Does DC Stand for Decision of Courage or Deceptive Cowards?

So it's out there.  After a few weeks of buzz about which DC Comics superhero was to be outed as gay, the word has finally come that it is the exact hero whom I thought it would be.  I now find myself wishing I had documented this prediction so that my prophecy could be recorded for future generations.  Alas, I will have to fall back on the old, "I swear I knew who it was going to be.  Just ask my wife."


Who is it, you ask?  None other than Green Lantern.  And the media seems to be celebrating DC for its courage in making one of its more well known heroes gay.


But while many are applauding DC, I am a bit suspicious.  Not at all because they made an iconic character gay.  I'm all about superheroes being more human and realistic.  It makes for a more compelling story.  I have no problem with a homosexual character.  What leaves me suspicious is the way DC has gone about its decision.  It has insulated itself.  Allow me to explain.

Busy Weekend

My weekend was filled with activity.  My youngest son had his birthday party with his friends, we celebrated Mother's Day and then my son had his birthday party with his family.  We try to keep the friends and family separate for everyone's sanity.


But the busy weekend is over and the busy week is now before me.  Lots of work and lots of baseball commitments loom on the horizon.


In the meantime, I hope to catch up with all of you by updating the weekly features and maybe throwing another post of two on here, so stay tuned.  If I can pull myself away from my son's birthday spoils, I may actually have a productive day of writing.

It All Comes Out in the Wash

As most people out there are well aware, parents of younger children perhaps even more acutely so, there are some days when free time abounds.  You make every green light.  Your carry out order is ready faster than usual.  You head down to the laundry room to find that the clothes you were going to throw in the wash have already been cleaned and your kids come home and say they were assigned no homework.


On such days, one gets to enjoy the extra time to relax.  The book that's been sitting on the nightstand is cracked open.  That last episode of your show gets watched.  You finally get passed that level or maybe you just take a nice long nap.


 There are days when the world makes you its b----.  You wake up late to take the kids to school.  The errands you had to run take longer than they should have because of the two cars that seem to be purposely driving at exactly identical speeds right alongside one another.  You don't realize you are in over your head on the do-it-yourself project you undertook until nearly every piece of your driver's side door is laid out on the street and you realize you have no clue how to put it back together again.  That giant television you picked up from your in-laws' house was much harder into your garage than you anticipated it would be (because your age is more of a factor than you anticipated it would be).  The tent you promised you would set up for your sons is found to have broken poles and you still have to get ready for the baseball game you're coaching.


But here's something you might not know, though parents of young children may figure it out sooner: It works out.  It always seems to anyway.  Somehow all the stuff you needed to do gets done and you still end up spending time with the people you love.  And the win for your pee wee team ends up as the icing on the cake.


When you lie down in bed that night, you will definitely be exhausted and you will probably be sore from all the running around, but there will be that sense of accomplishment.  And when you wake the next morning, you will feel like a million bucks.


You will smell like humid gym locker because you completely forgot to shower in your exhaustion at the end of the previous day, but you'll feel like a million bucks.

Sweet Distraction

Producing material worth posting here is not always my top priority.  As a husband, father and pee wee baseball coach, it simply can't be.  Other things are constantly popping up that take priority.  Of course, even when I have some spare time on my hands, the quality of my posts could still be questioned (and I would be the first to question it).


Then again, even with time and a willingness to post crap, I still find myself sitting in front of my computer from time to time with absolutely nothing to say (hard to believe, I know).  I am reminded at times like this of advice I received from my fiction writing professor in college.  "Creating quality output requires quality input."  This was said to remind us to read while we write and heeding this advice has served me well over the years.


But, when you are wide awake at one in the morning because of your terrible work schedule and your wife is sleeping next to you on the bed that you don't feel much like getting up from, turning on the light to read a good book is not a viable option.  When the television remote is within reach, however, and you know that's something she can sleep through, you hope that at least one of the eight thousand channels has some quality programming available in the wee hours of the morning.


So it was that I navigated past infomercials (a word that does not get underlined in red when I type it, which scares me), took in some late night talk show interviews, caught up on episodes of Modern Family and became puzzled by the trend of NBA players wearing nerdy glasses during post game interviews (now there's some fodder for a future post, but in the meantime...those belong to us, jocks!  Give 'em back!) before I found the way I was going to end my night.


Thousands of torchlights burned in the valley and an ominous thunderbolt burst across the dark sky.  Beads of sweat broke out on the foreheads of several hundred soldiers at once as they stood along the wall and prepared for battle.  With a monstrous cry providing the signal, the Uruk-Hai marched forward on Helm's Deep.


And that's all she wrote.  Good night, everybody.

Save the Drama

Several years ago, I started watching a new show at my wife's request.  I had never been a big fan of medical dramas, but my wife assured me that this one portrayed the doctors as real people with real life problems.  It was supposedly engaging and entertaining.


"Doctors are real people?" I asked myself.  "This I have to see."


For six long seasons, I watched the lives of the characters on Grey's Anatomy with great interest.  I watched as the over-worked, over-sexed, melodramatic interns turned to residents.  I followed the flurry of relationship-related stress and did my best to keep track of who was dating who and which one hated the other.


Then, somewhere near the end of the sixth season, I threw my hands up and folded.  "That's it," I said.  "I'm done.  I give."


It had broken me.  The constant drama, the overwhelming strife, the ridiculousness of the challenges faced by the constant rotation of characters who seemed to enter and exit through a revolving door proved too much for me.  I can't even tell you exactly which plot detail shoved me over the edge.  Perhaps it was the exploding bomb technician.  Maybe it was Meredith's nineteenth nervous breakdown (any Stones fans out there?).  Maybe I never recovered from the grief of George's horrific, disfigured death.  It could have been the constant repetition of Owen's teeth-gritting, bearded, pained expression.  Or maybe it was a culmination of all those things.

Up with the Sickness

A lot of people enjoy falling asleep to music.  Still others fall asleep to the television.  I know I have been lulled into a trance by the occasional soft glow of an infomercial in the wee hours a time or two.  I am also one of the many in this world who are soothed by the sound of a steady rainfall.  I find such a natural sleep soundtrack particularly relaxing.

I have yet to meet anyone who enjoys being whisked off to dreamland to the musical accompaniment of multiple children coughing incessantly.

I used to think that the worst sound to try and fall asleep to was chirping birds.  In my semi-youth, before I had become a father, I would return home after a long night out and be reminded that I had been out a bit too long by the judgmental song of that single robin that always seem to perch right outside my bedroom window.  No amount of pressure applied to the pillows over my ears could keep out its piercing call, which I am pretty sure could be translated to mean, “You know, some people have to work in the morning.”

Could There Be a Saint Lego?

Over the last few weeks, I have become even more keenly aware that Lego is the ultimate good.  And if it isn't THE ultimate, then it's damn near close.  Need convincing?

Structure

Parents tend to try and provide their children with a routine.  Routine helps establish priorities.  Homework comes before video games.  Vegetables get eaten before dessert.  Teeth get brushed before bed.  You must watch Episode IV before Episode I.  How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat?

Enter the Dragon

I almost forgot to wish everyone a happy and healthy Chinese New Year!  It is the Year of the Dragon and I encourage all of you to go out into the world and chase your dreams with the sort of enthusiasm and ferocity a dragon would possess were it not a mythical creature.

Now, let me leave you with a quick sarcastic fact to start the New Year off right.  When a friend inevitably references Enter the Dragon and claims that they plan to live this year more like Bruce Lee, remind them that if they were really committed to doing so, they would have died three weeks prior to the year's premiere.

(Rimshot)

Thank you.  I'll be here all year.  Tip your waitresses.

Meet the New Year. Same as the Old Year...Kinda

I wish that today's fatigue were the result of some compelling and controversial story whose details I would reminisce over for years to come, laughing out loud to myself in public anytime I thought of them and keeping them secret from my sons until they were in their thirties.  Alas, it is merely because I had to work last night combined with the sobering reality that I am getting older.


While that left me little time to conjure up the first batch of weekly features for 2012, it did not keep me from wanting to express a heartfelt Happy New Year to all the Transformer Generation Dad faithful out there.  So, Happy New Year, readers!  I hope you had a good 2011 but that you will have a better 2012.


This coming year should be one of great excitement on this blog.  I have a few interesting projects in the works and hope to expand out readership and interactivity (Is that a word? It is now) over the coming months.


The first major event will be the Second Annual TGD Geek Tournament, which will take place during the month of March to coincide with the NCAA's March Madness.  The format will be radically different from last year, but I maintain that this is not due to the backlash from angry commenters regarding some of the stranger and more random/lopsided match-ups.  Rather, the ensuing anger was half the fun of the whole thing for me, but I came up with a new idea for this year's tournament all on my own which I deem shall be more satisfying and create a possibly even larger population of angry geeks, nerds and dorks to shout at me.


Of course, Transformer Generation Dad hopes to still offer you the content, reviews and third person stories you have all come to love over the last two years, but will some new excitement peppered in ever so lovingly.


So, with a great deal of vague promises thrown out there, I welcome 2012 and say, "Bring it."

Eeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww...(GASP)...eeeewwwwwwwwww!

What I am about to tell you is shocking and disturbing.  Well, probably more disturbing than shocking.  It will also probably prove embarrassing for one of my sons several years from now when he stumbles upon the vast collection of my blog posts/ramblings floating in cyberspace collecting virtual dust some day.


No matter how high my son's level of horror is at the discovery that his old man wrote about his most vulnerable and private moments on a very public forum (I'll assure him hardly anyone ever read it), it will not come close to the level of horror that his mother and I skyrocketed to when we saw the disturbing thing in question.


During my wife's attempt at a sweeping overhaul cleaning of our home, she decided to begin with our boys' bedroom.  Once elbow deep in dusty action figures and assorted lost game board pieces, she eventually reached the wall our sons' bunk beds are up against.  She had climbed onto one of the beds, removed the sheets, displaced an army of stuffed animals which the son in question most likely completely forgot existed and, there, an old nemesis that we thought had long been defeated reared its ugly, multi-textured head again.  My son's booger collection.


My wife found herself face to face with what must have been nearly a year's worth of collected production.  Literally, her face was right there, such that I insisted she go take a shower before I would go near her because her hair probably brushed up against it.


About a year ago, I wrote about the last time we had inadvertently unearthed such a disturbing display.  Apparently, I had repressed the memory, but my wife insisted that I had written about it and I discovered the previous post here.


Thankfully, no public displays of snartwork (my term for snot art, as mentioned in the previous post I just linked to) had emerged, just these gems of clumpy green that had been secretly tucked away in the shadowy recesses near my son's bed.


So, calmly and I'm sure holding back her gag reflex, my wife cleaned them off the wall.  I stood and coached, telling her she needed to get a fingernail beneath them and even offered to retrieve the paint scraper from my tool box.  But she handled it like a champ with just a scrub brush and some elbow grease.  She didn't even call my son out on it immediately and instead favored a talk planned with him later to save him embarrassment.


I, of course, promised no such thing.


I just wonder if he's going to climb in bed tonight and be quietly distressed when he sees all his hard work has been destroyed.  Maybe while my wife was cleaning it he even sensed a great disturbance as if millions of boogers cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.


Then again, he's a resilient little guy.  He'll probably just start fresh.

Hold Your Reindeer!

There are so very many major events to celebrate in December.  We have Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Boxing Day.  You may choose instead to devote your celebratory energies and theme your home's decor around National Flashlight Day (Dec. 21), National Bicarbonate of Soda Day (Dec. 30) or the birthday of the longest tenured host of Television's Tic-Tac Dough, Wink Martindale (Dec. 4).


Regardless of what you choose to celebrate some time during the next month, one must recognize that Christmas is the most hyped of all these holidays, pseudo- or legitimate.  I know this because upon a visit to the bookstore the day after Halloween, the shelves in the children's section were cleared of all things spooky and scary to make room for all things red, green and snow-flakey.  I had not yet finished having horror movie fueled dreams about hacking my way through zombie hoards on my way to raid the long-abandoned grocery store's shelves of canned goods in order to sustain my bunkered family and already the ends of every aisle were adorned with fake snow and jingle bells instead of cobwebs.  Seventy-two hours later, one of the local FM stations (the one that normally plays the light hits of the eighties, nineties and today!) had converted to nothing but Christmas music.


Quick tangent: I love the Beatles and can acknowledge that Paul McCartney made some decent music after their disassembly, but his song Wonderful Christmastime is possibly one of the worst songs ever.  It makes me want to stab sharpened candy canes deep into my inner ear in order to prevent hearing any more of the song.  Moving on...


I find this premature shift of holiday gears unsettling.  While it should come as no surprise that I am a big fan of capitalism (earning and spending really gets my motor going) and I fully recognize the huge role Christmas has come to play in sustaining said massively successful economic system, I think that there is a proper way to celebrate what Andy Williams so aptly crooned to be, "The most wonderful time of the year," and that technique involves holding off until the day after Thanksgiving to begin your yuletide preparations.


Should you get into Christmas mode immediately after Halloween, you are committing over 14% of the entire year to the celebration of Christmas.  That's too much for any holiday.  We here at Transformer Generation Dad impose a strict 10% limit on how much of the year should be dedicated to any one event. You do the math.  That should give you more than enough days to wring all possible enjoyment out of any holiday.  Seriously, you do the math because, frankly, we aren't so good at it.


So go ahead and prepare all you want for the celebration of the enactment of the Twenty-First Amendment, which repealed Prohibition (Dec. 5...we'll drink to that) and which also happens to coincide with the birthday of everyone's favorite allegedly anti-semetic innovator of animation, Walt Disney (again, Dec. 5, though those celebrating Hanukkah may be less enthusiastic about it).  You may even decide to be all dark and moody and begin celebrating the year pre-anniversary to the end of the world per the Aztec calendar (Dec. 21).  I don't care, as long as you don't start until November 25th.


Besides, starting any sooner takes away from the splendor of Thanksgiving.  Anyone who loves the overindulgence of Christmas can certainly appreciate the overeating and watching of football on giant television screens (probably purchased during the previous year's Christmas sales).  Why not celebrate the Twenty-First Amendment a bit sooner and throw some booze into the Thanksgiving mix.  Just a suggestion.


Ooh!  Thirty-six and a half days!  We just figured it out.

Good News! I'm Still Alive.

I promised an update on how successful or unsuccessful the results of my fire pit construction project were.  I am happy to announce that I finished its construction and it looks like this:

Lawn maintenance concerns aside, I'm pretty proud of what I created out of a pile of extra retaining wall bricks that have been lying around in my backyard for several years.  Overhead cost for me: $0.


The most exciting news is that my wife and I enjoyed its inaugural late night fire within hours after completing it and there were no exploding rocks as I had previous feared.  My wife and I don't have any holes anywhere about our bodies that we did not have prior to the lighting of the wood placed in the middle.


Hooray for safety!

Mr. (I Think I Can) Fix-It

My best recollections of my youth do not include my father fixing much around the house.  He cut the grass, washed the cars, cleaned out the sump pump occasionally and was a great painter (of walls, not portraits of gambling canines on velvet), but that was the extent of it.  I do, however, have memories of watching over my father's shoulder as he watched over the plumber's shoulder as he fixed something.


Thus, when I became a home owner, I naturally assumed that any repairs to be made would require an outside specialist.  This was in accordance with my father's (and mother's) advice.  When you had a professional come in to do the work, they were on the hook if they made it worse.  On the other hand, if you did it yourself and made it worse, you were screwed.


After the first few minor problems sprang up around my house, I quickly discovered that these professionals cost a good deal of money.  I decided that since I was already pretty skilled at not listening to my parents' advice (I made my greatest strides in this field during high school), I would attempt to save money and try to learn a little more about how the various systems around my house work.  I was confident that, being a relatively intelligent guy, I could do at least a few minor home repairs.


A repaired toilet, two fixed sinks, a few patched up cracks in my basement and an arm-tingling electrical shock later, I have reduced the number of professionals I call into my home to make repairs down to one: the electrician.  I may be cheap, but I'm not stupid.


Learning to fix things has served me well over the past few years.  My confidence has not led me down the road to performing more than just minor maintenance on my sons' toys.  When something of theirs malfunctions, I have at the tiny little screws you see hidden on most toys and try to figure out just what's going on inside.  I hear a gear grinding in a toy car and I open that sucker up on my desk and see if it can be replaced.  When a delicate model is broken into a thousand parts, I meticulously piece together the remains using crazy glue and clamps and set it right again.


Most recently, we have had trouble with the Perplexus puzzles that Plasmart was so kind to send me to review.  Tsake note, while I still stand by the enjoyment and superior craftsmanship of the Perplexus, my sons have managed to be a bit rougher on them than most kids would be.


This resulted in me sitting at my desk and painstakingly separating the seam on the spherical marble mazes.  I used tweezers and a small amount of tape to get the particular section of damaged track back on line and fit another back into its slot.  In one instance, I repaired a dent on the outer housing of the Perplexus.  With the necessary repairs made, it was time to put the toys back together.


I carefully aligned all the mooring pegs.  I consulted the detailed diagram I had scribbled in order to guide myself while replacing all the pieces.  Soon, after much deliberation, sweating and tongue-sticking-out, I had replaced the outer ring and put the puzzle back in place.  You could barely notice a few minor scratches to the exterior where I dug my screwdriver into the crack to split the ball in two.  I was quite proud of myself.


That is until I noticed that the metal ball which one is supposed to navigate through the maze was still sitting on my desk with a smug, judgmental look on it's face.


So, don't call me Mr. Fix-It just yet.

Warning: This Blog Post May Cause Discomfort

Having kids in your house makes you infinitely more aware of what kind of commercials are being shown on television.  I know this for two reasons.  First, I have had to field questions on what erectile dysfunction is.  Second, because my sons magically know about every single toy out there before I ever hear about it.  What is more, every toy is awesome and they want it.

Perhaps you didn’t realize that watching TV and being exposed to commercial after commercial extolling the value of a product that is far less impressive in person than it is in full color being used by professionals on screen was why your kids were able to tell you about every feature included in the toy they are melting down over not getting in the middle of the store.  I don’t mean to dash the imagery that you may have of your children hosting thoughtful and conscientious consumer-reports-esque review sessions with their playmates.

But I digress.

The reason I mention commercials today is because I have noticed recently that every commercial contains a legal disclaimer.  Medications are certainly the worst offenders.  The manufacturers make it all sound very tame at first, suggesting that their particular drug “might not be right for you.”  They say this because their drug might cause you to incur seizures, blindness (temporary or permanent), homicidal dreams or bleeding from the pores.  I’m fairly certain such symptoms would not be right for anybody.

But even children’s toy commercials have ridiculous legal disclaimers.  Foam dart guns need to remind us not to shoot at anyone’s face.  Arts and crafts products warn of toxic materials.  Small parts are announced such that parents with little ones can be prepared to worry about what their child might try to eat or shove up their noses.  A toy shown flying through the sky includes a note in microscopic letters at the bottom of the screen reading: Toy does not fly.

It all reminded me of one of my favorite spoof commercials ever.  It came from Saturday Night Live back when it was still sort of funny.  Please click the link below the picture to watch the commercial.

Watch the video by clicking here.

This time is coming nearer.

My Wife Has a Point (I Will Deny I Ever Wrote This)

The NFL season is officially underway.  Though it doesn’t feel real for me until my beloved Bears kickoff tomorrow, my sons are everything football lately.  They want to play more Madden on their Wii, they play with the old pigskin on the front lawn, yelling random numbers (“Seventeen! Five hundred and two!  Eight!”) and colors (Red! Gold! Chartreuse! Taupe!”) prior to each snap and they long to tackle their friends more than usual, trying to plant their good buddies’ faces into the grass.

All this is casual.  There are no practices, uniforms or annoying overbearing parents with which I must mingle on the sidelines.  They play for fun and they will occasionally watch a game with me mostly from the corner of their eyes while building with Lego.

But it will not always be this way.  They are growing up fast and soon the decision will have to be made regarding whether or not they will strap on full pads and attempt to knock another child’s spleen out through his navel.

Several years ago, I would have said the decision was completely up to them.  Even as I said that, I would have really meant that the decision was completely up to me, which in turn would have meant that the answer was, yes, they will attempt to telescope the spine or shatter the clavicle of one of their peers by playing football.

I believed this at the time despite my wife’s insistence that her sons will not play such a violent sport.  Of course a mother’s natural instinct is to protect her offspring.  Just as a mother in the wild will create a wall of herself between child and predator, a human mother tries to prevent her precious sons from participating in activities that might cause them damage.  It is then the father’s responsibility to rip said child away from the safety of his mother’s side and throw them into the fray so that they might…well…be a guy, I suppose.

This all seemed like such natural thinking until something happened to me.  A few years back, I sustained a concussion while at work.  The details are another story entirely to be told only in the proper setting, over beer and fried food.

While experiencing the effects of the concussion, I didn’t think anything about my sons and football.  In fact, I thought about little else other than how bright the sun was, how loud the everything was and how dare you tell me I need to relax.  Put simply, I was very crabby, mostly due to the constant headaches and nausea resulting from my brain having rattled around within my skull, and acted like a complete jerk most of the time, which I promise is not how I normally act.

Once I was out of the tunnel, back to being my cheery, amiable self, I began to realize that concussions are serious business.  The fact that they are so prevalent in football made me question whether allowing my sons to play it was worth it.  My wife’s logic began to look like less of an effort to turn my sons into sissies and more like logical parenting.

I have yet to decide.  I write this today only because I realize the time when a decision must be made is drawing nearer each day.  My sons’ playing of football was once a forgone conclusion.  Then doubt crept in and made me think it could be up to them, and this time I meant it.   Now I even have doubts from time to time if it will be up to them or if I will just say no.

I am sure I will flip-flop on the choice several times before I need to make the ultimate call.  At least now I am a little more open to the opposite way of thinking.  It’s just a shame that it took my own personal injury to bring that around.

While I hope this opens the door for other parents out there to consider their options and not feel overprotective, I must be honest that the only lasting effect of my concussion seems to be that I jerk in my sleep, according to my wife.  Other than that, the trees in the tropical rainforest are in leaf throughout the entire calendar year.

Smaller plants from the ground use whip-like appendages in an attempt to ascend skyward toward the canopy.  Their green leaves unfold as they climb closer to the sunlight that await them on the other side.

For BBC Worldwide, I am David Attenborough.  Thank you for joining us.  Good night.

I Don't Think as Much as You Drink I Do

Dear Mommy,

First of all, thank you for reading my blog with such frequency and fervor.  If the multiple profiles following it and hundreds of daily page views are all being generated from you in an attempt to make me feel like more people are reading than really are, I would not be surprised and really appreciate it.  You have always been my biggest fan.

Second, thank you for providing such an outstanding example of parenthood.  I often look at the way you raised me for guidance during difficult times with my own sons, like that time when they were both in diapers and I went downstairs just to switch a load of laundry and returned to discover the apparent aftermath of a quick yet furious battle whose ammunition consisted entirely of poop.  Your patience during stressful moments like those and ability to display that you still loved and supported us has been inspirational.

You may have guessed by now that the previous two paragraphs of obvious (and wholeheartedly truthful) praise are meant to butter you up for the upcoming real purpose behind this letter.  Once again, you have displayed one of the qualities that I have tried to emulate: your intelligence.

Over the past year and a half that I have been writing this blog, I have made numerous references to my beer consumption.  In that regard, I am not exercising poetic license in order to be funny.  I am being completely forthcoming about my enjoyment of beer.

I know this bothers you.  I know this because you regularly tell me that this bothers you.  However, the purpose of this letter is to assure you that I do not have a problem.  Of course, that is exactly what someone with a problem would say, but I don’t have a problem so when I say I don’t have a problem I hope that you recognize it means I really do not have a problem.

Do I have several beers on an evening when I am not working and know that I can do so at my leisure without leaving the house?  Sure I do.  Do I drink beer in front of your grandsons?  Absolutely and I have, in this way, instilled in them the valuable trait of helping their elders by often having them save my knees and run up or down the stairs to retrieve a beer for me.  Do I have a beer over breakfast with them occasionally?  Yes, but only since starting the overnight shift at work when this beer is essentially a nightcap for me before climbing into bed for the day while they attend school.

As you can see, my beer drinking falls within reasonable, respectable and downright logical guidelines.  Furthermore, the discussion of it here on these blog posts serves the original and intended purpose of this blog, which I cannot remember at this time because I have had a few beers, but I will be sure to mention to you as soon as it comes to me, which will probably be tomorrow morning.

Oh, wait!  It highlights the duality of my personality and that of many fathers around my age.  We are essentially big kids, enjoying awesome action movies, building Lego sets and cartoons just as we did twenty plus years ago while being legally able to drink beer, vote and drive.

But not in that order.  In the opposite order.  In fact, just forget I put “drive” in there at all.  Just completely forget it.  Oh, man I just screwed this up.

What I’m trying to say, mom is that you shouldn’t worry about me.  My enjoyment of an undisclosed number of beers while sitting at my dining room table and building the Lego Millennium Falcon and subsequently telling everyone about it is simply a shining example of my ability to enjoy the fruits of my maturity while simultaneously staying true to myself and not being afraid to be who I really am.

And isn’t being happy and confident about who I am the best way to live the way you showed me how?

Again, my point is that I don’t want you to worry about me, mom.  I’m doing fine and not keeping a load of misery hidden from you.  I have a wonderful family.  I enjoy writing this blog.  I have a crappy job…BUT it allows me to live comfortably (by which I mean buy Lego sets for myself aside form the ones I buy for the boys and still afford groceries) in an era when many are losing their jobs.  I laugh and, in my own humble estimation, live life to its fullest each day.

Love Always,

Me

A Fantasy Team by Any Other Name...Would Suck

During this week's weekly features post, I became sidetracked when my brain began randomly generating potential NFL fantasy team names.  I spent probably as much time deciding which of these names to include in the post as I spent writing the rest of the weekly features.  Frankly, it was a lot of fun.

Thus, I have decided to offer my services to those who may still be in desperate need of a cool team name this NFL fantasy season.  My proclivity to do so can even be customized to your needs.  Just let me know the effect you're going for and I will try my best to oblige.

Are you looking to be oxymoronic?  Try Grrrrrl Scout Cookies or Sweet Chewy Center if your team's success relies on the up the middle running game.

Perhaps intimidation is your priority.  Then I Shoot Lasers or Executioner's Hood might be the name for you.

Are you a sports geek?  D is for Dalek, The Bothans or Galactus's Endless Hunger may suit your needs.

Feeling onomatopoetic?  SNIKT!, BAMF!, BAZINGA!, KRAKA-POW! or Pew! Pew! Pew! could work.

Complete randomness more your style?  Alex P. Keaton's Necktie.  First thing that popped into my head.

All these names and more are rattling around in my brain, just waiting for you to take one.  Seriously, please take one, they're driving me crazy and taking up way too much space in there.  I feel like the party host that insists you take home leftovers because the fridge is already at capacity.

There is no charge, it's just something I realized I enjoy.  Of course, should you decide to enlist my services, I would ask that you follow Transformer Generation via all possible social media and vote for the blog.  Perhaps you could even visit the store and purchase one of the many bad ass t-shirts available (we are always adding more!) but there's no pressure.  The fact that you have stopped by to read this blog is payment enough.

Feel free to ask for your custom fantasy team name today.  Just comment below and I'll provide you with an absolute TGD generated original.

Old Dog, New Tricks

Plenty of posts on this blog have dealt with my relationship with my dog.  Most recently, I have managed to internalize the struggle that he is having with old age.  I have made it my problem and a way to frame my concerns over my own mortality.

However, the events of this summer have shed new light on my worries over my dog’s gradual decent from active, curious puppy to area rug.  Instead of spending time missing the rambunctious, squirrel chasing scamp that barked at every passing pedestrian from the gangway next to our home and used to bound through foot high snow drifts with what I would have sworn was a smile on his face, I have learned to see the silver lining on the grey clouds developing in his eyes, which are probably a sign he is developing cataracts.

Several times over the last two months, my wife has let my dog out the front door on purpose while we have allowed our sons and their friends to run around well into the late twilight hours.  Normally, this would have resulted in my chasing him through the neighborhood for an hour until he ran out of steam and laid down for a belly rub or found a group of playing children that he was convinced he was one of.

To my surprise, my now elderly dog slowly descended the front porch steps and wandered slowly about the front lawn, returning just as casually as he had wandered away anytime his name was called.  It would seem that the extra effort that he causes me to expend by needing to be let out to go to the bathroom more often and the increased difficulty that the consistency of his leavings now present in cleaning up have been made up for.  Now we can let him out of the front door without fear that he will turn momentarily into a blur of white, brown and black and enjoy a summer evening as a family. 

This unexpected side effect of his advanced age has caused me to notice other positive aspects emerging in my mature dog as well.

He has become a better communicator in that he growls lowly to remind us it is time to feed him.  There is far less need to explain to our sons’ new friends that he will not bite but is just excited to meet them since he barely raises an eyebrow when they enter the house.  The presents that he leaves in the yard are grouped together better than they used to be because he has apparently become too tired to venture any further into the grass than necessary to find an appropriate spot to conduct his transactions.  I even find that his snoring has changed into a wheezier sounding rasp that fondly reminds me of the dying Darth Vader’s breathing sound immediately before asking Luke to remove his mask.

I know now that my dog’s senior years are not ones to be sorrowful over.  On the contrary, they are to be celebrated.  In fact, since he has just come over to sniff at me and see what I am doing as I write this, maybe I’ll take him for a little stroll without his leash on.

Oh, never mind.  He fell back asleep.

They May Have Silenced Tom & Jerry...

With the lack of Looney Tunes cartons on syndicated television and the more politically incorrect portions of Tom & Jerry being edited out of the episodes they do allow to air, I have found that my sons have an underdeveloped sense of ethnic satire. The stereotypes of various ethnicities have not been made clear to them the way they were to me as a child.

They are mostly Irish and Polish yet can’t appreciate a good joke about an Irishman drinking or a Pole doing something backwards. Likewise, they have never been exposed to their favorite cartoon character being struck on the head with a garbage can lid then breaking into an offensive Japanese mockery, complete with Fu Manchu mustache.

However, where I have been lacking in their education relative to these matters, Nintendo has been gracious enough to help.

When I bought Punch-Out for the Wii, the redesigned homage to the classic 8-bit NES game, I didn’t expect it to teach my sons about the differences they are supposed to notice in others. I had assumed that aspect of the game would also be redesigned or at least toned down a bit.

Had it been redesigned along with the rest of the game play, my sons might not know now that German people are robotic and militant. They would not have thought that every person they meet who happens to be from India should be wearing a turban and practicing some sort of mystical art. They never would have equated the Irish with bar fights or the Japanese with compulsion. They never would have thought that all Spanish men dance around with roses between their teeth when they aren’t fighting bulls.

Now, since they have discovered the game that I purchased and defeated a year ago and left sitting on my shelf, they are skilled in the ways of ethnic diversity. Bugs Bunny didn’t have to make any WWII era jokes about the Germans or Japanese. Punch-Out was there for them in their time of need. Sadly, like the original, there is no Polish fighter to instill any valuable lessons regarding that portion of their heritage (Soda Popinski is Russian).

But the most important lesson of the game is still included. It is right at the very beginning as it ought to be, just like it did back in my day, when you fight Glass Joe. It is one of the most important life lessons of all:

The French are pansies.