COLUMN: Is it a tradition if you only do it once?

You may recall the song “Tradition” from “Fiddler on the Roof,” in which Tevye extols the importance of his people’s customs and rituals in dealing with the trials of everyday life. Of course, I’m almost positive Tevye never tried to use vanilla frosting to secure the walls of a giant gingerbread house, which might have made him at least think twice about all that singing.

I base this on my own experience in trying to establish a family holiday tradition, which resulted in a gingerbread “house” that looked like the aftermath of a tornado in the North Pole mobile home park. This didn’t seem to faze my kids at all, who were just as happy to eat the remains of the marshmallow snowmen crushed by the gumdrop chimney, but it reminded me of how traditions can be a tricky business.

Yet when the holidays roll around, we feel the need to establish family customs. This is so that when our children have kids they can continue the practice of constructing gingerbread houses or making popsicle reindeer with googly eyes, and think back on what wonderful, caring, tradition-instilling parents we were, and how they really didn’t appreciate us as much as they should have. (Er, not mine. Other kids.)

For instance, in our house the tradition starts with the holiday card photograph. Some families give in and cart the kids off to a professional photographer who’ll pose them expertly in front of a meticulously rendered fake fireplace. These families are what we in our household like to call, “smart.”

Because for some reason we’ve always chosen the other route, which is to put the kids in red and green sweaters, prop them up in front of something festive (tree, wreath, garage door that’s been plastered with cheap wrapping paper) and shoot away. This is especially tough when they’re babies, because you’ll find that in the time it takes your finger to depress the shutter release, they will have propelled themselves sweater-first into the figgy pudding.

One year we tried to establish the tradition of cutting down our own tree, failing, unfortunately, to take into account my lack of acuity with a saw. My wife and kids had long since retreated back to the car and there I was, still hacking through the trunk like Paul Bunyan’s much smaller, manually challenged cousin, the one they trot out at the end of the day to deliver pancakes to all the real lumberjacks.

As for the extended family, we’ve tried the annual “Yankee Swap,” where you can swipe your present from somebody else. This is great fun, in that it takes the bitter subtext of pretty much all family holiday traditions and puts it right up there on the surface. Let’s face it, there’s nothing quite a satisfying as taking passive-aggressive Uncle Lennie’s envelope full of lottery tickets and leaving him with a plastic nutcracker.

Another holiday tradition in our house is the annual lighting of the menorah, although my wife is afraid of burning candles indoors, meaning we take turns screwing in the little orange light bulbs from right to left. Since I’m half-Jewish I tend to get lost about halfway through the prayer — after “asher kid’shanu” I have to ad-lib. Somewhere, my bubbie is slapping her forehead in a perpetual loop.

So some of these customs have stuck and some of them haven’t, but if there’s anything I think I’ve learned from all these attempts, it’s that you can’t manufacture traditions out of frosting or googly eyes. If you just carve out some special time with family or friends this time of year, the rituals that just happen will probably be the ones that stick — and even if they don’t, it’s fun to enjoy them while they last.

Although I can’t for the life of me figure out what I’m going to do with all these nutcrackers.

This column appeared originally in West of Boston Life magazine and North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for Gatehouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca.

And to think, people are starving in Japan

Times are still tough for many, but you know what the economists say: You can tell the recession is lifting when people start throwing food at each other again. Well, have I got some good news for you!

You read right here about the vicious girl-on-girl bagel attack in Cohasset, Mass. All had hoped that was an isolated incident, but no such luck: Earlier this week we also saw a dispute among two teens in Cambridge that resulted in a duck sauce debacle.

When police arrived, they saw the victim “covered in sauce” and the living room “disheveled” and “covered with food.”

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, during Lexington’s Festival Night — an annual event that welcomes Santa to Lexington Center — a police officer was attacked by a man wielding a glazed donut. In that case the perp was charged with disorderly conduct, assault on a police officer and, presumably, extreme irony.

AT LARGE Fake News Monday: Santa Injured In Mysterious North Pole Sleigh Accident

NORTH POLE (CAP) - Santa Claus is reportedly recovering from injuries and lacerations incurred around 2:30 a.m. Saturday when he flew his sleigh into the famous North Pole pole, which is situated about 10 yards beyond the end of his workshop's driveway.

According to North Pole Fire Department reports, he had been extracted from the sleigh by his wife, Mrs. Claus, who came out of their house with a giant candy cane and used it to bludgeon three of Claus's flying reindeer to death in an attempt to free him from the vehicle.

Their identities have been withheld until the families could be notified, but TMZ.com is reporting that the casualties may include Donner, Prancer and Blitzen.

"It's odd, because he's flown past that pole a million times before without incident - literally, a million," said one North Pole resident who asked to be identified only as Hermey. "Also, he's never out that late, except on Christmas Eve, and by that time he's usually flying somewhere over Belize."

The incident comes on the heels of a TMZ.com report last week alleging that Santa had engaged in a protracted affair with an anonymous woman, later identified in Us magazine as 'Doll' from the Island of Misfit Toys. Doll, 45, not only admitted to an affair, she also provided Us with photos and hundreds of "racy" text messages to prove it, such as one in which Santa tells her that she's on his "very naughty list."

She also provided a voice mail in which Santa tells her that Mrs. Claus had searched his iPhone contacts and might be calling her, and that if she did, Doll should tell her she's been involved in a long-term committed relationship with the Charlie-in-a-Box.

Still, Santa's defenders have noted that Doll has a long history of emotional instability, having also been linked to Yukon Cornelius, the cowboy who rides an ostrich and Scott Stapp of Creed.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: God is now a book publicist

Every so often in the humor writing business, you start to get worried that the world may be running out of funny things. This has been especially true lately; my colleague Jeff Vrabel has even suggested we might be in the midst of a full-fledged humor recession. But then you get an envelope in the mail declaring, in big, block letters, “MINISTER BELIEVES GOD DEFEATED CLINTON,” and suddenly all is right again.

The Clinton in question is apparently Hillary, and I know: You thought Barack Obama defeated her, even if he now may be wishing he hadn’t. But one North Carolina minister apparently thinks it was all God’s doing, in order to — and I’m going to quote this to make sure I get it right — “make clear His will for woman usurping authority over men.” In other words, Hillary lost because God thought she was an uppity broad; it’s right there in Timothy 2:11-14, wherein God smites she who be uppity.

Now, without getting too deeply into my personal religious beliefs, I should say that I am generally pro-God. However, I’m also fairly skeptical that God is getting too involved in politics, any more than he cares about the outcome of the Super Bowl. I have this gut feeling he’s more of a soccer fan.

I also doubt that he has any problem with women. Jezebels aside, most of the women in the Bible come off much better than the men — I’d take a Ruth or an Esther over an Ahab or a Nebuchadnezzar any day of the week.

But this minister (who I will decline to name, for reasons that will become obvious) paints a vivid picture of his efforts to derail Clinton’s candidacy, even writing her a letter to tell her that “her candidacy was not in the will of God and she would not be blessed.” He apparently “did not get an answer,” probably because if she responded to everyone who told her that her candidacy was not in the will of God, she wouldn’t have time for anything else.

The minister is apparently working hard to remove women from politics completely, before this whole women-in-power thing gets out of hand. Already, these female politicians are everywhere: “It is believed every state has some,” his release states, ominously. (Yes, even Utah! Although there they’re mostly just getting coffee.) Unless America “repents, puts women back into God’s will, [and] stops hugging gays,” we’re basically doomed, he says. To which I respond: It’s going to take a lot more than that to get Kathy Griffin to stop hugging gays.

Which brings me to the reason this minister sent out a four-page press release in the first place: to spread the word of the Lord! Wait, no, I read my notes wrong — it’s actually because he has a book to sell. Um, and that Lord stuff too, probably.

And not just any book: It’s a book that has basically been published by God. First, he “told the Lord in prayer it would take $25,000” to get it published. That’s right, he asked the Lord for the money up front, like you would with a crazy rich uncle you’re trying to get to invest in your independent film. Well, two weeks later, “the Holy Spirit guided him to a website.” You recall Monty Python’s Holy Hand Grenade? Welcome to the Spiritual Search Engine.

Finally, once he got the book published, he asked God to make it like the Ark of the Covenant, in that it would bring good fortune to any home that kept it, even if people didn’t open it. Translation: We don’t care if you read the darn book as long as you send your check for $29.95. (Payable to the minister, not to God, although his accountant will presumably forward along God’s requisite 10 percent.)

Well, as someone who thinks that if God didn’t want women in politics he wouldn’t have made the male politicians such screw-ups, and who thinks “gays” are perfectly huggable, I’ve decided not to help the minister promote his book by naming him or it in this column. (If you’re that interested I’m sure you can find him through Google, a.k.a. “the Holy Spirit.”) But I have a feeling he may be disappointed, both with his book sales and with the future of American politics.

Still, I think maybe we should lock him in a room with Sarah Palin for a few hours and have somebody write about that. Now there’s a book I’d buy.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: White House Security Breached Again, By Muppets

WASHINGTON (CAP) - The Secret Service is defending itself for the second time in a week today, after news broke that a White House state dinner had again been crashed by uninvited guests - this time by Muppets characters Statler and Waldorf, fresh off their appearance in the Muppets' viral Bohemian Rhapsody video.

When asked how they got in to the affair, Statler said that they had "entered a contest."

"Yeah, and we lost!" added Waldorf, prompting the two of them to laugh riotously.

According to Secret Service spokesman James Mackey, the security failure occurred at the initial checkpoint. He said the Muppets should have been turned away when Waldorf said, "I have our tickets right here," and Statler turned to him and asked, "Are they good seats?" prompting Waldorf to respond, "Sure are - they're on the next train out of town!" Then they both guffawed until they were waved through to the next checkpoint.

"The failure is ours," admitted Mackey, who acknowledged that there hadn't been a puppet on the official White House guest list since Wayland Flowers and Madame visited President Carter in 1979.

Apparently Statler and Waldorf mingled with guests for several hours, even getting into a long discussion with Vice President Joe Biden, who apparently thought they were a wealthy homosexual couple upset about the military's policies toward gay recruits.

"I told him we didn't believe in Don't Ask, Don't Tell," said Statler.

"Yeah, because we were going to tell him how bad the dinner was, whether he asked or not!" said Waldorf. "Wauh-ha-ha-ha!"

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Thanksgiving: 'We would be honored if you would join us.'

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope your dinner is full of good food, stimulating conversation and relatives who don't make you pray the meal would just end already so you could get to hiding in the den, watching football with your pants unbuttoned. You know who you are.

But even if it is bad, keep in mind that your dinner could be worse: It could be like the one Han Solo got invited to in The Empire Strikes Back:



In honor of Thanksgiving, I revisit that troublesome gathering along with some other memorable cinematic dinners for my latest Farkakte Film Flashback column at Popdose.com.

Han, no slave to social etiquette, shoots at Vader with his laser blaster, but Vader absorbs the blasts into his glove, raising the question: Why don’t they make the stormtroopers’ uniforms out of whatever that glove is made of?

Read it tonight while you're chawing on that leftover drumstick.

[Image: I-Mockery.com]

COLUMN: 22 (more) reasons to be thankful

As you may recall, around this time each year I like to take a moment to remind my readers that there are still plenty of reasons to be truly thankful. And if I can say that from my perch here in the heart of the newspaper business, you can certainly come up with something.

So stop reading that blood-sucking news aggregator site for a minute and take a gander at these, this year’s reasons to give thanks:

1) You’re not in a homemade balloon spinning somewhere above Colorado.

2) Levi Johnston has gotten nowhere near your daughter. That you know of.

3) You didn’t promise anybody you’d get a massive health care bill through the House and the Senate.

4) You haven’t been arrested for breaking into your own house.

5) You haven’t arrested anybody for breaking into his own house.

6) You’re not the planet earth, which will either implode in 2012 in a torrent of computer-generated special effects, or be sucked into a black hole by the Large Hadron Collider sometime within the next 15 minutes.

7) You didn’t decide to go for it on 4th and 2.

8) Your entire image isn’t being reworked against your will, like poor Mickey Mouse, whom Disney is re-imagining as more “cantankerous and cunning” — apparently the focus groups have said that they’d prefer Mickey to be more like Dick Cheney. But don’t worry, “Mickey is never going to be evil or go around killing people,” said one Disney Imagineer. OK, forget what I said about Cheney.

9) You didn’t win that annoying Nobel Peace Prize.

10) Your image isn’t showing up willy-nilly in pictures of water droplets on lotus leaves, like Ringo Starr’s is. A team researching water-repellent leaf behavior at Duke University took the high-speed images, and darn it if you can’t see Ringo’s little mop-toppy head right there. Add this to the list of signs that the world is ending.

11) None of your sex tapes have been made public. That you know of.

12) You’re not in Richard Heene’s attic.

13) You’re not Ruppy, one of five beagles who South Korean scientists recently engineered to become the world’s first glow-in-the-dark dogs. I imagine this makes it much harder to sneak up on people. Still, it finally offers a solution to the dire tripping-over-dogs-in-the-dark problem, and if you can get the dog to curl up close enough to you, you can read by him.

14) You didn’t try to address the nation’s annoying schoolchildren.

15) Perez Hilton hasn’t judged your beauty pageant or scribbled all over you with a white marker.

16) You’re not a drinker in Arizona, where a new law allows people to bring their guns into bars. Unfortunately, actually shooting somebody in an Arizona bar is still illegal, for the most part.

17) You don’t have Nicolas Cage’s financial advisor.

18) You didn’t lose your finger and have it replaced with a USB drive, like a man in Finland. In his defense, it is better, stronger and faster, plus it gives a whole new definition to the phrase “pull my finger.”

19) You’re not running for president in Iran. Or Afghanistan. Or Iraq.

20) You weren’t elected president of the United States.

21) You weren’t one of the many children frightened this summer by Colorado’s new ill-advised water conservation mascot, the “Running Toilet,” consisting of a man with an entire actual-size toilet on his head. (Best bystander quote: “I don't think the toilet meant to scare them.”) No word on whether the toilet has spent any time in Richard Heene’s attic.

22) You don’t work for Goldman Sachs, where executives had to scale back drastically and cut their massive bonuses to almost nothing.

What? Their bonuses and spending are as lavish as ever? Somebody should make those guys work for a newspaper.

this column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE."

The Muppets go skaramoosh

If the idea is to endear the Muppets to audiences that weren't around during their '70s heyday, then having them cover a Queen song probably isn't going to cut it. But I don't care, because this is AWESOME.

AT LARGE Fake News Monday: Giant Atom Smasher 'Probably Won't' Destroy Earth

GENEVA (CAP) - Scientists preparing the world's largest atom smasher to explore the depths of matter say chances it will open up a black hole that will suck in the entire earth, destroying all life, are "iffy at best."

"I mean, you'd need an awful lot of power and energy to basically open up a rift in the universe strong enough to suck in an entire planet," said Sergio Bertucci, a research director working in Switzerland on the Large Hadron Collider. "I don't think we'll be harnessing that much energy, probably."

Scientists have been working to repair the $10 billion collider since it malfunctioned just nine days after its initial launch more than a year ago. But Bertucci says talk at the time that the device could have snuffed out life on earth was highly exaggerated.

"France, Switzerland, maybe part of Austria, tops," he said of the so-called collider "Danger Zone," nicknamed such for the Kenny Loggins song of the same name. "And there was a small chance that the Iberian Peninsula would fall into the ocean. Tiny, like 100 to 1."

While scientists are desperately hoping the collider will provide a window into the origins of the universe, some have slammed the project for its excessive cost and the possibility that it will destroy the earth.

"Ten billion dollars! That's 400,000 $25,000 a year jobs that the money could have been used for," noted one commenter at the Telegraph.com. "Plus wiping out the planet - bad form."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: As seen on TV — but wait, there's more!

As any experienced parent will tell you, the longer you can keep your kids watching PBS, the better. Because even though Barney the Dinosaur may fill you with an inexplicable rage not unlike what an African honey badger must feel right before it crushes a puff adder’s head in its jaws, your toddlers love him and his educational friends. But more importantly: no commercials.

Once you move on to commercial television, it’s all over. First of all, your kids suddenly know about the existence of all sorts of things you’d rather they wouldn’t, like video games and Barbie digital manicure machines. The first time you’re trying to get them to turn off the TV and they declare “But Dad, I love this commercial!,” you can bet that somewhere on Madison Avenue there’s a man in a suit adding another child’s soul to the gigantic jar on his desk.

As it turns out, though, the toy commercials are the least of a parent’s problems, at least once you have a child who starts to enjoy professional sports. If you watch any of the big sporting events on TV, you know they are being targeted to a very specific audience: specifically, rich, white, perpetually randy older guys whose prostates are roughly the size of official Major League baseballs.

The most problematic of the ads shown during these games are of course the ones for Viagra and Cialis, with their now-legendary talk of four-hour, er, building projects (sorry, family newspaper) and the need to be constantly “ready,” like an aging Boy Scout walking around with all the tools on his Swiss Army knife extended.

My initial inclination during these commercials is always to throw myself in front of the TV — parents, if they were true to their natural instincts, would do nothing but throw themselves in front of things all day long. But I realize that would just draw undue attention to them, so instead I just make loud, inane small talk whenever they come on.

Me: “HEY KIDS — I FORGOT TO ASK YOU HOW SCHOOL WAS TODAY! SO HOW WAS IT?”

Kid: “Dad, why are you shouting? We can’t hear the commercial for the double outdoor bathtubs.”

Only slightly less bad are the spots with the guy who would have the most satisfying life ever, if only he didn’t have to find men’s rooms at the most inopportune times (during golf matches, on boats, while skydiving, etc.). It’s hard not to feel bad for the man, which is probably why whenever the commercial comes on my 8-year-old son declares “He has to pee!” and laughs so hard that he has to use the men’s room in our own house.

Then there are the ads for inappropriate movies; for instance, the spots for “2012” have my son convinced that the world is going to end in three years, which both disturbs him and adds fuel to his argument that future school attendance is not only unnecessary, but a pointless distraction from staying home and watching more commercials. My kids have also been lobbying me to buy the automatic soap dispenser, the wall-mounted toothpaste dispenser, the pan that bakes pre-sliced brownies and the machine that makes a cupcake the size of a volleyball.

So the situation is clearly dire, but not necessarily disastrous. Commercials are about as unavoidable as the headlines on the covers of women’s magazines (which you can find me throwing myself in front of whenever we go to the supermarket). I figure if my wife and I try to moderate their TV viewing, and watch with them whenever possible to explain or mitigate what they might be seeing, we’ll all be OK. Which is why if you pop over our house you’ll often find us all on the couch, taking in the ads together.

You can’t miss us — we’re the ones in the Snuggies eating the giant cupcakes.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

Happy toys, or evil instruments of death? You decide!

It's my favorite time of year; no, not Thanksgiving, although I am looking forward to gorging myself on carbs and poultry, not necessarily in that order. I'm actually referring to the annual release of the list documenting toys that, while on the surface may appear fun and cheerful, have really been sent here from the future to kill us.

The list is compiled each year by World Against Toys Causing Harm (W.A.T.C.H.), whose name always struck me as very James Bond-ian. I picture them in black spandex, meeting in their secret undersea headquarters where they spend the first 10 months of every year rolling back and forth over potentially dangerous toys, and then checking each other for penetrating and blunt-force injuries.

I'll let you read the entire list yourself -- it's always very entertaining -- but my favorite this year has got to be "X-Men Origins Slashin' Action Wolverine," a toy for kids ages 4 and up based on a character whose entire raison d'etre is slicing people to death with his razor-sharp claws. Sounds preschool-riffic to me! But W.A.T.C.H. disagrees:

The Wolverine action figure, sold for children as young as four years old, is marketed as an “indestructible combat machine” with a “[s]lashing [u]ppercut!” Wolverine has rigid, pointed plastic claws sporting three 1 1/2 inch protrusions on both fists. The right “pop-out” claw retracts upon impact, whereas the left claw remains rigid and unforgiving upon contact. Incredibly, there are no warnings on either the box or the toy itself.

Of course, there's a very good reason for that: Warnings are for sissies.

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: NASA Confirms Existence Of Carrie Prejean Sex Tapes

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (CAP) - Still basking in its discovery of water on the moon, NASA yesterday announced its second momentous find of the week: 25 more sex tapes made by former Miss USA Carrie Prejean.

"It's not like we were intentionally out there, you know, looking for them," said NASA spokesman Marvin Federer, speaking by phone from Cape Canaveral. "It's just that they're everywhere."

The tapes were apparently being streamed digitally over the Internet when they were picked up by NASA's SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) satellites, and were subsequently beamed onto NASA's massive control room screen.

"We haven't seen this many high-fives in there since we got the first transmission from the Mars rover," said Federer.

Prejean, who lost her Miss USA crown over "contract violations," was suing the pageant, claiming she'd really been fired for speaking out against same-sex marriage. But she was forced to drop her case when a homemade sex tape emerged.

Prejean called the tape "the biggest mistake of my life." When seven more tapes were soon uncovered, she called those "the next seven biggest mistakes of my life."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Come fly with meep!

It would be hard to overstate how much I'm enjoying the meep story out of Danvers, Mass. This is of course the incident in which the Danvers High School principal banned the use of the word "meep" (such that it is) because students were using it in a disruptive fashion. He did this via a recorded message to parents, although it's unclear whether he actually uttered the word "meep" on the recording, and if so, whether he did it in a squeaky, high-pitched fashion that might lead you to believe he was about to be humorously electrocuted.

I'm of course using Beaker, the meep-uttering lab assistant from the Muppets, as my reference point for the origin of the meep craze, since I grew up with the Muppets and still, to this day, probably relate to them a little too arduously for it to be healthy. But as Wicked Local Danvers so expertly reported, there could be any number of origins, including but not limited to:

• The Road Runner ("Meep! Meep!" Although I think that was, technically, a "Beep! Beep!");
• A "Dr. Who" character;
• A "dull, waste of life," according to the Urban Dictionary.

Also, the Geekdad blog suggests that it could have come from the character "Meap" from the Disney Channel show "Phineas and Ferb," which is, I might add, the BEST SHOW EVER. Um, according to my kids.

Anyway, the craze continues to grow, with characters such as Boston radio host Michael Graham using it to fill airtime, er, decry the nanny state. Me, I just want to keep Beaker at the top of the news cycle for as long as possible. To that end:

Column: An ode to the LP, whatever that was

I have a confession to make: I turned my back on an old friend, just when he needed me most. Well, that’s if you can consider an LP album to be a “he.” In some cases I suppose it might be a she. If you’re talking about, say, early ’70s David Bowie albums, who knows what the heck it is. But you get the idea.

For you youngsters out there, I should explain that an album is a collection of songs by an artist who has presumably given some thought as to what order you should listen to them in. In the old days they’d come on black vinyl, and you’d listen to all the songs in order, turning it over once in the middle. You’d do this in your house, and the music would come out of speakers so big that today, Steve Jobs could live in one.

It’s hard to believe now, but there was a time when if you wanted a collection of songs by a bunch of different artists, you had to stand in front of your tape deck juggling albums or CDs. That’s why giving somebody a mix tape was such a sign of commitment; it involved a Herculean effort that invariably ended with you standing in front of your giant speakers, swearing.

So you can see why the onset of digital music has been so groundbreaking — it turned your computer into a song Cuisinart, slicing and dicing your LPs into one big album featuring every song you’ve ever owned. Finally, with almost no effort, music fans could segue directly from Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” into “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from “My Fair Lady.” (You know who you are. OK, me.)

As a result, I’ve basically spent the last five years on shuffle. I do this even when playing just one artist, which essentially amounts to listening to a single, randomly ordered 15-hour-long Bruce Springsteen album. This comes in handy, especially if you’re driving from, say, Boston to Kokomo, Ind., and everybody in the car loves Bruce Springsteen as much as you do. I’m sure that happens.

But recently, Springsteen and other artists have started playing entire classic albums in sequence during their concerts, presumably to remind people they put the songs in that order for a reason. I also happened to be reading “Runaway Dream,” a great book about the Springsteen album “Born to Run,” and both of these things inspired me to play the album all the way through for the first time in years. Well, no, not in one sitting — who has 40 minutes?

Still, it amazed me how well the songs fit together, and hearing them in context reminded me what I’d loved about them in the first place. It also made me feel guilty about abandoning what is now, thanks to me and my fellow shufflers, a dying art form. Somewhere, millions of copies of “Dark Side of the Moon” are shooting little laser beams at my head.

So what am I doing about it? First of all, I’ve set my iPod on album shuffle mode, meaning it skips around from album to album instead of song to song. I’d never used it before, but now I’m finding it a thrill when the first song of a great album I haven’t heard in years pops up on my little speakers.

Second, and probably more radically, I’ve also gone back to vinyl. Yes, most of my records didn’t survive my parents’ great garage cleanout of 1993, but that’s why God invented eBay. Just last week I got Springsteen’s “The River” and “Born in the USA” on vinyl for 99 cents each, putting me in the admittedly galling position of having bought them on vinyl, CD and then on vinyl again — it’s really going to irk me when I have to pay for the inevitable cerebral cortex implant.

I’ve been enjoying flipping over all those sides, and I’ve even managed to get my hands on the vinyl release of a brand new album: “Songs from Lonely Avenue” by the Brian Setzer Orchestra, which sounds terrific. It’s somehow soothing that new discs like this can still get a vinyl release, and the BSO album is pretty heavy duty — it feels like a manhole cover.

But even though people gush about vinyl’s fidelity, I think most people buying LPs these days are doing it so they can place that needle down and watch the disk spin gloriously on the turntable, like it has a tangible purpose in life. (I don’t know what an mp3 is doing inside my iPod, but whatever it is, I don’t trust it.)

It also forces you to sit down somewhere in your house — not your car, or your gym, or while avoiding eye contact on the subway — and really listen, which is what music is all about. Of course, the Setzer album also has the CD mounted right in the gatefold of the LP, for easy digital dicing. (Hey, we’re not cavemen.)

So do your part: Listen to an album today — I promise you won’t regret it. Well, unless it’s a Helen Reddy album released between 1973 and 1980. Then you’re on your own.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Disney Shocked At Small Gross For Creepy, Boring 'Christmas Carol'

BURBANK, Calif. (CAP) - A soft opening for Disney's A Christmas Carol has jeopardized the company's planned slate of creepy animated movies nobody really wants to see, says one Disney executive who declined to be named.

"We had planned to roll out two or three of these a year," explained the executive, citing Disney's The Nutcracker, Disney's Johnny Tremain and Disney's Little Lord Fauntleroy as just three of the many creepy motion-capture animation projects based on old, boring stories they have currently in the works. "This has us rethinking everything."

The $200 million Christmas Carol, featuring Jim Carrey in 15 different roles, grossed about $35 million its opening weekend - enough to grasp the No. 1 spot at the box office, but much less than expected. People who did see it noted in particular the way Scrooge's ultra-realistic wrinkly and pockmarked skin contrasted with his glassy, dead eyes.

"I don't think I'll ever sleep again," said Sally Marples of Kannapolis, N.C., whose children left the theater in tears.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

AT LARGE Sunday Night Link Roundup

News and comedy, not necessarily in that order.

• Friend of AT LARGE Jeff Vrabel: "I cannot help but notice no one is fleeing in horror from all of the giant snakes."

• I'm not bad ... I'm just drawn that way: "Robert Zemeckis Confirms Roger Rabbit Sequel."

• Dan Kennedy interviews the geniuses behind Fake AP Stylebook.

• Where have you gone, Hal Linden? Friend of AT LARGE Dave Lifton speaks out "In praise of Barney Miller."

• The end is nigh: "Beatle Ringo Starr's face seen in water droplet on lotus leaf."

• “Mickey is never going to be evil or go around killing people." Well, THAT'S a relief.

• At Bullz-Eye: "Weird Al" on his new "Essential" album and being the most awesome singer ever. Actually, that last part was just me editorializing.

AT LARGE Fake News Thursday: Sexy Costumes Lead To Tween Prostitution Arrests

SALEM, Mass. (CAP) - Halloween festivities in Salem, Mass. were marred Saturday when police arrested more than a dozen 11- and 12-year-old girls, mistaking them for prostitutes.

"Well, you can't tell me they didn't look like prostitutes," said Salem Police spokesman Howard Wieczorek, who noted that they were only incarcerated for "a few hours" before their parents were able to pick them up.

"It was a little confusing at first, because most of their parents looked like prostitutes too," said Wieczorek.

Similar arrests were reported around the nation this Halloween, as "sexy" Halloween costumes have become more prevalent for girls of younger ages. In Salem, the girls were dressed as Sexy Hello Kitty, Sexy American Girl and Sexy Dora the Explorer, along with more generic costumes like Sexy Witch, Sexy Princess and Sexy Preschooler.

"I don't see what the problem is," said Michelle Ruggiero, 38, of Peabody, Mass., mother of one of the girls accidentally arrested. Ruggiero, dressed in her Sexy Homemaker costume of short apron, feather duster and bustier, was buying popcorn from a cart during Salem's famed Halloween celebration when police picked up her daughter and her friends.

"These girls are cute and thin, and I don't see why they shouldn't be able to show that off a little bit," said Ruggiero. "Maybe if more people let their kids wear 'sexy' little costumes, the United States wouldn't be in the disgustingly fat shape it is now," she added as she stomped out her cigarette with her 6-inch stiletto heel.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: A Yankee Doodle, do or die?

As a native New Yorker living in the Boston area, I’ll admit to having a complicated relationship with the Yankees. Not as complicated as the relationship between A-Rod, his wife and Madonna, but still …

See? Even I can’t resist the easy A-Rod joke, even though by all accounts I should hold each and every Yankee in the highest regard. After all, both my parents were born in the Bronx and my New York family is still full of diehards — I have a new nephew who at 6 months old has never, to my knowledge, been out of pinstripes.

But even as a child I tended to buck the family trend. I went through a period during elementary school when I rooted for the Mets, for a very logical reason: They had a mascot whose head was a giant baseball. While other mascots had at best a tangential relationship to baseball (c’mon, a chicken?), Mr. Met literally was a baseball. If somebody walked up and hit him in the head with a bat, I imagine no jury in the land could convict.

But beyond that, I always seemed to have an innate need to root for the underdog, which the Mets of the mid-’70s most definitely were; like my Little League team, and unlike the Yankees, they were terrible — meaning I could relate. Sometimes too much.

So it wasn’t until the ’80s, when the Yankees started losing on a consistent basis, that my baseball interests turned in their direction; now, this was a team I could get behind. My favorite Yankee of that period was, of course, Don Mattingly, who never got to a World Series but showed up every day and played his heart out anyway. He’d have fit right in on my Little League team, except for the moustache.

So by the time the Yankees finally got back to the World Series in 1996, even though I was living in Boston by then, I had no problem rooting for them unabashedly. When Jeter & Co. won that one, it felt like they were doing it for Donnie Baseball — it was a perfect victory, except for Wade Boggs riding that horse around Yankee Stadium, like he was just asking to be attacked by Apaches.

But before long the Yankees were no longer underdogs, being widely acknowledged as one of the best teams ever. Meanwhile, I had married a lifelong Sox fan (and former Fred Lynn stalker), and was starting to see what a Red Sox series win would mean. So much so that in 2003, I couldn’t help but feel bad when Aaron Boone’s home run finished off the Sox in the ALCS — and not just because as the token New Yorker there was a very good chance that when I got into the office the next day, I would be stapled to death.

Then a few things happened: The Sox did win, and I saw the joy that came with it for my wife and her family and friends. And my son Tim came of baseball appreciation age, and immediately took after his mother as a member of Red Sox Nation. Baseball is currently his favorite thing in the world, and watching it is our favorite thing to do together — which, since we’re in Boston, means watching the Red Sox.

So what that’s meant for this New Yorker is a sort of cognitive dissonance —– if the Yanks and the Sox are playing separately, I can root for either, and if they’re playing each other, there’s a danger of my head exploding like in a David Cronenberg movie. It doesn’t help the Yankees’ case that they’ve employed some truly unlikable characters (sorry, A-Rod), but on the other hand, how can you not like a Jeter, Matsui or CC Sabathia? Even my son can agree with that, as much as he may want them to lose in humiliating disgrace — he’s still a Sox fan, after all.

So if I’m going to root for the Yankees around my house this week — as I write this on Nov. 3, they’re ahead of the Phillies three games to two — I’ll do it quietly. I know when it’s over, no matter who wins, my son and I will be out in the backyard, pushing aside the leaves to try to get one more game in before the snow comes. That won’t be about the Red Sox or the Yankees — it will be about baseball, and how if the stars align properly, there are ways to love everything about it.

Well, except maybe for A-Rod. He just irks me.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

COLUMN: Things to do on Twitter when you're dead

If you’ve had even a fleeting experience with the Internet, you’ve probably thought to yourself, “Is there anything Twitter can’t do?” You’ve also probably wondered why there are so many videos of cats, but also the Twitter thing.

For the uninformed, Twitter is a service that allows people to post messages in 140-character “tweets.” It’s revolutionized the way people use the Web, in that it’s forced millions of users to come up with shorter ways to call everyone else on the Internet a moron.

But the latest Twitter development should really push the service to the next level. Just in time for Halloween, a UK psychic is mounting the first-ever Twitter séance, which she’s referring to as a “Tweance.” Most Twitter activities start with “Tw,” which is a practice referred to, in marketing circles, as idiotic. I’m sorry, “twidiotic.”

The psychic, Jaynce Wallace, is seeking suggestions at twitter.com/tweance for famous dead people to contact on Oct. 30, which of course makes some pretty large assumptions:

1) That dead people know how to use Twitter. I know enough living people who can’t figure it out that it’s safe to assume Mahatma Gandhi’s not sitting around in his little dhoti, typing out 140-character messages on his afterlife-issued BlackBerry. (“Violence still sux!” etc.)

2) Even if dead people DO know how to use Twitter, is that really how they’d want to communicate with us over the mysterious expanse that divides us from the netherworld — the same way that Paula Abdul told us she wasn’t coming back to “American Idol”? It seems unlikely, especially given how satisfied the deceased seem to be communicating through decks of cards and Whoopi Goldberg.

That said, given the suggestions that have come through so far, it appears that most Twitter users aren’t interested in asking, say, Albert Einstein about the discrepancies between atomic and subatomic physics. People would much rather talk to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain — “How are you NOW?” one user asks him, apparently suggesting that he just get over his own grisly suicide already.

People also would like to hear from recently deceased actor Patrick Swayze, presumably to find out if being a ghost is anything like being in “Ghost,” or is it, you know, different? If there were any justice, Swayze would decide that this was the time not to be nice and beat all the Twitterers with ectoplasmic beer bottles.

Granted, there are some people interested in talking to more high-profile historical figures. For instance, one suggests, “You should ask Hitler if he feels sorry for everything he did.” I’m not sure what he’d answer, but it seems to me that if after everything that happened he still thinks he was on the right track, there’s no getting through to that guy.

All I know is, I think this whole Tweance concept could wind up being the start of a disturbing trend. One day you’re using Twitter to communicate with spirits, the next day you’re using it to put spells on people and steal their immortal souls. It flies in the face of what Twitter was invented for: real-time minute-to-minute progress of the Balloon Boy. Instead I prefer to subscribe to the opinion of nikiandrea16, who declared in a succinct but effective tweet, “NOOOOO TWEANCE!!! IT’S A TERRIBLE IDEA!!!”

Then she posted a video of her cat.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE."

I'm too sexy for my costume

I'm glad people are finally starting to take notice of the crazy sexy costumes they're selling for little girls. (And when I say "crazy sexy" I am not referring to a TLC album. Wait, did I just date myself?) The adult costumes are insane enough as it is -- head down to Salem, Mass., around Halloween and you'll see bustiers, fishnets, short skirts and high-heels galore. And that's just the men.

Take these following actual costumes for sale this year:

• Sexy Cheshire Cat. As you'll recall from Alice in Wonderland, the real Cheshire Cat looked nothing like this. He was fat and male, and often invisible.
• Sexy Every Character from "The Wizard of Oz." Every year as I gather my family around the TV to watch this children's classic, I think to myself, if only this movie had more bosoms.
• Sexy Plus-Sized Nurse. See, just because a nurse has a little more of a figure doesn't mean she can't be just as slutty as all those skinnier nurses.
• Sexy Ghostbuster. I've seen that movie about 100 times, and I'm pretty sure none of the Ghostbusters looked like this. Not even Annie Potts.

I guess if grown women want to let it all hang out one day a year that's OK, but let's keep it out of the elementary schools. The youngsters should take a cue from Taylor Swift and dress like Chewbacca in head-to-toe fur so that people won't even know they're human, much less female. Or barring that, there's always the poncho that ties in the back and a plastic mask. What? It was good enough for the '70s.

[Image: sexycostumes.com]

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Disney To Offer 'Fast Pass' For Swine Flu Vaccine

ORLANDO, Fla. (CAP) - Citing the growing sense of concern over the availability of the H1N1 or "swine flu" vaccine, Walt Disney World has introduced a "Swine Flu Fast Pass" that will allow Disney patrons to step ahead of others to receive their inoculations.

"As incidence of the disease becomes more prevalent, parents are growing increasingly anxious," said Karl Metterschmidt, Disney's vice president of health and human services. "By using our Swine Flu Fast Pass, you can ensure that your child gets this potentially life-saving vaccination, and create magical memories in one of our theme parks at the same time!"

The Swine Flu Fast Pass is available to anyone who purchases at least a Five-Day Park Hopper Bonus Ticket and stays in a Disney resort classified as "moderate" or better. This means visitors who stay in the value resorts or the campgrounds are not eligible, noted Metterschmidt.

"But we guarantee you'll be glad if you choose to stay in some of our more luxurious accommodations," he said, citing Disney's Polynesian Resort and the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa as examples. "It may cost a little more, but isn't it worth it for your child's well-being? Hmm?"

As an added bonus, to allay the fears of young visitors, all shots "will be administered by beloved Disney characters, like Winnie the Pooh and Pumba from The Lion King," said Metterschmidt. All will be trained by licensed Disney health professionals, he added, and the syringes will be soldered to their hands, paws and/or hooves to ensure maximum stability.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

Wait, does 'Bio-Dome' count as a biopic?

Given the less than spectacular reviews for the new Amelia Earhart biopic, it's entirely possible that Monday's Variety headline will be "Amelia crashes and burns at the box office." And that would be their right.

Still, if nothing else it inspired me to take a walk down biopic lane over at Popdose.com, revisiting some more successful biographical films, and some, well, like The Doors:

Ah, The Doors. How could it have been any worse, really? By the fourth or fifth time a suicidal Jim Morrison (Val Kilmer) was shown hanging out of a window or off a fire escape, I felt like yelling, “Just let go already!”

Read the rest over at Popdose.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Bob

Does Dylan's gravelly voice go with Christmas? Yes, there are times when it sounds patently, hilariously ridiculous, but for the most part, to me, it seems heartfelt, nostalgic, mournful, hopeful and funny – actually, sometimes all at once. Unlike some other holiday albums from singers with more traditional (read: good) voices, he seems to really be feeling “The Christmas Blues,” not just showing off his pipes.

Read the rest at Popdose.com.

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Amelia Earhart Turns Up In Richard Heene's Attic

FT. COLLINS, Colo. (CAP) - Authorities conducting a follow-up search of "balloon boy" father Richard Heene's Colorado home have turned up missing aviatrix Amelia Earhart living in a box in his attic, where she'd apparently been since her legendary disappearance.

Earhart, well over 100 years old, was none the worse for wear, according to authorities.

"She said she'd been in tighter spots than that," said Sheriff Jim Alderden. "She's a tough old bird."

Alderden said his men hadn't thought to look in Heene's attic for Earhart, because they assumed she had crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

The discovery has led many to believe that Earhart's disappearance was an elaborate, attention-grabbing hoax planned by Heene, who caused an uproar last week when he erroneously reported that his son Falcon had been carried away by an experimental balloon he had tethered in his backyard.

"That stupid jerk - I was worried sick about that woman!" said Art Federburg, 81, of Hackensack, N.J., upon hearing about Earhart. "There's 72 years I'm never gonna get back."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: This column gives you the straight poop

I received an e-mail this week that started, “Hello Peter. Two advanced biofuels companies are announcing today that they can turn poop into petrol, and I thought you’d want to know about it.” My first thought in response to this was: Apparently my reputation has preceded me.

So how is it that I was the one who got flagged as the resident poop correspondent? If anything, I’ve been notoriously anti-poop — scour my published works and I guarantee you will find them almost exclusively poop-free. Taken as a whole, my body of work would seem to indicate a massive poop cover-up.

Granted, the minute kids enter your life becoming a poop denier becomes much harder — first when they’re babies and you find yourself praying that the bulk of the pooping will happen when you’re at work, and even worse during the potty-training stage, when you spend your days following your child around looking for any outward sign that it might be time to find a rest room — they’re like a tiny, poop-filled explosive device ready to go off at any moment.

One thing I didn’t anticipate, though, is how significantly the word “poop” would figure into my son’s vocabulary long after the potty-training stage was behind us. Turns out that to an 8-year-old boy, “poop” is the ideal expression: It works as a noun, a verb, an adjective and, of course, an interjection. Ask any 8-year-old and he’ll cite the word’s versatility, its utility and its sheer elegance, mainly by yelling “Poop!” at the top of his lungs.

All that is fine (I guess), but what bothers me is that somewhere along the line, poop went mainstream. Take the aforementioned biofuels companies, Qteros and Applied Clean Tech, which apparently spent six years developing their integrated sewage recycling solution: “We ate, slept and breathed poop for six years!” they declared. Well, they didn’t say that exactly, but it seems to be what they’re trying to get across.

And granted, it sounds like a pretty good idea — making electricity out of “recyliose,” an element extracted from human wastewater, in an effort to make the environment cleaner and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Even Republicans should be able to get behind this idea, given what they seem to think people who believe in global warming are full of.

There’s not just that, though: A Google search on “poop” turns up more than 1,000 current news stories, including one about the growing problem in Florida of manatee poop (otherwise know as “reason No. 5,674 not to live in Florida”), the popularity of elephant poop among gardeners and the disturbing tale of radioactive rabbit poop found around a nuclear waste dump in Washington state. Presumably this means there are also radioactive rabbits, which scientific experience would indicate are probably 40 feet tall and capable of breathing nuclear fire from between their nubby little front teeth.

Even the Ig Nobel awards, the much-less-serious answer to the Nobel Prize sponsored by the Annals of Improbable Research, spotlighted a poop-related development. Apparently, researchers in Japan found out that panda poop can break down bacteria, as long as you’re willing to slather it all over your kitchen, which of course doesn’t seem like a much better alternative. This is what scientists refer to as “throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” although instead of “bathwater” they say “panda poop.”

(Incidentally, these same awards honored the invention of a bra that doubles as a gas mask — actually two gas masks — which you have to admit could come in handy, especially if you happen to work in the recyliose plant.)

In short, there’s poop everywhere you turn, and I’ve decided to do something about it. It’s time we got back to the days when we pretended that unpleasant bodily functions didn’t exist — the days when there were no children’s books about gas-passing, and cartoons featured good, old-fashioned dwarves, not flatulent rodents.

I plan to begin by banning the word in my house, in exchange for something more socially acceptable, like “horsefeathers.” It’s a long shot, yes, but I figure I’ve got to start somewhere, and who knows? If I’m successful you may never have to open the newspaper and see the word “poop” again.

Er … After today.

This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Fake News Wednesday: Jimmy Carter Blames Obama Nobel Prize On Racism

PLAINS, Ga. (CAP) - Former President Jimmy Carter says the unexpected awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama may be the direct result of lingering racism on the part of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

"It took me more than 20 years of diplomatic work after my failed presidency to get my Nobel Prize," noted Carter. "President Obama is only 10 months into his failed presidency, so there's no other logical explanation."

Asked who the Norwegian Nobel Committee might be exhibiting their racial prejudice against, Carter said he "hadn't worked that part out yet."

"But let's just say that if Israel is behind this, I wouldn't be surprised," he added.

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

If you’ve ever had danishes attached to the side of your head, click here

I loved "Star Wars" as a kid, because frankly, what was not to love, with the possible exception of the Ewoks? That was before George Lucas released the three "prequel" movies, in which we find out that Darth Vader was, in reality, this pouty guy from "One Tree Hill." I'm pretty sure that's how it went.

This wouldn't have made a difference to me, except that I had a son who was Star Wars-obsessed from the ages of 5 to 7, to the point where I had to memorize each character's lightsaber color. (Mace Windu: Purple!) He's 8 now and is obsessed instead by the Red Sox. Insert your own burning lava planet joke here.

Anyway, it appears that the Star Wars craze shows no sign of abating, based on the Star Wars festival on Cape Cod that drew a crowd of young Jedis and, er, Jedettes this past weekend. It looks like fun, but for the record, I think it's cruel to dress a kid up like R2-D2. It reminds me just a little too much of Scout's ham costume.

(Incidentally, if you follow the link you'll notice that Boba Fett is incorrectly identified in the caption as "Bobo Fett," apparently by someone with a life. This could be because Lucas may have threatened the event with a lawsuit if they used the actual character names, or that under the helmet is a monkey that knows sign language.)

COLUMN: I'm leaving on a jetpack

My new favorite band is a group out of Scotland called We Were Promised Jetpacks. Not because of their music, which I haven’t heard yet, but because of their well-placed sense of righteous indignation. We were promised jetpacks, gosh darn it — what the heck are we all still doing down here? It’s frustrating.

So it was with some satisfaction that I read about Mr. Glenn Martin, an inventor who recently introduced a real, working jetpack at the AirVenture airshow in Oshkosh (Motto: “Please Don’t Say Begosh”), Wis. Developed by Martin in his native New Zealand, this jetpack is apparently capable of reaching heights of up to 8,000 feet, which should be plenty high enough to elude the invading Orc armies.

Martin is looking for test pilots for his device, presumably highly trained flight professionals with nerves of steel. So naturally, he offered the positions to the highest bidders on eBay. (That is not a typo.) You may scoff, but if NASA had recruited astronauts that way we’d probably have colonized space by now, although our space stations would be populated entirely by billionaires and members of ’N SYNC.

Besides, Martin is using some discretion: All applicants must have a “current driver’s license,” so there’s really no danger of getting someone who’s not qualified, as long as you don’t mind when grandpa accidentally reverses his thrusters and flies into a water tower. As the eBay listing says, “This is … your own ‘Wright brothers’ moment,” assuming the Wright brothers had exploded in a tremendous fireball 8,000 feet above Wisconsin.

Regardless, it sounds hopeful, but I have my doubts. I’m concerned that instead of buzzing around in jetpacks, we’re much more likely to wind up saddled with the latest invention by Honda: an electric unicycle. This was apparently developed for that coveted market share of drivers who felt the Segway scooter was just a little too cool for them. You know who you are.

According to the BBC, the unicycle uses technology from Honda’s Asimo robot to stand upright, meaning riders don’t have to balance it themselves. This gives them a big advantage over, say, street performers, whose unicycles must be powered strictly through their own dorkery. Unfortunately they only run for an hour — this means you can anticipate a landscape dotted by electric unicycle docking stations, where the electric unicyclists can hang out with each other drinking fake Romulan Ale and talking about why Hurley is the best character on “Lost.”

And if the unicycles don’t work out, it seems Nissan has yet another option for our future transportation needs: robot cars that drive independently and never crash into anything. They do this by constantly sharing their position with all the other cars, primarily through honking, swearing and obscene gestures. Wait, sorry, that’s how we do it now.

According to CNET, the robots are modeled after schools of fish and follow the “three rules of fish movement”: avoiding crashes, traveling side by side and keeping close to each other. The one drawback is, whenever you get to the top of a hill, your car will spawn.

Personally, I’m hoping transportation engineers will be able to combine the best elements of all these ideas and give us the truly futuristic travel devices we (meaning I) have dreamed of for years, namely auto-piloted self-balancing jetpacks that travel like fish. Then, and only then, can We Were Promised Jetpacks even think about changing their name.

I would suggest We Were Promised Lasers. Now that’s something I’d download.

Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England; this column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Thursday Link Roundup

Wacky news, fake news, and other stuff the Internets were invented for:

• The end goal of technology: "The 19 Craziest Craigslist Ads." We're putting newspapers out of business for this?

• When geek worlds collide.

• Actually shooting people in Arizona bars sadly still illegal: "Guns allowed in Arizona bars starting Wednesday."

• My alma mater, ladies and gentlemen: "Tufts: Sex Allowed Only If Roommate Is Probably Asleep."

• How long do you think it will be before Sarah Palin shoots Levi Johnston from a helicopter?

Catholic high school girls in trouble?

Love the idea of a Catholic Church iPhone app -- if we're going to have ones that make fart noises, we might as well have one that offers a little spirituality. Sure, it's ironic given the fact that iPhones are EVIIIIIIIIIIIIL! But hey, baby steps.

What I'm not so sure about is the video ad for the service, featuring the prancing, vogue-ing Catholic high school girls and the stern nun who winds up having an iPhone under her habit -- it all seems vaguely like a lost Zalman King movie. Is it me?

What Michael Moore needs in his next movie is a giant robot

In my latest for Popdose.com, I offer a random list of five business movies I deem worthy of the key to the executive washroom, in honor of the release of Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story. (Which I'm sure is more depressing than any of them, since Michael Douglas doesn't get arrested at the end.)

Among them is probably the greatest boardroom drama of the last 25 years. Yes, I'm referring to Robocop.

Robocop is a lot of things: ultraviolent action flick, cynical yet increasingly prescient futuristic satire, the last great Nancy Allen movie. But when you get right down to it, it’s a boardroom drama, featuring a boardroom where there was a very good chance you’d be shot 4,000 times by a killer robot. (Show of hands: How many of you have been in a meeting where you were secretly hoping that robot would turn up and put you out of your misery? Thought so.)

Read the whole thing at Popdose.

COLUMN: All's fair in love and pumpkins

All over New England, farmers spend months preparing their soil, cultivating specially bred seeds and gently tending their crop with high-tech lamps while protecting it from the ravages from the sun. They do this so they can, at the end of their labors, deliver the perfect giant pumpkin to their county fair, at which time my kids can declare, probably in unison, “Ew! That’s gross!”

And of course they’re right, because it is gross: It looks like something the dog might have heaved up onto the rug, if the dog was the size of Cleveland. But we’ll go see it anyway, because it’s fall in New England, and it’s the law. Sort of like how everyone in Minnesota has to visit the giant ball of twine.

Because as anyone knows who’s been to an agricultural fair like Springfield’s Big E or the Topsfield Fair, these gatherings evoke our nation’s rich agricultural heritage, assuming that heritage included citizen farmers who got up early each morning to tend to vast, rolling fields of Italian sausages and fried dough. How they got through the great powdered sugar drought of ’06 is still beyond me.

In reality, these events are an exercise in contrasts. For instance, my wife and I like to go to see the livestock, because we find the cows relaxing — they sort of make you want to curl up next to them, like they’re giant Labrador retrievers with udders. (Memo to scientists: Don’t get any ideas.)

Suggest that prospect to my kids, though, and they’re incredulous — why would anyone visit one of the nation’s oldest agricultural and livestock fairs to see agriculture and livestock, when you can be riding the “Crazy Bus”? Yes, it’s the same Crazy Bus that we rode in our town carnival last month, run by the same carnie who takes all his personal hygiene and wardrobe cues from old Hollywood movies featuring carnies. But there’s one key difference: At the fair, the wait’s longer. Plus, while you’re waiting, you can spend $8 to have your face painted like a Power Ranger.

But you can’t say these fairs aren’t adept at merging the agricultural with the, well, non-agricultural. Things like the racing pigs — somehow I doubt America’s hog farms are full of farmers setting up pigs at a starting line. (“OK, if you lose, we eat you. If you win, we eat you too. You’re all getting eaten. Get ready, get set …”)

There’s also a trailer with bears in it — I’m not aware of many ranchers out there raising herds of bear, although there is probably a hefty government subsidy available for anybody willing to try it. I’ve never actually been in the bear trailer, probably because my mother always told me: Don’t go into a trailer full of bears.

And yet despite these issues — the crazy exhibits, the greasy food, the fact that you have to park in what I’m convinced are ancient Indian burial grounds — at the end of the day these fairs are really a microcosm of America: They’re good but gaudy, large but deformed, cute and cuddly but if you get too close they may bite your finger off.

Or I suppose they could just offer a chance to get the family out of the house to an event where every single member is bound to find something to enjoy. Personally, I plan to keep that in mind this year when I’m on the Crazy Bus — I think if I really crane my neck from up there, I can see the cows.

This column appeared originally in West of Boston Life magazine. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”

AT LARGE Fake News Tuesday: Phillips Affair With 'Schneider' Suddenly Seems Less Creepy

HOLLYWOOD (CAP) - In the wake of Mackenzie Phillips' admission that she had a decade-long consensual relationship with her own father, most of the actress' fans agree that her long-rumored affair with co-star Pat Harrington, a.k.a. One Day At A Time handyman "Schneider," doesn't seem so bad anymore.

"I always thought that was wicked creepy - what was he, like three times her age?" said Janice O'Brien, 41, of Worcester, Mass., a longtime fan of the show. "But looking at it now, it doesn't seem like a big deal at all. AT ALL."

According to a flash poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, opinions have softened regarding much of Phillips' rumored youthful activity, including being shot up with heroin by her father, John Phillips of The Mamas And The Papas, and his associates, everyone from Mick Jagger to the guy who cleaned the pool at their Hollywood Hills mansion.

"I thought that was the most disgusting, unforgivable thing I'd ever heard," said Kenneth Roderson, 50, a social worker from Boulder, Colo., about the multitude of people who provided a young Phillips with heroin. "Now, meh, not so much."

[Read the rest at CAP News.]

COLUMN: Just another roll of the die

I’ll be reaching my 41st birthday next week, which means of course that I’ll be thinking about the inescapable specter of my own impending mortality. And also, cake!

I would submit, though, that it’s not my fault the grim reaper weighs more heavily on my mind with each passing year. Blame my body, for deliberately exhibiting all these signs of aging. If it didn’t want me thinking about dying, it would be firmer, and more robustly haired.

But beyond that, it seems like everywhere I look there’s another one of these online “death calculators,” which analyze when you’re most likely to die, and from what. You’d think most people would rather not know — personally, I want my tombstone to read “He never knew what hit him” — but no: One site launched last month, DeathRiskRankings.com, got 3 million hits right out of the creaky, wrought iron gate.

“One of our tag lines is ‘Death has never been so much fun,’” site designer Paul Fischbeck told the Seattle Times, raising the obvious question of what some of their other tag lines might be. (“Death: It’s not just about decomposing anymore,” etc.).

So I input my own information into the calculator to determine what I might be most likely to succumb to, were it to happen in the next year. The results were predictably disturbing; for instance, of 3,097 deaths predicted, 239 are accidents, and seven are “Accidents-Other.” I’m assuming the “other” are the people who have vending machines fall on them when they’re trying to shake loose a jammed bag of Combos, which is exactly how I expect to go. Look for me on one of those forwarded e-mail lists soon, along with all the people who used their Zippo lighters to check for leftover jet fuel.

Seeing all the types of death that could be facing me this year was, frankly, more than a little depressing. But I felt a little better when I compared myself to a similar subject living in Alaska. While diseases are fewer there — owing no doubt to the cleaner atmosphere, at least until we start drilling — accidents are way off the charts, with 797 to Massachusetts’ 239. Since “Bear Attacks” doesn’t get a separate entry, I have to assume that’s what’s making up most of the difference, along with all the people that Sarah Palin mistakes for wolves from her helicopter.

But that’s not the only item that’s put death on my radar screen: Someone also sent me the book “When The Sun Goes Down” by Betty Breuhaus, which tells you how to plan your own funeral. This is sort of like planning your own surprise party, except at the funeral you don’t have to act shocked when they turn the lights on. “SURPRISE!”

Still, she offers some good ideas, like picking your own music — for instance, she suggests that instead of traditional hymns, some people might want something like “The Rainbow Connection” from “The Muppet Movie,” presumably for the small population of mourners who don’t already associate Kermit the Frog with tragic, untimely death.

She also recommends writing your own obituary, which I can definitely see doing, since who’s in a better position to inventory the ways in which you’ll be sorely missed? (“His hundreds of close friends and admirers will greatly miss his renowned, almost Brobdingnagian sense of modesty,” etc.)

But I’ve got to get there first, and I’ve decided the best way to figure out when and how that will happen is the same way we find out most things these days: via a Facebook quiz. And according to the Facebook “Death’s Time” quiz, I’ll pass away Feb. 13, 2034 at age 65 from being “sliced up by a dough mixer.” I’d say they could be wrong, but it’s hard to argue with a Facebook quiz — they were dead on when they determined what “Goodfellas” character I was. (“Karen’s mother.”)

Of course, my real hope is that I wind up living a long, productive life, no matter how it winds up at the end. The apparent preoccupation with “death calculators” aside, seems to me it’s better to focus on what we do while we’re here, try our best to be happy and healthy, and not obsess over how it could all end any minute in a hail of accidents, growths, poisonings and/or infectious and parasitic diseases.

Still, just in case, I’m going to start eating a lot more cake.

Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England; this column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”