Check Out the Tail on That Moonfish (HOL 73)

House of Laughter 73

This morning’s comic strip “Pearls Before Swine” had this to say about blogging. “You know, I like Blogs, I really do….You know why? Because they provide their frustrated creator with the delusional outlet of being a published author. Sort of like how the prison warden lets the psychotic inmate scribble ‘Poetry’ on the cell wall so he doesn’t beat his bunkmate with a toilet seat.” Couldn’t have said it better myself, although the same sentiment was expressed almost verbatim in last week’s Family Circus.

Monday morning I woke up to Isaac asking, “Daddy, do you need a donkey in bed with you?” (I knew I shouldn’t have let him watch Clerks 2 this weekend.) He dropped a stuffed donkey into bed, and I drifted back to sleep. Two minutes later, “Daddy, do you need a camel in bed with you?”. Flash forward 15 minutes and the entire Nativity scene is in bed with me. It was like having a snooze button on a Sunday School class.

When I get home from work in the afternoon, I will sometimes stretch out in bed. Isaac will tell me to lay down on my stomach and he will climb on my back. He then bounces up and down. It turns out, I am the turtle, Crush, from Finding Nemo, and he is the baby turtle Squirt riding the East Australia Current. I know he learned that from TV, but damn it’s pretty cute.

Speaking of Nemo, we just came back from “Disney/ Pixar’s Nemo on Ice”. Crap-tacular. They played sound clips from the “Finding Nemo” while people in costumes skated in circles waving at the kids for two hours. There are occasional special effects like a thick green cloud of smoke that they evidently make out of paper mill waste and ground up dead skunks. At the beginning of the show there was even an explicit announcement that the smoke was most certainly “Not Toxic”.

From the minute we walked in the coliseum doors, we passed dozens of stands selling remarkably expensive Nemo bric-a-brac. I assured Isaac that I would buy him some of the stuff next year at a garage sale.

I realized the most unsettling part of the show though right after it started. My mind was drifting early on in the show, thinking about work, and the dozen different things I’m already doing this weekend, when one of the skaters whizzed by and the little monkey part of my brain clicked on and thought…..”cute well toned athletic butt in spandex”. Immediately the higher brain part of the brain knew something was amiss, and did a quick check, and issued an emergency broadcast “Attention all parts of the brain! Preliminary reports suggest, that is a dude.”

I had to stare at the floor for most of the rest of the night.

Would I go see Nemo on Ice again? Yes, because every penny we spent on tickets and awkward moments of gender confusion while staring at a toned skater in a lobster costume was worth it for Isaac’s smiles, laughing, wonder, applause, and unbridled enthusiasm about the whole damned thing.
Strength and Honor,

Matt