Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Baby, baby, baby!

Man, so two of my best friends (they’re a husband/wife combo) had a little baby last night. I went to bed around ten and the last thing I said to my wife was something along the lines of “good night. I’m really glad you didn’t just have a baby…wanna bone?” To which she replied “no I don’t wanna bone. And yeah, me too.” Having babies is exhausting. The funny thing about this is that our former baby and current three year old did something that he’s never really done before last night. Namely, he got up several times throughout the night and walked around yelling.

He wasn’t particularly upset or anything, he was just kind of rolling around the house yelling “mommy, daddy,” and essentially celebrating that he’s figured out how to escape his room. He woke up for the day at a completely unacceptable 502AM, and this is after a night of yelling. I FEEL like my old lady just had a baby, I tell you what.

But, there’s a difference between having a new crying baby and having an impudent toddler just flouting the rules in your house. The baby, one would hope, you treat with the tender concern of the terrified new parent (scrambling for diapers, food, etc) while with the toddler you just fight the urge to hog tie him and leave him on the porch.

I’m currently exhausted and it’s rainy out today. Therefore, I have nothing to do with my kids and no energy not to do it with. My baby is just waking up now (738) but I’ve been up for an ungodly amount of time, and I’m bound and determined to get this blog entry completed before I go in there and start bowing to her inevitable list of demands. Fuuuuuuuuuck.

It’s funny to think about this: the greatest minds of our future, the scientists and musicians and scholars and porn actresses, they’re all little babies and toddlers right now. Right now, someone that will grow up to completely revolutionize life as we’ve always known it is pissing in a corner somewhere with a magic marker up their nose. Your future son in law is shitting in his pants as we speak and a president of the United states, one that may be responsible for the deaths of millions of as-of-yet untargeted brown people is currently somewhere begging for someone to please give him a string cheese, turn on Go Diego Go and wipe his ass at the same time. It’s pretty wild.

Conversely, there are the perverts and the weirdos and the evil people of the earth. The next guy to (for example) cut up cheerleaders and turn their tits into hats is probably sitting beneath the coffee machine watching his mom suck off longshoremen in some motel 6 lobby somewhere. AND, because of that guy, a few other babies out there won’t reach their potential as the next Colonel Sanders/Barack Obama/George Lopez/Rick Santorum/Kal Penn/David Blaine. Life is bizarre, and there’s nothing so bizarre as checking out the way kids grow up and defy expectations.

A buddy of mine used to flush rabbits down the toilet. He once locked his cleaning lady in the basement of his house for like three days. He once uprooted a clearing of saplings with his bare hands on an ecology field trip. He was, in no uncertain terms a very bad kid. He had all sorts of learning disabilities and behavioral problems and he generally terrified most parents and teachers in our community. His parents were also nice people, married and well off. He had a brother who was pretty well behaved in comparison to him. There was no reason that I, as a parent who tends to look at things like causality can see that made him such a menace. And yet, he was a total fucking menace. The assumption, I’ve gotta imagine, was that he was gonna wind up in jail after the inevitable trail of dead animals he would leave in his wake turned into dead hookers and then finally dead cops, but actually he turned out to be one of the nicest, smartest, most well rounded dudes I know. In fact, he’s the guy I just made a feature film with. He’s not only a technical and artistic whiz, but he’s a goddamned college professor, for fucks sake.

As a parent, this completely baffles me. I was never in trouble in my life. I always got good grades, never once had detention, was only grounded twice in my life, never had any trouble with cops, nothing. I got excellent SAT scores and in general, my record is spotless (except for in second grade when I truly fucked up in math and had to stay in during recess to get tutored, but that’s a whole other salacious blog entry) and yet, look at me: I’m an abject failure. Who saw that shit coming?

There’s no way to know if you’re doing a good job or a bad job as a parent because, as I’ve often said, there’s no correlation at all between how a kid acts and how they are as an adult. There’s only the most limited correlation between what someone’s exposed to and how that effects them (ask Kna’an and Redmond O’Neal), and there’s just NO way of knowing how bad you’re fucking up your kid until you become an old, old person and they look at you and say “dad, it’s because of you that I’m a doctor for the underprivileged/middle school janitor that sneaks into the girls bathroom to set up cameras to catch them peeing” and then you know, it’s too late.

Congrats to the Halborgs!

xoxoxoxo

14 comments:

Juan said...

Yeah, my niece roams the house in the middle of the night. I kinda like to pretend that she's roaming the vast wastelands of a post-apocalyptic future. I'm just hoping she doesn't create some kind of cult that kills themselves wearing British Knights.

FranklinStein said...

"never once had detention"? Track 9 of your FIRST album says otherwise, even if it was just a dream...

Delicious entry, particularly this part: "...a president of the United states, one that may be responsible for the deaths of millions of as-of-yet untargeted brown people is currently somewhere begging for someone to please give him a string cheese, turn on Go Diego Go and wipe his ass at the same time."

Well, The Nate Berkus Show is back from a commercial break...

YeahYeahNo said...

I believe the lyric is "there is no way out of detention", but i could be wrong.

bill_stickers said...

If he sings about detentions he's never had, he lacks artistic integrity and I will no longer be a fan of his work.

Sarah_D_37 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sarah_D_37 said...

This has to be my favorite entry to date..... There is a huge debate regarding nature vs nurture... Many people defy the expectations society, and their families have on them.... This is a huge part of why I have always worked in health care - I like trying to figure out why people are the way that they are.... And why they behave the way they do...

Not for nothing dude, I obviously don't know you - but you don't seem like "an abject failure". It is a matter of perception, what do you want to accomplish? What does success in your life look like to you? Whatever - i think you are pretty badass, and your life doesn't seem too shabby.

It's A-Me, Martucci said...

"There is a huge debate regarding nature vs nurture"

IS there, now???

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee--

Sarah_D_37 said...

yea. it started because of this blog

Adrian said...

Im with Sarah homie. Your music is fucking awesome and a source of great inspiration for people that have good taste in music. Bill Stickers can eat a bag of dicks. Music may not directly mean exactly what the words are saying. Have some depth. And stop fucking judging.

Robb said...

(waving an extra big twig; wearing Wrangler overalls) YEAH, Bill! Yeeeeeeea! Me n Adrian, gonn' find you, buss you up!! You MEANT those things, Bill! About how, if, when if Brendan lie bout dentenshin, you quit his music, you said, and then, you was MEAN Bill! REAL meaan! Now, we getchoo! There's not a 100% chance that you were just being, or anything, you, I want your BLOOD Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

disastermarch said...

alright this movie your in, you've talked about it enough what's it called i wanna see it

Andrew Hudson said...

fuck man, play bass sing dick and fuck a chick. etc, your job. i gotta eg, wake up wank my dick pull a beer go to work, leave work pull bong.... leave head

Andrew Hudson said...

and also, also brendan im not sure if you know chirs macdoogle but if you want i know this band this band that has big plans. TWISTY MCNILLYS WANT TO HAVE A SPLIT RECORD WITH YOU LET ME KNOW CUZ> thier first chorus goes like this. (lyyrics wise) "gaston on the tweaker and dyno to the cresta vista. dont wanna be talis food so want my beta for your problems? ill cya later."

Matthew said...

To the guy who said he has no artistic integrity, you're a dumbass. This is yet another problem with punk rock, people hold others to ridiculous standards of purity... just another group of fundamentalists!! Brendan if you feel like you're an abject failure you should get after what you really want in this life my friend... success means different things to everyone, here's to hoping you find your definition! Cheers. PS - You're pretty fucking good at writing dude, keep it up!