Sometimes it's all about Me

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

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

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.

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.)