Everything is NOT as it Seems

November of 2016 has been nothing if not surreal. Up is down. Black is white. Night is day. Llama is dromedary. Well, maybe the last example isn’t the greatest, but you get the point. Things just don’t feel right.

It is difficult to separate lies from the truth. Everywhere you look you are presented with two different versions of reality. Sometimes you’re not sure what to believe, who to trust, or where to go for good, solid information. With so many different sources, each seemingly with its own agenda, discerning fact from fiction often feels overwhelming.

So what is one to do in this climate of perpetual deception? I believe the trick is to take baby steps. If you try to sift through every topic of importance every day, you will quickly go down a rabbit hole and run the risk of losing your mind, or at the very least, turning your ankle. Get grounded and start slow.

Indeed, I have followed my own advice and uncovered the truth behind an age-old lie. It may not seem like that big of a deal, but as I said, the trick is to start slow. It took meticulous research and hours of hands-on exploration, but in the end I feel confident with the truth I am about to reveal. And the truth is that “Everything Bagels” are nothing more than a lie. Admittedly they are a delicious lie, but they are a lie nonetheless.

When you go into a bagel shop or a store that sells lots of other stuff including bagels, you are often presented with a plethora of options. You can get a plain bagel, a sesame bagel, a poppy seed bagel, a cinnamon raisin bagel, an onion bagel, a blueberry bagel, a sunflower seed bagel, an egg bagel, a chocolate chip bagel, a garlic bagel, a whole wheat bagel, and of course, an everything bagel.

I have always taken the name “Everything Bagel” for granted because, let’s face it, they taste great. When something is amazing, you generally don’t worry yourself with what it is called. But what if what it is called is a lie? Should you stand by idly and let it go unnoticed?

A few months ago while at the grocery store I purchased a package of Everything Bagels. They were sitting next to the packages of cinnamon raisin bagels, which I also happen to enjoy. The next morning as I munched on my Everything Bagel it suddenly dawned on me that I was not tasting cinnamon or raisin. Clearly this bagel did not contain everything that might be on a bagel and yet the word “everything” was in its title. I read the ingredients.

An Everything Bagel contains the following: ENRICHED WHEAT FLOUR [FLOUR, MALTED BARLEY FLOUR, REDUCED IRON, NIACIN, THIAMIN MONONITRATE (VITAMIN B1), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), FOLIC ACID], WATER, SUGAR, YEAST, SUNFLOWER SEEDS, WHEAT GLUTEN, SESAME SEEDS, DEHYDRATED ONION, SALT, CORNMEAL, CALCIUM PROPIONATE AND SORBIC ACID (TO PRESERVE FRESHNESS), POPPY SEEDS, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, GARLIC, CELLULOSE GUM, CITRIC ACID, MALTODEXTRIN, XANTHAN GUM, CORNSTARCH, ALGIN, SOY LECITHIN.

In the list above I bolded the five ingredients that might be in its own bagel. (You’ll note that there are a lot of ingredients listed that would not constitute their own bagel. For example, I’ve never ordered a Xanthan Gum or Folic Acid bagel.) While we see bagel mainstays like garlic, onion, sesame seeds, poppy seeds and sunflower seeds, conspicuously absent from the ingredients list are cinnamon, raisin, blueberry, and chocolate chips, all of which are popular bagel ingredients. If one is being honest, an “Everything Bagel” does not contain everything.

So, clearly, the moniker “Everything Bagel” is nothing more than a blatant lie perpetrated by savvy, yet deceitful marketing types. Delicious though they may be, the “Everything Bagel” would be more aptly named the “Manythings Bagel” or, debatably, the “Mostthings Bagel.” But “Everything Bagel?” I think not.

Take a breath. Start slow. And you, too, can unearth the truth in this cockeyed world.

Man-Eating Car: News at 11

Hello, this is Rock Stone here on Channel 17, with some late-breaking news. Authorities report that there is a man-eating car on the loose this Halloween night swallowing up trick-or-treaters at an alarming rate. Repeat there is a man-eating car on the loose. Initial details of this report are sketchy, but apparently this psychotic sedan is cruising around the neighborhood luring holiday revelers with the promise of chocolate bars and gummy worms, only to gobble up its victims whole and speed off while blasting the Weird Al song, “Eat It.”

The photo on-screen was captured by a parent who was in shock as she live-tweeted her son’s demise. Her tweet, “Junior looked awesome as Frankenstein but then got eaten by a car” accompanied by the hashtag, “MoreTrickThanTreat” received over 2,000 likes at last report.

Baffled by this unusual phenomenon, local police are frantically rifling through Stephen King’s book, “Christine,” searching for answers, but at 411 pages it could be hours before any useful information is obtained. In the meantime, authorities are urging trick-or-treaters to avoid all cars sporting large, pointy teeth and lolling tongues. If you have any information about the man-eating car, or if you are the man-eating car, please call authorities right away. And now to Misty Fields for the weather…

Doug and I

Doug and I come from very different backgrounds. I’m American and he’s Danish. I’m a white collar guy and he’s a blue collar guy. I’m a football fan and he’s a futbol fan. And clearly, as is evidenced from the accompanying photo, we have different colored skin, too. Yet the two of us are the best of friends. Why? Because we respect our differences and can always find common ground.

You may well be saying to yourself right now, “Sure, Andrew, it’s easy to get along with someone who’s made out of hard plastic and has a smile permanently etched upon their face. But what about that guy over there who keeps on spouting crazy crap about that political candidate that I find crazy? How am I supposed to get along with him?”

Great question! Politics can be very divisive and Doug and I are on different sides of the aisle, so it’s not a topic we usually discuss. Instead we talk about our families (Doug’s son is doing great in gymnastics—it’s like he could hold on to the rings forever!); movies (turns out we’re both big fans of “Ghostbusters”—the original, of course!); and travel (we both love visiting Carlsbad, California!) But if politics or religion ever comes up, we simply agree to disagree and move on to a different topic.

So before you dismiss someone out of hand just because they have a different background, or like a different sport, or have different beliefs than you, think about Doug and I and remember there is always a way to find common ground. Because when you have a happy conversation with someone instead of an angry one, everything is awesome!

Your Menu Options Have NOT Recently Changed

When you call a doctor’s office it’s usually not for a good reason. You call to schedule an appointment to have that weird growth on your foot looked at; or you call to get test results back to find out what that weird growth on your foot actually is; or you call to pay the exorbitant medical bill you received, because it turns out your insurance inexplicably doesn’t cover weird growths on the foot. So, since you go into a call to the doctor’s office already experiencing some anxiety, the last thing that you want is to be lied to by their recorded phone message—yet it happens every time.

The first thing I hear when my doctor’s phone picks up is, “If you are experiencing a life threatening emergency, please hang up and dial 911.” That’s not a lie—it’s just common sense, albeit such common sense, I would hope it never has to be acted upon in the first place. I mean, let’s say you accidentally chop your entire arm off while dicing tomatoes. This is clearly a life threatening emergency. I would assume 99.99% of the population would think, “Wow, that’s bad. I should call 911,” seeing is how that’s a relatively easy number to remember. Presumably it would be much less likely that you would think, “Wow, that’s bad. Let me look up the phone number for my doctor’s office and see if I could get an appointment sometime this week to get this looked at.”

But it is after the obligatory, but moronically obvious 911 statement that the egregious lie occurs. The next thing I hear is, “Please listen carefully as our menu options have recently changed.” I am here to tell you, that is simply not true—unless you can define “recently” as sometime in the last decade.

I have been going to the same doctor’s office for about 12 years and I’m pretty dang sure the options have always been:

For hours of operation, address and fax number, please press 1.

To schedule an appointment, please press 2.

If you’re calling from a provider’s office, hospital or pharmacy, please press 3.

For billing inquiries, please press 4.

For medical records, please press 5.

Of course, “our menu options have recently changed” was true at some point in time—specifically, when the message was first recorded, oh so many years ago. But at some point—three months later? six months later? a year later? two years later, for crying out loud?—the menu options had not been changed any time recently, unless of course you’re talking about a geologic timescale, in which case any time in the past 10,000 years is considered recent. But, assuming for a moment that my physician got his doctorate in medicine, not geology, this whole “our menu options have recently changed” thing is a bald-faced lie.

Presumably, the reason they have perpetuated this lie for so many years is they assume people are too lazy to wait to hear the menu options and will start randomly pressing buttons, so they are trying to trick patients into sitting through all of the choices by claiming something may be different from the last time they called. If this is, in fact, the case I think there are some more honest ways to approach this message. I would recommend any one of these options:

1- “Please listen carefully, because while our menu options have not recently changed, you may be a new patient who has never heard our menu options before, or an existing patient who is either unable or unwilling to commit our menu options to memory.”

2- “You are about to hear our menu options and we highly recommend number four, but you may want to listen to all of them, just in case that’s not your thing.”

3- “Our office staff is way too busy and important to pick up the phone when it rings, so we prefer that you sit through this recording and then press the number that corresponds to the staff member who is going to leave your call on hold for 20 minutes before answering.”

See, all of those options are much more truthful than “our menu options have recently changed.” Of course, if they insist on lying on their recording, they could at least be more inventive about it and go with:

4- “Please listen to the following menu options, because if you don’t, a laser will shoot out of your phone and set your inner ear on fire.”

Now I’m sure it’s not just my doctor’s office that is guilty of playing fast and loose with the word “recently.” It’s quite possible that your doctor’s office, or insurance broker’s office, or lawyer’s office perpetuates this same ugly lie on their phone system. So feel free to suggest to them that they use one of the alternative wording options listed above. But if it’s your geologist’s office that says their menu options have recently changed, just leave it alone—from their point of view they’re telling the truth.

Goodbye, Jack Davis

Growing up a rabid MAD magazine fan in the 1970s and 80s there were several artists whose work I revered above all others. Men like Al Jaffee, Mort Drucker, George Woodbridge, and Paul Coker were living legends in my eyes. But perhaps the most legendary to me was Jack Davis, who was equally adept at pinpoint caricatures as he was at goofy cartoons. His illustrations seemed to come alive on the page. 

And I seemed to see his work everywhere—not just in MAD. I would spot his work on the front of TV Guide and Time, and on movie posters like the one for "Animal House." Every time I saw his distinctive work on some non-MAD thing I would get excited. It was like a life bonus to see Jack’s work somewhere besides MAD.

When I went to work as an intern at MAD in the summer of 1990 I got to meet a lot of the living legends like Al Jaffee and George Woodbridge, who lived close enough to the editorial office that they would drop off their work in person. But many contributors lived too far for frequent visits and they would send their work via UPS or FedEx. Jack Davis, sadly, fell into this category, as he lived in Georgia, so as a MAD intern I had to settle for hearing his endearing southern drawl on speaker phone from time to time.

Toward the end of my internship I sold my first freelance article to MAD. It was a spoof of the television show “Unsolved Mysteries.” As excited as I was to make the sale, I was even more excited when I was told by the editors they had decided to have Jack Davis illustrate. Actually, excited doesn’t properly capture my reaction—it was more a combination of dumbstruck and delirious. That an artist I idolized from the time I was a small boy would be drawing pictures based on words that I wrote was beyond surreal. And once I saw the actual article in print with our bylines next to each other, I was giddy for a week.

From MAD #304, July 1991

Eventually I did get to meet Jack Davis, who was like a lovable grandpa with an unexpected mischievous streak. It was a little over a year after my internship. I was now working for MAD fulltime and I got to go on the biennial MAD trip. It was a cruise to Bermuda and Jack was there with his wife, Dena. I was awestruck in his presence—not only because of his incredible talent, but also because he towered over me by about a foot. Meeting him was definitely one of the highlights of my MAD career.

Jack Davis Videotaping me Taking a Picture of Him

Interestingly, I would go on to sell about 50 articles to MAD over the next decade-and-a-half, but that first one was the only one Jack illustrated. I was definitely fortunate to have had that opportunity.

When I found out today that Jack passed away at the age of 91, I was saddened, wistful, nostalgic. Jack was an amazing artist and a gracious guy. That I got to have any sort of association with him is an incredible honor. He will be missed.

Tuesday Pants

I need to start off this blog entry with a disclaimer regarding the accompanying photo. I do not often take selfies of myself from the waist down. In fact, before today, I never have. I mean, how narcissistic would that be? The act of taking selfies is egomaniacal as it is, but taking selfies of random body parts brings it to a whole other level. I will admit I did once take a selfie of my hand, but that was only because I was bored and too lazy to turn my phone around toward my face. But I digress. Point is, I don’t want my audience to think I’m so self-absorbed that I’m standing around snapping pics of my limbs all day long. I only did it, because it directly pertains to the essay you are about to read, assuming you haven’t already given up on said essay. And I’d also like to apologize in advance if you find this photo too risqué—I tried to be as tasteful as possible. Now, onto my pants.

I do not, repeat, DO NOT, have a special pair of pants for every day of the week. On Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays I wear whatever pants I please. Well, that’s not entirely true, I suppose. If I wore shorts on a weekday, I’d likely have to have a visit with my HR manager. But the point is that Tuesdays is the only day of the week when I have a particular pair of pants that I always wear—my Tuesday pants.

My Tuesday pants are dark khakis. Some might describe the color as olive green or forest moss. The pants are comfortable and versatile—with the right ensemble, dare I say stylish. These are pants one might be proud to wear on any day of the week. But I wear these pants exclusively on Tuesdays.

There was a time, not too long ago—14 months ago, to be exact—when I wore any old pants on Tuesdays. Black slacks, grey suit pants, jeans of varying shades of blue, light khakis—you name it, and it was in my leg-wear arsenal.

But now on Tuesdays I exclusively wear my dark khakis. Why? What happened 14 months ago that changed my entire pants world? Something very simple…I became the Cubmaster of my son’s Cub Scout pack and pack meetings are on—you guessed it—Tuesdays. And at pack meetings you will always find me in uniform, which includes my dark khakis.

Of course, the Cub Scout leader uniform also includes a shirt, which is really the more important piece of clothing, because it has all the various badges that identify your role, trainings, and various achievements you may have earned. But I only put the shirt on right before I go to a Cub Scout activity, whereas the pants I wear all day long. (Not wearing pants all day long might also get me a visit with my HR manager.)

Now if you’re familiar with the Cub Scouts, you may know that pack meetings are only once per month, so you may wonder why I wear my dark khakis weekly. Well, in addition to pack meetings we also have committee meetings, which are on a different Tuesday every month. So that means twice per month, I need to wear the same pants. But, I also like to sometimes drop by the weekly den meetings to see how things are going, and if I do that, I like to be in uniform to set a good example for the boys. And, yup, the den meetings are also on Tuesdays.

There are Tuesdays, however, when we don’t have any Cub Scout activities. Indeed, we take a bit of a break during the summer months while folks are on vacation. And yet, every Tuesday, I still pull on my dark khakis—my Tuesday pants. Call it force of habit, or muscle memory, or OCD, but when I look in my closet on Tuesday mornings I reach for the same pants every time—if I were to attempt to put on a different pair, I’d feel incomplete.

Remember, a scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. And with the right pair of pants, they can also be stylish.

The Taking Tree

My sons are not the most athletic or coordinated kids in the world, but then again, neither are their parents, so genetics are not particularly in their favor in this regard. But just because my kids may lack athletic skills doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy athletic activities—it just means they’re not very good at them. Indeed, just a couple of weeks ago my boys decided they wanted to go outside and throw around their new flying ring (a Frisbee with a hole in it) in front of the house.

My nine-year-old took a stance about 15 feet away from his seven-year-old brother and got himself into position. I’m no sports physicist, but I could see from the angle he was holding his arm that things were destined to go awry. I was about to stop him, because I sensed a broken window in our future, when he hurled the ring in the air with every ounce of strength he could muster. Up, up, it went—higher than I imagined his little body could have ever tossed it—and then down, down it came—right into the branches of our tree, about 20 feet above.

We all looked at the ring, pondering how we might retrieve it, when my older son said, “I know how to get it down” and went running into the garage. Moments later he appeared with a nerf football and before I could stop him he heaved it at the ring. Well…not exactly at the ring—more like five feet higher and to the right of the ring. 

I didn’t think my son’s arm was so strong that he could throw a football that high. I was impressed, but now we had two pieces of sports equipment stuck in our tree. Again we all stared and contemplated our next move.

I should mention here that climbing the tree was not an option. While the branches were strong enough to support sports equipment, they were definitely too thin to support the weight of a person. Also, as mentioned in my opening, none of us have actual athletic skill, so if any of us attempted to climb the tree, there is a 92.3% chance we would end up at urgent care.

As we looked futilely at our trapped equipment my younger son suddenly had a eureka moment. “I know,” he shouted and off he went into the garage. Moments later he came back with a small rubber ball and took aim at the tree.

“Wait!” I yelled, but it was too late. Skyward the ball went, completely bypassing the flying ring and the football, and landing comfortably, mockingly in the upper canopy of the tree. We all gazed at our sports-fruit bearing tree in awe for a moment. Suddenly, my boys both turned and were about to run into the garage to look for other objects they could hopelessly lose, when I shouted, “Everybody stop!” They stopped.

I confidently walked into our garage and found a baseball—a hardball too substantial to get stuck in a tree. I swaggered back out as my boys looked on. I took aim at the flying ring, secretly thinking to myself, “there ain’t no way I’m hitting this thing,” and uncorked a fastball straight up in the air. Miraculously I knocked the ring right out. The boys cheered.

I moved over slightly and took aim at the football, a little bit more confidence flowing through my veins. I let the ball fly again and struck the football dead center, dislodging it from its arboreal embrace. The boys cheered louder.

I walked to the other side of the tree and eyed the small rubber ball, barely visible in the upper branches of our towering mesquite tree. This time my confidence waned as the ball was a good 30 feet up and fairly well camouflaged. I took a deep breath, channeled my inner Clayton Kershaw, and unleashed a furious fastball high into the air. “WHACK!” The rubber ball came tumbling down with the baseball right behind it. We all cheered as though we just won game seven of the World Series. This moment represented the pinnacle of my athletic career. And more importantly we now had all of our sports equipment back!

Ten minutes later the flying ring ended up on the uppermost portion of our roof. It remains there to this day.