Hairshirt

Why I Will Miss Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T06:11:00.004-05:00

There are things in life over which we have absolutely no control. Strike that. Let me say, instead: over the vast majority of things in our lives, we have absolutely no control.

We cannot control the actions of our friends and family. We cannot control disease. We cannot control how others perceive us, as much as Scientology wants us to think we can.

It is frightening. Truly, truly frightening.

Which is why I completely understand why people turn to religion. I've said it before: religion is about community and comfort and knowing that, even if you have no control over what happens, someone does. I get it. And I honestly don't have any desire to knock anyone out of their beliefs or even try to debate them. As long as they don't try to convince me that I have to believe as they do I am a-okay with any views they have that don't crap all over other people's rights.

I know that the vast majority of the country sees atheism as a rejection. A rejection of religion and a rejection of God and a rejection of "values". In fact, it's the opposite. Atheism, to me, is acceptance. It's the acceptance of this lack of control, this lack of ultimate and concrete meaning in life. It's acceptance of this and it's the decision to find your own meaning. The decision to be a moral person because it's the right thing to do, not because God will punish you if you aren't. The decision to try to make the world better not to reflect God's glory, but because it's our world and we need it to be the best place we can make it.

Obviously, I'm not the best spokesperson for atheism. I'm a guy who tends to write about vomit and weird smells. Which is why it's such a good thing to have men like Christopher Hitchens. I did not agree with everything the guy said. I think, in the writing of his that I did read, he tended to be a little harsh on people of faith. But he was a man of tremendous intellect and he was so very skilled at getting his points about this subject (and many, many others) across that I will miss him, even if I was not his biggest fan.

I'm betting there will be people--people of faith, mind you--who will be actually gleeful about the passing of this guy who spat in the face of their beliefs. And I'm not enough of a hypocrite to cry "Shame!" here because I said my share of snarky comments when Jerry Falwell died.* But I don't have a God who's going to punish me for being a dick. I have to just accept my dickishness and try to do better.

*Interesting tidbit: I could not for the life of me remember Falwell's name, but trying to find it on Google, I learned that there's actually a site called Religious Douchebags.com.

On the Train

2011-12-14T05:30:00.002-05:00

Picked the Kid up from preschool yesterday and he was not overly fussy, as he's been the last week or so--owing to a cold and a general lack of sleep. We sat quietly on the train, heading to my wife's work, where we planned to meet up with her and then head toward Harlem to pick up our Christmas tree.

It's not a terribly long ride from my son's school to my wife's job, so we weren't on the train all that long. But we were there long enough.

Down the aisle of the car from us, there was a teenage couple. Like so many awful, awful teen couples on a train, they seemed to see a trip on public transit as "alone time" and they took advantage of their alone time to make out.

The thought in my head was not, I should point out, "Get a room!" If they got a room and had enough privacy to actually have sex, they could very possibly end up pregnant and I thought it entirely ill-advised for the two of them to spawn a child at this point in their lives.

No, my thought was, "Get an understanding that the rest of us have less than no desire to watch your tongues slapping sloppily against each others' teeth." Seriously, teenagers, I don't have anything against public displays of affection, but public displays of advanced foreplay are an abomination.

The making out, though, was not the truly awful part of their behavior. No, the thing that really got the collective goat of the entire population of the train car was the fact that one of the two teens--and I could not, honestly, tell whether it was the boy or the girl--had their little brother with them. And the little brother had a recorder with him. And he was playing it. A lot. Badly.

If you've heard a kid with a recorder, you've heard it played badly. You know that it can sound like a guinea pig being strangled by a duck. Played perfectly, the goddamn thing doesn't sound great. But played by a kid who has paid no attention in music class, it is unbearable.

So the little brother is squeaking and squawking and sending little daggers into the ears of every single person in the car. Every single person in the car is glaring at him and at the teens. When I say every single person, I mean that literally. Some of them might have attempted to read their books or listen to their iPods or play their PSPs. But no activity could compete with that noise.

The teens seemed to have no real awareness that the entire subway car wanted to throw them all onto the tracks. They sat there, staring into each others' vacant eyes and occasionally applying a coat of saliva to each others' tonsils. The little brother kept us his awful song, like a jazz fusion clarinetist on a meth bender.

When we came to the station by my wife's office and I popped up out of my seat to exit the train, I gave the rest of the car a smile. It amused me, in some cruel way, that these folks would be forced to share the long trek toward Grand Central with Lil' Kenny G and his irresponsible guardians. I like to think that, somewhere under the East River, someone in the car finally had enough and threw their shoe at the teens to wake them from their pre=coital haze and alert them to the fact that they needed to take action to save the ears of their fellow passengers.

But they probably all just seethed.

Pathetic Christmas: A Short Story

2011-12-04T09:24:00.005-05:00

Ludwig threw a handful of tinsel at the tree. It clumped in one spot and hung there limply, a couple of strands falling sadly to the floor. Ludwig stepped back to sip his eggnog and take in the whole tree.

The ornaments he’d picked up at CVS were okay. The colors were nice, anyway. But they weren’t his old ornaments. They didn’t have any kind of personal meaning. Okay, they had some kind of meaning about him as a person, but he didn’t want to think about what that meaning was.

The one string of lights was not enough. A single string of Christmas lights in a window can look festive, but a single string of lights in a tree just looks inadequate.

He wandered over to the kitchen and opened the mini-fridge. He pulled out the little eggnog carton and poured the remains of it into his mug. He tossed the empty carton in the direction of the trash can.

He checked the cookies. Almost. He’d cut them off the log a little thicker than the wrapper had suggested, because he liked his cookies a little thicker. He hoped they’d still cook evenly.

He stopped for a moment and scratched at his balls. An outside-the-jeans scratch was just not doin’ it. So he made the call. He reached in, lifted his balls with his index finger and used the middle and ring fingers to give the underside of his sack a good itching.

The timer went off. He grabbed his potholder and pulled the cookie sheet out of the oven. He spatula’d them onto his festive holiday paper plate. Cookies were always best warm, so he picked one up and took a tentative bite.

It didn’t taste so much like vanilla as maybe what the idea of vanilla might taste like in the imagination of a martian robot. He put the remainder of the cookie back on the plate.

“George! George!” came a voice from the living room.

Ludwig stepped back in the room in time to see Mary clearing off a table and listening for the townspeople. Donna Reed was the perfect woman. She stuck by George even when he was being a dick. Donna Reed.

He looked around the room. He was utterly alone. He sat down in his chair and pulled a few Kleenex from the box. He thought, “The holidays really are a special time.” His thoughts were then filled with Donna Reed and watersports.

Newsies II: The Quickening

2011-05-02T20:46:00.003-04:00

My students' knowledge of current events is usually minimal. They don't spend a lot of time reading the newspaper, these fifth-graders. They don't seem to watch all that much news at home, either. But, when something big happens, they often have a handful of assorted facts that are maybe tangentially related to what has happened.

So, this morning, I had a small assortment of kids try to get me off the topic at hand--solving one-step algebraic equations--by bringing up last night's national security-related doings.

"Did you hear about the guy who died?" one of them queried.

"Mr. Wack, did you know Osama was killed?" said another, using Bin Laden's first name, because he was kinda like Tom and Katie and other celebs and posing the question to me because, obviously, I spend my time away from school in a cryogenic freezing chamber and was waiting for my students to fill me in.

Another kid tosses in the tidbit that "...they shot him in the head." This is followed by someone's dad's off-color joke, which I don't hear fully because I'm trying to get the rest of the class quiet so we can continue with the lesson.

Now, I don't know that I was fully versed in the goings-on of the world when I was in fifth grade, but I know that I wrote my first topical joke when I was even younger. It was a witty blending of the Action Comics quote "Look, up in the sky, etc." and the plummeting to earth of the abandoned Skylab.

I hope that these kids start paying just a bit more attention to shit that matters and a lot less attention to Jersey Shore.

Quick post on my kids' weak Osamatalk today.

Eau d'Asstard

2011-04-26T14:05:00.003-04:00

It's probably too small, blurry and generally iPhone-camera-ish to be made out, but this is a picture of a truck that was parked outside the run-down little department store down at the end of our block.

I don't know if, in fact, the entire truck was full of what was advertised on the outside, but I like to think it was. Y'see, the truck purported to contain Kim Kardashian's new signature fragrance. I couldn't tell from the ad what the perfume is called, 'cause all the target demographic would care about, I'd guess is that it's Essence of Kardashian. So let's go ahead and assume the perfume is called Giant Fucking Ass.

The whole reason I took this picture, the whole reason I'm writing about it is the tagline at the bottom of the truck ad, which, again, I'm sure you can't read. It says, "The voluptuous new fragrance from Kim Kardashian."

In what way can a smell be voluptuous? Does each particle contain some fat cells, so that it makes your nose curvier upon entry? Is it a scent meant to be smelled only when it's rubbed on the chubby thighs of a fame-whore? Is it high-caloric, so that it will pack the pounds on anyone who sprays it on themselves?

I don't get it. It makes about as much sense to me as someone choosing to watch a show about a bunch of rich douchebags who do nothing but shop and make sex tapes.

Shoulda Had Nip-Guards

2011-04-23T20:48:00.002-04:00

Ran a race in the rain this morning. Really, really goddamn wet. Which meant that my shirt and jacket got soaked and clung to me. That's embarrassing as it is, having to pull the shirt away from my flab periodically.

But the worst part of that is that the shirt was rubbing up against my sad, tissue-paper-strong nipples the whole four miles. And that means that my nipples have been on fire all day. Ouch.

They didn't start bleeding or anything, which is nice. But, still: ouch.

Tender nipples. My achilles heel.

It's Your Kids, Marty! Something Has to Be Done About Your Kids!

2011-04-21T12:35:00.004-04:00

When you're trying to have a kid, you have some vague sense that your life will change. You have lived childless up to a certain point and you know things will be different to some degree, but there's no real concrete knowledge of what lies ahead. There can't be. You haven't experienced parenthood, so there's no way to know what it will be like for you. It's like a hearing person vaguely thinking about what it'd be like to be deaf.

Not that I'm equating parenting with hearing loss. Bear with me a moment.

I'm sure that anyone trying to become a parent has read enough or talked to enough people with kids that they know that you worry about the child. You worry when he's crying and you don't know why. You worry when he has a fever. These are things that are scary when the kid is brand new, but it's stuff you get used to.

The type of worry I wasn't prepared for, and the type of worry I've been having lately, is the worry about what type of person my kid is going to turn out to be.

I have had near-panic attacks that my kid is going to grow up into someone screwed up. This could be because I'm looking at myself and my own failures and freaking out that I'll pass them on to him. This could be because I'm working this year with some students who have a shit-ton of issues and are so very, very difficult to deal with because of that. This could be because my kid is two and a half and I worry that every shrieking fit or refusal to do what Mommy and Daddy ask him to do means that he's got Oppositional-Defiant Disorder or something.

Let me pause here to state for the record that my kid is awesome. He really is. He's so smart. He's funny; not just silly in the generic toddler way, but actually possessing what appear to be comedy chops. He's very sweet and helpful and outgoing and charming. He's fantastic.

This worry of mine is not because I see anything in him that leads me to think he'll grow up to be an asshole. It's just my usual paranoia about my ability to do anything, which would include parenting.

What if he gets caught up with the wrong crowd in high school and starts using drugs? What if he's mean to the class outcast? What if doesn't like his parents and acts out accordingly? What if he finds Jesus?

Yeah, I worry about car crashes and muggers and all those things that could potentially hurt him. I put those things firmly in the category of Shit Over Which I Have Zero Control. But this other stuff, this stuff about him not growing into a good person, this falls under Things That Could Happen If I Don't Do My Job. And it's fucking frightening.

Who's the Dick?

2011-04-20T10:46:00.002-04:00

My wife and I went for a run yesterday. We ran a route we run frequently, from her office in Long Island City, across the Queensborough Bridge (it's not the "Koch Bridge", goddammit) and over to the park, then across Central Park South. Not a long run, but a nice one.

We usually stop at a little newsstand by the Columbus Circle subway entrance to grab a Gatorade. We did this yesterday. My wife stood with the kid in the jogging stroller while I ran in and got the drinks. I brought them back out, cracked hers and handed it to her, only to find that the top of it was frozen over. Fortunately, we were able to burrow a hole through the tundra and get her straw through.

Mine was a different story. I opened my lid to find it was frozen more or less solid. So I took it back in and showed it to the guy behind the counter. I said, "Hey, this is frozen solid." He said, "Did you open it?" I confirmed that I had, in fact, opened it, which was how I knew it was frozen solid.

And here's where the title of this post comes into play.

The guy says, "Well, it's open. What can I do with that?" The implication here being that he is under no obligation to switch the drink out for a non-frozen one

I replied, "You can give me one that's not frozen."

"You opened that."

"I can't drink this. I bought this because I need something to drink now."

He caved, I grabbed a new, more liquid-y Gatorade and he angrily told me to take both of them.

So...am I the dick for insisting that he give me a new drink when I maybe should have noticed it was frozen before opening it? Or is he the dick for not being more accommodating to his customer?

Either way, it sure was nice having a free, cold Gatorade waiting in my refrigerator when I got back from my run just now.

Logical (Y'know, Like Spock)

2011-04-19T22:33:00.005-04:00

I've long said that one of the reasons I'm an atheist (I have upgraded from agnostic, I guess, over the last few years) is that I can't stomach the hypocrisy of an religion that says, "Hey! You know all those thousands of other religions that have popped up over the course of human history? Well they got it wrong. Only now, now that we have come along, has someone finally figured this whole God thing out."

To me, it's a matter of simple logic. You weigh the odds and you have to reach the conclusion that none of these folks have it right.

I've always used a similar train of thought to back up my belief that there's life on other planets.

Okay, hear me out: There are an infinite number of planets. Infinite. Scientists are all the time discovering planets that are about the same distance from their sun as we are from ours. Does it truly make sense that, of all the planets out there that are in a position to support life, ours is the only one that did? To me, that's akin to our former belief that the entire universe revolved around our world. It's terracentric bullshit.

So I was gratified to hear Marc Kaufman back up my thoughts in a recent Fresh Air interview. Kaufman, a science writer for the Washington Post and author of the book First Contact, was talking about how we've found all these various types of life in places on our world that we had always thought utterly incapable of supporting any life. He said that scientists have found that, wherever life could, theoretically, exist, it does exist. He spoke about Mars and about evidence of microbial life that's been found in recent years. He talked, further, about all these other infinite, potentially life-bearing planets I referred to before. Life is out there. It's just logic.

He talked, as well, about scientists--including Stephen Hawking--who are of the opinion that efforts to contact these aliens might be a really bad idea, as they could be genocidal douchebags with big guns, but that's a whole other scary thing that I won't dwell on now.

I'm not saying, to be clear, that I think every yokel who claims he was anally probed by the Predator is speaking the truth. I'm not saying I buy into every half-baked Area 51 theory going.

But I just can't believe that, given the vastness of the universe and the, again, infinite number of planets out there, there aren't other places where life--whether microbial or bipedal; friendly or malevolent; primitive or space-faring--exists.

Making an Effort to Not Warp My Child's Brain

2011-04-18T11:14:00.005-04:00

I can be a cynical bastard. I really can. But there's really no place for cynicism when you are reading books to your kid.

When your kid comes running up to you with some book you can't stand and insists--insists!--that you read it, there's no good choice but to do your best to put out of your head how much you despise the goddamn thing and try to make it pleasant for all involved.

'Cause, if you sit there and act snide or snarky, you're taking the joy out of the experience for your kid.

Let me give you an example.

I love Richard Scarry. I bought my kid the big-ass compendium of Richard Scarry's stuff a couple years back--the same one I had as a kid, minus the one story where the Yukon bear takes his kid out and they hunt baby seals (not a joke)--and he loves it, too.

Now, some of the writing in the book is not top notch. There's a story called "Polite Elephant." It's meant to begin teaching kids manners, which is important if you don't want your child whipping it out in public and pissing on someone's shoes.

When I first read the story after not seeing it for thirty years or so, Polite Elephant came off kind of like a serial killer. "Polite Elephant knows that some rooms are for sitting...and others are for playing." "Polite Elephant is very careful when he plays with someone else's toys." And, when you think about the story in that light, it's goddamn hilarious.

But my kid really likes the story. And I can't read it multiple times every week making fun of it. So, I have learned to put my damaged brain aside and just be sincere when I'm reading. I think we're all better off for it.

Still, I am occasionally tempted to have Papa Bear tell Goldilocks to "...get the fuck out of our house, bitch."

Fuck You, Mark Twain

2011-04-16T14:09:00.004-04:00

I'm not an idiot.

People who have read this blog before may take issue with that statement, but let's just agree to table any argument on my idiocy and just go with it for now.

I'm not claiming to be an intellectual, god knows. Get me too far into abstract thought and I tune out and my mind starts playing the Jetsons theme. I'm not a scientist or a professor of philosophy or an engineer because I'm not that goddamn smart.

But neither am I sitting down on the couch, swimming in delight at a Mama's Family marathon on The Yokel Channel.

However, I've been feeling a bit cerebrally insecure lately. Rather, the New York Public Library has been making me feel a bit cerebrally insecure lately.

I love the library. I think it's one of the best things that's done with public money. Using the library makes me feel like I've learned a lesson in life. That lesson is, "If you buy books at the same rate you buy, say, coffee, you will be poorer than you'd like and you will have no room to move around the dwelling that was your home but is now a hardcover habitrail.

One problem I run into with the library is that popular books are reserved by a lot of people. So, if it takes me longer than the allotted time to read it, I'm racking up fines. This makes me resentful of the book. "Stupid book," I think. "You're costing me money. I have no desire to spend time with you." And so the book sits and the fines skyrocket and I'm unhappy and the person waiting for me to return the book is unhappy and the author is probably unhappy that his/her work is sitting, unappreciated.

This has happened to me three times lately, all with biographies that I'd been really excited to read.

I've read the first two books in Edmond Morris's Teddy Roosevelt trilogy and loved them. These are thick books, though. Not something I can zip through like an Encyclopedia Brown collection. I didn't necessarily want to splurge for Colonel Roosevelt when I could order it from the NYPL, so I put my name on the list and waited. I got a few chapters into it (about as far as his European tour after he'd been on safari) and it came due. I held onto it for a few days, but it became increasingly clear that I wasn't going to get through the damned thing without eventually owing as much in late fees as I'd have spent if I'd just purchased it at Barnes and Noble. So I returned it.

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow was the exact same thing. Good book, but I couldn't get it read in the tiny little amount of reading time I have every week.

But the Mark Twain autobiography takes the fucking cake. Last year, it was huge. Everyone was reading that thing. When I put that thing on hold, I was 257th out of 257 holds. I waited for goddamn months.

Finally, it came in at our local branch and I lugged the fucking thing home and plopped it on a shelf and it just sat there, mocking me; daring me to try to finish it. "C'mon, shitbrain," it whispered, "try. Just try to read more than a third of me before you have to return me."

"Go to hell!" I yelled at it. "I finish books all the time! I'm smart!" The book chuckled, coldly.

I never even opened it. The due date came and went and I resented the book more and more. Twain looked at me with his malevolent, folksy eyes from the cover. "Fuck you, Mark Twain," I said. "The Innocents Abroad was a snooze-fest!"

In the end, Twain beat me. I returned it, in defeat. And so I've learned another lesson: don't check out gigantically fucking thick books from the library if you're not going to able to renew them. Also, don't talk to books. It's a little crazy.

Sweet Fucking Jesus, No

2011-04-12T21:07:00.002-04:00

They really ought to call this Joel Schumacher Presents: Batman Live!

This is a picture from the London production, I guess. I can smell it across the Atlantic.

Wonderful, Vital Shows

2011-04-11T22:06:00.004-04:00

The "dangerous job" sub-genre of reality show has been around for awhile and shows no signs of abating, sadly. There are legions of devoted fans of shows like Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers and their ilk.

Now, the Travel Channel has come up with another variation on this beaten-to-death horse: Triple Rush. Bike messengers! Extreme! Dangerous! Those bike shorts ride up, man! And sometimes, like, your shoelace could get caught in the chain and shit!

You gotta wonder what other EXTREME ideas Travel Channel has in store for us.

Coffee Jocks! Slurp on into the hardcore, high-pressure world of New York barristas! Demanding customers! Scones! Steam!
Car Wranglers! Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! And readjust your mirror, seat and radio after the valets of Icon Parking's Time Square garage work their magic. What happens when Rajneesh scratches a '97 Camry?
The Leash! Dog walkers, man! What could be more extreme than having a pack of snarling Pekingese and Tea Cup Poodles secured by nothing more than a nylon strap? Claws! Teeth! Poop bags!
Mobile Men! Bomb squad? Losers! Firemen? Pussies! No job requires more guts than working Sales at the Verizon Store! Upselling! Contracts! Hair gel!
Bonz! What's life like for the sexy, souped-up septuagenarian docents at the Museum of Natural History? Extreme! School tours! Giving directions! Not getting paid! Extreme!

For my money, these all sound like winners, Travel Channel. To the Extreme!

Shut It Down

2011-04-08T05:10:00.002-04:00

This is it, folks. The big day has arrived and neither side shows any intention of backing down. There's a very good chance that this government shutdown is going to happen.

I don't believe I've mentioned it before, but last year, I was appointed by my congressman, Charles Rangel, to the House Citizens Response Advisory Panel, a group designed to keep the lower house more in touch with the thoughts of everyday people like teachers, bloggers and Real Housewives fans. (Guilty on all three counts!)

Through my H-CRAP connections, I'm privy to some goings-on behind the scenes in Washington. And so, I'm a little better-informed than the average American about just what this shutdown might entail. Let me go over the highlights for you:

National Parks--A lot of people are, justifiably, concerned about what a shutdown would mean to our nation's Parks system. Not to worry: if things do come to a screeching halt tonight at midnight, our protected lands will not go unprotected. The Interior Department has allocated funds for one park ranger. He will be keeping an eye on all of our national parks on his own, so he's going to be very busy, but he'll be there.
The White House--Most of the White House staff will be furloughed if the shutdown happens. One interesting sidenote in all of this: there is a little-remembered clause in the Constitution that states that, in the event of a shutdown, the Vice President will fill in for the White House chef. Reached for comment, Vice President Biden has said he's actually excited about the prospect and plans to "...whip up some patented Biden Burgers! They've got cheese inside the burger!"
The Capitol Building--The Capitol's bathroom attendants are, according to my sources, not considered essential during an emergency such as this. Wisconsin congressman Jim Sensenbrenner expressed concern, saying, "Just who the hell is gonna fold my T.P.?" Some of the more strident "family values" members of Sensenbrenner's party seemed a bit giddy about an attendant-free bathroom, with J. Randy Forbes (R, VA) stating he plans to "Larry Craig it up," whatever that means.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention--It has been decided that the CDC will be completely closed for the duration of any shutdown. Virologist Linda Strachen of the CDC in Atlanta was quoted as saying, "Yeah, we're pretty sure all that potentially species-ending shit we have in the basement will be okay while we're gone. I mean, we've got a padlock."
The Lincoln Memorial--As there will not be adequate staff to protect it during a shutdown, the statue of President Lincoln at the memorial will be moved into the garage until the government reopens.

This shutdown will be a test of our leaders and of ourselves. I think we're fucked.

She Got Her Drink On

2011-03-27T16:37:00.005-04:00

A couple of friends of ours were in town this weekend; two people with whom we always have an excellent time. We spent some time with them over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, having--not surprisingly--an excellent time. It's a bit different hanging out with them than it used to be, in that we've got The Kid, which means we turn into pumpkins around 7PM, so every meal we eat tends to be the early-bird special.

Last night, though, my wife volunteered to bring the boy-child home alone (very brave on her part, given that he was out past bedtime and was wired like [insert drugged-up celebrity joke here].) I took her up on this very generous offer and went out for drinks with our friends. And a good time was had by all.

Actually, a really, really good time was had by this one particular lady in the bar.

The place was mostly empty when we got there. Which was a big plus, in my eyes, as I prefer fairly quiet places where one can actually hear the conversation at one's own table. We snagged a spot, got the first round of drinks in and sat down for some pleasant, occasionally disgusting, talk.

Then the place started to fill up. There was a huge group there for a birthday party. The birthday gal was a very pleasant-seeming girl who was turning, I believe, 27. A mere pup. But, when she had occasion to speak to us, she seemed quite nice. Most of her friends, although frequently hitting us in the face with their purses because the place got that crowded, seemed nice-ish as well.

But one of their party--who, strangely, most of them seemed not to know very well--had done a little too much partying before the party.

She stumbled in not all that long after we'd gotten there, when only a few of the Birthday crew had arrived. She stood there in her far-too-tight, way-too-short skirt and bellowed out the name of whoever it was she was supposed to be meeting. She then lurched over to a table of people who seemed as taken aback as we were. But she joined them, so we concluded she was meant to be with them.

Periodically, through the evening, as the place got crowded, she could be seen crossing the floor like a runaway bulldozer or doing a truly inappropriate grind on someone. Generally making a spectacle of herself.

On the plus side, she was wearing underwear. We know this to be true, because, at one point, she hiked up her skirt to pull said underwear down a bit; a move that, as best I could tell from my thankfully brief glimpse of the action, was meant to be "sexy." At another point, in order to take a phone call, she sprawled out on top of an empty table right beside us, with her ass in the air and the view up her skirt offered for the crowd's...approval? So: underwear, thankfully.

After the phone call, she went to pick up a/her/someone's drink, knocking the glass down, which resulted in both the beverage pouring forth into the hood of my friend's coat and the glass breaking. Her thirst was in no way diminished by the broken glass, though, and she actually went to take a slug from it. Fortunately, some kind soul stopped her before she sliced her face off.

And that's where we get to the reason I'm writing about this. Because, up until the broken glass, nobody had really stopped her from anything. Nobody took the drink from her hand and said, "You need to get in a cab and go home now."

I wasn't watching her the entire time, so I suppose it's possible that someone did try to do this and failed. But most of what I saw was people laughing or looking away, embarrassed. During some of the more horrific displays, a number of folks took pictures, including us.

What do you do in that situation? The lady was not part of our immediate group, she was part of someone else's group. That pretty much means that she's not our responsibility. But none of the people whose responsibility she was seemed to be doing much. I felt a good bit of pity for her, but I was also filled with a decent amount of contempt for someone who acts like that, no matter what her state. There is something inherently amusing about a person so drunk they make an ass out of themselves; half of the content on YouTube is based on this. But why do I then feel like a dick for making fun of her?

In the end, I guess, I can assure myself that, if she'd passed out and someone was about to do something truly wrong to her, I'd have called the cops or something. And I can feel grateful that I haven't made a habit of getting anywhere near that drunk for a long, long time. (Also, during those college years before I learned how to not get utterly wasted, I never did any stripper moves when blitzed, I generally just vomited.)

Still, I don't feel good about myself for laughing at her. So, I'm sorry, drunk lady. Hope you made it home okay.

I Could Have Saved More

2011-03-23T17:51:00.006-04:00

I am the worst dead pool contestant, ever. I was part of a pool for, I think, five years. Nothing high stakes. Just a few folks thumbing our noses at mortality and trying to win a hundred bucks or so. All in good fun.

No, really. I understand how you could find it objectionable, placing bets on who you think might die in any given year. I understand that many would think it insensitive, morbid, blasphemous or just plain douchey.

But I have to tell you: I think I actually did a lot of good with my list over the years. I saved lives.

A spot on my list was an almost certain guarantee that you would not die. If you were one of the celebrities I kept going with year after year after year, you were basically immortal. I was kind of the Oskar Schindler of the aging celebrity world.

Seriously, how else would you explain how Mickey Rooney's still around? He's around because I picked him to kick the bucket year in and year out. The power of my suckage at dead-pooling kept that old fart going. Him and everybody else I chose. I don't think I scored more than a couple of times the entire period we played.

Which is why I'm writing now. After all this time, the folks who put this contest together every year decided it had run its course. And we threw in the towel. And a month later, the Queen of my list passes away. I'm sorry, Liz. If we'd kept going, you could've had another decade, at least.

But I don't have that power anymore. Which means that Abe Vigoda is not long for this world. Likewise, Andy Griffith and Jerry Lewis will be worm's meat by the end of this year. Steve Jobs will not be around to launch iPad 3. Ruth Buzzi and Chuck Berry just booked their tickets to the Big Adios. I protected you with my list as long as I could. Now, you deal with St. Peter directly. Good luck. I'm sorry.

Hairshirt Horoscope

2011-03-21T06:31:00.002-04:00

Aries: They say a watched pot never boils, Aries. Keep that in mind this week. Also keep in mind that your pilot light may be out. Which would also explain the not-boiling.

Taurus: You want what you cannot have and you have what you cannot keep. Oh, shit, sorry! That's not your horoscope. That's the tagline for a new Robert Pattinson movie. My bad.

Gemini: You are ignoring the warning signs all around you. Mostly because they're written in Swahili. You really oughtta learn Swahili.

Cancer: Given the state of the world, you are more certain now than ever that the next life will usher you into an eternity of good times at Dollywood. That's some faith you've got there, chief.

Leo: Today, you're feeling utterly discotastic.

Virgo: To achieve your dreams, Virgo, certain sacrifices will need to be made. Not, like, goat-killing or anything, just kind of going a few days without dessert. Seriously, don't kill any goats.

Libra: An argument with a loved one may bring up feelings you'd long thought gone. Feelings along the line of: "I wish she'd shut up. I really have to pee."

Scorpio: Now is a great time to indulge your love of design, tackle a project in a new room and give the whole house a brand-new feel! It's gonna need more than a new set of coasters.

Sagittarius: To get what you want this week, you'll need to dig deep within yourself. Ya nose-picker.

Capricorn: Quiet time at home with the family is what you're in need of this week. So, make it happen, if you have to drug the kids for a night or two. They'll get over it.

Aquarius: Be it food-poisoning or flu, there's a great big bucket of vomit in store for you this week.

Pisces: Juggling? Really?

Feh!

2011-03-16T22:30:00.002-04:00

So here's a great thing about writing while under the weather. You can sit a your computer and crap out forty-five minutes worth of words on a subject, then realize that you're not saying anything you'd want to bother anyone with reading and can't really publish anyway, because someone else already wrote about this topic a few days ago and put things a lot better, because he's a professional writer so why bother. Oh, wait, that's not a great thing. In fact, it blows.

(Actually, I don't feel the exact same way about the subject of this piece as the author does, but that's neither here nor there.)

I need to take some more cold medicine and go to fucking bed. Feh.

"Feh!" says I.

Ben

2011-03-16T07:01:00.008-04:00

I have had a lot of dogs in my life.

Well, in actuality, my family had a lot of dogs when I was growing up. We had a couple of dogs at different times when I was really small, one of which I do not remember at all--he died--and one of which I remember well--we gave her away. And then, when I was maybe 11, we got another dog who turned out to be the first in what would become a giant pack of canines that would leave my parents' house covered in shed hair for fifteen or so years.

At the height the insanity, we had a Cocker Spaniel (the one that kicked off all the dogginess), two Newfoundlands (to this day, one of my favorite breeds, despite the smell), a goofy Golden Retriever and a Brittany Spaniel that my sister foisted on my folks. That's a lot of dogs.

What I'm saying here is that I grew up with dogs. I was used to having dogs most of my life and, when my then-girlfriend, now-wife and I set up house in Seattle with various cats, I was jonesing for a puppy.

My girlfriend was a cat person. Her family had had one dog that she remembered, but she'd had a pair of cats with which she was much closer. She didn't mind the idea of getting a dog, but she lacked the fido fervor I felt. (Alliteration! The sign of quality writing!)

We talked on and off for a few years about getting a dog. We got to the point where I pretty much had her talked into it. And then one Saturday, on our way to a meeting of the theater group we'd co-founded with some drunkards we knew, we stopped off at a Seattle animal shelter, just to take a casual look around.

We hadn't even gotten in the door when a lady stopped us and asked us if we were looking for a dog. We said yes and she pulled open her trenchcoat to reveal two dozen puppies sewn in the lining. (Okay, no, she didn't. But that image suggested itself to me and seemed too appealing to pass up.) What she did do was to pull us over to her car, where she had a pair of big mixed-breed dogs that she'd found.

She told us she and some friends had been camping in Idaho. (On, one presumes, an abandoned potato farm.) They'd been at a place called Maiden Rock and had happened across these two dogs. They'd searched high and low for some owners but, not finding any and loathe to abandon two such beautiful, friendly hounds as these, named the girl "Maiden" and the boy "Rock" and shlepped them back to Seattle, where they fostered them at various friends' houses while they tried to find a permanent home.

The dogs both seemed very nice and they were lovely. But I wanted to go into the shelter, just in case some puppy inside seemed like a better match than a fully-grown Massive Potato Hound. But, of course, there wasn't anything in the shelter that could even come close to comparing. So we came back out and, though we felt bad breaking up the pair, took "Rock" to be our own.

On the way to the meeting, we discussed names. Being pretentious, I wanted to use something from Shakespeare. So we tossed a bunch of Shakespearean characters back and forth until we hit upon Benvolio. Good guy, peacemaker. And we could call him "Ben" for short.

I don't always make great decisions. I am frequently kind of stupid. But agreeing to my wife's instinct to take that dog was one of the best things I've ever done. He made my wife into a dog person. It took very little time for both of us to fall insanely in love with him. You couldn't not. He was that kind of dog.

13 1/2 years we had with him. He was the best dog I've ever had. He was Gary Cooper in dog form. He was patient and smart and loyal and handsome and just about perfect. He's pretty much ruined me for other dogs. It's been over a month and the loss is still sharp. We will miss him forever.

A Little Perspective

2011-03-15T19:30:00.004-04:00

I feel like crap. Not literally.

I have what I'm assuming is a cold. Congestion, coughing, fatigue and heavy on the achiness. Not loving it. I get a little whiny and self-pitying when I'm ill like this. But right now, I'm not feeling too horribly sorry for myself.

Because right now, my dad is undergoing another go-round with cluster headaches.

I'm not quite feeling up to doing a whole bunch of research at this moment to link to accurate, clinical information on clusters. So I'll just write a bit on what I've gleaned about them seeing my dad suffer through them for about three decades:

along the lines of a migraine, but, I believe, a bit worse than that.
like someone is shoving a bunch of icepicks into your brain.
can drive you near-suicidal with the pain.
come and go in cycles.
possibly triggered by diet(?)
not cured by much of anything.

I've seen my dad deal with these frigging things since he was in his thirties. They're hard on him--see above--and hard on the people who love him, because there's fuck-all you can do to help. You can stay in the other room and be quiet. You can leave him alone. You can feel really bad. And that's about it.

My dad's a strong guy. I've seen very little that can lay him low. But these things do it every time. He's gone a few years without them. But my mom told me the other day that he's getting them again. I hope--really, really hope--that this cycle does not last terribly long.

I love you, Dad.

Overs

2011-03-12T16:16:00.005-05:00

It's hard to walk away from a relationship. It's so hard that, sometimes, we stay and stay and stay in a situation that's just no good for us. When there are other, more fulfilling things we could be doing, we make the choice to stay in the relationship we don't want anymore to avoid having nothing. We take the coward's way out because it always just seems like it's easier to stay together.

I've tried to end it any number of times. And then I swallow my pride and come crawling back, knowing that the love isn't there. Well, I'm done with that. I mean it.

Because there comes a breaking point, doesn't there? There comes that point when you know. You know that, if you make that same mistake one more time; if you cave in and let things continue once again, you will have lost an amount of respect for yourself you cannot lose and still go on.

So I've reached that point. And it's over.

It's liberating, knowing that this is it. That the longest relationship of my life is coming to an end. Time to move on.

It was time to move on as soon as I saw that you'd put Lost on the cover this week. Ten fucking months after the show goes off the air and you feel that Lost is relevant enough to merit not just an article, but a fucking cover? It was bad enough when the show was still on and you'd have them on the cover every other week. But now? I'll be honest, I don't give a shit what the stars of Lost are doing now. And I loved that show. Loved it! But I have less than no desire to read a fucking cover story about Matthew Fox doing a play in the West End. No, sir. Sorry, Entertainment Weekly. I'm out.

I've left before, I know. And then I see a Dark Knight cover and I buy an issue off the newsstand. And then I pay $4.50 for a Summer Movie Preview and I start to think, "Hey, if I'm going to be buying this anyway, I might as well be paying the subscription rate." Which is how I find myself reading the fucking Power Issue. And your big American Idol preview. Or the latest utterly unnecessary list, like The Fifty Greatest Movies Featuring Cheese or whatever other pointless set of factoids you crap out.

And I'll be honest, even the Summer Movie Preview isn't what it used to be. That's right. Even at your best these days, you can't recapture what we had way back when. I haven't forgotten, Entertainment Weekly. I remember back in the 90s. Back when you had that edge. Back when you were young and hip and we'd spend hours together. That was a long time ago. And I don't need you now.

You might as well know: I've been seeing the AV Club for awhile now. They're everything you used to be and more. And they're free. So this is it. This is goodbye. Don't send me your pathetic renewal requests, because I'm not coming back. I might think of you every once in awhile. But then I'll remember how many of your articles I skip on average these days, and I'll set you back down gently on the magazine rack and walk away.

Goodbye.

Meat Scream

2011-03-09T06:05:00.003-05:00

I'm not a big fan of talking food commercials in general. I have never understood why seeing chicken McNuggets sing would make someone want to buy a box. The whole "sexy" green M&M with legs and lipstick makes me worried for humanity.

But this...

This takes things to a whole new level.

I don't eat Hot Pockets. I think I did, maybe twenty years ago before I realized that cooking could be more involved--and rewarding--than sliding something frozen into a cardboard tube and bombarding it with radiation.

These Side Shots are, to the best of my understanding, an offshoot of Hot Pockets--which was, by the way, my nickname in high school--and come in pairs that you pull apart to "enjoy." I can't speak to the quality of the product. They may be the tastiest thing since tempura-coated, deep-fried Ding-Dongs. (Gag.)

But the commercials are disturbing to me because these characters the ad company has created look like someone has sliced their lips off and their gaping maw is one big meat scream.

Who the hell wants to eat that?

Smooth Operator

2011-03-07T18:08:00.003-05:00

I rarely have any opportunities to look smooth. I'm not, generally, very smooth. Today, I got a chance to look positively unflappable. And I embraced it.

So I'm riding the 3 train home with the Kid on my lap. His daycare instructor has told me he ate pretty much nothing all day, so I'm encouraging him to do a little subway snacking. We've got a little walnut & yogurt-covered raisins combo that was very popular yesterday and I'm getting him to down some. In fact, I'm taking some nibbles myself and enjoying an iced coffee. Folks on the train smile at us.

Then we have some coughing. Little bits of walnut fly out of the Kid's mouth. The lady across the aisle from us says, "He's choking!" because, obviously, I can't hear the child on my own lap hacking something up.

I cup my hand under his chin, 'cause I have a sense of what's coming. And what's coming is a flood of milk, walnut and yogurt-covered raisin, all whipped up into a frothy concoction roughly the texture of a cottage cheese smoothie.

I keep my hand under there until the deluge subsides, then I calmly--and I really must emphasize the placid look on my face throughout this entire episode--open his lunchbag and dump the vomit on in. I pull a few napkins out of my pocket and, smiling, wipe off the Kid's hand and coat.

Without disturbing the toddler on my lap, I reach around the stroller and deftly pull a packet of wipes out of the diaper bag, then use a few of them to clean off the kid's chin and my rancid-smelling hand. I throw all the be-puked towelettes into the lunchbag and close it on up. Then I take another delicious sip of iced coffee.

This would not have been smooth if I'd been dry-heaving. This would not have been smooth if I'd loudly asked the Kid, "Why the hell are you puking on me?!?" This would not have been smooth if anything resembling a panicky or disturbed look wandered across my visage.

But this was smooth. For me.

Ode to Mr. Kotter

2011-03-05T16:59:00.005-05:00

Okay, so there's too much to say about this subject to tweet about it. I'm not Kevin Smith and I'm not going to do a series of 85 tweets to have my say on any one topic. I'm not going to try throwing this whole thing up on Facebook, either. Dammit, there are some things that can be best said on a good, old-fashioned blog. So here we are again.

I'm a teacher. I think I may have mentioned that on here somewhere before. I got into teaching because, about eleven or twelve years ago, I read a Newsweek article that said that we were running out of teachers and we needed fresh blood to fix our broken educational system. This may or may not have been the same issue of Newsweek that talked about this odd new phenomenon of "reality TV".

When I moved to New York a couple of years later, with that article still in my head, I fell under the staggering influence of a series of subway ads for a city-sponsored teaching program, a program in which people left their current careers (in my case, scooping cat turds at an animal shelter) and, after a swift summer of study, were thrown into classrooms in under-performing schools to try and save America's future while we simultaneously earned our master's.

Now, I will be the first to admit that this program was massively flawed. I did not feel prepared when I first stepped in front of a class full of students who it was my responsibility to teach. In fact, once I closed that door for the first time, I pretty much just stood there frozen, not knowing what the hell to do. That feeling lasted the entirety of that very, very rough first year.

But I didn't quit. I stuck it out that first year, and the next and the next, trying hard to become a better teacher. I didn't quit that first year because I thought of teaching as something good and noble and I didn't want to give up on that.

I feel that way still.

Teaching is a hard fucking job. Very. Fucking. Hard. School of Rock--with its room full of eager-to-learn students who sit quietly and absorb every utterance their instructor mutters--is fiction. Summer School--with its lazy teacher who breezes through the year, barely working, and then loafs about for three months--is fiction. What I'm trying to say is that any movie or TV show that may have given you the impression that teaching is a cinch is more full of shit than a Port-o-San at a Jimmy Buffet concert.

And as far as the outrageous pay that teachers are supposed to be getting: go ahead and do a little googling to find the average teacher salary in your area. Then, when you stop laughing, c'mon back and finish reading this. I'll wait.

The reality is that teachers work our fucking asses off for ridiculously little money. We face overcrowded classrooms. We're expected to buy much of our own supplies. Many of us lack materials to teach what we're expected to teach. I don't know about the rest of the country, but that "three months off" is closer to two months in NYC and a lot of folks spend the bulk of that time teaching summer school because we need the money.

Many of my students are normal kids that would've fit right in with the fifth grade class I was in 1981. But I also teach some kids who feel like it's okay to tell their teacher to fuck off. I teach some kids who feel like it's okay to threaten to "snap your fucking neck." (Don't worry, they're fifth graders. I'm in no danger, I promise.) I teach some kids who place no value whatsoever on their education and don't give a thimble full of rat turds if anyone else in the class gets to learn, either.

I bring these kids up to say that this is what I'm dealing with. These are not bad kids. They're not. But they've got problems. And these problems they have are something I have to figure out how to handle every day. In addition to all the other challenges teachers face today.

Teachers get off at 3:00? Fuck you! I, like every other teacher out there, bring my work home. Sometimes, it's time spent planning, grading or entering grades into an online data base. Sometimes, it's patience that has been worn down to a puny nub from being disrespected hours on end, so that I snap at my family for no good reason. My work comes home, long after 3:00.

I don't know why teachers have suddenly become the punching bag for all our country's woes. I suspect we have become the new "welfare queens"; a group of people demonized by right-leaning politicians to convince people that cutting social spending is the way to save our economy, instead of forcing corporate executives to give up one of their eight houses.

Listen, I understand that not all teachers are perfect. Dare I suggest that the every profession is that way? I understand, as well, that our educational system is not doing as good a job as it should. But don't try to tell me for one goddamn second that this is all the fault of lazy, idiot teachers who care about nothing but lining our pockets with the taxpayers' hard-earned cash. And don't try to tell me that the solution is to get rid of the only voice we have, our unions.

Here endeth the lesson.

Oh, One More Thing

2010-02-18T09:37:00.003-05:00

Hey folks,

Just in case anyone still checks this site--a long shot, I know--you can now follow me on Twitter. Yes, about five years after everyone else, I've started to tweet, or whatever the fuck you call it. My Twitter name is HairshirtJoe. Plain old "Hairshirt" was taken. Ain't that a bitch?

Now, I know fucking nothing about Twitter and how it works, but I've managed to successfully "tweet" twice without soiling myself, and I intend to try doing it on a more or less daily basis, I guess. Maybe.

Anyhoo, hope all is well with you, former bloggy friends. Onward! Into the next decade! And shit.

...and Goodnight to the Old Lady Whispering "Hush"

2009-03-22T08:19:00.002-04:00

Hey folks. I have had the thought in recent months--and heard it expressed by others, as well--that the personal blog may be dying, done in by Facebook and Twitter and other ways to connect with others and/or express oneself online. I know I do not check other people's blogs with the regularity I used to. Nor do I write new posts on this site with anything like the gusto I used to.

And so I'm going to go ahead and close up shop for awhile. Not forever, but for the near future, at any rate. I've come to a few realizations lately, I guess. Having my son has made me realize that I need to set a better example, which would include finding the drive in myself to actually pursue my dreams instead of just letting them kind of peter out. Taking time off for paternity leave has driven home the fact that I don't think I want to be a teacher forever. Putting these two eureka moments together equals an imperative that I get off my ass and get some actual writing done.

So I'm going to focus my energies elsewhere for the time being. I'm not closing this blog down. I know there will be things I want to write here. And there may be a time down the road when I get back in the habit of posting regularly. But for now, Hairshirt's going to be hibernating.

If you've been a regular reader--well, first off, I guess I'd ask what the hell's wrong with you. But I'd also like to say thanks. And if you have even a half-assed interest in reading anything I write down the road, please take a moment to e-mail me at askhairshirt@gmail.com and I will make certain to drop you a line when I start this thing up again.

Happy Trails,
Joe

A.I.iiiiiiiiiiiiiG.hhhhh!

2009-03-16T14:22:00.003-04:00

I don't know. If I was one of the executives at A.I.G. and I knew that, oh, everybody in the country was massively pissed off about those bonuses, I think I might take it in my head to say, "Fuck the contract, I'm turning the bonus down."

I mean, what would you rather do: give up a bonus that you receive on top of a salary that's a whole lot more than the average person in this country makes or face an angry lynch mob made up of those average people, all of whom would pretty much love to see you dipped in a vat of boiling cow dung?

Save Us, Barack Obama!

2009-03-10T08:14:00.003-04:00

I'm digging the fact that President Obama is rolling back some of the truly heinous shit that Bush left in place, like the limits put on embryonic stem cell research and the legacy of ridiculously massive overuse of signing statements. The last eight years were such a stinking quagmire that I, for one, am practically giddy at the thought of some of that damage being undone.

While the president is working on that, though, there's one action I'm wishing he'd take about which I've head nothing: Can't he do something about finally getting rid of Larry the Cable Guy?

This skidmark on the undergarments of comedy rose to prominence during the Bush Years, just like Paul Wolfowitz. Well, we're not hearing much from Wolfie these days, shouldn't the same hold true of Mr. Cable Guy?

But no. He's still clinging to notoriety, like a barnacle to the bottom of a garbage scow. Please, Mr. President, find some way to scrape him off and let his mind-rotting bullshit sink to the bottom of the bay, never to be seen again.

And, sir, if you could act quickly on this--say, before he's roasted on Comedy Central this weekend and it moves into heavy rotation so that I'm accidentally seeing bits of it as I flip around the dial--I'd be truly grateful, as would many across this country. Thank you.

Did They Fall Asleep?

2009-03-08T10:45:00.005-04:00

I went to see Watchmen yesterday. I won't go into what I thought of the movie here--you can hear all about that in the next episode of The Conversation, coming soon--nor will I talk about what it was like to finally see a movie after four months' exile from the multiplex.

What I want to address this morning, briefly is this: I saw this poster, or one very much like it (I think there was also a dude in a cowboy hat in the one I saw) hanging in the lobby of the theater and I have to wonder: what the fuck is going on in this shot? There's Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. I get that. I still insist that he's too fucking tall for the part, but I understand what he's doing at the poster's center.

My confusion comes from the fact that all the other people seem to have their eyes closed and their heads lowered. What the hell is that supposed to be?

Are they, I don't know, praying that this movie won't suck massive balls like X-Men III? Did Jackman rush directly to the photo shoot from his hard-workin' performance at the Oscars without showering and everyone else in the shot is trying to maintain the stability of their stomachs? Did someone lose a contact lens and Hugh is the only person not involved in the search?

I guess the most likely explanation is that some Mighty Marvel Marketer said, "We need something that looks goddamn profound. I got it! You guys in the back, look down! (click) Awesome!"

The trailer for the flick looked good. And god knows I'm a giant, slobbering geek and I'll go see most superhero flicks that don't involve Jessica Alba and/or Ben Affleck. But this poster makes me want to avoid this one like the fucking plague.

Plus Hugh Jackman's too goddamn tall to play Wolverine. Dammit.

Bad Times in the Land of Cleve

2009-03-05T15:58:00.004-05:00

I have never lived in Cleveland. But I grew up not far from it and went to college even closer. Close enough that Cleveland was the best option when there was a movie out which was indie enough that it wasn't coming to the strip mall cinemas in Kent.

I spent some time, then, in Cleveland, watching movies or going to the art museum or visiting one or another person I knew there. I worked as an extra on a movie there. (The movie is not good and I'm not even slightly visible in it, so please don't interpret the link as an endorsement of what is truly not a great way to spend a couple of hours.)

What I'm trying to say here is that, while I don't have any claim on Cleveland as a home town or even anything remotely like it, I like the place. It's scrappy. It's underrated. It's full of people with enough heart to dearly love teams that haven't won a championship since Rush Limbaugh last saw his penis.

It's a good place and it saddens me greatly to see what's happening to it.

I read last year about the situation in Youngstown, which is much, much closer to where I grew up. The leadership in Youngstown--faced with a population that has continued to spiral downward since the steel mills which had made the town what it was closed in the late 70s and early 80s--decided that drawing new citizens to the town was a hopeless cause and, instead, focused on shrinking the town, actually tearing down neighborhoods of abandoned houses, giving their police fewer vacant buildings to try to keep safe. A shrinking city seemed like a truly bizarre idea. And yet, it looks like something similar is going to be happening in more cities around the country. Cities hit hard by foreclosures. Cities like Cleveland.

These are scary, scary times, folks. I've got friends in Cleveland. I'm hoping things start to take an upturn before the town is overrun with C.H.U.D.s and roving gangs clad in leather vests and feathers. But what's the solution? I sincerely believe that President Obama is doing his best to try to turn things around, but even if everything he's doing works perfectly, it's still going to be awhile before the situation gets better. How can places like Cleveland keep from drowning until the worst is over? What can be done? Anyone? Anyone?

Status Symbol

2009-03-04T08:23:00.002-05:00

I've had a couple of people in the past tell me that the reason they're super-hesitant to add people as "friends" on Facebook about whom they have marginal feelings is that they feel that they then have to censor themselves. They want to be able to express themselves freely, which is important, I agree.

I'd never felt this way until recently. Over the last few weeks, I've had some status updates that I wanted to share with the world. I felt that these status updates would help others understand what's going on inside my complex, delicious mind.

But then I stopped and considered how some of the people I'd added as "friends" might feel about my status and I...I censored myself. And it's been eating at my insides ever since. Do I need to mask who I really am to spare the sensibilities of people who've found me online after interacting with me for an hour at the STD clinic? Am I going to let other people's belief in Jesus stop me from trumpeting loudly my feelings about The View? No, dammit. I will not.

But then I'd look stupid if I posted all these status changes on Facebook so long after the fact, so I'm sharing them here:

Joe Wack does not want to make love to your anus.
Joe Wack isn't sure if that guy was still breathing when I left the scene of the accident. Look, he just jumped out in front of my car. It was an accident. How can I let something like that ruin my life? Joe Wack is scared.
Joe Wack has found Jesus!
Joe Wack was r-r-r-really fucking drunk when he thought he'd found Jesus, so, nevermind. Jesus is still lost.
Joe Wack is LOVING the new edition of Barely Legal Sluts on the Loose!
Joe Wack just puked up somthing furry.
Joe Wack just found an excellent heroin dealer. His name is Al Vishniac and his address is 987 E. 110th St., Apt. 4-A.
Joe Wack hates Mormons.

From here on out, I'm gonna speak my mind, dammit!

To Bond and Then Not to Bond, That Is the Whatnow?

2009-03-03T07:50:00.002-05:00

This cracked me up this morning. IMdB's news feed had this at the top of the page. Halfway down the page, they had this.

You'd think someone maybe would've thought to remove the first one, right?

Just for the record, I think they should embrace an utterly counterintuitive approach and go with Woody Allen for directing the next Bond flick.

God Fucking Dammit!

2009-03-02T06:13:00.003-05:00

The second snow day. Only the second time since I became a New York City school teacher that they actually call a snow day and it happens when I'm already on paternity leave! Nine hundred, ninety-nine point nine times out of a thousand, they make everyone shlep to the building in the most inclement weather and then I get the joy of helping fill in for the dozen or so people who live far enough away that they can claim they can't make it in. When I'm not there to benefit from it, they go ahead and cut teachers city-wide a break. There is no fucking justice in this world.

Man's Messiest Friend

2009-02-27T15:00:00.006-05:00

Look at this handsome dog. Isn't he gorgeous? Doesn't he look intelligent and courageous and fun-loving and loyal? Well he is.

He's also reached a stage in life where he's no longer finding it easy to control his bladder. Which is inconvenient when you're caring for an infant. Because it's not like I can hand Ben his leash and say, "Go walk yourself, I'm trying to put the baby to sleep." Neither can I expect the Kid to hang out in the apartment on his own for awhile as I run Ben downstairs to take care of his business.

This means that, when Ben gives me The Look--and he's such a good boy; he always makes it very clear when it's an emergency, as opposed to a request--I have to snap to it. I've got to get the Kid into a coat and then into the carrier, both of which often cause much wailing, before Ben's kegels give out and piping hot dog piss streams forth onto the carpet upon which my infant son will soon be crawling.

This was an incredibly daunting task at first. My dogs can sometimes get a little freaked by other canines, so I was wary of having them attempt to start a rumble while I had the baby strapped to me. But walking a dog isn't something you can really do solo while pushing a stroller, either, so I had little choice.

Now that I'm a little more used to it, I actually walk both dogs, bend down to pick up turds without the baby falling out of the carrier, and can steer dogs and baby around without as much stress.

The problem now is that I'm not always here when Ben goes from emergency to core explosion. Today, for example, I took the Kid to see his mom at work. He likes it, she likes it, it's nice. When we get home, both of the dogs, as they often do, sat at the end of the hall, right inside the bedroom door, waiting for me. I think they like to be able to get a running start to greet me. I called to them and Mortimer came bounding down the hall. Ben, though, just sat there. When he didn't come, I wondered if he'd done something he knew I wouldn't be happy with, but a quick look around told me this wasn't the case.

So I called to him again and, hesitantly, he got up and started shambling down the hall toward me. Halfway through it, he stopped and just started peeing. I managed to grab his collar and steer him into the kitchen, my thought being that I could at least mop in there. Which I did immediately after he'd let go with a good half-gallon of urine. I then grabbed the Kid from the stroller, where he'd been sitting relatively patiently, and put him in the carrier, which brought said patience to noisy and bitter end.

Ah, what a beautiful scene: screaming kid, incontinent dog and me, walking down the street, leaving a trail of dog piss wherever we went.

Pod People

2009-02-24T16:26:00.003-05:00

Hey! Pleased to announce another exciting episode of The Conversation is up on Podomatic. This week, Keith and I discuss the Oscars, disappointing movies, TV show video games and ex-girlfriends. Truly, this one has it all.

So, if you're a fan of podcasts, give a listen. And if you're not, go to hell.

Needles and Pins

2009-02-24T15:41:00.004-05:00

Took the Kid in for his four-month pediatrician appointment yesterday. All is well. The reception/medical records staff were oohing and aahing over him, which is as it should be, 'cause he's fucking cute.

Naturally, he dropped a giant-sized poo bomb in his diaper while we sat in the waiting room. That meant I had to pray for a speedy call to the exam room, which we actually got, so it worked out well. Oddly, he freaked out a little when I laid him down on the exam table to change his diaper. Or not so oddly, I guess, assuming that he has some kind of baby memory of what went down the last time he was put on that crinkly paper.

Nor will he look kindly on the exam table the next time he's there, because, once again, crinkly exam table paper meant needles jabbed in his poor little body.

He was due for his four month shots and I got stuck with being the parental witness this time. Only fair, since my wife had to see it in December. It wasn't fun, but it was over fairly quickly. Now, I've heard people before say that, when their baby got shots, they had to fight an urge to beat the crap out of the nurse for hurting their baby. Can't say I had that urge. The nurse was just a nice lady doing her job. It's just that that job happens to be causing traumatic pain to little babies.

No, I was far too busy feeling bad for my son to worry about slapping the nurse. Oh, how he cried. Loudly and for a good long while. He cried as the first needle went in and he cried as the second and third went in. He cried while the nurse applied bandages and he cried when I got him dressed again.

I held him and hugged him and kissed him, but he went right on crying, occasionally giving looks along the lines of, "Your comfort means shit, Dad." Poor li'l fella.

He's aces today, of course. Needle trauma is intense, but short-lived.

This Does Not Bode Well

2009-02-22T20:45:00.001-05:00

Okay, we're only fifteen minutes into the Oscars and I can already tell it's going to be a long, long, stupid night. Sweet fucking Christ, do we really need a monologue about every fucking nominee? This is fucking agonizing. Fucking say their names, announce the winner and get to a stupid fucking montage. This blows leprous donkeys.

Plain as the Nose on Your Facebook

2009-02-21T23:30:00.003-05:00

I'm on Facebook.

It's kind of fascinating. It's fascinating because I like to think about how much the world has changed just in my lifetime. Not long ago, when you lost contact with someone, you lost contact with them. Your best friend from summer camp could easily disappear off the face of the planet and you would be none the wiser, as you wouldn't have spoken with them in twenty-seven years.

Google changed that, somewhat. For a long while now, you've been able to waste copious amounts of time by googling people you used to know. And sometimes, you'd find them. But a lot of times, you weren't sure if you'd found the right person. Not always easy to tell. And, of course, there were people who were still impossible to find.

Now, it seems like everyone I've ever known is on Facebook and I'm friends with a whole goddamn lot of 'em.

But Facebook friendship is really only "friendship" in the very loosest of definitions. There's a tiny little bit of information in a person's profile and then you keep up to date on their day-to-day happens sometimes, if they're the type of person who updates their status even semi-regularly.

The dark side of all this is that you're inevitably going to be found by people about whom you'd forgotten and with whom you'd rather not renew ties. When these people add me as a friend, I always say yes, sometimes with a long pause to consider things. It's awfully rude to deny someone's friend request.

And, really, what's the worse that happens if you accept? Well, okay, I'm leaving out extreme cases where you're friended by an ex-lover who still feels that, if they can't have you, nobody can. Because that really is the exception to the rule, right? More often, the worst is that you're then bombarded with status updates from these people that you can very easily just not read.

Don't get me wrong. It can be really annoying when someone you don't like all that much feels the need to update their status to alert the world of every sad little bit of minutae that pops into their heads. I don't need to know that you're planning on taking advantage of the sunny day to wash your car. I really don't. But, again, nobody's forcing me to read it.

Another dark side is that things become a little high-schooly at times. I've sat IMing with a friend about mutual "friends" of ours who annoy us. I'm not proud of that, but I did it.

And I've noticed that several members of my high school graduating class--members of which joined Facebook in droves the last few weeks to find whoever it is that's planning our twentieth reunion--have now removed our high school from their profile. I'm assuming it's because they figured it was the only way to dodge any more people they don't want to be-"friend".

Now, of course, I'm dying to know why they removed it from their status. But it's not like I'm going to ask them directly. We're not that good of friends.

Hey! I Used to Not Be Quite So Disgusted by Myself!

2009-02-21T17:47:00.003-05:00

So I just spent basically the entire day scanning pictures into an old laptop. (I'd go into why I'm not scanning them into the laptop on which I'm typing this, but that's another story for another day when I won't tell it either.)

Anyway, the pictures I'm scanning are from my last year of college up through about 1997, but I've been looking at even more, running right up through about 2005. It's really fantastic to kind of take a look at the breadth of one's life over the years. And it really hammers home one major point: I'm motherfucking fat.

The grey in my beard, I'm okay with, mostly. Yeah, it's freaky to see that it wasn't there just a few years back, but I don't really give a shit about that. The other sign of age that I can't really do anything about is my jowls. I'm destined to be a jowly bastard and there's nothing I can do about it. The jowls have been there all along, it's just that they're more pronounced when I'm as plump as I am right now.

Which is pretty goddamn plump. I look at pictures of me from the year-and-a-half when I lived in Arizona or soon after our arrival in Seattle and I have to mentally add five inches of lard to even recognize the person as me. This was mostly because I was too poor to afford to eat very often, but dammit, I was skinny.

My wife, of course, is sweet enough to say, "Honey, you were too thin then. You look better a little filled out." Which actually translates to: "You are such a fucking whale. What the hell happened to the marginally attractive guy I agreed to move in with?"

I'm flailing around trying to find an excuse and I have to resort to the kid. With the kid here, we're both tired all the time and we're more inclined to just give in to our lazier tendencies and not exercise.

So, son, if you're reading this fifteen years from now and your father hasn't been able to see his feet in recent memory, just remember that it's all your fault.

Curses! Foiled Again!

2009-02-18T16:39:00.002-05:00

Man, my wife and I are growing desperate. Before the kid was born--a miraculous event, for which we are both overwhelmingly grateful--we were giant movie-goers. We saw movies all the goddamn time. If we couldn't afford a movie in a given week, we'd seek out free advanced screenings. We love movies.

Thanks to the baby--who we love unreservedly--we haven't seen a movie in four months. Every week for the last ten weeks or so, my wife has suggested that we just bite the bullet and go see a flick. "If he starts crying, I'll just feed him right there," she says. "We can go see an early show with a tiny audience of mostly drunks and hard-of-hearing retirees," she pleads.

Well I'm not heartless. I like to let my lady have her way now and again to make her feel like she's got some power in the relationship. So I've put some effort into this whole movie thing.

We tried, in fact, to go see Slumdog Millionaire back before Christmas when my sister-in-law was here and we could leave the kid with her. And, of course, during the holiday movie-going season, the fucking thing was sold out long before we stumbled onto the line.

Since then, one thing or another has prevented us from getting into a multiplex.

Today, though, we had it all planned out. Middle of the week, nobody's going to be there. First show of the day, discount show so we can walk out if he goes apeshit and we won't have dropped the full $11.00 (which isn't, I realize, going to break the bank, but still...). The Village Voice says there's a 10:25 showing of Milk at the Times Square AMC, so we strap the baby to my chest and hustle on down there, arriving just a minute or two late.

And the goddamn doors are locked. What in the name of Mickey Rooney's ball sac is going on here, I wonder? The first show listed on their marquee is 1:25. There's all kinds of other people standing around outside, so I know I'm not insane. My wife starts trying to get on the Voice website on her cell, but crappy reception or a crappy phone--I'm not sure which--won't let her on and we eventually just decide that I made some kind of idiotic mistake.

We trudge uptown and make it to the Lincoln Plaza Theaters (sub-art house, supra-multiplex) in time for the noonish showing of the same movie. Should we do it? Has the baby reached his breaking point of being out and about? Will my back survive the experience? We zip over to the nearby WaMu, as the Lincoln Plaza doesn't accept debit cards. We hurry back to the ticket window and I say, "Two for Milk, please."

At which point, the lady in the booth says, "Yeah, I don't think they'll let you in with the baby." I was irate. "You filthy whore!" I cried and beat at the glass until my fists bled. Or maybe we just walked away depressed, I don't honestly remember. The woman did suggest that we try the Lincoln Square 13 uptown, where they're playing My Bloody Valentine and Paul Blart: Mall Cop, which, sadly, I've already seen.

And so, my wife and I are going into this weekend's Oscars having seen none of the Best Picture nominees. I know that we'll get back to the movies eventually. We just may have to sneak the baby into the theater in a gym bag.

Conversational

2009-02-17T18:24:00.004-05:00

Now that we've started up the ol' podcast again, we're tryin' to keep it going on a more or less weekly basis. So it's time for another episode. Go give it a listen. 'Cause it's not quite as rusty as last week's. It's not Mercury Radio Theater on the Air or anything, but neither is it Rush Limbaugh Jacks It to Pictures of Ann Coulter.

That's-a One Spicey Meat-a-ball!

2009-02-13T20:25:00.004-05:00

A couple of months back, I wrote about a new pizza place that opened up a few blocks from us; how much hope I'd had for it and how those hopes were so very cruelly dashed.

Well, it seems like everyone else in town felt the same way, as the pizza place has quickly been shuttered, replaced by an Italian restaurant, with "Under New Management" signs in neon orange and everything.

Now, given the relative lack of good delivery options around these parts, and the fact that my wife and I have long grown incredibly sick of all our standard options, we're probably going to give this place the benefit of the doubt and order some pasta at some point.

But I am given a moment or two of concern by the fact that the first item on their sandwich list is "Sausage with Broccoli Rape".

My wife and I just had a debate about whether the vegetable in question is the aggressor or the villain in this scenario. I suppose the obvious situation would be that the broccoli is being raped by the sausage, but I don't want to make assumptions. Whatever the situation, it makes me ill. I just feel like sexual assault has no place in the sandwich community.

For Massive Comic Geeks Only

2009-02-12T18:35:00.003-05:00

99% of the folks who occasionally read Hairshirt can go ahead and skip this post. Seriously, just stop reading. What the fuck are you still doing here? Go pretend to read Huffington Post or something.

Okay, I'm going to assume those of you still with me here are geeks like myself, so I've got a geek question for you. No, really, this question is about as geeky as "What's the Klingon word for 'love-child'?"

The New York Comic-Con was last weekend and, while I resisted the mild urge to just give in and embrace my destiny as a Hulk vs Solomon Grundy-debating fanboy and actually attend the goddamned thing, I did follow the convention-related news on the various comic sites I frequent.

One bit of news coming out of the convention was that an artist whose work I've been enjoying at DC has signed an exclusive contract with Marvel. (For any non-geeks who didn't heed the above warning, an exclusive contract generally means that the artist/writer in question can't work for the other of the two majors for a given term, usually a couple of years, which actually goes by pretty quickly in comic book years.)

My question comes from an article I read today in which the artist talks about the switch. He cites his slavering love for the characters and his deep, deep roots with the company, stemming from his days as a fetus, when his mother would insert issues of Uncanny X-Men into the womb for his reading enjoyment.

This article started me thinking about all the very many similar articles I've read in the past. Whenever someone signs an exclusive with one of the two majors, they invariably talk about how superior the new company is, how the new company's characters are the ones nearest and dearest to their hearts, how the assignment they've been given is the one they've been waiting for all their professional lives. Then, in a few years, they're doing work at the other company again, which I suppose must be absolute torture for them and their spirit must be entirely broken.

Why do none of these guys ever say, "Yeah, Joe Quesada offered me an assload of money, so I'm over there for awhile" or "The reason is that Dan DiDio pissed on my shoes at the DC Christmas party"?

I'd just like a more honest explanation once in a goddamn while, which I know might be a lot to expect from people who draw giant-breasted women who fight crime in bikinis and high-heels.

Yackity Back

2009-02-12T09:59:00.003-05:00

After an insanely long hiatus, we are proud to announce the return of the greatest podcast in the history of the on-line world, The Conversation with Bob Felcher and Karl Baloneypants!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Should I have fish for lunch?" But after you've made that important decision, you might find time to wonder just where the hell the podcast has been for the last nine months.

For the answer to this and all the other important questions of life, give a listen to the latest episode of...The Conversation.

Le Jour de L'amour

2009-02-07T21:16:00.003-05:00

I came to a realization this week that made me quite happy, indeed.

As a super-special bonus of taking this time off for paternity leave, I also get to be gone from school when our students will be celebrating Valentine's Day!

Now, I've got nothing against the day in and of itself. I love getting all romantic and putting on my snazziest thong to entice my wife. It's a wonderful thing to have a special day set aside to celebrate love. (My apologies to the single folk out there who have to schedule special things to do with friends and alcohol to escape the ubiquity of the happy--or faux-happy--couples.)

The thing is, middle school love is not the same as real love. It's real love in the way that Taco Bell is real Mexican cuisine: it's a cheap knock-off that leaves you with diarrhea.

Middle schoolers don't tend to do subtlety. They like to give their Valentines big, ugly, pulsatingly red gifts. They do this during class. They do this during my class, 'cause it's one class about which they don't give a shit, so they can feel free to just go ahead and let their social lives move to the fore. So I'm often dealing with thirteen-year-olds handing their "loved" ones giant fuzzy apes in heart-covered boxers or plastic-wrapped boxes of cheap, shitty chocolates that they bought from the guy on the corner who'll be selling leprecahn hats in a few weeks' time.

It's not entirely about gaudy gifts, though. There also needs to be the requesite amount of drama in a middle school Valentine's Day. Because it's not Franken-love unless there's some kind of problem that needs to be dealt with, loudly. Invariably, on Valentine's Day, someone has broken up with someone else or someone has stolen someone else's boyfriend or some other great fucking tragedy that will allow the kids to feel like they're living life inside a Twilight novel.

This year, someone else gets to deal with all that crap. Huzzah!

I also get to miss April Fool's Day, but that's an entirely different set of annoyances.

In the Name of Science!

2009-02-05T06:04:00.002-05:00

I'm conducting an experiment of sorts on my son. It may not be entirely ethical, I realize, but I'm doing it in the name of science, dammit.

Since I've been off, I've been working my way through the first four seasons of The Office on Roku. I do my best to contain it mostly to times when the Kid is sleeping, because I really do want to focus on him as much as possible.

But when, say, I'm feeding him or he's dozing in the living room, I'll watch a couple of episodes.

In addition to enjoying the development of the secondary characters, there's something else going on every time I hit play. I'm hoping that the show's theme will embed itself in the Kid's psyche. I'm hoping that, years from now, when the show's been off the air forever, he'll randomly hear the theme song someplace and think, "I know that song. How do I know that song? That's so weird..."

Science is not pretty, my friends.

A Place for Our Stuff...All of It

2009-02-04T16:27:00.000-05:00

We live in New York. Living here, specifically in Manhattan, you need to accept certain facts about your day-to-day existence. There will be odors you will find unpleasant. Drug stores will invariably have long, long lines and the clerks will be disinterested in customer service, at best. You will have to deal with all the fucking Yankee fans (*shudder*). And, unless you make an assload of money, your apartment will be small.

Our apartment is small. For this town, its size is not bad. It's not as utterly shoeboxish as other places I've seen, especially considering what we pay for it. I don't have any real complaints about the apartment in and of itself, which explains, in part, why I've now lived here longer than I've lived anyplace in my entire life, ever.

The problem, you see, is that darned baby. Oh, he doesn't take up all that much room himself. Yet. But there's all this other crap that comes with him. The strollers and the playmats and the swings and the Shetland pony.

We had, to be honest, way too much stuff even before the baby. But it was manageable. When someone came for a visit, we could throw all the excess crap in our bedroom and close the door. Now, though, there's no space in there. If we tried to throw all the excess crap in our bedroom, the door would not close. It is exceedingly difficult for me to even walk through the apartment without stepping on/tripping over something.

Let me pause here for a moment to put my aggravation over this situation into perspective. When I worked in nursing homes while living in Seattle, I had numerous occasions to take residents back to their apartments to pick up this or that item they'd left behind when they were rushed in the ambulence to the hospital.

It was almost always a depressing experience. (Who likes to be reminded that we can be living independently, in the style to which we've become accustomed, one day and the next day we'll find pureed yams on the menu, fed to us by someone making slightly over minimum wage?) But one apartment stands out in particular.

There was this woman who'd lived on her own in an apartment downtown for a long, long time. I was asked to take her to her place for some reason or another. (Let's go ahead and say it was because she needed her Pan flute.) I drove her downtown, walked her up to her door and, when she opened it, I got a whole new respect for rat warrens.

The woman's place was utterly filled with stuff. Piles of paper that came up to my chin. Stacks of magazines dating, I can guess with some assurance, from the Eisenhower administration. Her kitchen cabinets were overflowing with cans. The overflow completely covered her countertops. Towers of crap filled the entire place. She'd literally left narrow passageways to walk through and the rest of the apartment was jammed with stuff.

I'm not claustrophobic by any means. But this just creeped me out. I need space in which to move. I don't mind a little clutter. In fact, I find it homey. I don't require a stark, barely-furnished cavern in which my voice can echo off artless walls. But I can't stand not being able to walk a straight line through a room; stepping on something every time I put my foot down; having to move five things out of my way before I can even get in the goddamn front door.

And so, my wife and I came to the same, sad two-word conclusion this week: storage unit. God help us. Seriously, it'd be great if God could help us find a cheap storage unit.

*NOTE: Randomly Googled picture. Not my family. Seriously not my family.

Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men?

2009-02-04T14:35:00.004-05:00

It was inevitable, I guess. And so, now it's happened. I inadvertently made my kid cry by doing a scary laugh.

My dad did it, too. I remember. Halloween, had to have been 1975 or '76. Dad helped my sister and I carve a jack o'lantern and then turned off the kitchen lights so we could admire it. While the lights were off--in the spirit of the season--Dad let loose with a sinister laugh. Utterly appropriate and most definitely not bad parenting. But I was a little, shall we say, overly sensitive. And it scared the shit out of me. So, I remember, I started bawling.

Dad ran to the light switch and lit the kitchen up again, so I could see there was nothing to be scared about. The only thing I had to fear, I'd say, was the fact that I was such a total pussy.

My kid is just a baby. I should know better.

I was sitting beside him as he visited with Mr. Lion in the swing. I was cutting my fingernails and thinking that his nails needed some attention as well. So I told him. I looked at him and said, "And next, we'll take of...you!" and let loose with the laugh I'd perfected years earlier when I played The Shadow. (I make that statement because I want you to be aware of how the laugh sounded. And because I wanted to brag that I got to play The Shadow once. I'm a sad little man.)

Anyway, as soon as the laugh left my throat, I knew it was a mistake. Sure enough, his little lip started quivering and his eyes narrowed and reddened and then he was full-on crying. I left the nails on my right hand undone, grabbed him out of the swing and promised to never do that laugh again.

A promise I'll probably forget as soon as we carve our first jack o'lantern.

Moron of the Month (and It's Only the Third)

2009-02-03T21:51:00.004-05:00

Seriously, what the fuck is so hard about paying your taxes? If the math is too difficult for you to figure out because you're "...really more of a word person," then hire a goddamn accountant.

I realize it gets trickier when you make a whole lot of money, but you know what you should do when that becomes the case? Pay your accountant more!

You're in politics, where people who don't like you are going to be looking for turds to throw at your head. Why would you want to just hand them a Hefty bag full of leavings?

Tom Daschle, you're a dumbshit and try not to leave any residual Loser in the room on the way out.

And...Scene

2009-02-01T21:35:00.004-05:00

Just like that, my last tiny little shred of respect for Saturday Night Live has been flushed down the toilet and I will never, ever--fucking ever--watch the show again.

I chuckled mildly at the first three or four dozen "MacGruber" sketches. I think Will Forte can be fairly funny. Not the majority of the time, but occasionally. It should have been retired about two years ago, but whatever. It's SNL.

This morning, I'm watching last night's god-awful episode with Steve Martin--who truly deserves the Pink Panther remakes--and they bring back MacGruber. They've got Richard Dean Anderson, which isn't exactly funny, but it's nice to know he's not dead.

And then, in the middle of the sketch, Will Forte pulls out a can of Pepsi. I'm thinking, "Wow. What lame fucking product placement. Just not well done at all." I fast-forward through about three-quarters of the rest of the episode and promptly forget I'd watched it.

Ten minutes ago, I'm doing dishes and watching, from the kitchen, what's shockingly turned into a kind of interesting Super Bowl and I hear the MacGruber theme. "No," I'm thinking. "They wouldn't do that...would they?"

They did. They re-ran the lame-ass sketch from last night, in its entirety.

So now, SNL is dead to me. Actually, I'm pretty sure it's been dead for a long, long time and I'm just now noticing the corpse's stench, but whatever the case may be, I'll no longer be a part of it. Lorne Michaels, you belong in the foulest depths of Hell. Where you'll no doubt have plenty of Pepsi to drink, you prick.

Balls, Grow Some

2009-02-01T15:25:00.003-05:00

I don't hate Republicans. You can't paint that large of a group with the same brush. But there's a giant mess of them that are just massive fucking doucheknuckles. They're kind of like Biff from Back to the Future. The first one. They're horrible bullies and, let's just go ahead and say they're rapists, too. We'll take it that far if you say that our economy is being played by Lea Thompson.

And the Democrats are most definitely George McFly here. They're in charge. They have the power. But they're more than happy to let the Republicans borrow (and wreck) the car.

To a certain degree, I understand that the Democrats don't have a 60 seat majority in the Senate, and so they can't just do whatever they want. I understand as well that it's better to be inclusive and not to wave your junk in the opposition's face and that the Democrats should not just continue to do things the way they've been done for the last eight years.

But come on.

I sat listening to Senator Jim DeMint on This Week this morning, whining about the stimulus package and arguing that we should just let Free Market Economics take care of things. DeMint and the ideas he stands for are what got us into this situation. Letting business do whatever the fuck it wants leads to a handful of greedy assmunchers fucking the general public over so they can own another three vacation homes.

Obama and the rest of the Democrats won in November because the country doesn't want things done the way they were under Bush, so this is the time for them to take charge. Do things your way and if the other party doesn't like it, tough shit.

They need to be the George McFly, the successful novelist, not George McFly, the office drone.

Letter to My Son #5

2009-01-31T08:57:00.004-05:00

Dear Kid,

So you're about three and a half months old now. You're just about ready to start rolling over, although you still hate being on your tummy. You're grabbing Mommy's hair and Daddy's chest hair. You've outgrown almost all of your 0-3 month clothes, so you can no longer wear some of our favorite outfits.

I'm on paternity leave right now, which means I get to stay home and take care of you. It is a wonderful time. Not necessarily an easy time, as even the best babies--of which you are decidedly one--are a lot of work, but it's nice to spend so much time with you.

I've tried to maintain some continuity from the way Mommy does things, but there are definite differences in our approach. For instance, when Mommy thinks you're hungry, she can just--you should pardon the expression--whip it out and give feeding you a try. If it turns out you're not feeling peckish, she can put her bra on and switch tactics. Daddy, on the other hand, has to be absolutely sure you're hungry, because if I pull some breast milk out of the fridge and it turns out you don't want any, I've just wasted some breast milk. And that stuff's expensive.

Another difference is the way we get you to sleep. Mommy seems to have a magic touch and can just lay down with you and, I don't know, emit some sort of drowsiness beam that zonks you out. Daddy, on the other hand, can't seem to do it that way at all.

Instead, I have to sing you to sleep.

Now, it's entirely possible that I'm not trying too hard with any other method because I really like singing you to sleep. In fact, it's one of my favorite things in the world.

Your Daddy's not a great singer. I don't generally sing in front of other people. There was a brief time in college where I would go to karaoke with a big group of folks from the theater department and get up on stage to croak my way through "Walk of Life" or some other unchallenging song, but that's been about the extent of my public performances.

And yet, I was always a big car singer. It's been my habit for a long, long time to sing in the car. Loudly. I don't think I was aware of it, but I'm now pretty sure that, that entire time, I was just practicing for when I'd have to sing my son to sleep.

I sang to you the night you were born. I surprised the hell out of myself, because the song that came out when I opened my mouth to sing to you the first time was "The Tennessee Waltz". I like that song a lot, but it's not what I'd expected to sing. I sing it to you now almost every day.

Actually, we have a pretty extensive set list. Daddy doesn't like to get all repetitious, so I sing a wide variety and try not to sing the same song twice in one day.

I do a lot of Paul Simon songs for you. "St. Judy's Comet" is a fairly obvious choice. But we also do "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "Scarborough Fair", "American Tune", "The Only Living Boy in New York" and "The Boxer". We dip into classic country, too. "Give My Love to Rose" is a favorite. Lots of Patsy Cline, like "Crazy" and "Walking After Midnight" and "Sweet Dreams". "Sweet Baby James" gets a lot of use, as does "Kiss Me, Son of God".

There are times, though, when you're really fussing and I have to break out the heavy guns. That's when I throw down a little "Danny Boy". It's effective. If that doesn't quite do the trick, we move on to "Nothing's Gonna Harm You" from Sweeney Todd. And then there's the A-bomb. The last resort. The Ace up my sleeve. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". We save that one for when nothing else has worked.

This works. Sometimes it takes a littler longer than I'd like, but it's always effective in the end.

So if, let's say twenty years from now, you're walking down the street and you hear a random song you don't know and it makes you a little sleepy, there's a chance that Daddy sang it to you when you were tiny.

Lots of love,
Daddy

The New Math

2009-01-30T16:54:00.004-05:00

Forget Your Happy, C'mon Get Troubles!

2009-01-28T20:40:00.002-05:00

Jesus stubble-chinned Christ, people. The times, they are a-scary. Starbucks is closing more stores, sending 6000 mocha-slingers packing, and laying off 700 other folks as well. This comes on top of announced layoffs by Boeing and AOL and Microsoft and Caterpillar and half the other fucking companies still limping along in this country and the goddamn Postal Service, for God's sake.

Now, on one hand, I don't feel too sorry for Starbucks. I've thought for a long time that a business plan based on infinite expansion is basically doomed. And I certainly don't need access to a Starbucks every other block.

But if every goddamn business in the country fails except the occasional pawn shop, if everybody finds themselves unemployed, if all the service industry jobs are dominoed out of existence, the country is well and truly fucked, 'cause we don't have a safety position.

Ye gods, this is frightening. I need to go hunt down a venti chai latte to calm my jangled nerves.

Powers and Abilities Far Beyond Those of Mortal Men

2009-01-28T09:13:00.004-05:00

Karl Rove has, I read this morning, been subpoenaed to testify in front of a House committee looking into the U.S. attorney firings. The article mentions that Rove has refused to comply with previous subpoenas, saying that "...former presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify before Congress."

Interestingly, this is not the only superpower Rove has claimed to have. Over the past decade, Rove--or "Captain Turdblossom", which is his superhero identity--has attributed to himself:

super-strength
the "ability to cloud men's minds"
limited flight
"super-breath" (?)
shape-shifting
"a mystical dong"

It should be noted that this last one was discussed with Maureen Dowd toward the end of the 2003 White House Correspondents' Dinner and has not since been mentioned.

Kurt Skinner of the Brookings Institution has been quoted as saying, "I'm not a continuity-nazi, but I wish they'd decide what powers he has and then stick to it."

Flying Solo, Day 1

2009-01-27T09:25:00.006-05:00

What you probably couldn't tell from reading yesterday's post is that, about three-quarters of the way through my writing of it, I had to stop for a forty-five minute cry/shriek-athon. My little guy was uber-tired and wanted everyone in the tri-state area to know about it.

I worked methodically, as you're supposed to. I stood and rocked with him. I laid down on the bed with him. I rocked him in the glider. I changed the diaper, the utterly dry and poopless diaper. I thawed out a few ounces of breast milk and attempted the bottle-feed. Nada.

And that last one is especially galling, because it's the one part of the whole thing that is truly genderally unfair. My wife did a good bit of post-feeding pumping during the weeks before she went back to work, wanting to have a stockpile for the first days of her absence. Still, even with a decent amount of frozen Mommy shakes in the icebox, when Daddy thaws some out and the baby basically tells him to shove it, you--the Daddy--are left feeling double shame, because you've proved yourself unable to read your child's needs and you've just wasted two-and-a-half ounces of milk that your wife sat in a chair with a machine strapped to her chest to produce.

Eventually, though, the lad allowed himself to drift off to Slumberland and, other than that one rough patch, however, Day 1 went fairly well, all things considered. We had a successful feeding later in the day. There were no more screaming fits. Daddy got the laundry sorted and ready to go and managed to eat lunch and send Mommy a cute baby pic via cell phone. I even got some grades uploaded to the frustrating and crappy grade site my school is forcing us to use.

Bear in mind, here, that my wife only worked half a day yesterday. Who knows what I'll screw up today, with more time on my hands. Onward and upward!

Banzai

2009-01-26T09:34:00.003-05:00

So here we go. My wife literally just left the apartment. And so begins my three-month term as Perma-Daddy.

So many questions. Will I get a handle on the baby's needs? Will I find time to straighten up the living room? Will every piece of clothing I own get covered in baby poop? And, most importantly, I guess: Will I start watching Oprah? *shudder*

If everything I learned from such movies as Three Men and a Baby and Mr. Nanny, it's that I can be sure to expect many, many wacky hijinks.

Stay tuned, my friends.

Deep, Self-Pitying Sigh

2009-01-22T21:04:00.002-05:00

My wife won't listen to my whining about this, so I'm turning to you, the wonderful people who glance briefly at this page on which you landed after hitting the "Next Blog" button or googling "nurse+spanking+fantasties".

See, I'm about to go on paternity leave. I'm about to spend a few months doing nothing but taking care of my kid. It's exciting. For me.

For my wife, it's going back to work time. So any complaining I do this week about my job is most unwelcome to her ears.

Mostly, what I've been doing this week has been trying to wrap up the unit I was working on while dealing with a schedule fucked-up by the state English test. I've been trying to get my grades calculated and just generally prepare things for my absence.

Tomorrow, as a reward for the hard work they did on the Big Test this week, all of the seventh- and eighth-graders get to go on a field trip. Which excited the hell out of me, because I teach only seventh and eighth grade, which would have left me the entire day to enter my grades on the website we're using and get everything nice and squared away.

This morning, however, three--count 'em, three--people, including my assistant principal asked me if I'd be willing to go on the field trip, as they were having trouble rounding up chaperones. Coming from my A.P., it wasn't really a request, it was more along the lines of, "We're not going to pay you to spend a day in your office with no classes to teach, so you're going on the field trip." (He actually did put it in the form of a question and was very polite about it, but come on.)

I don't like field trips. You're with the kids all day with no break, you have to make sure they don't mock drunk homeless people on the subway, you have to keep them from getting run over and you invariably have to eat at fucking McDonald's. *shudder*

All in all, it wouldn't be so terribly bad, except for the fact that the field trip, I've been informed, is to the movies...to see...Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Inkheart opens tomorrow. It's a fun, family-friendly adventure movie based on a very nice book I just finished. Couldn't we see that instead? No. I have to go spend an hour and a half watching Kevin James get hit in the groin over and over and over. (See title)

Inauguration Day

2009-01-20T19:13:00.003-05:00

The moment was pretty much as cool as I'd figured it would be. He put the hand on the Lincoln Bible and, boom, he was President. I smiled incredibly wide.

Then I sat back to listen to his address and slowly realized that an auditorium full of kindergartners is not the best listening venue for this sort of thing. See, kindergartners know that the nice man on the screen is Important and that it's a Good Thing that's happening, but they don't really give two squirts of goat piss about what the nice man has to say.

So every teacher in the room spent the entirety of the speech shushing six-year-olds and didn't get to hear much.

Still cool.

This Is Just the Beginning

2009-01-15T19:49:00.004-05:00

People, I've been saying for years that the birds were going to turn against us. Now it's happened. I have proof in my possession that the geese responsible for bringing down the US Airways plane in New York attended an Al Quaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 2001.

When is our government going to start taking this threat seriously? I've sent literally dozens of telegrams to Barack Obama's advisors, begging them to make sure they've got a strategy for dealing with the avian threat around us as soon as they take office. I have yet to hear back from them.

This is just the beginning, my friends. Watch the skies.

Giddy with Anticipation

2009-01-13T21:16:00.005-05:00

Oh my god, y'all.

I just saw a commercial for that new movie with Renee Zellwegger! Apparently, she plays a big-city gal who moves to the country! And she don't fit in!

Now I don't want to take a guess at the plot, 'cause I'm sure it's real inventive, but I do know that Harry Connick, Jr. is in there, so I've gotta guess there might could be some romance.

Well, Little Joe's Must-See Movie List just got a new number one, with a bullet!

We All Scream

2009-01-11T22:16:00.005-05:00

So there's this ice cream. I read about it in New York Magazine, in an article about mobile food and, weeks and weeks later, I stumbled across their truck outside of the supermarket. As I always do what magazines tell me, I bought a pint and brought it home to my then-pregnant wife. We each took a bite, then spooned the rest onto the couch and rolled around in it, as this ice cream was something you didn't just want to eat, you really wanted to be encased in it.

Come October, I was shocked and appalled when the truck was consistently missing from its place outside Fairway. I sent an e-mail to the company and was sent a reply which said, in part, "It's October. We sell ice cream out of a truck. See you in the Spring, dipshit."

But recently, I learned that the company, Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream, would be selling pints of their product at Whole Foods. So, tonight, my wife and I bundled up the child and hiked down to Columbus Circle, where we secured some Van Leeuwen chocolate, which I have just consumed.

Great googly moogly, people. If you're in town, especially if it's Summer and you can find one of their trucks, you should try this stuff. I've learned over the years to not hype things too heavily, because someone invariably tries it on your recommendation and flings a derisive "Meh" in your face.

Bring it on, says I. This ice cream is goooood.

Diaper Shock

2009-01-03T12:44:00.003-05:00

Now, I don't want to be the kind of parent who talks incessantly about his kid's poop. And I really do make an effort to discuss normal, adult things around grown-ups.

But my son just took the hugest baby-dump I've ever seen. Seriously, the entirety of his diaper--front, back, sides--was covered. It was as if he'd invited three or four other babies in and had them poop in the diaper, too.

This was feces so severe that we had to give him a bath immediately. I'm truly glad that adults don't poop in the same manner. Otherwise, it'd be a much, much messier world.

Ano Nuevo

2009-01-01T21:06:00.004-05:00

Spent New Year's Eve here at home with my wife and baby. Quiet, peaceful and pleasant. Except for that coarse, awful Kathy Griffin informing the nation that she didn't, "...go to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth" on national television.

I'm sorry to see 2008 go. It had its rough spots, but, all in all, it was the best year of my life. So, arrivederci, Y2K + 8. Here's hoping that 2009 continues the trend of not sucking. We've already got a pretty damn good head start.

Light the Corners of My Mind

2008-12-22T21:56:00.003-05:00

The memory's an odd thing. For some reason, tonight I'm flashing back to three years ago. Almost exactly three years, in fact. We were driving to Ohio to spend a couple of days with my family before flying to Seattle to spend time with my wife's family.

My wife had told me, about two weeks earlier, that she was pregnant. We'd been trying for awhile, so the news was pretty much the most exciting thing I'd ever experienced. We were planning on telling my parents and my sister--had, in fact devised the perfect ways to tell each of them.

And I remember we were in the middle of Pennsylvania. We'd just stopped at some Subway somewhere before Milesburg, PA and I was driving while eating a crappy sub. And I looked over at my wife and I listened to the Christmas music we were playing and I thought, "I am perfectly happy right now."

Now, I'd had moments approaching this in the past. Moments where I'd thought about my circumstances and I'd realized that I was utterly content. But there's a difference between contentment and happiness. That moment, with the knowledge of the child on the way and the anticipation of sharing that news with our families, was the happiest I'd ever known up to that point in my life. (Well, neck and neck with looking down the aisle and seeing my wife's father escorting her toward me on our wedding day. That was pretty amazingly happy, too.)

I didn't know, at that point, what lay in store. How truly, truly shitty the next couple of years were going to be. About nineteen months later, I would look around at my life and come to basically the exact opposite conclusion: that I was pretty much as unhappy as I'd ever been.

Which brings us to today. Another Christmas season. I survey things right now and I'm happier than I was on that road in Pennsylvania. Forty-eight hours from now, I'll be seeing my son. It'll be Christmas Eve and I'll be reunited with my wife and our baby and I'll be filled with happiness and contentment that make everything that came before look ill in comparison.

And that's my wish for everyone this holiday season. (I won't get a chance to write again before the big day.) I hope that everybody has a moment to look around. And when you do, I hope what you see makes you truly happy. And if it doesn't, wait awhile. Because it's out there. And it will come to you.

Merry Christmas

Smelly

2008-12-20T23:23:00.003-05:00

The worst thing about the holiday season: fucking perfume/cologne commercials from which the rest of the year is largely, blissfully free.

My big question this year is, why the fuck are they once again showing the Liz Taylor White Diamonds commercial from circa 1988? Seriously, Liz most likely smells like gin puke these days, and who wants that in a bottle?

At least I haven't yet been subjected to the "I want your Bod" travesty.

More Than Meets the I Can't Watch This Shit

2008-12-20T21:32:00.004-05:00

Lonely men are sometimes driven to desperate measures.

There's bupkis going on in the Wack/Joplin (minus Joplin) household. Truly nothing doing. We've got cable, I've got time on my hands. And sometimes a lack of activity plus HBO equals me doing something I'll regret real soon. Like watching Transformers.

Look, I knew going in that it was a Michael Bay movie. I know what that means. But Jesus! What a pile of racoon shit. I'm only ten minutes in and it already makes Armageddon look like goddamn Citizen Kane.

Soldiers armed with big guns and the hoariest cliches from every WWII movie ever made. Jokes that suck the life from your very ears. And then John Voight shows up, so you just know it's going quickly down hill.

I'm scared, people. Truly scared. If I don't post anything after this, you'll know that the shittiest movie of the last decade took my life.

UDPATE: Made it through the first car chase, then couldn't take it anymore. Watched Notting Hill instead. That's right: an old, shitty Julia Roberts movie was more appealing than Transformers. Thanks, Michael Bay!

Alone Again, Naturally

2008-12-17T19:44:00.004-05:00

I have no real excuse.

I simply haven't felt like writing over the past week-plus, I guess. Oh, sure, there was the usual baby stuff to deal with. I mean, when my wife is relatively stuck to the house on her own all day, she generally wants to leave the premises--if only to run errands--when I get home. But there was still plenty of time to write when we got home, I suppose, if I could have forced myself to watch less Jeopardy!

And, yes, my sister-in-law was visiting this past weekend, which meant I had slightly less time to vomit my thoughts through the keyboard. But I managed to find time in there to watch a Young Comedians special circa 1991 (holy shit! Jon Stewart's gotten old!) and I could have used that time to jerk out one fucking Hairshirt Horoscope. But nope!

No excuses. I'm just a lazy fuck.

So what's changed? Good question. Answer: I'm the loneliest man on the planet.

My wife has flown the coop with my kid. They've gone to Seattle so that her parents can, I don't know, actually spend time with their grandson or some such shit. No, I'm glad she did. It's nice for her to get to be with family and it's really important for the Kid to be around his grandparents (witness the previously written-about Thanksgiving journey for more on my commitment to this idea.)

It's just that I've never been good when my wife's away. And now you add in the fact that I haven't seen my kid for around 26 hours and I'm just pathetic. So I'm trying to keep myself busy. I've got a list of twenty things I need to accomplish before I fly out to join them next Wednesday.

I've gotten six of those things done already (none of the really big ones, honey, 'cause, as I said above, I'm a lazy fuck) and time has not dragged on quite so much as it might. It helps, as well, that my wife knows what a whiny douche I am at times like these and she's done here best to send me pictures of the kid every so often instead of, y'know, visiting with her family.

Now, blogging is not on my list. But I figured I'd try to get some of it done, anyway, like, in-between cleaning the bathroom and making sugared cranberries. I'll also probably wash my hands in-between those tasks.

Over the River, Part 2

2008-12-09T18:37:00.002-05:00

The drive from Milesburg to my parents' house was a little easier. Not as easy as it used to be, thanks to someone's repeated need to have me pull over for breastfeeding (*cough*cough*the kid*cough*cough*). But we made it.

And then things were nice. We had a lovely meal, complete with Quorn's fake turkey roast (better than Tofurkey, but not perfect--at least, not how I cooked it). We got to spend time with my family, which is both rare and nice. We got to see my nephew some more. He's such a good little guy. Also, we got to run.

My wife hadn't run since...I don't know, mid-January? So it'd been awhile. We didn't complete a marathon or anything, but it was nice. Worked up a sweat. Ran off at least, let's say, ten calories from the meal. So that was good.

The next day was very pleasant as well. Running a few pleasant errands, more time with the nephew, watching my mom slave like a dog in the kitchen, making too goddamn much food, which is her modus operandus. Our friends Keith and Marcia came over in the afternoon and we got to hang some. They stuck around Friday night, when the house was flooded with family and friends coming over to meet the Kid. People were impressed, because my son's so fucking cool.

The next day started well enough. We lazed about the house. We ran. Then we lazed some more. My wife was keen to get out and see slightly more of the Mahoning County scene than just my parents' house, so we figured we'd drive to the nearest Barnes & Nobel and look at books. My dad had a gift certificate that we'd sent him in, I think, 1998, so he rode along, too.

On the way to B & N, I was feeling overly stuffed. Too many left-overs or something. By the time we reached Boardman--home to the aforementioned book superstore--my stuffedness had progessed to actual discomfort. It then progressed to massive nausea. In fact, I was feeling so sick that I couldn't even drink the delicious Cafe Mocha that they'd custom-made in the wonderful Barnes & Nobel Cafe! No, I just sat there with my son, thinking of the old Robin Wiliams joke, "Hey, here's a little switch: Daddy's gonna throw up on you."

I made it out of the store and about three miles down the road before having to pull over and yak in the bushes of a bank. I'm not huge on banks, so I didn't feel all that bad about leaving their hedge full of fake turkey and real stuffing. I did ruin a perfectly good scarf, wiping the slime off my lips. My dad was kind enough to drive the rest of the way home, where I slunk off to bed and lay in a gross-smelling daze while life carried on without me.

I slept on the couch that night, puke-bucket by my side, in an effort to spare my wife and kid from getting whatever I'd gotten, if it was contagious. (That didn't work. My wife came down with the same goddamn thing not long after we got back.) Then I woke up the next morning and my wife and I split the fucking thirteen hour drive back. Thirteen hours! Darn that breast-feeding!

Anyway, despite the driving and the puking and the driving, I'm thankful my family got to spend more time with my son. And I'm thankful for that son. And for my wife. And for a career that's marginally secure in the current economy. Hope yours went well, too.

Editor's note: Why is this stupid fucking post going up nearly a goddamn month after the holiday it describes? I'm fucking lazy! Tee-hee!

A Slice of Sorrow

2008-12-06T18:58:00.005-05:00

I'm unhappy.

For months, I've been drooling with anticipation--at times, literally--for the opening of a new pizza place a few blocks from here. Harlem, you see, while full of all kinds of really great buildings and culturally significant places and cool little shops, has a dearth of decent pizza places.

Most pizza joints around here are the kind that also have chicken and burgers and whatever else they can scrape together and their pizza is generally lacking. There's Papa John's, which is the same crappy mediocrity it is everywhere in the country. Other than that, you kind of have to go to another neighborhood to find anything decent, and none of those places deliver outside of their small area.

Tonight, then, I was utterly heart-broken when I finally got to order from this newly-opened pie-slinging establishment, only to find that it sucks thirteen flavors of ass. I knew I was about to be disappointed when I picked the box up to leave and discovered that the pizza was not significantly heavier than the box itself. Never a good sign. Another ominous moment came when a kid who saw me exiting the place called after me, "Mister! That pizza's nasty!"

That little jackass was right. Crispy cracker-ish crust. Sickeningly sweet sauce. Mostly, what I tasted were my own tears.

Please, baby Jesus, bring my neighborhood some decent 'za.

Over the River, Part 1

2008-12-02T20:26:00.007-05:00

Boy, those gals on The Facts of Life sure knew what they were talking about, didn't they? You take the good, you take the bad.

We took Das Spencinator to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. The trip has, in the years my wife and I have been doing it, invariably taken about eight hours. No matter what alterations we've tried, no matter when we've left, no matter whether or not we listened to our dogs' plaintive cries to for the love of all that's holy pull over and let them pee, we ended up taking about eight hours to get from here to there.

When we've had to leave after work, we've generally stopped about halfway across Pennsylvania--beautiful, beautiful Pennsylvania--and taken a hotel for the night to spare us the hassle of crashing through a guardrail and flying off a cliff in the Poconos. This time, I had to pick up a rental car Wednesday afternoon--baby + dogs + pies=no fucking way we were fitting in our '92 Civic--so a hotel was definitely in the offing. I made a reservation at our usual stop, the Ramada (nee Holiday Inn) in gorgeous Milesburg, PA.

Getting the car was pretty easy, other than the half-hour holiday eve trip down six blocks of 125th Street. Leaving, however, was a bear. They all tell you you'll have to take a whole lot of shit everywhere when you have kids, but my tiny imagination apparently always low-balled it. 'Cause it took me forever to cram all this shit in the car. Then, when wife, child, dogs and I were just about to pull out, the kid suddenly needed to eat. And so we sat. 'Cause society tends to frown on people who breastfeed babies while tooling down the highway. Cowards.

So, while we only did the first five hours of the drive and not the whole eight, leaving at 8 PM meant that we were utterly goddamn exhausted by the time we limped into Milesburg. On the way, I resorted to drinking my old, beloved friend Diet Mountain Dew, which helped. At my wife's suggestion, I also listened to something to keep my brain active, specifically the Sunday Puzzler from NPR's Weekend Edition. Since we didn't veer into oncoming traffic, I deemed the caffeine-Will Shortz combo a winner.

I got us checked in to the glamorous Milesburg Ramada and promptly passed out.

Tomorrow: Food! Family! Fomit!

Baby Crack

2008-11-25T20:23:00.003-05:00

We've been having the debate here, which changes constantly, about when/if to use the pacifier. You read stuff about how it shortens the length of time a child will breastfeed. You read about how you should really try to find out what the baby wants instead of just quieting the kid down. You read so many conflicting things that it's difficult to know if you're ruining your child when you shove the binky in.

It's an interesting effect that the pacifier has. It reminds me of bad movies where a thuggish guy sneaks up on the lady from behind and, with his leather-glove-clad hand, holds a rag soaked in ether over her face. You stick the pacifier in the baby's mouth and he struggles for a moment. He keeps his mouth wide open in defiance, shouting the whole time. Then, if you hold it in there like the thug and his glove, the kid gives in and starts working the binky in a carbon copy of Maggie Simpson.

And you have to wonder whether something that makes a parent's life so much easier (or at least less shriek-filled) can possibly be good for the kid.

In the end, we're deferring to our pediatrician, who dismissed cries of boob-doom and said that we should use the pacifier as needed. Just not all the goddamn time.

You Got Some Splainin' to Do

2008-11-24T06:39:00.003-05:00

This morning at a little after four, my life turned briefly into an I Love Lucy scene.

I woke up to hear my son fussing in the co-sleeper. Figuring that I was being all gallant and giving my wife some extra sleep, I scooped him up before it turned into full-blown crying. I bounced and shushed him for a minute or so and, when that was utterly ineffective, I took him to the changing table.

The diaper beneath his pajamas had a small squirt of poop in it, but not enough to really make him uncomfortable. Not one to leave even a little bit of poop--I'm so responsible--I took the quasi-soiled diaper off and gave Spencer's bottom a quick going-over with the wipe.

As I did this, he crapped again. I wiped it off of the changing pad and folded the pad over to keep the poop off my child. Who pooped again. I cleaned that off. Then there was some slightly-wet farting. As fast as the stuff came out, I endeavored to wipe it off my son's ass. Finally, the butt eruptions ceased and I felt safe enough to move the new diaper into place.

At which point he let fly one more squirt. Scratch one clean diaper.

He's sleeping now. All that pooping must be exhausting.

Remind You of Anyone?

2008-11-20T20:37:00.004-05:00

Seriously, these guys put the "heart" in "heart-warming." They're truly caring, loving human beings, overflowing with the milk of human kindness and packed full of gooey, sticky altruism. "Hey, we'll give you an extra month before we boot you out on your ass."

Thanks for caring, Fannie Mae!

Don't Shiver Me Timbers

2008-11-18T21:35:00.004-05:00

All I've got to say to this is: really? Pirates?

Aren't we in the 21st goddamn century? And we're still dealing with motherfucking pirates? Don't these yahoos realize what a stupid cliche the whole pirate thing is?

What's worse is, these Somali fucks aren't even doing it right. You seeing any parrots in all this news coverage? I'm not.

Fucking pirates.

Letter to My Son #4

2008-11-18T16:06:00.004-05:00

Dear Kid,

So, today is your one-month birthday. Thirty-one days ago, little man, you were born. You are utterly delightful.

You're a little calmer. Or maybe you mom and I have gotten a little better at calming you down--mostly your mom. Nearly entirely your mom.

This was a big weekend for both of us. Three out of your four grandparents were in town. In fact, your Grandpa Wack met you for the first time. He was duly impressed. Your cousin, Riley, came, too, although your mom and I hardly recognized him, as he's grown a whole lot since April.

We went to MoMA, where you saw your first Miro. And where I used my first public changing table. What a good time we had there. I don't know how anyone could have more fun in a public restroom.

A little while later, the whole lot of us visited the only Starbuck's in the city that doesn't have a changing table in their restroom...and so another first: I changed you on a wooden chair as a crowd of people slurped frothy coffee drinks.

And now you've turned a month old. As my dear old grandfather used to say, "Holy goddamn shit!" Seeing your cousin really hammered home how quickly all this changes. First you'll start eating something other than your mom's milk. Then your poop will start to smell. Then you'll be off to college to earn a degree that won't get you a decent job.

It's gonna be one giant blur of outgrown clothes and music I don't like and it's going to pass by me in the blink of a goddamn eye. Lyrics from Fiddler on the Roof suddenly have meaning in my life. Ain't that a bitch?

The Future of Hairshirt?

2008-11-17T20:10:00.003-05:00

Weird. Turns out, this whole baby thing can make other things seem like much less of a priority. Things like keeping current on comic books. Things like sleep. Things like blogging.

Also contributing to my silence the last couple of weeks is the strange sense of un-bitterness I've felt since the election. How am I supposed to help people with their misery when I'm feeling so fucking Mary Poppinsish?

I'm considering changing the name of the site from Hairshirt to Fluffy Terry Cloth Robe and writing about nothing but bunnies and pretty clouds from here on out.

Thank God my students still tell me to fuck off or I'd be an Osmond.

Anticipation

2008-11-05T22:11:00.003-05:00

Can you feel it, America? It's coming, and soon. Change. You can just kind of tell that it's going to be different this time. This is not the same old status quo.

It's been a long time coming, too. It feels like we've been wondering lost forever. That's almost over, though. Our long national nightmare is, at last, coming to an end.

I don't know when I've been this excited, this optimistic. There's something beautiful on the horizon.

I can't tell you how much it means to me that Top Chef is set in New York this time. Y'know? I'm so grateful that it's back. It's going to restore our country's hope, I think. Don't you?

Totally Called It

2008-11-04T23:08:00.003-05:00

Over four years ago, I posted the following:

Whither Cynicism?
There's a story with which I'm sure most of you are familiar. It's about how a young guitar player named Robert Johnson met the Devil at a crossroads. (Ralph Macchio may have been there, too. This is open for debate.) According to the story, Johnson sold his soul to the Devil and, in return, received the ability to play the guitar like nobody else on earth. From that day forward, audiences would sit spellbound as Johnson made music the likes of which had never been heard.

After the second night of the Democratic National Convention, I'm more convinced than ever that the story is true, and that a young politician named Barack Obama has made a similar deal.

How else to explain the extraordinary impact this man made with his first nationally televised speech before he's even been elected to a national office?

Maybe it has to do with the politicians who spoke before him.

First, there was Ted Kennedy, looking for all the world like Mr. Toad from Wind in the Willows, who gave a speech that made me wish he'd been drunker, because then he'd have at least been entertainingly pathetic instead of just long-winded.

Then we had Dick Gephardt, whose political career is now as faded and ethereal as his eyebrows. It took me halfway through his speech to remember that he even ran for president this year.

Following Gephardt, we had Tom Daschle, who shared the typical stories about how he loves to keep in touch with his South Dakota constituents. "I recall a conversation I had with a prostitute in Sioux Falls who took my dick out of her mouth long enough to ask, 'Senator, how am I going to afford health insurance if the Republicans take away my student loans?'"

After that came Janet Napolitano, the governor of Arizona, who is apparently the butcher younger sister of Billie Jean King.

Next there was Howard Dean, desperately trying to solicit that last tiny bit of adulation from the crowd with applause lines from eight months ago. "The democratic wing of the party! Haha...You know, 'cause, 'cause I'm liberal? Is this thing on?" I'm thinking that, after he lost in the primaries, party officials made him remove his testicles and put them in mini-storage. Either that or they had him on some kind of Super-Valium.

Then came the keynote speech. And I was awed. Let me just say that I'd heard the hype beforehand and was prepared to dislike Obama on principle. But when he was speaking, I literally couldn't help but be impressed. He's a fantastic, Clintonian speaker. He actually earned each five second pause for applause. Except for the bits he was obliged to throw in shoving daisies up Kerry's ass, he truly sounded like he has convictions. Convictions! Remember those?

I found myself, totally and without regret, buying into the hype and thinking, "This guy is going to be president someday." And so did the wonks covering the convention, at least those on PBS, who could be heard talking about "the birth of a new political star." This guy is the Tiger Woods of government! And I love it.

The thing is, though, this is all based on one goddamn speech. I have no idea what this guy stands for. For all I know, he could be against stem cell research and for the Star Wars missile defense system. He might be in favor of legalizing public whippings and regulating the amount of syrup I can pour on my flapjacks. But here I am, automatically giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Which is how I know. I know that this guy has made some sort of deal with the Devil. Because my cynicism is powerful mojo. It would take a genuine, Real Deal politician to get past that. And they don't make those anymore. Do they?

Thank fucking god.

Please, Please, Please

2008-11-04T06:14:00.002-05:00

I've lived here for a long while now. I live right across the street from the school where I vote and, walking my dogs past it this morning, I was delighted to see--for the first time since I've lived here--a long-ass line before the polls open.

Oh, mercy.

Lord, Hear Our Prayer

2008-11-03T23:16:00.003-05:00

A quick election-eve prayer:

Please, Jesus, don't let Americans fuck this up again. Or I'll puke non-stop for a goddamn year or something. Seriously, I won't be able to stop vomiting at the knowledge that Sarah Palin is a weak-ass old heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

Amen.

Watch Your Mouth

2008-11-02T19:49:00.002-05:00

So, yesterday, I made a giant mistake. When asked about how our son was doing at night, I actually said, "Well, he's been doing much better the last couple of nights." (nights...nights...nights)

Naturally, last night was our worst yet. Very cranky. Up frequently. Zero sleep.

If I didn't think my kid is the greatest goddamn thing ever, nights like that would piss me off.

(Not) At the Movies

2008-11-01T12:59:00.004-04:00

Bit of a revelation this week.

I come home from work yesterday and pick up our mail from the box. As it's Friday, the new Entertainment Weekly is in there and, wouldn't you know it, it's the Holiday Movie Preview. (Which is not nearly as cool as the Summer or Fall previews, but whatever.)

Anyway, I'm looking at Daniel Craig on the cover and trying to decide if I want to go see the new Bond movie when it all of a sudden hits me: It doesn't matter if I want to see it or not. We've got a new baby, so we're not going to get out to see a movie 'til fucking Memorial Day, man.

I mean, it's not like my wife and I have ever been on-the-town scenesters or anything, but we have been known to get our movie on. It's been a little while since there was anything out there I really wanted to see, but now we've got Zack & Miri Make a Porno coming out and then it's Oscar-bait season and we're going to see none of them. Hell, I may have to start buying pirated movies on the subway just to keep up.

Truly, this is the dark side of parenting.

Rebuttal

2008-10-30T02:30:00.003-04:00

And now I take it all back, as I just had the most entertaining five minutes I've spent in years, sitting with my kid on my lap, watching his face as he pooped his diapers. Holy God, it was beautiful.

The Spawn

2008-10-30T01:05:00.004-04:00

So I've re-read my previous baby entries and I've realized they sound a trifle Mary Poppins. In the interest of full disclosure, then, I should say:

Even though I love my son with all my heart, these first couple of weeks have not been without moments that make me question my suitability as a human being, much less as a parent. The Kid is not an absolute perfect silent angel. In fact, he's had some ear-splitting crying spells that have made me wonder if he is, in fact, a demon.

Like tonight, when my poor wife, who's had to deal with the bulk of the baby's colicky fits, wakes me up and tells me that she's falling asleep even as she's trying to rock the baby, and that she needs me to take a shift. And, since apparently my default setting when awakened out of a R.E.M. cycle is utter dickishness, I find myself inexplicably angry at my wife and resentful of my poor little son.

This is, truly, one of the most effective tools at promoting self-loathing I've ever come across. Realizing that you're capable of--even for a moment--hating your kid? Why, I've never felt so positively Hitlerian.

Having said all this, I'd like to go on record that I've read the books and I know that I'm not alone in having these moments, and I'd ask that people refrain from leaving any sort of "Don't worry so much" or "This rough patch won't last that long" comments and please just let me wallow in this for a bit. In about an hour, I'll be back to focusing on how utterly adorable my kid is and all will be right with the world.

He is awfully goddamn cute.

Heroes...and Why It Sucks Balls

2008-10-28T17:33:00.003-04:00

I'm a giant geek. That's not news to anyone.

I'm a drooling fan-boy who's been reading comics since the fifth grade and shows no signs of slowing down. Which means that I love super-heroes. I do, I confess. Batman, Superman, Flash, Green Lantern. I'll gladly spend an entire weekend reading about them. Sadly.

Because of my super-love, I was instantly hooked on the first season of Heroes. Loved it. Loved every second of it, even if the season finale was actually an utter letdown.

The second season, as all right-minded people agree, blew like a toothless hooker. They introduced lame ass characters (Eye-Goop Girl and her brother, Lame Boy) and put their existing characters in moronic situations (Mohinder and Parkman as My Two Dads?). I chalked it up to a nasty sophomore slump and limped through to the last few episodes, which picked up somewhat.

Which brings us to...now.

Great googly moogly, this show sucks. Sylar is a hero? Mohinder is Jeff Goldblum in The Fly? There's another one of those fucking Ali Larter sisters? Jesus weeping Christ, people. We've got more poorly-used time travel. We've got increasingly unfunny use of Hiro and Ando. We've got characters switching sides more frequently than in a game of Red Rover.

Watching last night's crapfest, in which the Columbian eye-goop chick basically forgives Mohinder for pasting her to a wall with his super-vomit, I was struck by a notion: they're no longer using real writers. Seriously, watch next week and see. I'm convinced they've gotten rid of their dues-paying members of WGA and are, instead, giving a handful of action figures to a few of the producers' kids. The kids play with the action figures, the producers tape it and transcribe it directly to that week's script.

Think about it: "Okay, now you're my brother!" "And, and now I've got you prisoner." "Nuh-uh, I'm escaping." "Well now I've got your powers."

They've stopped ripping off classic comic book plots and started ripping off ten-year-olds' home-made manga.

Count me out. Alert me if they introduce a character who's power is to write intelligent scripts.

Jesus Fucking Christ, Are Skinheads Stupid

2008-10-27T19:45:00.004-04:00

So this "plot" to kill Barack Obama...

Coupla dipshits talking big and pulling their puds over their "master scheme" and the media just goes right along and plays it up like they're the second coming of Al Quaeda. These are two sad, sad little morons who couldn't successfully kill a roach, but now they're all over the TV. Have you read what their "plan" consists of?

Wow, are these guys pathetic. It sounds a lot like my uncle Arnie's "plan" to make a million dollars.

"This is what I'm gonna do, see. I got an idea for this invention which lets you keep a can of beer cold in your truck for up to ten hours without using ice. Without ice, ya get me? So there's this guy at the Sud Bucket who told me he knows a fella in the Patent Office. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut the guy from the Sud Bucket in for forty percent of the operation and we're gonna patent this motherfucker and we're gonna sell it to the guys at Ronco or Home Shopping or one of those and we're gonna get rich. Whoa, hang on. 'Scuse me, li'l buddy. I think that last Miller High Life mighta stirred something up in my gut, 'cause it sure does feel like I'm about to yak."

Look, I fear as much as the next guy that some crazy redneck fuckrag is going to take out the very man who's about to lead our country through one of the biggest crises we've faced. I just don't think it's going to be a couple of douchenuggets like these.

Bard, Baby, Bard

2008-10-24T15:13:00.006-04:00

I promise that, after this first week is over, I'll start writing about shit other than my son, but for the time being, as we've spent 99% of our time since Monday here in the apartment, we've been eating, drinking and breathing nothing but baby. It's been All-Kid, All the Time.

Isn't it odd that every parent feels the same way about their kid? (There may be a few assholes who are indifferent to their off-spring, but I don't want to meet them.) We all think that they're the greatest thing since macaroni met cheese.

I was trying to think of a way to express the way I feel about my kid. I was playing with some Hamlet finger puppets when it hit me. Now, you've got to remove the context from this quote, as, in the play, it's attributed to the murdered King Hamlet in reference to Gertrude, his wife. Prince Hamlet, talking about how his dad felt about his mom, says that his dad loved her so much, "...[t]hat he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly."

Now, other than my illiteracy at not knowing what the hell "beteem" means, that about sums up how I feel about the Kid. So, when I'm up at 3:30 in the morning, with this kid red-faced and wailing at me, either because he's got a gas bubble lodged somewhere painful or because he just dreamed he was going through the birth canal again, my fatigue is trumped by my wish that I could just wave a wand and make it all better.

I explained all this to him last night and he seemed to get it.

Lesson Learned

2008-10-23T21:15:00.004-04:00

Another important milestone in the life of a father.

Today, I made my first panicky, moronic call to the pediatrician. Happens in the life of every first-time parent, I'm sure, but it doesn't make me feel any less like a dipshit.

Quite simply, it occurred to me today that, while I've changed a whole mess of poopy diapers, I'd only changed one which you could call urine-soaked. Also, I've only ever been hit by one stream of pee during a changing.

So I went to the books. And the books say that there might be a delay before your child starts peeing, that delay should not be terribly long and, if your kid hasn't started peeing by the fourth day (we're on Day 5) you should call your doctor immediately.

So I did. After which my mother-in-law pointed out that disposable diapers are incredibly absorbent these days that it might be hard to tell if there's pee in there. This was confirmed by my very patient doctor, who told me that it's a lot better to check the weight of the diaper, as urine-less diapers tend to be very light.

So, bottom line: pee-filled diapers are heavy and I'm an idiot. Good to know.

Paranoia Will Destroy Ya

2008-10-22T19:26:00.002-04:00

So, apparently, there's this whole other aspect of new parenthood, aside from the unbridled joy and the mind-boggling fatigue. (And those two in and of themselves are more than enough to occupy one's time.)

What I haven't heard mentioned much is the sudden, semi-constant, horrific fear that something is wrong with your kid. There are noises and behaviors that you come to fairly quickly identify as indications of hunger and/or feces. But there are others that are harder to interpret. And when you're presented with one of those that doesn't go away quickly enough, your mind starts going to all kinds of awful places. "Holy shit! He's kind of shaking in a weird way! Start the car, we're going to the emergency room!"

We were taking him to his first pediatrician visit yesterday and we were trying out our carrier for the first time. He fit in it nicely and was sitting snugly right up against my chest, but I couldn't really see him breathing. So of course I start freaking out that he's too snug, too tight against my chest and he's suffocating. Happily, I can report that he was fine. In fact, he was uber-comfy.

On the way home, I was sitting on the bus next to the kind of old lady you see all the time in New York. Loud, not entirely clean-looking, possibly drunk. She asked how old he was and congratulated us on him. Meanwhile, I was just praying she didn't get her old, drunk germs on my brand new baby.

I'm assuming this goes away after awhile and I won't actually spend the first few months of our son's life calling the pediatrician every four or five hours in a pan beccuse he farted in a way I've never heard. Otherwise, this is going to be a long, long parenthood.

Non-Baby Bits

2008-10-21T08:26:00.003-04:00

Even with an all-night poop-cleaning session going on in the Hairshirt household, I'm still managing to keep abreast of goings-on in the outer world. For instance, let's talk about a few things I heard on our local NPR station this morning:

The Takeaway (still the lamest NPR show this side of the disastrous 1996 experiment, Carl Castle's Reggae Hour) featured an interview with a man they described as Pakistan's "former permanent amabassador to the U.N." Call me crazy, but if he was the permanent amabassador, shouldn't he still be doing the job? Permanent is permanent, people. He should still be sitting in General Assembly meetings, even after he's a moldering corpse. Otherwise, they should have called him "Ambassador for the Time Being, I Guess, to the U.N."
The local news had a short piece on one business that's booming, despite the economic crisis: apple sales. They portrayed it as good, kind of cute news. I see it as a horrific omen of lingering economic disaster. Think for a minute, here. Movies about the '30s. Movies about the impoverished class in pre-revolutionary France. What's the one thing they always show? Someone on the street trying to make a living selling apples to other poor people. We should not celebrate the apple-salesmen, we should fear them.
One NPR headline that caught my attention was yet another uptick in the polls for Barack Obama, with some giving credit for the bump to the endorsement by Colin Powell. I loved what Powell said, especially the bit about the correct response to accusations that Obama's a Muslim being, "So what if he was?" Man, wouldn't Colin Powell make a great Secretary of State? Oh, wait.

Now, I'm a Dad

2008-10-20T21:53:00.002-04:00

It had to happen. And now it has.

I faced down my first poopy-diaper. And I fucking won, people. That diaper full of tarry crap will think twice before it darkens our door again.

I think I may be so sleep-deprived that I'm hallucinating. For instance, I'm pretty sure that Mahatma Ghandi is floating over our computer now, drinking a milkshake. So that's worrisome.

Onward, my friends! Into the unknown!

Spencernatural

2008-10-20T13:36:00.003-04:00

Kind of an odd incident at the hospital last night. It was very late--this was around 1:00 in the morning--and the new mother sharing the room with my wife was trying to go to sleep, so we turned off the lights on my wife's side of the room; thought we'd be as considerate as possible.

So we pulled the blinds and we turned off the light above the bed...and the room was still completely brightly lit. We were baffled. No lightbulbs going, no candles burning and yet I could read the small print on an insurance form.

Eventually, we figured out--and this was quite a shock to us both--that the sun shines out our son's ass. Who knew?

All Hail Thee, Hairshirt, Jr.

2008-10-18T12:40:00.004-04:00

Yes, yes. You must now, all of you within reading distance of this blog, now and forever, swear your undying devotion to that greatest of all living beings in this or any other universe, my brand new son, the Kid. He is the Alpha and the Omega. Kneel before him, unworthy hordes.

Pimply Irresistable

2008-10-17T04:34:00.002-04:00

I hate my body. I hate my mind, too, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.

What I'm hating about my body right is the fact that I'm now thirty-eight years old and I still get acne. Wasn't that supposed to end a long, long time ago? Wasn't that why I let that dickhead dermatologist pump me full of that fun, fun drug, Accutane?

Alas, I'm still prone to heinous skin-bumps.

Like the one currently sitting beside my nose. Now, this is not a normal, pop-it-and-it-goes-away zit. This is a deep-embedded cluster. It makes for a giant red bump. One that stays and stays and stays.

What this means is, from here to the end of time, pictures of me with my newborn son--I'm going to go ahead and guess that he'll be born sometime in the not-too-distant future--will feature the aforementioned disgusting, ugly zit cluster. Great. My beautiful glowing wife, our adorable little child and me with my pizza-face. Huzzah.

Baby Come [Out], You Can Blame It All on Me

2008-10-15T06:22:00.003-04:00

So at this point, we're thinking of changing tactics. We're thinking we might need to offer the baby a signing bonus to get him out of my wife. This evening, I'm going to wave a blank check in front of her belly and tell him to name his price.

Seriously, the last four days have seemed longer than the entire first forty weeks. I'm beginning to think the kid just doesn't like us.

*sigh*

My wife keeps telling me that I just need to shift my thinking and just pretend that the due date is a week and a half from now, keep myself from feeling so anxious to get this show on the road. Yeah, that's not working.

My in-laws are in town now. They flew all the way from Seattle, arranged a 10-day hotel booking so they could help us out with the kid. It'd be a real shame if they flew back without meeting him. Hey! Maybe that's the way to go about this. Maybe I should try a little intra-uterine guilt tripping.

Utterly Unnecessary Self-Justification

2008-10-13T08:59:00.004-04:00

Lately, a lot of my reading has consisted of books I checked out of the library. This is good for a number of reasons, among which are that, in times of economic uncertainty, it makes less and less sense to drop $24.95 on the new Nick Hornby novel--an example I use not because I'm under the mistaken impression that Hornby has a new book out (he doesn't) but because he's an author whose work I generally like but who has written a few books for which I've regretted paying full price--instead of putting that money toward, say, food. There's also the reason that, if you buy a book, you are basically contractually obligated to finish it. You're doubly moronic if you not only throw money away on a lame book, but then don't even have the guts to get all the way through it. (Few things have tormented me like the copy of The Autobiography of Santa Claus, which sat on a shelf mocking me for two years. Jesus, what a chunk of shit.)

Checking out a book from the library has allowed me the freedom to not finish a book if I can't stand it. For instance, it was a real slog trying to make myself take interest in A Confederacy of Dunces. I tried. It's a "classsic", after all. But I just didn't care for it.

I've brought the same completist attitude toward my television viewing. If I started out liking something enough to tune in, I've often just kept it on the DVR and choked down episodes I didn't actually like. It's even worse if it's a show that I know I'm supposed to like.

Which brings me to Mad Men.

Now, I started watching this show last season, not because of the critical acclaim, but because the advertising campaign made it look so cool. And it's a good show. It's soapy, but not hideously. It's got all kinds of nifty period details. It's got some solid acting.

But it's also got a lead character who repeatedly cheats on his wife. I can't abide that. I don't know why, precisely, but I've always had a hard time watching movies or TV shows with cheating characters. It just bugs me. My wife dragged me to watch Unfaithful a few years back and it was torturous. It's pretty simple, folks, if you're that unhappy in your marriage, you leave. Otherwise, you keep it in your fucking pants. I just lose all sympathy for a character when they cheat.

So the lead character in Mad Men, who is an interesting, complex character, well-played by a guy who was nominated for an Emmy for the part, is a philanderer and it ruins it for me. I'm so bugged by it that the entire season has been sitting in my DVR queue, unwatched.

I've finally made the decision that I'm just gonna erase them. Good TV or not, it's not like I'm paying for it, so why should I feel like I have no choice but to watch? Fuck it. I'm gonna watch a bunch of Laverne & Shirley re-runs instead.

Baby Update

2008-10-12T12:13:00.002-04:00

No baby yet. However, we have made a decision about the name. Given where we are in this process, we've decided to call our son Godot.

That is all.

Farewell, My Lunchly: A Jose Amador Mystery

2008-10-11T06:54:00.003-04:00

Chapter One:

Noon. A fall day, brisk like underwear fresh from the salad crisper. Jose sat at his desk and looked out the window at the guy crapping in the alley across the street. This was the world he lived in. One day, you're having tea and scones that your butler serves on a silver tray with doilies; the next day, you're wiping your ass with a stock certificate you found in the trash.

Jose took another bite of his sandwich and washed it down with bourbon. The bourbon was like a three-dollar hooker: it was cheap and toothless, but it did its job. The sandwich was iffier. Stale bread. A hunk of aging tomato. Two mayonnaise packets he'd found in a drawer he hadn't opened since he moved in. Hard times.

Times like these, a man could get desperate. He could start thinking crazy thoughts. Thoughts like, "Look at me! I'm cra-a-a-zy!"

Jose forced another bite of the sandwich down his throat. It went down like a glue-covered ass on a sliding board. It took two swigs of bourbon to dislodge it.

The office door swung open and there she stood. She was a tall dame, with legs and a torso, just the way Jose liked them. Her hair covered her head and her lips looked like they could form words. As she walked toward him, she didn't have a noticeable limp. She was his type all right. And that usually meant danger.

Jose wiped some mayo off his chin. "Pardon the sandwich, doll-face. Normally, I go to the Yacht Club for lunch, but I seem to have misplaced my membership card."

The dame sat down. "Just like a broad," Jose thought. She took off her hat and fixed Jose with a look like one of those velvet paintings of the kids with the big eyes. Or maybe dogs playing poker. Jose wasn't an art critic.

"I need your help, Mr. Amador," she said. He'd been right about her lips.

Jose refilled his glass with bourbon. "You're lucky, sweetheart. My help just happens to be for sale." He'd come up with that line two months ago and this had been his first chance to use it. "I get twenty-five dollars a day, plus expenses."

The dame's eyes fell, like a Twinkie dropped off a roof. "I'm afraid I don't have any money, Mr. Amador. You see, I invested my life savings in a donut farm."

Jose knew this story. It didn't have a happy ending and its character development was spotty. "I'm sorry to hear it, baby. I'm not going to be able to help you." Jose didn't work for free. Not since he got burned by a bunch of orphans with polio.

A single tear raced down the dame's cheek, like a slinky descending a staircase, only wetter. "I'm desperate, Mr. Amador. Would you be willing to accept payment in vaginal intercourse?"

Jose was about to tell the dame that sex was as useless in his office as a Discover card, when all of a sudden, the mayonnaise from his sandwich decided to make an escape attempt from his digestive system. His stomach lurched like a nun on a bender.

The dame saw that something was wrong. "Mr. Amador? Are you okay?"

Jose fought it. He fought like the National Guard on Mississippi River sand-bagging duty, but the tide of vomit was too strong. His sandwich and the booze it had been swimming in burst out of his mouth and landed in a warm splatter on the dame's chest.

She stared at him in numb horror as he picked a chunk of tomato out of his teeth. "You just got lucky, sweetheart. I don't normally take charity cases, but I can't turn down a lady covered in my own puke. Tell me your story."

Looking back on it later, Jose would come to regret accepting the Case of the Regurgitation-Covered Client.

Happy Birthday, Beigey!

Letter to My Son #2

2008-10-10T20:51:00.003-04:00

Dear baby,

So you're still not here, little guy. Today is your due date, but you seem to be having a good time in Mommy's uterus, because you haven't come out yet. No worries. We know you'll emerge when you're ready and we'll be happy whenever that is.

One thing, though. Mommy's a little concerned that you might come out on Monday. Normally, going into labor on a Monday wouldn't phase Mommy at all, but this coming Monday is Daddy's birthday and Mommy is of the opinion that little boys really need their own birthday.

See, I had been thinking it would be kind of cool to share a birthday, but I understand where Mommy's coming with this. I wouldn't want to deprive you of the joy of having your very own special day.

I want you to understand, then, that--if you did happen to be born on Monday--October 13th will be your special day. See, I've had thirty-seven birthdays. That's a lot. I don't really need any more, to be honest. I'm not that big a fan of cake.

Additionally, I'm heading toward the age where people start giving you "over the hill" gag gifts which they mistakenly believe are funny. Y'know, I get why people would want to make fun of someone's advancing age, mining humor out of our inability to deal with our own mortality. I get that. I just don't think that mylar balloons with the Grim Reaper holding a cake are necessarily the height of wit.

Anyway, whenever you're born, it's going to be relatively close to my birthday. And people are going to be tempted to bring cards for me to your birthday party to save time. Rest assured, tiny son, I will slap the card out of their hand and punch them in the sternum and tell them that this party is all about you.

In fact, pretty much everything your mom and I do over the next eighteen years or so will be all about you. Now get your ass out here so your mommy and I can start with the hugs and such. (And Mommy would probably be less worried about your future happiness if you could come on a day other than Monday.)

Love,
Daddy