Kidz Bop

OK, I've got to get this off my chest. I HATE Kidz Bop! If you have kids between the ages of 3 and 11 you probably know. For the rest of you, Kidz Bop is a group of smarmy pre-teens who sing really inappropriate pop songs for the kindergarden set. Wh have Sirius satellite radio and Clay's favorite channel is Kids' Stuff, which plays everythig from the (slightly hokey, but lovable) Wiggles, to Sesame Street tunes, to really cool artist like Laurie Berkner and Dan Zanes ("Both of which daddy even likes" [Clay's comment]). But unfortunately this is where we hear Kidz Bop. One of the first times I hear Kidz Bop, they were singing the James Blunt song, "You're Beautiful", which is already one of my least favorite songs on the planet. But having these little kids singing a song about an apparently disturbed individual who obsesses over a woman he saw exactly once on a subway, who smiled at him is too much for me. Then there's the KT Tunstall song "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" which they also do. There's something not right about that song in the first place, but it's even worse when they do it. Now I'm not for censorship ("Yea, daddy listens to Howard Stern when I'm sleeping" {Clay's comment]), but I change the channel as soon as anything by Kidz Bop comes on. Kidz Bop must be stopped!!! Thank goodness that Clay has developed better taste in music; Mozart, The Who, The Clash, Led Zepplin, The Ramones; you know, "the classics".

Look at me!

Yesterday I was in a waiting room with a group of about 25 other people. I sat down in one of the last empty chairs and picked up a magazine. After a minute or so, I noticed the woman sitting next to me had an iPhone. Pretty cool. Then I thought, why is she holding up to her chest with the screen pointing away from her? Then it hit me, she's pointing out to the rest of us lowly slobs that she has an iPhone and we don't! Under normal circumstances, I would have asked how she likes her iPhone and what she doesn't like about it. But this woman looked like she would be annoyed and have a "oh, so you noticed my iPhone; and yes I am much more important than you" attitude. I don't know what bothered me more, her showing off her iPhone or my wishing that I had one to show off. Oh well, maybe when the iPhone Nano comes out.

Goin' to Chicago

This morning, Clay was packing some of his toys in a box. When I asked him why, he said "They're goin' to Chicago." Why are they going to Chicago?!? "Because they need to build something". The the box gets dumped out on the sofa. Why? "The sofa is Chicago" he says. Welcome to the Windy Sofa.

Secret Code

With Clay getting older, we have to be very careful what we say around him. Not so much about saying anything bad; although that is a concern too; but with saying anything at all about going somewhere or doing something. For example, if I say "I wonder if we should go to the pool this weekend?", I will be inundated with endless questions about when we are going, why we are going, why can't we go right now and why aren't we there already! So we talk about the aquatic recreation area instead of the pool. Forget mentioning "Chuck E. Cheese"; it's Charles the Rodent. IHOP is the multinational destination for flat breakfast pastries; Bob Evans is Robert, Roy Roger's brother-in-law's place. Chocolate milk is brown bovine byproduct, Toys 'R' Us is the place of which we do not speak. We even try to speak about the boys as #1 and #2, as in "#1 didn't take a nap this afternoon", but recently Clay has figured this code out. He's starting to get to be too smart for us. Soon S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G will not work for us either. Even now he says, "Daddy, what's P-O-P-C-O-R-N spell?" I need to teach Nancy more Ukrainian.

The Big Wrench

Last Saturday night my brother's family drove out to the monthly "Star Party" at Sky Meadows State Park. It's a beautiful drive and it's very dark out there. Amateur astronomers bring their telescopes out and allow the public to view the sky through them. Some of these scopes are hand made and cost thousands of dollars. Clay was a little bored standing in line at each of the scopes, but he seemed to really like looking into them when it was finally our turn. An astronomer was giving a talk to a group of people talking about what could be seen with the naked eye, so we stopped and listened for a while. He began pointing out the Big Dipper and telling us all about it. I pointed it out to Clay and said, "Clay do you see those stars? That's the Big Dipper". "Daddy, what's a dipper?" I said, "It's like a big spoon." "No" he said. "A spoon would have another star in it. I think that looks like the Big Wrench!" I guess we'll have to keep an eye out for the other constellations; the Race Car, the Slip-N-Slide and the Chicken McNugget.

50 cent iPhone

OK, any one who knows me knows I'm a huge geek and I lover every new piece of technology, especially from Apple. Clay knows I want an iPhone i the worst way. Every time an iPhone ad comes on he says, "Daddy, do you want an iPhone?" "Yes Clay." "Why don't you buy one?" he says. "Because they cost a lot of money." Then the other day he added, "Yeah, they must cost like 50 cents or somethin'!" Yeah, something like that.

Me and Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods is in DC for his inaugural golf tournament. I'm not much of a golfer. In fact I haven't golfed since 1985 with my Sigma Nu brothers. I was usually the fourth when no one else (and I mean no one) wanted to play. But listening to the radio today I heard someone make a comment about Tiger that someone once said about me; "I've never seen a human being hit a ball like that before!"