March 30, 2007 by info.

It’s hard to promote a memoir about parenting in 2007 without someone bringing up Alternadad. That’s not the fault of Neal Pollack, who has written this excellent account of his own child-driven odyssey to grown-uphood. Today I finally finished reading Alternadad, not because it’s long (though that is my main criticism of it: It could use some trims), but because like all multi-tasking parents, I kept getting distracted.

I’ve been a fan of Neal’s writing ever since I was asked to introduce him and Augusten Burroughs to an audience at the Miami Book Fair a few years ago and therefore read Nevermind the Pollacks. Dude’s hilarious. His satire of rock criticism, particularly the Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus schools, was spot-on. I also liked him in person (Burroughs, however, was uptight and aloof). One of my biggest new-parent regrets is that I didn’t accept Neal’s invite to go out carousing in South Beach with him and Dan Savage. That would have been a night to remember …

Neal recently wrote a mostly positive review of Mamarama for The Miami Herald, which you can read elsewhere on my website. All of which is to say I’m not the most unbiased reader of Alternadad.

Which I heartily recommend. I laughed, I cried. Neal has a deft knack for deadpan dialogue and a wonderfully irreverent eye, ear, and nose for the grossness of small children. He’s a twisted comic genius. I kept seeing Jack Black playing him in the film version of Alternadad.

Some idiot at Time magazine called Alternadad the Howl of alt-parenting memoirs. It’s irritating that as soon as a male enters a genre, they’re anointed the leaders of the canon. Hey Time idiot (whose name I won’t grace with brain cells), women have been writing this stuff for years. Operating Instructions by Ann Lamott is the genre’s Howl; Ayun Halliday’s The Big Rumpus is our On the Road; Ariel Gore is our Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Pollack is, I don’t know, Ken Kesey (someone else tell me who I am. Or better yet, don’t).

Again, it’s not Pollack’s fault he gets to benefit from male privilege (though he could have been a little bit nicer to sister me in his review – but I digress). And I’m really glad a male’s throwing his hat into the ring — I guess we can’t call them  momoirs anymore. There can be no new approach to parenting without the sperm-providers involved. When people ask me about Alternadad, I like to call it and Mamarama his and hers companion volumes.

Pollack criticized Mamarama for my tendency to wax epochal about culture. I, conversely, think sometimes he could use a little telescoping of his own life. From a cushy upbringing to the family’s righteous organic-food obsession to his stint as a neighborhood organizer, Pollack is thoroughly caught up in upper-middle-class privileges that he sometimes seems oblivous of, or tries to ironically distance himself from via beer and punk.

But that classism does make his family’s eventual plunge into near-bankruptcy poignant. Pollack also misses the mark early in the book when he chastises himself for spending so much time thinking about something as domestic and therefore banal as parenting, whereas his male literary heroes wrote about big topics like war or their penises, or whatver. Wrong, dude: That willingness to take on a Brave New World is precisely what makes Alternadad not just funny, but important.

Alternadad is mostly about the guffaws. But it also provides profundity. Pollack beautifully summarizes the new consciousness that drives us alt-parents to navel-gaze, on page 282: “I felt a new emotion, at least for me. It wasn’t happiness, or sadness, exactly. Maybe it was a kind of all-knowingness, an understanding that life presents you with limitations and that you have to learn to deal with those limitations and be happy anyway. While I recognized the irony of having this life-changing epiphany while buying my son a plastic toy at a chain store that allowed its pharmacists to deny people birth-control medicine based on religious principles, I cried anyway. I wished I could give Elijah more, could be more for him. I just wanted the best for my family, and I felt ashamed that I couldn’t give it to them.”

The pressure to be a provider should be a great literary theme, if it isn’t already. Pollack tackles it with humility, grace, and judicious use of marijuana. We memoirists get a lot of ribbing for our egotism, Pollack especially. But in fact it’s his self-abasing humor that makes Alternadad such a joy.

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March 29, 2007 by info.

Last week the family was out having a rare meal together at a Greek restaurant. I complimented Karlie on her T-shirt, which read, “I would only end up hurting you.”

“Do you know what a femme fatale is?” I asked her and her sister.

“No,” they said.

 ”It’s a French phrase that means, literally, deadly woman. It’s a phrase for a woman who’s beautiful, but trouble.”

The girls’ eyes lit up. “Cool!” Kenda said. “I’m putting that on my MySpace page.”

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March 29, 2007 by info.

Belated posts on these: Rachel Fudge did an incredible interview with me in the current issue of Bitch. The article’s not online, but the link will tell you how to get this worthy publication. And you can hear Doug Henwood’s WBAI interview with me here. Deborah Harper just did a great, long interview with me that you can listen to as a podcast at a few of her sites and which I will post here as soon as I figure out how.

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March 26, 2007 by info.

Cole and I went to see Laurie Berkner with a group of dear friends yesterday. It was my first kids’ rock outing, the first time I’ve taken Cole to a show that wasn’t a festival. It was a beautiful day. In fact, without a drummer and enough amplification, Berkner couldn’t compete with the weather, the fun of playing with his friend Eli, and the joys of chasing bubbles. Cole sat with me for maybe two songs. Then I don’t know if he heard a word Laurie sang after that.

Berkner is a smart songwriter: not genius, but melodic and, as Cole would say, engaging. She’s definitely the most accessible of a slew of newish acts that are re-creating children’s music. I was on a panel about this at South by Southwest; I also wrote a story on it for the Herald in December. A couple of parents have been asking me if there’s good kids music out there. Here’s a list of CDs I recommended with that story. I would add to it both albums by Uncle Rock and the Sippycups’ CD (Uncle Rock, aka Robert Burke Warren, and Sippycup Paul were both on the panel).

KIDS’ CDS
* New Orleans Playground (Putumayo Kids): Includes such classic bayou tunes as Ya Ya and Choo Choo Ch’Boogie, for the young at heart.

* They Might Be Giants, Here Come the ABCs (Disney Sound): Educational can be weird.

* Wee Hairy Beasties, Animal Crackers (Bloodshot): Clever, fun, folksy, but not cutesy.

* We Are . . . the Laurie Berkner Band (Razor & Tie): Noggin-watchers’ favorite lady of song.

* Elizabeth Mitchell, You Are My Little Bird (Smithsonian Folkway): Folk, rock and reggae songs by Neil Young, Francosie Hardy, etc., gently and smartly reinterpreted.

* Jack Johnson and Friends, Sing-a-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George (brushfire): For the little jamsters.

* Dan Zanes and Friends, All Around the Kitchen (festival five): The former Boston rocker (Del Fuegos) pioneered the current wave of kid rock; his several CDs mix classics and originals.

* All Together Now: Beatles Stuff for Kids of All Ages (Little Monster/V2): Tasteful, modern renditions of Yellow Submarine, Birthday, etc., packaged with a book of poems and trivia.

* The Backyardigans, Groove to the Music (Nick Records): Some of the best musicians in New York play on these songs. Just beware of the munchkin singers.

* Lil Jams, Vol. 1 (GMG): Hip-hop hits sung by kids in not too cloying a fashion.

* Jack’s Big Music Show, Season One (Nick Records): A decent sampling of Nick Jr.’s favorites, including Berkner, Milkshake, and Sweet Honey in the Rock.

Posted in Recommended listening, sxsw | 1 Comment »

March 24, 2007 by info.

You’ve heard of bad hair days: Yesterday I had a bad mom day. First, when I picked Cole up from school, his teacher told me he had pulled his pants down in class, again, and kissed a girl, again. My son is a toddler letch. As Cole and I were riding away on my bike, perhaps because I was distracted by this news, I lost my balance and fell off the curb, with my son in the child seat. It was a very scary feeling knowing I was going down and poor helpless horny Cole was going with me.

Fortunately I managed to mostly break our fall with my hands (ouch) and we escaped with minor scrapes and a heap of embarrassment. But I felt like such a loser. It’s one thing to hurt myself with my clutziness, another to bruise my child.

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March 23, 2007 by info.

On the surface, Rebecca Walker’s new book, Baby Love, would seem to be her version of Mamarama:Bisexual, activist and author finds middle-years fulfillment as a mother. But given the noted third-wave feminist’s  recent comments to The New York Times, I like to think of Mamarama as the anti-Baby Love. Walker said, and apparently writes in her book (for which I refuse to shell out money), that blood is thicker than water, that she feels an attachment to her biological child that she could never feel for her stepchild, an attachment that adoptive parents wouldn’t understand. As a mom and stepmom, and best friend of an adoptive parent, I can say that’s crazy talk.

Yes, my feelings for my son are different from those for my stepdaughters, but they’re no less deep and true. They are complicated by the fact I didn’t know them their first years on earth, and by the fact they also have a biological mom. But in some ways we have gone through more things and had to work harder at our love than Cole and I have had to; there are extra strands in the rope of this bond.

Walker makes this absurd statement about how she would kill for her child but not her stepchild. I can’t even fathom how hurtful that statement must be to her stepchild. Besides, it’s not about dying; it’s about living. I take care of my daughters every day in a way that the woman who shares their genes does not. I’m sure we both would say that we’d die for them, whatever that means. And yes, sometimes I feel like killing them. That’s part of love too.

I also can’t imagine bashing your own mom in public once you’ve become a mother too. I appreciate Mom more than I ever did. Okay, I don’t know what Alice Walker put Rebecca through. But the daughter sounds not like an abused child, but like a spoiled brat out to get attention, by demeaning moms and feminists alike. If you like Mamarama, do not buy Baby Love.

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March 21, 2007 by info.

She killed it last night at the Culture Room! Here’s my Herald review and preview.

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March 20, 2007 by info.

Last night I read Cole for the first time a book he got for his fourth birthday (which was March 10), Not a Box. When we were done, I asked him if he liked it.

“Yes,” he said. “It was funny and engaging.”

Posted in Cute Thing Cole Did | No Comments »

March 20, 2007 by info.

Erika Schickel is a L.A.-based writer, actress, and mother of two. And she has written a great momoir. You’re Not the Boss of Me: Adventures of a Modern Mom is definitely for fans of Mamarama. Except Schickel is funnier. And in some ways more outrageous (she writes about how going to strip clubs is a welcome break from parenting). And very heartwarming (definitely read the last chapter about sisterhood).

And I’m not just saying this because she gave me a nice review in the L.A. Times. Schickel shows how alt-parenting tomes are not just about punk rock onesies and navel-gazing: That we’re dealing with profound issues of identity, sexual politics, love and culture here, albeit sometimes gussied up into humorous accounts of weed habits. Visit www.erikaschickel.com for more.

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March 20, 2007 by info.

Doh: For some reason this didn’t publish last Friday as it should have! Here are my Herald blogs on SXSW, belatdly: Last night I finally got what I wanted at South By Southwest: A really great rock ‘n’ roll show. Thank you, the Paybacks. The Detroit quartet laid down big, crunchy, juicy punk grooves inside the stone walls of Austin’s Ale House. No schtick, no effects even: “If there’s any reverb on, take it off,” singer Wendy Case directed the soundman in her hoarse Janis voice. The interplay between Case and guitarist Danny Methric is classic rock’n'roll, what you wish Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye still had. Case’s voice loses some of its range live, but the songs from their great new album Love, Not Reason shot straight from the heart.

At Eternal, English singer Amy Winehouse belatedly took the stage at 1:20 a.m. with her hair swept up and eyeliner giving her long cat eyes: very Ronettes. With two adorable male backup singers and a horn player, the show was strictly old-school — Dreamgirls brought to life. Winehouse has a distinctive style, vocally and physically, and good tunes. She and compatriot Lily Allen are the most buzzed-about acts of SXSW (Allen’s shows were impossible to get into).

Earlier that night, David Byrne joined the Brazilian-by-way-of-New-York band Forro in the Dark for a set of fokloric party tunes in the courtyard of the beautiful San Jose Motel.  Strumming a guitar, he played a Hank Williams song with the ensemble for the select audience. With his white moptop, the erstwhile Talking Head is literally an eminence grise here.

(And posted Monday at http://miamiherald.typepad.com/miamimusic/)

South By Southwest can be an exercise in frustration: Out of four days and nights of shows, why were three of the acts I most wanted to see all scheduled to play midnight Thursday? Why was my job making me watch local bands I could see back home while I was missing out on bands from overseas? Why was I so tired all the time? Here’s a few highlights I did manage to catch:

Bondo do Role are like the Beastie Boys meet Peaches in Sao Paulo. Signed to Diplo’s Mad Decent label, the three-piece new wave electronic group from Brazil played the Beauty Bar Friday night. They spin carioca funk out of samples of cheesy hits like “Summer Days” from Grease and AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.” They’re as much fun to watch as they are to listen to, with Marina all vampy wiggle and Pedro goofy cute like Quintron. Perfect for a South Florida crowd, local promoters.

The Stooges’ closing-night set at Stubb’s was one of the week’s most anticipated shows, though if you’re a Miamian used to seeing Iggy Pop about town, perhaps it was not so thrilling. The old songs — “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “TV Eye,” “Fun House,” etc. — sounded great, but new tracks like “She Took My Money” sounded trivial, weak in comparison. Understandably not the debauchee he once was, Pop seemed to resort to cursing for shock appeal. But hands off to any 59-year-old who can writhe like he can.

With 20 percent of the thousands of acts from overseas, SXSW was more international this year than ever. Dimmer played its first shows outside of New Zealand. Shayne Carter has lost the pop sheen of his previous group, Straitjacket Fits, but he’s replaced it with a blues growl, and his guitar playing is better than ever.

Before Dimmer went on, Land of Talk, a group I had never heard of, went on. It was the only band I spontaneously saw all week that was any good, but this Montreal three-piece is a find. Singer and guitarist Elizabeth Powell sounds a bit like the singer of Bettie Serveert. She has a weird, pitched, almost jazz-like way of phrasing lyrics, but it’s not pretentious: Her lyrics are clear and smart. Just the kind of discovery you go to SXSW for, but don’t always find.

Posted in sxsw | 2 Comments »