Good Late Night

‘Could Have Been Worse’
Leno Monologue Aired Friday night on NBC:

Settle down. If you came here tonight for sex with a talk show host, you’ve got the wrong studio.

This guy who was trying to blackmail Letterman was a producer from the show “48 Hours.” It could have been worse. At least it wasn’t a producer from “To Catch a Predator.” That would have been bad.

I’m happy to say that I’ve never had a sexual relationship with any of my staff members. (Band member throws down his drumsticks and storms offstage.)

COLUMN: It Would Be Fair If It Went Both Ways

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Tobin Barnes
I’ve got a problem. Well...I’ve got a lot of problems, but there’s one that’s particularly bothering me right now.

But that’s not all bad, I guess. Means I’m still alive and kicking.

As the saying goes, “The only people without problems are in the cemetery.”

Har!

That always makes me feel better, kinda, but just momentarily. After all, a “Har!” is just a microscopic interlude amidst the otherwise seething turmoil of life.

What the cemetery thing really means—and I don’t have to tell you—is that life equals problems. Of course, if all the problems were riddles and puzzles and fun mazes, that would be one thing. But they aren’t.

They’re more like thorny, nasty issues that if left unsolved can create more problems that have thorny, nasty issues.

So here’s my current problem. It just occurred to me the other day. Maybe you can relate to it, too.

My memory seems to be tuned into the negative. Know what I mean?

I can remember negative things about myself much better than positive things. I evidently have stropped my memory to razor sharp preciseness about the negative happenings in my life, while I have blunted my memory to a profound dullness as to the positive happenings.

I think—no, I know—that this hurts my self-esteem. And low self-esteem is one of those thorny, nasty issues. I’m sure I’d feel better if I could turn this around.

Like I said, this just occurred to me the other day when I was thinking of some doofus thing or other that I had done years ago. I don’t even remember what it was—heck, there’s a ton of them, a bottomless pit.

And I can vividly recall them as if they were happening to me right now. It’s almost like lucid dreaming where you can smell, hear, see, touch and taste the event. The negative memories are spooky in their reality.

These past moments involve things that I’ve said and things that I’ve done. I cringe whenever these memories pop into my mind.

Let me give you an example (hey, I’m not proud): I’m just a year or so out of high school at this dance at the Roller Drome in my hometown. I’m with a good friend when I see this girl and decide to ask her to dance. So I take off the jacket I’m wearing and hand it to my friend to hold, like he’s my valet or something.

Well, that was a doofus thing to do! Like I said, it makes me cringe to think of it.
To make matters worse, I start dancing with the girl like I’d seen people dancing at college, except I look like a dork when I’m doing it. And the girl starts to laugh at me. Needless to say, that potential relationship died right there on the dance floor.

Yeah, it wasn’t just a compound doofus double-flip, it was an ultra hangdog doofus moment. And it’s all so vivid to me now, even though it was forty years ago.

And I’m plagued with these lucid, vivid, doofus memories that pop into my head at random, spurred by some devilish latent triggers.

And I guess even that would be okay—might even be my due—if only I’d get some lucid, vivid hero memories as well to balance them.

But I don’t. The positive moments in my life don’t pop into my head nearly so easily.
There had to be a bunch of those bright, shining moments, too, didn’t there? A few, maybe?

Somewhere back there, I must have done something neat, said something brilliant…didn’t I?

Why can’t I remember them as vividly as my doofus moments? Yeah, something’s wrong with this picture. It’s psychologically perverse.

Not only are the positive moments not as vivid…heck, I have to wrack my memory to even find them. Go on mental safaris to hunt them down. And even then they’re only vague and foggy.

Why is that? Did they even happen?

It’s not fair I tell you. This is a problem!

It’s a screwed up mental landscape if I’ve ever seen one.

(Sent by Tom Cooley)

Image by seiuhealthcare775nw via Flickr

By Tobin Barnes
Who knows what the nose knows? So speak beak.

And I will, even though as Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

But I’m fearlessly going to do it anyway. I know the future. I see it clearly. And I defy anyone to prove my predictions wrong.

I know this might spook some people out, reading the prophetic words of a seer, but stick with me and experience your conversion, eerie though it may be.

Take, for instance, the pending health care legislation before Congress.

My first prediction is that something’s going to pass. Yep, you can take this one to the bank. After working on it all year long, Congress will go thumbs up on at least something. How can they not and keep their fifteen percent approval rating? No way. If not they’d look like fools…again. Something’s got to come out of the pipe, even if it’s a gurgle like after a flush.

My second prediction on health care is that the passed bill will make some people sick and others healthy. Some will get sick because the bill didn’t go far enough, and some will get sick because it went too far. Uh huh, there’s going to be a lot of moaning and groaning amongst the talking heads. Matter of fact, everybody’s going to moan and groan, at least a little.

As far as people getting healthier, well, hey, that’s inevitable. Some people somewhere will be healthier after the passage of this bill.

That’s right. Some people who had bad health before will get healthier later. It happens all the time, and I guarantee you it will happen this time, too. Of course, people will die as well, because everyone who lives dies.

But what can you do? Better health care overall can only do so much. You can’t always blame politicians, although you’d like to.

My third prediction?

Everyone’s going to declare victory on this baby. Just like in Lake Wobegon, in Congress everybody’s above average. So one way or another, everybody’s got to figure out how he or she was a winner in this and every other ideological confrontation. Might take a lot of figuring, but that’s why we pay them.

There will be no losers, even when you’re talking to the losers. It’s kind of amazing really, almost magical.

When health care legislation passes, the Democrats are going to take the credit for it. Once again, progress was made even though Republicans had to be dragged into the Twenty-First Century kicking and screaming. Things are now in the law books that weren’t there before. Woo-hoo! Smiles all around and everybody gets a pen at the signing.

Then they’ll go to bed that night and lie awake, thinking, “Oh my God! What did we do?”

You see, the problem with championing legislation is that you “own it,” as President Obama says. For the next generation or two, people are going to be second-guessing and nit-picking the legislation that Democrats took credit for passing.

Positives naturally carry with them negatives, and negatives naturally carry with them positives. It’s the yin and yang of life. Consult any philosophy professor or talk to your local town drunk.

Nevertheless, your political opposition will always focus on the negatives to your disparagement unless the general population finally comes to a consensus that the positives were worth it after all. So it goes.

Those against progressive legislation will turn out to be winners, too. According to the positives-produce-negatives and vice-versa theory, opposers will be fully equipped with negative ghosts to haunt those who helped pass the legislation. And for a long time, it’ll be fun for them. They’ll be able to dig up all kinds of pertinent, if isolated, horror stories proving they were right to oppose the legislation in the first place.

Now that may lead some to think it best never propose anything and to be against everything. Makes them think the past is always better. Matter of fact, they think, let’s go back to it as soon as we can. “Return to Normalcy.” Yeah, the past is so good, they never want to leave it until maybe after they’re dead.

These things I predict.

So you be the judge. How were those predictions? Spot on?

I told you it would be eerie.

Imma let you finish....

More here …

Madcap Lowlight Reel

(Sent by Roy Wilson) Hope no one got hurt...badly.

COLUMN: It's Not True Till You Realize It

Image via Wikipedia

By Tobin Barnes
My doctor once told me, “It’s tough for us guys in the Fat Boys Club to keep the weight off, isn’t it?”

I remember being offended. Speak for yourself there, Tubby.

I had always tried to think of myself as having an athletic physic…just maybe gone to seed a tad. After all, I’m the son of a former professional football player.

Ramp up the activity a skosh and eat one less deep-pan pizza a year, and I’m back to fit and trim anytime I want.

Fat Boys Club!

Is someone else in this room with you and me, Doc?

Of course, my dad ended up pretty hefty and that was soon after his football and Army days were over. And you couldn’t really call his brothers and sister svelte. Sometimes even “chubby” didn’t really fit the bill.

And, yes, when being honest with myself, I’ll have to admit I’ve certainly inherited his genetic tendencies toward instant weight gain. It doesn’t take much either.

A few days of neglect, and I’m hauling another pound around. Make it a week or two and I’ve got five extra on my body going that way when I’m going this way.

So I guess my doctor was right all those years ago. No doubt, I’m a dues-paying, member-in-good-standing of the Fat Boys Club International. Yes, it’s been a constant battle even though I used to think I was winning overall.

That is, until we got the Wii Fit about eight months ago. On my first weigh-in, my little Mii (the digital icon man that represents me) explosively transformed into a big Mii. Rotund might be the best description.

Whoasa!

Then the munchkin-like, diminutive but intrusive Wii Fit voice declared this about my weight: “That’s obese.”

Obese? I’m not obese.

Obese is the word used to describe those headless, unidentified whale bodies that waddle across the TV screen when they’re illustrating a news story on the fattening of America. Wii Fit must have its calculations screwed up. No self-respecting TV news reporter would use my headless body as a prime example of a shirt-stretching, super-size me, big gulper, would they?

Well, maybe not, but I had certainly gotten chubby. And the evidence was there whether I was willing to admit it or not.

One of the most telltale examples is a blown-up picture of a snapshot I’d placed on one of the bookshelves in my classroom. It was of me amongst some high school girls, given to me by them as a remembrance. I was touched at their thoughtfulness.

But one problem: In the photo I was taking up the space of two of them. When they gave it to me, I had gratefully told them I’d keep that picture forever. It haunts me still up there on the bookshelf.

Since last January, I’ve tried to increase the exercise and reduce the intake. I’ve been bicycling longer distances and taking grueling uphill walks, all the while eating like a pigeon rather than a vulture. I’ve been merciless—to my way of thinking anyway.

I’ve lost close to twenty pounds, but with all the sacrifice, it seems like I should instead weigh only twenty pounds. And even though the Wii munchkin voice doesn’t say I’m obese anymore, it does still say: “That’s overweight.”

So I’d like to lose more and hopefully keep it off.

But I know it’s kind of like Samuel Butler’s quote: “Friendships are like money, easier made than kept.”

Same thing with weight in a mixed metaphor kind of way: It’s easier to take it off than keep it off.

We’ll see.

Our Trip to Lake Tahoe/Early August

COLUMN: Some Things Have Changed

By Tobin Barnes
I’m starting my thirty-fourth year teaching high school students, so it’s natural that I often get the question, “Have the kids changed?”

Yep, I’m definitely the guy to ask. I’ve had a lot of experience with them.

During any given year during my career, conservatively estimating, I have had 150 individual students in all my classes. Take that times the thirty-three academic years I’ve completed, and that’s a whopping 4950 students.

Wow! It’s almost staggering. That’s a lot of potential impact that I, or any other secondary teacher, could have had over the course of a career.

Again, conservatively estimating—I hope this is very conservative—if I, or any other long-term teacher, has had a positive effect on only ten percent of all those students, that’s still a creditable 490 people.

That would be pretty good success in anybody’s book.

And as I said, I hope I’ve had more.

Obviously, I like being around teenagers. The last thirty-three years would have been pure hell if I didn’t. Like dogs, they can sense fear.

Uh huh, it’s not for everybody. With the wrong attitude on your part, teenagers can drive you barking mad, as they say in England.

Most of the time, however, I can get over that hurdle without too much effort and can then appreciate all the good qualities of teenagers. As a matter of fact, fairly well-adjusted teenagers are my favorite people. You just can’t beat their spontaneity, enthusiasm, and love of life. (It’s too bad that much of that seemingly gets doused in the next twenty years for all too many.)

But back to the question, “Have the kids changed?”

My short answer is always, “No.”

That basic bundle of interest and energy has not changed over the course of thirty-three years. There were great kids then that I admired and respected and there are great kids now. And, of course, there were confused, disruptive kids then and there are those kinds of kids now, though not really all that many in either time.

Teenagers often get a bad rap for various shenanigans—yes, in my time, too, and before—but the vast majority are firmly in the process of becoming fine people.

So, no, the teenagers themselves have not changed. But what has changed is their environment, and sometimes I wonder how they turn out as well as they do. Because of technology and mass media, kids today are exposed to things we didn’t know existed until maybe adulthood or beyond.

Sure, young people—and old people, for that matter—have been screwing up their lives since caveman days. There have always been ways and means to drag yourself down, if that’s what you’re looking for.

The difference is that the ways and means nowadays have multiplied almost exponentially. But it also must be said that opportunities for people to extend and fulfill themselves have multiplied, too.

There’s so much out there now: great, wonderful, good, bad, ugly, and, yes, sinister. We didn’t know a tenth of it when we were young, and that provided us with a comforting security and a certain insulation, but it also provided physical and mental limitations. Much of that, for good or ill, is not part of the lives of young people today.

So, once again, “Have the kids changed?”

No. But I have.

In many ways, I admire and respect young people even more than I did thirty-three years ago. Teenagers today are running a very complex gantlet of modern trip wires, but despite that, I can report that most of them are doing very well with the challenges.

As The Who used to state, “The Kids Are Alright.”