DadWagon Presents: The Podcast, July 25

Gabe Soria, Donovan Hohn, Theodore Ross.

So, last night’s second edition of “DadWagon Presents” did not go off entirely hitch-free: One of our guests was, sadly, locked in his office by his evil boss and prevented from attending the event. Brian Braiker, your presence was sorely missed, and we hope the handcuff marks quickly fade.

Apart from that, our speakers performed brilliantly. Graphic novelist Gabe Soria praised his son’s growing embrace of polytheism, Moby-Duck author Donovan Hohn tried to discuss his Alaska expedition with his uncomprehending toddler, and our own Theodore Ross, hyping his new book Am I a Jew?, did battle with his mother, who calls Judaism a “tumor.” See those links I added? They’ll take you directly to mp3s of each dad’s talks.

Now it’s time to get ready for the August edition of “DadWagon Presents”! We’ve got some speakers lined up already, and will release the full details next week (probably). See you there…

Hello, Dan Zanes

'His hair looks like Grandpa's!'

So, Sasha and I were walking home from school yesterday, and as we neared our apartment, who should we see a couple of doors down but Dan Zanes, king of the Brooklyn kiddie-music scene. Gray curls blazing, surrounded by fellow musicians. Yep, that’s him.

This happens occasionally. Zanes is like Jim Jarmusch in the East Village, or Terry Richardson around Bowery. Eventually, you’re going to spot him.

I didn’t have anything in particular to say to him, so we walked on by. But after we’d passed him I turned to Sasha.

“You see that guy with the gray hair?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know the CD we always listen to? That song ‘Polly-Wolly Doodle’?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That guy with the gray hair is the one who sings the song!”

“I sing the songs, too!”

She’s right, of course. “That’s right,” I said. “You sing the songs, too.”

As I hunted around in my pocket for the keys to our gate, Zanes and his crew walked past with their instruments. Sasha glanced over at them.

“His hair looks like Grandpa’s,” she said.

She was right.

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Dog Days and Dark Days: Entropy, Chaos, Death, the Inevitable

The last week or so has really sucked chez Gross. And because I’m in a bad, despondent mood, I’m going to just run down a list of all the hassles:

• Our boiler/water heater is on the fritz. Again. Less than a month after we had its pump replaced ($660!), an anti-condensing valve, plunger, and actuator (and maybe the circuit board, too) are shot. Over the last five years, we’ve spent more than $4,000 fixing this damn thing, and I’m pissed. We’ve worked out a deal with the manufacturer to get this thing fixed (this time) for almost nothing, but it still just makes life suck. Oh yeah, and we’re about to embark on an expensive gut reno of our bathroom—starting Monday.

• Sasha is miserable. Not just the usual non-cooperation here. She recently moved up a class at Preschool of America, and is freaked out, reluctant to go to school at all in the morning and crying for Mommy so long after she’s dropped off that her teacher feels the need to notify Jean. Sasha even, for the first time in her life, started carrying a “blankie” around, for comfort. Fuck. In just six weeks, she’s off to city pre-K with the “big kids.” Oh, I cannot wait.

• Travel writing sucks. After 8 years of doing it, I still can’t make a living, and I don’t see any way I’ll be able to anytime soon. In fact, it’s more expensive for my family if I work than if I just stayed home to take care of the kids.

• The lock in the front gate of our building picked today to get stuck. Maybe I’d make more money as a locksmith?

• My book is due in two weeks. I’ll finish on time, but it’s a race.

• It’s HOT outside. Have you noticed?

Look, I know these are just the average, everyday complaints of anyone trying to maintain his place in a middle class being crushed like a droid in the Death Star trash compactor, but you know what? It makes me feel better to vent at y’all, and my feeling better is really the only thing that matters today.

The Sex-Negative Preschooler

Let's make babies

This happened on an otherwise normal weekend morning. My boy, just turned four, who loves dinosaurs and whom I think is still sometimes hard to understand when he talks, especially when he has no idea what he’s talking about.

As I was getting him dressed in the bathroom:

“How did you meet mama?”

“Well, we worked next door to each other…”

“Is that when you [unintelligible] dipped her?”

“Wha? Uh, I was making coffee. And sandwiches. She handed out quarters at the arcade.”

“Is that how I was made?”

“No, that happened later. When we met, we were still in school.”

“Did [untelligible] you poke holes in each other?”

“Huh?” [Looking around the corner for the wife] “Where you at, babe?”

“You dipped your testicles in her belly. You made holes to do that?”

“No, no, not that. The holes were already there. Um, your mother and I met in college. I worked at the Coffee…”

“Did you kill each other?”

“Huh?”

“Did you kill each other to make the holes?”

“No. We’re not spiders. We didn’t kill each other to make babies. Nobody made holes. They were there already.”

My wife, the science-minded one, decided then to stop laughing in the other room and come deal with this.

There was talk of vaginas and sperm that swim like tadpoles. We unraveled his own view of baby-making, which was aggressively sex-negative, as they say: you poke each other full of holes and kill each other and put your testicles in the mommy’s belly.

I would say it was pure scifi, except the truth of babymaking—starting with all that rutting and ending with dilating, crowning, expelling—is almost equally strange. And some men do die of connubial heart attacks in the act and some women do die in labor and though I tend to think of my son as still inarticulate and tongue-twisted and dopey at times, it is nothing compared to me when trying to explain, or avoid, these things to him.

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