Teeny Manolo

We may have made reference to this guiding principle of parenting in the past. Yes, moms can enjoy a lovely Mother’s Day, full of pancakes in bed, trips to the spa, and salmon salad dinners in fern bars, but there’s no reason in the world for Mom’s fun to end there. All it takes is a little advance planning.

Rely on the Daily Martini to come across with three different, all tasty, recipes for a Mothers Day Martini! The Blushing Lady, the White Lady, and the Pink Lady (although my own Pink Lady recipe differs somewhat, but is tasty as well). The most important thing is that someone else mix it, very strong, and they bring it to you in bed.

Me likey! But I’ve got a bit of working out to do before I rock the skintight catsuit or the lead role in a $85,000,000 stinker. While I root around my pad for that personal trainer I misplaced, you can enjoy this selection of the week’s finest posts from around the Parentosphere:

Man Babies (ManBabies)

Banksy Unmasked? No superhero is sacred! (Gawker)

The fine art of grocery criticism (Defamisher)

File under That’s Just Wrong: Wine in a baby bottle (Gastrokid)

Thank you, Mommy (ExtraordinaryMommy)

The Great Truths, according to kids and parents (Fracas)

Cloned mare gives birth (Bridlepath)

Don’t call me Mommy! (WorkItMom)

You know you’re addicted to blogging when… (MagnetoBoldToo)

Celebrity moms speak out on motherhood (CelebrityBabyScoop)

What this world needs is fridge-based sex meters (TrueDadConfessions)

Dear “friend” (TrueMomConfessions)

Ninjas are everywhere! (TheBloggess)

Quick, easy money (GoodMom/BadMom)

Oh, my. Mrs. Z (the artist formerly known as Beyonce) has a lot to answer for with this:

From PopGumbo via Gawker

It’s only May and already the always hotly-contested Mother of the Year award is reaching temperatures approaching that of the heart of the sun. Don’t let Dina Lohan’s recent winning of Long Island’s MotY prize fool you: only on Lawn Gyland does the year end in May, and besides, as someone on Defamer pointed out, her competition was who, exactly? Amy Fisher’s mom.

Quite.

But I think our intrepid reportorial friends at the Guardian have come up with the one to beat. Yes, in Lucie Ceccaldi, mother of French literary bad boy Michel Houellebecq, we have our Brutus, our Secretariat, our Muhammad Ali, and possibly even our AntiChrist all rolled up in one wizened, bitter, 83-year-old bundle of patchouli-scented, tie-dyed 100% pure hatred.

Let’s listen in on some of her thoughts on parenting. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride:

She calls her son an “evil, stupid little bastard” adding that “this individual, who alas came from my womb, is a liar, an imposter, a parasite and above all - above all - a petit arriviste ready to do absolutely anything for money and fame…If he is unfortunate enough to use my name in something again, I’ll cane him round the face, that’ll knock his teeth out, that’s for sure.”

“If it hadn’t been my son, I wouldn’t read that kind of crap, I would put it down straight away, because if there’s one thing I detest in the world it’s pornography. That book is pure pornography, it’s repugnant, it’s crap. I don’t understand its success at all, that just shows the decadance of France.” In her own book, she speculates that he writes about sex because he doesn’t get enough. “What’s this moronic literature?! Houellebecq is someone who’s never done anything, who’s never really desired anything, who never wanted to look at others. And that arrogance of taking yourself as superior … Stupid little bastard. Yes, Houellebecq’s a stupid little bastard, whether he’s my son or not.”Does she believe in mother love? “Western women get on my nerves with their mother love.”

Do you love your son? “Yes, of course I love my son. If he dropped dead, I’d be profoundly hurt, definitively, but I wouldn’t complain in newspapers and write a book about it.”

On her son’s relationships with women she says: “Above all he loves money, and women have always kept him - first, me, and then his good wives. The second one I never met, and I don’t know the others who came after her.”

I mention that he lives in Ireland. “Does he? If he was less of a stupid bastard, I’d go and see him.”

Charmant.

Any picture by Banksy is worth several hundred thousand words:

I think the creators of children’s cartoons get away with murder because they know damn well Mom is in the kitchen finishing her coffee or her gin depending on the kind of day it’s going to be, and not in the living room supervising what her kid sees on tv.

As I may have mentioned, I’m An Old. I remember when black and white cartoons were in black and white because colours hadn’t been invented then. And yet, even I remember how children’s cartoons pushed the envelope (or is that the closet door) with some marvelously camp and butch characters.

How many can you remember? Velma. Peppermint Patty. Bugs Bunny in certain moods. That poor cat Pepe LePew was always chasing. And was there anyone on television, Liberace included, as gay as the Great Gazoo?

Take this quiz and find out which gay childhood icon you are. You can copy the code and post the result in your blog, or just come out in the comments section of this post.

Here is my result, and no surprise: it was either Velma or Peppermint Patty, and there were NO BASEBALL QUESTIONS! This quiz is rigged! Let’s call Scooby and the gang and investigate what’s really going on here…oops, slipping into character.

And now, to announce our winner of the Disney Week caption contest. In a packed field of creative competitors, one stood out.

For lo, I am very dirty-minded.

PaperPusher Says:
May 5th, 2008 at 10:18 am

Once you go black, you can never go back…

Congratulations and imaginary accessories to PaperPusher, to whom we hypothetically present the virtual, yet very lovely Dabby Reid necklace in “dog collar” length:

Back in the sepia-toned, bell-bottomed days of the Seventies when this documentary was shot, Langley was a lovely village surrounded by stables and farms, three-quarters of an hour’s leisurely drive outside of Vancouver. Now it is a strip-mall-encircled bedroom community an hour’s infuriatingly tense drive outside of Vancouver with, improbably, stables and farms still interspersed between SUV dealerships.

And this is the Langley School Music Project, a public school initiative by Hans Fenger, a teacher in the system. Just another public school teacher.

In the early 70s, Vancouver musician Hans Fenger decided to get a real job. His girlfriend was pregnant, and he couldn’t raise a family on earnings from club gigs and guitar lessons. He got a teaching certificate and a job in the Langley school district.

Here is some great analysis from The Delete Bin:

The recordings were literally a school project, headed up by music teacher Hans Fenger based in Langely B.C (just up the road from where I’m writing this), and incorporating 60 students who sang and played percussion instruments on songs which included David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, Paul McCartney & Wings’ “Band on the Run”, the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”, and the Eagles’ “Desperado”. The record polarized opinion. Some said that the takes on the songs create a sort of ghostly, otherworldly effect, while others denounced it as sounding amateurish and very “school assembly” in delivery. Perhaps it’s their origin which makes these recordings so compelling. Fenger had this to say about the project and the kids who created it:

“I knew virtually nothing about conventional music education, and didn’t know how to teach singing. Above all, I knew nothing of what children’s music was supposed to be. But the kids had a grasp of what they liked: emotion, drama, and making music as a group. Whether the results were good, bad, in tune or out was no big deal — they had élan. This was not the way music was traditionally taught. But then I never liked conventional ‘children’s music,’ which is condescending and ignores the reality of children’s lives, which can be dark and scary. These children hated ‘cute.’ They cherished songs that evoked loneliness and sadness.”

And now, click on to see (and hear) the kids:
(more…)

Forget your right to bear arms. Take up your right to bear toys instead! Now we know Charlton Heston is really dead, when a Big Wheel outranks a shotgun.

From the Daily Freeman:

Matthews said a resident of the home, thinking the two men were trying to break in, came outside carrying a shotgun. And when the man incorrectly thought one of the combatants had a knife and was about to use it, he fired a shotgun blast into the air in an attempt to scare the men, Matthews said.

But the two kept fighting.

Moments later, Matthews said, a woman showed up at the scene and whacked the two men with a plastic Big Wheel riding toy, and the fight stopped.

Well, you gotta know when you’re outgunned.