Grilling brats, drinking beer, and going to Dodger game with the guys.

Eating chicken wings with the other guys.

Going to Tball trophy ceremony to collect trophy and mooch off buffet.

Intermediate Class at Commerce Casino's "University Of Poker".

BBQ at Hogly Wogly in Van Nuys.

Solo Naked Hot Tub.

Going to see "The Hangover".

Watching "The Cincinnati Kid" wasted at 1 AM.

Listening to sports-talk radio garage-rock station on Pandora.

Playing online poker.

Porn.

Bachelor Week Meterosexual Activities:

Buying fruit at the South Pasadena Farmer's Market.

Watching "Top Chef: Masters" and "True Blood".

Bargaining over furniture at patio-supply store.

Tearing up over NPR coverage of Michael Jackson's death.

Listening to Dusty Springfield Radio on Pandora.

Reading celebrity gossip.

Dusting.

Walking my Boston Terriers.

Driving Prius to Trader Joe's.

Cooking Moroccan Potato Salad for Jewish-themed potluck.

Yoga.

Writing about yoga.

Meditation.

Blogging.

Regina: I TIVO'ed The Golden Compass. Do you mind if they watch it?

Parent: You can show them porn for all I care.

Elijah: What's porn?

Regina: Sexy movies.

Elijah: I'd rather watch The Golden Compass.

The attrition began two weeks ago. First, one of our most enthusiastic players broke his elbow coming off a McDonald's playground slide, cutting our team down to 11. Then, the kid with the 6 PM bedtime kind of faded away. After that, another kid quit, though his parents did make him tell the coach in person and did bring Krispy Kreme donuts for the entire team.

That left us with nine, the bare minimum required to field a teeball team. But then Saturday dawned. One of our remaining number appeared totally uninterested in playing, and spent the entire game moping on his bleachers next to his mom. Another was mysteriously absent. We were down to seven. The umpire let us take the field anyway. Coach had to discard his democratic ways and actually put the best players at key positions, lest every opposing hitter knock an inside-the-park home-run.

About 15 minutes into the game, our eighth player appeared. Apparently, he'd gone into the john with some comic books and had taken his own sweet time. I've been there, kid.

At least, I thought, Elijah has never wavered. But his wavering was soon to come.

"I'M HUNGRY!" he exclaimed.

I presented him with a snack assortment, prepared by Regina, that included a tangerine and a rice cake with peanut butter. Not the greatest snack of all time, admittedly, but it was certainly acceptable.

"I'm not practicing unless you give me green beans," he said.

Now, I like the fact that he was demanding vegetables, but I didn't have any, and he had to get to practice. We were already a few minutes late.

"You have to practice," I said.

"WHY?" he said, "IT'S JUST A STUPID PRACTICE!"

"Because practicing is part of baseball."

"But I already know how to play baseball!"

"You need to practice."

"I am not practicing and I am taking off my shoes!"

He took off his shoes. The argument continued all the way to practice. When we got there, he took some swipes at me. I forced him to put on his shoes and socks while he screamed and thrashed.

"I AM NOT GOING TO PRACTICE!" he said.

"Fine," I said. "You don't have to play. But you will sit next to me quietly on the grass for an hour. I'm not going to reward your temper tantrum."

"I'M SOOOOOOOO HUUUUUUUUUNGRRRRRRYYYYYY!"

Then you should have eaten what I gave you, I said.

There was much howling and screaming and drama, but eventually, the boy did come to practice and did sit quietly next to me on the grass. I wasn't going to get him onto the field, but I sure as hell was going to make him fulfill his commitments. Life is full of crap you don't want to do, kid. And if not wanting to practice baseball is your biggest concern, well, then, you're shitting in clover. God, I sound like such a dad.

He went to his 11 AM game on Saturday, played second base without complaint, and somehow managed to turn a bunt into a triple. We got nine players on the field, and didn't throw every fielded ball into the first-base dugout. Some would call that progress.

So, of course, we blamed the sugar when Elijah got sent to the principal's office at lunchtime for "defiant" behavior. We got the call, went to school, met with the principal, formulated this month's Elijah-control strategy, and took the boy home. He sat in his room by himself for two hours except for the three times he had to pee and the four times when he needed a drink of water.

Dinner went OK, until Elijah started playing Truth Or Dare. He dared me to stick my face in the dog's butt. I refused. Still, he found the request so hilarious that he repeated it over and over again.

"Stick your face in the dog's butt!" he said.

"No," I said.

"But it's a dare! A dog-butt-face dare."

"No."

"Stick your face in the dog's butt. Stick your face in the dog's butt. STICK YOUR FACE IN THE DOG'S BUTT, GODDAMMIT!"

He was screaming at me, his face furiously red. This was going to be a long night.

Regina and I did what any sane guardian of an unhinged child would do: We started blaming each other.

"You're the one who said he could see Star Trek this weekend," she said.

"Yeah, well you're the one who let him play Wii for three hours on Saturday and Sunday."

"Don't put that on me. You played with him."

"Fine. But you let him have that sucker at the doctor's office."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" Elijah roared. "I AM LOSING MY MIIIIIIIIIIIND!"

An hour passed. Elijah got out of bed multiple times. He ran around, making threats, screaming that he wanted me to stick my face in the dog's butt or else, and generally making our brains hurt worse than they'd hurt in a long time. We took away privileges galore, but it had no effect. My back was sore, my mind tired. This had to stop.

So I made a decision. I went into Elijah's bedroom, and whispered in his ear.

"Come with me to the bathroom," I said.

"What is it?" he said conspiratorially.

"You'll see," I said.

As he got out of bed, I took a cup of water off his night-tray.

He went into the bathroom, grinning.

"Well," he said.

And then I splashed the water in his face.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" he said.

Whoops. Wrong call.

I walked into the kitchen to compose myself. Elijah charged at me, now naked, fists flailing. He threw his underwear in my face.

"WHY DID YOU DO THAT TO ME?" he asked.

"Because you were hysterical," I said.

"I'M STILL HYSTERICAL!"

"Pollack," Regina said. "You're an idiot."

"I was just trying to calm him down."

Elijah said, "I'm not going to bed until I can dump a cup of water on daddy's face!"

"That's not gonna happen," I said.

"OH YES IT IS!"

"See what you've taught him?" Regina said.

There's a lot of media around right now about the concept of a "bad parent." Of course, the people writing the bad-parent books aren't actually bad parents, not even close. The guy who killed his five kids in that Seattle trailer park? He was a bad parent.

That said, though I'm certain that I'm not a bad parent overall, splashing water in my son's face to calm him down won me some major demerits. It was a flawed, immature decision made in anger. Any parent who's never had a moment like that, please raise their hand. I thought so. Still, this qualified as a whopper.

I went upstairs to take a shower, where I clawed at my face and wept silently. When I returned 15 minutes later, Regina said, "you have to deal with this. He's refusing to go to sleep until he dumps water on you."

"He's not dumping water on me," I said.

"You tell him that."

I went into the boy's bedroom. It was almost 10:30 by now, and he looked worn. Dark-blue craters had formed under his eyes, and his voice croaked.

"I want to dump water on you," he said.

"Listen to me, boy," I said. "I was very, very wrong to dump water on you. It was a stupid and impulsive decision, and I'm really sorry."

"OK," he said.

"So you'll go to sleep now?"

"Not until I dump water on you."

"But I already apologized."

He thought about this for a minute.

"OK then," he said. "Buy me something."

"After the way you behaved? No way."

"Buy me something or let me dump water on you. That's your choice."

I sighed. He had me beaten. This had to stop somewhere.

"All right," I said. "I'll get you a new Asterix book this weekend. But you also know that you lost Wii privileges for the month and treat privileges for the next two weeks."

"I know," he said. "But at least I'm getting a new Asterix book."

So, thanks to another bad decision by daddy, we had to make another insane compromise. But, as far as I know, the sun rose the next day, and things went much better. From now on, no lollipops in the middle of the week, not even if Elijah goes to the doctor. I'm sure that will solve all our problems.

Another morning, just before the game, coach asked the team, "now what are you supposed to yell when you get the ball?" The proper answer is "TIME OUT!" because otherwise every fourth play would be a grand-slam home run. But Elijah responded,

"Hey hey howdy howdy hi hi hello!"

"That's very original, Elijah," said coach, "but it's not right."

And thus our inaugural teeball season lurches ahead. Last Wednesday, Elijah's Yankees played a 6:30 game in Glassell Park, our first night game and our first one away from the friendly confines of the Tommy Lasorda Field Of Dreams. Because our league is pretty small, we play half our games against Glassell Park teams. For those of you who don't speak East Side L.A. code, here are some of the differences between the Silver Lake and Glassell Park leagues:

The Glassell Park teams are entirely Mexican-American and have about a 50-50 boy-girl split. The players each bring a dozen family members to the games, many of whom appear to have played competitive baseball at some point in their lives. Some of the Silver Lake teams have Mexican players, but mostly, they're as white as the cast of Gossip Girl. Speaking of girls, our teams have one or two, at most. Both parents rarely show up to the games. They're either sleeping off their hangovers or working extra hours to pay for their insanely overinflated Silver Lake mortgages.

Also, while Silver Lake is all about everyone having fun and participating, the Glassell Park teams play to win.

Despite this, their coach played everyone in the field. So did our coach--everyone always plays the field in teeball--but he's been taking care to rotate players around, giving everyone a turn at every position, no matter how competent. The Padres' coach, on the other hand, played his best five in the infield, and then let all his five-year-old booger pickers hang out in an outfield cluster. The positions didn't change from inning to inning.

I worked as our team's third-base coach that night. At one point, the Padres' third baseman was moving around twitchily. His coach came up to him, looked at him sternly, and said, "Eduardo. You want to jump around like that? Then do it in the outfield." Harsh, coach. Meanwhile, our guys were wearing gloves on their heads and running after balls in unison, no matter their position, while the Padres whipped around the bases.

It was freezing out there, and the game went on forever. They must have scored 20 runs, which happens when you bat 15 players an inning. We did OK, but everyone was cold and tired and whiny by the end. Also, let's face it, Glassell Park is no place for a bunch of pasty hipsters and their wimpy kids to be hanging out after sundown. That said, our Yankee boys devoured the Sun Chips, string-cheese and Capri Suns that Regina brought for snacks. It's never too late or cold or sketchy for snack time.

I've spent a lot of time thinking, maybe even worrying, about the difference between Anglo and Latino youth-baseball cultures in L.A. The odds are impossibly long that any of the six-year-old Mexican players I've seen this season are going to be big-leaguers, minor leaguers, or even try to play professionally, but there's still something aspirational about the way they conduct themselves on the diamond. Baseball is serious business here in the heart of Dodger Country, maybe not a way out (after all, no one's really looking to escape Southern California), but at least as part of the equation leading to the way up. The Five Tools are a point of serious pride, a way to learn discipline, control, and cool slides. As Eduardo said to me one inning as he took his station after a particularly spectacular display on the bases, "I've got dirt in my mouth."

Not so much in hipster land, where there's always a sanitary wet wipe waiting to clean off the dirt. Eh, we figure. If our kid's not good at baseball, they can always start a band, or go to Cal Tech, or both. For Silver Lake kids, teeball is just another box to check in the endless activity stream, alongside birthday parties and movie premieres and cooking classes and art lessons and, for the truly unfortunate, Hebrew School. In Glassell Park, the players always take the extra base, even if it's 45 degrees outside, even if it's been dark for an hour, and especially if the gabacho-saturated opposing team is running around trying to pretend to whack one another with invisible light sabers or spreading their arms and shouting "I'm Superman!!!!" when heading for home on a ball fouled at the plate. While I realize that plenty of Mexican kids go to Cal Tech, and plenty of Anglo kids end up being good at baseball, there's still a difference. At least we didn't have to play in Echo Park. I hear they're super hard-core over there.

Or maybe the Padres' coach was just a little over-competitive. The next day at practice, we had some fielding drills. Then we played a game on Saturday morning and did just fine. In fact, it was our best game yet. We were only missing one player, and it had nothing to do with his bedtime.

That was in my role as semi-well-known midlist author. As a paying customer with a six-year-old, I had a much different experience. Here's a quick summary:

It was hot and overcrowded. After paying for parking, a lemonade, and a soft pretzel, I was out 20 bucks. The "children's area", while certainly expansive, was mostly comprised of payola booths for bad self-published books featuring characters that no one has ever heard of and never will, and even worse corporate-published books by celebrities who can't write. While we were there, the children's entertainment stage, sponsored by Target, featured a despicable bear character called "Hip Hop Harry," who danced in front of his gathered victims to a pre-recorded rap about the importance of staying hydrated. Salman Rushdie in conversation with Nadine Gordimer, this was not.

But whatever. We got there late on Sunday and planned poorly. The LA Times Festival Of Books is the best book festival in the country. This post exists to complain about something else. Thus, the narrative continues:

"You can have a Sno-Cone if you agree to let us buy you a book," Regina said.

"Fine," Elijah said.

Most booths were impassable. However, none had a longer line than the one giving away free passes to a preview screening of Up. For some reason, this profoundly depressed me. At least the line wasn't for free Jack In The Box, though I'd imagine that line would have been even longer. We finally found our way into the nearest "bookstore," a large tent bearing the Target corporate logo. The only books for sale were ones by people who'd read at the stage that weekend. There was also much propaganda for Yo Gabba Gabba and Hip-Hop Harry.

"You know," I said to Regina, "maybe we should go to an independent bookstore. Skylight has a decent selection of kids books..."

But it was too late. Elijah was already holding a book.

"I want this one," he said.

"Are you sure?" I said. "I think there's a comic-book tent that has a lot of Asterix books..."

"NO!" he said. "This one. And then a Sno-Cone."

Elijah's choice was called Skippyjon Jones. Apparently, according to the embossment, it had won an E.B. White award. The Siamese cat on the cover looked harmless enough. Clearly, Elijah chose this book because it was the first one he saw that didn't have Hannah Montana's name in the title, and he just wanted to get his Sno-Cone. I was sure that we could do better, but whatever. I was hot and had a nasty sinus headache, and just wanted to get the hell out of there. So we bought Skippyjon Jones.

The Sno-Cone proved to be the wiser purchase, as Elijah hacked at it all the way home, allowing Regina and I to complain to each other about many things for nearly 45 minutes. Before bed, Regina read Skippyjon Jones to Elijah. I half-listened from the other room. Apparently, it's about a Siamese cat who imagines, much to his mother's chagrin, that he hooks up with a gang of "Chimichanga chihuahuas" and becomes a "bandito" called "Skippito." He also uses the phrase "Holy Guacamole!" I think you can see where this is going. Here's a little excerpt:

"Alfredo Buzzito," whispered the crowd. "El Blimpo Bumblebeeto Bandito."

"Si," Poquito continued:

As I listened, my jaw dropped wider and wider, and I hoped our many Mexican neighbors weren't eavesdropping on us.

After Elijah went to bed, I said to Regina, "Was I imagining something, or is that book a little bit racist?"

"I was thinking the same thing," she said. "It made me uncomfortable. But it won an award."

"Yeah," I said, "but I know the book business. That award came from white people."

Curiouser and curiouser, I did a little Skippyjon research on the internet. Sure enough, there's a mild controversy about Skippito. If you look at the reviews on Amazon, they're overwhelmingly positive, with 16 one-star reviews from Mexican-American parents who say that the book perpetuates negative stereotypes about their people. Then the white parents say, basically, you people need to get a sense of humor about yourselves. I've got to say, I'm siding with the Mexicans on this one.

Now, I'm not accusing Ms. Judy Schachner of Pennsylvania of being a racist. She probably has not idea that she's created the literary version of "yo quiero Taco Bell," just like the author of Little Black Sambo couldn't imagine that his titular character was a racist stereotype that would haunt black people for a century. When T.S. Eliot had Growltiger fight those "chink" Siamese in their "sampans and their junks," the concept of Orientalism barely existed. Rudyard Kipling didn't know that his noble Gunga Din was a colonialist's wet dream of native servitude.

Judy Schachner, and her many internet defenders, don't understand why it's not funny, and pretty demeaning, to have her hero stick "o" on the end of words while speaking in his "best Spanish accent." Even Carlos Mencia is more sophisticated than that. Also, a Spanish accent is softer and more lispy. Think Gael Garcia Bernal in Almodovar drag, not Speedy Gonzales.

Today, Regina took Skippyjon back to Target and exchanged him for The Lorax, a book that's not going to offend any parent, except maybe Sean Hannity. You can call us "p.c." if you want, though that term has lacked real cultural currency since about 1993. But it's not like we try to shield our son from all ethnic stereotypes. I let him watch The Simpsons, for God's sake. The difference here is that The Simpsons, and its ilk, are aware of their stereotypes, and they satirize them in order to show us all how ridiculous our prejudices are.

Skippyjon Jones, on the other hand, is a racist. We may not realize that now, but 100 years from now, people will laugh at our outdated stereotypes of Mexicans. And they'll be laughing in Spanglish accents.

Basically, The Fast And The Furry is a straight-to-video (and straight-to-Cartoon Network) crap-fest that's a bad parody of The Amazing Race, a flat-out ripoff of Wacky Racers, and a showcase for some third-rate Tom And Jerry slapstick. Now, I have nothing against Tom And Jerry. The original Tex Avery and Fred Quimby T&J cartoons are some of the greatest animation ever made. And I have nothing against my kid watching animated parodies of reality TV shows. He sometimes enjoys a show called "Total Drama Island" that I think is freaking hilarious. But combining the two, cheaply, just reeks of exploitation. It's like putting high-fructose corn syrup in something that's already sweet. That's what bothers me.

I may not have much to offer as a dad. But I do know the difference between a good cartoon and a bad cartoon, or at least an authentic cartoon and an inauthentic one. Chuck Jones' Looney Tunes shorts are great. Duck Dodgers is not. Tex Avery's Tom And Jerry cartoons are magnificent. Made-for-TV Tom And Jerry movies are not. Season 18 of The Simpsons is not the same show as Season 7.

Lest you think I'm lounging in nostalgia, I understand the people who made most of what I watched as a kid should probably be tried for violating the Geneva Conventions. For god's sake, I watched Quick Draw McGraw and Top Cat. So I'll offer a reverse: Justice League: Unlimited is the greatest superhero cartoon series ever made. Challenge Of The Superfriends, while mildly charming and very weird, is total crap. The worst episode of Spongebob is better than the best Yogi Bear cartoon.

Unless you're not TV people, in which case you have your own problems, I think it's important to maintain some aesthetic standards for what your kids consume, and to explain those standards to your kids. You can't just say "oh, it's Tom And Jerry," because not all Tom And Jerry is created equal. Would you find yourself thinking that "orange drink" is the same as "orange juice," that "cheese flavor" is an acceptable substitute for "cheese," or that Kidz Bop is, in any way, worth listening to in lieu of actual rock-n-roll? Of course you wouldn't, or at least you wouldn't admit it in my highly-judgmental presence.

Here endeth the lesson.

Now you kids get offa my lawn!

1. No drugs.

2. No "pornography."

3. No profanity.

4. No making fun of the parent company.

Well, I can understand number four, particularly when the company in question is the fine Meredith Corporation, which would never do anything like distribute a syndicated "lifestyle" program that includes space for three-to-five minute segments on childcare produced by companies like General Mills and Johnson & Johnson. Why, that would be borderline unethical!

However, the first three restrictions pretty much shut out 80 percent of my life. Now that I've cashed my final check from Parents.com, I can finally tell the world the truth that the Meredith Corporation has tried to suppress for too long now. I'm a dad, and I love cussin', jerkin' off, and gettin' baked!

But this activity remains hidden from the boy.

Once last year, around the holidays, Elijah saw a pipe sitting on the stairs.

"What's that, daddy?" he asked.

"It's for a snowman," I said.

"But there's no snow here."

"I'm mailing it to a friend where there is snow."

And thus ended the "talk to your kids about drugs" portion of my life. Am I proud of my stonerhood? Probably more than I should be. Does it affect my fathering? It doesn't appear to. Will you judge me negatively because of it? Possibly. I have no control over your point of view.

*****

Now then, as for "pornography": For god's sake, I work at home, all day, every day, so of course it's a big part of my life. Don't get all self-righteous. If you sat around in your underwear and/or stretchy yoga shorts until 5 PM, you'd be horny most of the time, too.

I've actually never been a huge fan of straight-up porn, though I do, from time to time, buy a month-long subscription to Beautiful Agony, which features wonderfully erotic videos of women's faces while they masturbate. I skip the dudes, and some of the New Zealand hippie chicks don't do it for me, but some of the videos work really well.

The mainstay of my auto-erotic life, as always, is Wonder Woman, about which I revealed too much in this painfully-detailed Nerve.com story. Did I really write that five years ago? Where has the time gone? If anything, my ability to indulge my shameful superheroine transformation fetish has increased since then. Pretty much everything I want and need is available on YouTube at all times, and can be easily accessed in those empty afternoon minutes between doing nothing and doing less than nothing.

This also remains hidden from the child, though it's harder, as it sometimes intersects with his own interests.

Recently, Elijah's been going through the Justice League: Unlimited catalog on Boomerang. I usually watch the shows with him, to answer continuity questions. Then the episode "To Another Shore" appeared in the queue. This features the best Wonder Woman transformation scene ever put to celluloid. I had to recuse myself.

"Where are you going, daddy?" he asked.

"I have work to do," I said.

As I staggered through the kitchen, Regina said, "What's the matter?"

"Wonder Woman...on....TV...." I gasped.

"Oh," she said, knowingly.

I went upstairs, took a freezing shower, and said five Hail Marys. Elijah watched the episode by himself. However, I did later consume it alone, after midnight, while all the creatures in the house slept, unaware of stray perverted thoughts.

*****

As for the final forbidden item, profanity, all I can say is that Jesus sucks Satan's shit-stained fuck-cock in hell.

Thank you.

May God bless America and the Meredith Corporation.

It's good to be back.

I've come to accept the fact that Elijah's been assigned to the Yankees, though I hope he doesn't succumb to the intense hype and media pressure. Some players just aren't cut out for the pinstripes. Regardless, we had to get him changed before the "parade." Thus I found myself sitting in the front-seat of my car at Avenue 35 and Eagle Rock Boulevard, tearing at his uniform shirt tag with my teeth. Regina had wisely remembered to cut off the pants tag, but not the shirt. This took me a couple of minutes and will probably cost me 200 bucks in dental bills later on, but finally, Elijah was ready for this year's informal baseball portrait. He posed, as is his wont, like a totally adorable ding-dong:

But regardless of their social class, the kids ate complimentary hot dogs, chips, and juice boxes:

Then, at 9 AM the next day, Elijah's Yankees took on the Silver Lake A's in an epic two-inning, 45-minute clash. The entire team showed up, which meant a dozen players batted in each inning and there were two layers of infield. Elijah's coach, a kind, mellow guy who happens to be the father of one of Elijah's classmates and also happens to be an actor who's been playing Van Helsing in a local-theater production of Dracula for months, has shown a lot of patience and has got the kids playing with energy and team spirit. This means something when most of the players still don't understand the concept of throwing to first base and when some of them still run toward third when they hit the ball.

Elijah played "right center" in the first inning, which afforded him much time to sit down and pick grass, and shortstop in the second. At some point, he was picking rocks out of the dirt, and the ball came right to him. He scooped it up in his glove, transferred it to his left hand, and threw it, underhanded, into center field.

After the game, coach said to Regina and I, "I think Elijah's a lefty."

"No," I said. "He just wears his glove wrong because he says it makes his hand sweaty."

We're going to work on that.

At the plate, Elijah smacked the ball fairly hard, both times, on the first try, and ran to first with determination and speed. Since I was acting as first-base coach, I was able to pat him congratulations, though I had to remind him that it's not a good idea to try your kung-fu moves out on your dad when arriving at first base.

He made his way around the bases and scored both times, with ample opportunity for archetypal crotch-grabbing:

Soon enough, the game was over. The parents made a "tunnel" for the players to run through, and we whooped loudly while they passed back and forth. After the game, Elijah sucked on a Capri Sun, and exulted in the fact that he "didn't get tagged out one time."

"But it will happen," I said. "At some point, you're going to get out."

"Of course I will," he said. "It's baseball."

Indeed it is, my boy.

Today, while in some complicated twist or other, I noticed that the protruding mole on my right shoulder had gotten larger, and that there were many hairs shooting out wildly. It looked like a little troll. Thus recognized, it stayed in my thoughts throughout practice. When I reached savasana, my mind drifted to the office of an imaginary dermatologist. I envisioned him cutting off my mole with a blade, and wondered if he'd use anesthetic first.

Wait, I thought. This isn't good yoga practice. You're supposed to notice something, acknowledge the noticing, and continue your business. If you notice something and then imagine a surgeon removing it by knife point, your practice is off. So I let my mind wander. The first thing it latched onto was the permanently ingrown wart on my left heel. No one's ever been able to take it out, but the imaginary podiatrist that I was thinking of just then might! Would he cut it off, or freeze it, or give me a prescription for those little strips that do the job themselves? Oh, damn! Why was I so Jewish?

Then teacher was chanting, vande gudanam...and it brought me back. Are you allowed to take a Mulligan on corpse pose? Because I'd like one for today.

So I went to the Bollyhood Café, by myself, since I no longer have any friends in San Francisco who stay up past 11 on a weeknight. I was, as always, a little stoned, so the music got into my bones a bit and I swayed around the dance floor. The crowd was small, but almost absurdly diverse. Why were there so many Palestinians in the room? My fun lasted for about an hour, until I realized that I was a lonely middle-aged man at a nightclub by himself, so I went back to my hotel room.

The highlight of my visit was, as always, the food. I had an even better run than usual in SF this time. I was staying near Union Square, and arrived at an off-hour. There's no better place to eat at 3 PM on Thursday afternoon than Katana-Ya , which makes the best bowl of rich-broth ramen in the Bay Area.

I could get a bowl equally as good at a dozen places in L.A., but all would require at least 25 minutes in the car. This was a five-minute walk, and I filled my belly with warm soup and slivers of tender roast pork and I was happy.

I woke up at 10 AM, alone, with no children to be found anywhere. I can't say that I was exactly hungry, but I didn't have a flight until 2:30, and, really, why waste hours in San Francisco not eating? So I took a solid 20-minute walk through the Tenderloin, passed Grass Roots, my favorite mid-city medical-marijuana dispensary, and got to Brenda's French Soul Food in time to get my name on the list before the lunch rush.

Once I got seated at the counter, I ordered a bowl of fresh fruit and an iced tea, but those were merely to serve as buffers for one of the finest things I've ever consumed: A plate of three sinful crawfish beignets, covered with a thick dusting of cayenne. It was a savory undersea donut volcano, and I left the Bay Area satisfied.

My good run continued back in L.A. On Saturday evening, at 5 PM exactly, Regina, Elijah and I sat down at Din Tai Fung in Alhabmra, and prepared to tuck in for some dumpling goodness. There are probably better dumpling places in L.A., and almost certainly cheaper ones, but Din Tai Fung has been doing it right for a long time. None of us complained when we put juicy pork-and-crab dumplings on our soup spoons, when the dumplings exploded soupy goodness into our mouths, or when we followed that up with a shumai fresh enough to qualify as evil. The family practically beamed with happiness as we walked into the parking lot.

Then, this morning, I sniffed back into reality, when I dragged my ass out of bed at 8 AM to get my cup of tea. Regina was making the boy's lunch. She stuck a small blue plastic container under my nose.

"Does this smell good to you?"

No, it didn't. I smelled like rancid meat.

"Bleargh!" I said. "What is that?"

"I was going to give him ham for lunch."

"You can't. Why did you have me smell that?"

"I wasn't sure," she said. "Would you smell the soy milk, too?"

"No," I said. "You smell the soy milk, goddammit."

"I smell daddy's butt," Elijah said.

I was definitely awake.

N: "Yes, son?"

E: "Do you ever pee in the shower?"

N: "I do."

E: "When?"

N: "When I'm in the shower."

E: "Is that OK?"

N: "It's OK. Totally natural. The water is warm and you just pee. I wouldn't make a habit of it, but it's no tragedy if you do."

E: "Mommy?"

R: "Yes, Elijah?"

E: "Do you pee in the shower?"

R: "I have, sometimes."

E: "Oh. Good. Because I like peeing in the shower just a little bit."

R: "Everyone does."

E: "Do you go poop in the shower?"

R: "No. Never. You go poop in the toilet."

E: "Daddy, do you go poop in the shower?"

Pause.

E: "Daddy?"

R: "Daddy?"

E: "Daddy?"

N: "Can we talk about something else, please?"

There will be a makeover on this site over the next few months, as I ready it for its yoga phase. But meanwhile, as this is my only real home for long-form personal expression, I'll start writing here again about matters of great world import. This may be hard to do, as I rarely leave the house, but I shall endeavor to entertain. Until then...

This, in yoga terms, is called Samadhi, the divine perception of universal consciousness, though the realization may have come to me because I was in the middle of a five-day drug bender. I’d bought some full-melt sativa hash capsules at my neighborhood medical-marijuana dispensary before coming to town, had taken two caps before getting on the plane, and had refried my brain first thing three consecutive mornings. Visions like these were happening regularly now; my synapses had begun to fray around the edges.

I really just needed to lie down for a couple of hours with a wet washcloth over my face. But instead, I’d made plans to meet a friend for an early-evening yoga class at her favorite studio. She was excited to share this experience with me. Doing yoga at this place, she said, had made her life so much better.

“Fuck yeah!” I said. “I love yoga!”

Yoga Dork, by Neal Pollack. Coming May 2010 from Harper Perennial.

Meanwhile, if you're one of the few remaining holdouts who remember when this site was a daddyblog (or a political satire blog, for that matter), the beat goes on and on at Parents.com.

Namaste,
NP