Bah-Bah-Baby.

I have many dreams for my daughter. I have four savings bonds so far and way more cutesy outfits than she'll ever be able to wear. On the bookshelf by the tv await copies of Hans Christan Andersen, Brothers Grimm, Aesop's fables, Little House On The Prairie, and The Wind In The Willows.

Ahem, on this other bookshelf over here we have this twelve volume edition of The Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark which cost me over a hundred bucks and which Monica still thinks I bought for myself. Why would you think that, baby? You seriously think I'd wait til you announced you were pregnant and then immediately order something like that? And that I'd make the foolish buy pretending that it was a gift for our daughter who was still nine months away from being born, let alone much interested in the discarded crumbs of a long ago journey across America? Honestly? Jeez. You really don't know me at all.

So anyways, as you can see: I got her entire future mapped out just fine. Mapped out. Hmph...that's kinda Lewis and Clark huh? Fuckin brilliant.

One thing I wish I could give her years from now though, I won't be able to. The Howard Stern Show. In all my years of music listening and movie watching and book looking and seeing paintings and watching very intense installations of David Beckham sleeping like an angel fallen to Earth from The Glory Cloud( what a wasted fuckin afternoon that was)....in all those years of mopping up my corner of culture's dusty floor...nothing has ever made me more giddy, or happier, or so overcome with joy and laughter than the King of All Media and his radio show.

Since I was about 15, its been there on my radio. And if what you think is that I was intoxicated by the sound of strippers moaning into a mic, let me tell you the truth: I already had like eight video tapes with that sort of stuff. From the beginning The Stern Show, even at its perverted peaks, has always been way way more than that to me.. Sex and sexism. Race and racism. Laughing at and laughing with. This thing, this radio show has helped me to understand better than, dare I say, anything else, that life is beautifully messed up. And that you need to sit with people you aren't familiar with and share some simple wasting time with 'em before you can seriously judge them. That may sound like an inflated boast, or some very warped stretch of a plug for this particular show, but I stand by it with everything I got. Plain and simple: the Stern Show helped me to learn what it is to be a liberal-minded person who sometimes wants to run over dumb-ass people in his car, but probably shouldn't.

The art of conversation is dying. It just is. Technology reigns and if we don't dig that, then we too fade away. I really really hope to be able to have family dinners with Violet as she gets older, talk about our days out in the world. But chances are we'll be lucky to have that every now and then rather than each night. With Stern and his greatest pageant ever given, me and Monica have had weird connections even when we're not together. Something happens on the show and we both nearly piss our pants with laughter... together but in different places. And often, its the first thing we can't wait to talk about when we hook up again. So, you might think I am a shitty dad for actually wishing that The Howard Stern Show would last forever, so that my daughter could one day listen in. But you'd be wrong. By laughing for so long at the things we aren't supposed to laugh at, I have learned to love what is so drastically different than me, that others want to stomp it dead with Biblical Doc Martens. Fuck them. I want Violet to know that laughter and all the wisdom hiding out inside it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, My Face Is Melting.

On Monday, around lunchtime, El Diablo backed his black'n'flame three-story dump truck right up to my house, released a lever, and unloaded a good three or four tons of hellfire onto the roof. It came crashing down into the living room where I was standing and landed on Violet, who was in my arms semi-asleep. There I was one second just whiffing her milky burps, my nose to hers, a little lullabye to see her off. And then out of the blue my baby gets dipped in Inferno.

Her eyes bulged and I gently asked her what was up. You burping? She didn't really respond but rather began throttling her stubby arms as if she was trying to take off for a little flight around the room. Then, the dreaded sounds: slow rolling fogs of moan that pile into and on top of one another like a terrible highway scene, until its just a single blood-curdling scream on high.

Oh my.

I panicked, I guess. I tried the binky but but no dice. We whirled around the room singing fucking Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer again ; these days in times of despair it is my go-to tune even though I don't want it to be; it just is. Purple baby face. Tears. Crying so hard you can see the dogs look up at you with eyes begging for me to shower mercy upon them, to spare us all this harsh midday torture session. But it was useless. Everything was useless.

Six hours later it was still pretty much going on. I'd put her down for a sec in her swing, the fires would burn hotter. I'd pick her up, move toward...I dunno...the yard?...and she'd squeal the squeal of an unsettled soul. I fed. I diaper changed. I stood by the shower, hoping the tranquility of running water might enchant her. Nada. Twice giant poos offered the possible promise of relief...but no. Finally, I felt the Devil's fingers grappling in my torched hair.He was flirting with me and it was fucking working. Seduced by evil: I looked down at my daughter and screamed out 'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!'

I set poor bawling Violet down in her crib and walked into the bathroom and slapped myself in the face. Except what was supposed to be a slap became a fist punch in the spirit of the moment, and so I actually punched myself on the high cheek. Pain shot through my adrenaline and tickled a nerve. But I liked it, needed it. Iate the pain like a hot wing. It was delicious, spicy. And no, I hadn't been close to belting Violet right then either. It was more that I needed to chill myself out by setting the babe down for a moment and bashing myself in the noodle. So, I stood there looking in the mirror at my mug. Maybe I took a couple deep breaths,I don't know. There was still big crying in the other room, but it had faded to background music.

An hour later, around 8, she finally passed out. I stared at her exquisite smallness as she breathed out and in over and over in my arms. We were both exhausted, our spirits water-logged. How could such a tender innocent three-month old ever pull off such an unholy display of terror? And oh the commitment. The hours of dedicated discomfort. Never giving in. Rarely giving up. What had it been, I wondered. Was it gas? An early tooth beginning to poke out? A full moon?

No.No. And no. It was: the devil, plain and simple. And we beat him at his own game, Violet. All that legendary badness and you and me, we licked him. And we'll do it again when we need to, huh? Just give Daddy a couple of days, sweetheart. Please.

The Ballad Of Two Couch Potatoes.

Watching Violet this past week has been just badass. She'll be sitting in her electric swing, eyes completely fixated upon the little pink and brown mobile that's attached, and all of the sudden, BAM! She starts to coo and sigh and she moves her eyes toward me or her momma and let's out a shrill exclamation of recognition, or love, or "I have crapped myself...a little help here, folks!" The messages are sort of lost in translation. But the gist is clear enough. She is beginning to connect the dots that shape our world. Watching her eyes widen just before she lets out a sound, its almost as if I can see the soldering going on inside her baby brain, teeny wisps of smoke leaking from her ears. Sweet connections are being made over here and then over there as lines of current are opened for the very first time. I had never given it a moment of thought before, that life begins so beautifully: with swinging in the living room and mobile flowers and the sounds of a three-month old recognizing something or feeling excitement. Now its crammed into every nook of me.

Maybe the best part of all this is seeing that my daughter is captivated by the TV. Yeah yeah, I know, studies show that too much television dulls a child's intellect and limits learning capacity and ultimately leads to unemployment, bongs, and dreams that die on the wings of an eagle that lives in the basement. But, I don't know. I ain't parking Violet in front of the tube for hours on end or anything. Its more like when she is chillin for a bit, no crying/no fussing, and I am able to hit the pause button on the day for a sec and grab a Diet Coke and some pretzels; I set her up, softly lodged, in the crack between the cushions on the sofa. Then, we watch a little pro bass fishing or baseball or Friends and she glares at the damn thing as if she can see something far beyond the screen: some hidden world of secrets being revealed to chosen babies. It's an impressive attention she pays.

Sitting there on the couch and relaxing for a little while as a long day winds down,...that can't be all bad, right? I mean, leaning up on somebody else's story can be a good thing sometimes, no? Everybody can say what they want about how to raise the perfect baby and how TV can hurt their intellectual chances down the road, maybe even make them dumb. But I don't know. We each have to trust our guts when it comes to all this. And here and there, television allows me and Violet a bit of a break each evening. A respite from all that seriously hard work going on during the live-long day. Something to watch together between all this getting used to each other.