Mr. Mortenstein Was Right

Today at the Doctor's office I got news that I've been expecting but not wanting to believe for quite some time. In fact, for many months, and possibly even a year or so, a kindly Jewish friend of mine has been unprofessionally diagnosing me, and doing so correctly.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am *officially* and increasingly...

LACTOSE INTOLERANT.

Allow me to offer some assurances to those who know me well enough to have heard me suggest that I would most certainly "take my own life" if I ever found out that this was true of me: I am probably not going to do that. But I am a little bit sad. Sad because I will now have to reduce my intake of delicious foods, including, but certainly not limited to the following list [additional submissions welcome]:

Milk, Cheese, Ice Cream, Lattes, Coffee with Cream (AKA the only way to drink coffee), Mac and Cheese, Yogurt, Frozen Yogurt, Cereal with Milk (is there any other way to eat cereal?), Fill in this Blank with Milk, etc.

Can anyone help me find a silver lining to this dark cloud of depression?

Seriously, compiling that list has gotten me down.

Turning in my shoelaces and sharp objects...

dj

[More] Mondays at the Bribery

Before I begin this post, let me acknowledge that I am well aware people grow leary quickly of parents talking about their children in fawning fashion. David Cross speaks excellently to this reality as someone on the other side of the fence on his hilarious second full-length of stand-up material, "It's Not Funny," calling his friends' decsions to have children "selfish and rude," among other things, before lamenting the subsequently terrible way in which new parents insist upon spending conversational time telling you all of the "banal minutiae" their kids do with a poorly hidden expectation that you will likewise find it no less thrilling and/or precious.

All of that said... I'm going to do it anyway, so feel free to skip this post. You won't hurt my feelings.

Last night, after dinner, Claire (my nearly two year-old daughter) and I went out for a "Daddy-Daughter" night. The first of our two stops was the Winfield Public Library, or - for the purposes of Claire's pronunciation skills - the "bribery." We were on a mission to get some more "bookies" about "Liney,"* "George," and "Bears." Walking into the Library, my daughter announced this to its studiously quiet patrons with no shortage of volume. Gently, I whispered to her an explanation that when we were in the bribery, we needed to whisper so as not to bother the other people reading bookies. "Pisher," Claire responded, much more quietly, indicating that she got it. For the next few minutes, Claire pishered all of her observations to me, from the "(s)noman" poster on the wall to the other girls in the bribery "reedin." Once we'd gotten all of the bookies we'd come for, we approached the check-out counter and took a seat on the big chairs.

At this point, Claire's night was already made, but we ventured on through the lightly falling snow to a nearby Steak n Shake to sample their newly advertised Fruit and Frozen Yogurt Milkshakes. To fully appreciate what ensued, you need to know that one of the first things Claire ever learned was the sign for "more." Even though she can now say the word perfectly -and does so quite often- she sometimes ups the ante by signing and speaking it at the same time. Once we'd arrived home and she'd had her first sip, the signing and speaking (and occasional shouting) began, alternately for "ice cream," "chilly," and "cold," all while reading bookies.

I can totally sympathize if you're reading this and thinking that it sounds like a lame Monday night - I never used to understand the phenomena of simple parental enjoyment either. But I certainly do now, and I hope that someday we'll talk about it together and both get it.

Until then, I'll keep sharing my banal minutiae.

dj

* If you've never read "Liney" (see also: The "Madeline" Series by Ludwig Bemelmans), I recommend starting with "Madeline" before moving on to such classics as the above pictured "Madeline's Rescue," in which Madline "jumps" into water, yells "help, please" to a "doggy," and then cries a lot to get her doggy back so it can have [countable] "puppies" for all the girls.

Do Not Underestimate This Man

My friend Brian is about to put out a full-length CD of fantastic music.
I've been lucky enough to hear some of it, and I feel I can confidently tell you that if for some reason you don't end up getting a copy, there will be a good-music-shaped hole in your collection that only it can fill. So don't dilly dally - keep an eye on http://www.myspace.com/brianwhitmanmusic and make sure you're not out in the cold when it finally drops.
Trust me - it will be well worth your hard earned.
dj

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Someone just told me about the iTunes potty word test and how it can serve as determinant of your sense of culture/refinement/general distaste for profanity. Feel free to use my (rather embarrassing) scores as a template to help you score along at home. Just use the search bar of your handy-dandy iTunes software to determine how many artists/albums/songs you have in the following curse word categories, listed alphabetically for ease of use.

A - 3
B - 5
D - 3
F - 6 ?!? This is intolerable! Who put these songs in there?
H - 10
S - 4

And that's not even to speak of lyrics, people. This one really made me think about what I'm listening to day to day...

But I'll never get rid of Neil Diamond.*

*Thus ends the greatest day of blogging in recorded history.

If Ever I Loved Thee...

... My Deathtrap 'Tis Now.
While attempting to move a newly purchased crib for daughter number two home from Target the other evening in the above automobile, I unwittingly snapped a crucial under-seat tendon that allows for, among other things, moving the driver's seat back from its foremost position. This has made for rather uncomfortable driving in the aftermath - the car, some have argued, was already a touch small for my lanky frame.
Nonetheless, do you wish to kill me? You need only tap my front bumper while driving and watch with glee as the guaranteed erratic airbag envelops the sum total of my torso.
But seriously, does anyone want to buy a Saturn SL1 in "as new" condition?

When Life Comes Full Circle

A number of years ago my wife and I went on a Spring Break Work Trip with our church's Junior High Group. The experience was memorable - memorable in a way I will never be able to forget, largely because one of my appendages will forever look up at me (even now, as I type) remindingly.

During one phase of the construction our students were there to assist with, our job was to pass telephone pole-sized logs downhill in true chain gang fashion so that they might be used to construct a new log cabin at the base of a ravine / near a small river. Upon reception of my first log, I was done.

Seeing a small junior higher struggling violently to handle the log end he was handing me, the correlation between his apparent struggle and the possibility of its extreme weight never once entered my mind. I was instead greatly concerned with appearing "manly" to my then girlfriend and future wife, the person immediately beneath me on the side of the ravine. In that spirit I elected to one-hand the log, only to have its full force pinning said hand to the ground nanoseconds later. Disappointingly, the section of ground on which everything fell was also home to a somewhat sizable and pointy rock. As I rolled the log off of me, this was only one of several observations I quickly made. Much of the surrounding grass was now lightly spritzed with something reddish. This spritzing was a full-blown drenching toward the tip of my ring finger - my previously starched white brand new work glove was now something you wouldn't want to drop into a bullfighting ring unless you were standing well outside of it.

When I pulled the glove off of my hand, the illusion of my manliness came screeching quickly to a halt as I barely managed to remain coherent in the face of a profuse amount of plasma and a dangling fingernail.

Now, with the command of time possible only in blogworld, we will fast forward to the present day. Last week my eldest daughter suffered a pantry door accident that left her right pinkie fingernail looking like it wouldn't be sticking around long enough to see her turn two. Knowing what losing a fingernail feels like, I remained hopeful for her sake... until last night. Catching what was still hanging on on a pillow, she looked up at me and whined, "Claire finger ouchy." My wife suggested tweezers. I suggested I sit down. And then, like Kevin McCallister in the only good Home Alone installment, I thought to myself, "[You're her Dad.] This is it - Don't get scared now." Taking her upstairs for a bath, I began muttering silent prayers that it would fall off in the warmth of the water, but to no avail. Within a minute of entering the bathroom, she again presented it to me with the same entreaty. "Claire," I said reassuringly, "this is gonna hurt just a little bit, but then all better." ... and yanked.

One minute and no tears later she was "swimming" with Elmo and loving life again, and I thought to myself, sometimes you get second chances to prove points. I don't think my wife has ever thought of me as such a bastion of masculinity as she did last night in a good, long while.

Thanks, Home Alone. And keep the change, you filthy animal.

The "Goes Without Saying" Blog

Seriously, though...

How about them Bears?

As someone who missed nary a game all season long, I think I can safely posit this question with no fear of being labeled a bandwagoner. A few other related points of note, if I may...

My 20-month old daughter has two responses when you tell her we'll be spending the afternoon watching the Bears. One of them is to laugh mockingly (my wife and I aren't quite sure why); the other is to yell "Suchdoon!" - a close relative of the English "Touchdown!"

Additionally, I once worked with a woman who used the above expression as a metaphor for having nothing good to speak of. I now kindly suggest she begin shopping for something new to say.

Elephant Parts

One of the more formative movie-going experiences of my life came during the final months of my eighth grade year, when I and some classmates spent the night at a friend's house... largely unsupervised. We began our evening of caution-be-damned indulgence with the PG-13 "it film" of the time - Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. Being sheltered trolls, this proved a rather regrettable decision, as none too many of us were ready to watch Walter Donovan misidentify the Cup of the Carpenter and subsequently suffer a face melting (the unavoidable and *entirely* biblically-based consequence of Holy Grail tampering, apparently).
To soothe our anxious souls, we turned next not to further dramaticism, but instead to an obscure little film that assuaged our anxious hearts and, more than a few times, anyway, made us laugh. That film was Michael Nesmith's Elephant Parts, and I have today decided to do something incredibly risky: I'm buying it on VHS off of Half.com in hopes that I will even smile once during a sixteen-year-delayed second viewing.

High hopes aside, I'll keep you posted. Anyone else ever revisited a childhood memory and found it sorely wanting?
dj

Natural Beauty

Say what you will about including live recordings on albums full of mostly studio material, but for my money I wouldn't want to hear the above in any other fashion - it's a haunting capstone to a nearly entirely perfect disc. If you think you don't like Neil Young or simply have never heard enough to want to like him, do yourself a favor - go out and buy (or simply stay in and download) Harvest Moon and let it wash over you.

...And stick around for Natural Beauty - you won't be sorry you did!

[This analysis brought to you by "15 Years After the Fact Record Reviews."]

A First Blog ... A New Home

Devoted Readers,
Today, I make my first official foray into the world of online blogging. I have been thusly inspired by some fine folks to whom I look both up, sideways, and downward. For some time and in a very inconsistent fashion I have been blogging on a poorly maintained and - comparatively speaking - boring myspace page. But no more! I will henceforth pour all of my creative online energies into this outlet and in so doing hope to find a like amount of people (see also: 3) who will appreciate my efforts.
And now a word regarding the obscurist, pseudonymical fashion in which I have created this page: Firstly, Andrew Birchwood has always been my desired pen name, ever since the formula for creating one was explained to me at a young age (Middle Birth Name + Street of Childhood Residence). Renaming my Blog the same seemed to me rather repetitive, so I have instead elected for the time being to use the current adopted name behind which hide my semi-creative musical endeavors, itself a stolen lyrical snippet from someone whose music I hold in high esteem. Without getting too flowery, I appreciate the image it represents.
Having said all of these things, I am still just an average human being with an average job and an average mental capacity, and don't propose to bring anything inherently new to the discussion of life and how to live it within the constraints of this format. But welcome to the discussion.
Thanks for reading...
dj