Ig-pay Atin-lay and the Resurgence of a Guy Named Erno

There has been a recent proliferation of events that suggest that the 80s may not quite be over yet. Or enough time has passed that people have forgotten what a colossally bad decade it was. As far as I remember it, the 80s pretty much sucked until some dude with a ridiculously large top hat and the name of a frequently used punctuation mark brought rock n’ roll back from the dead.

Growing up in 1980s Greenlawn, NY, about as far from the San Fernando Valley as is humanly possible, the local girls frequently asked to be gagged with kitchen utensils, they used words like tubular (which coincidentally inspired a musician named Mike Oldfield – later known to the rest of the world as Slash – to compose some ‘tubular’ music I’m sure I’d know if I heard it, and they all wanted to date Nicolas Cage. My point is, for as bad as they were, the fads in the 80s were infectious. Which leads to breaking news in 2007….

“Alpharetta teen takes 2nd at world Rubik's Cube contest.” Or so reported the Atlanta Journal Constitution on October 12. 2007! I can’t fault the newspaper for running this spectacular news, though it has seemingly gotten trapped in a space/time continuum.

For all the ridicule Georgia takes about its level of sophistication, no other state can lay claim to 18-year-old Chattahoochee High School senior Andrew Kang (eat it, Arkansas!). Kang, it was reported, had just returned from the World Rubik's Cube Championship in Budapest, Hungary, where he managed to solve a Rubik’s Cube in 10.88 seconds. In fact, this Apharettan overachiever gets frustrated when it takes him more than 15 seconds to solve the Cube. For reference, I still have an original Rubik’s Cube that was given to me on August 30, 1982. My quickest solve time: 25 years and counting.

About two years into my cube-solving fury, I became enamored of another 80s fad. Everyone within three years of my age wanted to be able to breakdance like Turbo and Ozone in the classically bad movie Breakin’. Well hold onto your backspins, folks: breakdancing is back! A video posted on Newsday’s website documents the grueling 'Breakdancing Battle of the Year' competition held in Braunschweig, Germany this past Saturday night. Not surprisingly, South Korea took the title again with “an athletic display that appeared to defy the laws of gravity.”

I don’t doubt it takes a lot of talent, but shouldn’t this have happened two decades ago? That’s when I was heavily into breakdancing. I was a white, middle-class Long Island kid with no ability whatsoever to dance (though I am still really good at the "White Boy Overbite," a dance move I proudly displayed at a friend’s recent wedding), donning parachute pants and a listening to a cassette tape called Electric Breakdance, which featured such urban rhapsodies as “Jam On It” and “White Lines.”

According to my only black friend at the time, Anthony Burrows, these were the songs with the beats that could get me to move. And because breakdancing required erratic moves, I thought it was right in my wheelhouse. Unfortunately, my moves were considered more eccentric than erratic.

While Greenlawn was no South Bronx, I still managed to do my part in embarrassing myself in front of anyone who would watch. Decked out in my black and gray parachute pants (zippers fully open, drawing attention like a peacock displaying its tail feathers), I invited our paperboy into the house to see me do the world’s fastest backspin after school one day. Using the paperboy as my conduit, I figured word would spread quickly through town once he saw my awesome talent.

I figured that the best way to maximize my spin speed on the hardwood floor was to use a good deck of KEM playing cards… the expensive plastic ones that come in their own hard-shell case. Cards strewn across the living room floor, I proceeded to backspin my way to local stardom, until five seconds later when I began to drift on the surprisingly slick cards and the side of my head slammed into the corner of the coffee table. Danny laughed.

This triumphant injury was trumped only weeks later by my friend Justin Silverstein. While wearing parachute pants and a red-and-black, Michael Jackson "Thriller" leather jacket, he broke his nose while showing the entire neighborhood how well he could do ‘the worm.’

Nevertheless, my plan worked. Danny spread the word about my miracle backspin to everyone. But by the time I was through being grounded for destroying my mom’s good canasta cards, breakdancing was out and big hair was in.

The one thing that I haven’t seen covered in the news yet is the resurgence of Pig Latin. Here in Atlanta, teenagers have suddenly started speaking Pig Latin at an alarming rate. Whenever I find myself near a group of teenagers, I hear them working hard to obfuscate their words to commoners in a tongue that barely qualifies as non-English. If they want to exclude me, they’d do better to speak Standard English with a Southern drawl.

But since I’m now officially a resident of the greater Atlanta region, I might as well do my best to fit in with the local population. I offer the final paragraph of this column to the local teenage set in a language they can understand.

Ow-nay at-thay e-thay eighties-ay are-ay ack-bay, I-ay ully-fay expect-ay it-ay oo-tay e-bay ont-fray age-pay ews-nay en-whay I-ay olve-say y-may ubik’s-Ray ube-Cay. Once-way I’m-ay inished-fay, I’ll-ay imp-pray y-may eanie-Bay aby-Bay ollection-cay, et-gay a-ay acky-Hay ack-Say and-ay ake-may ure-shay y-may ation-stay agon-way is-ay operly-pray outfitted-ay ith-way a-ay iamond-day aped-shay aby-Bay on-ay oard-Bay ign-say. Y’all.

Useless New Crimes Coming Soon to a City Near You

Question: What is the most dangerous crime currently plaguing our nation? If you guessed “terrorism,” you probably spend too much time in front of the TV, reading newspapers or breathing. You need to wipe the crumbs off your chest, get in the car and drive straight to the nearest house of worship, because right now you don’t have a prayer. The most dangerous crime today, at least in the forward-thinking and open-minded metropolis of Atlanta is… you guessed it: baggy pants.

Atlanta used to be a town with plenty of social problems like homelessness and poverty, and the crime that goes along with them. It also used to have a traffic congestion problem due to the highway infrastructure that became outdated slightly before the invention of the Conestoga wagon. But that’s all history now.

A city council edict in 2006 ruled that homelessness and poverty would officially be called ‘cultural gems’ in Atlanta, thereby putting an end to the problematic aspect. And traffic ceased to be a problem when urban planner Harold Morland spilled his coffee on the only existing copy of the latest traffic study - just before he was to present it to the traffic board and instead diverted attention by somehow managing to get OJ Simpson arrested again.

If you’re any kind of American, you’re probably wondering why parachute pants weren’t banned back in the 80s. Well, smarty-pants (ZING!), it turns out that native Atlantan and Atlanta City Councilman Clarence "CT (because the M doesn’t work on my keyboard)" Martin, the person responsible for thinking up the baggy pants ordinance, was too busy inventing the “Youthmobile,” a fleet of innovative vehicles designed to jam up the city’s traffic even worse than before.

Councilman Martin said he's tired of seeing “these young whippersnappers” wearing their pants down around their knees. His ordinance would make exposed underwear and sex in public equivalent offenses. I hate to agree, so I won't. When you think about it, you realize that these two offenses truly are nothing alike. Going out on a limb, Martin shocked the city by alleging that, "It kind of doesn't make sense. It is hard for people to walk."

Case in point: according to a story in the New Orleans Times Picayune, a 16-year-old Louisiana kid decided to go on a robbery spree. He managed to elude authorities on several occasions, but was finally caught only after his baggy pants fell down - which caused him to stumble and fall as officers chased him. I think the moral of this story is obvious: if you don’t wear baggy pants and you are a criminal, New Orleans is where you want to be.

Breaking new ground for Georgia, Councilman Clarence “The Cactus” Martin is including both sexes in the proposed legislation.

“But Scott,” you must be asking, “Aren’t baggy pants a predominantly male thing?”

To which I reply: That’s why the ordinance also outlaws “whale’s tails” for women. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I’m guessing it has to do with the grotesquely obese.

As the debate drags on endlessly, older residents are forming what is described as a “belt brigade” that could one day patrol the streets to urge kids to pull up their baggy pants. (Brief off-topic reminder: Ted Turner is still the more insane Atlantan, but Clarence “The Enforcer” Martin runs a close second.)

Imagine the choices police would have to make if Councilman Clarence “Product-of-the-Georgia-publick-schol-sistem-and-prowd-of-it” Martin gets his way: An old woman is being mugged in a coffee shop parking lot while an otherwise law-abiding, but baggy-panted, youth is inside purchasing a jubmino double-shot decaf caramel mocha stoccato libretto frappe (cost: $106.88 per gallon). If you’re a cop witnessing all this lawlessness, how do you decide which kind of doughnut you should get?

Silly as it may seem, the baggy pants problem is seemingly reaching epidemic proportions. A quick glance at the news reveals that proposals to ban baggy pants are starting to ride up across the nation. Concerned citizens in fashion Meccas like Mankato, MN, Charleston, WV, Trenton, NJ and Pine Bluff, AR are all seeking similar ordinances.

Support for such a ban is spirited. Johnnie Doctor, Sr., a Miami pastor whose quote I am including simply because I love his name, suggested that Miami consider the baggy-pants ban, saying “who the hell wears pants in Miami, anyway?”

So as the debate rages on, Atlanta's poverty-stricken homeless cease to be poverty-stricken homeless, and the traffic here still remains gridlocked between the hours of 3:30 am and 11:55 pm, Monday through Friday and on alternating weekends, we can all think about how insane you must have to be in order to be a city councilperson.

In the meantime, I’ll be tightening my belt and wearing a red baseball cap. They outlawed blue last week.

Headline Hogs: Atlanta Edition

Every city has something special it’s known for: Seattle has the Space Needle, Starbucks and grunge rock; Chicago has deep dish pizza and Al Capone; New York has celebrities like Regis and the Naked Cowboy; and Atlanta gets stuck with all the social misfit headline hogs.

You name the crazy headline, I guarantee someone from Atlanta is involved – most likely Ted Turner. Ted is one crazy old coot – and Atlanta’s most successful businessman. He is both wealthy beyond imagination and certifiably insane. He has a habit of saying downright ludicrous things such as “Jimmy Carter was a great President”; he launched a campaign to get rid of some harmless fish in a Montana lake just because he wanted different fish in it; and he casually donated $1 billion to the United Nations because “They do good stuff.” But perhaps the most telling insane character trait he possesses is the fact that, according to Wikipedia, he has always had a special place in his heart for professional wrestling.

But Teddy isn’t the only headline hog in Atlanta. Just this week, 44-year-old Atlanta resident Richard Jewell made headlines for his untimely death. Jewell, for those of you who don’t remember, was wrongly accused of planting a bomb in Atlanta’s Olympic park in 1996. Unfortunately for Jewell, Ted Turner’s CNN led the media charge in eviscerating him.

Fortunately, when he was cleared, Turner extended an olive branch to Jewell in the form of two obstructed-view, upper reserved level tickets for any Atlanta Braves weekend day game, played on a Wednesday night, where the starting pitcher is knuckleballer Phil Neikro, who won a team record 23 games in 1967.

Another of our headline hogs stole the spotlight from Julia Roberts to become the first one Americans think of when they hear the term ‘runaway bride.’ Proud Georgian Jennifer Wilbanks is the perennially surprised-looking woman who faked her own disappearance in 2005 just so she wouldn’t have to marry her fiancé, John Mason. Wilbanks said she was “scared to marry John Mason because she is afraid of an imperfect world” - which she would see really, really vividly. Incidentally, Wilbanks was also cast as an understudy in the Gwinnett County Players’ production of ‘The King and I.’ (Zing!)

While no Richard Gere, Mason’s less-than-ravishing Southern looks and questionable sensibilities make you wonder whether her eyes are bigger than his brain. He vowed that he would remain with Wilbanks even after she made national headlines for running from him. Even the Dalai Lama would take a spot in line to beat some sense into this idiot.

Last year, Wilbanks and Mason officially broke up, after which she promptly sued him for $500,000, which includes a share of royalties from a book deal he never would have gotten without her story. If she wins, I just hope she uses the money wisely and hires a plastic surgeon to take her ‘surprised’ facial expression down a few notches to something like ‘really interested.’ As a side note, Ted Turner sued her for “not staying on the lam long enough” and for “robbing CNN of valuable redundant news reports.”

If there’s anything we’ve learned from TV programming over the years, it’s that a good medical thriller sells. Andrew Speaker, a.k.a. the TB guy, is another headline hog that calls Atlanta home. He’s also the target of a smear campaign by Ted Turner for drawing more attention to TB in Atlanta than he ever did with Turner Broadcasting. Speaker, as you may recall, is the newlywed who honeymooned in Europe Jason Bourne-style. He then flew back under the radar and crossed the U.S. border - all the while being infected with tuberculosis (which is widely known to be fairly harmless if you’re already dead).

When he found out about the severity of his illness, Speaker did what any rational person would do: he boarded a pressurized airplane full of people and pretended to be healthy for six hours. He did this because, as he claimed later, he had been fearful of dying if he didn’t return to America. Apparently, Speaker thought that ‘the Al Qaida method’ was infinitely better: Take out a whole airplane full of people instead of just dealing with your insanity by yourself.

After all this drama, it was later discovered that the tuberculosis strain Speaker actually had was just MDR, not XDR, which begs the question: Which satellite radio provider really is the best? I mean, one has Howard Stern, but the other has all the baseball programming. Decisions, decisions….

Now that I have first-hand experience with living and working in Atlanta and dealing with the locals on a regular basis, I’m beginning to understand why this town is such a hotbed of controversial headline hogs. Things are usually so slow and polite here that people, sooner or later, are bound to lose their minds - in the spirit of Michael Douglas in the movie ‘Falling Down.’ Case in point: it took precisely 7 hours and 43 minutes of living here before this transplanted New Yorker dropped his first F-bomb at a four-way stop sign where every polite participant insisted someone else go first. It’s no wonder why Atlanta needs some headline hogs to shake things up a bit.

Clearly, Atlanta is rife with insanity of all sorts. There are plenty of people doing plenty of stupid things here, and there’s no telling who the next big headline hog will be, or when their story will break. But a word of advice to those looking for the notoriety: No matter what you do, be prepared for Ted Turner to be crazier.