Tell It To COACHIE

For those of you that don’t know, this season’s Amazing Race has a deaf guy on it. He’s racing with his mom and they are a good team. Of course, every time he’s interviewed, he says he wants to show the world that deaf people can do anything.

Okay. I was just wondering though? Are there large groups of people who think deaf people can’t do things? In my world, deafness seems to be a handicap that many many people cope with and overcome on a regular basis. His situation sort of reminds me of Charla, the little person on the Amazing Race who wanted to show the world that little people could do anything. I agree that footage of both of them shows that while some tasks are harder for them, they do find a way to complete them. And so, I will agree that they both have shown the world that their disabilities do not hold them back.

However Luke and Charla, if you want to be an example, then I think you’d better stay on the heroic side of the fence. Or was it your intention to show the world that deaf people can screw over their fellow competitors better than hearing people (even your mom seemed a little leery of the whole thing)? Just like Charla showed the world that little people will lie and act handicapped if they think it will get them special treatment?

Enough of this. What I need people, is a good book. All of the books I have read in 2009 have been complete downers, including the biography of Charles Schultz, A Thousand Splendid Suns, a fascinating yet revolting biography of Jesse James, and a book called The Billionaire’s Vinegar, which is sort of interesting but has no ending. Now I’m back to reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which everyone says is so awesome, but I just don’t get. I find it highly irritating that there is so much untranslated Spanish in it - at least The Yiddish Policeman’s Union had a glossary in the back. I think I went too long without reading it so now I’ll either have to start over, and I really don’t want to, or just hope it all comes together in the end. I had hoped to get to the bookstore on haircut day, but you heard how that turned out. Hopefully when I get to my parents’ house, everyone will be done with their Christmas present books and I can nab a couple for free.

One of the many things I will not miss about life in Missouri is my stinking stovetop. It slopes so badly from front to back that whenever I’m trying to saute anything I have to repeatedly spin the pan around to keep the oil from pooling in the back. I don’t know if it has gotten worse, or if I just haven’t made pancakes in a really long time*, but this past Sunday the batter was running all over the place, and few of the pancakes were very round. See?

But as I gazed at this batch of pancakes, suddenly it seemed like I was receiving a message from the great beyond. Does this picture remind you of anything?**

Maybe this?

This is not my only recent Bert and Ernie encounter. Last August, at my final pre-exile-to-Missouri Team Trivia at Station 7 (go there, try everything), the final question was “Who were the first two muppets to appear on Sesame Street?” I don’t know how I knew, but somewhere in my brain I did - it was Ernie and Bert. We were the only team in the bar that got it right. This is no small feat, because a bunch of the teams are competitive, and even when you know the right answer, you’ve still got to convince your whole team full of highly educated, well-read, accomplished, opinionated and stubborn people to believe you.

Jim Henson has always been one of my heroes, someone I would name if I was ever asked what three famous people I would like to have dinner with (I think the other two would be Conan O’Brien and Abraham Lincoln). I think that if he had lived longer, the world would be a better place, and I’m not just saying that now, I’ve thought it for years, and nothing I’ve read or seen about him has even slightly changed my mind.

I’m now off to research a dissertation on Ernie and Bert, to see if they have something to tell me. I mean, besides this:

and this:

(crappy quality, I know, but catchy song)

* I think the problem was they were made with skim milk instead of buttermilk. They looked more like crepes than pancakes.

** Pancakes will be up for bidding on ebay soon…

Amazing Race contestants from West Virginia (or wherever they are from) are more than I can take.  Were the producers carrying around a little jar of coal dust that to shake all over the camera before they turned it on those two?  They couldn’t have possibly been as bad as the show made them out to be.  Nevertheless, if they hadn’t been eliminated, I could not have kept watching because while in the past watching people behave like jackasses was entertaining, watching people fail because they just don’t have the brains or skills to do what they need too, that is just cringe and heartbreak-inducing.  And then I read their interviews full of bad grammar and simplistic answers and I wonder how long these poor suckers will be exploited.  Part of me wants them to win the “fan favorite” prize to make up for their humiliating treatment at the hands of the producers.  But the other, slightly larger part of me hopes that I’ll see them waving at the end of the race and then never see them again.

Independence = good

Tarring and feathering and colonial vaccinations = bad

I probably will keep watching this miniseries but I think it’s inevitable that I will lose my lunch before it’s over.

The way Tyler Florence speaks makes me want to beat him with a hammer (although I did enjoy his Applebees menu - what I wouldn’t do for a fine dining establishment like that within 30 miles of here.)