Getting naked for a cause

While Googling for the 2007 FHM Calendar, I came across an interesting trend — it seems everyone is putting out nude calendars!  What's more, 'charity' is now being used to justify showing flesh.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a welcome development.  You can now justify your baser instincts by saying, "I'm not really into this kind of thing, but since it's for a good cause….".  Its the "I read it for the articles" excuse taken to a whole new level.

There's even a site that catalogues all these "worthwhile" endeavors.

It's supposedly all in celebration of the human form.  Um, yeah, right.  But it's a convenient fiction which works for anyone who likes to look at booty — in other words, 97.5% of the whole planet.

This seems to have been started by the Calendar Girls, a group of older ladies who bared it all to raise money for a terminally ill husband and became the subject of a movie starring Julie Walters and Helen Mirren (both of whom I wish had posed for a calendar 25 years ago).

Now the good thing about this is that everyone is getting naked.  Unfortunately, it also means that literally EVERYONE is getting naked.  There's a Nekkid Farmers Calendar, a Bus Drivers Nude Calendar, even a Naked Grannies Calendar, which (be warned) also works as a form of birth control.

Hey, I'm all for people having a positive body image, and I feel as bad as the next person about how media imposes unattainable ideals of how we should look, dress and act.  I also understand that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  But its hard to see how some of these calendars could even charitably be called 'a celebration of the human form'.

The strangest one yet is the CHRISTIAN Nude Calendar, which shows models re-enacting Biblical scenes in their birthday suits.  The youth group of the parish of Katzwang (yup, that's the real name) did it to raise money for their activities, so scenes are shot inside a church and some of the models are underage.

I'm as broad-minded as the next guy, but that is obviously soooooooo wrong!  To see a real celebration of the human form, click here.

Santa is really, really, really late

This is a big weekend for Angie and I.  We're gonna build a giant 'M'.

A coupla months ago we asked the boys what they wanted for Xmas, and Javier said "Purple lollipops and a HUMUNGOUS 'M'!"  The kid wouldn't take no for an answer.  He kept insisting that Santa could make anything.

So, instead of telling him, "You're absolutely right –  too bad there is NO SANTA!  Mwahahahaha!", Angie figured we should make one.  See, she's creative and really good at that kind of thing.  So we decided to get hold of dozens of big packing boxes, tape them together and make tunnels shaped like an 'M' that the kids could crawl around in.

Of course, something would always come up and we never got beyond lugging the boxes to our house and dumping them in the garage.  Javier got over the disappointment of no giant 'M' for Xmas pretty quickly (a boatload of purple lollipops and sundry other loot helped ease the pain).

But the boxes are still there, gathering dust and sheltering roaches, patiently waiting for the day when they will be magically transformed into a child's Xmas wish.

Maybe this weekend.

Up against the wall

This weekend I finally got around to taking the kids wall-climbing.  Had been meaning to do it for a while but held off while their Aussie cousins were here so they could hang out.

So on Saturday I bring the two rugrats out to this place that's 5 mins from our house — PowerUp on Tandang Sora. It was the first facility of its kind in the country, and man does it look it!  Which is great because you know people go there to CLIMB, and not to vogue, preen or look cool – mukhang serious mga tao dun, pre.  I have an innate distrust of workout facilities that are too posh, anyway.

The people who work there are really nice and incredibly helpful.  Not condescending or patronizing at all, despite the multitude of stupid questions from me.  When I inquired about instructors, they suggested I just let the kids climb since they were likely too young to absorb too much instruction and might just zone out.  And kids are supposedly natural climbers anyway.  So they set Jose up with a harness and proceeded to teach me how to belay.

"Belay" is the technical term for "keep the damn rope tight enough so the climber doesn't crash to the ground and break his neck if he slips".  Not much too it, just keep focused on the climber and take up the slack as he climbs.  Which turned out to be harder than I thought.  There were a couple of people on the walls that would occasionally distract me because their, um, technique looked very nice.

Jose did pretty well, I think.  He climbed up to the top of a couple of beginner's walls and even went about 30 feet up one that had a slight outward angle. So I guess kids are natural climbers.

Javier wouldn't go up past 10 feet – quite understandable considering he's only 2 feet tall.  So I bagged the harness and would just walk over and peel him off the wall whenever he would shout "Down!" (incidentally, that's another technical term which roughly translates as "I'm gonna die!!! Get me off this friggin' wall!!!)  This worked fine until the time I was observing someone's, um, belaying style and didn't realize Javier had been frantically trying to get my attention.  Good thing the mats along the walls are well-padded.

Good times all around and pretty light on the pocket too. I spent less in the 2 hours we were there than I would have at a video arcade or a movie. So I took the kids again the next day. 

Naturally, Jose went in his Spiderman costume.

How convenient

Pat Riley is taking an indefinite leave of absence from coaching the Miami Heat to attend to hip and knee problems. 

Notice a pattern here?

Riles stepped away from the bench when the Heat was an underachieving team of mismatched parts. Stan Van Gundy takes over and does a great job of pulling the team together and making the playoffs. Then Riley (also the team President) trades for Shaq and things look much brighter with a hungry, motivated, in-shape Diesel on the team. A couple of months into the season, Van Gundy abruptly 'resigns' for 'personal reasons', and (surprise!) Riley takes over. The Heat end up going all the way, Riley gets another ring, and the basketball world gushes over what a genius he is and how he hasn't lost his touch.

Now Shaq is hurt, Wade is out with a wrist injury, and the team is 2 spots out of the playoffs in a horrendously bad Eastern Conference.  So it comes as no surprise that he's stepping down as coach 'indefinitely' — in other words, 'until we can start winning again'.

Remember, this is the same guy who described coaching in the NBA as "either winning or misery". I guess he figured out its better to let other people deal with the misery part.

My prediction: Riley's health will improve dramatically once Shaq and D-Wade are back in the lineup.  I wonder what the over-under in Vegas is on this?

With a bang

Survived the New Year's Eve festivities with all extremities intact. Glad to say the same for the kids, too. Unfortunately, there was the usual spate of injuries on the part of inept, inebriated, and in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time revelers.

Jose was getting a tad too comfortable setting off rockets.  He'd barely move back after lighting 'em until finally a short fuse threw some sparks into his eye. HA! That'll learn him, and no harm done.  But the spouse was not amused.

Javier, being the careful little bugger that he is, wouldn't even hold a sparkler for more than 2 seconds.  Looks like he'll have a successful career in investment banking.

Spent the first 2 days of 2007 in bed with the flu. Happy f@#!*n new year.