April 2009 - Posts

• A Peculiar Family Legacy

  Many families have their own eccentricities or family traditions or wacky talents.  Some families are talented whistlers.  Others all have double jointed elbows, and still others make music together, a la the Carter Family or the Von Trapps. My family hasn’t produced a skill that useful yet, but we do have a trait that has been passed down for generations through the men in our family line.  I can only assume that the trait is genetic, because otherwise you think someone would have had the good sense to stop passing it on. Here’s what it is: The men in our family make up alternative lyrics to common songs and then sing them loudly at inappropriate times. It’s not exactly the Von Trapp family, but it’s all we’ve got. I have strong memories of my grandfather singing odd but charming songs to us kids.  The songs were little nonsensical piffles.  When he would rock us in a chair he would sing: “Rock-o Rock-o Rock-o Rock-o Rock” Just something sweet and nonsensical and if he was the only one in the family who did it, you wouldn’t think anything of it.  However, my father, seems to have gotten an extraordinary does of this gene. My childhood is filled with an almost incessant string of songs that he would sing at top voice, often in the middle of breakfast or while driving to church, or canoeing.  My dad loved real songs that were odd, such as: “I can’t love you ‘cause your feet’s too big” And the “powdered milk” song from Prairie Home Companion. But more than that, he’s famous for singing songs that he just changed the lyrics too.  So he might sing something like: “Oh what a beautiful morning! Oh what a very dark night.  I’ve got a terrible feeling, we’re going to need a flashlight!” Top of his lungs at 7:00am. This is a mild song, but fairly typical.  Since all of the songs were made up on the spot, none of the songs were ever repeated.  So there’s sort of an endless stream of them in my head, yet I can’t remember any of them specifially.  But just come over for some weekend when he’s around, I’m sure you’ll hear a few. Now you have to understand, while growing up, this was cause for the entire family to groan and roll their eyes.  “Oh no, Dad’s singing again.”  It was a cause of general annoyance and occasional embarrassment depending on whether we had friends over or not. (To help you complete your image of my dad, he would also play the accordion at 11:00 at night, recite “the Jabberwocky” to anyone who would listen, tried to read me Moby Dick at age 6 and wanted my middle name to be “Aurelius” and my first word to be “brontosaurus”) So, my dad was generally odd and embarrassing, which is why it shames me to admit that I have turned out just like him. Somewhere in my early twenties (when mental illness often begins) I began singing nonsensical songs to myself, my wife, and eventually my children. I, too, favor peculiar songs.  When my children ask me what’s for dinner, I am more likely than not to break into song and sing: “Chicken lips and lizard hips and alligator eyes.  Monkey legs and buzzard eggs and salamander thighs.  Rabbit ears and camel rears and tasty toenail pies.  Stir it all together, it’s mama’s soup surprise!” I know, I know. I have also, through some horrible genetic curse, come to love some of the same songs my dad does.  I am very fond of the song “plastic Jesus” “Plastic Jesus!  Plastic Jesus!  Riding on the dashboard of my car!  I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I’ve got my plastic Jesus riding on the dashboard of my car!” And, much to my wife’s horror, I have taken to inserting lyrics into existing songs and changing them to fit out circumstances.  For instance in Proud Mary “Rolling!  Rolling!  Rolling on the River!” becomes: “Pooping!  Pooping!  Pooping on the potty!” Often sung, while our son is doing precisely that. I have also developed a private affinity for taking childrens’ songs and turning them into bawdy, adult themed tunes. I believe this is born out of the fact that some of these tunes seem to worm their way into your skull and the only way to not go insane is to change them so that they are no longer about talking backpacks and anthropomorphic teddy bears and the like. I will share with you my version of the Thomas the Train theme song if you promise not to judge. The original lyrics of the Thomas the Train theme song make no sense at all, but they go like this: “They're two, they're four, they're six, they're eight Shunting trucks and hauling freight Down the hills and round the bends Thomas and his friends!” Now, my version (and remember, we’re not judging) is a little different, I changed it so that it was a song about morally loose train engines and what happens when they don’t use birth control when they’re “hooking up” (no judging!) “I’m two weeks, four weeks, six weeks late, My headlights ache and I’ve put on weight Now I can’t even get a date Thanks to Thomas and his Friends!” I’ll spare you the subsequent verses, but I believe the first time Sarah heard me singing that in the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth she just shook her head slowly and mumbled something like: “If only that power could be used for good.” Oh well. I’ll spare you a dozen or so other examples, but be sure, there are lots.  It appears to be the Zumwalt curse and one I have been unable to avoid.  But even more disturbing, far more disturbing is that I seem to have already passed it on to my son. Our three year old Asher has always seemed to have an affinity for music and we frequently find him singing to himself.  In fact he has even written a few songs.  For a long time, we would be in the car and he would just break out into this song (which I think he wrote) that goes: Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!  I’m the Rescue Team of the whole wide world.  Helping my friends along the WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY!” That’s all well and good.  A little odd, but well and good.  However a few months ago I heard this come out of his mouth.  The kids had been watching Annie and had taken to singing some of the songs.  Asher was playing by himself on the playset and began singing: “Tomorrow!  Tomorrow!  I’ll give your bottom a spanking!” And so it begins. I am at a loss to explain why or how this happens, but the evidence is somewhat overwhelming.  I can’t help it anymore than I can help having the thick head of wavy hair I inherited from my mother. It is a blessing and a curse and one that is likely to be passed down generation to generation much like male pattern baldness or the ability to roll one’s tongue. My only hope is that my sons will find understanding spouses, or if they’re lucky, the full effects won’t onset until after marriage (Thank god for that “for better or for worse” line) The only advice I can offer to my sons is: (apologies to Journey) “Don’t stop Believing! Once you start conceiving You will be singing like this! Once you are older Your singing will be bolder So mock me at your own risk!” Posted Apr 28 2009, 06:02 AM by superdad with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Music, Asher, Better off Dad, singing [Edit Tags]

• Thomas the Train Meets Stringer the Bell

  My three year old son, Asher, loves Thomas the Train.  Most toddler boys do. It’s sort of hard to explain because the Thomas videos are about the most boring, low budget pieces of children’s entertainment you could find.  They also have these bizarre “everything you do is for the good of the collective” communist overtones. If you took a semi-literate socialist, an HO scale train hobbyist and someone with a $200 video camera they borrowed from their uncle, you would get the Thomas the Train videos. All of the videos show a train without the ability to make facial expressions chugging down the track.  Sure, his eyes can move back and forth, but that’s about it.  The whole video makes those Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer movies look like George Lucas created them.  And the storyline is always out of some re-education camp manual: “Sir Topham Hat asked Thomas to take a load of flour across the island of Sodor to the bakery.  The bakery was making lots of bread for people to stand in line for.  Thomas knew his job was important, and that he had to work together with the other trains to make the bread lines possible.  Thomas also knew that if he did a good job, Supreme Leader Sir Topham Hat would be pleased.” But for whatever reason children around the world love Thomas. Asher will play for hours with these trains, often by himself.  He’ll run them over his tracks, or make huge long trains of them, all connected together, and pull them slowly across the hard wood floor. He often likes to take several trains up for his nap, because what could be better than snuggling up to a small block of wood with wheels. One of the greatest traumas of our life happened last year.  Asher went through a period where he would take all of his trains with him everywhere he went in a rolling backpack.  Well, that backpack got left on the side of the road somewhere one night when we were getting home late from watching Aloysius’ basketball game.  When we realized what had happened, I traveled back out to the site of the catastrophe, but it was too late.  The bag, and its contents of beloved trains, was gone. The biggest problem with this incident was that Asher had about 15 trains in that bag, and for some reason, those stupid trains cost $10 a pop.  That bag was like the most expensive thing we owned.  I’d have been better off losing my wallet or cell phone Anyway, I’m telling you all this because a few weeks ago I got Asher (and the family) tickets to go see the real Thomas the Train at the B&O Railroad museum in Baltimore. That’s right a real train, decked out to look like Thomas was going to be there and you could ride on a train pulled by him.  How cool is that? Well, it was all very cool until Asher woke up that morning with a mild fever.  We gave him Tylenol and Sarah skipped church so she could stay home with Asher and he could rest.  We just needed him to get well enough to be able to go ride the stupid train we had spent all this money on. By the middle of the afternoon, he was definitely getting better, but he wasn’t 100%.  I knew he wasn’t 100% because when we put him down for a nap, he actually took a nap – never a good sign. We had to wake him up from his nap (also not a good sign).  But the fever was gone and I knew he would pull out of it.  So, we loaded everyone up to go out to the train yard in 95 degree heat (by the by, what the heck happened to Spring?  We went from 45 degrees to 95 degrees in a couple of days.  I believe I am contractually owed 1 month in Springtime where I neither need to have the heat or the air conditioning on.  I want my month!) Because of the napping situation we were cutting it close to get to Thomas on time.  As you know, all of the trains on Sodor Island run on time.  Sir Topham Hat sees to it! We arrived with a couple of seconds to spare and ran through the roundhouse.  Along the way, Asher got so excited by seeing all the great big trains around him, but we were on a mission.  So we headed out to the tracks and there sitting at the beginning of the track was Thomas. He looked just like the wooden train Asher had at home.  He was blue, had big wheels that turned and a face that didn’t move. Wow!  The magic of Hollywood! It really did look just like a giant Thomas and we were very excited to go for our ride. Until we actually …..went for our ride. Thomas was pulling a series of 3 or 4 old MARC trains.  So basically Thomas was hooked up to the commuter rail circa 1975.  This can not be what Sir Topham Hat had in mind.  But it was still kind of cool.  They had people dressed as conductors and friendly volunteers handing out “Official Jr. Conductor” certificates.  It was actually very nice and, best of all, the trains were air conditioned.  I bet they don’t have that on the Island of Sodor! Anyway, after a few minutes the train started up and that annoying song started playing…. You know the Thomas theme that was written by rejects from the Barney Show’s song writing staff. They’re 2 they’re 4, they’re 6, they’re 8! Blah blah blah I’ve got a headache Anyway, the train starts and for about 40 feet, it’s quite lovely.  You see the train station, and some of the Thomas activities set out, but after that the train leaves the train station and you’re traveling through the slums of Baltimore. I don’t mean this derogatorily as if Baltimore were just a giant slum.  What I mean is that the trainyard (not surprisingly) doesn’t run through the nicest area of town. As the train began moving along at approximately 10 mph (Thomas is kind of a wuss) we passed old derelict buildings covered with graffiti, overpasses covered with graffiti and small three legged dogs ………..covered with graffiti I kept searching for the phrase: “Body More Murderland” from the opening sequence of the Wire.  I didn’t see that but I did see lots and lots of other stuff (who knew so many people writing graffiti about Cheney were on a first name basis with him). We also passed car after car of old rusting trains ……. covered in graffiti.  I imagine by this point, Thomas was starting to mess himself “Oh please Sir Topham hat!  Please don’t leave me here!  I promise I will do what I am told and always be a good engine and always put the collective first!” So for about 10 minutes we slowly rolled through the seedy underbelly of Baltimore and then the train came to a stop and we started to go backward through the same scenes. Now, I don’t know what happened in the few minutes since we passed by, but on the way back, there were about a half dozen cops all tromping through the trash strewn grass and dirt surrounding the train.  They were taking pictures and interviewing people.  I was on the other side of the train, but I’m pretty sure I saw Stringer Bell lying face down in the grass. Then we got back to the train station and deboarded.  Thomas looked visibly relieved to be back at the station after his harrowing journey.  Oh, who am I kidding.  He had the same insipid expression on his face as when we left. Well, all in all, it was a nice day.  Back at the station they had a moonbounce and Thomas Tattoos and a huge model train set and a giant Thomas made out of legos and places to color and listen to stories and meet Sir Topham Hat and all in all have a good ol’ time.  There were also dozens of cool great big old trains that you could walk through and at least one where you could climb up and pull the knobs and whistles and pretend to be Casey Jones hurtling toward your doom. All good fun. But I would say that if your kid is a big Thomas fan, it might be worth the drive to Strasburg, PA to see Thomas.  That way, your ride with Thomas will include riding in antique train cars through the beautiful Amish country of Pennsylvania instead of riding in old MARC trains through a Baltimore murder investigation.  Plus, the most dangerous person you’re likely to see is Michael Scott.  Posted Apr 27 2009, 06:26 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Asher, Better off Dad, baltimore, train [Edit Tags]

• Feline Fiction

  When my daughter was a baby, I wrote a children’s book.  I was staying home and she slept a lot and so I had some time on my hands.  My book, now out of print – owing largely to the fact that it was never in print - was 450 pages long, ( I told you I had some time on my hands) but I edited it down some. I thought the book was excellent.  So did my wife.  Unfortunately, our nation’s publishers did not agree.  That’s ok.  I was happy to write it.  Sure, it would have been great to be published, but I knew before I started that it was a hard game to break into, so I didn’t have my hopes up too high. However, every once in a while I do have flashes of frustration about my unpublished manuscript when I come across some of the absolute crap that has been published.  You don’t have to spend long in the children’s section of a bookstore before you start to think, “Wow, I could have written that.” Think how it would feel if you already had. And let me tell you.  There is nothing.  NOTHING worse than reading a bad children’s book. (Ok… Sudan is probably worse) Audra gets to choose a book from the school library each week and like most children, she chooses the book based primarily on the cover.  This week she came home with a book that shows a French Chateau and a figure standing out front in a Marie Antoinette style gown and powdered wig.  This would be a little prissy, but fine except for one thing: The figure standing out front in the gown and wig…….is a cat. The book, “The Castle of the Cats,” may be the worst children’s book I have ever read.  It is derivative, poorly written, bizarre and most of all, very disturbing. It is based on a Latvian folk tale which, God willing, Disney doesn’t own the rights to. This morning, I’m going to take the time to walk you through “The Castle of the Cats,”  so you can understand the true horror a father experiences when he has to sit down at night and read something this horrifying to his daughter. Let me just give you a sense of the kind of story we’re dealing with.  Here are the first two sentences from the book: “Once upon a time there lived a farmer who had three sons.  Petro and Havrilo were clever fellows, but their younger brother, Ivan was small and simple.” That’s right.  It’s the three pigs, or Cinderella, except, this time, the hero is the stupid one. Oh come now, you might say.  “Stupid” is a bit harsh, don’t you think?  He’s just, you know….. “simple.” Right. I do not, in fact, think that “stupid” is too harsh.  And to support my accusation, I direct you to the next line in the story: “…..Ivan was small and simple.  He spent his days playing with a leather ball.” Hoo boy!  Call out the men in the white suits, we’ve got a live one! So, we have two hard working brothers and their lazy. idiot brother.  And because this is a fairy tale and makes no sense whatsoever, the father decides to choose who will inherit the farm by giving it to whoever can bring back the nicest handkerchief. Of course he does. This is truly a moment when primogeniture would have worked out best for all parties involved. So, given the opportunity to own some prime Latvian real estate, the two older brothers immediately leap to their horses and head out in search of the nicest damn handkerchief they can find. But what of our hero Ivan?  Does he rush off?  No, I’m afraid not.  Why would you want a farm and livelihood when you already have a leather ball to play with?  Truly, does life get any better than that? The father, perhaps beginning to wonder about his son, approaches him and asks him why he doesn’t go off to find a super nice box of Kleenex.  The son says: “Don’t be angry father.  My brothers can have the farm.  I only want to play with my ball.” Ivan:  The moron, welfare queen of Latvia. But his dad persuades him to give it a go, so Ivan, reluctantly, heads off in search of a napkin.  Being an idiot, Ivan decides to let his horse take him to wherever she wants. The horse, for reasons that are not clear in the narrative arc of the story, takes him to this French chateau where there are a bunch of human sized cats dressed up in fancy clothes.  Now, seeing a castle inhabited by giant talking cats might give a normal person pause.  But not Ivan!  He simply says, “I suppose there’s nothing to fear.  They’re only cats.”  Has he not even heard of Siegfried and Roy? So Ivan enters the house and the kitties are in the midst of a giant Cat ball, a feline fiesta, if you will.  So Ivan just joins in.  Then this tall sexy cat comes over and takes Ivan’s hand and says, “Did you bring us a present?” Did he bring them a present?  Did Ivan, our simpleton from the farm think to bring a present for the ThunderCats’ prissy cousins? Of course he did. Ivan pulls the leather ball out of his pocket and says, “I… I … brought you this?” The cats, of course, go bonkers and run around like a bunch of wild…. uh… cats.  They chase the ball and act nutso until they’ve all worked themselves out of their formalwear and powdered wigs and are just a bunch of cats again. (Watch out Ivan!  If a regular cat can suck a babies breath, what will these monstrosities do to you?!?) The Queen cat, completely spent, gives Ivan a walnut and sends him home. A walnut.  Seriously?  A walnut.  This book is completely polishing off any existing desire I might have ever harbored to go to Latvia. But, lo and behold, the walnut has a nice hanky inside.  In fact, it was so fancy, that “It made his two brothers kerchiefs look like noserags.”  And so he wins the farm.  Or, so you might think.  But the two evil non-step brothers make the very compelling and lucid point that “Father, you can’t leave the farm to a simpleton!” I think I remember Al Gore making the same argument. Anywho….. The father agrees and sends the boys off to get a wedding dress.  Prettiest dress wins.  (Kind of makes you wonder about the father’s proclivities doesn’t it?  First a nice hanky, now a dress.  You will be shocked to hear that there is no mother to be seen anywhere in this story.) Ivan (no surprise here) doesn’t want to go find a wedding dress.  He explains: “They can have the farm.  I’ll be happy to sit on the fence whistling.” Good lord, it’s like Of Mice and Men here.  I think I know what might happen to all of those kitties at the end of this book. So, Ivan heads back to catland and give the cat mint leaves this time.  They mistake the mint for catnip and go crazy once again.  The felicitous head feline gives Ivan another walnut, which – wonder of wonders – has a really hot Vera Wang wedding dress inside. Of course it does. The brothers whine again and the father says, fine fine.  Whoever brings back the most beautiful bride wins the farm!  The brothers head off, but Ivan decides to just hang out and whittle sticks.   The father encourages him to try, but Ivan, the lazy loser says: “How can I find a bride father?  Maidens don’t fit in walnuts.” Newsflash Ivan:  Neither do handkerchiefs or wedding dresses. But eventually Ivan gives in and heads back to Cat World for “The Bachelor: Manimal Edition!” (Do you remember Manimal?  Anyone?  Awesome show) So, Ivan shows up, but the only gift he has is a wooden ring he carved, which he gives to the pretty kitty.  (Anyone else see where this is going?  Anyone else deeply uncomfortable?) Then they have a big dance and dine on mouse-kebobs and what not, then at midnight all the cats scurry away and Ivan is left sad and alone.  The next morning he awakes and a beautiful woman is there standing at his bed.  Ivan is startled, but the lady explains: “Why, Ivan!  Don’t you recognize your betrothed bride?” Ivan, being slow and simple and all, just shrugs his shoulders and apparently thinks “Why not,” and leaves with the cat chick.  They travel back to the farm and of course he wins the hot bride contest.  Then they all get married. Ivan wins the the farm, but says he doesn’t want it, so he and his bride get in their carriage and head back to the palace to (Wait Ivan!  Don’t do it!  Didn’t you see LadyHawke!)  have a kitty litter - never to be seen again.   The book ends with this charming paragraph: “Every now and then a traveler appears, telling a strange tale of spending the night in a mysterious castle inhabited by cats.  Their queen is a beautiful snow white cat and their king is an elegant Tom, who tosses a leather ball from paw to paw.  Now what do you make of that?” I’ll tell you what I make of that.  Apparently Ivan is a big ol’ doofus even as a cat. Honestly, is it just me or is this not the worst book you’ve ever heard of?  Cats?  Walnuts?  Powdered wigs?  Idiot heroes?  What is wrong with the Latvians?  I guess what I’m saying is the next time you’re annoyed that your son wants to read The cat in the Hat for the 500th time, or your daughter really really wants to read you “Hannah Montana gets a Pedicure” (based on the movie!) then maybe you should count your blessings. And if you’ve got any stupid kids….. lock up your cats.  They’ll apparently do more than suck your kids’ breath. Posted Apr 23 2009, 06:59 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, books [Edit Tags]

• 17 Again? Um, No Thanks.

  My wife and I went to see the movie “17 Again” recently. The premise is more or less the same one you remember from about half a dozen different movies in the 80s.  A person (this time a 40 year old man who has been a loser as a husband and father) dreams of having the chance to do things over again to see if he can make it all turn out better.  So he meets a mysterious old man and the next thing he knows he’s back in his own 17 year old body, which happens to belong to Zac Efron .  It’s “Big” meets “Wacky Wednesday” meets “Back to the Future” meets, Oh, I don’t know, lets say “Weekend at Bernies.” Anyway, the guy decides to go back to High School where he was the basketball star and try to (in today’s parlance) make better choices (and in yesterday’s parlance: not be a screw up) It was an Ok movie - at times better and worse than you’d expect.  There was not nearly enough 80s power rock used in the flashback scenes, and I don’t think they got the feathered hair quite right, but there was another cameo from Jan from “The Office,” which was a nice random addition.  This time she plays the school principal who is secretly a Lord of the Rings nerd who speaks Elvish.  The girl gets around. Quite naturally, the movie made me think back to my own high school experiences.  The lead character graduated just two years before me, so it was hard not to think back to the late 80s and what life was like. As we left the movie I asked my wife whether she would go back to high school if she had the chance to do it all over again. She thought wistfully for a few moments.  “Well, I’ve got lots of good memories from that time.  For me, it was like going to hang out with my friends every day with a few tests thrown in.  But, I don’t have many regrets in life, so I don’t really see the need to go back.”  She said the only thing she might do differently was not get a perm in 8th grade. How’s that for psychologically healthy and well rounded? But what about me?  If I could get back into my scrawny 140 pound 17 year old body again would I like to go back and relive my high school glory days? No.  Way.  In.  Hell. I’d rather be attacked by a pack of rabid ferrets, leaving me legless with only gnawed stumps below the knee caps. Hmmm, do I really mean that? …… Yeah.  I think I do.  As long as I didn’t get rabies from the ferrets, I suspect that’s a reasonable trade.  So, I guess you could say that I didn’t care for High School.  Which is why these stories about someone going back to relive their High School glory days always intrigue me.  What the hell was Bruce Springsteen talking about? The main thing conclusion I came to about being forced to relive my high school years is that if it happened (if I woke up in my 17 year old body again and was forced to go back to Dobyns-Bennett High School again)  I think I would have pushed my parents a lot harder to transfer me to that school we got the pamphlet about in the mail. That, and I might not have worn the royal blue slacks and sweater set that I had gotten for Christmas so often. But, more than thinking about my own failed High School experiences (speaking of failed high school experiences, I especially don’t want to relive 11th grade trigonometry) the movie made me think about the high school experiences that my kids are likely to have. Unfortunately, although my kids are very cute and uniquely talented, it seems unlikely that any of them will grow up to look like Zac Efron and be the hero of their basketball team. Model UN?  Maybe.  Theater department?  Quite possibly.  Poetry magazine?  Almost certainly.  But Basketball?  It’s doubtful.  Sure, their Mom played the ol’ B-ball in high school.  But, so far none of our kids seem to be exhibiting any of her semi-natural athletic talent.  And certainly none of it is coming from me. You see, my problem in High School was that I took those after school specials to heart.  I decided to “be myself!” and “not care what others thought about me!”  And “march to the beat of my own drummer!” These qualities will likely serve you very well at your small New England liberal arts college, but are not particularly useful character traits in a large high school in Tennessee.  In fact I wouldn’t recommend them at all.  Just take your freak flag, pack it away under your bed and wait till Freshman Orientation at Sarah Lawrence to drag it out. So, hopefully, I have learned from my mistakes and can help my kids to be a little more successful in High School so that 20 years later they don’t have to travel back in time to do it all over again, or fear, with all their heart, the prospect of traveling back in time to do it all over again.  Surely, there’s a happy medium there.  My wife certainly found it. (Of course she did look mighty hot in that nylon basketball uniform she wore.  I’ve seen the pictures!  She claims this was a minority opinion, but I don’t believe it.  Rowr!)  And I believe my kids will as well.  As a family we know what to shoot for, what to avoid and hopefully when it’s time to check out those brochures in the mail.  And despite what the movies may lead you to believe, luckily, you’re only 17 once. Posted Apr 22 2009, 06:48 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, school, movies [Edit Tags]

• The Huggies Clean Team is Reporting for Dirty!

  There is a long history of anthropomorphic animal mascots for anything being sold to children.  I’m talking about Tony the Tiger and Geoffrey the Giraffe from Toys R Us and whatever the hell Grimace is. For some reason, children like giant scary animals who might normally eat them alive, but when hawking cereal or French fries are somehow compelling.  It appears to be a universal truth, which is why just about every product being marketed to kids tends to have some kind of creature plastered on the outside of the package. This is fine.  I’m sure it says something very sinister about American culture, but I have a special place in my heart for the froot loop bird and heck, I still remember when the Piggly Wiggly Pig would come to visit us at the grocery store in South Carolina.  My mom used to watch the papers and make a special trip so that I could run up and give Piggly a big hug.  Of course, at the time, that was the height of the Beaufort social scene, so you took your kicks where you could get them. The problem is that this proliferation of talking animals has led marketers to believe that every single item geared toward kids needs to have some zoo refugee shilling for it. Enter our story for today. Yesterday I was helping to wipe Asher after he did one of his big boy poops in the potty.  I was looking down at our container of flushable wipes and noticed for the first time that there was a flamingo with a captain’s hat on the container. “That’s random,” I thought.  “What does a flamingo have to do with wiping?” And then I noticed that the flamingo wasn’t just a normal flamingo wearing a captain’s hat.  It was a flamingo wearing a captain’s hat with a pink toilet for a body. That’s right a flamingo with a toilet for a body. What the heck? So, I did what any normal parent would do and I took a picture of the fla-toilet and sent it out on twitter (marcuszumwalt on twitter.com).  I sort of assumed that was the end of it, but then I noticed that on the side of the package it said that Freddy Flamingo was a part of the “Huggies Clean Team.”  This led me to the disturbing realization that Freddie wasn’t alone in sailing his ship, but that there was, in fact, an entire posse of creatures sailing with him.  Presumably characters like a half walrus / half toilet brush, or Susie the Snail Sanitary Pad. I went to the computer and much to my delight and my horror, there was an entire website devoted exclusively to the Huggies Clean Team. http://www.huggiescleanteam.com/default.aspx Here on this website you could meet each of the 7 members of the clean team and learn all about them! For instance, here is what it says about my new best bud Freddy: “It’s smooth sailing when Freddy is at the helm! Resourceful and responsible, he keeps the whole wishy-washy team under his wing. He knows when the coast is clear and does his best to navigate through any kind of weather.” And here is Freddy’s Special Talent!: “Friendly Freddy flushes finished wipes for extra freshness!” That’s gross! Think about it……Freddy (presumably) hangs out in the bathroom handing out flushable wipes to toddlers and then when they are “finished” he opens up the toilet on his back and throws them in. Freddy is officially the most disgusting creature ever created. Don’t you wish you could have been at tha marketing brain storming session when Freddy was thought up? “Ok, guys.  Let’s start thinking.  Now what’s going to make kids want to wipe their butts with our product?” “I don’t know, an animal mascot?” “Exactly!  Now what would be the softest thing you could wipe your butt with?” I know!  I know!  Flamingo feathers!” “Exactly!  Now, how can we tie the flamingo into the whole wipes thing?” “What about….  what about…… what if we made the flamingo a flamingo cyborg that was half bird / half toilet?” “Brilliant!  You’ve done it again team!” Of course, once they created Freddie the Flamingo, they had to come up with a whole line of friends for Freddie; one for each of the different clean team items they were trying to market.  So there’s a snake with a water hose for a tail that sells shampoo and a dolphin with a comb for a tail (I would think that would affect her swimming) that squirts detangling spray out of her blowhole. That’s all well and good (in a very bad way) but the marketing team also felt the need to give each character on the clean team their very own personality.  So now you have characters like Billy Buffalo who has a brush for a tail and whose “sense of direction is completely out of whack and that puts Billy in plenty of sticky situations.” Great….. a directionally challenged buffalo.  Freddie is also saddled withWally Whale who has emotional problems and Henry Hippo who is (how should I put this?) ….. “intellectually challenged.”  Basically Henry had a lobotomy so that they could insert a giant pump into his head that dispenses hand soap.  Ever since, Henry has been, well…. special.  Luckily, and I quote: “the Cleanteam keeps a close eye on his calamities.”  Great!  Just what Freddie needs.  On top of throwing poop splattered wipes down his backside he’s got to put up with Henry the moronic hippo, a Buffalo who’s liable to wander off at any moment, and a whale that can be found crying in the bathroom if he goes off his meds. I don’t know about you, but at this point, I am somewhat desperate for a Clean Team cartoon series, a la the Smurfs.  I can see them all chasing after Henry Hippo while he tries to eat a Volkswagen or something and Billy runs off and gets lost in the park and the whole time Wally the Whale is having one of his “moments.”  Then Carley Crab clogs up Freddy and they have to use Sammy the snake to roto rooter Freddy out and ….. Never mind it’s a terrible idea. But let me tell you what’s not a terrible idea…… a band! That’s right, the clean team has their own band!  Freddie plays banjo, Henry’s on the drums (no surprise there) and Wally Whale is on the ten gallon wash tub!  Much to my surprise Sammy Snake is the lead singer.  (I really didn’t think he had the voice for it) I’m sure you’ve heard their hit song “Clean Team Reporting for Dirty!” If not, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgBAXJ_h9hE&feature=related I have to say, one of the saddest experiences of my life involved this song.  At the bottom of the website is a link where you can download the clean team song onto your ipod.  I clicked on it with fetid anticipation (yes, I did use that word correctly) and had to hold back tears when a window popped up saying that this download was not available to US itunes owners.  (damn Brits get everything!) But there is some further solace to be had, because we Yanks do have access to the Clean Team “Reporting for Dirty” video which is a must see for any parent who cares about their kids’ cleanliness. I strongly, strongly encourage you to watch the first half of this video.  Let me give you a few reasons why.  First of all, the video is all about this dirty kid who seems to suffer from some of the same problems that Henry Hippo has. Secondly, there is a song and the opening lyrics are: “When you need a wipe to clean your bottom, well your pal, Freddy’s, always got ‘em!” Move over Lerner and Lowe. The second verse belongs to Henry and involves him insulting the child. “I’m Henry and you’re really stinking!  You scrub your hands while my lights blinking!” Don’t ask.  It has something to do with the lobotomy. Anyway, after the child has been bullied and insulted by Henry and Freddy, the Mom comes in and launches into a 30 second stream of insults where she calls her son every word she can think of to describe how repulsively disgusting he is.  Truly, you should watch at least the first minute or so.  It all goes downhill once Billy the Buffalo shows up, but what did you expect?   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5SaIUWkPv0 I’d like to say that I bought this product because I was enticed by the flamingo / potty creature, but I really just bought it because it was on sale.  That being said, I am now feeling somewhat attached to Freddy.  After seeing his song and listening to him in concert, I feel like he’s a very real part of my wiping experience. In fact, if I heard that Freddy was appearing at our local grocery store, just like my mother, I would load my kids up and take them down to meet him and give him a great big hug. Actually, that would be pretty gross, but with any luck, Henry would be there to help the kids clean up afterward.  Go Clean Team Go! Posted Apr 21 2009, 06:02 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Music, Asher, Better off Dad, stupidity, videos [Edit Tags]

• Hannah Montana Wears a Bandana and Listens to Santana while Eating a Banana

  I took my 6 year old daughter Audra to see the Hannah Montana movie yesterday.  (I also took my three year old son, Asher, but he went with about the same amount of enthusiasm as I did). The movie was…. I don’t know, about what I expected I guess.  It was not a great movie, but it followed the Disney family friendly “make some mistakes, learn a lesson, love your family, come out on top in the end” formula I expected it to. Sure, it didn’t quite have the dramatic subtlety or nuance you might expect from a Droopy Dog cartoon, but it was watchable. And don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a Hannah Hater. I don’t mind her.  I think her show is cute, even through most of the episodes seemed to be culled from old “I love Lucy” scripts.  (What?  You heard that my boyfriend is taking another girl to dinner?  Well, we better put on fake mustaches and dress up as waiters to get to the bottom of this!  What?  The girl is really his cousin?  Whaaaaaaa!) It’s fine.  In the same way that angel food cake is fine.  It’s light and doesn’t taste like much, but I’m not opposed to eating it. I don’t quite get the whole Hannah backlash.  Sure, she’s done some stupid things as a celebrity, but most of them have, and her stupidity seems to pale in comparison to some of her peers.  Besides, I don’t have any trouble separating the character from the actress, because: A) I’m not clinically insane, so I can tell the difference between the two B)  My daughter is 6.  She watches what we let her watch.  So it’s no great challenge to let her see Miley Cyrus on the Disney Channel and not let her see Miley Cyrus on Entertainment Tonight or Perez Hilton.  I really don’t see the problem.  And the movie is tame.  Heavens to Betsy is it tame.  When was the last time you saw a live action movie that was rated G?  Heck!  The Lizzie Maguire Movie was rated PG.  Although it was set in Italy, which is inherently racy, what with all the nudey statues and whatnot. (Why do I know all of this?) Well, none of that in Hannah.   They even obscure the one kiss in the movie, so little eyes don’t have to be grossed out by Cyrus getting the cooties from a boy. And how about this for tame?  The movie was a children’s comedy set on a farm.  And not once, NOT ONCE I TELL YOU, was there a poop joke, a falling in a cow patty joke or anything else having to do with animal feces. Have you ever seen a kid’s comedy set on a farm that didn’t have a “person falling in horse dung” joke?   The movie deserves a G minus for that alone. Besides, and you have to give me some leeway here, some of Hannah’s songs are pretty good. Oh, I know.  All of you snobby readers out there with your ipods full of Alpaca shepherd chants and Indie bands with names like “Nietzsche’s Soul” are thinking, “Oh, you silly man to enjoy the corporate created songs of a teenage shill.” Yeah, yeah, whatever, here’s the thing.  I try hard not to be a snob about music.  Now, I’m really critical of music, but I’m not too elitist about it.  If it’s a catchy song, and I find myself singing it while doing dishes, I’m not above proclaiming it a decent song. Now, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think Cyrus has much of a voice, but you have to admit some of her songs are catchy.  That “best of both worlds” song gets stuck in my head a lot.  “You’ve got the Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssstttttt of both worlds!  You look really slow and then you put on a show and it’s the Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssstttttt of both worlds and you throw it in a blender and you know youv’e got the best of both worlds!”   Or something like that.  I’m not so good at paying attention to the lyrics, but the tune’s pretty catchy. I mean,  no one is claiming that orchestra’s are going to be playing this at the Met in a hundred years, but for something to listen to while vacuuming, it’s not too bad. Think of it this way.  I love a filet mignon with béarnaise sauce.  I also occasionally like to get those nachos with that neon cheese sauce that comes out of a big bag.  There’s nothing wrong with either of those two things, unless you take a bite of the nachos and expect them to be coated in a delicate béarnaise sauce.  As long as you know you’re eating a fake cheese like substance, go ahead and eat it and enjoy it and quit telling people you’re so damn snooty that you won’t eat the cheese sauce.   Everybody eats the cheese sauce.  It’s good. Hannah Montana music is like getting dinner at the county fair.  No one thinks it’s quality food, or that it’s healthy, but who doesn’t like an elephant ear every now and then? “You’ve got the Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssstttttt of both worlds!” So anyway, back to the movie.  Here is a list of comments, observations and concerns I had about the movie. • The script was written by monkeys.   Well, maybe not real monkeys, but geez, if I gave you the 20 second premise, you could probably write the script in a couple of hours.  Hey, let’s try it!:  “Ok, Hannah Montana is getting too big for her britches as a super star, so her dad flies her back home to their rural town in Tennessee to get back to her roots.”  Go ahead, think for a few seconds, what else do you think happens in the movie?  How about she falls in love with the cute farmhand who teaches her to love the simple things in life?  How about her grandmother makes her get up early and do chores so she can appreciate the simple things in life? How about she gets in a situation where she has to maniacally change clothes between being herself and being Hannah so she can be two places at once and then realizes that it is all too crazy and she has to start appreciating the simple things in life? Seriously….. monkeys. • Tyra Banks cameos as herself getting in a shoe fight with Hannah That’s right, Hannah and Tyra fight over the last pair of shoes in a boutique.  They throw each other across couches and Hannah rides piggy back on the giantess Tyra while she spins her around in circles.  Seriously, Tyra mugging for the camera may have been the best thing in the movie. • There’s a song that uses the words “poppin and lockin,” “hoedown” and “that’s how we roll” all together in the same chorus. There is a scene where the movie tries desperately to create the next big dance craze by doing a hip hop / country line dance.  I am horribly sad to tell you that I think they succeeded.  As we were walking out of the theater, the middle aged black lady in front of me, said, “Ooh, I’ve got to get that song on my ipod so I can learn that dance!” If she wants to learn the dance, every 8 year old white girl in America is about to start poppin’ and lockin’. I have decided to reprint the insightful lyrics for you so that you will know what your daughter is going to be learning to do during recess this spring: Pop it, Lock it, Polka dot it Country-fy then hip hop it. Put your hawk in the sky Side to side Jump to the left Stick it, glide. Zig zag cross the floor Shuffle in diagonal When the drum hits, Hands on your hips One foot it, 180 twist And then a, zig zag, Step, slide Lean it left, Clap 3 times Shake it out Head to toe Throw it all together That's how we roll We will all be doing this at our children’s weddings in 20 years.  I commiserate with you in advance. I’m also going to include this video, for no other reason that it amuses the heck out of me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF6_UkwlUz8 • Jan, from the Office, plays Lorelai: the countrified love interest for Billy Ray. This was truly bizarre.  I don’t know whether the actress did a bad job or not, but I could not, simply could not, get over the fact that Billy Ray’s gingham dressed girlfriend was the woman who once said about Michael Scott after choosing to get impregnated at a sperm bank:  “If I was 22 and I had lots of time.. to have lots of children, then sure let's let Michael have a shot at one of them but honestly I have to make this one count.” So, it was a little hard to get past that.  • I was very disappointed to learn that the guy who plays the mayor in the movie was not Billy Dee Williams.  I hadn’t seen Billy Dee in anything in a very long time, and somehow I found it endlessly amusing that he might be in the Hannah Montana Movie.  Turns out he was not.  It was some guy named Beau Billingsea.  They could be twins.  Vanessa Williams was in it, though, and Barry Bostwick dressed up like Ed McMahon.  All very surreal. • I missed Emily Osment Basically, all the secondary Hannah characters were relegated to three minutes of screen time or less.   I missed Emily though.  I always think of her as the cuter more talented girl on the show.  Plus whenever I see her, I think about her creepy brother and all the dead people he can see. So all in all, the movie had lots of ups and downs, but mainly just lots of flat, boring, predictable straight paths.  Not a terrible movie, but honestly?........ Could have used a couple more people falling into cow patties. Posted Apr 20 2009, 06:28 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Audra, Better off Dad, movies, hannah montana [Edit Tags]

• The King of Shop

  Ladies and Gentleman, do I have something for you today. As you know, times are tough.  The economy’s in the crapper and this downward spiral is hurting all of us, even celebrities. Why just last week I read that poor Nicholas Cage had to sell one of his castles (that’s right, he has more than one) because of the bad economy and the fact that all of his movies suck.  And while it is interesting that a Bavarian Castle is coming back on the real estate market, I’m not really in a position to buy right now (just 20 million short.  I’ve totally got the rest covered) However, don’t let that sadden you too much.  Because I am about to provide you with the opportunity to own a piece of your childhood and for the rest of your life be able to intrigue, beguile and freak out your neighbors. Michael Jackson’s life is going on sale. I mean this is as sincerely as possible.  There is a massive auction beginning this weekend that will essentially sell off everything the King of Pop owns. Do you want to own the fedora he wore in Billie Jean?   It’s yours. How about those sparkly socks?  Trade in your car and buy ‘em! Think that the gates to Neverland Ranch would look mighty nice in front of your townhouse?  Well here’s your opportunity.  From his Victory tour jacket to his Rolls Royce Limousine to his garbage can, it is all for sale.  Just look through this digital auction book (or order a hardbound, 4 book, boxed set for only $200) http://www.juliensauctions.com/auctions/2009/michael-jackson/catalog-list.html You have to, have to, have to check this out.  And I will give you several reasons why: 1. You could read a hundred books about Michael Jackson and still not learn as much about the man as you would by looking through these pages of things that he owns 2. It will fascinate you in ways that you could never have imagined (he owns a lifesize Darth Vader made out of legos.  Who knew?  He was into Victorian antiques?  How about that.) 3. It will make Jackson seem so much more normal (he has a nice decorative salt and pepper shaker) and so much more bizarre (he has a painting of himself sitting in a theater with Peter Pan watching Kermit the frog and Mickey Mouse perform on stage) than you ever, ever could have imagined 4. You are going to find at least one thing that, if you were walking through an antique store in Vermont (or flea market in Vegas) that you would want to own. 5. You can afford something from this auction That’s right.  I don’t want you to look through this auction just to gawk at the decline of a musical icon, but because with $100 you can own something that Michael Jackson owned.  You could buy a chair that he sat on.  A handpainted sign that says “goodbye for now” from the Neverland Ranch.  You could afford Michael Jackson’s handpainted, Neverland trash can, or a bronze figurine.  You really could.  I promise. The thing that is so bizarre about this auction is that it swings so hard from normal to odd to creepy.  There are many furniture items that are things I would gladly have in my home.  There is a big leather chair that looks extremely comfy and that I would love to have, except for the fact that it would freak me out to think that Bubbles the Chimp probably used to sit in it. There is a lovely wooden farm-style table, some elegant tableware and some charming outdoor furniture.  There is also a life size boba fett statue, several wax figurines of Michael himself and a set of samurai swords.  It’s all a bit odd. There is page after page after page of cute bronze statues of children playing.  The kids are jumping over logs, or rolling on the ground with a dog, or watering flowers, or dancing in a circle.  Some of them are quite nice, except for one thing: They belonged to Michael Jackson. And the idea of him having dozens of bronze statues of children is a little freaky.  In fact, the extent to which his entire home was sort of a playground for children is a little freaky.  There was a circus tent and a rollercoaster and a toy train.  A whole massive room was filled with dozens of video games – enough to make Chuck E Cheese weep at his own inadequacy. It’s truly bizarre. Now, I don’t know what the deal with ol’ one glove is.  Perhaps he’s the sickest pedophile ever to walk the planet who created a sticky web of toys to lure kids to his home. Maybe. Or, maybe he is just a child in an adult’s body.  The more you look at all the stuff he owns, it truly looks like what would happen if a child was allowed to buy anything he wanted.  It reminds me of the movie “Big” and how Tom Hank’s character’s apartment was decked out with video games and a bunkbed.  Is there any wonder that Michael Jackson owns a Zoltare machine (no joke.  It’s in the catalog).  But musings on the darker / sadder sides of the King of Pop is not why we’re here.  We are here to ogle his stuff.  Would you like to own that weird robotic face from the moonwalker video?  It can be yours for a few grand How about a painting of Michael Jackson skipping through a field holding hands with  a Benneton ads worth of children?  (There’s several to choose from) All of his costumes and stage outfits are on sale from the most iconic (sparkle glove) to the wacky military / High School band uniform jackets he used to wear when meeting foreign dignitaries. My favorite item, just for freak-out kitsch appeal is the series of paintings done by Michael Jackson and Macaulay Culkin when they used to hang out.  Bizarre. But really, what I would rather have, and what I truly intend to bid on is something nice and  normal, but just a shade out of place.  Like, for instance, a lawn ornament, or a wall clock -  something that stands out just enough so that when someone sees it and says, “oh, that’s nice.” I can nonchalantly say, “Oh yes, that used to belong to Michael Jackson.” How cool would that be? Pretty cool.  But,  unfortunately, as it turns out, it’s never going to happen. I started writing this blog last week and I just saw an article yesterday that the whole auction has been called off.  Apparently, MJ has sued the auction company for reasons that I couldn’t follow and the whole thing is now kaput, which is very disappointing.  I had sort of gotten my heart set on a couple of pieces of statuary.  But some day it is my hope that Jackson will wanta be startin something and he will need to sell off some of his possessions to do so.  And when he does I’m going to run I’m going to do what I can to get there, because I’m sure it will be a thriller, a thriller night. P.S.  The kid is not my son Posted Apr 16 2009, 04:39 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: stupidity, shopping, Michael Jackson [Edit Tags]

• White House Easter Egg Roll – Part 2 – Fantasy, Fun and Fergie

  And so……… We had arrived into the epicenter of the Easter Egg World (as long as you don’t count the day before, Easter, as being part of that epicenter.) We were standing on the white house lawn.  To the left was a giant stage with some DJ desperately trying to get kids to come over and listen to him. “Hey kids!  Come on over!  Start gathering around the stage!  That’s right!  No, wait!  Don’t leave me for the Egg hunt, come on!  Oh, I am so alone.” It really was very sad, but there were real singers coming later, and I’m not sure your average 6 year old is all that interested in doing the Thriller dance with some DJ no one has ever heard of. So, like everyone else, we walked right by the DJ.  I knew there were lots of people still behind us and that this was our chance to go do something before the lines got too long.  I spotted an activity table with practically no one around and rushed right over. “Hi, welcome to the White House!  Would you like to try to identify different kinds of bird eggs? Oh shoot!  It was a science table!  We could have come back any time and this station would have been empty.  But we were already there, so Audra and Asher spent a few minutes guessing whether the giant white egg belonged to the penguin or the bluejay.  Aside from some confusion between the Osprey and the Red tailed Hawk, they did very well, (stupid confusing spotted osprey eggs). Then we walked up and got in a line to have our picture taken so it looks like our family is being hatched from an egg at the white house.  This is a very important thing to do, or so it seemed, by the number of people who were doing it.  The hardest part was holding up both of my children at once.  Thankfully, they are both ludicrously underweight, which is really important because, as it turns out, I am an incredibly weak individual.  After we got our picture I walked a few feet and saw a long line.  I turned to the guy in front of me and said, “What’s this line for?” He chuckled, said he didn’t know, but figured it was worth standing in. Well, it’s hard to argue with logic like that.   So I grabbed my kids’ hands and we jumped in line.  As we were slowly moving up the white house lawn, I saw that off to my left Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan was reading a book to some children. Here is what you need to know about Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan: He is not a very good reader.  His bear voices sounded a lot like his old man voices and his little girl voice was just screechy. I’m sure he has many other good qualities, though. On my right there was a professional jumprope team (who knew such a thing existed?)  They were hopping and twirling and backflipping with gusto.  My daughter, who can skip rope three times in a row, wanted to go over to see that, but I told her that we would do that as soon as we were done waiting in whatever this important line turned out to be. Ahead of us, I could see a motley menagerie of giant stuffed characters.  There was the Easter bunny and Clifford and Maisy Mouse and Arthur and a bunch of other anthropomorphic animals that I couldn’t indentify.  The animals were all swarmed by packs of rabid children.  It all looked very unhealthy.  I’m almost certain that this is how the black plague started. Fortunately, it turned out that the line we were in was for the official “Easter Egg Roll.” Excellent!  This was why we were here, after all.  As we got closer I could see that the Easter egg roll consisted of children racing down paths trying to “roll” (aka: hit or throw) hard boiled eggs down the grass.  I’m sure this was just crazy fun for kids in 1880 when this thing started.  They were always trying to roll eggs or hoops or stuff like that.  Rolling things was like the Wii of the 19th century. Anyway, the egg rolling area was set up just beside the West Wing and across from Malia and Sasha’s new playground.  Honestly, their playground isn’t all that cool.  It’s pretty much like one of those normal playgrounds you can assemble yourself from Costco, except it’s got a corkscrew slide. Way not to spoil your kids O. On the porch of the White House (can you call a marble columned portico a porch?)  There was an orchestra playing.  This was very nice, although the talented children playing were largely drowned out by all of the kids trying to accost whatever that crazy looking muppet with the purple hair was. Here’s a lovely video of that whole scene.  (please be aware that in all of these videos, my voice is extremely high and sounds like a 12 year old girl.  This clearly has something to do with the video camera since it is well known that I have a deep masculine voice like James Earl Jones and do not, I repeat do not, normally sound like Betty Boop in the middle of menapouse) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Yg1zv6Uys So after a not too terribly long wait, my kids arrived at the historical Easter Egg Roll.  This was their moment in history and boy it came and went quickly.  I mean, after all, they had another 28,798 kids to shuffle through this thing. Without explaining what the kids were supposed to do, they hustled Audra and Asher into a lane and yelled “go!”  Audra started effectively rolling her egg toward the finish line.  Asher, on the other hand, picked his egg up, put it on his spoon, threw it in the air , spun around a few times and then carried it toward the finish line. The video isn’t perfect, since I’m trying to find two kids through a decidedly small lens, but I believe it accurately captures the chaos, absurdity and general pointlessness of rolling eggs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKdscrVMxVw After the egg hunt we went over and collected our free White House Easter Egg Roll 2009 posters and I looked down at my schedule and realized that Brianna Scurry was going to be in the soccer area in approximately 1 minute. I suspect that for most of you, this news is about as exciting as it was to my children.  I, however, was pretty ecstatic.  Brianna Scurry was the tough as nails goalie for the US Women’s Soccer team when they won their famous 1999 World Cup.  My wife had played soccer in high school and college and we had followed this team religiously.  We actually have a giant banner of Brianna Scurry hanging in our garage. For me, it was cool beyond words that she was there to play soccer with my children.  My kids, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less.  I tried to prime Audra by explaining who this woman was, but I don’t think she got it. As it turns out, Scurry is incredibly nice, which was a pleasant surprise because she always looked a little frightening on TV, like if you tried to score on her, she might leap out of the goal and rip your trachea out with her teeth. She was actually a lot of fun, though.  She joked around with the kids and appeared to be having a blast.  Both of my kids got to try to score on her.  When my dainty daughter, Audra, who was wearing a dress with tulips on it and mary janes, kicked the ball to her, Scurry even pretended that Audra’s light tap of the ball knocked her on to her back.  Scurry was my Chevrolet player of the egg roll. Here are two charming videos.  The first is of Audra about to kick the ball before some punk kid takes it from her.  The video ends with Scurry getting attacked by a series of flying balls. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6qHkvnQmi0 This second video is of my sweet boy trying to kick a ball while wearing his winter coat.  It’s very sweet.  It makes me cry.  It also makes me want to sign him up for soccer lessons.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3wHGIzrtQQ After we left the soccer area we got our picture taken with some giant egg lady.  If there was more I could say to explain that, I would, but I’m not sure you can. And then we headed over to the musical stage where Her Humps herself was about to take over.  That’s right, Fergie, of the Blackeyed Peas was going to sing, which, of course, led me to my first thought of, “what in the world is Fergie going to sing that’s appropriate for small children at the White House?” Luckily she had some song about dating in High School that seemed fine and it turns out that she doesn’t believe big girls should cry and that also seemed ok.  She is, apparently, also Fergalicious which seems to involve her being tasty.  This was more questionable to me, but who am I to provide a proper definition for being “Fergalicious, So delicious. But not promiscuous or suspicious even if all that poop is fictitious” Anyway, Fergie came out and rocked the house with her little wacky dressed dancers who seemed to have been recently released from some kind of funked up kids show in the Ukraine.  But the kids had a good time dancing and although most of the girls were little, I hardly saw any of them cry. Please enjoy this grainy video I took of her wacky dancers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAwePzLN2AE And also this absolutely frightening video of my daughter’s reaction to Fergie.  Now, that is not Fergalicious! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnfgLlKt4zc My kids, whose favorite song is “Let’s Go to the Movies” from Annie, were not as enamored with Fergie as everyone else, so we headed out to explore the rest of the grounds, which unfortunately meant that we missed the giant headed presidents from the Nationals running down to headbang in the Fergie mosh pit (see the tail end of yesterdays video).  We did, however see Spike from Top Chef, which was not at all exciting. And then, despite the fact that there was still more to do, our two hour window was closing.  They started shutting down all of the activity booths and herding us all toward the white house exit.  This led us to the only disorganized part of the day.  Apparently the volunteers who were charged with handing out the wooden souvenir eggs to everyone had done a very good job when just a handful of folks were trickling out the gates, but when all 6,000 of us started to leave at once, they had no idea what to do.  So, a line backed up full of half crazed, wooden egg desirous, sleep deprived children and their parents. But that was just fine. By now, the sun was shining, the weather was pleasant and despite having already been up 5 1/2 hours by 10 am, we were feeling pretty good loaded down with our Easter egg booty. For those of you who are wondering.  No, we didn’t see the Obamas, or their dog, or even Rahm Emmanuel.  I have a picture of some woman in an orange coat walking toward the West Wing, but I don’t think that she was important.  If you would like to believe that it was Michelle Obama, you could.  I think the Obamas probably came out for the 10:00 session, because, you know, who wants to get up that early on Spring Break if you don’t have to? But I really didn’t care.  Sure, it would have been great if Audra and Sasha had traded phone numbers and planned to meet at Chuck E Cheese next Wednesday after school, but it probably wasn’t that likely of a scenario anyway. So we headed out of the white house, stopped by the secret basketball court on the way and collected our special wooden egg.  It was one of the coolest things that we’ve ever done and I am so happy and grateful that we managed to score tickets, all due to a very thoughtful friend.  On the way home, both of my kids fell asleep in the car, exhausted from a day that was truly magical, truly exciting, truly fun and most of all…. Truly Fergalicious.     Posted Apr 15 2009, 08:10 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Obama, washington DC, white house, fergie, easter egg roll [Edit Tags]

• The White House Easter Egg Roll - Part 1 – Getting There

  Yes. We were there.  We were at the coveted 2009, Obama’s first, Washington, DC, White House Easter Egg Roll. But how we got there, that’s an even more interesting story….. Ok.  You got me.  No it’s not.  The story of how we got to the Egg Roll is mildly amusing at best.  But come on, I got the Easter Egg Roll, surely I ought to be able to mine that for two day’s worth of blogs, right?  Otherwise, by Thursday I’ll just be desperately searching around for a column about late night TV infomercials or the important differences between spaghetti and spaghettini.  So humor me. Anyway, This whole Easter Egg Roll thing all started as a dream several months ago… an achievable dream.  In the crush of the election and excitement about the new Obama administration we debated long and hard about whether we should take our children, ages 6, 3 and 1, to the Inauguration.  Yes, we are that stupid. We knew it would be cold and crowded, but it also seemed like one of the seminal historical moments of their lifetime.  On one hand it seemed ludicrous to take them.  On the other hand, it seemed shortsighted not to.  In the end, it came down to this:  How much pain and agony would it be worth for our children to be able to say that they were at Obama’s inauguration? Our oldest, Audra, might actually remember the event and that seemed significant, but for the boys it would merely be a day of full out misery simply so they could tell people later that their parents told them that they were there.  For that matter,  we probably could have left them at home, lied to them and told them they were there and achieved the same effect. In the end, trying to balance frostbite, boredom and a busy day of parades and balls, we decided to forgo taking the children. This ended up being the smartest decision we have ever made –bar none. After walking for miles and miles in below freezing weather, pushing through a crowd of 2 million people and looking with horror at parents who had dragged their screaming infants with them into this frozen sardine can of humanity, we knew we had been very wise indeed. But I was still saddened.  I wanted my children to be a part of this historical moment and I regretted not providing them that opportunity.  But then brilliance as is can only strike someone deranged enough to have considered bringing his children to the largest gathering of humanity in the history of America. I deciding that we would take our kids to the white house Easter Egg Roll. Yes!  Yes!  That was it.  A child oriented program in the springtime.  One that they would enjoy and might even provide them the opportunity to arrange a playdate with Malia and Sasha. Brilliant! I realized, immediately that this was a difficult, but attainable goal.   For years and years, tickets to the egg roll were distributed on a first come first serve basis on the ellipse in front of the white house.  If you wanted tickets, all you had to do was camp out early enough and you were pretty much guaranteed tickets.  I had gone out a couple of years earlier at 5 am to wait in line and realized that this was not early enough.   There were people there with sleeping bags and tents – hard core Easter Eggers who knew that it is only through supreme dedication that you could attain entrance to the hallowed white house grounds. So, I planned to get there at 8pm, the night before, with a tent, a sleeping bag, and a fully loaded Ipod, ready to reserve my place in history.  This was an unshakable plan.  Sure it would require sacrifice, and a “man against nature” ethos, and possibly an empty milk jug, but it could be done.  And with a little pain on my part, I could guarantee a place in history for my children!  But then it happened. Technology. In an effort to make the egg roll “more open to people across the country” (and scalpers) they decided to sell the tickets online.  This led to a universally unclear system where the tickets were available at some time on a certain day and then on and off throughout that day, sort of, I don’t know, check back later, click on this link, whoops, broken page, wait a minute, you are in the “waiting room,”  your call will be answered in the order it was received, dial tone, type these squiggly letters into a box, mother’s maiden name, whoops, system crash, sorry, Error Message XR2291.   All I know was that every time I logged on, I got an error message and the page crashed.  Needless to say -  no tickets. I was really frustrated.  How was this more fair?  What about people who didn’t have computers?  What’s more fair than saying, “hey you want this?  You really want this?  Then sleep outside in 30 degree weather!” That will separate the sheep from the goats (and isn’t that what Easter is all about?) I did a little looking on craigslist and other places, but it was clear that there were far more lookers than sellers.  Tickets were simply not available to little old me.  I eventually gave up. My hope soared again when a good friend of mine who works in the government suavely promised that he could get me tickets, because “he knew somebody.” He did not. And so I gave up again. And then out of the blue, the true, wide blue, a friend of mine called up and said that he had extra tickets.  I just needed to meet him on Monday morning at 6 a.m. Wow. What was that about?  Sometimes hoping for something really is enough.  Most of the time it just makes you sad and depressed, but sometimes, it really is enough. So, on Monday morning, at 5 a.m., there I am  shaking my kids awake and holding them half asleep over the toilet commanding them to pee so we can head off to the White House Easter Egg Roll We arrived at the South end of the ellipse at 7:30a.m.  Our time slot was for 8:00-10:00 a.m. and when we arrived there were already thousands in front of us moving slowly up and down these Disney World style back and forth lines growing bit by bit closer to the ticket taking area.  I was very concerned.  I had seen our government’s security inspections at work before.  They did not move quickly.  I had visions of our entire 8-10 time being spent waiting for people’s bags to be searched for explosive packets of baby formula.  This was going to be a nightmare. But not in Obama’s America! There were thousands of volunteers and we flew through the process of getting our tickets taken, getting wristbands (like the kinds you get at bars to prove you’re 21, but here it just meant that at 10:00, the secret service could forcibly eject you from the white house grounds)  Then it was a quick pass through security and 5 minutes later we were walking under a sign that said, “Welcome to the 2009 White House Easter Egg Roll.” And we were in.   We were there, standing on the lawn of the White House.  I looked around.   It was like if the White House and Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch had been merged into one.  There were games, and music, and costumed characters and sports stars and celebrities and politicians all there to entertain our nation’s children on the lawn of the most important, most carefully guarded residence in the country.   Tomorrow you will hear about the pageantry, the absurdity, the grass stains, the Fergie.  But for now, here’s just a glimpse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3a7k7p9u5Y   Posted Apr 14 2009, 07:20 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Obama, Audra, Asher, washington DC, white house [Edit Tags]

• I’m Mad! Completely Mad! HA HA HA HA!

  Last week, my 6 year old daughter, Audra’s, School held their career day.  Every child was supposed to dress up as the job they wanted to have when they grew up. Audra wanted to be…… (wait for it)…. A Mad Scientist. Now where, you might ask, does the desire to become a mad scientist come from in a six year old? Good question.  My wife immediately blamed “those stupid Animaniacs videos you bought for the kids.”  And this is a very real possibility.  Another, shockingly, even more disturbing possibility is that she got the idea from the movie “Monsters Vs. Aliens” which we had just seen.  That movie prominently featured a funny character who described himself as a mad scientist.  So it is easy to see where she might have gotten the idea from.  Except for one thing - in the movie the Mad Scientist was actually a giant cockroach. What does this say about my daughter? Well, the genesis of this idea aside, I was left with the very real dilemma of “how exactly do you dress up like a mad scientist?” We had an old lab coat that came from a doctor’s kit.  Audra was initially hesitant to use the coat because it said “doctor” on the pocket and not “Mad scientist” but I convinced her that Doctor was just a title and that most Mad Scientists had probably earned an advanced degree in human / animal genetic hybrids or something. Then I went and found an old pair of my wife’s glasses, punched out the lenses and let her wear them. I wanted to put her hair into some kind of crazy, electro-shock, Bride of Frankenstein doo, but she said she wanted to be a “cute Mad Scientist”  (do you like how I keep capitalizing Mad Scientist as if it’s an actual proper noun)  So I just put her hair up in a professional little pony tail.  I tried to teach her a maniacal laugh, but she wasn’t interested. So, with her all dressed and ready to go take over the world, or reanimate the dead,  I sent my daughter off to school to mill around with the lawyers, firemen and astronauts that were otherwise populating the school. In a stroke of luck, I was scheduled to be the guest reader at Audra’s school that day.  So at 1:00 I headed off to her classroom.  When I got there, the kids were still at lunch, so I milled around and looked at the art on the walls.  There were the classic “Things I like” pages and a couple of writing assignments, including this one Audra had written for Flag day: “I learned that the F*g had 13 stars on it from Betsy Ross.” Who knew? A few minutes later the class started pouring in from lunch.  I had just helped out on a field trip a few days before, so the kids all remembered me.   They all came up and said hello and many of them hugged me and rubbed their ketchup stained mouths on my shirt.  As child after child came in I noticed that no one was dressed up.  Finally Audra came in still bedecked in her lab coat and I said, out loud, “wow, I guess not very many kids dressed up for career day.” One boy jumped to his feet and said, “I did!  I’m an FBI agent!” I looked at him.  He was wearing ordinary kid clothes: jeans and a t-shirt, except there was a string of red yarn tied to a piece of cardboard hanging around his neck that had the letters FBI written on it in crayon. “And I’ve got a gun!” he said as he whipped out a small black plastic gun, sending the teacher into a mild panic and telling the boy (not, apparently, for the first time) to “Put that in your book bag!” Another child, wearing jeans and a striped turtleneck, said she was a teacher.  Another one, wearing a pink jumper and leotards, said she was a lawyer.  And a third admitted that she had forgotten.  Well, she wasn’t alone there. So I read the class my stories and then it was time to go.  As the kids started to head back to their desks I told Audra I wanted to get a picture of her.  I pulled out my phone and just as I clicked the shutter, she struck a pose that appeared to come straight from Project Runway (which she has never seen). Apparently being a Mad Scientist doesn’t mean you can’t be sassy. And then I left the building, wondering how much money we needed to save to send our daughter to a college with a good mad scientist department. Much to my amusement, Audra wore the lens-less glasses for the next three days straight.  She kept picking up books and saying things like, “Oh dear, I can’t read that.  Let me get my glasses.” I know that’s rather odd.  But, if you ask me, it seems like just the kind of thing a mad scientist might do. Posted Apr 08 2009, 04:30 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Audra, school [Edit Tags]

• How the Magic Happens

  I woke up at 4:30 this morning, as I have been for the last month or so, to take Jessie to work.  Normally, when I get back home I brew a pot of coffee, write my blog and take care of whatever little computery tasks have fallen through the cracks lately (say for instance that letter I still need to write to a high school friend who wrote me last September). But today I just didn’t have it in me.  A month into this 4:30 thing I’m starting to give out.  I got back to the house at 5:30.  I was all out of coffee beans which meant I would have to brew a pot of coffee with a bag of coffee grounds that I bought back in 2008 (Is there no end to the pain and misery in this world?”)  Plus I didn’t know what I was going to blog about.  So I decided to go back to bed for an hour.  Maybe that would stir the creative juices. It did not Asher, inexplicably, came into to our room at 6 something and the morning officially began…. again. I stumbled downstairs, glared at the coffee pot and made a pot of pretty bad coffee.  Then I sat and stared blankly at the computer. Sometimes I have a blog topic that I’ve been mulling over for a few days that is ripe and ready.  Other times, something hysterical happened the day before and the whole blog is practically waiting there for me to type out.  Still other days I have to scroll through my list of old blog ideas and see if I’m desperate enough to use any of the ideas that clearly haven’t been good enough so far.  And then there are days like today. I’ve got no good ideas.  Nothing funny has happened to me (does sitting in the parking lot of the community college for an hour waiting on Aloysius to answer his damn cell phone so I can take him home count as funny?) And none of my old ideas seem worth beating into something readable. So I get desperate.  I start looking through CNN and Wonkette and MSN and my email inbox and hoping against hope that something will jump out at me and seem worth writing about. So here I am, flipping through random stories: “Kate Moss to write a cookbook” http://www.stylelist.com/blog/2009/04/06/kate-moss-writes-a-cookbook/ I don’t know.  I guess there could be a blog in that, but it’s kind of low hanging fruit.  Ha ha!  Famously thin, coke addict, who never eats writes book on eating!  I don’t know.  I would just be one more snarky guy on the computer throwing out the predictable jokes.  And I’m better than that, right?  Well, probably not, but I didn’t want to do it today. Then Asher comes in, crawls into my lap, cups my face in his hands and says he wants a cup of cereal and a yogurt. Ok.  Why the cereal is more exciting in a cup than a bowl is unclear to me, but I’m too tired to care at the moment.  Back to the computer.  I look through my old blog ideas again.  I do have this reference to something I found in an Oriental Trading catalog. I think about it for a couple of minutes.  I could talk about how Oriental Trading is really offensive and they ought to call themselves Asian Trading.  I guess that’s kind of funny.  Then of course, there’s the item itself; http://www.orientaltrading.com/ui/browse/processRequest.do?demandPrefix=12&sku=36/1944&prodCatId=387982&mode=Browsing&erec=23&sp=true&Ntk=all&Ntx=mode%2bmatchallpartial&cm_re=SL-_-CT-_-F3L1&N=387982&requestURI=processProductsCatalog&sd=Child+Crown+Of+Thorns A child’s rubber crown of thorns that can be used in: what?  A really twisted child’s passion play?  The world’s most inappropriate play time activity? “No!  I want to play Jesus this time!  You got to be beaten by the rubber cat of nine tails last time, it’s my turn!” Yeah, that’s funny, but also pretty inappropriate, but I guess that’s sort of the point. So, then I have an internal debate about whether I can write the blog in a way that pokes fun without being too offensive to my own religion.  Hmmmm. Then Audra comes in and wants what Asher has:  Cereal in a cup and a yogurt, Plus a kiwi cut into slices AND a bowl of Strawberries  AND…. Woah nelly!  We’re not running the Shoney’s Breakfast buffet here. I make her the cereal in a cup, give her a yogurt and a bowl of strawberries for them to share. Back to the computer…. What to write about… .what to write about. I think that maybe if I could find other weird Christian toys then I could do a whole blog about that.  I do some quick searching and aside from the fact that a Jesus-walking-on-water toy is just inherently odd, there’s nothing too crazy out there. http://shop.cbn.com/cbn/item.Tales-of-Glory--Jesus-Walks-on-Water-one2believe.0603154505317.htm Then it’s time to nag Audra about taking a shower.  We go through our morning routine of me reminding her every three minutes that she has to take a shower and to eat quickly and to stop talking because she can’t eat and talk at the same time and the bus is coming and…… So I take her upstairs get her set up in the shower and then leave her to get started.  I go back downstairs and look through CNN.com.  Usually they’re good for some stupidity. There’s this wonderfully idiotic video of Tyra Banks getting Levi Johnston to admit that he and Bristol Palin only had safe sex “most of the time.”  Tyra Banks is a master.  It’s funny, but again, if the fruit got any lower, it would be underground.  Besides, I think I offended enough people during the election. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2009/04/06/bts.johnston.on.palin.tyra.cnn Then, as I’m running upstairs to wash Audra’s hair, I hear Asher grunting in the bathroom.  “Are you ok?” “I’m going poop!” “Are you finished?” “Not yet!” Ok.  So upstairs I go.  I get to Audra and as soon as I open the shower door the whining begins: “It’s cold!  I hate this shampoo!  My eyes!  My eyes!  That hurts!  Don’t pull the tangles so hard!” And on and on, as I shampoo her, condition her hair, comb out her tangles and rinse it.  Afterward she agrees that “It wasn’t so bad.” This happens EVERY TIME! Just as I’m getting Audra out of the shower, I hear Asher calling me. “I did a big one!” So, I go down and wipe Asher’s bottom and then run upstairs again, and now Micah is crying.  I leave Audra curled up in a fetal position in a towel complaining of the searing cold and go get Micah up, change his diaper and get him dressed.  Then back into Audra.  I lotion her, play the roly-roly game that we always play post bathing (where I roll them up in a towel and then unfurl them like a red carpet) then I lotion her all over and throw some clothes at her and tell her to get dressed. I take Micah downstairs give him some cereal and sit down at the computer.  I’ve got 8 minutes before we need to take Audra to the bus. There’s a video about the questionable racial concerns that a “Chia-Obama” raises (sure it’s just hair on Chia-Homer Simpson but on Obama it’s a Ch-ch-ch-chia Afro.)  Ok, I don’t know if there’s enough to say about it, but the 30 second news segment is hysterical. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2009/04/06/moos.chia.obama.ban.cnn While I’m watching chia-Obama, Micah takes his bowl of cereal into the front hallway and dumps it upside down and then walks all over it, crushing the puffs.  (this is why he’s not allowed to have milk in his cereal. I angrily pull out the vacuum which is always at the ready and vacuum it up.  Then it’s time to load everyone in the van and take Audra to the bus stop.  I brush Audra’s hair, lotion her face, quiz her about all the things she’s supposed to have with her and then we load everyone up, drive up the hill, drop her off and head home.  I still have not one word written on the computer, or one idea about what to do.  I’ve got to clean the house and bathe myself before Micah’s speech therapist show up in a little bit, so I do the only thing I can think to do, which is write what you have just read. And that’s how the magic happens. Posted Apr 07 2009, 07:02 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Obama, Audra, news, Asher, Better off Dad, Micah, stupidity, celebrities [Edit Tags]

• But in this Economy, Daylight Savings are the Only Savings I’ve Got

  Do you know what’s worse than having your alarm go off at 4:30 and having to get up? Having your alarm go off at 3:30 and not having to get up. Apparently , I have a fancy pants alarm clock that anticipates Daylight Savings Time and automatically adjusts the time on the clock. Awesome, right? Well, not really, because several months after I bought this clock (at BJ’s wholesale club $29.99!)  the government passed a law changing the dates of daylight savings time.  So now, twice a year, at midnight, on a date I can never remember, my alarm clock leaps forward or falls back while the rest of the world stands still. For anyone who’s curious, the old daylight savings time date was apparently last night.  I know this because when the alarm went off at 4:30, I got up, got dressed, stumbled downstairs and started putting on my shoes.  Aloysius, who has turned nocturnal this year, was at the computer doing something that he quickly shut down when I walked in the room.  He said, “Y’all gotta leave early this morning?” I looked at the clock in the kitchen and saw that it was 3:40 a.m. Dammit. I stumbled back upstairs.  Set the alarm for 5:30 (so it would go off at 4:30.  I would have just changed the time, but to do that, you, literally, have to take the clock apart) and fell asleep for 45 minutes. Then got up at 4:30 and started my day again.  It was a rough morning. Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me: Ok, literally  seconds after I wrote the words “It was a rough morning” Asher came downstairs, asked for a bowl of cereal and then we looked at each other in horror as we both heard the unmistakable sound of water pouring on to the floor.  We then both looked down and watched as an impossibly steady stream of pee began to puddle around his feet.  He looked back up at me, clearly disappointed and scared.  I told him it was ok, and that everyone has accidents.  Then we both looked back down at the continued stream of pee that was cascading down his legs like Angel falls.  After a few more seconds I said, “Do you think you could stop it?” The answer to this question, was never vocalized, but it turns out, that the answer was, “no.” So, I took about 5,000 paper towels and wiped up about a cup and a half of liquid.  I also had to wipe up a series of “pee footprints” that were adorable as long as you didn’t think about it too much. But where was I, oh yes, daylight savings. Is this something we really need any more, what with the invention of the lightbulb and all?  Is it really important that we play God with the hours of the sunrise and force the whole country (save for those wacky counties in Indiana) to move their clocks forward and back at the will of our elected officials. All I know is that every time we switch the time around I’m annoyed.  Either I’m annoyed because sunlight is streaming in the window at 5:00am or because the sunset now happens three hours before we eat dinner. Makes no sense to me.  Just let it be.  I think we’ll all survive.  If the farmers are still all futzed about it, they can just get up earlier or give their youngn’s a flashlight so they can get their chores done before the bus comes. I mean how many people does this really affect in our country?  40?  Should the other 300 million of us have to screw around with our internal clock so Jethro can milk the cows without having to turn the barn lights on? I think not. So let’s end this foolishness right now.  Call your congressman, write your Senator and drop a line to the Timex corporation and tell them to remove that feature from their CD/alarm clocks. Because when I wake up too early, my blogs end up really lame. Posted Apr 06 2009, 06:33 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Asher, potty training, Better off Dad [Edit Tags]

• You’re Driving the Wrong Way!

  I knew something was fishy as soon as the question was asked. Aloysius, the teenager staying with us, said, “So, uh, what are you doing today?” I looked at him skeptically.  No one ever cared what I was doing. “I’ve got Dad’s group and then I have to go to church for Praise Band practice and then I have a meeting and then I have to pick up Jessie and then I’m coming home……. Why?” “Uh, I just needed to get something from school but I can get someone to bring it to me.” Uh huh. I told Aloysius that, if it was important, I could work it in, but it was a pretty busy day. “Nah, don’t worry about it.  Someone can bring it.” Uh huh. A couple of hours later, at Dads group,  I got a text. “R U bringing kids home for nap” I texted back. “Probably not.” Very peculiar. But then, Micah started getting really fussy - crying at the drop of a hat, whining about everything.  I looked at my watch and decided I might just have enough time to get home, put Micah down for a nap, leave him with Aloysius and get to church. And besides, this sudden interest in my itinerary was a disconcerting.  I had suspicions for a while that someone (I assume a girl) was coming to see Aloysius when we weren’t there.  He kept going out to the driveway to meet “someone.” And then Sarah came in one night and found Aloysius and Jessie eating Subway sandwiches.  Since neither of them has a driver’s license, and we live out in the country, this seemed strange. So anyway, as I pulled into the driveway, I fully expected to see someone else’s car sitting there. But there wasn’t a car sitting there.  In fact there were NO cars sitting there, including our 1997 Saturn which should have been sitting there. Unbelievable! It says something that it never once occurred to me that the car might have been stolen.  I was telling someone this story later in the day and they interrupted and said, “oh, no your car was stolen?” Of course not.  Aloysius took it.  Nobody would steal a 1997 Saturn with 170,000 miles. I conferred with Sarah on the phone.  Neither of us were surprised, but we were both disappointed and angry and mostly, just tired. Then I texted Aloysius: “I was at the house.  Go home now!  We’ll talk later.” He texted back. “ok.” Now, this is crazy.  I understand that.  Aloysius, who does not have a license, took our car without permission.  I believe the technical term for this is “grand theft auto.” If there had been an accident, insurance would not have covered it.  If he had been pulled over, in all likelihood he would be in jail.  Purely crazy. Although, not by Mississippi standards. The law in Mississippi is a lax affair.  Some things just can’t really be bothered to be enforced.  For instance driving rules (and lynching). Aloysius has been driving for years down there.  I had a twelve year old 3rd grader who used to drive himself to school (yes, I know there are like 5 things wrong with that sentence.) A teen that stayed with us last year got pulled over in Mississippi for speeding.  He didn’t have a license and was driving a car without insurance.  He had to pay a fine. Aloysius as well as just about every other kid in his little town has been arrested for something, usually being out past curfew.  Normally, his plan was to wait for the cops to get out of their car and then to take off running.  You could usually get away if you did that.  Of course, you got caught a lot too, but normally they just held you at the police station (a single room next door to the Mayor’s office in the shack of a city hall) until your mom came to get you.   One time, the cops got mad, because they had arrested him too many times that week so they decided to call the judge and put Aloysius in juvey.   But the judge didn’t answer the phone, so they let him go. Everyone in his little Mississippi town has a friend in jail.  Everyone has a relative in jail.  It’s not a big deal. I have tried to explain that in Maryland, however, it is a big deal.  That the cops get upset if you break the law and that they will put you in jail and that the jail actually is a prison and not a small room with a bench and a pop machine. When I finally got home from my series of errands I put the kids down for naps and called Aloysius up to talk.  I believe I started off the conversation with the universal greeting of: “What the hell?” He went on to say.  “Yeah, yeah.  I know it was wrong and all.” “But you didn’t care?!” “I care.  It’s just that Ricky borrowed $200 from me.” “Where did you get $200?” “From my student loans.  Well, Ricky borrowed the $200 but he stays in Greensboro now and he doesn’t get paid until Thursday.  So he got paid and he gave the money to Dre to give to me, but I wasn’t at school so Dre says can I meet him, but I wasn’t there so Dre hid the money under some pipes and so I didn’t want to leave it there and Dre couldn’t come so I decided to get it and then I came straight back and I knowed it was wrong.” I had stopped paying attention half way through the story, somewhere around the point where my mind got stuck on the whole Dre and money hidden under a pipe thing.  What the hell does that mean? So, I launched into a lecture about how I was disappointed and how he said that he wanted to improve himself and go to a 4 year college but he had done nothing but F one thing up after another this year.  And that we were spending a lot of time and money to try to support him in this, but that he had withdrawn from us and didn’t seem to have any respect for us at all and he was making a series of horrible decisions and in Maryland they will put you in jail for what he did and insurance and liability and life choices and a better future and blah blah blah. You know, the standard lecture you give to the 19 year old former student from Mississippi who is living in your basement and has just stolen your car.  And after a few more mumbled “Yeah, I respect you and all.”  And “Yeah, I knowed it was wrong” it was over. Did anything get accomplished?  I don’t know.  I tried to impress upon him that we were horribly disappointed, that it appeared he was headed for utter failure if he didn’t change something and that if he ever pulled something like that again, we would have to send him home immediately…. at least for a while. And then I made chicken salad, cooked a ham and made notes for the meeting I had that evening when the pastor came over.  All in all, it was a day that felt more typical than not. And that’s what scares me. Posted Apr 03 2009, 06:35 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, Mississippi, stupidity [Edit Tags]

• MyFace

  I recently bit the bullet and signed up for a facebook account. This was only after every person I knew on the planet had already signed up.  I knew that when my wife’s aunt who is currently in the Peace Corps in Moldova had an account, that I was clearly behind the times. It’s not that the whole idea of networking socially didn’t intrigue me; it’s just that I didn’t have the time. When my wife, Sarah, first got an account, I became a facebook widow.  She would stay up till 1:00 am every night friending people and writing on their wall and updating her status and doing other stupid sounding things.  I would turn to her and say, “honey did you just see how Jack Bauer beheaded someone and then interrogated the head?” She would mumble, “uh huh” and without looking up tell me that she had just been friended by her 8th grade Social Studies teacher. Okey doke. Whatever this facebook thing was, I just didn’t have the time for it.  I have been very busy and exhausted for the last decade or so and there was no time in my day to start trying to catch up with friends from 20 years ago, much less my old middle school teachers.  I mean, I wanted to.  But I just didn’t have the time. I thought maybe if I set up a twitter account, then that would be good enough.  I could tweet people and that would make me seem hip and socially viable without the giant time suck that was facebook. So I began twittering and a month later I still only had 5 followers: My wife, my brother in law, two friends and a person I didn’t know whose tweets always consisted of phrases like: “Hey! Did you know you can lose up to 20 pounds on the Crisco diet?  It’s true.  Check out this link!” So the whole Twitter experiment didn’t seem to be having the effect I desired. Then I read a quote where Barbara Walters was apparently talking to her minions on The View.  They were all discussing Facebook and MySpace and the like and Barbara, completely confused by all this new fangled technological hoo ha, said: “But I don’t understand.  Why would anyone even want to be on MyFace?” That was when I knew I needed to take the plunge.  I did not want to be as old and out of touch and generally creepy as Barbara Walters. Jack, A friend of mine who had also been a facebook hold out, and I had taken to referring to it as “The Facebook.”   As in, “Boy the kids these days sure do like spending time on the Facebook.” It was our way of seeming hip and ironic and mocking the elderly and their overuse of the word “the.” (“Honey, let’s go to the Walmarts!”  “You know, I saw that on the internets just the other day.”  “I got a message from a Nigerian Prince in the Email this morning.” But we soon found that the only ones laughing at our hip, ironic jargon, were ourselves.  Everyone else had already gone out and signed up for the facebook.  Then one day Jack came in, head bowed sheepishly, and told me that, he too, was now friending people on the facebook. I was alone and friendless (well, virtually) So, I waited for a weekend where I had a few extra hours and then 9 months later I took the plunge.  I went online and signed up. The process was easy enough.  I filled in my high school and college and all that kind of stuff and then a page popped up with pictures of all of these people I hadn’t seen in years. It said, “Hi, we think you might be friends of these people.” I started looking through this list of fat, balding people who used to haunt my nightmares in high school.  My pulse started to race. “Oh Crap!  I don’t want to see these people again!” I had spent the last 15 years actively hiding from some of these idiots, the last thing I wanted was for the kid who used to flick me on the head with his pencil every day on the schoolbus to be writing on my wall. Not on my wall! And Besides, I know what he used to write on the real walls about me back in High School.  This was not an experience that needed a virtual re-creation. I immediately went back and erased my high school from my profile.  That’s right.  Just try and find me now suckers.  I also decided to wear a fake moustache in my photo (oh drat!  I already have a moustache!) I decided that I had to find out how this whole facebook thing worked.  I liked the idea of it, but I didn’t need Tommy Preston back in my life.   So, the next day I did the only thing I could think of to do.  I went out to the store and I bought a book about Facebook. That’s right, when you walk through Barnes and Noble and wonder to yourself.  Hey!  What kind of idiot would buy a book about Facebook?  That idiot would be me. So, I was scared, but I was still intrigued.  I couldn’t believe all of the people from high school that were on facebook.  Honestly, I couldn’t believe that most of them could use computers.  I started browsing through their profiley things and looking at their friends and it was crazy.  I kept thinking, “hey!  They weren’t friends.  In fact, I don’t even think they knew each other.  How are they friends on the facebook?”  (I know, I need to stop calling it that, but it’s habitual now) It was a brave new world out there.  But I slowly began to dip myself into it. I did find that one of my friends from high school is now a Roller derby gal here in DC.  This was simultaneously very surprising and, on second thought, not at all.  It made me feel better about the whole thing.  At least some people escaped.  I haven’t friended her yet, but I want to.  I’m just afraid of where that whole friending thing could lead.  I saw six degrees of separation.  So, I wasn’t quite ready to go out and find friends from the Reagan years, but I was certainly happy to start seeing pictures and updates from good friends that I know now. But it was all so weird.  I got friended by a guy that I liked, but hadn’t seen in 10 years.  There was no “hello,” or “so, I see you have seven kids now” kind of conversation, but one day when I posted some anecdote about one of my kids, he wrote a comment that said, “Yep, my son did that last week.” Bizarre.  Is this what passes for “catching up” in the oughts? It was weird, but it was also great to find him again and see what he’s been doing lately, even if what he’s been doing seems to be stuff like. “Just got back from the gym.  Going to sit down and watch American Idol.” And then there is just so much I don’t understand.  I saw that one of my friends was given a “superpoke” by another friend. What the hell does that mean?  And is she ok? I am also intrigued by all the meaningless cyber junk that you can “give” people.  Last week I saw an ad where you can “give” someone a virtual “Marley and Me” puppy. I assume this is a virtual dog that crawls around on your facebook page and yaps cutely and then unexpectedly dies, pushing you into a deep virtual depression.  Who the heck wants that?  People who’ve already got a virtual prescription for virtual Zoloft? I also like, but am disturbed by, all of the quizzes.  You can take a quiz to find out which Supreme Court justice you are (Ginsburg).  Which Office character you are (Dwight- really?)  Which Punk rocker you are (Joe Strummer).  Where should you be living (Paris). Most of this is pure nonsense, of course, but I did take a “which President are you” quiz.  It said I was William McKinley.  This seemed random and crazy until I noticed that at the bottom it said “William McKinley is compatible with Ulysses S. Grant.” Now aside from the fact that Grant / McKinley compatability is an image I will have to scrub out of my mind with Clorox, it kind of freaked me out a little because Sarah had just taken the quiz and discovered that she was Grant. Freaky. But mostly I like this facebook thing because I can spend 5 minutes a day and just wander up and down my page making smart alecky comments on everyone’s posts for that day.  That kind of thing used to take lots of time via emails and phone calls, but now I can work it out of my system in a couple of minutes. Very convenient. So, I’ve decided that I like the facebook, er, facebook.  Sure, it scares me a little and I know that sooner or later someone from high school will find me and then I’ll have a lot of trauma to relive, but I’m stronger now and there seem to be a lot of plusses to this network of socialness, so I’m going to stick with it. And if I ever meet Barbara Walters and she asks me, “Why would you even want to be on myface?” I’ll know what to tell her. Because it’s kind of fun and you never know who you’ll meet. Posted Apr 02 2009, 04:09 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, stupidity, pop culture [Edit Tags]