Hey, we all have busy weeks. Here’s a meditation on parenthood and artistic identity that originally appeared on my blog:
Quite often, we’ll be listening to my iPod or the radio in the car and one of my young sons will ask me: “Is that you dad?” In my entire life, nothing has been as satisfying as that question. It means my boys see me as a composer and as a singer.
The audience that really counts gets it. [Read more →]
The Gulf full of oil. Radiation seepage in Japan. War in petroleum-rich countries. Mines collapsing. And the incessant, blow-by-blow, steady-drip news about all of it. [Read more →]
If only I had vision, I would have bought stock in some company manufacturing anything that holds or displays athletic awards. Because even years ago the writing was on the wall that ten-year-olds from Trophy Club, TX to Silver City, CA would be assembling piles of competition-based bling, and they would need some way to store it. [Read more →]
I never thought I’d write a “kids today” blog — especially not in my 2nd blog out for this site. In fact, I had another blog practically written, one I anticipated polishing up once I got home last night until I happened to catch the earlier train from work and happened to sit next to a group of high school boys so insulting, so incredibly ignorant, that I spent the rest of the commute composing this very blog in my head.
I am familiar with and accept the notion that “boys will be boys” — in fact, I sometimes am willing to let downright not-nice-crassness go because of it (with a blue velvet Virgin Mary perched above the toilet in my guest bathroom, who the hell am I to judge on crass?), but these kids went beyond even my limits. [Read more →]
While once we may have contemplated the merits of the philosopher king in human society, now we focus on a humbler, but quite common role: The parent coach. So many of us spend hours coaching our own kids, and I will start by stating the embarrassingly obvious: It is challenging. [Read more →]
In New Jersey, times are desperate for the public schools. Well, you say, things are tough all over. There’s just no money, you say. You’re broke. We’re all broke. So when those budgets come up for vote — because in Jersey the only budget you get to vote directly for is your local public school budget — you’re voting ’em down.
Sure. I want you to tell me the one again about the crisis we’re facing supporting and financing public schools in our culture. Tell me how we’re all stretched and suffering and we have to vote “no” on these budgets. [Read more →]
One trait of being a “screenager” is the love of upgrades. In a bit-based world governed by the never-ending promise of Moore’s Law, they live for the next best device. My daughter has been campaigning for a new cell phone to add to her growing list of devices, including a one-year old cell phone that she has lost… no, more on that in a moment. [Read more →]
Paradigms do shift, don’t they? It occurred to me that — what? — fifty or sixty years’ worth of musical conflict is now evaporating. I mean, kids and parents still work diligently to find new things to shake their heads behind each other’s back about, but the old “how-can-you-listen-to-that-noise?” bit is now sort of resolving itself into a dew, isn’t it? If teenagers today have parents who grew up on Led Zeppelin, it is sort of hard for them to shock the old gene-donors with long hair, screaming vocals and raunchy guitars anymore. [Read more →]
This may seem so apparent that it need not be said, but yet I must say it, however quietly: Screaming is not coaching.
Despite how obvious this may appear, people in that most important of coaching places, youth sports, sometimes find screaming as a primary communication method.
I can’t imagine that there is a parent out there that hasn’t had the discussion about whether or not they believed in the link between autism and certain vaccines administered to children. I know I certainly have. I chose to vaccinate my daughter, as I never really found there to be hard evidence that linked the two. Well, apparently — there isn’t. Some douche of a doctor — Dr. Andrew Wakefield to be exact — decided to go ahead and falsify his findings. Of course he’s denying it, but the evidence against him seems overwhelmingly strong. What could possibly possess a human being to do such a thing? And how will the country now react to those who so strongly supported this doctor’s theory?
Hey, Jenny McCarthy — all eyes are on you.
Welcome to 2011 ladies and gentlemen! Hard to believe that in a mere four years we will be riding hover boards, at least according to what Back to the Future 2 told us. I hope that 2011 is going to be a good year, and while I haven’t made any crazy resolutions, I want to make some positive changes in my life. This year I am hoping to get my groove back, like Stella did. However, I am hoping that doesn’t involve me being seduced by or sleeping with Taye Diggs. [Read more →]
During the past month, people across the western world have banded together to build and sustain a powerful mythical structure. If you could peer down on humanity and see highlighted, like you had infrared glasses, markers of the beliefs that connect us, that are intangible yet exist strongly in our communications and ideas, this time of year you would note a glowing red haze of lore maintained by a sea of good will and snowy pile of white lies. Since I too am a participant in the proliferation of this myth and would be crushed if a young believer who stumbled across this article (despite the opaque title) bit into the Christmas cookie of knowledge because of me, I’ll veil my language: Let’s say I’m speaking of Kringleism. [Read more →]
Like most boys, at the age of twelve I was focused on not being focused. I loved everything from baseball to science fiction to TV to day-dreaming. But I did know I wanted to be a musician, mostly because my dad was. When I heard the “Sunrise” section of Daphis et Chloe, though, I knew this feeling ran deeper than a mere desire to imitate my hero. The conclusion had been reached: I needed to compose. Maybe just as much, I wanted to be a conductor. I wanted to play the great piano that was a symphony orchestra — to raise God’s voice out of virtuosic, human keys with my hands. [Read more →]
10. Sharp Objects Potpourri
9. Mr. Wizard’s Home Liposuction Kit
8. Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Pitbulls
7. Lady Gaga Meat Playdress
6. The Highway Trampoline
5. Mattel’s Choking Hazard
4. The Sarah Palin Wind-Up Mama Grizzly
3. Baby’s First Self-Inoculation Kit
2. Owie! – The Jump-Off-The-Roof Game
1. The Underwear Bomber Blow-Up Doll
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Dear NFL,
I write you as a friend to express some concerns. I may be writing only from my own pure — and perhaps misguided — nostalgia, but I worry about the future of my great game. (I apologize in advance for moments of incoherence and inconsistency, but like many long-standing passions, the one I have for you defies articulation — and reason.) [Read more →]
So a month ago my wife, in one of those heroic moves toward permanent marital stability, bought us tickets to the Jason Bonham Led Zeppelin Experience. The show tapped directly into my untouchable love of Zeppelin. I was awed not just by the talent of Bonham and his band but the emotion driving this tribute. Meandering home afterward, thinking about the grainy videos of Jason as a child that were part of the show, I wondered what if Zeppelin had tried to launch today, in the age of helicopter parents. [Read more →]
While I was waiting for the train during an afternoon commute last week, I ran into him for the second time. A little boy, probably five or six. He ran wild on the platform. He played on the train tracks. He smashed the pay phone against a metal rail. He screamed at people. Last time, he also threw rocks at cars in a nearby parking lot. [Read more →]
My mother grew up in a farm town in Illinois. She had an older brother and a younger brother, and her parents had double standards. She could only go so far into the woods, she could only swim so far out into the lake, she had to be home before dark — that kind of thing. Her brothers did as they pleased and she was informed that girls were not allowed the same freedom.
I wonder if that’s why she never complained about raising me alone. And I mean alone, no support system whatsoever, no help from my birth father. I wonder if she just decided to prove to everyone that she was strong, and fully capable of being both parents. She was strong, she was capable, but of course she couldn’t be two people. Neither can I.
Early on in my parenting travels, I was a total anti-video game guy. A staunch opponent. Of course, these feelings were not due to a lingering bitterness because growing up I was the worst Pac-Man player in my town. No, I just didn’t want my kids sitting idly for hours on end, ruled by a screen, twitching, stagnating, drooling. But then came the Wii. [Read more →]
Interview with Alex Kudera, author of Fight for Your Long Day
I have known Alex Kudera since 1996 when he and I met in the café of Borders Bookstore in Center City, Philadelphia. A couple years later, Alex and I worked together as adjuncts at Temple University and at Drexel University. Alex has now written a novel, the just-published Fight for Your Long Day, and it is a bracing, painful, and sometimes funny look at the life of an adjunct college teacher in the early 2000’s.
Although Alex currently teaches full-time at Clemson University in South Carolina, he is quick to note that working full-time does not mean tenure. I recently interviewed him about Fight for Your Long Day, published by Atticus Books.
Below are some of the excerpts.
