Bad Parents

Episode V: We're Going to Be Friends (Or Enemies... we'll see)

(Some language as always will be a little salty and slightly NSFW.  Just so you know.)

As a parent, one of the most omnipresent worries before school starts is the worry of whether your kid will have friends.  They worry that, too. Nothing in school is more important to your child than not being alone and having a group of people to hang out with that they can count on, especially just to complain about those other kids who are clearly awful and will grow up to be the worst of the worst: criminals, star athletes, and politicians. They need new friends to grow emotionally and to protect themselves against everything school has to throw at them.

As an adult though, you don't really wonder if you're going to get any new friends.  Most likely, you're all set in the friend department.  You've reduced your friend interactions to mostly Facebooking and living passively at a distance with most of your acquaintances.  We all live in Facebookia, where we can all pretend that nothing too horrible happens, trust everything anyone posts on face value (that's what the "face" in Facebook stands for), and assume that everyone is a decent parent and has a decent job and a decent home and how-did-I-get-here sort of life.  But outside of having to muster up some yip-yapping chit-chat with someone on a plane or in a Soviet-like line at the supermarket, I generally don't meet or interact with people I don't know.  

Having kids changes all of that.  You have to deal with tons of people in ways you could never have considered before.  First off, you're part of the parenting club.  You are all over-connected with every parent everywhere and anyone seeing your kids can automatically ask how old they are.  And you HAVE to answer.  You are morally obliged to share with strangers your child's age in a way you'd never do with anything else.  You don't go around an old folks home randomly asking oldies how old they are or how near death they feel.  You don't show up at a holiday party and just start asking when people were born.  So with this nefarious parenting cabal, your children have born you into something you never thought you'd have to be part of.  A trip to the park is a trip where you not only have to have a variety of items for your child to play with or eat, but you must be equipped with the emotional wherewithal to talk to total strangers as though you're a person capable of not being a complete asshole.  

Not the exact kinda parklife one lives as a parent.

But that's just - as Blur would sing about - Parklife.  Then your kid starts schooling.  And then it kicks off a whole new set of parents that you have to be friendly with and be friendly with for years.  You hope your kid picks the right kid with the right parents, but you know you can totally get shafted with parents you'd like to throw off the Space Needle along with their bratty kid.  And then if you're totally cool with the parents, you're the parents that they loathe.  

I know for a fact that there was a pair of parents who couldn't stand us at pre-school.  I don't think we'd ever been mean to them or lock them and their kid in a room with a facehugger or did anything warranting them hating us worse than disco-dancing Nazi cockroaches.  Yet the contempt they held for us was never really hidden.  And although I didn't want to hang around with them either, for some reason their open dislike stuck in my plentiful craw.  Especially as we had to see them all the time and I didn't know what led to them to treat us this way.  But just like a pubescent teenager preoccupied with people liking them despite not liking those people at all, it hurt (or at the very least irritated like a hangnail on the heart.)  

But as this crusty cold war goes on, your child goes to a different school than theirs.  And you're freed.  Until you meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss.  Because if you're a weird kid like I was, you grow up to be a weird teenager.  Then you grow up to be a weird adult.  And a weird parent.  And even though for the most part "weird" is in (or at least everything that helped defined you as weird when young is totally accepted from comic books to Star Wars to Doctor Who), you still function as a person that's different from the rest.  

Especially here in Santa Monica, where even for a public school, the dads are keeping things tight.  Sure, there's a few of us chubs, but we're the minority to all the actors and other professionals who make a point of being totally in shape.  In the greater Los Angeles area, everyone is attractive.  From the police to the doctors to the folks who check the gas to the homeless, there is a sea of beauty here unlike anywhere else.  Whereas in the rest of America dads come in a standard slightly chunky size with doughy gallons-of-milk guts instead of six packs, here, they are all majestic adonises (or Adoni?).  So glorious in their presentation, you kinda hope that by you appearing to be a disfigured gargoyle in comparison will make YOU the rarity... the attractive one.  

(It does not.)

A picture of bald me next to every dad in Santa Monica.

A picture of bald me next to every dad in Santa Monica.

After wading through meeting billions of parents where you're all defined by your owner ("I'm Crispin's dad."  "I'm Lady's mom."  "I'm Lord Shitty-Shitty-Bang-Bang's father."), you do what we humans do best as a civilization: We make acquaintances.  And we do so with no expectations that they'll become friends.  However, even in the hodge-podge of random moms and dads and inbetweens, you will find a few on your same wavelength.  Who will laugh at the same thing.  Who will wear a t-shirt of a band you like, too.  Who will talk about Star Wars, but not like someone who just casually saw the movies, but someone who can rage out when you fear any word that starts with pre- will end with -quels.  All in all, you will find them.  And you will talk privately with gusto about the wretched other parents there are.  Griping about the entitled and slightly insane parents who yell at teachers not treating their kid like the messiah.  The uncaring, daredevil dickhole ones who drive Teslas too fast through the school parking lot.  The snotty ones who aren't as cool as all of you.  You, the cool parents.

It may seem you won't find your people.  It may seem that every other parent is an idiot or too involved in their kid or not enough involved in their kid or that they may wear t-shirts that seem at odds with any kind of taste or they may seem slightly sexist.  You may wander years without a parenting pal.  But then one day, you will arrange a playdate for your kid with another kid.  And you won't want to go to it.  You'd rather have a nap on a Sunday or do something that requires even less effort.  But because you love your son, you will go on that playdate.  And you will talk to those parents.  And you will realize they are awesome.  That they share your same thoughts on what a travesty MAN OF STEEL is.  How they also carry a first aid kit with them.  How they have awesome deeply enviable hair.

This is the only Zod.  I don't know what you're talking about when you mention this MAN OF STEEL business.

This is the only Zod.  I don't know what you're talking about when you mention this MAN OF STEEL business.

Then you return home.  Surprised to find some folks you actually like.  And then you wait by the magic email machine, hoping they'll email again.  You smile, pleased that you found some folks you won't mind talking to for the next ten years until your kids graduate and you become your own human again.  

(But then you worry all junior high style that YOU are their horrible parent that they don't want to deal with.  That you aren't cool enough for them.  That you talk too much and griped about a teacher they may actually like and that you're an obnoxious turd and it's amazing anyone likes you at all.  And right then, you realize that kids turn you into emotionally turbulent kids in all kinds of twisty horrible ways that makes Cronenberg's worst visions look like Play-Doh in comparison.)  

All you can do then is just put on the White Stripes "We're Going to Be Friends" and LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" and hope for the best.  (Well, that and that your kid doesn't become best friends with the son of a dickhead.  That would be the worst.)

My TCM-ing

Recently watched OVER THE EDGE, a late 70s film about discontent teens who rebel against their absentee parents and jerkhead authority figures.  If you've seen the sterling documentary about Kurt Cobain MONTAGE OF HECK, clips of this film are sprinkled through it, as it was Cobain's favorite film and one could see why.  It's actually the debut of a young Matt Dillon - wearing an always classy half-shirt.  The film actually works pretty well even today and helps me - as did that Cobain doc - to be hopefully be less of a dick parent hopefully.

That's all for now, folks.  Thanks for reading and hope you all have a week filled with so many extraordinary adventures that even J.K. Rowling looks on impressed.

So long,

Patrick T.

The T stands for Montage

Episode III: Rise of the Truly Terrible Horrible Awful Children (Who Make Me Feel Like a Good Parent)

(Some language as always will be a little salty and slightly NSFW.  Just so you know.)

It was just a Boys Under 10 soccer game.  But I saw a player of such singular talent that I couldn't believe it.  The kind of talent that you see in the movies and think, "There's just no way that can be real."  But it was real.  I saw it with my own two eyes.  (Four eyes if you're going to insult me with my glasses.)  And I heard it with my own two ears.  (No "four ears" comment, huh?  Yeah, I thought so!)  The kid was smaller than the rest and he swept down the field with amazing moves.  But I wasn't impressed with his soccer skill.  You see decent players every week.  There's usually one really good one on each team.  What this kid had though was that rare level of kiddie assholishness that it felt like a cartoon, like a bad South Park rip-off. 

This kid - who looked like the offspring of Harpo Marx and a urinal cake - screamed at our team's players.  Which wasn't too surprising.  Or all that bad.  Kids do talk some smack even at this age against their opponents.  Yet after he scored an early goal, he ran by myself and the other coach skipping and singing, "Zip-a-dee-do-da!"  It was as classless as it was audacious.  I'm just surprised he didn't moon us while flipping us both birds as he raced by.  Now, if the kid was just awful to the people he was playing against, it wouldn't be awesome, but it wouldn't be unoriginal either. 

But then he also screamed at his own team.  "Why do I even try if you won't get me the ball?!!" he yelled in the face a teammate who had no idea how to deal with that.  As the game went on, he even yelled at the ref, right in his face.  (And he wasn't a great ref, but it was like something out of the Bad News Bears, even though the kids in Bad News Bears were funny and this kid made you wish they brought back a good old fashioned kid-slapping.)  What this kid showed was on par with every SUPER-BRAT you saw in any movie ever.  I think of the Wonder Years brother who played the kid movie star in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure that had Pee-Wee's bike. 

And if this was the only kid like that, it would be okay.  You could live with it, but there's more than just one.  Every class has a couple, every grade a bunch, and every school enough to make you fear for the future.  (There's even one girl at my kid's school who makes new girls cry and her mom yells at other kids for her like the mom's her muscle.)

Instead of worrying about the future of our society due to kids like this, I'm actually thankful these kids exist.  These kiddie monsters show there are parents worse than you in an empirical fashion that will leave you feeling smug and self-satisfied for anywhere from 24-to-72 hours.  It takes every moment of self-examining one does as a parent and shows that you are a golden sunbeam of parenting awesomeness.  You are a fluffy android unicorn that clearly has a handle on things.  All because your kid is not awful. 

Yet that's where the really hard dilemma kicks in.  Because as big of a turd as any kid is, it's not their fault for their turdishness.  They're just kids.  However...

Their parents are true assholes.  Assholes who instill in their kid a belief that their child is entitled to more than other children.  Which is different from liking your kid more than other kids. Everyone likes their kids better than other kids.  But you also let your kids know they aren't the chosen one.  There's a difference between advocating for your children and trying to make all other children and adults and society to bend to the will of your terrible tot.  These tiny little shit Hitlers - or Shitlers as we shall call them - need to have a collection of allied forces to step forward and say that we are all in this together and we will not serve your mouthy child like a king or queen.  In the immortal words of the great commander Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!"

Because mouthy horrible kids who play soccer turn into awful human beings.  Like totally the worst.  Yes... granted, I was a mouthy soccer player.  Who argued with refs and got yellow cards. And never shut up and was pretty obnoxious.  But I'm different.  I turned out... alright?  I'm not like that kid.  I'm totally different.  Totally... diff... oh, crap.  Crap, crap, frakkin' crap. 

Another example of me hating something when I'm just really hating myself.

Still... those parents are the worst.

My TCM This Week

I watched a couple of old Alan Arkin films that they were playing awhile back during an Alan Arkin month.  I'd never heard of either before and was pleasantly surprised by both.

The first was a film called Simon where Alan Arkin plays a man that a bunch of geniuses at a think tank convince is an alien to trick the rest of the world just for their own malevolent amusement.  Written and directed by Marshall Brickman - the co-writer of Annie Hall and other Woody Allen films, it was an unexpected film with many laughs and featured the space shuttle before it was even actually used.  And it had a computer that was a giant talking phone, not to mention Madeleine Kahn, Wallace Shawn, Austin Pendleton, and the dad Alf lived with.  Really unlike most films and certainly anything from that time period of 1980.


The other was the early 70s film Little Murders, written by the great playwright and cartoonist Jules Feiffer and directed by Arkin himself.  Starring the always brilliant Elliot Gould, it's a bit more hit and miss.  One of the best moments though is a cameo by Donald Sutherland as the minister at a wedding that is just brilliant.  It's on par for me with Peter Cook in The Princess Bride and I'd love to see those two guys to form their own company to do weddings.


What I loved about these two films (and most films I watch off TCM) is how they capture a time and place that's both completely different yet completely the same as now.  Watching a New York where people were constantly being randomly shot in Little Murders, this dark comedy isn't too different from now with so many shootings taking place all the time.  And with Simon having a talking computer with a woman's voice that looks like a giant phone... it's pretty much predicting Siri and the iPhone completely.  

Thanks again for reading and hope you all have a week so brilliant that it gets its own TED talk.

So long,

Patrick T.

the T stands for self-loathing