Dads off the Couch

The Nine Minute Winter, Golf and Kids.

2012-01-27T14:06:00.000-05:00

For those of us able to remember 1979, if only becauseage-wise we’re in that sweet spotsomewhere between untenable youth and impending infirmity, the year was sort of a mixed bag. There were a few bummers:the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor threatened to melt down, about a dozenfans were trampled to death at a Who show in Cincinnati,and perhaps the most shocking of all, Britain’sfirst nude beach was established in Brighton.On the up-side though, Three Mile Island’s coincidental timing guaranteed boffobox office for Michael Douglas in The China Syndrome and the Who disasterguaranteed boffo ratings for a subsequent “very special” episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.

I can’t imagine, however, any up-side to a nude beach populatedby a cluster of pasty, doughy Britons shivering on a rocky, overcast shoreline.Yeah, I know.

Anyway, 1979 was also the year that Steve Martin publishedCruel Shoes, a collection of whimsy which included a shockingly prescient piececalled The Year Winter Lasted Nine Minutes. Which sounds rather a lot like this very year, I’d say. As a kid thatstory struck me as worst case scenario, but as an ostensibly grownup dad, thenotion of a winter-that-never-was sure is appealing. And now with the roughlynine minute snowfall of last week well behind us, it continues to be a season withplenty of opportunity to get out with the kids and pretend it’s spring.

If, for instance, you’ve never gotten around to teaching thekids how to hit anything longer than a nine iron, now’s the perfect time. Thereare ranges still open and waiting, some of which even have heated stalls. Moreover,it’s a big bonus that there’s never a wait for a bucket this time of year. (Presumably most of the old retired guys are busydodging gators in Florida.)

And even better, some ranges have mini golf on site in caseyou have little ones to amuse while the older siblings are busy shanking theafternoon away. And if the kids don’t hit balls yet, now’s the time to get a lesson, because there are plenty of pros sitting around busy hoping they won’thave to spend the winter running from gators. Do it.

Kids, Snow and Gravity = Perfect Family Time

2012-01-14T10:02:00.000-05:00

It was a crisp morning above the frost lineon Whiteface Mountain during, lets say,1988. The air was still and a few inches of fresh powder were a nice changefrom the usual late January ice that makes skiing in the northeast a more of achore than it really needs to be. It was, all in all, a fine morning, right upuntil my buddy Dave and I found ourselves facing a drop so sheer that weweren’t really sure that we were supposed to be there. Clearly we had missed atrail marker while we were chattering and trading stories about the previousnight that had started at Lums and ended up, well, never mind.

Anyway, retreating back up the lengthy trail wasn’t anoption, so we decided to face this nasty bit of black diamond the way only realmen would: we took off our skis and started sliding down on our butts. Genius? Absolutely,and we were feeling pretty good about the whole business until we heard thetelltale swish of a skier flying down the hill behind us. Needless to say itturned out to be a kid, all of six or seven years old, and not only was heflying down the hill in perfect form, he even spared a second to glance back atus with an expression of pity I’ll never forget.

It had never occurred to me until that moment that kidsand skiing not only mix well, but are a perfect match. And it was just that combinationof fearlessness and ability to pick up new things that I was counting on yearslater when we took our boys to Ski Big Bear when theywere about six or seven. Since then, the three of us have had a lot of greatdays not just skiing, but enjoying some of the other benefits of a day on theslopes: getting a chance to shoot the breeze while standing on line, talkingmusic and whatnot on the lifts, and just generally having a good time away fromthe pressures of school and the distractions of home.

So even if you’ve never been skiing or are looking for anexcuse to get back out after some time away, now’s the perfect time to pack upthe kids and take advantage some of the resources out there. There are, forinstance, late seasonpackages, discount ski passes offered by retailers such as Costco, andthe very tidy Liftopia.com.And… now’s the time to start thinking about your fourth or fifth grader for next yearbecause there are skipass and passport programs available for free lift tickets whereveryou may be. Do it.

New York’s 4thgrade program

Pennsylvania

New Hampshire

Michigan

Ski Utah's 5th grade Passport and 6th grade Snowpass programs

Frank Wiley’s behind the curve. (And I ramble about some self evident things.)

2011-12-21T20:47:00.000-05:00

Picture, if you will, it’s a warm summer evening, the sun isstarting to drop and we’re playing Wiffleball in the street. Moreover, the radioin the front yard is blaring “Billy Don’t Be a Hero.” Yes, yes it is. Because it’s 1976, that’s why.

Which also means that most of the cars that pass by as we playare driven by dads coming home after having spent a long day somewheremysterious doing things even more mysterious. “At work” is pretty much all we’vebeen told, because at that age we don’t even really care much anyway. All thatmatters is that dad is back and it’s time to head indoors for dinner.

That, however, was a long time ago and the world in which Ifind myself is very different indeed. I’m a dad now, but instead of a Buick thesize of a nuclear submarine in the driveway there is a small Japanese SUV. Thereare no bell-bottom pants in sight, and, god help us, we have more than one TVin the house. Alright, more than two.

Inexplicably though, all this may be lost on Frank Wiley as he notes with a slight tone of surprise that more dads than ever are staying athome with their kids. Yeah, I know. In my neck of the woods this is no surprise, as the neighborhood is filled with cops, firemen, and restaurant/food serviceguys. There are also families in which the wives have the most earningpotential, guys in the trades, and guys who are simply “between jobs.” Simply put,this is an average neighborhood and you can’t swing a dead cat without hittinga dude pushing a stroller around while waiting for Starbucks to open.

Yes, Wiley is simply pointing out that more dads are staying home with kids, but reporting on this trendas if it’s surprising (which it likely is to Frank, since he will admit onlythat this delightfully vague information has appeared in “a U.S. report” withno further elaboration) seems very… 90’s.

And yet, I must admit a certain nostalgia for the nineties, if only because back then politics seemed harmless, the interwebs were shiny as a new penny, and it had been a full decade since that movie with Michael Keaton had added that phrase to the lexicon. Just saying.

Fearless, Hitchens style.

2011-12-16T16:30:00.001-05:00

It was about four or five years ago that the boys and Ihappened to be stuck indoors on a grey, rainy afternoon of the sort that makesyou question whether or not the sun will ever actually reappear. You know them:those winter days when the notion that Persephone has been spirited away makesperfect sense. Or, the sort of day during which it seems impossible to not launch yourself headlong from theend of the couch and into your brother’s midsection for no particular reason otherthan he responded “Did SO!”

Or then again, maybe the cabin fever induced brawl thatensued wasn’t really triggered by a Seasonal Affective Disorder-y event, butrather the maddeningly low level of discourse in which the two littleknuckleheads were engaged. It was, after all, an argument that was unwinnable: whodeserved time with the Xbox more. In this intellectual battle of less thantitanic proportions there were assertions made about the character of theopposing sibling, refutations, counter arguments about the inherent lameness ofsaid sibling, and then retaliatory ad hominem attacks.

It was, in short, rather like watching pundits on cable newsin their never ending race to the bottomof the intellectual pile. Which, it must be said, is why today’s loss of Christopher Hitchens was so unfortunate.

He was an iconoclast who was by turns contrarian, bafflingand often maddening, but always intellectually fearless. Early on he was amember of the International Socialists, and yet by the last couple of decadesof his life Hitchens spent much of his time decrying what he saw as a softWestern response to the rise of Islamofascism and supporting America's military adventures. All the while, mind you, he remaineda staunch “antitheist” and saw himself as a standard bearer of traditionalEnlightenment values. Go figure.

As my boys have grown I’ve always done my best to make sure thatthey not only think critically about the world around them, but how to. By asking questions, and by forgingrelationships with those who are willing to listen to questions. By talking tokids with whom they disagree. By taking positions contrary to what they’resaying over dinner just to see what they’ve got.

In short, I’d be proud to have my boys grow up to be asfearless as Hitchens. Maybe just with a little less of the drinking, smokingand self inflicted cancer. You get the idea.

Crummy weather? Bounce bounce bounce...

2011-12-07T20:31:00.001-05:00

There was much to be said for growing up in New York in the late sixties and early seventies. There were the as-yet unregulated plumes of black smoke that periodically belched from the tops of apartment buildings that gave the city a distinctly Dickensian feel; there were the monochromatic, brick box apartment buildings themselves that lent the neighborhood a slightly Soviet-style dystopian flavor; and of course there were the parks. Parks composed almost entirely of bare dirt, broken glass, dog poop and concrete playgrounds.

Well, yes, now that I think about it there really wasn’t much to be said for growing up in the city. As a kid there were few options that didn’t involve concrete in one way or another, so a lot of my early childhood was spent nursing skinned knees, elbows, hands, and pretty much every other bit of me that I had little choice but to leave unprotected.

But luckily enough it’s not the seventies any more, and here in the sylvan climes of suburbia we have many more options to keep our kids active, most of which involve the kids getting to keep their skin. To wit: the little ones will likely enjoy bouncing an afternoon away someplace like Bounce City with its 16,000 climate-controlled-square-feet of bouncy castles, slides and obstacle courses.

Bounce! Trampoline Sports is another choice for keeping the kids busy on grey winter days, and it’s one of the growing number of indoor trampoline parks that give the slightly more adventurous set the chance to play dogeball and basketball on court-sized trampolines. Which, if nothing else, ensures a chaos/fun filled day.

There are a growing number of these facilities around the country as well, so odds are that you’ll be able to find a place where ever you may be. And best of all, you can leave the Bactine and Band Aids at home.
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Nanuet Teacher says there’s no Santa? We’ve got a Nanugrinch!

2011-12-02T10:04:00.001-05:00

Holy cats! Right here in Nanuet, a teacher of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed second graders decided yesterday that it would be wisest to let the little munchkins know what’s what; namely that this teacher believes that there is no fat man at the North Pole. No Saint Nick riding the Beach Boys’ Little Saint Nick. No right jolly old elf making his list and checking it twice. In short, that there is no Santa Claus.

That’s right, we got trouble right here in Nanuet city. There has of course been a predictably high level of dudgeon directed at Teacher X in the wake of these revelations; the only real question is just how long it will go on. (And yes, I do know who Teacher X is, but we can’t really have angry mobs with pitchforks and torches running in the streets, now can we? That is, after all, Fox News’ job.)

Speaking of which, I really can’t wait until Murdoch’s guardians of all that’s good and right in ‘Merica pick this story up and run with it like a fumbled ball at a Rose Bowl game. This incident was, after all, just another skirmish in the War on Christmas perpetrated by Teacher X in the service of the secular-atheist-pagan-whatever agenda. Right?

Or then again, out here in not-crazy-land this incident may be seen for what it is: a rigid teacher with a reputation for being particularly strident was having a worse day than usual and decided to take it out on a little kid who had the temerity to point out during a geography lesson that Santa lives at the North Pole. And for good measure, Teacher X decided to note that it’s actually the parents who leave presents under the tree. Yeah, I know.

But here’s the thing, either way you choose to interpret this little contretemps, Teacher X is wrong. There is, as all sensible people know, a Santa Claus. Yes, as a parent I do assist in the process by gathering wish lists from my kids, but that’s where it ends. Sure, I’m in my forties and the kids are well into their teens, but that changes nothing. I collect a list and the rest is Magic.

And, I might add, my folks who are in their seventies now are more than happy to point out the same thing to anyone who asks.

So, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, have a great Ramadan, and enjoy the Winter Solstice while you’re at it.

(Oh yeah, and Nanugrinch? Who doesn’t love a new and completely unnecessary portmanteau word?)

2011-11-30T14:33:00.001-05:00

There a number of rites of passage we all remember for our childhoods, some fondly and others not so much. Some are religious: Confirmations, baptisms, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, or even the appropriately vague Coming of Age ceremony for commitment-phobic Unitarians. (My peeps!) Some rites even seem designed to invite the chaos that we spend much of our time trying to avoid as parents: Walkabout and Rumspringa come to mind.

Among the suburban and rural set, however, there is the nearly universal cultural rite of the Acquisition Of The Driver’s License. It’s a milestone that represents freedom and responsibility for teens and sleepless nights for parents. Not to mention the financial burden of insurance premiums higher than the net worth of the teens themselves.

There’s a cost benefit ratio for you to mull over on some dark night.

Anyway, if your progeny haven’t reached that stage yet and are still stuck catching the school bus with a Pokémon backpack and a lunchbox full of Uncrustables, they’re still in luck. There are plenty of opportunities for them to get behind the wheel of a fun, fast go-kart that will be just quick enough to alarm the old folks and frighten the horses.

The boys and I are fans of our local indoor go kart park, Grand Prix New York. The track is reasonably challenging and there’s a restaurant, a space for parties, and a bar for Mom and Dad when they’re ready to hang up the helmet.

The best part about racing karts is that by the time the weather turns warmer and everyone is comfortable behind the wheel, there are countless places to race outdoors on larger tracks with faster karts. New York, for instance, has dozens of tracks, as does nearly every other part of the U.S. So go make Art Ingels proud. The kids will thank you.

Grand Prix New York (GPNY, to the cool kids)

August already? Believe it.

2011-08-01T09:53:00.003-04:00

August... what I had neglected in my earlier musings about the beginning of the end of summer is the old fashioned family-car-vacation. (Not that I'll miss this particular year in the least anyway. First it wouldn't stop snowing, and then it wouldn't stop raining. Then it was hot enough that 24 hour news “reporters” felt compelled to cook things on the sidewalks, and then just this week the NWS took to issuing tornado warnings for Bergen and Rockland counties. And yes, that's just half an hour from midtown Manhattan. Yeah, I know.)

But anyway, August is here and before you can say “back to school sale” my lovely bride and I will be tossing the kids and what I'm betting what will be a surprising amount of our belongings in the back of the van and setting off north. Yeee haw. We're gonna see us some boats and some aquariums and we're gonna play us some mini golf. You know the drill, just like when you were a kid and you and your siblings had to sit in the back seat on the way to visit a house where George Washington's secretary's half-brother may or may have not slept. Or signed something. Or whatever.

Either way, August, here we come.

Sick day redux. Or, an Active Dad concedes the day.

2011-03-16T20:21:00.004-04:00

It seems like just days ago that one of the boys was home sick, which had triggered a minor episode of Proustian remembrance on my part. Except that for me, sick days past were mostly about getting to eat as many bologna sandwiches and goldfish crackers as I wanted. Yeah, I know.

Anyway, the reason it seemed just like mere days ago that I was tied to the house with my very own little Typhoid Mary is because it really was, as it turns out, just days ago. And now the other boy is home sick. But that’s ok, because part of being an Active, Awesome Dad bla bla bla… is that I’m ready for any contingency. When the boy finally dragged himself out of bed we stuffed a pancake or two in his face and then the fun, such as it was, began.

We started off slowly with some streaming Netflix and an episode of American Pickers. And anyone who’s seen Mike and Frank poking through a box of oil cans will tell you that any given episode is stultifying enough to make the folks down at Auction Kings seem positively bacchanalian by comparison. (What? Is that a Charles Lindberg scrapbook? Stop it!) Anyway, once we had our fill of rural barns overflowing with moldering crap we moved on to the Xbox.

Here we rely heavily on Gamefly. Although not nearly as cheap as the low-end Netflix membership, belonging to Gamefly is still a far less expensive way for your kids to amuse themselves than getting tangled up with a seemingly never-ending stream of positively smelly game titles at full price. For $20 a month (which the boy pays for himself by doing extra chores around the house) the nice people at Gamefly send us two video game titles to keep around as long as we’d like before sending them back in their little pre-paid envelopes. Then, as if by magic, new titles arrive, and before you can say Master Chief we’re shooting aliens. Or jacking cars. Whichever.

So, are these responsible ways to spend a sick day? Would the day be better spent doing extra credit for homework? Or maybe getting a head start on that copy of Great Expectations that’s looming this Spring? Well sure, but sometimes being an Active, Awesome Dad means conceding that it can be good for the soul to do absolutely nothing productive. Which is also better than eating faceload of bologna sandwiches.

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Batting cages or little league? Cages every time.

2011-03-11T17:09:00.004-05:00

Having been around a little, I can tell you that kids are unique and as different from one another as can be. That said, they do all share some common traits, one of which is an almost supernatural ability to produce common emotional responses in parents and caregivers alike. These responses are of course enormously complex and fall on a wide spectrum… but that’s still not going to stop me from indulging in my fondness for oversimplifying everything.

To wit, at one end of the emotional spectrum is baffled disappointment: “Why did my boy just lick the kitchen floor from the back door all the way to the fridge?” At the other end is justifiable pride when he scores against that big goon of a goalie who’s either a 20 year old ringer or a fifth-grader with a glandular problem. “Run boy, run!”

Somewhere in the middle, however, is that sweet spot of maudlin sentimentality evoked by kids when they do nothing more than grow up. A maudlin sentimentality for which I’ve found that I have no patience. The sort of maudlin sentimentality that I don’t feel for my boy’s little league days. I’m probably just a bad father.

It’s been a couple of years since the older boy has played, and since April 1^st is right around the corner I was just thinking that I miss almost nothing about little league. I don’t miss the early start of the little league season. I like baseball well enough, but when Coach called up every December, that’s DECEMBER, to let us know that he was starting indoor practice in January it was all I could do to be polite. Mostly.

Nor do I miss all that time spent freezing my butt on the aluminum bleachers in April, or all that time spent baking in the sun on those same aluminum bleachers in June. I don’t miss all the shrieking little league parents who are blissfully unaware that they are walking, talking clichés. I don’t miss watching other people’s kids whiff the ball repeatedly. My kid does that plenty, thank you very much.

But here’s the thing; I do miss getting out to the batting cages with the boy. (Just enter your zip code and the website will find one for you.) In late winter and early spring it was always a great way to get out of the house and do something fun, active and productive. He loved the challenge, and I loved the opportunity to show off just a little. Right now it’s still too early in the season to be outside much, so it’s the perfect time to take the kids for a little no-pressure batting practice. Just make sure you don’t run into Coach.

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Steve, deathcore, and Weird Al. Go.

2011-03-10T10:41:00.007-05:00

Be courteous, kind and forgiving,

Be gentle and peaceful each day,

Be warm and human and grateful,

And have a good thing to say.

Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike,

Be witty and happy and wise,

Be honest and love all your neighbors,

Be obsequious, purple, and clairvoyant.

Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus,

Be dull, and boring, and omnipresent,

Criticize things you don't know about,

Be oblong and have your knees removed.

Be tasteless, rude, and offensive,

Live in a swamp and be three dimensional,

Put a live chicken in your underwear,

Get all excited and go to a yawning festival.

O.K… everybody!

Steve Martin, Grandmother’s Song.

The first time I heard that song I nearly embarrassed myself in a way that would have been hard to recover from. (Not unlike ending a sentence with a preposition, I suppose.) Put simply, I was the first bright-eyed kid on our block to get Let’s Get Small when it came out in ’77. When I brought it home, my pals and I crowded around the tired old turntable in the living room and started listening to the tracks, one by one, until we were nearly breathless from laughing harder than we ever had. That is, until the Grandmother’s Song came on and I nearly peed myself right there in the living room, which meant I was just a heartbeat away from a defining adolescent experience that would have embarrassed even Charlie Sheen.

Anyway, all of this is to say that it wasn't long before I convinced my dad to take me and a buddy to see Martin do his thing live at the Westchester Premier Theatre. It was a fun night, not just because Martin was as great as we had hoped, but because it was a chance for my dad and me to get out and do something new together. And since then, I’ve found that taking my own kids to shows has been just as fun.

It was just about two years ago now that I took the oldest boy to see Job For A Cowboy at the Starland Ballroom. It was a hoot, not because of the thoughtful, melodic quality of Cowboy’s music, but because it was something I never would have done if it wasn’t for the boy expanding my horizons a bit.

Since then I’ve taken the boys to a number of other things, most of which have been, quite frankly, rather more tame. There have been Rifftrax shows, Cinematic Titanic shows… and I just got us tickets to see Weird Al in May. (squee!) So embrace the live show. Assuming your progeny are older than the Blue’s Clues set, there are lots of choices that you’ll both connect with. Do it.

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International Women's Day.

2011-03-08T13:03:00.007-05:00

So it’s International Women’s Day, which got me thinking about moms. What should you do for your mom? Give her a call, or maybe go visit and fold some laundry for her?

Then you point out that it might be sort of condescending and feel contrived to do such a thing… which might be true. But go give her a call anyway, just because she misses you and would like to hear from you. Go on.

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PS- Pretty random? Yeah well, it is random Tuesday:

"Spring thaw!" Or: "So that's where the Christmas tree went."

2011-03-07T20:51:00.004-05:00

So, say it’s the mid seventies and I’m eight or nine years old. Where is the one place I’m likely to be? Sitting at a desk doing my homework? Helping little old ladies across the street? Cleaning up a park with the Cub Scouts? Fat chance. No, I would have been safely ensconced at the foot of my parent’s bed watching TV, that’s where. It was, after all, TV that showed me the most amazing things in the world. Wile E. Coyote, for instance, taught me rather a lot about physics, M*A*S*H taught me the difference between being a smartass and a smart smartass, and the Marx Brothers taught me just about everything else I needed to know.**

Still, though, my favorite shows were documentaries about science in general and archeology in particular. There was nothing better in the world than an episode about mummies, lost cities in the Amazon, or best of all: long lost flights that reappear only after having been ejected from the glaciers that had been their final resting place.

So you can imagine my excitement when I surveyed the back yard this morning and found it completely free of ice and snow for the first time since December. Whooo! The Spring thaw is here, and this afternoon was the first chance of the season to press the boys into service. We were out and about and found all kinds detritus that had been locked away in the rare deep freeze that this winter had brought: turns out our Christmas tree was just a few feet from the driveway, there were shovels and rakes past the deck that I have no recollection of owning, and there were a couple of bats and waffle balls still out near the swing since a nice spell of weather in early December had lulled us into a false sense of security.

Unsurprisingly the boys didn’t find the whole enterprise nearly as entertaining as I did, and in fairness to them our little expedition wasn’t nearly as cool as the one that found Mallory, but hey, spring is here and I got them outside and moving around on a nice afternoon.

**Which, upon reflection, probably explains my skill at charming middle-aged dowagers.

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(Mallory turns up here too, just in case you're not the link clicking sort.)

Chunky Monkey vs. the Contagion.

2011-03-04T23:20:00.002-05:00

It was a cold afternoon outdoors, although that didn’t matter much since we lived in an apartment with radiators that spent much of the day banging, wheezing and spitting out enough heat to make sure that we had to keep the windows open anyway. That particular afternoon, as did so many others, found me laid up in bed with a fever and sore throat, waiting impatiently for my mother to get back from the store with the two prizes that would go a long way to making me feel less put upon by the cosmos: Goldfish crackers and bologna. They were, when I was a little kid, the official Sick Treats.

Since then, of course, Goldfish and bologna have been forever ruined for me as an adult because I can’t help but associate them with a high fever and the urge to pull out my own tonsils with a spoon. Still, those afternoons of Dickensian wretchedness have inspired me to make my own boys’ sick days as much fun as possible. So, when our younger boy turned up with a fever and a guttural cough that sounded for all the world as if Carol Channing had swallowed Phyllis Diller whole, I knew just what to do.

First, a trip to Shoprite produced a tub of Chunky Monkey ice cream and a bag of mini Butterfingers that went right in the freezer (Winning!). Then a pair of Motrin and a long hot shower got him feeling perky enough to sit up at the computer where we had a few frozen Butterfingers and played some Butterfinger-themed flash games. (Just for thematic coherence, if nothing else.) When that got old we moved on to Pogo.com where we competed against each other in a few spirited rounds of Word Whomp, Mini Golf Madness and Poppit. After that we were off to Nick.com for some Tartar Treachery with Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.

By then the boy was starting to wilt a little, so we moved back to the couch where we turned on Netflix and finished off the afternoon by streaming Cave Dwellers courtesy of Joel, Crow and Tom Servo.

So no, not everyday can be an off-the-couch active day, but we do what we can. Jeez, I just hope that when the boy grows up he doesn’t associate Chunky Monkey, frozen Butterfingers and Mst3k with his own bouts of medieval-style contagion. Nah, it’ll probably be fine.

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Oh, and help yourself some Cave Dwellers. Mmmm.

Charm, hair and the big work.

2011-03-03T10:41:00.008-05:00

As any parent will tell you, children seem to have an innate ability to charm. It starts at birth, really. One moment your lovely bride or significant other is in the throes of childbirth which, you both learn a little too late, is an experience that makes you confront the very nature of existence and the fact that you may have terribly misjudged the direction in which you wanted your life to go.

But of course this existential crisis is short lived, because a moment later the doctors present a tiny little person for your approval, a human being that you made. It’s a momentous event for everyone, but as much as anything else it signals the beginning of a long relationship with a little person that will be based largely on a game of cat and mouse in which you try to get them to stop spreading peanut butter in their hair while they try to charm you into not being annoyed.

Although there are few defenses against a youngster that is determined to use his innate charm to prevent you from keeping him neatly shorn, (the only real solution to the peanut butter quandary) we found one good way that also serves a greater purpose.

The folks at the St. Baldrick’s Foundation have been raising funds to fight childhood cancer since 2000 when they had the novel idea to ask volunteers to shave their heads. The “shavees” are all good sports who participate in one of the local events held every March during which volunteer barbers, shavees, friends and family get together and have a fun time.

So if you’re the sort who likes to walk, run, bake cupcakes or whatever to help with the big work, why not add a little something new to your repertoire? It’s a fun day out, and if nothing else it’ll save you the bother of negotiating yet another haircut with the little charmers in your life.

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Oh yeah, and it makes for good entertainment too. Our younger boy as shavee last year:

(And if you insist on being a complete social media nerd, you can find St. Baldrick's on twitter and facebook. Go figure.)

Charlie Sheen: so much distraction, so little time. (For this at-home-dad, at least)

2011-03-02T11:13:00.010-05:00

At the risk of beating a dead, clichéd horse, I would mention this one thing: there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Yeah, I know! Just like so many dads out there, my days are filled with trying to be productive work-wise, getting on the elliptical so I don’t end up looking like Tim Curry, chasing the kids around, driving back and forth between Home Depot and Shoprite, keeping the house in a state respectable enough that we don’t risk a visit from Bob Villa and then perhaps spending a little quality time with my Lovely Bride. Jeez, I’m feeling a little dizzy just thinking about it. In short, Time is at such a premium that unwelcome distractions are a constant threat and are to be guarded against with all the tenacity of a toddler fighting bedtime.

That being said, many of the distractions we face daily in our digitally overloaded world are diabolically compelling. To wit: Charlie Sheen. I know, I know… just hear me out: I’m the sort of guy who counts himself among those who are deeply, sincerely un-interested in celebrities, and yet you have to admit that Charlie is bringing the Rant to a whole new level. The manner in which he’s able to articulate what the demons in his head are saying is truly stunning: "Guys, it's right there in the thing, duh! We work for the Pope, we murder people. We're Vatican assassins. How complicated can it be?”

How complicated indeed. The level of commitment and eloquence he brings to the table can only be envied by mere pretenders like Tom Cruise. Charlie favors us with more: “People say, 'Oh, you'd better work through your resentments.' Yeah, no. I'm gonna hang on to them, and they're gonna fuel my attack. And they're going to fuel the battle cry of my deadly and dangerous and secret and silent soldiers. Because they're all around you. Sorry, you thought you were just messing with one dude. Winning.”

The man is an artist. How, I ask, can anyone resist being drawn into the sideshow atmosphere that Charlie creates for himself? Sure, there aren’t enough hours in the day, but I think I’ve finally met my match. "I'm sorry, man, but I've got magic. I've got poetry in my fingertips. Most of the time — and this includes naps --”

Yeah, Charlie, I wish I had time for a nap, but even if I did it probably wouldn’t produce poetry. You the man. The crazy, crazy man.

Feeling the need for speed?

2011-02-28T17:17:00.014-05:00

There a number of rites of passage we all remember for our childhoods, some fondly and others not so much. Some are religious: Confirmations, baptisms, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, or even the appropriately vague Coming of Age ceremony for commitment-phobic Unitarians. (My peeps!) Some rites even seem designed to invite the chaos that we spend much of our time trying to avoid as parents: Walkabout and Rumspringa come to mind.

Among the suburban and rural set, however, there is the nearly universal cultural rite of the Acquisition Of The Driver’s License. It’s a milestone that represents freedom and responsibility for teens and sleepless nights for parents. Not to mention the financial burden of insurance premiums higher than the net worth of the teens themselves.

There’s a cost benefit ratio for you to mull over on some dark night, huh?

Anyway, if your progeny haven’t reached that stage yet and are still stuck catching the school bus with a Pokémon backpack and a lunchbox full of Uncrustables, they’re still in luck. There are plenty of opportunities for them to get behind the wheel of a fun, fast go-kart that will be just quick enough to alarm the old folks and frighten the horses.

The boys and I are fans of our local indoor go kart park, Grand Prix New York. The track is reasonably challenging and there’s a restaurant, a space for parties, and a bar for Mom and Dad when they’re ready to hang up the helmet.

The best part about racing karts is that by the time the weather turns warmer and everyone is comfortable behind the wheel, there are countless places to race outdoors on larger tracks with faster karts. New York, for instance, has dozens of tracks, as does nearly every other part of the U.S. So go make Art Ingels proud. The kids will thank you.

Grand Prix New York (GPNY, to the cool kids)

_________________________________________

Got a 4th grader? Maybe 5th or 6th? Then go skiing.

2011-02-24T23:58:00.005-05:00

It was a crisp morning above the frost line on Whiteface Mountain during, lets say, 1988. The air was still and a few inches of fresh powder were a nice change from the usual late January ice that makes skiing in the northeast a more of a chore than it really needs to be. It was, all in all, a fine morning, right up until my buddy Dave and I found ourselves facing a drop so sheer that we weren’t really sure that we were supposed to be there. Clearly we had missed a trail marker while we were chattering and trading stories about the previous night that had started at Lums and ended up, well, never mind.

Anyway, retreating back up the lengthy trail wasn’t an option, so we decided to face this nasty bit of black diamond the way only real men would: we took off our skis and started sliding down on our butts. Genius? Absolutely, and we were feeling pretty good about the whole business until we heard the telltale swish of a skier flying down the hill behind us. Needless to say it turned out to be a kid, all of six or seven years old, and not only was he flying down the hill in perfect form, he even spared a second to glance back at us with an expression of pity I’ll never forget.

It had never occurred to me until that moment that kids and skiing not only mix well, but are a perfect match. And it was just that combination of fearlessness and ability to pick up new things that I was counting on years later when we took our boys to Ski Big Bear when they were about six or seven. Since then, the three of us have had a lot of great days not just skiing, but enjoying some of the other benefits of a day on the slopes: getting a chance to shoot the breeze while standing on line, talking music and whatnot on the lifts, and just generally having a good time away from the pressures of school and the distractions of home.

So even if you’ve never been skiing or are looking for an excuse to get back out after some time away, now’s the perfect time to pack up the kids and take advantage some of the resources out there. There are, for instance, late season packages, discount ski passes offered by retailers such as Costco, and the very tidy Liftopia.com. And… now’s the time to start thinking about your fourth or fifth grader for next year because there are skipass and passport programs available for free lift tickets wherever you may be. Do it.

Ski Utah's 5th grade Passport and 6th grade Snowpass programs

New York’s 4th grade program

Pennsylvania

New Hampshire

Michigan

_____________________________________________

Hey Midwest, had enough? Come on over and crash with us for a while.

2011-02-09T12:35:00.009-05:00

I’ve been told, I think, that there are all sorts of reasons why the Midwest is a paradise unrivalled in modern history and that living there is just peachy. Mostly that thinking seems to revolve around how the people who live there are genuine 'mericans and that they love mom, apple pie and the flag just a little bit more than anyone else. Detractors will note that while that may or may not be true, it’s kind of hard to ignore some of the nonsense that goes on in the heartland.

But, as I live in a glass house as fragile as any other, I’m going to stop there before I singlehandedly jinx all of New York. Goodness knows we’ve been in a scrape or two. ‘Nuff said.

But anyway, if you should wake one day to find yourself living in heartland, there is one unassailable reason to pack your bags and catch the last milk train to the coast: blizzards. Or as I think of them: feet and feet of blowing misery if not outright attacks on middle-aged men prone to shoveling-induced cardiac arrest. In short: white blankets of bother.

I only bring this up, of course, because another blizzard is chugging across the Midwest as I sit here pecking out this little missive. Another frozen Sherman marching to the sea, leaving Oklahomans kinda sorry that they have to leave the warmth and comfort of those moms and apple pies to go outside and shovel yet again.

And the fix? Come on out and visit us in New York. Sure, we’ve had more than our share of snow this year, but we’re done now. And jeez, you wouldn’t want to spend your days worrying that you traded blizzards for fires and earthquakes, like some other coast I could mention.

Irony Radar.

2011-02-05T11:16:00.001-05:00

- Communicate with parents straightforwardly and simply, avoiding educational "jargon."

This morning I came across this sentence, quotation marks included, on EducationWorld.com. Now it is true that my irony radar may be a smidge oversensitive, but I’m still pretty sure that if somebody felt the need to highlight the word jargon because it may be too confusing, it was probably a poor candidate for a bullet point about avoiding confusion.

Does any of this matter? Heck no. If nothing else it just exposes how little it takes to amuse me. Which is why the interwebs and I are so in love.

( Education World ® - Curriculum: A Dozen Activities to Promote Parent Involvement! )

The interwebs are stalking me.

2010-12-17T18:20:00.005-05:00

Am I a guy who’s taste in popular culture is, well, unpopular? Well sure. Reason #4: there are few things I enjoy less than psychological “thrillers,” such as they are, that seem to dribble out of Hollywood at a predictable rate. And of course to me, the predictable rate of their production is matched only by the predictability of their plots. To wit: a spunky / world-weary Protagonist who is a hapless victim / detective inevitably stumbles-into / is preyed upon by a disarmingly attractive sociopath / disturbingly charismatic psychopath. Now go ahead and mix and match.

Anyway, fans of the genre will know that the above formula requires, as often as not, a scene somewhere in the movie in which Protagonist finds his or her way into the lair of the attractive sociopath / charismatic psychopath. The lair is inevitably covered in newspaper clippings, photographs and manic scribbling, all of which are a product of the aforementioned wackjob’s crazy obsession with the Protagonist, if not a general spooky madness.

So really all of this is just my characteristically long-winded way of pointing out something very simple; that there are places in the real world which are covered with clippings, pictures and scribblings… about you. Really, unless you’ve been living the life of a digital Luddite, the interwebs are full of the electronic detritus that you inadvertently leave behind. Ever hear of Pipl.com? Peekyou.com? Go on, put your name in. I’ll wait.

There. So how creepy is that? *shudders* Now I’ll grant you that I seem to have left a broader swath of digital debris in my wake than the average bear, but still, it’s something to consider the next time you think about signing up for MySquareTwitterFaceSpaceYelpBook.com, or some such similar nonsense. Or if you’re going to anyway, at least think about using protection. You know, like a fake name.

Hey, have a nice day!

Harbingers, holidays, and science. And my pants.

2010-12-02T16:07:00.003-05:00

In case you hadn’t noticed, harbingers, not unlike celebrity deaths, tend to come in threes. Here in our little neck of the woods just outside the city that nobody calls the big apple, there are three major harbingers that Santa will be calling before you know it. The first is that the leaves have finally finished falling, the second is that the infestation of vermin called Canada geese has temporarily retreated, and the last is that the waist sizes of all my pants have also begun their annual retreat.

Despite the obvious iron-clad scientific basis for these seasonal events, my Lovely Bride never hesitates to question that last one about my pants. She has been known, for instance, to wonder aloud about how likely it is that my pants really do experience a cycle of holiday shrinkage and summer expansion. Moreover, she’ll even suggest that the Holiday Pants Effect is nothing more than me eating a lot of pumpkin pie.

Really? Does no one remember sixth grade science class? Cold makes things contract and heat makes them expand. Like pants. Sheesh, chicks and science. Anyway, happy harbingers, people!

Stating the obvious. About the holidays, this time.

2010-11-22T22:33:00.005-05:00

As I’ve noted in the past I’m a pretty shallow guy who tends to think in clichés, and bearing that in mind, one of the upcoming New Year’s resolutions that I intend to make and then promptly ignore will be to let go of the clichés, truisms and similar rhetorical crutches on which I depend so heavily. It's also likely that I'll resolve to give up run-on sentences. Fragments too.

Anyway, before that self imposed deadline looms too near I’m going to go ahead and Beat a Dead Horse and point out something that you haven’t heard or thought about in at least five minutes: that this year the Christmas Season began in mid-October. It’s exhausting, really. One can’t, for instance, spend a few quiet moments wandering aimlessly through name-your-retailer-of-choice without dodging floor displays full of red and green socks while the appallingly fey Johnny Mathis simpers about snowmen and Parson Brown in the background. Blech.

The obvious solution, of course, is to simply give up any pretense that there’s any time of year that’s not about Christmas. In short, each and every day should be Christmas. Now some of you wide-awake boys and girls will remember that Timmy, the chronically unsupervised protagonist and perennial danger to the space-time continuum in The Fairly Odd Parents created just such a world just by wishing for it. Of course the results of his wish were, as was much of the rest of the show, predictable. The value of Christmas spirit was cheapened and the excitement necessary for Christmas magic evaporated pretty quickly. Well I say pah! That’s right, I’ll even put it in quotes: “Pah!”

That storyline suffered only from a lack of commitment. Consequences be damned, I think we really should just go ahead and make every day Christmas. What the hell, every day is already Go Out and Buy Some Crap Day, so why not just wrap everything and hand it around. Just think! Everyday at the office could be a secret Santa party. You’d never have to buy your own cologne or joke boxer shorts with painfully unfunny wordplay printed on them again! I like it. An entirely Christmas-based economy with no apologies.

So look for it on your next ballot: Prop 12-25… colloquially known as the Santa Rules. Vote yes. Your local name-your-retailer-of-choice will thank you.

Ahead of the curve with Harry. Or: An early review of the Deathly Hallows, oddly enough.

2010-11-18T14:00:00.003-05:00

There are few, if any, moments that I can recall finding myself squarely at the bleeding edge of any sort of curve. Curves of fashion, cuisine and pop culture are normally well beyond me; I was, for instance, likely the last person in the Western hemisphere to find out that a “Bieber” is not, as I originally thought, a small rodent-like puppet in a third-tier Disney show, but rather a pop star of some note. Apparently.

All of which is to say that I was mildly surprised to find myself sitting comfortably at a private Imax screening on Wednesday evening as the penultimate screen treatment of Harry Potter’s lengthy adolescence unspooled before an audience of Potter fans. Ah, but enough about me.

The decision to break the story into two films was certainly correct; part 1 is a taught, straightforward treatment of the book that successfully conveys the adult world of dread, danger and loneliness in which Harry, Hermione and Ron find themselves. It is a world in which no-one is to be trusted and the hustle and bustle of industrious bureaucracy is opaque and menacing. Perhaps most telling, though, is that it is a world in which there is often no clear-cut path to follow. Just as in real life there are dead ends, false leads and times during which there is simply nothing to do but wait for answers to present themselves.

There is of course plenty of action as well, although it is a relief that director David Yates has a deft touch so that the sequences of running, flying and things going boom never feel forced. (Which, if nothing else, makes it all the more clear that directors like Michael Bay have done us no favors by flooding the screen with car chases that not only feel endless, but are, inexplicably, less believable than sequences involving magic wands and flying motorcycles. )

So, in short, the Deathly Hallows got well deserved upturned thumbs from everyone I saw it with last night, and perhaps most importantly, I don’t have to be behind the curve and wait on line to see it with the rest of the nerds this weekend. Ha!

Kids, “master clowns,” and one small, sweet victory. Probably.

2010-11-17T12:37:00.006-05:00

As any parent will tell you, the benefits of raising a child are many, if for no other reason that children will occasionally confirm and reinforce your most deeply held beliefs. Mostly, of course, my kids spend much of their time inventing new ways to turn my hair grey, but still, my heart is warmed on those rare occasions that they inadvertently act as little emotional enablers.

To wit: it was on a warm autumn day not unlike this very one that my younger son announced to me, unbidden and without any hint of irony, that “clowns are bad.” He was, at the time, a mere tot of five or six and the first thought that came to mind was something along the lines of “out of the mouths of babes…”

This moment, then, was illustrative of couple of things. The first is that yes, I really am so shallow that I tend to think mostly in clichés, but second and more importantly, it was the boy’s youthful balance between innocence and an appropriately jaundiced view of the world that lent an unassailable authority to his observation about the inherent malevolence of clowns.

Bearing all that in mind, today is a day that should be celebrated. It is a day on which my suspicions have been confirmed that not only are clowns vile puppets who bow to the will of a single Clown Overlord, but more importantly that they are mortal. That’s right, after all is said and done, even clowns must slip this mortal coil and go wherever it is that they meet their Clown Maker. So to speak. In short, at the age of 84, “Master Clown” Frosty the Clown has finally left this world, and I’d say the world is just a little less creepy for it.

Sure, some may think me “insensitive” to celebrate his departure, and others may call me “loony” to go on about clowns as if they really deserve the scorn they endure. Others, like my Lovely Bride, point out that he was just a regular guy making a living doing something he loved and left behind a perfectly nice widow and a family who are probably very sorry to see him gone. Well that’s fine, and maybe it’s true, but I’m still not taking any chances. Everyone else can just wait around for the next “master clown” to be anointed, but I’ll be hiding in the basement with a bottle of seltzer and a pail of confetti, just in case.

"Really? Skating with what, now?" Or, WTF part one.

2010-11-11T22:44:00.014-05:00

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise” is just one of the countless chestnuts dropped on us by inventor, wordsmith, ladies man and world’s most devoted Benjamin Franklin enthusiast: Benjamin Franklin. Certainly the case can be made that his propensity for self promotion was as successful as it was unseemly, but if nothing else Franklin did have a way of putting none too fine a point on the obvious. In this case, “early to bed, etc.” is a good reminder that getting one’s butt up and out first thing each morning makes the rest of the day go a little better.

Unless, of course, you end up in the gym watching morning television.

Now normally I’m an afternoon gym guy, but in an effort to live a more virtuous, Franklin-esque life, I’ve been at Planet Fitness bright and early. That’s working out fine, except that all the effort I had put into immunizing myself against the mindless nonsense of afternoon programming seems to be useless against the mindless nonsense that is morning programming. In short, I spend much of my time on the elliptical wondering if I really just saw what I think I did.

This morning, for instance, I saw some promos for an upcoming show called Skating with the Stars. By this afternoon I had convinced myself that I had just imagined the whole thing until my Lovely Bride assured me that there would indeed be a collection of tired looking “stars” flopping around on a skating rink. Moreover, as best I can tell one of the “stars” is a large, middle-aged drag queen purporting to be Sean Young. Weird.

Anyway, the Skating/Stars thing is presumably just one of the mysteries of early rising that will vex me in the days and weeks to come, but with any luck I’ll eventually get the hang of it. Unlike Arthur Dent and Thursdays… but that’s a reference for another day. See ya.

Keep Circulating The Tapes! - (Fresh? Timely? Nah.)

2010-11-04T12:27:00.005-04:00

It was nearly 20 years ago on a bright, sunny Saturday morning that I happened to be sitting in front of the TV when I inadvertently landed on the Comedy Channel. (Yes, that thing you kids call “Comedy Central” today is the result of the devastating Funny Wars between HA! and the Comedy Channel in the early 90s. Cable TV takes no prisoners, apparently.)

Anyway, it wasn’t long before I noticed that there were silhouettes blocking some of the action, such as it was, and that they were busy mocking the poor sap on the screen who happened to have a haircut so ridiculous that it could only be eclipsed by the bizarre fur Speedo hiding his junk. The silhouettes were, in short, those of Joel, Tom Servo and Crow having fun at the expense of a bit of cinematic detritus called Cave Dwellers. I was hooked.

So anyway, even though I’m sure that at some point you’ve been told that All Good Things Must Come to an End (the sort of maxim usually spouted by cranks and misanthropes who, as best I can tell, enjoy lowering children’s expectations and kicking puppies), it turns out not to be strictly true. In this case, even though MST3K has long since been sent upstate to a beautiful farm where it runs and plays with all the other cancelled shows, the fun still lives on. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett are busy peddling Rifftrax, in which they engage in exactly the same sort of behavior that made me fall in love with them in the first place. Ahhhh.

Even better, they do live shows which are, for those of you who don’t happen to live in Mike, Kevin or Bill’s basement, simulcast through Fathom Events to a theater near you. The last live Rifftrax event was a thorough dissection of the studiously incompetent House on Haunted Hill, a movie complete with marionette skeletons and a plot so stultifyingly convoluted that in the end the movie just sort of stopped, rather than reaching any sort of conclusion. (To be fair, it must be noted that Vincent Price, urbane as ever, seemed to be a good sport about the entire affair.)

So anyway, true to the Dad’s off the Couch tagline, none of this has been timely or relevant to anything, other than to note that if you A: enjoy things, and B: are a nicer person than Hitler, you’ll probably groove on the Rifftrax thing. Go on, they’re waiting for you.

Keep circulating the tapes!

Story Time: Steve and the New MacBook Air

2010-10-27T13:44:00.003-04:00

So as best I can tell, Steve will sell me a little netbook for a thousand bucks. A beautiful, shiny netbook which would, presumably, make me the envy of every Apple nerd in Starbucks. But, as snappy an offer as that may seem, I’m going to have to decline.

Not for religious reasons, mind you; although I mostly use Windows machines, I’m certainly not immune to the lure of devices that work as effortlessly and intuitively as the iPod I’m listening to at the moment. No, it just seems to me that the 500 some-odd dollar difference between the 11 inch Air and the big-boy-sized Acer on which I’m writing this spectacular little missive could probably be better used elsewhere.

That $500 would cover, for instance, 196 of the triple espressos that I compulsively drink at Starbucks while I’m busy not impressing the resident Apple nerds. Or roughly 125 of Amazon’s daily $3.99 Album deals of which I seem to have grown inordinately fond. -(That’s a LOT of Groove Armada, people.)- Or, I suppose that same $500 would buy new shoes and clothes for my kids, but let’s not get carried away.

In short, when Steve speaks, I notice that there are a lot of people with glazed eyes and just a tiny bit of drool running down the corner of their mouths, which, if nothing else just seems a smidge unseemly. Unlike drinking 196 triple espressos, which is, obviously, perfectly reasonable. -Just saying.

How I learned to stop worrying and love Father’s Day.

2010-06-23T10:33:00.001-04:00

As anyone who’s known me for more than five or ten seconds can tell you, I’m not really a fan of attention. Neither am I a big fan of fuss, bother or commotion of any sort. (Which, incidentally, clearly illustrates that my early decision to quit Hermit School, get married and have kids may have been deeply flawed.)

In any case, over the years I’ve been learning to overcome some of these social deficits I’ve been so carefully cultivating and guarding; which in practical terms means that this last Father’s Day I finally decided to let go and milk the day for all it’s worth. So, when my Lovely Bride offered to fetch the necessary boatload of wings and ribs at Costco for the big day, I acquiesced. When Father’s day arrived I promptly went downstairs and, instead of lighting the grill, fired up the X-Box instead and played a full hour of Call of Duty 3.

Then, having stared slack-jawed at interwebs for a bit, I allowed myself to be ushered to the big comfy chair on the deck where I accepted an ice cold Clausthaler. (I also seem to have developed a taste for hilariously pretentious websites, but that’s a post for a different day.) And so, before I knew it, I was surrounded by family, ribs, kids with sticky fingers, Father’s Day cards and a new hammock to boot. All, I might add, while allowing myself to embrace the fuss, which, as it turns out, is pretty easy when you learn to stop worrying and love Father’s Day.

Now I just need to figure out how to make all this work for our 4th of July BBQ. And jeez while I’m at it, maybe Labor Day too.

World Cup? Sure, whatever. Just flip a coin, why don’t you?

2010-06-14T11:28:00.002-04:00

Barbershops, darkened tap-rooms and the sidewalks in front of coffee shops have one thing in common: they are bastions of the testosterone-fueled male banter that inevitably centers around one thing: sports. Sure, current wives/girlfriends and politics also occasionally rear their heads as fodder for stories that are usually as pointless as they are entertaining, but really it’s about the sports.

Anyway, I must admit that that the in-utero genetic lottery in which we are all forced to participate seems to have left me short of one crucial bit of DNA: the gene that makes guys give a crap who hit the most RBIs or three-pointers or however it is that you score touchdowns. I am, quite frankly, Sports Challenged.

I guess as deficits go, my lack of interest in watching grown men run around in Lycra jerseys hasn’t hampered me too greatly; I still enjoy a dark bar, cooking over a fire, jokes I can’t tell my kids, and other ostensibly male nonsense. (Although having said all that, I must admit that I do actually watch the Yankees in the post-season when the games actually matter… at least in the sense that a season-ending elimination matters.)

But here’s the thing that’s truly inexplicable to me: Soccer and the World Cup. But mostly the soccer part. For God’s sake, the games go on forever, nobody ever scores, and even if they do, the games always end in a tie anyway. Which brings me to the most inexplicable part of soccer: the free-kick parties at the end of tied games. Really? Free kicks? You’re going to use an activity entirely unrelated to the game itself to decide who wins after having spent the better part of a day running up and down a giant field? It’s as bizarre and disappointing as if baseball games tied in the ninth were decided by flipping a coin.

Not that it really matters to me, obviously, it’s just that it’s really weird. Just saying. Um, Go USA?

Shaving and a bit of shameless pandering. (For a good cause, of course.)

2010-03-12T15:26:00.006-05:00

Well, the snow’s melting and St. Patrick’s Day flags are sprouting up all over the neighborhood like a plague of reminders that it’s St. Baldrick’s season again; so if you’ve ever had the urge to either shave your noggin or at least try to convince one of your more malleable kids to do it, now’s the time.

Anyway, it was time to send out a Thank You email to everyone who supported our youngest who did it last year, and since I hate letting anything go to waste I figured I would repurpose the email and post it here. I am, in short, never afraid to maximize the heart-string-pulling potential of a piece like this. So then here it is:

------------------------------------------------
3/9/10

Hello all:

First, thanks so much to everyone who supported Ryan’s St. Baldrick’s Day Shavee Extravaganza last year; your generosity is much appreciated.

Now given Ryan’s foray into the exciting world of Type 1 diabetes last year, some might be tempted to wonder why he’s chosen to participate in a pediatric cancer fundraiser again rather than one related to his own thing.

At least partially, it seems that Ryan is excited to repeat the exercise because it gave him a reasonable excuse to avoid what is, apparently, the horrendous chore of getting a haircut. To that end, he has not had even a trim since being a shavee last March.

That said, Ryan’s participation this year is, of course, more than just about his hair. When Ryan was diagnosed last May he spent a week in Westchester Medical Center's pediatric wing. We all learned a lot that week, but perhaps most importantly we were reminded of a lesson that’s all too easy to forget: that there are always, always others less fortunate than ourselves. There is, in short, perhaps nothing more humbling than spending a week with children who are both living with and battling cancer.

So thanks again. The following URL links directly to Ryan’s St. Baldrick’s page where you will find a “before picture” of his unruly (tangly, unsightly mess) of hair that’s long overdue to hit the floor, as well as the links necessary to donate to the cause. (There are also before and after pictures from last year.)

2010: www.stbaldricks.org/participants/RyanReeeallyNeedsACut

Thanks!

Relativistic Ramblings: Is the music good? I dunno, let’s ask the 80’s.

2010-02-07T13:36:00.002-05:00

There are few things that live on in perpetuity like those that you grew up with. Or, put simply in deference to you, Kent: everyone knows that the music you grow up with is that which continues to resonate with you long after it has any right or reason to. At weddings or similar events, for instance, you’ll find those who were young during WWII are always shuffling around in a wobbly approximation of swing dancing whenever “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree” is played. (Quaint? Sure, but at least while grandma and grandpa are occupied on the dance floor the waiters get a break from getting yelled at for not bringing the Harvey Wallbangers fast enough.)

Moving on in generations: Acappella Do-Wop groups that regularly terrorize county fairs and the like are populated exclusively by beefy old guys who came of age in the 50’s and have a penchant for hot rods and size XXXL satin jackets. Do-wop? Really? I say “get some instruments and stop pretending you’re on a street corner in Flatbush, you vagrants.”

Then there are those who came of age in the 60’s, and as far as I’m concerned they still have to answer for Herman’s Hermits and The Turtles. (Is it fair to imply that Herman’s Hermits is characteristic of all 60’s music? Not really, but so what? Yeah you can bring up the Stones, The Who, Dead and Beatles, but it doesn’t change the fact that The Hermits sucked enough to smell up an entire decade. And Tiny Tim… oh never mind.)

Next of course came the 70’s; a dark time during which there was, inexplicably, no music at all. None. Moving on.

Now then, having arrived in the 80’s we find a decade represented by a golden renaissance of melodic genius. All was right with the world. New Wave bands littered the musical landscape like diamonds. (Neon pink and green diamonds.) Hair was big, clothes were all the colors of that neon rainbow, and if it didn’t come from Benetton it wasn’t worth wearing. (But what about Capezios and Members Only jackets, you ask? Yes, grasshopper, they were awesome as well.)

Music from the likes of Fine Young Cannibals, XTC and The English Beat filled frat houses and clubs alike, and there was a singer named Madonna who was, to some, young and attractive. Really! No lie!

The 80’s were fair and equitable though, and there were bands for those who preferred alternatives: That decade also saw, for instance, a few 60’s guys like Steve Winwood and John Fogerty come to their senses and create solo works that still define their careers. To me.

But then, all too suddenly, the dream ended when the 90’s blew in like a bitter wind. A bunch of bands from Seattle started filling the airwaves with their atonal nonsense called “Grunge,” and that, as they say, was pretty much that. Since then the musical landscape, such as it is, has been pretty much dominated by teenagers artificially manufactured in Disney’s musical sweatshops and something called Hip-Hop. Or so I’m told.

So there you have it: an exhaustive, scholarly history of music worthy of the finest tubes on the interwebs… and all in a mere five or six hundred words. Relativistic nonsense, you say? Well sure, but just to raise the stakes, I bet next time I can explain all of the world’s major religions even quicker. So there.

Diamonds in the rough.

2010-01-26T21:29:00.002-05:00

As I’m sure I’ve pointed out more often than is good for anybody, there are few activities that I enjoy as much as wallowing in the shiny baubles that magically appear on the interweb each morning. To some, time spent that way is akin to getting caught in a virtual La Brea Tar Pits of link bait and indefensibly ridiculous bits of electronic effluvia; but I’m more than shallow enough to enjoy all of it.

To wit: just this morning I followed a few links on the Times’ Op-Ed page that were part of a sidebar entitled “Resources: More on what books to throw out and why it’s a good idea to clean one’s home library.” One of the links included was this little gem by Lewis Grossberger, which just shows to go ‘ya why one should never, ever, take anything at face value. Grossberger’s “Resource” is, in short, one of those shiny baubles I so enjoy, and even better, it was hiding in plain sight amongst some of the rather solemn bits of literary opinion on which the Times has always depended.

So, enjoy the shiny and have a nice day while you’re at it.

Oh the irony. I even lost track of this post til just now.

2010-01-13T11:21:00.002-05:00

Made it. It was close, but I just barely crawled across the finish line by dropping our 80 or so Christmas cards in the mailbox. And now that it’s official, I guess I can remove the razor wire from around the chimney and invite Santa to come work his magic. Good thing too; if the Fat Man’s only choice had been to pass by our house and leave nothing but lumps of coal, the boys would likely have staged a mutiny here at our little compound. Or a bloodless coup at the very least. Either way, I would have been kind of disappointed to not get my annual allotment of boxer shorts and socks. You know, exciting Dad stuff.

Anyway, I’m still mortified that we very nearly ran out of time for everything this year and… holy crap, I still haven’t gotten any eggnog… that coup may still be in play after all… gotta go. Merry Christmas.

The Special Olympics of Holiday Cheer

2009-12-03T10:21:00.003-05:00

There are very few races in which I have the slightest bit of interest, yet I believe I’ve found another I couldn’t care less about: The First Christmas Card Mailed race. I should have known it was coming, really.

As I wandered down to the mailbox yesterday there was a suspiciously wintry chill in the air and the hushed silence that pervaded the driveway meant that the omnipresent leaf blowers were all done for the season. It was, in short, December 1st. As I nosed through the effluvia that the United States Postal Service is forever leaving in the mailbox, I spied what could only be a bit of red and green glitter at the bottom. Glitter from a Christmas card that was winking and smirking at me in the way that only a harbinger of this particular holiday season can.

“Yoo hoo,” whispered the glittery card, “guess what? It’s December and you haven’t even thought about Christmas cards have you? No you haven’t. I, however, came from a family that is organized, has their shit together and probably looks like they belong in a Ralph Lauren catalogue to boot. So there.”

I rolled my eyes which is really the only thing you can do when faced with cheeky, albeit hallucinatory harbingers of this most glittery of holiday seasons. Worse, by the time I got the offending card indoors and isolated it as one would a biohazard, I realized that it had left a trail of glitter behind me that looked as if I was being stalked by Phyllis Diller.

What to do then? Well, even though I realize I’ll never win the First Christmas Cards Mailed race, I really do have to get my holiday game face on. So then, it’s time to 1: beat a few smiles out of the boys, 2: snap a picture of the enforced smiles regardless of what I’m assuming will be their spectacular insincerity, 3: think of a pithy seasonal remark to add to the cards, and 4: actually mail the damn things.

So, I figure if I get all that done by, say, the 23rd or so I’ll be a winner just for finishing. Kind of like the Special Olympics of holiday cheer, if you will. Happy holidays!

The Tao of Wu? How about the Tao of Me?

2009-11-20T15:01:00.007-05:00

Sure, we all know the Tao of Lao Tzu, the Tao of Steve, the Tao of Pooh and the Tao of goodness knows who else, but now the “abbot” of Wu-Tang Clan and awesome nickname owner Robert “The RZA” Diggs (The RZA? Yes, I believe a nickname pronounced “Rizz-a” is pretty awesome.) has offered us the Tao of Wu. Really. Well that’s just fine but I think it’s high time I stood up and shared the Tao of Me.

So what are my qualifications for flaunting my own, unique Tao? Well, mostly that I’m anything but unique, really. That is to say that basically I’m a young-ish guy who’s a husband, father of two and all around regular guy. And unlike Mr. Diggs who is, apparently, chock full of Tao, I’ve never had to overcome any great obstacles such as race, gender or disability. Everything in my life has, quite frankly, come pretty easily.

To put a finer point on it, I’ve never had to work very hard. Well... I did spend twenty years in the trenches of the food service industry, but I hardly think the difficulty of my career trajectory matches, say, coal miners, single moms, factory workers in South America, child laborers in Asia or even Victorian waifs selling pencils on snowy street corners. So in the scheme of things, working a job where I catered to cranky old people who liked to pretend they were still in the Catskills was, in short, a cake walk. Sometime literally, but that’s a different story.

Anyway, to summarize what otherwise might be an unnecessarily long winded treatise, the Tao of Me pretty much boils down to these two things:

1: Be nice to people. It’s not that hard and even if you don’t believe in Karma, you will, over the long term, feel better. (Except of course if you’re a douche bag, in which case never mind.)

2: Share. Or, put much less simply: even if you’re tempted to feel like an entitled libertarian because you don’t think your tax dollars should go to undeserving people or be used to light streets you don’t drive on… just stop. Stop feeling all persecuted because some government services are inefficient and there are some people who take advantage of them. And just because you don’t personally use a particular service doesn’t mean that it’s unnecessary or has nothing to do with you, because it does.

And how is that, exactly? Because even if you’re the sort of dismissive jerk that’s frightened by anything you think is liberal or touchy-feely… bear in mind that we’re all connected. How? What do you think happens if no one with dark skin can get a loan for a car, house or business? What happens if kids in struggling families can’t get access to meaningful higher education? What happens if everyone who’s born into a crummy neighborhood is allowed to fail? Chaos, that’s what. It’s the recipe for the creation and preservation of a permanent underclass. Remember the Watts riots? Sure you do. And if you don’t, look it up. ‘Nuff said.

Anyhow, I once again seem to have gotten far enough afield that there’s no obvious way to turn this little intellectual safari around. And that’s fine, really, because I actually like it here and it’s time for lunch anyway. Tao out.

Cognitive Dissonance.

2009-09-19T16:37:00.013-04:00

There are few guilty pleasures I enjoy as much as reposting some of the shiny baubles I happen across on the interwebs each day, and that pleasure isn’t dampened in the slightest by the fact that it’s very likely that everyone has seen them already. And, as I also harbor a love of all things ironic with an ardor that may border on the unseemly, the following bit is sort of an exacta, if you will. =(Although to be fair to Irony, this piece is really more of an exercise in full-blown cognitive dissonance… so there you go.)

Anyway, enjoy:

"I am a conservative.

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level
determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its
valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right."

Routine? Not today, baby.

2009-08-06T22:03:00.005-04:00

Although there are few things as reassuring as routine, occasionally breaking out of that routine can be enlightening. Or weirdly entertaining, or even liberating. So this afternoon I found myself on an elliptical machine at the gym a full three hours later than usual which meant that I was exposed to a whole new world of bad TV; as opposed to the bad TV to which I’ve already grown accustomed.

Anyway, it seems that a part of that world is someone named Bonnie Hunt who has a talk show (who knew?) which, this very afternoon, featured an overly-enthusiastic audience engaged in a karaoke competition. Normally my default reaction would have been something predictably smug like muttering “really?” while rolling my eyes, but in this case I was transfixed by a young couple that got up and sang Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. They shook. They shimmied. They gave themselves to this performance as though it was a life-defining moment, which it may well have been. Ultimately though, not only was the performance cringe-worthy in both a meta and specific-to-them kind of way, but my heart also went out to this young woman who... wait for it... has no idea that she’s married to a gay guy.

Or maybe she does. Or maybe he isn’t actually gay, but just super-thrilled in an especially fabulous way to be in front of an audience singing an Elton John song. Who knows? More to the point, I guess, is that this couple clearly broke out of their routine for an afternoon and had a great time. So go on, turn off the machine and go do something different for a change. Just like I’m doing right...

P.S. - Oh yeah, and as always, Calvin has something trenchant to add:

Mmmm, smells like fresh links. Yummy.

2009-07-30T11:38:00.006-04:00

There are really very few reasons that come to mind when trying to justify keeping a blog going while you’re busy writing here and there for other spaces; but of course there’s always shameless self promotion.

Not the sort of shameless self promotion that’s even aimed at real people exactly, but more of the sort that relies on tossing up links to work in as many places as possible just to give the All Powerful Search Engines something to chew on and index. (Yeah I’m looking at you, Google, Yahoo and yes, even you, little Bing. So cute!)

So then, on to business:

Review of the New Hard Rock Cafe in Yankee Stadium

Three "One-Tank-Getaway" Vacations from New York City

Day Hikes in the Lower Hudson Valley

Have a nice day!

The Race to the Bottom Continues.

2009-07-02T22:08:00.005-04:00

The new bank down the street from us doesn’t think I can figure out their ATM. At least that’s what I’m guessing, judging from the great lengths they’ve gone to make it as blinky, flashy and generally exciting as it is. Actually I think they’ve done such a good job of removing even the slightest hint of mystery as to how the contraption works that even our dog must be tempted to grab a cash card and give it a try.

Really:

I guess the next time I see that old guy on the floor next to the ATM I’ll have to consider that he may not be a hobo after all. For all I know he may just be a victim of a flash induced seizure. I really need to find a new bank.

Michael Jackson AND Farrah Fawcett? Somebody crossed the streams.

2009-06-25T19:53:00.004-04:00

Goodness knows there’ll be terabytes written about both of them, but what I’m tickled by is that already the coincidence that they met their demise on the same day is being pondered, mused and mulled over by everyone from the Times to Blogger Bob. They don’t, after all, really have anything in common =(Except for the fact that they now share one very unpleasant date)= other than the fact that each was a cultural icon during roughly the same era.

But icon-wise, they were both compelling in their own way; one was a hot looking white chick, and the other starred in Charlie’s Angels. =(Too easy? Sure, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.) = But really though, there’s an entire generation in the western world that grew up with them and spent far too much time either listening to the Gloved One or gazing plaintively at that poster. Sigh.

So, that said, I have to admit that although I wasn’t really a fan of either of them I did still feel that odd sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach when I heard the news of their simultaneous demise. I guess the real lesson here is that that you don’t always get to choose the influences that wire your synapses and make you who you are. Go figure.

Coffee and cows. And rain, lots of rain.

2009-06-22T13:24:00.005-04:00

It's not that I don’t enjoy a rainy day as much as the next guy (which I don’t, actually), but I’m pretty sure that we’ve all had quite enough of this month’s Old Testament-style precipitation. We are, in fact, in the middle of the wettest, coldest June on record here in the East.= Really.

Now this may not mean much to you if you’re A: in the southwest where it’s always hot and dry and everyday would be a beach day if you had any beaches, or B: if you’re in the northwest in which case you probably wouldn’t have noticed all this rain anyway. = (Although I am now starting to get a little perspective on why Seattle is the birthplace of such things as grunge music and Starbucks: ‘cause jeez, if it really did rain all the time I would need to either drown my sorrows in the self-indulgent music that launched the careers of a thousand crappy, self-indulgent bands like Nirvana… =or, I’d be self medicating with Grande-Frappe-Mocha-Chino-Lattes till the cows come home.) =Which pre-supposes that there are any cows in Seattle, which I doubt because I’m also under the impression that vegan diets are mandatory up there. Of course I may be wrong about that last part, but it’s really not my fault because all this rain has got me a little muddled up.

Anyway, my point is that somebody had better be mostly done building an ark of some sort, because it looks like we’re going to need it sooner rather than later. And my only suggestion there is that this time we learn from experience and leave a few things behind: mosquitoes, spiders and most of the other creepy-crawlies for instance. Yuck. = Oooh, but we can’t forget to bring the cows, because unlike those hippies from Seattle I think they’re delicious.

Have a great day.

Father's day: 13 years and counting.

2009-06-20T23:37:00.003-04:00

Oddly enough this started out as a Stay At Home Dad Blog about six years ago (Really? Is it possible that I've been clogging up the tubes for that long?) so I guess it's appropriate to give at least a passing nod to any and all dads out there, regardless of where they are or how far along they are on their journey towards producing fully grown and productive members of society. My progeny, for instance, are both teens now and there are days, quite frankly, that I can't wait for them to be done.

But anyway... I'm still looking froward to yet another Father's Day while working on a new list of entirely unreasonable demands, 'cause as far as I'm concerned if you can't exploit a day like this then you're just not trying hard enough. (Bwaa ha ha ha ha....)

Have a great Dad's day!

Who rocks? Clapton and Winwood, that's who.

2009-06-11T17:53:00.007-04:00

Saw the Meadowlands kick-off of Clapton and Winwood’s 14 city tour last night; and it was, in a word, outstanding. A full review is forthcoming on Associated Content, but for the moment here’s a setlist and an especially crappy video I took. Whoo hoo.

01. Had To Cry Today
02. Low Down
03. After Midnight
04. Sleeping In The Ground
05. Presence Of The Lord
06. Glad
07. Well Alright
08. Tough Luck Blues
09. Tell The Truth
10. Pearly Queen
11. No Face, No Name, No Number
12. Forever Man
13. Georgia On My Mind - Steve Winwood solo
14. Driftin' - acoustic
15. Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out
16. Layla - acoustic version
17. Can't Find My Way Home
18. Split Decision
19. Little Wing
20. Voodoo Chile
21. Cocaine
22. Dear Mr. Fantasy (Encore)

Sometimes it's all about Me

2009-05-22T10:00:00.007-04:00

Just off the top of my head I can’t think of many things for which I’d be pleased to be paid a pittance, but writing seems to be one of them. Financially lucrative? Good lord no. Economically sensible? Of course not. =But… getting paid a pittance to write is not a bad place to start as it begins filling a few of those intellectual holes I seem to have been developing lately.

So then, let the shameless self promotion begin. Enjoy.

Review of the New Hard Rock Cafe in Yankee Stadium

Online Support Groups for Men Fighting Prostate Cancer

Professional Engagement Photographers in Westchester and Rockland County, New York
Five Fabulous Fall Wedding Dresses
• Summer Festivals and Events in Westchester and Rockland County, New York
• Book Review: Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
• A Guide to Memorial Day Weekend in New York City
Pediatric Dentists in Rockland County and Northern New Jersey

Rip Van... Hey There, What's Up?

2009-05-20T10:52:00.003-04:00

It’s May already? Jeez, how did that happen? Good lord, I feel just a little bit like Rip Van Winkle after a particularly epic bender. Well, I guess his thing was that he was just a lazy bastard who was hiding from his wife, and rather than whisky my thing is that I’ve actually been busy for a change.

Sure, I’ve been occupied at home keeping up with the boys and house all along, but I’ve actually been getting paid a little bit to write lately so I must admit that the urge to grace this little space with my unique brand of staggeringly insightful and amusing bon mots has waned. Or then again I might just be running out of steam.

Nope… I’ll have none of that. So then, in the next day or two I’ll be gearing up for a little story about our first Yankee game in the new stadium, and I have an absolutely original anecdote about how irritating teenagers can be. Really! Teenagers = exasperating! Whoda thunk? And since I’m obviously the first parent to experience such a thing I’ll be sharing like there’s no tomorrow.

Have a nice day!

Still Twittering? Yeah I'm a Luddite too.

2009-04-23T21:03:00.007-04:00

Joseph Kennedy, as the story goes, realized it was time to get out of the market when he got a stock tip from a shoe shine boy in 1929. When I originally heard the tale it was Rockefeller Jr. that received that tip rather than Old Joe, but the moral remains the same: Once everyone’s in the pool, you know it’s time to towel off and go hit the bar before somebody poops it all up.

Anyway, there’s a lot of grumbling to that effect in the twitter-verse these days; and although opinion varies about who the ultimate culprit is, (Britney, Rep. Joe Barton et al, Hilton, Kutcher, Oprah…) there’s certainly a consensus among the cool kids that twitter has jumped the shark. In response, a lot of them seem to be following a sort of 21st century manifest destiny by moseying along to Friendfeed where they can graze the wide open spaces of social media undisturbed by those all those pesky celebrities, noobs and posers. Or so I’m told.

At any rate, in the face of these shifting social sands I’m still holding fast to my status as a Twitter luddite, and as such I would point out that just last night I had a fine time following an exchange between Adam Savage and John Hodgman regarding whether or not it might be possible to pee straight through one’s khakis. It was actually pretty funny. Really.

So you crazy kids can have your Friendfeeds and Jaikus and Delicious-es and Flikrs and Linkedins; I’m just fine hanging out with the 2008-set, thank you very much. (And no, we don’t even mind the Fail Whale too much either, so there.)

Adam Lambert and the Lumpenproletariat

2009-04-08T09:52:00.005-04:00

American Idol? =Really? =Yeah, well, as I’ve noted before it’s a shady netherworld into which I’ve been inadvertently drawn, just as one would be to Amway, midget tossing or being Born Again. One assumes.

Anyway, the embarrassingly all-too-sincere skinny on last night’s Idol is pretty much this:

• Early fave Danny Gokey continues coasting, and while he’s still going to be a finalist he’s been lazy and it’s disappointing to watch.
• Also-early-fave Lil Rounds continues coasting as well, and although I originally thought it was laziness like Gokey, after last night I think it’s clear that she really just has no idea what she’s doing.
• Nice-blind-guy Scott of the oddly distracting hair (Just me?) continues doing mostly OK, but he’s really a Christian Pop star and just doesn’t know it yet.
• Allison has an outstanding voice, but is clearly a 36 year-old Hooter’s waitress that at some point made a Mephistophelean bargain in which she’s switched bodies with a random teenager. Which is fine, except that if we’ve learned anything from all those body-switch movies from the 80s, she’s gonna get busted at the end when there’s a hilarious mix-up with the magic idol/statue/spell. Oh yeah, and she’s not going to win.
• Cute-guy (is his name Kris? Who can remember?) does a good job as well, but doesn’t have the charisma to win.
• Wormy-guy Matt is too inconsistent for my taste. As well as being vaguely reptilian. Ick.
• Anoop-dawg remains oddly compelling and strong, it’s just a shame that he feels like a lightweight and is probably just a little too goofy to go all the way.

Which leaves us with dark horse Adam Lambert; who, for the record, absolutely killed with his brilliant cover of Ring of Fire just as he did with last night’s outstanding performance of Strange World. Sure, the song was probably a little cliché for the nerdy set, but I can only hope that it was distinctive enough to prove to the Middle American lumpenproletariat that Adam is far and away stronger than the pleasant but lamely homogenous Gokey.

That is, I mean, as if I really cared about big dumb old American Idol. ‘Cause reality shows are all lame and I’m not really taking this seriously at all. Yeah, so there. (Well anyway, I’ve gotta sneak off now and catch up on some Dancing with the Stars. Shhh, don’t tell.)

Cue the Vultures.

2009-04-01T10:13:00.006-04:00

Hey, feeling old? You find that it’s getting harder to think of ways to put a positive spin on just how tall your kids are getting and all that implies about your mortality? No? Just me? Yeah right. Anyway, it was just a few weeks ago that I realized that my oldest boy is as tall as me now, and I’ve gotta say it was a little more disconcerting than I thought it would be. Not life altering by any means, but still, humbling on the same sort of level as the first time you’re unpleasantly surprised by a birthday. Or the first day you catch yourself consciously thinking: “Easy now, don’t slip getting out of the tub.”

I guess it’s nothing more than a low-level, first skirmish with mortality though; so I suppose the positive spin here is that I still have time to save up for that mid-life-crisis-Corvette I’ll be wanting. Phew.

( "consciously thinking"?= Yeah, whatever.)

Sacrifice, Snark and Spin

2009-03-25T16:15:00.005-04:00

As spouses and parents we all make sacrifices; indeed there’s no other way to successfully navigate any meaningful relationship without opening up and surrendering a part of one’s self. Or so I’ve been told. Actually I guess it makes sense that everything’s not all about me, because if it were I’d have probably ended up being That Guy on Cops who was holed up in a cheap motel room in Vegas with a one-legged hooker and a big stash of crank instead of being the all ‘round Good Guy that I am. One assumes. Actually I don’t even really know what crank is.

Anyway, what does all this mean, practically speaking? That instead of subsisting on an entertainment diet made up entirely of lasers, spaceships and things that go boom, I’ve begun watching American Idol with the rest of my family. And Dancing with the Stars. And probably a few other things I should be ashamed about as well. (What Not to Wear anybody? Bueller?)

It’s ok, though, (I tell myself) because it’s all really quality time spent with the Boys and my Lovely Bride. And actually it really is quality time, because rather than being passive, potato-like recipients of the reality show weirdness that ABC and Fox streams into our living room, we take a much more active role. Much like Joel and the ‘bots, my Boys and I spend our time amusing each other with a running commentary on the absurdities with which Ryan Seacrest and Tom Bergeron present us each week.

In fact it’s become something of a game to see which of us can be the sharpest, snarkiest wag in the room as we constantly hone our Oscar Wilde-like wit just to the point where my Lovely Bride finally snaps. Well, perhaps “snaps” puts too fine a point on it; but either way we know we aren’t really bringing our game until she sighs, rolls her eyes and pauses the DVR until we shut the hell up.

So there you go. I’d argue that far from being the wasteland that TV is often portrayed as being, it’s really an opportunity for not only some personal growth, but some genuinely constructive quality time with the family. =(And there's your spin.)

Spring already? Ok, here we go:

2009-03-20T15:02:00.006-04:00

Ah, Spring. The traditional season of growth and renewal. The daffodils are on their way and the magic of Daylight Savings Time means an extra hour of life-affirming sunlight at the end of each day. And as if that weren't enough, spring is also a harbinger of all sorts of other goodies as well: Easter baskets, a spate of first Communion celebrations, some Passover gatherings and even the occasional baptism or bris. So either Amen or Mazal tov… =whichever.

(Moreover, I believe it’s been noted that Spring is when a young man's thoughts turn to love. While that may be true, I seem to recall that my own youth seemed to revolve around "love" to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Indeed, I’m pretty sure that the vernal equinox has absolutely nothing to do with all those raging hormones…= I mean “love”. =But as usual, I digress.)

Anyway, this particular Spring is looking even brighter than usual because it’s the first time I’ve been spared the seasonal albatross that is Little League. That’s right, I don't like Little League. There, I said it.

Ok, I realize that my ambivalence towards (read: hatred of) Little League puts me just outside the norm, but jeez, how many hours can you sit there and watch your progeny wiff the ball? How many times can you applaud someone else’s kid for making it to first without falling down? And then there are the physical challenges: by the end of the season the sun is baking you on the same aluminum bleachers on which you froze your buns at the beginning of the season.

So, where does this all leave me? Well, despite this failure to conform I do still believe that I'm a good father, and yes, a good American. I play basketball in the driveway with my boys. We throw a football at each other in the back yard. I drive them to religion and karate. In the summer I cook slabs of corn-fed beef on my grill and offer the neighbors a cold one to go with it.

So, yeah, that's me: all round regular guy and good dad. =And yeah, I hate Little League. =Going to make something of it?= No, I didn't think so.= Go Spring!

Learning, Giving and Shaving. In that order.

2009-03-17T09:05:00.006-04:00

Just recently I was mulling over the surprisingly long list of things that parents try to teach their children. It’s a list populated with not just life lessons to be learned as quickly and painlessly as possible, but pitfalls to be avoided. But it’s a really long list though, isn’t it?

It starts with the basics for the young ‘uns: Don’t-Take-Things-That-Aren’t-Yours, and then moves on to other seemingly simple concepts that are inexplicably much harder to follow, such as: Stop-Hitting-Your-Brother-With-That-Garbage-Can-Right-Now-Before-I-Have-To-Come-Down-There.

Anyway, two more things on that list are: Help-Others and Try-New-Things, which we managed to combine into one activity this weekend when our youngest decided to participate in our local St. Baldrick’s Day event. It’s a fundraiser in which participants not only have their heads shaved for the amusement of onlookers, but manage to raise a good bit of scratch for pediatric cancer research as well.

So really, it’s a win all the way around: a good cause got some dough, our shaggy youngest finally got an embarrassingly belated haircut, and now the rest of us have a peach-fuzz covered noggin around the house to mock for a little while. And, we get to mark a couple of things off the list.

...but some animals are more equal than others.

2009-03-13T14:02:00.004-04:00

I’ve found, and I’d think you’d have to agree, that one of the great pleasures of growing up, making new friends and moving around is that your cultural horizons are inevitably expanded and your social life grows richer and more satisfying.

Having kids though, exposes a dark side of that very same dynamic; becoming a parent expands your cultural horizons as well, but in a very different direction. No longer are you hanging out with your cool friends and talking about music, books and politics… no, as a parent you wake up one day to find yourself adrift in a complex, baffling world populated by talking bears, pint-sized explorers and anthropomorphic trains.

So, bearing that in mind, I particularly enjoyed this bravura missive during a visit to Cheeky’s Hideaway. He does a fine job of demystifying some of the more complex economic forces that seem to govern the alternate reality that clutters up my TV every day. Go on, give it a thorough read. I’ll wait.

Back now? Good, because I still have a few questions of my own that remain unanswered. I am, for instance, still baffled by some of the thornier social issues involved, particularly those surrounding inter-species subjugation. How is it, for instance, that a sponge named Bob can in good conscience keep a mollusk named Gary as a pet? On a leash, no less?

Other such cell-shaded instances of domination abound: Mickey Mouse “owns” a dog, as does that disturbingly anthropomorphized aardvark named Arthur. There are, of course, countless other examples.

So just exactly what are the rules that govern this inter-species subjugation? Are they social, biological, or perhaps even intrinsically existential? I’m assuming it can’t simply be an issue of sentience, as we all know that Gary the snail is not only savvier than his “master” but has the natty fashion sense to wear wingtip shoes as well.

If it turns out, as I’m afraid it may, that this class distinction merely lies in the ability to verbalize, then the animated world must be legion with animals trapped in a nightmare of mute impotence, unable to articulate their desire for freedom.

Oooh creepy. Never mind. I should probably just watch something harmless like re-runs of The Bachelor instead… eeew, no. Hey, maybe I’ll just go outdoors and see what’s happening in the real world. =Thoughts?

Dreams deferred.

2009-03-11T10:52:00.004-04:00

It occurs to me that one of the joys of parenthood is that not only do you get the underlying biological satisfaction of passing along your DNA, but as a bonus you get to pass along a lot of your emotional baggage as well. Now considering my propensity for monumental self absorption, which of those two gifts to posterity do you suppose interests me the most?

Yeah, it’s all about the baggage for me. After all, it’s fine that future generations will benefit from the genetic diversity I’ve injected into the collective gene pool, (Eeeew?) but what’s much more immediate and interesting to me is the near-instant gratification of projecting a lifetime of hopes and dreams on my unsuspecting offspring. Really now, who of you out there hasn’t put a bat into Little Billy’s hands while secretly fantasizing about the huge checks that are bound to come rolling in from Nike? Or a golf club, or a football or whatever. Play your cards right and a decadently comfortable retirement on the Cote d'Azur can be yours, thanks to Little Billy.

But life doesn’t always cooperate, does it? Nope, just when I thought I had everything worked out, Fate has gone and thrown a surprisingly large wrench into the midst of my little plans. It seems, if you can believe it, that kids have a natural selfish streak and don’t always play along. To wit: My older boy is 13 now, and he’s long since lost any interest he had in baseball (or any other sensible sport, for that matter) and has spent the last year or two doing what? Playing music, of course.

That’s right, my favorite little retirement plan… I mean son, has decided to follow his muse, literally, and be a Rock-God. That’s right, a guitar-playing, song-writing, vocal-wailing musician. I’ve tried pointing out to him that as a musician the only likely future he can look forward to is one of a perpetual diet of Cheetos and sleeping on other people’s couches, but of course he thinks that sounds great. Great. (And what makes it even just that much more galling is that I wasn’t really even married to the notion of sports-star. Really, any of the clichéd old faves would have been fine. You know, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.)

Oh well, I know it’s early yet and he’s liable to smarten up, but I guess it would be best for everybody if I just relaxed and let him be. When I look at it objectively, after all, he really is pretty talented. Ok, it’s more than that: he has a great ear, can pick up any instrument pretty much overnight, and jeez can he shred. Fine then. I guess I’ll just have to focus on his little brother instead.

And hey, you never know, it may work out for the older one. After all, I bet Mick Jagger bought his mum and dad a house or two.

25 Random things... Oh for heaven's sake.

2009-03-03T07:48:00.006-05:00

I suppose one of my favorite ways of categorizing people is by using a clear, unambiguous binary system of taxonomy. Which is, I suppose yet again, just a pretentious way of saying that I’m a fan of using the old saw: =“There are two kinds of people in the world…”

In this case, I was just thinking about the fact that I’m more of a scrutinizer than an enjoy-er… =if you will. = I always seem, for instance, to be more interested in what’s going on behind the scenes and how things work than in actually paying attention to whatever it is that I’m supposed to be enjoying. Sort of like a magic show I remember seeing when I was 8 or 9. It was just an affable guy in a cheap suit who was pretty good at sleight of hand tricks;= but I enjoyed the show in a very different way than the other kids around me because I was busy watching his every move and trying to figure out how he did the tricks.

Anyway, that’s all really just to say that my penchant for deconstruction also applies to this ‘25-Random-Things’ meme that’s been chugging along for the last month or two. It’s been sort of interesting to watch, but not because I really have much interest in the banal drivel that people are busy revealing about themselves. =(Not like the stuff you and I write, of course; we’re fascinating) =No, it’s the science behind the lifecycle of the 25-Things meme itself that’s actually kind of cool.

As Chris Wilson points out in Slate there’s a really interesting correlation between the seemingly inexplicable growth of the 25 meme and the way biological pathogens spread themselves. What’s more, just the fact that the meme evolved organically through several stages from one perfect square (16 Things) until it finally settled on another (25), suggests that it’s also yet another natural phenomenon that can be described using the mathematics of fractal geometry. How cool is that?

So anyway, yes it’s already occurred to me that the irony here is I’ve inadvertently just told you one or two things about myself that you didn’t know… = but hey, at least I didn’t number them. ‘Cause jeez, don’t even get me started about the internet blight of listing everything. =Bah. =Have a nice day.

Bringin' it.

2009-02-25T20:17:00.007-05:00

“History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry. From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.”

Boy can that man deliver a speech. And yet it’s more than that; he delivers a lot of different qualities all rolled up into one nice tidy package: confidence and resolve tempered with an intellect that’s informed by a genuine interest in the world around him. Which certainly is a refreshing change from you-know-who.

And jeez, not that I was going to go on about it, but after eight years of all that squinting, smirking,= waiting for answers =and= jaw-jacking,= last night’s foray into the world of the 21st century was an absolute pleasure. Last night our president actually mentioned science and universities. Not just schools that are all too often just parking places for our kids until they’re old enough to flip burgers or carry a gun, mind you, but universities. Universities that are the real foundation from which the next generation of technology and leadership must come if we expect to pick ourselves up and get back in the global race.

Wow, how’s that that for a load of pretentious twaddle? =Yeah well, sometimes I just can’t help myself. =Anyway, have a nice day, and as long as I’m at it, enjoy this little send-off from our former Adolescent In Chief:

Mmmmm... validation

2009-02-11T19:23:00.010-05:00

So during any given day how often do you experience a serendipitous moment of perfection that embodies both the grandeur and mystery that is life? You know, one of those moments frozen in time that is as perfectly sublime as it is precious? =Not so often, huh?= Yeah, didn’t think so.

I, however, was lucky enough to have one of those moments just this morning.*= To wit: there I was, sniffing around the tubes minding my own business when I came across this little amuse-gueule that’s wonderful if for no other reason that it so perfectly reflects what my boys and I had already been yelling at the TV for months now.

All of which is to just to say that it’s nice to have one’s views validated and expressed so eloquently. =Sort of. Enjoy:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

*Of course you have to remember that the bar for what I consider a transcendent moment is set really, really low.

That's Some Dream.

2009-01-21T10:05:00.006-05:00

This is Lincoln's first inaugural in front of the U.S. Capitol, a building built over the course of some seven decades, primarily by slaves.

And now, today...= well, 'nuf said.
=

Kaaahhhnn !!!!

2009-01-15T09:42:00.012-05:00

A Matador? If nothing else it must be an awesome way to get chicks. Or chicas, rather. Chiquitas? =Oh, you know.

Say it with me and don't forget to roll your rrrrrs: ="Rich, Corinthian Leather."

Well, I guess it was a paycheck. Hell, even Micheal Caine made The Swarm.

"Smiles, everybody, smiles!"

No thanks. In fact, I don't think there are any number of special appearances by Charo that can get Herve Villechaize out of my head. Blech.

"From Hell's heart I stab at thee. For hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."

Ahhh, now that's some good Montalban. R.I.P.

Wordless Wednesday. Sort of.

2009-01-14T06:55:00.009-05:00

.

Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait...

Mmmmm, ignominy.

2009-01-08T07:24:00.008-05:00

Hey, remember that first real big adult event you had to go to against your will when you were a teenager? =You know, the one where you had to dress up and stand around in a room full of grown-ups that not only you didn't know but had nothing in common with?= Or worse, how about that awkward family function when you were thirteen that was full of adults who’s names you couldn’t quite recall, and your worst fear was that one of them would start talking to you when you knew very well you wouldn’t be able to think of anything to say?

Yeah well, I was just reminded yesterday that not everyone grows out of that awful, fear-sweat fueled stage of adolescence. Just look at the hapless boob in the middle of this picture from yesterday’s Tribune:

Jeez, I almost feel bad for the poor dope. Well, not really, but you know. =(Of course Jimmy's not looking too sharp either, but at least he's having a good time.)

An Open Letter to All Those Who Have Made a New Year’s Resolution to Get Healthy:

2009-01-03T16:00:00.004-05:00

Hi. =How are you?= Good. =So, it’s nice and all that you’ve decided that this is the year that you’re going to lose weight and get healthy; and yes I know, you all want to look better and feel fit. I understand. But here’s the thing...= why did you have to join my gym?

I mean jeez, not only are your extra cars making parking a real problem, but now there never any Arc Trainers open in front of the good TVs. How, I ask you, am I supposed to do three miles without the History Channel? And no, I can’t just move to the elliptical machines, because they’re over in the TV ghetto where nothing’s on but Fox “News” and perpetual re-runs of Family Guy. Blech.

So, yes, you stood there on New Year’s Eve with a flute full of champagne and a big primate forebrain full of good intentions, but now it’s time to let it go. You know you want to. It’s hard to stay motivated and get to the gym all the time. And it is, after all, time consuming, a lot of work and kind of mind-numbing. Well, more so if you have to watch Family Guy, but you know what I mean.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I want you to be unhealthy, per se, it’s just that I think you need to decide if my gym is really right for you. You could, after all, just stop being a tightwad like me and join the New York Sports Club right across the street. I’ll bet they have fancier bottled water. And their scale probably works too. Just a friendly suggestion.

Oh what the hell... =go for it, I guess. If you really are ready, then more power to you. I suppose it won’t kill me to make an extra circle or two around the parking lot, but just do us all a favor and work out in front of Fox News so I don’t have to. Thanks.

Merrrrrrry Christmas!

2008-12-26T12:29:00.010-05:00

There’s a lot to be said for the holiday season. Who, after all, doesn’t enjoy shopping for and wrapping unnecessary yet totally fun toys and goodies, spending time with friends and family that we don’t get to see often enough, and then sitting down to a big Christmas dinner that’s as indefensibly extravagant as it is delicious? I do. Really.

I know of course that there are those who would frame the same events very differently; for some it's more like: Schlepping around to spend money on unnecessary junk, mandatory close proximity to family they usually avoid like the flu, and then yet another awkward meal spent trying to force down over-cooked ham while ignoring drunk aunt Marge and her yapping Pekingese.

I, however, am lucky enough to have great friends and family, so our holidays trend towards the former rather than the latter.- (And a good thing too, because I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to Pekinese. And I know I’m allergic to Aunt Marge.)- Anyway, as well as all the other fun we have, part of our Christmas break is usually spent re-watching the boy’s favorite tube-clogging holiday vids, including my personal fave, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra-holiday-house video.

So sure, you’ve seen it a thousand times, but just on the off chance that you haven’t had your fill of it yet, here ya go. Happy holidays.

Jeez I Hate Judith Warner

2008-12-23T17:32:00.006-05:00

There are certainly many things of which I’m rather proud, but one of my favorites is my ability to take umbrage with just about anything I read and then wallow in a bit of cynicism just long enough for it to gestate into a full-blown fit of righteous indignation. Then, if all goes well, that righteous indignation will fuel a finely crafted missive of social commentary that’s rife with pithy insights and withering volleys of logic so elegant that any reader can’t help but be convinced that I am, in short, Right.

This, however, is not one of those days.

Suffice to say that it’s almost Christmas and I’ve got a little too much on my plate at the moment to get up a full head of steam over Warner and her latest bit of misanthropic twaddle. Luckily enough though, the ecosystem of Warner-hating is so rich and varied that anything I had to add would mostly likely be superfluous anyway.

So anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours.

(…And if by any chance you happen to be one of the many who appreciate Warner, then good for you and don’t mind me. Perhaps it’s the At-Home-Dad in me that over-reacts to her. And hey, at least she’s no worse than dipwads Charlie LeDuff and Austin Murphy. Merry Christmas again!)

Almost Wordless... Thursday.

2008-12-04T09:06:00.003-05:00

Far, far away. And usually it's for the best.

Geek Rock and Synchronicity

2008-12-01T13:14:00.007-05:00

If by any chance you have kids, you know all too well that having them around is, if nothing else, a mixed bag. On one hand there certainly is a lot of associated noise, smells and angst, but then on the other hand I find that despite those shortcomings, kids are often useful for any number of things. They do, for instance, tend to be small so they fit into tight spaces when needed; they will eat a surprising variety of things in the fridge that would otherwise go bad, and even better: although they never seem to notice things that you and I assume are blindingly obvious, they do occasionally have insights that are downright uncanny.

To wit: about two weeks ago my older boy and I were in the car listening to an episode of You Look Nice Today which included both Hodgeman and Jonathan Coulton. And then, while we were still giggling like little girls, we passed by the Riverspace theater in Nyack and that sharp-eyed boy ‘o mine just happened to look up at the marquee and announce in his typically minimalist way: “Hey. Jonathan Coulton.” (As always, his economy with words would make any Trappist monk proud.)

And so just like that, in a blinding little flash of synchronicity we happened to be listening to Coulton and then the Riverspace Marquee promised that he would be playing there that very Saturday night. (Which is actually not unlike an incident involving Werewolves of London and Trader Vic’s in L.A.; but that’s a story for a different day.)

Anyway, we went to the show that Saturday and had a great time; I shot a little video and even got my copy of Thing a Week signed. I’m such a nerd. Whatever.

Almost Wordless Wednesday

2008-11-26T08:22:00.006-05:00

First snow! (Sort of.) Big Bear, here we come!
-

Sometimes it's all about me. Sometimes.

2008-11-24T10:23:00.010-05:00

There is hardly a day that goes by that it doesn’t occur to me that becoming a parent is a just another of life’s little milestones; much like getting married, graduating from school, or losing your virginity. Although hopefully not in that order.

As I get older though, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that parenthood is unique in that, if you let it, it becomes the default frame of reference for everything that happens for the rest of your life. You start mentally categorizing events by where they fall on the living timeline that is your progeny, and you remember things in the context of how it affected them. Which, if you have a tendency towards self-absorbed misanthropy as I do, can be a problem. After all, the first 25 or 30 years were all about me weren’t they? But no more; since I became a dad my perspective on most things revolves around the kids. Sheesh, what little need-machines they are.

Anyway, I realized this last weekend that there is at least one benchmark by which I can measure my impending mortality that has nothing to do with the kids: my roughly semiannual trips to Atlantic City with my buddies.

So it used to be, a lifetime ago, that when we were young and on the prowl we would all jump in our cars on any given night and head down to Trump Plaza to gamble, drink and smoke. The routine then mostly involved walking up the boardwalk to the Irish Pub for cheap food and good beer, and then wandering back down the boardwalk hitting every casino on the way until the last of us lost all our money. Then we’d stumble back to the cars around dawn with the stink of vice all over us and just barely enough time for a shower and change before going to work. You know, that kind of fun.

By now though, these trips have evolved into a whole different thing. Long gone is any semblance of spontaneity; these outings to A.C. are planned months in advance. There is no more braving the boardwalk on bitter winter nights; we sit around a table in Puck’s at the Borgata saying how nice it is to be warm. And driving around all night is only a distant memory; now after losing my money I just wander up to a nice, quiet room so I can be snoring by 1 a.m. You know, that other kind of fun.

So sure, I am, in a word, getting old... but at least when it comes to these trips I’m old on my own terms. It’s just me and my buddies, doing our thing, taking one night and not worrying about the kids.

Although… now that I think about it, it won’t be very long before both my boys will be old enough that we can start making our own trips like that. A new tradition of man-fun, if you will. So hey, maybe there’s room for both parenthood and that kind of fun. Huh, another thing to look forward to. Cool.

Randgruppenhumor *

2008-11-19T09:59:00.011-05:00

As per my last post, there are few things I enjoy as much as the glittery baubles that are out there clogging up the tubes, each seemingly with the sole purpose of keeping me from having a fully productive day. Like raking all those leaves that mysteriously appear in my yard each fall. (sigh)

This morning, however, I came across a Digg post that was special because it wasn’t just great for procrastination, but because it helped me further refine the taxonomy of jokes that amuse me and those that don’t. -(And sure, joke-quality is mostly subjective, but it’s all about me, me, me around here, isn’t it?) - So, in the category of academic jokes that I actually get, I found one loser and one winner. The first:

-- An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says "You're all idiots", and pours two beers.

Ha ha! Or not. Anyway, the second joke, still in the same academic category, made me giggle like a little girl. Go figure.

-- A sheep rancher invites an engineer, a mathematician, and a physicist to a competitive bidding for building his corral.

The engineer is the first to present his solution: he looks at the white board with a picture of sheep scattered around a field, and draws a square that encompasses them all, saying that the fence walls would be of a uniform length and that making orthogonal cuts is the most natural thing with power tools.

The mathematician presents his solution next: he goes up to the white board and draws a circle around all the sheep, saying that the circle gives the most interior area for the least circumferential length.

The physicist then goes up to the white board to present his solution. He draws a little circle off to the side that doesn't encompass a single sheep. The rancher, the engineer, and the mathematician are all puzzled, and look at him wondering what he's up to, demanding that he explain himself.

"That," said the physicist, pointing to the interior of the little circle, "is the outside."

Now that’s good stuff. And as always, while it’s unlikely that these interweb amusemants are helping me towards my ostensible goal of self actualization, they certainly are more amusing than going outside and raking all those damn leaves. Blech.
-

* P.S. Oh yeah, and randgruppenhumor translates as 'fringe group humor'. -Again, go figure.

Palin-whats?

2008-11-10T16:03:00.007-05:00

I suppose there are pros as well as cons to having the attention span of a goldfish, but certainly one of the big disadvantages is that it takes me a while to notice nifty things that others probably take for granted. That being the case, I find it helpful to occasionally stop and take stock of some of the shiny amusemants currently clogging up the tubes.

To wit: .That outstanding Palindrome for the hapless Sarah Palin: .“Wasilla’s all I saw.”= Now while that may or may not be cooler than the archetypical anagram. “Alec Guinness = Genuine Class”, .I do have a few fave Palin anagrams to add to the party: Sarah Palin = “A Sharp Nail”, .“Anal Parish”,. and for our Latin friends: .“Las Piranha”. .Mmmm, irony.

(Oh yeah, and 'SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS' translates as "The Great Sower holds in his hand all works"... but the genius bit is that it works sideways and upside down too. Go on, have a look. How cool is that?)

There now, something new and shiny for you to pass along.
=

RIDICULOUS: Intentional, or Embarrassingly Sincere?

2008-11-06T19:09:00.021-05:00

Hey kids, you like games? Sure you do, and one of my favorites is ‘RIDICULOUS: Intentional, or Embarrassingly Sincere?’ (I suppose this particular game is actually a combination of ‘Does This Smell Funny?’ and ‘Really? You’re Serious?’, but hey, I have to make do with what the news gives me.) Anyway, all you have to do to win this game is guess whether the following article is from the Onion, and therefore a snappy bit of satire, or from a traditional paper in which case it’s all too sincere.

So then, don’t be shy, step right up and play ‘RIDICULOUS: Intentional, or Embarrassingly Sincere?’ ....Read on and enjoy guessing.

11/05/08

The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace

What must our enemies be thinking?
Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.

According to recent Gallup polls, the president's average approval rating is below 30% -- down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11. Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

The president's original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.

Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.

Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, "We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."

To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman's low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.

Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman's presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years -- and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.”

Ok now, if any of you bright-eyed youngsters guessed ‘Embarrassingly Sincere’, you’re right!
This bizarre little nugget of delusional commentary came to us courtesy of Jeffery Scott Shapiro
of the Wall Street Journal today. So, what do you win? Well mostly a good laugh, but also a
bright shiny new president, so there you go.

Pony or posse. Whichever.

2008-03-27T20:06:00.006-04:00

One of the nice things about thinking back to my childhood is that there are very few things I regret. Sure, I guess it would have been nice to have a pony, but since I was lucky enough to have the basics like food, clothes and parents who seemed to like me well enough, I really have nothing to complain about. See? I’m just a glass-half-full kinda guy.

That said however, I’m pretty sure it would have been a lot cooler to grow up with a posse in tow whose sole purpose would be to cheer and applaud my every move…. like Run’s kids have. How do I know this? Well, at the moment I’m at a skatepark called Dropin with my older boy and the place is crawling with cameras and production people shooting a segment for Run’s House in which his kids are kick-flipping and grinding the afternoon away.

Anyway, the point is that it’s just a little odd watching a pair of otherwise perfectly nice little kids being followed around by a production crew that seems to have only two purposes in life: filming everything they do and then clapping and cheering as if the emperor really does have clothes. Well, either way it sure looks like more fun than having a pony.

How did you spend your Easter?

2008-03-23T21:23:00.002-04:00

;
;

Critical Thinking.

2008-03-10T20:03:00.005-04:00

The more I think about it the surer I am that I’ll probably end up retiring not to sunny Florida, but someplace civilized, like Costa Rica or the Spanish Mediterranean, or pretty much anyplace else but here. Why? Well, the reasons are more numerous than you might suppose, but there’s one in particular that old George articulates far better than I ever could, so:
-

So of course the most compelling reason for hitting the bricks even sooner is that I’m a dad with two able-bodied sons and a marked distaste for the neo-cons of whom middle-America seems so fond.

But as always, have a great day anyway. =:-P

Perspective.

2008-03-05T15:29:00.005-05:00

Hey look! A puppy! Awwwww, so sweet. I like puppies. They’re cute, they’re cuddly, and when they’re not busy whining or peeing they certainly do have a way of tugging at our collective heartstrings.

But here’s the thing about puppies. They’re not that cute, are they? Now certainly, what that marine did was pretty awful, but in the scheme of things does this story really rate the level of attention and outrage that it seems to be generating? Shouldn’t we be a little more worried about the human carnage being created daily by the untenable situation in which we’ve trapped our troops? I just find it baffling that day in and day out there are countless innocent people suffering through the spectacular chaos of our misbegotten foreign adventures, and yet as I sit here looking at today’s headlines it’s the puppy that has everyone’s panties in a bunch.

Well, truthfully I guess I’m not all that baffled. It’s just easier to worry about puppies and the legal fate of a single marine than to think through the ramifications of what’s happening in the big picture, isn’t it? It’s just human nature to be so easily distract… Hey! Is that a kitten? Awwww, looka da cute kitten…

Geeks Rock.

2008-02-27T15:30:00.006-05:00

I guess I could have named this post “wordless Wednesday”… except that now it’s not.

Anyway enjoy the video, and feel free to Google any of the following terms if you think it will help: ‘Portal’ ‘Coulton’ ‘twit’ ‘Belmont’ ‘Mann’.

Have a great day.

Jonathan Coulton performs "Still Alive" in Rock Band from Joy Stiq on Vimeo.

Purgatory. Sort of.

2008-02-08T15:34:00.001-05:00

One of the fun things about being me is that I’m reminded on a regular basis that there are very few things about which I’m entirely certain. Really, there are a lot of basic everyday things that I probably should know about but don’t. Why, for instance, do old people smell like that? Why is every guy named Chad a knucklehead? Why do people like ferrets? I dunno.

On the other hand, the good news is that as I get older there’s also a growing list of things about which I am very certain. Again, basic everyday things, like that playing poker is not going to make you rich, Britney Spears will never be interesting, and hanging out in a public library during the middle of the day is uncomfortably weird.

Yeah, so about the library thing. In the middle of the day it’s mostly full of people with reasonable excuses to be here: moms with little kids, old retired guys who natter on endlessly with the Rasputin-bearded-reference-desk-guy, and middle aged women trickling through with armloads of Nora Roberts novels. I, however, am one of a small number of apparently able bodied, pre-retirement age males who are here also. So what are they doing here? It would make sense if they were homeless, crazy or both, but I don’t think they are so they just give me the willies.

I, on the other hand, have a perfectly good reason for hanging our here. Really. We’ve been renovating our house since early December and the library is pretty much the only place I have left to hide from all the hammering, banging and general caterwauling that seems necessary for construction. It’s actually a lot like a living in a frat house where it’s perpetually Friday night, except the floors aren’t quite as sticky.

So anyway, despite the fact that my days are also filled with a lot of other domestic-y chores, this is where I inevitably find myself by the end of the day. Me, the Rasputin-bearded-reference-desk-guy and all these other guys with nowhere else to go. It’s actually kind of like purgatory, except it’s quiet and the bathroom is clean. Oh yeah, and the WiFi is free, so I can keep posting this nonsense.

Filed under: "Things You Already Know"

2008-02-06T08:57:00.000-05:00

Without any preamble, lets just say that there are times when parenting can be really tough. Sure, there are all the wonderful moments filled with first steps, Christmas pageants and bedtime stories, but as any stay-at-home-parent can tell you, being at home with your progeny is no picnic. Well, actually it is kind of like a picnic sometimes, but just on a really hot day when it’s crowded, the mosquitoes are out, and there’s sand in your lunch. That kind of picnic.

Anyway, that said, there’s really no need to get discouraged, because as bad a day as you may be having, you’re still a better parent than Tina Williams. Yeah, you already know all about her because she and her beer have been the darlings of the last two news cycles, but still, I think most people are missing the point: that she makes the rest of us look like the best parents ever. Thanks Tina!

BeatBearing project.

2008-01-16T16:46:00.000-05:00

,
Dunno why, exactly, but it's cool and I want one. Just 'cause.
,

,

"Peter Bennett, a PhD student at the Sonic Arts Research Center in Belfast, made this sequencer that you program with ball bearings. It has four tracks: kick, snare, hi-hat, and cowbell."

Whatever. I still want one. (And My birthday's coming up. Just saying.)

Take a deep breath...

2008-01-13T12:00:00.000-05:00

Although there are those who would disagree, we here in the Northeast are really no different than the rest of the nation. We have traditions that we hold as dear as anyone; we shiver through little league games in the spring, we grill way more beef than is actually good for us in the summer, and we spend our crisp autumn afternoons raking leaves while being serenaded by the ear-splitting roar of our neighbors leaf blowers. You know, Americana at its prosaic finest.

The winter though, provides an annual activity that’s even more stultifyingly banal: the “oooh-they-say-it’s-going-to-snow-but-we-don’t-know-how-much- -so-lets-all-speculate-ourselves-into-a-flather-over-nothing” tradition. Which, as of this very Sunday morning, has been going on for days. And days and days.

Well, here’s my response to the all the Chicken Littles out there, both of the professional meteorological and amateur variety: Tonight, it will get dark. Then it will snow a little bit. Tomorrow I will shovel that snow (while being serenaded by the ear-splitting roar of my neighbor’s snow blowers), and then I will have some hot chocolate and some lunch. And that’s all that’s going to happen. (Now granted, this prediction is based more on demonstrable experience than irrational hysteria, but I guess that’s just how I roll.)

So in short, if you feel that you may be one of those people prone to getting the vapors and creating drama over things you can’t control, please do us all a favor and save all that energy for something really weighty that’s also out of your hands. You know, like presidential elections or the Rapture; something idiotic like that. Thanks.

Addendum: Monday 1/14, 11:50 a.m.

So after all that, this is a picture of the “snow” we got from last night’s “storm.”

I just knew my chosen profession should have been meteorology, since it seems that neither competence nor accountability are required. =Grrrrr...

Waaaaaaa...

2008-01-08T07:15:00.000-05:00

Ok, I don’t really have anything to say, it’s just that I stumbled across this picture this morning and I love it too much not to share.

(Although I suppose it does go perfectly with what O’Reilly had to say about his latest Obama kerfuffle:, “No one on this earth is going to block a shot on The O’Reilly Factor.” ,The whole earth?, Really?)

Anyhoo, enjoy, and have a nice day.

An open letter to everyone who made a New Year's resolution to get healthy:

2008-01-05T17:22:00.000-05:00

Hi. ,How are you? ,Good. ,So, it’s nice and all that you’ve decided that this is the year that you’re going to lose weight and get healthy. ,Yes yes, I know, you all want to look better and feel fit. I understand. But here’s the thing…, why did you have to join my gym?

I mean heck, not only are your extra cars making parking a freakin' ,hassle, but now most of the Arc Trainers are taken in front of the good TVs. ,How, I ask you, am I supposed to do three miles without the History Channel? ,No no, I can’t just “move to the treadmills,”, because over there is the television-land ghetto in which the only choices are Fox News and perpetual reruns of Becker on TBS. ,Blech.

So, yes, you stood there on New Year’s Eve with a flute full of champagne and a forebrain full of good intentions, but now it’s time to let all that go. You know you want to. It’s hard to stay motivated to get to the gym all the time. And it is, after all, time consuming, a lot of work and kind of boring. Well, more so if you have to watch Becker, but you know what I mean.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I want you to remain the lazy sack of cheese that you are, ,per se... ,it’s just that I think you need to decide if my gym is really right for you. You could, after all, just stop being a tightwad like me and join the New York Sports Club right across the street. I’ll bet they have fancier bottled water. And their scale probably works too. Just a friendly suggestion.

Oh what the hell... ,go for it, I guess. If you really are ready, then more power to you. I suppose it won’t kill me to make an extra circle or two around the lot.

So now I'm both old and uncool. Oh well.

2007-12-20T20:41:00.000-05:00

So what is cool and who gets to decide? I suppose it’s a hopelessly subjective question;, cool is obviously in the eye of the beholder. I guess age also has a lot to do with it:, toddlers think mom is cool, fourth graders think snot is cool, and teenagers, depending on the day, think either nothing or everything is cool. People my age, however, seem to think it’s cool to go see It’s a Wonderful Life in a real theater with friends and family.

So that’s just what a small group of us did this last weekend at the Lafayette Theatre in Suffern, which is one of the rapidly diminishing number of original vaudeville houses that have been saved and still show first-run movies as well as “classic” films. On Saturday, though, they did a whole holiday thing, that included a Laurel and Hardy silent short accompanied by a Wurlitzer-organ-playing-guy, and a reading of A Visit From Saint Nick which was followed by, go figure, a visit from Saint Nick himself. You know, an actual fat guy in a red suit., Dopey? ,Sure, but the kids ate it up. I’d have preferred a few Rockettes myself, but that’s a different story.

Anyway, the main feature was It’s a Wonderful Life, which I, (and, as it turns out, much of the audience), had never actually seen from beginning to end. And yes, I know it’s a movie that has managed to polarize the masses like no other; ,some people love it with the same sort of blind allegiance they feel towards puppies and rainbows, and then there are those who feel waves of maudlin-induced nausea just thinking about George Bailey and Bedford Falls.

I of course fell firmly in the nausea camp, if only because I’m usually a curmudgeon and proud of it. ,(I occasionally consider myself smug bastard as well, but I usually save that for special occasions.) , Anyway, as you’ve probably already guessed, seeing It’s a Wonderful Life on a big silver screen while surrounded by cheery, unassuming folks really does make all the difference, and before I knew it the snow was falling in Bedford Falls, George was back with Mary, and I was sniffling along with everybody else.

All right, so there’s nothing cool about it, but it’s still not a bad way to spend an afternoon. ,And I got to see Santa, so there.

Smartosity.

2007-12-17T23:12:00.000-05:00

There’s a lot to be said for the holiday season: the smell of fresh cut Christmas trees, the crunch of new fallen snow underfoot, that special acid reflux that’s unique to eggnog with rum… ,really, it’s an endless cornucopia of sensorial treats when you think about it.

Even better though, as any parent will tell you, is that adding kids to the mix not only lets you hand down those cherished holiday traditions, but provides an excuse to create new ones. ,(Traditions, not kids. Although creating kids is fun too, if you like that sort of thing.) ,Anyway, what was I going on about? ,Oh yeah, new traditions. ,So…, yesterday we not only put up our tree and trimmed it with the usual jumble of shiny, but I also took the opportunity to play Mr. Science and showed the boys how to use a little bit of science foo to de-tarnish the silver ornaments.

To wit: ,rather than slogging it out in the trenches fighting the tarnish on it’s own territory with polishers and such, we simply dropped the ornaments in some hot water with a piece of aluminum foil and some baking soda. It’s the nuclear option, if you will. So, two minutes and an electrochemical reaction worthy of Beakman later, all that unsightly silver sulfide had jumped ship and made it’s way over to the aluminum foil in the form of aluminum sulfide. Fickle stuff, that sulfide is.

So there it is, a new kind of holiday tradition; ,one that celebrates brains over brawn, or as we say around here, good old fashioned smartosity. After all, if I raise my kids to value braininess properly, maybe they’ll stay away from the eggnog.

P.S., Speaking of cutting xmas trees... , anybody have a good cleanup solution other than ,$&#ing turpentine? ,This year our tree was sappier than a Nora Ephron movie... ,yuck.

Dead horses, monkeys and my kids.

2007-12-12T09:21:00.000-05:00

Although those who know me best might say otherwise, I think I’m an easygoing kind of guy who enjoys some of life’s simpler pleasures. You know, salt of the earth sort of stuff;, mom, baseball and apple pie. ,No wait, those are the things that make me a red-blooded all-American boy, right? ,So how about pina coladas and getting caught in the rain? ,Oh I don’t know, it’s all so confusing.

Anyway, there is one thing about which I’m quite sure, and that’s the pleasure I take in beating a dead horse. So today, even though everyone on the internets has spent the last week having fun with this little gem about Japanese research monkeys being “smarter” than college students, I’m still going to take my turn. Here we go.

So chimpanzees have better short term memories than so-called humans? No kidding. Any parent with a fifth and seventh grader will tell you that there seems to be an inexplicably steep curve with kids and their memory skills. But on the other hand, free will is certainly a part of the equation too. My boys, for instance, have entire episodes of the Simpsons imprinted on their little brains and will be only too happy to recite them word for word ad nauseam… ,and yet they both show a remarkable ability to jettison any information that they deem trivial. Trivial, like bringing home the books they need for homework, or putting on a coat before running out the door into the snow. Or even washing their hands after they go to the bathroom, for heaven’s sake.

So I ask you, is it really that big a surprise that our simian cousins display greater mental horsepower than your average kid? I think not. ,And jeez, unlike my kids we could probably even train them to wash their hands after flinging their poo..., if anybody's up for a challenge.

A day at the CIA. (No, the "good" CIA, silly.)

2007-12-05T07:26:00.000-05:00

So here’s a question that’s been on my mind more and more lately:, what do you do for fun when you get older? And by older I mean once you’ve acquired all the customary trappings of the suburban bourgeoisie; ,not just the wrinkly kind of old. ,I mean where’s the challenge in simply aging? ,Everybody gets old. ,No, my goal is to age with the same sort of élan as Ivan Ilych. ,Except without all the existential horror and moral bankruptcy., You know what I mean.

Anyway, over the years I’ve found that having fun is getting more challenging than it used to be. After all, when you’re a kid all you need is a few of your knucklehead friends, a pocket full of cash and eight or ten hours to spend barhopping your way across the Village until you end up at McSorely’s. ,You know…, fun.

Now though, as ostensible adults, my Lovely Bride and I have been widening our horizons and trying new things. This last Saturday, for instance, we drove up to the Culinary Institute of America, (watch any of The Next Iron Chef.?) ,which offers all-day “enthusiast courses” which are not only a lot of fun but also very much like an episode of Iron Chef. Basically, we were let loose in one of their industrial teaching kitchens with about a dozen other “students,” ,a teaching chef, and two themed menus that we prepared together as teams.

Then once all the cooking was done we all sat together in one of the dining rooms and gorged on all the food we spent the day making, which was, in no particular order:, filet mignon, shrimp cocktail with cognac sauce, foi gras and caviar on toast points, Bellinis and Kirs, chocolate mouse, bananas foster, and then and rather a lot of Riesling and Medoc for good measure. It was, in short, as much a fun social event as it was culinary.

So then, feeling a little bit of that early winter ennui setting in? Try the CIA for a bit of grown up fun. After all, no matter how it turns out, McSorely’s will always be there for you, just in case.

The finish line. (although I hear that Norwegian Line’s boats are nicer)

2007-11-30T13:23:00.000-05:00

Day 30

Well Bloppers, November is gasping its last and I hope most of you made it. As I noted yesterday I think the exercise of blogging every day was well worth it, even if I was personally responsible for clogging up more than my share of Senator Steven’s tubes with a lot of drivel about my kids, Dancing with the Stars and Halo3.

Aaand speaking of kids… ,just this morning I was appalled when I saw this bizarre poster at the Palisades mall today:

Really? Is this how far we’ve let common civility slide in our culture? We not only tolerate but expect that our children will be shrill, materialistic little monsters?

I guess that’s exactly what it means, but still, the message that I prefer to take away from this sign is that the cosmos is laying a little bit of a serendipitous kudos on me, ,my at-home-dad parenting skills and my well behaved boys. And jeez it’s not even like it’s that complicated to raise not-monster kids. Now of course Children of the Corn is a different matter…, now that I think about it even they were fastidiously polite while they were busy being evil. ,Whatever.

Have a great December!

Still Blopping?

2007-11-29T22:53:00.000-05:00

Day 29

Not to get all meta about this, but it is day 29 for all you NaBloPoMo Bloppers out there… so how you all doing? Everybody having fun? I know that for me it’s been a good exercise in staying focused on one task around here that’s actually good for my noggin.

Not that the usual routine of cooking and cleaning isn’t profoundly satisfying… ,oh right, it’s not… ,but still, way back I used to write every day and I wrote what seemed endless papers to finish up school, so until this month it had been a long time since I felt any pressure to produce. Of course that’s all well and good, but I still need to come up with one more staggeringly brilliant bit of insight by tomorrow. No problem.

Blop on.

Hide me...

2007-11-28T18:53:00.000-05:00

Day 28

So the next stage in our little renovation project has begun, namely looking at tile. ,Lotsa tile., Tile for this bathroom and that bathroom. ,Tile for the Kitchen. ,Tile for the floors and walls. ,Tiles for breakfast lunch and dinner. ,Gaaaa.

I’m actually doing ok so far; ,at every tile store I’m still nodding and ,“Hmmm-ing”, with a furrowed brow here and a chin stroke there, right on cue. ,I’m looking interested and even throwing in the occasional question just to mix it up, because we all know what happens if my Lovely Bride gets the feeling that I don’t care., Brrrrr.

Ooops, ,gotta go… ,I think I hear her coming and I can’t hide under this desk for much longer… ,pray for me…

Things I care way too much about. Like Dancing with the Stars. And conspiracy theories.

2007-11-27T21:00:00.000-05:00

Day 27

There are any number of reasons that people blog;, and the range, as we all know, is pretty wide. Some engage in erudite discourse about the loftiest ideals, some blog about what they fed the cat for lunch, and still others like to ramble on about idiotic conspiracy theories. And today I’m proud to present my very own homemade conspiracy theory that’s been carefully wrapped in crazy and topped off with a dash of ridiculous. ,And it’s about Dancing with the Stars, no less.

So here it is:, I’m absolutely convinced that Carrie Ann threw the judging last night when she gave Helio and Julianne that 9 for their second dance. The dance was clearly worth a 10, which I believe put Carrie Ann in the tough position of having to give them the praise the dance warranted and yet still somehow justify a 9. ,So, if you watch her comments closely you’ll see that she’s scrambling at the end to come up that lame excuse about Helio’s lifts not being smooth enough., Whaa?

Of course every idiotic conspiracy theory has to have a rationale, so… , I think Carrie Ann is in cahoots with Mel and Max who are supposed to win tonight, except that they didn’t dance well enough to make it a lock…, which forced Carry Anne’s hand when Helio and Julianne surprised everyone by turning in the best dance of the night. See?, It’s clear that the fix is in at Dancing with the Stars. , Really. ,Why is everybody looking at me like that? ,Here, ,look:

Master Chief Makes Me Feel Funny...

2007-11-26T20:04:00.000-05:00

Day 26

In keeping with the habit of brevity that I’ve been trying to cultivate here lately, please indulge me as I toss out the following declarative statement with no further build up. ,Ready? ,Here goes: ,I’m at a stage in life in which I’m down to very few vices. Actually I have so few left the number is embarrassingly close to zero, what with me firmly entrenched in my forties and being the very model of a modern major father figure… ,as it were.

That said, one of my knucklehead boys managed to step on/destroy/mangle our Halo3 disk this weekend, which left me unaccountably distraught until I realized in the midst of my grief that I seem be involved in a love-hate relationship with Master Chief as potentially destructive as that between Lindsey Lohan and booze., Or Paris Hilton and herself. ,You get the idea. ,I am, ,in short, ,pining for Master Chief. I used to hate both him and that damn game, and yet I kept playing it. ,A lot. ,Aw jeez, I guess I’m supposed to say it out loud: ,“Hi, my name is Evan and I’m addicted to Halo3.”

Really, as much as I whined about Big Team Battles and the sheer stupidity of Oddball, I was still getting better at beating down newbs and nose-scoping the better guys. My rank in Lone Wolves was 13 with 95 total experience, for heaven’s sake., (Good Lord, did that just sound as nerdy as I thought it did?) ,Yeah, think I need help for my latest addiction. ,Or…, at least another copy of the game.

Yeah, I’m just going to go out and get another copy of the game. What the hell, even if it is a nerdy addiction that’s turning my brain to mush at least it’s not killing my liver. ,Go me!

Stuff.

2007-11-25T21:33:00.000-05:00

Day 25

Anybody want a folding beach chair? Howzabout a set of bocce balls, or even better, an Easy Bake Oven. Most of it’s barely used, as are most of the boxes of junk now occupying my driveway like a small army of itinerant squatters who have come to vex me just in time for the holidays.

Well, I may be exaggerating as I’ve been known to do, but either way I just want the world to know that I was stuck this weekend cleaning out the garage, which is a job that I would imagine is only slightly less appalling than, say, a summer spent as Liza Minnelli’s pool boy., Only less humiliating. ,One would imagine.

Anyway, the point is that I’ve got a ton-‘o-crap to get rid of and not much time before the contractors show up to throw the rest of the house into chaos. ,So, who wants a big box of half empty paint cans?

Cutting it Close. Blopping Wise, That Is.

2007-11-25T00:25:00.000-05:00

Day 24

Cutting it kind of close but I haven't gone to bed yet..., gotsa keep blopping...
got it in my blood now. Not much of a post, you say? ,Yeah well I'll make up
for it tommorow by being even more staggeringly brilliant than I usually am., Even I can't wait. Yawn. Bye.

=

The Gathering Storm.

2007-11-23T19:22:00.000-05:00

Day 23

And so the chaos begins. Not too long ago I mentioned that we’re going to be putting an addition on our house, which as best I can tell will throw our lives into a state of chaos unseen since we got married. Or moved here. Or had kids. Actually it’s more than that; , it looks as if this project will test the very bounds of human endurance. Well, our patience anyway.

To wit: this morning My Lovely Bride and I began the first round of moving/thinning/disposing of our crap, which meant innumerable trips to and fro the attic, which at one point this afternoon left our living room looking like this:

Not so bad at all really, and I know it’s nothing compared to the coming storm. Still, after today I know for sure that if our Blissful Union can survive the whole renovation to the end we will officially have the strongest marriage ever. ,(And we’d better, ‘cause New York isn’t a no-fault divorce state.) ===Permissum venatus suscipio!

A Food Coma In The Making

2007-11-22T20:10:00.000-05:00

Day 22

Coffee, whipped cream with pumpkin and apple pie, some turkey wing, stuffing, dinner rolls, another bottle of Becks, glazed carrots, gravy, white meat, more stuffing, roasted potatoes, peas swimming in butter, stuffing, cheese and crackers, crudités and a bottle of Becks.

There. I believe that’s a complete list, in reverse order, of everything I put in myself today. And not only am I stuffed, but I believe I feel a food coma coming on. Hope you’re enjoying your food coma. See ya.

Thanksgiving. But Not Too Much.

2007-11-21T21:26:00.000-05:00

Day 21

So here we stand at the threshold of the Holiday Season. The leaves are finally falling, the turkey has arrived fresh from the chopping block having been separated from its head, and I’m sharpening up my can opener in preparation for one of my favorite time honored rituals: the annual Releasing Of The Cranberries. Woo hoo!

Well not really, but I was having a hard time making the whole thing sound more exiting than it actually is. Either way though, what this means to you is that you won’t find any maudlin, bittersweet Thanksgiving stories here. Nope, I’ve read a few of those on the blogs today, and there’ll be none of that here.

So have a good Thanksgiving, but remember, don’t go getting all mushy about what you have to be thankful for. It’s unseemly. Bye!

A Brief, Politically Incorrect Rant.

2007-11-20T21:22:00.000-05:00

Day 20

As I pointed out yesterday, for me writing is a creative process that often involves an undue amount of thematic wandering before I manage to sneak up behind my literary prey and knock it senseless with a barrage of mixed metaphors and preposterous similes. The aftermath is rarely pretty.

That said, today is all about brevity... ,so this is all I have to say to the all the sheeple I sit behind in traffic every day: ,I don’t care about the bumper stickers on your car and I still don’t give a crap that you want to keep Christ in Christmas... ,and what’s more, the only reason you’re all worried about it is because Bill O’Reilly told you to be. Nobody’s out to get either you or Christmas. Get a life, you paranoid nitwits. ,And as long as we’re at it, I don’t care that you think it’s, “Ok to say Merry Christmas” ,to you, ‘cause I wasn’t going to anyway. You want validation of all your fears and that this artificially manufactured war on Christmas is real? Go watch Fox News and leave me out of it.

And you know, as long as I’m ranting, if you’re one of those smug bastards that has a bumper sticker that says, “I Pray. Deal With It!”, you can not only shove it, but please invite all your xenophobic neo-con friends to do so as well. You think Jesus is the bee’s knees? Great, I like Jesus too, just don’t be such a dick about it., Grrrrrrrr.

Whew. Ok, I think I’m done. Have a nice day!

Dawdling, Podcasting and Algebra. The Long Way.

2007-11-19T21:25:00.000-05:00

Day 19

There’s no question about it, I’m not merely behind on most things, I’m a highly skilled procrastinator. The interesting thing about that though, is that it’s not even just nasty bits of business like checking the boy’s homework and taking care of a certain plumbing problem that makes me squeamish that I fall behind on; I even mange to lose track of things I enjoy. Which makes no sense, but there it is.

But, here we are in the 21^st century and at least one of those nagging issues has been solved for me with the ability to, as true geeks put it,, “time shift my entertainment choices.” ,Or, simply put for mere humans such as myself,, “podcasts are awesome because now I never have to miss any of my favorite shows, ever.” ,So now it no longer matters if I miss a week with Car Talk and the Tapppert boys, because they live on in perpetuity on my Zen V like cloistered nuns, waiting patiently for my attention. ,Or something like that.

…And I know, I know, it’s always a long trip from the first sentence of one of these posts to whatever it is I’m trying to get at, so here it is in a nutshell: I just got around to listening to the Car Talk puzzler from three weeks ago, and as intractable a problem as it seemed to me, my older boy rolled up his sleeves and figured it out. The right way, no less… using algebra.

Granted, after staring at the answer it’s all clear to me now, but the point is I gots me a boy who practically oozes smartosity, and I couldn’t be prouder. ,And maybe just a teensy bit jealous, but mostly proud.