oh my god, they've named the zeitgeist From Sweetney:

We are Grups!

I haven't felt this demographically self-assured since I got my Gen X carrying card in 1991.

Although it being New York Magazine, they skew weirdly on socioeconomics. They're on PowerBook Planet and spend $800 on strollers. Such is the bubble of publishing: But I have an $800 stroller! Doesn't everyone have an $800 stroller? Um. No. But somehow I feel defined. But shit. Would you want to listen to the Wiggles? Would you go to a listening station and say, "Hey, it's the new Wiggles album" and put it on? No. Then would you be excited about listening to the Wiggles for eleven hours? Neither would I. And that's exactly why I don't budge a fucking inch with the Wiggles--it's crack for preschoolers, and I can't believe the Bush administration hasn't declared a war against it. (And that might actually be winnable.) What the shit is so bad about playing the music you like for your children? That's what people did before Disneyland and cable. I like a variety of music (I had a klezmer phase) and if Baldo expresses a particular inclination--like, I don't know, the way he absentmindedly sings Cheap Trick while he's playing with blocks--then I'll encourage that gently and we'll have fun with it. I didn't dance my kid around the house to my music during his extraordinarily lengthy fussy stage to turn around and hand him to the Wiggles. Nothing personal against the Wiggles. They just have a lot of jazz hands, okay?

tend your own garden My parents are both professional horticulturists, so I don't know why I kill plants, but I do. Yet we are attempting to garden at Chez Baldo.

Partly I blame the Biscuit Brothers, who influence our lives in so many ways that they might as well be giving us marching orders. For my part it's a voluntary submission. Anyhow, they're always going over to Melody Garden ("mel-o-dy gar-DENNNNNN!") and picking baby grand pianos and shit, so now we've all agreed that we are going to try to produce some of what we consume. Hell, we'll all be cannibals in the suburbs in fifteen years, right? Or sooner? What's the ETA for that, anyway?

"Do you remember when we made our garden before and I destroyed it because I didn't like it?" Baldo asked.

"Yes, I remember that." How could I not?

"I'm not going to do that this time. I was a baby. Now I am a kid." Very reassuring.

So then yesterday was entirely given over to yardwork. I'm happy to do yardwork if I have greater than a 70% chance of actually getting to finish it. Baldo and I tilled and composted a bed. J. and I raked and bagged leaves. I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, but I'll try. If I can produce a single vegetable from my backyard, I will declare myself an American Bad Ass.

Back, safe, home again. I am back from Boston. I am tired and one eye is angry and pink. I don't think it's pinkeye. I think it's The Ick of Oak Pollen, with irritation from sleepy rubbing. Should I be mistaken, my apologies to anyone I may have infected with doorknobs, turnstiles, hand rails, shared newspapers, trash passed to the center aisle, signed books, shaken hands, or any other germ-infested surfaces I touched or snotted upon. At any rate, it's my left eye, which is the one that weeps uncontrollably during oak-pollen season. Why just the one eye? I have no idea.

Random observations in no particular order:

1. The changes to Kenmore Square saddened me somewhat, but Nuggets is still there, and Cornwall's. So there we are. Oh well. I loped around like Joe Buck during some downtime--the fourth-generation Texan does not move quickly, although I rediscovered jaywalking in about thirty seconds--and found The Other Side still there, although more restauranty than it was ten years ago.

2. I should also apologize for farting silently but violently throughout the flight from JFK to Austin; I drank tomato juice (why do I always do that?) and I had a couple of corporate meatheads behind me yammering nonstop about their meeting (with cellphone during takeoff, even) so I figured I'd gas 'em up real good. Welcome to Austin, y'all. Take only pictures; leave only footprints.

3. jetBlue is the cutest airline ever. Even the soap in the lavatory is cute. Those cute people are so proud of their new planes and satellite entertainment. Did you know jetBlue adds new planes, frequencies, and destinations each week? I sure did! Wow!

4. Oh, how do I love the Boston moms.

5. When I am not with Baldo, I still get really excited about construction machines. There was this one thing at the airport that looked like a hydraulic personnel lift, but the cab was enclosed. Cool! There was a backhoe on every block on Newbury Street. I would have taken pictures.

6. Excitement: When we finally got in at midnight last night, the jetway was broken so everybody had to deplane out the back. I thought I was going to finally get to use the inflatable emergency slide (while not actually being in an emergency, which is a plus) but we got rolling stairs instead.

Next up: Richmond.

Real Housewives! Ordinarily I advocate laughing at the superrich, but does anybody give a fuck about the Real Housewives of Orange County? Just curious.

I tend to think that if you spend hours working out daily and getting plastic surgery, you do actually have a job: Keeping your husband married to you. You're basically a sex worker.* And that's okay with me. I'm down with sex workers. I just wish they wouldn't be packaged and sold to me as "housewives and soccer moms." The real reality for mothers who don't work full-time is that we're quite often poor or at least living month-to-month. God knows you'll never see poor people on American television unless a hurricane wipes out a whole lot of them at once. Then the American public actually gets angry for a couple of weeks before latching back on to the tit of Teevee Beautiful People Who Lunch and Stab Each Other in the Back.

Best part of the show: "Soon you'll have your chance to prove to the world that housewives and soccer moms can be HOT! Check back in the coming days for more details." Fuck off, y'all--we have nothing to prove to you. We're too busy sellling shit on eBay to be Julie Cooper.


*By the by, real sex workers are also often poor.

My hero! Last night I powered down after Baldo's bedtime and sent J. out to see a bluegrass show at Flipnotics. And there in the crowd was my personal hero (or one of them, anyway, along with Carl Weathers): Sarah Jarosz.

Sarah Jarosz is the mandolin-playing bluegrass Wonder Kid from The Biscuit Brothers. She's an amazing musician. I showed an episode to Aunt K. (if you enter my house, I will make you watch The Biscuit Brothers) and she turned to me and said, "Oh my God. I suck."

So J. explained how Baldo is into the mandolin now, and Sarah Jarosz was sincerely pleased. See how it takes a village? That's right.

ow Do not drink the free beer, or you will get a massive gnarly sore throat and headache. All my lymph nodes hurt.

We took Baldo to two free day shows. Yesterday there was the Bloodshot Records showcase, which was conveniently located off an alley around the corner from a construction site with a REAL CORE-SAMPLE DRILLER and we watched and watched and watched it. The beer chick was impressed by our fortitude and gave us extra beers "for the cool parents." Which made me go ah HAH HAH HAH HAH! My couch is full of Legos and I'm not going to get to hear the music, but if that's your definition of "cool," rock on with that, honey.

I think I also got the flu. Great. People, don't be coming to town with all your germs.

Then there was the show at Cheapo's today. I really wanted to see the Grassy Knoll Boys and Cooper's Uncle. Instead Baldo's friend Moz the Wonder Kid was there, and as much as I love that little dude, he's one of those preschoolers that goes all the way up to eleven, and pretty soon he and Baldo were wrestling the gumball machine and having to be carried screaming from the venue. Hitherto I had actually persuaded Baldo to sit with me and watch the band. Because my son has decided that he wants to be a bluegrass musician and is going to "mandolin school." Okay, gonna start working on that one. He knows the mandolin has eight strings and two F-holes, and that's about the extent of my own personal knowledge.

Our biggest adventure has been using a port-a-potty twice. It blew Baldo's mind.

"It doesn't flush!" he balked. "I want to go in the other one, the brown one!"

We'd been waiting in line for ten minutes, and that was really fun. "The other one doesn't flush either," I said. "It's just a hole with a seat." Of course nobody really uses the seat, but if you're a narrow-assed four-year-old in 2T pants, you might fall in otherwise, and it's too tall for him to stand and pee.

Please no flu.

good news, everyone! "But for all they do to boost the economy, women continue to get the shaft across the American workplace."

Three years and counting Read this.

Go here.

mom and pop culture New column is up. Happy Ides of March.

please forward Send all correspondence and pies to the Amy's on Burnet. I'm going to live there and sleep in the factory.

There are still some bumps in the execution of the concept (seriously, watch out for the side of the playground that directly abuts the back parking, which shouldn't be) but I think it's the Greatest Idea Ever. You can get a good burger (yes, it can be veggie) and a solid, reasonable meal for your kid, and there's a playground and the world's greatest ice cream store.

It's a fantastic idea, and it's all working out according to my plan. It's going to cause different kinds of parents to mix. It won't be perfect, as the food might be a little high-end for families of lesser resource, but I do think at least there's going to be a conglomeration of Round Rockians and Far West blingy moms, and I'm going to give a shout-out to my Crestview moms, and we're going to get the Circle C moms up in this bitch, and they're going to eat a cup of ice cream and maybe start talking to each other.

Nota bene: There is an application for a liquor license posted. Beer, I'm guessing.

I think an Amy's of this nature would make an excellent addition to the east side redevelopment. Okay, how about not the unaffordable lofts for downtown professionals, but an ice cream store that every other neighborhood in town has? Why is there no east-side Amy's?

Oh, and on the downtown-professionals tip, there were several groups of office types eating en masse without children, but kind of looking like, "Why are all these KIDS here?" and I give those people about twelve minutes. Hello, it's an ice-cream restaurant, and it has a playground! We're going to claim it, okay? If seeing a child in public is going to cause you convulsions of disgust then you shouldn't eat hot dogs in ice-cream restaurants with playgrounds. That sort of stuff attracts the young people. They don't like tapas or Mongolian barbecue or new American cuisine the way they like hot dogs and ice cream. You can't have everything.

You might be surprised how well the kids behave in a restaurant that is friendly to them. You'd think the converse would be true, but most ostensible "family" restaurants are so jacked-up and overstimulating that I'm not going in there, no way. They all have television, which is Instant Tantrum. We had to eat at a TGIFriday's once while traveling, and that shit made me have a tantrum. And anyone who sticks a balloon in my kid's hands without asking me is going to get snapped in their goddamn suspenders because some people are allergic to that, dumbass. Don't sting people with bees and don't shove balloons at people, especially if you don't have an Epi-Pen. But if we can eat in a reasonable neighborhood restaurant with other families and nobody's freaking out, chances are the kids are going to be really cool with that. So that's where I'll be.

thanks a lot, you late-sleeping assholes [rant="on"]

I want to be a good mother. Okay? I want us to spend an hour reading every day. I want us to have free play and unscheduled time. I don't want to have to drag Baldo to the Convention Center after school and keep him from melting down in line for a SXSW badge for two hours.

People: Open the registration before noon.

Oh, but it's so early!

Yeah? Get the fuck over it. Preschool is over at one o'clock. My ass gets up at 6:00 no matter when I went to bed. Two hours earlier? Doesn't matter.

If you care about film and music and culture and shit, you can get your ass out of bed for it. And if you can't, I don't want to hear about what a hero you are. And no, I won't be able to meet you at your party because I've been up since a small child woke me at 6:00 a.m. with his brand-new recorder. (Thanks, mom.) Suck it up, baby. Open your registration before the motherfucking middle of the day because some of us have families and day jobs. And instead of partying our asses off we are striving for that elusive work-life balance.

What's the source of that snot? Pop quiz, hotshot. Why is your entire family so snotty? One ran a fever and had body aches for two days. One has a rash on his legs. You are mucopurulent two weeks after having a cold.

Flu, oak pollen, sinus infection. Ba-bing. Next?

Oh, and the cat just vomited. Hairball!

After I went to bed last night, I laid there for a while listening to a strange sound in my sinuses. It was a slow, steady, audible drip. Like a leaky faucet in the next room but inside my head. It was digusting.

Festival. Interview. Brain. I'm on my ninth interview now for SXSW. That's a lot for me since I usually sit in the dark watching House of Wax, and this time of year I get pulled out into the light, still blinking, and I conduct various inquiries with people several times a day. I'm past the point of diminishing returns. Partly it's the oak-pollen allergy. Partly it's just having to navigate this giant mass of people, and you want to talk to all of them and help circulate their ideas, which are all very interesting, except the brain gets mushy after a while.

Worst is when I get stuck in Interviewer Mode and interrogate people. I was painting a wall at Baldo's school on Saturday morning with the parent group, and I really, really wanted to know about how the color (a light celery green) was chosen.

Well, we had a can of it left over from when I did my kitchen this color, and everyone here agreed on it.

Bemused laugh. "So it was a marriage of convenience and coincidence, with consensus officiating?"

Yeah, I guess you could say that.

"And what are your hopes for this wall when it's dry?"

We hope the kids will like it, and that we'll have enough white for the trim.

And scene.

We're taking over Peggy Stern is my hero.

But let's back up first.

So the Wilson brothers are going off about Bottle Rocket and their origins (with Wes Anderson) as short-film makers. And there's kind of a fuck-you aspect to it, which of course I love, and which of course makes me swell with Texan pride. Owen, call me. J. says it's okay.

And then there was this terrible beat in the moment where Owen had to turn to the green screen and announce the arrival of characters from Chicken Little, a movie which proves with its existence why the world needs short-film animators who work by hand. But Owen rolled with it, because John Canemaker got to follow it up with a big hell yes for short-film animators who work by hand. Net gain.

And then up stepped Peggy Stern, who brought us all full circle by reminding everyone that mothers who work in the arts are standing on the shoulders of giants, for real.

I wanted Felicity Huffman to win Actress for Transamerica, but the Academy is just not ready for that. And that's okay because we have Reese, but Felicity Huffman has balls of steel. She could very well save us all.

obligatory oscar post God, I love to hear Salma Hayek say, "Brokeback Mountain." Can somebody get me a clip of that?

It makes my film-geek heart beat faster Baldo asked to see Lumiere's Demolition of a Wall. Then he wanted to watch A Trip to the Moon, which is on the same DVD of early cinema. We left the Lyra running for accompaniment, so as we watched we were listening to She Wants Revenge. I'm gonna go plotz now.

I really hope it works. Gasoline from cow dung? Having recently watched this movie, I think if we could make gasoline from cow shit, that might save us from extinction. I knew cow dung was good for picking shrooms. And now it might have extra species-saving action! What a remarkable substance.

we have to impeach him If you do nothing else today, read this story.

Wow. Kanye West was right.

omigod Omigod, you guys. Are you watching Lost right now? I am.

Ok, the screaming baby with the rash? That's like, from the time Ethan injected Claire with some syringey thing? Uh-huh. It was totally that, in my house, when Baldo was little. Except you have to subtract the part with the island and the Ethan and the syringey thing, and I'm not Australian. But that was normal for us through most of the day. I looked over at J., and I became The Scream.

I wasn't even done freaking out about that when I saw something else hideous. A Ford commercial going on and on about how great Ford is and how Ford really wants my family to be safe, and how Ford is leading the way in automotive technology, and how with its VOLVO BRAND Ford is proving their commitment to me. Ford's Volvo brand Listen, motherfuckers, you just bought the company. You didn't invent it, okay? It was the Swedes! Man. Everybody's always ripping off the Swedes. Like, corporate America's agenda is "Follow the Swedes" and as much as certain conservative elements in the United States like to pretend that the Scandinavian political model is bloated, or what have you (Hi, Dad!) I gotta say they kind of school our asses on shit like furniture and Olympic hockey and being really hot people. And software! Linus Torvalds is a Swede. "But he's from Finland, Marrit!" Yes he is but if Wikipedia is to be believed (and I'll give you that's a toss-up) the Torvalds family belongs "to the Swedish-speaking minority (roughly 6%) of Finland's population." You can tell meritocracy doesn't work because Sweden's computer genius totally kicks the ass of our predominant and omnipresent computer genius (no, not Steve Jobs--gah, some of us can't afford Apple, and our lives are completely colored by that different guy's business vision--license stuff other people do, just like Ford!), but our computer genius is the one who's stinking rich. Wait--isn't that backward? Well, anyway. Their genius is a cooler genius, and he might even excel at Being Unsexy.

"Yeah, well," says the American model. "We're so much richer than you! We're not all bound up in your ostensibly Byzantine tax structure and weird regulations."

"Yes that is a problem," says the Scandinavian model. "But we have sex and party, more than you do, and at the same time we're not hobbled by a Puritan heritage, and even though we have a tradition of austere religious dogma and the films of Ingmar Bergman, we're pretty logical, and we don't have a giant stick up our asses. Admit that you envy us."

And then the American model buys the Scandinavian model and stabs every living Swedish-American through the heart by calling Volvo a brand of Ford.

Volvo was cool because even though they're priced for the rich when they roll off the line, their cars are so durable that ordinary people can afford to buy them eventually. And they are so fucking safe. A friend of mine who is pregnant was rear-ended by a semi on I-35, and she and her three-year-old walked away from the accident. People have their "I cheated death because I was in a Volvo" stories. Volvos are my car. The first time I had sex in a car it was a Volvo. I don't want Ford to hurt Volvo and make their cars unboxy and incapable of being driven into the ground. I don't want there to be a Volvo SUV. (God, as if Ford doesn't already make enough SUVs. Yoo hoo, Ford Motors! Hi! 33-year-old mommy here. No, see, we don't want the SUVs. No, we want station wagons so please turn them back into real Volvos and make them affordable, please? And you guys could maybe make a diesel or a hybrid or a diesel-electric hybrid (yeah, do that!) but not the, uh, giant Canyonero that takes up three parking spaces in an urban area. The hybrid Escape was a nice try, but let's go a little further than that, ok? Thanks, love ya!) And I'll telling you all: Volvo is not a brand of Ford. Remember that.