There’s a New ‘Dad About Town’

I have a new columnist gig writing “Dad About Town” for a local magazine. As you’ve guessed by the title, in it I wax poetically about nanotechnology and Italian cooking.

You can read my first column on the magazine’s website because I’m contractually unable to reprint it on this one.

However, I think it is perfectly fine for me to reprint the photo of me they used with the column because while they may have paid for my words, I am paying for that receding hairline and huge nose:

When I was told they wanted to take a photo of me for the column, I thought there would be some elaborate studio set up with 500-watt lights, Euro dance music blaring and at least one assistant to touch up my eyebrows.

Instead, I got a guy with an iPhone snapping me in front of our downstairs bathroom wall.

No joke. That’s where I’m standing in that shot. The photographer is literally three feet in front of me, with half a butt cheek on the sink counter.

Makes sense as the other photo of me that you most of you are familiar with is this one …

… which was taken by me with a cell phone camera in our master bathroom.

We have one bathroom left in the house that I have not been photographed in. I’m saving that one for my Pulitzer.

+ + + Don’t be selfish – share this on social media. The writer needs to prove to his wife what he's up to all day at home. Cheers!

#GivingTuesday for Kids with Juvenile Myositis

Hey there, good-looking and generous blog readers.

Remember when we were a community?

Did stupid memes and gave out goofy awards to one another?

Donated blog space to spread the word about a rare condition?

Harassed people on Twitter to text a vote for a bunch of kids in need?

Time to see if that still can happen.

On this ‪#‎GivingTuesday‬, please help the hundreds of children like my daughter, Li’l Diva, who have the autoimmune disease Juvenile Myositis. The best way is to donate to Cure JM Foundation via the CrowdRise Holiday Challenge as our nonprofit tries to win $100,000 for disease research.

To refresh your memory, Juvenile Myositis (JM) is a rare and life-threatening disease affecting one to five children in a million. Li’L Diva was diagnosed with it 11 years ago at age 2. JM can affect virtually any system of the body, and there is no cure … yet.

Cure JM Foundation is a nonprofit organization created and managed by families of children affected by Juvenile Myositis (JM) – the leader of which is My Love. The group’s mission is to provide support for families coping with JM, raise awareness of JM, and fund research that will ultimately lead to a cure. In a decade, Cure JM has raised more than $4 million – much of which has gone to research by buying lab equipment, funding fellowships and paying for various medical studies.

A month in and with a month to go, Cure JM has already raised $61,000 in this contest and is the top fundraising charity of more than 450 vying for the prize – an additional $100,000.

If you can help by donating or spreading the word, all the Uncools would be grateful. Especially if you donated, but still so if all you did was share a link.

Cheers and peace – Un.

To donate: visit the Cure JM Foundation page on the CrowdRise Holiday Challenge website. 

Out of My Gourd

You did only three things with pumpkins in my youth: made filling for pies, carved jack-o-lanterns for Halloween, and smashed said jack-o-lanterns when they resided on the front porches of families that gave fruit or toothbrushes to trick-or-treaters.

But not these autumn days. Pumpkin, it seems, is the new bacon. It's the go-to flavor and scent additive for everything. Not only have the brewer, the baker and the candlestick maker added the orange gourd into their seasonal rotation of goods, so have the makers of chocolate, pasta and -- I kid not -- Pringles potato crisps.

And why not? According to a recent Nielsen report, sales of various pumpkin-flavored food and drink items rose nearly 19 percent in 2012 to more than $290 million. The stuff is selling like pumpkin-flavored hotcakes except, oddly, at our local IHOP which did not have them on the menu when I ate there on Election Day. It's enough to make you wonder how significantly we could improve the health of this nation if only someone would create pumpkin-flavored kale.

Household Tasks Not As Sexy As They Sound

Snaking a drain

Sweating a joint

Draining the Jacuzzi

Soaking the skillets

Flushing the down spouts

Scouring the grout

Spackling the cracks

Priming a wall

Degreasing the traps

Waxing the tile

Plastering the ceiling

Insulating the pipes

Resetting nail pops

Doping a hose connection

Priming a pump

“Well some things you can explain away, but …”

ME: So how’d guitar lessons go today?

LI’L DIVA: Good.

ME: Practice those (windmilling ala Pete Townshend) power chords again?

LI’L DIVA: (rolling eyes) No.

ME: Ahem. Learn anything new?

LI’L DIVA: Yeah, some song by … The .. Clack?

ME: The Clash?!

LI’L DIVA: Yeah.

ME: (eyes popping) Which one? Which one? “Should I Stay or Should I Go”? I actually sang that in our band in high school. We never played any where outside of my friend Tim’s basement before --

LI’L DIVA: No.

ME: “Rock the Casbah”? We also --

LI’L DIVA: No.

ME: "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais"?

LI’L DIVA: What?

ME: Which song?

LI’L DIVA: “Train” something …

ME: “Train in Vain”?

LI’L DIVA: Yeah.

ME: I have The Clash on Broadway box set you can borrow and -

LI’L DIVA: What’s a “box set”?

I have apparently failed on many, many levels.

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I’m Not Pregnant

… but I did write this piece “When Husbands Go to the Ends of the Earth for Their Pregnant Wives” for the WhatToExpect.com website about My Love and her completely absurd demands on me, the man who knocked her up.

And, if you clicked that link and read the intro – yes, I am the blog editor for the NYC Dads Group these days. Even though I live in Connecticut. Hey, everybody is outsourcing these days.