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A little light musing

Fatherhood,


My posts about Erin’s pregnancy and Abigail’s birth have been awfully introspective – and perhaps a little tear-jerky – so to keep this blog from being a ponderous chore to read, here are some amusing things that have happened in the Age of Abigail:

* I’d like to thank the creative and production staffs of “Parks & Recreation” for saving our sanity. The few moments Erin and I have to ourselves are usually spent decompressing via episodes of this show. We may decide to raise Abigail according to Ron Swanson’s Pyramid of Greatness at some future date.

* A friend of mine – a new father himself – sent me…er, Abigail a CD of 80s songs as lullabies. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” is surprisingly affecting. Oh and Abigail likes it, too.

* The trash can in the baby’s room – the one containing all the dirty diapers and sanitary wipes – is so sophisticated that Erin and I somehow removed the bag in reverse. That’s right: Two college-educated people were almost outwitted by a garbage receptacle.

* My daughter’s “Let me interrupt you for a second so I can take a crap in my diaper” face is hysterical. It looks like she’s going into a trance or casting a spell. It’s almost as awesome as the noises she makes when she’s waking up or stretching, which bear a remarkable resemblance to the noises made by the “Compys” in Jurassic Park.

* Abigail’s favorite way for me to soothe her is being held while I walk up and down the stairs to our 2nd floor. Our house is an old bungalow so the stairs are attic-style which means they’re very steep. I can usually fake her out but achieve the same effect by walking around our dining room table while doing half-lunges.

At this rate, I should have buns of steel by Tuesday.

Census, not consensus: Paper Machete, January 9, 2011

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I was back at The Paper Machete yesterday to discuss Chicago’s mayoral race.

Every time I attend The Paper Machete, I’m stunned at the level of talent on display. I’ve been to four shows – three of which I performed at – and if there is a show which consistently showcases such an incredibly talented group of writers and musicians of greater intelligence and humor, I haven’t seen it. Christopher Piatt and Allison Weiss put this on weekly, people. WEEKLY! And it’s free. FREE! You’re missing out if you don’t give it a chance. Check out the Facebook page or their podcasts.

A couple notes on this piece: Thanks to some smart feedback from Piatt, I wrote this specifically to be read as a speech rather than as a true essay that would be read. So I’m not sure how well it works just as plain text. If it makes it into the Machete podcast, I’ll link and you’ll see what I mean. UPDATE: The recording of this piece is posted here.

Also, after I performed it I thought it came off too pro-Rahm, which wasn’t my intention (and certainly isn’t reflected in the previous Machete piece I wrote). Chicago’s neighborhoods have many needs and I don’t think a pro-business mayor is what we need right now. But that doesn’t excuse the played-out games our city’s black leaders are engaged in this year. They need to get their collective act together for 2015.

—————————————————

My friends, can I take you into my confidence for a moment? I have a confession to make.

I’ve lived in the Chicago area my whole life and in the city proper for 13 years now. I’m politically aware to the point of being able to tell you roughly how much some of the candidates had in their campaign coffers at the start of this campaign and I’m old enough to not only have been alive when there wasn’t a mayor named Daley but to have actual memories of a few of them.

But for a couple minutes last night while I was working on this piece, I had to look up how a contested Chicago mayoral election works. Isn’t that embarrassing? I’m like one of those people who don’t know there used to be a Meigs Field. Or that Lake Shore used to go around the east side of Soldier Field. Or…something else with a field.

Anyway, I don’t feel too bad for not remembering how mayoral elections work in the post-Daley era since the recent actions of Chicago’s black political leaders showed they don’t seem to remember either what with all their efforts to rally around a consensus candidate.

So just in case you too have a lack of field-related Chicago knowledge, elections in Chicago used to work pretty much how most other elections go: There was a Democratic primary and a Republican primary and the winners of each of those primaries would run against each other in the general election…and the person who was the Democrat won.

But in 1995, the Illinois General Assembly changed the law to do away with primaries in the mayoral election. To understand why they did this involves me explaining the last 35 years of Chicago mayoral political history. You’d think that with 21 of those years involving Daley in the mayor’s office that it would be pretty easy but the 13 years prior to that are a mess of Democratic white guys being so mad at black guys that they were willing to elect a lady and even a white Republican if it meant keeping a black Democrat out of the mayor’s chair. Also, there’s a really bad snowstorm involved. It’s actually really interesting but in an effort to not have us here all day, just trust me when I say the big takeaway is this: Most people think the election of Harold Washington – by the way, he was the black guy – means that in non-Daley years all the black political leaders in Chicago need to do is decide on one black candidate to run for mayor and he or she will win.

Since the four leading four candidates for mayor are Rahm Emanuel, Carol Moseley Braun, Miguel Del Valle, and Gery Chico – or to put it terms of jokes you might hear involving rowboats: a white guy, a black lady and two Hispanic guys – things should be easy-peasy, right? No. They’re uh…hardy-tardy.

See, there’s never been a mayoral election under the non-primary system when Daley wasn’t running. So there’s no real evidence to support the idea that a black candidate could win against a white challenger. Also, the racial makeup of this city isn’t what it used to be.

According to an article in the Chicago News Cooperative, the most recent census estimates available say that “whites and blacks each represent almost one-third of the city’s population, while Hispanics have held steady at about 27 percent and Asians rose slightly to comprise a little more than 5 percent of Chicagoans.”

So first of all: bad news for racist white people: You’re more of a minority than ever but still not eligible to get in on all those fat city contracts for minority-owned businesses. Also, bad news for black political leaders still partying like it’s 1989: the black population has shrunk considerably to the point where it’s no longer feasible to decide on a black consensus candidate and think he or she will be elected mayor.

Ah but not so fast, you say! Just because the city’s population splits evenly down white and black lines doesn’t mean the voter rolls do, you retort in a manner most self-satisfied! Moreover, you say, 2008 voter turnout showed only 37 percent of white people vs. 40 percent of black people and 12.86 percent of Hispanics. And finally, black turnout has always been very strong and so you say good day sir I’ll have no more of your empty punditry.

To which I say, not so fast you jackanapes! We are not just talking about any white person. We are talking about Rahm Emanuel. This is a guy who has a power base of business interests, a ton of money and a mythical persona that’s something like Jewish George Clooney-meets-Ben Kingsley’s character in “Sexy Beast.”

And if we’re just going to look at this purely in racial terms, Emanuel’s been polling well for months among blacks and Hispanics. A recent poll – taken after Braun became the consensus candidate – shows he not only has a 3:1 lead among white voters, but a 16-point lead among Hispanics, too. And here’s the kicker: Braun’s only pulling 43 percent of the black. Emanuel’s pulling 32. So he’s working all sides of the census form.

Things would be different if the black consensus candidate had more universal appeal. Or, let’s face it, was not Carol Moseley Braun. As much as I’d like to see a strong black candidate, were I to enumerate all of the mistakes Carol Moseley Braun has made since she started campaigning – or hell, even just this week – we would be here until the runoff. So I think I’ll just quote Braun’s spokeswoman – a woman who is paid to say nice things about her candidate – who this week said “Am I a little nervous when she starts to talk to people? Yes, I am.”

According to that same recent poll, Braun’s foot in mouth disease has now translated into a 41 percent unfavorable rating. Unfortunately, she also has a 91% name recognition which – according to the pollsters – means she is “a candidate with little ability to grow her vote share.”

Which is why that poll shows Emanuel leading with 42 percent of the vote, Braun with 26, Chico with 10 and Del Valle with 7.

At this point, Rahm Emanuel could change his campaign slogan to “Rahm Emanuel: Lick My Balls” and he’d still probably win.

Here’s the thing most people forget about Harold Washington: he won his first election for mayor – the most racially-charged election in the city’s history – with 20 percent of the white vote. I’ve got concerns with Rahm Emanuel as mayor when we need less of a downtown mayor and more of a neighborhood mayor. But demographically, you could argue that he – not Braun – is the candidate with broad support from all over Chicago. And that’s what it’s going to take to win from now on: not a consensus candidate, but a census candidate.

My "Who Knew?" Essay for 20×2 10.5

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20×2 is an annual event (it started in 2001) at Austin’s SXSW with some “half-year” events in other cities. Each 20×2 event asks 20 presenters to answer the same question through video, song, spoken word or some other form of expression.

Last night, I read the following at the first Chicago 20×2 event co-organized by Andrew Huff and Gapers Block and held at Martyrs’ in North Center. I was blown away by how talented everyone was at 20×2 10.5. It makes me so proud to live in a city that can host a stellar event like this. I’m lucky and honored to be counted in their number.

Each presenter was asked to create a two-minute piece that answered the question “Who Knew?” This was what I read:

—

This afternoon, my fellow presenter Claire Zulkey and I were discussing what we were going to perform tonight and I said I was still a bit adrift because I’d discarded my initial idea: reading a fictional letter from Who Knew Reputation Management Services, a company hired by a potential candidate for elected office named Ron Wellington. The letter I was reading was the result of their findings. The main reason I’d stuck with the idea for so long was I had what I thought was a great joke about the company flagging a potential trouble spot for Ron Wellington’s campaign: The fact that he’d liked a Facebook page called “Who Wants To See A Picture Of Ron Wellington’s Balls.” And the kicker was he’d created the page himself.

[By the way, if you’re paying attention, you’ve now realized this was just a cheap way to include the balls joke and still discard everything else. I’m sorry, I have a really juvenile sense of humor and I think the word “balls” is hilarious.]

Anyway, I told Claire I was having trouble coming up with an alternate idea and she suggested Googling the phrase “Who Knew” and using that as inspiration. In doing so, I found a book titled Who Knew: A Continuation of You Never Know: A Memoir which I found really impressive because I didn’t realize you could get two colons in a book subtitle.

But in trying to answer the question “Who Knew?” I kept coming back to what initially sounded like a very pompous answer: “I knew.” And by that I meant “I knew the answer to a question even though I pretended like I didn’t.”

For example, when I asked my first wife if she missed me after we’d spent a few days apart and she said “Mmmmm…no, not really,” I didn’t think I knew. But I knew.

Then when I met a woman who liked drinking Maker’s Mark and thought the word “balls” was funny, I knew. I didn’t think I knew. But I knew.

When I was at Metro and felt this really peculiar rumbling in my stomach and wondered if I should leave the show then, instead of waiting it out and hoping for the best, I knew.

Ten minutes later when I was running like hell down Addison and trying to keep from crapping my pants, I really knew.

The point is: The more you try and distract yourself, the more likely it is that you’re avoiding the answer you already know. And it’s an answer that’s as obvious as a joke about Ron Wellington’s balls.

Pink

Fatherhood, , , ,

Sometimes I think I have no idea how to raise our girl to be a woman.

Sure, I’ve witnessed my parents do so with my sisters two. But then it’s only “I have an idea how to raise a girl to be a woman.” Not our girl to be a woman of my union with Erin. Because lo this is to be the girl who will grow to cure cancer, slay vampires, bring peace to the Middle East and will one day best monetize the websites of newspapers and magazines throughout the land.

She is to be The Chosen One.

Or so I’ve built it up in my mind.

In reality, she is but one more young woman who will be brought into the world by well-educated, over-read, liberal parents who are trying to steer their daughter clear of sexist influences and give her every choice in the world…except Pink.

Pink.

Last week, Erin and I were discussing colors for the nursery and I said “Anything but pink!” Because, of course, this will prevent…I don’t know.

Something.

It’s just too easy. Accepting pink as the default color for a girl is the equivalent of saying you liked The Joshua Tree when I was in high school: doing so raises far fewer questions about your personal point of view and allows you to get through a stressful situation without a bunch of weird looks.

In my mind, Pink is the pastel specter that hangs over our pregnancy. A threat far greater than any other, leading our daughter down the path of various princess-branded toys, which as everyone knows are the gateway drug to playing dumb to get boys to like her. And here thar be dragons!

***

A couple weeks before we learned we were having a girl, one of Erin’s relatives told us she hoped we were having a boy as she – owing largely to my fascination with all things Kryptonian – had bought us a few Superman onesies. Not missing a beat, Erin and I said our unborn child’s gender wasn’t an issue in this case as ours was a child destined to wear the shield.

Yet even Erin – a woman quite contrary – said to me at lunch last week “Our daughter might like pink and Barbies” in a tone that left unsaid the words “and that’s OK” as well as “and you might just have to suck it up and deal.”

My wife said these things after I expressed concern over exposing our daughter to – of all things – Phineas and Ferb as none of the female characters were women I’d want her to aspire to be:

* Candace – tattletale
* Isabella – boy-crazy (or Phineas-crazy, as it were)
* Mom – unobservant
* Vanessa – the child of an evil, if largely unsuccessful, mad scientist

My wife is more intelligent in these matters and reminded me that our daughter would likely want to model herself after Phineas and Ferb, the resourceful, charismatic, unstoppable heroes of the show. This brought me some measure of calm.

None of this should suggest I’m set on Turning Our Girl Into A Boy.* I want my daughter to be free to form her own identity, irrespective of the expectations of others, including – or especially – her father. After all, it’s not like I’m a typical male: I fake it pretty well but I know jack about sports, avoid dude culture at all costs and have preferred cocktails over beer since college. I’m far more Oscar Wilde than Oscar Madison.

My wish for our daughter is that she would be the human equivalent of an order in a Chinese restaurant: a little from column A and a little from Column B, becoming a well-rounded, thoughtful, multi-talented individual who’s sees nothing – even the color pink – in terms of gender and everything in terms of territory to explore at will.

* Let it be noted here that there’s an incredibly nuanced discussion to be had about gender constructs. Let it also be noted here that I’ve had a few glasses of wine and am unable to fully explore said discussion in the above but am aware of the issues surrounding it.

Trying to be both here and there

Fatherhood, , , , , ,

If you only follow my work here, you may be thinking that I’m a sad excuse for a writer/commentator. But as I noted in a previous post, I’ve taken to Tumblr and I find it suits my needs better than this blog. (Note: If you follow the link above, there’s currently an image there of me flipping the bird. Trust me when I say it’s for a good reason.)

The biggest surprise, to me, is the consistency Tumblr provides for my writing on media and such. My devotion to this blog always came and went in waves. I attribute this partly to a usability issue. Not to get too wonky, but this blog is tied to an old Gmail address that I no longer use and if I’m logged into my new Gmail address, I need to log out, then log in to this one and if I need a link or piece of text from an e-mail I need to log out again and….you see what I mean. Try as I might, I hadn’t fixed this problem. Plus, I’ve wanted to redesign here and devote this blog to longer pieces though I hadn’t quite figured out what I wanted to write about in this space.

It took an e-mail from my friend Fuzzy to remind me that not only hadn’t I posted here in a long time, my last update made it look like I was still out of work. So it was definitely time to stop thinking and start writing.

I’m now the director of digital strategy and development for Chicago magazine and have been since mid-May. This means I’m ultimately responsible for anything we do online – website, digital subscriptions, mobile, etc. I’ve got a great team of editors and producers under me who work hard and make the site look great. Plus, I’m working with a great boss at a publication with a rich and respected history. It’s a great gig and I’m excited to be there. And hey, I even get to be on TV sometimes.

I spent two months unemployed. While it’s not an ideal situation, you won’t hear me complain about it. I had the support of countless friends and family members, was actively interviewing and chasing down job leads, networked my ass off and had plenty of time for beers on my back porch with my dog. There were times where it was rough, of course. If you’re not someone who does well with unstructured time and your identity is largely tied to your work then being unemployed will make you feel rudderless. I think I was able to adjust my outlook on both of these matters, but it’s an ongoing process. Still, those two months made me realize how lucky I am. When you have a friend who makes an entire website about you, it’s impossible to feel like you lost something in the deal.

The other important piece of news in my life as of late is…my wife and I are pregnant, three months and some change as of this writing. We’ve been trying for about a year now so this was somewhat unexpected as we had begun to make peace with the possibility that our efforts would require some medical assistance or might come to naught. But no, we are with child. A girl, specifically. We could not be more excited. Or – in my wife’s case – nauseous. (Gents who are interested in having a baby: Morning sickness is a lie. Just start calling it First Trimester Sickness now so you get geared up.)

If you’re looking to free your identity from your work, getting your wife pregnant is a surefire way to make that happen (though perhaps it’s not for everyone). Even more so than during my unemployment, I have been a Husband. I didn’t grow up in a house where there was “womens’ work” or “a man’s job” and that’s not how my life with Erin is either. We both work and take care of the house. With the notable exceptions of mowing the lawn (which I insist on doing) and taking out the garbage (which Erin insists I do but to be honest no man’s wife should touch garbage) we share work equally in our home. But Erin’s been busier than usual with having the baby and it’s exhausting work so I’ve had to fly solo on a few Operation: House and Home missions like grocery shopping, making dinner, etc. It’s difficult sometimes but due to a lack of a uterus, it’s the primary means by which I can support our family’s efforts to bring a baby into this world. Also, it’s not like doing a few extra loads of laundry makes me want to throw up, so I’ve definitely got the better end of this deal.

It’s in my nature of be a planner and a researcher so I’ve looked over a few books about pregnancy. Most of them assume the guy is either 1) a jerk or 2) incompetent. As someone who is neither (mostly), I’ve sought guidance from some guy friends who’ve mostly said that sometimes you need to ignore the books and go with your gut. But I highly recommend the books by Arnim A. Brott: they’re written in an easygoing style with a distinct lack of condescension. He’s informative and honest and acknowledges that pregnancy is tough for men, too. (If you’re wondering where to start, Father for Life is a good primer.)

While I love my job, the one thing it doesn’t provide for me is a writing outlet. It’s been an adjustment for me to work on “big picture” tasks and not get wrapped up in the day-to-day. This week, it occurred to me that the best way to allow myself that outlet, separate my work life from my identity, explore where my life was headed and give this blog a reason for being would be to write about all of it. I’ve been hesitant in the past to write about my personal life here, but in all honesty my digital identity is already a mix of the personal and professional so it’s not as if I haven’t crossed that bridge. So it’s time to push through whatever technical issues we’re holding me back and give this thing some life again.

With this next step, there’s a lot to talk about even in a review of the last several months:

* Babysitting my sister’s months-old child alone, a mix of problem-solving and playtime
* The weekend Erin and I watched our toddler niece and discovered what it was like to be solely, if only temporarily, responsible for the feeding, care and diaper-changing of a little human
* Discovering how good a show Phineas and Ferb is during the above weekend
* A purely instinctual moment during church when I went all Dad-mode on our misbehaving nephews
* Holy shit, that’s my kid’s heartbeat!
* What it’s like to be a guy who always thinks about the worst-case scenario which means you can’t truly allow yourself to be excited about a pregnancy until you hit that three-month mark
* How my friends and family knowing about our pregnancy made the whole experience real in a way that even seeing an ultrasound hadn’t
* My inability to do anything to make my wife more comfortable when she’s dealing with first-trimester sickness and how that makes me feel useless especially when I’m “a fixer”
* No, seriously, that’s my kid’s heartbeat!

My hope is that I’ll avoid writing about this stuff as if I’m the first man to have a pregnant wife but still bring something unique to the topic. If nothing else, it’ll give me an excuse to write a think piece on Phineas and Ferb.

Diving off a different platform

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In the month since this happened, I’ve been keeping myself busy with a few things:

1. House-husband-ing
2. Lawn care
3. Beer
4. Tumblr

You can see my work on the latter here.

Why there and not here? The simple answer is that Tumblr allows for quicker publishing of small items that I don’t feel are worth a post here because I usually reserve this space for longer discourse or because the subject matter isn’t quite apropos to what I cover here.

The best thing I’ve read all week

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I might be biased thanks to my line of work but this spoke to me:

“The women are also dressed in period threads, and many have big Afros. I am happy to say it brings back an element sadly missing in recent movies, gratuitous nudity. Sexy women would “happen” to be topless in the 1970s movies for no better reason than that everyone agreed, including themselves, that their breasts were a genuine pleasure to regard — the most beautiful naturally occurring shapes in nature, I believe. Now we see breasts only in serious films, for expressing reasons. There’s been such a comeback for the strategically positioned bed sheet, you’d think we were back in the 1950s.” – Roger Ebert, “Black Dynamite”; Chicago Sun-Times

Fratulent

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“The moral implications aside, the better reason to stop using “fratty” is that it stands for so many things that it ends up standing for nothing. Which means that if you use “fratty” when you really mean “homoerotic,” you’re either lazy, stupid, or hungry for vengeance against the guy who kicked you out of that smoker party your freshman year.” – “If Everything is Fratty, Then Nothing Is“; Mike Riggs, Village Voice

All prejudices aside, Riggs is arguing here for better writing and that’s reason enough.

Reading and writing, no arithmetic

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Two important – to me, at least – announcements:

* I have been promoted to Editor and Director of Content at Playboy.com. It’s a tremendous opportunity and I’m really proud to be a part of an organization with both a storied legacy and a future that has the potential for tremendous growth.

* I’m doing a reading this Monday at the Hungry Brain, a bar in my neighborhood. I’ll be reading an original piece about how I’m getting old and loving it what it’s like to work at Playboy. I promise it will be funny. Details are as follows:

You, Me, Them, Everybody
Date: Monday, August 17, 2009
Time: 8:00pm – 11:55pm
Location: Hungry Brain (2319 W Belmont); Chicago
Price: Free

Readings from:
Aaron Cynic
Lindsay Hunter
Andrew Mall
Scott Smith

Hosted by Brandon Wetherbee

Hope to see you there.

UPDATE:For whatever reason, the “getting old” piece didn’t pan out, so I’m going with a collection of some amusing anecdotes from work.

John Hughes in five paragraphs

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“Few filmmakers define an era, a genre and a place like John Hughes did with his ’80s comedies often set on Chicago’s North Shore.

He may not have been a critic’s darling, but his name became synonymous with a brand of comedy in which young, rebellious, yet good-at-heart characters battle an establishment that seemed to rankle the filmmaker as well. Films such as “The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Home Alone” took on an iconic status, all while his productions revitalized the local film industry and launched scores of careers.”– Mark Caro, Chicago Tribune

That about says it all. But one more thing:

John Hughes created adventure. Joss Whedon was left only with metaphorical vampires and monsters to explain high school, as Hughes had already had his way with the setting several times over. He created fantasy adventures where a young man could fool an entire town, then cut a broad swath through one of the largest cities in America, leading a literal parade. He created romantic adventures born in 50’s mythic Americana where the boy from the wrong side of the tracks gets the most popular girl in school to fall for him, just before he realizes he’s in love with his best friend. And he created wartime adventures, where a ragtag group of soldiers with few common bonds unite against more than a few common enemies to escape a prison of society’s making. I could go on but…

In short, John Hughes created superheroes. For someone like me who spent his childhood idolizing comic book heroes, the heroes of Hughes’s films were there to hand me the baton as I entered the second leg of life’s race, better known as adolescence. And they made it that much easier to sprint my way through adulthood, where reuniting with your family at the end of the day can be as heroic as leaping a tall building in a single bound.