Teeny Manolo

Apparently, country music comes from Hartman, Arkansas. How appropriate.

A twelve year old and his ten year old sidekick got “liquored up,” stole his father’s truck, set off in search of a girl they’d met at the rodeo, jumped a guardrail, and ended up at the bottom of a hill in an Ozark forest in the middle of the night.

From the Modesto Bee:

Clark James, 46, who lives down the road from the crash site, said he answered the boys’ banging at his front door with shotgun in hand about 2:30 a.m.

“I opened the door and the first thing (the 12-year-old) said to me was, ‘I’m drunk and I had a wreck,’” James said. “I looked at him and I thought ‘You’re kind of young to be out drinking. And you sure shouldn’t be driving.’..”

Teresa Belew, executive director of the Arkansas chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said the 12-year-old is the youngest person she’s heard of facing a drunken-driving charge in the state.

James bets that both Johnson County boys are grounded for life.

“If not, then they should be,” he said.

How long till they get a movie deal and an interminable Kenny Chesney song?

When you learn that you are having a boy, a sort of resignation sets in about the whole fashion and clothes thing.  I mean, boys have this reputation for beating up their clothes, not caring if they are particularly clean, and basically as long as a few threads are holding it together, they are good to go.

I was also particularly fearful that my son would inherit my husband’s inability to match items of clothing.  Although he has many fine qualities, fashion sense isn’t one of them. Brown belt and black shoes?  What’s the problem?  Gray shirt and gray pants?  How in the world can I keep insisting that he can’t wear it out of the house, because if two things that are the same color don’t match, then the universe has a serious problem.

Anyhoo, my son had been displaying the usual young male indifference to his clothing.  Clean, dirty, matching, unmatching.  It was all the same to him.

But then last week, something happened.  Dare I say it, a breakthrough of sorts.

They were having “graduation” pictures for his preschool, and I had picked up a lined navy blazer for eight bucks, in one size larger than his normal size.  Yes, I know you are jealous about that.  Often when shopping for the Munchkin, I have the Bargain Angel on my shoulder.  For myself, not so much.

My son knew he would be wearing a white button down shirt and brown linen pants, but hadn’t known about the jacket. I showed it to him in the morning as we were getting ready and asked if he would like to wear it.  His eyes lit up and he said, “Oh, yes!”

So he got dressed and I put the jacket on him.  He immediately went to the full length mirror in my room and stood in front of it.  And he actually began to preen. 

“Mommy, I look like I am forty years old.”

“Yes, baby.”

“Mommy, I look like the mayor or something.”

“You do.”

He turned to me with a big grin on his face.

“Mommy, I look really good, don’t I?”

Indeed, perhaps there is hope after all, my son.

Surreptitiously, I wiped a tear from my eye.

And if the amount of squealing from random unknown females on the way to class was any indication, I may also want to think about amassing a large number of sticks. 

From the looks of it, maybe we should send them to Iraq and Afghanistan. Is clown fear the universal language?

We all know what pregnancy can do to your chestage.   The, uh, girls tend to get a whole lot bigger, especially if the new mother is breast-feeding.  And I am all for breast-feeding and embracing the new curves that a baby can bring to your body.

However, Christina Aguilera needs to get a clue.  It took highly tattooed former wild child, blood-vial wearing Angelina Jolie to show her the fine art of tasteful pregnancy and post-pregnancy cleavage.  

Classy!

Not so much!

Can I just say that I have never seen a more gorgeous pregnant woman than Angelina? Where are the cankles?  The softened jawline?  She’s carrying twins and she looks utterly fantastic.  It really just isn’t fair. 

Our creeptastic Friday photo seems to have scared off most of the competitors. I think they must know a lot of the same men I do…

In any case, three brave, talented souls persevered and entered the testosterone-heavy field. It was another close one, but it is now time to announce the winner. There can be only one.

gamma Says:
May 18th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Expanding on his work with “The Pacifier,” Vin Diesel does another remake of “Freaky Friday.”

And now, to the hypothetical awarding of the virtual prize. I was going to pick something Vin Diesel-related, but then I thought that wouldn’t be much of a prize…have you seen those movies? So here is something estrogen (rather than diesel)-powered, a good antidote to testosterone poisoning, the Juicy Couture Garden Party bracelet:

Last week’s question about becoming a surrogate mother was split fifty-fifty between those that would absolutely not, and those that might, under the right circumstances. I think that I would seriously think about it, but no one in their right mind would choose me, because of my health and pregnancy history. Which is pretty much why I only have one child. I think I might have to pay someone else instead of the other way around.

Today, I want to know all about hair coloring. Specifically, boys coloring their hair. A friend of a friend (really!) allowed her son to dye his hair black. Oh, well, teenagers are teenagers, you might be thinking. If that is how he wanted to rebel, then bless his little heart. Except, this young man is only in third grade, and it wasn’t temporary hair color either.

A picture of someone who DID show up for her shift

I’ve got to call this one for the coach.

Here’s the scoop: Jodie Hooper, mom of a 7-year-old Little Leaguer, promised to work in the concession stand, as all LL parents must do at least once in that league. She bailed, without finding a replacement.

Her son is benched for two games.

“We are not here to have kids sit benches. We want kids to be playing, but we need people to help us out,” Brouillette said.

About 370 kids play at the field. The fields are run almost exclusively by volunteers. Each parent is expected to help out at least one night.

“Is it fair if you know about it in advance and you are told? It’s one of the rules, otherwise we wouldn’t have concession stands,” parent Rebecca Diaz said…

Hooper said that she had things to do at work and that is why she could not work the stand…

“It’s a tough rule to have to enforce, because everybody has things to do,” League President Dave Brouillette said.

Yes, yes we do.

By now you all know what a hardass I am; it’s impossible to bench or otherwise punish a mother, grownups are supposed to be responsible for their commitments, the kid will get over it, he WILL be ashamed of his mother, this is a good thing. If Mommy is so indispensable at work, Mommy can damn well hire a teenager to take her place.

Thoughts?

Books are already magical, and pop up books seem somehow even more special. There is no better way to get your child hooked on reading than by introducing them to pop up books. Children (and adults too!) are completely fascinated with three dimensional pictures that are, in essence, individual sculptures. Yes, little hands can be grabby and close supervision necessary, but pop up books are also a wonderful way to teach young ones to appreciate and respect books.

Encyclopedia Prehistorica Dinosaurs: The Definitive Pop-Up by Robert Sabuda Special note must be made of Robert Sabuda, as he is widely viewed as the best pop up book illustrator out there. This is not the first time you will see him on this list.

Mommy? by Maurice Sendak, Arthur Yorinks, Matthew Reinhart A classic Sendak book, which is slightly scary but has the protagonist outwitting all the monsters as he searches for his mom in a haunted castle.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-up Adaptation by Lewis Carroll Yet another story illustrated by Sabuda, this is a retelling of the classic. But with totally cool pop up pictures.

Winter’s Tale: An Original Pop-up Journey by Robert Sabuda A story about animals who live in the snow, this visually stunning book ends with a Christmas cottage lit up by real lights.

(more…)

Loyal TeenyManolites know that we’ve long kept a beady eye on the jaded escapades of debauched homunculus known as Elmo. The back alleys of Hollywood swarm with the tainted, broken bodies of those he has used and tossed aside.

We thought he was the only one. But we were wrong. So very, very wrong.

From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency comes shocking news that everyone’s favorite glutton, Cookie Monster, has come out of the closet about his biscuit abuse problem. It can be only a matter of weeks before he’s in a residential treatment program in Utah, getting busy with Lindsay Lohan behind the sagebrush bushes.

Me thinks me have serious problem. Me thinks me addicted. But since when it acceptable to call addict monster? It affliction. It disease. It burden. But does it make me monster?

Summer, it is a comin’.

And for me, that sometimes means breakouts. Yeah, I feel cheated. Here I thought at this age I would be way past the breakout stage of my life. But nobody told me that they never really go away. Was it a conspiracy or did they just not want to dash my hopes?

I have never suffered from acute acne, but as someone who played many sports as a teen and young adult, I got my fair share of blemishes, just because it wasn’t always possible to run and wash my face immediately after a game. As I get older, my crotchety skin has to contend with the combination of sunscreen and sweat. Which usually, it doesn’t like very much. And, add to that of course the periodic, erm, hormonally caused outbreak, and my acne spot cream can get used up pretty quickly.

Remember how we used to call the acne creams/lotions “zit zappers?”

Well, now they’ve got ones that acutally do zap blemishes with an electrical current. They are to be used only on specific types of blemishes, usually the reddish ones that swell and are painful. They have some sort of fancy scientific name, but I think you know the kind I’m talking about.

The FDA-approved Zeno Acne Clearing Device requires that you hold the tip to the affected area for two and a half minutes. It uses heat to destroy bacteria, and can be used multiple times in a 24 hour period. Reviews were quite positive on this product.

The also FDA-approved Thermaclear Acne Treatment Device uses the same principle to inhibit bacterial growth as the Zeno. The good news with this one is that it requires only a two second treatment versus the two and a half minutes for the Zeno. Reviews were a bit mixed on this one.

Keep in mind that the tips only have so many uses, and a replacement tip must be purchased, usually after 60 or 90 uses, depending on the model you buy.

Would you be willing to spend over a hundred bucks to zap your pesky pimples? And if you don’t ever have pimples, then just know that I secretly hate you. Or, you could just go ahead and keep using your regular acne-rescue operations and let other people use electricity on themselves in the name of beauty. Me? I might be willing to try it out. Hmmm, don’t I have a tax rebate in my future?