Apropos

Today's City Rec group was listening to 96.5 (Cleveland's KISS-FM station) instead of 107.9 (Hip-Hop/R&B). During the last five minutes of the group, DMX "Party Up" started playing. I don't think I could come up with a song that best describes my mental state right now AND is wildly inappropriate for a group of 6-year-olds.

And the radio edit doesn't really sound all that different from the original. They didn't do a good job of bleeping. I laughed. I laughed harder when it was immediately followed by Elliot Yamin.

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Safety

Today was one of those days where I really wish I could shoot lightning out of my fingertips. Not to hurt anyone, mind you, just enough to intimidate. That would have been useful today.

Let me back up. For those of you who have escaped my summer kvetching, work has been horrendous. It has been just me for a week and a half with another week to go. Last week I had two 11 hour days, five kids groups, four leagues, open bowling, and a general feeling of endlessness. If I never have to work another kids group with glow bowling, I will be very happy. Ain't gonna happen until September, but whatever. We close for renovations Friday and I can't wait.

But I have to get through this week first. And as a warning to everyone, the safety on the bitch switch is off. Open bowling today was okay, but there's that moment of dread that hits at about 1:35 on Mondays when I realize that the Boys and Girls club will be invading. I am not fond of this group. First of all, when they set up their activity, they gave us an estimate of about 20 kids a week but today they had 7. That's been about average. Of course, we did our pricing based on 20 kids so we are getting totally hosed on this deal. Also, even though we quoted and reconfirmed a rate of $2 per kid, each kid is sent with $5. Not only do our 1's get drained but now all these kids are armed with vending machine money. Oh my fucking God. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if Uptown Girl wasn't there. I call her that not because she's been living in a white-bred world (wh-oa-whoa), but because she looks like a cross between Brittney Murphy and Dakota Fanning. I shit you not. If that hybrid wasn't bad enough, she doesn't fully form her words when she speaks (a trait I assume was described as "cute" by some drunken aunt and therefore reinforced the behavior) so I'm put even more on edge. Gah.

Then the basketball camp. With the boys age 10-14. Who of course make fun of the way I talk. Fuckers. Aside from trashing the place, the counselors were under the impression that payment was supposed to be collected (we bill, so no). Unfortunately, the counselors are not helping in the fight against the "dumb jock" stereotype. They decided the best way to collect payment was to use a plastic bag to actually collect the cash and have everybody get in line to pay at the end. As soon as they started their announcement I said to myself "Nope. That idea is not going to work." And it didn't. Not that it matters to me since, like I said, they aren't paying directly and I think it is more of a scam than anything else. How that basketball camp has stayed in business is beyond me.

Four days to go. Gotta make it to Friday.

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Is this gonna be on the test?

Try not to write anything unfavorable about a game show contestant on the interwebs -- it can be far more annoying than it is worth. VH1's second edition of its awesome summer series The World Series of Pop Culture started this week and I have been fairly active in the conversation about it over at TWoP. This show only has a single thread rather than a forum, so all discussion -- be it the reactions to an episode, clarification about questions, and chatting among past and present contestants -- is confined to the same space. On the first night, there was a category requiring players to identify 80's songs from a given lyric. One contestant, rather than take a wild guess when it was her turn, opted to use the excuse that she wasn't born until 1982, therefore she didn't know the answers. This caused a minor shitstorm about strategy, "easy" questions, and the inevitable "How did she get on the show?" The arguments go as follows:

A. This player/team sucks (based on personality traits)
B. Those players/teams are awesome (based on knowledge)
A. They may know their stuff, but I don't want to be locked in a room with them.
B. I don't see you trying out to be on the show.
Repeat as Unnecessary.

As an added challenge, the actual contestants have started to post in the thread (the episodes were taped a couple months ago). I mentioned in one of my posts that I didn't particularly care for one team, that I thought they "bugged" during their exit interview (they were eliminated) and that ruffled the feathers of one of the people on the team who posts. What followed was essentially a call for an inquisition on all the "haters". That is so Jenny Jones I don't even know where to begin.

It is so trivial...yet I feel compelled to write about it.

Speaking of trivia, an interesting thing happened at work today. The Friday City Recreation "group" (two kids "supervised" by two adults) was bowling and the adults were engaged in a round of Bible trivia. Let's break this down. "Trivia", by definition, is "useless knowledge". Now, those who excel at Bible trivia would have to know the book pretty, for lack of a better word, religiously. Yet would those who excel at Bible trivia ever call it "useless knowledge"?

This is what happens when I'm left unsupervised with my own thoughts.

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