Vacation’s End: All Good Things...

Vacation Day 6:

Blur. Slept a lot. Didn’t even watch much TV. Stomach still jumpy; re-introducing my regular oddball diet gradually till things smooth out. Had one too many popsicles before bedtime.

The day’s big news: The Missus was offered and accepted a lucrative fall teaching gig at Prestigious Hippie U down the road. One day a week for 10 weeks = mucho dinero. And somebody else is even paying her to blog! Using myself as my test subject, I had always assumed blogs were something people wrote for free because they weren't good enough to get paid for it. Turns out I was wrong about that. The Missus is good enough to get paid to blog. Congrats, honey! (Due to anonymity issues stemming from the unseemly shit I regularly post here, I regret that I cannot provide a link to any of her excellent work.)

Speaking of authors that couldn’t get published till they wrote their dead celebrity ex-husband’s biography, I’m really caught up in the Zevon bio. He’s just finally gotten sober (where I'm at in the book), and he actually becomes more interesting as a character. Before he was sober, he had only one trick in his bag, admittedly with infinite variations: Watch Warren get drunk and act crazy and hurt the people who love him. But without the booze and dope putting on the predictable dog and pony show, a more interesting character emerges. More faceted. Uh, he’s still kind of a prick, but at least he’s not hitting his women anymore and he’s reaching out to his kids.

Vacation Day 7:

Because I work on the periphery of the mainstream media, I get email from all kinds of groups to my work account. The Left and Right assault me on an up-to-the-minute basis with countless breathless press releases about their particular issue.

That’s how I know Bush’s Immigration Bill just now suffered a “crushing defeat” in the Senate. I don’t have any strong feelings about the issue myself - I think it’s all sound and fury signifying something Bush thought he could actually get done on the domestic agenda front. Fences, new laws, old laws, more border security or less, poor Mexicans are still going to find a way over the border to do our shit-work. It would be like trying to shove a Weather Task Force down our throats - what the fuck are we going to do about the weather??

I’m watching the TV news while I wait for The Man Cub to wake from his morning nap, then a friend is coming over to hang with him while I go see the new summer blockbuster where Bruce Willis wisecracks and blows stuff up.

The Man Cub is almost 22 months old now, and developing quite the distinct little personality. Bit of a loner, but exudes star quality once comfort level is achieved in a given situation. Big infectious laugh, often at unexpected moments. Mastering language in his own way and at his own pace.

He loves to draw! The world is his canvas. The front room and my office are littered with papers with his artwork on them; my current favorite is above. A weird-sounding version of “thank you” has emerged over the last few days and in the appropriate context - yay! Good manners will take you farther than some people think. He just yesterday figured out how to open the front door deadbolt - gotta stop at Ace today and buy some chain locks we can put higher up on the door. Gonna get one for my office, too.

We don’t do traditional “Time-Outs.” Not yet, anyhow. I do a variation where, if he’s pitching a fit or giggling through repeated requests to immediately stop a particular misbehavior, I pick him up with a dispassionate look on my face, walk him a few feet away from wherever he’s misbehaving, and place him - usually writhing and howling in indignation - on his back on the carpet. He kicks and screams for a little longer, then gets up and comes running over to one of us for succor. And he usually doesn’t repeat the infraction. (Unless it involves food. If it involves food, all bets are off and at some point said food will get thrown. ... Do they make Toddler Tarps? Must ask The Missus to ask The Google...)

Ooh, more bad Supreme Court decisions coming in. Some civil rights things I don’t really understand, but all my people are pissed and all the other people are pleased… For instance, The Missus just wrote me this about it: Jesus H. Christ in a bucket.

It’s never a good thing when The Missus gets to talking about Jesus.

Wow, hey, the Court just stopped Texas from executing somebody. You read that right: stopped. That’s not gonna make Dumbleyou very happy. When he was governor of Texas, mental incapacity - neither the prisoners’ nor the governor’s - was ever a barrier to executing the condemned.

[Later] Well, the movie was swell. Stuff blowed up real good, Bruce Willis is still skillful with the snappy zingers, and it even kinda had a story. The kid from the Mac commercials co-starred as a tech whiz helping Bruce try to keep the bad guys from succeeding in their extra-legal shenanigans. A family member was imperiled, you know, all the usual elements were accounted for except the black cop from the first three, here replaced by some exotic-looking dude playing a no-nonsense but friendly Fed.

Anyhow, these things aren’t about the details, they’re about the action sequences, and “Live Free or Die Hard” delivers on the action sequences. Recommended.

And that’s about it for the annual wildly self-indulgent Vacation Blog. It’s been a lot of fun having plenty of time to write without actually having much to write about; my thanks to anyone who slogged through to the end. Tune in again next year, when... nothing will happen!*


*This last bit is an homage to an obscure Monty Python record skit. They did a lot of stuff specifically and only for their comedy albums - not on the show, not in the movies, but in the same class of work. They’re out on CD now and at amazon. Definitely recommended, but make sure you read the product descriptions to make sure you’re getting the proper comedy albums and not just collections of recycled bits you’ve heard before. My favorite is “Contractual Obligation Album,” unfortunately released without its original lead track, “A Farewell to John Denver,” which featured a Denveresque folkie singing a lewd variation of “Annie’s Song” and then being strangled at length. Apparently, the late Mr. Denver’s lawyers were as successful in having it removed from this digital release as they were subsequent vinyl releases back in the day, and we are the poorer for it.