DadCentric

Phase Two

Well, it's happened.  And it's happened fast.  The Terrible Twos have begun.  Actually, it's the Terrible One and 51/52nds, but, who's counting?  My little daughter has changed - practically overnight - into this faintly recognizable version of the cutesy little girl she was less than a week ago.  They're disturbing, these newly developed defiant behaviors.

She has learned the meaning of the word "no" to the point that she answers on behalf of the dog when we talk to him: 

"Hey boy, you wanna go outside, buddy?"
"No!"
"Actually, honey, I was talking to Dre."
"Noooo!"
"Yes, I was baby so..."
"No!"
"Whatever."

She has also mastered the art of body contortion.  Pick her up when she doesn't want to be picked up and her knees go automatically to her chest - and then her feet to your chest.  Try to put her in her car seat at the wrong moment and her body goes rigor mortise on you like a cadaver in med school.  Oh, and forget about keeping a diaper on her.  That is, if you can get one on her in the first place.  It's like wrestling a bobcat.

Yes, she seems to be embracing this new phase with vigor.  She still has her cutesy side, mind you; you just have to look really hard to find it.  And I don't mind doing that, I guess.  After all, she's still my little pumpkin, right?

"No!"
Shut it, kid.

A-Dad-emy Awards Season

The Oscars were announced this morning, immediately bringing two questions to mind:  why the hell do they announce them so freakin' early in the morning, and will Mira Sorvino ever completely go away?  With no Lord of the Rings movie to dominate the awards, they were sort of all over the map, but as usual the Academy ignored some great films in favor of the hyper-literate and self-congratulatory Hollywood flicks.  If guys were nominating and picking winners, they'd look a lot different, so I'd like to propose my alternate awards for 2005:

Best Supporting Actor:  Among the actual nominees this year, I would give it to Paul Giamatti.  I didn't see Cinderella Man, but my wife HATES him and everything he's done, and I love to torture her.  However, the actual winner should be:  Mickey Rourke for Sin City.  The dude was a force of nature...his best work since Harley Davidson & the Marlboro Man.

Best Supporting Actress:  Among the actual nominees this year, I would give it to Rachel Weisz.  Why?  Because she's hot.  Also, her work in the Mummy movies was tragically overlooked in previous years.  However, the actual winner should be:  Tilda Swinton for The Chronic-WHAT-cles of Narnia.  I haven't seen a woman that scary since Lena Olin in Romeo is Bleeding. 

Best Original Screenplay:  Among the actual nominees this year, I would give it to Crash.  That really was a great film, and the way all the strands of the plot came together to show the interconnection of peoples lives in such a compelling way was incredibly rewarding cinema.  However, the actual winner should be:  Kung Fu Hustle.  A dancing axe gang, two harpists that fire blades from their instrument, and punches that throw people through walls.  Need I say more?

Best Adapted Screenplay:  Among the actual nominees this year, I guess I would give it to A History of Violence.  Why?  Because it starred Aragorn.  And I'm so tired of all the Brokeback Mountain talk.  Enough already!  However, the actual winner should be:  King Kong.  He fights three tyrannosaurs, including a crazy battle while hanging from vines, then splits one of their jaws open with his fists.  SWEET!  And the guy who played Gollum gets his head eaten by a giant worm.  Oh yeah, and it was a love story blah blah blah. 

Best Actor:  Among the actual nominees this year, I'd pick Terrence Howard.  Mostly because I don't want to vote for a gay cowboy, a pale shadow of Johnny Cash, a guy in black and white, or a guy who basically played a Southern girl with an annoying voice for two hours.  However, the actual winner should be:  Vince Vaughan for Wedding Crashers.  There are so many reasons why he is a worthy winner, but my favorite would have to be, "I got a stage five. Virgin. Clinger."  Let's see De Niro deliver that line.

Best Actress:  Among the actual nominees this year, I'd pick Keira Knightley.  Why?  She's hot.  Did she get nominated for Domino?  I'm not sure, but it doesn't really matter.  However, the actual winner should be Jenna Jameson for the remake of The Devil in Miss Jones.  Is there anything she can't do?  From the hours of footage I've watched, I can't imagine what that would be (and I can imagine quite a bit).  She's the Meryl Streep of our generation.

Best Director:  Among the actual nominees this year, I'd pick Ang Lee.  First, cool name--Ang.  Second, I thought Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was amazing.  They should give it to him just for that.  I know, I know, that was a few years ago, and has done The Hulk since then, but I'm a forgiving person.  However, the actual winner should be Steven Spielberg.  Not for Munich, but for War of the Worlds.  Finally someone realized that we go to these movies to see shit blow up.  Lots of it.  For hours.  Are you taking notes, Roland Emmerich?  Explosions are cool.  Lots of them are better.

Best Picture:  Among the actual nominees this year, I'd pick Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith.  What, not nominated?  Shocking.  I liked it, but Jar Jar killed all good will I had towards George Lucas years ago.  I'd actually probably go with Crash again, same reason as above.  However, the actual winner should be:  The Transporter 2.  Is Jason Stratham not the coolest freakin' action star out there?  They can make ten of these movies and I would not get tired of them.  Sure, you need to take some suspension-of-disbelief pills beforehand, but don't you need to do the same thing every time you see Woody Allen with a love interest on film?

Girlie Books

I'm going to just come right out and admit that I am thoroughly enthralled with the Laura Ingalls Wilder series of books.  There...I said it.  Now, just slap my ass and call me Gurdy.  For the uninitiated, this series is what beget "Little House on the Prairie."  Go ahead...laugh it up bitches.

It all started when my stepdaughter brought home "Little House in the Big Woods" for me to read to her before bed. Apparently growing tired of the intriguing articles presented monthly in Surfing Magazine that had been successfully lulling her to sleep for the past year or so, she plops this little gem on the nightstand one evening.  "Fuck," I'm thinking to myself, "I don't want to read about sunbonnets and cornmeal."  But I understand that, as a young girl, she probably has interests that are far below my radar and, if it takes the literary equivalent of playing dress up to make her happy, I'll bite my pillow the bullet and read it to the girl.  And so the adventure began.

Now, I'm doing everything I can to get her ready for bed as early as possible so I have more time to read about how Pa whittled a house out of an oak tree or how awesome it must've been to have your kids think a peppermint stick in their stocking was the best Christmas ever.  (In all honesty, what I'd really like to read about is how they went to the bathroom.  After finishing 3 intensely descriptive books covering several years, no one's pooped!). 

It's fascinating, really.  I couldn't imagine living hand-to-mouth like those poor bastards did.  I think that's what I like about these books.  They serve as reminders of just how good we have it these days.  It makes me feel guilty now when I bitch at my robot vacuum for missing a spot in front of the 42-inch plasma TV because my Video iPod was left lying on the floor.

"My momma likes Bacardi. That's why we call my little sister 151."

In the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, we're usually bombarded with a flurry of nonsensical stories that are usually only tangentially related to the game itself.  Most of the stories tend to be of the human interest sort.  For example, did we know that Shaun Alexander enjoys chess?  Or that Jerome Bettis loves cheese fries?  Not very illuminating stuff but, heck, it's the Super Bowl and we, the astute readers, are keen on the fact that newspapers have space to fill. 

Every once in awhile, we hear stories about the fans themselves.  Oh yes, those crazy wacky fans. 

In my entire life of being a sports fan, I don't think I"ve ever seen anything more astounding than this.   It's the story of a young Steeler's fan named "Seven" (yes, it's like that old "Seinfeld" episode...but IN REAL LIFE!)

According to the article, "Seven was born Oct. 26, 2004, between Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger's fourth and fifth consecutive victories of his rookie season. Although Seven's parents -- who live in Indiana, Pa. -- are often asked whether they named their son after Mr. Roethlisberger, they were actually inspired by another Western Pennsylvania institution: After driving by an 84 Lumber sign, they "decided to go with something numerical," said Mrs. Barber."

Seriously?  I don't know whether to laugh or cry.  Poor kid.  You Steelers fans sure are CRAZEE!

DadCentric Cooks: Death By Chili

So the Super Bowl is a few days away. Time to start thinking about what you're going to eat. At my house, that's easy. Chili. For the Super Bowl, nothing else will do, and since this will be Super Bowl XL, and the game may actually live up to the hype - well, no ordinary hamburger and pinto bean mix will suffice. A while back, on my personal site, I put up what I consider to be the Mother of All Chili Recipes. Here it is, revised to reflect current events:

If you don't have one, go buy a Crock Pot. (I did this post well in advance of the game so that you'd have time to run down to Target. You're welcome.) I love one-pot meals, and a Crock makes them amazingly easy to do. As an idiot, I can say with great confidence that any idiot can use one. And it makes this amazingly easy chili recipe even easier. Now, keep in mind that we are talking a cooking time of at least six hours, so you're going to want to start making this right when the Fox Pre-Game Show starts.

• A 2 pound beef roast (the leaner, the better - rump is good. Heh heh - I said "rump".)
• A package of turkey smoked sausage
• A can of Ro-Tel MILD diced tomatoes and chilis
• A package of Carroll Shelby's Chili Mix (I said it was easy.)
• A can of black beans (optional - if you use them, drain and rinse them before putting them in)
• Red wine
• A six pack of Karl Strauss Amber Lager. Better make it two.
• A box of cornstarch
• Salt and pepper
• Shredded cheese, diced onions, sour cream, and a big ass bag of Fritos. The Scoop kind.

Bust out your Crock pot, making sure that the burnt remnants of whatever it was that you tried to make the night before have been scraped out. Take your roast, remove it from the packaging(!), place it in the Crock, add salt and pepper. Cut the smoked sausage into slices roughly 1 inch thick. Eat one. You know you want to. Put the rest into the Crock. Prepare the Chili Mix according to the package EXCEPT substitute a cup of the red wine for one cup of water; do this in a separate bowl and pour it into the Crock. Of course, this means that you'll have an extra bowl to wash, which will require you to expend energy which you'll need for sex later (your wife/partner, who we assume is a chili fan, will throw her/himself at you). So maybe you'll want to whip up the Chili Mix in the Crock FIRST and then adding everthing else. While you're at it, pour yourself a glass of the red. Waste not, want not, eh? Add the Ro-Tel. Add the beans if you want. (Remember, drain and rinse them. Use a collander for this. It's the big metal bowl-looking thing with a bunch of holes in it.) Cover the Crock Pot. Turn it on to LOW. LOW LOW LOW. NOT HIGH. LOW. Let it cook for at least six hours. This is where the extra sixer of Karl comes in handy. Enjoy that while you listen to John Madden blather on; for fun, play the Madden Drinking Game (every time he says "Now here's a guy...", take a sip. On second thought, better not, unless you want the EMT's pumping your stomach an hour before kickoff.)

(Six hours later): Remove the Crock lid. Smell. Fuck yeah. Take a metal spoon and shred the roast; it should break apart fairly easily and be somewhat stringy. Now comes the tricky part. Hopefully you're not too drunk to do this. Check the chili. It might be a bit soupy. (If you put beans in, it will probably be somewhat less so, as the starch from the beans acts as a thickening agent. Alton Brown, kiss my grits.) Take a ladle and scoop out a couple of cups of the stock. Put it in a small saucepan. Take your cornstarch, and in a small bowl mix equal parts cornstarch and warm water until you get something that looks like soymilk (a few tablespoons of each should do the trick). Add that to the stock in the saucepan and bring it to a boil, stirring constantly. I'd recommend doing this over medium heat, especially if you have an electric range. Otherwise it might boil over and then you got worries. As it comes to a boil it will thicken up. Once it does, pour it back into the Crock and stir. Repeat this until you get a consistancy you like. Give it a taste. Add salt, pepper, and cayenne (a little packet comes with the Shelby's) to taste. Scoop it into bowls. Add the shredded cheese, onions, and sour cream if you'd like, although I gotta tellya, it won't need it.

Good luck, and if you attempt this, let me know how it goes.

Welcome to Zombieland

So, I'm a new dad again! My wife gave birth to a wonderful baby girl on Saturday morning.

If you want to see a photo go on over to http://chocolatemakesitbetter.blogspot.com

As you can appreciate posting may be a little sparse over the next week, but once I get back on track I will have a whole heap of baby related stuff to share.

What's the best thing for cleaning up vomit?

Should you still drink that coffee if you mistakenly use salt instead of sugar?

You know........that sort of stuff.

Anyway, I must go as I'm badly in need of sleep, coffee and baby cuddles.

Pete

Announcements

Hi. You're probably wondering why I'm doing a post on a Saturday. I could sell you some drama about how, over the past 24 hours, I've had a string of Jack Bauer-esque calamities befall me. The kid has to have the tubes in his ears. The dog dug his way underneath the fence AGAIN and this time his Steve McQueen/James Garner/Richard Attenborough-inspired adventure took him over our neighbor's (she being a Grumpy Old Woman of Indeterminate Age) fence, and the GOWOIA called THE COPS (plug here for my wife's site; I'll let her tell the tale). And the planned surfing excursion with Whiff was cancelled because apparently my bad ear infection karma rubbed off on his daughter.

Needless to say, it's been a shitty old time.

BUT! I'm geeked over some coolness coming up this week. Here at DadCentric HQ (a massive space station in geosynchronous orbit over Gotham City), we have Big Things happening. First, you may have noticed that "dt-greg" contributed a post yesterday. We in the Blogosphere know him as Greg, the man behind the curtain at Daddy Types, and are very happy to have him aboard. Second, Super Bowl XL. All kinds of Big Game related stuff. And third, a bit of a change in format to the Dad O' The Week post - thanks to the miracle of The Email, I'll be e-interviewing this week's featured dad, Jon Armstrong.

So enjoy the rest of the weekend, and while you're at it, answer me this: Lucas just got a new picturebook, Once Upon A Potty. One page features a picture of a potty containing a big steaming pile of babyshit. Lucas points at the picture and says "YUMMY!" Should I be concerned?

Salt-and-Pepper Crusted Pork

I've posted jack since Jason invited me to this party. Partly it's work/kid/life insanity; partly it's OPB [other people's blog]-induced stagefright, like pissing in one of those trough deals at Talladega; partly it's the new guy at the table wariness, like when that guy playing poker gets tricked into buying everyone's bacon doubles at Wendy's open-late drivethru.

Anyway, after two surprise stunning successes on short/no notice with this recipe, I figured it's the perfect inaugural guest post. And it also gives you an excuse to head to Costco to pick up giant trays of meat.

Salt-and-Pepper Crusted Pork [via epicurious]
2 teaspoons pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried rosemary, crumbled
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 12-ounce (about) pork tenderloin

1 tablespoon olive oil

Combine pepper, salt, rosemary and garlic in small bowl. Rub over pork. Let pork stand at least 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 400°F.
Heat oil in heavy medium ovenproof skillet over high heat. Add pork and brown on all sides, about 6 minutes.
Transfer skillet with pork to oven and roast until pork is cooked through, turning occasionally, about 20 minutes. Slice and serve.

2 servings

Notes: Start to finish, this is about 45 minutes, but that's mostly sitting or roasting time. This sounds like it's for a big filet, but I used it for the thick tenderloins from Costco. The above is enough to cover three servings. Our pepper mills suck [including the electric one with the flashlight built in. wtf?], so I've been using closer to a 1:1 ratio of S&P. When I got lazy and just threw in some whole peppercorns, though, they turned out to be kind of intense. This was the first time I've deglazed a pan, and boy, it was a good thing. The gravy was pretty good [a cube of bouillon and 2/3c water or so did it], but it also made cleaning it 10^6x easier. Not that that was my job; I cooked...

Anyway, be sure to watch the handle on that pan; because it'll be hot for like an hour after you take it out of the oven.

Lucaspeak

I scrolled back through my old posts and realized that I'm a bit heavy on the "things going on on TV/print/and Internets" and light on "things going on with me and mine." So I recorded a conversation between me and the kid yesterday, on the drive home from work/daycare:

Lucas: "Hi Daddy!"

Jay: "Hi Lucas!"

L: "Hi Daddy!"

J: "Hi Lucas!"

L: "Daddy!"

J: "Hi Lucas."

L: "Oh."

(Brief pause.)

L: "Hi Daddycar!"

J: "Do you like Daddy's car?"

L: "Oh!"

(A few minutes later...)

L: "Bye bye ton! Bye bye ton!"

J: "Oh, the sun's not gone yet - it's just behind the tr..."

L: "HI TON! HI TON!"

J: "Yeah! There's the sun - see it just went behind a tree and now it's..."

L: "Bye bye ton! Bye ton! Oh noooo!"

J: "Oh, it's OK, see, it just went behind that building an..."

L: "HI TON! HI TON!"

(A few minutes after that...)

L: "Wo-dah? Wo-dah? Pees?"

J: "Do you want some water? Here's your water..."

L: "No."

J: "Ok, guess you don't want any wat..."

L: "Wo-dah? Pees?"

J: "Ok, here's your wa..."

L: "No."

J: "Ok, no water then."

L: "Appa jew?"

J: "Nope, don't have any apple juice in the car."

L: "Oh. Peesa?"

J: "Tell ya what - we'll have pizza for dinner."

L: "Oh."

(Sometime following...)

L: "OBBLEGAGA! OBBLEGAGA!" (this is a real word, and it means...)

J: "Where's the helicopter? Oh, I see them! How many helicopters are there?"

L: (pauses) "TWO OBBLEGAGA! TWO OBBLEGAGA!"

J: "Yay! Two helicopters. That's right!"

L: "Two. Obblegaga. Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow!"

He is, after all, just shy of two.

UPDATED 1/27/06 1:41 PM PST: And OF COURSE, no more than ten minutes after I post this, I get a call from Beth. She took Lucas to the Ear/Nose/Throat Specialist at the behest of our ped. Turns out Lucas has to have tubes put in his ears; he's had an ongoing ear infection for a few weeks. Needless to say, that sucks. No damage to his hearing; the doc says that things probably sound a bit muffled to him (the tubes will fix that), which immediately got me wondering if his repeating "Hi Daddy" was because he couldn't hear me. I don't think that's the case - the kid loves to talk, and his vocabulary has really shot up considerably over the past few weeks. Still - ugh.

Bias Against Boys

Ok, here's my first opportunity to drop a grenade into the room and run away.  I stumbled across this article yesterday.  I found it interesting for many reasons such as, well, I grew up three towns away, I know many people who live there, I know some people that work at this particular high school and I find it intriguing that someone is suing a school for bias against boys.  Let me repeat that.  Bias against boys.  Now, I would usually dismiss this as some prankster's attempt to get a little press or some notoriety.  Take, for example, the student in NJ who is now allowed to wear a skirt to school (also notice the oh-so clever use of a Metallica shirt) - I understand the motive for the suit, but c'mon, dude, you ain't got the legs to pull that off.  Nice ponytail, though.  You have become the caricature of sensitive pony-tail guy.

But the suit in Milton reminded me of a book I heard about some years ago: The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Summers.  Now, I didn't read it, but I have seen past reviews of it and I understand she has drawn some free-wheeling, off the rails kind of conclusions, in addition to providing some relevant problems that are in serious need of being addressed.  I'm not here to advocate for the book or rail against it, either - I didn't read it so I have no opinion one way or another.  It's just that I am justifiably inquisitive since becoming the parent of a boy.  I'm wondering if anyone out there is encountering anything like this now?  Has anyone seen any evidence of this in their schools, social circles, etc.?  Is it a bunch of hooey?  Or is there something more nefarious happening?  Is there a bias against boys?  Just looking for opinions and thoughts from those of you, parents of boys and girls alike, already in the trenches as it were.