How to Know if You're Fat

If you're like me, you've probably stopped mid-bratwurst and asked yourself, "Am I fat?"

Now, that question is easily answered quantitatively. Some simple measurements and caluculations can tell you whether you are overweight.
But that is not really the question, is it? The question really is, "Do other people thinkI'm fat?" which is much more complex.

From conversations with numerous females and gay men, I have discovered a simple way of answering this question. If, when describing you to someone who has not met you, acquaintences say that you are a) really nice or b) funny, then your friends probably think you're fat, especially if the context of the description involved your love life.

Description (a) is really more of a female fat camoflauge. Though it can apply to males, it is highly desireable for fat men to be funny. We need fat men to be funny, because fat men are taken less seriously than skinny men, thus, even if they are not particularly comedic, we will use that descriptor.

Granted, this could mean that you are not fat, you are just ugly. Although skinny, ugly people (men especially) are more likely to be described as "smart" than "funny."

Pizza Hut, you enrage me

Let's start with a hypothetical. Let's say you are running a national restaurant chain which specializes in a meal most often consumed at dinner.

Consider this question as we move on: What time would you establish as closing time for such an establishment?

Further, let's say that on one particular day, you have decided to donate some of your profits that day to help in the rebuilding of a regional disaster area. You're probably expecting a larger crowd than normal, right? You've just given every indecicive person in the country an added reason to buy from you, and they'll feel good about themselves for doing it. You are going to make a killing today.

Now, after considering the quesion posed above, consider it again, only adjusting for the knowledge that on this special day, your demand will be unusually high. You will be more popular than every other similar competing restaurant on this day.

And let's say Joe Regular gets home from work at about 7 p.m. He's thinking about watching the NBA playoffs, which begin at 8 p.m., and he's thinking about having a pizza. And maybe he checks his e-mail, watches SportsCenter for a while, talks to somebody on the phone and, right around 8, decides he's ready to place his order.

Do you think it would be a good idea, a good business plan, to a) be open, b) answer the phone, and c) take this Joe's order?

I would, but I'm not running Pizza Hut. Maybe they know something I don't.

"Surviving" and "Finals Week"

This is the time of year when every student newspaper in the United States runs a series of stories and columns and news-you-can-use bits advising on "surviving" the end of the semester.

These bits invariably include profound piececs of advice like, "sleep," and "do not commit suicide." Usually, there will be an accompanying column, written by someone who maybe works 12 hours a week in the bookstore, complaining breathlessly about how draining the end of the semester is and how keeping "some level of sanity" is of utmost importance. These reports are always outrageously sensationalized, not to mention shameless indicents of self-plagiarism.

I'm adjusting for the knowledge that, by nature, I am not a highly stress-feeling individual. But I've never actually seen anybody freaking out about the end of the semester. For most of the people I know, the end of the semester means about a week or two of extra reading, writing and 'rithmatic, which can usually be basically complete by 10 p.m. if necessary. And most of the people I know have jobs.

If you don't even have a job, I don't want to hear one peep about "end of the semester stress," or finals week or "pulling an all-nighter." Nobody needs to pull an all-nighter. Nobody. Get up at 8, work until 5 and proceed to ace all your exams. That's not stress. That's having something to do besides check Facebook.

Over the last two weeks of the semester, I have, and will continue to have, a lot to do. It's annoying. But it's not "wearing me down." It just means I can't watch Conan.

Perks

I spend a lot of breath complaining about my job. I won't get into all the reasons why, but being a sports writer seems to do that to people. I think you have to have done it to really understand, but it basically comes down to this:

1. The quality of your work is sometimes out of your own hands
2. The pay and hours are terrible
3. Nobody likes you

But I'm not writing to complain today. I'm going to get a little melodramatic.
One of the perks about covering professional sports is, on occasion, you're there when a guy's dream comes true.

Last fall, I was interviewing a lowly drafted receiver, Jeff Webb, at the moment he found out he had made the Chiefs' roster. It was after a preseason game in which Webb had performed well. General manager Carl Peterson had just told reporters that Webb was going to make the team, and the message was relayed to Webb.

His eyes moistened, and you could see he didn't know what to say. The first person he thought of was Ruby, his grandmother, who had raised him. He couldn't wait to call Ruby.

Jeff Webb had just learned that he was set. He had, for practical purposes, just become a millionaire. He had a new life. The dream he had dreamed since childhood had just become real.

Shirtless, and shoeless, he hustled to find Peterson. He shook his hand and asked, "Did you really say that?"

I've been there for more of these moments this weekend. About 10 minutes after a player is drafted, his team calls him for a conference call with local media. Often, he's on a cell phone in a crowded bar, friends and family still cheering. For some of these guys, football is their only chance in life.

And when they find out their dream comes true, I get to be there. I see lives change.
And that's pretty cool.

We're Gathering Information

Being a journalist by trade, I live in a news (speficifally sports news) saturated environment, meaning I deal with a lot of athletes, coaches and public relations professionals.

Among the irritants in my profession are PR people, a group of paranoid double talkers whose duties in "public relations" seem to mainly involve keeping things private and not relating to anybody but their superiors.

Anyway, PR people have a few standard go-to plays when they're in trouble. Among these are "it was a mutual agreement," "we are moving on," and "no, he is not talking today." But my favorite is "we're gathering information," a line usually tossed around when, for instance, an associate has been arrested for masterbating to porn on his in-car DVD and slamming his SUV into a parked car, and being caught on video (this actually happened in the NBA last year). "No comment" is sooo 1995. The new "no comment" is "we're gathering information," which really means, "we're sitting in our offices going about our normal work, hoping you won't call back."

Another of my favorites, which always comes courtesy of an athlete or coach, is "I know what the truth is, and that's all that matters." Actually, no, that's not all that matters. Just ask Barry Bonds. Whether he's taken steroids or not, everybody who has ever watched Major League Baseball thinks he took steriods. Whether he did or didn't at this point is irrelevant. Bonds is a steroid user because we think he's a steroid user. This is how it works with public figures. It is in their best interest most of the time to talk about things.

We in the media get a lot of criticism for running with stories without talking to the priciples involved. Things like trade rumors, Curt Schilling's bloody sock, whether players are transferring, etc. all tend to follow similar reporterial arcs -- rumor, reports with unnamed sources, denial/non-denial by the priciples, resolution. These criticisms are valid. I am against using unnamed sources unless the story is so big and the information is so sensitive that it's the only way. However, the reason reporters run with this stuff is that the athletes/coaches/managers won't ever say anything more insightful than "we're gathering information" or "when something happens, you'll know." Everything is a big secret.

I would say more, but I'm currently gathering information.

I'm a Crappy Writer

I cannot write academic papers.

This has occured to me recently as I've turned in a remarkable string of C and D papers which I, while writing them, thought would be B papers. It seems that all of the principles and elements of writing which I like, and writing which real people actually read and enjoy are useless in academia. No more narratives (too disputable), no more humor (too much irony makes the writer's attitude seem sour), no more original figures of speech (the instructor will almost always find them "trite"), but no cliches either.

I like to think of myself as a decent writer. Many people have told me that I am. I've won numerous writing awards, both as an amateur and a professional. At least I hope I'm a decent writer, because my inability to perform mathematics is reaching legendary status within my circle of friends and family.

Professors hate my writing. All of them. Going back to 2003, I have received an A on one paper, an essay in which I was to analyze and compare two advertisements. I'll concede that for much of this time period, I have not given an A effort on these papers. But I have not expected As. It has never been much of a priority for me to get As. A mixture of Bs and Cs will suffice, and I've given a mixture of B and C effort, only to receive Cs and Ds and Fs.

The most inexplicable instances have come this semester, in my English class, which is instructed by a woman named J. Karen Ray, who on the first day of class called herself "a bit of a bear." She also has made no secret of her far left political ideologies and has jokingly sprinkled anti-male commentary throughout the semester. I'm not saying these things have had an effect on my grades, but I'm not saying they haven't.

Now, most of the time, when I get a poor grade, I know what the problems are before the paper is even returned to me. The comments are usually no surprise. With Ray, I have no idea, even after having the paper returned, what the real problems were. So I talked to her about it, and came away with this:

1. She doesn't like the tone of my writing -- an ambiguous criticism that could literally be used every single time, no matter what the tone was. If you just felt like giving somebody an F because you didn't like the look on their face (or their reproductive organs), this is one you'd definitely use.
2. She thinks I use too many generalities -- this was a valid criticism, until I rewrote the paper to address all of the generalities she didn't like the first time around.

Anyway, now I'm here trying to craft a 10-page paper about a topic on which she completely disagrees with me. This should go well.

Green Cars

Do they have to make hybrid cars so dumb looking?

I recently attended a rally against global warming.

Now, it should be noted that global warming was not on hand to address the accusations against it, which were many. And I should mention that I was there because the Topeka Capital-Journal was paying me to write about it.

Moving on, the rally included some hybrid vehicles on display. You could look at them. You could sit inside. You could read the sticker price. You could not, however, drive one of the hybrids. See, the actual mechanical abilities of a car are more or less moot, as long as it has a sunroof and puts out low levels of CO2.

Nonetheless, I scoped 'em out. There was a Honda Element, a Mercury Mariner and a Toyota Prius. The Prius advertized 55 miles per gallon city/highway, which is borderline orgasmic. Except that the price of this particular model was north of $25,000. You can buy a Corola for about $14,000 and get 40 miles per gallon, meaning if you drive 12,000 miles per year, you'd have to drive your Prius for 55 years before it paid for the difference in cost.

Of course, if you happen to be well off and environmentally conscious, and all you want to do is reduce your own emissions, by all means, buy a Prius.

I suspect someday in the not-so-distant future, the market will adjust to the point that buying a conventional, internal combustion-only vehicle just won't make sense at all. But we ain't there yet. Not even close.

Jason Whitlock for President

In case anybody missed it, from out of the Don Imus storm has emerged America's newest media star.

Jason Whitlock.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that I know Jason personally, and like him. Also, though I don't think he's even the best writer at his own newspaper (the Kansas City Star), his takes on sports and society are almost always original, fearless and best of all, not politically correct. Criticisms that he seeks out opportunities to play the race card are made of ignorance. He talks about race a lot, but he doesn't play the race card. He analyzes racial issues honestly. In fact, the more I write about this, the more I realize that Jason Whitlock and Charles Barkley are probably the same person.

Anyway, Jason is about to become a mega star. He's been on Oprah. He's interviewed to replace Imus on the radio. He has blasted Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton publicly, something every other black voice has been afraid to do.

I don't know what plans Jason has for his career. He could have left The Star long ago and, indeed, he has worked for ESPN.com and, now, AOL.com, where he has more freedom. He has said that he's a sports writer at heart, and doesn't feel the need to live on a coast to have a voice, which is why he's still in Kansas City.

But if he wants it, I think he can be about as big as he wants to be. He'd need to spend a few years in a more politicized arena (perhaps as a radio show) to build some cred. But from my perch in the middle of white America, I get the sense that black America is ready to follow someone other than Jackson and Sharpton who, as Whitlock said, are living in 1965, trying to scare black people with the idea of an imaginary white guy in the sky who's trying to squash them.

Perhaps black America has been reluctant to give that up, which is understandable, because giving it up means taking on more personal responsibility.

Whatever. I don't expect Whitlock to make a run for public office. In fact, I sort of expect him to stay where he is and maybe just write some more non-sports columns and do a few extra interviews.

I just hope people will listen.

Why Old People Like Bad Movies

I went to the theater the other day hoping to see "Blades of Glory." I would have settled for seing generic blades of glory, which would have been pretty impressive, although I don't know exactly what they would be (knives? skates? vampire movies?).

Anyway, while in line, a 60ish woman starts chatting up my girlfriend and me. She recommends "Wild Hogs," which if you don't know, is a movie about middle-aged men who start riding Harleys, but aren't very good at it. It stars Travolta (yeah, he gets the single-name treatment), Lawrence (Martin, doesn't get the treatment), Allen (Tim, ditto) and H. Macy (William). This movie, the woman assured us, was funny.

You should know, Blades of Glory was sold out

"Wild Hogs" is not funny. Not intentionally, anyway. The plot is basically this: The Wild Hogs gang gets into some trouble at a biker bar with real bikers. Travolta sabotages their bikes, causing a battle that ends with a ludicrous standoff in some quiet town. Travolta, Allen, H. Macy and Lawrence hold off about 60 bikers. Along the way, we get a series of gags about how middle aged men have to pee a lot, aren't exciting, and are whipped by their wives. I think I laughed audibly one time during the movie, although the scene was so good, I cannot recall what I laughed at.

I should have known. Old people, especially old women, have terrible taste in movies. For some reason, movie cliches don't bother them*. They actually embrace them.

For old people, cliches are a symbol that nothing is changing, that the world isn't passing them by, after all. Old people hate it when things change. They've resisted computers and cell phones for decades now, insisting that things were better in their day, before all the technology, despite the obvious truth that these things have made life exponentially easier, particularly for people who are disinclined to physically exert themselves.

But beyond that, I think this shows a fundamental difference in the way our generations use media. Someone in their 60s grew up in a world with three television channels, the local newspaper and movies in theaters only. When it came to media, they just took what they could get, and because there was not much competition, what they got was minimal and not necessarily good. But is was there, and that was enough.

My generation is a media-saturated one. We have hundreds of TV channels, movies on demand, videos on the internet and access to news media from all over the world. As a result, we don't give anything the benefit of the doubt because we know there is always something better at our findertips. Example: I rented "Saw," hated the first 20 minutes, shut it off and returned it. And that's a movie most people liked. When I got back from the video store, I watched a video of a lion attack on ebaumsworld.com. I knew, without the movie, I would still be able to entertain myself.

Now, if somebody could just figure out old people's obsession with pecan pie ...

I Like Extreme Makeover Home Edition

Extreme Makeover Home Edition is the show with Ty Pennington, a total wacko who goes around trying to inspire people with his enthusiasm.

Anyway, the premise of the show is this: A) Find family with crappy house, B) Rebuild this family's house, C) Have lots of quotes from friends and neighbors saying what a good and deserving family it was.

But that's not why I like the show.

I like the show because of the economic and political statement it makes, which I'm sure is purely accidental, but nonetheless cogent. That statement is this: The Welfare State is unnecessary.

On EMHE, the families in need first send in an embarrassing video of their living conditions. Then a TV crew comes in and films it for itself. The family then talks about how bad off they are and how they cannot make it on their own. The EMHE team picks up the story, and sets about rebuilding a house. The team solicits help from the community, and invariably gets more help than it asked for.
There are two main points here:

1. Neighbors, churches, local businesses all get in on it. And this is the important part. The help is coming from familiar faces, people they're going to see on a regular basis. It is much more difficult to blow something a friend gave you than something that fell from the cosmos and into your lap.
2. It's real help. Building someone a house and paying off their mortgage (which happened on the last episode) is a real fix to a real problem, rather than a $1200 check once a month. That's where community charity (and I'm using that term in the general sense) provides what government welfare never can on an individual basis -- the identification of a specific need, and the satisfaction of it.

After that, it's over. There is no milking the system, no having babies for extra money, no half-hearted job searches. Welfare subsidizes irresponsibility. Community charity does the opposite, and does it efficiently.

Now, if we could just do something about Pennington's hair.

P. Diddy is Underrated (Why Sean Combs is like Jimmy Johnson)

No, seriously.

I know is sounds ludicrous to call a relentless self-promoter like Sean Combs underrated. It's almost offensive to even suggest that to rational people, especially rational people who are music fans.

But I think Diddy has ironically created a career-obscuring backlash against himself by doing things like constantly changing his name, starring in outrageously contrived reality TV shows and pimping acne medication. His quest to become a worldwide business mogul has distracted the world from one of the best hip hop careers of all time.

Consider the following accomplishments:
-- Discovered and signed the Notorious B.I.G.
-- Produced Notorious B.I.G.'s "Ready to Die," which is almost universally regarded as one of the top 10-15 rap albums of all time. Many, myself included, say it is No. 1.
-- Produced Notorious B.I.G.'s Life After Death, which completed the creepiest progression of album titles ever, considering that Biggie was dead before Life After Death was released.
-- Jay-Z made one of his first appearances on Life After Death

Diddy has had a couple of major problems, 1) he kept trying to be a rapper. And he's a terrible rapper. "I'll be missin' you" is indisputably his best solo rap song and doubles as one of The Police's best songs, which brings up Puffy's other big problem, 2) virtually every song he ever produced was sampled from another popular song. Ostensibly, this looks cheap and lazy. But if you know anything about hip hop, you know that sampling music is the very root of the genre. The first MCs were just dudes at parties spinning funk records and rhyming over them. It is only within the last few years that sampling really took a nose dive in rap, with the proliferation of southern crunk rap, which relies mainly on a canned beat and clapping, and the productions of Pharrell, who uses music sparingly like Mrs. Dash. The best work of Dr. Dre, Tupac and Snoop Dogg is all sampled. The only difference was, for those guys, the sampling was mostly from semi-obscure funk or soul records, instead of top 40 songs from the 80s, so they didn't take as much crap for it.

P. Diddy hasn't done anything that every other producer didn't do. He just did it more openly. And it created much more radio-friendly music.

His career reminds me a lot of Jimmy Johnson's in this sense: When he had the talent (Biggie/Aikman, Irvin, Smith), he was a genius. He knows how to make a greatness out of really goodness, and he happened to strike gold early in his career (Landing Biggie at the beginning of his A&R career/Getting the perfect storm of the Big Three in the early 90s), but once that fell apart, he's really just been kind of OK ever since, and now is in related fields, but isn't completely ingrained in what made him famous (going from rap to clothing, etc./going from football to broadcasting). Plus, this all happened at about the same time for both men. Johnson won his first Super Bowl in 1992 and his last in 1996. Biggie released Ready to Die in 1993 died in 1997.

Puffy is virtually irrelevant to rap music now. His last few attempts at either releasing his own albums or signing new talent have flopped spectacularly. He's now more or less famous for being famous, which is why, before it's too late, he deserves some recognition for what he once was, and what he did for hip hop.

Baseball Fanatics

I'm hoping somebody out there -- assuming there are people out there -- can help me out here. I don't understand baseball fans. I don't understand their obsession with baseball. I don't get that some people like baseball, but not any other sport. I really don't totally get what people like so much about baseball.

And let's be straight here: I'm a sports guy. I watch sports all the time. I grew up playing. In fact, baseball was my favorite sport to play, though that was mainly because I was better at it than any other sport. The game has some charm. It has its slowly-unfolding drama and it has a lot of tradition. I understand why people like baseball.

But Baseball Fanatics take it way beyond that. Baseball Fanatics root for certain teams, sure. But more than that they root for baseball itself, they just love that someone, somewhere is playing baseball. That fact alone validates a Baseball Fanatic's entire worldview. Often, that is a Baseball Fanatic's worldview -- baseball exists. Baseball Fanatics don't really care about anything that doesn't directly relate to baseball. They didn't really know how Congress worked until the steroids hearings and couldn't imagine what Congressmen would talk about anyway.

It's terrifying.

Most sports fans have 1 or 2 teams we follow. We watch our teams play, keep up a cursory knowledge of out team's game -- its league, its rivals, the national scene. Take an average Kansas Fan. He can name all the players on KU's men's basketball team, can probably name the stars of the football team and could speak with respectable knowledge of college football and college basketball nationally. He also probably follows the Chiefs and may or may not know more about them than the KU football team. And there's a good chance he enjoys Major League Baseball to the degree that he watches the Royals when he's not busy, and has an opinion on Manny Ramirez. He's similarly versed in the NBA, and likes the teams that feature former KU athletes.

Baseball Fanatic isn't like this. Baseball Fanatic learns about sports other than baseball only so he can fluidly divert non-baseball conversations into basball conversations. Baseball Fanatic has read a whole bunch of immensely breathy and immensely analytical books about baseball and is pretty sure he has a baseball book of his own in him. Baseball Fanatic uses his fandom as a primary means of identification, thinking that doing so will keep him from associating with those who are different from him. Crazy thing is, he's right. As long as you hang out with Baseball Fanatics, you'll never discuss anything of substance, unless the designated hitter rule qualifies.

Writing Your Local Paper

Got a problem with your local newspaper? Look no further. A four-year veteran of the Capital-Journal, I’ve seen countless emails and taken countless phone calls with reader complaints.
Here’s how you do it:

Email Phase – Start off with a fire-touched email that makes absolutely no sense. If you can ignore most of the basics of English grammar, all the better. Take this email from jgriffith19@cox.net, with the subject line “Entertainment mag”: “Why is it that one week you put the names of teams playing in "This Week's Sports Action", and the next week all you have there is College Basketball, or NBA basketball, but nothing to tell which teams are playing?”
This is brilliant. She starts off with a subject line that automatically makes the email look like spam, so the odds of someone actually reading it are reduced by about 70 percent. Plus, it has nothing to do with the actual subject of the email. Then she cites something called “This Week’s Sports Action” which nobody at the Capital-Journal has ever heard of. Our best guess is that she’s referring to “Radio/TV watch” which, in her defense, sounds pretty much the same as “This Week’s Sports Action.” I don’t even know where to go from there. Actually, I can’t even tell what her complaint is. All I know is that it involves scheduling, the NBA, and/or college sports. At least she narrowed it down.

Phone Call Phase – As with any interpersonal communication, make sure to sound angry and use accusatory language in the initial greeting. You want to put the person on the other end of the line on the defensive as soon as possible, preferably before he even knows what the issue is and before you even know who you’re talking to. Just like in the email phase, you want to confuse them and make sure there is no way they can tell exactly what you’re talking about. And don’t call during normal business hours when all the editors are around. You won’t get nearly frustrated enough that way. You want to call at about 10:30 p.m., when the only people there are copy editors scrambling to make deadline. That way, they’ll be irritated they had to take a call, and it will also assure you that the person who can address your complaint won’t be back until the next morning. If all goes as planned, they’ll transfer you so you can leave a profane voicemail on an editor’s machine.

The Reply Phase – If in your voicemail you didn’t sound like you were on Day 3 of a four-day bender with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, you’ll probably be getting a response from an editor the next day. Usually, it will be a short, emotionless email explaining as concisely as possible why the newspaper did what it did. Something like this: “Larry, thank you for your feedback. We ran KU on the front page and K-State on page 6 because KU won the Big 12 basketball championship and K-State won an equestrian race. Thanks for reading.”
No doubt, the explanation will make no sense to you. No matter your perspective, whichever team you root for is the team the paper is always downplaying. The paper is a “(rival team’s primary color)-colored rag.” The curt response will only make you angrier, which is the perfect excuse for …

The Race Card Phase – When in doubt, play the race card. It makes everyone defensive and puts the whole conversation outside the realm of reality, which is where newspapers thrive and you flounder. When you play the race card, you can say whatever you want, but the newspaper can’t.
Email something like this: “How come you wrote a article about the black guy’s rape conviction when the white guy at (rival school) got a PARKING TICKET!!!!!!!!!!! Is the paper trying to protect WHITE playes and always dragging blacks and there mistaks thru the mud???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??!?!?!!? I bet you wont have a anser!!!!!” You’re so angry, you don’t have time to hit the spell check button, which will really come through. Your email is probably going to be a hit in the newsroom at this point. It may even get taped to a wall or stuck on a cork board somewhere. Also, your inability to spell and lack of a cogent point will guarantee that you won’t get any more replies.

This, to quote a local editor, is how your complaint will die: “Just another wacko.”

Meeting the Parents

I just met the parents.

And I just realized that anyone who has read my blog over the past six months is probably surprised to find out that I have convinced a girl that I am not, technically, a barbarian. Alas, using chicanery and two forms of calculus, I have done just that.

Well, a few months passed, and over the weekend, I met the people who spawned my girlfriend, which is sort of like a first date your girlfriend all over again, except that you aren't going to be opening your wallet and there will (hopefully) be no goodnight kissing, unless they're italian. And this is the most indisputably awesome thing about meeting parents: You are not expected to kiss them.

Even with that obligation absolved, I was still a little aprehensive about the whole thing. Once again, it's like a first date, only it's two first dates in one. You have to make good impressions on both mom and dad, which requires you to summon two diametrically opposed parts of the brain -- like watching "Animal House" and reading Hemmingway at the same time.

Knowing that I am a) an idiot, and b) a giver of bad first impressions (it seems I'm too reserved causing people to infer that I do not like them), I decided that my best strategy would be to talk about benign things like my job and my family, make only the easiest, safest jokes and otherwise keep my mouth shut, much like Jay Leno. After all, moms are easy. You can win over a mom in no time because they want to like you. You just have to not give them an obvious reason not to, which is harder than it sounds. It would be horrifyingly easy for me to mess this up. So keeping it simple, I thought, would at least get me mom's approval, which generally goes a long way in getting dad's approval. Dads want to dislike you, or are at least looking for any reason to dislike you. But they get lazy, and don't spend nearly as much time thinking about it as moms do. So they usually end up just grunting and trusting mom's opinion (I have two younger sisters, mind you).

Anyway, I was playing it fairly well. Made it through one entire evening with no major screwups. And the second evening went almost as well, except for a harmless remark I made about myself showing a little leg to get something. Well, this rapidly devolved into Mom and Girlfriend talking about showing cleavage while I tried to pretend I didn't know the first thing about cleavage and Dad tried to pretend he wasn't hearing his wife and daughter talking about showing cleavage to gain favor with men.

Fortunately, that situation ended with neither me nor Dad uttering the words "boobs," "cleavage," or any of their derivitives.

Cs and Degrees

It is (painfully) obvious to most who know me that I do not necessarily put forth painstaking effort in my academic endeavors.

It is simply a matter of priorities*, and school is not at the top of the list, instead ranking somewhere below rooting# (definition to come later. For now, let's just say "rooting" is what young men do on weekends) and somewhere above plucking nose hairs. Plus, I have always worked during school, and that has always come first.

Anyway, this is what I've learned through six years of college. This is how you make it through (Oviously, I have not always followed my own advice):

1. Attend class
2. Turn in assignments

That is all. If you want a B average, I suggest turning in assignments on time and attending at least 90 percent of the time. If you want an A average, well, I cannot help you. I've never done that.

But if you're merely interested in cruising through college, getting a degree in something innocuous like Communications, History, English, Sociology, Journalism, the main thing to do is show up. You don't necessarily show up to learn anything. If you're like most people, the last relevant thing you learned was in about 9th grade**. My boss, a successful sports columnist and editor, said everything he needed to know about life, he learned by watching "Rockford Files."^ You show up for two reasons: 1) This is how you retrieve assignments, and 2) To avoid getting slammed with non-attendance penalties. As recently as five years ago, college classes didn't necessarily require attendance. But they've gotten all uppity these days, and I suspect their motives have little to do with concern for the student's well being. Anyway, check out the syllabus^^ and find out how many classes you can miss and what the excused absence policy is. Don't screw this up and you're golden.

Secondly, just turn in stuff. I promise you, if you merely turn in every assignment, you will not get worse than a C. This doesn't mean you have to do every assignment correctly, or necessarily even complete all the requirements of it. You're just trying to get a few points here so you don't have to ace the final to get to 70 percent overall.

Most classes are structured to allow stupid people and bad test-takers to get good grades. Classes aren't so much about teaching as they are about getting people through. The best example of this was a spanish class I took at KU in which 70 percent of the grade was determined by homework assignments, half of which were on-line "quizzes" that allowed you to go back as many times as you wanted and re-do answers until you got a perfect score. But you had to do this every day. I got no worse than an 82 percent on all four of the tests, including the final, and registered a D in the class. Meanwhile, the D-bag who sat behind me who could barely say his name in spanish, got a B because he took all of the daily quizzes. My point is, most classes are structured this way. There are lots of built-in points that soften the effects of tests and hide your inability to master the material.

In probably 20-30 percent of classes, doing these things will get you a B. You'll remember enough by sitting in class and doing assignments to perform well on tests. In the other 70-80 percent, you'll have to study a little. But that's only if you want to.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some pesky nose hairs to pluck.
* -- Or abject irresponsibility.
# -- There is a breed of pig called the "Pineywood Rooter," which has a long snout it uses to dig up delights from the earth. This is what young males do when they are out and about. We go "rooting" for women, or another manner of good time, but mostly women.
** -- Unless you went to public school, in which case you probably never learned anything.
^ -- This is a man who also says Tom Jones was the best concert he's ever seen. You be the judge.
^^ -- Nothign about the syllabus, but that's enough footnotes, I think.

The Ultimate Mid-Life Crisis

I don't want to make anybody feel bad about their wheels, but a car just sold for $5.5 million.

It was Carrol Shelby's 1966 Shelby Cobra "Super Snake". It has twin superchargers on a 427, giving it over 800 horsepower, meaning it can go from 0-60 mph in about three seconds. For perspective's sake, your Cavalier goes from 0-20 in about four seconds.

Anyway, since it was the personal car of perhaps the greatest (certainly the most famous) muscle car guy ever, the personal Shelby Cobra of Shelby himself, the vehicle is literally a one-of-a-kind collector's piece. One other Cobra "Super Snake" (meaning it had twin super chargers) was built for Bill Cosby, but it was wrecked --not by Cosby -- years ago.

Cobras of any kind, by the way, are exceedingly rare. You've probably never even seen a real one -- most are fiberglass kit cars. Accordingly, most Cobras go for somewhere in the $300,000 range and up, depending mostly on what the car was used for.

My point is, if you're gonna drop $5.5 million on a car, this would be the car. And I'm not going to get off on a rant about how much money $5.5 million is, about how many Toyota Camrys you could buy with that (301), how many tickets to paradise you could buy with that (100,000, if we're counting Eddie Money concert tickets) or how many years' supplies of penis enlargement pills you could buy with that (22,921 years' worth of "Endowmax"). I don't want to get into all that.

I am curious whether the buyer, one Ron Pratt of Chandler, Ariz., who also owns a $4.32 million Futureliner van, will ever, ever, even after a thousand Endowmaxes, drive his Cobra. I'm guessing Ron, Jr. isn't taking this to prom. Senior probably has a $350,000 Bentley for that. Will he seal it in an air tight container? Put it on a spinning pedestal? Hire a full-time model to stand next to it wearing only the bill of sale?

Yeah, think of that next time the Neon blows a gasket.