Random Notes from a Crank

The plaque below comes from the carousel area near the Butterfly House in St. Louis County where the kids, Mrs. Nasty, and I spent the morning before my daughter's big dance competition at Kirkwood High School.

In contrast to that quotation, here's the nugget of wisdom I got from my fortune cookie at P.F. Chang's in Chesterfield: "Enjoy life! It is better to be happy than wise." Really? Is that so? Let's do a close reading of this sentiment lurching toward an aphorism. First off, the first independent clause is in the imperative mode, giving an order to the reader, which is a risky syntactical maneuver. To compound that risk, the author implores the reader to follow a cliche, and it is one that is a heck of a lot harder to follow than you would think with the daily drudgery, politics, and emotional flotsam and jetsam you have to trudge through. And then to finish it with an exclamation point, the most worthless punctuation mark in existence, turns the advice into a statement like the ones you might find on your junior high school yearbooks. It's as genuine as "Have a great summer!" But the second sentence, "It is better to be happy than be wise," is a psychological/philosophical kick in the short-n-curlies. Really, happiness trumps wisdom? Has Confucius been replaced with Bozo the Clown, the sophomore who is rationalizing flunking out of college, or the drunk, creepy guy at the end of the bar who you had a conversation with once that ended with you having to make up how you forgot about having to meet someone. The core claim of that sentence is that happiness trumps wisdom. Ponder that a good while. Also, why a dichotomy? Why an implied either-or proposition here, happiness vs. wisdom? Wouldn't Buddha say that true wisdom is seeing that happiness is a construct we create, that we need to see through such constructs? Regardless, I think it's important to attempt to both be wise and happy and that maybe both are interconnected.

This whole rant has got me thinking about one of my favorite jokes:

• What did Buddha say to the hot dog vendor?
• "Make me one with everything." 

Also, the fortune cookie reminds me what Dean Wormer said to "Mr. Dorfman," aka Flounder, in Animal House.




I think P.F. Chang's should use some of my dark fortunes. That would make me happy and spread wisdom.

Because this Dance Moms show seems to be such a big hit, I'm thinking about pitching a spinoff called Dance Dads. What I envision is that it's a documentary of the competitive dance competition scene as seen through the inner monologues of the dance dads at home or at the events. It would be like a cross between Mystery Science Theater 3000 and reality TV. The show would present the interactions of characters, but there would be voice-overs of what dads are thinking at certain times. There could be some dark humor in such a show--probably would need to be on HBO.