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Better Pop Culture

Tonight I was meeting with nine people online who were in Korea, Thailand, Siberia, China, Mongolia, and the U.S. We meet on the second Thursday of every month, and I always look forward to it. It's a one-hour meeting of managers who do the same job as I do in their respective countries. For me the meeting always means I have to be at my desk a bit late. Everyone's in different time zones so we had to negotiate the time. For the U.S. manager it's always 4:30 or 5:30 in the morning. Luckily she's an early riser.

I told Eri that I'd be done by 19:30 so please don't start the bath until then. Sometimes when I have this meeting the boys get grumpy and she goes ahead and gets them in the bath before I come downstairs. That generally means I am on the "second shift" - last in the bath, when most of the bath water is gone and what's left is lukewarm. I love getting in when the bath has just gotten filled and is at a piping hot 39 degrees. When the boys and I open the door the room is all steamy and inviting. 

As usual the meeting went about ten minutes late, but the boys were totally fine waiting. They are outgrowing that thing where they get hardcore grumpy in the evenings from being tired and instead just get super hyperactive. 

When I closed up my office and went downstairs they were heavy into their usual pre-bathtime shenanigans, which includes running around the house in their underwear laughing and yelling things like, "You're under arrest!" and, "Papa's coming! Hide!"

After corralling them into the bath like petting zoo animals we had a nice hot bath, a quick bedtime story, and as promised I found them a new funny video clip. They've memorized the ones from Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs. Osamu really loves quoting Gene Wilder when he goes, "I will NOT be angry" and Mel Brooks with, "Merchandising!"

So I racked my brain. I need short clips that are age-appropriate, genuinely funny, and stuff I loved when I was a little kid. There may be a dusting of narcissism in that last part.

At last inspiration hit. Three's Company. While the show itself is probably not age appropriate for the boys any more than when when I was watching it when it was on TV and I was six or seven years old, the episode where Jack dresses up as a grandma to win a baking contest popped into my head. And since YouTube has everything, I was able to find a short clip from that and the boys howled with laughter. I did too. That was probably my favorite episode of that show and I loved reliving the laughter with Kenzo and Osamu, even if it's just in a short YouTube clip. They have better pop culture to enjoy than I did, thankfully. 

Although I think the reason I share some of this stuff with them is because popular culture from the past includes some gems that should be passed down to future generations. Mel Brooks movies, Peter Sellers, and John Ritter are definitely among them. 

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