Better Stick With Ghosts Or Witches
Keeping in mind that many Inland Northwesterners are heavily armed, you probably ought to discourage your kids from dressing up as mountain lions for Halloween.
* The Slice lectures you on how to live your life: 1. Try not to act squirrely when purchasing condoms.
2. When viewing a new building or piece of public art, have something to say beyond “But is it Spokane?”
3. Do not name a child “Flu Shot.”
4. Have your checkbook out.
5. Admit that programs designed to inject humor into the workplace are monumentally depressing.
6. Never tell two women, “You’re the Mary and you’re the Rhoda.”
7. Now that cold-toes-in-bed season is near, it’s OK to refer to your spouse as “Big Foot.”
8. Randomly quote from “Animal House.”
9. Say a prayer for teenage mothers going it alone.
10. Forget it. Nobody on your Christmas list would want one of those simulated-flatulence videos.
11. Ski talk is best shared with other skiers.
12. Don’t pretend you can’t name every one of the Monkees.
13. If you are one of these “Baseball is our national poetry” types, get help.
14. Don’t read the entire menu out loud.
15. Resist judging pony-tailed men.
* Upon being told how soft drinks get their fizz, 4-year-old Peter Chandler said: “I’m not going to drink this if they make it out of gas.”
* We recommend: “The Old Neighborhood,” by Ray Suarez. The book’s subtitle sums up its theme, “What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration, 1966-1999.”
Suarez, familiar to some through his work on National Public Radio and PBS, humanizes but doesn’t sugarcoat social dynamics. “It is valid to say tens of millions of Americans — tens of millions of white middle-class Americans — don’t want to live in cities at all. Millions more don’t want to live in cities with large minority populations.”
Suarez is mostly concerned with places such as Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis and Cleveland. But his thoughtful book offers conversations and perspectives that could inform the important if sometimes naive discussions about diversity here.
* Talk is cheap: It’s hard to take seriously the hackneyed clamoring for “more movies suitable for the whole family” when Americans consistently avoid gems such as “The Iron Giant.”
(“The Basket” is a special case and you know it.)
* Today’s Slice question: Who are the Inland Northwest’s best checkers players under 10 or over 80?