Bookpusher

Tom Brady visits Seattle Grace Hospital.

(NSFW, possibly, due to some naughty words.)

Brilliant.

Postings have been light of late – Gav’s spent the last week battling a nasty case of the stomach flu, which has resulted in epic poops in size, color, and liquidity. Think of a quart of French’s hot dog mustard left out in the sun too long and you’ll get the general idea of what we’ve been dealing with here at Bookpusher HQ. The kiddo’s feeling better, though, and is now sleeping with the dulcet sounds of our now-please-god-less-than-one-year-left Commander in Chief speaking in the background.

I’ve decided to become a stay-at-home dad of a sort – I’m soon to transfer to a part time evening/weekend position at a branch close to my home so I can stay here and care for the big guy. Grand school will be over with in about a year, and besides, the cost of quality daycare in JoCo is completely insane, approaching levels seen only near Tokyo highrises and in certain parts of Dubai. Our cats have shown little interest in looking after the kiddo, and as they have no opposable thumbs, they could not be trusted to drive the car or to dial 911 if something were to go wrong during the day. Stupid cats.

(Meanwhile, if you have word of any quality affordable daycare options in the vicinity of old Overland Park, please don’t tell me about it, as I’ve already turned in my two weeks’ notice. This particular ship has sailed. I’ll be missed at my job, which is a nice feeling, and I think I’ll like my new stomping grounds. I’ll also, theoretically, have more time to write and read postings, so the quality of writing around here should improve.)

While I fully support the striking writers and what they stand for, the lack of original programming has put a meteor-sized dent in my TiVo schedule. Resourceful folks must find other ways to fill the TeeVee void until the adults decide to come to the bargaining table. Me? We’ve been tearing through the first season of HBO’s Rome on DVD (bummed from a certain goblin, with much thanks) when the kiddo allows us.

Also, Alan Sepinwall, an excellent tv critic for the New Jersey Star-Ledger, is posting episode reviews for the brilliant-but-cancelled television show Cupid, episodes of which can (mostly) be found in bits on YouTube. I’ve preached the awesomeness of this show for a while - now you have a reason to follow along, if you needed it.

Also, instead of watching television, you could – y’know – read a book.

Dizzying, dazzling, and intoxicating, this wonderfully inventive book might just be one of the best reads of the year.

And I’m not going to recommend it to you.

Let me explain. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is a multi-generational tale about a Dominican Republic family that’s afflicted with curse – or fuku, as it’s called in the DR - that culminates in the Oscar of the title, a sad, overweight, hopelessly romantic geek who yearns to be the next J.R.R. Tolkien in a culture full of players and playboys. (The family name is de Leon – Oscar’s classmates tease him with the name “Oscar Wao”, a corruption of “Oscar Wilde.”) The narrative bounces back and forth from Oscar to his sister, his mother, and his grandfather, as the history of the de Leon family is explained between the Dominican Republic and New Jersey. Intertwined with the history is the island dictator Rafael Trujillo, who hovers over the story like Sauron, his bloody and painful reign explained in exhaustive footnotes.

The story is told from the point of view of a classmate of Oscar’s, and is both emotionally deep and screamingly funny. Oscar Wao is the very pinnacle of geek lit – every paragraph is littered with references from old movies to comic books to pulp fiction to fantasy novels to 1980’s Saturday morning cartoons; if you don’t know who Uatu the Watcher is, or know what having an 18 in charisma is, or what the Zentraedi are, or what happens when something gets hit with Darkseid’s Omega Beams, then you’ll be helplessly lost within just a few pages. Added to this is Diaz’s habit of slipping his narrative into Spanish, which means this book is best read with both a Spanish-English dictionary and Wikipedia at the ready.

For those who are looking for a leisurely book, something disposable to read and forget over a weekend, this ain’t the book for you. But if you’re well-versed in your geek-fu and looking for the literary equivalent of a gourmet meal you’ll remember for a long time, then, man, are you in for an experience.

Longtime friends of mine know the loathing I have for Kansas City’s own Shawn Edwards, a ‘film critic’ – and I use that term very loosely – for our local Fox television affiliate who is either a soulless corporate shill or holds the record for the world’s largest case of ADHD. He will give a good quote for anything – the latest Rob Schneider film, an Arby’s commercial, public access shows about psychic dogs – anything. People like him aid and abet the mindless crap that comes out of Hollywood, and there is a special cozy section of hell for quote whores like him.

But today we celebrate his career, as he’s finally made the coveted #1 spot on the 2007 edition of eFilmCritic’s list of Whores of the Year. Congratulations, Shawn, you deserved it.

My parents are good-hearted enough to watch the kiddo for a few hours so my wife and I could get some non-baby time in. With a three-hour getaway time frame in which we could do pretty much anything we wanted, what do you think we did? We went to the movies and saw a film about, you guessed it, pregnancy.

Juno more than lived up to its indie-darling hype. This film about a teenage girl and her quest to find a family for her unborn baby is self-aware and solidly quirky, but intelligent and completely charming. Actress Ellen Page, last seen in Hard Candy, continues to be impressive despite her youth and has made my list of Actresses I Will Watch No Matter What the Movie She’s In, the cinematic equivalent of the coveted Save ‘Til I Delete status on my TiVo. She doesn’t have to carry the film by herself, as she has the likes of J.K. Simmons, Allison Janney, Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, and Jennifer Garner around her.

One of the things that struck me the most about Juno is that it speaks in a solidly female voice. Not feminist, or proto-feminist, or even neo-proto feminist, but female. The movie was written by a woman, told from the point of view of Juno, and that comes through in every frame of the movie, which in the male-dominated world of indie film, is a nice change. Compare with a film like Superbad, which I absolutely love, but, let’s face it, was a movie that was all about the penis. I’m okay with the vagina every so often.

Last night was incredibly entertaining – you had Kansas winning a fun-to-watch game over Virginia Tech, Obama and Edwards going one-two in Iowa, and a police standoff going on at Britney Spears’ house, all at the same time.

We’re living in good times, people.

The good news is that being a dad is still a lot of fun; the problem is that my entire life now exists is some absurd phantom dimension where time does not run like it should. It takes triple the time to do anything normal, like going to the store or paying bills or even watch watching tv. The kiddo must be taken into account - is he dressed properly? If going out, do we need to restock the diaper bag? Even if staying home, is he fed/changed/burped/clean? How did poop get in his ear, anyway? - and just when you think you’re ready to go and do whatever it is that you want to do, you’ve found that three hours have passed. Welcome to the Phantom Dimension, where you’re armed with a full diaper bag but without wipes and with mysterious stains on your shirt.

(Before being a dad, anything with stains on it would go immediately to the hamper. Now the laundry hamper is piled so high it looks like a task out of ESPN2’s World’s Strongest Man competition, right next to the Pillars of Hercules and the one where they carry around the rock that looks like the continent of Africa; a stain on a shirt isn’t all that big a deal anymore. Only if it smells. Smells still go to the hamper, and if we don’t get a handle on that pile soon I’m going to have to get Magnus ver Magnusson to come over and clean with me.)

Today is my son’s 1st month birthday. (And even to celebrate a date like that is absurd, like those middle-school girlfriends who celebrated three-week anniversaries of Going Out, even when no one knew what Going Out meant exactly.) His muddy eyes have now solidified into an amazing shade of deep blue; whenever I dangle a toy in front of him that rattles, those eyes widen and his lips pucker into a tiny “o” of surprise. He still grunts like a old man getting out of bed. He saves up his poops for once a day and they are hellacious in size and scope. He’s still not letting us sleep properly - we haven’t weighed him recently but we think he’s solidly over eight pounds and has more of a classic Gerber baby look to him. We know his stomach can hold enough formula to let us sleep for more than three and a half hours straight, but he has yet to give any indication of it. He reacts to our voices and has an adorable way of sighing and snuggling into our arms to signal when he’s content.