Jon Stewart vs. The Jurassic Corn Dog

Sunday.

The State Fair.

Me and my girls stalked about the fairgrounds in search of the elusive Jurassic Corn Dog. At first, we had trouble finding it, only managing to find newborn versions of the Jurassic Corn Dog. Tasty and tender, they went down easily, often in under four bites.

Perhaps it was the Hawaiian Shaved Ice, or the gyro, or the French fries, or the snow cones, or the bomb pomps and the quarts and quarts if ice-cold Pepsi, but when we finally wrangled the Jurassic Corn Dog and stood in awe at its wonder, between me and my girls we could only finish two-thirds of its massive carcass.

The Jurassic Corn Dog won.

Now, I may be getting older but a scant seven years ago, I was able to defeat the Jurassic Corn Dog…all by myself.

For the entire afternoon I was depressed.

You see I’m a big fella. I should be able to take the Jurassic Corn Dog. But I couldn’t. Perhaps in the aging process, your ability to digest deep fried corn batter and hot dogs slips, like your memory.

It’s probably for the best.

I shouldn’t be eating a lot of corn dogs.

But a month ago, I found a gray hair in the old chest patch. Now granted, I’m as hairy as bear, but seeing that bright white strand among a forest of brown deflated me a bit. I see it around my eyes too. Bags and growing crow’s feet. I find myself dozing on the bus.

When I start playing canasta and shuffleboard with knee-high socks and my pants to my chest, please shoot me.

I know.

Stop bitching about getting old. Everyone does.

Okay. New subject.

Jon Stewart.

I think Barack Obama’s biggest mistake in his run for the presidency was not choosing Jon Stewart as his running mate. His latest bit on the FOX news coverage of the “Terror Mosque” story was nothing short of genius. As a matter of fact, there isn’t one piece of the Daily Show I haven’t adored from moment one. Good work, Jon. The Emmy was well deserved.

And I know he skews liberal. Again, no rocket science needed there. But am I slow to think that what he is talking about makes the most sense in the world? Or is he just pandering to the liberal audience? I suppose everyone is pandering to one side or another.

Which makes you wonder about history? Has there ever been a truly impartial view of the events of humankind? If we go by today’s standards, future generations look to miss out on much of the REAL history of mankind.

It kind of makes you wonder how our generation would be if we were truly fed an impartial view of history.

September and Those Little Coffee Creamers

Hi, blog!

How are you doing?

Me? Yeah, I know I haven’t done anything lately to feel like a kid again.

I know. Bad me.

But guess what? I did something?

Yep.

When I was young, stops at diners and restaurants came pretty infrequently. My folks preferred saving money then wasting it on a breakfast of sunny-side eggs, bacon, hashbrowns and whole wheat toast. We can eat that at home.

And we did.

On the rare occasion that we actually stopped at a diner, usually on the way to the cabin or whatnot, two things happened:

1) We got hashbrowns. Out of all the creations on heaven and earth, I sincerely believe that God created hashbrowns. Those perfectly shredded potatoes, griddle-fried to the perfect consistency of salty-crunch on the outside and warm potatoey goodness on the inside. Can anyone besides short order cooks in roadside diners make perfect diner hashbrowns at home? I don’t think so. I know I have never come close to perfecting home-made hashbrowns to the godliness that the short order cooks in diners can.

2) Us kids drank the coffee creamers. Or maybe it was just me. Regardless, what kid can resist the creamy goodness stored in those handily kid-size little plastic thingies? I’d venture not many. Of course, drinking them all is never a good idea. That usually draws jeers from the folks. Sorry, Mom and Dad.

So today as I was making my Friday getaway from the plaza building in downtown Minneapolis, I happened to stride by the leftover goodies from a meeting. And there sat a moment of my childhood – a little wicker basket chock full of those little coffee creamers. So I stole one as if it were Aztec gold and drank it when I got on the bus.

Creamy.

That last line only works if you say it in the Homer Simpson voice from the episode where he and Bart steal Groundskeeper Willy’s retirement grease.

So today there was no young lady who just got laid off – I never did see her on the bus today. Sad. It was just me, my book and a little plastic thingy of cream.

But this isn’t all about cream. I wanted to say a few things about the coming end of Summer and beginning of Fall. Fall is the best season. Supporting evidence is as follows: football, cooler weather, kids go back to school (yay), leaves (I have a blaze maple tree in back and I shit you not, I could park a lawn chair underneath it and watch the leaves switch over), Labor Day, apple picking, wearing jeans again, wearing sweatshirts again, wearing flannels and my orange hat again, hunting, telling hunting stories, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s lining up like ducks in a row.

Need I say more?

So as the nights get cooler and I break out my orange hat, sit down and watch some football, rake some leaves, pick some apples, and have a lot of fun. Because even if the world is crashing down all around you, at least make the most of it.

I can’t end on a terrible cliché, sorry.

Eat pumpkin pie.

Corn Dogs

I’ve been stuck on some very depressing subjects lately. Self-doubt, the impending doom of America, being unemployed. So today, I went out of my way to witness something humorous and light-hearted. Walking to the bus stop, I watched to see if something stuck out. A rogue banana peel waiting to trip someone up. Bombardier pigeons. A bus puddle splash. Nothing. I got on the bus and took out my book to read – The Book Thief, nice. A very thin, young woman sat in the seat next to me. She had a purse, a large green bag stuffed to the gills and medium sized legal box full of office and desktop knick-knacks.

I know.

Here I’m looking for something to bring me up and I get a downer. I guess lately, since I’ve been contracting and looking towards getting in at the bank FT, I had forgotten how bad it is out there still. On the bus ride home, I couldn’t help but glance at the woman every minute or so as she stared listlessly out the window.

I still can’t shake the image. Imagine having to loss you job, pack up your things and then ride the bus home for 45 minutes so everyone could see. I felt terrible. For the rest of the bus ride, I sat with my book, pretending to read and thinking about different alternatives for the young lady. Perhaps she wasn’t laid off. Maybe she quit because she got a better job. She won the lottery. She got cast in the next J.J. Abrams movie. Her stock portfolio hit it big. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Why is it so hard to think positively in America lately?

Think light-hearted.

Think about better times.

Shit, think about escaping to a different universe

I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. the World a couple weekends ago. That was fun. A very delightful, hilarious escape.

And this weekend, fantasy football. Yeah, baby! Pack the Excedrin and the cheatsheets and get your wing-eating fingers ready to go.

And on Sunday, we’re going to the State Fair for the first time in seven or so years. There is a gyro and about ten corn dogs with my name on them, waiting for me.

Is it wrong to think about doing something fun? Should we hunker down in our depression and worry, wondering when and if things are going to improve? Do we let all this crap get to us? Isn't that letting them win?

I don't know about you, but I’m going to get a corn dog.

Hack

No, we’re not venturing into Matrix territory.

And even though I’ve been smoking WAY too much lately, I’m not about to do that.

Though, I could do for a good old fashioned loogie HOCKing.

No. Today, I’m battling a different kind of hack.

See, I’m reading this book. It’s by Markus Zusak and its called The Book Thief. It really has me reeling. See as a hack writer, when I do happen across truly gifted writing, it fills me with joy, yes, but it also fills me with a sense of embarrassment and depression when comparing it to my own writing.

Now, I’m not starting this to get a pity party going…no, no. I’m just grappling with this struggle and thought it might be therapeutic to write about it.

See, some of you have heard about my minor successes and my major struggles. Some of you read this and get entertained by it. Others probably see through all of this ham-handed veiling and get right to the point – hackish. To fill you in, I came from a grad school program that taught everyone how to read their work with a high-toned and fancy-to-do voice, write long, fluid, rambling, descriptive sentences that seem to go on with no end in sight and use every form of punctuation; and ironically how to limit your audience to the twelve people sitting around you in a grad school writing workshop.

I don’t say this to bad-mouth writing programs. They do the best they can and I got a lot out of my experience. But in hindsight, I see that the scope of modern day writing programs is very limited to the highly academic style of writing that seems to only reach a smaller and smaller audience.

Okay, parlay that experience with joining the workforce as a marketer and proposal writer – earning a pretty nice buck – and then getting my feet wet with writing adventure novels for middle school kids. That’s like taking a banana out of liquid nitrogen and dropping it on a hot plate – KABOOM.

So here I am. I just finished a novel, a science-fantasy novel, whose sole reason for existence was to give me a product to potentially woo an agent to my work.

So why a science-fantasy novel?

Take a look at my analytical mind at work. Ever notice the fantasy and science fiction section at your local Barnes & Noble? Yeah, it’s f!@#ing-A ginormous! Now, have you ever looked at the covers and read the first couple pages? Come on, admit it. Everyone has at one point or another. Most of it reads and smells like a three-week old tuna salad sandwich at the bottom of your high-school locker. But that stuff sells like hot cakes in a lumberjack town. And why does it sell?

Because it reaches toward an audience instead of away from it as a lot of academic contemporary writing does.

Well, that probably just black-balled me from the literary crowd.

Maybe that answers my question. Be a hack and be proud of it. It works for Stephanie Meyer.

Ooh, that probably just lost me the genre crowd.

But it still troubles me. Work your ass off, write the next great American novel and have a one in a million shot at actually achieving it, knowing I am not gifted and the words do not come as easily as they do for other, much more talented writers – OR – play the hand I’m dealt, work with the meager talent I think I have and hack out mediocre but palpably sellable fantasy novels and make a decent living out of it.

Is there truly a balance between high-art and marketable product? I think they are opposing ends on a long scale, but no one said you have to spend all your time on either end.

But it is writing about fun, fun things and not having to crowd your head with weighty diction, complex characters and boring day-time-television plots.

I think I’m just going to stay a hack.