The Star-Mangled Banner

Fergie

Back in 2018, the Black-Eyed Peas front woman, Fergie, sang the national anthem at the NBA All-Stars Game. The performance was largely described on social media as "the worst ever" even though the seven time Grammy Award winner sang in tune and didn’t run afoul of any of the lyrics. Admittedly, her bluesy, soul rendition had me wondering if she has any honest bff's in her entourage. Some of the NBA athletes rocked back and forth, transfixed by the rhythmic beat before they started to chuckle like catholic middle schoolers. I thought the Fergalicious version of the Star-Spangled Banner was at times cringeworthy, but not as bad as many of the past performances. To prove it, here are some dreadful renditions of the national anthem which if sung back in the day would have made Francis Scott Key root for the British.

In 2008, police officers across Hamilton County, Tennessee gathered in front of a memorial to remember fallen cops. Chattanooga Deputy Sheriff Ezra Harris butchered the lyrics as he carried every other note. The look on the faces of the boys in blue, trying not to laugh, made the event so much more memorable. The best lines were,

And the rock is red glen.

bombs bursting in air.

and

...through the night that the stars were still there.

Harris brought it all home with,

Wave, BRAVE, and the home of the free.

Then a police captain takes the podium and says,

"Join me in prayer, please."

Yeah, let's pray that doesn't ever happen again, but it did just six years later in 2014. After a lot of practice, Harris got a chance to redeem himself at The Great GMA Do Over. Harris was flanked by a gospel choir and a mounted police officer who was instructed to tase anyone who laughed. At least he got all the words right this time around.

In 2010, a Canadian woman attempted to sing the US National Anthem at a hockey game. Things started out fine until she sang,

What's so proudly we live...

She stopped, apologized, then took an agonizing moment to compose herself before she started from the top. Unfortunately, she flubbed the same line with,

What's so twilight...

after which she turned then exited the rink. Remarkably, she returned apparently for a third try with the lyrics in hand, only to crash and burn as she slipped on the ice. At this point, she realized there was no coming back from this level of screw up so she just laid there on her back atop the cold hard surface and prayed for spontaneous combustion. Luckily, no one expects that much from Canada whose chief exports are Canadian money and Justin Bieber.

Steve Tyler

In 2001 the lead singer of Aerosmith, Steve Tyler, belted out a rendition of the anthem before the start of the Indianapolis 500. His opening harmonica accompaniment seemed fitting considering this was mostly a tobacco spitting, fan boat bayou crowd, but when Tyler sang,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

I'm pretty sure he stops to wipe a controlled substance from his nose. He sent it home with a screeching scat singing closing that also rid the stadium of any pigeons. Tyler deviated from the lyrics when he sang,

O'er the land of the free and the home of the... Indianapolis 500.

Guys like Tyler are creative forces that just make the world a better, more stoned place.

Bolton

In 2003, Michael Bolton sang the anthem at Game 4 of the American League Championship Series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. Bolton brought his signature baritone voice but not his trademark mullet, thankfully. When Bolton sang,

O'er the ramparts we watched...

  he forgot the next line which we all know is,

...were so gallantry streaming.

After a brief but pain inducing pause, Bolton, the professional that he is, took a quick look at his palm on which he wisely jotted down some notes. Back on key he shoveled the rest of the tune into the microphone. To be fair it must be hard for a singer to belt out a ditty on pitch and in time against the echo experienced in a large stadium. Not to mention to do so before a crowd of fifty thousand baseball fans, none of whom actually like Michael Bolton.

In 2013 Alexis Normand attempted the nation anthem at the Memorial Cup which has to do with hockey in some way. Things started to unravel early on when she blurted out the word "first" after singing "last" in the line,

What so proudly we hail, at the twilights last gleaming?

After an excruciating moment of silence, Normand started free associating the remaining versus with whatever popped into her head. At one point she sang,

What so ever we said and the twilight still gleaming.

Then she farted out this gem,

And the rocks fair fair,

the bombs bursting in air,

and the land was still there.

To her credit she delivered the final verse with enough pride left to know that she fucked up so royally that for the rest of her life her friends will ask her where she thought the land had gone.

In 1981, Juanita Booker sang the nation anthem at President Ronald Reagan's inauguration. I watched it live on TV. Booker didn't mess up any of the lyrics, although she pluralized "flag" when she sang,

Gave proof through the night that our flags was still there.

I always assumed, perhaps erroneously, that there was only one flag flying over Fort McHenry, but there might have been more. While Booker's rendition wasn't that bad, the accompaniment sounded as if they were following her. She sang even lower than Michael Bolton which is quite an achievement. So low that at times Booker sounded like a foghorn.

A commentator explained that Reagan heard Booker sing somewhere and asked her to perform at his inauguration. That was the official narrative, but earlier in the year his wife, Nancy, was talking to her husband on the phone during a televised fundraising event in Chicago when she said,

“Oh Ronnie, I wish you could be here to see all these beautiful white people ... black and white people, I mean.”

The unofficial reason Booker performed at the inauguration was to make the incoming Reagan administration appear more racially sensitive in attempts to cover for Nancy’s gaff on the campaign trail.

So there you have it. Clearly, many singers were far worse than Fergie. Just about all performers of the National Anthem fail to render the last lines of the first stanza,

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

as a question. During the bombardment of Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key wasn't sure that by the morning the defenders of the fort would survive the onslaught, reflecting the tenuous nature of the nation during the War of 1812.

Now, if only someone could explain to me what “spangle” means.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on February 27, 2018.

Four Intrinsic Truths About Relationships

When I was in my twenties, I stopped dating for two whole years and entered a monastery to meditate on why I kept getting into such bad relationships. It took all but an afternoon to realize the common thread in everyone of those partnerships was me. Apart from the terrible haircut they gave me, I learned during my four hours of fasting, silence and soul searching that the criteria I employed in choosing a mate was wholly inadequate. You see, I mainly looked for one thing in a woman who I liked, namely, if she "liked me back." Clearly, this was not enough.

Up till then, I could always recall the date I met my present girlfriend because it corresponded to the day after I just broke up with some colossal bitch. I had an unbroken chain of atrocious relationships with an endless supply of consummate psychoses. It would be easy to fault women as a whole as some men do or chalk it all up to bad luck instead of blaming it on my own shallow manner in which I searched for the mother of my children. Certainly, it was my defect because last I checked I wasn't from a culture in which my parents arranged marriages. When I recall some of the knuckleheads I dated back in the day, I'm astounded that I emerged from the cesspool of youth unscathed.

I once dated a woman who in the summers constantly turned on the air conditioner in my flat without checking the outside temperature. Often it was colder outside than the temperature she set on the thermostat so she was using the air conditioner to heat the place.

Some women love drama. They find conflict in everything and make your daily life miserable. Once, after returning from the grocery store, my girlfriend at the time saw that I had purchased tunafish. Recently, she had seen a documentary about dolphins getting snagged in tuna nets.

“How could you buy tuna with what they do to dolphins?” she lamented.

.

“What about the tuna?” I asked, “The nets are there for them.”

She argued that dolphin's brains were as big as human's. I offered that if dolphins were so smart, they would be capable of avoiding a tuna net like the vast majority of mankind. She really didn’t care about dolphins, or the natural world for that matter. She had gone to a community college where she majored in psychology so there probably wasn’t much natural science in the curriculum. She just wanted to argue, so argue we did, about everything and nothing. When we broke up, I felt as if I had been paroled from daily, inane commentary.

Needless to say, at the tender age of 27, I needed to figure all this out so I took some time off to think. I had the foundation set correctly. I was looking for someone to spend the rest of my life with, a mother to children, a person whose goals were similar to mine. Who you marry is the single most important decision in a your life. It's not something you want to fuck up.

All this heavy thinking back then led to three intrinsic truths about relationships. These are things that should be unquestionably present. Here they are.

1. Must be free

Most women know a guy they adore who craps all over them. I call this dude the "end all, be all guy," (ea-bag). An ea-bag is often a woman's first love, first sexual experience and usually exhibits a host of atrocious behavior. He's a fuck buddy with an unlimited fast pass. "Big" in Sex in the City was an ea-bag as was Christian Grey from the Fifty Shades of Stupid trilogy. Women clinging onto the last jerk they dated or doling out a free pass to their ea-bag are not free. They are encumbered by the past and will never be able to form a healthy relationship until they unload their baggage and embrace self-determination.

2. Must be 100%

There are many complicated rules involving how you should respond to a text, tweet or other means of communicating via social media. If she is looking forward to a relationship with you, all the rules go out the window, and she will respond immediately as should you. When it's right, you both yearn to be together and will forego fool-hearted netiquette employed to give one person "hand."

3. Must exhibit morals

Once on a first date, a mentally challenged young man approached my date inquiring about directions. She was exceedingly kind. When he went on his way, she turned to me and said,

"What a dork!"

Apparently she gave him incorrect directions much to her amusement. At the end of the night when I walked her to her car, I noted that she parked in a handicapped spot without a proper plate. When I inquired about this, she explained that she did it all the time and never got pinched. People like her think the difference between right and wrong is getting caught. If this was her idea of best behavior on a first date, imagine what she was like after a year.

These three tenets were enough to guide me to a wonderful woman, who I married and had two children with. We've been together for 28 years. I no longer have a need for this list, but recently I've been thinking about it again which led to this addition.

4. Must have a good relationship with her father

A woman who has a loving and caring father will likely have a healthy outlook on relationships. Good fathers parent by fostering independence and self-reliance while mothers tend to nurture safety and wellbeing. To ensure that a young woman breaks free of her father and leaves the nest, nature has coded in that extra leg of the X chromosome all woman have instructions for mothers and daughters to fight just short of killing each other. My wife had a very close relationship with her father, who helped her in school with homework and science projects. She was his constant companion and assistant with home repairs when she was coming up. She became a mechanical engineer, then a software developer and finally a vice president for a global company. She attributes it all to her father's tutelage. I've seen her cry twice. The last time was when her father died.

So are there anymore? I think there is at least one more intrinsic truth about relationships. This last one is like the undiscovered element 119 on the periodic table just after the noble gas, Oganesson-118. We know it's there, but it's unobserved as of yet. College text books in technical subjects often treat a hard problem as "left as an exercise for the student." That's what the fifth intrinsic truth is. I recently asked some of my younger family and friends what was important to them in regards to selecting a life partner. A youthful family member offered,

"Nice bod."

This is a little too superficial and not in the spirit of what I'm looking for. A friend in his thirties suggested,

"Must be uninhibited."

Uninhibited is a word used by men in personal ads when describing what they want in a woman. They usually slide it in at the end in hopes that it will go unnoticed as in,

"Likes long walks on the beach, nature, going out to dinner, movies. Uninhibited."

The problem with uninhibited is that it actually means "must be willing to do my best friend too."

A young colleague once offered,

"Must have a good vibe."

Many young people believe that vibe is a window into your soul. If you're an upbeat person, your vibe will be good. If you're an uptight ass hat, your vibe will be bad. You can't see vibe. You feel it. Vibe is a reflection of who you truly are.

Brad Pitt, good vibe
Andy Dick, bad vibe

In practice vibe has got more to do with fashion than one's inner being. A man has a good vibe if he goes to a coffee house to read poetry, has a man bun or wears Jesus sandals. A woman has a good vibe if she drinks soy tea, has a tattoo of her grandmother's favorite saying on her wrist, or cares intently about tree sloths. None of the things will necessarily help you find a soulmate so forget about vibe. Besides, Brad Pitt extruded a good vibe for decades, but as a husband he turned out to be a major tool.

Someday someone will look out the window and gaze at the friscalating dusklight, take a deep breadth then pull out their phone and post words of wisdom on living and loving for the rest of us to follow. I just hope they do so before being banned from social media for going against the suggestion that Jill Biden would make a good surgeon general.

Editor's Note: Originally published on February 13, 2018.

Teach a Fish to Swim, and He'll Swim his Whole Life

Many years ago, I taught a few graduate level courses in computer science for a local college. My favorite was a "transition" course called, Object Structures, which was required for students who hadn't an undergraduate degree in computer science. It was necessary to get students up to speed, and as such, the course was for no credit. Unfortunately, many students thought "no credit" was synonymous with "easy." Two weeks into class, I got a strange phone call.

"My name is Carol. I'm Allen's mother, and I work in the industry."

Allen was a student who was struggling right from the start. I don't recall what his undergraduate degree was in, but it wasn't computer science so my course was required. Carol continued,

"Your course is too hard."

I tried to explain to Carol that students had to possess a certain skill set to attempt a masters degree in a field which was different from their undergraduate degree. Carol, a vice president for a well known software company, was having no part of it. She insisted that since Allen's company paid for the course, her son should get an A.

"After all, your course doesn't count," Carol insisted.

Snowplow parents are pretty common today, but back then it was widely believed that students had to suck it up and study. Helicoptering at the masters level was mostly unheard of. I explained to Carol that, my course did, in fact, "count" in that you had to pass it if you wanted to continue with the rest of the program. She was so dissatisfied with my response that she took it up with the Dean of Computer Science, who sent me an email indicating,

"The mother of one of your student's called to inform me that your class is too hard."

The dean was a bit of a stiff. That's probably how he got to be dean. Anyway, I rarely back down from an opportunity to be an asshole so I responded with,

"I was hoping Allen's mom and I could discuss this at the next parent-teacher conference."

The dean wrote back,

"There are no parent-teacher conferences in graduate school."

A few weeks later Allen did poorly on a homework assignment. The program he handed in didn't run at all so evaluating the efficacy of the output wasn't an option. There were only five programming assignments so bombing one would certainly impact your grade. I didn't want one bad assignment to cost Allen a letter grade, so I talked to him after class. He said that his workload got the best of him. I offered Allen the opportunity to take another week to work on his program.

He took the offer. He also took his friend's corrected assignment, copied it then handed it in the following week. I gave him a break, and he responded by cheating. Allen got a zero on that assignment which certainly cost him a letter grade. The dean sent me the following,

"Heard you gave a student the opportunity to makeup an assignment, and they copied another student's work. No good deed goes unpunished."

I had never met the Dean of Computer Science. I didn't even know what he looked like. I knew him through terse emails that he send out to the staff. I was what they called "Adjunct Faculty," that is, non PhD people from industry who teach for a fraction of the cost of a full time professor. The dean always distinguished adjunct from full time as in,

"All faculty are permitted to park in the garage. This policy expressly excludes the adjunct faculty."

I used to think about being called a word which sounded like "junk" on my long nightly walks to the building I taught my class in. In response to his inquiry about my cheating student, I wrote,

"I'm planning on addressing academic integrity at the next parent-teacher conference."

The dean wrote back,

"There's always after school detention."

After I returned exams, I always spent a few minutes of class time to go over the test, then I endured the line of students who questioned how I graded something. I called this activity "gaggling" for "grade haggling." I usually tossed the student a point or two just to avoid listening to their diatribe on fairness.

One five point problem required a numerical answer. Allen waited his turn in line then explained,

"You marked this wrong when I got it right."

Now, I wrote the correct answer in red ink next to Allen's wrong answer which I circled. Best I could tell is that Allen had added the parts to his answer that would make it correct like an extra circle above a "6" to make an "8." Not wanting to accuse Allen of outright cheating, yet again, I asked,

"Did your answer change?"

Allen laughed as he sat back down. I told the story to a colleague who must have relayed it to the dean because a few days later, he sent me this sage, unsolicited advice,

"You'll discover that teaching has its perks and its punishments. Next time make a copy."

Allen got a "C." I could have ejected him from my class for copying his friend's homework assignment, which many of the full time faculty advised. His mother wrote a letter to the Dean on her company's letterhead requesting that Allen's grade be expunged, the tuition returned and "a letter of reprimand be entered in Professor Languedoc's permanent file."

I laughed when I read my title. The dean had sent me a copy of the letter along with his response which was on university letter head. He wrote,

"Dear Carol,

   I'll take this up at the next parent-teacher conference.

      Sincerely,

          (signature)

          Dean of Computer Science"

Maybe he wasn't such a stiff after all.

A Disturbing Trend in Men's Health

With all that's going in the world, the pandemic, riots, drugs and trillions in national debt, no one is talking about a trend in men’s health which I have been following for some time. It's bad enough that we have young men engaging in activities like parkour and recreational drug use, this threat to men's health is a far bigger problem.

It's all over YouTube. I just watched a video whereby two dudes exchanged swift kicks to each other's testicles. The activity came to an abrupt close when one guy landed a direct hit. Another video showed a guy positioning himself, spread eagle, near a ramp as his friend rolled a truck tire down a hill striking his buddy in the balls. Just before launch the target guy says,

"This is the most intense thing I've ever done."

The tire, impacting his nut sack, sounded like Madonna being hit in the face with a salmon. Afterwards the young man over celebrates like Dude Perfect after a successful upper bleacher stadium shot. I also saw a video of a guy lighting fireworks from his butt. If an alien race is conducting an ongoing study of mankind, and they observe us using our ass cracks to launch ordnance, they might come to the conclusion that the Earth is not worth saving and recommend strip mining the entire planet.


Evel "Bones" Knievel 

Sure, my generation did stupid things in our youth, but we never did anything that deliberately threatened our junk. My friends and I built ramps which we jumped our bikes over, mimicking Evel Knievel, who often mused that his left pinky finger was the only bone in his body he hadn't yet broken. Usually we quit for the day when one of us face planted. We used to call it "bobbing for asphalt."

I got news for young men. Your balls are kind of important. Just ask Lance Armstrong. He lost a gonad to the big C. This all happened before he downed enough 5-Hour Energy for Chris Christie to place on American Ninja Warrior. So you can't blame it on performance enhancing drugs. You got to keep your boys in good working order. Deliberately kicking, dropping heavy objects on, or lighting fires in close proximity to your knackers is not a good idea. I've seen many skateboarders grind their stones on a handrail. Whatever they were trying to pull off was certainly not worth foregoing the joys of fatherhood.

Dave "Un Huevo" England

The pro snowboarder, Dave England of Jackass fame, donated a nad to medical science after a particularly gnarly wipeout. A lot of painful dude bro behavior mimics that of the cast of Jackass who routinely injure each other for on screen laughs. I never realized that natural selection was so funny. These guys have their priorities askew. Instead of risking their castanets on nonsensical stunts, they should be using their equipment according to the manufacture's recommendations. Skateboarders have come up with names for common accidents like getting the board rammed up your ass during a trick is called a "credit card." Crashing such that your legs bend backwards and your feet strike your head is a "scorpion." Grinding your acorns on a rail is called "getting sacked."

I'm not a medical professional, but I'll bet if you pop an apricot, the remaining one doesn't go into overdrive. This means your shot is going to be half the volume. Since there is a correlation with ejaculation and lowering your chances of prostate cancer, men ought to keep their equipment functioning for as long as possible on the highest possible setting. I'm not sure exactly what the medical studies actually say in regards to prostrate health, but I'm going to go with the benefits of more sex because it involves, well, more sex.

Maybe there is an evolutionary component to all this cultural cajone kicking. When the population gets too high and there isn't enough disease to go around, (although recently that doesn't seem to be a problem), nature self corrects by causing perfectly healthy men to sterilize themselves. It's sort of like lemmings hurdling off cliffs when their population surges even though that doesn't actually happen. What I simply cannot figure out is why young men are doing this?

You go through life with one body which must carry your head to the end. Smoking and drugs destroy the vehicle in imperceptible ways so the impact isn't felt until you are much older, long after you realize you're mortal. Death always appears far off to young people so they do stupid things like jumping from high places and kicking each other in the plums.

I think we should band together and contact our local legislators to tell them we want men's health to be a priority. I'm going to spearhead raising awareness for this important cause right after I reinvest my retirement savings in the Clapper, the Flowbee and the Ronco Pocket Fisherman.

Editor's Note: Based on a post originally published on February 6, 2018.