READING IS FUNDAMENTAL

You'd think with my new side gig as an art critic, maybe I had forgotten about my longtime fixation with the friendly neighborhood Bizarro ----way. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, but as much as it shames me to admit it, it's been pretty quiet of late. There's still the odd funk about the place, but it's a quiet funk.

So it's up to me, I guess, to try and stir things up a bit. Fortunately, the store's book drive provided the perfect opportunity. A couple of times a year, they set up a rusty old cart where they encourage the clientele to drop off old books, which other customers then buy for a dollar donation to various charities.

Given my aforementioned description of the store's portal to East Baltimore, you can just imagine the quality of, um, literature that passes through its doors. Picture lots and lots of trashy romance novels (to call them Harlequins would be an insult to the comparatively great works of literature that publishing house has produced), all with 14-point text and a maximum page count of about 80.

So into this mix I threw my own contribution to the greater cause -- an innocuous little book I found while cleaning out our basement called The Cold Warriors: A Policy Making Elite by John C. Donovan (yes, that John C. Donovan). It's jam-packed with fun chapters like "Beyond Pluralism: Elite Activity" and "NSC 68: The Acheson/Nitze Hard Line," but sadly, no pictures. I don't think I ever read it, but I skimmed its pages and as close as I can figure, it's about... um, an elite bunch of policy makers. During the Cold War. And stuff.

But as always, I digress. I lovingly placed the book on the cart next to the next most serious-looking book (The Brother's Wife, which I'm sure is appropriately shlocky but lacks the pictures of shirtless men and taffeta-bedecked women typically found within the genre). Anyone care to place bets on how long it takes The Cold Warriors to find a new home?

Speaking of cold, my guess is about the same time that hell... oh, never mind.

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!

One of the great things about renting a beach house is getting to experience another person’s aesthetic sense (or lack thereof). And the place my inlaws rented for a week this summer was a veritable Louvre of quality art (if by quality art, you mean unironic pink flamingo stained glass in the bathroom and purplish seascapes that looked like they were pained by R. Crumb in the midst of a Prozac binge).

And like in the great museums of the world, proper placement and setting really enhanced our studied consideration of the great works on display. Consider the enigmatic riddle suggested by placing a portrait of Robert E. Lee and a crucifix on the same wall (answer: both the South and Jesus, it seems, will rise again).

Then there are individual works that merit hours, if not days, of careful study. Consider this portrait of a wisened sea captain that hangs in a place of honor over the television (I realize the picture is a tad on the underexposed side, but perhaps that’s because the sheer artistic triumph of this grand oeuvre was just too much for the camera lens to handle).

Give yourself a moment to take it all in. If you close your eyes, you can almost smell the salt in the air, the wisp of his pipe, all tinged with the scent of the artist’s desperation after many an hour studying the legend to the paint-by-numbers kit.

But wait, there’s more. Consider the following details -- I didn’t go to art school or anything, but I still know that details are what make a piece of art a Piece of Art.

Note this will-o-the-wisp thing in the background. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be St. Elmo’s Fire (and if it is, what explanation do we have for the conspicuous absence of Rob Lowe?), but the colors would change subtly as you walked around the room. Spooky.

Again, I’m no artist, but I do know that it’s tough to draw a beard so it looks like a really cheap, fake clip-on beard -- impressive. Also, note the scale of the cap’n’s hands in relation to his pipe and his face. A symbolic message that he’s capable of steering through any storm? Perhaps. A sign he’s afflicted not only by bad weather, but also Marfan Syndrome? Almost certainly -- an artist of this caliber wouldn’t have problems with something as elementary as three-point perspective, after all.

As for the pipe? To quote Freud, sometimes a pipe is... well, just a pipe.

UM, NICE WEATHER WE’RE HAVING

Ever overhear a conversation so awkward you wish you could spontaneously combust to create a distraction?

The other day, I was trapped in an elevator with two people who obviously worked together. With a big toothy grin, one said to the other, “When I saw you in the garage just now and honked my horn, you jumped so high I thought you would hit the ceiling!”

“Well,” the other person replied, “I was hit by a car when I was 18. I was in traction for months.”

“Oh.”

It's never taken so long to ride up five floors.

‘I KNOW KUNG FU’

That’s my favorite line of dialogue (or come to think of it, it may be the only line of dialogue) from the overrated piece of dreck better known as The Matrix (which, as I describe elsewhere, is really just Tron without the day-glo suits).

But I digress. I mention this only because I got an e-mail from my own would-be Neo this evening, and it was so compelling it once again prompted me to lift my self-imposed ban on sharing spam messages:

Do you want the prestige of becoming a Certified Kung Fu Blackbelt??

Can you handle the respect that comes with the rank of Blackbelt??

IF YOU ANSWERED, "YES" TO BOTH OF THESE QUESTIONS, YOU ARE ONLY ONE PHONE CALL AWAY FROM ACHIEVING THE RANK OF KUNG FU BLACKBELT.

Hi, my name is [name withheld], and I am a 3rd degree Blackbelt Sifu Instructor. I have been a martial arts instructor my entire adult life. I am a decorated combat Vietnam Veteran and I received a purple heart for wounds received in combat. I currently own and operate a professional bodyguard agency for wealthy clients outside Orlando, Florida.

After years of study, I have developed a unique, easy to learn home study program. All you need to perform are the following stances:

1. Crane
2. Leopard
3. Praying Mantis
4. Dragon
5. Serpent

After performing the five animal stances and your fees processed, you will be awarded:

1. A FIRST DEGREE BLACKBELT in Kung Fu.
2. An official BLACKBELT CERTIFICATE with authentic seal with my original signature and the original signatures of two other Blackbelts.
3. A notarized certificate of authenticity.
4. A copy of my 3rd Degree BLACKBELT SIFU INSTRUCTOR CERTIFICATE, signed by a World Champion Grand Master, authorizing me, to certify you.

Simply purchase my course, learn five moves, and verify you can perform these stances by emailing me (ON YOUR HONOR) that you have completed the course and I WILL CERTIFY YOU AS FIRST DEGREE BLACKBELT...

To quote the Shakespearian thespian Sir Keanu Reeves, “Whoa.”

Fortunately, I think I’m ready for the respect that comes with the rank of blackbelt -- I mean, look how far it got Elvis. So here, in front of the entire world, I’m prepared to demonstrate my mastery of the five stances:

1. Crane (“Pay...”)
2. Leopard (“To...”)
3. Praying Mantis (“The...”)
4. Dragon (“Order...”)
5. Serpent (“Of...”)

Whoa, indeed.

TODDLER TOYS

The Three Year Old: Friend or Enemy book that Aimee picked out for us a few days back has been one of the biggest sources of unintended comedy we’ve found in some time. Along with the aforementioned clown-burning advice, we’ve now found a helpful list of toys appropriate for 3-year-olds. And it’s as helpful as you might imagine: I never, ever would have figured out for myself that a ball would be an appropriate toy for a three year old. An astrolabe, maybe, but a ball?

Anyhoo, here’s a fun way to test your parenting skills. Some of the items in the list below are from the book, others are not. See if you can pick them out:

• Balls
  
• Blunt scissors
  
• Cards with holes punched in them
  
• Clowns, scary
  
• Felt pens
  
• Glass, shards, multicolored
  
• Housekeeping toys (carpet sweeper, broom, dust mop)
  
• Hookah
  
• Kegs
  
• Kegs, pony
  
• Musical instruments
  
• Medical syringes, used
  
• Nature specimens, such as fish, turtles, salamanders, rabbits, guinea pigs or plants
  
• Nail guns
  
• Small child-size hammer, large nails, soft wood
  

Okay, okay, so maybe I made this too easy. After all, who would give their child a guinea pig?

WHAT A WAY TO GO

Well, no... actually I feel just fine. But apparently, at the Bizarro ----way down the street, I'm a goner.

Let me explain. Like lots of places with pharmacies, the store has a self-service blood pressure tester. A week or so back, I had a few free minutes to kill (and had just put a container of butter into my cart), so I figured why not give it a shot.

The cuff clamed onto my arm--hard. And then it got tighter. As I listened to some canned recording about heart disease, I felt my forearm throb a little, then go completely numb as the cuff kept clamping down. The recording stopped, but the cuff didn’t let go.

That’s when I realized I might actually be trapped inside the cuff, inside the Bizarro ----way. They’d turn off the lights after closing, leaving me to the rats or whatever else lives in the elaborate tunnel system they clandestinely built a few months back.

There are probably worse places to be locked up, I’m sure, but none came to mind while I was standing there.

After another long moment, the cuff released me, leaving me to ponder my blood pressure.

It was 0/0. In other words, no blood pressure at all. I didn’t go to med school or anything, but I’m pretty sure that’s Not Good.

Some grocery stores might accidentally shortchange you at the cashier. Others might leave the milk on the shelves a day or two too long. Mine declares me legally dead.

SEND IN THE CLOWNS

So what does it say about us as parents when our two-year-old daughter brings us copies of parenting books when we go to the library?

No, really -- this actually happened on her last visit there, and Sally brought home the copy of Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy that Aimee dumped on her lap before heading off in search of more George and Martha books for herself.

That's not the scary part. Consider this letter from the book. It isn't signed, but it's safe to assume it's from a Mensa Parent of the Year award winner:

Dear Doctors:

I have a problem of fear in a usually fearless boy who is just three. When he was about a year old we gave him a clown that rolls back and forth, with a very realistic face and eyes that roll. At first he seemed a little afraid of it, but soon he seemed happy enough. In fact, for a time he liked it so much that he carried it around.

A few evenings ago we saw a TV program about a circus. There was some violence in the picture. A knife thrower was trying to kill some other man, and although he wasn't dressed as a clown, there were clowns in the play.

I don't know if that caused it, but the next evening, our son said, "The clown is going to hurt me." His daddy told him no, the clown was just like any other dolly. This morning, the first thing he said was something about the clown.

I thought about burning the clown before his eyes, but perhaps that would be too dramatic. We are going to leave soon for a vacation with his grandma. Would it be best to take the clown along or to leave it at home?

Wow.

To the authors' credit, here's the first sentence of their response:

You seem to have made several mistakes.

They go on to point out that a clown "seems a somewhat dubious choice as a play object for a little boy," that perhaps the choice of television program was a bad one, and that -- and I never would have figured this next thing out -- "burning the clown would indeed be too dramatic. It might lead to a fear of fires as well as a fear of clowns."

Not to toot my own parenting horn or anything, but this was Aimee's reaction to seeing a life-size Ronald McDonald sculpture while stuck during an interminable layover at the Dublin airport:

"Creepy man! Aimee wants to see the creepy man!"

I couldn't be more proud.