People like to get high

When I was in high school I moved to another country. Quickly, I was reassured that my new mates alcohol consumption habits were very similar to my own. That was until one dark night, down in someone's parent's basement, when the revelers began snorting vodka through their noses.

Ostensibly this technique will get you drunk faster -- although it's not like it takes very long for a few traditional shots of vodka to kick in. The downside to snorting vodka is the sharp, almost unimaginable pain it shoots through the sinus cavity and to the back of the eyeballs. The pain does subside, but the eyes continue to water, and you are left with the distinct impression that some of the damage you just did to your brain will be permanent.

Since I thankfully never came across the practice again, I always thought vodka snorting was the unique and misguided domain of a small subset of young people in a far off land. Then a few weeks ago I read an article on how Prince Harry likes to snort vodka, and it is becoming quite the trend. In this day and age, with so many great ways to get high, why anyone would ever snort vodka is beyond me.

If snorting vodka is pointless and painful, what can be said about the huffing of fermented human fecal matter?

It's called jenkem, and it apparently produces strong hallucinations. Jenkem was discovered about ten years ago by Zambian street kids too good for sniffing glue.

Evidence that jenkem has crossed over to those with homes is highly anecdotal, although we do have this recent first person account from a Seattle paper. The author confirms the poop drug's hallucinogenic quality. He also adds "one of the downsides of jenkem is that you constantly have that taste of sewage in your breathing for several days after the fact."

Suddenly snorting vodka doesn't seem so bad.

Death Watch: Richard Jewell

The closest I've ever come to heroism is when, hundreds of miles away, some of my closest and oldest friends thwarted what could have been the signature act of terrorism in our nation's history.

Now obscured by 9/11, the Centennial Park bombing during the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta would have been a lot worse than two dead if the bomb had exploded in the manner in which anti-abortion terrorist and skilled bomb maker Eric Robert Rudolph had intended it to.

What prevented this from happening were the actions of my lifelong buddies. Dubbed the "Speedo boys" by law enforcement (because they had gone to the Olympics to work the Speedo booth -- not because they wore revealing bathing suits at inappropriate times), my friends were loitering drunkenly in Centennial Park when they drew the ire of a nasty fatman of a security guard named Richard Jewell.

Jewell argued with the Speedo boys. They eventually decided to leave, and went to grab the rest of their beer, which had been stowed in various backpacks. One of the bags in their general area seemed too heavy and full to contain beer, so they dismissively kicked at it before going on their way.

The deputy director of the FBI would later pay homage to what the Speedo boys had done by stating, during a press conference, "no doubt that movement (of the bomb) saved a lot of lives." This strange but true chapter in American history is documented in this book excerpt.

In subsequent interviews with investigators, my friends fingered the hated Jewell as a suspicious creep with "intense eyes." This characterization no doubt contributed to Jewell being profiled as a potential suspect in the bombing.

Of course that accusation proved to be false, and, in the aftermath, Jewell got all sorts of sympathy, Saturday Night Live and movie appearances, and libel settlements from news organizations.

Just a year ago Jewell was still receiving citations from the state of Georgia for alleged bravery -- some claim he helped move the crowd away from the bomb -- while my friends, the real heroes of the day, have toiled in anonymity for the past decade without a single NBC dime to spend.

I guess it goes to show if you are an unpleasant creepy looking security guard you should try your best to harass as many kids as possible just trying to have a good time during a national celebration.

Richard Jewell hit the jackpot with that calculus, and had been living large with the notoriety and cash it brought ever since. That is until he died today of natural causes. Richard Jewell was 44 years old.

10,000 losses and one Steve Jeltz

Yesterday the Philadelphia Phillies became the first sport franchise in the recorded history of the universe to lose 10,000 games. It's a feat of longevity, more than anything else. Although there are a handful of other baseball teams that have been around for as long or longer than the Phillies, so ineptitude can't be ruled out completely.

As a Phillies' fan who has borne witness to a good chunk of this longevity and ineptitude, I can honestly say I feel fine. The Phillies have brought me many good memories. OK, they have brought me some good memories. OK, I actually do remember when the Phillies won their only World Series in 1980. Granted I was quite young, and I didn't appreciate it the way I would have had it happened a couple years later.

But really, when I reflect back upon 15 years of waking up early so I could check the morning box score before school and, after that, walking out in the middle of many a conversations because I just got the sudden urge to go check the Internet to see how the Phillies were doing, it doesn't come back as an endless parade of losses and disappointment.

Instead I remember all the interesting people my Phillies' fandom has exposed me to. Like Steve Jeltz. Jeltz was relatively slick-fielding, absolutely no-hitting shortstop who started for the Phillies between 1985-1989, and who, along with Juan Samuel, made up the jheri curliest* middle infield of the National League.

For reasons never properly explained, Steve Jeltz was born in Paris, France. While Jeltz's last name was typically pronounced how it spelled, I preferred to refer to him as Steve yeltz. I did so either as a nod to his almost-Iberian place of birth, or because anyone so light hitting needed to be denied the hard J. I can't remember which. Maybe it was both.

Now I do remember the time Steve Jeltz, who hit exactly five home runs in his eight year major league career, managed to smack two homers in one game . . . after entering as a pinch hitter. . . hitting one from each side of the plate . . . leading the Phillies to victory in a game they had fallen behind 10-0 in the first inning!

That was exciting. There is good memory.

Losses come and go, and by the time they accumulate to 10,000 the very concept of being defeated loses its meaning. But Steve Jeltz's shockingly big day . . . that sticks around forever.

*The double play tandem's matching locks were so overwhelmingly distracting that Samuel's picture appears on Jeltz's 1988 Donruss trading card.

Death Watch: Lady Bird Johnson

Lady Bird Johnson will be best remembered for outliving her husband, 36th President Lyndon Baines Johnson, by 34 years. And for her name -- Lady Bird.

It was as a child growing up (briefly) in Austin, Texas that I was first made aware of the existence of the former first lady. At the time she was solidly in the local public eye because she was promoting and heading all sorts of wildlife conservation efforts in the Austin area. Like any other seven year old, I found her name fascinating.

I decided the reason behind her odd moniker was that a Lady Bird was what a first lady became after she was made a widow. It probably had something to do with recently learning about caterpillars and butterflies and first ladies and widows. Then, I concluded, the reason Jackie Onassis wasn't bestowed the same title is because she was off attending fashion shows and gallivanting with Greek shipping tycoons instead of honoring her late husband's memory by dedicating her life to planting flowers on the side of the highway.

OK, I just made up the Jackie O. part. But wouldn't it be cool if I had been capable of such self-generated righteous indignation at age seven? The part about why I thought Johnson was called Lady Bird is totally accurate, though. In fact, it was only recently I learned the truth.

Anyway, her given name was Claudia. From infancy, when a nursemaid commented that Johnson was "pretty as a ladybird," nobody ever called her Claudia. And now, 94 years later, Lady Bird Johnson is dead.

Tastes like chicken

When I was eleven or twelve I was over at one of my friend's houses -- we'll call the friend Tim. We were hanging out in Tim's room, doing whatever, when Tim's father walked in and started talking to us.

Pretty quickly in the conversation he asked me if I knew Tim ate cat food. I told him I didn't, and asked Tim if this was true.

Tim said that it was, and added his dad had paid him 20 dollars to eat the cat food.

His dad confirmed the payment, and added Tim ate it all up.

Tim claimed it actually tasted pretty good.

Then Tim's father offered us each 20 dollars to eat a full tin of cat food.

20 dollars was a lot of money back then, but I was completely grossed out by eating a tin of damp, smelly cat food. Also, I wasn't sure what the ethical and moral ramifications were of accepting money from another kid's parent for eating pet food.

Tim had no such problem, and happily re-upped on the challenge. Tim was made to eat the cat food using a cocktail spoon, and Tim's dad and I laughed hysterically as Tim gagged and made, with each tiny bite, faces suggesting his earlier proclamation of cat food's savory taste was incorrect.

Tim got his 20 bucks, and then we went rode our bikes to the baseball card store so he could spend it.

At the time I was a little jealous my parents didn't engage me in such lucrative stunt bets. I realize now Tim's father was a sick man.

The Tim and the cat food incident raised my awareness of humans eating pet food. It is an awareness that has remained heightened. So, when the poison pet food scandal/recall story broke about a week ago, I began waiting anxiously for the first human to be sickened, and wondering what embarrassing admission they would have to make in explanation.

And now we have our winner: Elaine Larabie of Ottawa, Canada.

Larabie ate the dog food not for financial gain, but because she was trying to fool her picky-eating terrier Missy into thinking she was being fed people food. Which is cute, in a crazy pet-lady-who-eats-pet-food sort of way.

Both dog and owner have been released from the hospital and are resting comfortably.

Idle threat of the week

Winter may have turned to spring, but it was still chilly yesterday, so the Panel of Judges decided to eschew our traditional first weekend of spring barbecue and head to the local multiplex to take in the latest 3-D cinematic release

OK, save it really being the first weekend of spring, that last sentence was entirely false. Although it does act to highlight the surprising revelation Hollywood sees its future in a 3-D revival.

3-D technology is almost as old as the moving picture, and the earliest confirmation of a 3-D film shown to a paying audience was in 1922. But it wasn't until the early 50's that 3-D movies hit their stride. Not much of a stride, it turned out, and the craze fizzled in the mid 50's, remaining largely dormant until 1980

IMAX theatres sparked the next wave of 3D hits which, like the first, didn't last long.

Now, having burned through the requisite generation of skeptical movie goers, Hollywood has been toying with the next generation of 3-D -- it's apparently much more realistic and has been capturing big per-screen bucks in very limited release.

Since money is usually followed, the next step is to bring 3-D mainstream.

I speak for all the Panel of Judges when I remember the first time I saw a 3-D movie. It was Jaws 3-D and I was a seven-year old shaking in excitement and anticipation when the usher handed me those famous polarized paper glasses. The movie itself was pretty bad, and I quickly learned a shark is no more scary coming directly at you than it is stuck in its two-dimensional cage. In fact, it was sort of annoying when it invaded your personal space.

3-D movie technology is fascinating in theory, and hard not to want to check out once or twice, but it doesn't work in real life. For the same reason virtual reality experiences never took off, neither will 3-D -- no matter how realistic it has become.

People like viewing things in the comfort of 2-D. The imagination can easily add the third dimension.

Hollywood's threat to ruin perfectly good movies with a superfluous dimension will flounder, once again, when mass audiences are exposed to the product.

Instead of providing industry stabilizing revenues, 3-D's latest greatest accomplishment will be garnering Idle Threat of the Week for March 19th to 25th.

It will also prove the old axiom: Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it -- in 3-D.

Spree and me both agree a case should cost 7.99

It's been more than two years since Latrell Sprewell brushed off an "insulting" three-year 21 million dollar contract extension from the Minnesota Timberwolves because he had a "family to feed." Then he inexplicably dropped off the face of the basketball earth.

But his quote lingered and Sprewell become the poster child for the selfish, spoiled athlete.

Being the optimist I am, I saw personal growth while the others saw ingratitude -- and why would you criticize a guy for thinking of his family when, five years earlier, that same guy would have literally choked the life out of the poor minion sent to him with a contract offer of any thing less than ten million per year?

I'm still trying to figure out where I stand on the latest news item involving Sprewell and comically inflated financial terms: The one where the mother of four of his children is suing him for 200 million dollars because he backed out of an implied "long term cohabitation deal."

My first feeling was relief. Now we know at least four of Sprewell's brood have beat the odds and received enough sustenance to survive their father's premature unemployment. Then, when I read Sprewell's current habitation is a yacht on a Wisconsin lake, I had to laugh because who doesn't think it's funny that Latrell Sprewell spends his winters on a yacht on a Wisconsin lake rather than on the basketball court with his contemporaries.

I also noticed the name of Spree's yacht is "Milwaukee's Best."

If I was lucky enough to get to live on a yacht on a lake in Wisconsin, I too would christen the boat "Milwaukee's Best." I couldn't even imagine calling it anything else.

I'm having trouble remembering another time Latrell Sprewell and I had something in common.

Oscar the Grouch was a chronic masturbator

There are things about Sesame Street that are lost on the young. Anyone over the age of ten knows Bert and Ernie, when not counting sheep or engaging in banana related pranks, are petitioning their local congressman on the latest gay marriage initiative.

And that Big Bird -- it's swell how they mainstreamed the retarded kid.

Don't even get me started on Elmo: His infantilism is only matched by his malignant self love. Not a pleasant combination. Especially when the temptation to rip his arms from his body, which would be a lot easier than separating a drumstick from a thigh, becomes overwhelming.

But the little red fella would probably like that, and ask you to give his legs the same treatment. Many narcissists are also masochists, but it isn't everyday you have one that takes his sickness to the point of immolation.

Death watch: Ed Bradley

Ed Bradley died today of complications from leukemia at the age of 65. He was a 26 year veteran of 60 Minutes and, along with Harrison Ford, Bradley introduced the world to the male midlife crisis earring. It never caught on.

Even though 60 Minutes is the easily the most successful newsmagazine in American television history -- and I like the news and the television -- I've never watched 60 Minutes for more than a few minutes.

I can't bring myself to: 60 Minutes scarred my childhood.

When I was growing up my fall Sundays were spent watching football. This was back when the NFC was on CBS. At some point during the fourth quarter of the featured four o'clock game Pat Summerall would bellow:

"Immediately after football, it's an all new 60 Minutes, followed by Angela Lansbury in Murder dramatic pause She Wrote."

It was then I'd realize I needed to start thinking about homework and having to wake up at an ungodly hour to start another horrible week of school. When 60 Minutes began the weekend was over. I hated 60 Minutes for that.

I never really held Ed Bradley responsible. Morley Safer, however, can burn in hell.

So I don't know much of Bradley's work. But I do know he was a well-respected investigative reporter who amassed 19 Emmy awards.

I was able to watch Bradley's last significant work of investigative journalism -- his effective take down of the ill-founded Duke lacrosse prosecution.

CBS put the segment on their website, and I watched it during the middle of the week.

With our eyes firmly on the diabetic kid's needles

I just learned something rather shocking: Candy cigarettes are still legal. That's impressive and improbable and either the result of some stealth maneuvering by a more powerful-than-previously-believed confectionery lobby or a fluke of regulatory neglect involving confused jurisdictions.

Made of chalky sugar or stale bubblegum, candy cigarettes were a staple of my youth. The good kind actually produced smoke of sorts when you stuck them in your mouth.

I'm pretty sure my parents wouldn't have allowed me to have them in the house, so I used to get my fix at school. The cool kids of Bethesda Elementary smoked candy cigarettes after we ate lunch -- and after we'd blow lines of crushed Smarties through our milk straws and off the smooth, lamented lunch room tables.

The guy with the candy cigs and the Smarties was the guy you wanted to be sitting near when the lunch bell rang.

Every year Halloween ushered in legendary binges.

Ironically, candy cigarettes tasted awful and to say flavored sugar disagrees violently with the nasal cavity is a dangerous understatement.

Yet the abuse continued. Of course when crack came into prominence we began experimenting with rock candy. But that only led to burnt fingers and confiscated matchbooks.

Get a medic!

When I was growing up my friends were obsessed with dunking a basketball. Unfortunately, none of us were tall or athletic enough to be able to do so on a proper hoop. While I saw this as a sign it wasn't meant to be, my friends saw it as a challenge to round up trampolines, park benches and adjustable hoops and cheat the tyranny of ten feet.

I hated this, and thought we would be better off practicing real basketball -- because you get to the NBA on your shooting, passing and dribbling, not your dunking.

But it was usually about five to one in favor of silly dunk contests over valuable game play. I would petulantly watch and refuse to participate.

So when the boy-who-flew-too-high in this clip ends up writhing on the trampoline in pain I laughed and laughed.

Pluto makes trouble

Learning about the nine planets was a big part my early formal education. While recognizing the comedic gift that is Uranus, my favorite planet, right off the bat, was Pluto.

I was small and felt like an outsider in the big world. Pluto was small and farthest from the sun. The intra-galactic connection between myself and the ninth planet was undeniable.

As I got older and bigger the bond, predictably, waned. With that, disturbing facts I had always known about Pluto -- it was smaller than our moon, its orbit was spotty at best -- came to the forefront. Pluto, it seemed, belonged with the other eight planets like a first grader belonged on the Supreme Court.

Pluto's planetary merits were also being debated by the scientific community. A historic demotion was a real possibility.

It looks like they went the other way.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has just classified three new celestial bodies as planets. My untrained read on these promotions is they were needed to justify Pluto's continued inclusion as a planet.

To make matters worse some astronomers think these new Pluto-friendly standards could lead to the recognition of up to 41 more new planets.

I say if you have 53 planets you might as well have one.

Low-expectations don't only have negative consequences here on earth.

The "Week in Review" inspires a personal anecdote

Yesterday, the New York Times Week in Review featured an article about Iran titled "The Fine Art of Hiding What You Mean to Say." The lede:

It is certainly unfair to accuse all Iranians of being liars. The label is judgmental and reeks of stereotype. The more appropriate way to phrase the Iranian view toward honesty, the way many Iranians themselves describe it, is to say that being direct and telling the truth are not prized principles in Iran.

The article then goes on to explain why the Iranians are, in fact, huge liars and details the exculpatory reasons for this.

Now for my anecdote:

When I was in seventh grade I had an Iranian friend. We'll call him Abdul. One day Abdul invited me to come to his house after school for video games and basketball.

I got off the bus with him, in a strange neighborhood, and he walked me towards a 8,000 square foot house. This was before the McMansion thing, when 8,000 square feet actually meant something.

As we walked up the long driveway Abdul, bursting with pride, asked me what I thought of his house. I said I thought it was big. When we reached the front door we found it to be locked. My friend rang the bell a couple of times and then gave up. "Let's go to my aunt's house," he said. "She lives around the corner and has a key."

So we did. Abdul's aunt's house was normal sized for the neighborhood -- meaning about five bedrooms four bathrooms. She greeted him in what was probably Farsi. After a short conversation I obviously didn't understand Abdul took me upstairs to his cousin's room to play video games. "My aunt doesn't have the key, but my parents will be home in a couple hours."

As we played tecmo bowl in his cousin's room, I noticed that the windbreaker hanging on the back of his cousin's desk chair was the same style as the one Abdul often wore to school. I was also confused how Abdul could have a cousin I had never seen or heard of -- but who, judging from the things in his room was around our age.

When an older, female cousin greeted us from the hallway and my friend offered her no explanation as to what we were doing in his cousin's room, I realized that we were, of course, in his house and in his room and I had probably met his mother and sister.

I waited for Abdul to explain his bizarre and naked ruse. He never even hinted at doing so-- even though I peppered him with inquiries as to when we were go back to the original house.

The next day at school I asked the other kids who lived in his neighborhood, about what had gone down. They confirmed my suspicion and added he often pretends that the bigger house is his "parents" and could do so because it is currently unoccupied.

Since that day I have been lied to by people of just about every religion and ethnic background. Yet the lie my Iranian friend told me stands alone in terms of reckless audacity, a complete disregard for the concept of a truth and, most bafflingly, a lack of the simple, pacifying phrase "I'm just kidding" when I confronted him.

After the lie, my opinion of Abdul diminished greatly.

Now if I had been privy to yesterday's New York Times article back then I would have known it was not his fault he chose to insult my intelligence by trying to pass off such a sloppy deception. Rather, the blame lay at the feet of the imperialism of the Arabs, the Mongols, the French and the British.

Bastards.

They still want their MTV

MTV turned 25 this week. It barely resembles its newborn self.

When I first watched MTV, in 1984, I thought it was coolest, most unique thing in the history of the world. It was a friend's house situation, and he was forced to do nothing but watch MTV when I came by.

Back then, MTV was a couple dozen videos on a loop. Some were surprisingly good, others predictably bad.

It has been years since the music video was MTV's bread and butter. But they've done everything else: Game shows, talk shows, sketch comedy, cartoons, documentaries, movies, anything involving warm places and bikinis, dance contests, dating shows, softball games, live music, atrocious but star-studded awards shows, political debates, extreme sports, movie reviews, auto restoration, house tours and daredevil behavior.

About half-way through its existence MTV introduced America to reality television. Neither MTV nor America has looked back.

Reality TV has been MTV's biggest cultural accomplishment to date, even though the "M" suggests it wants to be the music video.

I barely watch MTV these days, but have seen enough to notice they have been taking the reality format to its next logical step by producing shows that merge "real" people with blatantly scripted stories and more traditional production values. I'm sure this will soon catch on with the rest of the TV world, just like their early reality shows did.

I wonder if a kid today is as blown away the first time they see Laguna Beach as I was when I saw Duran Duran?

I seriously doubt it. But not because the videos got small. It was the world that got big.

Just when I thought the globe was getting warmer

It might be 103 on the East Coast, but it's actually snowing in my old African stomping grounds.

The answer to the question is no

I hate to bring this up at a time our astronauts are about to embark on a mission where there is at least a one percent chance of sudden death -- but has there been a bigger bust in recent human history than space exploration?

I don't mean to suggest we haven't learned a great deal about the universe in the past 50 years. Unfortunately, beyond satisfying curiosities, nothing we've learned has anything to do the lives we live on planet earth.

You'd think they'd have found something useful up there; a new kind of water, a plant that doesn't need water, a strong but bendable iron substitute, a glowing rock that could be used in flashlights. Wasn't that the kind of stuff they were expecting to find? Or was this whole thing just a trillion dollar mountain climb?

Not even to say its been a waste of money. The resources we've poured into the space program have come back in the technologies behind satellites, personal computers and lasers, among other things. You could even argue the space program has been a fairly good investment, as medium-sized government programs go.

My hostility towards the act of space travel might stem from the Challenger disaster, which tragically played live in my (and many other) classroom due to the "Teacher in Space Project" NASA was initiating. Maybe if I was generation older and remembered the space race and the national pride of putting the "first man on the moon," I'd view space travel differently.

Actually, it was a cartoon originally created for the youth of the man-on-the-moon generation that set up my soaring on space exploration.

The Jetsons lived in outer-space, and had a flying saucer car and a robot maid. Progress towards these things seemed like a reasonable expectation for my lifetime.

Even though the last twenty odd years have been unprecedented in terms of technological innovation and discovery we are no closer to living in outer-space or owning flying cars than we were when I watched cartoons. (I'm still holding out for the robot maid)

Instead of bringing us to the universe, all this new technology has been focused on bringing the world to us. Go back fifty years and what scientist or science fiction writer would have predicted that was how it was going to play out?

This could be be a reflection of a unforeseen timidity in human nature. More likely it's because each more highly defined look we take into yonders the more we realize there isn't anything out there.

Damned Statistics

A recent survey of 12-34 year olds found only 25 percent could identify all four broadcast network stations.

The survey became the most emailed Advertising Age article of the day, and garnered a spot on the zeitgeisty Drudge Report.

The implication being this information should be of grave concern to the broadcast and advertising industries -- if not the nation as a whole.

I contend it's nothing to worry about.

Ever since they started surveying these type of things, we've been bombarded with statistics showing the youth of America struggle to identify things awake they should be able to recite in their sleep.

As a child in the 80's I remember a lot of numerically backed talk of how the typical American student could barely name any of the fifty states -- let alone other countries. This was in stark contrast to the geography whiz's they were creating over in the Soviet Union and Japan.

We all know how that story ended.

The Soviet Union collapsed, unleashing such monstrosities as Kazakhstan, Kyrgzstan and Tajikistan on unsuspecting geography students the world over. In Japan the bubble burst unleashing ... Flooding ..? A rash of low-quality anima ..? I really don't know.

But I do know this -- All of my contemporaries who couldn't find the United States on a map if they were spotted the Northern and Western hemispheres had no trouble finding Mexico when Spring Break and Cancun beckoned. Nor did the countries of Europe pose much of a challenge when they decided to take time off and bum around the old world.

So cheer up ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox. As long as you provide quality programming the youth of America will find you.