Wild Nights on the Town

My youngest cousin, who just turned 20, got married this weekend. Then yesterday, my brother turned 30. Things like this make me start to feel like I'm getting a little old. In order to wage war on this unpleasant sensation, I've been actively spending wasting less time working and more time going out with my friends. (I've also been playing a lot of MarioKart on the Wii, but that's a story for another post.)

In our recent adventures, the gang and I have been playing some Beerball when the weather's nice and getting out of town when it's not. Last week we were quite fortunate to score tickets to a Flight of the Conchords gig in Ann Arbor, which evolved into a pretty epic night. Really, anything that involves a parking garage just screams: "High jinx on the horizon!" Throw a couple of the most creative people I know in the car, reunite some long lost buddies, add a dash of sexual tension, and let the good times roll! I've found that most evenings I spend in Ann Arbor end up this way and have resolved to get over there more frequently, especially with the summer coming up.

I'd hardly heard any Conchords' songs before we went to the show and just sort of went along because my friends wanted to go, but I found the boys pretty damn entertaining. Here's a taste, in case you haven't seen much of them yet:



"You could be a part-time model..."

So the Conchords are a new love of mine. An old love of mine is comedian Eddie Izzard, whom I finally had the opportunity to see live last night at the Detroit Opera House. There was also a Tigers game on, so we ended up having to park several blocks away and walk, which adds flavor to any evening in downtown Detroit, but once we got to the theater, all was well. We laughed 'til our guts hurt. I love Eddie Izzard because he's clever, which is my favorite trait in any human being, and he's especially clever when it comes to matters of language. Last night he did this bit about Latin and how complicated it must have been even for the Romans. I won't tell you the details -- particularly because I know my little sis is going to see him in Nashville in a few weeks, and she'd murder me if I spoiled any of it -- but I will tell you that it's awesome and well worth getting out to see. No good videos of his new stuff are out yet, so here's an old classic:

Quiet Photo on a Busy Day

Gathering 'Round the Hearth

I like to travel pretty much anywhere. I'm into going new places, meeting new people, and seeing things I would never, ever see at home. Normally, I make it my goal to visit one new place every year. This summer, I'm adding four new places to my "Been There" list: London, Dublin, Seattle, and Hawaii. And yet, somehow, I always end up back here. I even got surprisingly pissed off at my boss the other day when she implied that I was kind of a leaf in the wind who may not be around long. I raised my voice to her. (Good thing I'm in a union. Shit.)

At first I wasn't sure why I got so upset. After all, I consider myself a Citizen of the World, and I detest the idea of being tied down anywhere by anything. But lately, that seems to be changing, and I can only think of one little reason why...




This is my nephew, Aaron. As I'm writing this, he's four and a half days old.

I am smitten with him. He is perfect.


The truth is that the farther I travel from home and the more people I meet, the more I like my family. Of course, over the years in my travels I've met lots of fantastic people I adore, but taking people for granted is much easier when you grow up fighting them for the bathroom. Now that I'm old(er) and wise(r) I've realized how rare cool families are. I have three siblings who rock, two gorgeous sisters-in-law, two parents who are still in love with each other, five aunts, three uncles, three living grandparents, four kick-ass cousins, a dog-nephew, a cat-nephew, and now, finally, a real nephew. Everybody's stable; everybody gets along. Even the dog and the cat. We even know and love my brothers' families-in-law.



Brother #2 entertains his niece by pretending his weight clips are earrings. She digs it.

The amazing thing Nephew's coming has done is give us all an excuse to spend more time together, especially my brothers and sister and I. We're all grown-ups with pretty demanding lives. Brother #1 is an engineer who schmoozed his way to the top of his company inside a few years, which means more money and less free time to spend it. Brother #2, in addition to working to support the Wife and the Little Guy, is a law student. Sister is a historian, and her projects take her all over the country to dig in the dirt and polish dusty things. I currently teach at my alma mater and hang my hat about fifteen minutes from the homestead, so I see the Parents pretty regularly, but when the Siblings come back to town, the party is on.


My cat-nephew, Guinness, takes a snooze in the bouncer seat. We've tried to explain to him that it's for the REAL baby, but he just gives us a confused look.

When they arrive, I'm sitting on the living room floor, restringing my little Epiphone. I have to do this at my mom's house because I need to borrow her tuner... and because I inevitably ask for her help at some point. I set the guitar down to exchange the customary greeting hugs and to gather up the little bundle of Aaron. Within minutes, one of the brothers picks up my guitar, finishes restringing it, and starts strumming. The other slips down the hall and returns a few minutes later with our mother's sacred Gibson, a guitar we were hardly allowed to touch until we were teenagers.

Over the course of the evening, the baby and the guitars are passed steadily around the living room. The brothers play around, poking fun at each other and putting on thick country drawls to croon "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" while their wives laugh and roll their eyes. My sister, who in her own words "wields a guitar like a drunken polecat wields an abacus", attempts to play a song she has dubbed "Mostly Only D" on account of the fact that it mostly has only one chord -- D. Every other line, the chord shifts to an A, and she predictably flubs the rhythm each time. She gives up before long, trades me the guitar for the nephew, then sits and improvises flawless harmonies to everything I play.

With some coaxing, we finally convince Mom to sing, which is what we've been hoping for all evening. She acts shy and embarrassed, but eventually she starts playing "All the Pretty Horses". If you don't have a mother who sang you lullabies, and this lullaby in particular, then I'm sorry. You've missed out. We all lose track of the time as she reaches back across years (and -- it makes me feel so old! -- decades) and pulls forward all the songs she sang to us in our childhood -- a handful of Joni Mitchell melodies, old campfire tunes and folk songs, and my father's favorite: "Kisses Sweeter than Wine".

Every day, the world is getting smaller. I want to see and experience a lot of it. At the same time, maybe it's not such a bad thing to be a little bit tied down here...

Ask My Kids III: The Apocolypse

*Disclaimer: This first drawing was done by my cousin. I feature it here because I favor her shamelessly. And because the guy with his head on fire is funny.

In conjunction with studying e.e. cummings' "what if a much of a which of a wind", I asked my juniors to sketch and/or describe how they imagine the world might end. I expected to get some religious reflections on the Second Coming, perhaps some geopolitical analyses... I pretty much got action films, but a few seemed worthy of sharing with you.
For your enjoyment, Expatriate Games presents:

"The End of the World"
*cue foreboding brass theme*




My favorite on this list is "massive floods", although the guy warding off aliens with a slingshot is pretty sweet too.





"The end of the world will be like a light getting switched off. All of a sudden, everything will go dark and everyone will be dead."










"George 'Dubya' will launch a 'nuculer' missal at China or somebody. They'll launch one back. And everyone will die. Dumb@$#!"


"Either we'll discover that iPods give you brain tumors, the entire population of every developed country will die, and the world economy will collapse into another Stone Age, or this will happen:"

Ask My Kids II: Relationship Counseling

A conversation between two of my 17 year old students about the nature of love:

"You ever cheat on your girl, man?"

"Naw, man. I love my girl. I am a man in love."

"Yeah, I hear you, man. I love my girl too. But you know what I'm sayin', sometimes even if you in love, you still be tempted, you know?"

"Naw, not if you really in love. I mean, everybody tempted, but if you in love, you don't do nothin'. You don't act on that temptation."

"How you stop yourself? You know, like, some ho gettin' up on you, and your girl ain't there, whatchou do?"

"I tell you whatchou do: you get on your phone and you call the woman you love. Soon as you hear her voice, you ain't gonna be tempted."

"Well, what if she don't answer her phone? My girl be busy, ya know what I'm sayin'?"

"If she don't answer her phone, you go to her. Wherever she at, you go."

"See, but I don't gotta car."

"Then you walk, man. Whatever you gotta do, you get to where your girl at."

"But she live on the south side. I can't be walkin' that far. I got asthma."

(At this point, a third party chimes interjects: "You got an inhaler, dumbass!" She is promptly told to C her way out of this A/B conversation.)

"Look, it's like this, man. When you really in love, you need your girl, like you can't breathe without 'er. So, you don't care if you gotta be a little uncomfortable on the way over there, 'cuz you know as soon as you next to your girl, you gonna be able to breathe easy."

"You full of it, man."

"You not really in love."

:-)