MetroDad

"It's a Hard Knock Life"

Little Asian Orphan Annie and her dog, Sandy

I threw on the tux, put on a bald skull cap, and went as Daddy Warbucks while Peanut ran around singing "Tomorrow" at the top of her lungs. Non-stop hilarity ensued.

Best costume idea for a kid was my buddy "Tulse Luper" who dressed up his two-year-old curly-haired daughter as 1970's Bjorn Borg replete with Fila headband and junior Donnay racket.

What did you or your kids dress up as for Halloween this year?

War & Peace: The Toddler Years

Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “Battle not with monsters lest you become one.”

Normally I'd say that, in the grand pantheon of parenting literature, this is the wisest and most profound philosophical statement ever proffered on the subject of dealing with an unruly toddler.

However, I tend to discount anything ever said by Nietzsche because (1) the dude was German, (2) homeboy was fucking crazy, and (3) he never had kids.

I much prefer the words of the late 20th-century Brooklyn philosopher Pat Benatar, who not only looked much better in black leather pants but also famously crooned, "love is a battlefield."

In my ongoing battle with the most stubborn toddler this side of Leipzig, here's the latest weekend scorecard between me and the Peanut:

I was like the Miami Dolphins of parenting this weekend. I went 0-7 on almost every single battleground. Damn!

For those of you who think I'm one of those coddling modern-day parents who lack sufficient backbone when it comes to disciplining his child, I invite you over for a weekend of "Survivor: Tribeca." If you can control my daughter, you get a million bucks and permanent employment in the MetroDad household. If you lose, you owe me a bottle of Advil and some Johnnie Walker Black.

Any takers?

Yeah, that's what I thought. Wussies!

Next post: Do you have to be white to be Cinderella?

My So-Called Life: The MetroDad 20-Year Reunion

This past weekend, I attended my 20-year high school reunion.

Crazy, right? I know you're sitting there thinking, "Wait, how the fuck is it possible that MetroDad is having his 20-year reunion? He's too young! Did he skip elementary school?"

Well, don't let the beautiful hair and insouciant attitude fool you, my friends. I really am as old as I pretend not to be. 

All kidding aside...

I attended one of those effete NYC private schools usually characterized by alumnae with an overabundance of self-worth. As my older fellow alum and distinguished blogging friend, alice, uptown, opines, "the school is a factory for over-privileged smart-asses. Ironically, it's an academic institution that costs over $30K per annum these days -- yet was named for the founder of free public education!"

See, this was not your typical school where you go back to your reunion, joke about the football captain who became the bald manager of a bowling alley, or laugh at the cheerleader who lost her looks and got divorced 5 times.

Shit, this is a school that didn't even have a football team or cheerleaders.

It's a small school where seven graduates have won Pulitzer Prizes while many others moved on to become future literary stars, world-class musicians, and captains of industry.

Growing up, it was a sacrifice for my parents to send me there. My father's business was often feast-or-famine and, in the early years, there was more than one occasion when I remember the school calling up for that late tuition payment. However, being a typical Korean immigrant father, he believed that nothing was more important than his son's education and he was willing to make sacrifices on behalf of it. 

However, NYC has changed over the years. In my opinion, private education in this city has been tainted by the influx of hedge-fund riches so outlandish that, for many people, $30K is the equivalent of their annual dry-cleaning bills. 

I fully expected to show up to my reunion and be sorely disappointed that the vast majority of my classmates had turned out to become corporate lawyers or investment bankers.

And since I love rattling the cages of the creatively mundane, I contemplated imitating my fake girlfriend Amy Sedaris and buying a special custom-made fat suit. Then, I'd show up at the reunion in a powder blue tuxedo and introduce myself as "The Donut King of El Paso!"

For a brief moment, I also thought about showing up with a street hooker.

Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised at how my graduating class turned out. More than a few had dedicated their lives to public service and, interestingly enough, many had ended up becoming psychiatrists, artists, doctors, and journalists.

If anything, the reunion made my decision to send the Peanut to public school a little tougher to swallow.

See, on the one hand, I believe I had one of the best educations available anywhere in the country. My alma mater spares no expense when it comes to providing resources for its students. The classrooms, science labs, art studios, music facilities and technology operations are all state-of-the-art. And most students graduate speaking at least 2-3 languages fluently.

However, I'm a firm believer in sending Peanut to public school. Why?  Many reasons, one of the most important being that I'm terrified of sending my daughter to a school where the student body believes "Gossip Girl" is based on them.

Besides, if public education is ever going to work in a city like New York, it's going to involve parents who can afford to send their kids to private school but choose not to.

That being said, the state of public education in this country scares the crap out of me. Sometimes, I think it's fitting that public schools are called P.S. because it often seems that they're treated as an afterthought.

Somehow, we've got to convince all Americans that paying teachers what they deserve is as good an investment in our future as, say, building more prisons. My mother spent 20 years as a public-school teacher and, at the end of the day, she probably could have made more money flipping burgers at McDonalds.

I never understood why it's so controversial to compensate teachers better. The only reason I can think of is because society realizes that we've got teachers firmly by the balls. For the most part, these people want to be teachers, and as is often the case in this country, when we know somebody loves to do something, we fuck them over on their paycheck, because we figure they're going to do it anyway.

Shit, we should be thankful that teachers are able to impart ANY lessons to our kids nowadays. As my mom's experience has taught me, being a public school teacher these days is not limited to the boring educational stuff anymore. Any time you need to go through a metal detector to get to work, you deserve to get paid more than minimum wage.

Now I'm not saying that increasing teacher pay is the solution to solving this country's educational system. I am saying, however, that it's a good place to start. 

Personally, I think one of the reasons I want to send the Peanut to public school is because I'd like to test my pet theory that the single most important contribution to a child's education is the role that each parent plays in fostering that education. It seems to me that a lot of kids are going home to parents who are more interested in watching "Dancing with the Stars" than they are in their child's education.

Let me tell you something, my friends. I'm pretty sure that your child's education isn't a fluff-and-fold situation where you can drop the kid off at school, pick him up 12 years later and suddenly he's working on Fermat's Theorem with Marilyn vos Savant. If only it were that easy, right?

Whether you send your kid to public school or private school, none of it will mean anything if you don't get involved in your kid's education. That's why I refuse to give my three-year-old any dessert unless she asks for it in Latin. Besides, my dad used to give me more homework when I was younger than school ever did.

Anyway, all kidding aside, do you want to know the real reasons behind my obsession with education in this country?

I selfishly believe that the decline in our public school system is having a deleterious effect on me personally. I can tell that my readership isn't quite as educated as it used to be. See, I like to salt my remarks with the best of Shakespearean literature, but I'm just not getting the response I once did with such pithy observations like, "Shit, I haven't had a meal that bad since Titus Andronicus invited me and the gang over for dinner to Tamora's house!"

In fact, I'm pretty sure only a handful of readers are going to even get that joke ("Help me, Dutch-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.")

Anyway, I'll stop babbling now. I just want to end this nonsensical rant by saying that if our schools don't start doing their jobs better, I'm going to have to resort to getting laughs on this blog just by saying the word  "Motherfucker!"

And we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?  MOTHERFUCKERS!

By the way, for those of you who have e-mailed me privately asking about the reunion, my replies are as follows:

(1) Fat but not bald.
(2) Chicken fingers, a veggie burger, and a little weed.
(3) Not Cindy Crawford. More like Joan Crawford.
(4) 3:00 am.
(5) Echo & the Bunnymen

Next: My high-school photo. A little Bershon, perhaps?

The Lazy List of Fives

5 THINGS MY DAUGHTER HAS LICKED RECENTLY

1. The subway pole on the 2 Train
2. The sidewalk
3. The bottom of her sneakers
4. A random car tire
5. The entire left side of my face (while I was sleeping)

5 RECENT NON SEQUITURS FROM MY DAUGHTER'S MOUTH

1. "Can I have two ponytails for my monkey?"
2. "My feets have no stickers, Daddy!"
3. "The mousies are friends with the camels?"
4. "I eat your sneakers now!"
5. "I want donuts at Old McDonald's."

5 THINGS I TAUGHT MY DAUGHTER TO SAY FOR SHEER ENTERTAINMENT

1. "Who let the dogs out? Woof, woof!"
2. "Let's go, Mets!"
3. "Hit me on the flip side, yo."
4. "These are not the droids you're looking for."
5. "Yankees suck!"

5 CURRENT METRODAD OBSESSIONS

1. Breakfast burritos
2. The new Springsteen CD
3. "Gossip Girl"
4. Working out at 6:30 am
5. Macallan 16-year Scotch

5 THINGS I SAID IN ARKANSAS TODAY THAT MARKED ME AS AN "OUTSIDER"

1. "I'll have an egg white omelet with feta, tomato, and spinach."
2. "Who's Kasey Kahne?"
3. "My carbon footprint is extremely low."
4. "The suit? It's made by agnès b."
5. "Do you have any Macallan 16-year Scotch?"

5 RELATIVELY NEW "DADDY BLOGS" YOU SHOULD BE READING

1. Get That Out of Your Mouth!
2. The Daily Daddy Blog
3. Varsity Dad
4. Looky, Daddy
5. DadSmacker

A 5-PART BOOK MEME VIA NONLINEAR GIRL (slightly modified)

1. Total number of books owned? Over 1,000
2. Last book read? Falling Man: A Novel by Don DeLillo
3. Last book bought?  The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
4. Most treasured book?  A signed first-edition of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
5. Book I wish I'd written?  Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

Next post: Holy shit, my 20-year high-school reunion!

CHAOS THEORY: October 2007

No time for a real post. Too busy trying to figure out which new television shows I want to watch. Also, my All-Star team of physicians from Mt. Sinai has me on some medication that prevents me from drinking alcohol for two weeks. I don't know if it's the pills or the lack of booze but I think I'm developing adult-onset ADD.

Anyway, here's some mental diarrhea that needs to be purged before I plunge further into JWBSW (Johnnie Walker Black Scotch Withdrawal)
.

MY KINGDOM FOR A COCKTAIL

Speaking of booze, the fact that I'm not drinking these days has got me contemplating the state of my own sobriety. Personally, I think there's a pretty wide line between enjoying a good cocktail and full-blown alcoholism. For example, although I like having a nightly glass of scotch, I've yet to ask the waitress at Denny's what wine comes with the Grand Slam breakfast. Good for me, right?

Now I don't know whether alcoholism is caused by genetic predisposition or not. However, I'm slightly uncomfortable calling it a disease. I empathize with those who struggle with addiction but, in my opinion, cancer is a disease. Alcoholism is self-induced. Think about it. Do you really feel bad for alcoholics who can go to 7-11, buy a case of Bud, and feed their disease?  As Dennis Miller once said, it's not like lymphoma victims are going around chugging ice cold cans of cancer juice, right?

The only thing I have against drinking is when drunks get behind the wheel of an automobile. It fucking infuriates me that celebrities like Kiefer Sutherland, Nick Nolte or Lindsay Lohan continue to get pulled over for drunk driving so frequently. Did you know that, nationwide, drunk drivers kill an innocent person every 25 minutes? More than 5,000 children each year are killed by drunk drivers. As a parent, this scares the shit out of me. What the fuck is it going to take for these people to wake up?

Sorry for the rant. That concludes today's public service announcement.

YOU WILL DO ANYTHING FOR YOUR CHILD, WON'T YOU?

I like to think it's a given that we all make hard sacrifices for our children. Sometimes that sacrifice is measured by donating a kidney or taking a bullet: other times, it's by the fact that you're working two jobs in order to raise them in a safe neighborhood. I think most of us who believe in the inherent goodness of mankind understand these sacrifices.

However, before you become a parent, nobody ever tells you the other things that you will do for your children simply because you love them more than anything else. 

As a little kid, I always thought I'd spend my days as an international spy. At night, I'd drive my Aston Martin to Monte Carlo for friendly games of high-stakes baccarat.

Never in a million years did I ever imagine that I'd end up spending my nights patiently allowing my daughter to put dozens of pink hairpins in my luxuriant black hair while petting me on the head and loudly exclaiming, "Daddy, you're soooo pretty!"

Nor did I ever imagine getting completely sick because I tap danced down West Broadway in a torrential downpour while twirling my umbrella and singing, "Singing in the Rain" --- solely because the Peanut kept yelling, "sing the rain song, Daddy! Sing it NOW!"

Man, I'll do anything for that little munchkin. 

NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS

After my last post, a reader e-mailed me inquiring whether BossLady and I had ever thought about sending the Peanut out on auditions so she could get into "entertainment."

Personally, I think it's hard enough to have a normal childhood without being exposed to something as numbingly vapid as show business. I've always believed that entertainment lures the type of people who didn't get enough attention early in life and have grown up to become bottomless vessels of abject need. Ever spend time with a bunch of actors and actresses? For the most part, they're a very insecure lot yet they all have that "LOOK AT ME NOW" component wired into their personalities.

Look, I think my kid is absolutely adorable. However, I also like to think that ALL parents think their kids are adorable. But that doesn't make them actors; it just makes us parents. If you honestly think one kid is that much cuter than any other, you're missing the point. All kids are cute. There is no such thing as a kid who isn't cute. The trick in parenting is to make sure your kids are still cute when they become adults. 

And the best way to guarantee that is to keep them the fuck out of show business.

TODDLER BIRTHDAY PARTIES

Three-year-old kids are really cute but they're really fucking dumb. A few weeks ago, I sat Peanut down with a bag of Oreos and asked her whether she wanted a birthday party or a cookie. Naturally, she chose the cookie.

Hah! Who's smarter than a toddler?  That's right, baby. THIS guy!

In case you didn't know, toddler birthday parties in Manhattan can easily cost several thousand dollars. What does that get you? Three hours of playtime in an indoor facility, some out-of-work actors singing songs in costume, a couple of cold pizzas, and a birthday cake.

Now, I love my kid more than anything but the day I spend that kind of money on a birthday party is the day that I start lighting my cigarettes with $100 bills while snorting lines of beluga caviar in my private jet. It ain't ever going to happen, my friends.

Instead, we celebrated Peanut's birthday by having an awesome family day at the Central Park Zoo with the grandparents. Peanut had the time of her life and won't stop talking about it. Total cost: $28.00.  Boo yah!

THE DOG DAYS OF BEING A DOG

I'm not sure whether it's fair to have a dog after you have a kid. Before Peanut was born, MetroDog was our little baby. We'd celebrate his birthdays with special doggie cake. We'd take him on vacations around the world. We'd have him bathed and groomed on a monthly basis. And, naturally, he was always sporting a fresh look because BossLady loved buying clothes for him. 

Now MetroDog is like a red-headed step-child with tuberculosis. The poor dude only gets a fraction of the attention that he used to. He doesn't go on playdates with other dogs. He's constantly being chased around the apartment by Peanut and her friends.  And he hasn't had a bath in so long that he's emitting a smell which I can't begin to describe except to say, imagine if Glade made an air freshener in a fragrance called Ass.

To make matters worse, BossLady and I realized that we forgot his 6th birthday a few weeks ago. Happy belated birthday, my canine friend. We're so sorry and we promise to make it up to you. After all, you are the coolest dog in downtown Manhattan.   

SEX IN THE CITY

My brilliantly talented younger brother, MetroBro, is single. So naturally, as married people, BossLady and I love hearing his stories about dating in Manhattan. Yesterday, I received an e-mail from him that I feel compelled to share with all of you. If you're not of Asian descent, you may or may not find it as hilarious as I do. Anyway, here it is...

I realized something funny the other day as I was browsing through Match.com profiles. I kept on seeing a ton of girls who listed "Native American" as one of their preferences -- very often paired with "White/Caucasian."

This struck me as odd for two reasons. One, there are so few honest-to-god indians in NYC -- probably fewer than the number of girls looking for them on Match -- so how strange is it that so many girls seemed to want this? Two, to the extent that there are girls out there with a taste for some Apache action, isn't it weird that so many of them were also looking for white guys? Wouldn't girls looking for Native American guys be likely to be more multi-culti in their other preferences, i.e., if you like red, wouldn't you also be looking for black, brown, and yellow?

Then I noticed that a lot of the girls looking for Native Americans were FOBs -- not just Asians, but immigrants from all over: Europe, the Carribean, Latin America, etc.

That's when I suddenly realized that p.c. terminology doesn't travel internationally and that in all likelihood these girls think "Native American" means "someone who was born in the U.S."!

LMAAAO* at the thought of all these newly-arrived women opening their mailboxes and wondering why they keep on getting emails from dudes with Match screen names like "lightfoot75" and "woundedkneenyc."

*laughing my Asian American ass off

See why he's my brother?

DOING WELL BY DOING GOOD

Most of you parents with autistic children are likely very familiar with Cure Autism Now (CAN.) For those of you who are not, CAN is an amazing organization of parents, clinicians and leading scientists who are committed to accelerating the pace of biomedical research in autism through raising money for research projects, education and outreach. Founded by parents of children with autism in 1995, they've grown from a kitchen-table effort to the largest provider of support for autism research and resources in the entire world.

Even before I got married and had a child, I often donated money to CAN and attended several of their NYC events. They're a great organization and if anybody is ever going to find a cure for autism, it will no doubt be partly due to the tireless, ongoing efforts of CAN.

Now for a slight digression...

Most long-time readers know that, when it comes to this site, I tend to shy away from self-promotion. Over the past few years, this blog has received a lot of press in various newspapers and publications. However, I rarely ever mention any of this because I don't write this blog to bring attention to myself. I write here simply because it's a place for me to share my thoughts and engage with a great community of people. Shit, I'm no writer. I'm just a regular guy with a little extra time on his hands.   

Now, I totally get the fact that there are a lot of bloggers out there who have different motives for their own sites.  That's cool but it's not really my cup of tea. For the most part, I find that type of blogging can be somewhat of a whore's business and nothing turns me off a site faster than blatant self-promotion. Sometimes I look around and I see more chest pounding going on than a 24-hour marathon of "ER."

That being said, I'm going to break my personal embargo on self-promotion because it's for a good cause.

In a strange turn of events, CAN is having their annual Los Angeles celebrity fundraiser, Acts of Love 2007, next week. Acts of Love 2007 is a one-night only celebration of children in the words of those that love them, with inspiring celebrity readings and musical performances to raise money for autism. Last year, this one night alone raised more than $200,000 for autism research! 

Anyway, it turns out that a producer for the benefit is a fan of my blog and asked me whether they could use some of my posts for the celebrity reading. Naturally, I agreed and said they were free to use anything they wanted. As it turns out, two of my pieces were selected and will be read at next week's benefit by Jason Alexander and Catherine O'Hara. Cool, eh? 

So for any of you in the Los Angeles area who might be interested in attending the benefit, you can buy tickets here. It's next Monday (October 15) and will take place at the Geffen Playhouse. I've attended several of their NYC benefits in the past and they're always a lot of fun.

If you can't attend, you can always make a donation or get involved with CAN so you can continue to help them fight the good fight.

 

 

The Peanut Turns Three!

Dear Peanut,

Happy 3rd birthday!

Now, as usual, I could trip the light saptastic, wax poetic about how much I love you, and gush how, over the past three years, you've changed my life in ways that I never could have fathomed. I could tell you about the tears and joys you've brought to our lives. Or I could try to explain how the journey of fatherhood has been one of my life's most exciting adventures.

Instead, I think I'll just tell you how cool and weird and wonderful you are. THREE is such a fantastic age and when I look back at these times, these are a few of the things I'll want to remember about you now:

• You love dressing yourself in these awesomely bad ensembles. Denim shorts, yellow wellies, love beads, and Hello Kitty sunglasses. Polo shirt dress, combat boots, rainbow tights, and a Mets hat.  Seriously, you're like the illegitimate love child of Betsy Johnson and Helen Keller. If you ever become an avant-garde fashion designer, we'll know where it all started.

• Almost every day, you come up to us and ask, "are you happy, guys?" It's ridiculously cute. You're like the tiniest little Jungian therapist in Manhattan.

• Since the only television you're allowed to watch are old musicals, you're prone to break out into show tunes at any given moment. You can't count past 10 but somehow you know every single word of "So Long, Farewell"  Last night, you stood on your chair at the restaurant and started singing "The Sun Will Come Out TOMORROW!" Sometimes, I feel like we're living with Bette Midler or Ethel Merman.

• Like your mother, you absolutely hate eating fruits or vegetables. If you ever get scurvy, I'm totally blaming your mom.

• However, if you ever start going around and farting in people's faces, I'll accept full responsibility. I've been doing this to you since you were a baby and we both still think it's the absolute funniest thing in the known universe.

• You are definitely my mother's granddaughter in the sense that you are unfailingly polite. I'm not saying you're an angel but you are definitely the best-mannered little kid I've ever seen. For the most part, you're pretty good at saying "please" and "thank you." When we go to a restaurant, one of the first things you do is fold the napkin on your lap. And you always say, "Bless you" whenever someone sneezes. Sadly, I know a lot of adults who don't do any of those things. Keep it up, kiddo. 
  

• Lately, you've been picking up on all the little catchphrases that mommy and I unconsciously say in daily conversation. It's freaking hysterical when you come up to us and say things like: "You kids ready yet?"; "I'm going to the office. Bye!"; and our all-time favorite, "You guys want to hear something CRAZY?"
  

• Every morning, you climb into bed with us after you wake up. With your mother, you lovingly curl up beside her to snuggle. Often, you'll brush her hair gently or kiss her softly on the cheek. But me, you haze like a fraternity pledge. You jam your fingers up my nose, shine the book light in my face, and pry my eyelids open with your fingers. Last week, I woke up completely covered in moisturizer because you wanted to "put medicine on my boo boo."

• One of your favorite new activities is riding on the back of my bicycle as we take long weekend rides up the Hudson River. The whole time we're riding, you'll be chattering in my ear non-stop. I love these precious moments and often wish I could capture them in a bottle.

• You've just recently made the transition out of diapers and you couldn't be prouder. In fact, you're so proud that whenever you see our friends, you immediately pull down your shorts or lift your dress up, and yell, "Look at my big girl underwear, everyone!" It's awkwardly hilarious. Let's hope it ends soon.


• Already, at age three, you're a true New York foodie. Last week, you grabbed the newspaper, pretended it was a take-out menu, and said, "Daddy, what do you want to order?" Whenever the intercom buzzes, you automatically yell, "Dinner's ready!" And you've got an incredibly adventurous palate for a toddler. You've roamed many of the great ethnic restaurants here, stuffing your little belly with pho ga, tikka masala, agedashi tofu, and chicken tagine along the entire way.

Peanut...this is just a small sample of all the things that make THREE the best age in the world. You're an incredibly warm and caring little girl. It sounds so patently absurd to say that I'm so proud of who and what you've become in your first three years on this planet. But it's true. I can't wait to see what the future holds for you.

Happy 3rd birthday, little girl!

Love always,
Daddy

Clap your hands and say yeah if you're THREE!

MetroDad on Fandom

See this ticket?  That's my 2007 World Series Game 4 ticket for the NY Mets.

But oh snap!  The Mets didn't even make the playoffs! Despite having been in first place of the division for most of the season, the Mets suffered a monumental collapse and blew a seven-game lead in the NL East with only 17 games left in the season.

Never in baseball history had a team held first place for so long without finishing first. The Mets were so bad at the end that they didn’t even get the consolation prize of the wild card, thus rendering my World Series tickets completely useless (again!)

It's never easy being a Mets fan. You have to really want it. Mets fans are subjected to a battery of loyalty tests that no other fans in history have to navigate (except perhaps the Cubbies.)  Not only are we passionate but we're also a little bit crazy. 

The reputation of Mets fans as being tormented souls is legendary.  After all, at the end of the day, we're a bunch of hard-core crazy New Yorkers.  In fact, we're so enthusiastic that the NYPD actually built a jail underneath Shea Stadium just in case rowdy fans ever get too out of hand (actually, that's not so bad when you consider that the Texas Rangers keep a jail and an electric chair set on "simmer.")

Going back to the Mets' epic downfall, it's hard to quantify exactly how devastating this season ended.  In Bill Simmons' "Levels of Losing," he relegates the Mets' collapse to 'The Goose/Maverick Tailspin."

"Cruising happily through the regular season, a potential playoff team suddenly and inexplicably goes into a tailspin, can't bounce out of it and ends up crashing for the season. In "Top Gun," the entire scene lasted for 30 seconds and we immediately moved to a couple of scenes in which Tom Cruise tried to make himself cry on camera but couldn't quite pull it off. In sports, the Goose/Maverick Tailspin could last for two weeks, four weeks, maybe even two months, but as long as it's happening, you feel like your entire world is collapsing. It's like an ongoing stomach punch. And when it finally ends, you spend the rest of your life reliving it every time a TV network shows a montage of the worst collapses in sports history."

Sadly, he's right.  Already, every headline related to this Mets team contains the phrase "historic collapse," or "epic fall."  The back page of the New York Post blared: "CHOKED TO DEATH." The front page of the Daily News read: "FROM CHAMPS TO CHUMPS."

Look, my friends...I know that, in the grand scheme of things, baseball is only a stupid game played by a bunch of overpaid athletes.  And if we look at society as a huge dysfunctional family, then the relationship we have with our favorite athletes probably most closely resembles one between a co-dependent spouse and the abuser.  In our minds, despite all we've accomplished as adults, we're still the doe-eyed little boys looking up to the big, old jocks with their shiny varsity jackets. 

And so we continue to go to the games and shell out $15 for stale hamburgers.  We continue to revel in the victories and cry in the defeats. We live and die with our favorite teams.  And, for seven months of every year, every fiber of our emotion becomes dictated by the onfield successes of a bunch of men in polyester tights. Insane, right?

But if you're a true baseball fan, you're a lifer. To be a baseball fan is to have your heart broken. The game is practically designed to break your heart. The depressions of a chilly October always give way to the hope and optimism of Spring.  There's always next year.

Go Mets!

"There are three things in my life which I really love:  God, my family, and baseball.  The only problem - once baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit."  ~Al Gallagher

"Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona." ~George F. Will