Here’s To You, Mr. Amateur Firefighter

Here’s To You, Mr. Amateur Firefighter

Amateur. The word is based on the Latin root word for love. You do it for love. Word’s been debased now. Half-assed is how people perceive the word now. I woulda done this, and you shoulda done that. The person holding the camera had a hint of backseat driver about them, mocking the firemen that show up after the rescue’s done. To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat or HOW TO TURN A GODDAMNED CAMERA SIDEWAYS WHEN FILMING.

Let’s See. Wallet? Yes. Car Keys? Yup. Cellphone? Uh Huh. Parachute? Um, Parachute?

Let’s See. Wallet? Yes. Car Keys? Yup. Cellphone? Uh Huh. Parachute? Um, Parachute?


Now, where did I leave that thing?

There’s never enough “no” when you’re answering the question, “Will you jump out of a plane without a parachute?” Regular people jump out with two. So another guy jumps out of the plane with an extra one for you? I’d make sure I owed that guy with the spare parachute a lot of money, and cancel my life insurance. It’s the only way to be sure.

It’s A Lot Easier To Just Tell Your Kids That The Tooth Fairy Was Hit By A Bus

It’s A Lot Easier To Just Tell Your Kids That The Tooth Fairy Was Hit By A Bus


Kids just want dad to read them a story and get them a glass of water.Is that good enough for a dad? Hell no. Every demand on dad’s attention, no matter how trivial, must be met by an insane outlay of time, effort, and money until you achieve some bizarre jumbotron-wedding-proposal-grade reaction from your target audience.

Your wife told you to sneak a quarter under the kid’s pillow, so you of course spent eight hundred dollars and expended two hundred man-hours to do it. She can’t help but notice that the kid still just ended up with some change, and the towel bar she’s been asking you to hang in the bathroom is still in the package, four years after you moved into your house.

Towels dry faster when they’re on the floor, anyway.

Dreaming Of Making It To Round Two

Dreaming Of Making It To Round Two


Heavyweight boxing is dead. It’s one of those sports that was the biggest thing in the world, then all of a sudden it wasn’t much of anything. Horse racing is like that. Perhaps football’s days are numbered in the same way.

Mike Tyson was the last great heavyweight. There’s really no way to tell how good he was, because there was no one for him to really test himself against. He got bored, got beat, got jailed, got broke, and now he’s a punch line. But for a while, he was literally terrifying. It would have been fun to see him against an Ali, a Frazier, some form of Foreman in his prime — someone worthy of his best efforts.