DADWAGON

Not too much to say here except that if you live in New York City, you must go to the Asia Society on E. 70th and Park and see the Yoshitomo Nara exhibit, Nobody’s Fool.

Nara is a sort of Japanese Jeff Koons, a mixed-media pop phenomenon whose work–importantly for us–speaks on many level, including to kids. We had already had a children’s book he illustrated (The Lonesome Puppy), so the kids were predisposed to like what he was offering. But we took them to the show this weekend, and it was so much more than Nara’s drawings.

There were smooth (but not touchable) sculptures of outsized dogs. There were his trademark melancholic rocker girls, clutching knifes and looking defiant. There were a series of kid-sized interior space s that he had built for the show, part dollhouse, part carnival. All art.

The exhibit is also pintsized, which is beautiful if you’ve got kids until 12. This is no endless deathslog through the Met. In one hour you’ve seen it all. The kids reacted to some items; others not as much. But I’ve been looking for a way to give them a museum experience, and this is a great starter.

Bonus: a lot of his girl-portraits, which make trenchant little commentaries on the Japanese obsession with Kawaii (cuteness), look like Nara was trying to draw my daughter (who is actually quite cute to me,, btw): pale skin, prominent forehead, sorta Asian-looking but with wide eyes, carrying a shiv in her hand. All of these portraits my daughter loved.

Only awkward moment: Dalia looked up at another fairly large painting and asked the only logical question: “Why is that girl smoking?”

Regular readers of this space will recognize that we have very few moral ambitions on this blog. We do not blog for world peace, we do not call for an end to cancer. We do not aspire, like the excellent PhD in Parenting, to hold multinational corporations accountable for their anti-child profiteering.

Mostly we just want to make it home on the subway without our children taking a dump on us.

But we will raise a glass to those DadBlogs out there that actually succeed in making a difference, which is why I want to a belated congratulations our friend Ryan at Pacing the Panic Room for the hypersuccessful launch late last month of his charity children’s album Do Fun Stuff.

I have been reading Ryan’s blog for some time now because he’s a Floridian and a gifted photographer and an obviously committed father. But I had no idea he was also a get-shit-done kind of guy, that he could organize a Big Deal charity project the way he has.

The charity: PRISMS, for further research on Smith-Magenis Syndrome (SMS), which his stepson was diagnosed with in 2009.  I don’t presume to have best information about the syndrome, but Ryan’s blog tells you all you need to know about it: SMS affects the lives of those who have it and their families deeply, and more needs to be known about it.

What’s inspiring is that Ryan actually managed to rise above his own family’s struggle and do something about it. I’ve listened to a few tracks from the album, and they’re great. Do Fun Stuff is (or at least was recently) #1 on iTunes in Children’s Albums. It’s quite an achievement.

Buy the album on iTunes here. And renew your faith in humanity, or at least in dadbloggers.

We had the baby shower for the upcoming child, Ellie, a name that Nathan reminded me the other day was actually the nickname for the cute little elephant statues awarded each year to some of the nation’s best magazine journalists. No, that was not intentional, and for those of you who believe in fate, I guess that means I will never win one.

Anyway, the shower was fun, our hosts were exceedingly generous, and all was right with the world. One thing that did give me pause was the sheer volume of stuff we received as gifts–all reasonably necessary and entirely appreciated, but still. Babies, as most parents realize, come with stuff, and lots of it. For a generally disorganized sort like me, having to contend with all these goods can be rather intimidating.

Which is why I’m making my girlfriend do it! Since I already have a child I can assert that she should deal with all the hoo-hah, as I’ve been through it once before. Which isn’t entirely true, as JP’s mother is compulsively organized and was on top of everything.

In one sense, though, I guess I am giving her a real lesson in parenting: Always pass the buck. And as she tends to work much longer hours than I do (with compensation to match) I’ll probably doing more than my share of heavy lifting down the road. So, actually, you see, this all fair to me, my pushing this stuff onto her.

Logic!

From vacation to staycation: DadWagon celebrated the long holiday weekend by actually hanging around in New York.

Actually, Christopher had planned to stay away longer, but the “weather media extremists” forced him home early. But the rest of us were content. Theodore drank his daddy juice, Matt took his inner hipster for a spin around the block, and Nathan went to an actual cultural event so he could hear records from an old pro-war shlock jock.

It turns out, however, that the city is no cure for mood disorders. Because even with the sun shining warm and the shadows pleasantly lengthened, DadWagon still fretted. Nathan worried about his reputation in Canada, Matt heard people in his school worry about kidnappings, and Theodore braced himself for all the damage he and his ex-wife may be doing to their boy at home and at school.

It got worse. We don’t want to embarrass anyone, so let’s just say that collectively we nearly cried at a cartoon; warned about electroshocking your swish son; and worried about dead pedestrians, both real and virtual. Not to be overlooked: one of us seemed to worship Satan.

We clearly need the healing and restorative powers of the weekend. See you Monday.