About four weeks ago, the song that titles this post pulled up a chair and sat right down in my brain. The hypnotic guitar riff at the end just plays endlessly, on an ear-to-ear loop, and I've often caught myself singing the refrain out loud, wincing in Timothy B. Schmitt's falsetto. I even tried to Blip it, but for some reason Blip has yet to embrace its all-too-important 40-plus, folk-rock-enthusiast demographic. (BlipFAIL!)
The symbolism is pretty blunt, because behind the placid exterior of a neglected blog lies an existence that is anything but. Family Version 2.0 is experiencing a few bugs, and we're back with the mediator trying to re-jigger something that I thought we had jiggered just fine only six months ago. I'm optimistic we'll be able to sort it out, because I have to be, but it still frustrates me to see all this time and effort and money so needlessly misspent. It's like we're sprinting in circles in a huge bowl of heavy cream, churning up a frosting that will ultimately engulf us.
For a real-life metaphor, look no further than the light-saber battle in Washington Square Park that the boys and I attended on Saturday night:
The boys just about jumped out of their shirts when I told them about it, since they've been hitting the LEGO Star Wars pretty hard lately. But we should have paid more attention to the "all ages" in the fine print; the crowd was mostly college kids and hipster dudes. As usual, Robert assessed things frankly: "Dad, this is pretty lame. It's just a bunch of grown-ups in the dark beating each other up for no reason."
I know, kid. We're working on it.
