Salon.com > Christopher Noxon

Is my kid a jerk, or is he just 2?

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:49:00 +0000

My son pooped on me this morning.

The pooping occurred at approximately 6 a.m. after the 2-year-old leaped into bed and suggested that he'd be most grateful if I got up, escorted him downstairs and turned on his favorite program, a quasi-educational cartoon about a bilingual girl and her pet monkey.

What he actually said was this: "Daddy, up! Dora show! Dora show now!"

On most days, "Dora the Explorer" is good for a solid half-hour of pre-breakfast calm. But not today. Today Oscar motioned to his midsection and said he "hurt."

Woefully misunderstanding the situation, I kissed him on the head and loosened his diaper. At which point he tore off the nappy and grabbed hold of my leg.

And then he pooped on my foot.

This may or may not have been an accident. Looking up at me in the messy slow-motion moments that followed, his expression could only be described as satisfied.

I have two things to say about this. First: It is truly remarkable how tolerant of bodily waste one becomes raising small children. Before I became a dad, the news that my everyday routine would include being defecated upon would have sent me diving for a home vasectomy kit. It is some measure of how far I've come (or how low I've sunk) that Oscar's outburst prompted little more than an exasperated moan as I backed away in search of industrial-grade cleaning supplies.

Irving the Snowchicken is coming to town

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 13:00:00 +0000

I've never been particularly religious. I've got Canadian Quakers on my dad's side and Midwestern Protestants on my mom's, but growing up in '70s and '80s Los Angeles, whatever spiritual yearnings I possessed were satisfied via a consuming passion for "Star Wars." My best friend Jimmy was an altar boy at a church where they prayed to a spooky guy on a cross. I was fine with Obi-Wan.

But then I grew up and fell in love with a Beverly Hills Jewess, and we got married by a cool Reform rabbi who, unlike my mother-in-law, didn't mind that my first name began with the word "Christ." And now we have three kids, who, by mysterious matriarchic law, became Jews the moment they touched down at Cedar's Sinai. All of which explains how I find myself a big goy surrounded by Jews. My kids go to a school called Temple Israel, where they're drilled in Hebrew and the demands of their religious calling (nothing too major, just tikkun alum -- heal the world). At school, there's a name for families like ours: interfaith. The three kids and the wife, they're the faithful. I'm the inter.

Four square for grown-ups?

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 13:00:00 +0000

I had a plan. It was a good plan, a solid plan, one I felt sure would outfox and overwhelm the champion. When the time came for our big match, I'd step forward timidly, my expression and stance a picture of submission. Maybe I'd twitch. Then with a go-ahead from the ref, I'd unleash a devastating assault.

Rock, rock, rock.

The mighty fist of rock, thrown three times to the exclusion of a single peaceful paper or crafty scissors -- it was a reckless move, aggressive and obnoxious and sure to rattle the battle-hardened winner of the first annual $50,000 USA Rock Paper Scissors League championship.

That's right: They're now giving 50 grand to players of rock paper scissors, a kids game that's mostly played to settle such high-stakes disputes as who rides shotgun. Ridiculous, I know. But I can't help it -- I feel an irrational attachment to any game that poses a negligible risk of injury and allows me to drink margaritas while playing it. So even though I hadn't qualified for the tournament and had no chance of actually taking home the big money, I did the next-best thing: I worked out a deal to fly to Vegas and play the winner in a best-of-three showdown.

Mad Mel

Wed, 18 Feb 2004 23:58:00 +0000

Mel Gibson is on the TV, squinting straight into the camera, talking about ... me.

No, wait, this is even weirder: He's talking to me.

And he's pissed.

"You can say what you like about me," he says. "I'm a public person, I suppose, although I don't remember signing the paper saying I have no rights to privacy. You can pick on me. But like, if you start picking on my family while I'm out of town, get ready."

He lets that last line hang, leaning forward and raising his eyebrows suggestively. Suddenly he's Martin Riggs, the wild-eyed cop on the edge from "Lethal Weapon," laying down the law to a wiseass perp (in a scene that usually comes just before the one where he lets loose a left hook that sends thug teeth flying like so many loose Chiclets. Um, honey, can you check the deadbolt?).

Gibson is appearing on Fox News in the first in a series of charged and bizarre interviews about his film "The Passion of the Christ"; the most recent was Monday's hour-long exchange with Diane Sawyer on ABC. In addition to defending his movie against fears it will promote anti-Semitism, Gibson has used these appearances to complain about media coverage he says amounts to "character assassination." While he kept the off-putting conspiracy talk to a minimum Monday night -- he's got a movie to promote, after all -- he was never twitchier or more ominous than in his appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor" last year.