(This is where I’d put a segue if I had one)

Tennis player Andre Agassi used to advertise cameras using the slogan “Image is Everything.”  He is probably glad that this insipid phrase was presented (barely) tongue-in-cheek, because at the time he was saying it he purposefully looked like this (and may have been using fake hair to augment the look):

Do not try this at home

(I will conveniently fail to mention the fact that, back then, I thought his hair was really cool).

Last month I got a stark example of how hard it is for one to maintain a carefully crafted image.  I was sitting in an orthodontic waiting room with a few other parents of teenagers.  We were the proud, the few, the people who had already exceeded our lifetime benefit limits on orthodontia.  A man drove a hulking SUV into the parking lot and took a seat near me while his daughter got her braces adjusted.  He was wearing a fair amount of denim and black, and had a bit of an understated “tough guy” aura about him.  I wasn’t exactly intimidated by him, but let’s just say that if a terrorist had come running into the waiting room I would’ve deferred, waiting to see if the denim guy wanted to tackle him first.

His cell phone rang, and the ring tone was the opening guitar riff from “Bad to the Bone.”  Perfect.  But then he had to talk.  And despite his best effort, he couldn’t keep his voice low enough for me to not overhear this:

“Hmm?  Ranch dressing?  Okay.”

So with apologies to George Thorogood and/or any of the Destroyers:

On the day I was born, the nurses all gathered ’round
And they gazed in wide wonder, at the joy they had found
The head nurse spoke up, said this one’s true colors have shown
“He acts like he’s tough, but he’ll fetch Ranch Dressing home.”

I broke an artichoke heart, before I met you
I’ll break a thousand more baby, before I am through
I wanna be yours pretty baby, yours and yours alone
I’ll use my denim money, and I’ll fetch that Ranch Dressing home

This year we attended a “trick or treat” style festival at our kids’ school.  One young lad was dressed head to toe, including a mask, in a hazardous materials (haz-mat) outfit.  Just for fun, Laura asked him about his costume.  He replied (with a muffled mask voice), “I think I’m a spas-mat, but you’d have to ask my mom.”  Indeed.

Am I the only person in the world who when he hears the word “Budapest” immediately thinks of an insect infestation of Chinese religious statuary?

This paragraph is actually written to one specific young lady.  I don’t know her name.  I stood behind her in a line at a Nashville water park, waiting to return my locker key and win back my five dollar deposit.  In the course of a one-minute wait, I learned that her boyfriend, who at the time was engaged in a spirited and profane discussion with park employees, was named Chuck.  After Chuck departed the scene, his girlfriend apologetically explained to the employees that he was “only like that” when he had been drinking, which is also when he assumes his alter ego named “Chuck Nasty.”  I might add that after listening in context, I am fully confident that “Chuck Nasty” is an endearing moniker bestowed upon Chuck by Chuck.  I am also supremely confident that Chuck finds the whole “Chuck Nasty” concept more entertaining and clever than anybody who has met him, will ever meet him, or is generally sentient.  So I just wanted to drop this note in here on the off chance that the young lady might ever Google “Chuck Nasty” and stumble across this.  I have some important advice for her:  “You seem like a sweet, beautiful young lady.  Please, run.  Far.  Just run.  Off you go now.”

I have heard there is a method of cooking called “fusion,” in which two different types of cooking are combined (e.g. barbecue pizza).  I offer this next concept free for the taking for any entrepreneurial types, as a goodwill offering from my blog as a sincere attempt to improve economic conditions worldwide:  catfish sushi.

There is a similar concept to “fusion” cooking in the sports world.  You may be familiar with the biathlon, which is an Olympic event in which folks from snow-intensive countries race around on cross-country skis and pause periodically to fire weapons.  I can only presume (because I refuse to do the research) that the sport was founded when two guys named Lars and Sven got into an argument about whether “fight” or “flight” was the best way to escape a polar bear, and then their friends chose to honor their memories by combining both of their failed techniques into a goofy sport.  There is also a sport called “speed golf” which combines running and hockey.  (Just kidding – it actually combines running and curling).  I confess that my idea for a new sport is a blatant rip-off of speed golf, but I think it could be even bigger.  I’d call it “Fast-Bassin’.”  If you can imagine a bass fishing tournament mashed up with a 10K race, you pretty much get the idea.

One more sports idea while I’m on a roll.  Many distance runners are now equipped with GPS devices that they can wear like a watch.  Such devices tell them how far they’ve run, how fast, where they’ve wandered off to in a lactic-acid-induced stupor, etc.  So my idea is to host a high-school cross country meet in a huge fenced-in area.  The catch is that there would be a starting line but no finish line.  And no defined course.  The kids would each be outfitted with GPS devices linked back to a central computer.  After the gun fires, the first kid to travel 5K wins.  They would look like a bunch of gaunt free-range chickens just racing around out there.  I have raced in maybe seventy cross-country meets, and I’m telling you running in one of these every year would have been GREAT.

There is a commercial on TV in which some company brags about how all their cheeses are “hand crafted” or some such.  And while I appreciate artisan-ship as much as the next guy, the next time I’m staring at the cheese aisle in the grocery, I’m going to see that company’s logo and think, “I wonder how many craftsmen actually touched that cheese, and how strictly do they adhere to their company’s hand-washing policy?”  I’m going to imagine some sweaty worker’s thumbprint embedded in that cheese.  Now maybe at home I’d prefer a hand-crafted grilled cheese sandwich, but we’re talking about mass produced products here.  If John Henry taught us anything, it’s that sometimes using a machine isn’t such a bad idea.

OK.  That’s all for cleaning out the mental filing cabinet.  Talk to you again soon.  Happy 2011!

In fact, I think what they do is pretty smart.  Get a tradition like that going and every year when news is slow between Christmas and New Year’s Day, suddenly CNN is putting your organization’s name on TV twelve times a day with your list of “words of the year.”

Maybe I should give this a shot myself.  I have cited on several occasions my bizarre desire to coin a phrase or introduce a saying into the popular culture.  I don’t expect to get rich doing this, but would derive immense and inexplicable satisfaction if I knew that, for example, I had been the first person to describe Martha Stewart as a “domestic diva.”  Just overhearing “my” phrase in strangers’ conversations would be sort of a kick (unless I suppose they were discussing how stupid they think it is).

I want to introduce a phrase that fifty years from now will make people say, “Where exactly did that come from, anyway?”  And whatever Google has become at that point will eventually lead them to some pitiful archived copy of my little blog.  Sadly, I have all but given up on conjuring such a word or phrase by myself.

So instead I’m going to camp onto a couple of gems from Shelby, our eight-year old daughter who pretty much reads, writes, and creates stories all the time.

Our first phrase this year has already taken its place as an almost daily staple in our household.  It’s just appropriate for so many things.  I should give some background.  Our household is a big fan of the Beverly Cleary books about Henry Huggins and Beezus and Ramona Quimby.  In one of the books Ramona’s teacher admonishes the children that when creating their art projects that they do not want to waste paste.  I think Ramona describes some of her classmates as “paste wasters.”  Shelby seized onto that concept and thus was born the phrase that we use anytime something happens that was not worth the time or effort:

“That was a waste of paste.”

A meeting at work that didn’t accomplish anything?  A waste of paste.

Find some leftovers in your fridge that you forgot to eat before they spoiled?  Well, that was a waste of paste.

Keep this phrase handy.  I’m telling you it can be applied often.  And somehow it takes the edge off the frustration of whatever unfortunate event just happened.

Our second phrase is really more of a folk saying.  And I think it’s brilliant.  In fact, I think as a phrase it may work on a level that I haven’t fully appreciated quite yet.  This saying deals with disappointment.  It’s also about managing expectations and being a realist.  It’s also about injecting a little perspective into any situation.  Let me give you the background before I spring this one on you.

Shelby is creative and artistic and not a big eater.  Thus, much of her time at the dinner table is spent doing things like telling stories or asking questions.  Or rearranging her food.  Or making art out of her food.

Recently she had a round piece of baloney lying on her plate.  To her it was a medium.  I looked over and she was using a butter knife to carve pictures into the baloney before she ate it.  The government has subsidized lesser performance art.  And then this happened:

“Shelby, are you carving pictures in your baloney?”

“Yes,” she said sadly, “but there’s only one color in a baloney rainbow.”

Wow.  Remember that the next time you’re watching a TV commercial.  Or listening to a political debate.

Or making your New Year’s resolutions.

But I’ve never left.  I love three-year olds.  Even the ones who belong to other people.  Believe me; I’m as surprised as anybody.

One of the many fascinations I have with three-year olds is the way they handle being dropped off by their parents.  By age three most of them just walk in with no problem.  Most of the rest cry for about one minute and then are fine.

It’s the few who fall outside those main categories who intrigue me the most.  There have been a few over the years who just decide to be sad about once every couple of months.  There have been a couple of kids who were fine during the drop off, and then just start thinking about mommy and would lose it at random.  One little first-time visitor was so agitated and squirmy that I was having trouble holding him safely, so I sat him down.  He raced to the door and started repeatedly flinging himself against it.  He looked like a moth on a plate-glass window.  (I immediately scooped him up before he could hurt himself).

I told you all of that so I could tell you this.  A few months ago an exceptionally sweet little girl started attending our class.  She and I became buddies very quickly, but for the first couple weeks she cried for a minute or two when her parents would leave.

One day I was walking her around while she cried and looked longingly at the door where mommy and daddy were last seen.  She was too upset to be reasoned with, but that didn’t stop me from imagining I could.

“Just think this through,” I thought as I walked in a circle.  “Your parents are getting ready to go sit and listen to a sermon with a bunch of boring grown-ups.  You don’t really want to go with them.  Just look around in here.  We’ve got puzzles, dolls, and crayons.  We go to an indoor playroom for a few minutes every week.  It has tricycles and a sliding board.  And you haven’t even seen the Mr. Cow puppet show yet.  Mr. Cow and snack time are my specialties.”

She kept crying and I kept thinking to myself.  “If only you would settle down for one minute and listen to me, you would see how obvious it is that what I’ve got planned for you here is so much better than what you think you want.”

And then I wondered how many times God has said that to me.

(Years ago I mentioned how the word “meteorologist” had forever been ruined for me when I realized it sounded like “meaty urologist” and how almost all TV weather casts now result in me thinking about a portly physician).

These are the perils of having a precocious child who reads a lot.  And when I say she reads a lot, you should know that more than once I have found an abandoned book she had propped up behind the bathroom faucet so that she could read while brushing her teeth.  Some people channel-surf.  Shelby book-surfs.  Books are all over our house and half of them are ones she wrote herself.

She ruined the word while our family was seated around the dinner table.  Jacob asked Laura a question about something I don’t even remember.  And then he asked another.  And another.  He was having fun and maybe just trying to tweak her a little.  Finally she laughingly suggested that he stop asking so many questions and try and “be a little more intuitive” about the situation.

Shelby piped up in mock disbelief, “You want him to be more like an Eskimo?”

Silence fell.  Blank faces were shared while Shelby sat there with a mischievous grin.  She knew she had us and relished the moment while she was the only one in on the joke.  Did you get it?  I’ll let you off the hook.

Inuit.  That was her wordplay.  One of the two main indigenous people groups that comprise Eskimos are the Inuit.  She had probably just finished reading some book about a plucky Inuit girl who saved a wolf or something.

And henceforth when I hear the word “intuitive” my brain is going to see that little devilish grin at my dinner table and translate it into “Inuitive” and wonder what Eskimos could possibly have to do with the situation.

Happy birthday, sweet girl.

Thirteen.

I haven’t lived full time in a house with a teenager since I was a teenager.

Jacob is a great kid.  Smart.  Funny.  Athletic.  A wonderful big brother.  And I have to admit there are unexpected benefits of having him grow up on me.  For example, I’ve always been a big University of Kentucky basketball and football fan.  But I’ve struggled with being able to enjoy watching UK with anybody (Laura’s not a big sports fan).  Seems like everybody else I know is either a little too into the game, or not into it enough.

But now when it’s time for a big UK game, Jacob’s my guy.

I’m starting to realize that some of the wistfulness of having ones kids grow up is softened by the development of a new kind of relationship.  I used to not really like the thought of having a teenager, but now that I have one, I have to say I really like it.

Because of the one I’ve got.

The root cause is a combination of picky-eating kids and a (presumably) evil genius in the McDonald’s marketing department.  As a parent, there are times (long car ride) when a quietly-accepted McNugget is worth its weight in gold.  And when it’s time for lunch on a car ride, there is always a McDonald’s nearby.  It’s as if Ray Kroc himself conjured the interstate highway system for the sole purpose of linking his restaurants into a sentient matrix.

But recently I have begun to sense my family turning a fast-food corner.  We have yet to progress to any of your more exotic haute cuisine like, say, Taco Bell.  But lately we’re not getting nearly as strong a lobbying effort for McDonald’s from the back seat.

And that makes me happy.  Again, nothing personal against McDonald’s, but you must agree that there’s something unsettling about how McDonald’s food all smells the same in your car regardless of what you ordered.  And the way a lone wayward fry can make your car smell like a vat of oil for a week.

Let’s be clear.  I’m not some kind of gourmet snob.  Give me a sack of White Castles and a tub of Skyline chili to dip them in, and I’m a happy man. (As a distance runner, my theory is that one must consume a certain level of grease to keep one’s knees from seizing up).

But McDonald’s?  I’m just tired.

A couple weeks ago Laura had a Sunday School function after church so the kids and I were on our own.  (I would have cooked them a healthy, delicious lunch myself but Laura’s group was meeting at our house).  My plan was to go to Fazoli’s, which offers me the opportunity to feed pizza to happy children while enjoying some kind of pasta for myself.  I am a little ashamed at how much I was looking forward to my Fazoli’s.

But on the way I made a wrong turn and popped out on a main thoroughfare going away from Fazoli’s.  Do you know how sometimes when one little thing goes wrong, it spins off in unexpected directions?  Sort of like when you find yourself at work wearing blue socks with khaki pants because the phone rang while you were brushing your teeth that morning and interrupted your routine?

So as I looked for a place to turn, I noticed a new burger restaurant I’d heard good things about.  I’ve wanted to try it for a couple months.  It was right there in front of us, and since Jacob and I love burgers, and surely they offer a chicken nugget, ring, or finger for Shelby, this would be a great Plan B.  We pulled into the parking lot and I immediately became disoriented.  I should have called a timeout right there and immediately retreated to Fazoli’s.  But I forged on.

The parking lot was tiny and full, so I went around to the other side.  Here I encountered a dead-end and even fewer parking spaces (all full) with a sign telling me that there was additional parking in the rear, but on the side of the building from which I had just come.

And here is where things get fuzzy.  I think I saw open space off to the side and figured I’d just go over there and park, and drove out of the burger place’s lot.  I immediately encountered signs telling me I better doggone not park there if I was going to that burger place, since those spaces belonged to another business.  I turned to go back around one more time (my mind was reeling), and then something happened I still can hardly believe.

As I tried to work my way back out to the street, I realized I was literally driving through the outer reaches of a drive-thru lane of an adjacent McDonald’s.

All of the frustration of the last few minutes built into a wave that crashed upon our old Toyota Camry.  I gave up.  Sometimes not just electricity but electrical engineers seek the path of least resistance.  “Kids,” I asked dejectedly, “what do you want from McDonald’s?”  The sack was in my hand before I considered how easily I still could have just gone back down the road to Fazoli’s.

A man can do a lot of thinking as he marinates in fry fat fumes.  I wondered if possibly, just perhaps, the evil marketing genius sat in a meeting one day and proposed that if they just angled their drive-thru lanes just so, they could entrap some tiny percentage of customers who weren’t even trying to go to McDonald’s.

I’ll never look at a wretched fly struggling in a spider’s web the same way again.

I have mentioned in these parts that I am a runner.  Some runners claim running can be a spiritual experience for them.  For me it’s usually not.  I just like to go outside and run around in a Forrest Gumpian manner.  But I do run enough that assuming I have at least a few spiritual thoughts a year, one of them is bound to happen while I’m running.

And running on Easter weekend probably increases those odds.

So last Saturday I went out for a morning run.  The Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday has always felt a little odd to me.  Good Friday feels like a day for somber reflection.  Easter feels like a day of celebration.  But that Saturday always leaves me feeling sort of cold inside.  No stone rolling away on Saturday.

I ran by a church near my house.  This church always interests me because it’s one of those with the old-fashioned marquees out front where they put pithy little sayings like the ones you sometime see forwarded around in an email loop.  Things like “Seven days without prayer makes one weak.”

They had one message on the sign months ago that I spent way too much time pondering.  The sign said:

CHURCH THE WAY IT USED TO BE

At first I didn’t think much about it, but something about it nagged at me even though I knew it simply indicated that they probably have a traditional worship style.  Then I saw it again a few days later and realized the nagging feeling was that maybe they weren’t just advertising their worship style, but perhaps they were criticizing mine.  Our church, while somewhat conservative and traditional, does sing modern praise songs and uses video screens for various purposes.  I suspected maybe they don’t approve of churches that don’t “do church” the way they do.  The way it “used to be” when it was done right.

And then my sarcastic side took over.  The next time I drove by I was ready for action.  I slowed just a little as I went past and hurled an Easter egg at the sign.  Just kidding.  What I really did was sneak a peek down the side of the church building.  Just as I expected, I spotted just what I was looking for:

Air conditioning units.

“Well, well,” I smiled to myself, “I guess they’re not going back too far to the way church used to be.”

And then I started having more fun.  Why, with two-thousand years of Christian church history, did this particular church decide that the way to do church peaked sometime after electricity and air conditioning but before the advent of praise music and women wearing slacks on Sunday?  I imagined a church service there in about 1965.  I saw a wise elder rising spontaneously to his feet and commanding everybody’s attention right in the middle of the service.

“Wait!” he would have shouted with steely resolve.  “Do you see?  Can’t you tell?  THIS is EXACTLY what a church service should be.  We shall not change anything about our church from this point forward, because to do so would only diminish it.  This very day, my friends, we have perfected church.”  And all the members would have applauded (or said “amen” or whatever constituted appropriate public affirmation in 1965).

And so it was and still is today.  Church the way it used to be.  In 1965, anyway.

The sign’s message has long since changed, but I still think about it every time I go by.  I thought about that sign a little bit longer than usual last weekend after I ran past.  But without humor or disdain.  Maybe I was more reflective because it was Saturday and Jesus still hadn’t gotten out of the tomb yet this year.

And that’s when it hit me.

Easter Saturday may feel weird to me every year because it’s stuck between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  But that’s just because of what happened a long time ago.  You see, when Jesus got up and out on that first Easter, He never went back in.

Stuck in a tomb is only where He used to be.

But not anymore.

“It was really good.” – The Ark of Mark

I had never seen The Music Man before and knew nothing about it going in.  In fact, starting Friday morning, I kept getting the tune “do you know the muffin man” stuck in my head in anticipation of the play, even though I was pretty sure it was not part of the show.  (Having seen the play I can definitively proclaim that The Music Man and the Muffin Man are in no way linked – unless maybe it happened in a sequel).

One of my very favorite things about seeing a classic play or movie for the first time is what I like to call the “so THAT’s where that came from” moment.  You know the moment I’m talking about.  You’re watching some iconic movie and a character says a famous line and your brain hears something familiar and says, “Oh!  So THAT’s where that quote came from!”  My personal record for such moments probably happened when I finally got around to seeing Casablanca (or as it’s known in English, “White Castle”).  For those of you as uncultured as I am, Casablanca is where we got such gems as “here’s looking at you, kid”, “play it again, Sam” and “kiss my grits.”

I’d like to quickly share with you four such moments I had while enjoying The Music Man.

The first is straightforward.  Turns out it’s where “Seventy-Six Trombones” came from.  You know, the ones in the big parade.

The second is more personal.  During my childhood, every time any reference was made to Gary, Indiana, my dad would start singing a catchy tune.  Maybe you’ll recognize it if I share some of the lyrics.  It goes like this:

Gary Indiana Gary Indiana Gary Indiana

It is testimony to the brilliant catchiness of this tune that I can remember it from my childhood, considering how few times Gary, Indiana could possibly have come up in casual conversation with my dad and thus inspire him to break into song.

The third moment was when a barbershop quartet sang a song called “Goodnight, Ladies.”  I was (and still am) a fan of Cheers.  There was a Cheers episode where a barbershop quartet comes into the bar and Norm asks if he can fulfill a longtime dream and sing with them.  The chorus they sing is from “Goodnight, Ladies” and now I know it came from The Music Man.

Finally, a quick Google search confirmed my suspicions about my favorite “aha” moment of the night.  One of the early numbers is called “Trouble.”  This song is how the main character convinces the town that they need to spend money to form a band.  As I listened, waves of vague familiarity washed over me.  Then a big wave hit.  Suddenly I wanted to jump up and shout, “Hey!  This is just like on The Simpsons when Lyle Lanley came to town and convinced everybody to build a monorail!”  I love the monorail episode.

Perhaps it does not speak well of my cultural IQ that I am so delighted that an iconic musical helped enrich my appreciation of Cheers and The Simpsons.

QUESTION AUTHORITY

I find its tone a little presumptuous, especially considering it’s intended to promote independent thinking.  Every time I see one of them I have the same reaction:

Sticker:  QUESTION AUTHORITY
Mark:  YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME

I’ll question what I want to question, thank you very much.

But this time I noticed a delightful little detail that I enjoy even more than the inherent contradiction of the message itself.  Underneath the bold QUESTION AUTHORITY message was printed, in very small letters, the name of the company that printed the bumper sticker.

Followed by a copyright symbol.