DADWAGON

Given that Legos were a big theme this Christmas, it only seems right to share this work by the Lego-obsessed artist Marco Pece. BitRebels has the scoop on his collection recreating the classic works of art (Pece has put the photos on Flickr as well), and if you’re into that kind of thing, you’ll dig his other work, which involves recreating scenes from Pulp Fiction, Roman Holiday and so on, in Lego.

Matt Gross–cheap traveler, hipster douchebag, loving father and husband, and now, a new role: arch-prognosticator.

Matt recently appeared in a video over at DadLabs as part of a panel of “New Year’s Resolution Experts.” Experts! Do they have degrees in New Year’s resolutions perchance? Or are they just good at resolving to lose weight and work out more? Or is it, like all his fellow experts, that Matt has a nicely maintained beard? Maybe it’s all of the above.

Now, far be it for me to try to describe all the great wisdom conveyed in this lovely feature. Check it out yourself, and if you’re motivated, register your formal complaints with the Dadlabs boys.

But I will give you a bit of the DadWagon flavor contributed by Matt, who seemed to express the sentiments of all of us here with this tidbit of resolution advice:

The easiest best thing to do is always to resolve to do things that you’re going to do already. Why exert yourself? Fatherhood is difficult enough already. Why make it harder on yourself by spending the first six to nine months of the year feeling like there’s something that you should be doing because you promised yourself and your family that you’d be a better dad.

Sagacious, baby.

In fatherhood, there are many mysteries. Inexplicable circumstances. Things that make me just throw up my hands and say: WTF?!?

Like my wife’s sudden predilection for sketching SpongeBob SquarePants. It began on the flight to L.A., when Jean, stuck watching Nickelodeon on her seat-back screen, discovered the strange yellow kitchen cleanser. Not for the first time, really, but this prolonged close contact had a funny effect. Soon she began to draw quick versions of SpongeBob, usually on Sasha’s magna-doodle-esque sketchpad. Sometimes the nose was wrong, sometimes the expression—ah, but who am I kidding? Jean’s drawings were much closer to the real thing than I could ever achieve.

The truly odd thing is that Jean kept drawing SpongeBob, even when Sasha was no longer her audience. She’d be sitting there with a piece of paper at her side, and boom! The next minute there’d be a goofily grinning Porifera on the page. WTF?

Exhibit 2: Sasha, as I’ve said many times before, is a big fan of the TV show “Yo Gabba Gabba!” Well, one of the segments she loves features a cartoon character named Super Martian Robot Girl, a green-haired savior of people in trouble. Why’s no one dancing at your dance party? Ah, notices SMRG, there’s no music!

Anyway, throughout the Christmas season, Jean and I began to notice something odd. Whenever we were in a store that had a big nutcracker figurine—you know, gaping jaw, red suit, the whole works—Sasha would point to it and say, “Super Martian Robot Girl!” Now, the kid has good eyes. She can spot a fading contrail at 30,000 feet and follow it to a microscopic Bombardier. She can I.D. a picture of a snowman hanging outside a bodega as we zip past it on Sunset Boulevard.

But the Nutcracker and Super Martian Robot Girl look nothing alike! Check them out:

Now, I ask you, WTF? Can anyone explain these things to me?

I’m writing this post on Monday night, just after I’ve had my last bite of food before that thrilling ritual that parents (and others) get to enjoy: fasting for a life insurance physical. Isn’t that fun?

There’s both the pleasant and the unnerving in taking out a policy on your life. First, it assumes you have someone that you care enough about—and presumably cares enough about you—to look after even when you are worm food. It also assumes the inevitability of your demise, which is obvious and inescapable, but generally a topic one avoids as much as possible.

I already have a life insurance policy with JP as the beneficiary; the one I am applying for now is for Ellie. Again, the good and the bad vie with each other: I feel fortunate to have this abundance of lovable things around me, things that I created (with help), and that I am responsible for in a way that doesn’t end with my end. But that responsibility is also a burden: no one will ever tell you that you’ve done the right thing by your children; no one will pat you on the back, or congratulate you, or do anything to let you know that you’ve done well. You’re an adult now, or at least that life insurance policy assumes that you are, and the only rewards for that are internal, which—yes, yes—is both good and bad.

And I’m thirsty.