The Best Of CMJ

As some of you may know but a lot of you don't, I had another blog called Crazy Man Jones. CMJ was my first blog and it reeked of mommy blogging goodness.

There are things that I really love about that blog and so I thought I would revisit some of my favorite things. Mostly, I was either too verbose or too damn happy around there. Trust me, you're not missing much, but I had my moments.

So today, for your reading pleasure, I give you 'A Good Pair Of Pants' from Crazy Man Jones.

A GOOD PAIR OF PANTS

Last night was the talent show at my daughter's elementary school. The word talent was printed at the top of the program and that was the last traces of talent we saw for the rest of the painfully, dentist drilling your tooth, long evening.

Holy hell.

With a numb ass, because evidently my days of sitting on bleachers should have ended when I was 16 and not 30 and overly curvy, I sat bleary-eyed and watched the endless parade of trained monkeys and do-it-yourself choreographers.

Look, let me pause right here for a moment and say this. I love my kids and I tolerate other people's kids. I don't like to pick on children but seriously? After that rather large chunk of my life was lost to the monotonous production of bullshit that I was subjected to last night, I think I have a right to be bitter. Really. Mostly because I enjoy being bitter, and need an excuse, but it's their parents that are to blame.

Let's start with my daughter's act. She and her friend worked for over a month at recess every day putting together their best Hannah Montana routine. Complete with my daughter's grand finale of pulling off her jacket and throwing it at the audience. It was cute, they worked hard and there were 10 other acts just like them. 10 other acts of little girls, being little girls, and dressing like little girls.

To be entirely honest, those were the more entertaining acts to watch. So now let me get to the painful.

I'm all for enriching our children's lives and providing them with after school activities. But when your child is walking around in an outfit that I'm fairly certain is sold right next to fuzzy butt floss, buzzy buddies and clear-heeled hooker hoofs there is a problem.

While you're working hard at keeping them busy and away from drugs and partying what you're really doing is training them to be tiny little strippers. I'm assuming the school just doesn't provide brass poles along with the microphones, piano and boom box since there weren't any present last night.

Little girl after little girl paraded out wearing sequins, wigs and fringe. The only break we got from the hoochies-in-training were the obvious future pageant queens and their warbling of sappy country tunes or songs from the 80's by bands that I'm arrogantly positive thought they were entirely punk rock back in the day. At least I thought I was when I was listening to them.

There was an awesome group of kids from the neighborhood Tae Kwon Do class that broke boards and did a kick-ass demonstration. Hello and welcome to how to keep kids off the streets, people. Because if they do end up on the streets they are liable to give the local pimp a major beat down.

I'm not surprised by our future hustlers, pimps and ho's because the school is obviously run by complete con artists. After 2-hours of Star Search on Crack, these providers of saccharine enemas totally suckered us into sitting through a PTA meeting before handing out the prizes. Which, ironically, were cash prizes bringing my theory of strippers in a full circle. Dancing for Dollars.

I'm not saying dance class isn't awesome. Because it is. There were two acts that were adorable, sweet and as wholesome as children should be. What I'm saying is for the love of God people, cover your kids asses up if your going to have them shaking them and doing poorly timed pelvic grinds.

There's nothing wrong with a good pair of pants. Trust me. I wouldn't steer you wrong.

And just so you know that I'm not a complete asshole - I never wanted to kidnap a kid as much as I did the kid who was supposed to lip-sync a Queen song. He was so damned cute that I wanted to run out there and hug him as he stood nearly frozen, didn't move his mouth and randomly skipped two steps here and there. His parents should probably try to help the kid avoid future humiliation, but he was adorable.

All in all I say I didn't witness anything that years of therapy and a new wardrobe couldn't fix. Oh and maybe some rhythm.