21 Sep This Week in Rage – 9/21/13
This Week in Rage, a blog about the top three things that pissed me off this week:
Post Shooting Interviews: You can tell we’ve had way too many mass shootings when I’m able to start finding shit to complain about. So here goes. First off how come every one of those post-shooting interviewees looks like Wanda Sykes? And why is she being interviewed? She didn’t see anything, she just said, “I heard something that sounded like pop, pop, pop.” And then she has to explain what she thought it was. “It sounded like fireworks.” About minute eight into that interview I’m thinking, “What they fuck are we talking to you for? You were close enough to hear something but were far enough away to be alive for the interview. There’s no information you can provide to me.” Seriously, she wasn’t an eyewitness and she was barely an ear-witness. This would be like if porno was just a guy describing the sound of two people having sex. “They were four apartments away, I heard some grunting. I think.” After one of these tragedies I want to turn on the news and just once hear someone say, “Yeah, I was knee deep in that shit. I did a shoulder roll, tucked behind a park bench for cover, returned fire, then took him down and held him in a figure four until authorities showed up.” That’s an interview, not “I thought there was a Quincenera going on in the courtyard.”
Sonny and the Cherry FroYo: I took the boy out for some FroYo. (By the way, as the great Artie Lange pointed out on the podcast, how lazy are we that we can’t complete the words Frozen and Yogurt?). Sonny said he didn’t like it. What kind of kid doesn’t like frozen yogurt? I’m this close to sending him back. I pointed out to him that they had cherry flavor. He said, “I don’t like cherry.” I was outraged. Who doesn’t like cherry? Sonny replied, “When I was a little boy and I had my ear infections and mommy gave me the medicine it tasted like cherries”. And I thought, “My god. He’s right.” We’re imbeciles, we take medicine for kids and make it some yummy flavor but we then forever ruin their relationship with it. Sonny is now soured on cherries forever. He’ll never know the majesty that is the Rainier cherry. We should make medicines passion fruit flavor, like everything else, so that when kids get older they can lead a life free from that scourge. Maybe we could go Sunny D or Mountain Dew. Or let’s just make up a new fruit. Medicine fruit. I’m protecting our children because they’re our future. And robots, kids and robots are our future. I feel like we’ll probably get more use out of the robots.
Sonny’s Constitution Play: Speaking of the kids, I went to Sonny’s 2nd grade play where they talk about the constitution in that monotone that kids do when they’re reciting things they don’t give a shit about but have been forced to memorize. It’s an awesome way to learn. Hold something in your brain just long enough to regurgitate it in front of your parents and then never recall it again. I actually gave him a quiz on the way home and he didn’t remember shit. All the parents were there and were forced to sit on those mini-chairs where your knees are so high you can practically blow yourself. As if that didn’t suck enough the teacher then turned on us and said, “Ok, parents. Now it’s your turn. We need to see what you know about the Constitution.” I was thinking, “I came here to see my kid make an ass of himself, not me.“ I turned to my wife because between the two of us we have half a GED. We were both wearing a nice “oh shit” look because Sonny was on stage with a nice hopeful “don’t embarrass me” look. There should be something in the constitution about pop quizzes about the constitution. So the parent quiz began and hands were flying up left and right while Lynette and I sat there like stooges. Finally my opportunity came up. I don’t know anything about the Constitution but I do know math. The teacher asked, “There were twelve states but they only needed two-thirds to ratify. How many states did they need?” My hand flew up and said a confident “Eight.” The teacher said, “Nope, It’s nine”. My son snapped a pencil and was welling up while my wife was looking at me like “What have you done?!” Meanwhile I was thrust through a humiliation vortex back to Colfax Elementary. A shame-filled 8-year-old Adam Carolla sitting in a miniature chair not learning to read. Back in 2013 a parent in front of me who – despite having a shit-load of tattoos – was getting every question right, had my back, jumped in and said, “No, it is eight.” The teacher laughed it off and said “moving on.” I was so confused at that point she could have told me my name was Alan and I would have bought it. So I did what I never do, decided not to be a dick. She had worked on this play, and prepared and was trying to teach my kid. I let it go. But then as we were leaving she said to me, “You, young man, need to work on your fractions.” I was about to grab a miniature chair and use it to divide her skull into two halves. Then she got sing-songy, “Three, plus three, plus…oh you were right.” Lesson learned? Yes, and it wasn’t about the Founding Fathers, or fractions, it was about functions and to never attend another one at that school again.
– Adam