I’ve resisted writing about Haiti because, while incredibly tragic, it irks me to see our nation running to the aid of some other country when there’s so many terrible problems at home. I don’t think we should be policing the world or trying to save it, especially now. I guess the older I get, the more isolationist I become, but I can’t help thinking “why don’t celebraties have telethons to fix problems in America?”.

But I digress.

From the rubble of one of the world’s poorest countries came a story which seemed to perfectly highlight the haves and have-nots of the tragedy. And both the absurdity, and wonder, of our national obsession with technology.

An iPhone saved a man’s life in Haiti.

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People have begun to ask me: “So, how do you like Fatherhood?”. And I don’t, frankly, but this isn’t a surprise to me. It’s unfathomable to most people, but it’s what I’ve always felt and what I expected at this stage. I have, however, figured out a way to explain the feeling.

It’s like commuting home on a Friday night through stop and go traffic-

You want nothing more than for the journey to be over. You can’t stop thinking about how much happier you’d be doing anything but your current task. And yet, you don’t get out of the car, or park and wait til traffic is done, or decide to not leave work at all. Instead, you suffer through it… cause this will be the low-point of the days to come. That’s where I am.

And the hardest part for me is the special relationship I have with my son.

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I’ve been thinking about two news events which happened within 24hrs of each other on Christmas day 2009:

Two men with deeply held religious beliefs illegally traveled into other countries to spread their messages. Neither succeeded, but both made news. And though the news coverage has been very different, I can’t shake the feeling that their stories are almost exactly the same.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now postpartum. The Baby has landed. The Stork has delivered. Whatever way you’d like me to say that we have gone from pregnancy to parenthood.

So you might be wondering how I can write another entry about pregnancy. Well, I’ve decided I’m the town crier of pregnancy truth – “Hear ye, Hear ye….” Because it’s become quite clear that a few months of holding a newborn gives women amnesia. I suspect that something in the smell of fresh skin actually wipes out bad memories.

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I’ve been accused of being a Christmas Buzz-kill. My wife has even threatened to get me a Christmas T-Shirt: Black with white block letters: “This is as Merry as I Get”. And frankly, I’d really like to have that shirt. I’d wear it with pride.

You see – “It’s that time of year…” and just starting off with that quote already has you singing a Christmas song in your head, right? And that’s both my point and my problem.

Don’t misunderstand me, there are some things I enjoy about Christmas. But one thing leads the charge in my dread of this holiday and my hope for its quick departure:

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Los Angeles doesn’t just have an obsession with youth, it actually pro-longs youth. I see pictures of people in their early thirties from somewhere in the Midwest and always marvel that they look older than people around me in their early forties.

Elsewhere is seems that couples in their twenties are dealing with their second house and second child, and out here men in their forties rent apartments on Sunset and date mid-twenties models.

I find myself influenced by both. I’ve never been the nightlife kind of guy, and I’ve been happily married for more than a decade. But we still rent our home (not for lack of home ownership interest, but for lack of affordable options) and the majority of our friends are childless dream-chasers like ourselves.

Yet in the last year… things have changed.

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Yep. I said Porn. For Everyone. And to those of you who are already either offended or embarrassed… I do have a point to make here.

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I’ve just been struck by yet another oddity of the English Language.

In many ways I’ve spent a large portion of my adult life trying to figure out quick effective ways to use my native tongue. In fact, my only tongue.  (Porque yo hablo espanol muy paquito y muy mal….. or something)

But there are times when English doesn’t provide enough ways to get a point across.  There’s only so many times you can add “really, really, really” to something before it just confirms that you “really, really, really” have no idea what you’re talking about at all.

So I have a tendency to work in metaphor.  Using something unrelated to explain the gravity of my current point. Click to continue »

So.  This is the first of what I assume will be many postings related to kids and parenting.

(If you didn’t know… well… SURPRISE… We’re 6 months pregnant!)

As my wife and I march closer to the birth of our little man, the changes are already coming fast and furious.  And anyone who knows me knows I over-think just about everything.  No starry-eyed wondering at the miracle of it all… not me, not here… I’m wired more the opposite.  Cold hard analysis. Looking at the short and long term effects of decisions. Click to continue »

I’m a child of 80s pop culture. Those were my defining years. And I’m a story teller and filmmaker, so the films from that era shaped me.

And the iconic films of the 80s were mostly made by one man, John Hughes. He died suddenly today, and in the outpouring of news articles and facebook updates I find myself once again reflecting on how much I hate our response to those who have died.

Here’s a man who shaped a decade of comedy filmmaking. And he shaped a generation of filmgoers. Yet in recent years his work has been discounted as out of date, while gross-out work like Judd Apatow and Will Ferrell has been heralded as the way comedy should be done. Click to continue »