New Website and My Fake ID

I'm going to try to reel in my disgust over the Super Bowl and not subject you to a rant about how my friend Mike in Miami is right, and after Brady went all Hollywood, he hasn't won shit.  On the biggest stage, with a chance to seek revenge against the Giants and that mole-faced little bastard Eli who ruined his chance at perfection four years ago in the desert, Tom Terrific was anything but.  I am sickened and disgusted, and reminded of something my granddaddy once said to me and one of life's great truisms: sports will only break your heart, boy.

(Oh, and fuck you, Wes Welker.)

But the good news is...the new website is here!  The new website is here.  And here it is: http://www.joeclifford.com/.  Very important.  Starting tomorrow, this is where you'll also go to find the blog.  You can still type in the old address, which will direct you here anyway.  The only issue might be if you use an RSS Reader (whatever the fuck that is).  My webguy says that if you do you'll want the new address.  So there you go.

Pretty cool new graphic, eh?  (Thanks, Zenaida!)  Don't worry.  The content is not going to change.  Candy and Cigarettes is still committed to bringing you the very finest in goofy You Tube clips and funny cat pics.  But we wanted to look, y'know, more professional and shit.  Some of the features should make your life easier. Like, for instance, you can just leave a comment now without having to sign up with a Google account.  Which is pretty cool.  Gone, too, are some of the bells and whistles, the MySpace-like glitter of a tweeny girl heavily crushing on the Beibs. Which is long overdue, really; we're all supposed to be grownups here.  (Though I am sad to lose the flames.  Fire is cool.)

So take a look around the new site.  Let me know what you think, or what you hate. I think it should be a lot more user friendly, with greater accessibility to my work. Hope you agree.  If not, I can fix stuff, since it's all been converted to Wordpress, which means I no longer have to rely on others to do my updates.  It's all about self-sufficiency.

*

We had a Super Bowl party on the hill yesterday.  Lots of people.  Tons of food. Which might've been cool if the Pats won.  But they lost.  What could've been a joyous celebration quickly turned into: Who the hell are all these people and why are they eating my food?

Got a couple cool mementos from my past, though.  One, Noah, who played guitar in my first band in CT, Something Like Paisley, brought a burned disc of our long-lost college rock classic So It Goes (still one of the best memories of my life was driving down the Berlin Turnpike at 18, flipping through the stations and hearing one of my songs [the cringe-worthily titled..."Electric Sun."  Good tune.  Awful title] on the radio.  Trinity College's WRTC.  But still).

I've been getting the rough mixes of these from our old engineer in Connecticut, Jeff, who has been painfully pulling the songs, track by track, off nearly 20-year-old, disintegrating 1/2" tape, importing the tunes into some modern, space-age software for a later mix down (it's like living in the future).  But what Noah brought over is the original record, in all it's intended, power pop shimmery glory, which he dug out of his mom's attic on a Christmas trip back east.  It's the first time these songs have been heard (as originally mixed) in probably close to a decade.  I am going to remaster all this shit later and put it up on iTunes.  Best music I ever made. Seriously.  Which is really, really depressing if you think about it.

The other trinket delivered was further proof that I, too, was once young.  My first fake ID.

                                                                 Now that is a crisp, flinty glow!

Rich found it in his stuff at his house.  He must've used it too at one point.  (And, no, we never really looked alike, except in the way that all clean shaven, angelic 18-year-old boys all look the same.)  The funny part about my having a fake ID is I didn't drink.  Like, at all.  Didn't touch a drop of alcohol until I was 21 (and within the year I'd be addicted to meth.  Which is a lesson to all you parents out there.  It's all about moderation). What did I need a fake ID for?  Fuck if I know.

The name on the ID belonged to Chris Judd, my co-frontman in Paisley, who would go on to develop schizophrenia and swell to close to 400 lbs., becoming a shut-in.  I haven't spoken to him in over a decade either.  It's a shame.  He was a great songwriter and singer, and more importantly, he was a good friend.  A much better friend to me than I was to him.  (What else is new?)

Finding old pictures of yourself like this presents a weird sensation.  On the one hand, I am obviously younger (and ridiculously feminine looking.  I mean, seriously, I've dated women who weren't as pretty as that).  Yet...this is still what I see, for the most part, when I look in the mirror.  Sure, I catch the wrinkles and gray, the ravage of the hard years, but when I look into my own eyes, I still see a 16-year-old boy (or 18, in this case).  And I don't feel much older than that.  It's like in many ways I remained trapped in this state of perpetual adolescence, angst and violent mood swings very much included.

It's also a bit like The Shawshank Redemption.  Remember the part where Red finally gets his parole?  They ask him if he feels he's rehabilitated, and he delivers this great speech about how that word doesn't mean anything to him anymore.  But is he sorry for what he did?  Not a day goes by that he's not sorry.   Most of all though he wishes he could go back and talk to that crazy, angry kid?  Save everyone a lot of time and hassle; get another chance to get it right.

I guess in way I do get to do that.  Maybe that's what being a dad really is all about. As my boy, Holden, grows up, I get to impart wisdom and share my life experience, point out the potential pitfalls and how best to avoid danger.  And he'll think (or say) I don't know what I'm talking about, and set off to discover the answers on his own.  We've been doing this dance since the dawn of time, right?  If it wasn't true, it wouldn't be a Cat Stevens song.

And on that note... Don't forget.  Starting tomorrow, you can find us here: http://www.joeclifford.com/candy-and-cigarettes-blog/.  Same Bat-time.  New Bat-channel.  Bookmark us!

Ride Free

There's more than a few ideological differences my wife and I have when it comes to raising our son, Holden.  I talked about one of these the other day, his eating meat, which was a knock-down, drag-out brawl.  I eventually won.  But not without heavy concessions to the other side (apparently, I have to endure another pregnancy, which was really hard on me the first time).  There was also the heated circumcision question.  To me, I didn't see any room for debate.  Where I'm from, you got circumcised or your name was Barry and we kicked the living shit out of you in gym class*.

                                * I never really beat up a kid named Barry with an uncircumcised dick.

Justine is from Northern California, meaning born and bred in the Bay Area, the epicenter of liberalism and legislation to protect you from yourself.  Justine has traveled extensively, but her roots bore deeply here.  I'll never forget one couple's therapy session (yeah, I go to fucking couple's therapy.  So fucking what?  We have problems with our fucking communication).  After I'd been bitching about Justine's wanting to foster kids like we're Jolie/Pitt, our wiccan priestess of a counselor says, "Joe, you do know you've married an Earth Mother, right?"

Earth Mother.  Jesus.  Makes my balls shrivel even thinking of the expression.  Just this side of "praying to the burning gods on the playa" in the lexicon of shit that makes me want to move back east, shave my head, and join a gang. This New Age, subculture, third-eye crap permeates everything they do out here.  Now there is a lot that I love about San Francisco.  It is a place where success isn't defined by the kind of car you drive or how high up you work or live; a place where you are free to be who you are (or as much as any of those things can be true in a modern, industrialized society).  The percentage of folks with college degrees out here is staggering, not that having a college degree necessarily translates to intelligence. Some of the smartest people I know didn't even go to college.  But one thing an education does tend to do is foster feelings of inclusion, rather than exclusion.  And even though I hate most mutherfuckers, that is a good thing.

But everything comes with a price; reciprocity is the currency on which this universe runs.  And the by-product of all this is an oversensitivity that borders on cloying.  Hence, a championing of being politically incorrect.  Which is basically people now thinking they have an excuse to not be polite.  And if there is one thing that pisses Joe off it is not employing proper etiquette (my first wife made me read Amy Vanderbuilt's The Complete Book of Etiquette, quizzing me if I wanted to get some.  So hot).

                               You see how thick this shit is?  Cover to fucking cover.  "It's lunch time, asshole.  The napkin gets folded in half."

Most of these "Earth Mother," hippy traits of my wife I can ignore.  Despite her assertion that they form the bulk of her person, I see these characteristics as mostly minor, inconsequential details, like Mandy Moore on Scrubs saying "That's so funny" instead of actually laughing.

Which just proves what we already know.  Really attractive people can get away with just about anything (see Amanda Knox).  Justine is an absolute doll of a woman, smart, gorgeous, amazing mom, so what if I have to deal with the occasional tearing up when they show cat juggling videos from South America?

It's a little tougher to ignore with my in-laws, who are both full-fledged, card-carrying (-burning burner) hippies, who bless chakras and comment on the strength of someone's chi, but generally I let it pass, even when grandpa leads a drum circle procession into my house for my son's first birthday, or when grandma dresses him like a baby monk because chia seeds sprouted all over him.  It's the Bay Area. Drum circles here are like tipping cows back in Berlin.  Just what you do.

Of course, when it comes to actually raising our boy, navigating these issues gets a whole lot trickier.  If you read this blog often, you know I think my old man was a douche.  And he was.  God rest his soul.  But like Mark Twain said, the older I get, the smarter my father becomes.  The guy did get a few things right.  Like raising us in the country.

I am glad I grew up in the wide open spaces without much adult supervision, free to do stupid shit like testing the ice on the pond in the thaw of spring, until you'd hear it crack and rush to see if you could make it back to shore in time (Sorry, Roger; we miss you).  And riding our bikes, zipping down steep hills and over gravel pits, taking air off poorly constructed homemade ramps, doing tricks to impress our dipshit friends.  It's what being a kid is all about.

Seriously, how many chances do you have to feel cool as a kid?  Your mom picks out your clothes, you get those fucking goofy haircuts; you're old enough to crave freedom but too little to do jack about it.  Riding my bicycle--without a helmet--was one of the few moments I felt a reprieve.  Nobody was bundling me up and strapping on elbow- and kneepads.  It was my fucking Huffy and a big ass hill; and, yeah, I crashed a lot, and, yes, I've been diagnosed with brain damage, but no one can prove those things are related.  And don't forget, in the "big crash," it was the rest of my body that got fucked up, not my head.

I aim to win the support of the masses with these posts, and I realize this one is a losing fight.  No one is writing in and saying that encouraging my kid not to wear a helmet is a good idea. Of course he's going to wear a helmet.  It's the fucking law. More importantly, my wife says he has to, and when you win the 2 meat skirmishes, like I said, you have to concede other battles.  I am not even saying he shouldn't wear a helmet.  No way I could live with myself if the boy ever got hurt because of something I did (or didn't do).  I just think the '70s were a pretty cool time to be a kid.

I'll probably get a ticket out here for even writing this.  But hillbillies and rednecks get a few things right.  My son is going to grow up probably speaking four languages and eating kale chips, and he is more apt to do yoga than he is boxing. But never riding his bike too fast down a gravelly ravine, no helmet, the wind in his hair, trying to impress his version of Tracy B. with some ill-advised, hot-shot show-off move, and then fighting back the tears when he scraps his knees and face to shit?  That's what'll make a man out of you.

                                                           Skip to 2:50

Listen, I'd put the boy in a suit made of styrofoam and keep him in a bubble if I could.  I don't want to see him ever stub a toe.  That's what it's like when you're a parent.  But some of the best memories of my childhood came from doing stupid shit, the starting fires and playing with hornets nests, and yes going too fast on a bike without a helmet.  It's a shame, is all.  But I guess that's why we have moms. Otherwise we'd let the kid eat pancakes and pizza and Pop Rocks all day, and stay up half the night ogling half naked pictures of Kate Upton.

Ranking the Kids' Shows: the Cutthroat World of being a Wiggle

No one ever said rock 'n' roll wasn't a cutthroat business.

The big news over the weekend, and by "big" I mean if you have a kid under 3, is Greg, the original Yellow Wiggle, is coming back.  Yes, I'm fucking serious. (And, no, I am not talking about the 49ers' suck job and Alex "Whiskey Dick" Smith picking a fine time to come up limp again.  And Kyle Williams?  Fuck you too.)

I'm a huge fan of the Wiggles, my fondness well documented.  When Greg Page, the singer/songwriter--and let's just say it, visionary--behind the Wiggles was forced to step down due to a debilitating illness that caused him to faint a lot on stage (something that might be hard to explain to kids), he handed over lead singer reins to Sam Moran, a nebbish understudy who quickly became the de facto face of the franchise.

I never liked Sam.  I honestly don't know what he contributed in terms of songwriting, my exposure to his fronting the Wiggles limited to a few seconds of "Day-O" in a Sprout promo, but he seemed to me to lack the stature, both physically and metaphorically, to lead the band.  But in all fairness to Sam, it's tough to follow the genius of "Fruit Salad" and "Hot Potato."  Kind of like stepping into the shoes of Joe Montana and Steve Young.  Jeff Garcia never had a chance.

A few of you might be wondering where the joke in all this is.  There isn't one.  Yes, I may, technically, be a tattooed, big-gunned, former felon, but I'm a dad now.  And if you are a parent, you know how fucking important a vital Wiggles are to your sanity.  Without the Wiggles, it's goddamn Disney playground, Justine Beiber; it's fucking Barney.

Once the elation subsided, I did a quick Google search to see how the big move went down, which though not quite as cool as David Lee returning to Van Halen, is still a fairly big shakeup in my rock 'n' roll world these days*.

(*Speaking of Diamond Dave's return, anemic new single "Tattoo" notwithstanding, Gluehead used to date a former groupie of the band, who told this funny story how after a VH show back in its heyday Roth would cherry-pick the prettiest girls to take to Burger King in his boogie van.  They'd get a large order of onion rings and sit in the parking lot. The girls would play horseshoe.  Whoever got one on was allowed eat the onion ring off.)

The behind-the-scenes angles always fascinate me, the rock 'n' roll soap opera. And, boy, did Yellow Sam get fucked.

Tough exit for yellow Wiggle Sam Moran

By Holly Byrnes

From: The Daily Telegraph

January 19, 2012 12:30PM

THE rift between former Yellow Wiggle Sam Moran and the reformed original kids super group deepened today, with Anthony Field dismissing the dumped singer as "a hired hand."

Responding to The Daily Telegraph's revelations that Moran was mocked as the "salaried Wiggle" and paid a fraction of the group's $28.2 million earnings, Field told Today show entertainment reporter Richard Wilkins he hadn't spoken to "the guy" he shared a stage with for five years--replaced yesterday with original member, Greg Page.

"What Sam does now is Sam's thing. His contract has come to an end," Field said. "Sam was just doing a job.  He was a hired hand ... I haven't spoken to him"...

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/yellow-wiggle-greg-page-to-return-to-the-band-as-sam-moran-steps-aside/story-e6frfmqi-1226247884526#ixzz1kEDifdsR

The cold "hired hand" comment totally echoes what Morrissey once famously (and heartlessly) said of the Smiths' rhythm section, Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, when he called them "as readily replaceable as parts of a lawnmower" over a dispute concerning royalties.  As far as Rourke and Joyce go, they were pretty damn good, but you can understand the lead singer hubris.  Here, Moran was the lead singer.  

Apparently, of that $28 million in yearly income, Sam was paid a pittance of $200K, with his buyout being 3-months' salary, or about $60K.  Rather than take a dig at Anthony (he's the Blue Wiggle for all you keeping score at home), whose former band was, coincidently enough, called the Cockroaches, Sam took the high road, posting this upbeat, if heavy-hearted, video, urging the children to "keep wigglin'." That's very good advice, Sam.  Both when you are unceremoniously dumped from a children's singing group and, you know, if you are a fish.

This can't come as a total surprise to anyone.  At least not anyone who saw the documentary Death to Smoochy (at least I think it was a documentary), which chronicled the seedy underbelly (and rampant backstage sexcapades) of kiddie shows.

The best line in all this came when Jeff (that's the Purple one whose superpower is a Wonder Twin-eque napping) said this will "give Sam the chance to spend more time with his family."  You think, Jeff?  Ouch.

Frankly, I've never been able to figure out what Jeff (Purple) or Anthony (Blue) even do in the group.  Murray (the Red Wiggle) at least plays the guitar.  If any two should be "salaried Wiggles" it's those two dead weights.  It's funny when you strip away the family-friendly veneer and realize that what lurks behind all the smiles and Big Red Cars is the evil, petty heart of man, who will fuck over just about anyone if it means an extra dollar to add to their pile of millions.

I'm sure Sam will be OK.  He's an avid Star Trek fan and has his own "grown-up" singing career.  If ever two skills could be combined for guaranteed success...

Not that I care.  I'm just happy to have Greg back.  It simply wasn't the Wiggles without him.

Who's up for a little celebratory "Fruit Salad"?

Teen Angst

Rock critic Gina Arnold once wrote that Cracker couldn't hold a candle to Camper Von Beethoven.  I disagree.  I like Cracker more than Camper, even if Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart might be one of the greatest ten records ever made.  It's the same rationale I apply when I say I'd take Dave Gilmour over Roger Waters, even if you compare their two best solo efforts, About Face and Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, which Roger wins, hands down, despite About Face being a damn fine record.  About Face is terrific; Pros and Cons is a masterpiece.  I'll take the body of work of Cracker over Camper.  Not to mention, Camper simply didn't possess the pop sensibility of David Lowery's second band, and in particular that of one perfect pop nugget, "Teen Angst."

Always liked that term, teen angst, since it so deftly encapsulates everything I stand for.  I wrote earlier in the week how I think I'll be able to avoid that teenage rite of passage with my boy, Holden, his hating me in his teenage years, since I never really matured past the age of 16 myself.  "Teen angst" explains so many of my problems away.  There comes a time in one's consciousness, which usually coincides with the onset of balls dropping (or whatever the fuck happens to girls, which I don't understand; they are a mystery to me), where we start to recognize a certain hypocrisy governing the action of adults.  The priests who have been preaching sermons turn out to have been diddling little boys.  The politicians chastising gay marriage are discovered boning their pages.  It's across the board, a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do mentality that suddenly is exposed as fraudulent, disingenuous, corrupt and dishonest.  Teenage years offer no perspective of course, just the realization, which is a dangerous combination.  There are no extenuating circumstances.  Just black.  And white.  Which fills you will ire and rage.  Because you know you are right.

You get older, and, well, those shades soften.  It becomes harder to hold a grudge against your father when you become a father yourself, and you are, once again, fighting about the gas bill, having not received a credible blow job in three months. You recognize that everyone, in a sense, is doing the best with what they have, however piss poor the results.  And you are forced to let go of the some of the fist raised to the sky rhetoric.  Which, honestly, gets exhausting.  Not that these things aren't wrong anymore; you simply learn, to quote Billy Joel, that just surviving is a noble fight.

Could've gone with young Billy, but like Pete Townshend's "I hope I die before I get old" lyric, there is an intriguing juxtaposition that occurs with the later-day artist still railing against the system.  Except Billy isn't exactly railing any more. Regardless of whether you like Billy Joel (and I am pretty sure most of the people reading this will fall into the "fuck no" category), you have to appreciate the...honesty (it's such a lonely word.  sorry)...in his basically pulling up self-righteous stakes and saying, "Hey, I've got money now. Good luck with that whole 'taking on the man' thing.  I'll be over here paying someone to polish my 86 pairs of really expensive shoes." Which appeals to me, for obvious reasons, even if Billy Joel will always be as lame, at least to the hipster, indie set, as a one-legged biblical leper on roller skates.

Now I don't know what Billy Joel, or Pete Townshend, think about privately, if they still clench their fist and hold it up high.  They seem like grown-ups to me, though. Maybe that's just because they are bald, and all bald people seem like grown-ups to me.  You can't see what's inside another, and when it comes to fading rock stars who are still prancing and singing about getting some at 60, you can either believe it's sincere or that it's an act.  I take it at face value, because that is what rock 'n' roll is all about, after all. Even if Meatloaf changed his lyrics to reflect a shift in the conventional paradigm, I still want to believe in sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll.

Only that is a young man's fight.  Partying too hard in your 20s?  Somewhat cool. In your 30s?  Not so much.  And in your 40s?  You're a pariah who doesn't get invited to Thanksgiving dinners and who has really bad teeth.  And you really don't want to neglect your gums.  Nothing is as unattractive as someone who has neglected his or her teeth and credit score.

They say the number one treatment option for drug addiction isn't AA, or religion, or any of the myriad fringe theories like Rational Recovery or Moderation Management; it's maturing out of it.  You simply grow up.  Which I guess is what I did.  I certainly didn't do AA, whose rigid, dogmatic, my-way-or-the-highway approach gave me a terrific pain in the ass.  I have a lot of good friends in AA (or as good of friends as I can have.)  And there is always an undercurrent implication that part of my, shall we say, miserable disposition is attributable to my not working the steps and addressing my character defects.

I, however, would pin that one squarely on the shoulders of teen angst.  Yes, I am still angry about politicians blowing their pages and all the phony bastard, talking heads who've lost touch with their younger selves, even if the mere thought is somewhat laughable when it comes from a 41-year-old, home-owning dad who is in the process of refinancing (what can I do?  These interest rates are insanely low!).

It becomes the lesser of two evils, which one do I find less objectionable: a man my age who still listens to Blink 182, or a cop pepper-spraying the shit out of college kids sitting on the ground?  Or to quote Johnny Cougar (Mellencamp), growing up means growing old and that means dying, and dying to me don't sound like all that much fun.

And I know my case might be made a little stronger were I to select less shitty musical examples.  But I am a pop guy.  I make no apologies for that.

It's what you identify with.  I never left blue jeans and white tee shirts.  I never put away Catcher in the Rye.  I never learned to incorporate tempered expectations with a "that's just the way it is" mentality.  Too much old school Old Testament still in me I guess.  Righteous anger and all that.  (What you rebelling against?  What you got?) I am the other side now.  I can't tack up James Dean posters to my walls any more, because once you get out of college, you can't tack up posters; they need frames.

Then again, maybe it isn't about an age, the physical years worn on a body, and it is all about a state of mind, however juvenile.  Instead of viewing this perpetual adolescence as a character flaw, perhaps it should be embraced.  That first glimpse of right and wrong is habit forming, the outrage of injustice, from bankers and insurance companies stealing your money to your old man tell you not to smoke when, yes, that hypocrite smokes two packs a day (or rather, he used to, until the cancer got him).  Because I'll always believe if you take a look around and aren't at least slightly pissed off, then you aren't awake, and if you ain't awake, then you're dead.  And Johnny Cougar is right.  Dying to me don't sound like all that much fun.

Anhedonia

"What's it mean?"

"It means you don't derive pleasure from anything," says the Doc.

"That's what I got."

*

Been trying to put a finger on that one for a while.  Or more accurately, how do I answer...the question.  The one that comes after I do something stupid and someone's face twists up like they've just smelled a terrific fart, and they invariably say, "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

Now I have my answer.  "I have anhedonia, mutherfucker.  Back the fuck off.  It's, like, an ailment."

Everyone wants to believe his or her problems are unique, that he/she is special.  Or to quote Gordon Gano, "How can I explain personal pain?" 

In my case, I can explain personal pain with a new word I learned today.  Although, I should've known that one already, since I am an "English guy," and when the Doc explained it, I felt like a fucktard.  

"You know 'hedonism,' right?" he said, "and that 'an' means 'non'?  Anhedonia."

Really sounds like the name of a prog metal band, or a crappy Ayn Rand novel. "He wanted to built a freeway on the back of a poor man.  They called it a violation of human rights.  He called it progress.  The posthumous novel by one of the biggest asshole writers of all time.  The eternally boring Ayn Rand.  Anhedonia." Either way, I was glad to know I wasn't just a mopey teenager who turned into a miserable adult.  I am a survivor of anhedonia.  Makes me a goddamn hero, really.  Funny the power of a definition.

Of course, when you're talking about mental illness, we're not exactly dealing with an exact science, are we?  For one, I'm not even sure I believe in that term.  Like calling addiction a "disease."  Convenient.  Just not sure I buy it.  Maybe it's a little too convenient.  Could just be an asshole, right?  Plus, it smacks of victimhood, and no one likes a victim.  Maybe if you are the victim of a bombing or something like that, an attack by a feral ferret maybe.  But not when your main gripe is being sad.

That's what anhedonia means, in essence, being sad.  I remember being in rehab.  It was, like, my 16th trip.  Or maybe it was the 15th.  I don't know the exact number. I do know it was the time I shaved my head because I was afraid I was going to go bald (a reoccurring fear), and so I shaved my head, just to see if I could pull it off if worse came to worse.  If "worse came to worse" didn't mean, "What if I can't get clean this time and have to back to living in a shooting gallery and eating dead mice."  No, my biggest fear was what if I go bald and lose my pretty.  (Fortunately for me, I soon learned, I have a very pleasantly shaped head.)

So I'm sitting on the smoking porch, because that's all you do in rehab: smoke cigarettes and eat candy (and, yes, that is where I got the name for this blog. Actually, I named the blog after the second chapter in my memoir.  Which is how I picked up girls in rehab, by offering them candy and cigarettes.  Junkie girls crave the sugar, and everyone is poor as shit and always mooching smokes.  I, however, always made sure to walk in with a carton of Camels and several bags of Skittles). And it's probably 6 a.m., which is when the smoking porch would open, and I was always out there at 6 a.m., because I could never sleep and used to chain-smoke like a bastard.  And I remember this little old cleaning lady comes out to sweep and dump the ashtrays, and we get to talking, and I must've been bitching, because that is what I do, only in there it's worse, because I am in rehab, without drugs, and now I look like a bald man.  And the finches are chirping with the rising run, and the cleaning lady says, "Don't you wake up just happy to hear these birds?"  And, I'm like, "Fuck no, I don't wake up happy to hear any birds.  Why the fuck would I care about any birds?"  

It took a while.  But I realize the cleaning lady was right.   I don't mean to say I ever wake up happy to hear any fucking birds.  But it is about gleaning satisfaction from the everyday and mundane.  Because that's pretty much all we've got to work with. Very few days are carnivals.  Which is good.  Because I hate loud noises and bright colors.  But I'll tell what I do wake up to, which makes me far happier than any birds ever could.  My boy.  I wake up every morning, early, to my boy crying in his crib, and I go to get him, and even though I am tried as shit and cursing under my breath because it's still dark and I don't know when it happened, when it became an unspoken understanding that Justine gets to sleep in and I have to get up, but I still usually do some goofy entrance to his room, like knocking first or swinging the door open and jumping in because it makes Holden laugh, and he's got this adorable little laugh.  I change him, give him a couple belly farts (because that is what dads do.  Belly farts.  Throw the kid in the air.  Two dad tricks.  You want to be a father, you learn these tricks).  And since it's so early, my screwy brain isn't firing on all cylinders yet, isn't yet able to undermine amelioration, sabotage my best efforts and remind me of something embarrassing I said to a pretty girl in the 7th grade or convince me I am dying of tongue cancer.  Just me and my kid.  And he's smiling at me with big eyes, trusting that I will protect him, and I feel like somebody good.  It's the best part of my day.

*

We all need labels.  Like, Tim Tebow: Superwinner, or Ayn Rand: Fascist Douchy Shitty Writer.  It helps us define our lives, compartmentalize, saves time.

I don't know what the technical term is for why I seem to have a tough time leaving the house or interacting in public, why I don't seem to elicit much satisfaction from the things others seem to get a bang out of, like going a party or to a dinner with more than two people.  Asshole.  Anhedonia.  Doesn't really matter, does it?  They are just words, which we assign meaning to anyway.  And those definitions, like who we are, are always changing.  

The Faulty Logic behind Mottos to Live By

I was reading an interview the other day with Who guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend, where he was talking about writing his enduring lyric "Hope I die before I get old," and how with every passing year as he moved further from snot-nose into adulthood, he began to anticipate the shit he was going to catch for it.  It's a tough one to defend against, that's for sure.  When you spend your whole life railing against the system, what do you do when you suddenly find yourself part of the very thing you hate?

One of the ways I've gotten around this conundrum is in my refusal to mature.  It's a risky strategy, and one that doesn't win many friends or prove lucrative in the job market.  (It certainly doesn't lend itself to long-term marriages, either.)

The transition to being a father (i.e., going from irresponsible punk to mentor figure responsible for instilling values in a young child) has been a relatively smooth one for me.  My anxiety condition still gets the best of me from time to time, but that is why I have a psychiatrist, and I am at a loss for where the hours go, but I guess that is what a calendar is for.  Overall, I think I am pretty good at being a dad, and feel confident I will avoid the traditional teenager rite of passage, hating your father.  In short, because I still think like a teenager.  I still believe Holden Caulfield was right. And I don't expect that viewpoint to change any time soon.

The part that always trips me out is seeing these hair-bunned mothers and dopey fathers, the PTAers boycotting advertisers when someone flashes a nipple at halftime during the Super Bowl.  I always wonder, how did you get there?  When you're a kid, you laugh at people like that.  And then somehow, you magically transform into one of them?

                                                                    "My God, are we gonna be like our parents?  It's unavoidable..."

What I find most difficult, I suppose, is sifting through the bullshit, the endless parade of seemingly well-meaning platitudes with which I know my son will be confronted.  A little while back I wrote a fairly popular piece on here called "The Faulty Logic behind Whales and Mermaids (http://tinyurl.com/6vxkldt), which was in response to a viral poster being pasted everywhere, in which the author tried to equate knowledge with pant size.  In chastising the Facebook favorite, I expected to catch more flack from the large-boned set, but by and large the response was pretty positive, regardless of weight class.  Which was cool, since it wasn't my intention to criticize anyone for his or her appearance, as much as it was to lampoon a ridiculous, logically unsound notion.

Facebook is a breeding ground for a lot of these soundbites and catchphrases, winning legions of Likes and "you go, girl!"  This one has been popping up a lot lately:

Like "Whales and Mermaids," it seems innocuous enough with its positive carpe diem-like message.  Drink life to the lees and all that.  Except if one were to actually follow the advice of arriving at the finishing line all used up, you'd look like Donatella Versace, and nobody wants to see that shit.

No, you don't want to show up with chocolate in one hand and a latte in the other.  Chocolate is OK in moderation, but too much sugar is not a good thing, especially when you get older.  And that is essentially what lattes are, milk sugar, which turns to fat and places an inordinate amount of pressure on your joints and spine, and bones are particularly brittle at that age.

Encouraging a lifestyle that wears one out and leaves you ugly is bad advice, no matter how you spin it.  That advice works for exactly one person.  And you ain't him.

For the rest of us, I don't recommend heroin.  (Trust me, it's not good for your teeth and gums.)

I guess it comes down to a value system.  I'd consider arriving at the end of this goddamn thing in a well-preserved, attractive body to be a victory.  Withstanding this shitstorm and still being pretty and intact?  Hell yeah that's a success.  (Then again, I'd rather be good looking and dead than alive and healthy but unattractive. So maybe I'm not the best guy to ask.)

Conventional wisdom is just that: conventional.  And when you live outside those mores and folkways, it's tougher to gauge appropriate behavior.  Pushing iconoclast boundaries looks good on paper or in Christian Slater movies, but in real life, it isn't any more practical advice than what's supplied in Whales or Mottos.

                                             (Speaking of Christian Slater movies, don't re-watch Heathers.  Trust me, it doesn't age well.)

Maybe it isn't about developing an all-encompassing, foolproof philosophy for the boy.  And maybe I won't have to point out the bullshit to him.  After all, kids are pretty good at picking up on that themselves.  The tricky part is not losing the ability to still see it as you get older and join those same ranks you once opposed.

Becoming Richard Vernon

Every time I take Holden to his doctor's appointment, I leave feeling like shit about my abilities as a parent.  There are so many things that can go wrong, vital components of development that you have been put in charge of, and are royally fucking up.  For instance, my kid isn't talking.  This is probably because while attempting to promote my fledgling, stupid career by being rigidly dogmatic about writing at assigned times daily, I'd distract the kid by turning on the TV.  NPR says TV is bad for kids and stunts growth.  I grew up in front of the fucking TV.  So did my brother.  And look how we turned out.  OK.  Bad example.  But how the fuck can you be a parent and try to get any work done without a little distraction?  So for a few weeks, between the age of 9 and 11 mos., which are apparently the most critical to your child's developing mad skills to be a winner, I, with my well-documented limited coping abilities and severe anxiety, selfishly turned on Yo Gabba Gabba to give me a few minutes to finish writing, while my wife enjoyed her precious sleep.  Plus, the kid fucking loves Yo Gabba Gabba.  It was win-win. Right?  Wrong.  I got some writing done, all right, and in the process retarded my son's verbal growth, dooming him to a life of communicating like one of Dr. Necessiter's test subjects.

Being a parent is fucked up, and you cannot win.  In baseball, you are paid millions to fail 7 out of 10 times.  As a parent, all you need to do is fuck up once, to have that fuck up repeated for your kid's friends and families, and future husbands and wives for, like, forever.  We all have the story, the time our mother made us sing the "Star Spangled Banner" in front of her friends because, at 8, we were fucking tone deaf.  The time our father humiliated us at our baseball birthday party by striking us out.  It's like this Onion article.

Study Finds Every Style Of Parenting Produces Disturbed, Miserable Adults

OCTOBER 26, 2011 | ISSUE 47•43

SANTA ROSA, CA—A study released by the California Parenting Institute Tuesday shows that every style of parenting inevitably causes children to grow into profoundly unhappy adults. "Our research suggests that while overprotective parenting ultimately produces adults unprepared to contend with life's difficulties, highly permissive parenting leads to feelings of bitterness and isolation throughout adulthood," lead researcher Daniel Porter said. "And, interestingly, we found that anything between those two extremes is equally damaging, always resulting in an adult who suffers from some debilitating combination of unpreparedness and isolation. Despite great variance in parenting styles across populations, the end product is always the same: a profoundly flawed and joyless human being." The study did find, however, that adults often achieve temporary happiness when they have children of their own to perpetuate the cycle of human misery.

As a man, when you have a kid all you want to do is do a better job than your father.  All the inappropriate, mean, and hurtful things he said ("Joey will feed the cat," says Mom.  "Joey is too stupid to feed the cat," says Dad), won't be repeated by you. You practically outline a goddamn how-to manual of all the ways to succeed at this.

Now I know there are men out there who get along with their dads, think highly of them, have a wonderful relationship with him, and I am very happy for P. Scott Cunningham.  But, by and large, the majority of my friends have had tumultuous relationships with their pops, to say the least.

This past Saturday, at Lip Service West, we featured Hin Leung, a student at Cal, who read one of most powerfully devastating and emotionally wrought pieces you'll ever hear.  It was about his being in high school back in Hong Kong and finding out about his father's affair.  Hin deftly frames the piece with a chess game and fatherly advice, about standing tall, never surrendering, being a man, which Hin repeats at the end.  Whereas the advice in the beginning is sage and sound.  After his father's fall, those same words only invoke the the phony and pathetic.  Hin is young, his anger just and real.  I am somewhere in the middle, and while I don't condone infidelity (see my second marriage [whore]), I have more sympathy for fathers in stories like that than I used to.  Because I know how complicated this life gets. There is little left of the black and white, right or wrong, all/nothing views of my youth.  Because I am no longer the son.  I am the father.

Yeah, I just compared my parenting to Superman.  So fucking what?  Besides being fucking strong and all-around awesome, Superman is pretty fucking smart too.  The son becomes the father, and the father becomes the son.  We've been doing that dance since the primordial ooze, and mankind's been moving forward OK enough. Until now.  Because apparently TVs and cell phones and milk and 8 billion other modern accouterments are conspiring to undermine my best efforts.  (For a little context, my mother-in-law says I am poisoning my son by feeding him milk.  Just fucking great.  She also thinks cooked food is poison, not that that means jackshit when Holden gets the sniffles.  Virus he caught from one of the other kids at day care?  Nope.  In between stifling his ability to speak, I am apparently also poisoning my child by letting him drink milk like millions of other kids.)

I really fucking hate the Bay Area.  When I was growing up, fuck, man, we got plopped down in front of the TV for days.  And my brother and I drank a goddamn gallon of milk between us a day.  We also played in gravel pits, rode bicycles without helmets, and used wasps' nests for a pinata.  We rode motorcycles (without helmets), hit in batting cages (without helmets), and walked across thin ice through the spring.  I look back, and there are large chunks of time where I don't remember a single adult interfering.  

Then again, I am looking at it from a kids' perspective.  Maybe my mother knew where we were at all times.  Probably.  She was a good mother.  

The weird thing is now being on the other side of that line.

*

My cousin Celeste bought me a new pair of slippers for my 41st birthday.  They are handcrafted, comfortable.  Justine's friend Jane came over the other day.

"You know those are old man slippers, right?" Jane said.

Fuck, yeah, I do.  And I like walking on my front lawn with my old man slippers and terrycloth bathrobe to retrieve my goddamn paper, too.  It is time to accept that I am not John Bender anymore.  I have become Richard Vernon.

I always figured I'd remain hip and relevant.  I am not equipped to be the grown up.

I like being the Good Time Charlie.  This transformation has been the strangest part, going from siding with the 16-year-old, fuck you, POV (to which I still cling mightily) to the, "Hey, put down the candy and eat your vegetables."  It's primal man, just kicks in.  I want to be "the cool dad."  I will not be the cool dad.  

We're going back east for Thanksgiving to see my cousins, who are on Facebook. Lately they've been posting pictures of the whole goddamn family shooting guns. Little kids, too.  Shooting guns.  What the hell?  I'm considering canceling the whole damn trip.  I talk a good game about letting Holden ride motorcycles and box.  That kid ain't fucking riding motorcycles. And he sure as shit ain't boxing.  And he's wearing a fucking  helmet when he rides a bicycle (but not because I think he should; it's a state law out here).  Frank Zappa said speed turns you into your parents.  Well, you know what else turns you into your parents?  Being a fucking parent.

What happened to me?  I feel like Ice Cube after they gave him some money and a hug.

*

I closed with this song the other day, but it's been running through my head a lot lately, so you'll forgive an old man if he repeats himself.

Island Living Pt. II (No Good Deed Goes Unpunished)

On Saturday, my friend Rich was helping me hang the new TV in my garage, which I've turned into a pretty sweet health club--Powertek bench and shoulder press, V5 Hoist home gym, Lifefitness pulley system, elliptical, to go along with the speed and heavy bag, jump ropes and resistance tools, the benches, bars, adjustable dumbbells and exercise bike.  Now you can add to that a flat screen TV.  Welcome to Club Joe. No membership dues.  No waiting for machines.  And best of all?  Come the New Year, you will not have to wait while the droves of Revolutionaries show up for the first two weeks of January, eating their carb-laden protein bars, clogging up the good machines while they talk about their new found commitment, before disappearing into the overcrowded parking lot, never to be seen again.

Ah, fitness in America.

Whatever the skill or talent is called that allows people to do things like installing a swivel mount for a television or putting together a four-post bed, I don't have it.  It takes me three hours to hang drapes.  Last time I tried to assemble a desk, I ended up wood-glueing the goddamn thing together.  You need a souffle or poem written? I'm your man.  You need your car fixed, go somewhere else.

So Rich was helping (i.e., doing it for me).  You might remember Rich from Friday's guest writer, George Murphy, and his story (http://tinyurl.com/7x34ds9), which detailed my past life as a raging douche bag (before ending with my using my powers only for good these days).  Or you just might know Rich because you lived in Berlin, since he and I have been friends since we were five.

We'd gone running in the morning, like we do every Saturday morning.  Which is always dangerous.  Not because of the arthritic hip.  But because everyone who runs runs the risk of looking like one of these guys.

You see 'em every time you run.  You think you are not one of them.  But you never know.

Justine works weekends, so she wasn't home.  It was just Rich, Holden, and I.  Rich is Holden's godfather, and today Holden must've realized that this is the guy who will be slipping $10 in his birthday cards for the next 15 years, so he was all over him.  Holden's newest word is "up."  As in "pick me..."  Putting the TV mount together took most of the day, with Rich doing most of the work.  This isn't unlike when Rich and I worked together as ice cream men, driving the town truck.  Berlin wasn't the kind of town where you really needed an ice cream truck, with neighborhoods (back then) a couple miles apart and the public pools with their own ice cream.  Anyway, the ice cream boss famously once told the new kid driving the truck, "You deliver ice cream like Rich.  Not like Joe." When we were ice cream men (at 16), Rich and I thought that, it'd be a great way to meet girls.  But Rich still did his job.  All I cared cared about were the teeny weeney bikinis (Oh, Nicky Bozzuto and your giant breasts, where have you gone?)

While Rich did the hard labor, I tried to distract the kid, who was starting to get sick. The only way I could distract him was to let him ride on my shoulders as I pranced around the house like a horse.  It makes Holden happy.  Holden gets what he wants.

I was upstairs when the doorbell rang, and it took me a minute to put Holden down, and by then Rich had opened the door and was explaining he just worked here. And I knew who it was before I came outside.

If you were around last week, you probably read Pt. I of this (http://tinyurl.com/crls3lg).  There are few sayings I love as much as "no good deed goes unpunished."  Like fucking clockwork.  As soon as I wrote that check for that kid and his bogus company last week, I knew I'd regret it.  Not the money part. But I figured the same kid would come back and ask for me to buy more "not donations," or worse that he'd tell his buddies with whom he worked this racket that I was an easy mark.

"You bought the magazines," I heard the kid say to Rich.

"I already told you, I don't live here," Rich said.

"But you know the guy who bought the magazines, right?"

I opened the door and told Rich I'd handle it.

The kid was like his friend from last week.  Inner-city, Richmond, not from this neighborhood (am I saying that sensitively enough?).

"Yo," he said, "I'm not hear for no donations."  And he held up the clipboard, pointing to where it said, in bold print, "No Donations."  "I'm not asking for a handout.  I'm just trying to get a leg up."

I explained that his friend was here last week, and that I bought some magazines from him.

"How much you give him?"

"You don't need to worry about that."

The kid who'd come here the other night, I liked him, because I believed him, necessarily.  Not about his magazine racket.  I'm not an idiot.  But when he told me he was an ex-addict, trying to get ahead, down on his luck and hurting, I knew he was telling the truth.  I'm not saying he was a "good" guy, just that I felt where he was coming from, sensed a goodness about him.  Maybe he was playing me; I don't think so.  Having lived the way I did, I am pretty good about that sort of thing.  This kid on Saturday was a punk.

After I repeatedly explained I wasn't going to buy anything from him (not even sure what he was selling, something to do with soap), he started to get nasty, get a little street, if you know what I mean.

"When you work out," he said, "You two make sure you get yours, right?"  He sneered.

I'm not even sure what that was supposed to me.  He'd seen the equipment, but I don't know if he was referring to Rich and me.  I assume he was.  He'd also probably heard Holden crying, and if this was some esoteric statement or whatever, the dad in me wasn't taking a chance, and the mere fact that he might've been bringing my son into this somehow, made me step in, make it clear just how much bigger I was than he.

"I'm not passing judgment," I said to the kid.  "I wish you well.  But you need to leave."

"I ain't doin' nothin' wrong," the kid said.  "I can walk around anywhere I want."

We both knew what I was saying.

"Sure," I said.  "You can.  But I'm telling you, you keep going door to door in this neighborhood, someone will call the cops."

"OK," the kid said, backing down.  "I'll leave you alone."

"I'm not saying I'm going to call the cops," I said, trying to make it clear, "just that this isn't the kind of neighborhood to do what you're doing."

"You got yours," the kid said, motioning up at my big house.  "I just want mine."

As if he, or anyone else, knows what I had to go through to get this house.

I wished him luck again.  And he walked away.

I talked to Rich about it.  "There's no reason for me to call the cops, is there?"  Rich shook his head no.  "The kid isn't doing anything but trying to sell crap."

I was trying to convince myself, because this kid, unlike his friend last week, gave me a bad feeling.  Of course, there is always the deeper fear that I've become...that guy.

When I was a kid, I remember driving with friends and their parents around Berlin, which is as lily-white as you'll ever find, and anytime we'd have to go into New Britain, which had something Berlin had virtually none of, minorities, seeing how scared the grown-ups would get.  This was in the day before auto locks.  The locks used to be on top of the door, like a big spike. I better just include a picture for the iPhone generation.

Anytime parents drove through New Britain and saw a minority, they would make like they were stretching, and lean their elbow to rest by the car window, a process which would, entirely by coincidence I'm sure, also lock the door.  Every fucking time.  We all saw it, the kids I went to school with, and it was hysterical as we got older, into high school, going off to college, because at that age there is no racial division, not really.  Maybe a few jackwagon dillweeds are prejudice, but to most of the people I hung out with, the way our parents acted when it came to race and property values was pathetic.  Yet, there I was on Saturday, wondering, How did I get here?

It really bothered me.  Even thinking about that shit.  Had I been threatened?  Not really.  This kid's friend had simply told him I'd gone for it, and given the lousy success rate these door-to-door sales have, the kid was pressing his luck.  And when I made it clear that I wasn't giving anything, he got a little desperate, pushed a little too hard.  And I wasn't issuing an idle threat.  I knew someone on this block, whose median age is about 104 and white, was going to call the cops.  I was trying to give him a break.  It sucks that because of his skin color and economic situation he was going to invite police attention.  I've made it clear before, I am not a fan of the police.  Seen too much fucked-up shit take place with me and mine.  Back when I was using.  Back when I was scumbag, a lowlife fuckball.  A criminal doing bad things.  Even though I've returned to respectable, that grudge has been slow to soften.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a slight relief when, as I was walking Rich out to his truck, I saw the El Cerrito Police Force prowling my street.  It wasn't just one car.  They hauled out the big, bruising units.  They found the kid and a buddy at the end of the block, in the cul-de-sac.  They flipped on their lights and and escorted the foreign element from my gated island world.

And with that relief came the shame for feeling that relief, for having it so good, for being so blessed in a world of so much suffering.  And, yeah, I mutherfucking mean it.  This shit eats me up.  Always will.  The tattoos, the muscles, the rock 'n' roll, the temper, they don't mean nothing.  I am a bleeding heart, through and through.  I keep the walls high and tight, trying not to peer down or around them, because it breaks my fucking heart.  I don't allow myself to consider the reality of the way so many live their lives, because if I did I'd just end up sitting around singing Brett Dennen songs.

I know my wife will say I need to volunteer at a Needle Exchange or think this is an invitation for her to push fostering a child (which I've agreed to. As long as she is Korean, extremely attractive, and a week shy of her 18th birthday).  I started to get my certification to be a drug and alcohol counselor. Depressed the fuck out of me. Aside from the large percentage who were still using, the classes only reminded me of a world I want to forget.  I watch this Occupy shit, see Richmond at the foot of the hill when we pass through on our way to Kaiser, and it all makes me sick.  I want to do more to help people who were like me.  Not sure how, exactly.  Except to give the occasional ex-addict I deem worthy some money.  At least I know the person who is getting it, as opposed to donating to some faceless non-profit, paying a bunch of Greenpeace dropout's salaries, before what's left is distributed in the form of tuna fish sandwiches to the masses.

I don't know, man.  I don't have an answer to any of it.  And my sympathy is worth about the same as that guy's prejudice and hatred when it comes down to it.  Words without actions and all.

*

After Rich left, I played with Holden in the new gym.  He likes hanging out down there with me.  He thinks the elliptical step is a seat on a giant ride.  Last week, I bought him his own miniature heavy bag.  Little gloves too.  Hung it right next to mine.  Of course, he doesn't want to hit the little bag; he wants to hit the big bag, like daddy. And he will.  He's going have all the chances to do that and more. From here on out, everything I do is to make sure that happens.  And I hope he'll find some better answers than I have.