When should they see Die Hard?

I want to hear the kid say Shenanigans.

2010-02-22T10:51:00.000-08:00

sorry been away a while, busy with work and well, the other thing. Oh right, the kid. But thought I should put this here in case you hadn't seen it.

That is all for now.

-GD

HOLIDAYS PT2: What's Dutch for... uncomfortable?

2010-01-08T17:56:00.000-08:00

Ok. I've been doing a bunch of Dutch posts for a while, but I promise that this is the last one for a little bit. But don't worry. It's a big one.

December 5th is Sinterklaas for the Dutch. They still celebrate Christmas on the 25th, but the 5th is when they get the goods. So for the kids, that is the day. A local Dutch social organization was putting together a party for kids where Sinterklaas was going to show up and a good good friend of ours, Saskia's godfather, was going to be playing a very important role if you catch my drift (spoiler alert for small kids but look above for a hint).

Now, as anyone who's read David Sedaris knows, they have a little bit... different way of celebrating it. They still have the big man in a red suit and big white beard but instead of elves he is joined by his black helpers. Now of course there isn't anything inherently racist about a man having black employees. They may have a very good benefits package and their racial profile is simply an end product of an over eager HR person trying hard to conform to Affirmative Action. Oh did I mention that their job is to help Sinterklaas by not only keeping track of the information in his naughty and nice book, but also to punish the kids if they are bad. Lump of coal you say? No, one could burn coal for heat making that possibly a good gift in chilly Holland. Sorry kids, the Black Peters as they are called, will track you down and beat you with a bunch of sticks if you're naughty. So I'd stay on their good side.

Now, child abuse aside, the real problem arises when it is time to portray the Black Peters for festivities. In America if we need an elf we can throw Zoey Deschanel in a pointy green hat, with some funny ears, and call it a day. If we are really feeling authentic we can politely ask a little person if they would be so kind as to play the role. That is because we have little people to ask. In Holland they are short a few black people because about 200 years ago they were nice enough to sell us any that they had (or could find laying around Africa) and they charged very little for shipping because who knew if they'd still be alive when they got here. So, due to their rather alabaster personal landscape, when they want to dress up as Sinterklaas's helpers... that's right BLACKFACE!

I want to avoid entering into a very in-depth discussion about race but witnessing what I saw really made me quite uncomfortable. I had known about the tradition and seen photos before but seeing it in person truly brought it home. They don't just tint their skin like Snookie on the Jersey Shore they go full Jazz Singer and they do it having very little concept of what it means. I honestly don't think that they do it with any malice at all towards black people, it is just a longstanding inappropriate tradition that they carry on because in their country there is no one to say otherwise. Seeing the kind of thoughtless institutional racism that we in the states haven't seen in 40 years or so (unless you count truckstops in Tennessee) was a real shock to the system. Made me, who is no stranger to inappropriate jokes and behavior, take a couple of deep breaths and step back. The kids seemed to like it because shoe polish and lipstick aside it was a really fun day and tradition, so call me crazy but I'm pretty sure it's a terrific tradition that could carry on without the makeup. In any case Saskia didn't seem to care one way or the other.

-GD

THE HOLIDAYS: Pt. 1 "Even 'Linus & Lucy' can set me off"

2009-12-30T09:14:00.001-08:00

I love Thanksgiving and I love Christmas, late fall is really a terrific time for me. I love Christmas so much that one of my very few pet peeves is hearing Christmas music when it isn't Christmas. There is such a sense memory attached to those songs that I get super jazzed whenever I hear them thinking it's that most wonderful time of the year. The danger is when some jerk off radio station is doing "Christmas in August" and I get crazy bummed. One time I accidentally wandered into one of those year round Christmas shops in late spring. The realization of the actual season threw me into such a depression that I locked myself in my bedroom for a day eating spoonfuls of nutmeg until it had the hallucinatory reaction I was looking for. So yeah... I dig Christmas.

So over the next few days I'm going to to keep you posted on the excitement that has been my first Christmas as a Pop.

-GD

More Dutch "Goodness"

2009-12-30T09:11:00.000-08:00

Looks good doesn't it? Well...

Another joy of being married to a Dutch person is to experience the joy that is their love of Licorice and the wide rainbow of flavors that comes with it. They have sweet licorice, salty licorice, licorice powder that is sort of like "Lick-M-aid" (only licorice), and then they have a whole separate category for Anise related things. Likewise I'm sure that civil engineers who develop cities also have a wide catalog of street tars, concrete, and asphalt that they pull from when laying roads. I'm also sure that their road tars taste better than any licorice that I've ever eaten.

You see I don't like cauliflower (mean broccoli as I call it) or steamed carrots, but when I eat them, I can choke them down. When I try licorice, of any sort, my body rejects it like what. There have been countless times in my relationship with the wifey where I've been a good sport trying whatever new favorite flavor of hers she wants me to sample. It always ends in tears and a soggy half chewed black hunk of gross getting flicked into the kitchen garbage can.

But, as a good son-in-law and husband I have was a very good sport when it came to one of their Birth traditions. We have cigars, they have "Beschuit met Muisjes" (biscuits with mice), dry biscuits with sugar covered anise seeds on top with the appropriate blue or pink hue. And let me say... it is just as tasty as you may think it is. I did it though. I actually ate the whole thing with very minimal face making. Only did it once however.

-GD

CALL OF DADDY

2009-12-14T20:37:00.000-08:00

Fun with iPhone and good old animated gifs. Yeah... This'll get annoying after a while, hahah

And for the record, find me on the PSN as SergePainsbourg.

EDIT: Awe dangit. that is supposed to be animated. I'll work on that tomorrow. for now it's just a niceish photo.

-GD

Lie down with dogs... wake up with cuteness!!

2009-12-11T13:53:00.000-08:00

So, yeah, one of my biggest concerns about having the little lady was how my other little lady (dog) Lily was gonna react. She's clearly jealous at times and she does occasionally get a little too into licking her face but as you can see they are definitely getting along well.

one more ;)

-GD

Thanks PLAGUE!

2009-11-19T15:52:00.000-08:00

Big thanks to my "Blog Buddy" (the wife's term) Plague for sending me this. Again good sir, you rule. (it's for a 6 mo so she's gotta grow into it, but man I couldn't resist a pic).

It's from Think Geek which really has so much cool stuff. But Plague pointed out to me that they make this in red... REALLY? You might as well just hand her to Phillip Garrido on the next Away Team mission to WalMart .

And if any of you readers out there are feeling generous... ahem... she also loves Deeeeaaathhhh Metal.

-GD

DOES THIS MEAN HAVING A FAMILY IS A HANDICAP?

2009-11-04T14:55:00.000-08:00

Eat it jerks... After years of slowly passing by the Family Parking Section while grumbling and rolling my eyes at the throngs of cars adorned with stupid stickers marking off how many kids people have like a Bomber hatching off kills... I now can finally add myself to that fabulous list of people who get to park closer to the doors simply because they did the one thing they were put on this earth to do (tender ronies) and it feels gooooood.

Next I'm going to buy a big SUV so I can park in the Compact Car spaces in tight underground garages as seems to be the custom.

Oh and IKEA Soft Serve... brilliant.

-GD

Happy Halloween

2009-10-31T11:27:00.001-07:00

*untouched photos for another blog which shall remain nameless, but some of you out there will probably know where to find it.

-GD

Pff. The Dutch

2009-10-19T23:17:00.000-07:00

So, my wife is Dutch. Not like cops and army men in movies who are named Van *blank* that people nickname Dutch. Nor, like the Germans (Deutsche) who came to America and refuse to use modern inventions yet have no problem with high-tec flourescent orange/super reflective street safety devices and get called Dutch. She's real Dutch. That Windmill up there? That's the view from her friggin bedroom. Dutch.

So, one of the wonderful things about being with a foreigner is being a part of all the delightful lessons in cultural differences and the things that get lost in translation. For example, did you know that the Dutch also have a food pyramid, but theirs is built out of sugar cubes and blocks of cheese? Another, was the other day when we were discussing the baby and my wife said she was happy that our daughter didn't show any signs of "yawndice"(that actually did happen). I'm sure as time goes on I'll share with you many traditions I learn about as we share them with Saskia.

One Dutch Tradition, mainly from her region (who thought a country the size of Maryland had regions, much less regions that are VEEERRRY territorial), is to bake a bread in honor of the new born child. Called Krente Wegge, the bread is of course sweet, a raisin bread, and is filled with a marzipan filling (like you do), and is baked to be the size of the baby when born.

Like the good proud grandparents that they are my in-laws had the bread made to share with friends and well wishers. Now, our baby was roughly 19" long, but something tells me that somewhere in the conversion process to metric those numbers got frazzled along the way. How do I know this? Well, take a look at the photos they sent us of themselves with the bread. On the one hand you have the sheer scale of the loaf. On the other, my in-laws have a look of bewildered nervousness that their daughter may have just birthed a T-Rex.

-GD

4 8 15 16 23 42

2009-10-19T10:34:00.000-07:00

Well, Saskia is a week old and can I just say, it's a treat. Really really fun/wonderful/strange/cool experience. I will write more about the actual birth (no personal gory details sorry) later, but I just wanted to toss in a few words about the care of the newborn. Is it hard... Well? No.

For starters they're damn near indestructible. You know how people are afraid they'll leave the car seat on top of the car and drive off? Good news, even if you do, they're fine. Kidding.

However they are fine if they get run over by a FLIPPING TRAIN!!! (yes, seriously the baby was in that stroller and lived suffering only minor injuries.)

Logistically, they're easy. The eat, sleep, poo parts I knew. The only one that I didn't was "gas". If the first three don't get them to stop crying then burping her seems to be the final trick.

I can really equate the whole thing to the computer in the Hatch on Lost. On the show, they find a weird living quarters where every 108 minutes someone, usually Dreamy Desmond, has to input a sequence of numbers into a computer and hit Enter, thus averting a catastrophe (have we figured out exactly what that was yet btw?). The act of entering the numbers isn't really hard, it's just that you have to consistently do it every 108 minutes no ma. Same with the baby. Caring for her isn't hard, it's just that it takes round the clock attention or she implodes and the sky turns purple. Which brings me to my next point.

Someone asked me this week if she's keeping me up at night. To be honest, no. She doesn't keep me up, she wakes me up at night, but I'm getting decent sleep. Like difficulties people in life like to be melodramatic about, I'm beginning to think that the "No sleep when baby comes" is a self fulfilling prophecy. For the past 10 months I've had people bombarding me with this phrase

"Get lots of sleep now because soon... phoo forget it."

Now from the get go I had issues with this, but swallowed them so I wouldn't look like I was wrong later. For starters, how does one "back-log" sleep? I can sleep for a month, but then one of two nights of no sleep and it's all shot. Secondly, I'm really good on 5-6 hours a night. I know people who tell me they need at the minimum 8, but usually 10. I think they are probably depressed, have mono, or are avoiding life. And finally, when I lived and worked in L.A. I would work 12-14 hours a day, 7 days a week, and tried to have a busy (drunk/out late) social life. That meant I would regularly be out until 2 and at work by 7, and that went on for a while. It would be wholly hypocritical of me to say I could hack that, but not a stinkin baby.

Even so, once the lady was nearing the end stage I decided to drink the sleepy Kool-Aid. We would pass out around 10 and wake up about 8:30 or 9. Now, she was carrying a full term baby, I don't know what my excuse was. And it hit me, of course new parents think they don't get a lot of sleep when the baby comes. They just spent the last month oversleeping after everyone told them to, so they have no concept of what a "normal" night of sleep is.

So friends, my very informed (after one whole week!) opinion is this... Before baby arrives, go nuts! Go out with friends, have dinner at 9, stay up until 3 in the morning trying to beat Radec in Killzone 2 (I still haven't), take up smoking if only for a month, hit the gym every day, twice on Sunday, wake up and make breakfast in time to watch the only good hour of the Today Show, do it do it do it (helps instigate labor, this I know.), and just live. Do all these things and the schedule of occasionally getting up to feed or change a baby will seem like a pale imitation of the crazed life you were living.

-GD

SASKIA - 10.12.09

2009-10-15T09:36:00.001-07:00

Well, I had a few posts that I was going to write all about our final bit of preparation before the little lady was going to appear into the world, but she had other plans. Monday morning we were on our way to the hospital where she came into the world shortly thereafter. Healthy, with huge feet (Mom). I'll post more about it all later, but right now she's way more important than the innernet. Except for 4Chan.

BTW.. Car-seat? super easy.

-GD

FEAR IS THE MIND KILLER

2009-10-04T16:15:00.000-07:00

In the novel/movie Dune, Paul Atredies, new to the harsh desert climate of the planet Arakis, puts on his own Stillsuit. The Arakis native Liet Kynnes remarks that someone must have helped him put it on because he wore the complex suit designed to keep you alive in the desert not only correctly, but in the fashion of the Fremen who dwell in the desert. This of course ends up being foreshadowing, showing the intuitiveness and brilliance of the young leader who in time becomes a planetary messiah.

I bring this up because I have a similarly difficult task ahead of me. Or so I've been led to think. Keeping a baby healthy, alive, fed, and happy for 18 years apparently pales in comparison to the challenge most individuals face installing a car seat. I've heard tales of it taking up to 8 hours. 8 HOURS, to run a strap under a piece of plastic. And then the chances, after you actually manage to thread that labyrinth, that you've actually done it right are slim to none, guaranteeing that car crash or not, your baby will somehow find a way to shoot out of that base and through the front windshield.

You guys are morons. I'm calling it now.

I will be the Muad'Dib of the planet Graco. Sometime in the next couple of days I will install this car seat base in no time flat. Then, when I visit Ikea for meatballs and a carseat inspection, the Snugrideologist will look at me with an expression of stifled excitement and say,

"You've installed a car seat base before."

and I will say "No, never, this is my first time."

And he will gasp and drop to his knees and yell "WE HAVE FOUND HIM! THE CARSEATZ HADERACH!" and one by one I will be surrounded by people in yellow polo shirts all dropping to their knees to praise one so brilliant.

Or I'll get pissed while putting it in and toss it into the street. Time will tell.

-GD

Welcome people.

2009-10-03T11:01:00.000-07:00

Last March, my wife and I discovered that we were going to have a baby. Despite being recently laid off, the crap economy, and the general insanity that comes with a child I was rather excited.

For you see as all parents do I saw this as a two stage adventure in which to mold someone into a perfect being.

The first stage is what I'll call "The Minion Stage". Essentially having a little tiny henchman who does as their told and will make Manhattans for you. I've even started buying the smaller bottles of Canadian Club so he can lift it sooner. But, during this stage you do more than boss him around, you also prepare him for stage two...

"The Coolest Person on the Planet Stage". This is the butterfly to the minion's pupa. You see while they've been your henchmen you've been taking them to see "the right movies" while shunning musicals about High School that I'm sure he won't want to see anyways. Pokemon? Yu-Gi-oh? Whatever is popular now? Pshh. Ignore that! You've been showing him original seasons of G1 Transformers, GI Joe, MASK, and Thundercats on DVD, his taste is too refined for modern cartoons (save a handful of good ones). And of course he's never even heard of The Wiggles because for him he hears cartoons and bands and he thinks of Dethklok. He'll know the complete songbook of Dean Martin before he hears "Baby Beluga" for the first time! And on his 10th birthday you and him will sit down with a big bucket of Popcorn and throw the classic of the Horror/Action/Sci-Fi genre "Predator" into the wall screen (I figure we'll have wall screens in 10 years) and bond like no father and son ever did before. Then, when he is ready to enter High School, he will such a cultured, educated and all around awesome lady-killer they'll have thought James Bond himself had enrolled.

Then we found out we were having a girl.

Hrm. If I was wrong about the sex of the child, could I have been wrong about any of my other plans for her? Possibly.

In our birthing class (more on that down the road) they had an exercise for us where we took 14 different two sided cards and we laid out our "ideal" birth scenario. IV/No IV, Drugs/No Drugs, etc.. We slowly whittled it down until everyone in the class (should have) had Healthy Baby as the only card remaining. The point of the exercise is that while you may have a vision of the perfect birth, only one thing is truly important and very little of it you actually control.

So the news that I was having a girl made me rethink my whole plan. To be fair it was a bit of a relief. In my mind I was going to have the coolest son on earth, but there was a part of me that thought, "Am I just making the biggest dork in his school district?". As a nerd/collector/movie buff/artist/designer I have a lot of interests. So if I were to lay out my cards I'd have many ideal scenarios for the next 18 years of what I need to do with my daughter but as I whittle them down only one really important question remained...

When should she see Die Hard?

So please visit here often to see how I'm doing with my newest full time job, and help me figure out the answer to that, and other questions.

-GD