Michael Jackson shuffled off this mortal coil

news from yesterday is that Michael Jackson, self-styled King of Pop, died.

i'm sure for many people my age that contemplating it results in a muddled middle-ground emotion.

cemented in my mind is the elementary-school memory of hopping into my family's van after playing a league basketball game at the local YMCA, whereupon my dad announced in his odd humor way that we were "going to have a guest stay with us for a while" , then revealing the Thriller LP record he had just bought. i recall being thrilled (wordplay!), as was my older sister. Billie Jean, Thriller, Beat It, all part of the MJ cultural storm that was sweeping the nation at the time.

had Michael Jackson continued on as a normal human being and either made more great albums or at least faded respectfully from the industry, we'd all be simply saddened to hear about a music icon's passing.

of course MJ instead had to go off the rails and get creepier in appearance and behavior (my dad's comment above was obviously crafted well before the touchy-feely controversies of the 90s) so now people of my generation are left torn between "man his ascendancy was a significant cultural imprint on my childhood" and "boy, he was pretty much a freakshow pedophile after the glory days"

Week 6: Strength Building for Babies

My son got to enjoy some playmat tummy time with his mom last week, working on developing a powerful trapezius muscle so he can hold up his head good and proper

netflix history

i am morbidly drawn to actually rent and watch at least one of the films by the Antichrist Duo of Filmmaking, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.

these guys are known for Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and Disaster Movie - if you've seen a commercial or trailer for any of these movies i don't think i have to explain why they are satan's offal splattered on celluloid.

don't get me wrong; back in the college days with my friends i ran through countless bad movies (Dolemite , Death Race 3000, any Van Damme movie, etc.) that provided hilarious entertainment, even if that wasn't the original intent of the people involved in their production. these Friedber / Seltzer vehicles, though, seem different in a disturbingly bad way - as if they're scraping the ultimate in lazy writing and directing, devoid of any real personality.



so i already know they're bad by reputation, why would i want to watch one? basically because i feel compelled to know just how bad they are - i suspect that secondhand accounts from friends and others who have seen them will not quite convey the full impact of having personally experienced one of the films.

problem is back in the old Blockbuster days i could have just waltzed in and picked up a copy of one of the films and, if given an askance look by the clerk, calmly explain why i was paying good money to watch an encapsulated reflection on the decline of civilization.

but now i live in the Netflix era where any rental is indelibly marked on your rental history for all time - sure i could rate the movie 1 star but someone perusing my history might be left wondering if the rental was a snarky hipster affair from the beginning or if i had been earnestly seeking a hilarious good time but was left disappointed due to my seemingly terrible taste in movies. not sure if i can risk my online reputation in such a way among the powerful, anonymous internet elite.

a one-month-old little monkey

hard to believe it's been a month already - the hospital stay is still rich and vivid in our minds, but now little Adam is officially one month old (and a few surplus hours as of this entry)

nappin' with mommy


















remembering that funny joke dad told him