xtcian

Jartacular Revels Complete, Ian Laid Low

Steve, here, Ian's next-bigger brother. Ian picked up the phone at the farmhouse just long enough to ask me to fill in, and then he fell back into bed.

I missed it again, but Ian's traditional Jartacular Memorial Day bacchanalia was, according to the Mom, a great success. This year, the event roughly coincided with Ian's birthday, and there were three babies among the 40-or-so friends in attendance. I'm sure Ian has lots of photos and a full report coming here soon.

Alas, not long after the partyers parted, Ian perhaps unwisely extracted from the refrigerator and consumed some lobster bisque that may or may not have been a couple of days old. By Monday evening, he was laid low by several rather unpleasant symptoms we won't go into in detail.

He seems to be on the mend and will be back here tomorrow, we hope.

this field intentionally left blank

5/26/05

I'm taking today off, as well as Monday, and you should be getting out of the office to frolic and gambol in the daisy fields! See you next Tuesday!

me and my brother Steve on his 11th birthday, the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon

solipsism, thy name is alcohol

5/25/05

It just turned my birthday, May 26, a few minutes ago, so I waited until the two most important women in my life went to sleep, found my bottle of 16-year-old Lagavulin scotch, poured a glass, and am now taking 10 minutes to myself. 38 is a peculiar age in that it isn't peculiar at all - it doesn't sound much older than 37, and hasn't the sharp precipice of 39. All I know is that I lived longer than Jesus or Mozart, so I count my blessings.

When I was about 31 or so, stuck in Los Angeles and freebasing Rumplemintz, the clouds would occasionally part and I'd map out what I'd like to be doing in my late thirties. For some reason, it was important to me that my parents - especially my mom - see that I had children. "Hmm," I thought in 1998, "I'll need to be in a relationship for at least three years before I contemplate marriage, and then at least another two years before I can contemplate a kid. Since I know I've got at least another 18 months of misery here before even meeting someone close to bearable, I think I'm not looking at a kid until the year 2005, if ever."

Very analytic, utterly stupid, and yet, in the final analysis, pretty much accurate. Another odd thing happened around the same time: one night I flopped my mattress a bit out the window, stuck my head out, and slept under the three stars you can see at night in Los Angeles. I wondered if I was going to get married, and if so, where was she right now?

The voice in my head answered very clearly: you already know her. "How is that possible?" I countered, "How could such a detail be eluding me?" I calculated that I was "acquainted" with about a thousand people first-hand, but the number of people I "knew" would be right around 500. Why this number? No idea. I'm sure someone out there has done the research, but 500 sounded right.

So I began to go through everyone I knew, starting chronologically, going through Iowa (unlikely), Virginia (again, unlikely), London (possibly), Chapel Hill (possibly) and California (astronomically unlikely, as I hated every person I saw). There were a few friends who fit the bill - and you know who you are - but I just couldn't see it happening.

If you want to get to sleep fast, don't count sheep; count your friends. I think I got to about 80 before the sun rose and I'd been out for nine hours.

I should note that Tessa had been in England the same years I was (1977-79), in Chapel Hill when I was (1987-1991), in Los Angeles that very year (1998) and in New York when I moved there in 2000. I had run into her at a show in 1995 and she seemed a little skittish and depressed. Ten years later we had this great little kid together. I pray I get to be with her until we're 99. Actually, she'll be 97, but hopefully we'll have forgotten the details.

Many things had to happen for me to be born. My mom's first husband had to die at the wheel, and she had to have three miscarriages. My dad had to survive his abusive father long enough to get married to a woman who already had two children. Diseases had to be overcome, planes had to land, and Chip and I had to talk each other out of drowning at Jordan Lake in 1993.

I'm so happy to be here. I lift this glass of scotch to all of you, and I bow in humble, magnanimous humility at all the things that went to make me, Tessa and Lucy possible.

circadia, NY

5/24/05

Oh, the things I would have said. The crystal-clear prose, the trenchant epiphanies, the kind of blog entry you would have forwarded to old girlfriends saying you wanted to see them again.

But alas, tonight I have been caught by a dual tripwire: first off, Lucy needed to be walked around and around and around this morning from 7am to 10am, after I was up all night trying to finish another project. Thus I went back to bed for a few minutes and woke up and it was GODDAMN 3PM. I haven't done that since trying to stave off depression in 1998, and it has left me useless all day, freaking out over all the Prime Life Moments I'd slept through.

The second problem is that it was pissing rain and 45 degrees upstate today. That, my friends, is 13 degrees above freezing, and 30 degrees below normal. Trust me when I say this: it is usually so beautiful here you could cry every day. The spring honestly does the work of 400mg of Zoloft, Lexapro, Paxil, Zokoglut, Xukluxamor, and Zyxxyzyzkyzz - and you feel like you could never be unhappy again.

But throw in a day like today and you WANT TO FUCKING KILL YOURSELF BECAUSE IT'S MAY 24 FOR FRIGGIN' FORK'S SAKE AND IT SHOULDN'T GODDAMN BE LIKE THIS!

So I have nothing to say today except the weather better get better for my birthday on Thursday and stay good through the weekend, or ELSE. It rains on my birthday every year and now that the Red Sox have won, Bush got re-elected, and the falcon cannot hear the falconer, perhaps Nature can see fit to make something else utter bizarre happen and give me some SUN for my birthday.

I don't ask for much. Just:
- UNC in the hunt for the National Championship every year
- no autism or cancer in my family
- cars with side airbags
- air conditioning, Coke, Excedrin and occasionally Afrin
- my 3-point shot to go in at least 37% of the time
- a good song on the radio every fifth tune
- wifi and espresso everywhere
- a window
- this:

Oh well, nevermind, I have an embarrassment of riches. Go ahead and let it rain on my birthday again.

I'll remember you this way

5/23/05

It's Memorial Day this weekend, and like 2002, we decided to have our 4th Annual Jartacular - which means opening up the lawn darts, several expensive bottles of single-malt scotch, holding a quiz show and, of course, attempting the Barn Talent Show.

The talent show is always the weakest link (which is embarrassing to my Mormon forebears, I'm sure) but not this time. I decided to actually learn a few more tunes before this one, instead of falling back on "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)," as has happened the last three years.

Scott Bullock had the idea of doing "Mr. Blue Sky" by ELO last year, and we finally have the cajones to pull it off. For those of you without big brothers in the mid-70s, "Mr. Blue Sky" came back to the pop unconscious through this unbelievably brilliant Volkswagen ad, and it is devilishly difficult.

It's all basically in F major with a D-minor chorus, but the vocals are stunning, including a "vocoder break" and a Baroque ending. If we don't embarrass ourselves, I'll consider the Jartacular a success.

Not content to stop there, I thought I'd try and restructure another enchanting pop classic we used to hear while trying to roller skate. I've ranted about Afternoon Delight in the past, but before you snickering nabobs tell me I'm a twee gaybot, I dare you to download the song from iTunes and try to sing along. Every single verse has a different vocal line, occasionally flourishing to 4-part harmonies. Sure, it's about fucking ("the thought of rubbing you is getting me so excited") but this was back in a day when they actually wanted to pull off something semi-interesting.

I'd like to resurrect two amazing pop songs from the past each year we do this. As always, I am your humble servant and always taking suggestions.

Cute Li'l McCuddle Bumpkin!

5/22/05

We had a great weekend, and now that Lucy is beginning to really enjoy being "on the outside," as it were, it feels like a Family Event when we do something. She met her grandmother Linda for the first time, and was absolutely delighted:

Of course, that cur dog Chopin is always underfoot when we're doing something important.

Tessa took some pictures of us sleeping in on Saturday. Something about the bed brings Lucy's smallness into sharp relief.

I'd taken the dog for a walk the night before, but I was pretty distracted. Don't worry, we found him eventually.

We dressed up our little pumpkin to go upstate, where we ran into a Revolutionary War re-enactment complete with fife and drums. Lucy wore her Betsy Ross hat!

We took off without the dog

Our precious tiny bundle of joy got her first full bottle this weekend! Fully one ounce in her belly, one ounce on her shirt. It was going pretty smoothly, but there was this strange scratching noise at the door that was really distracting.

I threw the dog in the car tonight and went to the all-night store to grab orange juice and eggs for Tessa. When we got back, Grandma Linda took some swell pictures of our family unit!

Oh well, off to bed. See you on tomorrow's blog!

dark side of the horse

5/19/05

I was so disappointed in the Episode I of the Star Wars prequels that I ended up watching Episode II on my belly, remarking about how sad it was that my joy for such things had come to an end. Well, if you live long enough, everything gets reversed, leading to a rousing view of Return of the Sith tonight at a packed moviehouse in Brooklyn.

The theaters at the Pavilion at Prospect Park have definitely cleaned up their act since I saw that shitty Chris Rock-Anthony Hopkins nuke disaster movie there three years ago; for one, your shoes don't stick to the floor anymore. I do miss the local clientele screaming at the screen, however, the loss of which is one of gentrification's perils.

There is nobody better with whom to see a "Star Wars" movie than Lindsay Bowen. I happen to know he read a few of the Star Wars novels back in the day (even though he tried to deny it) and he most likely obsessed over the miniature Millennium Falcon as much as my brother Sean did. He might have even dressed up as Boba Fett at some point in his childhood, you never know.

There are plenty of sites that discuss the movie's strong points, failings and total lapses in continuity, but I found myself not really caring. I dig on generational brotherhoods, I suppose, enough to just enjoy being in the theater experiencing this work of pop culture along with everyone else who had tried to move their fake light sabers with their minds when young. I don't really care that it might have been sub-par, or even that Obi-Wan Kenobi sure ages badly between Episode III and the original Star Wars. I'm there for the collective pop unconscious, dude.

I love it when the whole country gets together to watch something with each other. Television occasionally offers this kind of brotherhood, but it's still an onanistic act - the theater is the last place where Jung's spiritus mundi is still intact. It reminds me of the day when states were neither red nor blue.

Or maybe it's the migraine medication I was taking. Fuck, man, I was high as a kite in there.

prog rock

5/18/05

Anyone wishing to avoid another day of political discussion would be well-served to skip over this blog (and go read Virginia's awesome this-week-only blog of the "TV Upfronts"!). However, I'm going to try and do this a little differently. Conservatives have taken over the Presidency, both Houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and run the most-watched media outlets, and today... they're going to get my blog.

Having seen every political discussion in these pages (the war, the election, the Coastopia brouhaha, etc.) degenerate into name-calling, "you just don't get it"-style sniffling disdain, and emails to yours truly telling me what a commie asshole I am, I'd like to completely open up to the opposition and let them have at it.

In short, I'd like to know why you are a conservative, because I'm having trouble understanding it. When I get letters that excoriate me and my family, I'd like to know where that rage comes from. Even if you're a very calm conservative that I like (chris m, badbob, etc.), I'm genuinely interested to know how you came by your belief system.

Here are the rules:
1. Your statements have to be positive and pro-active - i.e., you can't say that you're a conservative because liberals are idiots.
2. You can't give a reason that the other side holds as well. In other words, you can't say "I'm a conservative because I care about spreading democracy in the Middle East" when clearly, 99% of progressives share that opinion.
3. No incendiary bullshit. You can't throw out something like "blue-staters kill babies" when "I care about unborn children" would do nicely.
4. If you're going to make a bold point, please have it backed up with decent research. "Everyone knows the media has a liberal bias" is a dog that won't hunt.
5. You get points for honesty. "I'm a Republican because my family has always been Republican" is totally cool, although it begs more questions.
6. No commenters are allowed to mock your answers. They can, however, question basic principles.

I thank you in advance for taking the time to write these. Or nobody's going to bother, and then I'll just sit here and be humiliated because nobody came to my 7th birthday party.

united crepes of amygdala

5/17/05

Okay, this is going to be short and terribly unsweet, but I've been getting a lot of emails and the occasional comment over last Thursday's blog (the title of which, "Holy Shi'ite" was aped by the New York Post today!) concerning the whole "dumping the Koran in the toilet" thing.

First off, the story has not been proved false, just not proven. And though my rant on the subject is definitely incommensurate with a rumor, the salient point remains true: Americans have grave difficulty understanding anyone else's culture AT BEST, and at worst, we are the biggest bunch of assholes on the planet at a time when we need the most friends.

I don't "blame America first," I just look at the research, the sources, the continuing path of behavior, and then assess that it's pretty easy to blame America within about .04 seconds. If it makes you feel better, just insert "Abu Ghraib" or "indiscriminately bombing Afghan wedding parties and killing 35 members of a single family" in place of "Koran in the toilet."

To paraphrase Bluto in "Animal House," what the fuck happened to the country I used to know? I still have love for America, buried deep in piles of heartache, but I think it might be two things: a vestigal remnant of childhood innocence growing up during the Bicentennial, and perhaps the sobering, existential notion that no other country is much better.

When I was a kid, I thought we were the good guys, the benevolent giant that swooped in to help those in need, a self-questioning, beautiful oaf that gained its power by always remaining in ideological balance. The future of this place was decreed by a certain kind of tacit righteousness: how could we be destroyed if our hearts kept being the right place? I was so sure of our overall path, that I didn't even see the need to join the political discussion until I was almost 25.

Now, I'm sickened. Any country that could go through four years of George W. Bush and re-elect him is just crazy. It shouldn't have been close. We consume 26% of the world's resources, and we have 4% of the population. Does that not give ANY of you pause? We are one of the only civilized countries in the world that legally kills its own people. Oh God, I'm Boring My Audience.

I've had to look inside myself and ask: is my problem with my country just a logical extension of my problems with myself? I have been known to go on terrific rants about my own flaws; does this just fit neatly in the same category, as if I get off on the self-loathing? Well, yeah, probably.

But do you think about America and still feel the same about it? Not in an "I'm older and wiser now and have less expectations" kind of way, but I really would like to know if any of you have looked at your country like a girlfriend that you have suddenly fallen out of love with, and don't know how to break it to yourself.

As for me, it's made me a unique blend: a casual survivalist. We drive a hybrid car, our farm is entirely solar-powered, we have stocks of non-perishable food - but in daily life, I don't really care. I'm anxious as to how it all turns out for my daughter's sake, but I still watch "Alias" and eat dark chocolate.

gol-durn dadgum frickin'

5/16/05

When we were working on 13th-GEN, one of the biggest arguments I got into with Neil and Bill was my use of swear words in the book. Both of them absolutely loathed my use of them, but I was convinced that any book that purported to explain the habits of my generation without using profanity was like writing the history of the Inuit and leaving out snow.

I was so adamant that I took my case to the head of our division at Random House and demanded to see him in person. I can't imagine having those balls now, but I was 24 and since the whole thing had come so easily, I thought book deals were like low-hanging fruit. I don't know how I did it, but I convinced him to let me have 1 F-word, 2 s-words, and I think 3 "god damns." Neil and Bill were very gracious about it, although if it had been me, I would have ridden my 24-year-old ass out of town on a rail for being such a twerp.

Profanity is something that is untranslatable to most people over 50. It physically pains them to hear most swear words, especially the "f" one, even as we (the relatively young in America) bandy it about with the ease of a moist preposition. My friends and I went to great schools, some of us have written for this nation's finest papers, and still, when we get together, we say "fuck" or "fuckin'" about 15 times a minute without even knowing it.

I bring this up because my stepmom and my dad have said that they'd love to show this blog to several of their friends - some of them, let's just say, having attained various high levels in certain fields that I find interesting - and they can't bring themselves to do it because of all the swearing.

I responded a variety of ways, all of them mostly true:
1) anyone who is offended by my blog is probably a bad relationship waiting to happen
2) a blog by definition is a stream-of-consciousness art form that allows for offhanded profanity
3) if somebody likes my writing in here, they can probably deduce that it is possible to write without swearing
4) I write these in first drafts only, and if I have to go through the effort of bowdlerizing, it will be too much effort and I'll just stop doing it altogether

Of all of these, the last is probably the most relevant, as I have continued to come to this space, even back when my only readers were Tessa and my mom, because I can vent. If I didn't have this little breakfast nook in cyberspace after the 2002 elections, the 2004 elections, the Iraq war, various indie film horrorshows and kidney stones, then I'd be forced into temporary autism, writing on the wall backwards with crayons. I know profanity is often the easy way out, but it's SO SATISFYING.

Unfortunately, written profanity - like FUCK - have much more power to the human brain than an offhanded comment. I'd say the severity of profanity written versus utttered is about tenfold, which means you have to use it a tenth as less. I haven't read I Am Charlotte Simmons, but apparently Tom Wolfe tries to use "fuck" as much as college kids do, and it's quite off-putting.

I never meant this blog to be a career helper, but it did spawn a couple of Salon articles, an editorial in the New York Times, and a few book proposals. Is my casual use of profanity keeping me down? I put it to you, brave comrades and commenters: when I swear, does it bum you out? I mean, unduly?

never gonna stop the rain by complainin'

5/15/05

Okay, enough turgid, navel-gazy whining. Didn't someone in the comments tell me not to put more baby pictures here? So guess what you're gonna get? That's right, more baby pictures!

I don't know why this one fascinates me, but it's Tessa and Dana in November, and then again in April. Babies are inside, and then they're outside. Bizarre.

Another patented Foto Rekreation™ by yours truly. The first is my grandpa holding me in 1967, the one below is Lucy's grandfather holding her. Funny how none of the same people are in both pictures, yet the relationship is exactly the same. Or maybe I'm overthinking. Note Steinway piano in both shots:

Oh yeah. Did I mention that our daughter is not going to take it, nay, she is not going to take it?

We have a tiny 2' by 8' fire escape terrace out back, and while Lucy and I were talking, a rainstorm swept through Brooklyn. I was going to take her in, but she became fascinated by the raindrops hitting her face. Mom took some pics of us without us knowing.

I managed to capture an image of her smiling last week, but I'd given up hope of ever taking a picture of her gargantuan bellows of abject delight. And this was just luck, but I snapped the shutter at just the right time. Man, when she does this, I want to move mountains just to see it again.

tantalus

5/12/05

Perhaps I should just let it go. It has obviously been slipping for a long time, and though there are occasional breakthroughs, I feel like an old fencer draped in a wet, heavy comforter. Things happen that have never happened before.

I suppose I could start an entirely new lifestyle, shed all the ballast that has kept me from soaring since - shit, seventh grade - but seriously, how many more dime-store revolutions, how many ten-day epiphanies sliding back into quo, how many am I willing to shoulder?

I should probably let the other thing go too. It's just not worth the heartbreak, and perhaps there is a hint in the air that I haven't picked up on in years. It may be all too obvious, but I have chosen to ignore it, chasing some postopian dream that doesn't seem catching.

Really, I'm the only one left. Everyone else has gone on with their routines, exploded in their diaspora, and I'm still the little kid waving the captured flag, hoping somebody will notice.

Nobody else even tries. People don't like doing, as it is more effort than not. If I were to stop, would anyone else pick up the rest of the rope? My fire burns the tallest, but the constant gathering of kindling has been excruciating for my back.

Is it enough just to have a kid, and derive your identity from them? It means becoming the kind of person I'd swore I'd never be, and with it, the end of that long dream. I'm not sure that's particularly healthy, but man, I hear the call, and it's hard to ignore. I'm not ready to stop pushing the rock, but the hill looks so tall, and I've almost forgotten why I love the futility.

holy shi'ite

5/11/05

Man, why are some Americans so goldurn stupid? A report comes out that interrogators had flushed copies of the Koran down the toilet in order to intimidate inmates at Guantanamo, and a few hours later, my old roommate Jiffer is dodging bullets in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. I'll let today's email from her speak for itself:

While walking across the compound to the cars we heard loud (close) machine gun fire. the security guy screams "bunker!" so we scurry back to the office and wait there... Ten minutes later, they say it is clear, a second attempt, more gunfire and we are back in the bunker. Soon the whole staff files in and a guard is eerily told to take down all of our names. The cause of the demonstrations, we learn, as we sit in the bunker, is apparently news from a recent returnee from the illegal prison in Guantanamo that Americans flushed Korans down the toilet. Riots broke out - we stayed in the bunker for an hour.

Reports have come in saying that the governors office and the human rights office and the red cross have been burnt to the ground. still unconfirmed. The rest of the UN staff was evacuated to the military base. They may be evacuating Logar, Wardak, Panjshir, Kandahar and other provinces because everyone is up in arms about Koran flushing - apparently demonstrations started yesterday in Pakistan. After unconfirmed rumors of an explosive devise here this morning, we are not allowed to go out at all. home. or others' homes. and stay there... all this before noon today.

All I have to say to the people running The War On Terror: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? What vital piece of information on future attacks could POSSIBLY have been gleaned from flushing a Koran down the shitter? Was it like, "oh, I wasn't going to tell you about our secret camp in Syria, but now that you've flushed my holy book down the latrine, I know you mean business"?

The Muslim world already thinks we're a bunch of smug fuckholes who torture prisoners, and now this? And don't give me the "we have to use extreme measures in this crisis" bullshit - everybody knows that Guantanamo's info started getting stale about two months after the War on Terror started. Get us some information, you assholes, instead of desecrating an object guaranteed to enrage at least 1 billion people without any upside.

Jiffer is over there! I've got a baby daughter! I cross the Manhattan Bridge every day! GET US SOME PERTINENT COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE AND STOP PISSING MUSLIMS OFF FOR NO REASON!!!

As for this Bible-thumping administration, and, coincidentally, the drooling morons trying to force Creationism into the Kansas school system, I admit that I canceled my own protest in the bathroom tonight. I know that the Guantanamo folks flushed a Koran, but I'm not stupid enough to force my Bible in there. I may be a bleeding-heart lefty, but I'm not going to pay for a fucking plumber.

[update: Newsweek has basically retracted the story. I take the rant back if it was indeed false.]

s. charles w.

5/10/05

Happy Birthday to my brother Sean, who turns 35 today (and is thus outside of the much-coveted 18-34 demographic)! I would say more, but I think a few pictures might do him justice:

me and him, 1972 - he apparently said something very droll about the Nixon/McGovern election

me, Sean, Michelle, leaving for school, London 1978

Sean and Michelle, CRUISIN' 1987!

In 1920s garb for the Pink House shoot with Rick, Tessa and me, 2003

note box of early-'70s Bisquick and the savaged frosting beaters

halcyon salad days

5/9/05

My friend and yours The Woods Warrior had an interesting entry about the generation gap between Generation X and Y, namely, how there isn't one. I have to confess that I, too, feel as though I my own proclivities don't stray far from your basic teen.

Yes, I'm married and have a kid, which now labels me as Unthinkably Old, but let's look at some similarities:

1) crave distraction
2) obsess over new technology
3) completely addicted to email and the Web
4) quickly bored by art that doesn't go anywhere
5) vestigal acne
6) crave gossip
7) emotionally affected by network television dramas
8) wear pants that hang very loose in the drawers
9) skate shoes
10) stupid hair
11) rampant masturbation (just kiddin', ma!)

The only thing that really sets me and the Woods Warrior apart from your eclectic 18-year-old is that we can spell, and we actually bothered to vote in the last election. And I'll tell you something else that will marry these two generations: no decent art is going to come out of either one.

It wasn't supposed to be like this - "reactive" generations, like the "Lost" generation of the 1920s, typically give us our best art. It was why the poetry from WWI was awesome, and the "poetry" from WWII was dreck (Civic-minded generations are typically sentimental and ham-handed). Whether you believe in cyclical generational theory or not, our cadre of kids born 1961-1981 were in a unique position to churn out the next Hemingways, Pollocks, Brubecks and Langes.

So far, we have failed utterly. There are notable standouts in literature (Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon), music (Nirvana, Beck) and other fields, but there is certainly no Algonquin Round Table, no Mimi and Richard Farina and Dylan in the West Village, no Beats, no Haight. There won't be a single person 25 years from now saying, "gosh, I wish I'd been living in Chicago in 2005."

Tessa mentioned that the indie film scene of the early 90s in Austin (Rodriguez, Linklater and occasionally Tarantino) might have been fun, but those guys are all making blockbusters now, and independent film is two steps from dead in this country, digital media be damned. Shit, Gen X can't even take credit for hip-hop or techno, both forged by late-era Boomers.

What the hell happened to us? We all had crappy childhoods, came of age in a recession, found a technology boom that evaporated as quickly as it began, suffered the worst terrorist attack in history as we got into our 30s - you'd think some of us would have something to say.

Perhaps we forget how close most artists are to infinite stagnation. Give any person on the verge of a great novel the keys to the liquor cabinet, and nothing ever gets written. Put a Playstation in front of Eliot, and "The Waste Land" never materializes, wire Sylvia Plath's apartment with broadband and although she doesn't kill herself, she doesn't write "The Bell Jar" either.

Anyone looking to the next generation to fix the problem is going to be shit out of luck; they're just as infested with irony, post-mod and "rediscovering old bullshit and selling it as new" as we are. Perhaps the Blog, as imprecise, fleeting and ultimately unsatisfying an art form as there ever was, will be the one thing that we added to the discussion.

Which would be a real pity. My blog's pretty fucking good and all, but all three years cannot hold a candle to Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda.

cool drink of water, such a sweet surprise

5/8/05

Yes, yes, I know I can be a bit lugubrious when I go on about my wife, but yesterday was Mother's Day, and today is her birthday, so you'll just have to hear me prattle on once more.

I've always managed to keep my gifts secret from her, even the elaborate ones, but this time there was no way of hiding the goods.

When we were in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden a few weeks back, I noticed how Tessa always lit up around the cherry trees. The blossoms are insane (as those of you in D.C. know) and the ornamental varieties don't even bear fruit that you then track back into your house carpet. After a bit of research, I thought the Kwanzan Cherry tree was the winner, as it is obnoxiously beautiful and would bloom in time for her birthday, thus she gets the tree for turning 36, and the flowers for Mother's Day.

Those of you who know my wife know that "distractions" and "sleight of hand" don't really work against her, so I had to go ahead and cover her face with my hand when the nursery truck pulled up to the farm to plant the tree. And since it has been cold up here, the blooms aren't really out yet. But she was still surprised, and that's all that really matters.

Sadly, the Kwanzan Cherry only lives up to 25 years (nature always exacts a price for that kind of beauty), so it will be a temporary mainstay for the first third of our marriage. It will be time for a new one when Lucy gets out of college. Any college except Dook, I was quick to add.

Speaking of Ol' Ironsides, she has begun to giggle and smile her way through the afternoon, and it just breaks your heart. What was once a twice-a-week phenomenon has turned into fireworks of smilie-ness. Yet, like Bill T., gigs of electronic media have been wasted trying to capture the moment. After all, it's usually a spasm of delight, long gone by the time you click the shutter (assuming you're holding the camera).

Until this weekend, when she finally got so engrossed in her Auntie Michelle that I was able to catch a tiny bit before they faded. I vote YES for SMILES!

Slice, Serrate, Squash, Subsume and Slag

5/5/05

JJE asked me if the "5 S's" from the Happiest Baby on the Block DVD were working, and I thought I'd just go ahead and say what's been good luck for us as Lucy turns 3 weeks old. For the uninitiated, HBOTB uses Dr. Harvey Karp's method of getting newborns to shut the hell up, and they all start with S: Shushing, Swaddling, Side (laying the baby on its side or stomach), Swinging and Sucking.

Are those blog readers not having kids totally bored yet? Good.

Lucy responds to swaddling when we put her to bed for the night, but at any other time, she shadowboxes her way out of that fucker in about fourteen seconds. Her legs are so strong that she kicks herself free, and then the rest of it just pisses her off. We've had to resort to the Swaddle Me thing with velcro, so we can straightjacket her torso while leaving her legs free to thrash around.

If you've ever seen the "Happiest Baby" DVD, Dr. Karp quiets these kids in an almost miraculous fashion, and it's true, the shit works. However, like anything, it works until it doesn't anymore, which ranges from 45 minutes to 4.5 minutes.

We subscribe to the whole "attachment parenting" thing, because a) we're young and foolish, and b) there's no such thing as Lucy "crying it out." We've tried that, and she works herself into such a furious lather that her body heats up like an iron skillet and she makes Chopes hide in the bathroom. After a total meltdown, however, she's ready for her 4-5 hour sleep, which has been a GODSEND.

Here's what we've figured out: almost all babies go apeshit at some point in the evening. Their nervous system, tired from a day full of input, needs to reset, so they just explode as a way of de-fragmenting their hard drive. This has nothing to do with you as a parent, it's just the way newborns are wired. Once you come to grips with this, your empathy is contagious.

I don't mean to say that Lucy is a fussy baby or colicky; she is a normal newborn with a few fussy periods. I still wonder how Matt McM. and Carrie survived Cogan's three months of screaming, in fact, I'd give those guys a guest day on the blog to tell the whole story, which sounds harrowing and ultimately redemptive.

But, in brief, these are the ways we get Lucy to cool her jets:

1. Swaddling and rocking. Shushing does not work for Lucy, although we have a very engrossing white noise machine (actually an air purifier) that recreates the womb in our bedroom.

2. I tap her back lightly with two fingers, simulating Tessa's slow heartbeat (50 bpm or so).

3. THE SLING. Works wonders, and is the way dad can earn his fucking keep for once. We like the New Native Carrier, as it is easy on the back. Tessa is wearing it here.

4. The pacifier - annoying, because you need to hold it in her mouth for her (she doesn't have the skill set yet) but man, it works in a pinch. Unless of course, she doesn't want it, and then your neighbors will know it.

5. Your confidence. I honestly think that 85% of first-time parenting is not freaking out when your baby does. If you keep your cool, and refuse to be daunted, the kid will eventually follow suit. Even during the loudest screams, when nothing is working, just try to maintain your sense of the absurd.

6. Marrying a superstar like my wife. God, she is so great. I get weepy just thinking about how awesome a mom she is, after only three weeks. She's had a rough couple of days with Ol' Ironsides, and she still soldiers through. She's my hero and I love her like heroin.

1. buy 2. repeat

5/4/05

While Tessa and Nell went over their shopping lists at our fiftieth visit to Buy Buy Baby, Lucy and I had to drag our asses around the store looking for things to do. They aren't very kind to dads in there, there's no lounge with a TV or anything, so I wandered the aisles, getting more and more... creeped out.

Y'see, every baby product has a picture of a frickin' baby on it, and they always choose some little munchkin and then Photoshop the ever-livin' fuck out of it until the babies start to resemble alien gobs of beige Jell-o.

To wit:

this kid looks like a carved turkey that has been blanched clean by a sandblaster

this young Teutonic in the Baby Bjorn can't wait to annex Austria for the Motherland

hello. I'm going to eat your testicles

all the body parts of this baby came from OTHER BABIES

I don't trust this guy

we have this one in our house: he looks like a unset bowl of farina

and of course, this mom is going to DROWN THAT FUCKING ROBOT as soon as the camera crew leaves

deus ex mach 3

5/3/05

It's not often you get heartening news about your country's future, but a spate of recent studies and articles have come to the surprising conclusion that Generation Y - or what Neil Howe and Bill Strauss call the Millennials, born between 1980 and 2000 - are not shaping up to be the conservative, yes-men robots that they were predicted to be. These kids, in case you haven't noticed them, range from "just out of college a couple of years" on down to the brats screaming the loudest at the Walmart, and while their belief systems are shallow, but at least they're pointed in the right direction.

A study called OMG: How Generation Y is Redefining Faith in the iPod Era (PDF) conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner found, among other things, that Gen Y supports gay marriage (53%) and a woman's right to an abortion (63%) and identify themselves as Democrats by an 11-point margin.

Yeah, yeah, young people don't vote, and there's still time for them to change their minds, but as Rux Teixeira notes, these shifts are much less likely once they hit 30, which is not that far away from the elder edge of Gen Y.

More interesting, the Millennials are less religious than the rest of the country (almost a quarter claim agnosticism) and are part of what CUNY's American Religious Identification Survey call a rising tide of America's "non-Christian coalition," which rose from 20 to 37 million Americans in the last decade.

But there's more: according to the National Study of Youth and Religion (a team of sociologists led by UNC's very own - and ironically named - Christian Smith), Christianity is widespread among the younger cohorts of Generation Y, but they have little understanding of religious specifics and are more likely to think of Jesus as a pal, or to ignore the Big Questions altogether. He calls it "Benign Whateverism" and was surprised at how conventional these teens were, taking their parents' religion with no particular argument (something that should not surprise Neil and Bill at all).

Why is this good news? Because it means the guys and gals 10-20 years older than my daughter Lucy (thus giving them a lot of power in her eventual eyes) will not be shoving the New Testament down her throat. The religion Gen Y does have is of a distinctly unexamined variety, the kind that falls away most easily when exposed to other theories in life (like, say, "evolution" or "homosexuals being real people"). I had been worried that a horde of bible-thumping nimrods were goose-stepping through the Halloween Hell Houses of America, lining up at abortion clinics, taking virginity pledges and saying the word "faggot" at the dinner table. Now it looks like they can't be bothered.

"What's your beef with Jesus?" you might ask, and I'd respond that this blog is not the place to visit if you dig on organized religion. Like all sweeping statements, there are exceptions - if Cathie's sermons are anywhere near as heart-warming and magnanimous as the woman herself, then I'd be happy for Luce to hang out at St. Philips. But my experience of almost any Christianity - or any other goddamn religion - is that the proponents can't keep their fucking opinions to themselves. Their faith bleeds all over our government, all over our laws, all over our schools, all over women's bodies, all over queers, and all over me.

I have bemoaned how pathetic my generation is turning out to be, and I've paid my fucking dues. I'm just happy to find out that the next cohort of mall rats don't plan on riding the Body of Christ all the way to Armageddon. Maybe the famously cranky, brilliant biologist Richard Dawkins is right:

...the broad direction of history is toward enlightenment, and so I think that what America is going through at the moment will prove to be a temporary reverse. I think there is great hope for the future. My advice would be, Don't despair, these things pass.

daguerreotypes for mumsy

5/2/05

I had a huge rant worked up on generational politics, but then my mom called and said she wanted a bunch of pictures. Although posting pictures on the blog can be a hassle, it certainly isn't a big a hassle as working up a rant on generational politics, so I decided to go easy on myself and put a few of these up for her.

As much of a relentless archivist as I am, I haven't really taken an assload of pictures of Ol' Ironsides, mostly because it's hard to run and get the camera when you're cleaning barf off your back.

That, and all baby pictures look the same, you know: dad holds baby, mom holds baby, baby freaks out dog, etc... I wonder how many millions of terabytes are spent yearly on this sort of thing. OH WELL!!! TOO BAD FOR YOU, BLOG AUDIENCE!!!

I like this one - it's Tessa taking le bébé on her first stroll

when she finally burps, she goes back to work on the Powerbook

she loves the Picasso on the wall - newborns see in black-and-white and they love faces, so she just STARES at it

I have one of my mom doing this to me, so I captured her first bath

man, when you come home from hoops to see this...

INITIATE INDOCTRINATION PROCEDURE

the family unit (or as we say, "the family eunuch")

odysseus shrugged

5/1/05

Once I asked my mother how on earth she survived losing her husband in an automobile accident in 1960, when she was trying to raise my brothers Kent and Steve, then 2 and 3. She only replied, "Well, what choice did I have?" A similar circumstance - based in blessing instead of tragedy - is upon us, when a number of people have remarked that we have "taken to parenting" and appear to be way more laid back than we ought to be. I think of my mom in those moments, and wonder what choice we really have.

There are those moments, when Ol' Ironsides is on a crying jag, when I think "am I ever going to survive this?" or "I bet there's a Pi Phi mixer going on somewhere right now" - yet a byproduct of childbirth is an emotional mechanism that allows you to relish in your sudden lack of options.

UNC, New York, and especially Los Angeles convince you that no matter where you are, someone else is having a better time. I would spend hours in LA driving around with the Beachwood crew, thinking that our first drop of "fun" in eight months was just at the next party. In Chapel Hill, I used to routinely close Molly Maguires or Hell or Henry's listening to the faint siren song of "wait, don't go to bed yet!"

What is it about choices being taken away that elicits such freedom? I suppose it's another case of "happy mediums" but when Lucy screams, it blanches my life clean of all options. And to tell the truth, it's not all that bad.

Lorraine Tobias and I were talking about a couple of road trips we took in our senior years at college - she had a VW Bus with a bunch of her roommates caroming through Oregon, and I had a Winnebago full of friends doing the same thing on the PCH. Both of us were dirt poor at the time, I can't even recall how on earth how I paid for gas (that thing got 5 mpg). I was a wreck, emotionally unstable, fits of ecstasy surrounded by saharas of depression, but hey, "I had my freedom" <- say in robotic voice

I hope we can all find a happy medium in this parenthood thing. I still long for a crappy highway, bad theories at 3am and a half-bottle of Cuervo 1800. But I really don't miss a moment of some invisible Calypso telling me that if I just stay up one hour longer, I might find eternal happiness.

with the cherry blossoms today at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden