Tenor Dad

Pop Lyrics as Filtered Through a Pre-Schooler

2012-02-24T12:01:00.000-05:00

We listen to the radio a lot in the car. We listen to kids songs on the iPod as well, but as often as not we are tuned to a pop music station. Sometimes I worry that the lyrics are not appropriate for my children, but when I actually stop to listen to how they are processing these things, I get less worried.

"Your Love is My Drug" by Ke$ha
This is how Ruby sings this song:

What you got boy is hard to find
I think about it all the time
I'm all hung up, my heart is fine.
I just can't get you off my mind.
GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT OF MY TRUCK!

"Raise Your Glass" by Pink
Ruby will often fill in words she doesn't know with words that make more sense to her. For example:

So raise your glass if you are wrong, in all the right ways
Ow! A hundred dogs!

"Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" by Katy Perry
We were in the car one day when this came on the radio, and Ruby heard the first line of the song, which is "There's a stranger in my bed." She started laughing really hard and said "A STRANGER in her BED!? I guess she should have locked her doors!"

"Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon 5
Ruby consistently referred to this song as "Moves Like Jacket" for the longest time!

"Love You Like a Love Song" by Selena Gomez and the Scene
Actually, come to think of it, a lot of adults sing this song the same way Ruby does...

I, I love you like a love song baby
I, I love you like a love song baby
I, I love you like a love song baby
And I keep singing beep beep beep beep beep beep beep!

I have also successfully convinced her that "What the Hell" by Avril Lavigne is actually called "Walk the Cow," but that was my fault, not hers. There are plenty of other examples of course, and hopefully many more to come in the years ahead, and I look forward to all of the unintentional parodies, as well as maybe a few intentional ones.

The Old Woman and the Cheese

2012-02-23T11:05:00.000-05:00

Edward is learning a lot of new words. Well, okay, not a lot, but some. And the words he does know he uses a lot more often, and in increasingly appropriate situations. And then sometimes he uses his words the right way, but it is still so wrong.

Like today, for instance, we were at the grocery store and Edward decided to say goodbye to everything and everyone. Every time we passed a person in the aisles, he would wave frantically and yell "Bye Bye!" Every time we passed a loaf of bread, or a sign, or a stack of cans, he would yell "Bye Bye!" at it as loudly as possible and flail his arms around above his head. This elicited a variety of reactions, from cooing about how cute he was, to annoyed glares. Edward did not notice or care about any of this.

Another word he has recently learned is the word "cheese, and as luck would have it, we were buying some cheese today. No matter where I hid the cheese in the cart, somehow he would find it and reach it and grab it and hold it aloft and shout "Cheeee! Cheeee!" as if he had just discovered a winning lottery ticket. This met with the same reactions from the general public as when he was bidding them all fond farewells.

While I was at the deli counter waiting for, well, some more cheese, I left Edward in the cart for a few minutes, thinking I could trust him not to assault anyone. It had been maybe a minute when I turned around and saw that he had attracted an older woman, as Edwards are wont to do. She was oohing and aahing over him and generally making a fuss and I wasn't worried about it, so I turned back to the deli counter.

A moment later I glanced around just in time to see Edward haul off and smack the woman with his bag of cheese and yell "Cheeeeeeee!" at the top of his lungs, and when the woman quickly retreated, trying to protect her head with her arms, he grinned and yelled "Bye Bye!" even louder. She ran off before I could apologize, but I did tell Edward that while the word usage was technically correct, he was still wrong. So very wrong. And bonus points for me, because I managed not to laugh until I got to the car.

Driverless Cars

2012-02-22T11:00:00.000-05:00

As I was flipping through the DVR this morning looking for episodes of "The Doodlebops," the news was playing in the upper right hand corner of the screen, and it was telling me about driverless cars. According to the news, they are working on vehicles that need minimal human input in a variety of situations. For instance, a car that can parallel park itself may be in your driveway soon. They also stressed that these cars of the future would mostly work on highways, not while cruising around your neighborhood that is full of stop signs, hidden drives, pedestrians, and surprise trees.

Now, I just want to take a second to rant for a moment about the idiocy of the direction our society is headed. People! We already have driverless cars! They are called trains. And buses. And subways. And airplanes. If you want to drive down the highway, but also want to get your laptop out, play on your phone, or read a book, we have an option for that. The problem is, our public transportation infrastructure in the country is mostly terrible. But it can be improved!

See, the thing is, nobody actually wants to improve it. People like driving their own cars, although I cannot for the life of me understand why. They think it gives them freedom, and sometimes it does. The freedom to sit in traffic for hours. The freedom to get pulled over and pay fines. The freedom to pay for maintenance and insurance. The freedom to get cut off a dozen times by jerks. The freedom to pollute the crap out of the planet until the whole world smells like China. And people have even started taking the freedom to do other stuff while they are driving (cause actually, driving is boring and a waste of time and we all know it). People talk on the phone. They text. They surf the internet. They eat cheeseburgers. They do their hair. They break up fights between children in the back seat. They put on make-up. They fiddle with the radio. They scroll through their iPod playlists looking for that one Goo Goo Dolls song that they can't remember the name of. In short, driving is miserable.

So why on Earth do we keep going to great lengths to make driving more like riding a train, when we could just build better trains!? Remember streetcars? Trolleys? All the fun ways to get around before we decided we should all have our own cars? Jump on, read your book, jump off when you got to work. Perfect. I'm not saying there aren't advantages to having your own car (filling up the trunk with groceries would be harder on a trolley), but when I picture two possible futures, I much prefer the vision of enhanced and upgraded public transportation over the vision of thousands of people in their own isolated little bubbles zipping around the highways relying on a computer to not kill them in a fiery crash. My computer has a hard enough time opening documents without freezing, I don't want it driving me around. Thanks anyway.

Ruby Plays "Wedding"

2012-02-21T07:54:00.000-05:00

An actual conversation I had with my four-year-old yesterday:

Me: How was school today?

Ruby: Good.

Me: What did you do?

Ruby: Oh, I played wedding.

Me: (suddenly terrified) You did?

Ruby: Yes.

Me: And how do you play wedding?

Ruby: Well, you just have a wedding silly!

Me: I see. And who did you marry?

Ruby: Nobody! I was just supposed to get the hotel.

Me: The hotel?

Ruby: Yes, for everyone to stay at.

Me: Oh, so you didn't get married?

Ruby: No, silly!

Me: Well, who got married then?

Ruby: I don't know. Just some people I don't know. I didn't even go to the wedding part, because I slept through it.

Me: I see. So nobody in your class was the bride or the groom?

Ruby: No, we were just getting the wedding ready, and then we were so tired that we fell asleep and when we woke up it was Christmas!

Me: And that's how you play wedding?

Ruby: Yes. Also we had oranges for snack.

And that is the story of how Tenor Dad was very relieved to discover that his four-year-old daughter was actually playing wedding planner.

The Sanitization of Children's Music

2012-02-20T10:59:00.000-05:00

I remember music when I was a kid. I remember my cassette tapes and campfire songs. Music has a way of sticking with you long after other memories have faded, and so I recall most of the words and melodies of the tunes I sang lustily as an eight-year-old. Now, as a parent, it is my happy duty to introduce some of these fun songs to my children. Except they seem to be different now.

One of the best parts, to me anyway, was the irreverence of the lyrics I was singing. "Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts!" I would shout out loudly, grinning at how gross I was allowed to be because, hey, I didn't make it up! It's a song! I was definitely not supposed to say "ain't" in everyday conversation, because my mother would faint and my father would fall in a bucket of paint, but all of the best songs had this word in them, and what were the parents going to do about it? It was right there, recorded on my cassette tape! And how fun it was to change the boring old adult songs about Ol' Smoky, and instead sing about spaghetti and my lost meatball.

When I am looking at albums of kids' songs to purchase for my children, I will often be attracted to ones containing songs I loved as a child. Nostalgia I guess, or clever marketing on their part, or both. But they have changed the words! I remember a verse I used to sing, either to "Turkey in the Straw" or "Boom Boom Ain't It Great To Be Crazy" depending on the day, and it went like this: "A horse and a flea and three blind mice/sat on the corner dealing dice/the horse he slipped and fell on the flea/oops said the flea, there's a horse on me!" Now, I had no idea what "dealing dice" meant. I was seven! But on our version of it today, they have changed that line to "sat on the corner feeling nice."

In the classic call and repeat song "The Other Day I Met a Bear," there is a line that once went "He said to me/why don't you run?/I see you ain't/got any gun." This is now "I see you don't have any gun." This is more grammatically correct, I agree. But it is less fun! I have found many examples of lines in songs altered to make them more "kid-friendly," and it drives me crazy! But should it? What's wrong with making formerly dangerous things safe for our children? I don't know, but it seems like a slippery slope to me.

Do you remember that TV service a few years ago that was going to take out all the sex, violence, and swearing from classic movies and show "family versions" to you on your TV. Everyone cried censorship, and they were right about that. But when they play movies on network TV they often dub over bad words, or takes whole scenes out. They've been doing that for years. Then I hear that the Tea Party in Tennessee wants to change the history books that we use to teach our children and remove references to slavery in them. What!? You can't change history, you can only learn from it!

I am not a revisionist. In art, history, or music I am a staunch supporter of unaltered truth. I believe that if you think something is not appropriate for your children, then you should not expose your children to it. I like my kids songs irreverent, and I like my history as factual as one can get it. I know that we don't just let kids run outside and play anymore because we are afraid they will be stolen away, but can't we at least let them sing "ain't" once in a while?

The Standard Force

2012-02-17T10:05:00.000-05:00

We finally got a new car. Well, not a new new car, but we did sell the old broken one and picked up a less old, less broken one. The new car is a little different from the ex-vehicle. For one thing it has all of its mirrors intact. Also, the seat belts work and it is not missing all of its hubcaps. But the biggest difference is probably the standard transmission.

The first car I ever had was a standard and I do know how to drive one, but on the other hand I've been driving an automatic for the last ten years. I'm a little rusty. I have only stalled out in traffic once this week, with a long line of cars behind me, but the ride is not as smooth as it could be. I'm getting there. I just need to get my groove back.

Now, I am a rule follower. Yes, I am also a rule-bender, semantics aficionado, and fast-talking son of a gun, but in general I like to have a hard set of rules or instructions to follow. What this means is that I spent the first couple of drives trying to figure out the exact proper speeds at which to change gears. Where was that magic spot where third gear wanted to jump in? 20? 25? 23? At exactly what point of clutch deployment should I start to hit the gas? What were the rules of this car?

This worked out okay, but of course all of these variables are dependent on large numbers of other variables. What is the angle of incline of the road I am driving on? What is the weather like? How many people are in the car? Why was the sad cebu sad? You get the idea.

What I discovered is that the best way to ensure a smooth ride in the car is to use the force. I'm not talking about the stupid midichlorians force. I'm talking about the real force that Obi-Wan talks about. He says "The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.... A Jedi can feel the force flowing through him." That's the kind of force I'm talking about. The feeling kind.

Do you remember when Luke was trying to fight that little floating Bakugan with his lightsaber? It kept zapping him, but when he put the blindfold on he was able to use the Force to deflect the little guy. This would later serve him well when he decided to fire blindly on the death star using nothing more than feelings. Well, feelings and a proton torpedo.

Driving a standard is very similar. After all of the calculating and observing, I finally found that the best way to drive was not to keep an eye on the tachometer or the speedometer, but rather to just feel the car. Just by listening and feeling and using the force, I could easily tell when the right moment to shift was, and the ride became lot smoother. I was in the zone. I could drive this car, no problem!

And then I would get snapped out of it by a screaming child, or something on the radio, or some jerk cutting me off. But once you do it enough times, it's easy to get back to that place. This is the story of how I learned to stop worrying and just use the Force. But I do keep my eyes open, just in case.

How to Be Happier

2012-02-16T10:01:00.000-05:00

Simone and I read a study once that said that throughout a wide variety of tests they had only found one surefire way to increase happiness. I'll give you a hint, it didn't include making more money. It didn't even include spending more time with friends and family or achieving your goals. According to this study, the only thing that made any measurable difference in the happiness levels of its subjects was keeping what they called a gratitude journal.

Apparently, if you write down 3-5 things every day that you are grateful for, eventually you will get into the habit of actually being grateful for things, and being grateful for what you have makes you happy. It doesn't mean you don't still have goals and hopes and dreams, it just means that while you work for those things, you are also enjoying the journey.

I don't know if this is true, and goodness knows you can't believe everything you read online, but it did make a lot of sense to me, and so we incorporated this into Ruby's bedtime routine. When it's time to get ready ready for bed, first we give her her medicine, then she brushes her teeth and gets into her jammies. Once she is under the covers we read stories. Usually we do a couple of short books, but we have been getting into chapter books lately too (we are currently in the midst of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

Once the stories are over we turn out the lights and ask Ruby three questions. First we ask her "What was your favorite thing you did today?" to which she invariably replies school, except on weekends of course. Then we ask her "What was your favorite thing you ate today?" She always thinks hard about this one, trying to remember all the foods of the day, and we get answers as varied as "cake" and "broccoli." Finally we ask her "What was your favorite thing that you saw today?" and although it wasn't necessarily intended as such, she always answers this question with a list of people that she was happy to see. Mommy, Daddy, and Edward always make the list (and the cats too) and then depending on who she saw that day, she might say her teacher at school or her friends, cousins, aunts, uncles, or grandparents.

I don't know if these questions have helped Ruby to be happy or grateful, but she certainly is those things, and I like to think that we have at least a small part to play in how she views the world. I hope that as she gets older, she keeps in the habit of remembering the good parts of every day. Even on the worst day of your life, there had to be something nice that you ate, or saw, or did. And does this really increase happiness? I couldn't say. But as far as attitudes go, I think you could do worse than gratitude.

Romance vs. Comedy

2012-02-15T11:02:00.000-05:00

I admit it. I enjoy a good romantic comedy. There's no shame in that, right? But, I mean, not the romance part obviously. I like the comedy parts! They are funny! That other stuff is lame.

Last night we rented a great romantic comedy with a terrible title. "What's Your Number?" was the newest flick in the Redbox, and since movies were free at the Redbox yesterday I snapped it up. I have to tell you, it was really funny. I LOL'd multiple times. But when it came to the romantic bits, I kind of just ignored them.

The thing about romantic comedies is that the "romantic" half of them is going to be cliche. You know that going in. There was no doubt in my mind when I sat down that the two main characters were going meet in a cute way, slowly fall in love, have some sort of falling out, and then wind up together at the end. That's how it works. When the on-screen couple had their fight, I rolled my eyes and felt nothing, even as their characters moped about on screen, because I knew that they were getting back together. There were no emotional stakes at all.

But I was not watching the movie for emotional stakes. I was watching for the jokes. The romantic comedies that I do not enjoy, are the ones with nothing at all new to say, and that play at stale gender stereotypes without bringing any sort of new point of view to the table. There are tons of those, and they are bad romantic comedies. You may recall from the first paragraph that I enjoy a good romantic comedy, not a bad one. They may be few and far between, but if you can hang some interesting characters and some great jokes on the framework of the traditional romantic arc, then you've got a movie that I will probably enjoy watching.

Of course I know there are people out there who like the romantic parts better. People who want to see people falling and love and getting together over and over again. That's fine. I don't need to see that, but it's okay if you do. And as long as I'm laughing hard enough, I won't even notice you crying two seats over.

Please Pull Over So I Can Explain

2012-02-14T09:16:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I was driving home last night and I pulled onto the interstate a few exits north of my house. I got on in a small section in which the speed limit is 55 mph, though almost all of the interstate highways in Vermont have 65 mph limits. Wanting to go fast, but also not wanting to get a ticket, I assumed a speed of around 63 mph and went over to the left lane to pass all of those 55 mph slowpokes.

As I was doing this a big truck came roaring up behind me, apparently wanting to drive faster than 63 mph, but by this time there were several cars to my right and no good place for me to merge over, so I drove for about 4 miles with this guy up my tailpipe. When I got the chance, I did move right, and he passed me. However, about half a mile later the speed limit returned to its usual setting of 65 mph, so I increased my speed to about 72. I got back into the left lane where I immediately encountered Mr. Truck, who I guess wanted to drive 68 at all times regardless of the speed limit.

I felt a little bad pulling up behind this guy who had been trying to pass me for miles and had only recently gotten ahead, but on the other hand I was a little annoyed that he wanted to exceed the speed limit by 15 a few minutes ago, but now that I wanted to go faster, he wanted to exceed the speed limit by 3. I kept a safe distance, but he seemed to be annoyed by me, and when he finally did go over to the right lane, I passed him, and he came roaring up behind me again, now back up my tailpipe with his brights on.

Okay, I get it. You think I am being a jerk, driving slow, then as soon as you pass me I speed up and pass you back. But it's not true! I was just trying to adjust my speed based on the posted limit! If only I could somehow communicate this fact to you! Could you just pull over real quick and I will explain to you that I bear you no ill will and am only trying to drive somewhat normally?

The problem is, I have no way to get a message to Mr. Truck. When we drive, we are in an isolated little bubble with no method of communication with the vehicles around us. What a terrible state of affairs! Yes, we all have cell phones, and judging from what I've seen, most of us spend all of our driving time talking on them, but not to the people around us. How much nicer it would be if cars were like starships.

What we need is a way to hail passing cars and trucks, Star Trek style. We could open a hailing frequency and discuss stuff with the other motorists. Everyone's car phone number could be their license plate number! Sure, you might get a bunch of people calling you to say that you are a sucky driver, but just like in Star Trek, you could always ignore those calls. If we're all going to call people while we're driving anyway, it might be more helpful to be calling the guy in front of you, asking if he plans to drive 20 mph under the speed limit the whole way, or to mention that his blinker has been on for the past 3 exits.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that every car would need a communications officer, but I'm sure with bluetooth and telepathy that something could be worked out. And I know that you are also thinking that all of the calls will be filled with angry expletive-ridden shouting sessions by road raged psychopaths, and that all we will be doing is hitting the "ignore" button all day long. But here's what I think about that. I think half of the reason we have so much road rage, and why people act like such jerks on the road, is that we are mostly anonymous out there. We can zip down and cut off a whole line of cars to get to the off ramp precisely because they are not really people to us, but faceless cars who are blocking our way, and besides, what are they going to do about it? But if every time we did something on the road, the other drivers could call us up and ask why, maybe we would think twice before making surprise illegal left turns from the right lane. And maybe if the guy who cut us off called us up to apologize and explain that he is from New Jersey and so does not understand that left turns cannot be made by turning right first, we might not be quite so angry.

Auto manufacturers, the ball is in your court. Hailing frequencies open!

Gender Assumptions

2012-02-13T10:01:00.000-05:00

My default setting is male. If something is of uncertain, or undefined gender, I unconsciously make it male. When I was a kid, if a toy wasn't pink and had no bows or lace on it, in my mind it was masculine. Animals in nature, pets, heck, probably clouds and rocks too. I always made them make if the choice was up to me.

This wasn't something I ever really thought about, or even really noticed, because as I said, it was really all in my subconscious. But then I began to notice that Ruby makes everything female.

Her toys are probably an equal mix of male and female targeted items, and I must confess that I have accidentally assigned many of them a male gender, but even some of the toys with masculine names she will refer to as "she." Ruby also enjoys helping me play my Wii games. She solves puzzles with me and looks for items and secrets when I play. Currently I am in the midst of "Skyward Sword," and Ruby thinks that all of the characters in the game are female. Most of the characters are quite clearly male, (although with anime style rendering I could forgive some confusion) and yet Ruby always says things like "Go talk to that lady again," and "Did you find her fun wheel yet?"

I assumed that it was a gender thing, and that boys must make things male and girls make them female, but when I asked my wife about it last night, she said she often defaulted to male as well. So does society cause us to lean maleward, or is it different for different people? Is society changing? Is Ruby heralding a new societal norm in which being female is as valued (or more valued) than being male? That would be nice, but I am working with a very small sample group here. Do any of you tend to assume gender heavily in one direction or the other? Have you ever thought about why? I'd love to hear more thoughts on this!

My Favorite Song

2012-02-10T09:02:00.000-05:00

I am a musician. Perhaps this explains why people are always asking me what my favorite song is. Or perhaps people ask everyone that and I am not special, but it always stands out in my mind, because I don't really have a favorite song, but I have always felt that I should.

There used to be a definite answer, or at least an answer or two. When I was in high school and somebody asked me what my favorite song was, I could confidently reply either "Anna Begins" by Counting Crows, or "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" from the Muppet Movie. Those are definitely two of my favorite songs, but now that I am no longer in high school it has gotten a little more complicated.

I actually think that the more experience you have in a subject, the less you are able to have a definite favorite, at least in a broad sense. If you have only read twenty books, it is probably fairly easy to say which one is your favorite. Even if you have read a hundred books it might be possible, but if you are an avid reader of multiple genres, how could you hope to compare the best non-fiction autobiography you've ever read to the best sword and sandals fantasy epic?

At this point, I would have to narrow down the field a bit in order to choose a favorite. For one thing, what do you mean by song? Is Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" a song? Do opera arias count? Or are we only talking pop music? And how on Earth could I ever compare "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison to "A te o cara" by Bellini? No, I would have to separate the songs into categories.

But even the broad categories may be too broad. I couldn't just divide into pop and classical. I would need to probably pick my favorite French aria and my favorite German aria. I would need to pick my favorite ska song and my favorite country song. And even favorites come and go. For about a year in college I listened to "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind at least once a day, and sometimes more. It was clearly my "favorite" song of the moment, and it will always hold a special place in my heart, but there is always another song to take its place in the repeat button of my heart.

So is my favorite song the one that I am currently obsessed with, or a song that has lasted for years as a top iPod pick? Or is my favorite song the one that has touched my heart the deepest, even if I don't listen to it all that often? According to my iTunes, "Shake It" by Metro Station is my favorite song. I do like that song, and often rocked out to it on repeat in the car, maybe more than other recent songs, but I hardly even listen to it anymore, and if asked what my favorite song was it would not spring to mind.

In conclusion, I have no idea what my favorite song is. Heck, I couldn't even tell you what my favorite Billy Joel song is! They are all so good! I wish I did have a favorite song, so I didn't feel like an idiot every time someone asked me about it. But maybe it's better to love too many songs too much. There are so many songs that have meant so much to me throughout my life, and choosing my favorite feels like trying to pick my favorite child. I love them all differently. I even love terrible songs because of what they meant to me, like all the times my brother and I played our cassette tape of "Informer" by Snow as kids. Ah, memories.

So I cannot tell you what my favorite song is. But I can tell you what my least favorite song is, hands down. The stupid Titanic song by Celine Dion. If I could wipe one song from history, that would definitely be it, no questions asked.

Are Our Brains Being Rewired Against Classical Music Concerts?

2012-02-09T09:01:00.000-05:00

When I worked at Chorus America, I spent a lot of time around choruses and talking to them about their pressing issues. I have sung in more choruses than I can count (not true, I am just too lazy to count them), and there are a few issues that spring eternal. One issue was the lack of young people singing in choruses. Everyone felt that if they didn't get some new younger people into their choruses that eventually the organization would die out. That never concerned me though, because they have had that problem for decades. Young people are often too busy with starting careers and families to put in that kind of time and effort, but once the kids are a little older and their schedules are more stable, the people that want to sing in a chorus will find one.

The biggest problem always seemed to be concert attendance, and this was by no means limited to the choral groups. Orchestras, opera companies, recitals, and most classical music has seen dwindling attendance (even though we don't really want to talk about it in public), and we wanted to know why. One could blame the economy, as almost all artistic endeavors have seen fewer butts in seats, classical or not, but I wonder if there is a deeper, more troubling force at work here.

I have read article after article on how technology is rewiring our brains. We actually think differently now than we used to even twenty to fifty years ago. We are constant multitaskers and information comes at us fast and frequent. Taking it slow? People bring their laptops and cell phones on vacations with them, because slowing down doesn't mean actually slowing down anymore, it means doing fast and constant things that we want to do, rather than what other people want us to do. Kids have a harder time focusing in school. People are texting at the movies. Laptops are used while watching television, now encouraged by the "interactive" shows. Even the shows themselves display moving station logos and commercials for other programs on the bottom of the screen during the actual program. Standing in line? No problem. I have Angry Birds.

So what does this mean for classical music? Well, the thing about classical music is that it is, in its very nature, old. In a culture when we are attracted to the new and the updated, classical music presents a look to the past. People spend a great deal of money and effort trying to recreate the piece exactly as it was originally performed. We use period instruments. We write books and volumes on how to interpret specific sections of well known pieces. There are "standards" of practice that we follow, and one thing we don't do is "update" the music. Playing a Mozart piano concerto on a synthesizer would be akin to staging a civil war reenactment with machine guns. But there is a very small section of the public that is interested in civil war reenactments, except as a once or twice curiosity bucket-list kind of thing, and I wonder if people feel the same way about classical concerts.

I want to be very clear about where I am going with this though. It's not the music. The music is timeless, and people still love the music. We listen to it in our cars as we are driving. We put it on while we make dinner. The melodies from centuries past show up in movies, car commercials, and pop music videos. But it is all multi-tasked listening. What I am talking about is the experience of going to a theater or a concert hall, and sitting quietly for multiple hours and doing nothing but listen to a piece of music. I wonder if it is not a matter of taste, but now rather a matter of brain chemistry.

If our brains are really changing, what can we do about it? Is the classical music industry destined to just die a slow death? We certainly have our supporters, and they are a fierce and vocal bunch, but they do seem to be in a shrinking minority these days. At the concert I just sang in Carnegie Hall, we performed Carmina Burana, and during the performance they displayed projections behind us. A giant eyeball appeared and looked at the audience. Lazy color lines drifted across the wall as we sang. It became a multimedia event. The conductor was excited, because he told us that in the original score, Orff had written that glowing lanterns should be used during performances, and here we were, using our modern glowing lanterns. That is certainly one way to engage the audience on a second, visual level. And many opera companies do "updated" versions of shows, setting them in modern times, or filling them with gangsters, hippies, and other unexpected populations. Is this pandering, or the salvation of an art form?

In some ways I would set opera apart from this discussion because, while it has its own problems, opera has always been about multitasking. The combination of orchestral music, singing, dancing, sets, lights, special effects, costumes, etc. has been there from them beginning, and has evolved over the years into something that ought to keep people's attention away from Words With Friends for at least an hour or two. But what about a concert opera? What about a choral concert? What about an orchestra concert? What if it's not a choice anymore, but simply how our brain functions? What if we can't help but be bored, or at least long for some distraction halfway through a long, but beautiful piece of music? In this case, perhaps there is good reason for concern. The older generation that supports the arts also tend to be less addicted to technology, but when the torch passes to a new generation, will they take it up this time? Or will they be too busy watching YouTube videos while driving? I don't have the answers, but maybe I finally found one of the right questions.

The Life and Times of Claudia Devilfish

2012-02-08T09:03:00.000-05:00

Shortly after my wife and I were married, we had what we called the month of the three "C"s. In that month, we acquired a cat, a car, and a computer. The computer was replaced years ago, the cat is still around here somewhere, but the car we sold yesterday. And if you asked me if I was happy or sad about that, I would not be able to tell you.

When we got the car, it came with a Christian fish symbol stuck to the back of it, but the weird thing about it was that the head was pointing to the right. Generally those fish are pointing left, as if the fish is swimming toward the viewer. The only other fish we have seen with the heads swimming away from you are the Darwin fish with the feet. This led us to the conclusion that the fish on the back of our car was not a good Christian fish at all, but rather the exact opposite of such a thing. A devil fish. Now, back at this point in time my wife was babysitting in the afternoons, and she mentioned to her young charge that we hadn't named our new car yet, and the kid she was babysitting told her to name it Claudia. I have no idea why, but as we had no better ideas, Claudia Devilfish was born.

Claudia tried to be a good car, but she seemed to attract problems from the get-go. There was the time that the police came to our door to tell us that some drunk guy had driven into every car in our parking lot, including ours. Thank you, drunk guy's insurance. There were the mysterious vanishing hubcaps. Thank you, local hoodlums. There was the short little pole that I drove into, leaving its mark that remains to this day. Thank you, stupid self.

On the one hand, that car has been nothing but trouble. We've replaced the brakes more than once. The transmission is fairly new, since we had to replace that as well. Even the engine is not the original engine. We had to replace the windshield after it cracked, as well as the whole front end after the drunk guy incident. I have blown countless tires, and even ruined one of the actual wheels. The passenger's side mirror randomly exploded while we were driving down the highway one day. The driver's seat belt doesn't buckle. The windshield washer fluid no longer sprays. Depending on the wind, one of the headlights may or may not work. The gas cap has to be pried open with a key in order to fill the tank. In short, the car is a disaster and I can't believe we've kept it this long.

On the other hand, we've had the car for over eight years. This car took me back and forth to grad school every day for two years. We brought the cat and the computer home in it. The car carried both of our children home from the hospital after they were born. It has safely ferried us back and forth from DC and Baltimore to Vermont for dozens of holidays. I was sitting in that car the day I found out that my grandmother had died. There are so many memories, and so much life wrapped up in that hunk of metal that it might as well be a member of the family.

I tell myself that it was just a car, but it was our car, and maybe that means something. We may have outgrown it, but I'm glad that we didn't just scrap it. Claudia is starting a new life now, with a new owner that will love her despite her 200,000 + miles. Claudia, if you are out there, and you have somehow gained sentience and learned to read in the last 24 hours, we miss you, and we hope you're happy, wherever the road may take you.

Poop in the Pool

2012-02-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

As you know, I have recently joined a gym. As you also know, it is far too expensive to actually use the gym, due to the fact that I have small children that I am not allowed to balance on the handlebars of my exercise bicycle, and so am required to pay money for their care. I had been to the gym exactly twice. Once, when I was not allowed in due to my boots, and once for my fitness consultation. Now I have been three times, because we decided to take the family swimming.

If I don't want to pay for expensive gym childcare, but I still want to use my membership, the obvious solution is to do things at the gym that my children can do also, especially since it is free. My kids love to swim, so we bundled up one Saturday morning and braved the icy winds and snowy streets on our way to a tropical diversion.

There are three water features at the gym. The first is a big old adult lap pool, and it was full of big old adults swimming back and forth, from one end of the pool to the other. Very boring. The second feature is the kids' pool, which contains water that is much warmer than the lap pool (hopefully not due to unexpected fluids) and tons of children and their parents. Finally, over in the corner, is the hot tub, which has a no kids allowed policy. Sadly, there is also a big sign that prohibits parents from "supervising their children from the jacuzzi." There goes my brilliant plan.

The kids' pool was where it was at, and we even saw one of Ruby's friends from school there, so in we went, splashing around and having a great time. Unfortunately, it did not last more than ten or twenty minutes. Before we knew it we heard whistling and shouting and everyone seemed to be exiting the pool. "Clear the pool!" I heard from the staff, so we climbed out with everyone else. Someone passing by mentioned that there was "contamination" in the pool and it had to be cleaned. I wasn't sure what they meant by contamination, until I saw it float by.

I'm not entirely sure how one fully cleans poop out of a pool. I suppose there are so many chemicals in there that they could just scoop it out and be done with it, although if it were my pool, I would drain all the water and scrub the living, well, you know, out of it. That didn't seem possible though, so I would guess they just threw in some extra chemicals, but I couldn't say for sure. What I could say for sure is that we were not going back into that pool, so we showered repeatedly and headed for home.

So far it's going great at the gym. I expect to be at my goal weight in no time, thanks to all that running I did after I saw the contamination and my sudden loss of appetite.

But I Really Only Wanted the Sandwich...

2012-02-06T07:58:00.000-05:00

Yesterday marked my Carnegie Hall debut. Yes, it was as a ringer in a high school chorus, but we are not focusing on that right now. The point is, I sang on stage at Carnegie Hall. For some of you though, yesterday may have been about a different special event. I am talking, of course, about National Weatherperson's Day. Okay, no just kidding, I was talking about the Super Bowl.

You may recall that I spent last Super Bowl desperately running around town looking for a party, or at the very least a working television. It is my personal tradition to watch the game, with or without friends, make a gigantic sandwich, and enjoy the commercials (and sometimes part of the game). This year, it just wasn't possible.

They tried to be reasonable. The concert was at 3, and we were out by 5. Plenty of time for most of the people to get home, or to find a bar anyway. Nobody was going to miss the game because of this concert. Unless you lived in Vermont and had to be home for Monday morning. In that case, it was going to be extremely difficult.

I spent from 5:30 to 7:15 sitting at Penn Station waiting for train. Then, from 7:15 to 9:45 I rode said train to Albany. From there it was a three hour drive home (or so) and I finished my trip at 1 am, exhausted, and Super Bowl free.

Now, I had plenty of offers of assistance. My mother offered to DVR the game for me to I could see all the commercials. Others suggested the DVR route as well. And if the commercials were really all I wanted, they are all available online anyway. But I don't actually care that much about the commercials. And I would never DVR a football game of any kind, just to sit through it later. What I crave is the excitement of a shared national moment. I want to be a part of something bigger! But really, I only wanted the sandwich.

Children's Songs That Are Actually Good

2012-02-03T11:06:00.000-05:00

A week or two ago I received an e-mail from my good friend Swan Dancin'. He was looking for some kid's songs because he was about to become a father himself, but he had some very specific requirements. The first, of course, was that they are songs that kids will like. There's no point in singing songs to your child if your child will hate them. The second requirement was that the songs be excellent in and of themselves. This means Barney is out, as well as a lot of Elmo. No, these had to be songs that even adults would find some musical merit in. The last requirement was that they be reasonably easy to sing and play. As much as kids dig "Flight of the Bumblebee," that's not what we're looking for here.

Swan gave me his list of what he had already thought of, which gave me a good idea of the direction in which he wanted to head, and I sent him back some of my own ideas as well. Since then I have had even more excellent ideas to share, and I figured that maybe all of you parents out there had some ideas as well. Please feel free to share in the comments, so we can give Swan a ton of music to learn over the next several months (and years).

Swan's List
This Land is Your Land
Rainbow Connection
Puff the Magic Dragon
If I Had a Hammer
Yellow Submarine
I Got You Babe
If You Want to Sing Out Sing Out
Rock Around the Clock
Shake Rattle & Roll

So what we have here is where I would have gone anyway. Folk songs, classic early rock and roll, and obviously The Muppets. Here is what I sent back to Swan:

My List
The Muppets - Rainbow Connection is perfect, I agreed with him, and it would be a crime to not look into old episodes of The Muppet Show for inspiration here. The show is a perfect example of, at the very least, songs that fit the first two requirements. They filled the program with excellent songs that would appeal to kids, such as "Lullaby of Broadway," "The Banana Boat Song," "Crocodile Rock," and "Happy Days are Here Again," as well as originals like "Bein' Green." You can always count on The Muppets to be appealing to both adults and children.

More Beatles - "Yellow Submarine" is a perfect choice, but so is "Octopus' Garden," "Drive My Car," and "Blackbird." Maybe stay away from "Revolution #9" for a while though...

More Oldies - Ah, the golden era of Rock 'n' Roll, when everything was more innocent, or at least could pass as innocent when played for children. Songs that kids love from that age gone by are things like "Splish Splash," "Rockin' Robin" and "Blue Moon."

Tumblebee, by Laura Viers - One of my other friends, Never Troublin', gave us this excellent album of classic folk tunes for children. The songs are easy to play, fun to sing, and are good for grown-ups as well. She plays familiar favorites like "Jamaican Farewell" and "All the Pretty Little Horses," as well as some old stuff I had never heard before that I'm glad to have found, such as "Jack Can I Ride," and "King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O," which I know a different version of simply called "Froggy Went a Courtin'" but hers is a lot more exciting!

So that's what I told him, but the more I think about it, the more songs I think of. Here's a quick list of a few more that I've rememered:

My New List
The Big Rock Candy Mountain
The Candy Man
At the Hop
Chattanooga Choo Choo
Here Comes the Sun
With A Little Help From My Friends
Fun Fun Fun
Surfin' Safari (I know Surfin' USA is better, but it is also a lot harder!)
Hippopotamus Rock (and many other things by Rosenshontz)
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
The Bare Necessities
Everybody Wants to Be a Cat
Shenandoah
Michael Row the Boat Ashore

And lots more of course! I'm going to keep thinking, but let me know which ones I've missed, or which ones are your favorites, either from having kids, or from being a kid yourself! So much great music, so little time!

6 More Weeks of What the Heck

2012-02-02T11:18:00.000-05:00

Punxsutawney Phil came out of his hole today, and wouldn't you know it, the sun was out and he saw his shadow, terrifying the little thing so badly that he ran right back into his hole, signifying six more weeks of winter. Of course he didn't acutally run back into his hole, having just been poked and prodded by the media to get him out of the hole in the first place. And by poked and prodded I mean physically yanked and held aloft.

Why they need him to come out in order to see if the sun is shining is beyond me, but I guess that's just how they do it down there, although honestly, with all the camera flashes going off, I think poor Phil would have seen his shadow in the middle of a blizzard. But the important thing is that he saw his shadow there on the hallowed grounds of Gobbler's Knob, which I would make a joke about, but cannot, as this is a family blog.

In the middle of the ceremony there was a shout from the crowd, as some young gentlemen called out to the officiants, "It already feels like spring!" My interrupting little friend, you have a point. It has felt like spring for a lot of this winter, so if we're getting six more weeks of this, then what happens when actual spring arrives? Will it turn to summer in April, or have winter and spring just traded places and we will get three feet of snow in May?

I know that there are people out there who doubt that global warming exists, and to you people I say, there is something wrong with you. Perhaps you have faulty heat sensors in your bodies, and if someone turned off all the cold water in your shower as a joke you would calmly stand there, blissfully unaware of your boiling skin. Maybe you are stubborn, and don't want to admit things that are obvious to everyone else on the planet. Or perhaps you are just in denial. Look, I don't want all human life on the planet to die out any more than you do! But we have to face the facts. Punxsutawney Phil needs us to face the facts.

The real question is not whether our weather patterns are changing (because they are), but whether or not we humans have anything to do with it. I mean, weather patterns have been changing and evolving for billions of years (or, if you don't believe in global warming, thousands of years), and they are doing so again, rather dramatically it would seem. But is it our fault?

Honestly, I don't know. But if you told me that I was getting so fat that I was going to die soon, and it might be genetic, or it might be the four Big Macs I ate every day, I would probably give up the cheeseburgers, just to be on the safe side. So if there is even a remote chance that we humans are causing this "weirding of weather" with our pollution and corporate greed run wild, then I say we ought to stop it for a while and see what happens. Right? What good is a thriving economy with no planet to live on? We have a responsibilty as a people to at least try something to save ourselves, even if it doesn't work and it was never our fault to begin with. Otherwise, all of our winters up north will be 60 degrees and rainy. And Punxsutawney Phil does not like that.

P.S. It also does not look like he likes being yanked out of his hole in front of thousands of people, but that's more of a PETA issue.

In My Humanity I Have Grown Bored With Paradise

2012-02-01T11:06:00.000-05:00

I am spending this week in New York again, preparing for a concert at Carnegie Hall. You may recall that I worked with Carnegie Hall a few months ago on a recording project in which I sang the choral tenor lines from Carmina Burana for a learning track that they were sending out to students. The students are part of the "Carmine Burana Choral Project," in which local students from all over the five boroughs are brought together for an amazing opportunity to sing at Carnegie Hall. I spent a day recording my parts, and thought that was the end of it.

As it turns out, and those of you who were in high school chorus might remember this, a very small percentage of the high school choral singers are male. Therefore, I guess for balance, Carnegie Hall has decided to hire some ringers for the concert, and since they know I know the piece, I am one of eight men being brought in to participate as well.

It is a funny thing, being in high school chorus again. Over and over again I have experienced a series of "Oh yeah" moments, when something would happen that reminded me of my own years at choral festivals and the daily rehearsals at school. The warm-ups, the arms stretching, the talk about homework, all of it so familiar, and yet so foreign to me at this point. But the thing that surprised me most was the awe.

I was seated next to, as you might have guessed, some high school students, and there was one moment, during the vocal warm-up, that one of the kids next to me just said in amazement, "Beautiful." We were listening to the sopranos and altos hold two pitches of a chord after the men had dropped out, and this kid was in awe of that sound. Human voices joined together in perfect harmony, their sound pure and the room alive with youthful energy. And I did not notice any of this.

I hear that sound all the time. I go to church choir rehearsals. I go to opera chorus rehearsals. I sing in concerts and recitals and shows and productions. It's my job. When I hear the women singing in the background, I think, "Good, I have a minute of vocal break before I have to sing again." But I can't help it. I am too used to that sound. It is all too familiar to me, and while I still enjoy music of course, maybe a bit of the magic is gone.

But for a few seconds last evening, I got it back. I remembered how much I loved to just listen to different voice parts sing warm-ups. I remembered how incredibly amazing it was the first time I participated in a choral festival and heard all of those voices together. Powerful. Strong. Beautiful. I remembered the chills that had previously run over my body, just from hearing a choral phrase sung so purely, and so correctly. High school me was sitting in the rehearsal last night, just for a moment, and then it was gone. Then it was just me, singing Carmina Burana again for the one billionth time. And it's still one of my favorite pieces, and I still get chills sometimes from listening to it, or singing it, but they're not the same kind of chills as I got the first time.

The Further Adventures of John the Baptist

2012-01-31T08:02:00.000-05:00

You may recall that, for the past month, I have been dressing up as John the Baptist every Sunday morning in an attempt to teach Sunday School for the first time in my life. You may also recall that the number one thing I had managed to impart as of last week was that I am very fat.

The problem is those older kids. They sass-talk me and don't pay attention, and then they tell everyone that I have clearly been eating too many locusts, but they are already jaded and half-grown. Luckily, with each passing week, I rotated to a younger group of kids. Finally, this past Sunday, I had Ruby's class. Pre-school and kindergarten. Surely they would be into what I was doing. Right?

Let me take a quick pause here to make a statement in which I will attempt not to pass any judgement. The behavior of the children at my church is....ummmm....how can I put this? Less than controlled? Now, on one hand I have a lot of respect for the teachers, and the pastor who can get through an entire children's message with kids yelling and interrupting and being generally ridiculous. On the other hand, where the heck are these kids' parents, and why is it okay for this to go on? I know that kids will be kids, but man, if I ever did anything remotely close to what these kids get away with in church, you can believe that I would have been yanked out of that sanctuary before you could blink. I would have been ejected from church so quickly that only God would have seen it.

And in case you were wondering, this is the church I grew up in. It is, in some cases, the exact same adults who taught my Sunday School when I was a kid. So it's not like I have arrived at some new, differently cultured place. And now I am digressing, but I guess the point I want to underscore here, is that the kids interrupt each other, and their teachers, they run off in the middle of lessons, and they generally are, in my opinion, fairly rude, and the teachers just either ignore it, or sigh and ask the kids to stop. But it doesn't stop. And me being new, well I wasn't sure just how much leeway I had in this department. Could I tell the kids to be quiet? Was I allowed to put a hand on them to get their attention? At what point was it acceptable to punch them in the face? None of this was covered in my training, of which I had none.

So there I am, standing in front of Ruby and her class, and I see the boy. Now, after complaining for the last two paragraphs I feel that I should mention that most of the kids are pretty good. None of them would have lasted five minutes in MY old Sunday School classrooms, but for the most part they at least allow things to progress and spend their time whispering and giggling amongst themselves without being obnoxiously disruptive. Not the boy. I can't tell you his name, because that's obviously not cool, but anyone who goes to my church and is reading this already knows who I am talking about.

There is one boy who is the model of disruption. He clearly needs to be on some sort of medication, and I don't mean that in a funny or snarky way. More like in a, wow, I hope he actually gets on some medication for his own good, sort of way. He bounces around all over the place, shouting, laughing, crashing into things, and generally making it hard for anyone else to pay attention. He's not a bad kid in any sense of the word, he just seems to be completely unrestrained and totally unable to control himself.

I started my talk about the life of John the Baptist and it seemed to be going well. The kids were paying attention, and Ruby was super excited that I was teaching her class. The Boy answered all of my statements by saying something like "No you're not," but I ignored him, as I had seen everyone else do. It was around the end of my story that I noticed that The Boy had been pulling pieces off of the plastic table cloth and eating them. I'm not sure if I was supposed to do this or not, but I pulled a big chewed up piece out of his mouth and told him to stop.

Luckily it was time for a craft. Unluckily, the craft I brought involved markers and bowls of water. We were going to write on coffee filters and then dip them in water and watch as the writing disappeared, appropriate for talking about baptism. Everyone followed my instructions very well, except for The Boy, who drew pictures of Wii games he liked to play and splashed water everywhere. And the sillier he got, the sillier everyone else got, and soon it was chaos in the classroom.

I took their bowls of water away, and tried to talk to them about the baptism liturgy, and why we do the things we do, hoping to keep their attention for a few more minutes. At this point The Boy just got up and ran out of the classroom, shouting and laughing. I did have an assistant that was helping me hand out bowls and stuff, so she went out in the hallway to fetch him while I finished the discussion. This brought us to what should have been the end of church, and the end of what I had planned. Sadly, church went almost 20 minutes late.

I had nothing. No plan, no more activities. I got the water out again, but things quickly deteriorated again and I had to take it all away. Finally I asked them to play quietly with the toys that were in the room. This was their cue to run around and scream at the top of their lungs. And every time I would get them calmed down again (they were still young enough to fall for the "who can be the quietest" game), The Boy would just start shouting and running again, and that would be the end of it. But what really was the end of it was when The Boy ran into the wall and I saw the blood.

There was a lot of blood. It was all over his face and coming out of his mouth at a pretty steady rate. As it turns out, he had knocked a tooth out. We cleared everyone out of the area to look for his missing tooth as I prayed that it was one that was supposed to be coming out soon anyway. The class helper took him to the bathroom to clean the blood off of himself while I continued the search for the tooth. At least everyone was finally being quiet.

I found the tooth eventually, and we confirmed that it was a baby tooth, although no one was quite sure if it had been loose to begin with or not. He was pretty pleased with himself for having knocked out his tooth, and the everyone else in the class was now in total awe of him. He was a hero. The rest of the time was taken up by The Boy trying to think of what toy the tooth fairy was going to buy for him, and the rest of the class asking to look at his new smile.

I don't know if there is a point to all of this. Maybe just that I don't understand the new rules of raising children. Maybe I just wanted to tell you about this crazy thing that happened. I don't know. My father always says that each generation of parents is perfectly suited for raising kids to grow up in the environment that the parents themselves grew up in, but the problem is that the environment has changed, and so the parents really have no idea what to do in this crazy new future that their kids are living in. That seems true to me, but if there's one thing I'm sure, it's that my weight will not be the thing that Ruby's class remembers from last Sunday.

Swear Words For Parents

2012-01-30T09:09:00.000-05:00

So there you are, living your life, happily cursing like a sailor, when suddenly, it happens. Boom! You become a parent. Now, completely out of the blue, you have to drastically change your speech patterns so as not to scar your children for life, or worse, get the dreaded phone call from the teacher asking where your kid learned "that word."

For some of us, this is not so difficult a task as we never swore that much to begin with, while others of us regularly spiced up our everyday conversation with "effin' this" and "effin' that." But regardless of whether you were a big cusser, or an "only when I dropped the piano on my foot" cusser, there will come a time, as a parent, when the desire may suddenly come upon you to utter unspeakable words in front of your young progeny. It is at this time that we must take a lesson from the Mormons.

I don't know if you know any Mormons personally, but I do, and they are not allowed to swear. That is, there are certain words they are not supposed to say. This doesn't mean they don't shout angry words of frustration or curse in their own way; they just don't use the same words we do.

They cannot say "damn it" for instance, because that is bad, but they can say "dang it." They can also say "dampen," "damage," and "dandruff." And they do. They also say words like "shiz," "fetch," "motherfreaker," and "son of a biscuit." In their intent, all of these words mean the same thing as their blasphemous counterparts, however in their execution they come across as harmless nonsensical words or phrases that everyone can agree are super cute.

I myself have often found myself dropping groceries, being smashed in the face by a baby head, or unable to find my keys when I am five minutes late out the door for preschool, and without warning I start to say something inappropriate. Luckily, with quick thinking I am able to turn these words around in time to avoid catastrophe. In case you are not so quick on your feet with your words, I will offer some of my best last-second recoveries for you to study and use whenever you are feeling upset in front of the kiddos.

"Fuuuuuudge in a blanket!"

"Shiiiiiiii-Shi-Shi-Shi-Shimmy Shimmy Shake!"

"Mother Thumper!"

"Sheeee-aaaaahhh-eeeee-oooot!'

"Fuuuuuun Fun Fun!"

"Ding Dong Merrily on High!"

"Gaaaaaaarazzumfrazzum!"

"Holy ShhhhhhNikes!"

"Fuquintennial!"

So remember parents, don't curse in front of your kids. It's bad. Instead, shout nonsense words at them until they think you have gone crazy and decide to leave you alone. Then take a nap. And if they wake you up from your nap? Repeat step one.

The Funniest Thing About Girls

2012-01-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

As Ruby was getting ready for school today, she was very insistent that she wear a dress and tights instead of a shirt and pants. I don't really care about that, so we picked out a nice warm winter dress and some (I think) matching tights.

When we arrived at school, one of the other little girls walked right up to her and said shyly, "I like your dress."

"Oh, thanks!" said Ruby happily.

"I like your tights too."

"Thanks."

"Do you like my skirt?" the girl asked Ruby.

"Oh, yes, I do like your skirt," Ruby replied sweetly.

At this point, one of the boys in the class just shook his head and sighed loudly. "Boy, that's the funniest thing about girls!" he proclaimed, and then went back to building a tower with his blocks.

The Top 5 Inappropriate Lines in Children's Books

2012-01-26T10:03:00.000-05:00

As a parent, I read a lot of children's books. We read stories at bedtime; we read stories during the day. Our house is full of picture books. Yeah, some of them are a little trite and obnoxious, and you expect that so it's fine. But then there are the times when you almost can't get through a page with a straight face. Seriously, what were these people thinking!? I mean, I know kids won't get it, but c'mon people! Taken out of context, or sometimes even IN context, these just seem inappropriate to me.

#5 - What Floats, by Julie Aigner-Clark and Nadeem Zaidi

Where did that bubble come from? Why are there no other bubbles, and the only one that has appeared is floating next to that kid? I think we know the answer.

#4 - One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish, by Dr. Seuss

Oh, Dr. Seuss, you are full of silliness and wackiness. And creepy old drunk guys apparently. It's true that you do go on to say on the next page that he is drinking ink, but is that really any better? If I were a kid, I would not want sleazy Uncle Yink looking at me like that during story time. He likes to wink AND drink! Fun!

#3 - Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss

And Dr. Seuss shows up again. This whole book could really be taken out of context inappropriately, but the page I can't get through without snickering is "Would you, could you, in the dark?"

#2 - The Story of Babar, by Jean de Brunhoff
This one is going to take some explaining. You know Babar, right? He has a cute TV show, and tons of books about him. I thought I remembered him too, until I actually sat down with the original book at bedtime one night. The basic story is this: Babar runs away after his mother is killed by hunters and moves to the city, where he buys clothes and starts smoking. Then, after the elephant king dies, he goes home and claims the throne for himself on the basis of his new suit and tobacco addiction.

This is all well and good, but the little subplot in there is what really freaks me out. First, the reason they find Babar in the city in the first place is because his two little cousins run away and discover him. See?

"Why," he says in astonishment to the Old Lady, "it's Arthur and Celeste, my little cousins!" So we have established that these elephants are Babar's cousins. And they are little. How little, you may ask? Well, here is a picture of them being scolded by their parents (Babar's aunt and uncle) for running off, after they have found Babar.

They are quite young. And they are Babar's cousins. I cannot stress this enough, because check out what happens next...

Babar has somehow or other managed to "become engaged" to his eight year old cousin on the car ride home! I don't know how they do it where Jean de Brunhoff is from, but to me that is not appropriate.

#1 - Snow, by Roy McKee and P.D. Eastman
And so we arrive at the number one, most inappropriate line in children's literature. This one I cannot read with a straight face, no matter how hard I try. And the illustration does not help.

Really? That's the line you want to write for the kiddos? "Do you like it in your face? Yes, I like it any place!" Seriously!?

So to all future children's authors out there. Please, think about what you are writing. I don't care if the kids don't get it. We parents have to read this stuff, and the children will eventually want to know why we are smirking.

Good Names For Parenting Blogs

2012-01-25T11:02:00.000-05:00

As the writer of a highly successful parenting blog, as well as the writer of a highly successful opera blog, I would like to offer a hand up to some of my fellow would-be bloggers. Writing posts every day is the easy part, you will not need any help with that bit. No, the biggest challenge that you will face is picking out a good name for your new blog. Unfortunately, all the good names, like "Tenor Dad" are already taken, but don't give up hope! There are still plenty of mediocre names out there for you to choose from.

The most important thing about naming your blog is that you want the name to reflect the theme of the blog. By simply looking at the name of this blog, "Tenor Dad," you can instantly tell that this blog is about the experiences of someone who has no money and doesn't get enough sleep. Now, let's assume that you want to start a parenting blog about your experiences as a parent. You could name it something boring, like "The Parenting Blog," but that would be bad, because that name is already taken. Instead you should try to capture a slice of what it is like to be a parent in one short phrase or sentence. To get you started, here are some great ideas for blog names that are NOT already taken.

Why is This Broken?

I Used To Be Awesome

Pooping With the Door Open

I Remember Sleep

Shower Interrupted

Where Did You Hear That Word?

Avoiding the Candy Aisle

Put That Down!

Go Ask Your Mother

Go Ask Your Father

Go Ask Your Grandmother

I'll Go Get the Wipes

Okay, okay, "Pooping With the Door Open" is actually taken, but it's not a parenting blog, so I still think it could work. I hope these ideas will be useful to you as you set out on your exciting new venture, and if they're not, well, you can always start an opera blog instead.

The 84th Annual Academy Award Nominations

2012-01-24T09:21:00.001-05:00

It's my favorite time of year again! Oscar season. That wonderful month in which I try to cram as much cinematic culture into my eyeballs as possible. In previous years (read: pre-children) there was not too much cramming to do, because I used to go to the movies all the time, and when the nominations were announced I would generally have seen most of them. This has certainly not been the case in recent years, although I have to remind you all that last year I had shockingly seen 7 out of the 10 on nomination day.

This year I have not seen 70% of the nominations. I have only seen a third of them. But that's okay! There is still time! And it's not like I haven't seen any of them, right? I mean, I've seen:

The Help - A good solid movie. It was funny, it was sad, and the performances were incredible. No surprise that they racked up the most acting nominations (three) of any film this year. I don't think it will win the big prize, but I think it will take home an acting trophy.

Midnight in Paris - We just watched this the other night, and I thought it was awesome. It's the kind of movie we would get more of if cultured nerds ran comicon instead of, well, you know, regular nerds. Owen Wilson does a great Woody Allen, and the rest of the movie was basically like a comic book movie, with time traveling and real life cultural superheroes.

Moneyball - I'm not a huge sports fan, but I'm a sucker for a good baseball movie, and this was a great baseball movie. The cool thing about this movie was that it had all the elements you need for an exciting sports movie: washed-up plucky underdogs coming together to scrape out a victory, only it all happened off the field. The plucky underdogs were the GM and his accountant/personal assistant. Congratulations to them for making a non-sports sports movie, but have it be about sports.

And then we have the other six nominees. Due to the new nominating rules, there will now be anywhere from five to ten best picture nominees selected, and this year there happened to be nine. Well, good. One less movie for me to try and find. Of course I still have to see:

The Artist - I am aware that there is no dialogue in the movie. I am also aware that it is most likely amazing. I love a lot of movies with little to no dialogue, so that's all fine with me. I expect it will be similar to the first 30 minutes of WALL-E, only will fewer robots.

The Descendants - This is top on my list to see. It's supposed to be sad and funny, and George Clooney is great in that type of film. I was so pulling for "Up in the Air" two years ago, and then stupid old "The Hurt Lucker" had to go and win. So this year I'll be pulling for "The Descendants." I think. I mean, I haven't even seen it. It could be terrible.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Ugh. I do not want to see another 9/11 movie, even if it is awesome and has good people in it. I just don't need to subject myself to that. I don't need cinematic catharsis, and I don't enjoy watching those events unfold and replay over and over again in pop culture. I guess I'll try and see it anyway, but still; ugh.

Hugo - Now this one I will seek out and see. Numerous friends and family members have recommended it to me, and I have wanted to see it all along anyway. Can't wait.

The Tree of Life - I am a little scared of this movie, I'm not going to lie. It sounds confusing. But I'm up for it!

War Horse - I think this is that play I wanted to see a year or two ago, isn't it? Is this based on a play? It has a horse in it, right? Is it about a horse, or is that title just a metaphor? There is a horse in the poster, so I think there will be a horse in it. But will it be more "Seabuscuit," or more "Racing Stripes?" I guess I will have to see it and find out. (does the horse talk...?)

So that's the slate for this year folks. Other quick observations:
- No Pixar in the animated film category for the first time ever!
- The Best Director nods automatically give front-runner status to The Artist, The Descendants, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, and The Tree of Life
- Gary Oldman finally got his first oscar nomination. Can't believe it took this long!
- A Separation is the first foreign screenplay nominee in 5 years!
- George Clooney actually was nominated twice, once for acting, and once for writing!
- The film with the most nominations? Hugo, with 11!

Singing My Way to Fenway

2012-01-23T08:04:00.000-05:00

My mother called me a couple of days ago to tell me about a contest she'd heard about on the radio. Apparently, if I went down to the mall on Saturday there would be a national anthem singing competition hosted by the Boston Red Sox, and the winner of the contest would get to perform the national anthem at Fenway Park before an actual game.

This sounded cool, so I tried to find out more information. I saw it listed on the mall's website, but they didn't really list a time. (10am-4pm didn't seem like a specific enough time to me) Over those next few days I practiced singing The Star Spangled Banner in the shower, and driving to and from work, just to make sure I remembered the words, but I mostly put it out of my mind.

On Saturday morning, remembering the contest, I called the mall to ask what time the actual singing competition would be, and how one might sign up for it, but mall info desk lady had no idea. Well, I didn't want to drag the whole family out to the mall all day, so Ruby and I headed over just to check it out and do a little reconnaissance work.

What we found when we arrived was that yes, the competition did indeed last from 10am until 4pm. Basically, after filling out a form, you just sang the anthem in front of the video camera, and then at 4 they would announce the winner. It was an ongoing all day type of thing. Last year's winner was hanging out when I got there, and she appeared to be a 10-year-old girl. This made me nervous, as I was no longer sure that I was the demographic they were looking for. Last year's runner-up also looked suspiciously like a 10-year-old girl. Wondering if I was wasting my time, I stepped up to the microphone.

Well, I did a good job. I could tell, because everyone got really quiet and I attracted a bit of a crowd, many of whom congratulated me afterward and one even showed me the goosebumps on her arm (not kidding). I don't tell you this to brag, but only so that you will understand that I felt good about it, and so deemed it worth my while to return to the mall at 4 o'clock for the big announcement.

I paced around the mall nervously, feeling a little silly for being so jittery. This was a singing contest in a mall, and they were probably looking for a cute kid, or a twangy country-type person (the event was hosted by the local country station after all), and I am on the roster of the Metropolitan Opera, so what do I care about this goofy contest, right? But on the other hand, if I can't even win a silly singing contest in a mall, then what right have I to be a professional singer? Plus, Simone has never been to Fenway Park, and it is on our wish list of things to do in the next year, so this would be perfect.

As I sat there listening to the last few contestants, I started freaking out in my mind. Was that girl better than me (no)? Was that little kid cuter than me (yes)? The good feelings I had had in the morning had all but disappeared, and when they stood up to announce the winner, I pushed my way into the crowd, wondering what I would do if I didn't win, and even scarier, what I would do if I did.

And then they called my name. I won. I will be singing the national anthem at Fenway Park for a Boston Red Sox game in the upcoming season. I am ridiculously excited, and I will obviously let you all know the date when I find it out, so that you can all buy tickets to the game, and when I get up to sing, you can all chant "Tenor Dad! Tenor Dad!" and do the wave. And I'll be looking for you, so you'd better come.

My Fitness Consultation

2012-01-20T09:13:00.000-05:00

Good news! My stint in Coke Rehab is working! I have lost almost 20 pounds, and am now on my way to being actually not fat, instead of just relatively not fat. I know this because I had my fitness consultation yesterday.

My second trip to the gym went much better than my first trip. I brought sneakers, for instance. I didn't do much actual fitness, but I was weighed and talked about my general exercise routine (none) and what I like to eat (cheeseburgers). Surprisingly to no one, I am overweight. But it's not as bad as I thought. I only have to go down 5% body fat to be considered healthy. I'm sure I can convert 5% of my body fat to something else pretty easily. Maybe I will try to make some extra bones.

My fitness consultant spent most of the time explaining to me what the rates are for hiring a personal trainer, which was very helpful, but I tried to make it clear that I am an opera singer, and so have no money. This did not seem to dissuade her in the least. Persistence is a top quality in personal trainers and fitness consultants.

She did take me around to see all of the different pieces of equipment and, as we approached each area, she told me in great detail how much it would cost for her to tell me how each piece works. By the end of it, I had a very clear understanding of the cost of fitness.

Well, I decided to opt out of personal training, but I did go on something called an apocalypitcal machine (or something like that) which was basically a machine that got you in shape using the everyday activity of float-walking to get your heart rate up. After ten minutes of float-walking I was ready to grab Edward from the nursery and head to school to get Ruby.

Overall I am quite happy, mostly because my weight was down, but also because it seems pretty doable to work out at the gym a few times a week. I just need to figure out how to afford their gym nursery, or wait 4 years until Edward is in school. Health does not come cheap.

The Roof Collapsed, and Other Problems

2012-01-19T10:02:00.000-05:00

Ruby is going on a field trip today. Normally this would be very exciting (and in fact, it is very exciting to her), but the field trip is to the sister school a few towns over, and the reason for the field trip is that the roof collapsed.

Tuesday morning we drove up to the school parking lot to find several large trucks taking up most of the spots. As we walked through the front doors of the building, we were ushered/herded in the opposite direction of Ruby's classroom, to what is known as "the big room," because, well, it is big.

Upon arrival, we learned that a water pipe had burst directly over Ruby's classroom and flooded it, leaking into the hallway and some other classrooms, so now three to four classes would be camping out, refugee-style, in the big room, until further notice. I don't know how long "further notice" is, but it seems like a couple of weeks at least.

This is, of course, terrible news. Anything on a bottom shelf is now ruined. Books, puzzles, games, and other non-waterproof toys are all gone. This is upsetting indeed, but far more heartbreaking is the realization that all of the kids' artwork on the walls is probably destroyed. Possibly their books where they write their names every month and you can see the amazing progress. Maybe their craft projects and special creations. Things that can never be replaced.

Now, quite honestly, we are not hurting for artwork in the line-style crayon medium. We most likely would have eventually tossed most of it anyway. But to have it taken from us like this, so suddenly, so cruelly, is hard for us to take, and even harder to explain to our four and five year old's who want to know if the elephant they painted last week and left lying on the floor to dry will be okay.

The fact that it comes at a time when many schools and libraries in the state are still struggling to rebuild and restock after the terrible flooding of Hurricane Irene makes it even...weirder? On the one hand, it makes me grateful that we didn't sustain any real damage in the floods, but on the other it seems bitingly ironic that we now know, in a very small way indeed, exactly how they felt and still feel.

As we've dropped Ruby off at school this week, we've seen them vacuuming up water, tearing out drywall and carpeting, and generally making a huge mess of things in an effort to remove the damage and get to the point where they can start rebuilding. They're doing a good job and if we're lucky we might be back in business by the end of next week. Everyone will be fine, and things will be back to normal soon I'm sure. But for now, we'll be in the big room.

The Benefits of an Opera Voice

2012-01-18T09:01:00.000-05:00

Those of you with current or former babies know that they can lie there and just scream for hours on end. And I mean scream! How is this possible? If you tried to personally scream as loud and as long as those babies (like you did at that Justin Bieber concert that one time), you would lose your voice and have a sore throat for days. This is because you are not using your opera voice.

Babies know about the opera voice. Babies love the opera voice. The opera voice is what allows opera singers to, well, basically scream at the top of their lungs for hours on end and not lose their voice. Now, I must stress right away that opera singers do NOT scream at the top of their lungs. It just sounds like that much of the time. But it is not screaming. It is the opera voice.

You see, we opera singers have a unique challenge, having to sing over an entire orchestra and still be heard. We do not have microphones and sound systems. Sometimes we don't even have decent acoustics. All we have is our voices, and so we go through years of expensive training to basically condition our voices back to their infant-like state of being able to do what we were born being able to do but somehow forgot.

Once trained, we opera singers are able to just relax our bodies and esophagi and let the sound flow freely from our vocal folds, going for hours without getting tired, and also creating such resonance that we can be heard over very large amounts of noise. This is done for the express purpose of singing operas, but there are many fringe benefits of having an opera voice as well.

Need to get a crowded room's attention? Can't do that finger in your mouth whistley thing? Try using your opera voice to get everyone's attention. I guarantee that they will all hear you and quiet down.

Trying to call to a friend across a noisy bar? There are too many people between the two of you to get through, and they will never hear you screeching at them, but one blast of their name using the opera voice and you will have their attention. And the best part is, everyone else will be too drunk to pay attention to your call, so they will not quiet down and pay attention to you like in the previous example.

The opera voice can also travel great distances. I have found that, using my opera voice, I can get someone's attention who is standing much farther away from me than I could otherwise. A city block? Easy. Opposite end of a field? No problem. 6 stories up, hanging out of a window? I got this.

The last and best use of the opera voice is clearly in the field of child discipline. I hope that my children do not build up an immunity to the opera voice, but at the moment, the best way to let them know that I mean business, is a resonant and triple-forte "Hey!" sung in their direction. That will stop whatever mischief they are up to in a hurry.

So even if you are not planning to become an international operatic sensation like me, I would strongly advise you all to go take a few voice lessons and tap into your inner opera voice. It doesn't matter if you are tone deaf or have perfect pitch. You don't even need to sing a note. Just think about what a wonderful place this world would be if everyone was just 20% louder! Oh. Ummm.... actually, nevermind.

When the Manager Comes to Your Table

2012-01-17T11:09:00.001-05:00

I have a question for you, dear readers. I want to know who is crazy here. There are big changes afoot at the pizza place. We've hired a guy to come in and, well, basically "fix" everything. Technically he is there for marketing, but he has also firmly established himself in all areas of the restaurant, including the kitchen.

Last evening, he came into the kitchen while we were making food, and he told me to go out and chat up the customers while they were eating. To ask how their food was, if they had any suggestions or ideas, and to smile a lot and, in my opinion, bug the heck out of them.

I didn't flat out refuse, but I did call another worker over, told him to go talk to customers, and then went in the back to do dishes, avoiding the situation as much as possible. A few moments later, my co-worker returned and informed us that he had not spoken to the customer because the guy had just started eating his food and was reading a newspaper and didn't look like he wanted to be disturbed. Exactly.

When I go out to eat, I am quite happy for my waiter or waitress to come over and ask how things are. That is their job. However, on those occasions when some other random person comes over to talk to me, I get super annoyed. The waitress has just come to check on you, you are taking a bite of food, or talking to your friends or date or whatever, and some smiley obnoxious manager comes over and asks how everything is. I usually say "fine," and then ignore them as hard as I can, hoping they will leave, because it's just uncomfortable. I have nothing to say to this person, and they are interrupting my meal. In fact, if I know it is a place where the manager frequently comes over to chat up customers, I will probably avoid it if I can.

I said all of this last night, and I was told that I was in the extreme minority, and that almost everyone loves it when the manager comes over and starts a conversation with them in the middle of their meal, because it shows a personal touch and they feel welcomed, or whatever. I will admit that I don't know what the general public thinks of this, because it is not something I have ever discussed.

So am I crazy? What do you think?

Do You:

I really would like to know. I don't want to go around bothering folks, but if people really do love it when random strangers start quizzing them mid-chew, then by golly I will give the public what it wants! Let me know. Thanks!

Why Is John The Baptist So Fat?

2012-01-16T10:07:00.000-05:00

I am teaching Sunday School this month. The way it works at our church is that parents sign up for a one month stint either being a teacher or a helper, and that way we have enough teachers and nobody has to miss church for more than a few weeks a year. It's a pretty good arrangement, and so January is my month. I was e-mailed schedules and lesson plans, and two weeks ago (we had New Year's Day off) began my limited engagement as John the Baptist.

I don't know if they did this to me because they knew I had acting and stage training, or if it was just serendipity, but my lesson plan calls for me to dress up as John the Baptist and then, in character, describe my birth, life, and death to the children, with an emphasis on baptism and the baptism of Jesus. No problem, right?

The way the schedule is set up, we "elders" rotate around the different classes all month, while the "shepherds" stay with one individual class. My first week was with the 4th and 5th graders, followed yesterday by the 1st through 3rd graders, and culminating with the Pre-K and kindergarteners at the end of the month. I walked into my first week ready to go, and having no idea anymore what 4th and 5th graders were like.

It turns out that the youth of the day are not at all interested in the life of John the Baptist. Everything I said was met with boredom at best, and resistance at worst. If I said something like, "My clothes are made out of camel hair," they would respond with "No they're not, you are quite obviously wearing a brown Obi Wan Kenobi costume robe that you got in college like 15 years ago." Dang! Am I that obvious?

Well, we struggled a bit together, but I think by the end I finally got their attention. They certainly perked up when I said, "Don't any of you want to hear about how I was brutally murdered?" I also got them with the superheroic qualities of the baptism liturgy. Swearing to resist the forces of evil, darkness and wickedness in whatever forms they present themselves? It's like we're all in The Avengers, and Jesus is our Captain America, killed in battle, but three days later thawed out from the ice and back in action with his vibranium shield of faith, great for quenching fiery darts!

Ok, that's a bit of a mixed metaphor, but the point is, they were all paying attention and actually thinking about the words of their baptisms and what they meant, so I counted it as a win. Yesterday, as they all met in the chapel before Sunday School, I was setting up my room for the 1st through 3rd graders and eavesdropping on the kids as they discussed what they had learned the previous week. Quite curious to hear what my 4th and 5th graders had to say, I stood against the door and listened closely.

The leader asked what John the Baptist ate in the wilderness, and everyone knew the answer immediately. Locusts and wild honey! Good job kids! And then one of my wonderful little pupils raised her hand and asked "If he was only eating bugs and honey, then why is John the Baptist so fat?" She then explained to the confused teacher that she had met him the week before, and the teacher tried to tell her something about how God will provide for us, and even if we are only eating bugs and honey, God makes it a bounty for us. But whatever. At least they remembered me.

The Third One Was Terrible

2012-01-13T09:13:00.000-05:00

I am currently in New York for another audition, and on the train ride here I was deeply engrossed in book three of the Hunger Games trilogy. Well, mildly engrossed. Ok, it basically kept my interest, but I have to say, it was kind of disappointing. I'm not quite done yet, but something about the book just isn't as good as the first two. With the first two books, putting them down at the end of most chapters was simply an impossibility. I was so hooked, and it was so exciting, that I literally hungered for more (pardon my pun). With the third book, "Mockingjay," I just didn't feel that way. The writing was of the same style, and the characters stayed true to form, but for whatever reason, it wasn't as good as the first two books. That got me to thinking of a lot of other trilogy enders that disappointed me. For instance:

His Dark Materials - This is another book trilogy that I could not stop reading. I read the first two books in about a week, and when I finally got my hands on the third one, I tore through it, only to find that I hated it, and the series was ruined for me.

X-Men: The Last Stand - X-Men emerged onto the movie scene at a time when superhero movies were a joke, and it made them awesome again. This is the movie you have to thank for the fact that every summer we have 19 superhero movies clogging up the multiplexes. Then X2 came out, and is hands-down the best superhero movie of all time (sorry The Dark Knight, you are a very close second). I could watch X2 for days and days and never get bored. So what happened to the third one? It truly sucks. Director Bryan Singer left the production to go film another not so great movie, "Superman Returns." If only he had stayed on X-Men 3 and let someone else handle ol' Supes, maybe we would have gotten two better films.

Spider-Man 3 - Just re-read the last paragraph about the X-Men, but replace "X-Men" with "Spider-Man" (and take out the stuff about Bryan Singer) and you will have the same story again. Good first movie, truly great second movie, horrible third movie. No change of directors to blame on this one though.

The Matrix - When I saw "The Matrix" I was blown away. Most people were blown away. It was an awesome movie with ground-breaking visual effects. The second movie was alright, I guess, and even though it wasn't perfect, it left you with hope that maybe they were going to go somewhere cool with the third one. Nope.

Bob Newhart's Shows - I used to watch reruns of "The Bob Newhart Show" on Nick at Nite when I was in high school, and it was a great show. And even before that, I used to watch "Newhart" when it was on regular old TV, and that was great show too. Remember his third show? "Bob"? Yeah, neither does anyone else.

The Mummy - Man, "The Mummy" was a fun movie. "The Mummy 2" was a fun movie. Brendan Fraser has made some terrible movies, but these were not them. I'm not saying they should win any awards, I'm just saying they were some fun adventure films. And then they made "The Scorpion King." No Brendan Fraser = no fun.

Star Trek - This is kind of cheating, because all the odd numbered Star Trek movies are bad. 1, 3, 5, you get the idea. The good ones are 2 (KHAAAAAAAANNNN!), 4 (the one with the whales), and 6 (the one you didn't see that is actually awesome).

There are plenty of other examples (I'm not even going to discuss "Return of the Jedi" here, because I don't want any angry letters, and plus I like the Ewoks), but this is long enough as it is. Any others I am missing here? Let me know. And feel free to tell me about all the 3rds of things that are actually the best, like "Return of the King," "Storm of Swords," and the third TV movie based on "Gilligan's Island," "The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island."

Glossary of Terms

2012-01-12T09:06:00.000-05:00

It occurs to me that sometimes I use words, names, or phrases that you might not recognize, unless you are related to me or have read every single blog posting I have ever written. In an effort to be more clear, I have created this glossary of Tenor Dad terms that I can then link to when I use one of them, without having to explain it in writing every time. I may update this post from time to time, or I may not. We'll see how this works. So anyway, here are some quick definitions for you!

Binky - A pacifier.

Bubbas - Bottles of milk, warmed in the microwave for 30 seconds or so.

Daddy Bear - Ruby's favorite stuffed bear. He likes to drive cars and go to bear parties.

Edward - My son, born in March of 2010. He is (you do the math) years old.

Jesse Jellyroll - Our cat who likes to scratch all of our stuff.

Mousey Lionheart - Our cat who likes to scratch all of our people.

Nini - My mother-in-law, originally called Nina, but the kids changed it to Nini.

Ruby - My daughter, born in March of 2007, so you can figure out how old she is at the time you are reading this.

Simone - My wonderful wife of many years.

Toy Grammy - What Ruby calls my mother, because of the number of toys at my mother's house.

Uncle Big Dave - My sister's husband

Uncle Tall Dave - My wife's sister's husband

Speech Delay Evaluation Delay

2012-01-11T11:05:00.000-05:00

I just spent my morning with an evaluator from the state. At least I think she was an evaluator. She didn't really evaluate anything. She mostly just asked us questions and wrote things down. So actually, I just spent my morning with an professional informationalist from the state. We're trying to figure out if Edward has a speech delay.

You may recall that Edward had a dozen ear infections, leading to minor surgery to put tubes in his ears. This all went very smoothly, and he seems to be doing a lot better in the balance department, and the not-getting-ear-infections department. The only issue (is it an issue?) is his possible speech delay.

This is a difficult thing for we parents to decipher. On the one hand, we have his sister Ruby, who at his age was already speaking in sentences, could count to ten, knew all of her shapes and colors, and was writing pulitzer prize winning essays in crayon. When we compare the two of them, Edward's ability to say "car" and "ball" and "blearghleblat" does not seem very impressive. But it doesn't seem fair to compare your children, right? And she is a girl, and every one knows girls develop faster than boys. He is much better at smashing things than she was at his age, so there is definitely a trade off.

But then on the other hand, we have his cousin, born only a few days earlier, also a boy, and doing everything way earlier. He walked first, he talked first, he was attacked by a chicken first. Edward is way behind it would seem. The only thing to do, really, was to ask the doctor. And the doctor recommended we get Edward evaluated for a speech delay because he had fewer words than what was in the range of "normal." Also, and more importantly, it is free.

So that brings us to today, when I thought we were having our evaluation. But I think we were really having a pre-evaluation. We are going to have to set up meeting #2 for a full evaluation, and then meeting #3 for deciding how to proceed and if he needs help, etc. That sounds like a lot of meetings. Plus I had to sign a ton of stuff, which might seem boring, but it was a good chance to hone and refine my signature.

Regardless, we had a good time this morning constructing a "snapshot" of Edward's development up to this point. The woman that came was very nice, and Edward got to flirt and show off, so he had fun. Almost two hours of fun, in fact. I still don't know if he has an official speech delay though. I guess he just has an evaluation delay.

We Like to Potty (We Like, We Like to Potty)

2012-01-10T09:03:00.000-05:00

Friends! I bring you tidings of great joy! For behold, Edward has pooped in the potty! I wasn't there for it; I was at work, so everything you are about to hear is completely second-hand, but I'm pretty sure I have the right of it.

Well, okay, I was there for the very beginning of it. Sunday, just two short days ago, I pulled out the potty seat and the potty chair. Edward had been grabbing his diaper lately, even when it was empty, as if he was aware that something was about to happen down there. He had also become very interested in the toilet and what sort of thing goes on in that area. These are two classic signs that it's time to start thinking about potty training, so I thought, what the heck, I'll get the stuff ready for when he's ready.

Then, last night, a mere one day after we pulled out the potty training supplies, a miracle happened. Edward potty trained himself. He stood up, grabbed his behind and said "Uh-Oh!" My wife, thinking that it was now time for a diaper change, told him to go to his changing table, but he instead ran to the bathroom.

He pointed at the bathroom and it made it very clear that this was where he wanted to go. My wife brought him in, took off his clean diaper, and sat him up on the potty. He thought that this was great fun, laughing and giggling and having a wonderful time. Ruby came in to offer him words of encouragement ("No, Edward, you're doing it wrong!") and after a few minutes, everyone was shocked to hear the splash. TOUCHDOWN!

Edward could not have been more pleased with himself, cackling with pride, and his mother and I could not be more excited for this step on the road to a diaper-free house. And the best part is, we didn't have to do anything! And I don't think it was a one time fluke either, as he has already practiced sitting on the potty twice this morning so far. He is super into it. Now if we can just get the pee into the potty as well, we'll be all set. Next up: aiming lessons!

Bowling For Babies

2012-01-09T08:05:00.000-05:00

There is a new game at Nini's house now. It involves a rubber ball and several empty 1 liter bottles. I believe that it is supposed to be played something like bowling, but, as I discovered the other day, bowling for babies is quite different from bowling for adults.

For one thing, babies do not like to roll the ball. They prefer throwing or bouncing the ball at the "pins." This is less effective than rolling, especially for babies with poor aiming skills, but it does have the potential to do more household damage, so you can easily see why this is the preferred method.

After throwing the ball unsuccessfully at the pins several times, babies then move on to the next phase of the game: holding the ball directly over the pins and dropping it. This also has a surprisingly low success rate among the babies that I observed. I was astonished to find that, even holding the ball mere inches away from the pins and dropping it directly into them, my baby still managed to repeatedly miss every single pin.

Luckily, things turned around eventually, and the ball did indeed knock over some of the pins. This was the cause of great delight, producing much giggling and jumping up and down. I set the pins up again, expecting another ball drop, but this was when things really began to deviate from standard bowling.

Upon realizing that the pins are not fixed objects, the baby proceeded to grab one of the pins in his hand and then, growling like a rabid dinosaur, started bashing down all the other pins with the one he was holding. "GRAWRGH! BLARGHRRL!" he said, knocking empty bottles to and fro. In the middle of all of this came the realization that he was now holding a club in his hand. A club that could be used for more general bashing. And so, bottle in hand, the baby went around the room, thumping anything and everything within reach. In baby bowling, this is referred to as a "strike."

Overall, I would say that baby bowling was a big success, and we look forward to playing it many, many more times at Nini's house, and never, ever any times at our house, because our house is where we keep all of our stuff, and Lord knows we have a hard enough time keeping any of it intact with just a regular baby running around. I'm not giving him a weapon.

Disclaimer: May Be Fully Or Partially Ridiculous

2012-01-06T10:02:00.000-05:00

This is just a note to say that, to those of you who might be new to reading Tenor Dad, it is often very silly. I have noticed in the comments that sometimes people will respond to something as if they thought I was being very serious, when in fact much of what I write is (or at least is supposed to be) funny.

I will sometimes exaggerate. If I say that Edward hit me in the face ten million times, I probably mean he actually hit me four or five times, but that sounds boring so just go with me people. I also will include some things that are not 100% true. When I write stuff lke "I am going to sell my children to the highest bidder," I am totally kidding! Ha ha! Very funny! See?

And some stuff is just in there for pure silliness. I recently wrote a post about the hymnals at my Dad's church, and somebody tried to explain to me that the hymns I had taken issue with as being "pop music," were in fact different songs than the popular ones on the radio. Now look, I know this. Do you seriously think I do not know that the classic carol "Joy to the World" is not the same song as "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night? Of course I know that! I am just being ridiculous!

So if you are the kind of person that does not enjoy a dose of silliness now and then, I would advise you to go read some boring article about (insert whatever you find boring here - I'm not putting anything specific in because I know someone will be furious about it). But if you like things that are ridiculous, then welcome to Tenor Dad!

I Am Spock

2012-01-05T10:12:00.000-05:00

I grew up on Star Trek, both the original series and everything subsequent, and my favorite character was always that half-human, half-vulcan science officer, Mr. Spock. It never really occurred to me to wonder why he was my favorite, but I think I have finally figured it out anyway. I am Spock. No, I don't have pointy ears, and I don't have a sixties haircut, but I do have a human mother and a vulcan father. At least I think I do.

My mother is a being of much emotion and very little logic. She does not like to, you know, think things through. If she has a feeling about something, she is probably going to go with that feeling, even if it makes no rational sense whatsoever. This can be a very good quality about her sometimes, and the rest of the times it will drive you absolutely nuts. I can't tell you how many times I have had this exact conversation with my mother:
Me: "What!? Why would you do that?!"
Mom: "Well.....(nonsensical explanation)"
Me: "Yes, but (sense and logic)!"
Mom: "Oh, well I guess that's true. I didn't think of it like that."

On the other hand, we have my father. A very intelligent man who is extremely logical, he takes every factor into account when making a decision, except for human emotion, which I don't think he entirely understands. He gets very confused when people are upset with him, because in his mind he has made a very logical and rational choice, and he is always frustrated with other people when they base their decision making process on how they feel. If something is the right thing to do in every logical way, except for the fact that it will make someone really sad, he will do it anyway, and have no clue why he is surrounded by all of these unreasonably sad people.

And so then there is me. Trapped between two worlds of reason and emotion. I try to balance them both as best as I can, but I know that I often stray too far to one side or the other. Like Spock, I try and use logic to trump emotion as much as possible, but I also realize that sometimes you just have to follow your dreams, even when it makes no earthly sense to do so. I guess, in the end, even though it might have been nice to have two normal, well-adjusted parents, I'm glad I got both perspectives, and I hope that I can keep myself even enough so that my children won't have to write something like this when they are grown. Because they have plenty of other things to write about.

I Joined a Gym

2012-01-04T10:03:00.000-05:00

I have been to "the gym" exactly three times in my life. The first time was when I was in college and my roommates (who always seemed to be going to the gym) asked if I wanted to come along. I went in, fooled around a little bit, annoyed my roommates to no end, decided it was boring, and that was the end of that.

The second time was about 8 years later, while I was in graduate school. Again, my gym-hungry classmates were on their way to work out for the billionth time, and they encouraged me to check it out. I had a great time. I was wearing jeans, hiking boots, and a superhero t-shirt, and I thoroughly enjoyed treadmill dancing, even though my friends would no longer acknowledge that they knew me.

The third time I went to the gym was this past summer. Everyone involved in La Rondine at Middlebury was given a free gym pass for the run of the show, and I spent one day returning to my favorite activity, disco treadmill (now with more flailing!). And thus concludes my gym history.

Now, I have worked out before. I have gone jogging, biking, rollerblading, and walking. I went to the on-site weight room a few times when I was at Music Academy. But I have never seriously "been to the gym" as they say, on a regular basis.

Well, my wife's new job comes with discounted gym memberships, so all of that is about to change. Maybe. I went over this morning for the first time, just to check it out. I got my membership card and dropped Edward off in the childcare room ($8 a day, so I'm not sure how many days I can afford to work out. Not every day, that's for sure!). I hung my coat up and went over to the fitness room, but here I was met with a big sign reading "No Outdoor Shoes." They take things a little more seriously over there I guess. Here I am, still standing in my jeans and hiking boots, but unable to enter the fitness room.

I figured I would just take my boots off, but reading further down the sign, I also noticed a prohibition regarding socks and bare feet. So I was out of luck. Apparently, one is required to wear proper "work-out attire" to even enter the rooms at this place. I wandered over to the pool, and the spinning room, but you have to sign up in advance to go into those rooms, so again I was left standing in the hallway.

I wanted to get my $8 worth of child care that I had already paid for, so I wandered slowly up and down the halls, reading signs promising a healthier me, and staring at posters of oily, muscly people shouting things like "Never give up!" I took some pamphlets and signed up for a free personal fitness evaluation, and finally after about 20 minutes I gave up and went back to the nursery.

Edward and I came home reluctantly, he because I took away the train he was playing with, and me because I had just wasted $8 so that I could take several sips from the drinking fountain without holding a child in my arms. I guess if I am going to go back I should put together a gym bag of some sort, with sneakers and shorts and whatnot. I don't know though. I want to be healthy and in shape, but peeking through those windows, looking at all those sweaty people on bikes and weight machines, all I could think was that I'd rather go home and write a blog about this than actually do it. So I did. And now I feel great!

Things That Are True

2012-01-03T11:13:00.000-05:00

If you film two movie sequels at the same time and release them separately, they will suck.

Hanging With Friends is better than Words With Friends.

If you are the only person that cares about something, that's still one pretty important person.

Flouring both sides of a calzone dough will make it hard to seal.

The only way to become happier is to remind yourself every day of the good things you already have.

People with children have more freedom than people with dogs.

Everyone is special, but only by about .00000001%

Anything with sugar in it tastes better than everything with corn syrup.

In the case of Nix vs. Hedden (1893), the US Supreme Court ruled that even though the tomato was a fruit, it would be classified as a vegetable because it was generally eaten as part of the main course, and not as dessert.

It's A Wonderful Life is a depressing movie in which the bad guy wins and the whole town ends up broke.

Singing is much harder than working in an office.

If you didn't like the Lost finale, you didn't understand the point of the show.

Feelings of worthlessness may sometimes be reduced by doing something worthwhile.

A picture is worth 1000 words, which is why paintings cost more than books.

If you were an ancient Mayan and you were making a calendar, eventually you would probably stop and say "I think we've gone far enough. Everyone here will be dead by 2012 anyway. We'll just have some future Mayans extend it later, maybe in the 1800's or something."

What Our Kid Selves Can Teach Our Confused Adult Selves

2012-01-02T10:02:00.000-05:00

While I was at my mother's house on New Year's Eve, on one hand celebrating the ending of 2011 and on the other celebrating Christmas with my brother, I was given a gift. I don't know if she just wanted it out of the way, but while I was eating frozen shrimp and playing board games, my mother gave me my baby book.

I have seen my baby book before. My mother kept it up all the way through high school, so the last page has the list of my high school graduation presents; a nice bookend to the list of shower presents at the beginning. But for some reason, I was seeing it through new eyes this weekend. Maybe it was the sense of new year's reflection in the air, or maybe it was a general restlessness and slight dissatisfaction in my soul, but as I flipped through old report cards, immunizations records, and grade school projects, I started receiving a message from my younger self.

Many of the things I found just made me smile as I noticed how little some things change over the years. One glowing report card had the lone sour grade for "map skills," which is still pretty true to this day. Under my dislikes, my mother had written in that at age 8 months, I disliked being alone, going to bed, and finishing eating, which made my wife snort-laugh and comment that nothing had changed much since then. But then some things started to surprise me.

As I have mentioned before, math was always my thing growing up, and music seemed a natural extension of that. I was on the math team and took advanced math courses at UVM while I was still in high school. But to my surprise, on all of my tests and report cards, my verbal scores were higher. My 1st grade report card shows my math levels on track, and my reading level as advanced. My verbal SAT score was 40 points higher than my math score (which I remember thinking odd at the time). My baby book is full to the brim of short stories, cartoons & comics, and poems that I had written, and I suddenly remembered just how much I loved reading and writing. I mean, I like it now too, but back then it was a passion!

I found summer reading list books provided by the local library, but instead of filling up one book, I had filled up three or four each summer, sometimes reading as many as 100 books in one season, but I think the thing that really got to me was finding my 2nd grade evaluation. I read the sentence "He is a powerful reader and seems most contented when he's reading." and it hit me. That's right! I remember now! Reading and writing make me really happy! Blissfully, euphorically happy! How could I have forgotten this?

I've never truly forgotten, of course. I still read (although not as much as I would like to) and I started writing this blog, which has become a true source of pleasure for me every day, but it makes me realize that maybe what I should have been doing all along is writing. And by writing I mean music too. Books, a comic strip, operas, librettos, children's stories, parody songs, screenplays, educational videos, newspaper articles, you name it! I want to write them all! I did math for so many years, maybe I forgot how much I loved to read and write. But now I remember again.

I don't really do New Year's resolutions, but I do do New Year's goals and state of mind changes, and I want to tell you right here, right now, that this year I am going to spend more time writing. I am going to start a project, and actually finish it. Maybe I will try to get something published. Maybe I will just put stuff on the internet. But I feel a renewed energy about creating and writing again, and I just wanted to tell my younger self, message received buddy. I remember now, and I'm on it.

The Closing of the Year

2011-12-30T10:06:00.000-05:00

So that's it. 2011 is pretty much over. The next time I write and post something, it will be in 2012. END OF DAYS! Or not. I guess we'll see. But whether we all explode in a Mayan fireball, or just slowly kill our own selves off by drilling pipelines and shopping at Wal*Mart, the passing away of one year and the beginning of another is a good opportunity for reflection.

A lot of things have happened this year, some good and some bad, and as luck would have it, I have chronicled them all right here in the pages of Tenor Dad. This is good news for me because it means that I don't have to actually try to remember anything; I can just flip through old posts to recall major life events, such as:

I Started Singing in Florida
My first blog posting of 2011 detailed my plane ride to Florida for my first of what would be three shows with St. Petersburg Opera during 2011.

We Moved (again)
After moving to Vermont in 2010, we finally stopped burdening my sister-in-law and found a place of our own in February.

I Found a Job
I thought that I was looking for an impossible job, but somehow I found one. Now I just need another one or two more, and I'll be set.

My Car Hit 200,000 Miles
Let's hope that 2012 includes a new car.

Family Road Trip
For some reason, I thought that it was a good idea to drive from Florida to Vermont with a car full of my family. And actually, it was a good idea.

I Fell Off the Stage
Had a great time singing in La Rondine with the Opera Company of Middlebury. Oh yeah, and I fell off the stage.

Cookies
Ruby started her own internet cooking show. The world will never be the same.

The Ocean Ate My Phone
Yeah, so that sucked.

Ruby's Epilepsy
Between Edward's ear infections and subsequent surgery, and Ruby's epilepsy diagnosis, we saw a lot of doctors this year. Thankfully things are (mostly) under control, and we're looking forward to a healthy 2012!

Hurricane Irene
We had a super fun time evacuating our house this year. We all enjoyed it, but I'm not sure if we would do it again. Maybe it can be an every-other-year type of thing.

Ruby Started School
We just got Ruby's report card (well, I mean whatever passes for a report card in pre-school) and she's doing great! To paraphrase: Ruby is the best child on Earth and she will someday rule us all, but benevolently and because we want her to. At least that's how I read it.

I'm Giving Up Coke!
This may not seem like a major life event to some of you, but believe me, it has had more effect on me than the hurricane.

I Started a New Line of Educational Videos
Well, not really. But I did make a lot of fun videos in 2011, and this is just the most recent.

So a lot happened. The Met hired me. Ruby started a Tumblr account. I was on TV. Way more stuff than I can fit on this page. But luckily for you, it's all saved right here for you, and for those of you who are stalking me, there could not be a better resource.

Happy New Year everybody! I hope that 2011 was a good year for you, but even if it wasn't, we all get to start over this weekend. So take the time to think about what you want your life to be like, and then just do it. Go for it. Before the planet is destroyed by a Mayan fireball.

Bouncing Off A Truck

2011-12-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I checked the weather forecast and was told that there was a chance of some snow flurries and probably a lot of wind. At noon, they had issued a wind warning and said that maybe we would get an inch of snow. By the time I left for work it was snowing pretty consistently and they were telling people to stay off of the roads.

They closed the interstate by my house due to icing and several major accidents, and as the weather worsened (and more severe warnings were issued), I sat at the customer-free pizza place, wondering why I was there. It was suggested that we close early, but every time it seemed like that might happen, a lonely customer would straggle in and order a cup of soup, so the boss kept us open.

Finally, when the weather reports were predicting snowfall of up to an inch an hour and gusting wind chills of 25 below, and the store was completely cleaned, mopped, and ready to be locked up, we closed up early and I started the long, treacherous drive home.

I should explain up front that my car does not belong in weather of any kind. It is a soft top convertible that leaks severely at even the softest rain, and the tires resemble Patrick Stewart in their baldness. The previous owner told us when he sold it to us that he never took it out in winter, but rather kept it in a garage covered up, because even in the best conditions, with new tires and recent tune-ups, this car was no good in the winter. All of this weighed heavily on my mind as I drove off into the night.

The first half of the drive was scary, but manageable. I drove about 25-30 mph through the 40-50 mph zones, and though I slipped and slid a little, I am a good enough winter driver to ride the skids and control the vehicle, even in less than favorable conditions. When I finally reached the state highway that I live on, I was fairly confident that I would survive the rest of the journey.

That all changed when I pulled onto Route 2. I had about 4 miles to go before my house, and there were several obstacles to overcome on the way. The first problem was that the interstate had been closed, and so all of the traffic was rerouted onto this road, and all of it coming right at me. A solid line of huge trucks, little cars, SUVs, and everything else in between were shining their lights in my eyes and taking up more than their fair share of the road.

The second problem was that, perhaps because of all the oncoming traffic, their lane was mostly free of snow, but my lane was covered with inches of snow, slush and ice, and since nobody was driving my way but me, it was all I could do to drive in a straight line at about 10 mph.

I chugged along slowly, trying very hard not to crash into anybody, and I was doing okay until I was about a mile and a half from my house. That was when I got to the hill. The big hill. The one that is scary even on a bright summer day, because it is super curvy, super steep, and cars whip around it going 60 and you can't see them coming. Nobody was going 60 last night, but it didn't matter.

I tried to brake as I crested the top of the hill, but to no avail. I was only going 10-15 mph, but I quickly realized that I had no control of the car as I accelerated to 20-25, despite pumping the brakes as frantically as I could. The car started careening back and forth as the steering wheel stopped serving any sort of purpose, and of course, as luck would have it, there was another huge column of cars heading my way in the other lane.

When I first slammed into the guard rail I heard a huge noise and I was sure that my tire had blown, and I bounced over into the oncoming traffic lane, miraculously just as there was a small break in the traffic, and right when I thought I might get hit by something, the car swerved back into my lane, and back into the guardrail. Going faster, I bounced a bit harder this time, off of the guard rail and back toward the oncoming traffic. This time there was a big truck in the other lane, which I hit.

I bounced into the truck, and the bounce threw me back into my lane, and somehow I was going straight again. I couldn't stop, so I kept going, and the snow from my roof had shaken down and obscured my rear windshield, so I don't know if the truck stopped either, but I suspect it couldn't have stopped any more than I could have, even if it had wanted to.

Once I reached the bottom of the hill, there was the problem of getting up the next hill, and it was then that I was sure that my car was not going to survive. I got about a third of the way up the steep incline when the car started to really slow down, and by the time I was 80% of the way up, the car was not moving, but just spitting snow out of the spinning tires.

I was afraid that if I stopped and got out that the car would slide back down the hill again, so I just started pumping the gas pedal in spurts, and eventually I made it up the hill, an inch at a time. I wasn't sure if the problem was my tire, or just general automotive destruction, but once I got to the top of the hill, the car seemed to be going forward, and being a mile from home in a snowstorm with wind chills of 25 below, I was going to ride that sucker as far as it would take me.

I made it home with no problem after that, and when I got out to examine the car, I found no damage whatsoever. The tire seems fine, and there is not a scratch to be found. So......that was weird.

The Best iPhone Apps for Kids

2011-12-28T10:01:00.000-05:00

The iPhone is, to modern day parents, what I'm sure the pacifier was to parents of the early 1900's. A life saving (or at least sanity saving) device that will keep your children quiet on long car (or horse & carriage) trips, as well as a welcome distraction for those times when you need them to be quiet for more than five minutes.

I have scoured the internet to find out what people think are the top apps for kids, and I will also tell you what works for our family, so you too can pacify your child through the wonders of modern technology.

Travel Savvy Mom has a good list, but I notice that all of her selections cost money. That's fine for some people I suppose, but at our house we prefer the free apps. I might check out that geocaching app though, since my wife and I do enjoy it. If you haven't tried geocaching, I highly recommend it as a fun and healthy activity, but that's a blog for another day.

Babble.com has a long list of 50 apps, helpfully divided into category, and this list gains authority by placing at number one, the obviously best app of all time, Angry Birds. Kids love Angry Birds as much as adults love Angry Birds, and it is just as addictive for them as well, so you can spend many long hours in the car with happy, silent children using just this app alone. Tenor Dad gives two thumbs way up to Angry Birds.

Parenting.com has their picks, which conspicuously include their own apps near the top of the list, but they do have some great ideas on there. Ruby loves Pocket Frogs for instance, which is an app that lets you breed frogs and then make them hop around the pond, or race other frogs. However, I must warn you, do not let them get the Woooo! Button on a long car trip!

WorkItMom has her list, and MommyBits has hers. PBS even has advice on how to choose apps for your children. My only rule is that I never let the kids use an app that I have not fully tested first. And so now, without further ado, I present to you:

Ruby's Favorite iPhone Apps
1) Angry Birds - Obviously

2) The Monster At The End of This Book - Starbucks was offering this one for free, so I grabbed it. It's just an interactive version of the Sesame Street book that she already loved, and she never gets tired of reading it again on the phone.

3) LetsTans Deluxe - Tangrams for the iPhone. Simple as that, and fun for hours!

4) Songify - Yes, those Schmoyoho guys have an app that turns what you say into an autotuned masterpiece, and it's free! We love this one.

5) Tap Tap Muppets - I think we mostly like this one because of the Muppet songs. We are not very good at the actual game.

6) Pocket Frogs - Cute frogs hopping around. 'Nuff said.

7) Fog Window - Drawing on a virtual foggy window. Almost as much fun as drawing on an actual foggy window.

8) SpawnGlow - Basically just shiny lights flitting about the screen that you can control.

9) String Augmented Reality Showcase - This takes a little more work, but is pretty amazing. You print out on pieces of paper some images from their website, and then when you point your phone at those images, 3D stuff starts to happen. Our favorite is the dragon, which flys around your house. You can take pictures of it too. It's free and it looks like this:

10) Virtuoso Piano - Or any musical instrument. Kids love to make music, so any sort of piano, flute, etc. is super fun.

I'm sure there are tons of other great apps out there that kids would like, so feel free to share your favorites. We always love new ideas! Oh, and if you have a Droid or something, then you can just read the list and be sad that you do not have an iPhone. And then probably go download them all on the Droid anyway.

The Two Worst Kinds of People

2011-12-27T09:03:00.000-05:00

If there is one thing that I hate, it's the kind of person who expects me to be able to do something, just because they are able to do it. Time and time again I run into situations in which someone is rolling their eyes at me, or giving me dirty looks, just because I didn't see the solution that was so obvious to them. If you can do a task in five minutes and it takes me ten, it might not be because I am an idiot. It might just be because you have done it more than I have, or your mind/body is better suited to that particular task. I am so tired of the condescension and annoyance handed down to me by people who think they are better than me based on their ability to do one stupid thing, or the fact that they thought to move something to a more convenient place before I did. Get off your high horse and try treating people with respect.

The other kind of person that I just can't stand is the kind of person who is unable to perform even the most simple of tasks in a competent manner. Seriously, how complicated is the self checkout lane at the supermarket? It took me probably 3 seconds to master that technology, and I don't have time to sit around and wait for you to join the 21st century. I have groceries to buy! And why on Earth would you put that thing over there, when it clearly makes no sense, and you would have saved us both several extra minutes of work if you had just put it over here? It doesn't take a genius level intelligence to figure some of this stuff out. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but good gravy people, use your brains! If I can do it, I don't see any reason why you would not be able to do it. These are the basics of life! Let's apply some critical thinking for Pete's sake!

Oh, and hypocrites. I forgot about hypocrites. Okay, the THREE worst kinds of people. Sorry.

The First Annual Christmas Eve Scavenger Hunt

2011-12-26T07:56:00.000-05:00

This year, we started a new tradition with my wife's family. In past years we had played a Shop and Swap Christmas Game on Christmas Eve, where everyone goes somewhere, splits up, and buys a little gift (under $5) for every other player. At the end, we would go home for lunch, wrap the presents, and have a mini-pre-Christmas before church and bedtime. This year we decided to change it up.

My wife and I came up with a list of 8 things and we split into two teams after a nice Christmas Eve breakfast together. I was on a team with my wife's two sisters, Ruby, and my nephew Avery, My wife was on a team with her mother, Edward, and our brother-in-law Dave. The list was as follows:

1) Buy a gift for each member of the other group. (This way we all still get one thing to open at lunch.)
2) Sing a Christmas Carol to a store clerk.
3) Take a group picture with a Santa.
4) Take individual pictures of each group member standing on a rock on Church Street.
5) Take a picture of someone in the group holding a holiday DVD.
6) Take a picture of someone in your group wearing the ugliest Christmas sweater you can find.
7) Take a picture of 3 kings.
8) Take a video of your group dancing around a Christmas Tree.

It was a huge success. Everyone got to spend a fun hour out among the bustling Christmas Eve shoppers, embarrassing themselves and laughing, and we ended up with a lot of great photo and video memories that I obviously edited into a video montage set to holiday music. I can't wait to see how the game evolves next year, when we pass the organizational reins off to another family member, but either way I think we have found a great new tradition that we'll be playing years from now. Merry Christmas everyone!

Cookies S01E04 - Cornflake Wreaths

2011-12-23T08:05:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! This is my last posting before the big event, and so I would like to leave you with this gift: a special Christmas episode of "Cookies." In reality, Ruby and I made several types of cookies this Christmas, including several batches of caramel bars, candy cane cookies, peanut butter Hershey's Kiss cookies, and more, but we did not have time to film all of that. What we did film is the making of my personal favorite this time of year, Cornflake Wreath Cookies. Enjoy, and I'll see you all on the 26th!

Edward's Million Dollar Idea

2011-12-22T08:11:00.000-05:00

I knew that my 21 month old son was smart, but I wasn't aware of just how brilliant he was, especially in an entrepreneurial way. Yesterday, while I was trying to clean the kitchen, Edward came up with a million dollar idea.

The idea is very simple. What if, instead of having to season all of your food when you are cooking it, you instead seasoned the utensils?! I have never seen pre-seasoned forks or spoons in a store before, so I don't think anyone else has come up with this idea yet. Sheer brilliance! Every bite would be exactly seasoned the way you want, and you could have forks with more or less seasoning on them, depending on the desires of the diners! Who do I call to make this happen?

Oh, and did I mention that Edward told me about this idea, using his own unique communication style? That's right. He poured all of our salt into the silverware drawer. ALL of our salt. This sent me the message that he wanted to start a seasoned utensils business. Message received, little buddy. Message received.

Now, if anyone can tell me what he meant when he later emptied our trash can into the toilet, it would be much appreciated.

Christmas Delilah

2011-12-21T09:09:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure how many of you out there are familiar with Delilah, the syndicated radio hostess who runs a romantically themed call-in show, but I personally think that her show is ridiculous, and I do not listen to it. At least, I don't listen to it during 11 months of the year.

During those eleven months, Delilah will take calls from people who have just had a break-up, or just got engaged, or are missing their special somebody-or-other, and she gets their stories and then picks out a song for them to listen to. These songs are always sappy, overly romantic, and generally not my cup of tea. If you enjoy listening to Delilah, then look, I have no problem with that. I just don't like it myself. At least, I don't like it until Christmas time.

For the Christmas season, Delilah updates the music on her show to all Christmas songs, all the time. I like Christmas songs, so this is already an improvement to me, but the best part of all of this, is that the format of the show remains the same. So what happens is, somebody calls in because their boyfriend is overseas in the military and they miss him, and they want to tell Delilah about it. Delilah listens very thoughtfully, says some nice things, and then says "I'm going to play a special song for you and your man tonight, and I know that wherever he is, he can feel the love you're sending his way right now." And then she will play "Frosty the Snowman."

I'm not saying that all of her song choices are inappropriate, but there are only so many lovey-dovey holiday songs out there, so sure, when the first couple of the night calls in and says that they are all snuggled up together and loving each other up, Delilah can put on "Baby It's Cold Outside," but by the time the show has been on for a few hours, and she has used up "All I Want For Christmas Is You," and when some lovesick person calls in crying because this is their first Christmas alone after a horrible break-up, Delilah has no choice but to put on "Sleigh Ride."

I love listening to Delilah at Christmastime. I love the way she lets her listeners ramble on about stuff. Just last night I was listening on the way home from work, and some girl called in and said (I swear) "I just want to say Merry Christmas to all your listeners out there, and to let them know, that rich or poor, even if they have no roof over their heads, that I hope they had a great year, and they know what this season is all about. Even if they have no presents, the true presents are in their hearts and they can still get together with loved ones this holiday season." I think she rambled a bit more than that, but all I could picture was some poor guy in a cardboard box, somehow listening to the radio, with no loved ones to visit, and thinking what a great year he did not have, as he is now living in a cardboard box. Although I guess he might be grateful that his deluxe box has a radio in it.

So I will continue to listen to Delilah make awkward dedications. I will continue to listen to her callers say ridiculous things on the air. And I will continue to listen to the wonderful music that she plays. At least until December 26th.

Yes, Ruby, There Is A Santa Claus

2011-12-20T13:04:00.000-05:00

So Ruby came home from school the other day and said something horrifying. She said "Van told me that Santa Claus isn't real." Seriously!? She's in pre-school! I didn't think I'd have to deal with this until at least kindergarten! Well, I just leaned back and said "Now why do you think he said something like that?"

Ruby quickly said "I don't know! Of course Santa Claus is real; he lives at the North Pole!". Phew! Crisis averted. Since we all seemed happy with this resolution, I changed the subject and forgot about it.

But then yesterday she came home from school again, and said "Van says that Santa Claus was really old and he died!" Let me tell you, Van is not winning any points in my book at this point. So I said "Maybe Santa never brought Van a present because he is so naughty." Yeah, I know I shouldn't have said that. Whatever.

So Ruby looks at me and says "Well, maybe one Santa is dead, but I think there are a lot of Santas. I saw two at the mall the other day!" And I looked right back at my four year old daughter, and I said "Ruby, I think you are exactly right."

Hymnal Fail

2011-12-19T08:03:00.000-05:00

I was visiting my Dad in Maine this past weekend, and we headed to church Sunday morning like we always do. Since he is the pastor, they notice pretty quickly if he skips a week or two. He is a Baptist minister, but at home we go to a Methodist church, and so his church uses a different hymnal that the one I am used to. In fact, since his current church is a "community" church, I don't even think they have the standard Baptist hymnal that I have seen around either. They use what is called "The Celebration Hymnal."

We sang several things from this Hymnal, but I started noticing some weird things during the service. For instance, in the first hymn that we sang, we were instructed to sing verses 1 and 2. Here is what the hymn looked like:

Now I don't know about you, but I don't see much difference between verses 1 and 2. Why did they even print them as separate verses? Did they think we would not notice that they were padding the hymn, trying to make it look longer? Is this just lazy composing, or sneaky editing? I'm not sure.

But then we moved on to our next hymn, entitled "O Come Let Us Adore Him." Here it is:

Wait a second! That is not a hymn! That is the second half of "O Come All Ye Faithful," masquerading as its own song! That is cheating! Now I am definitely beginning to suspect tricky editors. That would be like me writing a song called "Do You Remember When We Used To Sing?" and just put down the chorus to "Brown Eyed Girl" a couple of times, obviously including all of the sha-la-la-la-las. I'm just saying that I think people would be pretty suspicious.

And on another note, I don't think all of the songs in there are actually hymns. I think they just started sticking random stuff in there to fill space. Like check this out:

Isn't "Higher Ground" a Stevie Wonder song? I'm pretty sure it is. I also saw "Joy to the World" by 3 Dog Night in there, as well as something called "Rock of Ages," which I'm fairly certain is a heavy metal Broadway musical of some sort.

This is all just to say, stop cutting corners, hymnal manufacturers! I'm on to you, and I'm spreading the word! Amen.

A Peninsula, Island, or an Isthmus

2011-12-16T08:05:00.000-05:00

You will all be happy to know that I have been hard at work on my latest informational video, and it is finally finished, just in time for the holidays! This is good news, because it sort of has a holiday theme, Sort of. But basically, it seems that some people have a hard time distinguishing between a peninsula, an island, or an isthmus (especially that last one). Luckily, I've created a song to help them out with that problem. And again, yes, this is basically for nerds, by nerds. Happy Holidays!

Apologies in Advance

2011-12-15T10:59:00.001-05:00

I'm very sorry, but I don't have time to write a blog today. I mean, I want to, don't get me wrong, but I am totally swamped over here. So I apologize for not giving you anything to read today. Please come back tomorrow for what I'm sure will be the most awesomest blog ever.

You see, the thing is, I signed up to do this cookie swap with the MOMS club, and it's tomorrow, and I haven't made any cookies yet. I'm not making cookies per se anyway, I'm making caramel bars, which are actually way better than cookies, but that's beside the point. The point is, that I have to show up tomorrow morning with 5 dozen caramel bars to trade, or I will not get any delicious cookies and I will be the laughingstock of the whole MOMS club!

I would have had more time, except when I went to the store this morning to get my baking supplies, it came to my attention that I did not have any money. Correction, I had no money in the bank. I had checks in my pocket to deposit at the bank, but as that was going to be my stop number 2 after the grocery store, I realized that I didn't have enough cash on hand, or money in my account, to get everything I needed. And since the store will not accept "Me showing them that I have a big check in my pocket" as a form of payment, I had to abandon my shopping and go deposit my funds. This took more time that I had wanted.

Then, when I finally did get home, Edward went on a mad spree of destruction that involved a roll of paper towels, a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, some Double Stuf Oreos, and one or more cats. Let me tell you, it is very hard to bake with all that racket going on in the background.

He is having a nap now, so I am free to bake, except that when I arrived at the kitchen I discovered that all of the baking pans, trays, measuring cups, and pretty much everything else I needed, was sitting dirty in the sink. So now I have to do dishes!

Well, I did the dishes, and Edward is happily shouting in his crib, and I managed to get one batch of caramel bars in the oven, but I still have at least three more batches to do today, and I have to leave to get Ruby from school in about an hour, plus I am working tonight at the pizza place, so I am pretty much out of time for doing anything. And did I mention I have to personally unwrap 144 little caramels?!

So anyway, I really don't have time to write anything for your amusement today, but I promise tomorrow's blog will be really good. Maybe I'll do a new video or something.

Locked My Keys In My Car

2011-12-14T11:07:00.000-05:00

The first time I ever locked my keys in my car, the car was running and I was in a mall parking lot. That was not a good day. As I was in college, and had no AAA, no roadside assistance, no OnStar, and no car/life experience, I freaked out a little. Thankfully, mall security eventually came and got the door open for me and I didn't waste too much gas as my car sat and idled for two hours.

I paid very close attention after that to the location of my keys, but even all my diligence could not stop it from happening again. Just a short 5 or 6 years later, I was doing a Christmas gig with my super-awesome-wish-they-still-existed a cappella group Passing Notes. It was a private party at a church, and we arrived ready to sing and eat and have a good time. Except I locked my keys in the car.

This time I did have Geico roadside assistance, and they came right over to unlock the door for me. And by "right over" I mean 3 hours later. Except they told me it would be within an hour and I had to be waiting by the vehicle. So while my friends and vocal bandmates ate, drank, and made merry, I sat out in the cold waiting for the stupid tow truck guy. I went inside to sing the gig (what else could I do?) and I did get a plate of food, but for the most part, I sat outside in the cold and waited for someone to come and retrieve my keys.

Yesterday, it happened again. Monday night we had come home from Ruby's school concert (which was very cute, by the way, and if I thought you were interested in watching twenty minutes of 4 and 5 year olds singing Christmas songs, I would totally post the videos), but in separate cars because Simone had come right from work. But we were out of milk, so someone had to go out and get it, and it was late and the kids needed to get right into bed, especially Edward, and in all the confusion, I took the kids in to bed, and Simone closed up my car and drove hers out to get milk. And I had left my keys in the ignition.

Of course I didn't notice this until the next morning, when I had the kids all bundled up, walking out the door to drive Ruby to school. I got to the car, put my hand in my pocket, and pulled out a jingling ring of nothing. Frantic, I ran into the house searching everywhere for my keys. Could they have fallen out of my pocket? Had Edward somehow gotten into my coat and flushed them down the toilet? Would they even go down the toilet?

Finally, I thought to check the car, and there they were, mocking me and having a grand old time in the car, while the rest of us were locked out in the cold. So I had to call my wife to come home from work and let me into the car with her key, and then she took Ruby to school while I shook my fist at the sky and thought angry thoughts.

Apparently I lock my keys in the car every 5 or 6 years, so I'm due for another round of frustration in 2017 or so. I wonder if there is any way to prevent this. Can I send a message to my future self, reminding him to stay vigilant about key placement? Maybe I can set an alert on my phone that will go off January 1st, 2017, telling me to keep an eye on my stuff. And would that even work, or would I still somehow forget anyway? I guess I won't know until I get there, but from now on, vigilance is key.

Woodstock Wassail Weekend

2011-12-13T08:07:00.000-05:00

Here at Tenor Dad & Co. we are always looking for fun and exciting things to do, and so this past weekend we drove down to Woodstock, VT for their annual Wassail Weekend. This festival was discovered last December by Nini, who was out doing her driving job and was the first car stopped by the police when they closed the roads for the parade. Being first in line, she had a wonderful view of the parade of horses and as she sat there for over an hour, she thought that it might be fun to attend this festival with family and friends while not at work and not trapped in her vehicle.

Our goal was to drive down in time for the book reading at the local library, but we were late as usual and by the time we found parking (which was no small feat) the story time had already started and so we gave up on that and headed for lunch.

We got some recommendations from the locals as to where we could find lunch, but everywhere we went either had no seating at all, or a long line out the door and a huge waiting list, so we wandered down to the green where we had heard there was chili. And I guess there was chili, but by the time we arrived it was pretty much gone. We did get some food, and proceeded to stand around outside in the freezing cold eating and waiting for the parade.

The parade. This was the main reason we were there, and definitely the highlight of the weekend, and it did not disappoint. We got front row seats (well, there were no seats...or rows either for that matter) for a great display of horses and riders dressed in fabulous costumes. Ruby was thrilled (Ruby quote of the parade: "Wow! I've never seen a unicorn in real life before!") and Edward stopped trying to escape/destroy things for a few minutes to pay attention to the animals. We all had a great time.

After the parade they lit the "yule log," which apparently is code for "giant bonfire," and some guy with an accordion was leading a Christmas Carol sing-along, so that was awesome too. We stood around the fire, finally getting warm and singing along at the tops of our lungs. Good times.

The last thing we wanted to see was an a cappella show at the church, but something went horribly wrong. I don't know if there was a schedule misprint or what, but a handbell group was scheduled for 2:45, and the singing for 3:00. We arrived at the church at 2:50 and the handbells were playing, and there was a crowd out to the door of people waiting for the singing. At 3:00, we wondered if the handbells were going to go long, and how they were going to get all of the people out of the church, and all of us in, in time to hear the singing. At 3:15 it was apparent that the handbells were not going anywhere, and neither were any of the people in their nice warm pews.

We finally gave up and left at 3:20 after some guy yelled at us because our kids were being too fidgity. It kind of left a sour taste in our mouths about the whole thing, and I don't know if the a cappella group ever went on, but I think we still had a good day overall.

I guess, looking back on it all, I would totally go again if I lived closer, and I would probably pop in and out to the events that I wanted to see over the 3 days (there were Friday and Sunday events as well), but living 90-120 minutes away, it might not be worth the drive just for the 20-30 minute parade, even though the parade was awesome. So all of that being said, if you happen to be near Woodstock, VT next December and you notice something going on, stop and check it out. Just get there early for the chili.

The First Rule of Parenting and Jungle Camping

2011-12-12T08:03:00.000-05:00

Check your shoes. This is a life-saving rule that is vital to both parenting and jungle survival. I know that it's not something that one might think about on a regular basis, so I am posting this reminder to all parents/jungle explorers out there.

For the half of you reading this who are currently sleeping in a jungle somewhere, you ought to know that there might be a scorpion in your shoe. Perhaps a poisonous spider is lying in wait, hoping to bite some toes. For this reason, you must bang your shoes out every morning before you put them on, taking extra care to remove all potentially deadly creatures from your footwear before inserting any of your extremities. It might seem annoying, but a memory slip here could prove fatal.

The other half of you reading this, the parents, should know that there is absolutely no telling what you might find in your shoe. If you don't check your shoes before placing your feet into them, you are quite likely to feel something squishy oozing up around your toes. This might be oatmeal, or perhaps half of a banana. However, you are just as likely to discover hard and pointy things hiding beneath the tongue of your shoe. A toy car, some blocks, or even a fork has been known to appear mysteriously inside the footwear of unsuspecting parents. If you are very lucky, you might hit upon something of the soft variety, such as a balled up sock or a teeny beanie baby. But be warned, like the jungle adventurer you too cannot rule out the possibility that your child may have found a scorpion or a tarantula and decided that your shoe was the best place for it. Children are very resourceful in a variety of diabolical ways.

So whether you are braving the wilds of South America or West Living Room, be sure to follow the first rule of any clever and long-futured individual and please, check your shoes.

This has been a public service announcement from Tenor Dad.

The Advent Calendar

2011-12-09T08:05:00.000-05:00

One of the cherished Christmas traditions in our house every year is the advent calendar. The advent calendar is shaped like a big house and it has 24 doors in it, each of which can hold a fun little present inside, and so the idea is that, starting on December 1st, you open one door every day until Christmas. My wife and I picked it up at Costco many years ago, pre-children, because we thought it looked awesome.

The first year we had it, my wife and I bought each other little gifts and we alternated days so that every other day we had something fun to open, and it was a huge success. So much so, that it was a little sad when we had children and realized that we would probably have to give them the gifts instead. And actually, after we had Ruby we kept giving each other gifts for a year or two anyway, because she was too little (we told ourselves).

Eventually we gave in and started putting little presents in the calendar for Ruby every year, and she loves it. I mean, what's not to love? You get a present every day! The hardest part for us parents is finding things small enough to fit into the teeny little doors. Some compartments are bigger than others, but none of them are huge. Socks are a good present because you can roll them up, and candy is always good too, but I suppose that trying to stuff the things in there is half of the fun!

This year is Edward's first year participating in the calendar, which means we had to try and get two presents into each compartment. I hope you like individually wrapped M&M's kids! Somehow we managed to do it, but the other problem that I had not anticipated was that Edward is an avatar of destruction.

Ruby is like me. She loves surprises. I don't think it would ever occur to her to try and open doors ahead of time. Even when she was very little, opening one door a day to mark the time till Christmas was all part of the fun and excitement of the season. Edward likes all of his fun and excitement at once. He is determined to open all of the doors and pull everything out of that calendar if it is the last thing he does. In fact, he has done it. More than once. There have been multiple instances of Ruby running to find me, yelling "Dad! Edward is opening the wrong doors of the advent calendar! I'm not looking! You go close them, and I will stay in here so I don't see anything!" A girl after my own heart. I also hate having my surprises ruined.

Edward does not care about surprises. He is not into delayed gratification. Yesterday afternoon he tried to eat the gingerbread house. I explained to him that we had just made the dang thing, and we would like it to last a little bit longer, but he just let out his primal yell and surged forward again, determined to smash and destroy.

So now the advent calendar has to go up on the kitchen counter, out of reach of children, and not looking quite as festive as it did over by the fireplace. I will be interested to see how Edward reacts to the calendar next year. Is this just a stage that he is at now, or does his personality truly lend itself to sneaking peeks at future surprises? I guess that's part of the fun of parenting, and I'm happy to wait and see, because just like the advent calendar, the journey is the good part.

Does Ruby Need a Tumblr Account?

2011-12-08T10:08:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking of starting a Tumblr page for Ruby's quotes of the day. Any thoughts on this from my rabid fan base? I like my long-form blogging on this site, but I feel that quotes are really too short to be posting as blogs here. On the other hand, many of them are too long for a twitter feed. I do post many of them to my facebook wall, but then they are restricted in who can read them.

What do you think? Is anyone interested in reading a mini-tumblr blog that includes things like this?

Ruby: "Okay Dad, I'm going to count off 1,2,3,4 and you sing any song you want, okay?"
Me: "Okay."
Ruby: "And a-one, and a-two, and a-one two three four..."
Me: "Doo, bee doo doo, ba da ba baaa..."
Ruby: "No, Dad! Not that song! I said any song you want! We better start over."

Reverent Irreverance

2011-12-07T09:02:00.000-05:00

I don't know if any of you have noticed in the past, but I am a bit of a fan of humor. To me, laughter really is the best medicine (tied with penicillin), and I try to keep a sense of humor about almost everything. I am always ready to throw out a joke, or a terrible pun, or some other wry comment, especially when they seem a bit inappropriate, and the only people in this world that I really don't get along with are the ones who don't seem to have a sense of humor.

As a general rule, this has served me well in life, but sometimes I worry about using humor in a respectful way. I am currently involved in writing a 10-12 minute presentation for the Christmas Eve service at my church. It is full of jokes. But how far can you really go when you are going to be presenting at an actual church service? Some people like to take religion pretty seriously, or so I have heard.

I know that people are often saying that God has a sense of humor, but I wonder if that in and of itself is blasphemous. Take this popular Christian joke for instance: "You can tell God has a sense of humor, just look at the platypus." Ha ha ha. Very funny. Except, are you saying that you know what God's intention was? You know for a fact that God made the platypus as a joke? What if God did not make the platypus as a joke? And would it be just as acceptable to say "You can tell God has a sense of humor, just look at Leroy over there." If I were God, I would not want people to be making fun of stuff that I made. Or would I? I don't know, I am not God.

So it seems to me that God is pretty serious stuff. It's not just life or death, it's eternal life or death! People do not want to take chances with that sort of thing. And yet we have Christian comedians, Christian writings with a humorous bent, and 10-12 minute skits that are performed during church services that contain actual jokes. Where is the line? I don't want to offend anyone.

Perhaps the difference is this: we will have to poke fun at things, instead of make fun of them. To "make" something into fun is to take away the seriousness of it, and I would never want to do that to people's strongly held beliefs. But I could certainly "poke" some fun in their direction without making the objects of the jest less serious themselves, right? So maybe some gentle poking is called for. But how do I tell where that line is?

Either way, I always feel some sort of guilt or uncertainty whenever I try to insert humor into an inherently religious situation. Any one out there have opinions on this? I was going through the same problem when trying to think of good names for a Christian a cappella group. How far can you really go when you are trying to lighten up something that is so heavy?

False Hope vs. Harsh Reality

2011-12-06T14:01:00.000-05:00

Today, while Ruby was at school, Edward ripped her special plastic fire helmet in half. The one she got when she got to go on the fire truck at school. So I quickly put it in the kitchen trash, buried it deep, and prayed that she would not notice that it was missing.

So what was my plan if she did ask where it was? Well, I was going to just say, "Hmmm, I don't know, maybe it will turn up somewhere." In other words, lie. But then I stopped to consider if that was the way I wanted to go. Was it fair to give her false hopes when I knew darn well that she was never going to find that helmet?

Then I got to wondering just how many of the things that I was never able to find as a kid were really secretly thrown away by my mother. I recall one such instance very well, although this was not really her fault. We had all made Easter baskets at school, and they were filled with candy, but for some reason I was not at school the day they got sent home. Maybe I was at my Dad's? I don't remember. I do remember coming home and waiting every day for the baskets to come home, and when it had finally been too long, I asked my teacher where they were. She informed me that she had sent it home with my mother almost a week before. When I got home, my mother told me that she had left it on the counter and the dog had eaten it, and so she had thrown it away and basically hoped that I wouldn't remember.

This has stuck with me ever since. I was really mad. I felt lied to. I felt betrayed. I wanted some damn candy! I was in 4th or 5th grade, and I don't think my mother did anything like that after that point (that I know of), but I bet she did before then.

Honestly, Ruby has way too many toys and junk, and she probably won't notice that the hat is gone, and I am sparing her tears and upsetness by not mentioning it to her. Isn't that part of our parenting job? To shield our children from the harsh realities of life until they are old enough to deal with them? But I also don't want her to find out that I have secretly been throwing away her broken toys and then have her be mad. But I guess there is nothing else to do but stay on course until she finally figures it out. And let's hope she doesn't ask about the helmet.

Santa Stampede or Why I Was Late to Church

2011-12-05T08:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, as the family was driving off to church in the morning, my wife was telling me a story of how several people in a row cut her off in traffic the other day and how it made her really angry. I can relate, because I still have a list of people in my head that have cut me off in the past that I will totally ram if I ever see them again. The ironic part of this story though, is that while telling this story, my wife ended up getting angry while driving again, this time at a traffic cop.

We were trying to navigate some closed roads that had popped up on our usual route, and we thought we had gotten around them when we came to some cones. Road closed. The end. But there didn't seem to be a reason for the road to be closed. There was no construction, and in fact other cars were driving down the very road we wanted to go down. When my wife mentioned this to the police officer, she got yelled at, which made her very angry.

To make a long story short, we couldn't get through no matter which way we went, so we finally parked several blocks away from church and decided to walk the rest of the way. Two blocks from church we discovered, up close and personal, the reason for all of the street closures. Away to my iPhone I flew like a flash. Switched over to "camera" mode (video, no flash). And what to my wondering eyes should appear? Well, I'll just post the video. Watch it right here.

Millions and millions of Santas. A Santa stampede. And that's why I was late to church. It's a good thing I got the video, or you'd never believe me.

Take Your Kids To The Muppets

2011-12-02T14:02:00.000-05:00

I try not to shamelessly plug things that I like all the time, which is why I try only to rail against things that I hate, and to never write tribute songs about my favorite beverage, but I worry that there might be a family out there that is not planning on taking their children to see the best family movie I have seen in a long time that doesn't have a Pixar short in front of it. Oh wait, it does.

In order to be fair, I will list everything, good and bad, about the new movie, so that you can make up your own mind, but I highly recommend seeing it. Whether or not you have kids is irrelevant.

Oh, by the way, SPOILER ALERT!

THE GOOD
There is a Pixar short in front of it! A Toy Story short! It is hilarious, and Jane Lynch is in it. I would go see "Twilight: Breaking Bad, Part 7" if it had a Pixar Toy Story short in front of it!

THE BAD
After listening to the soundtrack 87 times in the last week, I have discovered that there was a back story to the villain that was cut from the film, letting us know that he hated the Muppets because he did not know how to laugh. This explains why bad-guy Tex Richman instead says the words "maniacal laugh" every time he wants to laugh. This was clear to me by the end of the film, but the first time he did it, I thought he was just instructing his henchmen to laugh maniacally, perhaps because he was so rich he had people to laugh for him. A minor quibble, but I just thought you should know.

THE GOOD
OMG the soundtrack! The songs are written by Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords, and the film is directed by James Bobin, who directed the Conchords' television show, and you can really tell. I left the theater pretty sure that "Man or Muppet" was my favorite song, and the most Conchordy, but after listening to the awesome rap by Chris Cooper, I felt sure that either the Rhymenoceros or the Hip-Hopopotamus could have sung it and been believable. That being said, Ruby's favorite song is definitely "Me Party," and the song I find myself putting on the most is the big opening number, "Life's a Happy Song." It's so Muppety, so funny, so....good!

THE BAD
After the movie-long plotline about Animal's rehabilitation from drumming, I was waiting for, and expecting ,a huge drum number finale for him to go crazy on. "Rainbow Connection" was not it. It is just too mellow of a jam. I mean, he rocked the drums, don't get me wrong, but I would have liked to see him go crazy on a slightly peppier song.

THE GOOD
"The Muppets" is perfect for all ages. Edward, who is 1, loved it. Yeah, he fidgeted around a bit and we had to move him to a seat that had no one in front of it so he wouldn't bonk them, but he still loved the movie. Ruby, who is 4, can't stop talking about it, and we have had the soundtrack on repeat ever since we got home from the theater. And me, my wife, my mother-in-law, and my brother and sisters in law all loved it as well. There are plenty of jokes for adults, as well as the kids. A perfect example is the use of chickens sing that naughty Cee-Lo song. The adults figure out quickly the "Cluck You" joke, and the kids just hear a bunch of chickens clucking along to a happy tune. Brilliant!

THE BAD
When they rebuild/clean the old theater up, they do it to "We Built This City," by Starship. Now, I love that song as embarrassingly much as you do, but it would have been the perfect spot for an Electric Mayhem blow out. Some of my favorite songs in the previous movies have been when Dr. Teeth and company let loose on some awesome rock and roll, and we never got that in this movie. "Can You Picture That?" "Night Life" "You Can't Take No For An Answer" "........" See? There should have been something there besides Starship.

THE GOOD
"The Muppets" is absolutely respectful of all the old traditions, while updating the feel for a new generation. The things that people like Frank Oz are complaining about are silly. He doesn't like Fozzie's fart shoes, which are in the movie for one second, and are actually used as a way to show that the Muppets don't go there. They are looking for acts and when Fozzie breaks out his fart shoes, they all groan and shoot him down. Perfect for a bear who loves whoopie cushions, rubber chickens, and any other form of lowbrow comedy. And the fact that Kermit lives in a mansion instead of the swamp? Well, "The Muppet Movie" was sort of the story of how he got out of the swamp. He signed the standard "rich and famous" contract. It only makes sense that he would wind up with the other rich and famous folk. The important thing is that his character was unchanged, and he was the same humble and unassuming frog that we all knew and loved.

The movie is already a success. It more than made back its budget in the opening Thanksgiving weekend, so I'm sure we will see more Muppety things on the horizon, and that's great. I just wanted to let you all know that if you are looking for a movie to see with your kids, this is the movie for you. If you are looking for a movie to see with all of your adult friends, this is the movie for you. And if you are looking for a movie to take your teenagers to, well, tell them that "The Muppets" has Selena Gomez in it.

The Difference Between Relative Fat and Actual Fat

2011-12-01T09:07:00.000-05:00

Last night, as I was explaining to someone my many reasons for attempting to give up Coca-Cola, I was told that I was not fat. In fact, people are always telling me that I am not fat when I tell them that I would like to lose weight. That is when I have to point out the difference between being relatively fat, and being actually fat.

Prepare yourself people, because I am going to now reveal some personal information to you regarding my specific fatness, or "weight" as some people call it. When I was in high school I was around 175 pounds, and being 5'11", this seemed fine, but I was actually very thin for my frame. I am not a slight person in the best of times, and my big ol' head probably adds 25 extra pounds to whatever I'm supposed to be at. Suffice it to say that when I went to college and gained 10 pounds, I looked normal and healthy.

I stayed at around 185 throughout college, and after I graduated I slowly gained more and more weight until I had gained over 50 pounds, my highest weight clocking in at 238. So the question was, "Am I fat?" And the answer was actually yes, but relatively no.

You see, the actual healthy weight for my height, as recommended by doctors, is between 144 and 183. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I will always be on the upper end of that, but that being said, if I am much over 185, I am too fat. You cannot contest that, or wiggle around that. You can try to rationalize it, and you can give it a plus or minus 3% for a margin of error (but honestly there is already a pretty big margin of error built right in there), but even then you can only really get to about 190 before you have to accept that you are overweight.

So I changed my habits. I am giving up soda. I started eating breakfast. I don't eat after 8 pm. I stop eating when I am full. I have lost 15 pounds. I am currently at 223. This is good. This is progress, but I still have a ways to go. About 35 more pounds to be exact. And this is what I tell people when they say how not-fat I am. But the problem is, everyone else is fat!

I am relatively skinny. Most of the people I know are overweight, and more overweight than me. Of course one cannot really bring that up in polite conversation, and I do know some actually skinny people, but overall I do not look as fat as many Americans these days, even though 30 years ago I would have been considered a small planetoid.

So this is just a note to say, if you are judging your fitness based on the people around you, you might be kidding yourself, as I was for many years. You may in fact be fat. I know, I know, this is not a nice thing to say, but I am saying it for your own good. It actually feels good to be a little healthier, and I certainly don't miss those 15 pounds. Once I actually find some time to exercise, I might even lose those other 35 that have been hanging around. So do your future self a favor and lose the gut, even if it is smaller than the Joneses.

That's Not Whistling

2011-11-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

It is very loud at my house. I have loud children, and of course I am pretty loud myself. We all come by it honestly (have you met my mother?), but some days it sure does seem extra loud around here. Take the other day, for example, when my children decided to practice whistling. I don't think they were doing it right, but I guess you can be the judge of that.

Just another typical lunch at the Tenor Dad residence.

The Problem With The Problem With Peanuts

2011-11-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

Last week I posted an admittedly non-researched post about the strange new world of peanut allergies that we parents now live in. After writing it, and seeing all of the comments about it, I got kind of curious and decided to actually do some research on the subject, and what I found out was really, really annoying.

My first question, although perhaps not the most important in hindsight, was "Why do so many people have peanut allergies now, when just 20 years ago everyone in every school in America brought PB&J for lunch?" As is turns out, there is no definite answer, although there are a few theories. One study found a link between soy products and peanut allergies, while another found no such link. The most likely answer seems to be that for some reason, a couple of decades ago people were advised not to give their babies peanuts, and not to eat them during pregnancy or while breastfeeding. As it turns out, there is no reason at all not to give, say, your 1-year-old peanuts, and so The American Association of Pediatrics took back their recommendation a few years ago and now says that peanuts are fine for everyone, but a lot of people still think that peanuts are a food to avoid during those sensitive times.

An interesting fact to back that claim up is that countries that generally give their children peanuts at a younger age tend to have lower rates of peanut allergies. So basically, we did this to ourselves with our over-caution.

Ah, over-caution. This leads me to the question I should have been asking in the first place, which is "Just how bad of a problem is this peanut allergy thing?" One would assume that schools with strict peanut rules have a child going there that has a severe allergy, right? There are people all over the place that will drop dead at the hint of a whiff of something that has touched a peanut, right? I mean, why else would there be so many strict and crazy rules at our public and private schools?

Here are the facts about the peanut allergy "epidemic." 3.3 million Americans are allergic to peanuts. Now, that includes people who are only mildly allergic as well as those to whom peanuts are deadly. Does that seem like a lot? After all, it is 1% of America. Of course, 6.9 million people are allergic to seafood, but we haven't banned shrimp in schools.

Every year in America, there are 30,000,000 hospitalizations. Thirty million! But guess how many are food related: 2,000. Only 2000 people per year have to go to the hospital for a food allergy thing, and that is not just peanuts, that is everything. Number of food allergy deaths per year? 150. Number of deaths attributed to bee stings and people being struck by lightening per year? 150. So basically, you have the same chances of being stuck by lightening and killed as you do of being killed by food. And the number of peanut-related deaths per year? 10.

Ten people per year die because of peanuts! TEN! Now, I'm not saying that ten lives are not important, but this is a slippery slope! Want to know the number of serious sports-related brain injuries per year? 10,000! And that's just in children! 2,000 kids drown every year, and around 1,600 die because of gun accidents. Why aren't sports banned in all schools?! Why is swimming allowed?

It is also worth noting that, according to the studies that have been done, secondary contact with peanuts (smelling a peanut, touching something that touched a peanut) do not generally cause any sort of reaction in allergic individuals, and when they do, it is not severe. It is not possible to die from smelling someone's peanut breath. It is not possible to die from eating a pretzel that was on a machine that had touched a peanut. The most severely allergic might get a rash or something, but the whole thing has been completely overblown.

The problem isn't with peanuts, but rather the problem is with our problem with peanuts. There may be someone at your school with a peanut allergy, but they are probably not going to die. And if they are going to die, then I think it is well and good that peanuts should not be brought into that particular classroom. But to ban all peanuts and peanut-related products, and products that were made in a plant that also houses peanuts, for everyone in the whole school as a general policy, regardless of whether or not you have any allergic students?! This is insanity! But how can you go to a school board and argue against the "safety of children?" Well, you can bring the facts.

I think, at the very center of this issue, this hits a place for me that I feel very strongly about. It's why I get mad at airport security, and why I feel that we way over-spend on the military. It's why I am furious about the police brutality at the Occupy events around the country. One of my core beliefs is that freedom should almost always trump security. Obviously there are limits, and we do need some semblance of structure and security in order to live our lives, but when we start giving up our rights and our liberties just to feel a tiny bit safer, then we've lost what I feel are some of the most important parts of this country. So give me my peanut butter back, dammit!

How to Torment a Toddler

2011-11-28T10:01:00.000-05:00

The season of advent is upon us once again, which means that it is time to decorate for Christmas. Yesterday, we went out and cut down our Christmas tree, which did NOT fall on me thank you very much, and brought out the advent calendar, full of doors to open on every December day until Christmas. Poor little Edward.

If you really want to torture a 20 month old boy, simply put a large tree in your house, completely cover it in toys, and then tell him not to touch it. And while you are at it, put in a large, brightly colored box full of fun looking doors, and make sure he does not open any of them. Oh, and if possible, completely cover your house with exciting yet breakable decorations that he must also keep his hands off of.

It's going to be a long month.

Cookies S01E03 - Snickerdoodles

2011-11-25T14:03:00.000-05:00

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday! We did, and to prepare for it, we made pies, and a special batch of Thanksgiving snickerdoodles. Enjoy the show, and come back next time for more Cookies!

What I Am Thankful For

2011-11-24T08:30:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Class Warfare

2011-11-23T10:01:00.000-05:00

The kids and I were eating lunch at Moe's on Monday, because kids eats free on Mondays at our Moe's. That seems like a terrible sentence, but I kind of like it. Anyway, we were at our booth, when a woman and two young boys came over to our table.

"Excuse me, hi," the woman said. "My son recognized your daughter from school and he wanted to come over and say hello." Her five year old son smiled and waved shyly at Ruby, as Ruby focused all of her attention onto her quesadilla.

"Ruby, aren't you going to say hi?" I asked, trying to nudge her in the proper social direction. Ruby glanced up briefly, mumbled something that might have been a greeting, and went back to eating. "Well, it was nice to see you!" I called out heartily, trying to cover up for the fact that my daughter did not seem interested in speaking to this woman's son. The boy gave another half-hearted wave and then was herded away by his mother and brother, out the door and presumably to their car.

"Ruby, do you know that boy?" I asked pleasantly, trying to get to the bottom of this behavior.

"Well, I might have played with him a couple of times, but only on the playground," she said.

"What's his name?" I pressed?

"I don't know."

"Well, do you like him? Did you have fun playing with him?"

"I guess so."

"Then how come you didn't want to say hi to him today?"

Ruby looked up and said very firmly, "He's not my friend." Then, slowly leaning over the table, as if this explained everything, she whispered to me, "He's in a different class."

What I Should Have Said To That Guy

2011-11-22T09:06:00.000-05:00

Here is what actually occurred last night while on a pizza delivery:

Me: That will be $23.79.
Punk: Ok, here's $24.
Me: (standing, waiting incredulously)
Punk: Soooo, is that it?

Here is what SHOULD have happened:

Version 1
Me: That will be $23.79.
Punk: Ok, here's $24.
Me: Huh. You know, you may not be aware of this, but it is customary to tip your pizza delivery driver. We use our own cars and spend our own gas driving over here to bring you your food as a convenience to you, and we don't charge a delivery fee, so what you should do is throw a couple of bucks our way so that we don't accidentally drop your buffalo wings on the ground. Like this. *splat*

Version 2

Me: That will be $23.79.
Punk: Ok, here's $24.
Me: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you wanted your pizza delivered. That's the amount of money you would have handed me if you wanted to pick up the pizza yourself. My apologies, I will take it back to the pizza place for you. See you later!

Version 3
Me: That will be $23.79.
Punk: Ok, here's $24.
Me: Oh no. Please, let me get you 21 cents change. You see, either you are going to tip me, and even a lousy ten percent would be another two bucks, or else you are not going to tip me, because you don't believe in tipping. Zero tip I can live with, but 21 cents? That's like telling me to go screw myself because you hate me. No sir, either you are going to get me two more dollars, or I am going to give you your 21 cents. In the face! *clink*
Punk: Ow!

Version 4
Me: That will be $23.79.
Punk: Ok, here's $24.
Me: Is that it?
Punk: What do you mean?
Me: Well, it's customary to tip your driver a couple of bucks, at least 10%.
Punk: Oh.
Me: Hey, no problem, I will just eat 10% of your food. Let's see, that's 1 of your 10 wings, and just under one slice of pizza. I will leave you the crust. *munch* *munch* *gulp*

Version 5
Me: That will be $23.79.
Punk: Ok, here's $24.
Me: Actually, I have changed my mind. I am not going to deliver this food to you. Goodbye.

Version 6
Me: That will be $23.79.
Punk: Ok, here's $24.
Me: Ok, here's a punch in the face. *POW*

In conclusion, I hate that guy. Thank you.

The Problem With Peanuts

2011-11-21T07:59:00.000-05:00

My daughter's school has a no-peanut policy. But it is not just a no-peanut policy. We are not allowed to bring in anything at all that has even been processed near peanuts. For instance, because Snyder's brand pretzels are manufactured in a facility that also processes peanuts, Snyder's pretzels are prohibited at school. The reason for this, is that apparently some children are so allergic to peanuts that even being near something that has once been near a peanut can make them seriously ill.

To me, this is insane. I certainly do not want to offend any parents out there who have children with peanut allergies, but when I was growing up, such things did not exist. Were there kids out there who would die if they came near a peanut? I don't remember hearing anything about that. I do remember half the kids in school bring PB&J for lunch every day. Why were none of my classmates allergic to peanuts? I mean, I know some adults who are allergic to peanuts, but in the way that you just don't eat them, or if you touch some, you wash your hands.

The stories I hear these days involve life-threatening peanut situations, and it makes me think: what is different? What are we putting into our bodies, and our children's bodies, that is causing this new and horrifying allergy? What are we breathing? What is in our food? It's really scary, actually.

What I don't understand (and admittedly, I have not really researched this) is what is going to happen to these kids as adults. Do they grow out of this, or will they have to spend their whole lives in bubbles, avoiding Reese's Pieces and Thai restaurants? I find it incredible that schools will go out of their way to ban peanuts, but I don't hear about a lot of office buildings banning them. By my way of thinking, if you are going to go out into the world, you are going to encounter a peanut at some point, or at the very least a Snyder's brand pretzel. How can one possibly avoid peanuts for their entire lives? And what if, suddenly, tons of kids became deathly allergic to corn? Would we ban that too?

Here's another concern: a week or two ago, when I dropped Ruby off at school, she was eating breakfast in the car, which consisted of toast with peanut butter on it, and she shoved the last bit of it in her mouth as we walked across the parking lot. Does peanut butter breath kill kids too? If she had some peanut butter on her clothes, what would happen? I am not going to ban peanut butter in my house, however I also don't want to be responsible for harming somebody's kid.

I can barely imagine what it would be like to have a child with such a terrifying achilles heel. I don't think I would let them out of my sight, if being near something that had been near a peanut might mean their death, but on the other hand, how can one possible avoid peanuts forever if one is that sensitive to them? I'm sure parents whose kids actually have this problem have done a lot more research and have a lot more information than I do, so perhaps you can fill in some of these blanks. I'd love to hear from the peanut gallery.

Why This Is Late

2011-11-18T18:24:00.000-05:00

I never promised to blog in the morning, just that I would do it every day, and yet having fallen into a pattern of morning postings, I do feel like I have missed a deadline by posting so late. But there were too many distractions today whenever I tried to write something! For instance:

5) Edward decided to grab a plastic bowl and, using the scooping method, proceded to empty the toilet water onto the bathroom floor.

4) There was a faux robbery at the pizza that ended up being a misplaced cash drawer, but a lot of time was spent in fretting and phone calls.

3) I was running errands, including picking up my check at the pizza place, picking Ruby up from school, going back to get my check again, since it wasn't ready the first time due to the frantic search, going to the bank to put my check in, buying milk, and many other fun things.

2) I had to get ready for my audition trip to New York, so there was packing to do, and trying to pick out a tie. You know, manly things.

1) But the top reason I was not writing, was because I was madly trying to memorize my Gianni Schicchi aria in Italian. I have only done the show in English, but my audition is for the show in Italian. I figured I could at least attempt to sing it in a language that they would be remotely interested in hearing it in. I think I'm about halfway there, and the audition is in 21 hours. I'll let you know how it goes.

Nipple Hunt

2011-11-17T10:06:00.000-05:00

A baby bottle is comprised of three distinct pieces. There is the bottle, of course, which is the main body of the thing, generally made of glass or plastic, and its job is to hold the milk (or juice, or similar beverage). Then you have the screwy-ony-twisty-holdy part, or the "ring," which is used to attach the top and bottom sections of the bottle together and to make sure that the liquid does not leak out. Finally, you have the nipple, which is the rubbery part on top that you suck on to get the drink out of the bottle.

As far as I know, every time we have purchased a bottle it has included all three parts, so there should be no reason to have more (or less) or any one part, however this does seem to be the case. Yesterday, after all of dishes were done, I decided to give Edward a bottle so that he would take a nap. In the bin that holds all of his bottle paraphernalia sat several bottles, many (many!) rings, and zero nipples. I looked in the dishwasher, where the remainder of the clean dishes were located, and it did contain three clean nipples. That was nice at the moment, but then I got confused. How could there be a dozen bottles, almost 20 rings, and 3 nipples?!

I decided to go on a nipple hunt. I looked under the crib. I looked all around the nursery. I looked in the living room and the kitchen. I found six old bottles that Edward had hidden throughout the house. But each bottle was complete. 6 more nipples, 6 more bottles, six more rings. So even though I now had plenty of nipples, I was still overflowing with extra bottles and rings.

Are nipples like socks? Do you put them in the washer and half of them get lost? I don't understand how I can put an even number of socks into the wash and get back about 2/3 of what I put in, and hardly any matches, and I don't understand how I can wash several complete bottles and somehow lose half of the nipples. Does anyone else have this problem?

Or maybe it's just that the other bottle parts are breeding in the dishwasher....

Coke Rehab

2011-11-16T09:01:00.000-05:00

Hello, my name is Tenor Dad, and I am a Coke-oholic. I am here today to report on my progress in self-imposed Coke rehab, and today is not a good day for me. But before I get into that, let me tell you the story of how I got into this mess in the first place.

I grew up in Vermont, and even though it is a small state, Coke use was still rampant. I don't remember how old I was when I tried my first Coke, but I was pretty young. That being said, I was a very casual Coke user, mostly having it only at McDonald's or at parties. My real problem started in college.

The actual problem in college was that my university did not serve Coke. They were a Pepsi-only campus, and there was no Coke to be found. Normally that wouldn't have bothered me, because at the time I could not tell the two apart and I was not a big soda drinker anyway. The problem was, that for reasons both financial and diabolical, my wonderful institute of learning decided to do away with traditional dining halls and replace them with fast food restaurants. When I went to the "cafeteria" I was met with choices of Burger King, Taco Bell, Chick-Fil-A, and more. These places did not serve cranberry juice, let me tell you. The only choice was soda, Pepsi to be exact. And so, every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I drank Pepsi.

I hated it. I was sick of it. I didn't want to drink soda all day, but I was young and had a good metabolism, so it didn't bother me too much. But slowly and very surely, over the years I became addicted to the caffeine. When I graduated from college and left the university, I still hated everything about Pepsi, but I also needed my caffeine and I had become accustomed to soda at every meal, so there was only one choice. The sweet sweet nectar of the gods that is Coca-Cola.

Now, I know what some of you are saying. Why not drink coffee like normal people? And I say to you, coffee tastes like I am eating a forest fire. I have no desire to pour black death into my throat thank you very much. Even the smell of coffee is disgusting to me, although since I have very little sense of smell I get by okay, even in a Starbucks.

So now I am out of college, addicted to Coke, but many years pass and suddenly my metabolism decides to make me fatter, and years of soda drinking slam my reflux into high gear, and I know that I need to quit. But I don't. I can't. My wife and I decided to do one of those cleanses about 6 or 7 years ago, where we reduced our diet to basically brown rice and some other gross stuff, and it was supposed to last 2 weeks. I think I made it a day and a half before I was balled up on the couch moaning and holding my head. My wife just handed me a Coke, and almost instantly I was restored. End of cleanse, beginning of sadness.

Now I have decided to wean myself off of Coke for good. I know it is delicious, and has been inspirational to me, but I refuse to let this soft drink control my life. My latest attempt has been to try and only have one Coke a day. In my prime I would often have 6-8 a day (more if it was the Superbowl), but lately I have been drinking probably 1-4 a day, depending on the day and whether or not I am somewhere with free refills. But I figure if I can have only one a day for a week or two, then I can start to skip days, and eventually give it up altogether and just drink water.

Three days ago I had one Coke at lunch, went to work at the pizza place, and only drank water all night. I woke up feeling good. This is not so bad, I told myself, and so two days ago, I also drank only one Coke at lunch, went to work, and drank water. Yesterday I woke up with a headache. Not a terrible one, but it wouldn't seem to go away all morning. At lunch, I had a Coke and the headache disappeared. Then I worked again last night and once again drank only water.

Today I want to die. I have taken my migraine medicine, I have lain on the couch moaning, nothing is working. So I just opened a Coke. I feel a little guilty about it, but maybe my mother-in-law has the right idea. She says I should spread my Coke drinking out throughout the day like normal, but just drink less. So I could drink half a Coke at lunch and half at dinner, and that way maybe I could get to the point where I am just having a sip here and there. I hope that works, cause I am not going to make it through today otherwise. Daddy needs his medicines.

Thanks for your support.

The Great Edward Elevator Escape

2011-11-15T08:04:00.000-05:00

Edward and I were over at Nini's apartment yesterday doing laundry. As the morning started to approach its end, it became time to pick Ruby up from school, so I told Edward to get his shoes on. Edward loves to get his shoes on, and he knows that once the shoes are on, it is time to go. After I had helped him into his cute little toddler shoes (he is only 19 months old after all), I turned around for a few seconds to put my own shoes on. That was when I heard the door slam.

I turned back around and did not see Edward anywhere, so I figured he had gone out into the hall as he sometimes does. I finished tying my sneakers and opened the door into the hallway of the apartment building, but I still did not see him. That was when I heard the ding that told me the elevator had just arrived. That was when I remembered that Edward's other favorite thing to do is to push the buttons on the elevator, so I sprinted down the hallway.

The elevator door was about 3/4 closed when I jammed my foot into it, sending the door shuddering back open again. There, in the elevator, was a grinning Edward, who had run down the hall, pushed the elevator door button, gotten onto the elevator, and then pushed the button for the 2nd floor where, if I had not jammed my foot into the door, he would have gotten off and spent the afternoon happily wandering up the down the hallways while his father ran around screaming his name into the streets.

Kids. They always find new ways to surprise you, am I right? And a note to Edward: if you are caught doing something extremely naughty, the maniacal giggling does not help your case.

The Unbearable Sadness of Morning

2011-11-14T08:04:00.000-05:00

I am not a morning person. I fully understand if you are one, and I will never hold it against you, as long as you keep your perkiness to yourself, but mornings are not for me. And it's not just that I prefer evenings or late nights over the early part of the day. I actually despise mornings altogether.

For one thing, there is the fact that my body does not function well before 9 or 10 am. If I have to wake up before 9, I will not be at my best at that time. "Oh, boo hoo," you are all saying. "I have to be at work by 8 or 9 every morning" Well, so did I once. I worked many a job that required me to be in at the standard hour of 9, or sometimes earlier. And I did not function well then either. I mean, I did it, obviously, but my best work was done after 10 am, or probably after lunch if I am going to be totally honest here. This is why I am an opera singer. You never have to work before 10 am.

So there is the fact that my body does not get even remotely tired until after midnight, no matter how sleep deprived I am, and will not function at 7 am. Even if I went to bed super early and got 9 hours of good sleep, it doesn't matter. But bodily bias aside, I just hate everything about the morning time itself.

Now, even though I am not a morning person, I still have to get up at 6:30, or 7, or 7:30 if I am super duper lucky, when one or more of my children comes bounding into bed and jumps on my head. I have tried to adjust to this, and when I am woken up at 6:30, after fumbling around in a daze to get the kids ready for the day and trying to get out the door on time, I am usually at least somewhat alert by the time I drop Ruby off at school at 8:30. But then there I am, wide awake at 8:30, with nothing to do at the worst part of the day.

A few weeks ago, after dropping Ruby off, I decided to go to the grocery store with Edward, and we arrived at around 8:40 am. Let me tell you, there is nothing more depressing than a grocery store at 8:40 am. It's almost empty for one, because most people are on their way to work. The stores around it are closed as well, because no normal store is open at 8:40 am, so the parking lot is eery and silent, like a ghost town. The stockpersons are still putting the food out, so there are palettes scattered around the aisles, and empty spaces on the shelves. An odor of melancholy hung in the air and all around me I saw workers who looked like they might have needed another hour of sleep. It made me want to cry, it was so lonely and sad.

I did my shopping as fast as I could and headed outside, where the morning sun was harsh and full of sharp angles and glaring brightness that was only getting brighter, unlike a nice sunset that is warm and comforting and slowly fading away into beauty. The shopping done, we drove home and put the stuff away, and it was still only 9:30. I had three hours until lunch! What was I supposed to do with all that time!? That is sleeping time! Sure, I could maybe clean up the house a little, or play with Edward, but he wanted a nap, and I really had no amount of useful energy, what with it being so early. All I could do was sit on the couch, wishing I had slept a little later, and before I knew it, the morning had come and gone, passing me by completely. It was time to pick Ruby up, make lunch, do stuff, have fun, be productive, and otherwise enjoy the day.

The day went by, as days often do, and when it got late, my energy continued with renewed vigor, and I stayed up too late again, knowing all the while that I would have to get up early again the next morning. And that was the saddest thing of all.

Hell of a Wednesday

2011-11-11T10:02:00.000-05:00

I woke up with a terrible migraine, head throbbing, eyes throbbing, every sound slicing through my brain like a noisy brain slicer. I hadn't gotten enough sleep, as usual, but I had to get up and head to New York for an audition. I took my migraine medicine, hopped in the shower, and got my things together.

I left late, as usual, and headed towards Albany and the almost 3 hour train ride, realizing about 20 minutes into the trip that I had forgotten my book. The drive was fine, but I got to the station only 10 minutes before the train left, so I raced from the parking lot as fast one can in heeled leather boots, and managed to jump on with a minute or two to spare. My headache was coming back at this point, and since I had forgotten my book, I just decided to sleep.

I also spent some time looking at my music for the audition, as I was going to be presenting a piece I hadn't sung (or looked at) in almost a year, and it was a little rusty. I got off the train at Penn Station and took the subway up to my audition, except I had arrived 4 hours early. I thought it would give me time to relax, warm up, wind down, or something, but I was clearly not thinking. I had nowhere to go to do any of those things, so I spent about 2 hours in a crowded Starbucks being jostled by angry New Yorkers.

I made my way to the audition, arriving about 90 minutes early, hoping to run my rusty piece with the pianist, which I did, and it went pretty well. Then I sat in a hot, dry hallway with no ventilation for over an hour, basically condemning my voice to sound like it had been lost in a desert for some time.

I started with that piece that I had just rehearsed, and it went okay, but I've done it better. By the time they asked for my second piece, all I wanted was some water, but I soldiered on. I could feel the tickle in my throat any time I tried to sing quietly, so I overcompensated by singing too loudly (at least it felt too loud to me), and walked out of the audition feeling like I had wasted everyone's time and kicking myself all the way back to the train station.

Of course I didn't have too much time to wallow, because I had also made the brilliant move of scheduling my return train only 45 minutes after my audition, so it was a brisk trot to Amtrak, where I did make my train, luckily, and another long train ride back to Albany, where I would still have another 3 hour drive home. I would be lucky to get there by 12:30 am.

But I didn't get home by 12:30, because when I arrived back at my car, one of the tires was completely flat. It had not been flat when I left it in the morning, but it was dead now, so I had to change a tire in the dark in a sketchy parking lot wearing my nice suit. It was going okay until I grabbed for one of the lugnuts to finish unscrewing it from the tire and sliced my thumb open. Of course I had nothing with me that would help to either clean off my greasy thumb, or to stop the bleeding. Not even a napkin.

I did manage to get the spare donut onto the car, but they are only supposed to last 50 miles or so, and you can't go over 50 mph on them. Well, I drove 170 miles on that donut, all the way home at 45 miles per hour. I arrived some time after 2 am, knowing that at 6:30 or so, I would be jumped on by one or two children.

This is what it is like to be an opera singer. And I'm probably going to do it all over again next week, and the week after that. But I will probably buy a new tire first.

Should You Learn a New Aria For an Audition?

2011-11-10T10:05:00.000-05:00

I would like to step back from my usual brand of silliness for a moment and talk about an issue that is near and dear to my heart, and which has been plaguing opera singers (and probably other singers) for generations. Namely, should you try to learn the aria from whatever show you are auditioning for, even if you have never sung it before?

I will give you an example. Last week, I traveled to New York to audition for the roles of Don Ottavio and Lenski. In both cases I had previously studied the arias from the respective shows, but never to the point of performance. For the Eugene Onegin aria, I was never really able to get that dang Russian to stick in my brain, and for the two big arias from Don Giovanni, I had worked on them in a few lessons, but they were not memorized and I hadn't really put them through their paces. So I didn't offer them at the auditions. And in each case, I was asked if I could possibly sing them anyway, and I declined, although I am quite good at making up Russian on the fly.

When it comes to matters such as these, I turn to the two people I trust more than anyone in the world, my agent and my voice teacher. They (almost) always agree on everything, but here they diverged. My agent seemed a little disappointed that I had not learned them (even though when I found out about the auditions, I was in the middle of prepping my recital and had no time to work on anything else), and she felt that if I had presented the arias, I might have been offered the parts. The Onegin people even asked if maybe I could quickly record the aria and send it to them, but that didn't end up happening. So my agent really feels that, even if they are not 100% perfect, the people casting just want to hear how my voice sounds in those roles, and I can blow them away with my other stuff.

My voice teacher says absolutely not. You should never just throw something together for an audition. You want to showcase you at your best, and some of my arias I have been working on for years! It generally takes at least 4 voice lessons or coachings on something before I really feel that I am doing it up to par, and I spend a lot of intensive work on adjusting the tenuto here, or fine-tuning a portamento there. I spend time perfecting every phrase, and I think it shows (most of the time) in my auditions. According to my voice teacher, if you bring in something moderately close to the style of the show they are doing, and they can't figure out if you would also be good singing that show, then they are idiots and that is their problem.

He also says that it is not worth spending the time and energy learning an aria from a show that is not done very often, or that you will probably not sing a lot. Of course, if they are doing Faust, and I already know the aria from Faust, absolutely I should bring it. Duh. And he agrees that I ought to learn the Don Ottavio arias anyway, since I will probably sing that role at some point. But I would not present those arias at an audition until I had really worked out the kinks.

There is also the issue of time and resources. If I had unlimited time and resources and was sitting around all day doing nothing, then sure,' I could try to learn a new aria in a week or two, and really work the heck out of it. But I am home watching two kids all day and making pizza at night. I'm lucky if I get any singing in at all on a typical day. But I don't really know what the norm is.

Hey opera singers! What would you do? Do you learn new arias for auditions? If so, do they generally go well? Has anyone ever been annoyed because you did not bring the aria from the show they are doing? I'd love some feedback.

Our First Parent-Teacher Conference

2011-11-09T13:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Simone and I went in to meet with Ruby's teacher for our very first parent-teacher conference. This was kind of a big deal. For Ruby it meant that she got to stay home and be sad that she was not at school (I predict this will change over the next decade or two), but for us parents, it was our first chance to really find out what was going on with our daughter, now that she was spending all of this time away from us.

Now, I have been to a parent-teacher conference before, but I was in 4th or 5th grade, and I wasn't really supposed to be there. My mother had gone to the conference, and since we lived literally across the street from the school, I was in charge of making dinner. I was making hot dogs, and I knew that you had to boil them for 5 minutes, however I didn't feel like getting the pot out, so I decided to microwave them for 5 minutes instead. I don't know if you have ever microwaved a hot dog for 5 minutes before, but after maybe 3 or 4 minutes, you will start to notice thick black smoke flowing out of the device, and I at once realized that I had probably burned the house down, so I did the only thing I could think of, which was to run across the street, race around the school until I found the room my mother and teacher were in (thank goodness for giant plate glass windows), and flail around wildly in the air until someone noticed me. You will be happy to know that the house survived, although the hot dogs did not.

Well, anyway, this was going to be my first conference as a parent, and I was nervous. I was 99% sure that Ruby was a model citizen, the smartest, funniest, most helpful (and tallest) person in her class, and that we were going to receive a glowing review. But then there was always that thought that, well, maybe we were going to be horrified. Perhaps she was a mean bully who never shared and called people nasty names. Maybe she was an annoying tattletale with no friends who liked to boss people around. What if she wasn't picking up the concepts she was supposed to be mastering?! What if, as soon as she leaves our house and my personal guidance, she completely falls apart as a human being!?

Now, that was only the 1% speaking there, and I was still 99% sure that she was fine, but in terms of resources, the 1% was taking up at least 50% of my brain, and nobody was occupying anything, so there was no meaningful change in my thought patterns. Simone seemed excited and nervous as well, so we tried to think up good questions to ask ahead of time.

Since I couldn't come up with any good questions, I resigned myself to coming across like a bumbling dorkwad in front of her teacher and tried in vain to at least think of something funny to say. We walked in and sat down, ready to receive whatever information was coming our way. The reports we get from Ruby are things like what she had for snack, and which story they heard that day, but now it was time for a better progress report.

And you know what? She was fine of course. Super smart, super happy, gets along well with everyone, reaches out to her classmates to either help them, or ask for help. Totally well adjusted. I knew it the whole time.

How Long Does It Take to Sing Opera?

2011-11-08T10:00:00.000-05:00

It's time once again to answer questions posed to this blog via google search results. One popular way that people find this blog is by searching "How long does it take to sing opera." Since I don't really have anything posted that answers that question, I'll try to provide answers here.

Now, the main reason that I have not answered this question in the past, is because it is stupid and makes no sense. "How long does it take to sing opera?" I'm going to need you to be more specific in your search engine query wording, my dear general public. Do you mean, "How long does it take to sing AN opera?" Well, you might as well have asked "How long does it take to watch a movie?" Operas are all different lengths, ranging from short one-act operas that might run an hour or less, to epic Wagnerian 4-part cycles that take millions of hours to get through. Even the same specific individual opera will itself vary in length from night to night, depending on the caffeination level of the conductor.

Perhaps in your query you were wondering how long it takes to LEARN to sing opera. But that too, is like asking how long it takes to learn to dance the Electric Slide. Some people will pick it up in a few minutes, while others will suffer through years of miserable weddings, always clapping at the wrong time and ending up facing the wrong direction, no matter how hard they try to get the moves down. I personally have been studying voice in a professional manner (in that it cost me money) for over 15 years now. I have been making some sort of money singing opera for about 8 years, and I quit my job to study opera full time 5 years ago. 3 years ago I signed with my current management, and I have been traveling around doing opera for realsies for the past two years. So it took me either 13, 6, 3, or 2 years to learn how to sing opera. And I still take voice lessons and (hopefully) improve my singing even to this day. So perhaps it takes more than 15 years to learn how to sing opera. I will get bac to you on that.

But maybe you are really wondering how long it takes to learn a specific opera role. Again, it depends on the role and the size of your part, but I would say it definitely takes more than two weeks, because that is the fastest I ever tried to learn a role, and it did not work. Generally I try to give myself at least a month to learn a role, but if it is a longer role, or more difficult, or in a language I am not as comfortable with, I will try to give myself extra time. But then I procrastinate like all good tenors, so it ends up being about a month anyway.

The only other way I can read that statement, is "How long does it take to sing the word opera?" Hold on, let me check... Okay, I can do it in about half a second, but I suppose I could stretch it out longer... Okay, I tried to hold it out as long as I could, and I lasted about 25 seconds. Not sure if I got a great breath, as I am sitting down at the computer, so it could actually be bit longer. I will say it takes anywhere from .5 to 30 seconds to sing the word opera. There. Are you happy now? I hope you no longer view your visit to this fine blog as a waste of time, and if you have other specific questions for me, well, that's what the comments are for.

Good Names For Christian A Cappella Groups

2011-11-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking of starting a Christian a cappella group at my church. I have sung in, directed, and formed many other a cappella groups in the past, and I miss it. At a recent music meeting at the church, we were talking about doing new arrangements of old hymns, and I brought up the idea of doing a modern a cappella style group that could incorporate traditional hymn tunes and modern musical styles.

The more I've thought about this idea, the more I like it. A mixed group of approximately six voices that could sing maybe once a month in church. Low commitment to start, awesome results. But as you all know, the most important part of starting any sort of musical group is coming up with an awesome name for it. A cappella groups, if they are any good at all, must have some sort of horrible pun in their name, such as "The Tone Rangers" or "Rockapella." The problem I have found, is that when forming a Christian group, one doesn't want to get too sacrilegious, or one risks alienating one's key demographic. So I need some suggestions. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Hymnasium

Hymns and Hers

The 6 Commandments

G-flat Christ (no, wait, that is too sacrilegious. See?!)

The Beat Attitudes

The Sermonators

Psalmthing Good

Choir We Even Here

Hymnastics

The Amazing Gracenotes

Deuterockin' Me

The Bible Belters

A Choired Taste

The Acappostles

Baptism By Choir

Okay, that's what I've got so far. What do you think? Do you have better ideas? Which ones are your favorites? Once the name is picked out, I can, you know, arrange some music, find some people to be in the group, rehearse, and all that other important stuff, but I can't do anything until I know what terrible thing we will be called!

I Need New Glasses

2011-11-04T09:16:00.000-04:00

It has been a while since I got new glasses. For one thing, my wife's insurance at her old old job had great vision insurance, but the insurance at her old job did not include vision or dental. Now she has a new job which does include these things, but it has been almost two years since I had an eye exam and new glasses. But this is not why I need new glasses.

I have young children, and they are always grabbing my glasses off of my face, or bringing them to me with their fingers on the lenses, so the glasses have been pretty beaten up over the last couple of years. There are scratches on the lenses, smudges, and all sorts of nicks on the frames. These current glasses have been in bad shape for a while. But this is not why I need new glasses.

The reason I need new glasses, is because Edward decided to bring me my glasses yesterday, but instead of handing them to me in a normal shape, I received them in this condition:

Time to find an optometrist.

The Five Stages of Owning a Car

2011-11-03T10:07:00.000-04:00

1) Denial - "I love this car." "This is a great car!" "I am so happy to have bought this particular car!" - Denial is a temporary stage that one enters when one initially buys the car. There is a feeling of false happiness, and hope that this car will be better than the last P.O.S. you just traded away. Denial can last months, or sometimes years.

2) Anger - "Are you kidding me?! I just bought this thing!" "Seriously, car? SERIOUSLY?!" "#$%^&%$*@ CAR!" - Anger sets in once the buyer realizes that their new vehicle has major problems. Perhaps it leaks oil. Maybe to save money, the manufacturers started making the engines out of papier mache. It's possible that you will finally finish your internet research, only to learn that your car has an estimated life expectancy of 18 months. Whatever the reason, you will soon get very angry with your car.

3) Bargaining - "If I can just drive it to 100K miles, it will have been worth it." "Hold together car, I only have 16 more payments!" "I guess spending $5000 on a new transmission is cheaper than a new car..." "If I can just drive it to 75K miles, it will have been worth it." - Bargaining is the stage in which you must decide how long you are really going to keep your car, which you loved so well only two stages ago. Sometimes this stage involves negotiating with a higher power, such as an auto mechanic.

4) Depression - "I can't afford a new car." "My car sucks, so my life sucks." "I miss my old car." "It is 3 AM and I am somewhere on the Jersey Turnpike in a blizzard. I wonder how far I will have to walk to the next exit...oh, 17 miles." - Depression sets in when you finally realize that you absolutely must have a new car, but also realize that there is no way you can afford one. It is also at this stage that you notice that all of your friends seem to be getting new cars.

5) Acceptance - "Who cares if I can't afford it? I have to have car." "Well, I guess a nice used car would cost less than a new engine." "That's it. We're done, car." - Finally, one must accept that their car is terrible and barely functional and begin the process of getting a new car. Luckily for these people, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, because once they have selected their next vehicle, they get to hang out in stage one again for a while.

A Picture of My Penis

2011-11-02T10:12:00.000-04:00

Last night, while I was out making pizza, I got a text message from my wife that included the latest family portrait drawn by my daughter. Ruby, like all children (and adults, even if they won't admit it), loves to draw, and one of her favorite subjects is her family.

Now, we've seen pictures of people from Ruby before, and over time they have gotten, well, I won't say better, because who's to say Picasso's people are not "better" than Rembrandt's, but let's just say Ruby's people have moved along the spectrum from abstract to impressionist and on their way to realism. At first her pictures were just kind of scribbles, and then they became whirling squiggles with parts of faces, and now we are to the point where they include arms and legs and faces and whatnot. Oh, and they also include other things.

Now, I was looking at this picture on my phone, so it was quite small and I might not have otherwise noticed right away, but the message from my wife said "You are on the far right, in all the anatomical glory that she could muster." And looking closely, why yes, there it was, hanging halfway to my knees, a penis. Lovely.

So first of all, I have a few questions. One: Why am I not wearing any clothes? I do not normally wander around life with everything on full display. I did notice that everyone also had a bellybutton though, so I guess we are all naked. Drawing nudes is nothing new for the art world, so I suppose I will let that slide. But then Two: Where is Edward's penis? Is it too small to include? And I know vaginas might be harder to draw, but I do feel singled out as the only person in the family portrait showing off things that ought not to be shown in public.

Now that I think about it, maybe it's better that Ruby's drawings are still impressionistic. I hope that by the time she gets into fuller realism, she will no longer be drawing me in such an anatomically correct manner. But I love the picture. I love that she loves to draw, and I am excited to see her next masterpiece, whatever it may be.

But why am I so short? And how come I am the only person drawn in only one color? And....

Trick or Treating Party

2011-11-01T11:33:00.001-04:00

This year Ruby was invited to a trick or treating party at her friend from school's house. I had conflicting emotions about this immediately. Of course I was excited that Ruby was invited over to a friend's house. But on the other hand, we always go trick or treating as a family. Was this just the beginning of the end? Would she be off on ski vacations for Christmas and spending her birthday on Maui next year? Well, maybe not, but it did set off the signal in my head that she was starting the transition to having a social life that did not include watching "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" with me.

Luckily, as it turns out the whole family was invited, and there was going to be pizza, so we RSVP'd yes and got ourselves excited for some Halloween fun!

First we had to get into costume, which was easy for Edward, since he was going to wear his Spider-Man pajamas as a costume. Ruby had already been wearing her Donald Duck costume at school for the parade and my wife was going to be Minnie Mouse again (to go with Donald), so that left only me with no costume.

I figured if the girls were going Disney, then I should match Edward and be a superhero, but which one? I have so many superhero shirts that it was hard to choose, but Green Lantern seemed easiest, so I cobbled something together and we were ready to go.

When we got to the party, it was packed! That is one popular kid! Several people from Ruby's class were there and she was having a great time. Edward sequestered himself over at the snack table and proceeded to touch every food item within reach. Many of these items did make it into his mouth though, so that was good. With Ruby playing and Edward cause snackstruction, Simone and I were free to actually engage in conversation with other adults, which was weird. I kind of forget how to do that sometimes.

With food eaten and friends played with, it was time for the main event. Trick or treating! Everyone went outside as a group and quickly evaporated, leaving us confused as to what to do. Some families went left, some went right, a few crossed the street, and a couple more were still inside eating. We decided to just get started and the fun began!

We did kind of team up with another family or two, and they were a lot of fun. Ruby walked up to the doors with her friend, and Edward walked up with me. Let me tell you, Edward LOVES the trick of treating. It is his favorite. At 19 months old, there is nothing he loves more than taking things out of one container and putting them into another. All night long he got to go up to random people, take stuff out of their bowl, and put it into his bucket. He was in seventh heaven. The only problem was, he kept trying to take all the candy. He would go back for seconds and/or thirds, even as I would try pulling him down the steps and away from the candy. One guy had to pry his little fingers off of the candy bowl as Edward snuck back for fourths.

When we finally made it back to the party, we were surprised to find even more people there. Richmond, VT is jumping on Halloween, I have to tell you. The streets were packed with kids, and that party was hopping! Well, of course the kids did not want to leave, but it was bedtime, so we dragged them home, and then, to get them ready for bed, let them eat a ton of candy. It was a great night, and I will leave you with this last video of what the kids were doing after I told them to get ready for bed. (Hint: with their glow necklaces on, it was kind of like a rave)

Pre-School Halloween Parade

2011-10-31T11:01:00.000-04:00

Today was the pre-school Halloween Parade. Tomorrow is also the pre-school Halloween Parade, but that's not the point. Tomorrow is for kids who don't come on Mondays, so they can participate too. Today was for us.

We finally (and by we I mean my wife and mother) finished Ruby's costume yesterday, so she was all set for school this morning. You may recall that last year she went as Mickey Mouse, and it seems that her desire to dress up as dudes has not abated, as this year she has decided on a companion piece and will go as Donald Duck.

Even though I did not personally work on either of these two costumes, let me tell you that, from observation alone, Donald Duck is way harder than Mickey Mouse. Luckily we cheated a bit on the hardest part, and found a hat very similar to the one Edward wore last year as Pluto. Anyway, I think Ruby's costume looks awesome, and so I will share it with you.

As another exciting bonus to the parade, this week was our snack week, so Ruby and I made some fabulous looking Jack O'Lantern cupcakes for her class. Since they were not cookies, we did not make a show out of it, but it was fun anyway.

The parade started half an hour after we dropped Ruby off at school, which meant that for thirty minutes I sat in the car with a crazy 19-month-old boy who did everything he could to destroy the interior of my vehicle. I'm sure the fingerprints will come off of the rear view mirror eventually, although I have no idea how to fix the radio settings.

At the appointed time, we stood out in the freezing cold (it was below 32, so I'm calling it freezing, even though for Vermont it was quite balmy) and watched as the children came out in a line, walked across the parking lot in their costumes, and waved to us. It was extremely cute. This was followed by a skit in which the teachers acted out a story called "The Big Pumpkin," and I may be biased, but as an entertainer myself, I can say with full confidence that Ruby's teacher was by far the best one.

Now I'm back home, writing a blog and eating a cupcake. Happy Halloween Everybody!

Ghostbusters

2011-10-28T10:12:00.000-04:00

Last night, my wife took me on a date to see my favorite movie of all time on the big screen. I was only six when Ghostbusters first arrived in theaters, and so I missed out, although I did see it on VHS when I was seven and I've been hooked ever since. I also must say that I missed some of the best jokes when I was a kid, so every time I watch, it is a revelation. It gets better every time!

Now, I'm not sure why Ghostbusters was back in the theater (other than Halloween coming up, but Halloweens have come and gone for almost 30 years without a revival), but I was thrilled. When we arrived at the theater, there were themed decorations and a table full of Slimers and Stay-Puft Marshmallow Men to raffle off to the audience. I didn't win any of them, but it was still exciting.

Obviously I was wearing my Ghostbusters t-shirt and my Ghostbusters belt buckle, but I did enter the theater concerned that perhaps that was a little too nerdy of me. I mean, you never wear a shirt featuring the band that you are going to see, right? That's lame. You wear a shirt from a past concert of a similar band that proves you are too cool to geek out over the band you are currently seeing. So I questioned my shirt choice, and wondered if I should have instead worn my Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark shirt, or at least one of my other superhero t-shirts. I needn't have worried.

No one paid any mind to my boring old Ghostbusters shirt when there were people walking around in full Ghostbusters uniforms, complete with what appeared to be working proton packs, P.K.E. meters, goggles, and all manner of goodies. I wouldn't have been noticed at all unless I was wearing an unlicensed nuclear accelerator strapped to my back. There were little marshmallow men, ghosts, and other fun outfits, and suddenly I wished I were a little more nerdy.

All of this "getting into it" was fun and fine, except for in one case. Sitting directly in front of us were two guys who were just wearing bizarre costumes, unrelated to the movie. They weren't really ghosts, more like post-apocalyptic mutant bandits or something. The point is, one of them had covered himself in glow sticks. I'm not going to lie, it made the costume look cool, but guess what was not cool: sitting in a darkened theater behind a guy wearing a dozen glow sticks. The thing about glow sticks is, you can't turn them off. It was very hard to watch the movie when my eyes kept being drawn to the shoulders of the guy in front of me, which seemed to glow as brightly as the screen.

I still had a great time. I still found new things in the movie to laugh at, and it was awesome to see it in a crowded theater full of people who obviously loved the film. But please, whoever is reading this, never wear glow sticks to a movie. I don't care how cool you think it makes you look. It just makes people want to bust you. And next time, I will.

Edward's First Surgery

2011-10-27T09:02:00.000-04:00

Edward had his first surgery yesterday at 19 months old. After 10 or more ear infections in the first year and a half of life, we finally broke down and had tubes put in his ears. They used to do this for kids all the time, but I guess the current trend is to avoid surgery if possible, so we waited until it was clearly not getting any better and he was diagnosed with a slight speech delay.

In getting this procedure setup and underway, I was dealing with several offices, one being the surgeon's office, one being the main hospital folks, one being the pediatric surgery people, and also a little bit the anesthesiologists. The instructions that I was clearly given stated that he could not have solid food after midnight the night before the procedure, and only clear liquids in the four hours preceding the surgery. To me, this meant that, say, five hours before the surgery he could have non-clear liquids, like milk. In fact, when the surgery folks called to ask if we could move up the time, I told them about the milk, and they said not to worry.

When we got to the hospital and got him all signed in and into his cute little baby hospital gown, I was informed by a grumpy someone or other that all dairy products, including milk, count as food, and he was not allowed to have them that day at all. She did not seem to believe me when I told her that someone in her very department had told me earlier that day that it was fine. Then the surgeon walked by and told us that it was no problem at all. The anesthesiologist came over and told us we just had to wait an extra hour. I have to tell you, it was very confusing, and way too much drama to be dealing with, as I wondered whether or not I had just doomed my son by giving him his morning bubba. My advice to other parents: stop feeding your children about a month before surgery. It's easier that way.

Edward was in a fine mood as we sat out our time in the play area. He was smiling and laughing and engaging in his favorite activity, smashing things into other things. He flirted with all the nurses and seemed very happy to be there. I guess no one told him what was about to happen.

The surgery was very quick, only about fifteen minutes. My wife went in as they gassed him into unconsciousness, and then came out to wait with me until it was all over. Tubes in, fluids drained, good as new. He was awake already by the time we got to him again, and he was no longer happy. They said that the anesthesia would make him confused and angry for about 30 minutes after he woke up, and they were right on the money about that. He basically screamed and thrashed for half an hour, and then calmed down, had some apple juice, and resumed smiling.

I think his hearing has improved already, and, though it is a small change, he does seem to be walking a little steadier now too. Balance is better, hearing is better, and he has not suffered any long term problems, at least in the short term. We'll see what tomorrow may bring, but I think he got through it like a champ, and I am praying for a winter free from ear infections at last.

Pepsi is Not Coke

2011-10-26T09:02:00.000-04:00

Let me tell you a story. You go to a restaurant and order a steak, and the waitress brings you a pork chop. When you complain, she says that they only have pork chops, but they are basically the same as steak. Would you be fine with that?

Okay, that would probably never happen, but let me pose something slightly more possible to you. You go to a restaurant and order a turkey sandwich with mayo, and the waiter brings you a sandwich with Miracle Whip on it. Is that okay with you? No, of course not. Miracle Whip is gross. You do not want that on your sandwich. You did not order that. It has ruined your sandwich.

I think you know where I am going with this. You may know that I am a Coke drinker. The story behind that I will save for another blog on serious addictions, but the point is, when I order a Coca Cola, I do not want a Pepsi Cola, or an Orange Slice, or a Diet Sprite, or anything else besides what I ordered. I am fully aware that many people with unrefined junk food palates cannot tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi, but that is still no excuse for trying to sneak one past the unsuspecting public.

Now, to give the waitstaff of our fine country credit, normally when I walk into a Pepsi establishment and order a Coke, the person waiting on me will say "Pepsi okay?" and I will scowl at them and then order a Mountain Dew. This is what should happen. This is right and fair and good. However, the other day, at a diner in New Jersey, I ordered a Coke, and the waitress nodded and wrote it down on her pad. Or maybe she was writing "sucker," I don't know.

So I get the drink, start drinking it, and say immediately, "Simone, taste this Coke, I think there is something wrong with it." My wife tastes it, and looks around the restaurant. "Oh, I know why you don't like it," she says with a knowing smile. "It's Pepsi." I turn around, and sure enough, behind the counter in back of me sits a Pepsi fountain soda machine. Vendetta!

There are other factors contributing to this problem, I know. For instance, in some parts of this country, people inexplicably call everything a Coke. Pepsi Coke, Root Beer Coke, Orange Coke, it's just crazy. If you order a "Coke" from one of these people, who knows what they will bring you!? This is a serious issue!

And so I hope that by raising awareness of this terrible problem, we can start to eradicate this societal ill. Waitstaff, if someone orders a Coke, don't just bring them a Pepsi and assume they won't know the difference.

Ruby Scales the Wall: RennFest 2011

2011-10-25T12:25:00.000-04:00

For the past 7 years, I have attended the Maryland Renaissance Festival, but it did not seem like a tradition that was going to continue after the move to Vermont. Little did I realize just how much I wanted to go. The real reason behind the trip south after the recital, through the circus and the babyproofing, was to finally arrive at the RennFest.

Ruby has been to the festival every year since she was born, and so has Edward, although for him that's not as impressive. It is a family tradition in the grandest sense, and everyone was excited when we arrived at Revel Grove. I did notice a few differences between this year and past years, but that may have been due to the lateness of the season. We generally go in September, or even August, but this was the last weekend of the festival, late in October, and you could tell.

For one thing, it was super crowded. I have never seen so many people at RennFest, and as I said, I've been going for years. It was hard to wander around, with so many wanderers. Another noticeable different, was the distinct lack of skin. Generally, one can see all manner of people in ridiculous outfits, often heaving breasts upward and outward, and showing off a cornucopia of weird tattoos all over the bodies of the resident population. This year, it was cold out. Everyone was all covered up. Even the people in costume were in lots of furs and robes and capes and whatnot. There was nary a midriff to be found, which I suppose is both good and bad, as the human scenery is of varying quality.

We always try to do something new and fun every year, and this time was no different. Some years we have ridden elephants, tried our hands at the strong man bell ringing game, or purchased cool outfits. This year, Ruby wanted to climb the wall.

The wall was fairly impressive, and Ruby had never done anything like this before, but she was excited as they hooked her into the harness. As she began her ascent, we shouted encouraging words to her and cheered her on. "Grab the yellow one!" we called out. "Move your foot to the left!"

When Ruby was about two thirds of the way up the wall, she fell off. As she dangled in midair, slowly twisting in the wind, she was clearly terrified. From the ground, we continued to shout up to her. We told her to turn herself back around and grab hold of the wall again. We told her that she was almost there, and that she should keep going. And so she did.

Somehow, this four year-old-girl managed to get herself facing the right way again and continued to climb, despite her fears. She made it all the way to the top, and when they lowered her back down to the ground again, she was beaming. I have never been more proud of my daughter.

She faced her fears, she accomplished her goals, and even though we were all screeching at her, she was up there alone, doing it on her own. I can't think of any better indicator than that, that she will do just fine in life. She was thrilled to have done it, and she kept talking about the wall all weekend. And I'm still talking about it now. It was the highlight of the festival for sure. And then we got macaroni and cheese on a stick.

Babyproofing Services Available

2011-10-24T09:13:00.000-04:00

This weekend, after the recital, and the circus, the family and I headed down to the D.C./Baltimore area to see a couple of friends and have a nice hectic relaxing weekend doing fun stuff. One of our first stops was my friend Tracy's house, to say hello before she gives birth to her first child, which could possibly be any second, but will probably be in another week or three.

As usual, one of the first things I said when we arrived was something along the lines of, "Let me watch Edward so he doesn't destroy anything." No, no, I was assured that the house had been somewhat babyproofed, and that there wasn't really anything he could break. What happened over the next hour or two gave me a great idea. We could rent Edward out to people for the purposes of finding out just how babyproofed their houses are! This would be an invaluable service, I'm sure. You don't want to use your own baby, because when it somehow climbs up your cabinet and shatters Aunt Ethyl's priceless antebellum pottery all over the living room floor, you need to still be able to love your baby afterwards. That's where we would come in!

Well, anyway, the first thing that Edward did was to grab the long (and delicate looking) speaker that was sitting in front of the television and throw that on the ground. I quickly apologized, put it back where it was, and told Edward not to do that anymore, because there's nothing more helpful than telling a 19-month-old boy not to do something, especially in a language they don't understand, like grown-up.

Edward, not at all dismayed by the sudden lack of speakers to play with, went right over to a shelf, grabbed a rather sturdy looking animal statue of some sort, and broke the leg off of it. "Oh, it's okay," said Tracy sadly, "I can always glue that. Here, he can play with these cars." She brought out several cars of different types, ranging from hot wheels to what looked like assembled model cars. Edward loves cars, so he immediately picked up the largest and most fragile of them all, and smashed it onto the ground into a million pieces.

Tracy was now accumulating quite a pile of things to be glued, so we tried to steer him away from shelves and tables. We moved the coffee table out so that he could have a bigger area to play in, so of course he stuck to the edges of the room, now finding a beaded walking stick that had been purchased in Africa. He started banging it as hard as he could onto the beautiful hardwood floors, so I grabbed it away from him, and while I was trying to find somewhere to hide it, he went for the shoes.

He put on a pair of rather large shoes belonging to Tracy's husband, and starting clomping around the living room in them, stopping only long enough to start pulling more things off of the shelf. What finally distracted him long enough for us all to have an adult conversation was a bowl of change that he found. He loved to pick the change up and let it run through his fingers, and he loved to bring different coins over to us to show off. I swear if we'd had a money bin big enough, he would have been swimming in it.

So now Tracy has learned firsthand the cardinal rules of decorating with a baby in mind.
1) Do not ever put anything of any kind on a shelf
2) If you own something that was bought on another continent, put it in storage for 18 years
3) This is why you can't have nice things.

If you are expecting your first child, give us a call. Edward and I would be happy to come over and show you just how much destruction a toddler can do to your living space. All fees negotiable. Tenor Dad & Son cannot be held liable for any damage that may occur during consultations.

The Circus

2011-10-21T09:30:00.000-04:00

Parents, I have a warning for you. There will come a day when you will be tempted to cram too much fun into one day. It will end in tears. Resist! You cannot do two exciting things on one day, even if you really want to, and you cannot do even one exciting thing on a major travel day. I mean, you can. We just did, yesterday in fact. But it will end in tears.

Now that my recital is over (it went very well, by the way, thanks for asking), the family and I are going to take a nice long weekend and relax. And by relax, I mean cram as much fun into one weekend as we possibly can. The first fun stop on our journey of wonders was the Big Apple Circus.

The Big Apple Circus came to Vermont every year when I was a kid, and we always went. I loved it. It was the only circus that came to Vermont, and it was a thrill every year. Now, sadly, their touring schedule no longer includes the Green Mountain State, so I figured my kids would not get to experience the same joy that I had experienced as a child. But wait! Their schedule did include, weirdly enough, the Big Apple itself, New York City, and opening night happened to be the night after my recital! We bought tickets immediately.

This seemed like a great idea, especially when the original plan had the family coming down to the city the day prior, for my recital. As it turned out, that was not possible, so my family started yesterday with a long drive to Albany. Oh, how we wished the boy would sleep in the car, but alas, he did not. They hopped a train in Albany for a two and a half hour Amtrak ride into the city. Surely he would nap then, right? Of course not. When I picked them up at the train station, they were all already exhausted.

We decided to drop their stuff off at our car, and then walk across Central Park. Edward always falls asleep on long walks in his stroller. Oh, unless he is in a giant new place, full of exciting people, smells, sounds, dogs, and pigeons. Then he does not fall asleep. He just gets crankier.

We had some time before the circus, so we decided to get some dinner. Simone and Ruby waited at a restaurant while I walked Edward several times around the block, praying in vain that he would finally nod off for an hour or two before the main event. No such luck, and by this time even Ruby was getting whiny. Her feet hurt. Her knees hurt. Her toe hurt. Lovely. And we still had to walk to Lincoln Center.

In a case such as this, when you are at a long and fun event that takes place late in the evening on a day when your children are exhausted, there is only one thing to do. I went right to the cotton candy stand and sugared them up good. This worked well for most of the evening. Edward spent his time running back and forth, up and down our row yelling and pointing at things that may or may not have been there, and Ruby stared wide-eyed at the acts that were being performed in front of her.

Ruby made it through the whole thing. The trapeze artists were her favorite, but she seemed to enjoy it all. The night was a huge success. Edward made it until the final act of the evening, and then burst out screaming and crying, for apparently no reason. Well, he did have a reason. He was tired and exhausted. Simone took him out of the tent, and five minutes later the show was over. We strapped him into the stroller and walked out of the circus, where he immediately fell asleep, and stayed that way until we got back to the hotel. Then we put him in his bed, where we woke up, and then screamed at length until we were all crazy.

So we had a good time, and we loved the circus. But it was a travel day. I'm just saying.

The Case of the Missing Glasses

2011-10-20T12:14:00.000-04:00

Steve stood in the arch of the doorway talking to his friend Marco, as he had been doing for most of the party. It was getting late; most of the guests had started trickling out and Steve straightened himself up, deciding to do the same. Steve was a talent agent in New York, and the party was hosted by one of his clients. He found this man talking vigorously to a young couple about mordents in the piano works of Bach and begged his goodbyes. Steve headed over towards Marco again, unconsciously reaching for his glasses. Not finding them, he asked Marco if he had seen the glasses, and when Marco hadn't, Steve began to search the apartment, slowly at first, and then more frantically.

The problem was, Steve was almost blind without his glasses. He took them off to eat and drink and talk to people at parties, but for the purposes of looking at things more than a few feet away, he desperately needed those glasses. And the glasses were very expensive. Designer frames, lenses hand crafted in Germany, and they had been Steve's only real splurge that year, as he was generally very frugal.

As more and more guests left the party, Steve and Marco were left with the host, still searching almost an hour later. Finally, they gave up and Steve left the party dejected, and stumbled home through cloudy streets past foggy people, trying to see where he was going. For three days Steve suffered through life with no glasses, before finally deciding to get a new pair.

Ten days later, Steve's client gave him a call with wonderful news. The glasses had been found! I wonder where they were, Steve thought to himself. Fallen between some boxes or behind a shelf? No, one of the party guests had called up and said that she had found them among her husband's things and wanted to return them. And her husband? Why, it was none other than Steve's arch-enemy, Flaming Douche Rocket! FDR was also a talent agent in town, but the sleaziest, slimiest, jerk of a guy, and he had always had it out for Steve. Whenever Steve would turn down a potential client, FDR would scoop them up, and there was no love lost between them.

Suddenly, it all came back to Steve. He had gone over to the drink table to get a drink, and found FDR hanging around the liquor, where he had been camping for most of the evening. Steve must have put his glasses down in order to get a drink, and then, why, it was crazy to even think this, but FDR had stolen his glasses! And now, what, his wife had found them, probably wondered where he had gotten them, and was now returning them? Steve was furious.

It was several days before Steve got the glasses back. FDR's wife Eleanor showed up one morning, unannounced at the front desk of Steve's building. She buzzed up to the 12th floor and told Steve to come down and get his glasses. It was at this point that Steve lost it. "Are you kidding me?! You want me to come down there?! I don't think so!" Steve refused to make the trip downstairs, so Eleanor left the glasses with the man at the desk, no case, no note, nothing, and went on her way. The rudeness of these people left Steve boiling over in his apartment, and the cherry on top was when he finally went to get the glasses, he found that his new ones helped him see better anyway, because he apparently needed a stronger prescription now. So he stuck with the new glasses and left the glasses upstairs for good.

This is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. Don't steal people's glasses. It's not cool. This has been a public service announcement from Tenor Dad.

Tenor Dad Occupies Wall Street

2011-10-19T12:59:00.000-04:00

So I'm here in New York for my recital, and I basically had a free day, so I thought, what better way to spend it than to occupy Wall Street? And that's what I did.

Now, I must admit, I had heard that Batman might be there, so that was an added incentive to check it out, but as it turns out, Batman will not be there for a few more weeks. I think I saw Captain America though...

Anyway, this "Occupy Wall Street" stuff is all over the Facebook these days, and even a little bit of the real news (but not really), but I still didn't really know what it was all about, so I went down to investigate. Why were they protesting? What did they hope to accomplish? How were they going to do it?

What I discovered, is that these protests seem to be an anything goes type of affair, where people can air various grievances, but I didn't get much of a sense of unity from it all. There were people protesting the financial bailouts. There were people that hated Obama and there were people that were staunch Obama supporters. Many people were mad about pollution, and some were mad about eating meat, or cruelty to animals, or something along those lines. The "Occupy Sesame Street" people were there too, with their Cookie Monster signs, and there were also a bunch of people protesting the protests, holding signs that basically said "Stop whining and go home." There was even a topless girl in body paint, although I don't know what she was upset about, and I'm not sure they guys she was talking to knew either...

If I had to pick a theme in the midst of all these protests, it's that corporations and unbridled, unchecked capitalism are bad. Now, I can totally get down with that. I hate corporations. I hate the idea of them. A business is not a person, and it should not have the same rights as a person. The whole "It's not personal, it's business," thing has always smelled funny to me. It's as if we can separate our morality and our feelings for other human beings from our greed and money making desires. If I was going to join the protests myself, maybe I would hold up a sign that said "Money is not more important than people." That is one of my core beliefs, and, though I love my country like I love all of my dysfunctional family members, the thing I hate about it the most is the capitalism. To me, it doesn't matter if we have a thriving economy when air and water is polluted, people working three jobs can't afford to feed their families, and unsafe and unhealthy products are being sold to us because they are cheaper to make.

Now, in a world where money is the only thing that matters, or at least the most important thing, this is unavoidable. Money is really only a means to an end, but when more money means a better life for your family, how can you help but try to make as much as you can? We live in a system that has always existed, where some people have more than others, and that will certainly never change. So what are all these protesters (and me, in my mind, with my little sign) trying to accomplish then? I don't know. I still don't know. But what I will tell you, is that in my mind, food and shelter are basic human rights. Back in the caveman days, when there were not stockpiles of food and only so many caves, it was different. But we live in a world where people are being evicted from homes, and the streets are filled with homeless. We produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet, and yet people starve to death. Why? Well, because they can't afford to eat. To me, that is the height of immorality, and why business needs to be regulated. We've seen what businesses will try if they get the chance. They will cut costs, lie, cheat, steal, and deliver dangerous products to us. They will destroy the planet, and they will drive others out of business if they can, with shady practices and strong-arm tactics. There's no defense for this, unless you think money is the most important thing in the world. And if that's true, well, we really have nothing more to talk about.

On an unrelated note, Jesse Jackson randomly showed up and I was personally shoved out of the way by one of his bodyguards! Super cool! I don't know what he was doing there. Maybe trying to get on the news or something. He didn't say anything, but he did look around and stare at people in a serious manner, so at least it's a step in the right direction.

Look! His bodyguard is still glaring at me!

Recitals

2011-10-18T12:14:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow evening, I will be giving a recital. The most important thing to remember about recitals is the "i," otherwise you could have a problem, but the second most important thing to remember about recitals, is the music.

I have to be honest here, I have never liked recitals. I don't like going to them, and I don't like giving them, as a general rule, although I am getting excited about this current one. The thing about them is, it is someone just standing there, singing stuff. Usually, slow, beautiful, boring stuff. This is not what I like. I like going to shows! I like the drama, the sets, the costumes, the staging, and all the other things that ~~distract me from~~ add to the music. With a recital, it is just you on the stage, singing. And without all that other stuff, I personally find it a lot harder to memorize the music. For me, the last step in the finalization of the memory is when I put a show on its feet and start to associate different sections of music with the accompanying stage movements.

Now, some people will tell you that this is part of the challenge of giving a good recital. When it is just you on stage, with nothing but your voice and the piano accompaniment, you have no choice but to create the drama yourself, or else die a slow death on stage, musically speaking. It is a similar problem that one faces when doing an audition. How can you adequately display all of the emotion and drama of a scene or an aria, when you have no stage help. Perhaps you are singing about a beautiful flower, but with no flower there, you can either sing into your hand, or pretend there is a flower floating above the listeners' heads, but you've got to do something! And that something is not going to include an actual physical floral arrangement. This kind of imagination is generally manageable for an aria or two, but with a recital, you have to maintain interest for a full hour, sometimes more.

One way to do this is to program contrasting materials. This is what I am doing with my recital. A little early music, a little baroque, some opera arias, modernish english songs, and some weird French things. That ought to keep them guessing! I have to say, and no offense to any of you personally if you have done this, but there is nothing that is more difficult for me to pay attention to, than an entire recital of music by only one composer. Yes, I'm sure most great composers have plenty of music, and could fill several recitals, but by the end of the hour I am usually tuning out and thinking about dinner. Side thought: could this just be my ADHD?

Anyway, as any great opera singer knows, the best part of singing a song is when it finishes and you get all the applause, signalling that it is time to take a break and let somebody else sing for a while. Sadly, in a recital this does not occur, because whenever you finish a song, it is only time for more songs that you have to sing.

So that about sums up all of my feelings about recitals, except now that I am really doing one for real, I am getting a little psyched up about it. I like all of the music I'm doing, and hopefully I am interesting enough on stage to keep people paying attention. So you should come! But hey, if you do fall asleep, no hard feelings.

Pumpkin Patch

2011-10-17T10:47:00.000-04:00

One of the wacky traditions that Tenor Mom and I have implemented, right up there with chopping down our own Christmas tree, is picking our own pumpkins to carve for Halloween. This is slightly more sane than the tree thing, in that it is usually not snowing and one often gets a fun hayride to the pumpkin patch, rather than a soggy trudge through frozen fields. Pumpkin picking does have it's own challenges however. For instance, four ginormous pumpkins are way harder to carry to the car than a tree that the helpful tree boy has netted and tied to the roof of your vehicle.

One thing that was surprising to me is that finding a pick-your-own pumpkin patch was a lot harder in Vermont than it was in Baltimore. Vermont! The hub of agriculture and eco-business! And yet most of the places I found had only pre-picked pumpkins for purchase. This may be partially due to the fact that we are already having frosts in Vermont. I think pumpkin season comes earlier up here than it does down in ol' Bawlmer. Down south we could head to the pumpkin patch the last week of October and find plenty of pumpkins still on the vine, ripe for picking. I think pumpkin season in Vermont is sometime in September, but who wants to go get jack o'lantern pumpkins in the middle of September?!

Well, we did finally find a place that was open and had pumpkins available, so we drove out to the farm and got on our exciting hayride. One of the required hayride features at all pumpkin patches is a ride through the "spooky forest," full of skeletons, ghosts, severed heads, ghoulish babies, and all sorts of other family entertainment. Luckily, at 11 am, all that scary stuff doesn't look quite so scary, even to a four-year-old.

We arrived at the patch, ready for some picking, but let me stress that pumpkin season was pretty much over. None of the pumpkins were still on the vine, and many of them were rotting in the field. I don't mean to say that there weren't any good pumpkins left, there were tons, but it was not the lush, green, pumpkin patch of my previous Maryland experiences.

Not to worry, we all found great pumpkins and got them, with some heaving and puffing, onto the hayride tractor cart device, which carried us back to the farmyard proper. A highlight of our departure was finding all of the animals for patting and feeding. These animals included lots of goats, a pony and a yak. Edward was mesmerized, and Ruby was also excited, and it was a nice way for them to spend time while my wife and I took turns trying to hoist 600 lb pumpkins onto our shoulders and get them into the trunk.

Overall, we had a great day, and we got out of there just before it started pouring, so that was a bonus. I think it's important for kids to see where things come from, so farm visits are a must anyway, but it also adds a little something extra special to the holidays when you can actually go out and find your special holiday item where it is found in nature, be it trees, pumpkins, or Cadbury Cream Eggs. Next up: Thanksgiving! Anybody know a good place to hunt turkeys?

How to Be a Boy

2011-10-14T09:09:00.000-04:00

What is a boy? I suppose technically a boy is a young male human, so I was a boy once. But on the other hand, I was never really a "boy." Walking through the aisles of toys and costumes and games and everything else aimed at our children, I am constantly reminded that there are certain rules for being a boy that I never followed. Not that I was a typical "girl" either, I just wasn't very good at being a "boy."

For one thing, "boys" like sports, which I never did. I never played on a team, even though my pediatrician at the time (whom I loathed for saying this) told my parents that I must take up a sport. I did sign up for some sports, but I never went to a practice or a game. I was never really that coordinated and, while I liked playing with my friends, the instant it became an official sanctioned team, all the fun went right out of it. It was all about winning (even if the coach just told everybody to have fun), and I knew it. Even in gym class where it really didn't matter, every ball I missed was rewarded with shouts and looks of scorn from my beloved classmates. Luckily I didn't care (too much), but I definitely felt a lack of respect among those who valued athleticism above all else.

And maybe it was because I had a sister, or maybe not, but I was not selective in what cartoons I enjoyed. I loved He-Man, to be sure. I had many battles involving Thundercats and Transformers in my living room growing up. But I could also name all of the My Little Ponies. Is that embarrassing? Should it be? Maybe I wouldn't have picked "Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer" as my number one movie choice on any given day, but I have seen it over a dozen times, and I enjoyed it every time, despite its obvious "girl" bias.

Perhaps it was because most of my friends were girls. I have always gotten along better with females, but I don't think I ever counted a boy as my best friend until 3rd or 4th grade, and even now when I go to a party, or start rehearsals for a new show, I tend to gravitate towards hanging out with the women. I just don't understand boys. Of course I don't understand women either. Am I a mess, or what?

With Ruby, it was easier. I didn't want to assign gender stereotypes to her, and so when we would go to McDonald's on a trip, and they would ask "Boy or Girl toy?" I would always ask what the toys were, and then let Ruby decide. Sometimes she would get the Polly Pocket, and sometimes the Spider-Man, and that was fine with me. I figured that society would be sending her enough "girl" messages along the way, and I would do my best to make sure she had the option to do sports, or take advanced classes, or basically do whatever she was capable of, and had the desire for, doing, and her gender would not prevent her from anything.

But now I have a son. Edward already loves cars and trucks. He loves airplanes and dinosaurs. He says "vroom" when he plays with cars and "Rawr!" when he plays with dinosaurs. He may in fact be, a "boy." If that is the case, what am I going to do with him? I don't understand why 15 minutes of football takes an hour when all they do is stand around and crash into each other. I don't know how to fix a car. As far as I know, I never bashed my head into things constantly as a child. I don't think I know how to be a "boy," and how can I teach him if I don't know myself?

And here's another terrifying thought. What if he's not a "boy?" It's totally fine for girls to play with cars and do sports and have Spider-Man toys now. Perhaps there are some who would disagree, but I believe that, even if the progress is slow, as a culture we are moving towards a kind of equality for women. Not so much for men. Will I have the strength to stand at the McDonald's counter and ask Edward if he wants a truck, or a sparkly necklace? And what if he picks the necklace?

When I was 5 or 6, I had a doll that I loved very much. I had a lot of stuffed friends, but my doll was, at the time, my favorite, and I wanted to bring it in for show-and-tell. My mother begged me not to bring it in, and suggested other toys, but in the end she let me do it. Everyone laughed at me and teased me, and I came home crying. The end. Or is it? As a stay-at-home dad, I realize now that it is crazy not to allow boys to be nurturing, and to not let them express their care-giving side. I have ended up using a lot more of that side of myself than I ever originally thought. I am here in the house with two kids all day, and I don't really know how to cook anything, I can't sew on a button, and anything past basic cleaning seems to be beyond my grasp (according to my wife). So I am not a very good "girl" either.

I guess what it boils down to is that I want to give my children everything, and I know that I can't. I can't teach them how to sew, and I can't teach them how to play football. But I can teach them a lot of things. I can teach them how to ride a bike, and how to make cookies. I can love them for who they are, no matter who they turn out to be, or how much it might terrify me. I can teach them my values, and I can teach them to value others. I can let them know that the person who is laughing at them today, will someday be their Facebook friend. I was never a very good "boy," but I'm okay with that, as long as I can be a good father.

The New Cuteness

2011-10-13T09:01:00.000-04:00

So after being away for a month, I have definitely noticed some changes in my children. For one thing, Ruby has been in school for a month now, and is noticeably different in some ways. But she is four and a half, and there are more changes in Edward after a month away, as he is only 18 of them. Here is just a taste of the new cuteness.

* Edward can get himself out of his car seat (not the buckles thank goodness!) and climb out of the car himself, and when he does, he pushes the door lock down and closes the door after himself.

* His new favorite activity is opening all the drawers in the house and handing their contents to me one by one. Annoying? Absolutely, but super cute anyway.

* He not only says "Uh oh" all the time, but also "Oh no!" He says constantly, and at the cutest moments possible.

* Eward wants to do everything that Ruby is doing, which is not new, but now he is better equipped to almost do it. If she is sitting in a chair, he tries to squeeze in next to her. If she runs off, he tries to run. Tries, mind you. Ruby does not find any of this cute at all, but I do. The only part that is not cute is when he tries to flip over the back of the couch the way Ruby does.

* Waving is his new favorite. The other day, while walking the eight feet from the living room to the kitchen, he turned back and waved vigorously at me about ten times, with the biggest smile on his face. Even when I thought he was already in the kitchen, his head would pop back out of the doorway for one last grinning wave.

* Edward loves school. I don't know if it is the fact that Ruby is doing it, so he wants to do it too, but he gets so excited when we take Ruby to school. He runs down the hallways laughing, and goes into Ruby's classroom looking for toys to play with. On an unrelated, but also cute note, he always puts the toys back exactly where he found them when he is done playing with them. At school anyway. I wish he would apply this cute new skill to home life.

So there's your Edward update. Now that I'm home, I will probably not notice the gradual extra cutenesses creeping in, so it's nice to remark on it when I have the chance.