A Charming Mother's Day Post

today for mother's day we all went to the la zoo.

bb loved chasing the goats and sheep.


ab was knocked out by the chimps.


jb thought the alligator was dynamite.


mrs. b admired the majesty of the flamingos.


i was sad to find out that zebras don't have striped weiners.


the end.

When You Hit The Ground Running

i have been sprung from the cage.

last night was the final night of production.


i celebrated by standing on a folding chair next to a 7 foot tall, 320 pound giant.

(it's kind of upsetting that he and i probably have the same waist size.)


from now own, all anonymous commenters will deal with him.

today, the star effing continued as i went down to my buddy's radio show to watch gavin degraw do his thing.





of course, in real life, photo ops with genetic freaks and private concerts by clive davis supported singer songwriters are the exception, not the rule. which is why tonight i was just as happy watching jb and ab get their baseball on at little league and then taking the whole crew out for a delicious dinner of hot dog weiners and fried taters as i was living the modified life of a demented riley for 12 hours.

Placeholder

70 hour workweeks have never been so much fun.

it's all working out - except for the 'have enough time and energy to post on the metz' part.

but that's only temporary.

in the meantime, if you want to see what your boy does for a living, peep this little time lapse clippy poo i made of an 11 hour run during yesterday's 14 hour day. if there's a better example of sitting at a plastic folding table in a converted locker room of an old sports arena and working alternated with wandering off to eat or talk to people, i've yet to see it.



keep your eyes peeled for a donut, a mini box of corn flakes, a lot of writing and my kids heads popping into the frame late in the afternoon. you may not be able to see it, but they were smiling the fuck out of their faces, kind of like i'm doing right now.

Contents Under Pressure

a little over a week ago, jb was the one who was sick.


he was the on-the-mend fever 'n' sniffles flu patient with whom our 10 out of town friends-who-are-so-close-they're-really-our-family-members were deathly afraid of coming in contact during their long weekend here. he was the one they all avoided, right down to the closing moments of our last-minute goodbye barbeque, held outdoors to better allow his putrid virus to disseminate into the air, away from the moist, innocent membranes of their uninfected lungs.

little did we all know that, as we isolated my dewy-eyed little boy, it was their youngest, the little angel-faced 18 month old who was The One Brewing The Germ.


(zat's true irony, folks.)

first l'il angel infected the deep crew with whom she was rolling. one by one, less than 12 hours later, they began to go pine green in the gills. some of them vomited in a local 7-11 parking lot on the way to the airport. others waited until their flight lifted off from lax bound for new york, kicking off what had to have been one of the most unpleasant airborne experiences since wilbur and orville first made kitty hawk famous.

one of them even - i hear through the grapevine - accidentally befouled their own bed. this is a vicious unconfirmed rumor, but after witnessing the true nature of this Infection Most Foul, i do believe it. i believe it as much i believe in ben and jerry themselves.


less than two days later, my youngest began to show signs. and by "began to show signs", i mean "produced pints of home-made sour cream in his crib at 3:45 in the morning. for three days in a row". it wasn't pretty and it didn't smell good.

then, it was mrs b's turn.

then the terrible baton passed to jb, who awoke suddenly around midnight, muttering nonsense over the monitor. when i went into his room to calm him, he started clawing desperately at my mouth, suffering through a fever dream in which, i would discover later, he was convinced i was trying to push him into a lake for some reason. i carried him into the kitchen for a bit of tylenol and calm, and he ended up vomiting into a glass bowl, snapping out of his trance just in time to gaze into this most terrible looking diorama, marveling wide-eyed and grinning at what he had created. "look," he said, "there's not much hot dog but there is a lot of lemonade."

then it was ab's turn.

in time, there was only one man left standing.

Your Boy.

now, i don't know if you've ever gone through your day knowing full well there's a bullet out there with your name on it, a bullet destined to strike without warning and without mercy, but i can assure you that you go through a lot of emotion. ultimately, though, you end up basically shouldering a feeling of resigned indignance.

come and get me, mothereffer. here i am.


(damn i wish i could think of the perfect picture to put here. i've been racking my brain for about an hour thinking of a movie in which someone goes down fighting or is the last man standing or something and i've thought of a few but in the end nothing i'm going to go with. feel free to add any suggestions in the comments, and make me feel dumb won't you?)

i began to hear the gallows being assembled saturday afternoon. i heard the crowd gathering in the town square.

but, unlike the rest of my family, i would not be taken quietly. i would be taken on my terms. i would be taken full of peanut butter cup frozen yogurt.

eventually, my time did come. but, thanks to my foresight and the suffering of those who went before me, when it did, it actually tasted pretty good and was, to my complete surprise, still quite cold.

and then it was over.

i got into bed with an empty tum tum, a massive headache and a fever and i rode it out for 24 hours.

my house is clean now.


but from here on out, i'm sleeping with one eye open. and i'm keeping a frozen yogurt coupon in my wallet at all times.

Yo Soy Santino

congratulations.

despite my best efforts, you're still here.

to me, it makes no difference whether you're a loyal reader giving me one last chance to make with the typee-typee or one of the many googlers out there looking for a little more information on patrick ewing's penis. i'm just happy to have you still sniffing around.


so where was i?

well, remember not too long ago, 'round september, when i was waxing philosophic about a new job i was starting and was oh so psyched about? yeah, anyway, not so much.

i gave notice there this past monday and will be starting another, truly exciting new gig almost immediately. i'd tell you all the details if it wasn't for the boilerplate non-disclosure agreement they had me sign along with my start form today. that said, it's Big Time, definitely a leap to the majors and also probably the boys' favorite prime time show. to me, that's an incredibly rare opportunity and about as cool as it gets as a dad. like if your kids were huge fat meatballs who lived to eat fast food and you suddenly found yourself with the keys to burger king? that's sort of how i look at it.

jb has already asked if he can come with me on my first day. i told him he could but he'd have to stay in the car.

on the bb front...he's a pretty badass 13 month old.


period.

other than that, i wish i had an oddball story or interesting anecdote to share, but i kind of don't. maybe that's why the posts have been so meager recently. i'm sleeping well, i'm not worrying, and the family and the career are firing on all cylinders. apparently good routines make for boring blogging.

and if you don't believe me, ask nicole. this spritely young lass recently decided to spice up her personal blog by calling on her cyberfriends to pitch in with a guest post, if they so desired, on go nicole yourself. i took up the challenge by interviewing her. it should go up pretty soon, so if you're at all curious about the kind of questions this former sort-of quasi journalist can come up with when the chips are down, head over there. and regardless of what i came up with, she's always plenty entertaining and very honest.

beyond that, there's this song.



since the day i bought the album it's on back during my freshman year in college, i've been sort of confused about the point paul simon was trying to make. over the years, i've had a few ideas, but i've never really been comfortable with any of my interpretations. then one morning this week, i was driving to work with a smile on my face, thinking about something innocuously entertaining my sons were doing as i left just a few minutes earlier, and the song came randomly on my ipod. as i listened, for some reason my smile got bigger, to the point where it may have started to get a little dusty in my car.

to be honest, i'm still not completely sure what paul's singing about, but something tells me i'm getting closer.

anyone care to hazard a guess?

One

it's been a month...but more importantly, it's been a year.



today marked the beginning of bb's 53rd week on the planet. so far so good.

sleeping, eating, walking and kicking off our very first family cake fight with panache.




he started it. honest.



aside from that, i'm going to let you all in on a brand new birthing trend i've come up with. if you've got a bun in the oven, feel free to adopt it as your own. just remember, when the idea catches on, and you read about celebrity moms doing this in people magazine, you heard it here first.

the idea came to me in a flash a few weeks back when i interviewed a pregnant woman who seemed, at least to me, kind of smugly self satisfied with the notion of not finding out her baby's gender before it was born.

before i continue, let me state for the record, that i definitely don't think there's anything wrong in any way with enjoying The Big Surprise upon your child's arrival. personally, the mrs and i decided to find out what she was brewing each time because a)we were having twins and we wanted to be ready and b)we already had twins and wanted to know if we should save the hand-me-downs.

but you're you. do your own thing.

it's just that, in this instance, talking to this particular mom, she sort of made me feel like even proposing the very idea of merely contemplating such an act was against God's plan for the miracle of her baby's birth. and so i needed to come up with something that took the surprise even further. something that i initially proposed in a smart ass manner, but after a little contemplation, actually seemed to me to be sort of sweet.

here's how it works...

when your kid is born, don't let the doctor or doula or midwife or contest winner or whatever baby-birthing pro you've decided to go with tell you if it's a boy or a girl. insist on having him or her hand you the kid immediately so you can peep what it's packing and make the big announcement yourself.

what do you think? could this catch on? could actual sentiment be born of cynicism?

what if step two was to bake the placenta into a pie?

A House Divided Actually Stands Pretty Well. Especially If Your Half is Vomit Free

if you've got twins, you know the drill.

once in a while you have to divide 'em up. for everyone's sake.

one parent takes one kid, the other takes the other (and, in our case, the baby, i guess) and you go off into the big blue world and do your own thing. this forcible family division provides each child with precious and rare solo time with their mom or dad, far from the old ball and chain of their twin.


as you've probably guessed by now, yesterday was Dividin' Day.

now, the way it works around here, thanks to a decision the mrs and i made long ago to keep it interesting, is the kids get to dictate their Dividin' Day itinerary. this time around, jb, inspired by a spate of recent nerf basketball games in his room, announced he wanted to go to the clippers game. ab's choice was to stay home, go to mcdonalds for mcnuggets and watch 'rocky' for the first time on dvd. no sweat.

i bought the tickets on ebay, mrs b girded herself for a fast food dinner and it began.

see if you can guess who had a better time.

jb, his big foam finger and i sat 6 rows from the baseline, within spitting distance of the jumbotron cameraman.


yeah, he was kind of psyched.

we also got a hell of a game, and jb screamed himself hoarse


until the very last moment, when jerry stackhouse stuck the dagger in our hearts.



regardless of the final score, the littlest basketball fan and i agreed this was something we needed to do more often. this is what bonding was all about.

meanwhile, across town, the mrs did her bonding with the clean-up crew at the local mickey d's, after the baby kicked her Dividin' Day Dinner off by sending back about a gallon of used formula all over her lap and the floor. once she managed to change his clothes, using the bathroom sink as a changing table, ab took his usual 45 minutes to eat six nuggets. then it was time to go home, where ab fell asleep on the sofa by the midpoint of the movie.


daddy wins by tko once again.

Lettuce. We Get Lettuce.

with apologies to marilyn vos savant.

presenting the first in a series.

ask moe


by moe vos berg

what do food critics think about rice? - a.b., los angeles, ca

well, well, well. don't think the irony of you mentioning "food critics" in your question is lost on me. i mean, considering you and your brother are 6 years old and still react to the idea of tasting a hamburger with 'i'm sorry, mrs kennedy, but the president is gone' type emotion. remember how mommy and me and the doctor told you how important it is to try new foods, especially protein, so you can grow as much as you possibly can? yeah, you remember that? well i'm about 4 days from breaking out a picture of a midget or something and telling you that that's what you're going to look like if you don't start eating, like, a hard boiled egg or something every so often.


you won't even try unfamiliar candy for god's sake.

so, what was the question again? rice? fuck. i don't know. depends on the critic and who's cooking it. it's not like you're going to eat rice if ed levine says it gives him a boner.

why is elmo so happy? - j.b., los angeles, ca


hmm. let's see. 50 million plus in the bank. single. no kids. good hair. figure it out.

bitter? - mrs. b, los angeles, ca

licorice is bitter. you'd have to synthesize me in a lab tonight.

please send all future questions to askmoevossavant@gmail.com - and moe will answer in an upcoming post. once he's done grinding his teeth down to nubs.

Like Napoleon From Elba

yeah, it's been a while. sorry about that.

so anyway...

the whole crew took a pre-dinner trip to the mall tonight so mrs b could buy some lotion for old people.


(don't ask.)

once the lotion was procured, we were making our way back to the car when ab fulfilled his childly duty and announced suddenly that he had to pee. of course he did. right before we were about to leave. when the closest bathroom is an escalator trip downstairs. in target. which is gross. like urine stains in front of the urinal gross. pubes on the rim gross. gross.


whatever. when you have to go you have to go.

so we stroll down the escalator, and into the store and into the bathroom, and around the tile corner towards the urinals where we discover a kid, maybe 13 or 14, about my height, standing there doing his thing in full preschool, daddy-take-me-to-the-bathroom ass-out position. just this young man, his ass, and a mighty stream of urine with the vacant mini-urinal next to him.

needless to say, ab was as shocked as i was. at this point in his life, the boy has gone weewee in hundreds of urinals and has never a)had the slightest problem stepping up the plate and delivering and b)seen anyone besides his brother pee with their ass out. he knows what time it is. which is why, here, in this stinky target bathroom, up was now down, black was now white and my son could barely speak. seriously. i mean, after i sort of cued him to head to the open pisser and get going, he looked at me and kind of popped his lips a few times and whispered, 'daddy, i have to tell you something.' which is his code for 'daddy, i don't want to do what it is you expect me to do.'

i leaned down to ask what he wanted to tell me. his answer was something like "hemmhelmennenhemmehenninhen." he was seriously spooked.

in the end, we had to wait until assy mcweewee hiked up his pants and trotted out of the bathroom (without washing) before ab would even attempt what it was he came to accomplish. even now, 3 hours later, the boy is not right.

the point of this story? i'm adding another rule to MB's Book of Being a Parent. rule one...

IF YOUR CHILD IS OLD ENOUGH TO CHEW GUM, THEY DON'T BELONG IN A STOLLER.

i developed this rule in great neck, new york after seeing a child sitting in a peg perago blowing globe-sized bubbles while his mother struggled to push him along with a grocery cart full of stuff. mostly yogurt.

add to that

IF YOUR CHILD IS OLD ENOUGH TO GO THE BATHROOM ALONE, MAKE SURE THEY KNOW NOT TO PULL THEIR PANTS DOWN TO THEIR ANKLES WHERE OTHER PEOPLE CAN SEE THEIR ASS.

so let it be written. so let it be done.

Tick

i've been naughty.

the fact that people keep showing up to see what's been happening here at The Metz makes me feel nice.

that said...

here's the official berg family card for 2007 currently popping up in mailboxes coast to coast. if you're reading this, you're part of the family.

click for the bigness.

tomorrow am, we begin two weeks away from la. 7 days at disney in florida with the whole big time both sides of the family crew, and then 7 days in the promised land of long island, new york at my folks'. promises to be a grand old time.

here's hoping you and yours are doing what you want as the clock clicks down towards the end of 07.

big things, baby. big things.

Jade 'Em Early! That's What I Always Say.

when american gladiators comes back to tv on nbc this coming january, keep your eyes peeled. you just might see a familiar looking baby enjoying his bottle during 'hang tough'.


yes, this past weekend, bb shattered the standing record for 'youngest person ever to attend a tv taping' when the entire berg family made a brief appearance at sony studios to see it all go down and cheer on a pair of close family friends intimately involved with bringing the gladiators back to life.


without giving away any secrets, i can tell you that the show is Big Time. lights, noise, tumult...the whole package. and as overwhelmed as the boys were by the sheer size of the production, that's how into it mrs b was. as a tom-boy OG fan of the original series, my wife was digging it far more than someone with all their teeth should.

as for the baby, he was once again impeccably behaved, and only lost his shit when one of the gladiators started playing to the crowd by howling like a wolf. luckily, we were provided with a primo escape route, and mrs b hustled him off and out of the studio so he could enjoy the wind blowing in his face before he attracted any attention.


simple pleasures, yo.

Romaine

first thing's first.

let us first acknowledge avid metz reader and commenter "da dough kid's meemaw" who, for the second time now, has shamed me out of the comfy warm heroin-high of a writer's block and back onto my specially reinforced typing chair. i dedicate this, my 400th post, to you, ms. meemaw.

now let us tuck into this thing like a steamy hot pot pie.


let us quickly gloss over the nearly post-free month of november, a month in which i found myself quite busy at my new job. part of this busyness involved a series of meetings with rock legend/avid-marketer-of-many-many-products-featuring-his-likeless, gene simmons, at his wildly impressive home in beverly hills. for someone who is not starstruck easily, it was quite surreal to pull into the driveway of the guy who inspired you to start playing the bass and write crappy metal songs when you were 12, knowing that you're there to deal with him on a one-on-one level. i brought him linzer tarts. he insisted i leave with a trunk full of kiss comics, coffee mugs and a dart board. business was done.

but enough star effing.

let us touch upon the pair of trips to las vegas i took in november, each on successive weekends, one with the family to meet up with my in-laws, sister and brother in law and niece, one for work to cover the opening of the planet hollywood hotel and casino. as you can imagine, these two trips were very very different. one involved bowling with children in the dirty stinky alley at the orleans, the other involved working closely with this young woman...




you can imagine the double takes we caused walking side by side to and from our shoot, and back to our hotel, along the strip - she, an honest-to-goodness playmate of the year runner up spilling out of her tight red dress and me, looking like the j crew sweatered spawn of a bridge troll and calvert deforest.


i'm no mind reader, but i'm pretty sure every woman we passed was thinking "that guy has to be a billionaire or something" and every guy was thinking "i wonder how much he's paying for her".

let us now move on to one of the great thanksgiving weekends of all time.

my folks and brother came in and spread the happy from the minute they arrived to the minute the left.


no fighting, no biting. just love, laughs and eating like we all had two assholes.

speaking of which, let us pat this man on the back.


his name is go. he is a genius and he is responsible for a friday-after-thanksgiving sushi omakase meal that may never be topped.


he just kept bringing the good stuff, including a nice helping of shirako for my brother and me.


that's the sperm sac of a snapper. too rich for my blood, but tasty enough for Brother Berg to eat both plates.


and now let us start wrapping things up, with a solemn and honest declaration. i am back behind the wheel of this thing, baby.

but let us not go before sending our very best wishes to my boy, joe delicious. the man who helped bring the simon metz special to life is dealing with a bump in the medical road right now, but we have no doubt that he will reach the finish line of this particular crappy journey in no time and come out the other side smelling like a rose and probably garlic.

and finally, let us bow our heads and remember quiet riot front man kevin dubrow.


my pal sammy badass urged me to come back strong tonight and take a stand for The Real Metal by taking a swing at the guy.

sorry, sammy. i can't do it. while i was never a fan of quiet riot, the fact that dubrow died so young and actually had to move back in with his mother in recent years makes him too tragic a figure to attack. that said, let us all pour out a little jack daniels for him tonight, and thank the lord that he outlived his hair by so many years.


now that's how you wear a wig.

Tenacious "D"

sometimes when you're at your bloggy lowest, sitting silent and impotent in front of your mac and you just can't think of a single, solitary thing about which to write, the universe smiles upon you and sends a shiny, tinsel-tied package of sweet sweet candy from the classiest shop in heaven direct to The Place Where The Words Come From.

case in point...

this was the front of the worksheet mrs b found in ab's school folder yesterday evening.


the assignment appears to be pretty straight forward. the letter of the day is 'd'. practice your handwriting by copying these simple sentences featuring words in which the letter 'd' is front and center.

damp ducks david did dance.

ok.

that's side one.

side two is where ab's class was asked to draw a picture of two things that begin with the letter 'd'. get creative. use your noodle. that's where we bergs shine.

presenting side two.


you can imagine the reaction when the mrs showed me what our budding warhol had whipped up. my sides still hurt.

after we were able to control our laughter, we called ab in and explained with smiles on our faces that we absolutely loved the drawing, but bathroom words might not be the most appropriate subject for drawings at school. he explained that the teacher's aide helped him nail the spelling.


and you thought a los angeles public school education was worthless.

An Ironic Tale Of Nassau County Based Star Effery, Told In The Present Tense, With Only The Slightest Liberties Taken.

submitted for your approval...

my parents, mother and father berg, are at their go-to spot for a quick dinner - taby's in oyster bay, new york - last night, when they notice what appears to be long island's own billy joel enjoying a little nosh with his mole-covered mother and her husband at a three-top across the restaurant.


during the meal, nick, the owner of tabby's comes over to shoot the shit with my folks for a moment like he usually does. they ask him if, in fact, the piano man himself is in the house.

'yeah,' says nick, 'he comes in all the time. almost as much as you two.'

wink.

'i tell him to say hello.'

wink.

nick leaves. the food arrives. mother and father proceed to stuff their eat-holes. time passes.

and then, eventually, when the food is gone, they look up.

billy joel is leaving the restaurant. he stops at their table for a moment.

'hello,' he says politely.

'hello!' exclaims my mother, most likely surprised and a bit flustered. 'i want to tell you my grandsons are your biggest fans. and they're only 5 years old!'

billy joel grins.

'well, tell them i say thank you.'

he nods and walks out, leading his mother and stepfather as he does.

soon after, a beaming grandmother calls her grandsons in los angeles to tell them that none other than billy joel himself has sent a personal thank you to them for being a fan.

only they're not home.

they're out taking their very first piano lesson ever.

piano lessons they demanded to take because they want to play just like billy joel.


the end.

They Took The Snakes Away

when i was a lad, a wee lad, a car full of grownups played a rotten trick on me.

here's what i remember.

it has to be about 1974, because my brother's not around yet, which makes me two years old. we're heading from queens to the staten island zoo. the crew is probably my folks - at least my mom - my grandparents, and my great aunt bert. everyone is packed into my grandfather's green skylark. with typical early-to-mid 70s disregard for safety, i'm pretty sure i'm sitting on someone's lap. i'm very excited.

after a decent drive, during which my anticipation levels reach virgin-in-a-whorehouse levels, we finally pull into the parking lot of the zoo and drive around looking for a spot. it takes a while, long enough for someone to turn to me and say something like, "oh, no, moe! there are no parking spots! we're going to have to turn around and go home."

you can imagine how i feel.

luckily, just as my face registers a 'are you fucking kidding me?!' look, the car pulls into the spot they've seen all along to the merry sound of laughter.

and scene.

why bring it up now?

we took our own crew to the la zoo this weekend.

from the moment we walked through the gates, all mrs b and i heard was 'let's go to the reptile house. right now.'

'easy, guys,' i reassured them, 'let's do our usual route up past the meercats and stinky flamingos, down to alligator junction, up past the zebras to the place where they have the giraffes and lions and chimps and then back to the reptile house on the way out.'

you know, save the best stuff for last.

so that's just what we did.

we stood in front of the meercats and jb whined 'let's just go to the reptile house!'

we watched the pathetic, lonely elephant rock back and forth like he was waiting for his thorazine prescription to be filled and ab chanted 'reptiles! reptiles! rep! tiles!' until i asked him to stop.

the mrs and i craned our necks and watched in amazement as a mother orangutan scaled a net that must have been 50 feet high, plucked her child from its frightening looking perch and carried it back down to earth. the boys did not because they were busy staring at the map of the zoo in order to best plan our route to the reptile house.

eventually, after just about 2 hours of wandering and whining, the adults decided it was the proper time to head to The Chosen Land.

and so we walked, down past the frozen lemonade stand they're usually begging to stop at and the lifesized mock-up of a california condor they always stretch their arms out in front of...down to the spot where we came upon

this sign.


i read the sign faster than the boys did, which gave me just enough time to turn the camera on them as it all sank in.


that, my friends, is what disappointment looks like.

and if i could have taken a picture of myself at the exact same moment, i bet my expression would have looked very similar to theirs.

after all, their old man had been there.

only, back in staten island, my 'that fucking sucks' face went away almost immediately.

theirs lasted until i sprung for a frozen lemonade without being asked on the sad walk back towards the exit.


and then it was gone for good.

whew.