Doug Moe's Blog, page 10

Albert Brooks being great.

Albert Brooks being great.

Dear Students: Enjoy Your Vacation!

DEAR STUDENTS:

Enjoy your vacation!  It’s a great time to reflect on the year and spend time with family and friends.  Happy holidays.

Due on Tuesday, January 2nd:

20 page math packet in preparation for quiz
Social Studies presentation on the ancient Mayan culture.  Don’t forget the six page findings summary and to include your bibliography.  Visual aids (figures, posters, displays) will be presented on Monday.
45 Reading Diary Entries67 “Fun facts about History”400 Sentence-structure planning conclusions and introductions with supporting arguments and compound sentence analysis

Vacation Homework is 40% of your final grade.

Some parents are upset that there is any homework over vacation.  Some argue that a vacation should be a “vacation.”

It is my view that homework over a holiday teaches a valuable lesson:  nothing is easy, all is lost, people will make demands of you that are unfair and arbitrary.

Life is a grind.
Joy is fleeting.
Disappointment is rampant.
All is darkness.

EXTRA CREDIT:  Write a 500 word essay on “futility” or “struggle.”

See you in January!

Google-Proof

I sometimes miss great mentions of my book because I am GOOGLE-PROOF.  My book’s title, the title of my blog too is MAN VS CHILD.  But because there is a cooking show called Man Vs Child, I can’t just set up a Google Alert to ping me when there is a nice mention.  What a weird name for a cooking show, right?  I get that it is children against grownups, but where’s the cooking part in that title?  Man Vs Child in the Kitchen - there, I fixed it.

And I can’t even just have a vanity Google Alert for “Doug Moe” because there are several other prominent Doug Moe’s.  The most well-known is Doug Moe the basketball coach, apparently known for his big personality and sports coats.  I don’t know from sports.  But if you search “Doug Moe” on Twitter, you get lots of tweets about old-time Denver Nuggets facts.  And of course, there is Doug Moe, long-time Madison, Wisconsin columnist.  And arch-nemesis Doug Moe, real estate broker in Ventura, California who has the coveted www.dougmoe.com URL, relegating me to the second-class www.dougmoe.net.  *fist shake*

Anyway, I got a nice mention in Tools and Toys that I missed because of my GOOGLE PROOF status.  Tools and Toys is an awesome recommendation site that I’ve relied on many times, run by the great Shawn Blanc.  He also runs The Sweet Setup which is great for tech recommendations.  Whenever I’m procrastinating, spending my day figuring out if I should write something in Ulysses or Scrivener or, heck I don’t know, Word, instead of just ACTUALLY writing something, I usually end my search on The Sweet Setup.

So thanks for the recommendation!  Sorry I missed it until now.  Tools and Toys has great taste and it’s so great to be in their Holiday Gift Guide!

One of the funnest parts of putting Man Vs Child: One Dad’s...

One of the funnest parts of putting Man Vs Child: One Dad’s Guide to the Weirdness of Parenting together was getting to see my terrible sketches turned into wonderful illustrations by my incredible illustrator @jordan-awan.  Many of the best illustrations were ideas he drew on his own, but then he magically transformed some of my half-assed ideas into great stuff.  These illustrations bring so much charm to the book.

You can find Jordan here.

Santa conversation

My Wife: Santa's so smart bringing you such cute girl stuff!

My daughter: Yeah, but where's the stuff that I ordered?

Christmas Balls

Question:  is it okay, and maybe even cute, for a toddler to take a giant silver ornament from a food court Christmas Tree and bounce it up and down like a ball?  I’m not talking about doing it once and stopping.  I’m talking about doing it over and over.  

Or should the parents have stopped the child, since it is not actually a ball.  Or is all chaos allowed if it is done by a cute kid?  Also, the family might have been Italian - are Christmas Balls a thing in Italy?  Or is it just that parents are stupid everywhere?  Maybe we should all strip communal Christmas Trees of their ornaments and do whatever we want with them?

manvchild:Re: Elf on the Shelf Reporting RequirementsTo:...

manvchild:

Re:  Elf on the Shelf Reporting Requirements

To:  Santa

I am not sure what I am supposed to be reporting on here.  Subject is a child, doing things all children do.  Parameters of your naughty list are vague.  Please advise which of the following possible actions deserve a “naughty list” designation:

Subject blew nose multiple times in tissue and threw tissues on floor where they remained until parent picked them up.

Subject asked for grilled cheese, then refused to eat grilled cheese.

Subject keeps singing theme to 1-877-Kars-4-Kids

Subject did not wash hands after using the potty, was called on it, then went back and ran water to pretend they had washed hands.

Do these rise to “naughty” level?  

Frankly, the Elf on a Shelf mission is problematic.  My trade is toy-building, not spy-craft.  I am uncomfortable with this surveillance and question its necessity.  Is my reporting merely advisory?  Don’t you already know who’s been naughty and who nice?  

Respectfully, I submit that myself and other Elves on Shelves be re-deployed to the North Pole Toy Facility.  The demands and deadlines of Christmas were already straining our toy workforce before so many of us were assigned to spy on children.  

- EOS1456

manvchild:Best Humor Books of 2017Toot toot! I’m tooting my...

manvchild:

Best Humor Books of 2017

Toot toot! I’m tooting my own horn because my book got picked as one of Amazon’s Best Humor and Entertainment Books of 2017! 

If you’re a Doug Moe super-fan, you might be thinking “didn’t I already hear this?” The answer is - No! A few months ago, it was named in the Best Humor and Entertainment Books of 2017 *so far*

So now that it’s the end of the year, my book has defended its title, so to speak. I’m in this list with John Hodgman, Whitney Cummings, Chuck Klosterman, Kelly Oxford, etc. - I’m an underdog on this one for sure.

And of course, if you’ve bought it or left a review, thanks so much. If not - it makes a great gift for any parent, even moms! Think about picking up a copy if you haven’t yet. Yay!

Papa Bear

Yesterday was parent-teacher conferences at my daughter’s new school.  I’ve been happily surprised that her middle-school transition has seemed to be low-drama, and her school has a fancy-schmancy online system that I can look at her grades on.  So I knew that things were going well - no real dread going into the meetings.

In the first meeting, one of her teachers was like:  "She’s very shy and quiet.“  I immediately felt my face flush at this mildest of criticisms - and one that I actually mostly agree with!  "Uh-huh,” I said with a little bit of a tone.  I really didn’t mean to; it was just “Papa Bear” instincts rearing up.  I took a deep breathe and got my shit together.  The rest of the meeting went fine.  She is shy and quiet!  Calm down, Doug!

I really don’t think of myself as unrealistic about my kid.  I’m not one of these parents that says their kid is “creative” while the kid is scratching “Fart” into a table with a pocket knife.  I think I’m eyes-wide-open.

But the Papa Bear instinct is fierce sometimes.  I remember years ago when we forced her to play soccer for a hot minute, I was in peak Papa Bear mode.  She didn’t know what the hell she was doing, was lost among a bunch of mini-Pelès, the ball whizzing past her.  I wasn’t worrying about her scoring; I was worried about her feeling humiliated.  It was awful to watch her out there so out of her depth.  We had thought it would be a good experience, a good lesson in teamwork and listening to a coach and, ya know, exercise.  But instead it was a lesson in “sign your kid up for soccer earlier in life.”  

Other Papa Bears at the game were ready to beat the ref up for a bad call or because their kid got tripped, even though he was totally fine.  I was pretty uncomfortable around these Rage Bears, glad that I hadn’t previously lost my way so much that I thought yelling at a ref in front of a bunch of kids was a good idea.

Anyway, kids are almost always fine without our raging - our Bear instincts mostly just get in the way.  I’m glad I didn’t freak out on this teacher when my kid is actually getting good grades and everything is fine.  But it was weirdly close!  It’s the animal instinct, like trying to protect your cubs.  

Be careful!  We all have that inside us, but we have to be wise about when to bring our natural instincts to, um, bear.  (Sorry)

You like funny stuff - buy my book, wouldja?

Hey Zoey! Get Off Your Phone!

Hey Zoey! Get Off Your Phone!:

Check out my friend @danmaxfox‘s cool Kickstarter project - a children’s book about phone addiction.  Dan’s hilarious, so I think this will be a good read.