Category Archives: Parenting

Generation Landslide

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The summer intern season is winding down and it has left me melancholy, as usual. Only the best, brightest and well-connected are granted internships at the investment banks in Manhattan. They’re the fortunate sons and daughters of well-heeled parents. Many of them, through no fault of their own, are blissfully unaware that they were found under a golden cabbage leaf. This is not to imply they’re lazy. They are not. They’re hard working and dedicated. In order to land an internship, they have to prove their mettle. But since they’re selected from the best schools, that’s a foregone conclusion.

Because I work in an open-architecture environment, I am privy to their phone conversations and chats with fellow interns. Academia and success is all they’ve ever known. They’re too young to have lost a job or suffer a serious setback. It sounds like many of them haven’t even enjoyed a proper heartbreak yet. An intern assigned to our group is an NYU student (tuition is +/- $60,000/year). He spends his weekends in the Hamptons summer rental his father arranged for him—a reward for landing the internship. He’s not boastful or smug about it. He’s a good-looking kid (kid!) and seems to have an endless parade of pretty young things with flat stomachs visiting his desk trying to curry his favor.

The yellow brick road is stretched out before him. I’ve carved out a pretty decent life with the tools that were available, but the types of opportunities they take for granted are unimaginable to me. My future no longer carries an air of mystery or boundless possibility. They make me feel old and lacking in accomplishment.

He hath a certain beauty in his life
That makes mine ugly.

Othello
Wm. Shakespeare

Spent some time feeling inferior
Standing in front of my mirror

Every Picture Tells a Story
Rod Stewart

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I’ll tell you one thing I don’t envy—their pathetic addiction to mobile phones. It’s the adult version of a sippy cup. While visiting the county fair in Ohio last week, I was watching The Daughters on the bumper cars. A kid was reading text messages while in the middle of his bumper car ride. Sounds ridiculous but here’s photographic proof:

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He can’t disengage from his phone long enough to enjoy a proper bashing on the bumper cars. Do you know what’s even sadder? ANOTHER kid on the SAME ride who placed a phone call while driving the car!

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They’ve always said that cell phones and driving are a hazardous mix but I suppose it’s irrelevant here. Last Sunday, my bride was in a minor fender bender. She was waiting for the light to change and in her rear view mirror, she saw the car behind her slowly creeping up. Its driver, a young girl, was yapping away on her phone. Bump. They got out of the car and she denied being on the phone. My bride gave her the old “don’t lie to me” and she immediately buckled and admitted fault. She got her driver’s license on Friday. It took her less than 48 hours to get in an accident because she was on the phone.

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A boy und his mutt. Voof.

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The latest from the Associated Press and my elevator

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My office has elevator TV. Step into almost any lift in Manhattan and you’ll be greeted with a TV screen that broadcasts ads, news, sports and entertainment tidbits. They show pie charts from USA Today. I defy you to tear your eyes away from the screen as the car shoots up to your floor. You can’t. It’s insidious brilliance.

[Almost as insidious and brilliant as a cigarette campaign I saw at an ad agency I worked at many years ago. They went to local beaches and passed out rubber flip-flops for free. Embossed on the bottom were the Camel cigarette logo and image of Joe Camel (remember him?). People—kids—walked on the beach and left an impression in the sand. I saw photos of beaches COVERED with Camel logos and Joe Camel’s phallic face. They were called “Camel Tracks.”]

Elevator TV is broadcast by Captivate Network, which makes perfect sense because we’re captured like rats in a ticking trap. Cheeky bastards. They ran this news blip the other day from the AP wires:

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It’s not funny. I’m not trying to imply it is. The man was murdered. But can you see how this all went down? A loudmouth American—a Texan, no less—drunkenly pushes his way onto the stage and wrestles the microphone away. Starts yelling into it. Feedback. The musicians, who probably take pride in their work, look on with contempt. One of them snaps, stab, stab, stab. Lights out. If you’re a guest in a foreign nation, mind your manners, pardner. Giddy up.

I wish I’d invented elevator TV. I wouldn’t be typing this from a coffee shop at 7:09 a.m. before facing the Captivate Network. I’d be typing it from a beach in Tahiti sometime after 2:00 p.m.

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Speaking of coffee shops, just look at this poor bastard sitting next to me.

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He was simultaneously juggling three—three—devices; a laptop, an iPad and an iPhone. Wasn’t the promise of new technology to set us free and simplify our lives? What a lie THAT turned out to be! After I watched this sorry show, I meditated on leaving my iPhone at home for one day. Going an entire 24 hours without touching it. Do you know what? I have a modicum of self-awareness and I don’t think I can do it! Could you? Seriously. Could you? We should all try it as an experiment. Verizon and AT&T won’t like this idea one bit.

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Coco and some of her neighborhood pals. They really do enjoy each others company, all appearances to the contrary.

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If you are an old man thinking of taking early retirement, you should read King Lear first. If you are a middle-aged man thinking of marrying a younger woman, consult Molière before-hand. If you are a young man and you think that love will last forever, you might wan to take a gander at Wuthering Heights before making any long-range plans.

Joe Queenan
One for the Books

A startling revelation: I’m wealthy

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I didn’t exactly set the world on fire professionally. Not having a degree, I entered the workforce with one hand tied behind my back. I’ve forged ahead as best I could and am fortunate that I stumbled into something I enjoy doing, but it’s not my idea of success.

In his unheralded masterpiece, I Ain’t Got You, Springsteen sings that he’s “Been paid a king’s ransom for doin’ what comes naturally”. That, to me, is the very definition of success. Brothers and sisters, that ain’t me. (Chances are that ain’t you, either. Most of us never get to sip from that golden chalice.) And everyone who says I should stop my whining, that their college degree was a waste of time (this has been said to me many, many times) should perform the following experiment: remove any mention of college from your resume and try to find a job. Let me know how that goes. I got as far as I did out of a combination of talking a good game and dumb luck.

I was similarly ill-equipped for fatherhood. I was raised by a man who was so overwhelmed with the responsibilities inherent in raising a family that he developed severe bleeding ulcers in his stomach from the stress. My mom had to keep a quart of buttermilk in the fridge at all times for him to guzzle to temporarily relieve his gastric agony.

Evey Sunday there’s a full-page ad in the New York Times Magazine for Patek Philippe watches. The theme of the campaign is that you’re not buying a watch, you’re buying an heirloom. The scene is always of an über successful, über Caucasian father with his über Caucasian son. In one ad, he’s teaching him how to read the blueprints for—I don’t know what the fuck it is—the new wing, I suppose. In another, they’re on a grand sailboat and he’s teaching him how to hoist the mizzen mast. I seethe because my memories aren’t anything like these bucolic scenes. My memory is that after my father left, our phone service was occasionally shut off for lack of payment. So since I didn’t have any usable information to leverage, I was somewhat reluctant to become a father, to say the least.

It would seem that despite my bumbling and cluelessness, I might be doing something right. I might have figured this thing out after all. I went to bed on Saturday and found this on my pillow:

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What do you do with a kid like that?

Red hot MoMA: A photo essay

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Were you expecting something salacious? Well you can forget it. This time.

Nothing will drive you stir crazy quicker than a three-day weekend in the middle of a cold, dark February. If you don’t get the hell out of the house you’ll be driven mad and you might start picking off your family.

I dragged everyone into the Museum of Modern Art for the afternoon. The Daughters are still too young to have any real appreciation for what they’re seeing—to them, there’s no difference between what they see at MoMA and a poster they’d see in a restaurant—but I’m trying to plant little seeds of corruption. Plus, I get in free with my corporate ID. A real value, since admission is up to $20 bucks per adult!

There’s a big, BIG Abstract Expressionist exhibit running through April 25th. I’m not a huge Abstract Expressionist fan, but it’s as important a gathering of these works as you’ll ever see under one roof in your lifetime, so it’s worth a visit.

The first thing I did was hit ’em with an uppercut—Marcel Duchamp’s readymade sculpture Bicycle Wheel. I tried to explain how anything can be art and that it’s all very subjective and in the eye of the beholder, etc., etc. Then I started to bore myself, had mercy on them, and kept my mouth shut.

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There’s a long room with a Monet water lilies triptych along one wall. The museum cleverly set a bench in front of it so people could sit and zone out. It really does calm your nerves and makes you yearn for a mug of warm milk and honey.

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“Mommy, is that woman drowning?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Brad broke her heart.”
“…?…!…?…What?!”

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I was standing off to the side and overheard 9-Year Old Daughter explain to 4-Year Old Daughter that the artist put the canvas on the floor and dribbled paint all over it. Muuhahaha! My work is almost complete.

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There’s a room full of Mark Rothko’s work. I like him a lot. He has one painting that he did over and over and over again, but it’s a good painting! (Kind of like the Rolling Stones, who have been reworking that one song for decades.) I heard a story once that some of Rothko’s works are done on untreated canvases and are simply fading away and cannot be saved. Can anyone confirm that?

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The museum is an exhausting experience. Even *I* get wiped out after a while! But I choose to think of this as their commentary on these goddamn Ad Reinhardt monochrome paintings. ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz.

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The most beautiful work of art is, of course, the city itself. I think the MoMA architects knew that and created these windows that look like picture frames.

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Vegetarians: Do NOT Read This Post

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Saturday brought, what is likely to be, the final blast of sunny, hot weather until next year. We gassed-up the Toyota and headed down the Jersey shore for the annual Seaside Heights Que by the Sea festival. It’s the state barbecue championship, although you don’t have to be from New Jersey to enter. There were vendors from all over the tri-state area. Awards were given for best chicken, ribs, pork, and brisket.

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There were over a dozen award-winning booths just like this one. How does one decide?

The event is sponsored by the Kansas City Barbecue Society. I have no idea who that is. For all I know, it could be some guy in his garage with a certificate he printed himself. No matter. If a Kansas City Barbecue Society-sanctioned event includes this…

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…then count me in! 4-Year Old Daughter said, “Daddy, that’s gross.” I spoke to the chef and he said that that pig will turn for 12 hours. The meat they served that day was cooked the previous day and the guy above was served up the next day. Now THAT’S a reason to get out of bed in the morning!

Regular readers know that I’m nuts for ribs, but I decided to deviate slightly and get the brisket. I dribbled a little BBQ sauce and a little hot sauce on it. Not a lot. You don’t want to mask the flavor of the meat. Baked beans on the side (of course). It was so good that I told Mrs. Wife I wanted to go back the next day for more. I wasn’t kidding. I’d have done it. She put the kibosh on that idea. She’s too sensible.

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This is an industrial-strength smoker. The streets were lined with them and the fragrance of smoking meat permeated the air. It made me woozy. Someone should develop a perfume that smells like a barbecue festival. Men would find you irresistible. It’ll work. Trust me.

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When 8-Year Old Daughter heard that we were going to the barbecue festival, she shrieked with delight. She likes ribs just as much as I do. The apple never falls far from the tree. And just for the record, she said that as good as these were, they’re weren’t as good as Uncle J’s ribs back in Cleveland. And she’s right about that.

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Take a look at this blog. She posts one photo per day. No text. The consistency of the quality is pretty amazing.

secondWide