Jerry Lewis in France

Since my last blog, Super Bowl Sunday, we've been to the movies in Altoona a couple times, most recently to see Eastwood's latest, Gran Torino. More about the movie later ---for now I want to write about the Troy Polamalu Coke commercial which ran during the previews. You know, the 2009 version of the Mean Joe Greene ad from the 1970s. The theatre was filled about 75% capacity, and even though everyone who isn't living under a rock has already seen this ad a few times, my fellow matinee patrons laughed and cheered as though they were watching the ad for the first time!

It felt kind of odd to me not to laugh with them, but frankly, the ad bores me. I liked the original with Mean Joe much better. Sure, the first time I saw the Polamalu ad, I enjoyed it as much as the next guy. I liked when he tackled the guy in the business suit. I laughed some, but not that much, because it wasn't that funny. (Now, if you want to know a commercial that makes me laugh, just watch the facial expressions of that kid whose mom is stingy about old cell phone minutes---that kid is a genius and deserves an Oscar! He doesn't say much, but he cracks me up everytime.)

At any rate, like the young people say, it's all good. The joy over the Steelers 6th Super Bowl win is still palpable. The movie patrons got me to thinking about what a winning professional sports team can do for a community. The financial benefits to the economy are obvious. By my own count, roughly one out of every four kids in the elementary schools were I work wore a Steelers jersey to school during the weeks before and after the Super Bowl. Elmira had also wanted a Polamalu jersey, but when she saw the $58 dollar price tag, she knew that was a ridiculous amount of money for a jersey with someone else's name on it. Later, I bought her a low priced pink T-shirt with a Steelers Logo on front and the slogan "Got Six?" and on the back "The Burgh Does".

Still, plenty of people shell out big money to wear this stuff. Perhaps this is what they mean by trickle down economics. I am not a betting man, so I can't honestly say that the Steelers success has fattened my pocketbook a single dime. But when the Steelers win, people feel better,even those of us more than 100 miles away from Pittsburgh. And when people feel better, the theatre houses fill up with patrons so giddy that when Polamalu comes on, they howl like a lot of Parisians at a Jerry Lewis film fest. Since winning the Super Bowl, Troy could sell us anything. He could even pack them in for this forgotton and rarely seen classic: Lewis' ill-conceived holocaust picture, The Day the Clown Cried.

Now for the Coke ads that you should jeer, but won't because doing so might make you look like a mysogynist. Even worse, you could be mistaken for someone who gets his water not from a bottle, but from a tap. Maybe you're one of those who blindly eat vegetables other than high fructose corn syrup, and you consume fruits that aren't Cherry Coke. God forbid you believe the myth that Coke products aren't actually good for your heart.

If soda pop consumption is a major contributor to the obesity epidemic, and obesity significantly increases the risk heart disease, then why would the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute team up with Coke and Heidi Klum in an ad campaign to increase awareness of women's health issues? Is it of no consequence that she makes a fortune starring in McDonald's ads in Europe? Does Heidi McHottie really know something we don't? Do french fries reduce the risk of stroke? Should I believe those who've told me that cigarrette smoking helps them reduce stress and keep weight off? Is David Letterman being straight with us when he claims asbestos is a valuable source of calcium?

Evidently Evidently, advertisers know that Heidi in a red dress, like Troy Polamalu in Pennsylvania or Jerry Lewis in France, could sell us anything. I'd like to invite Heidi to McDonald's and a Jerry Lewis movie just to pick her brain and find out. She could wear her red dress and we'd gorge ourselves on french fries, healthy coke products and Big Macs until we got our fills. Then at the theatre, we'd laugh with everyone else at that hilarious Troy Polamalu commercial, enjoy the feature presentation, making out through the holocaust scenes, until our hearts exploded all over our hot buttered popcorn.

Here We Go!

The Steelers in their 7th Super Bowl Sunday
THE BOSS at Halftime
Lots of junk food, potato chips and the HERE WE GO song

Priceless.

Steelers 34
Cardinals 24

I think Tasha is more excited about the game than I am. Tasha was talking to her mother last night, encouraging all her Malaysian family to be sure and watch the Super Bowl. I had to laugh when she started listing names of players for her mother and then when she sounded perplexed that Ben Rothlesberger and Hines Ward and Troy Polumalu weren't household names over there. Twenty years from now, when you see Malaysians wearing a lot of black and gold, the Steeler Nation just might want to give a big fist bump to Tasha.

The Jordan Twp Butterfly Effect

How did this happen?

I don't entirely agree with those who say Hollywood has groomed us for this. There have been plenty of black presidents in movies and television during the past 20 years or so. Morgan Freeman played one in the movie Deep Impact. The TV drama 24 always seems to elect a black president. Even the child actor Sammy Davis Jr. had once played an eight year old President Rufus Jones way back in the early days of cinema. Oh, and then there is my favorite, President Duane Elizondo Moutain Dew Herbert Comacho (below) in the hilarious futuristic, Idiocracy. If you haven't seen Idiocracy, add it to your netflix queue today.

Norman Lear's fueds between Archie Bunker and his neighbor, George Jefferson in the long running sitcom All in the Family probably had more to do with Obama's election than 24 or Deep Impact. If some movies and sitcoms helped, other shows probably had potential to hurt a black man's chances of getting elected. Hollywood probably cancels itself out. Wouldn't guys like Fifty Cent and Flavor Flav negate the more positive influence of black characters played by Morgan Freeman or Bill Cosby? ---which begs the question why does DL Hughley even have a show?

Come to think of it, Sir Isaac Newton could have predicted Obama's election. Remember the third law of Physics? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Eight years of GW's moronic "you're either with us or against us" policies are what elected Barack Obama. Recently, many have asked what will be George Bush's legacy? The answer is simple. The election of Barack Obama is George W. Bush's legacy. Instead of a dimwit divider, we've got an intellegent uniter as a President. According to Newton's law, we can predict Obama will remain in the White House for the next 20 years or so.

This great moment in American History causes me to reflect upon my youth on a farm in western PA. Like the butterfly that changed the course of a hurricane half a world away, maybe Mom and Dad had all those years ago, started a little something when they adopted my youngest sisters, a Canadian Indian daughter, Lana; and later a Korean daughter, Judy Mi Yung. Bringing a Canadian Indian into Jordan Township and into an all white school district forced our little corner of rural America to welcome other races into the community. Of course, Lana and Judy were only two teaspoons of water added to the great white ocean. And I cannot ignore the fact that 30 years later, McCain handedly won Jordan Township ---and Clearfield County. But Obama easily won Pennsylvania, despite predictions to the contrary, by Governor Rendell and Congressman John Murtha, that a black man couldn't win here. Murtha even called his own constituency, western PA, a rural and backward place populated with uneducated bigots, racists and rednecks.

There may have been plenty, but I really don't recall many instances of overt racism against Lana or Judy. Lana came along a few years earlier, and probably had to deal with the ignorance more than Judy. I think there were a few elementary school teachers who treated Lana a little differently. A first grade teacher, Mrs. Hughes comes first to mind, but it has been so long that my memory fails to come up with specifics. Mom or Lana might be able to remember. Any additional input here would be greatly appreciated.
There were a few little things though, like the way our elderly neighbor, Harold Parks used to refer to Lana as "the little coon girl". I remember he used to tease me about how I liked to play in the ditch across the road. Suzanne and Lana used to come along too. After a rain it was most fun, floating little sticks through the "big rapids" all the way to Stone Creek. I suspect Harold was amused by the fact that we were splashing around in the same water to which his septic system leached, but that's another story.

Harold's referring to Lana with such colorful language came not out of hatred or racism, so much as it probably came from the discomfort with the idea, that in all his 75 or 80 years, Harold never had to interact with anyone of a different color than his own. Through no doing of his own, Harold's world had been de-segregrated, and he never even had to get on a bus.

Like many western Pennsylvanians, Harold had worked as a coal miner. He spent a significant percentage of his daylite hours lugging shovels and picks and props through the dangerous, damp, cold and dark underground shafts. Many of his spare hours were probably spent scrubbing the black dust off his skin. How can anyone hold a grudge against someone whose lungs sucked coal dust so to heat the homes of his fellow man? He may have been a redneck, but he was no racist. Harold was such a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates, (the only team in MLB history to field a team completely with minority players. Maybe then manager Danny Murtaugh helped to elect President Obama?), that he nicknamed his grandson, "Chico"---the same name Pirate announcer Bob Prince had given to Hall of Famer, Roberto Clemente. I suspect he thought it was a pretty neat thing to have Lana, an American Indian living next door. I like to think he and his wife Helen jabbered away with Sunday visitors over coffee, tea and those chalk flavored pink bismuth candies they used to eat. "Oh, just let me tell you about the adorable little coon who moved in next door. When she comes outside to play in the ditch, you can see her from our house! "

Years later, during Harrisburg Farm Show week, at Grandpap's annual Pennsylvania Potato Growers banquet , I remember sitting around a large round table set with white table cloth and a confounding arrangement of silverware. I don't remember who was there exactly, but Grandma, Grandpap, Aunt Dorothy, Suzanne and Lana were there I am pretty sure. Gladys and Norman and their boys may have been there too. Seating arrangements were that we shared the table with a few other potato growers. As an ice breaker, Grandpap prompted Lana, who was probably about seven years old at the time, "Tell them what you are." I've often thought about that day, and wondered why Grandpap felt obligated to explain the color of Lana's skin. Was prompting a little girl to explain to a group of adult strangers, why her skin was darker than theirs, a politically incorrect thing to do? I contend it was just the opposite.

"I'm an Indian," Lana muttered shyly.

I give good credit to Grandpap who wanted to teach Lana to speak proudly of her heritage. He knew more about native Americans than what he gathered from 17 seasons of Gunsmoke Monday nights. On potato deliveries with him, he shared plenty of stories about the Osceola Indians, and he often talked about the other local Indian settlements in Chinclacamoose (now Clearfield) and arrow heads he found plowing in the meadow. Grandpap had insisted that Lana tell the world that she was indeed "an Indian," because he was also proud of her heritage, and proud to have his fellow potato farmers welcome her to the table. Thinking back to the banquet, most of us probably sympathized with Lana during what seemed an awkward moment. But, I think it was the right thing to do. I wish I could remember the responses of those other potato farmers who shared the table with us. I'm sure they were congenial, but probably strange for them too.

As far as Judy's run-ins with ignorance go, I can only recall that the school district figured that if a six year old couldn't speak English, she must have been mentally handicapped. So they enrolled her in remedial education classes and signed her up for the Special Olympics. Everyone was happy when she faired quite well in the competitions against genuinely handicapped children from other schools.

About the only other thing I remember from those days was that Judy was mean to our dogs, presumably because she believed they should have been tied up at a meat market, rather than running free or welcomed into the house. I also recall that Judy liked to sing My Darling Clementine in Korean.

If you wonder why this post seems to have gone aimlessly on from President Obama to Comacho to Danny Murtaugh to Harold Parks and Flavor Flav, I'll use the excuse and remind my dear reader, that the butterfly effect is based in chaos theory, and is highly sensitive to location and natural conditions of the time. I'm not a mathematician, so I cannot explain it, but to say that we are all connected and even the McCain stronghold of Jordan township can play, and has played a part in the change.

PPU SOFTBALL NOTEBOOK and Adeu to Updike:
Natika's been selling Pizzas and cookie dough to earn money for her softball Spring training trip to Florida next month. Thanks to everyone who purchased she can afford to go. This should be an exciting season for her, as she enters the year as the fourth outfielder. With only three upperclasswomen, and several freshmen girls vying for the starting outfield positions, this should be an exciting season for Natika, as she enters the season as the fourth outfielder. Her speed and excellent defensive skills should help get her into a lot more games than last year. Her roommate and best friend Lindsey is the star shortstop. Together they work out regularly in the batting cages. Natika claims her hitting has improved a great deal. I spoke to her earlier this week, and she is very confident of earning a starting position.

For my money, John Updike was the best writing stylist of our time. I liked Poorhouse Fair, Rabbit Run, Rabbit is Rich, and more recently The Terrorist. The Ex-Basketball Player is one of my favorite poems. He also penned a memorable essay about Ted Williams homerun in his final at bat. I was sad to learn of this great genius from Pennsylvania's passing from lung cancer this week.

Hope for Tom, Dick and Harry

On Thursday, Ianniq received a certificate proclaiming that he's been accepted to Clarion. On Friday, he received another, embellished with a ribbon and gold calligraphy that he'd been acccepted to Lock Haven. He's hung them proudly upon the wall behind his homeschool desk.

Whoopdeedoo!

I can't put my finger on it, but something about these acceptance certificates reminds me of that episode of Married with Children when the family dog received a credit card.

Coming Soon: Obama, the Steelers and PPU Softball

Ravens and Birches and Rickshaws in Calcutta

It's about ten below zero degrees outside this morning. Schools were closed Friday which worked out for Ianniq, Natasha, Elmira and I to keep our scheduled visit to Clarion University. I liked it there, although we heard pretty much the same old spiel already heard from the other state universities we've visited. The cost factor might figure a little lower than IUP or Slippery Rock. Clarion is the smallest of those three we've visited. We were glad the baseball coach made plenty of time to talk with Ianniq, and it seems like Clarion might be a good fit for him in that regard.

We stopped at Dunham's sporting goods in Dubois on the way home. Elmira needed a pair of snowboarding boots. It was nice to see they had the step-ladder out and were busy hanging an Albert Pujols poster and preparing to set up their baseball equipment displays. Pitchers and Catchers report in three weeks. Spring can't be too far behind.

Remember the Frost poem "Birches", about young life testing limits, and a boy climbing high upon their narrow birch trunks until they bend and gently bring him back to earth? Evidently, Natika has become a swinger of birches as she has continued to test the limits of her school, her scholarship and her parents' sanity. Of course, these behaviors are nothing that I haven't done multiple times in my own life, testing limits of all those who care about me from time to time through the years. Remember the poem's ice imagery? When you're young, everything looks bigger and shinier and irresistible to the touch as the ice coated branches of young birches about which Frost writes. You want to reach out and grab hold of their shimmering surface, smooth like crystal, beautifully glazing over the real wood of the matter. Fool around too much, the ice shatters, and the inner dome of heaven falls in. Sometimes the weight of the ice causes limbs to bend or break. Sometimes they bend and spring right back up. Sometimes they bend and stay bent over like, as Frost describes, a young girl drying her hair in the sun. This limb isn't broken yet, but it's pretty hard to spring happily back up when she calls. These days, I find great comfort in Frost's closing truth, "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

I think of the US government's auto industry bail-out. The big three auto-makers have been slapping together inferior gas guzzling cars for most of the past few decades, and testing the limits of the American consumer for even longer than that. Of course, plenty of red, white and blue die-hards still insist on purchasing a two-and-a-half-ton gas-guzzling American SUVs to transport their sorry two hundred pound ass (average) to and from Walmart. This was the vogue for the early years of the W administration. To criticize the wastefulness of these consumers meant being ridiculed as a tree-hugger with a liberal agenda hell-bent upon taking away your right to own an SUV! Who couldn't have predicted the day would soon come when the new car lots are overflowing with Hummers and the big three auto makers are asking the taxpayer for a zillion dollar bail-out? The inner dome of the-good-old-days-of-ripping-off-the-American-consumer-with-second-rate-automobiles heaven has finally fallen in.

I heard about this rickshaw driver in India, who peddled commuters and tourists through the streets of Calcutta for a living. He made about 40 US cents per day, or just enough money to live in a wood shack and feed his family. The man's father was also a rickshaw driver who made about the same money. But the city had recently introduced motorized rickshaws, with a plan to phase out bicycle rickshaws within the year. Bicycles had become too slow for the hustle of the big city. It was thought that motorized rickshaws would help alleviate some of the severe traffic congestion. When an interviewer asked the rickshaw driver, who could never afford to purchase a motorized rickshaw, how he and his family would survive when the government essentially banned their livelihood, the rickshaw driver sort of shrugged his shoulders and responded that it was just something that he and his father would have to accept. Although he had no other skills, and his future was uncertain, he said the new law made him feel hopeful because he knew motorized rickshaws would help people to get around much faster, which would be better for his country.

Clearly, this civic minded rickshaw driver is unqualified to join the American Auto Workers Union. Ask an American auto-worker to sacrifice for the good of his company or country? I really shouldn't be judgmental, because I don't know what he'd say, but I can pretty safely surmise that he'd mutter something about how that $76 per hour he earns for mounting rear view mirrors was not enough for him to keep up with inflation last year.

Here's an idea for an economic stimulus package. Gather up every GM, Ford and Chrysler product in the country, melt them down and manufacture them into Japanese cars. Drive through a low income housing project parking lot sometime. Take note of all the Dodge Neons, Chevy Cavaliers, Pontiac Grand Prix and other such cheap and unreliables parked there. Each of these mobile trash heaps needs frequent repair and drains the already stretched-to-the-limit budgets of the poor who live there. It's not a coincidence that a Japanese vehicle is a rare find in a housing project. I suspect the reliability of Japanese vehicles has helped more people out of poverty than any American Auto worker is willing to admit. Perhaps nowhere else will you see such a direct link between poverty and American made cars. Dodge Neons and many of the Pontiac cars are practically disposable after 85 or 100 thousand miles. One last stop before the scrap yard, these inferior pieces of junk wind up in the hands of the low income housing dwellers who keep them for about six months, during which time they pay and pay for repairs. When the Neon blows up, the cycle starts again. The poor must replace it with another American junker with standard equipped firmly attached rear-view mirror. No doubt, these American disposables are a big part of what keep the poor, poor.

A HITLER UPDATE AND OTHER ODDS AND ENDS

Little Adolf Hitler and his baby Nazi siblings are safely in the custody of New Jersey Child Services. Trust the caseworkers that yanking these three kids from their parents care had nothing to do with the names they were given. It seems a little intervention known as planned ignoring might have gone a long, long way in this case. Generally speaking, social workers are knee-jerk alarmist idiots. Remember the Mormon commune debacle last year?

A first grade boy said to me the other day, "Santa brought me Destroy All Humans 2." Perhaps we need a game more specific to destroying all social workers...and American auto workers.

Elmira is a little too fascinated by this death row inmate who gouged his own eye out and ate it. Do you think she might need a check-up?

This afternoon we will find out who goes to the Super Bowl. Tasha wants to have a little party to watch the game. I hope the Steelers win, but I am a bit concerned about the way the stars seem to be aligning this year. Abe Lincoln turns 200 in February and Barack Obama, a descendent of slaves, will be inaugurated on Tuesday.
This might be a stretch, but Charles Darwin also turns 200 this year and the big three automakers (with or without a government bail out) are on the verge of extinction.
And finally, Edgar Allen Poe turns 200 on Monday. Could this mean the Ravens are also going to win this year?

I am happy with all four teams in the championship this year. Of course, an all PA Super Bowl would be an exciting thing. I know the Eagles have a long history of disappointing their fans. However, I recall thinking during the game the Eagles beat the Steelers early this season, that I hadn't seen a team dominate Pittsburgh like that in a long, long time. They sacked Big Ben eight times, and they really looked unstoppable that day.

I've been a long time fan of the Cardinals. I used to route for them when they were in St. Louis when they had one of the most under-rated quarterbacks in modern history, Neil Lomax at their helm. It seemed the Cards were always tough to beat, and they always gave NFC powerhouses of the day, the Cowboys and Redskins fits, but the Cards rarely made the playoffs. So if the Cards get in, good for them. They are long overdue.

I hope the Steelers can win tonite. I'm sure things will be pretty rowdy here when they do. This quote from John Mehno's column this week reminds us of the downside:
"The Steelers are one victory away from this region being buried in an avalanche of homemade Steelers novelty songs.

Success is not without a price."

New Year's Day

New Year's Eve day a couple of friends invited us join them marching and playing African percussion instruments in a State College parade. We hadn't seen the annual ice sculpture displays before, and it sounded like it might be fun, so we loaded all the kids in the van and went. I played a shaker and Natika played a bean rattle, and Ianniq played some hand carved rolling pin thing. Natasha and Elmira carried poles with animal likenesses on top. Temperatures must have been in the low teens. Fingers got cold and stiff, but we still had a lot of fun.
We enjoyed dinner and desserts at The Diner afterward. It's always neat just to check out the kids who work there. One of the prerequisites for hire must be an accident involving a tackle box. The girl who waited on us was sweet enough, but the cooks in the basement were either smoking something or they had an early start on the New Years champagne. The French Onion Soup was awful. When she first served it to us, the cooks witheld the standard mozzarella and croutons. She gave us just a bowl with onions and broth. The waitress with fish hooks in her lips did all she could do to make it right, reheating the soup with croutons and cheese, as we requested. Still, the best French Onion soup in town comes from the Corner Room, not the Diner, that is for sure.

Every New Years day I think of Roberto. I was only ten years old, but like those who remembered where they were when Kennedy was assassinated, I remember like yesterday where I was when I learned about Clemente. We were in the car, on our way to visit Aunt Gladys and Uncle Norman and cousins Larry and Norm. I think we heard it on the radio right there in the car. I spent most of that year 1973, believing that Roberto Clemente couldn't possibly have died in that New Years Eve plane crash. For months, I figured that one day he'd show up on a beach somewhere, having swum safely to shore.The Nittany Lions seemed lost at sea this afternoon as they were thoroughly beaten by USC at the Rose Bowl today, 38-24. A couple penalties at crucial times during the first quarter cost them the game.

Happy 20th Anniversary!

If anyone were to ask my advice about how to make a marriage work, I wouldn't dare tell the whole truth, that for our 20th wedding anniversary, Tasha and I bought a set of twin mattresses. Yep--separate beds. Truth be told, Tasha can't stand sleeping with me. She says she's had twenty years too many of my twitching wildly, pulling the covers off her, hogging too much space and tossing and turning all night long. Plenty of nights I lie awake, fearful that I may roll over and wake her, to which she might respond with a right jab to my solar plexus or a brisk smack to the head. So, I agreed that separate beds might not be such a bad idea.

If anyone asked my advice, I'd probably tell them to throw the 50/50 relationship theory out the window. Decisions are made on a 100/100 basis. If Tasha or I don't completely agree about a decision, we don't move forward until we do. I'd never suggest that anyone attempt to make a cross-cultural marriage like ours work. Ours works not out of love or romance or any such poetic pipe dream, but out of patience and respect for our differences. Tasha and I have always agreed how we would raise our kids, with hope and understanding that our cultural differences promise to influence them to be good citizens of the world. Still, nothing has prevented them from making many of the same bad decisions I made as a teenager. Evidently, our first two have been cursed with my dominant knucklehead gene traits.

Twas a nice visit to Mom and Dad's place in Granville today. Lana and Samantha were there with all of us. Mom made a nice big salad and some fruit punch. Tasha cooked duck and Lana brought lasagna. Mom made seafood lasagna which was excellent even though she thought it came out a little bit soupy. Lots of cookies and genuine Turkish baklava made by our friend Ann made for plenty to eat. Dad showed us his new project, a pin hole camera that he built from a few small pieces of plywood. If it doesn't take good pictures, he says it could easily be converted to a box trap.
After lunch, we all went to the movies in State College. Tasha, Mom, Dad and I watched "Doubt" starring Merle Streep and Phillip Seymore Hoffman. This film was a rare value for the price of admission which left us with plenty to think about afterwards. I am still contemplating the line "Doubt is a bond as sustaining as certainty".

Merry Christmas to all and Thank you for 20 glorious years Natasha!

and here's an interesting feel good story from Hollywood to help us remember 2008: