Octomom update & other distractions

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Because this story is ostensibly about distractions and I wouldn’t want your mind to wander, I’ll start with the headline tease that likely snagged your attention in the first place.

Octomom is alive and well in Laguna Niguel, California, striving to finish her autobiography, recovering from a booze and pill addiction and doing what the NYTimes says is a bang-up job of raising her 14 children. Headline: “The Octomom proves us all wrong: The Happy Household of a former Tabloid Curiosity.

And — good news, fellas! — the gal’s still single!

I know all this and more because Val and I over one vacation breakfast in Chincoteague, Virginia, explained to the kids the who, what, where, why and how of Nadya Suleman, 44, the woman who in 2010 gave birth to 8 children because, I guess, there’s something about having six kids that leaves one unfulfilled.

Did I mention she’s still single?

How the conversation led to Octomom, I cannot recall.

A widely-debunked myth claims we use just 10 percent of our brains. Nonsense, say top neurologists. All of our brains are active nearly all of the time.

They say this like it’s meant to reassure we’re deserving of being the planet’s dominant life form and thus get a pass for indifferently extinguishing all the others.

Me, I have more respect for the brain power of the common canine.

Even a stupid dog is the more efficient thinker.

A dog’s thoughts can be roughly dropped into four categories: eat, play, sleep and  screw. Romantics might be tempted to lump play and screw into the same category. But I’ve seen horny dogs in action and unless you consider a quick butt sniff romance, I’ll contend there’s a difference between play (chasing a tennis ball) and screwing (google it).

Imagine how much happier and more productive we’d all be if we thought with the discipline of dogs.

Alas, it’s not to be. 

See, I use 100 percent of my brain, but it’s devoted to learning and retaining things like the marital status of Octomom.

In the hour I’ve spent composing this blog — talk about your pointless distractions — this is a partial list of the distractions that have rolled like vapid tumbleweeds across the wasteland of my mind.

Baseball, lunch, Jeff Probst, golf, bourbon, firewood, sex, Elizabeth Banks, sex, the new Springsteen movie, mosquitos, Stones on tour, pizza, book sales, my in-grown toenail and is it time to water Buck’s plants up here on the 3rd floor (no, but I did it anyway).

You know something a dog never thinks about? Jay Thomas. He played Eddie LeBec on “Cheers.” He died two years ago Saturday at the age of 69.

I’ve been thinking about him ever since a friend sent me a link to a commercial that showed George Washington driving a car. As I know what a black hole of distraction YouTube can be, I pondered if I had time to watch the 30-second clip.

I did.

Then I figured since I had time for that I had the 4:45 it’d take to watch Thomas tell David Letterman the uproarious story of the day he met the Lone Ranger. It’s absolutely hilarious. Letterman says it’s the funniest story he’s ever heard. Check it out.

I now watch it whenever I find myself getting depressed by distracting news about climate change, gun violence or polls that hint Trump will win again.

I’m using 100 percent of my brain but, unlike the dog, about 97 percent of it is pointless BS. I worry I’m changing my cranial composition from gray matter to fecal.

It’s a pity the Nazis so thoroughly polluted the term, because I could really use a leisurely stretch in a concentration camp. 

Really, there ought to be a camp where adults could go to learn how to concentrate.

The blog result would be fewer stupid distractions: more coherence, less Jay Thomas.

We’d pick a topic and wring everything we could out of it, which in the case of Octomom we can only hope wouldn’t result in more children.

The last thing I’d recommend for an aspiring writer like Suleman is more runny-nosed distractions running through your home.

Especially if you’re prone to having them all running through your head.

Fall movie potentials & Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Val and I and just caught the matinee of “50/50,” starring one of my four favorite actors, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The other three are John Lithgow, French Stewart and Kristen Johnson.

That’s right. They’re the four stars of the uproarious “3rd Rock From The Sun” that ran on NBC from 1996-2002. Read all about my obsession with it here.

About five years ago when I was on a lucrative run of work, I decided on a crazy splurge.

If you’re guessing sports car, golf clubs or Vegas hooker you overestimate my ability to fund a crazy splurge.

No, I went and plunked down $108 for the complete DVD catalogue of the entire series. I intend to leave it as heirloom entertainment to my daughters and will know I’ve raised them well if they become estranged over who gets caretaker privileges.

Each cast member -- including Jane Curtain and Wayne “Newman!” Knight -- is uniformly excellent.

And none of the stars have done anything post-show to diminish my affections.

In fact, Johnston, a stunning, leggy blonde, just upped my admiration ante by getting in a fight on a commercial flight. Normally, I’d be chagrined at such mopish behavior but this was perfect because the fight was with . . .

Octomom!

Yes, she made tabloid headlines for getting into a shouting match with Nadya Suleman over having to share aisle time with her sprawling herd of runny-nosed rabble.

As great as each is, I think we’re witnessing something entirely different with Gordon-Levitt. He’s becoming one of our finest and most appealing actors. Starting with a role in Robert Redford’s 1992 hit “A River Runs Through It,” it seems like he’s been groomed for acting greatness.

His farcical acting in “3rd Rock” is as laugh-out-loud as funny as anything I’ve ever seen. He was great in “50/50,” in which he plays a 20-something character devastated by a cancer diagnosis.

We loved him in “500 Days of Summer,” and I’m looking forward to seeing him in the new Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” filmed here in Pittsburgh.

And now it’s like the world is discovering what “3rd Rock” fans have always known: This kid is special.

Confirmation for me happened a couple weeks ago when I read Gordon-Levitt is dating the beautiful and very cool Scarlett Johansson.

I’m rooting for him because actors interesting enough to make me want to see them in anything are becoming rare. They start out strong and make bad decisions or let their personal life so clutter their craft I find them unwatchable.

Here are some current and recent movies and why I will or will not pay to see them:

• J. Edgar -- Heck, I’ll see it on the day it opens. As great as Clint Eastwood was for his first 50 years, his second act is even more compelling with movies like “Gran Torino” and “Million Dollar Baby.” This one stars Leo DiCaprio, our best actors and one who hasn’t complicated my viewing enjoyment with off-screen shenanigans. Heck, I know more about his green initiatives than who he’s dating.

• Moneyball -- I’m leaning nope. Brad Pitt play a baseball general manager who helped revolutionize the way players are evaluated. But Pitt’s flamboyant personal life is making him too distracting to enjoy. Plus, I’m always disappointed in baseball movies ever since “The Bad News Bears.” It remains the “Gone With the Wind” of baseball flicks.

• Tower Heist -- Oh, how I hope this gets gangbuster reviews. I’m a sucker for funny caper movies. But Ben Stiller’s becoming hit and miss. For every “Meet The Parents” or “Night at the Museum” I love, there’s a “Meet The Fockers II, III and IV,” or “Another Night At The Museum.” I can only conclude his motivated more by greed than legacy. And Eddie Murphy’s probably made more bad movies than anyone else on the planet. But the plot looks irresistible. It looks like a rip-off of the short-lived, but terrific 2007 series “Knights of Prosperity” about a bumbling gang of thieves intent on burglarizing Mick Jagger and starring -- Mick Jagger! “Tower Heist” looks promising, but if Rotten Tomatoes comes back with less than 70 percent favorable, I’m staying home.

• Anonymous -- I’ve for years tried to promote the falsehood that historical documents prove William Shakespeare started out as a 16th century tabloid writer who did stories about towns saved by giant balls of twine and how puppy loved turned an 11-year-old peasant into a petty thief. I did so because I thought it would reflect well on me, a 20th century tabloid writer who once did the exact same stories. I say I’ll see it, but probably won’t unless word of mouth is gangbuster.

• The Rum Diary -- This looks like good alcoholic fun. I like seeing movies that make me want to rush off on a really wild bender. And I do like Johnny Depp.

• Puss in Boots -- One of my favorite hangover cures is seeing a really good kid matinee with my little cuddlers. It’s like taking a nap with your eyes open. But I absolutely hated all the Shrek movies. If the kids want to see this spin-off, they’ll have to have mommy take them. No hangover’s that bad.

• The Three Musketeers -- Nope.

• Real Steel -- Looks unwatchable. We’ve reached a stage where special effects are no longer special. Here’s an idea: Let’s go back to putting the premium of telling a coherent story.

• Dolphin Tale -- The kids loved this so much with Val they want me to see it with them so you betcha. Plus, the cast includes Kris Kristofferson so it’ll give me an opportunity to brainwash them on the way home with songs from a performer I’ve always admired. My favorite of his? “To Beat the Devil.”

• The Departed -- I have to mention this because we just stayed up till 1 p.m. last night re-watching this 2006 Martin Scorsese movie. Based on the duplicitous criminal life of recently nabbed Boston mobster Whitey Bulger, it won a host of Oscars. It includes some of the finest acting by some of our finest actors. It stars Jack Nicholson, DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Vera Farmiga all at the top of their games.

Footloose -- I never saw the first one and won’t see this one. But I found out years later that John Lithgow played the maniacal anti-rock ‘n’ roll preacher in the first one and parodies the role in the “3rd Rock” season 3 show “Tricky Dick,” in which Tommy joins a grunge band. Rather than see either of them, I think I’ll pick a night and watch all of season 3 all over again!

Culling the happy hat herd

I admire mothers because the primary motivation for much of their existence is the love of a child. Truly, a mother’s love is one of the most awesome forces in nature.

Sure, many fathers feel that way, too. We’re rah-rah for nurturing, bonding and all the rest of that blahbidy, blahbidy, blah crap.

But it’s dawned on me that men might be superior to women in one regard: we’re imbued with a selflessness that gives us the capacity to love more than just our children.

And I, of course, mean in addition to loving ourselves.

We love our ball caps.

I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was feeling the moment I decided to pull the trigger on a ball cap purchase. I can tell you what I shot golfing the scorching day that white saline line started creeping up the bill.

Unlike my daughters, my hats have never told their friends I’m weird, smell bad, or done anything to make me look stupid -- other than resting atop atop my head and that’s an entirely passive act so I don’t begrudge the hat for that.

I understand women enjoy shoes, purses and dresses, but I think it’s deeper with men and hats. Go ahead and assume it’s only seems deeper because we’re more shallow.

I became stuck on this hats-as-children analogy when I began to realize I was becoming the Octomom of hats.

Hats have been spilling out of closets, from under car seats and off shelves whenever my head went.

I counted and, damn, if I didn’t have one hat for every day of the month: 31 hats.

I figured I needed to ditch a bunch of hats or brainstorm a controversial medical procedure that would leave me with 30 additional heads.

And think for a moment what I’d be like with 31 heads. If done properly, I could wind up 31 times more intelligent than I am now. Or else my current brain power would be divvied up among the number leaving me intellectually diminished, besides really freaky.

Either way, the development would probably thrill my barber.

But I took the easy way out and cut the herd in half. I spent the morning strolling down memory lane and conducting what amounted to the Sophie’s Choice of headgear.

I started with the beige brigade: I had nine beige hats and always keep a couple in the car. They’re good because they’re very neutral and don’t draw attention to my face when it’s suffering from the effects of hangover.

But nine? Five had to go.

Getting rid of one of my late father’s Olde Stonewall golf hats seemed like such a betrayal. But I have to be honest: it looked stupid on the old man and I’m sure it looks stupid on me. It has way too much of what an old friend of mine used to call “Fuddage,” the gap between the head and the inner hat ceiling. Plus, it’s all sweat stained. To hell with it.

I ditched a Rolling Stones tongue logo hat that’s always been special to me because it reminds me of a fun prank. I had the hat sent to my 8-year-old Josie and in the personalized message part had them write: “Dear Josie, Me and the band want your Dad to have this rockin’ hat for Father’s Day. Be sure to tell him we all love his blog! Rock on, kid! From Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones.” The hat gift from a band she’d seen perform at the Super Bowl seemed to impress her and had her looking at me more reverentially. Lasted about 20 minutes.

Took me two hours this morning to cut the hat count in half. Then I spent the whole afternoon giving pep talks to each hat like the career councilors do with employees moments before security shoves them out the door.

Now it’s off to the Salvation Army with the whole bunch.

The task was emotionally grueling, but gives me confidence that one day I’ll be capable of taking on some of life’s other challenges.

But it’ll be years from now before I’m ready to tackle the T-shirts.