Author Archives:

I Bet Katy Perry is Naked a Lot, Dad…

Posted on by Frank
1

What I Learned from the Grammy’s with the Volume Off:

I learned that nobody knows who Chris Brown is. That became obvious from the conversation at the bar. Who is that?  I dunno.  Is that Chris Brown? It might be… Who’s Chris Brown?  

CHRIS BROWN?

I was also reminded that the music is not half as important as the size of the army convulsing behind you. Given the outlandishly retarded scale of choreography at the Grammy’s one might argue that the songs are irrelevant altoghether. I blame Michael Jackson.  Ever since “Beat It” no visual performance of a dance song can exist without four hundred drones going into seizures behind the singer.  The Dancing Extras Union must be a hell of a powerful force, because we’re talking about 30 years of exactly the same crap.

Where MJ had the trademark hand on his belt everyone else since dropped their paws a few inches.  Now the benchmark is being able to keep one arm pointing at six thirty through your crotch while leading a squadron of hopping orangutans and ducks with hip dysplasia. Are any of the ludicrous choreographies memorable?  Any particular steps notable? Nope, it’s simply silliness as a rule, and as Humpty Hump once put it: No two people will do it the same, You got it down if you appear to be in pain

Other notable revelations from Music’s Big Night –

Alicia Keyes is getting a little chunky yet still wildly hot.  But I am convinced she changes her skin tone depending on what venue she’s playing.  I’ve seen her almost fully Caucasian on the Today show and for the Grammy’s there could be no doubt that Ms. Keyes was black as she tickled the ivories next to that grizzled white hag, Bonnie Raitt.

Grammy Hammy

Adele looked nice and soulful and stuff.  Big, expressive eyes. Still, I couldn’t help but take a little sip of tequila and think “…bet Alanis Morissette can kick the snot out of that sobbing cow”

Dave Grohl is possibly the cheeriest fucker in rock. Can’t blame him, being in one of the last important bands in modern music and now fronting the cash machine that is the Foo Fighters.  I have not seen that dude break his smile ever.

All in all it was nice to have the volume off.  I’m frickin’ sick of hit songs, because my burden is no longer in having to hear an overplayed tune – I have to give thoughtful reflection to each fucking ditty because my kids listen to them. Has to be assessed as acceptable for small people’s ears before allowing it some play in the car. Gotta dig reaching those these points as parents when you become your parents.  Happens everyday, from the things that come out of your mouth (Don’t you get fresh with me, Mr. So and So…) to the weird, “purposeful” poses you strike when answering questions you don’t have the vaguest clue about.

Others are bigger, becoming factors in how you try to stay a few steps in front of your children – whether to protect them, keep them from doing idiotic things or simply to prevent them from having any fun.  Suddenly realizing that all the music kids listen to these days is crap, is one of those moments. You’ve mutated into the same repressed dipshits as your own mom and dad.

I like to delude myself. Say that it ain’t quite the same for me.  The reason today’s radio tunes are silly crap is because they really are – it has nothing to do with me being 43. Matter of fact they’ve really been stupid for decades now.  Creatively, whether we’re talking pop, rock, hip-hop or whatever the fuck “alternative” is now, the music world caught Chlamydia and went barren.  Rarely hear a female vocal which hasn’t gotten computer enhancements. Hardly any tunes which aren’t remixed melodies already made somewhere between 1963 and 2004.  So at least everything is familiar which, as an aging dude, is probably why I don’t hate it all.

What I do hate is current sexual content of Top 40.  Not that there’s so much sex content – but how blatant most of it is.  I’ve always preferred the dirty little innuendos of rock and punk.  It made it easy to play fuck-slanted songs in your room without triggering a conniption in your mother.  And it took more lyrical skill to write those songs. Once upon a time, we all knew what it meant to be “Turning Japanese” and got the full gist of Little Red Corvette.  There’s very little metaphorical masking anymore.  From Rhianna’s “S&M” to the countless Katy Perry verses which include a threesome, Top 40 is pretty much headed towards songs with very straightforward titles.  Probably only a year or two away from a Taylor Swift song called “Fucking Makes Me Happy” or a maturing Justin Bieber crooning, “Wanna Pork You with My Penis Tonight, Shawty”

The kids are picking up on the sex lyrics too and I loathe having to field their questions at this point. I rapidly switch stations when Rhianna or Britney Spears comes on.  I don’t even want to touch Perry’s “Futuristic Lover”.  Even though it actually aims for metaphoric sex references, the over-the-top repetitiveness makes it apparent she’s trying to get at something.  If Elsie catches on and finally asks, the only thing I’m gonna be able to tell her is this:  Never, ever, never have sex with aliens – it just can’t turn out good. Saw a space caterpillar get it on with an astrogirl in a movie once.  All she did was scream and get covered in worm barf…

But I don’t always successfully filter what my kids are exposed to. A Personally Monumental Faux Pas: In my attempts to mold my kids into my own idea of cool – I put Rage Against the Machine’s Ashes in the Fall on a cd mix for Jacko.  It’s a pretty great arrangement, so it was sweet to hear him cranking it up in his bedroom. Forgot all about the lyrics when I burned the song for him!  Will always remember them lucidly after hearing Zach de la Rocha in my little boy’s room growling about “the priest that fucked you as he whispered holy things…”

Oops.

Additional Research…  and/or  Further Reading

I Wanna Look Like a Ken Doll

Posted on by Frank
1

E was showing me a new pullover from LL Bean this morning, remarking that it was an XS – must mean the company was reconfiguring its sizing system

“Hmmm,” I said, “Maybe Bean is trying to be more inclusive and make women feel better by sizing them down……ohhhh, fudge pops.  No, no, no wait!  You really are a small…I mean extra small…I mean I’ll be sitting in the garage if anybody needs me…”

Well, that blew the last couple of years of constantly trying to compliment the missus.

Body image issues abound as you approach midlife.  E really has nothing to worry about as she still plays a lot of soccer and is pretty much the same size she was when we met in the early 90’s.  But I think the self-consciousness over physique has grabbed hold of me as now. I lost about 30lbs this year, only to throw 8 back on over the holidays. Instead of seeing it as a net loss of 22, I’ve opted to grow batshit; thinking I’ve become slug-like mess again with an additional 75 lbs surging over my belt.  I find myself sneaking past mirrors, hoping they won’t see me. In moments of better fortitude I take a look into the glass only to be horrified; realizing my torso has been engulfed by a massive, bottom-heavy amoeba leaving spindly limbs protruding in pale frailty as my face swells and undulates beneath a Boris Karloff forehead.  Full-blown craniodiaphyseal dysplasia has also gotten me. With my Rocky Dennis head bobbing atop an amorphous protoplasm figure the only comfort is that I won’t need a costume come Halloween – the neighborhood kids will flee in terror from the gargoyle-headed glob of marmalade which tried to eat them.

 So I run for the gym – hit the elliptical for half an hour before deciding five miles on the treadmill might better take a nip at     them lovehandles. It still fails so it’s time to hit the weights.  Stack bars with iron plates and grab the biggest dumbbells they got.  If you can’t tone away the fat then build up muscle to squeeze it thinner under your skin, like stuffing brisket into a bag of jelly. Get home, tell the looking glass to go fuck itself and guzzle smoothies or eat lettuce as if it were cookies.  Can’t do a thing to shrink your ginormous skull, however, so you grow hair like a madman, skip shaving, wear welding goggles and a ten gallon hat to make your face seem a wee more diminutive. All for naught because your little daughter is still going to laugh at your giant ass and giggle about how huge your head is.

How ’bout them apples? My social world has shrunk to where I’m letting kindergarten criticism eat at me.  Damn! I’ve become a character in a Lifetime movie – like a middle-aged woman hated by her kids. Obsessed with bulimia and cutting herself, she starts slutting around with the freaks and retards who bag her groceries. Gaaaahhhhh!!! I don’t wanna sleep with mongoloids!!!

I really used to be an A-cup

In a perfect world I wouldn’t have returned to this workout compulsion; I’d be addicted to alcohol like a normal person.  But that perfect world would also inflict the same hangovers on 43 year olds as it does on those in their 20’s.  Which is to say they’d be minimal; about as agonizing as hiccups. But they are agonizing and time gets meaner as we age.  Might as well stay in the gym and keep watching the carbs.  Don’t want to find myself turning 50 and having a preteen girl taunting me about the unsightly cellulite and my wheelchair…

On Previous Thoughts:  Still sticking with making Jack write whenever he fucks up.  Yesterday was “I will not hit my sister”.  50 times, and I’m thinking all the crying he was doing while at it meant it’s a working punishment.

On Further Thoughts:  My book, Jackass On A Camel, still sells a little better every month.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, by all means do git your fanny over to it….please.

 

Elsie Burns My Nuts

Posted on by Frank
4

Not exactly, even though dedicated readers here would know it’s not out of the realm of possibilities. The other morning, my little pony-tailed cyclone dumped an entire box of Reese’s Puffs all over the kitchen floor.  While setting her up with a flattened vacuum attachment to get the little cereal balls under the fridge the nuts roasting on the stove began to burn.  That sort of pushed me from kindly showing Elsie how to fix her own mistakes to clenching my teeth and screaming in my head “Fuck, fuck fuck, fuck, fuuuuuuuck!!!! Elsie the Destroyer and all her goddamn collateral damage!”

Now, when judging mishaps or flagrant household felonies it’s important for parents to know when to take mild corrective actions (hand Elsie a dustpan, brush and hand vacuum when she spills cereal all over the floor) and when to go full bore abusive (turn purple, tell Elsie she’s evil and stupid then rip apart all her dolls when she squirts toothpaste all over the bathroom mirror)  Naturally I’m kidding about violent rages but, as it turns out, I now walk the new line of child abuse – my wife has informed me, in full on just-so-you-know-Frank form, that other parents had heard I sometimes yell at the kids…

The kids have ratted me out to the neighbors. And I guess yelling is the latest no-no of parental behavior; one more thing on the checklist of acts which trigger visits from Social Services. How about that?  As if trying to get your kids to behave like good little people wasn’t hard enough the current fashion of parenting keeps mandating a gentler and gentler approach to straightening your little freaks out.  Pretty soon even that ridiculously ineffective “time-out” will be verboten and every infraction your children make will necessitate nothing more than a discussion. And even those will have to be mostly positive – making sure a tiny monster understands that while it poses challenges for mommy there really isn’t anything wrong with squirting a bottle of Gorilla glue into her underwear drawer…

If you’re a parent already, or have at least been able to witness the spectacle of modern parenting in action, you’re sure to have noticed that discussing a kid’s misbehavior is a time consuming affair.  Not that talks aren’t necessary – I do feel that any day which features some particularly ugly behavior requires some discussion.  Always good to have an end of the day chit chat to figure out what the hell was going on in the kid’s brain and how she/he thinks it can get fixed.  But a tête-à-tête each and every time your precious darling goes batshit is just going to slow everyone’s life down in a very ludricous way.

My path to yelling actually entails some of this time-eating insanity.  I normally give the spawn two or three calm warnings to knock their crap off, one of which usually includes a brief talk about the problem and possible consequences.  And they’re reminded that if they choose to ignore the alerts, Dad is going to yell at them. And probably say some unpleasant stuff while he’s at it.  There are some things which the kids have been told will always circumvent the warning cycle and lead straight to yelling:  Yelling at me first (I like a good contest), willful destruction of other people’s things (throw a hammer through a garage wall, suffer some ear damage…) and punching little girls in the face (that’ll get a 70lb boy carried up a flight of stairs by the back of his jeans, tossed from the doorway onto his bed, and warned to stay in his room until dad no longer wants him dead)

What I almost wish was to take a stab at my own parents’ technique: A single warning.  Screw that up and get ready for a potentially harrowing bellow.  Continue to fuck up and expect a sweet ol’ crack in the mouth.  After that, repeated offenses of the same kind meant a shortcut straight to backhand highway.  There wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of discussions with my folks.  We did get our talking-to’s for repeated offenses and more stunning acts of destruction – How did you get that blowtorch lit in the first place?  You’re only six years old… I didn’t get hit all that often either. We just knew when we were fucking up and a little twitch of the hand was usually enough to get us settled. But I truly have no interest in bringing physical punishment*to the table.  I just wish there were consistent ways to discipline kids and prevent further outbreaks of idiocy without constantly interrupting the day to engage them in corrective conversation.

I see how other parents shorten the disciplinary process by not doing much of anything. And their children tend to be feral little fuckers.  Again and again other kids act as reminders that Jack and Elsie ain’t bad kids at all.  But being a father means always hoping they can be the best they can, and that will always be a time-consuming task no matter how you cut it. So we look for new ways to help them.  Lately it seems that parenting magazines and books are serving me better as fireplace kindling than fathering guides. Things which have worked usually come as tips from other moms and dads struggling through their own family shitstorms.

Here’s one of the most recent corrective things we’ve been doing, something I got from the parents of one of Jack’s hockey teammates.  It’s the old grade school style punishment of writing on the blackboard. So far it’s good for mild behavior fumbles and for reflecting on more serious transgressions later on (major freak outs still require solitary confinement for a while).

“I will always tell the truth.” Was the first one we put to use.  Honesty is still a work in progress but at least Jack references the writing he’s had to do and that’s a sign he’s understanding what it’s all about..

The ones I’m dying to put in action this morning are these “I will use words when I communicate” “I will not talk like a duck all the time” and “I will not be a constant retard”.  If you’ve been by the Red Frog before you might have an idea of what I’m getting at. Don’t know how well it’s going to work but I’m pretty sure his penmanship is going to improve…

 

*I have this blog after all.  It’s partially designed to help release parental frustration that could otherwise end up in violence.  I also like to draw pictures of the kids getting tossed to sharks or buried in anthills.

 

Next Up:  Father & Son Shoplifting Adventures!