My First Interview

Uber blogger Sci Fi Dad has this awesome feature on his blog Tales From the Dad Side (one of my favorite reads on the internet) where he interviews fellow bloggers and then provides insightful commentary rips them apart. Earlier this week, he asked me to be his next victim. Check it out here.

Doo Doo

The Bean and I were talking right before I tucked him into bed. Something I said triggered this response:

"Oh, that's like Karen who puts doo doo in her mouth."

Karen was the pretty little blonde girl in the Bean's pre-school who was rumored to have the attention of very boy in the class.

"What did you say she does?" I asked aghast.

“She puts doo doo in her mouth.”

So this is where it begins. Where the teasing and the name calling starts, I thought. I tried to conjure up the name of the troublemaker in the class who had started this rumor. Or maybe the startling truth is that the girl actually did put feces in her mouth. I bet she wouldn't be so popular after that. I need to investigate further.

“Who told you that?”

“I just know that she does. She puts his ears in her mouth.”

What?

“Wait,” I said. “Who is Doo Doo?”

“He’s the thing that she sleeps with at night.  She puts his ears in her mouth.”

“Oh.  Of course she does.”

Milk Please!

Sprout: “Milk please! Milk please!”

Me: “You’re going to get milk when you get in the car.”

Sprout: “Car please! Car please!”

I Found Out Long Ago It's a Long Way Down the Holiday Road

I'm hanging out over at Venus vs. Mars today where the topic on hand is vacations and why I should be driving a Family Truckster when I'm on one.

Scary Toy Story

Turn down the lights because I have a scary story to tell. Everything you are about to read is completely true.

It started innocently, the way that these things usually do. The Bean was given a toy truck for his birthday. After unwrapping the present, we discovered that the truck went against our usual toy guidelines, which stipulated that toys that with lights and sounds needed to have an off switch (lest the added stimuli drive mommy and daddy to commit a violent act). Making matters worse was that the truck was motion activated. All it took was a slight nudge for it to make a loud engine sound, VROOOM!, followed by a HONK! HONK!

The boy loved this truck from the moment he saw it while I loathed it with the white hot passion that only a fellow parent will understand. But the Bean was crazy about his new toy, so I put up with the noise for his sake. Needless to say that it wasn’t long before the toy drove me completely insane. VROOOM! HONK! HONK!

Time went by and thankfully the toy was forgotten and heaped in the bin to live amongst the Bean’s other forgotten cars and trucks. But this truck, this evil truck, didn’t want to be forgotten. It would make itself known from the bottom of the bin. The kids would wrestle on the floor and we’d hear VROOOM! HONK! HONK! Somebody would walk past, VROOOM! HONK! HONK!

The truck soon began to torment me. There would be times when the toy would go off for no reason. I would be sitting in the other room and hear it. VROOOM! HONK! HONK! It began to happen at night, when the house was dark and I was the only one awake. VROOOM! HONK! HONK!

I finally had my fill of the wretched toy truck, so one day when the kids were out of the house with WonderWife™, I decided to do what I should had done long ago. I was going to end it.

I grabbed a screwdriver and slowly approached the toy bin. The truck seemed to know that I was coming and let out a VROOOM! HONK! HONK! as if to say, “What are you doing, DGB?”

I fished the truck out of the bin, flipped it over and gingerly went to work. But when I removed the battery cover, I was met with a most shocking sight:

It was completely empty! There were no batteries in the toy!

I recoiled and dropped the truck. How could this be? There was only one answer: this vile toy was surely forged out of pure evil from the fiery depths. There was no way I was going to live under the same roof as a possessed toy. I’d seen enough horror movies to know that doing so will always end badly.

I quickly took the demonic truck outside and tossed it in the dumpster. In a few days it would be off of my property and would no longer haunt me.

I imagine that the truck is now resting in some landfill, buried beneath trash and debris still making its ungodly noise. But somehow I don’t think I’ve seen the last of it. Each night when my family is asleep and I make my way through the dark house, locking up for the evening, I can still hear it…VROOOM! HONK! HONK!

Smoky Earthy Salty Porky*

A mischievous sparkle was in the eyes of my co-worker as she approached my office door.

“I was out at lunch today and I found you something,” she said with a big grin on her face. Then she reached into her bag and gave me this:

Yes even my colleagues know of my strange fascination with bacon-flavored products. But it's not that surprising in this case.  This friend is a fellow foodie and over the years we have shared many a conversation about the meals we've eaten and the food we've cooked.

Bacon truffle caramel popcorn seemed like a treat that needed to be shared, so after my friend inexplicably declined a taste I somehow managed to muster up enough will power to not open the bag until I could get it in front of WonderWife™.

Unlike some bacon products that revel in shock value rather than flavor, this bacon truffle caramel popcorn seemed well thought out. Each component was designed to work together.

The popcorn was entirely coated in a thick shell of rich, crunchy caramel. Buried beneath the browned sugar was bacon—real pieces of bacon that brought a smoky applewood flavor to the popcorn. (The bottom of the bag revealed a few sugar-coated pieces of bacon, which was a treat in and of itself.) The whole shebang was infused with truffle oil. It must be said that I am usually not a fan of fungus, but the truffles gave the confection an earthiness that cut the sweetness and added an unexpected depth of flavor.

It is not something that I could eat every day, but I would eat bacon truffle caramel popcorn again in a second…as long as I had somebody to share it with.


*This is the genius description of the popcorn found on the bag. 

I'm a Brat

The awesome blogger Chag from the awesome blog Cynical Dad started something really cool.  It's a brand spanking new blog called Culture Brats.  And guess who he's invited to be a contributor?

A lot of really cool and talented bloggers.

Foolishly, they have asked me to join them.

The blog went live this week and it's already chock filled with stuff about music, movies, TV and one of the coolest features, Criss Cross Counterpunch, where 80s pop culture is thrown into a battle royal to answer important questions like, Which is the better album, Prince's Purple Rain or Michael Jackson's Thriller.

My first post over there is about, what else, movies and the current 3D trend that's sweeping through multiplexes.

I strongly suggest you click on over to Culture Brats and poke around.  It's totally awesome.

Yeah, About That Thing I Said Yesterday...

I’m here.

I’m not going anywhere.

A lot of you saw through the charade.

But some of you didn’t. You left some nice comments. Some of you called WonderWife™ to find out if it was true. And while absorbing your collective reaction, I realized something--it wasn’t the best April Fool’s joke.

A good April Fool’s prank is one that is both slightly believable and slightly outrageous. Like this. Or this. Or even my rather lame attempt last year. The best ones are the ones where you fall for the joke for a second, then you’re in on it.

Yesterday’s post was inadvertently a little like throwing a funeral for myself. I thought that most of you would automatically see through it. But for some of you, the execution was a little too poker faced.  A few of you seemed genuinely sad.  Thank you for caring.  I am touched.  

But it's not true. 

I think Sci-Fi Dad said it best when he said:
In other news, DGB has also decided to give up bacon and one-off, special edition candy bars.

So to reiterate, I’m not giving up the blog. Because if I don’t write all of this stuff down, how am I going to ever remember it happened?

Walking Away

I've been writing this blog for two and a half years. That's more time than I have devoted to most things in my life. However, there comes a time when things must end. Sadly, I've found it harder and harder to keep the ideas coming and lately when I sit down at the keyboard, the ideas don't flow like they should. Writing is becoming more work than fun these days, and that's never what this whole blogging thing was supposed to be about. On top of it all, my real life is getting busier, the kids are getting older and need more of my time and attention. I'm in difficult position discovering that there isn't enough time to do all of the things that I want to do.

So with all of this weighing me down, I've decided to call it quits and walk away from this blog. This is a really hard decision, but I hope you will understand and respect it.

I sincerely thank all of you for reading my words over the years. It means more to me than you will possibly know.