Focus Is Everything

Several days ago I mentioned the fact that my son Ian shares a birthday with the Olsen twins, and I posted an alluring picture of the twins sporting butterfly pasties; for some reason, this picture increased traffic to my blog tenfold (on one day, over 800 people visited) so I am going to focus less on my oldest child Alex, who although cute and quotable, has pissed me off of late (because when he saw Ian sprinting across the house, he raised his foot and karate kicked him in the stomach, nearly breaking Ian's breastbone) and focus more on Ian and the Olsen twins-- though, as I have said before, I have never watched an episode of Full House (but, although I didn't know it until Catherine mentioned it last night, I have been watching Mary-Kate-- she's the Jesus-loving pot dealer on Weeds).

Do Cremains Inspire Brand Loyalty?

Although Stacey thought that Dr. Fredric J. Baur (the inventor of the Pringles can) was buried in a Pringle-can shaped sarcophagus, that wasn't quite the case: some of his ashes were placed in an actual Pringles can and the rest were put in a traditional urn-- if he was buried in a big round red coffin with the Pringles logo on it, then it would have been very hard to keep a straight face at the wake, which is the most important thing at a wake . . . not to laugh at the body-- but what I am more curious about is the effect of interring someone in a product's container-- it can't be good marketing-- and it reminds me of the scattering of Donnie's ashes in The Big Lewbowski: did Folger's actually pay to have their brand name on the receptacle?

Dave Knows How to Steal Wry Observations (From the Population at Large)

When I began this blog, I thought my sentences would be full of wry observations (e.g. How would the convenience store 7-11 have reacted if the planes hit the World Trade Center on July 11th instead of September 11th, and the numerical array 7-11 became synonymous with the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil? Would 7-11 have changed its name? Or marketed itself as stalwart purveyor of patriotic snack consumption? the only way to beat the terrorists is by eating a Slim Jim?) but more often I overhear the wry observations than actually think of it myself; I love to eavesdrop, and I heard this just before the skies opened in New Brunswick Saturday night . . . the girl walking in front of me said, "This is my Einstein moment for today . . . when people hear thunder and lightning, they open up metal umbrellas and point them toward the sky," which is a pretty good point, but still, last night, I would have risked it to avoid the soaking I got, and another not so wry observation was directed at my wife and I as we braved the storm-- the doorman of the tapas place looked at me, soaked to the skin, and then at Catherine, snug and dry in her hooded Columbia rain coat and said, "Wearing that jacket tonight? Smartest move ever!" and when we walked into the super-cooled air-conditioning of the Hyatt, I realized he was right (and the Hyatt is too classy to have hand dryers in the bathroom).

Bosky Stringfellows

If you don't mind sacrificing your sunny disposition, read about the Stringfellow Acid Pits-- I just read the story in an anthology called The New Kings of Nonfiction-- and the case is a mind-boggling combination of Jarndyce and Jarndyce and Michael Clayton, with no easy culprit, plenty of waste and corruption, and no good answer; on a lighter note, in another essay in the book I learned a new word: bosky . . . perhaps your yard is bosky-- especially if you live in Central Jersey.

Dave Knows How to Behave in Line at the Pharmacy

Although I have never seen an episode of Full House, I do know that when you get to the head of the line at the pharmacy-- especially a long line, when you have plenty of time to prepare-- that you'll be required to provide some sort of tender-- cash or charge-- and I don't demurely look askance, step back, and then sheepishly root around in my purse, then fumble around in my wallet inside the purse, then look at the money like it's some kind of insect that lives in the purse, then make a bit of small talk with the cashier, then hand over the money, as if it's better to do such base things with someone you're acquainted with; somehow, without ever watching Full House, I've figured this out, that it's better to have your money or credit card in hand to speed things along, because if you're waiting to pick up a prescription, you're either impotent (like one of the guys in the line-- the pharmacist's voice was a little too loud) or someone is sick, and not only have I figured this out, but I have also (unlike my computer spell-check) learned how to spell non sequitur.

Happy Birthday . . . Ian, Mary-Kate, Ashley, and William Butler Yeats

Ian turns three today; if he were a bit older (notice my use of the subjunctive tense) he would be able to rap with the Olsen twins about sharing a birthday, and if he were a lot older he would have had a sure-fire conversation starter with William Butler Yeats (who I hear was equally as hot).

The Early Bird is Annoying

The nice thing about sleeping with the air-conditioner on (besides the fact that it keeps you cool) is that you don't hear the birds in the morning; my neighborhood birds woke me up this morning at 4:30 AM, two hours before my alarm clock is set to go off-- thanks birds!

Harbinger or a Test?

To do my part for the planet, I've sworn off consuming large mammals for a few months, but when I unwrapped my number 29 from The Park Deli, it was loaded with ham instead of turkey-- and I ate it, of course, it wasn't my fault, and it tasted delicious-- but do I regard this as a sign (that there is nothing to be done, the end is nigh, an omen of consumption, a harbinger of ensuing pork, and I should gorge on greasy flesh before the rapture) or perhaps this was a test-- and if it was a test of my newfound principles, then I failed miserably.

Dave is RRRRIIIIIPPPPPED

I have never felt stronger than yesterday at the gym-- but don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with a description of a ten day cycle or how much I bench-pressed (makes me think of Boogie Nights: let's say it together . . .) or how creatine makes me urinate all the time-- instead I'm going to describe what happened when I got out of the shower (insert joke here); I was drying off my back, using the two-handed yoke pull, when I heard a fantastic comic book RIIIIIPPP: I had nearly torn my towel in half . . . and even though it happened because it was a very old beach towel, weathered by years of sun and salt, and had nothing to do with my awesome strength, I enjoyed the moment and RIIIPPPPED it some more.

Alex Wins the (Mental) Contest

Yesterday, on the way to soccer practice, Alex wanted to race his soccer ball against my soccer ball down the big hill that leads to the park; playing the role of the good father, I did not push my ball as hard as he pushed his, but though Alex's ball took an early lead, it met extra resistance in some high grass that my ball avoided, and so my ball surged past his and rolled much farther into the field-- but when I claimed my victory Alex denied me, and when I pointed out that my ball went faster and farther, he said that to win the race, you had to get your ball to land on the (oddly enough) exact spot that his ball had landed on.

Sorry

It's not the heat, nor is it the humidity . . . it's the ball sweat.

Bow Down to Our Insect Overlords

Ian's first three years could be titled Portrait of an Entomologist as a Young Man; it's not that just that he likes to spot, collect, hold, and observe bugs, bees, worms and spiders-- he actually thinks about them: yesterday, after discovering several ant hills in the garden, he looked up at me and said, ominously, "the ants are mad at us" . . . and when I asked him why he said, "because they like to bite us" which makes some sort of sense, but I definitely had a vision of Them! when he said it.

Darth Vader Would Be Scary as a Whale

My kids can sing the Darth Vader theme song in the voice of just about animal: a sheep is "baa baa baa baabuhbaa buhbabaa" and a pig is "oink oink oink oinkoinkoink oinkoinkoink"-- but yesterday Alex tried it as a blue whale and although I admire his spirit of artistic experimentation, I would have to say that his impression of a cetacean is pretty poor.

Alan Partridge: Too Droll For Some

Whenever Catherine goes out, I plan to watch whatever we have from Netflix (now it's this show The Riches, with Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver-- so far it's excellent) but every time instead of watching, I go up to bed the same time as the kids, read, and then fall asleep within minutes-- which is pretty pathetic-- but I think I can only watch television with other people; in fact, I can't remember the last time I've watched a TV show or a movie alone . . . probably last year when Catherine gave up on The Alan Partridge Show and I kept watching (because Steve Coogan is priceless).

My Children Cooperate in a Jailbreak

Two scary things happened yesterday: 

1) I learned that my red running shorts are "not sexy" and look "very eighties"-- and the fact that they have netting (so you don't need to wear underwear with them) didn't seem to impress anyone in the English office; 

2) I came home to find Alex and Ian pretending to sleep on Ian's floor, and when I asked them how Ian got out of his crib, Alex said he helped him get out, by stacking several laundry baskets and then using a large stuffed Winnie the Pooh as a ladder-- and the scary thing is not that Ian escaped, it is the bigger picture: the natives are starting to cooperate.

There Will Be Milkshake Drinking

We finished There Will Be Blood last night; at first Catherine relegated me to watching the end of the film on the laptop so she could watch the two-hour finale of The Bachelor, but then she decided that I looked too depressing, sitting in a straight-backed chair with headphones on, watching the one of the bleakest movies ever made, so we watched the end together-- and my final comment on the film is this: I swore off butter after watching Last Tango in Paris, and now Daniel Day-Lewis has ruined the milkshake.

Don't Worry, That Guy Who Got Dismembered is Just a Minor Character

During story time, my son got upset for a moment when the King of the Elephants died from ingesting a poisonous mushroom, but then he realized that it wasn't Babar who died, but a minor character and he didn't care anymore, just as I have lost all feeling for the oil workers who keep getting killed in increasingly gruesome ways in There Will Be Blood (which is pretty good, but slow-- we are on day three of viewing it).

The Subway Is Byzantine

My last two trips to New York I have fared very poorly on the Subway System: previously, we took the B instead of the D on the way to the Met and ended up in Queens-- and this was certainly our fault, and alcohol consumption may have been to blame-- but this time even local Manhattanites were shaking their heads: after we ascended many stairs with the toddlers in tow, there was an 8 by 11 piece of paper instructing us that the A and the C were running on the local lines because of construction, and then after descending many stairs and taking the A we found ourselves whizzing by the 81st St. Museum stop, and then we kept going and going and finally we disembarked at 125th and took the downtown A to 59th then switched again to the uptown C to get to the Museum (it was funny hearing Alex saying "Why can't we catch the Local C?), and so on the way back we figured we had it down-- just take the C, take the local and we were guaranteed to stop where we wanted-- but as the D rolled by the conductor shouted out her window, "TAKE THE NEXT D! THE C IS ONLY RUNNING ON THE EXPRESS!" which we did and then switched again (it was easy, the train was waiting) but still . . . in the greatest city in the world should they be relying on taped up pieces of computer paper and shouting as their method of information dispersal?

DNA, Horizontally and Vertically

Microbial taxonomist Carl Woese says that in the good old days-- before archea, eukaryotes, and bacteria-- life shared its genes horizontally, there was no separation of DNA material, and evolution proceeded at a rapid, communal rate in the primordial soup, but then bacteria isolated itself and its intellectual property and the Darwinian age began (and lasted several billion years) and evolution moved slowly and separately; now, that time is coming to an end, the cultural revolution begat the bio-tech revolution, and once again, genetic material is being shared horizontally-- and I think this means that you shouldn't worry about that modified tomato that stays ripe for a month after it's picked because soon it will also be able to talk to you.

Pain or Sepsis?

Just worked up a sweat removing a splinter from Alex's foot-- it took the two of us to hold him down.