Rogers book excerpts & my vehicular homage to "Tallahassee"

“They were helicopter parents years before most Americans had ever even seen a helicopter. That’s what most parenting “experts” would say about the way James and Nancy Rogers raised the baby they named Fred McFeely Rogers, born March 20, 1928. They refused to allow him to mingle with common classmates. They spoiled him, smothered him with parental love. What this says about a widely derided parenting technique is best left to the experts, but clearly some children of helicopter parents are destined to soar.”

• That’s the lead to the new book I hope will be available around Labor Day. The title for now is, “Growing Up In Mr. Rogers REAL Neighborhood: Life Lessons from The Heart of Latrobe.”

• I was embarrassed — well, even more embarrassed — to be seen driving my ’07 Saturn Vue (210,082 miles) after a slow speed nick surgically removed the entire grill. So I impetuously painted Dale Earnhardt No. 3s on the doors — bonus points to those who recognize it as a homage to Woody Harrelson’s “Tallahassee” character from the hilarious 2009 spoof, “Zombieland.” I posted pictures with me holding my zombie-slayer knife and we all had a good laugh. Now, four days later, I’m embarrassed again. 

• A 2008 survey of 3,000 British teenagers found that no fewer than 20 percent of them thought Winston Churchill to be a fictional character. The same survey found that 58 percent thought Sherlock Holmes and 47 percent thought Eleanor Rigby were real folks. It’s heartening to learn moronic children are an international phenomenon.

• The obligation I feel toward this deadbeat blog is pure madness. It pays squat, yet devoted readers tell me they’re upset when I let it languish like I have this month. Behold the irony: I ignore it for eight days in favor of trying — trying, mind you — to score a tidy payday, and I worry the hiatus might upset readers who for the most part would never dream of paying to read it. No wonder I drive an embarrassing vehicle.

• I doubt I’d pay to see them again with my tight finances, but what the Rolling Stones are doing this tour is breathtaking. We’ll not see the likes of them ever again.

• The Hon. Gov. Tom Ridge has graciously agreed to provide the book’s promotional foreword. My favorite line: “Chris writes about Latrobe the way Sinatra sings about New York, unflinching about the gritty realities, but with abiding affection and relentless positivity about the future.”

• One of the best nights I had selling the Palmer book was a pre-Christmas signing right here at The Tin Lizzy in Flappers, the beguiling second floor bar beneath my office. I sold a lot of books, made a bunch of new friends and bartenders Zach and Aaron sold a lot of Arnold Palmer drink specials. We’re already trying to conceive a drink exclusive we can call The Mister Rogers. We’re nearing consensus that a Mister Rogers should be room temperature tap water.

• That’s a cheap shot, albeit a funny cheap shot, from three renown boozehounds on a lifelong teetotaler. But he was anything but a milquetoast. I’ve unearthed some tremendously soulful stories about Fred. Contrasting the upbringing of this sweet, gentle soul with the rowdy Latrobe I for the most part inhabit is leading to what I think will be a book even more compelling than “Palmer: Homespun.”

• How did the word milquetoast become a pejorative to describe an ordinary bore when it by all means ought to be a snappy breakfast order at the neighborhood diner?

• I do love my wordplay. When I get back to more consistent blogging I’ll probably do something with this … “There must be a baker's equivalent to ‘piece of cake’ that is not ‘piece of cake.’ Because if a baker says something is going to be a piece of cake and shows up with, say, a pie instead he could be accused of loafing -- and don't get me started on bakers who loaf.”

• And this … “Megan Rapinoe says US Womens Soccer victory has team ‘on Cloud 9.’ She's mistaken. On-going gender equality issues mean they're only on Cloud 5.”

• “America used to really watch Mister Rogers. Maybe now it’s time America began to really study him. Two Ohio educators are spearheading a nascent movement to persuade the world to view Fred Rogers, not as a popular children’s TV host, but instead as a transcendent cultural figure along the lines of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.”

• Val and I are now in the happy habit of watching old “Cheers” reruns at bedtime. The show still holds up. I’m amazed at how deftly they introduce new and uproarious characters on a near-weekly basis. Seeing Frazier, Lillith, Ma Claven, Woody and others drop in and be hilariously impactful right away is a marvel.

• One dispute: Val likes to skip the “Where Everybody Knows Your Name,”  theme song and I could listen to it over and over. I think I feel this way because the song always reminds me of home. Odd, I know, because, well, I am home.

• My heart warms every time someone compliments my Adelphoi commencement address, as someone does at least once a week. Need a speaker? I’m your guy. You may not know it yet, but I’m your guy.

• “We’ve made this our home. We’re never leaving Mister Rogers Neighborhood. After reading the stories in this book, I hope it never leaves you.”

• That’s the book’s last paragraph. Now all I need to do is finish all the stuff that goes in between.

Let Woody be Woody: Harrelson flicks & others

Didn’t see HBO’s “Game Change” because we don’t have HBO. Would have rushed to order it if any of the show promos had hinted it included Woody Harrelson playing a character based on Woody Harrelson.

He’s becoming that entertaining.

I’ve read enough profiles of him recently to understand shows depicting Woody being Woody would be better than most of the movies starring alleged A-list actors who command far more respect than the B-list actor who got his start on “Cheers” playing a guy named Woody.

Better is any role that has Woody playing an exaggerated version of himself.

That’s what happens in “Zombieland,” and “The Messenger,” two of the finest movies we’ve seen in the past two years.

In both, Woody plays over-the-top, more hick and cartoonish versions of himself with out-of-control rage issues.

And when I say a cartoonish version of himself, I’m talking Yosemite Sam.

That’s exactly who he acts like in the peerless zomcom “Zombieland” from 2009. In it Harrelson plays a dim, but ultimately sweet redneck who slays hordes of blood slobbering zombies for fun and survival.

We recently rented the outstanding Harrelson drama “The Messenger,” also from 2009, about the U.S. Army details obliged to inform parents and spouses of the death of loved ones fighting overseas. In it Harrelson plays a dim, but ultimately sweet redneck who wrestles with the morality of war and getting drunk.

He was acclaimed, too, for his role in 2007’s “No Country for Old Men,” in which he plays a dim, but ultimately sweet redneck bounty hunter who fails to persuade a more lethal bounty hunter with a Moe Howard haircut to, please, not shoot him.

It’s been a marvelous career trajectory for an actor from Hanover, Indiana, who played a dim, but sweet redneck bartender from Hanover, Indiana, who wrestles with how to keep guys like Norm and Cliff from getting too drunk for network standards aiming to keep must-see TV family friendly.

He has what seems to be a non-Woody role in the ballyhooed new movie, “The Hunger Games,” so we’ll probably skip that and look forward to the rumored sequel to “Zombieland,” in which he reprises, well, you can figure it out.

We’ve done our share of enriching Hollywood the last couple of months. Here’s my jiffy little critique of what we’ve seen in theaters and at home. I’m ranking them on a scale of how many Woodys they’d need to make them perfect (zero Woodys, perfect; five Woodys unwatchable).

• “Safe House,” starring Denzel Washington -- Another fine performance by the great Denzel, but the movie suffers from obnoxious camera technique favored by directors too lazy to set up real action shots. Yes, it was the Drunken Camera Man School of Filmmaking. Too many of the too many action films are slapped together this haphazardly. Three Woodys.

• “The Lorax” -- We are in the Golden Age of kiddie movies, but the Seuss movies, to me, don’t work. The art is lavish, the stories slim. The perfect Seuss template remains the 24-minute version of “The Grinch that Stole Christmas.” Four Woodys.

• “Arrietty” -- Another one with the kiddos, this one very sweet and tender. It was unhurried, the artwork sumptuous. I thought it might be too slow for my girls, but they loved it. Not a classic, but we’ll watch it again. It’s nice to see movies made that show kids not all stories are spastic. One Woody.

• “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” -- This was fantastic. Great campy fun. And the computer-generated action-sequences of the monkeys run amok is mesmerizing. One Woody.

• “Bridesmaids” -- This was a critically acclaimed box office smash that both Val and I hated, me more than her. It’s from the Judd Apatow school of gross-out comedy. Its success means we’re going to be inundated with more of it in watered down forms. Five Woodys.

• “Breaking Bad” -- Not a movie, per se, but we’ve spent more than 45 hours the past three months catching up on seasons 1-3 of this AMC drama about a high school chemistry teacher who turns to meth cooking to provide for his family after he’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. Better than “The Sopranos,” this is the most entertaining show we’ve ever watched. 1/2 Woody.

“Breaking Bad” is near perfect, but there’s nothing in the whole wide world that couldn’t be improved with a little Woody.

Twinkie bankruptcy: time to nut up or shut up

I was overcome by an alien impulse as I strolled down nutritionally desolate aisle 6 of the local grocery store.

Seize the Twinkies!

News that Hostess Brands, makers of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos, was going bankrupt had apparently triggered a run on the golden sponge cakes with creamy fillings.

Some Twinkie fiends had already laid siege to the shelf. There were only three 10-packs of the indestructible treats still for sale for $4.29 each.

The boxes show the smilin’ Twinkie the Kid cowboy, the creation of some former art student who may once have fancied him or herself the next Picasso, and a supersized Twinkie with the nitpicky legal disclaimer “Product Enlarged to Show Detail.”

That Twinkies were sinking is something that just last year would never have registered with me.

It’s probably been more than 30 years since I’d last eaten one.

If that makes me sound like some sort of snack food snob, it’s misleading.

I eat tons of crap. I love chips, pretzels and about any dark sweetness produced in Hershey, Pennsylvania, a lovely company town that looks like all company towns would look if companies were run by 6 year olds.

And, as I’ve said before, the day chickens start laying Cadbury eggs is the day I become a chicken farmer.

So while the Twinkie’s never tickled my taste buds, something about its forbidden waste always tempted.

The reason I felt compelled to start hoarding Twinkies has less to do with the unsinkable pastry -- for experimental purposes I just submerged one an hour ago (still afloat) -- than it does with Tallahassee.

Not the city.

I’m talking about Tallahassee, the redneck zombie slayer.

Tallahassee is the name of the Woody Harrelson character from the uproarious 2009 movie, “Zombieland.”

It’s a difficult comedy to sell to dainty viewers who are put off by films that include graphic scenes of the living dead feasting on human flesh.

So now when people ask me what “Zombieland” is about, I never say it’s about zombies.

I say it’s about one man’s quest for the world’s last Twinkie.

And it is.

Tallahassee -- to prevent from becoming too familiar, they call each other by their hometowns -- realizes that the zombie apocalypse means production of his beloved Twinkies has forever ceased.

Somewhere exists, he knows, a box of Twinkies.

“Not just any box of Twinkies, the last box of Twinkies that anyone will enjoy in the whole universe. Believe it or not, Twinkies have an expiration date. Some day very soon, life’s little Twinkie gauge is gonna go . . . empty.”

So, being a careful sort, I had to buy a 10-pack.

Like I said, I haven’t eaten a Twinkie since the late 1970s, but something about them has always beckoned. It’s just so iconic.

It’s the subject of a book I have to get around to reading. It’s Steve Ettlinger’s “Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover how the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined) and Manipulated into What America Eats.”

Ettlinger explores how things like Polysorbate 60, Sodium Caseinate and beef fat become part of a simple snack cake.

The concept is pure genius.

I showed Val the box of Twinkies like it was a new puppy.

“Look at this!” I said. “I’ll bet I haven’t had a Twinkie since 1979!”

“That’s probably about when those Twinkies were made,” she observed.

Deciding to savor the anticipation, I put the box aside until the kids were in bed.

Coincidentally, Val had taped a movie made at roughly the same time she suspects the Twinkies were. It was “Broadcast News” from 1976.

What a great, prophetic movie.

It’s funny, because I grew up in the ‘70s and remember it being a time of innocent joy. There was The Partridge Family, Speed Racer, The Steel Curtain and the dawning awareness that life was getting more interesting as one-by-one the girls began filling out their sweaters.

“Broadcast News” reminded me of all the unholy tumult that was off the radar for a boy who’d yet to grasp the importance of the daily news.

There was Patty Hearst, the Munich Olympics, Pol Pot, Watergate, the Nixon pardon and the chaotic conclusion of the Vietnam War.

It wasn’t nearly as idyllic as I remember. Sure, parts of it were decent, but overall it hurt a lot of people and left a bad aftertaste.

You know what?

So did the Twinkie.

Let's all America go to the movies

I usually begin each day taking grim inventory of my reflection. It’s not pretty.

Bloodshot eyes, gaping facial pores, unsightly nostril hairs dangling like Tarzan vines over my cracked lips -- ugh.

Damn the man who invented the mirror.

That’s why the first-thing question that’s popped into my head the last four days has been a tone-setting triumph.

“Am I a man or a muppet?”

That’s a key line from the new Muppet movie. After seeing the movie on Sunday, I can’t ask it of myself without recalling uproarious laughter.

I only wish I were a muppet. They’re splitting up a pot of loot that’s in the neighborhood of $30 million.

That’s a lot of dough for piles of stitched cloth and feathers. And you know what?

It’s not nearly enough. For the good of the country, it should be more.

Here’s what I’d do if I were president in this time of national crabbiness: I’d declare tomorrow afternoon a paid holiday.

“Everyone’s going to stop what they’re doing and we as a nation are going all go to the movies,” I’d say. “But you can’t see the vampire flick, the latest Sandler stinker or that one that hints our former FBI director likes to wear frilly dresses. No, we’re all going to see the Muppet movie.

“And when it’s done we’re all going out to our neighborhood bars and restaurants to talk about it. Oh, and one more thing: Free popcorn for everyone!”

Wouldn’t that be splendid?

When I’m not looking in the mirror taking stock of my flaws, I spend a lot of time deep in my own head. I wonder why I’m the way I am, my two defining characteristics being happiness and insolvency.

I’ve concluded the one has to do with the other.

I like to drink in bars. I like to golf with buddies. I like to sit in the warm sunshine and watch baseball games. And I like to spend silly cuddle time at home with my three darlings.

But what I like to do most goes unmentioned in those varied pursuits: Man, I like to laugh.

I try and do mostly legal things that lead to that reaction.

Sadly, steady laughter gets in the way of doing things like earning a living or tracking my on-line back account, an activity that often leads me to weep.

So of course I just love it when I find a really funny movie.

Here are five movies I can watch over and over because they always make me laugh: “Hot Fuzz,” “Zombieland,” “Slapshot,” “Animal House,” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

And now add to that list “The Muppets.”

It’s just a hilarious joy.

It’s one of those rare funny movies that couldn’t be improved with profanity. I think.

Inappropriate profanity always makes me laugh. Our 5-year-old’s showing this tendency, too.

She came up to me the other day and wickedly whispered, “Daddy, do you know ‘hello’ has the H-word in it!’”

It’s true. So now without fail I cheerfully greet her, “HELL-o, Lucy!” She laughs her little ass off.

I can’t wait until she’s 6 when I deem her mature enough to watch that marvelous swearfest that is “Midnight Run,” another of my favorite funnies.

I wish more people would instinctively reach for laughter over other more base ambitions. People are so reflexively serious.

I started today thinking I’d write about a brainy front page topic, but wisely veered off.

There are already too many people paying too much attention to politics, locker room scandals, the Euro, and money bags bankers contemplating their next bailouts.

What this country needs is a really good laugh.

The Muppets have shown up just in time.

So do yourself a favor and go see it. Take a kid, take your folks, take a neighbor, kidnap a grumpy stranger from the bus stop. Old, young, black, white -- it works with every demographic.

I swear you’ll enjoy it.

Feel free to swear, too. That always cracks me up.

Sarah & the zombies

People lean in confidentially when they ask my opinion of the bloodthirsty monster dividing the public and causing millions of Americans to lose sleep at night.

And I’m not talking about Sarah Palin.

Yet.

Oh, I’ll get to her.

I’m talking about zombies. They are everywhere.

They are to this holiday season what Beanie Babies and Tickle Me Elmos were to gentler days gone by. They are red hot.

What do I think of them? I adore them. Can’t get enough of them.

It surprises even me.

One of my favorite comedies of the past five years is the uproarious “Zombieland.” The Woody Harrelson/Jesse Eisenberg movie is a bloody riot, and I mean that in both the literal and the British sense.

My wife and I have already watched it three times. It has cartoon violence, over-the-top giggles and the best Bill Murray cameo ever.

Then there is the exact reverse of that jolly satire. It’s AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”

The story is one of utter dread. There are no laughs, no sly lines. Just a horrific tale of urban survival and gore galore. Its slim six-episode run just concluded last Sunday. The skimpiness of its first run meant AMC had little faith in its potential.

Guaranteed producers have in their rush to capitalize on the sensation become like zombies themselves, albeit ones who feast on sushi and not careless humans.

So, yes, I’m currently infatuated with zombies. I find myself wondering about them and how I can differentiate one from, say, my friends at the bar.

Zombies have blank expressions. Check.

They aren’t picky about their looks. Check.

They have nothing to do all day. Check.

They eat with their fingers and are confused by things like silverware. Check.

If you think I’m being unduly judgmental about the boys in the bar, you are mistaken.

I was checking on myself.

I don’t think I’m a zombie, but apparently that’ll be an option if the kitchen ever runs low on chicken wings.

So with “The Walking Dead” in production, our TV is event free on Sunday evenings.

God help me, I decided to fill an hour of programming about the walking dead with an hour of TV featuring a woman who is just so, golly gee, full of life it’s surprising someone hasn’t jammed moose entrails down her throat to get her to shut the hell up.

Honest, I was just about to write a post congratulating myself for not having mentioned Sarah Palin all year.

The stinging Aaron Sorkin blast about her killing a caribou to show her bona fides to voters who think Ted Nugent an agile-minded man of reason was, I guess, what got to me.

But the real reason I had to watch was the same reason I used to watch a professional wrestling match when two titanic villains were set to grapple.

Yes, last night it was Sarah Palin vs. Kate Gosselin.

And, let me tell you, it was better than a cage match between George “The Animal” Steel and Rowdy Roddy Piper.

The show started with Sarah shopping for guns, talking about how much she loves guns, about the many problems guns can solve and why guns give her the kind of feelings the rest of us get from watching things like E.T.

I’ve never heard her in any interview gush as much about husband Todd, although guns, even unloaded ones, certainly have more to say than he does. 

The show wound up with the Palins camping with the Gosselins. It couldn’t have been more awkward. Sarah spent the entire time rhapsodizing about the joys of Alaska and Kate kept saying, in essence, gee, I hate Alaska.

Kate looked like I must look when a Jehovah’s Witness is eager to proselytize to me during a Steeler game, only with a snazzier haircut.

Sarah’s father rudely said of mega-mom, “She did nothing but bitch as soon as she got off the plane.”

It was fascinating. Here were the two stars of second tier network doing their best to sabotage each other.

News today is that Sarah is in Haiti on what’s being called a humanitarian mission. I heard some rah-rah sound bites and can only imagine they’d edited out the part where she says the solution to all Haiti’s godforsaken problems is to relocate the entire island to suburban Wasilla.

Coincidentally, Haiti is where zombie folklore originated in 1937. You can look it up.

So it makes perfect sense to cynics like me.

She wasn’t on a mercy mission. She was campaigning.

The only people who can see her in a position of leadership any more are truly brain dead.