SQUALK TALK

PILLOW SQUALK

I already know what I want for Christmas. I saw it in the Brookstone catalog. The manufacturers maintain this is NOT some lame novelty product, but a boon to mankind. I’m not so sure about womankind. It was this provocative headline that caught my eye:

                                           AT LONG LAST, A REMOTE CONTROL PILLOW

Someone finally had the brains to sew a TV remote inside a throw pillow. Brilliant! The people who wasted valuable time thinking up Windows 7 must be kicking themselves. Really, what man hasn’t spent 15 minutes looking for his clicker, then wondered why he couldn’t switch channels with something he never misplaces—like his can of beer.

Never again will you have to ask:  “Where’s the remote?” Instead you’ll be asking why there is mustard on the volume button.  One fan commented, “It looks like the regular pillow I cuddle with.” Okay, that is a little creepy, but I was still intrigued.

There are some safety warnings:  Like a minor possibility of being electrocuted if you drool on the thing.  The device shuts off after two hours of inactivity—not gonna happen because most men are persistent channel surfers.  However, falling asleep on the pillow is a pressing problem.  A few customers complained  that one minute they were watching a documentary about FDR on the History Channel and minutes later woke up to Snooki on Jersey Shore.

The people at Brookstone also claim that the item is a great conversation starter.

“Hey, Joe, is that pillow also a remote?”

“Yes, Tom, it is.”

“Please pass the cheese puffs.”

As I mentioned, the big benefit is that you will never again lose the remote. Of course, I came out of Kohl’s the other day and spent 20 minutes looking for my car, and I played golf Thursday and lost six clubs, so I’m not optimistic this is a surefire solution for me. Nevertheless, the designers state that the gadget is idiot proof. However, if you spent forty bucks for this contraption, it may already be too late.

The product website boasts the pillow can control 500 devices. I went around the house and I could only find six or eight devices in all our rooms. Maybe if I counted the bread box and our antique magazine rack, I could get that up to ten.  My electric razor and toothbrush are probably considered devices, but I wouldn’t want those things revving up in my bathroom unless I’m present to monitor the situation.

My wife wondered if she could start the dishwasher with the pillow, but I had to put my foot down. This kind of laziness is ruining our country, although it would be awesome to get Orville Redenbacher popping in the microwave right before the movie starts.

Mary Ellen and I decided not to wait for Christmas and ordered the pillow remote online. We don’t have the same tastes in television shows so we often end up having a little spat about what we should watch on our big screen TV.   Now that we have this new cushy gadget, it has added some spice and excitement to our marriage. Never underestimate the value of a good pillow fight.

TALKING HEADS

Mary Ellen and I were relaxing on our back deck and after swatting a few mosquitos, I said, “You know, sweetheart, we should look into screening in this area.”

“Yes, Dick, you’ve been saying that every year for the past 15 years.”

A few minutes later I mentioned how quickly the summer passes once July 4th weekend is over.

“I know, you say that every year around this time.”

I also remarked that the neighbors don’t grill out as often as we do. Apparently I had made this observation before.  Several  times.

Suddenly, I felt this great pressure on me. After thirty-one years, I didn’t have a single new thought to offer.  I had always taken great pride in my creativity, but clearly I was no longer snappy with the repartee. Several moments of uneasy silence followed. Mary Ellen finally spoke…

“When it gets this hot, I think about cutting my hair shorter.”

“Where have I heard that before?” I asked.

At that moment, we both realized we needed a way to jazz up our conversations. Mary Ellen had an idea: “I read this article in the doctor’s office, I think it was in Cosmo, that might offer a solution.”

I’ve seen some of those covers of Cosmopolitan and I was just praying that was where she saw it. Phooey, it was from Good Housekeeping. Mary Ellen said the writer recommended that longtime married couples should pretend they are going out on a first date. That would make for an exciting and potentially romantic evening.

It seemed like a silly idea at first, but I agreed it was worth a try. On Friday night I asked Mary Ellen out for the next evening. She was annoyed because I waited until the last minute, assuming she didn’t already have Saturday night plans.  To be really suave, I went outside the house Saturday night and rang the doorbell, like it was a real date. I thought that would make a big impression on her, but she’s no dummy and realized I had simply forgotten my keys.

We drove off in the car. “What shall we talk about tonight, Dick?”

“If this were a first date, we’d probably chat about movies we’ve each seen.”

“Okay, great idea.  I just saw Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.”

“I saw that, too.”

“I know, Dick, we saw it together.”

“Gone to any good restaurants lately, Mary Ellen?”               

“No, my husband likes to go to the same places all the time.”

“Mary Ellen, you are not supposed to have a husband. This is a first date. What kind of a jerk do you think I am, going out with a married woman?  Let’s try travel. Have you ever seen the Pyramids?”

“We went last year. How could you forget?”

“I didn’t forget. I’m making conversation. That was the whole point of this.”

“Well, it’s getting too weird for me. I feel like I’m dating a man who’s lost his memory.

We tried everything that people would chat about when getting to know each other: music, religion, politics. Honestly, we didn’t hit it off, but there must have been something brewing on some level because despite a dismal first date, we both ended up back at my place.

Grand Vacation

Grand Vacation

The Wolfsies have returned from a weeklong vacation to the Grand Canyon. It’s the only place in America where you’re allowed to drag your kid to the precipice of one the world’s deepest chasms, but they put you in the slammer if you feed a squirrel.

Any aspirations our small family had about making the descent to the bottom were squashed when I went into a gift shop on the South Rim. I asked the clerk to recommend a book about this National Park. Hold onto your hat—actually, hold onto anything you can. The number one seller is: Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon. What a charming choice for fans of light summer reading.

The authors do not restrict their colorful travelogue to unscheduled plunges to the bottom. They want you to know that with a little bit of poor planning, you can also die of dehydration or starvation. Rattlesnake bites, driving off the edge and eating poisonous plants are more fun options to choose from.

Writers Myers and Ghiglieri want you to know how safe the Canyon is if you are careful, but the book seems oddly misplaced in the gift shop so close to, well, the edge. There aren’t pamphlets relating the history of scaldings on the counter of McDonald’s or brochures about whimsical power tool mishaps attached to your chain saw purchases. I’m glad they didn’t think of this unique marketing gimmick when the Pinto was hot (so to speak).

There are many entertaining chapters in the book: bear attacks, drownings, and rock slides, to name a few. So many ways to buy the farm and still enjoy the grandeur of nature. Maybe I’m an optimist but I look at it this way: only a few hundred deaths in six million years. That’s not a bad record.

You want to hear more, don’t you? In one touching chapter a man makes tea for his wife out of a deadly canyon flower and they both die within minutes. In another section, a woman tries to pet a mountain lion. There’s clearly a fine line between bad luck and stupidity. Then there’s the elderly couple who got lost in their 1996 Taurus on a back road. They were found dehydrated, but still alive. They had no water, but a week’s supply of Depends. I’d call that ironic.

The chapter on suicide makes it clear this really is the place to go if you have a flair for the dramatic. It is rumored that one guy who met his maker by driving off a cliff had complained at the gate that the entry fee was exorbitant and he would never come back again. No idle threat there.

Travelers from abroad love the Grand Canyon. Europeans winter in Arizona. Asians summer in the Canyon. Americans usually fall there. About 600 feet. That’s just an average, though; your actual plummet may vary.

The beauty of the Grand Canyon is overwhelming and we really did have a great time. When we left, I packed the trunk full of water and drove slowly along the winding roads, our GPS leading the way. I enjoyed that book, but I didn’t want to be in the second edition.