Breaking Dad 1 -Baby Dragons

Baby Dragons.

Netflix had been on long enough. I told my eight year old daughter to shut off her show that long ago stopped teaching how to train your dragon and do something else. In her typical child-like summer boredom, she said there was nothing else to do.

“Fine,” I said, in full-on Dad mode. “I’d like you to go to your room and write a story.”

 To make this part short, she went to her room and found something else to do as I made dinner.

Over some classic Dad cooking, I asked if she wanted to do anything for her day camp talent show happening the next day. She said her talent was going to be ‘audience participant’ and simply sit and watch the other kids perform.

I asked how her story was going and she said she didn’t have any ideas for one so she had played with her dragons.

“I have an idea,” I prompted, “what about a story about how one of your dragons tried to bite off your Dad’s foot which is why I am in this cast?”

She looked at me funny, mainly because she knew I really sprained my ankle in a freak trampoline fight accident with a ball that more safety-conscious Dads would probably have said "get that off there before someone gets hurt.". 

“Uh, I don’t think so,” she said in the same voice her mother would use, “you stepped on a ball.”

“Well, I want to read your story before bedtime, so you better get on it.”

At bedtime, I hobbled into her room and read her short story. It was good; there was a beginning, middle and end. It was about dragons but no mention of me or my ankle cast. I could live with that.

“You know,” I said, as an idea came to me along with the thought I may be the greatest Dad in the world “you could read this to your day camp for the talent show.”

“I can’t do that, Dad,” she said, shaking her head. “Writing isn’t a talent.”

I went immediate poker face. We all know kids have this way of really cutting deep into someone’s psyche, but they can hide their social rudeness behind their age and innocence. “How come you are so fat?” I’ve heard younger children ask, “Why are you so old?” another question to a relative. It happens.

Writing isn’t a talent?

I saw her side; talent shows tend to focus on active performances; singing, dancing, gymnastics. There aren’t many popular shows for the many other sides of culture; writing, drawing, painting. 

I believe my daughter has lots of talents. Parents should notice the natural talents their children have and encourage it.

“Writing is a talent,” I told her, trying to hide the hurt in my thoughts because I am obviously biased. 

“Creating is a talent. I’m sure a lot of kids would like to hear your story. And you know what? I bet it would make some of them want to write their own as well.”

I wish I could end this story with how I wanted it to end. I want to say she went to that Talent Show, stood up in front of her classmates after they sang and danced. I wished I could say she told her simple story of a dragon bullied by other dragons until she was helped by a girl who made her brave enough to scare away the other dragons.

But she didn’t stand up and read that story for her talent show.

Maybe next time she will. All I can do as a father is to remind her anything she creates is a talent be it writing, painting, or building. 

It doesn’t have to be what all the other dragons are doing. 

Shitty working title or the relevance of irrelevant things happening to you.

Shitty working title in progress but not going much further than this...

This is just a reminder of 2 odd things that happened laterly referring  - the Motherboy Incident and the USS Indianopolis.

Motherboy

I'm in a funk, I'm thinking i will watch some AD, -go for some tried and true comedy instead of attempting to go down the Netflix rabbit hole of potential 'funny' shows I have or haven't heard about. I'm thinking maybe I should watch Motherboy (my own mother/son issues perhaps?) I don't know. But later, in front of Netflix I change my mind. I randomly pick an episode of something called Lady Dyanmite, starring Maria Bamford, who played the sketchy addict in AD season 4. I notice that it was executive produced by Mitch Hurwitz, creator of AD. Good start, I think.

The episode is called I Love You. In it there is a scene in a record store and i'm not really listening to much to the dialogue, drifting off in my own self-loathing thoughts when I notice behind Maria's friend is a poster of MOTHERBOY!!  I'm like 'holy shit!'

I take it as a sign - I need to watch Motherboy. Perhaps there's some message in there I am meant to hear/take away. So I decide to immediately stop LD and switch to AD. Also somewhat of a surprise is that Motherboy is already queued up. Ok, maybe last time i was binge-watching AD (many months ago) I stopped at Motherboy and simply forgot that was the next one i was set to watch. Whatever.

I watch Motherboy, not having any epiphany to help me out of my current state. I go back, finish Lady Dynamite. Near the end, she has a breakdown (she's always on the edge of a breakdown it appears) and she starts yelling "I'M A MONSTER" which strikes me that is also what Buster screams in Motherboy.

I'm now worried that was supposed to be my epiphany; I'm a Monster. Or is it the sheer idiocy of the circumstances; Buster and Maria are nothing close to being monsters in the true sense but yet that is what they consider themselves. Is that also what I feel/think?

The USS Indianopolis Incident.

I'm at the beach with my client (care aide for someone with a mental disability who is under a 24/7 court-ordered supervision. We go to the beach. I tell him of my fear of fish nibbling my toes as I swim, which leads to my recollection of a US Navy ship which sunk in WW2 and all the crewmen who survived basically floated in shark-infested waters for a month or so before being rescued. I couldn't recall the name of the ship at the time, thinking it was the USS Missouri.

Next day, I'm again on Netflix and there is a Nicholas Cage movie staring at me; the USS Indianopolis. 'that's the boat' I think, 'what a coincidence i was just talking about that'. Cue to today where I am again sitting in front of Lady Dynamite, deciding to give it another go after the Motherboy thing.

At the end of this one, for reasons not related to the actual episode there is a character doing a voice over for a animation piece. The joke is it is a song a shark is singing, about how he only eats 'seamen'. In the ocean around him there are a bunch of sailors, looking panicked. The shark starts eating them. In the background there is a poorly drawn ship - the USS Indianopolis.

That is all.

Getting old with Weezer

First, I’ve never written a concert review before. In fact, I hardly have ever read them. The gist of them seems simple enough, so I’m going to try one.

One thing I think most published reviewers don’t talk about is the $ factor; after all, they don’t have to pay for the tickets. I once went to a Leslie Nielson play about Clarence Darrow. All I had to do was call up the ticket office, told them I was writing for a magazine and they left a free ticket at the pick up window for me. The show was great (to me) because the only other thing I was going to be able to do that night for free was go for a walk. So I think most reviews should begin with the reviewer stating how much (or if) they paid for the ticket.

My opinion (and I believe yours) of any show would change vastly if I paid nothing for it versus if I paid $100 for it. If I paid $500 for a ticket, I’d be expecting to get a ride home by one of the band members but that’s neither here nor there. So with that caveat, my beautiful wife bought us tickets for Weezer as a Valentine’s Day gift.  We had a rule about not buying presents on Valentine’s but she broke it and spent $77 and that’s another different topic altogether. To the show!

Shit HAPPENED - or fuckit, I'm doing a cleanse.

***This post deals with extremely graphic bodily functions. If you don't believe everyone poops, this article is not for you. That said...

via GIPHY

Ow ow ow ow, I'm thinking as I'm sitting on the toilet, again. I have destroyed my asshole . 

And all because I finally decided to do something about my chronic exhaustion, bad diet and dad belly; I mentally snapped and purchased a cleansing kit, one of those dietary-type powders that is supposed to help your metabolism or something.

I remember, there was this time, nearly fifteen years ago when 'cleansing' was the 'in' thing to do. Maybe it still is but my life and social circle has changed from knowing who is starring in the next Tarantino movie to knowing who all the pups in the Paw Patrol are.

I knew about 'cleansing' because there was this girlfriend of a drinking buddy who was the group buzz kill. She'd be the only one not drinking and although nobody asked she'd find some opportunity (such as the waitress saying "would you like a drink?") to tell everyone she was on a cleanse.


She said it as if it was something to be proud of. But not matter how many times she ‘cleansed’ she was still always a bit of a dick. We were all pretty happy when they finally broke up.

Now, nearly twenty years and twenty pounds later, I've decided to get serious about my health. No matter what you might think now, I’m here to tell you your body changes after 40. I start to think of the bathroom consequences of many of the foods I am about to eat. God help my toilet and asshole if I start craving hot sauce again. Funnily enough, I just watched an episode of Teen Titans GO! that perfectly summed up my evolution of addiction to spicy food. 

Shit happens

December 15th, 2016

Today was officially the last day of a 10 year social services career. It ended quietly, perhaps fittingly the way it should have; just me and one client. The other one who is usually there had committed himself earlier in the week; hallucinating and hearing voices. He will return next week, a change in his meds and the side effects that go with it. I'm glad I'm not there for that. Instead me and the other guy spend my last shift going to the mall, grabbing some snacks and watching TV until shift change.

It was a good time, basically just baby-sitting a young-at-heart adult. He's a funny guy and our running joke was "I want my two dollars", a line from Better Off Dead I kept throwing at him because I bought him a coffee the night before and I knew full well he would not ever pay me back. I showed him this clip on youtube so he'd better understand why I kept saying that to him.

Now, nobody ever pays a care aide worker back, except in the occasional back-handed compliment like 'I could never do the job you do'. That's bullshit. Anybody can do the job I do, much like anyone can do the job you do, if they chose to want to do it. I don't kid myself, what I do isn't rocket science or political espionage. It was simply trying to make someone's life better for a few hours a day. Often, whose life you were trying to make better wasn't the person you thought it was. Every job I've been in I've been told never to lend money or buy something for a client, much less buy them something expecting it to paid back. But sometimes, the best thing I could do for them (and my own sense of self) was to reach into my own pocket and buy them a coffee or a burger. That is the only real words of wisdom I can say I learned after 10 years.