One of my favorite Christmas songs is "Merry Christmas from the Family" by Robert Earl Keen (whoever posted the YouTube video below misspelled his last name). I discovered this song a couple years ago and it quickly became one of my favorites of the holiday season. I love this song almost as much as I love Christmas classics like, "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)," "Silent Night," and "Jingle Bells." 

Here’s how Wikipedia sums it up:

"Merry Christmas from the Family" describes the Christmas gathering of a fairly dysfunctional Texas family whose merrymaking—which includes drinking alcohol, carving a turkey, watching a televised ball game and smoking cigarettes—seems to be punctuated with Christmas music and the need to run to convenience stores for additional supplies such as fake snow.

"Merry Christmas from the Family" is pure genius. Take a listen and enjoy the excellent video.

I hope you had a very merry Christmas. And Happy New Year!
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The Daily Mail reports that, according to the UK Government, Scooby Doo is the healthiest cartoon. Researchers spent 200 hours watching top children's television shows to determine which characters were the most active. Scooby Doo topped the list because, well, they run around a lot.
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Rounding out the Top 5 are: 2. Shaun the Sheep (never heard of it)  3. LazyTown (doesn’t sound very healthy to me), 4. Peppa Pig (never heard of it) and 5. Bob The Builder (“healthy,” but unwatchable)

Enough about the healthy cartoons. Here’s a list of The Five Least Healthy Cartoons:

1. Extremely Fat Albert

2. SpongeBob StretchPants

3. Super Fat Friends

4. Dora the Porker  

5. Angelina Size Fifteena
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Quinoa is a popular item in health food stores across the country. Every day, people are choosing to incorporate this heart-healthy food into their diets. As a public service, I'd like to share 10 things I think you should know about quinoa.

Ten Facts and Tips About Quinoa

1. Many people think quinoa is a grain, but it’s actually the seed of a plant that’s closely related to chard. These amino acid-rich seeds are not only very nutritious, but also super disgusting!

2. “Quinoa” contains the word “no,” which is what everyone says when asked if they want seconds.

3. If you eat one cup of quinoa (one serving), you will:
    * consume 220 calories, 40 grams of carbohydrates and 8 grams of protein.
    * want to take back all the bad things you said about couscous.

4. The word “quinoa” comes from the French words “qui" meaning "who" and "noa" meaning “really likes this crap?”

5. If you’re in a fancy restaurant and want to order their highly acclaimed quinoa dish, be sure to pronounce it correctly: keen-wah. Actually, it doesn’t matter—you’ll never find yourself in that situation.

6. Quinoa’s Official Slogan: “Just for the taste of it! Okay, just for the health benefits.”

7. The Incas considered quinoa a sacred food and referred to it as the “mother seed.” They valued quinoa as much as gold. Oh, did I mention that the Incas also sacrificed young children?

8. Nobody in the history of the world has ever uttered the phrase, “May I have that fantastic quinoa recipe?”

9. Quinoa cooks very easily, in 15 minutes, the same time it takes to bake a delicious pepperoni pizza. Just saying.

10. Quinoa by itself tastes rather bland. You may want to add some olive oil or butter, which will make it taste only slightly less shitty.
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I recently took my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Kate, to Trader Joe’s. She likes coming along on shopping trips because she really enjoys looking at people. But she especially likes going to Trader Joe’s because the cashiers give out stickers to kids.

Most little kids like stickers. Kate loves stickers. It’s almost an unhealthy obsession. The only thing she likes even more than stickers is balloons. One time, my wife bought her a sheet of stickers that were all balloons and Kate’s head almost exploded.

Along with giving out stickers, Trader Joe’s also has this game they do for little kids. Every day, they hide this stuffed donkey toy somewhere in the store. If a kid spots the donkey, they tell the cashier where it is. Then they get a piece of candy.

As we got in the car, I said to Kate: “Remember the game at the store? When you look for the toy donkey?” 

She replied with an emphatic “Yes!”

Fifteen minutes later, we’re in the store walking around. At one point, I looked down at Kate in the cart and noticed that her head was moving slooooowly from left to right. The look on her face was deadly serious.

 “What’re you doing?” I said.

“Looking for the donkey,” she said, in almost a whisper. Then she continued to scan the store, like a robot.

I had forgotten about the donkey game.

“Okay, good job,” I said. “Keep looking.”

About ten minutes later, I was grabbing gallon of milk and almost dropped it when Kate yelled “THERE IT IS!”

She found the donkey – but I couldn’t see it.

“Where?”

She said, “There!”

“In the refrigerator?”

“No, no! Up THERE!”

The donkey was perched about four feet above the milk section, on a little ledge.

“Good job,” I said.

The entire time Kate was looking for the donkey---a good 20 minutes---she had the demeanor of a Secret Service agent, searching for a lone gunman in a crowd. (I know you’re here, donkey…you can run, but you can’t hide.)

I’m pretty sure that if I had played this game at her age, I would’ve had the laser-like focus Kate had…..for about a minute.  (Look for the donkey…look for the donkey…look for the—oooh, ice cream!)

Right after Kate found the donkey, she was beaming. I looked down at her and thought: You got this skill from your mother. Both Kate and my wife are highly observant people. Me, not so much. I can’t count how many times my wife and I have had a conversation like this:

Me: “I really like this new lamp.”

Her: “I bought it six months ago.”

As I was driving home from the store, I was thinking about how much Kate is like her mom. Then suddenly I heard Kate’s voice from the back seat.

“Daddy?”

I turned down the radio.

“What sweetie?”

“Poo poo!” she said, followed by a huge belly laugh—which totally cracked me up.

I guess the kid is a little like me too.
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A couple months ago, I got an email from someone at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. She asked if I was available to do some cartooning for an upcoming public health advertising campaign.

“The campaign is to promote the use of female condoms,” she wrote.

For several years, I did cartooning for the SF Health Department’s syphilis prevention campaign, which featured a happy-go-lucky cartoon penis named “Healthy Penis.” Those comic strip ads were fun to write and draw, so I was interested to find out what their new “female condom” campaign was all about.

I thought, Maybe they’ll want me to draw a talking female condom. She could be called Connie the Condom!

I emailed back saying that I was available and asked for more information. Turns out there wasn’t going to be any mascot for this campaign. They had something completely different in mind.

“We want to promote the use of the newly redesigned female condom (called FC2) among gay and bisexual men,” she said. “We’d like you to draw a series of illustrations which would show men how to use it.”

I was sent samples of illustrations showing women inserting the condom. They were plain and looked like typical textbook illustrations. She asked if I could create a new a series of cartoony illustrations of a man using the female condom. I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t going to be a goofy cartoon mascot involved, but was happy to accept the job.

Over the next few days, I worked on the sketches. The first drawing was a hand holding the condom. Pretty straightforward.

Then I started drawing the second sketch: a guy standing up, with his partner about to insert the condom.  My wife was there for instant feedback.

“It’s weird to see one of your cartoon characters with his pants around his ankles,” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied. "It's really weird."

 “What’s that behind his butt?”

“It’s his partner’s hand,” I said. “He’s about to insert the condom.”

“Don’t you think the hand should be a lot closer?”

“It’s close enough,” I said.

“His hand is like three feet behind the guy’s butt,” she said. “You have to make it much closer—he’s his sex partner.”

“You really think it’s too far away?”  

“The way you have it drawn now, it doesn’t look like he’s about to have sex with the guy. It looks like he’s going to throw the condom at him and run."

She was right. It looked ridiculous.

I went ahead corrected the sketch and proceeded to work on the others. One Saturday morning, my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter walked up next to me while I was drawing a tattoo on a naked butt.

“What’s that, Daddy?”

“It’s a tattoo,” I said, then quickly moved the drawing pad out of view. “Why don’t you go play with your toys?”

In about a week, the cartoons were finished and approved by the Health Department. Here’s an excerpt (censored for the kids):
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The campaign launched this past Monday, on Valentine’s day, at San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza.  

I really enjoyed working with the Health Department. They’re great. Still, I wish I could’ve drawn a cartoon character named Connie the Condom. That would’ve been a lot of fun.
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In my day job I work in development for a large nonprofit company. My company manages seven housing facilities for seniors—from government-subsidized housing to upscale retirement communities. Another facet of the company is that we offer Community Service programs for low-income seniors in the Bay Area. I raise money for these programs.

Because my office is adjacent to one of our high-end retirement communities, I encounter seniors every day. Over the course of six years, I’ve met some wonderful and interesting older adults. Jacques Iselin was one of them.

Originally from Switzerland, Jacques had a thick accent and a no-nonsense demeanor. He walked around the retirement community like he owned the place. The atmosphere of a retirement home, I’ve learned, is just like high school. It has all the same elements—the “in crowd,” the rumor mill, the backstabbers, the misfits, the troublemakers—except that all the “kids” are in their 70s, 80s and 90s. Jacques Iselin was definitely one of the “cool kids.”

When I met Jacques in early 2005, my first impression, I have to admit, wasn’t a good one. I remember him barging into my office and telling me—not asking me, but telling me—to do something. I can’t recall the details of his request but I do remember thinking, “Who the hell IS this guy?”

Over the course of the next year or so, I began to "get” Jacques. Beneath the gruff exterior was a nice guy. And a great human being.

Although my personality is nothing like Jacques’, I still viewed him is kind of a role model. He lived life the way I believe it should be lived. He traveled extensively, was kind, stayed active, and generously gave back to his community with his time and money.  In the nonprofit senior services sector, two widely used buzz phrases are: “healthy aging” and “aging successfully.” Jacques was the embodiment of both those terms.  (As his wife Silvia would say to friends, “Jacques is so healthy, it’s sickening.”)

In early January, Jacques began experiencing some pain which worsened over the course of a couple weeks. As the pain became unbearable, he went to the doctor. During an examination at the hospital, it was discovered that Jacques had cancer. Everywhere. Jacques’ body was filled with tumors.

Upon giving Jacques this shocking news, the doctor said there were two options: 1. Undergo a rigorous chemotherapy treatment that would likely add months, possibly even years, to his life or 2. Do nothing, in which case he would have just weeks to live. Jacques chose Option 2.

When Jacques returned to the retirement community’s Health Center, he wrote a letter which Silvia placed on the main bulletin board for all residents to see.  It read:

“Dear friends,

You may have heard that I was in the hospital. The doctor discovered that I have cancer in several vital organs. Instead of enduring a painful and prolonged chemotherapy treatment, I have decided to leave this earth with dignity. I’ve had a great life. I’ve traveled the world and lived to a good old age. I have no regrets.

“I would love for you to visit me in the Health Center. My eyes may be closed when you come in but just say my name and I’ll be happy to talk with you.  I look forward to seeing you!”

Last Friday, January 28, I went up to the Health Center to visit Jacques. He was lying in his bed, looking very frail, and his eyes were indeed closed. Instantly I had flashbacks of visiting my father in the hospital eight years earlier.  My dad died of cancer in 2003 at the age of 63. I was surprised how quickly those memories came rushing back. I contemplated turning around. Instead I said, “Jacques?”

Jacques’ eyes immediately opened and he turned his head towards me. A weak smile came across his face and he began to sit up. It was clear he had lost a lot of weight. “Hey,” he said. “How are you?”

His well-known gruff exterior was gone. He was simply a dying man, at peace with his decision to leave this world. Thanks to the morphine, he was in no pain. He looked frail but he also looked extremely content.

We chatted briefly and I resisted the temptation to say “Goodbye.” Instead I told him, “We’re all thinking about you down there.” Before I headed out the door, I reached out my hand. Jacques grabbed it and squeezed it. “Take care,” he said.

Yesterday morning, February 3, I received an email from the retirement community next door. Whenever a resident passes away, we are notified. The email subject line was: “Death notice.” I knew who it was before I opened it.

Jacques Iselin passed away peacefully early in the morning on February 3. He was 87 years old.

Goodbye, Jacques. You lived your life well, with no regrets.

I hope to do the same.
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Just saw this article on SFGate about the second-best gift wrapper in the world. She lives in San Francisco and her name is Megumi Inouye. I don’t really care about gift wrapping in general, mainly because I suck at it. I read the article only because I was intrigued by the fact Ms. Inouye is the second-best gift wrapper in the world.  Who knew there were gift wrapping competitions?

Turns out Ms. Inouye got the title “second-best gift wrapper in the world” at a big contest in New York in 2008. The article explained that she would have been the first-best gift wrapper in the world except that she made minor error in the final round of the competition. From the article:

“The challenge was to wrap a baby grand piano. Inouye might have been slightly ahead but, in her joy, she forgot to do what she usually does—to fold over one edge of the wrapping paper, for extra strength. When she pulled the paper over the piano keyboard, it suffered a small tear.”

I remember in elementary school I got second place in a class spelling bee because I left out the ‘h’ in the word “rhyme.” For years, whenever I saw the word “rhyme” I thought about how close I came to greatness, but fell just short. 

I wonder what Ms. Inouye thinks whenever she sees a baby grand piano. “Damn it, I could’ve been somebody!”

Probably not. From the article, she seems like a person who wouldn’t get too worked up over losing a championship. It’s clear she has a passion for wrapping gifts that transcends competitions. Here’s her take on gift wrapping:

“Wrapping is self-expression. It is an extension of the gift. It is the soul of the giver communicating to the soul of the recipient.”

For people who are good gift wrappers, that’s a heartwarming thought. For me, not so much. It’s unsettling to think that every Christmas, over all these years, my soul has basically been telling other people's souls to go f--k themselves.

I’m glad wife does most of the gift wrapping.  
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Want to see a sketch of a cartoon idea that was induced by a mind-altering substance? Read on!

One day a few weeks back, I was really tired. I was so exhausted that I resorted to drinking some 5-Hour Energy. (I try to use that stuff sparingly because it kind of scares me. It’s rocket fuel. I’m pretty sure one of the ingredients is paint thinner.)

As usual, after about three sips of 5-Hour Energy I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to run around the block five times. And a few seconds later, a cartoon idea popped in my head. It seemed pretty funny, so I immediately I grabbed a piece of paper and sketched it out.
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I drew this sketch in roughly 14 seconds. Even though it’s shaky and rough, I like the look of the cat.  In the final version, he didn’t change much.
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I should note this cat is based on my 21-pound cat, Simon. I’m pretty sure he drinks 5-Hour Lethargy.
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I recently decided to start running in the morning instead of trying to run at night. For me, running at night during the winter rarely works out. After working all day, commuting and helping get our daughter ready for bed, I am exhausted. I’m a morning person, so I figured running before work is the best way for me to get (and stay) in shape. Today was Day 1 of the new schedule.

My alarm clock went off at 4:50. Then I hit the snooze button.  I don’t remember hitting the snooze button. The alarm went off again at 4:55, which is when I groggily realized: Oh, yeah. I need to get up.  My wife must’ve been reading my mind because a second later she muttered, “dontyouneedtogetup?” 

I put on my running clothes and reflector vest, and then grabbed a flashlight. I was out the door by 5:00.

With the exception of races, I don't think I've ever I’ve gotten up this early to go running. Here are three things that surprised me:

1. Nobody else was out running. Or walking. I thought I’d see at least one other runner out there. Or even someone walking their dog. Somebody to give the Hey-how’s-it-going-you’re-also-up-early head nod to. I did see a fat woman in a blue bathrobe picking up her newspaper, but that doesn’t count. And I wish I didn’t see that.

2. There were no cars on the main thoroughfare in my neighborhood. None. Not even a bus or a delivery truck. I thought about running in the middle of the street for a couple blocks, just for the novelty of it. But I didn’t. That would’ve been stupid.

3. It felt good. Actually, it felt great.

I got home at 5:40 -- a 40-minute run. Not a bad start. I’m going to do the early morning runs on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and get up at 5:00am to draw cartoons on Tuesday and Thursday. So here’s to running and drawing cartoons early in the morning!

Thank God for coffee.
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Possessed Puzzle 11/30/2009
 
Recently my sister gave my wife Katrina and me few puzzles her children had outgrown.  One of them is a wooden “sound puzzle.” Here’s what it looks like:
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The child pulls out all the animal pieces and when they put each one back over the matching animal, it makes the sound for that animal. When you fit the bird piece into the bird slot, the sensor activates and it chirps. The cat meows. The dark barks. The child has fun and learns at the same time. That’s the idea.

When our 17-month-old daughter Kate started playing with the puzzle, she instantly loved it. It was great. But then the puzzle started messing with me.

A couple weeks ago, I came home late and Katrina was upstairs. I closed the front door, walked past Kate’s toys in the living room and suddenly heard “ROWF! ROWF! ROWF!” It scared the crap out of me. A second later, I realized it was just the animal puzzle.

Over the next several days, it kept making noises by itself—sometimes it would chirp, sometimes it would meow, sometimes it would bark. Eventually the puzzle settled on the bullfrog sound. Whenever I’d walk in the room, it would croak. Loudly.

One night, as we were getting ready for bed, Katrina said, “That animal puzzle keeps making noises when I’m near it.”

I said, “It’s been doing that to me too. Every time I’m in the living room, it makes the bullfrog noise.”

“For me, it’s the guinea pig,” she replied.

“You always get the same animal too?”

“Yeah. And just when I think it’s not going to happen – it happens.” She paused for a few seconds and added, “I wonder if it’s your dad trying to communicate with us.”

My dad passed away six years ago and whenever either of us experiences what could be paranormal activity—lights turning on by themselves, objects moving by themselves, etc.—Katrina suggests that it might be my dad letting us know he’s around. While I believe in ghosts, I don’t think my dad would try to communicate through a kid’s puzzle.

“I doubt it,” I said.

“You never know. It’s certainly interesting that the puzzle makes a specific noise for each of us.”

As Katrina finished putting her clothes in the dresser, we were both silent. Then she turned and said, “Did you turn off the front light?”

“I think so.”

“Could you go check?”

“Okay,” I said. “But if the puzzle makes the frog noise while I’m down there, that would be a little too freaky.”

As I walked downstairs, I yelled “Hey Puzzle!” I wanted to catch it off guard.

I walked past the living room to the front door and opened it. The front light was on, so I turned it off. Then I turned around and glanced over at Kate’s little table. Sitting silently on the table in the dark corner of the room was the puzzle. It looked ominous. I walked away and was near the foot of the stairs when the puzzle let out a loud “CROOOAAK! CROOOAAK! CROOOAAK!”

I ran up the stairs faster than usual. The stupid puzzle was messing with my head.

When I got to bed, Katrina came up with a more plausible theory about the puzzle: perhaps the sensors are light sensitive. This theory was corroborated the next day by my brother-in-law, Sean.

“The puzzle is definitely light sensitive,” Sean said. “It would meow at me. It’s a little freaky.”

“Yeah, it is.” I said. “For me, it always makes the bullfrog noise.”

“Really?” Sean said. “It’s always the bullfrog?”

“Yeah. It just did it last night.”  I decided not to mention the part about me running upstairs like a little girl.  

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, the puzzle was silent. No croaking, no barking, no meowing—nothing. Then early this morning, as I walked into the kitchen to make coffee, I heard what sounded like an indignant mouse. “SQUEAK! SQUEAK! SQUEAK!” Even though I knew why it was making the noise, it still was a little creepy.

It could be worse, though. At least it's not a talking Elmo doll that makes death threats.
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