We all say we want to raise our children to be think for themselves. I admire how one of our members, Fivel Rothberg, gives his son the freedom to experience the world and his own choices with acceptance and without judgement. Enjoy Fivel's guest post about how proud he is of his son. -M.S.


As the father of a 13-year-old self-proclaimed Satanist, I can honestly say I’m proud of my son Noam. His beliefs are at once jokingly provocative and seemingly serious. He says that he doesn’t believe in God, but does believe in Satan, “because Satan is cooler. And if you think about it Satan is actually ‘good’ because he’s punishing bad people, right?”  He’s got a point. To me his Satanism is like a person trying on a wild-looking hat out in public, to see what the reactions will be.

Spooky That said, Tamara, my son’s mom, no doubt contributed to Noam’s professed beliefs. He was raised on a steady diet of Tim Burton films, like Nightmare Before Christmas, and horror classics that cherish the macabre. Noam’s favorite toy at age three was a doll named “Spooky” that looked like a bit like chubby vinyl black teddy bear with a simplified skeleton printed on its front.   
For at least a year, Noam also towed around a two-foot long creepy-looking Frankenstein monster doll with a grotesquely large head, its veins popping out left and right. At three-years-old, the doll was practically the same size as he was. At 13, he now has a tendency to draw zombie clowns and multi-horned devils. So should I really be surprised when my son announced his Satanism?  At least he is showing conviction, right?
Tamara is also the daughter of a Jehovah’s Witness.  She wasn’t raised that way – her mom converted only a few years ago, possibly at the behest of Tamara’s grandmother who has been a Jehovah’s Witness for decades.  I bring that up because it’s interesting to witness, if you will, the disruption, variety and rediscovery of beliefs all in one extended family. Tamara and her partner Jim  – Noam’s stepdad – do not practice any religion. But as far as I know they both believe in God, just not organized religion. And Noam spends the majority of the time living with them.
I came into my own non-religious or atheistic tenets at around the same age as Noam is now.  As I studied for my Bar Mitzvah I questioned the fantastical stories of the Torah. The tales are such an intrinsic part of Jewish life that they are retold year after year, holiday to holiday, and every day in between. After years of Hebrew school, in which I barely communicated with the rabbi, I distinctly recall wandering up the synagogue’s back stairwell toward the offices to speak with him.  I remember walking down the dimly lit office hallway, where the tiled floors were angled so that they pointed toward Jerusalem. The rabbi, a kind but distant man, invited me in and asked me what I had on my mind.  I wondered, “in the Torah it says that the flood that Noah escaped killed everyone else in the world. Does that mean we descend from Noah and his wife, not Adam and Eve?”  He answered, “well, probably at that time it felt like the whole world was flooded, but it was just the area around Israel. Besides, they are just stories that are told, they are metaphors.” “Oh,” I said.  While I went on to do my Bar Mitzvah, my nonbelief was solidified the day I finally had the courage to question the rabbi.
I can only imagine that this disjuncture of shared beliefs within a family system is increasingly common in an era when co-parenting or split parenting is prevalent. With that in mind, I admire Noam’s questioning, searching and playfulness as he discovers the world around him and what beliefs he will hold onto as “the truth.”
Fivel Rothberg is a father, media maker, producer, educator and activist who received his MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College.  He is currently finishing a short documentary about being a father and addressing abuse in his family.

Website: http://www.housedevil-streetangel.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/HouseDevilStreetAngel
Twitter: @fivel_rothberg

I understand where your at then.   I guess I would just keep talking to her about it.  She is probably gonna get mad, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Basically, I'll follow Tom Scocca wherever and whatever he writes, so if he's going to do a no-holds barred account of the deeply weird moments of the childbirth process as part of Deadspin's Blood Week, I'm there.

He says the blood squirts out of the umbilical cord, I say how high?Blood hit the wall. We were down at the foot of the bed, and the blood hit the wall above the headboard, like the kill shot in a Korean movie. Six, seven feet, easily, clearing my wife where she lay.Okay, then!

FWIW, I didn't cut the cord, either. I mean, why? How did that start?

Blood Week | Childbirth Is A Precious Rite Of Passage, If You Enjoy Agony, Terror, And Flying Jets Of Blood [deadspin]

greg

Wow, this was really good. I picked it because I had all the ingredients on hand but I never heard of avgolemono before. But after my first bite I realized that it’s lemon rice soup. This was simple and really good. It would have been nice to garnish with fresh herbs instead of dried, but I was being thrifty.

RECIPES:

Avgolemono

Alright, now that we've covered 150,000 baby products in one fell swoop, where were we? Ah, kid-related contemporary art auction oddities.

You may know Liza Lou from such elaborately beaded sculptures as Kitchen, the life-size, 168-sq ft replica of a kitchen stuffed with details, all of which were covered in glass beads, placed by hand, with tweezers, by the artist herself, over five years, between 1991-6.

And ten years later, she had focused in a bit, just beading the hell out of this little baby sculpture. Who looks kind of Mayan painting, in a way? Maybe that's why it's called Sacrifice.

Feb 15, 2012, Lot 359: Liza Lou, Sacrifice, est. £45-55,000 [christies.com]
Check out Liza Lou's early story from this 1996 episode of This American Life [thisamericanlife.org]
Liza Lou's dealer in Europe is Thaddaeus Ropac, who I call ThRopac. You should too. [ropac.net]
Previously, not directly related: Hand-beaded My Little Pony

greg

I just wanted to share with you guys my thoughts about the next console Microsoft will be producing. I've heard several rumors and I just wanted to give my input about it. Anyway, check out the article, and let me know what you think, either here, or on there.

http://voices.yahoo.com/rumors-xbox-720-10929217.html

If you catch your son looking at porn, what do you say when his stepmom might be one of the women he's looking at?

Quote from: keetedw on Yesterday at 06:59:35 PMYeah, I spent way more time on it than I thought I would.  The first character I created, I think I have something like 47 hours of game time.  The second...well...I think I doubled that.

Hell of a game.


I would love to have spent those hours playing that game, but I got 3 boys and one due in march with lots of...

We interrupt this completely esoteric posting stream to bring you this important announcement:

HOLY CRAP, THE DISNEY BABY JUGGERNAUT! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE:I wanted to share some exciting news from Disney Baby as the brand announced its expansion into Mealtime, Bathtime, Nursery, and Apparel. From Simba in the Nursery to Nemo in the tub, the adorable all-new collections are organized around the key moments in mom and baby's day to make everyday moments even more magical.Ha, yes, yes, here at Team Dad World Police we spotted the "mom and baby's day" thing, too. At the end of the day, Disney Baby is still a subsidiary of Disney Mom, which is in turn a subsidiary of Disney Consumer Products, and that's not going to change this year or next. But every Disney Media press image of actual babies includes a dad, though, so you know what, good for them.

Besides, who cares, when Disney Baby basically launches so much product, there's not a Babies R Us big enough to fit them all? Disney Babies R Us. Nemo faucet protectors. Mickey teething rings. 101 Onesies from the Aristocats alone.

Within a season, there will be so much Disney Baby merch in every nook and cranny of every kid shopping experience, it'll be impossible to remember or explain what the world was like in the era B.D.B.

The time when nobody had thought of putting a second row of snaps on the bodysuit crotch so you can use them another six weeks. When--uh, yeah, it's already starting to fog over.

greg

Quote from: keetedw on Yesterday at 06:57:56 PMI could spend hours over some beers with you talking about in-laws (out-laws, now that I'm divorced).  I've seen some situations where people get along great with the in-laws and others where they're hated and everything in between.

My relationship with my ex's parents was shaky from the start for a number of reasons, a...

Quote from: Keith on Yesterday at 08:36:30 PMSorry to hear all of that man.    Life is rough now-a-days.   I have kids with ADHD and OCD.   It is very tough handling this.  Some good in it though is that it doesn't happen everyday.   There are some good days.

Really the only true piece of advice I can give you is to talk to your doctor and see if your wife will do t...

Steve Jaeger once again validates why baseball will always reign supreme.

"I'm too damned young to peak."

David Finch's talks how to be a good husband, whether you realize at 30 you are on the spectrum or not.

There's a rather insane art exhibition on in the world right now, 331 of the existing Damien Hirst Spot Paintings are on view in all eleven branches of the Gagosian Gallery: three in New York; two in London; plus Paris, Geneva, Rome, Athens, Hong Kong, and LA.

If you see them all, and get your little card stamped to prove it, Hirst will give you a personalized Spot print of some kind. GBonenfant, who finished today,, is th 19th person to do complete the Spot Challenge.

For a little while, I considered chartering a G4 and splitting it 10-11 ways, so that we could make the 8-city, 30,000-mile trip to see all the spot paintings in under 72 hours flat. [A friend at the gallery assured me we could arrange to have them open for us in the middle of the night, if needed.] It was going to cost upwards of $450,000, though, so yeah, no.

Anyway, Hirst painted the first few Spot Paintings himself in the late 1980s, but since then, his assistants have been cranking the "endless" series out with intentionally machine-like precision. So far they've made about 1500 in various shapes, sizes, and densities, but they're all basically just spots. For the titles, Hirst randomly selects pharmaceutical names from a giant physicians' desk reference book.

Which means that there is literally no significance to the fact that this small [9x10 inch] 1995 painting being sold at Sotheby's next week in London is named Bisphenol A, except whatever associations I or you or the baby gear-savvy world project upon it. If that's enough to move you to shell out 50,000, though, now's your chance. Chump.

Feb. 16, 2012, Lot 102: BISPHENOL A, est 35-55,000 GBP. [sothebys.com]

greg

Should we consider him a hero or a traitor?

Simply the wickedest video I have ever seen. Watch this F*#'ing thing.

Austrian adventurer is making the final preparations to jump from the very edge of space

I hate to break the news, but computers and the Internet are not fads.