Amazing Race

No Love in the Club: Part 2

The drive up to Park City was rather uneventful considering the initial shock of seeing a harlot walk out and enter my friend’s car. We talked a little about ourselves and started joking around more as we got closer to our destination. Fortunately for the scantily clad women with us we found a parking spot right in front of the club. The girls spent another ten minutes or so getting ready and debating over trivial tasks such as bringing in a coat (for the 15 foot walk to the front door), leaving a purse in the car (also, our car was 15 feet from the door), applying chap stick, and applying perfume. The combined time it would have taken a normal person to complete these tasks and make these decisions was 42 seconds give or take, our entourage complicated these simple tasks by deliberating for a full ten minutes of personal agony for me. As we finally approached the front door to the club, greetings were given to the bouncers and we were ushered inside. I was subjected to only a visual frisking at this point and made my way into the club.

As I entered the club bar area my mind reverted to the many episodes of Jersey Shore that I had watched in anticipation of this moment. I expected the following things from my club experience that seemed standard in every Jersey Shore club excursion.

1) At one point there would be multiple women dancing on tables or bars (Coyote Ugly also contributed to this delusion)

2) There would be at least two people beyond any point of coherence due to inebriation that would fall down at some point during the night.

3) Every bouncer that I came into contact with would give me mad props and I’d say something cool to them that they would immediately courtesy laugh at

4) A girl and guy making out with no regard for any other living (or dead) person

5) The wild card was that I would see a guy kissing two girls at the same time

Now these are all things that I legitimately expected to see at some point because of my avid watching of Jersey Shore. None of these is something that I necessarily hoped to see (who I am kidding, I wanted to experience all of these things), but I did fully expect to see something of this sort during the night. I will say now that I did not see any of these things happening during the course of the night and was a little bit upset by my misfortune. However, there were other things that I did see, but first I will go back to our entourage.

As was expected the girls that we arrived with quickly ditched us after we had been there for 15 seconds. They seemed to know everyone and started taking an insane amount of pictures. I fully believe that nearly 50 pictures were taken over the course of the next two hours. To put this in perspective, I recently spent a full 9 days in Europe and managed to take 28 pictures the entire week. This is most likely because it was freezing and I hated taking out my camera, but still 28 pictures in Europe. We were in a dark club with nothing cool to see at all. I couldn’t understand why the girls wanted to take so many pictures of themselves dressed in such revealing outfits. I can understand one or two pictures, but there were enough pictures for multiple albums. It was like they were documenting the fact that they had no self-respect for their future dead beat husbands and families. Congratulations to them.

One of the girls that we came with was expecting a boy that she had a crush on to be at the club that night. However, she often varied from her original desire to see him. Her reasoning went like this

1) hope that he comes

2) hope that he doesn’t come

3) hope that he comes so that she could ignore him

4) hope that another boy she liked would show up so the first boy would be jealous

5) hope that she could go home with the first boy

6) hope that she could go home with the second boy

7) hope that the first boy wouldn't show up

8) hope that she could dance on a table and kiss two guys at once

Ok, I made that last one up. But claiming that this girl was fickle, was a gross understatement. She was almost as bad as Brad on the Bachelor. Every time that Brad goes on a one on one date with a girl, he almost always gives them a rose and says that he is way into them and that he is excited with how things are going. This man can not pull his emotions away from rationale thinking at all. I guess now that I think about it, he is just like every guy, so I suppose that I cannot fault him too much.

About halfway through her deliberations the first boy did show up and proceeded to grab her friend’s butt, hit on various other girls, ignore her, and then eventually talk her into staying the night with him. This last part was especially excruciating. We had planned to leave at 12:00 because of some early morning church obligations for myself. The girls pleaded for 1:00 and my friend and I relented. At 1:00 the girls showed up and said they had to say goodbye to their friends. 1:20 came and one girl came by and said she had to find the other girls (we could clearly see them dancing on stage by the DJ as she claimed she couldn’t find them). At 1:45 we finally corralled them into the car and were about ready to go, but the one who had so many deliberations about the boy said that she had to go back into the club for a second. She didn’t answer our phone calls or come back out for 20 more minutes. This was the point when I started cursing her out to her friend, with my friend more than equaling my creative swears. Finally the girl showed up outside. She came to the car, said she was staying, and walked back inside. I was furious. Her plan had obviously been to stay much later at the club, but she had the gall to drag us along for such a long period of time with no intent of intimating what her true desires were. By the time we got home (a snow storm had just come in and slowed our drive home) it was 3:30 in the morning. Only Pauly D can change my idea of clubs now. I still think he is one of the coolest guys that ever graced the club scene and I pledge to continue my club affiliation vicariously through him.

There were a few things that I did enjoy during the night and here they are in no particular order:

1) A man that looked exactly like Billy Zane and for all I know it was his cousin or maybe even son, spitting image

2) A large woman in a bright red dress that we simply referred to as The Big Red Machine, I was mildly entertained when we talked one of the girls into getting her picture taken with The Big Red Machine

3) Drinking half of a red bull and feeling like my heart was going to explode, I would be an awful drinker

4) A kid getting tackled at my feet by three bouncers and one of them cuffing the kid and another taking a shot to his gut as they dragged him out of the club, no one knew what the kid had done, but it was funny

5) An older gentleman wearing crappy skate shoes from the late nineties and bobbing his head to the beat of the music for most of the night, I’m pretty sure he was so liquored up that he had no idea where he was

6) A cool kid walking by my friend and simply saying, “you’ve got a grabber”, we later learned that this was when a girl leaves and then comes and finds you multiple times throughout the night and often drags you along wherever she goes. Thanks cool kid!

7) An indian kid who looked like a gypsy shaman indian who was actually wearing a headband with a feather and indian looking vest

8) An Asian kid doing a sweet break dance before it was broken up by the bouncers

Let me now explain how this was my personal liberty jail. As Joseph received some of the greatest revelation ever known to man he was in a dark, awful jail with people who hated him. I wasn't in quite such a circumstance, but I did have clear thoughts as I sat in the back of that club. I knew that I was grateful for the knowledge that I had been given of the restored gospel and that I should do nothing that would disqualify from the wonderful blessings of a Christ centered life. I walked out of that place feeling empowered to choose the right and make the most out of my life in whatsoever situation I would find myself. I believe that sometimes the sweetest thoughts can come in places you would never think. This different perspective really helped me to see how great my life is and how great it is to have the gospel in it.

Car-less

Last week I was seated around a spacious table with a few of my co-workers working diligently on a new project. We had just finished a great meal and were finishing up the small details pertaining to the completion of the new initiative. As often happens after meals, my mind was prone to wandering and I glanced up at the tv right above our table. Some program about a car show was on and I didn't think too much of what was going on, nor was I much interested in what was happening. Suddenly someone mentioned that the car that the camera had focused on was a '68 something or other, to which someone else responded that this was not the '68 version, but the '65 model. The feeling that washed over me was similar to the feeling I got about two-thirds of the way through Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen; I had no idea what was going on. I saw that there was a car on the screen and that it looked like an 'old' style car and that people were looking at it. In Transformers I was aware that explosions were happening and that some robot vehicles were fighting for some reason, but beyond that I had no idea what was going on.

I don't think I am alone in saying that when it comes to cars the best thing that I can come up with to say is that the car looks cool, nice, or big. I suddenly revert to a third grader trying to describe his house in my elementary vocabulary. There must be some generational gap when it comes to car knowledge or maybe I'm less inclined to pay attention than other people. I do not know anything about old cars except that they are old. I can distinguish a Mustang, or Camaro, and even the rare Corvette, but when it comes to years and models, I have no idea how people can tell what is what and does it really matter. Apparently one model was better than the other for some reason that no one can really explain, it just is general knowledge.

Everyone has heard stereotypical jokes about men and their adoration for cars. Men love cars, they fix cars, they wash cars, they go for long drives in their cars in the fall, they grill out of the back seat in their cars, they make out in cars, they do everything with their cars. It would seem that the whole reason for man's existence begins and ends with a car. I remember watching Home Improvement in my youth and wondering why the "Tool Man" was always working on his car or talking about a car. I mean always. A full 25% of the scenes were of him in his garage working on his car with his friends, boys, even his wife, and oddly enough many times he was all alone working on the car. As a child I was taught that a good portion of my everyday life must be spent doing something with a car. I had better things to do as a 12 year old and skipped the mandatory daily sessions working on a car. On another note, if a life form from another planet could only tune in to Home Improvement episodes they would be convinced that man had some sort of amorous relationship with his car. (heck, even I was convinced of this, no wonder Miss Taylor was always so upset with Tim, he was stepping out on her)

My lack of knowledge or even concern for vehicles led me to wonder about the following question. Will the cars of this generation be considered classic cars in the future? When someone calls a car classic, I'm not even sure what that means. I do know there is nothing classic about a Corolla or Accord. So my answer would be no. Which means, that unless this generation goes and researches old cars from the 50's to 70's, people will just stop caring. I can't recall a conversation where I sat around and talked with my friends about cool cars. (except after each and every Fast and Furious movie and in that case we only talked about how fast those cars were, and to boot, those cars were civics, nothing classic about that). Why would we talk about cars? Did guys ever just sit around and talk about how cool cars are? Maybe they did, but that seems way outdated. To car lover's defense, I'm sure that people still do get together and talk about their cars that they've owned in the past and how cool they are and that's great for them.

Now there is one area of pop culture that has embraced mentioning cars and showing them on music videos. You guessed it, hip hop!!! Country music videos with hicks driving old beat up trucks around just never caught on. I suppose that the hip-hop culture does talk a lot about cars, but usually they only refer to the price tag, rims, or how many hood rats are draped over the vehicle. And all of those things are just bragging anyway (I've never seen a rap video where they are doing an oil change or rotating the tires). So, after all I do suppose that there is some contemporary discussion (if you call a scantily clad woman washing a Maserati as a discussion, I do, that is something to discuss for better or worse) or cars, but it's not a conversation I'm likely to join in on soon, unless a new Fast and Furious movie comes out soon.

My Liberty Jail (Part One)

Liberty is perhaps the most ironic name for a prison, unless somewhere an inmate somewhere is sitting in Freedom Jail shaking his head slowly. That’s like naming the biggest buffet in Louisiana “Slims” or referring to the largest inmate at the state pen as “Tiny”. Most cities have jails and the jail usually follows the name of the city (Salt Lake County Jail). In Mormon historiography, Liberty Jail was where Joseph Smith was unjustly incarcerated for 4 months during 1838-1839, however the title Temple Prison was later associated with this locale because of the tender revelations that were received here and now reside in the LDS scriptures the Doctrine and Covenants. Those familiar with Mormon history are well aware of the content and circumstances that brought about these revelations. This location was probably the last place that Joseph would expect to receive a revelation. But do revelations ever really come when or how we want them to? It is my experience that this is not the case, inspiration comes when and how the Lord sees fit. Certainly we have places of refuge in Temples, Churches and even our own homes that are conducive to revelatory experiences. However, I believe it is possible that someone can elicit responses from the divine in prison type surroundings, just as Joseph did. These locations may in fact include spiritual or physical prisons (the Church actively assigns member to visit prisons to those members who have made mistakes and end up there). I witnessed first hand how a prison like atmosphere can induce one to want to be better and led to think more clearly on what direction their life should take. In no way do I intend to encourage people to seek such an environment for divine inspiration, but sometimes a glance at a riotous and sinful type of life can lend itself to the realization about how good life is without those influences .

Another weeknight sprawled across a sofa clad in basketball shorts and a hoodie watching sports was the pinnacle of what my genius could come up with to entertain myself. Luckily a friend with promises of hot tubs, games, and girls was the incentive I needed to pry myself off the couch with a rain check promise that I would soon return to my sanctuary. Rushing through my pre hang out warm up I showered, dressed and even doused myself in some smell goods (cologne for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term smell goods). Within the hour I was at my friend’s doorstep ready to meet some new people and hopefully meet a great girl. My optimism was approaching defcom three status (which is really high, there are four defcoms). This night was going to be awesome!

Two hours crawled by as the girls continually prolonged their proposed time to meet up with us, patience was certainly waning and the initial optimism had all but dispersed. I think that once you hit that second hour of waiting for someone to get ready you start entertaining other ideas of something to do, any idea, ideas of dollar movies, play box (xbox), or anything that doesn’t involve waiting longer for someone to put on clothes and comb their hair. We would have welcomed a coloring books with open arms at this point (and don’t think that thought was not entertained).

Finally the time arrived that the girls where ready (I could have gotten ready 17 different ways in the time it took them to prepare themselves) and we pulled up to one of their houses. The optimism was back, we were finally going to meet up. This night was going to be great! And then…the butterflies of the stomach variety were replaced with a large stone. As soon as I looked out the window a shudder of disappointment rippled through my whole body (I believe, and my friend confirms, that my body actually shook). The girls were dressed like women of the night, harlots, whatever you want to call it. I was in jeans and a t-shirt. Looking back I’m not sure if I was more rattled by the outfits or what the outfits suggested. We would not be going to any movies tonight; hot tubs were a distant thought, my longing for my comfortable sofa refuge at home would not be seeing me for longer than I had supposed. Those outfits suggested only one option for that night’s activities, we were going to one location and one location only…..we were going clubbing.

Anklitis

As soon as I landed I knew that this was much worse than any of the other ones. I've been prone to ankle sprains for the last decade or so. The first time that I ever had an ankle injury was one spring afternoon in the backyard of one of my good friends. As precocious young children we often sought fun in precarious ways. On this particular day my neighborhood cohorts and I encountered a number of mattresses in a dumpster. Naturally, we laid claim to our treasures and took them back to my friend Shu Shu's house. We started jumping on the mattresses while imitating wrestling moves for a few hours until one of us realized that the mattresses were probably extremely dirty. It was then that we started spraying the mattresses off with a hose and were surprised to see a foamy liquid emit from the first mattress, much to our chagrin we realized that these mattresses were laden with urine from one of our good neighbors. The spraying of the mattresses continued for a few hours until we were satisfied that all of the urine was cleaned out. During the hours that it took for our new "toys" to dry we cogitated about the possible uses. Wrestling mats, makeshift sleds, a motorized bed and other ridiculous uses. We finally settled on an idea, we would jump off of the trampoline and land on the mattresses doing various stunts, flips and aerials. Now the trampoline at our disposal was not your conventional round tramp that was so common in the late 1990's, not this was one of the old rectangle tramps that provided possible injury at any jump (which could possibly be said of any tramp, although these seemed much more dangerous). The fun started off innocent enough, we'd jump off on the mattresses on our feet first and then onto our back and then some flips. The ante kept on escalating until finally I decided to jump as high as I could and land on my feet on the far side of the mattress. I took off confident in my take off, but quickly started to fade to the right, I waved my arms frantically to try and control my drift, but as I came down my right foot landed outside the mattress and rolled my right ankle hard. It felt (and sounded) like it popped as soon as I landed. I laid down instantly and tried to move my ankle, but it was quickly swelling up to unnatural sizes. As I limped home, I winced with every step as I could barely walk. Days of my foot in ice packs and bowls followed as I utilized crutches to make my way around school and home. Since that first sprain I have injured each of my ankles numerous times. The most recent one was last Tuesday at a Church pick up game. I was driving to the middle of the lane and came down on someone's foot. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post I knew that this one was worse than the others. I could feel a small pop in my ankle and was sure that I had done some damage. I was determined to walk it off like all of the others, but my dad encouraged me to go get an x-ray. I had not been able to put any weight on my ankle for two days and was rather discouraged that I had fractured my ankle. As I sat in the doctor's office I offered a silent prayer that nothing was broken and that this wouldn't hinder me with everything that I needed to get done that week. As the doctor walked in my heart dropped, but I was soon reassured that I had only suffered a small bone chip and that the ankle would be ok. I was so relieved. The next day I found that I could move around a lot easier and that the swelling wasn't as bad as the previous day. I'm sure that there was some sort of divine intervention because there was such a stark contrast from the previous day. There was still some swelling as the days continued, but overall there should be a full recovery. I did however get a call from the radiologist today that there was a small crack in the bone that could have happened last week or could have been older. Perhaps that first trampoline incident was more serious than I first anticipated, but I feel blessed to know that I should be fine.

Here are some pics of the recent injury



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When in 'Doubt, fire' the ex

Last night as I was impatiently waiting for the Jazz game to come on because of an error with FSN, I randomly came upon a show that I had not seen in years. The story was a simple one, man has marital issues, man divorces wife, man attempts to win kids over (fails), man becomes house maid dressed like an old lady to stay close to the kids and keep tabs on his ex. You’ve guessed it, the incredible story of Mrs. Doubtfire!!! Apparently my memory is not so good because after watching for a couple of minutes I couldn’t believe how crazy the premise of this movie is.

Take a second and pretend that you are fifteen years old again. You have seen your dad everyday of your life and know him better than you know anyone else. Unfortunately, your parents decide to get a divorce and to compensate for taking care of you and your siblings, your mother hires a housekeeper. Oddly enough the new housekeeper looks exactly like your dad in a huge fat suit (Mrs. Doubtfire is the largest British housekeeper ever, has a strange body structure, and always wears the same thing), and to boot has a funny accent (did I mention that your dad was a professional at impersonations?) At any point would you suspect that this might be your dad? (you nodding your head slowly) YES!!!! It’s such a convoluted plot. How did the writers create the script? Here’s my take:

Screenwriter: Ok, I just talked to Robin Williams and he wants to make a new movie. He wants to do lots of impersonations and funny voices and that’s about all he said.

Writer: Hmmm, he does do that fantastic old English lady impression.

Screenwriter: Yeah, I’ve seen that. Ok, let’s see…how about he impersonates a housekeeper of some government official so that he can spy on them?

Writer: No, he’s not a great action actor. We need something with kids.

Screenwriter: He’s a hip housekeeper for street kids and helps them get their lives on track.

Writer: Wasn’t that kind of the premise of Hook?

Screenwriter: Ok, they’re his kids and he’s trying to be around them without them knowing it’s him

Writer: You’re on to something…

Seriously, how was this movie created? (It was actually based on a book, but it’s funny to think of a bunch of writers sitting around trying to create a movie this movie out of thin air) When I think of how you could get this kind of story I am stumped. Despite my misunderstanding of how this movie was created, I found some parts of the movie very funny, especially when you contrast it with Arrested Development. For AD fans, you’ll remember how Tobias dresses up as Mrs. Featherbottom so that he can see his daughter more regularly, but it is painfully (as in laughing too much pains) obvious that Tobias is the new housekeeper. I know I’m a bit late to hop on the mocking bandwagon of Mrs. Doubtfire, but AD ridicules how blatantly obvious it is that Robin Williams is the housekeeper in Mrs. Doubtfire. Does the movie ever address why there no background check? Name check? (how many Doubtfires exist?) Social Security check? Did Mrs. Doubtfire go to all this trouble to provide this false information?

All this thinking about Mrs. Doubtfire led me to some self evaluation. Don’t we sometimes want to remain in the lives of those who we break up with? Many people react to break ups in the same way as Robin Williams reacted to the break up with his (her) family in this show. I came up with six similarities:

1) After break ups, many girls (and boys) quickly find a way to get back into their ex’s lives. Examples include, attending the same church or club, going to a party they know the ex will be at, or in one crazy case actually moving into the same apartment complex as the ex. (this really happened and they are actually married now) Most people try to stay around and be friends with the ex in vain (sometimes legitimate) aspirations to rekindle the flame that has been put out.

2) Being friends with the new man (woman) in the ex’s life. Now this one is a little weird and to pull it off the person has to be very clever or subtle. In Mrs. Doubtfire, she sort of befriends Pierce Brosnan (new boyfriend) to keep loose tabs and make fun of him at every opportunity. Sometimes it is a lot more obvious. One time I met a really cool girl and we soon became friends on Facebook. Later that same day I received a friend request from someone who I did not know at all. I noticed that his friend’s included the girl I had recently met and her sister. When I questioned the girl about this she confirmed that he was her ex and that he added every boy that she met. I’m serious about this. The funny part was when I was hanging out at her house a week later and he came over. “Hey, you added me as a friend last week on facebook.” He mumbled something and walked into the other room. Weird…..

3) Parties. This is the easiest way to stay around in someone’s lives, especially with the advent of Facebook. Mrs. Doubtfire always finds ways to be at her (his) kid’s big events even though the dad can’t be there in person. He is still involved in the fun times. How easy is it to go and see what events someone is attending and randomly show up at that event (on the contrary this can help if you don’t want to randomly run into someone at a party)? Parties are a non-confrontational, relaxed environment that provides a place of casual conversation with an ex. Parties are a safe place to “run into someone” and chances are that the other person is going to be civil and maybe even kind. If you are really lucky they’ll realize that they made a huge mistake and start trying to date you again. Maybe.

4) Text. Although the texting craze hadn’t quite hit a stride yet when this movie was made it still proved that limited contact was necessary at some level. Robin Williams could see his kids once a week and only for a brief period and he was still relevant in their lives. The text offers limited contact in our day, but can mean many different things. Usually we have no idea why an ex is texting us, but this list gives a pretty good overview:

a. I’m sorry I hurt you

b. I hope that you come around

c. I’m still thinking about you

d. I’m not thinking about you enough to call

e. I still want to be friends

f. I want to ask you some irrelevant question that I already know the answer to

g. I’m lonely

h. I want to get back together

i. Remember how good of times we used to have

j. I am lost and have no idea what I’m doing

k. I want to hurt you in some way

l. I want to show you that I am more mature than you

m. I want to see you to see if there is anything between us still

The list goes on and on and on. The text is a wildcard. No one really knows what the other person’s motives are in texting. That is why it is called text, its 160 characters of words. Trying to derive any emotion out of text usually leaves people more confused. One of the most confusing things in a text from an ex is ‘how are you’? “Well I’m sad, you dumped me” “I’m over you”, how to you respond? There is no way to decipher what the words ‘how are you’ really mean. Refrain from using this at all costs.

5) Wasn’t Mrs. Doubtfire essentially stalking her (his) ex and children? He was obviously not in full custody of his children and seeing your children when you don’t have visiting rights is illegal. Stalking also happens when break ups occur. This does happen. The bad thing about stalking is, it is so easy. People can of course do it from a distance these days through social networking, but does that really diminish how crazy it is? There are times when you want to see how the ex is doing or what they have been up to lately, but it can go much further than that. I guess as long as you aren’t dressing up as a housekeeper at your ex’s house and cleaning up after them you are probably in good shape.

6) The straight up approach. At the end of Mrs. Doubtfire she finally comes clean, or rather is found out. She (him) states her motives, her love, her desires for her children and a reasonable solution (reasonable in the sense that this would be unsettling to find out your dad has been cross-dressing for months) is found. Sometimes the best solution is to get back together and sometimes the best solution is to cut all ties with the other person. If there exists any smidgen of doubt about where the relationship stands, the best thing to do is talk about it directly with that person. I spent the better part of a few years reading into signals (I guess they weren’t signals) that I perceived to be someone’s interest and I was wrong. I should have asked some tough questions and been clearer.

Maybe the writer of Mrs. Doubtfire had been divorced, maybe the screenwriter had been in a tough relationship and then tried to reconcile with his ex. Someone got the inspiration to write this movie and provide a blueprint of how to not do things when it relates to a break up of any kind. There are kernels of wisdom in explicitly not following the path that Mrs. Doubtfire walked.

A ride on the Ferris wheel

I’m reminded of a story that I heard or might have even made up about a young parent who had a baby girl. That parent cared deeply for the young girl and did everything possible to provide for her all of the opportunities that would lead to a successful life. As time progressed, the parent began to neglect the girl with the promising future by denying financial and emotional support. See, the parent had other pressing issues to worry about instead of the future of the little girl; powerful rich friends often requested help from the parent to set in order their affairs. That once promising young girl was quickly forgotten and left to her own devices to find success. You may be surprised that you already know this negligent parent and young girl; they often go by their more familiar names of the United States government and the public education system.

Most of the demise of the public education system can be traced back to one single event. Some suggest the end of segregation, Republican budget cuts or Mormons having way too many kids (I just threw this in for fun because it’s just this empty rhetoric the church is often criticized for). These are all wrong; David Hasselhoff had a better chance of winning dancing with the stars than any of these being legitimate causes of the education downfall. No, the real reason this happened is because of a well known movie that came out in 1986, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This movie glamorized the notion of not going to school. Before this movie came out, no child or teenager had probably ever played hooky instead of attending class. The concept of not going to school was outlandish and completely foreign to students in the United States; (almost as foreign as Spin occurring in the Bill O’Reilley No Spin Zone) no one thought it was possible. To say that the fad of cutting class caught wild fire is an understatement, Ferris essentially ruined the American school system by teaching it was cool not to go to class.

For those of you who haven’t been alive for the last twenty years or in a hole and not seen this anti-school propaganda film, Ferris Bueller is a young boy who develops an intricate plan to not go to school for one day. Principal Rooney (Ferris’ arch nemesis) does all he can to foil young Ferris’ plans and at one point even shows up at the house to gather evidence in hopes of expelling the brash young school ditcher. Mad props are due to the nefarious Principal for going above and beyond his call of duty, but as we’ll see it was of the utmost importance that Ferris’ not get away with his radical ways. Never has someone done more to attack the public school system and never has someone accomplished so much in one day off of school. Ferris did the following things in roughly seven hours:

Talked his friend into also cutting class and picking him up

Schemed to getting girlfriend out of class and then picked her up

Attended a Chicago Cubs Game

Went to tour the Sears Tower

Walked through the Art Institute of Chicago

Crashed a massive parade in the middle of the city and “Twisted and Shouted” all over it

Weaseled his way into a High-end Restaurant for lunch

Went swimming with his friends

The amount of time this would take any normal human being to accomplish is roughly 38 hours (give or take), but Ferris’ magically achieves so much in just seven hours?!?! Let the delusion begin!! Teens everywhere were suckered into believing they too could cut class and crash parades. (Why do you think we no longer have random parades in the middle of the week with thousands of people?, that is how the world was before this movie came out). Kids realized that 1) principals were not in fact student’s pals (or prince’s for that matter) 2) crashing parades was normal 3) cutting class was the coolest thing ever and if you had a fun enough day they might make a movie about it some day.

No matter how you slice it a pie is still a pie and no matter how you slice skipping schools it’s still giving the old screw you to lady America. But I must digress for a minute. Is the education provided for in America’s school really worth not cutting class? As I illustrated in the beginning, the deplorable state of America’s schools has left many children unable to receive the education that will provide them with the skills they’ll need in life. “Waiting for Superman” is a movie about children throughout the United States who are trying to get the best education possible. Some must go through admission processes that utilize a lottery selection; which doesn’t allow some children to attend their preferred school. This process is difficult for families with low incomes because they often do not have access to the same private institutions as higher income families if they are not accepted. Interestingly enough, many school aged children could ditch school to watch a movie about how inefficient school is; they would learn more about school by not going to…. wait for it…school. I don’t necessarily condone this behavior, but I don’t criticize it either. The purpose of schools is to provide learning, but if instruction isn’t adequately offered children should not be punished for not attending?

In high school my friends and I always tried to replicate Ferris' sweet day off, but we always fell short. We went to hang out at an abandoned house and it got cold so we left and went back to school. Other times we went and played basketball or nintendo at one of my friend's houses. The best time that I ever had when ditching school was to go see Star Wars 2: Attack of the clones. I never traveled more than 10 miles away from my school in all of the times that I ditched, and as you can tell I never did anything remotely cool at all. Basically, there was nothing worthwhile to miss school for and I probably did myself a great disservice by not attending school, even though I got great grades. There really was no reason to go if I could maintain high marks and enjoy some friend time, even though I never had close to the day that Ferris did.

Ferris’ wasn’t too concerned with the equality inefficiencies that exist in schools, but no doubt he wanted there to exist an option that the school system and provide a fair shake to all children. I have some suggestions. 1) Rank schools based on objective criteria that is public information to all families. The parents can choose where their kids go and the schools that underperform are shut down. Nothing motivates an institution to perform like the threat of closure. 2) Schools should be able to specialize in certain subjects. I hated art, science, and history in school. Why couldn’t I have gone to a school that specialized in math and economics; wouldn’t that prepare me better for my future than superfluous time wasting subjects? Yes, and so would other children who would have thrived at an art, music, of even a sports school. America is based on choice, let the people choose. Perhaps there is reasoning behind teaching a wide range of subjects to children, but to me it seems an inefficiency of the system. There are many problems with the school system and I’ve tried to offer some suggestions instead of simply criticizing the problem. The circumstances will get better over time or America’s youth will continue to ditch school. Maybe Ferris was on to something deeper when he decided to take that day off.