Mel Gibson

So the boys escaped with the Wife of Hatcher one afternoon on vacation, while I minded the baby. When Charlie woke up, I took him up to the boardwalk to do a few rides. Meanwhile, the kids were busy at some store making me a craft-related birthday surprise for the following week. I meet them on their way back to our rented condo, and Jake, the four-year old, comes running up to me proudly keeping the secret and blurting out “I’m not telling you what we made for you, Dad.”

Bill, the wise six-year old keeper of secrets, knows that Jake’s statements has already given Dad a clue into his birthday present, and with krinkled brow, scolds Jake: “You’re not supposed to tell Dad that we made him anything.”

Jake, with a brief look of contrition aimed at Bill, quickly breaks into a smile when he figures a way out of this mess, turns to me, and says: “We didn’t make anything for you dad.”

A couple of days later, Joey lets the cat out of the bag, starting a story by saying “When we were painting daddy’s coffee mug …” He doesn’t finish the story because he realizes the gaff, as does everyone else at the table. With my birthday still days away, wanting to preserve their believing the surprise hasn’t been completely blow, I say something like “What, you painted me a roffee lug,” as if I hadn’t heard him clearly. Billy, again visibly annoyed with Joey’s revelation, but momentarily more piqued by my obtuseness, clarifies my understanding: “No, a cup, a mug.” That’s why he is the wise six-year old keeper of secrets.

The moral of the story is this: never go through the trouble, as I did, of snooping around looking for your surprise birthday gift from your kids when they are that young – eventually they’ll tell you what it is anyway.

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So Mel Gibson’s in a lot of hot water. And lest my comment be interpreted as a defense of what he said, it is not. But from what I’ve read the reporting officer was basically told to edit his report and exclude the anti-Semitic comments, on the grounds that this was a drunk driving offense, and if word of what he said got out, it would create a whole firestorm. That seems like a sensible judgment call to me – if there were a dead Jew on the road 1 mile back from where Gibson was arrested, maybe those comments were pertinent to a potential crime, but a blood-alcohol test is a blood-alcohol test – you can’t blow a 1.0 and than say to the judge – “No way I was drunk – I didn’t insult any Jews when I was arrested.” I guess my question is this: is your police report a matter of public record?

That said, of course the leftie bloggers are all over the conservative Gibson for his remarks, but somehow they are all right criticizing him while expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people, Hezbollah, and everyone else who like to compare Israel to Hitler’s Germany. Go figure. The truth of the matter is a lot of people to both the extreme right and the extreme left hate Jews. But as a matter of American foreign policy, certainly the right is more in Israel’s corner than the left. I’m confident you’ll never catch Jimmy Carter saying those things, but I am also confident that a guy who regarded Arafat as being worthy of a Peace Prize is in no position to criticize a guy like Gibson. Now, lack of support for Israel does not imply hatred for Jews, but you cannot deny that in many cases, the two go hand in hand.

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Hansirr commented that all my summer music picks were depressing; on retrospect they are. I think my general happy-go-luckiness has always led me to like depressing songs - it's like the only way I can experience the full range of human emotions is vicariously through the lyrics of heroine addicts. But aside from that, Summer lends itself to a feeling of loss - no other end of season is as much regretted, and no other season is as much anticipated. Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all seems apt for summer, but not for other seasons.

That said, when is the f*&$ing heatwave going to f&*%ing break!