The Tooth is Out There

My six-year-old son lost his first tooth the other day. Well, maybe “lost” isn’t quite the right word. The tooth was yanked out with a string by his mom (a.k.a. my wife) after it had been precariously dangling in the front of his mouth for the better part of two months. Fed up with the tooth’s stubbornness in not coming out via natural causes, we decided it was high time we took action—hence the yanking.

My son was compliant with the forcible removal of his tooth, as he too was anxious to finally join the ranks of his many friends at school and have a gap-toothed smile. So when the moment of truth came, he braced himself and took the yanking like a man. He did not cry out, yelp, or even whimper during the procedure, for which we gave him no anesthetic.

I asked him if it hurt and he proudly said, “No.” Then he looked at the tooth that my wife put in a small plastic cup and noticed there was some blood on it. He looked up at me and asked, shakily, if there was blood in his mouth. I looked in his mouth and said, “Yes, there’s a little bit of blood. But that’s natural.”

Clearly this was not the response he was hoping for. He ran to the bathroom to look at his mouth in the mirror and as soon as he saw the bloody spot where his tooth used to be his eyes welled up with tears. I assured him that it was no big deal, pointed out that he told me it didn’t even hurt, and instructed him to rinse his mouth out with water.

He vigorously rinsed his mouth out with water, shaking and trying to hold back his tears. In between spits there were dramatic statements like: “I never want you to do that to me again!” and “I never want to see that much blood coming out of my body again!” Then his four-year-old brother came into the bathroom and took the hyperbole up a notch when he said, with heartfelt sorrow, “I don’t want him to die!” (Cue the violins.)

After the rinsing and spitting we moved on to the ice. We had him stick an ice cube in the space where the tooth used to be and the bleeding was considerably staunched. Still, his brow was furrowed and he looked generally ill at ease. That’s when I whipped out the Twinkies.

My kids had never had Twinkies before and for some reason, on my way home from work earlier that evening, I decided to pick some up. The effect of the Twinkies was instantaneous. As soon as I produced them and said, “Who wants dessert?” my son’s anxiety was replaced by gleeful fascination. Moments later he was biting into a piece of cream-filled sponge cake heaven, and all thoughts of his own mortality were forgotten.

That night, as my son slept, I snuck into his room, removed the tooth from under his pillow, and put a dollar in its place.  I would have put a Twinkie there, but we ate them all.

Let's Help August Live Up To Its Name

Welcome to August—the only month of the year without a major holiday. This is somewhat ironic given that the dictionary definition of the word august is “inspiring reverence or admiration; of supreme dignity or grandeur; majestic.” And yet without the ability to boast a major holiday, I say that August is the least majestic of all the months.

Of course, you’ll notice that I have to keep on modifying the word “holiday” with the word “major.” That’s because if you dig deep enough you’ll find that there are indeed some minor holiday’s in August. A quick Google search has revealed that August 19^th is National Aviation Day and a scant two days later on August 21^st it’s Senior Citizen’s Day. And if you live in Texas, you may be well aware of the fact that on August 27^th your state observes Lyndon Baines Johnson Day. (Then again you may not be well aware of that fact. Since I don’t know you personally, I really couldn’t say, could I?)

Point is it’s high time that August got a real holiday—a major one—one that will allow it to live up to its name. Nothing against senior citizens or aviators (or especially senior citizen aviators) but we need a more universal holiday in August, so that everyone has a reason to celebrate.

I have tried to come up with a few ideas. My first thought was how about a National Food Day, since everybody eats? Turns out there already is one on October 24^th. Then I thought, “What about National Pet Day?” I know not everyone has a pet, but a large percentage of people do, and even those who don’t may have interacted with a friend’s pet, seen one on television, or been viciously attacked by one on the street. Seems pretty universal to me.  Well that’s already taken, as well—April 11^th is National Pet Day. Finally I came up with National Blood Vessel Day, because you can’t deny that every single one of us has blood vessels—lots of them, in fact. And it turns out that there is no National Blood Vessel Day. (Well, there was one in Berlin in 2006, but never here in the States.)

So, what do you think? Does National Blood Vessel Day have the potential to become a major holiday in August? If not, don’t be shy about posting your ideas for a major holiday in our sad holiday-less month. Perhaps if one of these ideas garners enough interest we can start a petition on the White House website. In the meantime, I’m going to work on a catchy song for my holiday. I’ve already got the first two lines:

It’s time to snuggle; it’s time to nestle,

Let’s love each other and each blood vessel!

Organ Stop Pizza: Come for the Organ, Stay for the...um...Organ

Many readers of this blog are likely aware of the fact that I am a pizza snob. It’s a hat I wear proudly, hailing as I do from Brooklyn, the pizza capital of the world. Fortunately, in my 18 years living in the desert I’ve managed to locate a few pizzerias that pass the Brooklyn sniff test, but they are clearly the exception. The average slice of pizza in Arizona is…well…average at best.

There are times, however, when I will get pizza at a place whose quality I know going in will not be up to snuff. Generally I end up at a place like this for a reason other than the pizza. Peter Piper Pizza is the perfect example. No person with functioning taste buds would ever go to PPP for the high quality eats. No sane person, at least. Indeed the only reason to go is because you have children between the ages of two and twelve, who want to play games, win prizes and generally wreak havoc in a place that happens to sell pizza. 

All of this is preamble to the rather unique pizza place I found myself in on Saturday night—Organ Stop Pizza in sunny Mesa, Arizona. I went with my four-year-old son after I took him bowling. Earlier that day I asked him if he wanted to go to La Famiglia (our Brooklyn-approved pizzeria of choice) or a pizza place we had never been to before that plays music. To his credit he went with the new option, which was a step forward since he is very much a creature of habit when it comes to food.

What makes Organ Stop Pizza unique is not the pizza—indeed, the pizza’s taste is subpar even for the frozen section of your local supermarket—but rather, the fact that it is home to the world’s largest Wurlitzer pipe organ. This gargantuan instrument is played nightly by one of the restaurant’s three resident organists. On Saturday, Charlie Balogh (no clue how you would pronounce that) was at the helm. According to Mr. Balogh’s online bio he was named “Organist of the Year” by the American Theatre Organ Society in 2000. (Yet another society to which I will never belong.)

When we first arrived at Organ Stop I noticed a man dressed as Santa sitting in the lobby. I then quickly noticed signage indicating they were having a “Christmas in July” celebration/fundraiser. I became alarmed that my son would notice and either start battering me with questions about why Santa would be this far south this time of year or, even worse, become deluded into thinking that he would be showered with gifts sometime in the next few weeks. Fortunately, he never seemed to notice Old Saint Nick, so I managed to dodge that bullet.

What my son did notice, however, was that the music was loud—too loud apparently for his taste. The restaurant has a unique set up in which you order at a counter when you first come in and then seat yourself in the auditorium, which has cafeteria style seating. When we entered, right around 6PM, the place was jam-packed and the only seats I saw open were two rows away from the pipe organ. As we came in, Mr. Balogh was playing a rousing version of “Happy Birthday” and as soon as we sat I saw that my son had his hands over his ears. I asked him what was wrong and he said that the music was too loud. I reminded him that he had said that he wanted to go to the place with the music and he said, “But I didn’t know it was going to be so noisy.”

While we waited for our food to be ready, we heard the theme from “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and “Sleigh Ride” (remember, it was Christmas in July.) As we sat there I noticed that there was a second floor balcony looking down on the stage. I asked my son if he wanted to move up there once we got our food, to see if it was less noisy. He did. So, while listening to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” we picked up our food from the counter and went upstairs.

Once on the second floor we sat down in a spot that my son agreed was slightly less noisy, but was instead too dark. So we got up and moved again, this time to a spot that was better lit, but still noisy, although not quite as noisy as it was downstairs. Less than a minute later Mr. Balogh signed off for intermission and the house lights were turned on. This was by far my son’s favorite part of the show.

During intermission we ate our pizza, which I noticed was strangely cut into ten slices. In an effort to make the pizza vaguely edible I looked around the table for parmesan cheese or garlic powder, but only saw salt and pepper. If I ever go back again I’ll make sure to wear a jacket with lots of pockets so I can bring my own seasonings.

My son was halfway through his second slice when the lights went down and the music started back up. This prompted my son to immediately put down his pizza and announce, “I’m done!” And with that, we abruptly left. As we walked back to the car my son said, “I knew I should have picked La Famiglia.” It was as though he was reading my mind.

And yet, I can’t say I regret having gone there. The whole thing was pleasantly surreal—akin to driving 70 miles out of your way to see the world’s largest ball of twine, or watching an early John Waters movie. Indeed, under the right circumstances I could even see myself going there again…the right circumstances would be that I wasn’t with my kids and I had already eaten a full meal.

Meet the Creatures...At Your Own Risk

A guinea pig urinated on my hand yesterday. Well, not directly on my hand. I was holding it inside a cloth sack to avoid the possibility of getting scratched or bitten and it urinated inside the sack. Since the sack was about the thickness of a pillow case, this was tantamount to getting urinated on directly.

No, we did not purchase a guinea pig as a pet. (We have a large, marginally unhinged cat in our house, which would probably try to swallow a guinea pig whole and end up hacking up the world’s largest hairball.) I took my six-year-old and four-year-old sons to a “Meet the Creatures” class offered by the City of Chandler at their Environmental Education Center at Veteran’s Oasis Park. And by “meet” I mean hold and possibly get urinated upon.

The class, offered weekly throughout the summer, is run by a couple who are animal rescue experts. During the first five to ten minutes of the class participants learn about the various animals in the room and how to handle them. The “how to handle them” portion of the lecture is of particular importance, so that one might learn which pets are okay with being picked up (like the urinating guinea pig) and which ones can be petted but not picked up (like the bunny the size of a warthog, which we were told would kick you in the chest with the force of an MMA contestant if you tried to lift if off the ground.)

The animals featured at the class ran the gamut from common things such as the aforementioned guinea pig and rabbit, to more exotic animals like a wallaby and a paca. I got to hold the wallaby (also in a sack, but thankfully non-urinating) which was kind of cool. I mean, short of hopping a quick 20-hour flight to Australia and bushwhacking my way into the outback, when else will I get a chance to get up close and personal with a wallaby?

While I had the pleasure of holding the urinating guinea pig and the dry wallaby, my sons were a bit more skittish about handling the animals. They seemed much more content letting me hold the animals while they gingerly pet or brushed them. My six-year-old did, however, hold a small turtle about the size of a drink coaster. When the turtle tucked its head into the shell my son commented that it looked like a sandwich, but he passed on my suggestion that he take a bite out of it.

One animal that both I, and my sons, kept at a healthy distance was the flying gecko. I don’t know if “flying gecko” is what it’s actually called—it probably has a slightly fancier name that I didn’t quite catch—but the point is that it was a gecko much larger and more exotic than your garden variety gecko, and more importantly, we were told during the orientation that it sometimes jumps on people’s faces. Yup, we were told by the woman running the class that we could hold the gecko, but it may—without any provocation—jump on your face. She said—and I quote—“if you’re not comfortable with it jumping on your face, you may not want to hold it.” I would have thought that the majority of people (at least sane people) would not have been comfortable with an eight-inch lizard launching itself toward their eyes/nose/mouth, but apparently I was mistaken on that count. Most of the people in the class—both children and adults—seemed perfectly fine handling the kamikaze reptile (and interestingly, it didn’t face-plant anyone the entire time) but the Schwartzberg men kept a safe distance at all times.

At the end of the class we thanked the instructors, lathered ourselves in several quarts worth of hand sanitizer, and went on our merry way. The memories of this class may last a lifetime, but, thankfully, the scent of guinea pig piss goes away in a couple of hours.

My Undying Love (And Sometimes Hatred) For Baseball Stats

There is a website called Baseball-Reference.com, which is to baseball statistics what the Sahara Desert is to sand. The information contained on this site is pretty much endless. Want to find out who led the American League in triples in 1958? No problem. Who came in fifth place in the National League Cy Young Award voting in 1993? Easy.  What was Rickey Henderson’s career batting average with one out and runners on first and third? It’s a cinch. (Oh, and for those interested, the answers to those questions are Richie Ashburn, Jose Rijo, and .319, respectively.)

When I first stumbled across this site six or seven years ago, I had to throw my shirt into the dryer about ten minutes later due to the several pints of drool that poured out of my mouth like a mini Niagara Falls. For baseball stat geeks like me, there can be no bigger time suck. In a world without adult responsibilities I can see myself looking at this site for 18 hours at a stretch. (If such a thing existed when I was in high school, I would surely not have a diploma today.)

In general I try to keep this addiction in check. For the most part I don’t look at this website more than once or twice a week, or as current baseball events necessitate. For example, when Torii Hunter hit his 300^th career home run a couple of weeks ago, I felt compelled to race over to Baseball-Reference.com to find out how many current major leaguers have 300 or more homers. (FYI—17.)

But as much as I love combing through the statistical minutiae on this website, there is one factoid kept on this site that as of this year, I no longer enjoy looking at. That would be the yearly list of the oldest player in each league. This year the oldest player in baseball is Mariano Rivera, who will turn 44 on November 29, 2013…a little more than two months after I turn 44. Yup, that means for the first time in my life I’m older than every single player in major league baseball. How’s that for freakin’ sobering?

Yeah, I get it—it’s not that big of a deal. People age. Big whoop. But somehow, even though I never played baseball competitively, have absolutely no athletic ability, and haven’t swung a wooden bat in more than a decade, in the back of my mind I always thought that maybe one day I could be a professional baseball player.

Was I being overly optimistic? Perhaps. Delusional? No question. But now that toxic combination of optimism and delusions has been dashed away forever by raw statistics. I have to face reality—if Mariano Rivera, the oldest player in baseball and two months my junior, is retiring at the end of this season, it’s probably unlikely that my baseball career will ever begin.

And so, nobody will ever find information about me on Baseball-Reference.com; but whatever information they do find on that website, there is an excellent chance that I will have looked at it first.

The Trip of Sand and Legos

One of the many advantages of living in Arizona is that the school year ends in late May, which allows those of us with school-aged children to go on vacation prior to a vast portion of the country, for which the school year does not end until late June. (Of course, one of the many disadvantages of living in Arizona is that unlike most of the country, the school year starts up again in early August, leaving the youth of our state to sit at their desks in vast pools of their own sweat as the temperatures outside soar to 115-degrees. So maybe it’s a wash.)

In any event, we took advantage of our early vacation last week by going to San Diego. (Okay, technically we went to Carlsbad, which is about 20 miles north of San Diego, but unless you happen to be familiar with that portion of California, you would be confused if I said we went to Carlsbad, and might think I meant that we went to Carlsbad, New Mexico, which would be plausible since we live in Arizona, which is obviously adjacent to New Mexico, and Carlsbad Caverns is indeed a popular tourist site, but that’s not where we went and I didn’t want to confuse you, which is why I said we went to San Diego, even though we never really set foot in San Diego itself. Whew—I’m glad I got that off my chest.)

Clearly this travelogue is off to a terribly wordy start so from here on out I’m just going to give you pictures and captions.

 

 

I call this photo “Grapes and Croutons” because that’s what my four-year-old son decided to have for dinner on the night we arrived in Carlsbad. It was a very long day of driving to get from our house to the Motel 6 we stayed at on our first night, so we really weren’t going to make a big to-do about our son’s dinner choice. Besides, we were eating at Denny’s, so it’s not like we were offending the chef.

 

 

The following day, at The Armenian Café in downtown Carlsbad, the food choices were a bit saner. For lunch the boys dined on an open-faced grilled cheese on pita bread and seasoned French fries. As you can see from the euphoric looks on their faces they very much enjoyed their meals, despite the fact that they would both be hard-pressed to locate Armenia on a map.

 

After lunch we went to the beach. In the picture above we had just arrived at the beach and look happy and fresh-faced. About an hour later, after several encounters with unexpectedly aggressive waves, we looked more like extras from The Poseidon Adventure. No photos exist from that portion of the trip.

 

This is the lobby of the LEGOLAND Hotel, which opened for business about three months ago. For my sons of four and six, this place was more or less paradise. The Lego pit shown above was just one of the many things that made this place a walking fun machine. Get a load of the bathroom below…

 

And the super fantastic bunk beds…

 

And the overtly silly Lego-headed ice bucket…

 

And the snarky signage in the kids’ portion of the hotel suite.

 

Honestly, it was a blast, and was worth every penny of the relatively absurd asking price for a one night’s stay. Also there is no better place to prepare you for LEGOLAND itself, which is where we spent the next day.

 

Yes, we went to LEGOLAND, not Mount Rushmore. But we still got to see Mount Rushmore, albeit a version made out of something on the order of 180,000 Legos. “No way!” you say? Don’t believe that’s really made out of Legos? Well, take a gander at the more detailed close-up below and you will see that I josh you not.

 

Pretty impressive, huh? There are hundreds of these intricate sculptures throughout LEGOLAND. They are made by “Lego Master Builders,” which is a job title that I think would be way more entertaining to have on my business cards than “Director of Grants.” I’ll have to speak with my supervisor to see if she’s okay with me making that change.

 

The cool Lego creations only comprise a small portion of LEGOLAND. Most of the park consists of rides—lots and lots of rides. Pictured above are my wife and older son about to take off in a helicopter ride. If I wanted to be mean, I could have also included the picture I took about sixty seconds later when the helicopter was up in the air. In that picture my son still looks just as happy as in the first photo, but my wife looks like she just ate same very bad sushi. Clearly helicopter rides are not her thing.

 

A few hours later I took to the skies with my sons in this nifty little airplane ride. While I did not have the same visceral reaction that my wife did in her earlier copter jaunt, I’m pretty sure that it was during this ride that the sunburn on the back of my neck went from mild to crispy.

 

 

In between flights the kids took to the ground as they got to drive Lego cars on Lego racetracks. And yes, indeed, those are Lego pedestrians that my older son is driving by. Fortunately, he didn’t accidentally hit one of them and get slapped with a Lego lawsuit.

Of course we have hundreds of additional photos of this trip, but I don’t want this blog to turn into one of those painfully long slideshows of yesteryear, in which trapped guests would keep a fake smile affixed to their faces while all the while secretly wishing that someone would hit them over the head with a two by four and render them unconscious so they would no longer have to endure the incessant droning of their host. Suffice it to say it was a fun trip—one I’m sure my kids will be wishing they were back on when they’re sitting in a pool of their own sweat in August.

 

Hello Netflix Streaming and Goodbye Productivity!

I’m using this blog entry as a head’s up to regular readers of this blog (yes, all eight of you) that my already infrequent output is likely going to become much more infrequenter. (As is my caring about the English language, as evidenced by that last sentence.)

As astute observers of headlines have clearly figured out, I recently subscribed to Netflix Streaming. Yes, my wife and I are among the millions of Arrested Development fans who could not live with the thought of missing new episodes and were forced to sign up for this service. We already had a subscription to their DVD service, but since the brand new escapades of the Bluth family are only available via streaming, we had no choice but to bite that $7.99 per month bullet.

Originally our plan was to subscribe to the service, watch the 14 new episodes of what is arguably the funniest show of this millennium, and then cancel the service. But, of course, plans are like ice sculptures—they look fantastic the moment after they’re made, but after a few hours in the hot sun they’re nothing more than a giant puddle soaking through your sneakers.

The moment that I logged into my new Netflix streaming account I realized that I was a dead man. As I scrolled through the plethora of movies and television shows that I can now watch anywhere, anytime from my laptop, I knew that there was no way that I would be cancelling this service. And I’m sure this was Netfilix CEO, Reed Hastings’ evil little plan along. Force legions of rabid Arrested Development fans to subscribe to their streaming service and then see how many of them get reeled in hook, line and sinker. I’ll admit that they caught this fish.

And now I sense that the vast majority of my spare time will be spent staring at my laptop watching all those television series I’ve wanted to see that I’ve just been too busy to check out—The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, American Horror Story…the lists goes on and on. Because now I can watch these instantly! (I know, I know—the ability to watch things instantly is nothing new. No, I’ve not been locked in a cryogenic chamber; I’m just a late bloomer on the technology front.)

So certain things will surely fall by the wayside—writing this blog, balancing my checkbook, and basic hygiene, just to name a few. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing altogether, just that I’ll be writing less frequently. Instead of seeing something from me every two weeks you might see something every two months…or quarters…or perhaps, years. Only time will tell. But if you want to lodge a complaint about my reduced output, don’t bother sending it to me, because I’ll be too busy watching something that everyone else already saw three years ago; instead send your missive directly to Reed Hastings. As if he cares!