April 1st not foolish enough

(737 words)

America will be better off when people spend as much time preparing for April Fool’s Day as they do for stuffy holidays like Thanksgiving.

Everyone could take the day off. Instead of watching tedious professional football games we could watch reruns of shows like “Get Smart” and “3rd Rock From The Sun.”

We could still enjoy a big family feast, but mixed in amidst the cranberry and turkey would be dribble glasses and whoopee cushions.

America’s suffering from a laughter deficit — and I’m part of the problem.

It’s been years since I’ve pulled off a really great April Fool’s Day prank and even that record is tainted because the victim was a gullible 6-year-old girl.

It was 2006 and my wife was 6-months pregnant with the child who would in June become Lucinda Grace.

It was an exciting time, especially for Josie. She was infatuated with the idea of becoming a big sister. It was a cheerful mindset that would conclude about 8 days after the actual birth.

But prior to that she was positively enraptured about the idea of having a new baby in the house.

Val and I decided to use her enthusiasms against her.

So on the morning of April 1, I crept into Josie’s second floor room and gently shook her awake. I had big news, I said.

“Congratulations, darling! You’ve got a baby sister!” I told her the baby’d arrived in the middle of the night. “Do you want to come see her?”

She did. Holding her soft, little hand in mine, we together started down the stairs. On the couch cuddling a swaddled bundle was her mother — and to this day I can’t believe I got her to play along.

With awe-filled eyes, Josie pulled back a corner of the blanket to see . . .

Barney the Purple Dinosaur!

I saw her face race from wonder to pure rage.

“April Fool!”

It was incredibly cruel. I saw the confused hurt in her face and thought, man, if anyone ever does anything that mean to her again I’ll kill them with my bare hands. But it was okay that I did it because, hey, I’m her dad. And on the plus side, she instantly assumed an irrational hatred for Barney, a result hedge fund investors might call an unanticipated collateral dividend.

She raced upstairs and buried her sobbing head in her pillow. I ran after her and told her this was what April Fool’s Day was all about. Then I put her little tear-streaked face in my hands and said, “And now how would you like to get even with Mommy?”

The thought of humiliating revenge, the essence of this great holiday, was a transformative balm.

I knew right then our angelic little daughter would be as wicked as the rest of us, and thus able to navigate her way through the often stormy seas of humanity.

So I spent the next hour showing her how to rig a rubber band around the kitchen sink spray faucet, balance an egg on top the refrigerator door, and disguise your voice on a call to Nana so she might at least momentarily think it really was George W. Bush calling to say she’d need to get her wrinkled old butt to Baghdad.

And then when all that fun was over Josie went to her mother and began plotting how to get even with me in various painful and humiliating schemes that endure through this day.

I don’t think I’ve pulled off a truly dastardly April Fool’s Day prank ever since.

The most I do anymore is make about a dozen boring prank calls to secretaries for various city big shots, give them a made up name and ask them to call me at 412 665-3640.

It’s so lame.

I could probably try and concoct something devious here on the blog, but I don’t think I’d feel right using the blog for such shiftless purposes and, besides, everyone knows it’s wrong to tell lies on the internet.

Maybe you can do better. 

Either way I hope you’ll fight the repressive pressure to be pretentious and will instead try and savor the silly.

I’ll try and do the same, but first things first.

It’s just about time to call the Pittsburgh Zoo, as I do every April 1st, and say, “Hello! This is Mr. L.E. Funt. Been any calls for me?”

Related . . .

Don’t believe anything you read, ‘cept this . . .

Fatherly fibbers stirs skepticism

A tale of turtles, pranks & Manti Te’o

Re-Run Sunday: TV-holics prepare for bender

AMC is in the midst of re-running the entire season of "The Walking Dead" in advance of tonight's return. "Survivor" returns Wednesday. We're in the middle of enjoying full season DVDs of  "Homeland," "Dexter," and "Justified."

It's not that all the TV has us wishing we never had kids. It's just weekends like this make us wish we had someone nearby who could all day watch our kids while we all day watched our TV.

There are lots of really great TV shows on these days. So here's a salute to TV viewing from 2009, featuring highlights about why "3rd Rock From The Sun" is one of my all-time favorites.

My wife and I are the worst kinds of insufferable snobs who are always telling people at parties we never watch much TV. For some reason, this makes us feel culturally superior or at least equal to the people who lie back they never do either.

It’s all hooey, of course. We watch all the time. Not only do we watch, but we take it all so seriously that we’ve gotten into vicious public shouting spats in highbrow restaurants about whether Jack Bauer’s brutal tactics will unnecessarily cost fictional lives. She screams that national security gives Jack moral sanction to conduct interrogations that involve lopping off the fingers of enemy combatants and I scream that she doesn’t know Jack about Jack.

The fights will start all over again Sunday with the long-awaited return of Bauer and “24.” That will kick off a run of must-see viewing for us that will likely lead to reduced productivity, sleepless nights and months of neglect for the poor kiddos who’ll exist solely on the dubious sustenance of Pop Tarts, Cheetos and Fresca.

Within the next month or so, our nights will be filled with “American Idol,” “Lost,” “24,” and “Survivor.” Sure, they all fall in the lowbrow category, but they all look like “Masterpiece Theater” compared to my very favorite show of all time.

That would be the magnificent “3rd Rock from the Sun.”

You can stuff M*A*S*H in Major Frank Burns’s rat-infested foot locker. Take the gang from Seinfeld and have them spend a Twilight-Zone sort of eternity looking for lost cars in endless parking garages.

Sure, those are great shows, but there’s never been a funnier, more laugh-out-loud hilarious show than “3rd Rock,” which is currently making the evening rounds on TV Land starting at 11 p.m. EST.

The absurd premise is based on four aliens -- Tom, Dick, Harry and Sally Solomon -- who take human form and come to earth to study our habits. They end up in Rutherford, Ohio, where Dr. Dick Solomon, played by John Lithgow, teaches incomprehensible physics to dimbulb students and craves earthly delights with his office mate, Dr. Mary Albright, played by the wonderful Jane Curtin.

The cast is uniformly excellent, but the peerless Lithgow steals the show.

The so-called great actors of the day leave me utterly cold. To me, acting normal isn’t acting. I sit mere barstools away from six guys who on any given day can out-surly the acclaimed Sean Penn. These guys act like they hate their jobs, their ex-wives, the man we elected president and anyone who cheers for the Chargers to beat the Steelers on Sunday (I’m right there with them on that last one).

If they ever give an Oscar for chronic misery, I have a barful of nominees ready for the red carpet, a unwelcome stroll they’ll reflexively say they hate.

But my pulse races anytime I see truly great overacting. And there’s never been more over-the-top overacting than that which is done by the incomparable Lithgow, in my opinion the greatest overactor ever.

The episode where Dick Solomon takes over as the relentlessly pompous director of the high school version of Romeo & Juliet should be required viewing in acting schools that have been churning out generation after generation of robotic actors who’ve been brainwashed into thinking guys like Moe, Larry and Curly are lowbrow.

Watch for it. That particular episode is called “Romeo, Juliet & A Dick.”

That’s another thing. What must have been intended to be a great subversive inside joke is now splashed all over the screen anytime a viewer checks out the program guide. Nearly every episode includes the name Dick in the title.

Some examples: “Father Knows Dick;” “Will Work For Dick;” “Eleven Angry Men and a Dick;” “I Brake For Dick;” “I Enjoy Being a Dick;” “Angry Dick,” and the sociologically relevant, “These Dicks They Are A Changin’.”

For those of you raised by sensitive sorts in cloistered environments, each of these titles is intentionally freighted with a double meaning. And to lowbrows like me, each is uproariously funny.

I doubt the brilliant producers of the show ever imagined the viewers would see the actual titles flashed up on the screen of a station watched by children, but youthful innocence has a short shelf life these days.

So, no, we don’t watch much TV. Just the shows mentioned above supplemented with near-nightly viewings of “3rd Rock.” I purchased the entire six-season run (1996-02) when it came out on DVD three years ago. It is one of my most cherished possessions.

Val loves it, too, but she takes exception when I say the “Romeo, Juliet & A Dick” episode is the best. She prefers “Dick ‘The Mouth’ Solomon” where Tommy and Sally fall under the sway of a guido they mistakenly believe to be a vicious mob hitman. She insists it’s the funniest “3rd Rock” ever.

On this point, we disagree.

You should see the gape-jawed stares we draw in highbrow restaurants when I scream at her that she doesn’t know Jack about Dick.

America needs a snow day

Usually by this point in the winter I’ll already have posted three or four I-hate-winter screeds.

The theme is shoveling snow sucks, all snowmen are abominable and that people who enjoy being outside in sub-freezing weather don’t have the good sense God gives a cow.

That’s why I was struck by an alien emotion this morning. I woke up sad it hadn’t snowed.

It started around dinner last night. The day had been pleasant and moderate, much as this whole winter. I’ve had to shovel just twice. As recounted in this winter-blasting howl, I shoveled at least twice a day for three weeks straight in the record snow-hell of February 2010.

Then one of the kids looked out the window and exalted, “It’s snowing!”

Was it ever. We’d gotten an inch in the hour since the sun had gone down. And it was snowing like we’d be buried by dawn.

That seemed to promise one thing: Snow day!

If there’s one thing I love about winter, it’s the school-sanctioned laziness of the snow day.

It’s probably not like that for most employed folks who consider it an inconvenient disruption of their busy, productive lives.

But they’re mostly Type A bullies who won’t let acts of nature deter them from endless money-making missions.

I’m not at all like that. It’s been my custom since I started working for myself -- er, more like NOT working for myself -- to stay home and watch cartoons whenever the school declares a snow day.

I must be something like a Type P person.

I’ve never forgotten the juvenile euphoria of huddling around the radio to hear Jack Bogut on KDKA announce -- yippee! -- no tests or teachers that day. It was like a surprise parole for the wrongly convicted.

I’m of the mind that when the wise men and women who run the schools decide it’s too dangerous to run the buses, it should mean every thing in the whole district closes until at least noon.

It should be like martial law. The only people permitted to drive are operating snow ploughs or are responsible for making pizza or ensuring the state liquor stores are open and stocked.

Then the roads could be declared safe around noon for desperate pilgrims in need of the aforementioned essentials.

My daughters were crushed this morning there was no snow day, especially the sad little kindergartner.

The poor kid’s never had a snow day.

This is the first year Greater Latrobe has had full-day kindergarten. We can argue about whether this will put our kindergartners on equal footing with kindergartners in totalitarian countries that impose things like year-round school.

I’m dubious of the benefits, but who am I to say?

Maybe one day I’ll rejoice that my daughter had twice as much kindergarten as her Daddy. That means twice as many cookies, twice as much nap time and twice as much time gazing around the room to see which kids eat their boogers and which ones just wipe them on the desk.

Yet, with all that elementary education, I understand it’ll fall to me to home-school her in one realm at which I’ve always excelled -- the art of the well-deployed hookie day.

So one day if the weather doesn’t cooperate, we’re going to be like the indoor ski resorts I hear about in places like Dubai. We’re going to have an artificial snow day.

We’ll pretend there’s two-feet of snow outside and get the fireplace cooking right along with the Poptarts. We’ll watch “The Three Stooges,” “Finding Nemo,” and seasons 1 through 4 of “3rd Rock From the Sun.”

We’ll simmer some soup, pop some Orville Redenbacher and stay snug in our jammies clear through the hot dog dinner.

We could all benefit from some Mother Nature imposed down time, a little stretch where the roads are impassable, the lines are down and there’s no one there to tell us to sit up straight or risk missing recess.

Please stay tuned to this blog for frequent weather updates and reminders that you’re working too hard.

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!

TV-holics prepare for bender (from 2009)

It says something about how topical the news has been that I've yet to write about a devastating personal crisis: our TV, the big boy, broke two weeks ago. But I can't blog today because, hallelujah, it's repaired and I'm bound to pick it up.

So I thought I'd re-post this lovenote to lowbrow television from 2009 in case anyone is missing my blog posts the way I miss having the TV (not possible).

Thanks for checking in!

My wife and I are the worst kinds of insufferable snobs who are always telling people at parties we never watch much TV. For some reason, this makes us feel culturally superior or at least equal to the people who lie back they never do either.

It’s all hooey, of course. We watch all the time. Not only do we watch, but we take it all so seriously that we’ve gotten into vicious public shouting spats in highbrow restaurants about whether Jack Bauer’s brutal tactics will unnecessarily cost fictional lives. She screams that national security gives Jack moral sanction to conduct interrogations that involve lopping off the fingers of enemy combatants and I scream that she doesn’t know Jack about Jack.

The fights will start all over again Sunday with the long-awaited return of Bauer and “24.” That will kick off a run of must-see viewing for us that will likely lead to reduced productivity, sleepless nights and months of neglect for the poor kiddos who’ll exist solely on the dubious sustenance of Pop Tarts, Cheetos and Fresca.

Within the next month or so, our nights will be filled with “American Idol,” “Lost,” “24,” and “Survivor.” Sure, they all fall in the lowbrow category, but they all look like “Masterpiece Theater” compared to my very favorite show of all time.

That would be the magnificent “3rd Rock from the Sun.”

You can stuff M*A*S*H in Major Frank Burns’s rat-infested foot locker. Take the gang from Seinfeld and have them spend a Twilight-Zone sort of eternity looking for lost cars in endless parking garages.

Sure, those are great shows, but there’s never been a funnier, more laugh-out-loud hilarious show than “3rd Rock,” which is currently making the evening rounds on TV Land starting at 11 p.m. EST.

The absurd premise is based on four aliens -- Tom, Dick, Harry and Sally Solomon -- who take human form and come to earth to study our habits. They end up in Rutherford, Ohio, where Dr. Dick Solomon, played by John Lithgow, teaches incomprehensible physics to dimbulb students and craves earthly delights with his office mate, Dr. Mary Albright, played by the wonderful Jane Curtin.

The cast is uniformly excellent, but the peerless Lithgow steals the show.

The so-called great actors of the day leave me utterly cold. To me, acting normal isn’t acting. I sit mere barstools away from six guys who on any given day can out-surly the acclaimed Sean Penn. These guys act like they hate their jobs, their ex-wives, the man we elected president and anyone who cheers for the Chargers to beat the Steelers on Sunday (I’m right there with them on that last one).

If they ever give an Oscar for chronic misery, I have a barful of nominees ready for the red carpet, a unwelcome stroll they’ll reflexively say they hate.

But my pulse races anytime I see truly great overacting. And there’s never been more over-the-top overacting than that which is done by the incomparable Lithgow, in my opinion the greatest overactor ever.

The episode where Dick Solomon takes over as the relentlessly pompous director of the high school version of Romeo & Juliet should be required viewing in acting schools that have been churning out generation after generation of robotic actors who’ve been brainwashed into thinking guys like Moe, Larry and Curly are lowbrow.

Watch for it. That particular episode is called “Romeo, Juliet & A Dick.”

That’s another thing. What must have been intended to be a great subversive inside joke is now splashed all over the screen anytime a viewer checks out the program guide. Nearly every episode includes the name Dick in the title.

Some examples: “Father Knows Dick;” “Will Work For Dick;” “Eleven Angry Men and a Dick;” “I Brake For Dick;” “I Enjoy Being a Dick;” “Angry Dick,” and the monumentally relevant, “These Dicks They Are A Changin’.”

For those of you raised by sensitive sorts in cloistered environments, each of these titles is intentionally freighted with a double meaning. And to lowbrows like me, each is uproariously funny.

I doubt the brilliant producers of the show ever imagined the viewers would see the actual titles flashed up on the screen of a station watched by children, but youthful innocence has a short shelf life these days.

So, no, we don’t watch much TV. Just the shows mentioned above supplemented with near-nightly viewings of “3rd Rock.” I purchased the entire six-season run (1996-02) when it came out on DVD three years ago. It remains one of my most cherished possessions.

Val loves it, too, but she takes exception when I say the “Romeo, Juliet & A Dick” episode is the best. She prefers “Dick ‘The Mouth’ Solomon” where Tommy and Sally fall under the sway of a guido they mistakenly believe to be a vicious mob hitman. She insists it’s the funniest “3rd Rock” ever.

On this point, we disagree.

You should see the gape-jawed stares we get in highbrow restaurants when I scream at her that she doesn’t know Jack about Dick.