April 2006 Archives

On Sunday, I took Elijah to the Los Angeles Times Festival Of Books at UCLA. He wasn't very interested in hearing Joan Didion read, and he's not a big David Rakoff booster. Mostly, he wanted a fresh-squeezed lemonade. So we split one of those, and then he had a hot dog, with a side of chips that I'd brought from home. After that, we walked around the kids' section of the fair. Julie Andrews and John Lithgow were reading that afternoon. I can't help that I have a fondness for show tunes, but I knew that I'd never get to see either of them.

Elijah's girlfriend has two aunts who are in The Bangles. I consider that a genuine pop pedigree, if not a rock one. She'd come from richer royalty if her aunt were, say, Lita Ford. Nevertheless, these Bangle aunts are bound to our preschool by blood. So on Saturday, May 6, at 4 PM, The Silverlake Independent Jewish Community Center will host a benefit concert starring one of 1986's hottest all-girl rock bands.

The Bangles are gonna play in our sandbox.

Because I like the school and know that it needs to continually raise funds to stay afloat, I'm trying to put my indie-rock snobbery aside. I realize that a Stooges reunion concert would probably be an inappropriate substitute. Therefore, I'm backing The Bangles, for the sake of the children.

That said, when you're dropping your son off at school and you've been up since 6:15 AM, the last thing you want to hear is "Eternal Flame" playing from a boombox. This is the concert chair's in-school promotion strategy. He's also made up tasteful, nicely-colored glossy promotional cards, which are appearing in various themed cafes and overpriced kids' clothing boutiques around the neighborhood. If there's one thing this generation of parents doesn't lack, it's show-promotion skills.

This morning at Shabbat, the promoter told us that ticket sales were going "pretty well," and told us that we could take 10 tickets or so to work, if we wanted, and maybe sell them there. I did not see a fast charge for the sign-up sheet. Our school's director then advised that if we have any friends who are Bangles fans, we should encourage them to purchase tickets, because the show will sell out. I have no doubt of that. All my friends are totally into The Bangles. Also, there will be food.

I'll almost certainly provide updates as the week progresses. And if you want tickets, we can probably work something out. It will be like Coachella for parents, only with one band in a sandbox.

When I went to pick Elijah up from school, his teacher was chatting with another parent in the parking lot.

"How's my little angel?" I said.

"Your little angel," she said. "Didn't have a lunch today."

"What?"

"We looked everywhere. No lunch."

"But I made lunch for him. I remember bringing it to the car, and..."

Then I realized I'd left Elijah's lunchbox in the back seat. All day.

"Oh shit," I said.

"That's right," she said. "We had to feed him. We had to find some turkey and matzoh. And the other kids all shared stuff from their lunches. The good news is that Elijah enjoyed it."

A feeling of extreme shame washed over me. Also incompetence and failure.

"I'm so sorry," I said. "It won't happen again."

The teacher, who, as I've said before, is a woman of extremely good humor, made me raise my right hand and swear that, as God was my witness, my son would never go hungry again. So I did. And of course I won't make that mistake again. But I'm so abashed that I made it at all. So I ask you parents who are out here reading this:

How have you screwed up as a parent? I'm talking minor mishaps like this one, not major psychological damage. Please inform me that I'm not alone.

Good god, I'm glad that Regina's back. There's no school on Monday. Elijah's teachers are taking the day off, along with three million other Latinos, to peacefully shut down Los Angeles in protest of the pending immigration bills in Congress. I told Regina that I wanted to take Elijah to the protests. She pointed out that he's only three years old and probably won't get a lot out of a protest like that unless it involves lots of animals, which it probably won't. Still, I'm considering it.

And yes, I brought his lunch inside today.

I picked Elijah up at school at 3 PM. He'd just fallen off a tricycle and skinned his knee. I felt like he was playing the injury up a little bit, since he was riding that same tricycle when he greeted me with:

"It huwts weawy badwy!"

I know he's turned on the manipulation jets when he emphasizes the "w" sound instead of the "l." Also, "r" tends to drop.

"Onwy one fing wiw make me feew bettew," he said.

"What's that?"

"Ice cweam! Can I have some ice cweam, daddy? Pwease?"

He looked at me with eyes full of limpid, greedy innocence. I was unable to resist his powers, even though I knew that concession would only bring me a world of hurt.

"Sure," I said.

Elijah then informed me that he didn't want to go to the gym and out to dinner at the Soup Plantation, which was my "getting close to bedtime" strategy for the day. Instead, he wanted to go home and play with his toys by himself. I knew this was a lie, since he never plays with his toys unless accompanied.T here's nothing I enjoy more than spending a couple hours of playing "airplane restaurant" in Elijah's bedroom closet, or by playing hide-and-seek, which, the way Elijah does it, could easily be called "sitting under a blanket and screaming."

But at a certain point, a guy's got to take a shit.

Unfortunately, when I broke away for a few minutes to do just that, Elijah got angry and dumped a cup of cat food in the cat water bowl. Then I walked in to find him cackling. He was also sitting with his feet in the toilet. Thank God it wasn't the toilet I'd just crapped in, but still. You shouldn't put your feet in the toilet.

I distracted myself from the existential crisis of temporary single parenthood by taking Elijah to the zoo after school. It was a short trip, because the zoo closes at 5 PM. Elijah, who can be uncommonly kind when it suits him, was very concerned that I get to see everything I like. I chose to spend a lot of time watching the chimpanzees. To Elijah, it's a very cool thing that chimpanzees like to eat carrots and green onions.

We also saw the greatest thing that's ever happened at a zoo. While we watched, a female giraffe uncorked a great stream of urine. A male giraffe put his tongue right under her butt, and lapped it up. He then thrust his nose in the air, drawing back his lips in a rictus of perverted pleasure. You know it's a good day if your highlight is witnessing some bizarre non-procreative act of giraffe sex. Elijah thought as well.

"That giraffe drinks pee," he said.

"Yes he does, son."

"I want to drink pee, too."

"No."

"Why? Because only giraffes drink pee?"

While I understand that certain cultures throughout the ages have believed, somewhat mistakenly, in the therapeutic qualities of drinking your own urine, it's still not a behavior I want to encourage in my three-year-old.

"Yes Elijah," I said. "Because only giraffes drink pee."

Because I'm single-parenting this week, I don't leave the house without a fruit leather in my pocket. That's just an idle observation that fits nowhere else in this post, which will be entirely absent of "gazing upon the wonder that is my son" rhetoric, even though I did that just last night. Actually, I went into his bedroom because he'd fallen asleep on his back, across his pillow, with his feet propped on the wall next to his bed. Also, he'd stuck his hand through the back crease of a small cardboard box. He'd obviously collapsed in the middle of some sort of important horseplay maneuver. He looked awfully cute, but this was no way to spend the night. I made the necessary adjustments, went into my own bedroom, and set my alarm for stun.

From the moment we dropped Regina off at the Burbank Airport at 7 AM, until about 15 minutes after sundown, Elijah and I didn't stop moving yesterday. He called it an "adventure," which meant I was doing something right, but I called it "not wanting to spend all day at home with a child who tries to flush towels down the toilet for fun." Highlights follow.

Regina is out of town, on mommy sabbatical somewhere in the United States, so I am in sole charge of the boy until Wednesday afternoon. Therefore, I am busy, and posting will be light. But the posts will be of good quality when they do arrive. Thank you.

The mgmt.

Our secular Easter yielded an important behavior-training tool. We gave Ellijah a Godiva chocolate bunny in his basket. As I write this, it's the Thursday after Easter, and he's barely gotten through the ears. This is because everytime he misbehaves, we deny him bunny privileges. When he hurts the animals, no bunny. When he throws a tantrum because we're talking to each other instead of him, no bunny. When he dumps the recycling all over the kitchen floor for no reason, the bunny gets denied. The threat of no bunny persuades him to let us get him dressed. I wish it were Easter every Sunday. But that would probably confuse the Christians. Our Lord has risen....again! Hah! Suckers.

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, Hot Man has a new enemy this week. His name is Funny Bunny, and he is deadly. We learned about him this way. Elijah came home from school one day, repeating the name of Funny Bunny over and over again. He seemed half-amused, half-traumatized.

"FUNNY BUNNY! FUNNY BUNNY! FUNNY BUNNY!"

"Who is Funny Bunny?" I said.

Before we begin, allow me to pimp for a book to which I contributed. It's called Maybe Baby: 28 Writers Tell The Truth About Skepticism, Baby Lust....and a bunch of other things. Editor Lori Leibovich has pulled together a fascinating collection of honest confessionals from fine writers about parenthood, which the propaganda tells us is life's great adventure. And there's not a mention of Grups to be found anywhere in the text. I'm still kicking myself for ever talking to that reporter. Anyway, my essay is about our decision to have only one child. I still can't believe it when I see the mothers at Elijah's school, and I mean most of them, who have three-year-olds and also babies hanging from sacks slung across their chests. Though none of them are, to my knowledge, insane, having more than one kid still seems like kind of an insane choice. Then again, that may be because of the type of kid we have. And besides, we have another child of sorts already, which brings us to today's narrative.

For this year's family Easter activity, we took Hercules to the annual Haute Dog parade in Long Beach. It was Regina's idea. She's been very concerned about Hercules since we moved to Los Angeles. Herc has developed a twitch on the left side of his mouth, and Regina claims she sees patches of gray hair. It's true that the neighborhood is full of terrifying dogs that want to eat Hercules, and inside the house there's a boy who is constantly smacking him and pulling his ears. But I think there's a different reason for his problems. I'd have a twitch, too, if, like Hercules, I continually took poop out of the catbox and munched on it like I would a Snickers bar.

But things have been improving for the Herc. Regina found a Boston Terrier Meetup group. We got together once at the dog park in Silverlake. The meetup was run by a middle-aged gay man who, the one time we met him, wore a sweatshirt that bore the blown-up image of a Boston. His own Boston, a creature named Billy, was the largest representative of the breed I've ever seen. At one point, Billy went pretty hard after another dog in the run, pissing off the other dog's owner, whose intended status as a bad-ass cholo was muted somewhat by the fact that he owned a Pomeranian. Hercules charmed everyone at the Meetup, even though he got so excited that he ran around the whole time with a strand of drool that ran from jowl to jowl like decorative jewelry. Regina, emboldened by the Herc's performance, signed him up for a Dogster profile, which you can find here. Hercules definitely has more friends than I do.

And thus, the Haute Dog parade. Regina prepared a lovely costume for the Herc. He wore a purple-and-red scarf around his neck, and a flowery purple ribbon. Atop these, Regina placed a small Easter basket, and inside that, small Boston Terrier figurine. For herself, Regina wore a broad-brimmed gardening hat, which she decorated with various red pieces of fabric and a red plastic flower. She said that if she was going to be a crazy dog lady, then at least she needed to play the part.

Whereas the day before, I'd taken Elijah to downtown Los Angeles for the Blessing Of The Animals, a pure shining example of authentic American surrealism, working-class style, the Easter dog parade in Long Beach revealed a very different America.

On Saturday, Elijah and I took the train to downtown L.A., so we could attend the Blessing Of The Animals. This been going down on Olvera Street for the last 76 years, and the event did have a bit of a magical-realist feel. It centered around a traditional plaza, which housed not-so-traditional booths from various herpetological and Pug Rescue societies. Elijah and I both got to enjoy the sensation of having a spazzy cockatoo walk all over our arms and shoulders, and we fondled various boa constrictors. Then E started begging me for shrimp, which meant he wanted to go to dim sum in Chinatown. So we did that, and he ate an entire plate of salted shrimp, with the head on. In fact, he ate the heads first. I probably have the only child in the world who counts salted shrimp heads among his favorite dishes. This makes me proud, because the head is the tastiest part of the shrimp.

We went back to Olvera Street, to watch the procession, which was led by a bull. Another highlight was a float-type thing that featured a half-dozen healthy-looking geese in a straw-filled cage. Atop them were two rabbits in smaller cages, and atop the rabbits were ducks in domed cages. Also, there were some goats on the march, and now Elijah can say that he's seen Cardinal Mahony drip holy water on a rabbit wearing an Easter dress.

Also present at the Blessing Of The Animals were some anti-anti-immigration protesters, who I imagine will propagandize at every non-Republican public event for the next 15 years, until the current generation of bloated white racists is either dead or shitting their pants in various public warehouses for the elderly. Elijah asked me why the people were yelling, and what the signs said.

"They're mad because bad people want them to go away," I said, not knowing how to explain xenophobia to a three-year-old.

"Do you want them to go away?"

"No, I think they're fine."

"You're not a bad person."

"Thank you, son."

"Sometimes you're grumpy, though."

"Yeah, well, so are you."

So I wanted to use the chorus from The Wiggles' Captain Feathersword Fell Asleep On His Pirate Ship (Quack Quack) as the epigraph for Alternadad, because, you know, it's a song that torments many contemporary parents with kids under the age of two. I thought it would be a lark.

Yesterday, I got an email from Leanne from Australia. She informed me that "The Wiggles have approved the inclusion of a segment of the lyrics to the song 'Captain Feathersword Fell Asleep On
His Pirate Ship (Quack Quack)' in your book 'Alternadad'. Based on the information you have previously supplied, a fee of US$1,000 for the initial 15,000 units for the territory of the World would be payable..." To the richest men in Australia, who are trying to soak a writer for another $1,000. Greedy, greedy bastards.

I wrote a new epigraph for the book, but my editor told me to think twice, because why risk pissing off four rich men in colored unitards? But I'll paste it below because this is a mostly-unread blog.

Anyway, if there are parents out there who still, for some reason, play the Wiggles for their kids, or have any Wiggle-related merchanside in their house, I encourage you strongly to destroy it now out of solidarity with my annoyance. Up yours, Greg. Fuck you, Murray. Bite my butt, Anthony. And do me a favor, Jeff. Don't wake up. Here's the epigraph.

Dear Wiggles:

Love,
The Parents Of The World

Elijah's school threw a seder lunch for the students today. Before that, there was a little play in the kindergarten room, to which parents were invited. Regina pointed out, with perfect accuracy, that I'm the Jew in the family, so she sent me.

The morning began with the appearance of the kindergarten teacher, who was wearing a red headdress. He was followed by various students, who wore various colored headdresses based on their roles in the play. What followed was a loose retelling of the Passover story. Actually, what followed was the teacher running around whispering to kids, none of whom could remember their lines. At at an early part of the play, when the parents were still sort of paying attention, he said, "and then Pharoah put all the Jews into slavery. Now, is slavery good?"

"Nooooo," everyone responded.

"I'm glad to know this school's stance on slavery," I said to a mom sitting next to me.

The story of Passover proceeded. Elijah didn't really seem interested. At one point, he flopped down in my arms and pretended to fall asleep, which his teachers found hilarious. "Everyone's a critic," I said. He perked up a little bit soon after, saying,

"Juice? What kind of juice are they drinking?"

"No, Elijah, not juice," I said. "Jews."

"Are they orange Jews? Grape Jews? Pineapple Jews?"

At this point, his teachers were just encouraging him, so I said, "I'm sorry, this is my fault."

Then the kindergarten teacher said,

"God sent his cootie angels down to earth, so they could give cooties to the Egyptians."

Cootie angels? That was definitely the most interesting interpretation of the Haggadah I'd ever heard. I said to Elijah's teachers,

"Do you guys teach the kids about cooties?"

Elijah's head teacher, Judith, is a woman of great humor who finds it amusing to dress her boy students in pretty frocks. She said, "I guess we'll have to now."

Conversation in the car yesterday on the way home from school:

"Sigh."

"Why are you sighing, daddy?"

"It's the Bush Man. He's evil and he's trying to destroy the world."

"Can anyone fight him?"

"I don't know."

"Hot Man can fight him."

"I wish that were true."

"Hot Man can fight Bush Man and Doctor Octopus and The Rhino."

"OK."

"Why is Bush Man trying to hurt people?"

"Because he's crazy."

"He's only trying to hurt grownups. Not kids."

"Well, to be fair, he doesn't really think he's going to hurt people. Especially kids. But because he's crazy, he's going to hurt everyone."

"I will put hot things all over him and then the giant birds will come and eat him."

"That would be much appreciated, son."

What was I supposed to tell him? That the United States is going to test 700 tons of "bunker-buster" bombs in the Nevada Desert on June 2? It's not like he would understand what that means. I doubt that protests by the Shoshone tribe are going to stop the operation, which bears the Strangelovian name "Divine Strake." I don't know what a strake is, but I do know that this President considers himself the instrument of God's will on Earth. Judging from the rhetoric coming from the White House, and from Iran's outward taunting of us, I would have to conclude that a catastrophic nuclear war is imminent. This is really happening. I'm terrified, and worst of all, I feel terrible for my son. He didn't ask to be brought to life at the end of civilization. I'm sure all of you parents (and non) feel the same way. We cannot allow our mad President to launch a nuclear weapon. Who is going to stop this from happening?

"What kind of a world are we leaving for our children?" may be a cliche. This time, though, it's a cliche worth asking. Now I will leave you all to enjoy Humanity's Darkest Hour.

I was in charge of Elijah most of the weekend, because I'm heading off this week on a very important business trip. He's the type of kid who breaks things when he's bored, so we had to get the hell out of the house. On Saturday morning, after a visit to a local coffeehouse where Elijah spent half an hour licking cream cheese off a plastic knife, I took him to the California Science Center, which had just opened a Science Of Superheroes exhibit. I figured that Goo Man would be interested in learning about his fellow mutants.

It really didn't surprise me that the exhibit turned out to be nothing but Marvel Comics product placement. Science didn't seem to be a primary concern. Dr. Reed Richards would be ashamed. For instance, nothing is going to be able to persuade me that adamantium, the metal used to create Wolverine's indestructible skeleton, actually exists on Earth. Also, there is no science that can truly explain why Bruce Banner turns into The Incredible Hulk, or to explain why Ang Lee turned one of the top three most awesome superheroes into a pretentious, droning filmic meditation on the troubled relations between fathers and sons. As if I needed to know anything more on that topic. And I guess it's nice to teach kids about the weather, but should we really be teaching them that the weather can be controlled by an African woman with shock-white hair and glowing eyes? It's just not true!

Despite the bells and whistles, and I mean there were a lot of bells and whistles going off at all times in that little room, not to mention sirens, the exhibit actually felt kind of cheap. Five days in, the Iron Man and Magneto exhibits had already fallen apart in need of repair. I did enjoy imitating Banshee's sonic shriek (and destroying The Sentinel while doing it), but the Spider-Man climbing wall was weak, and the Invisible Woman "illusion chamber" came up lame. Also, let's be like Daredevil by closing our eyes and walking through a two-foot-long padded room? I think not. If they had me fight Jennifer Garner among a lot of clotheslines full of laundry, then you'd be talking.

Elijah showed interest in only one exhibit, and then he showed too much interest. I was unsuccessfully clacking away, trying to make Doctor Octopus' prosthetic arm tie a shoelace, when I heard someone say, "Boys shouldn't be doing that." How long Elijah had been licking Iceman's hands, I'll never know. But we had to leave.

Elijah's own superhero identity has been shifting rapidly. One day, he was no longer Goo Man. Instead, he had become "Hot Man," whose power was, Elijah said, "shooting hot things." Apparently, Hot Man deposits his enemies on something called "the floor of dust," and he then summons a mosquito swarm. That was totally acceptable to me. When your son shouts "I will throw you on the floor of dust!" to you during a wrestling session, how can you not feel proud?

But upon our return home from the dubious museum exhibit, Hot Man took a turn toward the dark side. Suddenly, he’d become "Hot Saw Man," whose power was that he went around "sawing things" with a piece of serrated cardboard extracted from an empty 24-pack Pacifico Cerveza carton. I found myself on my bed wielding a soft pillow, fighting for my metaphorical life as my son cackled madly and said: "now I will saw you into little pieces!" It was probably a mistake to allow him to watch Saw II with me the other night.

But I joke. I didn't actually let him watch Saw II with me the other night; this reality is scarier. He became Hot Saw Man all on his own. Something deep in his nature made him want to recreate a grindy 70s-type horror movie in my peaceful home. Regina and I both suggested, independently of each other, that Hot Saw Man become Hot Sauce Man, whose power is shooting hot sauce out of his fingers. Elijah didn't really take to our steering. Instead, he's decided to call himself Hot Owl Man, who is not, as the name might indicate, a hot owl, but rather someone who rescues dogs and cats from the dread carnivorous "hot owls," who live among us without our knowledge. Hot Owl Man isn't my favorite superhero he's ever done, but it's certainly better than Hot Saw Man.

On Sunday, I took Hot Owl Man to the Kidspace Museum in Pasadena, where we met his friend Sean and Sean's dad, Greg. While Greg and I discussed the possibility of forming a band out of parents from Elijah and Sean's class (apparently Ariel's dad was the drummer on an obscure Redd Kross album), Elijah and Sean got very wet in a fountain-type exhibit. I had nothing but a spare diaper handy, so Elijah ran around for about 15 minutes in his diaper and sockless blue Crocs. It was warm today. Sean, on the other hand, had a spare T-shirt, and, more importantly, underwear. The anxiety of influence was about to manifest itself.

When we returned home, I put Elijah in his pajamas, at his request, and also in a pair of King Kong underwear, which he likes to wear backwards so he can see the dinosaurs. He and I sat on the couch and shared a tangerine. Then he stood up, said, "I have to go pee-pee in the potty now," and wandered off. A minute later, he called me in. Sure enough, he'd done the magic deed. I rewarded him with a half-dozen M&Ms. About 45 minutes later, this time without even telling me, he went into the bathroom and dropped a fine-looking little turd into the bowl. He got more candy.

I called Regina, who was at the mall enjoying her last moments of freedom, to tell her the news. She didn't say anything. Instead, she sang:

"Hallelujah! Hallejuah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Halle-loooooo-jaaaaaaah!"

I didn't join her in the chorus, but I enjoyed imagining her singing that at the women's room in Nordstrom's.

So now tomorrow morning Elijah will go to school, for the first time, wearing underwear instead of a diaper. Over the next few weeks, there will be accidents, and probably disgusting ones. Nevertheless, a phase has ended, and I've rarely been happier. It's a blessing to not have to wipe another human being's ass, especially when you're not getting paid. Still, I feel strangely sad as well. I'll never miss the diapers, but I will miss the version of Elijah who wore those diapers. That little one is gone from me forever, lost in the floor of dust.

We are not pregnant. April Fool! Har de har har har.