13 Things I Would Never Hear Again if I Power Drilled Through My Eardrums

1. [Crash!]


2. "Dad?"


3. "Dad!"


4. "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!"


5. "Where the hell is dad?"


6. "If he was up your butt you'd know"


7. "Shut up!"


8. "You shut–"


9. [Crash!]


10. (Tandem) "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!"


11. "There he is. He's at his desk with his headphones on pretending he can't hear us–DAD!"


12. "WHAT!"


13. "The dog pooped on Uncle Marty's bed again."

Out of the Mouthes of Babes . . .

I know what I need to do.
I need to kill something.
That's going to help my self-esteem.

Roon, age 12, playing Call of Duty . . .

DIY: Installing a Vanity in 10 Easy Steps!

Death By Children is about more than the nefarious and deadly machinations of our spawn or their efforts to render us twitching and pale from their ongoing appropriation of internet porn slang. It's about a lifestyle, a way of going about your day with a kind of Zen focus, a way of being ever more self sufficient and capable. To that end, we present our ongoing series of Do It Yourself projects.

DIY #003: The Vanity.

Materials:

• A vanity.


• A sink.


• Channel locks


• Plumber's tape


• Plumber's crack


• Crescent wrench


• Screwdriver


• Hack saw


• Band-aids


• one sink kit (for installing the drain stuff)


• two 12" water supply lines


• The internet

Installation

1. Using the internet, start looking for a vanity. Use Google "shopping," eBay, and Half.com, late into the morning, discovering wild and gorgeous bathroom vanities worthy of a WalMart heir, vanities that look like they were carefully removed from the apothecary bathroom of a 14th century Amish alchemist. At about 3:41 am, wake up your wife and try to convince her to let you buy a $2,967.13 vanity that comes with a Belarian Granite sink, a black Tennessee marble sink insert, a burnished, teak cabinet made from the remains of President Lincoln's personal privy, and brass handles melted down from the recovered portholes of the Titanic. Try not to be discouraged as, even in her groggy and sleep deprived pre-dawn fog, your wife points out that the Lincoln vanity is a 32 inch top and we have a 26 inch space. Also, shipping is $541.32.


2. Find a vanity at Menard's online. This is awesome because it looks EXACTLY like the Lincoln vanity, only its made entirely from recycled elementary textbooks, sawdust, and glue. Order. Pay. Feel the warm flush of accomplishment rush through your body.


3. Remove the old vanity. This is easily accomplished by simply leaning on it to see where it is attached then letting it crumble beneath your application of modest pressure. Pull the pieces apart, and dispose.


4. Go to check on the width of your vanity online. Check. Notice a funny email from your bud that directs you to a website displaying pictures of people who shop at WalMart. Stop surfing this website only after your children come home from school and beg you to make them food. Menards is closed. So you'll have to get the vanity tomorrow.


5. Pick-up new vanity at Menard's where the plumbing department manager informs you that because you did not check a delivery option when you closed out your shopping cart online, they have not shipped your vanity. He fixes this. It should be here in about 10 days.


6. Act like it's all part of the plan. Scratch your chin. Say, yeah, yeah. That's what I was hoping. Buy a new toilet to make it look like you're there for a purpose because that little plumbing department manager weasel is eyeballing you like you're 113 years old and never heard of a shopping cart. Screw it, buy two new toilets. [see, DIY: Installing a New Super Flush Toilet in 5 Easy Steps].


7. Three days later, act non-plussed when Weasel calls to let you know your new vanity was shipped early. Go to Menard's to pick-up vanity. When asked if youneed any help out to your car, reply with a manly 'what-are-you-kidding-me?' shrug. Schlep the box out to the car. Recall that you drive a 2003 Camry and note the box for the vanity is 9 feet by 6 feet by 4 feet. Cram it in.


8. Unpack the vanity in the living room while sitting on the couch watching your DVR episode of MadMen. Don Draper would've built this thing from scratch.


9. Drag vanity to bathroom and slid it into place. My god, that is one beautiful vanity. Look at it. Run your fingers along the details on the bent-wood door. Look how it fits perfectly, how the door opens and closes without hitting. You sir, are a man.


10. Lie down on your back and shove your upper body into the cavity of the vanity. Install the p-trap, the drain pipe, and the drain valve. Get everything ready to connect to the existing drain. Note that the new vanity is four inches taller than the old one, that the sink is displaced to nine inches out instead of six and that your shiny new p-trap is about three miles away from your grubby old drain.


11. Buy a 9 inch drain extension.


12. Measure the gap between the existing drain pipe and the new on hanging below the sink. It's 6 inches.


13. Get the hack saw. Saw 3 inches off of the 9 inch straight pipe.


14. Drag the vanity out of the bathroom.


15. GET THE BAND AIDS! GET THE BAND AIDS! GET THE BAND AIDS!


16. Attach new 6 inch drain pipe into the sink drain. Note: a professional plumber allows for the inside of the fitting. Note the new 1 inch gap between the jagged end of the shortened pipe and the old p-trap SHOULD INCLUDE the one inch of pipe that would fit into the fitting.


17. Drag the vanity back into the bathroom.


18. Go to Menards and stand in front of the sink repair section. Think to yourself: maybe you've been approaching this wrong. Think: why the hell don't they make flexible—


19. Purchase flexible sink trap repair kit.


20. Install flexible sink trap repair kit.


21. Pull the escutcheon off the wall so you can finally attach the new p-trap to the old drain pipe. Note that your house was built in 1937 and your drain pipe is not threaded. It's also embedded a half inch behind the wall and welded to something you can't see.


22. Stare.


23. You can't just unscrew the horizontal drain pipe, because it's welded as a single unit. After installing a six inch 9 inch pipe extension to a flexible p-trap repair unit to the old p-trap (thus creating an loosely defined w-trap) leaving a one inch gap from the end of the flexible repair kit to the existing drain pipe sticking out of your wall.


24. Beat. Head. Against. Sink.


25. Go to Menards. Buy a rubber coupling. Work it on between the two pipes and voila! You have drain.


26. Turn on the water.


27. Check every section to find out why the water is not draining. Everything is perfect.


28. Beat. Head. Against. Sink.


29. Drag the vanity back into the dining room.


30. Call Garrity plumbing. Your son will let him in while you're at school.


31. Come home to see your gorgeous vanity installed with what, even from a distance, you can see is perfect and sanguine grace. Underneath the sink, a gleaming chrome p-trap falls gracefully from the drain in the sink and disappears through a new escutcheon into the wall.


32. On the dining room table is your self-installed w-trap lying on top of your bill ($532.00) and a note from Garrity in the margin: "Nice try."

Urine Trouble

Antique Yellow Fire Hydrant from Stock Photo

My family is different. We live on a different schedule than most families because [My Attorney] is an attorney. I stay at home and cook and clean and yell at the dogs, instead of a mom doing it. A family night consists of us watching Supernatural for three hours or maybe playing a video game. We do a lot of sushi. So it’s no surprise that things go awry on the occasion (hence this blog) and not terribly surprising when, five minutes before school starts, the kid comes out of his room and says: the dogs peed on my shoes.

The kid is growing. He’s almost eyeball to eyeball with me and the other day when I tried to get him to upstairs into the spooky second floor where we store all of our poltergeists and darkness, he flung his arm out to stop me and knocked my 46 year old ass through a window. It was like push, only he was giggling so I couldn’t be mad. We quit charting his growth on the kitchen door frame because we were afraid we’d saw through the joist. His feet are so big, the other day he clipped his toenails and the spent nail flew across the room and broke my collarbone.

SO he walks into this kitchen this morning as I’m scrambling to get out the door and warm up the car and he props a small sport yacht on the counter and says: they pooped on them too.

How and why does a dog drop a deuce on a pair of Nikes? Do they aim? Is it retaliation? Did we do something wrong? Is it dog language that means something, like pardon me, but I’d like a larger water dish, henceforth, my good man, (also: floooooop. There ya go).

I grab my boots, which are slightly oversized, and he plows his gargantuan feet into them and winces and says it’ll be ok, he doesn’t have gym. I tell him, great, get your jacket. He disappears. I hear: they peed on my jacket too.

MERDE!!!

I give him my old man jacket, a slick black windbreaker with an incongruous silver swatch up both sides. He stares at me like I’ve applied lipstick and rouge.

Get your bookbag.

He disappears into his room and suddenly yells something he’s not allowed to say, followed by:

They peed on my bookbag!

I swear to god, I’m having their bladder removed.

DIY—Installing a Pre-Hung Screen Door in 10 Easy Steps.

Death By Children is about more than the nefarious and deadly machinations of our spawn or their efforts to render us twitching and pale from their ongoing appropriation of internet porn slang. It's about a lifestyle, a way of going about your day with a kind of Zen focus, a way of being ever more self sufficient and capable. To that end, we present our ongoing series of Do It Yourself projects.

DIY #002: Pre-hung Screen Door.

Materials:

• Hammer


• Circular Saw


• Gaping hole in back porch


• Broken screen door hanging precariously on one hinge with sharpened metallic edges unspooling into a guantlet of razors


• Plumber's wrench


• Three pocket knives (one non functional)


• Teflon Tape


• Duct tape


• Masking tape


• 7 to 12 screwdrivers of varying types and sizes


• Power drill


• Power drill


• Fairy dust


• Valium

Installation

1. Once you have assembled your materials, turn off the power to the entire house.


2. Look for the new screen door in the basement. Look for new screen door in the pantry. Look for new screen door at the neighbor's house. Check out neighbor's new Jag. Borrow a hammer.


3. Go to hardware store and purchase DIY screen door—81 inches tall, 36 inches wide. Return home.


4. Unpack contents of  DIY screen door. Chase dogs away.


5. Run after dogs and retrieve instructions. Measure doorway.


6. Return to hardware store. Return door for DIY screen door 77 inches by 32 inches. Pay extra for not having all the parts or a receipt.


7. Unpack contents of DIY screen door. Chase dogs away. Lay door out onto picnic table. Lay out all of your tools onto door. Drill 17 1/8 inch holes equal distances between top and bottom of door edge. Remove tools. Turn door over. Repeat. Think for a minute. Turn door over. Swing door around so the top (TOP) is toward the top (TOP) of workbench (PICNIC TABLE). Drill new holes.


8. Attach door edge to door edge. Attempt to attach attached edges to gaping hole's frame using hammer and power drill. Realize door weighs 714 pounds. Drop door on foot. Speak French. Leverage door on packing material until door is aligned with edge of gaping hole. Align alignment hole with 1/8 inch pre-drilled alignment---


9. Drill a 1/8 inch alignment hole into Gaping Hole frame. Return to step 8.


10. Attach DIY screen door to Gaping Hole frame using 34 1/8 inch machine screws, hammer, power drill, plumber's wrench, blow torch, and teflon tape.


11. Remove protective cover from pet entrance flap. Call dogs.


12. Using the Power Drill, remove manufacturer's screws from pet entrance flap. Using pliers, remove pet entrance flap from pet. Using duct tape, #13 jeweler's hammer, and a whistle, reattach pet entrance flap to center of door.


13. Dig through tool box for the hinge and cotter pin for the pneumatic door release arm. Attach to pre-installed door arm bracket and—


14. Remove door. Turn exterior side (EXT) to exterior.


15. Using power drill, salad tongs, a letter opener, and a power drill, reattach DIY screen door to Gaping Hole frame.


16. Read instructions.


17. Follow instructions reading: "Using pliers, move auto lock mechanism to full and fully extend pneumatic door release mechanism," with perfect attention to detail. Attach fully extended pneumatic door release mechanism to door mechanism bracket. Attempt to close door.


18. Apply upper body weight generously against DIY screen door. You should hear a "pop," and a "loud metallic grinding," whereupon your DIY door will drop three inches, slam itself halfway shut, and remain fixed in that position indefinitely.

Why My 11 Year Old Son Thought he Was Locked Out in the Dark.

He was.

But I didn't know. It's not some kind of post-redneck tough love program to rid him of his unnatural fear of life after sundown (He's like a reverse vampire.) He tried the back door for reasons that will never become entirely clear, found it was locked (because of all the 11 year olds) and freaked out. Prudently deciding to alarm us of his presence, he knocked. Loudly. On the window. Which shattered.

Hope that clears that up.

Wake Me Early Father, for I Must Kill.

I've been considering the post modern family lately and I've come to the conclusion that I really ought to transport my entire family back to 1843 so we can spend the day in the parlor drinking sasparilla and playing Parcheesi. I ought to have a swallow tail coat and a monocle and sit on my son's bedside at 4 in the morning and wake him with the dulcet quatrains of Paradise Lost, in Latin, while [My Attorney] milks the yak and my daughter prepares our early repast of hand harvested goose eggs and blood sausage. That's what ought to happen.

Instead,  I woke the boy child up at 7:40 this morning, about twelve hours before he usually wakes up, so he can play Halo 3/ODST before school. This is the post modern child: a determined, pre-dawn, mirthless killing machine.

I am so proud.

I've pondered this predicament previously here at Death by Children, the post-modern dad not planted in the bleachers but plopped onto a divan, laptop afire, headphones playing a raconteur's stack of Tom Waits and the Decemberists, occasionally glancing up into the great high-def maul of home entertainment whereon his progeny, the fruit of his loins, is racking up a collection of the kind of long range head shots that would make Lee Harvey Oswald vote Republican and it is clear what's missing: the joise de vris, the gut revelations, of what happens in the bleachers when your kid knocks one out of the park, and you leap, involuntarily, into a fist-pumping-Irish jig-roundabout-pimp-swagger-plexy screaming THAT'S MY BOY! THAT'S MY BOY!! THAT'S MY BOY!!! and knock over your beer.

Us pomo pops don't get that much. Our kids hate baseball. They really do. They're into wireless networking, Family Guy ephemera, and globally linked high definition explicitly graphic games of death wherein they can jack up their kill ratio and digitally t-bag their opponent's dead avatar.

Which is exactly what mon homme petit was doing this morning from 7 until 8:45. Now I know he's good. He routinely despleens vast populi of players from London to New Zealand from the comfort of his dirty-ass room. His deeply inked and tatooed uncle took him on the other day and Connor killed him ceaselessly in the most embarrassing and improbable manner possible. He was being creatively cruel in the dispatch of his uncle's avatars—a cat and mouse kind of thing—when his uncle, a technically proficient highly competitive swagger junky started asking questions about the response time of the controllers, the virtual analog of saying the sun was in my eye. Roon called him a pussy. The kid is ruthless.

And I want to shout out THAT'S MY BOY! I want to manifest manic proud papa turrets syndrome but there's no one here to see it so what's the point. I can email people. I can Facebook it. I can Tweet. But it's just not the same.

So do all I can do: I pat him on the back as I go into the kitchen for another double espresso and I say what every great pomo pop says to his kid:

Nice kill, son. Nice kill.

Thirteen Things You Can Do With Google CHROME GOOGLE CHROME

1. GOOGLE CHROME CURES CANCER!
   
2. GOOGLE CHROME FINDS AND REPLACES THIRD NIPPLES!
3. GOOGLE CHROME DISTRACTS LIBERALS SO THE GOP CAN NUKE KANSAS!
4. GOOGLE CHROME WILL HELP YOU TRAVEL IN TIME!
5. GOOGLE CHROME HELPS YOU GROW A THICKER, RICHER HEAD OF HAIR!
6. GOOGLE CHROME EXPLAINS ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE IN COOL DR. SEUSS STYLE RAP!
7. GOOGLE CHROME LOWERS GAS PRICES!
8. GOOGLE CHROME MAKES YOU TALK LIKE SEAN CONNERY!
9. GOOGLE CHROME PROTECTS TRAILERS FROM TORNADOES!
10. GOOGLE CHROME MAKES MS VISTA WORK!
11. GOOGLE CHROME MAKES GOOGLE CHROME WORK AS WELL AS GOOGLE CHROME!
12. GOOGLE CHROME WILL ABSORB ALL THE OTHER PROGRAMS ON YOUR COMPUTER AND TURN THEM INTO GOOGLE CHROME ADD-ONS!
13. GOOGLE CHROME GOOGLE CHROME GOOGLE CHROME GOOGLE CHROME!
    

Too weird for words

Tooling around the internet, I Stumbled on this bizarre series of photographs. I have no idea if it's real or staged or hallucinated but I love it. Salud!

Soviet Space Pig.

Monday is Manday is a Madmen Marathon

Madmen Saved my Life

I'm easily obsessed. When I find something I like, something that really works for me, I don't just become a fan. I become a bleary eyed insomniac of uncontrollable lust for whatever new infatuation has crossed my path. When I was young and strong, this worked to my advantage, back when I was a man. A dude. A rock-n-rolla. Now that I'm an ancient old douchebag, it just makes me drooly. Case in point: my obsession with the hit T.V. series, Madmen.

Like every other red blooded man in America, I've given up Wide World of Wrestling and fantasizing about wearing tights and dropping a Dusty Rose off the ropes into some bleeding bastard's sagging solar plexus. No, we've put that behind us. We shaved, bought a crisp white shirt and a slim gray suit, and got a hat because we're all in agreement that we no longer want to be Dusty Rose. We want to be Don Draper.

Goodbye Do-Rag. Hello Stingy Brim Trilby.

Like most portly middle aged dads, I've been hurtling down the hirsute route to Harley Davidson ownership and too many tattoos. I wear do-rags in public without shame. And I don't mean the simple handkerchief over my bald head cause it's hot out demure yarmulkes, no I mean custom cut vividly rendered close-up prints of hot pepper do-rags. I'd wear this get-up with a Hawaiin shirt chosen specifically for the sheer lewd audacity with which it challenges even the loosest dictum of fashion, all while sporting an Amish bass-player's beard, which is just a mullet for your face. With sandals and white socks. To dinner.

But I'm giving it all up. I'm saved. I've found my T.V. Jesus and his name is Don Draper. He's everything all us old fat Dads have secretly been trying to rediscover in ourselves. We yearn, with remarkable clarity, the driven, ambitious, suave, reckless, hellion of our youth, that former self always dressed to kill, a single malt scotch in one hand, a leggy blond in the other. I say remarkable clarity because our 20-20 hindsight is capable not only of discerning objects in our past with stunning, self congratulatory accuracy, it's actually able to see stuff that wasn't there, brilliant hallucinations of our youth, like our suave Playboy life, so much like Don Draper's. Exactly like his. Since he's as much a hallucination as our gin soaked 007 pre-nuptial faux historie.

Don Draper is an Advertisement for the Lost American Manhood

Draper's as much a carefully constructed fake as the ads he designed for the Kodak Carousel. But I'm being harsh here. He's not really fake. He's a mash-up. An amalgam of all the leading men, heroes, crooners, and father figures from 1950 through 1962. He's a threeway DNA splice of Sam Spade, James Bond, and Jimmy Dean, and the people that grew him in a vat in some secret  underground T.V. show lab have hit the diamond crusted caves of the Gnomes of Zurich because Draper is just flat-out the coolest, most dispossessed, most casually cruel, driven, capable, highly paid, dapper, super creative, bastard that's ever been broadcast.

What, me? A guy crush?

Sorry, but I can barely spell homoerotica. No, it's not repression or latency that's driving so many of us newbie 40 somethings to adopt this most recent template of manliness. It's relief. All our life we've harbored a secret love of fedoras and gray Italian suits and longed for luscious high-haired broken blonds with evil grins and malice on their breath. But we've been force-fed hippy milquetoasted sugar-pop idiocy since Kennedy took off his hat. The Monkees? Eight is Enough? American Hero? Are you kidding me?

American television manliness lost it when they stopped running The Saint. After that, everything just faded out into a tie-dyed haze of hash-pipe hallelujah hack flattery by men who were overly conscientious and well-meaning, men who were as concerned for others as they were for themselves. And don't even try to resell me on the Rockford Files as the last bastion of manhood. Nice theme song, but Garner missed the girl as much as he kissed the girl. I'll give you Kirk, but shortly after Kronkite went off the air, the American man morphed into something that left us all wiping our eyes and asking what the hell just happened?

I'm not here to promote Draper's womanizing, I'm all grown up now and I know that kind of behavior leads to double-murder-suicide or, worse, therapy. And I don't mean to champion the haze of cancer wafting around the StirCoo office or the way they jack the women down the ladder. It's a period piece, people. I get that. But there's something compelling about Draper's no bullshit demeanor and even something about him having a demeanor at all. Draper is unfazed. He operates on a steely principle of get-it-done-give-me-a-drink-and-shut-the-hell-up. I love it.

I am, therefore, a Real Man.

So I'm spending Manday obsessing over this show's first season, filling in gaps int he story, looking up the original products and campaigns on Google (aside: I have sudden-kick-ass-office-envy disease and Draper's home office has a 1944 aluminum lamp that juts, dude it JUTS, out over his desk. I will make that lamp if I have to.) and grooving on the full-frontal fuck-you attitude displayed in the creative department of Sterling-Cooper and just digging it, the Kronkitian scorch of the 21st century man revealed through his 50 year post-pardoned ancestors' smokin' and pushin' lipstick on late-night black and white cop dramas, when I wonder randomly if Martha Stewart might have something on her website about folding towels and BAM there it is, my growing middle-aged re-manhood, swept away in a sea of warm, crisp, linen, because the whole time I've been watching Draper and fantasizing about snapping the brim on a Homberg or wearing thin ties or sweet-talking a husky high-haired blond, I've been folding towels.

Death Warmed Over

Yo peoples. This is the new Death By Children blog. I hope you like it. Please link up and tell everyone you know or have ever even heard of.

VOTE FOR PEDRO!

And by Pedro, I mean me. I got picked by this website who's subtitle is: for women, by women, about women. I mean, my name is Christopher, and though I know you can name your daughter Christopher in Massachusetts now, I still think most people assume someone named Christopher is a dude.

However, my post is up and I think I win something so pump the greed button, man. I'll probably win a lifetime supply of apron strings or cheese cloth. Stupid contests.

13 Things on Thursday I Could Have Been Doing Besides Standing In Line at the Doctor's Office With a Jug of My Daughter's Urine

1. Anything else.


2. Taking over Leichtenstein.


3. Learning how to spell Liechtenstein.


4. Smuggling ocelots.


5. Growing an elaborate beard.


6. Learning conversational Greek.


7. Pimping out a smart car.


8. Worrying about the economy (oh wait, I did that).


9. Shaving highly literate quotes into my sideburns.


10. Fixing the grammar on local produce center window signs (pickle's 88 cent's!)


11. Yo quieroing my taco bell.


12. Snake dancing on a black volcanic beach in the Maldives.


13. Getting some flash added on to my grill.

Thank GOD for Zotero!

As a writer, I'm constantly wrestling with research. I spend a lot of time angrily muttering about lack of seamless integration, about not having a real system, about punk librarians . . . well now I may have to shut up.

While I've been researching a new book, I downloaded some Firefox tools and found this divine intervention for serious writers and researchers: Zotero. Just visit the site and watch the video.


src="http://www.zotero.org/images/promote/get_zotero_98x39.gif"/>

Annual Appeal to All the Ardent Advocates of this Author

It's simple. In order for me to continue to promote Death By Children at the level which currently allows me to write from the comfort of a luxurious sports yacht off the coast of the Maldives while eating fresh caught crab and drink Westvleteren 12 like it was water, I need your support. By support I don't mean money. You can't send fistfulls of money over the internet though so many of you try. No. I mean connectivity. I mean readership. I mean eyeballs.

So show your love, show your undying fealty to my withinering prose. Forward your favorite Death By Children column (you might want to drill down through the tabs at the top of the page) to all of your friends and family, all the people you work with, your neighbors, your ex-boyfriend the bass player for that one band, your kids in college, your old high school chums, and everyone you know on Facebook.

By spreading the word of Death By Children, you will assist your fellow man in their slow crawl up the evolutionary chain by igniting their poor, pitiful lizard mind with the dynamic, highly advanced verbiage you've become accustomed to here, you being such a literate, suave, ultra-hip cool person that you are.

Thank you;

Death.

Why was Adrian Grenier at Hot Doug's Today?

And where was his entourage? And why do I care? I'm not a big fan of the show, not because it's bad or anything, but because, let's be serious here, I'll never get to see it. MY DVR is DOA because my kids have appropriated this machine to use as an electronic time capsule for storing Futurama, Family Guy, and the Simpsons to protect these treasures for future generations against neutron bombs and zombie plagues.

And of course, I support their effort, to a degree, because a) I am afraid of Zombie plagues, and (b), the Simpsons have highy detailed drawings of a working nuclear reactor which future generations might find useful after the apocolypse in order to power up those ancient old gas plasmas to study the anthropological wonder that is (will be) the Simpsons. They will not be using them to watch Entourage, however, simply because Entourage is all about the nuances and situational humor of skinny jeans and hair. You can't find a working nuke plant in that show. Totally useless.

I've seen pictures of Entourage cast members, leaning against cars like a glyph of late-90s-band-flyer-well-heeled-disregard reprocessed by a zen monk feng sui wizard with a PhD in compositional balance, I have, and like everyone else who sees these posters and ads I was instantly compelled to entrain the date and time into the very bowels of my brain, re-schedule everything in my life around its one hour manifestations, and Twit the holy bjesus out of it, but I didn't, and I won't, because I can't watch TV as our cable box (-es, all 4 of them) are fully booked for the aforementioned post-apocalyptic anthropologist TV party, a'la fruit of my loins and Dish Network.

I tried to watch the news yesterday to maybe get a glimpse of the coverage of Uncle Walt's unfortunate demise and enjoyed all of nineteen seconds of it before the little lozenge of doom blinked into existence to inform me that, no, sorry, nice news show and all, but Futurama reruns are on. And that's the way it was.

Later I was watching the news again, having just settled my ample corpus into the couch when the little lozenge of regret informed me, again, that I was mistaken if I intended to continue to infringe on South Park reruns. I hit the delete and an entirely different lozenge winked into existence  to chastise me for even supposing I might watch live TV while it was storing I Didn't Know I was Pregnant! which I happily deleted only to find a ferocious and persistent lozenge alarming me to the imminent recording of Emergency Room Disaster: Pancreas Explosion!

I leaped to my feet, fist full of remote, and speed deleted every single lozenge but they just kept coming: Spleens!; Extrovention; The Sad Story of Little Nell Who Had Cancer but Donated Her Liver to another kid who had Cancer who died!; What's That? Doctor's Real Mistakes Caught by X-Ray!; Real High Speed Chases!; Ice Road Hookers; Lost; Totally Lost; and Seriously, Dude, I Don't Know Where We Are is that a Polar Bear?

I  gave up. I went to Hot Doug's where, after standing in a line that stretched (this part's not an exaggeration) around the building and past two neighborhood houses, for two hours, behind a group of ironically inked graphic artists who started out as two but kept attracting simillarly tattooed cyclists until they were six, all of whom appeaered as if they'd pulled their clothes out from under a hamper in a third floor walk up in 1972 but had had the presence of mind to douse themselves with Axe which made my lungs want to decavitate, to get an Alligator and Cajun Roumelade hot dog, and then, finally, after fighting my way through the hoardes of hippies and Germans who don't seem to understand that the fat guy with food walking toward them and saying  E X C U S E  M E over and over is actually attempting to leave and perhaps they might want to let him through, just out of old school politeness, whatever, and finally, finally, after TWO HOURS of all this shit and they didn't even have the goose fat fries because it's Monday and finally, I walk out, amazed at the sheer diversity of haircuts and ironic tattoos (one guy had a willy wonka candy wrapper on his shin), I stroll past the end of the line, food triumphantly in hand, and THAT'S WHEN ADRIAN !@#$%%^&! GRENIER DECIDES TO SHOW UP!?

I caught his eye and said, 'Good luck, lady, they close in five minutes."

Stoopid celebrity.

Open Letter to Internet Porn Trollers Visiting This Blog

I'm talking to you, Mr. "Border Collie Licks My Toes." I don't know what perverted sociopath t-boned your childhood like an off-white van t-bones a brand new porche, and I don't care. Stop. Stop now. As much as I like the traffic stats on my Google analytic page, I really REALLY don't want your kind attentions.

Even though I am deeply reassured by the scarce 1.42 seconds you spent on my blog before you realized it wasn't dog porn, I am equally deeply dismayed that you found your way here at all.

And the rest of you. Seriously, move to Singapore or something. I can't stand the "key word results page" stats any more. I'm supposed to find out people are searching for "highly articulate hilarious parenting humor" not "gay dog".

So, in the immortal paean of every Irish cop in every family movie car crash scene ever, (ahem) "Alright, move along, nothing to see here."

My Indian Name is 'Dances With Squirrels'

Every day my kids and I burst out the front door so I can take them to school. We do this at almost exactly the same time, and when I say burst, I mean something like explode.

Since we live in Chicago near a golf course and a forest preserve, we often see rabbits, chipmunks—even deer—grazing in the yard. We always see squirrels. Squirrels rule the street. They’re so tame they don’t even scatter when we race down the sidewalk to the car, they just sit their on their fat little haunches gnawing acorns or pine cones or crabapples and give us the hairy eyeball, as if every single squirrel immigrated from the Bronx.

Until the other day, when a squirrel and I bonded.

I always assume the squirrels don’t pay much attention to us enormous. explosive bipeds. I figure they figure us for ‘big crazy squirrels’ and ignore the screaming, the papers flying everywhere, the hip-check duels for determining who gets shotgun. But the other day, I threw the door open, raced down the steps, and skidded to a stop: One of them was staring at me.

I don’t mean staring the way a rabbit will glance at you to see if it should run, I mean a big fat tawny squirrel with an acorn in it’s grip was giving me the hairy eyeball. Like he recognized me.

I sensed a weird resonance with this tiny mammal: we were roughly the same shape, we both had a sardonic glare plastered on our mugs, we were both exquisitely browed. I was carrying a stack of books in my hands, close to my chest, worried they’d slip, just like he was carrying a giant acorn in his little fingers. I don’t know why I did this but I hunched down, like I was ducking—and the squirrel did the same thing. My son said the most remarkable, eloquent thing, practically an oration, he said “Dude.” I was inspired.

I double hunched and the squirrel double hunched. I turned my head to the right and the squirrel turned his. I ducked my head. He ducked his head. It was an interspecies tango. I said “Oh my God, my new Indian name is ‘dancing with squirrels’. My kids cracked up. My dance partner ran away.

The next day we hit the steps and pulled up short. There he was, same time, same place. My daughter immediately started in with a ‘bown-chicka-wow-wow’ and me and the squirrel ducked and bobbed until my son, though deeply impressed with the cross genus gyrations, informed us we were already late for the first bell by groaning, “Dude?” and we pulled into the car. As I checked the rearview to pull out, I saw my squirrel still staring at us, like the song was still playing but we’d jilted him and went to the bar for a drink. He looked surprised.

The next day he didn’t show. Instead of blowing the door open, we eased out onto the steps-- but no squirrel. I tried to get a rabbit to bump and grind but he just wiggled his nose, kind of a ‘you got to be kidding me,’ wiggle. The other squirrels just raced around the tree trunk and ignored me. I mean they completely ignored me, like they were saying ‘that bastard just left Franky standing there.’

As we sped through the neighborhood, suicide squirrels darted into the road, dodging my tires and leaping out of the way with hair trigger timing and steely bravado. I usually ignore this but after dancing with a squirrel for two days in a row, I had a new view. These were not simply confused rodents. They were warriors. They were testing their mettle by arcing across the path of oncoming hummers and hybrids. I imagined bristly squirrel girls hidden in the boxwoods and peonies switching their carefully groomed tails and saying ‘OMG, did you see that?!’ while their boy squirrels strut back to them across the grass having risked everything to give the tiny finger to chrome plated roaring death by squishilation.

This fantasy spun completely out of control so that every wild animal I saw seemed to have cartoon talk bubbles suspended in mid-air over their heads, filled with snappy dialogue and withering quips. The deer all talked like Frasier, rabbits were all frat boys’ the squirrels all talked like DeNiro in taxi, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and asking me ‘what, you gotta problem?’

The Family Braap

I didn't marry my wife because she can burp the alphabet but it was right up there with "hot" and "wicked smart". However, when my kids asked me why I married her (with a little too much of a 'what the hell were you thinking' in their voice . . .) I gave them the alphaburp spiel.

She can do it, too. My wife's ability to brap alphabetically is impressive and worthy of video (we have not--yet) but lately she won't do it. She won't pony up. My son will get down on his knees but she won't crack. She's a lawyer now and that kind of behavior won't hunt.

But the two or three times she broke it out for the kids forever changed their idea of burping. For most kids, a good fricative FRAAAP will do. But not ours. Our kids have goals.

The princess gave up early. It doesn't please the court. She gets to about J then loses focus. But the kid, he's committed.

My wife taught him how to fake burp in order to get through all 26 letters. She neglected to explain the physics involved: when you sallow a lot of air, it kind of makes you a human balloon and the air, it needs to come out.

So one day Connor is working it. He's horfing air like a Hoover and pumping out magnificently phlegmatic ligatures but he can't get past M without cracking up. So he's working on his game face when he fades. Just peters out. He wanders into the bathroom and sits down on the edge of the tub.

I'm on the phone (I don't recall the conversation but given the sheer idiotic guyness of coaching my son to better burping, more than likely there were a lot of "dudes" and air-fives) when I notice Connor is gripping the edge of the sink and staring at the floor with a look that either meant 'I'm giving birth' or 'this happened in Alien'. Then he screams.

My son is scared of spiders and there's one chick on his basketball team that railroads him to the hoop like a freaking bulldozer and he just stands there blinking so I'm not saying he's tough. But when it comes to puking, diarrhea, and any other ungainly expectorations, he's a pro. No prob. If he has to puke, he pauses the DVR, says 'Pardon, methinks I must hurl, forthwith’, hits the can, cleans up, and returns to Spongebob like nothing happened.

If you didn't read it in my previous, I don't freak out. I don't call 911. I don't scare easily. So when homme started wailing and wouldn't stop, when his screaming started getting louder, harder, more urgent, I grabbed the phone.

I've never felt so useless and stupid. Staring at Connor, patting him on the back, the arms, not knowing what the hell is going on, thinking his stomach is knotted, or his heart is decavitating, or his spleen's exploding, and he's looking at me like I'm supposed to know what's going on. I ask him what’s wrong and he nails me, his face contorted with horror and surprise: ‘Don’t you know?’ The paramedics burst through the door and the street fills up with sirens and red lights and they hit the hallway, all radios, faceplates and gear, and Connor looks up, astonished, revelation dawning, and he burps.

For 38 seconds.

It is a luxurious, arresting, and august irruption. It is a venting of such sepulchural weirdness it seems to disrupt the natural order: birds fall from the sky, wolves howl, republicans forgive someone, time stops yet the burp just keeps coming, just keeps unraveling like a magic act and even Connor, in the middle of it, starts to laugh while he's belching. I'm laughing. The paramedics sitting at my kitchen table are cracking up. Connor, giggling, continues to erupt: short echoing bursts of FRAAAP and CRARRRG and BLAAAAGH--like Batman for blind people.

The paramedics advise us to administer a folk remedy: coke. Burp boy keeps up his vaporous ellipses. The bleats get further apart and stop catching him by surprise and before the paramedics leave, he manages one last massive BLAAAAP!

He uses it to say thank you.

Monday is Manday!

I'm still reliving my Friday spent sitting in a leather wingback smoking a Macanudo and talking to an Arabian math teacher about the underlying similarities across various root languages and beers with Dave, fully manned-out, 3-day beard and leather brim cabelas cap representing.

Dave and I turned in our book last week and we definitely deserved a smoke. I enjoyed a Hoya de Monterrey vacuum stored aged Partaga first a couple of hours before the Macanudo event, the boys in the council circle of old retired guys laid out a table full of grilled custom butchered bratwurst and other stuff I didn't recognize. Unfortunately, I'd just loaded up on crab cakes, spiced fries, and Newcastlesat Village Inn.

I spent the day talking to Dave about how to market the book and wishing I had snoot full of scotch. Then the Arabian math teacher showed up and we got into a long lively discussion about imprecision in the English language and how there are similarities in grammar at the root of most similar languages, you know, guy talk. Then a local songwriter stopped by and played me one of her songs on her iPhone while she knocked back an Olivia Serie G and talked guitars with Big Lee.

I finally had to pry myself out of the wingback and finish off the very tail end of my last Macanudo and looked around that the animal heads on the wall, the thousand dollar humidors, the Mont Blanc displays and the dual 50 inch wide TVs dedicated to news and sports and wondered why the hell I didn't live there.

113 degrees

You just have no idea how hot it is here in Alabama where I am visiting my clan (that's clan with a C). We've cancelled everything. No golf. No great big barbeque. We're just sitting under the fan in the AC watching movies and hoping the entire state doesn't just burst into flame.

Also, my stepfather gave me one of his cowhorn peppers. In case you ever visit Alabama and some local offers you a cowhorn pepper, just punch him in the face.

My Son's Awesome Balls

Another Man Moment slides into oblivion as I ponder my son's recently acquired balls.

We were at the Sox-Yankees game at Comisky Park just south of Chinatown here in Chicago sitting in seats good enough for God. My son had brought his glove, a ball, and a sharpie. We were 20 rows up from the Sox dugout, looking down the first baseline from home plate. Roon and I grabbed the sharpie and the gear and loped down the steps to the dugout where Jenks signed our stuff. It was sunny and nippy and the guy selling hot dogs was saying it like it was some kind of verdant truth. He didn't call out HOOOOOT DOOOOOGSS! Like they usually do. He glared into the crowd, banged on his box, and stated, perfunctly: Hot Dogsh. Like he was saying "It ain't hot pretzels, idiot."

So Connor is sitting there burning in the sun and he has his little black glove and his Sox hat and his Sox shirt and Morkoviak slices one to 8 o'clock and guess who gets it? Oh yeah. The guy RIGHT BEHIND MY SON. Connor had his hand in the air and it tipped his glove and shot into the open hands of the baseball marketing director sitting behind us.

This has happened before. We were at a Bulls game and one of those impossibly curvaceous t-shirt girls slingshot a bulls shirt into the air over our head. Its parachute opened and it drifted down like some kind of modified Chinese water torture specialty, like a Fellinni take, like for seven and a half years it floated down directly over my son's head. There's no one around us for like fourteen seats and he's screaming. I mean BELLOWING "I GOT IT I GOT IT" and just as it's almost in his hands the wind (wind?) blows it one seat back to a guy in a suit (AT A FRIKKING BALL GAME). I just turned around and stared down into his brain stem for a second and he smiled and handed the shirt to Connor who proceeded to scream until his throat blew out.

But it was different at the Sox game. The guy had class. He didn't even hesitate. He shoved it into Roon's glove, said "Nice catch, kid! GO SOX!" and patted him on the back. Connor was practically weightless. He held the thing up and whooped with the kind of unadulterated glee that made my inner Southern boy proud.

After the game (Sox pasted the Yankees) we walked out and Connor carried the ball in front of him and kept saying to me "It sure is cool that I caught this foul ball, huh?" "Yep, caught a foul ball, right here. Yep this one. Nice one dad, huh? This foul ball? This ball? That I caught?" All the way down six levels until we were in the car. Then he rolled the window down. "I sure like this ball. This ball is super cool, This foul ball. That I caught."

Ahh. Baseball.

----

Radio: We Are T-Minus Something or Other

The Dave & Chris show on WBBJ 1530 AM is a go. We just have to finish up a few things and learn how to speak English. We've decided to host our inaugural show at the Cigar King. They don't know this yet. Maybe we should tell them . . .

Jenny Craig, I think I Love You

ot many people know that I have been, most of my adult life, secretly obese. I hide it well with baggy clothes and by never leaving the house, but, truth be told, I'm fat as all get out.

By average standards, I have been, at my greatest rotundity, 100 pounds over the standard mark. Just because the standard is set according to the average size of fanatical fasting Fakirs in Darfur doesn't mean it isn't right. I'm supposed to be only one person and, according to the measure, I'm two.

My gorgeous attorney has also battled with thinnitism and decided recently to join Jenny Craig. As a measure of support, I vowed to stand by her, diet spackle bar to diet spackle bar, steamed zucchini to steamed zucchini, in her quest to reduce her size by one thin secretary.

So here we are, 7 weeks into the program and we're down 20 pounds each. 20 pounds. I never thought I'd freakin lose twenty pounds. You know how much twenty pounds is? Grab four bags of sugar. Wear them. For thirty years.

However, no one's noticed yet. My pants are hanging off my ass like I'm some kind of white rapper wanna be. I went bowling and nothing worked because I'm used to heaving twenty more pounds up to the line and I'm just . ... off. I look in the mirror and I look different to myself and I see me every day. I see my attorney every day and we LOOK DIFFERENT! WE'RE SKINNIER! AND NO ONE NOTICES IT!

I think it has to do with fear of fat. When my attorney complained that no one had noticed that she'd lost weight, I told her that until she's dramatically thinner, no one is going to say anything because they can't be sure they're right. If they say "Wow, you've lost weight!" and you say, "Uh, no," look at them for a minute then finish with "I'm still fat," well, it's an awkward moment.

It's the opposite of the irrevocable comment: "When's it due?" to which the robustly bellied recipient of this folly replies, with frigid malice, "I'm. Not. Pregnant."

If you are on the upside of ample, as Mrs. Death and I were, please accept my assurance that you can lose it. You really can. And it's easy.

I've been losing two pounds or more every week for eight weeks. I eat more than I used to, the food is good, and I haven't exercised. At all. I'm not advocating that by the way so all you nitpickerels can just stand down now. I hate exercising and I doubt I'll really do it until I have to. If I was exercising---I'd have lost probably 25 pounds by now.

Jenny Craig food is expensive and it doesn't always live up to the picture on the box. The pesto pizza is terrible. The cheese tortellini is torpid and wan. But the Fish and Chips is alright and the pot-stickers and cashew chicken dinners are pretty tasty.

The important thing we've found is to load up the fridge with diet Jello and really good vegetables. We eat a salad every lunch and a huge bowl of steamed veggies every night. I have yogurt and dry cereal for breakfast every morning with a fruit, a cup of coffee and a lot of water. I eat a snack two hours later: yogurt and a snack bar with fruit. I eat a JC lunch with a womping salad at lunch, take a vitamin, have a snack two hours later, cottage cheese, a fruit, and diet chips. Then dinner. Then desert. I'm eating more food than Oprah on a binge and I'm losing weight.

I know some of my readers are, as I have so delicately described, on the upside of ample. Maybe it's you. Maybe this sounds like preaching but I'm pretty excited about losing weight. It can be done. You can do it. If I can do it ... you can.

Thirteen Things That Make You Go Huh?

1. Blobpositioning
2. Impossible to describe.
3. Proof that internet is the new CB radio and oddities museum combined.
4. I just . . . I don't know what to say. People are weird. Thank god.
5. don't.
6. Tobacco Warning
   
7. Important things to know if you are a writer.
8. Praise God for Maple Bacon Lollypops.
9. How I Get Ready for Work Every Day.
10. I used to run one of these in my old job . . .
    
11. I can't tell you how many times I've had to say this VERY SAME THING to my kids ...
12. I refer to this site DAILY...
13. Why Adobe is the God of Design. (Caution: high speed only!)
    

Monday is Manday for Beer!

I had a rough weekend. I did. I was swamped with children, I saw Sweeney Todd and sympathized far too much with that poor misunderstood psycho killer, and I got a sinus headache that still hasn't gone away. Plus I had to do a lot of wifey stuff, laundry and cleaning and yadda yadda yadda. I'm hip deep in laundry RIGHT NOW. And just when it looks like the horizon is just a long, dirty dishtowel stretched into infinity, my bud, the inestimable mathrock genius drummer, Dan Brill, of Acumen Nation (buy their CD now!) invites me to his birthday party. And where does a self respecting hard core heavy metal drummer with mind melting power drumming skills have a party? Where the beer is heavy and the women are too! Brau Haus. Ah, there is no antidote to housework more clear and manly than weird German beer!

13 Things I found randomly on the Internet

1. This peanut looks like a duck.
2. Turkey vultures virtually vibrate vivacity and vim .
3. Which 70s album cover do you most resemble?
4. Random. I'm talking random here, people.
5. How life ought to be all the time.
6. I am a zombie filled with love.
7. Why do Brits always play villains when their commercials are sooooo good?
8. This would be a plopsicle.
9. Great music video!
10. Paranormal writing test.
11. This lady's baby is so stoned.
    
12. Will Smith plays the Cramer of Superheroes this summer.
13. Second Best Blog on the Internet.
    

Sperm Wail

Today I walked out onto the Mother Theresa tarmac to retrieve Boy and saw him from all the way across the lot, beaming at me, loaded with promise. What a moment. I mean, he's like a little Kennedy doll and he's picked me out, made eye-contact, from like 50 yards and I know he's just bursting with pride. It's like he's barely containing a nuclear bomb of pride and I'm so glad. I could use it.

I had a bad day. My mac deep-sixed at THE VERY MOMENT I WAS UPLOADING A CLIENT'S FINISHED WEBSITE. I mean like as my finger hovered over the return key, as the space between the fingerprints and the Baleek china surface of the mac grew increasingly smaller until I could practically feel the nano indentation of the word "enter," the screen froze and my mac died it's third and least noble death.

Also, I absorbed the brunt of the snot gargling this week and received my dubious infection like a church wafer, spending most of yesterday lying in bed watching Top Chef re-reruns and wondering if I had the temerity to stand erect in the shower long enough to shave (I didn't). I actually went to the store in my "cold clothes"--cut-off -jersey-raggy-old-shorts that look like I cleaned a crime scene in them with a matching t-shirt complete with an espresso-tinged ellipses running down my front like some weird t-shirt semaphore, a semiotic self-referential version of "I'm with stupid," the kind of high-end hyper-intelligent garb Umberto Eco would wear to a micro-brew ten-pin bowling alley old-school martini joint.

And my guitar was out of tune.

And my headlight went out.

And did I mention my Mac had crashed? I mean, I had just spent something like 8 hours crunching through a Flash site from scratch, turning it into a beeeautiful work of art that screamed through transitions and just looked gorgeous--for free. And can't. Show. It to any. Body.

And I got bad customer service from the Mac store. This is what kills me. The MAC store, my place of worship, Middle Managemented me. I know the face, I've worked retail. I know when I've hit the customer service terminal wall.

So walking across the hot sticky tar (90 degrees in Sept!) and seeing my son broadcasting a radiant ear-to-ear and knowing that he's at this top-shelf school and knowing that he's finally working at the level he deserves, I'm thinking he's going to say something like:

• Father, dear, you were right! The Brothers Karamozov really is incredible!


• Wow; the similarities between Latin and English are stunning. Did you know . . .
  or even


• I owned pre-calc today!

Because your kid, smiling, smart, achieving, can blow the bad day away. That genuine enthusiasm, the kind of all-in yeah-baby crash-the-car bravado that only kids can provide, can clear it all out like a firehose. Reset. Do over.

And that's what I wanted. And just like any good Wuthering Heights remake, I loped in slomo across the blacktop to my prideful, beside-himself with accomplishment, scion of 5th grade intelligentsia, fruit of my loins, heir to my . . . fortune; mini me, my boy who drops in beside me and says:

Dude, today we totally talked about sperm!"

I Am a Fearless Cub Scout Leader!

As usual, the scouts and I performed a valuable community service by walking through the forest preserve and pouting to the point where a helicopter could land on our upper lips.

I enjoy scouting. I like sleeping on the cold hard ground during a rainstorm then driving home for three hours smelling like a dead weasel slow roasted over a tire fire. I like eating hot dogs cooked to a delicious full bodied carbon. I like gnats. Under my eyelids.

And I truly appreciate the civic lesson embodied in the Scout credo. There really isn't another organization for kids that actually rewards them for selflessly assisting the community. Bravo. But whoever said scouts is a youth organization was misguided and high on bug juice. Scouts is a brilliant method for ensnaring the skills and resources of local adults through the apparent involvement of their children. Scouts is a ball and chain. You get your kid involved in scouts because YOU were a scout and by god if you had to hike three miles through a muddy ravine to camp in a slough full of badger vomit your kid's gonna do it too.

Take today. We assembled the scouts to walk through the local forest preserve to clean up litter. This is selfless and noble and I felt like a titanic citizen, like I was cast in bronze. I could barely walk straight cause I had my chest stuck out so far. For like eight seconds. Then I looked around and realized the scouts were all throwing empty Pabst cans into the river. They spent the entire hike endeavoring to fall off the steep muddy sides of the DesPlaines, cut themselves on broken glass no doubt previously dipped in the festering open wounds of homeless CDC escapees, and stab each other with the pointy ends of sticks pulled out of cold fires that looked suspiciously sacrificial. As the scouts rocketed down the leafy deer trails in the woods, leaping nimbly over the discarded cigar tubes and McDonald's wrappers, they passed by countless scenes as wild and rare as anything on the nature channel: Enormous hardwood fungi big as dinner plates; wild asparagus shooting up out of the ground like, um, asparagus; deer nibbling at the remains of a Taco Belle Grande. Real nature.

I saw these things because unlike the feral howler monkeys we were leading on this selfless act of delittering the forest, I was actually picking up garbage. Me and all the adults. The parents. And it occurred to me that the people who convince the scouts to do this kind of thing are brilliant social engineers. They ask how big the troop is, multiply by two, and get a solid number of adult volunteers. If the kids actually do anything, it's a bonus.

The kids only real brush with condensed littering occurred when we stumbled on a hobo camp. No hobos, alas, cause we'd dearly love to have interviewed them and shared their homely dinner of hot beans and chicken wings with a nice steaming cup of black coffee, all cooked over a small fire in a paint bucket. Ah, to listen to them regal us with stories of riding the rails and then teach us the secret hobo signs and maybe part with a song backed up by a cigar box banjo. But they weren't there. Which is good. Because the meth addled freaks who had made this camp had consumed something like eight cases of Ice Blue and had tied something to a tree with an old lamp cord and some wall wiring. Oh and we found a cat skull. Maybe not hobos so much as psychos.

As we shuffled through the underbrush we came on another encampment, a circular fence of fallen limbs all wrangled together around an old fire. We found a lot of pills and a lot of hair dye so this must've been a travelling goth encampment. After we circled around through the forest, we passed by it again (after we'd removed the dope) and it was already filling up with a bunch of youth meddling with a keg. Ah. Nature. Walden would be proud.

It occurred to me as were were leading these pink cheeked elven kids through the dark forest that the dark forest of Chicago was not a whole lot different from the dark forests of any medieval locale. Ours is filled with drunken louts, lost youth, and secret gypsy encampments of people that probably don't exactly hold to the Scout motto much. This idea was driven home by the man we ran into up on a grassy plateau. He had an enormous welt on his head and we thought maybe he had passed on to that great summer camp in the sky when he heaved a deep snotty snorp and we realized that he'd merely passed out there in his little house BUILT ENTIRLEY OUT OF EMPTY BEER CASES. Two of our scouts, wanting to share their nascent sheer with this colorful local, began to jump up and down at the edge of the clearing singing merrily: HOBO! HOBO! Until he woke up and lumbered their way.

We eventually finished up, stowed our bags of trash, old tents, rotted lawn chairs and assortment of empty beer cans--a job well done. I for one biked home satisfied and relieved that we hadn't had to explain any caches of needles nor a single spent condom.

Frosting Cupcakes on Demand

Every other week I go to lodge and hang out with a bunch of like minded men. Pillars of the community, doctors, lawyers, builders, politicians, ordinary salary men, engineers, barbers, butchers, salesmen, and more, we sit down to a delicious dinner and discuss Family Guy trivia. It's an exclusive, elite club and I'm proud to be part of it. During our meetings, we have a very strict NO CELL PHONES policy. I put mine on vibrate and hope the kids don't implode while I'm semiincommunicado. I tell the kids: DO NOT CALL ME UNLESS YOU ARE ON FIRE!

In the two years I've been able to do this, the kids have NEVER called me. Ever. They have some weird respect for me when I put on the Vegas suit (meetings are a black tie thing). I've never had to rush out of a meeting. Until this last Wednesday night.

Now you have to understand: the daughter is afflicted. Along with her gifted status and the extra brain cells she got from [My attorney]'s DNA, the stuff that helps her explain polygon tessellations and get an A in Arabic language studies (she can sass me in two languages now), Rah received (from my DNADHD) a glitch. We're not sure what it means, but, when we're both away--the mom working, the dad smoking fine cigars--Rah tends to start baking.

This is highly alarming because the genius DNA means she can measure the ingredients perfectly but the DUH-NA means she forgets the oven is on,  takes a shower, tries to write a novel, then falls asleep.

Once [My Attorney] and I were on a date. The kids were under strict orders to not call unless

1. something was poking out of them, and


2. there was a lot of blood

Even then I'd better hear sirens in the background or they were grounded. Yet, between the appetizer and the main course, we got this call:

Dad?
Are you on fire?
I smell gas.
Your brother farted.
No, I'm baking.
It's 10:30 at night!?
It's my 11 monthiversary tomorrow!
Jesus Haploid Christ.
What should I do?
Give the phone to your brother.
...
Dude!
Are you in the kitchen?
Dude.
Do you smell gas?
Dude?
Turn on a burner.
(pffff)
Still there?
Dude.

So the next day I explain to my daughter that baking is to occur during daylight hours only, when I am there, and with the local fire department alerted.

Just before my meeting starts last Wednesday, I'm having fellowship (Stewie impersonations) during dinner (pizza) when the phone rings.

Dad?
Yeah.
Is the top of the oven supposed to get really, really hot?
[insert tirade here]

I explain that she is to turn off the oven as soon as the CAKE she is baking at 8PM AT NIGHT is DONE. Twenty minutes later I call her.

Is the oven off?
(totally dejected) Yeah.
Don't call me again unless you've lost a limb.
(still remorseful) OK.

So I'm in my secret meeting, vibrate mode, in the middle of a lecture when the phone vibrates with such tintinnabulated seismic alarm it rips a hole in my pants and skips across the floor. I excuse myself under a cloud of raised eyebrows and glares, walk outside and answer the phone.

I'm thinking "Holy crap, the place is on fire." I get this.

Dad?
Yeah.
On your way home can you pick up frosting?

As a father, you develop certain skills, certain ninja-like qualities, that can't readily be explained to the unspawned. The dadface is a father's principle skill, along with all it's declinations, like the uttering of the word 'boy' with barely constrained menace; like the whistle your son can hear down in his bones even though he's six miles away with his Xbox headset clamped across his ears in the middle of a tactical assault yet still reacts with robotic efficiency and primal urgency; like the face that answers questions like 'can I watch Naruto?' asked rhetorically as they reach out to swipe the remote from your easy-chair lair, then glance over and freeze in place as their soul is melted by your Medusa-like perfunctory glare. These are important tools of a parent and to them I have added a new skill, a modern age technique for cell phone use: the silent glare. After about forty seconds of lethal silence, Rah says: Oh, were you in your meeting? I'm sorry! White frosting, ok?

Apparently it doesn't work on girls.

I get to the store rack up a basket stand in line realize I forgot my wallet when I changed into the Vegas suit drive home walk into the house and she's asleep.

Snoring.

The kitchen's been cake-bombed. The counter top is a foot deep in mixing bowls, measuring cups, flour sacks, cook books, wooden spoons, spent diet coke cans, food coloring, cupcake wrappers, cupcake pans, cake pans, cake mix boxes, and, inexplicably, a ball of yarn with two knitting needles stuck into it like a rabbit ear antennae.

In the center of it all is my enormous clear glass mixing bowl filled to the rim with a broken strawberry cake. It looks like it was raped by a squirrel.

This explains the tons of dejection and remorse I heard in my last call to her. I remember now why she's baking: it's her boyfriend's birthday the next day and she wants to celebrate at lunch and was going to bring him a cake. A cake that is now shredded and useless.

Then, tucked behind the huge glass bowl, I see three perfect cupcakes. They are naked and unfrosted.

Here's where awesome dad proves he rules with a velvet gauntlet.

I make icing from scratch, from a secret Amish recipe--frosting so white and light and delicious, angels appear halfway through mixing it, and at 12:22 am, while she's snoring in the other room, amid the debris of exploded pastry, I frost my daughter's cupcakes.

Cussin' Up a Storm

We're a cuss friendly family, here at the house of Death. My kids cuss with abandon, [My Attorney] and I cuss like sailors--even the dog cusses.

But I'm wondering if this is a bad thing. My kids are careful editors outside casa de caca--no complaints from the school. But once they get inside the door? Like sailors.

I'm not saying it's fbomb central. They're colorful, not ugly. They say the D word and the S word and the GD word and a few composites handed down from past generations. X-box live has added some new words to the list, since the Boy plays Gears of War with some articulate potheads from New Zealand. But overall, they're cursing is actually sub-naval.

I think I'm highly liberal and I think this is unusual but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, behind closed doors, all families are cuss positive.

What's it like in your family? Do youi let your kids cuss at home? In the car? In texts?

Flickr Resume

I've been using Flickr a long time and stumbled onto a Flickr meme game where you answer twelve questions and use Big Huge Lab's mosaic maker to illustrate your list. The rule is you answer the questions, then search your answers on Flickr. You have to use an image from the first results page. Here's mine.



1. What is your nickname? G
2. What is your favorite food? Oysters
3. What high school did you go to? West Orange High School
4. What is your favorite color? white
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Scarlett Johanson
6. Favorite drink? Chimay Beer
7. Dream vacation? Veranasi
8. Favorite dessert? Flan
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Finished
10. What do you love most in life? Learning
11. One Word to describe you. Curious
12. Your flickr name. chris garlington

Freelace Writers Don't Get Sick Days.

s you know, I work at home. When I came up with a career change I thought to myself, ok, brilliant, I'll work at home, write, become famous, make a bajillion dollars, and live like a rock star. I envisioned myself draped over my leather chair with a laptop and a cappuccino interviewing Obama for Rolling Stone.

I knew that was a fantasy, I knew I'd be writing stock entries for digital camera retail sites and B2B literature instead of the great American novel and I was and still am ok with that.  My principle complaint is that in each of the myriad fantasies I entertained about the glamour of the telecommuter life, I was always BY MYSELF, not embedded with the groaning, moaning, hacking, wheezing, snot sluiced rheumy eyed boredomites I am bivouacked with currently.

Tuesday at 3:48am (AY EM!) my daughter woke up screaming. [My Attorney] was propelled from the bed, leaving a body shaped smoking hole in the floor as she manifested by her screaming daughter's side, then remanifested by my side to tell me I had to take the girl to the emergency room because her ears were exploding.

By 4:25 I was standing in the ER with the screamer who had swallowed two hulking horse pill sized [brand name aspirin who won't play ball with me that rhymes with "stylenol"] expecting to still be standing there four hours later explaining to them how I am not actually an indigent, but a possessor of gold plated POP insurance benefits that allow me to handpick new organs and pays in cash. However, I didn't have that experience. I was processed with such alarming efficiency that I am compelled to believe they were tracking me by satellite and knew I was coming and why. The girl and I found ourselves in a room post haste and before the blue curtain unswished itself, a doctor came breezing in, looked in my daughter's ear and proclaimed, with grave authority: there's nothing wrong. We were home by five.

I know I'm supposed to wax joyously about such efficiency in our health care. I mean, people complain all the time about lag time at hospitals and doctors' offices, myself first and foremost. I hate it. I hate that I have to answer the same questions three times in the same visit; I complain that I have to fill out the same form every time I show up even though I haven't changed my name or grown a new arm; I complain that when I tell the nurse the girl had no fever the attendant then asks if she had a fever and then the Doctor asks if she had a fever and then they take her temperature. I dread the ER like I dread the draft and so when it works they way I've always shouted that it should I shouldn't bitch but here's the deal, if it works, then what am I going to write about?

And the kids are sick. The girl really does have a hideous and disgusting ear infection, the kind of thing that spews whale vomit from the side of her head like a punctured jugular. The boy and [My Attorney] may have strep; at least they're acting like they do when they have strep. The boy has a horrible stomachache and [My Attorney] sounds like a third level Star Wars alien bar-scene voice-over. She usually sounds a little like Demi Moore when she's sick, but not this time. She's on a trial and so tired and sick her eyes actually fell out of her head this morning and she just left them there on the carpet in the wadded up tissue and spent diet coke cans like two quail's eggs in a crow's nest. She turned to me and said "Hrrrgh frogsnot didjkse ughtra clambake?" As she passed into delirium, I crept out of the room.

And, worse, as [My Attorney] waivers in and out of consciousness, she's losing track of time like some kind of Alzheimer patient in the last throws of losing their mind, and keeps nagging me out of sequence, like I'll hang up her jacket and she'll say thank you then 'did you take my jacket to the dry cleaner?' and 'is the baby ok?' and my favorite 'he'll never know; is a hundred enough?' which I hope is about a birthday present.

And it all started with dog puke. Ty blew cack on the boy's bed three times in a row, which meant three huge laundry cycles on an already strained system that is trying to finish all the laundry that was soaked during the basement flood. He cacked on the new porch. Cacked in the kitchen. I took him to the vet and he cacked all over my car. The vet breezes in and gravely proclaims: there's nothing wrong.

God help them if they get me sick. I will retaliate, I swear. I will puke on the dog. I will puke on [My Attorney's] jacket. I will puke on their homework and their book bags. They will rue the day RUE THE DAY if I  {haaaorf} get {wheeeze} even {hack!} the slightest bit {flaarrrrgh!} . . .  crap.

13 Things on Thursday That I Already Miss from our Trip to Fat City!

One: Lump crab and alligator cheescake from Jaques Imo's. Holy. Mother. Of. God. This was by far the most bizarre and delicious thing I've ever eaten. Ever. ever.

Two: Sweetbread Appetizer at Bayona's. I saw God. God said You think this is something? Try Jaque's Imos!

Three: Pravda. The hip-ass literati lounge decorated in prewar commy art, and Absinthe curia. They played the Cocteau Twins and served us Absinthe with no prattle or disdain. Arty yet homey. Loved it. And they made the best dirty martini in the quarter. This was a martini so dirty it was served with a pair of panties and a call from your wife. Absinthe, by the way, is . . . drifty.

Four: Koops. If you're a waitress or a bartender and your joint is closed and you just want some good food, a beer, and no bullshizzy, go to Koops. Two of the bartenders who'd served us at other places walked in while we we there after the quarter had shut down. It was cool. And rabbit and oyster gumbo? God.

Five: The infinite jukebox. I'm hanging with my girl arguing tequila with a dishwasher from the Marriot listening to Filipino Box Spring Hog, then Cake, then Waterboys, then . . . the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars? It's like a giant iPod that plays any song you want but also tries to get you to play video poker.

Six: Soul Rebels. They pointed their trombones at my wife and sang Getcha Booty Down Low. For that alone, I adore them. They are a HIGH ENERGY BAND. They could make baptists dance.

Seven: Rebirth Brass band. I've wanted to see this band for so long I almost cried when they got on stage. The ultimate New Orleans band (with Soul Rebels on their heels). They own the Maple Leaf, they shake the roofbeams, THEY MAKE STUFFY WHITE PEOPLE DANCE LIKE JAMES BROWN! You got to understand how to see Rebirth. At 10:30 at night they were just getting the barbeque going in front of the club. Around 11:30 they finally got started and just blew the roof off the place. By 11:35 the little hall where they play had gone from maybe thirty people evenly dispersed like a checker board and enjoying the odd cool breeze to A FRIKKIN VIBRATING DRUNKEN MOB 300 STRONG, SWEATING, MAKIN' OUT, GETTING IT ON. It was divine.

Eight: Pat O'Brien's. I know it's a cheesy tourist thing and is pretty much the Space Mountain of New Orleans but damn is it fun. I'm such a music snob that when Phil Collin's comes on the car radio I'll kick it out of the dash board. You couldn't PAY me to play a Billy Joel song. But three minutes and four Margaritas into Pat O'Brien's and I'm scream-singing Piano Man and throwing money. But beware: They will keep serving you booze until you die. NOBODY GETS THROWN OUT OF Pat O'Brien's! I got so drunk I started requesting Gilligan's Island Incidental Music, Mutant Ninja Turtle Fight Song, and Mendelssohn's Concerto in G Minor which did not make the real-estate-saleswoman-cum-lounge-singer laugh.

Nine: Alvin, the professional drink tray soloist. Look. It's impossible to explain. Pat O'Brien's has two great big copper clad dueling pianos between which a man stands with a drink tray covered in quarters. He has huge thimbles on all his fingers and at some point the piano players say Take it away Alvin! and he DOES A SOLO on a DRINK TRAY. It's just stupid and insipid and clearly a gimmick for generating tips. Here's how you tip him: You roll up a dollar (I saw a guy throw a 20) then get his attention then throw the dollar-ball which he catches on the tray and the room goes crazy. It's just. . .stupid. I know it's silly as all get out but I had the most fun tossing money at this guy and just digging on the fact that somewhere in the world there's a guy making a living playing a drink tray. And, here's the weird part, HE'S NOT THE FIRST ONE! THIS GUY did it first (We saw him in 2003).

Ten: The Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches every night at 10pm at LaPavillon where we stayed, dripping in splendor. The place is ornate, gilded, and flush with Louis 14th antiques. They treat you like landed gentry, turn your bed down at night, wear those safari hats and open the door for you and it's just rock star luxurious. But every night at ten oclock they have a tiny buffet table with cold milk, hot chocolate, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Old men in sear sucker suits and little old ladies in chiffon dresses and trust-fund leveling diamond necklaces were elbowing me out of the way to stack these free sandwiches in their arms and go back to their room. But, after a night of professional Margaritavilling, those sandwiches hit the spot.

Eleven: Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. Another silly tourist trap. Whatever. They make KILLER margs and Brint Trenor plays there twice a week and he frikking smokes a slide guitar.

Twelve: All the naked chicks. I can't say enough about the importance of high quality public nudity as a means to boosting tourism.

Thirteen: Drunks touring Bourbon street at two in the morning--with their kids. Here I am smoking a cigar and drinking a MaiTai on the street at 2 in the morning giggling uncontrollably at the collection of nearly nekkid wimmin hanging out the door of a strippers club and I'm looking at the pictures on the facade of the place which are lurid and pornographic and I hear 'Daddy, I'm tired' and I turn to my right and there's a guy AND HIS WIFE AND KIDS looking at the very same damn porn I am. And people question MY parenting skills!

Derp

It occurs to me that I don't blog nearly as much as I should.

My Son Has an Outstanding Online Kill Ratio

I was at a little league game one time and my spawn was playing right field, the place where they put blind kids and quadriplegics, and the first base superstar, a kid with reflexes slightly higher than a coked out ninja astronaut, misses a grounder. It bounces out through the grass into the glove of the spawn of my loins
who was probably about to scoop up an interesting rock. He stood up in total shock, threw the ball to second base and got a guy out. After spending most of the season saying, well baseball isn't that important, and you should see the kid golf, I screamed so loud I spit my left lung into the dugout.

I don't pay much attention to sports. I just can't get into it. Guys will start talking to me about sports and I just blank out. Sounds like gibberish to me. Like cheerleaders talking about purses. Like old ladies talking about the neighbors. So the poor kid, he doesn't have much of a sports dad to teach him the ropes. That might not matter much since he is to sports what a fish is to the hot desert sands. He plays golf and volley balls. Excels in one, keeps up in the other. That's just fine with me and definitely fine with him because he's not a playa. He's a killer.

I never got to scream that's my boy after a three run RBI but I am proud to say he's an unsympathetic, merciless, unstoppable, death machine when he's playing Halo 3 on Xbox live.

Yesterday, he was playing some guy from Australia who was a Brigadier level player (which means he hasn't slept in eight weeks) who had the temerity to kill my son who was on his own team, a move the game announces by saying you were betrayed. Connor's inner sense of justice was so fouled, he followed the guy through the rest of the game and punked him at every opportunity. Scored the highest kills in the game, left a pile of bodies behind a Warthog. The guy couldn't even get in the game. At one point, his virtual highly armored self actually shrugged its virtual shoulders and virtually stood there, virtually crying. I was so proud.

Damn, that's a sweet dragon.

I found these posters while looking for some graphic art prompts. Absolutely fantastic. I would go see every one of these guys . . . except the Floyds.

The biggest difference between graphic art of the Victorian era and today is not merely the brilliant advent of photoshop, it's the mistakes. The old stuff had gorgeous mistakes which do not happen in computer controlled artistic rendering. Look at the way the letters are not base aligned and how they're all weighted differently. Not because the artist wanted them to be, but because the artist was eyeballing the whole thing and didn't have an intel processor equipped Mac that could kern ligatures to the nanometer.

And look at that frikking dragon. Damn, that's a sweet dragon.

You can see the rest of the collection here.

Haute Cuisine Macaroni and Cheese is GO!

I looked up Macaroni in Cheese on the internet to get the best recipe. Seven hours later, I gave up and just tried to find the common trends in the 3,410,987 recipes I read before I gave up.

Here's the deal. My wife and I love cheese. Maybe it's because we live within spittin' distance of Wisconsin or maybe it's because we're nouveau snobs and love to talk about how we had some delicious manchego with our 12 year old tawny port. Or we're dweebs. We even shop at a cheese shop, The Cheese Stands Alone, down on Western. So we often have a couple of heels of expensive cheese sulking in the fridge and I like to give 'em a new home shredded up along side some hardcore New York cheddar with so much attitude it smokes cigarettes and still listens to the Stones and bake it into comfort food heaven.

Recipe:

DO NOT MEASURE ANYTHING

So my Mac&Cheese has: Manchego, Piave, Iberico, Romano, and frikkin' Chedda. I take four egg yolks, a spoonful of Dijon, some cream, and a little Cayenne pepper. Oh. Macaroni.

You shred all the cheese into a pile. You get a bowl, toss in the egg yolks, mustard, cream and cayenne and mix 'em together. Toss in the macaroni (cooked--duh). Mix it up. Now add most of the shredded cheese, mix it up. Pour it into the baking thing. Finish with the rest of the cheese, toss it into an oven that's almost on fire until the cheese on top is brown and bubbling.

My son ate it like he'd been starved to death.

Serve it. Ought to look like this:

What's in a Name

y daughter’s budding freshman romance is either sickening, if you are a crusty old curmudgeon like myself, or the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen if you’re retarded.

I suppose I’m a little jealous in a weird and admittedly stupid way, that she’s dating someone in 9th grade. I didn’t have a date until the end of 10th grade and it didn’t go too well. I didn’t have a girlfriend . . . until . . . um . . . So, anyway, like I said, this thing is saccharine to the point of causing instant diabetes if you stand too close to her and it got even worse this week when she celebrated her monthiversery.

This auspicious date fell on the day one of best friends, Scott T. Pants, and his beautiful Italian wife brought a gorgeous girl into the world and made the exact same mistake as me and my Attorney by giving their daughter a name that is both elegant and portentous. They named their daughter Sophia. We named ours Sarah. Both names lie side-by-side in the baby name books under the rubric of “wisdom” but the baby name books are written by childless zombie robot hacks and they never go any deeper in their research or experience to figure out what a name really means because clearly the names Sophia and Sarah, if you look them up in the original Sanskrit, mean not “wise one,” but, instead, “too smart for her own good—and yours”. It’s right there on the pyramids.

I feel for Pants and his lovely Italian wife and I fear for him too because, like me, he has spawned a force of nature not unlike a hurricane for, like me, Pants married a beautiful genius, and, therefore, like Rah, his Sophia will be the center of his universe. Whether he likes it or not.

Having a beautiful genius daughter is a little like reverting back to your first girlfriend because they know they hold your heart in their hands and will happily smash it to pieces should you have the temerity to disagree with them about even the slightest thing. Say, for instance, coming home from a date via the blue line through Chicago after dark.

Where the normal, caring, wise father would offer the humble opinion that, should one decide to seek one’s puppy-love romance at one’s boyfriend’s parlour, one should plan this event, in the father’s, again, humble opinion, so that one leaves and returns at reasonable times and informs one’s parents in a reasonable fashion prior to the event of all the details surrounding the event out of respect for all the parties involved.

However, a girl named Wisdom knows, innately and without the arduous necessity of actual consideration, that world bends to her will and humble opinions be damned, she will inflict her noble presence on the CTA at her leisure or her father shall never have the pleasure of her company again.

So I feel like I ought to say something right here and now and provide a sign post, a guiding tract, a word, to new fathers everywhere, and particularly to my friend, Pants: choose your daughter’s name carefully and don’t pick something so auspicious as Sarah. Pick Hope or Faith or Joy—something malleable and sweet, a name that bespeaks verdant pastures and song. Something wholesome and Swedish, like Helga.

Punch Buggy Pugilism and the Black Parade

Maybe it's part of getting old, but I can't seem to spot Volkswagen beetles until it's too late. By too late, I mean my son has drilled me in the bicep with a Chuck Norris knuckle punch and I'm howling with pain and barely able to drive us through insane Chicago traffic to the next Volkswagen beetle, which I will not see. Again.

In case you are just now walking out of a life in a cave, punch buggy is the emerging Olympic sport of sighting Volkswagen beetles and then, upon said visual identification of said beetle of Voklswagenistic orgin, promptly beating the crap out of whomever you're sitting next to. This game is played in the car, while driving, so if that person is the driver, then they better be able to maneuver sans left hand because the moment the person riding shotgun sees a buggy--WHAM--dead left arm.

Roon is addicted to this stupid game, a game surely invented by 10 year old brothers back in 1835 when they didn't have the internet or cars or decent health care and, on more than one occasion, I am certain, some poor Swedish immigrant buried an extra son after a buggy punch incident went horribly wrong. I can see him now, Amish beard wagging in the afternoon sun, leaning against a hand-made shovel in his white shirt and stovepipe pants, wide brimmed hat held grimly at his side, "Vell, he vas a goot bouy, and he is viff Gott now--punch buggy! (slam!) ooh!--gott to digg another hole, yah"

The game and my son's violent enthusiasm for it, are underscored by his new obsession with My Chemical Romance, a group that wears almost as much makeup as KISS and has almost the same weird marshall influence on its ravenous, zombiefied 10 year old fan base. I have to admit, I think they're a good group and I can hear the guitar player pretty obviously ripping off Queen and I doff my hat (well, do-rag) to his ingenious and talented thievery. But the group revels in some kind of grave obsession with the color black and death imagery and are trying, I think, to single-handedly create a new genre combinging emo, which is like a curse word for 10 year olds, and goth, which is a level of cool ten year olds peer hopefully toward and whisper about and pretend to disregard almost as much as they pretend not to notice girls, a genre I think might be called Gothmo, or Emoth.

I remember when I was young I wanted to be in the KISS army. We all wore Army fatigues and KISS t-shirts and threw our horns-of-Satan salutes in the air and prayed for the coming revolt to be a violent, sustained, bloodbath of biblical scope during which our heroes would descend from a lightning streaked thunderhead and join us as we decapitated disco dancing yuppies with our razor-edged flying-v electric guitars.

My Chemical Romance inspires a similar, though wussed-out, semi military response in it's fans although they're all vegetarians and pacifists so instead of the KISS army they're more like the Salvation Army, dancing, sort of. So I get the music thing but I never, ever, hit my dad. Evidence to this fact is that I can type with both hands.

Together, along with the inch and a quarter he gained since January and the ability to wear my shoes, punch buggy pugilism and the enthusiasm for the Black Parade are turning my son into that thing that's older than a kid but not quite a tween yet and I can see the hairy gawky teen poking out of him like he's wearing some kind of costume. Just the other day he was sitting on the couch and suddenly sniffed and said to the room "God, my pits reek."

And it's not the gleefully vicious thrill he gets spotting one of those stupid cars and punching me in the arm to the glumjoy cascade of electric guitar from My Chemical Romance that's driving home the fact that I'm getting older and so is the mini-me. It's not even the fact that I miss the same antibiotic-chalk-yellow buggy that's parked in the same spot every damn day and take a hit for it because I'm getting older and so is it. It's this: when he hits me, it's not like a kid is hitting me, it's like some dude is hitting me. It kind of hurts and after two or three buggies, I got to tell him to lay off and I pretend its because I think it's boring but the truth is, my arm hurts.

My Friend Started a Blog.

My friend in Florida, Pat Greene, just started a blog. He roams all over Florida writing news stories for regional mags. He has the weirdest most serendipitous luck anyone could ask for. No writer could ask for better luck. I mean, seriously, who gets lost in Tarpon Springs and finds a casket in a dumpster. Please read his new blog and congradulate him on his excellent spelling. His blog: I Still Don't Want to Talk About It.