MonkeyFight

The Monkey Fight is On

I’ve been meaning to change oinkbird to monkeyfight for months. I’m sure you know what that’s like. When I imagined doing it I saw a coordinated effort involving graphic designers, branding consultants, and loads of fresh code written by people in foreign lands. But fuck it.  I gotta start somewhere. So I’m just changing the name. Bang. Just like that. I certainly don’t want to be half assed about it but it’s never going to get done if I don’t do it in pieces.  So I’ll start here and gradually it will become what is inside my head, which is monkeys.

About 15 years ago, I was introduced to the image of monkeys in my head by a woman who taught yoga in New Orleans. (This is the same woman who put me in a position that made me feel as if my back was breathing but that’s another story.) She said during class one day, “Try to calm the monkeys in your mind.” And suddenly all the monkeys in my head got a little worried: “Oh shit. She spilled it. He’s onto us.” It was one of those moments that resonate in a way that make you pay attention enough that you might actually learn something new. I didn’t. I mean, it caught my attention but I didn’t do much about it:  "Oh right." I thought. "Sometimes I’m generally distracted and unclear about what I’m supposed to do with my life so perhaps I should- hey look at that piece of string.” Monkeys love string.

I did mange to hold onto a thought though; not exactly beware of the monkeys, but be Aware of the monkeys. Point is – I think it’s gotten exponentially more difficult to focus on things of importance with the speed and density of distractions these days. High speed monkeys. I mean, I check my email thirty five times a day. I look at my phone over a hundred times in a day. And honestly, how did we used to spend the minutes we now spend on Face@#!ck? Literally, what did we do in the days when 'status update' and 'feed' were boring technical words? Don’t get me wrong – for all I know people were choking kittens before and now they’re harmlessly looking at pictures of people they wanted to have sex with when they were 17.

The Boy is over seven months old – 231 days to be exact. He’s got two teeth on the bottom of his mouth and two coming in on the top. He’s found some syllables: “da-da” and “ga-ga” - both timeless classics. He’s not crawling yet but he can sit like a champ. I played catch with him this week; he would throw a little tiny ball and I would throw it back in his lap and he would pick it up and throw it again. It didn't exactly go in my direction but it seemed a little early in life for coaching. This went on for about five minutes and I could have done it a lot longer if he’d let me. Yesterday I took him into Manhattan – just the two of us - to pick up my filmmaker swag bag from the Tribeca Film Festival. Naturally the chicks swarmed him (ie me). I fed him a bottle, he fell asleep, and then I requested a meeting with Sony Pictures Classics. He ate his first noodle last night – whole wheat elbow macaroni.

Every parent says it goes fast. They even say it in the same way, shaking their head with a sort of breathless disbelief, “It goes fast.” My hope is that monkeyfight can slow things down a bit and help me stay connected to the things that matter most to me. That's the fight. And make no mistake, I love me some monkeys - I just don’t want them running the asylum that is my head. And besides, monkeys can play catch with the best of ‘em once they’re tamed. So if we play our cards right we might even be able to field a team in the end.
     



       

Great Song or Greatest Song?

As part of my effort to create more kinetic earnings as a writer, I’m penning a little gem in the romantic comedy genre.  Or as people in the biz say - romedy-rom-comedy-rom genre.

So I’ve been watching some romantic comedies in order to grease my romantically comedic  comedically romantic  funny bone.  I watched Pillow Talk last night with Mr. Rock Hudson and Ms. Doris Day. It’s about a guy who gets laid all the time by beautiful women who then decides he’d like to bag the beautiful, smart, lonely woman upstairs (Doris Day’s character). So he tricks her into falling in love with him so he can try to get in her pants. 

I've never been good at pitching a story but that's the jist.

Anyway, I enjoyed it and it left me feeling like I don't watch enough of the classics. These iconic actors like Rock Hudson and Doris Day (or Douglas Kennedy and Marguerite Chapman) really do have the old school chemistry, the magic that Ben Affleck has finally given up on so he can go from being a hugely successful actor to a hugley successful director. AFFLECK! Your unbridled, shameless success haunts me still!!

Anyway, the absolute best part of Pillow Talk comes when Rock and Doris are hanging at a piano bar and the piano player starts playing the song Roly Poly.  Doris Day is delightful - there - I've said it.  And it’s the best song I’ve heard in a while so I thought I'd share it. I'm thinking it should probably be the global theme song for 2011. I've played it for The Boy a few times now and if I dance around and get in his face while the song is playing he starts cracking up like it's the funniest thing he's ever seen.  So that's two recommendations by my count.

The image quality here is sucky but check it out:

   

    

Fatherese

The Boy has definitely been smiling at The Wife more than me lately.  I denied it at first - thought it was a figment of my imagination.  But the more I paid attention, the more obvious it became – she was getting more grins.

I chalked it up to breastfeeding at first.  After all, those are clearly some blissful bonding moments. But suddenly this hardly seemed fair. Who knew how this would affect my relationship with The Boy? I started to worry I’d be chasing his elusive smile for the rest of my life.  Always accommodating him, always caving to his demands in hopes of seeing that smile that would make me feel important and relevant in his world. I’d be like the U.N. Security Council. I couldn’t give up without a fight.

I spent a day jerry rigging a harness that held a feeding bottle at the exact angle of The Wife’s breast. When I was done it seemed functional but looked like I was wearing some sort of fetish gear for people who want to be told they're naughty.  Regardless, when I finally tried it out on The Boy, a chest hair poked him in the eye and he started wailing.

I had to change tack. If The Wife was going to provide nutrition and comfort then, I decided, I could provide entertainment. At first I kept it to the basics. I walked up to him as if everything was perfectly normal, and then I pretended to be surprised. Like, “Oh, my God, what happened?” (which is pretty much how I feel as I go about my day).  That got him to raise his eyebrows but no smile. Then I pretended there was a fly buzzing around the room so I twisted my head around and around until I had to sit down to steady myself (also something I have to do quite frequently throughout the day). The fly routine got the dogs interested for a few minutes but The Boy was unimpressed.

To up the ante, I borrowed a few tricks from the timeless and mysterious art of pantomime.  I waited for The Wife to leave the apartment and then I got to work. I was hoping to paint my face white, but all we had in the house was the purple outdoor paint we used on our fence.  I hesitated until I saw we had turpentine.  And just to be extra careful I only used one coat.

Once the paint dried, I got into my black leotard that I don’t often talk about, and I headed for The Boy’s room. He couldn’t suckle my teat but I could put on a show!  I found him with his entire right hand in his mouth and his eyes locked on his feet. Tough crowd.  When he finally noticed me, I leapt into action.  I pulled on the invisible rope, I moved my hands along the invisible wall, I even ad-libbed by pretending to raise and lower the curtains. I got nothing.  Even if he knew how to clap the sound would have been deadened by that soggy right hand.

While I waited for my face to stop burning from the turpentine, I picked up a book I’d been ignoring for weeks:  Touchpoints by T. Berry Brazelton. It’s about the emotional and behavioral development of children from birth to three years old.  To my surprise the book fell open to a section on communication and ‘motherese’:  “the soft, gentle, high-pitched baby talk” which apparently lets your baby know he should pay attention to you.   Brazleton says that motherese helps the baby save precious energy by ignoring the other adults in the room (a skill we could all use especially around the holidays). “All right, Dr. Brazleton,” I thought. “Assuming that’s your real name...”

It was worth a shot.

I started talking to The Boy in a high-pitched voice that landed somewhere between The Nanny and a balloon being relieved of its helium.  I immediately got The Dog's attention again.  My 15 year-old mutt hobbled out of bed to find a quieter place to sleep. And he’s deaf. Anyway, within seconds, right on cue, The Boy, good ol' Enrico, gave me a big smile. Even a few squeaky laughs followed by more smiles as I kept talking to him in motherese fatherese.

What a relief. Now I figure I’m only a few months behind The Wife with regard to bonding with The Boy.  But I figure if I talk in that helium voice every waking moment for the next few months I should be able to catch up before he gets to daycare where all sorts of other high-pitched voices will vie for his attention.