I Was Never Quite Like This

Irony isn't an all bad thing. An ironic viewpoint is much maligned, but you know what, you need it in high school sometimes.

I remember the first week I started work at a high school. I remember back in high school going to pep rallies, and I thought they were pretty neat. I played in the band (after I quick football itself), and certainly never got totally caught up in them. But they were entertaining, and I played my heart out on the baritone, and I cared about the game some. But that first week working at a high school, I went to that pep rally and was just blown away by how much the students all cared. There was no irony to their cheers. It was passion.

Maybe that's a place where lacking irony's pretty good. It's good to see the students care for something at least (they don't care much about their homework).

But look at this. The Winters Blizzards were voted the top 1A mascot in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which now puts us up against the top mascots from the other divisions. Winters is pretty passionate about this vote. I'm surprised we haven't had a pep rally about it.

Anyway, what I linked to are the comments on the poll, and it seems to me as though people are a little too passionate about this. Sixteen of the comments are variations of "Go Blizzards." The other eleven are variations of "Suck my balls; we're going to win; so suck my balls" (though I doubt they'd ever use a semicolon correctly). Twenty-seven comments in all.

I'm pretty sure these students are going to go insane someday and probably be Nascar fans, too (which is close to the same thing). I'm all for caring about stuff, you know, throwing yourself into things and not keeping ironic distance from humans and their little endeavor. But Lord, you've gotta not care about some things.

Time to Start Blogging Again

I decided to put my blog on hiatus as long as the election was going on. I’d been ranting too much.

I’m back, now, and I think I’ve only got one more election story left to get out of my system. Here it is.

I’m a smart-aleck. It’s in my genes, and if you know my dad, you know where I got it. Kalyn got it, too. We’re neither nice like Mom. So it goes.
So, I was supposed to go to a wedding in Alabama about a month ago. It was pretty awesome, and if I can get around to it, I’ll tell you a story or so about it as well. Anyway, the wedding time and place worked out quite well. I flew into Nashville, where my sister who recently moved to Kentucky could pick me up on the way to the wedding, and then I could head back to Kentucky with her to see her new home. Perfect.

Getting there, though, I had to be facetious. I decided to wear my Obama t-shirt on the flight. I just wanted to see if anyone on the plane would think I was a terrorist (I wasn’t one).

I saw a lady wearing a Women for Obama button on the flight, and I nearly whispered to her my terrorist joke, but I decided that might not go so well on a plane.

Anyway, I didn’t really notice anyone nervously watching me. That was good.

Instead, I got quite the opposite reaction. I arrived at the Nashville airport, and as I walked through it, all of the airport workers I passed would give me fist pumps (no terrorist fist jabs though) or comment on how awesome my shirt was. That was cool.
The best thing, though, was that night. Kalyn picked me up, and it was fairly early, so we headed down toward Music Row to see what we could find. After a while, we decided to find ourselves a hotel room. We were downtown, and I wasn’t very inclined for us to drive thirty minutes toward the edges of Nashville to find a cheaper motel. Plus, we wanted to see some of the downtown the next morning, and I knew that the hotel for the second night of the trip had already been paid-for for me. So, we decided to stay in one of the really nice hotels in downtown Nashville.
I walked into the forty-story or so Embassy Suites, and asked for the prices. The hostess, a young African-American lady, quoted to me, “$210 plus a parking fee.” I thought about it a second and said, “Ok, I’ll take a room.” It was nice place.
She started typing and kept looking up from the computer at me. I figured she was just checking me out like any woman would want to, but after the third glance or so, she said, “I really like your shirt. There might be a discount for it.”
I said, “Awesome. And I was just wearing it to see if anyone on the plane would think I was a terrorist.” (I really said that; she laughed.)

Then the price: “$150.”

Yep, a $60+ discount for wearing my Obama shirt.

I have a pretty good feeling about the next four years.