Comic-Book dorkdom

OK, I have to come outta the broom closet here: I love comics. There. I said it. So, in keeping with the previous post on Batman, here's another entry based mostly upon a video game called "DC Universe Online."

It is something called a MMORPG, massive multi-player online role-playing game (break out your Dungeons and Dragons dice, guys!). Players create their hero or villain and are mentored by their favorite characters (like Batman, Superman, Lex Luthor, or The Joker) as they save lives / spread death and destruction all over the various ports of call in the game.

And at this house, we (mostly) love it. It's terribly addictive, I'd recommend it except that it can be the biggest brain-drain time-sucker you've experienced. As you level up your character you get more badass and can interact with the "heavies" of the DC Universe more. Which is dorky, I realize, but fun.

I also love video games. Not all of them, but some. I grew up with parents who resisted them, we eventually had an Atari and a Nintendo NES, later a Sega Genesis. In college, there were many times I'd sit at home with with my little brother playing Madden or Mario instead of going on a date or stepping out - it was fun to hang and goof off.

Nothing's changed much, except that sometimes I think I'm supposed to set a better example of responsible adulthood for my children than to sit on the sofa and geek out over games like this one. This is the source of endless household controversy, as the wife takes a dim view of video games.

My wife and I are about 40, and occupy a weird generational position. On the one hand, we were kids in the early days of home video games (with the Atari system), but those were days when games and gaming were less-advanced and far less immersive: you'd play a few levels and those levels were repetitive, the game exhausted itself within an hour or so at the most. As games progressed, that changed. And now, with the advent of online games, the gaming experience has expanded exponentially to the point of near-limitless gameplay.

As a result of maturing in this "gap" I've noticed that my peers (folks about my age) are split, some embrace new technologies openly and other seem to wish that we'd return to the halcyon days of "playing outside all day until Mom calls you in for supper" or "reading a book."

DC universe offers something like limitless play, though I'm not sure it's The Greatest Ever. Missions are repetitive at times, and that gets tedious. But the sheer number of different character types reduce the repetition. My son's hero is based on The Flash. My two daughters' on Wonder Woman and Batman respectively. And me, I'm the pal of the villainous Joker -duh. Sometimes it's just fun to splat the good guys with a huge boxing glove on a spring.

Like I said, my wife and I demonstrate the "split" I was referring to. She'd prefer our kids to get out of the house and explore the world. I can't really argue with that, it's a fun thing to do. But our kids (and perhaps this is my fault - being a lazy parent) seem to enjoy playing their video games more than chasing bugs outside. And yes, if you're wondering, I've fought with my kids over this plenty: unplugged the TVs, confiscated the games, etc. A healthy balance between "fun" and "obsession" needs to be found, most especially in a world where the video games are so damned addictive.

An older lady, a Eucharistic minister in our church, was talking to us a few weeks back at the local bagel shop. She mentioned that she played World of Warcraft with one of her sons (seriously, the last person I'd have expected to be playing that MMORPG). She said that, at first, she hated the idea. But, since her son lived across the country, she decided to try the game out as a way to connect with her son at his level - doing something he enjoyed. Over time, the game hooked her, too, and they apparently play it together every week.

I was struck by her story. You can try to force your kids to connect with you on a level that you decide that they should be connecting with you on....or you can (when appropriate - I'm not saying "anything goes" here....) try and engage them on their turf. In a world inundated with technological advances the choice is to embrace it or refuse it. My bet is that if parents don't embrace it their kids will.

I'm not saying I've got anything figured out, here at my little house - not at all. My preference would be for my little guys and gals to grow up healthy, get out and see the world, and do well in their studies - with video games being a pleasant diversion. For the most part, that's all they are (unless we're the 15-yr old....) And we're not lawless here, there are rules and we're in charge (for the most part). In the final analysis, it's merely one way to share an experience with my kids. I can live without the endless arguments between them about whose character is better than whose, though.

Because mine blows all their heroic asses up. With a smile.

Batman, 22 years later

I'm sure a bunch of ya - in your thirties and forties now - recall the 1989 version of "Batman" with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson as The Joker. It was released a few weeks after high school graduation, and was a much-hyped and profitable movie. If memory serves it made a buttload of cash.

It should've, I saw it at least 4 or 5 times that summer.

I'll back up a moment. I loved Batman since I was old enough to watch TV. The campy Adam West show from the 1960's and the cartoon and also "Superfriends" were all my favorites growing up. I had Batman sheets. Batman underwear. Batman posters. The ubiquitous Bat-symbol tee shirt. Stickers on my car. Sometime in the late 1980's I picked up some of the comics (Frank Miller's "Dark Knight Returns" among them) and was introduced to a "new, dark" version of Batman.

When I first met the gal I eventually married, she was sporting a Batman tee-shirt and earrings. I figured it was serendipity.

The Keaton-Nicholson movie became "our" movie that summer, in part because the other movies out that year weren't as good OR simply because 2 adolescents on the cusp of adulthood aren't typically connoisseurs of movies with good stories - we wanted to see explosions and cool villains, etc etc. It was directed by Tim Burton, then known for "Beetlejuice" and "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."

So, to the point. Sunday night I had the bright idea to watch it again, this time with our 4 kids. They loved it. I found it a little depressing - you can't go home again.

The movie suffers from bi-polar disorder, in addition to having been made in 1988 - a few years prior to the CGI revolution in film. Today, I'd say it's half of a good story and half baloney. Keaton appears to be sleepwalking through most of his scenes, and Kim Basinger is pretty much eye-candy. The absolute worst scene in the movie is when she confronts him in his cave - I think they write better dialogue in Japanese-dubbed monster movies. "This is how it is, I tried to avoid all this but I couldn't..."

Ouch. Painful. Ventriloquist dummies are given better material.

The flip side is Jack. His Joker, once he's arrived, is all joyful maniacal id. You can tell he realized it was a goofy role for him to take and he rips up every scene he's in. Without his Joker this movie is pretty much unwatchable. He manages to nail the character, as both funny and criminally evil. This isn't to say that he doesn't look ridiculous in his purple costumes (and as a 50-ish man he looks a little....fleshy), and some of his dialogue is equally wooden. But he delivered the movie, period.

A lot of "Batman" plays like a long-form music video, which is cool thanks to the bombastic score and the fairly well-paced action scenes. As we all know, they've done Batman better with the more recent movies and in the amazing video game "Arkham Asylum." Still, without this 1989 movie, those projects probably never get off the ground. I guess if you look at the movie for what it was at the time, it has its' moments.

At the time it was released, I loved it. I think Carol loved it, too. I know my younger brother (he was 10 at the time) was a huge Batman fan, and to some extent he still is. It's funny, some movies hold up and some don't. By way of contrast, Tim Burton's "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" holds up as funny all these years later, while his "Batman" does not. But for us I guess it's a kind of time capsule, a mile-marker...do you remember when????

[it wasn't serendipity, by the way. Within months the Batman stuff was gone and she'd replaced it with the J Crew catalogue. There would be no shared love of the caped crusader's adventures. So it goes]

My kids, of course, loved it. Our 4-yr old was reciting lines of The Joker's dialogue all day yesterday ("One thing I am not, is a killer. I am an artist.").

So you can't go home again. So what? The kids don't care. Why should they?

Mayhem, and the Grammys with kids

We all manage our own mayhem.

This stay-at-home thing is harder than you might think, for reasons you might not imagine. The first "problem" that springs to mind is utter boredom. There are days that .....jussssst...... draaaag. I'm not a camp-counsellor or an early-childhod education expert. My kids spend their days making demands and getting annoyed when those demands aren't met.

OK, kinda goes with the territory, right?

Then there's the spouse who works. My wife will come home from a tough day slaying the dragon and see that nothing's clean, no food is made, and there's nothing but screaming or yelling going on. Some days, I'm amazed she bothers to walk into the house. Pure mayhem.

But, that's only some days.

Another problem is what you do with your personal time. Clean up the place? Sure. Or get some exercise? Good idea. Perhaps read a book? Or write on your blog? Or pop in a movie? Sometimes in the face of all of those choices you might realize that you've got no choice at all: the house is dirty and you're kinda fat - so you exercise and clean up.

Whatever, right? Part of the deal.

Then, there's your relations and friends. Y'know, the ones who work. The general attitude can be summed up in two phrases: "Oh, I think that's so great!" and/or "Well, so what are you doing with your life."

Both are valid.

I had the distinct displeasure earlier this week of being berated. This was as a result of a poorly-written e-mail that I'd sent in haste, and such fallout was inevitable. The anger and vitriol directed at me were, perhaps, somewhat over the top and out of line and got really personal. But I was essentially called out for being a selfish person. My failings were pointed out, and even my kids were brought into the "discussion."

Well, who likes hearing stuff like that?

I re-read some of my own blogs, and it's not hard to see my tendencies lean towards complaining. This is hard, that's tough, boo-hoo, blah blah. Perhaps this angry person had a point.

I do complain too much. I've not had a difficult life at all. Yes, there's lots of "work" (of the non-monetary type) to do in my little existence but none of it is back-breaking and rarely could I deem it "difficult." I have a house, family, a pretty good dog, and thanks to my folks a decent education. If I've under-achieved in this world, I've only myself to blame. On the whole, I should talk more about how happy things are and how lucky I am that it's this easy.

No, there's no sarcasm intended there, really. I think I just fall into talking about how tough my life is because....well, because that's how everyone talks. It's some type of verbal crutch, I guess. Lame, I know.

We're all pulled in multiple directions at once, and sometimes as a result tempers get short. My preference is to try and keep as many people happy as I can. I'm not always good at that. Because once that kind of mayhem starts, well, who knows where it ends up?

In this case, I guess it all got de-fused with some re-scheduling and some phone calls. But the bad smell lingers.

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Our 11-yr old daughter watched the Grammys with us this week. This was entertaining on a few levels, as a parent of this little chirping 6th grade bird and as fellow music-lovers hearing her little critiques --- her likes and dislikes. I let her fill up her own ipod these days, and her selections are eclectic.

So, without much more of a preamble.....here's some of her observations:

---upon seeing Lady Gaga: "she's soooo weird but I love her song but she's just sooooo weird"

---"I love this song" (insert nearly every song played by a pop artist)

---"he looks dead, I hate this song" referring to Bob Dylan

----"Oh man, he's old, his skin is weird" re: Mick Jagger

---"he's huge" re: Cee-Lo Green

---"you can tell they're celebrities because they don't look anything like the normal people"

---"why does he look so angry? It's like he never smiles.... and all he does is walk around the stage....why doesn't he learn to dance, and smile more" re: Eminem

--"hmmmmm....................no" re: Arcade Fire

--"look, her mouth moves sideways when she talks" re: the lady in Lady Antebellum

The list is all I can remember, and doesn't do her justice. It was funny. She talked just about the entire duration of the broadcast. Sometimes she sounded like the little girl she is, and other times she sounded like the woman she will be in the future. It livened up an otherwise lame self-congratulatory awards show.

Hallmark, Hank, and kids

Remember this game? Perfection? I think my parents got me one of these when I was five or so, it had a wind-up timer on it. Put all the shapes in their respective spots and you can consider yourself a winner, or cheat and just affix them all to their proper places while the timer's off. Like anything, with some practice I got pretty good.

Yes, it's a metaphor.

Today's Valentine's Day and like most of our American holidays it's more an excuse to spend money you don't have than it is a day to truly express your love for your "other." Of course, we can reject all of the commercialism and save our hard-earned cash - but then we're considered cheapskates for doing so (at best....at worst you could earn the titles "cold" or "numb" etc, etc). Cards and flowers will be purchased. Sexy outfits. Dinners eaten at nicer restaurants.....the list is endless, really.

But I think what we're sold (by the media, by others around us) is that we can achieve romantic perfection in the process of purchasing "things" that will endear us to another person. That attraction and love are somehow related to the gifting of baubles or plants that will die within days.

Yesterday, my church celebrated World Marriage Day - a celebration that was perhaps motivated here in Maryland by our Legislature's deliberations on a gay marriage bill (the Catholic church is against the idea). Anyway, in the midst of Mass there was an opportunity for couples to stand up and renew their vows. If any couple needed such a chance, it was my wife and I. So, we stand up. The priest has us hold hands and face each other and - whilst gazing into each others' eyes- renew the marriage vows. While I'm trying to concentrate on repeating the promises to my wife and trying to look at her while I do so, our 4-year old son is punching me in the butt because he's angry that I'm not holding him up. And then he starts kicking me. Finally, he head-butts me behind my knees, causing me to lose balance and nearly wipe out in the pew. To top it all of, our other son rips a fart that smelled like a dead man's last rotted breath.

She, of course, had no troubles at all. Pulled it off without a hitch. Well, I guess that's how these things go. I was highly irritated at both of my sons.

Later on in the day, thinking about it, it was exactly the kind of vow renewal I should've expected from my little family. Nothing's ever perfect around here, yet it somehow fits us perfectly. So it goes.

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Love is one of those amorphous and impossible to understand concepts. It's been written about in our earliest recorded writings, the Bible and the Greek poets all the way to good ole- 2011 and Katie Perry (who sucked at the Grammys, incidentally - that's tomorrow's blog....the tale of watching the Grammys with an 11-year old daughter). Love is equal parts joy and suffering. I've experienced both sides of that, but I hope most of you avoided the latter. Like everything, it's complicated.

One of the more beautiful love songs I ever heard was by Hank Williams. I'm not a country aficionado but I heard this one on an album of Hank covers by a band called "The The" back in '95, called Hanky Panky. The song's titled "I Can't Escape from You," and it wallows a bit in the less-happy aspects of love.

My recitation below doesn't do the song justice, go listen to it's sad melodies yourself, but I'm reprinting it in its' entirety, both because I'm lazy and because it's just that good:

I've tried and tried to run and hide

To find a life that's new

But where I'd go, I'd always know

I can't escape from you

A jug of wine, to numb my mind

But what good does it do?

The jug runs dry and still I cry

I can't escape from you

These wasted tears are souvenirs

Of a love I thought was true

Your memory is chained to me

I can't escape from you

There is no end, I can't pretend

That dreams will soon come true

A slave too long to a heart of stone

I can't escape from you

Some stuff I've been listening to

I love music. Who doesn't?

I also realize that this is the lazy man's blog, so yet again here's a list of stuff I've been listening to, with some expository sentences that are thrown in simply as justifications and other bullsh*t.

First, a caveat: I'm a near-40 white guy who grew up in what's now considered suburban Maryland. I attended high school in DC, but I've got ZERO street bona fides. Some of the stuff below will be rap and hip-hop music - I AM NO EXPERT ON THIS TYPE OF MUSIC - but I do know what I like and what I don't. In this writer's opinion, rap/hip-hop has been a boring niche, full of songs that are (like this blog) simple lists of how tough a guy is, how many gals a guy can get, how much money he has, [INSERT THE EXCESSES HERE]. Or, when it gets more "gangsta", how many caps he's busted in the asses of others.

Yawn. Next.

Well, some of the artists on the list below have caught my greying attention by exposing a little heart and humanity. Some real emotion. For me, this was new.

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Cee-Lo Green's The Ladykiller: a really great album. Cee-Lo's work with Gnarls Barkley got him a lot of radio play, but "F--k You" is a tremendous song (forget the clean version, but at least your kids could get the tune stuck in their heads, too). His voice is distinctively old-school (like Al Green) and so are the melodies on this record. But it soars. "Bright Lights, Bigger City", "Satisfied", and "No one's Gonna Love you" are among the better songs, but really the whole thing's good. I can't say there's much heart in this - not the real kind. It kind-of reminds me of Barry White a bit, he's playing a character. It works, at least here.

Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: reminded me a bit of a Queen record in its' polished sound. Every noise seems to serve a purpose, which is put to great effect in the fantastic song "Runaway." "Monster" is another standout, too, I think the gal on this track is Nikki Minaj (won't swear to it, could be MIA). The title track is good, too - who knew they had seances at malls? I have Kanye's first two records (College Dropout and the follow-up) but they were OK, not great. He seems to have realized that it takes courage to show a little heart, and I think he does that here. This isn't an album of love ballads, of course, but there's heart and humanity here that I didn't notice on the other albums I'd listened to.

"Love the Way you Lie" by Eminem: another heartbreaker. I know it's yet another fictional "rap story" but Rihanna's vocals are poignant and the lyrics are grownup and - again- show some heart. I've never really been a fan of Eminem, and probably still am not one. But this song is great.

"Tik-Tok" by Ke$ha: my 11-year old daughter picked out Eminem and this song last week. OK? That's my defense. This is a brain-sucker that removes your mind and replaces it with this electronically-produced piece of crap that makes me wish I was young and dumb instead of old and dumb.

"Tired Climb" Kylesa from the album Spiral Shadow: like rap, metal tends to be boring. For me, I'm a Metallica guy. But they've shambled into middling territory (trying to recapture old magic, I guess) whilst bands like Mastodon press on. We saw Kylesa open for Mastodon in 2009, I think, and the big "gimmick" was that they have 2 drummers in the band. And a girl in there, too. I got this album based on the single "Tired Climb" which is pretty good. Their music is very layered, not as trippy as Mastodon but perhaps a bit more accessible to non-metal fans.

"White Crosses" Against Me! (mentioned on this page last summer): a good neo-punk record. These guys are maturing from a punk band to a rock band (if you wanna see 40-somethings claim the punk mantle, listen to the rather boring new Rancid record).

"Townes" by Steve Earle: love this one, it's not new but it's worth a listen - if only for the song "Rake."

"Bubblegum" by Mark Lanegan: another older record, I love the song "Methamphetamine Blues".

"when they come to murder me" : Black Francis. The former Pixies frontman has been playing solo since 1992, this is off his record Sevn Fingers. It's a good song, I think it's about the mythological Minotaur - but that's just a guess.

always looking for new stuff, as my ipod has a bunch of songs I've already listened to 100 times. Feel free to hit me on The Book of Face or drop a comment - I'll give ya full credit for your suggestion if I like it.

Rock on

Super Sunday

I know what some of you are thinking....this again? I think I've posted at least 4 pictures of Big Dumb Ben on this blog since August. This should be my last one for awhile.

Let me say this: I'm glad he lost. Not really happy that his team lost, but after last year's allegations and charges against him (credible BUT unproven in a Court of law) I think he's a piece of crap human being. To be fair to him, many of his peers are probably just as bad. The entitled athlete is not a new development.

If you're a Facebook friend of mine you've perhaps noticed my repetitive references to Ben the Rapist, etc etc. Here's my bitch with you Steeler fans out there: you have a great team, but why were y'all so quick to forgive this clown? What's the hurry? He never once bothered to apologize to the woman/women he hurt - not publicly. Show me where he did so - even once - and I'll take it all back.

Again, forgiveness is divine, but there's no need to rush it. Especially for a millionaire athlete.

Enough of him. After today, unless he does it again, I'll let it go.

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There was a pretty interesting game Sunday. I think the better QB won, but not the better team.

Aaron Rodgers is not like 2002's out-of-nowhere Tom Brady. He's been a pretty good QB for a couple seasons now on an up and coming team. It's no surprise to see him win a title, but it was perhaps surprising to see him beat a superior football team almost single-handedly.

Steeler fans, face the facts: your QB is not that bad, but he's not world-class. His team carried him in Super Bowl XL (with the assistance of some amazingly poor officiating) against Seattle. Santonio Holmes made an amazing end-zone catch vs Arizona a couple years ago that pulled out a win - and Big Ben gets credit for driving them downfield in a clutch situation. Sunday, he was out of tricks. True, his O-line let him down on occassion. But, more often than not, he was simply off-target.

Troy Polamalu is a good strong-safety, but he can't cover a mattress. The Packers exposed his weak coverage skills by forcing him away from his strengths (on the line of scrimmage) and out into pass coverage - where he's been toast. Baltimore torched him. The Jets did, too. He was a non-factor in the playoffs. I don't know if it was an injury or not, but he was invisible.

James Harrison was absent for nearly all of Sunday, I think he had a sack. But so was the vaunted Steeler D-line. In fact, the Steeler defense looked confused on Sunday. Had the Packer WR's not dropped at least 6 passes, the statistical yardage would've been near-historic.

The only reason that the score was close was all of those drops. This coulda been a laugher, folks.

That it wasn't is a testament to the talent on the Pittsburgh sideline. I think that if the Super Bowl was a best-of-3 tournament that the Steelers would win 2 of 3 games. Such are the risks of a winner-take-all playoff.

But, hell, give Rodgers all the credit. He made lemonade out of lemons. Jordy Nelson is not a goat, purely because Rodgers wouldn't quit on him. Clay Matthews' golden locks are now gonna surpass Polamalu's in popularity. Just wait til summer, all the blonde kids at the county fair will be sporting Clay-dos.

Anything else? Nah. The commercials sucked. All of them.

For me, the fun was watching the game with my 10-year old son. He was really into the game and living and dying with every first down. He was actively rooting against the Steelers (like me, though for different reasons I'm sure). I can't recall ever seeing him get so excited about a game before. Kinda cool.

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So football's done. There's a chance that there won't even be a 2011-12 NFL season thanks to the expiration of the CBA. Great, the only workplace in America where a union has ANY power anymore - owned by billionaires and operated by millionaires. All we fans want is some gridiron fun. A-holes.

As for my team's chances of seeing The Big Game, they're as dim as ever. Danny Snyder has engaged in a well-publicized war of words with a free paper in DC, and threatened to sue the pants off them for defamation and anti-Semitism. The irony of a Jewish billionaire being offended by a defaced photo of him (looking like a devil) whilst the name of his professional sports franchise is "Redskins" is beyond amusing. The sublime leads to the ridiculous and is boiled down into Silly Soup. Jee-zus. I'd put the Redskins at 50-1 to win it all. Maybe 100-1. Seriously, I'm considering jumping off the 'Skins entirely - every year's the same crap.

But, I don't like purple. So I guess I'm stuck.

History lessons, XLV, and the transience of memory

Ya don't have to be an art aficionado to know that the famous Dali painting is titled The Persistence of Memory. Y'know, with the melting clocks and trees that resemble Daphne? The trouble with history in a world full of subjectivity is that everyone seems to think that they can create their own alternate histories that suit them best. So it is with Steeler fans.

"It's all about the championships, the rings, baby! We've got six!" This is a common refrain, and something every Steeler fan should rightly be proud of, a hell of a good football team. No arguments there. The 49ers and Cowboys trail with 5, respectively.

The inconvenient truth is that the NFL had a championship game that existed before Mr. Pete Rozelle married the words "super" and "bowl" into a corporate and copy-righted entity. And the undisputed "Kings" of the NFL? The Green Bay Packers, who won 9 NFL championships and 3 "Super Bowls" (which likewise happen to also be NFL championship games). 12-time world champions.

This is where the NFL screwed up. Hockey has it's Stanley Cup. The NBA has their finals. And the records kept by both of those leagues do not delineate between a "modern era" and "pre-modern era", whatever that would be. A championship in a sport is its' championship (or, to borrow a hated cliche, "it is what it is").

If the NFL sells the naming rights of it's title game to some business, does that mean we re-set the clock for the "AT&T Wireless Super Bowl?" The idea's preposterous.

But, hell, it's America. We tend to take a "what's happening lately?" view of things. And, when you're reading a blog written by a guy who obviously is taking something fun and diverting as the Super Bowl and making a big deal out of it, you know the author is clearly taking this sh*t too seriously.

Packers: 12 rings; Steelers: 6. Both have the chance to add to the totals on Sunday.

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Is it all really about the championships?

There is much ink and paper being wasted on the "storylines" of Sunday's game. Come Monday, will any of it matter much? By the following Sunday (February 13th) some of us will be hard-pressed to recall who won, or we'll be hearing all about the upcoming NCAA March Basketball tournament. These things tend to seem disposable. Perhaps only the fans really care?

I kinda doubt it, I'll bet it matters to the players on both teams right now.

"It's all about the championships." We hear this a lot.

Is it? A hypothetical NFL player watched last year's Super Bowl at home. By February he's working out hard keeping his body in shape while also aging yet-another year without earning the championship he's dreamed of. Every season he comes up short, and always will. Through the force of his will he continues to drive himself, batter his body on the field and in the weight room - but never feels the confetti.

What did he play for?

Another NFL player is on a Super Bowl winning team in a given year. By February he's in the weight room and studying film and learning the new playbook. He's meeting the rookies and new teammates management added. He punishes his body in training camp, makes weight, and punishes it even more during the season, where he wins another Super Bowl. By the following February, he's back in the weight room......and on and on and on.

It seems monotonous in its' meaninglessness - like something Kafka would write. Or a Russian novelist. Like the mythical Ouroboros, it's a wolf eating its' own tail to survive. A wheel, turning endlessly. Disposable as yesterday's horoscope.

And this is our reflection as a culture. All is disposable, nothing is irreplaceable. Last year's heroes are this year's goats, "the bums." I'm not sure that it's all about the rings. I think the rings help, they create a goal that's worth fighting through pain and doubt to achieve - but I don't think it's The End that some make it out to be.

Let's use Big Ben (aka The Rapist) as an example. Will winning Sunday redeem him? Perhaps to some Steeler fans, sure. A Super Bowl title means endorsements, magazine covers, adulation, and a measure of immortality (tell that to James Washington). Perhaps it gets him back into the good graces of sportswriters like Peter King or the ESPN guys. Does that truly redeem him? Would 100 championships redeem his misdeeds? Plug in the name "Mike Vick" instead. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference.

Like Doc Hudson tells Lightning McQueen in the movie "Cars," the championship (Piston Cup) is "just an empty cup."

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All of that blah blah blah aside, there's an actual game they'll play Sunday in between the "event" commercials (which will suck) and pomp. It should be a great game, two proud franchises with a combined 18 titles clashing on the NFL's biggest stage. 2 good quarterbacks and 2 good defenses. I think this guy Rodgers has something to prove, but then again so does Roethlisberger. Like last year's Super Bowl, I think a weird play-call or oddball occurrence (like a punt/kick return for a TD) will win the day. In games like that, historically, the Steelers have prevailed. But for some reason (call it the cheese) I'm thinking Packers.

February 1st

This is our little guy. He's 10 today. Yes, he's in a tub full of water with a diaper and wooly-bear pajamas on. My wife and I will always remember that the docs weren't sure he'd get past his first few days.

I guess his story starts with us being dumb. We'd had our second child (Camille) in October of '99 and since she was still nursing we figured the chances of another pregnancy were slim. Whoops.

It wasn't a complete shock, OK? We're not THAT stupid. But, stupid enough, evidently. There's a circle here, and Bobby completes it. I'll get to that in a bit.

She carried him to about 35 weeks and the water broke just after the Baltimore Ravens crushed the NY Giants in the Super Bowl. We ran to St Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, where you could see the city's buildings (no, not skyscrapers, not in Bal-tee-morrrre) lit up in gauche purple lights. Heck, we'd had two babies, a third was simply repetition.

He came quick, like most of our kids have. But this was different. Here I was, waiting to hold my newly-born son and cut the cord and the nurses all gathered around him, cleaned him up and whisked him out.

And- worst of all- he never made a noise. Our daughters had wailed like banshees. He was stone silent.

So, I admit it, I was worried. My wife was left on the hospital bed feeling lousy. It was not a good place.

Some of you have experienced NICU, and this was our initiation. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where no parent ever wants to have to visit and every parent who does have to thanks God it exists. The nurses were great. Bobby's lungs weren't developed, and the nurses kept joking about the weakness of white boy babies who - apparently- have underdeveloped lungs when they're not full-term.

So there he was in an incubation unit with hoses and cords and sh*t all over. He was a veritable giant in the room, what with all of the bona fide preemies clinging to life. There were too many to recall, my most vivid recollection is one of absolute wonder that the tiny beings in the incubators were still alive at all. It was near-miraculous.

The other thing I learned was that the nurses employ a kind of gallows humor. I think the success rate in a NICU is not even close to 90%, so death is very real and lurking behind every tick of the clock.

We stayed in the hospital for about 5 days, maybe a little less. My wife wouldn't leave.

Finally, we had to leave but he had to stay, as he was still suffering apnea episodes. My wife cried and cried.

The docs (there was one from the Phillipines who was a nice guy but not encouraging) administered a steroid to help his lungs develop. They were only going to give him 3 doses (any more than that apparently was a waste of effort). When the 2nd dose didn't work, the writing was looking fairly evident. The filipino doc reminded me that one of JFK's sons died from a similar event. A catholic priest blessed him. My LDS friends blessed him. I'd have hired a yogi and rabbi if it would've helped....

As for me? I felt as helpless as my new son. I was ever-present, but had to care for his 2 older sisters at the same time. The grandparents helped a ton.

The 3rd time, obviously, worked. We brought him home in a snowstorm. I'll never forget the day he caught a cold - about a month after coming home. I didn't sleep for days I was so worried he'd stop breathing.

But, it's Bobby, he was cool.

He's grown into a funny kid. As he hits 10 he's something of a "himbo." I've seen little girls at the pool giggle over him, squealing "he's so CUTE!" while he cluelessly runs off to dive into the pool. He really is a beautiful child, I don't know how the hell that happened. But yes, he is a bit of an absent-minded idiot ......just like his folks I guess.

After that start we had with him, he can jump in the tub fully clothed whenever he wants....Love ya, kiddo,

Dad