Well, 2007 is almost over.  As far as I’m concerned, it was a pretty swell year.  (A kind of a long year at times, but a pretty swell year…)  As if anyone cares, here are my highlights:

• Media Highlights:
  • TV:  MAD MEN proved that if if you wanted to see a show as intense and psychologically complex as the SOPRANOS (and with cooler clothes), you only had to wait about 3 months; FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS was the funniest and driest show on TV; those gazillion sketch comedy shows made popular on the Internets produced HUMAN GIANT and WHITEST KIDS YOU KNOW; FIVE DAYS on HBO was one of the best police procedurals I’ve ever seen, from the victims to the police press liason.  And let us not forget the one thousand million kajillion kids programs I have become an expert in, especially BOB THE BUILDER, DIEGO, and anything by Pixar.  And thanks to the finale episodes than LOST and EXTRAS–What would I talk about about at the virtual water cooler?
  • MOVIES:  If there was one major theme in movies this year (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOUR DEAD, etc., etc.) it’s the saimple trusim “Crime is best left to the professionals.”  I could make a decent argument that Anton Churgh in OLD MEN didn’t even exist, but was just a cloud of evil.  Special ponts to Judd Apatow school of filmmaking, which is to teen sex comedies as the Sopranos is to crime shows — proof that weird, fat and strange people can be excellent, moving actors if just given the chance.  And as to the fawning (and mostly deserved) critical reaction..  I’m reminded of David Lee Roth’s comment:  “Most rock critics like Elvis Costello because they look like Elvis Costello…”
  • BOOKS:  This is the year I read my first Stephen King book (scary!), my first Cormac McCarthy books (deep!), and my one hundredth police procedural translated from a foreign language.  And the first year I really got into the whole books on tape phenomenen.  Now why can’t I find REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST online?  And thank heavens for the Ricky Gervais podcasts.
  • MUSIC:  What is that, exactly? 
• PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS:
  • I got to keep my automotive job while many people did not.  And not one day goes by when I do not think of that.
  • My wife and I remodeled our kitchen from scratch (with invaluable help from my neighbor, tips from my brother in law, and waaay to make trips to the Ikea Fans website).  Next year:  A backyard gazebo (God help me…and my poor wife…and my neighbor…)
  • Our son got a clean bill of health after from his coarctation operation and does not have to go back to the Doctor for two whole years!  (This, combined with his becoming a maniac, was the best news all year).
  • My daughter got Student of the Year at her elementary school, is learning cello (using the new method, called “avoiding practicing”), is still doing her ballet, and is driving me near-homicidally crazy just about every day.
  • My wife and I are still happily married after 17 years and spending quality time together.  And not one day goes by when  do not think of that.
  • My network of friends and family remained relatively healthy and happy.  Some people have passed on this year, which as I get older makes every day and every relationship that much more important and valuable, even if sometimes people bug the crap out of you.
  • I am President of the PTA for the second year in a row, and all that that involves.  (I’m not sure this belongs on the highight list…)
• PERSONAL LOWLIGHTS:
  • I am not ignorant of the fact that I have a certain worldview and a certain sense of humour that is not always to everyone’s taste, and that there are times that I can inadvertantly (or, at times, totally advertantly) offend or hurt the feelings of people I actually honestly care about in my own self-centered way.  Because of this, I’ve been taken off the Christmas Card list of someone I have known for years, and probably bugged many other people without knowing it.  This is something, as Dr. Phil would say, I need to work on.

Anyway, here’s to 2008!

About once a month I have a bad dream, and it’s usually about zombies.  I think zombies are scary, obviously, and they have the added value of being a uniquely modern metaphor for modern life.  (A lot of the older monster movie metaphors, like Dracula and sexual urges, just aren’t as relevant any more in this age of “freedom”.)  They are all the same.  They share a common purpose–to come after you and eat the flesh (or brains, etc.) of the living.  There are very much “on message”.  They are after you, and there’s nothing you can do about it, short of blowing off their heads.  If you kill one, there will be another, and another, and another. It is usually down to you and a few others and inevitably, one of your own small circle of survivors with succumb to the zombie plague and you will have to kill them or be killed yourself.   And often it just seems easier to give in and let your brain by eaten.  Oh well-at least it’s only once a month!

If I regret one thing about my child-rearing technique (if it, in fact, could be called a technique), it would be responding inappropriately the first time my 3-year old son said the word “Poop” in order to get a laugh.  Of course, I laughed.  My wife laughed.  My daughter laughed.  We all laughed.  Historians will tell you, this was our undoing.  Now everything is poop.  No sentence cannot be improved by substituting “poop” (“Buzz Lightyear!  Defender of the Poop!”).  No question has a funnier answer.  (“What woudl you like for dinner?”  “Poop.”).  No better threat has been invented (“I’m gonna poop on you!”)  And try undoing the poop trail once they have been started.  It is basically the toddler equivalent of dropping the f-bomb, only someone is going to laugh everyone time.  Oh, poop.  Next up:  Fart.

It snowded.  We sledded.  We made cookies. Dad snow-blew.  The winter is really here!  (Be careful what you wish for…)

 What’s it like to have two kids, one 3 and one 9, in the Winter?  Allow me to illustrate:

• 7:30 PM – Take 3-year old to bed to read and fall asleep.
• 7:45 PM – Books complete.  Lights turned out.  Must lay down with him to get him to sleep.
• 7:55 PM  – Try to walk out quietly.  He screams.  You close the door.  “Nitey Night!”
• 8:00-8:15 PM – 3-year opens the door to leave room.  You say “It’s bed-time!  Get back in there!”  He goes in.  He comes out.  “Go to bed!”  He goes back in again.  Repeat ad nauseum.
• 8:16 PM – Lay down with him again.  You fall asleep.
• 8:30 PM – 9 year old comes to bed.  Insists your wife lay next to her for a minute.
• 12 PM – You wake up in your 3 year old’s room and sneak out to your marital bed.  Except it’s empty, because she fell asleep in the other bed.
• 12:10 – Wife joins you in marital bed.
• 3:00 AM – Papers are delivered.  Dog barks.  Daughter wakes up and climbs in bed with you two.  Whatever.
• 3:30 AM –  Son comes into bed.  Kicks you repeatedly until 5 AM.
• 5:00 AM – The alarm rings, playing your disco CD selection “Get Up And Boogie”.  A new day begins.

If you’re my age you grew up with Steve Martin, watch him on SNL, had all his comedy records which you can quote verbatim, read and enjoyed SHOPGIRL, and are actually pleasantly surprised to see he’s kept a career playing in kid’s movies like CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN.  So it’s really nice to see he has an autobiography out, called BORN STANDING UP, that goes into extensive detail about just how Steve Martin became Steve Martin.

There are two great things about this book.  The first is that, unlike, say, Elvis Costello, his does not come across full of mock humility (“I made this little album you may have heard called IMPERIAL BEDROOM..”), nor is he as temperamental and self-involved as say, Rip Torn, who once dismissed an interviewer who had not seen his bit part in TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT by saying “Aaah, you’re not familiar with my work…” Instead, he’s very, very straightforward.  I tried this, it didn’t work.  I tried this.  It still didn’t work.  I was clueless…  I was lucky…

The other best thing is that you really get an excellent sense of just how much hard work it took for him to find his comic groove and become successful.  Twelve to fifteen years of really hard, very soul-searching work.  I think this would be an excellent book for a young actors/musician/comic to read so they understand just what is involved in to become suddenly “famous”.

Plus, it’s got some very funny lines, like this one from Johnny Carson:   ”I announced to the press that I’m working on my autobiography.  Already four publishers have run off to copyright the title “Cold and Aloof.”  Ba-bump!

This is weird.  I got an email from someone wanting to advertise (!) on this site (!) on certain pages, mostly mentioning technology.  They wanted to pay a decent amount of money per link, with no strings attached, and the ads are labelled as such.    Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I tried to reason with them.  I said look, who reads this blog besides my ex-girlfriends and the involuntarily incarcerated?  However, they would not take “No” for an answer, and I found the experient kind of interesting. (And no, they’re not porn links).  Anyway, call me Judas, call me a Benedict Arnold…call me anything but late for dinner, which is where I’ll be taking my wife to with this bizarre windfall.  Enjoy, and remember…you knew me back when money was the root of all evil!

 You know, before I had children, I would visit the homes of people with children and say (to myself, mind you) “What on Earth…can’t these people keep it together long enough to get this place picked up?” and I would politely move a toy or a blanket and find a place to sit on the stained couch, and mentally tut tut, and should my wife and I lay in bed and discuss having children, we would quietly acknowledge (to ourselves, mind you) that we wouldn’t be like that, that we were already so organized that, with a just a little extra thought and time, of coursewe could keep things cleaned up.  We would be busier, of course, but it would just take some time and ingenuity.  I mean, look at the Ikea catalogs!

Then we had a kid.  We got a bigger house for “the space”.  Then, several years later, another kid.

Now we are doomed.

How have things changed?  Let me give you an example.  Our house has a nice room off the main entryway which we call “the office.”  It has a PC, and books, and recipes.  And a closet full of coats.  And four bags of shoes of various sizes.  And a box of pool toys.  And some candles.  And a sewing machine, I think.  And four boxes of unsorted PTA materials.  And diapers.  And undeveloped camera film from two years ago.  And some mis-matched winter clothes.  And my daughter’s cello and music stand.  And some boxes of uninstalled under-cabinet lights.  You know–from Ikea.  And this is just one room.  Whose door normally remains closed to visitors.

The thing is, once you are married, and once you have the kids, and when you both work, and and you volunteer at the Girl Scouts and PTA, and when you finally, finally, finally get five or ten minutes or two hours to be alone and do whatever you want… Well, I’ve gotta be honest with you.  De-clutterizing has moved down on the list.  Talking is nice.  A drink is good.  Canoodling is good.  Watching a grow up show on Tivo for 30 mins before bed, then canoodling…  That’s like–the big time!  De-clutterizing..well, we’ll get to it.  On the week off.

But you know what–I just had a week off.  And I was under the weather.  And I had to pick up the kids from school.  And balance my checkbook.  And I even read a book.  And the clutter is still there.  But I’ll get to over the Christmas break.  Really!  Just…gimmee a minute to find the battery for my son’s new Batman toy, and clean the ashes from the fireplace, and to TiVo the new iCarly show for my 9-year old, and…