Which brings us to the wisdom of the nearly century-old Chicago-based nonprofit Prevent Blindness America, which was once called the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness and is dedicated to...preventing blindness.
Unreal: Why are you so intolerant of blindness?
Sarah Hecker, director of PBA media relations: The thing is, half of all blindness if preventable. So we want you going to the eye doctor to make sure you don't have glaucoma, or cataracts, or any of those diseases. One thing about glaucoma is you can have it and it starts deteriorating your vision, but you might not notice it right away, and before you know it part of your vision is permanently gone.
Your press release says 40,000 Americans per year injure their eyes during sports. But we've heard through the grapevine that the number is actually closer to 39,500.
Actually, we got that number from the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Aren't ophthalmologists notorious liars?
Absolutely not!
OK, we've tried to control the urge, but we've got to say it: It's all fun and games until someone puts an eye out — right?
You know what, that is true. What your mother and father told you when you were five years old — it's one of those "everything I need to know in life I learned in kindergarten" sort of things.
Could plastic goggles prevent a stingray's tail from puncturing your eye?
You know, I haven't seen any results of stingray testing. I want to say it would, at least, help. I'm sure it wouldn't hurt.
In eighth grade we were voted 'best eyes' by our junior-high class. Do you think beautiful people should take extra-special care of their baby blues and browns?
Clearly, it is your duty to protect your eyes, especially if yours are much better looking than the rest of ours.
Glad we see eye to eye on this.
You Never Can Tell
Chuck Berry turns 80 on October 18. But the public party for the mercurial musician began last week.
On September 13, in anticipation of the milestone, St. Louis event planner Bill Kay Jr. treated 160 friends, family and clients to a private screening of the 1987 flick Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll at the Tivoli Theatre. Kay, who's 45 years Berry's junior, spared no expense, serving brats-in-a-blanket from Gus's Pretzels and arranging for aisle service of libations. Afterward the crowd waddled up Delmar Boulevard to Blueberry Hill's Duck Room for Berry's monthly gig.
For most of Kay's cohorts, it was their maiden Berry voyage. ("Is 'My Ding-A-Ling' about what I think it's about?" asked Ben Terrill, an ad rep at the St. Louis Business Journal.)
Kay himself was hoping for a little more showmanship than Bo Diddley — who shoved his hand down his pants groping for a hernia — displayed at Harrah's the week prior. Mostly, though, he just wanted to play culture czar.
"Chuck Berry almost errs on the side of being too available," he told Unreal. "I think people take advantage of the fact that they think they'll always get to his concert like they do the Saint Louis Art Museum or the Zoo."
Earlier that same day, British television reporters had blitzed across town on their own quest for a story slated to air on the BBC next month. The producers sought Mayor Francis Slay's take on Berry's greatness (no dice), visited KDHX and posted a digital message — "Chuck Berry Where Are You? BBC Newsnight" — on the Busch Stadium scoreboard during the Cardinals' tilt against the Astros.
Not surprisingly, they failed to line up face time with the media-averse rocker.
Must have been the foreign correspondents' toughest assignment to date, right? "Without getting shot at, yes," confirmed Stephen Smith, adding, "I don't get it. It's not like we're here to do muckraking."
At ten o'clock sharp Berry ascended the Duck Room stage, resplendent in a glittering blue blouse. The Red Hat Society ladies in the crowd forgave him a repeated verse or two, as did Post-Dispatch columnist Bill McClellan, also in attendance. Forgetful Berry was, but charming.
When the concert wound down a mere hour later, Bill Kay and the BBC-ers strategically placed themselves outside the stage door. When Berry reappeared a few minutes later wearing his trademark yachting cap to sign a few autographs, he balked at the BBC reporters and snapped, "No pictures!" as Kay got down on one knee.
Kay took the rejection in silence, too polite to mention that he'd just shelled out $4,000 on an evening devoted to the granddaddy of rock & roll.
Kay's friends, meanwhile, were grateful. "Thanks, man," said Chris Barlow, a former record-store clerk. "That was a real education."
Unreal Overboard
Some of Unreal's earliest and fondest memories are of summers spent at the Lake of the Ozarks aboard our fifteen-foot 1972 Delta. These days the Lake's overrun with Scarabs and idiots, but our love of boats endures — and after a few beers we can still slalom our Unreal ass off.
So we're pumped when Seebold's Champ Boat Race Team invites us to a late-summer run on Creve Coeur Lake in one of their racing boats. Bill Seebold, the owner and manager of St. Louis' Bud Light Racing Team, raced for 46 seasons in Europe and the U.S., starting back when boats topped out at 26 mph. He tells us that a series of fatal crashes in the mid-1980s spurred a revolution in boat safety. So what's more dangerous, we ask: riding in one of his boats or inadvertently swallowing Party Cove water? The latter, says Seebold. "You never know what goes on in that water."
Good point. Vastly reassured and sporting a helmet straight out of Speed Racer (water's still more lethal than concrete), we step into the cockpit with our driver, Nathan, who warns us to hang on. Hang on is right: Creve Coeur Lake is small, but it's a frickin' puddle when you're taking turns at 105 mph.
Scary, yes, but it sure beats our usual Friday-afternoon routine: watching the office plants wilt. Though we're still waiting for Seebold to follow through on his offer to let us slalom behind that sumbitch.
Local Blog O' the Week
"eTony's Blog"
blog.myspace.com/skinflaps
Author: Tony Scharf
About the blogger: Tony is a 25-year-old single parent, comedian and a mortgage consultant. "I like eating grass and being shaved," he states on another of his MySpace pages.
Recent Highlight (September 11): DISCLAIMER: Not funny
Why do I hate 9/11 so much? 9/11 is the one day of the year when American's show their true colors more than any other day. 364 days of the year, everyone is a bunch of mindless apathetic assholes, but on 9/11, suddenly everyone cares. I seen so much 9/11 bullshit today that it made me want to shit my pants.
More than the actual event itself, I'll never forget how after 9/11, suddenly everyone was proud to be American. There were American flags coming out of peoples' asses.
The funniest thing about it is how most idiots truly believe that that event had anything to do with them, and that the terrorists were attacking us for any other reason than the following: Our country represents Christianity and an asshole government.
The existence of our current government is an every day tragedy. Maybe if everyone cared every day as much as they cared on 9/11, we could solve some REAL problems.
Know of an Unreal-worthy local blog?
Send the URL to [email protected].
