Honea Express

Archive for the ‘In the News’ Category

Phil from A Family Runs Through It is a homeschooling Stay-At-Home-Dad and a provider of fine menswear. He had something to say, and by golly, this is the place to say it.

Please welcome Phil!

It might be old news by now, but that whole Bristol Palin pregnancy situation still bugs me.

At first I briefly wondered about the hypocrisy of a mother who preaches abstinence to other kids, but can’t seem to control the behaviors of her own.

Then I started thinking about all the life experiences the two young kids will be missing out on because they’re tied down to the responsibility of a baby. College, travel, friends. It’s all out the window now for them. Time to grow up fast, whether they’re ready or not.

Ultimately, though, what continues to bother me is the almost celebratory manner in which the news of their pre-marital sex was greeted by conservative religious Republicans.

It reached a point where the young man who couldn’t control his hormones was receiving a pat on the back from a US Senator and Presidential candidate. That went along with the free airplane ride and television face time he got out of the deal. I didn’t notice, did he get a standing ovation at the convention as well?

And here is what bugs me. A long time ago, in a city not far away, I became engaged to a wonderful young woman. I was 24, she was 20. Everyone was happy for us as we set the wedding date for a distant day some 18 months into the future.

We were in love, and ready. Ready for you-know-what.

But before anything could happen, we both received not-so-subtle messages from members of her family and church.

“You wait!” they told us. “Wait until you are married!”

I don’t remember them telling us why. It was simply imperative that we wait. Because if we didn’t, we would be shunned by all. As in nobody would support us, talk to us, be friends with us. And, most assuredly, nobody would be coming to our wedding.

That’s a frightening prospect for two people just starting out in life. So, we waited. And waited. And waited.

Damn, we waited!

Eighteen long months, we stupidly waited.

And for what? Where was our reward? Well, I mean besides THAT.

The people who made us wait twenty years ago are the very same kinds of people who are now issuing press releases about how proud they are of this brave young unmarried couple having sex in the backseat of a Chevy Silverado so they can accidentally make a baby.

I kept expecting them to talk about how Bristol and Levi would be shunned. Or, at the very least, I thought someone might say how disappointed they were in these kids for throwing away a big chunk of their future because they did not wait.

Hey, I waited! And, over time, I got my reward. A loving, generous wife of nearly 20 years, along with two kids who we chose to bring into this world when we were ready for them.

And all those people who scared us into waiting back then? We shun THEM now. That’s payback.

As I mentioned previously, some kind folks were nice enough to give me some topic suggestions. I’m going to do them all now because the wife and kids are out of town and I have no life. It’s very, very sad to be honest. I do have a cold Moose Drool at my side though, and The Kooks on the iTunes, so I’ll make the most of it.

CityMama @whithonea can you blog about that ocho cinco nonsense?

Yes, Stefania, I can.
Once upon a time there was a wide receiver named Chad Johnson. He was a fucking idiot. The end.

It was my first quake. I’ve lived in California for 5 years and I’ve never felt anything like that. It made me feel dizzy- but I wasn’t. I know, that’s deep.

In lieu of flowers please send money.

When I was in Jr. High, or Middle School as it has come to be known, I found a dead body. It wasn’t just a dead body, but it was the body of a man that had been stripped and tied and left in the Arizona desert for a week.

Just between you and me, bodies stink. Seriously, I’ve smelled a lot of bad things in my life, most of them since then, and nothing has ever come close.

I was in college for 7 great years, on and off. You smell a lot of things in college- mostly puke and crap, but there are some other lovely mediums available, and when I say lovely I really mean disgusting and when I say available I really mean forced upon you. The world is your oyster and it smells like it.

I found the body while “hunting” with my cousin and a friend. “Hunting” was basically us shooting each other with BB guns, which is one reason I won’t let my boys own one- the other being that they’ll shoot their eye out. Is that the same reason? What about the time that I shot a sparrow and it died and I buried it in a Pop Tart box in the backyard and then felt all dark and emoish even though emo didn’t exist yet? Is that a good enough reason?

Whatever? Like what you think matters in this matter (unless you agreed with me, then it most certainly is important, thank you).

We were “hunting” and we smelled it. It was the smell of death, and to be honest I don’t know that I knew what death smelled like prior to that moment, but the minute it hit our nostrils we knew that that was what we were smelling.

We were in a dry riverbed that doubled as a grazing area for cattle. We assumed that we had stumbled upon a cow that had finally decided to end it all. We followed our noses.

That’s why I don’t care for Fruit Loops. Sure, the cereal is fine, but every time Toucan Sam tells people to follow their respective nose because “it always knows” I want to punch him in that big, beautiful beak. Don’t follow your nose! Especially if what you’re smelling isn’t fake fruit.

We found the body. His hands were tied behind his back. We looked at each other, the three of us armed to the teeth with BB guns and dull Rambo knives. We looked at each other and then we ran like hell.

Your mind plays tricks on you when you’re 13 and you are running through the Arizona desert on a summer afternoon. Your mind plays tricks on you when you’re miles from the nearest house and you have just found a body that had obviously been murdered. It makes you see things, like murderers for instance.

Cut to scene- three young boys, screaming about murderers and running as fast as they could around rocks and cacti, all the while pumping their BB guns with a vigor that would set the standard for future pump-action activities unobtainably high.

Everyone knows that when faced with a murderer there is only one option for a boy armed to the teeth with a BB gun and a dull Rambo knife, and that is to shoot the bastard’s eye out and hope to hell that someone else was aiming at the other eye. Then you continue to run like hell.

We ran to the nearest house and proceeded to scream our lungs out while banging on the door. At this point the murderer must have been right behind us. We were sure of it.

The owner of the house listened to our story and somehow understood what we were saying. They called the police and we continued our journey to the home of my cousin. His parents had been called and they were waiting for us. All of our parents were there within minutes.

The police arrived shortly after that and my cousin took them back to the body. It was an easy trail to follow, as we had been very thorough in exercising our survival skills. There was a path of trampled brush for miles. It glistened with tears and BB’s.

Hansel and Gretel had nothing on us.

It wasn’t long after the police came back that we had to speak to the media. There was an angle and some spin, and suddenly we were being patted on the back for things that any idiot with a nose would have done.

We were told that the body belonged to a drug dealer. A deal had gone bad. The body had been dumped in the riverbed and the murderer was long gone. Or. Right. Behind. You! (Just seeing if you’re still here).

The three of us played on a little league team and we had a game that afternoon. We went to it and we talked as kids are prone to do. We were famous because some poor guy made some bad decisions- or bad decisions were made for him. We never took it lightly, that part of the story. Sure, the further removed we were from our fear the funnier that became, but death leaves scars on a boy, and some memories linger forever.

I spent the better part of the day reading various reviews of Disney-Pixar’s WALL-E. It’s not that I was looking for them, they found me. They were everywhere. Reviews written by CNN, Yahoo, MSNBC, New York Times, USA Today, and the leading papers across the nation wrote of WALL-E with such prose and poetry that I felt like I was reading a high school girl’s diary. These were words of wonder and love and I feared that perhaps they would build my hopes too high. I was afraid they would make me expect too much, and subsequently fall too hard. I read the reviews with growing anticipation, and braced myself for the inevitable.

It never came.

The movie is everything they said it was. It is a wonder of animation. It is a tender story of love and loyalty. It is a commentary on human nature vs. Mother Nature. It showcases the apathy of mankind with interest and concern. It preaches, but it is not preachy.

There were lessons, but they weren’t there for us to learn, because they were lessons we know too well.

When I saw Happy Feet I left the theater wanting to march up to a penguin and kick it. It went so far with its agenda as to anger those that agree with it. WALL-E went so far with its agenda that it inspired hope.

It’s funny, the film was in production for years, yet the message it sends couldn’t be more timely. It is a time for hope, a time for change, and a time for action.

I find it telling that there were only two major papers in the free world that disliked the movie and one of them is in Arizona, as is someone else that runs on an agenda opposed to the messages that WALL-E embodies.

I told you it was timely.

The theater, which showed the film digitally as opposed to film (incredible), was filled. There were infants, toddlers, teens, parents, grandparents. It is both a family film and a date flick. There were two things I found telling about the quality of the movie, a) a packed theater filled with kids was stone silent during the first 30 minutes of the film despite there being little or no dialogue, and b) they clapped. I love being in a theater where people clap as the credits roll. There is no one to hear them, no bows to be taken, but the people clap because they have been entertained and they have appreciation to show.

WALL-E deserves it.