On the recommendation of a reader, I took Elijah to the La Brea Tar Pits over the weekend. I'd never actually been there myself, so it was exciting for both of us. Our date went extremely well, one of those occasions when the boy and I are totally in sync, like we can read each other's minds, though that's not so difficult when all I think about is sex and baseball and all he thinks about is sharks and poop. Inside the Page Museum (which is where they keep all the excavated bones), Elijah saw the sabertoothed tiger skeleton change into a sabertoothed tiger hologram and back again. I had to reinsert his eyes back into his skull. But otherwise, the day proceeded without incident.

After we learned all about giant sloths, mastodons, and dire wolves, we went to Pink's on La Brea for one of their legendary hot dogs. Actually, Elijah had a hot dog, with pickles and ketchup, while I took another five months off my life by consuming a double mushroom Swiss cheeseburger. Fuck it. I was hungry.

Elijah wanted to show everyone at Pink's the tube of plastic prehistoric animals that I'd purchased for him. Person after person stopped by our table to share their own childhood Tar Pit memories. Here are questions designed to jack up my flagging comments section: Do you have Tar Pit memories? Is there someplace special your parents used to take you when you were a kid?

After we got home, I retreated to my desk in the back of the house with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and then I took a nap because I'd woken up with the kid at 6:30. After I de-napped, I had just enough time to take a shower and drive to my poker game, where I got my ass handed to me as the buzzer went off on the second blind. Poker just isn't my game. I got scolded twice by the organizer for eating pita chips too loudly after I'd folded my hand.

Anyway, I didn't see Elijah until about 9 AM the following day. I emerged from my coffin to find him shooting stuff out of his finger, as usual. Only now it wasn't fire. It was goo.

"I'm Goo Man!" Elijah said.

"He's been Goo Man since the Tar Pits," said Regina.

"They call me Gooey!"

"They call him Gooey," she said.

He stuck out his finger.

"You have goo on you!"

"Oh my god! I do!"

"You're the Rhino! And Doctor Octopus!"

Apparently, Goo Man had replaced Spiderman overnight. I swelled with pride. My child had invented his own superhero. Not only that, his hero had the power to smother his enemies (two cats, a Boston Terrier and me) with a "goo blanket." Technically, this was just a blanket off his bed, but if you concentrated hard enough, I found, it could feel like goo.

"Goo Man gets goo all over everything!" said Elijah.

"Your daddy is Goo Man, too," said Regina, deploying a double entendre beyond our son's comprehension.

"No! I am Goo Man!" said Goo Man.

Goo Man was the weekend's most redeeming feature. Otherwise, Elijah got into Regina's little jar of mentholated ointment, mostly putting it in his hair. But he also said he'd eaten some, meaning I had to make what seemed like my weekly call to Poison Control. I talk to those operators more often than I talk to my father. Also, about 10 minutes after he'd watched Regina fold a huge basket of laundry, Elijah went into our bedroom and deliberately overturned it, and sat there cackling as we folded it all over again. These were the major offenses in a weekend full of whining and early rising.

The babysitter showed up at 6 PM on Sunday night. Regina and I went to a mediocre restaurant in West Hollywood and got reasonably drunk. Then it was off to the Troubadour to see Art Brut, a band that can best be described as, oh, Franz Ferdinand fronted by Jonathan Richman. The band rocked quite well, though they wore the pallor, which I knew all too well, of having just spent a week in Austin at South By Southwest. We enjoyed the show, particularly because the doorman, who'd been staring at Regina's breasts the entire time we stood in line, allowed us into the VIP lounge, but only after calling her "mama." Regina found this flattering, but a mite annoying.

"I guess once you clear 30, you're a mama," she said.

Hey, Elijah, I thought, your daddy is a VIP at the Troubadour, but then I realized that Elijah didn't give a shit. But I still kept that feeling close to my chest, until 6:15 AM rolled around the next day, and then l found myself packing a lunch for someone who was simulatenously watching Tiny Planets and trying to smother a cat with a blanket. As Art Brut says, Bang bang. Rock-n-roll.

One more thing. To that smug frat schmuck who filed the lawsuit claiming that men have the right not to pay support for a child they fathered by accident, I have this to say: You do the crime, you do the time, bucko. Being a father doesn't stop you from being a selfish asshead, necessarily, but it certainly opens up other options. Be a man, get it together, withdraw the suit, and call off the media dogs. Or I'm sending Goo Man after you.

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