This Time It's For Keeps

Okay gang. After last week's "look before you leap" moment, I can, today, officially announce my adoption by Offsprung and unveil the new blog. I present to you

Don't Forget to Flush

As I said, I'm beyond excited about this opportunity and I once again want to thank (and congratulate!) Ryan for recommending me for the gig. And now, as a new Dad, he has a wealth of advice and information at his fingertips! As do all of you (though we welcome non-parents as well, so you can mock our "whiny narcissism").

There are a number of sharp writers on the site, so I encourage you to check all of them out and if you like what you see, a link and some word of mouth would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you and enjoy.

Happy Meme's Day

Blood has tagged me with this "Seven Random Things" meme. I find this exercise especially difficult because my life is so meticulously ordered that randomness is not allowed to penetrate. I laugh in the face of Chaos Theory.

Or maybe it's all I ever write about is random. One of the two.

1. My first major in college was Aerospace Engineering, despite the fact that I hated math (and physics). I abandoned it within a year, a full three years before the Defense Industry collapsed in LA, plunging the universe into recession.

2. I sang in my church's youth choirs for many years, beginning at age 7 when I had the second lead in a musical play called "Zach Jr." about Zacchaeus--of "wee litttle man climbing up in a sycamore tree" fame--and his son. I continued to do it all through high school, culminating with my tour de force rendition of "A Little More Sleep," a song you've never heard of, but one I crushed on dozens of occasions from the stage at Trinity Baptist to campgounds in the High Sierra.

3. One time I tired to scale my backyard fence--a redwood fence--in my bare feet. The end result was four hours in a podiatrist's office where she removed more than 200 splinters from my feet without the benefit of anesthesia.

4. I knocked myself unconscious chasing a foul ball. I ran into the chain link fence at full speed and top of the fence was neck high. Donny, who was on the opposing team, said I rebounded backward several feet, the impact and give of the fence combining for a slingshot effect. The scariest part of all of it was opening my eyes and seeing Bill Geyer's big moon face looming over me.

Clearly, I should stay away from fences.

5. Somewhere in the US of A there are three guys who are my half-brothers. I have never met or spoken to any of them and am pretty ambivalent about doing so, though it would take me about five minutes to find them.

6. An apartment I once lived in was prominently featured in "Deuce Bigelow, Male Gigolo." The complex next door to that one was the setting for Steve Carrell's home in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."

7. I graduated college a full ten years after I graduated high school. I didn't spend all that time in class, having dropped out twice, gotten married and divorced, played in a rock band, developed a nice little drug habit, worked two jobs simultaneously and played the role of Gen X slacker to a significant degree.

Taggination:

Betty
Chadillac
April
Garthski
Donkey Puncher
Facty (Come back, Facty! All the plants are dying!)
Kenny Ray

Links That Work and Will Make You Want to Hug Yourself

Pauly is a machine. I don't know how he does it. Just reading his stuff makes me wanna nap. In the midst of his whirlwind, travel, gamble, write lifestyle, he has released another issue of Truckin'.

Read. Now. Or I will fight you.

May 2007, Vol. 6, Issue 5
We close out the fourth year of Truckin' with an issue that features a couple of new scribes.

1. 60 Hours in Amsterdam, Part I by Paul McGuire I was worried that the Air France ticket agent in Nice was going to send my bags to Paris. He kept asking me if I was going to Paris and I responded with "Amsterdam" everytime he asked... More

2. Stuck in Monte Carlo by Otis Dart It was actually the sea that I had stepped out on the balcony to see. I'd only been on the ground in Monte Carlo for a few hours. The moment I crashed into my room at the brand new Monte Carlo Bay Resort, I'd fallen into the most comfortable bed in the world... More

3. Emilio Estevez Loses His Tooth by BTreotch Four minutes earlier, Emilio Estevez was beating his kid-brother Carlos while he was hog tied and strapped to the top rail of their swing set with cheap-itchy yellow rope... More

4. Confessions of a Man by Sigge S. Amdal I should have asked her for a date. Any date at all. 4th of March, 6th of April, didn't really matter. As long as we could go and have a dinner, or see a movie or something. It's not like I'm craving a relationship, I've got too much to do already, but it stung inside of me knowing that I'd already lost a chance. A chance. Singular term. There could be more coming... More

5. A Grand Day Out by Susan Bently On the other side of the road sat this German guy's car with a huge dent on the bonnet and his family sitting in the car, wife and children looking wide-eyed and pale. The bleeding carcass of a moose lay next to the car, dark patches of blood over the centerline... More

6. City of Sins by Clay Champlin People head to Las Vegas for two reasons: salvation or condemnation. Those looking to be saved from their mundane Midwestern lives bask in the perpetual glow of the strip or gawk skyward at downtown's Freemont street experience... More

Premature Linkination

After intense meetings with marketers, programmers and a homeless guy named Terry, I am sorry to report my little corner of Offsprung will be undergoing some changes, including the url, before going completely "live."

Be assured I will update you all at the coming out party.

But, in the meantime, please check out the rest of the writers on there. They're hilarious.

The official press release:

Once upon a time, there were no websites for parents. That made parents very sad. Their lives felt lonely and meaningless, and they were forced to seek advice from unqualified strangers, and even their own relatives. But then, starting in 2004, a certain class of people began to fuck with purpose. Soon, thousands, perhaps millions of kids were born to tech-saavy parents with money to burn! Prophets predicted a great baazar. The Internet responded.

So, then, Offsprung, the perfect online antidote to a parenting culture gone mad. We feature the sharpest, funniest writers on the Internet, each one eviscerating, or at least challenging, a different excess of that culture. Here are some of them now:

–Matthew Tobey brings us The Cleaver, the final word on the absurd and semi-evil world of celebrity parenting hype.

–Christopher Monks has created Dadsmacker, the first-ever blog totally devoted to taking on the pretensions of “hipster” parenting, a ridiculous movement that no one on this site has been involved with in the slightest.

–Amanda Marcotte, the scourge of Catholicism, brings you Unsprung, which should make Christian right “pro-family” moralists shake in their hypocrisy suits.

–Amy Davis keeps the shark from jumping on Huxtabled, serving as our primary tastemaker in the world of video-based children’s entertainment.

–Leigh Anne Wilson, operator of the Honeysuckle Shop, a well-regarded online sex-toys establishment, writes all about matters orgasmic in Lock The Bedroom Door.

–Dara Grumdahl, a James Beard award-winning food writer, puts the American diet to shame with Defamisher,.

–Alternadad* Neal Pollack will dispense parenting advice with the help of his trusty Silver Surfer.

And they are just the tip of a thick, brilliant iceberg of talent. Over the next few weeks, Offsprung will launch nearly 20 blogs, all of them hilarious and incisive. And we’ll be bringing you so many other features. You’re not going to believe what hit you, people. Soon, it will be hard to imagine your lives without Offsprung.

So come on in. The water’s pretty warm and the surf is perfect for boogie boarding. There’s room for thousands more.

Welcome to Offsprung.

*A licensed trademark of something or other.