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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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!

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:

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.

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