Pajama Pants Nation

On December 19, 2000, I wrote my first web site commentary/editorial/blog/rant or whatever you want to call what you’re reading now. It was a piece about how goofy George W. Bush was. Today, I celebrate my 100th commentary. Bush is still goofy.
There are many ways to celebrate milestones such as this. There’s a look back, the “A Very Special Blossom,” the clip show, the moderated discussion, the celebrity cameo, and the mea culpa.

So let’s take a look back. How is life different now than it was when I started this? It hasn’t changed a bit. It’s the same as it was before. In fact, I dare say that it’s more the same now than it had ever been before.

Let’s try the very special Blossom episode.

[Stephanie walks in the door.]
Stephanie: Hi, everyone. I’m home.
[Applause . . . to the extreme]
Mark: Oh, honey, I’ve got some bad news.
Stephanie: What’s wrong?!?
Mark: Liam has an extraordinarily messy diaper and the social worker from the adoption agency will be here in 22 minutes! Oh, wait! We’ve had the theme song and some dialogue. That puts it down to 17 minutes and 52 seconds.
Stephanie: Well, then, change the diaper.
Mark: Hey, great idea.

15 minutes, 23 seconds later.

[Car door closes and social worker drives away]
Mark (to Stephanie): Honey, you’re the best!
[all smile as credits begin rolling and theme song plays]

No wonder they cancelled Blossom. Let’s try the clip show. You know, the episode where there is some lame plot line and most of the show is filler in the form of scenes from previous episodes.

Oh, my gosh, Mark’s at the dentist and we’re not sure if he has cavities or not! Hey, remember when Mark wrote this? “You end up in a worse predicament than you started–not only are these people still talking to you, but you invited them to talk to you.”
Or how about this? “Whereas the Minnesota Twins are demanding taxpayer subsidizing for a new stadium”
This was a funny one: “They claim to use 11 herbs and spices and (here’s the shocking part) none of them are named Sporty.”
This was quite profound, considering the context of the commentary and Mark being at the dentist: “Then, after everyone has squeezed into his or her six square feet of space, they show you a video.”
Remember the one that was the most asked about at WenCon2003, given the continuity issues and all: “As time goes on, I’m starting to believe more in the intruder perspective than in the playmate perspective.”
And one more, to bring it all back home: “We looked out our hotel window and saw a bunch of tents on the sidewalk across the way.”
Oh, finally! Mark’s back from the dentist. No cavities. Hoo-ray!

Should have clipped that one right out! Let’s take a spin at the moderated discussion.

Moderater: Mark, what have you learned over the past four years and seven months?
Mark: I dunno.
Moderator: Do you have any favorite columns?
Mark: Dave Barry’s column is pretty good.
Moderator: No, no. [sigh] Where have you seen the most improvement in your writing?
Mark: I use the word “portionless” more appropriately now than I did in the past.

Oh, the poor moderator. Let’s put the moderator out of his or her misery and try the celebrity cameo. Often, on a milestone episode, they producers will bring in an A-list celebrity or political figure. Ed Asner is on vacation this week, so we’ll bring in George W. Bush.

Dear Mark,
Thank you for becoming a Bush Team Leader . . .
That is what’s called a “Ratings bonanza!!”
Finally, the mea culpa. I don’t know what that actually means, so I’ll just point out some mistakes I’ve made over the years. This is actually more of a year-end task by newspaper columnists, but I’ll give it a whirl anyway. Here are some of my mistakes:

My brother, Jon, pointed out two math errors I made. First, The Who has six letters. Second, six syllables in four words is 1.5 syllables per word. My math was incorrect on both.
My brother, Dan, mentioned that I didn’t know what I was talking about when I wrote about taxing the internet, specifically in regards to which portion of the internet was being taxed. He was at least mostly correct.
Another mistake I made was my actually believing the newspaper accounts that the Clinton administration had left the White House in a shambles when they departed.
Finally, my an idiot. (I don’t know. Some guy sent me an e-mail message reading “your an idiot.”)
Oh, yeah, I actually have no idea if Ed Asner is on vacation this week or not.

So, thank you for allowing me to celebrate 100 commentaries. To close out my 100th work extravaganza, one more clip from a previous commentary:

At least, that’s how I’m spinning it. (No wonder I’m winded!)

© 2005, Mark Wentz

Oh, it was that time of year. The time of year when Stephanie says, “Mark, we got the call!” At 9:15 AM on May 23rd, Stephanie let me know that the adoption agency called to let us know that the Korean government gave us the okay to adoption a child in Seoul. Frantic airplane ticket-buying and work-situation maneuvering followed. Within 48 hours of the call, we had gotten in an airplane and had landed.
In Chicago.

15 hours after that, we were in South Korea. Oh, to be tired in a foreign land.

First, we had to get a place to stay. The Korean adoption agency has a guest house. That was full. When that happens, they make reservations for us at a nearby hotel. That must have been full, because they sent us to a not-as-near hotel. The Hotel Mirabeau. Located in Shinchon, on of Seoul’s premiere shopping, entertainment, and business districts, the Hotel Mirabeau gives you a feel for Paris in Korea. At least, that’s what their web site claims.

The last thing you do when you fly over several time zones is go to sleep, even though you’re tired. You need to go to bed at the normal time; otherwise you’ll never get over the jet lag. (And, no, rubbing sleep back into your eyes at 2:00 AM does not work.) So, you do the next best thing: eat. Too tired to try the local cuisine (that was my excuse that time), we went to an American-ish type place: Han’s Deli. We thought we would grab a good sandwich and feed our rumbling stomachs. Unfortunately, Han’s Deli wasn’t a sandwich shop; it was more of a pasta joint. It seems that, at least to Han, Deli isn’t short for delicatessen. It is short for delicious. And the pasta was delicious, so I wasn’t about to argue.

After that fine dinner, we decided to walk to Eastern, the adoption agency. Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in modern history, I had a better idea of how to get someplace than did Stephanie (and that includes when she moved into a state in which I had lived my entire life). Please, please, be seated. No urgent need for a standing ovation. It took us about 25 minutes to get there from the hotel. Of course, we really had no purpose there at the moment, so we kept walking. We saw a lot of Seoul we hadn’t plan to see that evening. But then we found our way again and headed back to the hotel.

The next day was a big day. At 9:10 we were to meet the social worker, the doctors, and the boy.

We went to sleep and woke up on time. That was pleasant enough, considering the hotel forget about our wake up call. We learned something that morning: be careful when using an electric outlet adaptor. United States’ plugs don’t fit in Korean outlets. You need an adaptor. We asked for one at the front desk. They provided one, and Stephanie plugged in her curling iron to get it warmed up. Well, when she got back to it, the end of the iron had melted off. It’s not often you need to wait for a curling iron to cool before you use it, but that was our lot in life that day. What do you expect from a hotel where the fire escape is a rope in a dresser drawer and a wall-mounted hook. (But it had instructions. That was nice.)

So we had some breakfast and went to Eastern to meet with people. We met with the head of paper work or something. She said some stuff. I have no idea what because I was just thinking “bring us the boy!” Then she took us to the social worker. She said some stuff. (Ditto the listening part.) Then she took us to meet our child and the foster mother. One of the first things he did was grab a football. I was pleased.

We asked the foster mother some questions. Of course, the big questions about the boy before placement and the big questions about the boy after placement are TOTALLY different. In short, we have no idea how to get our child to go to sleep. But he is world class at crying so, on average, we’re doing fine.

After visiting with the boy, we met with the doctor who started Eastern, Dr. Kim. It was more social than anything else; just wanted to meet us. Dr. Kim gave us two books he had written. Once he found out that Stephanie is a librarian, he gave us two more books. Maybe someday we’ll have time to read one. Then we met with Dr. Kim’s son, Dr. Kim. That was another social event. Only, Dr. Kim is more quiet than Dr. Kim.

Then we were off on our own for several days. Pay no attention to the order of these events as I don’t recall what took place when. I’m just that attentive.

We saw churches. We went to a big church because we thought it was a quite historical church. Turns out we meant to be at the one across the street. So we went to that one, too. Doesn’t sound like much, but the priest was nice.

We went to a couple of palaces. I’ve always been a fan of castles, but the Korean palaces are amazingly ornate. I’d describe that in more detail and discuss the significance, but 1) the tour guide had a weak microphone, and 2) the tour guide would start talking when she got to the next spot rather than waiting for the tour group to catch up. In time, you learn to ignore her and just look at stuff. Like the secret garden, which, apparently, was let out of the bag. If you have the opportunity to look at the palaces in Seoul, don’t pass it up.

If you have the opportunity to visit the Amethyst Showroom, pass it up. On our tour, it was the next stop after the palace with the secret garden. It was an Amethyst jewelry store with a wall that had Amethyst on it. The tour part was a lady telling us how great Amethyst is in Korea. Then they pointed us to the gift shop, which was the rest of the room. Subtle.

Then came the street markets. They were nice in that most of the rest of the city we saw had “westernized” stores. There weren’t a lot of souvenir shops except in the street markets. Since I can buy shoes, pants, and lettuce where I live, I didn’t need them here. We needed souvenirs. The only problem I have with the street markets is that they are so crowded it is difficult to walk through. And then people set up shop right in the middle of the walkways which were already too crowded. Not for me, I must say. Not for me. But we did discover how Korean merchants deal with one-language-is-enough-for-me Americans. They carry a calculator, punch the price in the calculator, and show us the display screen. Now that’s thinking!

The most expensive thing we bought was water. Not that water was overly expensive. We just bought a lot of it. It was, I believe I overheard, record heat in Seoul. Yeesh! I don’t care for heat and humidity and Seoul had plenty of both. And smog.

If we had gone up into Seoul Tower, we could have seen all kinds of smog. But we didn’t. Oh, we went TO Seoul Tower. We took the subway to some station. Got out. Walked up this long hill to get to the gondolas which take you up to the tower. Paid for the gondola tickets and rode the gondola. Then we walked from the gondolas up some steps. We finally got to the base of Seoul Tower and read the sign which said “Closed until October.” But we did have a nice view of the city and the smog from there. Plus, it was about the only green space we came across. So it was nice just sitting there. But we had to leave.

We had to get to Star Wars. There were two reasons for this. First, we hadn’t seen it yet and wanted to see if the story made sense. We knew if we didn’t see it now because we wouldn’t have time after the child entered the picture (our “picture;” not the Star Wars motion picture). Second, we thought it would be interesting to see what it was like watching a Hollywood movie in a Korean theatre. Unfortunately, we spent too much time enjoying God’s splendor and missed the beginning of the movie. I wanted to see if the Star Wars scroll was in English or Korean. The rest of the movie had Korean subtitles written down the right side of the screen. I rarely noticed them, so it was great for me. I bet it was difficult for the Koreans watching.

The next day was the last full day in Korea for us. We spent it doing some last minute shopping and some last minute paperwork. We also were able to visit with the boy for about an hour. Again, this was before we had custody of him so we didn’t have the right questions to ask.

The next morning, we packed up and headed off to Eastern. There was a short prayer service for the foster children being adopted. Then we got into the van and Liam was handed to us. Finally, it was off to the airport.

Let me say something about this adoption thing. It is difficult to learn how to care for children. It is difficult taking children on airplane trips. Multiply them together and you have learning how to care for children while on a twelve hour airplane ride. It’s just insane. However, Liam did very well. Only one hour of it did Liam scream, but scream he did. Most of the rest of the trip he spent eating, sleeping, and playing. Not bad.

When we finally got to the airport in Minnesota, we had a surprise for us: a welcome home party for Liam. It’s still a surprise. My brother, Jon, was caught in traffic. My sister, Amy, her youngsters, Jacob and Oliver, and their sign, “Welcome home Liam,” were in a different part of the airport. My parents were in the right spot, but were turned the other way as they were looking at the bagel selection in the coffee shop. And we thank them all. And a special thanks goes to Jon for interrupting his Harry Connick, Jr. concert-ticket winning endeavors to let us crash at his house the night before the initial 7:00 AM flight.

Recuperating from jet lag is no easy task, especially when you have to schedule around a youngster who doesn’t know he’s got jet lag and, if he did, correcting it would be pretty low on the priority scale. We know raising Liam will have its challenges. We know it takes a lot to keep Liam on the narrow road to success. In fact, we’re set to start the most important thing.

Tomorrow, we open an account for his college fund!

© 2005, Mark Wentz

Oh, it was that time of year. The time of year when Stephanie says, “Mark, we’re going to visit my family.” This time it was to visit her brother and his family at their new home in Greenville, South Carolina. That is more difficult than you’d suspect, though. The trick is to look in Simpsonville, South Carolina, because that is where they live.
Why is it that we often have the wrong information about where things are located? People often give the name of a large nearby town rather than a small town. I suppose it is easier to find some places (like Greenville) on the map than it is to find other places (like Simpsonville). That should be clarified, then. Matt, Dorothy, and the young ones don’t live in Greenville. They live in the Greenville Vicinity. Or Greater Greenville. Or Greenville Improper. Maybe it would be easier to just say they live in Greenville.

If anyone can forget where Matt, et al, live after all of that, good luck remembering your own street address.

After we landed in Simpsonville, or Greenville, or where ever that darned airport is located, we were quickly chauffeured via the Sac-Mobile to the family estate. It’s a pretty nice neighborhood. So nice, they don’t have a park. They have a “club house.” A club house is a bunch of park equipment, neighboring a swimming pool, neighboring some tennis courts, neighboring a house-type building with a sign out front advertising things like “Tuesday: Poker night.” Now, you’re perhaps saying to yourself, “Lots of towns and cities have that.” Yes, but my understanding is that this was just for the neighborhood. And it wasn’t even one of those weird Twilight Zone neighborhoods that look wonderful at first but you come to find out they have zombies and dark secrets either. It seemed pretty normal. I mean normal aside from the trampolines.

It seemed that every home in Simpsonville had a trampoline. Apparently, the town slogan is “Simpsonville: Trampolines-A-Plenty.” (Word on the street is that “Simpsonville: Feel Free to Call Us Greenville” came in a close second.) Now, don’t get me wrong. Trampolines can be a lot of fun. Fun, that is, if you’re young, light, and have a death wish. Even after the first few minutes, my stomach had a feel that somethin’ ain’t right. Then came the demand: “Mark, do a butt buster.” I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. A butt buster has nothing to do with the metal frame of the trampoline and doesn’t end with someone saying “Walk it off, walk it off.” It’s much worse.

A butt buster is, to the uninitiated, is where you bounce on a trampoline and then pull up your legs so you land on your butt and then bounce back up to your feet. Man alive! If you thought your stomach was churning after normal bounces, you’re in for a treat. Not only that, but your back hurts, your shoulders hurt, and your neck hurts. (Yeah, it took me a few days to learn the technique enough to not nearly paralyze myself.) Surprisingly, there are multiple ways to perform a butt buster. Legs straight out. Legs crossed. Knees to the chest. Oh, yes, and safely–that is to say, watching others.

But, (Buster,) stomachs weren’t the only things churning on this vacation. The family purchased an ice cream maker. I don’t know the original purpose for the purchase, but the day after we got there we needed to take iced cream to Soren’s class. So, Dorothy made blueberry sorbet. It was pretty good. The kids liked it. They also liked that one classmate had his birthday, so his mom brought chocolate-chip cookie bars. One kid–I don’t know his name–noted how cool it was that they were having pizza, apples [actually, pears], cookies, “this stuff” [the sorbet], and raspberry milk all in the same lunch. I figured the tables and chairs would be low and the kids loud, but I don’t remember the food portions being so small. So, if you ever want to feel tall and hungry in a loud room, visit an elementary school lunch room.

I haven’t yet mentioned the house itself. It’s a very nice house. Some noteworthies: two stories, hardwood floors, a screened patio, and a guest bedroom. That’s right–no more sleeping on the sleeper sofa. That is, unless you don’t do a butt buster–or so I was told. (Man! There are some CRAZY South Carolina laws!) Actually, the house wasn’t fully two stories. Only a portion of the house had the second story. Other portions had an atrium effect going. You know, where the room goes from the floor of the lower level to just this side of the roof. It looked very nice, but, in all honesty, the only thing I could think about was, if we owned it, how would I reach the top when Stephanie told me it was time to paint it? Oh, the troubled life I lead.

But it had the ice cream maker, so that was good.

On Friday evening, the town (Simpsonville, Greenville, or Someothertownville, I’m not sure) held a street carnival with vendors, “rides” (small inflatable objects where kids could bounce a lot) and a big tent holding a posh dinner and celebrity viewing. We enjoyed ourselves, had some bad expensive food, and didn’t see Kevin Costner. How many of you can say you’ve had that happen during YOUR vacation?

But it was not all fun and games. We had a discussion and it turns out that I am not lifting weights properly. In fact, I’m not even on the right weights, much less lifting them correctly or even doing the correct number of sets or reps. I might as well have been busting my skull with the weights. Oh wait, skullbusters is one the exercises I’m supposed to do. (Not related to the butt busters, although whoever came up with that exercise family tree must not have seen me try a butt buster.) So, after several demonstrations and a bit of reading, I’m now the proud borrower of a book about weightlifting. I’m doing some of the correct weight-training exercises. Incorrectly, most likely, but still doing them. And, I can tell I’m doing them, because I hurt.

Star Wars was also on the agenda. No, episode III hadn’t been released yet. However, like all good South Carolinianaisoes, we decided to freshen up our Star Wars mythology memories by watching episode II. Rumor has it that this was the better of the first two episodes which, as you know, are widely reported to be abominations to the deity known as Han Solo. I’ve never been a big Star Wars fan, so I don’t know. But I do know that a lot of folks in the area had the same idea we had. None of the rental places had a copy for us to rent–of ANY Star Wars movie. And since we didn’t have our own (thus the attempt to rent), one was purchased. So we watched it. Then we watched Napoleon Dynamite. Why? Because we wanted to! GOSH!

Then, as happens during most trips, it was time to go home. A very early flight, another flight, car ride home, grocery shopping, laundry, chores, eating sleeping. The whole vacation had a lot for us to do, but we got it all done. How?

We busted our butts.

© 2005, Mark Wentz

A while back, I had a discussion with my brother-in-law, Matt. He’s quite an interesting chap. Matt believes in the Philosophy of So–that is, the philosophy that any statement can be effectively responded to with the question “So?”–or, as he calls it, So-phism: which is not to be confused with sophism. (My only regret is that I couldn’t pack more punctuation into that sentence!)
“I like chocolate.”
“So?”
“My feet hurt.”
“So?”
“If we don’t fix this program, it will effectively wipe out the progress of the 20th and 21st centuries?”
“So?”

This is not to be confused with the Cornholio model of retort.

“I like chocolate.”
“Are you threatening me?”

Feel free to try either with your boss sometime. (Disclaimer: Neither Wentzmania.com nor any person associated with Wentzmania.com endorse your trying either with your boss sometime.)

That’s not what the discussion was about. But it is related. You see, Matt is a philosophical guru, of sorts. And when I say “philosophical guru, of sorts,” I mean he says some things that I have never thought of, heard of, or find life-affirming . . . of. But his thoughts are interesting.

It started when I made the incorrect assumption that he was “anti” something or other. He wasn’t, and told me so. (not “So?”)

He’s not anti-everything. He HATES everything. This threw me for I never knew of a discernable difference between the two. (I try not to clutter my thoughts with thinking.) And there is a difference.

Ironically (you’ll find out later), I asked him to explain himself. The following are my interpretations of his comments and then my own further depths of idea in the area.

Hate is an emotional response. Anti-ism is more of an intellectual response.

For examples:

Anti-ism:
“I’m anti-chocolate.”
“How could you be anti-chocolate? Explain yourself!”

Hate:
“I hate chocolate.”
“Oh, I like chocolate. Well, gotta go.”

As you can clearly see by these two bogus exchanges, anti-ism essentially begins a discussion whereas hate all but ends a discussion; especially if you hate it in a grumpy fashion. As someone who is anti- stuff, I can tell you that if you mention you’re anti- something, you’d better be “on.” People will often want to know exactly why you’re anti- that thing. That’s often difficult, considering that sometimes it’s been years since I’ve decided I was anti- something and I don’t necessarily remember ALL of the reasons why I was anti- it or ALL of the sources I used to arrive at those reasons. That’s the other thing with anti- ism: you have to have valid reasons.

Valid anti-ism
“I’m anti-Green Bay Packers. They’re considered great, even though they only have one great player. They play on a field that is artificially heated, but claim it to be frozen. They swindled money from the tax-payers to renovate the stadium. And they all too often beat the Vikings.”

Invalid anti-ism
“I’m anti-Green Bay Packers. They’re all boogerheads.”

Again, there is more expected from someone who is anti than from someone who hates. If you were to say you hate the Green Bay Packers and then launch into why you hate them, sooner or later the response would be “Yeah, you hate the Green Bay Packers. We get it.” (The correct response is, of course, “So?”)

Furthermore, there’s no counter to hate. That’s not true with anti-ism. If you say you’re anti-Green Bay Packers and give the above reasons, there’s a counter to every argument. Perhaps they are no longer considered great. Maybe they have more than one great player. Maybe it is a myth that they heat the “frozen” field. Perhaps the stadium was renovated with money collected from bake sales. Maybe they don’t have a good record against the Vikings. By being anti-something, you open yourself up to unfortunate verifications.

However, if you say you hate the Green Bay Packers, there are no points to counter. If you say “I hate the Green Bay Packers,” one could not realistically say “Actually, you don’t.” Well, maybe if you were hooked up to a lie detector. But how often are those things around when you’re talking about how much you hate the Green Bay Packers? Not very often, at least by my experience.

So the value in hate is that it takes much less effort and there is no counteraction. Debate starts. Debate ends. I win. What could be better?

Looking back on what I’ve written, Matt comes across as being negating, hateful, anti-social, impatient, and no fan of the Green Bay Packers.

So?

© 2005, Mark Wentz