Curious George

In every single Curious George book, the Man With The Yellow Hat either takes George somewhere and leaves him there, or leaves George alone in the house, or sends him off somewhere alone, and he always tells him "be good and don't get into trouble". But you know he's going to. I think the Man With The Yellow Hat is a complete idiot who always truly expected that George would not get into trouble. That's beyond optimistic; it's lunacy.

By the end of the book, though, everyone has competely forgotten about how George burned down a building or set every animal in the zoo loose. They will have forgotten because George will have made a little girl laugh or delivered a pizza to a shut-in, and so the mayor gives him a medal.

Are we supposed to learn a lesson from Curious George? Because I have yet to figure out what it is. If I had done half the stupid crap that he does in those books, my folks would have whupped my butt. And yet George gets medals.

I'm totally and completely serious. If Curious George ever visited a nuclear weapons facility it would be like:

"George was curious. He wondered what would happen if he turned both keys at the same time. A huge mushroom cloud appeared over the East Coast. George was sad!"

And after the nuclear winter, of course, he would get a medal.

On a more technical note, does it bother anyone else that Curious George has no tail? They say he's a monkey, and he's from Africa, and he's obviously not a chimpanzee or a gorilla. What happened to his tail? Is he some kind of mutant monkey? I would like to see this issue addressed in future books.

Cheerleaders

I've always loved cheerleaders. I love the little ponytails and the little skirts and you could always count on them to encourage you and be positive no matter how much your team sucked.

I dated a cheerleader in high school once. She wasn't the same off the field though as she was when she was cheering. But if, instead of being perky and uplifting, the cheerleader's job was to complain and insult you and then dump you when another guy looked her way, she would have been captain of her squad.

But it's great to have cheerleaders even if a lot of people view them as unnecessary. I think a cheerleader's role is vital, especially if your team sucks. Because what else is going to keep the team going? Blind optimism?

The stereotype is that cheerleaders are stuck up. Most of the time, in my experience, this is true. But cheerleaders are mostly really good-looking, and most really good-looking people are stuck up, so it shouldn't be a shock.

But I love cheerleaders. I love movies about cheerleaders. If I had a hundred bajillion dollars I would hire my own cheerleaders to follow me around so that whenever I felt discouraged or down, they could do a little cheer for me and then afterwards (my favorite part) they all jump up and down and go "whoo hoo!" and do splits and cartwheels and stuff like that. I love that.