Vacation: Porch View U

I am on vacation this week, and so far I am living like I did in college, minus all the beer and smoking. The Boy's best friend J is here--my favorite kid in the world that I'm not related to--and J, The Boy, and I have been hanging out in the living room since Sunday night. We've watched some movies and many episodes of South Park, and I have been reading while they play video games.

We also played football in the front yard. I wouldn't bother telling you this, but it made my day today, because a guy walked by as we were playing (I was QB, J was the receiver, and The Boy was defending, flopping around in his best imitation of Troy Polamalu), and he asked the boys whether I was their mom. The Boy answered that I was, and the guy said, "Man, that was a good pass!" The boys were appropriately impressed. :-)

We watched Die Hard this afternoon. I haven't seen it since it came out, and I've never seen any of the sequels, but I have to say that it's an excellent example of what an action movie should be.


You've got your charismatic hero, lots of snappy lines, a smart and kindly sidekick, chases, fires, explosions, derring-do, general violence, and a spectacular villain.


Oh, Alan Rickman. I'll take your Hans Gruber any day.

The only thing that dates this movie (besides the horrible hair on the women) is the fact that the hero, John McClane, fights FOR the big corporation. I think now the hero would probably fight with the guys who are sick of the big corporation's greed.

It's been a great vacation so far, but I'm promising myself that I'll get some work done tomorrow. I want to go through some old clothes, hem some curtains, paint my bedroom, and continue my quest for flooring to replace my god-awful carpeting. It'll be nice to care care of business, but I'll miss living in the dorms.

City of Champions

Check out the hardware that now lives in Pittsburgh!

Lord Stanley's Cup . . .


Meet Vince Lombardi's Trophey!


These two trophies have never met--they've never lived in the same city in the same season . . . until now!

Congratulations Pens!! Hockey, football, Most Livable City . . . I am very proud of my hometown.

Life of the Party

I know this isn't a great picture, but I took it while I was stopped at a red light behind this van.



I don't know how well you'll be able to see the smaller type, but on the left (above the flag) it says, "Urine A-1 Hands With Us," and on the right it says, "We're #1 in the #2 Business!" And did you catch the bumper sticker on the bottom right? STOOL BUS.

I can't decide whether I love the guy who owns this business, or if he's a brighter, more ambitious version of the Randy Quaid uncle from Christmas Vacation.



Then again, who says I can't love him if he's Randy Quaid? At least he doesn't take himself too seriously.

June Rhymes with Moon

One of the fellas I work with has an oddly misplaced Patrician accent--think Katherine Hepburn--and he insists that the vowel sounds in June and moon are not the same. He makes June have an "ew" sound, and it drives me bananas.

The Boy will officially be in 7th grade as of noon (which rhymes with moon AND June) today. He'll take Algebra I, and have Spanish everyday. The so far generic Science will morph into generic Biology. Social Studies will turn into American History. Language Arts will stay the same. He's growing up.

I didn't do much this weekend, beyond basic housework and driving The Boy from here to there (the Spring Ref season is over, and the last soccer game for his travel team is Sunday, so weekends will be a lot easier, which, thank God, because I'm tired of having soccer eat my weekends). I did a little experiment with a cheap vinyl roller shade, spray mount, and some fabric I had laying around, and was able to replace an old, ugly, dirtier than I'd like to admit set of vinyl blinds with a reasonably pretty, sturdy, CLEAN shade in my living room. I learned a few lessons from this first go, and will try it again on another window over the weekend.

That's pretty much it, though. Oh! I watched Role Models last night. C got it through Netflix, and told me I needed to watch it. I was skeptical, despite my fondness for most of the cast, but it's surprisingly funny, sweet, and well written. I recommend it.

And that's it. We're in a fund drive this week, so I feel like I'm looking through a long, long tunnel at next weekend, but I already can't wait for it. And I might take next week off . . . woo hoo!

Head Bumps

If you haven't seen this commercial for Bumpits, please go watch it and then come back. I'll wait. And don't be lazy--it's worth it, I promise.

Did you watch?!?! I don't even know what to say about this. I mean, I guess it's not really that different from stuffing your bra, but it seems like you'd be so much more likely to get busted--because there's a big plastic lump hiding under your hair.

I don't mind some of the styles they show, I guess, but I find the product pretty hilarious. (And how did they make big bee-hive hair in the 60s? Surely Bumpits aren't a recycled thing? And SURELY surely Amy Winehouse doesn't use Bumpits. I mean, she'd never be able to keep track of them, for one thing.) The poor women and girls in this low-budget commercial don't do anything to detract from the hilarity. Note the jaunty little . . . flourish (?) the Asian girl puts on. Her hair bump makes her perky!

12 1/2

Okay, I give. Being the mother of a kid who’s almost not a kid any more is starting to . . . well, let’s just say it’s starting. First came the Great Oral Sex Talk (TM), and then came a sleep over with a friend the night before The Boy and said friend went to see a movie with another kid. And no parent. And GIRLS. (This was a totally harmless and upstanding visit to a multiplex to see the Wolverine movie. The mother who drove them all in her van stayed and watched Angels & Demons. Nothing to worry about, aside from, you know: girls.)

Most of The Boy’s friends have their own phones now, so you can probably imagine what the sleep over was like. Remember how, when we were kids, you went to a sleep over with your girl friends and one or two of the girls (never me, because I was too shy and puritanical [my, how that changed]) spent as much time as possible calling different boys and asking them who they liked? Think of how that scenario changes when each kid has his or her own phone. The Boy and his friend thought it was funny at first, but ended up shutting of their phones after a while, so they could end the deluge of “Who do you likes,” and get down to the serious business of playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii.

So, haha. Cute and all. But then it seems that The Boy and his friend got a little too big (stupid, mean, bitchy) for their britches. They wrote two stories about two boys in their class, and neither story was flattering. How do I know they wrote these stories? The idiots saved them to my laptop’s hard drive. Imagine my surprise when I opened up Word and saw a doc called “N Sucks.” I only hesitated a moment before reading it and the other file. And then I checked my browser history to see whether the two files had been e-mailed. Sigh. They had.

In truth, both stories were unkind, but pretty tame aside from one where a character called another a “stupid homo.” This more than anything is what compelled me to have a serious discussion with The Boy, because while I know my kid isn’t perfect, I like to think he’s got a bit of honor in him (I know it’s an antiquated word, but I refuse to believe it’s an antiquated notion). And kids who care about honor don’t make fun of other kids, and they CERTAINLY don’t let other kids use homo as an insult. Especially if their dads are gay. Mmm-kay? I knew The Boy himself didn’t write that little gem. In fact, I’m pretty familiar with The Boy’s writing style and vocabulary and know that he didn’t contribute much at all (I know, for example, that he had a character turn into a Muppet [he’s finishing up an art project that mirrors Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, using Jim Henson as his guest of honor] and then get defenestrated [we’ve been cracking defenestration jokes for weeks—it’s a funny word]).

What bothers me, though, is that The Boy went along. And I’ve seen him cave to this other kid’s whims since they were pretty small. Time for a talk.

I asked The Boy what he could tell me about some stories he and A (the other kid—in fact the very kid whose dad is an ass and who was trying to force the big stupid house on his wife) had written. Immediately, The Boy’s face fell. He said, “We wrote some stories that were stupid and mean, and we shouldn’t have done it.” I asked what he was thinking, and he said he didn’t really know, but that it was late and they were tired and being stupid. And then he said, “I feel especially bad about the story about R, because I don’t even know him!”

I was glad about two things: He seemed to honestly feel bad (he was near tears), and he didn’t try to sell out A, who I know was the driving force here. But I still had to get to the little matter of his allowing A to use the word homo as an insult—-in The Boy’s presence, and in our home. I told him he has to speak up about stuff like that. We talked about how to speak up, and how hard it is. And we talked about the fact that I had cool, funny friends who could be mean, and who were very hard to stand up to.

And then I told him that I’ll give him one more chance, but if I see him not being able to stand up to A, they won’t be allowed to hang out together outside of school.

It was a long, good talk. And I hope it made some kind of difference. I made The Boy e-mail the two girls he and A had sent the stories to. He told them both he’d had second thoughts, that he knew the stories were mean and stupid, and that he hoped they’d both delete them and forget about them.

And I called A’s mom and filled her in. She was really upset, but of course A’s dad said she was overreacting, that boy’s will be boys, and that e-mailing those stories was no big deal at all. Because A’s dad is an asshole. And despite his mother’s best efforts, A is heading right down the same path.

I just hope I don’t have to say the same for The Boy.

"Let's Have Some Fun, This Beat is Sick. I Wanna Take a Ride on Your Disco Stick."

So. SO. I am a dork and a geek, and am one of those adults for whom much of popular culture--especially where music is concerned--disappeared once parenthood came along. The Boy was born at the tail end of 1996, and pretty much the last "new" band I remember really liking was Ben Folds Five.

A few things permeated my oblivion: Eminem and his Slim Shady would often stick in my head. I saw Outkast on SNL and fell in love with them. I have a bit of a thing for the Black Eyed Peas. For the most part, though, I've spent the last twelve-plus years bringing up The Boy on a steady diet of public radio and the music I loved from birth to about age 26, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash and Buffalo Springfield, Barenaked Ladies and Counting Crows, Nirvana and Hole. He had a brief foray into bands like AC/DC when he played guitar, but for the most part he just coasted along with whatever I offered, expressing dislike for anything too slow or lovey, but that's about it.

The time has come, though, for The Boy to want to listen to the songs the other kids are listening to, so we've been watching some videos on YouTube and listening to the pop music station in the car sometimes . . . which means that for the first time in my life . . . I am looking at pop music from The Other Side--The Grown-up Side. I've found the Peas, of course, whose Boom Boom Pow song pleases and amuses me ("I'm so 3008; your so 2000 and late,"), Britney's Circus, which is fine, and Lady Gaga. That's her lyric from the title up there, from her song Love Game. Here's the link to the video, if you care to have a look. (I really dig her silver nail polish, but am fully aware of the fact that I am much, much too old for it.)

Anyway . . . yeah. Things are pretty sexed up, aren't they? I laughed out loud the first time I heard Lady Gaga mention her interest in riding some fella's disco stick, and I asked The Boy whether he had any thoughts as to what said line might be referring to. He said, "I think she means penis," and I said, "I think you're right." We talked a little bit about how it seems that sex is pretty much inescapable in pop music and popular culture in general, and how that just seems insane to him, even if he likes the way the songs sound. And then, THEN . . . we heard Right Round, the Flo Rida song that I GUESS is a cover of the Dead or Alive song from the 80s. Do you know this song? Unabashedly about oral sex? Call me crazy, but I wanted to make sure The Boy would know what he was saying if he found himself walking along, singing, "You spin my head round, baby, right round, when you go down, when you go down down." Here's a transcript of that bit of the conversation:

Me: You know this song is about oral sex, right?
The Boy: "What?!?
M: Going down is a euphemism for oral sex.
TB: What's oral sex?
M: [Without even a pause, as if I'm totally cool with what I'm about to say to
MY PRECIOUS BABY BOY.] When you use your mouth to stimulate someone's
genitals during sex.
TB: [Long pause.] OH MY GOD, YUCK!!!
M: Yeah, I thought it was gross too, when I first heard about it, but it turns
out that it's actually a nice thing when you're ready for it.
TB: [Total disbelief; turns up volume on music, ending discussion.]

And so ends a tender parental interlude, wherein I try to play it cool while wildly following my gut and hoping I'm doing the right thing. I mean, sex is a good thing. Knowledge is power. Right? What's weird is that I had no problem at all discussing "the birds and the bees" with The Boy; why should oral sex be any different? What's my problem?