I've been working on one post for a while that was just going to be a vehicle for a Metallica / System of a Down music video.  But I'm kinda tired of thinking of boys as a joke

Julia is officially at her due date.  Last week at this time I was totally ready but now it just doesn't seem like it's going to happen, which is weird.  Frankie is closer than he's ever been and now he's even closer and he seems like a shoddy non sequitur to an irrelevant story.  I don't mean to sound all like "what's going on in my life or whatever" but...  Today it's like you've been planning a trip for the past month and now your are leaving tomorrow and it seems like the trip is long gone, like you've already done it a thousand times, like it's just this thing now that you aren't even sure is in the future but part of some other timeline in some other dimension.  That's a thing you feel right?

The past month, I've been listening exclusively to Love, Dad on Earwolf and it's got me doing more productive things with my time, or at least planning more productive things.  I don't feel good about being passive anymore.  Now, I just kinda feel like I am failing unless I am doing something, no matter how menial the task.

So that's good.

Father and son adventures are just around the corner.

So this blog might get better.

...

actually, i guess boys are pretty funny

Ok.  So, not so much about my drinking.  But, maybe it'll come up organically.

I've been participating in dad talk with other new and/or soon to be dads.

I was feeling bad that all my dad mountain blogs were all about how I drink and listen to records.  So I started trying to do more dad like stuff.  I've picked up a dad book and I've asked other dads about dadding.  By talking about our hopes and fears, us dads, we all end up talking about ourselves and how we drink and listen to records.

I don't know if that paragraph reads very well.

How about this:

Last week, I ended up playing Oppositional Forces (the bad guy) for a field exercise.  This means that I spent a long time in an open field with some other guy, chain smoking cigars and talking.  He ended up being a new dad.  So we dad talked.

What surprised me was how quickly we ended up talking about ourselves, how we were most fascinated and fluent in our flaws and foibles.  We talked about almost every mistake we ever made growing up, always through fits of laughter.  Each of us trying to one-up the other with an example of our youthful indiscretions, which ended up as examples of the kind of flaws we would accept and detest in our own sons.

Is that abhorrent?

I think I would have thought so just a year ago.

But now?

idk

On Thursday I went to the Class VI (on post liquor store) and bought two 12 packs of lager for $14.  No big whoop, just a good deal.  On the way home I listened to 

, which justifies this being a dadmountain post.

I got to thinking how uninspired I feel I've been.  That is to say that I've reached a plateau in creativity and I'm pretty much just jealous of all of you who are, at least in my mind, doing very creative things.  So I had a little crisis.  I needed to do something.  But I only had a few minutes at home alone and all I had was 24 cans of cheap beer.  And so I decided to shotgun a beer.

Why?

I don't know.

I don't think I've ever successfully fully shotgunned a beer.  Whenever I tried in college I let a lot just pour out the side of my mouth and alway left a little in the can when I threw it onto the ground, making a mockery of this weekly ritual before, during, and after new episodes of Tool Academy.

And, but, so, anyway, this last Thursday, when I got home, in order to defeat a spell I was under, I decided to shotgun a beer, fully, to prove to myself that I have improved since college.  Back then, under the best circumstances, it was impossible for me to take more than one sip of beer at a time and would never (ever) finish the last sip of luke warm beer because it would definitely have caused me to vomit.  Now, I can consume much more alcohol in many more forms than I could just five years ago, so I knew this would be a challenge I could do.

**pause to pour myself another glass of lager**

I came home, greeted the dog, and took off my top.  So, just so you can get the full visual, I was wearing:

I took five beers from one 12 pack and put four of them in the refrigerator and one on the kitchen counter.  Remembering, possibly falsely, that it is best to shotgun a beer that is not completely cold, I took the can from the counter and went out to my back yard and thought to get good ol' Calvin and/or Brian on gchat or something and dedicate this to the good ol' days but decided I didn't have time.  I took my Brewski

and pierced a hole near the bottom of the can.  Confidently placing the hole into my mouth, I flipped the can right-side-up, popped the tab and chugged it about three fourths of the way down before I realized how badly my stomach hurt. 

The beer was too warm and way too foamy.  I tried to burp but knew that this was not going to be a burp.  Before my God and my doG, dropped the can in the garden and ran into the bathroom and vomited all of that foamy beer and, with a mild euphoria, rediscovered something in myself and was reaffirmed. 

So I guess this is the next wave of Dad Rock?  I mean of course not.  But, I guess it might be?

I've been listening to this kinda stuf for a while and it's this kinda of stuf that makes me excited to be a dad.  Though I seriously doubt anyone besides me will care about my book and record collection when I die, I've always considered future generations of Jacks when building my library.  Now that there are only two months left until Francis is born, I am concerned that my Thelonious Monk and my Marcel Proust  are just and totally wrong.  While I have DFW and TMBG, I don't know if my library is enough of a reflection of me.

Right.  I know that They Might Be Giants and Dinosaur Jr. aren't really the same.  But, they are more me than any Jazz or Classic(al) record I own.  And Proust is great and so is Monk but what kind of boy to I take myself for?  

As much as I'd like to be the guy that could appreciate a 25 year old single malt scotch with some Jazz ( which I guess I could), I'm really the guy that likes to mix Jim Beam with Orange juice and listen to fuzzy noise so that my body can get so sick of my brain that it just pushes it away and goes with the flow it can't get to know while sober.

And but so here I am, two months away from meeting my first born, a-son-no-less, drinking a Micro-brew and trying to figure out which books I am going to read to him first (probably DON QUIXOTE).

I guess I am trying really fucking hard to make a person that is not going to be into Adult Swim and blogs that are overly reliant on YouTube.  I might manage.  At the very least, he'll get a bigger head start by going to more museums and having been read more books and hearing more substantial music.

Maybe. 

Maybe.

Maybe.

Jesus Christ...

Maybe.

Maybe a boy can turn out to be sophisticated and brilliant when his dad is all grown up and still listens to grunge and considers Tim Heidecker to be the ideal father figure.

RIYL: Coheed and Cambria, The Dear Hunter, Brand New

I...
This one time in college, I said that my musical guilty pleasure was SmashMouth.  But what I didn't tell you was that I also really liked My Chemical Romance.  I hope I never told anyone in high school I liked My Chemical Romance.  That would have been embarrassing.  But I did (hopefully) in secret.

I am always telling Julia that I'm not looking forward to the teenage years but that is not true.

Do you guyz remember feelings?  Like, real feelings?  The God awful intensity "of a real live emotional teenager?"  Now that I read THE ATLANTIC, THE NEW YORKER, and TRANSCENDENT SPECULATION ON THE APPARENT DELIBERATENESS IN THE FATE OF THE INDIVIDUAL, I really don't have the feelings I used to have.

Much like the books on my shelf remind me what I have read, my records remind me what I have felt.  And so I drink whiskey and I listen to My Chemical Romance and I remember the way I felt in the mornings when I watched MTV2 or Fuse before I rode a recumbant bicycle I found rusting away on the beach to the bus stop, which was one bus stop away from one of my besties who would then let me share one of her iPod ear buds to listen to The Unicorns or Le Tigre.  Or I drink rum and listen to The Thermals and remember how I felt when I lived in Austin and listened exclusively to pop-punk with my 30 something besty with one testy and told some strange girl who asked me to dance to fuck off cuz I was putting Shellac on the juke box.  And/or when I drink gin and listen to Dan Deacon I remember the way I felt when besty and I sang "Free Fallin'" at Karaoke in San Francisco and got so many phone numbers from so many honeys.

This is derivative of the feelings I mentioned in my last post.  But the way I drink is derivative of the way I drank.

Having a son is going to be metal.

I base my feelings on nothing but feelings.

I don't really know what it takes to raise a successful human being.  I am a human being that is relatively comfortable but I am not successful and I hate my job enough to think that the comfort is not worth it.  I agree that "the male child... must separate himself from the original, indispensable, nurturing mother and venture forth into a way of experiencing himself that is not her and that he cannot learn from her either by example or by instruction...  a boy must learn to be different from her without this difference deteriorating into either antagonism or fear."  Is it wrong to think that it would be easier to raise a girl who could just learn to be like her mother?

I do not want my son to be like me, but I do want to like my son.  I worry that if I like my son, then that means that he is like me, which means that he is fundamentally fearful and antagonistic.  At this particular moment in my life, the last thing I want is for my son to follow in his old man's foot steps.  So let him deviate.

I saw my father work grave yard shifts, own a bar, and go back to college and graduate Sigma Cum Laude by the time I was a junior in college. But, I think that was too late.  I saw my father hate everything about his life for too long and now I think that I have to hate mine to be a grown up.

So in a little less than two years I will be getting out of the army, pursuing a masters, and getting a job that I actually like.  So maybe my son won't have to deviate too much.  Maybe he will see me struggle and disagree with my choices.  But he will see that I have made choices that have made me happy.  He will not come to the conclusion that being a grown up means sacrificing dreams for comfort.  Let him deviate!  Let him deviate just so long as he is being himself.  So long as he isn't doing it to not be me.

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how to announce that Julia and I will be having a baby boy (due May 6).  In truth, I contemplated not announcing it at all and just let you find out when/if I ever see or actually speak to you ever again.  But I'm so bad at actually keeping up with people that are not in my immediate vicinity because of all sorts of the reasons that you'd expect, so what are the odds that I'll start making the conscious effort to talk to you individually once the baby shows up.  Slim to nil, that's what.  But if you received the link to this, I think that you were/are/will-be-once-again a big part of my life and I want to share this with you.  But, due to my not being the best at keeping up with you, you may not care to keep up to date with me anymore.

So here's me telling you and creating a place to update y'all on my business while giving you the chance to ignore.  

But yeah... It's a boy.  So far the little guy is healthy and I'm leaning towards the name Francis.