February 2007 Archives

Last night, around 9:30 PM, we heard a wailing from Elijah's bedroom. He'd been in bed for more than an hour. We thought he was already asleep. But we should have known. He's never asleep.

"Momm-eeeee! Dad-eeeee! I want my Superman computer!"

In the living room, I said to Regina, "he wants his Superman computer."

"I guess so," she said.

The "Superman computer" is something, in the shape of the Superman "S" logo, that plays different number and letter games, while not-so-subtly promoting the Superman Returns movie. It has a keyboard and a circa-1986 digital screen. Elijah got it as a Chanukah present from my aunt and uncle. Once it appeared, there was no removing it from the rotation, as much as I've occasionally wished for its removal.

"It's almost 10 PM," I said. "He can't play video games now. He'll never go to sleep."

I went to Elijah's room to tell him this. He began to wail like a mother whose son has just been "disappeared" by the government.

"I weally weally need my Superman computer!" he said.

"No you don't."

"Yes I do!"

"No."

"I need my Superman computer," he said, "because I have to take over the world tomorrow!"

Where did he learn that position?

On Saturday night, while I was off giving a very important reading, Elijah announced that it was time for a "science experiment." We actually gave him a junior science kit for Chanukah, which largely seemed to involve dissolving things in water and mixing together different colors of sand. This was the first experiment of his own devising.

When I woke up with Elijah Sunday morning, he went to the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic cup. An ice cylinder filled most of it.

"What the hell is this?" I asked.

"It's my science experiment!" he said.

"Oh," I said.

"Let's put some Cheerios in and see if they freeze, too!"

Today's bilious David Brooks column in the New York Times may have intended to be the last word on the "hipster parenting" trend, but I think it will have an opposite, galvanizing effect. There are certainly some annoyng cultural signifiers afoot, mostly having to do with clothing items and the occasional pretentious mix tape, but deep undercurrents run through this generation that Brooks could only begin to understand.

I wonder how long it's been since this "patio man"-praising "bobo", who lives in a cosseted corner of Philadelphia's Main Line, has had to worry about drug-dealing in his neighborhood, or whether or not his kids were going to get a good education, or if an innocent visit to the doctor was going to send him into thousands of dollars of debt. Probably never, I'm guessing. Every family but the most wealthy is up against a wall in George Bush's America. "Hipster parenting," despite some very superficial fashion frosting, is actually a conservative pushback calling for the return to primacy of truly traditional American family values.

I'm proud to be part of this generation of parents, which is trying to regain cultural control of its lives from corporate entertainment conglomerates (or at least influence certain corporate-entertainment decisions). The entrepreneurial energy has only begun to assert itself. I see parents remaking children's fashion, yes, and children's music, but also piling tons of energy into helping save our sagging public-education system, trying to reclaim decent childhood nutrition from a deep Cheetos-dug hole, and generally trying to assert their cultural identity in a world that denies them anything but beleagured "soccer mom" or "diaper dad" labels.

Brooks says he's "not against the indie/alternative lifestyle." While he rightly points out that there is an especially annoying brand of indie conformity, he wouldn't know an authentic DIY project if it started giving him a lap dance on the R5 to 30th Street Station. We're trying to raise our children to be thinking, creative individuals, not indie automaton clones of ourselves. I don't care if my son grows up thinking differently than me. I just care that he grows up thinking at all. He's not a "deceptive edginess badge." He's the great joy of my life. Together, along with the energy and enthusiasm of thousands of other parents, we're going to change the world, or at least try.

There has to be a better way to raise a kid in this country. Brooks, in all his privilege, doesn't get the point: This is not a consumerist movement. We "hipster parents" are middle class, and we want the same things that our middle-class parents had: A decent school for our kids, a decent house in a good neighborhood, and decent health care. The rest of it is just window dressing, though, admittedly, it's fun window dressing. I'm glad to be raising my son in the era of The Sippy Cups instead of the era of Barney. A commenter on sociologist Richard Florida's message board says it better than I:

"Okay, Mr. Brooks, when is your parenting book coming out? My three creative and innovative children can't wait to hear your recommendations. Are you going to recommend the "Barney Does Pop Tunes" disc, so my daughter will have to turn in her IPod and her Green Day discs? My son will turn in his cool games and his sketch pad (along with his cartoons and snarky political commentary)and "Republicans for Voldemort" poster for what?"

Finally, I may have given my son an "abusively pretentious" name, and I may have written an "indescribably dull" book. But I've never been a relentless apologist for repeated excessive abuse of government power. My son will never ask me, "Daddy, why did you support the Iraq invasion when the government was so obviously lying?" David Brooks, on the other hand, will have a lot of explaining to do.

I've been interviewed by Jesse Thorn, "America's Radio Sweetheart," on The Sound Of Young America. Listen to the interview here. And sign up for this most excellent show's email list here. And here's an older interview I did with TSOYA.

In the summer of 1980, I attended basketball camp at the Phoenix Jewish Community Center, run by Suns center Joel Kramer (a rare NBA Jew), and Suns coach John McLeod. One morning, Coach McLeod came into the gym with some news.

"I want you all to know that we traded Paul Westphal last night."

"Awww, maaaaaan," we all said. Paul Westphal was a player we liked because he shot the ball every time it touched his hands. This is the kind of basketball to which a 10-year-old can relate.

"But we traded him for Dennis Johnson," said the coach.

"Yaaaay!" we all said.

Never mind the absurdity of the situation. Can you imagine, for instance, Pat Riley walking into a gym full of grade-schoolers and announcing a trade like he were conducting a press conference? But this was just before the rise of Magic and Bird, when the NBA was still a pretty homely institution. Regardless, Dennis Johnson, DJ, had just come off a championship season with Seattle. Maybe he could figure out how to get the Suns over the hump into the Finals.

Now, as has been widely reported, Dennis Johnson is dead. He never got the Suns into the Finals, but then again, NEITHER HAS ANYONE ELSE. He played inspiring ball for us until the Suns traded him, in one of the worst deals in the history of the NBA, for Rick Robey. It's a shame Coach McLeod wasn't around to announce that trade to me in person. I really would have given him a piece of my mind.

Anyway, Dennis Johnson was a great player. It was a privilege to have cheered him on for three inspiring seasons at Veterans' Memorial Coliseum. He brought much joy to my boyhood. Aloha, DJ.

Elijah has been getting bored with storytime at school, and when Elijah gets bored with something, everyone knows. We're working on hemming in his disruptive tendencies, which include locking arms with his friends and chanting "We Are The Carrots! We Are The Carrots!" But meanwhile, Elijah was told he could bring in his own book, which teacher would then read aloud to the class.

Well, yesterday morning, Elijah tookthat book to school. Regina had the morning shift, so I didn't see what he chose. I probably wouldn't have stopped him even if I had seen.

When I got to school that afternoon, teacher said, "We tried reading Elijah's book. But I had to skip a lot of pages."

"What book was it?" I asked.

She pointed to the counter.

"Elijah," I said. "Why did you bring The Charles Addams Mother Goose?"

"Because I wanted to," he said.

We love this book at our house. It turns childhood nursery rhymes into a good-spirited satire about decapitation, cannibalism, and overall ghostly wretchedness. The spider eyes Miss Muffet with lascivious intent, and Tom Tom The Piper's Sun runs down the street carrying a pig skeleton, while chased by an angry mob. The Solomon Grundy tale, which the teacher decided to read to class, is particularly grim, depicting an ordinary man who leads an ordinary life, and then slowly rots away unloved.

Whoops.

Today, the school director said that it's fine to read a book like that to one kid, because you can make little private jokes and explain away the grimness. Elijah, in particular, likes to face the monsters in his mind, so it's not a problem. But large groups freak out easily.

"I swear I didn't know he was bringing that book," I said today.

"It was endorsed by Stephen King," she said.

I guess we won't be bringing Flanimals in for circle time after all.

Every boy dreams, when growing up, of playing the Borders in Westwood, CA. Now, this Saturday, I will have my chance, as part of Romie Angelich's Published, Produced, Or On Their Way. The reading is at 7:30 PM. Since I haven't yet read in L.A. west of Vermont, the potential audience could be enormous. This is particularly true since my co-star will be the delightful Wendy Spero, author of Microthrills.

Meanwhile, it's long odds that anyone still visiting here hasn't yet purchased their copy of Alternadad, but I suppose I should give you the opportunity nonetheless. And if you have read the book, I kindly beg you to procrastinate at work for a few minutes today and write a review on Amazon. Literary critic careers have sprouted from less potent seeds.

Here endeth the self-promotion. For now.

We went to a birthday party on Saturday in Los Feliz, a neighborhood where every store is either a children's boutique or a yoga studio. This particular birthday party took place at a children's boutique. It was a very nice party. The mom and dad provided beer and wine for the grownups, and juice boxes for the kids. As required by federal law, they also provided a jumpy castle. A man who called himself a "bubbleologist" provided the entertainment.

He had big tubs of bubble water and implements of various sizes, which allowed him to create all sorts of bubble exotica, such as bubble cubes and bubble tetrahedrons. He knew how to make bubbles inside of other bubbles. The kids went crazy. Some of them, like Elijah, went especially crazy and parents had to sit by their sides so they wouldn't pop the bubbles before they reached bubble fruition.

In addition, the bubbleologist was French.

Frequent reader/blog comment gadfly "Philly D" asks if we're having any alpha-dog issues in our house. The answer is no. Hercules has always been a bottom, and Shaq is "passive dominant." He's not aggressive, he just makes it clear that he's in charge. He'll stand over Hercules and hold him with his paw if Hercules tries to assert his own sad little authority, but they don't fight over food or toys. However, the real dominant animal in this house is Teacake, Regina's 15-year-old male tabby. The other night, Shaq tried to lay atop Teacake on the sofa. Teacake grabbed Shaq around the neck and sunk his teeth in, not tight enough to leave a mark. Then he let loose a low, throaty moan that said, "listen, you farty malcontent. I have lived in five different states and ten different houses. I am in the early stages of kidney failure. And I am not going to put up with your goofy Boston Terrier crap."

I have to say, Teacake won my respect right there. And it only took him nine years.

The day after Shaq entered our realm, I went to San Francisco. The two events had nothing to do with each other. But we got Shaq while I was in the middle of my epic book tour, so I missed his first week with the family.

That afternoon, I got a phone call.

"I don't know if I want Shaq," Regina said.

"You begged me for him--for weeks," I said.

"I know," she said. "And now I feel guilty. He's nothing like Hercules."

"Of course he's nothing like Hercules," I said. "He's a different dog."

"What are we doing?" she said. "I don't know what we're doing anymore."

"Woman," I said. "You are driving me crazy."

Every day, the panic subsided a little. Regina started saying things like "Shaq is a good boy," and I knew we were going to keep him. One theme did persist, however.

"Oh my God," she said. "Shaq has the worst farts ever."

"OK, dear," I said, basically dismissing her. Regina has always been a little extra-sensitive when it comes to matters olfactory. I can't begin to enumerate the times I've been forced to sniff a blanket, or a bedsheet, or a rug, for the faintest whiff of urine, vomit, or feces. This has led Elijah to believe that animals are always attempting to poop in his bed.

I landed at Burbank Airport at 10 PM on a Saturday. Regina let Elijah stay up past his bedtime so he could pick me up. The dogs came along as well. They picked me up curbside. I got in the car and started spreading the kisses around.

Then I took a whiff. The air in the car smelled like regurgitated grass inside the belly of a rotting rodent corpse.

"Man," I said. "You weren't kidding about the farts."

I review Evelyn McDonnell's rock-n-roll mom memoir, Mamarama, here. Meanwhile, Erica Schickel, author of her OWN alt-mom memoir, reviews it here. And to close the circle, Ella Taylor reviews Alternadad and Schickel's book in the LA Weekly, painting my book, which "has been getting more positive notices than it deserves," as a thinly-veiled sexist attack on hardworking mothers.

Well, you can't please 'em all. I realize that mothers have been making the same types of sacrifices that fathers are now making for generations, but the culture is changing, and the roles are evening out. Men are trying to come to terms with their new place in the hierarchy just as women are, and we're all trying to break through the cultural stereotypes of parenthood that we encounter every day. The fact that I don't like the occasional uptight mom on the playground has nothing to do with sexism; it has to do with inherent crankiness.

Anyway, enjoy the varying perspectives.

We aren't nanny people. For one, nannies are super-expensive, at least for us. The going low-rate in L.A., $500 a month, would bust our budget wide open. Also, I've always found the nanny-parent relationship somewhat discomfiting. It can work just fine, of course, but too often I've heard rhetoric like "Consuela is a treasured member of our family" and smelled the bourgeois hypocrisy.

That said, we do hire babysitters. We've had plenty of luck on Craig's List. About once a month, we get a visit from an Occidental College student, who Elijah adores. She's really too busy to babysit--she has another job, a full class load, and is on the track team--but she keeps showing up regardless. She likes playing with Elijah. When we got Hungry Hungry Hippos, she was more excited than he was. She came to his birthday party and spent the entire time hurtling around the jumpy castle with her boyfriend. She sent us a holiday card thanking us for allowing her to "be a part of your wonderful family." But graduation looms, and we'll soon lose her.

We also sometimes get a visit from a grown woman who works a day job in PR, but always seems available to sit on Saturday nights. We know absolutely nothing else about her, but she shows up and does a super-efficient job. Elijah never complains about her, so we consider her a reliable backup. She definitely likes dogs, which is a plus.

Then, two afternoons a week, from 3:30 to 6:30, the most awesome babysitter on earth comes over. We found her on Craig's List. The fact that her email address contained the word "geek" should have been the first clue that we'd scored big-time. She's an education student, and her creativity knows no end. Under her watch, Chutes And Ladders gets played with rubber lizards, and backwards. Elijah's room turns into a giant hotel for his Playmobil animals and pirates, who apparently live in used egg cartons because it "helps their sleep." Play-Doh gets wrapped in tinfoil and labelled as a "dessert bar." On her first visit, she brought Elijah a book called "Punk Farm," about a bunch of farm animals who form a punk band, and her boyfriend took her to see Massive Attack for her birthday.

And sometimes, she takes Elijah to Big!Lots.

There have been a few minor changes in the playlist at home. At the Portland dance party, Belinda and Hova played the Toy Dolls' deeply awesome version of "Nellie The Elephant." I'd forgotten how much I loved that song, and I instantly realized that its essential qualities--fast, silly, animal-related--fit Elijah's preferences perfectly. I downloaded it as soon as I got home. I also added, to the "Elijah Rock" ITunes playlist, a couple of Me First And The Gimme Gimmes songs. Their covers of "Over The Rainbow" and "The Rainbow Connection" seemed to suit the boy perfectly.

Sure enough, Elijah loved all three of them, and has been making me play them over and over again. Nellie The Elephant is fun no matter how many times you play it; the others are innocuous when repeated, though when Elijah is running around to Fat Mike singing "Over The Rainbow," I sometimes feel as though I've been zapped into a snowboarding-themed Mountain Dew commercial.

But those new songs are a minor threat compared with what I've done to our listening schedule in the car. Last week, I made what might have been a fatal mistake. I put "Dr. Demento's Greatest Hits" into the CD changer.

"Pollack shouldn't simply be lumped in with a spurious hipster parenting movement. His book reveals that the core aim of fatherhood has barely budged: provide food, clothing, shelter."--Slate.com

The death of our cat, Gabby, hit us hard, and me most of all. She'd been my familiar for the better part of 11 years. I still expected her to mew around the corner and launch herself onto my shoulders. But now that she was gone, I was, at least, enjoying having one fewer animal in the house. It was a small house, and Elijah was a wild boy, which made it feel even smaller.

We were left with only Hercules, our adorable little Boston Terrier who had the bad habit of publicly masturbating whenever company came over, and Teacake, Regina's 15-year-old male tabby, who was exhibiting early signs of kidney failure. Excretory fun abounded daily. But so did sadness.

The animals also seemed to be mourning Gabby. Teacake roamed the house, mewing woefully, and Hercules lay on the sofa like a lump of brindled coal. We had to drag him down the street and up mountains. He seemed to live only to lick our dinner plates.

One day, Regina was on the Internet, always a dangerous thing.

"Neal," she said.

"What?" I said.

"I found our new dog."

"We're not getting a new dog," I said.

"Oh yes we are," said Regina. "He lives with a professional dog trainer who's putting him up for adoption. He's a Boston Terrier."

"Do you really want another dog?"

"It's either that or another baby," she said.

"Hmm," I said.

At that moment, Elijah screamed from the bathroom: "I'M READY TO WIPE!!!!!"

"Let's do the dog," I said.

Regina showed me the dog's picture.

"His name is Shaq," she said.

I join the ranks of authors podcasted on The Bat Segundo Show.

And I say hello to The Poop, the San Francisco Chronicle's parenting blog.

The car was oddly quiet as we drove home from the gym tonight. Regina and I wondered why. Then we learned.

"Some people don't like it when I eat my boogers," Elijah said.

Silence.

"But I do."

Smack, slurp, smack.

"Because they're delicious."

"Ewwww," Regina said.

"Good lord," I said.

"Mmmmm," said Elijah.

Imaginary superheroes came up again today, as they do every day.

"Sign Man is the most powerful hero in the world," Elijah said.

"Oh, come on, dude," I said. "Sign Man?"

"Uh-huh. He throws signs at people. And there's also Tree Man and Lamp Post Man."

"Now you're just taking every object you see and putting "man" after them."

"No I'm not!"

"Yes you are."

"Don't forget Truck Man."

"You're proving my point."

"He puts bad guys in the back of him and then he mails them to Hot Man, who cuts their heads off."

"That's better."

Buried in the comments section of a previous post was this:

Neal, I wanted your opinion. I perform children's music at festivals and parties - mostly Pete Seeger stuff, and yes, some Dan Zanes. I'm always looking for new material. How about a list of Neal-approved songs I can play to the 3-5 year olds on acoustic. Any other readers want to add any as well?

Eric

Well, Eric:

I'll recommend a couple of favorites from our house: Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog and You Can't Roller-Skate In A Buffalo Herd. In a previous post, a reader suggested Blackbird. The rest, I'll leave up to my vast readership. Suggest away, denizens of Alternadadland!

This just in: Alternadad is #10 on this week's L.A. Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction. When I heard the news, I said:

"Whooo! Whooo-hoooo! Oh my god, Regina! You've got to come in here right now! I don't care if you're on the toilet! I made the list! Can you fucking believe it? No. The bestseller list! What list did you think I meant? Whooooooooooo!"

Subtle, I know. But what would you have me say? Restraint has never been my foremost quality. Oh, I'm so excited!

I was in Portland on Saturday afternoon, enjoying a fantastic dance party thanks to the ever-groovy efforts of Belinda and Hova from Greasy Kid Stuff, the greatest kid's radio show of all time. A woman came up to the DJ table with her five-year-old.

"Excuse me," she said. "Do you have any Ralph's World?"

"Ralph's World?" I said. "Oh my god, no! Ralph's World sucks!"

"Oh," she said, obviously taken aback at my strange opinion. "My kid really likes Ralph's World."

This is known, in the book business, as "blowing a sale."

Though I, like everyone else I know today, am totally consumed by only one thought-- that Ilan is a weenie hack and Marcel got jobbed, or maybe Sam should have won--I will bravely slog forward into Alternadad-land.

Three interviews today in various papers, the last wave of them before this trend recedes from the media shores: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Canada's National Post, and the Oregonian.

Meanwhile, I've taken much joy in the recent public mocking of the hideous Julie Aigner-Clark, the hypocritical uber-soccer-mom founder of the Baby Einstein Corporation. Her videos, while occasionally handy when there's a pot of pasta on the stove, are, despite their pretensions toward teaching kids about art and classical music, mostly boring garbage starring low-rent puppets.

My kid is too old for them anyway, and besides, I've found better time-wasters. Like many parents of my ilk these days, I sometimes turn to YouTube for solace.