Doug Reviews 'Murica!

Pretend for a moment America has an avatar that embodies all the best things about this country. A living personification of our most deeply held beliefs on duty, honesty, freedom, liberty, bravery, strength, justice, and kindness. You are probably picturing someone like Superman or Captain America. That’s good.

Now, I want you to imagine that avatar has an evil twin. This twin is certainly all things American, but instead of symbolizing all the good about America, the evil twin displays everything wrong with our nation.

Bad news, everyone. Evil twin actually exists. I sat next to him at a poker table in Las Vegas last week.

He strolled arrogantly up to the table and sat down with a smirk and an air of superiority unrivaled by…actually, you know what? I’m not being fair here. Let me start over.

He rolled up arrogantly to the table, teetering atop his overworked Rascal Scooter with a smirk and an air of superiority.

As he barked at the employee who was helping him move the actual chair out of the way so he could park up close to the table, I took a moment to lean back and get the full picture.

He was shaped like a half-melted soft-serve cone, where everything has sort of cascaded down and settled around the mouth of the cone.  His head was perfectly round, and his pink face looked as if another, bigger face was trying to squeeze its way out through the jowls and forehead.

His beady eyes looked out from behind enormous wire-rimmed glasses and caught me staring. He smiled the smile of the third-grader who thinks nobody noticed his fart. He reached out a Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man hand and in a voice that sounded like bacon hitting a frying pan in the Deep South, said “Hah! I’m Ran-deee.”

I did my best to shake hands without touching him, and immediately brushed the sticky crumbs off my palms that he had somehow passed to me.

He had not been dealt two hands before he called a waitress over and ordered (I kid you not) chicken fried steak and a strawberry milkshake. This was sometime around midnight on a Tuesday.

While he waited for his food, Ran-deee lost a fairly big hand. He flopped a set of three’s, and called the guy with Ace-King of diamonds a “suck out” when the third diamond hit the board on the river (Quick translation for my non poker-playing friends: this was Randeee’s way of letting the table know he feels he is the only one who should be allowed to play poker, because everyone else disrespects the game by beating him with what he views as inferior cards).

Randee’s food came, and I began to notice he made a disturbing little “HERP” sound every time he shoveled a new pile of chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes into his mouth. I swear, it was as if his own mouth was screaming “Halt!” in an effort to prevent the onslaught of incoming calories.   

The Australian gentleman sitting across from me and Randee was drinking a Red Bull energy drink. Upon discovering this, Randee felt obligated to inform the Australian that studies have confirmed major health risks associated with energy drinks. We all stared blankly at Randee the way Mormon missionaries would look at Lindsey Lohan as she gave them tips to staying sober.

An hour went by. Randee, sweaty and breathless from either an unnoticed heart attack or the task of moving the milkshake from his tray to his lips, pushed his chips all in with a straight. I called, feeling my full house was probably good. It was.

Randee went from pink to red to purple. He had what appeared to be a stroke, then slammed his cards to the table, accused me of being a “flippin donkey!” and stormed off. To his credit, it is not an easy task to storm off when you have to first back your scooter up and perform a five-point turn.

As he whirred away, I couldn’t help but hear the words to that sacred Lee Greenwood anthem, “…Cause there ain’t no doubt that I love this laaaand, God bless the U.S.A!”

Thanks Randee!

Doug Reviews a Crappy Situation

Louis CK does a comedy bit about the absurdity of people complaining about their flights. He goes on to remind us that no one is interested in the minor difficulties we experience while partaking of the miracle of flight. Having said that, I think even the best stand up comedian around would cut me some slack and let me tell about the flight I took yesterday.   

Let me explain.

The flight from Salt Lake City, Utah to Pocatello, Idaho is only a short 50-minute hop. To make the journey, passengers are carefully stuffed into what I call “Delta Minis.”  Tiny planes that often force me to paraphrase a quote from Zoolander, “What is this, a jet for ants!?!?! It needs to be at least…three times bigger!”

I was the last one to board. I know you are supposed to get on the plane when they announce your specific boarding zone, but in situations where it is assigned seating, I like to get on last and survey the plane for the best available seat, not necessarily the one I’ve been assigned. 

This flight was no exception. As soon as I hunched over, bent my knees, and duck walked onto the plane, I noticed the front solo seat was empty, which I quickly remedied (front solo seat means each row is three seats: two on one side of the aisle, and then a line of single seats).

I was the last on board, so it wasn’t long before we were air born.

Salt Lake was windy that day, with gusts up to 25 mph. But Pocatello was even windier, and somewhere between the two we hit some major turbulence. And so did my stomach.

It was the kind of stomach trouble that brings on that brief, sweaty panic that you may not be able to hold it, but then subsides in a moment of instant relief. I figured I could hold it until we touched down, and went back to reading my book. The last thing I want to do is take a 2 on this itty-bitty plane that I wasn’t entirely sure even had a restroom.

A few minutes went by, and another wave of discomfort washed over me. But this wasn’t your typical wave. My body was telling my brain very clearly, “I know you didn’t want this, but you will definitely be pooping on this plane. I’ll give you 37 seconds to decide the best place to proceed.”

Brushing aside a stern warning glare from the stewardessman, I unbuckled and dashed to the back of the plane (Due to the high turbulence factor, we had been asked to remain in our seats). I wedged myself into the bathroom and tried unsuccessfully to close the door. Yeah, unsuccessfully.

This might be a good time to remind my readers that I am 6’4” and 230 pounds when barefoot and naked.  The bathrooms in this little Willy Wonka aircraft are made for someone who is no taller than 4’11” and weighs no more than 72 pounds. 

Clock ticking, I had to make an embarrassing decision. I stepped out of the bathroom, turned my back to it, bent over and sort of backed up over the toilet like I was backing a truck under a trailer hitch. A Mexican guy looked over at me and we made brief eye contact before the front of the plane quickly caught his attention.

I was able to get my body hovering over the toilet, pull the accordion doors shut and drop trough just in time to unleash hell. I’ll spare you the details, but rest assured it was about as bad as it can get. Add to that the knowledge that my fellow passengers could hear me banging around in there as I smashed against the walls or hit my head on the door with every bump in the sky.

(Try to imagine yourself sitting in an outhouse in the sky. Then, imagine God strolling up to that outhouse and deciding, just for the fun of it, to grab the outhouse and shake it like a pop can)

Despair began to sink in. There is no feeling more hopeless than sitting on a toilet in the sky during rough turbulence, knowing that no matter how strong your will, you are not going anywhere until your body says so.

In the depth of my despair, however, I found a gritty resolve.  It was the grim acceptance that in the event of a crash, that spot was where they would find my remains. I didn’t care if they landed the plane and deboarded, I was there until I was done. It was a new state of enlightenment for me.

Things got better.  Things weren’t that bad. I made my way back to the front of the plane, fellow passengers averting their gaze, stewardessman looking past me, red with rage and disgust. I didn’t care, I had learned an important lesson.

Sure, I hope I never see any of my fellow passengers again. And yeah, Skywest probably won’t let me fly their airline again. But I learned that life can get pretty crappy sometimes (of course I used that pun), but with time it goes away. And over time, you forget about the bad times and simply end up with nothing more than a funny story to tell.

Doug Reviews School Prayer

Unfortunately for you, I am a lazy and occasional libertarian. Every once in a while, I feel inspired to offer my two cents regarding the political operations of this wacky planet Earth. 

The topic on a local news radio talk show this morning was prayer in schools. In case you’ve been in a Turkish coma for the past few decades, let me sum up: One group wants to make sure prayers to God in the name of Jesus Christ are being said in schools. Another group would like to prevent the saying of those prayers in state institutions, like schools and General Motors.

Since I belong to the group who supports prayer, I feel like it is my responsibility to stand up for the group that does not. I count at least two atheists among my group of very best friends in the world. Since I know they are amazing people who live with a sense of morality I strive to emulate, I’d like to use the next few paragraphs to defend their right to “worship how, what, or where they may.”

The radio host had written an Op-Ed piece about the importance of prayer in school, and spent his time this morning really emphasizing the soundness of his points. I’ll try to sum up his defense of schools prayer through bullet points:

1.     This country was built on the common belief in a higher power- And if we’ve learned anything, it’s that the Founding Fathers were infallible geniuses, could make no mistakes, and were all secretly Mormon.

(Oh, and just a reminder, the country was established on the ideal that people should have freedom from religion. Remember how in England they were being forced to accept the church they didn’t believe, so they fled to find a place where they could believe how they choose? It’s a similar story to the one of the Mormons crossing the plains in search of a place where the government did not dictate their religion to them.)

Anyway, the Founding Fathers debate has a lot of going back and forth about their true, actual religious beliefs. So I’m gonna skip it. I will take a minute to list a few things they might have got wrong: women’s right to vote, black people counting as an actual whole human being, and fashion sense.

2.    People who don’t like/believe in prayer should just get over it and sit quietly until it’s over- To be honest, I feel this way too. Because currently, the prayer being offered lines up closely with my religion and therefore seems no big deal to me. The problem is, I have no right to represent those who believe differently than me.

I do wonder, however, how I would feel if I went to watch my daughter sing in a school assembly and they began by laying out each child’s prayer mat, turned them toward Mecca and chanted Islamic prayers while prostrating on the ground to kiss the floor.  Would I still sit quietly and “get over it”?

Probably not. I’d be nervous about what creating and living under an Islamic state could mean to my Mormon family and me. And that’s only because a few thousand Muslims give the other 1.4 Billion a bad name.

I mean, it could be worse, I could be a non-Christian in 1412 and been subjected to state sponsored disemboweling.  Or I could have been an attractive young woman in 1692 accused of refusing to have sex with a married man witchcraft (After all, Exodus 22:18 does say “thou shalt not permit a witch to live”).

I guess these thoughts gives me at least enough insight to try some empathy.  

3.    “Atheists are simply jealous of the happiness religious people get from their beliefs” (this was actually said by the radio guy today)- Unfortunately, this is the kind of thinking that gives us religious types a bad name. Atheists are no more or less happy than Christians, just like guys named Paul or no more or less handsome than guys named Steve.

And if I could take it a step further, I would guess that a person who makes this type of comment is reaching. Perhaps in an effort to mask their own struggles with their faith, they would find something easy to which they can attribute to religion. This morning’s version was “the happiness that comes knowing we can see our families again after death.”

Yes, the one common denominator I’ve noticed in my atheist pals is that they really hate their families and are always talking about how exciting it will be at death to finally get rid of the bozos and cease to exist.

Look, I don’t care what you believe. But this world is filled with a lot of people, and if we each believe the world should conform to the standards of our particular chosen religion, we will continue to see the fruits of that battle. They lead to a world filled with hate, terrorism, torture, war, rape, death and murder, all done in the name of my god being better at being god than your god.

Perhaps we should all take the radio host’s advice and relax a little bit, and if we are doing something in a setting paid for by the tax dollars of the collective, we should try to show as little preferential treatment to certain groups as possible.