01.23.07 Confetti Egg (formerly Strobe Lights)

The shell is dyed, the hole poked, the yolk drained? now go ahead, smash this fragile ovoid and release its bounty of smallish items of interest!

Alternadads unite. The Sunday LA Times included my review of Neal Pollack’s book about struggling to stay cool in the cultural dead zone of fatherhood. Pollack is a fellow Angeleno with a distaste for Barney and an obsessive desire for his kids to appreciate good rock and roll. It’s a very funny and thoughtful book, and Pollack is keeping a great Blog about the ongoing hilarity of raising his son Elijah. Elsewhere in blogland, here’s a review of my review.

RPS goes corporate. You’ve been in meetings since dawn, you’ve just wolfed down a wilted cobb salad and you’re now facing a long afternoon holed up in a conference room with a crowd of dispirited office monkeys? only one thing will save you now: rock paper scissors. Really. The World RPS Society (the original Toronto-based league of twee intellectuals, not to be confused with the balls-out, Bud-endorsed US Rock Paper Scissors League) has just launched a service that will organize and referee RPS tournaments at conferences, office parties and other business events. A frivolous exercise in forced cheer? No —  is an ingenious way to quickly break professional artifice and generate creativity, communication and fun. (Here’s a hint, minions: bosses throw rock.)

Harrumphing Codgers rejoice! Here’s a manifesto for cranky old men! British author and broadcaster Michael Bywater has published what sounds like a clever tho reactionary survey of the Rejuvenile phenomenon, or to quote his title, Big Babies: Why Can’t We Just Grow Up? Reviews say it’s about how government and advertising treat adults as “mewling infants who have to be told, essentially, look look shiny shiny coin coin every forlorn second of every babyish day.” There’s good reason to worry about business and government encouraging adults to drop critical defenses, but I refuse to believe the answer to that problem is a return to the rigid and overserious traditional mold of maturity. The rejuveniles I met while working on the book were mature in many ways and immature in many —  I say in the book, it’s possible to lead a happy healthy life that ?includes charity and skateboarding, G-8 summit position papers and midnight cupcakes, long stretches of concentrated seriousness and mad fits of impulsiveness.?