Whatcha Doin'?

While I was writing the previous post, Marty came over and sat down and wanted to know what I was doing. "What's a sitcom?," he said, looking at my computer screen.

My explanation tellingly had to involve "iCarly" because Marty really doesn't watch network television. He also doesn't watch reruns. Never mind that when I was his age, I not only could quote whole episodes of "The Brady Bunch," but also "The Partridge Family," "The Monkees," "The Munsters," "The Addams Family," "McHale's Navy," "Hogan's Heros," "Bewitched," "I Dream of Jeanie," and probably another 10 shows that I'm not even thinking of.

"Why are you calling it My Life as a Sitcom?," he asked.

"Well, I used to live in Los Angeles, some of my best friends wrote for sitcoms, and now our life is kind of like a lot of the stuff that they used to write," I explained.

"Wait a second," Marty said. "Is this a blog?"

When I admitted that it was, Marty ran off yelling, "Mom! Dad's blogging!"

He eventually came back and actually read what was written of the post at that point. Oddly, what bothered him was that I had left out some small details. He was unfazed though by the fact that his name is changed in the blog, which is what I actually expected to be questioned on. In retrospect, though, he's written plenty of stories on his own, so changing someone's name for story purposes didn't really bother him. Me leaving out exactly how he had asked his mother to speak to his little brother, though, was apparenlty annoying.

It wasn't stated, but I now have to start checking the internet history on the computer, just to make sure that Marty doesn't decide to do some blogging of his own.

Car Trip

Yesterday, I had to drive to the Chicago suburbs to look at some equipment that a theater undergoing a renovation was selling off. At the last minute, I decided to ask Marty if he wanted to come with me.

10 hours non-stop with my 8-year-old son.

My first clue about what the journey would be was when we were first getting on the Indiana turnpike and Marty noted that the choices were Ohio or Chicago as we came out of the toll booth. A couple of miles down the road, he mentioned that it was good that we had chosen the Chicago ramp. "If we went to Ohio, we'd have to come all the way back through Indiana to get to Chicago."

A few minutes later, after he had already gotten tired of playing Zombie Duck Hunt on his iPod, I got this..."I don't understand the theories of football."

For the record, I only got about two questions into trying to find out what he didn't understand before just giving up (his answers amounted to "everything").

Then, I got the first joke of the day. "What kind of food does the Easter Bunny eat at the movies?," I was asked. "Hop corn."

At a rest stop, after he noticed some Chicago Cubs merchandise -- which he's designated as his favorite sports team for no real reason -- he also noticed the White Sox stuff next to it. "Who are the White Sox?," he asked. "They're a sports team," I said. "Yeah, but what do they play...football? Soccer?," he said. I explained that they were a baseball team and that Chicago actually has two professional baseball teams. "Why?," he asked. "Do they get to play if the Cubs get sick or something?"

A little while later, he noted another group of road signs. "We can either go to Chicago or Des Moines," he said. I told him that we most definitely weren't going to Des Moines. When he wanted to know why, I had to tell him that I was not going to Iowa and that I didn't really like the Hawkeye state. When pressed to admit why, I told the story of having a tire going flat in Iowa and being stuck for several hours trying to find any place that had an air hose that wasn't frozen.

That led to a conversation about Marty's new favorite subject -- U.S. states. He asked if he had ever been in West Virginia before and I had to tell him that while he's been close to the WV border, he never actually went into the state. When he said that he wanted to rectify that, again I was busted for my lack of enthusiasm. Turns out that I don't really care about going back to a lot of states. (He was later disappointed when his requests to go to St. Louis and/or Wisconsin were denied.)

I told Marty that mostly West Virginia was just hills and mountains. Turns out that actually appealed to him. He told me that was also why he wanted to go to Colorado. I explained that there was a significant difference between the Appalachians and the Rockies. I've been scared a couple of times driving in the Appalachians, but I've never thought that I was going to die, like I have driving down from the Rockies.

That made Marty laugh hysterically. "I don't know why I'm laughing about my dad thinking that he was going to die," he said, between guffaws. I could've let it go, but being his father, I felt the need to teach him one of the rules of comedy...tradgedy plus time equals funny. "So, it can be funny," I said. "Because nothing actually happened to me. I didn't die." "Well, of course, you didn't die," he said. "If you had, then there wouldn't be anyone driving the van right now."

At the rest stop, Marty had bought an Invisible Ink book based on "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" He was using his pen to reveal the answers and then asking me the questions. When I started getting too many right, he switched and started giving me the answers and made me guess the questions. He hit a question about mythology...a word that he surprisingly didn't know. When he asked for an explanation, I did so...branching out to explaining the mythologies of the Greek, Roman and Norse gods. To demonstrate the similarities between the gods, I brought up that there have been episodes of Spongebob Squarepants where they refer to Triton and others where they refer to Posiedon. When I finished, he said, "I didn't understand a single thing you just said because I was busy thinking about how much I love lemonade, but heard something about Spongebob. I heard that part since I like Spongebob so much."

I suppose that I should've asked if he loved Spongebob as much as lemonade.

He loved lemonade so much that when we finally arrived at the location of the theater sale, he ended up having to use the restroom three times in a half-hour period.

After we had first looked at the equipment on sale, I needed to think about what I was willing to buy for my community theater. So, Marty and I went to have lunch at a restaurant called The Sugar Bowl. Marty frequently dislikes restaurants, but how could he turn down one that had sugar right there in the title?

As I was looking things up on my phone, Marty was busy running through an idea for a Spongebob episode that involved Patrick and Spongebob peeing on everything. Conversely, the Greek family sitting behind us were discussing whether Columbia or Boston College offered a better Masters program. I was only half paying attention to anything, so I was hearing things like, "So, then they start peeing on a police officer..." "I totally love the neighborhood around Columbia..." "And, then just as they're about to pee on a jellyfish..." "I hate Boston..."

After we were done with our meal, our waitress -- who was actually part of the family behind us -- came to the table with our bill. "I was born in California," Marty announced. "Really," she said. "What part?" "Los Angeles." "LA, huh?," she said, "Cool." "I was born the day before Halloween," he added. "I was born the day after Halloween," she said. "No, I said the day before," Marty insisted. "I got that," she assured him. "You were born October 30th, I was born on November 1st. It's all good." That seemed to satisfy him, but...

He repeated his proclomations with the girl at the cash register -- who I'm pretty sure was the cousin of our waitress -- adding, "I was born the day before Halloween, not the day after like her."

Actually, that was a pretty good conversation with a stranger for him.

After I bored him by going back to the theater and buying a few lights and cables...and annoyed him by not allowing him to just go anywhere he wanted in the mostly empty theater...Marty finally wanted to know what fun Chicago thing we were going to do.

We decided to take a drive by Lake Michigan, since Marty didn't see the point of going to Chicago if you're not going to see the lake. As we got close, I got off Lake Shore Drive and drove by Lincoln Park Zoo. After asking Marty if he wanted to stop and take a quick walk through the zoo, I said that I was going to have to try to find someplace to park and that might not be easy. "Then why the heck did you get my hopes up to go to the zoo?," my son admonished.

We finally did manage to come up with parking and took our walk. A brisk walk because it was 29-degrees with a nice stiff breeze coming off the lake. Right after we got into the zoo, we stopped to try to decide where we wanted to go with our limited time. As we talked, a park squirrel started to approach us along the railing.

Marty eyed the rodent suspiciously. I told him to just ignore the squirrel, that it was just looking for food. "I don't have any nuts, Mr. Squirrel," Marty said. I started to walk away and realized that Marty wasn't coming with me. I turned around to see Marty turning out his pockets with the squirrel at his feet, trying to prove that he did not have any food with him.

As we walked around, I somehow mentioned his little brother Casey. "I've been having so much fun in Chicago," he said. "That I forgot all about that little devil."

Little devil is his new nickname for his sibling. Apparently there are more on a list on his iPod, but little devil is his current favorite. Of course, every time that I hear this, I think of the Harvey comics character Hot Stuff...who it turns out, Casey actually does look a little bit like.

The problem with having a kid that seems to be geared towards the bainy side, is that at places like zoos, they want to read everything. We got stuck in the bird house, as Marty had to read and then identify the different birds. And, he was a little too excited about the puffins. I also was treated to sea lion jokes at that exhibit (See? Lion.).

Finally, it was time for us to go. As I started down Lake Shore again, my cell phone rang. Being in the middle of a city with a tough cell phone law, I yelled that I didn't have any hands free options with me and handed the phone back to Marty. I heard him speaking to his mother for a few minutes and just as he was asking to talk to Casey, he complained that the line had gone dead.

He tried to call back, but he's not used to my Blackberry. Amy ended up with a two-minute voice mail that sounded a little like, "I did push that...now what? It says connected. I don't know, I don't hear anything. There was just that one ladies voice..."

We managed to make it home without too much incident. There was a reasoned argument by Marty about why he should be allowed a Happy Meal ("A, I'm hungry. B, I want a toy. A is obviously more important than B...but I really do want a toy."), that was hard to argue.

We're actually returning to Chicago in a couple of weeks as a family, but the banter will be more muted with the sibling arguments going on. Still, 10 straight hours with my 8-year-old son did help remind me why I love him so much. You only get so many times to build memories like that. Maybe, I'll even be inspired to take Marty on a road trip so that he can see West Virginia for himself.

Then again, probably not.

The Cool Kid

As alluded to previously, the coolest person in my household happens to be the youngest, 5-year-old Casey.

I suppose as a parent there should just be a supposition that at the very least the kids are going to think that they're cooler than you. I'm sure that part is true no matter who we're talking about. In a couple of years, the horde of kids that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have taken on will, I'm sure, consider themselves both smarter and cooler than their parents (and they could be half right).

My problem with this is that everyone believes that Casey is the coolest member of our family. I'm at least a marginally accomplished person. I've lived in L.A. I've been around celebrities. The above-mentioned Mr. Pitt once almost ran over me in his SUV. I write about sports. I've been on staff at the very hip webzine, 2Walls.

And, Amy was an officer in the Air Force, dealing with things like missiles and satellites. In some quarters, that would be considered pretty cool.

Marty, his older brother, started trying to write his own books when he was three. So, at some point there's a decent chance that he'll grow into his own coolness, say around the time that he's hitting college.

But, no, Casey holds the title of coolest.

As near as I can figure it, it's because the rest of us have some kind of stress, anxiety and/or social disorder. I'm not going to entirely say that Casey doesn't have any of that -- he's got my genes, has to have some -- but for some reason it doesn't affect him the same way.

He's always been this way, too. When he was 2-years-old, I would have him out at a store and people would walk by and say 'hi' to him by name. People that I had never seen before. When he got a little bit older and it would happen, I started asking, "Who was that?" The only response that I ever got was, "Oh, that's my friend."

Once at a local Memorial Day celebration, Amy and Casey went and sat in an open area. Suddenly, a couple of kids saw Casey and came over to sit with him. The next thing my wife knew, she was surrounded by kids that she didn't know.

It's gotten to the point that when he was four, we were at a Cubs game in Chicago and had parked by DePaul University. As we were going to our car on a late Friday afternoon, Casey started to wander into the open door of a just starting college party. We rushed to grab him, not so much because we were worried about his safety. No, we were worried that if he got inside the college kids would ask the rest of us to leave, but would let Casey stay.

At his godmother's hip Hollywood wedding in Texas (side note: entertainment industry weddings are hardly ever actually in Los Angeles. It's just one of those things.), we couldn't find Casey. Not in any sort of stress inducing way, we just weren't sure where he had gotten to. As we were talking about it, who comes sauntering out of the middle of the dance floor in search of a bottle of water? That's right, as a preschooler, he was already acting like he was out at a club.

He walks into sporting arenas bobbing his head along to hip-hop music that he's never heard before. He slumps on the couch eating pizza and playing video games as though this were his off-campus apartment. He walks up to people in stores and strikes up conversations. When a girl says hi to him, and you teasingly ask if that's his girlfriend, the response is usually, "No, but she wants to marry me." When he tries on clothes at Old Navy, he blends in with the manequins.

There's nothing that you can really do about it. I'm not really sure what happens with cool kids. I have no personal experience to draw upon. I don't know what cool kids grow up to be. The only aspiration that we've been able to get out of Casey thus far is that he wouldn't mind being rich.

My only real hope at this point is that by the time he's a teenager, he'll be able to help us get into restaurants that we might otherwise have trouble getting seated in. Then again, I guess there's alway the possibility that they'll just seat him and leave the other three of us standing behind the velvet rope. I would love to say that he would never leave us behind, but that would be untrue. Truth is he finds our lack of coolness a little unseemly.

Eventually, I'll get used to the fact that the little one fancies himself a modern-day Fonzie but it probably won't be any time soon.

State of Mind

Marty and Casey keep playing this iPhone app called "Stacking the States." It's one of those educational ones...they answer multiple choice questions about states and then they've got to stack them on top of each other to hit a certain point. It's kind of like reverse "Tetris."

Of course, the first problem with this is that Casey can't read. Or, at least in grand kindergarten fashion, he claims that he can't read. Of course, when he wants to read he suddenly knows a lot more words. But, in this case, even Marty has trouble figuring out how to pronounce some city and landmark names that he's been unfamiliar with until now. So, what that means is that when Casey plays the game, it really means that I'm playing the game. It goes something like this:

Casey: "What's the answer?"
Me: "I can't see the screen. What's the question?"
Casey: "I can't read it."
Me: "Try to read it."
Casey: "What...state...has...Mmmm...Mmmm...Ah...Nnnn....Ick..."
Me: "Let me just see the stupid thing...Monticello."
Casey: "Yeah, which one. (Looking at the screen again) Montana, Texas, Indiana or Virginia."
Me: "I thought you can't read."
Casey: "I can't. Where's Monticello?"

It goes on like that for the better part of an hour most of the time.

More troubling though is that Marty has now started to build an affinity for certain states. There's always been talk of states, I guess, in our house because we have that weird quirk where all four members of our family were born in different states...me in Delaware, Amy in Indiana, Marty in California and Casey in Michigan. Not even all of our pets are from the same state. So, I suppose it's not surprising that there would be interest in the geography of the U.S. Which, I'm totally fine with.

However, it's the states that he's taken a liking to that have me perplexed. First, there's Alaska. I suppose that's not entirely unthinkable. It's way up north. It's big. It's got stuff like moose and reindeer. I've never been overly interested in it, but I've never been as big on the Upper Penisula of Michigan, or Northern Wisconsin or, well, Canada as other people I know. To me, Alaska has always just been some giant landmass state that is economically important because of it's huge reserve of natural resources. I know, having talked to others, that there's some romantic, Jack London-y, part to it. It's supposedly breathtaking (never been there, but Amy has...which now makes her fascinating to Marty). I don't get romantic about the northern climates...I prefer desserts...but if that's what you like, then have at it.

But, his other new favorite state in Nebraska. Nebraska?! The freakin' Cornhusker state. What's worse, he keeps wanting me to like Nebraska, too. Amy, who has been riding the wave of her Alaskan triumph, of course made sure to note that she "kind of" likes Nebraska.

This is a problem, because -- no offense to Tom Osbourne and the boys -- but I don't really like Nebraska. I've never been a fan of the plains states, if you must know. Many people I like have a strong affinity for Kansas, so perhaps I would make an exception there, but otherwise I could do without the flattened view and amber waves of grain.

Now, admittedly, my problem with the state of Nebraska is strictly a selfish one. I have never spent a great deal of time there. What I have done, however, on multiple occasions, is drive through the state coming or going to a coast. It's flat and it's long and that's no fun.

Ever had to drive through Nebraska in the middle of the night in a moving van, with bad shocks and nothing but an AM radio? Well, you haven't lived until you've tried it. I listened to an hour long show with people talking about alien abductions as though they were fact based events...and almost panicked when it went off the air, becuase it had taken me an hour just to find something that remotely interesting to keep me from becoming hypnotized by the straight, straight, straight road ahead.

I don't why it's such a problem for me to have a son that now likes a state where I've had to avoid sleeping truckers coming into my lane repeatedly or where my lasting culinary impression is stale coffee from a Love's Truck Stop.

Just to add insult to injury, Marty also kind of likes Rhode Island. He finds it interesting because it's the smallest state (which the opposite is also the appeal of Alaska). However, I'm from Delaware...otherwise known as the second smallest state (even though it's the First State). I grew up hating Rhode Island and it's stupid smaller square mileage than my birth state. Not even the Farrelly brothers repeated attempts to make me think Providence is a great place has changed my mind.

Since I value individuality, I should be happy that Marty has his own likes and dislikes. His own thoughts and ideas. His own dreams.

I just wish he were more like me.

Spineless

I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened, but I've become a wuss. At least at my day job.

Now, I'm talking about a specific type of wuss. Certain types, I didn't really need to become...I was born into it. I'm not an outdoorsman. I don't like guns. Aside from the cartoon type, I'm not a fan of violence. I've been leery of motorcycles since I was about nine and a cousin was paralyzed in an accident. With very few exceptions, I haven't faced many physical confrontations that I haven't tried to joke my way out of. And, I'm sure that my lack of misogyny qualifies me as a wuss in the eyes of some of my brethren.

No, what I'm talking about is that I've become a company wuss. Not that long ago, I used to make firm decisions, confident in myself to the point that I feared no repercussions. If those above me in a company were really dumb enough to disagree with me in situations where I was so clearly right, then...well, I didn't care. If a company was going to get rid of me for exercising sound judgment, then I could live with that.

Now? Well, I can't make any freakin' decisions without first second guessing myself and then calling and/or e-mailing everyone and their brother to build agreement. Because, I can't have a decision come back on me, because I actually have gotten myself into a situation where I can't really afford to lose a job.

Of course, many, many, responsible adults spend their entire adult life making sure not to lose a job, and many of them progress quite nicely up the corporate ladder. Heck, many of the smarter ones passed me by on my different stops when this VP or that one decided that they were more fun to have around than me and my "honesty."

But, for one thing, it's a little late for me to be starting to do this...I've lived my life on this obnoxious path so long that it feels completely disingenious to me that I've started being afraid of my own corporate shadow. I feel like the older salesmen in "Glengarry Glen Ross," terrified of third place.

Second, I only work a day job because...well, I need money. And, unlike some of my more successful friends, I'm not able to actually pay the bills with what my creative endeavors bring in. It used to be that meant that I didn't care about my day job, so I didn't really care what they thought of me. Now, however, I've hit that age where I'm well aware of what the job market thinks of many of my middle management peers. I spent years analyzing the data about over-40 workers. So, I'm stuck.

I should take solace in the fact I actually am still a firm decision maker in other aspects. When I'm dealing with the community theater, I help guide decisions left and right. By it's nature, I have to make decisions as a writer. I don't usually have to make decisions normally, but I do have a respected voice in my role as a local sports writer.

Instead, that almost makes it worse. If I'm not a wuss other places, why do I have to be one any place?

Oh, well, at least I know that I can come home each night to the respect of my wife and children.

OK, stop laughing. Would it kill you to just humor me once and a while?

Whatever You Call It

My older son, Marty, has a condition called Asperger Syndrome. It's kind of a high functioning autism that has started to gain more recognition. If you've watched television recently, one of the couples on "Parenthood" have a son with it and, while it's never mentioned, the son on "The Middle" basically fits the clinical description. That show even references the type of social skills class that Marty participates in at his school. It also got a lot of publicity when former baseball standout Curt Schilling -- who's kind of a loudmouth -- started talking about his son's diagnosis...or, I guess, more specifically started promoting his wife's book about it.

On the one hand, it's taxing as a parent to deal with any anomalies in your children. I think most of society still harbors a fear of being different. A lot of people give talk to not caring about that -- including me, since I've had people make the comment that I seem to care less about what people think of me more than anyone they've ever met -- but in reality, there's still that part of our genetic code that tries to get us to stick with the tribe. I think we're predisposed to fear any problem with our children, no matter what it is.

Now, Asperger's -- which I mispronounce and misspell on a regular basis -- really isn't the worst thing that your child can have. Heck, I would run out of room if I was to try to list every other possibility that would be worse.

The biggest issue with Asperger's is that Marty can be easily distracted, has trouble controlling his emotions and can be socially awkward.

On the plus side though, his mind functions in ways that other people's don't, which can lead to moments of great creativity. If you've read this blog, you've heard about Marty's movie pitches that he's still hoping to force his way into Nickelodeon's office to deliver. And, the social awkwardness can offer some unique insight into human interactions. He doesn't understand how things like conversations are supposed to work, so while it can be painful to watch at times...it can also lead to comedic moments as he misinterprets what the norm is supposed to be.

Of course, you don't always know when these things are going to come up. From August until March, I spend every Friday night covering first high school football and then basketball. In my absence, the rest of my family has a tradition of Friday "movie nights" where the boys get to eat dinner in the living room and have popcorn.

Well, with the end off my coverage responsibilites for the season, I ended up with a Friday night at home.

This caused Marty great consternation, because having me around changed the routine of the movie night. Initially, Marty had his mind set that I should have to go to the newspaper and spend my Friday night there whether they needed me or not. Then, he thought that I should just go any place...as long as it wasn't at home. Finally, there was progress made and I was going to be allowed to stay in the house, so long as I stayed completely out of site. In the end, the compromise was that I could stay...however, I had to pretend not to be home.

Oddly, even though I was trying to pretend not to be there, Marty was still allowed to ask me to grab him the bag of Doritos from the refrigerator or have me provide answers for his "Stack The States" app.

Of course, the truly fun part of all of this for me are the times that a professional is describing parts of Marty's diagnosis and I start getting glances from my wife. The ones where she seems to be noticing similarities between what they're talking about and me. Sure, I guess that on a certain level, my inability to stop myself from saying exactly what I'm thinking at all times can be seen as socially awkward I suppose. And, sure, I'm kind of easily distracted. And, I usually can't remember what someone was taking about 10 minutes ago, because I didn't really care what they were talking about...and it was 10 minutes ago.

All of that stuff seems perfectly normal to me, but if that's not your reality, man, well who am I to quibble. We're all on our own trip, man. (I also sometimes start channeling Dennis Hopper...but I'm not sure that really has anything to do with any sort of autistic condition).

You are what you watch

I'm a little concerned about what the television commercials that air during the shows that I've been watching mean about me. Especially, when it comes to cable television where there's a lot of target marketing by companies looking for a cutrate way to hit their likely customers.

For instance, I was watching a rerun of "The Jeffersons"...before you say anything, it was a flashback episode and anyone that can resist a little peak into the lives of George and Weezy before they moved on up has some sort of genetic deficiency. Anyway, I couldn't help but notice that there seemed to be numerous firms that thought that I might have a structured settlement from a lawsuit, but still might be in economic crisis and willing to sell the monthly payments to them for a lump sum payment. I'm not sure that I'm truly the target for the ad since a) I don't actually have a structured settlement and b) I'm smart enough to realize that the lump sum payment that they're offering is significantly less than the actual value of the settlement.

I've also found that frequently cable television believes that I am a female with acne that hasn't taken advantage of the advances in blemish medication that ProActiv has made. While I appreciate what they've done for the likes of Jessica Simpson, I'm still not sure that they were aiming for me.

Maybe the problem is that I'm watching shows that I'm not supposed to be watching. Maybe that's because, when I do watch television, I frequently have difficulty deciding what to watch. Realistically, if you were an advertiser trying to get my attention, you would put an add on the programming "Guide" that I continuously scroll through trying to find something of interest. That's how the Pay-Per-View movie people end up with a chunk of my money every month. You'd have just as much success putting advertising on the DVR menu screen. I tend to stare at that a lot as well.

I'm not saying that I have a problem with the bad advertising -- well, maybe with the structured settlement people...that seems kind of unethical and slimy -- I've always had an affinity for bad commercials.

I'm old enough that I remember when the UHF stations were the domain of "As Seen on TV" advertising. (If you don't understand the terminology, for God's sake, that's what Wikipedia is for.) To this day, I harbor a grudge that I was never able to buy a set of Ginsu knives. I try to get Casey to say into his toy microphone, "Hey, good looking, we'll be back to pick you up later!" And, I'm one of about 15 people that got the joke in Cameron Crowe's "Say Anything" that referenced a late night ad for a soul music compliation.

Really, I actually am a sucker for the Time Life series infomercials. Many is the time that my wife has been perplexed as she's entered the room to find me watching a half-hour infomercial hosted by the likes of Billy Dee Williams or John Sebastian or the two guys that are still playing as America hawking some music collection or other. I find it somehow soothing to watch 10 second snippets of old songs being lip-synched to on "Ed Sullivan," or "American Bandstand, " or "Hullabaloo." I don't even minded the stilted sales pitch that always includes something like, "A generation of performers stepped forward to put their mark on the musical landscape and change the way that we listened to pop music forever." And, then they cut to a clip of Herman's Hermits or Gerry and the Pacemakers, putting much more significance on the role of "Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter" to the British Invasion than I probably would.

Perhaps I should just stick to that and leave my viewing of old television shows to my various DVD box sets (although I'm still stuck without "Happy Days" or "The Dick Van Dyke" show sets, so there's only so much that I can do there).

But, at least I'll know who to call if my dumbass lawyer ever agrees to have a $500,000 settlement spread out over five years of monthly payments.

Back In...Well, I Guess I'm Wearing Blue

OK, so it has been noted that the blog kind of went into hibernation mode there for a little while. I can honestly say that it was for good reason.

For starters, I'm the president of the board of a community theater. It's actually "theatre." I'm not entirely sure why the people that started the thing 20-some years ago went with that, but they did. It's also the board of "governors," as opposed to "directors." Again, not entirely sure why...although, I guess with all of that we probably really should all be speaking with Madonna-like fake British accents.

In any case, back in November the theater was approached about possibly buying an out of use church building. So, we quietly went about trying to find larger donors that might help make that happen and originally we were to try to have it done in the spring. However, at the end of January, the church that still owned the building told us that they had another buyer come forward and that they would give the group 30 days to come up with the money, otherwise they would have to accept the offer of the other prospective buyer.

Want to know what it's like to try to help organize people into raising $50,000 in 30 days? Apparently, it's not impossible because we managed to do it. But, man, did I spend a lot of time talking to people...including the press, which I think is always odd for a writer. You're being interviewed by someone that's going to write about you...you kind of feel like you should interview the person back and write about them, just to make things even.

Plus, the average age of the other board members is somewhere north of 70...and that's with adding in the one 27-year-old. On the plus side, many of them are retired so they've got time to do things like run down to a court house to get paperwork or call on prospective donors. On the other hand, there's are other issues that come into play...like hoping they won't fall while trying to enter said courthouse and end up with broken bones.

Thanks to a lot of effort by a lot of people -- both the people that were already involved with the community theater and others in the local community that just stepped in to help -- we actually did close on the new building a week ago.

So, now I'm obstinantly overseeing a group that now needs to renovate a building into a theater, raise the money to do that, decide on the building plans for doing that, figure out the ADA (American Disabilities Act) requirements for it, and come up with a way to generate enough funds to do things like pay for the utilities on the building. I get paid to manage one business, and now my volunteer job just turned into managing another one.

Oh, and I'm supposed to direct the season's first play...a task that I'm desperately hoping to pass off to a local college student so that I might have the chance to, you know, sit down every once and a while.

The second thing is that, while this was going on, I was also covering the Indiana high school girls basketball tournament as part of my sports writing gig. While normally that keeps me busy for about 2-2 1/2 weeks, this year one of the local team's made it to the state finals...which means that I spent a whole lot of the last month writing about girls basketball.

The good thing is that, I played basketball, I like basketball, so I don't really mind writing about it. And, I've kind of become the newspaper's de facto girls basketball person, so after five years of covering the local sports scene, I actually sometimes know what I'm talking about.

And, I get to find out what some of the newer music is. If I wasn't hanging out in gyms with blaring sound systems, I probably wouldn't know songs like DJ Khaled's "All I Do Is Win" and Taio Cruz's "Dynamite." My 5-year-old son, Casey, would, but then he's cooler than me (more on how pathetic it is to have a 5-year-old that's cooler than you are in a later post). I did find it interesting the team earlier this season that warmed up to Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" in its entirety the first week that it was released. Let's just say that it's not really chock full of future jazz band standards.

Speaking of...I can't honestly say that when I was a lad that I was really envisioning the day that Ozzy Osbourne and AC/DC would become staples of the pep bands (and, thanks to the movie "Megamind" my sons now also walk around singing "Crazy Train" and "Highway to Hell"...although they'll usually change the latter to either 'heck' or 'heaven' if asked...after a 10 minute conversation where Marty argues that he doesn't understand why 'hell' is a bad word).

Likewise, I didn't see "Don't Stop Believing" having a 30 year run as a standard. I'm also still trying to figure out where along the line Bruce Channel's "Hey Baby" became a call-and-response high school band number. I'm assuming that it was sometime after "Dirty Dancing" since that's the only way that most people know that song...but it must have been sometime when I was in California and not really going anywhere near most high school events (with the exception of going to see LeBron James play...but even that was at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion). I do like the one that some of the high school bands now do with Bon Jovi's "Living On a Prayer"...where they stop playing and the student section sings the refrain acapella. Anyone who's ever spent time in a karaoke bar knows how much fun it is to have a crowd of people wailing, "Whooah, we're halfway there...Whoo-ah!, living on a prayer..."

These are the kinds of things that I wonder to keep my mind off of the fact that all of the parents of the current high schoolers are very much my peers. And, the fact that in the not too distant future, a lot of them will be younger than me...despite the fact that I'm still six years removed from my own oldest kid hitting high school.

The downside to covering high school girls basketball in Indiana is...well, that seems like it should be kind of self-explanatory. During the tournament's second or third weekend, I was among my press row brethren when one of them mentioned that we were lucky to be there because we could have the misfortune of being in Los Angeles, sitting in a luxury box, watching the NBA All-Star game. I was dumb enough to point out that the last time that the NBA All-Star game was in L.A., I actually was in a luxury box watching the Rookies vs. Sophomores game that featured LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony, et al.

A friend and colleague from the South Bend Tribune looked at me after I relayed that information. "And, now you're here with us," he said. "The Lord, Jesus Christ, does not like you."

Words to live by.

If someone ever writes a theme song for "My Life As a Sitcom," that's what I hope that it will be called.

V-Day

After 10 years together, this is what Valentine's Day becomes...I didn't get home from work until nearly 7 p.m., at which point my wife was trying to help Marty do his homework...which he didn't want to do...while Casey ran around like a maniac. We exchanged cards while trying to fix dinner and the kids argued over which box of the exact same Valentine's candy was whose.

Then we had a dinner so memorable that I couldn't actually tell you what it was...but I can tell you that Marty spent most of dinner under the table and Casey sang a song about "poop."

Then the kids took their showers, which meant that we were treated to Casey's "pee-pee" dance for the 1,000 or so time and Marty got water all over the floor because he didn't remember that he needed to go to the bathroom until he was in the shower.

When the boys finally went to bed, Amy immediately slipped into something a little more comfortable...some flannel pajamas. She had a head cold and wanted to go to bed early.
We did watch some TV together while she flossed her teeth, which was nice.

Then she went to bed, texting me to bring up an extra blanket for her when I went to bed.

What did I do? Well, I did a chunk of paperwork while half watching television until I fell asleep.

I read a statistic that said the feeling of being "in love"lasts for an average of two years...but in my case, I can't imagine the euphoria ever ending.

Oh, and in keeping with the romantic theme...it dawned on me over the weekend that once upon a time I used to like under wire bras for the more traditionally obvious male reasons. Now, I like them because they're easy to identify when you're taking clothes out of the washer...since you're not supposed to put them in the dryer.

C'est l'amour!

The Sports Zone

While watching the Super Bowl, I was reminded again that my sons do not yet share my affection for sports. There are other things that are my interests that they do like. They're both fans of comedy in a variety of forms -- laughing at everything from the Marx Bros. to old Bill Cosby albums to Bugs Bunny cartoons to their own generations' batch of Nickelodeon and Disney shows. They both seem to share my interest in storytelling. They both like music.

However, neither one of them has much interest in sports. I've tried to get them to watch football at various times, but usually all I get is complaints that I'm hogging the good TV. The one thing that they liked about the Super Bowl was the various snacks that got laid out on our dinning room table. They didn't even care about the commercials. Well, they did like the one with the kid dressed up as Darth Vader and trying to use the Force, but that was about it.

They profess to like baseball, but that's more because they like a baseball video game. Casey did play T-Ball, but that isn't the best indicator. He almost fell asleep in the outfield after all.

I do occasionally hope that they'll decide to play more sports at some point. While I was never the greatest athlete, I did at least play sports. And, I was the worst athlete in my family. My father was an All-State basketball player, my one brother was a college basketball player and my other brother was a starter in multiple varsity sports in high school. So, there's got to be some halfway decent genes in there someplace.

They do like to go to sporting events. They've each been to multiple professional baseball games. They've been to high school and college basketball games. And, Marty has been to two Notre Dame football games. However, their affection for live sporting events is also misleading. What they really like is concession stands. My sons have never seen a concession stand that they couldn't find something that they wanted. They're happy to sit in a seat as long as they've got plenty of popcorn and lemon Italian ice.

Of course, I wasn't overly interested in sports when I was their age, I suppose. To this day, I have a deep seated hatred of the Oakland Raiders and Denver Broncos because they seemed to have continually preempted The Wonderful World of Disney on NBC when I was a kid.

Still, as someone that writes about sports regularly, it would be nice if my sons were at least passingly interested. Even if it were soccer, that would at least be something. And, let me tell you, that was a hard sentence to write.

The Bully-enator

Yesterday, my sons talked me into stopping at a McDonald's that has one of those play area things...you know the ones with the tubes and slides and stuff.
Casey came to me at one point and told me that there were mean kids inside. Being a lover, not a fighter, Casey decided to hang out in the lower levels. Marty, however, never came down. Finally, when I called him down to leave he told me that the mean kid that Casey had told me about had said that if Marty didn't tell him something that he would push him down the stairs. I told Marty that he shouldn't worry about it since nothing happened and started to usher him to the door. Marty said, "If I ever see that kid again, I'm going to teach him a lesson...in science."
It hadn't really dawned on me prior to that about the ambiguous nature of that saying. If no one's ever told you what you're supposed to be teaching a lesson about, how do you know?
So, I tried to explain to Marty what the difference was, but he didn't seem to get it. All he said was, "Well, I was just about to tell him that I know stuff about science, but then you said that we had to go."

Twinkie the Kid

Not to get too '80's stand-up (or Seinfeldian) on you, but what's the deal with all the retro packaging on consumer products? Who came up with the idea to just start slapping logos from the 1960's and 70's onto everything in an effort to sucker middle-aged consumers into buying things that they don't need -- in fact, have been ordered not to have by their doctor -- just so that they can recapture a moment of their lost childhood.

Of course, it could be that I'm just upset because I'm one of those suckers. It started innocently enough...I saw the Pepsi with the cool blue and red logo, just like the collector sign that hangs in my kitchen. But then, right next to the Pepsi, was the Mountain Dew made with real sugar. The Mountain Dew with the light green script and the drawing of the old timey hillbilly on it. How could you not buy that?

Then there was the Cap'n Crunch, Peanut Butter Crunch and Crunch Berries cereal boxes featuring the characters from the old Jay Ward directed commercials of my youth. I had to buy those...my sons have never really seen Smedley the elephant or the pirate Jean LaFoote. I wouldn't want them to miss out a cherished part of childhood like that.

I was in a gas station when I came across Doritos in old school packaging. It was the Tacos flavored ones. Not the Tacos at Midnight or the Twilight Tacos or whatever the hell they have now...but the old school Taco Doritos...the ones that are just flavored with the kind of taco seasoning that you find in an Ortega kit. Thankfully, they don't have any of the overpowering flavor of those modern Doritos.

And it just keeps going. The other day I was walking through the snack food isle at the grocery store and who did I happen upon? Twinkie the Kid and Captain Cupcake! Not some bastardized version but the real ones! I went searching frantically for King Ding Dong but couldn't find him...but I'm hoping he's out there. I would even take Chauncey Chocodile.

I'm not sure what's next. Maybe someone will do limited run of Fruit Brute or Freakies. Maybe 7-Up will bring back those inverted Coke glasses. Maybe instead of just an occasional glimpse of Hamburgler and Grimace, McDonald's will roll out a full on campaign with Mayor McCheese and Officer Big Mac. Maybe M&M/Mars will bring back the actual Marathon bar...the one that was like a braided rope of hard caramel.

Whatever it is, no matter what I might say here, I'm sure I'm probably going to be a sucker again. Luckily, most of the stuff doesn't cost very much. If Chrysler somehow brings back the Plymouth Road Runner or Duster I might be in for some financial strife.

Birth Story

As part of his journal at school -- which includes a portion for drawing pictures -- Marty apparently decided to tell the story of his birth...an interesting choice I thought since he doesn't remember it.

The thing is that, while I'm sure that we've told him the story before and he likes to make reference to the fact that he was born in Los Angeles, but we've never dwelt on it. That stands in stark contrast to my own mother who when I was a child repeatedly made sure that I understood that she was in labor for some ungodly amount of time, that the doctors were making jokes about my not wanting to come out due to the current racial unrest (I was born about 3 weeks after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed) and that at some point the doctors talked to my father about the fact that mother and child might not make it.

Here's my concern...I don't think that we've dwelt on it, but to be honest, Marty's birth was probably the most traumatic thing in my life. The labor was bad, there had been worries that he was running out of amniotic fluid, he got stuck, they had to cut my wife...and when he came out he didn't breath right away. Some swat team of doctors came running in to intubate him. That part was actually over in a matter of minutes, but it was the worst minutes of my life.

As it happens, my son's godmother -- and one of my best friends -- showed up at the hospital assuming that the birth had already taken place...only to find herself roped into actively participating in the birthing process. It is also one of the most traumatic experiences of her life.

So, I'm worried that maybe we actually have made a bigger deal out of all of this to Marty. I don't mind him knowing the story...the kid was born at Cedars Sinai in L.A., a hospital that actually gets mentioned with some frequency on T.V., so there are reasons for it to come up from time to time. I also usually tell the story of the following day, which happened to be Halloween, when I walked across the street to get some non-hospital food from Jerry's Famous Deli and in my sleep-deprived state got a little freaked out by the costumes...until the holiday dawned on me. But, I don't want it to seem like any of it was some huge deal (to him, anyway, since I still have nightmares and his godmother refuses to acknowledge that it even took place).

I do wonder what his teacher thought of his depiction, which was for the most part pretty accurate. My favorite part was his drawing of the intubation, which features a caption above the doctor's head that reads, "Jeez-O-Pete," and has horrified expressions on the drawings of me and his aunt.

Of course, his version, complete with a drawing, ends with him sleeping peacefully in a crib in a nursery...which is also how the real story ended. So, I guess all really is well that ends well.

At the Movies

My boys convinced me to take them again to see "Megamind" in the theater again. This is the fifth time that Marty has now seen the movie in the theater, which conversely means that this is the fifth time that I've seen it. Neither of my sons have ever been to a movie without me. The closest its ever come was when their mother was with us and they all went to see "Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel" because it features Zachary Levi, who's a friend of a friend. I instead went to the neighboring screen and watched something else. I couldn't even tell you for sure what that was, but I do know that it did not have the word "Squeakquel" in the title.

I've been trying to think when the last time that I saw a film that many times in a theater during its initial release was, and I'm struggling to come up with something since the original "Star Wars." Like many males my age, that movie I saw somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30 times. In my case that was because "Star Wars" played for 2 years at a movie theater that was about 2 miles from my home. Sometimes I just went to it out of sheer boredom. It got so bad that I remember going to see some documentary on the search for the conspirators behind Abraham Lincoln's assassination that was playing on the only other screen that theater had...and during the 2-3 times that I saw it, I could hear "Star Wars" through the wall and could tell what part it was up to. Then when I went back to watching "Star Wars," while it was still playing I could tell how things were going next door with the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth. So, that was partially just a matter of convenience. I mean, I also saw "Smokey and the Bandit" a good number of times at that same theater.

But, I didn't even see "The Empire Strikes Back" or "Return of the Jedi" five times initially on the big screen (for the record, through various special screenings and rereleases, I have now...the geek in me required that clarification). I know that I saw "Back to The Future" and both "Rocky III" and "IV" at least three times each...but that was because I kept ending up going with different people (ok, and because I truly love "Rocky III"...Amy gets mad at my inability to pass up Clubber Lang if I run across the film on cable). Other than that, I'm not remembering anything, since being a straight male, I only saw "Titanic" once and have only ever seen "Avatar" because it featured another friend of a friend (Joel Moore).

Oddly, I also ended up going with the kids to see "Despicable Me" three times over the summer in the theater...and there would've been more occurrences of that had I allowed it. Apparently the storyline of a bad guy that turns good -- the theme of both "Megamind" and "Despicable Me" -- appeals to my kids. I guess that shouldn't surpise me since I've heard them argue over who will be the better evil scientist when they grow up ("I'm going to take over the world, and you can just work for me!" "No! I'm going to take over the world!").

The positive side, I guess is that Marty now has a clear understanding of who Will Farrell and Steve Carrell are. Of course, he sees "Elf" every year at Christmas, and there was a stretch where he and Casey watched "Evan Almighty" a couple of times a week...but it's only now after his summer at the cinema that he's decided that they're worthy of his attention.

One other thing that I learned from my sojourn out with the children is that your wife gets mad at you if you allow your 5-year-old to spritz himself with whatever he wants at the Macy's cologne counter. Apparently having your young son smell like a "Kansas City whore" is upsetting to some mothers.

Technology!

I'm neither a technophobe nor a technophile. However, I do find myself frequently getting frustrated with people older than me, or sometimes even my own age, that have trouble dealing with technology.


I try really hard to be patient and understanding. I mean, I understand that not everyone spent 6 hours typing code into a Commodore 64 so that a round "ball" image would bounce across the screen. Not everyone was paying attention when Nintendo came along and totallly blew away Atari (and even fewer held a secret allegiance to Intellivision before that). There were a lot of people that didn't have to learn Windows '97 when it was released and had to learn every stupid revision since...even the ones that made the system more difficult to use. Many people still have never worked on a Mac, let alone remember when the operating system didn't look like a Microsoft knock-off. Sure, I can download an app to my iPhone that I bought on iTunes as my kids watch an episode of iCarly. I'm sure that there are plenty of people that have never bought something on eBay and paid for it using PayPal. And, based on my experiences in the workplace, I'm one of the select group of people that knows how to install a network printer. I have a blog, a Twitter account and a Facebook page, but not everyone does.


The community theater for which I am president of the board fills the other seats on the board with people who's average age is 74, so I'm frequently in a position where I'm reminded of this gap in the use of modern technology. I mean, they still talk about people using checks...whereas I couldn't tell you if we still actually have paper checks attached to our bank account.


Here's the problem though, I'm pretty sure that -- hip as I think I am -- I'm really just the new generations' technology bitch. I say that because I'm pretty sure that my sons already look at me that way.


When either of my boys has a problem with their DS and they bring it to me, it turns out that they really are only looking for my advanced finger dexterity -- sort of like when they want me to write something because I can type faster than them -- but not for anything else. As soon as I move past the point that they were having trouble with, they rip the device out of my hands immediately so that I won't "mess anything up."


They watched a video that I edited on an earlier version of Final Cut and they thought that it was "quaint." They both grab my phone out of my hand because I'm "not going fast enough." They each complain about the speed of our wireless connection and of our now dated iMac (for the record, we were actually thinking of upgrading right up until the unexpected major expenses just prior to Christmas...see the post "My Holiday Luck").



Someday, I'm apparently going to be in the old folks home with my sons becoming angry because I don't understand the latest intuitive software that was just introduced. That's the bitch about getting old...you still think you're cool even when all facts point to the contrary. I guess I should've known that it was coming...I think vampires are stupid, not sexy, and I'm not actually interested in writing anything that has the word "zombie" in the title.

I guess I'll just keep fighting the good fight...reading my Sports Illustrated on my iPad, while listening to a podcast on my smart phone and Tweeting about the whole thing. I'm going to fall behind but it won't be because I'm not trying.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Marty wants to show me how to access classic "Donkey Kong" through the Wii.

Wolf Call

My sons have discovered the "wolf whistle." You know, the traditional construction workers to a pretty secretary cat-call. I'm not exactly sure where they've picked this up, but since they frequently watch old "Tom & Jerry," "Droopy," and "Bugs Bunny" cartoons, all of which feature that on a regular basis.

I first discovered this new entry into their arsenal while they were watching "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" The first appearance by Jessica Rabbit and suddenly I was surrounded by frat boys at a wet T-shirt contest. I thought that it might be an isolated incident, but then I let Marty watch a portion of an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" that featured the characters dressed up like DC Comics' characters. When the Penny character entered dressed as "Wonder Woman," there it was again.

Here's the problem -- more so than my 8- and 5-year-old boys objectifying women -- they don't know how to whistle. So, they just make some noise in their throat that approximates the "wheet-whew" of the whistle. It's annoying. So, now I'm trying to teach them how to actually whistle so that they can do this right. Objectifying women is one thing, but if you're going to do it with an annoying sound...well, that's where I draw the line.

They're also learning other things from those old cartoons -- besides the occasional racist joke and that it's ok for cartoon characters to smoke. For example, Marty has developed a strategy for if he ever finds himself in a bull fight. His idea is to paint the bull red, make him look at himself and, viola, the bull will just attack himself.

(I'm actually impressed that when Marty sees "viola" in print, he pronounces it correctly. For years, he's watched DVDs with the language option set on French. When I pointed out recently that he hasn't done it in a while, he whispered to me conspiratorially that he still does it with games on his Nintendo DS that have French as a language option. A couple of years ago, I asked him if he actually wanted to just learn French and his reply was, "Nah, that's too hard.")

Editors note: The title of this post is actually a reference to a song in my favorite Elvis movie, "Girl Happy." If your reaction to that bit of information is, "Elvis movie? Who has a favorite Elvis movie?," I honestly don't know how to help you.

Lovebug

At my day job, which I differentiate by saying that it's the one that pays me something resembling an actual salary, I'm one of the so-called bosses. I'm part of a management team that oversees the work of a 13 person group. Technically, I'm one of the decision makers...the only problem is that the people that make up the staff that reports to me and the other manager don't really care that much more about what I have to say than my family does.

The generic white collar jobs come with a lot of legal rules about what you can and can't do, and also come with a lot of policies and procedures about how you're supposed to do this or that. I don't know when and where it happened, but sometime along the way, I became a stickler about that kind of stuff. Turns out in the modern workplace, that's not an opinion shared by all...there's a large group of people that believe in the motto about "as long as it gets done, who cares how." Maybe it's all those years working in HR, but I can't bring myself to let those transgressions go.

So, I'm not the most popular manager in the world. While, in my mind, I believe myself to be the main character in my little sitcom, my staff believes me to be Mr. Mooney from the old "The Lucy Show" (or was it, "Here's Lucy" or both...the post-"I Love Lucy" Lucille Ball stuff all kind of runs together for me). I'm the mean boss that always interferes with the harmless shenanigans of the fun-loving workers.

It's a small company, so a short-while ago, my superiors started to try to get me to loosen up and the staff to stop putting up Facebook posts about what an asshole I am. We all grudgingly agreed to give it a shot.

One of my staffers, however, had trouble fighting the urge to call me an asshole and decided to take a unique measure to soften her stance on me. So, she's started ending conversations with me with, "I love you." You know, like, "Here's that file that you made me skip lunch to find, causing me to cancel my plans with my ailing father. Let me know if you'd also like me to work late and skip my daughter's dance recital or if you'd perhaps like to order mandatory overtime this weekend, since this is supposed to be mine and my husband's 'date' weekend. Oh, and, I love you."

At first it was fine that this was her little "He's really not that much of a jackass" mantra and if it helped stop the "My boss is a total dickhead" Tweets, I decided that I could live with it.

That is, until it started being expected that I return the affirmation with the traditional, "I love you, too."

I tried to resist that, but turns out your even more of a jerkwad if you won't return something like that. So, I eventually opted for the path of least resistance and just started saying it back. Then, some of the other staffers decided that they should follow suite and next thing you know, I apparently love everyone in my office.

It's gotten to the point that when I'm any place and I hear someone say, "I love you." I just automatically say, "I love you, too." This has led to some difficulties during visits to my sons' school...although I guess it doesn't hurt to know that I do apparently have some options if things don't work out with my wife.

The declarations of love were good enough for a short period of time, but then I was given a new nickname...Lovebug. Some would say that this is better than the names that they used to use for me, but in all honesty, I'm really not sure about that. See, I actually kind of like being an asshole and frightening people just a little bit. But if this sticks, I'm in trouble because I'm not really physically big enough to pull off having Lovebug come across as something ironic.

Now, not only do I have a staff that doesn't listen to me, they're not even afraid of me. I'm sure that, just like with my 5-year-old, if I actually got mad enough that they might be...but then I'd probably be relieved of my duties and the police given my name as a potential terrorist suspect. Or, worse, someone would try to make me go to counseling. I like to provide for my family, but that would probably be the deal breaker.

At this point, the "I love you" and Lovebug stuff has been supplemented by hugging. I usually try to avoid touching people that I actually care about, so truly, this is just the icing on the cake.

I'm not sure what comes next and I'm pretty sure that I don't want to know. There used to be a time when I worked for a big corporation and sat at a desk writing boring legal stuff and rifling through various statistics, hardly talking to coworkers sometimes for days at a time. If anyone has a job like that to offer, let me just say that I can be had for a song. I'll even bring along the little "Herbie, the Love Bug" replica that my staff gave me to brighten up the new workspace.

Liar Update

In the post entitled "Liar, Liar," I talked about how Marty wants to meet with the president of Nickelodeon so that he can pitch some movie ideas that he has for the network. I more or less explained to him when he first brought it up how the process actually works, but he doesn't really see why his way wouldn't work just as well.

Here's the problem for him though...while when he was born we lived about 300 yards away from the Nickelodeon studios in Burbank, he now lives in Southwestern Michigan. Sure, his godmother and her husband are out in Los Angeles...but he wouldn't even be able to pull a proper "Sleepless in Seattle" scheme off, since the nearest airport doesn't fly direct to LA. He gets lost going from our living room to the laundry room, so I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be able to navigate a connecting flight.

But, ever since this originally came up, Marty's been watching a video that I made from when he was a baby of things around Burbank, including the Nickelodeon stuff. I can't prove it, but I think he's trying to find a way to sneak in.

So, just on the off-chance that you hear a news story about a skinny, redheaded wannabe writer/director that was caught in an air duct at Nickelodeon trying to weasel his way into the executive suites...feel free to assume that it was my kid.

Same Old Song

It's a given that getting old sucks. What I hate is being reminded that I'm old...which has become more difficult since Casey learned to talk, since he likes to point out that I'm old (and bald).

For me, it's music that is always the killer. I still remember one of the first times that I really, truly felt old because of music. I was in LA driving along a freeway and left a station on that was playing "Maneater" by Hall & Oates. I don't particularly like "Maneater," but it was probably one of those Totally 80's things and I was holding out hope for something better.

And then the DJ came on and said those magic words..."Number 1 20 years ago this week, 'Maneater'..." It was like being hit in the stomach, because I was fairly aware of how old I was when the song was out, so if that had been 20 years...well, then that sucked. Of course, that story happened like 8 years ago, so now it really, really sucks.

The other night, I had it happen for the latest time. I was covering a high school basketball game and as part of some cheerleader routine they were playing "It's Tricky" by Run-DMC. And, part of me was thinking..."Aw, yeah, that's my jam!" Run, DMC, Jam Master Jay...hell yeah!

Then it hit me. I couldn't pinpoint it, but it dawned on me that "It's Tricky" came out somewhere in the late 80's, making it more than 20 years old. I mean, I've seen "Run's House" on MTV, so I know that he's old, but somehow that usually doesn't translate into me looking in the mirror at myself.

All I know is that it's pretty bad when the hip hop that I used to listen to that made me cool is now so old that the people in their 20's that work for me at my day job have never heard of it...I don't even know what to do with that. It was bad enough the time that a Heavy D & the Boyz song came on at work, and people were talking about remembering the song from when they were little kids.

Next thing you know, my Warren G and Snopp Dogg CD's are going to date me.

Aw, damn it.

What?

My wife apparently sometimes feels overwhelmed from living in a house with all boys. Overwhelmed with perceived stupidity that is. In particular, she seems to have an issue with our hearing.

Now, personally, I think that there’s at least a possibility that women talk in a range that is hard for the males of the species to understand. There have been multiple times that my wife has walked into the room while Casey has been watching TV, Marty has been on the computer and I’ve been on the Blackberry and none of us have heard a single thing until she’s changed octaves and yelled, “Why isn’t anyone listening to me?!”

We usually try to listen for a little while after that, unless what she wants to say takes longer than 30 seconds…in which case, our eyes typically glaze over.

Last night, she became peeved repeatedly because she said that she had to keep repeating herself. That might be true…that might not be true. For all we know the first time that she said any of that stuff was after we said, “What?”

You might think that the fact that we’re saying “What?” is a giveaway that something was said, but that’s not true. If you’re used to being yelled at for not listening, you just get in the habit of saying “What?” any time that you hear any sound. If the dog picks up a stray Cheetos that the boys dropped on the floor I say, “What?” Sometimes my sons walk in the door from playing outside and just yell, “What?” for good measure. You never know when a woman’s been saying something that they wanted you to listen to, so it’s always better to be safe.

Notice that I left off, “or sorry.” In my experience, the “or sorry” happens regardless of anything else. The only word that my sons and I say more frequently than “What?” is “Sorry.” Sometimes, and this is a specialty of my older son Marty, we just say it all together, like this…”What? Sorry.” Chances are that whatever we weren’t listening to was something that we were supposed to apologize for (“Who left the milk out on the counter?,” “Who left the toilet seat up?,” “Why is the front door open?”) and even if it wasn’t then you can just apologize right off the bat for the (possibly) not listening.

You can say that all of this is kind of cliché…men don’t pay attention and all of that…and that’s probably true. However, there’s got to be more to it when a 5-year-old, an 8-year-old and a 42-year-old all have trouble hearing the same things at the same time. There has to be some scientific explanation for that. And, by God, I will not rest until I find what it is…someday I will find the cure for the ailment that makes me not pay attention to my wife. I will get a government grant and do all sorts of case studies until there is a clear diagnosis. My wife will be listened to someday through the miracles of modern science. The answers are out there. My sons and I will listen…eventually.

What?