Back in the early 90's, some friends of mine set me up with a stunning actress they had met working on a television show. We really hit it off, she sent me a letter written on a Chuck-Taylor high top shoe, and I was in love (until I found the 48-cassette Tony Robbins "Awaken the Giant Within" collection in her car). She moved to Los Angeles to pursue her dream, and within a year or two I saw her putting dinner on the table for her two kids. Her hair was short and she was already playing the late 30-something mom. Evidently in Hollywood if you don't make the pretty young thing cut it's off with the hair and a new headshot.

I've been watching a lot of television lately. A lot (said with Simon Cowell accent) and by television I mean the dark grey box sitting on the plastic storage container over there in the corner with the blinking green light because I never set the time properly thingey. There sure is a lot of dancing going on there. Dancing because you won something. Dancing because you beat your opponent into a bloody pulp. And a lot of dancing because you have overcome your male incontinence problems.

As a pubescent boy, which I once was (and many claim "still am"), there wasn't anything more magical, enchanting, forbidden or otherwise off-limits than the girls' locker room at my dear Sunset Park Junior High School. Even the smoke-filled "Teacher's Lounge" or the weirdo "Boiler Room Guy" could not hold a candle to the funny feelings I got when I thought about the girls' locker room. Though my family didn't have HBO, I had other friends who did, and they dutifully relayed to me the details surrounding anything involving the girls' locker room in Porky's I, II, III and IV. I was intoxicated and couldn't imagine the forbidden fruit waiting for me inside.

Recently, I was asked to create an animated piece for our dear friends at Nike GameChangers. Now I'm an animator, rememember- I'm not a "creative," or a "writer" or a "strategist." I'm a pixel monkey- I don't think- I do. The brief as I remember it, was something to the effect of "Girls feel less than 100% motivated to participate in sport. We'd like to explore why this is, and why this doesn't have to be." (Please forgive me smart people- this an incredibly poor distillation I'm sure). I was put on a team with 2 of my female colleagues, one of which actively participates in sport, and not your stereotypical girl sports like cheerleading and running, but basketball and the like. I was waiting for the creative dust to settle so we could get to the good stuff like- "What can I explode?" and "Who can I offend?"- you know, typical mantras of a motion designer. But my team wanted to discuss the "issue" and get to "the substance of the matter.". Yuck!!! This was work, not therapy. Why were they doing this?

A strange thing happened as I listened to the athlete in our group talk about growing up in female sports (I enjoy playing Ping-Pong but my tremendous weight precludes me from being called "athlete"). They were second class. They were not real athletes. Their uniforms were falling apart and weren't nearly as new the boys uniforms. They practiced in the crappy gym while the boys got the nice one. My heart started sinking.

And then she went there: "Our locker room sucked."

It was the school's original men's locker room built in the 1930's when men juggled Indian clubs and used iron kettles to barrel their chests. She went on to explain in detail how the moldy, tiny locker room was the most humiliating part of being a female athlete at her school. The talisman of all the mysteries of female became uncomfortably real to me. It wasn't a place where naked women showered in comfort and curled their hair. It was a symbol of shame, and humiliation, and quite possibly a harbinger of treatment to expect later on, in other non-sports related endeavours.

My girls' locker room fantasy vanished in less than a minute, and I realized this wasn't some pie-in-the-sky over the top politically correct notion of someone hopelessly out of touch with what real women want. I realized it was true, and I was happy to let go of the Porky's version and do my best to portray the issues as I now understood them. I didn't get to explode anything, but was honored to be a part of the team that created this video – Beat the BS.

There were times in my life, long before the internet, and shortly before the Sharper Image catalog came to my house, when I would dream of owning something really cool. Something other than my dad's nylon Nike® windbreaker and pants (as seen in the movie "Breakin'" and "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo Shrimp") that I would occasionally wear when break dancing (I was more of a Popper and a Locker, so backspins weren't a staple move of mine).

One of those things that I would occasionally pine for was a NASA Space pen. There was something irresistible about having the same pen that astronauts used while conducting space missions. It would write sideways, upside-down, any-which-way and would never stop writing. It had miraculous chrome-bullet styling and would need no introduction on the playground. Flash that baby, and the ooohs and aaahs would commence. Sure my signature would need to be refined, but there could be no end to the good fortune that was sure to fall on its lucky owner.

Recently, I saw an advertisement and for a Space Pen and several things occurred to me. Sharper Image died because of the internet, probs. It was the only place I could see a Barnett® Crossbow and kid-sized F1 race car from FAO Schwartz in the same catalog. It was 5 times the magic of the Sears Christmas Catalog until they really started focusing on the Air Ionizers and golf accessories. I swear every issue of the last year or two of Sharper Image contained about 12 different kind of Air Purifiers and Ionizers. It had more putting aids than a Brookstone catalog. Once the intertube hit the scene, I could find the most outlandish, wild toys and inventions the world had to offer, and could skip the Ionizer and golf themed "Sharper" pages.

The other thing that occurred to me when I saw the Space Pen advertisement: NASA probably doesn't use space pens anymore. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I just can't picture astronauts using pens in space for anything other than spinning it for some zero-gravity footage (even now I think they do things like squirt ketchup or throw popcorn). Most of my vision of NASA comes from "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" (made back in the 60's, I suppose) and I don't remember seeing Space Pens being used.

It's a shame that even space, rockets and NASA don't carry the panache they once did. I suppose that even now, "Space Pen" has an associative mystique that "Upside-Down Pen" or "Gravity Defying Pen" just can't duplicate. Perhaps the boilerplate in the advertisement states that the pen is no longer used in space, but if not, maybe, just maybe, America's finest space men are still taking those ink-filled wonders up into the stratosphere for a engaging page of Sudoku.

I have one password for everything, and it is very secure. It originates from a popular special we used to run at Domino's pizza while I worked there. Oh it's alphanumeric by the way- don't you worry. It was called the 2-2-2 special. 2 pizzas, 2 toppings and a 2 liter of Pespi. It was a phrase I said over 3,000 times during the summer of 1992 while I worked the phones at Domino's Pizza in between delivering the pies. My earth father had, in a moment of absolute lunacy, told me and my band he would match whatever money we could save up for a P.A. System over the summer, and we did everything in our power to make him sorry.

Back then, I had no passwords, no email, no bank account logins, nothing. I think logging in to the Domino's payroll system involved hitting the F5 key and hitting the arrow down key until my name was highlighted. I got to college, got my first ATM card (more lunacy form the earth parents) and had to come up with a 4 digit pin card. I was instructed to make it very easy to remember, but something a criminal wouldn't be likely to guess. Now if you saw some of the places I risked my life delivering pizza to, you would assume criminals would be very familiar with the 2-2-2 special. Some reason, I didn't think it would be a problem and settled on a version of that particular special.

 
       My Protector

Nowadays, I have (at last count) over 38 logins and passwords, and all of them involve some version of that Domino's 2-2-2 special. I have not once had a problem with identity theft (identity crisis- yes (witness the breakdancing years of 1985-1988), but I attribute its uncrackeable-ness to its humble source. Thank you Domino's Pizza for providing my digital life with comfort and security for all these years. My wife's password usually involves "password" with a number at the beginning or end to meet the alphanumeric requirements. Curiously, she's never had problems either.