Recent quotes

"I am so enamored of oatmeal that there are days that I not only have it for breakfast, but also for dinner."

-- Kathy O'Malley

*** WGN radio personality Steve Cochran re-told the story recently of something that happened at one of the Chicago Cubs' postseason games at Wrigley last October. He was enjoying the restroom facilities on the club level, as was Michael Jordan. When Steve went to wash his hands (as any radio personality with good hygiene is wont to do), he overheard a fan in the restroom approach Jordan at a urinal.

"Wow, Michael Jordan! Can I have your autograph?"

To which Michael turned his head (but not the rest of his body) and replied with a line he must have rehearsed so many times in so many public restrooms around the world.

He said: "This isn't a pen."

***
"The level of illiteracy in our parents are appalling."

-- George W. Bush, to the Conference of Mayors

***
David Letterman's "unfair edit" of Arnold Schwarzenegger (he cuts and pastes bits of speech to create a new sentence the victim never uttered): "I'm a movie star with the leadership talent of a mastodon frozen in time."

Good dads plan good parties.

We're a little less than a month away from my daughter's second birthday. Planning is in full-swing. A lot of logistics still need to be worked out: Where to get the party favors, getting the invitations finished and in the mail, how many balloons will look like enough to fill the room. And most importantly, how to transport two adult African elephants safely to the Bahamas.

Every second birthday party has to have a theme. I'm thinking the direction we should go in is "regime change." The end of the second year and the beginning of the third year of life is a time when the child will most likely first realize that (s)he is not the center and circumference of his/her universe. It's important that we begin to introduce to her the notion that she no longer controls her parents and her world. We, in fact, control her. I'm sure this sounds harsh, but if the concept is introduced in a way that is not frightening but rather entertaining, she (and all her fellow party-goers) can have an educational, fun-filled birthday. Edutainment, if you will. (Thank you, CKB.)

Nonetheless, the artistic focus of the event will focus on "opulence." A local fabric store will send yards of rich fabrics -- dark colors along with some gold -- to the location, where party organizers will deck out the room. Also, several Persian rugs will cover the ground, including a custom-made 40-foot-long runner, over which all guests will walk when they arrive. Following the guests, Piper herself will enter, on the back of one elephant. Laura and I will follow on the second one.

At the close of the procession, we will have a short program of opening remarks by two members of The Wiggles. This is partially to set the tone for the day's event, but the speakers will also stand as representatives to everyone who has met our daughter, and they will offer testament to the joy she has brought to their lives. Then some additional speakers -- the list has not been finalized yet -- will keep things moving with lively presentations:

1. Piper's two grandmothers, who will explain with graphs and numerous adorable pictures how their granddaughter is clearly proof of evolution -- displaying the best genetic traits from previous generations.
   
   
2. Dusty Baker will talk for twenty minutes about the ways in which Piper is already beginning to show leadership skills. He will also encourage her to continue to work on her pitching skills and try to favor her left arm, if at all possible. He will also reserve ten minutes for a Q&A about his solution to the lead-off man problem with the 2004 Chicago Cubs.
   
   
3. Dave Eggers will read essays about a fictional road trip he took with Piper. A printed-and-bound version will be supplied to all guests as a party favor, with additional footnotes supplied by David Foster Wallace.
   
   
4. Steven from Blue's Clues will give a warm presentation on obeying your parents, and how life can't always be about you -- there are other people in the world. He will then solve a Blue's Clues mystery that shows how much better Blue's life is when she is selfless and shares.
   
   
5. After talking about the concept of "cooperation," Kofi Annan will lead the entire party in a rousing rendition of the alphabet song. The Austin Youth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Daniel Barenboim, will perform the accompaniment, arranged by Thomas Newman, with a surprise piano solo by his cousin.

As the strains of the song die away, the room will darken and a large screen will drop from the ceiling. A fictional account of Piper's first two years, written and directed by Sofia Coppola, will receive its world premiere screening. Johnny Depp will play the part of the father, a caring man whose understated humor is always spot-on. Felicity Huffman will play the part of the mother, a beautiful and intelligent woman who handles the pressures of working full-time and parenting with the ease of a Chinese circus plate-spinner. The part of Piper will be played by Elijah Wood. The 20-minute film ("and I call it a film, not a movie") will be received to thunderous applause, and we will excuse Mr. Ebert from the rest of the party so that he can wire his review back to the States. Our publicist will also step away so that she can begin the Oscar nomination campaign for 2005.

And then the games begin. Outside the building, a cricket test match between New Zealand and India will be in full-swing. Follow the rock-lined path through the palm trees to the big orange flags and you'll find Joe Rogan hosting a special edition of Kids Fear Factor. (The theme: brussels sprouts!) Down by the water, the head coaches of the Carolina Panthers and the New England Patriots will lead the grown-ups in a flag football game. There will be an actual-size piñata of a tiger containing small nuggets of 24-carat gold along with the Kinder Surprise Eggs and hard-to-find but entertaining Japanese candy. Back at the resort's center, a version of "Velcro the Cell Phone on the Donkey" will be offered. Since we don't want to make any child feel like a loser, all participants will receive their own cell phone with a one-year contract, just for playing.

After our Carribbean-themed dinner is complete and each child has finished dinner (lobster tail with ketchup, animal cookies, apple juice, flan with raspberry sauce, key lime pie, and, of course, all of the bunny pasta you can eat), the chandelier above the table will lower to reveal David Blaine, tied in a straitjacket and looking a bit wan. He will mutter that he hasn't eaten in twelve days and that his fast is dedicated not only to all the wonderful fans out there who give him reason to live, but also to Piper. He will mean to say more but unfortunately will lose consciousness.

But the children will have already been distracted by the sudden presence of Elmo, who will thrill the audience with a full version of Elmo's World focusing on putting on diapers -- thus giving Piper a chance to thrill the crowd with her remarkable dexterity in diapering every stuffed animal in her room. Lastly, David Letterman will walk in with Harry tucked in his arm. Dave will present the "Top Ten Reasons Piper Will Be Potty-Trained During Her Third Year." And the dinner will officially close with a rousing (if slightly off-key) rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," sung by former governor Howard Dean.

The day will wind down with a stunning sunset, and all the children, thoroughly exhausted and ready for a full night's sleep before they fly back to their comparatively dull lives on the morrow, will nod off contentedly after staring at the special party favor on the shelf of the dresser in their luxury-suite: a giant crystal goblet, with "Piper Jean Bailey's Second Birthday Extravaganza, February 26, 2004" etched on it, filled with water and containing a goldfish named "Dorothy." The nannies provided for each guest's child will be on duty while the adults enjoy a child-free evening of grown-up discussion, dancing, and cocktails, concluding with a live concert.

Anything I've forgotten? Let me know soon, 'cause we have to get crackin'.

Checklist:

• Charter plane.
• Create checklist of items invitees will need to pack. Don't forget to put "A present for Piper" on the list.
• Check into whether the guys carrying shovels are union or not.
• How the hell do you get up on and down off the elephant? Oh wait, I know. An airport staircase truck. Call Jason Bateman.
• In fact, let's put "A present for Piper" in boldface on that list.
• Set up 54 one-year cell phone contracts with Cingular in exchange for event sponsorship.
• Make sure someone is watching Blaine all the time so that he isn't cheating on the whole "fasting" thing.
• Call Mary Zimmerman, the director of the extravaganza, and ask her to hurry up with the list of personal needs for her suite.
• Arrange with the Sesame Workshop to give Kevin Klash time off for the party.
• Contact Whole Foods -- ship 20 lbs. of brussels sprouts to the Bahamas.
• Bring the potty seat. You never know.
• Run this all by Dr. Phil and make sure I'm not looking at major therapy bills later on down the line for her. The last thing I need is for this party to get expensive.

Friend MIA

One of my obsessions is to keep track of old friends. My drive to do this must be rooted in my desire to hold on to -- and often re-experience -- the past. One odd aspect of this obsession is that most times I don't feel the need to write to them on any regular basis. I just want to know where they are. Once I know, I'm happy. Until a few months down the line, when I have to do another checkup on them.

I have a short list of four or five friends who have eluded my detective work for some time now. Person Number One is someone who, though we have not spoken in almost a decade, I still consider to be one of my dearest friends.

I didn't like Andrew at first. We met in college, both working on the student newspaper. I had a column on popular music, and he had a column that was ... really hard to peg. He was all over the place. He was boisterous, and the noise distracted most people (including me for awhille) from the indisputable fact that he was brilliant. Still, we were thrown together when his girlfriend and my girlfriend decided to room together. That's when I finally figured out what a gem Andrew was in a school sadly devoid of creative thinking.

When we graduated, I went to New York and he and I began writing letters. Andrew helped me survive one of the toughest periods of my life. As happens to too many young, naive kids with dreams, New York fed on me, and after my internship at the PBS affiliate ended without a job, I was feeling pretty beat up. On top of that, my long-distance relationship with my girlfriend was disintegrating and my family was going through some difficult times. Andrew's letters helped me survive an incredibly sad, lost time. His writing wasn't always brilliant, but I was fascinated with the amazing leaps in cultural logic he would make. The inside jokes, the not-so-non-sequitirs, and the bareness of his soul. He liked me, in part, because I got him a lot more than most people, that I was able to make those ridiculous leaps with him.

Here's a sample of his writing. Sometimes his honesty tips into maudlin. But that self-effacing style was part of Andrew's charm. And I feel like during that hard time, he was the only non-family person who reached out to me, was willing to listen (or read) me, and opend up to me in the same way. (Names of others mentioned have been abbreviated.)

12/04/87
St. Louis

My Dearest Marck,

I received your letter of the 27th a few days ago and I've been anticipating this letter in return with the warm of a fire that crackles in your mind's eye as you walk the last 100 yards through the snow. I find that I enjoy anything that has to do with enjoyment if it is sipped, instead of gulped. It is unfortunate that my background as an extremely petty bourg has bred me to the gulp. But then again, perhaps that only gives me more breadth.

How are you my good friend? Your letter was a God-send at the end of a particularly colorless day. The only thing drearier than a Midwest late Fall day is a Midwestern winter. It is times like this that try the fairly true wisdom of Calvin Trillin, who said "for Mid-westerners, a hometown has not statute of limitations." Of course, this isn't Indianapolis. I pray God I shall never again face a Winter in that place. I don't mind a winter with snow, but a winter that's as bleak and barren as an icebox, that is a vision of the devil womb and Dante's second Hell. These snowboots were made for walking ... to Miami.

So ... Miami. Wup, wrong paragraph.

As I was saying, it was great to hear from y'all. It was a revealing letter and that is a difficult thing to pull off. Though, on the other hand, I suppose there is still enough distance between us that this is still not all that difficult. But still, I was pleased to receive it.

To go through your letter in comment:

Yes, it is feminine, this angstschaltz over the gal. I think as artists and as sensitive youths we are as feminate as we shall ever be. Once we were children and as such removed from either, someday we will be men; in the mean time we are people. I would not like to change, but I will. I will become my father. It is my theory that the crucial turning point in maturing is facing up to the reality that you will or have become your father and accepting it.

Look at us with these women. We are a pair of jokes, we two. We are jokes in search of a punch-line. Misogynists in Love. Ah, but better by far than "Miss Oginyst's in Heat." We may be jokes, we may be in poor taste, but we're sensitives by damn it.

Living with T & D must be interestingly odd. I am not a difficult person to live with. But I cannot think of many people I would enjoy living with. Perhaps only A. Perhaps not even her, she has days that make me bite my fist. Perhaps that is why I have no real friends. I am a failed misanthrope. You are appalled. I think I would like living with y'all. There are parts of it that I know I would enjoy. I am easy to please in most respects. That's a conscious decision. I decided when I was 11 that as human's only two reacitons are to laugh or to cry, I would laugh, where possibly. Still, I am ... a bum.

Ah, collaboration. I roll it around in my mind like a heady vintage. It shall be interesting and odd -- in a pleasant way. I look forward to it. Tomorrow I'm going to buy the Music Studio software for the Comodore 64, you know, where the guy's jumping up in the air. I need to write. I want to send you some stuff. This nocturne, for instance. I think I need to rethink my creative process. I always show things to people. I judge their reaction, I use their thoughts as catalysts. But I begin to see that I shall get nowhere really until I find my own voice. And to do so, I must try all kinds of oddities in search of the beams to erect my oeuvre from. And these elementary sophomoric attempts are extremely hard to judge. Who can say: I know comedy! Abbott, you go with this guy Hardy. Laurel, you team up with Costello here? Even A, even you, most assuredly my family. I need to make my odd noises. I must learn to shape myself.

I am determined to carve my own working space. I begin to realize that I cannot work directly in the vein of my heroes. And there are enough people mining the center floor. I must turn to the side and sink a new shaft. I will attempt, with my construction of words and music to consider and revise even the smallest element. The word, the note. I am ashamed to say that I haven't the patience now to truly do this. I must pray God to show me grace. I need it.

Say hi to R for me. I had a crush on her a time or two, but I assume she doesn't know and it's just as well; as Dylan & Caitlin Thomas proved, drunkards should never marry.

Why do I feel for you? Maybe you do feel peppy and that things are happening for you, but who am I to feel for? Myself? Those would only be Irish tears. A? E? Psaw. They need our love, not our sympathy. They'll take that when they need it. I look at you and see options that I might have taken, I see bits of what I've gone through and what I'm going through now. I feel sorry.

The difference between you and me #13: I like New York. You love it.

Send me some parts of your work at hand. If it's words, I can read them. If it's notes, I can enter them in my program. I can send you ideas back. We can exchange if you like. No value judgements on direction or the context. Just options, given in respect of our individual voices. Come on, don't chicken out on me. Send me some working copy. I dare you, in a friendly manner.

Yes, I miss being truly Avante myself. I have begun wearing earrings in my spare time again. Just the wires, it's odd, minimalist and cheap.

I was touched by your feelings at the Thanksgiving service. You have a heart like a lion, Marck. You must be good to it.

Berkeley. What are they doing to us? I could cry. I could rant and rave. I too, may move closer to the only reason to live. I am ashamed ... but only to a degree. Thank-you for the place to stay. I am grateful to you for it. Likewise, I am sure. A poet once said it is great to say let me help, than to say I love you. But he isn't dead yet, so who cares?

I have bought a tape of David Carradine reading "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. God-like. Purely god-like. I've already read the book a dozen times but I had no idea that Beat is only truly intelligible when orally presented. Soon, I believe, I shall send you a copy. I think you would be interested in it.

I miss A. We talked the other day and I think things are a lot better between us. I finally got a letter from her today. I devoured it like life. I want more. I am not satiated. Ah ... love is like a gentle kick in the teeth. Well, I must go now. I shall write again soon. Till then, have fun in Gotham.

Your pen-pal,
Dean Musclwitz

Six months later, Andrew had talked me into abandoning The Mealy Apple for the midwest. I have him to thank for bringing me to Chicago, and thus in some indirect way for my beautiful family. Andrew and I had dreams of writing amazing songs together, but our approaches never meshed. He was too loose and I was far too tight. I was unwilling to change, and perhaps he was unable to. I never gave him the chance I should have. We roomed together in two different apartments for a little over a year, and then I moved out. He soon met the woman he would marry, who carried an extreme dislike for me. And so we drifted apart.

Andrew now lives in the southwest. He founded a wonderful radio drama troupe. They recently put up a web site. It's the first time I've been able to track him down beyond old, defunct email addresses. I'm writing him occasionally, and I plan to continue, giving him little updates on my life. He has not responded. I'm not sure why. Hopefully he'll come 'round and realize that, at least on this end, all is forgiven, if there is anything to forgive. Perhaps he's not there on his end yet.

I miss your words, Andrew. I hope you get back in touch.

Mail bag!

It's not often you receive "Happy New Year" cards -- especially three weeks after the event. But yesterday, I was touched by the sweetest note -- from my cable company!

I know they choose to "send the very best" because the envelope flap has the imprint of "Hallmark Business Expressions," but they really went the extra mile with one of the best handwriting fonts I've ever seen. I'm sure I can forgive them for spelling my name wrong -- I mean, AT&T and Commonwealth Edison haven't gotten it right, either. And after the smarmy preprinted portion of the note talking about what a privilege it is to serve me (They are my servant!), their cute faux-writing font informed me:

We also wanted to take this time to let you know your digital package price will not increase in January.

It's Christmas in January! I have ten worry-free days of assured non-increases in my cable bill! Of course, I'm bracing myself for the card they send me February 1.

***
Big thank-you shout-out to Elizabeth for providing my work machine with its new alert sound: The Howard Dean Screech!

Caucus cacophony.

At first I was concerned about Howard Dean's apparently weak showing in the Iowa caucuses last night. But then I flipped over to MSNBC (I know, I know -- but I was in one of those moods where I wanted to hear a conservative slant on things, just for the entertainment value of the depth of their smirking), and lo and behold, there was Pat Buchanan, claiming that Dean, once again in the position of scrappy underdog, was perfectly positioned to take New Hampshire and the rest of the country and assure himself the nomination. And I figured, well, either Buchanan is wishing this to happen because he thinks Dean would be the easiest for Bush to beat, or he has a salient point.

And I can't believe I just typed the words "Buchanan" and "salient point" in the same sentence.

But all that was before. Yeah, before. Oh, you know what I'm talking about, don't you? Yep. The Speech.

Actually, that gives it too much credit. Maybe I should call it "The Screech." What ... the ... hell? At first, when he took the stage, all Dean-goofy-grinning and rolling up his sleeves, ready to "get down to bidness" on the east coast, I thought: "Oh, okay. I see what we do here. We're spinning." He took his words in the "look how far we've come" direction. And it was actually working nicely. And then we crossed into the bizarre: The laundry list of all the states where the Dean campaign would fight, culminating in his return to D.C., where they would "take back the White House! Aaaaaiiiiieeeeeeee-haaaahhhhhhh!"

My jaw dropped. Did that sound come out of a human?

Oh well. Surely he'll recover, right? I mean -- mark my words -- that beastly ape-yell will be The Daily Show's "moment of zen" on tonight's edition, but that'll be the worst of it, right? Wrong. He did the list again. He threw in some different states, but basically tried to sledgehammer this geography lesson into a motif, all red-in-the-face, and seething. And then he said: "I ..." But someone in the audience caught his eye, and Jesus Christ, he started the state list again!

Finally, some all-too-tiny voice that tells him to "put the damn brakes on, already!" got the message to his skull and he got off that groove with this (paraphrased) gem: "Now, we have to say some polite things up here ..." And he went on to do his thank-you's. Well gee, Howard. Sorry to put you through a painful, public display of gratitude.

Somebody better hurry up and tell Dr. Dean that it don't matter what his message is, the medium was really sucking last night. It won't matter how impassioned his supporters (and that includes me) are; when they get a look at the goofy Tasmanian Devil that spat and screamed on that stage in Iowa, they're gonna have a second thought. I've read about his lack of self-control, but never had I seen it expressed so blatantly. If I send him any more money, I'm gonna earmark it: "Please use for a decent handler."

Let's see: I have Perle, Frum, swine.

As I was hurrily getting ready for work one morning several days ago, I caught the tail end of an interview with David Frum and Richard Perle on NPR's Morning Edition. Perle and Frum are busy promoting their new book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. This is the kind of book (and interview) that would leave me snorting and rolling my eyes in a typically narrow-minded, liberal fashion.

The authors encourage broadening the Patriot Act, getting the US out of the United Nations, and generally controlling any country with oil because, hey, that country can't be trusted. But there was a moment near the end of this interview that chilled me to the bone.

Juan Williams (interviewer): David Frum, if there was one prescription that you would say we have to act on immediately, what would it be?

David Frum: I'm tempted to say it's to re-elect President Bush, because if that doesn't happen, everything else falls apart. But I would say my first recommendation would be ....

And I didn't hear the rest of his answer. I didn't need to. I felt like I had just been hit with a January Chicago snowball, hard-packed with icy realization. Up until now, I was floating along on this idealistic notion that we were going to nominate a viable candidate to go up against the Bush administration, and that we'd fight valiantly and there would be another exciting finish, perhaps even with a new man in office. But something about the way Frum tossed off that first part of his answer -- it made me realize exactly how driven the men currently in power will be to make sure that they stay there.

This doesn't feel like a game anymore where one side gets to be king of the hill for awhile, and then next time the other side wins the national thumb-wrestling competition that is the general election, they get to be on top and the first party has to follow their rules. Suddenly I sense that the Bush administration -- not the Republican party, mind you, but the specific men that make up the power of this leadership (Cheney, Perle, Rove, Wolfowitz, etc.) -- believe it is their destiny to sit behind the wheel, and they are prepared to go to any lengths necessary to make sure that their version of "Life In America," which they've been cooking up for the last decade, will be brought to complete fruition. No matter what.

And since that moment, I've felt almost defeated, with more than nine months still to go in the race. The very fact that they're in control gives them unfair access to the controls -- the media, other governmental departments, and gobs and gobs and gobs of money -- makes me worried that they couldn't possibly be unseated, short of a scandal of Watergate-like proportions. And since that's already happened once, I don't get the sense that anyone (Democrat or Republican) is going to be stupid enough to let that happen to them again.

Laura and I should have acted on our notion to move to New Zealand in 2000.

Am I the last one to realize this?

After getting over the initial stun-gun of Bush's new fervor to reach into space, return to the moon, and place some humans on Mars (which may not sound like such a bad idea to those New Englanders who suffered through the recent cold spell), I tried my hardest to summon up some excitement about the idea.

I assure you that when I was 10, I would have bathed all week in the waters of this idea. One of my favorite books and TV movies of the 70s was Stowaway to the Moon, a yarn about a young kid who stows away on an Apollo mission. Preposterous, I know -- but it certainly wasn't at the time!

Now I'm a stupid grown-up, and all I can think of is where else all that money devoted to this problem could be used. Which might be narrow-minded. There should be money for both the research resulting from space exploration and more earthbound social causes. But now? With the economy still in so much trouble, and hardly on a clear road to recovery?

And then it hit me: A big bump for NASA means major funds for G.W.'s home state of Texas. Well, it's a good thing that at least one other state will reap major benefits from this new space program. I mean, it's not like Bush has any perceived benefit from helping Florida too, right?

Oh. Wait a minute.

Do you like your market black?

I recently finished reading Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, and I'm a little disappointed in myself because, well, I had pretty much the same reaction that everyone else I know had to it: Nice read, but it ain't no Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.

That first book was kind of transformational for me. I've been vegetarian now for three years, and I originally did it to make me eat a more healthy diet. But Fast Food Nation clarified for me some social reasons for my decision. And it isn't just a horrors-of-the-stockyard, modern-day The Jungle that one might expect; Schlosser really explores the economics of fast food, like the low-wage jobs or -- most compelling to me -- the screwed-up business of franchising restaurants. (I now try to avoid setting foot in any fast-food franchise, even for a baked potato or salad.) And he looks at the cultural effect of fast food, like the targeting of kids in marketing campaigns while completely ignoring any negative effects on their health.

Fast Food Nation, I think, was also the book primarily responsible for bringing to the world's attention the (already known but heavily underreported) fact that McDonald's french fries actually had beef byproducts added to them and they weren't as "vegetarian" as many had originally believed. For this exposé alone, the book was worth publishing. One in a series of comeuppances that Mickey D's has had to suffer through in the last few years. I'll supersize an order of that, with relish, please.

Reefer Madness did not inspire me quite the same way, though Schlosser can take the facts surrounding a non-fiction event and spin a story as well as any novelist I've read. And it's in the section that could easily have become the most titillating that he tells the most intriguing tale. The section is on pornography, and the story is that of Reuben Sturman, the indisputable former king of modern pornography, and his remarkable "run" from the law, capture, escape, recapture, and eventual demise. While Sturman was not nearly as evil as one Al Capone, his desire to not give the US government one cent of his income went way beyond obsessive and mad Capone look like a rank amateur at tax evasion.

Though he sometimes seems a little unsure, Schlosser is fairly certain that more government regulation is needed. I struggle with the idea of more regulation myself -- I want to see better things happen in our country, but I'm sufficiently cynical to doubt that grassroots movements can effect that change. I'm sure I should be even more cynical of government's ability to do this as well, but the way I look at it, as long as the current administration is going to expand government at an ever-dizzying pace, I can wish to see that expansion used for the common good rather than for the purpose of beating ploughshares into swords.

So I, who have never so much as held a joint to my lips, am in favor of legalizing marijuana, since, despite the cultural "tradition" of casting it as something evil, could not possibly be any more destructive than alcohol. And let's use the income from taxing weed to fund some kickass substance abuse programs.

Let's get some serious immigration reform -- not that pseudo-bill that Bush just pushed to us prior to his trip to Mexico. I worry for the future of California, a state near and dear to my heart, if we don't find a way to pay living wages -- and as FDR put it in 1933, "by living wages I mean more than a subsistence level -- I mean the wages of a decent living." We need to think about our relationship to those low-paying, "immigrant" jobs in a whole new way.

And let's get some backbone and toss the Comstock Law. It's a relic of the past, a joke, and it only seems to get exercised when some conservative mouthpiece way out of the mainstream decides (s)he needs some attention (s)he can't otherwise get and tries to justify a crackdown on free speech disguised as something for the good of "the family."

As for Schlosser, though my excitement about him was slightly dampened by this book, I'm betting his next book brings him back more to the center of a media maelstrom: He's writing about the American prison system.

And at no time was eye contact made.

I'm hustling through the Wild Oats in Evanston, because our dinner at Cross Rhodes is probably already bagged, and I can just sense my Greek fries getting colder with every aisle in which I dally. Earlier, standing at the door to our condo, I pared down my shopping list to only the next few day's essentials and I had almost escaped when Laura called out for one more item. I sighed and added it.

Now, looking over my basket and double-checking the list, just the one item remains to be found. I'm wandering down the nutritional supplements aisle, looking over the tops of shelves to adjacent aisles to get my bearings, when a young, idealistic gentlemen in a pressed Wild Oats apron approached me with a great deal of energy. His posture, his gait, every movement indicated that he was in his domain, I was his welcome guest, and he was prepared to serve my every need.

"Can I help you find something?" He spoke with a crisp, direct voice, with no discernible dialect. It was a voice full of confidence ... knowledge ... almost an intuition for what I was about to ask for.

"Uh, yeah," I said. "Where are your panty liners?"

Hmmm. I must've been wrong about the "intuition" thing.

"Oh!" His body tensed up. "Yes!" He threw his hands up, but then quickly transformed the reaction into a double-finger-pointing gesture in the direction he was now quickly striding. He whirled around the endcap and laid his hand right on a box.

"There!"

"Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks."

"Uh-huh!" Voice right back to chipper, if a little shaken. He turned his back to me and faux-straightened a shelf while I stood there faux-consulting my list.

Before I headed to the checkout lines, I noted: "Well, I think we handled that particularly well."

"Yeah!" Grocery Boy said, a little too enthusiastically.

***
A sign I once saw in the door of a Logan Square convenience store:

Hot breath Dirty body Smelly feet NO SERVICE

Incentifying my readers.

Each year, Matt Groening presents a list of Forbidden Words in his alterna-indie strip Life In Hell. Here are his words for 2004:

Absolutely!
Action Items
All-Natural
Big Government
Bling-Bling
Botox Party
Death Tax
Dialogue (v.)
Dope (adj.)
Dubya
Exit Strategy
Extreme
Fair and Balanced
Faith-Based
Functionality
Homeland Security
Impactful
Infrastructure
Jump The Shark
Matrix
Metrosexual
My Bad
No-Spin Zone
Nucular
On Task
Outsourcing
Re-purposing
Restructuring
Re-tooling
Street Cred
Sweet!
Synergy
Tacky
Tax-And-Spend
Tax Relief
Tight!

Wow. "Synergy?" I thought that was soooo 20th Century.

I can only think of one word I really want to add to this list. I attended a conference in December and was listening to some suit talk about marketing to prospective college students. If he used the word incentify one more time in his spiel, I was gonna pee on his PowerPoint presentation.

(And come to think of it, using "suit" to describe a corporate type might also be worthy of this list.)

Life with Piper I

One morning, I emerged from our bedroom after my shower and as Laura was just getting in hers. I passed by Piper's cracked door and saw her sitting up in her crib. I stuck my head in.

"Good morning, sweetie."

"Mommy?" Her usual first utterance.

"Mommy's in the shower."

I made the sign for bath, even as I prepared myself for soft weeping, because she wants to nurse. But not this morning. Today, she just looked at me and said: "Nice day a-day."

Nice day today. This is a phrase that Laura's brother spoke when he was Piper's age (or younger), and we occasionally say it to her when she wakes up. Apparently she has been paying attention.

"Yes, sweet thing, it is a nice day today," I tell her as she throws her arms around me, settles her head on my shoulder, and we walk into the bright morning sunlight of our living room.

***
Laura was reading the third of Piper's five bedtime books -- this one called simply Yummy, Yucky. Laura is reading it, but allowing Piper to pass judgement on the items.

Laura: "Sandwiches are ..."

Piper: "Yummy."

Laura: "Sand is ..."

Piper: "Yucky."

Laura: "Soup is ..."

Piper: "Yummy."

Laura: Soap is ..."

Piper: "Yucky."

And so on. But we discovered how close Piper has been paying attention when she got to:

Laura: "Daddy's cookies are ..."

Piper: "Yummy."

Laura: "Mommy's coffee is ..."

Piper thought about it an extra-long moment, and then said: "Hot."

***
Tell me this child isn't devious: Her most recent trick is to say a word, but not too clearly. Then you repeat the word as if it is a question, and she responds. So the game works like this:

"Atch emmo."

"What was that, honey?"

"Atch emmo."

"You want to watch Elmo?"

"Ooooooooooo kayyyyyyyy."

She says that last part like you just talked her into it. But you weren't talking her into anything -- you were just trying to clarify what she was saying. By responding "Okay," she has now made your clarification sound like a promise. And what are you gonna do now -- break your damn promise?

I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up with her. And she's not even two yet.

***
Laura asks, "Piper, would you like a brother or sister?"

Without looking up, Piper says, "Yep."

Laura clarifies: "Which do you want: A brother or a sister?"

Piper looks up and says: "A doggie sister."

Fare shake.

Laura had a doctor's appointment downtown the other day, so I needed to take the El back to work after lunch. This would be my first trip on the train since the fare increase from $1.50 to $1.75. My fare card had only $0.70 on it, so as I approached the machine to add enough for the trip, the station attendant came over.

"You just going one way?" he asked. I confirmed that this was my intention. "Just give me a dollar."

He pressed the CANCEL button on the vending machine, spitting my card back out without my having added value to it. So I agreed, even as I'm aware that this probably means he will pocket my cash ... and I'm abetting.

But wait -- after he unlocked the disabled-access gate for me to walk through, I watched him take my dollar and feed it into the machine. He wasn't keeping it! I thanked him and move on, but he wasn't done. He felt the need to justify his action.

"Can you believe they raised the fare a quarter? That's ridiculous."

"Yeah ..." I trailed off as I moved toward the stairs, but I was debating whether to say anything about the fact that I don't have a problem with the fare increase.

I think the Chicago Transit Authority went out of its way to make this increase as mild as possible. I mean, this was the first fare increase in 12 years! NYC's public transportation ($2.00 now, right?) can't claim that. And the CTA actually reduced the cost of transfers (from $0.30 to $0.25). And they didn't increase any of the multi-day pass costs (making those an even better value than they were before). So it sounds to me like the CTA is doing its best to target the fare increase toward those who don't rely mainly on public transportation. Or am I completely off base here?

I chose to say none of this to my fuming CTA worker. I wondered as I sat on the train if the guy would have made me the same offer to me had I not looked like the kind of person who maybe couldn't afford this easily. I've been growing my hair out, I'm doing "the beard thing," and my expensive work clothes were covered up with a somewhat dingy winter coat and scarf. Is this "discount fare" an offer he makes to those he feels need it? Or does he do this for everyone, provided they're standing all alone in the station at the time he makes the offer?

My question was partially answered that night when I relayed the story to Laura and Piper's babysitter, Marta. "He does that for me, too!" said Marta. I note that, unlike me, Marta is female, and unlike me, Marta is gorgeous, and he may just be giving her one of the perks that many beautiful women sometimes experience from the puppy-dog men they encounter.

"Maybe he's bisexual," Laura offers.

"That could be," I concur. "Hey Marta, you and I are competing for the same guy!"

Marta flashes me a look that makes it clear that Mr. CTA Worker is all mine, should I seriously want him.

One of the big reasons the CTA switched a few years ago to the fare card system was to avoid the skimming that many station attendants, who used to handle the money directly, were doing. It's interesting to note that (assuming this is a somewhat prevalent occurrence) a form of skimming is still going on, and now the riders seem to be benefitting from it. Next time a wave of articles on how bankrupt and teetering-on-on-collapse our public transportation system is, I'll know that I played a $0.75 role in the ongoing tragedy.

***
Happy birthday to: Elvis Presley, David Bowie, and Paul Hester. But most of all, happy birthday to brother Ian. I hope you have a kick-ass gig in whatever town in Colorado you've stumbled into tonight.

A Rose is a Rose is a creep.

While I seem to sway back and forth on whether or not Pete Rose should go into baseball's Hall of Fame, I am absolutely certain that I despise the guy. I wasn't a fan back when he was playing, but that's because I was a Dodger fan and the Reds (who [this is for all you young'uns] were part of the National League West then ) were our main rivals. And there was no love lost between Rose and my hero at the time (and whose private life also brought me down when I was older), Steve Garvey.

There was a great story I remember reading in the Los Angeles Times back in the 1970s, and it perfectly captures Rose's attitude. The Rose family was going out to dinner, and his son came downstairs wearing a white t-shirt with the image of Steve Garvey. Rose reportedly told Pete Jr. that they were going out to a nice restaurant and that he should dress a little bit better than this. Pete Jr. was sent back upstairs, down which he returned shortly ... wearing the exact same type of t-shirt, except with Rose's image on it. "That's better," said Rose. "Okay, let's go."

I should hardly fault Pete for his arrogance -- or, if you are a Rose fan, perhaps you'd call him "scrappy." It's just that attitude that was central to his success as a ballplayer, and it's also what makes him so reprehensible. But it's not like he's the only Hall-of-Fame caliber player who's an asshole off the field. If there's any argument I'll buy to get me to say "Let him in," that would probably be the angle one would take. Over the last few days, the issue that has risen to the top of my personal Pete Rose pickle barrel is this: Major League Baseball's stand against Rose smacks more and more each passing year of a "pot-kettle-black" situation. Here's a sport where:

• steroid use rages for years while MLB looks the other way -- and even now, the issue is not confronted head-on due to a shoddy, no-backbone "solution" they hammered out with the help of the Players' Association.
• players who cheat -- like, say, a certain Hall-of-Famer who admitted to using foreign substances on the ball -- are happily ushered in to Cooperstown.
• the owners of the teams (most likely) collude, either knowingly or tacitly, creating an Old Boys Club-type atmosphere where business decisions are made for personal profit rather than the best interests of the longevity and honor of Our Favorite Pastime.
• they won't allow Rose into baseball, but they happily display much of his paraphernelia (such as the bat with which he broke Ty Cobb's all-time hit record) in the Hall of Fame.

So here's what I think should happen:

First, induct Rose. I can't believe I feel nauseous even as I type that. But just do it. Get this blight the hell out of our way so we can all shut up about the guy and his pathetic, polluted campaign. He's a loser in so many ways, and I hate that someone of such low character would be allowed to be officially recognized as a Hero. But we can hardly hold him up to a higher standard than his former bosses or peers. To continue to lock him out of the house for the mess he made when the house is so disgusting for so many other reasons ... That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

The next step -- the most important step -- is that MLB also confesses to its sins and gets its act together. Concurrent with Rose's induction, MLB should declare, "We are taking steps to make sure that a fiasco like this never happens again." Strike Rule 21 (all sections, not just Rule 21d) from the books, and rewrite the rules, making it clear that if your actions (i.e., betting on your own games, whether or not you always bet on them to win) actually work against the best interests of the sport, you will hurt your chances at staying involved in this game or being considered for the Hall.

I don't really believe for a moment that such a thing would happen, certainly not while Selig is commissioner, and probably not as long as the owners get to pick someone from their own ranks as their leader. But as WGN Radio's John Williams likes to say, "When I become king...."

My morning at the dentist's office.

Tam, my dental hygienist, was really sticking it to my upper left quadrant. Her sharp metal devices were plunging (seemingly) well under the gum line. It took my mind off my new concern that, while Tam said she loved my own daughter's name, she had just revealed that she had named her daughter "Brin" without any coercion. That's not short for anything; just "Brin."

So she finally lets up long enough to ask me to rinse, and I say to her, "So I guess I have some work to do on that upper side?"

She turns back to me from the Tray of Evil Equipment, looking confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, that last bit hurt on this side, so I figure I could have done a better job up there. Right?"

"Oh, that!" she says. "No, no. I was just looking for something to do. Okay -- open again, please?"

***

Final check from the dentist: "Good, healthy teeth!" He pats my cheek.

"You know the only reason I have such good checkups is because of my deep-seeded fear of your reprisal if I ever came in with bad teeth, right?"

The dentist laughs.

"No, seriously," I press on. "If I was the last person on earth, do you really think I'd ever floss?" He chuckles again, wishes me a happy new year, and walks out to check on more deserving patients. But I think he looked a little shook up, like maybe his world wasn't as safe as he had thought it was when he woke up this morning.

Next time, I put into motion my plan to subtly turn the dentist and hygienist against each other. July 8th can't come soon enough.

And who the hell would name a boy "Merry?"

Finally caught The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on Saturday night. For someone who is not a fan of the genre, I enjoyed the trilogy immensely. Still, there was this feeling as we plowed past the third hour that I was completing a marathon. (Come to think of it, I could have run two marathons in the time it took to watch the series.)

I had heard a lot of people talk about that "dragging" feeling at the end, so I wasn't surprised when we kept having meaningful fades-to-black with very "conclusive sounding" Howard Shore music ... only to see another scene start up. But when we finally faded to white for the first time ... only to came back to another scene, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. God bless him Peter Jackson for being so faithful to the author's original words (which I've never read, by the way) and following each story to Tolkien's imagined conclusion for the sake of accuracy. But the problem lies in the pacing of those conclusions.

The scene where Frodo wakes up safe in bed and everyone piles in to see him was relatively quick (though I admit I was waiting for Frodo to point at each hobbit in the room and say: "And you were there, Merry! and Pip, you were a scarecrow! and Sam, you were a tin woodsman!..."). But later we have this ridiculously drawn-out goodbye on the docks, with a five-minute hug between Frodo and Sam, and I'm feeling like, "Jesus, little people, get a room with a big round door and just consummate it, already!"

(Along those same lines: Am I the only one who thinks Jackson left off the ending where Merry and Pippin move to Vermont and get married?)

Laura decried the movie, noting that the CGI was somehow not as realistic this time 'round (and I concurred that there was some awful work as Frodo and Sam run in to the mountain to dispose of the ring) and that it lacked more light-hearted moments like the conclusion of Legolas' defeat of that giant elephant creature. I admit that the second intallment is probably my favorite, but I really feel like you have to give Jackson and the movie the Oscar this year in recognition of the entire trilogy. I mean, no director has ever taken on such a project, and I think there were very, very few people who believed that he would achieve this level of critical success (especially from the people who lived and breathed these books). And New Line studios basically leveraging their entire company on the backs of this movie -- wow. And it paid off!

Not that this will make anyone else in Hollywood take such a chance again. Things like this only happen once in Hollywood. No sequel here. I did hear recently that the film version of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe will now be filmed in New Zealand. I guess they're hoping for a little bit of that Kiwi good luck left in the flora. Though if I were the New Zealand Tourist Authority (or whatever they're called), I'd order an outright ban on any more Hollywood movies being made on NZ soil for a few years, lest the rest of western civilization discover what an amazing place that country is, move down there, and completely ruin it.

Look.

My daughter spoke a new word last night: "Look." And I found this worrisome.

What's the big deal? Any 22-month-old child can handle one-syllable words, and most (including Piper) have far more extensive vocabularies. My issue was the way I know she came to discover this word. She came to it via the television, albeit indirectly.

The Tournament of Roses Parade is a longstanding New Year tradition for both Laura and me, dating back to our respective childhoods. I remember waking up in various southern California households in which my family lived, always feeling the refreshing start-overness of January 1st, and running to the television to turn on the parade. I often slept through the early start of the parade. It was no trouble finding it on the television: Every local network affiliate and many non-network stations in southern Cal cover the parade live.

Then, as now, I loved the floats the most. The marching bands were fleetingly interesting. The various horseback brigades were downright boring. I would invariably lose interest long before the parade was over, and by 10 a.m. I was looking for other stuff to do. Barely hours old, the new year was beginning to feel an awful lot like the old year. The Rose Parade is just one of many examples of how having a child lets me to re-live my own childhood. Piper was too young to watch for more than a few seconds last year, much less appreciate it. I expected this year to be an "improvement."

A few things have changed since I watched the parade as a kid. It has become much more overcommercialized, with many floats' corporate sponsors using flowers, grasses, and natural foodstuffs to exploit (to greater or lesser degrees of subtlety) some aspect of their company. Luckily, a work-around appeared last year when the cable channel Home & Garden TV began covering the parade (sans commercials!) with intelligent broadcasters avoding the corporate America shill with product-placement voiceovers. HGTV's folks talk about the materials that made each float and the arduous work that goes into creating them.

Another change: Now I live in the central time zone, so my (and Piper's) rising at 8:30 yesterday morning meant we still had an hour-and-a-half to kill. (Dad: Prep work on the evening's feast. Piper: "Watch Elmo?") The most exciting change by far is my ability to TiVo the parade and skip the damn horses. Time for a little overdue media justice, Mr. Palomino!

"Look, Piper!" I exclaimed. She was busily watching her Bitty Baby doll's eyes open and close as she rotated it from a vertical to horizontal position. I tried to ignore the wearied, practiced expression she had on her face as she lifted her head from her activity to look at the TV. I said "Look," and she looked -- not at me, but at the television. She studied the screen for a moment. I made some comment like "Do you see the lion?" in an overly excited voice, and she said "Yep," and went back to her Bitty Baby. Just another year.

Later that night, as I was hurrying to finish the hoppin john, the kale with red pepper and parmesan, and the yeasted corn bread, Piper took one of her running tackles into my knee, screaming: "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" And when she had my attention, she pointed back to the living room and said: "Look!" I was at a critical point in my cooking, so my friend Ed went instead to view her completed puzzle achievement, but as I reheated the kale with olive oil, I asked Laura, "Have you ever heard her use that word before?" She said she hadn't. "How did she learn that?" I wondered. And then a moment later: "Oh my god. I tell her to look at the TV all the time."

When Laura was still pregnant with Piper, we discussed many issues regarding not only logistics of a new human being but the philosophies behind raising it. We agreed on almost everything, but I was awfully quiet when Laura made suggestions about television habits. Her radical take was that she wanted the television gone, period. More generally, she wanted a much less time spent in front of it. Her one demand was that certain shows with a good deal of violence -- Oz, The Sopranos, and NYPD Blue come to mind -- could not be watched when Piper was in the room.

I mentally shuffled my feet about all of this. It's not that I didn't agree with her; I just couldn't imagine letting many of those shows go. And yet, there HAS been a reduction in grown-up TV time. I had some help: Oz finished its run, and a couple of other shows were cancelled. (Frasier will end soon, and I can't imagine Dennis Franz hanging in too much longer with his stale show.) But I also made a concerted effort to not pick up new shows last fall. Lo and behold, my 30-hour TiVo has a lot of space on it. It's kind of nice.

But Piper still "atches Elmo" (she's not too good with her W's yet) and occasionally catches a Teletubbies episode. We limit her TV watching to an hour or so a day. What's scary is the trance she goes into. You've seen it, even if you don't have kids. I ask her a question and she may as well be deaf. She has disappeared into Elmo's World.

In a lot of ways, I feel like in my life I "look" more than I "act." I don't want my daughter to be like this. I mean, she's clearly pretty sharp: She completed every one of her puzzles yesterday afternoon, and some of them are rated for 5-year-olds. But the "Look!" episode last night got me thinking a lot about steering my little girl toward a life more active rather than passive.

My mother-in-law is fond of reminding me regularly that the best teaching method for Piper is by example. Maybe more television will go by the wayside in 2004.