It's a rare one, this Friday night. I actually have some time to myself before 9:30. S is having drinks with some mom friends, and both the kids are at friends' houses. So, what do I do with this bonus time? Write a blog of course. Actually, I've been thinking that I need a TV show to get into. I'm thinking White Lotus. I've been meaning to watch it, and now season two is coming out soon, so it's good timing. S watched it and said she thinks I would like it. It's a Mike White project, and I watched Buck & Chuck fairly recently and thought it was bizarrely good, so I'll give White Lotus a shot. Maybe I'll watch an episode later tonight during my usual alone time. I was also thinking of finally getting into Mad Men. It's the only one of those big early "prestige TV" dramas that I've never seen.* But it feels so daunting to actually get into it. It's like, I missed that cultural train and there's not another one coming.
*There's kind of a "Big 4" of shows in this category: The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men.
The only show I've been watching of late is Love Is Blind, and it's pretty vapid. I mean, the vapidness is kinda the point. S likes those types of shows, and so it's something we can watch together. It's fine. I'll even go so far as to say I enjoy it, but it's only because I'm watching it with her. I assure you, I would never watch an episode on my own. Even now, mid-season, I'm not really that invested. If for some reason we couldn't finish the rest of the episodes, it wouldn't bother me in the least. I wouldn't even look up what happens online. If I never find out if Cole and Zanab actually got married, I'll still be able to die in peace.
And actually I have been watching one other show. The boys and I usually watch an episode or two of Bluey each night. It's a pretty good show -- very good by kids show standards. Sometimes -- often times, actually -- it gets too precious by half, but I suppose that's part of the charm. Interestingly, a bunch of the episodes actually get censored before they stream on Disney+. In fact, an entire opening sequence of an episode was removed because it centers on Bluey's dad Bandit possibly farting on her as he gets out of bed. I don't like that they change the writers' original work, but I do feel nostalgia for the time kids shows got censored for referencing bodily functions, instead of whatever Twitter is mad about this week.
Speaking of Twitter, ol' Elon has taken over, I guess. I really couldn't care less, and I don't get the freak out at all. Like, how could you make Twitter -- a cesspool of awfulness in its worst moments; an addictive, unproductive time-suck in its best -- any worse? Plus, I mostly agree with Musk's vision regarding what Twitter should be. I will say, life is slightly more pleasant without Trump being able to tweet, but he says he's not coming back anyway. That might not be true, but maybe it is -- who knows? That last thing I'll say is that if you invested a lot time and emotional capital into a soulless, mega-billions tech company that makes its money off of selling your data and forcing you see ads, then that's kinda on you. And if you fit this mold, getting off Twitter -- if that's really what you're going to do -- is probably a net positive in your life.
Actually, I'll say one more thing. Elon is a good example of what I was talking about in my last post about how Democrats are increasingly becoming incapable of building the coalitions needed to consistently win elections. He made an announcement a while back about how he was going to vote for Republicans in future elections because he felt Dems had become the party of "division and hate." This is extremely misguided, in my opinion -- I couldn't disagree with it more. But it is indicative of how the Democrats are losing voters by constantly making them feel judged and unwanted. The sentiment toward Elon should be "come back, we'll find come ground and work together," but instead it's "good riddance, douche." And the frustrating part is that it's not even the party leaders who are doing this. Many Democratic candidates seem to be reasonable people who want a broad coalition and don't want to engage in all this culture war stuff, but they can't escape their association with the nuttiness of left-wing media, social media, academia, and so on, that's become so prominent over the last five.
The reason I've become so critical of liberals is because we need a strong Democratic party to combat the derangement and danger of the Trumpist Republicans, which manifested itself recently in the form of a brutally attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband that was meant for her. The enablers of this type of violence -- the election deniers, the conspiracy theorists, the civil war agitators -- these people need to be roundly rejected at the ballot box, but they aren't, and part of the reason for that is that Dems have been so bad at branding and at focusing on things people most care about. And to be clear, the Reps aren't much better (if at all) at coalition building. When it comes to politics in this country, sometimes I feel like I'm watching that badminton match in which neither side is trying to win.
Anyway...
You might notice that this is not being posted Friday night despite me saying it's Friday night at the beginning of the entry. Shortly after I started writing, I got a message from Lil' S2's friend's dad asking if I could come get him. Well, he more implied than asked -- it was one of those "Looks like things are winding down here" texts. So I had to get him, and then I had to get Lil' S1 from his party, and I haven't been able to get back on to finish this post until now.
I guess Lil' S1 had an incident at the party. As I understand it, some kid was bothering him and trying to steal a cookie he was saving for Lil' S2, so Lil' S1 hit this kid, and then the kid's mom yelled at Lil' S1, even dropping an F-bomb. The mom later apologized to Lil' S1, and Lil' S1 apologized to the kid, and then the party went on as normal, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary when I went to pick him up. (The party host didn't tell me about the incident when I came to get him. She called S later. She told S it was too hectic to talk to me, but I think maybe she just felt more comfortable talking to S and not in person. Whatever. I don't mind.)
So many layers here to unravel. The first is that the adult needs to act like an adult. You shouldn't swear at a ten-year-old, especially it's not your child. That's a definite transgression in the parenting world. You can talk to them and tell to stop, but really laying into them and swearing at them is a no-no. (Ironically, in this case, the mom was modeling the exact behavior -- lack of self-discipline when responding to somebody you're angry with -- that she was mad about.) S, understandably, was quite upset about this. I was too, but not to the same extent. For one thing, I remember having adults who weren't my parents bitch me out when I was his age, and it sucks, but it's not like super traumatic. For another thing, we weren't there, so we don't know exactly how it all went down, and we don't know this mom, so unless we are going to get her number from the host and, like, settle her hash, which seems like it would only exacerbate things, there's not really much we can or should do about it now.
Then there's the other issue of Lil' S1 hitting this kid in the first place. He's been having problems with this, with not being able to get along with other kids. I can't even explain it. He's so sweet in so many ways, but he has this weird temper sometimes where he'll just start yelling at other kids or getting physical with them. It usually with kids who are younger than him, which makes it especially bad (he says the kid in this incident was his age or older, but we don't know for sure). It's to the point where if Lil' S2 has friends over, we have to tell Lil' S1 to just not play with them. I'm really hoping this is just an immaturity thing. He's still very much a "little kid" emotionally, and so maybe, probably, he'll grow out it.
The other thing is that he's not very big or strong physically, and I'm worried that one of these days he's going to do this to a kid who's tougher than him or has an older sibling, and they're going to fight back, and it's not going to go well for him. On the flip side of that though, I also don't want him to be a pushover. If some other kid is harassing him or trying to take his stuff, I want him to be able to stand up for himself. You can't always rely on adult intervention as a child. Like I said, layers, it's just a tough situation to navigate all around. We already have one kid in therapy, maybe we need to make it two.
Anyway, we are moving on to happier things like ghosts and monsters! Halloween is upon us. S and I went to a party last night. I dressed up as Walter White, and she donned a hazmat suit. It was a pretty decent costume pair -- not very topical, but easy without being a total cop out. We're taking the boys out trick-or-treating tomorrow night. It will be the first year that we split up. I'll take Lil' S2 with his friends and his friends' parents, and S will take Lil' S1 with his friends. I'm not sure if I'll wear my costume out. Without S to put things into context, I might just look like a guy in a pork pie hat.
Until next time...
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