Your Dog Isn't Your Kid by Johnny DiLoretto

Your dog is not your kid. Don’t say you love your dog like it’s your kid. People who  say that sound… well, like an emotionally stunted idiot.

Let me tell you why. Firstly, you don’t have sex with a dog in order to get pregnant with a dog. Two, forget screwing a dog, you don’t actually ever lug around a dog fetus inside of you, letting it stew in there for a good 9 months.  And, this one goes without saying, but you never actually bear down and squeeze a cute little sopping wet puppy out of your cha-cha parts.

Furthermore, one doesn't birth just one dog. One births a litter, and even if you did birth a litter of pups you’d be forced to let them duke it out over your two tits. Don’t forget you only have two tits. To truly love a dog like your own child you’d need at least 8 to 10 tits.

So, the very idea that you love your dog like it’s your own child is flawed reasoning from the start…

But, for argument’s sake, let’s say you just acquire a dog the normal way and now you love it like it’s your kid.

Here’s the number one reason why that’s a monumentally stupid thing to say:

Because having a child is a constant reminder that you’re going to die one day and that the only thing left of you is going to be tied up in this little person who holds in their delicate grasp all your hopes, dreams, and fears. Your child is the as-yet unscrewed up miniature version of you that will carry your legacy into the future.  

You will pour everything you have – emotionally, spiritually, financially – into this person. You will watch them learn to walk, you will help them acquire the gift of speech, you will, hopefully, even teach them how to urinate and defecate into a toilet. 

Having a child is to walk through the world with the constant fear that harm might befall him, a perpetual nagging doubt that you haven’t equipped her well enough with the emotional and psychological tools to contend with other human beings; that he or she won’t measure up, that they won’t succeed, that they’ll have their hearts broken or their spirits crushed. These are fears that plague you deep in your soul. It just doesn’t hit you quite that deep when your dog gets nipped at for sniffing the wrong ass.

I know  --- I know --- people are disappointing and it’s easier to love a dog. It’s easier to love an animal that loses its shit when you get home. That’s mainly because you can’t leave a kid in a kennel all day while you’re working.

And, I know, I know --- dogs help people get through some terrible times. Dogs are wondrous creatures that have evolved alongside of humans over the last 10,000 years to provide people with protection and companionship. These animals, it’s hard to believe were once all wolves. But you’d think after 10,000 years they might be able to say something, a word at least - a “hello” or “thank you” even. Let’s face it, these are limited creatures that have been given every opportunity to grow and learn and tail wagging and leg humping are still their primary modes of expression.

But, let's move on. Don’t say you love your dog like it’s your own child because it only points up your emotional inadequacy. Grow the F up. People are hard. People will fucking let you down. Some of them want to use you, some of them want to abuse you, some of them, god only knows, want to be used by you. (Thank you Annie Lennox.) But dogs are not children. They are companions. And you should love them as such. 

The bottom line here is that we live in a world now where people just say crazy, over-the-top shit and everyone is supposed to validate everyone else’s feelings no matter how juvenile or asinine the crazy shit they say is.

It’s like having to pretend the fibromyalgia is really anything but the result of eating too many trans fats and sitting around on your ass all day.

Now, it’s okay, if you have kids, to say that you’re dog is part of the family. That’s acceptable. But it’s as freakishly annoying to treat you’re dog as your child as it would be for someone to treat their child as a dog.

Which reminds me, I gotta get home to let my kid out so he can shit in the yard.

Johnny DiLoretto is a father, husband, movie guy, comedy guy, writer, radio / television personality and  a huge Dean Martin fan. He writes stuff for Pencilstorm too.

Shark Attack Obsession! by Johnny DiLoretto

I spend a lot of time thinking about sharks.

Let me rephrase. For a guy who lives in the middle of Ohio, doesn’t travel much, and never goes into the ocean, I spend a lot of time thinking about sharks.

Yes, it’s all because of Jaws, but, more than fear, Jaws inspired in me a lifelong fascination with sharks. Can’t get enough of ‘em. Love to learn about claspers and the ampullae of Lorenzini and all that.  Look those up and thank me later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clasper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampullae_of_Lorenzini

Photos like this are hypnotizing. You know, you could be in there...

I should also clarify that in addition to thinking about sharks, I think a lot about being eaten by a shark. Now, the Washington Post just published an article about this and here are the latest numbers: “Last year, 80 unprovoked shark strikes took place worldwide: Seven resulted in deaths, including one in California. Fifty-three strikes took place in U.S. waters, nearly half of them off Florida.”

That’s more than enough to justify my anti-frolicking-in-the-surf stance. By the way, this is also a guy who loves to fish from the shore when we vacation in the Outer Banks. And while I’m safely fishing from the beach, I intently follow all the swimmers just waiting for one of them to do that horrible jerking thing right before they’re tugged under in a gush of froth and blood.  

I know I have a better chance of being felled by a wheat penny dropped from the Empire State Building than I do of being attacked by a shark, but I’m not interested in the numbers really. Shark attacks are inevitable. They are inevitable because people go into the ocean, and there are sharks in the ocean. If sharks were found in Crate and Barrel, people would be attacked while they were shopping for sofas and flatware.

So, a couple times a year I will see the inevitable news story about someone being bitten and/or killed by a shark. I then eagerly post the story on Facebook and Twitter with an added, and I’m paraphrasing, “I told you so.” Whenever I post these shark-attack stories, beach-lovers and saltwater-swimming enthusiasts everywhere comment to the effect that I’m an idiot; that these attacks are so rare I have nothing to worry about; that more people die in car accidents every year than they do by shark attacks, and so on and so forth.

But this is the reasoning of people who, if they were fictional, would end up dead first in a horror movie.

Yes, it's Photoshopped, but you get the idea. It could happen to you..

First of all, their argument doesn’t hold up. Let me see if I have this right: More people are killed by cars than sharks, so why aren’t I afraid of cars? That's their reasoning? Well, for one, a car won't fucking eat you. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. OK, it’s unlikely, I get it, but why play that particular lottery? We play the good lottery, the big cash payout, change-your-life lottery, because despite the astronomical odds we just might win millions of dollars. But why play the bad, possibly decapitated, lose-your-life lottery? The odds are equally astronomical but if you win this one --- you get eaten by a shark. Congrats. You're a torso. 

That’s ridiculous. If you absolutely insist, by some misguided logic, on playing some variation of lethal lottery,  why not play the golf-club-in-a-thunderstorm lottery. At least you're in one piece when that one's over. 

This is the shark equivalent of having a rain cloud over you.

But, just for kicks, let’s examine this car-shark argument a bit closer. First of all, as I've mentioned, a car won’t eat you. It’s not like you’re walking down the street and suddenly a car swerves off the road, grabs you in its grill and starts thrashing back and forth, tearing off a huge piece of you before casually pulling back onto the road and driving away.

Furthermore, for this shark-car analogy to actually make any sense, we’d have to be driving sharks. And, well, now that’s just Crazy Talk.

This is not Photoshopped. This is really a man being eaten by a car. 

The bottom line is that because automobiles are manmade and because they're one of the most common things we see on a daily basis, they just don't inspire terror. We spend a lot more time in the presence of cars than sharks, so of course we're more likely to be killed by a car. In any event, I would rather die in a car accident than by shark attack. In other words, I’d rather die by blunt force trauma than by being crushed and torn apart in the gaping maw of a ruthless carnivore.

Here’s another, different way of looking at the problem. Why risk it because we may just have it coming... Humans kill more than 100 million sharks a year for no good reason, so maybe shark attacks, which are on the rise globally, are just the animals’ way of trying to even the score. I may be scared shitless of them, but I’m definitely on the sharks' side. I'm with them. Absolutely, I would attack someone if I was a shark too. With pleasure. I’d be like – “look at this guy - dicking around in my territory, swimming, splashing, flailing around like an idiot with his dopey limbs and tacky board shorts. What balls on this guy – killing 100 million of us every year for soup and he comes into my ocean? Screw this guy.” Then wham, I’d clamp down on his ribs.

Just a little food for thought. And, now, for your reading pleasure - a brief history of shark attacks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/6984067/Worlds-10-worst-shark-attacks.html

Johnny DiLoretto thinks a lot about sharks. You can read his top notch story about the  the movie JAWS by clicking here. Also check out our contributors page to learn more by  clicking here.

Why the World Needs Superman... by Johnny DiLoretto

Why the World Needs Superman...

I hate when people say they don’t like Superman. It’s like saying you don’t like Elvis. You might as well say you don’t like the first, best idea of something. Every rock and roller who came after Elvis has a part of Elvis in them – they couldn’t exist without Elvis. There are no Beatles without Elvis, no Springsteen, no nobody. Likewise, there are no other superheroes without Superman.

Superman, where superheroes are concerned, was the first best idea. Two guys from Cleveland said, hey, what if there was a dude who could do almost anything? They created Superman. The very next best superhero idea was Batman, who is the exact opposite in that he doesn’t have any powers at all. Every superhero creation thereafter was, is a variation of Superman or Batman.

But what’s really galling are the people who don’t like Superman because he’s not… dark; because he’s earnest, honest, and pure.

This is the why of Superman.

Superheroes are spurred to action, driven, or compelled by some motivating event or force. Batman is motivated by the murder of his parents and Spiderman is motivated by the murder of his uncle, but Superman – he’s merely an orphan from another planet. Here on Earth, he just happens to be extraordinary. He was raised and loved by two adoptive parents. There’s no vengeance lurking in his character, no deep seated need to set things right.

So, why does Superman do good, why does he save people? You ready for this one? Because he can. He could rule over the Earth, make little puny, chump-ass, Superman-butt wiping slaves out of all of us, but he doesn’t. He’s motivated only by benevolence.  He doesn’t have to lift a superfinger, a finger by the way that could effortlessly flick our heads off, but he does.

And what makes him all the more extraordinary, is that he does this in spite of human beings being total assholes.

When I was a kid there were two moments in the first Christopher Reeve movies that are seared into my brain that I believe formed, partly, who I am today - or, at least, who I'd like to be.

The first comes in the great scene in which Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane interviews Superman on her balcony. The no-nonsense reporter asks Superman why he’s here, meaning on Earth, and he walks right into it: “to fight for truth, justice, and the American way,” he says. She rudely snickers at this seemingly naive answer. Superman turns suddenly very stern, locks eyes with her, and replies, “Lois, I never lie.”

Boom! Shut your cig hole Lois!

I’ve never forgotten that. And it still holds true today – that the minute you show people some raw earnestness they’ll try to slice you open.

The second moment is in Superman II during his epic battle against General Zod and Zod’s two other fellow Kryptonians, the three of whom all have the same super powers as Superman. It's three against one in the heart of Metropolis (a thinly disguised NYC) but it’s pretty much a stalemate until Zod stumbles upon Superman’s Achilles’ heel, and no, it's not Kryptonite. “I’ve discovered his weakness,” Zod informs his crew. “He actually cares for these… people.” 

Wow. What a punch to the gut. You can hurt him by hurting people?! Heavy. Again, just because he cares. And, then, in a stunningly dark assessment of human nature, the citizens of Metropolis turn against Superman, calling him a coward when he flees Metropolis to draw Zod away from them. He cares even when he shouldn't.

The Clark Kent / Superman Alter Ego Conundrum

The other thing that gets under my skin is when people say “Who wouldn’t be able to tell that Superman is Clark Kent? He’s only wearing glasses! Blah blah blah, I’m typical blah blah, I don’t think about anything interesting and I have no insight blah blah, I’m a dunce. Blah blah.”

Clark’s “disguise” really shouldn’t be an issue. It’s not that people can’t  see that Clark is Superman; it’s that they don’t want to see it.  His humility blinds them from it. People don’t want to see greatness in the quiet, unassuming guy sitting next to them at work. In fact, they downright refuse to see it.

The very fact that people point to the so-called “lameness” of Clark’s disguise only points up their own lameness.

In Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol 2, David Carradine has a great monologue about Superman in which he, and I’m paraphrasing, observes that “Superman’s costume isn’t a costume. Those are his clothes. Clark Kent is his costume. Clark Kent is how Superman sees us.”

I think that’s great, but not entirely accurate. Clark Kent is Superman’s way of showing us who we should be: honest, ethical, good, humble.

That we can’t see that simple truth is our problem. Each of us needs Superman to remind us to be our best possible self, to be good, to do good without the promise of reward, simply for the sake of good, even when it seems like other people don't deserve it. 

You can learn more about Johnny DiLoretto by visiting our contributors page here.

Columbusland, or... The Abby Singer Show!

I used to be on TV. But, after ten years, I had to leave because of the man. And by “the man,” I mean this dick I worked for.

While I was pondering leaving my high profile, perk-riddled gig, my wife asked me if I could do it.

“Do what?” I asked.

“Not be on TV,” she said.

“What, are you kidding?”

Was she implying that I was some sort of egomaniac who needed to be on TV, like I needed the attention of an audience in order to be fulfilled?

Yes. She was.

“Of course, I don’t need to be on TV. That’s preposterous.”

It wasn’t long after I started my new job at the Gateway Film Center that I began plotting ways of getting my face on the screen. Why be on TV when you can be in the movies?

Yes, it killed me, but she was right.

The first piece I shepherded into being was a promo spot for the film center’s annual summer Double Barrel Western Series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcWwHiXb6QE

Well, seeing my mug plastered across a 50-foot wide screen was all the encouragement I needed to do more.

As part of the Cinema Classics film series, a companion to the WCBE radio show of the same name that I co-host  with my friend John DeSando, I saw another opportunity: comedy sketches that spoofed the movies we were showing.

They both feature an idiot studio exec who doesn’t quite get the geniuses who work for him.  In the first one, he (me) tussles with Stanley Kubrick; and in the second, Orson Welles.  Jimmy Mak, ShadowboxLive’s head comedy writer and an old friend, plays both directors -- brilliantly. DeSando turns up in a weird non-sequitir cameo in both.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48XxD4nDBek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1w6T-Lna6Q

Fortunately, my boss, the phenomenally talented and brainy and not susceptible to in-print ass kissing, Chris Hamel, approved of these extracurricular activities. In fact, he’s so game he played the James Bond figure that my Nameless Cowboy guns down in the Western bit. What kind of a boss allows that to happen? An awesome one.

So, Chris asked me what I thought of the film center’s pre-show. For those of you not familiar with theater parlance, a pre-show is that generic package of trivia questions, ads, and animations that plays before the movie and is generally ignored.

We sat and watched the pre-show together. In its entirety. Afterwards, he asked me what I thought and I told him I thought it was crap. He agreed and asked if we could do better. Naturally.

And so, our new in-house show was conceived. After breathlessly kicking around different titles based on obscure movie jargon like The Cross Cut the good ideas began to flag. By the time we were seriously considering calling it The Abby Singer Show we were good and loopy. “But no one will know who or what an Abby Singer* is,” our co-workers cautioned. “Right!” we shouted back. “That’s the beauty part.” Eventually, having reached the nadir of our naming sessions, Chris blurted out Columbusland.

Abby Singer, for the record, is the second to last shot of the day on a movie production, named after 1950s Hollywood production manager and assistant director, Abner "Abby" Singer. When Singer's crew would ask how many shots were left to do he'd answer, "We'll do this and one more." 

Fortunately, the "Abby Singer" show idea never left Chris's office. The basic idea survived though and that was to create a loosely formatted, informal talk show in which we would interview Columbus prominents about the movies while drinking.  And the city would be our playground.

Kinopicz American, a hyper-talented production company in Grandview, agreed to take the project on and brought their insight and ideas. In order to keep the show from becoming me and Chris drinking and ego-jousting, Kino, as we affectionately call them, suggested bringing on a Girl Friday who would temper the testosterone and drastically drop the combined age of the two-man cast which if combined would approach octogenarian heights.

We immediately thought of social media maven and Columbus vlogging sensation, Amy "Schmittastic" Schmittauer. 

We thought Amy would anchor the show, keep it grounded, but she quickly proved to be as strange as we are, and so the show quickly took on a life of its own.  So far we’ve only shot 3 episodes, but it continues to evolve. We’ve worked in more scripted comedy and we’re playing around with the interview dynamics, and, quite frankly, I'm not sure where it's headed. As long as it continues to get better, which it has, we'll all be happy.

Each episode of Columbusland runs at the Gateway Film Center for 8 weeks and you can see the show 20 minutes before any movie we’re showing. Well, due to the constant cocktail drinking and frequent light cursing, you can see it before any PG-13 or R- rated movie.

The entire endeavor, it bears repeating, is the kind of project that can happen when a cool boss rolls the dice on a great idea and lets it ride.

Here’s episode two:

The complete cut of Columbusland: Episode 2 CASINO, shot at the new Hollywood Casino in Columbus, Ohio. Join in the misadventures of the Gateway Film Center characters as they traipse around Columbus, bumping into local personalities who share their takes on life, Columbus, and, of course, movies.

Golden Pear: Whole Foods Opens in Upper Arlington

It feels a lot longer for us Upper Arlington residents who care about food, but for over a year we've had to make do with the cramped, temporary mini-Whole Foods that was scrunched uncomfortably into the Lane Ave. Shopping Center like Woody Allen in a chorus line of Rockettes, but finally the new, spacious Whole Foods has opened up where the old Whole Foods once stood and where Wild Oats stood before that, and it’s pretty great.

First among its virtues is its manageable size. Unlike the Dublin location, the new store doesn’t swallow up Disney World-type acreage. To wit: Disney World is bigger than 17 countries while the Dublin Whole Foods is bigger than 5 of those countries; or at least as big as Tuvalu which coincidentally sounds like an expensive, imported cheese.

This new market comes stocked with all of the quality items you’d expect and a few new tricks to make the UA swells feel like they’re getting the cut above they’re entitled to by virtue of the fact that they’re UA swells.​ For instance, there's a visible dry-aged steak locker, touch-screen order kiosks at the deli and hot bar, and a cute little bistro called The Social where you can order food and have a draft beer or coffee, provided your caffeine needs can't wait until you get to Colin's Coffee...

​On a recent visit to the new digs, I was impressed to see a variety of glassy-eyed whole fish (a sign of freshness) on display – flounder, branzino, and snapper. I'll most definitely be grilling these mothers whole through the summer. And the rest of the selections, from the dairy to the deli, are equally impressive.

I should divulge here that I am a fan of Whole Foods. Now, listen, I would much prefer to be single, have no kids or pets, live downtown, ride a Vespa, dress smartly in skinny chinos, shop every day at the North Market, and scoff knowingly at schmucks who still listen to old-timey devices like the radio, but that ain't my reality. And because I appreciate quality, organic and/or sustainably raised or cultivated foodstuffs without a lot of s**t in them, it follows that I appreciate having a Whole Foods nearby.

Not everyone is as appreciative. One other food reporter was in attendance at the recent media tour of the new store. When I expressed my excitement over a cheese made with beer from Rockmill Brewery in Lancaster, she was quick to point out that the cheese was not made at the brewery, but that the beer was shipped to an Oregon cheesery, added to the product there, then shipped all the way back to Ohio. 

Certainly, I agree that shipping the beer to Oregon and the cheese all the way back probably leaves a Sasquatch-sized carbon footprint, but she was leaning on this  imperfection to dismiss the store. 

I think she saw this cross-country beer-and-cheese long haul as some sort of sin. But to offset that misstep, the market works with a number of Ohio beef, pork, and chicken farmers, gives other Ohio products a place on their shelves, diverts 90% of their waste from the landfill, practices composting, and supplies electric car hook-ups in their parking lot. Isn't it enough to deflect that one blow?

In all fairness, the observation itself was rather vague, but the tone of it seemed leveled at the store and not at Rockmill Brewery.  And this is where we are with our food writing these days. There is an unwillingness to embrace anything, um, unhipsterish for lack of a better word; and UA is most definitely a hot bed of unhipsterishness.

I definitely see the value in the city's food writers ignoring restaurant chains so we can devote more space to columns about independent restaurant owners. I even see the value in dismissing crapholes like Kroger and Meijer outright, but Whole Foods? Seems like there are better places at which to aim their culinary vitriol. 

The problem is our very tightly knit food community. Everyone knows everyone else and no real criticism can take place for fear of pissing someone off or hurting a friend’s feelings. Real criticism has taken a backseat to glad-handing the "in" kids. This often leads to mediocre food being overpraised or a great store like the new Whole Foods being casually dismissed because there's no local, in-kid connection.

None of this will really affect people in Upper Arlington because people in UA wouldn't know good food if it jumped down their gullets and because they're unaware of the larger food conversation taking place in Columbus anyway. About the only engagement with social media in Arlington is the mommy blogging phenomenon wherein women who can’t stop talking about their kids write about them when there are no other women around to talk about their kids with.

The bottom line is that the new Whole Foods turns out to be the latest, greatest hot spot to eat out in Upper Arlington and not just because of UA's food illiteracy and their overall, bland Caucasian-based tastes, but because it's better than 90% of the actual restaurants in the neighborhood. You probably just won't hear the bloggers — food, mommy, or otherwise — talking about it.