Entry 813: Father's Day 2026

I have the house to myself on this Father's Day 2026. S is riding with another mom to take Lil' S2 and a few of his pals to sleepaway camp, and Lil' S1 is spending the day at a cabin or a farm or something like that. The parents of one of his friends from school rented a house in a rural area and welcomed some other folks to join them. They actually invited our entire family, and I suspect we would have all gone if today wasn't also check-in day for Lil' S2's camp. But I didn't really want to go without S, so we arranged for another family to take Lil' S1 with them.

It was a tough call on my part. I certainly didn't love the idea of spending an entire day out in the boonies with people I barely know (especially with an entire day to myself as the alternative), but I also don't want to be the dude who grows old and withers away in his mancave with no friends around, because he didn't cultivate any new relationships when he had the chance. And I know I'm not good at taking the initiative to plan social events, so, as a general principle, I try to not turn down invitations. But there are exceptions, and those exceptions apparently including making small talk for hours on end while Lil' S1 leads a D&D campaign in the other room. So, I decided I would leave it up to Lil' S1. I laid out three scenarios and presented each of them neutrally, so as to not influence his choice: 1) neither of us go; 2) we both go; 3) just he goes. He immediately picked 3. It was so quick, in fact, that I would have been offended if that wasn't the answer I was hoping for.

Setting aside my own preferences for a minute, he's at a tricky age where it's not at all obvious, as a parent, what events you should and should not attend with him. Young teenagers pretty much always act as if they don't want their folks around--and they often say as much--but sometimes they really do want you there, or at least they appreciate that you are there. And then even if they genuinely don't want you there, is it something that you still need to go to for supervision? That's a consideration also. Lil' S1 and his friends are pretty independent, which is wonderful, and they also have access to an extensive public transportation system, which is also wonderful, but they aren't quite old enough to do everything they want and go everywhere they want without a chaperone at least in the vicinity. This becomes especially apparent when Lil' S1 tells us he is going to go somewhere, and we have a conversation much like the following.

Lil' S1: Hey, I'm going to [event] with [friends].
Us: Okay, well, how are you getting there.
Lil' S1: Metro.
Us: What stop is the event on?
Lil' S1: I'm not sure exactly yet.
Us: Okay, well, what time are you going?
Lil' S1: [Friend] is coming over here at 1:00, and then we are going to go and meet [other friend].
Us: 1:00? You know it's 12:30  now, right?
Lil' S1: Yes.
Us: And [friend] is coming over here, right now, even though the place you are going is the exact opposite direction for him as our house?
Lil' S1: Yes.
Us: Okay, where and when are you meeting [other friend].
Lil' S1: Not sure exactly. We'll text each other.
Us: You know phones don't always get service on the Metro, right? Do you have a backup plan if you can't get a hold of each other?
Lil' S1: No
Us: And don't forget, you have [some other obligation] at 3:00. Are you going to be able to do all this and get home in two hours?
Lil' S1: Yes.
Us: And your friends' parents, they're all okay with this?
Lil' S1: Yes, they all already said it's okay.
[*Buzz, buzz* Text from other parents]: Hey do you guys have any idea what's going with [event]? Apparently they are supposed to meet in a half hour, and this is the first I'm hearing of it lol.

And scene...

In other news, we are on the final episode of Modern Family, which means we are going to need a new sitcom to watch pretty soon as a family. Overall, it was a good series, but like almost every TV show I've ever seen that was more than like five seasons, it drastically dropped in quality in its latter half. In fact, I can pinpoint the moment I realized that it had completely jumped the shark, or should I say, moved the piano.

Season 9, Episode 15: Cam and Mitchell are throwing a party at their house to celebrate Mitchell's new job as a high-pay, high-power attorney for a well-known billionaire. To rub their newfound success in their friends' faces a little bit, they buy a piano for their living room. Midway through the party, however, they learn that Mitchell's new boss was involved in fraud or something like that, and so Mitchell doesn't have the job anymore. They don't want their friends to know this, so Cam takes all their phones under the pretense of being more present in the moment. They also can no longer afford the piano, so they want to return it, but they can only get their money back if they return it that very day. So, Cam lures all their friends into the bathroom and takes the handle off the door, which somehow "accidentally" locks them in. Then, the next scene, as they "fix" the lock and all their friends come out, the piano is gone, and in its place is a stack of boxes under a giant blanket in the shape of a piano.

What...?

How did that happen? How long were their friends locked in the bathroom? The piano movers weren't even there yet, and it would take several people at least like an hour to move this thing once they arrived. Then it would probably take another hour or so to find and move all the boxes to set up the fake piano after they left. How long are we supposed to believe this group of people were trapped in a small bathroom (and what kind of psychos would lock people up like this)? At some point, the detainees are climbing out the window or forcing the door open. And also how could they possibly move a piano and a bunch of boxes without somebody in the bathroom hearing what is going on? The bathroom is adjacent to the living room. A normal bathroom door could not come close to stifling such sounds. 

Then, to make things even more inane, after the are let friends out, they all ask Cam to play something on the piano, so he pretends that his electronic keyboard is the piano keys and plays with the blanket still on. Amazingly, nobody peeked under the blanket or wondered why his playing sounded like an electronic keyboard and not an actual piano. The whole thing is a set up for Mitchell's sister Claire to lie on the fake piano, jazz singer style, and fall through the boxes thus revealing the whole charade, and that is kinda funny, I guess, but you can set that up so much better. The whole thing is so stupid, and not in a funny stupid comedy type of way, but in an I actually feel like watching this has made me stupider type of way.

The thing is, obviously you have to suspend your disbelief with any work of fiction, but you also have to be able to relate to what's going on. "It's funny because it's true" is a comedy cliché for a reason, and it's especially resonant for a show in which sympathizing with the characters is the main source of the comedy. Phil and Claire talking to their hot divorcee neighbor--funny! Phil and his father flipping their car--not very funny!

Although, that latter scene did send me down a Fred Willard rabbit hole. His character dies at the end of the episode, and it seemed the writers shoehorned it in, which made me wonder if it's because he died in real life, and I think that's what happened, as the dates seem to line up. Then I started reading Willard's list of TV appearances, and it is insane how many small-to-medium-ish parts this guy played throughout his career. He might be up there for greatest TV character actor of all time. Here's a list of shows he was on that is about a fifth of the size of the one on his Wikipedia page, as I'm omitting shows I've never heard of. It also doesn't include any of his movie roles (e.g., This is Spinal Tap, Best in Show)

• The Bob Newhart Show
• Laverne & Shirley
• SNL
• The Love Boat
• SCTV
• Trapper John, M.D.
• The Golden Girls
• Married... with Children
• The Ben Stiller Show
• Family Matters
• Murphy Brown
• Roseanne
• Friends
• Clueless
• Sister, Sister
• Lois & Clark
• Saved by the Bell
• Muppets Tonight
• The Weird Al Show
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch
• Two Guys and a Girl
• Mad About You
• The Simpsons
• Just Shoot Me!
• Ladies Man
• The Hughleys
• Ally McBeal
• Undeclared
• King of the Hull
• Hey Arnold!
• Family Guy 
• That '70s Show
• Everybody Loves Raymond
• The Drew Carey Show
• The Batman
• The Boondocks
• Everybody Hates Chris
• Wizards of Waverly Place
• Modern Family
• Castle
• Important Things with Demetri Martin 
• Chuck
• Funny or Die Presents
• The Closer
• Raising Hope
• Hot in Cleveland
• The Cleveland Show
• Community
• New Girl
• I Think You Should Leave
• Space Force 

That is a ridiculous résumé. I'm more than six years late on this, but RIP Fred Willard, you were a national treasure.*

Well, that's all for now. Happy Father's Day to those who celebrate fake holidays.

Until next time...

*He was also in something called Easy to Assemble, a web series featuring Illeana Douglas sponsored by Ikea... WTF?! Jeff Goldblum and Keanu Reaves were also in it... double WTF?!  

Entry 812: Winters, They Will Come And They Will Go

I've been having cotton candy dreams lately. That's my term for dreams that are super intense and slightly unsettling, the type that require you to recenter yourself for a few minutes after you wake up. They aren't nightmares necessarily, but they aren't sunshine and lollipops either (despite being called cotton candy dreams). They're not like watching a horror movie, but rather a really well-made thriller. Scratch that, they're like being in a really well-made thriller. But one that doesn't make sense. They're like being in a David Lynch movie.

I call them cotton candy dreams because once on a podcast a guy was talking about his friend who was on medication, and this friend found that if he ate a certain brand of cotton candy, he could only ever find at CVS, right before he went to sleep, it interacted with his medication in a such a way that it would give him the wildest, most intense dreams. For some reason, this little anecdote has always stuck with me (it could have been the part that CVS sells cotton candy and that a grown man buys it--that sounds utterly disgusting to me), and since then I've referred to such dreams as cotton candy dreams.

I don't have cotton candy dreams often, but the past week, I've had them nearly every night for some reason. One through line is that there is almost always a celebrity involved, and in my dream I'm friends with this celebrity, and then when I wake up, it's always a bit of a letdown that I'm not actually friends with them. (Most recently it was Larry David, surely because they showed him so much during the broadcast of the last Knicks-Spurs game.) Another through line is that I live in a shitty place. That's my version of the "naked in public" anxiety dream. I live in some overcrowded group house or dingy studio apartment, and then when I wake up it's a relief to be in my king-size bed next to my lovely wife, in my beautiful house, in my nice neighborhood.

Anyway... speaking of dreams, I've mentioned before that I think "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac is basically a perfect song. So, I was pleased that the choir at Lil' S1's school sang it during his "moving up" ceremony. I did wonder, however, when they started it, if the subject matter was appropriate for a middle school graduation, you know, being about a man who wants to exit his current relationship so that he can philander more. However, the choir director anticipated such misgivings and changed the lyrics to something more apt for the occasion, so "women, they will come and they will go" became "winters, they will come and they will go." To which I say, well done, choir director.

It was a fine ceremony overall, even though I got to it late. I had to go into the office that day, and it's a bear to get from my office back to DC anytime from like 3pm to 7pm (which is why I usually go to the gym for a few hours after work). Also, the thing I most had/wanted to do in the office didn't start until 4pm and the doors for commencement at Lil' S1's school closed at 6:30pm. I gave myself what I thought was ample leeway, leaving so that my expected arrival time was 6:10 (accounting for traffic), but it wasn't good enough. At some point along the way, my ETA jumped from 6:10 to 6:23 to 6:32 in the span of about 30 seconds.

By the time I final got to the theater, it was 6:35, and the first speech was under way. I waited for it end, and then I slipped in and sat in the first open seat I saw. I quickly realized I was in a special section reserved for faculty, which is why a seat was available so close to the stage. Nobody seemed to mind, but I felt awkward, so between each speaker/performance I tried to find where S was sitting with her sister and Lil' S2. Surely, they had saved me a seat, right? But where were they? I could not spot them, even though it's a relatively small theater. So, I just sat in the faculty section the entire time, trying not to feel weird about it. I was cursing S in my head for not saving me a seat and sending me a text saying where they were sitting, but she actually did do that, but the text didn't go through until much later in the night for some reason. The highlight of the ceremony for me was Lil' S1 reading a funny poem he wrote. It was a pleasant surprise, as he didn't mention it to either S or me beforehand.

Alright, I'm just about out of time, but let's do a quick lightning round before I go.

• I seem to have successfully gotten rid of the houseflies on our deck... for now. They will probably come back at some point, but I haven't seen one in weeks. I've seen other gnats and midges (which I spray down immediately lest they grow into something bigger), but no houseflies. Knock on wood.
  
  
• But not all is good with our deck. There is a leak in the ceiling now. I got up on the roof today to see if I could find the source, and immediately it was like, There's no way I'm finding this damn thing. The entire outer layer of the roof is full of cracks and splits, and it's impossible to know which one exactly is leading to the leak. I did however notice that the leak is by the skylight, so I bought some waterproof sealing tape, and covered up the edges of the skylight. Will it work? Maybe, maybe not, but for $17 plus an hour or my time, it's worth a shot.
  
  
• We got rid of our trampoline today. It's the end of an era, but, now that I think of it, it was a bad era (we bought it at the beginning of the Covid shutdowns), so maybe it's good ju-ju to get rid of it. It was time. The thing was falling apart, and it made me super nervous, safety-wise. The protective netting tore to shreds over the years, and I couldn't figure out the right replacement, so the new one didn't fit right and was constantly falling off. Then we kept losing springs. When I saw some six-year-old neighborhood girl I didn't know bouncing on it, I was like, Yeah, we're gonna get sued if I don't get rid of that thing. So, I broke it all down by hand, wrapped up the piping and springs in the jumping mat, tied it off and dragged it out to the front curb for bulk trash pickup. It was a bitch. It took me like four hours, and I was drench in sweat and my hands were sore and blistered when I was done (for some reason I didn't think to put on gloves until I was like 75% of the way through). But it's gone now, so mission accomplished.

Until next time... 

Entry 811: Repeat Champions... Not!

It's the 5th-grade flag football league title game. The Seahawks are trying to repeat as champions. They have the ball, down three, at the 40-yard line (which is actually about 20 yards from the end zone). There are a mere 15 seconds on the clock. The Seahawks coach (aka me) calls the play. Seahawks QB Lil' S2 takes the snap and scans the field. He fires the ball to his buddy and main receiver Z running a crosser. Z makes the catch! He snakes his way past some defenders, across the goal line! Touchdown! Seahawks take the lead with mere seconds remaining! They will be back-to-back champions!

But wait... the referee throws his penalty marker. It's a flag-guarding infraction on Z.* No touchdown and a ten-second run-off of the clock. The game is over. The Seahawks lose. Many players on the team break down in tears. The coaches shake their heads and mutter curse words under their breaths, wondering what on Earth would possess a referee to call that ticky-tack bullshit on the final frickin' play of the championship.

*Flag-guarding, if you're unfamiliar with the rules of flag football, is when the ball-carrier uses their arms to block the defenders from pulling the flag. Usually, it's not called, especially at this level, unless the player intentionally and obviously uses a chopping motion to deflect the defender's hand, which, I will point out, Z did not do. I think he was holding the ball kinda low, but he always does that and almost never gets called for flag-guarding. This was the type of thing, where if the ref doesn't call a penalty, nobody thinks anything of it. I don't think flag-guarding was even on the mind of anybody on either side of the field until the ref threw the flag.

So went my Sunday evening. It was such a gut punch, and I'm legitimately bummed about it. I know it's just elementary school rec football, but that doesn't mean you can't care. It's good to care. Caring is where all the satisfaction and fun and personal growth comes from. I'm glad I still care about things. One of the biggest downsides of growing up as a Gen Xer was getting pummeled with the notion that it's uncool to care. Nothing could be further from the truth. Caring is the best. So, yeah, you can care about winning and losing in kids sports. 

You just can't be a psycho about it. But I'm not. I never am, and I wasn't in this instance. I didn't say a word to the referee; I didn't gesticulate in an aggrieved manner; I didn't even do that thing coaches sometimes do, where they complain to other parents on their sideline, but in such a loud manner that, in effect, they are complaining to everybody at the game, including the referees. I did none of that. I took my place in the high-five line, congratulated the players on the other team and their coaches, and then sat down my team and gave them a short talk. I told them that they just didn't get the call. That's it. They did enough win, and probably should have won, but the call went against them. It doesn't take away from how well they played in the game--all season, really--and they should all be proud.

I don't know how much solace they took in that. But one of the dad's from the other team came up to me, and said he thought I said the right things to the kids. He also said it was a bad call and that he wished there was a way we could have had one more play to decide things in a noncontroversial manner. I appreciated that especially since there was no reason for him to say anything to me at all. It's not like we were sitting next to each other at a dinner party. I had no idea who he was. He just started talking to me. But it was really cool of him to do that. 

Lil' S2 took it hard.* He was sobbing after the game, and he rode home with S (we had to drive separately), presumably because she's the more comforting of us two. He already got his "life lesson" spiel from me and probably just wanted some unconditional sympathy from his mom. He played really well though. They hold the semifinal and final on the same day in this league, so we had two games, and he was almost perfect on the day. We had two QBs, but one recently broke his finger, so Lil' S2 had to take every snap for us, and he was throwing dots. In the first game, we ended every possession we had with a touchdown pass. In the second game, he threw a bad pick-six at the end of the first half (his one big mistake) and put us behind the 8-ball, but we battled back, and he threw the go-ahead touchdown with 1:10 left on the clock, and then after they quickly scored to retake the lead, he immediately drove us downfield and threw the aforementioned nullified game-winner. It was cool and very reminiscent of Kurt Warner in Super Bowl XLIII.

*He seems fine now, though. One of his buddies who's also on the team came over, and they seemed to be happily playing video games when I peeked through the ajar door to check on them. That's one nice thing about kids: They heal quickly and not just physically.

So, I'm sad we lost, but it certainly went better than our baseball playoffs. We got thumped 15-4, and it was somehow less competitive than the score indicates. Lil' S2 had a terrible game, with two strikeouts in two plate appearances (is it worth mentioning he fouled off a few pitches? probably not, but I did it anyway) and a quasi-drop in right field (it wasn't an easy play, but a decent little leaguer makes the catch). After the drubbing, Lil' S2 said he wished he had "skipped the game," and proclaimed that he didn't want to play baseball next season. Fine with me, but he also said that last year. So, we shall see.

Alright, that's all for today. Just an update on flag football that literally nobody wanted. But I needed to get that all out there. Thanks for being my sounding board.

Until next time...