Still Twittering? Yeah I'm a Luddite too.

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

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.

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

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:

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.

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.