A Superhero Afraid of His Own Name

When is a superhero not a superhero? Apparently, when he hails from the United States. At least, Marvel Studios thinks so. The studio is about to release the new Captain America: The First Avenger summer action film and brave Marvel execs are concerned that the name won’t travel well when it reaches foreign shores. Already, Marvel has announced that in Russia, the Ukraine and South Korea to name a few, the film’s name will be shortened to simply, The First Avenger – ostensibly to placate the hyper-anti-American sensitivities of overseas elites.

But, but … I thought our world-citizen, leader-for-all-mankind, über-President was going to fix all that.

Hey Marvel, why not go one politically correct step further and re-title the flick for each of the countries it plays in? For example, in Berlin theaters the film could be called “General German.” In Guadalajara it could be “Major Mexico.” Movie goers further south could buy tickets for “Corporal Chili,” “Admiral Argentina,” “Private Peru” (that one almost sounds scandalous, doesn’t it?) and so on and so on.  

I wonder how they’ll apologize to moviegoers for the protagonist’s unapologetically patriotic red, white and blue costume? Maybe they could digitally render the garish suit into a neutrally non-offensive Swiss Coffee sort of color and hand out glasses with the appropriate colors of each different country on the lenses. What's next, remaking Superman into "Super-gender-neutral-person"?

Hooray for Hollywood.

My Mugs Runneth Over

As I was reaching in the cabinet to get a coffee mug to begin my morning intake of steamy dark goodness when something occurred to me. Namely, that one of the consequences of parenting four smart, ambitious and capable kids is that – ultimately – they will likely attend a college or university. (The fact that the public school system shills for higher education from the first day of kindergarten on probably has something to do with it, but I’ll save that topic for another day. Anybody remember trade schools?) 

You might be asking; what in the wide-world-of-Dunkin Donuts does my morning brew have to do with sending kids to college? Two words: coffee mugs.   

Let me explain. Two of my wife’s and my four “kids” are well into their adult lives and graduated with their respective degrees in hand some years ago – one from the Master’s College and the other from Azusa Pacific University, both Southern California institutions. Our two younger kids, however, are currently in the middle of their own adventures in higher education – one at the University of Montana in Missoula, the other at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.

If you’re keeping score, that’s four kids and four different colleges or universities. And yes, we do eat a lot of ramen noodles and mac n’ cheese these days.

So, what does reaching into the cupboard to get a coffee mug have to do with kids and college? Glad you asked. This morning, as I was confronted with a large and very odd assortment of mugs stacked on the shelves, I realized that as a result of the outrageously expensive rite of passage, my kids get a degree and at least four years of life-changing personal growth and professional training (please, dear God, let it be so!). But other than decades of loan payments, all their mom and I get out of this are coffee mugs.

It’s true. We have a cupboard full of coffee mugs with “(name of college) DAD”  or “(name of college) MOM” silk screened onto them – a veritable hall of fame of colleges our kids have attended – and not much else to show for all the money, anguish and effort poured into sending four kids to college. No, wait. In all honesty, we also have those little decals with the school logos on the back of our car windows. I feel so much better now.

I wonder if this is a uniquely American thing, or are parents in other countries cajoled into spending even more of their there-it-goes-out-the-window retirement money on overpriced ceramic mugs from the colleges their offspring attend? I mean, wouldn’t you think that – upon investing tens-of-thousands-of-dollars every year to have your son or daughter live 24/7 on your campus, eat your food, sit in your classes for hours upon hours, etc. – that the least you could do is to pony up a couple of free mugs in a swag bag of goodies and chotchkies as a “thank you” to the parents and/or grandparents who helped to make it all possible? But nooooo. At best, bled-dry parents get a subscription to the school’s over-produced, glossy-stock, full-color alumni magazine and a never ending river of appeals for donations to said college. Sigh. 

And it doesn’t end with mugs and decals. Why do we parents feel so compelled to spend even more of our dwindling cash on college-branded bumper stickers, those stupid flappy flag thingies to clip over your car window, keychains, sweatshirts, hats, baby onesies, football jerseys (like any of us parents ever played college ball!) seat cushions for when you buy outrageously priced tickets to a college game and even warm fuzzy blankets with your kid’s college logo printed on them to help keep you warm when you’re sitting at home watching TV in a freezing house because there’s no money left to pay the heating bill.

I really should have t-shirts made up that say, “My kid went to college and all I got was a lousy coffee mug.” Unfortunately, my dresser drawers are already jammed with too many t-shirts that have – you guessed it – college logos on them.

Sigh. I’ll see you ‘round town. 

Note: This is a slightly modified version of my column first published yesterday, 6.30.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Frustration In A Can

If you own or rent a home, you pay every month for the utilities; gas, water, trash, cable or satellite, electricity, etc. These regular expenses are a necessity and – baring an exceptionally cold winter or hot summer, normal monthly costs are a small but necessary part of overall living expenses.

Like most people, I tend to take utilities for granted – you pay your monthly bill, flip a switch, the light comes on. Turn a knob, the oven heats up. Pick up the phone, you get a dial tone. (Unless you’re under 30 and you don’t have a clue what a land line or a dial tone is, in which case, never mind.)

My point is, you expect a “utility” provider to be overwhelmingly reliable, and on those rare occasions when something doesn’t work (power outage, low water pressure, a tree limb across a phone line – that sort of thing), you want them to be easy to work with and to quickly remedy the problem.

When was the last time you heard somebody complain about Southern California Edison, for example? For the most part, you don’t. CV Water District? Nope. Charter Cable? Okay, now here’s a company that pretty much illustrates perfectly the difference between being a reliable and customer-focused utility/service provider and, well, one that isn’t. 

But this isn’t about cable TV. My growing frustration is with our local trash, er, excuse me … ‘waste’ collection, er, ‘management’ company. I won’t mention the company by name, but its initials are “A” and “W” and used to be “BFI.” As customers of this company, unfortunately, we’re “SOL.” But I digress. 

Our household refuse, yard clippings and recyclables (it all just used to be generic ‘trash’ in the pre-PC days) are supposed to be picked up once a week. At least that’s what we pay for. Inevitably, however, one of our three different colored hoppers, or bins, or whatever they call the massive, wheeled containers that we drag out to the street – is left behind by its respective collection truck.

That’s because we live on a private drive with several other homes on it. So our three humongous cans have to go out on the street with everyone else’s monster cans. All of us combined used to be able to fit as many “traditional” trashcans as we needed in a rather small area near our collective mailboxes. Of course, that was also when trash truck drivers would get out of their cabs and actually empty the cans by hand. Ah, the good old days.

Now, one smoke belching, oil leaking, diesel drinking truck comes for the brown cans. Another comes for the black cans. And a third comes for the blue cans. Sounds environmentally responsible and efficient, doesn’t it? Not hardly. My neighbors’ and my cans now take up twenty or thirty linear feet of street. No matter how hard I try to arrange all of the cans to leave plenty of room so that the ginormous mechanical arm can pick them up – inevitably one or more of the drivers knocks over a container, or places it back on the street directly in front of another container that has yet to be emptied. So guess what? The full one’s left unemptied by the next driver because – well, heaven forbid  he should get out of his cozy cab to move a container that his own conscientious colleague left in the way.

Of course, I’ve called repeatedly to let the oh-so-nice customer service reps know that this is an ongoing problem and am always promised that a driver will be out the next day to pick up our missed cans. I’ll just say that – what customer service promises and what the drivers actually do are usually polar opposites on the professional spectrum. I’ve been told repeatedly that “a driver will be dispatched by radio to pick up your can – if not today, then tomorrow for sure. And we are so sorry for this inconvenience.”

Sounds good, right? Sounds responsible. Sounds customer-centric, like these good people really and truly care about us . Right.

Sounds like a big ol’ oversized bin full of I-really-couldn’t-care-less-about-your-problems-and-just-want-to-get-you-off-the-phone-so-I-can-get-back-to-checking-my-Facebook-wall. Oh yes … and thank you for calling, we appreciate your business.

I’ve been told that my problem will be resolved within 24 hours so many times I’ve lost count. And still the can sits out on the street by itself, stinkin’ up the neighborhood until the following week’s normal pickup day.

It makes me want to ‘forget’ to pay their bill some month and see what happens. But something tells me the company’s accounts receivable personnel will do their job a lot more reliably than the drivers. Ya think? 

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a longer version of my column first published yesterday, 6.23.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Laughing My Arse Off

Last weekend, my wife and I saw “The Trip” at a small theater in Old Town (no ‘e’) Pasadena known for showing artsy-fartsy, lo-budget, independent films.

I laughed myself sore at the achingly funny, often poignant, mostly-improvised “dialogue” between actor-comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (playing dangerously loose versions of themselves), as the middle-aged duo spend a week on the road traveling through Northern England’s Lake District – ostensibly to review its more esoteric inns and restaurants for a British magazine.

The movie has been edited together from an earlier six-episode BBC2 sitcom of the same name and features several spontaneous, seemingly ad-libbed, devastatingly sharp verbal duels between Coogan and Brydon, each a brilliant impressionist in his own right. These two do Michael Caine, Al Pacino, Sean Connery and even Woody Allen better than the originals themselves.

I purposely don’t do movie reviews, so I won’t go into any more details of the plot, or lack of one, than I already have. My point, however, it that as I laughed my way through the eye-wateringly entertaining film, I was once again reminded that the British accent is a God’s gift to the English people.

Maybe it’s His way of making up for giving them a taste for bland food, Benny Hill and medieval dentistry skills. Now imagine how much funnier that line would sound spoken with a British accent. See what I mean?

Chrome Is Where The Heart Is

One of the things that my Dad and an older brother often did in their spare time was to take an ordinary car or truck, strip it down to its nuts and bolts, pistons and bearings, gaskets and gears – and then rebuild the entire vehicle from the tires to the headliner, turning it into a faster, more powerful, shinier, louder, way more impressive piece of rolling stock than it had been in its former life.

Whether it was Dad’s ‘48 Jeep 4x4 Willys wagon with a small block Chevy powerplant and completely custom interior (including a hand-fabricated cockpit-like dashboard and overhead console) or my brother’s mid-60s era Chevy Chevelle SS with extra wide street racing tires, a Hurst shifter and Holly 4-barrel carb, our house near Two-Strike Park was the birthplace of these and many other impressive rides as I was growing up.

I couldn’t help but reminisce about the vehicles of my youth this past Saturday when – in honor of my Father-in-law, Bud Falkenstien’s birthday (who fittingly is a retired mechanic) – we attended the weekly gathering of the Early Rodders car club at the United Artist theaters on Verdugo under the 2 Freeway interchange with the 210.

The Early Rodders have been meeting on Saturday mornings at 7 o’clock since 2001. Although many of the cars on display any given weekend are painstakingly restored muscle cars from Detroit’s golden years (think ’56 Chevy Nomads or Corvette Sting Rays) or much older classics (a 1951 “Henry J” looking like a Studebaker on steroids had me daydreaming of ¼-mile qualifying runs) – anyone with a passion for cars is invited to bring their ride and show it off. This past Saturday I was surprised (pleasantly) to see a couple of 70s-era Nissan (known as Datsun back then) Z-cars like one I used to collect speeding tickets with way back during my misspent youth.

There were also several of the more exotic sports cars present last weekend – including a suh-weet Ferrari GTB, a rare mid-engine Ford GT40, a vintage Rolls Royce, a totally bad and rad Shelby Cobra and even a gorgeous, British-built, open-cockpit Morgan.

Stroll around the UA parking lot on a Saturday morning and you’ll see small groups of men (this is a decidedly “guy” thing – including my wife, I counted a total of three ladies in attendance last Saturday) with their heads under the upraised car hoods, inhaling the heady fragrance of hot motor bath and 10-40 weight oil and talking exhaustively (sorry) about cubic inches, torque-foot pounds and gear ratios. Walking and gawking, hearing brief snatches of conversation about 4:11 gears in a Dana 60 rear end, or singing the praises of a 289 Ford V8 vs. an Olds 455 or Chevy 396, it occurred to me that – whether it’s sports cars or sports heroes – we guys always seem to share our passions by the numbers. If you’re into more typical sports (which, for whatever reason, I have never been), you can recite runs scored or single season passing yards, field goals attempted or rebounds per game as easily as your own home address. On the asphalt at an Early Rodders event, however, the talk is mostly about horsepower and model years. But nonetheless, it’s all about the numbers.

It seems to me that the popularity of this sort of gathering is growing, even if only on a subconscious level. For example, the Men's Ministries team at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena has had such success with our annual summer "Classic Car Nights" sponsoring six such events over the next three months alone.

To which I say, enjoy the phenomenon while it lasts. I mean, seriously. Can you even imagine attending a weekend gathering of gearheads a decade or two from now and drooling over a souped up, ‘classic’ Prius? (“Dude, don’t you just love the smell of rechargeable batteries in the morning?!?”)

Yeah, neither can I. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This was first published yesterday, 6.16.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Feelin’ the Facebook Love

So, today is my birthday. Seems to happen every year right about now. Even if I wanted to avoid it – or ignore it (which seems to be more the case with every added year) – Facebook makes it impossible.

For the five of you out there without a Facebook presence, the social networking juggernaut automatically notifies you when each and every “friend” of yours has a birthday. Not only on the day itself, but on the Sunday before you get a notice of all your friends who will celebrate a birthday in the coming weeks.

This is frustrating, because I’ve always taken some bit of pride in writing down my family and friends’ birthdays on a big paper calendar (talk about ‘old school’) that I have under the keyboard on my desk. Then (depending on the importance or significance of said friend or family member, to be brutally honest) I either send a quick email, make a phone call or – hopefully – have looked ahead early enough to have the time to go buy a card and drop it in the mail.

I can’t tell you how many people have been pleasantly surprised over the years that I bothered to remember their birthdays -- with even a quick email. It seems like such a simple thing to do, yet so many people just don’t seem to take the time to do it. Honestly, it’s been kinda fun to do something nice like that all these years.

Then came Facebook. Now remembering someone’s birthday is almost entirely done for you. All you have to do is click on a person’s name, type in your greeting and post it. Woo hoo. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there will soon be an ‘app for that’, too. It sure has taken the fun and “specialness” out of my efforts to brighten someone’s day, though. Dang.

Now all I have to worry about is how many messages I’ll get on my Facebook wall today. 25? 50? Do I dare hope for 100? Nah … because, I know no matter how many I get, it won’t be long until the insecure side of me starts asking why I didn’t get more. I mean, who doesn’t like me or want me to have a happy birthday? What did I do to them? Did I somehow miss their birthday?

Crud. Life used to be so much simpler. I must be getting older.  

Happy birthday to me.

Flagging A Big Problem

Did you know today is Flag Day? It comes around every June 14^th. Even though my birthday is the next day, I almost always forget until I see someone else’s flag on their front porch. Then I rush home and dig mine out from wherever I stashed it on July 5^th the year before.

I can’t blame myself entirely, though. If it has to do with patriotism, citizenship, shared responsibility to our country or anything to do with American exceptionalism, it isn’t taught in our schools (other than at private, Christian-schools and in home-school curriculums). More often than not, anything like this is actually demonized as being jingoistic and unenlightened.

Shame on us.

We proudly teach gay pride, Mexican pride, self pride and pride in being from any other country on the planet or in being anything different or unusual or unique. But our educators (for the most part) have purposely abandoned any teaching about what made this country such a magnet for all of those other individuals and groups who take so much pride in being from somewhere else.

I wonder. Do you take your hat off and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance at ballgames? If you didn’t fly your flag today, why not? Do you even have a flag? (And no, an L.A. Lakers or USC Trojans car window flag doesn’t count.)

It’s a grand old flag, folks. I sure hope we come back around to appreciating all that’s good about it. Happy Flag Day. Long may it wave.