The world is full of humor, happiness and wonder.
The world is also doomed by ridiculous amounts of greed, hypocrisy and suffering.
Here, the two interact in harmony.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Latin Night

We saw the Denver Nuggets take on the New Jersey Nets last night in East Rutherford, in what turned out to be the Nuggets' worst loss in 12 years. The game was over four minutes into the third quarter.
Luckily we were still entertained as it was "Latin Night" at the IZOD Center.
Sponsored by Goya, makers of All-Things-Latin Food, the promotion's purpose was simple: To "honor the Latin community."
So how did they honor the Latin community? One horrifying way after the next.
1. Featured Latin-flavored dishes (seasoned with Goya products!) throughout the concession stands.
2. Had the white and black (and uno or dos Latina calientes) Nets dancers wearing Latin dress and dancing Latin dances to Latin music between timeouts.
3. Gave away a vacation to the Dominican Republic to a slim high school kid who made more baskets in 30 seconds than a portly high school kid, sponsored by Republica Dominica department of tourism.
4. Had Nets forward Eduardo Najera, conveniently the league's only Mexican player (and my personal favorite player, especially when he was with the Nuggets) come on the jumbotron arriba-aribba-ing something in Spanish every five minutes.
5. Shot Goya-themed T-shirts from a T-shirt cannon.

But my personal favorite:
6. Having the Nets dancers throwing Chipotle burritos into the audience.

We were cringing throughout. Can you imagine what they would have done for Asian night or how they would have honored the black community? What foods would they have thrown into the audience then?

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

I found a better way

He rides my bumper like a jackass in some special hurry (to get where - his job that he certainly hates but is late for?) Unsatisfied with my speed, he jumps to the next lane to drive inches from the bumper of an old lady's car.

Now in a turn-only lane, I pass the old lady and the other driver. I beep my horn and point and glare at him to acknowledge his fine display of jackassiness. He then whips back into my lane to tail me, I thought, to retaliate for my beep and glare. My mind flashes forward to him tailgating me to my house -- just .2 miles away -- and the confrontation that follows. As my future self confronts him, nobly exclaiming "There's no need for any of this," he butts back into the right lane.

All fine until he is right beside me stopping for the red light. As he pulls up he is leaning on his horn, and has his middle finger ready hanging out his window. We make awkward eye contact, seperated only by six feet and the glass of my passenger window. He looks about 24.

Seeing my nemesis' portruding middle finger along with a bothered wtf face makes something unexpected shoot from my mouth: an outburst of laughter. I just put my hands in the air, laughing hard, and shrug my shoulders.

What I presume to be an unexpected reaction breaks his glare and he puts his middle finger away. And then he smiles, as if to say "You're right. This is silly, this game we play where you honk at me and then I honk at you and flip you off, the game where our blood pressures rise and we get really mad at each other but can't do anything about it because we're in separate moving vehicles, the game where we drive off in a huff and then when we get home or to work we retell the story, saying 'Oh you should have seen this idiot on the road'".

His guard collapses and we laugh at each other, suddenly just two guys, former strangers, former enemies, chuckling about old times. The light turns green and the cars ahead of him begin to move. As he drives away, with his hand still out the window, he waves.

I keep laughing all the way home, thinking that now if he followed me to my house, we'd probably end up being buddies and we'd have this really funny story about how we met.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

New stories

I'm pleased to have my story "Things to Consider Before Waking a Sleeping Bear" published at Johnny America. It went up today. Here's an excerpt:

The color of a bear’s fur is meaningless. Some brown bears are black and some black bears are brown. Some black bears (who are black) identify more with brown bears. Regardless, a bear will use its fur to trick you. And then maul you to death.


I am also happy to have another piece accepted at monkeybicycle called "A Modern Wedding." It should be up sometime soon.