Matt McHugh.com - Blog

I'm enjoying the hysteria over Swine Flu. Not that I take trans-national outbreaks of diseases where humans have no immunity lightly -- but seriously, this one doesn't seem all that serious. Yes, it's spreading rapidly. Yes, it's caused some fatalities. Yes, it will likely get worse -- yet the likelihood it will actually escalate to a statistically significant health risk to the population-at-large is extremely slim. In the grand scheme of things to worry about, it just doesn't rate very high on my list.

Personally, I know of no one who died from any infectious disease of any kind. I know dozens of cancer victims, a handful of heart attacks, more than a few traffic fatalities, and even a few terrorism and/or war victims. We seem pretty cavalier about those statistically greater risks, yet get all nutty over some relatively mild influenza strain because it's got a catchy name, comes from South of the Border, and sells newspapers.

The "sells newspapers" bit was metaphoric, of course. Nothing seems to move those rags anymore.

You hear a lot about the decline of newspapers. Often embedded in that is a kind of lament for the death of journalism. The two are not the same. Not even close.

A newspaper is an ink-and-pulp thing that, frankly, has outlived its usefulness. Yeah, it's nice to have to cover the table for art projects or wrap glasses when you move, but mostly it's just waste. Good riddance to it, I say.

Journalism, on the other hand, is an abstraction, a approach to the vetting and reporting of information and viewpoints that can thrive perfectly well in any medium. Its lease on life is infinitely renewable. It's just a question of how much we want it.

I don't fret about the death of the newspaper as a physical or even business entity. It's essentially been replaced already. Not all of them have gotten the memo yet.

However, I do worry about the death of journalism. I worry that the prevalence of opinion and the ease with which is can be published -- instantly, globally, and with a semblance of authority -- threatens the concept of vetted, verified information. I worry that our ability to tell the difference between fact and opinion -- the twin pillars of journalism that are (in theory, anyway) always clearly labelled -- is being irrevocably eroded by Google-indexed blogs and tweets.

I like to know what happened today, then hear different viewpoints on the ramifications of the day's events. Journalists are trained to know the difference. A disturbing number of regular folks are not only unable to tell the difference, but seem to place no value on the distinction. And a lot of them have blogs.

This well-written and researched book follows the long arc of the "Project Nim" ape-language experiment in fascinating detail, from the foundations of its inception to its rather sad ending. Throughout, Ms. Hess is careful to ensure that our sympathies are always with the chimp Nim, but she never anthropomorphizes him. By the end, it's hard not to see Nim as a victim. A loved and well-treated one (sometimes), but a victim nonetheless.

That's all fine. This not a book of cold, journalistic detachment, but an engrossing story of the personalities -- both human and animal -- involved in a radical bit of research that Ms. Hess clearly posits as misconceived. Again, that's fine. A book like this can have a viewpoint and still be honest, and this one scores on both counts. However, there were definitely moments that seemed downright gossipy as it outlined the foibles of some of the humans involved. In fact, almost every major player (Bill Lemmon, Herb Terrace, Roger Fouts) come off as arrogant or inept jerks (or worse) under Hess's constant editorializing.

Even with her chapter notes at the end of the book, I found it hard to connect the dots from many of the anecdotes to any reliable source. Sometimes, I just felt there was too much free-floating opinion in the text. It doesn't invalidate the book. I guess I just wish she'd given some of the people in the story the same empathy she lavished upon the chimps.

Overall though, this was an incisive and informative read, and eye-opening throughout.

Regarding the above book about Nim Chimpsky: for those of you who don't know, Nim was a chimpanzee raised by a human family in the 70's as if he were a human (wore clothes, ate at table, used a toilet... sometimes) and taught sign language. The whole idea was to give him an environment as close as possible to a human child to see if that fostered strides in language development. His name, a pun on famous once-linguist/now-activist Noam Chompsky, was a poke at Chompsky's view that language was a uniquely human attribute. Though the whole thing was far too chaotic to be considered an "experiment" by scientific standards, and ended up pretty much an abject failure by any measure, it did help solidify one lasting concept for any future ape-language studies: Apes ain't human.

Infant chimps are ridiculously cute and exhibit strikingly human-like needs for affection and attention. Within a year, they become destructive, unpredictable animals with insatiably curious, problem-solving minds, vast emotional sensitivities, and zero grasp of human socialization -- regardless of who diapered and fed them. Thus it was with Nim. Though he did manage to pick up some signs and seemed to have genuine affection for some of his human caretakers, in the end, he was a breed apart and had no use for the tools thrust upon him.

Still, I can't help but wonder if someday someone will find a way to break through that species barrier and communicate with an ape, or other creature. A few years ago I read a book about Kanzi, a bonobo taught in the 80's to use special symbols on a keyboard, that seemed to come closer to such a breakthrough. I've always been interested in the idea (witness my story "Inhumanity", which I wrote some 15 years ago) and, on some level, I do believe it's possible. Though, as Project Nim demonstrated, we will likely always fail when we try to teach an ape to think like us. The opposite approach, learning to think as they do, is probably our best hope of starting an inter-species conversation.

My friend Frank, who died last week of cancer, had his funeral today. Certainly the most unique funeral I've ever been to. In accordance with his wishes, he was cremated and his ashes dumped into the sea in Manasquan, New Jersey, in view of the beach house his family owned for forty years. So me and 100 assorted friends and relatives took a chartered fishing boat out past the jetty to dump half of Frank into the Atlantic (the other half will be dumped in Bonaire at some point, again, in accordance with his wishes).

When someone very ill dies, your first emotion is relief. I certainly felt that after watching Frank deteriorate over months. Afterward, grief creeps in. Grief is an odd and powerful emotion. It seems not connected to anything, but an entity unto itself. Grief is a reflex, an instinctive reaction to the death of someone close to you, that has very little to do with anything you thought or felt about that person. It is the visceral recognition of irrevocable loss, no more and no less -- potent, universal, and in many ways, indistinct.

After grief, though, there is something else: sadness. I grieve for the death of my friend, but I am simply saddened by the fact I will never see him again. I don't have many friends, and I've lost one. I grieve for Frank, but I am sad for myself. Connected, I suppose, but not the same feeling.

My friend Frank was an outsized personality, loud and mischievous, who partook of life's pleasures with infectious gusto. He lived to be the life of the party, the host with the most, the #1 fan, the winking lech, the perennial goofball jokester who knew how to push you right to the edge then pull you back with a clap on your shoulder and sincere assurances that he was just kidding around. And he was. And you knew it. You knew it because he was a truly good-hearted man who never showed a trace of mean-spiritedness. He just wanted to have fun and drag you along for the ride. Frank was your friend whether you wanted him to be or not.

Without Frank, I would have never gone to a pro football game. I would have never spent New Year's Eve on top of the Empire State Building. I would never have gotten shit-faced in a dive bar and seen a biker chick throw a trash can through a picture window. I would never have installed a dishwasher. I would never have bought a propane grill. I would never have gone scuba diving at night in Grand Cayman and fanned bioluminescent polyps off coral in the moonlight 60 feet underwater. I would never have found my wedding ring, which slipped off my finger during aforementioned fanning. I would never have had hours upon hours of impassioned arguments about all manner of sci-fi and comic book minutiae. Without Frank, years of my life might have passed without unselfconscious laughter. Without Frank, I have no idea what might fill that void.

We have this image of Heaven, inherited from ambient culture and tradition, as a peaceful, pastoral place. That is not Frank's Heaven. Frank's Heaven is a place of food and drink, of beer and barbecue, of music and motion, of sing-a-long chants and dirty jokes and Christmas decorations and video games. In Frank's Heaven, you can have as many desserts as you want and kids deserve the coolest new toys and grown-ups are allowed to play with them and dogs sleep in bed with you and you go to Disney World twice a year and if your team makes it to the playoffs, goddammit, you hock whatever you have to get tickets. Frank's Heaven is on the 40-yard-line, first row... and he'll always save you a seat.

Thank you, Frank, for being my friend. Enjoy your time in Heaven. Save me a seat.

Well, well. The e-ink is barely dry on the Kindle 2 and Amazon drops an Apple-like bomb and announces a newer/bigger/better product with the Kindle DX. Very interesting.

What's always impressed me about the Kindle is not the device -- respectable though it may be -- but the content sales model. Amazon launched the Kindle program with basically a handshake deal with publishers, volunteering to take on the cost of digitizing books and selling them at a loss -- e.g., Amazon sells most Kindle books for $9.99 each yet they pay publishers their standard bookseller discounted list price, upwards of $12.95 per digital copy. That's right. Amazon absorbed the cost of set-up and takes at least a $4 loss on every Kindle book they sell. I've heard oblivious types in the publishing industry say "They can't keep that up forever." That's right. Eventually, they'll dictate list price to publishers. Watch and see.

Beyond that, what's most interesting to me personally is the Kindle's very open self-publishing program. To publish your book on the Kindle, all you have to do is HTML code it and buy an ISBN. That's it. I haven't gotten around to it myself, but I'll surely take a whack at the platform and see how it goes. I wonder how long it will be before some real, name-brand author decides to give it a go. When J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Myer or James Patterson or John Grisham decides to no longer accept the bribery of a media company, what then? Or maybe Oprah picks an obscure Kindle author for her Holy Grail book club imprimatur, and suddenly the whole game changes beneath everyone's feet.

Yeah, I went to see the new Star Trek. That was really the wife's choice -- though she didn't have to twist my arm.

My review in a nutshell? Great cast. Mediocre movie. Everyone seems to love it -- my wife and our friend certainly did -- but it really isn't that great of a film. Again, the cast and characterization is, in fact, stunningly good. Every one of the new, young actors really nailed the essence of those familiar, old characters (though Simon Pegg's Scotty served only as fleeting comic relief). They all understood that the characters were not the previous actor's idiosyncrasies. No halting delivery for Kirk. No raised eyebrow for Spock (well, maybe once). No bug-eyed indignation for McCoy. They played the characters in their own way, rather than imitate the former players -- an impressively entertaining feat in itself, and frankly, worth the price of admission.

Otherwise, though, it was just space opera. A decent one, to be sure. Very high production values and some acceptable action -- though mostly shot too chaotically to hold my attention... a trend I hate in current action movies. I just don't need to see any more shit blow up on screen. I don't care how digitally hyper-detailed it is. And, story-wise, you got every worn-out plot device in the canon. Time travel. Vengeful villian. Crew of untested cadets (once again, the Enterprise is "the only ship in the sector" ... that's been used in like four movies). A nonsensical Maguffin called "Red Matter" that looks like a lava lamp and destroys planets, except when it's inconvenient for it to do so. Seriously. The plot was drek.

Still, the cast was outstanding. I actually got little goosebumps when Spock and Kirk had their first adversarial, Reason-versus-Passion tête-à-tête on the Enterprise bridge. That's what it's all about to me: the archetypal personality drama. Then, they fly off to a planet where some social issue is dramatized in an alien context to let you see it with a fresh eye. That's Star Trek to me. Not when shit blows up.

We'll have to see what the next movie brings. And, yes, I'll probably go on opening weekend to that as well.

Oh, by the way, it's "Trekkie." A Star Trek fan of any stripe is a "Trekkie." Don't matter if you have/have not worn ears at a convention, own/don't own any signed memorabilia, or have/have not kissed a girl. If you know the difference between Kirk and Picard, a Vulcan and a Romulan, and the numeric sequence "Seven-of-Nine" sexually arouses you, you're a Trekkie.

Who are these friggin' dorks that started calling themselves "Trekkers" in the 80's... and worse yet, how did they get the media to adopt the term, as if "Trekkie" was offensive. It ain't offensive. What's offensive are loser, sci-fi geeks too pretentious to embrace the self-mocking fun of fandom. Even among the nerderatti, there's a pecking order -- and "Trekkers" are the peckee's and "Trekkies" the peckers.

I mentioned Seven-of-Nine in the previous post. Seems a good excuse to Google Image a few shots:

Definitely like her better with the whole fake plastic rib cage thing. My friend Frank loved her. This is for you, big guy!

So the boy had been saying lately he wanted to see Jurassic Park. I guess someone in the second grade's been talking it up. I've seen it many times. You may forget nowadays, with CGI dinosaurs on the Discovery Channel 24-7, but when those things first showed up on screen in 1993, there'd never been anything like them on film. I recall watching the T-Rex-chases-Jeep scene in slow-motion (on VHS!) over and over, marvelling at how the toes splayed in the mud and leg muscles shifted under the skin. Holds up quite well today.

Anyway, I know it's not particularly bloody or sadistic, but it does have some scares and realistic violence, so I wanted to sit and watch it with my son (8). My daughter (almost 6) wanted to watch as well. I let her, but kept warning her about all the scary parts in advance and telling her what would and would not happen (the mean lawyer will get eaten, but the two kids will not... etc.). I really believe that watching scary things in movies and seeing them come out all right is a good way for kids to manage fears. Jurassic Park is actually an excellent vehicle for that and we all had a fine afternoon.

Now my son is now obessessed with velociraptors. I didn't have the heart to tell him Spielberg basically made them up, combining characteristics from different species, and that real velociraptors were three feet tall and covered with feathers (at least according to the British Museum of Natural History diorama).

I have no idea where this came from or what it's supposed to mean. I just tripped across it doing a Google image search for "velociraptor." I just had to grab it for posterity. My apologies to the creator (of the image, that is, not the "Creator") for swiping it. I'd cite you if I could find you. That's good Photoshop work.

Perhaps one of you cheeky monkeys noticed in the recent Seven-of-Nine montage, there were only eight pictures. Doesn't seem right does it? Here's one more for you:

Of course, strictly speaking, this is not an image of Star Trek: Voyager character Seven-of-Nine, but of actress Jeri Ryan. Feel free to complain.

(Apologies for the all the pictures, but when I fall behind in daily blog entries, it's a quick way to help catch up. Feel free to complain.)

I read something today about Facebook being pressured to delete groups by and for Holocaust deniers. I must confess that I am decidedly against the idea.

First off, let me say that it is completely within Facebook's right to do so. Despite its highly public nature, it is nonetheless a private entity and can make whatever decisions it likes about the content it chooses to permit on its network. Furthermore, I wholly support the notion of individuals collectively lodging protests with a large organization to get it to change policy. Finally (for the record), I am not a Holocaust denier and regard said demographic as a concatenation of morons or bigots or assorted blendings of both.

What bothers me is when we, as a society, get comfortable with repressing unpopular or even reprehensible speech. Your beliefs may be misguided, but you still have a right to express them. As long as you are not directly inciting violence, the right of free speech should be extended to you, and protected by law and conventional wisdom. For example, personally, I think virtually everything that comes from the various mouths of your typical conservative pundit types is deceitful and dangerous -- just as they all in turn believe thusly of, say, the New York Times. When the pendulum of popular opinion swings one way or the other, should one side be permitted to silence they other? Very few rational people would say yes to that.

Not analogous, you say, to lump polarizing news media with Holocaust deniers? Sure it is. Just a question of degree, of where we choose to draw that imaginary line between what we judge as hateful or merely irksome. We have, as a society, moved that line all over the map. I say beware of gerrymandering unpopular ideas into comfortable ghettos so we don't have to look at them -- because someday, you may say something 51% of the population thinks belongs in a concentration camp. What's that line about those who forget the past?

So, Facebook, delete the Nazis because you determine they're bad for business. That's your prerogative. Don't delete them because you think they're wrong. That's censorship.

Had to go in this morning to meet with the school principal and the boy's second grade teacher and school psychologist. Nothing major, just the boy has been steadily misbehaving and it's time for a check-in. It's happened many times in his short academic career and likely to happen many more.

Here's the problem: my son has no tolerance for frustration. When he wants to do something and can not for whatever reason (against the rules, inappropriate time, another kid has a turn, what have you), he often gets upset--and that can range from pouty to tantrumy with little apparent cause. I do sympathize with these teachers that find him troublesome. He is troublesome sometimes, believe you me. But, as angry as his behavior can make me sometimes, I have a distinct advantage over his other caretakers: I understand him.

You see, he's me. I was him. We have very, very similar dispositions. I have learned a fair measure of discipline and can repress my feelings much better than he can, but I take frustration badly by nature as well. I didn't have the kind of issues in school he does because I went to Catholic school and they simply intimidated me into behaving. But I take my own failures very hard. I regard rote social conventions as moronic. I suffer fools very poorly and respond to injustice -- major or minor, real or perceived -- with simmering rage. More and more, I find it difficult to censor myself when I encounter things I believe are pointless or worse. I think of the embittered fury I barely contain daily as part of my son's genetic legacy, and I pity him. Sadly, this does not mean I know how to help him acquire filters I willed into existence over years. Hopefully -- and this often seems the case -- he will prove more precocious than I was and learn self-imposed emotional malleability quicker and easier than I did, and struggle with it less.

I have to say that O's announcement that he would permit closed military tribunal trials for Guantanamo detainees to continue sorely disappoints me. Just sliding back down that slippery slope of moral convenience and political expedience, while feeding the opiate of security to the masses. I don't buy it. I don't like it.

The only reason for the tribunals -- as their supporters will tell you straight out -- is that we lack adequate admissable evidence to convict many of the suspects. We have testimony from highly questionable sources, confessions obtained under duress, and employed illegal search and seizure where we had no jurisdiction. Many of these guys might well be bad guys, but we can't prove it without looking like bad guys ourselves. The security argument is total bullshit. There are ample provisions in federal courts to withhold sensitive intelligence from being revealed in a public trial. We don't have to give up our secrets to nail these guys in a court of law... except for the one big secret: we nabbed them with no regard whatsoever for law.

When, for whatever reason, we choose to grant ourselves the right to bend the rules, it erodes our moral right to condemn others that do. The dark side of the force is not more powerful, just quicker and easier.

There are about 240 terrorism suspects, untried and uncharged, remaining at Guantanamo. Obama, surprisingly to some (including me), has decided to continue with the Bush Administration's policy of having closed military tribunals for these detainees rather than open trials in U.S. courts. However, I have an alternative suggestion:

Seriously, why not? A few bullets or injections. A couple mass graves or, even better, cremations and -- badda-bing, badda-boom -- problem sovled. Quick, easy, and what could be a better outcome for American security than unambiguous eradication of all possible terrorists? Ice 'em at X-Ray, I say!

Reprehensible, you say! Unfair, monstrous, tyrannical, unjust, and (wave flag appropriately) un-American! No, we can not simply dispatch those we do not like. We must give them impartial hearings and determine beyond a reasonable doubt that they are guilty of criminal offense or represent immediate and specific danger. We must give them fair trials.

No, wait. They might -- rightly or wrongly -- be acquitted in fair trials. All right, scratch that. Let's give them closed military tribunals with utterly different standards of proof and no public accountability so we can be a lot more sure we'll get the convictions we want and be able to lock them up forever and still feel good about ourselves.

Yes. Much less messy than mass executions. Never mind. Forget I suggested it. (Though, it is much quicker and easier....)

Recently both Chyrsler and GM announced they would cut dealerships in the U.S. by as much as 25% by 2010. This leaves me with very mixed feelings.

First off, as this recession deepens and people continue to lose their livelihoods, I worry incessantly about the domino effect of that. Those car dealers all employ people who have families and mortgages and recycle the money they make back into the economy -- and as long as that circulation keeps flowing, there's hope the patient will recover. Every layoff or closing or downsizing is just one more leak in the pipes.

On the other hand, I hate car salesmen. Seriously, I've had a number of bad experiences and, as a category of people I wouldn't mind seeing starve, car dealers are pretty high on my list. Besides, the whole approach of American car companies over the last 30 years -- the whole "buy or lease a new vehicle every three years" philosophy they've shoved down our throats -- is just reprehensible from a resource standpoint. Yet another short-term profitability scheme proves to dry up the long-term well.

So, what to do with out-of-work car salesmen, who kind of deserved it anyway? Here's my idea, retrain them as mechanics, convert the dealerships to garages, and put them to work keeping the cars they sold on the road for 10-plus years. Gives them jobs, saves people money, and reduces resource drain. Case closed.

The recent flap over Obama addressing the Notre Dame graduating class -- i.e., a decidedly pro-abortion rights politician speaking at a dogmatically anti-abortion Catholic University -- had all the hallmarks of a good ol' headline-making kerfuffle and, for the most part, went off by-the-numbers. Lots of picketing protesters outside, a few hecklers inside, and a guy on the podium canny enough to acknowledge them but yield no ground. All in all, a fine bit of theater that let both ends say hooray for our side.

However, one moment recounted in the news did give me pause. A handful of folks in the audience reportedly yelled out: "Stop killing our children!" I can't help but wonder who those people were, and who they they were talking about. Were they parents of army reservists activated to Afghanistan? Or perhaps relatives of teenage Taliban insurgents on the Pakistani border? Or survivors of genocide in Darfur? No, of course not. Nothing so logical.

Let's get one thing straight: no matter what you believe about the sanctity of human life in other people's wombs, they ain't carrying your children. You want to adopt them if they get dropped off at a hospital, or stored as frozen embryos, then you can call them yours. But, until you do, they ain't, no matter how much you wish to delude yourself otherwise. "Stop promoting the right of mothers to kill their children." I'm fine with that. Inflammatory and accurate at the same time. Perfectly fair rhetoric. Inappropriately claiming ownership? Just bad form.

Here's my solution to the abortion problem: If a woman becomes pregnant and does not wish to carry the child to term, she can choose to have the embryo removed, then it is frozen and becomes a ward of the state. The woman pays for the removal; the government pays for the storage. A public record of each embryo's genetic profile is made available to assist anyone who wishes to adopt one for implantation. Everybody's happy, right?

Apparently, not right. Or at least not The Right. This perfect solution (you gotta admit, it solves everyone's concerns) has actually been pre-emptively nixed in position statements from anti-abortion groups. That makes no sense... It's freakin' perfect! Women are not forced to incubate unwanted offspring, and the unborn are not terminated. And, as a bonus, there's a vast pool of free (i.e., government-funded) embryos available to childless couples. However, abortion opponents are canny enough to recognize that this places the burden of caring for the unborn -- even if in cold storage -- on the very civic institutions they seek to sway toward outlawing abortion. Not only do they recognize the formidable cost and logistics of that, but they grasp the irony in that it makes them responsible-by-association for the lives of the unborn they reportedly are seeking to save.

No, they sure don't want that. Part of opposing abortion is making sure the mother pays the price for her indiscretion. Having a baby is your just deserts for having sex, hussy! Don't make your mistake my problem!

I tell you, that's how I see most "pro-lifers" approaching it. Certainly the Catholic Church, with its pervasive hatred of sexuality, has a dash of that attitude in its anti-abortion DNA.

Splashed all over the headlines today are pictures of the "Missing Link" fossil -- basically a 47-million-year-old lemur with fingernails that's the earliest example of a primate that shows critical human-like attributes (said fingernails, oppposable thumbs, possible bipedial locomotion). Nicknamed "Ida" by the Evolutionary Biology Marketing Department (obviously not, but it sure seems like it, doesn't it?) this critter is making a big debut with a BBC documentary and media blitz and possibly a tour later in the year.

Just all seems so businesslike and opportunistic, doesn't it? Anything that gets the word "evolution" into the press is bound to stir up plenty of hubbub, and scientists, like everyone else, can profit handsomely (monetarily or reputationally) from the careful manipulation of fame. Still, it all seems crassly sensationalized. Well, somebody's got to fund all those digs, I guess.

My daughter turned six today. We actually had her party yesterday. Nineteen girls between 5 and 7 running around in a rented church hall for a "Fashion Catwalk Model" birthday (my daughter's exactly worded request when asked what kind of party she wanted to have). The wife ordered sequined hats, oversized sunglasses, and feather boas for everyone. There were make-up and nail-painting and stick-on tattoo stations. Everyone got to decorate a headband and a little picture frame. They got personalized shopping bags to go from table to table to pick up goodies. At the end, we put on music and they got to strut down a paper runway -- which they'd all decorated earlier -- as I videoed them and showed a live feed on my laptop. All in all, a huge hit.

All this little girl stuff is just so alien to me. Academically, I know they might like this kind of thing, but it would never have occured to me to put a party like this together. Other than general gopher, my only contribution was the technology (which they loved, by they way... little girls, more than perhaps any other species, love to see themselves on camera). My wife conceived and executed all of it. Were I a single dad, I would have come up with games, crafts, maybe some kind of funny show. And, it might have been OK. But this fashion crap really hit the sweet spot with the kindergarten diva set. Surprised me.

One other contribution I made that I only got semi-right: I blew up about 40 balloons and had them just kicking around the room, figuring every kid likes to bat around balloons. Well, guess what these little she-hellions did with them? They popped them. One-by-one, they sat on every last balloon and, as each burst, they screamed bloody murder in one vast, synchronous squeal. Took them about ten minutes and it was the most gleeful fun they had. Who'da thunk....

To show you how out of touch I am, here's the mixed CD I put together as a party favor for my daughter's 6th birthday guests:

Not only are most of those songs over 20 years old, but they never really were "kid" songs. Oh, I'd argue that's a decent cross-section of timeless pop ditties that will work for any generation of teenyboppers, but they're definitely not dead-on bubble gum. As with most everything I do, I put that selection together to please myself. I could have nabbed some Hannah Montana or Jonas Brothers -- or put something together from the half dozen Happy Meal giveaway "KidzBob!" CDs we have (for those of you who don't know, they're contemporary pop hits re-recorded with kids singing them... not quite as offensive as you might think) -- but that wouldn't have been as fun to me as plowing through my own archives for things I like that I thought might connect to the kids.

In truth, their parents are more likely to appreciate that selection than the girls... and I'm OK with that.

In keeping with my daughter's interest in music -- actively encouraged and manipulated by me -- my present to her for her 6th birthday was a CD boombox.

I went back and forth with whether or not to get her a mini-shelf system or a clock radio or a personal CD player or an MP3 player or just pirate some Hannah Montanah CDs (you heard me... sue away, Mouse), but in the end opted for a simple boombox. It's compact, has decent sound, and seems durable enough (though the CD tray slides out, like a computer's... not ideal to subject to a kid's handling), and has -- and this sealed the deal -- a 1/8" stereo line built in so you can plug in an MP3 player (years ago, I bought a mini-shelf system without one and vowed never to repeat the mistake). All that for under $40 for a known brand (RCA... though that means nothing today; this was probably cranked out at the same Chinese manufacturing gulag that makes JWIN and Coby crap).

Of course, she was visibly disappointed upon opening the box. "I was hoping for a toy." Of course she was. It's not like you just got 20 useless hunks of battery-powered pink plastic from your party guests (I know why my son should have every superhero action figure, but I can't wrap my head around why my daughter covets yet another Barbie... my double standards at works). Still we set it up in her room and she quite seems to like it. I'll call it, cautiously, a hit.

So, what makes me so sure my 6-year-old girl likes music? Well, aside from the fact she's a 6-year-old girl, I've definitely observed her grooving to the tunes. For example, from a party guest, she got a UHP (Useless Hunk of a Plastic) that's a guitar-shaped thing that plays thirty seconds of a Hannah Montana song when you push a button. And she knew the song the instant she heard it. Also, she's directly said that she likes singing and dancing to music, but doesn't want anyone watching her do it. A radio in her room is the time-honored method of dealing with that scenario.

Though the clue that sticks out in memory came a few months back when, for some inexplicable reason, our mechanic gave her a CD when she came to into the shop with my wife. It was this collection of cheesy pop-rock songs about dinosaurs recorded by assorted embarrassingly over-eager studio musicians. But she loved it. She would put it in the living room player and sing along with pure abandon to "Brontosaurus Rumors" or "T-Rex: The One and Only King" or "The Truth About Triceratops," performing the same self-choreographed moves for each song every time. It was ridiculously adorable.

Anyway, after looking upon that, I knew this girl needed her own music device in her own private space ASAP. Since she's had a own boombox in her room, she's listened to a story CD, watched a Simpsons episode on my iPod (audio courtesty of the MP3 jack), and fallen asleep every night to a station she found herself on the dial -- ranging from classical to jazz to Latino.

Amongst the 20-odd gifts my daughter got for her 6th birthday was a pink, plastic "Glam Girl" or some such thing keyboard -- a musical instrument, that is. I've tinkered on the piano for 30 years and have two electric keyboards she's free to plink around on anytime, but the giver couldn't have known that. Even in the box, it looked like a piece of worthless crap to me -- however, since it came with no receipt of any kind, I went ahead and opened it when she asked.

First off, it didn't work at all. I cracked the case and found a lead wire that hadn't been soldered to the battery contact. OK... easy enough to fix. After getting it back together, I played around with it for a few minutes and found it to be an even bigger piece of crap than I'd imagined. Seriously, I've heard greeting cards with better sound.

The fact this thing even exists pisses me off. It's an absolutely worthless hunk of non-biodegradable garbage. Yet, there's a factory in China that cranks these out and a network of importers and distributors that waste resources getting them here. Just wrong, pure and simple. I don't care how cheap it is to make or sell. It should not exist.

On another level, it's ridiculous that someone felt compelled to give this as a gift. Not because it's poor quality. That's an honest mistake. But I'm irked at the whole notion of gift-obligation for kids' birthdays. The rule is you have to buy something, even if you can't come up anything worthwhile. Why? I don't agree with it. Give a gift or don't -- with no stigma either way. That's my perfect world vision.

The mountain of stuff my daughter got as 6th birthday gifts has ticked me off enough to strategize ways to end the idea of the gift-obligatory party. Seriously, I want to put a stop to it. If my kid has a birthday party and wants your kid to come, then come. Have some cake and pizza and play some games and be part of the event. That's what it's all about. Let go of the idea that the price of admission involves a gift. Screw that. Honestly, I don't want -- and my daughter doesn't need -- any more stuff. Yes, she loves bright, shiny new things -- don't we all? -- but she'll have a better, more memorable time running around and bonding with your kid. That's the whole point. Along the way, our values got warped here.

I know it's a pointless battle, but I'm going to try fighting it. Over the summer, I'm going to host a couple of parties for my kids' friends that have no birthday or holiday context whatsoever. Just a little orchestrated fun for a couple hours. Bring over some snacks to share, if you like. Kind of like a grown-up party.

The interesting thing is that I can kind of see the logic, paranoid and bigoted though it may be. Picture the kind of gentlemen who might wear a tank top to a bar in Northern New Jersey, 75 miles from any beach. Yes... you're right. A guy in Jersey with a tank top as his evening attire of choice is pretty much exactly what you think he is. Insert whatever term you like, and rail against the prejudice, but I've lived in this area half my life and it's a very real demographic. They don't call 'em "wife beaters" for no reason.

Of course, said bar has no problem with women in tank tops. I think it actually requires them as dress code for the female bartenders.

I've gotten into a new trend reading to my kids in the evening: we "funnify" books. I think it all started a few months back with a My Little Ponies book when they baked cookies and a squirrel stole and ate them all. It ended with something like:

My daughter -- 5 at the time -- picked that book for me to read aloud to both kids. It's hard to read that kind of stuff straight-faced sometimes, so I slipped in:

Both kids roared. From then on, they kept wanting me to "funnify" books. Toddler books for little girls are the easiest. Barbie. Princesses. Strawberry Shortcake. Banal, marketing-driven stuff like that I don't mind working over. Higher quality material like Dr. Seuss I won't touch, but I'm OK with fart jokes at the Care Bears' expense. That's about the level of the funnification... and it kills with the K-2 set.

Now, the kids want to try as well, so after I funnify the Teletubbies or what have you, they each take a whack at it. My son circles round and round, trying as many jokey lines per page as he can think of, trying to hit on something funny. My daughter just gets stuck and once declared, "Funnifying is hard!"

The song stuck in my head today I had to buy from iTunes: "Know the Enemy" by Green Day. I'm sure I heard it on a commercial or something, so no real mystery how it got stuck. It's a great punk-pop anthem.

Have to dig a little deeper into Green Day. I only know a bit of their stuff, just the big hits really, but I like it and whenever I come across a new song of theirs, I'm always taken by how consistently good they are.

Matt McHugh.com - Blog - May 2009

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