As we round the corner into Birthday Week, I realize that one year ago today was Jackson’s due date and I looked like this:

This is a picture of a woman who finally has eaten her weight in Haagen-Dazs ice cream.

Almost every mother I know with a nearly-one-year-old child has her thong in a twist about planning a birthday party for a child who absolutely could not give a shit what day it is. I know how sexist this is, but it finally took a man — one who works in the building trades, no less (i.e., a manly man) — to straighten the whole first birthday concept out for us.

It boils down to this:

(1) Get cake

(2) Place cake in front of baby

(3) Take pictures of baby flinging cake around room

Optional: Funny hats

Not optional: Margaritas for mom. And dad, I guess, since he’s paying.

Overenthusiastic Dad (to Jackson): “Hi!! What’s your name??”

Me (reluctant to get too familiar): “His name’s Jackson.”

O.D.: “Jason?!”

Me (even more reluctantly): “Jack-son.”

O.D.: “Well, hello, Jassen!! This is Coral!!” (indicates sprightly daughter with ringlets in red gingham sundress) “Say hello to Justin, Coral!!”

Coral: (well-trained, smiles politely and waves before skipping off to the swings like a perfect little princess)

Jackson: (stares)

Me (haven’t seen the likes of her since my trip to see the Nutcracker in fourth grade): “Wow.”

O.D. (obviously expected more from us): “Uh, well . . . bye-bye, Janson!”

What can we conclude from this episode?

A. I have a highly sensitive twit meter.

B. I have no friends.

C. All of my dialogue was actually performed in sign language.

D. None of the above.

E. None of your goddamn business.

One of the cruise lines is using Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life” in its commercial. You may have heard it first in that inland epic, Trainspotting, but you’ve grown since then, you’re a citizen under pressure and you need to let off a little punk rock steam by driving golf balls off the Fiesta Deck. “Here comes Johhny Yen again” the commercial begins, but clever sound editing cuts right to the chorus: “I’ve got a lust for life! Lust for life!”

As I’m sure you recall, however, the song really goes

“Here comes Johhny Yen again / with liquor and drugs / and the flesh machine / he’s gonna do another striptease / hey man, where’d ya get that lotion?” etc.

Hmmm, which cruise would I rather go on, one full of smug young marrieds who used to own a B-52s album, or one where a reckless, tattooed man from the East Village encourages me to take my clothes off and roll around on broken glass?

It’s the spirit of Mr. Pop that ought to be on hand on these occasions, is all I’m saying.

The links page is finally up.

*Actual quote from my father.

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W. H. Auden, “Musee des Beaux Arts” (1940)

“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by Peter Breughel, the Elder (1525-1569)

Oil-tempera, 29 inches x 44 inches, Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels.

just swinging around and having a mellow eleven-and-a-half-month-old time, when about fifty ten-year-olds on some sort of day camp trip invaded our scene and started playing tag. Fifty people playing tag! Pandemonium! The Nut sat on my lap and clung to me. All these kids were screaming their guts out for twenty minutes or so before the head supervisor blew a whistle and started herding them toward their buses. One of the sub-supervisors was wandering around looking like Ron Jeremy and he came up to me.

Ron Jeremy: “I seem to have lost some of my children.”Me: “Well, don’t look at me, I don’t have them.”

R.J., considering my tits (and believe me, they looked a lot better before I gave them over to nine months of breastfeeding): “That’s okay, I didn’t really like them anyway.”

Remind me not to send the Nut to this day camp.

Don’t you just love viola jokes? I know I do!

[via mimi smartypants]

* A viola burns longer.