Dad Shame

Sometimes when my children find other kids to play with at the park-- which is happening more and more often-- I get bored, and sometimes when I get bored, especially if I've forgotten something to read, then I toss whatever balls we've brought in the wagon at my kids; I did this the other day with a Nerf football, I chucked it over the top of the jungle gym, hoping to surprise little Ian, but my aim was too precise and I hit him in the side of the face, and so he turned to me and said "Daddy, you hurt me" and then went back to playing . . . and then I noticed that another father caught the whole thing, and his look of disgust for me was priceless.

He Hates to Say It . . . But He Loves to Say It

You're not supposed to like saying "I told you so" but in his book The Black Swan, all Nassim Nicholas Taleb has to say about the current financial crisis is: "I told you so"-- and there's nothing more enjoyable than saying "I hate to say it, but I told you so."

Caster Disaster

Last Saturday, I was that asshole: I chose a shopping cart at Target with a bad caster that alternated between making a loud clattering sound and a high pitched shriek, and I was too lazy to switch carts, instead I suffered the frowns of employees and shoppers alike-- it was early-- AND I got into the "express" lane at the grocery store and before I realized that I had more than twelve items, there was a line behind me . . . I thought I didn't have much but I did -- six bottles of seltzer, four cans of SpaghettiOs, two things of lunch meat, rolls, a loaf of bread, hot pepper rings, two packs of paper plates and a pack of paper cups-- for a grand total of eighteen items-- 50% more than the limit; once I realized my transgression I turned bright red, and all I could do was bag really fast and race out of the store, the shrieking caster broadcasting my shame.

Greek Myth = Wet Kids

I thought reading the kids some Greek myths would be at worst innocuous (and a bit boring) and at best a nice basis in the most common allusions in literature, but when we were out splashing in the rain the other day, I turned around to find both my children lying in a large brown puddle, faces in the water, making some kind of kissing fish sound; I asked them what they were doing and Alex said: "I'm that guy, Narceesusus, looking at himself in the water!"

Stress at the Stress Factory

Sometimes the comedy club isn't funny-- like when the table next to you can't stop chatting and you ask them repeatedly to please be quiet because you can't hear the jokes, and the waitress asks them to be quiet, and finally, you lose your temper and tell them to shut up and the young guy at the table-- put in the awkward position of having to defend his womenfolk, stands up and yells at you and then Patrice O'Neal stops the show and asks what the fuck is going on and your wife tells him and-- when O'Neal questions the offending table-- the annoying and loud drunk lady says (seriously) to Patrice Oneal "I didn't know I couldn't talk while you were doing your act" and Patrice Oneal lays into her and her table for a while and then on the way out a member of our table asks for an apology and soon enough there is a scuffle and a very effective brother/ sister tag-team pins the young guy who yelled at me to the floor and we throw several other folks into the tables and chairs and then we make a quick exit before the police detain us-- Catherine knew the hostess and so they let us out without delay-- and we retreated to the Corner Tavern, where we watched the police cars race past, on their way to a comedy club melee.

My Son the Half-Assed Telepath

My four year old son Alex told me that "in school you have to say everything out loud, you can't just talk in your brain, because the teacher can't hear what's in your brain" and then Alex claimed that HE could read my brain and he told me to count to a number in my head-- but not to say it aloud-- and, miraculously, he guessed it (the number was five) and while that was nifty, Alex then failed on the next seven tries at this same trick and so when I asked him to concede that he could not read minds he said "What about the five!" and he decided that he could only read minds "a little bit."

Words Are Worth 1000 Pictures

Yesterday, Catherine and I went to our first Back-to-School Night, and Alex's classroom had pictures the students drew on the walls and the pictures had captions written by the teacher-- but the captions were recited to the teacher by the students and then she transcribed them -- so the pictures were rudimentary and childish: you had blobs at the park, stick figures with happy balloons, dots on crooked mountains, etcetera-- but the captions were neat and legible; Alex's picture consisted of two stick figures next to some sort of jagged squiggly thing and the caption read: 

"My little brother Ian and I are running away from the poisonous lizard."

Football Conquers Chores

Whenever you have a lot of chores to do, and you've been sitting on your ass all afternoon watching football because you're sore from playing soccer, invariably, the Giants game goes into over-time-- and then what are you going to do . . . stop watching and start vacuuming after you've already invested three-and a half hours?

Prepositional Ponderings

This has been bothering me: Vincent Chase is the star on "Entourage," but I don't think he's the star of "Entourage"-- Ari Gold is . . . or is he?

Roslin > Palin

I was going to continue in the political vein with a sentence about the Sarah Palin/Laura Roslin Battlestar Galactica analogy-- Palin does look like Roslin (and Tight looks like McCain) has  but the analogy is so obvious-- and also very flawed, Palin is way dumber and way more conservative than Roslin-- so instead I'm going to remind you that it's really hard to coach a soccer game in a civil manner when you're ahead 4-0 in the first half (but I'll still provide a photo of Tricia Helfer).

I Go Off on a Tangent (About the Propriety of a Name)

Sarah Palin's children are named Track, Willow, Bristol, Piper, and Trig; Trig is her child with Down Syndrome . . . and the condition was diagnosed prenatally, so you'd think the Palin family would have had plenty of time to come up with a name that's a little less humiliating . . . kids without Down syndrome have a hard enough time spelling "trigonometry."

Ring the Bells, Let It Be Known: Dave Fixed the Toilet

Let it be known: yesterday-- Sunday the twenty first of September . . . the first day of autumn-- I FIXED THE TOILET; I replaced the fill valve (incorrectly at first, although I didn't know it, but when I returned from soccer there was a small flood in the bathroom and so, after deciphering the many pronged directions, I was able-- with much blasphemous profanity-- to fix it) and the purpose of this sentence is to record this feat for time immemorial so that six months from now when I have lapsed in my household chores once again-- as is inevitable-- then at least when my wife tells me that I never do anything around the house, I can pull up this post and say, "Once, not so long ago, I FIXED THE TOILET!"

I Wear Bad Idea Jeans

Another bad decision in a long line of them: during our 8th grade soccer pre-game warm up (and I feel that it's crucial to have a crisp looking pre-game warm-up) the kids playing the crosses were a bit sluggish, and so I gave them a little defensive pressure to get them up to game speed-- I ran from one side of the field to the other and made them cross the ball around my body, but I forgot that I was carrying a fresh, hot 16 ounce cup of coffee from WaWa . . . until a cross nearly grazed it and I realized that if the ball was two inches lower I would have suffered second degree burns (and completely ruined any semblance of a professional pre-game warm-up).

Circular Logic

My ninth grade math teacher said if you drew a perfect circle free-hand, then you would immediately go completely and irrevocably insane-- and so, of course, we spent hours of time trying to do this when we should have been taking notes-- but although I'm not sure if that's true, I am sure that if I write a perfect sentence and you read it, you will go completely and irrevocably insane.

What Not to Say to My Wife

My wife got placed on the jury of a criminal case, and while she's not thrilled because she has to miss work (and she has to go to court on Rosh Hashanah, even though she is off from school on those days) she is still kind of intrigued by the case-- but PLEASE do not give her any advice on how to get off a jury, it seems EVERYONE has been telling her their various theories on how to get out of jury duty, none of which have been tried, and none of which work when you are actually face to face with a judge.

George Bush and My Wife Battle Rude Shoe-Throwers

People can be so rude . . . or so my wife tells me-- people aren't usually rude to me, but they are constantly being rude to my wife-- for example, the other day when Catherine was putting our kids in the play gym before her spinning class, some other kid was having a temper tantrum and this other kid threw his shoe at his mother, but it missed and whizzed straight at Catherine's head and she had to duck to avoid being brained and neither the mother nor the child apologized to her.

Hermit Crab, I Name Thee Lazarus!

A miraculous resurrection in our house-- and we're not even near Easter; Catherine threw away the corpse of our pet hermit crab two weeks ago, but we never broke it to the kids (as they rarely looked at the thing) but, creepily, even after the crab's demise, the shell would occasionally change locations in the tank, and so Catherine figured that the kids were playing with the shell, but it turns out that she threw out the empty molted shell of the crab, and though it suffered through two week of no food and water, it is still alive and well (and still the worst pet ever, but far easier to take care of than a dog).

Dave Feels Lucky (But Not THAT Lucky)

After having a bad day Saturday (high fever, constricted throat, tonsillitis, car accident that was pretty much completely my fault) I had a good day yesterday-- the insurance guy was very helpful: instead of admitting the car into the official Geico body shop-- where they would have replaced the bumper, the quarter panel, the headlight, etcetera-- he wrote me a check for the estimate-- which was five hundred dollars over the deductible, and then he told me of a cheap Asian body shop on Woodbridge Avenue-- a stone's throw from my house-- where they fixed my car for several hundred dollars, and so the money from the insurance paid for this and covered the cost of the 85 dollar ticket (with a little something for my troubles) and he said my rates wouldn't go up because it was my first claim ever and a small claim, so with all this good luck, I thought I would capitalize and play the lottery, but the woman in front of me at the convenience store, obviously a lottery "regular" because of her rapport with the cashier, bought thirty one dollars worth of scratch-offs, and it was so sad that I couldn't bring myself to follow suit and so I didn't buy a ticket.

Kids . . . It Would Be Convenient If They Were All the Same Size

Catherine explained to me in so many words that my household chore contributions of late have consisted of playing the guitar and reading (somebody has to be in charge of these) and that nothing on my "to do" list has been crossed off since June, and so, in order to earn my keep, I decided to put away the laundry; this was easy enough for my clothes, I put them in whatever drawer had room, but it was slightly harder for Catherine's clothes-- she has separate drawers for different kinds of clothing and they all look the same to me-- and it was damn near impossible for the kids . . . Alex and Ian's clothes differ by a few millimeters and the only way to check is by looking at the little faded tag, which is nearly inscrutable (but the millimeter difference in size is important-- it's the difference between Ian's pants falling down or not) and so I'm thinking that it might be easier to stunt Alex's growth a little-- deprive him of essential nutrients and allow him to smoke a couple of cigarettes a day (filtered, of course), and bulk up Ian a bit with a high calorie diet and some steroids or creatine-- so that the two of them wear the same size and can share clothing.

Sick is No Way to Drive

If you need a doctor on a Saturday, you're better off living in a third world country; I went to PromptCare on Easton Avenue, and I am amazed at the audacity of their name (they should go with something a little less ambitious, like JustBeforeYouExpireCare): two hours later I was diagnosed with acute tonsillitis (the doctor was really impressed by how swollen my tonsils were) and then, in my feverish delirium, I hopped into my car, excited to go home and finally get some sleep-- I was up all night because my throat closed up-- and I promptly rear-ended the woman in front of me, denting her trunk and screwing up my fender, so then I had to wait for the police but I was so sick that it was like being in a dream-- and I couldn't even get that angry at myself for my stupidity (although the lady in front of me did stop very short, she did one of those false starts into traffic, where you accelerate a bit and then decide you can't merge and stop suddenly).