One of my law professors once pulled out one of those oldfangled CD boomboxes and played his son's new EP for his property law class. Some of the songs, such as "Girls Own Juice" and "Make Sex" upset some of the more stridently-feminist students, and this, along with the professor's tendency to call girls "Cupcake" made some of them wonder how Catherine MacKinnon ever managed to stand near him at faculty events. I just remember sitting there impressed that a father could be so proud of his son's rock jam about vaginal secretions.

That son, of course, turned into Andrew W.K. whose songs "Party Hard" and "It's Time To Party" you've probably heard in beer commercials or that Girls Gone Wild videotape you ordered in 2003. Mr. W.K. is well known for his piano-infused party rock as well as for always dressing like a house painter, but did you know he has a kid's television show coming out this week? It's called "Destroy Build Destroy" and the preview pretty much speaks for itself:

I guess building rolling robot bombs and facing down a tank are this generation's equivalent of getting slimed on Double Dare. I would have liked to have been there when Andrew W.K. asked these kids' parents to sign the liability waiver. "Yeah, after your daughter blows some shit up with a bazooka we're gonna drop grandma's Mary Kay car from a crane on the edge of a cliff, then we're gonna build some shit and blow it up then we're gonna PARTY TILL WE PUKE."

It's official: Andrew W.K., world's best babysitter.

I found about a hundred new urchin photos last night and some of them are really cool. Almost as cool as these girls with their folded arms checking out the dudes outside the factory walls.

You still have time to enter the contest for the free music player, just leave a comment on the most recent post before 3:00 p.m. EST and I'll update this post as soon as I use the random number generator to determine a winner.

**UPDATE**

Thanks to everyone for the hilarious comments. We only have one 1000-song player to give away for Father's Day, but they're sending us a couple more so we'll have another contest in a few weeks and give those away as well (hopefully with friendlier odds). Using the random time and date generator at random.org we determined the winner of this giveaway to be the person who commented closest to 1:24 a.m. on June 11, 2009: Jennifer, from Bend, Oregon. I think Jennifer was one of the first people to read this blog in 2005. Glad you've stuck around all these years, Jennifer.

For the second time in a week I found myself this morning in the difficult position of explaining the concept of a 'douchebag' to a Gallic audience. Quel est le problème avec un sac pour la douche? I heard the lovely French visitor ask her friend. "You know," I say, "Like with a spray-on tan. . .or frosted tips?" Veut-il dire l'homosexuel? Oh, never mind.

* * * * *

I stopped in an Ann Arbor record store after doing the u-pick strawberry thing yesterday. I like this one because I can usually put the baby down to crawl all over the owner's mild-mannered black lab while I thumb through records and pretend I remember what it feels like to care about something other than the purported merits of child leashing. My son had so much strawberry juice streaking down his jowls he looked like a chupacabra freshly yanked from a goat carcass. The dog felt sorry for me and decided to make me look like a better parent by licking the juice off my son's face and I was all, What up, dog! giving him a heartfelt thumbs up.

The record store was crawling with college-aged hipsters and I had no business being in there. It has been many months since I even looked at any of the music websites I used to spend whole workdays reading before kids, scouring the net for much-ballyhooed upcoming releases and trying to schedule as many live shows into every week as possible. I don't have a demonoid account. I don't even know where to begin illegally downloading music anymore. So instead I buy Check Your Head on 180-gram vinyl, drop the needle, and lose myself in the soundtrack of my fifteenth year on earth.

In the record store, I gingerly clutched a couple re-issues of beloved old albums, and some hipster holding the new Dirty Projectors record looked at the vinyl in my hand like I was waving around my wife's dripping placenta. You'd better watch out, pal, I thought. Don't ever lose your sense of irony or fall in love and become enslaved by biological imperative. Keep smoking your American Spirits and wearing those sperm-killing jeans and maybe you'll get lucky and die a poetic death before fate ever transforms you into a sad sap with strawberry juice all over his t-shirt buying an album released before you were born. Then I brought my reissues up to the counter and faced that character even more intimidating than the judgmental-aisle hipster: the record store clerk, whose job-mandated scrutiny of your purchases is flavored by minimum-wage bitterness and followed by guffaws indicating failure, or, if you are deemed worthy, a gruff, "That album's pretty decent."

But this guys says to me, Do you still have any use for CDs, buddy?

Not really, I reply. I'm trying to replace my old CD collection with vinyl.

Oh well, he says. I have all these promo Dave Matthew CDs, thought you might want one.

Just then a flaming minivan pulled by hellhounds clatters into the store and a dozen shrieking hellwraiths wearing pleated khaki pants and tucked-in polo shirts grab me by each of my limbs and drag me screaming and howling into the everlasting hellfire engulfing their Town & Country which then drives into a vortex of writhing sinners venting the cackles of Moloch in Pandaemonium and the barking of hellhounds returning to the womb of sin to gnaw at her entrails. . .

* * * * *

There are more French visitors coming next week. Apparently the French appreciate me, the same way they like Jerry Lewis and the parts of animals that no one else wants to eat. I prefer to think they just get me, except, that is, when I'm trying to explain what a 'douchebag' is. Next time, I'll know just to point at myself with both forefingers, up and down, and say:

"This."

* * * * *

Sandisk just bought a bunch of ads on this site and sent me one of their tiny new slot radio music players to give away. Apparently it comes preprogrammed with 1000 handpicked songs in prearranged playlists so you never have to bother with record stores or downloads or iTunes. You might just find out what the kids are listening to these days. I will give it away randomly to anyone who comments on this post and announce the winner on Friday (for father's day). No comment requirements, but feel free to correct my French or call me un sac de douche vaginale.

Warning: anyone who defends a certain musician whose name rhymes with Gave Dad Snooze will be immediately disqualified (It still stings, you see).

This week's selection is the story of a girl and her doll, told in the earnest black and white photography that was a hallmark of the most terrifying examples of Nixon-era children's literature. I believe this book was published as part of a campaign by the Porcelain Doll Manufacturers Association to combat the prevailing belief that there is nothing more terrifying than a China Doll staring at you from across the room.

After their weekly visit to the zoetrope, Amy stuck her nose on the glass at C. N. Mackie's Magical Toy Depot while her mother inspected the crinoline cage she'd had repaired next door at Douglas and Sherwood's House of Hoops. "I simply must have a talking doll, Mother," Amy insisted.

"I'm truly sorry, Ma'am," the Victorian shopkeeper said. "But they won't make talking dolls for at least another fifty years or so."

"If my daughter desires a talking doll," Amy's mother said, "Then you will sell us a talking doll."

"Let me go in the back and see what I can find."

"Well Miss, they say this one talks, but from the looks of things her last guv'ness didn't like what she had to say."

"I don't care," Amy snorted. "Repair her at once."

"Yes, Miss."
"My name is Talky Tina, and I love you very much," the doll said. Children are meant to be seen and not heard, Amy grinned, lightly spanking its bottom as she walked away.

"This doll is indecent," Amy's mother said to the shopkeeper. "Dress her respectfully, something with leg of mutton sleeves, perhaps. And a cashmere shawl."

"Yes, ma'am."
"My name is Talky Tina," the doll said. "Will you play with me?"

"I'll play with you, alright," Amy whispered deviously as she left the store.

"My name is Talky Tina, and this is making me really uncomfortable, Amy."

When she tired of the game herself, Amy let the neighbor boy lift up Talky Tina's petticoats in exchange for half a pack of Beeman's chewing gum

"My name is Talky Tina. Please don't bury me under the rock cairn again."

"My name is Talky Tina and I'm afraid of heights. Please don't stick me in that tree with Silent Sam."

"My name is Talky Tina and I don't like this one bit!"

Amy just laughed.

"My name is Talky Tina, will you be my friends?"

"Silence!" Amy shouted at Tina. "Can't you see the adults are having a conversation?"

"My name is Talky Tina and I don't like figgy pudding."

"Well, you'll eat it even if I have to tie you to your bed and force it down your throat!"

In time, Amy stopped playing with her talking doll. "My name is Talky Tina, and I am lonely," she said.

Whenever she tried to speak, Amy throttled her good.

"My name is Talky Tina, and I love you," Talky Tina said to Amy on the swing.

"You're boring!" Amy shouted, and threw her in the bushes.

Talky Tina wept while Amy's former cat Mr. Fritz consoled her. "She used to put laxative powder in my tuna fish," he said while peeking his head under her petticoats.

"My name is Talky Tina and I will survive on the streets by selling matchsticks and picking the occasional pocket until I get my revenge."

One day, Talky Tina returned to Amy's house [cue creepy music box]. Now things were different. During her absence, Amy had begun treating Little Lulu the same way she had treated Talky Tina.

"My name is Talky Tina, and I am going to hurt you."

"That's right, Amy. Step right over to the edge, and just lean forward, just a little. . ."

"Owwwwwwwww!"
"What happened?"
"Oharghwawww. Just stepped on another goddamn plastic Pegasus."
"How many does she have now? That herd is multiplying."
"Oh God, there's blood."
"Pegasus, what happened to being the winged-equine friend of man?"
"Just be grateful she's not into unicorns."

You were worried that the hardest part of having a boy would be the mudpuddles and mischief, but it turns out those are some of the best parts. Sometimes we share a secret masculine delight in smashing things. We pound on pots, and chairs, and the floor. We are loud. Don't tell the liberals, but there will be battles and war. Toy guns, even. For now he's content with dolls, and fairies, and flying horses (though sometimes they fly down the stairs). Our daily adventures will change, no doubt, as he puts more weight against the tiller.

We were a trio and he was our Harpo, but now that's all changed. Everything, now, has its word. And new words are meant to shouted. There was a dam that cracked with the letter B, and through it rushed Ds and Ps and Ms. Everything that was true then, is true again. Only now, his sister is here to share in the delight of every new word, every parroted proclamation from this formerly silent sidekick.

* * * * *

We stand around in the meadow and I watch my son watch his mother turn cartwheels. The joy of it overwhelms him; he puffs out his chest to contain it all but it escapes in shrieks and giggles. I see her beauty in his face and think, Good: high school won't be as tough for him. He reaches up his hands in imitation of her and plants them on the ground as if to do a cartwheel himself. Falling short, he scurries forward on his hands and feet. Her hand goes to her heart from the cuteness of it.

* * * * *

When you have an older sister, you can't learn to run quick enough. She might have a toy. Or ice cream. And YOU WANT IT TOO. As your walk edges closer to a run, the way you move your arms might remind your father of The Bushwackers making their way to the squared circle:

There's more than a minor resemblance, son. But we'll save the wrestling for when you're older. For now you wrestle with words; you've realized the world is full of them.

And you know now that you can make them, too.