hot!

my goodness the excersauser struck a chord! thanks for y'all's input. i definitely look forward to the day she is less of a soft, floppy fish and can actually enjoy it as it's meant to be enjoyed -- for the moment, she just stares at and drools on it. of course, she may not live long enough to enjoy the excersauser as it is meant to be enjoyed. i fear she is an endangered species.

don't get me wrong, please. she is not an endangered species because i would willingly harm her. no. she is endangered because i unwillingly put her in harm's way. all the time. oh, the examples are myriad. last week i sat her up and she GRINNED like she wanted to show you this new sitting thing she created. she sat there like katharine hepburn: gorgeous and wobbly. then she flopped backwards and SMASHED her paper skull into the ground. granted there was a rug and a towel between her smushy head and the hardwood floor, but still: she screamed. she actually spoke, i swear to buddah, and said: JESUS CHRIST! MY FATHER IS TRYING TO KILL ME! ARREST THIS MAN AND PUT HIM IN A CELL WHERE HE WILL BE RAPED AND THEN SHIVVED.

anyway, i have not been arrested. yet. but i probably should be arrested (and NOT for that little extortion deal i scored in atlantic city last fall. that was totally mutually beneficial). no, i should be incarcirated incarserated locked up for putting my tiny baby in harm's way for no good reason ... repeatedly.

take this sunday for example. the nice guys went to brunch at a friend's house in redhook. it was my duty to bring all the fixin's for bloody marys (maries?). mrs nice guy was to bring fruit salad. this friend, we'll call her gertrude, had just moved into her lovely apartment near the water (and not the subway) the week prior. when we showed up, with vodka and tomato juice and baby and fruit salad, in no particular order, gertrude was just pulling bacon out of the oven.

yes, that's right, she made bacon in the oven.

i, personally, had never seen bacon made in an oven before. and, it would seem, the oven had never seen it before either, because the oven, which had survived 600 cruel brooklyn winters, decided at the moment of our entrance to CATCH ON FIRE AND BURN THE APARTMENT DOWN WITH EVERYTHING IN IT INCLUDING THE BABY AND MY WIFE AND THE VODKA, in no particular order.

people, do you understand? gertrude's house caught on fire! this was my sunday morning! here it is in slow motion: we show up. we hand her the baby. gertrude walks into her bedroom with my wife and my baby. my miscreant friends and i are left alone in the kitchen to mix cocktails. then. then! then, the oven begins to breathe hot heaving breaths of baby-murdering grease-fire into the house. smoke fills the kitchen. one friend suggests opening the oven and throwing water in it. another friend wants to keep it closed. i begin to feel the heat of the flames melting my eyes. black death-smoke billows forth. slowly, it dawns on me that the oven, which is on fire in a way that ovens are not usually on fire, lies directly between ME and MY WIFE and MY CHILD (and several of MY DVDS THAT GERTRUDE HAD BORROWED AND NEVER RETURNED). so, i do the natural thing: i start crying. while gertrude calls the fire dept., i selflessly put my body into harm's way. i run into the bedroom to assemble my wife, child and dvds, in no particular order, grab the vodka and usher everything out of the apartment. sure this all sounds very bruce willis of me, but since this is my blog i am conveniently leaving out the part where i soiled myself repeatedly.

we run outside. it is interesting to note how many of my degenerate friends evacuated the apartment with drinks in hand. the fire department comes and shuts down the entire block in 3 sweaty, manly seconds. firemen with big axes beat on the doors of gertrude's neighbors, eager to swing their heavy instruments. the captain runs upstairs, ascending four of them at a time, as gertrude's various female guests (and sundry passers by) oggle beefy firemen unfurling their massive hoses. and then ... the group sex! no. nothing happens. the oven fire had extinguished itself.

after new york's finest stopped laughing at us and left, we let the smoke clear out of gertrude's apartment and retreated, tails between legs, back inside. it was gomorrah: we spoke not of the conflagration. we ate the delicious oven-destroying bacon. we drank powerful cocktails and debated which fireman had the most impressive equipment. we hugged our babies just a little bit tighter. in no particular order.




UPDATE! the votes are in! attention brooklyn firemen: apparently there is one among you who goes by the name of "KEANE." you, sir, have been proclaimed "mostly likely to have started the fire yourself, you're so hot" by my brunching ladyfriends. maseltov.

also, sorry for the silence around these parts. i have had no access to interweb for three looong days. am back and ready to rumble now, though.