From the AP comes this sordid tale of road rage and poopie drawers:
State police said a woman wiped a dirty diaper on the window of another woman’s vehicle during a dispute in a traffic jam as both were leaving the Fayette County Fair. Jessica Hollis, 23, of Mount Pleasant, has been charged with harassment in the incident which state police in Uniontown said happened about 10:50 p.m. Saturday. Police said Hollis smeared the diaper on the rear window of a vehicle driven by 36-year-old Melanie Campbell, of Hopwood
Don’t mess with (or near) Mommy…she might (or you might) get pissed.
As I well know, most of you out there have been consumed by the drama that is the what’s-her-name-daughter of that actor from the Matrix (and lots of other stuff), doing that skin flick or something like that.. It got me thinking–who gives a shit about what happens to the children of famous people I don’t really care all that much about?
Apparently, lots of people do. It’s what’s known–and I looked this up–as the “Celebrity Culture.” People care! They want to know about the private lives of people they will never meet and who certainly have no interest in meeting them.
An odd ritual in the anthropological register of the Western Civilization, but it exists, I guess, and who am I to fight it?
In that spirit, I give you this from Babble: a list of which celebrity-parents have “nailed it” or “failed it” with respect to their progeny. Kate Hudson/Gold Hawn–NAILED! Charlie Sheen/Emilio Estevez–NOT SO NAILED!
You get the picture. Have a look and imagine how you would feel if a good portion of the entire country was judging your parenting skills.
Despite the fact that Matt is generally considered the hipster scumbag among the DadWagoneers, I think I am the only confirmed biking-douchebag among us. I commute to work on my bike (who’s picturing me in skinny jeans right now?), and I’ve pedaled JP around on the back of my bike since he was two. Unfortunately, he’s starting to push the weight limit on the bike seat I have, and I’ve become increasingly bummed out at the thought of not being able to bike with him anymore.
Now, of course, there are solutions, but as is often the case, at times the cure is worse than the disease. Case in point: this video from the New York Times about “cargo bikes” and the precariously self-satisfied types who take their kids around town on them.
It’s never fun to confront your own cliche made real, but this was tough for me to watch. Start with the little girl preaching about the environment, cut to the the fashionable bikes that come in the best of this season’s colors, end with me committing to driving everywhere from now on.
That said, I might just buy one–there’s room for two kids.
Perhaps I’m treading into territory controlled by Nathan and Matt, DadWagon’s resident traveling salesmen journalists, but I’d like to write a word or two on what happens when urban-dudes such as JP and me leave the city and confront…the United States of America.
Now, folks, let’s not kid ourselves–New York ain’t no kind of America. The better-known stereotypes hold true: Southerners fry everything; New Yorkers are brusque and impatient; Midwesterners really are boring and non-confrontational; New Yorkers are socialists with opinions on things they know nothing about; folks on the west coast are vain and pretend to recycle more than they actually do; New Yorkers are obsessed with money and hair gel. All True!
As for parenting, to the New Yorker, the rest of the country is a paradise of school resources, slovenly competition, wild, abandoned budgeting, football facilities, and school buses. A beautiful, beautiful thing this America, where you can get your child educated for free. Free, I tell you! And no one thinks that if you don’t get into the proper pre-school that Harvard is out of the question! Or in the question for that matter!
Then again, I met a fellow with a nineteen-year-old and a fourteen-year-old who told me how happy he was with his older son because had gone to “vo-tech” (he’s a welder), and how unhappy he was that the younger simply insisted on going to college. This was something that junior needed to be talked out of, in favor of the military perhaps, or something else non-collegiate. Great idea, Dad–kill those dreams!
Yes, that was me smearing 49 other states with a single brushstroke, and that’s unfair. But how many people did I meet on vacation who expected me to account for every single action taken by Barack Obama–and not since he was elected; I mean, every single action taken by Barack Obama, including, but not limited to: peeing, nuclear detonations (imagined or otherwise), tax policy, hamburger preferences, vacation scheduling, and of course, relations with Israel and the Arabs (who were not often referred to as Arabs, unfortunately). So, other states, deal with it.
Anyway, I miss my family and I wish I could see them more often, and I enjoy my time in America’s playland whenever I jump out of a plane headed to the coast, but well, home is the Kingdom of Brooklyn, folks, where the elitism grows on trees, the writers sweep the streets with their idioms, and I have to get back to work.
Have a nice day (can someone please translate that into American?)
