Everything

Everything changed.

People use this phrase all the time. Everything changed on September 11th. Everything changes once you're old enough to drink. Everything changes once you drive a Hemi. Everything changes once you listen to the Doors.

On May 31, 2005, everything changed for us.

I remember so much of that day, and the days leading up to it. I remember exactly where I sat and where R lay when she had the misoprostol treatments. I remember the restaurant on Capitol Hill where we ate our last formal meal pre-baby. The antiseptic smells of scrubs and clean towels. The bathtub where she tried using hot water to stem the pain of her contractions, to postpone the epidural just that much longer. The salmon from the cafe, the location of everything in the room - the tv, the bassinet, the sink, the bare padded area where I slept while my wife worked to bring our baby out of her body and into the world.

I remember seeing the crown of his head emerge, as magical as anything I have ever seen. I realized then the weight of creating another human being. We weren't just creating ultrasound pictures or something to put in the crib. We created a person, and here was his head, and here were his shoulders, and the umbilical cord caressed his throat gently, like the last kiss of a lover, and then the doctor's scissors snipped it away and he sprang out into the cold light of day. It was 5:32 am. It was a Tuesday. Today is Wednesday. We have gone fifty two weeks and one day since that magical moment, and today is the anniversary of his birth. It's his birthday.


I want to say that we were playing his lullaby CD, the one that's playing now as he slumbers in the next room. I could be wrong. We could have been playing James Taylor or Cat Stevens or Enya. But my heart wants it to have been that lullaby CD that welcomed him into the world.

I remember so many trivial and hugely significant moments that splash against each other in my mind like ripples in a turbulent sea. I remember his tragically feline cries from those early early days, and I remember how much he slept as his body struggled to draw as much nourishment as he could. The desperation of those early days, until the lactation consultant came and taught R about latches and the satisfying clunk! of his swallows, and he began to feed in earnest. Then it all comes in cascading waves. Meconium diapers. Blankets. His play gym, and the way he would lay on his back and bat a fist at his little hanging frog.

The frightening first day I spent alone with him.

Baths. Strolls in the Bjorn and in the various strollers. I remember the first time we went to the store in the Bjorn - he spit up on the padding and I didn't even notice until we entered the store and I saw the white patches against blue fabric. (I had nothing to clean him up with. I had to learn.) The first time I went to parenting class, feeling awkward and slightly desperate and wildly emotional in a room full of mothers who were equally emotional if not more.

More memories. Solid food. Smiles. Laughter. Tears and crying jags that evolved from catlike cries into real babylike sounds. (No less tragic.) Naps that were blissfully still and long, and naps that descended into chaos and tears on both sides. All of it.

I remember it all, and the things I don't remember sneak up on me unexpectedly. I remembered suddenly this morning how tiny his first diapers were, and how small his body was, like a doll.

I used to be so tired that I would fall asleep on the couch carrying him, and we would sleep together, sprawled together in a pile of fatigue. I fell asleep holding him that first day, sitting upright, and I startled myself awake with nightmare visions of how I could have dropped him, how I could have somehow slipped and had him tumble out of my hands. I don't believe that now. Even that first day, I was his father, and there was no force, not even my own exhaustion, that would have caused him to slip from my grasp.


Our boy is now a year old. 365 days ago, everything changed for us. My career changed. The way I looked at everything - television, food, baseball, alcohol, plastic, honey, electric fans, newspapers, everything - changed. My new world is exactly one year old, and I'm only starting to get used to it. He is the joy of my life, and the greatest thing I have ever been associated with.

Happy birthday, Oliver.

Lies and Snakes and Planes

So I was sitting around thinking one day...

No, that's a lie. I was on TableTalk, which is my new addiction. It's a combination reader forum and bulletin board that runs parallel to Salon.com. I was surfing through the various threads I subscribe to, and ran across the Snakes on a Plane thread, which is just a bunch of silliness and giddy excitement about the upcoming movie starring Samuel L. Jackson and a whole damn mess of snakes. Someone mentioned that the only two movies she was looking forward to were "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Snakes on a Plane." She then wondered why she couldn't find a movie that would show both as a double-feature.

Always one for a challenge, I imagined Al Gore as he might appear in the SoaP movie, trying to convince the other passengers of their common dilemma:

"The truth of the matter here is incontrovertible. There are snakes, and they are aboard this plane. We're not talking about one snake, or a small handful. There are lit'rally hundreds of snakes. Right here! Here on this very plane. This plane where you and I rest comfortably, has come under a very sudden and unforeseen attack by snakes."

Then someone wondered aloud about Dick Cheney trying to explain to W about the movie. And, as I said earlier, I can't resist a challenge.

Bush: So, Uncle Dickie, any good movies out there?

Cheney: mutter grumble ... Nacho Libre.

Bush: Oh, yeah, that's the rasslin' movie. That'll be good! What else?

Cheney: mutter mutter snarl snarl ... snakes ... mutter growl ... plane mutter mutter ... guy from "Pulp Fiction."

Bush: Oh, my gosh! Should I call the National Guard out to the airports?

Cheney: grumble mutter ... fiction, Mr. President ... gribble ... not real.

Bush: Yeah, but that United 93 plane movie really happened. I remember that! I went out to some field and they said it was a plane ... that the plane crashed ... there was this field ... well, I didn't really get it but I said God bless America and everyone clapped, so I guess it went okay. Are you sure there really aren't some Islamic snakes on our planes?

Cheney: mutter mutter ... not likely ... grr woof ... we'll look into it.

Sigur Rós Review by Dooce

I found it in my heart, though, to drag my body out for the evening on the off chance that my husband would have a transcendental, life-changing experience, even though now as parents we have those every day when our child takes a nap.

That sentence alone should be enough to persuade you to read Dooce's review of a recent Sigur Rós concert. It's a magnificent attempt to define Sigur Rós' music, which is slippery and amorphous and grand and bewildering. That is, it's indefinable. The review is waiting for you over at Alphamom.com.

God, I miss concerts.

The First Time

The interview went well. Good rapport, good answers, blah blah blah. I'm waiting to hear from them.

What really mattered to me is that Oliver was a gem in his first daycare session. He was charming, he was playful, he only had one serious crying jag. He also was nearly asleep on his feet when I came to pick him up - the interview went longer than I expected.

I've been at home with little O for nine months now, and last Friday was tough for me. It was like the beginning of the end. If I don't get this job, I'll get another one, and we'll be putting him in someone else's hands for eight or nine hours a day. I don't worry about the daycare provider - she's great and kind and loves Oliver. It's just ... well, it's not us. It's not me.

When I came to pick him up, I was disappointed that the main daycare provider wasn't there (she had to pick her own kids from school.) The other person there wasn't able to give me a full rundown of how the day went, only the short time she had spent with him. Before Oliver saw me, I peeked in the door and saw him playing contentedly with the daycare worker. I called his name a few times (it felt like several hundred) before he looked my way. And then he let me pick him up. And then burst into tears.

And yes, I felt nine shades of awful. A little girl looked up cautiously and asked, "All right?" He was all right. Tired. Maybe hungry. Maybe a little spooked at having suddenly been dropped into the hands of strangers, with a gaggle of other kids he'd never seen before. But of course he was all right.

I took him home and he almost fell asleep on the eight-block drive home. He was down in minutes, and only then did I allow myself a few tears at the new bridge we had crossed.

Interview

Hokey smokes. I sent out a resume last night, and twelve hours later, the organization called me back to set up an interview.

I can't tell you the organization, obviously, but it's a fundraising job and it's a much larger organization that I first realized. My interview's at 1:30 tomorrow (Friday.)

My contract work with my previous employer dried up at the end of April. I finished everything I could do, and though it was tempting to invent some previously undiscovered work so I could bill them for more hours, I dutifully reported that my desk was clean. (One of these days, they'll realize that I still have office keys.)

As much as I want to continue being a stay-at-home dad, things are tough on one income. I could hit some temp agencies, but they're all M-F businesses, and my M-F daytime hours are busy. (I can't imagine sitting Oliver in the waiting room of a temp agency while I do typing and grammar tests for hours.)

So after sending out two dozen resumes, I got a lightning-fast bite. The job description is comprehensive, the voice over the phone was friendly, and these folks really look like they've got their act together. I could really enjoy being just another employee in a well-oiled machine of a development department. Cross your fingers for me.

Oh, and we're also going to try daycare for the first time tomorrow. While I'm interviewing, little O is going to be hanging out at an at-home daycare for an hour or two. It's the first time he's been away from both of us since he was three months old. So cross your fingers and toes. Between the new experience of daycare and the job interview, I am in an emotional state commonly referred to as "freaking out."

Moussaoui Lives

At last, the grotesque spectacle is over. Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted (however periperally) in connection with the 9/11 attacks, will spend the rest of his life in prison. The United States will not be carrying out his execution.

Those of you who are longtime TMBS readers know my feelings on the death penalty. For you new readers, here goes. I'm against it. Always. In every instance.

Why? Because I have a soul, and I don't believe that I should kill other human beings out of revenge. If I won't do it, I won't have the government, acting on my behalf, do it and dress it up in terms like "the ultimate punishment." It's killing. We, as a civilized society, should not be in the business of executing people. This is not an abstract discussion for me. I've had my opportunity to face this decision directly, when the man who killed my brother was sentenced, and when it came time to make the call, I couldn't do it. I could not be a party to murder, even for a man who had murdered my own brother.

The federal prosecutors had two challenges in this trial. First, they had to convict Moussaoui for something that would tie him to the 9/11 hijackings, even though everyone knows he was in jail in Minnesota when the planes took flight. So they wrangled a conviction on the grounds that Moussaoui should have confessed he was part of the plot when he was arrested in August 2001. As many civil liberties lawyers have explained, this is essentially convicting ZM for not implicating himself in a crime, which he has every right not to do under our Fifth Amendment. The precedent is disturbing, and no doubt will be challenged for years to come.

So part one was successful. ZM was tied to 9/11. The jury decided he was eligible for the death penalty based on this bizarre conviction. Now they just had to push the jury to decide in favor of his execution. This is where the trial went over the edge from bizarre right into horrorshow.

The prosecutors showed video of people jumping from the World Trade Center and hitting the ground. People on fire. Body parts in the street. They played the cockpit recording from Flight 93, the final moments of 40 people's lives who fought to save the U.S. Capitol or the White House from catastrophe. Giuliani was called upon to describe his personal anguish as a witness to the WTC attacks. Phone calls were replayed. Countless ghoulish scenes of death and chaos were shown. Tears were shed by nearly everyone in the courtroom.

"That was a man on fire as he fell through the canopy. Those are the remains of his body," Rosbrook testified in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

And yet the jury refused to execute Moussaoui. When the prosecution mounted an all-out blitz of horror to push the jury to their emotional limit, they maintained their humanity and spared Moussaoui's life. He will not be released, of course - he spends the rest of his life in prison, and will die a tired old man instead of a martyr.

On NPR this morning, I heard that Moussaoui claimed that the United States had lost, because they weren't able to get an execution. When we have a system that cheers murder as justice, when someone like Moussaoui practically begged to be executed by America's hand, and the jury was still able to hold onto their decency, I think the opposite is true. I feel pride today for those twelve jurors, our representatives of justice and, amazingly, of mercy.

Someone Knows I'm Here!

A special shout-out today to Phil aka "Macchiato Man" of Perils of Caffeine in the Evening fame for posting my very first comment on the new blog! I knew someone would find me, eventually, but it was getting awful lonely out here in the wilderness.

I know I've got other friends out there from the Salon Blog community. Drop me a line, people, so I don't feel all Robinson Crusoe out here. I promise I'll try to post more often. (The corrolary to that: you might be reading a whole lot more about Oliver than you ever wanted to. That's the price you pay.)

Snow Lands in the White House

Unbelievable. Bush hasn't done enough to alienate the American people. Now, he's appointing Tony Snow, from the Fox News Channel ("We Distort, You Decide") to be his new press secretary.

As many trying-to-be-evenhanded journalists have noted, just because Snow made his living on Fox doesn't mean he's always been a fan of the Prez. Media Matters has looked over some of his past shows and columns, and has come up with a fun list of questions for Snow's first appearance in front of the WH Press Corps:

• Do you still think President Bush is a "wimp" and looks "impotent" for not "veto[ing] a single bill of any type"?
• With the failure of Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination, do you consider Bush's presidency effectively over?
• Will you pursue amicable relations with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), even though he "behave[s] in such an inane manner," and "made official his descent into the Moonbat Grotto"?

Check it out here.

The New Rules of Driving

I'm sorry if you're following me. But I'm in the slow lane. I'm not going to speed up, so you might as well pass me.

I'm not going to speed up, unless it looks like I might miss the next traffic light. Then I'm going to floor it - but gingerly, gradually, because I don't want to wake my passenger.

That's the thing. Oliver's in the back seat. Asleep. His head is slumped down, his chin in his chest, his lower lip moving softly with every breath. And so I'm going to do everything I can to keep him asleep. That means I'm not going to stop this car for the next hour. At all. So you probably better just go around me, because this won't be much fun for you otherwise.

Why is he asleep? Sometimes he just conks out on the way back from a distant location. Sometimes, I'll admit, I know he's been awake for three hours and he'll fall asleep on the way home, and I take him out anyway because I want him to sleep in the car. Naps get tiring for me, and sometimes I'll admit I need a break. I want him to sleep without me having to bounce him for fifteen minutes, without the sudden wakeups after thirty minutes. So we drive around town.

If you're behind me, you should be warned that I'm going to coast through stop signs. Oh, sure, it'll look like I stopped, but if you study it closely - if you videotape the intersection and then play it back in slo-mo - you'd realize that I merely downshifted to first gear, and slowed down to a near-stop. I paused, just long enough for the momentum of the car to shift slightly, almost imperceptibly, and then we're off again. The car never stopped. The baby's still asleep.

Stop lights are, of course, a particular hazard, but I've figured out the secret. I watch the walk signals. If I see the walking man, then we're in the clear - I can proceed at a normal rate of speed. Unless we're too far away. Then, I'm going to lean on the gas, just a bit. And possibly switch lanes, if I need it. I will not miss that light.

And if I see red on the crosswalk sign, watch out. I'm going to gun it. Not shift gears. I'll just gently rev it up until we're going fast enough to make the light. If it's yellow, I'm not going to stop. And if it turns red just when I'm going under ... well, I'm just going to have to explain it to the cop while my kid screams in the back seat.

If, god forbid. we actually hit a red light, I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to go through it, mind you - that would be dangerous. But I'm going to do everything in my power to keep the car from actually coming to a complete stop. So I'll downshift gently, one gear at a time, slowing down very gradually - the trick here is change speed so slowly as to make the word "gradually" seem like reckless abandon. A bit more. Just a bit more. Now we're in first gear, and I'm coming up on the car ahead of me. So now I'm going to take the car out of gear, and coast in neutral at microspeed. We're still moving, but at a snail's pace. Rolling. We're drifting toward the other car now, breathtakingly slow, but we're still moving. A second more - only a few feet more before the car ahead of me forces me to hit the brakes. Come on. Just a second more.

And ... the light turns green.

As the car ahead of me accelerates, I slip the car back into first gear and tap the gas. And we're moving again. Never stopped. See how nicely that worked?

So if you're behind me, I'm going to look like a driver grappling with indecision. Speed up. Slow down. Switch lanes, then switch back. Creepy-crawl up behind other cars at intersections. I'm constantly watching fifteen blocks ahead of me, and my eyes are also constantly scanning my rearview mirror, in which I can see his rearview mirror, the one that faces him in the backseat. I watch his face for any sign of motion, the slightest blink of an eye, the slightest grimace. I'm constantly looking backwards and forwards while driving. It's tricky, but I've gotten used to it.

You really should just get around me. I'm just driving around and around in a giant circle, up and around Alki Point, down 35th, down around the ferry dock. I'm not actually going anywhere, unlike you. So you'll probably get impatient, and maybe you'll want to lean on your horn a little. (Please don't.) Just go around. Because I'm going to be driving like this for as long as I have to, as long as that little boy's asleep in my back seat.

Hmm. I didn't expect that.

Find your own pose!

Let me just say, as an editorial comment, that this was the strangest online quiz I've taken in dog's years.

TomKat, Brooke Have Babies

Katie Holmes and Brooke Shields gave birth within hours of each other.

I think it would have been great if Brooke named her kid FuckTomCruise Shields.

Maybe that would be better for a middle name.

Friday 5 + 5: Music Notes + What This is Not

New records sneak up on me. I don't know why. It should be fairly obvious that bands who release albums in 2004 or 2005 are obligated to follow with a new release sometime around this year. This rule doesn't always apply (David Gilmour took two decades between solo releases), but it generally works. So why, then, was I stunned when I heard about the new Drive-by Truckers release, "A Blessing and a Curse?" They were due. Their last record came out in mid-2004. What's the shock?

Ditto for Public Enemy's new release. PE, actually, has been recording like gangbusters, but every time I hear of a new album, I'm taken by surprise. Their new record, Rebirth of a Nation, is a fascinating project. The entire album's lyrics are written by Paris, who made my "Best of the '90s" list with his landmark "The Devil Made Me Do It." (Then he got the CIA on his back when he released "Bush Killa" about the first George Bush.) I'm not sure it always works, but it's sure an interesting concept.

So, I'm going to attempt to prepare myself for the new releases from a few artists that I love. These are the records I'm most looking forward to... eventually:

5 Albums Worth Looking Forward to:

1. Sleater-Kinney's follow-up to "The Woods." This is what I said about their last record:

This will be one of the albums they talk about in twenty years, along with "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and "Kid A" and the other great albums of the early 21st century. This is an unbelievably great album. Stop reading this. Go get it.

Go!

For their last record, they moved to a studio on the East Coast, hired Dave Fridmann, and blew up the original mold of S-K. The guitars were explosive, the vocals were full-on ferocious, and everything sounded grittier and sloppier. It was great. Here's hoping they can pull more surprises next time.

2. Hem's next studio record. I loved their first two albums, "Rabbitsongs" and "Eveningland." Their latest record, "No Word from Tom," is a collection of live tracks, odd covers, and unreleased tracks. The covers are intriguing, but in the live songs, you can hear that the band has found its heart as an actual band. Sally Ellyson's mystical voice sounds steadier and more grounded now, and the band spins new melodies and new takes on already-familiar tracks. "Eveningland" was a more confident record than the first, and the next album may be something amazing.

3. Kanye West's follow-up to "Late Registration." "The College Dropout" was brilliant. "Late Registration" was the multi-platinum hiphop record of the year. What's he going to do next?

4. The Go! Team's next record. Their first record was a revelation of frantic guitar, multilayered samples, and radical-cheerleader vocals. Can't wait to see what's up their sleeve next time.

5. Anything new, anything at all, by MF Doom. Yeah, I'm hooked. I have no idea what he's talking about half the time, but his flow is hypnotic and his musical choices are always surprising. After the madly inspired "Mouse and the Mask" collaboration with DJ Dangermouse, he is quite literally capable of doing anything.

Just because I've always wanted to do this, I'm now going to answer the inevitable question. The concept of a Friday 5 + 5 list is my own invention. Friday 5 + 5 is not a tribute to:

1. Faith, the evil slayer on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," who often said "five by five" as an expression that all was well.

2. Chuck Woolery, who went to commercials on "Love Connection" by saying he'd be back in "two and two."

3. David Letterman's top ten lists.

4. Any am radio station that does traffic and weather on the fives.

5. The numerologically significant 5. Although I was born in May (5th month) on the 25th day (5 X 5), and you can add up the numbers of the year I was born to get 25 (still 5 x 5.) But no, it's not that.

Time Limit

He's got less than six months. That's what the oncologist who's treating my father-in-law has advised. Less than six months.

Baseball season will be entering the playoffs in less than six months. The new fall shows will be debuting. The leaves will start turning red and gold, and some will already be tumbling earthward.

And R's father may not be here anymore. In less than six months.

I've seen this on television but never experienced it in reality. I've attended funerals. My mother's. A teacher's. They died suddenly, without warning. I've never known anyone who has been given a time limit like this. It seems surreal: the premise of movies and books about finding your true self.

A cloud sits over our living room. Every day, R has a moment where it hits her, and often tears spring from her eyes unexpectedly. She did not have the best relationship with her father. Like many children, she saw him leave home too early, establish his own life, move out of town and out of their lives. She has a brother who hasn't yet forgiven him, and may never. She is the oldest daughter, and tries to hold the family together with phone calls and patience.

I can only sit and watch. I think about my own father, who lives less than an hour from us and has seen his grandson exactly once. I wonder how long I have left with him, how long his time limit may be. His father died in his sixties. My father continues to work full-time, and is raising two young children, his new family, with his "new wife," as I call her. He works hard at home and at his job. How long does he have? Ten years? Five? How long do I have to mend our damaged relationship? How long, to make sure that I have no regrets when his time comes?

R got a phone call last week from her father's partner that things were getting bad. He was in intensive care. He was reacting badly to his chemo. Pneumonia in one lung. He was unable to walk, had trouble talking. "Come now." The next day, her own father took the phone and said he didn't want anyone coming out until he was better. Apparently, he's out of the ICU, but R took her phone to bed with her every night, waiting with dread for the phone call.

I want to be optimistic but have no idea how to even approach this. Will her father outlive his time limit? Will we have a year, two years? Or will it happen quickly, like a thief in the night? We'll be calling soon to make plane reservations, so we can fly to Florida and introduce Grandpa R to his only grandson. Their first meeting may well be their last.

How I Can Tell When My Wife's Tired

(Context: My wife is the sort of person who reaches back, way back, to get the newest container of milk with the most distant expiration date. Expiration dates are law for her. If a date has passed, it's over: throw away whatever it was. My instinct is always to say, "but it still smells good!" But forget it. It's over. It's expired.)

This morning, my wife pulled her sandwich from yesterday's lunch out of her work bag. It was ham and cheese that had been sitting at room temperature all night.

Waving the sandwich at me, she asked, "Do you think this is still good?"

Mrs. B needs a vacation. Fortunately, she has all of next week off. Hopefully she'll be back to her food-mistrusting ways by then.

Friday 5 + 5: Technology Moves Ahead (and Leaves Us Behind)

Five Sounds My Son May Never Hear, Outside of a Museum*:

1) A manual typewriter.

2) The dial of a rotary phone.

3) A phonograph needle on an LP. (Note: as long as club DJs exist, this may never be an extinct sound. But I don't own a turntable, and I own four times as many CDs as records.)

4) Change falling into a pay phone.

5) A manual cash register. (Okay, there's always some tchotchke store with an old-fashioned cash register. But, as with the phonographs, they're just not as ubiquitous as they used to be. To my great dismay.)

*Note: my undying gratitude goes out to Tom Ferrick Jr. and the staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer for their small, but heartwarming online Museum of Lost Sounds. I've taken several of the sounds heard here from their website.

Five Technology Questions My Son Will Ask Me That I'm Dreading Having to Answer:

1) How does the internet work?

2) How does a cell phone work?

3) How come you can put more stuff on a DVD disc than on a regular old CD?

4) If you rip a library CD onto your computer, how is that not stealing?

5) What did baseball players look like when you were a kid? (Yes, the whole Barry Bonds thing is still getting me down.**)

**If you don't understand why the size of baseball players is a technology question, you haven't been reading the sports section lately.

Comic Wars

Well, Aaron McGruder's taking a hiatus from his brilliant comic, "The Boondocks." He's doing both the animated cartoon and the comic, and has decided to take six months off from the strip to recharge his batteries.Apparently, Huey's running out of things to say, too.

Everyone's favorite cartoonist, Scott Adams, the always-inventive (note: deep sarcasm) creator of "Dilbert" has a few things to say about that. According to the industrious Mr. Adams, McGruder's comic work isn't all that hard, since he's not actually drawing the strip anymore. (This isn't exactly a new revelation. The fact that McGruder hires an artist came out in a New Yorker profile in 2004, which Adams sorta cites.) Since he's only writing the scenes, not drawing them, it should be child's play. In fact, says Adams, it's the easiest job in the world.

I imagine Stephen King rolling over in his grave when he hears that McGruder doesn’t have time to write his four sentences per day for the strip. I realize Stephen King is still alive, but I assume he sleeps in a grave anyway.

Believe me – I understand how hard it is to work on an animated TV show, unless you have a big writing staff like the Simpsons. It’s literally 100 times harder than writing a comic strip. But still – four sentences? Come on.

I suppose it's not very hard when you're just coming up with the latest riff on efficiency reports, failed motivation strategies, and office politics. Boondocks, on the other hand, tries to not only go after real issues, but stay current. I think McGruder's four sentences (to use Dilbertman's snotty terms) are significantly more work than, say, Jim Davis' three sentences, or Bil Keane's twelve words.

And while I'm on the subject, is Stephen King the only author that Scott Adams knows by name?

And while I'm at it, if there's a Scott Adams boycott being organized somewhere, count me in. That motherfucker hasn't been funny since I was in college.

It's been common knowledge for a while that Aaron McGruder was feeling pressured by too much work and the constant pressure of deadlines. (I'll refer to the same New Yorker article. Also, this interview with Salon reveals his own internal and external pressure.) His comic did seem to be losing some energy in recent months. Here's hoping the time off helps invigorate his work.

Friday 5 + 5: Batter Up!

I've been trying to catch up with baseball. I paid precious little attention to baseball during the Hot Stove League period. So here's my quickie recap of everything that happened during the off-season that I should have paid more attention to.

1. Ichiro is unhappy. (Or, like every lazy reporter in America, you can use your favorite play on "Sleepless in Seattle" here.) In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, Ichiro Suzuki expressed his discontent with the Mariners, who he sees as apathetic and lacking in spirit. He cites the last game of the season as a case in point. If you believe the translation (and the Seattle Times didn't), he said:

I had always felt that the value of a player really depends on his spirit in the last game of the season, just as the player would approach the first game of the season. On that last day I couldn't find anybody warming up on the field, and nobody said anything about it. We lost that game without spirit. What's worse, 35,000 fans came to see it, spending their money.

2. Mariners look east once again, signing catcher Kenji Johjima. Kenji is touted as the best Japanese catcher of his generation, and has made pitchers and players happy with his enthusiastic and intelligent play during the pre-season. Good deal.

3. Mariners pick up Jarrod Washburn. Washburn's a mediocre pitcher, late of the Angels, for whom the Mariners have high hopes. He's been signed to a four-year contract worth $37.5 million, which Fox Sports used as an example of one of the worst off-season moves of the year.

4. M's pick up Carl Everett. He's been signed to a one-year contract from the World Series champion (sorry, I just laughed and swallowed my popcorn) White Sox. Everett's a decent hitter, a switch-hitter, but a serious attitude problem. A loudmouth, an arrogant man who goes toe-to-toe with coaches, umpires, and apparently his own children when needed, he can't possibly be good for the Mariners. I'm disappointed.

5. Felix Hernandez. No, he's not new. But he's still with the team, and he's still tough to hit, and he's so big that the ESPN magazine put him on their front cover. Hernandez is an astonishing pitcher, and hopefully the Mariners have a good enough rotation so that they can win more than once every five games.

Five Major League Stories from the Off-Season

1. Sammy Sosa retires? According to the Onion, he made the tough choice to retire just 12 runs shy of a steroid investigation. It didn't happen, but teams sure don't seem eager to sign him after his depressing time stretching out Orioles jerseys. Maybe the Onion's on to something.

2. Barry Bonds used steroids. According to the authors of "Game of Shadows," he started using them in 1998 out of resentment that the balloonified Mark McGwire was getting all of his headlines, and has kept using them to score his tapeshot home runs. Bonds has argued innocence before, but with the extensive documentation in this book, it's going to be hard for him to continue to make that argument.

3. Bonds sues. Today Bonds filed suit against the authors of "Game of Shadows" - for libel? Nope, apparently he's just trying to freeze the profits, and maybe get the authors up on a contempt of court charge. He's apparently using a California law that prohibits profiting off unfair business practices, by which he means using grand jury testimony. Conveniently, he hasn't sued for either slander or libel, which would require him to prove his lack of steroidness in a court. Keith Olbermann airs out the issues here with one of the book's authors, so read him to get the skinny.

4. Oh, yeah, Garry Sheffield uses steroids, too. And Jason Giambi. And probably Marion Jones. And lots of other people. Sorry for the folks who are actually following baseball, but this is the biggest story of the off-season. As a new father of a boy I hope grows to love baseball, this fills me with sadness.

5. The World Baseball Classic. Yes, I loved the idea. It's one of the few things that Bonehead Bud has gotten right during his tenure. And hooray for the Yanks getting booted in the early rounds. The world has been building baseball talent for generations, and it's about time they got to shine on a major stage. Kudos to the Ichiro-led Japanese team for winning the tournament, and bragging rights until the next one comes around. (It's also a relief that Ichiro has found something to be excited about.)

What stories did I miss?

Archives from The End

The End is an "alternative" radio station in Seattle (not to be confused with The End of All That Is and Ever Was). Like most semi-corporate rock stations, they have in-studio performances from bands large and small, which they call EndSessions.

Recently, I was listening to the station and heard a dj say that every EndSession was now available for streaming online. Now, this is a station with a lot of history, including most of the rise of Nirvana and Pearl Jam and the grunge scene. So their archives would figure to hold lots of interesting tidbits. I was excited.
Unfortunately, their EndSessions didn't begin until 1997, so they effectively missed the grunge era. Still they've got some goodies in their files. For exclusives, you can't really beat "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love, and Understanding" by Chris Cornell, currently of Audioslave and legendarily (note: not a real word) of Soundgarden. (If you're into Cornell, he also does two solo songs in another session.) They are fairly Seattle-heavy, as you would expect, so you can find things like Death Cab for Cutie doing "Sound of Settling" and "The New Year,"and the volcanic Blood Brothers racing through "Love Rhymes with Hideous Car Wreck." There's also smaller local acts like Schoolyard Heroes and the Lashes.

And of course, they've got their share of big national acts: Coldplay, Green Day, Franz Ferdinand, the Killers.

Then, of course, there's the hilarious version of "Chop Suey!" performed by Tenacious D.

The hacks at The End would probably direct your attention to the improvised "Endsession 100" song by the Presidents of the United States of America. Of course, if you listen to the lyrics, you'll hear them talk about all the songs they did that aren't streaming off The End's website.

Overall, it's a fun resource to have. I wish there were more songs available, but then again, I wish the End played more bands like Spoon and the Arcade Fire. Wish in one hand...

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

We're trying to teach Oliver some basic sign language. Oliver, like most boys, will probably be a late talker. (He's only started babbling in the last week, and our pediatrician was nice enough to plant a seed of worry in our minds. He's not necessarily behind, but he's not ahead of pace, either.) In the meantime, we want a way for him to communicate with us, and vice versa.

There are plenty of books on the subject. I started reading Sign With Your Baby by local Joseph Garcia, which recommends using valid ASL signs rather than madeup "baby signs." Then I picked up a nifty set of sign flashcards at the local evil giant bookstore. The flashcards are odd. While most of them seem to have legit ASL signs, some of them are bizarre and don't resemble signs I've seen in any of the baby signing books. Thank goodness some genius posted thousands of ASL signs online, along with QuickTime movies to demonstrate how to make every sign. Now I can cross-check the flashcards with the real signs to see which ones are off.

I'll say it again: whoever created this website is an absolute genius. Super genius. There should be a MacArthur grant given.

I've started off with the sign for "more." It seems like the most natural sign, since we always seem to be guessing whether Oliver's still hungry of if he's just playing with his food. For lunch now, I put down three or four pieces of finger food (organic lunch meat, vegetables, tiny pieces of toast with hummus) and sign "more" at him every time he runs out. But he's figured out an easier sign. Every time he runs out of food, he just lifts up the empty bowl and shows it to me. I guess it works.

Friday 5 + 5 (+ a couple extra): Where Good Music Comes From

Good music is hard to find these days, kiddlets. Most radio plays preprogrammed crap. The popular music magazines (Rolling Stone, Spin, Blender) seem like corporate advertisements instead of, I don't know, music magazines. Where's a music head like yours truly to turn? Heres five of my secret paths to finding the best, newest, and most off-the-radar music (and at least five artists I discovered through each outlet.)

KEXP. We have a local music station that rocks. It also streams live around the world, distributes dozens of podcasts (including my new favorite, a song-of-the-day podcast featuring unsigned artists and in-studio performances), and has archives of literally hundreds of studio performances on their jampacked website. You gotta love a station that you can hear for two hours without recognizing a single artist.

I've heard a million artists for the first time on KEXP, but the first one that comes to mind is Aterciopelados, the great Columbian band. I remember hearing "Luz Azul" twanging out of the radio and thinking, what the hell is this? Always a good sign.

The Late Show with David Letterman. For over twenty years, Mr. Dave has hosted some remarkable talent on his show. Just because he's getting older doesn't mean he's forgotten how to rock. I've recently seen Common, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and the Subways on the ol' Late Show stage.

I saw both Outkast and Missy Elliott for the first time on Letterman. Outkast, in particular, just blew me away. I was expecting above-average crunk music. Instead, they did "B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)," with Andre 3000 wearing a spangly robe and a blonde wig, if I remember correctly. There was dancing, the lyrics were hyperfast and seamless, and I was left breathless.

Zoe Radio. Yep, I read about her on BoingBoing just like all the other latecomers. But before that, I heard her raving on the late, great public radio show Pop Vultures about Pretty Girls Make Graves. Zoe's a 15-year-old in southern California (her dad has deep music connections) with refined tastes in alt music. She likes to throw on a wild mash of music in her streamed and podcasted shows. (Note: the latest show doesn't seem to be streaming or podcasting, so that's a bit of a drag.) I've heard everything from the Arctic Monkeys to Joni Mitchell to Tegan and Sara all the way to Dinosaur Jr. on her little show.

I've heard a lot of artists for the first time by listening (like a maniac) to archives of Zoe's shows. She raves about Okkervil River, and after several listens, I finally got entranced by them. I also got my first listen of the Arctic Monkeys, the Hold Steady, and Death from Above 1979 from Zoe.

The Mountain. Another Seattle radio station, KMTT. 103.7 on your fm dial. I'm a little ashamed of this one, because I mock the Mountain relentlessly for its boomer-lite playlists, way heavy on Jack Johnson, Bonnie Raitt, bad Santana, and bad Crosby, Stills, and Nash. But sometimes they delve into the world of new music, and when they do, they tend to make good picks.

I heard Hem's "Half Acre" for the first time on the Mountain and was awestruck. Hem has since turned into one of my absolute favorite bands, but it was the fogeys at KMTT that first turned me onto them.

Paste Magazine. I read a fair amount of indie music magazines - Harp, Filter, Mojo - but I subscribe to Paste because it's the best. Subscribers get a free CD of excellent indie music and occasionally a DVD with videos, movie trailers, performances, and miscellany. The articles are thoughtful and respectful of music and artists in the way that Rolling Stone seems to have forgotten. They also cover off-the-radar film, books, and culture nicely Any magazine that can have Patty Griffin, Jeff Tweedy, and ?uestlove on their covers has got to be doing something right. Paste also has a fantastic podcast with full cuts of songs and reviews. They did several this year from Sundance, which you'll enjoy if you're a film person. Or if you're a wannabe film person. Like me.

One of Paste's sampler CDs had both "Gideon" by My Morning Jacket and the soon-to-be-overplayed "Soul Meets Body" by Death Cab for Cutie. I went out and bought both albums immediately. Recent samplers have also featured a fine selection of non-mainstream artists: Bright Eyes, Brendan Benson, Madeline Peyroux, Over the Rhine, Tywanna Jo Baskette, etc, etc.

So, come on, peoples! I'm always looking for another source of good music. What sources am I missing?