i know you all saw the ginormous child care studythat concluded the more time that children spent in child care, the more likely their sixth grade teachers were to report problem behavior ... and that children who got "quality child care" before entering kindergarten had better vocabulary scores in the fifth grade than did youngsters who received lower quality care.
i'd just like to point out this interesting detail:
In the study, child care was defined as care by anyone other than the child's mother who was regularly scheduled for at least 10 hours per week.
huh? so what does that make dad? leftover minced liver patty? christ! as mrs nice guy said to me last night: "i guess those nine months you spent at home didn't qualify as 'quality' care"
ooooof. this recovery business is a tedious thing, let me tell you.
i've been lying on my ass so long that my bed has a massive mr nice guy-shaped dent in it. [i am lying on it now and i just watched an across-the-street neighbor emerge from a house and piss on the graffiti-scrawled fence next to the building. in broad daylight. no bathroom inside?] the days are a blur. i am lucky if i get downstairs more than once and sitting at the dinner table is only tolerable in 30 minute chunks. still, i have made some major post-surgery milestones. here they are:
last wednesday: watched "batman begins," courtesy of netflix. took me about 8 hours because the percocet kept making me alternately fall asleep and hallucinate that i was being persecuted by liam neeson's mustache. at some point in my feverdream, my 20-pound one-eyed cat leaps up onto the bed and lands heavily on my knee. for the next hour i can only see the color pain.
last thursday: made it downstairs for dinner. daughter christens me with new name: Daddy Boo-Boo Knee. i die a little inside when i can't hoist her into the air and fling her around.
last friday: changed the bandages on my knee, which looks like a woman's basketball painted with a bitchin' sunburst design. my left quad is already visibly losing muscle mass. the sight of my pallid, broken body triggers mrs nice guy's gag reflex.
last saturday: consternated and constipated: begin learning the hard way about one of percocet's shitty (or should i say "un-shitty") side-effects. later my wife gives me a shower with my leg encased in saran wrap and a tall kitchen trashbag. least-erotic constipated soapy rubdown of all time.
last sunday: put pants on all by myself! also not very erotic ... later that day: the cat leaps onto my knee again. i invent new obscenities in 12 languages and swear upon all that is holy that i will have vengeance. ever been irrationally furious with a hapless housepet? not a proud moment.
monday: well, now! it seems i have finally grown my first-ever full beard, mustache and all! (stache-spiration: liam neeson in batman begins.) i shave the facial overgrowth into shape a little bit until i look remarkably like a red-headed barry gibb. look out, ladies! ("you can tell by the way i use my walk i'm a ... pathetic gimp?")
tuesday: the doctor told me i'd be out of work for at least a week and he was right. by tuesday my brain (such as it is) felt about 100 percent even if my leg was still a dead-weight rotting slab of roadkill. so i started working from home -- and actually had a more-productive couple of days in bed than i have been known to have in the office (where i have delicious access to cable tv).
yesterday: after eight days confined to my little cave, i decided it was time to venture outdoors for the first time since my surgery. it took me about 15 minutes to get into jeans, a sweater and one shoe (i had to ask my mother-in-law to apply the other shoe ... which was actually slightly more erotic than the shower). my goal was to make it to the coffee shop four short blocks away. despite being thoroughly exhausted just from getting dressed, i ventured forth on crutches. once outside i felt like a lumbering lummox, the littlest beegee. everyone was probably laughing at how ridiculous i looked in my full-leg brace and crutches and gibb-beard. i felt ... tired. i made it two blocks. i could see the coffee shop two more blocks away and--even though it looked like it was 600 miles on the horizon--i knew i could make it there. but then it dawned on me: how the hell was i going to make it back? i was out of breath, my arms ached, my knee was throbbing and i wanted to take a nap. defeated, i did an about face and headed home. i barely made it. i heaved myself upstairs, almost taking a tumble, took off my brace and flopped onto the bed. as i lay there hyperventilating, i see the cat out of the corner of my eye about to jump onto the bed ... with astonishing speed i fling my right leg into the air, deflecting her from landing square onto my broken left knee. she goes flying across the room, lands on her feet and slinks away, dejected. i feel glorious.
today: heading in to the city to get my sutures removed and hopefully hear that there are no massive irregularities going on with my leg. my saintly long-suffering wife has been threatening to change the grimy, crumb-filled, coffee-stained sheets of my sick bed. then, since i haven't had any percocet since last night, i am going to drink a beer and, with a little luck, poop.
so it appears that i've been meme-tagged. normally mr nice guy is nobody's monkey -- he will not dance on command! but today, i make an exception. this is a meme that i can get into. besides, i'm bedridden with nothing else to do aside from download porn. the challenge: list seven songs you are into right now. No matter what they are. They must be songs you are presently enjoying. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.
a few caveats before i begin: i will not be including any of the songs that i have discussed here or elsewhere. so that means no amy winehouse, even though she would probably top the list (besides, metrodad's already all over her ... and fairly oddmother already claimed lily allen, leaving lady sovereign as the remaining unclaimed british bad girl du jour. i like her just fine, but i don't think she'll make the final list). nor will any of the songs i included on BIYF's blogger's choiceoh so many moons ago--besides, that wouldn't qualify as "presently" even though i do still very much enjoy each of those songs.
still, this is a much harder exercise than it sounds. only seven? that's it? oy. impossible. so to wheedle down the potential contenders, i grabbed my ipod, hit shuffle and chose the first seven songs that i'm actively digging, more or less at this instant. there are so many, many more who were simply unlucky enough to not be fingered by the shuffle button first. also, i'd post mp3s to go along with the selections, but all my music lives on an external hard drive which is not in my bed with me, my laptop and my percocet.
here we go, in order of my ipod's choosing:
1. Moto Ya Motemo by Seke Motenga and Kalo Kawongolo: oh hell yes. this lee "scratch" perry produced track (from their "African Roots" album) was recorded in the late 70's and finally released on CD last year. Motenga and Kawongolo came to jamaica by way of their native Zaire and brought with them their zouk and afro-beat influences. when merged with perry's dub mastery, their sound coalesced into something very special. add some slick american soul into the Fela-meets-Trojan Records mix and you get this gorgeous, mellow, groovy, spacey, innovative sound. (short clip here)
2. Forty Days by Billy Brooks: anyone who was paying attention in the early 90s will instantly recognize this as the backbone to Tribe Called Quest's "Luck of Lucien." i only recently unearthed this big band soul-jazz breakbeat gem. (for the record, i am a mid-level breakbeat geek.) the thick, velvety horns, the slick guitar, the crisp drums ... it all pours into your ears like audible chocolate milk. makes the hairs on my arms stand up every time i hear it. seven minutes of pure sophisticated groove. the gentle reminder that Tribe was probably the greatest thing that ever happened in hip hop only adds to the appeal. sigh. (short clip here.) Forty Days also reminds me of Don't Cha Hear Me Callin' to Ya by pianist Junior Mance (i do love me some soul-jazz piano -- listen here -- looks like you just got two songs for the price of one). "Don't Cha" was included on last year's required-listening 4-disc funk compliation What It Is!!!but mance is the real deal--no fly-by-night funketeer. he cut his proessional teeth with some pretty impressive all-star jazz heavyweights, like these guys (in fact, that's mance on piano):
3. Oh But I Do by the Nat King Cole Trio: speaking of jazz and funk, this is funky in the way things were funky before the '50s: these cats have more soul in their pinky toenails than everybody who has ever been related to me by blood combined. i've always loved Cole's early trio work, but for some reason it wasn't until fairly recently that i checked out his live recordings. this is off his "live from the cirlce room" cd. such a great recording -- you can hear glasses tinkling and voices chattering in between songs. the record has an incredible atmosphere to it, you feel like you're in the room with them. (clip here)
couldn't find the footage i wanted, but this sure doesn't suck:
4. Sad and Lonesome Day by the Carter Family: this is actually something i was really into about 12 years ago that recently wormed its way back into my heart. it's fairly straight-ahead carter family grimness and haunting harmonies. straight up american gothic. i love the guitar work -- it's almost a cross between wildwood flower and john hardy. (clip). the best part about it? beck covered it. yes, that beck. and he did it on banjo! instead of singing "o, today has been a lonesome day" he caterwauls "today has been a fucked up day" without too much irony (or perhaps with just enough -- clip here). pitch perfect.
speaking of wildwood flower, let's take off our hats and pay mother maybelle some respect:
5. Electric by Boris: because sometimes you need to completely trash your hotel room and you require just the right japanese art metal to do it to. this is an onslaught of violence and ardrenal gland punishment. put your headphones on and blow holes through your eardrums. (clip) NOW. don't take my word for it, though. the pretentious douchebags at pitchforkare all over boris: "Electric" cranks the cowbell for two minutes of instrumental boogie, replete with tiny post-punk guitar daggers closing out the song.
here they are in action, not as good as "electric," mind you, but it'll suit our room-smashing needs:
6. Vans by the Pack: i'll be the first to admit that i am probably not the target audience for this song. also, i thought vans were sneakers? and another also, are these guys like 12 or something? whatevs. these bay area teens flip expectations by rapping about ... skateboarding? this is pretty sick. "get your grown man on," indeed:
actually, now that i think of it. Vans reminds me of another current yay area favorite: WhiteT-Shirt, Blue Jeans and Nikes by Keak the Sneak. hyphy at its hyphest. this is outstanding stuff. highlight is E-40s verse (he's the dude in the camo shirt). the ideal soundtrack for all your gas-brake-dippin':
7. Georgie Buck by the Carolina Chocolate Drops: good old traditional antebellum string band music by a trio of kids from the piedmont region. sorry, you thought traditional string band music was strictly the domain of whitefolk? ah, well, you haven't done your homework. more flipping of expectations here as the chocolate drops do their ethnomusicological thing. they're digging up the rich history of black fiddle and banjo folk music (in the most literal interpretation of "folk") that used to permeate the south. robert johnson was the exception not the rule. when record companies started sending recording engineers down south, they thought that the only "authentic" black music was blues ... the cruder the better. so the string band music that used to be so dominant in black culture was virtually erased from history. these guys are bringing it back. i had the distinct pleasure of seeing them play in new york last month. there is nothing quite like being in a stuffed room watching three musicians stomp, hoot and holler their way through some of the most enduring cathartic party music. they had the sweaty, beaming crowd eating out of their palms. check it out:
instead of tagging some poor hapless soul to prolong this meme, let me just invite y'all to leave comments -- what seven songs are you currently into? what did you think of my brilliant selections? what are you wearing right now? hit me.
aaaaand i'm back! as far as surgeries go, i'd have to say this was a walk crutch through the park: got to the hospital at 11:30. was having my knee shaved and IV drip stuck into my arm by 12:30. was on the OR table close to 1:30. the anesthesiologist made minor, if mildly alarming, smalltalk, given the circumstances: "so, do you drink?" i replied, "uh, a little. hey should i already be feeling the effects of whatever you just stuck in my IV? because there are six of you and two of them are speaking quechua." he said "i should hope so! what's your drink of choice?" i replied "uh. wine? occasionally i'll have a scotch or a bourb--" and that was it. outlikealight. the next thing i knew i was being lifted onto a gurney and wheeled into the recovery room. by 4 pm i was eating a surprisingly good hospital tuna sandwich (probably that was the drugs talking). then mrs nice guy appeared. i chatted with my incredibly handsome doctor, practiced my crutching skills, and was sent home with a head full of percocet at around 8 pm. all in a day's work.
so apparently they gave me an epidural. thankfully they didn't send me home with a newborn. when i first woke up, though, everything below my waist was numb. everything. ever happen to you? terrifying. couldn't even wiggle my toes. gradually it wore off, of course, but man that was unpleasant. i don't like missing even one day of my kegel exercises. still, i found myself longing for that eerie numbness this morning when i got out of bed, reached for my crutches and felt all the blood in my body rush straight for my knee, which is now roughly the size of a woman's basketball. i can feel every heartbeat inside my knee THUB-DUB, THUB-DUB, FUCKYOU MR NICE GUY!, THUB-DUB. YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME? THUB-DUB. ouchie.
at least the doctor tells me that the surgery went exceptionally well and the menisucs i got was the perfect match. it was, also, "the thickest meniscus i've ever seen." how great is that? every time i wear shorts from now on, i plan on asking my wife: "honey, does this make my knee look fat?"
by the way, i am writing this on percocet. and my daughter just turned into a giant bat.
posting may still be light and may make even less sense than usual, but i'll be back with more gory/gritty details as the occasion warrants. and hopefully the drugs will take my writing to a whole new level. let's start with a haiku, why don't we:
my knee surgery is finally behind me and so is an army of undead Liberaches who want to eat my drug-addled brains
damn, that didn't quite fit into the haiku template did it? let's try again:
percocet is great for coping with knee pain and so is percocet
yesterday i went in to see the doc for one last look at my knee. he took a few x-rays, stood over me looking incredibly handsome, and told me the good news: i don't need an osteotomy at all -- just the meniscal transplant. apparently one of the unforeseen benefits of having had to wait a year for the tissue was that he got to examine how my knee acts over time -- he saw the scans last year and he saw them this year and he determined that in the end it won't be necessary to inflict The Most Painful Surgery in the History of Mankind upon me. no sawing of bone! no "excavating" of deeply embedded old screws from previous surgeries! no excrutiating "re-alignment" of my joint as if it were a rubber tire!
oh, i still get to have surgery today--in about 4 hours--don't get me wrong. but at least i get to have the super-cool (yet still quite major) surgery: dead man's knee. i haven't found much out about my donor yet, but it appears he was only 23. very, very sad. i will be sure to enjoy my life a little bit more for him from here on out. i hope his knee liked whiskey.
anyway, today i got up early in order to spend some time with my daughter: this will, after all, be the last time for 2 months that i'll be able to carry her around, the last time i'll be able to walk with her in my arms, the last time ... i'll have to take the morning shift for two glorious pain-medication-filled months! i took her downstairs and, damn it if she didn't try her best to make sure i'd never want to hang out with her again.
first she wanted to hear her raffi CD, which she listens to about 284 times a day. i said no because it was early and we'd wake up her mommy ... and her excellent grandparents who are staying with us and helping us remodel the kitchen. so we played with her choo-choo trains until she decided she was hungry. i asked her what she wanted to eat as if i didn't know her answer would be yogurt ... as if she has wanted to eat anything other than yogurt for the past year. so we went to the fridge and i reached for a yogurt. this elicited a howl. NOOOO! ok, fine. wrong yogurt, i guess. i reached for another yogurt. NOOOO! NO YOGURT! APPLE SAUCE! so like a dupe i reached for the apple sauce, to which she replied NOOOO! NO! APPLE SAUCE! YOGURT! (which, by the way, she pronounces: OG) so the next 10 minutes were spent finding the magic yogurt that she would deign to eat. naturally it was the first yogurt i had proffered.
then we sat at the table. she told me where she wanted me to sit, so i sat there. then she told me she wanted the cat to sit at the table. i had to explain that the table is for people and the cats hang out on the floor. so she countered strategically: she demanded to eat her yogurt on the floor. i had to explain that people eat at the table, not on the floor. we had reached a crossroads. she refused to eat anything other than yogurt ... and now she refused to eat it anywhere but on the floor. i stood firm ... for about a nanosecond. i thought to myself: did i really care if she ate yogurt on the floor on my last day of walking for 2 months? so we sat on the floor.
after yogurt, which she didn't finish, she again wanted to hear raffi. when i said no raffi, she wanted to watch a DVD. damn. fine, raffi it is. i put raffi on the stereo, which was apparently the wrong move. she demanded that raffi be played on our boombox. i explained to her that the stereo was just as good, better even. she freaked out until i had to put raffi on the boombox, which required digging around behind the stereo for the chord (because we lost the boombox chord in the move), failing to find where it was plugged in, falling down and bumping my chin on the corner of the table the stereo sits on.
finally, after minor struggles with the chord, i managed to play her raffi CD on the requested boombox. she smiled. then she said "more raffi? more raffi?" and i had no idea how to counter that: raffi was playing. how could she want more? she walked up to the boombox and cranked the volume to 12. ahh, more raffi indeed. i turned it down so as not to wake up everyone in brooklyn. she countered by screaming even louder than the music had been.
i am telling you, good people, i CANNOT WAIT for the sweet oblivion of surgery today. a nice respite, 'twill be.
posting may be light for a little while. godspeed!
knee bone's connected to the high tibial osteotomy and medial meniscal allograft
for those of you who have dutifully been keeping score at home (which means you, mom) ... you know that tuesday is the day that i am scheduled to have my Incredibly Nasty Knee Surgery. yes, that's right: after a year of waitingfor good dead-guy meniscus, they have apparently found me a match. and so they're gonna cut daddy open, shave down his arthritic bone and slip dead-dude tissue inside me.
and if only i weren't about to find myself in so much horrible pain, here's what i'd say about it: AWESOME.
seriously, think about it: Dead Man's Knee. if the meniscus donor was a big-time baller, i'll be able to dunk now! finally! do you know the torture of being 6'3" and nowhere near able to dunk? i'm lucky if i can get far enough off the ground to step over the homeless man who sleeps in front of my house. it's terrible! or, like, what if my meniscus donor was a super hot vaguely european pansexual? maybe i'll become suddenly irresistible to anyone who makes accidental eye contact with my knee! maybe through my knobbiest of joints i will become some kind of SEX MONSTER! or what if my new meniscus belonged to an evil-genius plotting some crazy international lemur-smuggling scheme and suddenly i'll wake up to find that my knee is a bajillionaire with 12 secret swiss bank accounts in the cayman islands?!!! how will i be able to access all that sweet swiss-cayman loot?
anyway. you can see how complicated, yet awesome, knee surgery can get.
but nothing is quite as complicated as this: my surgeon, Dr. Hot, gave me a ring on friday ... two business days before he was scheduled to slice half of all my knees open. he said "hey mr nice guy. so, i know it's been a year since you were supposed to have this surgery and all ... and i know that you're supposed to have it on tuesday. but here's something funny: there's this new way of doing the procedure which is totally great. i think i want to do it on you. but here's the rub: it would require that you have TWO surgeries over the next two months and, oh yeah, i've only practiced this on two people before. but it's really neat. so. does that sound cool?"
i replied, rather cogently given the circumstances: "uhhhhhhhhhhhh."
he said: "no really, the surgery you are currently scheduled to have is probably the most painful surgery we do. it's way more painful than a total knee replacement." (for those of you still keeping score at home, mom: i've been slated for a high tibial osteotomyand a medial meniscus allograft.)
i said: "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. i've been waiting for a year and you're telling me this two business days before surgery?"
he said: "think about it."
so i called my dad, pater nice guy. el padre happens to be an orthopedic surgeon (he's also the guy who recommended i see Dr. Hot in the first place, but we'll let that slide ... FOR NOW). i told him: "so Dr. Hot wants me to have this other type of surgery, IN TWO FUCKING INSTALLMENTS because he was talking to some friend that recommended it. and now instead of having the MOST PAINFUL SURGERY OF ALL TIME, he wants me to have two merely "very painful" surgieries A MONTH APART, thereby extending my recovery period by AT LEAST TWO MONTHS. by the way, in case you were wondering, i actually am kind of fond of being able to walk and this is very not cool with me."
so pater nice guy, super-hero-in-scrubs that he is, calls Dr. Hot and lays some jedi surgeon wisdom on him: "um, i don't think this new surgery is the surgery my son needs." Dr. Hot replies: "now that i think about it, you're right. he will get the surgery we planned all along." my dad said "very good."
there you have it. we're back where we started: i am still having the exact same Incredibly Nasty Knee Surgery on tuesday. only now i am much less secure in this decision.
even though it clearly has ceased to matter, here is my take on the operation: why the hell is this guy calling me like three days before surgery to tell me he has a new idea about the procedure i need ... even though i was supposed to have it A YEAR AGO? should i be worried that he was trying to talk me out of the original surgery by telling me that it's the "most painful" surgery he does? after all, that's the surgery i am once again scheduled to have. finally: how old do you have to be before you don't feel like a 7-year-old girl when Daddy calls your doctor to rip him a new asshole?
for those good souls among you feeling inclined to leave comments, please don't tell me that i need to cancel this surgery or find a new doctor. that's not what i need. thank you, though. i have decided to forge ahead with this. what i do need, however, is a lifetime supply of vicodin and whiskey. and a big fat pile of swiss-cayman loot wouldn't hurt either.
brother nice guy came to town this weekend! every year around now, le frere has a two-day conference to attend in manhattan. since the conference runs on tuesday and wednesday, he arrived on sunday evening, ate a late dinner with us and spent monday bonding with his niece who he doesn't get to see much of.
what did we do monday? why, we took the little whippersnapper to the brooklyn chuck e. cheese, of course. a few weeks ago, the sitter reported that she had taken the girl there, and this aroused a strange set of conflicting emotions in me: 1) i was a grumpy because i wasn't so sure i wanted my younger-than-two-year-old daughter to go on a bad-pizza-and-video-game field trip. 2) i was sad because i wasn't the one who got to take her on her first bad-pizza-and-video-game field trip. BAD SITTER!
so we took her to chuck e. cheese. have you ever been to chuck e. cheese OR SHOULD I SAY SCHLOCKY SLEAZE? man this place is some shoddy. where to begin? the games which haven't been updated since 1992? the fourth tier class-D animated characters (like PasquallyThe Italian Stereotype So Egregious That Even the Olive Garden Rejected Him As A Potential Mascot)? the fact that they don't sell beer? of course, it doesn't help that the brooklyn franchise is situated in one of the most obnoxious malls in the country. but, whatever. we walked in tall and proud (mostly because it was funny that everyone clearly thought we were a gay couple out with their daughter and a certain level of discomfort flickered across most people's faces as we passed by). we did what any proud, nurturing father(s) would do: we held our breath and marched right on in. after all, this was supposed to be all about the girl, right? whether or not we wanted to be there had nothing to do with it.
upon our entry, Schlocky Sleaze's maitre d' for some reason that was never explained to us felt the need to stamp our hands. he stamped mine and then my bro's. then he reached for my child who reacted much in the way someone reacts upon learning that they are being taken to a gulag for the rest of their life where they will do hard labor without ever seeing Elmo again. she screamed, twisted, howled, screamed a little more and then screamed. also she cried while she was screaming. and spat fire. so the dude stamped my hand twice and ushered us in.
once inside we made a bee-line for the food counter to order 14 pitchers of beer ... which they don't sell. fuck! so we ordered a pizza and some water. the vendorman told us "we don't have any water. but we have juice." ah, yes. chuck e. cheese "juice." i have no doubt that the beverage on offer was 100 percent fresh squeezed florida grown orange goodness, but i declined anyway in the off-off far left-field chance that the "juice" was actually 439 percent sugar and "natural fruitpunch coloring." then i ordered up $5 in tokens and we went in search of a table.
in wandering through the wilds of the brooklyn chuck e. cheese on a monday afternoon, i was struck by how crowded it was. not only was it crowded -- damn near packed -- but a good nine-tenths of the customers were hasidic jews. now, i don't have anything against the chosen people (hell, three out of four of my grandparents were members of the tribe ... but the crucial maternal grandmother link was lacking and also there was the fact that i didn't want to go to sunday school) but something deep inside me suspects that chuck e. cheese isn't, well, uber-kosher. just sayin'. i don't know, something about pumping tokens into a giant animatronic Clifford the Big Red Dog seems like it must lie in direct contradiction to at least one of the laws of the torah. no?
still, i was determined to show the kid a good time. i stuck her on the carousel. she didn't seem to mind that. i put her in Clifford. that went over fairly well. we tried our hand at a snowmobile video game which i thought was friggin' awesome but inexplicably bored her to whiny tears ("dude, didn't you see how much freakin' air i got off that last ramp," received no sympathy from her). fine, back to the carousel. somewhere along the line she deduced a connection between DISPATCH OF TOKEN and NEW, GOOD THINGS HAPPENING. the most fun game she discovered was one of her own devising: she would take a token, put it into a machine and then ... walk away. then she would take another token and put it into another game and ... walk away again. it was as if she was buying a round for everyone in the house. "LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED, LITTLE BITCHES" ... on dad's dime. i tried to tell her that once the token was placed in the machine, the whole point was to play the game that had just been purchased. she looked at me as if i were a sad, old, out-of-touch coot. "oh daddy, no," she said with her ginormous eyes. "you've missed the point entirely. it's almost cute, how naive you are. now be a doll and give me some more tokens with which to purchase games for my new hebraic friends. then be gone with ye."
all in all the day was a hit. i don't know that i need to rush back to Schlocky Sleaze any time soon ... OR SO I THOUGHT. the next morning, daughtergirl somehow found a remaining couple tokens and scooped them up. "MONEY!" she shouted with weirdly aggressive glee. this was not a word i taught her, but at least she seemed to muster the suitable near-erotic joy with which unexpected newfound riches are to be met with. so, bonus points for her. she waved the tokens in my face and commanded: "ride puppy dog! RIDE PUPPY DOG!" sadly, the giant animatronic Clifford does not live with us, so i had to deny her this request, which was met with an impressive array of pyrotechnic hysterics, screaming and more fire spitting. (note to self: purchase giant red token-eating, bucking puppy dog asap.)
[something i didn't know about chuck e. cheese before i just did some distracted, semi-drunk googling 2 minutes ago: it was started by the guy who founded atari. Nolan Bushnell. good for him. if he ever writes his memoirs he can call them "From Pong to Pasqually, the Nolan Bushnell Story." then he can give me money for giving him that title.]
yesterday after work mrs nice guy granted me a hall pass so i could go out with Brotown--a field trip for grown-ups! le frere and i met at the newly refurbished campbell apartment douche-magnet. we waited for some of his friends, quaffed a round, hopped in a cab and tried to grab a table at the delightfully delicious spotted pig, but a two-year wait for tables forced us to relocate reluctantly a block away (i was beginning to pine for the relative simplicity of suck e. cheese) to the white horse tavern, a move which was at least made more tolerable by our promptly begining to reenact the moments before Dylan Thomas's death: at least they serve beer. much drinking ensued. so much drinking in fact that i folded early, tucked my tail between my legs and returned home shortly thereafter, leaving Brotherford B. Hayes to continue on into the night with his former freres-in-frat without me.
youtube is just the gift that keeps on giving. the other day i was flipping through various clips with the kid in my lap. she kept demanding ELMOSONG? ELMOSONG? but the only problem was that i couldn't find the original sesame street clip of elmo singing his signature ditty. it used to be there but i guess it was ordered down.
good thing i found this -- a bootleg elmo's song video! i watched it with the girl perched in my lap. as the song started she squealed in delight ELMOSONG! and then things went terribly wrong. i doff my cap to the asshole who posted this ... :
