Pop Culture – Page 260

Raising Children to be Animals

leeduigon(patty)September 28, 2013

As reported recently in The Huffington Post ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-lynch/an-open-letter-to-the-parents-of-the-stephentown-300_b_3983962.html? ) , some 300 teens in Stephentown, NY, celebrated Labor Day by breaking into someone’s house and having a “party.”

In addition to just plain vandalism and theft, along with a lot of drugs and alcohol, these fine young people also peed and pooed all over the house. Just like monkeys. And to make sure all their little friends knew about their exploit, a lot of them bragged about it on the social media, complete with video. Hint to publicly-schooled young geniuses: if you’re going to do a crime, posting video of it on Twitter is a real good way to get caught.

The owner of the house, a former NFL player, was able to identify the animals because they publicized their own names and pictures. He set up a website, http://www.helpmesave300.com , where he named all the kids and said he wouldn’t have them arrested. That was his first mistake.

He offered the animals the opportunity to return to his house and put things right.

So naturally the parents of the animals threatened to firebomb his house. According to a Sept. 19 article in The New York Daily News, they have also threatened to sue him (!) for publicly identifying their kids. Hint to idiot parents: your offspring already identified themselves on Twitter and Facebook.

The owner estimates that the animals did $20,000 worth of damage to his home, according to the Daily News.

Once upon a time, the shame of having raised a child that could do a thing like this would have been too much to bear. The parents, rather than live as outcasts with everyone in town whispering behind their backs, would have moved. As for what kind of punishment would have been administered to the “child”–

Well, hey, when I was a kid, nothing like this ever happened. We all knew that no form of punishment our parents had ever handed out before would be adequate for such a gross offense as this. Mine, I think, would have imposed the death penalty. So we didn’t do such things!

But they do ’em now. And what does that say about their parents?

P.S.: The link above doesn’t seem to work. The HuffPo article cited is by Kelly Lynch, Sept. 24, “An Open Letter to the Parents of the Stephentown 300.”

The Vacuousness of ‘Being Spiritual’

leeduigon(patty)September 16, 2013

I have two neighbors who have deserted Christianity in favor of “being spiritual.” At least that’s what they say. When they’re not simply “spiritual,” these jidrools claim to be Buddhists. I doubt they know the difference.

The one volunteers for Hudson River clean-up cruises (we don’t live in New York), then comes home and walks her dog on other people’s property and doesn’t pick up after it. No amount of protest seems to make an impression on her: no Golden Rule here. I guess that’s part of being spiritual. She also goes to art movies at ridiculous prices. She hasn’t worked in donkey’s years.

The other has Buddhist prayer flags hanging all around her property, and an outdoor hot tub, and the mother of all floodlights–which goes on in the middle of the night and wakes me up because it’s aimed right at my bedroom window. When you’re spiritual you don’t have to think about things like that. I don’t know how she affords all these gew-gaws; she doesn’t work, either. Maybe spiritual people don’t have to work.

The both like to get together with friends occasionally and all do yoga on the front lawn, with the cars going by. It’s not a pretty sight.

Mind you, neither of these individuals has ever been within 1,000 miles of a Buddhist culture. I remember an ad I once saw in one of the Jersey shore papers: “The Bugville Buddhists will make their annual trip to the Atlantic City casinos on such-and-such a date.” I think this tells us all we need to know about folks who say they’re “spiritual.”

Their point is, Anything but Christianity. Christianity is not cool. It won’t get you into the whoopee crowd. No one will mistake you for a celebrity. And of course it really isn’t Christian to let your dog poop on someone else’s yard and let your floodlights shine into someone else’s bedroom window in the middle of the night. It ain’t Christian, but it sure is spiritual.

My Favorite Sunday Color Comics

leeduigon(patty)September 1, 2013

After coming home from church or Sunday school, for most of my childhood, one of my favorite Sunday pastimes was to read the color comics in the newspaper. Here are a few of my all-time favorites.

1. Prince Valiant by Hal Foster, launched in 1937 and continued to this day by Foster’s successors (he died in 1982). Was there ever more gorgeous artwork in any newspaper or magazine? I loved just to look at this strip; reading it was almost an afterthought.

2. Mark Trail, by Ed Dodd and his successors, first appeared in 1946. The Sunday version took a break from the weekly story-line to educate readers about wildlife, helped along by beautiful color illustrations. Boy, could you learn a lot about wildlife by reading this! It helped instill in me a lifelong fascination for wild animals.

3. Peanuts, by Charles Schulz, ran from 1950 to 2000. In its time it was the most famous and widely-read cartoon on earth. Charlie Brown’s perpetually futile efforts to kick the football continue to symbolize all sorts of real-life tribulations for all sorts of people. But I think the strips from the 50s and early 60s, before “Peanuts” became a global phenomenon, were the funniest and most creative.

4. Mandrake the Magician, by Lee Falk, who also gave us The Phantom, first appeared in 1934 and is still being produced by Falk’s followers. Who can forget that dramatic phrase, “Mandrake gestures hypnotically…”? Don’t you wish you could do that! (Well, you can–but nothing much will happen except to make people think you’re a kook.)

5. The Teenie Weenies was cranked out every Sunday by William Donahey from 1914 to 1970–a good run! You’ve gotta love the idea of these little tiny people living just out of sight: a whole little world, with everything that that entails. Imagine what they could get up to today, if they had access to our computers while we were asleep.

I could go on, but I’d rather let you, faithful readers, expound on some of your favorites. To be nine years old, and spread the color comics section on the floor, and lie down to revel in it for an hour–it’s hard to beat those simple pleasures.