The kid in the hat on the far right is all like, "let me shine your shoes, you yuppie prick." To which I'm like, "Yes, sir."

A while back I wrote about how I wanted to do a regular feature here at Sweet Juniper where I would "review" (i.e. make fun of) children's books written by celebrities. Our friendly neighborhood BARGAIN BOOK WAREHOUSE (slogan: "Where Bad Books Go to Die") has a gigantic section devoted solely to shitty children's books written by shitty celebrities. I thought it would be funny to write about Jada Pinckett Smith's Girls Hold up the World, but every time I sat down to "review" it I felt like I was making fun of the retarded kids at the school assembly.

Then I found a celebrity totally undeserving of pity: Billy Joel. By virtue of his continued existence, and a literal reading of his 1977 hit "Only the Good Die Young," hasn't Mr. Joel essentially admitted what we all know to be true: that he is not good; that he is bad. Billy Joel's third wife is 24 years old. He's 57. His own daughter via Christie Brinkley is 21. That's why I was sure when I sat down with a copy of his crap children's book Goodnight My Angel, I would be able to totally make fun of this soft-rock pansy asshole with impunity. The illustrations are so saccharine that Thomas Kinkade "The Painter of Light" himself wouldn't even have the plums to draw anything this cheesy, and the text of the "book" is nothing but the lyrics to the song that Billy Joel sang to his daughter when his current wife was still in diapers.

Who do these celebrities think they are, believing themselves authors of children's literature simply because they managed to felate the right music/TV/film executive at the right time in their lives? A celebrity becomes a parent and suddenly realizes, Goddamn, these kids' books have only got a few words in them. I may not have graduated high school but I too can be an author! In Madonna's infamous words, "I'm starting to read to my son. But I couldn't believe how vapid and vacant and empty all the stories were. There's, like, no lessons. . .There's, like, no books about anything." Imagine if Margaret Wise Brown had said that about the pointy-bra-wearing industry.

But I am glad somebody finally bought Madonna a thesaurus.

I am also disturbed by this trend of hiring an artist to slap illustrations on the lyrics of a venerated musician's song and calling it a children's book. Beyond Billy Joel they've done it to songs by Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Jerry Garcia and even Bob Dylan.

Perhaps I'm too harsh. The problem may not be the fact that publishers are doing this, but that they are just doing it with really lame, boring songs by decrepit celebrities. So I thought that instead of making fun of shitty celebrity books, it would better to imagine the possibility of children's books made from non-lame songs by less decrepit celebrities. So, in that spirit, I present to you, "A Horse Named Paul Revere," a children's book by The Beastie Boys:


I have also set up a flickr site with the full rap/text. This blog is clearly a cry for help.

At this point I know what you're thinking: "Cripes, Dutch, you're writing about Little House on the Prairie? How gay are you?"

The truth is, pretty darn gay I guess. But I know I've been talking a lot of shit about "how much I hate television" lately, so to prove that I'm not a total prick I thought I'd write about one of my all-time favorite TV shows.

When I was a kid, every night at six o'clock I would watch a syndicated LHOTP episode with my cut-up-smoky-link-filled macaroni and cheese. I loved that show. Don't get me drunk and talking about the time Laura found fool's gold in the creek or the episode where Mary burned down the barn. Or that time Nellie pretended to be in the wheelchair and she rolled down the hill into the creek? I will talk about LHOTP all night. Remember the time Laura stole Nellie's music box and had all those trippy punishment nightmares? Or how Pa made that stuttering Swedish chick with the short leg special shoes so she could play stickball with the other girls? Remember when Laura and Andy Garvey try to catch the creeper of Walnut Grove by putting a bucket of green paint above the door and it ended up turning Pa's hair green? I loved that shit, son.

I read an article recently about how little boys generally stick their noses up at books with girls on the cover, the major exception being the Little House series. There's something about that whole wood choppin' homesteadin' huntin' & fishin' thing that I know I really enjoyed, and part of that came through in the character of Charles Ingalls, brought unforgettably to life by Michael Landon. Although I enjoyed the books, I was never as mesmerized by them as I was by the television show, primarily because it was easier to watch the TV show than read. But I had also seen the show before I read the books, and I just never could accept the gruff, bearded fellow that Laura Ingalls Wilder described in the books as Pa. To me, Pa was Michael Landon, fresh-faced and 70s shagged and fucking awesome.

I don't understand why Michael Landon is not a gay icon. If I were gay, I would totally be gay for 1974-era Michael Landon. How do the gay choose their icons? Judy Garland? Cher? Why not Michael Landon? He had the whole western thing going. When he was on Bonanza, he had his shirt off half the time. And Landon's muscles weren't those "4 sets of 12 reps to work my rhomboids" muscles, but muscles earned pitching bales of hay and kicking ass. Plus he seemed to be really close to one of my favorite-all-time actors, Victor French. Victor's got to be a hairy bear icon if ever there was one. And don't forget those four and a half seasons of Highway to Heaven, which itself was one of the awesomest shows ever, it makes that show about angels starring Maya Angelou that my grandma loved so much look like a steaming pile of horseshit. Highway to Heaven's resurgence on TV Land almost feels like an excuse for me to get cable. I love it because it looks so old now, the way episodes of I Love Lucy looked when I was a kid. Except I remember when Highway to Heaven was new.

I'm dead serious about Little House on the Prairie, though. Michael Landon might not have made it as a gay icon, but I do see him as an icon of fatherhood. Despite whatever problems he had in real life, on screen Michael Landon knew how to be a father, particularly a father to little girls, which seems like more of a challenge than siring little boys. I loved the way he always kept in touch with his tender side, even though you knew if some rowdy drunkards came to town and disrupted Rev. Alden's sermon or if one of Laura's schoolmates was consistently getting too harsh a whuppin' from his own Pa, Charles would be there with a stern look and the guns to back up what's right. And he was always right. Pa was equally capable of playing a fiddle tune before bedtime, comforting half pint over the loss of a pet, or giving practical homespun advice about how to deal with that snooty Mrs. Oleson and her venomous progeny. Crap, all this talk makes me want to go eat bacon strips at Cracker Barrel with Victor French and reminisce about old times, I miss being 9 and watching that show so much.

The thing that strikes me now about the show was its fucking decency. Walnut Grove was portrayed as such an idealized community, where neighbors supported each other in hard times and Doc Baker was happily paid in small livestock. Walnut Grove felt very safe. There were no lawyers in Walnut Grove. I wanted to live there. Though uniformly Christian, these characters weren't your typical homo-hating southern-fried anti-intellectual evangelicals. Their Christianity provided them with a moral compass to do good in their community: to make the right decision even when it was hard or unpopular. And man, did they love to sing "Onward Christian soldiers" and "Bringing in the Sheaves." Poor Reverend Alden. I think his hymnals only had those two songs.

In Pa Ingalls, Landon (who produced, wrote, and directed the series as well) created a character who exemplified a certain Christian moral ideal that I can approve of: honest, loyal, faithful, non-conforming (hello: a 70s shag in Victorian Minnesota?), loving, hardworking. He could make or do anything. This was true in the books, but really came to life on the screen. Pa would work a whole day at Hansen's lumber mill, come home and plow the fields, and then crack jokes at the dinner table and ask his girls about their day and tuck them into bed before making sweet prairie love to Caroline on a mattress full of hay after the last oil lamp burned out. Now that's one hot hunk of Christian fatherhood, right there.

When I was a kid, I got dragged to church every Sunday. My church wasn't like Walnut Grove's church/school. Everyone there was so old. And the minister was so boring. And they never sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" or "Bringing in the Sheaves."It was torture. We didn't have homemade fried-chicken in a picnic basket waiting in the wagon for a kickass picnic down on the banks of Plum Creek after church. If we were lucky, we had a bucket of KFC and three sides to eat while my dad watched This Old House. I know a lot of people, even nonbelievers, who bring their kids to church just to instill some kind of vague morality in them. To that I ask: why torture when you can entertain? I got all the morality I needed from Little House on the Prairie, bitches. And now they have it commercial free on DVD.

If only I could find that dress for Juniper. . .

The Dude as Dad

Posted by jdg | Wednesday, April 12, 2006 | , , ,

WALTER
Not your fucking rug again, Dude.

DUDE
Yes the rug again, Walter.

WALTER
I know, I know, it really tied the room together.

DUDE [changing from a pair of jelly sandals into bowling shoes, sockless]
Well it did, Walter.

WALTER
Why did you have the kid this week anyway? I thought you only saw him once a month on non-league game weekends.

DUDE
Oh, Maude had to go to Vienna this week and she couldn't bring him with her.

WALTER [stretching a leather bowling glove over his wrist]
What happened to the nanny?

DUDE
Who Knox? He and Maude had some sort of falling out. Something to do with a video he made of Egon.

WALTER
He sounds like some kind of pederast.

DUDE
He's not a pederast, Walter. He's a video artist. Maude just didn't want him using little Egon in his work. She couldn't get a new nanny before she had to fly out. So, the Dude was dad for a whole week.

WALTER
The Dude as dad. [Walter tips a bottle of Bud towards the dude, who takes a sip from his caucasian.]

DUDE
That's right, man [smiling widely, with milk dripping from his mustache.]

WALTER
What happened with the rug, Dude?

DUDE
I was trying to figure out how to change the kid's diaper the first night. I had just taken a dirty one off him. There was shit everywhere and I was trying to wipe it off his little balls and then I heard the tea kettle on the stove. By the time I got back he was lying there peeing all over the rug, man.

WALTER
Your son's a rug pisser.

DUDE
Fuckin-A, man. [The Dude gestures with his arm, making a perfect arc].

WALTER
Your rug has certainly seen its share of micturition, Dude.

DUDE [whispering]
The other thing is, this was the first time I saw his little johnson. Maude didn't have him circumcised.

WALTER
That's too bad.

DUDE
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad she didn't have it done, man. It was just a little weird to see it. I'm not used to how it looks.

WALTER
She should have had him circumcised.

DUDE
What the fuck Walter, don't you know circumcision is an act of violence?

WALTER [visibly upset]
Huh?

DUDE
Remember last year when I was still having those nightmares? The nihilists, chasing me with giant scissors, you know, how they wanted to. . .

WALTER
. . .Cut off your johnson?

DUDE
That's right, man, well anyway, I got to talking to Allan my landlord about a year ago, and he tells me it's not the nihilists after all, but all the emotional baggage I have from being circumcised.

WALTER
Allan told you this?

DUDE
He's got an associates degree in psychology from Santa Monica College, man. Plus he's an intactivist so he's like an expert on this stuff.

WALTER
What the fuck is an intactivist?

DUDE
Somebody who spreads the word about the evil of circumcision, I guess. And he's trying to grow back his foreskin.

WALTER
Grow back his foreskin? What? How the fuck is he going to do that?

DUDE
I don't know. Something about skin grafts, and weights and pulleys; I didn't get the full details, Walter.

WALTER
Circumcision isn't evil, Dude.

DUDE
What are you talking about, man? It's an act of violence against an innocent child, Walter.

WALTER
Damn it Dude, the brit mila is a sacred covenant between man and God. It's not some kind of torture. It's not like castration. And it sure as shit isn't fucking evil. [Walter slams fist on the table; scorecards and empty beer bottles scatter. The Dude's cocktail nearly falls from the table.]

DUDE
Watch it man, there's a beverage here!

WALTER
Brit mila.

DUDE
I'm not talking about the Jewish thing, man.

WALTER
I am circumcised, Dude.

DUDE
Well so am I, Walter, but that's the whole fucking problem, man; We didn't have any say in the matter and truth be told I think I might have liked to have a foreskin.

WALTER
No you wouldn't, Dude.

DUDE
What the fuck do you know, Walter?

WALTER
Oh, I know.

DUDE
How do you know?

WALTER
Because if you hadn't been circumcised you might have found yourself standing in the showers at Long Binh camp and some smartmouth first lieutenant from Brooklyn points at your foreskin and for the rest of that tour your whole platoon is calling you the anteater. [shouting] And goddamn it I didn't watch my buddies die facedown in the muck so that your dancing landlord could besmirch three thousand years of beautiful tradition.

DUDE
I thought you said you were circumcised, Walter.

WALTER
I was, dude, in 1984. When I converted to Judaism.

DUDE
You got circumcised for Cynthia?

WALTER
I made a sacred covenant with the lord, Dude. Abraham was circumcised when he was 99 years old. Besides, I wasn't going to have Cynthia looking at my. . .

DUDE
But Walter, that must have been major surgery, man.

WALTER
Just a little local anesthetic. Outpatient procedure. I was on bedrest for three days, but that was it.

DUDE
Christ, Walter.

WALTER
You want a foreskin, Dude? I can get you a foreskin, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me.

DUDE
But Walter. . .

WALTER
The issue here is your rug, Dude. And with Maude overseas, might I suggest another Lebowski, Egon's grandfather perhaps, who has the wealth, uh, the resources obviously to compensate you for the fucking rug.

DUDE
The fucking rug that his darling grandson soiled.

WALTER
That's right Dude. Who's watching the kid right now though?

DUDE
Oh, his grandma Bunny is taking care of him. Let's fucking roll.

[The preceding fragment of the script for "The Little Lebowski" was recovered by an associate at the Sepulveda Boulevard Kinkos in Van Nuys, CA, after a frazzled Ethan Coen rushed in to copy a small stack of typewritten pages, accidentally leaving behind several off-center copied pages in the recycling bin. Several other fragments were also recovered.]

Golly

Posted by jdg | Monday, April 10, 2006 | ,

Wow, I sure am glad Gwyneth Paltrow decided to name her second child "Moses."

Seriously, God's chosen peeps have been wandering around for centuries with white-unleavened-bread old testament names like Elijah and Noah and Daniel and Jacob and Solomon and David, and according to the social security administration's list of popular names, plenty of goyim are going after that old testament flavor too.

Ever the trendsetter, leave it to Gwyneth to go after the big one: Moses.

See, while there are certain biblical names that are totally normalized, there are a few that would still raise an eyebrow these days. And one of those is the name I wanted to give Juniper had she been a boy. At the top of my list:

Goliath.

You think I'm kidding, but I'm so not. I'm dead serious.

I wanted a strong, powerful name. I knew that any son of mine might be destined to be diminutive, bookish, and quite possible gay. And I'm totally cool with that, but how much better would a diminutive bookish gay guy be if he was named Goliath? Sure, high school would be hard, but it's so passe to consider schoolyard taunting when naming a child. Taunting builds character; what you have to consider are the collegiate dividends. Goliath is so the name of a big man on campus. Imagine Goliath at a college party, doing a keg stand while everyone shouts his name. All the girls will want to know who Goliath is. If he were to turn out gay, imagine the reception he'd get at the gay bars. "Goliath's here!" the bouncer would shout. That's when the party really starts.

Wood was never as keen on the name Goliath as I was, but now that Gwyneth has bestowed her newborn son with the kickass name of Moses, here's to the hope that Wood will be more receptive to the name Goliath when the next baby rolls into town.

Because imagine a little tiny newborn infant named Goliath. Imagine a toddler named Goliath. I know you're nodding your head at the awesomeness of that right now. Don't even try to deny it.



Posted by jdg | Wednesday, April 05, 2006 |

Guess who has slept through the night with nary a peep, from 7:30 p.m. to 6:15 a.m. the last two nights?

Not the snoring mother-in-law; not Wood or I (who wake every hour wondering if a burglar with a striped shirt and a black lone ranger mask has crept up a ladder and stolen our baby).

Wood is convinced that if I write this, it will "jinx" us. I tell her not to use that word, that it's politically incorrect, like saying "I got gyped" or "he jewed me down." I have no idea what I am talking about though. I'm just too overjoyed and well-rested to keep quiet.