Atlanta Rollergirls

Now y'all who read my blog more often than you clean your baseboards know that I seldom if ever ask you to give to any charities or anything like that. I don't ask people to jump rope for the cure or any other such nonsense. Just not my bag. But please hear me out. There are people who need your help.

I'm talking of course about the Atlanta Rollergirls. They kick ass and everyone who's anyone should run out and buy tickets to their next gig. I don't know when it is. Check their site by clicking hither.

Oh wait. That's wrong. Don't click there.

No, really. Don't. Please.

Here's their site: www.atlantarollergirls.com I knew I had it somewhere in my favorites.

The missus and I went to see them do their thing a couple of days ago and -- let me tell you -- you haven't lived until you've seen live roller derby. Remember Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling? This is even better.

I'm talking sexy chicks on wheels! Mean women. The kind your mother warned you about and the kind your father secretly hoped you'd bring home so she could help build a new back deck or change a carburetor. I'm talking about chicks pushing other chicks off the track so they go sailing into the audience.

And whatever your taste in roller derby queens, there's something here for everyone. From what I could gather after watching the Apocalypstix take on the Sake Tuyas, roller derby is kinda like tug-of-war. You want people of all shapes and sizes.

Hey, remember what Freddy Mercury said? They make the rockin' world go round, right? Well, when it comes to roller derby those girls make the rockin' world go

round and round,
oh round and round
The meanest hunk o woman
That anybody ever seen
Down in the arena

I'm trying to come up with a way to express to you the fun Elaine and I had on our latest mystery date but frankly words elude me at this point. How can one accurately describe an atmosphere where tailgaters are welcome to imbibe in the parking lot (and bring in their own bubbly for a couple dollars) while those with preschoolers are welcome to bring their progeny in to see the show? We didn't bring Meryl on this go-around, but there were little ones there, and I dare say they enjoyed watching the game. Some of the little ones in the audience even had moms on the rink!

I'm not making this up, people.

So please. Operators are standing by and the Atlanta Rollergirls need your help. Sure, they perform at the Yaarab Shrine temple on East Ponce, but those shriners are too busy helping needy children to donate money to the bloodbath that is Atlanta roller derby. The future of roller derby is in your hands.

You simply have to see it to believe it, folks.

Trust me on this one.

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Godfather who art in Kevin

Dear friends of ours have asked if I would be their child's godparent which, in and of itself, really should come as no surprise because I've been a parenting expert for a little over two years now, and if thinking you know everything equals all-knowing I've had a god complex for longer than that. If you put those two qualities together, surely you get the makings for a good godfather. Right?

Well, that's what I'm telling myself anyway.

Fully agreeing to this was something I did only after a healthy amount of self-debate. My understanding of godparents was that in the unfortunate event of the death of a child's actual parents, godparents step in and see to a child's spiritual wellbeing. My idea of spiritual wellbeing is usually limited to not drinking the grape before the grain, and even though I think that's good advice, it's not something I'd likely bestow upon a newly orphaned kid. Moreover I feel a certain amount of pressure just making sure my own daughter grows up in a healthy nurturing environment. God forbid my lack of godparenting skills should lead to my godchild growing up in a dysfunctional godfamily.

When I asked the friend what she hoped for from her new daughter's godfather, she expressed that she simply wanted someone to be there for her. Upon seeking advice from others, it's been suggested that I throw in a gift once a year or maybe a well thought out letter. This much I can certainly do, and in fact I think I'll look forward to it.

Even still gentle reader, I'm not without a few questions, namely: 1) Are you or do you have a godparent? and b) What all does godparenting entail?

Show your work.

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Bloodborne pathogens: friend or foe

Just yesterday my wife returned home from work to find me eyeball-deep in an online training session on bloodborne pathogens.

I know what you people are wondering. You're wondering what type of job I have that I need to engross myself with the spreading of bloodborne pathogens. Go ahead. Say it.

You're wondering this very thing.

I don't generally discuss work here for a number of reasons, the main one being that I want to be able to secure a job in the future without my potential employer being concerned that I'm going to blather all the corporate secrets and dirty laundry on my blog. I'm honestly not about that, but you never know what a paranoid potential boss is going to think. I also like to use my corner of the innerwebs as a place to excape from work, which means when it comes to worky worky the rule on my blog is no talky talky.

Me love work long time.

That being said, I teach English to people who speak their own kinda talk at home. I only bring it up because I want to point out I'm not in a job where I generally encounter bloodborne pathogens during my day. I work contractually for very few hours and we just don't practice surgery in my class. We don't tattoo. We don't inject. And none of us are blood brothers.

I do work out of a state agency though, so I'm guessing this mandate was a hand-me-down from some higher ups at the state level in case one of my students decides to self-amputate during the final exam. At least now I know how to handle the situation.

Note to self: Buy Laytex gloves.

No glove; no abstract non-count noun expressing like or emotion.

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101 interesting things about me

Occasionally when bloggers find themselves with little to write on, they post a list of things about them a reader might be interested to know. Here is mine:

1. I hate making lists.
2. That is all.

On a more uplifting note, here's a copy of a movie review for the film Evening that I just submitted to Netflix:

How such a stellar cast can come together and produce such insipid drivel as this is beyond me. The entire film takes place across two time periods and a dreamscape, all three of which are poorly transitioned from one to another. Something tells me this movie plays in one of the circles of Dante's Inferno. Just poor.

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Seven windows to my soul

Though dates had little meaning to me then it must have been September of 1977 that my mother registered me for kindergarten class. As I recall the teacher ran it like an open house where moms sat down and filled out the necessary paperwork while kids got to try out the standard array of classroom toys: blocks, cars, dolls, etc. Light refreshments were served in the form of animal crackers on napkins and orange juice in Dixie cups

These were the real animal crackers too and not the more economical bootleg Animalitos that I pick up in the ethnic foods aisle for my kid now. The cups were those standard run-of-the-mill pattern everyone had in their kitchen at the time. You know the one I mean? Harvest gold flowers with a fold-out handle on the cup for easy holdage. Speaking of which, be sure and check out this video for Dixie Cups in honor of Earth Day.


Anyway, I remember not caring for the orange juice because it had pulp floating on top. Now I prefer extra pulp while my toddler whines about it the extra fruity goodness and makes a point of dramatically spitting it out when I try and pass it off on her hoping she won't notice.

Another early school memory is from when I was at the listening center with Kristie in first grade. We each had those gynormous headphones on and were listening to some audio cassette that I'm sure told us to circle the red balloon or write the letter A or some other equally engaging task. At one point in the exercise, Kristie leaned down into the speaker of the tape recorder to tell me she thought it was almost time to line up for lunch. She thought somehow that by talking into the speaker of the tape recorder that the sound would electronically be transferred into my ears.

Stupid Kristie.

At 13 I took piano lessons. I had played the trumpet in band so I wasn't totally ignorant when it came to reading music and I had practiced my piano recital piece ad nauseum I'm sure much to my family's delight. It was I Just Called to Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder.

When the time came I chose to play the song without sheet music because I had been told that would leave a bigger impression on the audience. I made it through almost the entire song, including a major key change, without so much as a single flub, but for whatever reason when I got back to the refrain on the last verse I missed my fingering and quickly broke tempo in order to try and correct the mistake. Scott, a fellow student, claimed he couldn't tell that I had goofed. He no doubt lied, but he was kind that way.

Nice Scott.

Not long after my seventeenth birthday I was living as an exchange student in Seyssinet, France. I took classes with several other American highschoolers during the morning, and we were all left to our own devices for the rest of each afternoon. There was this one chick who always wanted to scribble defaming remarks about me in my workbook. She was cute and a year older than I, but because I was a late bloomer, I didn't know at the time that workbook scribbling was some highschool girl pre-dating ritual.

One day she proposed getting together to hang out in the park after school. She wanted champagne to commemorate the event and indeed it was easily attainable at the local grocery store so I bought a bottle. Several giggles and quaint remarks later the bottle was empty but I wasn't feeling particularly intoxicated nor had the courtship progressed beyond sideways glances and flips of the hair, so I proposed going back to the grocery store for a bottle, only this time for a bottle of rum and a bottle of Coca Light.

I'm sure some of the more pessimistic among you can see where this is going. You would be right in your assessment. I've got family who reads my blog, so I'll spare y'all the sordid details, only some of which I even remember to this day.

There was the expected first shared kiss, another shared kiss, feeling up, being felt up, vomiting, foggy memories, having to move to a vomit-free bench, regaining consciousness with a semi-circle of nosey locals watching the show, getting on the wrong tram and having to eventually take a taxi back home. The brief courtship didn't last long after that. OK, not at all. The paramour did suggest weeks later that we stay in touch once we got back to the other side of the pond, but I think my ego had been damaged by the whole thing, so I never tried to contact her after that.

Some chicks you just gotta stay away from.

While going to college I still lived at home. One morning when I was in my early twenties I woke up at oh dark thirty to the sound of a ringing phone. Still asleep I instinctively picked up the receiver but said nothing. I could hear my father on another extension talking with some other man whose name I recognized but had never met. Without even needing to eavesdrop any further to determine what was going on, I hung up the phone and whispered My grandmother just died. She had been my last living grandparent.

By the time I hit thirty I had been married a couple of years to my wife whose grandmothers were both still living. One day one of them called, and again I answered the phone. When I learned who was calling I was quick to tell her that my wife wasn't home but would be back within the hour to which the elderly woman replied That's okay. I called to talk to you.

I had agreed to help her with some shopping the day before and apparently something made it into her grocery bag that wasn't hers. She was calling to see if instead maybe it was mine. When I asked what it was in the bag she explained that it was a toy car -- not a matchbox sized car but a model replica sized car -- and she thought maybe I collected them and was therefore the rightful owner. Incidentally I don't collect model cars and never have, but I liked that she had thought of me in this way. After years of being grandparent-less, on that day I felt like I was a grandson again.

Only last week my wife and I were talking about the television shows my daughter has, much to my dismay, taken a liking too. One of these god-awful shows is Big Big World which is hosted by a huge Plushy who talks like a washed-out stoner who hails from the West Coast. I told my wife that Meryl and I don't watch that show very often because, as I put it, the show comes on at the buttcrack of dawn. Meryl, who being not yet two years old and therefore at the stage where she parrots back everything she hears, responded simply yeh . . . uh huh . . . butt crackers.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the seven windows to my soul.

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I'll teach you

I am 35 years old. I have yet to learn the Electric Slide.

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Truth be told

Time is a precious thing when I've a kid who's sleeping and I've doubled my teaching schedule on top of that, but I'll make this brief. In response to which of my previous claims listed here was not 100% true, I'll preclude with this:

In Steve Martin's book, Shopgirl, the main character whose name is Mirabelle has a theory on lying that for whatever reason I think has merit. She says that in order for a lie to be effective it must have at least a certain minutiae of truth to it and it must also be embarrassing to tell. Each prerequisite serves its own purpose. A lie that has a certain element of truth to is easier to tell convincingly, and a lie that was somewhat embarrasing for the teller to tell is less likely to lead to having to answer further questions that, if answered wrong, might uncover the lie being told.

It is true that I do not wear underwear, but it is not true that I don't own a pair of button fly jeans. I do in fact own a single pair of button flies which makes the last statement untrue. Such is the beauty of the coordinating conjunction. Sneaky little devil.

In response to the few family members and lone googler who responded, the statements about driving the police car and chatting with the priest in the confessional were in fact true. My sister was quick to point out a typo on my part about the police car already running and the cop tossing me the keys. I'll be honest. I don't remember which part of that was true. Was the police cruiser already running when I jumped in, or did the cop toss me the keys to crank it? I can't remember. I would have corrected the discrepancy in my writing were I to have detected it first, but since it was already pointed out, I thought shame on me; I'll just leave it.

As to chatting with the priest, again that was 100% true. My wife and I were in Prague on vacation. He caught me snapping flash photography in the cathedral which is one of the no-no's though he didn't say so and I admired him for indirectly correcting my errant behavior by instead simply engaging me in conversation. He asked me what my religious background was, and I told him I was not Catholic but that my wife was. Apparently, wven as a non-native English speaker, he saw through this non-answer and asked me again what my religion was. When I confessed that I was without religion, Father Petr was quick to share that he felt the message of Jesus Christ was intended for all people because Jesus was the Prince of Peace. When i returned from Prague, I sent Father Petr and email stating that I had cancer and that my wife was in the cathedral that day lighting a candle for me to which he responded:

Thanks !

Praying for your healing.

Fr. Peter

Five months later after undergoing chemotherapy I wrote to Father Petr again updating him on my condition and thanking him for his prayers and kind words. He replied with these kind words. Now, I don't normally make personal emails public, but I think his message is one that would benefit others and therefore should be shared.

Dear Kevin,   I wish you a strong health, all the best for your common life, and the great gift to have a grateful heart in all moments of your life, even those less nice ones.   May the Little Jesus, the Prince of Peace, bless and protect you all!

Father Petr
Monastery of the Infant Jesus of Prague

Even four years later rereading his email makes me a little teary-eyed. I was a stranger he didn't know from Adam. Being the head abbot at what many vacationers see as a common tourist attraction and many Catholics see as a miracle site, he likely encounters thousands of people each day. Surely his in-box is overflowing, but he took the time and energy to write back to me, someone who lives a third of the way around the planet, and in a foreign language no less. I think that says a lot about him and his vocation.

Father Petr's commander-in-chief faces much criticism as he pays his first papal visit to the United States, one of which is that he hasn't done enough to evangelize and bring more sheep to the flock. I'm not Catholic so it's not really my place to make that criticism, but I would dare say that if he's trying to up his numbers, he should consider putting Father Petr in charge of the Programming and Outreach Department. Not only that but Father Petr gets my vote for sainthood.

No lie.

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