School Days, School Days

By writing this, I risk sounding like any upper generation person starting of "back in my day..." However, it baffles me, and I think it has more to do with where I live now, rather than anything generational.

On Thursday, I woke up, and turned on the local news like any other day. It was about 6:00 - 6:15am. Any way, I knew the forcast was calling for snow, and a decent amount - 6 - 8 inches. Lying in bed I see the school closings scrolling across the bottom of the screen, and they had numerour "weather updates;" where the storm is, show the Doppler radar, when are we getting it, it's snowing right now! So I peek out the window.... nothing. I see no flakes and no indication that flakes were there overnight. All morning from the moment I woke up to the snowless ride in the car, I hear about this snow.

While at work, I do not have a window in my office, so I went to my bosses office to check on the snow. It had finally started snowing around 11:00 - 11:30am, and it wasn't very hard. Nothing was sticking. The roads were just getting wet. It did pick up in a couple hours. But nothing started to effect the roads until about 5:00pm.

In West Virginia, where I went to grade school, there had to be tons of snow for school to get called off. I remember days, when it was prediced that we would get a foot or so, and if it hadn't started by the time we had to catch the bus, we were on our way to school. Occasionally, they would turn around and let school out early. But we always seemed to make the attempt. One time, my father was tking me to school in a horrible snow storm and coming down a hill we slid and hit a curb. By the time we had gotten there they called it off, but obvioulsy waited until the last possible minute.

Here, if the forcast says "snow" people shut down as precautionary measures. And it's not just the schools. On my way home from work that Thursday, I stopped at a gas station and they had a sign up that they were closing early due to weather. I thought gas stations were open all the time no matter what. Apparently this was not the case. I just find it funny that schools get cancelled based on forecasts. If they had gone to school that day, they would have been fine. School would have been let out long before the snow was effecting anything. And of course, since it started so late - they had to cancel the next day too. I didn't go to the grocery store that night, but I bet that it was full of overreacters stocking up for being snowed in by the daunting 6 inches of snow.

I have to admit that there is a level of jealousy involved too. Do you know how many days off I would have had if my school district had the same philosophy! I want my office to adopt it too. "Hey it might snow tomorrow, so just stay home."

If I think about it, it mirrors the reaction of the people as they are driving. Like I said previously - people freak out; overreact. On some level I would like to say that this will ultimately effect the work ethic of our youth, making them think it's okay to not try if things might get hard. But I don't think it will have that large of an effect.

I just want a day off for free too.

Where is the line drawn?

All this week... maybe two; I have heard about nothing but steroids on Sports Talk radio. Should records stand? Should awards be taken away? Who knows?

I know I don't.

I do know that technology evolves. And games evolve. It's the source of stupid rankings. But you can read what I think about that below. Anyway, there is the saying that "records were made to be broken." By steroids? What about other technology? Take football. If a wide reciever breaks the record for catches, do people look to see if the receiver wore the tackified gloves? Isn't that an advantage? How much does it help? I know receivers 20 years ago did not have them, so should they get the record? Of course.

Peyton Manning broke the record for touchdown passes. He plays in Indianapolis that has a domed field. Is that an advantage? How much? How many TD passes would he have thrown if he didn't play at least half of his games indoors? Should he get the record?

Today's athletes enjoy the fruits of technology, whether it be custom shoes as opposed to Chuck Taylor's, better rehab through medical technology, better equipment, better everything. Once upon a time there was some talk about aluminum bats in professional baseball. The consensus is making use of these things is not cheating. Even though not eveyone does take advantage of these things. Not all receivers where gloves.

So I guess it comes down to what is legal, and what isn't. And that's where it gets tricky, Leagues draw certain lines about what can and cannot be done. People talk about the "integrity of the game" and what not, when the game changes. The 3-point shot, the play clock, no contact rule, no standardized size for baseball parks, and the list goes on. I'm not saying that steroids is not cheating. It very much is. What I am saying is that there is some level of hypocracy in condeming Home Runs yeilded by steroids and turing around and praising the long drives of a golfer who is using the latest Bertha driver that adds 'X' amount of yards to a drive. There's a difference. One the body is juiced, the other the intrument is.

I don't know where the line is drawn...

All I know is that if it weren't for technology, no one would be reading this right now. Not that I'm breaking records or winning awards...

"Ross" Moments

When watching television, at times, I have what I'd like to call "Ross" Moments. Let me explain. On the show Friends, Ross - at some point - went from the 'straight man' to a guy that was blundering. Sometimes, he would do things that I could see coming from a mile away and I just could not bring my self to watch because he was going to embarrass himself so badly. For instance - there was an episode where Denise Richards guest starred as Ross' cousin. She started off staying with Chandler and Monica, but since Chandler could not help ogling her - she decided to stay with Ross. Near the end Ross puts a move on her. This girl who is supposed to be his cousin. Ugh. I could not watch. Then there was the time when he was wearing leather pants on a date and started sweating in them. He goes to the bathroom to cool off by pulling them down. Then - with Joey's advice - proceeds to put lotion, and baby powder on his legs to try to get the pants back on. Ack.

So... from now on when I feel sooo embarrassed for someone on TV that I can't watch, I refer to it as a "Ross" Moment.

I had one the other night while watching The Apprentice. The two teams were tasked with creating a commercial for a body wash. One team decided to have a homosexual innuendo. Now, the portion I had a promblem with was not the homosexual portion, but the overtness of the innuendo itself - involving a guy and a woman with a cucumber. For a national TV add, this was embarrassing. The other team had a decent concept but the execution of it was embarrassing. They had marathoners and one - te get refreshed - uses the body wash. Everything from the set to the actors were over-the-top cheesy. And not close to nathional advertising standards, and therefore embarrassing to me when they went to present. I could not watch either of them. I hid my eyes, and shyed away. They made me uncomfortable and, really, embarrassed for them.

As the evaluator pointed out, both commercials sucked and both teams were brought into the board room when the Trumpmeister was not a happy camper. He watched the commercials (again I averted my eyes) and concurred that both of them were horrible. The best way I can describe how I felt is this: It's like when you are younger and staying at a friend's house. During the course of that stay, the friend gets in trouble by their parents. They begin to get yelled at for whatever reason and you are left to watch, not knowing what to do. Should you leave? Pretend it's nothing? Watch? Look away? Very uncomfortable.

And that's how a "Ross" Moment makes me feel. Embarrassing people on TV is more commonplace anymore. Especially on 'reality' shows. And that makes it worse for me, because it's not scripted.

But I will tune in next week.

Rankings...

Ahhhhh... rankings. Everyone wants to know where everyone stands.

I don't know if I could be more tired of rankings. There are rankings fron VH1 on the biggest songs ever, and the worst songs ever, and rankings of big moments in 2004.

Now, everyone wants to rank the Patriots in terms of the greatest teams. Are they number 1? 2? 3? In the top 10? Who cares? Really? Some say "oh they would have beaten the Steelers of the 70's." Or, "Oh they would have beaten the 49ers of the 80's." Does it matter? Do people want to do this simply to open the debate? I think so.

People are to concerned where things rank in temrs of all time. And that's just a ludicrous thing to do. The Patriots are good. They have won 3 of the last 4 Super Bowls... so who cares if they could beat the Packers of the 60's? They don't have to play them. But, still.... everybody seems concerned with where people rank.

How does one determine that? How do you 'rank' one song above another? How do you rank an embarassing moment over another? "Well, Uncle Frank getting hit in the jewels at his wedding is more embarrassing than Aunt Jean showing her ass and getting drunk at the family reunion." Is it that important to stack moments like this? I'm not sure of the difference, and I can't understand why people can't appreciate what they have right in front of them.

I wish I had the criteria for the "sexiest man alive," or the "biggest moment in 2004." I think the "Today" show is having a vote on the greatest American. They will end up voting between President Bush, Clinton, Toby Keith, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Nancy Reagan, Lindsy Lohan... when I would wager that the greates American is no one famous, but is in Iraq or Afganistan right now in the heat putting his life on the line and will never be recognized for it.

It just makes no sense to me. Who gets to vote on these things? What qualifies them to do so? Do they have a special 'ranking' degree? Like I said, people fail to appreciate the accomplishments of a person or a team because they are too concerned with where that person or team 'ranks' among everything all time...EVER

Maybe it's because people want to see the best all time, I don't know. But it seems sad to me. Sad that people can't look at things for what they are in their own era.

Because each era is different. There are different circumstances and and personel and elements. Which ultimately make things impossible to compare teams or people from one decade to the next.

For the record "Ranking people, accomplishments, and/or events" ranks number 6 on my all time pet peeves list :-)