Letting the Tiger out of the Cage

Several years ago...

Whitey & I have been out somewhere all day--I believe beer may have been involved.

We come stumbling back to his apartment in Hoboken (a 5th floor walk up, to my cardiovascular systems horror) & Sue (his wife) has been extraordinarily gracious & not only rented a movie, but got what was theoretically a boy flick--Everybody's All-American.

We watched in dumbfounded silence as one of the most excrutiating pieces of dreck ever committed to celluloid unfolded before our glazed eyes.

Finally (or after 15 minutes), I begged to shut it off.  Chuck hesitated, but when Sue said it wasn't that bad, he agreed to continue the audio-visual crime.

He came over to my side about 10 minutes later. but Sue held fast.

At last  the movie reached it's emotional climax, Randy Quaid & Tim Hutton have a huge confrontation  at the LSU Homecoming game & happen to be directly in front of the LSU mascots cage.  We see a tiger pacing back & forth in back of them as they mewl about 20 years of emotional wounds that no men with penises would ever suffer, let alone admit to in front of another man.

And, like Saul on the road to Damascus, it came to me:

"The only way to save this movie is to let the Tiger out & have him maul everyone"

By then even Sue waited with baited  breath, hoping against hope that the Tiger would make it a Blockbuster night.

Since that time, we refer to shutting off an awful movie as "Letting the Tiger out".

I have no way of proving it, but I believe Pat Conroy must have stolen this idea, because just as Prince of Tides is getting too awful for words, a tiger gets loose & kills everyone.

O. Griffin Judd, The Further Adventures

So I go in & check on my son at 3AM the other night, to see why he's screaming &
has been for an hour.  Same old same old, he wants out of his crib & into our
bed.  But there's a new twist; he's got one leg up & almost over the side of the
crib.

So Saturday I moved our guest bed down to his room & we let him be a big boy &
sleep in a bed.  Yeah right...  You tuck him in & give him a kiss & he's out the
door before you are.  After several such episodes, I told him it was stay in bed
or back to the crib--as one would guess, I was soon wrestling a shrieking
toddler into the crib.

Went in to brush my teeth & with that, a bookshelf or hutch must have tipped
over upstairs, at least judging by the resounding thud I heard.  But no, there
goes Griffin whizzing by, lip bleeding, runs past me & his shell-shocked Mother,
leaps into our bed nestles into the pillows & cackles at us.

He'd hurled himself out of the crib somehow, fallen four feet to the floor &
couldn't resist rubbing Mom and Dad's noses in his victory.

Little bastard...

Orrin and Stephen and the Tittie Box

Dear Andrew:

Thank you for the NASA patches and the totally awesome replica of the Apollo 11
rocket.
 

I am, of course, reminded of a story.

We'll call it Orrin and Stephen and the Tittie Box.
 

At some point in the late 60's/early 70's Stephen and I were obsessively
collecting aluminum and newspapers, because at that point you could still
recycle them for cash.

Fortuitously, our Grandfather owned his Apartment building in Brooklyn, so my
grandmother brought us a huge pile of papers that the tenants had thrown out
(she also literally fought bums for soda cans to bring to us).  We prepared the
newspapers for delivery to the recycling center &, to our adolescent wonder and
joy, found that we had hit the motherlode--some tenant had tossed in his Playboy
magazines along with his New York Posts.  God Bless Hugh Hefner!

Now it being the sixties, and our mod parents being "progressive", we were, if
not encouraged, at least not discouraged from having a boyish curiosity about
female anatomy--we were allowed to keep our treasure trove.  And, as you may
have noticed, we Judds are nothing if not literal-minded, so we quickly cut to
the chase.  We didn't just tear out the pictures, we actually cut out the
women's breasts & only their breasts (in this gentler time you were not
submitted to full genitalia shots and the like, the women of Playboy, like
Barbie dolls, were devoid of such things).

Now what can a pair of boys do with such a valuable collection of breasts?  How
pay them the honor they are due?

Well, it just so happened that we had a model replica of the Apollo 11 capsule
that came in a special slipcase, so that if you disassembled it you could keep
the pieces in the box.  Of course, we loved the space program, but the feats of
Man can not compare to the wonders of God.  So we made this slipcase the
repository of our collection--it became The Tittie Box.

So far so good, right?  A couple of All-American boys having good pre-pubescent
fun (or well on their way to becoming serial killers, one or the other).  Until
a day came that lives on in the lore of the Judd clan.

Our grandparents had come to visit.  You may remember how straightlaced a man
was The Honorable Orrin G. Judd.  This is a man who was called by the police at
3:00 am because they'd found his car in the street (an unsuccessful burglary
attempt apparently) & they wanted him to move it, so he got dressed--no, I mean
got dressed in his three piece suit, tie, garters, wingtips, the whole nine
yards to go three blocks & repark his car at three in the morning.  He wore two
piece bathing suits for cripes sake.  At Mets games, the man kept score with a
fountain pen.

Well, you probably see it coming, my Mother looks up and what does she see in
the hands of this saintly (never had a drink in his life, never swore, wouldn't
work on Sundays) old-fashioned man--of course, he's holding The Tittie Box.  Now
legend has it that there was a tiny sonic boom as Mother actually achieved Mach
1 in her race across the room to grab the box before he could open it.  We'll
never know if that's true or not, but we do know that she earned beaucoup bonus
points in Heaven for saving our Grandfather from a shock that surely would have
killed him.

Thanks again for the Apollo 11.

All Common Knowledge is Wrong, part 1 (David and Goliath)

[the first in a series which will prove that all or nearly all things that are commonly understood are wrong]

So you know the story of David and Goliath, right?  Young David goes forth with
only a puny little sling & because he's a righteous servant of the Lord, he is
able to conquer insurmountable odds & defeat the giant Goliath. (see below)
Over the course of your lifetime you've heard innumerable comments about a David
& Goliath situation, where a little guy (or company or team or whatever)
overcomes the odds & triumphs over a bigger guy (or company or team or
whatever).

Well, are you aware that this is the most inapt analogy in human history?  For
3000 years mankind has misunderstood the story of David and Goliath.  The fact
is, Goliath never stood a chance.  David was the prohibitive favorite & the
concept of his losing to Goliath is incomprehensible.

Imagine if you will that we are updating the story to the present.  Goliath is
still nine feet tall & wearing armor.  He has a sword, a chainsaw, a stun gun,
whatever weapon you choose that is effective for hand to hand combat.  Now David
steps forward & all he has is-------an AK-47.  Who do the odds favor in this
fight?  Well, it may seem a little too extreme a comparison, but it illustrates
the central point of the story.  David went into battle with Goliath with a huge
technological advantage.  Goliath could not do any harm to David until he was
close enough to use his unwieldly spear & then to grapple with him in hand to
hand combat.  Meanwhile, David could stand off at a distance of hundreds of
yards & use his sling, which is widely acknowledged to have bben capable of
penetrating the armor of the day.

So the next time you hear someone prattling about a David & Goliath situation,
remember, it's actually Goliath vs. David.
 

           1 Samuel 17 (English-NIV)

            1Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at
Socoh in Judah. They pitched camp at Ephes Dammim, between Socoh and Azekah.
            2Saul and the Israelites assembled and camped in the Valley of Elah
and drew up their battle line to meet the Philistines.
            3The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites another, with
the valley between them.
            4A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the
Philistine camp. He was over nine feet [1] tall.
            5He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor
of bronze weighing five thousand shekels [2];
            6on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung
on his back.
            7His spear shaft was like a weaver's rod, and its iron point weighed
six hundred shekels. [3] His shield bearer went ahead of him.
            8Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, "Why do you come
out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants
of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down
                  to me.
            9If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects;
but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us."
            10Then the Philistine said, "This day I defy the ranks of Israel!
Give me a man and let us fight each other."
            11On hearing the Philistine's words, Saul and all the Israelites
were dismayed and terrified.
            12Now David was the son of an Ephrathite named Jesse, who was from
Bethlehem in Judah. Jesse had eight sons, and in Saul's time he was old and well
advanced in years.
            13Jesse's three oldest sons had followed Saul to the war: The
firstborn was Eliab; the second, Abinadab; and the third, Shammah.
            14David was the youngest. The three oldest followed Saul,
            15but David went back and forth from Saul to tend his father's sheep
at Bethlehem.
            16For forty days the Philistine came forward every morning and
evening and took his stand.
            17Now Jesse said to his son David, "Take this ephah [4] of roasted
grain and these ten loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry to their camp.
            18Take along these ten cheeses to the commander of their unit. [5]
See how your brothers are and bring back some assurance [6] from them.
            19They are with Saul and all the men of Israel in the Valley of
Elah, fighting against the Philistines."
            20Early in the morning David left the flock with a shepherd, loaded
up and set out, as Jesse had directed. He reached the camp as the army was going
out to its battle positions, shouting the war cry.
            21Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines facing each
other.
            22David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the
battle lines and greeted his brothers.
            23As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from
Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard
it.
            24When the Israelites saw the man, they all ran from him in great
fear.
            25Now the Israelites had been saying, "Do you see how this man keeps
coming out? He comes out to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to the
man who kills him. He will also give him his
                  daughter in marriage and will exempt his father's family from
taxes in Israel."
            26David asked the men standing near him, "What will be done for the
man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this
uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the
                  armies of the living God?"
            27They repeated to him what they had been saying and told him, "This
is what will be done for the man who kills him."
            28When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the
men, he burned with anger at him and asked, "Why have you come down here? And
with whom did you leave those few sheep in
                  the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your
heart is; you came down only to watch the battle."
            29"Now what have I done?" said David. "Can't I even speak?"
            30He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same
matter, and the men answered him as before.
            31What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent
for him.
            32David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of this
Philistine; your servant will go and fight him."
            33Saul replied, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine
and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his
youth."
            34But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his
father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the
flock,
            35I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth.
When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it.
            36Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this
uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the
armies of the living God.
            37The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of
the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." Saul said to David,
"Go, and the LORD be with you."
            38Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor
on him and a bronze helmet on his head.
            39David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking
around, because he was not used to them. "I cannot go in these," he said to
Saul, "because I am not used to them." So he took them
                  off.
            40Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from
the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in
his hand, approached the Philistine.
            41Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him,
kept coming closer to David.
            42He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and
handsome, and he despised him.
            43He said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?"
And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.
            44"Come here," he said, "and I'll give your flesh to the birds of
the air and the beasts of the field!"
            45David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and
spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the
God of the armies of Israel, whom you have
                  defied.
            46This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you
down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine
army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth,
                  and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.
            47All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear
that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give all of you
into our hands."
            48As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly
toward the battle line to meet him.
            49Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and
struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he
fell facedown on the ground.
            50So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone;
without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.
            51David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine's
sword and drew it from the scabbard. After he killed him, he cut off his head
with the sword. When the Philistines saw that their hero
                  was dead, they turned and ran.
            52Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and
pursued the Philistines to the entrance of Gath [7] and to the gates of Ekron.
Their dead were strewn along the Shaaraim road
                  to Gath and Ekron.
            53When the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines, they
plundered their camp.
            54David took the Philistine's head and brought it to Jerusalem, and
he put the Philistine's weapons in his own tent.
            55As Saul watched David going out to meet the Philistine, he said to
Abner, commander of the army, "Abner, whose son is that young man?" Abner
replied, "As surely as you live, O king, I don't
                  know."
            56The king said, "Find out whose son this young man is."
            57As soon as David returned from killing the Philistine, Abner took
him and brought him before Saul, with David still holding the Philistine's head.

            58"Whose son are you, young man?" Saul asked him. David said, "I am
the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem."