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.

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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 . . .