Building Castles on the Beach

The most obvious thing about Xander is the plastic tube stuck up his nose. He was born at 34 weeks and one day of gestation, which provoked a peck of petty pneumonia. His first week was ventilator tubes, chest x-rays, and a plethora of different doctors and nurses and respiratory specialists poking and prodding. But after six days, he was down to the minimum of airflow interventions: a simple cannula taped to his cheeks with prongs thrusting only a few centimeters into his nostrils and a low amount of pure oxygen pressure to help his lungs heal and grow. He stayed in the NICU for another three weeks, and even when he was ready to go home, he still needed the oxygen. It’s nearly six weeks later and he’s still got the tube stuck up his nose. The day we brought Xander home, Apria Healthcare came out to install a large oxygen tank and to give us a small sign warning us not to smoke, even though as Mormons we tend to shy away from such things. (Wait, do people still smoke these days?) The...

Back in my college days, I was fairly liberal-minded. Not that I was attending hemp rallies and staging sit-ins to get Dean Wormer to ban the CIA from campus recruiting. It was BYU, after all. I was a radical just by wearing my hair slightly below the collar. But I also gave back the night several times and even wrote a final grad school paper on how men could benefit from feminist literary theory. So when my first daughter was born the summer between receiving my BA and commencing grad school, it was my honored duty to be able to spend what I thought was a lot of time with her. Still, I was working two part time jobs and then, in the fall, taking various classes. I would often take my daughter to campus, even to class, which wasn’t uncommon in the Mormon culture of multiply-and-replenish, except I don’t remember a lot of other fathers doing it. I felt more than a little supercilious with my daughter in the crook of my arm like a football as I strode through the halls of the Jesse Kn...

“Your art is the prettiest art of all the art.” --Roy from The Office I’ve recently viewed three documentaries about art. But such different art. Most recently, I saw the movie Exit Through the Gift Shop . This film is made by the underground street artist called Banksy, about whom I knew nothing until he created a Simpsons couch gag for an episode back in October. You remember: Korean sweatshop, dead kitty fur in the Bart dolls, Panda bears used as pack mules, DVD-hole-punching sad unicorns. View the couch gag here . Exit Through the Gift Shop isn’t really about Banksy. It’s about a guy named Thierry Guetta who films everything he does. Everything. Just films it. He’s married, has a family, and runs a thrift shop in Los Angeles. Then a relation from France visits and takes him out at night to meet up with some street artists and...do street art. I guess that’s what you call it. This is more than just graffiti. I suppose you could call it tagging, because it’s like they have th...

I’ve been on Facebook for about three weeks and here’s my experience so far. Day One: Middle of the night. I hold the baby in the crook of my left arm to keep him asleep. I open my laptop at the kitchen table and my wife’s Facebook page is open. On a whim, perhaps because of the lack of sleep, I decide to sign on up, input my info. It wants to know where I’m from and where I went to school and what religion I am. I’m game. Input data. I have a profile. Now what? It tells me I should Find Friends. I friend my wife and my fifteen year old daughter, but they have to confirm my request. Can you decline a friend request? Won’t I be the loser if they do. Day two through seventeen: I don’t look back at the Facebook account even once. Day eighteen: Feeling nostalgic after cleaning out a closet and finding long lost journals. I wonder if I can get in touch with old friends on Facebook. Again, it’s late. This time I can type more easily  because the baby’s snoring away in his comfy cha...