mr. nice guy

closure is good

2009-05-03T22:25:00.002-04:00

hey, remember me? let's wrap this up, shall we? i'm obviously not doing this any more, so why pretend?

if you need me, i'll be at this (extremely rudimentary and very unfunny) wordpress site. drop me a line and i'll tell you a story about poop or something.

thanks for reading. be kind. be strong. go forth. prosper. life is amazing. are you going to eat that?

like the white dwarf, i am composed of degenerate matter

2009-02-26T18:42:00.004-05:00

this post is being posted because tonight i am going out for drinks with LOD, metrodad, mom101, croutonboy, mommypoppins, daddytypes, liz of coolmompicks and alphamom. therefore i need to at least halfway pretend that i am still a blogger. i need to justify my attendance. i need to man up.

therefore, here is a post:

yesterday, at naptime, my three year old called me into her room. she said "daddy! my hands smell funny when i do this." and then she stuck both fists into her undies and begins vigorously masturbating. then she stuck them under the nose and inhaled deeply. "see?!"

i didn't quite know what to say. i want her to maintain a positive body-image and a develop a healthy relationship with sex. but, "i love the way your vagina smells" would have sounded, well, creepy. and i can't afford any more therapy than she'll already need. so i shrugged and said "uh, do you want to wash your hands?" she said yes. and then she did. and then she napped. the end.

so then. i am, for now, officially still qualified to drink with these superstars. look for me at the bar: i'll be the shriveled white dwarf in a constellation of hypergiants. even better: drunk hypergiants.

regarding child health care in america

2009-02-11T17:50:00.002-05:00

this deep, penetrating news report (oof, that makes it sound like porn) on the precarious state of child healthcare in this country solidly reconfirms my own private stance on the matter. also, lollipops.

because i have nothing else to say right now

2009-02-03T18:08:00.002-05:00

you know that "25 random things about me" meme has been working it's way through the facebooks? i finally caved after being tagged about 12,000 times. here. now leave me alone:

1. i was a chubby child/teen. i still hate taking my shirt off in public. now my pants on the other hand ...

2. i have never owned a bicycle and consequently cannot really ride one without posing grave danger to myself and everyone within a 50 yard radius.

3. i think i have had 8 knee surgeries. i've literally lost count. most recently, about 2 years ago, i had a dead guy's medial meniscus transplanted into my left knee. i was hoping i'd finally be able to dunk. no such luck. mysteriously, i now speak perfect mandarin.

4. fuck! the baby just woke up from her nap. she wasn't asleep nearly long enough.

5. i studied in grenoble, france, for a year, where i met my first love. she was a french girl from the countryside. i was completely fluent by the end of the year. i have since lost about 85 percent of my french. fortunately, i am still fluent in the language of love.

6. i had a pierced ear for one day when i was 13. when my mom saw my retarded little skull-shaped stud she said "your dad's going to fucking kill you." i took it out that instant. i suspect he knows anyway.

7. i didn't go to prom. i ate a bag of shrooms at the afterparty instead and thought i could read ally sheedy's mind. then i jumped in the pool and almost drowned. when i woke up the next morning i had total amnesia -- couldn't remember who i was. that took a couple of terrifying hours to wear off. just say no, kids.

8. i am totally secure in the fact that i am not the primary breadwinner. i highly recommend everyone get a sugarmama.

9. i was in the thespian club in high school.

10. i was on the fencing team in high school.

11. miraculously, no one has ever beaten me up.

12. not that they haven't wanted to.

13. was once told by an intern that i had been voted the "second-blackest white guy in the office." i have no idea what that means. but i take comfort in it.

14. i make really good mixtapes.

15. not once did a mixtape ever get me laid.

16. i've been swimming in the playboy mansion grotto. twice!

17. i took a poppin' and lockin' class when i was 11.

18. i used to ball boy for the occasional tennis tournament. andre agassi once yelled at me in front of a packed center court when i didn't hand him a fresh ball soon enough. man, i hate andre agassi.

19. i wrote a screenplay with a friend when i was on extended paternity leave -- a comedy about ball boys. i thought it was really funny. nobody else did.

20. the first time i heard the music of the beatles was in the movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band starring the BeeGees and Peter Frampton, which i had on Betamax and watched incessantly. when i finally heard the Beatles' real Sgt. Pepper, i was galled that the songs were in the wrong order and didn't sound as good.

21. the first porno flick i ever saw was also on Betamax. it was called Broadcast Barbara.

22. the last porn i ever saw was on the internet, five minutes ago, between writing items 16 and 17 on this list.

23. actually, now the last porn i ever saw was after writing item 22.

24. i got caught shoplifting on a school field trip to six flags in seventh grade. that sucked.

25. i am a little concerned that the only job i am halfway qualified to do is rapidly disappearing from existence.

in loving memory

2009-01-29T10:01:00.005-05:00

ok so it's been a few days now, but i'd like to better illustrate for you the painful day that was friday. first of all, check out this motherfucking bush:

look at those thorns! check out those gnarled, dried-out jagged stems of death! now imagine one of those thorny, twisted sharp bastards sliding right into your eye as you're walking along at a steady homeward-bound clip! imagine it! do it! pain, i tell you. agony. searing hot fire-ouch.

it's had some time to heal, but check out my poor eye: see that speck to the right of my gorgeous hazel iris? that's the Wound. a millimeter to the left and i'd be typing this post on a braille keyboard!

i know what you're thinking: mr nice guy is a big pussy. just say it already!

here's my toe. not broken, as it turns out, but still purple:

damn, i need to hit a pedicurist.

so, there you have it. oh, and my other news? remember how the doctor said eat a low fat diet throughout the duration of my possible gallstone attack? "no more bratwurst" or whatever. yeah, well screw that. i went to a new wine bar in my neighborhood called Brookvin on saturday. i happen to know the head chef (he used to be the cook at Newsweek -- that's right, Newsweek has a cook.) more importantly, he's worked at Savoy and for some reason he likes me. on the day after my doctor's visit the wife and i decide to check out the new establishment. i almost decide not to go because my side aches and i feel a little woozy and walking there in the cold puts me in a real bitchy mood. but the second we sit down, my friend hooks us the fuck up with chicken liver, lardo, pancetta, homemade head cheese (!) ... and bratwurst! i ate every last fucking bite! and the wine flowed and the lord saw that it was good.

the next day, saturday, wouldn't you know it: no more pain in my side. little Charles de Gall had gone silent. i felt 100 percent better. maybe all the fat greased his journey right through my colon. who knows.

it pains me to say it, but i believe i lost Charles this weekend. we hardly knew him.

Charles de Gall

Jan. 13 2009 - Jan. 18 2009

Go in peace.

time lapse cuteness

2009-01-29T07:50:00.001-05:00

i wish my 7 month old would play this well for this long.

rabbit run

2009-01-28T10:34:00.002-05:00

critical beatdown

2009-01-26T09:52:00.008-05:00

the doctor tells me to take my shirt off and leaves the room for 15 minutes. there's no way to look cool sitting in a doctor's office with no shirt on for 15 minutes. i study the norman rockwell paintings of country doctors and their adorably cheeky young patients with an attention to detail i don't believe they've ever been subjected to by a shirtless man. i will tell you this: that norman sure did rock well.

doctor returns, takes my blood pressure. pokes my back.

"this hurt?"

"nope."
"this?"
"uh uh."
"how about this?"
"sorry to disappoint."

he tells me to lie down and begins jabbing at my abdomen.

"this hurt?"

"no."
"this?"
"nyet."

"thi -- ... uh. please come down off the ceiling."

"mommy."

he draws some blood, i pee in a cup and he tells me: "you don't fit the profile in the slightest, but all your symptoms suggest that you may have a gallstone." the typical gallstone sufferer profile, of course, is an overweight female in her 40s. (later, when i tell my brother this, he says "dude, i always knew you were a fat old woman.")

so the doc is going to run some tests and let me know what comes next (ultrasound? laproscopic surgery?) he did seem to think the stone was probably small and, given the location of the pain, in the process of passing all by itself. (this is where we pause and all praise jesus, allah, buddah and satan that i don't have a kidney stone.) he tells me to stick to a low fat diet. i tell him i had bratwurst for dinner the night before. he says "don't do that again." i'm like "ever?"

on my way home i am stewing and brewing. feeling sorry for myself. i am walking down my block and i begin to picture my little gallstone, floating along the bile duct. i well with pride a little bit. this is my special little guy -- i made him! behold the miracle of life! i decide to name him Charles. he is the son my wife never bore me. my own little Charles de Gall. i love him.

and then ZING! a branch from a giant rosebush reaches over a fence as i walk by and it jabs me square in the fucking eye! the whole world flashes red and then goes black. i almost fall down from the surprise and the pain -- my eye feels like it's the size of a baseball and it's streaming tears. FUCK! my right eye! i am five blocks from my house, stomping along in the early evening rush hour, one hand over my eye and cursing up a blue streak. "fucking goddamn fucking cocksucking bush! fuck! ow! fuck! my fucking eye! first fucking gallstones and now i'm going to lose a fucking eye. FUCK!" i turn around and shout at the front yard with the bush in it: "I'M GOING TO BURN YOUR FUCKING HOUSE DOWN!" i run up to the bush and start snapping off branches and stomping on them. people are crossing the street in order to avoid me.

my eye really hurts.

i get home, one hand over my eye and the other on my side. my rage has apparently ratcheted up the bile production. little Charles is kicking. it takes me a minute to get the key into the door because i have no depth perception. i scratch the paint around the lock with my key and spit profanities at the world. when i get in, i am relieved that the kids are out with the sitter and the house is empty. this allows me to throw things and drop atomic f-bombs throughout the living room and kitchen.

it takes a full hour, but eventually i am able to open my eye for more than 30 seconds at a time. gradually i realize that i am probably not going to have to walk around with an eyepatch and gallstones next week. this is a relief. that would have been too much to take. the kids come home ("daddy, why are you holding your eye?") and the bile in my system generally subsides. i realize that, erm, this too shall pass.

mrs nice guy gets home and puts the kids to bed while i drink a tall glass of doctor-discouraged beer. i start to feel better.

a little later, i'm walking to my room, glad the day is done and eager to crawl into bed. as i amble down the hall, i stub my toe so hard that i feel it in my groin. my testicles crawl up inside my body and, i guess, introduce themselves to Charles. my gallbladder tells them that there's no more room at the inn. my side aches. my eye begins tearing up again and i cover it with my hand as i hop towards my bed. the toe is throbbing and it feels like someone has jabbed a pen-knife into my gut. i'm doubled over and hobbling blindly. i have no depth perception and i almost miss the bed. the toe -- the second on my my left foot -- i notice has instantly turned an ungodly shade of purple.

i am pretty sure it's broken.

i collapse on the bed and i wait for 2009 to be over.

mrs nice guy looks up from her laptop and asks: "are you done yet?"

Take Time To Talk To Your Child About Whatever Crap They Like

2009-01-24T19:16:00.002-05:00

surprisingly solid parenting advice from the Onion!

Maybe you have a daughter who likes to draw unicorns or elves or some shit like that. Doesn't matter what it is. When she approaches you with her latest picture of a dolphin jumping over a rainbow or whatever, don't just slap that son of a bitch on the refrigerator with a magnet and pat her on the head. Actively tell your little girl you appreciate her unique talents as a developing young lady and, for good measure, tack on some bullshit about how much her little crayon chicken-scratches mean to you.

the baton has been passed

2009-01-23T16:48:00.004-05:00

heh. so not to be outdone by the man who has replaced/promised to undo everything done by their daddy, Jenna and Barbara Bush have written their own letter to Sasha and Malia:

As older girls, we were constantly inspired by the amazing people we met, politicians and great philosophers like Vaclav Havel. We dined with royalty, heads of states, authors, and activists. We even met the Queen of England and managed to see the Texas Longhorns after they won the National Championship. We traveled with our parents to foreign lands and were deeply moved by what we saw. Trips to Africa inspired and motivated us to begin working with HIV/AIDS and the rights of women and children all over the world ...

Oh yeah. And also? We got to party our fuckin' tits off!!!

Anyway, if y'all ever need any advice, like bodyshot recipes or presidential HPV remedies, you know who to call!

i'm still still not dead

2009-01-23T09:57:00.007-05:00

so on tuesday night i made the most mind-crushingly delicious greek lamb-eggplant pie -- so good it'd make you slap your mama and french kiss your dog. then, in the middle of the night, i developed a wee case of the bloat. i was like the rarebit fiend, tossing and turning through the night because of the pain in my abdomen. curse you, savory meat pie! it felt like someone inflated a balloon with acid right where my pancreas was supposed to be. i tried the child's pose. i tried the plough. nothing would dispel the pain.

in the morning the bloating was gone. but the pain, she remained. three days later there is a constant dull aching in my right abdomen. because i love scaring the hell out of myself, i decided to do some googling. i searched "pain abdomen right side." i searched "pressure bloating abdomen." i searched "anal sluts." i searched "stomach cramps."

here's what i learned: i either have appendicitis, hepatitis c, gas, gallstones, indigestion, colon cancer, crohn's disease, pancreatitis, tapeworm, ebola, PMS or malnutrition. basically, i'll be dead by my next birthday. (incidentally, i also learned that anal sluts are a spooky yet oddly alluring breed.)

i swigged some maalox the other day and while it did result in some deeply gratifying expulsions of gas from orifices i wasn't aware that i had, this nagging pressure/discomfort in my side remains. i was hoping to write a mildly amusing post earlier this week about soccer class, AA and dan zanes, but then I came down with a mild fever and chills on wednesday. so i went to bed at 7:45 wearing a thermal, a sweatshirt and a sweater.

i have doctor's appointment today. i am inclined to think -- given my history with intensely painful esophagus-melting acid reflux -- that it is some form of gas or something. (apparently i am a 33 year old man with the insides of an octogenarian hobo). in any event: i am deeply hopeful that it is not the Hep. that would be a tough one to explain to mrs nice guy.

i'll let you know how this all shakes out. meanwhile, just when you thought you were done reading pointless year-end lists, here's the Village Voice's increasingly irrelevant annual Pazz & Jop issue. i voted this year. for whatever it's worth here's my ballot -- my more-or-less favorite songs and albums of 2008 (on the day i was filling out the ballot).

what were your top songs and records of the year?

finally, here's a picture of a shockingly-phallic gallbladder filled with stones:

truck alphabet

2009-01-19T11:57:00.000-05:00

this is brilliant.

(i found it here and it reminds me of dutch's graffiti alphabet, which is also brilliant.)

classic, 2.0

2009-01-16T09:57:00.001-05:00

we bought our 3-year-old My Neighbor Totoro for christmas. i had never seen the 1988 Miyazaki masterpiece before, but i was familiar with a few others like Spirited Away (amazing) and Princess Mononoke (confusing but amazing).

anyway Totoro is incredible -- this is what movies are supposed to do. it conveys a sense of wonder without being cloying. it's mysterious and fun without being too scary or too pandering. it also got me thinking: is it a new children's classic?

Disney has a corner on the market of the old school children's classics: Fantasia, Dumbo, all those fucking princess movies. so for something i'm working on, i'm wondering: what are the new classics?

hit me with your noms, all age groups welcome. 3 and under; 4 to 9; 10 and up. Those are flexible if you find your picks naturally fall into slightly different groupings. The 10 and up group will likely include "grownup" movies that are appropriate for older kids.

all films should have come out since 1980. these can be obvious -- ET -- or more offbeat -- The Witches. indie and foreign movies are fine. mediocre, Home Alone-type blockbuster fare is not.

what are the classics in your house? and i promise to be funny next time.

"Dear Malia and Sasha,"

2009-01-14T15:52:00.002-05:00

the president-elect has written a letter to his daughters in the current issue of Parade magazine. as i read it, my own two girls are playing on the rug.

I want all our children to go to schools worthy of their potential-schools that challenge them, inspire them, and instill in them a sense of wonder about the world around them. I want them to have the chance to go to college-even if their parents aren't rich. And I want them to get good jobs: jobs that pay well and give them benefits like health care, jobs that let them spend time with their own kids and retire with dignity.

I want us to push the boundaries of discovery so that you'll live to see new technologies and inventions that improve our lives and make our planet cleaner and safer. And I want us to push our own human boundaries to reach beyond the divides of race and region, gender and religion that keep us from seeing the best in each other ...

These are the things I want for you: to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world. And I want every child to have the same chances to learn and dream and grow and thrive that you girls have. That's why I've taken our family on this great adventure.

only six days to go.

ask and ye shall recieve

2009-01-14T13:10:00.008-05:00

T was mean, though. he didn't take no U!

for some reason that highly excellent richard pryor clip totally reminds me of this thoroughly kid unfriendly song:

the more you know

2009-01-14T09:33:00.003-05:00

here

smell the knotted fist

2009-01-13T07:47:00.002-05:00

i've never really been a U2 fan, but i respect their frontman's extracurricular activities. he appears to be sincere in his desire to make the world a better place and he should be thoroughly commended for his remarkable efforts to do so. he certainly doesn't need to do anything for anyone -- he could just sit on his mountain of money and rub that cold hard cash all over his naked body. kudos, right?

when i heard that bono had been tapped to write an op-ed column for the new york times, i shrugged. to be sure, the irish are not particularly known for their lyricism and lord knows there are no great irish writers. be that as it may, this bono dude obviously has his opinions.

all joking aside, sir bono wrote an appreciation of bob dylan's singing in a recent issue of rolling stone. i was surprised and impressed by how wonderfully it was written. it wasn't just a good essay, it was startlingly good. i shook my head -- i for one would have no idea how to write an appreciation of dylan's singing. he's just too huge and his singing is just too loaded. but then bono nailed it with this perfect turn of phrase:

"There is certainly iron ore in there, and the bitter cold of Hibbing, Minnesota, blowing through that voice. It's like a knotted fist, and it allows Dylan to sing the most melancholy tunes and not succumb to sentimentality. What's interesting is that later, as he gets older, the fist opens up, to a vulnerability."

yes! his voice is an unsentimental knotted fist! that's perfect!

on sunday bono's debut (i think) column ran in the times. it is a lovely, boozy ode to frank sinatra, flowing with wit and a distinctly celtic lifelust. the scene is a simple if implausible one: bono is in a dublin pub on new year's eve and Ol' Blue Eyes' voice rises above the crowd on the stereo. the song is "My Way." bono writes:

"His ode to defiance is four decades old this year and everyone sings along for a lifetime of reasons. I am struck by the one quality his voice lacks: Sentimentality."

and then! he begins the next paragraph with this question: "Is this knotted fist of a voice a clue to the next year?"

oy. look i am not trying to play gotcha with the biggest rock star in the world. but i do have a couple of questions for you, el bono.

first of all: do you really think that sinatra's croony voice on "My Way" and Dylan's adenoidal midwestern twang are both "knotted fists" devoid of "sentimentality?" sinatra, at the time you describe him, was smoother than satin dipped in melted butter. dylan, at the time you describe him, was all rough edges with a molten core of fury. but apparently they are both punching you with their fisty voices and not the least bit sentimental about it.

second of all: you're a lovely writer. clearly you've got the chops. did you just get lazy?

or did you simply somehow develop a tic for describing people's voices as "unsentimental knotted fists." i can see you at the inauguration: "Obama's is a voice of hope, a knotted fist of unsentimental courage!" i can see you at the Oscars: "Mickey Rourke's unsentimental knotted fist of a fist was the Wrestler's true voice!" i can see you at the Grammys: "My knotted voice is the fist of unfathomable fame and unsentimental success. Raise a knotted fist jammed with cash and unsentimentally buy a (RED)ipod with all of my fist's songs on it."

third of all: did you think no one would notice?

heard any good jokes lately?

2009-01-12T09:25:00.005-05:00

[deep breath.]

hi. just a quick note to let you know that there's a new laid off dad up in this internets, peoples. and he (that would be me, for my slower/drunker readers) has got a few things to clear up.

first off: ok, yes, i know. i haven't updated lately. like at all. ever. but as you may or may not know: my bride and i had us a new daughter in june. meaning we've had a newborn on our hands. who has in the interim become a less-newborn. (also plus we haz insane three-year-old.) meaning we haven't been sleeping. and then there was an election that few of you may have taken note of. basically, i laid low. i had a heavy mind. LIKE ANY OF YOU CARE. jesus, why should you? in short: no blogging. and you know what? the earth somehow miraculously continued to rotate on its axis.

and then! then this other thing occurred. as it happens, i'm a journalist. and i was working at a fairly reputable organization -- one of the few that still peddles reputable journalism. i was reasonably happy there. but! late last year i was offered AN EVEN MORE BETTER JOB somewhere else. a, you might say, dream job. (not THE dream job, ok, but A dream job. for me anyway. a subtle distinction, but one that bears making.)

so i took the dream job.

and the dream job, surprise!, was pretty dreamy. sometimes it wasn't the dreamiest of dreamy, but there were moments of crazy-dreaminess in there. i was happy: it was october 2008 and i had a job to drool for and i was happy and did i mention i was happy? also i got to travel and talk to some ridiculously cool people (seriously, imagine the coolest living person you can think of in the music industry. got it? ok: well, i talked to at least one cooler person.) (probably.) and yet, i was too busy to do the simple things in life. like: eat, parent, blog.

so, whatever. fuck you. i loved the job, even though i didn't really get to see my kids any more. they went to bed before i got home from my so-called dream job. this made me sad. but still! i had a dreamy dream job of dreams!

and then, like brilliant people everywhere these days, i got laid off.

pink slip, motherfucker!

in my short time at the new job, i had accrued two full days of severance pay.

fired on the day before my vacation.

ain't that a bitch?

so, fuck it. i've got some free time on my hands now. right? i have a 3.5 year old daughter and a 0.5 year old daughter on my hands, right? i got me a (approximately) 22.5 year old wife on my hands. and i am at the ass end of a thoroughly unanticipated layoff. i have an unwanted job hunt on my hands. (freelance, holla!) so, all of this adds up to: blogtime and blogfodder, both of which are really fucking hard to wash off. seriously, be careful. this blog stains.

with that in mind, let's please all try to make this blog a better place, shall we? will you take my hand in yours? will you help me help you?

i'm not dead

2008-09-02T19:15:00.000-04:00

just very, very tired. so very tired.

jesus. what a shitty weekend

2008-08-10T23:58:00.000-04:00

good night, black moses.

isaac hayes WAS stax.

and you know what? i love the guy, but i always hated "shaft."

you don't understand

2008-08-09T13:21:00.001-04:00

I AIN'T SCARED OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS.

rest in peace, bernie mac.

a tip of the blog

2008-08-06T22:33:00.000-04:00

see, now this is how you do it -- all in one post black hockey jesus goes after the sacredest of blogging cows (for the record, i did not just call dooce a cow); he name-drops popular testicular bloggy allies; flatters his wife; makes you laugh, and attention whores his way through three squillion backflips. i've been doing this shit for four years -- him? four minutes. he's got it down pat. and you know what? fuck him.

also, i'll probably be compulsively reading him more often than posting here. much easier that way, right? i'm so very tired.

live from the trenches of my brain

2008-08-02T15:11:00.009-04:00

so, what's your fucking deal, mr nice guy? you go begging for comments. you get a shit-ton of love from your ~~insane~~ loyal readers. then you disappear again. seriously. what's your problem?

i know, i know. sorry. i have no excuse. actually that's not entirely true: i have excuses. i have two kids and a busy job. so blogging is sometimes sporadic.

cry me a fucking river, asshole. you think you're the only person who has a life around here?

hey, look. that's not --

no seriously. give us some news. tell us something. make it funny, too.

um. ok. mrs nice guy and i celebrated our six year anniversary last week! that was exciting (i actually accidentally typed "sux year anniversary" but spellcheck caught it. hahah -- Freud much?!) six years of marital bliss and blisters. we've actually been a bona fide couple for -- well, it'll be ten years in november. a decade! ten years with one woman, who happens to be the smartest and prettiest (almost typed "pettiest" oops!) woman on earth. and merciful. who else could put up with me? do you have any idea what 10 years looks like? if we had a baby the year we got together, she'd almost be 10 now!

wow, your powers of illustration are staggering.

look, i'm tired. beat. this new baby is toying with my sanity a little. she's ridiculously cute and totally growing on me. but she still hasn't smiled and i fear that she's brainwashed my wife (of six years -- did i mention that?). i'm officially the least interesting person in the house now. and this kid doesn't even smile. well, she doesn't smile for me. she apparently smiles for my wife. when i'm not looking. me? she makes me sweat my balls off dancing around like a retarded monkey and all i get in return is a smirk.

anyway, your anniversary.

oh, yeah. it was rad. we got a babysitter and went out to dinner! first outing alone since the newbie was born. it was lovely. went to a little french restaurant we've been meaning to try.

that's it? last year you surprise her with a weekend away; this year you take her to dinner? not even a movie? is your seven year itch coming 365 days early or something?

actually, since we've almost been together for 10 years, mrs nice guy points out that my seven year itch was due about three years ago. i missed my window of opportunity, she says. i'm such a loser i can't even properly scratch my own itches.

oh, really funny. so you're cheap AND a failed scumbag?

cheap? what? look -- ok, we're on a bit of a budget at the moment. know why? we had to have our roof repaired. whole roof. it needed to come off and be replaced. when the guys came to start taking it off, they were stunned by what they found. apparently the previous roof had been made of newspaper, rubber bands, broken dreams, crushed fairy wings and Jimmy Hoffa. here is an actual quote from one of our roofers: "it's like an abortion the way they did that roof. i keep waiting for one of my guys to fall through ... hahahaha." yeah, hahaha. really fucking funny -- you know what happened about two hours after he said that? one of his guys fell through. we're damn lucky he didn't come crashing through our ceiling. less lucky: the final bill was nearly double the estimate -- and these guys were totally not jerking us around. so. sorry if i've had other things on my mind.

"tear the roof off the sucka, tear the roof off the mothersucka! tear the roof off the sucka! "

right. only imagine that song being less about giving up "the funk" and more about giving up "your life savings." worse: we also need a new cornice. and window sills. and a paint job.

ouch.

yeah, no kidding. god i need some scotch. like, all the time.

so, you big baby. now at least you've gotten around to updating your blog. only it appears that you're having a dialogue with yourself.

tell me about it. hey it's not like i haven't been writing. want to read some of the stuff i've been doing for work lately?

not especially.

i figure i might as well start linking to it here. if you don't want to read it, you certainly don't have to. this was in the past week alone. so forgive me for not getting all publicly navel-gazey. bills to pay, etc.

James Brown is the funky embodiment of the first two laws of thermodynamics. or something.
roll over Dark Knight and tell Iron Man the news, here comes Italian Spiderman!
talking with Dr. Drew (yes that Dr. Drew) about the cigarette ban at addiction treatment centers in New York. i wanted to ask him about my erectile dysfunction, but the timing seemed awkward

you're a whore.

really? you think?

you're a whore and you're conducting a conversation with yourself on your pathetic daddy blog. a daddy blog, i'd like to add, on which you beg for comments and talk about your love of whisky, not liking your own baby and scratching your seven year itch.

what! no! i ... rather, it's just that ... i mean. ah, fuck it. you're right.

of course i'm right! now, pass me the bottle.

*sigh* here you go.

thanks. you're still talking to yourself, you know.

yeah, i know.

looking for sources

2008-08-02T13:14:00.001-04:00

hi gang -- i'm writing a light, humory piece for someone (will tell you who if you email me) about parents who love their own kids ... but hate everyone else's.

do you adore your perfect little angels even as your best friends' snotty, obnoxious rugrats drive you insane?

or maybe you love all children and simply couldn't imagine how anyone could hate them -- yours especially.

i welcome all thoughts, insights, funny stories. would prefer it if you lived in the general new york vicinity. please shoot me a note: slarkpope [at] gmail [dot] com.

playground stories

2008-07-27T15:06:00.002-04:00

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

2008-07-25T15:57:00.002-04:00

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

rest in peace, randy. and thanks.

wherein we return to our regularly scheduled programming

2008-07-24T10:47:00.002-04:00

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

2008-07-23T13:56:00.002-04:00

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.

2008-07-22T18:57:00.002-04:00

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

2008-07-19T22:52:00.010-04:00

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!

2008-07-17T01:07:00.001-04:00

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

2008-07-16T17:54:00.000-04:00

the mighty feist on sesame street. yay!

the sounds of my youth

2008-07-11T17:42:00.006-04:00

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

2008-07-09T23:01:00.001-04:00

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

2008-07-03T11:56:00.002-04:00

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!

2008-07-01T23:15:00.004-04:00

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.

Dr. Strangehands, or how i learned to stop worrying and love birthday parties for 3-year-olds

2008-06-30T15:52:00.002-04:00

it's birthday party season. we met most of our parent-friends because they all had babies at roughly the same time we did, which means we've been spending every weekend for the past 2 months going to birthday parties. parties in the park, parties at Kidville, parties at the Music Together place, parties at people's too-small living quarters, parties in trailer park meth labs. you know, routine stuff. often, two parties in one weekend. sometimes two in one day. lord, can we please just have one weekend to ourselves again?

on saturday we were at our first of two parties -- for twins, so that's kind of like two parties at once now that i think of it. it was at 10:30, which meant no beer. fine. whatever. i recently invested in a hip flask so i was cool with that. it was a lovely day and Prospect Park was uncharacteristically empty. there was much frolicking. i brought a Frisbee. there were bagels. a dude played guitar and led the kids through a rousing rendition of yellow submarine. there were, of course, cupcakes (question for another time: when did cupcakes replace birthday cakes? i have yet to have a slice of birthday cake this year. i blame sex and the city and those ridiculously overhyped pucks they serve at Magnolia Bakery.)

anyway. we're all enjoying ourselves. my wife is wearing our newborn daughter in a sling, i turn and see her from behind, talking with another woman who recently had her second kid. i saunter over, pausing to grab a bagel on the way. i take a bite of the bagel. it's a good bagel. tasty smoked salmon, the works. approaching my wife, i take another bite of the bagel. i mean, damn, this is a good bagel. i lean in and tap-smack my bride on her rear.

but i notice that there is a different amount of give. the physics of her jiggle have somehow altered. the plane of her haunch seems to unfurl at a perceptibly different angle of convexity.

uh-oh.

i fear i may have just ass-grabbed another man's wife.

in front of my own wife!

we made eye contact and i confirmed, to my horror, that which i had suspected: this was not my wife's ass. and now this woman is looking at me thinking, "that was not my husband's grope."

hasty apologies were profusely delivered. she laughed. my bride laughed as well. i apologized again. i turned shades of red hitherto known only to beets and onions and firetrucks. all was forgiven in high spirits. i have a newborn, after all, i'm not sleeping well. i plead baby. people understood.

the party returned to normal.

i totally got away with it! when the laughter subsided i even said "ok, then. who's next?" ... because i am a creepy, creepy old man trapped inside the body of a creepy younger man. anyway, the whole affair provided a brief moment of levity. so it dawned on me: this is probably how swinging got started in the '70s!

i sure hope that wasn't the last kid's birthday party of the season.

from the self-promotion files

2008-06-30T15:16:00.001-04:00

you'd be forgiven for thinking that jazz is for old people and robots for kids. but behold! two things so mind-bendingly counterintuitive that taken together they might drive you completely MAD!!!

or not:

1) Brat Scats: Jazz for Kids.

2) Perfect Helper: Robots for Oldsters.

that is all.

regarding the newbie

2008-06-27T00:31:00.001-04:00

when we last spoke, i had gotten us up to the point where the baby was born. you'll recall, perhaps, that we had been in the hospital for just one hour before the baby arrived. yeah, well, we would be in the hospital for another 24. hours, that is. doing nothing. (except for watching awesome reruns of jon and kate plus 8. no joke.)

one hour of labor. 24 hours of bureaucratic purgatory, serendipitous bad TV and dickfaced nurses. does that seem fair?

i am not going to linger on the negative here (other than to state that for our first baby, we were allowed to leave the hospital in 12 hours -- and i had gotten antsy after hour 3). i am instead going to revel in the positive. in the fact that we have a beautiful, perfect new daughter. who, it should be noted looks eerily like her big sister, only with slightly smaller eyes and slightly larger cheeks.

here she is, smiling her first smile. probably because she hadn't opened her eyes yet:

i mean, come on right? too cute.

she has a nice tuchus too:

anyway. because so many of you have asked so nicely, i'll tell you her name just this once. pay attention! her name is Calla. as in calla lily ... you know, like the flower? as it happens Calla means "beautiful" in greek, but that's really just gravy -- it could mean "donkey nuts" in greek and we'd still think it was an elegant, lovely name. fortunately for her, Calla does not mean "donkey nuts."

also fortunately for her, she appears to harbour the appropriate amounts of skepticism. here she is alert, eyeing us all askance-like. this is a look i would not have anticipated so early on in her life:

it is as if to say, you mean YOU'RE my dad? jesus. why don't you just call me Donkey Nuts and put pictures of my ass on all of the internets?

ahem. yes. well. you probably can't tell from the picture, but the whites of her eyes are beyond bloodshot -- there is a little ring of fire around each iris. she looks like she was mugged. she looks like ... well ... a demon. an angry, vengeful demon full of angry vengance. it turns out this frequently happens when labor is fast and furious. the hospital pediatrician gave us our new favorite expression: "precipitous birth." our baby, apparently, began life precipitously. hence, the bloody devil-eyes. and also apparently she is part hellhound.

whatever. the most important moment had yet to happen: the meeting of the big sister. mrs nice guy and i booked ourselves a private little room in the hospital where we could enjoy a little privacy while we were being held prisoner. while locked up in exile, i would make frequent jaunts to Au Bon Pain (which should follow KFC's lead and have its named shortened. only not to ABP. it would be more accurate to just go by Pain). on one excursion to Pain -- for stale coffee and cardboard pastries -- i stood in the hallway waiting for an elevator with a young orthodox jewish guy who couldn't have been older than 22. he was on his cell phone, yammering jubilantly. "man, i highly recommend having a kid. i'm telling you, it's the best." god, i love brooklyn.

anyway. after many jaunts to ABP, i mean Pain, and many sleepless hours, there was a knock at the door of our room. i shouted "it's open," assuming it was another nurse coming to cluck passive aggressive reprimands at us for opting to keep our newborn daughter with us instead of flinging her under a heat lamp. only it wasn't. it was Big Sister Nice Guy! the sitter brought her to the hospital to meet her new baby sister.

she stood at the threshold, tentative and shy. when i saw her -- the first time since Calla was born -- i gasped. i had just seen her the day before but here she was again, seeming so grown-up and sweet and so full of shy-sassy good will. strangely, it was this moment that most brought the whole birth home. i remembered when this child was born. we were in this very hospital, just one room over. and here she was three years later -- old enough to understand something very important was happening, but not quite old enough to understand exactly what it was. i started choking up.

she walked cautiously up to the bed and whispered. "that's my baby?" we told her that, yes, it was her baby sister. she said "lemme see." we let her see. she said "i want to hold her." so mrs nice guy got off the bed and let her climb up. we put the baby in her lap. she discovered the buttons that make the bed go up and down. she pushed the buttons. a lot. she forgot about the baby for a minute. the baby slumped over.

we told her to stop pushing the buttons. she didn't. then we tried telling her to be careful of her baby. she kept pushing the buttons with a little grin on her face as if to say "i have a tiny hostage here. what are you going to do about it?" we sighed. she finally got bored and stopped pushing the buttons. we thanked her.

then she kissed her sister. and said "i love my baby."

then the world melted in a puddle of love.

then she saw that there was a television in the room and announced "i want to see Dora." the baby slumped over again.

fortunately i had found Nick Jr or Cartoon Network or something earlier so i put it on. unfortunately Dora was not on. some awesome cartoon about summer camp was on starring a spider monkey from Sao Paulo and instantly i saw that this might be the greatest thing that ever happened to television, but unfortunately my eldest did not share this opinion as it did not involve a shouting diminutive latina bossing us all around in spanglish. so first born started to whine. loudly. i professed helplessness. then the baby took a tar-black crap. this turned out to be helpful. her big sister forgot about Dora for a minute. she wanted to look at the baby's poop. why? why is this what we're focusing on at this moment of birth and jubilation?

i'll tell you why: because if i have learned only one thing in the past 11 days of fatherhood with two kids it's this: it's still All About First Born. number two is just along for the ride. and also sometimes she barfs.

anyway, i hope she knows that we love her. she's perfect. and so was her placenta:

so. that happened

2008-06-23T23:30:00.003-04:00

so it turns out that as i was typing my last post my wife was indeed laboring laboriously under the laborlicious pains of laborly labor. wow. what sort of shitty husband pauses to update his pathetic blog, read by an audience of tens, when his beloved bride is in the earth-shattering throws of birth pains? don't answer that.

anyway. labor was happening. the sitter had been warned earlier in the day that something odd was abreast (no pun intended) and that she should be at the ready. she should have the Bat Phone charged and the Bat Mobile fully fueled, only instead of Bat Phone and Bat Mobile she should really consider a cell phone and a taxi ... must more realistic when you get down to brass tacks. and that's what we were apparently down to. about an hour after i typed that post, i put our older daughter to bed (because my wife was too busy having contractions: clue number one that something was up). once baby nice guy (who will now heretofore -- which is a great fucking word -- be known as Big Sister Nice Guy) was in her crib, talking about mermaid princess queens and glow-in-the-dark dragons or whatever it is she's into these days, i returned to my wife. this was at about 8 pm. she had assumed child's pose and was making a noise that went like this: KJJJJJSSSSSSSSSS GUUUH FUCK THE WORLD'S FACE mnnnnnnnnnnnguu.

so i called our midwife. our midwife, it should be noted, was out of town for the weekend. she told us on thursday "oh, by the way: i'm going out of town this weekend. don't go into labor." and we were all like "hahahaha. oh my god, we're screwed."

naturally, wife was in labor. we called the midwife's emergency number and Substitute Midwife answered the phone. i was all "hi i'm mr nice guy. um, mrs nice guy's husband? yeah. um we don't know you and you don't know us but we're pretty sure she's in labor." and the Substitute Midwife was all "who?"

great. just fucking balls out great. i explained to her who we were. she said "ok. call me when you think you need to go to the hospital." and i said "awesome. thanks. just what the fuck is it that you do again? because we thought it was your goddamn job to tell us when to go. she could be 8 feet dilated for all i know."

i hang up and called the sitter. "ok. you need to get here like FIVE MINUTES AGO." she says "ok. i'm in Bay Ridge. no problem." god i love our sitter. wife looks up at me with watery eyes. i know this is a special moment. she parts her dry lips and whisper-shouts: "I WANT TO UNLEASH PAIN AND DESTRUCTION ON ALL LIVING CREATURES. DEFINITELY ESPECIALLY YOU."

well. shit on a stick. i pack some bags, pausing to fix my wife a bagel and get yelled at. then i stop and put on the shirt i was wearing when my first daughter was born. just because.

the phone rings! it's the Real Midwife! she says "i'm on my way back from vacation, pulling off the jersey turnpike now. heading to the hospital." AWESOME! she asks me to hold the phone up to my wife as she has her next contraction -- she wants to hear how far along things are. i do this even though i am pretty sure it will get me killed. wife makes a noise roughly equivalent to that of 10,000 undead souls locked in purgatory being unleashed to feast upon the brains of retarded husbands who hold the receiver up to their wives in the middle of a contraction. the Real Midwife says "sounds like labor! see you at the hospital."

fuck. fuckity fuckery foo!

i call the sitter. it is now approaching 9 pm. she answers. "hey! i'm just waiting for a cab. i had to stop by Target to buy a change of clothes for the sleepover."

i think this was the exact moment that my brain imploded an began leaking down the back of my throat. i'm not positive though. so i say to her "next time WE'LL LEND YOU A PAIR OF FUCKING SWEATS. be here. now." at this moment, i do not love her very much.

we wait for the sitter to arrive. actually, i wait. my wife is temporarily inhabiting in a parallel universe where waiting has not been invented. shouting has, though. the sitter arrives. we tell her to hold the cab. she holds the cab. i help my wife down the stairs and while i do this the sitter apparently puts the luggage into the back seat. i know this because when i go back into the house to get the luggage my wife tells me the luggage is already in the cab by saying "THE FUCKING LUGGAGE IS ALREADY IN THE FUCKING CAB."

so we get in. we tell the cabbie: long island college hospital! he says "i live in manhattan. i don't know where that is."

FUCK! NEITHER DO WE!

we look up the address. he rolls. he gets us there with a quickness that would make andretti blush. i unload the car -- wife, luggage and all. i tell him i'll pay him for the sitter's fucking trip from fucking target and i'll pay for us. he says it's on him because of the miracle of life (or probably more precisely: the miracle of not breaking water all over his back seat). i like this guy. i pay him anyway and give him a fat tip. we limp through the emergency room doors, my wife pausing once to have contractions and wish malice upon me. everyone parts like the red sea. one dude walks by, family of eight straggling behind him. he looks at me and says with a rueful smirk "congratulations, man." then he rolls his eyes and keeps walking.

we get to the delivery room floor. the nurses shout something about "active labor" and usher us into a room. wife is stripped, poked, drawn of blood, asked questions and mugged for her wallet. the Real Midwife arrives! we all shed tears of relief. it's about 10:45. wife labors in tub for a bit. her water breaks. it's time to start pushing. the midwife says "let's have this baby!" i ask her if she thinks the baby will come before midnight because i'm pulling for the kid to be born on father's day -- because after all, this moment is all about me, a very very small man. the midwife is all "oh yeah, no problem," as if i insulted her by thinking this labor would last longer than 2o more minutes. wife, sitting on my lap at the edge of the bed, pushes. she screams. it's awesome. wife panics. she says she can't do this. the midwife says "actually you have to do this because the baby's heartrate is dropping. i want her out on this push." and then, boom, the baby is born.

we cry. the baby cries. she looks alarmingly like our first daughter. everyone is fine. i take pictures and make phone calls. and cry.

it was, hands down, the best father's day anyone's ever had.

more to follow!

so. this is happening

2008-06-15T18:33:00.005-04:00

hi.

i know. it's been a while.

again.

i seem to be phoning it in a lot. i know. i apologize. again.

these things happen. i pay more attention to one website/lover than i do the other. people get neglected. feelings get hurt. blog posts get unwritten. this is the way of life in this wacky digital age. and for that i am sorry. i promise to try to attempt to change my ways. i will be better to you. if you still care. it's ok if you don't. i'd understand.

anyway, yeah. if i haven't lost you for good, i'll do better from here on out.

tomorrow, that is. maybe. anyway, not right now. i mean, it's not like i can write very much at this moment. see, i've got things on my mind. it seems my wife might -- MIGHT, as in maybe, possibly, perhaps, just could be -- in labor at this very moment.

again.

eeeep.

(more, maybe, as the evening devolves ... on twitter).

why god invented the internets, vol. 1329

2008-06-05T17:44:00.000-04:00

the chipmunks slowed down!

and dave is apparently satan. who knew?

'nuff said

2008-06-05T15:07:00.000-04:00

"dear internet: blogging about your children is child abuse." this coming from one of the leading hate-merchants on the web. still, they do have a point.

rest in peace, harvey korman

2008-05-30T09:53:00.001-04:00

if you want to please your captain, sink 'em low boys, hang 'em high

2008-05-28T15:54:00.000-04:00

this right here is how it's done:

bonus round ... with john paul jones on piano!

in case of emergency: do not ride subway

2008-05-28T13:06:00.000-04:00

dear new york city metropolitan transit authority,

i live in this city. i take the subway just about every dang day. i keep seeing a certain sign on my commute and i have become curious: what is the emergency cord for if it's not for pulling in the event of an emergency?

don't follow me? well. check out the subway's Emergency Instructions and please let me know if you can decode them: in case of fire, medical crisis, or violent crime ... "Do not pull the emergency cord."

i am going to tug the cord on my way home just to let everyone know that "everything's ok on my end!"

ps: thank you for not arresting me when i took that picture.

weezer is too clever by half

2008-05-23T13:41:00.000-04:00

this went up on the youtubes today.

this is a real commercial that really plays on tv for real

2008-05-17T12:01:00.000-04:00

i am buying 10 of these things.

what's next? mom jeans?

2008-05-16T11:52:00.002-04:00

this whole having-a-second-kid nonsense is getting frighteningly official. yesterday my bride came home with an Ergo baby carrier! oh dear. soon enough we'll have someone to stuff inside it. imagine. the first time around we rocked the Baby Bjorn. walking around brooklyn with my first born strapped to my chest for a year was a lovely prolonged bonding experience. it also had the minor side effect of making me feel about as sexy as a eunuch wearing a diaper. in a bunny costume.

so what, i wondered, was this Ergo carrier all about. as you know, ergo is latin for "therefore," as in "i breed, ergo i apparently wear things in the fanny pack family." these contraptions very popular with all the crunchy brooklyn moms. i peeked at the box:

"the best way to support your Baby ... and your LifeStyle." indeed.

i'm not sure why Baby is capitalized -- maybe they want to emphasize how very important your child is, you know, in case you forgot. maybe they're German. maybe it's a message from the 18th century when ergonomically-correct infant-shaped knapsacks were all the rage. more perplexing, however, is "LifeStyle" -- no space, both words capitalized. i mean, presumably if you need an ergo carrier, it's a bit late to start thinking about condoms.

whatever. i wondered what LifeStyle of mine this baby carrier is the "best way to support." fortunately the box offered some helpful hints, such as Chillaxing By The Beach With Your NewBorn Because That's What You Do When You Have NewBorns:

if that's not quite the LifeStyle for you, they also have the Abu Ghraib Hood Accessory To Bind and Gag Your Squalling Child to Your Back, Freeing Your Handsome Self Up To Admire the Palm Trees:

this last LifeStyle isn't on the box, but maybe it should be. it certainly IS plastered on phone booths (remember those?) and bus stops around brooklyn. it's my personal favorite: I Love My Boo, Which I Do While Wearing LifeStyles -- or Trojans or Magnums or Whatever's Handy in the Heat of Our Moment -- And I Also Get Regularly Tested ... But, Honestly, Having A Baby Doesn't Really Fit Into My Immediate Agenda:

a bit early for father's day, but ...

2008-05-15T12:59:00.000-04:00

please take a moment to reflect on the tender and tenuous bond shared between father and son. this humble clip is so beautiful that i cry a little every time i watch it. mostly the tears are from laughter, but they are truly genuine. i wish my dad were here so i could give him a hug. and a little yodel.

speaking of the presidential election. and man babies.

2008-05-13T22:35:00.000-04:00

yes, the things on this list are all, indeed, younger than john mccain. but note one glaring omission: no man babies. man babies are definitely younger than john mccain. who will think of the man babies?

obligatory mother's day post

2008-05-13T15:20:00.003-04:00

so for mother's day we had a lovely weekend -- both of my parents and my in-laws came to new york to celebrate ... OH LOOK! MAN BABIES!

eight is so very much enough

2008-05-09T18:09:00.001-04:00

ok so i'm never going whine about having two little kids. this is a vow to you people. never again shall i bitch and moan about how scared I am about having more than one little one, about losing sleep, about how hard life is as a parent and boo-hoo-hoo. you see i have made a horrifying discovery: i have discovered Jon & Kate Plus 8.

to those of you with lives who aren't watching Oprah every other minute or religiously tuning into the TLC because you're actually sane might not know what i'm talking about. allow me to breakitdown:

i was at the gym the other day, a rare treat. riding the ol' stationary bike. watching tv. totally zoned out. it was great. i'm flipping through the channels and because i don't really know my way around the cable lineup not having cable at home, i'm just randomly watching whatever. i start with The Hills. i don't really get The Hills, but then i know i'm not the target demographic. i do think my soul died a little bit the day i learned who spencer pratt was. (although, i will say this: justinbobby is kind of rad.) i can't get mad at these children -- they're pretty, paid handsomely to have nary a care in the world.

at a commercial break, i start surfing the channels. i end up on a scene where some mom is wrangling her kids into the kitchen. she appears to have two or three of them. "ah," i say to myself, "this looks familiar. herding cats. heh." i watch for a minute and it slowly begins to dawn on me, she has more than three kids. actually, wait. there's another. she has more than four kids. holy shit. she has more than five kids, seven kids. she has eight fucking kids. and they're all under the age of six or something.

it was at this very moment that my brain broke.

i stayed on the bike for about three hours, my broken brain attempting to process episode after episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8. absolutely captivating television. watch clips here. the scoop, for those of you who don't know it: jon and kate gosselin couldn't get pregnant so they took fertility drugs. then they had twins. so very cute. a sane person would have stopped right there. but they are, apparently, not very sane. she says she wanted to have just one more baby because she didn't know what it was like to not have to split her attention between two babies. ah, but the cosmos loves a good practical joke. instead of one baby she had ... six. at one time. a whole litter of pups.

my broken brain was trying so hard to understand this fact. eight kids. all under the age of four. in one house. sweet jesus.

after watching Jon & Kate for a while (they are, it turns out, very charming and kind of fucking badass, if a little too heavy on the God stuff, at least on their website) i toggled back over to The Hills. the blonde one was on some date with some cute sk8r boy she went to high school with or something and they were all like giving each other loaded meaningful glances over uneaten frisee salad and triple skim lattes and talking about the crisis in darfur. no, wait. they were talking about recent breakthroughs in string theory and quantum physics. hahah. i'm kidding of course. they were talking about, well, it's hard to explain, but i'm sure it was something meaningful about, like, cool stuff. that they bought shopping. and like. yeah. whatever. also, audrina's a slut.

i toggle back to Jon & Kate and there they are just trying to get through breakfast also. it's chaos plus insanity times madness to the power of crazy. i'd buy a whole haberdashery just so i could tip every single hat in it. man.

talk about two very different "reality" shows.

this is when my broken brain formed it's first idea since breaking. it was a fantasy. my fantasy is this: i want heidi and spencer to have eight kids. i want lauren and brody to have eight kids. i want audrina and justinbobby to have eight kids. i want all those ratfaced little Hills turds to have eight kids just for one day. that is something i'd subscribe to cable to watch.

"people matter, but celebrities matter more"

2008-05-09T00:58:00.002-04:00

you know, john mayer is kind of rad. mostly because he's the first to admit that his music kind of isn't.

that said, i did see one live clip of him playing at the (*gag*) Jammies and he was trading solos with Buddy Guy! ... and the dude absolutely tore shit up! do you think the ladies on the Mayercraft Carrier know this -- or care? he might be the luckiest boy, like, ever.

i kind of want to be his friend.

and kiss him.

steampunk'd

2008-05-08T10:23:00.000-04:00

newsweek, oct 31, 2007: Steampunking Technology

new york times, may 8, 2008 Steampunk Moves Between 2 Worlds

an actual press release that somebody sent me today. please make the pain go away.

2008-05-07T11:14:00.002-04:00

***PHOTO/INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITY***

CELEBRITY DOGS WALK RED CARPET AT LAUNCH OF NEW HEALTH/WELLNESS PRODUCT FOR PETS
Sex & the City Star Canine “Elizabeth Taylor” Will Celebrate HealthyMOUTH, First of its Kind Dental Care Water for Dogs and Cats, As It Makes Its Highly Anticipated NYC Debut on Thursday May 8th with an Evening of Pet Pampering

WHO:
Celebrity Doggie Divas will strut their stuff for the PAW-parrazi :
· Penny, King Charles Spaniel (“Elizabeth Taylor,” upcoming role in Sex and the City movie, also plays Charlotte’s dog on HBO series)
· Bravo, Golden Retriever (stars alongside Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon and Rachel Weisz in the upcoming Lovely Bones)
· Mia, Miniature Pinscher (stars alongside Paul Giamatti and Billy Crudup in the upcoming Pretty Bird)
· Camille, Jack Russell, seen in ads for fashion house COACH
· Bijou, Chihuahua, seen in print spoof of Paris Hilton’s dog in Maxim Magazine
· And 40 other cute, well-behaved, party-hopping dogs!

it goes on. but i lost the will to live right around here.

on recidivist procreation

2008-05-05T14:11:00.001-04:00

we have a few friends whom we know because they had their first kid around the same time we had our first kid. we met through a neighborhood "new mommy" list that my normally misanthropic bride signed up for about three years ago. turns out to have been a good move -- the people we met are fantastically wonderful and, now, three years into parenthood, our only social acquaintances. it's amazing how one's social life reorganizes itself around one's proclivity to spawn. the frequency with which i carouse with single friends has greatly diminished over the past 36 months. so, too, has the frequency with which i drink to excess (somewhere other than my kitchen/office/crawlspace), pass out and urinate on friends' couches, fornicate with dudes/goats, and generally ever see single friends other than over lunch or because they're my colleagues whose mere existence mocks my life.

well! now, just like us, our baby-friends are beginning to spawn anew. in fact. we're not even the first! we have one friend who had baby numero dos just two months ago (on valentine's day! awwww, sweetness!). another good friend delivered her second boy just after that. we have a third friend whose first child was born within a couple months of our first child, late spring 2005. they had child number two ... a year ago. meaning they had a baby when their first unable-to-rationalize/cope child was barely (not even?!) two.

we, as you may know, are expecting Child 2.0 sometime between five minutes and eight weeks from now. i, being journalistically inclined, did some cursory interviewing of these fascinating Recidivist Procreators. here are some of the pearls of wisdom i have recently picked up:

1) "i always thought having a second baby would make life marginally harder. i mean, we've done this before, right? yeah, well, it doesn't make just a little bit harder. it makes them exponentially harder. it makes like freakishly more difficult."

2) "will you please fake my death so i can come live in your crawlspace? all i want is sleep."

3) "i couldn't find the baby's shoes this week and my wife was at work but she wasn't answering her phone and so i got really pissed ... and i sort of kicked my bedroom door down."

4) "well. it's been a year now and i feel like i am just becoming human again. sorry for falling asleep in the middle of that sentence."

5) "you know how you look at people with no kids and you hate them? you hate them because they can go out to dinner at any time; you hate them because they get to see movies; you hate them because they stay up past 11 and they still complain about their meaningless little lives. right? well when you have two kids, you hate people who have only one kid. you despise them. they have no idea how easy they've got it."

and so in conclusion: my little passionfruits ... please fake my death so i can come live in your crawlspace. i promise the sound of my weeping won't disturb you too much.

the trouble with hitch

2008-05-02T22:29:00.003-04:00

a collage of alfred hitchock's subtle cameos in his own movies. so many good ones. "rear window" and "north by northwest" easily rank among my favorite all-time flicks of his (if not of all time), and both boast seriously strong hitchcock cameos. but i think "the trouble with harry" might someday win out as my top AF film in the end (even though hitch's cameo is one of his weakest).

so this is weird.

2008-05-02T12:58:00.001-04:00

children who attend daycare or playgroups cut their risk of the most common type of childhood leukaemia by around 30 percent.

"Until we have conclusive evidence then we cannot say for certain what causes childhood leukaemia." -- Dr Carole Easton

what facebook would look like in the real world

2008-05-02T12:34:00.000-04:00

sex and the mommy!

2008-05-02T10:44:00.006-04:00

the new york post, that paragon of american journalism -- the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh columns all rolled into one -- has a groundbreaking report today: one-third of moms have cheated! what?! at scrabble, right?

oh noes! the same amount -- just 36 percent -- say they're still attracted to their husbands. the rest would apparently rather bone george clooney (well, who wouldn't?) or, um, barack obama.

least reassuring quote: "the desire to have desire [for their husbands] is there."

ladies, please stop reading now.

seriously, gals. go away.

gone?

good.

ok, gents. so i sent that story to my friend dan. his response? "they harangue you to get married and then...they cheat!" ah hahahaha! ahaha HAH ahHAHA hah HA!!!! ha! ha. hee. heh. huh. hmmm.

(i am never going to get any love again, am i?)

won't someone please think of the children? better yet, think of the people who are supposed to be thinking of the children.

2008-04-30T23:27:00.003-04:00

we don't go to too many baseball games in this household. i rarely pack up the family and head to madison square garden, either, to take in a friendly game of basketball ... or one of them rock and roll concert shows that the kids like so much these days.

also, we don't drink too many things out of a bottle around here that aren't scotch, wine, beer, seltzer or milk. roughly in that order of importance.

so it's a good thing that i read this cautionary tale about a poor clueless Ann Arbor dad who took his 7-year old to a Tigers game and bought him a Mike's Hard Lemonade, which apparently contains delicious alcohol--who knew!? you see where this is going: dude finds himself face to face with the cops ... while his son is rushed to the hospital! and then foster care!! oy. note to self: remember to read labels on bottles real careful-like when my kids are old enough to attend the hannah montana comeback tour.

and here i thought we were only supposed to treat our tourists this way ...

eight weeks to go. maybe.

2008-04-30T18:02:00.003-04:00

we go in for our little check up with the midwife today. i love our midwife. we wanted to do a homebirth this time around -- especially since the birthing center at Long Island College Hospital (which, logically, is located in Brooklyn Heights) closed down, meaning my bride will have to deliver in the delivery room (heaven forefend!). but our midwife isn't covered for home births. and we love her. so delivery room (and all the necessary evils that come with it), it is.

at the check up today, the midwife measured the belly. my wife is a thin woman, narrow. she's well proportioned. and she's a gorgeous pregnant knockout -- skinny all over and one big bump. weirdly people have been asking her for the past month if she's either A) due any day now or B) having twins. people are idiots. if her belly were any smaller, people would be asking her whether the baby was ok. or if she was eating enough. like i said, people are idiots.

so we grease up the belly, and listen to the thwack-thwack heartbeat. bless. mama gets weighed and measured. like a steer. i ask the midwife if there's any way to tell how big the kid is. she says she guesses five, five-and-a-quarter pounds. totally normal for 32 weeks. good.

then she tells us to come back every two weeks and adds, offhand, that the baby will probably increase in weight by a half-pound a week from here on out. we nod as we put on our coats. then pause. we do the math.

that's four pounds in eight weeks.

that adds up to a nine pound baby. at least.

remember how i mentioned that the wife is a narrow little lady? First Born clocked in at 6 pounds, 11 ounces. that's south of seven pounds ... of blazing crotchfire agony and bloody torn crotchflesh. three more pounds will split the poor woman open.

which made us pause again. the fucking baby. she's going to come early, isn't she?

my daughter and i wear matching armani track suits, color coordinated with our bugaboo.

2008-04-26T17:01:00.000-04:00

because if you don't buy a $200 infant-sized tie-dye dress from Burberry for your 18-month-old ... the terrorists win? or wait. maybe they win if you do buy it? ack. complicated!

key quote: "It gives me an excuse to buy nice things for myself." ah, the true nature of parenting.

taylor. chuck taylor.

2008-04-26T16:37:00.006-04:00

meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

"The core kid we are looking for is the 'optimistic rebel' who wants to be different, irreverent, and creative. ... In general, Converse is the everyman shoe; it inspires originality, and that's why it's popular among kids who play in garage bands. It is massively simple and has unbelievable attitude. They are like a canvas for self-expression."

i love me some chuck taylor. but optimistic rebel? ninja, please. how about something with a little more sole! i propose this as a new slogan: "they were good enough for dr. j, you bet your ass they're good enough for you. sucka!"

i wrote a little poem for my beloved shoe. feel free to take it and use it, mr converse bossman.

"Neither slip nor slide
Nor break in your stride
When you've got Chuck T. on your side."

we can split the profits you reap from my advertising genius. say, 76-24 ...

i used to have a crush on dawn from en vogue, too

2008-04-26T16:24:00.001-04:00

oh my. look who's coming to rock the bells.

a little bit of feel good

2008-04-24T15:53:00.002-04:00

work it, jamie. do you. (and do a little stevie, while you're at it)

gettin' jizzy with it

2008-04-22T21:36:00.000-04:00

i subscribed to a little semi-daily e-mail newsletter like three years ago. YourDictionary.com's Word of the Day. heard of it? pretty cool. anyway, i signed up before i was receiving 91,654 unsolicited (and semi-solicited) daily electronic missives. almost every day for three years i have received a note from the good YourDictionary.com word-o-philes (if only there were a word for "word-o-phile" ... i wonder where i could look it up?). over those three years i have learned one or two good new words from the service, so i am loathe to unsubscribe from what might otherwise be considered in-box clutter. i like learning new words. sometimes i try to work them into conversation. like the time i tossed "Apothegm" around with the reckless abandon of a word-tossing asshole.

so anyway, i am cleaning out my e-mail today and what do i spy? a recent cache of unread YourDictionary.com words of the day. oh goodie! learning time! let's see. what did i miss? "Watershed," today's word. bah. that's not worth the free subscription fee. "Wafture?" now you're catching my eye, if only slightly. "Cacoepy!" awesome. i wonder how that's pronounced.

hmm, let's keep scrolling. "Accrue." meh. "Manumit" heh -- not too useful these days. "Bootleg?" boring. "Acerbic." "Jizz." "Bromide."

wait. hold on. scroll back one.

Bromide?

no, scroll back one more.

Jizz?

yeah. you read that correctly: Jizz.

the nerdy-ass word-of-the-day e-mail i subscribe to sent me the word "Jizz." there it is: Jizz in my, uh, in-box, tucked demurely between offers to "Grow your Meat Hose" and e-mails claiming to be from my own penis. so, naturally, office servers be damned, i opened the e-mail. how, i wondered, was the usually-reputable YourDictionary.com going to define "Jizz."

i'll tell you how. like this: "The immediate, characteristic impression given by an animal or plant." immediate animalistic impression, indeed. isn't there a better, less deeply-confusing word or expression for this. like, i don't know, "first impression?" i mean ... i have apparently, without knowing it, given total subway strangers on my daily morning commute my "jizz." around here they arrest people for less.

i wonder how the good people at YourDictionary.com suggest working "jizz" into a sentence. hmm, let's find out ... i swear to baby moses in the basket that i'm not making this up:

Suggested Usage: The experience of recognizing something in an instant without understanding how you do it is a common enough experience, so this word deserves wider usage. "I tell you, she was walking a fox on a leash--it was like seeing a dog with the jizz of a cat." When you recognize an old friend who is walking away from you on the far side of the street, you are responding to his jizz - why not tell him so? "Leo, since you had that bad haircut and the surgery on your knee, you have developed a unique jizz."

i am going to try this at work tomorrow: "You know, Helen, with your bloodshot eyes and the way you are walking this morning in that rumpled skirt -- weren't you wearing that yesterday? -- I'd say you've got some funky new jizz in you."

or maybe: "Say, Peter, those exceptionally tight jeans and the rapidity with which you hit Alt-Tab when I walked into your office without knocking have combined to give you a jizzy vibe today."

my theory is that the YourDictionary.com webmaster was unceremoniously laid-off recently and this was his jizzy way of getting back at his erstwhile employers.

the world's ok, i guess. whatever.

2008-04-19T11:37:00.001-04:00

unrequired reading -- by popular request

2008-04-18T00:15:00.002-04:00

haven't flipped through this book yet. but i, for one, anticipate having trouble finding the chapter called "Daddy Loves Mommy So Much More Now." oy. (and, in the interest of balance, counterpoint).

i need a chaser.

you too? how about a poorly-selling erotic cake calender starring un-augmented spanish milfs? happy to oblige. oh dear. this calendar. it's like a docket of sadness, ticking off months of pain in daily doses of rejection.

what's in a name? i am glad you asked!

2008-04-16T12:54:00.006-04:00

he as we've mentioned 'round these parts before: the bride, she is all gestational once again. as usually happens when the womenfolk start makin' babies, the conversation has been known to turn toward the topic of names. as in: What in Tarnation are We Gonna Call the Unborn? now, more or less, we have come to an agreement (thank goodness we aren't having a boy because there was No Agreeing on the topic of appellations for the phallically endowed). we have chosen a name. i should amend that to: my babymama has strongly recommended that i accept her preferred choice of name. as she reminded me, with serrated blades shooting from her fiery eyeballs, the child will be getting my last name, after all. indeed. and so, we have chosen a name. it is a good name.

i am not going to tell you what it is. but i have it on good authority that in some regional Tlingit dialects it translates roughly to "Daughter of the Great One. And His Wife."

for those of you in the position of having to come up with a name, let me please be of assistance. i live to help. i am here for you, body and soul, but mostly body. this site is waaay better than the baby name voyager in that it trolls the 1990 census. it randomly selects first names and pairs them with randomly selected last names. just keep hitting refresh. i found some girls' names that i really liked, and i e-mailed them to my lady:

Iola
Minta
Spoon (i mean, does it get any more awesome than "spoon?")
Misha
Ola
Floy
Minna
Lisette
Ila
Ivey
Shin
Spoon
Mike (kind of rad for a girl, actually)
Eustolia!
Noemi

i love them all. i think i lost her at spoon, though.

then comes the hard part: the middle name. with our first child, we chose a traditional indian name, a nod to my masala mama's heritage. i am guessing she's inclined to do something similar this time. I AM GUESSING SHE'S WRONG. because LOD alerts us to the fact that Vlassic pickles will award a $25,000 savings bond to the parents "show their love and dedication to Vlasic® Pickles by making his or her middle name, 'Crunch' ..." so rad on so many levels. maybe the bonds will have yielded returns significant enough to pay for your child's therapy once she's ready!

finally, i'll point out that just this past march a company called the generations network published a book called "bad baby names" -- now in blogular form! -- which is a compendium of ... well, you figure it out hotshot. the books authors scoured the census from 1790-1930 as well as marriage, birth, death and military records. all the names included in this slim volume are for reals. like, Hysteria Johnson (b. 1881), Kathryn E. Coli (b.1894), Jump Jump (b. 1825), Jam Lamb (b. awesome), and Ima Hooker (no, for reals). but the highlight? quite possibly the best name ever known to man in all of earth's history? there it is on page 31: Wanna Funk, born in 1930 in kansas! Wanna Funk! born in 1930! this means she was 22 when Horace Silver's "Opus de Funk" came out, 33 when James Brown pwn3d the Apollo, 45 when George and Bootsy et al. boarded the Mothership. whew. talk about timing. of course, chances are she is/was probably just a big Lawrence Welk fan.

"come on guys, isn't raping me just kind of dark and obvious?"

2008-04-15T16:11:00.003-04:00

oh. hell. yes. lookie who's getting back together and going on tour with all new material!!! (don't look too closely thought because, jeez, they look all old and bloated.)

(still funny though!)

wherein we take a deep breath.

2008-04-14T15:44:00.000-04:00

thanks, all, for your thoughtful commiserating on the joys of owning -- and trying really hard not to murder -- an almost-three year old. your comments were really great. it was a cathartic thing to write, and just posting it made me feel a little better. if a bit guilty. and of course today, on my day home alone with Kidzilla, she's being a pure delight. sure, she demanded that she wear her now too-small "white lion" halloween costume just as we were out the door. it was momentum-disrupting, but i didn't feel like fighting it. besides it was funny to imagine her going about her day dressed like a tiger. it was even funnier riding the bus with her. she's totally oblivious, although she did wonder why people were talking to her more than usual today; i felt a little silly.

the best part about all this -- the ups and downs of dealing with a threenager (favorite new word of the year, courtesy of hissychick) -- is that i have a little something called perspective. maturity. wisdom. i know, for example, that there will be ample time to exact sweet revenge on my child by embarrassing her face off in public when she's an actual teenager. i. can't. wait.

how to start a mommy blogging brouhaha on the interweb

2008-04-14T15:33:00.000-04:00

want to stir up a little ridiculous controversy that serves only to underscore your central point (that parents today be cra-zay)? New York Sun columnist lenore skenazy has the recipe for you.

step 1. let your 9-year-old son ride the subway all by his badself under the theory that parents today are waaaay to overprotective. ("i gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.")
step 2. write an excellent, thoughtful column about it. "half the people i’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. as if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. it’s not. it’s debilitating — for us and for them."
step 3. let simmer on the interblogs.
step 4. serve hot-headed.

skenazy is totally on to something here. the over-propensity among parents (usually Of a Certain Means) to hover and helicopter over their kiddies' every move is a serious bugaboo of mine (awful stroller pun intended, sadly). but more importantly it does the kids a disservice. the real world is not a baby-proofed, rounded-corner, anti-bacterial rubber room. thank god. so why raise kids as if it were? they'll be sorely disappointed. (as it is they're going to have to grapple with the fact that they're not the Specialest Little People on Earth they've been told their entire childhoods, but that's another source of irritation for another time).

now skenazy has now bequeathed the internets with a special gift: Free Range Kids (LOVE the name). a snip of her blog's mission statement: "At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. our kids deserve no less." the blog's first post was april 1 and there's only been one more since, which does not inspire great confidence that this brilliant idea will yield an especially robust site. but we'll reserve judgment for now.

i comfort myself in the knowledge that i am raising a strong-willed woman. so at least there's that.

2008-04-11T18:04:00.005-04:00

what do you do with an almost-three-year-old who fights with you? and when i say "fights with you" i mean "goes all mike tyson and bites an ear off your shit" kind of fighting. cause i've got a serious fighter on my hands here. she is not, let's be clear, a hitter or a scratcher or anything violent like that. but when she adopts a cause, she digs in. like a steamshovel. relentless. unwavering. much like when, say, mother teresa set up shop in calcutta and never once considered buckling under the oppressive weight of her deeply-felt mission to bring succour to the impoverished ... once my child decides she wants a lollipop, it's all over until she gets her lollipop. or at the very least she digs in until someone's daddy dies in a steaming puddle of his own urine. whichever needs to come first.

take this morning, for example. and when i say "take this morning," i mean "remove it from my prefrontal cortex so i need never remember it again." mrs nice guy went into the office bright and early, leaving me in my still-slumbering state. my schizophrenic brain was half-delighting in the luxurious decadence of a big empty bed and half-dreading the yelling that was guaranteed to emerge from The Child's room. and then it came: MOOOOMMMMMYYYYY!!!

me, stumbling in: hi baby. gooooodmorning!
her: i said "MOMMY!"
me: i know, banana. but mommy's at work.
her: i want mommy.
me: she's at work.
her: but i want mommy. because i need my mommy.
me: i know, babyducks. but she's at work.
her: i want mommy.
me: she's at work. let's have breakfast!
her: NO I CAN'T HAVE BREAKFAST BECAUSE i want mommy.
me: ok, well she's not here and i am. or should i leave?
her: nooooooooo. don't leave me!
me: ok then! let's change that diaper!
her: i want mommy.
me: i swear to you, if i could give you mommy right now, i would. i'd give you eight mommies. on steroids and estrogen. but she's at work.
her: i want mommy.
me: FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND JUST AND GOOD WHY DON'T YOU BELIEVE ME?!!! she's at work.
her: i want some gum.
me: she's at wo-- oh. gum? you can't have gum until you have breakfast.
her: GIVE ME SOME GUM. where's mommy?

it's hard to know how to react here. it's very easy to escalate and start yelling, like for real. and also getting incredibly beet-red-in-the-face pissed. but then you're just coming down to the child's level. just when patience is at its thinnest, one neds to find that reservoir of strength you didn't know you had (like that time you lifted a capsized volkswagen off of a nun's crushed legs). one needs to go to what i call your Love Place. you must find within you that secret lakeside resort of calm, loving understanding. you have to at the very least act like a grown-up (hint: does not entail succumbing to all-consuming rage and throwing a fist-full of unused pull-ups down the hall). this secret lakeside resort is very hard to find -- that's why it's a secret. but i have to believe it exists. otherwise the human race would not have survived.

anyway. finally i wrangle her out of her crib through the strategic implementation of an alligator hand puppet and a story about a silly cat who wears red shoes. amazingly, her mood recovers much faster than mine. she's all giggles and daddylove the second her feet hit the ground. i'm wary of this good will. we go to the kitchen to eat. i open the fridge. she points to the peach yogurt. "i want that one," she says. so i say, stupidly, "peach yogurt, coming right up!" her: "I DON'T WANT PEACH YOGURT! I WANT THAT ONE!" of course she's still pointing at the same peach yogurt. only she's crying hysterically now. i hoist her up and let her grab the yogurt she wants. she chooses the blueberry yogurt on the other side of the fridge. naturally. then: "i want a silly purple spoon," she announces settling into her chair ("you have to push me close to the table"). i open the utensil drawer and am confronted with the reality i already knew awaited me: we have no silly purple spoons. i hand her a not-very-silly blue spoon. she starts crying. "I WANT A SILLY PURPLE SPOON!"

i damn near lose it here. i dump all the spoons we have in front of her. "HERE! SPOONS! TAKE ONE! KNOCK YOURSELF OUT!" this is not, i should note, typical behavior from someone who has found the Love Place. shouting about spoons before breakfast is not something that comes from the grown up, loving, secret lakeside resort place in one's heart. so i take a deep breath. i chill. she settles on a spoon. she wants a bowl for her yogurt. i pluck one of her bowls off the shelf. it happens to be blue. she voices her objection. "not that one! NOT THAT ONE! I WANT A PINK BOWL!"

oh, sweet bleeding christ.

i get her a pink bowl. she wants granola sprinkled on top of her yogurt. i sprinkle granola on top of her yogurt. she takes a bite. one bite. one single miserable bite. and says. "all done! i want gum."

me: you can't have gum until you eat some breakfast, you know that.
her, throwing herself on the floor: PLEASE HAVE SOME GUM!?!?!
me: no sweetie, i know you want some but you can't have any. eat your yogurt and we'll talk.
her: i don't WANT yogurt. give me gum.

it's war. it's officially war. she's on her back on the floor, crying and pulling her hair. i am fetishizing the moment when the sitter comes and i can put on my headphones. i should probably read some more books on raising kids, i am now realizing. we once read plenty of books. books about pregnancy, plenty of books about newborns. but now? these dark waters are desperately uncharted.

i try rationalizing with her. ("how can you have gum before breakfast? that's silly!")

i try ignoring her. ("what does npr have to say about the national foreclosure rate? i wonder!")

i go into my room and quickly get dressed while she thrashes on the kitchen floor.

i come back and give her a hug and try to calm her down and whisper sweetness into her ear. she yells at me -- barks orders at me, with pointed finger! -- commands me to fetch her some gum.

i snap.

i plop her into her stroller, perhaps a little too heavily, and tell her she can sit there until she's ready to calm down, talk to me properly and maybe eat some yogurt. and miraculously, after 2 seconds, this works! she cries. every teardrop is a year of my life ripped from my heart. but it works! she agrees to eat some yogurt. she asks to be spoonfed "like a baby," and i happily oblige. she finishes it! she's all smiles and daddylove again! so, finally, i give her a big fat piece of gum.

all settled, right? wrong. this is just one fight. these scenes unfold daily at bedtime, bathtime and naptime too. boundaries are being tested. so is my will to live. in the end i usually get the result i want, or some approximate compromise. problem is, i'm only consistent in that i'm alternately too soft or too hard, depending on my mood. and her mood. sure, i got her to get out of bed and i got her to have some breakfast before gum, but i can't help feeling that i went about it all wrong. i mean, the kid was chewing gum at 8:03 am. sugar-free, but still.

at 9 the blessed sitter arrived and i darted out the door. caught my train. put on my headphones. about two stops into my commute i realized: i missed my daughter. that, and i really needed some coffee

got milk?

2008-04-11T13:16:00.001-04:00

cause if you don't, you're going to want it after watching this:

praise the lord that someone is out there funnelling millions of advertising dollars into something that's not actually killing our kids. or getting them doped up on the internets. even if it is making them hit the puberty by, like, second grade.

speaking of video

2008-04-10T00:01:00.000-04:00

hey, yeah, so. i know i've been overdoing it on the video front lately, but, well, there you have it. on that note ... look! flickr has video now. fun. at least i didn't embed it.

"they're young; they heal fast"

2008-04-09T14:07:00.000-04:00

as founder of the tinkering school, gever tulley fully admits to the fact that he puts "power tools in the hands of second graders." he also delivered an excellent talk at the TED conference last year: 5 dangerous things you should let your kid do. what are these five things? i'm so glad you asked:

1. play with fire
2. own a pocket knife
3. throw a spear
4. deconstruct appliances
4.5 break the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (yay! -- ed.)
5. drive a car

"trust me, they're going to learn things that you can't get out of playing with Dora the Explorer toys."

watch and learn:

consider me consoled

2008-04-08T00:21:00.002-04:00

my bad and i'm sorry: the clip in the last post didn't pan out did it? copyright issues (or should i say copywrong? heh). see, i'm not even a goldfrapp fan, but that leaked (or was it pirated?) video she's made, well, it put a wee smile on my face. and i wanted to share it with you via the magic of blog. and maybe you would have been moved to purchase her album or, better yet, see her in concert. in which case my non-sanctioned video sharing would have netted her rekkid a sale or, better yet, concert ticket purchase. or two. but, no. someone had to pull the plug on the video and spoil everyone's fun.

not so this time. i have been burned and i have learned my lesson! i am a law-abiding nice guy. so allow me to present to you, fellow law-abiding readers, a studio-sanctioned video! i found it five minutes ago, posted by someone named "warner brothers." no one told me to tell you about it. but it happens to be by a little tiny band that i happen to think might just be going somewhere. and i have my fingers crossed for these scrappy dudes. maybe if only, i don't know, they found a more charismatic and talented frontman. heh again.

let us now rise and salute the raconteurs. in a word (or two): bad. ass.

UPDATE! the afforementioned "happiness" video has resurfaced! watch it here. make yourself happy. go go gadget golfrapp:

take that, feist

2008-04-03T15:00:00.001-04:00

happiness is:

here come the dino 5

2008-04-02T22:15:00.001-04:00

hey, prince paul has a children's album out. it's actually kind of rad!

UPDATE! short version of the DINO-5 theme song, which my kid freakin' loves the shit out of (and frankly, so do i), here:

YOU HAVE A PRESENT FOR ME. YES.

2008-04-02T22:10:00.003-04:00

i happen to have been out of town a few times this year already -- twice for work, once on vacation with my bride. on each of those trips, because i felt guilty for being away and because i missed my child with the intensity of a dead lightbulb (sweet, sweet ipod, it has been lovely to reacquaint with you)--which in turn made me feel guilty for not missing her enough--i would always come home with a big fat present. or six. t-shirts, puppets, coin boxes, dolls, sea shells. this child gets HOOKED THE FUCK UP every time i leave the house for more than 12 hours. sometimes, because the occasional "no strings attached" (except for the strings tied to my very SOUL) freebie crosses my desk at work, i don't even have to be out of the house for more than half that long before returning laden with plush goodies ...

unfortunately, she has figured this out.

every time i get home these days, it goes like this:

daughter: DADDY! i'm so happy to see you!
me, melting: aw, babe. i'm happy to see you too! gimme a hug.
daughter: you have a present for me!
me, solidifying: um. no. not today.
daughter: WHY?

this, as you can imagine, has become something of a problem around here. generally she takes no-present-daddy in good stride. shrugs him off and returns to cramming stuffed animals up her shirt ("you have to be CAREFUL. there's a baby in my tummy." clearly there is a fair amount of processing going on around here.)

other times, the sailing is less smooth. like the other night. at 2 AM. when she woke up shouting "DADDY!" i stumbled into her room. "what's wrong, baby?" she rolls over: "i want a present." i delivered her a present, all right. a sotto voce f-bomb and a promise to introduce her tomorrow to the gypsies who will be her new parents. for some reason she did not thank me. i am mystified.

"spitzer, spitzer, what did you do?"

2008-03-28T18:02:00.003-04:00

apparently some 3-year-olds are more advanced than others. mine, for example, has trouble sorting out the differences between "today" and "next week" and "my birthday." it's all a blur.

other kids, however, are all up to date on the latest on the gubernatorial crisis in albany. watch this clip: here we learn that "everybody at school is talking about" the eliot spitzer scandal. you know, the one in which he paid $80,000 for his friend, Kristen, who was on the show "the girl is wild." the poor governor had to quit before he was peached.

new york city kids are some sophisticated tykes, i tell you what. still. personally, i prefer the rehash of Star Wars. something about coaching a little girl to describe hookergate smacks of trying a wee bit too hard to get a laugh.

breaking: bonadouche

2008-03-26T17:35:00.003-04:00

as if an entire reality show devoted to the travails of an utterly charmless danny bonaduce wasn't enough, now VH1 has created it's own special brand of network-endorsed child abuse. hosted by the erstwhile partridge, I Know My Kid's a Star pits a gaggle of tweens against each other -- and their own parents -- to determine who's got enough "it factor" to become the next child star.

best part of the show's debut: an unfortunate lass is so nervous upon meeting bonaduce and the other contestants in the beginning of the show that she pukes into the bushes. your heart breaks for the girl. and while some might argue this is only a natural reaction to meeting bonaduce in the fleshy-flesh, clearly it's the most accurate review the show will ever get.

instead of delighting in the ridiculous behavior of the parents -- like the pressuring, porny stage mom Rocky who is clearly showboating vicariously through her nervous wreck of a daughter -- you find yourself fighting the impulse to call child protective services. there is good cringe-inducing TV and very, very bad cringe-inducing TV. while bonaduce, of all people, says he wants to help kids avoid the dangerous emotional and chemical pitfalls of child stardom, here he seems determined to drive these tykes straight to Lohan-ville. only, you know, without the stardom part. stay classy, VH1!

didn't anyone at the network see the sad-but-funny-because-it's-true headless britney episode of southpark? have we learned nothing?!

copulatin' calamari!

2008-03-26T12:04:00.001-04:00

so over the weekend we had planned on going to cost-co because my in-laws left their car with us for the week and, well, we need lots of supplies. so we got going bright and early, very proud of our industriousness. but, wouldn't you know, it was easter sunday, so obviously the store was closed. boy were we ever ...

HOLY FUCK! GIANT SQUID SEX!!!!!

naturally, you have to assume that giant squids come from somewhere, right? no surprise: they have sex. well, sweet jesus, i never anticipated an article about mating mollusks would wind up being THE GREATEST THING I HAVE EVER READ IN MY LIFE EVER.

key quotes:
"scientists now believe the males had either accidentally inseminated themselves during 'violent' lovemaking sessions with females or been inseminated by other males after 'bumping' into them in the dark depths of the ocean."

i think i accidentally inseminated myself after reading that sentence.

and:
"males get round their inferior size by being endowed with a particularly long penis, which means they can inject the female without having to get too close to her chomping beak. The male's sexual organ is actually a bit like a high-pressure fire hose and is normally nearly as long as his body"

wait. "high-pressure fire hose!!?" mmm, squid bukkake. i suddenly find myself craving calamari. with extra tartar sauce. waitress!

jumpin' jamaica!

2008-03-24T14:12:00.003-04:00

because, i am sure, you have been dying to know the details of our jamaican jaunt -- mostly because you, like me, will always take an opportunity to wallow in the misery of knowing how lovely your life isn't -- i present to you, in photos, the dream vacation that has rendered me thoroughly unable to return to reality.

we stayed in negril. we stayed at this teeny tiny resort built into the bluffs and caves overlooking the waters. it was, in fact, called the caves (and, i'd wager, still is). there were no beaches at this resort, mostly because it was built on rocky cliffs. this was fine by me as i do not do sandy beaches so well, although i definitely do water well. and besides, here is the sunset that greeted us upon our arrival:

hello, caribbean wonderland. would you mind if i kicked off my shoes, grabbed a pina colada and stayed a while?

the beauty of this place is that -- since it is rather obscenely expensive -- everything was included. when i mean everything, i mean everything: from your guided snorkle tour (into the eponymous caves, no less), to your private sunset hot tub session, to your two course breakfast, to your three course lunch, to your three course dinner, to the 23 squillion drinks you quaff between each meal. indeed. now that we're back in new york, my liver needs a vacation ... i made every effort to drink every penny that we were spending.

when i wasn't jumping off cliffs, that is. as the resort was built on the bluffs, the architects had the good foresight to include ledges, custom built for hurtling yourself from. these ranged from 10 to 20 to 30 feet off the crystal-blue waters. upon receiving the tour of the place, i peered down from the dizzying 30-foot ledge and i knew: there will be jumping.

you see i have this self-destructive impulse, which i believe is fairly common, to jump off of things. when i am in tall buildings, on rooftops, on ledges, every fiber in my body screams: JUMP, MOTHERFUCKER, JUMP! usually, i don't jump. because i would probably die. and then i would never be able to jump off of again -- a veritable Catch-22. but here! here i am presented with a 30-foot ledge overlooking a beautiful bay and i am virtually being begged to jump. i mean, it's just water. right? so. i donned my groovy billabong circa 1998 board shorts (i miss saying the words "swimming trunks") and i approached the ledge. i looked down.

people, let me tell you: 30 feet is no joke. 30 feet is some high ass shit. we're talking higher than the highest resort staffer. you think, "i am about to willfully fling myself off this ledge. why? there is no shame in not jumping." and then another much more evil and anti-darwinian part of your brain says "what's wrong, are you afraid you'll sprain your vagina? JUMP, MOTHERFUCKER!" and then, just after your wife tells you she'll kill you if she has to go home a pregnant widow, everything goes blank.

and you jump.

and, indeed, it feels glorious. granted ... it doesn't look very pretty:

GERONIMO!

a side view:

when you hit the water, every part of your body that makes impact gets an incredibly rude slap. see how my arms are flayed out? you don't want to land like that. i have massive bruises on the underside of my right arm from multiple jumps. also my ass. my white ass looks just like a blueberry pancake -- flat and shot through with little purple clouds.

anyway. they have a guy on the premises, a man of very few words, who gives the snorkle and kayak tours and checks the pool for alarming levels of red stripe-flavored urine. we took to calling him Aqua Man because he was clearly 80 percent fish. in the snorkel session, he'd skim along the bay floor, holding his breath for 50 minutes at a time as he danced with the sting rays. he took us into one of the caves, which he called the Bat Cave because, well, there were lots of bats in there, one of which almost made a canadian woman we were swimming with into Bat Lunch.

sometimes, when on dry land, Aqua Man would take a real dive off the ledge. and it was beautiful:

we asked him the secret and he said it was "easy. just jump out in a 45 degree angle over the water. don't go straight down because you'll flip onto your back." i never quite summoned the gumption to dive off the 30-footer, but i did, finally, gather up the guts to dive off the 20-foot ledge:

compared to Aqua Man i looke like a bloated goose, crash-landing after a mai thai and vicodin binge. also, when you hit the water on a head-first dive, your shoulders take the brunt of the impact. so after three of these i had a dark blue welt on my right shoulder. which nicely matched the purple constellation under my right arm. and did i mention my ass? jesus. by the end of the week, i looked like i had been to S&M camp.

we only left the grounds of the resort twice: both times for lunch. once was for jerk chicken at a place called Bourbon Beach. we got a ride from a driver named Clovis who is loosely affiliated with the resort. and reality. he only charged us $30 to drive us to lunch and back -- and $10 for him to hang out with us while we ate. how nice of him. he, awesomely, wore a superman ring on his wedding finger. why? to protect him from marriage to his girlfriend, mother to three of his five children. he also addressed all questions about my wife and her pregnancy to me. even though she was sitting right with us. he totally ignored mrs nice guy. over the course of the week we would come to conclude that jamaican men have a, uh, different sort of relationship with their women.

the second time we went off campus was to sample some of the chicken at this place:

it was, indeed, serious. but it was no bourbon beach. bourbon beach served the best jerk chicken i have ever had in my life -- spicy, tangy, herby. delicious. when we asked if we could buy a bottle of their miracle sauce they said we could ... for $20. we passed.

so, yeah. it was a good trip. we made an effort to do as little as possible: sleep, sun, swim, eat, repeat. we had the occasional strong pang of missing the kid, but we knew she was in good hands and that we would see her soon enough. the flight home was a jarring re-entry to real life: the plane was an hour late; there was turbulence; mrs nice guy barfed for the first time all week; we went into a holding pattern for an hour. we arrived close to midnight and the kid was obviously asleep. we snuck in an peeked at her.

her fat slumbering stubborn face made re-entry bearable. it was certainly the only thing i could have handled dealing with in my real new york life after a week of this:

bathing john malkovich

2008-03-22T13:39:00.000-04:00

gentle, impressionable reader. please, come. take my hand ... no, not that one. take the hand with the loofah in it. that's it. yes.

don't be shy. for it is time. it is bath time. it is time for Bathing with Bierko, the very reason that god invented the internets.

demented. hilarious. uncomfortable. genius.

subway stories

2008-03-21T12:01:00.002-04:00

our lovely sitter decided to take the little nipper into the big city this morning -- they headed to soho for some easter egg hunt -- which was great for me because i got to ride on the train with them part of the way there. i humbly posit that everyone's morning commute would be improved about a million times if they got to spend it with my shouting daughter. (WE'RE GOING ON THE "R" TRAIN TO THE CITY! WE'RE GOING IN THE TUNNEL!)

as we stood on the platform, waiting for manhattan-bound train, the thoughtful child kept an eye on my well-being. BE CAREFUL DADDY, YOU CAN'T FALL DOWN IN THE TRACKS. IT'S DANGEROUS. the vehemence with which she lobbied for my safety caught the attention of this shabby homeless dude who was otherwise deeply engaged in picking up spent metro cards off the ground while muttering to himself. she shouts, he looks up. and he shouts back. and a meeting of the minds is convened:

him: HELLO LITTLE GIRL!
her: WE WAITING FOR THE TRAIN!
him: THE TRAIN! IS IT COMING?!
her: THAT'S MY DADDY BECAUSE I'M WEARING PAJAMAS.
him: YOU A BEAUTIFUL GIRL. BLESS YOU.
her: YOU GOING TO LOOK FOR EGGS TOO?!
him: YES! YES, THE TRAIN! IT'S COMING, MAMI.
her: HAVE TO BE CAREFUL!
him: OK! BYE BYE! YOU BEAUTIFUL FACE.
her: GOING TO THE CITY.

he was harmless and she was adorable, but still. i'll admit to feeling a little uneasy with the whole guileless, earnest, trusting, beautiful 3-year-old shtick she has going. the sitter tells me the kid talks to everyone on the train (she apparently takes her on more outings than i do -- in my defense, i'm usually too busy keeping her locked in the basement).

of course, most sane people would have their socks charmed off by the little porkchop. naturally. unfortunately, not every person on the train (or waiting for it) is sane. at what age, i wonder, do i tell her that it's probably not the best idea to launch into a discourse about your pajamas with every homeless stranger you meet on the street.

oh well, at least she didn't pole dance this time.

the beard stays, YOU GO!

2008-03-20T02:31:00.001-04:00

agh. sorry for the poor posting, people. i probably should have given y'all a heads up that after spending a week in san francisco for nonstop work, i was coming back to new york for all of two days -- for more nonstop work.

and then mrs nice guy and i packed up and went to jamaica. without the kid. for six glorious days. of nonstop chillaxing.

a brief timeline of the past two weeks: i said i was going to SF and indeed i did. i schlepped my wounded knees over there to attend this massive conference about things too dull to get into here, but suffice it to say i was working. a lot. but i did get to do some eatin':

lunch at the surprisingly tasty Ducca (in the lobby of the Westin, of all places), stone's throw from Moscone.
i dined one night at the decidedly hip -- and delicious -- SPQR (i took a cab there after an aborted attempt to walk found me kicking hypodermic needles on 6th street and feeling vaguely menaced 'round every corner. and here i thought i was an urbane, sophisticated brooklynite only to be scared by a gaggle of latenight SF toughies. i am ashamed.)
had lunch at some mediterranean/italian place whose name i can't remember but it starts with a Z and they have their own cookbook because the food is quite tasty.

i spent the rest of my free time hanging out with my good college friend Crazy Legs and her not-quite-so-new-anymore daughter. she lives nearish to haight-ashbury, so i pilgrimaged to Amoeba and picked up a stack of rekkids (ray bryant, chet atkins and jerry reed, abdullah ibrahim, emmylou harris, syreeta). then i remembered that i must be in the vicinity of the Grateful Dead house, so i looked it up on the old blackberry, and indeed i was but a block away. so i paid my respects to 710 ashbury -- a lovingly restored victorian with some crazy mojo. keep on truckin', jerry ... i wonder how much the current occupants hate you.

anyway. i stayed at the new intercontinental hotel and they tell me that i was either the first or second guest to ever stay in the room that i had. i only wish i could have defiled it a little more for the next.

so, yeah. not all that exciting. what was exciting was getting on a plane last week to jamaica. we stayed at a tiny little resorty place in negril. the in-laws drove down and watched the kid while wife and i sat in the sun for six days, arising only to swim, eat or drink. more on that later. first, i must conquer the severe depression i have lapsed into upon returning to my desk and realizing that now i must work.

but first, let me leave you with this -- a grim peek inside my current state of mind:

mr nice guy goes to san francisco

2008-03-03T22:50:00.002-05:00

so i'll be in SF (do not say "Frisco") this week. i'll be arriving in the bay area (do not say "Frisco") late tomorrow night and leaving california (do not say "Frisco") friday afternoon. i'll be there (do not say "Frisco") for work.

is there anything going on this week i should check out if i get some free time? i see that stephen malkmus will be playing at amoeba on weds, but that'll likely be a total clusterfuck. balkan beatbox was supposed to be playing at the filmore on thurs, but it looks like that may have been cancelled because their singer and bassist are being held by immigration (oh noes!!!).

so what should i do for kicks in Frisco (oops!)?? any tips?

'and on that farm he had a pregnant lady symbolizing a pig. E-I-E-I-O!'

2008-02-29T11:22:00.001-05:00

so. the next time mrs nice guy complains about her pregnancy--that she "can't sleep," that she "feels enormous," that she "still barfs every morning," that she's "always exhausted," that she has "sciatica"--i'm going to gently, but firmly, remind her that at least she's not locked in a cage. naked. on all fours. in public. as a metaphor for a pig.

stay classy, PETA.

garfield minus garfield

2008-02-28T18:22:00.002-05:00

this is seriously the best thing i have seen all year.

all right, fine. allow me to explain why: when i was a wee lad, Garfield was the first comic strip that i read. that, and Peanuts. but Garfield was the first strip that i "got." you know? i thought it was hi-larious. the cat loves lasagna! that's fucking comedy! you can imagine my dismay when i got older that -- in addition to getting lazy, narrow-minded, cheap, cowardly, mean-spirited and reviled by my peers -- i realized that Garfield is just not funny. it is, in fact, the opposite of funny. instead of mirth, it summons despair and violent rage.

however! now, by removing Garfield from the strip entirely, the sense of wonder and joy i once derived from reading Garfield has been restored! it's funny again! yay!

i guess they rejected "No Country for Twin Porn Burglers"

2008-02-28T18:11:00.002-05:00

here it is, barely feb 28 on a leap year and already we have a leading contender for the best headline of the year, if not ever, courtesy of the associated press:

Twin porn actors charged in burglery

sweet honey in the rock, there is so much goodness in that wee little phrase. although i suspect it doesn't really need to be a four page story. and there aren't even pictures.

'it's an exciting movie'

2008-02-28T16:47:00.002-05:00

dad screens Star Wars, Episode IV for his three year old. dad asks daughter to rehash the movie. dad tapes kid. mad cuteness ensues. [spoiler alert: do not watch this if you've never seen Star Wars. crucial information about Darth Vader, Obi Kenobi and the "shiny guy" robot revealed herein].

props to daddy types for the link.

dan zizzie in the hizzie

2008-02-25T22:39:00.006-05:00

sunday we met up with some friends and took the kids to see dan zanes, who is of course the reigning pied piper of family music (without, i'm hoping, that whole leading-children-off-to-their-deaths motif). sometimes, as much as i'd like to deny it, it's hard to be a young parent in park slope and not endure the creeping suspicion that i am a craven yuppie scumbag hipster-lite stereotype. thankfully i am not self-aware enough to be too painfully plagued. so, with cheer, the fam hopped on the 5th avenue bus yesterday after breakfast and headed north to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. in no time it turned into the Dan Zanes express: every person who would board the bus was either a parent or a toddler. or horrified to find themselves on some bourgeois nightmare re-imagining of ken kesey's Further schoolbus packed with midget merry pranksters.

the opera hall at BAM is gorgeous -- DZ called it the Carnegie Hall of Brooklyn, and so it is. when we got to our seats we were astonished to find that $22 placed us third row center. the Man Himself was a little jarringly onstage doing last minute sound-checky things. he smiled and waved at folks as they walked in. it felt like he was welcoming us into his living room -- the performer/audience wall thus shattered, it never fully reconfigured for the duration of the show.

but, i mean really, check the proximity:

ah, but i am getting ahead of myself.

now, i am on record as having certain, well, grown-up feelings for one particular ms. laurie berkner. but i have to say, in recent months one of Zanes's bandmates has been catching my eye on the concert DVD (and late-night google image searches). barbara brousal is raven haired, slinky, sophisticated and mysteriously sultry -- a deeply compelling contrast to laurie's bouncy, sproingy, cutesy colorful playfulness. now, don't get me wrong: i still love me some berkner. but i was verrrrry much looking forward to seeing BB in action yesterday.

imagine my dismay upon perusing the program only to note that there was no mention whatsoever of barbara brousal! o, heartbreak! mrs nice guy took, i thought, a bit too much delight in my obvious deflation.

but! then the show started. Zanes had vacated the stage to change. Collin Brooks, his usual dapper drummer, was the first on stage. then came Saskia Lane on upright bass, followed by John Foti on accordion and Elena Moon Park on fiddle. who, i wondered, would dare to take the place of my dearly departed brousal? barbara! even though you share a Christian name with a woman who drove my first grade carpool, i hardly knew ye. agh! fine. let us get a good look at the person who doth claim to replace you ...

oh.

my.

oh my. my oh my. it is, indeed, a lady named Sonia De Los Santos, who hails from Mexico. she may have some pretty mighty shoes to fill, people. but, let me tell you, i learned yesterday that there is no such thing as global warming. the reason the polar ice caps are melting is because of Sonia's smile:

gggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhh.

uh, sorry. but i mean, come on. THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A KID'S CONCERT. dan zanes has some serious mojo working for him in the painfully adorable bandmate department, i'll tell you that much.

ahem. so anyway the man of the hour tells us that he's got a new album coming out in a couple months called Nueva York or something and it's got a lot of latino and hispanic roots flavors to it -- salsa, meringue, norteno, etc. (probably not too many narcorridos, though, sadly). so we were treated to a few ditties from the new rekkid. and this being brooklyn, his home town, he played "wonder wheel," his homage to the coney island ferris wheel. i keep waiting for the Dan Zanes Backlash, but astonshingly it fails to arrive. maybe it's not so astonishing. the sound mix was perfect, the lighting warm. his song choice was tasteful, his dance moves endearingly ridiculous. there were songs about monkeys and songs about mary mack, silver buttons and all. there were anti-war stalwarts ("i'm gonna lay down my sword and shield ...") and pro-immigration tunes. at the end of it all, he did his James-Brown-I'm-Exhausted-to-the-Point-of-Collapse bit, hand towel and all. then he played the traditional Zanes end-of-show waltz, "sidewalks of new york." he stepped down off the stage and slinked through the unwashed masses out into the lobby. he vanished. dan zanes can put on a hell of a show.

there were, per usual, a smattering of guest appearances: tap dancer derrick k. grant brought, um, 'da noise and i guess 'da funk. BombaYo, from williamsburg, did their ferociously badass puerto rican folk dancing to poly rhythmic chants (toddler nice guy: "look! ballerinas!" ah, if only ...); the Filipino Arts & Music Ensemble was adorable with their twelve-thousand mandolins played with huggable awkwardness by 13 year olds ("the most strings i've ever seen on stage at one time ever!" says ZanesHimself). anna zanes, dan's daughter, was there in all of her early-teen glory and she played the flute and daddy dan sang along and she had a friend with her and it was cuter than baby pandas. bless.

then, of course, there was Father Goose. he didn't just hop on stage. he swarmed it. he had a posse. he brought his boys. he had a hype man! at a kid's concert! a hype man! a hype man who i am pretty sure had a glass eye for reasons we'd be better off not knowing about. dan zanes is rad for many reasons -- the all-inclusiveness, the you-can-too vibe, the exquisite choice of songs. but chief among the reasons that he is rad is turning Rankin Don into Father Motherfucking Goose. if brooklyn is the dollhouse that dan zanes built, father goose is the guy who tore the damn roof off it. jaysus.

so, yes. dan zanes puts on a hell of a show. but "children's music?" pishposh. this was as good a performance as a performance can get. you could ask for no better critic than my three-foot-tall daughter who weaseled her way to the front of the baby most pit. there she was, palms down on the stage, bouncing up and down for a solid hour. when she woke up from her post-concert nap, we asked her: "do you remember what you did this morning?" she paused and furrowed her tiny brow with a gravitas that would make walter cronkite look like pee wee herman. "ummmm," she replied. "i can't remember."

there will be hackneyed headlines

2008-02-24T19:00:00.003-05:00

allow me to take the occasion of the oscars to bring up something that has been bothering me lately: lazy headline writers of the world, the jig is up! time to retire the cliche "there will be ..." and "no country for ..." constructs. they've both been done to death. behold, from this month alone (i'd love to lay the blame for this on the writer's strike, but that somehow seems like wishful thinking):

There Will be Disappointment; Cinematical, 2/24/08
There Will be Oscars; Times-Picayune, 2/24/08
There Will be Gold; Baltimore Sun, 2/24/08
There Will be Confusion; McClatchy Newspapers, 2/24/08
There Will be Booze; New York Post, 2/24/08
There Will be ... Oscar!; The Witchita Eagle, 2/24/08
Oscars: This Year There Will be Milk; Anderson Herald Bulletin, 2/24/08
There Will be Fun Trivia About The Oscars; Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2/23/08
There Will be Blood; The Mirror, 2/23/08
There Will be Oscar Specials; Suburbarazzi, 2/22/08
There Will be Oscars; New York Times, 2/22/08
Cool Swag of the Weel: There Will be Bullwhips; Cinematical, 2/22/08
There Will be Gold: Oscar Picks; Express From The Washington Post (wtf?), 2/22/08
There Will be Cake! Portal 2 Confirmed; PC Gaming, 2/22/08
There Will be Blood; Seattle Post Intelligencer, 2/21/08
There Will be Oscars; The Guardian UK, 2/21/08
There Will be Stars on Sunday at the Academy Awards in Hollywood; Voice of America, 2/21/08
There Will be Lots of Gazing at Stars on Oscar Night; The Tampa Tribune, 2/21/08
Hollywood and the Internet: There Will be Blood; The Economist, 2/21/08
There Will be Gloom and Doom at the Oscars; New Zealand Herald, 2/21/08
Drink Up: There Will be Rum; Seattle Post Intelligencer, 2/20/08
There Will be Oil; The Grist, 2/20/08
There Will be Blood Over Stolen Laptop; Silicon Republic, 2/20/08
Eco-homes: There Will be Floods; The Independent UK, 2/20/08
For Scott Rudin, There will be quality; The LA Times, 2/19/08
There Will be Memories; New York Times, 2/19/08
There Will be Blood on CBS via 'Dexter'; San Jose Mercury News, 2/15/08
State Budget, There Will be Blood; Arizona Daily Star, 2/15/08
There Will be Blood; New York Times (Maureen Dowd), 2/3/08

There Will be Beating a Dead Horse. but wait! there's more:

No Country for Lumpy Thighs; Chicago Tribune, 2/24/08
No Country for Young Men; The Grist, 2/24/08
No Country for Old Systems; Multichannel News, 2/23/08
No Country for Oscar Men; Kolkata Newsline, 2/22/08
No Country for Just Art; Economic Times of India, 2/22/08
No Country for Paul Thomas Anderson; Blogcritics.org, 2/21/08
No Country for Old Dictators; Slate, 2/19/08
No Country for Old Phones; Las Cruces Sun News, 2/19/08
No Country for Two Best Pictures; The Simon, 2/19/08
No Country for Inattentive Critics; New Republic, 2/18/08
No Country for Safe Motels?; AOL News Bloggers (Mo Rocca!), 2/18/08
No Country for Young Men; The District Weekly, 2/13/08
No Country for ... Well, Anyone; Daily Green, 2/13/08
No Country for Old Movies; IHT, 2/12/08
No country for old men; Guardian Unlimited, 2/11/08
No country for old oil; The Daily Titan, 2/10/08
No Country for Old Metaphors; New York Times, 2/5/08
No Country for Old People?; Inside Bay Area, 2/3/08

i could go on, but i'm starting to go blind. besides you probably get the point. i'd like to think that with the oscars finally going down tonight this phenomenon will become a thing of the past. but this blog is No Country for Such Optimism.

carry on, girlfriend

2008-02-23T12:25:00.001-05:00

my god. i want to interview the father of this young lady so i can do everything he did in raising her. he must be so very, very proud. is 2-and-a-half too young to start in with the electric piano lessons and FM classic rock saturation? i mean, seriously, this is incredible. it's like she's from the past and the future at the same time:

hello baby

2008-02-22T11:51:00.002-05:00

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter.

-- T.S. Eliot, "Marina" 1930

is this where the wild things are?

2008-02-21T11:14:00.003-05:00

whoa. could this possibly be an actual screentest from the Where the Wild Things Are movie? one can only hope. spectacularly exciting:

(hat tip to gf.)

UPDATE: an observant reader kindly points out this annoying news to us. Annoying.

sexing the soup dumpling

2008-02-19T23:57:00.003-05:00

so tomorrow we're going in for the 20-week sonogram. technically, i guess el preggo is at week 23. but we're both late bloomers, so we figured why not do this thing after our own fashion.

we've decided to go in and find out what the sex of our unborn spawn is. last time around we opted to be surprised. the 10 months of my bridebird's first pregnancy constituted a delicious exercise in suspense, terror, thrills and baited breath. this resulted in a fairly hilarious birth story that we'll be dining out on until our daughter herself gives birth. i'm too lazy to look it up and link to it now, but suffice it to say, it culminated in an orgiastically joyous blood-spilling release of anxiety.

anyway, we're too tired for all that shit this time around. we want to know. we want to know if we have enough hand-me-downs. we want to know what stripe of sibling to tell our first born she should be prepared to torture for the next 80 years. we want as few surprises this time around as our fragile, addled psyches can take.

also, neither of us can agree on a name this time around, so we want to narrow the field of options by half (or, i guess given that we live in park slope, by one-eighth).

so in 12 short hours, i'll know the sex of the sea turtle floating in my spouse's belly. i'll know the flavor of our soup dumpling. i'll know if i'll be spending the rest of my life coming home to a household of lovely ladies ... or son who must ultimately annihilate me (hey dutch, congrats).

i do have some ambivalence about finding out. it just doesn't feel natural. but we are both too tired to resist the ineluctable. we submit. bring it on.