Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Aug. 27, 2012
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Seriously? Even though “Road Apples” is a humor column, I am sometimes criticized for a lack of seriousness when it comes to choosing topics. I recently received an e-mail from an irate reader who shall remain nameless, but who asked: “With the country in shambles and the world in turmoil, why do you insist on choosing silly topics? Why don’t you try writing about today’s serious headlines?” Well, that e-mail struck a nerve, and so I carefully listed what I thought were last week’s most serious headlines, in hopes of seriously finding a serious topic there to satisfy my more serious readers. Seriously. Here’s what I came up with: 1. Joe Biden to attend Republican National Convention in Tampa 2. Your tap water may contain brain eating amoeba 3. Nike’s new LeBron James sneakers to sell for $315 4. Dining room table explodes in Seattle 5. Man arrested for driving motorized picnic table in Ontario • The first topic, which caused a lot of concern among folks on both sides of the political aisle last week, seemed serious enough to satisfy my critic. After all, a Democratic Vice-President attending a Republican National Convention is serious stuff. But then again, after considering the many humorous ramifications of a column concerning Joe Biden, especially if some canny Republican were to ask him to make some spontaneous, offhand remarks for, oh, say an hour or two, to entertain the convention crowd, I decided against it. • The second topic, inspired by an August 23, 2012 Los Angeles Times article by Eryn Brown, tells how researchers discovered the possibility of fatal brain damage due to an amoeba called Naeglaria fowler sometimes found in tap water in Southeastern states. This seemed serious enough to write about, but while pondering the brain-eating amoeba topic, Joe Biden kept coming to mind, so I left it alone, too. • The third, the announcement by Nike that they’d be featuring a new $315 LeBron James sneaker in their lineup, seemed very serious, tennis shoe-wise. When I was a kid, you could pick up a very respectable pair of good, sturdy canvas Red Ball Jets for $5. They didn’t include sensors to track the distance I could jump or the speed at which I could fly down the basketball court, but then again, I couldn’t jump or fly, so it made no difference. If any of the kids I knew back then had suggested to their parents that they needed a pair of $315 tennis shoes, their parents would still be rolling on the floor laughing, some fifty years later. Nope, can’t write about that, there’s way too much humor there. • The fourth topic dealt with a very serious Seattle gentleman named Adam Welch, whose glass dining room table spontaneously exploded while he was getting ready to go to work. I saw some very serious photos of the spot where his table used to be before it exploded, and the resulting glass shards that remained, I was seriously disturbed. We have a glass patio table, and I hate the idea of that thing going KABLOOEY while we’re using it, or even while we’re standing around in the vicinity. Here was a topic I could seriously sink my journalistic teeth into, I thought. But then I read how Natalie Swaby and the people at Seattle’s King News took Welch’s photos to Seattle’s spontaneously exploding glass dining room table expert, Justin Ivy, who explained the whole thing by saying “It’s not extremely common, but it can happen.” To make matters worse, Mr. Welch said he’d owned the table for four years, implying that it had always been a good, reliable table, and had never given him any trouble before. Scratch that headline. • The fifth and final topic seemed to at least offer a ray of hope. Serious hope. It was suggested in an August 21, 2012 article by Scott Taylor in the London [Ontario] Free Press. Obviously there are some serious advantages to a motorized picnic table. You can drive it to your local drive thru fast food restaurant, pull into a parking place, and your table is right there. On the other hand, there are some serious disadvantages. You can’t drive a motorized picnic table if your elderly relatives at the table aren’t equipped with table helmets and table belts and some duct tape to keep their paper plates from blowing off and littering the streets. But as it turned out, there were no elderly relatives seated at the table, only a 46-year-old driver and several of his inebriated buddies, who were not interested in any practical application of motorized picnic table technology, only in taking a joy ride on a four-wheeled, lawnmower engine powered picnic table with what appeared to be a large garbage can mounted on the rear. These guys were pulled over and ticketed by London police for having open liquor bottles on their picnic table while it was in motion. Once again, no seriousness there. So to my reader, Mr. Nameless, who is looking for more serious news, less silliness, all I can say is I tried. Seriously. |