Writer/editor at Nickelodeon's Nickmom.com, syndicated humor columnist for GateHouse, music journalist and speedily graying dad based on the coast of Carolina.
Zoltan Kohari, known as the Slovak Batman, poses with a portrait of himself in his home in the town of Dunajska Streda. (Reuters)
GateHouse — So obviously everyone wishes that Batman was real, that both our valuable streets, as well as those in Detroit, could be kept safe by some crazypants vigilante with a black-metal baritone and a wellspring of dark psychological horrors he took out on Antarctic-themed umbrella-packing supervillains, SURE, I mean who WOULDN’T want that? I can’t think of a town in the world that couldn’t use more justice distributors in capes, except for Cape Town, South Africa, which is frankly overdoing it a little bit.
But you all TALK a big game, in your plush fluffy recliners watching the same four teams win NCAA games (aw, good for you plucky underdogs of Kentucky) eating made-up foods like “Triscuits” and “queso,” the latter of which isn’t even a THING, I checked with Siri. Who among you is man enough to actually make this fantasy happen, to slough off the shell of your hellish quotidian existence and bring Batman to reality? Aside from all those weird roving gangs of self-appointed Batmans who put on black sweatpants and childish face masks, get their mom’s permission and hit up the go patrol the brutal streets of Park City, Utah, or whatever? (Also, it’s Batmans. Batmen looks sillypants. If anyone from the AP Stylebook would like to debate this point, please email me at shutupnerds@gmail.com.)
GateHouse — A few things about the NCAA tournament, which this year is being attended (and handled nicely, thankyouverymuch) by my Indiana Hoosiers, who have finally returned to the dance following a lengthy recruiting scandal in which the school hired a coach who was previously involved in a recruiting scandal and then came to Indiana and engaged in — this was weird — a recruiting scandal, a development which caused everybody in Indiana to gasp.
When this recruiting scandal happened Indiana — which, interesting story, had spent most of the previous few decades being coached by an overweight cartoon character with a spotty history of winning championships and not-choking people — lost everyone who ever played for them and spent many many years losing basketball games to schools that exist only online, such as the University of Phoenix and some people who met on FarmVille . So this is kind of a big deal, and please excuse my singing of the IU fight song, which is actually a new song, as we lost our original one in a recruiting scandal.
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1. Hey, guys! Guys in the office! Listen, I’m gonna be sitting at my desk this morning, just hanging around doing some work and drinkin’ me some coffee, so is there any way you could hit me up with some talk about how your bracket is doing? Really doing? I don’t mean just stats and wins and losses — those are boring and bourgeois NUMBERS, devoid of LIFE and FEELING and FEELINGS OF SELF-ASSIGNED SUPERIORITY. No no, I want to know how you did it, how you picked nearly 2/3 of your games right, what you were *thinking* EACH TIME.
YEAH, I’M TALKING TO YOU, LOSER. THE FLARE LOOKING THING, IN SPACE, THE ONE THAT’S SOLAR. You suck. You are the worst solar flare ever. You are a pink fluffy unicorn of solar flares. You are a fragile porcelain mouse of solar flares. You are a Hallmark Christmas ornament of solar flares, one of the ones with a basket full of puppies waiting for Santa with cookies or something. One time in 1999 I had to evacuate my hometown for a hurricane that ended up sputtering out over the Atlantic and arrived as the kind of autumn shower best used for frolicking and making sure one’s azaleas are sated. You are the Blooming Azalea Spring Shower of solar flares. Try to look cool in front of your black hole friends now.
Sigh. My apologies for using valuable Internet to yell at a galactic event that I do not remotely begin to understand, but I have good reasons:
I find that most of my problems can be solved by yelling.
It wasn’t even a galactic event, really. This big-shot solar flare that was supposed to burst forth from the sun, scorch its way across 93 million miles of cold black space and rock the Earth like a solar hurricane did what I can best describe as jack squat, given the inconsiderate confines of the average newspaper reader’s sensibilities, and apologies to my grandmother, for whom “jack squat” is probably pushing the limits of what’s acceptable discourse among respectable company. (Sorry, Grandma, I write dumb jokes and “jack squat” is kind of right in my wheelhouse.)
Thrilled and honored to contribute to the relaunched — and slick-looking! — official site of Bruce Springsteen, as part of a team that includes such Bruce luminaries as Chris Phillips, editor of the legendary Backstreetsmagazine, Caryn Roseand Glenn Radecki. The site’s a treasure box for Bruce fans and features blurbs for albums, tours and videos, which feature my contributions throughout. If you’re interested, I also wrote a handful of band bios, including those for Springsteen, Stevie Van Zandt, Nils LofgrenandSoozie Tyrell. Check it out!
Twice now, through no appreciable talent or skill of my own, I’ve been lucky enough to fly to New York City— at not very many moments’ notice — to stalk Bruce Springsteen. I did it last year when he performed on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon,” thanks to the success and unprovoked generosity of an old friend who books the musical talent and is inexplicably gracious to inveterate obsessives. On that first tripa buddy and I found ourselves, suddenly and without adequate warning, in a conversation with Bruce Springsteen about children, parenting and the community of siblings, a three-minute galactic improbability that sort of resulted in the birth of my second son. (Long story.)
I did the same last week (fly to New York, not have a son), due to a second lightning strike of luck and babysitting, and found myself once again in the lobby at 30 Rock swarmed by a buzzing mass of Bruce people and happily dazed tourists. As it turned out, one of the swarming people in our ticket line looked a lot like Seth Avett of the Avett Brothers, a band that I’ve stalked a fair amount as well (my Billboard review of “I And Love And You,” and me interviewing them at Bonnaroo in 2010). You know that thing where you stare at somebody like an idiot, trying to see if it’s really that guy, but you can’t tell, and the wifi doesn’t work so you can’t Google image him so you stand there like a hopeless yokel until someone else confirms the identity for you? You do? Great.
The show, of course, was a delirious joy. Springsteen made a babushka joke, which, as a dutiful Slovak, I’m pretty sure was written just for me (thanks, Boss). The ’80s-bandanna/LMFAO sketchwas a perfect sequel. There was a bit during a commercial break in which the zipper on Springsteen’s black leather jacket got stuck, and the short version is for three minutes off-air two women struggled to free a fake-panicking Bruce Springsteen from his clothes while Jimmy Fallon impersonated Bruce’s preacher-man persona and the Roots laid down what I think was polka music. I very much enjoyed writing that sentence.
Well, OK, I still have a son, but “I still have a son” is a crazy-boring lead, and “MANY YEARS AGO,” which I imagine to have been spoken aloud by a drunken Sean Connery, makes this column seem more akin to an epic clash of skygods and dragonlancers instead of what it is, which is a belated attempt to pin months of my son’s misbehavior on a 6-year-old named Brayden.
Many years ago I had a son in kindergarten, a son who was getting in trouble. A lot. Two or 3 times a week, for most of the winter. Our kindergarten reported behavior via a series of stoplight-coded cards — green (for Gallants), yellow (for Goofuses) and red (for the criminally insane) — and my son had been a Green for months, which I promise I’m not saying with that obnoxious dadblogger “MY PRECIOUS ANGEL CHILD SPENT THE ALLOWANCE HE EARNED PLANTING PEONIES FOR THE NURSING HOME ON EYEGLASSES FOR NAMIBIAN ORPHANS EN ROUTE TO HIS MOST RECENT SOCCER GAME WHICH I SHALL NOW TELL YOU ABOUT ALSO” thing — whatever, he was usually on green. Until one week, where a yellow snuck in. Then another, and then another, until there were yellows many times a week, and I began to dread asking about colors when I picked him up.
Darth Maul, whose character development begins and ends with his evil Southwestern facepaint
GateHouse — Went to see the new, 3Dmafied version of “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace” this weekend, and I didn’t hate it. I should’ve hated it. I didn’t hate it. What the hell is going on right now.
Like most “Star Wars” nerds and nerdesses, I have a love/hate relationship with “The Phantom Menace,” and by “love/hate” I mean “Just the hate, with a side of grilled This Sucks and a mug of What Is This Horse Poop?” I saw “Menace” in 1999 with a cadre of fellow nerdlingers (and, inexplicably, our fiances) and we spent the next two weeks struggling to think of nice things to say about it, fighting to justify the emotional investment we’d made, an investment that had been returned to us in the form of jokes involving flatulent space horses and the nuanced drama of intergalactic trade route taxation disputes.
I'm a a writer for such outlets as Men's Health, Paste, Billboard and brucespringsteen.net, a writer/editor at Nickelodeon's humor site NickMom.com, a syndicated humor columnist for GateHouse, a very slow runner and a father of two (the younger of whom has been personally approved by Bruce Springsteen) on the coast of South Carolina. Even longer bio/clips.
