Left of the Dial

Loudon Wainwright III's "Daughter"

This is a man who has very clearly had female offspring. 

Round about these here parts, we refer to this piece as "Senator Smoosh's Theme Song." 

Plausible Deniability

"Hi, Daddy. You come outside?"

Why, yes, Senator, I did come outside. Have you been playing with dirt?

"No."

The Mighty Zep

I'm channelsurfing just now as The Bean walks through the room. I land upon VH1Classic which happens to be showing Led Zeppelin Live for only the forty-seventh time this month and The Bean is stopped dead in her tracks.

"Whoa," she says, listening to Jimmy Page's wailing slide. "That sounds GOOD."

I am surprised by this. I listen for a moment and have to admit that, despite my reservations about the sloppiness of live Zeppelin, and the accompanying preening, it kinda does.

"Say, 'Is that the mighty Zep, Dad?'" I coach.

She grins. "Is that the mighty Zep, Dad?" she dutifully repeats.

"As a matter of fact, it is!" I reply. "Good ears!"

She beams. I think she has an appreciation for Robert Plant's hair few can understand, seeing as how it's almost exactly hers, only longer and not actually pretty.

I go back to check on The Boy and when I return I find that Senator Smoosh is still in her chair but has reached further than I'd have thought possible to grab the bowl of cereal I'd been feeding her and is now feeding herself, or so the cereal all over her chin and cheeks would indicate. She's not actually feeding herself at this very moment, however; she's banging her spoon on the bottom of the bowl in something remarkably approaching Bonzo's own bizarre sense of time and as she does—I kid you not—she is nodding her head in the unmistakable manner of a headbanger. She looks up at me and smiles, continuing to headbang.

"Oooh, yeah!" Robert croons, and I have to agree.

Another two saved from the abomination that is the showtune.

I Love Tax Day

I loves me tax day.

Well, okay, not really. I hate it just like everyone else, only even more so because, well, I’m me and I feel things more passionately than anyone else alive.

(Just like everyone else.)

I’m disorganized and hate details (unless they pertain to who played what on which song on this or that precise date). And, of course, I’m poor. But not quite poor enough (and clearly not nearly rich enough) to avoid paying taxes.

But paying taxes is simply how we invest in this great nation of ours. So when I pay my taxes, I feel good(ish) because I know I’m paying for some poor kid somewhere to have a decent breakfast and then maybe I’m the one who bought him the biology book he’s going to be using. And maybe he’ll grow up and cure cancer.

If you’re to the right of me—and there aren’t many who aren’t—be happy: when you pay your taxes today (provided you aren’t like our vice president and too rich to ever actually pay taxes, having your accounts off-shore and all), you’re buying body armor for our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, strike that: no one apparently pays for that except their families. But your taxes are what built our newest aircraft carrier, which keeps these here United States of America safe from them who plot day and night to do ‘em harm. And how cool is that?

I don’t exactly like shelling out a lot of money to buy my kids shoes, as happens every other month it seems. But it needs to be done because, well, it turns out after careful examination, children need to wear things on their feet so’s they can run and jump and be let into stores and it seems socks alone aren’t always quite enough. So you buy the shoes. Because you need to. And because you love your kids enough to want them to do well, and children without shoes, studies have proven conclusively, don’t do as well as children with shoes. Also? After a while? Their feets get kinda bloody and raw. Or so I've heard. And you do it because appropriately shod with a good pair of shoes, who knows where or what those kids’ll be able to do? You do it because you love them and it's the right thing to do. Still not a lot of fun, maybe, but more more than worth it in the end.

So. Thanks to all of you out there for buying my country a pair of shoes today.

(Metaphorically speaking, of course. As far as I know.)

Busted

So Max, the Rose and the Boy are all sick, to varying degrees; he’s just got a bit of a cough, but the two oldest both have pretty high fevers, and Max decides to make things inneresting by investing in both a cough and the high fever.

It’s a bit after eight of the clock in the evening, Top Management is off at the brand-spankin’-new piano class she's trying on for size, bein’ all Wynton Kelly and whatnot, and the oldest three girls are sprawled on the couch, Max and the Bean reading, the Rose just staring off into space, still as still can be.

I walk towards the back to check on the Boy, who’d wisely conked out a few minutes earlier, still with his glasses on, of course. As I pass the Blue Room I see, out of the corner of my eye, Senator Smoosh on the floor, playing.

I take a few more steps and stop. I’m not sure what she’s playing with, but there’s a large number of objects, and all the objects are pretty small. And even a quick glance has given my brain enough information to realize that the objects probably weren’t toys. And of course the fact that the Blue Room is currently deserted, its regular occupants all sequestered on the couch in the living room, makes this a most convenient time to raid drawers belonging to big sisters.

All this goes through my peabrain in a matter of milliseconds. I back up and peek in and the good senator’s head shoots up instantly. “No,” she breathes.

Her expression is sincere, plaintive, mayhap a tad guilty, impossibly fetching, the timbre of her voice as she mews her plea irresistible, all the more so because I have no doubt she didn’t mean to say it, she didn’t plan to say it, it came out of her instantly, busted as she was.

By now I’ve seen that what she’s playing with indeed belongs to her big sister and, indeed, are not toys: she has gotten into a small box of hair supplies, rubber bands, barrettes, other follicle-related doodads of which I, as the male of the species, am incapable of learning the names. With the training acquired osmotically from being a parent for 37 years in the aggregate, I can see there’s nothing there obviously life-threatening, unless, of course, the Rose were to find out. But the Rose is incapacitated at present. And besides, she’s putty in the good senator’s hands, like the rest of us.

But just as Senator Smoosh has protested automatically and not of her own volition, so do I assume a reproving facial expression all unwilling. It’s only later that I realize I’ve done it, as her reaction causes my nervous system to run a brief systems analysis. And when it does, I realize that my eyebrows have raised inquiringly and that I’ve got a quite small, somewhat amused smile. I can feel these things. And although I don’t know for sure, I suspect that what I’m doing is unconsciously aping the expression Top Management gets when, for example, I arrive home on a Friday night and tell her that I’m planning on spending 98% of the next 60 hours in a horizontal position, never attaining verticality for more than a few minutes at a time.

At which point Top Management gets that same somewhat amused, distinctly superior but patiently and lovingly so expression on her face. Sometimes it’s accompanied by a “well, that does sound pleasant,” or something along those lines.

Top Management, of course, has every right to assume a superior expression. I have no such right, certainly not with her, and assuredly not with her youngest, given that as a female she’s already automatically my better, and in this precise case, being the Next Step in Human Evolution, considerably more advanced than I.

And yet assume the expression I do. Which I realize only when she follows her mewled demurral with a breathy, heartfelt and heartrendingly tender, “please.”

I steel myself. I nod, smile gently, step away from the door, and melt. Sometime later, Top Management comes home, and as she opens the front door, a brisk winter wind whips in with her, chilling the house as only a San Diego breeze in the low 60s can, reviving me and causing me to regain my status as a solid rather than a liquid.

I test out my resolidified muscles and stand. Poking my head back into the Blue Room, I see that she has cleaned up all her ill-gotten non-toys. The skeptical would say it’s so she wouldn’t get busted by her big sisters.

But I know it’s simply another sign of her advanced nature.

Who, me? Do something I’m not supposed to? The very notion. Why, just one look at the hair falling fetchingly over my eyes should indicate I’m incapable of being less than perfect...

[Editor’s note: this is a recreation for illustrative purposes only and not from the actual event in question.]

Never a Good Start

“Hello?”
“Hi. First of all, don’t freak out: she’s okay.”

We’ve all gotten calls like that. Which doesn’t make them any less alarming.

(She really is okay, by the by, just a bit sad and uncomfortable and the sorry recipient of a very important life lesson.)

But an even worse opening to a conversation?

“Hello?”
“Hi. You need to come home. Right now. The doctor said we’ve got to take Max to the emergency room. Immediately.”

(She’s also okay, by the by, just the genetic beneficiary of her mother’s and maternal grandmother’s low blood pressure which, when combined with a virus, leads to a sudden and most upsetting albeit very temporary lack of consciousness.)

Whatever happened to: “Hi! I just called to say I love you!”

(Oh. That’s right. That sucks too. Just in a very different way.)

Genius!

As though there were any doubt my young chillens are computer savants—idiot computerants?—more proof appears.

You could also argue that this is, indeed, actually proof that their parents should watch said spawn more carefully and/or shut off their computers when not actually in use. You would be quite right and shut up.

Bittersweetness

Yes. Exactly. Just so.

Zombie Apocalypse

35%

35%. Sheesh. I just know it's because I said I'd try to find and help my fambly.

Stoopid fambly. They get you killed by zombies every time.

Mountains

Drove up to the mountains this day. Amazing drive, the same one we took on Top Management’s birthday. Drove through some areas hard hit by the fires in October. Large groves of burned out trees in gorgeous meadows of wild grasses a buttery yellow color the likes of which I’ve never seen is a surprisingly beautiful sight.

Not quite a White Christmas, although we did drive through a small section that had snow on the ground. Not one of the girls could guess what said white stuff was, so out of context was it. “We…we can have snow in southern California?!,” the Rose gasped dramatically. At 4100 feet you can, apparently.

After gazing at one particularly stark and fire-ravaged section, the Bean asked, “What’s a fire’s favorite dance?”

None of us could guess.

“The Hokey Smokey!” she said happily.

I had no idea.

Returned home to find out my uncle Oscar Peterson had passed away. Here’s a quick clip of him warming up. Guy didn’t suck.