Thanks to his entire preschool’s enthusiastic focus on superheroes, my three year-old son’s current obsession is the song, Iron Man. So I decided to show him the song being performed live on a YouTube video. We watched the performance, him with a grin on his face and me with a look of concern on mine.
After about two minutes of Ozzy being Ozzy, he suddenly decides he’s had enough of the video. And this is a sensation he never has when it comes to just about any video content. He can be watching a teeth whitening infomercial and burst into tears when he hears it’s time for bed.
But this time he said stop. He said he’d rather listen to that song about the guy who lives in the pear (that’s Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer to you and me).
I smelled victory. No more Ozzy.
The next morning over french toast, my son looks up and asks if we can listen to Iron Man. So I say, “But I thought we decided that song was sort of terrible?”
And he says, “No Dadda, we decided the song was really good. It’s just that guy who is terrible.”
Oh, oh, we were halfway there…
Thankfully, since last weekend, the only thing he wants to listen to is Tom Morello and the Boss doing Ghost of Tom Joad at MSG.
Doesn’t it seem weird that there even is a real Maurice Sendak? I was listening to some outtakes of appearances he’s made on Fresh Air, and the whole time I just kept thinking, “Come on. You’re actually that Maurice Sendak?”
Think about it.
You’re Maurice Sendak. You’re at a dinner party (anywhere, really). Someone you’ve never met tries to strike up a conversation.
During the first couple seasons of Mad Men, I didn’t really think the show lived up to the hype. I love the show and we never miss an episode in my household, but with shows like Six Feet Under and The Sopranos so often being left at the Emmy altar, I wondered if Mad Men really deserved all the accolades.
After season three, I now wonder if the accolades can ever live up to the insane quality of the show. My wife insisted, about midway through the season finale, that I publicly apologize to the show for having called it overrated in the past. I apologize (but I am, in part, thinking about the January Jones GQ cover as I do it).
