One of my favorite moments in 2003’s Old School takes place during the elaborate third act where the fraternity must pass a bunch of academic and physical tests to stay on campus. (Side note: This film was made by the Academy Award-nominated co-screenwriter/director of Joker, Todd Phillips—chew on that for a second. The world in 2020 is crazy in so many, many ways.)
In the debate portion, Frank the Tank (Will Ferrell) goes up against renowned political strategist (at least at the time), James Carville, a ringer brought in the by the university. But Frank turns the tables and delivers an amazing rebuttal on economic issues, shutting Carville down. When told he’s won the debate, Frank says, “What happened? I blacked out.”
Welcome to parenting (during a pandemic … and otherwise).
Being down the parenting rabbit hole is sort of like living in California (speaking from personal experience). There are no seasons, so time never passes. Years go by as if they are months and you are perpetually 23 years old there. It wasn’t until I first looked in a mirror after moving back to Michigan that I learned the truth. I saw my reflection and said, “Who the hell is that guy?”
Seriously, I’m not sure what happened. My last entry was five years ago. I felt I had to update this old masthead because that cute diapered bum belongs to a kid who's started growing a moustache and gets weird when we talk about girls and rocks out to Black Sabbath and Nirvana.
I’d heard there were tween years, but we seem to have jumped ahead to full-blown teenagerdom in 6th grade. It feels like I’m living with an 11-year-old version of Judd Nelson from The Breakfast Club and he’s cast me as the dweeb principal who’s cramping his style. Fun times.
Now this. It’s like I went out to get Flintstones vitamins and toilet paper at Target and got home to find out that we all now live in a Steven Soderbergh movie. And, by the way, if it had to be that, why couldn’t it have been Ocean’s Eleven? I mean, really. The worst ailment to befall anyone in that movie is a little bit of heartburn experienced by Brad Pitt’s Rusty Ryan in the final scene. To be fair, he brings it on himself. Have you seen the junk he eats throughout the entire movie?
Sorry, where was I? Oh, right. The Academy recognized Todd Phillips for directing a movie. What kind of world do we all live in now?
It’s time for pandemic parenting. We’ve seen all the memes and social posts. Talk about wartime! These are SOS and distress signals if I’ve ever seen them. We’re all slowly (or maybe rapidly) coming to realize something. Kids need to go to school. Because we are not meant to spend this much time with them. They are really not that fun every minute of every day in a confined space. It reminds me of when they were younger and every single episode of Caillou seemed to go on for a painful, interminable length of time. Now it’s like there’s a Caillou marathon and it’s the only thing on TV and you can’t change the channel or turn the TV off. Ever.
Sure, it has its moments. Like, have you ever seen a bunch of 8-year-olds on a group video chat? I don’t think any of them was having the same conversation. It’s like the War Room in Dr. Strangelove. Although, probably slightly more productive.
Of course we bide our time with too many episodes of Clone Wars, too many snacks, and too many wasted hours. But, we did also accidentally manage to encourage and facilitate some creativity, with perhaps the most unlikely of resources in the age of Disney+ and FaceTime:
Cardboard!
So far, we have an 8-year-old constructing a secret lab and collaborating with his 11-year-old brother on an elaborate marble run. They spent hours on this! Maybe we’ll survive after all. When asked what he’s working on inside the secret lab, the kid is very cagey. I think he is building a spaceship to get off this ridiculous planet and away from all the stupid humans.
By the way, this refrigerator box has been folded up in the garage since last summer. Why? Because I got distracted by baseball practice and conferences and trick-or-treating and Lego building and I forgot about it. Parenting genius or lazy bastard who lucked out?
I’ll let you be the judge.
So, stay safe, stay healthy, try to stay sane. Take this time to reflect. Ponder the mysteries of the universe. Here, I’ll get you started:
The Academy has now given the guy who made Road Trip with Tom Green the exact same number of Best Director nominations as the guy who made Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X.
2020, people.
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