He crawled around the back steps for a while, not 10 feet from our table, and scurried up and down the back gate as we ate… glaring his beady little eyes.

After we finished eating, Henry, Francesca (the lovely 3-year-old who lives next door), and I were running around (well, they were running, I was trying to catch up) when, out of the blue, the squirrel attacked!

Okay, it didn’t attack, but what it did was run underneath the table, scratching Craig (Francesca’s father) on the ankle.

Kristen saw this brazen behavior and screamed. Lillian, our downstairs neighbor who also was eating with us, saw nothing, but screamed louder. Craig, being a man’s man, grunted.

Well, all this screaming (and Lillian was really wailing) scared the bejeezus out of Henry, and he stared to scream and cry.

(Francesca and I had no clue what was happening. Neither of us shed tears.)

I guess we’re going to have to call the city and have them bring out a trap. Either that, or we’re calling Billy the Exterminator.

In Bethlehem, the fauna included a bunch of rabbits (including several babies that my sister, Rachel, decided to bring into the house one summer evening), birds, spiders, bats, and, especially, squirrels.

There was one very friendly squirrel that lived around our house that my sister named “Peanut”. Peanut was a gentle soul, who would often come up on our porch and munch on granola and other goodies that we left out for him (or her… we never did get a good look at the animal’s private area).

Peanut hung around for years, and when my sister headed off to West Chester University, the squirrel hitched a ride down Route 309 and lived in her dorm room. True story.

I never had the same type of relationship with wild creatures that my sister did. That is evidenced by the squirrel that has taken up residence in the area near our building who we have affectionately dubbed “Brazen Squirrel”.

(Brazen is a great word, one that is usually only uttered by 80-year-olds from a rocking chair on their porch. “You brazen kids, get off my lawn!”)

But brazen is a great descriptor of this squirrel. He eats out of the trash cans. He sits on the back fence, and stares at you, daring to walk through the gate. He runs around you and even between your legs as you sit down in one of the patio chairs. He jumps off the side of the building as you’re walking up the stairs, mocking you. Mocking you! With his beady little eyes!

He has yet to attack any of us, but we’re waiting. One day, he will come up to us, snarl his evil snarl, and then take my wallet. I will get mugged by a squirrel.

At first, I was worried he was rabid, but he’s been around for a few years now, and rabid animals don’t live that long. No, he’s just a meany.

Henry seems uninterested in the nasty creature. If the squirrel comes skulking around him, he ignores him or yells at him (“No!”), the same as he does to the cats when he feels that they’re doing something wrong.

I’ve realized there is only one way to make this squirrel walk the straight and narrow: I’m getting my sister to come out here and do her Dr. Dolittle impersonation and turn this rodent zero into a hero.

We had fun. Hope you did, too.

We’re leaving for a vacation in Florida on Thursday, and there’s a gigundo heap of laundry that needs to somehow get done before then. I have nothing exciting to tell you, dear readers. I do, however, have pictures of Henry to share:

With any luck, he won’t ever have to wear this down jacket again.

Have I told you lately how much this boy loves playing with trains? I haven’t? Oh, that’s right, I’ve been too lazy to post.

Thank god crayons are non-toxic. Henry’s probably eaten 12 of them.

He climbs ladders like these all by himself.

But he still likes it best when Mommy pushes him on the swings.

But if I ever do start up a business again, I know exactly what I’d do. I’d start up a company that would work with sign companies to correct spelling and grammar before these things are manufactured. So, that flower shop down the road would not be Geneses Flower and Gift, but instead Genesis Flower and Gift. I mean, really, people. Spell check!

I’d also work with companies that not only manufacture products overseas but also print up the inserts and instructions. I mean, how many times have you bought something, pulled out the directions, and thought to yourself, “This is English, right? I mean, these are English words, but this makes no sense.”

I’m writing about this today because last weekend, Kristen got a knitting reeling machine. (It was given to her when someone saw her request on Free Cycle.) It’s a pretty cool contraption: it will help ball up yarn without all the tangling and cursing. (I do the tangling; Kristen does the cursing.) It’s made in Japan, and I’m not sure if it was just poorly translated or it was written out by someone who had very little grasp of the English language.

For your pleasure, here are the instructions, with all its wonderful incoherence. I have not changed anything. Enjoy.

Necessaries for Knitting

K.M. All-Powerful Reeling Machine

Main Features:

A) Being equipped with convenient metal connector, this tool is attachable to wherever you may wish, in the three directions – vertical or horizontal or diagonal. So there is no trouble at all like entangling of thread or yarn.

B) It is holding type, and made entirely of metal. The connector is of the utmost convenience and permanent use.

C) This reeling machine can be used for all kinds of thread or yarn. Because you can expand or contract it as the case demands, either for hand knitting thread of small reel or for woolen yarn of large reel.

D) The part where thread or yarn are reeled on is covered with vinyl. By this protection, thread or yarn never gets tangled or dirty.

E) This machine is also convenient for washing of old woolen yarn, as small or large reel is made at your will by the use of handle attached

F) Push the red button and adjust the size of machine-reel. Please.

Directions. When you open or shut it. please give it a slight swing. just as you do with your umbrella or parasol.

No, not about my own mortality, people. I’m morbid, but not that morbid. (Not yet at least.) I was thinking about how what we’ve all seen as something great, something earth shattering, something timeless, quickly becomes not-so-great, dull, and dated as the years go on.

Hughes’ films all went by a similar pattern: the underdog (or group of underdogs), with their kind souls and individuality, not only come out on top in the end, but they make their enemies love them, changing everyone in the process (except themselves, of course). Unfortunately for these underdog cum heroes, they become unbearable by the end, and you actually start rooting for their demise. At least that’s how I feel now as an adult. (And yet, when they were released, they were universally adored.)

Take “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off,” for example. Ferris Beuller is a terrible, self-centered person. He admits it throughout the movie. And yet, because he wears a silly leopard-patterned vest (really?) and is a little wacky, we are supposed to embrace him and love him and want to be his friends. In real life, I suspect, Ferris would be pummeled and nobody would really care either way. And as a 45-year-old, he’d be an unemployed used car salesman on his 4th wife.

In fact, the only people in Hughes’ films that are remotely likable are the sidekicks who (tellingly) get kicked to the side at the first chance. Ducky in “Pretty in Pink” was kind, quirky, had good taste in music, and a good soul, and yet he is dismissed for the pretty boy (the whimpering Andrew McCarthy) with a sweet heart who will likely dump Andy (the always annoying Molly Ringwald) as soon as he starts freshman orientation at Berkeley. (What happened to Jon Cryer, by the way? “Two-and-a-Half Men” could be not only the worst sitcom on television today, it could be the worst ever.)

Cameron Frye, from “Ferris Beuller” was depressed, his parents were loveless, and he lived in the coolest house ever. Yet he had thoughts and an understanding of life far greater than his years. (And his Red Wings jersey was pretty cool, too.) Yet he was the suicidal laughingstock instead of what he deserved: compassion.

And let’s not forget some of the worst things about Hughes: his blatant use of the stereotype. Sometimes it was part of the story (the pathetic “Breakfast Club”), and sometimes it was used for laughs (the ridiculously racist Long Duk Dong in “Sixteen Candles).

(An aside: Really, Hughes? Long Duk Dong? “No more yankie my wankie?” That’s just terrible.)

But enough skewering Hughes. And thankfully for you all I neglected to discuss his truly awful kid-friendly films, Home Alone (1, 2, and 3), Beethoven, and Curly Sue. I’ll try and give the guy a bit of a break on those.

These movies — especially his teencentric ones — were all classics of their day. They were oft-quoted. They were easily recognizable and discussed. And yet, looking back, they were horrible.

I mean, when Henry turns 12, I don’t really want him to watch these movies. Not because of their barely objectionable material (a semi-nude Kelly LeBrock in “Weird Science” could probably push him through puberty), but because they focus on kids that I don’t really want him to be. It’s not that they’re quirky or somewhat bad (every hero has to have some faults, or else every movie would be about Superman), but these movies are full of self-absorbed, self-obsessed brats. Maybe it was just the 80s (the Me Generation). Maybe it was just what everyone was feeling at the time.

I’ve always considered the 80s to be the bottom of the barrel for pop culture. Movies were much  better in the 70s and 90s; music, too. So perhaps Hughes was just the one guy who was able to pull all of this together, the quintessential best director of the worst movies.

It looks, I suppose, like we’ll be skipping that decade when we introduce Henry to movies of the non-animated types.

Of course, the greatest movie of all time (a short, 1-minute examination of man’s inhumanity to man) follows. This is everything Hughes wanted in a movie, but never could have. A walker. A baby. A hallway. The three parts of a film that are crucial to its success.

(Another off-topic post. There are pictures of Henry interspersed, however, so you’ll at least be able to enjoy that.)

There are people, like my mother, who seem to be magnets for those who want to tell their life story. She can be in an elevator and by the time the door opens on the 12th floor, some poor woman has confessed to her all about her three marriages, her recent knee surgery, and the fact that she stopped tithing in 1995.

I have a similar affliction, but instead of hearing the ramblings of the lonely, I get to hear about the insane and/or racist.

This started a couple of years ago when, in back-to-back-to-back hair appointments in three different cities (Denver, Cincinnati, and Chicago), I was bombarded by the barbers’ hatred of black people.

In Cincinnati, the barber proudly proclaimed that he wouldn’t cut the hair of “the coloreds” and has had several fines and hearings in front of the Ohio Barber Commission because of this. (Did you know that there was such a thing? I looked it up: every state has one.) This guy was old and miserable and sort of pathetic, but I’m ashamed to say I didn’t say anything in defense of those who he wronged. I also rationalized that he was the one with the scissors and he could do some serious damage to my already thinning head of hair, so it was best to stay quiet.

This is something I’m not proud of. Usually I’m a pompous know-it-all and will tell people the what-what if I feel they’re being irrational or hateful or doing something illegal. (Don’t even get me started on downloading of music or movies without paying for it.) But with these guys, I stayed silent.

In Denver, I heard of the barber’s exodus from the city to the suburbs because he didn’t want to be the only white face on his block full of what he called “the brownies”. (This is Denver, mind you, which only has an 11% African American population. We’re not talking about Mobile, Alabama.)

And back in Chicago, as I sat in the barber chair of a place conveniently located just around the corner from our place (that kills me, you know; it’s right there and I’ll never return), the man asked me if I had problems with roaches. “No,” I said naively. “We have an exterminator that comes every other week to spray for bugs.” “Not those roaches; the Negroes.”

I didn’t know what to say. Initially I was really appalled at the guy for such a comment, but then I was a bit amazed that I had never heard of the racist slight “roaches”. (I mean, it’s nowhere to be found in that song from Hair.) I stammered something about how I liked everyone (until I meet them and start talking to them and then all bets are off), but he either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. (In reality, as a practicing curmudgeon, I am disgusted with everyone equally, regardless of their ethnicity or religious beliefs or sport-team affiliation.)

This got me thinking: do I look like a racist? What is it about me that screams “this man will willingly listen to your hateful speech”? At last check I have no swastika tattoos or George Wallace t-shirts.

Lately, this type of situation has moved from the barbershop (I’ve had regular, closeted racists cutting my hair, as opposed to those who prefer the hate-speech avenue) to the taxi. I’ve taken a ton of cab rides lately, mostly lasting at least a half-hour, as I go from my place to the airport, the airport to some hotel, back to the airport, etc., and it seems that if there’s at least a half-hour available, I’ll hear some sort of ranting and raving of a madman.

I’ve heard white drivers complain about “the Arabs”, the Pakistanis kvetch about the Indians, and East Africans complain about the West Africans (never did I know that the Sudanese so hated the Nigerians). And each of these men (it’s always men) always assumes that I agree with them.

The Sudanese driver who was driving me to Midway a couple of weeks ago railed on how stupid, cheap, godless those Nigerians were, and after he was done, he turned around and said, “But I don’t have to tell you that.” Right. I’m with you, man. Those damn Nigerians.

And if it’s not hatred to another country’s residents, the comments become pretty mysoginistic. (Women really are second-class citizens in most of the world, aren’t they?)

With cabbies, there are times when I try and change their mind — especially the women stuff — but it never really helps. They just laugh and then call up some friend on their cell phone, talk in a language that is so far away from anything I could comprehend that I can’t even catch a word, and likely make fun of the silly American in the back seat. (With the Somalian, I protested: “Now, all the Nigerians I know have really been stand up people.” I think he realized that, in fact, I don’t know anyone from that area of Africa [or any part of the continent, actually].)

But it doesn’t last very long until they’re off the phone and having a jolly laugh with me about this or that.

I have to do something about this. I know that I can’t change all these people (or any of them, probably), but I’d like to try.

Either that, or I have to start hating Nigerians.

In my life, I’ve met my fair share of famous characters. (By famous, I mean anyone who is known by at least 25,000 people.) Many of them have been in the comic book field (although a lot of the more famous people there are at the low end of that number), but I’ve shaken hands with and had short conversations with authors, athletes, and musicians.

For example, I once tried to tell a joke to the ex-Senator and basketball player Bill Bradley. It went something like this: I was working at a Borders store in Princeton when we got a call that the Senator (who was at the time considering a run for the presidency) was in the area and was going to stop in and autograph his recently published book. He arrived at the store, flanked by a couple of Secret Service agents, sat down at a table where copies of his book were waiting for him, and started to sign. I went up to him, looked at him very seriously, and said, “Sir, if you’re going to write in those books, you’re going to have to pay for them.” He got this very concerned look on his face, began stuttering that he was the author, that he was Bill Bradley. I smiled at him, revealing the joke, but he continued to try and explain what he was doing. No sense of humor that Bradley.

He never did run, and if he had, I wouldn’t have voted for him.

Anyway, the most famous person I’ve ever met — the person who is most well known throughout the world — is someone who was, at one time, also one of the most annoying. Who is this man?

Let me go back a ways to the spring of 1992. School had finished up for the year, and I moved back home for what was the last time. I was working at the local comic book store, and, because I was a glutton for punishment, I would listen to the local rock station, WZZO. (I later became friendly with their afternoon drive disc jockey, Blake Dannen [not his real name]. But I digress.)

Anyway, one of the big songs of that summer was the Spin Doctor’s annoyingly catchy “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong.” If you’re between 30 and 40, you’ve likely heard this tune about seven million times, and, if you’re anything like me, you despise it. (Even more, you despise their more-popular follow-up, “Two Princes”. That song actually makes me bleed out of my ears.)

Of course, I know now how bad a song that was, but the first three, four, or five (okay ten) times I heard it, I thought, “Huh, this is catchy. It’s got a nice hook.” But then, after listen number eleven, it dawned on me: this is just not a good song at all. Of course, before realizing this, I had made the terrible decision to actually purchase their debut CD (Pocket Full of Kryptonite) and give it to my then girlfriend. (Is it surprising at all that she broke up with me two weeks later?)

It seems that the summer of ’92 was owned by the Spin Doctors. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing one of their songs, and that album ended up selling more than 5 million copies. (Most, I assume, have found their way into the sale bins of used CD stores.)

Their second album, Turn It Upside Down, came out in 1994, but, thankfully, by that time I was so entrenched in uber-hip indie music that I missed it completely. (It sold only 2 million copies. Only.) Their third record, though, sold a measly 50,000 copies (a great number if you’re a band on the rise; a terrible number when you consider what they once sold), and they briefly disbanded and the various members went their own way.

How do I know all about this, you ask, if this is a band I hate so much? Well, because, one Saturday evening in the spring of 1998, I had dinner with (a tasty meatball sandwich) and watched perform in a small cafe in Clinton, New Jersey, in front of twelve people, Chris Barron, the Spin Doctors’ lead singer. At the time, I was working at a small, university-based publisher where my fellow associate editor was high school friends with Barron (as well as the lead singer of another band I don’t much care for, Blues Traveler).

Barron played for about 90 minutes, much of it from his recent solo album that nobody there knew existed. The crowd (if you could call it that) did get into it when he played some of those Spin Doctor hits, but then he quickly went into some morose tune about lost love that was not catchy nor ended up on the radio 18 billion times.

Here’s the thing: he was a really nice guy, if a little ungrounded. He was loaded (selling many millions of records meant that he was not hurting for cash), living in New York City, and and he told us he would spend his days walking around the city, sitting around cafes and people watch. He had stopped writing songs and the little show in Clinton, New Jersey, was the only one he would play that year. He even shaved his scraggly beard and cut his hair (if you know the band, you can picture him in your head), but quickly regrew them once people stopped recognizing him without them.

After the show was over, Chris, my co-worker, and I all said our goodbyes, and I drove back home. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Chris Barron was the most famous person that I’ve ever met. I mean, millions of people around the world knew who he was, knew his work, could sing his songs. Sure, most of them didn’t know his name (he was, I’m sure, that scraggly looking guy from that Two Princes band), but he was known.

And after this realization, I became a little sad. He had no handlers. No bodyguards. Nobody tried to kiss him or steal his hankerchief (ala Elvis).

Because I have a huge ego, I’d like to be famous some day. (For what, I have no clue.) I wonder if I’ll be as normal as the Spin Doctors guy. Just with better grooming.