Practicing With Socks & Baby Powder

I’m a little concerned this morning. Parenting is the most important job in the world, and we have to take our responsibilities very seriously. With global threats of abrupt climate change, terrorism, and the paparazzi always in our periphery, we really have to be on our toes. So when I encounter a particular news story and notice certain behaviors in my boys, I have to pay attention.

Both of my children have expressed a particular interest in footwear. At almost 5 and almost 2, they have both been caught on film in Mom’s high heels, my slippers. Hell, Noah has made a regular habit of tucking into a pair of Jake’s sneakers, then putting on one of Carol’s sandals and one of my oxfords. Jake in Carol’s calf-high boots (thigh-high for him) is a regular Winter sight. And socks. My, my, my. The socks. Both of them have been known to wear upwards of 5 pairs on a good day. Not every day, mind you. Just once in a while. One of them gets a little too close to a basket of fresh laundry and suddenly you see layers of white cotton, navy argyle, rainbow lycra covering tiny, tiny ankles. Egads.

Add to this an affection for baby powder. That’s right. A recently renewed delight for Jake in recent weeks. His post-shower “snow storm” is a favorite pleasure. And I don’t have to mention lotion. they love lotion. Skin care everywhere.

“What does this all mean?” I hear you ask. Honestly, I thought nothing of it until I came across this story. A 20 year old New Mexico woman in police custody was able to slip out of leg irons thanks to 6 pairs of socks and some lubricating cocoa butter. She threw baby powder in a guard’s face and made a run for it.

So, are my kids just exploring their boundaries? Are they just playing dress-up? Do they really have a thing for feet? Or are they thinking about what the future holds? Are they devilish and clever and planning for the inevitable?

People, please. Be safe out there. And watch your kids. Sure they’re cute. But they may also be practicing. 

Jesus On My Cell

Yesterday, Sunday, dubbed ‘Family Day’ in our house because it’s the one day we are always all together from dawn until dusk, I received the most egregious telemarketing call ever. It was around 12:30 in the afternoon on my cell phone. Caller ID showed an 800 number. Hmmmm. I answered and it was one of those pre-recorded messages that sounds like a real live person.

“Hi there. This is Bobby Graham,” and then a pause for me to reply “Hi, Bobby, what can I do for you today.” Except I, like most people, have developed that reserved, cynical, suspicious tone when answering the phone, so I offered no pleasant greeting to my new buddy Bobby.

Bobby went on to tell me that he represented the Billy Graham Ministries and was calling to see if I was one of the many people whose life was touched by ‘Grampa’ Billy. Wow. That was just so wrong. Where does Billy Graham (or the Billy Graham Ministries empire) get off calling me on my CELL PHONE to solicit saccharine nonsense and, ultimately, cash.

No, Bobby Graham. I have no tale of the miracle of faith in Grampa Billy answering my prayers and delivering that new used car downpayment in the form of a Pick Six ticket. And not for nothing, get the fuck off my cell phone. I’m not donating to your cause, and your unsolicited call of questionable legality (you will never convince me that this is a non-profit organization and I have never done business with you, so read your Do Not Call Registry guidelines a little closer, Bobby) is costing me money.

Look, I got about 4 hours of sleep last night and I’ve been up since 5 so I’m a little punchy, but come on. Bobby’s religious views are not mine, and my views are none of his business. This call really pissed me off. I don’t want email telling me my girl thinks my penis is too small and I better get going on some ‘natural male enhancement.’ I don’t want faxes urging me to secure a line of credit at incredible sub-prime rates. And I don’t want the God Squad bugging me for donations on Family Day. My time is my own. My faith is my own. 

And anyway, when the Almighty communicates with me he prefers to burn a bush.

Lake George

So we went to Lake George for a couple days. This is a regular one or two-nighter for us every year or so. The Lake is lovely, the tourist population is suitably large and Springer-lovin’ to make me feel trim and bright, and the kids are always entertained and entertaining. We’ve stayed at the same hotel on our last 3 visits (spanning 4 or 5 years). They have a decent little pool, and a playground. Jake and Noah spent a good bit of time at the latter. I kept taking pictures, but they’re hard to find because of the damn camo shirts Mommy bought them. Look hard, you’ll find them.

Actually, we had a good time playing the “I can’t see you in your camo shirt” game with Jake. Great fun. Of course, Noah is not allowed in public for the next few months because he’s going through a bit of a phase. No stroller, no high chair in restaurants, doesn’t want to hold hands walking in public. Oh yeah, and when you walk in a direction he considers unfavorable, he drops on his butt in the middle of the floor/sidewalk/road/parking lot and screams know.

I remember Jake around the age. One time when he didn’t want to hold my hand in Target on a crowded Saturday he screamed “Take your hands off me you freak!” I forget what show he heard that on, but I got some great looks. I was like, “No really, I’m his father. I’m not really freaky. Just ask his mother.”

Rrrrrright.

Double Decapitating Daddy Booty

OK, I’m lame. I never even mentioned my incredibly awesome Father’s Day. It’s been a busy week. We’re going to Lake George for a couple days next week, which means I have to do double work every where to make sure I am not too sorely missed. Then we had a couple showings scheduled and the house was kind of a mess on a day I was home. And Noah’s been getting up at like 4 am every day, and I have been doing that thing where I can’t fall asleep at night so I’m really tired and cranky. Oh yeah, and Carol’s laptop had something like 1200 viruses, trojans, and other nasties that required several days of struggle resulting in a complete reformat.

And then, when I was finally going to write about my awesome Father’s Day, I got all distracted by big dick tequila. It happens.

So, in a pathetic attempt to make up for my negligence let me just mention that we had a lovely picnic at the Big Red Hook Park (Jake’s name for it – I don’t know what it’s really called, but it is big and it is in Red Hook, so…) and I got a supercool gift. Mommy helped Jake and Noah pick out a very nice Nikon digital camera for me that takes high quality pics, and it is relatively idiot-proof. I am just starting to play with my new toy.

That leads me to the second part of this post – justifying my double booty designation. I recently won the first ever caption over at Decapitating Shadows. A great honor and thrill. I received my prize last night and simply had to share – and I am now doing so with a picture taken with my awesome Father’s Day camera.

Let me say, this was a really cool prize package and I’m quite pleased. Thanks flygrrl!

Here’s the rundown of Booty 2 (as photographed by Booty 1):

• 1 completely wacky San Rio folded diner placemat type thing that is entirely unreadable to my hopelessly monolingual eyes. And it made Noah scream for Wow Wow Wubbzy! (though just about everything makes him scream for Wubbzy these days).
• 1 cool pink envelope that Noah already ‘addressed’ to someone, though I don’t know who. I am also not Baby-lingual – at least not in writing. But I pretty sure it’s going to someone in Scribble Town.
• 1 Sugar CD, Besides. Excellent collection of b-sides, alternative mixes and such from Bob Mould & co.
• I Bettie Serveert CD, Dust Bunnies. I love this album. I always really like Bettie Serveert. They had some great mid-90s indie rock.
• 1 Low Pop Suicide CD, The Death of Excellence. I used to play thse guys on the radio all the time but have never owned one of their records. Rock on!
• 3 pieces of yummy chocolate. Yes, only 2 are pictured because I needed one last night. And in the interest of full disclosure, the number of remaining chocolate squares has dwindled to 1 since the picture was taken. Yum. Yum. Yum.

Theories

Recently we’ve had some problems with Noah and food. Our once chow-happy boy has not been eating well lately. Not at all. I’ve seen this kid polish off two hot dogs in less than a minute (sans bun, but still impressive). And he used to eat pounds of vegetables and fruit every day. Literally. Pounds.

Yesterday I had to run some errands, and I had the boys with me. I won’t even go into it, but it was rough. So we had a treat for dinner – Burger King. In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that we actually did some advance recon and found that BK currently had the best toys for kids (Fantastic Four over surfing penguins). The boys each had the 4 nugget meal. And I made sure they ate in the car on the way home. Noah in particular. He killed 3 of his 4 nuggets before we got over the Rhinecliff Bridge (about 3 minutes drive time).

My theory – Noah will only eat in the car. I don’t know if it’s the motion of the car, some weird I’m-belted-in-so-now-I-can-eat-thing, just the general atmosphere in the back seat of the Jeep… I don’t know. But the kid loves to eat in the car, so we’re going to have to start taking him out for a drive when we need him to finish his vegetables, know what I mean.

Speaking of theories, Jake introduced one of his own on the way home. Apparently, if you have to pee, but are lucky enough to have a cold drink to put between your legs, your pee pee will actually freeze and you can last all the way home. No lie. You can freeze your pee with a tasty cold beverage from BK. I wish I knew that trick back in the day with Rosemary Caine when we were driving for hours and hours to gigs. I could have used a good frozen pee pee trick to ease the pressure more than once.

Goggles

Understand:

Sometimes

life

warrants

goggles.

Please

play

safe.

Bingo

I don’t watch a lot of television. I watch The Office. I watch the Daily Show. Sometimes the news at 10. Lots of Noggin and Nick Jr. and Discovery Kids and Sprout. Not a lot of adult-oriented TV. Unless it’s on DVD. I buy the good shows and watch them over and over again. Like Arrested Development. I know most episodes of AD inside and out.

I hate reality TV. I hate contest shows. I hate the new generation of prime time game shows. In truth, I’m really not a fan of the contemporary entertainment business. So, I am pretty clueless about what’s on the tube on any given day. And that’s why I was absolutely stunned to discover, last night, that America is now watching Bingo on Fridays.

That’s right. Bingo. They made a game show out of Bingo. It had a bizarre name like National Bingo Night, I don’t really know why. There was a distinctly unbuff, aussie sounding host with a shaved head who looked particularly uncomfortable whenever the contestants engaged in a little pressing of the flesh – Bob Barker and Richard Dawson be damned, these women looked like they were going to throw him down on the ground and engage in some nasty little Bingo ritual of love.

I have not researched this at all. I do not want to know. It terrifies me that this was really on TV. This is the next big thing. Bingo. Sexy, edgy, ready for prime time, even in the urban market Bingo. This ain’t your Grannie’s Bingo no more kiddies. This is National Bingo Night.

If you had told me this was a new Christopher Guest movie I would have believed you in a second. Even if I didn’t see Fred Willard. It was that over the top. It was that cartoonish. I mean, these contestants were right out of central casting. I kept catching sideways glances from the host. You could almost read his ‘how did I end up here?’ thoughts. And then there was the Commissioner (I think that’s what they called him – by this time I was pounding cheap Cabernet in astonishment). He stood in the audience to check Bingo cards, because the crowd plays against the contestant. I guess that makes sense. But the weird part was his referee uniform (he looked like he just came from a second grade soccer game) and his out of control Mexican accent. His timing was so bad, and he’d be like “I have to tell you if someone in the audience has a bingo…<excrutiating overly long pause to really heighten the pseudo-drama>… right after these words from our sponsors.’ Stunning.

Now Carol knew about this. She had actually seen a bit of it when she was in Massachusetts a couple weekends ago. So she wasn’t nearly as shocked as me. She was, I think, less surprised about the Bingo show than that we were actually watching it. Personally, I couldn’t get past its existence. I was riveted. This was like riding in a subway car with Flock of Seagulls. I mean, you just can’t take your eyes off that mess.

I sit here on Saturday morning in stunned silence. My kids are watching commercial-free TV for kids. My wife is on her way to work at the shop. I am getting mentally prepared for a run to the mall/grocery store with the wee ones. But I just can’t get it out of my head. Bingo. Last night I watched Bingo. This is the height of American creativity. Bingo. There was a farmer, had a dog, and what was his name-o? That’s right. Bingo.

We need some good ideas. Fresh ideas. True creativity. Wait! I know. Battleship! I can see it now: the audience in life jackets, a retired Navy Admiral as the host – or maybe somebody from the British fleet so he has that appealing, cultured accent, a pool full of sharks and deep sea predators to add drama and danger. Can’t you just see the opening credits, an A-Team style theme song but with more horns and cannons and the backlit host saying, “Two fleets of five vessels, provisions are low, amunition is nearly exhausted. Today, ships will sink. Today, men will die. The seas will boil with their blood. Only one captain will be victorious today. Will it be you? Or will you be the one who says…” [houselights up, the enraptured crowd screams in unison] “You sank my battleship!”

Bingo.

Bread and Cheese, Baby!

Oh Man, I just had the best lunch! I cut up a just-ripe mango and had it with most of a fresh baguette and half a chunk of soft goat’s cheese. The cheese was kind of spready, enough to make a sort of sandwich on a chunk of baggie. It was creamy with a little tang and had to be one of the best goat cheeses I’ve ever had. It was Soignon brand, but the package I had wasn’t on their site. What I had was a little 3 inch round, probably cut from a big cheese log (no chuckles – even though ‘big cheese log’ sounds really funny). On the label it said ‘suitable for vegetarians’ with no other distinctive label. My, my, my, it was yummy. If only I’d had a nice Sancerre it would have been the most perfect lunch I’ve ever had. 

Well, top 10 at least.

And I still have about 6 skinny inches of  baguette and half my cheese left for an afternoon snack. Afternoon snack will ROCK! Maybe I can dig up some Sauvignon Blanc before then.

Little Ivy? I think not.

New York Times, May 10
Nine prominent professors are leading an effort to rethink the culture of undergraduate teaching and learning at Harvard.

“It’s well known that there are many other colleges where students are much more satisfied with their academic experience,” said Paul Buttenwieser, a psychiatrist and author who is a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, and who favors the report. “Amherst is always pointed to. Harvard should be as great at teaching as Amherst.”

I just read this on the Amherst alumni site. It gives me some nice warm fuzzies, though, because Amherst really was a swell place. There was a lot of academic freedom and personal choice, and it was a great environment for me to explore my interests.

I’ve always kind of liked the fact that a significant population has no idea what Amherst College is (except back when the Minute Men were hot in the 90s, when most people assumed I went to UMass). Still, it warms the cockles of my heart to see a nod to my alma mater from a source of such ersatz prestige. I mean, I’m not knocking Harvard, but the Ivy League designation is, to me, like the Bordeaux Classification of 1855, when wine producers were classified in 1855 based on price (which more or less reflected quality at the time). Today, some of the First Growths are still quite amazing, but there are many lesser-classified wines that, in my humble opinion, surpass most of the Premier Crus. For example, to my palate, the wines of Cos d’Estournel are among the finest in the known universe, and the press routinely agrees, but they remain relegated to Second Growth status.

The analogy is not totally off (even though I used it just to wank a little about the 1855 Classification and my favorite Second Growth). After all, the Ivy League really designates an athletic conference of 8 of the oldest schools in the country. Certainly these are 8 schools with great academic reputations (and huge endowments) but it always bugs me that many people believe Ivy League schools are the best schools. They are not. They are excellent schools, but they represent only one type of school. Specifically, one that is old and one that has a substantial athletics program. You’re not gonna find big athletics at a small liberal arts college. But you will often find a more intimate educational opportunity, and I think that’s what Paul Buttenwieser is indicating.

Cool. I agree Mr. Buttenwiesser. And let me be the first to apologize on behalf of all those kids who must have called you Paul Butt-head-wiesser when you were growing up. That was wrong of them.

I’ve clearly been awake for far too long because I’m just rambling.