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Fetus News for March 28, 2010

I Am Not Phil

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I’m Noah! This Summer, my wife and I are having twins! Anyone know where I can get a good deal a on a blue space monkey?

One of my favorite shows on TV these days is a new comedy called Modern Family. In many ways, it’s a pretty typical family sitcom, albeit one shot in that faux-documentary style everyone is using these days. But it’s buoyed by sharp writing and a pitch-perfect cast who delivers consistent, multidimensional, and very funny character performances every week.

A particular standout is Ty Burrell as Phil, a 40ish father of three. Phil is that sitcom standard, the doofy, childlike, suburban dad, but the show brings a new energy and a real humanity to a potentially hoary archetype.

The running gag with Phil is that he desperately wants to be a cool dad and to relate to his kids on their level. For Phil this means learning all the dances to High School Musical and using teen slang like “WTF” which he thinks means “Why the face?”

I’m very nervous that I will turn into Phil in years to come.

There’s no question that I am roughly as dorky as Phil, at least proportionately for the real world. I am, however, slightly more self-aware. I know I’m not cool. There might have been a time when I attempted to be, or at least convinced myself I was, but I have long since abandoned such illusions.

I think the nail in the coffin came a few years back when I bought a Weird Al album –

The fact that I was buying Weird Al albums in my late 20s or early 30s was probably a sign I wasn’t particularly cutting edge –

And, when I got it home, I discovered that I didn’t recognize any of the songs he was parodying. Not only was I out of it, culturally, but I was significantly less cool than Weird Al Yankovic. Not a good day.

So the advantage that this self-awareness gives me over Phil is that now, unlike him, I have utterly no desire for my kids to think I’m cool.

If my kids grow up thinking I’m cool, they are completely screwed. Any child who uses me a as a role model for how to seem hip might as well just pre-wedgie themselves every morning before they leave the house.

So which way do I go? Do I censor myself? Hide all my comic books? Try to make it through the day without referencing Monty Python, every day for the next eighteen years?

These are tough questions! I didn’t expect the Spanish Inqu … DAMMIT!

Or do I go in the extreme opposite direction and crank UP my natural dorkiness so high that it annoys my kids so much that they rebel against me by being cool.

Or maybe there’s a middle ground, where I just monitor the kids for how cool they are and if they’re not cool enough I just … buy them some cigarettes or something.

Decisions, decisions.

Anyway, the point is, I need to do SOMETHING to make sure my kids don’t think I’m cool. Not if I ever want them get laid before they turn 30.

Hold on … if my kids don’t have sex until they’re 30, that would save me a lot of tsuris. Maybe there’s something to be said for having dorky kids.

Hmm … yeah …

Tonight, I think I’ll wait till Amanda’s asleep, then I’ll put headphone on her belly and play the twin the Dead Parrot sketch.

Awesome!

Bye!

Screwing up Your Kids in the Best Way Possible

A Lot to Learn

Somewhat Off-Topic: Up My Nose With a Rubber Hose

Welcome to TwinDadBlog

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. I’m Noah. This summer, my wife and I are having twins. We’re never going to sleep again.

Hello again and welcome to the first entry on this new video blog or “vlog” as the kids call them, because apparently the word “blog” wasn’t nuspeaky enough.

As I said, this summer I will become the father of twins. This blog is a place where I can share thoughts and experiences along the way. Now, you might be asking, why should we care about you? Isn’t your wife the one who is currently growing two human beings inside of her?

The thing is she also has a real job, while I am wildly unemployable. So I’m the one making the videos. I’m pretty sure Amanda will appear from time to time, but mostly this is the Noah show. So feel free to stop watching now and start looking for videos of English children biting each other or something.

Anyway … me. My name is Noah. I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Drama and a Master’s Degree in Playwriting, because if the novel was the medium of the 19th Century and film of course was the medium of the 20th Century, surely plays, theatre, drama is the medium of … the 17th Century. So we moved to Los Angeles, because we figured, since I know how to write plays, I could just add “screen” or “tele” in front of them and quickly become the toast of Hollywood. Here’s a montage of my work writing for film and TV.

(A clip from "Weekend Update" on "Saturday Night Live" is shown of Amy Poehler saying "New research shows that women think men with square jaws are good short-term partners, while men with softer, rounder faces are perceived as better long term mates. In other words, you date Bert but you marry Ernie.")

Yep. That was it. One joke on Saturday Night Live. Once. Three years ago. But actually, things were going pretty well for me. I had an agent, I writing scripts, I was taking meetings. Things were going really well. Then suddenly everyone decided to go on strike. I was not consulted about this.

So, during this strike, Amanda and I had the opportunity to travel around the world. All the way around. That was pretty cool.

By the time we got back, the strike was over and the two sides had agreed on one thing “Nobody hire Noah.” So, there were, back in the country and one of us was wildly unemployable, so clearly it was time for us to start having children.

After trying for a while -- that was the fun part -- we discovered in November that we had succeeded and we were, indeed, pregnant. Then, a month later, we learned we were double-pregnant. That’s right.

Two babies, one uterus!

And here’s the part they don’t always tell you. When you have two babies, you need to buy twice as much stuff. Two cribs, twice as many diapers, two sets of therapists bills.

And, as it turns out, if you take twins to day care, they expect you to pay for both of them! And daycare for just one baby costs about as much as the average person's salary.

So, we had a few options.

(SUBTITLE: A) THREE INCOME HOUSEHOLD)
A) One of us takes a second job, so two of our three salaries will cover day care for the twins

(SUBTITLE: B) LITTLE RASCALS-STYLE FARCE)
B) We could attempt a farcical solution involving stacking one baby on top of the other and dressing them in a long trenchcoat, so it looks like they're just one really tall baby

(SUBTITLE: C) BIG LOVE)

C) To increase household income, bring a third person into our marriage, ideally Scarlett Johannson.

C was my favorite, but my wife vetoed it, for whatever reason, so we've decided to go with

(SUBTITLE: D) WACKY REVERSAL OF TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES)
D) Noah becomes a stay-at-home dad.

Since of course, as I said I am wildly unemployable and I possess almost no valuable skills, it only makes sense to entrust the care and upbringing of two helpless, needy, proto-humans.

So, while things may change, for now, this is what you should expect from this blog. A few months of posts where I say “Isn’t it wacky that my wife is having two babies?” followed by several months where I say “Isn’t it wacky that I’m staying at home trying to take care of two babies?”

So, join me, won’t you, on this journey? It’ll be a double-dose of fun.

Okay, sorry, I don't want to end it like this.

So come along, it should be pretty twinteresting.

Not that.

It’ll be a pair-adise?

God, no.

Please continue to visit my blog. I will attempt to make it not suck.

Bye.