MetroDad

Microphone Check, One, Two…

Anyone still out there?

Apparently, it’s been SEVEN months since I’ve last written here.

I wish my prolonged sabbatical could be explained by an ambitious whirlwind of hedonistic activity. Then I could apologize profusely for my absence by giving you amusing little synopses of my daily and exciting life.

The fact is that the past seven months have been relatively busy, both in good and bad ways. I’m at a bit of a loss on how best to explain it all, so instead I’ll resort to the wise words of the immortal amphibian philosopher, Kermit the Frog: “Man, time’s really fun when you’re having flies.”

Aside from quitting my job, starting a new business, moving in with The Girlfriend, and enjoying the fruits of our blended family, I’ve also been temporarily sidelined by some medical “inconveniences.” Without going into any detail, one of these has required me to take a mini convalescence.

The upside of this convalescence is that I’m under strict doctor’s orders to do very little except “read, write, walk, talk, shit, and sleep.”

Since I've got about an hour before the Vicodin kicks in, I thought it might be the perfect time to revisit this site, no?

 

FAMILY RULES FOR DADDY’S RECOVERY

It hasn’t been easy explaining to the three girls (ages five, eight, and nine) why I need some post-surgery rest and relaxation. The Girlfriend and I sat them down patiently to quell any potential fears and explain the very foreign concepts of peace and quiet.

To ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding my recovery, I’ve compiled a list of rules that I plan on pinning to the refrigerator (which pretty much ensures that the only two people who are ever going to see this are me and our wonderful Ecuadorian nanny. Hi Olga!)

1. Mr. Belvedere doesn’t work here anymore. Yes, I did just compare my role in the family to a middling 80’s sitcom character with an eponymously named tv show. But seriously, for just one short week, get yourselves into bed. Pick out your own clothes. Put the dirty ones in the hamper. Pack your own lunch. And please don’t forget to feed the cat. You guys remember the cat, don’t you? The little furry creature you absolutely adored for two weeks and then started treating like an unwanted Furby you got three Christmases ago?

2. Watch the Throne.  Gang, I know there’s five of us and we only have one bathroom. It’s tough even under normal circumstances. This week? I don’t care if you’ve crapped your Hello Kitty underwear five times or have to pee so badly, you’re going to get kidney stones. If I want 45 minutes of uninterrupted bathroom time to shit, shower, shave and read the past three issues of the New Yorker, it’s mine. No barging in. No banging on the door. No wiggling your fingers under the door and yelling, “Hey dude, whatcha doing?” I’m hiding from all of you. That’s what I’m doing.

3. The answer is “No.” No, we’re not watching The Disney Channel. No, I’m not making each of you a separate dinner. No, I can’t carry all of you into the bedroom. And no, I can’t change that light bulb in the hallway. Normal services will resume in a week. Until then, please kindly make alternate arrangements.

4. Finders, Keepers. No explanations will be provided when you sadly discover that your favorite ice cream/wine/chocolate/nuts/cake has magically disappeared. And for the record, yes, I did go into your bedroom and eat all the candy that Grandma gave you last week, which you had so cleverly stashed in your pillowcase. 

5. About that wine…Vicodins are very large pils. In order to swallow them cleanly, Daddy is going to need a little wine, sometimes a lot. Unsolicited references to Heath Ledger will not be necessary. Thank you in advance.

6. Sexy time…The Doctor specifically mentioned that sexual activity is to resume as quickly as possible. See, he even wrote it down here on this prescription pad. I might not be able to do any of the heavy lifting, baby, but I am willing to experiment and see how quickly it takes to restore one’s serotonin to pre-surgical levels. You know, for science’s sake.

 

À LA CARTE

Speaking of cooking separate meals, am I the only one who feels like a short-order cook? The oldest girl eats virtually nothing, resulting in a battle of wills that The Girlfriend and I are currently losing. The middle one eats like a sumo wrestler, causing us to take out a second mortgage to fulfill her plethoric protein requirements. And the third seems to subsist solely on white pasta, milk, and rice. It’s like one is on Weight Watchers; one is on Atkins, and the third is on the South Beach diet.

In all seriousness, we’re more than a little concerned about the oldest girl. We're not sure whether she's going through a prolonged stage of being a picky eater or slowly developing an unhealthy relationship with food. Her ambivalence about eating causes us a lot of consternation, to the point that she's going to go see a nutritionist. Have any of you been in a similar situation? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. 

Back in my day, if I didn’t eat anything on the dinner table, my parents would subject me to an hour-long lecture about how my Korean father was raised solely on tree-bark, rotten kimchi, and pebble soup. If any of our dead relatives could see us refusing even a plate of beets, they’d spit on us from the high heavens. When guilt didn't work, the threat of a spanking usually did the trick.

Shit, I still reflexively flinch any time I see a plate of beets. 

 

OVERHEARD ON THE NYC SUBWAY

“I’m so fucking scared of all the rats running around in my ‘hood that I’ve started tucking my pants into my socks.

“I’m thinking about selling one of my sailboats. It's got a leak in the dining room, so I figure why not?”

"Are you taking me out on a date later? Because if you aren't, you'd best get your hands off my ass."

"Yo, that dude is like the gay Mexican Marlon Brando."

“I’m not fat by Texas standards. I’m just fat by New York standards. When I go to Houston, it’s like I’m anorexic. It’s pretty much the only reason that I even bother visiting my parents.”

"Yo, you didn't know they got seat fillers at the Oscars and all those other award shows? It’s so when they pan over the audience, it doesn’t look like a Mets game." 

 

PLAY BALL

Regardling my beloved NY Mets, I can honestly say that this is the earliest in the season that I have ever hated them. Out of life-long loyalty and a misguided sense of devotion, I will continue to root for them. However, I'd like to inform current team management that these games are being watched under protest.

In a side note, I was in Washington Square Park yesterday, watching a father toss a baseball with his very young son. At one point, the ball slipped through the boy’s hands and nailed him squarely in the face, resulting in an immediate bloody nose. The boy quickly dropped his glove, started sobbing uncontrollably and ran straight to his father for consolation.

I really wish the next NY Met player to get beaned with a baseball would charge the mound in a similar fashion, crying and holding his arms out for a hug. It would make the games eminently more watchable.

Until, you know, they can actually start winning some games. 

 

FITNESS MADE SIMPLE

Since I knew my convalescence would leave me bereft of physical activity for a while, I spent an inordinate amount of time at the gym prior to my surgery.

Living in Manhattan, my gym is normally swarming with intimidatingly fit people. However, during springtime, you’ll find a fair share of people who clearly didn't do much during the off-season and are now desperate to quickly get fit before summer hits. Recently, my gym has started bearing more resemblance to a West Virginia franchise of Old Country Buffet during a families-eat-free, double-coupon night. Some people are so out of shape that you’d swear that any mosquito that ever bit them is probably now on Lipitor.

I don’t begrudge these people for their slowly-paced walks on a treadmill. In fact, I wholeheartedly applaud them for taking action that will drastically improve their lives. It's not easy starting a fitness routine and I'm proud of them for making the effort. I do, however, have one simple piece of advice for those embarking on a new fitness routine.

Put down the copy of US Weekly and get serious.

Any sort of intellectual or communicative endeavor in the gym should be strictly verboten. Reading, talking, or texting while exercising is like wearing an i-pod while having sex. The brain's role in working out is primarily inhibitory and should be reduced as much as possible. As Mark Leyner once said, serious workouts should ideally be modeled on the copulatory abandon of the headless praying mantis.

While we’re at it, stay off the treadmill altogether. Steady-state cardio is vastly overrated, and I venture to say that most people probably get sufficient cardiovascular benefits running back and forth from the fridge in order to catch the latest broadcast of “The Biggest Loser. Do some push ups. Lift some weights. Take a yoga class. Try Zumba. Sign up for kick-boxing. Anything except that walking human habitrail. 

 

PORTRAIT OF A SHADY

The ubiquitous phenomenon known as “the selfie” always makes me ponder what future civilizations will think about this narcissistic period of time defined by obsessively taking one’s own portrait with a cell phone, filtering the image in the best possible light, and dispersing it on social media. Will future generations look back on our selfies with the same morbid disgust that we currently reserve for Victorian-era child mortuary portraits?

I get that we all want to structure the perception of ourselves in a way that reflects favorably upon ourselves. And really, there’s nothing inherently wrong with publishing the occasional self-portrait. After all, one’s appearance is a significant part of the life you’re presenting to the world. Taken tastefully, the “selfie” can even add a bit of context to your never-ending stream of lattes, cats, skylines, blurry concert photos, and food.

However, can we please all make a pact to use the selfie a bit more sparingly, like saffron in a fucking paella? In my humble opinion, selfies should be used about as frequently as one goes to the dentist. Once a year is fine. Twice is acceptable. Three is a bit obsessive. But any more than that and you’re crossing over into the realm of Narcissus.

Oh yeah, one more thing...Stop with the fucking duck lips! You don't look sexy. You look like a platypus prostitute. Stop scaring the kids.

Capiche?

 

READING

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris: Slightly uneven. Might be of greater interest to new readers rather than long-time followers. Entertaining but doesn’t have the side-splitting humor to which we’ve become accustomed.

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee: A highly intelligent and elegant novel about values, greed, family and modern morality. However, like Chinese food, I felt hungry after reading it.

Tenth of December by George Saunders: Possibly the most highly-anticipated but well-received book of the past year. Nobody today writes like Saunders. His off-beat wit is unlike anyone else. Perfect summer beach reading.  

May We Be Forgiven by A.M.Homes: Definitely worth ALL the hype. Highly recommended. She's definitely my new nerd crush. Be sure to read it this summer. 

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Ahmid: A fascinating novel about a Pakistani-American man torn between the history of two cultures. The book has some great ideas but somehow falls short of being great. Nonetheless, it’s an extremely thought-provoking post-9/11 novels that, even a month later, still has me thinking about it.

 

KANYE WEST, ON THE REWRITE TIP

Sometimes I like to think that somewhere in Kanye West's garbage can, there's a crumpled up Post-It note that says "Let's get glossed tonight. You can be my black Bob Ross tonight."

Does anyone besides me get that joke?

 

STIRRED, NOT SHAKEN

The Girlfriend and I have been living together for almost a year now. Since we both have joint custody of our children, this means that for 50% of our time, we have three children from two separate marriages living under one roof.

It's pure heaven and we don't take any of our happiness for granted. Luck and fate somehow conspired to bring us together. For that, we're eternally grateful.  

When a single parent first swims into the uncharted waters of post-divorce dating, there is so much that can go wrong; the whole experience can be fraught with anxiety. Sure, maybe the occasional one-night fling or brief summer romance can help soften the blow but when the initial euphoria ends, you realize that finding a life-long partner is going to be infinitely harder than the last time you were single.  

Even when you think you're ready for a serious relationship, you rarely are. The most important thing I tell anyone who gets divorced is to really take your time before jumping back into the dating scene. The dissolution of a marriage is a traumatic experience and you have to put the work into yourself before you're ready to be with another person. Patience is the key. Love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.

When the Boss Lady and I split up, I was forty years old with a four-year-old daughter. I had no idea what was in store for my future and my mind raced with a million questions.

Will I ever find someone who shares my perspective on life?

Does that woman even exist?

Will she mind that I have a kid?

Will she even like kids?

What if she wants one of her own?

What if she already has kids?

What if her kids hate me?

What if my kid hates her?

What if the kids hate each other?

The Girlfriend and I have been extremely lucky to find one another. I'll get into the trial and tribulations of forming a modern-day blended family in another post but, right now, I'll just say that things are going great. 

The two of us have a very loving relationship, and it's important for us to show our kids what a healthy relationship looks like. We're firm believers that children live what they learn. But in a way, that's all besides the point. What makes all of it so much easier is the fact that our kids truly do love one another. They love like sisters. They fight like sisters. And they make up like sisters.

While the Peanut have may have had a bit of a tougher time acclimating from being an only child to a middle one, it's been a major adjustment for all of us. Yet despite the fact that so many things could have gone wrong, we couldn't be happier about how well things have worked out. Three girls under one roof can be intimidating but, at the end of the day, they care for each other. They love one another. And they're lucky to have one another. What more could two divorced parents ask for?

Spring Break 4 Eva, y'all!

CHAOS THEORY: October 2012

It's a dark and rainy night in NYC. The Girlfriend is in Europe for work. And after a long weekend of solo parenting three young girls, I just want to lie down on the couch, crack open a bottle of wine, and watch some seriously bad television.

Before I get drunk and turn on the Mets game (the very definition of bad television,) I thought I'd share some quick thoughts with all of you.

 

SPEAKING OF WINE...

Before the summer ended, the Girlfriend and I took all the girls on a fantastic two-week vacation to visit her parents in Ireland.

In a way, it’s a shame I don’t live in Ireland. Here in America, if you’re drinking in a bar at 11:00 am, it means you’re an alcoholic. Over there, it means you’re a country gentlemen, an artist or a farmer. One thing I've learned about myself over the years is that there are very few things I enjoy more than drinking wine during the day.

Here at home, I find my schedule ill-suited to the rigourous demands of serious daytime drinking. I once read that binge drinking is defined as having “five or more drinks in one sitting.” I’m sorry, but in Ireland, that's called "lunch." Thankfully, a bottle of wine is only four drinks so I'm able to temper my oenophilia back in the States. Everything in moderation, my friends.

Or maybe I just need to move to Ireland. 

 

AND TELEVISION

Tonight, I've come to the conclusion that between work, the kids, The Girlfriend, and everything else in my life, I'm not watching nearly as much television as I should.

Lots of people today complain that they would like to have more time to spend with their family. I, on the other hand, complain that I’d like to have more time to watch television.

For example: I’ve never watched a single episode of Homeland. It’s supposed to be an awesome show. Like, really awesome. Maybe even better than Breaking Bad, which I also haven’t seen. I should be watching that too. I also haven’t seen Boardwalk Empire, Portlandia, Game of Thrones, True Blood, The Tudors or all of Mad Men. I’ll probably regret missing those shows when I’m old, much in the same way a lot of old people regret things like working less, having the courage to express their true feelings, or staying in touch with good friends. Screw that. Not watching more television truly makes me sad.

Unsurprisingly, the girls love television as much as I do. However, being outnumbered 4-1, this means my television diet consists mainly of Glee, So You Think You Can Dance, and The Voice. This is no fucking way for a man to live.

A stronger man might throw out the TV and become one of those insufferable people who brag about never watching TV. I hate people like that. Watch too much TV and yes, you’re a loser. But if you don’t watch any TV at all, then you’re a douche and I don’t want to know you.

So what to do? Do I get my own TV? Do I force the girls to watch what I want to watch? Do I love TV more than my own family?

It probably depends on what’s on.

 

KOREANS & THE IRISH

By the way, my trip to Ireland only confirmed my long-standing belief that the Koreans and the Irish share a special affinity. More often than not, people call us the "Irish of the East." We're stubborn, hard-working people with chips on our shoulders and a reputation for being tough, mean, chain-smoking drunks. We're quick to fight and (sometimes) quick to forgive.

We love boozing, singing, eating potato pancakes, spouting poetry in long drunken monologues, and getting into fights (preferably all on the same night.) Our people share a history of oppression from neighboring imperialistic countries and have a homeland still divided by politics. We both have a healthy disregard for authority. We'd kill or die for our families. 

 And nobody eats more fucking cabbage than we do.

Needless to say, I felt right at home.

 

FLYING THE (TOO) FRIENDLY SKIES

Is there any other activity besides air travel that combines so many different elements of unpleasantness in so many varying degrees? What else affords you the opportunity to sample from an emotional smorgasbord containing everything from mere boredom to abject terror?

The wonderful cuisine; the comfortable seats; the fresh cabin air...I could go on for days.

On our Dublin-NYC flight, the stewardess announced that four members of the Sweet Adelaines were on board and we were about to be "honored" by an in-flight performance. For those of you who don't know, Sweet Adelaines is "a worldwide organization of women singers committed to advancing the musical art form of barbershop harmony."

I'd rather listen to a dog bark at a fucking crow than endure the sounds of a barbershop quartet. It's bad enough United was charging me $7.00 for a crappy Bloody Mary but now I had to endure the aural equivalent of waterboarding? You should have seen the looks on our girls' faces. As their inflight movies were paused, all three of them took off their headphones, threw up their hands, and gave me the WTF face.

As payback, I tried to convince The Girlfriend to tell the flight attendants that I was a famous Korean rapper named MC Vanilla Rice and that I'd be more than happy to freestyle some rhymes for my fellow passengers. Gangnam style, yo.

She wouldn't go for it.

 

THINGS THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN INVENTED BY NOW

1. Pillows that constantly stay cool.
2. Invisible socks.
3. Skype in hologram form.
4. Light sabers.
5. Home dry-cleaning.

 

BOOKS I'VE READ LATELY

To paraphrase my boy Kanye West, "Does anybody read real shit anymore?"

"Lionel Asbo: State of England" by Martin Amis

Will any of Amis' novels stand the test of time? As a fan of his work as a journalist and critic, that's the question I kept asking after reading his eagerly-anticipated book about a Dickensian thug who wins the lottery. As always, Amis' writing crackles with witty prose, scathing satire, and flashes of brilliance, yet I was ultimately disappointed. His memoir, Experience, and his criticism, have been far superior to any of his novels since London Fields.

"Canada" by Richard Ford

When we think about the great American books of the early 21st century, Canada may be right up there. In this stark novel about a boy's life changed when his parents make the unlikely decision to rob a bank, Ford displays the skills of a linguistic master at the top of his game. This beautiful book reminds us why he may be our best living author. He writes with a confident, meticulous style that tenderly describes what it means to grow up in America. Ford's empathy, insight and descriptive narratives alone are worth reading.

"A Hologram for the King" by Dave Eggers

While I don't often read book reviews, the NY Times coverage of Egger's latest book was so effusively praising that I felt compelled to read it. The book follows the yearnings and disappointments of a downsized sales executive hoping to score a major technology contract. It's a bluntly simple narrative that lacks any emotional fullness. The writing is as uninteresting as the protagonist.

Currently reading: D.T. Max's Every Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace. While lacking the captivating prose of a great biography, it has a certain encyclopedic quality that is sure to galvanize DFW fanatics.

 

MY DINNER WITH ANDRE

While I am writing this and getting drunk and listening to my ipod, Yo Yo Ma just segued into The Notorious B.I.G. It made me wish that this playlist were a dinner party. I would either cook or make reservations for the three of us at a cool neighborhood restaurant where we could discuss the nature of life. Afterwards, we could all drink tequila and play round-robin backgammon.

 

THE DOWNSIDE OF DIVORCE

Being divorced parents who share custody of our children with our ex-spouses, The Girlfriend and I frequently talk about how greatly we underestimated the extent of the pain we'd feel when we weren't with our kids all of the time.

Don't get me wrong. We're both comfortable with our divorces and have no regrets about the choices we made. We may not have known it at the time but, in the end, we think they were decisions that will make us, our kids, and our former spouses ultimately much happier over the long term.

Yet you can't possibly imagine the overwhelming sense of withdrawal we have over the girls when we're not with them. If the girls were our romantic crushes instead of our kids, we'd spend all our time looking them up on Google, checking out their Facebook pages, riding our bikes past their house, dialing their numbers and hanging up before the phone even rings. It's a painful physical and emotional longing that scorches our emotions of guilt, remorse, sadness, shame, pity, anger, fear, and sorrow. 

Sure, there are times when we're all together and the girls are driving us so crazy that we sometimes turn hypocritical and want a break from the non-stop Mardi Gras festival that is our life as a co-mingled family living in close quarters.

But you can't imagine how painful it is, after an amazing week with them, to have to send them to their other parents as we hold them tightly to our chests and whisper in their ears, "See you in a few days, darlings. We love and miss you more than you can ever know."

It's the hardest thing I ever have to do and it breaks my heart every time.

These are my girls...

 

Dear Andy

Dear Andy,

Eleven years.

Eleven long years since we last spoke the night before that fateful morning. Eleven years since your life was tragically cut short. Eleven years of a life without you.

Somehow, it feels even longer.

This morning, the anniversary of your death feels strangely unlike those of the past. Why is that? Does time really heal all wounds? Can it truly alleviate the pain that reason cannot? Is my memory really losing hold of all those cherished details that are so significantly and transcendentally important? Could I possibly be failing to remember everything about a person who was so much a part of my lfe?

Is this what it means to get over the loss of a loved one?

I spoke to your mom last night, Andy. We talked about how we wanted to stop using 9/11 as a way to mourn you. It's too painful. Of course we remember you every day but maybe we should stop using this day as a reminder. Maybe we should move on with our lives. Maybe we need to start letting go of the past.

But can we really ever? Is that even possible? How does one even do that?

I sometimes think about what if 9/11 had never happened. How different would the world be today? The days and months following the collapse of the Twin Towers brought out the best in people, and for a brief time, I felt as if we, as a nation, were united in our desire for peace, our respect for the dead, and our love of country. Americans came together without pride or prejudice, and the rest of the world stood by us in solidarity and support.

Eleven years later, I feel like we've lost something. America feels different. It's a fractured and contentious place. Perhaps that's due to the fact that this is an election year but I deeply miss that spirit of community, humility, and grace that swept both America and the world.

More importantly, when I think about what if 9/11 had never happened, I think about how much richer my life would be with you still in it. 

I imagine meeting you and Kyle in Central Park and tossing a football around before grabbing dinner at his mom's house. I picture you taking the Peanut out for an afternoon of shopping and ice cream on a Saturday afternoon. I envision us hanging out at the beach, cooking dinner, and having marathon discussions about life, love, and how much we hate the NY Knicks.

But most of all, Andy, I always see us laughing.

It's one of the great ironies in my forty-three years on this planet that, more than anyone else whom I've ever known, you were the one who always taught me that life was short and that we were put here briefly to enjoy it and live it as fully as possible. Whenever I was depressed, you were always the one to cheer me up. Whenever I needed someone to talk to, I could always count on you.

I was only thirty-two years old when I lost you yet, eleven years later, I feel that the lessons your friendship taught me affect me even today. You showed me lessons about life that I will never forget. You taught me how to be a father. You taught me how to be a spouse. You taught me how to be a friend.Your impact on my life will never be replaced. Nor will it ever be forgotten.

I love and miss you terribly, brother.

I always have and I always will.

Forever your friend,
PIerre

 

Andrew Golkin, 1970-2001

Little Women

DO THE MATH

The Girlfriend is a woman. The Girlfriend has two daughters. I have one daughter. Do you know what that means? It means that I am constantly surrounded by females. When I discuss this with my guy friends, they all shake their heads and ask what it's like living with four females.

(1) Do you know how long it takes three little girls to get ready in the morning? On average, they each need to brush their hair about 2,304 times before they even think about brushing their teeth. If I need to take a shower in the morning, I set my alarm to beat the morning rush. If the shower takes more than three minutes, I start hearing little fists pounding on the bathroom door.

(2) Sometimes I leave the apartment just to take a crap.

(3) When you live with four females, the odds are high that at least one of them is going to be mad at you at any given time. As men, we learn at a young age that the best way to deal with an angry female is to avoid her. We also know that women are like wolves. When one is mad at you, they circle the wagons and mark you as prey. No man in history has survived the wrath of multiple females. It''s like being on the wrong end of a fast break on the basketball court. You run back to play defense but the odds are that someone is going to dunk on your head. Your only option is to flee the apartment immediately. Preferrably to go take a crap.

(4) The Drama! Oh, the Drama!

(5) The average female takes approximately 78 minutes to get ready to leave the apartment. Ok, now multiply that by four and you have a brief semblance of what it takes to go out for a simple family dinner. Mahatma Gandhi once said, "patience means self-suffering." Gandhi had four sons. Homeboy doesn't know shit about patience.

 

GIRL TALK

All kidding aside, I LOVE being surrounded by girls.

They're sugar and spice and everything nice.

Boys?

Boys scare the living shit out of me. They're like miniature chihuahas possessed by Satan, caked in mud and adrenaline. The boys I see while chaperoning school trips never cease to amaze me. On one recent 2nd grade outing, I watched a boy repeatedly bang his head against the side of a school bus until he almost passed out. When I asked him what the hell he was doing, he said "It's fun. Try it!" I then looked over to see his dim-witted dummy friends doing the same exact thing. Total. Fucking. Morons.

Friends of mine have a boy who has so much excess energy that they were forced to erect a trampoline in their backyard so the kid could burn off all the reckless energy and wouldn't set the house on fire.

Think I'm kidding?

According to a recent study, a baby boy is 76% more likely to set something his parents own ablaze. Boys are also much more likely to bully, use drugs, be violent, and go to jail. This also means that they're much more likely to shorten what's left of my precious life span.

Besides, have you hung out with any teenage boys lately? These kids speak mainly in audible grunts and nods. I’d be shocked if their facial muscles actually work.

Comedian (and father of two girls) Louis C.K. once wrote about how much more interesting girls are than boys. They're sensitive creatures who notice the world around them and take part in doing things that boys wouldn't even notice. They're thoughtful little flowers who treat people well and, for the most part, genuinely care about those around them. Boys? Eh...not so much. 

This is, of course, a generalization; a lot of girls end up being selfish and obnoxious as grown-ups, just as some men are really sensitive and thoughtful. But I generally prefer spending time in the presence of females. Girls are good roommates; they're good company when you go shopping; they're able to talk openly about their feelings; and they're a lot of fun to hang out with in the car when you're just sitting in traffic (nothing in life warms the cockles of my jaded heart more than hearing three little girls sing Adele songs from the back seat while we're jammed up on I-495 in a soul-crushing traffic jam that makes downtown Beijing look like the Bonneville Salt Flats.)

Those little things add up to a better life.

Also, in all honesty, I'm 43 years old. I think I'm too old to have a son. After a long day at work, I really don't want to go outside and toss a football with a boy, or bounce him around on the trampoline for hours, or go coach his Little League team. 

I just want to lie back, put my feet up on the couch, curl up with the girls, and watch two hours of "So You Think You Can Dance."

Crap, maybe all that estrogen is having an effect on me.

 

KEEP HOPE ALIVE!

Ever since the Peanut was born, I've spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about how best to raise a young girl in this day and age. Now that I worry about three little girls? It's all I ever think about.

While I contemplate the myriad of ways to build their confidence and self-esteem, nurture their creativity, and foster their talents, I also think about all the positive hopes I have for them in the future.

I hope they never lose their spark. I hope they're always honest and act with integrity. I hope they learn to take responsibility for their actions and own up to their mistakes.I hope they always do the right thing by helping those around them who are less fortunate. I hope they find partners who love, respect and honor them. I hope they always make the right decisions that will offer them a lifetime of happiness.  

But mostly, I hope they learn to start cooking and cleaning because I'm sick of picking up their crap and making dinners that nobody eats.

 

THE TOOTH FAIRY RECESSION OF 2012

The Peanut is almost 8 years old and only recently started losing her teeth.

Her first tooth, she lost at school. The second, she swallowed. And the third was extracted via dental floss and the help of some of her friends.

I remember losing my first tooth as a kid. I was so fucking excited that I ran up to my dad, showed him the missing tooth, and told him I couldn't wait for the Tooth Fairy to come visit me that night. If memory serves correctly, he opened his wallet, tossed me a single, and said, "There is no tooth fairy, kid. Go buy yourself a comic book."

When the Peanut's first tooth came out, she was so sad about losing it that we spent over two hours writing a letter to the Tooth Fairy that would have put the epistolary chapters of "Pride and Prejudice" to shame. The letter was replete with time-lapse descriptions of the loss, detailed drawings of said missing tooth, and heartfelt pleas for clemency.

That night, I crept into her bedroom like a ninja and slipped a fresh dollar bill under pillow. Expecting her to wake up happy as a proverbial clam, I instead was greeted in the morning by a forlorn child who looked like she'd lost her best friend.

ME: "Why the sad face, honey? Didn't the tooth fairy come last night?"

PEANUT: "She did but she only left me a dollar!"

ME: "A dollar? That's great!"

ME: "When the tooth fairy visited Alessandra, she got $5 and when she went to see Lucas, he got a box of chocolates and twenty bucks! How come I only got a dollar? It's not fair!"

Someone once told me that if kids complain about only getting a dollar, you should pull out one of their other teeth with a pair of pliers and tell them that every time they bitch, "the tooth fairy skims one off the top."

But being a sensitive modern day father raising his daughter in the moral Gomorrah known as New York City, I decided to start casually polling friends of mine about the current market rate for a lost tooth.

Turns out that most of my friends are averaging about $5 per tooth. My buddy Jason recently gave his six-year-old niece $20 after she lost her first tooth. She then counted her teeth and projected her earnings out over the next year. Her next step: discounted cash flow, with a demand for a lump sum payment up front.

Smart kid but damn, it's bad enough that I have to listen to the Peanut whine about all the toys that I never buy her, now she's going to take her measly dollar to school and some other kid is gonna wave twenty bucks in her face and make her cry.

IS THERE NO DECENCY IN THIS ECONOMY?

 

THE FAB 5

Statistically speaking, the modern family is no longer solely confined to being a mother, a father, and their biological children living together under one roof.

Never before have there been so many factors influencing what we define as a family. These days, more unmarried people are raising children. Gay and lesbian couples are having children of their own. Single women are having children without a male partner to help raise them. More people are living together without ever getting married. More people of different races are marrying each other. And more than ever, many women are choosing to not ever even have children.

Personally, I've always believed that the only definition of family that matters is your own. As many of us have learned, being related is no guarantee of love. Furthermore, the state sanctioning of what constitutes a family should have no impact on how we choose to define our own sense of family.

The important thing is to have your own clan of loved ones whom you love and are there for you. Whether it be close friends, loved ones, or small farm animals, all you really need is your own little gang.

This is mine. 

Hope you're all having a great summer...

 

Portrait of the Writer as a Young Girl

When I was a young child, I’d often fantasize that my parents were not really Asian immigrants who busted their asses to provide an idyllic upbringing for me and my younger brother. Instead, I had visions that I was simply a misplaced member of an obscure royal family and that, at any moment, my real family would find me and I would rightfully assume my title as the Crown Prince of Cashmeria.

I never mentioned this to the couple who considered themselves “my real parents” because I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. However, my mother must have innately picked up on it because from a very young age, my family nickname was “The Prince.” Naturally, this only confirmed my suspicions that I HAD been switched from birth at the hospital.

By the time I reached my teens, I deduced that my royal parents were having difficulties locating me so I set out upon the world to make my own fortune.

Every empire must start somewhere and mine began by working the night shift as a busboy at Bobby Rubino’s Place for Ribs.

For those of you who don't know of that fine dining establishment, Bobby Rubino’s is like the wife of T.G.I. Fridays that always has bruises on her face and claims she's just "clumsy.”

Located on a desolate highway in suburban New Jersey, the restaurant was a magnet for pot-bellied salesmen, lonely housewives, cops, and refrigerator repairmen. Every night, at the end of my shift, I would bicycle home reeking of cheap barbecue sauce, collared greens, and desperation. Did I mention that I was only fifteen years old?

The sole highlight of my employment there was the night Eddie Murphy came to visit “the premiere place for ribs and BBQ.”

Let’s remember that back in 1985, Eddie Murphy was enjoying an unprecedented run of success that has rarely been repeated in Hollywood. Still shy of his 26^th birthday, he was already coming high off the heels of “Saturday Night Live,” “48 Hours," and “Trading Places.”

Yes, Eddie ultimately embarrassed himself by releasing the Rick James-produced single “Party All The Time” and had yet to deploy his star power to write, direct and produce his dream project, the ill-begotten comedy-drama crime period pic known as “Harlem Nights.” And sure, it was years later that his drunken one-night stand resulted in a positive paternity test with Spice Girl Melanie B and he got arrested for soliciting a transvesite prostitute. However, at that precise moment back in 1985, Eddie Murphy was the fucking MAN! Has anyone ever had the remarkable 5-year-run that he had back in the mid-80’s? At the moment, the only ones who come to mind are Wayne Gretzky, Elle MacPherson, and Notorious B.I.G.

As soon as Eddie Murphy walked into our rib joint, he started throwing hundred-dollar bills in the air like confetti at a parade.

Clearing the Murphy entourage’s greasy plates and doling out pre-packaged lukewarm Wet Naps, I netted about $500 that night. For a fifteen-year-old wanna-be-tycoon, this was a veritable fortune.  A brave new world had suddenly opened up before my very eyes and I astutely realized that there were easier ways to make a buck.

By the time I arrived on the west coast as a naïve but ambitious college freshman at Berkeley, I was determined to earn enough money whereby I could effortlessly afford ski weekends in Squaw Valley, oysters in Point Reyes, and Bloody Marys at Sam’s Café. Essentially, I wanted to be a Marin County housewife.

A brief summary of jobs that I had in college:

(1) Watching coma patients and recording any changes in their status.

(2) Tending gardens as an assistant to a landscape architect. I was quickly revealed as a city slicker upon clearing weeds by hand and excitedly yelling, “Holy crap, escargots!” Up until then, I had previously believed that snails originated solely from the scenic waters of Bourgogne and were indigenous in the U.S. only on the plates of wealthy Park Avenue matrons dining at La Cote Basque. Have I mentioned that I was the Fresh Prince?

(3) Crawling through empty dormitories at the end of every semester to scavenge discarded text books that could be re-sold to the student bookstore.

Eventually I got a highly-lucrative job teaching tennis to housewives at a country club. While my peers were making $5.00/hour toiling at the library or making avocado-and-sprouts sandwiches at Café Med, I was booking a relatively cushy $35/hour working on my tan and cooing the phrase “lightly grab the racquet and shake hands with it gently.” Could life get any better?

After leaving college, I moved to Washington, DC where, after several fruitless job endeavors, I found work doing something I truly enjoyed...writing.

I loved writing for a living. Not only was it intellectually stimulating but I also found that I enjoyed the solitude of the work. Whether penning lifestyle pieces for local magazines or dissecting government policy for think tank journals, I felt as if I had found my true calling. Yes, I thought to myself. This is the life for me.

After several arduous and back-breaking years, I began thinking that maybe it wasn't the life for me. As anyone who has spent any time as a freelance writer knows, it's incredibly stressful trying to figure out where or when your next paycheck is coming. It's disheartening to spend two weeks writing a piece only to be paid less than one might have received working at a fast-food restaurant. Writing requires such an indomitable spirit and a steadfast dedication to craft that I sometimes believe that the low wages exist solely to weed out the disingenuous.

Harlan Ellison, in an interview published in Writer's Digest, once said that anyone can become a writer. The trick is not in becoming a writer, it is in staying a writer. Day after week after month after year.

Ultimately I chose to abandon writing as a career because I not only had doubts about my ability but also because I found my personality ill-suited for the personal sacrifices required to pursue the craft. After all, I wasn't nicknamed the Prince for nothing. If I could pursue another career, make enough money to eat sushi every night and travel the world, yet still pursue writing as a hobby that was probably good enough for me. Once I came to that realization, I never looked back.

Until today.

Tonight, as I was getting the Peanut ready for bed, we sat down and I asked her what she wanted to do for a living when she grew up.

"I think I want to be a writer when I get older, Daddy. Or maybe an artist."

"Well, kiddo. You know that you're immensely talented and you can be anything you want to be when you grow up."

"How about you, Daddy? Would you want to be a writer too? Wouldn't it be great if we could both be writers together?"

"Maybe, sweetie. Right now, I'm more focused on working so that we have a roof over our heads and food on our table. Maybe someday, we'll both be writers and we can write in the same room together."

"I'd like that, Daddy. I'd like that a lot."

Shortly thereafter she fell asleep and I was left feeling an enormous sense of pride. In some ways, I felt like one of those soccer/football/hockey dads who never quite get over their glory days and wish nothing more than having their child fulfill all of their own dreams and fantasies. But really, it was something more than that. It was this incredible feeling that this little kid whose diapers you changed and whose boogers you wiped suddenly, for the first time, has her own set of dreams and fantasies.

Recently, the Peanut wrote a poem about love that moved me beyond belief.

I'm speechless.

She's SEVEN.

Clearly, she's already a better poet that I have ever been.

I'm not posting this as one of those overly proud parents boasting "Look and see what my progeny has done!" I'm posting it because as an adult, one always forgets the depth of emotion of which little children are capable. I'm posting it because I'm a little at a loss on how to best foster her talents and dreams of being a writer. And I'm posting it because I continue to be in awe of the constant surprises that come with parenthood.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the day when the Peanut's first book is published and I can start pimping out her Amazon page to all of you. 

Maybe then, I can finally retire to the good life.

You know, until my "real" parents find me...

CHAOS THEORY: February 2012

Random thoughts on a rainy Wednesday NYC night...

DO REAL MEN DO YOGA?

Internet, I have a confession.

I am now a person who does yoga. Yes. I am a Yogi. Me.

It all started out innocently. I just wanted to add a different dimension to my workouts. Lifting gets boring (those weights are heavy!) and running on treadmills makes me feel like a lab rat. So despite my general dislike of anything that reeks of a pretentious New Age fad, I thought I would expand my horizons and give yoga a try. At the very least, I figured I'd get to stare at my girlfriend's gorgeous body for 90 minutes. Where was the downside?

Holy cow. I'm hooked.

Seriously, I love yoga. I'm sleeping better. I'm breathing easier. I'm less stressed. I've become stronger and more flexible in ways that I had never imagined. I'm bending to Downward Facing Dog, dropping to Chataranga, and reaching to Tadasana.

Despite my fears, I'm pleased to report that I have yet to develop an unfettered love of kombucha, Lulu Lemon, or patchouli. And the day that I say goodbye to any of my buddies by chanting "Namaste" is probably the same day you'll find my dead body in the bottom of the Hudson River.

Luckily, I think my yoga teacher knows the limits of my tolerance for pretension. For example, instead of forcing me to hear Ravi Shankar jam out on a sitar, we ended this week's lesson by lying in savasana while listening to Zero 7. I'm clearly doing the upscale downtown Soho version of yoga.

Anyway, I really do love it.

If I could only resist the temptation to fart out of my third eye every five minutes, I think this yoga thing might be for me.

 

DREAM DINNER

The year I was applying to colleges, Harvard, Stanford and Princeton all asked potential matriculents to write an essay answering the same question: If you could have dinner with any figure or figures, living or dead, real or historical, who would it be and why?

I can't remember exactly what I wrote but I'm sure my 17-year-old pompous self started the essay by stating, "Don't you mean WHOM?" 

I was thinking about this today because last night, I woke up from a weird dream that had a similar motif. The details of the dream are fuzzy but it entailed a dinner with me, my girlfriend, Oprah and Alec Baldwin.

In the dream, we start off with champagne and cheese. Alec and I huddle on one side of the table talking about mayoral politics, the Knicks, and Peter Luger steaks. Oprah turns to my girlfriend and says, "Girl, you lookin' good." I love it when Oprah gets a little sista-y. Nobody really knows the real Oprah. When the cameras are off, the girl is mad cool.

Over dinner, they start sharing amazing celebrity gossip. Oprah reveals the entire Brad and Jen saga, even though she promised Jen she wouldn’t. Alec tells us about the time he almost had a threesome with Tina Fey and Condoleeza Rice. Amazing!

After a few drinks, I convince Alec that we should start prank calling Rudy Guiliani, Rupert Murdoch, and Kim Basinger. Nobody picks up so we start drinking martinis before dessert.

After dinner, we make s'mores, cuddle on the couch, and watch re-runs of Extreme Home Makeover. Then suddenly, the dream ended. I woke up, jumped in the shower, and went to work.

*FYI, in case you were wondering, I didn't get accepted into Harvard, Stanford, or Princeton.

 

 BOOK SHELF

Much to my own detriment, I tend to gravitate a little too much towards "serious" literary writers. Because I've always been interested in determining how the writing of contemporary heavyweights (Amis, McEwan, Eugenides, Roth, Atwood, Coetzee, et al) compares to the classics of the Western canon, I often miss out on less-recognized writers who are producing great work. To remedy that shortfall, I've just ordered the following books from Amazon.

Charles D'Ambrosio's The Dead Fish Museum

Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply

John Jeremiah Sullivan's Pulphead: Essays

Wes Moore's The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

Have you read any of these? Or read anything else lately that you can recommend? Let me know.

 

THE END IS NIGH?

Speaking of books, NY Times best-selling novelist, reality television star, and professional guidette Nicole "Snooki" Polizetti announced today that she is pregnant with her first child. If the baby is born on December 21, 2012, then the Mayans were right.

 

RANDOM TEXT MESSAGES FROM MY FRIENDS, VOL. 8

"Hey man, am I supposed to tip the nurses?"

"Who knew Maria Shriver had the most appalling voice in the world? No wonder Arnie sought solace with the Spanish help!"

"Did you know that when girls eat asparagus, their pee smells bad too?"

"You'll be glad to know that mock turtlenecks are still alive and well in San Francisco."

"Isn't couture arguably ephemera?"

"I just reverse-engineered a Cobb salad!"

"Before people get a divorce, they should try switching the side of the bed they sleep on. Problem fixed!"

 

ON PARENTHOOD

I've been finding it increasingly difficult to write here about parenthood.

In the same manner that one's life becomes more complicated as one gets older, parenthood also becomes progressively more challenging as one's child gets older. The stakes are higher. The repercussions become more serious. And every event takes on greater significance. Navigating the perils of changing diapers become laughable after one realizes that those were the gravy days.

It's difficult to explain parenthood to those who don't yet have children, because becoming a parent is an intensely personal experience. Every child is different. Every parent is different. Every culture has their own way of doing things. The experience is fundamentally different for every new parent in the world, yet children are the one universally shared thing that binds our giant collective chain letter of human beings together, regardless of nationality and language. How do you explain the unexplainable?

As Jeff Atwood succintly said,

As an adult, you may think you've roughly mapped the continent of love and relationships. You've loved your parents, a few of your friends, eventually a significant other. You have some tentative cartography to work with from your explorations. You form ideas about what love is, its borders and boundaries. Then you have a child, look up to the sky, and suddenly understand that those bright dots in the sky are whole other galaxies.

You can't possibly know the enormity of the feelings you will have for your children. It is absolutely fucking terrifying.

It never ceases to amaze me how much I love the Peanut.

The Peanut is now seven and while she has grown up to be an incredible child, I often find myself constantly thinking about her past, present, and future. Wasn't it just yesterday that I was changing her diapers? How does the time fly by so quickly? With all the dramatic changes she's experienced in her life thus far, am I really doing absolutely everything in my power to ensure her current happiness and well-being? What obstacles lie ahead? In what ways will she thrive? Where will she struggle? How can I protect her?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Ultimately I remember to take a deep breath, bring myself back to earth, and remind myself that while the days may be long, the years go by fast. The kid is only seven.

And you know what?

Seven is cool.

This is seven.

Hoop Dreams: The Rise of the Asian-American Baller

When I was a teenager, I thought nothing in the world would be cooler than being a professional sportswriter.

See, as a young boy, I was an extremely shy kid and more than a little introverted. More often than not, I could usually be found with my head buried in a book or furiously writing stories in a tattered journal that accompanied me at all times. I was a studiously sullen kid with few friends and I recall spending a large part of my adolescence alone in my room with a good book and the door shut.

My quiet time, as my mom called it.

Eager to ensure that I get some exposure to fresh air, my mother signed me up for every sports league in town. To the surprise of everyone (most notably myself,) sports came naturally to me and I turned out to be a fairly gifted athlete. Soon I was playing competitive junior tennis in tournaments all over the east coast. I was an all-star pitcher, shooting guard, and soccer player. Eventually, I even excelled to the point where colleges began recruiting me for my athletic prowess.

In a way, sports saved me.

While that might be a slight exaggeration, it's a fundamental truth that sports did drastically alter the arc of my life. Growing up as a young Asian-American book nerd, I wasn't exactly brimming with confidence. Having been raised in a predominantly upper-class white environment, I was often bullied and made to feel as if I were inferior or "different."

But it's true what they say...sports level the playing field.

With every successful moment on the court or on the field, I found myself brimming with ever-growing levels of confidence. I became absolutely sure in my abilities and never once doubted that I was equal to the task at hand. Surprisingly, I found that I absolutely loved the competiveness that would allow me to reach higher and higher levels. I feared nothing. I yearned to hit the winner that would finish off my opponent. I wanted to be the one taking the last-minute shot with the game on the line. I craved having the pressure of being alone in the spotlight.

Eventually, this all leaked over into my personal life. I became much more confident, self-assured, and outspoken in all facets of my life. I learned to overcome my insecurities of being an outsider and I found myself being accepted in ways that I never had before.

But once a literary nerd, always a literary nerd.

So after discovering that I possessed a modicum of athletic skill, I soon become an avid fan of not only all sports but also sportswriting. I was fortunate to have grown up in an era when sportswriting was at its highest level of craftsmanship. There was no doubt in my mind that it was a genuine form of literature. The exquisite and resonant long-form pieces written by guys like Frank Deford, Roger Angell, Charles Pierce, David Halberstam, and George Will were as good as anything I'd ever read by Hemingway, Faulkner, or Joyce.

More than anything, what these writers taught me was that sports are not only a prime venue for the expression of human beauty and physical accomplishment but can also reflect transcendent themes in life and society. At the end of the day, I truly do like to believe that sports is human life in microcosm.

Or as George Sheehan once eloquently put it, "sports is where an entire life can be compressed into a few hours, where the emotions of a lifetime can be felt on an acre or two of ground, where a person can suffer and die and rise again on six miles of trails through a New York City park. Sport is a theater where sinner can turn saint and a common man becomes an uncommon hero, where the past and the future can fuse with the present. Sports is singularly able to give us peak experiences where we feel completely one with the world and transcend all conflicts as we finally become our own potential."

So yeah, I fucking love sports.

But where am I going with all this?

Two words.

Jeremy Lin.

Ever since the Jeremy Lin phenomenon began (and for you readers who don't know about "Lin-Sanity, read this non-sports fan guide for a full update,) my e-mail box has been flooded with messages and my phone has been ringing off the hook. Everyone from friends, casual acquaintances, media outlets, and readers of this site have reached out to me.

"Yo, man! How about your boy J-Lin?"

"We'd love to hear your thoughts on Jeremy Lin and his significance to Asian-America."

"You watch the Knicks last night? Lin-sanity rules again!"

As both a proud Asian-American man and an avid sports fan, I have to admit that the Jeremy Lin story fascinates me. Here was an undiscovered player barely drafted into the NBA who has singlehandedly, in the span of one week, lit the basketball world on fire, reignited the moribund Knicks franchise, and become a national and cultural phenomenon that has taken the country by storm. 

At first, I wasn't going to write about Jeremy Lin because part of me just wanted to yell out, "So what? You don't think Asian guys can play hoops? In this day and age, are we really so surprised by the ascendence of an Asian-American baller?"

As a society, have we become so inundated with the emasculation of the Asian-American male that when one of us displays incredible physical prowess, we're shocked beyond belief?

But this was naive of me.

Seeing a fellow Asian-American man dominate in the predominantly rarified world of professional basketball was confusing. I found myself having feelings of pride that I couldn't easily explain. Jay Kang of Grantland put it much better:

"What I was trying to describe was the very strange, specific, and rare pride one feels when watching one of their own succeed in a forbidden field. Basketball, more than any other professional sport, is an exhibition of the human body and therefore lends itself to heavy racial codification. The experience of seeing an Asian American body within that arena chased away all the standard emasculating stereotypes, at least for a while. Yes, Yao and his cohort of gawky, jump-shooting countrymen had already played in the NBA. But they didn't count. For this particular revenge fantasy, our hero needed to be able to understand every single racist thing said to him on the court and respond by dropping 30."

There have been other Asian-American athletes who have excelled in other sports, only to elicit little or no response from the community. Across the Bay from Lin’s hometown of Palo Alto, baseball stud Kurt Suzuki just turned in the best season of any position player on the Oakland A’s. A little way down the 101 in San Luis Obispo, Chris Gocong’s Philadelphia Eagles jersey hangs in the locker room at Cal Poly. Hines Ward was Super Bowl MVP and a possible Hall of Famer. So why does Jeremy Lin, shooting guard for the Harvard Crimson, captivate us in a way that few professional athletes ever have?

I'm not exactly sure.

Maybe we, as a nation, truly do appreciate the underdog story. The amazing thing about Jeremy Lin's rise to cultural significance is that, in many ways, it seems to have transcended race. Everyone from Harvard grads to blue-collar workers to faithful Christians to workers who have been dumped by their bosses to those whom have never been given a chance...everyone seems to have found a connection with a nerdy point guard who just weeks ago was more likely to be found bagging groceries than electrifying sold-out arenas.

There's no comparison to what Jeremy Lin has accomplished over the past two weeks.

Certainly not from the point of view of race.

And a lot of it is about race, isn't it?

As Bill Simmons wrote in Grantland today,

"There's been a subtle racism lurking behind everything that's happened these past two weeks; you can't help but notice it when they show someone holding a "Yellow Mamba" sign in the stands, or with the people who crossed the line on Twitter (that's still going), or even the late-night monologue-type jokes like "Of course Jeremy Lin would go well with MSG" or "Who said Asians couldn't drive?," which sound relatively harmless until you think, Wait, nobody would be making 'black' jokes if Lin were black."

At the end of the day, I'm an avid sports fan. And as a sports fan, I want to see Jeremy Lin succeed. It's a great American underdog story that truly does transcend sports.

But more importantly, as an Asian-American man, I want to see Jeremy Lin succeed because it's one more step towards knocking down stereotypes about Asian-American men.

I never had a role model who looked like me when I was growing up. I wish I had. Maybe the path would have been easier. Maybe it would have been the same.

At the end of the day, I'm a 43-year-old Asian-American man who has struggled with my identity for much of my life. And while I don't believe that professional athletes are role models or heroes, I do believe that there's something to be said about inspiration. No matter one's color, I think we can all agree that Jeremy Lin is a great inspiration.

Still, I look forward to the day when nobody thinks twice about an Asian-American basketball player dominating the NBA. I look forward to the day when nobody thinks twice about an Asian-American leading man, an Asian-American rock star, or a studly Asian-American playboy.

But until that day?

Represent, J-Lin.

Represent.

 

CHAOS THEORY: December 2011

Random thoughts on a Monday night...

MERRY BIRTHDAY HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Every holiday season, I struggle a bit over how to explain Christmas to the Peanut.

Generally speaking, I am wholly unqualified to have this conversation with my daughter. Being somewhat immature and fairly agnostic, I often celebrate Christmas by singing "Happy birthday, Baby Jesus!" all day long and toasting God's only son with a glass of single-malt scotch while acting surprised when opening presents that I've bought for myself.

Ideally, I'd like to deemphasize both the commercial and religious aspects of Christmas. Although I struggle with my own faith, I think it's semi-important to try and frame Christmas in terms of the Nativity and the day that Jesus was born. However, at the age of seven, the only Jesus whom the Peanut knows is the parking garage attendant down the block. Things could get a little confusing. I really need to start taking her to church one of these days.

At the same time, I'd also like to forgo too many discussions about Santa. The Peanut is only seven years old and I'm quite sure that she does not yet need to be concerned about omnipotent mythical father figures making value judgments about her behavior. On the flip side? Pretending to call Santa on my cell phone has stopped many a tantrum in mid-stride.

So to sum up: no religion, light on Santa. What's left?

Essentially, I'd like to convey to her that the true spirit of Christmas is love, peace, and good will towards men. I'd like to explain to her that Christmas is a time of celebrating life with one's friends and family.

And naturally, I have no desire to withold from her all the fun festivities associated with the holiday season: Christmas trees, stockings on the mantel, egg nogg, chocolate Advent calendars, and Santa's cookie plate. Plus, I'll be the first to admit it; I fucking love Christmas music. Little Drummer Boy? I listen to that shit all year round.

It's a fine line, isn't it?

I'm thinking of doing a demonstration with some sock puppets. Or maybe I can find an "Elmo Loves Christmas" DVD. I hate that little red furry bastard but he's been helpful in the past (see "Toilet Training: 2004.") Or maybe there's something on youtube?

Anyone got any good ideas?  Help a brother out.

 

MEANINGLESS CONFESSIONS

1. Between Michael Pollan and the plethora of food documentaries to which I've become addicted, I can no longer put anything in my mouth unless I know its provenance. Sometimes I open my mouth and I'm shocked to hear myself speak: Are these free-range chickens? Is the fish wild or farm-raised? Are these avocados organic? Is there any gluten in the kale salad? Somewhere in the heavens, my tough-as-nails Korean ancestors are sighing heavily.

2. I have tried to like Kings of Leon many times and have failed. I'm now giving up.

3. Am I the only one who is genuinely surprised to discover that I wasn't the lucky person to win the previous night's lottery?

4. I just bought a crockpot.

 

LITERARY

1. Thus far, Jeffrey Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot" wins my vote for best book of the year. The “marriage plot” referred to in the title is a term literary theorists use to label novels of courtship; think Jane Austen, Eliot and Anthony Trollope. The protagonist, Madeline Hanna, is writing her college thesis on the subject. Not coincidentally, at the end of the day, this novel is really nothing more than an elegantly-written, old-fashioned story centered around Madeline and her two suitors. They simply don't write books like this anymore. What makes it such an exceptional novel is that Eugenides is a superbly gifted storyteller who writes as if he has nothing to prove and by doing so, shows that he may be the great American writer many have suspected him of being.

2. Overhyped Book of the Year: "The Art of Fielding" by Chad Harbach. All the critics seemed to love this debut novel by one of literary mag N + 1's co-founders and I eagerly awaited its arrival on my doorstep. While brilliant at times, it ultimately disappointed. Was it the underdevelopment of the main characters? Was it the sophomoric portrayal of human relationships? Was it the lack of humor pervading story? I'm not quite sure. Nor do I really care.

3. I have just started Haruki Murakami's "1Q84," his 928-page surreallist novel tackling the themes of murder, history, cult religion, violence, family ties and love. While I am a huge Murakami fan, this one doesn't strike me as a breezy page turner. 

4. I'm also reading Spalding Grey's memoirs. Incredibly written but can only be read in short doses. Since we all know how the story ends (suicide,) it's a bit like having lunch with Sylvia Plath every day.

 

GOOGLE IS MY SANTA CLAUS

Lest one think from my earlier musings that I am some sort of Scrooge or a grinch, I respectfully disagree.

As far as the Peanut is concerned, there really is a Santa Claus and he is solely responsible for all those magical presents that miraculously appear underneath the tree on Christmas morning. I cherish every single moment with my daughter but there are few things that make me as happy as seeing her beautiful face light up with glee when she wakes up on Christmas morning and runs to the tree to see what Santa has brought her.

Every year, I have the Peanut write a letter to Santa explaining why she's been a good kid and what she would like for Christmas.

This year, her list includes a karaoke machine, Paper Jamz, Zoobles, Polly Pocket, Arthur Christmas, Air Swimmers, Sing-A-Ma-Jigs, and a Doggie Doo.

Aside from the karaoke machine, I literally have no fucking idea what the hell she is talking about. It's like she's speaking a foriegn language. Suddenly I'm having flashbacks to being a little kid and seeing the blank expressions on my immigrant parents' faces when I endlessely blathered on about Coleco game machines, Brite-Lites, Masters of the Universe action figures, Gobots, and a Rubik's Cube. How could they not know about these things?

Sigh...

Part of me wants to pay it forward by just getting her a full set of Encyclopedia Britannica, a $20 bill, and a new Mighty-Mac jacket.

On the flip side, my daughter has me wrapped me around her little finger so my Amazon shopping cart is already locked and loaded. 

Yes, Peanut.

There really is a Santa Claus.

 

A Brief Note on Giving Thanks

As I look around me, I can't help but get the feeling that America seems to be an angry place these days. 

We're angry that a shrinking portion of the population controls a growing portion of the money. We're angry that public schools are failing our children. We're angry that our so-called leaders are more concerned with partisan mudslinging than solving our nation''s problems. But more than anything else, we all seem to be angry with one another.

Look, I get it. We're a PMS nation built on anger. Heck, the very foundation of this country was built on anger. "What, you're going to tax us without fair representation? You're going to tell us whom to worship?  You're going to treat us like 2nd-class citizens? Fuck that. We're starting our own country!"

However, we seem to have reached a point where the appropriate response to life's irritations is sheer anger and rage. Have you read the newspaper lately? Every minor tangle is a potential interpersonal Gulf of Tonkin incident. Funny looks on the street result in brawls. Incidents on the highway result in road rage. Innocuous slights by strangers end up in wrathful revenge. 

Now, don't get me wrong. Everyone feels anger. I don't ever want to NOT feel anger. But, as Dennis Miller once said, the collective mistake we're making is this: Anger used to be a bass line that we used to merely provide a funky bottom to our cultural zeitgeist. It's now broken out into a shrieking guitar solo that's drawing a rivulet of blood from all our ears.

So maybe during this holiday week when we get together with all of our weird relatives and stuff our faces, we can turn the dial down on some of that hate and take some time to remember how lucky all of us truly are. In the grand scheme of things, even the most disgruntled among us is living better than 99% of our fellow inhabitants on the planet. Trust me, I've seen it firsthand.

For better or worse, let's give thanks and be truly grateful for all that we do have in our lives. Let's remember to help those who are less fortunate. And let's always remember that health, love and friendship should never be taken for granted.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and your families. Good will towards all.

Peace out, homies.

 

Random Text Messages From My Friends, Vol. 7

The following text missives from my cell phone are all about to get purged so, as usual, I thought I'd jot them down here for posterity. Names and telephone numbers have been withheld to protect the (not-so) innocent.

"The best part about Halloween is giving out packets of ketchup to little kids."

"What's worse? Piercing your newborn's ears or giving her a lower back tattoo?"

"Wife walked in on me doing the robot. It didn't faze her. The thrill is gone."

"Patron tequila with limes doesn't count as a juice cleanse, homeboy."

"Just ate shrimp cocktail, lobster salad, sushi, snow crabs. I'm about to crap The Deadliest Catch."

"Ever walk by a group of women and hear one of them tell her friends 'I''d tap that?'"

"Don't judge Heather Mills until you've hopped a mile in her shoe."

"Best part about working for myself is giving the boss handjobs under the desk."

"Dallas is making me feel very brunette."

"Please say you're kidding about the colonic. Is crapping bib lettuce and spicy lemonade not enough for you?"

"I want to be me when I grow up but with more hair and cars and a better second serve."

"Thinking of starting an Alan Parsons Project cover band. You want in?"

"Can't decide what I like most about this party: all the recently divorced men or the baby lamb chops."

"I live where botox and silicon runneth over but the gustatory landscape is severely lacking."

"My husband is reading Vogue and I'm watching the Detroit Lions game. That answer your question?"

"Everyone here reminds me of mashed potatoes. White and lumpy."

"Remember when we used to to party and go to rap shows? I'm now at the Bryan Ferry concert drinking chardonnay. Where did things go wrong?"

"The only guys who like Coldplay are the ones who want to sleep with girls who like Coldplay."

"Just spent 2 hours on WebMD. Convinced I'm dying. Fare thee well!"

 

MetroDad GiveAway: Your turn, folks. What's the funniest or most random text message you've received? The reader who submits a comment that makes milk come out my nose wins a brand-new Apple IPod Shuffle. Be sure to leave your e-mail address in the comments.

 

Day Tripping

I have repeatedly refused to chaperone the Peanut’s field trips, even when they were on days I wasn’t particularly busy at work and could easily have done so. The thought of riding in an old school bus with a bunch of screaming second graders holds about as much painstaking appeal to me as teaching my parents how to program their DVR.

Unfortunately, the Peanut’s most recent field trip happened to coincide with her seventh birthday. In the course of asking my lovely daughter what she wanted to do on her "special" day, she looked me dead straight in the eye and said, “I want you to chaperone my class trip.”

Damn, this kid is good.

As far as I can tell, the primary job requirement of a parent chaperone is ensuring that no child gets lost or left behind.  Secondary responsibilities include poking straws into milk cartons, breaking up fights, wiping boogers, and fielding questions.

Lots of questions...

"Why do you wear sunglasses indoors?"

Because your pink Hello Kitty sweater is searing my corneas.

"Why are you wearing all black clothes?"

I’m mourning the loss of my childhood.

"What did you bring for lunch?" 

Grilled iguana, a couple of corn dogs and a shrimp cocktail. 

"What do you do for a living?"  

Play drums in a Justin Bieber cover band.

"Where do you live?"  

In a van down by the river.

 This Guantanamo-style school bus interrogation literally went on for about fifteen minutes and ended only when the little midgets decided that my answers were wholly unsatisfactory. Suddenly, they turned their backs to me and yelled out to my daughter, “Hey Peanut, how come your dad is so weird?”

To which my daughter yelled back, “He’s not weird. He’s just goofy.”

Sarcasm is lost on the young.

To add insult to injury, the field trip was to see an experimental dance troupe. Had I known this beforehand, I would have faked my own death. Don't get me wrong. I am all for supporting the arts but spending two hours watching dancers reenact the anguished pain of a butterfly via interpretive movement is more than a man can bear.

In all honesty, I was hoping to catch a quick nap during the performance. Here's what I did instead:

(1) Smack three boys in the back of the head for talking loudly.

(2) Comfort a crying girl being mercilessly teased by two mean girls.

(3) Enact revenge on the mean girls by telling them that they were ugly.

(4) Learn the latest incarnations of the time-honored clapping game, Miss Mary Mack.

(5) Realize my shortcomings as a chaperone, leave the theater, and smoke a cigarette.

Apparently, the school has plenty of eager-beaver moms who are more than willing to volunteer for these trips so I'm fairly certain that my inaugural chaperone experience may have been my last.

 

Maybe I'll join the PTA instead.

 

Or maybe I'll do what a buddy's dad used to do whenever he was asked to volunteer for anything. He'd immediately whip out his checkbook and say, "Ok, whom do I have to write the check to make sure that I never even get asked to volunteer for anything again?"

 

Of course, this was the same father who once said to my friend, "I didn't even talk to you until you were three years old. Why? Because you had nothing interesting to say."

 

Pure genius.

 

 

Humble thanks to the folks over at Babble for naming me as one of the Top 50 Dad Blogs and also the Best Written. When I first started this site, there were very few men writing about their experiences as fathers. It warms the cockles of my soul that there are now enough to actually compile a list. I hadn't heard of many of these sites before so I'm eager to check them out. You should too.

 

Return of the Mac

Lately I've been inundated with e-mails from friends, readers, news outlets, and PR agencies imploring me to write more frequently on this site.

I've always tended to squirm a little whenever this blog gets any sort of attention. It's sort of a mixed blessing for me because, as I've mentioned before, I have zero interest in being a "popular" blogger or making any money off this site. There are over 57 million blogs out there and I come across quite a few that are very clear about their naked ambitions (ad revenue! book deals! t-shirt sales!) 

This, my friends, is definitely not one of those blogs. 

You see...in that wide divide between complete obscurity and worldwide fame, I believe there exists a great number of pan flashers, egoists, and one-hit wonders hoping for a giant slice of the adulation quiche. As my man Dennis Miller likes to say, "while most of us are content to simply rubberneck the carnage on the side of the road, too many people these days are desperately striving to actually BE the car wreck."

Me? I don't want to be that wreck. I've always believed that popularity is a goal for the emotionally insecure. I also realized very early on that I personally do not have the proper disposition to handle even a modicum level of fame. (Why? Many reasons...but mostly because if my photo were ever in a magazine and I came across it at my dentist's office only to see that someone had drawn a dick and balls on my chin, I'd be pissed for weeks.)

In all honesty, I think the blog's growing popularity was part of the reason I haven't written more here in the past year or so. I started to feel as if I were writing for an audience as opposed to just writing for my own pleasure.

Quite simply, all I want to do is just hang out with you guys, shoot the shit, and tell funny stories about my daughter putting diapers on the dog.

On the flip side, I don't write here solely for myself. I started this site as a creative outlet and to find some like-minded parents who didn't take themselves (or their kids) so damn seriously.  Little did I know that I would end up meeting so many cool, smart, and interesting people who not only get my sense of humor but can also appreciate random musings on midget rappers, drunken Scrabble, and iCarly. Getting to know all of you and making some real-life friends has been, by far, the best part about starting this blog. 

As the preeminent social philosopher Lil Kim once said, "Y'all rock, yo!"

Anyway, I bring all this up because I've decided that I'm going to write a lot more on this site. I'm currently working on a book of humurous personal essays so partly in that regard, I'd like to use this site to invigorate those writing muscles that seem to have completely atrophied since I stopped writing here. To tell you the truth, I've also missed all of you.

So now that I'm back, allow me to re-introduce myself...

For all you first-time visitors here, this site is, for lack of a better phrase, a "daddy blog."

What the hell is a "daddy blog?" you might ask? Well, I can't answer for all of them but I like to think of this site as being very similar to a "mommy blog."

Except with real humor!

And 50% less crazy! 

(Just kidding, ladies!)

Actually, if I had to describe what this blog was about, I'd say it was simply about life, love, and the gentle art of raising children. It's the story of one man's heroic journey into the depths of parenthood and the ensuing joy that follows.   

(Sorry, my sarcasm cup runneth amok.)

In all seriousness, this blog is about what happens when a self-involved NYC man living a carefree hedonistic life becomes a father for the first time. It also follows the path of single parenthood and the ensuing comedy of raising a seven-year-old daughter in downtown Manhattan.

Prior to having a child, I had an amazingly fun life. Though I always wanted kids, I worried about the possibility that having a kid would put a damper on my lifestyle. However, I have to admit that life these days is much more enjoyable. More enjoyable than I could have ever imagined.

I know there are some people out there who say, “I can’t remember life before my baby was born!”  Really? There was nothing memorable about your life before you had a kid? That totally sucks.  Because I had a shitload of fun before I had a child, and I enjoy those memories just as much now as I did then. Heck, many times those memories are what get me through the night! 

But does being an involved father mean that I've forsaken my former personality to become a dad?  Have I subverted my diverse interests to pursue the path of parenthood? Am I destined to become a Stepford Dad or one of those repugnant Alpha-Parents?

Hell to the N and the O.

Don't get me wrong. I'll be the first to admit that it's not easy. There's a part of me that sometimes wants to bail out on being a parent, jump on a plane to Bali, drop Ecstasy, and write screenplays under a palm tree. There are other times when I start thinking about the cumulative cost of after-school care, ballet lessons, and college tuition...and I think to myself, "Damn, I could have bought a Porsche."

But therein lies the rub, folks. There's no way that you can emotionally or monetarily amortize the cost of having a child. I'm not going to trip the light saptastic here but having a kid is one of the greatest joys of my life. There's no way to explain it if you haven't experienced it.

This blog is merely my attempt to laugh at it all.

That being said, I do think there is a certain social contract between a writer and his readers.  When you read a blog, you expect to get a consistent perspective from the writer. However, things can get a little dicey when that writer is also a card-carrying member of the parenting blogosphere. So, in the interests of clarity, here is a list of topics that will NEVER be covered on MetroDad...

1. Seinfeld-like observations of the "didja ever notice?" variety.
2. My love of cats.
3. How the mean parents at the PTA make me feel like I'm in high school again.
4. My favorite recipe for pumpkin soup.
5. A mind-numbing, hour-by-hour recap of my day.
6. The size of my ass.
7. Bitchings about my ex-wife, my parents, or in-laws. 
8. My love of Gymboree!
9. How much it will cost to get my minivan fixed.
10. Why my kid is the greatest.

Throw a rock on the internet and you'll find a mind-numbingly enormous amount of blogs covering those and other scintillating topics.

Sorry but this won't be one of them.

On the other hand, here are some completely random examples of what you are likely to find on this site...

• Changing the world one dangling participle at a time (Strunk & White in the house, yo)
• Underage Chinese Gymnast (This post went viral all over the world.)
• 25 life lessons for my daughter (Tips on not raising the next Lindsay Lohan.)
• Child brides & boyhood crushes (The beautiful innocence of young love.)
• Diary of a single dad (Thank God I have an amazing girlfriend now.)
• Fun with deconstruction (My thoughts on champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics)
• The 8 types of playground parents ('Fess up. Are YOU on this list?)
• An open letter to all toddlers (Post this on your fridge.)

In toto: adulation quiches, dicks and balls on my chin, car wrecks, Chinese gymnasts, grammar, and single parenthood.

Yeah, that about sums it up. 

What's up with all of you?

 

Dear Andy

Dear Andy,

It's 7:30 in the morning and I'm staring out the window of a hotel room in Stamford, Connecticut. As I gaze out across the Long Island Sound, I can't help but be struck by how beautifully clear and sunny the sky is today. It's so strangely similar to that day ten years ago when we lost you, it almost sends shivers down my spine. 

Ten years.

Kyle and I had drinks with your sister recently and we were talking about the passage of time. Susan was saying how hard it was to believe that it's been ten long years since she heard your voice, ten long years since she listened to your laugh, and ten long years since she saw your face. Would none of that really never happen again?

For me, I don't know what to think. When it comes to you, time has lost any sort of meaning. Sometimes, I feel as if 9/11 occured just yesterday. Other times, it feels like a lifetime ago.

All I really know is what I feel...and what I miss.

I miss walking into my office every morning and knowing that you were going to call at any moment. My mornings are lonelier for it.

I miss those evenings when we'd be out with a group of people but whenever you'd see me leaving, you'd make sure to give me a hug and say, "I love you, brother. Talk to you tomorrow."

I miss those late-night conversations out at the beach where we'd just grab a few beers, sit out on the deck, talk about life, and laugh about the absurdity of it all.

I miss our Monday night Chinese-food-and-a-movie adventures. It was one of my fondest weekly rituals. I don't think we've done it since you've been gone. It could never be the same without you.

God, has it really been ten years?

Collectively as a nation, there seems to be a sense of amnesia about 9/11. People want to remember the event but, at the same time, they want to get past that lingering sense of loss. It happens less in New York but you can feel it.

I get it. Bad things happen. Darkness descends. And putting personal tragedies behind us in order to move forward is an intrinsic part of life.

But how do you hold on to the things that are truly transecendentally important? How do you remember the parts of a person that that are also a part of you? What does it mean to get over the loss of a loved one?

As the writer Haruki Murakami once said, "no matter how much suffering you went through, you never want to let go of those memories."

Sometimes it saddens me that those memories are slipping away.

But ten years on, I do know that whenever I’m feeling alone in a room, the person I still always hope to see is you. Because I want to tell you about this amazing song that you'd love or about a hilarious movie that we need to see. I want to hear that infectious laugh that always cheered up my day. I want to skip work, grab a few beers and throw footballs in Central Park all day. Or I want to spontaneously jump on a plane to Miami with our best friends for one of those amazing long weekends in Miami where we'd laugh so hard that tears would be streaming down our faces.

Speaking of our friends (whom you always lovingly referred to as "la famiglia"), you'd still laugh your ass off if you saw us now. Life may change but somehow it still remains the same. We're a little older and a little grayer but, at the end of the day, we're still that same old bunch of silly misfits. As a group, we don't see each other nearly as much as we should. Maybe it's because we're all getting older and are busy with our own lives. But really, I think we all know it's because you were always the glue that held us all together.

We all miss you, Andy. You're still very much a part of our lives. We think about you all the time and we miss you as much today as when we first lost you. We can be anywhere in the world and one of us will quietly raise a glass and simply say, "To GoGo." Without fail, tears will always come to our eyes as we take a moment to remember how much we miss and love you.

Tonight we'll have dinner with your family, drink too much wine, and tell our favorite stories about you. We'll focus less on the loss and more on the joy that you brought into our lives. We'll mask grief with mirth. We'll trade bitterness for optimism. And as always, we'll take comfort in the tragedy of this day by being with our loved ones.

The only thing missing will be you.

I miss you, brother. I miss you a lot. May you always rest in peace.

Love,

Your friend Pierre

 

 

Andrew Golkin, 1970-2001

CHAOS THEORY: July 2011

Once again, almost two months have passed and I've completely forgotten that I even have a blog. Mea culpa. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said, "summer has set in with its usual severity."

So far, Summer 2011 has been going great. After a few rough summers, I feel like I've got my sea legs back and am ready to embrace what has always been my most cherished season. For me, summer is not just a season but rather a state of mind. Bring it on, yo.

As I type this, I’m sitting outside the Doctor’s beach house, where he and I are taking turns throwing the kids into the pool and listening to them squeal hysterically with delight. The picnic table is piled abundantly high with bottles of Rose, pitchers of homemade lemonade, lobster salad, farmhouse guacamole, and fresh vegetables from the garden. The faint smells of coconut suntan lotion and flowers permeate the air.

Have I mentioned how much I love summer?

TIPS ON BEING A GREAT HOUSEGUEST

The Peanut and I have always been lucky when it comes to the generosity of our friends; and while it’s always nice to be invited for a single weekend, here are a few of our personal tips for ensuring multiple future invitations.

(1) BRING GIFTS….I always like to give towels monogrammed with my initials. That way, the hosts will never forget me and I feel like part of their home. Win, win!

(2) BE USEFUL AND EMPATHETIC….Do the things that your hosts really want to do but are prevented from doing by decorum. Buy that bottle of Jagermeister. Slip the kids some Benadryl. Take a dump late at night in the neighbor’s pool.  

(3) MAKE THE WEEKEND MEMORABLE...Draw an outline of the Virgin Mary in a container of hummus and alert the local media. Your hosts will love telling this story for years. Trust me.

 

OMAKASE

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how to downsize the scale and scope of my lifestyle.  

Moving into a smaller apartment and shedding myself of so many material possessions was unexpectedly cathartic. I realized that very few objects I owned held any emotional value for me. Somewhere along the line, I’d crossed over and reached a point where the things I owned ended up owning me.

Like so many others before me, I had become a slave to the Ikea nesting instinct. It’s a vicious cycle. One moment, you’re spending $250 on some bathroom candles. Next you’re blowing $8,000 on a dining table. Pretty soon, dropping $100k on a car doesn’t sound so unreasonable. Unless one makes a conscious decision to end the cycle, where and when does it end?

I have no wish to be poor but, at the same time, I have no desire to be rich.  Whereas over the course of my life, I’ve been both, I’ve come to realize that neither status has ever played much of a role in my overall life’s satisfaction or general happiness.

So aside from the basic ability to support myself and my daughter in Manhattan, I’m starting to think that when it comes to my financial ambitions, I desire only enough money to be able to travel several times each year, to never have to think about purchasing books or clothes, and most importantly, to be able to buy sushi dinners for my friends wherever and whenever I please.

Hey, I know it’s not Walden Pond but I think it’s a step down the right path.

 

RANDOM TEXT MESSAGES FROM MY FRIENDS, Vol. 6

The following text missives from my eclectic group of friends are all about to get purged so, as usual, I thought I'd jot them down here for posterity:

“Every time I hear Debbie and her Australian accent, I want to go eat at Outback.”

“Baby just exploded diarrhea all over me. Dog is licking it up. Think I'm going to vomit. Go ahead and start dinner without me. I’m gonna be awhile.” 

“Let’s just say that the last guy to cook for me twice in one day was probably Colonel Sanders.”

“The worst side-effect of gender equality is the couples baby shower.”

“How many calories are burned eating a lobster roll? I’m asking for the lobster.”

“In honor of the Puerto Rican Day Parade, I’m sexually harassing my wife right now and spraying the kids with shaving cream.”

“Who do you think would win in a fight? Cher or Lady Gaga?”

“Just for the record, I wasn’t staring at her ass. I was staring WITH her ass.”

“You’re my favorite minority friend but if I ever meet a black man who drives an old Cadillac, you’re fired.”

“My favorite is when there are no boobs and then all of sudden, boobs!”

 

SING THE SONG SOUNDS LIKE HE READS IT

When life’s myriad complexities start weighing heavily on me, one of my favorite means of decompression is to grab a stool at a mellow neighborhood bar or restaurant armed solely with a good jukebox, a good cocktail and a good book.

I always empathize with my female friends who tell me that they’d love to do this as well but can’t because apparently there’s something about being female and alone in a bar that makes everyone assume that she’s desperate for conversation, so people like to interrupt her (“Hey, whatcha reading?”) and if she doesn’t smile and answer politely, they think to themselves “bitch!”

As a man walking into a bar alone with a book, I’d like to think that people find me dashing and intellectual but I’ll settle for nerdy and weird. Either way, I never get bothered.

But being an over-thinking literary geek, I’ve invented a personal game for myself where I try to match up the right bar with the right meal, drink, soundtrack, and author.

For example…

Local Irish bar, bacon cheeseburger, shot of whiskey, Bruce Springsteen, Raymond Carver.

Outdoor café, grilled cheese sandwich, glass of rose, Bradenburg concertos, Shakespeare.

Sushi restaurant, salmon skin avocado hand roll, sake, Arcade Fire, Haruki Murakami.

I’m the only nerd who does this, aren’t I?

Seriously, go ahead and give it a try.

 

PHILOSOPHER JIM CAREY

I was randomly surfing the internet late at night during a recent bout of insomnia and somehow found myself reading a recap of an old CNN interview between Larry King and his guest Jim Carrey.

I had never really known anything about Jim Carrey before except that he is, of course, Jim Carrey. As it turns out, he seems like a very pensive and thoughtful guy. As he related stories of growing up poor, living in his car, battling depression and suffering hardship, he says:

“I just got to the point where I realized the only way to look at life is to believe that everything that ever happens to you, is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

Maybe it was the insomnia. Maybe it was reading about all the sadness in his life. All I know is that I was surprised that a Jim Carey quote could have such a profound effect on me. My own personal philosophy leans toward the belief that when life throws roadblocks in your way, you’ve got to remove the negativity and create a mindset that allows you to proactively enact change. Jim Carey’s philosophy seems like a sturdier and more succinct version of my own. I think it’s a useful tool for looking at life.

I know. Jim Carrey, right? Who would have ever thought it?

Next beers on me, Ace Ventura.

 

SING THE SONG SOUNDS LIKE SHE SINGS IT

My daughter amazes the shit out of me.

In her first six years on this planet, she’s witnessed her grandfather painfully succumb to cancer. She’s seen her parents split up and divorce. She’s attended three different schools in three years. She’s had major eye surgery. And she’s moved out of the only home she’d ever known.

Yet, she’s turned into a really cool, smart, funny, sensitive, caring and polite kid.

So, as a special treat, I got us a pair of third-row tickets to the Glee concert. It was her first “big girl” concert and the two of us could not have been more excited.

There are a million words I could write about seeing the world through your daughter’s eyes. Or the pure joy that comes from seeing her so happy. Or the sense of wonderment at seeing one's child grow before your very eyes.

But if a picture says a thousand words...

Hope your summer is filled with lots of fun, sun, love and lobsters. Cheers!

 

HOUSE RULES: My House, My Rules

One of my favorite bars in New York is a secret.

It has no telephone number. No windows. No signage. And the address on the front door is conveniently wrong. The bar's owner just wanted to open a tiny, intimate space where friends could come for quiet conversation and exceptionally well-made cocktails.

Framed discreetly inside the dimly-lit bar is a subtle sign dictating the rules of the house.

1. No name-dropping.
2. No hooting, hollering, shouting or other loud behaviour.
3. No fighting, play fighting, no talking about fighting.
4. Gentlemen will remove their hats. Hooks are provided.
5. Gentlemen will not introduce themselves to ladies.
   Ladies, feel free to start a conversation or ask the bartender to introduce you. If a man you don't know speaks to you, please lift your chin slightly and ignore him.
6. Do not linger outside the front door.
7. Do not bring anyone unless you would leave that person alone in your home. You are responsible for the behaviour of your guests.
8. Exit the bar briskly and silently. 

What I love about these rules is that they don't just outline a set of house policies. They convey a form of tolerance and politeness that seem to be lacking in society today.

The only rule I might add is "If you must talk about the Yankees, please feel free to do so. At home."

I often think about rules when it comes to parenting. Growing up, I didn't have very many rules. That's not to say that my immigrant parents weren't very strict. Hell, they were the original Tiger parents and they reigned over me and my brother with an iron fist.

But aside from the fact that I was a pretty good kid, they didn't really lay down a large set of rules.

I think the only three I ever had were no reading after bedtime, no piercings and no swearing.

Ironically, I got my ear pierced right after they told me that rule. I now stay up until 2:00 am every night reading. And I don't think it's a secret to you guys that I curse like a fucking truck driver.

My daughter is 6 years old and I realize that I have a million rules for her already.

Why do I have so many rules?

Partly because if she had her way, she'd drop out of first grade, watch TV all day, and subsist solely on burnt ends and ice cream. But it's also partly for my own protection because the Peanut is constantly trying to work me over like a piñata.

For example, this is the first year she's had homework and it's like she's allergic to it. The first week of school, we sat down together and while I read the paper, I told her she had to do all of her homework. Literally every 30 seconds, she'd stop and say something ridiculously absurd:

"Hey daddy, put on some music. I think this would be a really good time for a dance party."

"This would be a lot easier if I had some ice cream."

"You just do the first part and I'll take it from there."

The first 5 minutes of doing homework together and I immediately had to set three new rules; (1) Dance parties are for weekends, (2) No eating ice cream during homework, and (3) You have to do all your homework by yourself.

THIS SHIT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!

I remember, years ago, a pivotal parenting moment for me was when I first caught myself saying, "If you don't finish your broccoli, you don't get any dessert."

At the time, I started laughing hysterically because I felt like I had lost my parenting virginity. Generations of parents have uttered those exact same words and somewhere along the line, it's become a rite of passage. I remember thinking, "Ha! You made your first rule."

I just didn't know that it would never end. Does it?

Today, I was walking around the neighborhood holding hands with the Peanut and actually found myself saying: "New rule. No trying to push me into the dog poop when we're walking down the street together."

The Peanut shook her head, looked up at me, and said, "Man, you sure do got a lot of rules."

You have no idea, kiddo.

 

What about you guys? Did your parents have any crazy rules when you were growing up? Do you have any ones for your kids that sometimes make your head spin? What's the funniest rule you've ever had to say to your kids? An inquiring mind wants to know.