Recently in Parental Guidance Category

I believe we are in the midst of a Kids' Show Golden Age. Granted, I often bitch about children's fare on this site, but that's the product of having to watch the same damn shows over and over, the accursed Groundhog's Day scenario that afflicts all parents at some point. Regardless, when I was a little shaver, there was virtually nothing but garbage on TV kids. Nowadays, there are some bonafide masterpieces aimed exclusively at children.

I've written in the past of my love for Flapjack, Phineas and Ferb, and Yo Gabba Gabba (easily the best toddler-oriented TV show ever, non-Sesame Street edition). All of these shows have a certain amount of anarchic weirdness that can tickle the funny bones of both kids and adults. I wrote about them because I fear adults without little kids in their lives may miss out on treasures like these that would be right up their alleys. And I am doing so again, because I have recently discovered a show that can easily stand among these giants: Adventure Time.

Adventure Time, which debuted on Cartoon Network about a year ago, stars Finn, a young lad who longs to be a hero, and his best friend, Jake, a magical dog (voiced by John DiMaggio, better known as Bender on Futurama). Together, they roam the enchanted land of Ooo fighting all manner of evil.

Most of the plots revolve around Finn and his strict, self-applied codes of honor and chivalry, coupled with Jake's love of doing nothing at all. Such as an episode in which Finn vows to rescue a little girl's stolen flowers from the infamous City of Thieves, even though he is warned repeatedly by an annoying old crone that no one can enter the city and not become a thief. While Finn valiantly tries to rescue the flowers as they are literally being stolen anew every two seconds, Jake dives right into the city's thieving ways, swiping a sweet pair of boots, just because.

Tellingly, Adventure Time was created by a former Flapjack animator, Pendleton Ward. It shares with Flapjack a crazed energy, warped universe, and unique style. Finn and Jake's limbs wobble and extend at will, almost like ancient Disney cartoons. The landscapes through which they travel are just as mutable, liable to change at a moment's notice. As Robert Lloyd put it in the Los Angeles Times, Adventure Time resembles "the sort of cartoons they made when cartoons themselves were young and delighted in bringing all things to rubbery life."

In the context of the show, virtually anything can happen. New characters and wondrous lands are introduced in almost every episode, as befits a show that revolves around magic and adventuring, though there are recurring characters. Like the Ice King, an angry monarch with a penchant for kidnapping princesses. Or Lady Rainicorn, Jake's girlfriend, a unicorn with a rainbow tail who speaks through a voice box interpreter (which usually only broadcasts in Korean). Or Marceline the Vampire Queen, who loves to play bass and hungers not so much for blood as the color red.

I should also mention that it is laugh-out-loud funny. Take, for example, an episode where Finn spares some sugar for a poor beggar who turns out to be a Magic Man. The Magic Man horrifies Finn and Jake by turning a bird inside out, then does Finn a "mystical magical favor" by transforming him into a giant foot. "Today a magical life lesson comes to you!" he insists, though the lesson itself is far from clear. Finn demands to be returned back to normal, but the Magic Man refuses--"Not until you appreciate what a jerk I am!"--and disappears in a burst of fireworks that spell out EAT IT.

I am also greatly amused by another episode in which Finn tries to help a whiny talking mountain who is upset because he is forced to watch a nearby town of "roughhousing marauders." Finn tries to mute the bad guys' roughhousing by tying animals to all of the bad guys, which only bothers the mountain more. ("That was terrible! Now the men are just punching animals!") You won't soon forget the sight of tough guys with mice and cats strapped to their fists punching each other.

I'm just scratching the surface here, and I also fear these descriptions make the show seem saner than it is. Adventure Time is straight-up bonkers in the best, most organic way possible. It can't really be understood unless experienced, because it truly is an experience. It's unlike almost anything else on TV, kid- or adult-oriented. It could definitely slot into the Adult Swim lineup, alongside Aqua Teen Hunger Force et al, and not seem out of place at all.

The show's tone and philosophy is probably best understood by this bit of dialogue, which comes at the end of one episode where Finn and Jake had adventured their way into and out of trouble:

JAKE: Let's never be stupid again.

FINN: No, let's always be stupid--forever!

Last year, I wrote an appreciation for The Baby on her third birthday. Here it is a year later, and she's turning four, which I can barely fathom. She talks better than me now. She's learning her letters and numbers at lightning speed. I'm looking into kindergartens (to enroll her in, not just peeping through the window). She has become extremely opinionated about her daily wardrobe. Truth be told, she's not The Baby any more. She's a little girl.

I can barely say that, or even write it, because it seems so insane to me. The amount of time that's passed in her life already is unfathomable to me, as difficult to wrap my head around as the concept of infinity (which I had to do when she asked me 'What comes after space?' and I tried to explain to her that space goes on forever). And I realize that so many of the cute things she said and did when she was little are dangerously close to being lost in my memory (because I need that brain-space to remember crappy 30-year-old commercials).

So I'm furiously trying to compile all these items so they won't be forgotten (in a Word doc, because computer programs never become obsolete!). Like how when she was newborn, she wouldn't cry, but make a 'mew' sound, almost like a kitten. How when was only a few months old, she used to light up when she heard the Feist tune used in an incessant series of iPod ads. How she had a set of play keys and would toddle around the house trying to "unlock" all the doorknobs she could barely reach.

As I compiled these things, going in chronological order as much as I can, what I keep coming back to is how gloriously silly she is, and how that allows me to be silly in a way that would be impossible without her. Like how she's watched Pee-Wee's Big Adventure so many times now that I recite scenes from it with her, verbatim (at her insistence). Or how she does the herky-jerky dance from Mr. Show (don't worry, I just let her watch the dancing part). Or how she wants to be a "spaceman," and asks mommy to make her a spacesuit out of tinfoil. (Stunning results seen here.) Or how, when she's taking a bath, she loves to see me slide past the open bathroom door in my socks, often backward. (I'm talented.)

With each passing day, as she discovers something new, I feel like I'm discovering it right along with her. It helps that she has an affinity for things I like, such as The Adventures of Pete and Pete (she does a spot-on impression of Artie, Strongest Man in the World). But it's so easy to be jaded and cynical about everything in this world, and having her in my life reminds me that there are wonderful things in it.

When she was first born, and I'd see her lying in her bassinet sleeping, I'd approach it slowly and listen for her breathing. It seemed impossible to me that something so unbelievably tiny and fragile could be alive. I thought a strong wind could hurt her. As time goes on, you realize that kids are much tougher than they appear. I'm astounded at how quickly her bumps and bruises disappear; you can literally see her heal over the course of a day.

Even so, when your child is hurt, it pains you like nothing you've felt before. Earlier this year, The Baby came home from school in an odd mood. She's very often cranky, but this was something different entirely. She seemed depressed. I kept asking her what was wrong, but she said "nothing," in this sad, distant voice that told me it definitely wasn't nothing.

I did lots of things to cheer her up, putting on her favorite shows, taking her out for pizza, then getting her ice cream. She'd be happy for short bursts, then I could see a switch go off, as if she remembered "oh wait, I'm still sad," and she would settle into a funk again.

Finally, as we walked back home, I got the story out of her. Some boy she was friends with at day care said he wasn't going to play with her anymore. He would play with some other girl. She was heartbroken, and it broke my heart, too. It was her first taste of rejection more serious than me not giving her a cookie, and I realized this was the just the first of many heartbreaks that awaited her. I thought about being a little kid and how awful it feels to be excluded, usually for reasons you're never told or can't understand, and I felt the weight of all that sadness on me.

We were walking home on an overpass above the Long Island Expressway. She likes to watch the cars zip back and forth beneath her, especially at night, and the Manhattan skyline glisten through the exhaust haze in the distance. She stared in that direction, but really didn't take any of it in.

"You feel sad?" I asked

"Yeah," she said.

"You know what I do when I feel sad? I think about things that make me happy. You know what makes me happy? You."

"Really?"

"Yeah, sometimes I'll get sad or mad during the day when I'm away from you, and I'll think of something silly you did or said and it makes me happy. Maybe you can think of somebody who makes you happy and that will make you feel better."

She thought for a while, hand on chin, and named a classmate, not the one who'd just rejected her. "She makes me funny!" she said, which I interpreted to mean, She makes me laugh, and added, "I like to make people funny!"

"It's nice to make people laugh," I said, "because when people laugh, they're happy."

"Yeah..." she said, with a little laugh herself. We went home and watched Pee-Wee's Big Adventure for the 8 billionth time. She laughed as hard as she always does for the Breakfast Machine scene, and when Pee-Wee yells IS THERE SOMETHING YOU CAN SHARE WITH THE REST OF US, AMAZING LARRY?!



She could not stay awake long enough to see her other favorite part, Pee-Wee overdubbed in his movie cameo ("Paging Mr. Herman..."), and fell asleep curled up next to me. I carried her to bed, laid her down, and kissed her good-night.

Watching her sleep, I thought about how tiny she once was and how I used to think her every breath was a miracle. And I thought about how fragile she once was, and still is, and how there isn't a single thing I wouldn't do to spare her one second of pain. Though I'm sure I could do anything for her, I haven't been called on to do anything Herculean yet. Usually it just takes a 98-pound man-child wrapping scotch tape around his face.

As a parent, you realize very quickly that you're going to have to watch a lot of crap on TV you really don't want to. At first, it's because you realize a certain program can calm down a hysterical baby or hasten sleepy-time. (For my kid, that certain program was Predator.)

Eventually, your child will develop his/her own tastes and want to watch the same movie or show over and over and over again. And thanks to DVDs and video on demand, it's easier than ever before to indulge this OCD. Of course, none of this stuff is meant for your adult eyes/brain, but some of it grates on you more than others.

Like many preschool kids, The Baby went through a Caillou phase, which I believe she has finally outgrown (knock on wood). If you don't have children, you have probably never seen this show and I suggest you continue to avoid it. Caillou is about a four-year-old bald kid who is an enormous weiner. I can't think of a better word to describe this kid; "weiner" covers it, with its implication of profound uncoolness.

There's nothing really wrong with the show in aggregate, but the character of Caillou drives me up the wall. He has a squeaky little kid voice with a pronounced Canadian accident. He is preternaturally well-spoken and well-behaved in a way that no four-year-old has ever been. And everything in the world must revolve around him. If you remember The Kids in the Hall sketches with Bruce McCulloch as Gavin, Caillou is like a slightly younger version of that.

Oh, and Caillou has songs. Almost all little kid shows do, but these songs feel slapped together, both lyrically and musically. Really slapped together. I think they were all written by Garth and Kat.

This clip below is a perfect example. I can't remember why Caillou is singing about being in a rock and roll band, not that it matters. The song clearly takes longer to listen to than the composer took to write it.



And yet, when I heard this song, it struck a chord. It reminded me of something--not despite its threadbare intellect, but because of it. It rattled at the back of my mind for a while, searching for a connection, until it hit me like a bolt from the blue: It sounds exactly like Wesley Willis' "Rock and Roll McDonalds". Don't believe me? Have a listen.



In case you don't remember or were too young to catch him the first time around, Wesley Willis was a schizophrenic who rose to "fame" in the 1990s thanks to songs he made with Casio keyboard presets, which he used to drive away the "demons in his head" that would take him on "hellrides". Some of his songs were about how much he loved music, some were about beating up superheroes, and some were obscene rants involving animals.

Of course, since every Wesley Willis song sounds exactly the same, you could say "Caillou's Rock and Roll Band" resembles any of them. But I think this comparison is more apt than, say, "Eat a Panda's Ass."

This morning, as I dropped The Baby off at day care, another parent was talking to one of the teachers about her kid. Apparently, he'd been "bad" the day before, committing transgressions such as pouring an entire juice box into a Little People dollhouse (which I, of course, found hilarious). He also threw a block at an unnamed girl, which prompted said girl to smack him in retaliation.

"It think I know who that girl was," the teacher said, and gave my daughter a knowing look.

This troubled me, so I bent low and asked The Baby if she'd hit this kid. Her answer was unclear, but her hemming and hawing suggested that she probably had. "You shouldn't do that," I told her. "If somebody hits you, tell the teacher."

"But it's good if she sticks up for herself!" the teacher said, clearly not bothered by any of this.

"Yeah, but she can stick up for herself without smacking somebody," I responded.

"It's okay," the mom said, lowering herself to eye level with The Baby. "If [KID'S NAME] does that again, you can hit him. He deserved it!"

Thanks, Other Kid's Mom! You just gave my kid license to hit your kid whenever she wants! Just because you said she should only do it when your kid "deserves" it, that doesn't mean she will, or that she's a capable judge of when retribution is called for. I saw her once charge across the room at another kid because she thought he looked at her funny. (By the way, there is nothing more simultaneously adorable and terrifying as a baby on a rampage.)

Also, once you say something to a three-year-old, it can not be unsaid or dislodged from their brain. Did you once say it was okay to eat jellybeans before dinner? You now have a kid who expects to eat jellybeans before dinner every single night for the rest of their live, because you said something in passing once.

And this is all happening at 7:30 in the morning, people. I am in no state of mind to start an argument over conflict resolution among three-year-olds, or to simply tell this other parent to mind their own beeswax. I just wanna kiss The Baby goodbye and drive to work without getting sideswiped by a Hasidic school bus (the deadliest vehicles on the Williamsburg streets).

So I just said, "Well, I gotta head to work now," hugged The Baby and went on my way. I fully expect to be punched in the head when I get home tonight.

A tweet by Onion scribe/artiste Maria Schneider (aka @writtennoise, auteur of Pathetic Geek Stories) pointed me to this hideous cover of a recent issue of Life and Style. As you can see, it's a "before-and-after" shot of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's daughter, Shiloh. In the before pic, she looks like a typical little girl. In the after shot, she has short hair and is wearing a cardigan. The cover screams WHY IS ANGELINA TURNING SHILOH INTO A BOY? and laments the fact that Shiloh has "No girlie things"! "IS IT HARMING THE 3-YEAR-OLD?" ZOMG!

Despite being a magazine aimed at a largely female audience, this publication has forgotten one very important thing: You can't force a three-year-old girl what to wear anything she doesn't want to. Trust me. I am legally required to clothe a three-year-old girl, and I know that they have no qualms about letting you know when they're unhappy with your choice of outfit for the day (or anything else, for that matter).

At this young age, kids simply like what they like. It has very little to do with the peer pressures that emerge later. For whatever reason, Shiloh likes dressing this way now. The chances of her wanting to dress this way for the rest of her life are about as slim as her watching Dora the Explorer when she's in college. How many things do you do/like now that you liked/did when you were three? And if she does grow up to wear "boy" clothing, it's because she wants to, not because Crazy Angelina Jolie "made" her that way.

When I found The Wife and I were having a daughter, one of the first things I thought (other than PANIC) was, "I'm not gonna have any of that princess crap in my house!" Because I associated the whole Princess Phenomenon with a mindless philosophy of entitlement and passivity that's resolutely anti-feminist.

But somewhere along the line, she got exposed to Princess Stuff, and she likes it. She's not super into it, like she wears a tiara to day care, but she does like it. So she has some princess-y toys and some princess-y outfits, and the world has continued spinning on its axis. Hopefully, if I raise her right, she won't turn out to be a Kardashian.

She also likes some non-girly stuff, too. She often makes me play Spider-Man--of course, I always have to be Venom and get wrapped up in her webs and carted off to jail (which greatly resembles our bathroom). As I type this, she's watching an X-Men cartoon, which she asked to see (screamed, actually). Her love of these things has nothing to do with me. I have never forced her to watch any of them. I learned very early on that when you force a kid to watch something, 99 times out of 100 they will hate it.

Even so, every now and then, she will say of something--even if it's something she likes, like Spider-Man--"that's for boys!" As if she shouldn't watch/play with it. I have no idea where she gets this idea from. She certainly doesn't get it in our house.

But she has to leave our house sometime. And when I see things like the garbage linked above, I realize she must just get it from the air, living in a world that tells her from infancy that there are certain things she can't like or do or think or be. I could have kept every item of princess-iana out her hands and sight, and she'd still be exposed to caveman attitudes like this.

Thanks, world.

A whiles back, I wrote about a site called Tiny Art Director and how it represented one of the darker, more soul-crushing aspects of parenthood--how your children can be Heathers-level cruel to you on a daily basis. But kids do cool stuff, too. Like make up hilarious stories with enormous universes and characters ruled by a logic that only makes sense to them.

Witness Axe Cop, an online comic drawn by an adult but "written" by a five-year-old. Apparently, the young auteur (Malachai Nicolle) tells his stories about the titular character to the artist (Ethan Nicolle), who illustrates them. Magic ensues.

I will not ruin your experience by revealing any details of the exciting Axe Cop story arc. Suffice to say, it's pretty much exactly what you might expect from the mind of a five-year-old. Click and enjoy. I promise awesomeness.

Thanks to namethebats, who first alerted me to said awesomeness.

One more Baby story to close out her birthday week, if I may.

The Baby has this habit of spotting a random toy just as we're about to leave for day care in the morning, then grabbing it and insisting on taking it with her. If it's something small, like a Yo Gabba Gabba action figure or a spider ring, I say okay. If it's something big or ridiculous, like a book or a chair, I say no. If I say no, she immediately throws a fit, and I have to figure out how to distract her so I can get her out the door.

This morning, she really wanted to take a plastic pumpkin (the kind used for trick-or-treating). I said no, and she went ballistic. I carried her out onto the porch and closed the door, but she flung herself against it. It carried her down the stoop and walked down the street with her, but she was still upset.

If I get this far and she's still crying, I try to find something nearby to excite and distract he, like, "Oooh, look at that squirrel running around in the tree!". But this morning, none of the usual sights are working. s

Then, at the end of our block, I spotted an old TV someone had thrown out on the curb. It lay screen-down, and some vandals had obviously gotten to it, because there was glass all over the sidewalk and the side panels were kicked in.

"Oooh, look at the broken TV!" I said, and made a smashing noise.

Immediately, The Baby stopped crying and started laughing. "Broken TV, oh no!" she squealed, and imitated my smash sound. Her anger about The Pumpkin Incident was completely forgotten.

We turned up another street, walked another 10 feet or so, and The Baby said, "Daddy, you remember the broken TV?"

"Yeah, it was funny!"

"It was FUNNY!" she said again, made the smashing sound, and laughed hysterically.

Perhaps I should be a tad worried about this, especially considering that time Predator lulled her to sleep. But then again, maybe I should have expected this, because I think breaking stuff is funny. I thought that when I was a kid, and I think that now. I have no idea why. It just touches a dumb, primal Laugh Button within me. When Dave Letterman used to throw junk off the top of a five-story building or crush them with a 80-ton hydraulic press, I was in heaven.





So The Baby has the I Think Breakin' Stuff Is Funny Gene. In celebration of her birthday, this weekend we're taking her to the demolition derby.

While I was busy trying to immortalize the majesty of Steampipe Alley, I made another video discovery: a bunch of digital camera movies I'd totally forgotten about. All the clips were less than a minute, and came from when my daughter was only a few months old. Grasping at her toes. Shoving toys into her mouth. Flailing wildly in a vain attempt to control her limbs. All of the small triumphs of a tiny life.

Watching these moments, they felt like yesterday to me, and yet, they feel like forever ago. I felt almost crushed by the weight of time, by how much she's grown since then, and by the realization of how quickly she'll grow up from how big she is already.

I was also somewhat shamed to realize that I rarely talk about her on this site. And when I do, it's usually to bitch about how hard parenting is, or to rail against some rude jerk I encountered while out in the world with her.

That's because I try to be funny on this here site. Whether or not I succeed is another story, but that's my intent. The sad fact is, frustration and anger are funny, while happiness isn't. That's why most comedians are such well-adjusted people.

Tolstoy famously said all happy families are alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I don't think that's entirely true. But I do think every person's notion of happiness is so deep and profound that it becomes un-profound to the larger world. Within the universe of you, it means everything, but to everyone else, it means nothing.

That may be why I don't write about my daughter on this site very often. Because she makes me happy in a way that defies words. Happy doesn't do it justice. It's the closest word there is, and it's still light years away from what I feel. Trying to describe how she makes me feel would be like trying to describe my own brain: I've never seen it, and I never will see it. I just know it's there and it makes me alive.

She makes me feel happy in a way I haven't felt when I was a child, that feeling of pure, unadulterated joy unbroken by any worries or fears. It's a rare feeling, especially for me. I've never been able to turn off my What Now alarm for too long, even when I was a kid. It is extremely difficult for me to forget about Life and have fun. But being goofy with my daughter brings me to someplace childlike and wonderful, and it happens so easily I can hardly believe it.

It kills me to drop her off at day care each morning, kiss her goodbye, and spend the whole day without her. A minute doesn't go by that I don't think about her, about walking in the front door and seeing her and being silly with her. Sometimes I think of myself as Homer in that one flashback Simpsons episode, when he arranges pictures of Maggie around his de-motivational plaque so that DON'T FORGET: YOU'RE HERE FOREVER reads DO IT FOR HER.

The sad fact of my life/schedule is that I see her at her worst parts of the day: early in the morning, when she fights to stay asleep (like Daddy, she is not a morning person), and at night, when she can be just as cranky. Not to mention all the stupid Life Things I have to do that get in the way of playing with her. I live for the weekends, when I get to spend hours with her and enjoy her in all her wide-eyed, curious, and crazed glory.

I could recount a million little things she's said and done that warmed my soul, but they wouldn't mean anything to you. However, I would like to share one little story with you, with a preface:

One of the hardest things to learn as a new parent is that your kid won't love you the way you love them. They can't. Babies are Pure Id. They are nothing but Need and Want. They will get mad at you and yell at you and hit you when you dare to deny them their every whim, or don't yield to it fast enough for their fancy. You can't take it personally. All you can do is love them and hope they learn to love by osmosis.

So I've come to expect low returns on my investment of affection. But one day a few months ago, I was playing with my daughter on our bed. Jumping around, hiding under the covers, just being silly. All of a sudden, in the middle of all of the goofiness, she stopped and fixed me with this quizzical, serious look.

"I like you, Daddy!" she said, as if she had just realized or decided this. Up to that moment, I'd never heard her say "I like [anything]". I almost burst into tears. It meant so much more to me than hearing her repeat I love you, because it was so real and genuine. It wasn't rote, something I forced on her through repetition. It was a conclusion she'd come to, one she felt she must declare. "I like you, too!" I said, and gave her a huge hug.

Today, she's made me happy for three full years. It feels like yesterday, and it feels like forever, in the best way.

A few weeks ago, The Wife, The Baby, and I visited a friend in Bushwick for a BBQ. About three minutes into this lovely summer event, The Baby made it known that she would not be satisfied with the selection of toys we'd brought with us. So The Wife went off to a local dollar store to get some crayons and a coloring book.

But she didn't just come back with a coloring book. Oh no. She came back with a goldmine of surrealistic art treasures. She came back with one of the straight-up weirdest things I have ever set eyes on. And it was a mere 99 cents, shoved between expired Tuna Helper and off-brand Malta.

Why was it so weird? The ultra-cheap production is a factor. "Cheap" is actually charitable for the care and attention that went into this publication. Needless to say, none of the art is very good. It was obviously cobbled together from various sources, with little regard for aesthetic unity or copyright issues. Many images have been blown up a thousand times, so the borders are way too thick and pixelated.

But that's not why this thing is so bizarre. Oh no, that doesn't even scratch the surface. If David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and Werner Herzog collaborated on a coloring book, it wouldn't look one-tenth as weird/disturbing as this thing.

Context is key. Keep in mind, this is meant to be a coloring book for children. That's what makes it so insane. At least I assume it's a coloring book. There is no text in this book except for what you see there on the cover. I'm not even sure what language this is. Italian? Romanian? Esperanto?

I hoped to investigate the origins of this weird, weird thing, but I can't figure out who published it because it has no ISBN. The only publishing info is a bar code and a note that says MADE IN CHINA (which means it's probably made of ground-up plastic pellets and lead paint). But it might as well say MADE ON NEPTUNE, because I can't imagine a human mind putting this thing together. I just can't!

Why? Oh, you'll see. Don't worry, you'll see.

The tweeting of bigplastichead alerted me to the blog Tiny Art Director. The site's author (professional illustrator Bill Zeman) draws things he's told to draw by his four-year-old daughter. She then critiques them as only a four-year-old girl can. Which is to say, in extremely harsh terms that make no attempt to salve her father's feelings.

Because not even a professional illustrator can perfectly match the insane, wondrous visions that swirl around in a little kid's head. And to a four-year-old, the reasonable response to this is to go ape-shit and erase the drawing your dad made for you at your request.

Reading this site, I alternated between delight and horror. Many of the posts were extremely funny, but a lot of them hit a little too close to home. I've had my 2-year-old yell at me NO, DADDY, NO! for simply looking at her when she doesn't want me to, or scream at the top of her lungs because a DVD she wants to watch isn't loading fast enough. "I'm sorry honey, I'll have to speak to those bad men at Sony for not making DVD players that can be activated at the speed of a toddler's whims."

So to me, this site serves as a preview of what I can expect when my daughter reaches the full height of her powers of expression and snap judgment. And doesn't like my drawing of a plane made out of poop.

Louis CK has a routine wherein he talks about the difference between little boys and little girls. To wit: Boys break things and do horribly destructive things, but they do it just to do it. It's not personal. A boy will jump up and down on your bed and bust the boxspring, or throw all the good flatware in the microwave for a half-hour, but he won't do it to hurt your feelings. He's just being a jerk.

Girls, on the other hand (says Louie), will do stuff to destroy your soul. The example he gives: his older daughter broke her doll by accident, snapped the head right off. So she insisted that he break her sister's doll in order to bring about some demented childlike sense of justice. IF I CAN'T HAVE AN INTACT DOLLY, NO ONE SHALL!



Yup, the rest of my life is gonna be FUN. Good thing I've lost all my hair already.

Whilst catching up on a DVRed epsiode of Best Week Ever, The Baby had a mild-but-loud freakout. We paused the show at this precise moment so we wouldn't miss any of the hilarity:

But as we tried to calm The Baby down, she saw this screen and immediately erupted into hysterics. She squealed, "Daddy! Monster!" and made the claw motion sort-of displayed by Paul F. Tompkins.

We couldn't restart the show because she thought this screen-freeze was so funny. Every time she saw it, she would laugh with childish fervor and say some variation of "Daddy, funny!" And when she would turn to see the TV screen once more, she'd break into insane laughter, as loud as the first time.

So thank you, Paul F. Tompkins, for making us laugh about weirdly paused screenshots. Again.

There's one block of Flushing Avenue, right around Bedford, that's completely torn up. And it's been completely torn up since I started taking the bus to work.

The street is literally ripped open, with a huge, gaping hole cordoned off by an rickety wooden fence. You can see down inside, where months of rainwater have accumulated, leaving a lime green, radioactive scummy pond. Enormous segments of concrete sewer pipe lay on the sidewalk. They once had screens on their open ends that looked kinda like cheesecloth, but those were weathered away long ago, and their remnants flap in the breeze.

None of this crap has moved in at least 6 months. I don't know who's to blame: the city, or whatever slumlord started repairs and never finished them. But because of it, my bus gets trapped on this block every morning, thus making my commute far longer than it need be.

So this morning, while I'm stuck at this point, I see some Hasidic kids playing on the sidewalk. They're taking cardboard box from the kosher grocery store across the street, and they're trying to bale a puddle of dirty rainwater with it. They range in age from 4 to 8, and they look like they're having the time of their lives.

I see this is in my own home. My daughter will play with a 10 cent hair scrunchie, or a paper towel roll, and have as much fun as she does playing with expensive Christmas presents. If not more.

So my parental advice is, exploit this childhood window while you can. Forget the Baby Einstein nonsense and get the kid an empty pallet of tissue boxes from behind the local Duane Reade. The kid won't care, and you won't have to cajole them to play with that hand-crafted wooden xylophone you wasted 30 dollars on.

A while back, I wrote of a grocery store parking lot incident that occurred when I was still a newish father. My baby clunked her head on a shopping cart, got upset, and proceeded to yak several metric tons of formula on the pavement. And while I tried to calm her down and avoid the puke, some mouthy broad rolled by me. Did she offer to help? Did she let out a sympathetic "I've been there" sigh? No, she screamed TILT HER FORWARD!! and kept on moving.

This act was astounding in its cluelessness and willingness to throw gasoline on a fire. It takes a special kind of person to see another human being in crisis, resist the temptation to help or ignore them, and yell something at them.

Rudeness is a fact of life in NYC, but it's usually simple, impersonal rudeness. When someone goes out of their way to be rude to you while you're in the middle of something very serious--well, that person must be applauded for their sheer commitment to assholery.

This woman was the champion of Rude Douches in my experience. Until yesterday, that is. Ladies and gentlemen, a new king has been crowned.

I've been super busy at work lately, but yesterday I left in a timely fashion. I was looking forward to a quiet evening at home, working on the podcast, hopefully catching 30 Rock, The Office, and the debut of Delocated. My daughter must have sensed this, because she picked this evening to jam a raisin in her nose.

She toddled over me and said "Daddy, boo-boo nose!" I saw the raisin sticking out of her left nostril, and asked her to sit still while I retrieved it. Of course, this caused her to rear her head back and lodge the raisin deep in her nasal cavity, way too deep for me to get at.

We called her doctor, who told us what we feared: she'd have to go to the ER. There are a few hospitals near us, but they're all closing within months. I have reservations about taking my child to a hospital whose workers know they're gonna be out of a job soon. I had visions of the doctor saying, "Yeah, her appendix is coming out. It's not infected, but I've never done an appendectomy before and this might be my last chance!"

So we schlepped all the way to Flushing, amidst beautiful LIE traffic, and ran smack into a jam-packed ER waiting room. Despite an interminable wait, the baby was reasonably calm and well behaved, until we went to triage. She picked this moment to have one of her trademark meltdowns, kicking and screaming and going limp like a non-violent protester.

Post-triage, she was still freaking out. I ran with her out of the waiting room and tried to calm her down, but in her anger she kept kicking me right in the stomach. "You want down? Fine," I said, and let her on the ground. She slumped and whined with her head on the hallway tiles.

This is an act that every parent of a 2-year-old has seen. You just have to wait it out until the kid is tired of acting like a jerk. Doing so can make you look like a jerk to non-parents and other bystanders, but it's really the best thing to do. Anything else is a waste of your physical and emotional energy.

At this point, the ER doors opened and one of the hospital maintenance guys came through. "You gotta get her off the floor," he said. "It's dirty."

"I would if I could," I shoot back.

"You gotta do it," he says. "You gotta be a father."

And he keeps on walking.

Ok, first off, mind your own business. Second, mind your own business. Third through one hundred and seventy eighth, MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS.

I gotta be a father?! I've been waiting in this overcrowded ER waiting room two goddamn hours because my daughter shoved a raisin up her nose. In a few minutes, I'm gonna have to hold her down on a hospital bed while a complete stranger shoves a hook up her nostril to fish it out. If that isn't the definition of a father, you tell me what is, asshole.

And yeah, I figure the floor is dirty, Einstein. But if it is, isn't that YOUR FAULT, GUY WHO CLEANS HOSPITAL FLOOR FOR A LIVING?!

I was seriously ready to fist-fight this guy. But he was gone as quick as he appeared, and at this exact moment we were called into the ER. My desire to get the fuck out of this place as quickly as possible trumped my desire to punch a stranger, no matter how much a bastard he was.

Congrats, New Rude Douche Champion! I'm gonna pick out a huge trophy in your honor! And the next time I see you, prepare to have that trophy shoved right up your ass.

Something dumb that drives me nuts: Kids who refuse to dress up.

This is not an Adult Feeling for me, or a Parent Feeling. Even when I was a kid, it really bothered me when I saw other kids at a fancy function dressed in jeans and sneakers.

Maybe it was because I had to get dressed up all the time to go to Witness meetings. So I'd think to myself, Hey, kid, I gotta put a suit on three times a week. You can't put on friggin' tie for Aunt Clara's 90th birthday?

I don't come from fancy people, by any stretch of the imagination. But I do come from a family where you know that sometimes you have to dress nice. And "nice" doesn't mean "expensive". It just means "not showing up to a funeral in a Budweiser t-shirt."

It doesn't take a lot of money to not look like a slob. I wore SalVay suits as a kid. Hell, I wore sub-SalVay suits. I wore suits from this nasty-ass thrift store in our local town that smelled like an armpit. Every time I set foot in that place, it took a few weeks off my life, from a combination of intense fear I would be spotted there and the airborne contaminants inside it. Seriously, I think it was built on top of a former pesticide testing facility.

But you know what? We were too damn poor to turn up our noses at such bargains. After a delousing, the suits looked fine. Plus, there was the occasional pearl hidden within. I once managed to snag a vinyl copy of Monty Python's rare three-sided record for like a buck.

I'm aware that not everyone has what sociologists would call the "cultural capital" to know how to behave in certain social situations. But my feeling is, if you have enough money to not shop at The Pest Hole Thrift Shop like I did, you also should know how to dress at a fahncy function.

All of this childhood anger hit me anew this weekend at a party I attended. The outfits worn by people at this party ranged in their fanciness. I was at the lower end of the scale, in a nice sweater and dress shoes but also wearing a pair of jeans. Some folks were all decked out, others were closer to me. But no one looked like they just rolled out of bed and put on something that'd been laying on the floor.

Then this one kid showed up in a replica NFL jersey and sneakers, and just like that, I was FURIOUS. Because it wasn't an old holey football top or scuffed-up Keds. No, it was sparkling, brand-new (or well maintained) Vince Young replica and matching shoes in similarly pristine condition.

So this family had enough dough to dress him in the outfit of his choice. And everyone else he entered with wore appropriate attire. He just didn't feel like getting dressed up. It really pissed me off, in the kind of blind, dumb way that you can only be pissed off when you're a kid and you find something WRONG and UNFAIR!

And I see NO WAY in which this post could come back to bite me in the ass when my own child refuses to get dressed up some day!

As a parent, I'm always on the lookout for something that may warp The Baby. Not so much to shield her from harm (apart from the obvious evils), but more to spot True Weirdness that may shape her in the future.

By True Weirdness, I don't mean someone/something that tries real hard to be weird. Some Williamsburg hipster in a handlebar mustache and a Billy Jean pleather jacket does not have True Weirdness. I'm talking about a creative expression so undiluted and genuine that the practitioner has no idea (s)he is being weird. Like some guy who lives in the middle of nowhere and who's never been to a gallery and has no artistic ambitions at all, yet feels compelled to make sculptures out of old mufflers and crankcases.

Sadly, most kiddie fare is devoid of True Weirdness, unless you consider the preternaturally wholesome world of Barney weird. (/thrusts hand up high) SpongeBob Square Pants can get completely insane at times (in a good way), and has plenty of jokes that go way over kids' heads. SpongeBob makes me laugh on a consistent basis, and I like that it provides steady work to Mr. Show alum Tom Kenny. Still, it's hard to call something as popular (and lucrative) as SpongeBob Truly Weird.

There's Yo Gabba Gabba, which is complete audio/visual crack for parents who grew up with Nintendo. And I have to applaud any kids' show that regularly features Rahzel, Biz Markie, and Mark Mothersbaugh. But it also tries very hard to be hip. It succeeds to be sure, but this self awareness keeps it from being Truly Weird.

I have only discovered one Truly Weird kids' show, and it is as strange as anything I've ever seen on television: The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. It airs on Cartoon Network, and could totally be part of the Adult Swim lineup if it had more pottymouth. But unlike the Adult Swim shows, I don't get the sense that it's trying to be weird. Its simply dedicated to a bizarre mini-universe whose architect has no idea how weird his visions look to the rest of the world.

While staying at my mother's house over the weekend, my baby daughter woke up screaming in the middle of the night, completely inconsolable. She was wailing in a desperate and terrified way completely unfamiliar to me. And there was nothing I could do to make her stop, which gave me the worst feeling a parent can have: powerlessness. If you can help it, you don't want your child to realize you're completely worthless until they're at least 10 years old.

Cry Recognition is one instinct you develop pretty early on your parental career. Like a car nut who can tell the model of classic wheels based on the sound of the engine, a parent can tell what their child wants based on the style and timbre of their cries. There are subtle yet important differences in a baby's cry when she's wet and a baby's cry when she's hungry. Or a baby's cry when she just feels like crying and waking up everyone in the house. Babies are real dicks sometimes.

I tried whispering soothing things and I tried singing to her but she refused to even open her eyes. So I walked her into the bathroom, hoping that she'd see herself in the mirror and realize she was with her father and everything was okay. But that didn't work either. So I finally decided to take her out to the living room and put on some kiddie show she likes. I felt like watching Teletubbies at 2 in the morning about as much as I felt like stabbing myself in the eye with a cocktail toothpick, but these are the sacrifices you make for your children.

I don't talk about The Baby on this site very often. Sure, I'll refer to certain things that parenthood has exposed me to. I'll opine on how having a kid gives me new perspectives on things. But for the most part, I don't like talking about anything she actually does.

The reason is that, whoever you might be, I'm sure you do not give a shit. If being married means creating a series of endless in-jokes that no one else in the world will ever have a chance to be a part of, then that's what being a parent is like, times a thousand.

Like, when you're hanging with a friend that you've known for a little bit, and he's hanging out with guys he knows from way back, and they spend the whole night reciting disembodied lines from episodes in their collective past. And they're laughing their heads off while you think What the fuck are these idiots talking about? So they start explaining it to you, but the explanation has so much back story and footnotes to it that you'd prefer to remain in the dark.

Prime example: last Saturday, The Baby climbed into our bed while we were still trying to sleep. So I pretended I was still asleep with exaggerated, cartoony snoring sounds. The Baby thought this was funny, so she started to imitate it in a way that only a baby can imitate something she doesn't understand. For a few days, every time I said "Go to sleep!", she'd make a similar noise. But every time she did it, it was as if she was making a copy of her previous attempt, so after a few days of this, it sounded less like a snore and more like she was clearing her throat of phlegm.

I thought this was hysterical, so I tell her to "go to sleep" every time she's been around friends in the past week. Of course, these people never heard the several days' transition between Snore Noise and Weird Hacking Noise. They just hear her make a horrible sound and wonder if she's feeling okay. There's no way they could think this is funny, because they would literally have to have been with us the entire previous week in order to "get it". The payoff is so small that it's not worth the setup.

I know this will totally come across as a Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children?! post. But if there is one point on which I agree with the Helen Lovejoy Crowd, it's anger over the premature sexualization of little girls. It's always bothered me, and now that I have a daughter of my own, it bothers me even more. The biggest perpetrator of this crime is, of course, Madison Avenue--although Roger Clemens has certainly done his part.

To be fair, this trend is part due to the fact girls now hit puberty at ridiculously young ages. Thanks to all the hormones we pump into the animals we eat, if you poured some milk and slapped a raw steak on a bowling bowl, it'd start growing breasts. But I also wanna say it started with Britney Spears, 'cause hey, why not?

Way back in the late 1990s, Britney Spears made music that was squarely aimed at the Radio Disney crowd, while cultivating a persona of Slut In Training. She had all the confused sexual politics and virgin/whore complexes of a Rock Hudson/Doris Day movie, but with better production values and half the self awareness.

The creepiest part about it was, when you heard her talk at this time (and God help you if you did), she seemed blissfully unaware of the Lolita Vibes she gave off. When the subject of sex was actually broached, she sounded like Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock trying to fake-hit on Tracy Jordan's wife. She was clearly being manipulated by a publicity machine capitalizing on the Look But Don't Touch Appeal of an underage hottie. Not to be alarmist, but look how well that turned out for her.

If two's a coincidence and three's a trend, as all the marketing mavens tell us, then I have to wonder about current trend in children's programming:

Pirates.

I don't know when this happened. I certainly didn't watch a lot of children's programming between when I was a kid and when my child was born, but I don't remember too many pirates in the shows I watched as a feckless youth. Most of my favorite shows were glorified infomercials for a series of action figures. Now that I think about it, I guess that's a form of piracy.

One example I see constantly is on The Wiggles , my baby's favorite show. If you've never seen The Wiggles , it's essentially four Australian guys singing surprisingly well-crafted songs. (They will get stuck in your head until you will be tempted to perform self trepanation. Trust me.) For 1-to-2-year-old babies, this shit is like heroin. One of the Wiggles' many pals is a "friendly" pirate named Captain Feathersword. His pirate activity is limited to dancing with his crew, singing, and cackling maniacally, with very little emphasis on the plundering of booty.

Hello, and happy new year to all. As will become abundantly clear, the post below was written before Xmas. I never got a chance to post it, so now here it is in all its outdated glory. Enjoy, and I will have more timely stuff posted very very soon.

The Baby has made a few forays into Outer Space (= Not The Living Room) in her first few weeks on planet earth, but most of these trips have been to relatives' houses. Friendly territory, where she gets poked and prodded and photographed until her psychological defense mechanisms kick in and render her catatonic. So we thought it might be a good idea to toughen the girl up, get her out of the house and acquainted with the evil world that will one day crush her fragile spirit once she's sufficiently cognizant to realize its true depths. Fun!

My original plan was to teach her some survival skills. We would drive out to the Meadowlands and drop her off in a tied-up sack with a map and some C-rations, to see if she could find her way home. But The Wife suggested that this might be seen as child abuse.

So we did something more acceptable to society but no less cruel--we took her to the mall. We had Xmas shopping to do, and there's only so many people you can buy hilariously ironic eBay gifts for. "Here, Uncle Phil, have this Lucky Strike ad clipped out of 1954 issue of Collier's. It's funny 'cuz it's old!"

Once again, I have been delinquent in updating the site. But at least this time, I have a perfectly legitimate excuse for my delinquency: 6 lbs 4 oz to be exact. I'd love to post a picture of our little bundle of loudness, but knowing the evils that lurk on the interweb, I'm sure my jpeg would wind up the victim of some nefarious Photoshopper.

How are the first few weeks of parenting? I touch another human's feces on a daily basis. I've gotten about 20 minutes of sleep within the past 12 days (which is probably 20 minutes more than The Wife has). And despite rarely getting sick, exhaustion has allowed my immune system to accept the worst cold I've had in years. So sleep deprivation, sickness, and humiliating tasks--it's kinda like being a POW, but I'm surrounded by pacifiers.