Wolf or Baby?

I have been spending more time than advisable on Facebook lately, as I experience a motivational low due to fatigue and December. And that is how I came upon this blog, linked to by a college friend:

Is it a Wolf or a Baby?

I called David over and showed it to him.

"What IS it?" I asked, essentially begging the same sort of question as the blog itself, "Is it a blog or a joke?"

"Its a meta blog," he answered casually.

That is yet another reason I love my husband.

"Oh yeah," I murmured, "A meta blog."

What I really want to do now is create a blog called Is it a blog of a metablog?" and my first entry would be this Wolf Vs Baby blog.

But that would be taking procrastination to a new level.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Like-a-Reads

A year or two ago, someone gave us the first three Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and at that time, Primo was still struggling through Frog and Toad and a 200-page volumes, liberally sprinkled with the word "moron" seemed as appropriate for Primo as True Blood or Merchant of Venice. What a difference a year makes. A few months ago, Primo unearthed the Wimpy Kid books and devoured them, spending hours on end at bedtime reading them. So passionate was he for the fine literature that we were getting into arguments at 10pm when I realized he was still awake and tried to wrest the books from his anxious fingers.

"I just want to finish the book!" he'd protest, "I only have sixty more pages!"

In this way, he finished all six books in about two months.

It was sad to see it end because the Wimpy Kid books were the first that really hooked Primo on reading, and I got a little nervous that without anything comparable to dig into, he'd lose interest in the act of reading. So I posted on my handy, local list serve, Park Slope Parents, for recommendations of books like the Wimpy Kid series, which would galvanize the hearts and minds of seven year-old boys -- just in time for Christmas. Here's the list I culled:

Geronimo Stilton

Ellie McDoodle

Dork Diaries

Secrets of Droon

The Zack Diaries

My Weird School

Magic Tree House

Boxcar Children

We checked out a bunch of these last week and Primo was vaguely interested in them all but nothing life-changing. Then we happened upon Dear Dumb Diary, by Jim Benton, who Primo has been smitten with after devouring all the Franny K. Stein books he penned. A perfect choice! Acerbic, edgy, gross, with lots of drawings to make the pages fly. I guess for some parents the protagonist might come across little mean-spirited, and I might not let very impressionable Seconda read it but for Primo, who wouldn't use the word "idiot" without flagellating himself about it, I'm not too concerned. It got him hooked all right. And there's a bunch of installations too - enough to bring us to the next craze.

Happy reading!

Meeeeeeeerry Christmas!

An oldie but a goodie. Christmas cheer and love so intense its kind of choking.

Merry Christmas to all!

For Appropriate Audiences

I took Seconda and her cousin to the movie Happy Feet 2 this weekend and we scurried in just as the previews were starting. The first preview was for the new Snow White (or one of them, I should clarify, since there is a slew of new takes on the old tale): the kids were into Mirror Mirror and dug Julia Roberts as the stepmother. Then came a preview for the Titanic sD. This seemed odd to me and I worried the kids would be frightened by the sight of the ship breaking in two and huge rushes of water flooding into the cabins. When the preview for the next movie announced that it was made by the people who made Bridesmaids, I started to get anxious. It was a movie about people having babies, and so, I reasoned, that might be why the movie people thought kids would like it, but the humor seemed way too mature for the four year-olds in my charge and at the end of the preview, when a Bradley Cooper-type said the word, "bitch," I gasped audibly.

"That's not a nice word," I volunteered.

"WHAT'S not a nice word?" the girls piped up.

The moviegoers in front of me laughed at this.

"Oh, nothing. Its OK. Forget it," I muttered, thinking. "What the fuck are the people at UA thinking today? Am I a prude of is this shit out of control?"

When the green screen popped up before the next preview, which was ok'ed for "appropriate audiences," my palms started getting sweaty. What would be next?

And there was a little boy, leaving a greeting on his family's answering machine which said, "Hello. Today is September 11th."

Oh no, I thought, not . . .

Yep. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Featuring a kid, but not, in my estimation a kid movie.

"Did the daddy die?" my niece asked me.

"Um," I said shifting in my seat, "yeah."

"Ohhhhhh," she said, "that's sad."

"Yeah," I agreed.

Someone in the control booth is on crack, I concluded. Or I'm on crack. Either way, this little cinematic outing isn't going well.

Finally, after thirty five very stressful minutes of previews, the movie began and it was . . . New Year's Eve.

Somebody went to the manager to tell them they'd put on the wrong movie and in a few minutes, we were back on track again, watching animated penguins dance in unison, just as we'd intended.

I guess I should be lucky they didn't play the preview for Saw 14 or the re-release of Last Tango in Paris or whatever. The worst the kids were exposed to was a terrorist attack, the greatest shipwreck in the history books and the word "bitch." Not too terrible, I guess.

Hey Girl

OK, shut the front door. Breaking news, people: it appears that my boyfriend, Ryan Gosling, belongs to the Park Slope Food Coop. Which means I now have to do the unthinkable and join, so I can casually hang around the kale section until he happens in, asks me to grab him a bunch and realizes he loves me and wants to marry me, despite the fact that I am already happily married. But, in less insane, more entertaining news, this tumblr blog about Ryan Gosling and the Food Coop -- Food Coop Hey Girl -- is about the funniest thing I have ever read. My favorite is the picture of him with the far-away look where he muses about the double make-up policy. The internet has its moments, I'll tell you that much.

Education Before Chocolate

We're big fans of chocolate advents calendars in my house and this year, since I'm so on top of my Christmas game, I bought the kids theirs even before the first of December. They've been enjoying their chocolates in the morning on the way to school and this year, we haven't yet had the prob lem where Sec tears open all the windows one day in a frenzy of choco-desire and then cries the rest of the month because there's no candy left. Its been smooth sailing.

The other morning, Primo asked for his calendar (part of the reason we've avoided Sec's choco-frenzy is that I smartened up this year and keep them stashed out of reach, to help her fight temptation).

"Ok, " I said, "Just have Daddy show you how to tie your shoes and once you tie them, you can have your chocolate."

I was surprised to find that Primo was shocked and chagrined by this.

"Why are you making me have EDUCATION before I eat my CHOCOLATE?" he yelled.

I had to laugh. What else can you do?

Now that I see how anathema education is, particularly when it precedes sugar-consumption, I think perhaps that I won't point out to Sec that while she's looking for the right chocolate window to open, she's actually learning her numbers Don't want to upset her.

What the Hell Are You Talking About?

Just read this hilarious, insightful piece on the Harvard Business Review (why do you look so surprised that I read HBR? I read it SO MUCH, in fact, that I have an acronym for it, something which the author makes fun of in this very same article.And by the way, I'm screwing with you. I try to steer clear of publications with the words "Harvard" or "Business' in them in general.):

I Don't Understand What Anyone is Saying Anymore

Reminds me of being in grad school getting my masters in English Lit. I used to keep track of all the meaningless words volleyed about incessantly during seminars, in the back of my notebook. They were so meaningless I don't recall any of them, except for one: slippage. This was a big hit in my seminar on James Joyce. It was "slippage" this and "slippage" that, and I'd nod my head in agreement, like, "Oh yes, now THAT'S an instance of slippage you just couldn't possible argue with, right there," but I basically had no freaking idea what they were talking about. Of course, I'd never let anyone in on that because I assumed everyone else understood perfectly well what that meant. Then, one momentous day, my friend Lena, who'd been an actress with me in LA and had also moved back to to NY to get her Masters in English, did something UNTHINKABLE. Seriously, it was so ballsy that I think I gasped audibly.

In the middle of a very intense conversation about "slippage" in Finnegan's Wake, she said, "Excuse me. Maybe this will sound really dumb, but what does that word mean?"

Everyone sat, speechless for a few seconds. And then I realized that NO ONE knew what "slippage" meant, probably because its some piece of theory mumbo jumbo that was invented to give you a headache.

The girl who spelled her very ordinary name in a very unusual way and always dominated discussions, piped up finally and offered some ridiculous definition which made no sense, like, "When we say, 'slippage' we are referring to the way in which the words slip in meaning, that is to say, the space, however large or small that may be in any particular instance, between the word and its meaning."

Gotcha. Totally. Loud and Clear.

I'm still proud of Lena for that 'fuck you' to academic nonsense speak. So follow her lead, shared by this business mastermind Dan Pallotta, and don't be afraid to say: "I've got no flipping idea what you just said, man. Was that English?"