Daily Paragraph -- thinkThin High Protein Bar Taste Test

I like Clif Bars. I especially like them as a post-lunch dessert to my salad at lunch. But, my supply has run out, and I haven't had the wherewithal to drive over to Costco to restock. So, today I wandered across the street to 7-11 to satisfy my dessert urges. Clif Bars are available there, but I decided that if I was going to spend two bucks on an energy bar, I might as well try something new and different. Enter the thinkThin High Energy Protein Bar -- chunky peanut butter flavor (chocolate dipped).

From the packaging, you can tell right away the target demographic: people who lie to themselves to feel better about eating candy. The good people at thinkThin take this approach from multiple angles. First, the wrapper has the simplicity and the dull monochromatic color palate of an organic product, though nowhere does it actually claim to be organic.

The wrapper goes to some pain to inform of what horrible nasties you will not be consuming in your energy bar -- no sugar and no gluten (heaven for fend!). Personally, I'm completely ambivalent to the gluten-free claims. I suspect a lot of candy bars have no gluten (unless they sneak a cookie there like those clever bastards at Twix), so it's not like gluten-free is some kind of indicator of healthfulness. As for the lack of sugar, I missed that when I picked the bar. I might have chosen something else, had I noticed. Fortunately, the lack of sugar didn't prove to be an issue. They used maltitol for sweetness, and I generally don't mind the reduced sugars as an alternative to sucrose. It's the zero-calorie artificial sweeteners I find to be pretty gross (aspartame, I'm looking at you!).

Once you open the wrapper to peak at the product inside, it becomes pretty evident that you are about to eat a candy bar. It's dipped in chocolate. Dip something in chocolate and it becomes candy. I think Julia Child said that. Or maybe it was Dan Quayle.

And how does it taste? It's okay, but not amazing. Texturally, it falls somewhere between a Powerbar and the concoction Reese's crams into it's peanut butter cups. The chocolate coating is a little muted in it's chocolatey-ness, and the peanut butter bar inside is similarly muted in it's peanut-buttertude. I blame both these issues on the lack of real sugar. Next time, I'll just get a peanut butter chocolate chunk Clif Bar, which has actual chocolate chips and actual sugar in it. At 250, the two products have the same number of calories, too.

An interesting side note on the calorie count: at dinner tonight, I took a peek at the calorie content of the kim chee we were enjoying with our Korean beef short ribs and kung pao Brussels sprouts.The kim chee came from a jar (the ribs and sprouts were prepared by my loving wife), and according the label, one serving of the kim chee provides 15 calories  with seven serving to the container. That means I could have eaten two and a half jars of that of that tangy, spicy, garlicky goodness and received the same amount of energy as the energy bar I had eaten early in the day. Of course, it would have cost at least $10 more...

The Daily Paragraph -- Could We All Please Agree to Use Our Turn Signals?

At times of heavy traffic, I actively dislike driving north on Diamond Street across its intersection with Bosworth. The Glen Park BART station sits on the southeast corner of the crossing leading to an effectively endless stream of idlers and slow pokes, including pedestrians, commuter buses, taxis, Ubers, Lyfts, and various other vehicles that clog up the crosswalks and curbs.  A general absence of city planning resulted in two de facto lanes of traffic leading into the intersection in that direction. Neither lane has a legally-assigned role, but as you might expect, the cars planning to turn one way or the other onto Bosworth tend to favor the lane corresponding to the direction of their turn. Unfortunately, there is always enough oncoming traffic to slow down the left-turners and enough pedestrian traffic to slow down the right-turners. I almost always want to go straight. Picking a lane is invariably a coin-flip for me. It's frustrating enough to endure the delays imposed by poor lane selection, the least my fellow drivers can do is give me a heads-up about their plans. We will all get where we want to go a lot faster if we work together, damn it! Today, the driver in front of me decided to play a game with me. We were stopped at the light, both of us in the left lane. Numbers one and two in line to enter the intersection, neither of us giving any indication of plans to turn. I thought I would get a pleasantly unimpeded trip across Bosworth once the light changed. Nope! The green light lit up, and so on blinked the left turn signal on the car in front of me. Aggh! Why? I would have preferred that the little turd turn left without signalling at all. People who do that are at least committed narcissists or assholes. If you wait until the green light to turn on your signal, you suggest that you really just don't understand what it's there for, but you think you do. That makes you an idiot, and idiots are dangerous. You can predict what an asshole will do, but not an idiot. So here's my request...don't be an idiot. Use your turn signal, and do it in time to be helpful. Thanks.

The Daily Paragraph -- Baseball is Ruined

So the A's have officially ruined another baseball season for me. They felt like an unlucky, underperforming mediocre team going into their current road trip, but seven losses later they are definitely a bad/hopeless baseball team with little to cheer for this season and little chance of recovering from fecklessness next season. I've been following the A's since 1998, and their worst record through that period has been 74-88; they did that twice. Right now, the A's have to win 23 of their remaining 42 games to reach that pathetic record. That's right, the team that just got swept twice on the road needs to win more than lose just to tie for their worst record over the last 17 years. In 1997 they only won 65 games, and I think they can beat that. My official prediction for their final record is 70-92. The next thing the team has to look forward to is the draft next Spring. This stinks.

The Daily Paragraph -- The Human Canvas Jury

I've mentioned the past that I'm a fan of the reality tattoo competition showe Ink Master. It's overwrought and ridiculous, but the competitors do appear to be genuinely talented artists, and the judges clearly take their roles seriously -- a little too seriously. One element of the show is clearly there just to create tension: the Human Canvas Jury. This is the panel of tattooees who received free permanent art work on their bodies during the challenge (probably after signing a pretty impressive legal waiver relinquishing any right to sue for dissatisfaction with the final product). They gather in an isolated room after all the needlework is done to decide who received the worst tattoo of the day. The responsible competitor becomes eligible for elimination in front of the judges shortly thereafter. This season, the Ink Master production team added a nice little wrinkle to the process. This time around, the "canvas" with the worst tattoo gets to come to the judges' discussion to confront their artist before the final elimination. It's a nice little touch of drama, which always makes for good TV, but here's the thing -- it's totally pointless. The judges don't really care what the Human Canvas Jury thinks. If they disagree with the jury, the selected artist is definitely safe. If the jury truly selects the artist most deserving of elimination, you can bet the judges would have booted him or her anyway. Here's my suggestion of how to tweak the system a little to make the Human Canvas Jury a little more relevant, and I think it would make for good TV, too. Instead of having the judges make the final decision, have them nominate the bottom artists and let the jury decide who packs up shop and leaves. It only makes sense, right? They are a JURY, after all. I think this approach would be great. The judges could make the case for why each bottomfeeder deserves to go home in front of the jury before they're all sequestered for deliberation. What do you think, Dave Navarro? It's a great idea, right? If you use it, I don't even need any money, but some kind of producer credit would be nice.

The Daily Paragraph -- Rock Band Name Scoring

I'm an advocate for aesthetically pleasing band names, but it's hard to define exactly what the criteria are that define that. So here's an attempt at a scoring system that might make the rules a little clearer. Let's see how it goes.

1. Part of speech: 5 points for noun (1 bonus point for being plural), 3 points for adjective, 2 points for verb, 1 point for anything else. 
2. Number of syllables: 5 points for 3 or fewer syllables, 3 points 4 or 5 syllables, 1 point for 6 to 8 syllables, 0 points for 9 or more syllables (a "the" at the beginning of the band name doesn't count in the total)
3. Originality: 5 points if there is no other well-known band name similar to it, 3 points if there are one or two other bands with names somewhat similar, 0 points for unoriginal band names
4. Additional points:
1. Add 1 point for using one of the colors red, black, or white (using two colors does not add more points)
2. Add 2 points for alliteration or assonance
3. Add 3 points good use of rare consonants (q, k, z, v, j)
4. Add 5 points for coolness
5. Deductions:
1. Subtract 3 points for each of the following: pretentiousness, cutesiness (unless properly balanced edginess), and self-importance
2. Subtract three points for obnoxious/incorrect use of rare consonants
3. Subtract one point for puns and nonsense words (sorry Beatles, this means you)

Okay, let's see how this works out with some examples:

The Rolling Stones get a 21 (plural noun, 6 points; 3 syllables not including "the", 5 points; originality is hard to judge here, let's give them 3 points; 2 points for assonance; and 5 points for coolness; no deductions). Pretty good! Seems appropriate.

Imagine Dragons get a 3 (1 point for being an imperative sentence; 3 points for 5 syllables; I don't feel like the deserve any originality points; 2 points for assonance for the long a sounds; minus 3 points for unbalanced cutesiness). Maybe a little harsh, but I agree, Imagine Dragons is not a good band name.

Here are some more, just for kicks:
The White Stripes  -- 19 points
The Jam -- 21 points
Hootie and the Blowfish -- 7 points
Nickelback -- 10 points
The Red Hot Chili Peppers -- 10 points

Well, I dunno. I wish Nickelback got a lower score because the suck so bad, but maybe the band name itself isn't entirely to blame.

I think the system could use some tweaking, but it's a start.

The Daily Paragraph -- What am I watching?

TV. I like it -- probably too much -- but it can't be helped. It's so much better now than it was in the 1980s, and I watched a lot of TV then, too. I can't imagine myself anxiously anticipating new episodes of Night Court today, and yet I loved that show 30 years ago. Loved, loved , loved it! Or maybe I just had the hots for Markie Post. But since that time, actually funny shows have kicked the tar out Night Court humor-wise. And action dramas? Holy crap! I used to get charged up over Knight Rider. It's embarrassing just thinking about that.

So what am I watching these days?

I try to keep my Reality TV limited, but I do indulge. I favor skills competition shows, and these days I watch would-be special effects make-up artists conjure up cool creatures on Face Off, and I watch testosterone-addled tatooists permanently alter people referred to as "canvases" on Ink Master. When Top Chef rolls around, I watch that, too.

With the finales of Breaking Bad and Mad Men in the past couple years, I'm down to one serial drama -- Better Call Saul. I have to keep these type of shows to a minimum, though. They're too stressful. I literally lose sleep over them. I think watching The Wire may have speed up my male pattern baldness and taken a year off my life. Season four of that show? Torture! Anyway, I've decided I'm not going to get sucked into Game of Thrones or Walking Dead. My heart can't take it any more.

Half-hour comedies are really my bread and butter, and the ends of shows like 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and How I Meet Your Mother have left me looking for replacements. I can't tell if Community is really over, but I would definitely watch more if Dan Harmon decided to make more episodes (or a movie). As far as I know, New Girl is coming back for another season. I like how that show transitioned from quirky cuteness to occasionally raunchy wackballitude. God bless Tina Fey for picking right up where she left off with 30 Rock by creating The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. And Will Forte has definitely earned my attention with The Last Man on Earth (and good for him for hooking up with January Jones in the process).

Apparently, I'm also a sucker for cartoons with title characters voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, too, as I enjoy both Archer and Bob's Burgers tremendously.

The internet age of scripted television has brought out some other good stuff that I'll watch as long as no one tries to charge me too much to see it. Duckie and I are both happy that The Mindy Project has apparently found a post-Fox home on Hulu, and if Mitchell Hurwitz decides to make more Arrested Development for Netflix, I'll certainly watch it. I also really like Catastrophe on Amazon, and I look forward to more of that, too.

Comedy Central always seems to have something worth putting on your DVR, whether it's Key & Peele, Inside Amy Schumer, Broad City, or Drunk History. I'm even thinking of giving Another Period a second look (I like the cast a lot).

See, there's plenty of good stuff to watch, and I'm always hearing about new shows I want to check out. But in the end it doesn't matter. Ultimately, I know that I'll watch whatever is on -- except maybe the reruns of Rules of Engagement that WGN America is always playing. I don't even understand why that show got airplay in the first place.

The Daily Paragraph -- Unwanted Bills

For the second time in about two and a half years, we received a single greasy dollar bill in the mail in an envelope with no return address. Last time I didn't think much about it, but Duckie was pretty freaked out.  My rationale was that a friend sent us the money to compensate us for feeding a parking meter on his behalf.  Receiving the second dollar in the same fashion pretty much put a knife in the heart of that little fantasy. I decided not to take any chances this time. I opened the letter in the backyard wearing a pair of disposable nitrile gloves, and once I confirmed the contents (one dollar, no note) I crumpled everything up and tossed it in the trash. If this whole exercise is a joke to somebody, I don't get it. If it's a game, I don't know the rules, and I don't want to play. If it's a mistake, well, it's weird and I still don't get it. The final option is that we're the beneficiaries of the oddly generous actions of  a nut job. In any case, I'd like it to stop.

Daily Paragraph -- Some Dogs Names

Some dogs I have known: Squeaky, Whiskey, Kahlua, Phoebe, Belle, AJ, Barney, Fletch, Bailey, Nugget, Cooper, Toby, Meekah, Dilan, Murphy, Kaya, Puff, Duke, Archie, Eliza, Eddie, Jasper ...wow! I'm really surprised that's all I can think up. I know there were lots of others, but I just can't think of their names. I guess friends' pets' names are just one of those things you lose as you get older.

Daily Paragraph -- Ending Up in Stitches

By the time you've reached your forties, chances are good you've had stitches a few times depending on how accident prone or unlucky you've been. I can think of four sets of stitches I've had in my lifetime. I think that's a pretty low number, especially for someone who spent a number of years being a teenage boy.

My first set of stitches resulted from a yardwork accident in 1989. I was trimming some hedges with a set of electric clippers that had once belonged to my grandmother. It wasn't equipped with any of those fancy-schmancy safety switches that folks are so fond of these days. If you turned on the clippers and then let go with one hand, they just kept running. They were generally indifferent to what you then did with that free hand. And the clippers didn't come with any of them protective guards, either. If you recklessly let your free had drift toward chattering blades, you wound up with a chunk of your index finger popping out of the skin like a lump of bloody meatloaf. And that's what happened to me. A mostly pointless trip to the Penfield Volunteer Ambulance followed by an off-hours trip to see Dr. Nazarian later, and I had my first set of stitches.

My second set of stitches resulted from my wisdom tooth extractions when I was 19. I had all four taken out at once, and per standard practice, the gum holes were sewn up afterward. I think those stitches all dissolved, so maybe they don't count.

My third set of stitches were needed to close up a slice in my forehead I received by bumping into jagged wall of rock in a gorge in Ithaca one summer during college. I was edging my way up a waterfall when it happened. It was shocking at the time. I thought I gently tapped the wall, but when I reached up to check on it, I ended up with a handful of blood. The total stitch count was low, but I was still surprised that I needed them at all.

The last set of stitches came from a lab accident at Exelixis more than a decade ago. It was classic glassware handling mistake. Any smart chemist will tell you never to use too much force to connect two pieces of glassware together or pull them apart. I forgot that one day and ended up with a nice little laceration in my thumb. Again, not a lot of stitches but enough to drive the lesson home. It could have been worse, though; I knew I guy in grad school who severed a tendon with a similar lapse in caution.

All told, I've been lucky, stitch-wise. I'm not going to tempt fate by speculating future sutures (hey that rhymes!).

Daily Paragraph -- Rumplestiltskin Redux

The following is a story I told my son today. He made me tell it three times, each time interrupting more frequently for different embellishments. The bedtime version was fundamentally incomprehensible. Anyway, here's a moderately coherent telling for your perusal:

Theo was five years old, and he rode the bus every day to kindergarten. One day, Theo met a small man in a green suit on the bus. The man told Theo his name was Rumplestiltskin and that he was a leprechaun.

"What do leprechauns do?" asked Theo.

"We hide treasure," Rumplestiltskin answered.

"Can you tell me where you hid some?" asked Theo.

"Oh no, I can't do that. That would be cheating," Rumplestiltskin answered.

Theo decided that he was going to try to guess where Rumplestiltskin might have hidden some treasure. He noticed that the little man had pamphlet from the Upper Noe Recreation Center in his pocket and that his shoes were covered with sand. Theo connected the dots and said, "I think you buried some treasure in the sand box at Upper Noe Rec Center."

"I can neither confirm or deny that," said Rumplestiltskin. "But I can tell you that if you find some of my treasure, you have to share it, or it will disappear."

After school, Theo convinced his dad to take him to the Rec Center, and they started digging away in the sand box. All the other kids in the playground thought they were crazy, except for one boy who decided to help.

After a few hours of digging, Theo heard a clunk as he jabbed his shovel down into the ground. He and his dad and the other boy cleared away some more sand and uncovered a big wooden box with the name Rumplestiltskin written on it in gold. Anxiously, they opened it up and found it was full of Rescuebots!

Theo was thrilled, and he wanted to take them all home for himself, but then remembered what Rumplestiltskin had said and realized he needed to share the toys so they wouldn't disappear. So, he gave one Rescuebot to the boy who helped him dig up the treasure, and the next day at school he gave most of the rest of the Rescuebots to his friends, keeping only one for himself.

Sure enough, the Rescuebots never disappeared, and Theo found that sharing them with others was more fun than hoarding them and playing alone anyway.

The End

Daily Pargraph -- Dubious Video's for Three Year-Olds, Volume 1

Recently, Theo has gotten attached to a new song that has been getting some play on the radio stations we play on our commute to preschool/work. The song is "Ex's and Oh's" by Elle King, and it's actually a rocking little pop tune. I like it. Of course, as a child of the internet era, Theo craves visual stimulation when listening to music, so we have also watched the video on youtube at home. It's right on the border of what I think is okay for him to watch, mostly because he is unlikely to understand it. If he could wrap his mind around the actual contents, I would probably try to steer him away from it. The song and video have a thematic link to Olivia Newton-John's early 80s cheese-pop classic, "Let's Get Physical" -- lyrical innuendo accompanied by images of beefcake. Olivia wanted some fella at the gym to let her hear his "body talk, body talk", while Elle croons that her pumped studs "always want to come, but they never want to leave". The lyrics are sure to fly over my three year-old son's head, but I'm not sure how to think about the beefcake. I suppose it's not really that different from watching Katy Perry parade around the jungle in an animal print tube top and a grass skirt in "Roar!", another favorite Theo jam from a couple months ago. Meh, they're all better than Barney.

The Daily Paragraph -- Seveneves and Wet Hot American Summer

Yesterday I finished reading Neal Stephenson's latest novel  Seveneves, and I also completed a weekend long binge-watching of the Wet, Hot, American Summer reboot series. Two pretty impressive accomplishments for one day. I'm really struggling to come up with some parallel that will tie both achievements together in one tidy little bundle. It's a stretch. Seveneves is a 860 page novel about the survival of the human race in space after the moon randomly blows up, breaks apart into millions of little asteroids which crash to the earth setting the atmosphere on fire over several thousands of years. Seven billion people die. It's a real pick-me-up. The Wet Hot American Summer reboot, is a goofy cheesy absurd series in which a collection of A-list comic acting talent in their late thirties and early forties reprise their roles as teenage camp counselors which they were too old to play when the original movie came out fifteen years ago. Silly, silly, silly. I admit it. I laughed...out loud...a bunch. In the end, the only thing the two things have in common is me.  I have a long-standing history as a Neal Stephenson fan. I think I've read every novel he's written, and I don't know the last time I read a book of fiction that wasn't his work. Ten years, maybe. I've also been following much of the cast of the Wet Hot American Summer for years as well. The creators of the show were on the early 1990s MTv sketch comedy show The State, which I loved and own on DVD. So in the end, the connection is devotion on my part...and the fact that I happened to express it at roughly the same time for both. Yep. That's pretty weak.

The Good Guys Beat the Worst Guys 4 to 1

On Saturday, my family finally made it over to O.co Coliseum (or OcoCo, for short) to catch our first, and potentially last, A's game of the season. You see, Major League Baseball games are not events scheduled with preschoolers in mind. Day games fall right at nap time, and night games, well, they're night games. Anyway, Saturday's A's game had a start time of 1 pm, and we decided to take our chances.

The A's were facing their rival, the dreaded Los Angelheim Angels --easily my least favorite team. These days I've taken to calling them the Porsche Cayenne of baseball (ie, they're expensive and high-performance, but they're also ridiculous, ugly, and fundamentally pointless). The day before, the Angels had managed to come back from a 7 to 2 deficit to beat the A's 12 to 7, so I was actually not very optimistic about our chances.

We arrived early, which made sense for two reasons: 1) we were likely to leave early to accommodate  a potential very sleepy three-year old, and 2) because the first 15000 fans to the game were to receive a Sonny Gray gnome with a solar-powered glowing baseball (I'm not going to try to explain that --it's too much). After we got our gnomes and checked out our seats, we went straight to the A's Fun Zone, the children's place space on the second level behind the concession stands. It's not much of a place space, really. It has four coin-op mechanical rides (two were broken for much of our time there), a small mediocre play structure, and some random toddler toys (mostly lawnmowers, for some reason). I would generally rate the space as inferior to our local playground, but I think Theo considered about a hundred times better than actually sitting in our seats to watch a baseball game. We spent a lot of time there.

I went off to buy us lunch, and we were back to our seats before the first pitch. I forced Theo to stay there for two whole innings, during which the A's manufactured a run. Then it was back to the Fun Zone for us for the next two innings. Theo spent much of that time running to the play structure for a trip down the slide and then climbing up on a broken coin-operated elephant, because, hey, why not?

I convinced him to head back to our seats by the top of the fourth inning. He still wasn't into the game, so Duckie got out her phone and turned on Netflix. Theo watched Curious George instead of watching the A's and Angels fail to score any runs for the next couple innings. Arguably the right choice.

Then, in the top of the sixth, Angels superhero Mike freaking Trout, tied the game off a single by Erick Aybar, and I was expecting things to get ugly. But A's pitcher Jesse Hahn locked things down, and no more damage was done. And better than that, the A's strung together some hits in the bottom half of the inning and ended up with a three run lead. In fact, they hit three consecutive doubles -- the first with a man already on base. It was pretty great. Theo even managed to clap along with the crowd  and give us high fives.

At the end of the 6th, we decided it was safe to leave. I didn't want stick around to watch the Angels come back, and if the A's blew the game open later I wouldn't have felt bad for missing it.

Theo watched Duckie's iPhone pretty much for the whole walk out of the stadium to the car. He once yelled at the crowd for being too loud because he couldn't hear his videos. We stopped by a souvenir stand on the way out so I could buy a new A's cap (a more traditional one, this time), and we drove home. Theo fell asleep in the car, the iPhone blaring away in his hands.

As it turns out, no further runs were scored that game. Somehow, I was at my seat every time a runner crossed home plate, despite missing two full innings hanging out in the Fun Zone and leaving after the sixth. I rarely get that lucky when it comes to watching sports.

My Athletic Achievements

So I'm 42. It's time to face facts; my athletic peak is in the past. I don't have any chance of impressing anyone with my competitive accomplishments without making use of the phrase "in my age group". It's time to look back on my athletic life, such that it was, and examine the highs and lows. Let's start at the bottom.

In a moment of stupidity during a full-on dorm-to-dorm snowball fight in my Freshman year at college, I decided to make a one-man charge across the frozen tundra between Mary Donlon Hall and Helen Newman Gymnasium. I don't exactly what I expected. Glory? Cathartic validation of my manhood? What I got was ice-pelted testicles, a black eye, and bruised ego.

Later in college, my friends and I assembled an inner-tube intramural water polo team. We were handed a fast exit  in the single-elimination tournament in which we participated. On personal level, I had mistaken an ability to swim for competence at paddling awkwardly around a pool and throwing a ball into a goal. Not the same thing.

In graduate school, I had the privilege of playing on a really terrible intramural basketball team. We had at least three guys who wanted to point guard, but zero guys up to the task. I played the role of the lunky big man (lunky is combination of lanky and clunky) with no particular ball-handling skills and absolutely no touch. We played three games. We lost the first one badly, and that was our best performance. That pretty much represented my last attempt make use of my height to my advantage in sports.

I was also on a really terrible Berkeley Chemistry Department softball league team in grad school, but I kinda liked playing on that team. I also played on the league champion team one year, and that sucked.

All in all, I don't think that's such a bad list. Embarrassing? Yes, but it's not like I missed the game winning field goal wide right at the Super Bowl twenty-five years ago like Scott Freaking Norwood! I'm not bitter. Anyway, I'll get to the top moments in another post.

Absurdist Humor Versus Lazy Writing, A Case Study

Several months ago, we discovered Peppa Pig, and she and her world have been a presence in our lives ever since. There are an apparently endless collection of G-rated 5-minute episodes of her show available online (on youtube and Nick Jr. and I'm sure other media sites as well). I would have expected to have seen them all by now based on how much time logged watching them, but every now and again, we stumble across one that none of us recognizes.

Here's a primer for the uninitiated: Peppa is an anthropomorphic pig/little girl who lives with her mother (Mummy Pig) and father (Daddy Pig) and little brother (George Pig) in a mostly anthropomorphic universe of talking dogs and elephants and sheep and cows and rabbits and so on. The parallel universe all these creatures inhabit appears to be somewhere in or around England since the full gamut of accents found in the British Isles is represented. This latter fact has had some curious impact on my household. My son has adopted a few British terms for items and events that were not yet familiar to him in American vernacular. For example, he uses swimming costume, power cut, and climbing frame in place of bathing suit, black out, and monkey bars, respectively.

The videos generally quite cute and toddler appropriate, and they span from the benign to the modestly educational to the genuinely clever. My wife, son, and I all seem to enjoy them on some level.

The purpose of this blog post is to discuss one episode in particular: Snowy Mountain. It's a personal favorite of mine because, frankly, it's ridiculous. I'll spare you the narrative description since the full video is a mere five minutes long and it's linked below.

Peppa Pig: Snowy Mountain

There's some full-bore nearly Monty-Python-esque silliness to be found in this video, and I'm not sure if it's all intentional.  I love the fact that Madame Gazelle carries around her trophy for being the World Champion in Skiing in a magical, object-volume concealing packet in her ski jacket. That strikes me as a deliberate and successful attempt at goofy humor. But some other funny gags appear to be the product of lazy screen-writing.

I find it hilarious that Pig family tries to drive up the mountain in their car, but based on later in the dialog, we are led to believe that Mummy and Daddy Pig have been skiing before. Seems like they should have known better. I'm willing to roll with the notion that Mummy Pig is able stay vertical on her skis while chaotically zipping down the Snowy Mountain even after what we can only assume to be years away from the slopes, but how the hell did all the rest of the skiers, including a full class of young beginners, manage to remove their equipment, descend the mountain, and climb into a bus in time to watch her ski down the street and crash into what I believe is meant to be her own home? Is that all just part of the madcap wackiness of the show, or did Editorial take a nap and pass the script on to animation without even reading it?

In any case, I still think it's great. It just goes to show that you should never let plausibility get in the way of a good gag.

For some reason I thought that taking each US State, alphabetizing the letters in its name, and then re-alphabetizing all the states would be interesting.  Here are the results:

State	Alphabetized State Name
Alabama	aaaablm
Alaska	aaakls
Arkansas	aaaknrss
Nebraska	aabeknrs
Massachusetts	aacehmssssttu
California	aacfilnor
North Carolina	aachilnnoorrt
South Carolina	aachilnoorstu
Delaware	aadeelrw
Nevada	aadenv
North Dakota	aadhknoortt
South Dakota	aadhkoosttu
Indiana	aadiinn
Maryland	aadlmnry
Pennsylvania	aaeilnnnpsvy
Hawaii	aahiiw
Oklahoma	aahklmoo
Louisiana	aaiilnosu
Arizona	aainorz
Kansas	aaknss
Montana	aamnnot
Colorado	acdlrooo
Michigan	acghiimn
Rhode Island	addehlinors
Florida	adfilor
Idaho	adhio
New Hampshire	aeehhimnprsw
Georgia	aeggior
Minnesota	aeimnnost
Texas	aestx
Washington	aghinnostw
Virginia	agiiinrv
Utah	ahtu
Maine	aimne
Iowa	aiow
Connecticut	ccceinnottu
New Mexico	ceeimnowx
Kentucky	cekkntuy
Wisconsin	ciinnossw
West Virginia	eagiiinrstvw
Tennessee	eeeennsst
New Jersey	eeejnrswy
Oregon	egnoor
New York	eknorwy
Vermont	emnortv
Wyoming	gimnowy
Ohio	hioo
Mississippi	iiiimppssss
Illinois	iiillnos
Missouri	iimorssu

The outcome isn't as interesting as I had hoped.  With the letters in their names alphabetized, the vast majority of the states start with 'a'.  In fact, only six states even start with consonants.  That's pretty boring, I think.  Somehow, Missouri ended up at the end of the list.  I don't find that very interesting either.

The most interesting part of the exercise was learning what states are easy to alphabetize and which aren't. Ohio, Idaho, Tennessee, Mississippi?  Easy to alphabetize.  Pennsylvania and North Carolina take a little more thought.

I hope you can find more value in this table than I did.

Top 5 Christmas Special Songs

My 6 favorite songs from the classic American animated television Christmas specials of the 60s, 70s, and 80s:

6. "Hark! The Herald Angels" -- Loo Loo Loo version from A Charlie Brown Christmas

First of all, A Charlie Brown Christmas must have a representative song on any reasonable list about great television Christmas specials and their music. Vince Guaraldi's score is iconic ("Christmas Time is Here" was employed by the writers of Arrested Development to help portray Charlie Brown-style abject personal rejection on the show).  There is so much to love on that soundtrack.  But to me, nothing says Christmas like the Peanuts gang loo-loo-looing the melody of "Hark! The Herald Angels" with their noses pointed up to the sky except when they pause for a collective inhale.  

5. "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand" -- Twas the Night Before Christmas

Twas the Night Before Christmas is a bit of an odd special.  It doesn't really portray Santa in a very flattering light.  He's apparently kind of a hypersensitive jerk.  He decides not to deliver toys one Christmas because a cabal of adolescent nerd mice wrote a letter to the editor of some one-horse town's local paper and denied his existence. Sheesh!  He could be a trophy wife on one of those reprehensible Real Housewives shows. Still "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand" is a pleasant, uplifting, little ditty performed in the special by Joel Grey (You probably know him as the martial arts master trainer, Chiun, in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins).

4. "The Island of Misfit Toys" -- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

This is another special where Santa comes across pretty poorly...at least at the beginning. Seriously, St. Nick, what's with the reindeer bigotry, man? And why is a glowing red nose any more of a mark of shame  than that bizarre shock of anthropomorphic blond hair on Fireball's scalp? I don't think I'll ever understand Arctic culture.
Anyway, I look forward to Rudolph and Herbie's visit to the Island of Misfit Toys every time I watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  The song plays a big part in that.   The intro is eerie and sad but after a few seconds the tune turns chipper and hopeful. But my favorite part is the roll call of misfit toys. Some of them are odd and silly -- right up my alley humor-wise. A water pistol that shoots jelly? A cowboy that rides an Ostrich? Those aren't just simple manufacturing rejects.  That's some serious toy design weirdness there.

Now it has been almost 50 years since Rudolph was first broadcast.  Let me see if I can provide some new misfit toys for the modern era.
1.) A first-person shooter video game that isn't available on XBox. (a swing and miss!)
2.) A Ninjago Lego kit with only green square blocks. (strike two!)
3.) A doll that doesn't include any voice recognition software (Aaaaand you're out!)
Okay, I give up.

3. "We Three Kings" -- A Claymation Christmas Celebration

Back in the 80s, the California Raisin Advisory Board launched an ad campaign featuring dancing singing claymation raisins performing R&B classics, and it worked. They were extremely popular.  Not bad for a product that fundamentally looks like rabbit poop. In 1987, CBS took that popularity and broadcast a half-hour Christmas special of claymation sketches and videos set to Christmas music.  The California Raisins were featured performing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer".  The special won an Emmy, but somehow failed to break into the Rankin-Bass style pantheon of classic Christmas specials.
In any case, I've always liked the version of "We Three Kings" they put together for that special.  The three kings themselves sing the verses in a straight-forward traditional style, but their hip camels, replete with leather shoes and bow ties, jazz up the chorus.  It's pretty great.

2. "Heat Miser/Snow Miser" -- The Year without a Santa Claus

The Year without a Santa Claus has always been my favorite animated Christmas special, and that's almost entirely due to the Miser Brothers.  I love those guys. The dry humor.  The cool supernatural powers. The team of Mini-Me minions.  What's not to love?  The performances are perfect, too.  Snow miser is frenetic and wiry.  Heat Miser slows the tune down a bit so it picks up a little flavor of a New Orleans summer.  So good!,  There's really not much more to say.

1. "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" -- How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Well of course this is number one. You have to love the rich booming bass of Thurl Ravenscroft (yep, that was his name).  He could have just repeated the lyrics "You suck, Mr. Grinch" one hundred times, and it would have been awesome.  But instead, Ted "Dr. Seuss" Geisel penned some appropriately Seussian lyrics and made history.  They're icky without being gross ("nauseous super naus", indeed), and spooky without being frightening. Geisel certainly paints the Grinch as a dark-hearted dude without making him seem irredeemable or evil, which is important for the narrative.  It might be interesting to hear the song as rewritten by Rob Zombie, but I don't think it would have fit in the story.  There's little doubt in my mind that "You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" was a stroke of pure genius.

Theo gets his first wins

My wife and I had a baby the day after Christmas, 2011.  As much as anything else, that explains why this blog has gone on an extended hiatus.  Pregnancy and planning and baby-having and more life stuff have all gotten in the way since I last wrote a post for this blog.

But I'm back.  Know why?  Because that baby we had on Boxing Day is now big enough to take to local baseball games.  In fact, he's been to games at both AT&T Park and O.co Coliseum.  This post is a report on how those games went.

July 15, 2012 -- Houston Astros 2, San Francisco Giants 3.

Theo's first MLB game ever.  I would have preferred to start him out in Oakland, of course, but this game was also a birthday gift for my wife so the Giants got priority.  It's fine.  I've gotten over it.  In any case, it was good choice for a first game because it featured Giants starter Matt Cain facing the very team he threw a perfect game against only a month earlier -- the hapless Houston Astros.  The fans genuinely believed that Cain was going to repeat his June 13th performance.  He didn't, but the Gigantes won, so everyone went home happy, anyway.

I bought us tickets in the cushy digs of the Club Level so we could access to the cozy indoor seating in case of inclement weather or just general baby fussiness.   The weren't cheap, but they were definitely the right choice.  Our actual seats were on the third base side under the View Level overhang so we didn't have to worry about shielding ourselves from the infamous skin-charring San Francisco summer sun (note to those unfamiliar with SF: ain't no sun here in the summer).

The game included a free Madison Bumgarner (I call him Mubby because his real name sucks) bobblehead to the first 25,000 fans to arrive.  We got there early enough to get ours, but that meant standing in line for 30 minutes to get into the park.  We parked at a half a mile from the Orlando Cepeda entrance, and we literally (the real kind of literally not the kind that doesn't mean literally at all) got in line within 100 yards of leaving the parking lot.  In retrospect, this may not have had an entirely positive effect on our boy.

Theo had a bit of a tough time through the pre-game rigamarole and the first couple innings.  While we found our seats and ate our ballpark lunches, Theo grumbled and whined.  Early in the game, I took him to the men's room for a diaper change (it had been a while), and he did NOT like it one bit.  After we got back to our seats, the excitement of the day finally overwhelmed him, and he fell asleep in my arms for about an inning and a half.  He was fine after that.

Frankly, the game wasn't that exciting.  I barely remember it.  Part of the problem was the Astros.  They're a bad team having a bad season.  They have exactly one player of interest, Jose Altuve, their shortstop.  That's it.  I'm actually pretty glad that they'll be joining the AL West next season.   I'd love to have another crappy team around for the A's to beat up on (I hope I didn't just jinx that).  The Giants didn't really help matters, either.  Bruce Bochy definitely assembled a B-team line-up.  The now disgraced and suspended Melky Cabrera didn't even play to pad his testosterone-enhanced stats.  At least no one can claim that the win was tainted by PEDs.

Looking over the box score, I can see that no one hit very much.  The Giants got a bunch of walks.  And Matt Cain and the Giants' bullpen were effective.  'Nuff said.  I do remember that when we left around the 7th inning, the final score was already locked in, so we didn't really miss much.

Despite some dark moments, Theo began his live-and-in-person baseball watching career on a good note.

August 19, 2012 -- Cleveland Indians 0, Oakland Athletics 7.

This past Sunday afternoon we finally evened out the split loyalties of our household by taking Theo to his first Oakland A's game.  This time my wife bought the tickets.  In the light of ticket prices at beautiful AT&T Park, the smart strategy when picking seats at for the less popular East Bay team playing in the clunky out-of-date dump currently known as O.co Coliseum is to "go big or stay home."  Duckie honored this approach.  The seats I bought in the mezzanine level well into the outfield down the third base line at AT&T Park cost nearly twice as much as the seats Duckie bought 16 rows behind home plate at the Coliseum.  Of course, I was also paying a premium to get access to the Club Level accommodations in San Francisco, but you can be sure that equivalent seats in the two parks don't have equivalent impacts on your pocketbook.

Anyway, the seats were great, and so was the weather.  It was sunny without being to hot.  Like in San Francisco, there was a giveaway gift for attending the game -- a green T-shirt commemorating the A's record-setting 20 game winning streak in 2002.  This time, however, we arrived too late and went home only with our ticket stubs to serve as mementos.*

The visiting club was the Cleveland Indians.  I was much more excited about them than the Astros the month before.  They're a nominally better team (still very much out of the playoff hunt, though), but more importantly they have a team stacked with really cool names.  Maybe, I only feel that way because due to a general ignorance of traditional Hispanic first names, but I stand by my position.  The Indians players had names like Asdrubal, Ezequiel, and Esmil while the A's trotted out two guys named Josh, a Brandon and Derek (they get some points for Coco, Yoenis, and Jemile, though).

The game was fun, mostly because the A's were so dominant.  A's starting pitcher Jarrod Parker had a good outing, and the hitting showed up as well.  Brandon Moss and Coco Crisp hit homers, and the team tacked on a few more runs earned through less potent methods as well.  More importantly, the Indians didn't get anyone home at all.

I think Theo had a slightly better time at this game.  For now, I'll refrain from assuming it's because he's already dedicated his baseball allegiance to the A's.  The timing was probably just a little better with respect to eating and napping.  Once again, we left after 7 innings or so, but all the scoring was already done

Thus far Theo appears to be a bit of a good luck charm for our local MLB clubs.  Let's hope the streak continues for a while.  Go A's and Giants!

*This actually isn't true.  At both parks we stopped by guest services and got Theo his official First Game certificates.  They're pretty low tech, but they're free.

Giants 5, Fathers 7: The Comeback That Wasn't.

On Tuesday while I was at work, I got an unexpected but very welcome invitation from my friend David.  He was the generous recipient of his boss's two Field Club level tickets to that night's Giants game, and he wanted me to join him.  I was coy at first.  I reminded David that I had just sat in Field Club a few weeks ago with my wife, and I didn't think it was wise to spend that much on tickets more than once in a month.  He told me the tickets were free.  I actually suspected as much, but I didn't want to be presumptuous.  Free baseball in primo seats is difficult to pass up, even on short notice.  Once I got Duckie's buy-in, I told David I would come along.

You might recall that my last trip to Field Club seating at AT&T Park was a mixed bag.  This trip was no different.  I didn't get to go home with a nice memento like last time, but the game was a lot better even if the outcome was similarly disappointing.

The Set-up:
We got a late start on the night.  David's wife, Suzannah (Ooooooo, shout-out to you, girl!), had to work until 7 pm, so David had to stick around the house to take care of his daughter, Noa, until he could make the hand-off to Suzannah.  Noa is seven months old, so she's not quite to the point where you can plop her in front of the TV with some Mac 'n Cheese, kiss her on the forehead and walk out the door for a little baseball.  Maybe next year.  Fortunately, David's tickets came with a parking pass,  so we drove to the game instead of making the long, slow trip on MUNI.  In the end, we only missed the first inning and a half, and as it turned out, we didn't really want to see that part of the game anyway.

The club portion of the Field Club seating is really just a big food court, and you walk right into it when you use the super convenient, super exclusive Field Club entrance (which, of course, we did).  Once you're in the massive cavern of beer and fattening foods, it doesn't make much sense to go to seats without your hands full of dinner and drink.  So that's what we did.   Field Club doesn't offer Cha-Cha Bowls (a serious oversight, in my opinion), so I went with a Polish sausage.  David's eyes went all kaleidoscope-y with all the exciting options, and he decided to break with tradition.  He went for a meatball sub.  Later in the game I stopped back for some made-to-order caramel corn (they serve it to you in a Chinese take-out container.  Mmmmmm....buttery sugar).  It was all good.

The Game:
By the time we got to our seats, the Giants were already down 3-0.  If you've followed the Giants at all over the past month, you know that 3 runs is generally considered to be an insurmountable deficit for their horrible offense to overcome.  Needless to say David and I were not encouraged.

Now, I don't generally do game summaries in my baseball blog posts, but since this game turned out to be pretty exciting, I'll be mixing in a little more detail from the game into this post.

As I was saying...the Giants were already down when David and I sat down, and the Padres threw another run on the board in the fourth to make the situation feel particularly hopeless.  We were left to find ways to amuse ourselves as we waited for the Giants' bats to wake up...or not.

One of my favorite games to play at any ballpark is the "Make Entertaining and Occasionally Cruel Observations About The Teams" game.  David was totally on board for this.  Here's what we came up with:

Ugly Nick Hundley
 

1.) The picture of Padres catcher Nick Hundley shown on the scoreboard for his plate appearances was awful.  He looked kind of like a sneering hick who might have been part of Kiefer Sutherland's pack of hoodlums in 'Stand By Me'.  The picture was bad enough that David and I just started calling him "Ugly Nick".  (The following night, David and I watched the second game of the series from our respective homes.  After a Hundley strikeout, David texted me, "Hit the pine, Ugly Nick.")
2.) Padres third baseman Logan Forsythe officially earned his place among the Worst Names in Baseball.  I'm sure Trevor Plouffe will welcome him with open arms.
3.) Padres outfielder Kyle Blanks is huge.  Seeing the true size of the gigantic baseball players is one of the benefits of sitting in Field Club.  And by the way, Kyle Blanks is huge.
4.) At some point, Giants shortstop Orlando Cabrera ended up on second base (I know!  I was as surprised as you are.)  When he got there, he had a nice little jovial chat with the Padres second baseman.  It wasn't until later that I realized that person was Orlando Hudson.  It was an all Orlando summit.  If only we could recreate the event at the foot of the Orlando Cepeda statue outside the park...and everyone could eat a Cha-Cha Bowl....awesomeness.

The other compelling entertainment available to us as we suffered through the first five innings of the game was provided by our neighbors in the stands.  Early on we were introduced to the cheers of a guy a few rows behind us who sounded like he might have been Aaron Rowand's little league coach.  "Watch the ball come all the way in!  Good job there, kid!"   All game long, he was hopelessly upbeat though in a condescending and pointless way that might be appropriate at a slow-pitch softball game, but not at a professional baseball game.

Sharing Row M with us were a bunch of guys in business casual attire who kept getting up for alternating beer runs and trips to the bathroom.  Since we had the two seats closest to the aisle, they kept walking in front of us.  At least they apologized for it.  The weren't actually all that entertaining.  Mostly, they were annoying.

A few rows ahead of us and across the aisle were a couple more colorful fans.  First there was a guy dubbed "House of Pain" by the people behind us.  The moniker fit.  He was a tall, skinny white guy, shaved bald and heavily tattooed.  He was wearing a black knit cap all askew as if he were trying to express some sort of mid 90s hip-hop sentiment....you know...like House of Pain.  He emoted convincingly throughout the game.  He really cared.  And he wasn't so bad.  His buddy, on the other hand, I didn't care for.  I'll call him Asshole Guy.   Despite being decked out in full Giants regalia, he decided in the late innings of the game he was going to heckle Brian Wilson, the Giants closer.  He would yell things like "Hey Wilson!  Does your butt hurt?" or "Brian why don't you stop shaving yourself?"  Do those sound like reasonable taunts to you?  Of course not.  They're idiotic.  And why was he dong that, anyway?

This is Lou Seal holding a little girl in the aisle near our seats.

The guy in the black knit cap on the aisle is House of Pain, and

the guy two seats to HoP's left is Asshole Guy.

Behind House of Pain and Asshole Guy was a woman with her three year-old daughter.  There aren't generally a lot of kids in Field Club, and this little girl was a trooper.  She made it all the way to the end of the game without conking out.  In the eighth inning, or so, David pointed her out to me and said "That girl is a plate."  I didn't understand.  I made him say it four more times before I realized he was really saying, "That girl is up late," which makes a lot more sense.  I'm getting stupid in my old age. 

Back to the game.

In the sixth inning, the Giants finally scored some runs.  Pablo Sandoval and Aubrey Huff were on 3rd and 2nd, respectively.  Brandon Belt grounded to Padres first baseman Jesus Guzman, and I think we all felt impending disaster because Pablo was way too far off third.  Guzman felt it, too.  He wanted to get the lead runner, and he got greedy.  Instead of stepping on first to get the out, he airmailed an ugly, ugly throw to third that was way out of Logan Forsythe's reach.  Both Sandoval and Huff scored, and we were all ecstatic.  High fives all around.  At the end of the inning it was 4-2.

The Padres scored again in the seventh thanks to an error by Jeff Keppinger.  The Giants failed to score in the bottom of the inning, and the Padres returned the favor in the top of the eighth.

In the bottom of the eight, things got interesting.  Brandon Belt singled.  One out later, Cody Ross doubled allowing Belt to score.  Then Aaron Rowand got on due to an error which also moved Ross to third.  And then something crazy happened. 

Bruce Bochy decided that this high pressure situation was the perfect time to put in his fourth string catcher (with Posey out for the season and Whiteside out with a concussion, the Giants needed to bring up a back-up to back up the back-up's back-up).  So Boch replaced Chris Stewart with Hector Sanchez.  According to the Giants' scoreboard, Sanchez is from Maracay, Aragua.  That threw us for a loop.  What the hell country is Aragua?  Answer: It's not a country.  It's a state in Venezuela.  I just learned that in the interwebs. I'm deeply flattered that the staff at AT&T Park assumed we were so savvy about geography that we knew that.  Though, they were wrong.  Anyway, Bochy really wanted this guy to bat.  Needless to say, we were concerned.  Rowand's little league coach was concerned.  The beer-swilling pee-boys were concerned.  I'm sure House of Pain was concerned, even if Asshole Guy was too busy being an asshole to care.  We were collective yelling, "Bochy!  What are you?  Crazy?"  Turns out, no.  He wasn't crazy.  Sanchez hit an RBI single. 

The Giants followed that up with one more run on a hit by Orlando Cabrera.  The game was tied!  The Giants were back in it!  The crowd was back in it!  We were all in it!

But we were arrogant, and forgetful.  We forgot that the Giants' most dependable relievers, Brian Wilson and Sergio Romo, were not available.  The Giants would have to rely on the likes of Ramon Ramirez and Steve Edlefson, and they would fail. We would not be leaving on the high of a walk-off victory.  With the help of Ugly Nick Hundley and his compatriots, the Padres scored two runs in the top of the ninth, and we were back out of it.  The Padres still had their lights-out closer, Heath Bell, available, and he did exactly what we knew he would do.  He retired the heart of the Giants line-up in order.  Final score 7-5 favoring the fellows from The Whale's Vagina.

Wrap-up:
Field Club is awesome and convenient, though apparently my presence there is a bad omen for Giants' success.  The Giants are 0-2 when I've sat in that part of the park.  After the game, David and I walked back to his car disappointed, but not broken.  We were able to bolster our spirits by repeating the best name in baseball over and over again in random contexts.  In fact, I recommend you all try it when your team loses a painful game and starts to look like the play-offs may not be attainable.  Say it with me now:  Jair Jurrjens.  Jair Jurrjens.  Jair Jurrjens.  Ahhhhhhhhhh.