Things I Want My Son to Know #1: Bo Jackson Is A BAMF

When I was a kid, there was no greater athlete than Bo Jackson. I mean athlete in the purest sense of the word. There were better baseball players, and there were better football players, but if we're talking sheer athleticism, Bo left them all in the dust. No one moved with the grace and power he did. And he was also exceptionally good at his chosen sports. He was an all star in both, and he probably would have been an Olympic medalist in track if he'd had the time to train.


My brother and I pretty much worshipped him. I remember sneaking out of bed to watch TV and seeing him break a wooden bat over his knee. I was in awe of his strength and told my brother about it in hushed tones. Every morning before school, we watched Pro Stars, a cartoon that teamed him up with Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretsky to fight crime. And every morning in the opening credits we saw the clip of his most famous play, when he made a nearly impossible catch at a full run, and then ran up/along the outfield wall to land on his feet. We watched him play football for the Raiders and baseball for the Royals. We watched his "Bo Knows" Nike commercials. We read his autobiography, Bo Knows Bo.


And then, when I was five, we saw him up close. The Royals played the Angels, and our parents took us to the game. We had field level seats in left field, and there he was. Right in front of us. There were a lot of kids in our section, and between innings, most of them would line the railing, calling to Bo. My brother would run down there with them, but for most of the game, I stayed back. Finally, after the seventh inning stretch, I asked my parents if I could go with my brother. I was shorter than the railing. I had to stand on a little ledge and hold on tight to see over it. I was standing there next to my brother,  struggling to hang on, when Bo walked up to us. He talked to all the kids for a couple minutes, but I have no idea what he said; I was too awestruck to hear him. Then he made like he was going to throw the ball he was holding. The older kids, including my brother, all took a few steps back to try to catch it. I stayed where I was; I knew I didn't have a chance. And then Bo stepped forward and handed me the ball.


It's rare that you get to meet your hero, especially when he's a superstar athlete. It's even rarer to meet your hero and have him live up to the hype. Bo Jackson wasn't just an amazing athlete; he went out of his way to be kind to a little girl. That was pretty much the greatest moment of my life up to that point. I loveed that ball and remembering how I got it. And I learned from Bo what it meant to truly be a Bad Ass Motherfucker.


Not too long after that, he sustained an injury that ended his football career and seriously derailed his baseball career. He was tackled, and his hip popped out of the socket. He popped it back in. Ask any trainer how impossibly strong you would have to be to do that. Bo was that strong. He ended up with an artificial hip, and he shocked the world by returning to professional baseball in 1993. He homered in his first at bat.


You can check out some of his highlights here.

Write This Book: My Parents Didn't Steal An Elephant

One of my all-time favorite books is There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar. It's the story of a fifth-grader named Bradley Chalkers, who probably started out just a little socially awkward, but who has grown increasingly alienated from his peers and is seen as a lost cause by students and teachers alike. Everything starts to change when two things happen: his school hires a new counselor and a new kid in class wants to be Bradley's friend. It's not easy but Bradley begins to make strides both socially and academically. When he says he can't do a book report because he doesn't have any books and the library won't lend him any, his counselor Carla lends him her favorite book, My Parents Didn't Steal An Elephant.

My Parents Didn't Steal and Elephant my all-time favorite book. It tells the story an unnamed narrator of unknown gender, the child of two former circus workers accused of stealing an elephant. It is smart and funny and bizarre. Sadly, it doesn't actually exist. All we have are a few precious excerpts that Bradley reads aloud to his ceramic animal collection. Seriously. How awesome is that? Anyway, this is the entire known text of Lasso's book:

I hate tomato juice.

Every morning, Aunt Ruth gives me a glass of tomato juice, and every morning I tell her I hate it. "Fine, Dumpling," she always says, "don't drink it."

She calls me Dumpling. Uncle Boris calls me Corn Flake. They're crazy. One of these days I'm afraid they're going to try and eat me.

My parents are in jail. They got arrested for stealing an elephant from the circus. Only they didn't do it. If they stole an elephant I'd know about it, wouldn't I? I mean, if your parents stole an elephant, don't you think you'd know about it?

I think the elephant just ran away. Her master was always mean to her. He whipped her and made her do stupid tricks. My parents used to complain about that a lot. That's why everyone thinks they stole her.

So, anyway, that's why I live with my crazy Aunt Ruth and Uncle Boris. If you ask me, they belong in the circus. They're crazy!

Uncle Boris always smokes a cigar. It just hangs out of the corner of his mouth. Whenever he kisses my aunt, he swings the cigar out of the way with his tongue, and kisses her out of the side of his mouth.

I bet you think Aunt Ruth doesn't like it when he kisses her that way. Wrong. She always laughs when her does it. Sometimes she smokes a cigar, too. I told you they were crazy.

Look! He even smokes his cigar while he's drinking his tomato juice.

Uncle Boris and Aunt Ruth are married. I bet you thought you already knew that, except you're not as smart as you think you are. They were my uncle and aunt even before they got married. Uncle Boris is my mother's brother and Aunt Ruth is my father's sister. They didn't even know each other until my parents got arrested for stealing an elephant. Then they both came here to take care of me. Hah! They fell in love and got married a week later. It was sickening! You're lucky you weren't here.

I've been cheated out of an aunt and uncle. If they had each married somebody else, then I'd have two aunts and two uncles. Now I only have one aunt and one uncle. I wonder what happened to the aunt and uncle I don't have. I wonder if they married each other, too.

I just met Ace. He's my parents lawyer. Guess what? He's crazier than my aunt and uncle put together.

The first thing he said to me was, "Do you like peanuts?"

"They're okay," I answered.

"Good," he said. He gave me a peanut and I ate it.

"Do you want another peanut?" he asked.

I shrugged.

So he gave me another peanut and I ate that one, too. Big deal.

"You must really like peanuts a lot," he said.

I told you he was crazy.

"I want you to remember that, he said. "If anyone asks you, you really like peanuts a lot."

"Okay, I really like peanuts a lot," I said.

Then he gave me three more peanuts! "Eat these!"

I ate them.

"You just ate three peanuts in five seconds," he said. Can you believe it? He had timed me. Tell me he isn't crazy!

So then he asked me, "Are you good at math?"

Well, I don't like to brag but math happens to be my best subject. Big deal.

"Okay, here's a math problem for you," he said. "If you can eat three peanuts in five seconds, how long would it take you to eat fifty thousand peanuts?"

I got out a pencil and paper and figured it out. "About twenty-three hours and nine minutes."

"That's less than a day, isn't it?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "there are twenty-four hours in a day." He's supposed to be my parents' lawyer and he doesn't even know how many hours there are in a day!

"Remember that," he told me. "If anybody asks you, you can eat fifty thousand peanuts per day."

I laughed. "Who would ask me that?"

"The police."

That's it. That's all we have of this amazing book. A little bit more is revealed in Bradley's book report, but that is such a breathless and joyous delight that I'll leave it for you to discover when you read There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom yourself. In the end, Carla leaves the school, but things work out alright for Bradley. He has friends now, and he got a hundred percent on his math test. It's hanging on a wall in Mrs. Ebbets's class. Still, every now and then, I make a silent wish that Carla will come back and bring a copy of My Parents Didn't Steal and Elephant with her. I'd like to find out if they really did it.

Christmas is coming, I'm trying not to get fat

Today is when I allow the Christmas Season to start. Malls, radio stations, grocery stores, and catalogues may try to push its advent ever sooner, but I refuse to see, hear, smell, taste, or feel the Christmas spirit until December 1. And so, as the frenzied countdown to the greatest of all days begins, I would like to give you a gift. It's called Meet Me in St. Louis.

Meet Me in St. Louis my favorite Christmas movie. Okay, so it's not technically a Christmas movie. Whatevs. The most pivotal moments happen at Christmas, and it gave us "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," the greatest Christmas song Of All Time.*

Early on in the film, the main character, Esther Smith, played by Judy Garland, has the following exchange with her older sister while they get ready for a party they're throwing:

"I'm going to let John Truett kiss me tonight."
"Esther Smith."
"Well, if we're going to get married, I may as well start it."
"Nice girls don't let men kiss them until after they're engaged. Men don't want the bloom rubbed off."
"Personally, I think I have too much bloom. Maybe that's the trouble with me. "

That's my personal diagnosis for everything. Whatever ails me, I just say I have too much bloom. John Truett is their new neighbor, whom she has never met. She tries to lure him into kissing her after the party, but he shakes her hand instead. They do eventually kiss on Halloween, after she beats him up for being mean to her little sister. They're in love and happy, and then her father announces that the family is moving to New York just after Christmas, thereby placing a pall on the celebrations. After rejecting John's plan to drop out of school and get married so that she can stay, Esther sings the truest, most melancholy and hopeful Christmas song of all time.



So, have yourself a merry little Christmas. Here's hoping that next year all our troubles will be out of sight.

*It's also the movie that gave us Liza Minelli, as her parents met on-set.

Hey there, loveryboy

Happy Anniversary, my love. It's been a good year.

Friar Tuck: The Original Gandhi?

So, BBC One has a new production of Robin Hood, and it's incredibly absurd. I love it. Robin Hood has emo hair and refuses to kill anyone. Guy de Gisborne wears eyeliner and leather pants. Marian wears pants and sneaks out of the castle dressed as "the Nightwatchman," distributing food to the poor. She was killed by Guy in the second season finale. There's a Muslim girl named Djag in the band of Merry Men. She and Will Scarlett fall in love and get married when the whole crew takes a quick trip to the Holy Land to save King Richard. Basically there are anachronisms galore, all to appeal to modern audiences, I guess.

This fall BBC America started airing the third and final season, and they've advertised from the start that Robin Hood will die in the final episode. The penultimate episode aired Saturday, and Robin and Guy, now working together to defeat the new Sheriff, Guy's little sister Isabella, took the castle with help/hindrance from Archer, their shared half-brother, and Robin's new girl, the working-class Kate. Also, Alan of Dale was killed by the original Sheriff of Nottingham after being falsely accused of betraying the gang. Yeah. Fans of the original legends might want to avoid the series. The one thing that really made me go hmmm, though, involved Friar Tuck and Little John.

Friar Tuck arrived on the scene fresh from the Holy Lands in the third season premiere. Interestingly, in this iteration, Friar Tuck is a preternaturally wise black man, not the jolly wino of movies past. He is very serious and very focused on teaching Robin that the people need inspiration as much as they need his ill-gotten riches. In this episode, he rallied the men of Locksley to take up arms to block a supply train Isabella was sending to Prince John. Everyone marched on the castle, and Friar Tuck got them to...sit down, blocking the path of the supply train. Yeah. The world's first non-violent protest?

It's always surprising the way that we ignore history when we tell the Robin Hood legend, especially since the actual history is so fascinating. King Richard was a more inspiring king than John, perhaps, but better? He spent less than a year of his reign in England. His vast French holdings were more important to him than his English lands. The sheriffs were patrolling the forests on his behalf, not Prince John's. The massive taxes were being raised to pay his ransom after he was captured returning from the Crusades. In fact, the stories of Prince John's treachery come from his not raising enough taxes; it looked as though he was hoping to leave Richard locked up forever. John was a much weaker king, it's true, but England should be eternally grateful for his weakness. His losses in France made England the centerpiece of the Angevin empire. And never forget that he was the king who signed the Magna Carta, limiting his own power and establishing the writ of Habeas Corpus, the foundation of English common law.

Friar Tuck's tactic worked, in total defiance of the brutality that was really the order of the day. Isabella's men refused to massacre them, and Robin Hood's men took the castle, while the original sheriff began to lay siege. It looks like it'll be a tough situation next week, and I'm hoping that at least a few of the Merry Men will live to the end of the episode. Robin will die a noble death, I'm sure, although if they really wanted to be subversive, maybe the writers should turn him into a traitor, hanged by his own men, or perhaps just an ignominious death, hiding in a hole, crying and praying for it to end quickly. That would really turn the legend on its ear.

Okay, FINE! Harry Potter Is Kind of Alright

I was starting high school when the Harry Potter mania hit. And it was mania. And I was repulsed. Seriously, it was a children's book about wizards and people were going on about it like it was the Second Coming of the McDLT. It was the most creative and original book ever! It saved a generation from illiteracy! By the time a college pamphlet arrived in which a dean (a dean!) proclaimed, "J.K. Rowling is the Shakespeare of our time," I was pretty much ready to do violence on anyone who even mentioned the books to me.

After high school graduation, I went on a cruise with my grandma. The other young person at our dinner table, Nick, was incredulous at my refusal to read the accursed books. After significant badgering, I struck a deal with him: I would read the first two books. Nick was certain I would love them and continue; I was certain I would not. And guess what? I was right.

I really did try to give the books a fair shake, honestly, I did. But in like, the second paragraph, Dumbledore takes out a handy little device: it looks like a cigarette lighter but actually turns off all the streetlights. Rowling has ingeniously named this a "put-outer." I was done right then. I kept reading of course--I'd made a deal, but I'd already decided: strikingly unoriginal. As I continued reading, I found more evidence to support my claim: a great evil who was defeated but not destroyed, an unlikely young boy sharing a connection and a destiny with said evil, the never quite healing injury linked to their mindmeld thingy, and a confrontation with his parents' murderer that has an unexpected outcome. They'd all been done before.

Then the third movie came out, and it was directed by Alfonso Cuaron, a director I really admire. And I surprised my self by wanting to see it. And I did see it (on TV), and I kind of liked it. Just a little. Then I caught the fourth, which was even better. And the fifth. And then this summer I saw the sixth and decided I wanted to read the book. I wanted to learn about Voldemort's backstory, and people said it was covered better in the book. So I read it, and I liked it and read the fifth, then the fourth, and finally the seventh. In a week.

I kind of loved them. Yes, they were derivative. A lot of it was the same old sci-fi fantasy cliches repackaged into an English boarding school experience. And I will never believe that anyone would join a group called the Death-Eaters and follow someone called the Dark Lord. But I found the connection between Voldemort and Harry and their wands really interesting, and I liked the imaginary lore of the magic world.

The thing I liked most though, is that in the end Harry wins because he is kind and always tries to do the right thing. Dobby gives his life for Harry and Kreacher switches sides because Harry treats them humanely. Narcissa Malfoy betrays Voldemort because Harry didn't kill her son. Harry's greatest personal crisis comes when he discovers that his father was kind of a jackass in school. And when Harry believes that Dumbledore was manipulating him into dying to defeat Voldemort, he goes, terrified, into certain death to save his friends.

On tv and in books and movies we are constantly barraged with precocious smart-alecky kids always looking for an angle. It's really nice to see a kid get ahead by being, well, nice.

Princess Leia Still Kicks Ass

Ok, so I know I've been promising a new post for a thousand years now, and it's kind of lame to just repost something someone else wrote, but here's the thing: I'm SO sick of everyone feeling like they have the right and apparently even the responsibility to constantly comment on every woman's body*. You don't. Or, I mean, I guess it's technically your right to comment on anything you want to but constantly commenting on every woman's body makes you an asshole. I don't care if you're a man or a woman, body-snarking is mean, unfair, and ultimately, Boring. Yes, I did capitalize it for emphasis. It's Boring. Saying "she's fat" adds absolutely nothing to the public discourse. If you don't have anything interesting or substantive to say, just don't say anything. Please. For the love of all things holy.

Anyway, Carrie Fisher recently made the mistake of googling herself and found that a blogger had written that she used to be attractive but now looks like Elton John. I found her response hilarious:

You see, I was hot when most people are hot—- in my fucking 20’s & part of my 30’s……THEN, in an effort to imitate humans, I had a child &, to further maintain my life like disguise, I took medications for about 9 thousand years, &, despite all my efforts, I continued to get older & older——inadvertently, I assure you———-I tried to arrest my development physically as WELL as emotionally, but unfortunately without as much success. I also must confess that I ate food. I’m sorry….. I realize that I promised never to eat anything but lettuce & sun flower seeds, but tragically, I was unable to keep my promise.

Yes, I realize…..I KNOW that I vowed to exercise for 3 hours a day—-aerobics, pilates AND yoga, but alas, I admit with a large quota of shame, that I failed to fulfill this other important commitment.
NO, I shouldn’t look as if 30 years have passed. I understand completely if you can’t find it in your heart to forgive me for looking like 3 decades have passed…….Of COURSE you should mock & belittle me for being so large!! What else could you POSSIBLY do?????!? I’ve let you down by treating my body as though it were just some giant sad sack that I use to haul my personality around. You have every right to compare me to Yoda or Elton or Kirstie…….I’ve brought it on myself.

Carrie Fisher is an accomplished actress and writer. She has battled drug addiction. She has chosen to be very public about her mental illness (bipolar disorder), helping to lessen the stigma for fellow sufferers. She is the daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds(!) and the stepdaughter of Elizabeth Taylor(!!!). She was Princess Leia. Her appearance is literally the least interesting thing about her. Please, please, please just shut up about it.

*I'm saying woman because most body snark seems to be directed towards women. Body-snarking men is just as inane.