Corn Flakes and Smoked Clams

Family dinner is an important priority in our family. That's the time for bonding, for sharing, for burping loudly while discovering important, unexpected nuggets of childhood development.

And, of course, it's the time for complaining endlessly about the food on the table (and desiring either plain corn flakes or smoked clams...maybe both) while kicking siblings under the table.

As much as I hate to disrupt such honorable revelry, a few weeks back I took the opportunity to interrupt the enthralling proceedings and get philosophical.

"Girls, where do you see yourselves in 20 years?"

All action at the table ceased. I was met with a wall of blank stares.

"OK," I tried again, "when you're 30, what would you like to be doing? How will you be earning money? Where will you be living? How will you be getting around? Tell me what you see."

They quickly got it and started throwing out some soundbites: "I'll own a bunch of horses," "I'll be working for Pixar," "I'll own a house and a car," "I'll have corn flakes/smoked clams for dinner every night," etc. etc.

"Good, now...how are you going to accomplish that?"

Blank stares.

"OK..." I started again with a deep breath, "what are you going to need to do between now and then in order to ensure all of those things will come true."

McKenna chimed in, "Go to college?" Reese added, "Get good grades?"

They were on the right track, but I wanted them to see it more clearly. I wanted to motivate them.

"Think about every kid in your class - think about every kid in your grade. Now think about every kid in your grade at every school in the city...in the nation...around the world. Overwhelming, right? But to put yourself in position to do everything you want, it's really simple: you just have to work a little bit harder than everyone else. A little bit harder in school, a little bit harder in your jobs, a little bit harder in any effort that requires your attention. You'll rise to the top and you'll be able to accomplish everything you want."

I let this bomb drop, sat back and waited...sure it would ignite a firestorm.

Reese was the first to explode, "I'M GOING TO BE THE BEST IN MY CLASS! I'M GOING TO WORK HARDER THAN EVERYONE ELSE!!!"

Awesome. I looked over at McKenna - she had her head down in her plate, moving her broccoli around in endless figure 8's. I was expecting an, "I'M GOING TO BE TOPS IN MY CLASS! I'M GOING TO INTERN AT APPLE WHEN I'M 18," or, at the very least, "I'M GOING TO INVENT A SMOKED CLAMS MACHINE!"...

"What about you hon?" I asked, lighting the fuse...

She looked up and confidently replied, "Mmm, I just want to be somewhere in the middle."

In my head I was screaming, "WHAAAAAAT?!?!?" ...but somehow I had enough restraint to speak through vice-clenched teeth, "WHATDOYOUMEANHONEY?"

"Well, if I'm somewhere in the middle, then maybe somebody who isn't as fortunate as me will have an opportunity to be successful too."

Hot air instantly instantly started leaking out of my ego. How could I argue with compassion? What kind of a monster would I be to insinuate she had her priorities screwed up...? But then an idea hit me...

"That's really beautiful - your sentiment is in exactly the right place. The challenge is that helping people requires effort as well. Working harder than everyone else will put you in the best possible position to help the most amount of people in the most effective way."

I considered my response a victory when the broccoli stopped doing figure skating tricks and went down the gullet, but the true test will be what my kids will be doing 20 years from now. Will they be playing Anchorman with warm Coors Light, or self-sufficient, comfortable in their own skin, and satiated on corn flakes and smoked clams?

Of course this conversation is the first thing that pops in my head when I see the absolute train wreck of Survivor's last episode.

In 24 seasons, never have we seen a tribe voluntarily give up immunity to go to tribal council. Not only is it pure idiocy, but it's deserving of the worst move of all time...and that's among stiff competition.

The whole of the strategy at this point in the game should be numbers. Period. Enter the merge with numbers, and you've got an enormous advantage. Look what happened last time: one by one, every member of the smaller tribe was picked off. It automatically puts you in in the final 6. But when a tribe is more concerned with politics at this point in the game...the writing is on the wall, and it says: buh-buh.

Colton is the perfect analogy for the current brand of the Republican party. Rich trumps all. Yes, even being gay. Colton despises Bill solely because he's not well off, and yet Bill works his ass off in a valiant attempt to pursue his life's passion: comedy. He pays the price of scraping by in order to do what he loves to do.

"I'm sorry, but I'm a Republican, I don't DO handouts," Colton spats in a private interview. But his entire existence is based on handouts. He's never worked a day in his life, he's received every dime he's ever had as handouts from his parents, and he only knows minorities as servants.

Bill's exit was poetic, "He judged me for my differences while I accepted him for his." Bravo.

But Colton is still in the game, and that's important. As much of a despicable human being that he is, he's playing a better game than Bill. And like the current Republican party, there's now so much fear about speaking out against absolute insanity that nobody even attempts to say something logical for fear of being targeted and marginalized. It's Lord of the Frickin' Flies.

And yet, Probst dropped the ball as well... When he said, "Only time will tell if this strategy works or not," he couldn't have been more wrong. The strategy already failed. There never was any upside to stupidity. Never an upside to voluntarily disadvantaging themselves. Never an upside to looking like assholes to 25 million TV viewers.

How I wish I could have sat down with them before that tribal council for a casual dinner and asked, "So, where do you see yourselves 20 days from now...and how will you get there?"

Because in the absence of education, of critical thinking, of debate and logic and respect for others, the one who screams and whines the loudest, using fear as a false uniter, will prevail...but only temporarily. I still have faith that integrity trumps stupidity in the end.

And after my talk, Colton would have been booted, Bill would have been spared...and perhaps, just perhaps, someone would have invented a smoked clams machine...

What a glorious world it would be...

H8TR

I realize this is not going to come as a huge shock to some of you...but I hate people.

No, really.

I hate. People.

OK, technically not all people...but the alternative is definitely the exception.

Put aside the growing political trend of not just tolerating ignorance, but embracing it and holding it up as something to be admired (while vilifying the educated). Put aside the "everyone's special" diseased mentality that psychologically adolescent parents instill in their kids (sorry kids, but you're not born special, you have to EARN it through hard work). Put aside the "we're all winners and there are no losers!" cesspool of fecundity that permeats our society, with every kids sports team receiving "participant trophies" and the absolutely baffling elimination of slaughter ball and smear the queer from school playgrounds.

Too many people think their shit doesn't stink, and I'm not afraid to say that I hate them.

Recently it seems like I've been placed right in the crosshairs of numerous people that deserve to be hated, because in the past few weeks I've encountered a triumverate of these human blights.

On a plane from Los Angeles to Sacramento, I found myself seated next to a guy in his late 20s. The plane was parked at the gate as everyone boarded, and I took the opporutnity to build my bubbleboy cone of silence in window seat 5A, reading quietly and making as little impact to those around me as possible. Soon, this guys takes seat 5B, and he's got no bags, no books, no iPod - no nothing - just himself. Literally three seconds after he buckles in, his knee starts vibrating non-stop in a manic display of OCD that I know will not subside for the impending 60 minute flight.

"Don't say a word, don't say a word..." I tell myself, convinced that if I can just last out the next hour, I will avoid an unpleasant scene that would likely result in me screaming obscenities at him... But as I try to maintain my focus on my book, the seat vibrations were so severe that I literally couldn't focus on the words. It was like I was sitting on a cushioned jackhammer.

I think I deserve some credit for lasting the six minutes that I did, but just as I screamed to myself in my mind, "YOU CAN DO THIS! YOU'RE NOT GOING TO SAY A WORD!" I watched outside my own body as I suddenly and unexpectedly turned to him and spat, "ARE YOU OK?!"

He looked at me completely confused. "Huh...?"

"Are you OK? You're shaking - I didn't know if...there was a problem."

He was offended. He scoffed. "That's what I do."

"You shake? That's what you do?" I gave myself permission to get pissed. "All our chairs are connected; I can hardly keep hold of my book - can you not shake your leg?"

Now he was pissed, "We're on a plane, PLANES SHAKE."

"NOT WHILE PARKED AT THE GATE THEY DON'T!" I replied.

Thankfully (for both him and me - more for me, because I'm not sure what I would have done otherwise), he stopped shaking and ignored me for the remainder of the flight.

The next week I was in the San Francisco airport with about 90 minutes before my next flight. I headed to the food court, but quickly realized that every table was taken. I looped around twice before a table opened up and I grabbed it. Halfway through my lunch, I heard an older guy behind me ask the next table if he could join them as there weren't any open tables. But nope - he was denied. He turned his attention to me and I quickly invited him to join me - I had space and (usually) I'm not an asshole.

As I turned back to my Sports Illustrated and sushi, the guy parked his luggage, set down his lunch, sat down across from me at the small, 2 person table, and...pulled out his f-in phone. With his face two feet away from mine, he then proceded to call three separate people and loudly drone on one-sided about absolutely nothing.

Little flecks of spittle dusted my spicy tuna roll.

Visions of Larry David encoutering the same situation...but rather than stage a whole scene (ballsy and brilliant), I intead tucked my testes back in my underbelly, scarfed my hamachi and blew the joint.

The final straw happened at the most unexpected moment.

I run most mornings before sunrise on the stunning American River Parkway. It's the only time of day that I can get out for an hour or so without it disrupting my family, and besides - I love the solitude, the peace, the still beauty...the hypnotic silence down by the river with only a trail and the wilderness to keep me company.

On this particular day I was having a particularly good run - I had pushed myself, was sweating freely, feeling alive...I was fully immersed in the very real "runner's high." With just a mile remaining, I started thinking to myself how great this was for my health; not just my physical health, but moreso for my mental health. With all my vitriol and hatred for the preponderance of assholes out there, I was surely heading down the path to an early cardiac arrest...but sweating out my toxins was my cure. I could literally feel my mental health healing its scars with each pounding footstep.

As I complimented myeself on my meditative prowess, I half-noticed a bike light coming toward me on the trail ahead. It had rained the night before, and I was approaching a section of the trail that had no shoulder, and with my dog on a leash with me, and it being still pitch dark (even though I too had a headlamp), I moved out on to the grass and weeds, navigating the puddles and mud rather than battle the biker for space (the trail can accomodate two going in either direction, and I actually had right of way with no shoulder).

But the biker, a morning commuter, was having none of it, and as he approached, he actually swerved toward me and muttered, "Goddamn asshole, get out of my way..."

You've never seen someone in such a deeply meditative trance go from zero to a billion on the heart attack scale so quickly - less than a milisecond. I had, "MOTHERFUCKER," "PIECE OF SHIT" and "COCKSUCKER" out of my mouth before his rear tire had passed my heals.

Look, I'm not proud of it - heck, I barely had anything to do with it. It happened beyond my control. My asshole tolerance levels had peaked and brimmed, and they needed a release. Thankfully, they rained on someone who most definitely deserved it.

And as we kick off the 24th season of Survivor, I have to admit, I have learned to revel in the abandon of assholes. No longer does Mark Burnett staff these things with people from all ages and all walks of life. He has a quota of assholes to fill, and by god, he fills 'em. After just one episode, it's apparent that this season is brimming with assholes.

And as we all know, watching assholes is light years more rewarding than dealing with them face-to-asshole.

We hardly get any real drama in this first hour, but the promise of asshole-spewing is ominously tremendous. Alicia with her universe-revolving-around-her mentality, drips with "you owe me respect" assumptiveness. Colton with his "no straight guy is worth my time" attitude, uses uncomfortable, venomous humor to construct flimsy relationship bridges.

It's unlikely I'll encounter any of these self-promoting dolts in an airport restaurant or on the bike trail at 4:45am, but if I do...watch out.

Of course all those bikini-clad hotties are all just fine the way they are...

God, I'm such an asshole.

Until next week...