Scott Just Posted This Article

I just discovered I have OCD. Not in the traditional sense like normal abnormal people. I don’t feel the urge to straighten out the disaster on my desk and I don’t wash my hands every three minutes. I do, however, have a crystal meth-like addiction to updating my status on Facebook. My recently acquired iPhone (status: Scott is phoning it in – hahaha) is the technological Purell that makes it all possible no matter where I am.

When I’m not updating my own status, I find myself consumed with checking up on everyone else’s. In fact, when I poked (more on that term later) around, I noticed that more messages are being transmitted on this website than the sum total of communications that happened between when the Phoenicians’ developed the first alphabet (pretty much our current alphabet with the exception of the letter P for reasons nobody understands, which led directly to the First Russian Uprising of 1242 – later renamed the Prussian Uprising, just to stick it in the face of the Teutonic Knights, who defiantly added a silent K to the beginning of their titles because they thought Teutonic Nights sounded too much like a Jenna Jameson movie they had recently rented) – and Al Gore’s invention of greenhouse gas. As an aside, Jack Ray Tompkins, a carnation farmer from Gretna, NE would argue that when his wife Bobbie Anne moved out, he was truly the first to realize the damage that could be done by greenhouse gas (his status: Jack Ray’s greenhouse only seems to fill with gas after he eats broccoli). While Jack Ray considers legal action against Mr. Gore, I’ll get back to my story.

For eons, which are classified as ‘three month increments’ in internet terms, Facebook’s primary users were high school and college students. That has all changed. In fact, while I’m not old by any stretch, a younger coworker of mine named Dayna recently assured me that unless I do something immediate and drastic, I will be the proud owner of a one-way ticket for the short bus to Squaresville. That moment marked my crossing over the social networking event horizon and into a black hole where my parents both registered for Facebook accounts before I did.

As I updated my status for the 11th time today (Scott is writing again), it occurred to me that things have changed a lot since I was in high school. We didn’t have email, text messaging, instant messages, Facebook or Twitter, but our communication methods, while rudimentary, suited us well.

These handy comparison charts illustrate the fundamental differences between today’s popular communication technologies and the caveman-like ways by which we communicated:

Another interesting thing pointed out to me by Dayna is that the popular Facebook ‘poke’ isn’t nearly as innocent as it seems. This discovery has the potential to lead to serious trouble if you go around randomly poking people. Judging strictly by the dozens of people who have poked me, male and female, I’m a pretty popular guy in Facebook territory. By Dayna’s definition, I’m getting more action than Linda Lovelace at Studio 54 in 1977.

I really have grown attached to Facebook, but I think I need to detox. At least until I wake up in the morning. Scott is finally done with this article and is off to bed.

A Really Bright Idea Whose Time Came Too Early

Some ideas sound like a lot of fun to me. Only when it’s too late do I begin to question my sanity and in turn question how I made the complex series of decisions that have gotten me this far in life. This past weekend was no exception.

As the parent of a Cub Scout, I am frequently presented with opportunities to “bond” with my son. My bonding battle cry consists of 50 percent “gung ho” and 50 percent “mercy.”

I’ve never been much for camping. Growing up we never went camping. In fact, growing up we never went anywhere but to my grandparents’ house in Fort Lauderdale. Given that my sister and I had to share a terrace as our sleeping quarters, the annual pilgrimage to the “South” Bronx typically involved as many insects as camping, but with worse ventilation and a greater risk of being force-fed weird fruits like figs (without the cakey Newton covering) and dates, and Metamucil-flavored tea. Not to mention moth balls.

The point is that camping to me is just another form of self-torture. If I have the means to pay for a climate-controlled room with a clean bed and bathroom I don’t have to seriously argue with myself about getting up to visit in the middle of the night, why would I opt for a tent?

Even more torturous was the Cub Scout camping trip we participated in a few months ago. All the families were to meet at the beginning of a 15-mile bike trail to ride as a group to the campsite. This is possibly the worst idea ever developed by modern man. Though the bike trail was considered “level one,” the better part of the group riding the bikes was apparently at a skill and fitness level that could only be properly measured with carefully placed decimal points.

Adding another layer of “bonding” to that experience, we had the pleasure of dragging our sleeping quarters to a flat piece of land and building a shelter to shield us from the night that had arrived a good hour before we did. If there’s anything worse than setting up a tent, it’s doing it by the light of a campfire.

The next morning held even less appeal as I tried to sit back on the bike seat and realized I would be riding the entire 15 miles back to the car while standing fully upright on my pedals. For the record I also held my entire mid-section several inches from the car seat on the drive home.

I thought the Scouts had finally made a decision with parents like me in mind when they planned an overnight trip to the Fort Discovery science museum in Augusta, GA. We would spend the day exploring the museum, sleep among the exhibits and leave after a few classroom sessions the next morning. This idea, it turns out, was about as bad as the bike ride, only with fewer Constitutional freedoms and inalienable rights.

When we arrived, our tour guide “Eddy” began listing the rules for our stay. He verbally rattled off a list of 62 rules (really!) to a group of Cub Scouts that didn’t hear a word he said. Rules 47 and 48 were the ones that troubled me the most. The doors to the museum would be locked at 8:00 PM, and lights out was at 11. I stifled a sudden urge to pick up a poster tube from the gift shop and start yelling “Attica! Attica!” and began to deal with the fact that I would be a prisoner on lockdown inside a fun, interactive science museum surrounded by dozens of children with all the self-control of a toy poodle whose owners just came back from a two week vacation.

I also noticed that Eddy had a commitment problem. He really liked to use the phrase “pretty much,” and he used it in pretty much every single sentence he said:

Me: Can you please point me to the men’s room?
Eddy: It’s pretty much right around the corner behind that statue of Pythagoras.
Me: Who?
Eddy: Pythagoras. He pretty much invented triangles.
Me: Are you sure it's not a theorem designed to measure the length of the hypotenuse in right triangles?
Eddy: Pretty much.

Among the exhibits that demonstrated important scientific principles, like Bernoulli’s and inertia, we found mind-bending technologies like:

• “The digital character recognition device.” We were instructed to write anything we wanted on a piece of paper using our own handwriting, place it into the device and press the start button. The device was connected to a screen that would display an exact digital version of what we had written. This amazing scientific breakthrough was a standard flatbed scanner;
• “Remote facsimile communication device.” You guessed it. A piece of outdated office machinery most offices outside the Third World don’t use anymore; and
• “MagLev train.” This was interesting technology that would have been more compelling had it not been stuck to the track as if it were welded in place.

During our exploration, we came upon the perfect location to set up camp. This exhibit showed how phosphorescence, when exposed to light, made any shadow cast on it stand out. A glow-in-the-dark wall faced a strobe light that flashed every five seconds, and it was the only exhibit fully enclosed with a black curtain to keep the light out. This would be our overnight home.

Beating the rush, we quickly moved our belongings to our private sanctuary and rolled out our sleeping bags, thus making us the envy of all in attendance. It proved a decent choice until the next morning when the museum was powered up (at 7:00 AM!) and we were awoken by a 10,000 watt flashing alarm clock with a five-second snooze reprieve. This, my wife explained, was our penance for claiming the most private refuge in the entire museum.

I can’t say I’m necessarily looking forward to the next big trip, but I’ll go. At this point I know what to expect:

• Any time I am forced to spend a night in a sleeping bag, my kids will refer to me as Mr. Cranky Pants the next day,
• No matter how many times I do it, I will never understand why anyone would go camping unless they are under duress, and
• No amount of begging before these major planned trips will ever get me out of going on them.
• Pretty much.

It’s a Rescue Mission, Technically

After years of building large collections of digital music and picture files, I recently decided it was time to organize it all in a meaningful and remarkably tedious way. Looking back, this is a job that should only be attempted after winning the lottery, eradicating all crime and doing away with world hunger, each of which would be easier and less time-consuming than organizing your digital photos.

Having transferred my iTunes library onto my newly purchased portable hard drive, or “floppy disk” for those of you still donning a beeper, I began the process of moving my photos to a single location. Throughout the process, I looked forward to seeing the pictures I took on a trip to Paris several years ago. Hundreds of CDs and folders later, no France pics.

Well, as it turns out I thought of the last possible place I could have the pictures stored. The laptop I used back then was essentially dead, sitting in my bottom night table drawer. I tried to fire it up last night and see if they were there. As I suspected, it wouldn’t start up. That’s when I took the little mini screwdriver to it and disassembled the entire thing looking for the hard drive. Keep in mind, my technical skills where it relates to computers can be summed up in three words: “on/off switch.”

After removing approximately as many screws as I believe come in a standard space shuttle, I had a pile of random parts, any of which could be the hard drive. Considering all the parts were hard, this was a difficult elimination process. My first step was to rule out anything with blades. The ‘fans’, as we computer geeks call them, resemble a little itty bitty version of one of those old 400 watt box-style fans that my dad used to put in the window on hot days to save money when he was too cheap to put on the air conditioning (note, it was cooler outside than in the family room). So with the fans out of the way, I began to systematically search each individual piece looking for a sticker, a label or a heat stamp marked “hard drive.” Keep in mind, these parts are extremely small. When you get inside one of these things, you begin to realize why they need tender little 6-year-old Chinese hands to assemble them in the first place.

Having located no such markings on any item, I took the next logical step, which was to walk around with the magnifying glass I needed to see the parts and show everyone in the house how big my eye looks when I do “this!” After completing that useful step, I refocused my attention on what I refer to as “The Real Housewives of Orange County” for approximately 42 minutes. Spoiler alert: this show sucks – and Billy should get rid of Quinn before their brains begin to interact and create a dangerous black hole of dumb.

Back at my workstation, I ruled out my next piece of computer – the DVD drive. This was easy to spot given the fact that it had since fallen on the floor and opened to reveal the contents I forgot to remove. As a side note, I’m selling a copy of Fletch Lives on DVD (no box) in case you know of anyone who might be interested. Next, I set all the parts out on the table in size order, starting with the screws measuring about three atoms across and working my way up to the frame of the screen, which only my dog was able to disassemble further.

After laying out every part – minus the two parts I had already discarded – my nine-year-old daughter walked over and asked, “Daddy, isn’t this the hard drive?” I smirked, kind of shook my head a little, and responded, “don’t be silly, honey, I KNOW that’s the hard drive. I’m trying to make sure there are no parts here that need to be recycled.” Another note: the hard drive was attached to a piece of the laptop body that was simply removed with a pressure switch – no need to remove so much as a single screw.

Hard drive in hand, I made my way to Best Buy to find out how the Geek Squad could rescue my files. I suppose I could have simply taken the entire laptop with me and saved a lot of time and aggravation, but then I wouldn’t have gotten to play with the magnifying glass.

Upon my arrival at the store, the clerk at the door insisted on tagging my hard drive (size: 2.5 inches x 3.5 inches – no Jewish jokes, please) for a return. I had to explain that I was gentile (I’m in the Bible Belt, for crying out loud), and that this was not a return, but a job for the Geek Squad. I made my way to the back of the store (where the Jews are forced to go for ‘de-lousing’) and found a geek to talk to. He explained that their fee for any data recovery would START at $99! “$99?!” I exclaimed, tipping my Jewish hand just a tad too much for comfort, in retrospect. “Or you can buy this ‘hard drive enclosure’ for $51.99,” he added, showing me how simple it would be to install my laptop hard drive in it and connect it to my computer with the USB. How those little barcodes connect things to computers I’ll never know.

“$51.99 is a little more than I really wanted to spend on this project,” I explained.

“Well, we do have a pretty liberal return policy; 30 days with a receipt,” he whispered with a wink. Looking at his name tag, I realized he was speaking my language.

“That sounds like a swell idea, Mordechai.”

I took possession of the loaner and made my way back home.

Just a few minutes later I was browsing the files from my dead, and now mutilated laptop. Lo and behold, I found a file folder: “pics to burn on CD.” Empty. After searching further, I located a folder called “work.” A few clicks later and voila… the dog pees on the floor. Several seconds go by and I realize nobody else even knows about it, and it ain’t gonna clean itself up. I get the paper towels, Spot Shot, Clorox wipes, Swiffer and a mop. I know there’s a way these things can work in concert to create cleanliness. I call my daughter, the one who gave me the assist on the locating the hard drive. She runs into the room excited, only to find out that daddy has made a bigger mess out of a puddle of pee and a handful of cleaning products than he made on the kitchen table with the old laptop, which by the way, didn’t need to be disassembled at all to begin with. She took hold of the cleaning process and let me finish the manly task of trying to locate my pictures from Fwonce.

In a flash, I drill down through the work folder ‘Work/Scott/Ruder Finn/Air France/Events/Press Trips/Lacroix/Pictures.’ There it is! Success! A folder full of a couple hundred pictures from the trip to Paris. I quickly copied them to my digital file folder and burned a CD of them just in case.

At that point, I removed the old laptop hard drive from the loaner enclosure, boxed the loaner back up and prepared it for its return from whence it came. The pictures are safe.

Which is more than I can say for Billy. He has no idea that Quinn is ready to have “the talk.”

A Revolution in New York

New York governor Eliot "The Hooker Booker" Spitzer has resigned his post amid a scandal that involves him paying thousands of dollars to several prostitutes for their services. Spitzer claims he didn't inhale.

Lieutenant governor David Paterson will become the state's first black governor and only the third in the nation since Reconstruction. He is legally blind. So much for a vision for the future.

More to come...

How I Bought My Ticket to Hell

I have a few theories about exactly when and where I actually bought my ticket to Hell. Any reasonable and sound person who believes in the supernatural could point to a wide array of things I’ve done in my life to explain my eventual, assured, eternal damnation.

I wasn’t the kind of kid that pulled the legs off spiders or burned ants with magnifying glasses. And I’m not the kind of adult who practices patently criminal pastimes outside the occasional traffic infraction, as evidenced by the summons recently found in my mailbox which featured a few snapshots of my Toyota Prius driving through what was seemingly a red traffic signal. The evidence, including close-ups of my license plate and an actual DNA sample left at the scene, made it difficult for me to argue it wasn’t me driving. Damn revolutionary imaging technology. But the $70 I spent to make that indiscretion go away is nothing compared to what I have to look forward to.

It’s not that I really went out of my way to assure myself a blistering infinity. My life has simply been filled with decisions that needed to be made and hunger that needed to be addressed. Who could blame someone for being decisive and sticking to their guns?

The first such instance was when I became newly-minted intern for iconic local rock station WBAB on Long Island – the youngest on the roster, in fact. I was proud of my unpaid position and saw it as the perfect excuse to leave my family behind on Rosh Hashana, the biggest of the varied Jewish holidays where families gather to feast on bland food and celebrate collective self-loathing and misery.

As it happened, legendary Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora was scheduled to visit WBAB that very day. It’s not so much that I wanted to meet Sambora, but he was my meal ticket to teenage popularity and possible sex with a really hot girl.

Weeks prior to the Sambora Incident, after years of what can only be classified as passive stalking, I finally summoned the courage to convince my friend Brian Clermont to ask out the hot girl from the music booth at the Commack Flea Market for me. When she said yes, I knew I needed to impress. This was, after all, the most sought after girl in all of Commack. Her mane of tall, stiff 80s hair represented the Holy Grail for all male flea market shoppers within a 10-mile radius. Long story short, I told her I was a bigwig with a local music outfit known as the biggest rock radio station on Long Island and promised I’d bring her to meet then next rock star that came through the doors. How can I help it if Sambora was a Goy with no respect for my predicament or my religion? What choice did I have?

More recently, I’ve become acutely aware of my religious heritage. I’m relatively certain that in my beloved town of Loganville, there are more people who have ridden in an actual space shuttle than have drawn a shamus across a line of Hebrew text in a Torah. Now, I define this next issue more as self-preservation than denial of heritage, but eight months into my Bible Belt residency none of my neighbors knows that I’m Jewish yet. Not that I’ve given them any real clues.

For instance, I would bet the house (the one I risked my life to wrap in Christmas lights) that I was the only Jew in town climbing across the roof to ensure that Santa could easily locate us when it came time to pony up with the presents. But that was only after I went with the family to a tree farm, saw in hand, to physically cut down the perfect pine tree so we could put it in our living room and decorate it with all sorts of non-Jewish bric-a-brac.

But the worst of all offenses may be when I attended a pig roast one Yom Kippur, the holiest of all High days in the Jewish faith. Yom Kippur is the Jewish equivalent of confession, only you don’t actually confess your sins to anyone; instead you atone through the majesty of starvation while sitting in a crowded temple all day with a bunch of other starving Semites. When the hunger hallucinations begin, the Rabbi might begin to take the shape of a raw porterhouse steak with legs, like on Tom and Jerry. In the hours before sundown, when you are legally allowed to eat again, delirium has set in, making matzo seem like a viable food option. But I digress….

One fateful year, when I was about 20 years old, my friend Tony was attending college and invited me to the aforementioned pig roast at a frat house. Being a passive zealot, I failed to realize that the day of that particular non-kosher pig’s reckoning happened to be the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Considering I had already paid my $20 (non-refundable for those of you keeping score), there was no way I wasn’t going to attend. So as my family wallowed in self-loathing after paying ten times as much for temple tickets, I ate pork directly off a swine carcass on a spit.

At this point it’s all academic for me. If sex, drugs and rock and roll aren’t enough to make me Mr. Applegate’s new Lola, turning a blind eye toward my religion is sure to do the trick.

But religion has a funny way of getting even. Case in point: the flea market girl never answered my calls again after Richie Sambora outed me as an unpaid member of the hangers-on club of Long Island; it wasn’t until after the Christmas lights were hung that I realized only about half the strands worked; and I got food poisoning from the undercooked fraternity pig.

So maybe Hell is really delivered in small doses immediately following religious infractions. Not that it matters. In my eight months here the only religious practice I’ve followed is yelling “Jesus Christ” and flipping the bird to what have to collectively be the worst drivers in the world.

If He Says It’s 150 Inches, He May Not Be Lying

Every year there is one place every consumer wants to be but few have the opportunity: freezing on a line outside Best Buy to see if they will have a Nintendo Wii so their kids can be less disappointed about what they didn’t get on Christmas morning.

A scant few weeks later, the electronics industry takes over in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (a.k.a. Bill Gates’ platform to inflate his ego only slightly less than his checkbook). Here is where they unveil new products of all shapes and sizes that cost more than most of the people talking about them make in a year. Among other things, here is where you will see the next game system consumers won’t be able to find in stores for at least 26 months.

In order to gain admission to this extravaganza of over-hyped and ultra-expensive gadgets and gizmos, you must meet strict requirements, which solely include breathing. I was lucky enough to qualify for credentials along with what seems to be the entire population of the states of Maine, Delaware and South Dakota, including pets.

This was the first time I visited the show, and I’ve learned a few things which may be helpful for those of you out there who plan to attend in the future.

• If your credentials don't arrive in time, the only electronics you will see on day one consist of mobile communication devices attached to the ears of angry would-be show goers complaining to friends, spouses and co-workers about standing in a miles-long line waiting for their passes. As a rule, this line is not designed to move in any way. Considering the town we’re in, many people were disappointed to find that there was no buffet when they got to the front.
  
• Automotive technology, as far as I can see, has advanced at an astonishing rate. For reasons nobody fully understands, every single product is designed in the form of a very hot female. For some reason, these females are always situated in front of some sort of visual device that generally contains a map on a screen.
  
• The sales people, or exhibitionists, at each booth distract from the real purpose of the trade show floor: collecting swag. In fact, there are people who go to the show for the sole purpose of getting corporate branded pens, flashlights and hats from the exhibiting companies. The wheeled suitcases these people drag around the show floor make it easy to spot and trip over them.
  
• Car stereos now come with embedded purple neon lights, thus completing the visible spectrum of colors. Finally.
  
• Televisions are getting larger. Some companies unveiled plasma screens up to 150” in size. Nobody, with the exception of Bill Gates (more on him later), has a wall big enough to handle a screen of this size. Nevertheless, consumers will buy them just to have them. The companies know this, and are appropriately developing a 300-foot screen for next year so consumers can open their own drive-in theaters.
  
• Bill Gates still has way too much money. This fact is evidenced by the size of the Microsoft booth at the show. For reference, the booth is approximately the size of four football fields, if the football fields were each the size of the former polar ice caps.
  
• Speaking of cold, I’m almost certain that Las Vegas is not really located in the Nevada desert, but rather in Nome, Alaska.
  
• Moving about on the show floor requires precision timing and a willingness to ‘go with the flow’, especially when you’re in near an area that’s particularly popular (Las Vegas). Successful navigation is based on your ability to break off from one throng of people and join another moving in a different direction.
  
• Wear comfortable shoes. I do not recommend Bass Elite dress shoes for men.
  
• Small Chinese electronics companies looking to break into the US market will take a small booth at the Consumer Electronics Show. For some reason, every single one of these companies includes the name of the town where they are headquartered in their name. For example: Ying Ho (Shanghai) Electronics. Imagine Micro (Redmond) soft or XM (Washington, DC) Satellite Radio.

These tips should prove useful to anyone who can’t find a way to avoid coming to the Consumer Electronics Show in the future. But before I go, I think it would be a great disservice if I didn’t share a few pointers about Las Vegas in general:

• When you land at the airport, you will get your first expensive lesson as you pass the slot machines – and get to the taxis. The beginning fare is somewhere in the double digits and they charge by each 1/11 of a mile (this is totally true). The good thing is that some entrepreneur somewhere is working on finding a way to turn taxi meters into gambling devices.
  
• No matter how short the Strip seems to be, walking the entire thing on foot is an all day affair. And it’s a walk that causes blisters the size of cherry tomatoes on your foot.
  
• Vegas shows, like any of the 77 different versions of Cirque du Soleil in town, will run you approximately two months’ salary. Taking your girlfriend out to one of these shows legally qualifies you to become engaged.
  
• Slot machines still don’t pay out much in the way of profits. If you’re looking to walk away with money from a machine in the casino, I recommend the ones marked ATM. They’re not nearly as glitzy and exciting, but they have the best payout percentage in the casino.
  
• The Wynn is one of the nicest new casinos on the strip. Given its ultra-elite status, Steve Wynn is considering charging a cover just to get in. Keep this in mind when you walk by the small, seedy gambling halls as you look for a nice place to play.
  
• Las Vegas is, according to the map people, in the middle of a desert. You wouldn’t know this by the millions of gallons of water you will see in fountains, Venetian canals and mirages in front of every hotel. Georgia governor Sonny Perdue should consider building casinos all over the state in order to solve its current drought issues.

All these tips are designed to help you plan your trip to Las Vegas and future trade shows held at the opulent Las Vegas Convention Center. The best thing I can do for the public is to share these tips with my readers in hopes that you will someday do what I did and skip the mortgage for three months prior to coming out.

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.

The Secret of Homeowner Debt Explained

I have been a homeowner for about four months now. I intentionally joined the ranks of the literally dozens of other happy homeowners across the United States, but I’m also beginning to understand how a perfectly content homeowner can quickly turn jaded and miserable. We’ve dealt with more than our share of surprises since moving in: the heater blew: $1,000; leaky tub: $650; new springs for the garage door: $275; new caulk for the ashram: what exactly is an ashram, and why does it need caulk?

The first time I saw the house that ultimately became mine I nearly fainted. I attribute this to a combination of the house's natural beauty, the excessively hot temperature outside and the blow dart in my neck. It seems the guy who lives across the street bought some “toys” for his kids on a recent business trip to Namibia. Having traveled for work myself, I made a habit of bringing home local knick knacks for the kids, but I question whether poisonous darts make good gifts. Kids will... use..... theeese..... oibnwarvrl.leaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Sorry - blacked out there. So anyway, after seeing the house, I knew it was “The One.” Real estate agents know when they're taking you to The One. They spend all that time showing you dozens of surprisingly decorated houses that make you wonder whether the current owners are visually impaired, and question their motives where it relates to what qualifies as presentable.

Working closely with the existing owners of The One – all of whom are played by local out of work actors – they make sure that everything is in order, that the house looks perfect and that the colonies of insects living within the walls of the house are properly wrangled and fed.

When my agent brought me to The One, I knew it immediately. As soon as I walked in, I felt at home. The open floor plan was exactly what we had been looking for; the kitchen was fully updated with stainless steel appliances that would sit idle, but would look pretty, until we sell; the huge yard gave me no indication that it would work in concert with my finicky ride-on lawnmower to ultimately become my biggest nemesis. This was definitely it.

The first night in the house was great, assuming you don't mind desert-like heat and a complete lack of furniture. The central air conditioning system, which was invented for the sole purpose of breaking down on oppressively hot days, was unwilling to cooperate with the simplest of commands.

Me: Set temp to 74.
Air conditioner: No.
Me: Set temp and hold at 74.
Air conditioner: No.
Me, getting really agitated: (click, click, click, click) Set temp to 60.
Air conditioner: Listen, dude. You're the new guy here. Why don't you go find a floor to sleep on and leave me alone?

This led to my very first service call as a homeowner… to the air conditioner repairman who kindly only charged me double for coming out for an emergency appointment on a Saturday night. He explained that while he technically knew what was wrong, I would have to pay an additional $1,000 in order to properly fix the unit. That was a relief considering we were just in the process of endangering our own lives by setting all our extra money on fire.

Fast forward two weeks. If you do not yet own a house, take note: The ‘American Dream’ is not a term meant for the actual home owner. If you want a good taste of the American Dream, I encourage you to get a job servicing any of the million things that will go wrong in some new unsuspecting homeowner’s house.

In the two weeks following our closing, I contributed more to the state’s revenue stream, by way of the Georgia contracting community, than the combined value of every Van Gogh painting ever sold at auction. This phenomenon clearly explains why new homeowners typically find themselves in the most debt they will ever be in. It’s like a homeowner hazing ritual designed and perfected by real estate agents, the contracting community and credit card companies.

Worst of all, it’s perfectly legal. As I read back through the hundreds of papers I had to sign at the closing, I found a paper headlined “Ha Ha, You Idiot!” that details a requirement on my part to single-handedly employ at least half the population of the City of Atlanta, including suburbs, for a minimum of 14 months, but not to exceed greater than half the net value of the assets of the electorate, based on the accrual method of accounting. Since nobody has ever taken the time to actually read every single document at a closing, lawyers have a long-running joke about slipping in insane documents like this one that are perfectly legal and binding once you sign them.

We’ve finally worked through the pain of actually becoming homeowners and we’ve accepted that the dozens of contractors we have employed will be part of our lives for the long-term. With every mortgage payment we make, we realize that for every penny we build in equity, some random contractor will earn two, courtesy of the Merritts.

Now we just have to learn to deal with neighbors. Speaking of which, does anyone know of a good antidote for Namibian blow dart poison?

Legal White Powder Found in Atlanta

Where I used to live in New York, snow was a welcome addition to the dreariness of winter. For about five minutes. That’s about how long it took for all the frolicking adults to realize it was the start of months of shoveling, skidding across multiple lanes of traffic (note, this particular problem is not limited to snow and ice on Long Island), dodging wayward snowballs, and constantly chasing after smaller kids and trying to explain why they shouldn’t eat yellow snow.

One of the reasons we chose Atlanta as our new home is that it doesn’t really get any snow. Until now. As soon as we arrived, someone came up with the novel idea – an idea so crazy it’s a miracle Ted Turner isn’t involved – of covering a giant hill at Stone Mountain Park (named after native Georgian Civil War General Stone M. Park) with the powdery white stuff. After taking measurements, officials decided using snow would be easier and “slightly more legal.” Thus Coca-Cola’s Snow Mountain was born.

I’m not one to brag about my foresight, considering I haven’t had any since I was a seven days old (shout out to Rabbi Yehoshua Krohn!), but it seems obvious to me that this plan was flawed from the start.

For one, I loosely understand the physics of ground temperature and snowfall (no I don’t), and I’m familiar with what constitutes cold enough weather to sustain snow outdoors (it has to be really, really cold). Okay, I’m not even sure the rules are considered part of physics – they may be calculus or pharmacology, but the point is that according to the most recent Farmer’s Almanac, “Not only does Atlanta get maybe a dusting of snow at a time, if that… the city shuts down like a bathroom after Rosie O’Donnell stops in for a number two when any trace of snow is in the forecast, so everyone can go to Publix to get milk and bread.”

In order to create this winter wonderland in the heat of the Bible Belt, organizers imported a battalion of snow-making machines – the same kind you’d find on a mountain in Vermont or New Hampshire during the ski season, which generally comprises fall, winter, spring and most of summer. They do not use these machines during the two weeks known locally as ‘Quick: we can swim’ when temperatures are likely to reach as high as 62 degrees.

The blowers were fired up on October 2, which happened to be the same day that Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue declared October "Take a Shorter Shower" month due to the current drought. He also suggested not running the water while brushing your teeth, but that one seems to be pretty well covered already here in Georgia. According to statistics, the average person can save between three and seven gallons of water by skipping their legs below the knees while taking a shower. Over the course of a year that amounts to more than 2,000 gallons – which can be used by Pepsi, Coca-Cola’s biggest competitor, to fill 12,810 sport bottles of Aquafina water.

In spite of the drought, the snow machines were firing full-fledged snow, which when mixed with the 80 degree weather that day turned into full-fledged water before hitting the ground at a rate of 38 gallons per minute, in effect creating the world’s most elaborate lawn sprinkler system.

Finally bowing to the public outrage of wasting a total of 1.2 million gallons of water as the community deals with a drought of epic proportions, the park has decided to halt its lawn-watering program. Displaying a profound understanding of the situation, Stone Mountain Park’s public relations manager Christine Parker said, “We've already sold tickets, and we can't just stop. That would be like a water park just deciding to turn off the faucets.” (Humor writing is easy when you have quotes like this to work with.)

After paying the equivalent of the combined annual tourism revenue of the entire Caribbean to promote Snow Mountain, Coca-Cola publicly endorsed the decision to call it off. In related news, Stone Mountain Park is in sponsorship talks with other soft drink companies.

Now disappointed children across the Atlanta region will be forced to wonder what getting snow caked under your shirt collar, head first at a high rate of speed feels like and they’ll never know the joy in getting knocked over by a snow-tuber who has gone astray as they try to climb back up the hillside in the slippery snow, but they will always remember the time when politics got in the way of a good time, thanks to Governor Sonny Perdue – a man who wasn’t chicken to say what he felt. (Come on, how can I let a name like this slip by twice without saying anything?)

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.