Do What Now?

You talkin' to me?

My son, Travis Bickle. He's healthy now, by the way.

Sorry for the painfully infrequent blogging, but I've determined something that, I think, may revolutionize the world. Turns out, having a child can really gum up any schedules or plans you have.

No, seriously. I know you're thinking, "There he goes again, trying to be funny." But a child really does change things. I'm applying for several large government grants to study the phenomenon, and to document my findings. Lobby your Congressional-type people today.

To resume my spotty blogging, here are a few selections from the Betty Crocker Cook Book for Kids, circa 1970-something. No publication date is given, probably to protect the people responsible for this book. The items aren't all that bad, until you remember that they were inflicted on children already scarred by Brett Somers and "Love, American Style."

Just to be sure your kid has OCD

"Okay, Evan, now that you've sliced the melon pieces into perfect triangles of a uniform width and height, you can place the tips on the points--each 72 degrees from its neighbors--that I laser-etched in the dish."

Not a lot of child-friendly fun to be had here, I'm thinking. If there were any residual fun left in the melon slices, they were demolished by being laid on a bed of lettuce.

If you can pull this off, you're Superdad

I am the reason God created computers. I am an unsuspecting, low-key, "Can't we all get along" kinda guy. But for some reason, when I'm given a project that involves any kind of intricate manual work, I suddenly transform into Gorilla Monsoon on an IV concoction of testosterone and Clumsipheron. (Ed. note: "Gorilla Monsoon"? Are there three people, including Mr. Monsoon's family, who know who he was in 2008 without Googling? And isn't the "ed. note" thing the mark of an uncreative hack?) (Reply to ed. note: Yes. No. Yes. Get out of my head.)

But that's not why you called. We're to discuss the totally coolicious banana split thingy contained herein. While it lacks the full-on, calorie-laden goodness of a real banana split, there's a minimalist beauty about the thing that makes me like it. Here's to you, Mr. Fruit-carving Dessert for His Kids Guy.

Craters: They're the new tapas

Maybe the experiences of having a new baby have dulled my senses or something, but I swear I've checked and re-checked this picture, and it's horizontal. Except it's not. Let's just say that, if the horizon seems to be lacking in horizontalness, just tilt your head like you're a dog hearing a squeaky brake pad, or any member of "The View" cast.

Now, onward. I'm still learning about having a child, but I'm already sure that attempting to serve something that looks like this, and is called "Crater Ham Loaf," is one bona fide way to ensure that the only way your progeny will henceforth visit the inside of a kitchen is if you glue Nintendo Wii coupons to the ramekins.

Cousin Oliver swears by it

See, Cousin Oliver was a...wait. If I really have to explain that, maybe you should be checking out some other, non-retro blog.

So, as I was saying, Cousin Oliver would have just eaten this up. It's cute, at first, just like Cousin Oliver was. But the more you look at it, the more eye-gougingly irritating it becomes, making you suddenly aware that the era you're supposed to be enjoying is so very out of touch and needs to be disposed of, post haste. Just like Cousin Oliver.

Besides, this is a cookbook. Isn't the whole thing a "cook's corner"?

Well, that was an experience

My wife, my son and I just returned home from a three-day stay at Children's Hospital in Birmingham. Seems little Jacob has both an intestinal virus and faulty nursing mechanics, so he was dehydrated and malnourished. Lemme tell you, being told your child is malnourished really makes you feel like a good parent. (Also, Faulty Nursing Mechanics would be a great name for a rock band.)

But, thanks to a godsend of a nurse named Debbie, we got his nursing mechanics suitably tweaked, and he's eating like Jethro Bodine now. Maybe they won't call Child Services on us now. And blogging will resume once I get a little less bleary-eyed.

Now, where was I?

Long time, no post, but young'uns will do that to you. And this isn't a full-scale throwdown of a post, but still, it's something.

To catch you up on things, Jacob will be two months old this coming Monday. They grow up so fast. I've become acquainted with colic, and I've given countless prayers of thanks for Mr. Hoover or whoever invented the vacuum cleaner. (Why is my irritable son soothed by the roar of an upright vacuum cleaner? I don't know, and I don't really care. However, if he's into loud sounds, his old pa has a few CDs he's going to introduce him to that will really boost his spirits.) I've become a CrackBerry addict (Curve, for right now, but I'm seriously craving that new Bold, when it's released. iPhone, Smiphone, I say.)

I've also discovered a few sites I'll be adding to the blogroll shortly. (I'm always thinking of you, you big lugs. <chin chuck>). There's It's Lovely! I'll Take It, which posts wretched pictures from real estate listings, along with snarky commentary. And there's Totally Looks Like, which is just getting started, but has lots of promise. It's like those old "Separated at Birth?" things.

And here's the aforementioned blog post. Not much, but the flywheel of posting has a lot of inertia, and I'm still trying to get it up to fully operational speed. The selections are from the Better Homes & Gardens "Meals with a Foreign Flair" cookbook of 1963. Enjoy.

Strawberry porcupines forever

This is like one of those pictures that's an old lady if you look at it one way, and a bobsled team if you look at it another. A dessert inkblot, if you will. I love strawberries, so this looks delicious on one hand, but then the Sputnik-ness of that porcupine thing makes me want to slap some food designer with an industrial-strength tussy-mussy.

Penguins are so sensitive

(Cause nothing's cooler than Lyle Lovett.)

I don't go for fancy cars
For diamond rings
Or movie stars
I go for penguins
Oh Lord I go for penguins

Throw your money out the door
We'll just sit around
And watch it snow
I go for penguins
Oh Lord I go for penguins

Penguins are so sensitive
Penguins are so sensitive
Penguins are so sensitive
To my needs

Ach du lieber!

Once again: I was almost a German history minor in college, one of my goals in life is to make it to Germany, and I think German is the coolest language not currently rolling around in my head. (Although I'm shaking my fist at the Volkswagen people for choosing Tennessee over Alabama. Grrrr.)

However, I have to question if, in fact, there is such a place as Germany, and whether or not anybody who ostensibly lives in that ostensible country ever lives past, say, 25. Or do they issue an automatic external defibrillator and angioplasty certificate when you order fat German sausages, boiled beef, pig's knuckles and weinkraut?

Don't get me wrong. Plop that down in front of me and I'd go blitzkrieg on it. I'm just saying, that's a notarized application for a coronary.

My kingdom for that sweater

First, just ignore the horrible scanning job I did. I don't have a honkin' big scanner like those snobs Charlie and Simone over at Modern Mechanix. (They think they're so much better than I am, just because...well, they are. But they could at least keep that fact to themselves.) So that never happened, these are not the droids you're looking for, etc.

Now, just look at the awesomeness of a couple of things. For one, they're gathered around that most cliched of cliched sixties/seventies eating shindigs, the fondue pot. It was 1963, they had a young, handsome president, and they were happening people. So why not indulge in a bit of the old fonduing?

And finally, Give. Me. That. SWEATER! Or blazer, or whatever it is. The white thing with the red lapels. I'd break several federal laws to get my hands on one of those, and I'd never take it off. And I live in Alabama. That's how supremely awesome that thing is.

My name's Joe Friday, and I wear a badge

A badge imprisoned in a video file the idiot running this blog can't extract and code correctly. I should have my partner run him in, but he's so pitiful that I guess we can let him go.

Translation: I've got some old "Dragnet" episodes from the early fifties, long before Jack Webb became craggy-faced. Shoot, I'll say it: Jack Webb was a handsome man. And the show was different from later years, too. More of a film noir kinda thing, although not really. Just different, and good.

In the meantime, would it appease you if I posted a picture of another handsome feller?

Okay, here he is. And I know that you're not going to believe it, but he's standing up on his own two legs, and can even walk forward and backward! Just take a look and see.

Wait. It just occurred to me that you might want to see the other new feller, Jacob, instead of Humphrey the dog. Okay, I can handle that, too.

Here's one with his grizzled, bumfuzzled and sleep-deprived dad, earnestly wishing there where a convenient mask or paper bag around.

And this one:

"Put me in, Coach! I'm ready! Grrrrrr!

At first, we feared an alien facehugger had attached to him, but turns out, it's something called a Soothie pacifier. Even if it does make him look like he's about to join Peter Frampton in some "Do You Feel Like We Do."


Aunt Ginger dropped by.

Now, if we could just mount a flat-screen on the ceiling, I could do this all day. "Deadliest Catch," "Dirty Jobs," old "Dragnet" reruns...I'd be set!

Some of the established pack members check out the newest, hairless, kinda funny-looking member.

And finally, a really, really, really tired daddy, a daddy not up on nursery rhymes and lullabies, resorts to the only vocal soothing he knows: Drive-by Truckers and Robert Earl Keen songs. I'm not kidding. I picked out the more droning kinds of songs, the ones I didn't have to really sing on, let him lay on me so he could feel the vibrations, and it helped calm him down. (The t-shirt was just coincidence.)

I'm back! Kinda sorta

Colicky baby is slightly less colicky, and a July 4th weekend of sleeping, sleeping and more sleeping have me feeling saucy. So I'm planning--no promises, mind you--on posting some new stuff this week.

In the meantime, go to your DVR or VCR or PDQ or whatever you use to record television programs, right now, and program it to record Turner Classic Movies this coming Saturday at 1 a.m. central (U.S.) time. TCM is showing "Skidoo," one of the all-time WORST movies ever. Groucho Marx plays a gangster named God, Carol Channing does a striptease to seduce Frankie Avalon (seriously, unfortunately), and Frank Gorshin, Mickey Rooney, Slim Pickens, Burgess Meredith and a host of other people who should have known better combine to produce something so bad, it defies mocking.

Please understand that when I say the movie is bad, I don't mean "bad, but kinda funny in a cheesy way." No, I mean bad, as in "you'll want the proverbial eye bleach after watching it." As the Interwebs say, be warned: what has been seen can not be unseen.

Now if TCM or some such will just show John Wayne in "The Conqueror."
 

Funny thing about those statements

You know, those statements I made a couple of days ago about blogging and emailing? Hehe, well, it's the funniest thing. You know how I said that my son had been pretty easy to handle? Yeah, well, that was before he turned into

THE COLICKY DEMON-BEAST FROM HELL!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, is there a more heart-stopping sound than a baby--especially YOUR baby--crying like a banshee monkey in need of a root canal, earnestly throwing his all into a vocal showcase worthy of Ethel Merman, and you can't do a darn thing about it? That's been the Dunn household for the last few days. Thank God for Gripe Water, Alimentum, Mylicon, and a mother's and grandmother's soothing ability. (Of course I tried. And of course I failed. When he's old enough to jam his index finger playing catch is when I'll be in the "Daddy comforting sweet spot.") We're actually getting a little rest. But the blogging and emailing, they no work. Maybe this weekend. Sorry.

In the meantime, howzabout a link to some spiffy old Warner Bros. cartoons? Whoever Dynotuber is, he/she has excellent taste in cels.

Who said this baby stuff was hard?

I mean, my son--that's still weird to type, I'm gonna just tell you--is a month old today, and I'm not sleep-deprived at all. I mean, sure, sometimes treappds updsaw83fnn or pwqaudddbs, but that's to be epfatedesldasr, cralwm? It's not like I'm delirious or blacking outtttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt or anything.

Actually, the little feller has been pretty doggone good. People ask me and my wife if he sleeps through the night, and we say, "As far as we know. We leave the fan on so he won't bother us." (That joke copyright Henry Cho, who not only has done comedy for 20+ years without ever using a cuss word, but is also the nicest person I've ever interviewed.) And, of course, it's a new experience for me to actually be excited--nay, giddy--over the sight of a bowel movement.

I said all that to say that I'm going to try and resume blogging, now that things have settled down a wee bit. (In addition to daddy duty, I had a weekend of concert coverage and another weeknight concert to review, too.) I'm kind of swamped today (I'm blogging on my lunch hour, as a matter of fact), but hopefully will be back tomorrow. And if I'm asked really nicely, I might post a picture or two of the little feller.

And if you've emailed, I'm about to start plowing through my backlog. I apologize for the lateness in responding.