January 28-29

Still attempting to recover from my quick NY trip. Spent most of Monday wandering around the house in a daze. On Tuesday awoke early to prepare for dentist appointment. It was a huge success-- no cavities. Had brunch at the Farmer's Market with an old friend, then bought like 200 stickers for Baby, who's currently into stickers. I don't know what I was thinking. I also shopped for sausage supplies for Wife, who is making elk, venison, wild boar and buffalo links for Superbowl. Each type of game will be in a separate sausage, in case you were concerned. For some reason Baby went bananas from 8:15-10:00 PM before falling asleep in the Big Bed. Now I must go to sleep after making sure I don't have any outstanding moves to make on Scrabulous.

The Metaphysics of Barney

"Barney is a dinosaur from our imagination, and when he's tall he's what we call a dinosaur sensation."

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. Kids in Barney play with him when he's a little stuffed animal and without the use of any magic words he just springs to life, returning to his inanimate form after singing a plethora of arcane nursery rhymes and teaching valuable lessons about fire safety and dental hygiene and the like. I can kind of understand if you are part of a group playing with him when he is little you could imagine him turning huge collectively, but it is still weird that everyone imagines him in the same way and he leads them instead of them deciding what he might be doing. It also strikes me as odd that all adults in the show simply accept Barney at face value as if he is part of their collective imagination as well. They don't ever appear to see him in his stuffed form but only happen upon the scene after he is sensational, as if the children's imagination is so strong they telepathically project it onto the adults. And don't even get me started on Baby Bop and her brother BJ, two other dinosaurs that do not appear to be imaginary at all, as they never appear in stuffed form. Why then should Barney have to appear in stuffed form if they do not? I wish some French intellectual could solve this puzzle for me. The Sesame Street monsters are simply there in the world of Sesame Street, and the "real humans" in the show, adults and children alike, never question their (the monsters') reality. I don't see the point of Barney having to be imaginary at all, as opposed to "being" there all along. I'm also trying to figure out what if anything this has to do with Snuffy on Sesame Street, who used to be Big Bird's imaginary friend but is now real, as if Big Bird willed him into "life", complete with his whole Snuffy family. That took years, but perhaps it paved the way for the Barney kids to appear to be able to will Barney to life immediately for everyone in the show, even those who have never met Barney before. Unless Barney came before "real Snuffy." I guess I should research the order. And nobody ever asks where Baby Bop and BJ come from. I must dust off my cultural criticism texts from college and ponder this question further. Clearly if I decide to return to school I have my dissertation topic.

January 19-27

Did not have time to write about my trip to SF before embarking on my trip to NY to hang out with Grandpa (although there were other activities). Will have to recuperate and plan to post two travelogues which will include SFW escapades only. Okay, going back to sleep.

January 18

One way to forget about the strike is to travel, eat, drink, or all of the above. I spent most of the day writing and trying not to get ill due to this bug going around. At about 5 PM I received a phone call from a friend, let's call him Joe, who informed me that he had just arrived in San Francisco from New York. It turns out another friend, let's call him Paul, who lives in SF, was a bachelor for the weekend, as his wife and daughter were in the Midwest visiting relatives. I guess his wife was originally going to go without their baby, but her parents filed a formal guilt trip and at the last minute she felt it best to bring said infant along. After Paul did the requisite moping around the house bemoaning their impending absence, he placed a frenzied call to Joe outside of his wife and child's earshot, begging him to head west to help celebrate his impending weekend without diaper doody or finger painting. Joe complied almost immediately, hearing the desperation in Paul's voice, as Paul had not had a break from his familial responsibilities in over a year. Knowing that I was in a malaise and that the Wife was sick of me, Joe called to brag about his planned weekend of debauchery in order to make me feel worse. Overhearing our conversation, the Wife, to our shock and amazement, insisted I join the boys if I could get a cheap, last minute flight. Fearing for the health of my liver and also sensing some sort of elaborate emotional bear trap, I asked if she really meant it as I quickly scanned Travelocity for flights. Wife assured me that she and Baby had plenty to do that weekend and although they would miss me it would be nice for me to play with Paul and Joe. Knowing that her immediate plans included a girl's night at a friend's new home, in which Baby was included, a visit to her brother and his family the next day, and a play date for Baby on Sunday, and taking into account the fact that Baby can now recount the events of her day in amazing detail, I concluded that Wife probably wasn't sending me away so she could continue a torrid affair with somebody, but rather simply wanted to get rid of me and my whining for a couple of days. So while she took Baby into the distant environs of Cheviot Hills, I found a cheap flight leaving early the next morning and started packing. I informed her via cell phone of the time of my departure and she approved, then said Baby was asking for me and I drove over, picked Baby up, gave her a bath and we fell asleep. I called the bachelors, who were practically incoherent as they bathed in a giant vat of sake at some sushi joint, and informed them of my scheduled arrival the following morning, just in time for us to eat lunch. Details to follow in my soon-to-be inaugurated Travel section.

Play-Doh

Play-Doh is back in my life. A friend bought Baby a 50th Anniversary pack with so many amazing colors it made her Crayolas bitter with jealousy. When I cracked open that first little jar of teal that smell brought back so many memories of...that smell. Come on, I'm sure like me you couldn't freakin' remember more than three or four things from when you were of Play-Doh'ing age unless you underwent a talking cure on Sigmund Freud's couch. Still, there is something comforting and soothing about that smell. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that they pump it into airports, shopping malls and prisons just to calm everyone's nerves. Obviously, if you've ever been to an airport, shopping mall or prison you know that a healthy percentage of people remain immune to the Play-Doh scent's magical effects. Perhaps one day we will read a study revealing that for 50% of smellers the Play-Doh odor actually activates the neurotransmitter for "being an a-hole." Who knows. I also recall reading about somebody escaping from prison with a gun made out of Play-Doh. If that didn't actually happen, it should, provided the person has been put behind bars for a crime he did not commit involving an unreliable witness, that three strikes law, and the theft of a loaf of bread. Anyway, Baby loves Play-Doh and I have never before felt such appreciation for my artistic talents. Not having much of which to be proud in the professional arena of late, any sign of approval or gratitude from anyone for anything I do comforts me in a way the Play-Doh smell never could. For instance, the other day me and a person in oncoming traffic stopped at a stop sign at the exact same moment, and I needed to make a left turn while he was apparently going straight. I flashed my brights to indicate that he should go first and he did, waving a heartfelt thank-you to me on the way as if I had just cured cancer. That felt great. At the gym I glanced at a fetching young woman bouncing along on a nearby treadmill. She smiled at me as if to say, thanks for acknowledging my gym-induced hotness, you're not so bad yourself, now go back to your business, I'm not inviting you to sleep with me. That felt great, too. And then Baby asked me to make a cup of coffee with the black Play-Doh and I fashioned a little mug with a handle and put some light brown Play-Doh in the cup and handed it to her and she said, "Dada, you made coffee faw me!" and smiled so brightly I was nearly moved to tears until she took a fake sip then real bite out of the cup and I had to explain that Play-Doh was for pretending, not for eating. Feeling emboldened, I asked her what else she wanted me to make, and over the course of the next few days I sculpted a bowl of soup, pancake, noodle, pizza, cup of tea and happy face. The results were less felicitous when she requested a frog, whale, buffalo, rhino, lion, tiger and Thomas the Train. To each one of these creations she responded with a sour face, look of rage, or hysterical crying. I dread the future when she asks me to make a woolly mammoth, Michelangelo's Moses, a strand of DNA, the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, or fried calamari. Sensing my apprehension, Baby has for the time being gone back to requesting coffee cups, plates and the like from Dada and is working diligently on making her own frogs.