Sing It, Kid

I heard on the radio the other day a mother talking to the hosts of a radio show. The topic had been about the recent disqualification of a contestant from American Idol, and then it had shifted towards singing in general, and out of nowhere a mother called the show with a story.

The gist of her story:
Her own young daughter had been entered in a town talent show and while the mother had been waiting for her daughter to perform on the stage for the town, she and the rest of the community were treated to a seven-year-old girl climbing up onto the platform and belting out Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats."

First few lines:

Right now,
He's probably slow-dancing with a bleach-blonde tramp,
And she's startin' to get frisky,

Right now,
He's probably buyin' her some fruity little drink,
Cuz she can't shoot whiskey,

Right now,
He's probably up behind her with a pool stick,
Showin' her how to shoot a combo,
And he don't know . . .

And now, the chorus, sung at the top of the lungs and with all the pride of a woman who has done what is about to be described in song:

I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped-up four wheel drive,
Carved my name into his leather seats,
Took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,
Slashed a hole in all four tires,
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats!

I want you to imagine a little girl, no older than ten years old, in a nice dress and shoes, hair up in a bow, wearing her mother's lipstick and blush, singing in a very high tinny voice these precise lines.

I want you to also try not to crack up when you do.

There are a lot of songs out there that should not be sung by children, in my opinion. I don't know where the girl's mother's head was at this point, letting her little girl get up there and extol hatred and rage for the opposite sex like this (IN SONG, nonetheless), but what is done is done.

It is a funny image, isn't it?

Talent competitions are fine. Singing songs for an audience is also fine, I just have this firm belief that the song that your little child is going to sing should be something which won't have the entire audience in a dead faint or in stitches.

There have to be others . . .

• Hit Me Baby, One More Time by Britney Spears
  Depending on the age of the singer, and the gender (hopefully a girl), we could have a general uproar in the audience. Who is this person who is "hitting" this baby, one more time? And how many times did it happen before?
• Invisible by Clay Aiken
  The general idea of this song is that someone wishes he could be a ghost, watching the love of his life in her room without her noticing, and then he can "make you mine tonight" - lines which only Clay Aiken, the charming young American Idol runner up, could get away with. Certainly no one else, and especially not a little child.
• Sexy Back by Justin Timberlake
  If any little child below ten . . . no, make that below fifteen, knows exactly what this song is about, then there is a problem. Drag them kicking and screaming from the stage and straight into therapy.
• Candy Man by Christina Aguilera
  If any little girl can pull this one off, I'd be impressed. I'd also be petrified to hear her mention the phrases "Makes my cherry pop", "Makes my panties drop", and "With a real sweet c**k" in front of an audience.
• Livin' La Vida Loca by Ricki Martin
  First of all, the audience would leave at once. Second, if a young boy is singing about someone making him take off his clothes and go dancing in the rain, and getting him drunk and leaving him in the city, we have a problem about what television programs this child has been watching.
• Yeah! by Usher
  No child under ten should be able to be "in the club with my homies" or should be able to have a girl "all up on me" and certainly not be able to "make her booty go whack" and ultimately shouldn't be able to make her shout "yeah, yeah, yeah!"
• The Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
  Hey, if the kid can get past the first few lines, which state "Mama, just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead", then I applaude the listeners.
• Incomplete by the Backstreet Boys
  A song about sadness, misery, rejection, and loss. If he's singing about this, the dosage of his medication is obviously too weak.
• Tipsy by J-Kwon
  I don't actually need to say anything about this one . . .

Here Comes The Sun (Where'd The Snow Go?)

I woke up yesterday and stepped outside, heading for the gym like I usually do in the morning, when something hit me.

No, not a car. Not anything large and hard, and really nothing at all. It was more of a revelation, a realization, one of those moments that my Literature teachers so tactfully call "Ah-ha moments."

Who came up with that? I ask you, can we get any more ridiculous?

There was no snow. That was the point I was trying to make. I stepped outside, prepared myself to plunge into a snowbank on my way across the campus, and was startled to see signs of life once again.

Ducks out near the lake. Grass, standing tall and green. Skies without clouds. A bright and yellow shiny thing in the sky, bringing heat and light to the world below, and making a strange black thing on the ground just behind me which followed me no matter where I went.

After a while, I was informed that this was my shadow. Really, what will they think of next?

To use that phrase that someone decided to put on a needlepoint pillow some time ago, Spring has Sprung.

Beware, it leaps without warning.

Somehow, without me noticing, Spring snuck into the neighborhood and set up shop. The snow was gone and the clouds had moved away, the air was warm once again. I barely recognized the place.

This was SPRING. Not that period of days wherein the weather looks all nice but you know that the next day there would be snow crushing everything back down, but a beautiful time you just felt in your bones would last for at least a few months. It was Spring, Spring, Spring.

I felt anxious.

Suddenly, people were outside in shorts. Without jackets, even. They were hitting little white balls with wooden sticks, or throwing brown lemon-shaped pigs at one another. People were actually using the benches out on the quad. For once, no one was scraping their car of ice.

This, surely, had to be a dream.

There was one way for me to be sure. I went back inside and changed my clothes. I removed my heavy jacket and warmer pants and walked out in jeans and a t-shirt and lighter jacket.

And I felt the warmth spread through my body from that big shiny thing in the sky.

And I liked it.

Okay, fine, Spring is here.

TV, Schmee-Vee

I used to watch a lot of television. I mean, a great deal. A big deal. An AMAZING deal. There are very few words to describe just how much television I used to watch.

Okay, fine, I'm exaggerating.

The point is, I used to watch a lot of television. Why "used to" and not any longer? Because I decided to go to college instead of spending the rest of my life watching my television shows. No, I'm not saying that I don't get to watch television anymore. I'm saying that I no longer get to watch television programs where I am.

College does something to you. For instance, it gives you a schedule you must, absolutely must, adhere to. And there shall be no argument about this - you go to college, you get a schedule, and you will follow it to the letter or else feel the wrath of the educational system.

Also known as failing.

College also inflicts the following:
- Appetite for anything easily cooked in a microwave
- Heavy dependence on quarters for washing machines, dryers, and vending machines
- Claustrophobia

Now that I have this schedule, I can't sit home all day and watch television. Granted, I never did, but you understand what I mean. Something has suddenly become more important than the television programs I would watch all the time, weekly, at home.

Hey, I'm not completely alone here. I used to watch Lost every Wednesday (no, wait, when was it on before? Tuesday?) until I realized that I had to fill that time doing homework and studying. I also cannot enjoy House or CIS or NCIS as I have things like night classes or exams always around the corner, taking up every moment I could sit on my butt and stare at the screen.

You'd also be alarmed at how this has cut into my time for playing video games. Sad.

We're all like this now, unfortunately. There are girls literally in tears because they have night classes during the O.C. There is even one teacher who spent the first semester in a rage what with ABC switching time slots around. She took it out on the class - let me say, it was a miracle I passed.

(Teacher, if you are reading this, I agree. I LOVED that show. I can't believe they moved it.)

Ultimately, we have nothing to do but try to form our lives around our new schedules. Clubs, meetings, classes, study time - all must be done first. It is a wonder that we, as college students, can still remember our favorite shows anymore.

I think.

But there are alternatives. For instance, there are those who, having missed entire seasons of Grey's Anatomy, organize viewing parties. They put up signs everywhere and people flock into the room, cramming it to capacity, just to see every moment from the season they missed.

We have had O.C. parties. Grey's Anatomy parties. We had a weekly American Idol session. No, I am really not making any of this up. I only wish I were . . .

In conclusion, we have television. We also have college. One of them must win.

So . . . any takers?

Headlights, Deer, Boom!

The phrase "a deer caught in the headlights" has been a common one which haunts many a generation of young people learning to drive. It also, for that matter, haunts those of us who are writers, as it is such a nice phrase but also such a terrible cliche and we can't use it without people sneering at it.

At any rate.

The worst possible way to experience this is to symbolically become the deer, stare into the headlights, and wait for the impending crash.

This can be many things. No, you don't actually have to sit in the middle of the road with antlers on and wait for a truck to come at you. You simply have to find something to dread and realize that you're not waiting for it, you're staring into it as it comes barreling towards you.

Monday morning, you will be going to the dentist to have four teeth pulled. It is now Monday of the previous week, and you have exactly seven days to watch this approach.
The in-laws will be visiting.
The work evaluation papers are being passed out today.
Something horrible. Just fill it in, I'm not going to spell it all out for you.

In my case, it is the midterm.

You start the truck, I'll sit myself down on the pavement.

I should have studied more. Yes, I did study, don't give me that look, but I should have studied more. I could always study more. There could be a time I spent two weeks studying for one test alone, shirking every last assignment or life-necessity (showering, eating, deoderant) and I will still sit here and say to myself, "Why didn't I make it three weeks? And, geez, what reeks?"

Did I do all the terms? Do I remember all the essays? Who was that important guy?

The truck is now approaching.

As the truck approaches, you suddenly realize something. No matter what, that truck is going to hit you, so get comfortable and wait for it.

You will go to the dentist, the mother-in-law will make you loathe yourself, your peers will drive you into the ground, I will try my darndest and fail miserably. These are things we must accept and get used to.

Of course, I could always pass, but for the sake of the dark and dreary theme of this entry, I'll say that I'll fail.

You have to get used to this. You have to accept the fact that at the given time, you will stare into those headlights, and then it will be over.

They will pass. You're either flattened, or you've flattened yourself and let it pass over you without hitting you.

Get it over with. Stare deep into those headlights, you have no choice.
And wish me luck, while you're at it.

Buried Alive

There is always that moment in popular cartoon strips or television sitcoms or even movies where an unfortunate character heads for a closet. They are warned to not open it, to keep away from it at all costs.

Examples:
- The little boy who has been told to clean his room begs his mother to not open that door.
- The roommate who has a hot date stopping by dives in front of it when his girlfriend plans to hang up her coat.
- The dopey father brags about how organized he is and heads to the closet.

No matter what the possible reason for going to that door (save a slasher film wherein there will be a masked man weilding a chainsaw or an axe or whatever it is that evildoers use to kill their victims nowadays), the outcome is the same.

There is an avalanche.

The door opens, the character looks up into the darkness, their face suddenly pales with fear and horror and they throw up their hands to protect their face, and all at once they are overtaken by a wave of debris.

Old clothes. Trash. Discarded food. Homework. Random cardboard boxes, for effect.

There are times that this happens in real life. You may not think it ever happens, but it does. Really. There are even times when there is not a closet involved, but just a space which fills randomly with stacks and stacks of heaven-knows-what, and the slightest tap will cause it to all come tumbling down.

Let us be honest with one another: you have one. There's no shame in that, I have one too. I call it my desk.

There can be shelves stuffed with everything imaginable. There can be piles in the corner of things precariously positioned. There can even be one of those weird hammocks people stick in their bedrooms to throw stuffed animals into.

These are timebombs waiting to happen.

The other day, I shut my desk drawer too hard. Truth be told, I slammed it. I had one second to cringe in fear, realizing what I had done, and then it all came crashing down. The flashlight balancing on the top shelf, the stuffed monkey that someone gave me for Valentine's Day, the hat resting on top of a box of stale cookies, the pencils and the papers and the pens and the things that I had shoved on top of one another just to get them out of my way.

It came down.

When something like this happens, what exactly are you supposed to do about it? Cry? Well, okay, that is entitled, but that solves nothing.

I offer you advice, then.
Cry, but make it short. Rend your clothes if that helps.
Next, if you have cried, make sure you change it into hysterical laughter quickly or anyone rushing to your aid, having heard the deafening impact, will start to dial 9-1-1.
Finally, grab a shovel. You'll need it. Take careful aim and start stacking again.

Because that is how you did this in the first place, isn't it? Admit it! You know that your giant pile will come down any day now, and you knew it when it was forming and you started walking on tiptoes whenever you came near it, but you did nothing about it. Instead, you AIDED IT.

You made it worse! You added more mess! You tossed another paper or sweater up there, and you knew it was a mistake!

You are as guilty as I am, then.

So, while you grab your shovel and put things back to the way they were, so will I, your friend, his neighbor, his mother, her sister, her children, their best friends, their greatest enemies, and their one-day-offspring.

Happy shoveling. Try not to get buried alive.

Fight! To the DEATH!

The war has begun. There will definitely be prisoners taken.

As, in the distance, summer begins to loom, we, the people, casually glance at our television sets or turn on the radio or even just open a webpage and all of a sudden, the war is upon us. There is no way to escape it, there is no way to turn a blind eye to it, and there is no way to run from it.

Disney World versus Universal Studios. Seaworld versus the beach. Carnivale versus Disney Cruise Line.

Oh, the lack of humanity.

Go ahead and laugh, you know full well what I'm talking about.

Today, we can look at the television and suddenly be bombarded by at least seven commercials during one commercial break concerning vacation spots all around Florida. Why? Because that time has arrived, the time to reserve now and prepare for the (hopefully) warm and sunny time that we plant between June and August. Sometimes also May and early Septermber.

The war to find that perfect vacation spot has come to us.

Reserve NOW.
Buy timeshare NOW.
Get your tickets NOW.
NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW.

Or all will be lost.

Today, as I sat at breakfast, the large television screen on the wall played a heartwarming commercial concerning the next magical Disney vacation that you might take. This was immediatly followed by one for Universal Studios. This was ultimately followed by one for the state of Florida itself.

NASA launched rockets. Dinosaurs attacked people in boats. Fireworks lit the sky. Women in bathing suits dived into the ocean.

Oh, the bloodshed.

This is a time that is very frightening. This is the time that we should just lay low and let the travel agencies duke it out and leave us be. But the war is impossible to ignore.

Disney. Universal. NASA. Seaworld. FLORIDA ITSELF.

You must choose, or all will be lost.

Peace be with you.

Man Over-Bored!

So, how's spring break going?

Let's ask a question that is more pleasant, then.

So, how's that hangnail?

Forget it. Spring break, this year, is a bust. I am that one person who has been sentenced to spend it at home with his parents underneath a great mountain of snow rather than somewhere expensive, amoral, and tropical.

As such, I am bored. I have little more to do than feed fat dogs, watch talk shows, and actually do the homework assigned. Pathetic.

However, I am not alone and I know it. There are those of you out there that are stuck in my position, and to you, I say this: Let us stand united.

Spring break, the summer, New Years Eve, and many other fantastic holidays are often times when the magazines say that you should get up and run out into the world to celebrate, to get a tan (well, not New Years Eve), and to have the time of your life. There are always these holidays which come around and there are always those of us, like me, who find ourselves that small percentage that has been forced to stay at home without anything to do.

New Years, you sit in front of the television and your parents snore loudly on the couch nearby.
Spring break, you catch up on Oprah (no quoting me on this).
Summer, you head for the tanning salon to convince others that you actually went to the beach.

There are those of us that will not go anywhere. But we can find our own fun, if we look hard enough.

What do we do? What should we do? Cook? Garden? Sleep?

Myself, actually, I am not a good cook. I have burned spaghetti. Really. And my father keeps me from gardening, what with his hatred for flowers and his everpresent lawn mower. And I mentioned two fat dogs, preventing any sleep.

Read? Yes, that seems good.
Write something? Perhaps the next great American novel?
See a movie! There's a winner.
Eat massive amounts of food. There's another. Come back and show those skinny, sunburned toothpicks that you are pale and fat and PROUD OF IT.
Listen to music. Play it loud. Very loud. Have the cops brought in by helicopter and tank with the pressure of the music.

The point is this: you may be alone, but you are never without options. You can always find something to do with your life. Just look hard. VERY hard, mind you, and eventually, something will happen.

Now go feed that dog.

Well, When You Put It Like That . . .

Ever heard the phrase, "Your day could be worse"? I hate things like that. I'm sure we all do, but when taken apart and looked at point blank, we see the truth in a statement like this.

Let's discuss the hatred of the statement for a moment.

"Accidents happen." Okay, so WHY DID IT HAVE TO?
"Life's not fair." Yeah, but WHY NOT IN MY FAVOR?
"Your day could be worse." Sure, but IT COULD STAND TO BE A LOT BETTER!

Phrases like these are basically an eloquent way of adding insult to injury. So you've fallen from a high place, landed in a mess, and now you're broken and bleeding and a stinking pile of . . . something - someone walks up and says, "Well, I wouldn't have done that." Insult to injury, people. Not a pretty thing.

However, taken apart, like I said, and looked at, it can be seen that these are often true.

This morning I was reading a book which dealt with a young girl at the age of only ten. This particular girl had just buried both of her parents back in the 1700s in the family garden in Europe, both of them having died from the Black Plague. Soon after burying their decaying and disease-ridden corpses, she realizes that she has contracted the disease herself and crawls into her house to die.

Puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

It is a hard thing to consider, but no matter how hard your day is going, there is always a way it could get worse. That doesn't necessarily comfort you, but it should cushion the blow. I, for example, thought I was having a bad morning. There was something in the sole of my shoe that I couldn't get out, I didn't enjoy breakfast, and it was a chilly eight degrees outside.

Sitting down before class to read a few pages and discover how this poor girl's day was going, I decided I was alright.

We, as people in a mad and crazy world, rarely see this. I sure didn't until I compared myself to a peasant during the Black Plague.
So the toaster burns the toast. At least it didn't short-circuit and burn the house to the ground.
So you called the waiter, "Miss" by mistake. Thank goodness he didn't sue.
So you found out you have a broken leg. Fortunately it isn't a broken pelvis.

You catch my drift, I'm sure.

As bad as everything goes in your day, and as miserable as you think the world may be, there is likely someone, at this precise moment, having a worse one.

Stop feeling bad for yourself. Feel bad for him.

Grow Up

Flowers are a peculiar thing. I know this because there is no longer the simple strategy for keeping them alive which consists of the following:

1) Pick them
2) Put them in a vase
3) Add water

No, apparently one can't just expect a flower to survive in water anymore - things must be done to keep them alive and well and therefore flowers are to be watched like bombs in case they go off in a shower of petals.

I had some flowers from Hawaii sitting in a vase on my windowsill in my room. I put them on the sill, kept the window open for sunlight, put nice water in them - they were dead within a week. It was sad to throw them out, I loved the scent.

After a brief stint in the theater, some friends brought me a bouquet of roses. I put them in the same vase and added this expensive powder they brought with them, supposedly for the purpose of prolonging the roses.

It worked. Then, I read the back of the package and found out that water had to be changed every couple of days, fresh cuts were required, the roses were to be rotated in the sun, etc.

Basically, I decided it was more trouble than it was worth and let them go after about a week and a half.

Nowadays, you can't expect a flower to live in a vase for more than a day. If you want results, you must do all sorts of things. Florists today will scream and yell until they are blue in the face to emphasize that water is not the answer.

Get bottled water. Add chemicals. Pray. Buy fifteen sun lamps. Dance around them waving a stick and chant ceremonially.

To me, this is becoming troublesome. I say, keep them in the garden, or buy fakes ones. But then again, the idea is to let life thrive on your windowsill.

Better have the chemicals ready.

Rain, Rain, PLEASE Go Away

When the sky opens and you find yourself buried underneath a sea of cascading water, your inital reaction is "Oh dear, I appear to be wet."

If you're anyone who lives on a college campus, there are two possible ways you can interpret rain. I am, so I will tell you. And to be honest, it is nothing along the lines of "Oh dear, I appear to be wet."

1) You get depressed and miserable and slink about for the rest of the day as though you have just been informed that rather than a month left to live, you have a week, and the Superbowl is on the eighth day.
2) You laugh, as it is the funniest thing that could possibly happen.

To explain, let me say this: we, as college students, have different hardships than the rest of you. Really, we do.

If you are depressed and miserable, you have reasons. It is a common fact that even with the most state of the art buildings (hah) everyone living on the bottom floor will be subjected to a flood and everyone living on the top floor will find out the ceiling leaks. The place smells of mildew and decay and you are upset by this horrible turn of events. Also, when you walk out of doors, you find that you have nothing to wear that isn't completely rain resistant. All you brought to college are your good sneakers and your fashionable designer tops which no one should have shelled out for in the first place because we're broke college students fighting just to put meals in our stomachs but I'm rambling again. These clothes are now ruined. Your hair will frizz and everyone you know will mock you from class to class. Your bag, full of two-hundred dollar textbooks, will be soaked.

Rain will ruin your day.

Or, like me, you could be the other person.

You could accept the fact that you are soaked and look ridiculous, but you also have to take a moment and look around at the other students and teachers, stumbling about in the rain, and find a sort of humor in their misfortune and laugh at it.

This is cruel. But it is also true.