Duly Noted

A couple of mornings ago,  before school, my daughter is writing in her diary. I take a peek because I'm curious and often she keeps it pretty secret. It's got a little lock and everything. Usually it has things in it like a portrait of herself with her name under it and on the top of the page the musing,  "I love me."  Or one whole page covered corner to corner by the lone exclamation, "My brother is CRAZY!"

I take a lot of peeks. She leaves the key around. Something about unlocking that little pink diary to read it feels oh so right and so wrong simultaneously. I blame the NSA.

On this particular day in question, she has drawn a picture of a flower, dated it June 11, and written a caption above the picture that says "It is winter."

I say, " Hey honey that's pretty intriguing, writing it is winter over a picture like that. Very creative." She says, " No but it's not that."
I say, "Ok honey, I just think it's cool is all."
"No it's not what that says though." She replies.
"Ok, well, even if you didn't mean it, I still think it's neat. Sometimes mistakes turn out to be really--"
She collapses to her knees like a pocket James Brown and screeches, "Noooooo!  It's not THAT!" And then buries her face in her hands. Hardest working tantrum thrower in show business. Godfather of soul devouring outrage.  It's early so I get mad. I slam what ever it is I'm holding (hair brush? lunch box? Monkey's Paw?) down on the dining room table, spill some water and bark, "No! Why are you yelling at me! Stop it!" I pick her up and put her down on her feet and send her to her room. She comes down and we talk about communication. She says sorry, I say sorry, and we go to school. I never find out what happened and we don't really talk about it again. At home later that afternoon, she writes this and hands it to me:

It reads, "Dear daddy, I love you. I Love You! Happy Father's Day.  I hope it's fun. Me and Pumpkin Man did the best we could at listening. Thank You.

I immediately scoop her up in my arms and squeeze her and cover her face in kisses and babble about how wonderful she and her brother are (You like how she threw him in there for good measure?) and how much I love them. Emotionally evicerated, my head swims from lack of blood and I have to sit down and put it between my knees where I've cleverly hidden a bourbon. Some bourbon. A liter of bourbon.

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When you're with them every day, all day, you see the best of them and the worst. The thing is, they see the same of you. You can't help it.

A lot of parenting advice boils down to being even tempered. Don't get too high or too low. Don't yell or freak out or get too excited. Be calm and cool at all times. Walk away, take a time-out, breathe deep and consult your higher power (Mine's a chicken burrito. With guac!)

You know, just don't react with any sort of emotional extreme to actions taken by the people you are biologically programmed to love more than life itself. Easy Peasy. When you're kid wins the race, fucks up at school, performs an act of kindness, lathes the cat, poops in the potty for the first time, etc, don't over emote. Just stay on an even keel. That parenting philosophy, with the notable exception of gender roles, hasn't really changed all that much from the 1950's archetype. Just knock the bowl of your Father Know's Best pipe with the heel of your hand, and tousle their hair/give them a stern talking too, and go back to your twitter feed. The truth is, we don't do that. Not every time. The truth is, some of us have called our toddlers fucking assholes when they're acting like fucking assholes or squealed like Bieberites at the Bieber ice cream smorgasbord jamboree and hair combing expo when they nail the landing in gymnastics. It's natural. We feel passion for these little genius/assholes.  The truth is, to remain as even tempered as we're supposed to all the time, that pipe bowl has to be loaded with sociopathic tendencies and opium.

The thing is, they bubble with potential, our kids.That means the potential to be almost anything. Anything doesn't just mean astronaut or president. It means junkie or murderer or lobbyist. They are human, they are imperfect. Their potential is near limitless And as parents, we are the same. Imperfect. More so, maybe. We've had longer to work on our imperfections.  And when you spend countless hours with tiny beings who are just learning the world, those imperfections come to bare. Yours rub against theirs and it results in days of too much yelling, too many tears, too much guilt, too much pride. It happens. What're you gonna do? We love them on a cellular level. That kind of passion is sure to lead to some amount of ill. I mean, have you seen humans?

I strive for even tempered. I really do. But I'm a man of loud voice and large opinion. So my kids know when I'm angry. They also know when I'm happy or proud or content or silly or gassy. Especially gassy. They know it all. In return so do I. It's not so bad, knowing when they're sad and when they're happy. Knowing for sure. Makes thing a little less complicated. Sometimes. Other times it makes getting ready for school in the morning sound like the Red Wedding.

And they test the even temper. They probe it with whines placed just so or negative responses to reasonable requests. They tap tap tap on the wall of my pleasant detachment with psychological ball peen hammers until the wall cracks and I can feel my blood pressure behind my eyes and I'm pretty sure my nose and left ear are bleeding freely. Then their are the times when my better nature wins out and no matter how the they probe and poke and tap and claw, I hold firm. I'm usually pretty proud of myself when that happens. Glassy eyed and exhausted, but proud.

What I hope (What else can I do?) is that in the tumult of a household full of passion and opinion (and gas) that they find themselves unafraid of their emotions. That as they get older they can feel and express themselves openly with just enough restraint to not get arrested. Let me add, just for posterity, that they really do listen well. Most times.

HM

P.S. Happy Father's Day and stuff.

Rooster, Run

So I'm lurching my way through my little 3 mile (generously measured) run the other day. I've started running again because I'm stupid and I also I don't like taking my genetically disadvantaged fat guy  medications. I'd do anything to avoid taking that shit. Even running. Funny though, if Percocet lowered cholesterol, I'd never run again.

But I'm running and I'm at about the 3/4 point and I have the headphones in and the Alice In Chains song Rooster comes on and even as I am aware of how awful I am,  I start to identify with the song. The Rooster is a song written by the band's guitar player about his father. His father was a member of the 101st Airborne division and Team Leader of a Long Range Recon Patrol during the Vietnam War. Which of course is exactly like a chubby jew gasping his way through a half- hour run on a sunny Sunday morning in America. I need more shame.

Scene

Me: Sweating and gulping and jiggling and trudge-jogging and wishing I had a burrito.

My headphones swell with the intro. The lyrics kick in:

"Ain't found a way to kill me yet"
Eyes burn with stinging sweat"

And even though I know how I sound, in my head I'm still like, "Holy shit. That's me! My eyes are totally burning with stinging sweat. And I'm still alive. I'm the Rooster!

It deteriorated from there:

"Seems every path leads me to nowhere"

No shit. I'll barely make it home at this rate

"Wife and kids and household pet
Army green was no safe bet"

Check, check, check, and running is extremely dangerous for a man in my condition.

"The bullets scream to me from somewhere"

If one interprets"bullets" to mean "yippee dogs" then fucking check.

"Here they come to snuff the Rooster
Yeah, here come the Rooster, yeah
You know he ain't gonna die
No, no no, you know he ain't gonna die

Walkin' tall machine gun man
They spit on me in my homeland
Gloria sent me pictures of my boy"

This part is where it gets to be just a little bit of a stretch. Although, I was about 59% certain I was going to live, and I spent some formative years in a small town in New Hampshire and while I wasn't often spit on, I did not get along with many people. Ok, so I'm hanging in.

"Got my pills 'gainst mosquito death"

Cutter with Deet. Bam, I'm back!

"My buddy's breathing his dying breath"

Took the dog with me and she is panting pretty good at this point. Check

"Oh God please won't you help me make it through"

If I had a nickel for every time I said that when I went for a run in my life I'd probably have upwards of two dollars.  Because I hate running.

Then that refrain comes in again and at that point I'm just about home and filled with an electrifying simultaneous sense of shame and accomplishment. Felt that A LOT as teenager. At least I'm exercising again.

HM

Date Night '13' Or How We Spent our night of freedom.

Mild Spoilers ahead. Nothing specific and I was careful. Besides there's a study out that shows that spoilers actually enhance your enjoyment, so live a little.

Tonight was Date night which traditionally in our household means Sci-Fi Movie night. Given a choice between Will Smith's careening narcissism and Star Trek Into Darkness, we chose the latter.  We really had a good time.

We saw it in 3D because that is also traditional in my household. The 3D was great in some spots, a little stagey in others, and in still others just a little too much. At times it felt like we were watching Star Trek Into Chris Pine's Acne Scars.

I love science fiction. The way the good stuff acts as a mirror for modern society. The way any science fiction worth its salt is allegorical. The way shit blows up and makes pew pew sounds and warp speed and encounters with sexy aliens and chase scenes and set phasers to fucking yeah!

Anyway, In Star Trek Into Zoe Saldana's Mediocre Acting Ability (Seriously, I wish someone else was Uhura. She didn't ruin the movie, but is Angela Basset really too old? Kerry Washington not free?), we've got terrorist attacks, including one where a large ship is purposely dive bombed into a city, and a struggle by those in charge as to how we should respond. With vengeance or with justice? And are the two different? It could be seen, by me anyway, as an allegory for our current situation concerning terrorists, drone strikes, Guantanamo, etc. In the movie they waffle, but eventually try to bring the bad guy in alive. Because that's how they roll. In the movie there is a moment when Chris Pine's left pockmark is giving a speech, and in it he says something along the lines of how while we want vengeance on those that harm us, we must be careful not to find or encourage their evil in ourselves. We bring'em back alive and put'em on trial. Because that's how we roll. Or rather, that's how they roll. We're not so sure these days.

Let me say I've read no other reviews of this movie. Doing so would have totally harshed my writing buzz, as they say on New Vulcan. I don't know if this viewing of it has been driven into the ground or debunked as nonsense. And I never watched Lost, so I don't really know where J.J. Abrams's brain is at.

The movie is just light enough, just loud enough, just fun enough to make me think that possibly I'm full of shit. Probably.

Possibly.

But then again, J.J. Abrams is supposed to be pretty good. And it's a good story, the movie. There are themes of friendship, father-son relationships, the dichotomy of human intellect versus emotion, and a totally fucking ripping space jump scene. It is mildly predictable, but it is a Hollywood Summer Blockbuster (said with reverb).

So I'm gonna go the generous route and say ol' J.J. threw one by the Hollywood system and managed to make a pretty solid Lib-Lab Commie Scumbag allegorical science fiction flick. 3 1/4 dead Tribbles out of a four dead Tribble rating system.

HM

P.S. I don't know that you have to see it in 3D. Definitely on the big screen, but not necessarily in 3D. It was fun, but I can't say it was completely worth it.

Birthday Time/How To Succeed In Parenting Without Even Trying

I'm 40 years old today. All week, he kids were asking me, "Are you excited daddy? Are you excited for your birthday daddy? You're gonna be 40 on saturday daddy, are you excited?"

"Yeah, I'm excited." I'd reply eye-rollingly.

Honestly though, I am excited. There a lot of places I expected to be at 40. Dead, drunk, naked, performing in a dive bar in East St. Louis as "Lady Gagguh." So all in all, I'm feeling pretty good about it. 

Also, there's this:

So we found this injured bird in the backyard. A grackle. I found it. The poor thing was flopping around on its back and trying to turn upright without success. I got some gloves on and tried setting it upright. It hitched and bobbed and wobbled and flipped back over again. 

"Maybe it's shitfaced?" I thought.  I smelled it's breath. No such luck. I didn't know what to do with it. I certainly couldn't have the kids finding it.

For more, please go and visit Dadcentric. Thank you and Have a Pleasant weekend. 

My Family's Cheerful Acquiesance To A Billionaire

I've been very busy lately. I got  a new pair of sun glasses and I've been going around trying to convince people (myself) they're Google Glass. You can take pics, make videos, google stuff. You have to say "ok glass" to activate Google Glass. This has led to a lot of me conspicuously barking "Ok Glass. Google how to say half a pound in Chinese," and then screeching a string of unintelligible gibberish at my Israeli falafel guy before abruptly turning around and moaning "Ok Glass. Google love." Then I laugh and exclaim to passers-by, , " If only  you could see it, man!" Then I try to convince strangers I'm staring at them because I'm an auteur filmmaker , then I say, "Ok Google Glass, google auteur filmmaker." Then I pass out. Technology is amazing.

This past Saturday, my family and I took part in our city's Spring Park Clean-up initiative. We swept and raked and picked up trash while a nervous city worker kept driving by to tell us he thought we'd done a heck of a job and why don't we stop already.

At the end, we had an audience with the mayor. It took my power wife five minutes to convince him she needed to be on "some committee somewhere." I was getting a sandwich.

It was nice to do something for our city because soon we're going to be taken over by casino billionaire Steve Wynn and then we'll all be spending most of our time toiling away a thousand feet below the Earth's crust in Mr. Wynn's vast poker chip mines. I can't wait to lose one of the kids at the roulette table. 

A casino for my metza-metz-not-quite-fair city is beginning to seem imminent. I actually asked the mayor and his city planner , "So you don't think you're going to get screwed by a billionaire?" They laughed and then gave me two thousand parking tickets. 

There is an agreement in place for something like 30 mil this year and 20 mil a year going forward plus a hiring preference for Everett residents. I don't know how he'll get out of paying the cash, though I'm pretty sure he will. but I do wonder if that hiring preference thing includes job training. Not a whole lot of black jack dealers in my city, I'm pretty sure. I'm also pretty sure all of Mr.  Wynn's billions would seem meaningless to him if his Google Glass could google love. Cue music. Call me, Hollywood.

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Check out a Google Glass ad here. My favorite part is that while they've been spending time trying to convince us all that there is no danger of intensely creepy and ubiquitous violations of privacy, one of the first things they show in their promo video is a dude quietly following a ballerina down a dark stairwell. 

Which reminds me, what if you get google glass and you forget to deactivate the camera and then it records everything you look at for two-and-a- half hours straight? That is a lot of bootlegged Food Network.  

Also, if you click the link about the casino and read the story, that rendering of the casino is so far from what ny city looks like right now I'm convinced they're going to bulldoze the city and the forcibly re-assign the majority of us to hard labor in Mr. Wynn's vast felt paddies. 

Finally, go here and donate to help Always Home and Uncool and his family run to Cure JM. Not only will you be donating to a good cause, you'll essentially be paying to make him compete is a race against his own children. What could be better than that?

May 5th

Cinco De Mayo. or as we know it here in the Northeast, Mexican St. Patrick's Day. For those that don't know, Cinco De Mayo celebrates the day when Senor Tostito led the uprising against the imperialist forces of regular potato chips, there by freeing Mexicans to sneak over the border and bring tortilla chips and salsa to all of America to eat with beer or Margaritas while watching sports or movies. Which conversely, then freed the people of Mexico even more so they can cut our grass or become line cooks. At least, that's pretty much what I learned at my daughter's school on monday.

I happened to be volunteering at my school during their Cinco De Mayo festivities this year.

Festivities included (and were limited too):

Making paper sombreros inexpertly decorated to wear on their inexpert heads (except for my daughter who used just the perfectly tasteful amount of little colorful pom-poms, crayon squiggles, and poorly glued sequins. Truly captured the soul of Mexico if by soul of Mexico you mean Taco Bell.)

Eating tortilla chips and lousy salsa at snack time.

End of festivities.

No mention of the Mexican Revolution, the Franco-Mexican war, Hidalgo, Juarez, or Salazar (Author's note: These are Mexican heroes. As a point of pride you should know that I only had to look up three of those names, and two--Hidalgo and Salazar-- I actually recognized due to the fact that the former is the name of a very mediocre Viggo Mortenson film and the latter is a combination of luck and that Hollywood often picks it as the name of the head drug dealer in any given cop movie. America: History Shmistory, your ticket'll be twelve dollars sir.)

Also, for those that might not know, Cinco De Mayo is not a big deal in Mexico. It's more Flag Day than it is Independence Day. Which I'm cool with. Really, I don't mind vaguely racist excuses to drink and try ethnic food. At least something happened in Mexico on Cinco De Mayo. St. Patrick's day in Ireland was originally a small, sad, quiet meal consisting of mutton and depression in honor of St. Patrick Wilson's uncomfortable schtupping of Lena Dunham in Girls. Look it up if you don't believe me. It's science.

I really don't have a problem with the nationwide Margarita throwdown that is the celebration of Cinco De Mayo in the U.S. At least people are thinking about Mexico. A little.

My only issue, and it's an infinitesimal one at that, is that while they had them celebrate Cinco De Mayo at school with a racist hat'n'snack "Fiesta," they mentioned nothing. Not even that bullshit about it being Mexican Independence Day. Just, "here you go guys. Color in these paper hats as offensively as you can and then we'll go have chips!" "Yaaaaay,"the children replied.

Of course, now I'm hungry for nachos. Stupid nachos.


HM

P.S. A photo gallery of traditional Cinco De Mayo art for your enjoyment.

That is one nervous looking cactus. Maybe because it's afraid it'll be deported when the kids are done coloring it. I wonder where the school officials got the "Racist Coloring for Kindergartners Workbook." I can't find it anywhere
The Peanut can color though, can't she? Colored the shit out of that racially stereotyped cactus, that's for sure. Probably she and I should have a little talk about Mexico at some point. She should at least know that most cactuses do not dress that way.

World's record for longest photo caption.

Yaay! Peanut sure can glue the shit of some pom-poms though, can't she? Glues her ass off. 

The Anticipation is the Best Part I Guess.

I have to pee. I'm not getting up though. Not right now. There is no way I am missing this. But man, I have to pee. Really like, squirming and worming and wiggling my butt. But if I get up now it'll be over by the time I get back. Just gotta squeeeeeze tight. Mmmf. Can't. OohUhhh. Lock my ankles together. GO just get up and go and then No no no. I'm ok. Alright. Let's see this. Whoa he's gonna rip that guy's throat out. Look out! Ahh no. I really have to pee. Seriously.

"Do you have to pee?"

"No."

"Ok, because you're wiggling all over the place."

"NoIdon'thavetogoPEEEE!"

"Ok."

Man, do I have to pee. I mean really bad. But look at this. The other guy is winning now. I can't believe it. AHH I have to pee. Get him! Look out! Ooh, I think I just let a little out. But this guy is about to kill the mean one! Arrgghh!

"Are you sure you don't have to pee?"

"YesI'mSUURREE!"

"You can take one of your dinosaurs upstairs with you."

" . . . Okaaay. Daddy this dinosaur is a Gigantosaurus and the Gigantosaurus attacked the Brachiosaurus but the Gigantosaurus is a meat eater but the Brachiosaurus manages to get away because he uses his looong tail to hit the Gigantosaurus and then he gets away."

"Wow. That's quite the upset. Get upstairs to pee now."

"Daddy come with me."

" . . . Okaaay."

Phew.