John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

A Beatle exchange in the car

My son has really been getting into the Beatles lately, which made this exchange in the car timely. 

We were listening to Seventies on 7 on Sirius XM's satellite radio feed, and on came Got To Get You Into My Life. 

Me: Ack - that's not the Seventies! It came out in '66! 

Nick: (Calmly) Dad ... let it be. Just let it be. 

Me: Good joke, Nick! 

Nick: (Slight pause) Um ...

Me: That was deliberate, right? 

Nick: (Another slight pause) Nooo. 

But then he chuckled, and I found myself no longer in times of trouble. 

The Chuck Norris joke my son wrote himself

When Chuck Norris goes into a bar, he orders a Molotov cocktail. 

 

**

 

Not bad, kiddo! 

Work like a Trojan ... or not

On the way home today, I said to Nick that I would need to throw myself into a wrtiting project so that we would all be able to go out tonight for an event. 

"I'll just work like a Trojan," I said. 

"You mean, live and party like a Trojan," he said, pointing out that while the Trojans were good at battle, it was the Greeks who worked hard and outsmarted them with that horse. 

"So, really, it should be 'work like a Greek,' " he concluded.

Yes, indeed.  

Big and clever

Several evenings ago, we had one of those family conversations with quite a lot of banter. 

After I had said something (and I honestly don't recall what it was), Nick replied, "You think you are so big and clever." A pause. "Oh wait ... you are big and clever." 

That part I remembered to jot down. 

Three words

Right after a buffet breakfast today, Nick remarked: "Dad, three words agree with me: cartooning, Lego and buffet." 

(Beat) 

"Make that, all-you-can-eat buffet." 

Duly noted, with the word count adjusted. 

I've got you, under its skin

Nick, upon seeing a platoon of insects of different varieties devouring a fish carcass: "Well, they really got under his skin." 

A very special Christmas for Homer

Our son just came up with this one, as a possible Christmas special title for The Simpsons.

"Look what's under the Mistle-[annoyed grunt]"

()

If it needs explaining, "annoyed grunt" is the script direction given to Dan Castellaneta, who came up with "D'oh!" As an ongoing joke, "annoyed grunt" now shows up in show titles and elsewhere, and is meant to be read as good ol' D'oh.

Indeed, as Castellaneta himself explains in this interview, the Simpsons writers still insist on using "annoyed grunt" in scripts, even though D'oh has become an accepted component of English usage.

Random passage

I had an interesting chat this evening with Nick about the word "random," as in his aspiration to create some more "random comics." (He's been having fun developing his cartooning habit.)

I told him that back in the golden days of yore, "random" meant something that was in no particular order or chosen for no particular reason or number.

He nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, that's the same," he said. "It means weird."

 

Flash, blur

"Why is he called The Flash when he should be called The Blur?"
- Nick, pondering aloud while getting ready for bed.

Battle of the bands

A recent conversation in the car between yours truly and our son Nick, who's 11.

The radio was playing the languid opening bars of Wish You Were Here.

Me: That's Pink Floyd.

Nick: That's Pink Floyd? Oh ... I've heard of them.

Me: Yeah, I play lots of their songs. (I name a few.)

Nick: (Listening.) Hmm. Not bad. (Beat) I still prefer Arctic Monkeys, though.

I had dropped some Arctic Monkeys into a playlist for the kid, but I didn't expect to have that kind of effect.

We'll check in with the boy when he's about, hmmm, 15. That should do the trick. At that age, I was playing The Wall end to end.

I am, apparently, like Phil from Modern Family

So, the other evening, my son said I reminded him of Phil, one of the characters on Modern Family.

You know ... the doofus.

I gave Nick a "tread carefully" look, but before he noticed it, he had said, "You know, you're really nice, and you're a good dad."

Good save, kid. Good save.

The boy figures out narrative

While putting on his jacket and mitts this morning, my son told me he had figured out a few things about narrative - so to speak.

"To have a story, you have to have a hero, and they have to do something," Nick said. "There has to be a sidekick, and there has to be a wise person. There has to be a villain." Slight, uncomfortable pause. "And there may or may not be a love interest."

Nick's in fifth grade now, and is reading quite a bit. The inspiration, though, he said came from Shrek.

There you have it. I'd say he's well set for everything from Joseph Campbell to Lethal Weapon.

 

The bread that meets with the boy's approval

Martha made bread yesterday evening. It's very good. So said the boy: "Nothing like fresh bread to make you feel like a man."

The kid and the iPod: 'I've been dragging all my life'

We had a moment of  transition in our house yesterday: I formally gave my son ownership of my old iPod Nano. My wife gave me a new one last year for Christmas, so my older one wasn't getting much use. Moreover, Martha and I have noticed that Nicholas is starting to get a lot more interested in music.
So, it seemed like a good idea to let him listen to his own music, at least around the house.

He, of course, was thrilled. And so were we, when we saw him on the living room couch, crading the thing in his hands, his toes wiggling and head bobbing to whatever it was he was listening to. 

To get that point, though, we had to put some tunes on the Nano. But what, exactly, does our son like?

To help set things up, I sat down with him on the couch with my laptop, and set up a playlist for him in iTunes. I would play a suggested tune, and he quickly took on the air of a Roman emperor, with a thumb up or down to determine what headed to the folder. (One surprise: a Branford Marsalis tune, which apparently reminded him of Bleeding Gums Murphy.)

Eventually, being a nine-year-old, he wanted to do all of this by himself. I said, "Let me show you how to drag and drop a song." His reply? "Dad! Dad-Dad-Dad-Dad ... I've been dragging all my life." His hands were gesturing as if to say, "Scram."

So I did, and will be curious to see what music turns his crank from hereon in.

Bedtime checklist

What I heard from my son's bedroom the other evening:

"Gun? Check. Whip? Check. Repulsive slingshot? Check ..."

There he was, putting some toys (if the belt of his dressing gown ... aka, the whip ... is a toy) in a small pile before he climbed into bed. An Indiana Jones moment, I'm guessing, although you sometimes can't tell.

It's a personal choice

Scene with son: Picking him up yesterday evening, I told him we would be making our own pizzas for supper. Nick informed me he would be making a meatatarian: "I'll start with some meat sauce, then put on pepperoni meat, and then some bacon bits."

I gave him a look and then he added, with a pause, "It's a personal choice."

The line reading - and I have to call it that, because Nick is a pretty savvy media kid, go figure - was spot-on to the Wendy's commercial below, which came out last year.

Hmmm. I trim out the commercials on our DVR, so he doesn't see that many, so I was surprised that he, well, nailed the line. He does this with movies repeatedly (as does his dad, as his mom will attest, often with a sigh). Didn't know he was absorbing commercials so well too.

Blessed are those with leopard seed

With Halloween on the horizon, our son Nicholas is more than a little interested in creeping up the house.

The other night, he laid out one of his plans, about how we could drape sticky stuff all over our faces, that we could then peel off.

"Just as if," he said, "we had leopard seeds."

Rules of engagement, 007 style

A recent conversation with my son, who's eight:

"Dad, I didn't know you had the James Bond movies," my son exclaimed from the back seat. Turns out he was aware of 007 and James Bond (a fellow student had brought a book to school ... which must have made for an interesting show-and-tell, if that's what it was for), but didn't know there ever had been movies. I bought one of those discount megasets on DVD a while back.

"Sooo ... can I watch them?" Nick asked.

"Oh no," I said. "There's too much sex and violence for someone your age."

"Well, Dad," he said, "I might actually be able to handle the violence, but I'm definitely too young for the sex." A pause. "I'm too young for engagement."