Exercising Bragging Rights and Eating Cookies

I’d like to take this time and thank my cousin Dayyan Eng for the bragging rights his career has given me, of which I shall fully exercise in the beginning of this post. He is a filmmaker in China whose amazing short film, Bus 44 (which can be admired here) has won awards at Sundance, Cannes, and the Venice Film Festival just to name a few. His first feature length film, Waiting Alone, just got distribution for a China release around August I believe. So if and when it comes over to the US, make sure to stop by your local theater and watch it. You won’t be disappointed. Specially since I make a special guest appearance. Ha.

But seriously…

Has everyone heard of that ridiculous new thing Sesame Street is doing to Cookie Monster? Basically, denying his one source power and his entire reason to live. It would be like telling Linkin Park to come up with something original, they would all just go “does not compute” and spontaneously combust. I mean how could they take away cookies from the COOKIE Monster. Man, I was watching Sesame Street a few months ago and his addiction to cookies still gave me the biggest laughs.

Alas, such is the way of the ever-changing world. Parents’ increasing over-protectivity of their children today is seriously sickening. I was watching the ever-informative Daily Show the other day and their guest was discussing this very topic. She was saying how there are elementary schools where they have virtually done away with kids playing tag during recess and instead substituted it with something called the “friends circle” – or something ridiculous to that effect – where kids get to take turns sharing their feelings. Unbelievable. And then there’s all these other people who don’t even let their kids roll around in the dirt like kids tend to naturally do for what to me really is no good excuse at all. They seem to forget that exposing them to all these things at a young age will actually develop the immunities necessary to fight them at a later time when it becomes necessary. Sigh, I just don’t get people sometimes. As Harvey Pekar so eloquently put it “life is pretty complex stuff”. I know imma be throwing my kids out of the house and into the sandbox and make sure they’re well exposed and comfortable with nature and all the beauty it has to offer. And when they get old enough, they can stay home all day with their dad watching HVGs; that’s Holographic Video Goggles for those who are time travel impaired.



...how am i supposed to heal, if i can't feel time