Ghost Posts on a Big Day with bonus Confessions of a nervous puker

Today is my kidlet’s birthday. It’s also the day of her class trip to the zoo, as it worked out, and thankfully the school at which I teach is on Spring Break, so it’s all come synchronicitously together in order that I could chaperone the trip and spend the day with her classmates and her. Which is where I’ve been all day. Unless …

When I was a kid, there were no less than three separate occasions on which I was supposed to take a field trip to the zoo with my school and got so excited the morning of the trip that I threw up and was told I could not go.

Consequently, my first zoo visit was in Berlin at age 18. No regrets, because it was a kickass experience, as well as informative: did you know that one of the zoo’s elephants was actually the first casualty of the Allied bombing of Berlin? Tell A Friend!

Well … that’s a pretty bleak fact, any way you look at it, really. Maybe keep it among us. I’m sorry I even said anything. Lately I’ve been blurting out awful things: I don’t know what’s going on with me.

As an example, I was next going to tell you that, growing up, besides vomiting my way out of zoo visits, I also got sick on my birthday two different times, and, in one instance, my mother briskly carried out the party in the backyard without me while I knelt on my bed and watched out the window of my room, but that’s bleak, too. Then I was going to say that I still throw up all the time when I’m nervous, upset, or excited, and it’s not an uncommon sight to see me roll down my window and have to puke out the car while behind the wheel, driving on my way to some place or person I feel Ways about that get my guts all knit up, but that’s even worse. Jesus wept, this is supposed to be about my kidlet’s birthday! I’m giving up.

Here’s hoping that tomorrow (today) finds me on the trip as a chaperone, and not so excited that I got sick and the teacher and my mom made me stay home. Again.

Unlikely G and Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: God bless Bob Barker

(Please do.)

Major happy birthday wishes to superfly dope-fresh Unlikely G, Mr. Bob Barker. Never been a huge game show guy but I love the dude.

American readers might know that Bob Barker, the longest-running host of a game show ever (The Price is Right — one of my sorority sisters cleaned house on that show), ended every episode of his show with the sign-off line, “Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered,” a tradition his replacement after retirement, comedian Drew Carey, has continued. Thus I have a long association of spaying and neutering with Bob Barker. It’s an honor most would call dubious but I have a feeling that he would probably be quite happy with it. And today he turns 87!

Top five things you might not know about this gentle silver G:

Grew up on a reservation in South Dakota.

At 73, became the oldest MTV Movie Award recipient, winning Best Fight for his golf-course brawl with Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore.

Bowed out of longtime hosting duties for the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants when his request that the organization stop giving fur gifts was denied.

Gave $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation for the outfitting and secret launch of a ship (since renamed the MV Bob Barker) which interdicted the Japanese whaling fleet.

Has two notorious beefs: a) with the Qualla Boundary Cherokee over their treatment of bears in their zoo, the long public fights over which have resulted in Chief Michell Hicks threatening to ban the rabble rouser and PETA from the res; and b) with formerly close pal Betty White over the relocation of an elephant from Los Angeles to a sanctuary in San Andreas.

It seems argumentative and counterintuitive to fight, but if I have learned nothing else from the rap world, it is that BAMF’s gotta have beefs, and you must admire someone tenacious enough to keep up an argument with a fellow bad-ass like Ms. White. They are both good people who are genuine friends to animals, and I predict they will patch it up, if they have not already.

So send a big birthday wish in to the universe for Bob Barker, an old school Unlikely G from way back!

Daily Batman: It’s Batman. On An Elephant.

It’s Adam West. On an elephant.

(Image caption reference from long-previous post. I told you it would appear again and again.)

Pachyderm-it-up,
pachyderm-it-in;
let me begin
I came to win,
battle me, that’s a sin …