Three minutes of Mr. Rogers struggling with a cat? Three minutes of Mr. Rogers struggling with a cat.

Happy Cyber Monday everyone. (I just found out that's a thing. Kind of like 'Gangnam Style,' which I had to Google last Wednesday. Apparently I'm late.) It seems to me that society would better benefit from keeping all of the insane shopping deals together on the same day. It could make for a 'SUPER SHOPPING EVENT OF THE CENTURY!' Day. Cyber Black Friday. Think of the Sears commercials we could make. Order your Craftsman tools online and then come to the store to get 60 percent off Lee Jeans and reversible belts! Starring Paula Abdul. Is Paula Abdul still relevant? Wait... (Googling)...The Internet says no. Hmmm, how about Kesha. Yes, the Internet says she is popular. I do not know who that is. But I don't need to. I don't shop at Sears.

Anyway, the point is that with smart phones and iPads and all of that other crap Steve Jobs was planning to overtake the world with it seems like you could get 40 percent off a four slice toaster on Amazon while you were waiting in line at Bed Bath and Beyond for the $20 throw pillows- or whatever the Hell it is people wrestle each other for in Black Friday lines. It would be the ultimate Christmas shopping modern technology multitask event! But, if the Internet wants its own special door buster deals day the Internet can have it. Because the Internet can do whatever it wants. Case and point: This.


Or this.

Or this.


And, if you fast forward to 2:12 of this episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood you can watch about three straight minutes of Fred Rogers struggling with a cat. Do it, television friend. Trust me, it's totally worth it.


This discovery was made as I was attempting to educate Avelyn on exactly how unnecessarily convenient modern technology has made her life. These days when some little puke wants to watch his or her favorite TV show they can just pester mom and dad until they find it on Youtube or log in to their depressing, little-used, child-centric Netflix account to play it instantly. When I was a kid I had to wait until the show came on at its scheduled time, and if I wanted to watch TV right then I was stuck with the nightly news, or David the Gnome, or Northern Exposure. (That's how I always knew I was up really late, when I would sneak downstairs and my mom would be watching Northern Exposure. I think it came on at 10.)

One day, a little bit annoyed and bitter after a morning full of arguing with Avelyn over watching TV on my computer, I decided I would teach her a lesson of what it was like when I was a boy. Way back in the grainy, discolored late 80's and early 90's when all we had were Fred Rogers and Sesame Street and we had to walk to school up hill both ways and pick berries on the side of the road and sell them for the five cents it took to buy dinner at the local market and, well, you know the rest. You know what? We were damn happy with that, too.

So as she was begging me to On Demand an episode of 'Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood,' which is an absolutely unwatchable spinoff starring a totally inaccurate depiction of one of the characters from the Land of Make Believe on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, I decided to take her back to her roots. I sat down and forced her to watch a full 26 minute episode of Mr. Rogers, which you can see above. By the time it was over I was asleep and she had closed the computer and gone off to watch paint dry or stare at the floor or pile up mounds of dirt for stimulation. Seriously, Fred Rogers was a sweet man who seemed wonderful when he was the only show in town but, DAMN was that shit boring.

Luckily for me she does not care for Daniel Tiger, either. In the old show, when he was a puppet, he was a misbehaving, ferocious lion who caused trouble and lived in a tree. In the new show, the computer animated Daniel is a gigantic pansy. He walks around with a back pack all day long and sings lame little songs about turning things that make you sad in to things that make you happy. Totally unrealistic. Like, kids get sad. Let it happen. That's life. Kids that don't have sadness and disappointment grow up to have their hopes and dreams immediately crushed by adulthood. (Then again, most of us grow up to have our hopes and dreams crushed by adulthood, but that is beside the point.)  Also, the plot lines are totally unrealistic, most real kids don't get sad about getting their favorite shirt dirty or messing up an art project. They get sad because their cat dies or they run full speed in to a door knob and bump their heads. What do you want them to do? Take a Vicodin and enjoy the day? Cook the dead cat and make 'chicken' fried rice? Shut up, Daniel. The songs aren't even good. He always talks about how he feels "disappointed" and then has to hug and talk it out with his parents. Whatever. I don't know why any of this matters. Don't watch that show. It sucks.

"Hey, kids! Wanna get beat up in school every day for the next 15 years? Act like me!"


I'm not really sure where that rant came from, but there it is. In other, more relevant news, we celebrated our last peaceful Thanksgiving ever this year. From now on we will be dragging around two children, one of which will be guaranteed to be throwing some sort of fit every year. The day was lovely, although I am not a huge fan of Thanksgiving as a holiday. The turkey and fixins are not any of my favorite foods and I usually just end up really tired and bloated by the end of the day. But, I'll take the mid-week vacation. I do like the feeling that the whole world stops for a day. Although, IHOP is open, and that is a tradition I will be instituting every Thanksgiving going forward. Banana bread french toast? Yes, please. 

Av is also now in a very tolerable age when it comes to Christmas. She is very excited about the season but she is still too young to ask for anything of substance as a gift, so we end up saving a lot of money and she isn't too much of a dick about wanting things yet. Among her requests this year are: A tiny doll-house-sized tuba, a doll that eats and poops, stuffed animal friends and crafts. She loves crafts.

It is also nice this year that she can pretty much do everything on her own. Eat, sleep, poop, talk, get dressed, play- these are all things that, when she wants to, she can do independently, which makes holiday shopping, travel and gift giving much easier. My absolute biggest anxiety over having another child is that when he comes I am once again going to have a human being that can do nothing for itself. I do not miss changing diapers, manual feeding or having to pick up and carry a child everywhere. Monica is the exact opposite. She cannot wait to do all of these things. This should make for some pretty easy doling out of responsibility when the little guy gets here.

Still struggling for blog topics, my goal for the remainder of this week, by request, will be to craft the memories of the nightmare trip to Mexico Monica and I took in the summer of 2008, the details of which seem to bring great joy to everyone but us, in to words. More to come.

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What is this Internet thing and how does it work?

Turns out they haven't yet developed the technology that instantly transforms my thoughts in to sparkling, witty online content without any manual effort. Apparently I still need to type it and post it. Sorry about that.

Since we last touched base in April many things have changed. Monica and I have made it official and gotten married. So far we have made it two months and she has not filed for divorce yet. It must be my movie star good looks. I have also continued to pad my hall of fame child fathering stats and planted another successful seed. Which means I will soon have two children under the age of five running amok every moment for the rest of my life. Thrashing around my apartment, spilling sticky foods in the back seat of my car and generally never shutting the fuck up. This is a thought that is so terrifying that I think I have mentally blocked out the reality that I am going to have to start this entire process over again in March. Even more terrifying, this time it will be a boy. So I now have to make double the effort to ensure that he does not end up a quirky, grouchy, drunk, manic depressive lunatic like his father.

That said, it is also very exciting. At the advice of Field of Dreams, Harry Chapin and every late-90's Neu Metal rock ballad I will play catch with him often. This will be a start. I will also place the baseball in his left hand and force him to throw southpaw so he can someday get a contract with the Cincinnati Reds and pay for my liver transplant and nursing home bills.

Av has started preschool and I am pretty sure she is down to only crying 65 percent of the time that she is there. She says that it is because she misses me. What she really misses is the ability to watch Wild Kratts and eat cheese curls whenever she feels like it. I'm also pretty sure that she sometimes pees her pants on purpose because she thinks she is going to get to go home. Most days she lives somewhere in the middle of enjoying school and not wanting us to know that she enjoys school. So she invents things like how she doesn't like her teacher or how she is afraid the kids are going to steal the stuff she brings in for show and tell. She is also in complete denial that she is going to have a little brother. I am pretty sure she thinks he is just going to live in her "secret house" with the rest of her stuffed friends and only come out for games of Dog Pound*.

*Dog Pound is an Avelyn original that involves making a gigantic pile of all of her stuffed animals on the couch, burying herself in them and making me give them all individual voices as they "search" for her in a multi-species game of hide and seek. The chances of me falling asleep at some point during this game are 1,000 percent. Every time. Again, hall of fame average. Similarly, I have invented a game titled "ghost kitty" in which I cover myself in a white fleece blanket and lay on the ground "meowing" while Av climbs on me, brushes my hair and pets me. I also fall asleep every time we play this game, and I don't get caught as often as I do when we play dog pound.

I am still fat. I am still a bartender. I still celebrate 'Suicide Tuesday' every week at which point I convince myself that my life is going nowhere and that I am useless to society. During this time I also develop deep disdain for virtually every human between the ages of 18-25 who is not homeless or in jail. This usually ends with me starting- but not finishing- my resume online and begrudgingly going back off to work at the bar where I fill my pockets with more cash than I would probably make at any useless office job I was thinking of applying for. That will usually carry me in to the weekend on a high note. These are the mental issues I am talking about. Suicide Tuesday needs to be cleared up.

I have all but abandoned the journalism industry, as I despise almost every element involved with it, most of all the last editor I had at the PATCH site. Fed up with essentially doing the one or two articles he didn't want to deal with each week for $40 a pop I started ignoring his emails. He didn't seem too broken up about it and neither am I. It's not that I want to abandon writing, it is that I want to abandon giving two shits about some new hire at the local library because some snobby, Catholic college stiff is dangling two $20 bills in front of my face. I have also become totally disenchanted with most of the Internet, mainly because it gives a voice to every person in the world to become totally hypocritical and pretentious with no repercussions. No I don't care about the issues in foreign countries. I don't care that professional sports teams use racist Native American imagery. I don't care if you think I should eat this or not eat that. What I care about is the score of the late basketball games last night. Or how to get this stupid freeze pop (or is it highlighter!) stain off of my carpet without calling Stanley Steamer. That is what the Internet is for. See, somehow this is why I can no longer be a journalist. It makes sense to me.

We won the summer league bowling championship this year, a surprising rise for a team just one season in to its career. Unfortunately, we are now currently flirting with last place and I have lost all ability to bowl, battling the old women and that one guy who is like, 6'8, 300lbs, bowls off the wrong foot and can't bend over for the worst average in the league. I think I need to see a sports psychologist. Or maybe just a  regular psychologist. Maybe I should just be a psychologist.

In any event, as things in my life appear to be on the verge of being turned upside down again, the blog is back. I hope all of you can experience the journey with me. Every day is a gift. I am off to probably have my child attempt to gauge out my eyes and spit in my face as I have distracted her with a Tom and Jerry DVD so I could write this. Tom and Jerry have got to be responsible for influencing multiple psychopathic murderers over the past 75 years. If we had anvils she would drop them on my head. Fact.

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Now listen to Jack White.