Years ago, 9-Year Old Daughter used to watch a show called Dora the Explorer. It was a program designed to teach rudimentary Spanish to Caucasian suburbanite children. I thought it was a pretty clever use of programming for the pre-K set. I reasoned that aside from English, Spanish would be the most useful language learn.

Flash to four years later.

I was walking though the family room and 4-Year Old Daughter was watching TV. It was another foreign language primer but it wasn’t Dora or her cousin Diego. She was watching Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. This program teaches basic Chinese words and phrases to children. Boy if THAT isn’t a sign of the times! (Ni Hao = hello and Kai-Lan is the character.)

I find this all a bit unsettling. I’m not a fan of China. The government is one of the most corrupt and oppressive on the planet. China’s economic success is built on stolen and pirated American technology. They are guilty of keeping the Yuan artificially low on the international currency markets, the result of which is contributing to a sustained high unemployment rate for the world and an overheated inflation-prone economic headache for them. And don’t get me started on their bullshit Olympics with their computer-generated fireworks cute girl lip-synching “Ode to the Motherland.”

On a personal note, not long ago I worked for a woman who was Chinese. She was the stereotypical high strung, shrill-voiced, joyless, workaholic, dragon lady slave master. She was single-handedly responsible for nine months of unrelenting misery.

So I’d prefer that my daughter not develop warm feelings for China or its culture. Does anyone know how to say “bugger off, Kai-Lan” in Cantonese?

I try to keep things light and airy around these parts. There are plenty of bloggers out there who do an excellent job of pointing out what a foul place this world is. I don’t need to pile on. For the most part, I stay away from politics. I’m not a deep thinker and do not aspire to be one. I limit my posts to this city I love, the foibles of parenthood and an occasional theater or art review.

But those dirty, rotten mothers in Afghanistan got to me.

I recently read an article that left me on a high heat stewing in my juices. Have you guys ever heard the term bacha bazi? It translates to “boy play.” Apparently, it’s part of Afghan Army culture to take boys from their families, some as young as nine, dress them as girls and train them to dance for an audience of men. They are then auctioned off into prostitution to the highest bidder. Many of the customers are powerful military commanders and upper echelon members of the police force. They dress them in uniforms and are kept as sex slaves.

This custom is said to be over 300 years old. The former Governor of the Kandahar Province has been routinely seen at public events with teenage boys in tow, some of them in heavy makeup. Officials denied that they were bacha bazi.

This isn’t the Taliban! These are supposed to be the good guys! In fact, not only does the Taliban condemn this practice, they intervened in a fight between two pedophile warlords over a coveted “dancing boy.” This is who America has gone bankrupt fighting for. We’ve lost thousand of young soldiers defending this way of life.

The United Nations has stepped in and is trying to halt not only this atrocity, but also the practice of recruiting children into the police force. Good luck turning back 300 years of tradition. I’m sure that’ll go over well.

Please spare me any comments about how I need to respect the way other people have lived for hundreds of years. They’re animals. I do not understand some aspects of Mideastern culture. So many facets of it are depraved. The women are treated like a piece of property. You can still go to jail for being gay.

I’m officially against the war. Pull our troops out, cut ’em loose and let them slaughter each other for all I care. Barbarians.

Lots of folks threaten to come to New York and share a libation with me but only a brave few have followed through. So far.

Dinah of More Idle Thoughts, who was born in New Zealand but moved to London and finally settled in Australia, is in Brooklyn for a six week cat-sitting gig. Lucky her!

The Brooklyn Bridge just before sunset (on the Brooklyn side). Note the beautiful cathedral window cutouts in the stanchion and the spider-web cables.

She’s staying in Brooklyn Heights, which is a beautifully preserved neighborhood just off the Brooklyn Bridge. All those years I lived in New York I fantasized about living in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights but I was denied that pleasure.

I haven’t been out to eat in Brooklyn for quite some time so I asked four people for a recommendation and each of them said the exact same thing; Noodle Pudding. It’s a terrible, terrible name for a very nice Italian restaurant. I had a lovely risotto with sausage. She was nice enough to gift me this incredible print she made. She lugged it all the way form Oz! Inscribed it to boot!

You meet some very nice people, who have some very interesting stories to tell, from blogging. When someone comes to New York and takes the time to look me up, I feel a special responsibility to show the city in its best light. It’s a happy challenge.

Mrs. Wife and I had a proper night out last Saturday. We saw Daptone recording artists Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Ever hear of ’em? Fantastic. They’re funk/soul/rhythm and blues masters. The Dap-Kings are the band you hear backing Amy Winehouse on her stunning Back to Black album. We saw them, appropriately enough, at the beautifully refurbished Count Basie Theater.

It’s a big show with a dozen people on stage. It’s an old-style R&B review with a Master of Ceremonies, opening acts and members of the band given solo turns. But Sharon Jones is the real master. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve seen someone work a crowd the way she did. She told a great story about how she honed her skills in a wedding band. The band was a bunch of Italians and initially there was some push-back when the leader wanted to hire her. He told his band mates, “I can hire a white girl, but none of them can sing like SHE can.” That settled that.

If they come within shouting distance of your town, do yourself (and your soul) a huge favor and go see them. I guarantee you an unforgettable night. Here’s their tour schedule. Lucky Clevelanders can see them this Saturday night at the Beachland Ballroom. I have half a mind to drive out there and take in the show. And I’m not kidding. Here they are on a segment from Later with Jools Holland. By all means, turn it up, baby.

Last spring I assured The Daughters that they’d never see another winter like the one we just had. It was indescribably brutal. Mother Nature has, of course, made a complete liar out of me. Once again, we are being hammered with storm after storm. Today and tomorrow is a hellish mix of rain, sleet, freezing rain and snow. I feel the punishment but I can’t connect the sin.

The New York Times always finds interesting and elegant ways to describe the storm du jour. This last winter blast was described as “…a giant white smudge over the Northeast on radar maps.” Sheer poetry!

Here are some pics. These were taken in Soho where my offices are. I was particularly struck by the contrast of the white branches against the red brick.

Am I the only one who’s amazed that I can buy a banana—a tropical fruit—in the middle of Manhattan the day after a major blizzard? Ponder that for a moment. From a historical standpoint, it wasn’t that long ago that such a thing was unthinkable. The world has shrunk and we’re all better off for it, if you ask me.

Poor bicycle. Dead and buried. See you in June.