A Colossal Oversight

I realized that I have not been using the word colossal enough. I apologize for this oversight. Thanksgiving is going to be colossal this year.

The Time I Met The Karate Kid

A while back, Steph and I went to Long Beach for a weekend. You might remember me from last month's story about Long Beach. That was a clear Troy McClure reference for all my fellow nerds. Anyway, while we were there I met Jaden Smith; The Karate Kid 2000! I know some of you fact checkers are shaking your heads and saying “that movie came out in 2009” or whenever, but can't we all agree that there was 80's karate kid (Danny LaRusso) and there is now karate kid (Will Smith's kid.) I met the Will Smith's Kid version across the street from the Ross in Long Beach during the Latin Street Festival.

Stephanie loves Ross. A truer statement would be that Stephanie loves a deal. So, when she saw this huge Ross she was pretty excited. I was too because there was a big crazy street festival going on and I wanted to sit and read and watch all of the people and stuff. So, she went off and I found a place to sit and we were both content.

After a minute, I was approached by a group of four or five teen-age boys. They weren't the menacing kind of teen-agers, they were the snickering goofball kind. Interesting side note: My spellcheck thinks that I have misspelled teen-agers. It has offered me the alternatives “teen-pagers, teen-wagers and teen-ravagers.” I guess, if I had to choose from the three, I would say these kids were teen-wagers.

So, I recognized Jaden Smith right away but I didn't want to spook him off by asking for an autograph or anything too soon. He said that he and his friends were raising money to buy football equipment for his school and if I would give him $25 he would use it to get a football jersey. My concerns were two-fold; first, the only paperwork he had was an old beat down piece of paper with no school letterhead or anything, that looked like it had been written by a group of snickering goofball teen-wagers on a computer at home. Second, that Jaden Smith was spreading himself too thin if he is also playing football along with his karate studies. Also, I had secretly hoped that he would give me his sales pitch in a rap with no swearing just like his old man would've...

I offered the karate kid a counter proposal. I said, “Hey, did you know that you look like the karate kid?” Jaden's friends thought that was pretty funny and immediately took up my opinion and started teasing Jaden. I said to him, “if they're laughing you don't need them cause they're not good friends.” Anyway, I told him I wasn't interested in giving him $25 but thanks for offering me the chance. Then, I told him that I was a tourist down in Long Beach for the weekend visiting from Utah. I pronounced Utah like “eeuutahhh” for some reason when I told him that. I said that all of my friends were going to be really disappointed if I didn't get photos with any celebrities. I told Jaden that I would give him five bucks if he would let me take a photo with him and tell all of my friends back home that I had met the karate kid. He discussed it with his cohorts and then said he would do it.

The tricky part was trusting the teen-pagers to not run off with my cell phone when I gave it to one of them to take the picture. I picked the one that looked the slowest and had him take the photo.

A Note On Gender Equality

I think there would be way more heroic acts committed by females if this didn't always happen:

Person One: That was heroic.

Person Two: Yep, she's a heroine.

Person One: She's on heroin?

Person Two: She is? That explains it.

Person Three walks up: Wow, that was really heroic.

Persons One and Two: Well, you know she was totally on heroin when she did that...

And that's how gossip starts.