greeting from a jam packed american airlines 767. flight 118. we are rocking the brand new gogo wi-fi service, 35,000 feet over the midwest, steaming towards new york and the end of the year.
thanks to that post, we managed to pull a few more loyal Metz fans onto the bandwagon. if you're one of these very lucky and wise people, i want to welcome you to the family with your very own copy of this year's Moe Berg family holiday card. glad to have you aboard.
ok...lame recap...reveal of the holiday card...
...now what?
what about 2009?
what about it?
well, if 08 has taught me one thing, it's count on nothing. make no plans. just stay on your toes, do your thing and hope for the best.
which is why all i hope for 2009 is the ability to keep on doing my thing with my crew. provided this plane lands safely at jfk two hours from now.
---
thanks to the usual jam packed new york/new jersey schedule, posting may be light until after the first of the year. or it may not be.
feel free to check me on twitter - which i still don't think i'm using properly - until we get into the swing around here.
and until then, have a safe, fun, healthy, happy, prosperous, peaceful new year.
they were born 7 years ago tonight, each one smaller than a sandwich.
i think these are pictures of jb and ab. honestly, though, i can't even tell anymore.
tonight, 25 of their animal-loud, videogame-and-mini-golf-fueled friends finally helped wash away whatever lingering sentiment i still associate with the night they were born.
my sons are no longer nicu preemies gone good. they are essential members of a 1st grade mob meticulously assembled in hell by the half-breed demon spawn of al capone and satan himself.
and we're more than half way to their bar mitzvah.
many of the world's most enduring catchphrases weren't ever actually said by the people who are known for supposedly saying them.
regardless, noted impressionists from rich little to fred travalena to frank gorshin (god rest his weary soul) have fed their families and paid their staff by leaning on these phantom but familiar sounding lines.
to wit:
cary grant never ever said "judy, judy, judy".
william shatner went his entire star trek career without actually reading the line "beam me up, scotty".
and james cagney didn't ever once utter the words "oooh...you dirty rat!" on film.
please keep this in mind when you hear my son ab's impersonation of me, which he debuted last night and consists solely of a scrunched face, a lowered voice and the five words "i would like that food".
"so?" you ask with great interest, "what does the fact that the economic ground is cracking beneath my old, shredded, wonderbread bag shoes have to do with the fact that i'm down with the pig?"
"listen up, shithead," i say with off-putting contempt, "i'm getting to that. and try to take a shower once in a while. you should be ashamed of yourself."
what if i told you that you could have a satisfying, delicious, stomach-warming, artery-packing Bacon Breakfast for mere pennies? and you would only have to deal with one or two hippies at the most?
you'd tell me that you were breaking out your finest bib.
here's how it works.
1) go to whole foods before 9 am or so
yeah, i know, i know.
"moe, i can't go to whole foods! that place is very expensive! the hand picked organic peruvian albino avocados are, like, four bucks each! and don't get me started on the luxuriousness of having both an olive and a cheese bar! plus, i drank all that cough syrup. i'll never get up before noon!"
are you done?
seriously. are you done? are you finished yet? do you want bacon or do you want to complain?
ahem.
where were we?
1) go to whole foods before 9 am or so
2) enter the establishment
3) walk towards the serve yourself hot food bar
4) try not to get caught staring at the hot moms and fresh-faced co-ed cashiers
(step 4 is applicable only to men and lesbians.)
5) find the little cardboard boxes
6) find the bacon
7) put 7 or 8 strips of bacon in the box. this should be more than enough to satisfy even the most pork grease-addicted lardass
8) look for the most alluring cashier
9) have this cashier weigh the box and ring you up
10) pick your jaw up off the floor as your Grand Bacon Total is calculated at...
...less than 20 cents!
11) get in your car, take off your shoes, loosen your belt, turn up the radio, and munch that bacon as you drive to the unemployment office to apply for benefits
economical, atkins-friendly and tasty.
those are three terms we don't throw around here at the Metz very often. but i'm willing to bet you a can of soup that after you set my plan in action, you're going to get those three words tattooed somewhere between your navel and your knees.
first thing's first. i love everything there is to love about my boy bb.
he's adorable, sweet, fulfilling, entertaining, heartwarming, blah blah blah blah right down the baby powder scented line until you get to the fact that he's a little more than 5 years (i think) younger than his brothers. he may run around the house clutching his wii remote muttering "madd'n, madd'n" under his breath while he tries to keep up with his role models as they play handball in their room, but he's still just a bite sized toddler who's asylum mad for muppets. why should he miss out on an important formative live entertainment experience just because his parents have already been nailed to the cross in front of hooper's store and managed to climb down once already?
that's the question i kept asking myself as we sat in the 30% of the pasadena playhouse that actually had asses in the seats.
the lights went down. my boy lit up.
mrs b and i rolled with it.
the only things that made things tolerable were
1) watching bb enjoy himself so much
2) looking around at the other parents who, to a person, were completely ignoring the show onstage and just staring at their beaming children. men women and children lost together in rapturous adoration but for completely different reasons and looking in totally different directions
and
3) sitting there wondering what must be going on in the mind of this woman
she played "jenny", the only non muppet member of the ensemble cast. it was her job to move the story along. the motivation, if you will.
as in...she's a music teacher who moves to sesame street, only the moving trucks haven't arrived with her instruments yet, which upsets her, so a helpful crew made up of your child's favorite characters prepare a musical show for her without her knowledge.
the good news is that this woman is a working actress.
the bad news is that she's acting opposite a cast of silent co-stars over pantomiming their portion of the pre-recorded dialogue while wearing slighty ratty looking fursuits.
the terrible news is that she is forced to sing an emotional solo number in the first act called "music is my life" wherein the rest of the cast gets to go backstage, take off their giant heads and cool down for a while while she stands there in the spotlight belting it out to an audience of children who literally begin to cry and scream in abject frustration and open revolt the instant they notice that there are no muppets onstage with her.
bb cried the loudest.
and just in case there was any question at all whether we were gathered for art or commerce, i present to you the balloons they trotted out to the edge of the stage in full view of all the children when the lights came up for intermission...
by the time i took that picture, a full 50% of that clump had already been spoken for at 8 bucks a pop.
kvetch though i might now, as the curtain fell on jenny and elmo and the rest of the crew, my wife and i had accomplished two important things. we made bb about as happy as a boy can be. and we endured something we never ever ever have to do again thank the sweet sweet lord in high holy heaven above praised be his name.
preparing a successful thanksgiving dinner when you don't really cook at all is no small feat.
the only thing to which i can really compare it would be handing the ball to an unproven rookie for the 7th game of the world series. a rookie who has never basted a turkey before and goes no deeper into the spice rack than garlic powder.
a rookie named mrs b.
this year, with the loss of the family's most gifted poultry chef and carbohydrate procurer, the pressure to step up and deliver some great tasting vittles was higher than ever. especially when it came to feeding my old man, a fellow who has, over the years, become, shall we say, comfortably accustomed to the manner in which my mother prepared things. born without a middle name, he happily added "Routine" to his birth certificate sometime in the early 70s. didn't get the right cranberry sauce? palpitations. goyishe gravy? agita. 7 layer cake sliced improperly? break out the paxil.
this year, there was no hiding his concern as we got closer and closer to meal time, especially as he eyed what was being prepared.
hmm. sourdough bread in the stuffing? carol didn't ever make stuffing with sourdough. oh, and there's rye bread in there also? and celery! what do you know? what's that? bourbon and pecans in the sweet potatoes? fine, i guess, if that's how you do it around here. and sauteed string beans & mushrooms...ok...ok...breathe, kenny, breathe...
a few hours before the carving hour, the phone rang. it was my aunt debbie, my father's sister, the cook i imagine he'd choose as his next favorite if he were ever to have to prepare a line of culinary succession after my mom, calling to wish us all a happy holiday. when she asked to speak to my wife, my father sweetly mentioned as he passed her the phone that aunt debbie happened to be a great cook. as in "if you have any last minute questions, about how to cook it the way i like it, now's the time."
before i go on, i want to mention that, while it may sound like my dad was being a jerk, he really wasn't.
first off, you should know that for his whole life, food has been a comfort to him. when he was a kid, he was always happiest when he was eating with his family. years later, as an adult with a young family, he impressed upon us that we should always take time to sit and eat together as often as we could.
thus, like most jews, he believes that food = love.
that's pure turkey skin, folks
and now that the source of his food for the past 40 years has been taken from him well before her time, lord knows he's entitled to feel a a little uneasy about the other part of the equation. here we have a man venturing out into new territory, both culinary and otherwise, for the first time in decades, concerned about what he might find. would his new life as a widower be full of disappointing meals that would make him miss his beloved wife even more? would his cherished daughter-in-law muster the chops to rise to the occasion and feed him the way he was used to being fed? or would he be forced to write off her kitchen skills forever? how would it all play out?
i am happy to report that it played out perfectly.
mrs b cooked the shit out of that bird and all the other stuff in the bowls surrounding it.
and while ken b may not have gotten the menu my mother would have cooked for him, from bite one, there was no mistaking that this spread would more than do and will continue to do for the years to come.
take a bow, mrs b.
mom would have been more than proud of the daughter she never had...
...even as she felt the stinging burn of shame over her youngest son's decision to sexually assault the turkey you worked so hard to cook.
(feel free to add all the stuffing jokes you want in the comments.)
when you're young, you think you're going to be forever blessed.
case in point...
backup shooting guard, united rice packing. fourth grade.
and, of course, who can forget
backup midfielder, lewis village under 16 soccer?
yes, once upon a time, i had Mighty Ringlets. proudly conditioned with Aussie 5 minute miracle, airdried and picked out each morning to maximum sproing. worn both with and without a home made headband. (mostly without, thank god.)
it was a blessing and a curse. old ladies alternately complimented me on my shiny tendrils and mistook me for a girl. the shampoo bills strained my parents' budget.
but i'd be lying if i said i wasn't happy with what i had.
and then one day, one dark day, my Shirley Temple Head up and disappeared. almost overnight, it settled into a sort of a clump.
don't get me wrong, though. there was movement. slowly, slowly, slowly things began to retreat in the power alleys just above my temples. my already sizable forehead decided to stake bolder new claims closer and closer to the top of my bean.
and then, almost as suddenly, things settled quietly into a holding pattern. as in the same hair levels and same cut - regardless of stylist - for years and years. as you can see when you compare these two photos, one taken when the boys were born in december 2001 and one screwing around with bb in july of this year, things are basically the same.
i mean, these days, i look like a bitter old man with cobwebs where his insides should be - but from the eyes up, things have basically been holding the same ground.
until recently.
recently, whether i've been basking in post-haircut bliss or overgrown shag, there's been a constant source of concern.
the fact that you can see through the muff to my scalp.
brutal, but true.
i'm a big boy. i dealt with it. i modified the manner in which i applied my murray's pomade. i twisted. i patted.
eventually, when i realized that i had fallen into a pattern of pomade application that included a modified combover up front, i decided to throw in the towel and undergo a bold experiment.
a co-worker had the clippers. i had the head. we came to an agreement. we would use the number 2 setting and i would see what we ended up with.
honestly? i kind of like it. i like the way it looks and i like the fact that, unlike a lot of guys who lean on the clippers, i don't really truly 100% need to do it just yet. i have the option of growing things back out.
but i don't think i'm going to.
the boys like it. the baby can't stop rubbing it. mrs b didn't yell at me. i've been told i look 10 years younger and 10 pounds lighter. and not by someone trying to sell me something.
so? now i need you to tell me what you think. honestly.
and not just about that totally fucking bizarre basketball picture. (but feel free.)
he left his beautiful red haired bride behind in brooklyn to risk his life healing the people who helped save the world in the hürtgen forest, at the battle of the bulge, and on the ludendorff railroad bridge at remagen.
then he came home and made my mom.
at ease, soldier.
and thanks. (and to the rest of you, how about chucking some love to pros vs gi joes, run by my friends the zinones? you want to talk about doing amazing work? shiiiiiiit.)
over the past few weeks, everyone's favorite alphabet addict, bb, has become absolutely artie-lange-style hooked on they might be giants' 'here come the abcs' cd and dvd.
and who are we to discourage him?
he loves the songs, he digs the visuals, and, most importantly, thanks in part to the multimedia alphabetic assault, he's got his letters down stone cold pat on the short side of two years old.
being the enablers that we are, and always out to encourage our children's intellectual growth, mrs b and i immediately decided to amazon up a copy of TMBG's abc follow-up, called - surprise - "here come the 123s".
to no one's shock, bb took to it like raisin takes to bran.
in watching the disc with the boy a couple of times, i began to take particular notice to a track dedicated to the number 1, called "one everything" - which, in addition to its simple lesson about the actual number itself, actually delivers a pretty deep philosophic message.
everything we experience is really just little parts of one big universal thing.
amazing.
what 19 year old me could only discover during a terrifying trip on laced mushrooms in my friend david's backyard can now be delivered to a todder in handy dandy jingle form as he sits on the family couch.
i thought going to the polls this morning as a family would be something a little more momentous than it ended up being.
(fast-forward 28 years. it is the day before election day. ab, jb and bb are sitting in a diner on long island. the three handsome brothers are sharing a great variety of different foods.)
ab: hey, jb and bb. remember when dad and mom took us with them to vote in 2008?
jb: yeah, that was great. that was a historic day.
bb: i was really young, so i don't remember much, but it was completely cool that they made it a point to get us involved on the day america elected its first black president.
jb: i can't wait to take my children tomorrow to vote for america's first robot president!
ab: yes, sir. bleepbloop/cyrus '36! we're making our own memories now!
jb: please pass the hummus, sushi, roasted peppers, steak, chocolate milk and matzoh ball soup so i can eat it all without retching or complaining.
(rewind back to present day)
while this may or may not be how it plays out far in the future, i will always remember the present for a few reasons.
today was not just the day i took my children to help elect america's first black president.
it was also the day bb threw a snot-bubbling shit fit just as we were handed our ballots after standing in line for 45 minutes behind the kind of self-satisfied overly sanctimonious obama voter that might normally cause me to get behind bob barr.
it was the day ab strolled through a big smelly rainwater puddle on our way to the polling place, soaking his left sneaker, sock and foot down to his calcaneus and talus.
it was the day jb had to restrain himself from gagging due to the scent of the room in the church nursery school where they set up the voting stations, a smell you find at the point on the venn diagram where wet dog, zoo and foot meet.
so much for romanticizing the present.
in the end, ab punched the ballot for barack, jb punched the ballot to preserve the marriage rights of homosexuals, bb was mollified by being given a pen and i saw the election of a man i find truly inspiring.
as someone with friends and family members whose political leanings are scattered across the proverbial landscape, i've tended to stay away from politicsonThe Metz.
not tonight.
call me naive, but tonight i am a happy, hopeful man who watched his sons help make history. the same two little boys (and their baby brother) who spent an entire election cycle watching the speeches and debates and all the other hot air along with their old man, never once thinking that the idea that a black man, or woman, or very very old person for that matter, was out of place as they fought for their spot in the white house.
in honor of halloween, how about we go with the good old trite and true handing out of TRICKS and TREATS for the first time ever here at The Metz? huh? hmmmm? how about it? what do you say? eh? question mark?
let's hand our first TREAT to jb - aka his class' skeleton student of the month.
an honor he has sought and deserved and, for some reason, known only to last year's kindergarten teacher, has been shut out from since the opening days of school. there isn't a kid alive who was more psyched to get that certificate and shake his principal's hand. and in a skeleton costume no less.
another TREAT goes to my man ab - who, in a halloween world full of indiana joneses, cowboys, draculas, and, yes, skeletons, decided to spend today dressed as a bottle of ketchup.
which would not have been possible without our next TREAT recipient, mrs. b - the woman who created ab's ketchup costume from scratch
and who spent the better part of 40 minutes helping me apply a bald skin wig tonight.
without her hard work and that wig, i could not have dressed up as Bald Best Buy Employee With A Mustache - something i've secretly always dreamt of being.
(cheer up, boys. your old man can get you an extended warranty for cheap!)
one last TREAT to the one and only bb - who had his mind blown when, for the first time in his life, people just gave him candy for no apparent reason. as payback, he blew their minds as the one of the world's most adorable mickey mice.
as for the other half of the equation...
a TRICK and a big fuck you to the house that left this bowl outside the front door.
i've got news for you, bub. nobody wants one piece of laffy taffy or pack of smarties, let alone two. your offerings are insulting and your threats are pathetic.
this post, this one right here, was sort of a tongue-in-cheek, woe-is-me laundry list of crappy things that my family and i rolled with over the course of a week or so. i posted it on august 15th.
in hindsight, it almost seems cute.
especially when you run down everything that has happened since.
this is who we lost on august 12th.
mrs. b's grandma. the boys' great grandma. loved three things in life. coffee, cigarettes and her family. not necessarily in that order.
this is who we lost on august 17th.
stuart.
the smiling guy in the middle of that photo. one of my parents' closest friends. a de facto uncle to my brother and me. went suddenly and way way way too soon with a glorious head of hair.
this is who we lost on september 14th.
my mom.
no description necessary.
this is who we lost this past saturday.
mrs. b's grandpa. the boys' great grandpa.
broke his leg falling out of bed less than two months after he lost his wife. never recovered from the surgery he needed to fix it. he's going to be buried next to grandma on tuesday. it would have been their 64th wedding anniversary.
after four stomach punches in 8 weeks, when i delivered the latest news to jb and ab yesterday morning, i felt the need to explain to them that this is not generally how life is. even if you're unlucky, you don't normally lose four people that you love one after the other like dominoes. especially when two of those people probably still have cards from their 60th birthdays somewhere in the house.
would it be naive to assume that, with no one left who's seriously ill or precipitiously old, that we may be out of the woods for at least a little while? naive or not, would it be too much to ask?
that said, if there's someone you'd like to get rid of before the end of the year, there's still time to introduce them to my family and me. as you can see, our Black Cloud references are impeccable.
today was mrs b's 35th birthday. in celebration of this momentus occasion, we did what we have done for the past two years on her special day. we went to ruby's diner - theboys' favorite "restaurant" - for a salty, grease-laden meal and the featured attraction, the ritual staff singing of ruby's corporate birthday song for the lucky lady of the family as she sits there with a labored, but ultimately sincere, smile, cheeks flecked with french fry oil.
you know the song. the one they chant like robots at chain restaurants when they bring out the free birthday sundae because singing the actual "happy birthday" song would make their corporate bosses liable for royalties to whoever it is that owns the publishing on that song. probably michael jackson.
now, as much as jb and ab love to subject their mother to being serenaded by a bunch of CSUN students dressed in 1940s era car hop whites, they still haven't grown the sack to actually let our lucky server know that it's their mom's birthday. what usually happens is the poor kid comes over, zits a-glistenin', he welcomes us to ruby's, and takes our orders while my sons glare at me with owl eyes while violently jabbing their heads in our waiter's direction to indicate that i shouldn't forget to break the news to him. there is much under-the-breath muttering of "dad. daaaaad. tell himmmmm."
and so i do.
and we sit. and we wait.
the boys' sandwiches disappear almost instantly. and when the last crumb is gone, that's when the impatient whimpers begin.
"when are they going to sing it?"
"dad, what's taking so long?"
"what the fuck is that retard doing back there?"
(ok, i'm paraphrasing on that last one.)
for the past two years, something like this has happened.
this year, as the meal was winding down, i noticed our man, alvero, pacing by the entrance to the kitchen, waiting for the sundae to be finished. that's usually the sign to get the blackberry ready to record another cherished and overpixelated family memory.
after a moment that seemed to last forever, alvaro got the ice cream and began to make his way to our table.
"this is it, guys," i told the boys, anticipating the celebration we were about to begin. "get ready!"
before i got all the words out of my mouth, alvero was tableside. solo. no crew. no song. no candle.
just a bowl of ice cream and his zits.
"here you go," was all he said as he placed the sundae in front of our beloved birthday girl. and he didn't say it with any melody in his voice.
the boys were devastated.
they wouldn't admit it, but we could tell.
to make it up to them, we let them play some rare midweek wii when we got home.
that was good.
with mile-wide grins on their faces, before the front door had even closed behind then, they signed on to the wii wireless network's mario cart channel to race against a few strangers from all corners of the globe.
one stranger's name was "assinvader".
that was bad.
when jb asked what an ass invader was, i told him the name was pronounced "asin vader". like darth vader's brother. probably a french guy.
anyhow, what i'm trying to say is that i love my wife.
i love her madly.
she's a good sport and a smart woman and a beautiful person and i'm lucky and blessed and words that are much more important than that to have ever met her. life has pitched a few storms our way lately, and there are more on the horizon, but the truth is that, no matter how bad it gets, she's the sunshine that keeps us all encouraged and warm.
i'm honored that she's put up with my nonsense for 1/3 of her life.
and i can't wait to fill out that fraction in the years to come.
some television producers have their names appear in the credits of high quality broadcasts like 60 minutes, the sopranos, 30 rock and louie anderson specials.
others find themselves behind the cameras while a family of drunken women entertain an intimate crowd of eight probable drug users by wrestling each other in a pile of heated shaving cream at a nightclub in el monte at 2 in the morning.
it's a living.
the truth is i'm definitely not complaining. i LOVE my relatively new post-american gladiators job. i am paid to be creative. i enjoy the type of responsibility for which i've been looking for a while. and if that wasn't enough, i get to exchange "can you believe we're doing this?" looks with people i respect and with whom i enjoy working immensely, as we stand together watching two brothers mix plastic buckets full of mud that will soon be slathered all over at least one of their sisters.
that said, i don't think i was prepared for what i would find when my co-workers and i left our hollywood offices the other night to shoot this as-yet-untitled sales presentation for what we believe will make a very compelling unscripted dramedy on any number of cable outlets, about the father of mud wrestling and how he and his extended family travel the backwaters of america getting muddy, creamy, oily and violent - both in and out of the ring.
oh, and that's "very compelling" as in "whoa. i just saw this bum pull a wet newspaper out of that trashcan and eat it."
among the amazing things i witnessed in el monte with my own two chocolate brown eyes...
a 6'3" wrestler - think equal parts robin byrd and big bird crossed with an old leather handbag - drink crown royal and coke until she vomited in the parking lot and passed out. but not before she drunkenly sauntered up to me where i stood, mumbled "you're so short i can do this", and mustered up the effort to swing her leg so it would rest on top of my head
a meth addict in polka dot chaps get her earring ripped out by her sister during an impromptu backstage brawl
an earnest and serious discussion about who makes the best lap dancee when it comes to the way they tip: truckers; farmers; or miners
i think in the end they decided was a three way tie.
