Don't tell Channing Tatum I said this...

...but he has two girls' names. He's like a cross between Stockard Channing and Tatum O'Neal. Does that creep you out too, or is it just me?

In the bookstore window

Whenever I walk past the window of Barnes & Noble I stop to see what childrens books they're featuring. I don't know if it's because I'm competitive by nature or just mean-spirited, but I tend to get very irritated--too many celebrity books, too many sequels, and too many books that just seem insipid.

Out of the dozen I saw last night, there were only two that I begrudgingly liked:


"Plant a Kiss" is simple and clever, and it's a double entendre: you plant a kiss, and it grows love, get it?


"Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site" is the kind of book Samuel would've liked when he was little--anything about vehicles. So how could I not like that?

As for the rest...


"Goodnight, Dragons." Maybe it's just sour grapes, but I think there should be a rule that an author must spend at least four seconds coming up with a title. "Goodnight, Pirates." There. Now can I be in the window? Grrrr.


"If You Give a Dog a Donut." How many times can an author get away with writing the same damn book? Isn't this, like, #36 in the series? I lost respect for Laura Numeroff after "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." If it's too difficult to come up with an animal that starts with C, you shouldn't be allowed to perpetuate this ponzi scheme.


"Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet." Talk about writing the same book 36 times. How about "Fancy Nancy and the Bratty Little Girl Who Refused to Share the Bookstore Window With Others"?


"It's a Big World, Little Pig," by Kristi Yamaguchi. The figure skater? Dammit. Somebody needs to teach her a lesson. Anybody have Tanya Harding's number?


"Blowin' in the Wind," by Bob Dylan. This is not a children's book. It's a book for self-absorbed Baby Boomers (I know, redundant) to give to their grandkids to direct attention back to themselves.


"Shoe-la-la.": What's worse than the 37th iteration of "Fancy Nancy"? The 37th blatant rip-off of "Fancy Nancy." Henceforth, glitter on the cover will be a requirement for all books targeted to girls under 18.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go buy "Plant a Kiss" and wish I'd written it.

Cutest Baby Ever

I saw this ad in "American Baby," and I told Jennifer, "I want this."

She said, "The dress?"

I said, "Yes, if that comes with it."

Late night reading

There's something strangely liberating about being a grown man with tears streaming down your face at 2am after reading a YA novel for the past four hours that you can't put down while the whole house sleeps: one son on the living room sofa, another in your bed next to a dog, next to your wife, the other dog snoring on the cold tile of the bathroom floor and who knows or really cares where the cat is. Probably creepily staring at you right now from wherever he is.

I will go to bed. But it's nice to read a good book. You know? It's nice to care deeply about fictional characters, who are secretly you and me and everyone we care deeply about in real life, in all its dog-hair-covered-dangling-legs-not-enough-room-in-the-bed imperfect perfection.

A good book lets you escape the real world, and when you return you appreciate it more.

Two thumbs up for good books. Two thumbs up for this one in particular.

Blood brothers

Samuel and Ethan went to a sleepover birthday party tonight. They were concerned about a rumor going around school today that whoever falls asleep first tonight will have a prank played on them. So they vowed that if one of them is the first to fall asleep, the other will protect him.

Happy birthday Ethan!

The boys' birthday parties seem to be getting more low-key as they get older. Or maybe we're just in the lull between the chaotic shriek-fest parties of childhood and the parents-are-out-of-town booze fests of the high school years.



This year it was basically a living room full of pre-teens playing "Rock Band" on the Wii for three hours, punctuated by pizza and cake.


Well, it wasn't all pre-teens.


Jennifer got the party rocking with her rendition of "We Got the Beat."


Bailey turned it up to 11 with his version of "Eye of the Tiger."


And my sweet little Ethan is another year older, but still sweet, in a socially unacceptable, non-conformist sense of the word.

Strollers

I sit next to the editorial department of "American Baby" magazine, and they're always testing new products. Today it was baby strollers. I was hoping to walk into my office and find it filled with babies, but no such luck.