I have a friend who massages horses for a living.

He was a paramedic, then a massage therapist.  His Mom is some big equestrian expert; she regularly goes to Europe as a consultant to some very swanky clients, exactly the kind of people who would pay for horse massages.

He studied equestrian anatomy and behavior and then went to work.  The first day the horses weren’t sure what to think of him.  The second day the horses saw him coming down the path to the stables and started trying to get his attention.  He told me it was as if they were saying, “Me!  Me first!”  He quickly became a very popular figure at the stables.

Horses LOVE massage.  My dogs love massage-or at least, my idea of dog massage.  They line up for it. 

I’m glad they cleared up the beaurocratic clutter on this one.    Silly, if you ask me.

Everrybody deserves a massage.

The other day my friend Dan Mitchell and I got to talking about those strange little catch phrases that pop into the English language from time to time, get ridiculously over used for a few years, and then completely disappear…never to be uttered again…except for by the incredibly unhip.

By way of example you remember “Where’s the Beef” from the 1980s?  What started out as a fast food commercial later ended up being used in a 1984 Presidential Debate.  How weird is that? 

More recently we’ve cycled through “Get ‘er done”, “talk to the hand”, “It’s all good”, and “Wazzzzzup” from the Budweiser beer commercials a few years ago.  When my Dad called me and said “Wazzzzzup?” I knew that culturally speaking we had officially jumped the shark.

 “Peace out” still seems to be floating around…although I always figured that Mahatma Gandhi is about the only person who could’ve used that phrase and had it ring true.  As soon as your average 3 piece suit wearing bank presidents and divorce attorneys started saying “Peace Out”, it kind of ceased to have any real meaning, you know?

And of course, there’s also “You GO girl!” …which I only find to be funny if you say it to super macho guy.

Within the last couple years I found myself hearing “It is what it is” an awful lot…what does that actually MEAN?  Isn’t that like saying “a refrigerator is a refrigerator” or “an elephant is an elephant”?  Whenever someone around me says “It is What it Is” I hear the voice of my high school algebra teacher Frank Kich saying “that’s little more than circular logic disguised as deep thought, Mr. Casey”…..

I’m no linguistic expert but lately I get this feeling that “it is what it is” is slowly being replaced on the over-use meter by the catch phrase “I’m just sayin’…”  In fact, earlier this week when I told my 6 year old daughter it was time for her to go to bed, she protested by pointing out that her 9 year old brother got to stay up later than her.   I reminded Lily that her brother was older and that Mom and Dad make the rules of the house, not her…and she responded by stomping off to her room and yelling “Well, jeez Dad, I’m just SAYIN’!”

If 6 year olds are using “I’m Just Sayin’”…..it must be long past time for that catch phrase to go too.

Of course…when you get right down to it……there’s not a whole lot any of us can do about the catch phrase phenomenon…..because, after all….”it is what it is”…

Peace out.

Would somebody please make a kind of screen blocker that clings to a computer screen and then peels off and goes back on, in adjustable shapes?

I have to look up lots of stuff every day, and I am completely sick of looking at people’s dental records, ugly, really bad dancing animated characters, flashing neon telling me I won something and jumping spiders.  This stuff is so distracting that I have to leap away from the page, and I miss stuff.  Or I HAVE to go back to the page and get grossed-out.

Plea to net advertisers:  please stop grossing me out!  Want to keep me?  Show me puppies or outdoor scenes that are unusual and colorful, or even just pictures of your product.  Heck, show me just colored squares or dots or something!  Just leave teeth, aging skin and insects out of it.  I’m not crazy about babies dribbling food, either.  What if I’m trying to have lunch?  What if I’m not feeling all that hot? 

Repulse me=lose me.

Or, make me little screen-clinging blockers that enable me to NOT see your disgusting ads.  That would be the polite thing to do.

I just read that last sentence and realized the utter futility of this plea.

Never mind.

The last time I wore my fancy dress up shoes, the wife took one look at them and said, “You know….if you dropped those shoes out of an airplane over the Congo and they landed in front of a guy who’d been walking around on the scorched earth barefoot his whole life, even HE wouldn’t wear ‘em…..that’s how bad they are.”

As I’ve become an expert at reading BETWEEN the lines’ over the years, I took this to mean that Anne wanted me to get some new dress shoes.

So with no more fashion sense than I had at the age of 16 and a hundred dollars burning a hole in my pocket, I found myself in one of those giant, serve yourself discount shoe warehouses faced with an overwhelming number of questions:

Brown or black? Lace up or slip on? Fashionable or versatile?  Stay and buy shoes or spend the cash on beef jerky and margaritas?

Once my head stopped spinning, I actually managed to find 1 pair of brown shoes I liked, and 1 pair of black shoes I liked….for under a hundred bucks it should be noted…..and an hour later, I was back at home, getting the nod of approval on my purchases from Anne.

Done deal, right?  Wrong….

Later in the week I come home from work to find that Anne has set up a fan in front of the door to our closet and opened all the windows in our bedroom. 

I said, “Uh…honey….why did you set up a wind tunnel in our room?”

She said, “Well..I’ve been smelling this gasoline stench all morning, and I finally figured out it was coming from your new shoes.  So now I gotta air the room out.”  Perfect….

Here are my 4 quick thoughts on this little transaction:

1. I understand that once I’ve worn the shoes out into the world, it’s possible that I could step in any number of things that could cause them  to smell……but can someone explain to me how a pair of shoes that’s never been worn outside can smell like gasoline?  Buying shoes is stressful enough….do I really need to sniff the things before I take them to the register? 
2. Perhaps getting 2 pair of dress shoes for a hundred bucks wasn’t such a steal after all…..
3. Maybe there’s a marketing opportunity here and some renegade shoe company will start INTENTIONALLY adding a smell component to their footwear.  Just imagine, motor cycle boots that actually smell like a Harley…..wing tips that smell like….chicken wings…… and tennis shoes that smell like…..Roger Federer. 
4. Maybe it’s my fault for not checking the label before I bought the “gasoline shoes’.  The tag that said “made by the Exxon corporation” should’ve been my first clue.

Call me paranoid if you want….but I can’t shake the feeling that somewhere….deep in the Congo….there’s a barefoot guy….laughing hysterically at me right now…..

This is not a joke. 

Bears are between food sources right now, hungry, desperate, and need to put on 20,000 calories a day.  Your birdfeeder is a HUGE temptation.

Take heed!

This past weekend I joined over 2,000 riders in the 20^th Annual Courage Classic, a 3 day bicycle tour that benefits Children’s Hospital. 

Here are 8 quick thoughts on that experience:

1.       When I put on my cycling gear Saturday morning, Anne said “you’re the only person in the world who can wear spandex bike shorts and still look like you have no butt”.   After spending 10 or so hours in the saddle I was wishing I had a little more cushion to work with back there.  My tush feels like Tiger Woods was hitting it with a 9 Iron all weekend.

2.       The nice folks over at Campus Cycles hooked me up with a top of the line Trek Madone road bike for the Courage Classic.  This thing is sleek, efficient, and incredibly light weight….in other words, everything I’m not.  Or as I heard one guy remark while climbing Battle Mountain- “Unless science can find a way to turn my belly into carbon fiber, I don’t think it’s the bike that’s really slowing me down, y’ know?”

3.       Going over Vail Pass my bike computer gadget said my RPM’s were around 65….which means I was spinning the pedals about once every second.  At the time, I was going 3 miles an hour.  If you get a chance today, go for a jog in a wind tunnel while someone sticks sharp needles into your quads…that should simulate the experience pretty closely.

4.       Noah, my trainer from Define Fitness, sent me a text at 12noon on Saturday that said “Are you keeping your RPM’s above 80 like I told you?” I texted him back “My RPM’s are only above 80 when I’m going downhill with a tail wind.”  He wrote back “Good luck. Should be a fun day for you.”  This proves my point once again that trainers have NO sense of humor whatsoever.

5.       When I finished the ride on Day 1 the kids were waiting for me at the finish line and the first thing they said was, “Where have you been Daddy?  Uncle Brian has been back for like an hour already.”  I said, “Uncle Brian is younger than me, he doesn’t have kids so he has a lot more free time to train than me, and besides I never liked him anyway….he’s kind of a show-off.”  Where have I been?…..puh-lease….

6.       On Sunday I was so hungry I defied the conventional yogurt/banana/power bar pre-ride breakfast option and went high protein with bacon and eggs instead.  On the early part of the ride I felt like I was really cruising past a lot of other riders…but then it occurred to me that people were intentionally avoiding riding directly behind me so they weren’t down-wind.  Rats. I’m not Lance Armstrong….apparently I’m Dunce Ham-wind….

7.       I ran into my sports anchor pal from 9 News Susie Wargin just before we started to climb Vail Pass…..in fact, I started the climb before her…but about 15 minutes in I heard someone say “Nice work, Casey.  Keep it up.”  And there went Susie whizzing past me….riding side saddle, juggling bowling balls and sending text messages on her Blackberry.  I should introduce her to my brother Brian…they’d probably get along famously.

8.       Ever watch a person who has no use of their legs climb 4,000 vertical feet pedaling a hand cycle?  Ever see a person do a 58 mile bike ride carrying oxygen?  Ever see former and current Children’s Hospital patients put aside their own medical issues and personal challenges and ride 150 some miles through the Mountains of Colorado?  Wow….talk about Defining Courage.  That’s it in a nut-shell.

At its very best, the human spirit may just be the single most powerful energy source on the planet.  What a humbling and gratifying experience to get close enough to see it in action.

1.  If we were all bad-asses like this guy, would there BE any crime? 

2. If the media concentrated more on the bad-asses than the perpetrators, would we all be less afraid, more proactive, stronger,  and tougher to prey upon?

…well, that’s what I call it.

When people can celebrate their roots from two separate continents, this is a celebration of both cultures, and cultural hybrids are often vibrant, new and eclectic.  Consider the melding of African folk song with the European guitar, which gave us Rock and Roll…

Anyway, here’s another cool World Culture happening:

http://www.3news.co.nz/Video/Maori-hapu-welcomed-at-gathering-of-the-clans-in-Scotland/tabid/313/articleID/114095/cat/782/Default.aspx#video

Over the weekend I was watching some TV with the kids when I happened to notice that whatever show we were watching was on channel 173 or something absurd  like that.  And so I turned and looked at the kids and said, “You know….when I was a kid, our TV only had 3 channels.”

My son said, “Why?  Couldn’t you guys afford anymore channels?”

I said, “No…there weren’t any other channels back then.  Just CBS, NBC and ABC.”

So my daughter said, “Well..how did you watch Sponge Bob or Hannah Montana?”

I said, “There was no Sponge Bob or Hannah Montana.  We had Saturday morning cartoons and that’s about it…”

Evan was holding the TV remote in his hands at the time…you know the thing that’s about the size of a brick and has more buttons on it than a 727 these days…..and he said, “So, if there were only 3 channels, your remote control must’ve been pretty small…”

I said, “TV’s didn’t have remote controls back then, buddy…..if you wanted to change the channel you had to get up and change it…”

As if to clarify for once and for all that we were clearly having one of those “generation gap” type of discussions, my 6 year old daughter thought this was the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard in her life and immediately burst into fits of hysterical laughter.

“La la la….look at me…I’m Daddy….getting up to change the channel on the TV….”  Grrreat…..

In having this conversation with my kids, it occurred to me that there are probably quite a few other things that were a part of my life that they will have absolutely no point of reference for…..here are a few of ‘em….

-          Rotary phones with chords on them that didn’t have a voice mail option
Regular gasoline
Having a paper route
the Snoopy snow cone machine
Roller skates that came with keys and the phrase “all skaters, change directions…”
lining up quarters on the panel of a video game to ‘reserve’ your spot
Manual typewriters
riding in the back of station wagon without car seats or seat belts
8 track tapes that clicked over from one program to the next in the middle of a song
catch phrases like Mr. T’s “I pity the fool”, Gary Coleman’s “Whatchou talkin’ ‘bout Willis” and…..Arthur J Fonzarelli’s “Heeeyyyyy….”

Near as I can tell, the only way to find solace in being a victim of the generation gap is realizing that someday my kids will find themselves having to explain just  how antiquated their childhoods were to THEIR children…and THAT is a moment I’m looking forward to witnessing….

On May 7 of this year, the news broke that Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez had tested positive for performance enhancing substances and would serve a 50 game suspension as penalty. 

What with all the big names that’ve been caught up in the steroid scandal, I can’t imagine anyone was terribly shocked when Manny joined that list back in May. 

While he hasn’t exactly offered the same public explanation or apology that A-Rod did, it isn’t hard to imagine that if he did, Manny might take the very same approach:  it was an accident, the substance in question was prescribed by a doctor, I didn’t know what I was using was illegal, the sun got in my eyes, the dog ate my homework, it wasn’t me it was some guy who looks like me, even though “Hey..when you play the game at my level, there’s a lot of pressure to perform, so I did what I felt I had to do” might be closer to the truth.

I wouldn’t pretend for a second to know what the expectations and demands are like when you’re a high profile professional athlete like Manny Ramirez…but I contend that whether you’re a welder, or a truck driver, or a banker, or a teacher….we’re ALL under a tremendous amount of pressure to perform each and every day…..and while the stage may be smaller, most of us can’t jab a needle in our butts to increase our productivity…..nor can we take solace in having a 200 million dollar cushion to fall back on either.

How about driving a 10 year old car with a bad muffler to your job and spending 12 hours working in a meat packing plant so you can feed your family and come up with 60 dollars in co-pays when your kids get sick?  Now THAT’S pressure to perform.

My 9 year old son is a huge baseball fan….and when my nephews and I coach his teams every summer we stress over and over and over again that excellence and achievement are important….and winning is great…..but the most important thing is to play the game the RIGHT way…because selling out what you believe in in order to win, is a lose-lose proposition.

On Wednesday night Evan and I were watching the Dodgers play the Reds in LA.  Manny was out of the lineup due to a sore left hand but manager Joe Torre called him in to pinch hit in the 6^th inning with the bases loaded and the score tied at 2.  And almost as if it had been scripted by Hollywood, Manny Ramirez hit the very first pitch he saw over the left field wall for a Grand Slam homer.

And as Manny the victorious was rounding the bases to the cheers of 40 thousand Dodger faithful, my son looked up at me and said, “Wow, Dad…that was awesome.  Someday I want to be just like him…..”

Driving down University Boulevard earlier this week I passed a church that had the following words on its front yard sign:  “Ability without honor….is useless….”

And it occurred to me that pretty soon….. I might need to use those exact 5 words to start a discussion with my son about baseball, life, and choosing your heroes very very carefully.