A Very Special TeeVee Moment, Or, “Don’t Piss Me Off”

I do watch some TeeVee.  I like it, so fuck you.  It’s the quality time between the wife and I share so tenderly.

So on this one television program on the NBC network called Parenthood there is a scene that truly resonated with me both as a father and as a grumpy jerk son of a bitch.  So I’m sharing it with My Dad Homies.  Yeah, Parenthood, I’m whipped like cream.

Quick back story: the smart-but-troubled granddaughter, Amber, invited her crunchy-mope boyfriend from Fresno to come spend some quality/love time with her.  The boyfriend is one of those bad acoustic guitar playing, thin bearded, flannel shirt wearing, fake philosopher kids you want to punch because he so full of shit you get mad pissed that the chicks buy that bullshit.  You know the fucker.  He has a van.

At one point, the mother, Sarah (Sarah and Amber are living in grandpa Braverman’s compound outside of Berkeley), discovers the boyfriend with Amber in the shower.  Boyfriend runs out of the house, predictably.

So this one scene I’m noting, the crazy, hippie-vet grandfather of the Braverman clan, Zeek (played by Craig T. Nelson), confronts the teenage suitor from Fresno in the kid’s van.

Boyfriend: (in all sincerely) “Sir, I just want to let you know I consider myself a student of phi-los-o-phy.  Live and let live, I mean no harm to anyone.”

Zeek: (annoyed as hell) “I am an irrational hard ass with rage issues.  Don’t piss me off.”

I had to pause the TiVo machine and write the dialog down because it was so…me.  My wife agreed.  You see, I am the father of a daughter.  And I’m also an irrational dick with a rage chips on my shoulders.  Don’t piss me off, boys.

The Birthday Loot Grab Extravaganza

Hey dads!  My kid just had a birthday.  I’m still recovering from said birthday.  Birthdays, as you know, are a very special time for any young kid.  That long full-year wait until….  Hell, I still love birthdays and I’m old as hell.

But let me tell you something, padres, here in the wilds of the affluent suburbs of Washington, D.C., kid birthdays are as perverted as Michael Jackson’s fill-in-the-blank.  For real.  Shit is off the hizzy, as the kids used to say about decade ago.

Before I discuss the Great Birthday Loot Grab, let’s quickly review the most significant of all annual Childhood Loot Grabs:

• Easter – From chocolate bunnies (hollow) to jelly beans; baskets of eggs to eco-terroristic plastic eggs, Easter is the second most blessed day of the year.  For dentists.  We just talked about this, but when did Easter become the new Halloween with all the candy and whatnot?

• Halloween – This holiday is officially approved sanctioned by the American Dental Association.  When did Easter become the new Christmas with lights and decorations and gifts?  When did goody bags start appearing at Halloween?

• Christmas/Hanukkah – We all know this is the collective greediest of all holidays.  Time for family, time for carols?  Time for receiving new, free shit like a motherfucker!  Gift giving?  Meh, that’s okay but it’s not as fun as gift receiving.  That totally rules.  I mean screw all the fake-ass religious overtones, the great December giveaway should, practically, be renamed Winter Gift Getting & Loot Grab.

• Birthdays – But the individual greediest of all holidays is the birthday.  The affluent suburban guilty-as-hell-parent kid birthday:

My kid just had a birthday.  I’m still recovering from said birthday.  For the last few years, she’s specifically attempted to begin birthday party preparations for her next on the first day after her last birthday.  I had to implement a dad-policy years ago that she couldn’t even begin discussing her birthday until January 1.  Guess when she begins discussing her birthday?  January 1, the moment she wakes up.  Happy New Year!

My child has had a birthday party at her home, an affluent suburban party center, a play-gym twice, a rock climbing center, and an indoor pool.  The pool was this year.  She’s already alluded to a skate park for next year and I had to give her the look and ask, “Is it the new year already?  Really?”  Jesus, kid, the goddamn nerve!

Kiddo just turned eight and got a new bike (aluminum frame Trek, black anodized rims, etc.), a camera (not crappy playschool piece of shit, hers says “Nikon”), a bunch of American Girl stuff, some DVDs, and some other stuff.  That’s just from the parents.  At 8:00 a.m.

But she had a party later in the day–after the soccer game–and got ALL KINDS OF SHIT!  Good shit too.  From her friends (and no, we didn’t have her open that stuff at the party) she got a snorkeling set, some top-brand art supplies (that I want to steal), a set of authentic and professional engineering/drafting tools (that my neighbor wants to steal), a battery-powered bubble gun, a bunch of board/bored games…and like $200 in gift cards!  She only had a dozen kids at the thing.  I once had the nerve to suggest a hippie no-gift party; we still have unopened gifts going back to her 4th birthday.  No-gift party?  No…I’m still sleeping in the basement.

Now, I used to actually be a jerk about how little a gift card means as a gift but, you know, now I’m kind of cool with it.  Combine the Target and Visa and Amex gift cards and it’s Wii-city for daddy!  The kid actually wrote, as a class assignment, a persuasive letter advocating for a Wii.  Her points of persuasion were: 1) “It’s fun for when I’m bored,” 2) “Wii Fit is great exercise,” and 3) “With Mario Cart, I can begin learning how to drive.”  Uh, all valid reasons as far as I’m concerned.

So in addition to hundreds of dollars of gifts from the parents, rental of the pool and party room, decorations, and a cake we also had to fund the Gift Grab that’s called goody bags.  You know, gifts for the party attendees.  The free pool in April, the cake and Capri Sun pouches, and all that party shit isn’t enough.  No.  We have to also give the attendees like $10 worth of stuff in a plastic bag that matches the plates, tablecloth, and napkins.  Birthday parties for kids have the same carbon footprint as the Super Bowl®.  I asked couldn’t we just give the kids a ten dollar bill in an envelope as they left?  NO.  I can’t just give the kids a ten dollar bill in an envelope as they leave.

Now she/I have to write Thank You cards.  For this, she prefers Crane & Co.  Sigh.  Ten more years and she’s on her own.

You know what I got for my 8th birthday?  A G.I. Joe and a cast for my broken arm.

What Easter Taught Me About the Future of America

The girls are older now.  But the moms still think an Easter egg hunt is cute.  Like Christmas, Hanukkah, Halloween, and birthdays Easter is another in a series of childhood loot grabs.  I played along because I didn’t want the sighs, stares, or lectures about “community and cultures and traditions” again.

The “hunt” generally consists of callously “hiding” eggs for the kids to “find.”  I was the egg hider this year.  As my friend Seany Hi-Def said, “they must have picked you because of your expertise of hiding weapons, drugs, stolen money, babies, and white women.”  I don’t even know what that means but I’m still laughing aloud.  Perhaps it’s race related.

But hid I did.  Coffee in one hand, eggs in the other.

Anyway, remember when we were kids?  We’d hockey check the weak and hoard the booty.  It was a free-for-winner-take-all viking pillaging!  Ahhh, the good ole days!  Now?  These were this year’s egg grab instructions (and when I say “eggs” I mean the eco-terror variety filled with teeth-rotting candy):

Mom #1:  “OK, girls, Ty has hidden seven eggs in each back yard.  If you find your seven, you have to help the other find hers.”

Mom #2: “Yeah, each of you will finish with seven.”

AND I read this posting from a mom on a famous social media site: “Kids nicely waited in their bedroom until I was out of mine to start their hunt. They followed the rules and made sure each kid got an equal number of eggs. They enjoyed their goodies and did not ask for more.”

WHAT?!  SINCE WHEN?!  Rules?  Helping?  Equal? Waiting? Didn’t ask for more? Since the shit when?  What are these kids learning from Easter?

Let’s see…America is barely literate anymore, manufacturing sucks, the economy is in shambles, and we are racist pricks.  We got Tea Baggers, American Idol, and no more dodge ball because someone might get hurt.  Look where Rules, helping, equality, and waiting got us.  We’re not at all hungry anymore.  In fact we’ve video-gamed,  and participant-trophied our long-lost bad ass “culture” to the precipice of being overrun by the Chinese.  No, forget the Chinese for now, we are so soft and lazy and catered-to we now risk defeat at the hands of Mexico.  No!  We have so pacified, Purelled, and bubble-wrapped our fat, lazy, addicted, helmeted, “special needs” children, we are going to be overthrown by CANADIANS!

People.  Competition is the hallmark of evolution.  You cannot have “survival of the fittest” if you don’t fucking know who the fittest are.  You cannot get better at something if your goal is to be the same as everybody else.  Why try anymore?

I have to bite my cheeks to a bloody pulp because at soccer games I have to hear, “You’re ALL winners!” since they DON’T KEEP SCORE so the LOSERS don’t get their FEELINGS HURT.  What are we teaching our kids?  Life’s never going to be fair.  You’re not all winners.  You’re really not.

Happy Easter, crybabies!  The future of America is grim.

My advice?  Get your kids some flannel shirts and skip orthodontia.  Learn your kids that “about” is properly pronounced “aboot, eh” because now that we have socialized medicine, the Pledge of Allegiance is aboot to be replaced with “O Canada, we stand on guard for thee,” eh.  Heck, even Obama was drinkin’ a Moosehead the udder day, hoser.

ᐆ ᑲᓇᑕ! ᓇᖕᒥᓂ ᓄᓇᕗᑦ!
ᐱᖁᔭᑏ ᓇᓚᑦᑎᐊᖅᐸᕗᑦ.
ᐊᖏᒡᓕᕙᓪᓕᐊᔪᑎ,
ᓴᙱᔪᓗᑎᓪᓗ.
ᓇᖏᖅᐳᒍ, ᐆ ᑲᓇᑕ,
ᒥᐊᓂᕆᑉᓗᑎ.
ᐆ ᑲᓇᑕ! ᓄᓇᑦᓯᐊ!
ᓇᖏᖅᐳᒍ ᒥᐊᓂᕆᑉᓗᑎ,
ᐆ ᑲᓇᑕ, ᓴᓚᒋᔭᐅᖁᓇ!

All hail Prime Minister Palin of the Tea Bag coalition.  You betcha!

Dogshit Shoe Decision Making Machine

So when you get home from an evening walk with the family and you discover that your kid has stepped squarely in somebody’s fucking dog’s fucking dogshit, you have to make decisions quickly.   And who makes decisions like us fathers, right?  If anything, we are quick, decisive, and authoritative.

1) Where in the house did the kid walk before she discovered dogshit on her shoes?

A) Took shoes off at the back door.  Quality, consistent parenting saves the day again!

B) Came in back door and took them right off.  Close call, nothing a damp paper towel won’t solve.

C) Came in front door, walked through house stopping in kitchen, walking on the stairs and over Persian rug and shouted from the back of the house, “what’s this on my shoe?” Fuck!

2) How old are the shoes?  Can they be tossed?

A) The kid looks homeless in them.  Toss ’em!

B) Could get away with wearing them in school play.  Toss ’em!

C) Eighty-five year-old grandma just bought them from specialty Adidas store in New York this past weekend. Fuck!

3) Where’s the wife?

A) At work.  Toss shoes out.  Out of sight, out of mind.

B) Still talking to neighbors about the community garden or some boring shit.  Toss shoes out.  Quickness rules.

C) Looking right at you because she’s not going to clean any dogshit. Fuck!

4) Who cleans dogshit?

A) Kid cleans because she can learn from the experience.  Hurts me more than it hurts you, honey.

B) Wife cleans because she’s a do-it-all high-achieving supermom who knows that husband’s hands are his livelihood!  Thank god for angels.

C) Dad cleans because he’s low-man on dogshit totem pole. Fuck!

5) When to clean dogshit?

A) Immediately so kid can understand the troubles you go through for her health and the cleanliness of her home.  Wife provides educational commentary.  Good parenting never takes a holiday.

B) In the morning so kid see the work involved in the warm, sober light of the morning.  Puts off the inevitable but drives point home.

C) Immediately while the wife and kid go up for bath and to listen to Naked Brothers Band. Fuck!

6) How is father rewarded for diligence?

A) Kid thanks father and draws a picture for refrigerator of smiling dad scraping dogshit from new shoes with a stick.  Awww!

B) Grateful, relieved, love-making.  Is this a dream?

C) As reward, dad gets to watch CBS’s Survivor on TiVo. Because life is good.

If you answered anything other than straight-Cs you’re either single or a goddamn liar.  As I’m certain all My Dad Homies can attest, I still taste dogshit this morning.