30 years Later, I'm vindicated by the Cake Boss

Many people enjoy complaining about reality shows, because, like griping about there being no good Chinese food in town, it can really help you feel superior to those around you. Personally, I finished High School, and I love some reality shows, so the complaining-about-reality-shows magic doesn't work on me.

A recent favorite is the show Cake Boss, which is about a guy in Hoboken named Buddy Valastro, who has the classic New Jersey accent (which most people from New Jersey claim does not exist). He and his employees at Carlo's City Hall Bake Shop make the most incredibly inventive and artistic cakes imaginable, which are then eaten. This makes them like Tibetan Sand Paintings, only delicious.

In one episode there is a meeting of two highly creative cultures where Buddy and his crew make a robot cake for a hackerspace party. It's not some lame sheet cake with a computer generated robot decal on top, nor a flat cake cut in the shape of a robot. It was a 3-D motorized robot, driven by Buddy using remote control.

Another episode reminded me of my own brief experience with creative cake design. It was 1977 and I was in the Cub Scouts, which is pretty much the extent of my military experience. Anyhow, our pack was going to auction off some cakes to make some money, and there would be prizes for the best cakes.

I was very interested in airplanes, particularly airplanes from World War I, so I decided to make a Red Baron plane as a cake. This presented a couple of challenges. One was that mixing red food coloring in with vanilla icing resulted in pink icing, no matter how much food coloring I used. Another was the whole business of how to hold up the top wing of a biplane. I had already given up the idea of making the Fokker Dr. I triplane that people associate with the Red Baron, which was fine really, because earlier in his career he flew the Albatross DIII, a biplane. There were some monoplanes used in WWI, the Fokker EIII being a good example, but biplanes are just cooler.

I did not know what great building materials rice crispy treats and fondant, (used extensively by Buddy's team) are. I didn't even know what fondant was. My Dad and I did come up with the idea of using cardboard 'struts' to hold up the upper wing, and that worked quite well.

Needless to say, the biplane stood out among the cakes in the shape of race cars, and the cakes in the shape of cakes, but with a picture of a race car on top. I ended up winning 1st prize, but as is always the case, haters gotta hate, and when they found out there was cardboard in the cake it caused a minor controversy and some comments about 'oh no what if I accidentally eat the cardboard?'. I ended up getting my picture in the paper, but in the caption they described it as a 'pink airplane', which pissed me off, because as mentioned earlier I was not exactly thrilled that the red hadn't worked out.

30 years later I'm watching Cake Boss, and Buddy gets a job designing a cake for an Air Force event. Of course there has to be a an airplane as part of the tableau, and guess what, Buddy uses a wood scaffolding and builds the plane around it using rice crispy treats and fondant. Next to that airplane, my airplane looked like the Wright Brothers plane, or even that plane with a hundred wings that folds up like a lawn chair in that funny clip. Still, I was glad to see that using cardboard was perfectly fine, as even a cake genius like Buddy needed to use something non-edible but sufficiently rigid to hold the airplane up. The Air Force airmen didn't whine about 'oh noes, there is wood in there!' They loved the cake, and as always the episode ended with everybody happy and agreeing that life is wonderful, especially when you're doing something you love.

The Happiness Hat Will Solve all of Your Problems

This was in Gizmodo weeks ago, so this isn't exactly a scoop, but it really captured my imagination: The Happiness Hat Will Spike Your Skull.

happiness hat from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo.

While the idea of having a spike poke my head to remind me to keep smiling is unpleasant, an honest self-assessment tells me I really could have benefitted from such a thing in my youth. Even when I am not in the grips of the black dog of depression, I'm not particularly a smiley guy. This caused much social friction for me throughout the years. At my first 'real' job, which I really hated (ostensibly I was writing C++ code for the Navy), I once had to endure a lecture in the break room from a woman who was brainwashed by Disney. It started with 'you know what I notice about you, Steve? You NEVER smile!' She then proceeded to let me know how wonderful my life was, and how I had a wonderful job and really should be happy. I wondered at the time: who would feel happy and lucky in the middle of a dressing down from the Cheer Police?

Though she was a loathsome person who would do things like sing two lines from the song 'Young At Heart' repeatedly over the course of several days, there is certainly some validity to what she was saying. People do like and feel more comfortable around smiling people. I think there's a Chinese Proverb that goes 'A man without a smiling face should never open a store'. Possibly it's 'A man with a smiling face should open a store'. Either way, if you frown all the time, stay out of the almost extinct small family owned store business.

In my case I believe it was always assumed I was depressed, or angry, or stuck up. None of these is particularly great in the winning friends and influencing people game. And even though it's true that I don't particularly enjoy being around people and only really like a few people, I am the first to admit you can really open a lot of doors and even keep people off your back if you smile a lot. It keeps HR from looking into your business, and for that alone it's worthwhile.

The hat is of course ridiculous, but it's also very cute and non-threatening, which probably helps. It looks like something a grandma may have made, and who but the most monstrous heel would mock a smiling person wearing a cute hat made by a loving grandmother? It's a really brilliant prototype, and some engineering love could make the device practically disappear. Perhaps engineers could even use the technology that allows Rush Limbaugh's drug-destroyed ears to function here. Sensors could administer a shock not to cause pain, but to stimulate the face muscles to smile! The day will come when we'll never have to look at grumpy people again.

Of course, then we'll look elsewhere for emotional cues, and we'll be back where we started. Sigh. Why bother with any of these ideas? It's all futile.

Geisy Arruda of Brazil Keeps Berkeley Naked Guy's Fight Alive

Geisy Arruda, a Brazilian student at Bandeirante University in Sao Bernardo do Campo (near Sao Paulo), managed to get herself expelled for wearing a skirt that was deemed 'too short' by the people who get to decide these things, although in the pictures the skirt was no shorter than any skirt you'd see in a bar in a college town on any given night. At least that is what I am told.

This is strange to me for many reasons. Apparently it was not only the uptight, made-for-80s-college-exploitation-movies administration prudes who chided Arruda for dressing like 90s fake TV lawyer Ally McBeal, who also fought the power by wearing short skirts (she was also on a hunger strike, although they never explained why). Her fellow students also jeered her, and some are being suspended for that reason. Also, isn't Brazil famous for men and women running around naked or nearly naked? Somebody wiki that for me, please.

Geisy's story reminds me of Berkeley's Naked Guy, aka Andrew Martinez, who stirred up controversy in the early 90s by wandering about the UC Berkeley campus with no clothes on (he did wear sandals, and sometimes compromised by wearing a bandana, but not on his head). Naked Guy made the talk show circuit, but his story took a sad turn, as after college he had to deal with homelessness and schizophrenia, and committed suicide in prison at 33.

It would be easy to chalk up Martinez's naked activism to the mental illness he struggled with, but that would be disrespectful to his memory and to those who suffer from mental illness. It's possible for a mentally ill person to still have a mind of his own and strong beliefs. Geisy's story reminds us that people are still strangely uptight, and I'll be the first to admit that in above 80 degree weather, having to wear clothes can really suck. I'm also pretty sure this kind of thing drives the sort of people who founded the Creation Museum batshit insane, and I have to support that.

You can't say I didn't blog today!

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Knee-Jerk News

Today the world celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The guy from Jesus Jones who sang 'Right Here Right Now' could not be reached for comment. MTV organized a concert in Berlin featuring U2, and came under fire for erecting a 2 meter wall to keep out people with no tickets. Several people were tasered while trying to climb the wall to escape during one of Bono's speeches.

A nameless storm wrecked havoc in El Salvador this past weekend. Meteorologists gave the storm no name in honor of Clint Eastwood's 'Man With No Name' character in the Sergio Leone films. Kanye West stirred up more controversy with a televised comment that 'George Bush does not care about South Americans'.

'A Christmas Carol' beat 'Michael Jackson's This is It' at the box office this past weekend. Film-makers blame circulating internet spoilers about the ending of 'This Is It' for the poor showing.

Nokia recalled 14 million phone chargers after discovering a youTube video that demonstrated how the chargers can hard boil an egg, and then deliver a fatal shock.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 203 points today. In a press conference, Ben Bernanke announced that this marks the end of the recession for the cocaine and prostitution industries, which are believed by many economists to lead the rest of the economy by one quarter.

In the sports world, fans have been bewildered by the recent lightening of 90s home run great Sammy Sosa's skin. This is the first time a baseball player's appearance has changed drastically in a short time for no apparent reason.

An Arizona State University poll released today shows half of Arizonans are avoiding large crowds because of the flu. The poll also revealed that half of visitors to Arizona are avoiding large crowds because they're full of Arizonans.

Tonight on Curb Your Enthusiasm

Larry goes to buy a tackle box for his friend Funkhouser, but gets into a heated argument with a clerk who won't sell him one because he doesn't have a fishing license.

Later, while discussing the script for the Seinfeld reunion, Larry screams at a waiter who gave him Lime Diet Coke, when he had asked for Diet Coke with real lime in it. Seinfeld tries to rein Larry in, but this makes Larry so angry he tells Seinfeld the reunion show is off.

At Funkhouser's birthday party, Larry presents Funkhouser with a gift card for the Sporting Goods store that refused to sell him the tackle box. Funkhouser expresses his disappointment with the gift, using that voice of his that sounds like something from a radio PSA about symptoms of Acid Reflux disorder. Susie overhears this exchange, and cusses out Larry, which is hilarious because she's a woman.

Finally Larry is ejected, and on the way out he sees a plate of glasses of Diet Coke with slices of real lime on the rims. He tries to grab one, which prompts Funkhouser to punch him in the face. The scene freezes right before Funkhouser's fist makes contact with Larry's face, and the signature tuba theme begins playing.

Anyone can hate this: the 'nathlete' billboard.

Like Maxfield Parrish, I dislike billboards. In a more pragmatic way, I understand that billboards featuring infants pimping out tire stores or car dealerships are good for the economy: the most likely local family business can use the advertising, and the billboard rental company employs people, too.

Still, most billboards have no reason to exist. I'm thinking of the 'Integrity: Pass it On' billboards. I don't really need to be inspired while I'm driving. I need to pay attention to the road.

A particularly egregious offender that's annoyed me more than I should allow billboards to annoy me is the Natural Light billboard defining a nathlete as 'holding two natty's while doing 'the robot''. There's just so much to dislike about this.

First off, the definition makes no sense. 'Holding natty's while doing the robot' is an act, a 'nathlete' is a person. See the urbandictionary entry. You don't hear a sports broadcaster say: 'wow! She really gymnasticed that one!' You probably wouldn't define mathlete as 'performing implicit differentiation in a competition in order to mark off a checkbox for your MIT application'.

Second: referencing the robot is a really lazy way to go for the laffs. The go-to breakdancing move for the 'look at whitey trying to breakdance' joke used to be the worm, but now it's the robot, possibly because this requires even less athletic abiliy. You can probably do better. Of course, if your job is writing copy for Natural Light ads, you probably can't.

Third: there are much better beers than Natural Light. More importantly, there are much better CHEAP beers than Natural Light (Pabst Blue Ribbon, Milwaukee's Best). There are even better horrible beers to drink ironically than Natural Light (Keystone Light).

In conclusion, the only way this billboard could be worse would be if it somehow made light of alcohol-fueled date rape. And that's all I have to say about that.

This post brought to you by urbandictionary.com: helping people over 30 understand what the kids are going on about since 1999