Neal Pollack's The Maelstrom

Since I posted about my kid-scat troubles a couple of days ago, the poo-related advice has flowed in a steady stream. A couple readers have recommended books. It's going to be hard to replace Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi: "A one-hump camel makes a one-hump poop. A two-hump camel makes a two-hump poop." No "Elmo's First Poopy" book can possibly top that in Elijah's heart.

We've decided that, after the holiday, we're going to start making Elijah sit on the potty for a few minutes after waking up every morning. We'll give him a book or a magazine or something. And then we'll start taking him into the bathroom every couple of hours. We all consider our bowel momements one of the most satisfying moments of every day, or, if you have IBS, every week or two. I want Elijah to discover the joys for himself. Maybe I'll give him The Onion's Our Dumb Century to read on the can so he can be just like dad.

But the best suggestion I got, by far, was for the "Potty Party." Someone with a Ph.D. in child psychology came up with this brilliant strategy. I will print it for you here, annotated. As Dave Barry used to say, I am not making this up.

Potty Party

What You Need

• A doll that wets
• A potty chair
• Big boy/girl underwear (instead of diapers)
• Lots of liquids for your child and the doll to drink

Consider Before You Begin
• Development:
The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests waiting until 2 years of age to potty train.
• Modeling:
You can demonstrate or have the doll demonstrate the process of "going potty."
• Motivation:
Find out who your child's superhero is. The hero will provide the motivation in this process.

Yeah. I'm sure that's exactly why Stan Lee created Spider-Man. Is there anything stupider than the current trend of creating "baby" versions of superheroes to put on diapers? I'm sorry. The Hulk is not a baby.

Step 1: Teach a Doll That Wets
Your child will learn by teaching the doll how to go potty. Have your child name the doll and give it something to drink. Then walk the doll to the potty chair with your child. Pull the doll's "big kid" underwear down and watch the doll go potty together.

This sounds, to me, a lot like Neil Strauss' advice for picking up chicks in "The Game."

Step 2: Throw the Doll a Potty Party!
When the doll successfully goes potty, throw a potty party! Make it a big blowout with party hats, horns and celebrate. Give lots of attention to the doll so that your child understands that going potty is a good thing.

Be sure to tell him not to wear his potty-party hat in public restrooms.

Let your child know that when he goes potty, he will have a potty party too. Not only that, your child gets to call his favorite superhero to report the good news!

Or how about getting rid of the middleman and just throwing a potty party for Spiderman? We can tell the kid that Spidey's pee is actually made of spiderwebs!

Step 3: Get Rid of the Diapers
At the beginning of the process you placed underwear on your child's doll. Now it's time to take away the diapers and put underwear on your child.

Step 3.5: Buy detergent with extra bleach.

Step 4: Drink Lots of Fluids
Give your child plenty of fluids to drink. The sooner he has to go potty, the sooner you can begin potty training.

Can we give him nonalcoholic beer? What about low-alcohol beer? Would that make him pee faster, or would it increase his risk of contracting whiskey dick down the road?

Step 5: Ten Trips to Potty When Accident
Ask your child if he needs to go potty. Your child might say no and that's OK. Because you've given your child plenty of fluids, he will soon need to go.

If this step doesn't work, attach a catheter. And an IV drip.

If your child has an accident in his underwear, don't scold him. You want this to be a positive experience. Instead, take your child to the potty, pull his underwear down, and have your child sit down. Do this 10 times. This builds muscle memory and your child will eventually go.

Meanwhile, allow the dog to tear the potty-party doll to shreds. This builds a different kind of muscle memory. Note: whatever you do, don't pull your own underwear down ten times as well, because you might get a visit from Child Services. Actually, if you throw a potty party and tell people about it, they might visit you anyway.

Step 6: Let the Celebration Begin!
When your child successfully goes potty, throw him a potty party. Most importantly, your child can now call his favorite superhero and tell the hero about what he just did! Enlist the help of a friend or relative to play the hero and take the phone call.

Ah, yes. Daddy just happens to have Spiderman's cell-phone number on him. Tell him he can swing by anytime to take a look at your poop.

Posted by at 3:54 PM | Permalink

Welcome to a staple of the parenting-blog genre: The potty-training entry. Keep in mind that I'm writing this at the end of a 17-hour-day of more or less nonstop parenting, so you will excuse what may seem like an excessively grumpy attitude.

Sundays were pleasant once. Now, as I write this, my son is laying in bed, screaming "I POOPED ON MY ANIMALS!" as part of a ruse to extend a day that began before the sun came up. And tomorrow will be more of the same. Not only do I despise a 10 PM bedtime, it's even worse when you consider that it's followed by a 5:30 AM wakeup time, and worse still when you factor in that the first thing I do in the morning is watch Dora The Explorer. But I love my kid so very very much and he's my precious treasure and I couldn't live without him. That said, I really wish he'd stop crapping his pants.

I don't remember the first time I used the toilet. My parents have a photo of me straddling a Donald Duck head with a towel around my shoulders. It's a miracle, based off that photo, that I don't have a sexual fetish for poultry. But I use the toilet now. My son, on the other hand, just cleared his third birthday, and we're still cleaning up his stinky messes.

All the potty-training experts, professional and amateur, say that parents shouldn't put pressure on their kids about using the toilet, because it'll make their kids neurotic. I think it's time to make Elijah neurotic already. We've tried being laid-back, only putting him on the training seat intermittently, letting him pick out his own training potty, and not complaining when he chose a "throne" model that plays an electronic trumpet sound whenever he sits down.

As it turns out, he likes making that trumpet go off, but only by throwing hard plastic toys into his throne. From time to time, he'll express an interest in the lower functions and will sit on the pot with his pants down, but he usually loses interest by the third sounding of the trumpet. He's discovered that he can make it go off by whacking his penis on the side of the sensor. We've also tried "training pants," which is a strange name, because it sounds like we're training him to wear pants. These things don't work either, and so we find ourselves washing pee-soaked mounds of plastic every night, or at least two nights in a row, until we get sick of them.

Why am I talking about this? What has my life become?

When Elijah sits on the toilet and says "my poop is sleeping," that's about as cute as a kid can get, in my opinion. But when it's 6:45 AM and I'm facing a diaper full of light-brown creamy shit and I have to wipe great gobs of it off my son's testicles, I really find myself growing tired. This is not a small baby anymore. This is a fully conversant human being who eats almost as much meat as I do and whose crap smells almost as bad.

Because he's a boy now, I cannot say, as I want to sometimes, "Goddamn it, Elijah! I'm sick and fucking tired of wiping shit off your dick!" He would more or less understand what that meant. Instead, I kidify my conversation, and say "Daddy doesn't want to wipe poopie off your peenie anymore. Can you please start using the potty now?"

The answer is always no, followed by, about an hour later, "Look, daddy, I've got poopie on my hands, and I'm eating it." The fact that Elijah does not have poopie on his hands, and is not eating it, provides little solace. Poop jokes are less funny when you're swimming in a river of the stuff. Good lord, kid. Use the damn toilet already.

Posted by at 3:09 PM | Permalink

The Suns lost again tonight. Their season record at home is now 1-4, and they've only played two road games. You could write the loss to Dallas off as opening-night jitters, the Kings loss as due to bad refereeing, and, well, the Pistons are just incredible right now. But when you lose to the Memphis Grizzlies (which features some good players but could hardly be considered a squad for the ages) by 12 points after a three-night layoff, then perhaps you should polish off the dust that gathered on the mirror last season and take a look. Last year at this time, the Suns were an unstoppable force of nature. Now I find myself looking at my watch. By the time Amare rises from the grave, it may be too late.

Meanwhile, book number 45 is in the bag, and man, is it a doozie. How does this sound: a weather scientist gets dropped on an obscure island at the edge of the Antarctic, and almost immediately finds himself beseiged by a strange race of bloodthirsty reptilian monsters. I though that might sound good to you. Add to that the fact that this book is brilliantly and dryly written, and you have Cold Skin, by a Spanish anthropologist named Albert Sanchez Pinol. It resembles an H.P. Lovecraft novel with the sensibility of Borges, but is also as scarily thrilling as the first two Alien movies. This one is an absolute classic.

Posted by at 1:07 AM | Permalink

The posters for Circus Chimera started popping up around town about a month ago. I should have known this circus was trouble because one of the sponsors was a grotesque local death-trap indoor "playscape" called Rad-I-Jazz, which appears determined to blind half of Austin's children with stray foam from its "lava pit." But my wife Regina has a lot to do with the move coming up, and she's commanded me to keep Elijah out of the house as often as possible. So to the circus we went, on Saturday at 4:30 PM.

It was held in the former long-term-parking lot of the now-abandoned Robert Mueller Municipal Airport, a truly charming setting if you're a fan of ghost airplanes. This circus was inexpensive, as such things go, though they charged you extra to allow your kids to ride on the creakiest, lamest little train I've ever seen, on a track that I could have built myself. Also, though the circus claims to be animal-free, they do offer pony rides, and there's a stinkhole of a trailer that features tarantulas, turtles, and several enormous, depressed-looking pythons behind glass. We were admitted into that trailer, at the cost of a dollar each, by a man who had two fingers on his right hand, between which he snatched the money. This guy looked like he'd been sniffing glue every day for the last ten years.

Elijah seemed to enjoy that feature well enough, but then we went into the circus. He was attracted to the cotton candy, though he informed me that it was not, in fact, cotton candy, but rather "cotton candy on a stick," which was, technically, true. He also liked the "toys" that were being sold by some local hires, who looked annoyed, possibly because they'd been forced to buy the toys, barely functional light-up tops and light-saber ripoffs, out of their salaries at a nearby dollar store.

It was hot and damp inside the tent. We looked out at the arena: The floor was covered by a rubber tarp with some sort of star design in the center, which was, I think, supposed to have been white, but it looked soiled in places. This would have been forgivable in a low-rent circus that featured animals, but I found myself wondering from whence that dirt had come. Elijah kept asking me when the "pretend monsters" were going to "come out and juggle the clowns," so I could have guessed that we weren't going to make it to the second act.

After we endured Muzak renditions of the themes from The Rose, Dr. Zhivago, and Love Story, played over the PA at coccyx-splitting volume, an announcer came on to tell us that the Circus Chimera had recently signed a deal with a company from Cincinnati, Ohio, "to be the exclusive vendor of their delcious peanuts." This was one of the craziest things I'd ever heard, but then it got crazier, because apparently, there were prize tags in various bags, and if people bought peanuts in the next five minutes at the reduced price of one dollar, there was a chance, but only a chance, that they could get a piece of paper telling them that they'd won a balloon. Wow. A whole balloon. The woman sitting next to Elijah was, as far as I could see, the only winner in the crowd of 120, though to be fair, only about a dozen people took advantage of the special offer. While she was claiming her prize, Elijah attempted to steal her peanuts, but I stopped him even though I was tempted to do the same thing.

The show began with a dance number of sorts, featuring five short women who seemed to be from an Asian country (perhaps Thailand), and three who appeared to be from one of the Baltic States. They walked down Astroturf-covered steps while dressed in white bodysuits and white feathered head-dresses that looked like they'd been sewn together at the last minute backstage. I suspected that these women had been kidnapped by some kind of circus slavery ring and forced to tour Texas with the Circus Chimera, because they were not attractive and they also couldn't dance, which generally are requirements for circus dancing. I said to Elijah, "ooh, look at that." But he was already shuffling restlessly in his seat.

The general unappealingness of the Chimera dancers was immediately balanced out by a super-hot former Soviet gymnast who appeared wearing a pink leotard excavated from a Danskin outlet store in the early 1980s. She swung around on a ring quite athletically, which was a special treat for the dads in the audience, because the outfit left nothing to the imagination. You could see the contours of her ass quite clearly, and when she stretched forward, you could also see her nipples, and I don't just mean the shapes of her nipples. They had thick brown aureoles and were obviously in the primes of their nipple lives. I've seen less titty at a strip club in Vegas. Elijah, in the meantime, asked about the monsters some more.

Next, in case there were any gay men in the audience, Chimera threw them some candy in the form of a lithe fellow in a black jumpsuit who twirled rings quite seductively. He was followed, in short order, by two hideously unfunny clowns who danced the can-can while wearing tutus, a family of lipstick-weraing Ecuadorian acrobats who flipped one another around, and a slightly better clown who teased a 12-year-old audience member by making her figure out where he was hiding a roll of toilet paper.

By the time the hot gymnast reappeared, wearing what appeared to be a half-satin, half-leather fetish suit, Elijah was begging to leave. So, as this woman did something unbelievable like throw her legs over her head and then perch her chin on her overturned shins, I was forced out of the tent by my child, who was crafting the whimpering beginnings of a public tantrum. I couldn't say to my three-year-old, "Please let's stay. I want to see if the slutty gymnast shoots a banana out of her hooch." He probably wouldn't have understood, though his mother would have, which is one of the main reasons I married her.

There's something gratifying about taking your kid to a small, seedy circus, particularly if he didn't like it, as he later told me, because "The Aquabats weren't there." Now, for those of you who don't know the Aquabats, they are grown men from Southern California who wear superhero costumes and fight monsters like Dr. Space Mummy and Powdered Milk Man on stage, while also playing dorky, science-fiction themed ska rock. When I saw them about a year and a half ago, I knew that, one day, they'd be my son's favorite band. So I bought their video collection, Serious Awesomeness, and went about teaching my son about comedy costume rock. They are now his favorite band, and we have to watch at least part of the video twice a week.

I'd told Elijah that there would be acrobats in the circus, but he'd heard what he wanted to hear. Later, Regina said, "You're turning him into a total indie snob, and he's only three."

"What are you talking about?" I said. "The Aquabats are awesome."

"But now he hates the circus. You can't make him think all mainstream things suck."

"His favorite TV shows are Little Einsteins and Go Diego Go!" I said. "He gets his share of corporate entertainment brainwashing. And I let him like what he likes, because I love him."

"That's very generous of you."

"Wouldn't it be cool, though, if The Aquabats were in the circus?"

Elijah took time out from a particularly gripping episode of The Backyardigans, possibly the "Soccer Monster" one, to exclaim "Yeah, daddy! It would be cool!"

"God help me," said Regina.

Posted by at 12:35 AM | Permalink

I knew that the Suns were in trouble when Doug Collins announced that Richard Hamilton only had 9 points midway through the 4th quarter. Sure enough, it was another slow fade into oblivion. Five games into the season, and I'm already tired of hearing about how the Suns are this close to being undefeated. The fact is that even in the games they've won, they've gone limp in the 4th quarter. They are not a three-dimensional team right now, and their opponents lie in wait like snakes, only our Rikki Tikki Tavi had knee surgery in September.

Talk about pulling a literary metaphor out of your ass.

Yesterday I spent 15 minutes with my son talking about whether or not monkeys could drive cars. When we concluded that, in fact, they could, but only if the cars were powered by cheese, I watched him imitate a car-driving monkey for a while. Later, we watched a Muppet Show episode where the guest star was Harvey Korman. My brainswashing program is working.

Posted by at 11:11 AM | Permalink

I have long been debating whether I should live in a state that votes 3 to 1 to codify anti-gay bigotry into mainstream law, or whether I should live in a state that defeats every single one of its Republican governor's politically pandering ballot initiatives. Well, that debate is over. Actually, last night's election had nothing to do with my decision to leave Austin and move to Los Angeles, which was made months ago, but I certainly feel glad about my decision today.

I've enjoyed my three years in Austin very much, and have met some wonderful people who have been very good friends, not just to me, but to my entire family. The generosity, humor, and overall rock-n-roll attitude of this place cannot be overstated. The state of Texas is another story.

Texas is largely misunderstood by the rest of the country. It's far more cosmpolitan, well-educated, and sophisticated than people might think, given the corrupt religious hypocrites it's sent onto the national stage in recent years. But because of those hypocrites, if anyone is going to fully audition the radical right's loony social agenda, it will be the government of this state. Today, someone said to me, "at least you don't live in Kansas." True enough. But who's to say that in 10 years, when my son is preparing to enter high school, the schools here won't be teaching "intelligent design" as well? I'm not taking that risk with my family.

Again, though, I'm not leaving town for political reasons. But if I were, I don't know if I'd be unjustified. So it's off to Los Angeles for me. Nothing could possibly go wrong with my life now.

Posted by at 10:46 PM | Permalink

When it comes to throwing birthday parties, overzealousness is the most common parental sin. Though I haven't encountered anything needlessly extravagant yet, I'm sure the moment of truth, featuring pony rides or a gift bag worth $50, awaits me. The closest we've come so far was last spring, when the parents of neighbor kid who liked to bop Elijah on the head threw a party in their front yard and rented a jumpy castle. Otherwise, though, it was just a cooler of beer, frozen hamburger patties, and a poker table where I lost $20 to a group of former defensive linemen from the University Of Texas. They were so large and intimidating, I probably would have folded with a straight flush.

We threw our own 3rd birthday party the Saturday before Halloween. Regina entered Hipster Homemaker mode, and cooked Elijah a chocolate cake (from an organic mix, of course), but at his request she cut it in the shape of a shark and decorated it accordingly. The party cost us a little money, but mostly because my dad was attending and he likes a good buffet. As for the kids, there were seven of them, all of whom Elijah knows well. The party started at 10:30 AM. The group sugar crash hit at 12:30, and the party was done, after a quarter-hour of howling, long before 1 PM.

The point I'm making here is not that we gave Elijah his first guitar this year, though I have been enjoying this song he wrote called "I Like To Eat Poo At The Stoplight." What I'm saying is that there is overparenting when it comes to birthdays, and then there's underparenting. Last week, we received an invitation to a birthday party in Elijah's cubbyhole at school (new, more-appropriate-for-him school, no biting), and thought, oh, a birthday party. That pretty much takes care of our Sunday entertainment for the kid.

Well, the party was held at the playground at Central Market, where every white parent north of downtown Austin hangs out on the weekend. There was a jazz combo playing, and our birthday boy's parents had decided to put the birthday table directly in front of the trumpet player's amp. Also, the party was at 1:30 PM. Any parent of a young child knows that a 1:30-3:30 party directly interferes with prime nap hours. Maybe they wanted to go to church first or something. This is Texas, after all. Check that. This is the United States, after all. But if that's the case, then maybe they should have had the party on Saturday. Regardless, the birthday boy looked wobbly and confused, like someone who's just emerged from the water on "Invasion."

The problems with inviting every three-year-old from your child's class are numerous. First, three-year-olds are not, as a species, entirely comfortable with socializing outside of a known space. My son's best friend at school could send him screaming in terror if we encountered him at the grocery store. Also, there's the chance that your kid doesn't actually know the birthday kid that well, or, worse yet, doesn't like him. Then there's the problem that we ran into today: No one from the school other than Elijah and a kid named Dimitri showed up at the party, meaning we spent an hour sitting around a picnic table with some kid's aunts and uncles but never actually exchanged a word with them. The trumpet music was so loud that Elijah never said hello to the birthday boy. We had a piece of carrot cake, which was only the birthday cake because the mom had forgotten under which name she'd ordered the actual cake. The bakery had to give her whatever was left in the case. All parents have been tired to the extent that we attempt to leave the room and walk into a wall, so I have sympathy. But even if you get the wrong cake, you shouldn't let your guests, who, by the way, you haven't met, cut their own pieces. We left soon after.

I've spent most of my life attending bad parties. We've all been to them: The cocktail hour where everyone's an anthropology grad student but you, the kegger where everyone went to high school together but you, the Rosh Hashanah brunch where, when you sneak off to call your girlfriend, the phone smells like an old woman's saliva. Well, maybe that last one is a memory more specific to my own experience. But if parents plan to invite strangers to birthday parties, then at least make them feel welcome. Conversely, if strangers get invited to birthday parties, at least have the courtesy to show up, or at least RSVP in the negative. Those of us who do make an appearance can only eat so much Mr. Gatti's pizza (a vile, local version of Domino's) before vomiting.

And now, if you'll excuse me, Sunday is rip-off-your-diaper-and-pee-on-the-floor-while-cackling night in my house. At some point, I'm going to learn my kid that going to the bathroom doesn't just mean tearing some toilet paper off the roll and flushing it down. But that moment has not yet arrived. At least while I was changing his diaper tonight, Elijah said to me, "mekka lekka hi, mekka hinie ho." I immediately recognized that as the genie's chant from Pee Wee's Playhouse, which I've been showing Elijah lately.

"Mekka lekka hi, mekka chinie ho," I responded.

"Long live Jambi," he said.

"Are you ready to use the toilet yet?" I said.

"No," he said. "Not yet."

Just preparing you all for a year of parent-blogging. Alternadad is coming.

Posted by at 9:30 PM | Permalink

When TNT decided in the offseason to put the Phoenix Suns on twice a week, they figured they'd be getting a monster-truck rally featuring Amare Stoudemire, Quentin Richardson, and Joe Johnson, along with the league's MVP and a serious X-factor in Shawn Marion. They must be regretting that decision now that the Suns are depending on James Jones and Boris Diaw, who should have been numbers eight and nine off the bench, at best. If tonight's three-and-a-half hour foofaraw in the Valley is any indication, the games will certainly be entertaining. But speaking for all Suns fans, who are, I realize, a distinct minority in this world, I would rather see an unequivocal 20-point blowout win than a three-point double-overtime loss to a team that played most of the game like someone was putting Xanax in their Gatorade.

Around 11:30 tonight, I was getting ready to make fun of Dallas center Erick Dampier, the slowest, dumbest player in the NBA, and the newly sedate Mavericks coach Avery Johnson, who this week admitted that he watches game films of himself, and not from his playing days, either. Coach Narcissus sucked helplessly on his towel for three and a half quarters. Then Dirk Nowitski remembered that Stoudemire is on the sidelines in a knee brace, and the Dirkster started draining shots like the superstar who led Germany to second place in the European championships, a huge accomplishment on par with making the CBA playoffs.

But I digress. Instead, I must decry Suns owner Robert Sarver and his ridiculous foam orange finger, though it's kind of nice to see face-painted chucklenuts crowd the arena in Phoenix, which traditionally has boasted a fan base of waxy-faced savings-and-loan executives. Also, I don't know how many times this season I'm going to be able to watch Leandro Barbosa miss a big shot with the game on the line. You're not playing Uruguay anymore, Leandhrino. Would someone tell me again how this happened? How did my team, which last year was the closest thing the NBA has ever had to the Harlem Globetrotters, suddenly become the Washington Generals? Oh, the humanity!

Meanwhile, in the actual NBA, as opposed to a Mark Cuban-funded video game, the Spurs dismantled a pretty good Denver Nuggets team by 11 points. And it only took them 48 minutes to do it.

Posted by at 1:04 AM | Permalink