riders on the stooge

after reading their tour rider, i am now officially the biggest fan the stooges ever had. i have always enjoyed the musical stylings of iggy et al., but MAN this is some quality reading.

key line: We need: one (1) monitor man who speaks good English and is not afraid of death.

and: 3 large industrial fans to be provided by promoter two on stage and one in the dressing room for use by the drummer. He's practicing that scarf thing that they used to do in Bon Jovi and Heart videos.

can you see your mommis, baby, standing in the shadow?

this is just a little something to let you know what i think is awesome.

i don't think it's awesome that my daughter can say "mommy." that's to be expected. i mean, she's 17 months old now. what i do think is awesome is that she calls out for MOOOOOMMMMMMYY, as if searching for a lost pet, even when mommy is sitting 2 feet away. we'll all be sitting on the divan, kicking it old school style in our antechamber, when all of a sudden the child, out of nowhere, will start going MOOOMMMYY!!!! of course, mommy will respond: "yes, sweetie? i'm right here." the kid will look at mommy and then the kid will blink. and then the kid will go MOOOOMMMMYYY, appealing to some higher unseen authority. mrs nice guy, patiently, will say "yes, darling. i am still right here." unconvinced, the child will begin anew, this time trying a new strategy. she chants: mommy mommy? mommymommymommy. mommis? mama. mommy. mommis mommissssss? at this point, there's nothing we can do but let her work it out for herself. still, it's awesome. at the very least, i am grateful to her for the introduction of "mommis" into the parenting lexicon.

anyway. mommy, it seems, isn't always mommy enough for baby, even though mommy is mommy enough for me ... as mommy reminds me every other night with whips, restraints and egg beaters.

sorry, am i oversharing now?

housing slump? what housing slump?

so for various reasons that are actually quite interesting but i don't feel like telling you, work has been hell the past couple weeks. hell. it's on fire and smells like rotten eggs. that kind of hell. i'm naked, getting branded every five minutes all while stuck in a windowless room with two opinionated french people who smoke a lot. no exit.

hence, no blogging.

but life, she has a funny way of grinding ever onward, even when you're swamped like a gator at the office. we're officially buying a house, for example. crikey! as you'll recall, we walked away from the dreamy speakeasy house, our hearts heavy with rocks of bile. (note to self: factcheck this later to see if rocks can actually be made of bile, and if they can, buy some.) but! a week later! we found another house! that we liked! almost as much! and we made an lowball offer! and they accepted! at which point we crapped ourselves!

lawyers leapt into action, engineers were summoned, mortgage applications obtained. last week we signed the contract. then the sellers signed the contract. then we put our sweet condo on the market. then! that very day, before the open house even, we got an offer for above asking price. what the fuck? does shit like this actually happen to people? certainly not to me.

so we had the open house anyway today because we are greedy fucks and we want to instigate a BIDDING WAR. stay tuned. at least our great fear has been assuaged: we will in fact be able to unload our apartment and won't be forced to take out more loans and sell our daughter in order to afford owning two houses at once (even though it would be pretty rad to have "multi-property-owning brooklyn slumlord" on my resume).

so the thing about the house we're buying? it's a house. and it's yellow. and it's in park slope! fun fact: the public school district for our house has the highest percentage of mentally retarded kids. at first i was a little ambivalent about this piece of trivia. but then it dawned on my blackened bilious heart that this means my kid is practically guaranteed to be in the top-performing percentile. thank you new york city!

anyway, the house has two floors, three bedrooms an office, a yard and a basement. you know what that means, don't you? basement? two words: man space. i am pretty sure i can die happy now.

something old and something new

on this special day we celebrate the exploration and discovery of new cultures, before canabalizing them for profit.

first of all, could i be any more obsessed with this song? her name is amy winehouse and this is "Rehab" from her forthcoming album -- tapping into some of that hip hop-meets-swing thing that outkast and xtina have been flirting with most recently. throw in a little etta james-style vocals, an ethnically ambiguous sizzlean british chanteuse (and dj mark ronson), you get this frothing pot of sex. musical candy, sure. empty calories, yeah. but so damn sweet. something new that sounds old.



now here's something old that looks ridiculously new. b-boys could learn a thing or three by watching this 1929 moving picture show, "King of Jazz." who knew poppin' and lockin' was pioneered by a white dude named "Rubber Legs" Al Norman almost 80 years ago?



happy columbus day, y'all.

maybe Little TO is onto something ...

ok, so maybe i went too far with the last post. maybe, just maybe, Little T is about the only tot that kids can relate to. because he speaks their language. because T.O. knows. because, man, it's a fucking jungle on the tot lot. i mean it's a take no prisoners, every-kid-for-herself, i-don't-give-a-fuck-whose-ball-this-is guerrillas-in-the-midst warfare.

baby nice guy has a mini stroller. she is freakin' obsessed with her mini stroller. she has a freaky little cross-eyed hairless baby doll that she MUST take with her everywhere. so she's a tiny little mommy now. it's weird, but what the hey. it's her thing. she wants to push her own stroller and lug her own baby around, it's her prerogative. i guess it feels nice to be the boss for once, and this is definitely familiar turf for her: baby, stroller, push, move, go.

but autonomy is not complete. every now and then i have the privilege of barking orders at her: "where's your stroller?!" she trots over to her stroller and obligingly pushes it around in a circle for a while. i am unconvinced of her dedication, so i ask, "where's the baby?!" she points to the baby. "kiss the baby!" she lifts the baby out of her stroller, kisses it on its lumpy head and then ... throws it on the ground. so you know what this means, right? i am impressed. she's got a fundamental understanding of the parenting impulses: kiss baby, throw baby. these are the two poles of my existence boiled down to a nutshell and my 17 month old has already deduced as much.

anyway, sharing. sharing is not an impulse that she possesses. nor is it, for that matter, an impulse that anyone on the tot lot possesses. we bring her wee stroller and her wee baby doll. and we take her to the tot lot ... and all she wants to do is push other kids' strollers around. she wants one of the 8 other EXACTLY IDENTICAL NAVY BLUE MINIATURE MACLAREN STROLLERS to push around for the sole reason that it doesn't belong to her and it makes some unsuspecting toddler PISSED.

and so after much research, here is my tot lot maxim, boiled down to three simple words. say them with me now: Ownership is Fluid.

ownership in the tot lot is not like ownership in reality. if you are a tot in the aforementioned lot and you see something that attracts your eye, like for example some woman's wallet sitting in some other child's stroller or maybe dad's 98,436-degree coffee, well then, that thing suddenly BELONGS TO YOU. just because it does. you wouldn't understand. it's a tot thang.

aha, but here's where things get complicated: ownership may be fluid, yes, but sometimes another tot might decide she owns your glitterball, or your sippy cup, or your mom. WHAT DO YOU DO THEN? well, that depends. if you are currently claiming ownership of someone Else's Elmo doll, for example, chances are you couldn't give two shits about some little squirt homing in on your half-eaten bagel. HOWEVER. if you have claimed ownership of someone's Thomas the train board book while that exact same someone has started pushing your stroller around, well then, sister, all bets are OFF. that is a full-on declaration of war. "ne touche pas le stroller de Bebe. sinon, cest la guerre!" i think Lafayette said that.

if you are my child, your spidey sense kicks in the second some other tot has touched your mini maclaren, 600 feet away. if you are my child, your head spins, Linda Blair-like, and your eyes focus, terminator-like. you make a noise at 3824x10-to-the-28th decibel that sounds like this: NOOOOO! and then, as your parents clasp their hands to bleeding ears, you begin running because, for all you know, that child is about to eat your stroller and you'll never see it again if you don't get there soon enough.

right? i mean, what do kids think these other kids are going to do with their stuff? sell it on eBay? I'm all "Jesus, baby nice guy, relax. have some string cheese. if some little squirt touching your shit is the worst thing that ever happens to you, then i am going to be rubbing your forehead for good luck every remaining day of my life." she doesn't fall for it. she runs over to the offender and again lets out a spine-melting NO! and wrenches her stuff out of the other kid's arms. the other kid, of course, is indignant. he's all "but ownership is fluid! didn't you read the fifth paragraph?! this is my stuff now, beeyotch! you can't have it back!"

and here's the funny part. while both kids are melting down--both the plaintiff and the defendant in the tot lot stroller-jacking case--the other kid's mom comes over and saya "now listen, Dylan. that stroller doesn't belong to you. that stroller belongs to this other baby. now sweetie please give it back. give it back sweetie. honey does that belong to you? no. so please give it back. stop screaming. stop. please? honey? mommy would like you to give it back. no? you don't want to give it back? why not? give it back, honey." meanwhile i'm starting to twitch. "lady if the tot lot has taught us anything, it's that LOGIC is not the dictating force here. nor is coercion. THE STRONGER ONE WINS. and what is stronger than mommy? let me show you." and then i wrench my melting-down toddler's stroller out of teachable-moment mom's claws and give it back to my kid. i say nothing else, but i think verrrry loudly, "save it for when your kid understands things like ENGLISH, lady."

yeah, so, i'm left to wonder ... where does my child get it from?

no time out for T.O.

news like this is too good not to share. now, i'm no mega-sportsfan, but even mr. nice guy knows a steaming heap of greatness when he smells one. and here, dear readers, is one glorious pile of awesome: the terrell owens children's book.

"Little T Learns to Share" will tackle book stores on November 15.

co-authored [which is publishing lingo for "fully authored"] by television writer Courtney Parker, "Little T" depicts the travails of Owens as a boy learning to share his new football with friends. thank god we have role models like this. i mean let's take a good look at adult T.O. and examine exactly why he's the right man for this important book:

• in 2003, after leaving the 49ers and breaking off all ties to the team, Owens appeared in an interview for Playboy magazine, in which he shared insinuations that teammate Jeff Garcia was gay.
• in September of 2004, he "co-authored" an autobiography: "Catch This! Going Deep with the NFL's Sharpest Weapon." in 2005 he shared that he had never actually read said "autobiography."
• in November 2005 he shared his opinion in an interview that the Eagles--his employers--lacked class. he also shared his feelings that teammate Donovan McNabb, who was playing with a sports hernia among other injuries, was not a "hero" while Brett Favre, who played for someone else, was.
• let us not forget the accidental suicide non-attempt attempt scandal that unravelled messily when Owens shared too much hydrocodone with his digestive tract late last month.

friends if anyone ever asks you: who will think of the children? you now know the answer: verily, terrell owens will swoop down, a winged angelic mercury, and shield our babes from all manner of sins.

what's that you say? humbug? our Little T is the very embodiment of pride, envy, slander, narcissism and betrayal? pshaw! the man can run! and catch! verily, he deserves every penny of his 3-year, $25 million deal, and his $5 million signing bonus, in addition to his $5 million first year salary. so. give him another $7 million and tell him to take a break from all his hard work. and be sure to thank him for allowing his name to appear on the book jacket.