For Me And So, So Many Others The Period From 2000 To 2009 Was One Long Rick Roll

I used to think that the years from 2000 to 2009 would be best known as the Decade of Contrarianism. In the heyday of contrarian thinking, stuff like "Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green" was so easy to read (not that everyone agreed; I remember one commenter complaining, "I realize I'm an over-the-hill Gen X'er, but Wired is really starting to irk me with its meme of 'everything you think you know about [subject X] is wrong; here's why' stories").

By the end of the decade, "cracking the cognitive egg and scrambling it up" actually became good for your health. Alex Pareene's "Encyclopedia of Counterintuitive Thought" summed up what I assumed to be the great defining characteristic of the 2000s and collected all the greatest examples. Stuff like "Exercise is bad for you," "Nepotism is good," and "Radiohead isn't a good band."

Anyway, I thought the 2000s were the Decade of Contrarianism. And then I saw the Delta Lady:

Both Goober and I were like, "Why is this lady with this fuck-me look telling me to fasten my seat belt and not smoke?" What's with that weird head-on shot, that zsa-zsa-zsu finger wag, those Angelina Jolie lips (I was surprised no one compared her to Christina Hendricks until I realized that this was sort of from before Christina Hendricks broke).

If you haven't flown Delta recently, this is what they show:

After I posted the picture the other day, Frank emailed to say that he found this lady so strange, too. He wondered if it got less strange over time, like the suits at Delta reined her in or something. So I Googled it. And wouldn't you know it, there's nothing strange about her at all — she was designed to be a YouTube sensation:

And what's more, this was so 2008. I guess we hadn't flown Delta since before 2008. But more importantly, if I'm such a internet-savvy guy, how exactly did I miss this particular internet meme?

I mean, I felt like I was right on top of that Ruby Tuesday viral thing:

And that Gatorade ball girl ad? Duh, obvi:

Lonelygirl15? Pfft. I mean, I'm so used to this stuff that I couldn't even enjoy Catfish.

Which is why it's so painful to think that I've been Rick Rolled into paying attention to commercials. And maybe the idea that the 2000s were all about cheeky counter-intuitive wisdom was itself wrong: The 2000s were actually the Viral Decade. The GoDaddy.com Decade. Maybe even the Rick Roll Decade. And now your contrarianism folds in on itself. Like an Inception on Contrarianism. Oh wait, that was 2010 — wrong decade . . .

And Frank, I think I finally figured out what you were seeing — it's sort of like Sunset Boulevard: The in-flight video is as strange as it has always been — it's just everything else around it got just as strange.

The Origin Myth Of "Because I Said So"

Before Animal was born we had to fill out a sort of questionnaire that the hospital called the "birth plan." The birth plan is meant to get a sense of the parents' wishes and thoughts about some of the basic decisions surrounding childbirth: Stuff like who is going to be in the room, whether or not the mother wants drugs administered and if the baby is male, whether the parents want the child circumcised.

Now I try to live life making sensible, rational decisions. When faced with choices, I weigh options and use hard facts and solid evidence to guide me. When confronted with coherent arguments to the contrary, I am flexible enough to change what I think. I know I have an open mind.

All of this is true and all of this applies to what I believe. Except, that is, when it comes to circumcising my son.

Which is to say, when it came time to decide whether we would circumcise Animal, I was like, "Oh hell yes we are circumcising Animal." And that was before we even knew if he was a boy. I'm kidding.

Now I may sing along to Christmas carols at midnight mass with my in-laws and I may not bother with fasting on certain days of awe and I may not follow the directive to eschew leavening agents for eight days in the spring but there is no goddamn way my son will have a foreskin. Call it "irrational" or whatever. Call it an archaic or even barbaric superstition. Whatever, I don't care: My ancestors were not persecuted so my son could walk around with a foreskin.

I know some fathers in my position feel this way because they don't want their sons' penises to "look different" from their own penises. That's not me. I could not care less what my son's penis looks like. Penises are nothing to be narcissistic about. I can't explain it other than I just don't want Animal to have a foreskin.

Of course when it came time to cut off Animal's foreskin, I got very nervous. This happens in the first day or two at the hospital. At the hospital where Animal was born, a doctor from our OB-GYN's office came to do it. She said that we shouldn't watch, which was fine with us.

Now you may be thinking what a spineless sadist I am for wanting Animal to have to undergo this and then refusing to watch myself. That's fine. Like I said, it may be utterly irrational. I can no more explain this than I can explain why the Yankees are evil or why men are intrigued by lesbian porn — which is to say, it just is and I have long since stopped trying to explain, account for or unlearn it.

So for several hours leading up to the doctor cutting into Animal's dick, I feared the worst. You can imagine. And while we waited for what the nurses cleverly truncated as "the circ," I considered the worst and thought to myself, "And why did you allow this happen? Because of some bozo vestigial irrational idea . . ." Even after the doctor reappeared with the Monkey and said that he was most upset about having to lie still while the procedure took place (is that an easy lie they tell?), I proceeded to worry that gang green would take away my baby's junk.

I dutifully applied Bacitracin ointment until the pediatrician finally told us we were in the clear. Now all that Sturm und Drang is behind us. And I am proud to say that my son's dick looks just like my own.

As the weeks went by, I discerned another great, albeit slightly selfish reason to chop off your son's foreskin, which is that there is less to worry about when you're cleaning. Look, Mr. or Ms. I-Don't-Have-A-Child-And-Frankly-I-Don't-Want-One-But-If-You-Have-One-You-Shouldn't-Brag-About-Cutting-Corners, I know that it may sound fairly draconian to want to cut into a baby's dick in order to avoid more work for yourself, but it is what it is! It was just one less thing to worry about while we figured out how to burp, clean, feed and otherwise tend to Squeak.

And then you read something like this:

The death of a 2-week-old baby boy who contracted herpes following an ultra-Orthodox circumcision is being investigated by the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office.

. . .

The infant had been circumcised in a controversial religious ceremony in which a rabbi or mohel draws blood away from the freshly circumcised penis with his mouth.

I could have gone the rest of my life without ever having to think again about some geezer sucking baby dick, but no, they can't just stop at one. They have to do it again. This after the City Health Department did a flashy public health campaign to educate people about the dangers of allowing an old geezer to suck your baby's dick, er, I mean continuing the practice of metzitzah b'peh which, roughly translated, I believe means "sucking baby dick."

(That these people had the gall to protest the city supposedly infringing on their religious rights only makes it worse. Drawing Nazi comparisons makes it that much worse.)

Look, I don't know what the ostensible religious reason is behind this practice or even what the tradition is about, and frankly I don't care. Babies contracting herpes this way is probably one of the most horrifying things I can think of right now. Babies dying from this is beyond horrifying. It's mostly unbelievable. Think about all the things Judiasm, the Jewish tradition and Jews themselves have contributed to civilization. And then think of a mohel with cold sores sucking on baby dick. To borrow something Rick Santorum once said, "You bet that makes you throw up."

Now you're probably saying something the lines of "Oh, OK, so you having a doctor chop off your son's dick is fine but somehow that guy sucking a baby's dick crosses some sort of line?" Well, yes. So be it. That is what I think.

"Why?" you might ask.

And that's when I reply to you, with a completely straight face, and without a single trace of irony, "Because I said so."

And now you are ready to be a father, my son.

We Built This City On A Robust Thesaurus

You know how developers like to oversell projects? Sometimes they might have a video piece with a bunch of irony-free copy and pat, stock images. Yes?

Looking back on these can be fun — they're time capsules from a different era. Here's a portion of a promotional film featuring Shea Stadium, for example:

More recent examples show the limits of what stadia and arenas can really do for a municipality. Toledo's Huntington Center merits about 31 seconds worth of excitement, for example:

As time goes on, these promotional videos look fairly ridiculous. And then there's this promotional spot for the Barclays Center, which already looks ridiculous (via):

It sounds like it was written with the thesaurus on the high-treble setting. Some of the highlights:

0:06 "Brooklyn, the word itself resonates — it is a lifestyle it is an attitude." Except that "Brooklyn," the word itself I mean, is a little clunky — especially when it's only two syllables, the last of which you sort of swallow at the end. "Toledo," on the other hand, really does resonate: It's like when Humbert Humbert sang the mellifluousness of "Lo-lee-ta" . . . "To-lee-do: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. To. Lee. Do." Brooklyn? Not so much . . . and like so much of the rest of this video, it sort of ruins it once you call something "a lifestyle" and "an attitude."

0:36 "The transformation of its residential and business areas has prepared this great borough for an even greater future: It has prepared Brooklyn for the Barclays Center." I suppose you could call what happened "a transformation" though I imagine some might object to the euphemism.

0:57 ". . . all to achieve a cultural and environmental synergy." Again with the thesaurus . . .

1:18 ". . . the next great Brooklyn landmark providing all those who visit the opportunity for a truly landmark experience." A "landmark" experience? Now this is just starting to sound like the summer intern's first draft . . .

1:46 "The Barclays Center will be more than just a venue, it will be a destination." See 0:57 and 1:18 above.

2:02 "Brooklynites will be able to stand proud behind its new landmark venue." I know this is just intern gibberish, but the symbol of Brooklynites standing proud behind something is interesting, no? Why not "next"? Or is this a veiled dig at the people who live behind the arena?

2:19 The montage that begins "getting to the Barclays Center couldn't be easier" sort of looks like an Al Qaeda planning session. Creepy.

3:13 "A perfect mix of the now, the then and the next that you will only be able to capture at the Barclays Center." I like the rhetorical balance of "now" "then" and "next" — now if I could only figure out what it could possibly mean, and more importantly, understand why I will only be able to capture it at the Barclays Center . . .