Say "Aww S**t"

So instead of being on the beach today, I’m sitting here on my sofa wasting away on my computer. Why? Because I just recently had to have one of my wisdom teeth pulled, and per doctors orders I am stuck at home mumbling and drooling on myself even more than usual. Of course I pulled my first two wisdom teeth when I was in eighth grade, so it’s not like this is a new experience for me; but it doesn’t make it any more fun. As with many things in my life, I blame it on my dentist.

Now it’s nothing personal against dentists, but I hate them. There may be no activity in the world that I hate more than visits to the dentist (at least that doesn’t involve dysentery and/or the Jonas Brothers). At least with doctors, you go in when you see something is clearly wrong with you, such as your foot is facing the wrong direction or there’s a knife sticking out of your stomach. But with dentists, you have to go every six months so they can find something wrong with you. Oh and trust me, they will find something wrong with you. By golly, they didn’t pay all that money for grad school just so you could waltz out of there with no problems they could charge you ridiculous amounts of money to fix. They have to pay off all those grad school debts after all.

So the first thing they do is lean you back in a chair and shine a ridiculously irritating light in your face. You half expect Dick Cheney to show up with a bucket of water and a cattle prod. Then they grab everything they can get their hands on and shove it in your mouth. I bet they have bets in the back room on who can get the most and weirdest things into patients mouths. “Hey, did you hear Bob actually managed to put a putter and a shotgun in that kid’s mouth?” I particularly hate this part, because I don’t like people sticking things in my mouth. (You can give yourself a pat on the bat now for all the “she said jokes” you’ve just made.) Although to be honest, there are times when I feel sorry for them. I mean, mouths are disgusting places; I wouldn’t look in my mouth knowing all the things I’ve put in there. (Really? Again with the “she said?” If there was any other way to say this I would).

Anyways, they will then proceed to lecture you on the importance of flossing. If you were to listen to dentists, flossing would solve all of the world’s problems, including war and famine. Even though I don’t know any normal people that floss regularly (then again, I can’t say with any certainty I know any normal people period). Now I’ve been lucky enough to have pretty healthy teeth for most of my life, no braces and only a few cavities. But I just recently switched dentists, and apparently this guy has a very large grad school debt, because he was intent on finding things wrong with my mouth. They took out this thing they call a cavitron, which sounds more like a character from Transformers than something I would want to stick in my mouth. Speaking of characters from Transformers I would want to stick in my mouth, all of the critics need to stop criticizing Transformers 2 and Megan Fox. There was clearly a plot (robots fighting, Megan Fox, robots fighting, Megan Fox, guns) and character development (for instance, Megan Fox changed outfits several times).

Okay sorry, back to the point. My visit was almost over and I thought I was actually going to get out without something wrong with my teeth. I am clearly an idiot. Because my doctor said that I needed to remove another wisdom tooth, and frowned at my x-ray to show his level of concern. Having had multiple wisdom tooth surgeries, I still do not understand the whole concept. Apparently humans are filled with numerous body parts that we don’t actually need: appendixes, spleens, brains, etc. For some reason, we also have an extra pair of molars which we apparently evolved in order to eat trees. Or something like that; I could be mistaken with beavers. But apparently we stopped eating whatever we were eating because we stopped needing our third molars. So when these third molars come down from your brain or wherever teeth come from, they start messing up things in your jaw. But this is the part that still confuses me: not everyone has them. I’ve talked to people who have never had their wisdoms pulled, while others have all four pulled. For instance, the dentist said that my fourth tooth will probably never drop down so I don’t have to remove it. This concerns me, because that means it could be anywhere. For all I know I have a large hostile molar drifting around my brain, and one day I’m going to be talking and this tooth is going to stab my brain and I’m going to start seizing randomly.

So needless to say, I was a bit mad when I went in yesterday to have my surgery. Of course, it’s not the surgery I hate. The surgery in fact is awesome, thanks to the miracle of sedation. I just remember getting injected and the next thing I knew I was sitting on my couch at home feeling way happier than I should have considering there was a large bleeding hole in my mouth. It’s the recovery that isn’t too fun. First off, there is the aforementioned large bleeding hole in your mouth. You ever wonder why vampires are always so mean? It’s because blood does not taste good. And of course, that is all you will taste, because your dentist gives you a list of things that you can’t eat after surgery, which leaves you eating pudding for the next three days. They also told me to avoid strenuous activity, but that’s a personal policy I adhere to at all times anyway. On a positive note, they give you the tooth. I’m going to put it under my pillow and see what the tooth fairy gives me for it. I hope it’s a lot of money, because I needed the sedation mainly to deal with the bill.

Save the Fur Coats

I am ashamed to say that while I’ve been in Hawaii, I haven’t really kept up with the goings-on in my adopted state of Colorado aside from hearing that a bunch of tornadoes landed there. So you can imagine my excitement when I read that Colorado has seen a dramatic increase in the birth of baby lynx. Okay, so I actually couldn’t care less about lynx. I care more about the recent National Hockey League’s draft than I do lynx, and I really do not care about the NHL’s draft. I didn’t even watch the draft and I know what happened: some team in Canada or something drafted some Russian guy with five teeth and one eyebrow and seven z’s in his name.

Anyway, I figured I should find out why lynx being born were such a big deal. I mean, something has to be a pretty big deal to get news coverage during the same week Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Billy Mays die, right? (In all seriousness though, I am truly saddened by the King of Pop’s passing. The guy may have grown up to be a perverted albino elf, but I count the “Thriller” album as the third greatest invention behind the wheel and TV. Whenever I dance in my room to “Wanna Be Startin’ Something,” I will miss him.) Getting back on topic, a lynx apparently is a bobcat with pointier ears, and they are supposedly an endangered species. This of course means that lynx have more laws protecting them than the Pope and that PETA has their conniving little minds involved. I’m sure they threw themselves extravagant “Save the Lynx” fundraisers with champagne so expensive one bottle could have bought an entire ranch for the five remaining lynx in Colorado.

In the meantime, zoos of course are furiously trying to breed more lynx so they can set them loose in the wild, where they of course die. I mean, they are endangered for a reason, right? I was always taught that if a species is dying out, that means it generally sucks at life and according to Charles Darwin they should not breed. Or at least this was the reason my ninth-grade health teacher gave me when he said I should be neutered (true story, he told me that). But never-the-less, here are these zoo keepers furiously trying to breed more lynx. What’s that like anyway? I mean, do they do like an eHarmony thing to find matching lynx? I imagine it would be awkward being forced to have sex with someone you may not even like to ensure the survival of the species, with people watching you no less. That’s a lot of pressure.

But apparently some brave/horny lynx in Colorado have finally accomplished what teen girls are somehow able to do every five minutes: get pregnant. The baby lynx are apparently going to be released into the Colorado wilderness, which concerns me. I for one would rather not have large predatory animals wandering in the Colorado wilderness, especially since nowadays the Colorado wilderness is awfully close to Colorado not-wilderness, which is where I spend a lot of my time. I have enough on my hands trying to dodge hippies and liberals, I don’t need these things to worry about. Why don’t we relocate them to someplace with fewer people and more wide open space, like North Dakota? I’m sure they won’t mind. Here, let’s ask them now: Raise your hands if you don’t mind us putting lynx in your backyards? Let’s see, five hands. Well, for North Dakota that’s more than half the population, so majority rules.

Now don’t get me wrong; I love the outdoors. Just this past week, my old Boy Scout troop went on their annually weekly summer camp, and I drove out to join them for one day. The second I got out into the wilderness away from cars and cell phone reception I felt relaxed. There’s something about sitting around a campfire that puts you at ease. I’ll tell you what that something is: knowing I won’t get eaten by bears. You see, I like the outdoors in Hawaii because the biggest animals running around are chickens. But on the mainland, the outdoors contains large animals that are capable of eating me before I eat them, which is my qualification to be a dangerous animal (which is why I don’t consider snakes dangerous). I remember I once took a trip to Canada and we were trout fishing on a lake. My dad and I were fishing a few hundred feet from the camp site when we smelled the others cooking chicken. The first though I had was “Mmmmm.” But my second thought was “wait, if I can smell this, can’t the bears?” It was the most afraid I have ever been eating food; half of the chicken ended up in my ears because I was always turning my head back and forth just waiting for some large bear or moose to come charging into camp and eat me.

Oh well. It looks like we’re just going to have to deal with these lynx for a little while until some rich person needs a new fur coat. In the meantime, I think the threat of lynx attack should qualify me to be listed as an endangered species and be enrolled in a breeding program. I heard that Megan Fox is also an endangered species…

I Can See Clearly Now

The one thing about going to school on the mainland is that I have to take care of all my medical visits during my short visits back to the islands. That means that my break is often a parade of physicals, teeth cleanings, pap smears, etc. Yesterday I once again found myself reading old issues of National Geographic and watching Discovery Health in the waiting room, this time while waiting for my eye exam. Supposedly you’re supposed to get your eyes checked every year or so, but I was going for an eye exam to get my prescription for new glasses. I play basketball with them, and being as I am a clumsy idiot, I eat it a lot and my glasses have numerous scratches on them from skidding across asphalt courts; as a result my vision is permanently interrupted by about twenty floating white objects. And good vision is very important and always has been, as we can see by bringing back our two cavemen, Wog and Oog.

Wog: What is that thing running towards us? Looks like a mammoth, no wait, maybe a bear. Hmm, should we run?

Oog: Don’t spear it, it could be my mother.

Wog: Okay, but if it is she’s slimmed down AHHH!!! (Wog is eaten by a large moose).

Oog: Mom?

I first figured out I needed glasses in the 8^th grade, particularly in my Algebra class. I would sit there in my sit and squint as hard as I could and try and make out what the teacher had written on the board, devastated that I couldn’t join my classmates on the journey of knowledge. Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. I actually just came in and went to sleep since I knew I couldn’t see what the heck the teacher was putting on the board. My algebra teacher just saw me there making faces at the board and muttering to myself and assumed I was retarded. So finally, I finally decided to get my eyes checked.

First, they check how well you can see without glasses, which means that poster with the big E on it. I’m not sure what that E is for; the doctors never even ask you to read it, they just start at the fifth line. I mean, the thing is huge, and even if you can’t actually see it, everybody knows it’s there. I mean, Stevie Wonder could walk into the room and read that top line. Then of course they tell you to cover your eye with what appears to be some kind of spatula they took out of their kitchen. Once you’re done with that, they put what appear to be fifty-pound metal glasses up against their faces and start to flip different lenses and ask you which one looks better. If you’ve never gone through this, it’s a lot more stressful than it looks. In the beginning, it easy because in lens two makes the words clear while lens one appears to be filled with giant black clouds. But as you go on, the difference becomes so small you have trouble making up your mind and you don’t want to choose the wrong one or else you’re going to be bumping into poles the rest of your life.

After a few routine tests, my optometrist decides he wants to inspect my eye. This is the part where he shines a light five times brighter than the sun and tells you to stare straight at it so he can see any injuries to your eye (aside from the one he’s causing with his light that is). Then it’s time to check your eye pressure, which is always my least favorite part. First off, I admit I’m a little sensitive about putting things near my eye; even eye drops freak me out. I always put the bottle above my eye and try and open my eye, but I always either end up blinking or missing and putting my eye drops down my nose or something (my fear of eye drops is yet another reason I prefer cocaine to marijuana). So for the eye pressure test, of course the first thing the doctor does is put in these numbing eye drops that it makes it feel like your eyelid is covered in road tar. Then he shows you what appears to be a large magic marker with a plastic tip and informs you he is going to poke you in the eye several times. I’m pretty sure if I heard that in normal situations I would cry, but at the moment the road tar in my eye has hardened and my eyelids aren’t working properly.

After all of these tests, the doctor finds that my vision hasn’t changed much. But then he starts talking to me about contacts, which I’ve never worn in my life. As I’ve mentioned before, my fear of putting things in my eye is the main reason, but they just look like a hassle. I’m sure you’ve been around someone with contacts before when they just all of a sudden double over in pain and start screaming and clawing at their eyes because one little fleck of dust got in their contacts. And then of course there’s always that one guy who loses his contacts and makes everybody stop what they are doing and crawl around on the ground looking for them (and of course 70% of the time they are just in the corner of his eye or on his nose or something). Besides, I think my glasses make me look sexy. If you agree with me, I think you might also need to get your eyes checked.

Playing Korean Chicken

So I was surfing the internet yesterday when I read on CNN that North Korea is going to shoot a nuclear missile at Hawaii in early July. Obviously, as a person who is currently in Hawaii, this story concerns me. A lot. On my list of things that concern me at the moment, it is currently third behind what I’m going to eat next and whether or not I should take a nap and just ahead of cockroaches flying into my ear (trust me, if this ever happened to you it would be this high on your list too). But it’s not just me; the entire state of Hawaii is paying close attention to this story. The last time a story concerned everyone in the state this much was when they did a story on how the recession would cause the price of spam to go up. You can tell the seriousness of the issue when the West Hawaii Today’s headline reads “Lakers Continue to Hold Referee’s Wife Hostage.” Oh wait… sorry, that was the sports section. Anyway, trust me, it was the lead story.

Apparently Kim Jong-il finished the “Friends Season Five” DVD his mother got him, because he got bored again and decided to say he was going to blow up America. This is nothing new obviously; Kim Jong-il threatens America so often that his threats are behind “John and Kate Plus Eight” updates on the news (somebody needs to deport that woman to Iceland before her husband and her eight children throw holy water on her and she dissolves). The last time he tried to launch a missile it went about eight feet before the rubber band powering it snapped and it just kind of fell over (further proof Asians should not be allowed to drive anything).

This time North Korea is using a Taepodong-2 missile with a range of 4,000 miles, which is funny since Hawaii is more than 4,500 miles away. My guess is that, like me, Kim Jong-il was not paying attention in that part of class where they teach you how to convert from metric units. But of course it sounds a lot scarier when they say “North Korea threatens to bomb Hawaii” instead of “North Koreans aimlessly send missile into the middle of the ocean somewhere.” And remember, this is all according to Japanese Intelligence. Now, the Japanese are smart and all, but I don’t fully trust intelligence from a country that tells me to set up a VCR by “plug socket wall for best electricity and taste.” Besides, how do I know that Japan isn’t just publishing this story so the Koreans will read it and forget they were actually planning to bomb Japan? My geography is a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure that Japan is a lot closer.

Regardless, the United States has said they have set up a missile defense system. Now, I’m sure this is true, but I’m still nervous because I still don’t really understand how these things work. When I hear “aerial missile defense system” I picture some guy named Earl sitting on his porch with a shotgun looking at the sky with binoculars. I would much rather have something I can see, like a big concrete dome or a giant butterfly net. This whole missile intercept thing sounds like it involves a lot of complex math, which I don’t trust.

All I do know is how everybody in Hawaii will react: they will buy toilet paper. No really, whenever there is some kind of impending natural disaster or emergency situation, people in Hawaii head to Costco to buy toilet paper, rice, and gasoline. Even when it makes no sense. For instance, a couple of years ago there was a big earthquake off the coast of Kona. I’m watching the news and I see reporters in Honolulu standing outside a Costco and there are tons of cars trying to get gas and people walking out of the store with enough toilet paper to TP the entire city. And for those of you geography challenged people, Honolulu is on a completely different island from where the earthquake was. They only felt a few tremors and lost power for a little while. Yet the first thing they think when they lose power is “oh my god I need toilet paper and gas,” even though since toilets and streetlights don’t work during power outages, making both of those items relatively useless. If the city of Honolulu were hit by Hurricane Katrina, all you would see are people floating on rafts of toilet paper holding bags of rice. But then again, I’ve heard stories of people in early Hawaii wiping their asses with Sears magazines (which were shipped to your mailbox for free whether or not you wanted them), so I can see how these people have come to hold toilet paper very near and dear to their hearts.

So anyway, I hope that North Korea won’t act on this threat, because as I’ve just told you, we are definitely not ready for it. If we suddenly heard that the missile was incoming, we would all rush to hide in our basements before we realize that nobody in Hawaii has basements. At least on the mainland people have those storm shelters installed. In Hawaii, people just go the Ace Hardware and nail plywood to their windows and duck tape their doors. Odds are that when the bomb went off, half the population would be on the road trying to fill in gas. I personally will probably just stay at home. Of course, with the speed that news reaches Kona, I’ll have to read the paper on July 5^th to find out Kona’s been wiped out by a nuke. Speaking of wiped out, I’ll probably have to save the newspaper, because they were sold out of toilet paper.

The Life of the Rich and Retarded

I’m sure you’re like most people; you think that your life is full of problems. Well you need to just suck it up, because according to Jessica Biel, you don’t know anything about problems until you have been saddled with the greatest burden of all: being really hot. I mean next to that, all of your problems seem pretty insignificant right? I bet now you just feel like such an ungrateful brat, taking your ugliness for granted.

All joking aside, as a fellow hot person I can empathize with Biel. Okay, yeah, that was still a joke. Now I promise I’m done joking around. Apparently Biel recently said that being pretty was a disadvantage during a recent interview with a women’s magazine. (Hey, this is a bit of a tangent, but have you ever wondered why men’s magazines have scantily clad women, but women’s magazines also have scantily clad women? It shows you how disgusting women think we men really are; the entire female population would probably be lesbians if they ever figured out how to have children without men involved.) Anyway, the magazine asked her something along the lines of “Are your good looks a disadvantage for an actress?” to which she answered yes.

Now before we all over-react and call her an airheaded bimbo, let’s take a moment to see where Jessica is coming from and try and see her point of view … Okay that was long enough; Jessica Biel is an airheaded bimbo. Unfortunately, this is the type of thing that happens when you are famous. Normally when people say retarded things, the two or three people that still hang out with them just nod their heads and sigh (I’m a great example). But when these retarded people become famous, every little dumb thing that they say turns into a headline story. This in turn gives other retarded people the opportunity to show how retarded they are by talking about the retarded things that retarded celebrities do. How else do you explain the entire VH1 channel? For every retard that is famous for no reason (Paris Hilton) there is a retard that is famous for talking about retards who are famous for no reason (Perez Hilton). It depresses me watching shows with these celebrity analysts knowing I will have to work hard for the rest of my life to pay for electricity while they are on TV for knowing what Sarah Jessica Parker does with her toenail clippings (I heard she eats them).

If you want to get really depressed you should watch this one show they have on VH1 that is entirely about how much celebrities spend on themselves. You always knew that celebrities spend a lot of money, but just in case you wanted an exact number, this show is for you. Now I would be mad enough finding out that these celebrities spent millions of dollars useful things like cars, mansions, cocaine, African orphans, etc. But you watch these shows and they talk about celebrities who spend millions of dollars on toilet paper because they only use the even numbered sheets in a roll.

So this of course got me to thinking about what I would do if I for some reason became famous and fabulously wealthy. I have a feeling I wouldn’t make a very good rich person, because the first thing that I thought of getting for my mansion was a riding lawnmower and a urinal. (Why do you never see urinals in houses? They are so much easier.) But this past week I went to a beach house for my friend’s birthday party and I now know what I want with all my money. This house was right on the beach and had a bench, four lawn chairs and three hammocks. I guarantee that if I lived at this house I would never be up for more than five minutes or move more than ten feet at a time.

Of course I still have no idea how or why I am supposed to become rich and famous, but then again I’m sure that was what everyone said about Shia Labeouf when he was growing up and now he gets to make out with Megan Fox (of course, people are probably still saying that about him). It was around then that I was struck with inspiration from an unexpected source: American Idol finalist Adam Lambert. I was listening to a radio show talking about how he finally came out as gay (if you were one of the people who were somehow surprised by this fact, I bet you would also be surprised to find that water is wet). I was just about change the channel when the announced said something that caught my attention: American Idol would be holding auditions in Denver. And it suddenly was all clear to me: I will become famous by auditioning on American Idol. As all of you who have ever heard me sing can attest, I have a voice like Jim Morrison, or at least what Jim Morrison sounded like while he was overdosing on heroin. But you don’t need any actual singing talent to get famous, just a memorable audition. So who’s with me? I’m thinking of combining the performances of William Hung and the bikini girl while singing the “I Love You” song from Barney.

S-p-e-l-i-n-g S-u-k-s

As a sports fan, I love this time of year. It’s the time of year when I start cheering against the LA Lakers and the Detroit Red Wings and the nation is captivated by America’s Pastime (pretending to like baseball). But don’t forget one of the truly great sporting events of the year: the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Some of you are asking if spelling is a sport. Well, to decide that, I use this rule of thumb: If I can’t do it and it’s on ESPN, it is a sport, so spelling is definitely a sport. For those of you who have never watched the National Spelling Bee, you should stop having a life and watch one. The first one I can remember watching was in Mr. Day’s English class in high school. I don’t really remember why we were watching ESPN instead of doing work, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with several of us claiming it had to do with English and Mr. Day being close to retiring and not really caring at that point.

Anyway, it gets pretty intense. These poor children stand up there in front of this huge crowd with cameras and bright lights in their face and have to spell a word that the officials clearly made up five seconds ago. Most of the kids get this stunned look of fear and confusion; if you’ve ever seen my face while someone is explaining the concept of catheters (I’m assuming here that you haven’t) then you know the face. But it’s embarrassing to just come out and say they have no idea how to spell the word, so they stall by asking questions that clearly have nothing to do with how the word is spelled, like “What is the country of origin?” Often they ask the same question twice. Of course they always ask the judges to use the word in a sentence, but the officials always choose a sentence that doesn’t help you at all, like “Bobby opened a book and saw the word guerdon,” or “Bobby was asked to spell the word guerdon,” or “Hey look! It’s not a guerdon!” Finally, the kid’s time runs out and he tries his best to spell the word but inevitably fails, and the crowd goes “awwww,” and the kid tries their hardest not to cry. And it was always a word that was pronounced simply enough but for some reason (once again, I blame the French) contains way to many b’s, x’s, and h’s. For instance, the word will be pronounced “Ball” but it will be spelled “Bhauxle.”

Of course, some kids manage to somehow get these words right (my guess is steroids). This year’s winner was Kavya Shivashankar, who correctly spelled Laodicean, which is some kind of city in Asia (although I always thought that they couldn’t give you proper nouns; or at least that’s what I contended when I misspelled Tennessee and Connecticut in a middle school spelling bee). For some reason, Indian children tend to be really good at Spelling Bees, probably from all the practice they get trying to spell each other’s names. Last year’s winner was named Sameer Mishra and one of this year’s runner-ups was named Aishwarya Pastapur (but then again, the other runner-up was named Tim). Another thing that all of these children have in common is that they are all from boring little states where there probably aren’t a whole lot of things to do and practicing how to spell words is considered a jolly good time. For instance, kids from Kansas win a lot of these things. Just take a look at the states that the top six spellers this year are from: Kansas, Virginia, two from Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana. If you told me I could either take a month-long road trip to these states or stick my foot in a bucket of live eels the next thing you would see is me running off to Chinatown barefoot.

Needless to say, people in Hawaii rarely have a rooting interest in these things (although I would like to see if Kavya can spell Kaahumanu and Liliuokalani). But this year, one speller, eighth-grader Talmage Nakamoto managed to place eleventh despite being from my hometown and going to the same school system I went to. This of course is a great source of pride in town, which happens every time someone from Konawaena does anything remotely intelligent (which is not as often as you would think of a school system that produced such a super nova of intelligence such as myself). This of course brought back memories of my days as a speller in middle school. Yes, believe it or not, I once tried to compete in our school’s spelling bee, and I, like Talmage, had dreams of competing under the bright lights. Unfortunately, that dream ended when I was unable to spell the first round word, which was (brace yourself): spaghetti. I am completely serious, I didn’t know how to spell spaghetti (actually, I still don’t, but when I just typed it in the red squiggly line appeared under it so I auto-corrected it; I’ve also used auto-correct every time I have used the word unfortunately in this story). Now, my excuse was that I don’t like spaghetti and rarely eat it, but for some reason the judges didn’t care. This whole situation is sad on several levels. For one thing, it shows you what kind of school I went to where “spaghetti” is even in a spelling bee. So obviously, my failure at the spelling bee was just the start of a life-long trend of failing at sports. Which is ironic, since I work as a sports journalist. Kavya may be the National Spelling Bee Champion, but I can spell Wally Szczerbiak from memory.

Final Answer: Just Shoot Me

Even though I am currently on summer break, my sister (who is a sophomore in high school) is still in school. Unfortunately for me, this means I have to drop her off at school in the morning, which means waking up early, something that I generally try to avoid. So now that I’m up in the morning, I’ve resumed an embarrassing habit that I have never told anyone about before: watching Live with Regis and Kelly. What, were you expecting me to say cocaine? Why would I have to wake up early in the morning to use cocaine? Why is cocaine use embarrassing?

Anyway, I love watching that show. Mainly because of Kelly Ripa, who is funny and pretty and for some reason has really muscular arms. Whereas Regis Philbin looks like a sad gerbil. I would probably still watch the show if it was called Live with a Random Hobo and Kelly, or Live with a Trained Monkey and Kelly. Regis just sits there and mumbles on about things that nobody outside of lower New York cares about while Kelly makes funny jokes and looks good. Plus, Regis has the worst taste in sports; I mean he’s a fan of the New York Yankees and Notre Dame football, which are both in my top ten list of sports teams I wouldn’t mind seeing deported to Sweden (along with the Lakers, University of Florida, and the entire National Hockey League).

I realize I may be ragging on Regis here, but I frankly think I am justified. My family used to watch Who Wants to be a Millionaire back when Regis hosted it and to me, deciding who to punch, Regis or the retarded contestant, was harder than the actual questions on the show. I mean, they would get a $1000 question that asked something like “Which of these fruits has seeds on the outside: a) strawberries b) peaches c) potatoes d) Ford F-150s.” And instead of just saying the correct answer (kiwis), the contestant will start to explain what interesting (as in boring to everybody else) event in their sad lives enlightened them to such an earth shattering realization as strawberries having seeds on the outside. It’s like therapy or those stupid ice breakers they always make you do when you go to club conventions. (Has anyone else noticed that when they ask you to name something interesting about yourself, everyone always talks about the bones they’ve broken? You don’t see me talking about my STDs to break the ice, so I don’t care that you once broke your collarbone.) Anyway, once this is done, Regis would ask “final answer?” as many times as possible, as if he were getting paid each time he said it. If one child died every time Regis said “final answer” China could stop drowning baby girls.

Anyway, getting back to my point, which was… er… oh yeah, Regis and Kelly. So anyway, I was watching an episode last week where Regis challenges a 100-year old woman named Emma Hendrickson to a bowling match. Sadly, she did not beat Regis, but she was still impressive none the less. She bowled a 64, which actually is below the average she normally posts in her bowling club. On a good day I can maybe bowl a 55. Since bowling is one of the few things to do at night in Kona, my friends and I used to go bowling a lot in high school, which most people are surprised to find out once they see how badly we suck. We would get our butts kicked in a Special Olympics bowling tournament. A friend and I once failed to break 50… with our scores combined (I had a 33, he had 10). So the fact that this 100-year old woman is still bowling these kinds of scores is inspiring. I would be happy if was peeing without any help at 50, much less still coherent at 100.

But anyway, watching Regis and Kelly along with countless elderly people around the world (the only other people in the world who wake up early) and watching this 100-year-old woman made me start thinking about getting old. I often felt that I would make a great old person. Sitting on a porch wearing adult diapers with a shotgun while farting and scowling freely sounds like something that I could get used to (actually, I already do these things). Also, nobody would tease me when I forget everything and don’t speak proper English. They would say “Aw, look at the old man.” Whereas now they just say “How the hell did you make it into college?” Speaking of college, I think dorm life is great preparation for retirement life. Think about it, we lived with other people our age, ate dinner at 5, anxiously waited for mail, and Jeopardy was a major event in our day. The only things missing were bocce ball tournaments and Viagra parties (well, at least the bocce ball…).

Anyway, I have been inspired by Ms. Hendrickson to live a long and fulfilling life. So I’ve decided that once I retire, I’m going to go on tour doing those eating challenges. You know the ones where if you eat an entire cow’s worth of steak you get it for free and they give you a cheap T-shirt? Those. I also plan to die while doing one of these when I’m 100. I’ll just fall face first into a five-pound steak in the middle of one of my greatest feats, like Houdini. Maybe Regis and Kelly will do a story on me and I will be a Jeopardy clue. And of course Regis Philbin and Alex Trebek will still be hosting these shows. Because evil never dies.