The Perfect Baby Handbook » Phenomena

Perfect babies, perfect parents, and FAILure

dale — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 04:49:12 +0000

“My child must succeed! I will give her every opportunity to succeed! She will learn to write tricky words like ‘constitution’ in a lovely, calligraphic hand, but her vocabulary will never include ‘failure’!” It was such modest claims that inspired me to satirize competitive parenting in The Perfect Baby Handbook.

OOPS: Originally conceived as a guide to abstinence.

Now, it turns out, that while I was busy satirizing and you were trying not to be too easily satirized, the verb “fail” was turning into the noun “FAIL” (always capitalized) and becoming a cultural phenomenon.

Exhibit A: The website, FAILblog.org, launched in Jaunary, 2008, by the same ingeniously simplistic people who brought you LOLcats. FAILblog invites users to submit images of things that have been done badly, horribly, or disastrously. You might, for example, be able to spot a certain, subtle flaw in this book cover (right).

Exhibit B: This weekend, The New York Times magazine devotes an “On Language” column to the phenom, reporting that Americans are applying the “FAIL” concept to everything from CNN’s coverage of the Iraq protests to clumsy cows, from Bill Clinton to Amazon.com snafus. The recession, one observer tells the Times, has only fueled the temptation to see the world through FAIL-tinted glasses:

“It really started to take off when the financial industry decided to — ahem — fail…Talk about the perfect storm.” The fail meme met the financial crisis head on at a Senate hearing in September, when a demonstrator held up a sign reading “FAIL” behind Henry Paulson Jr., the former Treasury secretary, and Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve.

“Shut up, shut up!” you may be saying. “What about my baby?” Well, just make sure you don’t send him or her to this not-so-august institution:

Related Posts:
• Family togetherness FAIL
• Babysitting FAIL
• Homophobia FAIL

The mystery of the disappearing birthday present

dale — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:30:26 +0000

Have you seen this t-shirt? Say, blowing down a street in Brooklyn? Or on the back of mischievous, Size-5 thief? Or somewhere in my friend Ariel’s house?

THE TEE: Gone, but not forgetten.

If so, please grab it and forward immediately to Perfect Baby Handbook Worldwide Headquarters on Montague Street so I can restore it to Ariel’s son Austen, the birthday boy for whom it was intended.

You see, sometime between 12 noon, Sunday, when I arrived at Austen’s madcap, high-concept birthday party (and handed it, giftwrapped in orange tissue paper, to his mom) and 3 p.m., it vanished. And 100-percent cotton, imported “Vintage Black Football Jerseys” by Appaman don’t just vanish, do they?

Especially when they’ve been known to “pair perfectly” with Appaman’s “Vintage Black Slalom Sweats”?

But, somehow, this one did, amidst the chaos of the treasure hunt, the dauntingly complex Jelly Bean taste test (organic vs. non-organic), the hysteria, the glee, and the serving of a cake that so masterfully depicted Nemo (of Finding Nemo fame) that a dozen toddlers stampeded towards it, much like art-snobs crowding around the latest Damien Hirst sculpture.

It truly is a mystery: Although Austen was witnessed at one point “feeling” the package and asking, with slight dismay, “Is it clothes?”, no one knows if he ever opened the gift. The card that accompanied the gift was found, halfway out of its envelope, on the floor.

My current suspects include:
• Birthday guest Dorian, a rival four-year-old who has never impressed me as honorable.
• The cat, Augustina Trembalina*
• Mysterious forces who feel strongly that well-off American children receive far too many birthday presents and wanted to make a point.

*Certain names have been changed

Why your baby will grow up to be a Scary Information Glutton

dale — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:59:53 +0000

Everyone loves a clairvoyant. Especially when she predicts the future with as much bluster and certainty as Penelope Trunk, who pens a syndicated business column called the “Brazen Careerist”—and focuses her forecasting on one’s own beloved child.

DECISIVE: "Hi Mommy, you're fired."

Trunk’s most recent projection, “What Generation Z will be like at work,” is irresistible. In a nutshell, it seems that your baby is going to grow up to terrify all of his or her older coworkers. Your child won’t be a team player, he’ll process information at “lightning speed,” and he’ll be busy swallowing “neuro-enhancers” (the successors to ADHD medication) that render him even more freakishly intelligent than you’d hoped.

Of course, Trunk’s take is a bit more nuanced than that, and stuffed with highly tempting, occasionally tangential links. For example:

For those of you who doubt the power of naming, check this out: If your name begins with a K you will strike out more often in baseball. If your name begins with a letter toward the end of the alphabet you could be economically penalized.

Don’t you want to know how an X name will lead to economic penalty? I did!

Until I discovered that the explanation is overly wonky and heavy on unzippy terms like “alphabetical discrimination.” That said, I did learn that children whose full names reduce down to “negative initials,” such as P.I.G. and B.U.M. are “especially likely to die from psychological causes, such as suicides and self-inflicted accidents.” Fun fact!

Family togetherness is a trend that makes you wear all-white and behave inappropriately

dale — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 03:58:08 +0000

If you haven’t quite decided what your favorite parenting trends of 2009 are quite yet, please keep an open mind. Surfnetparents.com would like to suggest this one, “Nature Vacations”:

Note the caption: Apparently, the crazy fad that’s leading American families to conduct public orgies on dude ranch holidays while wearing “innocent” white clothing never dies.

I’m confused. Why is this vacationing family behaving like drunken, bisexual sailors? Why are they all dry-humping each other? Furthermore, what happens when some easily shocked horse from a neighboring ranch trots up to that fence in the background and starts neighing in horror?

Perhaps I’m reading too much into this. Let’s see what a “nature vacation” actually involves:

Hitting up hot springs, seeing geysers, hiking to the top of high peaks…be trendy with the kids this year…[and enjoy] the satisfaction that comes from a day spent in fresh air, and invigorating exercise.

Hot? Geysers? Peaks? Satisfaction? This doesn’t sound entirely innocent. Still, let’s not judge. Let’s allow this hedonistic family to have their reckless, imbalanced, psychologically damaging fun. They will, of course, discover that there’s always a price to pay the morning after, as this video reveals:

The legend of the demonic, incompetent babysitter

dale — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:59:08 +0000

A SITTER OF BABIES: As depicted, non-evilly, by Norman Rockwell

If you’d somehow failed to notice that babysitters have a bad rep, this Salon.com interview with Miriam Forman-Brunell about her new social history, Babysitter: An American History, is a splendid reminder.

Forman-Brunell is a woman who has clearly spent days watching and re-watching When a Stranger Calls, the 1979 horror movie that she says represents a certain culmination of an urban myth known as “The Babysitter and the Maniac”:

[In this legend], the children are upstairs usually asleep, and the babysitter gets a phone call asking her if she’s checked the children. She gets that phone call three times. After the third time she calls up the police to trace the call. He calls back and they call her to tell her that the man is in the house and that she has to get out of the house immediately. What usually happens is that she runs upstairs and finds the kids have already been murdered.

…That story gets circulated very widely, from coast to coast during the 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Kids actually contribute to the spread of it at summer camps and they share it as a true story. And finally by the end of the 1970s it gets made into a movie, “When a Stranger Calls” [starring Carol Kane as the babysitter]…

When I saw this film, I was quite impressed both by Carol Kane ability to bug out her gigantic eyes to convey fear. Lacking Forman-Brunell’s awareness of babysitter urban myths, I was also blown away by the originality of the twist. The Call, you see, was not just any call….

Sgt. Sacker: Jill, this is sergeant Sacker. Listen to me. We’ve traced the call… it’s coming from inside the house. Now a squad car’s coming over there right now, just get out of that house!

From inside the house! This made quite an impression on me. Partly because my brother, sister, and I did not have a bug-eyed babysitter who might conceivably drift off and let a killer infiltrate our Pleasantview split-level. The stalwart Judy, a future doctor, was a formidable teen who popped popcorn in a iron skillet and rarely, if ever, chatted with seductive strangers on our wall-mounted phone. Many years later, after ensuring that we did not get murdered, she married a man named Wyman. And still dropped by every Christmas with a box of Black Magic chocolates.

You know, I never questioned the the idea of chocolates called Black Magic until now. Maybe Judy was not so benign after all?

Related Posts:
• New York Times book critic comes out as a “baby bulimic”
• Admirably imperfect mom of the week: Stefanie Wilder-Taylor
• The fate of Paris Michael Jackson, according to the world’s meanest astrologer

Children at risk from Jon Gosselin’s “clothing designs”!

dale — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:55:13 +0000

WORST & CO: The sub-chic Jon & Hailey

Just when you thought Jon Gosselin, of “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ fame, couldn’t get any more loathsome, People magazine reported that he’d signed a new deal to design kids’ clothing for the Ed Hardy label with help from his new girlfriend. This seemed unfathomable and was later refuted by the rigorous journalists at Entertainment Tonight:

A rep for the clothing designer denies previous reports that the two were designing a new line together, telling ET, “There is no children’s clothing line in the works with Jon and Christian [Audiger, who designs for Ed Hardy]. It is untrue.”

With this respite, the world made sense again. I mean, seriously, have you clocked the way Jon dresses? Is there anyone less qualified to conceive youthful, innocent style except perhaps Jeremy Piven (“Entourage”) or Hulk Hogan (“Brain-Addled Wrestler”)? Has Jon absorbed some important life-lesson by leaving his spouse for Hailey Glassman, 22, the daughter of his wife’s plastic surgeon that might inform his sense of color and proportion? Do louts know how to sketch?

But damn: Turns out the People story might be true. And, if its original reporting stands, it gets worse. Much worse: The poor Gosselin sextuplets will be drafted to wear Jon’s fashions in ads. And his girlfriend is to uncreatively collaborate:

Glassman will also have a hand in creating the kid-friendly fashions. “She’ll have a lot of input with Christian,” Gosselin told PEOPLE of Hailey’s involvement.

Old Hailey can’t even choose sunglasses that flatter her strangely pointy face (though, in her defense, apparently she hasn’t let her plastic-surgeon dad give her an artificially squared-off face.)

Incidentally, People’s report on this development is hilariously even-handed, as if its reporter felt the need to hedge her bets in case women still find Jon adorable. Is that even possible?

Why insanely costly private schools could (but don’t) charge even more

dale — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:47:46 +0000

FUNNY HA-HA: Fieldstone grads

In the middle of the most recessive recession in decades, you’d think attendance at private schools might dip a bit. Nope, reports the Economist in a semi-horrifying story that makes you want to drown someone. In fact, even more parents are scrambling for the right to pay surreal, bankruptcy-inducing amounts:

Compared with last year, applications are up 14%,” says Mark Stanek, the principal of Ethical Culture Fieldston, a private school in New York. All through the application season he and his board of governors had been on tenterhooks, waiting to see if financial turmoil would cut the number of parents prepared to pay $32,000-34,000 a year to educate a child…

How unnerving for the board of governors! Those tenterhooks can really hurt. Overall, the Economist finds “little sign of a meltdown in private schooling” in America, while finding a nice smattering of signs that such schools will raise fees by 2-to-4 percent this fall. Two theories: 1) Parents fear the recession will further shit-ify public schools; 2) They assume that application rates at the snoot-schools (which are really selling college-placement guarantees) will be down, increasing their kid’s chances.

After amassing proof that these institutions could get away with charging way more (in much the same way that Rosemary’s Baby’s heroine amasses evidence that her husband’s in league with Satan), the report offers a nice reality check:

So why aren’t fees even higher? [The likely explanation] is that schools’ quality would decline if they simply sold places to the highest bidders. Part of what they offer is the chance to learn with clever classmates, and if fees were too high the pool of brainy potential pupils would become too shallow.

Whew! That was close.

Michael Jackson doll—as seen in hands of his bereaved son!

dale — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:00:48 +0000

BENDABLE LIMBS: Blanket and doll

Trust it to a website called “Droolicious—Modern Design for Modern Parents” to find a product to drool over in the middle of Michael Jackson’s memorial.

The site’s post titled “What Was Blanket Holding?” dispenses with eulogistic ponderings and zeros in on the revelation that Jackson’s youngest son, Blanket, was gripping a “1995 Official Triumph International Michael Jackson doll” that “you can pick up” for between $260 to $1500, depending on whether you’d like it to sing.

No one at Droolicious seems to find it at all curious, notable, or (I dunno) heart-rending that this child is holding a plastic, miniature version of his plastic, full-sized dead father—something that’s never really been seen before. John F. Kennedy, Jr., for instance, didn’t have a JFK doll to help him mourn.

It’s as if Barbie’s daughter is attending Barbie’s Dream Funeral. A version of which, I just found out, was recorded for this 2007 YouTube video. Given Barbie’s parallels with MJ—both emaciated pop icons, born in the late 50s, given to makeovers and blank expressions—this clip disturbed me. I actually gasped at 00:28.

Goodbye, Barbie/Michael.

Related Posts:
• Michael Jackson bleached his son’s hair—both cruelly and cheesily
• Michael Jackson’s death as a “learning moment”
• How Michael Jackson disguised his kids—a brief history

Why Evian’s roller-skating babies terrify me

dale — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:47:04 +0000

Already a YouTube phenomenon, this new Evian commercial suggests that mineral water is so rejuvenating, it will transform you into a vaguely thuggish, roller-skating infant.

Evian clearly thinks this ad sets new standards of cuteness. These babies redefine precocity and outshine squirrels for agility as they one-up each other with funky roller moves—a reference to the late-70s jam skating scene in New York’s Central Park, set to the 1979 hit, “Rapper’s Delight.”

And it is freaky-cute, up to a point. Namely 00:26, when several of the babies leap in the air and cling to a wire fence like rabid dingoes who’ve watched West Side Story (or Thriller or The Lost Boys) a few too many times. And then it dawns on you: These babies have no parents. Why?! Have they perhaps killed their parents?

OVERSIGHT Responsible parenting in action

Who will stop these bundles of roller-skating joy if they turn rogue and swarm out of the park? If they begin leaping on cars and roller-skating their way up the Empire State Building? Will the U.S. Air Force be able to neutralize them in time? (Compare this illustration, right, from page 66 of my book, The Perfect Baby Handbook—although this infant is also dangerously mobile, at least his flustered dad is attempting to supervise him.)

On another level, the Evian commercial disturbs me because it suggests just how ruthlessly the new generation of aggressively educated, genius-ified babies may render the rest of us obsolete. Of course, it may not be too late.

Facebook updates about babies bring both joy and heavy sarcasm

dale — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:38:00 +0000

Witheringly funny website alert: If you haven’t visited STFU, Parents, a new blog which celebrates the peculiar inanities of parents’ Facebook updates, proceed with caution. It is a 100 percent sentimentality-free zone.

The site works like this: Someone submits a screen-shot of a gushy parent’s Facebook page to STFU, which posts the screen-shot and relishes it absurdities. Or, as in this case, its punishing monotony:

Thanks to Friend of Perfect Baby Handbook, Marjorie Ingall—mirthful, brainy mom of two—for suggesting the site.