Tiger! Tiger!

Tiger! Tiger! you're a shite,

Crashing in the dead of night,
What immoral hand on thigh

Could lift short skirts up on the sly?

In what distant, driven swing

Did you think to risk everything?

In what ho dare you, bare, enter?

When alone most sure to sext her.

And what waitress, what porn star?

Cheating standards not on par

With your wife at home, yes, waiting

While you're making your rounds dating

What the endorsements? What the game?

In what pair of pants was your brain?

What the golf club? What Ambien grasp

Rushed Elin outside to shatter glass?

When the Gatorade pulls their dollars,

And no longer puts your face on bottles,

Will you smile your handiwork to see?

Or weep at the sneakered feet of Nike?

Tiger! Tiger! you're a shite,

You fired the bullet that you must bite

What impossibly bad behavior?

Returneth to your cave, you player.

(Inspired by William Blake's classic poem: "The Tyger")

Lost in the Lights

The MTV show Jersey Shore does not represent me as an Italian-American from New Jersey. Still, I have lived long enough on this earth, and among enough ethnic groups to know that, whether or not we'd like to admit it, stereotypes, both negative and positive, survive because they are born of some truth. Where there is smoke, there is fire, so to speak. However, like many Italian-Americans, I watched the first episode of Jersey Shore the same way I watch horror films...through my fingers...as I begged the people on screen not to do what they were about to do. "No, please," I called out to drunk and pathetic Snooki. "Don't get in the hot tub in your bra and leopard print thong!" But, sadly, even with my plea, she did. And sadly, even with my shame, there are, indeed, Italian-Americans who absolutely live by guido/guidette lifestyle rules. In this case, where there is a tan, there is a tanning bed.

Yet, rest assured, not all Italian-Americans are cut from the same leopard print cloth. The same way the African-American community can proudly claim Barack Obama as its own, it must also claim Flavor Flav. The same way the Latino-American community can proudly claim Sonia Sotomayor, it must also begrudgingly claim that rapping, Reggaeton, iO Digital Cable pitchman (Do I haf to trenslet?). So what is it then that creates such gaps in achievement and, subsequently, pride, within a specific racial or ethnic group? Is it education that separates us where race, cultural heritage, and geography do not? Is it a question of where we sit atop the socioeconomic ladder? Or, quite simply, is it travel and a steady exposure to people from other backgrounds that keeps us, regardless of our youth or age, open-minded and ethnically balanced? What makes one Italian-American woman "Dr. Melfi", for example, and the other "Carmela Soprano"?

I venture to guess that, ultimately, it is deep-seeded, hole-in-the-soul insecurity that causes certain personality types to latch on to the lowest, most obvious "standards" within their respective ethnic groups. Unfortunately, this Italian-American "Guinea" standard stands out precisely because it is represented by insecure posers who, in an effort to mask their fear of social isolation, fist-pump the hardest, yell the loudest, and dress the most ostentatiously. People who don't feel the need to belong, don't worry about earning titles like, "King of the Guidos"- which, to me, isn't a title anyone should aspire to have. In fact, it's not unlike being named the "Lord of the Flies". Lord, oh Lord, you are still only a fly. But people with low self-esteem all too often harbor an inexplicable attraction to all things outrageously over-the-top. Easily intimidated people, it seems, tend to gravitate toward personas that seem the most intimidating. This, of course, is a very broken road toward feeling both protected and welcome, but it is a road lit with flashing club lights and is, therefore, irresistible. But don't be fooled. Lights, after all, don't always illuminate. Sometimes lights afford you the option of hiding in plain sight. Ask any baseball outfielder who plays night games. You can lose things in the lights. Most notably, yourself.

Still, vainglorious behavior will always attract attention. A lot of attention. Heavily accented guidos and guidettes are entertaining and amusing, and, as a result, quite profitable. Is it any wonder that Hollywood keeps coming back to the lowest common denominator in terms of Italian-American storylines? This is what makes everybody the most money. The Mafia posturing. The hair gel. The way they tawk. The caked-on make-up. The sausage and pepahs. The nails. The Italian flags. The multitude of juiced-up Vinnies willing to wear tight, white T-shirts, drive Mustangs...and slap their Teresas around when they get too accusatory.

I do not doubt that UNICO (an Italian-American service organization) is sincerely outraged at MTV for putting Jersey Shore on the air. After all, it is difficult to claim that MTV is not, in fact, complicit in perpetuating a negative stereotype of Italian-Americans when you really start to pay attention. Stop and take a closer look when you channel surf; you will almost never find a positive image of Italian-Americans to rival the negative ones that are out there. Then again, whose fault is that? Maybe UNICO is just embarrassed, as I am, that we have these attention seeking buffoons among us who seem to have a stronghold on our collective identity.

MTV is a business, first and foremost. Like Bravo, home of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, it doesn't care. It is making money off of eight (residually) Italian-American kids from the East Coast who were willing to, first, exploit their culture in their everyday lives, and then willingly exploit themselves as they exploited their culture on television...in a contrived, fish bowl experience. The exploiters have, thus, become the exploited. Unfortunately, judging by the ubiquity and popularity of their image, they continue to succeed at marginalizing Italian-Americans as a people. If we don't change, how can we expect society, as a whole, to change its attitude toward us? We can protest all we want, but a select few among us can't hear this truth no matter how loudly it blares.

The house music is pumping and thumping much too loudly.

You Down with OPM?

They have been referred to as "helicopter" parents...because they hover. A recent Time magazine article chronicles the evolution of this overparenting phenomenon. Hands-off parenting steadily groped toward hands-on parenting in the 1990's, and now parents apparently seem to have completely forgotten that their kids have hands of their own. Many modern day parents are like anxiety-heightened personal assistants with really unhealthy attachment issues. They are parents to the extreme. Today, parents who leave their kids alone to fail, fall, and falter are considered bad parents, renegades who are often bullied by what I like to call the OPM (Over-your-shoulder Parent Mafia). The OPM's fear is often irrational, but their criticism of other parents who do not agree with their safety/educational tenets is loud and proud. OPM sounds like "opium", I know. That's because I wonder if some of these parents are high when I observe what they are doing to these overscheduled, overinstructed, emotionally and materially overindulged kids of theirs.

Sylvester Stallone was recently reprimanded by countless media outlets and called "The Worst" (on that mess known as The Insider) because he had two of his daughters (ages 11 and 13) sitting in the passenger's seat of his sports car as he drove down a residential street in Miami. Poor judgement? Yes. The worst? No. Not unless he forced them to watch Rocky V when they got home. Some even went so far as to suggest the girls should still be riding in car seats. Honestly, I believe in car seats. I sincerely do. They save lives and that's a fact. But these car seats nowadays are an unbelievable sight. A feat of mind-bending engineering, really. When I strap my six-year-old niece into hers I feel like I'm prepping her for root canal surgery on the moon, not a five minute drive around the block at 15 MPH. Yes, it's better to be safe than sorry. I get it. I agree. Still, the idea of her being strapped into one when she's an adolescent or a teenager makes me wonder what will be next. Perhaps we should slow down the earth's rotation because, you know, it is spinning pretty quickly. And, you know, spinning is dangerous. Why do you think those tires on those chains at playgrounds have been extricated? Kids die when they spin.

My father always let us ride in the front seat of his car. In fact, as kids we used to beat the holy shit out of each other just to get to the car door first so that we could ride shotgun. And, no, we did not wear seatbelts. A seatbelt would have just gotten in the way. How would we have been able to slide over and steer the car while our father picked his teeth with a toothpick, or counted out his change as we approached a tollbooth? The kicker is this: My father thinks he was a very good father. Why? Because he never killed us. He means intentionally. Growing up, had we gotten hit by a bus because he let us cross highways, I suspect he would not have taken any sort of blame for our deaths. It would have been an accident, after all. An accident caused by our own inability to not get hit by a bus. No, when he says he's a good father because he never killed us, he means killed us because we were getting on his nerves by being too loud while he tried to watch the soccer game, or taking too long to fetch him a pair of clean socks. When a story came on TV not too long ago about some sonuvabitch father who set his triplet baby girls on fire, my father pointed to the TV and said, "You see? I told you I'm a good father." Because he never roasted us on a spit over an open flame, he thinks he deserves a prize. Perhaps, a new pair of socks.

And yet, for all the lack of caution, for all the lack of interest and concern, we're pretty much fine. We have our problems, of course, but guess what? I have yet to experience a broken bone. For all my careening downhill in a shopping cart sans helmet, swimming in the ocean without swimmies when I couldn't swim, and doing my "gymnastics" routine on an open staircase with wads of Bubbliscious gum in my mouth, I survived. My siblings and I are social, educated, moral, and respectable people...and our parents never went to one PTA meeting. I never even showed them my homework. I'd occasionally turn to them when my pencil needed sharpening, but that's just because that wood whittling with a butcher knife was tricky business. My pencil tip may have looked like it had been gnawed on by wild animals, but in my hand, it did its job. And I did mine. With my own hand.

Eviction Noticed

About two months ago, in the middle of the night, I was startled out of my sleep by a very peculiar happening. Seconds after I "awoke" from my "sleep", my personal perspective was completely inverted. I wasn't where I thought I was anymore. Instead, I was floating above my bed, looking down on myself from somewhere over my body. What I saw scared me so thoroughly, I'm getting the chills again just thinking about it. What I saw was, well, me. I was lying on my back, but slumped to my left. My mouth was agape, and my eyes were open. I wasn't blinking. The moment I caught a glimpse of myself, I gasped. Was I dead?

Suddenly, with that same gasp of breath, I returned to my physical form. I sat straight up in my bed, my left arm tingling with pins and needles. The sound of my heart racing and skipping more aggressively than it usually does was both frightening and comforting. I was alive. Sandra Spirit had apparently taken up residence in Sandra Body once again. I could see my wall now, not myself. I was looking through my eyes, watching the dark. What, I asked myself, had happened to me in those few seconds just prior?

Naturally, I solved my fear by doing what any reasonable person in this situation would do: I covered my head with my comforter and buried myself between my pillows. Had I wormed myself any further into my mattress, it would have folded itself up and around me and made me into Sandra Taco. Surely this would keep me safe from whatever it was that had lifted me out of my body and into mid-air. I mean, if I had died for a few seconds, surely barricading myself with down bedding would protect me. My heart, if it had stopped briefly, couldn't possibly stop again in one night, could it? No. Not if neither one of my feet was hanging off my bed.

I wondered if this had been my Intro to Death 101. A little taste. An appetizer. One crabmeat stuffed mushroom before the prime rib is served. But if that is, in fact, what dying is, I don't want it. I'll pass, thank you. Even though I felt zero pain, just a jolt followed by confusion followed by fear, I'd rather stay alive. I always hear people announce, "When I go, I hope I go in my sleep, in my own bed...quietly and in peace." Yet, if life has taught us anything, it's that hope isn't always the most realistic route toward peace. Perhaps this is a life lesson that the concept of death and dying should appropriate. There is no real peace in the transition. I think we can assume that, regardless of how you die, whether you experience pain in the process or not, dying is always going to be a shock to your system. Let's assume it's the most difficult move you will ever make. Let's think of it as being evicted from your body. Even if you've been given notice, you don't want to leave. Once you're out, you're wondering where you're going to go next. You want to break back in and live where you've been living.

I think that's what I did on that one suspicious night about two months ago. I think I broke back into my body before it had been completely boarded up. Clearly, death didn't last very long in my case, but it did leave quite an impression on me. I wonder how long it's going to be before some kind of governing celestial force realizes I managed to slip back into my body soon after I was kicked out of it. The irony, of course, is this: I don't even like my body. But, really, it's better than no body at all; that's what I've come away with. So, I guess I'll keep it with me. I do wonder about being pulled back out of it, but I try not to worry about it. All I know is, should I be snagged for trespassing any time soon, I intend to put up one hell of a fight. My soul is a squatter, so to speak. But she won't go quietly.

A Chicken Lives in New Jersey

My grandfather, who lives in suburban New Jersey like the rest of us, recently had a chicken. Her name was Clementina and she was akin to a pet cat. Self-sufficient and a bit of a snoot, she roamed his yard and went about the neighborhood with her head held high as though she had every right to be strutting along the asphalt. I'm going to assume that she died of natural causes, but one never really knows.

As kids, we, too, had a chicken. My father had bought her for us where they slaughter chickens at some place in Jersey City. This is just one of the many inappropriate places my father would take us as children. Horrified, my older sister and I would watch as they’d slice the chickens' heads off with a blade that was built into the counter. Some kids get to go to the zoo; we got to go watch chickens go bye-bye.

However, on one occasion, instead of with the usual, freshly killed chicken, we actually returned home with a live one. Hoping she would provide eggs daily, we kept her in the garage…in a Foodtown shopping carriage my father had stolen and transformed into a coop. My sister named her Chicky. Her full name was Chicky Feathers Joey Bazzarelli because my father let us each pick a name. My little brother contributed the Joey part, and I nearly blew a gasket.

“Chickens are girls,” I said, losing my patience.

Of course, my father told me to leave my brother alone, unless I wanted a schiaffo across my face. So, yes, the name stayed, but I was very annoyed about it. I still think it's totally stupid. I don’t think I need to tell you that, as a child, I had high blood pressure. Anyway, Chicky never laid eggs. No, she gave us something better, something no other pet could: chicken drama.

One afternoon, while we played outside with the garage door open, someone’s unleashed dog made a beeline for Chicky. It knocked over the Foodtown shopping carriage and, Chicky, understandably, went from frazzled to certifiably nuts, flapping and running across the washer and dryer, sort of flying around the garage, fumbling across my father’s tool-strewn workbench to get away from the dog.

Being that we were kids, home alone, and, well, chicken shit, we scrambled inside to call the police.

“There's a dog,” I said. “Loose in our garage,” I said. “It's going to eat our chicken!”
“Is it your dog?” the cop asked.
“No,” I said. “We don’t know whose dog it is.”
“Whose dog is it?” the cop asked.

My blood pressure rising, I didn’t answer for fear that I’d curse and earn myself multiple schiaffi in the process.

“Well, the dog’s probably just hungry,” the cop finally said. “Leave it alone. Let it eat your chicken. It'll run off after that.”
“But the chicken's ALIVE!” I yelled.

Eventually the police showed up, caught the dog, and made us call our father who got in trouble for not having a permit for Chicky. He couldn't have cared less. I remember him telling the police something about a dog’s not being on a leash being “more danger” than a chicken in someone's garage. Not that any of the hunting dogs my father owned over the years even knew what a leash looked like.

Needless to say, Chicky survived the dog chase, and we continued to keep her. Albeit, illegally.

“No worry,” my father said. “They no do nothing.”

Unfortunately, Chicky didn’t last too much longer. Chicky got cancer. Her right eyeball protruded at least an inch due to the tumor growing behind it. When she’d let you, you could feel the clusters of tumors under her wings. She also couldn't poop anymore because there was a tumor growing on her rectum. My father had to use pliers to pull out the feces she struggled to release. It was heartbreaking, watching her suffer like that. She really did suffer.

Then, not long after the first tumor appeared, Chicky died. We came home from school and she was gone. I asked my mother if my father had put her out of her misery. He hadn’t.

Recently, over one of our Saturday family lunches that starts at 2 PM and doesn’t exactly end, I brought up the subject of Chicky.

“Really, Dad?” my sister asked. “You didn't kill her?"
“No,” he insisted. “Justa she's die. By sheself. I find dead.”

It was quiet for a beat.

“You know,” I said. “The one time you should have killed a chicken, you didn’t.”

Ode to Panettone

Raisin bread,
seasonal,
or, rather, brioche
Light and fluffy
with a bitter brown crust.
Inside, diced orange peel,
scattered and candied-
or should I say, petrified?
Why do paesani
like you so much?
You give me agita,
literally.
Whether I eat you here-
or in Italy.

Alone All By Myself

I hate going on dates. I hate hate hate going on dates. I'd rather sweeten my tea with pulverized glass than go on one more awful date. The idea of even attempting to have one more one-sided "conversation" with one more one-word-answer manbot is so excruciating to me that I suddenly understand the logic behind that show Snapped on Oxygen. Here's an example of a somewhat recent exchange I had during one of my more painful dates:

ME: So, then you like what you do?
HIM: Yeah.
(Silence.)
ME: Great. So, what inspired you to go into that industry in the first place?
(More Silence.)
ME: Did someone encourage you to go into that field?
HIM: Dad.
ME: Your dad?
HIM: Yeah.
ME: Great. That's great. So, do you and your dad work together?
HIM: Yeah.
ME: Really? Oh, that's nice.
HIM: Yeah.
ME: Do you like working with him?
(Again, Silence.)
HIM: Sometimes.
ME: Sometimes? Why's that?
HIM: (shrug)

Anyway, the date wound down with this:

ME: Yeah, I don't think this is going to work out.
HIM: No?
ME: No. I actually feel like I'm alone on this date. And, to be quite honest with you, ______, I don't really need to date you to be alone. I can be alone all by myself.
HIM: Okay.
ME: Yeah, I actually prefer being alone all by myself.
HIM: (shrug)

I am 33 and single, and, frankly, the only times I wish I had a man in my life are a) when I'm having car trouble b) when I have a lot of parcels and/or bags to carry while I'm shopping and c) when I see men walking around with their kids hoisted up on their shoulders. Were it not for these three disparate moments in time, I'd be fine. I'd scarcely consider pairing up. The problem is a) lately my car has been having quite a bit of trouble b) I always seem to have a shitload to carry, and, c) to make matters worse, I work with kids, so I see lots of men carrying their kids up on their goddamn shoulders.

I don't like to gripe about men because it's basically been done a gazillion times over by many other women who do it so much better than I ever could but, seriously, what the hell?

If the men I date aren't legally mute, they're talking non-stop...about sex. In odious detail. They don't even know my last name, but they want to know what color my underwear is. So, when they ask, I tell them.

"It's black," I say.
"Ooooo, black, sexy," the horny bastards reply.
"Yeah, and guess what?" I say. "You're never going to see it."

Not unless I also tell them the style, the designer, and the size of my underwear so they can then go and peruse the lingerie section of Bloomingdales on their own...the pervs that they are.

Now, I cannot speak for all women on this subject, but I can speak for myself. The sex talk does not work. The no talk does not work. Why can't the interest a man expresses in a woman be, I don't know, sweet? A respectful, yet charmingly playful, effort toward genuinely getting to know the woman because he genuinely likes the woman. You don't want to hold her hand unless it's immediately going to lead to nakedness? Somehow that just doesn't seem right to me. If it really is only about sex across the board then, really, I'm in trouble. One guy proudly told me that he doesn't know if he loves a woman until he has sex with her. In my mind, love should develop first. Sex should be an expression of that love.

But, apparently, I'm alone on that one.

Single Turkeys (Put A Wing On It)

All my single turkeys
(All my single turkeys)

All my single turkeys
(All my single turkeys)

All my single turkeys
(All my single turkeys)

Put your wings up...

Listen to us
you're not gonna stuff
any of that mush
in our guts

We've had enough
of the buttery brush
Your drumsticks were our
legs and butts

Pay us attention
Did we mention,
beef and pork are very
deliiiicious?

We buzzards are tough
Yes, ugly and such,
but come and touch us and you'll suff-er

Try and catch us cuz we're gonna put a wing on it
Barely fly, but we're gonna put a wing on it
Baked and sliced, bitches, we can put a wing on it

gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gobble

gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gobble

Your oven is hot
and you think you've got
a holiday meal to hit the spot

But we think not
We're hiding your pots
and pans out in the garage

Pay us attention
Did we mention,
fish and duck are very
deliiiicious?

Want to carve and cut
us birds into what
you'll just serve tomorrow for lunch

Try and catch us cuz we're gonna put a wing on it
Barely fly, but we're gonna put a wing on it
Baked and sliced, bitches, we can put a wing on it

gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gobble

gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gobble...

So
many pilgrims served
It's worse than what you've heard;
it's so absurd
Thanksgiving and Christmas,
both traditions
to uplift us,
not kill us,
slit our throats...
Drown us with gravy boats
See this is what we know
Atop a stove, a Macy's float,
cartoonish oaf
about to roast

All my single turkeys
(All my single turkeys)

All my single turkeys
(All my single turkeys)

All my single turkeys
(All my single turkeys)

Put your wings up...

gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gobble

gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gob, gob, gob
gobble...

Have a Heart

You know when you're walking along somewhere and you happen to notice a fellow human being who is in distress, but you keep walking along, pretending not to notice so that you can get away with doing nothing to help? Yeah, me neither. I personally always try to do something to help. Even if I don't necessarily think I'd be much of a help, I still offer my assistance. And I've always been this way. The steady threat of ABC's "What Would You Do?" hidden cameras has not suddenly made me a decent person. I, like most of you, tend to do the right thing. However, if you are one of those people who pretends to not notice that your help is needed, and just go along on your merry little way without stopping to offer someone a hand when a hand would obviously be appreciated, I'd like to think that you, at the very least, would be both artful and considerate enough to never ever mention to the very person you failed to help, how you saw him or her in distress, but did nothing about it. I mean, surely there cannot exist the type of person who would offhandedly remark, "I saw you. I saw you slip and fall on the ice. I saw you struggling and everything to pull yourself up...but I didn't help you."

Surely not. Not unless you are one of the women I happen to work with.

You see, a colleague of mine actually said that very thing to me the other day. My hard fall onto the ice was, at least, two weeks in the past and no one was talking about it anymore. And yet, there she was, admitting to me that she had seen me struggling and didn't help me...because she didn't want to bother me. Did you catch that? She didn't want to bother me. She hadn't even offered an empty, "Are you okay?" I was so stunned that I could do nothing but listen as she rambled on. Was she kidding me? Who would be dense enough to admit this sort of thing? Then I sarcastically told her that it was probably a good thing that she didn't help me because she probably would have also slipped on the ice and then fallen on top of me, making it much worse. But as I tiptoed away from this morally questionable space cadet, I couldn't help but remember all the times I helped other people out, strangers included, and how good it made me feel to do something.

Perhaps, had she done something to help, she might have felt the way my sisters and I felt on a super sunny spring afternoon at the local Dairy Queen, back when I was eighteen years old. This specific DQ is no longer standing because word eventually got out that the teenage boys who were working there were, um, how do I say this? Squirting themselves into the soft serve vat of cream? Oh my God, I'm gagging. Anyway, who knows if it's even true, but that was the rumor.

Anyway, this rumor was a good two years away as we sat in my sister's Volvo eating our ice cream. Then, as if on cue, we all looked up from our treats at the same time to notice a thin, disheveled-looking elderly man. This probably wouldn't have kept our gaze had he not also appeared to be both alone and mentally retarded. Eating his vanilla cone in front of the DQ, he wore a pained expression on his face. He seemed confused, lost, scared even. As he licked his ice cream, he squinted and pressed one hand to his forehead with such pressure that it looked like he was pushing his loose forehead skin into his eyebrows in the hopes of pushing them all the way down and off his face. "What's wrong with that guy?" my little sister, who was nine at the time, asked from the backseat. But, before I even had a micro chance to try to answer her question, I heard it. The sniffling.

My older sister, who was twenty-two at the time, had already begun to bawl. The napkin that had been wrapped around her cone to absorb any dripping ice cream was now suddenly working overtime as it wiped away her tears. The thing is, my sister, a.k.a. Tenderheart, always cries when she catches even the most fleeting glimpse of mentally retarded, or physically disabled people. And she always utters the same 9 words once the floodgates open. "WHY do I always have to SEE these things?" she laments. And our response to my sister's wounded soul is always the same: we laugh. At her. Not at who she is crying for, just at her. And through our laughter we always ask, "But why are you crying?" As she fights to catch her breath, she usually replies, "It's so saaaaaaaaaaaad." And then she adds, "I don't know WHY I always have to SEE these things. WHY do I always have to SEE these things?"

But I will be honest with you, okay? The sight of this particular man in front of DQ, on this particular day, in this particular moment, tugged pretty aggressively at my own heart strings. Seeing this elderly, mentally retarded, and, likely, lost man was like stumbling upon the tearjerker trifecta. Within seconds of my older sister's initial sobs, my little sister and I joined in with our own. Oh how we blubbered. It was worse than when we watched The Champ.

"You should go see if he needs help," I finally sniffed to my older sister as I wiped my nose. But by now she was wailing. She couldn't do it and, well, my other sister was technically still a child. And apparently children aren't supposed to talk to strangers or something, so I couldn't really instruct her to do anything about it. Plus, she, too, was still a weepy mess. So, with no other choice than to forge forth on my own, I pulled myself together and got out of the car to see if I could do something for this man who appeared to be in need of some assistance.

Hunching my shoulders slightly and bowing my head a bit, I approached him. I don't remember him as being shorter than I was, but for some reason, I always hunch my shoulders slightly and bow my head a bit when I say, "Excuse me..." to anyone. Maybe a body language expert or psychologist could help me out with this one but, I'm guessing that this is my way of presenting myself as somewhat submissive. A non-threat. Like, "Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you. Look at my lousy posture. I'm probably brittle and weak. If you had to, you'd be able to run away from me easily." Anyway, I asked him if he needed help and he said that he did. I couldn't completely understand what he was saying, but somehow I caught that he had gotten on the wrong bus and needed to get home because his wife would be worried. I hadn't been talking to him for more than a minute when my sisters suddenly crept onto the scene like the Munchkins coming out, coming out, from wherever they were...which, in this case, was the tear-soaked interior of my sister's Volvo.

Now, this was before the days of everyone having a cell phone, so we asked the teenage DQ dummies who had been watching this scene unfold from behind their sliding glass windows, if this gentleman could use their phone to call his wife. Before they could say yes, the man we were trying to help added this heartbreaking detail about his wife: She wouldn't hear the phone. She was deaf. To my right, once again, I could hear the sniffling begin, but then it abruptly stopped. My sister had a plan.

We made the DQ dummies call the guy a cab. When the man started crying that he couldn't pay for a cab because he had no money, my sister announced that we would pay his cab fare. When the cabby arrived, we handed him fifty dollars and told him to give the gentleman any money that was left over after he dropped him off. We also told him to make sure he got into his apartment safely. The cabby couldn't have been any nicer, or more pleasantly surprised by how much kindness we were showing this stranger.

Then, as the cabby drove off with our new friend in the backseat, the three of us smiled broadly at each other. We didn't say it, but we were all quite proud of ourselves. We almost joined hands and did a Ring-Around-the-Rosey dance right there in the parking lot to celebrate our inspiring wonderfulness. And then some smartypants asshole guy who had been watching, but doing nothing but eating his ice cream on the sidelines the whole time called out, "That cabdriver ain't gonna give him that money." Whatever. We ignored the smartypants asshole...because we knew the cabby would follow our instructions. We just knew. And then it happened. A burst bubble. My older sister realized that we hadn't given the cabby a tip. She started to panic. I could see it in her eyes. This good deed was now completely undone. "Why didn't you remind me about the tip?" she snipped. "We didn't thank the cabdriver!"

No matter. She would figure it out. The next day my older sister brought a generous tip to the cab company to thank the cabby for doing his part. When she walked in, all the drivers already knew the story. They were impressed and moved by what we had done and talked about how our particular cabby was just the guy for such occasions. As it turned out, he was the male equivalent to my older sister. He would have done the same thing we had done. You, likely, would have done the same thing we had done. Had you known you had fifty dollars on you when you encountered a lost, elderly, mentally retarded man with no money and a deaf wife at home, you would have used that money to get him home, too.

Unless, of course, you're the type of person who wouldn't want to bother him.

Breaking the Routine

Last week I happened to catch a rerun of Jimmy Kimmel Live. The episode had originally aired in November and featured Reese Witherspoon, Scott Weiland, and the Pumphrey brothers. If you are like me, you haven't the slightest idea as to who the Pumphrey brothers are. The truth is, not only did I not know who they were, I had zero interest in finding out. And so, after the Witherspoon interview, in anticipation of Weiland's gangly, teetering, guyliner smeared performance, I turned the volume way down and diverted my attention toward writing out a very short list of my new year's resolutions...in pencil.

Then, just as Kimmel's two relatively unknown guests were walking out to their seats to chat, I glanced at the T.V. Now, much as I hate to admit this, it was what these two casually attired guys looked like that made me immediately dig the remote out of the couch and adjust the volume. Could it really be? Actual men? You see, the Pumphrey brothers, stars of a new reality show called Human Wrecking Balls on G4, are both impossibly tall, and brawny in a way that suggests strength, not preening. Both in their thirties, peroxide blonde Craig and brunette Paul are apparently, and each in their own right, highly regarded and accomplished martial artists who hold world records in God-knows-how-many feats of strength. Thus, after a brief, genial conversation, Kimmel challenged the brothers to demolish a vending machine with their bare hands. And so, in less than 2 minutes, that's precisely what they did. Have you managed to guess the premise of their show yet?

Human Wrecking Balls, on every Wednesday night at 10 PM, is a show about the science of breaking stuff with human force alone. The tagline is: Man vs. Man-Made. After I watched the brothers annihilate the vending machine on JKL, I nearly cried for all the lost treats that were so mercilessly strewn about the studio stage. I felt sorry for the vending machine, and yet, I could not help but be impressed by how precise and methodical the destruction had been. Effortless, even. Without a hint of chemical support, or pent-up aggression. This was not two jackasses trying to hurt themselves for cheap laughs. Too bad I'll never see the show, I thought to myself, knowing that I don't have TiVo and, therefore, due to my Wednesday-night-at-10 PM addiction to Bravo's Top Chef, would be unable to see the show for myself. And then, this past Sunday afternoon, while I was channel surfing, wouldn't you know it, I stumbled upon a Human Wrecking Balls marathon.

The show features the aforementioned Pumphrey brothers, an engineer/science guy, and a pretty, albeit, pretty pointless nurse on the sidelines who basically cleans out wounds and snoozingly tells the guys things like, "It's a good thing this or that didn't happen because I wouldn't have been able to do anything for you and the hospital is really far away." Great. What the hell are you doing there then? Couldn't someone like, oh I don't know, the Food Network's Paula Deen stretch Band-Aids across their scrapes and scratches? I'd rather see her and her motherly Southern comfort in the nurse role. An expressive, "Aww baby, what'd you do now? Come 'ere and let me fix that up for you," would make much more sense in this context. Never mind the fact that the brothers are from Indiana, not Georgia.

Anyway, where the stuntmen programming of late seems to revel in recklessness, this show focuses, instead, on the science of breaking things. Getting hurt is not their intention, even if it is their reality. They ask questions of the engineer/science guy or expert on site if what they are doing does not work. In other words, there is method here, not madness. There is an effort being made to educate the audience about what they are seeing. And I, a person who is not generally interested in examples of brute force or physical science, was awed by the art of it all. When Paul Pumphrey is commenting on his brother's performance of a specific task, for example, he'll often refer to how Craig looked while he was doing something. "It looked pretty," he might say. Or, "It looked cool." And it does. Especially when the slow-mo happens. You can appreciate the art when you can see the minutia of the execution. The height the jumps reach, the full extension of arms and legs, the glass crashing outward, seeming to splash...it isn't just breaking shit; it's physics by way of martial arts, and years and years of training. There is a sort of beauty here.

So then what is in the destruction? More art, or just a mess? I would argue that, in the destruction, you will find the science. There is a sort of wisdom here. Hence, the show's production team smartly uses these opportunities to flash digital science lessons and fun facts up on the screen to explain what is happening to the objects and why. There are blueprint sketches that simplify the scientific explanations for viewers. And in the brothers themselves? What do we find there? Well, there you will find the heart of the show. When the camera catches genuine looks and queries of concern exchanged between the brothers Pumphrey, you realize, as a viewer, that, yes, there is real risk involved, and, yes, they are real brothers.

The genuine affection and friendly rivalry they seem to enjoy supports the format, which is as follows: Craig comes up with a scripted "hair-brained" idea and tells Paul, "Hey, it'd be awesome if you did it." Paul is unwilling and tries to deflect the challenge onto his brother. How to solve this? Well, prior to any joint BIG challenge (i.e. destroying a Cessna airplane, office space, sailboat, car, manufactured home, and so on) the brothers compete in a mini challenge to determine who will have to do the extra tricky part per Craig's suggestion. For example, who will not have to run through a glass wall in an office? Whoever will most thoroughly destroy a Xerox machine with his bare hands in the allotted time, of course.

The engineer/science guy on hand is a little bland, but he knows his stuff. Unfortunately, he is also on hand to discourage results and lower expectations. He is, for lack of a better term, the resident naysayer. "You've got your work cut out for you with this one," he'll drone. His lines are stagey and manipulative at times, but they may just be intended to voice the thoughts of doubters who are sitting at home...or so I'm guessing. Who knows. Maybe the guy's just a downer.

The brothers themselves, however, are very likable, even when they are delivering corny lines. Craig, the younger, but bigger brother, can roll up a frying pan in his bare hands with about as much effort as it would take the average person to roll up a single sheet of oak tag. He seems to be the more natural athlete, and yet, Paul, who can hurl a round tabletop out a window like it's a Frisbee, seems to be the more disciplined and committed of the two. In other words, they are super strong, and don't seem to get drained of their strength.

Unfortunately, when I mention the strength of these two brothers to a strong man I know, he immediately dismisses them and brings up the steroid angle. And why wouldn't he, after all? I'm convinced that strength is to men what beauty is to women. Tell a strong man another man is stronger and he'll muscle through with a steroid accusation; tell a beautiful woman that another woman is more beautiful and listen while she brings up the likelihood of plastic surgery. Anyway, the steroid possibility hadn't crossed my mind before the strong guy I know mentioned it. Is it possible? Sure. Baseball and Andy (holy roller, my ass) Pettitte taught us that. But I kind of doubt it. Or, rather, I'd like to doubt it, because I like the show. And I think you'll like it, too. Who knows, this Wednesday night I may just break my routine and watch Human Wrecking Balls instead of Top Chef. See? I, too, can break something.