Thursday, December 01, 2005

The Long Tassle of The Law

By now you’ve probably heard about Anette Pharris, the Nashville mother indicted for hiring a stripper to perform at her 16-year-old son’s birthday party.

Yes, every newspaper brims with ads for gifts designed to make any birthday special , but Pharris would have none of that. To ensure that her little darling had a memorable occasion, she allegedly searched far and wide until she found a stripper willing to disrobe at a party with a guest list that included 10 minors.

The stripper and three other adults were also charged by the police, thus validating the best-selling book “It Takes A Village (To Contribute To The Delinquency Of A Minor).”

Obviously, Pharris desperately wants to be one of those “cool” moms. It would not surprise me if she went around announcing things like, “Look! If you squint really hard, my stretch marks sort of kind of look like rapper 50 Cent!”

Prostitution and drug dealing are common in the Pharris neighborhood, so the mother defended her actions on the grounds that her son could see a lot worse happening on the street in front of their house. It’s a wonder she didn’t use the same logic to hire a motorist to run over a dog in the kitchen during the birthday party.

Pharris argues that age is just a number (so is “7 to 10 years without parole”), and that her son Landon is “very mature” for his age. I’m wondering how he demonstrated his maturity. Instead of dollar bills, did he stuff a diversified investment portfolio down the stripper’s G-string?

Of course the mother was giving her completely unbiased opinion when she lauded the boy’s maturity. She probably thought, “It takes a lot of maturity for a boy to keep a level head when he’s Beethoven, Einstein, Tom Cruise, and Mark McGwire all rolled into one.”

Parent-child relationships have certainly changed since I was a boy. Remember when you were told, “If you get a whipping at school, you’ll automatically get another one at home”? Now it’s “If you get aroused at school, I’ll see to it that you get aroused again when you get home, mister!”

I’ve heard of parents giving a child a car on his 16th birthday, but apparently now it’s enough just to give him the back seat!

The idea of discipline and restraint has really evolved. Evidently, it now means, “Darn – I should’ve told the stripper to bring handcuffs and a whip.”

What does the future hold for the Pharris family? In order to give her son an unforgettable birthday, the mother wound up going to jail. How will she top that when it’s time for senior prom?

(“Son, when the lights dim at midnight, just remember -- that’s your Mom getting fried by Old Sparky!”)

In case you’re wondering, young Landon Pharris seemed quite pleased with the party. Someday he’ll probably deliver the following ode to his mother: “M is for the melons she hired for me; O means ogling strippers’ rears; T is for the tassels that inspired me; H is for hormones coming out my ears; E is for her eyes, glued to Jerry Springer; R means rash, and rash she’ll always be; Put them all together they spell ‘MOTHER,’ a word that means endless counseling sessions for me!”

A Site For Eyesores

“A man’s home is the government’s castle.”

That seems to be the sentiment in too many cities. For example, Franklin, Tennessee, where several aldermen are trying to strike a blow for aesthetics by banning construction of garages that (*gasp!*) face the street.

There’s enough of the old “pursuit of happiness” ethos in me to get riled up when Frasier Crane wannabes have hissy-fits over flag poles, basketball goals, pink flamingoes, life-sized Graceland sculptures made of ear wax, etc.

Granted, the snobbery of these glorified hall monitors has its positive side. They’ve obviously found a superior way to humiliate the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Forget about stripping them or ridiculing their religion ; you’ll have Amnesty International going ballistic if you just force detainees to wear T-shirts that announce, “Thank Allah, I own a front-loading garage.”

And I suppose the aldermen envision themselves as gallant heroes, bravely saving the unwashed masses from one faux pas after another. If Joe Blow insists on the vulgar path of building a front-loading garage, he’ll soon be using it for a big garage sale, because his kids will be rejected by all the Good Schools and wind up living in a van down by the river!!

Aldermen dismiss complaints that the new rule would require bigger, less affordable lots. They have faith that developers will be able to solve the problem, presumably while they’re also curing the common cold, working the kinks out of perpetual motion, and finalizing a safe response to the question “Does this dress make me look fat?” Hey, it could happen, especially if the developers get a noise variance for use of an Evel Knievel ramp, so the homeowners can jump over the house and land in the back yard.

The control freak who introduced the measure asserts that houses should emphasize the people living in them, not the cars those people drive. I suppose that means he’ll next sponsor a law requiring all new homes to have see-through walls. At least then you could ticket the scofflaws who are secretly wearing white after Labor Day.

It seems that communities funnel too much research and development money to The Committee For Finding Even More Things We Can Arbitrarily Call Tacky. Aw, it could be worse. The committee would be denouncing even more things if members didn’t get into slap-fights over whether the committee plaque matches the wood grain of the door.

No wonder the elitists are hung up on rear-facing garages. Their heads are stuck so far up their rears!

Don’t get me wrong. Building codes and neighborhood covenants have legitimate uses. I’ve been around long enough to know that extremes of eccentricity and slovenliness cannot go unchallenged. When I was 15 years old, I was hired to mow the lawn at an apartment house. Even though I loaded down a pickup truck with toys, bottles, cans, and other debris before mowing the first blade, I still managed to run the mower onto an automobile engine block that was concealed in the grass!

I hate that the aldermen dredged up such memories. Legend has it that somewhere in the yard, the skeletal remains of Henry Ford were up on concrete blocks. (“Hey, ya never know when you might need a spare part. . I intend to do something about Henry whenever I get around to it.”)

Bewitched, Bothersome, and Bewildered

Are you looking forward to the new “Bewitched” movie starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell?

“Bewitched,” of course, was a long-running ABC TV series about the comic misadventures of the Stephens family: a pretty young witch (Samantha) married to a mortal (Darrin).

“Bewitched” was an instant hit in the Nielsen ratings. It premiered in September 1964 opposite “Password” and “Dr. Kildare” and finished the season second only to “Bonanza.” I have been unable to corroborate a report that Samantha sought revenge on the Ponderosa bunch by unleashing nosey neighbor Gladys Kravitz on them. (“Abner, I swear there’s something strange about that Hop Sing Cartwright. With that ponytail, I think he’s a hippie or something.”)

When Tabitha was born (January 13, 1966), it was a national sensation. Doting parents Samantha and Darrin were just glad that she had 10 fingers and 10 toes and owed her allegiance to the Prince of Darkness.

“Bewitched” might have soared even higher if not for resistance from fundamentalists. Remember the pesky Old Testament admonition “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”? I think the general public was satisfied to water down the Law of Moses to “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to eat Jimmy Dean Pure Pork Sausage.”

“Bewitched” also faced opposition from draft-age men, who were sarcastically grateful that Samantha always managed to help Darrin be in two places at the same time but never remembered to end the Vietnam War. (“What??? I didn’t? Oh, my stars! Esmeralda, have you been messing with the refrigerator magnets again?”)

One of the most infamous aspects of “Bewitched” was the change in Darrins. Purists insist that the show started downhill when the role went from the pop-eyed Dick York to the duller, smugger Dick Sargent. The event persists in the international consciousness 36 years later. World leaders at a recent G-8 summit were overheard commenting, “Ah, yes – Dubya, the ‘second Darrin’ of the Bush family!”

Darrin faced enough trouble even without an actor switch. Remember Endora, Samantha’s spiteful, meddling mother? You could probably visit her exhibit in the Mother-In-Law Hall of Fame – unless, of course, your own mother-in-law is visiting. (“Go ahead and enjoy your museum * cough * cough*. I’ll probably be able to call 911 if something happens.”)

For younger folks who don’t “get” the reruns of “Bewitched” on TV Land, I guess it was just a product of simpler times, when we could be entertained by talking horses, Martian uncles, monster families, flying nuns, and midriff-baring genies. I would hate to see it just starting out in today’s world.
Dr. Bombay would no longer “come right away”; you would get a generic witch doctor, and he would come by mail order. High-paid consultants would have to study whether boiling eye of newt affects the wellbeing of newts. With cutbacks in aviation, the animated opening sequence would show Samantha riding a lint roller instead of a broom.

It gets worse. Samantha’s practical-joker Uncle Arthur would probably booby-trap chairs with “Whoopee Korans” and make Howard Dean the chairman of the Democratic Party. What? Oops. Never mind.

Will the movie resonate with today’s audience? As momentum builds for the story of a woman who conjures by stirring a cauldron or twitching her nose, kids may be asking “What’s a cauldron?”

And Michael Jackson will be asking “What’s a nose?”