Well, he's got a point.

ITEM: Kanye West tells Reuters, "Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book's autograph." (via NYMag) I think I may have read some of the same books as he has. We do have a lot in common, you know. We were born on the same day, in the same hospital. (Well, I don't know if he was born at Saskatoon's City Hospital, Wikipedia says no, but y'know, that could just be more of Wikipedia's general anti-Saskatchewan bias.) Also, despite the fact that we are both disgustingly rich, neither of us feel that we have yet achieved our true potential. Our biggest difference? His book is finished and published. Mine is still just a bunch of weird notes about Frankenstein, the Barr Colonists, and club house sandwiches.

ITEM: Vancouver weekly the Westender wonders on its current cover: "Are bloggers making it hip to have kids?" I haven't read the article because I don't live in the West End, and, y'know, I stay outta theirs, they stay outta mine. A friend who does live in the West End told me, though, that the report says the ME of Only Magazine--which I can't read either, since I have siblings--has column about being a dad. Another reason I can't read Only Magazine is because they filed their Eugene Mirman article under "Music" instead of "Not-Music". Other than that, Only's pretty fine. Maybe they'll Google themselves, find this page and ask me to write for them. I wouldn't automatically say no.
Back to blogging dads, well, more power to them. For this dad, blogging's been at the bottom of my priority list because A) who wants to blog when you can make noises with a six-month-old? B) I'm taking a writing class and y'know how that is C) I'm doing a tiny little bit of writing out in the world with an interest, if not a lot of time, to do more D) Did I say blogging was at the bottom of my priority list? That's just cuz listening to music didn't even make the list. E) is for Emmet F) is for Fiction, which is slowly, oh so slowly taking shape G) what, I still have to explain myself? Didn't you see reason A? That's my bottom line. The fam. It's where I'm at, it's where I'm happy, it's where I'm (kinda) needed. I'm also not blogging that much about my little girl because I'm saving all my observations and experiences to pitch a sitcom to HBO about what it's really like to be a parent.

ITEM: I think I was also going to say something about Paul Auster, but, um, I'll save it.

mp3: "Dangerous Fun" by Jesse Winchester

The real reason newspapers are failing

You call this a scoop? Back in my day, you had to jump out a window to secure an exclusive rescue/interview or turn the Earth backward on its own axis to qualify as a scoop. I guess times really are hard.



mp3: "Hard Times" by Baby Huey

M is for the Many Sleepness Nights

My mom was in town last month. She dropped perhaps the most shocking revelation in my entire family history ever: She's never seen the original Star Wars movies in their entirety. If she had told me this five months ago, I would have called her a liar, right to her face, my own mother. How could someone who raised three boys and one girl in the 1970s and 80s not have seen the Star Wars movies? Get real, Mom.

Of course, now that I'm a parent--now that I have just the slightest idea of what it's like to be a mother--I get it. While we were busy watching Han Solo get frozen in carbonite for the 80th time, Mom was busy, y'know, TCB. Motherhood, like rust, never sleeps. Never watches Return of the Jedi, either.

Not that she wasn't familiar with the material. She used to let me stay up late to listen to the Radio Dramatization of Empire on CBC. She helped me learn to read with the Star Wars storybooks and novelizations. She abided my ambition to become a Jedi Knight, tolerated my Lego tornadoes and dutifully reminded me when I had left my action figures in the freezer again.

These days, I've got a baby of my own. I'm a pretty good father, in my opinion. I'm getting better at it all the time. I like to think that if I had to, I could take the world on my back for my little girl. But my wife, the beautiful mother of my beautiful little girl, she's there carrying the weight every single day. I don't want to undersell the importance or hard work of fathering here, but mothers, man, I don't know how they do it. I do know, though, that I couldn't do it without 'em. And I certainly wouldn't even want to try.

This is all an inadequate show of appreciation for both my own mother and the mother of my baby, and all the sacrifice, hard work, and love they commit every single day.

mp3: "Be Careful There's A Baby In The House" by Loudon Wainwright III