DadWagon Presents: The Podcast

Paul Ford reads from "The Male Brain."

So, the first monthly presentation of “DadWagon Presents” went off relatively well! All our speakers showed up—that’s Paul Ford, Peter Meehan, and Jeff Yang, who actually arrived so early he had time to go home, beat his children, and return to Pacific Standard to kick off the reading. And it’s a reading we can now bring to you, here on the Internet, through the magic of technology! Please allow “DadWagon Presents” to present to you “DadWagon Presents: The Podcast.”

Part 1: Jeff Yang, the “Tao Jones” columnist for the Wall Street Journal, discusses his membership in “Rice Daddies,” a Bay Area support group for Asian-American fathers. Click here to listen/download.

Part 2: Paul Ford, digital guru and novelist, on his surprise that he doesn’t actually hate being a parent to his twin 9-month-olds. Click here to listen/download.

Part 3: Peter Meehan, Lucky Peach founder and author of the Momofuku and Frankies cookbooks, on trying to get his toddler, Hazel, to eat as well as he does—maybe even better. Click here to listen/download.

Download them, listen to them on the subway, then look uncomfortable as your fellow straphangers edge away from you, the guy who’s cackling uncontrollably.

And get ready for next month, when “DadWagon Presents” returns to Pacific Standard with a new crop of readers. No idea who they’ll be, by the way.

Finally: Happy Father’s Day!

Keep the Jew Away From the Fire

I’ve decided to share  a post from my website, theodoreross.net, which I thought fit here because it is childhood related., it also happens to be something that I cut from my book. Online literary outtakes, ladies and gentlemen–read it here first:

I think about this often, whenever I need a reminder of my futility as a Christian. I must have been in fifth grade or thereabouts, which means I was ten years old and a student at the Christ Episcopal Day School in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. “Christ,” as we called it, was a smallish red-brick affair, no air-conditioning, situated on a grassy rise across from the brackish waters of the Mississippi Sound. A crushed-shell driveway twisted away from the beach road toward the school, running past the campus church, a small cemetery, and a large soccer field flanked by southern oaks and pecan trees.

It had to be a Wednesday, I suppose, because shortly after morning muster outside the school (a hundred youngsters dressed in blue polyester uniform pants or skirts, white button-downs, and penny loafers or topsiders, standing at attention and, with mumbling indifference, pledging allegiance to the flag and reciting the Lord’s Prayer) we marched together to the church for Reverend Johnson’s weekly school mass.

First evidence of my Nazarene insufficiencies: it was a holiday of some sort, only which one escapes me. Regardless, as reward for some minor bit of good behavior I was afforded the special responsibility of lighting candles in front of the congregation in honor of the forgotten observance. The drill, as I recall, had me seated in the very front-most pew, dressed in white robes; at the proper moment the right Reverend would summon me—with due dignity, I imagine—to a large silver candelabra where I would light six pearl white candles thicker than my wrist. A prayer of some sort would be intoned as I performed my ritualistic duties. For this purpose I had been given a book of matches from the Pirate’s Cove, a local Po-boy shop from which students with a signed permission slip could order-in once per week (not me: I packed my own lunch each day, an act of what I still consider misguided character-building on my mother’s part.)

Christ’s church was an unassuming place—wooden pews and brown carpeting throughout, stained glass windows, room for no more than two hundred souls. The Wednesday congregants, oldsters with the leisure and spiritual inclination for mid-week prayer, had little patience for children. They would stare daggers at our itchy and quivering and pinching mob, infuriated, unreasonably, I think, that we couldn’t keep still for God’s endless hour and a half. As concession to the senior citizens, our principle, Mrs. Jordan, an acerbic, tough-love Cajun with a charming smile and a powerful two-fisted paddle stroke, would select a single, unfortunate youth as her ecclesiastical example and deliver unto him a minor backhand to the head.

I should relate how excited I was to be chosen for the candle rite: a special seat away from my schoolfellows, splendidly dressed (by my lights), armed with the power to bring fire—even now I can recall the thrill. Besides, unlike most of the other students I actually liked going to church. I enjoyed the Biblical stories, sang with gusto in the choir; each week, I shuddered with envy at the children privileged to take their place at the communion rail and accept Reverend Johnson’s offer of wafer and wine (by the end of that school year I would join them).

Reverend Johnson, who was in his sixties and had at some point suffered a stroke that had left him with noticeable verbal deficits, commenced with the service. His remonstrations from the pulpit—the half-intelligible depredations of the King James, the Shakespearean syntax verily marred by his slurred speech and southern drawl—were, even for one predisposed to enjoy it, brutally boring. Thankfully, there were at appropriate intervals the group amens, the dropping to one’s knees, the rising again, the singing of songs, and the like, to keep my attention fixed.

I found myself growing increasingly nervous as the mass proceeded. Opportunities to create fire were sharply limited in my household—the pilot lights on the stove worked, we didn’t camp—and what few there were (July 4th sparklers) my older brother claimed as his own. Plus, what if I tripped over my robes? Or set them on fire? (I’d had enough lab science at that age to develop a healthy fear of polyester) What if I couldn’t make sense of Johnson’s guttural nonsense and missed my signal? Would the service grind to a halt? Would Mrs. Jordan hustle me back to her office for a good, stout, going-over with her whupping stick? My knees started bopping up and down in anxious anticipation. I stopped when Mrs. Jordan cut me a warning look and took to drumming my fingers on the pew.

When the time came, however, I caught Johnson’s signal without too much effort. I carefully walked to the candelabra and addressed the six candles. After a fit of spastic fit of panic as I searched for pockets in my robes—there were none—I hiked the garment up to my waist and produced the matchbook from the back of my uniform pants. I removed a single paper matchstick, dismissing a mental picture of a Pirate’s Cove shrimp Po-boy, lavishly dressed, took a deep breath, ran the stick along the striker…and nothing. I frowned and surveyed the match—the head still intact, so I turned it over struck the other side. Nothing.

People like to refer to “flop sweat” in such circumstances, as if it were a real phenomenon. One hears much of the breaking out in nervous perspiration, the supposedly instantaneous drenching, the cinematic mopping of the soaked brow. Perhaps I have a slow metabolism, but I remained largely dry; a slight dampness about the underarms, perhaps, but no more. I looked up at the congregation, smiling nervously, and gestured weakly at the matches. I received a blank response.

I accidentally dropped the spent matchstick to the ground, started to bend over to retrieve it, thought better of it, and returned to my task, freeing a fresh matchstick from the book.

Again with the match…again nothing.

I still refuse to admit to any flop sweat. If I must employ a cliché to describe my level of diaphoresis, I’ll go with “lather,” which I admit sounds too athletic, but seems most accurate in my memory. Rushing now, I dropped the second matchstick to the ground without a thought, removed another, struck it—nothing—struck the opposite side; again nothing.

A first nervous stirring from the congregation began, augmented by a barely-audible titter from my schoolmates, who were beginning to suspect that my failures might free them ever-so-slightly from the standard Christ rules of silent churchly decorum. Mrs. Jordan’s heavy eyes narrowed to wary slits, quieting the mutinous throng. Reverend Johnson remained in his stroke-stupor, stone-down-a-well, aloof, the picture of spiritual repose.

I hardly noticed. The task of lighting the match had excised all irrelevant details and distractions. There was nothing but candle and match, the blue tip of the stick, the silver candelabra, the white candles, and nothing else.

The match, the match, the match! And nothing.

Finally, mercifully, a bald old man materialized from the blackness of my crippled peripheral vision bearing a bronze Zippo. He successfully lit my fifth—sixth? eighth?—match, and I laughed with relief, the congregation laughed with me, I held up the match for their joyful inspection.

The first candle went up without problem. The second didn’t catch immediately, flaming for a second and then extinguishing itself, and I had to come back to it with the matchstick, but it caught on the second try. The third seemed to take an interminable time to go up, but eventually it did, bursting into first flame and then flickering down as it consumed the ambient oxygen; it returned to life as a small breeze pushed through the church. My limbs went loose and tingly; my heart pumped with radiant blood; my head swam beneath rivers of palliated adrenaline. There would be no stopping me now.

Somewhere in a distant corner of my consciousness a clock began to tick. A single matchstick, no matter how thick or sturdy, can last but so long. Yet the thought of stopping to ignite a fresh one—the risks, the potential for failure—was too ridiculous even to consider. I would soldier on with this one; together we would bring fire to the candles, we would fulfill our flaming destinies, and when we were done, I would blow her out with gratitude; I would retreat to my bench; embarrassed, yes; slightly ashamed, perhaps; most certainly by now, and in all honesty, covered in flop sweat; but no, not defeated, not destroyed.

The match died before I could get anywhere with the fourth candle.

I went back to the book, grabbing matchsticks two at a time now, striking and failing, dropping the wasted ones to the ground. Again the old man came to my rescue, although it should be said, not by giving me the lighter—I suppose one doesn’t share a Zippo—but only to start a new match for me.

Candles four and five went up with relative ease. That left only the sixth, the final flame, the last lighting, and what, it might be asked, would I have given for a match of greater length than one with which I had been equipped? Alas, we must go to war with the matches we have, not the long fireplace ones we might want or wish to have at a later time. Before I could address the problem of the last candle it burned to my fingers and singed me. Dropping it to the ground, I accidentally lit the carpet, and then instinctively stamped out the fire, charring the Lord’s cheap flooring. I stamped about the church in pain, shaking my fingers and shouting, Goddamn! Jesus Christ!

Things like this happened to me all the time.

Q&A: Joel Stein, Author of Man Made

Joel Stein has done a lot of things. He’s made a career out of being Joel Stein in strange situations—having George Clooney over for dinner and light handyman work, eating placenta (not on the same evening), and so on. For his new book, Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity, the TIME columnist (and former colleague of mine) fought a UFC legend, spent three days in boot camp, worked a shift with firefighters and generally scurried around looking for barrelchested role models who could teach him how to be more of a man for his young son.

One thing Joel Stein has never done? Hold an interview by Google IM. Until now. This is going to be amazing:

DadWagon: Hey Joel

Joel Stein: Are we chatting now?

Oh hell yes

Seriously, this is it? I’m disappointed. It feels like AOL.

Ok. We can call it off.

Are you wearing pants?

I am a classy freelancer. I have the Late Late Show [Joel’s appearance with Craig Ferguson from late April] open in my other browser. You look nice.

I haven’t watched it yet. I figured I should wait for [my wife] Cassandra to watch it with later. And yes, I wore a tie. No one does that anymore. Wait… are you masturbating to me on your other browser screen???

That’s what a classy freelancer does… one browser for masturbating, one for interviewing

That way you never have to stop working. I’m learning so much.

So we’re gonna talk about your awesome book, but before that, let’s talk about me. Tell the readers how we know each other.

Okay, but I get confused here. We didn’t know each other at college, right? Because I’m too old for that to have happened. So I didn’t meet you until you showed up at Time. I’m guessing that was 2002? I knew you were Rome’s cool friend who went to international places.

Great. I just wanted to get the “cool” part across. K thx. Let’s move on.

Did I get all that right? Even the 2002 part?

No. But it’s like Mike Daisey. It was “true” even if it wasn’t true. Because of the “cool” thing.

The reader show know just how slowly you type. Do you use one finger? I’ve written three columns waiting for your responses.

The other browser, Joel, the other browser. OK: Professional question. You will write for anybody—you used to write for a cigarette magazine at one point, right?—and you are prolific. Why is this your first book?

I always thought books were different, since they’re not meant to be disposable. I’ve never thrown one away. It seemed like your permanent record. So I kept waiting for an idea. I had one in 2000, but all the editors I pitched it to didn’t like it. This maybe wasn’t the idea I was waiting for, but I liked it, and I got tired of waiting and I realized that we were getting to a point where books might not get made as easily anymore, so I had to do it soon. And it wasn’t just any cigarette magazine. It was Marlboro. I do have standards.

True flavor, no doubt. So at what point did you begin to see that Laszlo was not a mouth to feed, but a book to sell? (and are we even naming the kid?)

I just realized we both have photos of us holding guns as our Gmail photos. That is the move of Jews insecure about their masculinity.

Yeah, tho you may not remember that you actually shamed me into changing my Twitter profile pic, which was of the look-i’m-on-tv-ergo-important genre.

That’s right! You had one of those “I’m on TV” freeze frames! I saved your ass on that one. It’s such a blonde Fox commentator move.

Anyhow: Laszlo

I call him Laszlo throughout the book, and that is his name, so yes, he is going to hate me for the rest of his life since I might control his Google results for a long time. He’s actually not that huge a part of the book, since, after freaking out that I was having a boy, which, as you know, I am not at all equipped to raise, I went off on my own to do man stuff. It’s not like I brought Laszlo with me in the ring to fight Randy Couture. Though I did bring him to Vegas for that trip. But he stayed in the hotel while I got my ass kicked.

In rough outline: Army, firefighter, MMA… what else?

I did three days of boot camp at Ft. Knox with a troop. They let me fire a tank. In my first three hours, before doing any physical activity—mind you it was hot, and I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep, and I locked my knees—I fainted for the first time in my life. Into the arms of a soldier. Honestly, it was so much more stressful than I could have ever imagined. They scream at your face while you eat, while you piss, while you get dressed. There’s no break.

Other stuff I did: I got a day trader to give me $100,000 to trade with for a day. Hunted, fished, rebuilt a house, drank scotch. I start by trying to fix my first mistake by becoming a Boy Scout. I went camping with a troop and earned my first badge.

The day trading seems like it doesn’t fit with the rest, does it? Isn’t that something Jews can do naturally?

No. The rest was the traditional Scotch-Irish, Southern version of manhood that has come to mean manliness in our country. But there are other versions: The stiff-upper lip, drink-tea while the bombs are falling British one, for instance. So the day trading one was my attempt to try on a different version, but still one foreign to me. That taking-money-from-other-men, snort-coke-off-a-hooker, Boiler Room kind.

And yes, the Jewish kind. Though I kept meeting secret Jews on my manventures. The baseball player who taught me how to throw, catch, hit and coach was Shawn Green, a Stanford Jew. One of the sergeants in the Marines when I did some stuff in San Diego was Jewish. So was the CEO of Patron who races a car for their Le Mans team – and he had been a Navy Seal. And, of course, the day trader.

Secret Jews are the best kind. [Ed. note: see also Theodore’s upcoming book: Am I a Jew?]

We are everywhere!

You mentioned coke ‘n’ hookers (metaphorically, no doubt), and it reminds me that I had a conversation with my wife about your book a couple days ago. I was describing it as a rather awesome premise for a book. She seemed mystified, and just wanted to know whether Cassandra thought it was dumb/dangerous to do all those things.

Yes. Cassandra thought it was stupid, that a person doesn’t change by doing stupid stunts. But she was wrong. I think we only change by doing things. I can fix stuff in my house now. Not much stuff, but some. My parents, oddly, were more worried about the UFC fight than Cassandra was. Though she tried to get me to back out the night before, when I was really messed up from the training. Dana White had a guy choke me out, twice. That plus the pre-fight jujitsu training messed me up.

Glad you got some DIY skills. One of these days Clooney is gonna get too busy to come over and fix things in your house.

It’s much cheaper than having Clooney come over and handyman. That guy can drink. And not the cheap stuff.

So are you still tweaked from the fight or training? Any lasting injuries?

No! I’m really glad. My throat hurt for about 10 days after the choking out, but it went away. In fact, I was feeling pretty great when I finished the manventures, since I was in really good shape from training for the Army and UFC and some other stuff. But then I slacked after.

That is also manly. Or at least mannish. Or manlike.

Slacking on working out? It actually doesn’t feel manly at all. The less we work out, especially as we get older, the more androgynous we look and act.

Anyhow, Julia will be glad to hear about Cassandra’s reservations. Though something tells me we weren’t talking about your book so much as my upcoming trip to Libya. Thanks for being that foil.

When [former TIME Managing Editor] Jim Kelly made a joke to me about embedding me, before anyone knew what embedding was, Cassandra said she’d divorce me if I went to Iraq. And she was serious. Libya is a little more dangerous than a fight with a UFC guy who knows you’re writing about him.
But have fun!

I will. It’s just a big hummus party over there right now.

It is a nice time of year there! Though it’s the height of tourist season, so that can get annoying.

ROFLibya. Let’s get back to the book. I gotta go, and my slow typing has kept us from talking about the awesomeness of this thing. So I’ll say this: It was always a poorly kept secret at TIME that you were a pretty amazing writer when you weren’t doing the funny stuff too. Tell me there is pathos in Man Made.

Pathos aplenty! We had the book printed, at dear cost, on specially treated paper that is salt-water resistant since the test audiences cried so much when they read it.

Still gonna fry the insides of the Kindle, though

They hadn’t thought of that! Book publishers are stuck in 1960. Honestly, I had to make my final changes in colored pencil and mail it back to them. Seriously.

We’re all fucked. Final question: what can you tell us about Man Made, the movie?

I’m having lunch with Jake Kasdan today, who I think is going to direct it. It’s being produced by Shawn Levy through a deal at Fox. Like all movies, I’m sure it will never get made. But I get to write it. I can’t believe they’re letting me do that. They also must know it will never get made.

That’s where the guaranteed money is. Charge them a ransom for the screenplay then it won’t matter. Final item that is not a question, but rather a statement: I see that you actually drove somewhere to have waffles with a blog called Girl to Mom as PR for this book. That means your time is not worth as much as I thought, and that you will definitely have time to come read at one of our DadWagon readings. I am psyched to have figured that out. See you there!

Google ads, by the way, really seized on the day trading part of our conversation. Good luck in Libya. It would be tragic if this were your last piece of journalism.

There’s the pathos. Congratulations, Joel. Thanks for gchatting.

Thank you.

Boys And Girls: Mini-Animals and Mini-Humans

Sons!

Let me start off by warning the readers of this post that I am about to be sexist, and what’s more, that I will also engage in outdated, demonstrably untrue gender stereotypes. And yet I believe them and I’m trying to be funny, so being an archaic moron is okay, right? Nice thing about blogging: rhetorical questions.

So, all that said, let me jump in. Ellie, my sweet little girl, is approaching 17 months, the stage at which it is said that a “language explosion” takes place for most children. This is the point at which they progress from being moaning and grunting little beasts and start expressing themselves, sipping espressos, and declaiming the ethical shortcomings of Kantian philosophy.

Ellie seems ready for this to happen. She’s been saying a few words here and there for months now, and has built up a fairly large vocabulary, including a few two word phrases, not all of which are intelligible to people outside of her nuclear family, but I’m counting nonetheless.

Very, very cool stuff, even when she cries “No” and flings blackberries at me, or when she yells “Eew” and points at the crap she just made in her diaper. Cute is the word, and if she were yours I bet you’d agree.

Here’s the rub: JP, at this age, met none of these linguistic landmarks. In fact, he wasn’t talking at all, and didn’t for quite a while after that. Forget the notion of that at his current age silence would be a laughable impossibility–he wasn’t talking then and it was something of a concern.

No big deal, though. JP is, in my humble opinion, a bright boy, and talkative to a fault. My point is that there are ways in which I view children at that age dependent on gender. Many girls, not just Ellie, tend to develop earlier than boys, and not just verbally but physically as well. To me, it has always seemed that little boys at this stage are like wild little animals–like ferrets, perhaps, or foxes, or wombats, or anything small, furry, simple, and untrustworthy with your food and possessions. Girls, on the other hand, are, for better and worse, miniature human beings with all the foibles and grace notes of the species.

Now, please, I am well aware that this is statistically hogwash–boys and girls develop at their own pace, like the little unique snowflakes gag that they are. And yet I still believe my son was a rabid wolverine and that my daughter is Diane Keaton! So there.