The Frog Who Wanted To Be A Singer

Since my early days as a dad blogger, I have been singing the praises of local library book sales.

Well a few weekends ago, just as summer was coming to a close, my oldest son and I went to the Chapel Hill Public Library for one of their book sales. My youngest didn't want to come but he did request that we get him a book on "skateboarding, snowboarding or dinosaurs."

When we got there the stock was pretty much picked over and we weren't having much luck with our searches.

I did managed to get another Ross Macdonald book as well as replacing my copy of Ray because a few years back I passed on my precious, tattered and worn copy to one of my nimrod friends.

We didn't find any action sports or dinosaur books for my youngest but I knew we needed to come home with something. He's got a mild obsession with aliens but the alien books I saw would surely have crept him out more than entertain him.

I rummaged through a bunch of kids' books boxes and finally just grab bagged a book from the depths.

It was called The Frog Who Wanted To Be A Singer. It's a book about a frog who wants to be a singer but is told that frogs don't sing. Against every one's better judgement, the frog labor's on in the face of adversity and finally manages to pull off singing his song in front of an audience.

And it becomes a huge hit.

I have read my fair share of kids' books, most drive you bat shit insane with their quaint rhyme schemes and second-rate graphics, but this sucker fucking delivered!

It reminded me of the time I tried to tackle writing a story for kids. A friend of mine was part of this "write a book in a month" web site and convinced me I should sign up. Now I have enough unfinished writing that nags at me that it seemed like a silly thing to do.

And quite honestly, a waste of time.

But as a writer I'm always looking for a good way to exercise my chops without the frustration of having to rewrite a chapter or fine tune a character that has been in my head for years. So I signed up and said I would try and tackle a children's book.

As you can see from the excerpt below, I derailed from my original plan quite quickly...

Willie The Worm


“My name is Willie,” he said.

“Hello Willie!” said the crowd, some seated on fold-out chairs, others standing by the walls of the activity room of the local Unitarian Church.

“And I am a worm,” he said.

“Let’s welcome Willie with open arms and hearts,” said a whisker-scratching Harold, who was clearly the moderator here tonight.

“What if you don’t have arms?” chimed out that old crow Terence from the back.

“You know what I mean Terrance,” said Harold.
“Must you do that every meeting?”

Then Harold turned back to Willie.
“You may continue,” he said.


It all started when Willie began hanging out with the moles. They would go and dine on freshly-fertilized soil and then sit back and wait for their buzz kick in. The moles would tunnel endlessly and let the kaleidoscope of colors exploding in their heads guide their way.

At first it was fun for Willie. He’s slither behind his mole buddies riding their newly dug tunnels like a water slide at a theme park.

It was a blast.

The one day Marty didn’t show up for the party. They sent out a search party to find him. But the search party returned with bad news.

Marty had passed away.

“One too many trips to the DDT cabbage patch,” said a snarky Steve.

They memorialized him by doing what they do best: getting wasted.

A few weeks later, Willie had his own close call when he nearly drowned in a mud puddle because he was too far gone to get his butt out of it. So he stayed above ground for a few weeks, living under rocks and inside leaf piles until he could get his head straight. One thing he knew for sure: no more tripping with the moles.

It was his good friend Gary, a bulbous grub, who told him about the meetings at the church.

“But the church is a people place,” said Willie.

“Peoples can be cool,” said Gary who was cool like a jazz musician.

So Willie took his advice and now he found himself staring at a crowd of strange faces all wanting to hear his story.


“Wow, that was some story,” said Carrie the cow from the back of the room.
“Makes kicking my salt lick habit seem like a game of Chutes & Ladders.”

“Willie,” said Harold.
“Listen to me: When your friends start dying, it’s time to change your lifestyle,” he said.
“Do you hear me?”

“I do Harold,” said Willie.
“I guess that’s why I’m here… to, to, to get help,” he said with a hard swallow.

“Rehab! Rehab!” squawked Terence.

“I think you’re right on this one Terence,” said Harold as he took his back paw to his ear for a scratch.

“The boy needs to dry out and sober up,” he said.


The pastor – a tall, slender man with graying temples – rolled out a wheelbarrow. With shovel in hand he scooped up the poop left behind from the meeting and cleaned up the batch of compost he’d left as a snack for the rodents. He then genuflected at the front of the altar and made the sign of the cross. He said a short prayer in silence for God’s troubled creatures who had just left the building and then went out back and dumped the contents of the wheelbarrow into the church’s community garden.


Willie didn’t like rehab because he never slept. And when he did sleep he had the most horrific nightmares. His dreams were an amalgamation of memories and hallucinations.
One dream his had over and over again was the dad he watched his father die. It was a memory he could never shake and one night as he lay awake trying not to return to the horrid memory he can to the conclusion that he got loaded to erase the past.

So Willie surmised that if he could confront the one reoccurring bad dream, then it was be one giant step toward facing life sober. But then he drifted off back to sleep…


“Willie, c’mon!” he dad yelled. “Hurry up goddamn it,” he said angrily.
“You’re putting our lives on the line!”

Willie and his father we making a calculated risk trying to get from one side of the creek bed to the other in search of a food source and possibly a better home. Exposing themselves was a great risk and one his father ingrained into him over and over again.

“I know Dad, I know!” said Willie. And as he said this he went over the litany of dangers in his head. They were birds of every variety to fear: crows, owls, eagles, finches, woodpeckers… you name it. Not only that, but there was fowl and snakes and mice and all kinds of dangers out there. But one was the most dangerous of all: the fisherman. And it was at that moment, when Willie thought it, that the fisherman appeared behind a thicket of holly bushes. His boot barely missed squishing him. Just as he was catching his breath the fisherman’s dog came sniffing around, licked up Willie only to spit him back out on the ground.

“Hold up!” said the fisherman. “What do we have here?” he said.

Willie can’t remember much after that, or rather he tries not to but suffice it to say he had to watch his father be turned into bait.

Seeing you’re fathered skewered on a fisherman’s hook is not something you easily forget and suddenly Willie stirred from his dream and awoke.

He wanted to get wasted.

Backyard Skimboarding

Peeking out at our flooded backyard with my kidz, we hatched an idea to do some backyard skimboarding.

The wife quickly put the kibosh on it with her talk of snakes, sticks and snapping turtles.

But it seemed like such a good idea.

I mean, when you can't be at the beach, you bring the beach to you right?

Rise & Shine

Tropical Storm Hannah arrived in the late afternoon on Friday. The hype was in full force yet my 8-year-old still managed to have football practice in the rain. The brunt of the storm wasn't due to hit the area until the middle of the night, so practice was held in what could be referred to as a Seattle sprinkle. Kudos for the coaches who stood out there for two hours and taught the game to fledging Mosses, Mannings and Manns'.

I got several WTF? phone calls from my wife during my two hour stint sitting under an oak tree watching practice. But honestly, at no point did the weather seem life threatening. There was no thunder and no lightening... just a steady, fine mist of a rain.

It wasn't until much later that the ass whoopin' came and still it was mild in comparison to other storms I have encounter here in North Carolina.

We didn't get the word that my boys' football games would be cancelled until about 7:30am on Saturday.

Once we got the news, my wife and I laid in our bed with the window open and just listened to the rain; about every twenty minutes it would surge hard then cut back to a trickle.

Seeing an opening in unscheduled time (a rare site these days with school, football and work), I convinced the boys to make us a pot of coffee which they did and then brought us our cups in bed (how sweet is that?). Feeling the need to satiate my inner gourmand, I headed to the kitchen and whipped up some huevos rancheros for the wife and I while some Cornell Campbell wafted through the house.

Feeling Like One Of Those Army Commercials Today

You know, the one from a few years back about how they do more by 6AM than most people do all day...

I got up at 7:30am and made sure the kids had breakfast. It wasn't a breakfast of champions as the cupboards were bare so they turned to Kix cereal with soy milk and a strawberry pop tart each. Then I corralled them into brushing their teeth and getting dressed while I made them lunch.

As I was making lunch, I threw in a load of laundry - I had it in the dryer by the time we left for school. Oh, and I changed the kitty litter because today is trash day so it just made sense.

I had a pang in my heart for my youngest; he's going through growing pains and is now realizing that school happens everyday all day and he's not happy about that. Plus it appears he has inherited the seasonal allergies that wreak havoc on his older brother and me so the little fella was a wee bit tired - from school and from a stuffy nose that kept him from a good night's sleep.

After I dropped the boys off I came home and took a shower because I stunk like an ashtray from the show my band played last night in Raleigh. I didn't get home until close to 1am because the city had all these streets closed off for today's celebration of the new convention center. With the street closings and all the construction that the city has seen, I got all turned around and lost my bearings. By the time I readied my ship and got to I40 to head home, I was greeted by the cops who had closed off the west bound ramp. So I got on the east bound ramp and figured I'd just go down one exit and turnaround. But as soon as I got on the interstate I was greeted by more orange cones than I could count and an assload of blinking lights.

Guess the city decided to re-stripe that part of the interstate and I have a hunch it was on account of the previously mentioned celebration because once I got past the city it was nothing but open road.

I also needed to go to the grocery store but to do that I had to manhandle my bass cabinet out of the wagon.

The grocery store was mobbed.

Of course because there's a hurricane headed our way and people like to clog the grocery stores in the name of preparation. I can't blame then, the hype is heavy on Hanna even though the poor bitch has been downgraded to a tropical storm. I have been on the receiving end of poor hurricane preparation and it wasn't pleasant and that was before I had kids.

And then I had the good fortune to have one of those baggers who likes to put like three items in a bag. I should have done it myself like I usually do but the bagger was already halfway into it by the time I finished unloading my cart. Suddenly I felt bad about how environmentally unfriendly my trip to the store had become... then again we do have a rain barrel and we still do use the bucket in the shower.

It's not even noon yet.

I'm not even halfway done with what I need to do today.

And I can't get this song out of my head...

ESL, Ike And The Like

Hurricane season is shaping up to one real mother what with Gustav just landing and Hanna, Ike and Josephine lined up like a string of pearls off the coast.

North Carolina has a long history with hurricanes and since I moved to the Tar Hell state in '95, we've had 8 notable ones that have made landfall, ones with names like Fran, Bertha, Bonnie and Floyd.

I'm about 160 miles from Wilmington which isn't that far by weather standards but I had to find that out the hard way. When Fran came through in the summer of '96, some friends and I decided we would stay up and watch the doppler radar on the Weather Channel.

The rains came heavy but soon it got late and we all retired to bed.

"Hurricanes are nothing," I thought.

I had lived through the Northridge earthquake just a couple of years earlier - I felt I knew what total destruction was and what it could look like.

At some point in the middle of the night I woke up to what I thought was someone knocking at my door.

Nobody was knocking at my door.

No, but my little mill house was getting pelted with trees branches and other debris.

The next day we woke up to one of the most gorgeous days ever only to be greeted by power outages and fallen trees. Suddenly you realize how dependent you are on electricity: for money, for food, for communication.

Fran left her mark alright, plowing through beaches towns and straight up I40 through Raleigh and on to Durham, Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Some people I knew didn't have power for weeks.

Weeks.

Crazy shit.

And that's why sometimes things can get tricky when you try to explain these things to kids. You don't want to scare them so that every time they hear the word "hurricane" in passing they'll start to freak out. Yet at the same time you want to instill in them the importance of being informed and prepared.

And to respect the power of Mother Nature.

That said, I'll take a hurricane over an earthquake any day... at least you can see it coming.

Life Ain't Nuthin' But A Funny Funny Riddle

I stumbled upon an old high school classmate because I was stumblin' around and, as is the case around here, found a great bit of joy in blogging just for the sake of blogging.


Cheers to the new revolution, er, resolution.

Learn your skill sets folks, because soon you will need them.

Insert random punk rock YouTube clip here:

Have Mercy

I had to wait for the bus again today.

In the pouring rain.

Fay came... although a few days ago they said she wouldn't.

And she was about as exciting as a Larry Brown novel.

My sons came off the bus and started to run for the cover of my umbrella.

"Where's your raincoats?" I hollered to them as they were in mid-stride.

"Cole left his at school," said my 8-year-old third grader with a flash drive.

"And he left his lunch box too," he said.

"Wh-wh-what?" I gasped.

"Go easy on him dad," he said,
"It was his FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!"

And how was his first day of school?

"Great," said Cole.

School Daze

School started this week and with it came a whole lot of drama.

The school has swelled past its student limit in recent years and now the campus is littered with trailers which, as it turns out, still isn't enough so they have decided to do some construction.

However, due to the construction of the new wing, the school has changed the procedure for drop-off and pick-ups: you can no longer park your car and walk your kid into school or park your car and pick your kid up from school.

Anybody who has ever spent any time in long car lines knows that having the option to park and avoid the shenanigans is key.

I really only need to endure it in the mornings as both kids will be taking the bus home (although the first two days the bus was 45 minutes late. WTF?).

When you go to your kids' school's open house, they give you a list of things your kid will need to bring in for the following year. Usually this involves things like rulers, wipes, notebooks and your basic scholastic swag. But this year my 3rd grader needs to bring in a flash drive.

I shit you not.

A sign of the times indeed.

School starting is a mixed blessing; I'm excited my youngest is going to school but it seems like only yesterday he was being born. It's hard to make the transition even though I have been looking forward to it for so long. Not only is my youngest officially out of the nest, but it also signifies that my job as a stay-at-home-dad is drawing to a close. Not that I couldn't find a job - like freelance writing - where I work from home, but rather the day in/day out sheep herding of infants and toddlers has come and gone.

I'm happy and sad at the same time.

I guess that's why I had that dream where all my teeth fall out the other night.

School starting also means summer is over. I had an insane summer last year with a bachelor party in Hollywood, hernia surgery,tick bites and a CD release show.

There was going to be no way that this summer could trump that...

But it did.

It wasn't all bad.

There was the beach trip to the Jersey Shore to see family and I lost my lake virginity.

But now it is fall, the boys have started football (flag for the youngest, tackle for his older brother) and the future most certainly must be brighter than the recent past.

Mustard & Jelly

This has been circulating around the at-home dad blogsphere.

I always wanted to do heavy metal versions of fairy tales...

Hitchhiking

In recent posts I've talked about one of my brothers and life at the beach.

This one involves both.

And a bachelor party...

In the spring of '87, I was a freshman at Salisbury State, a small college on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It was March and my brother was set to get married to his college sweetheart (on his birthday no less) in Pennsylvania.

I was living off-campus with my roommate Crazy Marty, playing rugby and barely going to class. These were the days before cell phones and emails so I didn't find out about my brother's bachelor party until the last minute.

I had missed my opportunity to catch a ride back home with some of the kids I knew who often made the 3-and-a-half hour trip. They call campuses like these suitcase colleges because a majority of the students went home on the weekends.

So I was sitting around with my rugby friends lamenting the fact that I was going to have to miss my brother's bachelor party when one of them chimed in, "why don't you hitchhike?"

He went on to explain that it pretty much was a straight shot down US 50 with not much in between. They convinced me without a doubt that it would be easy to score a ride. All I had to do was get a ride from Crazy Marty to the liquor store on the outskirts of town and find a eastbound traveler.

I managed to land one pretty quickly and the guy happened to be from my home town... but he was only going as far as Cambridge. Depending how you look at it, this could have been a crucial mistake because now I was farther away from school and in a town few stop at on the way out. I set up camp in front of a store with my duffel bag and waited.

And waited.

Bored of waiting, I figured I would just start walking and eventually I would find a ride. So I crossed the bridge and started walking. My logic was that with each step I would only get closer to my goal; sitting on the side of the road seemed like a waste of time. That was until I walked for about two hours with my thumb out and didn't have much luck.

It was then, looking out at the vast nowhere in front of - and behind me - that I started to curse my friends for what now appeared to the most ridiculous of all ideas. Out there on the open road, I had a lot of ideas to ponder.

And that's when a car pulled off the side of the road in front of me. I saw the reverse lights come on and I knew I had a ride.

He told me he was headed to Pennsylvania and that he figured he needed some company for the long ride. He had recently been divorced and had come down to visit his brother in Ocean City. His brother, so he claimed, was a major drug dealer at the beach and he'd done partied enough and decided it was time to head back home.

There was some general talk of drugs and cops and other hazards of his brother's occupation. As we spoke he reached into some sort of olive green army bag and scooped out a handful of bullets, waved them in front of my face and said, "Nobody is going to fuck with me."

"Fuck me," I thought.

Always one to face the most darkest times with the most driest humor, I bellowed out, "Now why would you need those?"

It was then that he reached under the driver's seat and pulled out a mayo jar full of a white powdery substance.

"Because I've got all this blow I need to unload," he said.

Great, here I am in a primer grey Ford Pinto station wagon with some guy tweaked out on blow who appears to be packing heat. He's got loose lips and a few hours to kill on a drive and I became his guinea pig passenger. I blew through my arsenal of stories about rugby hi jinx fairly quickly and had to labor through him endlessly bitching about his ex-wife and all the hot coke sluts he banged back at the beach.

"I'm not lookin' for a relationship right now, just lookin' for some fun youknowwhatImean?" he said while elbowing my rib cage.

Caught up in conversation - and wanting to avoid any possible confrontation - I didn't have the heart to speak up when we came to the DC/Baltimore split. About twenty miles later when he noticed a sign for Baltimore he recalled that I had originally stated DC as my destination. He offered to turn around but I insisted Baltimore was okay. My sister lived there after all so I was going to have to just roll with the plan.

When we got to Baltimore, he thanked me for the conversation and I thanked him for the ride.

There I was standing on the edge of the Inner Harbor looking for a pay phone with my head up my ass.

I rang up my sister and explained the situation.

Living in the city, she didn't have a car but her boyfriend did and she'd have him come get me. Once again I decided to split the distance and started to walk towards my sister's place on Calvert Street. But at some point I got disoriented and switched streets. It didn't help that I had only met my sister's boyfriend once and wasn't sure who to look for. Suffice it to say I ended up walking most of the way before I got the smarts to call from a pay phone and give the cross streets on the corner I was at to him.

He was an English teacher and Dead Head and the cool guy whose class everybody probably wanted to take. Intrigued by my adventure, he was eager to hear my tale. He was a Dead Head after all and had traveled all over the country following that band. There was a deli below my sister's place and he bought me a sub and a pitcher of beer. I flipped through the pages of the City Paper while I told him my ordeal and that's when I noticed an ad for the Descendents playing that night at the now legendary punk rock dump the Marble Bar.

"You know what would make this day even crazier?" I said to him.
"If I went to this show."

No doubt he could relate. So he promised me he would drop me off there. My sister was planning on going to Mexico for her law school spring break the next day so she asked I not come home real late. Her boyfriend also volunteered to drive me back home the next day to get to my brother's bachelor party.

So he dropped me off and there I was sitting at a punk club about to watch one of my favorite bands when all of the sudden these skater kids I knew from Salisbury show up. They had driven up from school to see the show and we going to drive back afterwards. People did shit like this for punk rock back then.

When the show was over I asked the skater kids if they could give me ride up the road to my sister's and they said sure but on the way we past Loyola and feeling like I wanted to continue down this Kerouacian road to nowhere that I was on, I had them stop and let me out there. One of my best friends from high school went to Loyola and I knew he'd hook me up with a place to stay so I ran up the hill to campus and made a bee line for his dorm.

But the dorm door wouldn't open.

And the place was like a ghost town.

I asked a security guard what was going on and he said, "spring break."

Fuck me.

At this point, it was too late to call my sister so I did what I had done all day: I walked.

I walked for hours and miles before finding my way to my sister's place. The kicker was that it was just after 4am and she wasn't going to get up until 6am. So I attempted to sleep on a bus stop bench, then made my way into the alley behind her building and propped myself up against the wall. I didn't really sleep much so I decided I'd go back to the bench - at least from there I could see a clock on a building - a clock I would watch until I saw the light come on from my sister's room.

I waited about a half hour before I buzzed her to let me in, then immediately passed out on her couch.

After my mid-morning nap, because that's really what it was, I got my ride home and by night's end was at some house with a bunch of dudes watching blue movies and drinking beer. At some point we made our way into DC to go to a strip bar.

I have no idea how I got back to school.

I think my oldest brother Jimmy gave me a ride back...

Stovepiper

The only time Barbera comes before Bukowski.

It's all this guy's fault.

Beat Poets have set up camp here.

Thanks to Larry Ferling.

Are bloggers the new Beat Poets?

Cloris Leachman Just Killed It

I just came home from working a Sunday evening catering shift.

Exhausted from losing my lake virginity the day before, where I drank bastardized versions of Wild Orchids, rode jet skis and made a very feeble attempt to water ski (note to self: close mouth and let go of rope), I soldiered through a shit ass'ed catering shift.

My shift involved setting up for some extreme German baptism party only to have a storm roll in and have to move slash lift eight foot tables (with place settings) from the backyard to their wrap-around porch.

Channel surfing away from the Olympics, I stumbled across the roast of Bob Saget. Saget is most known for his role on the TV show Full House or as the host of America's Funniest Home Videos.

I watched a few mediocre comics roast the man.

Then Cloris Leachman came on.

And killed it.

Killed.

It.

Oh and Don Rickles made an appearance.

Suddenly I remembered a recent late night informercial on Dean Martin's variety show.

I had just labored through trying to finished the Nick Tosches biography on Dino before my recent trip to the Jersey Shore.

I never made it to the finish before it was due at the place where one of my friends works. I didn't want to return it all full of sand and stained with suntan lotion. Plus it's one of those dense as fuck books that would demand more attention that I could possibly give at this juncture in time, so I pledge to myself I would purchase a copy and return to it when I could better digest the Crocetti family lore.

Here's a clip from informercial I recently saw and what I think comedy is all about.

Enjoy.

Brothers

 

This is me with my brother Mike.

He's four years older than me but we shared a room growing up so we sometimes act like twins.

Even though he lives in Pennsylvania and I live in North Carolina, we pretty much talk just about every other day.

He's probably one of the funniest guys I know.

I can't recall a family get-together where we weren't cracking each other up for reasons that would seem unexplainable to everyone else in the room. And we usually get the spousal lectures before family visits that include the caveat: "you and your brother better behave yourselves...'

He is a simple guy with simple needs: he gave up wearing underwear years ago when his waistline no longer fit into them and he deducted shortly thereafter that one doesn't really need to use underwear. It was his first philosophical breakthrough regarding consumerism.

He also told me once how he doesn't like that feeling of being wet after he takes a shower and often blow dries himself with a hairdryer.

Back in the day, he was like Richie: he taught me how to sneak out of the house and the proper way to egg cars and was sort of a hoodlum in junior high but by the time he got into high school he was too consumed with sports and girls and didn't have much to do with me.

The whole dynamic really took a turn when he went to college.

That's when suddenly it became my job to go retrieve him when his semesters ended at West Chester. The drive was about three and a half hours from home which made it more encouraging to get there, sleep over, and come home the next day. Picking your older brother up from school was a cool thing so I often enlisted the help of my friends to ride shotgun.

One time it was me and my friend Kevin. We had arrived early and neither my brother nor his roommate Jerry had come home from school yet so a guy who lived below them offer to let us stay with him until my brother came back from his last class. It was everything off-campus housing should be: cassette tapes everywhere, empty beer cans littering the coffee table and the rank smell of pot in the air.

When my brother came home we asked him if he'd buy us some beer. So he went out and got us a six-pack of Genesee Cream Ale. After playing a few rounds of darts with my brother and Jerry, Kevin and I decided we wanted to venture out and see the campus. We walked down the three flights of stairs and made the trek to High Street. It was night time and most of the campus had already started to shut down for break so - dejected - Kevin and I made our way back to my brother's crib. When we reached the third floor and the door of his apartment, the hall light was out which made it pitch black and rendered us blind. We had to feel our way with the key to the doorknob only we had no idea which key it was which made our efforts even more of a challenge.

At some point I guess I was trying to line up a key to the hole with Kevin standing right over my shoulder squinting in the exact same position as me, when we suddenly heard the click and the door opened. But the key was stuck in the handle. I yanked it out and ended up butting my elbow into Kevin's nose which quickly exploded with blood. By the time we got to the top of the steps inside blood was everywhere. When my brother saw Kevin's face he jumped up and hollered, "Jesus Christ what happened?" Much to my dismay, Kevin uttered, "Somebody sucker punched me."

"What!!??" screamed my brother.
"Where? Who? " he said.
Then he turned to his sleeping roommate and said, "Jerry get the fuck up. Someone tagged Greg's friend in the face."

Now Jerry was a Marine who took up boxing and could lick any body's ass in two quick seconds.

"Where is the guy?"

It was then that Kevin realized the seriousness of the situation and 'fessed up that it was a joke and that I had bashed his nose with my elbow.

But it also was one of those defining moments when you realize that despite what differences you might have or the beefs you got into as kids your brother had your back: that he would kick some body's ass for kicking yours without question.

Of course, neither of us have ever had to ante up on that, I mean we're Italian - we are as they say, "lovers not fighters."

So this year I was super excited to be able to vacation with my brother and his family. It had been almost 15 years since my brother and I got to hang out at the shore with one another. So in honor of that, I reprised a look I had 20 years before and went and bleached my hair for the occasion.

This time around, only one person managed to come up with a witty Billy Idol jab...

Anybody See Any?

My 8-year-old got me up at about 5:45am this morning.

We saw maybe three shooting stars before we decided that it was getting chilly (and my neck was starting to hurt from looking up!).

But there's always tomorrow morning.

Hopefully I'll have the same luck this person had last year:

Set The Alarm Folks

It is coming.

Of course, there's always this to consider.

Another Puzzler

This one irks me even more than that JC Pennys ad.

Dear Budweiser,

I've never really liked you.

I think your beer sucks.

Mostly because your alcohol is rice-based and rice-based alcohols, like sake almost always leave me with a headache whether I have consumed two or ten drinks.

But now you have gone and sold your soul to Belgian-based InBev yet still claim you are an American lager.

How can that beer?

The people have spoken - you can no longer stake that claim.

In all fairness, brewing beer wasn't an American invention - especially lager so your claims are comical at best.

Now could you please stop with the Great American Lager campaign already?

Really, first it was Ford trucks (with their Mazda engines) and now you Bud are coming at me with this.

I don't really care about the sale or your beer.

Maybe I should be taking this up with the ad agency?

And don't me started on the radio spot about how important the glass is to the Bud experience...

Early To Rise?

It's time for meteor showers folks.

So if junior or the little miss are early risers, try bottle feeding outside and looking up.

Or set your alarm clocks.

I've been fascinated by the night sky for as long as I can remember.

Especially moon shadows.

And anything moon related even though some days the moon can make me feel like going bat shit crazy.

One day I will own a really tricked-out telescope.

Hopefully before the aliens abduct me.

Add Delete

Had to tidy up the Blogroll today.

Some bit the dust and others were welcomed to the family.

Sacrilege or Pure Genius?

Has anyone seen this?

I never thought I'd be the one coming to defend director John Hughes much less some teen flick movie but something about this just rubs me the wrong way.

And I'm not the only one in an uproariously confused state about it.

These people are as curious as me as to what fucking tweener out there will be able associate with "we're different but all in this together" subplot.

My guess is that they are selling kids clothes through the parents because it is mom and dad's credit card that's footing the bill but what teenager wants to by clothes their parents think are hip?

Advertising, you've failed me again.

I'm sure Whit has something to say about it.

Or maybe Chag.

Too bad Rock Star Mommy doesn't still blog.

I know she'd have something to say about this, especially the shitty Simple Minds cover.

Not Feeling It

 

Some days you just feel like throwing in the towel.

Or maybe just throwing sand in the face of that which irks you.

It's been a long summer.

Very long.

And even though I love summer, sometimes it can even give you the blues.

I want the summer to end because I want to put all the voodoo behind me.

Yet when summer ends in just a couple of weeks, it will usher in a new phase in my life: my youngest will start kindergarten and I will begin the inevitable transition back to working full-time.

I want to work and look forward to it.

But when my youngest told me he was going to miss snuggling with me it took all of my strength to keep back the tears.

So here's sand in the face to a shitty summer and a little hardcore ditty to lift the spirits:

Against My Better Judgement

I let my boys watch a few episodes of Wildboyz.

Mostly as a cure for boredom as it has been nearly one hundred degrees the past few days, that and the boys are still going through a delousing from the whole head lice debacle which pretty much keeps them stuck inside for the better part of the day.

Yesterday we got the thumbs up to go swimming but with the temp so high in recent days, the pool was like bath water.

God knows what kind of communicable diseases you can get from bath water.

So after tiring of video games, on came the Wildboyz.

Then the unthinkable happened.

Today a black mamba woke me up.

Jackassworld

I Can't Make This Shit Up

 

Shiver Me Timbers

 

The big joke between my wife and I since we got back from vacation is that when people ask we say, "we went to the shore but didn't go in the ocean."

And it's true.

The water was freakin' cold.

Arctic cold.

Frigid you might say.

Somewhere in the high 50s/low 60s.

But that didn't stop this dude from tuning blue in the name of fun.

I think I went in twice in 10 days and only know am I starting to feel my balls and the tips of my toes again.

I think a road trip to Wrightsville might be on deck for Saturday.

The current water temp there is 79...

I Didn't Even Take This Picture

 

But I totally dig it.

Donut Burgers

 

Getting donuts on Sunday after mass is a Barbera family tradition that goes back as far as I can remember.

So when I was at the beach and I didn't see my brother around after mass on Sunday morning, my nephew Michael told me he went to get donuts.

"Creme donuts," he said.
"Ever had 'em?"

"Yeah I've had creme donuts before," I told him.

"But these have special creme," he said.

"Oh, you mean the kind that makes your teeth itch?" I said.

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"It's a Pop Pop term," I said and explained how my dad uses that term for things that are sweet.

My brother and sister-in-law returned, put the donut box on the table and then I opened it up.

Sweet jesus.

Would you look at those things!

My nephew referred to them as "donut burgers" because life for him is full of Simpsonalia.

These of course, should not be confused with these donut burgers which couldn't possibly be more disgusting.

Although I bet Homer would eat one.

R'n'R Beach

 

A Sea Isle City Sunset

 

Technically, it's probably Townsends Inlet.

The Cowtown Cowboy

 

Once you get over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, you hang a right on 40 and head east to the beach towns.

There's not much to see during this stretch except endless rows of corn or maybe the Jersey Devil which is known to inhabit the Pine Barrens of south Jersey.

And then there's Cowtown.

When I think of Jersey, rodeos don't immediately come to mind.

Nope, more like The Boss or Yo La Tengo maybe some Silver Queen corn or Maxwells in Hoboken.

I definitely don't think of cowboys and rodeos.

Cowtown has always intrigued me.

We should have stopped.

I always want to stop but am always too eager to get to the shore.

You'll know you are in Cowtown when you see the cowboy.

Of course it came up on us sooner than I expected and what with the digital camera taking forever to boot up and my wife's lead foot, I managed to only capture a sliver.

But I like the sliver.

Because that's just one of my patented typos away from silver.

And silver always makes me think of this junkie cowboy chestnut...

Weeeee!

 

Shortly after experiencing the joy that was the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, my kids lost their bridge virginity on this bad boy.

It's the world's longest twin suspension bridge and going over it, according to my 5-year-old, was like a ride at the NC Sate Fair.

I Heart Baltimore

 

Most of our family trips involved a direct line to three places: North Topsail Beach, cabins in Ashe county or going home.

Going west or east in the state of North Carolina, there's not much to see. Sure on the way to the mountains to get to pass by Winston-Salem which at least gives the kids something to look at besides trees and going east you get, well, you get to see not much of anything.

So when we saddled up to do vacation this year, the kids were jazzed at the prospect of staring off out their windows at something else.

They screamed when we entered the Harbor Tunnel in Baltimore. They've heard the stories for years about Baltimore from my wife and I. Both of us went to school at Towson University which is located north of Baltimore.

I used to ride my mountain bike down Charles Street into the city and people watch at the Inner Harbor or maybe take a trip to the seedy side of town.

When were were courting, you could often find my wife and I seeing hair metal bands at Hammerjacks . I think we saw Slayer there. I remember I almost got thrown over the balcony's railing because apparently where I was standing had good sight lines and some metal head wanted that spot.

And of course they had heard many (censored versions) of rugby tales over the years that involve the Charm City.

So when we saw the city's skyline on the horizon with the harbor to the right of us, we debriefed the boys that the tunnel was a-coming.

If you find yourself with some time on your hands in Baltimore, don't forget to get yourself some pie from Rodney.

Souvenirs

What do you like to bring back from your family vacation?

T-shirts from the boardwalk?

Check.

Sea shells combed from the sea shore?

Check.

Sand in your car?

Check.

This year we decided to add something else to the fold: head lice.

Yeah.

Fuck me.

At one point during our stay at the Jersey Shore my son complained about an itchy scalp and how he had found a bug in his hair but I chalked it up to sand and told him to wash is hair a little better.

But after that I noticed he kept scratching his hair behind his ear like a dog.

Wednesday we took the ferry from Jersey to Delaware and made our way to Ocean City, Maryland, to see the in-laws. We crashed early and got up the next day and hit the boardwalk so the kids could do the whole skeeball-in-the-arcade and rides thing (which every kid must experience once in his lifetime) and then retreated to the condo to rest.

My wife took a nap while I entertained the kids by initiating some PS2 because even though me and the old lady were bushed, the kids took a cat nap in the car on the way back.

At some point Spencer scratched his hair again and pulled out a bug.

"Here," he said.
"These are the bugs I have been finding," he said.

It was as big as a grain of rice.

I took the bug into the bathroom, called my wife and mother-in-law in and we all looked at it and said, "head lice."

Then the mad scramble to delouse his ass began.

My wife darted off to CVS and purchased some lice killing shampoo. When she washed out his hair a good 60 to 75 adult lice floated down the drain. [The wife said I was exaggerating and should reduce the number in half - ed.]

After the shampoo (i.e. a pesticide) you are required to take a fine-tooth comb and comb out every possible strand of hair to remove the bug... only my son has a mop of hair.

It was painfully clear that he needed a haircut as we're talking total infestation.

And he acted like Samson.

I called Jersey and gave them the news but as we looked deeper into the how, why and where of it all it became painfully obvious that he probably had them before we left and that he probably had them for awhile.

The life cycle of head lice is about 40 days and you can't see an adult until after about 20 days.

Ad therein lies the psychological disturbance of it all: they could be everywhere.

Beds, blankets... you name it.

I've heard of people having head lice but never has the full scope of it been communicated to me: the three-times-a-day combing of hair to find nits and nymphs, the endless washing/drying everyday of everything your head has touched, and the overall pain in the ass of at least seven to ten days combating it just to wait and see if you have got them all.

Re-infestation is common.

So for the last day we have been delousing the homestead, the kids and ourselves.

What a way to end your vacation.

Enough already.

Really.

Somebody bring the good news, I've had enough of the bad...

Just Got Back...

... from a very long vacation which involved beaches and shores, bridges and tunnels, and even a bridge-tunnel.

Until I can pull my head out of the sand, let's take a look back at previous summers had here at the House of G.

In 2005, it was all I could do just to survive the summer with two kids, my oldest on the brink of kindergarten.

By 2006, summer was far more enjoyable but it took me weeks to post about it. Expect the same this year.

Last year, I was quicker on posting about my vacation exploits, but still wrestled with the art of Blogger and its pic-posting cousin Picasa.

Vitaminenergy Colon Cleansing

A few weekends ago, Father's Day to be exact, I attended a 3-on-3 soccer tournament that my 8-year-old son played in.

This was one of those full scale tourneys with all kinds of sponsorship tents dotting the landscape.

As is par for the course in these situations, free swag was to be had just about anywhere and everywhere and I decided that since I was up at the crack of dawn and had to work later in the day, that I would try a Vitaminenergy drink.

I'm no stranger to energy drinks.

Years ago when they first entered the market one of my newspaper colleagues and I decided we'd do a little "research" and sample these new beverages for a possible story.

At the time, none of them really grabbed a hold of me but if I had no access to coffee and needed a eye-opening jolt, I'd probably reach for a Red Bull.

Anyway, I'd had the vitaminwaters before - and although I wouldn't recommend them to anybody - I figured since I was in the middle of nowhere that their version of the energy drink would suffice in the pinch that I was in.

Pinch.

Remember that word.

When my wife saw that I had a cold beverage she asked for a sip and then asked where I got it. I told her they were free and pointed her to the company's tent. We both downed our drinks while waiting for my son's team to collect their medals.

They had won the tournament in a shootout with my son making the winning goal.

Talk about feeling some serious dad pride... or maybe it was the drink I just consumed.

At some point during the 45 minute ride home my bowels started to alert themselves to me that they needed attention. But unlike coffee and its shit-conducing factor, this wave quickly appeared to be one that I wasn't going to be able to hold back for very long (but I did make it home).

Once we arrived home I dashed in the door and made a bee line to the bathroom. As soon as I got my shorts down and relaxed did the stream of shit start. Actually, calling it "shit" would be a mistake as this was more like I turned on the faucet that my anus does indeed NOT have and listened to myself pee out my ass.

That's about the only way to explain it: I was peeing out my ass.

Phew.

Glad that that was over, I made my way to the couch to recover only to hear my wife go into the bathroom.

I spent the next several hours peeing out my ass much to my dismay, each time thinking, "I can't possible have any more in there can I?" and then proved wrong by my bowel-spitting butt.

I was about two shakes of a fig tree away from calling off work but I needed the money (because of that damn car thing) and decided to be a trooper and head off to work.

It probably was a good thing because it forced me to not think about my pissing anus as well as being a good exercise in butt clenching.

Not only could I not think about even touching food, just looking at water conjured up memories of peeing out my ass. Yet it was almost one hundred degrees and I was working outside with visions of dehydration dancing in my head.

Alas, I made it out of my shift alive and without having to spray my colon into some stranger's tiolet and I did choke down some carbs as we cleaned up.

The next day my wife said she had the same problem and we both deducted that it had to have been a result of those drinks.

Vitaminenergy... don't say I didn't warn you.

When You Can Truly Be Self-Referential

So I went back through my archives and found that in the summers of '05 and '06 I barely had the time, energy or inclination to post what with having to deal with the two boys 24/7.

Last year around this time, I was still in recovery mode from having hernia surgery. I remember I watched a lot of movies, mostly in the middle of the night after the pain meds wore off and I found myself wide awake in a silent, somber house with nothing else to do.

I would lay on the couch, sit the lap top on my chest, plug in some headphones and satisfy my film watching desires. But one thing that was increasingly obvious was that I was beginning to go completely bat shit crazy from being tethered to the house.

Then, much like now, the family vacation is on the horizon and I can smell the ocean air already.

This year we are switching it up a bit and taking the kids to the beaches of our youth.

Maybe we'll find the mighty conch again.

Or maybe some shark's teeth.

But despite my enthusiasm to show the kids what beach life was like for me or what it was like for my wife, I will undoubtedly miss North Topsail this year...

Wow

How come nobody told me about this movie?

Squirrels: Friend Or Foe?

I was turning into my neighborhood the other day when a squirrel ran across the street in front of my car so I stomped on the brakes to let the little fella get passed.

As I was about to push down on the accelerator, another squirrel appeared from the brush and made the dash across the street only he was followed by another one , two, three, four, five, six... SEVEN... EIGHT!

That's right eight friggin' squirrels all ran across the street in one lot.

I feared they might be copycat rodents trying to take a page out of the book these Russians wrote.

But then I remembered Charlie from last summer and I can't imagine that guy wilding about the 'hood.

I find the things a mild nuisance, especially when they are looting the bird seed from my feeders or trying to burrow into my attic's crawl space, but for the most part I feel I have a harmonious relationship with those guys.

But I have found that most people either love them or hate them.

How about you?

Chlorine, Sunscreen and Steve Miller

The smell of those three combined will always and forever conjure up memories of my days as a pool boy.

No shit.

I was a pool boy at the Beverly Hilton back in the early '90s.

At the time, I sort of hated my job.

You see I moved to Los Angeles to get into the film business but after a short foray doing p.a. work I landed a gig being a gopher-turned-copywriter. The office was full of characters but this isn't a post about working at Davis*Glick.

After I left that job I bounce around doing more p.a. work and even had a stint working as a fact checker and proofreader at Sassy's little bro publication Dirt before finding myself as a bicycle messenger in downtown Los Angeles - which quite possibly could have been the most interestingly shitty job I've ever worked.

Looking to get out of the messenger racket, I skipped work one day and applied for a job as a valet parking attendant at the Beverly Hilton. I had spent semester breaks and summer vacations as a car courier in the Metro DC area driving various makes of cars along the way. After I filled out my application I sat in the Human Resources office for an interview in which I was politely declined that position because of my inexperience driving Bentleys and Rolls Royces.

The next day when I got home from 10 hours in the saddle, there was a message on my answering machine which asked if I wanted to be a pool attendant.

I said yes.

My first day on the job I found out the hotel was the place Heidi Fleiss got busted.

I soon would discover that the place was ground zero for a lot of things.

The hotel was owned and operated by Merv Griffin and I was told, in no uncertain terms, that Merv liked to eat pool side everyday and that he had a batch of CDs that you were required to put in rotation on a daily basis. Two that I remember were Steve Miller's Greatest Hits 1974-1978 and Elton John's Greatest Hits 1976-1986. And if you didn't have these CDs in rotation or had switched them out for something else (I once brought in Dinosaur Jr.), you would get a visit from management.

Management hated me because they thought I had the best job in the world because all I did was hang around the pool all day. That's because they weren't there in the early morning to see me take the better part of two hours to clean the tiles, sweep the deck and vacuum the Olympic-sized pool.

I also had to clean the fountain.

And of course service the need of every douchebag who stayed at the pool from celebrities and wanna-be celebrities to contestants on one of the many shows Merv created or produced.

Oh and toss in some soccer hooligans.

A few months into the job it was obvious why I had gotten hired: I was white... and Merv liked boys. But there was a hitch at the onset - I had a tattoo on my calf. I'll never forget the hilarity at having to bandage up my calf every morning for two weeks before I finally convinced the assistant managed that a sore that doesn't heal is far more offensive than a tattoo on the calf of a young man working at a pool in Beverly Hills.

One day while I was sweeping the deck of the ever present flower pedals, I heard the sound of a band coming from the ballroom. The hotel is the host for the Golden Globes and several other industry events so it wasn't unusual to see celebs walking around or hearing noise coming from the ballroom as it readied itself for some monstrous event. But on this day I had to draw myself closer because I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The band was sound checking with Spinal Tap's Big Bottom.

The next day I read in one of the trade magazines that AFI honored director Rob Reiner the night before and that - yes - it indeed was Spinal Tap that performed.

There are many stories, too numerous to tell in one blog post.

I wrote about the Christmas tree fiasco last summer after Merv passed away.

And there was the time Dr. Ruth demanded I get her an LA Times which found me running all over the hotel trying to find a copy (it was late afternoon and most of the comp issues had disappeared) only to return to find Dr. Ruth asleep and shortly thereafter, the LA Times in the deep end of the pool.

In 1994, California - and its Rose Bowl in Pasadena - hosted the World Cup. This was a nightmare for me. During that World Cup I would come to work to find the entire contents of some one's fruit platter floating in the pool (thrown from the balcony I assumed), ejaculate in the gym bathroom, or broken glass at the bottom of the pool.

Good times.

Although Argentinian women were a sight to behold.

The Germans were rude and poor tippers.

And the Columbians all wore mock afros like Carlos Valderrama. But they soon would morn another teammate who was murdered for having scored a goal on his home team. Legend has it that the gunman hollered "Goooooooooooooooooooooooooool!" for each of the 21 bullets he shot into Escobar's body.

Another time I had a visit from la mafioso, the mafia, when one guy paid me handsomely to make sure his wife never stayed into the sun too long while he was handling some business throughout the day and then there was the Saudi-American kid George - a liaison for some sheik who was pissing away his oil money at the hotel - who approached my fellow pool boys and I and asked if we would be male strippers for the ladies in the sheik's entourage. It seemed the ladies had grown tired of the men and their strippers and wanted to do something as payback. The hilarious thing was that we didn't even have to get naked, rather just show some skin that was deemed inappropriate to be seen by their beliefs.

I passed on that one, as well as the numerous propositions I got from old men(most "straight" men from the Midwest or deep South) for "massages" and by the Costa Rican hairdresser who worked at the salon on-site who wanted to know how big my "pee pee" was on a almost daily basis.

My colleagues and I had develop a certain pool boy speak that would allow us to openly comment on guests without them having a clue as to what we were talking about. One of the others guys would routinely order room service out by the pool and sign the number of the suite of one of the guests. Unlike my recent gas station attendant confession, these will remain secret only to be reveal within the pages of a book or through the courier font of a screenplay.

Looking back, it wasn't all that bad of a job. I made close to 30k, had health insurance and great benefits, two free meals a day and could stay at any Hilton for free if not really cheap. I also used my job to set up a complimentary dinner at Trader Vic's the night I proposed to my wife although since she suspected I would propose during that dinner, I gave the double-pump fake and waited until we drove out to the beach at Malibu after dinner to get on my knee.

But it was the tediousness of fighting boredom that got to me. During the non-summer months, there'd be a string of days upon days where you wouldn't see a single person to give a towel to, place a cushion on the lounge or sell overpriced Coppertone to yet you we confined to your post lest some guest did miraculously appear and expect to find some 90210 cast-off waiting to serve them hand and foot.

I've been told recently that the hotel is slanted to be razed and subsequently erased from history so that they can erect something else in its place.

Because that's how Hollywood sends its loved ones out to pasture...

Fluffer

This time last year I was talking about Christmas In July and prepping for hernia surgery.

But I still managed to be a soldier of rock and roll.

I have to say, in retrospect, that having a vasectomy was much more pleasurable than having a hernia and the subsequent bruising that followed.

Welcome To The Peloton

One summer tradition I have adopted since becoming a stay-at-home- dad is the watching of the Tour De France.

My fascination with cycling goes way back to when I was a little grasshopper. But while BMX and mountain biking has figured prominently in my life over the years, ever since I saw the move Breaking Away in the late '70s I have had a soft spot for road racing.

By the '80s, I was a full-on fan of Greg LeMond who was the first American to win the Tour. I remember reading a story in Sports Illustrated (?) about how LeMond would put his body through Herculean demands, one time riding while in the throes of a diarrheea attack.

I've also been intrigued by the story of Marco Pantani so much so that I wrote a song about the guy.

Then there was Lance Armstrong and his amazing story that if you don't know at least part of then you'd been living under a rock for the last decade. He's the only man to win the race seven times... in a row. Calling that one of sport's greatest achievements is an understatement at best.

In recent years the Tour has been plagued by a host of controversies but yet I still find it to be a joy to watch.

This year I'm pulling for Cadel Evans as well as George Hincapie and Christian Vandevelde and hope to see the coveted yellow jersey on one of them.

Thunder & Lightning

We had some crazy storm roll in Friday night which put a damper on everyone's jonze for a fireworks display.

The storm came on with a vengeance and with little warning: one minute we were out back grilling at my brother-in-law's watching the kids in a water balloon fight (which escalated into a hose fight that I may have gotten the worst of) and then next minute we were dodging thunder clouds and lightning while trying to light off some fireworks.

I was determined to use up my left over bottle rockets from last year but the wind kept blowing out my lighter.

When I saw a bolt of lightning and heard the loud clap of thunder I threw in the towel and retreated to the comforts of their house.

The next day when we came home after spending night, we had no TV, no phone and no internet service.

Some of our tomato plants got whacked as well as sunflower or two by the storm.

And that's when my wife yelled, "Holy shit!"

As you can see by the looks of these pictures, it appears the tree house got hit by lightning when we were gone.

Check out the zipper-like strip that goes up the bark of the pine tree... or the hole in the roof... or the shredded plywood?

Fucking nuts, eh?