Moms Are From "Sure, I Will Go Out On Sunday Night To Get Poster Board" And Dads Are From "You're Screwed."

At 6:10 on Sunday night, we were enjoying a family dinner when my son asked, “Do we have any poster board?”


“Oh yeah,” my other son said, “I have that project too.”

Parents, we know the following to be true. Those who aren’t parents heed my words. Nothing good comes from poster board. It is a gateway to school project hell.

So last Sunday evening, a few hours from bedtime, we were about to make collages – with poster board that we were not sure we even had – that were due the next day.

And by “we” I mean the boys and my wife. The “I” part of “we” went to the family room to finish off the wine.

Sensing the encroaching swear-fest from me, Bonnie donned her “Ultimate Mom” cape and herded the boys upstairs.

Or so I thought. About thirty minutes later she came up from the basement –with poster board. “I snuck out because I didn’t want you to get mad,” she said. She did the right thing of course, teaching the boys a lesson by not getting them what they needed would be fruitless.

She did it because she “didn’t want them to be upset.” Would I have done this? Probably - but I would have made damn sure they were upset. I just feel that as the father of a couple of boys, I need to be, well, a prick sometimes. Now, this could be some buried passive aggressive wiring, but I don’t think it is. I liken it more to the “silverback syndrome” that gorillas display. You see, the second a baby boy is born, the silverback knows his days are numbered; he also knows his offspring is going to be way cooler than he is. Before he can pick the fleas off his wife, his son will be eating more awesome bananas than he ever had as a kid. The silverback will be envious. So, in the years that he is still physically more imposing and while his offspring still need a back ride to the clearing to play with his other gorilla friends, the silverback jumps at the opportunity to pretend he is still the boss.

For the kids, of course (gorilla or human) this doesn’t work. Dave Bowie sang, “And these children that you spit on as they try and change their world, are immune to your consultations. They’re quite aware what they’re going through.” So yeah, I would have gone out for the poster board, and I would have been pissed off. I like to think I could have pissed them off a little, just a little, for not telling us sooner. But they would certainly have been immune to my consultations. They know the Silverback would move a mountain for them.

Bending The Sub Lady To My Will (Where Dave Contends With A Knife Wielding Senior Citizen)

The lady brandished the 14” bread knife at me as she spoke, each syllable accented with a flicking of the knife through the air.

“That was not me, sir,” she said sternly. (Five flicks.)

“It absolutely was you,” I said.

Uncut

“Sir,” flick, “I would not have done that.”

“You did it last week,” my safety buoyed by the counter between us.

It’s rare you find yourself in a confrontation at the sub counter in a grocery store, but I sure as hell did.

It started three weeks ago, and like the Bloods and Crips, escalated to outlandish proportions.

You see, every week Bonnie and I order a 14” Italian sub to eat over the weekend. Well, three weeks ago when I ordered the sub I was told by the lady who would soon be brandishing the knife that they were running a special: buy one 7” sub and get a 7” sub for free. “Great,” I said, “I’ll take it.” I really was not paying attention, but at the very last moment, I noticed she cut the sub, made on a 14” roll, in half, wrapped each separately and gave me both pieces.

“Hmm,” I thought, “had I known that I would not have had her cut it.” Why? Because we bring our sub home whole, and cut it into thirds. Lesson learned.

The following week, I went to the counter and told the lady (who had no idea at this point in seven days hence she would be considering felony murder) that I would like the special, but just do not cut it.

“I can’t so that,” she said.

Before we go further, a few facts:

1. I was not asking for anything special, including: extra meat, half-toasted, double wrapped, the tomatoes not touching the lettuce or Swiss cheese with minimal holes.

2. Had the special meant I would get 7” inch bread, I would have been fine. I would assume they got a deal on 7” rolls somewhere. It was the EXACT SAME SANDWICH, just cut in half (and at the very end to boot.)

Round two was successfully mediated by a younger worker – kind of like the former gang member who goes back to the neighborhood. Reluctantly, she left the sandwich intact and just put two stickers on.

It was 1 to 1. The rubber match.

This week when I showed up at the counter, I thought the problem was solved. This is when the lady began wielding the knife, steadfast in her resolve. I felt like asking her if she forgot what the gang mediator had done last week.

After some posturing, she went to ask a manager.

“We can’t do it.” I think her teeth were clenching.

“You don’t remember this discussion last week? You were here last week, I remember. Just put two stickers on it, that’s all.”

Granted, I sort of felt like an elitist prick at this point. And truthfully, I really had no desire to upset this older lady. I brushed those feelings aside.

She went back to the manager who I am sure told her, “Okay, just don’t cut the sub for the elitist prick.”

“Okay, what kind of cheese do you want?” the knife back on the counter.

I almost said, “The same kind I asked for when I fucking ordered before you tried to turn this into a Federal racketeering case.” But I didn’t.

When she handed me my uncut sub, I also didn’t say, “See, that wasn’t so hard after all.” I did say, “See you next week.” I swear I heard the knife flick through the air.

Where Dave Eats A Fried Pig Head

“I wouldn’t recommend eating the eye,” our waiter said as he placed half of a deep fried pig head in front of me. It took a few seconds for my eyes to orient themselves; for the head to come into focus.

As it arrived.  The sunken eye is near the top

“It’s being held up by a piece of neck meat. Make sure you rip it open and dig around. I brought you a knife but mostly you just go at this thing with your hands.”

I found the eye, just aft of the jaws. It was crinkly brown with a little ball of hard yellow that had formed on the outside. (The iris?) I started with the cheeks.

Bonnie and I were eating at Cure, a newer restaurant in Lawrenceville, for her birthday. Our general rule for finding a new restaurant is that we don’t eat anywhere that my parents would love. This excludes anyplace that serves baked potatoes. Not that there is a thing wrong with baked potatoes, I just don’t want to spend money to eat one. (Our biggest restaurant avoidance is steak houses. Fifty dollars for a steak I can cook just as well on my Weber kettle grill? Kiss my ass.)

But back to the swine’s head. Imagine a mold of a pig skull with every cavity stuffed with juicy pulled pork then wrapped in bacon. Then deep fry it. Granted, you have to get past the wrinkled eye and the teeth, but beyond that, it’s really quite amazing. The snout was the one part that was a bit disappointing, with its bits of bony cartilage. On the other hand, the gums were a treat, like thinly sliced, crispy bacon.

Lest you think Bonnie was averse to this, she was not. She gamely devoured the pieces I placed on her plate of house made chorizo and gnocchi. I could not say as much for the young girl sitting next to us. She had a look on her face best described as a cross between someone who was witnessing an autopsy and someone who was questioning the wisdom of a fifth shot of tequila. I made sure to pull the upper and lower jaw apart when she was looking.

The halfway point.  See the teeth?

Bone exposed (God that was fun to type) and eye still intact (though I have to admit, the waiter said he didn’t “recommend” I eat the eye - he didn’t say to “not” eat the eye) we passed on desert which would have been a plate of locally sourced cheeses.

Here is a brief Q&A culled from several inquiries:

Q: Would you eat it again?
A: Hell yeah.
Q: It was BYOB, what did you drink?
A: Duh. A cooler of beers, a squirt bottle of vodka and some tonic.
Q: Did you say pickled beef tongue was on the appetizer platter?
A: Yeah, it was great. So was the creamy lard on baguette.

Anyone hungry?

(I highly recommend you visit this place.  Click here for their website.)

The Greatest Music Video Of All Time - Deconstructed

MTV no more invented music videos than the movie Pretty Woman invented prostitutes. Both were merely vehicles for glamming up an already existing genre. So before Tawny Kitaen slathered about a Jaguar during Whitesnake's, Here I Go Again, record companies were pumping untold hundreds into music video production.

Possibly the grandest example of this is the infinitely compelling video for the classic Hall and Oates song, She’s Gone. After watching this video many times I have come up with two divergent views. First, it is possible that the video is as bland as it is because no one, not even the caterer, gave a rat’s ass about it. But I like to think otherwise. I like to think that the minimalistic but highly stylized video may be the greatest piece of short film work on record.

The video opens with a still shot of an abandoned luncheonette, possible THE abandoned luncheonette that spawned the album by the same name, and of which She’s Gone made its appearance. It’s at this point that the video makes a very hard left turn into the obscure. At 0:25 we are met with Hall and Oates, both seated in chairs from Goodwill. Hall, who looks like a sullen Dave Bowie is wearing high-heeled clogs with socks and Oates is wearing the front, and only the front, of a tuxedo shirt. The horrid lip synching begins. But, is it horrid or perfect? Everyone who has gone through a romantic pitfall has been off their game a bit, stumbling around. So, maybe from the very first line of the song, the fact that they appear to not be in synch with the track is really the ingenious manifestation of emotion.

At 0:57 the chorus starts, and at this point you may be thinking, “Okay, couple of stoned dudes in chairs. What’s the big deal?” Well, at 1:01, a brunette in a purple flowered dress, long-strides in front of Hall and Oates, obviously the woman who has cast the pall over the fortitude of our protagonists. She walks purposefully from left to right, followed briskly at 1:08 (and this is where things get really heady) by the devil. As they sing the line, “Oh, I’d pay the devil to replace her,” Hall and Oates both grab for money sitting on the table between them to throw at the devil. However, only Hall succeeds. Either Oates just mucked up his cue, or, this is done to demonstrate his reluctance to so easily give in to soul-sucking evil. (It’s interesting that immediately after this, Oates sings, “What went wrong.”)

When the chorus is sung for the second time, the devil again comes across the stage, at 1:52. This time, two different things happen. First, the devil looks squarely into the camera, perhaps signifying to us that he can tempt anyone, even us voyeurs. Secondly, Oates either gets his cue right and tosses money at the devil, or, it is symbolic that heartache is so incredibly porous, that the ability to withstand the temptation is only fleeting.

The most intimate and telling few seconds of the video happens between 2:45 and 3:10. The devil, after his third appearance circles back around behind John Oates and helps him on with his tuxedo jacket – except it has flippers. Oates picks up his Les Paul and plays the guitar solo. This appears to be emblematic of fighting through an obvious handicap - in this case, playing the guitar with no fingers. This seems an obvious metaphor that needs no further explanation.

As the song fades and Hall and Oates wonder off stage right and left respectively, the devil, who has been following them, sits decisively in Hall’s seat. Was this because Hall was the first to throw money at him? Was this because Hall did not possess the determination to overcome his fragile psychological state like Oates did when he played through the flippers? Whatever the reason, the devil looks very content to placidly resign himself with the knowledge that during our weaker moments, he is sure to find someone willing to wear high heeled clogs.

Youth Sports - It's All Apparel And Camp Chairs

We recently spent a cloudy and cold Sunday in Medina, Ohio at a lacrosse tournament. Besides some excellent middle school games I was struck by two things. One, youth sports is nothing if not a team-apparel rich environment. And two, what’s up with all the freaking camp chairs?

My Protagonists

Every kid (about 1,000 at this tournament) is dressed in the latest apparel couture of his or her school’s team -all worn with gang color fanaticism - and none of it cheap. My boys (along with about every other lacrosse player at their school) own the pièce de résistance - the Seneca Valley Boat Jacket. They retail for $85.00 – and that’s without having a clue what the hell the “boat” in boat jacket even is. According to the apparel tab on our association website, you can also order: four different types of tee-shirts (not including something called a “performance tee”), four different styles of hoodies (to be worn at your own peril), sweatpants, golf shirts, fleece jackets, etc. They even have something called an “unstructured hat.” Being fashion challenged, I have no idea what “unstructured” means. Maybe it’s a hat that refuses to stay on your head, or one with a bill that moves around depending on the mood it’s in.

And it’s not just the kids, it’s the fools like me – a grown man running around with a Seneca Valley Lacrosse tee-shirt. But it does match my boxers that have “lax dad” written across the ass.

And these camp chairs. What’s up with their proliferation? You wouldn’t dare go to a game without a camp chair. Or in most cases, a trunk full of them. If for some reason we forget to take our camp chairs to a game, my wife and I become flabbergasted as one of us says, “Shit, we forgot the chairs!” But a lot of this is born out of necessity, since schools will spend tens of thousands on a Kentucky Bluegrass-turf -hybrid playing surface, but will not shell out a grand for a decent set of bleachers. These chairs sprout like dandelions all along the fringes of every field. Just once I’d like to go to my parent’s house and grab one of their old aluminum folding chairs with the plaid and frayed webbing and the bent arm rest and show up with that. That would be like showing up at the gym with a Walkman cassette player with the foam headset instead of an MP3 player. Old school or old fart?

Somehow I can’t picture my dad wearing a North Catholic High School Trojans tee-shirt to my basketball game decades ago, and I think if I told him to bring a camp chair he would show up with a stump. Not me, I’m the guy with the team tee-shirt and my camp chair – with netted cup holder, of course. Oh, and the boxers. (Maybe.)

Because Sometimes The Ass Is Your Own Bad Self

I chuckled to myself at the woman emptying six creamers into her small coffee before I chuckled out loud at myself for emptying my sugar packet into the garbage can instead of my cup. It was the closing chapter of a tumultuous ten minutes.


(Warning: The following is going to seem shallow and bitchy – some may even say elitist. To you I say – I couldn’t agree more.)

There are few things I enjoy more in the morning than some semblance of routine. On the few mornings a week I begrudgingly convince myself that it is in my best interest to go the gym, I look forward to the following post work-out treat; a low-fat chocolate milk (the best recovery drink in the world) and a coffee. Not only that, I want to get it from the convenience store that is, logically, convenient. It is where I stop most mornings for coffee, where I stop on the way home for milk and where my kids walk to spend $70 on a 324oz Slurpee and eight hotdogs. It is like my offsite kitchen and pantry – I know where everything is.

But lately they have disappointed me by refusing to stock low-fat chocolate milk. Sure, they have whole-fat (is that right?) chocolate milk, and a tractor trailer’s worth of energy drinks, but dammit, no low-fat chocolate milk. For the last few weeks I have joined that sliver of the demographic that have walked out of a convenience store empty handed (and disgusted).

Because I am intent on my chocolate milk AND coffee, (and out of spite) I drive to another convenience store a mile away. It’s still on my way, but on the wrong side of road, and out here in suburbia avoiding an extra traffic light takes on the tactical significance of a SEAL Team 6 raid. (By this time, my coveted routine has been busted like a Santorum coffee mug at an #occupywallstreet teach-in.)

So, not only am I out of my routine, I feel like a jackass because I am hovering around this foreign coffee station searching desperately for the sugar like a senior citizen looking for the prunes at an Atlantic City buffet. When I finally tracked them down (hidden right in front of me) I caught the lady next to me with a fistful of creamers, six to be exact, and watched her empty one after another into her small coffee. I thought of two things; 1) maybe coffee shouldn’t be her drink, and 2) she was making what amounted to a poor person’s latte. That’s what made me laugh to myself. (I thought it was funny, at least.) It was also at this point I grabbed a packet of sugar, ripped off the top and proceeded to pour it right into the garbage can – sweetening the empty wrappers and coffee stirrers.

Yeah, my routine was broken, I just poured sugar into a garbage can, and a woman with a very creamy coffee (who was most likely very secure in her morning routine) got a good (outward, fully outward) laugh at the elitist stranger in her offsite kitchen.

Kids Swear, Okay?

Sitting at my kitchen table last week, I heard my son say, “Dammit” while he thumbed his iPhone in the family room.

“Dylan,” I spoke up, “I’m right here.”

“Oh geez, Dad, sorry,” he said.

And that was it. No yelling. No taking away his iPhone. No lectures.

There are some parents who would have gone ballistic at this point - maybe even cursing at their child to not curse. This isn’t to say that the boys are allowed to swear in the house, it’s just not a capital offense.

I do not possess some higher parental knowledge that allows me to lead with zen-like platitudes. Its just means that to think that my kids are above swearing is foolhardy. Getting overly engaged in the policing of language is like picking low hanging fruit.

And really, how much of a hypocrite could I be? I have been practicing swearing since I was their age (about 13.) Since then, I have become so skilled in cursing that I can deliver a sentence with up to 75% swear words. There are days when I don’t tell the people in my life that I love them, but never a day when I don’t say the word “fuck.” So be it.

A year ago, when the boys got their first iPod, they had asked about downloading a song that had the “Parental Warning” graphic attached because of the word “fuck.” (At the behest of my wife, I was going to try and avoid swearing in my blog, but I would’ve had to type, “the ‘f’ word” or something like that. So silly!) I said, “Listen boys, I really don’t care about you hearing a bad word. I care a lot about you hearing songs that talk about drugs or hurting people. So yeah, you can get it.”

OM effing G! What kind of parent does that? Well, I guess one that knows boys will be boys, one who realizes that teenagers like to swear the way that Fox News likes leggy blondes, and one who is glad his kids recognize that coming to me to ask about downloading a song is being responsible. Thats the high fruit, dammit.