Do Not Open Until Christmas

Feel free to say I'm in my Grinch mode here, because I am sick of Christmas already. That's pretty amazing considering we have just reached the supposed "start" of the Christmas shopping season, a.k.a. Black Friday. Originally the day was called Black Friday because this was the day that all the stores went "into the black" or in other words, made big wampum. Now it may be called Black Friday because due to the rush to grab a good parking space (or ANY parking space) and the likelihood of Christmas shoppers going road rage on each other (see column #12), there's bound to be auto-related madness going on. I wouldn't know because as a rule I do not go anywhere near a mall on Black Friday, or for that matter any weekend between now and Christmas.

My problem is with the fact that for whatever reason we now have to deal with this insanity BEFORE Black Friday. A friend and I went up to Carousel Mall, the profit center of Central New York, he was there to get a new motherboard, I was just along for the ride. The parking lots were full and the traffic was nuts. Christmas decorations everywhere and Santa in the commons area with the pretty decent line.

By the way, did I mention this was THE SECOND WEEKEND OF NOVEMBER???!!!

Now the reasoning as I understand it is that the stores have extended the Christmas shopping season in an attempt to compete with the online retailers. That's pretty dumb, in my humble opinion. What is the reason that most shoppers prefer to go online to make their purchases rather than brave the malls? Parking and traffic. So, in order to compete, the stores have extended the Christmas shopping season back to almost Halloween, which in turn only creates FEWER parking spaces and MORE traffic, thus driving more people to buy their presents online. If this keeps up, you may see Christmas sales starting right after the Fourth of July pretty soon, and no I am not referring to Christmas in July.

So, what you may ask, are all these people jamming up parking lots from here to Walla Walla for? What is the big deal that is making for a run on the department stores in early to mid-November? What is the Furby this year, the Tickle Me Elmo, the Cabbage Patch Kid, the toy every kid MUST have? Well, there is none. Not at this point anyway. However, there are a few items that kids are oohing and ahhing over, starting most notably with PlayStation 2. This is hardly a toy, not at a price tag of $300 and the ability to do everything but make your coffee in the morning, including of course, playing video games. What Sony basically did with the PS2 is make it into a small video-game playing computer, and since they refused to let Microsoft get anywhere near it, it actually WORKS and is relatively inexpensive. Relatively being a relative term of course; while much cheaper than your standard PC or I-Mac, it's three times what I paid for PlayStation 1 last Christmas and twice the price of Sega Dreamcast, which does pretty much the same stuff graphics wise with your video games, only it doesn't do anything else. I must admit I drooled over the graphics of this thing while at the mall a couple weeks back (I had to do something while my friend got his motherboard), but you've gotta be nuts if you think I'm either shelling out $300 for the stupid thing or asking a loved one to pony up the requisite dough for it.

Oh by the way, Microsoft is planning on getting in on the video game hysteria soon enough with their own game system (wow, a video games system that crashes half the time and will probably play only Microsoft games; don't bother calling tech support on this one).

So, you don't have the money to buy a PS2 (or you're actually sane enough to not spend that kind of jack), and you're looking for other options. You'll want the traditional cheap action-figure type toys sold at most department stores. I was predictably stunned to hear in a department store ad that among your Powerpuff Girls toys and the other big sellers were, as God is my witness, 'N Sync "marionettes". Like we don't have to see enough of this joke of a pop group everywhere else, now it's Justin Timberlake the action figure (goes pretty good with your Britney Spears blow-up doll). There is no reason at all that I can see, other than to appease your squealing teenage daughter, to get figurines of these soon-to-be-has-beens. Oh, and speaking of has-beens, nice sales numbers on that new album of yours, Spice Girls. More people READ THIS COLUMN last week than bought that piece of trash.

All of this said, I am getting touches of the Christmas spirit. Snow looks pretty this time of year (and then you have to go out and brush it off your car and drive in it, and it ceases to be pretty). Once you get past Thanksgiving, it's OK to be in that kind of bright and cheery mood, until of course the constant overplaying of the Christmas songs wears you down to the edge of insanity, but that's another column. I just have a problem with it lasting so long, because I have a hard enough time trying to keep the Christmas spirit going until the actual Christmas Day as it is. Lengthening the season only makes it that much more likely that I will burn on this long before the 25th of December, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this. Perhaps it was just a brilliant move by the retailers to throw on TV something, anything that will pull us out of the national god-I'm-sick-of-this-election-would-they-just-get-it-over-with malaise. For this, we should probably be grateful. Happy shopping!!!

Praise the Lord and Pass the Tryptophan

I can certainly look forward to the best meal of the year come next Thursday. After all, it is Thanksgiving and my aunt puts on the biggest and best spread since the last time the 49ers were in the Super Bowl. You don't dare go away hungry from that stuff. Truly, Thanksgiving is an interesting tradition. Sure there's egg nog and ham at Christmas, hot dogs and potato salad on the 4th of July and endless candy at Halloween, but Thanksgiving is the true lone holiday where your very purpose is to gorge yourself as much as possible and that's solely what the day is about. Think about it, Thanksgiving is meant to signify the peace between the Indians, errr, Native Americans, and the Pilgrims, and what did they do to mark this peace? They certainly didn't hold hands around the fire and sing "Kumbaya". They ate. A lot. Considering how pathetically skinny I am, and that I make little to no effort to change that status at the current time, a day like this is big time, and I guess I must store up a year's worth of appetite for the day, cuz I try to top myself every year with how much I eat.

That, however, is not the issue I take with Thanksgiving. I, of course, must take issue with something here, or else there's no point in writing the column (you oughta know that by now). My issue is with something that cannot be solved by modern science or chemistry or any of your grandma's best cooking techniques. I take issue with a chemical. Get used to hearing this word, it'll come up a lot between now and next Thursday, and only right before Thanksgiving, I might add. The word is tryptophan. I would dare call it "Turkey's Revenge". What it does is it makes you sleepy. You ever wonder when you were young why not two hours after a huge Thanksgiving feast you and your cousins would walk into the living room after a particularly rough game of outdoor football to find the older relatives passed out in couches and easy chairs like someone just gave them pudding and told them to wait for the spaceship? Tryptophan, my friend; they wuz drugged. Scientists have yet to determine why this only a turkey phenomenon, and therefore only a seasonal problem, but there it is. Think about it, though, if you're a turkey and your destiny is to get decapitated and wind up on someone's dinner table as the centerpiece of a mammoth serving of food, you might as well get some pleasure in knowing that your body chemistry will put those who eat you out cold. Considering, however, the fact that only turkeys seem to have this situation, it might just explain why turkeys serve no real purpose when alive and are pretty much the dumbest birds to come down the pike.

Here's another problem I have with the whole tryptophan thing, other than the fact that it exists. What is the other big thing now commonly associated with Thanksgiving? If you didn't say football, smack yourself. That is the only other major thing about the day (Macy's parade, my ass). So, why therefore, do you serve turkey and drug someone to sleep when there is football to be watched? You should NOT fall asleep watching football. Hockey, maybe. Golf, probably. Football, not a chance. However, most Americans unless they have a team to root for (or money riding on the game) are out cold by halftime of the late game. Not to sound sexist, but perhaps this is a tradition carried on by the women of the household to get the men to fall asleep and then they can have their peaceful quiet conversation. Considering that in my family, we're down to two men at the table at Thanksgiving (myself and my uncle), this isn't as hard a task as you might imagine. Now that I think about it, they schedule football games on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday as well, and you know what you usually eat on those days? Leftover turkey. I think I may be on to something here.

This tryptophan phenomenon is especially dangerous if you plan on DRIVING HOME after Thanksgiving dinner. This unfortunately is the case with me, much as I'd like to stuff my face and sleep until Sunday. I have to work a 6am-noon shift, hop in my car and drive three hours out to the aunt's house for dinner, and then, not long after I have finished stuffing myself, I must hop back in the car and drive three more hours (in the dark) to get home cuz I have yet another 6am-noon shift the following day. So, I might ask, would I not be driving under the influence on my return trip home? That's just plain dangerous, my friend, sending me out on the roads drugged up, and after dark no less, recipe for erratic driving if I've ever heard of one. And for those of you who know me, save the "how is that different from the way you normally drive" jokes.

Now I certainly do not intend this column to scare people into not eating turkey this upcoming Thursday. Honestly, if what I have written has not accomplished its purpose of making you laugh and instead has you considering going vegan, you need help, my friend. Eat all the turkey you desire this year and every year; Thanksgiving, as I have previously noted, was solely created so that we could all eat like no human being ever has or perhaps ever should. Just keep in the back of your mind that you ARE being drugged as you eat your holiday turkey, it's a simple fact and cannot be escaped. Then again, you may get off on that sort of thing; if so, then you too need help. Do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT think that I have given you some sort of excuse for doing something stupid and perhaps illegal; tryptophan, while legal, is not to be messed with. I can see the exchange now...

"Officer, I swear, I didn't want seconds, but my aunt persisted..."

Approaching the Age of Insignificance

So as of today, November 10, I am 22 years old. Or to put that in a better way, I am no longer 21. See, 21 is a cool age to be, it means you just hit the drinking age, which of course is a significant point in any young adult's life. To be no longer 21 is to be insignificant. Let's face it, you have so many "milestone" birthdays in such a short time. At 16, you can get a learner's permit and eventually a driver's license (although it takes some longer than others, but that's another column...) At 18, you can vote, which means you too can have your vote recounted endless numbers of times while people claim you voted twice for the same person or for two different people or whatever the hell it is they're arguing over in Florida. A brief sidebar to that, I can just see the "Don't blame me, I voted for Nader" bumper stickers running off the presses at this very moment.

Of course, 21 is the big one, especially for those of us who turned 21 while at college. For most, it becomes an orgy of alcohol; the infamous "21 shots" comes to mind, although if you actually remember your 21st birthday, you're most likely in the minority. In my case, turning 21 was not something I'd like to remember. Trust me, there is nothing worse than reaching the ultimate party age and being unable to celebrate because you are bed-ridden with the worst case of the flu you ever had in your life. I was drugged out on medication rather than drunk, and were I to have a choice, I would certainly opt for the kind that results in throwing up because you did too much, rather than doing nothing. Still, I enjoyed being 21, not that this year was any more special than past years, although I did graduate from college, so that must mean something. It's a magic number, 21 is, and I of course am not referring to blackjack. You command a different kind of respect when you are 21, even though certain people I work with referred to me on-air yesterday as about to turn 19, 17, and 14 at various times (and I thought growing the goatee would take care of that). I thought it was cool to be 21, like I've made it this far, and for many of us who went through that high school and college experience, surviving to 21 is quite an accomplishment.

So, I am no longer 21, and not happy about it. A friend of mine turned 21 on Wednesday and so he's going through all this now, and sadly I'm looking at that as the far-gone past ("Yeah, I remember when I was 21...") What is the next big thing after 21? At 25, I can rent a car (woo-hoo, I am SO looking forward to THAT!) After this point, we're down to the 0s, as in the big 3-0, the big 4-0, and so on. My birthday officially carries no significance whatsoever, except of course for the fact that occasionally like this year, it's a national holiday because of Veterans Day falling on a weekend. Then again, when Veterans Day has fallen during the week, I've always jokingly referred to it as "the federal observance of my birthday". After all, we don't observe Lincoln's birthday or Martin Luther King's birthday on the right day, so they can give me a different day too, I don't mind.

I'm also starting to consider my birthday to be insignificant due to the fact that nothing ever happens on my birthday, either to me or to the world, and has not at any time in history. Sure, on November 10, 2000, we have this first-time-in-200-plus-years situation with the election and not knowing who our next president will be, but that will not magically resolve itself today in such fashion that November 10, 2000 will become a day that everyone will remember like the day JFK was assassinated or the day man walked on the moon. The Berlin Wall? Happened on the 9th of November. Oh, no, they couldn't wait that extra day to start tearing down that thing; hell, they had to live with it for almost 30 years, one more day wouldn't have killed them. Do you know how depressing it is when you're a kid in school and you have to research the major historical events that happened on your birthday and the best thing you can come up with is the birth of Martin Luther and Leonid Brezhnev dying? Not even a great moment in sports history, like a career milestone or a record or a dramatic ending to a game for all the marbles. So basically, history has about 50 or 60 more opportunities, if I'm lucky, to give me something significant.

Insignificance aside, the day is indeed special to me and those around me. The usual family tradition of relatives singing "Happy Birthday" to me on the phone (and painfully off-key) will continue, good friends will e-mail me, I get taken out dinner perhaps. And this is still MY DAY, regardless of anything happening, so don't think I'm all depressed about the fact that today, I have to turn THIS age on THIS day. I am of the usual mood that nothing can bring me down and nothing will ruin this day, and I'm sure that besides my dramatic bout with influenza last year, there have been some bad things that have happened on my birthday, but the key is I don't remember any of them. Come to think of it, I really don't remember most of the good events either. See what I mean when I say that nothing exciting ever happens on my birthday?

I'm 22. 2-2. However, I'm still young, and still to some extent looked at as pretty damn successful for my age, having done all the stuff I've done. At the same time, I do think that I have reached the age where all the years are going to start to run together. After all, with nothing major in the near future (at least not that I know of), it'll get to the point that a co-worker has gotten to where he can't remember if he met someone important on his 23rd birthday or 24th (or was it maybe 22nd?) Whatever age you happen to be at, though, the best advice for everyone is to enjoy the age you're at; after all, you can't jump ahead to the older age just yet, and you can't go back to the younger age you were (although I wouldn't mind being 21 just a little longer...)

Like Anyone Cares Who I'm Endorsing

I would venture a guess that at this point in my column's short life, I have actually managed to get an audience of regulars who read this column every week. Having said that, I'll bet you think you know me pretty well, especially on the political side of things. Well, I have a confession to make, and I hope you all are prepared for what I am about to share with you. After all, considering Mr. Bush admitting his DUI a while back, it is the fashion right now to make public statements about the things we have done in our younger years, or in my case all 21 years and 359 days of that.

I am a moderate.

Yup, you heard me, I am a moderate.

I have often said that being a moderate is the easiest way to get everyone upset at you. After all, if you're conservative, then all the liberals hate your ideas, if you're liberal, then all the conservatives hate your ideas, and if you're a moderate, then BOTH conservatives and liberals hate your ideas. And I DO have ideas, by the way. As part of my job, I have to run Rush Limbaugh's program (I can see the sympathy posts coming now...) I have to listen to him go on about how moderates are wishy-washy and not worth anyone's time, and that if the "right" or the "left" were to cater to our needs, they would be in effect "selling out". No wonder people are sick of the conventional two-party system, nobody listens to you if you're in the middle. And the supposed "voice of the middle", the Reform Party, is run by Mr. Buchanan, who is only slightly right of Hitler on the political spectrum. So, who, as a moderate, am I left with?

Well, first off I should also mention I am a registered Republican, which combined with being moderate, pretty much makes me an enemy of the state to many of the right wing. They'd rather I not be in the party, I'll bet. I registered, along with a lot of young people, I'm sure, on the wave of the McCain candidacy last winter and spring; we thought he would be best for the party and best for America. Better than Bush, at least, and on that I still believe I'm right. During the primaries, I considered George W., who I shall henceforth refer to as Junior, a "blithering idiot". That opinion has not changed. However, I do believe that given the major party candidates, Junior and Vice-President Gore, better a blithering idiot than a pathological liar. Nader doesn't even show up on the radar screen, as on most things, he's farther left than Gore.

As you can tell from the title of this column, I'm sure you couldn't care less who I'm voting for in the election, but I'll reveal that it will most likely be Bush. Call me 99.9% sure, that's the best you'll get out of me until I step in the booth on Tuesday. You may all feel free to call me an idiot for being pro-choice, pro-gay rights, anti-Microsoft, and agnostic to boot, and yet still voting for Bush. However, let me say that there is no sure thing that the Congress will stay Republican, and that will serve as a check on the right wingers if that does happen. Even if the GOP still controls Congress, I do not believe that there are a bunch of right-wing, Rush-repeating, conspiracy theorist types who will ride in with Junior and make sure that Roe v. Wade is overturned and that things like Vermont's civil unions law are invalidated.

Sure, if you listened to talk radio, and being a producer, it's part of the job description, you would think that such were the case. However, remember one key thing I was taught in the early stages of my career. Only about 2% of people actually call talk shows, and based on the people I've dealt with, a good chunk of them are often times on the extremes. I mean the people that are so gung-ho about their ideals and feel so much like they have an ax to grind (preferably in the other side's skull) that they are willing to spew their venom to the airwaves. Now, of course, I've dealt with a lot of sensible people who make very good points, and I'd like to see more of that, rather than people who claim that Clinton and Gore are the spawn of Satan or that by electing Junior, we have no shame, because we are electing "an alcoholic" and "a criminal". Often times, though, when you agree with the host, you aren't so eager to get off your chair and call to express that. You call because either you disagree with the host or because you want to give your own opinion, and frankly, you couldn't give a rat's ass what the host's opinion is.

I've known enough people in my life to know that the average American cares about important issues, like gun control or abortion or the military or taxes, but that they wish for compromise. Pride may be the biggest problem in Washington. Lawmakers are too proud and too fearful of embarrassment or taking some from the 2% who call the talk shows to even give an inch on principles. I tire of hearing about "the slippery slope" we'll be on if they even give an inch. I think the generation I am a part of, despite what many think, will get very involved in politics and try to change the way things are done, try to rock the establishment. Forgive me for being idealistic, but I haven't seen my spirit crushed yet nor my hope of an America where we can actually work together and not try to discriminate or divide extinguished.

That said, I am now off to get rip-roaring drunk so I can admit my "youthful indiscretions" to the press 30 years from now...