I have gazed into the bowels of hell and they eat Olive Garden

I learned an important lesson this past weekend. Just because something is free doesn’t mean you should actually take, or in this case, ingest it. If you were walking down the corridors of the mall and saw a kiosk that said “free kicks to the groin”, would you allow your nards to be pummeled simply because the service was gratis? If you saw a bin full of “Liberace Plays Barry Manilow” 8-track tapes at Wal-Mart with a red sign that said “FREE”, would you take one, even though you don’t own an 8-track player and any machine you borrowed would spontaneously melt and explode from embarrassment at having housed something so heinous?

We are in the throes of a brutal recession flirting with full depression status. I had a $25 gift card to Olive Garden that I “won” (a debatable term) at my company’s Christmas party. Sherri and I needed a night out. Friday night + babysitter + $25 for food = CHEAP DATE. I knowingly compromised my standards, bit the shotgun shell, took an imaginary shot of make-believe scotch, and departed for Olive Garden. We showed up around 7:00 and there was barely a place to stand. The hostess said the wait was 70 minutes. Are you bloody freaking kidding me?! People actually WAIT for this place? I quickly mastered my nerves and allowed my highly logical Pearson brain to take over, rationalizing the fact that 70 minutes in Restaurantland actually meant 30 minutes in the real world. 67 minutes later we were seated.

Next to the county fair and Wal-Mart on a Saturday, Olive Garden provides the best people-watching experience known to mankind. We saw squirrely-looking prom dates, jaded lesbians, hood-rat gangstas, and a woman whose obnoxious knockers were being contained by a polyester stretchy shirt four sizes too small. I swear if that behem’ho had twisted to one side at the wrong angle, one of those monsters would have sprung out with wicked force, knocking her (or any bystander within three feet) unconscious. Oddly enough, I don’t think the freak show waiting in the lobby would have even noticed. Just another night at Olive Garden for them.

Why my aversion to Olive Garden? Because it is trash. It is terrible food. Granted, I lived in Italy for two years and am a little pickier toward Italian cuisine, but not overly so. Their processed sauces and mushy pastas are just BAD. You will find better Italian food at Fazzolis, Pizza Hut, and in Chef Boyardee cans. Do these people not know there is a Macaroni Grill right across the freaking street that actually serves good Italian food for roughly the same price?!

By the time we were seated I was already angry. Angry that I had to wait 67 minutes for inevitably bad food. Angry that I had to watch knocker-lady bounce and flit around the freak show lobby. And angry that we were seated next to the family with the autistic redheaded heavy girl that yelled out “basagna classico!” every 90 seconds and continuously asked for crackers for her soup.

When the waitress asked us for our order I said, “I really don’t like this restaurant, but it’s been years since I’ve been here. What would you recommend that might change my opinion?” I don’t remember what she offered partially due to her bad answer, but mostly due to the high-pitched squeal of the steam pouring out of my ears. I knew my only hope was to order the most bizarre thing possible, with potent cheeses or sauces, hoping to mask the overall gnarliness of Olive Garden food. I went with the Steak Gorgonzola-Alfredo. And, naturally, I hated it. I ate the steak off the top and went Doberman on the salad and breadsticks.

The moral to this story is twofold. Free does not necessarily mean good. And, most importantly, Olive Garden sucks. That is all. Boom goes the dynamite.

Inappropriate Adjectives - Andrew Bird is Retarded

Marty: Whoa, wait a minute. Doc, are you telling me that my mother has got the hots for me?
Doc: Precisely.
Marty: Whoa, this is heavy.
Doc: There's that word again - heavy. Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

Have you ever wondered how certain, often inappropriate, adjectives found their way into colloquial English? For example “bad”, as in “dude, that is one bad lookin’ sofa.” English would suggest that the sofa is ugly. Or uncomfortable. Or even malevolent. But we know that term actually means the sofa is good. Bad = good. Or how about “cool?” At what point did something of a lower temperature become good? Have you ever eaten cool meat loaf? It’s anything but good. And how can “cool” and “hot” be interchangeable? “Have you seen Mike’s new Ferrari? That car is hot.” Or is it cool? Logic suggests that it can’t be both. And you can’t physically measure something’s coldness anyhow since temperature is calculated by heat, implying that a state of “coolness” is simply a partial absence of heat.

Nowadays the Ferrari would be “sick.” But sick isn’t interchangeable with “gross.” Apparently the hot/cool rule doesn’t apply to nausea. Skilled athletes can be “filthy” or “nasty.” So, to be clear, I’m to understand that poor hygiene is considered good in sports? I played ball with Italians that smelled like week-old onions and carcass farms, definitely putting them in the filthy/nasty categories, but they sucked monkey butt at basketball. Maybe the filthy/nasty rule only works in America. Lame Europeans.

Speaking of lame, when did the word “gay” all of a sudden mean “lame” and when did “lame” score pariah status? Stephen Hawking can’t walk, but I’m pretty sure he’d work me at a spelling contest. And I have some alternate-lifestyle friends that likely take offense to “gay” meaning something negative, especially after the word used to mean HAPPY.

And how about “sweet?” How do you know your gorgeous new LCD television is sweet? Did you freaking lick it? Oh, maybe you mean the OTHER kind of sweet…like it massaged your shoulders and gave you a hug after remembering your birthday.

As odd as these words are, I use them often and heavily. Gnarly, rad, sweet, hot, smokin’, rockin’, wicked, hard, badass, insane, filthy, uber, and wild are all WIN.

The mother of all inappropriate adjectives, likely the most offensive, and naturally my personal favorite is “retarded.” Meaning so good that it’s beyond insane. It’s beyond filthy nastiness and wicked uber gnarlihood. It’s so awesome that it’s RETARDED. Example? Sure. “Wednesday night’s Andrew Bird concert was off the charts. I mean, the way he uses digital loops and sonic layering is utterly retarded.” See following video…

Ostensible Parenting

Parents are failing their children on an epic scale. A guitar hero buddy of mine in Cincinnati wrote a stellar blog piece about a year ago that detailed how “helicopter parents” are sheltering their kids from rejection and disappointment. Clearly that’s setting the stage for monumental disaster later in that child’s life when he realizes that the world is not made of sunshine and dancing unicorn dust. Girl Scout cookies don’t magically sell themselves and you actually have to try out for basketball teams. I’m no expert on parenting, but I’m a decent observer. And what I observe is ugly.

Many parents expect the public school system to raise their children. My brother in law is a counselor at a middle school in southern Utah. He has shared numerous stories of how parents refuse to take accountability for their misbehaving children and expect the school to handle the discipline and reform…as long as it doesn’t hurt little Timmy’s feelings. Parents also expect the school system to create intelligent, witty, creative, courteous kids that naturally turn into successful and motivated adults. News flash…the public school system is in place to ASSIST in the education of children. It is YOUR responsibility to actually teach and raise your kids. The system is there to provide proven and effective methods to present information to young people by adults that are knowledgeable and skilled communicators. Parents are there to make damn sure their kids understand the information given or, better yet, instill a hunger to MASTER the subject matter and have fun doing it. Schools don’t create scholars. Schools don’t make CEOs, professors, and presidents. Parents do.

I was sickened when I read this article today about New Mexico parents failing to pay their school lunch tab. Children whose parents are behind are being given a plain cheese sandwich, some fruit, and some milk instead of being given normal lunch like the kids whose parents are current. I need to bullet my points here, otherwise I’ll ramble:

1) I understand that times are hard. The recession blows.

2) It’s gut-wrenching for me to envision a sweet, timid 1st grader, like my son, being physically pulled from the lunch line and handed a white sack with a stale cheese sandwich and a mushy apple inside while his peers point and laugh. White sack = poor kid. That is the kind of public ridicule that will instantly and forever damage that kid’s self image. His peers will always remember him as one of the “white-baggers” from 1st grade, just like Chas remembers me for my crappy shoes that slid all over the basketball court…25 years ago.

3) It is pathetic that parents don’t have to share in their children’s shame. Shielding yourselves with your own kids is disgusting, intended or not.

4) It is commendable that the school district is trying to make sure that each child has something to eat for lunch. The system might be flawed and not well planned, but the effort is there. Hunger is a verb that most all of us will never fully know. Being hungry is one thing…hunger is quite another. It motivates people to steal and kill. Hunger sucks, and I applaud the district for fighting it.

5) It is commendable that the school system is holding parents accountable and not allowing them to get everything for nothing.

6) It is sad that this ^^ comes at the expense of children.

The school system is on track to lose $300,000 this year on unpaid student lunch bills alone. That is six times the amount in 2006. In order to cover the debt, the schools will have to pull from other departments in the budget since not even the federal lunch program money given, from OUR tax dollars, can cover. So all students will suffer from the inability and ineptitude of bad parents.

I fully understand that there is poverty in the world and that parents are struggling to feed their kids. My “bad parents” claim might seem harsh. I counter that with the following question. If your child were NOT in school and were home for the summer, would you expect him to starve or would you find a way, no matter how creative, to feed him? Easy. You’d feed the kid. Now, take that same creativity, throw it in a lunch box and send it to school with the boy.

In my opinion the solution is simple. Completely do away with school lunch programs. I sell cookies to school districts and buying groups all over the country. It is astounding how much time, effort, and MONEY is put into child nutrition. That shouldn’t be their job! You don’t need a cookie that has no fat or sugar and tastes like cardboard. What you need is to tell Timmy to turn off the Playstation, get off his lardass, and mix in some kickball.

It is not the school’s responsibility to teach, raise, discipline, AND feed our children. By doing away with the program you put all children on a level playing field. If all the kids are bringing white sacks to school, no one will care if one houses a cheese sandwich or a cheesesteak. The sack itself is the equalizer. When kids “forget” their lunch, call the parents. If it persists, call in the cavalry. Get DCFS involved. For the truly willing and CARING, there are programs out there to make sure your kids don’t go hungry. The public school system, however, is NOT one of those programs.