Sweet Jesus, I hope my daughter is gay.

November 2, 2015November 3, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 17 Comments

November 2, 2015

I got to spend a day last week with Matthew Shepard’s parents. Shepard is the University of Wyoming student who was brutally murdered in 1998 because he was gay. I was invited to participate in a Department of Justice hate crime training of law enforcement officers in Salem, Oregon. I’ve talked about the “Matthew Shepard case” since it happened, but after hearing his parents talking about their son and seeing his face in theirs, I felt like I finally got to know Matthew himself. The pain of losing a child must be insurmountable. The pain of losing him or her to a hate crime only ads to the weight. The training was held on the sixth anniversary of President Obama signing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. So much of that was to due to the hard work of Dennis and Judy Shepard.

Listening them talk about how far we’ve come was encouraging. Gay people now have the same right to marry in all fifty states, thanks to the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Discrimination against people because of their sexual orientation in most states is illegal (although it’s still legal in Wyoming). “Homosexuality” has gone from shocking (Does anybody remember Billy Crystal’s character on Soap or Jack Tripper’s flamboyant caracature on Three’s Company) to Ellen DeGegerenes spending her afternoons with middle-class housewives. Some famous athlete or actor comes out of the closet and you can hear the crickets chirp.

But lord, we’ve got such a long way to go. In 2013 there were over 1,200 reported anti-gay hate crimes (and countless unreported attacks). Homophobia is still part of the mainstream youth vernacular (“That’s so gay.”) and there is a presidential candidate who thinks going to prison makes you homosexual. (Can there be a prize for the dumbest brain surgeon in America?) I could go on and on but it’s too depressing. For example, gay kids are still 4 times more likely to attempt suicide than straight kids. But we’re on it. We are way on it. It’s a good day to be gay in Portland, but it still has to suck in Omaha.

The point is it’s getting better. There is a crack in the heteronormativity of our culture. Not only are there Gay-Straight Alliances popping up in schools all over the country (even Mississippi!), many parents with kids are not just assuming their children are straight. When I imagine dancing with Cozy at her wedding, it might be her marriage to a really awesome woman! Who knows?

So while I was watching the Shepards talk about the murder of their son, how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go, I became lost in thought. There were two things stuck in my head that I thought would be important to say out loud.

First, Andrea and I don’t really care if Cozy is gay, straight, transgender, bisexual or any of the other letters. I think most parents worry that their queer child will just face more obstacles (including being victimized by hate criminals). Sure there are a few idiots who think their kid will burn in hell because of their “choice.” (What if Mike Huckabee has a gay kid?) But most just mourn the loss of freedom that child will experience in a homophobic society. My great hope is that when Cozy is a tween, coming out for gay kids won’t be any more dramatic than coming out for straight kids (and straight kids do come out).

She’s not going to have to wait for the right moment to break it to mom and dad. (Like most parents) we will already know. I’m more worried about finding out she’s left-handed (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Nobody should waste one second of their lives in the closet. (I’m looking at you, Mike Huckabee.) All she’s gonna get from me at the announcement is, “Meh. Have you done your homework? Oh, and I love you, bug face.”

The other thing is there’s at least some good news for lesbians. Because men can be such pricks and are not good about talking about their feelings and shit, heterosexual couples have it rough. They fall into all that Mars and Venus gendered discourse. (Just read any book by Terrence Real.) These “traditional marriage” blowhards don’t seem to worry much about how most straight marriages end up in the dumpster. But research shows that since women are much better at talking to EACH OTHER, Cozy’s lesbian marriage has a much better chance of lasting until she’s an old lady riding off into the sunset (because that’s what lesbians do, I’m told).

Of course the added bonus to all this is that it will limit her exposure to douchebags. I’d prefer her having a soccer-playing girlfriend to a video game-playing boyfriend.

At the least my gay daughter would be forced into taking up the fight against all the oppression that will still exist. She won’t be free to sit on the sidelines and just worry about her queer friends. As I’ve mentioned, it took me way to long to join this fight. Hopefully, she’ll be sitting in her fourth grade civics class in 2024 and reading about the bigoted morons that hogged the limelight in 2015.

And to paraphrase Heathers, one of the best movies ever made, I love my (possibly) gay daughter.

Gender: Nature vs. Nurture 4: She’s gotta be free!

October 26, 2015October 26, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 6 Comments

Cozy has made it to 14 months. I was a little nervous about the 13 month spread because of the Stevie Wonder thing. (“Thirteen month old baby, broke the looking glass…”) So we’re at a year and two months and still no clear gendered behavior. I’m going to knock on wood before she walks in here with a picture of Barbie that she has uploaded on my smartphone. She is still just a person. Hooray!

It’s funny how we think about gender in terms of opposites; that there are opposite sexes. A local rock club posted a noticed that “Opposite genders” were not allowed in their bathrooms. (The note came down after some trans-sensitive folks had a word with the owner.) Genders have no opposite and men and women have more in common than we acknowledge. It’s not like boys walk on their feet and girls walk on their hands. This is not Dr. Seus-land.

But the gender binary is a powerful idea. We do construct the idea of gender in this culture, at this time, in terms of opposites (although less so than previous generations). Men are active and strong while women are passive and weak. Men are stoic and women are emotional. Men are earners and women are spenders, and on and on. Of course there are a zillion examples of how this is not true and the core of the liberal feminist agenda is that women can do anything men can do, including fight wars. (Radical feminists have a different take on that, as discussed in the post on Second Wave.) But patriarchy establishes that men assert the desired quality and then the opposite is relegated to the feminine. Men are brave heroes and women are crazy bitches.

One of the characteristics of this gender dichotomy is the idea of autonomy. Men are supposed to be free to come and go. High plains drifter. Papa was a rolling stone. The world is there for men to explore, block by block, continent by continent. Chart your own course, dude. Make your own dreams, homeboy. Hit the road, Jack Kerouac. In contrast females have a thick rule book to play by and are not supposed to be autonomous. They are supposed to be dependent little princesses, sitting around in their parents’ castle, singing, “Someday My Prince Will Come.” In my mom’s generation, women typically said yes to the first man that proposed to them because it was the only way to get out of the parents’ house. This was long before Sex and the City.

Of course, any single mom now would laugh at this simple dichotomy but there are still vestiges of it around. When I was in college, there were plenty of women who would joke that their major was “pre-wed,” and they were in college to get their “Mrs. Degree.” There’s a Bible college south of Portland where the female students are still fond of saying, “Ring by spring or your money back.” For those women I would require a viewing Mona Lisa Smile, the 2003 Julia Roberts movie. If your life is dedicated to finding a husband to take care of you, you are in for a sad awakening at around age 29.

I want Cozy to be autonomous. I want her to roam free and drive her own car, not sit in the passenger seat (or the backseat with the other guy’s wife). She roams the house and has only fallen down the stairs once. (Please don’t tell anybody.) Of course, as a parent I keep a close eye on her, but if she wants to play with her blocks or look at books, she can. We are trying to instill a sense of her own independence while keeping her safe from falling down a well. (Little girls falling down wells was a big fad in the late 1980s.)

Baby’s are generally the opposite of autonomous. If she’s headed for the street, I’m going to pick her up. If she’s munching on spilled coffee grounds, I’m washing her mouth out. If she’s trying to turn on the TV and it’s not Sesame Street time, I’m going to shut it off. And I am always taking something out of her hands. Sorry, kid, grown ups are in charge. But at the same time, she has to discover her own freedom. She can be a rolling stone as long as the door to the basement is closed.

Andrea and I went to go see Madonna’s big Rebel Heart concert last week. At 57, she is a great example of what a woman can do when left to her own devices (and a dumptruck full of Botox). Madonna couldn’t have happened in the 1950s. She needed the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s saying that a material girl has the right to her own life and dreams, so go for it. Be like Susan in Desperately Seeking Susan, not Roberta. Or be like Roberta in the end of that movie. But get an education so you don’t have to keep all your belongings in a Port Authority locker in a bus station. (OK, there’s been way too much Madonna in this house since the concert.)

Parenting is such a balancing act. The challenge of raising an independent child who doesn’t get mowed down by a drunk driver at a parade. It seems like our society is always trying to strike a balance between our freedom and our safety. On top of that, I don’t want Cozy to think she is some princess who’s singular dream is the arrival of Mr. Right to think for her once she leaves the nest. It’s nice to see the rejection of the princess thing by so many parents and girls. We don’t live in fucking medieval Europe. Unless she’s the mother of dragons, we are looking forward, babe. A rolling stone with roots, that’s what we want, not Repunzel. Besides, Cozy has already decided she is going to be a soccer star or a contractor. She can hire Prince Charming to manage her payroll.

Molesting Children on Instagram

October 16, 2015October 16, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 7 Comments

October 16, 2015

Do you ever think the the world would be a better place if a whole category of people would just die? No, I’m not talking about Trump supporters. They can be helped. I think I’m pretty good at understanding why people do the horrible things they do. Many people view school shooters, serial killers, Nazis and the Koch Brothers as just plain “evil,” but I look for the complex series of sociological, psychological, and biological variables to understand how they got to the point to make those choices.

Andrea was bopping around Instagram the other night. I was telling her about some crazy Japanese anime I’ve been writing about in my new book. Suddenly, she threw her phone down on the bed and clutched her chest. I figured she saw some bizarre Japanese drawings, maybe of women and eels. Nope. It was child porn. Real child porn.

Her eyes filled with tears and she handed me the phone. It was a profile called Cumfun and the first picture was a blindfolded girl, about 8 or 9, being forced to perform oral sex on an adult male. I didn’t look at any of the rest of it, but out of the corner of my wincing eye I could see that all the pictures were of children in sexual situations. He claimed to have a Snapchat account as well, which probably means he was the one doing the abusing.

I wanted to puke for so many reasons. As a parent of a girl, this is not just an abstract social problem. But also that this vileness could exist on America’s favorite photo sharing site. This is the site that banned #Goddess and pictures of women breastfeeding. Of course, plenty of porn slips on to Instagram. I discovered this last summer when I hash-tagged a picture from #Cancun. I don’t know what hashtags Cumfun used and I don’t want to know.

We were in a state of shock after seeing what could never be unseen. As soon as we got our bearings, I immediately called the 24-hour hotline for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (1-800-THE-LOST/1-800-843-5678) and reported the site. I had to thank them for the important work they do which suddenly had become very real. By the next morning Cumfun’s profile was gone. I was ready to call a friend at the FBI if it wasn’t.

So there are two issues here I am confronting.

The first is the lack of oversight on an app that I love and spend way too much time on (@blazakr). Cumfun had a lot of photos posted so I have to imagine that he (maybe she) had been on Instagram for at least a few weeks. How could this happen? Instagram clamps down on breastfeeding pictures but it’s oblivious to videos and pictures children being raped on its platform? And we just stumbled onto one. How many more profiles like this are on Instagram?

The second issue is the sickening reminder that child pornography is even more of a pervasive problem now thanks to electronic media. These are somebody’s children. Children who will grow up with all the psychic scars connected to child sexual abuse. I can suggest some important research on serial killers and show you that it often turns out very badly. Typically those children grow up to perpetuate their victimization on their own children. So, yeah, sometimes I hate the world.

On one hand, the social scientist in me wants to understand the causes of pedophilia. There is some pretty fascinating research that has found, among other things, that MRI scans of pedophile brains reveal less white matter than normal brains. White matter helps to pass nerve messages through the brain. Interesting, right? Yeah, no.

The other (more emotional) hand says who cares about white matter. I have a child that some monster may want to molest at some point. Just cut his head off now, white matter and all. I have plenty to worry about as a parent; Cozy getting splinters or becoming overly dependent on Elmo for her emotional needs. I don’t want to have to think about some dude with a “psychiatric disorder” kidnapping my daughter, filming her rape and sharing those images with other “sick” people. Good lord. Seriously?

But the reality is we have to prepare her for this darkness in the world. We have to let her know that there are people that will hurt her very badly just because they can. They might be strangers or they might be someone she already knows (which is actually more likely). We have to teach her to trust her gut and protect her body. We have to teach her to scream and fight and go for the eyes. And we can’t wait until she’s headed off to college. More like kindergarden. It is soul crushing to even think about.

I want Cozy to know the world is a beautiful place, filled with joy and excitement. I want her to take risks, reaping the rewards of a chance taken and learning from her failures. But she needs to know there is a dark force out there that will crush her for sport. There may be a scientific explanation for what they do (and therefore a real cure), but for the moment, I would be happy if they just died. I’m a compassionate person, but I also hope that “Cumfun” is headed to prison where he will be low pedo on the inmate totem pole. I don’t really care about what is wrong with his brain. I care about those kids in his Instagram profile.

What I can do right now is to encourage everyone who reads this to pressure Instagram into being more vigilant about allowing people to use Instagram for their exploitation of our children. And for Goddess sake, if you see something, please report it right away.

What should I do if I see images that sexually exploit children (ex: pornography) on Instagram?

Dad Love 7 – I need a pep talk.

September 30, 2015November 3, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 9 Comments

September 29, 2015

About 15 years ago I was helping this young skinhead get out of a dangerous hate group. He told me he would pass the difficult act of assistance on to others. He became a social worker. You spend your entire adult life working to deconstruct the harm caused by racism, sexism, and homophobia, you hope something will come from it. I don’t mean a Nobel Peace Prize, just a sense that your efforts mattered. And they would end when you felt you were done.

I always trip up on the difference between empathy and sympathy. Can I have empathy for a person of color who has been hassled by the police? I have never been a person of color. Can I have empathy for women dealing with the low-grade burdens of patriarchy? I have never been a female. I can have a lot of sympathy, but can I have empathy? Some would argue that just being a human being allows you to have empathy for any other human being. I like that idea but it misses something.

The reason I mention this is I just got the notice that my unemployment benefits have run out and the pressure is now on to get Career Part 2 on its feet. You might remember in January I posted a slightly cryptic blog about needing a career change and then in May another post added some details to my unpleasant exit from my university home for twenty years. It wasn’t all grim. During that time I had my Kickstarter project for my new novel fully funded and got to teach an amazing anthropology methods class on Isla Mujeres. I didn’t get paid but it was a free summer on a beautiful Caribbean island with my family. I cherished every second of it.

Americans love adages; One door closes and another opens! Follow your dreams! It gets better! Don’t stop believing! The movies and TVs are filled with the rags to riches stories that prove that big dreams can happen. Just listen to an interview with the winner of your favorite reality show. “I knew that if I just kept believin’ I would be the next American Ninja Warrior.” What we don’t see is all the suckers who thought the same thing and got absolutely nowhere. When I lecture about social stratification, I discuss how the reality is that most American stories are rags to rags and riches to riches, like silver spoon man-baby Donald Trump (Trump reference!).

People don’t want to hear that. They want to believe that everything is possible with hope, God, good Karma, the right lottery numbers, friends, a good haircut, blah, blah, but the statistics just don’t back that up. But I am special! I’m not a statistic! You want to believe that there is something bigger and better just around the corner, just like Tony in West Side Story. (Spoiler alert! He got shot to death.) We will buck the trend.

I’m not on a bummer bender. (OK, maybe a little bit.) I had my dream. I was a tenured professor at a great university. It was a path I started on in my freshman year of college. I had a career that made a difference in the world. I won awards for my teaching and my research was in textbooks. I was the face of my university in the media and I took it all as serious as your life. Then a handful of people, for reasons I can only pretend to understand (the squeaky wheel gets the hammer), decided taking it all away was a worthwhile activity. They hurt my colleagues, my students (especially my graduate students who came to work with me), the school itself and, most of all, my family. My daughter’s financial security has been gutted. It’s a story so bizarre, someone should write a book about it.

Malala Yousefzai was on Colbert last week and she said she had forgiven the Taliban members that shot her in the face. That really shook me to the bone. If she can do that, I guess I could forgive a dean or a provost, but it’s not so easy. Not when I think of my savings account shrinking as I try and care for my family. Not when I think of the community work I could be doing instead of figuring out next steps. Forgiveness is the goal.

But there is a huge bright side. I’ve had all this wonderful time with my daughter that I would have spent working on campus or grading papers late into the night. She will be a better person because I was there. I’ve had time to write and cook for my wife and plan a wide open future. In a way it’s been a wonderful blessing. Instead of fantasizing about flying a plane into the administration building I want to thank them with a big sloppy hug. There is something wonderfully exhilarating about being zipped to a clean slate.

I can’t say there haven’t been moments of great challenge. Our wonderful health benefits were cancelled. Fortunately, thanks to Obamacare, were are all covered now and Cozy has a dentist appointment coming up. Andrea is back to work and I’ve got some great possibilities on the horizon but all involve us moving away from Portland, a community we both feel deeply connected to. I guess there’s a handy saying about that as well. Get out town before you get thrown out, or something like that.

This is where the empathy comes in. When I look at my beautiful child, who I love more every single second, there’s a sense of desperation that wells up. What if there’s not a better job out there? What if that was the most secure gig I will ever have? What if Cozy is destined to a life living in a van down by the river? I start to empathize with people who turn to crime to provide for their family, robbing banks and lemonade stands. I’m a long way away from becoming Jean Valjean or a character in a Springsteen song, but I get it. I would do anything for my kid, just like those Syrian refugees. Anything.

My brown wife laughs at all this and says, “Shut up. You’re a white male with a PhD.” I know I’ve got some assets that will keep us out of the shelter but I have to think about all those parents who are downwardly mobile. I’m sure each one of them felt special, too. “Everything will work out,” I can hear them say. But like Liam Neeson, I have a very particular set of skills. Yeah, I could land a job at Costco but I’m a teacher and writer. It’s a small lane to get back in to and make enough dough not to slip backwards.

So you start engaging in magical thinking. I could win Power Ball. I could get a massive publishing advance for the book I’m writing. My previous book could finally get made into a film and I could wave to university administrators from the red carpet. Ellen DeGeneres could give me a $10,000 gift card to Target. And there’s always the possibility that they’ll need a sociologist on a hastily assembled manned mission to Mars to collect water (sponsored by Nestle).

When I was a single guy, I just would have rolled with it, part of the grand adventure. Maybe moved to Prague to teach English or enrolled in assassin school. But when you have a family, it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame. It’s easy to panic and think the ship’s going down, like it has for so many other families.

But then my wife lays her legs across mine and Cozy crawls across my chest and I think, who cares about the rest of it. The work I’ve done has a life of its own and as long as my family is healthy and together, all the rest is just sprinkles on a cupcake. Besides, I have a enough crap to sell on eBay to pay the mortgage for years. Everything’s gonna be fine.

Help, there’s an alien/cyclone/toddler in my house!

September 18, 2015September 18, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 7 Comments

Sept. 18, 2015

Warning: This post is not about Donald Trump (unless you find tips on how to handle a toddler relevant).

We headed off to Mexico this summer with a 10-month-old baby and came home with a year-old kid. A lot of amazing things happened in those two months, most importantly, Cozy started walking. We’ve been home almost a month and she’s pretty much running the house. So this post will be a trip down memory lane for some people and a cautionary tale for others.

First, I’d like to say to all those who have toddlers whose homes I’ve visited and thought to myself, “Christ, this place looks like a bomb went off,” I apologize for judging you so harshly. I have to think that cartoon of the Tasmanian Devil is based on a 1-year-old child. We have our own little devil. Cozy is in love with the theory of gravity. She loves to see things fall to earth. Anything on a shelf or a plate becomes subject to an experiment. If I hear a crash I know she is doing science. When we got her a helium balloon she was completely fascinated that some things fall up. But most things fall down and shatter.

She’s also in love with the theory of entropy, the gradual decline into disorder. Although, it ain’t so gradual in this house. Where did dad’s work-out schedule go? Cozy. Where did our sleep schedule go? Cozy Where did that book go I was reading? Cozy ate it. Where did the power bill go? Cozy ate it. Where did the Cheerios that Cozy was eating go? In my underwear drawer. Where did the year go? Loved every second of it.

There’s also the fact that now that she is fully mobile, all the household dangers just got magnified by a factor of ten. She went from crawling to walking to sprinting in the blink of an eye. I ran downstairs to change the laundry and thought she was in her room, but she doubled back behind me when I came upstairs and I heard a horrible thud as she rolled down the steps to the basement. Fortunately she busted her lip instead of her neck but that door is now permanently closed. So is the cabinet door under the sink where’s she convinced some great wonder must be. I think she figures we have Elmo locked up under there. It’s her mission to break him out.

So the baby is long gone. We now have a little alien person living in our house who speaks full sentences in some strange language. As best as I can tell, it’s a cross between Icelandic and that derka derka language the terrorists in Team America spoke. But she knows what she’s saying. She’ll tell you that she wants mac and cheese, not oatmeal (Sorry, off the menu), or that I need to get out of bed and put on a puppet show, or plastic bottles don’t go in the recycling. (They’re for throwing across the kitchen.) If there was a Rosetta Stone for this language, I would gladly pay medium bucks for a hot version of it on Craigslist.

After a year, we have a lot more than the germ of a personality. She’s pretty much here. Cozy loves art, like her mom. She loves to paint and draw. A brush or a pen or a crayon and she’s busy for precious minutes. So far only the oven has been tagged. She loves books and will just dive into a story. Thank God we’ve got Goodnight Moon in English and Spanish (Sorry, Trump). But most of all she loves baths. That’s a lucky one. Really, any kind of water. In Mexico, her abuela took her swimming in the ocean almost every day. Yesterday we went to Salmon Street fountain and it was all I could do to keep her from jumping in. And when dad is in the shower, there’s often a little face that will pull back the curtain for the thrill of getting soaked.

Now that Andrea is back at work after our summer on the isla, I’m back to playing stay-at-home dad and there’s a lot of intense bonding. Before I was racing to get housework done during naps. Now, I’m just hanging out with my new friend. Sometimes we go out for coffee, sometimes we color, sometimes she helps me to take the dishes out of the dishwasher and sometimes I take a nap while she spackles the concrete wall in the laundry room. (OK, that last one is just wishful thinking.) Sometimes we just lay in bed making faces and I think I could just do this forever.

I love getting to know this person (who is still free of gender). It’s a whole new ballgame. Yeah, mom and dad would really like it if she took more naps, but she’s got too much to figure out about the world. You can see the wheels turning behind those big brown eyes as her brain grows at a dizzying rate. One minute she trying to figure out if the cat can talk, the next she’s striking a pose in hope she can convince dad to get a kitten. She’s figured out how to talk to Siri on Andrea’s iPhone, so maybe Cozy can ask her. I just look at her in wonder. Where did this amazing little person come from?

All that “it goes by so fast” business is truer than true.

Dad Love Pt. 5 – Flash, Ah! He’ll save every one of us!

June 1, 2015June 1, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

June 1, 2015

You hear about parents doing super-human things when it comes to their kids. Moms will lift a car off a toddler or dads will run into a burning house to save a baby. It’s all anecdotal, so there’s reason to be skeptical. Just look at this clip from America’s Funniest Videos, a lame show that usually features scenes of dads being hit in the balls by kids with whiffleball bats. Real or fake?

This Video Proves That Parents Can Do Superhuman Things When Their Kids Are In Danger

There’s an actual name for this phenomenon, hysterical strength. It’s about the rush of adrenaline, or epinephrine, that occurs as a response to acute stress. You don’t have to be a parent to experience this type of hyper-arousal, but it has to be a variable.

Now, there’s a reason that I bring this up. Despite my reputation, I tend to think of myself as slow-witted. Maybe it’s the cumulative effect of all the allergy medicine I’ve taken over the years or watching one too many Republican candidate debates. I know this because when some asshole says something sexist or racist, I have the most epic response. Five minutes later. I want to go back in time and give them the perfect zinger instead of just standing there slack-jawed. Huh? When something crazy is happening, I can be a few beats behind. We had a big shooting in the neighborhood Thursday night. (Maybe you saw Cozy and I on TV being interviewed.) The gunman ran right past my house. When I heard all the sirens, I should have ran outside and at least had my camera out. Better, I could have tackled the kid and been king for a day. Instead I just thought, All those sirens are annoying. Cozy, let’s eat a banana.

I’m not the only one. KPTV was interviewing some Portland official less than a block from the shooting. The shots ring out during the interview, pow, pow, pow, pow, and the guy just keeps talking. I don’t think he’s a dolt, our brains just have a hang time in processing things out of the ordinary. Wait, what? I wish I was the guy that just acted on impulse, but I’m the mouth breather that’s just standing there. Huh? Is something going on?

So here’s the story. This weekend I was giving Cozy her breakfast, oatmeal and blueberries. We bought this IKEA high chair second hand and lazy dad didn’t strap her in. She now likes to stand up everywhere, including in the high chair. I usually just shove her back down and talk to her like she’s a dog. Sit, Boo Boo. But this morning was a little different. I turned away to grab a rag from across the kitchen. The kid had blueberry all over her face. I was about four feet away from her.

When I turned around, she was not standing up in the high chair. She was on her way towards the floor, feet pointed up at the ceiling. Just typing this gets my heart pumping. Now normal, slow-witted Randy would think, Gee, that seems wrong. Or maybe, that must be some other baby falling through the air. Or perhaps, Is Ashton Kutcher playing a joke on me?

But instead, somehow, I flew across the kitchen and caught Cozy about four inches from the hardwood floor. Richard Sherman on his best day couldn’t catch an interception like that. Something came over me. There was zero hesitation. I just acted. I can’t imagine where we’d be right now if I hadn’t, but I did. It was the strangest thing because it was so unlike me. And maybe it’s all the practice of grabbing stuff out of her mouth before she swallows it. (Well, there is still that missing shopping list that we won’t tell mom about.) For a second, I was the Flash (Quicksilver for you fellow Marvel fans). I had super-human strength.

Now, I don’t want to get cocky. If I’m just resting on my one great save, that’s when Cozy gets snatched by an eagle or falls into a crevasse when the big one comes (and it’s coming). Or maybe she’ll just pull a cup of hot coffee off the counter or fall out of a window while I’m thinking how awesome I am. Maybe I just got lucky and there is no “Parent Power” gene, but just in case there is I gotta keep my Spidey Sense tingling. You can’t turn superhero off,

Dad Love Pt. 4 – You’re so far away

May 22, 2015May 27, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

May 22, 2015

This is just a little shout out to all the parents who have to be away from their kids. I’ve been gone all this week, first to Washington, DC, do do some work with the National Institute of Justice, then to Montgomery, Alabama to work with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now I’m in the Atlanta airport about to head in the right direction, Portland. The airport is full of parents going somewhere.

“Home,” has a bit of new meaning these days. All week I’ve had to talk to my child via FaceTime. I think Cozy thinks I now live inside my wife’s laptop. Seeing her face light up when I appear on the screen is a great rush of emotion. Andrea and I can get plenty done on the phone (including going on about how we much we miss each other), but when Cozy’s face pops up, it’s all over but the drooling. Andrea and I have business to deal with (the heating oil tank is leaking), but when Cozy is there, it’s just baby talk. The people in the next hotel room must think their stuck next to somebody who speaks in tongues.

It makes me think of parents who are in the military, or are working overseas or out of state. It also makes me think of parents who are in prison and rarely, if ever, get to see their kids. While my colleagues were going out for drinks, I was racing back to the hotel room to get a fix of baby face time. Wifi’s not free? I’ll pay!

The sociologist in me worries about those soldiers, prisoners, and others who don’t get that face time. What’s the impact on them and their children? It’s a miracle drug. We humans need it to to be human. That emotional bonding. I’m just glad I get to go home and see my family. Home, it’s where I want to be. My flight is boarding.

I know that someday Cozy will read all this. I just wanted her to know that I’m never not thinking about her.

Even Better Than The Real Thing: Cozy’s First Concert

May 19, 2015May 19, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 1 Comment

May 19, 2015

First concerts are a big deal. When I taught my Youth Subcultures at Portland State, BP (Before Purge), on the first day I’d read the role and ask students to tell the class their first concert. It typically went two ways. You might have some cool obscure punk band or you might have something completely cheesy (a lot of New Kids on the Blocks). There’s also a subcategory called “Christian Rock Fest.” I used it to start a conversation about generational experiences. My first concert locates me in time and space (Elvis Presley, 1973, Atlanta, Age 9, thank you, Mom and Dad). There are also first concerts that you wanted to go to and ones your parents took you to.

So Cozy will probably have a concert she will claim as hers sometime around 2028. But I wanted to give her a Point A that she could start from and maybe brag about 50 years from now. I think she’s got it. On Friday we took her with us to see U2 in Vancouver, BC. You might know that I have a bit of a history with this band that started when I first saw them play at the Agora Ballroom in 1981. Personal relations aside, a U2 show is always an emotional, exhilarating event. And Andrea had never seen them, so there was no way we were going to miss the northwest stop of the 2015 Innocence and Experience Tour.

The original plan was to dump Cozy with a babysitter and make the 5 hour drive up to Canadia. But overnight babysitters are in short supply and the folks at the Rogers Arena said babies don’t need a ticket. (Canadians are so nice.) Andrea made a reservation at an Airbnb and grabbed the passports and I burned a few Alt Latino podcasts for the ride. So with a good set of baby headphones we strapped the kid to the Prius and fled the country. Thanks to the horrid Seattle traffic, I got a little stressed about making the 7:30 show time and brought the fun-level down a bit, but Cozy was fine the whole way up.

Gone are the days of getting on U2’s guest list. It’s probably easier these days to get backstage to see the Pope than Bono. So we ended up with tickets in the top row from the evil StubHub. Although, I did bombard U2’s new manager, Guy Oseary, with a bunch of tweets and pictures, including of a letter that Bono wrote me. Top row. But with this stage set up, pretty damn good.

Cozy loves a crowd, so her eyes were open wide as we made our way to the seats. On the way, in the ladies room, some middle-aged “lady” with a wine glass and a Coach purse stopped Andrea and asked, “Why did you bring your baby to this?” (Obviously not a Canadian.) Andrea gave her the Mexican finger. But everybody else was charmed by Cozy, as usual. Then the lights went down and the Ramones came on the P.A.and the band took the stage, playing “The Miracle of Joey Ramone.” Crowd goes wild. Cozy, head phones on and in a pouch on my chest, seemed a little freaked out. What’s this craziness? she cried out.

By the second song, “Vertigo,” there was a big smile on her face. She loved the colors and vibrations. The staging was massive with a huge screen the band could climb inside of. She was transfixed. The fourth song was “I Will Follow,” from their first album and sounded as explosive as it did when I saw them in 1981. I looked down and Cozy was asleep. She’d wake up every few songs, including for a powerful version of “One” that ended the night. She seemed to love it. She won’t remember any of it, but I will tell her how much she dug it.

Of course her parents were blown away. Andrea loved Bono’s tender tribute to his mother, “Iris,” and I was happy to see them play “When Loves Come to Town” for the recently departed B.B. King. The band was tight and grand, tackling issues like AIDS drugs and the unpunished murders of the Irish citizens from the 1972 bombings and then keeping it light by pulling a fan on stage or Bono making jokes about The Edge falling off that stage.

There are better reviews of the show. It’s must have been the 25th time I’ve seen the band play live. Maybe 35th. I’ve never missed a tour, even when they opened up for the J.Geils Band on the 1982 October tour. But this one was special. I think Bono would have loved Cozy’s wide eyes at the whole thing.

One day you’ll look back

And when you see

Where you were held

By this love

– U2, “Mysterious Ways.”

I wanted to just let go of everything throughout the concert. I did during the rare performance of “Bad,” a song I saw take shape in the studio in Dublin in 1984. But I just kept looking at Cozy and imagining her 20 years from now playing the first concert game.

Snotty brat: “Well, my first concert was the Flip Flerps at the Massengil Amphitheater in ’24.”

Cozy: “OK, but my parents took me to see U2 when I was 9 months old.”

Game, set, match.

Cozy sees U2, 15 May, 2015, Vancouver, BC.

Dad Love, Pt. 2: A Star is Born

February 16, 2015August 7, 2016 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

Feb. 16, 2015 My daughter Cozette turns 6 months tomorrow. In 30 weeks, I think I’ve gone through every emotion on earth. Part of it is about the things that Cozy has done. (She almost said “Dada” last night, kinda, “Dawah”). Part of it is the anticipation of the things she’s about to do. (She’s so close to being able to sit up on her own). And part of it is the recognition of the the things I am now capable of. (More than once I’ve put my hand in her diaper to see if she’s wet and then run my fingers through my hair. So what!).

One of the most amazing things is to see her evolve as a person with her own personality. She is incredibly curious. I love when we go to the grocery store. I put her car seat in the grocery cart and see her face light up. She’s going to have lots to look at at our local Fred Meyer. The Valentines Day balloons blew her freaking mind. Watching her eyes focus on the items we pass by as we go down the isles makes me think about how a year ago those eyes were just forming inside mother’s womb.

She already has mad social skills. She loves being around new people. But you can see her size them up. Trust, but verify. She knows she’ll get a reaction with her smile. I think Cozy will know how much happiness she can bring the people around her.

Cozy is also really strong. She can stand up when she leans against something and even do a little dance, kind of a boot scootin’ boogie. And then she falls over like a drunkard. This week she started using my hands to pull herself up and it’s impressive. She’s got a seriously strong core. My bet is she will be sculling in the 2036 Olympics. (Google it, you layabout.)

I think her best quality is her empathy. It’s the one thing I want to give her but she’s already got it, when so many adults are devoid of any empathy whatsoever. Anyone who has read my first novel, The Mission of the Sacred Heart, can guess that I have struggled with intense depression at different points in my life. Anyone who understands this knows that it can get the better of you when you least expect it. In many ways, Cozy knows exactly what I need in those moments.

One of those moments was last week. I was just laying on the floor of the nursery wrapped up in the uncertainty of life right now. For the first time in decades, I have no idea what my future looks like. I’m scared shitless. Maybe I should’t have quit PSU. Maybe I should’ve gone one more round with the administration and perhaps (finally) won, winning the financial security my young family deserves. On one hand I’m excited by what I think is going to be a thrilling and successful new chapter. On the other hand I feel like we’re going to be living in a trailer down by the river, undone by people who could care less about the well-being of my child.

Cozy was laying on the floor next to me. I just couldn’t move, stuck in a black cloud. Instead rolling around (like she usually does), she just stuck close to me. She put her little hand on my cheek and stared right into my eyes, like she was saying the thing I’ve told so many others who are sunk in the trench of depression, that at some point the bad stuff is in the rear view mirror and you’ll feel so good for getting through it. It was such emotional moment. I was having a deep conversation with a little baby who needed me to be there for her but also for me. I was about to cry and then she farted so loud her diaper fell off.

I’m super glad Andrea and I are Cozy’s parents. I think we’ve got a strong set of values rooted in love, justice and creativity. But I think Cozy would turn out fine if she was raised by Kim Jong Un and Mama June. This baby has soul. And she saves me every day.

Dad Love, Pt. 1 (Here)

And you can get my book at Powell’s by clicking below:

The Oral Phase Sucks (INSERT FREUD JOKE HERE)

February 3, 2015February 3, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 5 Comments

February 3, 2015

My baby’s face is quickly becoming a vortex, something between a Dyson vacuum cleaner and super massive black hole. Suddenly everything that’s not nailed down is headed for her mouth. Where are my car keys? No, no, no, not the beer bottle! Your toes are safe, kid. That will come in handy when dad sends you off to Yoga Camp.

I’ve been lecturing about the good Doctor Freud for over 20 years. His phases of child development make a lot of sense. Birth to 2 years old is the Oral Phase. Cozy is coming up on 6 months and you can see her discover her mouth. It started with nursing and now it’s not just the boob she wants.

It think the turn was the moment she realized she could put the binky in her own damn cake hole. Since then everything has to be tried for tastiness. Last night she chewed on my belt for 20 minutes like a puppy. Hey, I was watching The Bachelor and wrapped up in Kelsey pimping her dead husband story. The kid’s fine.

But that’s the thing. Now you’ve gotta be Eagle Eye Cherry. At any moment some choking hazard could be going down your precious child’s gob and you better have had that baby choking class. The other day Cozy was napping in the crib. Or so I thought. She had quietly chewed the tag off of a stuffed animal and had it in bits in her mouth. Those two little teeth are like a super cute version of the wood chipper from Fargo.

So here is another thing to constantly worry about. I’ve finally stopped staring at her to make sure she was breathing. Now I worry she’s going to find a rubber band or an old Cheerio and it’s gonna be lodged in her larynx. It never ends. Do they make masks for little babies? Like ones for tiny Japanese people. Baby Gap must carry some kind of face filter.

The next stage should be even more fun. Freud believed the Anal Phase was from 2 to 4 years old. This is when toddlers get a rude awakening because “society” says there are rules to follow, the main one being pooping in a toilet. For Freud, potty training was the key act that shapes the personality. Oh, joy.

Third is the Phallic Phase, from 4 to 6, when kids discover their sex parts. Nobody wants to think of a 5-year-old masturbating, but it happens. Just keep your hands out of your pants, thank you. Feminists have had issues with Sigmund at this point because of his assertion that girls begin to develop “penis envy” here. (I saw a bumpersticker in a feminist bookstore that said, “War is Menstrual Envy.”) The “biology is destiny” bit is seriously problematic.

But Psychoanalytic Feminists (yes, they exist) think penis envy is just “patriarchy envy” and we shouldn’t write Freud’s theories of the unconscious off over a little dick. Freud argued that you need to make it through the three stages without becoming fixated. We all know people who are anally fixated. They are called “Virgos.”

But Cozy is a long way off from any phallic fixation, symbolic or otherwise, thank the psychological gods. I’m just trying to get her through this phase without choking on a pen cap or becoming orally fixated. Lord knows what that could lead to.

It’s always a balancing act with Freud. Not enough oral stimulation (mostly from nursing), the kid is neglected and will manipulate others to get something in her mouth. Too much stimulation and she stays in baby mode. So how we handle this phase could turn Cozy in to a manipulative nail biter or a sadistic homicidal maniac. Can a neurotic parent get a break?

The good news is Freud’s theory from 1905 has lots of modern critics. There’s no evidence that extended breastfeeding turns a kid into Bette Davis, chain-smoking her way into the grave. But Sigmund still has his supporters. And do I really want to risk it? Just get me to the Anal Phase in one piece, OK?

	2025: When America,… on Standing, Again, at Ground Zer…
	2025: When America,… on Dad’s Top Discs: Favorite Albu…
	2025: When America,… on Elegy for a Land Line
	2025: When America,… on Growing up with a K-Pop K…
	2025: When America,… on Foreshadowing the Clampdown on…

Watching the Wheels

Feminist Fatherhood

Parenting