Alberty's Blah Blah Blog

Okay, I know that at 41years old I am already a curmudgeon. I get it. It’s who I am. I must somehow get to sleep at night with that knowledge. And I do sleep at night. Most of the time.

I also know that becoming a dad, even this late in life, is supposed to grind off a few sharp edges, make some clear feelings a little blurrier, make the bristles a little softer. But there are two things in the realm of children that I hated and loathed before parenthood, and I find that I am perfectly happy in loathing after birth. Not afterbirth. Though seriously, guys, ask when it’s safe to turn around or it will be a while before docking in that port again, okay. Serious.

The first thing I hate is children’s theatre. I know, sacrilege: I’m a theatre guy and I should love all things theatrical, but I have found most children’s shows to be boring, insipid, dumbed-down morality tales that leave me feeling both angry at wasting sixty minutes of my life and angry that I still hate children’s shows which must mean I’m an insensitive pretentious jackass.

Actually, there is one guy in town who writes kick-ass children’s’ shows, and I’m pretty excited to take my kid to one, mostly so I can scream “booger” at the top of my lungs in public without all those people looking at me, like they usually do. But that’s another post.

The second thing I hate is children’s’ music. Oh my god. I can barely type the phrase without shaking.

I once heard an NPR article about research by Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier on what makes people hate some music and love other music. They discovered some-ten things that made people take hammers to radios. Then, and here is the genius, they wrote a song based on the research. A holiday cowboy song sung by an opera singer, accompanied by accordion, tuba, and bagpipes, with backing vocals by—you guessed it— a children’s’ chorus.

My dislike for children’s music stems from the same basic symptoms as my dislike for children’s theatre. That and a slight distrust of the whole genre. I love Mozart, but I wasn’t surprised to hear that the whole Mozart Effect thing was bupkiss.

Anyway, we have this Raffi CD that I was calling Rufie, until someone told me, “Sure, rufies are sedating and make you forget large chunks of time, but they also make you feel good.” Raffi does not make me feel good. Now, I can sit through “Baby Beluga,” but only because it makes my kid look like he’s popped ecstasy in a trance bar — well, that or he looks like Stevie Wonder.

None-the-less, first I gave Raffi, the benefit of the doubt, but he screwed the pooch — as my dad likes to say — when he recorded that unmitigatedly offensive and insipid cover of “Day-O: The Banana Boat Song.” The first time I heard it I wanted to club small furry animals. I lost my mind with aesthetic rage.

Now, I know, I have friends who will ask why I like Dan Bern’s Two Feet Tall. I will go out on limb to say that most of those songs, although they seem to be children’s songs, are actually songs for new parents. There are a couple that are clearly for kids. But the ones that I really dig on are parent-centered.

So it was with a cynical and jaundiced ear that I read a Time Magazine article on something called, god help me, Kindie Rock. I can barely say it seriously. Try it: Kindie Rock. Sounds like a porn star.

And there, in the insert photo of the article, is Marty Beller, from They Might Be Giants, performers of my early nineties mock-anthem “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).” I had to take note.

While reading, I came across the name of a … Kindie Rock …  performer named Justin Roberts. I iTuned him. I listened. I purchased.

I am like totally a middle school girl for this guy’s music!

Okay, the first song I listened to was “Cardboard Box.” It had me. Totally. It made me think of a couple of kid friends of ours who wouldn’t let us throw away a humongous box because my wife had turned it into a house for them.

“Gym Class Parachute” totally sent me back to middle school. In a good way. It was probably the best memory of middle-school that I had. Well, that and the time I took after Joe Chung with a yardstick in art class. That was pretty good, too.

“Snow Day.” Classic for kids and teachers alike.

But the one that utterly sealed it: “Never Getting Lost.” Oh my god. Even thinking about it, the lump is forming behind my sternal notch. I mean, I know it’s going to happen. There will come a time when my wife or I will turn around and our kid won’t be there. And it will be all we can do not to totally lose our shit. But here is that moment from our kid’s eye view.

Justin Roberts’ Jungle Gym is a great album. It doesn’t talk down to kids or parents. Roberts has a real ear for the hook in a sort of Beach Boys way.

It is the kind of album that makes me not only feel nostalgic. It allows me to see into the future; my son and I laying on a grassy hill gazing into the night sky, pointing out our favorite constellations talking about that one time when…

Can you be nostalgic for nostalgia that hasn’t happened yet?

Popularity: 15% [?]

Okay, so last night I made a bunch of pizzas. No crust, though. I suck at crust.

Actually a tangent (imagine that).

My first two years of college were at a little school in Boston called Emerson College. I loved it. While there I worked for the school pizza company called Wild Pizza. It was free pizza at the end of the night. What could I do, not take the job?

Anyway, my first night working, the manager gave me the task of making the dough for the next day. He quickly rolled off the ingredients and amounts, said something like, “There’s a sheet around here somewhere if you need to look at the recipe.” Then he went off to have sex with his girlfriend in the dry-goods room.

So there I was, an eighteen year-old Iowa boy alone in an east-coast kitchen listening to the muffled noise of what sounded like macaques mating under water.

There was a huge cauldron mixer that I was to put everything into and mix until the beater nearly stopped, whatever that meant.

Just let me say this: I now understand the important difference between tablespoons and cups, especially when yeast is the measured ingredient. The next day was a not a good day for me or the walk in fridge that held the Jabba-the-Hut dough worm that I created. It was less good for the manager, though, so there was something to that.

I loved working for Wild Pizza. It was hot and sweaty, but the people were fun and well connected (in the way pizza makers are usually well connected), and they let us make anything.

Some schmo from ΣΑΕ calls in all tanked up on Jäger and testosterone and orders a large Oreo and jalapeno with extra cheese? Two extra bucks and you got it, fratboy! I loved that. All except the O’Malley. Crazy popular add-on to normally good pie. Crack a couple of eggs on top of a ‘za and let the residual heat cook them sunny side? Not for me. But whatever.

Anyway, I guess that the Wild Pizza gave me the permission and the constitution to play around with pizza. Wolfgang Puck, of course helped with that, too.

So last night we had some friends over: vegetarians. Perhaps the first vegetarians to set foot in our house for dinner. I love this couple. They’re super sweet, smart, funny, oddly healthy people. And, better yet, their coming to dinner forced me to move beyond my pepperoni, green olive, pepperoni, and pepperoni pizza — a rut I have been wheeling in for some time now.

So anyway, I made a little caramelized onion and rosemary sage potato pizza that made the angels weep with joyful love and contentment. The recipe follows.

But here is the deal. I hate the idea of cooking something just to add it to something to cook something else.

For example: Cook the ground beef to then add it to the lasagna that you then cook. Or cook the chicken with a wonderful array of spices, just so that you can roll them up into tortillas, sauce them and cook them again.

This is sort of my fascination with Iron Chef America (which is totally different from my fascination with the original Iron Chef, but that’s another post).

Iron Chef Bobby Flay will roast peppers, peel them, stew in a sauce, blend them, pour it over something and bake it. That’s cooking times three!

Yeah, I get it. Taste and nuance and yada yada, but I’m at home with a 14 month-old boy whose drinking from the dog dish and a wife coming home in half an hour. I don’t have time for a par-broiled roulade of roasted beets and broccoli rabe flank steak grilled to perfection. And I live in Cedar Rapids. I couldn’t get my hands on broccoli rabe if my life depended on it, you pretentious bastard. Not you, Bobby, I love your work. I’m talking about that other guy.

Anyway, here’s the deal. You get up in the morning — on a weekend day, okay? Before you start doing your morning voodoo, put a sauté pan on low heat, drop in some olive oil, a little hunk of butter, and cut up a couple of onions — I like them in rings for this. Put the onions in the pan, coat them in the molten oil/butter, and then just let them cook for a while. On low.

Make your morning bev. Right now, for me it’s a couple of cups of Highlander Grog. I love me the cuppa cuppa froo froo.

Read your paper. Whatever.

Stir the onions a bit. When the onions get softer and start to color a little, take a couple of potatoes and dice them into ¼” cubes. Set them aside.

When the onions are super soft and a little brown, put them into a bowl. Add a little more olive oil to that pan, then toss in the potatoes, a little salt, a lot of pepper. Stir to coat and let them go.

Drink coffee. Read paper. Whatever.

When the potatoes are nicely browned, reserve them to a bowl.

Here is the business part. Break a couple of eggs — or egg alternative for my veggie friends — and scramble them in the same pan, adding some of the potatoes and some of the onions.

You have a delicious (please don’t say “deeeeelish”: it turns my stomach) breakfast, AND you are ready for dinner later tonight.

Here is the recipe for Caramelized Onion and Rosemary Sage Potato Pizza.

Ingredients

Directions

Enjoy!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Last week I wrote about and gave you the recipe for my favorite muffins, the delectable Blueberry Bran Muffins. I love these muffins. I find that they fill some deep, heretofore unknown hole in my life. I bite into one of these delicious muffins and my tongue dissolves in puerile joy and it nearly brings me to muffled, mouth-filled giggling.

This dog — the one to your left — that dog — has, over the last two weeks, eaten more of my beloved Blueberry Bran Muffins than my wife and I combined.

Were I a violent man…

But alas, I am not. The dog still lives.

Bran muffins.

Bran.

Fiber.

I mow my lawn on Saturdays. And before I do so, I “flush” the lawn by hand. I put on vinyl gloves, grab a plastic bag, and walk the lawn bent at the waist.

Bran muffins.

Look at him. He is a border collie /borzoi mix. He is taller than my fourteen-month-old son. He weighs eighty pounds. He has long thin hair. Everywhere. It flares out at his buttocks.

Bran muffins.

My son loves to chase this dog. He giggles gleefully while chasing after this doggie’s exceptionally furry tail until the doggie stops suddenly and my son’s face plows right into the doggie’s back-side.

Long, long hair. Everywhere.

Bran muffins.

What makes it worse is that … well, actually a couple of things make it worse. First of all, by the time we discover this caninial treachery, he has long forgotten what he’s done. So when we get home and begin the conniption, when we yell of his gluttonous perfidy and betrayal he has no idea what the commotion is over. All he knows is that cowering seems to be the right thing to do. In fact, I’m guessing when we send him into the yard amidst our half-uttered curses, he is probably relieved to be outside, so he can do things to make his tummy stop gurgling.

The second, more painful reason is this: It’s my fault. It’s true. If I just didn’t make the most delectable, moistiest, nummy-nummy muffins! That’s not true. Well, it is true, but it’s not the reason.

He is a dog. It is his nature to eat nummy-nummy muffins if they are made available to him. I am angrier at myself. I must remember to put the delectable muffins up, off of my tall — what I thought was out of his reach — kitchen cabinets.

Damn me for my stupidity. But alas, as he is a dog, I am a human, and that is my nature.

I must go now, as I hear him pawing at the door, begging to be let out into the yard that I must mow tomorrow.

Perhaps I shall start leaving large chunks of cheese on the counters.

Popularity: 4% [?]

It’s a good day when I can write 500 words.

Did you know that I have written a book? It is 90,000 words. That seems like a lot. It is a lot, but when you break it down, it is only six months of 500 word days. Granted, that’s if the first draft if perfect. Which it never is.

None-the less, when I break it down that way, it doesn’t seem as daunting. And when I was writing the book, I had weeks of 1000 word days. It was like warm rain to me.

Right now I am working on the first SPT Writers’ Room show of the season. Our sketches are due this Friday. At 5. And this writing has been tough. The title of this show is “In Over Your Head,” which at first blush seems like it would be pretty easy. But the muse has failed me, so the work has begun.

I have so many things that I can do instead of write. When my son is up, there is no writing, at least until my wife gets home. When he is napping, then I can eat lunch. I can clean the kitchen from breakfast and/or lunch (sometimes dinner from the previous night). I can do laundry. Sometimes I can simply sleep too.

But the blank screen is always back there, in the recesses of my mind. Sometimes it mocks, sometimes it screams. And sometimes, like lately, it’s been eerily quiet. Like walking into the woods and hearing nothing. Something, you know, is wrong.

What do I have to say? Or more importantly, what do I have to say that people will find interesting. Nothing in this post, I dare say.

Sometimes I make lists of names that I like: Runcible Spoon (he would be a effete British detective), Reginald St. John-Smythe (actually I am using him for this SPT show, if the sketch is approved), Colfax Mingo (though I can’t use that one because I have a friend who is using that name for a sci-fi detective novel).

Sometimes I try to come up with phrases that may never have been said before. “I caught the lemur in that Pawpaw patch just sucking on that can of sassafras.” Or, “Grandma, hand me that air horn, the neighbors are dancing the merengue naked again.” Or, “I did lie to the American people, knowingly, with malice of forethought, for personal gain, and in the full hope that I would never get caught.” Things like that.

I guess it’s just a way to lube up the finger joints or whatever neurons are supposed to be firing up the ideas. But often times it simply does not seem to work.

It comes down to this. Writing is work. There is no finger of God that presses into my head to start the flow of ideas. I simply just have to sit down every day and do it. Right?

See, even with all that, I’m only up to 499.

Popularity: 5% [?]

*Recipe Follows

This wonderfully exotic restaurant sits like a surprise gem in the middle of a strip mall just off Madison’s Lake Monona. Once you walk through the door, you are hit with the smells of Indonesia. I was actually a bit shocked. It took me back thirty-five years. These were smells I hadn’t smelled since I was five, but they were clear and warm and swam in sudden memories.

I was born in the Republic of Singapore and lived on the Indonesian island of Sumatra until I was five. My father’s company policy at that time meant we were required to hire as many domestic servants as we could. Each Indonesian hired by an expatriate for that company received subsidies in the form of rice and other food. We had three, but the two that I remember most were a married couple, Sahuna, who did laundry and cooking, and her husband Ahmat, who’s job was to make sure I didn’t run off into the jungle.

After recovering from the shock of sudden memories I saw that the wait staff were your basic Midwestern Anglo-college students. Honestly, I was disappointed and it lowered my expectations of the restaurant. That knee-jerk response was, of course, pretty stupid. I was greeted with, “Selamat datang!” I hadn’t heard this phrase in years, and again I was transported.

I was there on the perfect night. They were highlighting their Rijsttafel (Rice Table), which was a large smorgasbord of small tasting dishes. Lumpia, tahu isi, martabak telor, rujak cuka, tahu goreng, sayur lodeh, perkedel telor, acor, udang goreng tepung, oseng oseng tempe, dageng rendang, sate ayam—I’m sure I’m missing something. And, because I loved them, I ordered some krupuk. What a glutton.

Anyway, I mentioned to the waitress that I lived in Indonesia for a while and was looking for a specific kind of rice ball. She asked me to wait a minute. Just as my drink arrived so did Baba, the cook. He was a wonderful, joyful man who eagerly gave me his recipe for what I was looking for: Lemper Ayam.

Talking with Baba and, finally, the food, combined to create one of the best restaurant experiences of my life. I can say that any time I am in Madison, a visit to Bandung will be first on my list.

Lemper Ayam

Ingredients

Directions

Popularity: 50% [?]

Last night my wife and I worked through one of those incomprehensible and difficult parent nights. Our fourteen month old son, who normally sleeps through the night, was up — at first — until 3:27. When you’re a new parent, you notice these specifics. And by “up,” I mean Linda Blair up. Up like a 1980’s fund manager on a three-day coke bender.

He had gone down at about 9:30 or so, but had bolted upright into a scream at 11:47. It was my turn to take him. We had a lovely diaper change and a bottle and he had seduced me into imagining that he was sleeping, limp-arm sleeping, as my wife calls it.

I sat him back into the crib and began to creep out of his room, and it was as if I had poked him with a cattle prod. He sometimes has this WWII hand crank air raid-siren thing that he does. That’s what he started doing.

I picked him up and we cuddled again until he was sleeping. Again, I laid him down, and the same thing. I spent most of my paltry sleep magic on him, but anytime there was the possibility of my leaving the room he was up and screaming.

My wife relived me at 12:42. She said, “Can you sleep if I take him?” She always asks that because I am a notoriously light sleeper. She can sleep through the sound of bog banshee wailing it’s high pitched, curdling squeal through our back yard, which is oddly enough the same sound that our neighbor’s car makes every morning. (Come on, Mike, could you seriously get that serpentine belt replaced? For the love of God.)

I, naturally, told her that I could sleep. And I believed it. You see, she has some sort of baby magic that I don’t fully understand, and it nearly always works. But I became a silent witness to her first impossible struggle.

Lost, after a time, in that gray sleepy twilight, I would shiver into consciousness, shaken by a wail from the next room. My wife would begin shushing and humming. Then my son would break into a low keening, a stuttering breathy guttural thing that made me feel like I was living in a Poe story.

It was interminable. But, like during the birth of my son, my wife was nearly superhuman. She pressed on like some British captain facing the Zulu hoard. He wailed, she hummed, he keened. Humming and keening. Humming and keening. Then quiet.

Then wailing. Humming and keening. Humming and keening. Then quiet.

Finally, at 3:27 she slipped beside me into bed, the house finally blanketed in silence. I took her hand and said gently, “You are amazing. Tonight you truly became a mom. I don’t know how you do it. I certainly couldn’t.” At least that’s what my brain was trying to say. It actually came out as, “Yuuuur tune moooooork. Mmmmm.”

But for a quiet moment: bliss.

At 3:43 my eyes flipped open to another scream. It was my turn. As I wheeled my legs out of bed and sat up, my wife said sleepily, “Seriously?”

“I’m just gonna do the thing,” I replied. “The thing” worked every time. It was cheap, it was easy, it was a ridiculous waste of resources. It was the type of thing that dads do. I packed him up and we went for a drive.

It’s not the smartest thing to do: packing your kid into your car and driving, sleep-deprived, through the city at 4:00 in the morning. But I did it. It was magic. And in the passing glow of each streetlight I could see him falling away to that place we liked him to be. And within ten or fifteen minutes he was a rag doll.

I pulled back into the driveway, carefully removed him from the car seat, and tenderly crept his soundly sleeping self back to his crib. I was nearly limp with relief. And when I set him gently onto his mattress he was suddenly awake and keening. And for a moment I had one of those images of padded room and tormenting jailers flash through my addled brain.

Now here is where I made the mistake. You see, my wife and I had been talking about some of our friends who had had to do the difficult task of breaking the kid into self-soothed sleep. This is where you let your kid know you’re there for them, but you leave the room for longer and longer periods to let them know that they are safe even when they are alone.

Yup, I decided. Tonight must be the night. I was able to handle about an hour of that. Each time I moved from the crib, my heart would break a little. And he was not at all interested in this plan of mine.

Finally, he had been at it long enough that I felt he was probably hungry. I pulled him out and he was instantly calm, though not really interested in eating. He just wanted to hang out in my arms. I had never been though this before.

As we rocked, I noticed the new fan we had brought into his room to help out with the air circulation.

It was a tower fan. A Hawaiian Breeze brand tower fan. And he dozed, nestled in my arms. I realized that the fan, in the dark, did not look like a fan.

Now at the time I thought it might be because I was bleary-eyed tired. But the thing looked like a monster. It had two red lights at the top, to tell us, first of all, that it was on. It had another light to tell us that it was on “Lo” (which is another thing all together).

The wind grill, underneath the lights, was a long, dark, cavernous mouth, with strange and unnatural teeth. It was, even for me, a little frightening.

And the best part. It was pointed at my son’s crib. It was also between his crib and the door. So any time I left the room, there this thing was, between us.

It took me a while to convince myself that this could be the issue. Once I did, though, at 5:23 am, I got up and quietly—with one hand, mind you— got a strip of duct tape, taped it over the beady red eyes of the fan, then turned it away from his crib.

I set him down again. He popped up to standing and watched me as I went to the door. I stood in the door for a moment. He plopped down and finally went to sleep.

Now, I don’t know. It could have been the monster — or it could have been an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese — but long after he’s forgotten it, I’ll remember the night of the monster and how I was the guy who protected him from the thing that scared him. And that’s pretty cool.

Popularity: 4% [?]

A bit more of a back story here on Banana Grandma.

She was married three times, that we know of. Her given name is Lottie Mae Lampley, but recently, she has taken to being called Angela. I am not making this up.

I’m not sure how many siblings she had. I know one, Tootie Mae (yup), was imprisoned in California a bit for bigamy. Again, I am not making this up: while going through some old Super8 film (for you young’uns, that means rolls of film that you had to watch from a projector that…never mind) anyway, while going through some family movie rolls I found a particularly old metal canister with some faded writing on it that I could not decipher. I handed it to my father, asking him what it said.

Unfazed, he handed it back to me saying, “Tootie’s Seventh Wedding.” We watched it, and it was a magnificent archive of poorly wrought 60s clothing. There were many crew-cuts and much big-hair. I think there was a dog.

In college I once had a professor who was working on a book about Oklahoma bank-robbers of the depression. I mentioned that a couple of my great uncles were bank-robbers. She asked who. I said, “I think they were Lampleys.”

“My God,” she hooted. “I just wrote a chapter on them.”

“Seriously?” I was pretty surprised and this bizarre connection.

“Yeah, yeah. They were found shot dead and shoved in the back of Buick or something, right?” she said leaning back in her chair and lacing her fingers behind her neck.

“Yeah, totally!”

We laughed.

Then there was an awkward silence.

Anyway, my grandmother’s third husband (again, that we know of) died (he’s a whole other story, god help me). His name was Isaac, but everybody called him Sam.

Okay, even I’m starting not to believe this, but it is true.

We went down south to help my grandmother with the funeral and clean up the house and get her moved to better housing.

My father and I were in Sam’s workshop, cleaning out spiders’ webs and dusting off tools and such. I watched my father pick up a large toolbox and set in on the counter. He opened it and recoiled in horror. I can’t quite impersonate the sound he made, but it was sort of like the sound that bubbles make in a hot mud pit.

“What’s wrong?” I said, fearing a giant spider.

“Jesus!” He stepped back.

Taped into the top of the toolbox lid were four Polaroid photos (for you young’uns a Polaroid was… you know what, just click on the link).

Can you guess?

Boudoir shots of my grandmother. Oh, yes they were. Mostly naked. And by mostly, I mean she was wearing booties. I remember in one shot (there are not enough rufies in the world) she was laying on her side facing the camera. Her left knee raised, her left foot, shod in sherbet-orange and brown crocheted booty, set delicately on her fleshy pink right knee. She was smiling. Her long-haired Chihuahua, Peppo, stood in the background with devilish red eyes, staring demonically at the camera.

“A son,” my father whispered tremulously, “a son should never see such a thing.”

Truer words were never spoken.

And yet, the third Christmas after Sam’s death, my father drafted my brother and me into a gift scheme that was both questionable and, ultimately, enlightening.

He had decided that it would be funny if he gave my grandmother a vibrator for Christmas. He had decided that it would be funny if he gave my grandmother a vibrator for Christmas. I repeated that, just in case you didn’t catch it the first time.

However, he thought it would be more prudent if he sent his sons to go out and find one. So we swallowed the metaphorical condom filled with crack and headed out to do his bidding.

Spencer’s Gifts, of course. This was well before online shopping. My brother and I found one, a streamlined little number that not only glowed in the dark, but lit up at the tip (to what ends I do not know, but the lit tip somehow made it seem more seasonally festive).

We wrapped it in paper emblazoned with dancing cartoon reindeer. It sat under the tree like a dirty-bomb in Central Park. Waiting.

We tingled with anticipation.

Christmas came, and, as is usual, I played the role of gift giver. I usually know what the big gift of the year is and wait to hand that out until last. Thus it went with this little parcel of Christmas cheer.

She unwrapped it and held it for a moment. “What is it?” she said.

“Mom,” my dad said, a tad incredulously. “Look at it.”

She stared at it for a moment. We leered at her in anticipation.

I walked over to her and twisted cap at the bottom. The thing whirred up like a Ghostbuster’s Positron Collider.

It only took a moment. She looked up at us like Ralphie holding his Red Ryder BB Gun. She wrapped both hands around it.

“It’s a vibrator!” my father said, though I’m pretty sure that was unnecessary.

She started curling into herself. “My Lord!” she said shaking.

I thought perhaps we’d killed her. Or maybe she was suffering a seizure.

She leaned forward. We all stepped toward her, fearing the worst.

Then she launched herself backward onto the sofa and burst out a giggle that was not unlike the sound of an agitated cotton-top tamarin.

“Are you okay?” I said.

She began rocking back and forth giggling and breathing, giggling and breathing.

We looked at each other, not really sure what was happening.

Finally, she leaned back and took a great breath. “Thank the Lord,” she said with a giggle. “Now I can stop freezing bananas.”

Popularity: 4% [?]

My paternal grandmother is about 4’9”. Both ways. She wears house dresses and muumuus (that does not even look like a word, but I guarantee it’s authenticity) in what I would call the autumn-sherbet colors. These colors are also prevalent in her crocheted booties as well as her thinning hair (which does vary in color, based on the dye-job du jour).

She is a racist, self-centered, pot-stirrer. She loves her improbably tiny long-haired Chihuahua more than any other living creature. She is a professional hypochondriac who keeps my exhausted father at her beck and call.

And I love her dearly. Not just because she’s kin (as she would say), but also because she is a continual trove of anecdotal material, comedy sketches, and cautionary tales. Often these tales involve my father, who is either the instigator of the story or the butt of her antics. Either way, it’s good material.

We, and by that I mean my family and about one-hundred friends who have never met her, but have heard the story, call her Banana Grandma. This is that story.

But first a character sketch.

One Christmas, sometime ago, I was home with my parents when my grandmother called. My father talked with her for a bit and then moved to hand me the phone, but dropped it, sending it skittering across the floor.

When I picked it up and said, “Hello,” the shaky voice on the other end said, “What were you doing; playing with yourself?”

I was not, as you might imagine, expecting this question. “What?”

“What was that sound? Were you playing with yourself,” she said again, as if she were talking to a foreign-born line checker at Wal-Mart.

I didn’t quite know what to say. So I did the only thing at my mental disposal. I said, “Um….”

She said, “Who is this?”

I said, “Jason.”

There was not even a moment’s pause. “Oh, I’m sorry, honey, I thought I was talking to your daddy.”

I was a little relieved, a little confused, but then suddenly horrified again when she said, “Well were you? Playing with yourself.”

After I collected myself, I strangely engaged her in this conversation. “Um, no. You?”

Yes, that is what I said. I actually asked my grandmother if she was enjoying the benefits of self-love.

Perhaps it was a defensive move. Perhaps the tracks for the train were laid in a previous tale. But her response was, “Oh, no, Honey. That dog done dried up years ago.”

While the image of that moment sits percolating for you, let me tell you a little about my father as a back-story to the upcoming Banana Tale. When my paternal grandfather was around 75, he got circumcised. Oh, yes, he did. He had simply stopped bathing and his doctor told him to either start showering or get circumcised. Otherwise it was simply a matter of time until his “doogie” rotted and fell off. He decided on the circumcision.

Still with me?

My grandfather was old enough that he was hospitalized for a couple of days after the operation. My father, as a bit of a joke, sent him a packet of pornographic magazines — Jugs, I believe. He sent them right to the hospital. He did this, as he said with a devilish grin, to see if he could “rip a stitch from 500 miles away.”

I was a fortunate party to the speaker phone conversation when my grandfather called from the hospital. I learned new words from that phone call.

Thus was the strange and perhaps questionable environment that precipitated the Banana Tale. Which, alas, must wait for tomorrow, as I have reached my word limit for this post.

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*This site is still under construction.

*Recipe follows

Not for the faint of heart!

There was a bran muffin recipe that I quite loved many years ago. I no longer remember it, but I do recall that it contained a vast amount of melted butter. The reason that I no longer remember the recipe is that it slipped out of my favor for a while.

You see, I had made a batch for a week’s breakfasts, just after I graduated with my MAT.

It was a Monday, and I was interviewing for a teaching job. I was crazy-nervous and didn’t know that I had consumed four of the delectable laxatives before my morning appointment—I came to realize this after skittering home later that day.

I won’t go into details—you’re welcome—but I will say that my lower intestines answered nearly as many interview questions as my mouth did. I felt as though my chest and knees were connected by a tremblingly taught rubber band, that any moment my knees might pop to my chin and I might launch up to the ceiling like a water rocket. I guess I went into details. Sorry.

It was quite some time, fourteen years actually, before I made and ate bran muffins again.

My wife had called me to tell me that my son of fourteen months had eaten nearly a pint of blueberries. She said that his diaper was in such a state that it looked like she could readily re-feed him the berries he had recently consumed. It’s a mental picture that, once conceived, will not soon leave you. It’s also the sort of things that new parents discuss easily, not just among themselves, but also with friends who’ve recently had children.

This, of course, I did. And while regaling my friend with the story of my son’s blueberry poo, I made the off-hand, on-color remark that it must have looked something like blueberry bran muffin batter. Her response to the remark made it a fait accompli that I would make her some blueberry bran muffins.

The irony? They are the best muffins I have ever had. And I love a good muffin.

I got the recipe from my favorite recipe site, Recipezaar.com, now Food.com.

Here it is:

Ingredients

Directions

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*This site is still under construction.

Well, here it is. My first blog page.

I like to call myself a writer, but I’m more of a dabbler. A writer has a full-time job: writing.

Two years ago I was a writer. I wrote hard, four hours a day for a year. I finished a 90,000 word book. Then I had a kid.

I can’t write now ‘cause I got a kid. JK Rowling, right?

Yeah, I’m a schmuck. So, I am going to write every day. About what, I don’t know. I don’t even have my categories set up yet.

I suppose, based on my interests, I will write about food and theatre, things that are dirty and morally questionable, my son, my writing, general thoughts, and mysteries of the yada yada.

So today I say welcome to anyone who happens upon this posting. I’m assuming that the things to come will be considerably more interesting.

Like many editors say, delete the first chapter and you have yourself a good novel.

So here is to you, first post.

Click.

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