Three Rings of Number One

Welcome to what, for legal reasons, we cannot refer to as the Greatest Show on Earth!

Today I saw five tigers perform ‘The Wave.’

Actually, today I saw four tigers perform ‘The Wave’ while the second one from the left just looked at the other tigers like they were idiots.

But that’s about the ratio you get when humans do ‘The Wave,” so it totally counts.


Yep today I went to the circus with my three-year-old. Which if you need to go to circus, is really the way to do it.


Adults may find a bargain circus lame at best and depressing at worst.


A three-year-old just sees magic, wonder and clowns.


It’s amazing.


One of the greatest things about circus, are those brief moments when something happens that is not ‘all part of the show.’ Something small goes wrong, and for a moment everyone thinks something horrible is going to happen to the performer. The audience holds its breath in unison and as the acrobat regains his balance, a collective oooooohhhhhh escapes the crowd.


The greatest one of these in this show came in the final act. Three elephants paraded around, sitting on stools and lifting scantily clad women. Suddenly one of them (the elephants, not the scantily clad women) began to pee. The stagehands had obviously been here before and one of them through a convenient bucket of sawdust over the urine and got ready to scoop it up.


The elephant however, didn’t stop peeing.


I know elephant are enormous animals, but it was impressive how much piss this one had.


The wee just kept coming. It was officially pouring peepee at this point. While the other elephants continued their show, the stagehands ran around in a panic looking for more sawdust to cover their growing problem with.


Guys kept coming with buckets from the emergency sawdust store they had in the back.


One of them wasn’t watching where he was going and he stepped in the puddle..


He began to slip.


We began to hold our breath.


He flailed his arms.


We moved forward in our seats.


He regained his balance.


We let out a giant oooooooohhhhhhhh.

Earlier in the show, a tight rope walker slipped and had to catch himself with his hands on the way down.


We were more relieved that this guy didn’t fall into an overturned kiddie pool’s worth of pee.


I think it’s because as normal people, we can’t imagine a situation where we could fall to our deaths from a one inch wire that we intentionally walked out onto.


And yet, we can all see a future where we fall into pee.

Somethings are not hereditary

I love my son.

Sometimes you just have to preface a blog post like that.

Like I said, I love my son and I truly mean that. He has opened my eyes to a world I have never known. He has taught me more things than I have taught him. He’s helped me laugh, made me cry and given me a reason to get out of bed in the morning.


He is also the biggest pansy I have ever met.

I mean seriously, this kid is a wuss.


It wouldn’t be so bad if he was afraid of things kids are supposed to be afraid of: strangers, thunder, vampires, that jerk kid who lives up the block, Libertarians.


But he’s afraid of everything.


He’s afraid of half of the cast of Sesame Street.


He’s freaked out by hamburgers that don’t have cheese.


He’s even scared of the current instability in the Korean Peninsula. And I mean seriously, that’s way on the other side of the world.


It’s gotten to the point where it’s affecting our life decisions.

We had to get him fish for a pet because the only animal he isn’t afraid of is two inches long, forever contained in a plastic box and will die if tries to come out and get him.

Believe me, we have tried to convince him that the neighbor's cat isn’t going to bite him, take his juice, try to get him to join its pyramid scheme or whatever it is he seems convinced it wants to do. 

He just won’t listen to reason.

And yes I am aware that little boy that’s afraid of dogs is basically half a kid

So something’s got to change. Like any other father who watches an unhealthy amount of martial arts movies. I see violence as the answer to this problem. I’ve been trying to introduce wrestling and monkey-fist kung fu our daily routine.

So far, my flawless plan has completely backfired.

He can’t break boards with his hands. He whacks himself in the head with his nunchucks. He can’t even catch a fly with chopsticks. He can, however, headbutt you in the junk like a pro.

At any rate he can headbutt me in the junk like a pro, but that’s a good start. I’m sure head butting a vampire in the junk is basically the same thing.

I just really hate encouraging him to practice.

But still, I’m happy to do what I can.

I’m just trying to get him through the tough times in life. Soon enough he’ll learn how much there is in life to be really scared of: death, mortgages, freaky dolls, vampires, new seasons of Glee.

If a thousand blows to my nads can help him deal with all of that, then I’m happy to grit my teeth, have my eyes tear up, feel a bit sick, and bear it.

It’s what any father would do.

Now I just need to worry about the other 98

Sometimes the best thing you can do, is be a total dick.

After work I found myself in a bit of a mess because I realized not only had I not written a column for this week yet, I hadn’t even came up with a topic.

In my panic I even started writing one that I’ve been putting off for years in which I reveal to the world my secret shame (Don’t worry, it’s nothing too bad, it does however involve mostly naked men).

Fortunately within minutes of going up stairs to take a break from baring my soul to the Internet, something wonderful happened.

I did the worst thing I’ve done all year.

I purposely popped  a small child’s balloon.

It’s cool though, the kid was my son, which makes pretty much everything I do OK in the eyes of God.

In my defense, I didn’t do it in front of his face. I’m not Skeletor.

He wasn’t even home at the time. It was a helium balloon he got at a birthday party almost two weeks ago. It must have been some kind of genetic super balloon because until today, it was still floating fine.

Throughout the course of the course of the day, while my wife and I worked in our separate but equal home offices and the boy was at preschool, the balloon began to sink slowly towards the floor.

I knew how this would end. I’ve been a father long enough to know that this would only end in tears. My son had ignored this 15 cent bag of plastic filled with a noble gas for the last week, but when he came home and saw it beginning to float off this mortal coil, it would immediately become the most important thing in his life and its demise would be a tragedy of epic proportions at least until he watched “Go Diego Go.”

In the three years I’ve been dealing with snot that isn’t mine, I’ve had many interaction balloons. None of them were whimsical. I’ve chased escaping balloons into oncoming traffic. I’ve driven across town to the late-night party supply store to get the right color of replacement balloon. I’ve had more funerals for balloon animals than I care to remember.

And through it all, I’ve learned two things. A) kids only care about balloons if they see them. B) I really hate balloons.

So when I took my car key and plunged it deep into the heart of that purple, oblong demon. It wasn’t out of malice, or mean-spiritedness toward my son. It was with a sincere desire to maintain and spirit of peace and harmony in my home.

And deep personal hatred.

It felt so good.

Boldy going where no one should have to

Today my life just got infinitely better.

For anyone wondering what new game got announced that would send me to such heights of joy, I am afraid I’ll have to disappoint you by saying it’s not game, movie or even action figure related.


Ok, I take that back Lego Marvel Heroes sounds pretty cool.


But what has really got me the most excited I’ve been since I saw the Hobbit is now I can go the the bathroom at work again!


This will come as a surprise to 16-year-old me who would endure pain normally associated with torturing people who throw up on their leader in Medieval Europe to avoid having to use a toilet that someone in my family did not own, but I spend a lot of time these days in public restrooms.


It’s not that I’m unhealthy or a weirdo who like sitting on a disturbingly warm toilet seat. It’s just I’ve reached the age where my body has decided what time it wants to poop every day for the rest of my life.

That time happens to be 9:30 AM.

I also happen to be employed in a Western Society that tends to look at the guy who comes in at 10:00 as not a team player.

This means, until my bowels or societal pressure change, I’m pooping at work.


At least I was.


My peaceful routine was recently shattered when a coworker pointed out something horrible.


If you are standing at the urinal, and look down and to the right, the new super shiny tile lets you see the reflection of the butt of the guy sitting in the stall next to you.


When I learned this, everything south of the border closed up and refused to work like a French company being told they couldn’t get 8 weeks of time off this year.


(I would just like to point out I just made a satirical commentary on European work ethic and a poop joke in the same sentence.)


This has, needless to say, made my work days less than comfortable. Not only could I now not ever use that stall for fear of someone staring at my Kiester Kaiser but I can’t use the urinal either, because I don’t want to accidentally catch a glimpse of some poor sap’s Crapper Capper.


I didn’t think it was possible to make this restroom, in which the only way to tell if someone is in the handicapped stall is to go up to the door and try to pull it open, any worse, but this did it.


So at my desk, productivity has sagged, morale has plummeted and no one dares come talk to me about anything.


It’s been a rough couple of weeks.


So what happened to make me suddenly less self conscience about letting random coworkers sneak a peek at the Hairy Hills?


I got an iPod Touch.


You guys can stare at the Back Nine at the Manly Meadows all you want. I’ve got Birds to make less Angry.


Geek on. I guess. I’m not actually sure if I still say that.

2012: The year I stopped trying and started lying

Well if you’ve been online at all these last few days you can’t help but have noticed. It’s all over the news. It’s all people have been talking about in the social media. It’s even gotten it’s own Google Doodle.

It’s 2013.

I always find New Year’s to be an interesting time. I’m not quite sure how I should feel about it. On the one hand I like top ten lists and sparkling cider. On the other hand I hate people telling me I should try to lose weight for the next two weeks before giving up and eating Oreos by the stack.

Where the new year has made it’s presence felt the most would have to be my old nemesis: The Grimace.

No wait, I meant Facebook.

Clearly I’ve had too many nemeses.

It seems like everyone has been posting their big 2012 milestones and accomplishments which I suppose is all fine and dandy if you’ve got them.

The problem is, there becomes a time in your life we’re you’ve already done pretty much all the big things you’re gonna do. 

I’m almost 31, I’ve already crossed off most of my planned steps off my list. Last time I checked, all I had left was “Grandkids” “Punch a celebrity” and “Die”.

But rather than what I’ve done the last two years and just wallow in self pity, this year I’m going to be more proactive.

I’m going to lie.

Facebook friends don’t know what’s actually going on in your life. If they did, they’d be real friends. So you can tell them you did whatever you want. What are they going to do? Not thumbs up your picture of dinner on St. Patrick’s Day?

So here’s a brief list of what I accomplished this year, in no particular order.

Learned four new languages: Korean, Persian, Tagalog and Proper English.

Read the whole Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Crime and Punishment, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Necronomicon and Freakonomics.

Invested in a large number of successful stocks, the best performing of which was my neighbor kid’s lemonade stand.

Invented, trained for and successfully ran a tiger marathon where you run 26.2 miles with a tiger chasing you.

Built the largest tree house on the moon.

Kicked a moose

Burped the alphabet.

Phew, what a year. 

Hey that worked, I feel better about myself already.

Bring it on 2013. I’ve totally got this.