playground stories

sitting on a playground bench, holding my newborn, watching my three year old on the big-girl swings. she's swinging with this other girl, i'll call her Josie, because that's her name. Josie's mom and older brother Owen are sitting with us. we've all just met. the mom asks me: how old is the baby. we tell her: six weeks old today. we all nod. it sure goes by so fast. she's getting plump. it's a magical time.

mrs nice guy asks Owen: how old are you? he's five. nice kid. we ask him how he likes being a big brother. he says: "i'm a big brother, but i have a bigger brother too! he's older. he's 20."

"oh," i say, like an idiot. "that is a really big brother."

Owen's mom tells us that the big brother is her husband's son from an earlier marriage. we all nod. makes sense. she gets up to push Josie on the swing.

i ask Owen, "so do you get to see your brother a lot?"

"no. he's in California."

"oh, yeah. that's far away." poor kid. he's got this big half-brother and he's so far away. that must be hard, especially when you're saddled with a smelly little sister. i would imagine being a 5-year-old boy would be a lot more fun with a much-bigger brother around. "is he in college over there?"

"i don't know."

"oh," i say. i figure perhaps this kid doesn't know what college is. i'll try another tack: "maybe he's in school or something?"

"maybe."

"it's pretty neat to have such a big brother," i say, stupidly. what a fucking conversational wizard you are, mr nice guy. you should teach a night class at Brooklyn College: How to Have Awkward Small Talk with Five Year Olds You Don't Know. i figure I've pretty much exhausted this line of conversation and decide to let it go."

"he's in jail!" [at this point mrs nice guy makes a noise that sounds a little like this: GHNK! which i know intimately from many personal failings to be the sound of repressed laughter.]

"uh?" i respond, checking to make sure Owen's mommy is still out of earshot. "hmm." witness how my panther-like reflexes react to unexpected conversational pitfalls: "well, so i guess your sister is swinging pretty high --- "

"he took a car! and he went to jail!"

"GNGKHG! GN!!" [thanks, mrs nice guy, that sure is helpful.]

"ah. heh. well i guess you shouldn't. um. take cars?" good advice, mr nice guy. you have definitely scared this boy straight. here's your eagle scout badge, you fucking knob.

"my dad went out there to pay a lot of money so he could get out of jail!" fuck. please somebody make him stop.

"heh heh. you don't say?" i'm squeezing my brides hand and desperately attempting to derail this kid's train of thought. "ahem. hmm. wow it sure is hot today."

"KKNJ!"

"yeah, but he's still in california. MY TURN TO SWING."

and he bolted. happy. well-adjusted. unfazed.

damn.

kids are awesome.

rip, randy pausch

aw, shit. fuck. hell. fuck. fuck.

rest in peace, randy. and thanks.

wherein we return to our regularly scheduled programming

i always knew ernie and bert were cold as ice. but, damn little dudes, this is some off the chain shit right here!

Brownsville, home of the brave
Put in work in the street like a slave
Keep rugged dress code
Always in this stress mode
That shit will send you to your grave ... So?

watch, learn, love, laugh and ANTE UP, BITCHES!!!!!!

going off the rails and i am sorry but maybe things will get more interesting as a result of my brainrot

HA! AHAHAHAH! you have all done my bidding, my beautiful minions. you answered the call. you are well trained. now we can move on to the next phase of my plan, a little something i have nicknamed: Operation Give Mr. Nice Guy Whiskey. because it involves you giving me whiskey.

in all honesty, i am a little embarrassed. please, let me apologize for my ugly neediness. i am sure i broke about 10,032 rules of blogging etiquette for breaking down and begging for comments. i myself am too busy to update my own site all that often, much less leave comments on other people's blogs. WHO THE HELL DO I THINK I AM TO GO AROUND BEGGING FOR COMMENTS? i should be ashamed. and now that i think of it, all of you who left comments should be doubly ashamed. i mean, really. you disgust me almost as much as i disgust myself. so we're even, right?

i blame my lapse on lack of sleep. i blame my lack of sleep on my 5 week old daughter (and my 3 year old daughter who spent one long night last weekend barfing on everything that wasn't nailed down). but mostly i blame my lack of sleep on the baby. and i blame the baby on my unchecked animal sexuality. i blame my unchecked animal sexuality on roofies. (sorry, hon!)

we fell into the newbie parent trap. here is how things have gone so far: baby slept solid for 2 weeks. over the course of those first 14 days she was awake, like, 3 minutes total. i was all "this is awesome. babies are easy. i hope she sleeps until she's 18!" then gradually she started waking up more and more. i was all "hey you're cute when you're awake. cool. you don't smile but at least you're not fussy. you're like My Little Embryo."

now here's the pattern: mrs nice guy goes to bed first, early. i stay up as late as i can, usually until the baby needs a bottle sometime between midnight and 1 (i love bottle feedings. she gets all wide-eyed and sweet. she makes eye contact and gurgles.) then i either sleep with her on the futon or let her sleep in the carseat while i do private daddy things. (WHAT? i'm talking about updating this blog, pervs.) when she wakes up again -- anywhere between 3 and 5 -- i hand her off to mom and i crash back on the futon. the missus and i are not sharing a bed because we are both very light sleepers and ... the baby ... well she's starting to sleep less and less.

and apparently she's a rare breed of bat. she's nocturnal. it's not like she does anything. she just lies there and makes noises: djhg asgfg dkggh. like that. it's kind of cute until you realize it loosely translates into PICK ME UP AND WALK, BITCH, OR I WILL SCREAM LOUD ENOUGH TO WAKE MY BIG SISTER AND THEN YOUR LIFE WILL REALLY SUCK.

so lately i stay up until 3 am pacing the halls, hitting "refresh" on my browser and shaking my fist at the cruel gods. i also have been reading about all of the excellent BlogHer shenanigans and cursing my penis. oh how much better this blog would be if only i had a nice rack. or something.

sleep deprivation is eating my brain again. this much is clear. i need to stop typing now before i say something really stupid. or, like, threaten my readers that i'll grill babies if they don't add me to their blogroll or, better yet, they should close their eyes and think of me when next they make sweet love to their special partners.

ahem. don't make me do what i am about to do.

the birth of my second daughter has been an occasion to reflect upon my life, my marriage, my expanding waistline, my deepening debt, my broken libido and the cold sweat of my tremor-filled insomnia. it has also been an occasion to read old entries in this here blog-o-rooni, which has been something of a trip down memory lane. reading old entries has been like revisiting myself when my first child was born. i've enjoyed seeing how things were going at the five week mark last time around. gotten a chuckle or two out of my naive young self. i am grateful to myself for keeping this blog going for so long. also, reading those entries has made me realize something: my prose contains, at its essential core, a shimmering brilliance. a glimpse at eternal truth.

you know what else i realized? i get waaaay fucking fewer comments now than i did three years ago. and for that i blame myself. and you. mostly you.

this is a call to arms if ever i have heard one! you are basically telling me that i have failed you, readers. sure i quit for a few months, i have taunted you with abandonment. i have pretended not to care. but in truth i am nothing if not your humble servant. a really, really humble servant. i amaze myself at times with how pure my humility is.

but i feel i need to give you a sign, because you are ungrateful. let me renew my commitment to you! let me reaffirm your faith! mr nice guy is on bended, battered knee for you. speaking of which: i, breeder is dead. i never really wanted to do it in the first place -- writing about my home life for any publisher other than myself made me deeply uncomfortable. also, at work i'm not allowed to type things like FUCKMEAT SHITSTAIN BITCHBUBBLES!

so instead i'm gonna launch a digital media type webbie blog-jigger for my employer, whom i love very, very much. got any ideas? please let me steal them.

meanwhile, i will keep doing my thing over here. i will make this blog bigger, better, stronger and dirty wordier than ever before. it's going to be so awesome that you're going to go insane and hurt somebody you love very much. but first ... leave me a comment or i will grill and eat my newborn child.

future tense

so in the realm of stuff we've done lately? there's not a whole lot. last week (or was it two weeks ago?), we had a full-frontal family monday all together at home. my bride is on maternity leave and i usually work tues-sat, so normally we only have one day a week as a family. sunday. but! for a brief time, while she's on leave, we actually get to enjoy two days as a family. sunday and monday ... in the same week! who'dathunk?! anyway, we're home on a monday and it's like 108 degrees outside, 202 percent humidity, plus 24 more degrees celsius, because they felt left out. so we decided to go see WALL-E.

for those of you unfamiliar with WALL-E, it's that new disney/pixar remake of Idiocracy, starring Johnny 5. not too shabby.

it's also probably not so appropriate for your average 3 year old, especially if your 3 year old has never been to a movie before. take, for example, my 3 year old, who had never been to a movie before. we arrived at the 10:30 am showing (and only paid $65,000 per person! yay, matinee!), took our seats and snuggled in. i was a little worried that she was going to talk through the whole thing, that she was going to get distracted, that she might get bored and want to leave. basically, i was desperately terrified that she was going to keep me from watching this movie. which is marketed to pre-teens.

i needn't have been concerned. we get in there, the blessed air conditioning is a blessed godsend of sweet blessed relief, and i suddenly realize that i am fully prepared to take my daughter to see WANTED and also maybe DEBBIE DOES DALLAS 12, ANAL CHEERLEADING BRIGADE immediately after WALL-E if that's what it takes to stay out of the fetid equatorial new york swelter.

but i digress. i sit with my girl and i tell her "now, don't talk because this is a movie and we don't talk during movies." i mean, inside voice, right? oh, silly daddy. the lights go down and an entire audience of 9 year olds starts yapping away. their parents? they whip out cell phones and call third cousins in Schenectady. i get momentarily affronted. such rudeness! silly daddy, strike two. i should have saved my energy to get affronted at THE DEFEANING VOLUME OF THE PREVIEWS, WHICH HAD APPARENTLY BEEN ASSIGNED TO GITMO FOR TORTURE/INTERROGATION PURPOSES, BUT ACCIDENTALLY ENDED UP AT OUR LOCAL CINEMA, PLAYING AT 39,485 DECIBELS. AND I AM SPEAKING AS SOMEONE WHO HAS 3 SUB-WOOFERS ATTACHED TO HIS IPOD.

so, yeah, the previews were loud.

my child did not seem to mind. she laughed heartily at the preview for Journey to the Center of Your Pocketbook, starring Encino Man, who used to make $20 million per picture (wrap your mind around that if you can) but no longer does because his employers realized that he is completely unbankable, but that doesn't stop him from out-earning you for your entire life in the past month alone. a dinosaur barfs on someone's head in that preview.

anyway. we watch the movie. (my grunting newborn daughter, incidentally, is strapped to her mother in a sling. she cannot see the screen, although she occasionally does her impression of Dick Cheney providing a running commentary on the flick: MEGH! GRAGGH! GOATFART!) i figured that WALL-E would be a safe bet for the 3-year-old because it doesn't feature much dialogue and therefore would be easier for her to follow. what i hadn't counted on was the fact that the movie relies fairly heavily on tricky devices like: the future.

if you tell my daughter that we're going to the playground "later" she says "NO LET'S GO TODAY!!!" and then you say "yes, we're going later today. today. but later. same day. just later." she crumbles into a heap of salt, screaming "NO NOT LATER! TODAY!" if you ask her what she did while you were at work, she'll tell you "four weeks ago, i went to music class." so, explaining a distant dystopian future where we have all terribly failed our descendants, and now robots are cleaning the trash-heap of earth while devolved humans live on a corporate-sponsored space-station stuck in an endless purgatory of mindless consumerism, was a tad sticky.

she enjoyed it though. she loved wall-e, and who wouldn't? every scene that wall-e wasn't in, she would ask WHERE'S WALL-E?!?! WHAT EVA DOING?

she got scared once or twice, so she sat in my lap. that was my favorite part of the movie: the part that scared my daughter. this is how desperate for affection i am -- i was incredibly grateful for a thing that spooked my 3-year-old enough to scramble into my lap, who then muttered "i'm just a little bit scared, but that's ok."

movie ends. she fixates on all the wrong details: like the fat boneless future-babies that you see for .0003 milliseconds at the end of the movie ("what are the babies doing?!! where the babies go? what happened to babies!!!"). whatever, she loves the movie. on the way out of the theater, she sees a poster for the movie and she yells "WAAAALLL-EEEEE!" and she sounds exactly like the robot -- it's uncanny and it's cute, she sounds like wall-e! and then she says "i remember that movie from yesterday!"

so i laugh. i wonder out loud: did you like the movie? she says "yeah, it was my favorite movie." and so i ask her, what was your favorite part of the movie? and she says "the dinosaur throwed-up on his head!"

you know what? screw that feist lady! this is this the new awesome!

UPDATE: never mind! video no longer available. feist wins!


holy smokin' tabernacle choir, this is mind-menacingly metastasizing! (i don't even know what that means!)

nor do i know what this means: "the non-Newtonian properties of cornstarch mixed with water on a subwoofer" (@the franklin) ... just watch already.

1, 2, 3, 4 monsters walking 'cross the floor

the mighty feist on sesame street. yay!

the sounds of my youth

this is precisely the sort of thing for which i am a sucker. a musical meme! the premise is simple enough: pick a favorite album for every year that you've been alive -- it can be your current favorite from that year or your favorite record during the year in question. i'll try to strike a fair balance between the two. (god. i'm a geek.)

i'll even provide you with a handy tool for playing along at home: wikipedia. as in, here's a (thoroughly incomplete) wiki-rundown of the year in music: 1975, the greatest year of all time -- because it was that year in which i was born. february 3, to be exact. so since we're already talking about 1975, let's get my list started ... WITH the caveat that all of my selections are subject to change if you asked me this question on any other day. (for the, um, record, this idea was stolen from dad centric pet cobra guy, who found it here, though it seems to have originated, probably, here.)

here we go, then. year by sweet year of my life, my favorite album:

1975: Red Headed Stranger; Willie Nelson (narrowly edging out Dylan's Blood on the Tracks even though "Tangled Up in Blue" is one of my top five favorite songs ever)

1976: Songs in the Key of Life; Stevie Wonder (or Mothership Connection; Parliament ... or Rocks; Aerosmith FUCK THIS IS HARD)

1977: Menagerie; Bill Withers (runner up is Talking Heads: 77)

1978: Here, My Dear; Marvin Gaye. (sooo tempted to put in the Sgt Pepper soundtrack -- you know, from the movie starring the BeeGees & Peter Frampton? was a huge touchstone for me. still, couldn't do it. Marvin's record is a slow-burning mind-blower.)

1979: Off the Wall; Michael Jackson (suck it, Thriller)

1980: Dirty Mind; Prince (close second: Back in Black; AC/DC)

1981: Tattoo You; Rolling Stones (on the strength of "Slave" alone)

1982: 1999; Prince (tied for second place: Violent Femmes' self-titled debut ... and the Nightfly; Donald Fagen YOU KNOW IT!!!!)

1983: Synchronicity; Police (god it hurts to type that. oh, how i loathe you Sting)

1984: (i'd really like to say i'm cool enough to include Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime, but I am going to tell the truth and go with) Purple Rain; Prince

1985: Radio; LL Cool J (hey, i need a beat) (runner up: Rain Dogs; Tom Waits)

1986: Raising Hell; Run-DMC (and, the flipside, License to Ill; Beastie Boys)

1987: Appetite for Destruction; Guns 'n' Roses

1988: Vivid; Living Colour ( ... and i kinda liked Poison's Open Up and Say Aaaah. SO SUE ME)

1989: 3 Feet High and Rising; De La Soul ... followed by Paul's Boutique; the Beastie Boys (of course if you were to actually ask me this question in 1989, i'd have probably said Warrant or something. ooh, i know: Built to Last; Grateful Dead -- i'm all over the map, i know.)

1990: Shake Your Money Maker; Black Crowes (followed by People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm; A Tribe Called Quest) (can i kick it?)

1991: Star Time; the James Brown box set ... or if you want something contemporary, hell, i guess: Ten; Pearl Jam (never did care much for Nirvana)

1992: The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion; Black Crowes

1993: Exile in Guyville; Liz Phair

1994: One Foot in the Grave; Beck (followed by In this House on this Morning; Wynton Marsalis)

1995: Brown Sugar; D'Angelo

1996: Odelay; Beck

1997: OK Computer; Radiohead

1998: Moon Safari; Air

1999: Mule Variations; Tom Waits

2000: Nia; Blackalicious

2001: White Blood Cells; the White Stripes

2002: Clone; Leo Kottke and Mike Gordon

2003: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below; Outkast

2004: Cee-Lo Green ... Is The Soul Machine

2005: Arular; MIA (only because i got tired of putting Beck and White Stripes on here. Demon Days by Gorrillaz also strong)

2006: The Letting Go; Bonnie "Prince" Billy (i know this can't be right, it's a great album, but my favorite? shit. what else came out in '06 ... ?)

2007: Dirt Farmer; Levon Helm (also, speaking of retro, 100 Days, 100 Nights; Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings)

2008 ... who knows!? although since you're asking today, right now i'm totally in love with Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet

ok kiddies. homework time: let's have your lists please! i want them on my desk, asap!

playing favorites

i'm not entirely sure how to put this. you see, i have a feeling that's a little ... well ... a little inconvenient. i'd rather not have this feeling. it's a feeling that i am pretty sure has torn families asunder, a feeling that has sent children -- do not pass go! -- directly to therapy. it is a feeling that dare not speak its name.

only .... i shall dare to speak its name.

here is my feeling: i don't like this new kid as much as i like the old kid.

now, before you have me hauled off and raked over the blogcoals, let me point this one thing out: i have known the old kid longer than i have known the new kid. also, to be fair, i am pretty sure that i do not like the old kid now as much as i did when she was the same age as this new kid is now.

that caveat aside, let me say this: babies are lame.

THERE I SAID IT!!! BABIES ARE LAME!

first of all they sleep all the time. then, when they finally do wake up, all they want is food. when they get food do they even look at you? no! they get all whiny and barf on you! they pant. they hyperventilate. sometimes they do weird-ass baby tai-chi. or they startle and roll their eyes. but do they connect with their biological parents in any meaningful social way? ha!

eye contact? forget it! a smile? you've got to be fucking high! babies are way too lame to smile at you!

picture a happy little household of three: mommy, daddy and their kid. the kid, despite being 3 years old and a tragically deranged schizophrenic, is an angel of heaven sent from above to make the world a sweeter gold-shinier place. sure, she whines way too much and still poops in her pull-up, even though she denies that she has pooped in her diaper while simultaneously telling you she is a big girl who poops in the potty despite the fact that this is a bald faced lie and at this exact moment she has a giant turd in her pants that she will soon be begging you to clean up with your bare hands.

now. where was i? oh, yes. you have this little dickens of a toddler and you love her and she talks and smiles and giggles and makes jokes about monkeys and spaghetti WHICH ARE HILARIOUS and has a weird fixation on princess mermaids. she even says "i love you" unprompted (right before pulling your cherished records off the shelves and using them as frisbees). she is, like, eight shades of awesome and crazy. she rocks your world all the time. the three of you together are a virtuous pyramid.

now, all of a sudden, into the fine-tuned three-tiered ecosystem of your home comes a tiny, 7-pound eggplant with eyes. if you are a man, this eggplant doesn't care about you because you don't have boobs that drip milk through three layers of clothing. even if you're a mom and you do have boobs that leak through stainless steel, she doesn't really care. sure, she'll indulge. but she doesn't smile. you could be a giant nipple for all she cares as long as she gets fed. then she passes out again -- "fuck you, i'm tired. peace out." THEN! she wakes up every two hours and says I HAVE GAS. FIX IT!

i mean, i'm sorry baby, but you just got here. somehow you manage to sleep all the time AND wake us up all night long! it's amazing. granted, you're a very cute eggplant, but come on! you're just an eggplant. a lame baby eggplant!

dear reader, answer me this: can you blame me? am i a very bad dad? will i like this child as much as her sister? i mean, i really adore her big sister. still. she's pretty scrumptious, i guess. how delicious would her fat little babythighs taste after 30 minutes on the grill? heh. wait. did she just look at me? or is she sleeping again? so sweet. isn't she cute? don't you want to pick her up and put her in your mouth? i mean, could you just die? look at this baby! those cheeks! they comprise like 70 percent of her BMI! so fat and delicious. look at that baby. she's perfect, right? don't you love her? yeah. so do i.

wake her up and i'll kill you twice.

and now a special message to my daughters, in the future

hello girls. it's probably the future wherever you're reading this. you cruise around in flying hovercars and download music directly into the chips embedded in your brain. your adorable robot dog follows you every where you go and your parents have been cryogenically frozen.

now that you're old enough to understand certain things that you just couldn't way back in 2008, i want to tell you something. you're on the verge of womanhood now ... planning a career, dreaming of a family. the future is yours.

so, for the love of god, watch this video and internalize its message:

stripping kills!

the (un)sweet smell of new life!

about three or four days ago we noticed a peculiar -- how shall i put this in a delicate fashion? -- odour emanating from our newborn daughter. we'd be changing her diaper, all filled with parentlove, and hoo boy, the smell would charge up your left nostril like hitler invading poland. you go cross-eyed from the stench. you stagger back. but it's too late: devastation to your olfactory nerves (represented in this metaphor by Danzig) is complete.

has this happened to any of you? my beautiful newborn child, she smells like -- oh, how to describe this politely? -- well, she smells like nine month old maggot cheese, stored in 25-year-old gym shoes buried under 18 pounds of warm yak intestines. she does not smell good. the source of this stench is clear: it's the withered remains of her umbilical cord, clinging to her torso by a thin-yet-steely strand of slimy ooze. an ooze that refuses to let go of her sweet body. an ooze that, i'd like to add, stinks.

my two-week-old daughter -- who is lovely and cute and sweet and loved dearly by her parents and is clearly brilliant -- smells like the entire state of new jersey tucked inside your great-uncle Lorenzo's unwashed groin. right after he spilled a 12 pound wheel of expired Limburger into it. and then puked on it.

this baby does not smell good.

or, to be more precise, her umbilical stump, which has been attached to her, does not smell good. her blackened husk of a cord, i fear, is rotting. she has Stump Rot. rather, she has Umbilical Stump Rot ... which i have pointed out to friends would make an excellent name for a sludge metal polka band -- if only it didn't refer to my baby girl.

a tour through the internets suggested that some smell shouldn't be too worrisome, as long as it's not accompanied by inflamed skin and obvious infection. none of this was noticeably present. well. so. after a few days of living with our new roommate, Kid Stinkbelly, i decided to take action. i offered to change her diaper this morning. i escorted my daughter -- who i rechristened Stinkpot McStumprot -- away from my bride and over to the changing table with utmost care and tenderness. i cooed to her as i removed her diaper and dabbed at her deliciously scrawny newborn chickenbutt. i booped her on the nose with my much bigger dadschnoz. i gently massaged her all over.

and then i assaulted that fetid pit of a navel with three gallons of rubbing alcohol, a hacksaw and a blowtorch. this bitch of a stinkcord needed to come off!

and off it came! pop! right off! a tiny, withered strand of black death tippled right into my palm. the baby didn't even wince.

for a brief deranged moment i went insane. i considered keeping it forever. it wasn't such a foul thing after all, this little piece of my baby. maybe i'd make a necklace out of it and wear it until i died. i'd have this little chunk of child dangling close to my heart for ...

then my wife, who happens to be terrified of stinky black umbilical death, approached the room. i threw the remains into the trash! i coughed nonchalantly before my babymama said a word and shouted crazily, "NOTHING! i'm not doing anything, why do you ask? SHE'S FINE! and i am definitely not going to wear her vestigial bellybits around my neck like some totem of lost babyhood in case you were wondering."

and then i left the house alone. got on a subway and went to work.

today was my first day back at the office since she was born -- we get two weeks of paid paternity leave around these parts. it's generous, i suppose. anyway, i don't know what it says about my life that two weeks home with a newborn and her 3-year-old big sister felt like a vacation. but that's what it felt like. it was a wonderful moment of sweet family nesting.

tonight i got home and ate dinner with my family. as i scooped the first few bites of my very special dessert into my maw, i paused. something about the homemade whipped cream atop the ramekin dish of warm strawberries and rhubarb reminded me of something. i bent over and inhaled deeply. took a loooong whiff. and i realized what it -- ever so faintly -- reminded me of. the creamy dairy mixed with the tart compote to deliver a remarkable facsimile smell: a faint echo of the rotten umbilical stump! quel surprise!

suddenly i wasn't as hungry for dessert as i thought i was. the spell was broken! the evil Monkey's Paw that was my daughter's satanic umbilical cord held no more sway over my sleep-deprived brain! oh, happy day! no more cord, no more smelly baby.

i still didn't feel like finishing my dessert, though.