 
### EROTICA FOR SPORTS FANS

A collection of humor

by

### MojoFiction

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 MojoFiction

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment and certainly not ours. Seeing as how it's free, this ebook may be given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, go ahead.

Thank you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE: ON THE SUBJECT OF BEING A GUY

THE POWER WASHER - SYMBOL OF MANLINESS EVER SINCE THE INVENTION OF THE PATIO

SO HE DIDN'T PROPOSE - THE REAL REASONS ... EXPOSED!

IN WHICH WE DISCOVER TIME TRAVEL WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY DISPROVING THE EXISTENCE OF TIME AND, THEREFORE, PROVING THAT MEN ARE SMARTER THAN WOMEN

THE TELLTALE TOILET AND OTHER LABOR DAY TALES

AND ON THE 8TH DAY HE SAID, "LET THERE BE AWARDS"

HOW TO SURVIVE THE HOLIDAYS

STARBUCKS + OPRAH = ENLIGHTENMENT

REDNECK WITH A LIGHTSABER

PART TWO: ON THE SUBJECT OF SPORTS...

DISC GOLF HERO

SPARTAN RACE! HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE CHEESEBURGER SLIDERS...

MOJOFICTION'S #1 SUPER-AWESOME YOUTH BASKETBALL ALL-STAR GAME

EROTICA FOR SPORTS FANS (AKA 69 SECONDS FOR HIGH-STICKING; AKA 50 YARDS OF PLAY)

CHICAGO BEARS TRY TO GO 1-1, END UP 2-0 - AFTER GLOBAL PROTESTS, RULING ON THE FIELD STANDS

MOJOFICTION VS. ZOMBIES!

ST. LOUIS CARDINALS FANS UNLEASH MASTER PLAN VS. CUBS

PART THREE: ON THE SUBJECT OF FATHERHOOD...

NATURE TRAIL OF DOOM!

NIGHT AT THE [FIELD] MUSEUM

A TOAD... IN A CAR

JUST WHAT ARE TODAY'S KIDS THINKING, ANYWAY? AND SHOULD WE HAVE ASKED?

THE LONG FATHER'S DAY - CELEBRATING ALL THINGS DAD (PART 1)

THE LONG FATHER'S DAY - CELEBRATING ALL THINGS DAD (PART 3)

THE LONG FATHER'S DAY - CELEBRATING ALL THINGS DAD (PART 5)

THE DAD FILES - EPISODE VIII: THE OFFSPRING STRIKES BACK

EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW I LEARNED FROM PLAYING VIDEO GAMES UNTIL 4 IN THE MORNING AND DON'T TRY AND TELL ME IT WASN'T WORTH IT BECAUSE I TURNED OUT PERFECTLY NORMAL

PART FOUR: ON THE SUBJECT OF CHICAGO...

I'LL TAKE THE BLONDE: A CHICAGO CRIME STORY

MAYBE ALFRED HITCHCOCK WAS ON TO SOMETHING...

NORMAL ROCKWELL, WHERE ART THOU?

THE FULL CHICAGO SPORTING EVENT EXPERIENCE

CHICAGO IN A GLASS

CHICAGO IN AUTUMN = FUN (probably)

PART FIVE: ON THE SUBJECT OF BOOKS AND STUFF...

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S STAR WARS (A Book Review)

A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH DOUGLAS ADAMS

TOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL: BLACKLIST: AFTERMATH (a book review)

REVENGE OF THE FANTASY NOVEL - PART 2: THE REVENGE!

FOREWORD

MojoFiction was originally intended to be a simple pen name. My full-length novels are written under that name, but the "voice" is mine and the novels reflect the individual characters in those pages. On the other hand, MojoFiction as it relates to my humor blog, mojofiction.com, is a construct – a fictional character I created to deliver humorous essays. Almost everything on my blog is written as this character and you should know that this collection of humorous stories comes from my blog. In the MojoFiction persona I usually refer to myself in the 3rd-person plural, which might be confusing at first, so consider yourself warned.

**Just so you know** : when I published these online in their original form, they included super-awesome, funny pictures that I can't include here for licensing reasons.

As to why there are a couple of seemingly random book reviews at the end of this ebook... I just thought they were funny.

Thank you,

Jeremy Engelbrecht – AKA MojoFiction

# PART ONE: ON THE SUBJECT OF BEING A GUY...

THE POWER WASHER - SYMBOL OF MANLINESS EVER SINCE THE INVENTION OF THE PATIO

HAVE YOU EVER been doing dirty, sweaty, outdoor work that was so manly that you knew, as soon as you started doing it, that it would be a testosterone-fueled, blazing sun of epic manliness, burning so bright that you would have to ask your neighbors to keep their wives inside if they wanted to keep their marriages together? Then, when you were done with the job you felt so empowered that you couldn't even sit down to enjoy a beer? Instead, you walked around the house for an hour looking for other manly things to do, only to see the household problems fixing themselves as they came into contact with your radiating manly aura?

Okay, our man-o-meter may not have reached 11, but yesterday we here at MojoFiction were power-washing our back deck, and we felt pretty manly about it (the man-o-meter never dipped below 8, honest). But it wasn't just the power-washing that was making us manly. It all started a few days ago...

A few days ago (like we said), we went on a trip to Home Depot, which is pretty manly in-and-of itself. We were doing some garden-...uhm, landscaping, but realized we needed a few things. So, we hopped over to one of the thirty Home Depots in our area for some additional top-soil, some bricks, a spade to split our hostas with, and other manly accoutrements.

Before going further, we would like to openly complain about the weight of those bags of top-soil. It's dirt for goodness sake, why's it so heavy? And then it was getting all over our clothes and causing a mess and we just don't like it.

Anyway, while we were doing manly things at Home Depot we remembered that our back deck needed some attention (and has for a few years now). So we rolled our cart into the aisle displaying power washers. Immediately, we received a text from man-central acknowledging our shrewd thinking. There were a lot to choose from, but we narrowed it down quickly because we didn't want to mess around with the gas-powered washers because those scare us. So, like any man would, we looked over the electric washers, found the cheapest one available, and asked for help getting it into our cart.

Back at the house, we finished up our landscaping project, which included closing up a hole that lets animals crawl under our house. (That's a whole other story. It involves skunks and it's hilarious.) Then we turned our attention to the back deck. We had an old propane grill that really needed to go. So we broke it down using our secret stash of manly tools, only to discover that some wasps were building a nest inside it. We screamed and ran inside, closing the door behind us until the wasps went away, then we took the grill out front with the rest of the trash for pick-up.

This leads us to yesterday, where we finally got a chance to light that power washer up. There's something to be said for holding an eight-foot-long hose in your hands that's operating at about 1-trillion PSI, which, as you may know, is enough to bore a hole through the Earth and is, therefore, pretty f@#$ing manly (Just don't cross the stream with another power washer or you'll rip apart dimensions and Gozer will return to conquer us all). We hooked up the power washer and brought it out to the deck, where we proceeded to blast away dirt and grime and old paint with a high-pressure stream of water that we knew was really just an extension of our manliness. When we finished, we turned the nozzle to the highest pressure and gouged our signature into the last deck board.

That done, we instantly fell in love with our new power washer. Really, is there anything it can't do?

Back deck? - Power Wash

Front porch and sidewalk? - Power Wash

That annoying robin squawking at 5 in the morning? - Power Wash

Those neighborhood kids who make all that noise? - Power Wash

Our computer has a virus? - Power Wash

Could our power washer broker world peace? We would like to find out.

Did our power washer rescue that cute little kitten stuck in that tree? Well, it certainly helped it get down...

We plan on using our power washer as often as possible this spring and summer ... and fall and winter. It reminds us that, sometimes, it's good to be a guy. And it's good to remind yourself that you're a guy by doing simple things in a complicated, and therefore, manly way. Like buying expensive and dangerous equipment just to wash your deck.

Man and Power Washer, is there a more sacred relationship in the world? We hope so, because now it's starting to sound creepy.

SO HE DIDN'T PROPOSE - THE REAL REASONS ... EXPOSED!

A FEW DAYS ago the staff here at MojoFiction came across a news article on the World Wide Web that detailed the 10 reasons "He hasn't proposed to you yet." Or something like that. We were shocked to discover that these 10 reasons had absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever, as noted by reason number 2: he can't remember your name; reason number 5: he already had a golf outing scheduled for that day and it's not possible to change the tee time; and reason number 7: he thought you were from that maid service he uses once a month since you kept picking up after him and he just naturally assumed that you would realize you were only getting paid to clean on Saturday and eventually you would go back to your home office.

As the internet's appointed defender of well-built, manly, extremely handsome, yet thoughtful and sensitive men everywhere, we have decided to set the record straight on why your man hasn't proposed yet. Given the importance of this subject, we decided to the best way to get the required information for our study was the old-fashioned way, with boots on the ground. So we put our boots on the ground and walked over to our computer for a detailed Google search, and here is what we discovered.

Top 10 Reasons He Hasn't Popped the Questions Yet (real version, not the fantasy version you might find on other internet sites):

**He's looking for a bigger diamond to replace the center stone on the amazing engagement ring he bought** \- It's amazing how often this happens. See, he bought the ring with what he realized later was only a puny 3-carat, IF-quality, Princess-Cut diamond center stone that blended in too much with the diamonds in-laid into the white-gold band. He's been spending his lunch hour scouring Jeweler's Row looking for a replacement. Don't worry, he'll propose soon. Probably during that romantic dinner he just made reservations for at Le Louis XV Alain Ducasse at Hôtel de Paris in Monaco.

**He's waiting while he saves up enough money for a month-long honeymoon trip that would put British royalty to shame** \- Realizing just how special you are, he knows that a simple trip to Tuscany would hardly cut it. So he's currently contracting a charter to sail down the Rhône Valley in France, where you'll visit famous chateaus and drink French wine right from the source. Then it's off to the Norwegian Fjords, followed by a trip to Ireland to see the Giant's Causeway and several other destinations he wasn't letting anyone know about. So just give it a couple of months, it will be worth the wait.

**He's afraid that, if you say yes, he'll be so happy that he might literally explode** \- This is all about safety. He's very concerned that his sudden combustion due to otherworldly happiness might harm you, what with the shrapnel and all. Just show up at his place on Saturday night wearing a hard hat, safety goggles, and a Kevlar vest. Guaranteed proposal.

**He loves your parents** \- A lot of guys admitted to this. He's stunned by how well he gets along with your entire family and he's concerned that he'll constantly invite your mother over for tea, or just to see the grandkids. He already wants to hang out with your sister and her husband and their delightful triplets every other weekend and he's sure that you will get really annoyed with all this family time pretty quickly and he doesn't want to start the marriage off on the wrong foot. Our advice? Tell him it's okay to hang out with his buddies on Friday night, drinking beer and taking the truck to the local mud field. That should seal the deal.

**There's just not enough housework for him to do** \- Every woman has a right to fill out her very own "Honey-do" list, and your man passionately supports this. But he realizes that once you're married and he buys you that ocean-side mansion in Malibu, he'll come home from a long day of work in the city, tired from the long commute and worn out, and there won't be any real housework to do because it's a brand-new property and your butler has taken care of most of the daily chores. He specifically ordered cable TV without any sports channels just so he wouldn't be distracted from the household work you would assign him. He doesn't want to deprive you of the joy of the "Honey-do" list, so he's waiting a few years until that mansion becomes a fixer-upper. You hold on to that man; he's a keeper!

**He's afraid his intense desire to spend quality marriage time exploring different shopping malls every Saturday, gardening any time the sun is out, and gossiping with the girls over coffee about what Jennifer said to Lisa when she heard what Lisa said to Cindy about that thing with Frank, will interfere with your Facebook time** \- He knows how important your social life is. He doesn't want you to feel like you have to give up being you just so he can feel needed. If you want him to propose, just assure him that when he eats that spicy food you told him not to and it gives him explosive diarrhea, you will update your friends with all the details about it while he's in the bathroom and NOT while he's still at the table.

**He doesn't want you to think you're just a housewife** \- He's thrilled with your successful career in the district attorney's office putting the bad guys away. But he's concerned that his status as a billionaire playboy prince with his own fleet of luxury yachts and airplanes dedicated exclusively to transporting him around the globe to fight international hunger, bring free education to the poorer communities of the world, and broker world peace, will overshadow your accomplishments. Rest assured, it will not. He is prepared to give up all his money and yachts and planes, and even cut off his dark, thick, silky, GQ-model hair, so you can be the bread-winner. Just let him know that it's okay for him to make these sacrifices and he'll be taking you to the Justice of the Peace in no time.

**Disneyland is not available for rent until 2018** \- He wants you to have that special wedding, so he's put in the reservation now for the entire Disneyland theme park, where he plans to have the ceremony held at the Sleeping Beauty Castle. You just have to wait a few short years. You can do it!

**He doesn't want to rush you** \- Guys know that today's woman values her independence. When you're ready, he's ready. So he's just waiting for the "Ready" signal. See? You're in control. No worries!

**He's in love with your best friend and they've been dating behind your back** \- Sorry.

So there you have it. If you're scoring at home, the first 9 reasons are: he's insecure. The other reason is: he's a jerk (and so is your best friend).

Who knew?

### IN WHICH WE DISCOVER TIME TRAVEL WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY DISPROVING THE EXISTENCE OF TIME AND, THEREFORE, PROVING THAT MEN ARE SMARTER THAN WOMEN

EVER WONDER WHY Doctor Who (the smartest guy in the universe) always has a female companion, but he never has a relationship with her? That's right, modesty. But let us explain. See, this whole thing really began when we accidentally discovered time travel. And, unlike Hot Tub Time Machine (or Doctor Who for that matter), this really happened.

One of the main arteries into Chicago from the north is Interstate 94. Recently, we were driving in to the office via Interstate 94 when we passed a traffic alert sign that overhangs the interstate. That morning the sign said travel time to the loop (downtown) was just 20 minutes. Since we were already going about 80 mph, we figured we'd cut a few minutes off that time. About ten minutes later, we passed under another traffic alert sign, which kindly informed us that the travel time to the loop was now 30 minutes. By driving for 10 minutes we actually added an extra 10 minutes to our driving time. The only logical explanation was time travel. Though our car appeared to be moving forwards in space, we were clearly travelling backwards in time, thus allowing us to experience even more outstanding interstate driving. Only in Chicago! Luckily, we were paying attention to this cosmic phenomenon as it was happening and we were able to use the extra time to enjoy a second bowl of Cheerios before leaving the house for work ... again!

Normally, we would have simply accepted that time travel officially exists in the state of Illinois and left it at that. But we just spent the last week-and-a-half on a long vacation, enjoying the native culture and cuisine of the country of Texas. While there, we had plenty of time to have our mind blown by Jim Holt's 2012 book, Why Does the World Exist? which brought us back to time travel and really got us thinking.

At least we think we had plenty of time. Now we're not so sure...

Why Does the World Exists? is a philosophy book that attempts to answer this question: Why is there something instead of nothing? However, the first thing the book posits is that to get to something it helps to understand nothing. But true nothingness is almost impossible to fathom, let alone prove. Early in the book, Mr. Holt looks at the conundrum of understanding nothing by turning to numbers. After all, mathematicians will tell you that math is the universal language and they've been solving problems with math forever.

16-year-old Billy: "Sorry coach, I just can't hit that three-point shot."

Coach: "Just add 4 and divide by the cosine."

Billy: "It worked! Now I never miss! Thanks math!"

Look at the following equation provided by the book: 0=1-1 (or 0=1+(-1)). Notice that it's not 1-1=0. Mr. Holt asks the reader to picture the equation "...not as 1 and -1 coming together to make 0, but 0 peeling apart ... into 1 and -1." You had nothing, now you have two somethings. Opposites that, theoretically, can cancel each other out, like matter and antimatter. The book goes on to quote Oxford chemist Peter Atkins, saying "Opposites are distinguished by their direction of travel in time." So, it's possible that the universe sprung forth due to the sudden existence of time.

Now this is the part where MojoFiction goes off-book. But, as far as we can tell, if time is travelling both backwards and forwards simultaneously from the starting point (with -1 denoting backwards time), in order to balance the equation and account for nothingness, then time must be circular because backwards time must be travelling to some point that already happened, otherwise, what is it travelling backwards to? Logically, the end point for backwards time must be the beginning, where it would run into forwards time. Only if forwards time is infinite can backwards time travel infinitely backwards. Assuming that forwards time is finite (that -1 and 1 can mesh back together and form 0), you would only have to wait for forwards time to come back to the beginning in order to end up in the past and effectively time travel (granted, you might be a little old). Unfortunately, there is a mathematical figure not discussed in the book that gets in the way of all this happiness: i.

In mathematics, i represents the imaginary number (yeah, THE imaginary number). The imaginary number is further defined as the square root of -1, or √-1. If i is the square root of -1, then i² = -1. If -1 is made of purely of imaginary numbers, it stands to reason that -1 itself could be an imaginary number, meaning that backwards time, notated as -1, would be imaginary. If backwards time is imaginary, then forwards time either has no opposite and nothing does not exist, or forwards time is itself an illusion. Your choice, but whatever you believe, the point is, you have a grasp of nothingness.

How does this make men smarter, and what was that about Doctor Who?

Doctor Who doesn't have relationships because his ego is big enough as it is and he can't handle any more compliments. See, every woman in a relationship with a man at some point tells her man that he understands nothing. Men, this is the ultimate concession in the battle of the sexes. She is clearly respecting your transcendent depth of knowledge of the universe by, however unwittingly, admitting that she only understands something. You, on the other hand, understand a far greater truth: nothing. Really, is there anything manlier than that?

POST SCRIPT: The time-travelling interstate in Chicago, Interstate 94, is usually simply I-94. Perhaps it should be ... i-94?

THE TELLTALE TOILET AND OTHER LABOR DAY TALES

EVER HAVE ONE of those days when everything that can go wrong does? We here at MojoFiction would like to officially call that day Tuesday... and Wednesday. Okay, fine, let's go ahead and throw Monday in there, too.

MONDAY NIGHT

We tried to go to sleep at a reasonable hour on Monday night because Tuesday happened to be the one day of the entire year that we had to be at the office, no excuses. That's because MojoFiction works at a broker-dealer and a regulatory agency was dropping by for a friendly visit and we're the Chief Compliance Officer. We won't bore you with the details of the industry because it tends... to... make... zzzzzzz. Oops, sorry, we drooled a little on the keyboard.

So we had just turned off all the lights, crawled into bed, and felt sleep was imminent, when, somewhere in the back of our sleepy mind, we recognized a quiet sound.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Great.

We slunk out of bed and, after a brief hunt, we discovered that the toilet in the half-bathroom on the main floor was happily dripping away into the laundry room below it. The great thing about this discovery was the added bonus of realizing that the drip was not coming directly out of a plumbing fixture, but from the sub-flooring, which meant that the wood was most likely saturated with... liquids -- and that could be a much bigger problem.

Of course, being manly, we wanted nothing more than to immediately tear that bathroom up and see the extent of the damage and fix it immediately with our manly skills. But it's a hard-wood floor and that would entail removing the toilet and tearing up the floor boards, which would be a loud and time-consuming job and we had to be awake for work the next day. Also, we didn't have any tools, which probably isn't that manly (so don't tell anyone). We ended up turning off the water to the bathroom (+1 man-point for knowing how) and going to sleep (+3 man-points for laziness-but-with-a-totally-viable-excuse). Only we couldn't sleep because all we could think about was that stupid bathroom. So we went in to work on Tuesday bleary-eyed and grumpy.

TUESDAY

The day went by quickly thanks to the stress of the regulators. They wrapped-up by telling us they'd be in touch with the official word about how badly we were screwed. Then we informed our boss that we were taking a personal day Wednesday to do things with our toilet and, while we probably shouldn't have worded it that way, we went home immediately and got to work.

TUESDAY NIGHT

You know what the staff here at MojoFiction hates? Wax rings. We've removed a toilet before, but somehow we never pull up that wax ring properly and we always smoosh gross-looking waxy stuff all over the place. This wax ring was particularly gross and we had to burn the rubber gloves we wore while removing it. Unfortunately, we couldn't do anything else because of the aforementioned lack of tools, so we made some dinner and watched reruns of NCIS (+8 man-points for owning a large flat-screen TV). But the day couldn't end without our body reminding us of our chronic cough.

We've had this enjoyable cough for the past 6 weeks. We thought it was going away, but, like the Transformers movies, just when you think you're out, they make another sequel. So we made a note to call the doctor's office in the morning. Then we stayed up late playing Skyrim because, what the heck, we weren't going into the office the next day.

WEDNESDAY

We made an appointment with the doctor for the afternoon. Then we headed out to Sears to buy tools.

We bought:

Circular Saw

Miter Saw

Saw Horse

Sea Horse

Seesaw

Ear Plugs

Pry Bar

Safety Glasses

Chisel

Light Bulb (for a different project, but we broke the bulb immediately after arriving at home and we don't know why we're telling you this...)

Then we went home and started sawing into the wood planks and pulling them up. It wasn't pretty underneath and we took a photo to show our co-workers, but we won't show you because this is a family website. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been, so we're letting it dry out before cleaning it up and putting new wood down this weekend, which we think is a fantastic way to spend Labor Day. Really @#$!ing fantastic. Then, of course, there was the matter of the cough.

We walked into the doctor's office figuring it would be one of those ironic times when you can't cough to save your life, even though you "have a cough." Of course, that's exactly what happened. The receptionist politely asked for the co-pay up front, in case we didn't make it out alive. We obliged and the doc called us in. After a series of tests the doctor politely informed us that he had no idea what the deal was, but here, take some drugs and enjoy life. Actually, he suspected allergies, but also a possible nasal issue causing dripping down our throat. And he did prescribe some Claritin and asked us to come back in a week. Then he asked us if we'd let him teach a lesson to his new assistant using our mystery cough condition. The young assistant was strangely enthusiastic about seeing what was wrong with people up close and happy to agree out loud with all the weird things going on in my cough-ridden throat as the doctor shined in a light and asked everyone in the world to take a look and comment.

THE CHERRY ON TOP

The weekend isn't here yet, so we still have bathroom work to look forward to. But just after we got home from work this evening, we realized we forgot to pay the local water bill. It was due today.

Their office closed two hours before we got home and now we have to pay the "past due" amount.

Happy Labor Day!

### AND ON THE 8TH DAY HE SAID, "LET THERE BE AWARDS"

WE WEREN'T GOING to post anything until after the new year, but there may have been some developments in the end-of-year awards category. You know, probably. We're still trying to figure it out. But when you're a super-famous, trendsetting, international magnate like MojoFiction, these things happen. If we could count how many times we were pictured on the cover of a magazine in 2013 alone, it would be an amazing feat because we really have no idea since we never sign up for those free subscriptions they try to push on us at that F.Y.E. store in the mall. But our guess is we were featured on tons of them, and since no one reads magazines anymore we don't think you can prove otherwise.

Our point is it's awards season. That wonderful time of year when everyone who's famous gets recognized for something (probably for thinking up awards). Even we are not immune. See, this all started earlier this year when we won the coveted "GQ Anonymous Reader of the Year award," surprisingly beating out someone or other for the honor (we're sure we bested about a million people).

Best of all, the award comes with a free six-month magazine subscription, which we've always wanted but didn't know how to get. We didn't mention this award previously because we don't like to brag. But it's the holidays, which means by law you are required to forgive us. So we're bragging.

On top of that, just last month our very own son (the one we're aware of, anyway) earned one of the Cub Scout's highest honors, the patch for "Super-Awesomest Dad in the History of, Like, the Entire Universe." We weren't even aware this patch existed until last month when we told our son that that's what it meant and, despite his repeated protests, he had to tell anyone who asked that that's what it meant. He proceeded to display an epic face-palm which, as you may know, is secret Cub Scout code for "Here we go again." Anyway, that counts as an award for us as far as we're concerned.

To complete the trifecta, we also won Sexiest Legs. Thank you Animal Planet.

So it's been a good year for awards, with just one disappointment. Somehow we never made it into Maxim. We made sure to buy every issue this year and look at every picture to see when we would be featured, but it didn't happen. We think that's because the magazine is clearly sexist and only features rather attractive famous women who are probably famous because they were in Maxim. Honestly, we had no idea that's what the magazine was about. But we plan on buying every issue in 2014 as well just to make sure we're right. Don't worry; we'll unmask this conspiracy, even if it means looking through every FHM just to compare.

The worst offender of awards season is the Grammys, who give awards for absolutely everything, including mentioning the Grammys (we now own two Grammys ... oops, three). But at least they're straightforward. The movie industry on the other hand, needs to get it together.

Every movie awards ceremony is a precursor to the next one which is a precursor to the Oscars. The various "Film Critics Circle" awards from several cities who think they're cooler than Chicago, but they aren't, are barometers for the Golden Globes. The Golden Globes are consolation prizes for Emmy losers, but they are also barometers for the film unions, like the SAG awards, or the Directors Guild awards. Those awards point the way to the Academy Awards. Unfortunately, this process is fraught with randomness, which makes it difficult for the honest guy laying a buck down in Vegas to beat to the odds come Oscar time. We propose organizing these awards into a tournament.

First, anyone nominated for a People's Choice award is automatically disqualified. Next, the winners from the critics circles face off in the Golden Globes. The winners of the Globes are automatically entered into the Academy Awards, unless they are a comedy. The winners of the various movie unions face off against the Globe winners for Oscar glory.

Like fantasy football, all these awards ceremonies would now mean something. And since they now mean something, then they will probably ALL be televised. Wouldn't that just be super-awesome?

And we graciously accept the award for this idea.

HOW TO SURVIVE THE HOLIDAYS

IT'S BEEN A long week since this whole thing began last Tuesday. We haven't even had time to get to this until today. It all started with the lighting of the Christmas tree in Daley Plaza here in Chicago. They lit it two days before Thanksgiving, leading us to believe that Thanksgiving had been cancelled and the city was moving right along to Christmas. Then the Atheist display went up next to the tree and we thought Christmas was on its way out too. Turns out we were wrong on both counts, but now we've been forced to add being thankful for pure scientific reasoning to our laundry list of holiday celebrations. Our Atheist stocking over the fireplace is actually an Einstein-Rosen Bridge to who knows where. You should have seen what the kids pulled out last year.

MojoFiction: "What did you get little Johnny?"

Little Johnny: "Look Dad, I got quarks!"

Little Amy: "That's not fair! Mine's just emitting background radiation."

MojoFiction: "That's because you were on the naughty list. Again."

Anyway, on to the holiday story!

THANKSGIVING: DAY 1

Last Tuesday night, just as we were getting ready to fall asleep, our super-sweet, brand new Samsung Galactic S23 Phone-Thingy (whatever, it's cool and new, that's the point) started ringing. Our ringtone is some serious crunk, so at first we started dancing to it, but then we realized someone was calling us so we answered. Good thing, too, because it was our mom, which we verified by making her answer several challenge questions. She was flying to Michigan (the U.P., thank you very much) and had missed her connecting flight, thanks to a late plane on the first leg.

She said, "Hello, are you awake?" (This is a rhetorical question strategically employed by mothers everywhere.)

We said, "Of course. We're always awake at this hour." (This is the only counter-move to that question.)

"I missed my connection. The next flight isn't until 11am. Can you come pick me up?"

"You should make them get you a hotel room nearby since it was their error."

"Well United is being a bunch of m@#$%!f@#$ing @$$#@&$$" (yeah, that's our mom) "I'd rather go somewhere else. But only if it's not too much trouble. I don't want to inconvenience you." (Translation: "I'm just your mother. Don't make me beat you in the face with that award I received from the hospital for the longest labor ever for your birth. It's shaped just like a baseball bat and has '90 hours of hell' engraved in it.")

So we drove out to the airport and picked up our mom and let her stay at our house. And of course while she was there she did one of those things that only a mom would do for her son, even though he's a little too old.

She said, "I have all these fancy tablets," (she does) "and I don't know what to do with them. I never use this Galaxy Tab 2, do you want it?"

Really?

Since MojoFiction is a good son, we politely said, "Sure, we'll take it off your hands."

We turned it on and immediately played three hours of Candy Crush Saga. At that point, our mom tried to take back the tablet but we called "No take-backs!" and ran away.

THANKSGIVING: DAY 2

We rented a car for the long drive to the U.P. because our car is getting a little up in miles and also in weird vibrations when we go over 60 mph. We called Enterprise and they reluctantly agreed to pick us up. They arrived in what the government classifies as a small tank, but which we later learned was called an "Escalade." On the ride to their lot, the driver asked us pointed questions about our need to rent a car, such as, "Travelling for the holiday? Where are you going? How far away is it? How long will you be gone?"

So we said, "Why do you want to know? Planning on robbing our place?"

"...No."

"Why did you hesitate before answering?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Then the guy at the front desk went through the same questions. So, when we got back home to pack for our trip, we took all of our electronics just in case. Fitting the flat-screen in the trunk wasn't easy and we had to strap our son to the roof because there was no more room. But we did it.

No one broke into our house, which we're sure has to do with the fact that there were no more electronics in it. Good thinking on our part.

THANKSGIVING: DAYS 3 – 6

Lesson learned: If you must go on a long road trip, bring Bill Cosby.

The trip from our house to our U.P. destination is between 7 and 8 hours. We get up early and drive all morning. That's the routine. With an eight-year-old boy in the car, it can get a little trying. So this year we downloaded MP3s of Bill Cosby's classic, Himself. It may not last 8 hours, but for the rest of the trip, our son kept signing, "Dad is great. Gives us chocolate cake." Not that we did. Or at least that we'll tell his mother about.

Thanksgiving itself was a lot like anyone else's Thanksgiving, with much overeating, a little overdrinking, and several kids crying because something wasn't fair. For the next few days we simply relaxed, played family games, played with our son and his cousins in the snow, and tried talking like a yooper.

On the long ride back, we broke out Bill Cosby again. He just released a new special called Far From Finished. We downloaded it and played it out over the car speakers. One again our son laughed all the way home, and so did we. Cosby's source material hasn't changed much, he still talks about marriage and kids, and he still tells stories, as opposed to throwing out punch lines. But he's still one of the few entertainers that the whole family can listen to. No profanity, no sex and drugs, just a perspective on life that so many of us can relate to, told in a way that makes time seem to disappear while you're listening. It was like a refreshing night-cap on a week filled with kids and games, comfort food, family and laughter.

And that, we're pretty sure, is how you survive the holidays.

STARBUCKS + OPRAH = ENLIGHTENMENT

WE HERE AT MojoFiction frequent Starbucks. Don't judge us. It's a choice, not an addiction. We can quit whenever we want, which will be never ever ever, or until something trendier comes along.

When we visit Starbucks we usually order a simple iced Chai Tea Latte (tall). We like this drink a lot because we can order it in short hand in any Starbucks anywhere by saying "iced tall chai" and making a little finger-gun and saying "pew!" like we're all cool and stuff. Of course, if we're ordering at the Starbucks that we frequent by our office building, we only need to show up and they'll say, "Hey, Mr. Fiction, iced tall chai coming up." It's like they know what we want and that makes us wonder if they're just friendly or if they're trying to get us out of there as quickly as possible because they don't really like us or maybe we smell bad or something and then paranoia takes over because we're sure we didn't do anything wrong and maybe we didn't take a shower that morning but who takes a shower absolutely every day anyway and why are they staring at us and what the heck is an upside-down macchiato, is that code for something? So many frustrating questions. We hate Starbucks. Why do we keep going there?

Anyway, yesterday we walked in for our usual drink. Instead of ordering it right up for us because they know what we want, they waited for us to say it. Okay, fine. We said "Iced tall chai please." They said, "Would you like to Oprah-ize it?" We were like, "Whaaaa?!" and they were like, "Yeaaaah!" and we were like, "No." That pretty much killed the conversation.

They explained to us that Oprah Winfrey, Chicago icon who no longer lives in Chicago, had developed a new style of chai tea drink that Starbucks felt compelled to sell. Oh the joy! Oprah and tea... together! We pinched ourselves several times, trying to wake up from this heavenly vision. To prove to us that we were not dreaming, Starbucks offered to sell the drink to us at an increased price and we knew that it was true.

Here's how this celebrity nectar came about:

A "teaologist" from a boutique tea company called Teavana was hiking in the highlands of Tibet when he slipped and accidentally fell into Oprah, who immediately ate him for his rudeness. Afraid that he might bring shame upon his tea company, the teaologist agreed to allow Oprah to design a new tea drink that they would sell far and wide, except in Austin, Texas, where the hipsters are so evolved that they even rebel against being hipsters.

This was obviously a divine match, like Zeus and... well, who didn't he do it with? As you know, a "teaologist" is a professional licensed by Sesame Street to handle the letter T in various educational settings (the letter T being the most volatile of the letters). An "Oprah," as defined by the Oxford dictionary, is someone who attaches their name to things. Oprah also has a "tea passion" according to a press release we read regarding this new tea drink. (We have a "video game passion" but no one lets us brag about it. Quite the opposite, actually.) The odds of Oprah and the teaologist (great name for a kid's book) running into each other was probably really low, except that there is a Teavana down the street from her house. One thing led to another and their union birthed a marketing plan.

Enter: Starbucks.

Unfortunately, the staff at our particular Starbucks weren't sure how to sell it just yet. They would break into laughter when they would say, "Oprah-ize," which probably isn't a real term (who knows?). They gave us a sample and it wasn't bad. But it wasn't interesting enough to trade up. We found out later that a portion of the sale – they don't say how much – goes to an Oprah charity to support those poor souls injured while handling the letter T.

Apparently, Sesame Street has some explaining to do in regards to a certain Cash-for-T-Certification scandal. They're not sure who's been handing out the fake certifications or how much money they're making off of them, but Oscar the Grouch's new solid gold trash can is very suspicious.

### REDNECK WITH A LIGHTSABER

BEAR WITH US, this is going somewhere. [1]

Amidst the horde of books MojoFiction has either received or bought for our son during the early years, there was one title that stood out, If You Give a Pig a Pancake. It's a funny little book about the improbable chain of events that would happen if you had a pig at the breakfast table and offered him pancakes.

This got us thinking. What if you gave those sometimes-mocked mid-westerners mentioned in our blog title some lightsabers?

First we should state that we're highly qualified to study this important metaphysical question by virtue of having once lived in Missouri for several years (we've been called a redneck) and having owned Cabela's Big Game Hunter: Trophy Bucks for the Nintendo Wii (if you've blown away a dozen deer and twenty or so ducks/quail/turkeys in just two minutes with your CGI shotgun – while some announcer tells you all that carnage wasn't even enough to qualify for the next round – you might be...qualified to write this blog). We also have two skunks living under our house that we can't seem to dislodge and we're pretty sure they're going to have skunk babies soon.

So now that we've verified our street cred, what about those lightsaber-toting country persons?

Obviously there would be a lot less Ford F-150s on the side of the road during hunting season and a lot more TIE Fighters. This would be highly entertaining because the hunters wouldn't have to sit for hours in the bushes. They would wait in the trees for a buck to come by and then just drop down on to them like an orange-vested blur. Duck hunting, however, could get messy.

BUT WHAT ELSE WOULD HAPPEN?

Now, when Carrie Underwood gets mad at her boyfriend for cheating, she doesn't have to slash a hole in all four tires. She can just thrust the lightsaber through the hood and melt the engine. Take that Mr. Three Dollar Bathroom Polo!

Now Keith Urban might actually seem manly.

Speaking of American Idol, the season 9 finale between Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina would have been a lot more entertaining as a lightsaber duel. Right?

The neighbor's eight dogs bothering you again? Just turn them to the dark side. Now they only poop INSIDE the neighbor's house.

Possums living under the back porch? They better hope they can do the Kessel Run in under twelve parsecs when you turn that Jedi blade on.

Speaking of Star Wars, do you think Darth Vader would have even tried messing around with a rebel wearing a leather Stetson and one of those belt buckle flasks that's filled up with Gentlemen Jack?

AND...

The Country Music Awards just got a lot more interesting.

Branson Missouri just got a lot more dangerous.

She's a little bit country; he's a little bit rock and roll? Guess who's winning that one now?

The National Lightsaber Association. "This is not the gun-loving American you're looking for... You do not need to perform a background check..."

(Actually, we're not sure the NRA doesn't already have lightsabers.)

The more we think about this, the more it sounds like a great idea. We understand that George Lucas or Disney or someone is going to own the rights when a real lightsaber is invented, but let's get those out to the people as soon as possible. Then we'll find out what happens when you give us good old country folks a lightsaber.

Never mind. We've pretty much known since May 25, 1977.

________________

1. Not really. (back to text->)

PART TWO: ON THE SUBJECT OF SPORTS...
DISC GOLF HERO

WE HERE AT MojoFiction decided it was high time we started playing disc golf. We decided it after our brother-in-law wouldn't quit talking about it and then his wife wouldn't stop talking about it and since, if you've followed the lineage, his wife is MojoFiction's sister, we had to respond lest we lose another battle of sibling rivalry. (If the previous sentence made any sense to you, you win a prize!)[1]

First things first, don't call it Frisbee golf. We called it Frisbee golf and immediately found ourselves on the FBI home-page. Apparently, where your local municipality may have red-light cameras, disc golfers have covert audio surveillance set up to catch disc golf posers such as MojoFiction. After assuming a new identity and changing our appearance by growing a smashing handlebar mustache, we were ready to take our chances on the course. (We tried to change our appearance by going to the gym and actually getting in shape, but it's so much easier to grow a mustache.)

Early in the morning, we arrived at Dick's Sporting Goods to pick ourselves up some fris...discs. Turns out there are several types to choose from and several models for each type. There's the "Driver," the "Mid-Range," the "Bird Killer," the "Viagra (insert innuendo here)," the "Where-the-@#$!-Did-It-Go?" and the "Putt and Approach." We're not sure the "Putt and Approach" was a real disc, because obviously you would approach and then putt, but our brother-in-law assured us it was real and very necessary.

All of these discs have ratings printed on them for four important characteristics:

Range: how far the disc will go in the opposite direction you were aiming.

Fade: how long you can stand out in the sun trying to get that putter in the basket before your sunblock wears off and you burn.

Loft: how quickly the disc will plummet to the ground about ten feet in front of you, causing your eight-year-old son to laugh in your general direction.

Radiation: not sure what that means, but apparently the average disc has a 2000-year half-life and it's illegal to sell them to Iran.

Unfortunately, we had no idea what any of the number ratings meant, but buying individual discs required taking out a second mortgage just to afford it. Since we wanted to stay off the grid, thanks to the Feds, we instead purchased a three-pack of basic discs using cash that we found in our mustache. Since our son was tagging along, we bought two. Now we were ready to play.

We arrived at a local 18-hole course unsure of what to find. We were concerned because disc golf has a long and honorable tradition and we didn't want to get it wrong. The game was, of course, invented in Scotland in 1715 by French tourists who, not realizing that the hideous bog monster attacking the neck of a well-kilted Scotsman was actually a bagpipe, grabbed the instrument and flung it away, where it landed on the horns of a highland bull and deflated from the puncture wound. The bull didn't flinch. It simply started chewing on the bag of pipes. Everyone had a laugh except the Scotsman, who grabbed the Frenchman by his ankles, swung him around, and launched him into the air, starting a tragic feud between their two families. But disc golf was also invented in there somewhere, so we're assuming there is a lot of tradition.

Anyway, the course that day was empty. However, two guys arrived just before us and were starting the first hole. One guy looked like a football player and the other guy looked like an armchair quarterback who was apparently giving his wife the day off because he had brought his baby along and was pushing the kid around in an Army-regulation ATS (All-Terrain Stroller). We didn't mind someone ahead of us because it would give us the chance to see exactly what they were doing to play this great and ancient game of disc golf.

Unfortunately, they asked us if we wanted to play through. They said they were going to throw a lot of discs because they were practicing for a tournament. That's when we noticed the large bag they had that contained at least fifteen discs. But we only counted to eight before they asked us to stop snooping in their bag. But still, a tournament?

It turns out there is a Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA). It's pretty serious stuff and we here at MojoFiction would challenge anyone who has joined to show us why we should not laugh at them. What? You can win money at these things? ...See, it turns out we are also a member as of a few moments ago, so you should respect the PDGA.

So we played through, launching our first disc at the basket we could see in the distance. Apparently, we accidentally grabbed the "Where-the-@#$!-Did-It-Go?" disc, because we immediately lost it. But after some trial and error we were on our way. We arrived at the basket of the first hole only to find someone else's disc already there. The guys behind us apologized, but it was the baby's first try and basically a lucky shot.

The course was crazy, with holes going around the woods, into the woods, and through vast swatches of deep grasses meant to claim your disc forever. Somehow we made it to the end with our son only winning by a few strokes (in our defense, it's harder for him to lose his discs since he doesn't throw them as far).

We'd like to go back and try again, but first we have to lose that black SUV that's been following us since Wednesday. Come on, PDGA, what do we have to do to get you to call off the authorities? Can't you just admit that it's a Frisbee?

________________

1. No you don't. (back to text->)

SPARTAN RACE! HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE CHEESEBURGER SLIDERS...

WE HERE AT MojoFiction thought it would be brilliant to run in a Spartan Race this weekend. There are several different levels of Spartan races, this one being a Spartan Sprint. How five miles is a sprint, we're not sure. But it's on the other side of Indianapolis so apparently there's also a car sprint to get there prior to the actual race.

A little background on the Spartan Race/Sprint:

Five miles may not sound like much of a race, but Spartan races are serious obstacle courses of the evil kind. You don't win a Spartan Race, you survive it. It's brutal enough that we had to sign up for something called "Casualty Insurance" (which seems pointless if MojoFiction doesn't make it...) and we had to sign a disclaimer saying that if we expired during the race, Spartan Race would get to keep our car and our girlfriend. Also, we were invited to participate last year but couldn't make it. Our friends proceeded to constantly remind us of how much fun they had running through muddy ponds, crawling under barbed wire, and carrying giant tires up hills. We proceeded to find new friends. But we also vowed to make it to this year's race.

It occurred to us a few days ago that we should probably start training.

It's important to look at your body-type before starting a training routine (this may or may not be true, it just sounded like a good way to start a paragraph). An in-depth Google search tells us that our body-type is "Ectomorph," which is named after that green creature from Ghostbusters. As you may know, ectomorph in the scientific community means "seriously good-looking and rippling with muscles that comic book illustrators would be jealous of (in your face Jim Lee)."...Oops, we were looking at the wrong body-type. Ectomorph apparently means "tall and lanky but makes up for it with winning personality."

Well, we didn't really like that explanation so we consulted the Urban Dictionary instead, which helpfully answered our question about the real meaning of ectomorph. To quote:

"Did you really just ask the Urban Dictionary the meaning of the word ectomorph? Are you some kind of cranky, aging white guy? Please don't use our website anymore."

Using this advice, we designed our week-long workout regimen, which would whip us into shape for the Spartan Race. We designed this regimen while consuming a delicious Egg McMuffin and hash browns from McDonald's, which we knew would get us started on the right foot – plenty of protein and energy and stuff.

Step one: we tried to run for twenty minutes on the treadmill at the gym in the basement of our building here in downtown Chicago. We almost died, so we switched over to the elliptical machine. By the time we figured that thing out it was time for lunch, so we popped over to the Titled Kilt with some friends to implement step two.

Step two: It's important to remain focused during training. We figured Titled Kilt would simulate the frenetic race environment and really challenge our mental fortitude. We were pleased to see that we were able to remain completely focused on exactly four waitresses who apparently were required to wear short kilts of the titled variety (we had no idea, pinky-swear). Similar to actual Spartan conditions, they tried to throw us off by delivering cheeseburger sliders, beer, and some kind of vegetable that only comes fried, just as nature intended. But our training paid off and we remained focused on the waitresses and un-distracted. Four restraining orders later we knew our focus training was a success and we were ready for step three.

Step three: As important as focus is, it's equally important to make up a third step of training so that your friends will be impressed by how many steps you've taken to prepare for the grueling destruction you will suffer at the hands of the Spartan Race. Having completed our physical training in step one and our mental training in step two, we decided to wrap up our training with an intense study on the best way to celebrate our total dismantling of the competition (or at least of our friends, who didn't train nearly as hard as we did). Should we grab a Sharpie out of our shoe and write "losers" on the foreheads of our friends? Should we have someone dump a barrel of Gatorade on us? Both sound like fine celebrations to us, but after completing our training by watching some online videos of other Spartan races, we're pretty sure we'll be taking a celebratory nap. But we will do it intensely, just as our training taught us.

Now, just a few days away from the Spartan Sprint, as we enjoy our specially formulated athlete diet of leftover Chinese food we found in a forgotten container in the fridge, we realize that, in the end, it doesn't matter whether we come out on top or not. What matters is that we tell everyone that we came out on top.

MOJOFICTION'S #1 SUPER-AWESOME YOUTH BASKETBALL ALL-STAR GAME

ORIGINALLY WE PLANNED on blogging live from the Academy Awards, but apparently security at the Kodak theatre decided to keep it tight this year, and somehow we made "the list," so they stopped us at the back door (we thought we were pretty secure in that cello case) and graciously allowed us to stay in a holding cell downtown. With nothing else to do, we sat back and recollected our son's now-completed season of youth basketball. And the reason we recollected it all so clearly is because we were forced to attend every game, which, really, we loved. Honestly.

And Saturday was their official send-off: the all-star game.

So, the first thing we noticed upon arriving at the school gymnasium was the fact that other people were there, which really annoyed us. But we found out that if you want to play a basketball game you need other players and the other players tend to have parents who are staying to watch because the players are only nine and someone needed to drive them to the game anyway and it sure wasn't going to be their older sister Trisha who has more important things to do now that she's sixteen and dating Bradley who's colossally awful grunge band is obviously going to make it big very soon and who cares of if Dad promised to wrap a guitar around that cretin's head the next time he caught him sneaking into daughter's room on a Saturday night?

Also, the school used the game as a fund-raiser, meaning they made us pay a dollar to get in, which sounded pretty cheap and made us wonder if they really needed the money or just wanted to extract one more slice of pain from us before calling it a day.

But it's all about the kids. In that spirit, they set up the basketball court to reflect the true NBA experience by making it look exactly like it has for every other game, but they piped in some poorly chosen club music and played it really loud and a beer cost eight bucks. Probably. They were out of beer. At least, we're assuming they were out of beer because the kids running the concession stand only had soda and water available. Anyway, to complete the experience they even played a canned national anthem where the singer hung way too long on the word "free." (You know what we're talking about.)

The coolest part was the player introductions. That part they actually gave a fun, authentic feel to. After arriving, some random person who we just assumed worked there asked our son two questions for his introduction: How tall did he want to be? And what college did he want to come from?

He answered, "six-foot-four and Tennessee."

Of course, we asked him, "So you want to be taller than your dad and go to a completely different college?"

He said, "Yup."

If we're being honest, during the game we were this close to running out on the court and blocking one of his shots and saying, "How does our six-foot-two look to you now?" Easy tiger, we didn't do it. We just wanted to.

And then came the half-time show.

See, if you're reading this and thinking, hey, relax man, they're just kids having fun, we have to tell you that you are totally wrong. We can see the gears turning in their nine-year-old heads, and those gears are telling them, "If you play your cards right, you can make Dad buy you ice cream after the game." But half-time was the real problem. At half-time they put on a half-court shooting contest. One dollar to play, a basket wins you ten. At first, parents were giving their kids a buck to go for a shot, but after a dozen or so kids went through the line the event organizers started asking the adults to pony up and go out for a shot. And who was the first parent to go out there? MojoFiction. That's right, because we've never been able to handle peer pressure.

When we stepped onto the court, no one had yet made a half-court shot, so we got in line behind about three other kids, including our own basketball-wielding offspring. Just before our turn, one of the kids finally launches a shot that banks in. The crowd goes nuts and the kid thinks he's the next LeBron. At this point, you should know that it was, like, his sixth attempt, so we only clapped lightly. Then we paid our dollar and immediately we were told to step back about ten extra feet for our shot. We didn't complain, because we were only there to show up the kids and we can do that from anywhere on the kid-sized basketball court. So we launched our shot and, of course, it clanged off the front of the rim. We smiled politely and shrugged, but inside we were really ticked because we planned on blaming any missed shot on the lowered basket for our miss, but when you clang a shot off the front of the rim on a lowered basket, you've got nothing.

After the game we were conversing with our son about the whole experience. He said he really enjoyed it, but he thought the funniest thing was when, after we missed our half-court shot, one of his little friends said, "How embarrassing. An adult can't make a shot when a kid can."

"That was funny?" we asked.

"Yeah."

"Oops, was that the ice cream shop we just drove by without stopping?"

So the season is over. No more kids scrambling up and down the court, dribbling the ball head-high, passing it into the feet of their teammates, shooting it straight up in the air and back down onto their own heads, no more... ah, nuts. You know what? As a parent, we're going to miss it. Good times.

### EROTICA FOR SPORTS FANS (AKA 69 SECONDS FOR HIGH-STICKING; AKA 50 YARDS OF PLAY)

WARNING: TASTELESS CONTENT (Seriously, we don't know what we were thinking)

Jimmy Mongus sat silently in front of his locker, staring at the ball between his legs. He had lived his whole life in the shadow of his older brother Hugh, but now his time had come. He was the starting quarterback, and he would play the field like a champion.

He picked up the football with his large right hand, gripping it firmly, feeling the bumpy, leathery skin of the ball. Then he changed hands, seizing it with his left and squeezing it. Then he changed back to his right because he remembered that he was right-handed, which he thought was probably important.

The team gathered together like fish in a school. It was time. Jimmy slid his helmet over his head and looked proudly at his fellow players, all looking slick and shiny in their new white uniforms. Before the start of the season, the team had been forced to change their name due to some minor technicality of being really offensive. In honor of the city's maritime history, they were now called the Sea Men. Together, they filed out of the room in the bowels of the stadium. At exactly 10 minutes to kick-off, the Sea Men burst forth from the tunnel and onto the field, to the great pleasure of the crowd, who roared with approval and then immediately took a short nap and then ordered some more nachos.

After deciding who would go first (it was always the other team), the Sea Men kicked off, surprising their opponent by pushing the ball right into the back of their end zone, which the other team was not happy about and they audibly complained, saying, "What the hell was that?"

As the Sea Men defense took the field, Jimmy felt the intensity of the home fans, cheering lustily in their brand new stadium, named after America's forgotten soft drink, Squirt. The opposing players could hardly hear the quarterback's audible amidst the vibrating noise of the crowd, and even the neighbors complained and gossiped about it at church. But there was no culling the excitement released by the crowd at Squirt Stadium.

Finally, the opposing team got off a play, but it ended before it began, much to their embarrassment. After two more tries they still couldn't break through the Sea Men's tight D, so they punted.

Jimmy took the field and the team's gorgeous, underpaid, and underappreciated cheerleaders cheered him on. But he had no time for them. There were ten men on that field that needed him. He lined up under center, his hands ready to receive the ball underneath. He had trained his entire life for this moment, pumping iron in the gym, chiseling his body until his muscles could cut glass. When he proposed to his girlfriend next week, he would not need to give her a diamond. He would give her his muscles. And his money. And a small part of his fame....And maybe he would hold off for a while now that he thought about it. Yeah, that was a good idea.

Jimmy surveyed the defense, observing the matchups, looking for the best option. In his mind he saw the Xs and Os from the coach's game plan, the way it was meant to be. Xs and Xs were too damn confusing. They tried that in practice once, but Sea Men were crashing into each other everywhere, confused and alone. Except for this one guy who was happy to try and tackle everyone, which no one could figure out.

Finally, he saw the gap he would aim for and he called a quick audible at the line. The original plan called for him to shoot the A-gap, but he saw something better. At Jimmy's command, the center passed the ball back smoothly into his hands. Jimmy grasped the ball and backed up three steps to give himself room and slow things down. Then he saw his target, his man had one-on-one coverage and had broken loose behind the safeties. Jimmy didn't hesitate, he reeled back, then he thrust forward, propelling the ball overhead, through the defense. They were as one, tosser and receiver. And the player took the ball into his waiting bosom and ran the length of the field for an earth-shattering score.

On the sidelines, the Sea Men erupted. In the stands, six rather large, shirtless gentlemen with the team name splashed in paint on their ample bellies, one letter per person, celebrated by jumping wildly into the air, sloshing their beers and spilling nacho cheese on the girl in front of them. She shrieked and her Adonis of a boyfriend turned around. She pointed at the S guy, who she assumed prematurely spilled his nacho cheese. Quickly, the boyfriend slapped him a high-five and then a low one, followed by a colossal fist bump because, darn it, that man on the field had just scored!

And he would score three more times that day, which was a record for a man his age, and his deeds were recorded in legend and also he landed a Cialis commercial.

After sixty minutes of play, which included a much-needed 15-minute break, Jimmy Mongus, sweat drenched and spent, sat on the sideline bench, not wanting to return to the locker room. He watched the crowd file out of Squirt Stadium, satisfied and probably really drunk, but satisfied nonetheless. They would walk home feeling really good and really bad at the same time and they would casually discuss it with their friends at work like it was no big deal. Then the clean-up crews arrived to take care of the mess, which was never the job of the guys on team Sea Men. Their job was to go home, sit on the couch with a bowl of corn flakes and relax with an episode of Mad Men.

But Jimmy knew he would always remember this day and whoever that team was that he just played. Whatever, there would be another team next week.

### CHICAGO BEARS TRY TO GO 1-1, END UP 2-0 - AFTER GLOBAL PROTESTS, RULING ON THE FIELD STANDS

IF YOU LIVE in the Chicagoland area, you know that Chicago is known for having two seasons: winter and taxes. But they also have the Chicago Bears who, though more of a cult than a football franchise, play during the winter and so could probably be lumped in with the winter season which means we're not sure where we were going with that.

For those who don't know, the Bears play home games in Soldier Field, so named because it is dedicated to the hard work and sacrifice of some of our heroic former Illinois leaders who in 2001 came out and said, "Oh, by the way, everyone in Cook County just paid 500 million dollars for a new stadium for some rich people but, sorry, there's no money to fix the CTA." Soldier Field is also the only taxpayer-funded stadium built from alien technology that can be seen from space. Because it can be launched against America's enemies at a moment's notice to bombard them into submission with sub-par quarterback play, the government keeps all orbital views of the stadium from the public due to national security, but we here at MojoFiction managed to get a hold of one from a secret source that we'll only identify secretly by their secret code name: "Google Earth." (Don't tell anyone!)

Since we're from Colorado, probably the best thing about living near Chicago and watching the Bears is the fact that they are nowhere near the broadcast zone of our favorite team, the Denver Broncos, which means that instead of watching Peyton Manning destroy the Giants in the second half (because somehow the Broncos never destroy anything in the first half) we got to watch the Bears dominant run game advance to their opponent's one-yard line and then take a break to try and throw a one-yard pass to score and, of course, oops, interception. You have Michael Bush! Didn't you see that scene in the movie "The Dark Knight," where Michael Bush runs headlong into a semi-truck in downtown Chicago and flips it over, end-over-end? Run that guy into the end zone!

More worrisome, Jay Cutler had to scramble a lot. The offensive line is better since they actually hired one in the off-season to take the place of the life-size cardboard cutouts of Justin Bieber they had been using last season, which were surprisingly immobile and melted when it rained. When Jay was scrambling for yards it was okay, but when he tried to make a play (such as, say, a pass) while harried, it didn't end well.

There were a lot of mistakes in other facets of the game as well, including trying to broadcast it, but FOX gave it their all. Actually, the lack of on-screen graphics for the first half didn't bother us as at all, but when they lost the picture entirely during the final minutes of the first half, we flipped the channel to the Broncos... oh, that's right, we didn't.

And finally, if you didn't see it, there was the Minnesota punt that almost turned into a safety thanks to a miscue on the Bears special teams. Per official NFL rules, section 4, paragraph 23.5 of sub-paragraph 2 of the Treaty of Versailles:

"Any punt that careens into the end zone may be batted back into the field of play provided it has not touched the ground in the end zone and the player batting it back has leapt at least 2.4 feet into the air and hit it volleyball-style behind him. He must stick the landing. If the players on the punting team can maintain lift by jumping the aforementioned 2.4 feet, they may continue to bat the ball all the way back down the field, though that probably wouldn't be a good idea."

An alert Chicago player knew this rule and immediately tried to touch the ball after it was batted back. Instead, however, he kicked it forward into the end zone and the waiting arms of the Vikings. Thankfully, someone quickly redrew the end zone line, leaving the Vikings players out-of-bounds and making the play a touchback.

Somehow, against all odds, the Bears won the game to go to 2-0 for the young season. And by against all odds, we mean against the Vikings who, against all odds, are a pretty good football team that doesn't win. But the first team the Bears play that knows how to close out a game will cause the Bears some trouble.

So far, though, we're not sure anyone knows how to close out a game this year.

Except those Broncos! ...We think. We'll let you know when we actually see them.

### MOJOFICTION VS. ZOMBIES!

WE GAVE THE staff here at MojoFiction an informal poll in an effort to find out why we keep doing these things to ourselves. The only answer we could come up with was some kind of pre-midlife crisis (we're not 40 yet...). Here was the poll question:

Why does MojoFiction keep doing this to himself?

a. Stupidity

b. Not smartness

c. Some kind of pre-midlife crisis

d. Other

The staff at MojoFiction actually consists of just one, and we chose "d. Other." But we're pretty sure we meant "c." so we're going with that.

See, we ran another body-crushing obstacle race on Saturday out near Rockford, Illinois. While most guys in America having a midlife moment would be out buying a time-travelling DeLorean so they could go back to 2003 and pull Bartman's arm back before he could get his fingers on that foul ball in game six of the N.L. playoffs at Wrigley Field (not that we're living in the past or anything), we were out challenging our poorly constructed physical infrastructure in a 5K race to the death vs. hordes of zombies in an obstacle course challenge called "Run For Your Lives."

We got up on Saturday morning and drove out to Byron, Illinois, south of Rockford, to meet a friend who also couldn't afford a DeLorean, and therefore would be running, for our 9:30am heat. The first thing we did was forget our phone at home so we couldn't let our friend know we had arrived. Luckily, said friend left us twelve voice-mails and one really insulting text message asking us where the heck we were. Thankfully, we were able to meet up shortly before our race started.

The premise of "Run for Your Lives" is, of course, that you are a banker trying to get away from the 99%. Ha, ha! Just kidding! You are actually a banker running away from zombie hordes who are demanding refinancing. This is basically an excuse to host an obstacle course race, but also serves as a nice gimmick to get otherwise nerdly people like MojoFiction to participate. When you sign up for the race, you can sign up as a runner or as a zombie. We thought that paying to be a zombie was like paying to work, so we went with the runner option. Each runner received a belt with three red flags on it and absolutely NO Green Herbs (not even a First Aid Spray), which didn't make any sense, because how were we going to heal ourselves? The zombies spread themselves out around the course in specific "Zombie Zones" where runners would try to get by them without losing any flags. The object of the race: to get to the finish without approving one adjusted mortgage rate.

That's what made the race so darn difficult. A 5K isn't the longest race in the world, but the race was on a motocross course that was very up and down (hello knees). In between hills and obstacles, runners had to sprint through gangs of zombies and avoid losing flags. Sometimes the zombies and the hills would get together to really hose you. We're in decent shape, but we did not train to run wind sprints and 50-yard dashes all day.

After only ten minutes on the course, we had crawled through rock-infested mud, under barbed wire, over large bales of hay, meant to really annoy your arms, and ran at full speed through three groups of zombies. Barely a mile in we were beat down and walking. We didn't feel bad because a LOT of others were, too. That actually worked in our favor because the only way to have a chance at keeping a flag was to wait for a group of runners to congregate at a zombie zone and then run through as a group. We're pretty sure we were the sacrificial lamb most of the time because we finished with zero flags. And that was after finding one out on the course and attaching it to our belt (extra life!).

Nonetheless, it was fun. If you're in any kind of shape, you should really take that fitness out for a spin, it beats the gym any day.

Best part of the day (besides the celebratory beer): They had an obstacle called the Smokehouse. It's basically a long tent that looks like a shack. You crawl under it all the way to the other end. Because they pump all this smoke into it (which is basically a fog machine), you stay low. We happened to be on the edge, so when we heard the SNAP! and "OWE!" from our buddy crawling next to us, we looked up and saw thin threads hanging down in the smoke. They delivered a mild shock to anyone touching them. We skirted them on the edge, but the whole way through we could hear our friend swearing up a storm.

SNAP! OWE!

SNAP! OWE!

SNAP! OWE!

Yeah ... that was great.

### ST. LOUIS CARDINALS FANS UNLEASH MASTER PLAN VS. CUBS

ANYONE FAMILIAR WITH the baseball rivalry between the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals knows that it's the greatest rivalry in the history of sports where at least one of the teams constantly sucks. Since it's baseball, I'm sure there's a stat about that somewhere. So it's a decidedly lopsided rivalry, which may be why Cardinals fans love it so much. Imagine if that big kid on the playground, Tommy, kept picking on poor little Billy because Billy could hardly stand up for himself and all the teachers stood around saying, "That's good thinking, Tommy, picking on the little guy." Those teachers are Cardinals fans. And it's hard to blame them, seeing as how their team doesn't have over 100 years of futility behind them (and possibly ahead of them).

What I can blame them for is how they all show up at Wrigley field for every freaking Cubs-Cardinals tilt, which results in ticket prices that would make a major oil company executive blush. Those games routinely sell out in February, leaving the secondary market a cesspool of wanton greed. A quick, perfectly legal check of NSA records shows that more than one Middle-East prince has gassed up their private jet, put out their best designer suit, rocketed across the ocean to Chicago, only to turn away from Wrigley and hop back on their plane with their mouth agape, saying, "Those tickets are how much?!"

But, God help me, I bought those tickets.

Okay, so that's my fault. But I totally have a fall guy for this: my family. Relatives and in-laws are a lot more expensive than they should be, that's all I'm saying. And it's the Cardinals fault (and their little fans, too).

See, over the weekend my sister and her husband dropped by for a visit. Originally, it was just going to be my sister, who was going to drive down from the U.P. on Friday to drop off her three kids with their grandmother who was driving up from Missouri to claim them for three weeks (and I wish her luck on that extended grandchild visit). I asked my sister if she was going to stay on Saturday and we could do something like catch a baseball game. I then said that it was too bad her husband couldn't make it because a baseball game at Wrigley Field can be a good time. It is, after all, the world's largest beer garden. The next thing I know I get a call from my brother-in-law telling me that it turns out he can make it and he can't wait to go see a baseball game at Wrigley. So now, of course, I had to deliver.

I went to the Cubs website, where I saw they were playing the Cardinals over the weekend. Great. Really, why does God hate me? Well, I thought, the tickets can't be that bad because the Cubs aren't going anywhere this year, which usually means cheaper seats. But I'd forgotten that the Pirates were somehow on top of the division, meaning the universe was in a state of inter-dimensional flux: up was down and left was right and all that quantum physics stuff that they can't really explain so they say, "It's because of quarks!" and you can't really argue against quarks.

Anyway, there weren't any tickets available on the team site, so I went to a resellers market where, for my convenience, the tickets were priced at three times the face value (that didn't include the convenience fee, which is obviously there to make everything extra-super convenient).

So everyone arrived Friday night. The kids and grandma left Saturday morning and by mid-afternoon I was on my way to the Cubs-Cardinals game with my sister and my brother-in-law.

"What do we owe you for our tickets?" they asked.

"Don't worry about it," I said (this response to eat the ticket prices myself was clearly part of the evil plan of Cardinals fans everywhere and, therefore, not my fault).

We drove into Chicago, arriving almost two hours early so we could enjoy the neighborhood, take some pictures in front of Wrigley, and maybe find a local bar for some pre-game drinks. As we walked by the gates of Wrigley on our way from the Red Line El stop, I noticed they were giving away replicas of the Harry Carry statue to the first 10,000 fans. Cubs fan fantasy come true! But, of course, if you go in to get a statue, you can't come back out because they won't let you back in to the game (without a good excuse). So I had to walk away without a statue in order to enjoy Wrigleyville with my guests, but not before I blamed my missing out on the give-away squarely on the shoulders of Cardinals fans everywhere.

About two hours later, after kicking back at an excellent bar down the street, we took what turned out to be our pretty darn good seats at Wrigley. My sister had never been to Wrigley Field and her husband had never seen a professional baseball game. There's something special about being there with friends and family when they do something fun for the first time. We had a fantastic time, even surviving this attempted Kung-Fu sneak attack from a rogue Cardinal's fan: (One of those super-sweet pictures goes here ... sorry, it's on the blog.)

The Cubs won 6-4 in what looked like a laugher early but became tense late. We celebrated every hit, every run, every strikeout; we ate Italian sausage and drank low-end beer; and we high-fived every stranger we could find.

When we arrived back at home after the game, I reflected on just how perfectly those Cardinals and their fans had played me. And I cried a little bit inside. See, my brother-in-law, still pumped up from the game, drank my last beer. Surely, that was the end game from those sneaky Cardinal fans all along.

Stupid Cardinals, making me have a memorable evening with my family at an epic Cubs-Cardinals rivalry game when I could have just as easily stayed home, pouted about ticket prices, and went bowling or something.

One day, I promise, I will have my revenge.

# PART THREE: ON THE SUBJECT OF FATHERHOOD...

NATURE TRAIL OF DOOM!

WEIRD AL YANKOVIC once recorded a song called "Nature Trail to Hell", a tune about a fictional movie about a group of Cub Scouts going for a hike who are terrorized by over-protective parents who think their kid clearly would have sold more popcorn if the neighbor's brat hadn't gone to every house in the neighborhood first to sell his popcorn instead of sharing the houses like they should have. Just kidding, the Cub Scouts all die at the hands of a hatchet-wielding madman.

Anyway, as kids, "Nature Trail to Hell" entertained MojoFiction and his siblings to no end. But this is a family site and we didn't want to use Hell in a sentence, let alone the blog title, so we're calling it Nature Trail of Doom and not Hell. In no way are using the word Hell. Originally we were going to say Nature Trail to Terra Haute, Indiana, but we received a lot of angry letters and one flaming poop bag (note to young people: do NOT research the flaming poop bag prank on the internet – probably easily accessible on your phone – and attempt to use it on your enemies with hilarious results).

So really-anyway, last Friday night completely reminded us of Nature Trail to You-Know-Where (hint: Hell). Our son's Cub Scout troop held their October pack meeting after dark at a local nature preserve, complete with a roaring bonfire, s'mores, and not nearly enough space for all the adults and their other clearly non-Cub-Scout kids that they could have left at home with a babysitter, but who are we to complain?

Driving into the back-woods, on a dirt road too small for a Mini Cooper, our headlights shining on a dark wall of trees, we immediately imagined every Stephen King scenario possible. We reminded ourselves that our Volkswagen was a masterpiece of German engineering, but that didn't really stop Cujo so maybe we weren't that safe (thanks a lot Germans). We parked, pulled out our folding chairs and escorted our Cub Scout son to the Children of the Corn festivities.

Quick historical note: MojoFiction and his offspring try to go camping once or twice a year. The first time we went we were robbed in the middle of the night by a very polite raccoon, who popped open the lid to our cooler, grabbed what he wanted, and then closed it back up again, leaving a thank you note at the bottom of the cooler, which, we think, was kind of a dick move considering he had just robbed us (never mind asking why we left the cooler out overnight). Obviously we've been plotting our revenge: we'll just see how much he likes a flaming poop bag!

Raccoons, you are on notice.

So super-triple-anyway, when one of the scout leaders, for reasons we still don't know, asked our son about his worst camping experience, does he bring up the raccoon? No. He brings up the time we thought it would be fun to go camping in late September, only to see the overnight temperature drop to the lowest in weeks, leaving us shivering all night in our wimpy tent with our wimpy sleeping bags because someone forgot to pack extra blankets. We're not saying who because we're not into that finger-pointing stuff, especially when the finger points at us.

Finally, the meeting commenced and all the "dens" performed little sketches that were probably funny but we were playing Bear Grylls' Survival Run on our phone and we figured out how to make his parachute a British flag which gives the game a James Bond feel, especially when you select the "Secret Agent Bear Grylls" outfit. Selecting outfits is really the fun part anyway. There's even a Bear Bear Grylls outfit, which is funny because it's... you know... a bear... What? No see, we just mean it's fun to dress up Bear Grylls for his day of slaughtering dangerous animals in the world's most dangerous places, which is really the awesome part and not the outfits and stuff that we said before and, okay, so he doesn't actually have any weapons or kill any animals but we imagine that's what he's doing and that makes us pretty manly and, you know what? We could totally destroy Bear Grylls in a steel cage match. And then you're next.

Infinity-anyway, the meeting ended and the group headed out for the pack tradition of a night hike through the woods with nothing but our flashlights and our insane fear of the woods at night. 50 Cub Scouts and their 50 fifty siblings and another 50 parents plowing through the woods at night?

Nature never saw it coming.

If Freddy or Jigsaw or Martha Stewart, or any other evildoers were out there, they were no match for us. The local wildlife? Yeah, maybe they left some poop on the trail and maybe we stepped in it and maybe we cursed loudly which made some children around us cry and earned us a scolding from some parents who didn't believe us when we tried to blame someone else, but that's all nature's beasts were able to do. By the time our hike was over nature had given up and simply rolled over.

So all the kids had a good time... until we arrive back at the bonfire. That's when, to their horror, the pack leaders told them that s'mores weren't actually on the menu, but something far more terrifying. They would be cooking... asparagus. Just kidding. We tried to tell our son that, but he didn't believe us. You'd think we make things up all the time or something. But we did clear out of there as fast as we could, because another danger lurked around every corner.

Cub Scouts.

Seriously, have you tried hanging out with 50 scouts and their entire families at one time? That's some scary sh-

NIGHT AT THE [FIELD] MUSEUM

WE HERE AT MojoFiction delivered a sweet Christmas present this holiday season when we presented our son with tickets to an overnight at the Field Museum of Natural History here in Chicago, an event for kids age 6-12 and their guardians. Last Friday we had to deliver on those tickets, which, it never occurred to us, was part of the deal. But, sensing a Great Moment in Dad History, we decided to follow through.

How cool of a dad were we? – Well, we're modest, so we're not going to brag about driving two hours from the city, back into the suburbs, and then 2-1/2 hours back to the city in the freezing rain Chicago experienced Friday night just to get our kid to the event. No, we are not. That's because we did something far more praise-worthy. That's right; we drove I-90 into the merge with I-94. Boom! As readers of MojoFiction know, had we simply taken i-94 all the way, we could have probably made it back before we left, but we didn't have that option. Nevertheless, by cleverly driving behind a bus the entire way because traffic was so thick we couldn't have changed lanes if we wanted to, we made it to the museum on time.

That's when we really sprang into action.

After parking underneath Soldier Field, we arrived outside the museum with our sleeping bags and pillows. Immediately, we slipped on the ice and went down. Just to show he's a chip off the old block, our son took the same fall. So all of our stuff was wet, but we carried on. Inside the museum someone handed us a chart showing sleeping arrangements. There were a lot of group sleeping areas and one large family section. And what group should we see taking up half the place? Our old nemesis: Cub Scouts! And just across the main hall were their arch-enemies: Girl Scouts. So it was going to be a long night.

We ventured into the Ancient Americas exhibit, laying out our gear somewhere between the Mayans and the Aztecs, being sure to keep away from the sacrificial knife artifacts, you know, just in case weird things were to happen in the night, like in that movie. And its sequel. Using our stealth tactics, we crossed through the Cub Scout area (remember, the more patches they have, the more dangerous they are) and into the main hall.

The main hall at the Field Museum features the T-Rex known as Sue (was Fred really such a bad name? What about Louise?), along with huge Native American totem poles and life-like replica elephants. Around these exhibits the museum set up learning stations, with little-seen displays of spiders, scorpions, giant insects, creepy animal skins, and dinosaur eggs.

Finally, it was dad-time:

Us: "You totally have to let that guy put the tarantula on your head."

Our son: "I'm scared of spiders."

"That little girl is letting him put it on her head."

"I don't want to."

"You have to."

"No I don't."

"Yes you do."

"No."

"Yes."

"Have you ever held a tarantula or had one on your head?"

"No."

"If I have to do it, you have to do it."

"No I don't."

"Yes you do."

(Darn it! We should never have enrolled him in Cub Scouts, they're too clever)

Us: "I'll buy you a present if you do it."

Our Son: (eyeing us suspiciously) "What kind of present?"

"A present befitting putting a tarantula on your head."

Though he still didn't trust us (we don't know why), the prospect of a new toy or whatever was too much to pass up. So he went over to the table and offered his head.

Immediately afterwards we had this conversation:

Son: "So, what kind of present do I get?"

Us: "What would you like?"

Son: "A Bugatti."

He watches way too much Top Gear.

Later that night, the museum offered a "self-guided" flashlight tour of their Ancient Egypt exhibit. That exhibit should always be in the dark. Looking at the mummies, statues, artifacts, and the museum's recreation of the Nile River through the lonely beam of a flashlight really brought everything to life in a new and creepy way. We think their dinosaur bone collection would be freaky-cool in the dark, too.

Afterwards, they had other activities kids could get in on, but we chose to explore the museum's permanent exhibits. We had a lot of fun since many of the exhibits were virtually empty, unlike a regular crowded weekend, and we could pretty much do whatever we wanted. We traipsed through the Evolving Planet and the dinosaur bones, we hit the Hall of Gems, and we visited their Pawnee Lodge.

The entire evening was a success and we would encourage anyone thinking about it to go ahead and do it. Where else are you going to be able to hear your child say, after they've held a tarantula, "I want to hold the giant cockroach!" (Fine, it wasn't giant, but it looked big to us.)

Okay, spiders, great, we get it. But who in their right mind wants to hold cockroaches?

That's right. Cub Scouts.

### A TOAD... IN A CAR

"TOAD CAR! TOAD Car! Toad Car!" This was the cheer that greeted MojoFiction as we sat down to watch our son compete in the annual Cub Scout pinewood derby. We don't know if it was right or if it was wrong. But it happened.

Before we talk about Toad Car, though, let's explain the pinewood derby for the uninitiated.

Pinewood cars are little wooden models that race down a track via gravity. According to Wikipedia, the pinewood derby originates from the early days of the American frontier, when wild bands of plains-roaming lumberjacks bought the state of Washington from Bill Gates in what is known as the Louisiana Purchase. Mostly they were just thirsty, and Congress had just passed the Starbucks Act of 1832, so Washington seemed like good place to go. Unfortunately, there was no entertainment to go with their coffee, so lumberjack Larry Kilroy invented tree racing, which was way too dangerous and that's how the pinewood derby was born. Now, Cub Scouts annually descend on the local hobby stores to buy up every single starter kit for their pinewood derby cars so that when you get there with barely a week to go they are all out and you have to look at your son and say, "Good thing your mom is taking care of this one."

So there you go.

But really, one of the unexpected benefits of divorce is that we here at MojoFiction did not have to help build our son's pinewood derby car. Trust us, he was better off for it. While we didn't take shop class in high school, we're pretty sure we would have failed it, as evidenced by a poorly constructed bird house we once built. See, it turns out that birds don't have hands and, therefore, can't open doors. Our bad. We should have realized that. You know it took two weeks and eight city permits to scrap that thing?

Naturally, we assumed the pinewood derby was a friendly affair, where kids of all ages would race their cars down the derby track while the parents would sit back with a frosty cold beer and some nachos. Well, we had to leave the beer in the car, so already things were looking down. But it turns out these things are pretty competitive, with winners advancing to district championships against other Cub Scout troops. So the competition was fierce.

Needless to say, our offspring did not advance to district. In fact, he came in last every race except one. He took it like a champ by hanging his head and not talking to anyone for the rest of the day. That's a MojoFiction classic right there.

But the truth is, no one was going to remember the winners or losers from that day because of the audacious car built by one radical child:

Toad Car.

Prior to the official races, the siblings of current Cub Scout members were allowed to race their own pinewood cars. The kids line up and give their car to a guy who places them on the ramp at the top of the track. He then presses a button that releases the cars. The fastest one wins. One youngster presented a car that consisted of a slat of wood, on top of which sat a clear plastic box with holes drilled in the top. The box was partially filled with mossy dirt. On top of that dirt sat one, medium-sized, real-life toad.

Our first thought was to dial up PETA and take care of this travesty, but then we thought, a toad? In a race car? Freakin sweet! And so did the rest of the crowd.

Toad Car lined up against Dragon Car, Minion Car, and Lego Car. The operator pushed the button and the cars released. All the way down the crowd chanted "Toad Car! Toad Car! Toad Car!" And that was just the adults.

Maybe it was the box design, or the weight of the plastic and dirt. Maybe it was the construction. Who knows? Somehow, Toad Car lost every single race. By a lot. It was never even close. But did anyone care? No. And how can you when there's a toad car on the track?

Up until our son lost all his races he was laughing and having a good time. As he sunk back into his seat in despair, we simply sat next to him and said, "How about that toad car?" And he was quickly laughing again.

And then we told him we video-taped all his losing races on our phone and would be showing them to all of our friends. We're a good dad like that.
JUST WHAT ARE TODAY'S KIDS THINKING, ANYWAY? AND SHOULD WE HAVE ASKED?

TWO FOR ONE! Today MojoFiction meditates on the unexpected thought processes of this nation's youth. And by youth we mean kids under the age of eight. And by kids under eight we mean our own kid (who's actually eight now but never mind). After eight the cuteness scale really drops off.

WHAT OUR KID SAID ABOUT APOLLO 11...

So one day we're relaxing at home, minding our own business, and reviewing our son's weekly schoolwork that the teacher sends home every Friday in a folder. This is where trouble usually begins, with a school folder and us wondering why half the math pages have some other student's name on them.

A quick background check: Our son is obsessed with space and science fiction and Doctor Who. He's also obsessed with Star Wars, though that has morphed into being obsessed with Angry Birds: Star Wars and sneaking off with his dad's cell phone to play it because his dad happens to be obsessed with Angry Birds: Star Wars and where else would you play a game anymore than on your cell phone and is that Chewbacca bird awesome or what?...Hey, we just like the game, okay? Leave us alone.

So in the school folder we find several pages of that huge-lined, grade-school newsprint writing paper with drawings all over every page and what look like stories to go with each drawing. So, of course, we start reading. Most of the stories are re-enactments of some scenes from The Clone Wars computer animated cartoon, but the last story looks like something different.

"What's this?" we politely asked our son.

"That's the Apollo 11 rocket blasting off to the moon."

We may have let him watch From the Earth to the Moon and Apollo 13 a few times.

"Who are these people?" we asked, pointing to figures floating around the page.

"Those are the astronauts."

Okay, that all makes sense. So we turn to the last page where we're greeted by what looks like some kind of disaster movie still. Curious, we ask our son the following question:

"Who are these people over here?"

"Well," he said, "this is Apollo 11. And these are the people who died when this stuff fell off the rocket and landed on them."

"...Oh."

We believe we've said enough.

ABOUT KATY PERRY...

What kind of opinions could a kid under eight possibly have about Katy Perry? We're glad you asked. We're going to travel back in time about three years, which isn't much of a reference, just saying that our son was younger than he is now. He informed us, pretty much out of the blue, that he had about a dozen girlfriends and was going to marry about six of them.

Sounds like a guy already:

("I'm dating all these girls but I really only have long-term plans with that one....Not that any of them know that.")

But despite his declaration of polygamy, our son had a concerned look on his face.

"What's wrong, dude?" we asked. "If we were going to marry six girls, we wouldn't be down about it. There would only be one reception, though. And no open bar."

"Two of my girlfriends are adults."

Uh-oh.

"Who are they?" we asked.

Honestly, we don't recall the first one, but he clearly stated that the second one was Katy Perry.

"Well," we said, "We don't think you can marry Katy Perry."

"Why not?"

"First of all, you can only marry one girl. You can't be married to all of them because they might not like it if you were."

"Well, marrying one sounds easier anyway."

"You wish."

We lost him for a moment with that one, but then we continued explaining:

"And you can't get married until you're eighteen. By then Katy Perry is going to be around forty."

"Oh," he said. Then he looked up at us with a thoughtful look on his face and said, "I hope she's still pretty."

And with that, we handed our son his first government-issued Man-Card. He earned it.

Later, he surprised us when he mentioned off-hand that Mitt Romney was a handsome man for a presidential candidate. In fact, our son said Mr. Romney was probably #2 in his top 10 list of handsome men, right after his grandpa (on his mom's side of all things). Ignoring the fact that our young son had a list of handsome men, we asked where his dad would fit into that list. He said:

"I don't know... Number six?"

Man-Card revoked.

### THE LONG FATHER'S DAY - CELEBRATING ALL THINGS DAD (PART 1)

**GREAT MOMENTS IN DAD HISTORY!**

Sometimes, as a dad, you look back on things and you realize what a fantastic job you've and you give yourself a pat on the back because, since it's not Father's Day, no one else will. Other times, you hope you haven't completely ruined the precious childhood of your offspring. You might try to keep those moments to yourself, but, thanks to the miracle of the internet, now everyone gets to know how royally you screwed up. These are those moments.

ABOUT RABBITS

The summer after my son turned four, we were sitting in the now-closed ESPN Zone in downtown Chicago eating lunch. I hadn't planned on stopping there, but I recalled they had a game room on the second floor and I thought it would be fun.

Whenever we eat out I try to pick places where the kid's menu, if there is one, includes a vegetable option because who doesn't like vegetables? I'm just a cool dad like that. I wasn't sure about ESPN Zone, though, which, as a symbol of total sports manliness, might only serve raw-egg smoothies or freshly killed meat or whatever athletes eat and/or inject these days. Fortunately, they had sides available and so I ordered some carrots for my son's plate. It would go well with the cheeseburger sliders that should be a staple in any child's diet. (Something like that. I sometimes get confused when I'm allowed to roam free.)

A few minutes into the meal, my son had a question for me.

"Bestest daddy in the world?" he asked politely. (Seriously, he said that... Why don't you believe me?)

"What's up, big guy?" I replied.

"If I eat too many carrots, will I turn into a rabbit?"

Say what?

I don't know where children get these kinds of ideas but I can assure you that it's not from their dad. I was, of course, stunned.

Being a good father, and sensing an impending Great Moment in Dad History, I replied, "Yeah, of course you will. Where do you think rabbits come from?"

I don't want to say he was shocked by this news, but he looked down at his plate without saying another word. Seeing that the matter was closed, I started to talk to him about the great game of baseball, which, when you live in Chicago, can be a pretty big deal. Suddenly, tears started rolling down his cute little four-year-old face and he started sobbing.

"What's the matter, buddy?" I asked.

"I don't want to turn into a rabbit."

Uh, oh.

Well, it took some doing to convince him that in no way was he going to turn into a rabbit. He would have to eat all the carrots in the world, and even then, he might just get an upset stomach. So I was able to smooth out a mini-crisis and assure myself that my son would continue to eat vegetables as he grows up and not run from them screaming and into the waiting arms of a deep-dish pizza (not that there's anything wrong with that).

And my son learned a valuable lesson: Dad is not trustworthy.

Of course, he never questions Dad's insistence that Santa Claus exists. I supposed when some old, bearded, overweight dude who lives with elves delivers the very gift you always wanted on the very day you hoped to get it, you don't question it.

THE SLED HILL

So I thought it would be a great idea to let my son watch The Empire Strikes Back. After all, he'd seen the original Star Wars and thought it was awesome. I think he was five.

So we watched it on a Saturday morning in January while we waited for the snow to finish covering the sled hill at the local park. Of course, he loved the movie and he liked Han Solo the best. I couldn't argue. Many of the best Star Wars quotes come from Han Solo, as I would soon be reminded.

At the sled hill, we discovered that just about every soccer-mom in town had beat us there, but that's what happens when you sit in front of the television for two hours instead of going outside. They were all pushing their innocent little urchins down the rather long and steep hill and having a grand time. So we trudged up the hill to find a spot where I could push my son down on his plastic, slightly warped sled, and partake in the grand time.

My son admitted that he was scared to go down the hill by himself, but he didn't want to go down the hill with me either because I had a habit of trying to hit the man-made jump that some intrepid kid had built halfway down. Being a good dad, I thought I had a remedy for his fear.

First, I said I wouldn't push him towards the jump (this may or may not have been true).

Second, having just watched The Empire Strikes Back, I thought the view from the top of the hill could have been from the ice world of Hoth. I mentioned this to my son and he suddenly wasn't scared. He couldn't wait for me to push him down the icy slopes of Hoth.

I gripped the back of the sled as he sat down.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

"Yeah!" he said.

"Okay," I said. "I'll see you at the bottom."

Just as I pushed, and, therefore, could not un-push, he turned towards me and said, "And I'll see you in hell!"

Thank you, Han Solo.

I think what made it better was the surrounding, utterly shocked group of young mothers who couldn't believe what they had just heard, and what kind of father was I anyway?

Jeez. Doesn't anyone like Star Wars anymore?

NEXT TIME...

Tomorrow, we relive more "Great Moments in Dad History!"

THE LONG FATHER'S DAY - CELEBRATING ALL THINGS DAD (PART 3)

THE SECRET AGENDA OF GRANDPA

My dad was always just Dad until my son was born, then I started thinking about him as Grandpa. Mine wasn't even his first grandkid. Technically, he has eight of them, but, since those other ones belong to my brothers and sister, and since I have never given up on sibling rivalry, I'm going to assume that my son is his favorite.

So anyway, I have this picture I like to call "The Wisdom of Grandpa." There he is, imparting his knowledge of life and the universe to two of his grandchildren over pancakes on a Sunday morning. Actually, grandpa made the pancakes himself and he's standing there trying to find out how much his grandkids are enjoying them. Why is he questioning them on their love for his food preparation skills?

Here's why:

Grandfathers are show-offs. That's right, I said it. Show-offs. Never mind their calm, outward demeanor that says "I have attained the wisdom of a thousand Buddhist monks over my lifetime. I require neither food nor drink nor any other Earthly entrapment to survive. I live on the harmonious flow of the energy of the universe." That's just a smokescreen that Grandpa puts on to mask his real intentions – to show off his amazing, Gandalf-like wizarding abilities to your children. That and it makes an excellent poker face for his buddies from church when they get together over beer and cards. But still...

It took a while to figure this out. I had to employ some serious Harry Bosch/Jack Reacher/NCIS detective work. But I've put together a pretty good case. Grandfathers you are hereby forewarned: I'm on to you.

EXHIBIT A

My parents live in a suburb of Denver, Colorado, and I live outside Chicago. About three months after my son was born the grandparents showed up at the house to see their new grandchild. Grandpa was holding on to the kid, who has never seen anyone wearing glasses before. The child's grabby little hands kept trying to pull them off.

"Oh, you like those?" asked Grandpa. "Those are called glasses. Pretty nice, huh?"

And then he proceeded to take them off and let my son play with them, which mostly meant trying to stick them in his mouth, which in turn made Grandpa awfully happy.

I can tell you right now that if I took off my dad's glasses and started throwing them around or trying to eat them, he would not be awfully happy!

EXHIBIT B

When my son was two, Grandpa happened to be in Chicago on business and he stopped by the house for a quick overnight visit. What did he bring? An old toy dump-truck that he used to play with when he was a child, which he gave to my son. Well, I don't recall ever seeing this dump-truck in my life. That means he was holding on to it, not for his own kids, but for his grandkids.

Of course, my son instantly loved the toy and didn't let go of it for about three weeks. And while Grandpa was there, my son would only play with Grandpa and that new truck. When I got him out of bed the next morning, the little guy immediately ran around the house looking for Grandpa, who he found in the kitchen making coffee. He grabbed Grandpa by the pants leg and pulled him into the living room where the dump-truck waited. So Grandpa, pretending to just be humoring the kid, went through all the cool dump-truck functions with the lad over and over again. That's right: he was pretending to humor my son. Now we know that he really just wanted to show off by letting his grandson know that his dad never bought him a toy as cool as that dump-truck. Right?

**EXHIBIT C THROUGH WHATEVER** (Man, there are a lot...)

That time I took my parents and my son to a Cubs game at Wrigley Field and Grandpa sat next to his grandson and instructed him on the nuances of baseball? Showing off.

That time Grandpa showed several of his grandkids at once how long he could hold his breath underwater at the pool? Showing off.

When most of my siblings and their kids and the rest of us all went bowling together and Grandpa, who claimed he hadn't bowled in years, easily beat everyone with a 200+ score? You guessed it -- Showing off.

When Grandpa drives 25 hours from Colorado to the U.P. just because he thinks it's more fun than flying? Utter insanity. (But, yeah, showing off.)

I could go on and on, but as I write this, it occurs to me that all I'm doing is compiling a mountain of evidence certifying how totally awesome Grandpa is. This is so wrong. I refuse to let my son read this.

CLOSING ARGUMENTS

About a year ago. my parents stopped by the house on another one of their trips across America, or whatever it is they're doing these days (I can't keep track). I had just bought new bikes for myself and my son. Of course, who does he ask to go biking around the neighborhood with him? Grandpa.

A week later, Grandpa called up to tell his grandson that he and Grandma had been inspired to go buy new bikes of their own and they had just come back from an excellent bike ride around their own neighborhood and they just thought he should know that. These people are 70 and they just bought new bikes. I hope I inherited those good genes.

A month after that, I received a cryptic photo on my phone from Grandma. The photo showed Grandpa lying in a hospital bed with what appeared to be a tube attached to his head. I immediately freaked out and called Grandma only to find out that Grandpa thought it would be a good idea to go on a bike ride while walking the dog. Well, the dog, on a leash, saw a rabbit and took off, yanking Grandpa right off his bike. He landed head-first on the concrete, which knocked him out. Luckily someone found him and an ambulance was called. He needed a few stitches for a gash on his head, but otherwise he was okay.

And what did he do the next time he saw my son?

That's right, he showed off the scar.

### THE LONG FATHER'S DAY - CELEBRATING ALL THINGS DAD (PART 5)

**FATHER'S DAY GIFTS!**

Now we come to it, the real meaning of Father's Day. You thought it was all that other stuff, but let's get real, it's about the gifts. Like any guy, MojoFiction won't waste any time extemporizing on why gifting is important on Father's Day. We'll just get to the gifts.

2013 Dodge Sports Car SRT GTS 477kW Viper

This one is obvious. Head off that mid-life crisis now with a car that costs as much as your college education. In that respect, it's almost like a Mother's Day present. But really, we don't have to explain the importance of the sports car. Don't worry if you don't have enough money up front, it's called a loan and they're available from any number of legitimate sources. Our advice, call J.G. Wentworth, 877-CASH-NOW. [1]

A Tie

They should be tie-dyed and say fun things, like WORLD'S AVERAGEST DAD, or CRAPPY GOLFER. This will ensure that we wear them all the time. Of course, if you have money for 30 ties, maybe you should start thinking about a down-payment on that car.

Inflatable Television

This is serious stuff. When your dad has an inflatable television, he can take it anywhere and be the life of the party. He just needs a matching High Definition projector and a subscription to all the HD Sports channels on cable TV, along with Slingbox or some similar service (877-CASH-NOW). Now he'll never have to miss a game of embarrassing Cubs baseball when he takes you camping, because, as you know, camping is an excuse to get away from the house and watch baseball on a huge television somewhere else, preferably in a natural setting that didn't have a TV before and, therefore, really needs one. If there are TVs in the bathroom at Buffalo Wild Wings, there can be a TV in the middle of the Appalachian Trail, just as nature intended.

Standing Urinal

When any man comes over to the house to watch the big game on your dad's glorious inflatable television, he doesn't want to stand over that little toilet in the newly refinished bathroom and splash drops everywhere. And he sure as heck doesn't want to sit on the toilet to pee just because his wife makes him do it at home. But if that bathroom had a standing urinal, your dad would be the king of the block. Like the ending in Field of Dreams, male friends and complete strangers would line up for miles just for a chance to use your dad's standing urinal. And now your dad will never have to hear the phrase "Did you put the lid down?" ever again.

Somebody Else's Kids

Imagine how much fun your dad will have hanging out with somebody else's kids. They could go to the beach all day and skip the sun block, or sneak into movies, or eat way too much ice cream at the sweet shop BEFORE dinner and ruin their appetite. And Dad won't have to worry about any responsibility because, hey, they're not his kids....That would be sweet.

A Bobble-Head Doll that Looks like His Wife

Now your dad can take his lovely wife with him to office where, every time that hot secretary he recently hired pops in, he can see his wife shaking her head vigorously at him, letting him know, in no uncertain terms, that he shouldn't have hired that hot secretary and he's going to be in trouble when he gets home and can he please stop at the store for some asparagus and some milk, but no beer. Oh, and she maxed out the credit card again. Sorry.

Applebee's Lunch Decoy

Forget putting this guy up at the office to fool the boss, just stick him under the car in the garage with his legs sticking out and the wife will think her man is working on the car. Meanwhile, after relieving himself in his stand-up urinal, Dad can hop in his new Dodge Viper and drive over to his buddy's house where they'll break out his inflatable television to watch the big game while eating high-end ice cream treats with someone else's kids. And since the bobble-head as at the office, he won't remember to call the Mrs.

_________________________

1. On second thought, DON'T. (back to text->)

THE DAD FILES - EPISODE VIII: THE OFFSPRING STRIKES BACK

TODAY'S COLUMN OFFERS 3:1 odds that you'll enjoy it. That's better than the Bulls-Heat game tonight!

On to today's files!

ON HUMOR WRITING

There isn't much I like more than writing humorous material. Maybe free-donut Friday at the office, though they've started bringing in a lot more bagels, which brings down the experience. Anyway, there isn't much I dislike more than being shown up by an eight-year-old who thinks he's funny.

On Friday evening I picked my son up from his mom's per our usual arrangement. As always, he brought with him a folder containing his schoolwork from the week so I could see how he's doing and ask him how he knew that 39 minus 14 was 25, but for 9 + 3 he answered 6. Well...these things happen.

Besides his folder, he said he had a present for me. Somehow, at a fund-raising fare the school had earlier in the week, he came away with a small bottle of body spray called (and this is completely true) Really Ripped Abs. Being a guy, he was sure I would really want the spray so I could get some really ripped abs. Ignoring the fact that body spray doesn't have metamorphic powers, I said "What if I already have really ripped abs?" He laughed like I had told a joke. Then he said we could always use it in the house like Febreze, only manlier. I asked if he would want to sit on a couch that was sporting some really ripped abs. Sure, you wouldn't need cushions anymore – because of the couch abs – but it might not be that comfortable. He laughed about that all day and I felt like a winner. But then he showed me a short story he had written at school.

His short story came equipped with a picture that was too large for me to scan into the computer, so use your imagination. It was a green-colored bird in a cage squawking to get out while the owner looked on with a puzzled look on his face. Here is the story, as written by my offspring:

"This hunter has just caught a rare green-feathered robin. He has been looking for one for three years.

The bird does not like the cage and wants to go back to his family.

The hunter thought about letting him go. Then he decided to let him be free for two reasons:

One, he wanted the bird to be happy; and, two, it was really annoying."

"It was really annoying." Great punch-line that I may steal one day. I laughed all day about it and he let me know that he felt like a winner. But part of me understood that my own son might be funnier than I am.

Nuts.

ON GOLF

On Sunday I took my son golfing for the first time. We've played miniature golf and hit the driving range many times, but "real golf" is entirely different. Because the course operators can be hard-core about keeping up the pace, I decided we would play best-ball. It wasn't like I wanted to show the kid up, but obviously we would be using my tremendous shots all the time.

On the first hole, he gave the ball a mighty thwack with his little driver and burned it across the open ground, about half way to the fairway. Short, but nice and straight. I let him know it was an excellent hit, but now he needed to stand back while I took my turn. Of course, I topped it and we ended up using his shot. First hole of the season, I said. Just getting the kinks out.

On the approach to hole four, I landed the ball about twenty-five feet from the edge of the green. A pitch from there and we'd be on. Unfortunately, I had placed the ball under a tree and on the other side of a sand trap. I had no idea how I would get over the trap without hitting tree branches, other than punching the ball over the sand and all the way across the green, which would leave a huge putt.

I told him to drop his ball near mine and get ready to take his shot. I had just started pointing out where he should aim when I realized he was already swinging his club. I saw his ball go sailing over the sand, drop onto the green, and roll within eight feet of the hole. Being a good dad, I immediately congratulated him on his excellent shot.

From me to you: it's hard to be a good dad when it comes to golf.

At the end of the outing, as we walked back to the car, all I could hear was my son saying "Remember when we used my shot on that hole," and "Remember when I made my putt and you didn't," and "What was my best shot today? Was it that drive that beat yours?" Of course, I answered yes to all and put on my brave, happy face. After all, it couldn't get any worse, right?

At the car, as I popped the trunk and started loading the clubs, my kiddo slipped into the back seat of the car. There must have been some funky leftover aroma hanging out (I won't say what) because he stuck his head out and said, loudly enough for the people walking by to hear and give us a movie-quality double-take, "Dad, this car needs some really ripped abs."

Show off.

EVERYTHING I NEEDED TO KNOW I LEARNED FROM PLAYING VIDEO GAMES UNTIL 4 IN THE MORNING AND DON'T TRY AND TELL ME IT WASN'T WORTH IT BECAUSE I TURNED OUT PERFECTLY NORMAL

MOJOFICTION HAS A shocking confession to make. We play video games....Sometimes. Not all the time. Really, we don't have a problem and we can quit whenever we want. Just let us finish this level first and then we'll be done.

Why are we confessing this marginal sin that only required one Hail Mary and five bucks into the offering plate (and we're not even Catholic, so we don't know what happened)? Well, we went ahead and introduced our son to video games and now we think we probably shouldn't have. He didn't even like them at first. We had to repeatedly subject him to computer generated mayhem to finally get him to join the path of the true video game believer.

It all started with Fruit Ninja, though, really, if they had called it Vegetable Ninja they would have sold a lot more copies to American kids everywhere who love strawberries but hate cauliflower (we would also like to see Cute Internet Kitten Ninja for reasons that are probably very disturbing). Still, after that first taste of smart phone ninjaness, he wanted to play it all the time. We figured the phone only generates a little bit of radiation, so why not? Anyway, that gaming translated over to the Wii and now we have a video game library so vast that it was just installed as an official wing of the Library of Congress... and, no, you can't check out Mario Kart. Get your own copy. Unfortunately, with the next generation of game consoles on the way, we now have to figure out how to raid or son's allowance to pay for an X-Box One.

On the plus side, our son generally only likes party games, where you can play against other human beings, especially racing games. And we've also exercised some parental caution by not allowing him to play games that are realistically violent. When he expressed interest in a fist person shooter, we bought a paintball game, which you think would be boring but is pretty darn fun.

On the minus side, we're concerned for his overall worldview and general education because it's come to our attention that video games do not represent an accurate depiction of the real world. That was a surprise to us because we've been playing video games since the original Nintendo and now you tell us that there aren't secret blocks hidden just above our heads that, if we jump at the right spot, will throw up gold coins? Thanks a lot. And have we been jumping on turtle shells for nothing all these years.

A few of the things we've learned over the past few years from video games that have been passed on to our offspring:

If you jump on a mushroom you will bounce REALLY high – Mario Kart

The next time you go skiing at a fancy resort, a hyperactive restaurant owner with personnel problems will most likely ask you to deliver a plate of spaghetti to a customer who somehow ordered from behind a tree way up on the Elephant Slope (there will be no reward but you will happily do it) – Wii Ski

Four left turns lead to somewhere completely different from where you started – Temple Run

There's no reason to fear huge man-eating bears, even two at a time, if you have a mace – Skyrim

Ahsoka can whoop Ventress with just her one green lightsaber that she holds upside-down – Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Lightsaber Duels (Don't worry, we set our son straight on this one. In real life Ventress would never lose.)

If you burn down the highway outside of Vegas at 156 mph in a tricked out Mazda and the cops try to run you off the road (you now, like they do), you can take them down instead and no warrant will be issued for your arrest, you'll get the girl, and rack up huge bonus points – Need for Speed

With one rifle and a double-barreled shotgun, you can slaughter 30 migratory birds and 15 trophy bucks, not to mention an assortment of turkeys and rabbits, in just three minutes... and lose – Cabela's Monster Buck Hunter

Someone was on serious drugs when they made Rayman: Origins – Rayman: Origins

With one effortless swing, you can drive a golf ball 300 yards straight down the fairway – Tiger Woods Golf

With one effortless putt, you can sink a hole-in-one and beat your dad at mini-golf... oh, wait, that really happened

So it looks like there is going to have to be some elite parenting time going on to clear this all up, especially since the young man has been accepted into the gifted class at his school. Though, at his young age, we're not sure what gifted really means. Probably not gifted at video games.

Hey, Dad has to be better than his kids at something.

# PART FOUR: ON THE SUBJECT OF CHICAGO...
I'LL TAKE THE BLONDE: A CHICAGO CRIME STORY

LOCATION: CHICAGO

TIME: 9:35AM CST

DATE: CLASSIFIED

OUR HERO: MOJOFICTION (What? It's our story and we're the hero.)

Everything you are about to read is true.

Ever have one of those days where you feel like you're sitting around forever, waiting for something exciting to happen? That's right, they're called workdays.

On this particular workday, Mr. Fiction glanced at the computer clock to discover it was already 9:30am. He realized with mounting horror that somehow the office had sucked two hours of work out of him, but he had not yet ventured down the street to a certain coffee-house for an iced tall caramel macchiato (if you think that's wimpy, than we really meant a double-shot espresso). How could this have happened, he wondered? And why was he still working on a desktop computer? It's like the Flintstones around here, only without the comedy.

After a quick word with I.T. to requisition some modern technology, Mr. Fiction pieced together a plan of action to secure his morning coffee drink using only his stapler, a file cabinet drawer label, and a Styrofoam cup from the break room. This worked out well because he needed to staple some important pages together, finally label that drawer, and throw out yesterday's empty coffee cup. But after that he scanned the office, saw no one looking his way, and made a dash for the elevator to the ground floor.

In the lobby, the highly trained, professionally disciplined security staff at the front desk watched our hero casually walk by and out the door because that's basically their job and they knew the guy anyway and it's not important to the story, so just forget it.

MojoFiction stepped outside into the muggy Chicago air – his biological caffeine clock ticking away madly. He scoped the area for his destination, but all around him an unexpected sea of teenagers funneled down the street, confusing him with their yappity-yap and their Dunkin Donuts coffee that they probably bought at the train station on their ride in. @#$!ing Lollapalooza. Can't they take that thing out to the suburbs? Finally, he got his bearings and made off down the street towards one of the fifteen coffee shops that exist within a two-block radius of his office.

That's when the @#$! went down.

Parked cars of every type lined the street that morning, some illegally parked and already receiving tickets. Half way down the street a taxi stopped just in front of a mysterious, black SUV, presumably to drop off a passenger. Suddenly, the driver's-side door of the SUV opened and a man in a dark suit and sunglasses popped out and politely told the taxi driver to park it somewhere else. What was that SUV doing there? And who was this security guy who met every possibly security-guy stereotype, including the earpiece? Unfortunately, he wasn't talking and just gave MojoFiction a dirty look because Mr. Fiction kept staring at him.

Without any answers, our hero turned south, walked down the street and to the corner to cross over. But just as he got to the corner, another black SUV rocketed through the intersection, going east-west. Two shiny, black SUVs within a block of each other at the same time downtown? Surely, something nefarious was about to happen. Thinking quickly about how stupidly he was thinking, Mr. Fiction crossed the street to see what was going on with the new SUV.

The vehicle came to a screeching halt immediately after crossing the intersection, pulling over to the curb and NOT paying for parking. Then, no less than eight men wearing dark suits and sunglasses burst from the vehicle. One of the men popped the trunk and let the others reach in to grab backpacks, which were hardly color-coordinated with their suits. Then, with practiced military precision, the men congregated on the sidewalk and, with a nod from the guy who popped the trunk, they all turned and... rushed headlong into Starbucks.

MojoFiction quickly followed because, after all, he was going to Starbucks and now there would potentially be eight other people in line ahead of him, which might constitute a criminal act.

Inside Starbucks, the eight well-dressed interlopers stood in line ahead of our hero, making him wait at least another five minutes. They ordered an assortment of lattes and Frappuccinos, with the apparent ring leader ordering a cup of the Blonde Roast. Then they went on their merry way, talking, laughing, and drinking fancy coffee drinks as if nothing had happened. Their training had paid off and the mission was a success. Coffee acquired. And right under the noses of the unsuspecting public.

It was a professional operation all the way and, to be honest, we're not even sure it's safe to blog about it. After all, they got away clean. But if we had parked anywhere downtown without immediately paying the meter, we would have received a parking ticket in, like, 10 seconds. These guys were obviously well-connected, which means this case goes all the way to the top....Which is pretty much standard operating procedure in Chicago.

If you never hear from MojoFiction again, be on the lookout for a covert coffee-drinking security detail descending on a coffee-house near you. If you see them, run the other way, because if you don't, you'll have to wait in line that much longer for your coffee.

MAYBE ALFRED HITCHCOCK WAS ON TO SOMETHING...

IN THE COMPLETELY true-story movie The Birds, the title creatures sit around minding their own business and then, just when you get comfortable, they attack you in droves, causing a lot of screaming and running around and it makes your vision turn black and white. Nowadays, with the threat of mass bird attacks mostly gone, America faces another avian threat. Well, our cars do anyway.[1]

The staff here at MojoFiction wonders why birds target our car on a regular basis. No, they're not stealing our rims. We put a stop to that after the third time by cleverly buying generic rims from Sears that no one would want except maybe the nice old lady who lives on the corner (we're watching her very closely). MojoFiction:1 – Birds: 0....well, Birds: 3 actually, but we feel good about our current position. Anyway, what we're talking about is birds dropping a deuce on our car.

A huge tree takes up most of the small yard in front of our townhouse and overhangs our driveway. On any given day we can stand outside and see that our driveway looks pristine – not a bird dropping on it. But park our car there for an hour and it ends up covered in purple schplutz. Several times we've been in the house and thought we heard hail. We ran outside to move the car into the garage only to find out that it wasn't hail...

When we used to live on the north side of Chicago we owned a white(ish) Chevy Cavalier, a horse of a car that soldiered on for 168,000 miles before dropping dead of embarrassment when it realized it was a Chevy Cavalier. That car used to attract the pigeons like whatever it is that attracts pigeons (probably Chevys). They would follow us everywhere in that car. That's a scary thing when you live in Chicago because those birds run their territory with an iron fist. That's right, in Chicago they have fists. The flock you really have to watch out for, according to police records, is the Fullerton Raiders. They own a supposedly legit tattoo shop under the 'L' tracks, but their enforcers hang out on top of a billboard, underneath of which is a thirty-foot pile of petrified pigeon leavings that lets you know you're in their hood now.

We used to think they were just marking their territory by decorating our tragic Cavalier. But it turns out that pigeons are very superstitious. From the air, our dropping encrusted car looked like a huge pigeon circling the block looking for leftover human food (we were just looking for parking). And they worshipped it:

"Hurry, follow our God! He will lead us to the land of forever bread crumbs promised in legend, where there will be much feasting and pooping!"

"...But someone remind Brian not to poop on the feasting!"

When our car died and we had to get a new one, the birds stopped following us. Also, we moved to the suburbs.

But outside of Chicago, sometimes known as Chicagoland (or The Wastelands, to Cook County residents), the birds don't need to flock together to control their human underlings, thanks to their ultra-secret, high-tech spying network secretly known as the National Avian Security Agency (NASA). Before Snowden blew the lid off that one, you couldn't walk by a pine tree in the suburbs without passing under one of their listening stations. They say they only monitor for cats, hawks, and the occasional worm, for home-nest security purposes, but now we've found out they've been actively searching for clean, shiny cars, and sometimes a bald head or a fresh ice-cream cone. But instead of shutting down their operations, they claim to have updated their system of checks and balances but, no, they won't tell us how for security reasons. We just have to trust them.

MojoFiction's car, however, has been targeted often as of late and we're starting to think there's some profiling going on. The only thing that seems to even the odds is the chain saw we bought that we use to threaten to cut down the tree on our yard. But we know they're still watching us.

Maybe they're mad because we tried to get them put on the no-fly list. But they're birds and they just gave us the middle feather and went on their way.

And if you think that joke was cringe-worthy then we know a place where you can go park your car.

_______________________________

1. We're letting you know up front that this blog entry is pointless. We just really wanted to whine about all the bird poop on our car. (back to text->)

### NORMAL ROCKWELL, WHERE ART THOU?

PICTURE IF YOU will, a dark, overcast day in Chicago. Street lamps reflect in small pools of water left over from the rain and a thin mist seems to hang in the air. Our eye takes us downtown, to the intersection of Wacker and LaSalle Street, just over the bridge. Imagine the rain has stopped ten minutes earlier, leaving the ground damp and heads wet from the occasional unexpected drip. In the middle of the white-striped crosswalk across LaSalle Street stands a white-haired man dressed in a charcoal suit, trench coat, and fedora. A business man. Maybe a lawyer. In one hand he carries a black briefcase, in the other, a large black umbrella, closed. This businessman crossing the street stops suddenly. Now he turns and looks intently at a yellow taxi that screeches to a halt right in front of him, almost hitting him because the wet ground carries the car a little further when the driver hits the brakes. The man in the intersection barks at the taxi about his right-of-way while he vigorously thrusts his closed umbrella at the crosswalk signal.

Now imagine on the west side of the street, where our businessman started his crossing, stands a guy who calls himself MojoFiction (seriously). He stares wonderingly at the scene and thinks, "If I was Normal Rockwell I would totally paint this." Why does he think this? Here's where it gets interesting...

I think it was a Wednesday, but if you're more of a Friday person than it was Friday. I was on my lunch break and decided that the best way to spend said break would be to go to a job interview at another company. Shame on me, being so sneaky, but a friend of mine had made the interview happen and the company sounded pretty good, so I wasn't going to miss it. Naturally, I didn't have an umbrella with me when it started to rain, so I showed up at the interview a little wet. It turns out that dripping all over the chair in the conference room where they held the interview is a pretty good ice-breaker. For those of you keeping score at home, professionalism is actually a better ice-breaker, but it was too late. Anyway, the two people interviewing me were these young guys who were basically looking for people like them and I happened to fit the bill and the job was pretty much mine. But I didn't know that as I started the walk back to the other office where I still worked.

In Chicago, Wacker Drive holds the distinction of being both north-south and east-west. That's because it follows the bend in the river downtown, which defines the outer border of "The Loop." If you've seen Christopher Nolan's first two Batman films, you might also be familiar with "Lower Wacker" that runs underneath. Also, if you didn't know, Chicago is also one of those towns where, if you're a pedestrian, you hate cars, and if you're in a car, you hate pedestrians. When it rains, that mutual disdain shows up in full force. And it would that day on Wacker Drive.

So I was walking around the bend in Wacker Drive and I came up to the corner of LaSalle Street and Wacker. Traffic, mostly taxis, shot down LaSalle into the financial district (if it can be called that). While I waited at the corner for the light to change, a businessman walked past me and stepped off the curb, encroaching into the street like they do in Chicago, hoping to see a small gap in traffic that will let them rush across the street before getting the walk signal. He didn't have to wait because the traffic light changed to red and the southbound taxis stopped, freeing up the intersection. Our heroic businessman launched himself into the crosswalk, hurrying on his way to who knows where. Maybe I was lost in thought, I don't remember, but I didn't follow him.

LaSalle Street itself is a wide street, so it takes a few seconds longer to cross. The businessman didn't even get halfway across when I heard the screech of tires and saw a taxi cab come to a halt about two feet from him. The businessman jumped back about a foot, but I don't think that would have helped if the cab didn't stop. Thankfully, a pedestrian incident was averted and no one got hurt. Of course, it's important for a pedestrian to let those pesky taxi cabs know how badly they've mucked things up this time, which brings us back to where we started and my Norman Rockwell moment.

Picture if you will a businessman in the middle of a crosswalk on a wet day in Chicago, facing off against a taxi-cab. It hasn't occurred to the man that even though the cars coming down LaSalle Street have stopped, the cars on Wacker Drive just might have a left turn signal that allows them to turn down LaSalle. Imagine this sharply dressed business man yelling at the taxi driver while he animatedly thrusts the tip of his umbrella across the street, pointing to a signal that clearly says "Don't Walk."

### THE FULL CHICAGO SPORTING EVENT EXPERIENCE

WE HERE AT MojoFiction celebrated our 40th birthday on Friday night by crying ourselves to sleep because we are now old. But we also celebrated by taking in a Chicago Bulls basketball game on Saturday night. Instead of attending the game with our good friend Mr. Jack N. Coke (along with some regular friends, probably), we took our nine-year old son. Recently, he finished his youth basketball season, which he really liked, and we thought we'd remind him of what he was missing by letting him watch other people play basketball. We also let him know that many of those people make millions of dollars to play while we actually had to pay to let him play in his youth league.

It was his first NBA game and he was excited like you couldn't believe. Originally, we were going to go downtown to watch the city turn the river green — well, greener than it already is — but they moved the time up from 10am to 9:30am. Now that we're 40 we don't get up before 9am (we just made that rule up, and we like it).

Since we were taking our son out to his first game, we wanted to give him the full experience. Instead of taking the train in, we drove down i-94 and let him experience the thrill of the miles-long traffic jam that is the interstate 90-94 merger. That actually ended up moving pretty quickly, so we were disappointed. But then we exited at Adams and drove west, where we thought we'd make up for the interstate by running into all the cars arriving early for parking. Of course, we drove straight through to the parking lot without any hassle and even got a space right by the entrance to the lot, meaning we'd get out pretty quickly once the game was over. So far, the full Chicago Bulls experience wasn't really working.

Enter: The Billy Goat.

Stopping at the Billy Goat is a rite of passage for anyone going to the United Center for any reason. After all, if you're going to attend a sporting event that serves mainly greasy burgers and fries, what better place to stop at first than a legendary restaurant that serves mainly greasy burgers and fries (no Pepsi. Coke)?

We left the parking lot and headed towards the Billy Goat, in the opposite direction of the United Center. The cold wind scratched at our faces and our son asked repeatedly why we were walking away from the arena. We answered, "The full experience!"

We arrived at the front door to the Billy Goat, pulled it open, and stared at a full house. That place was packed all the way up the door. There was a group of about 30 teenagers all dressed in the same outfits and waiting in line that must have arrived just before us. So: arrive in the city, pay a ridiculous amount of money for parking, walk into the cold wind for blocks and blocks in the opposite direction of your ultimate destination just to get to a low-rent restaurant only to end up rejected by the crowd so large that you can't even get in the front door? Now that's the Chicago experience.

We left and walked to the United Center where we ate hot dogs (probably, they were kind of greyish, so who knows).

Finally, the game started – the Bulls vs. the Sacramento Kings. Our seats were up in the 300 level, but good nonetheless. Our son was mesmerized by the event, from the giant scoreboard above the court, to the pre-game theatrics, to the spectacular play of Joakim Noah. We, of course, used the moment to impart our expert knowledge of professional basketball to our son. Also of course, our son is apparently at the age where he's no longer sure that Dad is an expert at anything. We assured him we were and then we used our outstanding parental abilities to tell him not to argue with us.

As the game entered the 4th quarter, the score was close. We were literally on the edge of our seats (so we basically paid for the whole seat for nothing). The Bulls took a full time-out to strategize about the best way to stop missing shots. While we waited, we suddenly noticed small parachutes dropping from the rafters and on to the crowd. The Bulls marketing dept. likes to tie t-shirts to parachutes and drop them on the crowd. But none floated our way. Just when we thought we'd miss out, a parachute took an unexpected turn right towards our seats. We went all deer-in-headlights and watched it as it floated right to the couple next to us. The girl reached up and snagged it.

We turned to our son and said, "What happened? It was coming right to you!" (Completely ignoring our own immobility...)

"I don't know," he said. But he did know. He admitted he was afraid that if he jumped up for it he might go tumbling down the stairs and over the rail into the lower seating. (We're serious here. He said that. He really did.)

You can guess what happened next. Earlier in the game, the girl had asked our son if it was his first basketball game. He replied that it was. Now, the same girl handed him the parachute shirt and said she'd like him to have it, since it was his first game. Our son graciously accepted and thanked her profusely, which we were very proud of.

So: drive into the city to spend the evening eating hot dogs with your son and letting him experience his first live Bulls game and having a stranger hand him a parachute prize that will most likely not come her way again, only to leave the arena with a home team win and memories of a great time?

Full Chicago Sporting Event Experience.

### CHICAGO IN A GLASS

NORMALLY, WE HERE at MojoFiction celebrate everything it means to be a guy in today's "it's a war on women" world, including (but not limited to), power tools, fatherhood, sports, being a good father while losing to your son at sports, and wondering aloud why the line is so long as Starbuck's when all we want is a venti mocha Frappuccino. Today, however, we are taking a detour from our usual fare to celebrate a little piece of the great city of Chicago: Prohibition....Hold on, that's not right. What's the opposite of prohibition? Imbibing? Okay, look, the point is that we're celebrating Chicago and drinking whisky. Sorry for the confusion, that's kind of a guy thing.

Anyway, if you've seen the movie The Untouchables, then you know that Prohibition only took place in Chicago, while the rest of the country enjoyed fine Canadian spirits with absolutely no repercussions. So it's fitting that we came across a whisky recently that's all about Chicago and generally available only around here (sorry to gloat but... no, we're not sorry). However, there are a couple of parts to this story.
PART ONE: THE WHISKY

There is a fairly well-known hang-out in Chicago called Delilah's. It's considered a "Punk Rock Bar," but over its twenty years Delilah's has also become known as a whisky bar, mostly because of the hundreds of bottles they have available (though, admittedly, on Sunday they are a Buffalo Bills bar). Keeping anything open in Chicago for twenty years is kind of a big deal, so the owner decided to celebrate. In a seriously guy-move, the owner got together with a scotch whisky maker called Compass Box and put together a special bottling they simply called Delilah's. It's like a bourbon, but definitely a scotch (if you are a guy you will understand). It's something you pour over the rocks or, to echo the whisky-maker's sentiments, shoot and chase with a beer.

We're always interested in Chicago-centric events, so when Delilah's whisky was released locally earlier this year we went out to Binny's and grabbed a bottle. After realizing we had to pay for it, we put it back, but then we came back and bought it because it turns out no one else was going to buy it for us. Interestingly enough, later these cheapskates would help us drink it. Yeah... that's kind of a guy thing, too.

Of course, once you have acquired an interesting bottle of whisky, the immediate question is, what are you going to do with it? There's only one answer: drink it with friends (unless it's Ardbeg, then you save that one for yourself).
PART TWO: THE OCCASION

At MojoFiction's place of employment in downtown Chicago, several of us sometimes celebrate the end of the week by gathering in someone's office and drinking a beer or sampling a new whisky that one of us has brought in. It's one of those work-bonding things, and also the boss was out, but it's something that we all enjoy. (Okay, the sad truth is, there are not many women at our company and that makes us cry a little bit, but we're not in charge of hiring.) If you've never sat in on a whisky tasting with a bunch of guys, you might be confused at first. Here's a sample conversation:

WHAT WAS SAID:

Guy #1: (Burp)

Guy #2: Hmmm.

Guy #1: Yup.

WHAT THEY MEANT:

Guy #1: Good scotch.

Guy #2: I acknowledge your contribution to the conversation, but I cannot rate that burp higher than a 3.

Guy #1: Yeah, it was lacking in reverb, but pleasant nonetheless. Don't forget, football at Tilted Kilt on Sunday. And the Broncos are going to get beat.

Guy #2: In your dreams.

But once you get past the coded conversations, what you have is a group of friends sitting around and talking about the world at large over a bottle of whisky. One guy (whom we'll call Guy #3) was on his way out of the office when we flagged him down and showed him the bottle of Delilah's. An hour and half later he was still sitting in our office with four of our other co-workers, enjoying another glass. Throughout that time, the word had spread and people from other departments dropped in for a taste and to talk for a few minutes. By the time we decided to call it a day we'd pretty much seen everyone in the office and they'd pretty much all tried a dram of whisky. There wasn't much left in the bottle at that point, so we gave the remainder to Guy #4 and told him to share it with his friends over the weekend. We knew they would respect him for having bottle of Delilah's in his cabinet. It is, after all, a little piece of Chicago.

And now it's gone.

Unless you go to Delilah's, of course. We're sure they're stocked.

### CHICAGO IN AUTUMN = FUN (probably)

THREE BLOG ENTRIES for the price of two. 3 for 1 seemed a little generous, don't you think? As always, we honor all competitors' coupons, unless their blog is better than ours. Anyway, here's what has been going on in Chicago since nature ticked its calendar over to Fall.

DA BULLS

We here at MojoFiction love basketball and we know everything there is to know about the current incarnation of the NBA. So we actually posted today to brag about the seating arrangement we had for last Friday night's game at the United Center, which featured the Chicago Thingys (we forget) versus the Utah Knicks. The poor Utah team didn't look very good against a sloppy Chicago team: receivers were wide open but they kept getting called for off-sides by the line judge, who kept awarding the other team free kicks. At least we think that's how basketball is played. But it hardly matters because we love the NBA! And we thank Scotland for sending it "across the pond" on the Titanic. Obviously, it didn't make it that time, but the Hindenburg was able to drop it off shortly before heading to New York.

So anyway, the sweet tickets wasted on MojoFiction instead of going to real fans were in the second row behind the visitor's bench, which means we couldn't see anything because all the visitors are 9'2".

But at least we got to enjoy the half-time show, which featured these freaky dudes who can hover twenty feet above the ground without any wires that we could see.

The only thing we could figure is, their abilities might have had something to do with the large trampolines directly below them, but we don't want to guess.

DA CLOUD GATE

Chicago is a beautiful city in the fall, unless you have to sit in an office all day working, which MojoFiction does. So, when no one was looking (except the secretary, she's ALWAYS looking), we stepped outside and walked over to Millennium Park to see one of Chicago's cultural attractions, the "Cloud Gate."

For those of you who don't know, the Cloud Gate fell from the heavens in 2006 with a loud THWONK!, narrowly missing three city workers who were immediately awarded three years of disability and positions as Aldermen (and also Police Superintendent), along with generous pensions that Illinois demanded from Indiana because everyone from Indiana works here anyway.

The locals call the Cloud Gate "The Bean" because, per NBA rules, it's shaped like a basketball. But what's really confusing is which Legend of Zelda game the sculptor raided to come up with the name Cloud Gate. Right? It's not actually a gate to anything unless you stare at it on an overcast afternoon for fifteen minutes without blinking. Then $#&! gets weird.

HALLOWEEN

In our opinion, Halloween ushers in the fall season, not those thoughtless trees littering their leaves all over our yard and clogging up our gutters without so much as a "my bad." Stupid trees. How do you like this new chainsaw we bought? Yeah, you just stand there and say nothing...

We love handing out candy to our nation's youth, because it keeps dentists in business, but also because the really little kids are funny and so excited to get treats. ...And extra also: we feel bad for all the candy our own kid has taken from the neighborhood over the years, so we have to give something back. So this year we here at MojoFiction bought three bags of candy to hand out, which ended up being almost $30.00. We didn't realize we were spending so much until we got to the register, where the cashier quickly called "No take-backs" and we had to buy it all.

Unfortunately, Halloween virtually rained out in our neck of the woods. Trick-or-Treating was from 4-8pm, but by 7pm we only had two visitors, so we packed it in early. But then, just before 8pm the doorbell rang. We opened the door to find two young boys, escorted by their parents (standing out in the rain), who were obviously off to a late start, given their low candy levels. Our guess, they tried to wait out the rain. Well, they were in luck.

We grabbed our bowl full of candy and dumped a huge handful into each bag. Looking back on it, we should have given them even more. As we closed the door, we heard one of the kids say to his parents, "Mom, look how much I got!"

To explain the warm, fuzzy feeling we experienced upon hearing that, let's use this mathematical equation:

$30.00 worth of candy + 2 happy kids who almost missed out = totally worth it.

PART FIVE: ON THE SUBJECT OF BOOKS AND STUFF...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S STAR WARS (A Book Review)

VERILY, A NEW HOPE

This is a real book. Seriously. We here at MojoFiction couldn't believe it either. Shakespeare AND Star Wars together? Break out the paper bags because we're hyperventilating from too much excitement due to overexposure to a geek fantasy unlike any other. Sci-fi nuts, historians, and your college English professor together in one place? Beam us up, Scotty!

When we saw this book casually lying around at a Barnes and Noble, we didn't think it could possibly be real, so we did the usual authenticity tests, including biting the edge and using the cover to cut glass. Neither test worked, but the annoyed looks we got from the bookstore staff told us all we needed to know. So we took the book over to the café that resides in every Barnes and Noble these days and accessed their free Wi-Fi (suckers!). Sure enough, the Shakespearian canon goes: Much Ado About Nothing, Henry the XXIII, Jurassic Park, Star Wars. Did you know that George Lucas is actually an anagram for Twelfth Night? Who knew? (Besides Oliver Stone)

Since all of William Shakespeare's Plays are in the public domain, a guy named Ian Doescher went ahead and claimed to be the author, knowing full well that there's nothing we can do about it. To Mr. Doescher's credit, his reinterpretation of the opening salvo in the Star Wars saga (there's really only three movies, right?) is nothing short of brilliant. You may think we're lavishing high praise on a re-write of a screenplay, but we were a theatre major in college... and we've probably said enough.

Ever wonder what R2-D2 is really thinking when he makes all those beeps and whirs? You'll find out, because the author uses every Shakespearian convention, including asides (which we would include, but we think there's a copyright issue...).

Anyway, you can't make this stuff up!...Well, the author did, but that's beside the point. First of all, he writes the entire story in iambic pentameter, which, as you know, is THX certified. That's a feat in-and-of itself, but it's how he uses it that reveals how good the author is. If you love Shakespeare AND Darth Vader, you'll find the Sith Lord using rhyming couplets and emoting to the audience. Wondering how action scenes can play out at the Globe? Enter the Chorus! The author leaves no Elizabethan stone unturned in his quest to turn Star Wars into a play, and, in fact, we're pretty sure an intrepid group could easily produce this play for the stage. Online you can even find study guides for high school and college classes.

There's a thought. High school kids don't want to read Hamlet, but might they read Star Wars?

Ultimately, though, the question comes to down to how good of a read the book is. We think it's outstanding. Through the medium of iambic pentameter and the tropes of old Shakespearian plays, the author adds a surprising amount of depth and feeling to the characters. Famous lines take on another dimension, while the reader will see character motivations in a new light. This book isn't just a gimmick. It's a serious work of literature that is at times funny, insightful, and moving, while keeping true to the original material and even paying homage to previous works by Shakespeare. While "Is that a lightsaber I see before me" may be obvious, we won't spoil the best ones for you.

Beyond that, William Shakespeare's Star Wars does something that's hard to do these days. It sheds light on a classical form of writing, making it accessible to today's youth who deal primarily in LMAO, TL:DR, and other forms for internet / texting-speak.

Ian Doescher shows us that all the world really is a stage, even worlds that are far, far away.

And anyway, where else are you going to see Jabba the Hut wearing an Elizabethan hat?

A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH DOUGLAS ADAMS

IF MY EMPLOYER is reading this then I'll probably get fired, but, oh well.

Today Google reminded those of us who love internet searches that it's the anniversary of the untimely death of Douglas Adams. Seeing their celebratory doodle reminded me of my one-time encounter with the author. I say encounter loosely, since the famous author had already passed on from this world and I was standing above his interred ashes in London's Highgate Cemetery, wondering why I just paid a fee to see dead people and marveling at how an entire city can shut down due to an inch of snow.

Before you cry foul and say I can't call this an encounter, I will first say that you may have a point. But I will also say that I once stood in the middle of Tiananmen Square, well after the renowned 1989 protests, and still felt the power of the history of that place (adjacent to Tiananmen Square is the Forbidden City, which only adds to the moment). I think that when you understand and believe in the importance and history of a person or place, that you can have an experience with those people and places just by being there -- where they were.

So there I was in London, on what was supposed to be a business trip, sitting at a table in the Railway Pub on Liverpool Street and downing some kind of beer I'd never heard of (it was too early in the afternoon for a scotch). I'd only just eaten lunch at Dirty Dicks, and, while I still hear about that from my co-workers, I didn't think I'd be back in a pub so soon. But London had just experienced the storm of the century the previous night and the one inch of snow this crazy storm had dropped on the land virtually shut down several of the train lines from the outlying boroughs, along with Gatwick airport and who knows what else. This meant that my afternoon appointment never showed up, which meant that I had some free time, which, to my mind, meant I should find the nearest pub and be as American as possible by wondering aloud about the point of "football" and other funny English things, such as "elevenses." But it also gave me time to wonder what I would do the next day since, as you might guess, I had the foresight to schedule absolutely no appointments (but I told the boss I was leaving it open "just in case"). My co-worker, who was there attending to technical matters at our data center, wanted to visit Highgate Cemetery. Since I had a free day on the company dime I thought, why not.

The following morning, we started our journey to Highgate Cemetery. Along the way we accidentally wandered into the British Museum, where we spent an hour or so looking at the Rosetta Stone and other old Egyptian things while we wondered if they would get mad at us for not donating any money at the door. Then we ended up at the British Library where the Magna Carta is on display and which I found to be remarkably small and illegible. Finally, we remembered Highgate Cemetery and started on our way.

Highgate Cemetery is located in North London. If you're on foot you have to take a circuitous route to get there, but once you arrive you will be rewarded with having to pay several pounds for entry. On this day there were no other visitors we could see, probably due to the snow. We paid our pounds and walked in.

Highgate Cemetery is old, not ancient, but old, and divided into east and west. We were in the East Cemetery. As we walked the snow-covered path, past giant monuments and small gravestones alike, we searched for the marker for Douglas Adams' burial plot. Even with a map it was harder to locate than we thought. We ended up at the grave of Karl Marx, where I commented on his enormous size, given the representation of his head on the tomb. I was told it was something called a "bust" and that he was not actually that large. I'm not entirely convinced. Finally, as we worked our way back, we found it.

The gravestone was small and hidden in a back row. I got as close as possible and read the engraving. It said:

"Douglas Adams. Writer." -- followed by his dates of birth and death.

Here were the ashes of a man who made countless others laugh and even think a little bit. He probably annoyed Christians and certainly emboldened atheists. He was beloved by sci-fi geeks and aspiring writers and humorists. Artists are constantly interpreting his work, whether in films, books, or t-shirts (we're looking at you Woot!). It will be a long time before he is forgotten. Longer still because I've already introduced my son to The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy (the most recent film version).

All these things and his gravestone says only "Douglas Adams. Writer."

Well, it's true. He was a writer.

I think he would appreciate the economy of words.

### TOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL: BLACKLIST: AFTERMATH (a book review)

THE STAFF HERE at MojoFiction picked this book up on a whim and we don't remember why. Okay, we do, but we won't bore you with the story about how we bought a different book but left it at home so we needed something else for the train so we bought this from the little shop at the train station downtown. We will not bore you with that. The point is, we bought the book and, like the forging of the one ring, some things cannot be undone.

Let's be clear, this book has a target audience, which is 15-year-old males, because grown men like MojoFiction shouldn't be playing video games. See, we remember being 15 and reading Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan, who was a super-secret-agent-type person with carte blanche to do whatever was necessary to construct super-awesome action sequences of immense, consequence-free Hollywood violence. We loved it. We also remember playing a secret agent role-playing game called Top Secret and loving it even more (did we mention that we didn't date a lot in high school?). So we understand and the nostalgia we felt while reading this book was palpable. So, for every teenage boy out there who thinks henchmen are a dime a dozen and there's nothing that can't be solved with only a tactical assault rifle and unlimited government clearance, this one's for you:

Here's the rundown:

Russian billionaire software mogul Igor Kasperov has vanished and the entire Russian intelligence community has mobilized to find him. Due to other recent events in Russia, the U.S. is very curious as to what's going on, so they decide to try to find Igor themselves. Returning from South America in a failed attempt to locate some nuclear material that has recently gone missing from a high-security facility (in Russia!), Sam Fisher and his group, now called Fourth Echelon, are assigned to the mission.

Fourth Echelon is a super-duper black ops project that answers only to the president of the United States when they feel like calling her, which is often, because the president apparently doesn't have anything else going on. They operate out of a military cargo plane refitted with a state-of-the-art computer system that can hack every security camera on earth at a moment's notice, even in places where there aren't any security cameras, and beam the information into Sam's tri-focals (seriously, that is NOT a Zelda reference).

The plane stands ready to deliver Fourth Echelon to any action scene in the world where Sam Fisher might be needed to spring into action with his action-packed +5 Über-Patriotism of Action-ness. No henchman's life is too small to spare; no grenade is too unnecessary to leave unexploded. When Chuck Norris goes to sleep, he checks under his bed for Sam Fisher. Yeah, we said it.

As Sam's team inches closer to finding Kasperov, things get complicated when they find out the man's daughter has been captured by a sinister GRU agent who will stop at nothing to get her target, including killing innocent people who would otherwise have nothing to do with the story. Thinking that the daughter may be the best way to find the father, Fourth Echelon moves in and the chess match between intelligence forces is on.

As you might expect, the weakest aspect of the novel is the thin characterizations and forced emotional moments. The author knows his military hardware and tactics, but in the hands of automatons, it's not that interesting. Oddly enough, Kasperov is a well-drawn character and his moments on the page are welcome. We thought that a greater focus on his run from the Russian authorities would have made for a fascinating read, as a civilian caught up in international espionage and cyber-terrorism, running from his country and trying to find his daughter, could have provided not only a solid emotional core for the story, but delivered a real sense of tension and fear. But this is a book about a video game after all, so, understandably, the storyline stayed on Fisher and his team. But we think the author missed the best story.

So there you go. This book hits all the right marks for a video game tie-in, with cinematic action from cover to cover, high-tech gadgets and weaponry, and two highly-trained soldiers HALO-jumping in to deliver justice from above, just like we imagined doing when we were 15.

### REVENGE OF THE FANTASY NOVEL - PART 2: THE REVENGE!

WE HERE AT MojoFiction love the sci-fi/fantasy genre. We used to read fantasy novels all the time, though we started with Dragonlance, not The Lord of the Rings (we are soooo sorry). But we took a serious hiatus from them a couple of years ago. The fantasy genre is as popular as ever, why would we do that?

Well, either we accidentally drank a Potion of Lower IQ (that should totally be in Munchkin), or we have a really good reason.

We had to think about it for a while, but we're going with the second one. ...Right?

Here's the deal: fantasy novels are just too darn long. Not the individual books themselves – that we don't mind. A book can be a thousand pages as long as it's good (and as long as we don't have a life). But when it's a thousand pages and there are six more to read after it, we start to get annoyed. Especially when it's just a "projected" number of books. And really especially when the author is taking three years between each book. For instance, we really wanted to read A Dance with Dragons, by you-know-who (and if you don't, turn on HBO), but we finished reading the previous book, A Feast for Crows, sometime during the Irish Potato Famine and we simply couldn't remember what the heck was going on or who was who or who was dead or anything. A subsequent search of the internet found a site with a recap of the previous novels that turned out to be as long as a novel itself. (Our full respect to the person who put that whole thing together. You, sir, are insane, and we salute you.) So we haven't got around to A Dance with Dragons yet.

Patrick Rothfuss's outstanding novel The Name of the Wind came out in 2007. The follow-up novel The Wise Man's Fear came out in 2011. The mere span of a college career! At least he has only one major character, which is a lot easier to follow.

A few years ago we remember eyeing a book from The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, which we have not read. Wait, there are how many books in the series? Friends and Seinfeld came and went in less time than it took to get The Wheel of Time out.

Does every fantasy story come in the form of a trilogy? Or a quadrilogy? Or a fourteen-ilogy?

Thankfully, no. Enter author Joe Abercrombie.

MojoFiction's older brother recently sent him a copy of the fantasy novel Best Served Cold, by Mr. Abercrombie. It's a few years old, but it feels like a breath of fresh fantasy air, or at least a little Febreze (few people realize that Febreze is actually +6 versus trilogies). It's a brutal, blood-soaked, adult novel full of murderers, thieves, and every other anti-hero you can imagine. In short, it's totally awesome. And it's a stand-alone novel.

We're sure Weis and Hickman have just sent out their best Halfling assassin after us, but we stand by this stand-alone book. The story centers around the general of a mercenary army whose employer unexpectedly tried to kill her and her brother. Unfortunately, they didn't finish the job, leaving the brother dead, but our anti-heroine alive to plot revenge against the seven men responsible. The novel recounts her exploits as she gathers a small band of troublemakers around her to travel the country in search of her would-be killers.

Centering the story in various cities around his fantasy world, Joe Abercrombie's writing brings the characters and events to life with the descriptive force of a veteran writer. He could easily write straight horror novels. Tension bleeds out in every scene, ever conversation. When violence occurs, it is gory and gruesome. The dialogue crackles because each character is well-drawn and generally three-dimensional, each one speaking in their own way, their own cadence and vocabulary. But, even though it's a long book, scenes never feel drawn out or boring. Every conversation builds the characters and sets up forthcoming events. Character motivations are not always clear, but that lack of clarity is an asset to the story because there's also more than meets the eye as the plot unfolds and secrets are revealed.

MojoFiction realizes that Mr. Abercrombie has also written a fantasy trilogy. We're choosing to ignore that fact. Best Served Cold is bleak human depravity, but it's a lot of fun from a skillful writer with a vast and somewhat twisted imagination. If you like the fantasy genre and don't want to devote ten years of your life to a series, check this one out.

### About the Author

MojoFiction is really just a strange pen name (though there's method to it...) for a native from the state of Colorado. Unfortunately, I currently live in Illinois, which is hardly mountainous, which leads to a lot of travel to less geographically-challenged places. I am an avid lover of the outdoors, believe in the importance of family, sometimes watch cartoons, and spare no expense in an effort to be funny (no matter how many times I might crash and burn).

When I'm not writing or hiking or being lazy, I have a day job in the city of Chicago, though I call in sick to attend Cubs games as often as possible. Mostly because tickets are quite affordable when your team su- ... isn't as good as the other teams.

I have written two full-lengths novels: The Legend of Gerald Arthur McGuinness, about a boy growing up in a fictional town in Colorado; and The Girl from I.T., about a girl in Chicago juggling her disastrous professional and social life with an unexpected diagnosis of breast cancer.
