Bikes

My 8 year old learned how to ride a bike this week. He's had about 10 minutes of practice per year since he was 5. So little due to there being nowhere a kid could learn to ride within pushing a bike distance from our house. Anytime we've taken the boys out to ride bikes it's required us to pile the boys plus two bikes into an automobile and drive to a spot with an empty enough black top to practice on. For some reason it's also a requirement that the day be hot as balls - which doesn't sweeten the deal for anybody.

Anyhow, on a recent trip to the grandparents' house, the kid picked up the knack and now we're piling bikes into the car and driving to an empty parking lot with some regularity. And here's what he does...

...pedals the length of the big empty lot, puts his feet down to stop, gets off the bike, manually turns it around (a process that takes about 30 seconds), remounts and pedals the length again.

1 lap = one bazillion minutes.

Still... cool.

Fart Test

Almost never do I respond to internet memes, but every once in a while one comes along so entirely (ahem) up my alley that I go a bit overboard. Last week a friend posted the DESCRIBE YOUR LAST FART USING ONLY A MOVIE TITLE one and, yeah I responded.

Over 200 times.

A week later I got a phone call at work first thing in the morning and it's my 8 year old calling with his own contribution to the list - The Desolation of Smaug - and last night while recounting the phone call for some guests, the 9 year old goes through our DVDs and makes his own list, prompting one guest to ask my wife "How does it feel to have given birth to your own husband?"

So here's that list:

- The Black Hole
- The Man Who Wasn't There
- The Getaway
- Doomsday
- Escape From New York
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
- A Series of Unfortunate Events
- The Ladykillers
- Burn After Reading
- Rabid
- Dirty Pretty Things
- Mission Impossible
- Danger Mouse
- Pitch Black
- The Thing
- Basic Instinct
- Kill Bill
- Don't Go Into the Woods
- Mystic River
- Pusher
- A Fistful of Dynamite
- Billy the Exterminator
- Find Me Guilty
- Dawn of the Dead
- Little Miss Sunshine
- Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
- Human Nature
- A Mighty Wind
- Return of the Living Dead
- Chain Reaction
- Good Night and Good Luck
- 28 Days Later

That'll Do, Pig. That'll Do.

So I had to punish my son for an attitude problem tonight. He didn't see the point of doing his stupid homework and I explained that the point was not actually to know the answer to a random mathematical problem or be able to hold forth on the merits or lack thereof of a young-reader's book, but to be able to demonstrate practical applications of the principles he has been lectured on.

I told him his punishment was not for not wanting to do the homework, but for having a bad attitude about doing it, to which he countered that he didn't actually have a bad attitude, but that I had misperceived his actions and tone. "I hope that's true," I said, "but even if it is, it's important for you to learn how your actions and tone may misrepresent your intent, therefore the punishment still stands."

Ten minutes later at dinner, once crankiness had been quashed by mom's homemade pizza and moods were considerably higher, he addresses me cheerily from across the table - in front of his mother whom he knows is often uneasy about the choice of film and literature I choose to expose he and his brother to and work through with them, and who might be taking it out of my hide for a few days - about a certain visually stunning and poetically violent bit of martial ballet we'd looked at recently.

"Hey dad, you remember in Kill Bill when (The Bride) chops off (O-Ren Ishii)'s head? You know how her scalp just flies through the air and then we see her brain? Wouldn't the sword have chopped off that part of the brain too?"

"Um... Yes. Remember, it's very stylized and not a realistic depiction of violence."

- Sheepish look from me.
- Withering look (directed at me) from mom.
- Satisfied smile from the boy who'd applied the principles from the lecture on tone he'd just received.

Game. Set. Match. That'll do, Pig.