Neal Pollack's The Maelstrom

Yesterday we went to McCabe's, the legendary guitar shop, music school, and acoustic venue in Santa Monica. Farmer Jason, the alter-ego of the former lead singer of Jason And The Scorchers, was doing a kid's show. His album, A Day At The Farm With Farmer Jason, is one of the leading documents of a musical movement that must be called, for lack of a better term, "indie rock for kids." It's a concept album of sorts, with the conceit being that Farmer Jason tells kids about the different animals on his farm, and then he rocks out about those animals.

We learned of the concert from Greg, who is the father of Elijah's school friend Sean. Greg is in a kid's band himself, a charming folk outfit called The Hollow Trees, which, according to its legend, is led by a banjo-playing squirrel. Sean pretty much matches Elijah in the adorableness column, except that he's a lot calmer. He and Elijah saw each other and instantly started bouncing. Soon, they were chanting "Farmer Jason! Farmer Jason! Farmer Jason!" even though Elijah, at least, had no idea who that was. This became clear as we waited in line for the box office to open. Elijah pointed to various photographs in McCabe's display window.

"Is that Farmer Jason?" he said.

"No," I said. "That's Jimi Hendrix."

"Is that Farmer Jason?"

"No, that's Robert Johnson."

"How about that?"

"That's Elvis."

"Who are these guys?"

"The Beatles."

"The Beetles?" he said. "Those aren't Beetles."

"They are men who called themselves The Beatles. They were a band. Some people say they were the greatest, but I prefer the Rolling Stones, at least up to Tattoo You."

"I want to see The Beatles!" he said.

"We'll rent Yellow Submarine sometime."

With that bit of fatherly wisdom imparted, we went to the show. Farmer Jason was perfectly good, but he talked too much between the songs for Elijah, who soon got twitchy. I couldn't understand why.

"Because," Regina said, "you've played nothing but loud guitar rock for him since he was a baby. Now anything that's not completely crazy bores him."

"Oh."

"You've created a three-year-old punk-rock snob."

Of course, Jason Ringenberg is an authentic punk-rock icon. But to Elijah, he was just a guy in a red-checkered shirt and a straw hat who was encouraging kids to "do the doggie dance." While Sean sat nicely, Elijah removed his seat cushion and started walking around, letting everyone know that it was, in fact, a "salami pizza." The music simply didn't move him. However, at one point, Farmer Jason mentioned that he was about to sing a song in the style of Johnny Cash. Elijah heard this and his eyes brightened. He began to clap.

"Yay!" he said. "Johnny Cash!"

Regina and I exchanged a knowing, prideful look.

From there, we continued to explore the West Side. After lunch, we went to Venice, where we walked the canals. According to the talk of locals, Venice was once populated solely by abstract painters who were also in the Hell's Angels. Well, these days, it's all concrete-and-glass palazzos, but the canals are still a lovely setting for a family walk.

We strolled and admired the ducks. Elijah stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.

"My pants are wet!" he shrieked.

And they were growing wetter. Soon, his shoes were wet as well. A steady stream of urine piddled down his left leg and pooled on the ground below him.

"Oh my god!" said Regina. "Is he wearing a diaper?"

She checked. He was. But it was upside down and backwards. Plus, both Elijah's legs were going through one hole, leaving the left one wide open for leaks.

"Neal, did you let Elijah put his own diaper on this morning?"

"Yes."

"Why did you do that?"

"I thought he could."

Obviously, I'd been wrong. We went into emergency operations mode, taking off his jeans and his shoes. The shoes were rubber and thus could be cleaned with wipes. The jeans were done for the day. Regina had brought several extra diapers, but no extra pants. Thank god we were only five minutes from the Venice boardwalk, Southern California's leading tourist attraction and therefore a gold-mine of cheap souvenir pants, not to mention T-shirts featuring Calvin smoking a joint.

Later, we were walking down the boardwalk with my friend Jenny, who lives nearby. Elijah had on a new pair of sweatpants. He saw a dog with only two working legs. The dog's back side was connected to a two-wheeled device, and he motored really well using his front paws. It was a touching scene.

"Look!" Elijah said. "That dog is a car!"

I think he's gonna like it here.

Posted by at 1:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (70)

In Portland a couple of weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of finally meeting Belinda and Hova, hosts and creators of Greasy Kid Stuff, which is the best kid's radio program of our time. You can listen to their archives at the above link, and you can also find them streaming live at WFMU, the best radio station of our time. I spent a fine afternoon with them and their adorable two-year-old daughter. They're fortunate to have a girl, because now they can put their substantial collection of Powerpuff Girls paraphernalia, which they owned long before she was born, to good use. Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup are far better role models for little girls than Dora The Explorer, if only because they fight a villainous turban-wearing monkey while Dora's monkey, "Boots," is a sexually ambiguous goody-two-shoes.

Belinda and Hova gave me a copy of their CD Greasy Kid Stuff 2: More Songs From Inside The Radio. It's just as good as their first CD, and has already become one of Elijah's favorites. He especially likes track 3, "The Mechanical Man," definitely the greatest robot song of all time, and track 14, "The Dinosaur Song," which is pretty much what it sounds like, but actually better. Other favorites include track 9, "Mouser Mecha Catbot," sung in Shonen Knife style (Elijah calls it the "kitty cat robot song") and track 5, "Two Little Bugs." I highly recommend that you purchase these CDs. Your kids' music library will double in richness.

On that same trip, I made the acquaintance of Heidi Raykeil, author of Confessions Of A Naughty Mommy, which answers the eternal question: "can a smokin' hot, relatively well-off woman from Seattle learn to enjoy sex again after the birth of her first child?" I mock, for that is my way, but the book really is funny, charming, and, my wife assures me, quite relevant. It took about two days for my libido to return after Elijah's birth, and then I went on Wellbutrin, which soon had me humping the living-room pillows. If this were high school, and there were bleachers, I would be jerking off behind them. I suppose that's a little off-topic, as I'm not a mother.

I find it amusing that we need to have this discussion at all, since American women were supposed to have gained control of their bodies and their libidos more than a generation ago. But in a political climate where the government is trying to fund teen Christian conversion programs that take on the guise of "abstinence education," it's nice that someone is reminding women that their sexual life cycle doesn't have to go as follows: chaste nubile princess, virgin bride, baby-making machine, and withered hag. Thanks, Heidi. Meanwhile, my own sex advice to married couples with children can be summed up as follows.

1. Take lots of showers together.
2. Use scented and possibly flavored oils.
3. When your wife says "either you watch The Daily Show or get some nik-nik," always choose the nik-nik unless there's been some really important national or world event within the last 24 hours.

Considerably less naughty--but equally mommy-like-- is the book Chicken Bedtime Is Really Early, by Erica Perl, with illustrations by George Bates. I met Erica in Washington, D.C., during that same tour. She then graciously sent Elijah an autographed copy of the book a week later. He likes it a lot, and I find it totally charming as well. It's definitely one of the best bedtime books in our library. Really, though, any bedtime book that doesn't feature a corporate-produced children's cartoon character is good by me. I don't want to read any book featuring a familiar character unless it's called Elmo Goes To Bed And Never Wakes Up.

So there you have it: Cool compilations of kids' music, a book about new moms and their libidos, and a non-libidinous bedtime book by one of those selfsame new moms. These products have little in common, except that they're all from a generation of parents that's trying to figure out its place in the world. I'm proud to be part of that generation, and hope that I can help, in my small way, to light the way toward a relatively enjoyable future. We'd best have our fun now, because fun will be the furthest thing from our minds when the giant spiders seize the planet and make us their slaves. But that's still at least 20 years away. Enjoy your weekend!

Posted by at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (42)

11 AM, PST, 2-22-06

"Go ahead, New York."

"Um, is this Neal?"

"Yeah. Sorry about that stupid greeting. I saw New York displayed on my cell phone and I was trying to be funny."

"Right. This is Megan from HIT Entertainment."

"Oh, hey!"

"You called yesterday?"

"I did. I'm writing a parenting memoir and I wanted to quote a Wiggles lyric."

"Which lyric do you want?"

"It's the one that goes 'quack quack quack quack quack, cock a doodle doo.' I think that more or less sums up contemporary parenting."

" I know it well."

"You have kids?"

"No, I just work for the Wiggles."

"Understood. Do they make you wear one of those unicolored shirts to work?"

"No, I wear my own clothes."

"Do you have to eat fruit salad for lunch?"

"No, they're pretty cool."

"I won't make a 'wake up Jeff' joke, then."

"OK."

"Anyway, the lyric will be the epigraph for my book. I believe the official song title is Captain Feathersword Fell Asleep On His Pirate Ship."

And thus, two adults went about their busy, busy days.

Posted by at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (111)

We had two birthday parties over the weekend. The first was for Jake, who was turning one. His parents had recently moved to L.A. and bought a condo. Unfortunately for them, the woman in the condo below is insane. They made the mistake of showing her around the place after they moved in, and now she positions herself below Jake's room at night, plays loud music, and bangs the ceiling with a broom. This makes our neighborhood problems look minor. It's true that neighbors down the street called parking enforcement on us. But we did leave our car parked in front of their house for more than three days, so they technically had a legitimate dispute even if they were assholes about the whole thing.

So yes, the party. They held it at the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area, a lovely park in West L.A. with creeks and flowing hills and nice playgrounds. The fact that it seems to have been carved out of a small oil claim doesn't distract from its beauty. The pumping derricks give it a nifty touch. Regina hadn't seen her friend for a while, so I committed myself to watching Elijah for most of the party. We ran over to the playground, which was castle-themed. For a while, I watched him play, but then he started whimpering that he couldn't get over some curvy climbing bars. I gave him a boost. Then I thought, oh, what the hell, and I scrambled up the bars to follow him.

As I reached what I thought was the top of the bars, I stood up. My head connected with a bar above me, straight on. I instantly felt my neck compress. The top of my head, I assumed, had been driven into the base of my throat. The pain was broad and stinging. I collapsed to the floor of the play surface and began to writhe.

"Urgh! Arrgh!"

"Daddy," Elijah said. "What are you doing?"

"I hurt myself."

"Be careful, daddy."

I continued to buck in pain. None of the other parents at the playground seemed to want to come to my aid. Either they hated melodrama or they enjoyed seeing a gringo in pain. Regardless, I evenutally stood up and assessed my damage. Yep. I had definitely cracked a vertebrae. I just knew I had.

"Elijah," I said. "I have an injury. A boo-boo."

"I know what an injury is, daddy."

"Fine. We still have to go see mommy."

So we walked back toward the picnic tables, Elijah throwing a fit the entire time because I wouldn't race him. I arrived holding the back of my neck, with Elijah clinging to my jeans pocket.

"What the hell happened to you?" Regina said.

"I have an injury."

I explained what had gone down.

"Typical," she said. "You had to go get hurt while I was trying to hang out with one of my friends. If I'd done this at one of your friends' parties..."

"Yes, Regina. I did this on purpose."

Soon, we put this piece of minor marital bitterness behind us, and saw to my healing. There was ice present, and Advil. Fortunately, the birthday boy's mother is a doctor. Her assessment: Nerve irritation. The symptoms resembled whiplash. I would have muscle soreness. She called in a prescription for painkillers and muscle relaxers. Score.

Later, Jake's parents opened his presents. One of them was a Ramones T-shirt. It occurred to me that the shirt had probably cost as much as all the Ramones had spent on clothing combined in 1975, and that a Ramones T-shirt is no more a sign of a "cool" baby than a "Vote For Pedro" onesie.

The party proceeded. I was soon able to converse normally, and Elijah showed everyone his new trick, which is that he pretends to shoot fire out of his right index finger. It's not the superpower I would have chosen, but it works for him.

In the car, Regina said, "Only you could give yourself whiplash at a child's first birthday party."

"True," I said. "But only in L.A. could I go to a child's first birthday party and leave with a Percoset prescription."

******

There was a dinner party to attend that night. I was determined to make it, despite my injury, because I'd spent the better part of the previous two days trying to find a babysitter. Our regular sitter, who Elijah loves, was at a track meet in Reno. I sent emergency emails to various sources, including to the list serv for Elijah's class, but Craigslist was my bailiwick. Several young women responded to my inquiry. One of them asked why we'd moved to L.A.

"I came to feed the beast," I said.

She did not end up sitting for us. Instead, we found a nice young woman named Megan. She came with a recommendation from one of her co-workers, whose kids she had sat for before. "She's awesome," was the recommendation. I realized that my generation must be in charge now, because no one over 40 would describe anyone as "awesome," much less a babysitter. At least it wasn't "she rocks."

So we went to the party and made merry. I came home full of red wine and THC. Then it was time to pop my painkiller and my muscle relaxer.

"There's no way I'm going to be able to get up with him tomorrow," I said.

"Probably not," said Regina.

"Thanks for understanding."

"I'll cut you a deal. I'll get up with him, but you have to take him to the birthday party tomorrow morning."

"Not a problem," I said.

The party was at 10, and it was nearby, so I slept until 9. The drugs hadn't quite worn off yet, but I muted them with a cup of tea and a Diet Cherry Coke. Elijah and I drove to Kidspace, a children's museum in Pasadena that I've mentioned here before.

This time, the birthday being celebrated was that of one of Elijah's classmates. I've gotten to know the parents in his class fairly well, so the conversation was amiable. Elijah hooked up with a little girl named Ariel, and they spent the entire party pretending to buy everyone candy from a nearby vending machine. At one point, Kidspace employees sat all the kids down for games. Elijah ignored all the games except for musical chairs. There were two supervisors, a perky young woman in a cowboy hat, and a stoned-looking dude in a ski cap.

The cowboy-hat girl perkily arranged the chairs, while ski-hat guy manned the boom box.

"Start the music!" she said.

He pressed play. Out came some grinding guitar, pretty hard-core, and some raspy vocals.

"I told you," she said. "No Motorhead."

This was funny in its own right, but I was further amused by the thought that he'd tried to play Motorhead at a kid's birthday party before. He obviously didn't see anything wrong with it. Either did I, actually. Lemmy probably has kids, too.

I took stock of the other fathers at the party. They were not Lemmy, or even Lars Ullrich. Many of them were wearing fashion jeans. More than one had an argyle sweater with a Penguin logo on it. I saw one guy carrying a Kate Spade diaper bag. I complained to Regina about this when I got home.

"Oh yeah?" she said. "Look at yourself."

Sure enough, I was wearing fashion jeans and an argyle sweater with a Penguin logo on it.

"Fine," I said. "But I wouldn't be caught dead with a Kate Spade diaper bag."

I'd been using a ratty old backpack that had once been attached to a ten-year-old piece of Regina's luggage. It was appropriately downscale. I felt so much better about myself, and nothing is more important, when it comes to attending children's birthday parties, than parental self-esteem.

My neck felt better that night, so I didn't take more painkillers and muscle relaxers. But they're in the medicine cabinet now, waiting to pounce. I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

Posted by at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (72)

This morning, Slate.com published an important article,, by me, on why Winter Olympic-themed video-games suck. This seminal piece of cultural criticism will shortly launch me into our country's intellectual vanguard. Along those lines, Regina bought Ultimate Spiderman for our XBox. It was on sale at Costco. She wanted to show Elijah how to play the game, but I had to explain to her who Venom was.

"He's like this in an evil Spiderman suit made by science, but he's also an alien symbiote," I said.

Regina is such a sci-fi dork (she watches Stargate SG-1 and thinks that Surface is awesome) that I didn't have to explain myself further.

"That's cool," she said.

"He bites people and he has tentacles."

"Oh."

"Elijah shouldn't see an evil lizard man rip off someone's head until he's at least 6."

"I totally agree."

Anyway, Gina and I hoping to carve out some time to play Ultimate Spiderman this weekend. I have waited a long time to confront my old nemesis, The Shocker. If we can get Elijah down by eight, we'll have three good hours before bed.

So what was I talking about? Oh, yes. My 50-book challenge. I continue to read at a moderate pace this year, probably because I spend too much time watching basketball on TV and playing video games, but I do consume enough words to keep from starving my brain. Of late, I've knocked off Home Land, by Sam Lipsyte, a novel of suburban alienation which was all the rage among the cognoscenti last season. I've got to say, the guy can write; his prose is very advanced, along the lines of, say, pretty good Nabokov. Not many people now can write that way, or, for that matter, collect butterflies, a reference I'm dropping for the true Nabokov scholars in the crowd. Overall, I found the book a little disappointing, but maybe that's inevitable given all the pretentious hype. That said, there are a couple of passages in Home Land that capture--with full moral clarity--the feeling of existential despair that will ultimately, like Galactus, devour us all. I have no idea what the fuck that previous sentence means, but I'm keeping it anyway.

Number 5 this year is an excellent book called Unspeak, by a British journalist named Steven Poole. It's a savagely argued study of how governments use sophisticated euphemisms to control the populace. When "creationism" can be renamed "intelligent design," where "torture" become "abuse," and "propaganda" itself is now "public diplomacy," well, then, son, you're in the grip of petty fascism. Poole makes a pretty persuasive argument that we're living in a modified 1984, and it's hard to argue with him. I mean, things are a little more chaotic and there's more tittie, but Orwell couldn't predict the future with 100 percent accuracy. No one can, except for Sydney Omarr. We're living a version of that story nonetheless. The TV screens may be a bit smaller, but not much.

Book 6 is going to take a while. Mark Bowden has a 625-page monster, Guests Of The Ayatollah, about the Iran hostage crisis coming out. It's going to be an enormous bestseller, because it's gripping and smoothly narrated. I feel a little guilty about finding some of the hostages annoying, but maybe that's a testament to Bowden's skills. The book, I hope, will start some debate. This is probably a pretty good time for a comprehensive history of our relationship with Iran. We'd best understand that country as much as possible, because all signs point to the fact that, immediately upon the next terror attack on American soil, Vice-President Cheney plans to nuke its capital city. If that happens--and with this "government", anything is possible--it will be the darkest day in the history of the world. The alien symbiote is upon us. Happy weekend, everyone!

Posted by at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (425)

Today's conversation.

Elijah: "I want to have a big breakfast. "

Neal: "OK."

"I want to have a meeting."

"Sure."

"I want chicken."

"I think we have some leftover chicken in the fridge."

"With soy sauce."

"OK."

"I want beef."

"We don't have any beef."

"Is beef a hairball?"

"No, Elijah. Beef is not a hairball."

"Barf is a hairball!"

"Kind of."

Posted by at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (88)

We've just returned from our first parent-teacher conference at Elijah's school. This one went far better than the last conference, two schools ago, where teacher informed us that Elijah had been biting the same little girl every day for two months, and that he would have to leave school as soon as possible. My failure as a human being was complete.

This time, teacher told us that Elijah likes leading the other children on imaginary underseas adventures, that he likes to play Papa Bear in their seemingly daily class play of Goldilocks And The Three Bears, and that every day at approximately 10 AM, he puts on a blue dress and dances around, which makes the other kids laugh. He doesn't show a lot of interest in mommy's clothes at home, though we wouldn't care if he did. Everyone in L.A. has to have a transvestite period.

Potty-training is slow-going, teacher said, but Elijah is starting to show interest. She encouraged us to put him in underwear at home, no matter how often he craps his pants (my phrasing). Regina bought him a 3-pack of King Kong briefs at Target yesterday. I would like some myself. What man wouldn't want the word "Kong" draped across his crotch?

Also, the conference revealed the unsurprising fact that Elijah can converse in full sentences with adults about any topic, though that topic is usually sea animals and the many things they eat. On the negative side, he has trouble soothing himself when he becomes upset and sometimes cries uncontrollably on the playground. A class clown with excellent verbal skills who's also prone to hysteria. How did I ever produce such a child?

It's almost as though the boy sprang from my head fully-formed, which is not to take any credit away from the unbearable agony his mother suffered in bringing him into the world. The other day, I was putting Elijah's shoes on before taking him to school. He clamped his hand over my mouth.

"I don't want you to talk anymore!" he said. It was a phrase I'd heard many times before, but never from him. I immediately knew what he wanted me to do.

"Mmmmmmmmph!" I said. "Mmmmmmmmph!"

Then I clamped my hand over his mouth. He also mmmmmmphed. We sat there for a bit, going "mmmmmmph! Mmmmmmph! Mmmmmmmph!" Regina walked into the room, said, "you guys are geniuses," and walked right back out, leaving the boy and I to our weird symbiosis.

I would definitely say that we're the happiest father-son combination in the world, except for possibly Brad and Maddox. I won't make any jokes about Brangelina's upcoming "Sexiest Baby Alive," because if something got mocked on The Borowitz Report a month ago, then I'm a little behind the curve. However, I do feel fit to comment on the odd incident last week where Britney Spears got photographed driving with her baby on her lap. Of course Britney is an incompetent dipshit. We all understood this long ago.

However, I do find it vaguely amusing that Secretary Of Transportation Norman Mineta saw fit to call Britney "irresponsible" during a speech to commemorate Child Passenger Safety Week, a holiday which has echoes of the ancient pagan festival Seatbeltus, wherein parents would lash their children to large trees for seven days and leave them to the elements.

I wonder if Mineta, certainly the most decent remaining cabinet official, also finds it irresponsible that the new Bush budget calls for millions upon millions of dollars of cuts to programs that help the neediest children, ones who aren't the lucky spawn of superstars or the pretty lucky spawn of B-list hipster writers. Cutting more than a billion dollars in state vocational grants, nuking several hundred million dollars in federal college scholarship funds, getting rid of the three-million-dollar Thurgood Marshall Legal Opportunity Fund--that all seems pretty irresponsible to me. The budget also calls for record military spending, which may have not been necessary if billions of dollars of Iraq "reconstruction" money hadn't gone missing in the last three years. The richest one perecent is, quite literally, taking food out of the mouths of children. Try too hard to connect all the dots and you might just go insane. But who cares as long as Brad and Angelina--who are people with refined social consciousnesses, mind you--can have sexy babies?

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ..."

Posted by at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (492)

Yesterday was one of three annual "work days" at Elijah's school. The director informed us upon enrollment that we must attend at least two of these or else face financial penalty. As we've increasingly learned, Elijah's school is a commitment. It almost shut down a few years ago, and apparently will be recovering forever. There are endless fundraisers and committee meetings and surprise little fees laying all over the place. Plus each family has to give 15 volunteer hours to the center a year, in addition to the work days, or else face further financial penalty.

On the one hand, how can you possibly turn down such a cause? Here's a struggling Jewish community trying to bring itself up out of the ashes of bankruptcy. Working on the center, as part of a social contract, translates into one of the highest forms of charity, according to the Talmudic law pamphlet I read recently while waiting for a chicken kabob sandwich at a kosher deli in San Francisco. On the other hand, volunteer work can be a huge pain in the ass.

However, I have to admit that I was touched yesterday when I arrived to see the JCC dads working hard on spraypainting the graffiti off the front of the building. Other guys were cleaning windows or changing lightbulbs in the gymnasium, while one guy spent three hours, seemingly without break, raking leaves out of the playground sand. Just as many mothers performed just as many tasks. I'm not particularly good at anything, so I got assigned to do a "table inspection" while Regina made new labels for the cubbyholes in Elijah's classroom. If we'd gotten there any earlier or any later, I probably would have spent the day painting, or at least gotten assigned to paint. Elijah wasn't letting me do much of anything. You know you've been on a business trip for a few days when your son wants to accompany you on a mission to jiggle tabletops. Eventually, I pitched the work and started chasing him around the gym. He found it hilarious if he rolled a basketball and I hit it with another basketball. Also, he taunted me while I attempted to make free throws.

"I bet you can't make it...." he said, over and over again. And when I did, on occasion, make one, he still insisted that I hadn't made one. Is there a job waiting for him at the Department Of Defense?

A little later, I found myself outside, scrubbing down some chairs with industrial cleaner. A mother from another class, who I'd never met before, approached.

"Do they have anything more organic?" she said. "You know, like they sell at Target?"

"This is it," I said, indicating my bottle of Krud Kleaner, "but we use that Target stuff at home."

"I don't clean my own house," she said, too quickly.

"Oh," I said.

Then she seemed to gather her guilt a little.

"It's a treat I gave myself."

I don't have a problem with people hiring maids. I would do it myself, at least once a month or so, if it was in my budget. Housework can be a real drag, and it's the last thing you want to do after a day's work. Evidence of this can be found in our bedroom hallway, which is full of baskets of clean laundry and unpacked moving boxes, and in our bathroom sinks, whose drain apparati are crusted with toothpaste scum. Also, I must not neglect to mention the continual light dusting of cat litter that helps point our household toward a better tomorrow.

But I don't like it when people try to justifiy their "help" by referring to it as a treat. I got drunk and high after my show in Seattle the other night and I bought a Snickers bar at a convenience store. That was a treat. Cleaning people are luxuries.

In general, we feel a slight amount of class separation between the other families at Elijah's school and us. There are many nannies afoot, and also a kind of lax attitude about school hours. Regina took Elijah to Griffith Park last Friday. To celebrate Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish festival of trees, they had Shabbat in the park. Regina found this inconvenient, but she's not Jewish, and I assured her that having this ceremony in the park was a nice gesture to a semi-pagan holiday.

So they went and they sang songs. Afterward, everyone stood around talking. Regina hauled ass back to school because she had work she needed to do that day. When she got there, one other mom had arrived. It was nearly a half-hour before Elijah's teachers and the other parents showed up, at it was nearly 10:30 before Regina left. Again, it's nice that the community here is so welcoming that people would want to stand around for an hour talking to other parents in the park on a schoolday. And we really do like the school. It's charming, thoughtful, and fun. We're still just getting used to the customs of this strange country.

Why, Regina almost missed her yoga class! Oh, woe is us!

Posted by at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (398)

I'll be travelling until the weekend, so no more entries until next week. Please endure. And consider this an "Open Thread." Talk among yourselves.

Posted by at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (400)

I picked Elijah up from school yesterday and I brought Hercules with me. Regina was having a General Foods International Coffee Day with another painter, who she met online, and I wanted to give a little extra time. Together, the boys and I drove to the Silverlake Dog Park, about which Elijah complained mightily.

"I don't want to go to the dog park!" he said in the car.

"But we're going," I said, "because Hercules needs to run around with his friends."

"Nooooooo! The dogs will jump on me! Then they will bite me! And they have sharp nails!"

"Oh, don't be such a wuss," I said. "You'll be fine."

"Daddy, will you carry me?"

"I will put you on top of a table, and then I will guard you with my life. Will that be sufficient?"

"Yeah. What's Herky gonna do?"

"Run around."

"Is he gonna eat rabbits? Or is there gonna be a sea monster there?"

And so goes every conversation I have with the boy.

We went to the dog park, where Hercules got it on with a malamute pup, two Scotties, and a three-legged bitch stray. Then we went to the kid park, which was part of a city rec center. Elijah played around for a while. I ran into a mother who'd I'd met at a party, and we chatted noncommitally about how difficult it is to get an agent to read a spec sitcom pilot (a conversation that I rarely had with mothers in Austin). Elijah played with her seven-year-old daughter, Isabella. The boy has a quality that makes slightly older girls want to take him under his wing. When he's sixteen, I predict, he will take a job as a bellhop in a luxury hotel, and at that point, his powers will begin to come in very handy.

Casanova ran up to me and shouted:

"My butt hurts because I have gas!"

And then he ran away.

"Aw," said the mom. "It's cute that he tells you when he has gas."

"It's no big deal," I said. "All Jews do that."

It got less cute when he ran up to me and said.

"I have poopy daddy!"

Jsabella's mom began to back away, and she did it even more quickly when I loudly announced that I'd forgotten to bring a diaper to the park with me. I had one back in the car, a leftover "Disney Princesses" pink pull-up number that my father had accidentally purchased for Elijah, but I had no wipes. It was time to approach a rec center employee.

"My son has to use the potty," I lied.

She led us into a slighty-better-than-average park bathroom.

"Um, I have a dog. Is it OK if I bring him in?"

"Oh sure."

The fact that she would allow me to do it made me uneasy, but I took Hercules in the bathroom with me anyway, and tied his leash to a faucet handle. Then I pulled down Elijah's pants, unfastened his diaper, gently lowered it with the precision of a Nip/Tuck character, lifted it back up, tipped it over, and tumbled some magic nugs into the can. Then I had to pick up the three pieces of crap I'd accidentally dropped on the floor.

For those of you who are planning to have children: Welcome to the rest of your fucking life. Parenthood has many payoffs, but where you once would have been getting high and watching Cartoon Network in the early evening, now you will be picking up human shit from the floor of a Parks And Recreation Center restroom.

Back at the car, I opened the door and turned away to fish the Disney Princesses diaper out from under an Etch-A-Sketch.

"Oh, how cute!" I heard a female voice say.

Elijah stood in the middle of the sidewalk. He'd dropped his pants to his ankles, and was gazing at me with a death-knelling gaze of pure beatific innocence. I knew it was an act. But that's the way he behaves around the ladies. Two young women, almost certainly actresses, were running their hands through his hair, He just smiled, naked from the waist down, and took it.

I hurried over.

"My apologies," I said.

"Oh please. He's the most adorable thing ever," said one of the ladies.

"Yeah, I guess it's better him than me doing that, huh?" I said.

"Um, yeah. I would say so."

"It's a family trait."

I was joking, but I must have sounded lurky, because they backed away. Elijah saw the diaper. He put his hands to his face.

"Nooooooo!" he said. "I don't want a woman diaper!"

At that moment, I knew we'd reached the dread Rubicon of gender awareness.

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