What Do You Give A Guy For His 50th Birthday?

I just turned 50 this weekend (insert codger joke here). So, Unknown Wife and I got a sitter and went out to eat some sushi and see The Dark Knight.

But after church today, we stopped by a Learning Express (basically a place with educational toys). Right there on the shelves was a Water Balloon slingshot (in case you're wondering, here's a link to a similar model). When we got home, I got my neighbor who lives three doors down to help me out and started launching balloons down the street and over the trees. We soon had the Unknown Daughter and the neighbor's three sons try to catch water balloons we launched from about 60-80 yards away.

Back in college we used to make a similar contraption called a "Funnellator" by attaching surgical rubber tubing to a funnel. We used it to launch water balloons (and other, far more disgusting things) almost 200 yards with our deluxe model. It surprising how many other contemporaries had similar experiences. In fact, a member of the advisory board for our student-managed investment fund once told me (after a few beers) that he's used a Funnellator to launch a sheep's brain (yes, you heard me right, a sheep's brain - he was a Biology major before he switched to Finance) almost 150 yards to land in at the front-door of one of the sororities' houses.

My neighbor and I are thinking about modifications to the store-bought model to see if we can bring it up to code. After all, you never know when the development down the street might try to attack us. We might bring the engineering professor down the street into the loop to see if we can make something more automated.

Preparedness is all.

The Day My Butt Went Psycho

No, this is not a post about gastrointestinal difficulties.

Today's Wall Street Journal has an interesting story about a new trend in books for boys. It turns out that they don't like to read as much as girls, unless it involves stuff that's gross or at least somewhat inappropriate (real news flash there, eh?). Hence the title of this post. It's the title of a new children's book by Zack Freeman. Here's the description from Amazon:

Zack Freeman is ready to tell his story...the story of a brave young boy and his crazy runaway butt. The story of a crack butt-fighting unit called the B-team, a legendary Butt Hunter's formidable daughter, and some of the ugliest and meanest butts ever to roam the face of the Earth. A story of endurance that takes Zack on an epic journey across the Great Windy Desert, through the Brown Forest, and over the Sea of Butts before descending into the heart of an explosive buttcano to confront the biggest, ugliest, and meanest butt of them all!It's a story you and your butt will never forget!

Another book the article mentions is "Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger" by Kevin Bolger.

So boys like off-kilter, gross, and tasteless stuff. Who could have known? Of course, when I brought up the article at the breakfast table, Unknown Wife thought it was inappropriate and tasteless. I, on the other hand, when right over to the computer and ordered the books from our library for the Unknown Son. He's pretty excited about themsince he's just about done with his latest in the Captain Underpants series.

Meanwhile, Unknown Daughter is reading Fairytopia. Thus speaks the chromosomal divide.

75 Skills Every Guy Should Master

Esquire just put up a great collections of things every guy should know. There's a lot of good stuff -- some of it pretty old-school, but still spot on. Here are a few of my favorites:

• give advice that matters in one sentence (#1)
• show respect without being a suck-up (#12)
• throw a punch (#13)
• approach a woman out of his league (#19)
• be loyal (#23)
• jump-start a car (without drama) (#35)
• step into a job no-one wants to do (#52)
• shake hands (#70)
• iron a shirt (#71)
• sometimes, kick some ass (#53)
  

There's many more (feel free to add your own). Read the whole thing here.

HT: Neal Boortz

The 300 - A Fine Movie

Since I've had a pretty good week (and it's Spring Break here at Unknown University), I treated myself to a viewing of The 300. It was well worth every penny.

It's definitely not one to take your kids to (and probably not your wife either). It had its share of gore, but that was to be expected from adaption of a Frank Miller graphic novel (and about war, yet. So get over it).. But even that didn't seem as bad as you would have expected because of the somewhat otherworldly lighting and colorization they used.

I know, I know - the Spartans weren't nearly as honorable and praiseworthy in real life as they were depicted in the movie. Some of them were gay, and they were not nice in reality. And I can see how you could read political or racist overtones into the plot. But then, if you want to you can probably read them into just about anything.

But having said that, I can see why the movie has done as well as it has. It's not just that the camera work and special effects were striking (they were). And it's not because it was pretty violent and gory (it was).

Honor, respect, and courage are the themes of the movie. The Spartans depicted in the movie were the epitome of what used to be called "Stand up guys". They were willing to fight and die for a cause, and they went through it all with a definitely guyish and dark sense of humor. I particularly liked the scene at the end when Leonidas tells the traitor Ephialtes "may you live forever", as in "you don't deserve an honorable death in battle." A few people in the audience actually clapped and cheered at that point.

There are a lot of people who still go for those things in movies. And we're not all testosterone-drenched yahoos (at least, we're not JUST those things). So if you like a good guys movie, devfinitely see this on the big screen. I only wish there was an IMAX near me so I could have gotten the full visual effect.

Mixed Martial Arts

This is a bit off my usual fare, but it was a real "guy's night" last night. I've been working a lot lately, and made a few extra $$, so I ponied up for Pay Per View and watched the UFC Mixed Martial Arts fights last night. It was worth every penny.

They had two former champions who'd just lost their titles (Matt Hughes, a welterweight and Rich Franklin, a middleweight) who were both in their first fight since losing, and a retired 4x champ (Randy Couture) who came out of retirement to fight reigning heavyweight champ Tim Sylvia.

All the "good guys" won. And in the title bought, the 43 year old Couture completely dominated the 30 year-old, six-inch taller, 40-pound heavier Sylvia. He manhandled him on the ground (not surprising - Couture's a top wrestler), but he even beat Sylvia at his own game (on his feet). They don't call him "Captain America" for nothing.

Not surprisingly, the Unknown Wife opted out and went to bed early (it started at 9:30 and didn't end until about 1 a.m. She asked why I enjoy this so much. Well...

1. I played competitive Judo in college and took a couple of years of taekwondo in high school. So, I know just enough to appreciate just how technically good they are (it's not just a bunch of guys slugging away at weach other. They're amazingly skilled.
2. Having competed in a number of sports, I appreciate the whole competitive thing. The pre-competition "whoop whoops" in the stomach before a competition are something that's hard to describe if you haven't experienced them. But of everything I've done, there was nothing like the feeling of anxiety before a Judo match. There's just something about facing someone one-on-one -- it's probably the purest (and potentially most daunting) form of competition out there.
3. Finally, the fighters are almost without exception stand-up guys. Very few of the top guys talk much smack (in fact, Hughes is a churchgoing Illinois farm boy and Couture said he'd dedicated his fight to "Jesus Christ who stood up and died for our sins and the American Soldier who stands up and fights for our freedoms." ). And it's pretty cool to see two guys try to beat the hell out of each other and then hug and laugh with each other once the fight's over.

Anyway, it was a nice change of pace for some entertainment.

But I made a tactical error - we were out of chips and salsa, so I had to snack on edamame during the show. That's just a bit too froo-froo for fight night.....