Moment 4 Life (Uncut)

by Bill Zam | Posted on: July 27, 2011 9:56 am - in unpublished

Been there, done that, got the volunteer T-shirt.

Who knew cancer could be so much fun?

Obviously this controversial statement is intended to get your attention so I can make this point about the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life: charity events for diseases are not always somber and depressing. If, like me, you have ever used this excuse for non-participation, cross it off your list.

Don’t Repost This as Your Status For One Hour
If I haven’t already lost you, let me assure you that I am not asking for anything. I myself am painfully average when it comes to donating. I have my own well-rehearsed list for not participating in charity events: I’m too busy; I’m too broke; I gave at a different office. All of these are absolutely true, but I am quicker to use them in this modern age of over-solicitation. Thanks to phony corporate guilt marketing and overzealous Facebook pummeling, it’s easy to get de-sensitized and not do anything at all. Let me say it this way: my favorite kind of volunteering is the kind you actually volunteer for. [Many of you are now volunteering a grammar rule about not ending sentences with a preposition. This is something I’m aware of.] The purpose of this article is not to add to the saturation, but to take a moment to give those of you sitting on the fence with me a more attractive option for helping.

Ain’t No Party Like a Cancer Party ‘Cause a Cancer Party Don’t Stop (Unfortunately)
Relay For Life is a charity event the organizers call “a time to celebrate those who have battled cancer, remember those lost and get inspired to fight back.” I recently walked with my family to support a friend whose father has cancer, as well as to honor various friends and relatives who have passed away or are currently soldiering on as survivors.

When I arrived at the local high school track with my kids, what we found, quite frankly, was a raging party. There was a martial arts performance, a money-raising “beauty” contest for men in drag, and a woman hula-hooping her way around the track like a possessed circus performer. There was live music, bounce houses, games, and footballs and Frisbees flying through the air like an asteroid field. This particular event was on the day of the supposed Rapture, so at first I thought they were asteroids. The best time to walk for charity in an open field is the day God is expected to strike down upon thee with great vengeance. “Hi, Lord! Maybe you should blow those thunderclouds away so you have a clear view of the altruism!” I guess it worked this time, but don’t feel bad if you weren’t out there saving the world on May 21. Weather permitting, the End of Days has been rescheduled for October and you’ll get another chance.

Starve a Cold, Feed a Cancer
As with all carnivals, there were ridiculously overpriced concessions, but for once it felt right to pay $4.00 for a grocery store hamburger, because the meat of that money was going to cancer research. It also felt good knowing I was going to walk it off before I went home. Since we would need plenty of energy, I kept myself and the kids heavily hydrated with charitable bottled spring water, and also convinced myself that it was a good reason to drink about a half-dozen iced coffees with Splenda. After the walk, I learned that there are entire books and websites claiming that Splenda is the latest product to cause cancer. Another round of morbidly ironic espresso, barista!

8 Mile
The kids played in the midfield, joining us for an occasional lap, while I walked the easiest eight miles of my life. Between the caffeine and losing myself in the palpable positive vibe of my fellow walkers, the day flew by. There were no rules or lane violations. Nobody yelled at each other for going too slow on the track or going the wrong way. When the P.A. announcer courteously requested moments of silence, respect was universally delivered by people of all ages. I felt great, not just because of the good cause, but also because each lap was one small step toward getting me into a smaller charity T-shirt for the next event. I could have walked further for my own health without the kids, but the Relay is about solidarity and community, not distance. More attendees = more money, and more education for my children about the realities of life and death.

It’s All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses a Life
I’m not naïve. It’s obviously not just a party, and this is most evident during the luminaria ceremony after dark, when the Relay honors those affected by or lost to the disease by lighting candles inside sand-filled bags. The theme of this walk, spelled out beautifully in the bleachers with luminarias, was HOPE. Aside from hoping for a cure, it personally made me hopeful for a kinder world, where people treat each other with the respect and deference that was present throughout the event.

Touched By a Euphemism
I don’t like the phrase “we all know someone whose life has been touched by cancer.” People don’t get “touched” by, for example, chemotherapy. A more appropriate verb would be ravaged or devastated. In the few short months between the walk and the time I finished this article, two of my close relatives were diagnosed with cancer. My friend’s father, whom we were sponsoring at the walk, was transferred to hospice care. Call me touchy if you must, but this is not the best place for euphemisms. Cancer fucking sucks.

Raising HOPE
My hope is that I have not guilt-marketed you, browbeaten you or essentially contradicted my own advice. I will not be following up to see if you read this and I will not be asking you for money. I just wanted to relay the message that it only took me about four hours to switch from indifferent to invested, and you might find yourself similarly inspired, like my five-year-old. He heard my wife and I talking today about yet another person who had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

“Lung cancer? Yay! We get to go to another walk!”

Okaaaay. Maybe he doesn’t fully understand why he was there; his motivation is bounce houses and brotherly bonding. But it doesn’t matter. He’s excited to go again, he’s full of energy, and his T-shirt money is as good as anyone else’s. If your motivation is still not there, believe me, I understand. But if you’d like to save a life, lower your cholesterol, or even just want a new T-shirt in your closet, take a lap with him.

To support Relay For Life, visit http://www.relayforlife.org/relay/about.

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Tweet the Joke: When in Rome…

by Bill Zam | Posted on: July 10, 2011 1:55 pm - in contests

Tweet the Joke features joke setups from a different comedian each week; Twitterers provide the punchlines. Bill Zam won for the following entry:

@TweetTheJoke: Sunday’s #TweetTheJoke from @myqkaplan:
When in Rome…

Zam:
…do as the Romans do (flee to France to avoid rape prosecution).

 

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My Name Is Earl caption contest

by Bill Zam | Posted on: May 5, 2011 11:56 am - in contests

Bill Zam won this caption contest hosted by Greg Garcia, creator of My Name Is Earl; Yes, Dear; and Raising Hope. For background, the woman in the picture is “Patty the Daytime Hooker.”

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Memorex Memories (Uncut) – with trivia answers

by Bill Zam | Posted on: April 1, 2011 10:21 am - in unpublished

Mixed emotions.

I traveled a lot this year. My journey[1] took me through America,[2] from Boston[3] to Chicago[4] to Kansas[5] to Houston.[6] Occasionally you’d find me over the borderline[7] as far away as Africa[8] or Asia,[9] or in a big country[10] somewhere else, like down under.[11] Once I even crossed the river Styx[12] without paying the ferryman![13] All without leaving my library.

If you just had an a-ha[14] moment, you know that I’m talk-talking[15] about my iTunes library, which grew exponentially with 80s music as I digitized my old cassette collection. I didn’t move very far geographically – a tape ended every 30 or 45 minutes and I ran[16] across the room to flip it[17] – but I did go back in time.[18]

I’m so excited[19] to get all of this music on my computer and discard hundreds of obsolete cassette tapes. No more rewinding or using the eraser end of a pencil to spin a stubborn reel. I got my first CD player in 1988 and did a mandatory persuasive presentation in high school Speech class about it, smashing a record with a hammer[20] and pulling the guts out of a cassette to demonstrate the comparative durability and capacity of the Compact Disc.

I mentioned my family’s earlier influence on my musical tastes in Side One of this article, but the 1980s were truly[21] my formative years. They say that popular music is the soundtrack of our lives, but at that age – junior high especially – it seemed to be the focus of our lives, and we were loving every minute of it.[22] Those were our glory days,[23] when Gina worked the diner all day[24], a girl named Rio[25] danced across the sand, and Nikki was everybody’s darling.[26] There was no need to buy a copy of “Thriller”[27] or “Every Breath You Take”[28]; you simply needed to turn up the radio[29] to hear those ubiquitous tunes. But if you wanted a one-hit wonder, you’d have to buy the cassette. The other option was to sit by the radio, hoping Rick Dees would give a Weekly Top 40 intro long enough for you to get to the record button of your cassette deck before “Our House”[30] or “New Girl Now”[31] or “867-5309/Jenny”[32] came on. If you happened to be listening to Casey Kasem, you might miss the button while reaching for the stars, or (during the Long Distance Dedication), the tissues.

A box of Kleenex was definitely in order[33] when I got to my mix tapes. Up to this point in the digitizing, it was mostly laughter, like when I remembered that the Breakfast Club[34] was a band as well as a movie, or when I would hear tongue-in-cheek shouts of this is my jam! from my wife in the other room for every fifth song.[35] For many, the 1980s meant MTV, new wave and rap, but to me the lasting invention of the decade was the Mix Tape.

The seriousness of a relationship in the 80s and early 90s could be judged not only by sexual consummation, but also by whether one had prepared 90 minutes of meaningful music on cassette, complete with liner notes that looked like somebody dropped an M-80 into a pack of Magic Markers. One of the romantics,[36] I fancied myself the Jam-Master Jay[37] of mix tapes, filling each side of the tape with carefully selected hits and serenades, interspersed with film and comedy clips. In retrospect, I would have gotten more action if I focused more on the girls and less on creating the perfect K-Tel collection, but I’m happy with how it worked out. I gave my wife a Digitally Remastered Box Set of her old mix tapes that she appreciated more than anything I could have downloaded from iTunes.

As I transferred the cassettes, many of them proved as flawed as my high school speech had demonstrated. No matter what I did with the Dolby Noise Reduction switch, Hall & Oates[38] warbled even more than they did in the 80s, while Twisted Sister twisted to a painful death in the hungry[39] cassette player. As these degraded physical[40] symbols of my childhood slipped away, though, I realized that the tapes held more than analog music, and lasted a lot longer than expected, at least in my memory.

There was the road trip I took with my best friend’s family and the Eagles[41]; the Bigger And Deffer[42] hoops games on a youth center court in my ironically Richer and Whiter suburban town; and the mental photograph[43] of my first slow dance, kindly engineered for us by a friend’s mother at a chaperoned co-ed house party. It was awkward, but it was heaven. And although it was 1984, it was not “Heaven,” by Bryan Adams. Inexplicably, it was Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” which is slow-dance bliss until Jimmy Page takes over and you find yourself looking at your dance partner in a wide-eyed “stare way” that says, “What the hell do we do now?”

Eventually we said goodbye to the 80s, Chris-Crossing[44] from jumping with The Pointer Sisters[45] and Van Halen[46] to jump-jumping with Kris Kross in the 90s. I’m not one of these guys who insists that his generation was better than those that followed. I won’t presume to know what musical memories will one day move today’s teenagers – perhaps shared iPod buds or YouTube dedications – but I will share some advice. When I first heard it, this advice was nothing more to me than a random sentence between electronic hand claps. But as I listened to the noisy tape reels wind away into oblivion this year, the message suddenly came across with digital clarity: Hold on to 16 as long as you can, changes come around real soon, make us women and men.[47]

 

[1] Journey, formed 1973

[2] America, formed 1970

[3] Boston, formed 1976

[4] Chicago, formed 1967

[5] Kansas, formed 1970

[6] Whitney Houston performed professionally as early as 1977 before “having it all” in the 80s.

[7] Madonna, 1984

[8] Toto, 1982, or the South Bronx if you spell it “Afrika”

[9] Asia, formed 1981

[10] Big Country, “In a Big Country,” 1983

[11] Men At Work, “Down Under,” 1981

[12] Styx, formed 1970

[13] Chris de Burgh, “Don’t Pay the Ferryman,” 1982

[14] a-ha, formed 1982

[15] Talk Talk, formed 1981

[16] A Flock of Seagulls, 1982

[17] While Bell Biv Devoe’s Poison wasn’t released until 1990 and this “Do Me” reference was accidental, I’ll give you credit since it was actually in the box of cassettes!

[18] Huey Lewis and the News, 1985

[19] Pointer Sisters, 1982

[20] Technically M.C. Hammer until 1991

[21] Lionel Richie, “Truly,” 1982

[22] Loverboy, 1985

[23] Bruce Springsteen, 1984

[24] “Living on a Prayer,” Bon Jovi, 1986

[25] Duran Duran, 1982

[26] “Darling Nikki,” Prince, 1984

[27] Michael Jackson, 1982

[28] The Police, 1983

[29] Autograph, 1984

[30] OK, if you want to argue that “One Step Beyond” or “House of Fun” were hits #2 and #3 for Madness, you are sick with 80s nostalgia. Go sit in a padded room with Kevin Dubrow.

[31] Honeymoon Suite, 1981

[32] Tommy Tutone, 1982

[33] Hair band Kleenex released their debut album, “Definitely in Order,” in 1987.

[34] New wave band Breakfast Club released “Right On Track” in 1987, and if you believe Wikipedia, they actually once counted Madonna as a member – on drums!

[35] I’m white, she’s black. If I’m being honest, it was more like every 50th.

[36] The Romantics, formed in 1977, are most famous for “What I Like About You.”

[37] Jason Mizell (1965-2002), was the DJ of Run-D.M.C.

[38] Daryl Hall and John Oates first paired up in 1969.

[39] Twister Sister formed in 1972 and released Stay Hungry in 1984.

[40] Olivia Newton-John, 1981

[41] Although it seemed like I was runnin’ down the road with Don Henley and company a lot in that decade, the Eagles actually didn’t release a studio album in the 1980s.

[42] L.L. Cool J, BAD, 1987

[43] Def Leppard, 1983

[44] Christopher Cross’ most famous 80s hits were “Sailing,” “Ride Like the Wind” and “Arthur’s Theme.”

[45] “Jump (For My Love),” 1983

[46] “Jump,” 1984

[47] “Jack and Diane,” John Cougar, 1982

Read Side One of this column.

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A Serious Problem (CT Indian Life)

by Bill Zam | Posted on: July 17, 2010 10:09 pm - in magazines

Funny or die.

A friend of mine recently confided, “We Indians are in general a very serious bunch of people.” I have a serious problem with that.

As one of CT Indian Life’s only non-Indian contributors, I try to offer a different perspective on matters of interest to the Indian community. In fact, I take pride in seeing the whole world from a different angle. As a humor writer it’s my job to lighten the mood by throwing a custard p pie in the face of everyday situations. Here are 10 tips for relieving stress through humor.

1. Laugh Every Day
Find something to turn the corners of your mouth up every day, even if it’s plastic surgery. Whether it’s highbrow, lowbrow or unibrow, we all have different triggers that make us laugh. My hot button happens to be sarcasm. (You can find it by opening the metal plate on my back; you’ll need a Phillips-head.) You’ll know by the end of this article whether I found yours. If nothing else, hopefully you’re ticklish.

2. Know Your Audience
Whoever invented the phrase “It’s not a laughing matter” should be beaten with a rubber chicken. The masks of tragedy and comedy, the time-honored symbols of the stage, are together for a reason. You need the latter to survive the former. You just need to know your audience, know your boundaries, and…

3. Know Yourself
Are you one of the “serious bunch?” Is it because you want to be? Or could it be because someone else wants you to be? In Almost the Truth, a documentary about British comedy troupe Monty Python, comedian Sanjeev Bhaskar poignantly describes his fascination with the Pythons and his parents’ disapproval: “You didn’t really want your kid to be influenced by someone who is quite patently a bloke dressed as a woman with a high voice.” Don’t let others decide what’s right for you.

4. Self-Deprecating Humor
In my experience, the easiest way to laughter is to make fun of yourself. Whether I’m joking about my weight or revealing something stupid I said to a potential girlfriend, self-deprecating humor sells, with bonus points if I hurt myself. To quote Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Laugh and the world laughs with you; rip your pants jumping over a fence and they’ll hyperventilate.” OK, I made that last part up.

5. Others-Deprecating Humor
Let’s face it, it’s no fun to the be the butt of the joke all the time. Once you know those boundaries, cross them. Learn from my mistakes – giving the CEO an atomic wedgie during a board meeting is not the best place to start. However, a bit of good-natured ribbing can show others that you care about them.

6. Work at Your Laugh, Laugh at Your Work
Are you the type of person whose main source of stress is their job? We call that type of person a “human.” We spend 40 hours a week at our jobs (80 if my boss is reading this), most of it under heavy stress. If you can’t laugh at your work, work on your laugh. Find a colleague with a similar sense of humor and share a walk, a coffee or even an instant message packed with J.

7. Share
Laughter is contagious, and it multiplies when you share it. Like chicken pox. Smile and you will often see that smile reflected back at you. If not, throw that custard pie. At least one of you will be laughing. Just be sure to run while they’re still wiping their eyes.

8. Slap People With Fish
Physical comedy is the great unifier of diverse cultures. Remember Sanjeev Bhaskar? In the end, even his strait-laced mother could not resist Python’s Fish-Slapping Dance, a simple, delightfully witty sketch. If this video doesn’t relieve some tension, please start this article over.

10. He Who Laughs Last
What happened to #9? Surprise! I eliminated it. If your mathematical brain always demands a predictable, logical finish, change your perspective. If your current path is stressing you out, make a “you” turn – allow yourself to lighten up by having the rug pulled out from under you.

Laughing every day to relieve stress applies even on the worst day of your life; especially if it’s the worst day of your life. My philosophy is that a life without laughter is not worth living, and I aim to follow that plan until I’m done living, and maybe then some. I don’t even want my grave to be grave. I’d like my tombstone to read, “WATCH YOUR STEP: DEAD GUY.”

Some people will tell you this is not a laughing matter. I say laughing is all that matters.

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