FREE DVDS ARE THE KEY TO MY BLACK HEART

Oh you wacky, wacky bastards (and bitches)!!!

Friday afternoon, we're sitting around the house, watching our son try out his brand new 100% hearing skillz by pressing his ear against the dustbuster and hitting the power switch when the doorbell rings.

It's UPS.

And he's got some packages for me.

Some packages from Amazon.com.

Apparently some of you people took me seriously when I posted my Amazon Wish List link a week ago and bitched that nobody ever buys me anything off of it. The joke behind that was that I was bitching about something that you guys couldn't have possibly knew about.

Ha! Pretty funny, huh!!

Well, trust me Dippy the Clown...it's a shitload funnier when you actually get some schwag from total strangers!!

Well...not that they're actual strangers. I know these people via the Internet but have never met them in person and ogled them like a bulldog admiring a humpable leg.

Kate sent me the Simpsons Second Season box set which is just too cool for words. Twenty-two episodes of what is arguably the Simpsons' best season.

I've got to admit...I opened that box and ...well...I spanked it. Right there in front of the wife and boy. I spanked that monkey with FERVOR, ladies and gents. I spanked that monkey like it had just stolen $13.47 in loose change off my nightstand. Color that monkey SSSSSSPANKED, baby.

The other one was from my boy Public Defender, one of my most loyal buds on the "Ed" Boards over at Television Without Pity. P.D. has almost single-handedly kept those boards alive after the show was taken off the TWoP's roster of shows to be recapped.

Los Defender sent me not one, but TWO DVDs...."Fast Times At Ridgemont High" which has been one of my top five favorite movies for the last 20 years. When that movie was released in the summer of 1982, I went to the theater every night for a week with a different person because I wanted everyone I knew to see it and experience what I considered to be my life story in the form of Jeff Spicoli. With the exception of my hair being dark brown and not surfer blond...I was EXACTLY like Spicoli in 1982. I haven't watched the movie yet, but I did watch the 38-minute "Reliving Fast Times" feature that has interviews with several of the cast members and it was AWESOME!!!

Did I spank it? No.

I saved the spanking for "Barelaked Nadies"...a DVD of all of the videos from Barenaked Ladies. Damn...I've loved their songs for years ...but had only seen a handful of the videos. It was so cool to see the video for "What a Good Boy" and "Brian Wilson". PLUS...the live concert footage of them performing those same two songs...well kids...I had no choice but to whip out that monkey in front of my horrified wife and child and spank it once more.

Both of you guys...that was wayyyy cool of you to do. Thanks to both of you and I'm thinking you might find a little extra somethin' somethin' in your stockings this year as well. And I'm not talking about mouse shit neither.

BUT...for the rest of you....do NOT buy me anything off my Amazon Wish List. I cannot afford to turn around and buy you something back in return. Neigh...what these two people are getting is something personal and from the heart of Uncle Bob because they're obviously two wayyyy cool people and I'm obviously wayyyyy broke this holiday season as you're about to find out.

Not that the rest of you aren't cool. But I don't have the time to craft a fine gift for each of you who send me stuff. I love everyone who checks this page out (fuck it...I've got the holiday spirit in me right now and can't be Mr. Asshole today) but just can't afford to be as generous with my gift-giving this year as you can. But the love I have to give...it's all encompassing.

Smooches to everyone.

Especially Kate and P.D. Because they got me cool gifts.

The reason I don't have the duckies to buy each and every one of you gifts this year is because we took Andrew to Toys 'R' Us on Saturday to get a gauge on what he might want for Christmas.

All year long we've bought him little things and put them aside for Christmas. He's got about eight or nine gifts stashed away. But I wanted to get him a few more things because he's our only child and dammit...it's Christmas.

(By the way, for those of you who still believe in Santa Claus....your friends are right. There's no such thing as Santa. It's your parents buying you gifts and giving you the false hope that there is such a thing as Santa because it makes us all giddy to see your face on Christmas morning when you see those presents under the tree. I hate to burst any bubbles, but c'mon...do the math, you dumbasses. Santa visits EVERY kid on earth in one night?? Christ almighty....how stupid are you kids?? If Santa was real, he couldn't visit every kid in your fucking town, let alone the whole world in one fucking night. Quit listening to your parents as they desperately try to hold on to that last remaining shred of innocence and wise up to your buds....THERE IS NO SANTA, YOU RETARD.)

Anyway, we walk around the crowded store and the only toys Andrew's showing any interest in are the toys he already has. We're shoving boxes in his hands at alarming speeds and he's just staring at them.

We write down a few things we think he MIGHT like and decide to leave.

Outside of Toys 'R' Us, there's several playhouses set up. Expensive playhouses.

For the hell of it, I put Andrew down on the sidewalk.

For the hell of it, Andrew runs straight inside one of these playhouses and squeals with glee.

Andrew squeals and squeals. The smile on his face is one of the biggest I've ever seen. He hasn't smiled like this since the time we put Maggie on a leash and took her to the pound to be gassed.

(Maggie and Andrew are mortal enemies. We're just now finding this out. Both are jealous of the other)

We let him play for ten minutes inside this Playhouse. He squealed the entire ten minutes, opening and shutting the door and windows, babbling coherantly on the phone inside, ringing the doorbell over and over.

Clearly, we had finally stumbled across something the kid really, truly wanted.

When we said it was time to go, he wouldn't budge. He wanted to stay inside the house. Susie had to crawl in there and get him while I stood on the sidewalk all dignified and mighty. Ain't no way in hell my fat ass was going to get on the sidewalk, crawl inside that house and get stuck. Uh-uh. Fizzuck thizzat.

Andrew screamed bloody murder as we left. It was almost an embarrassing scream...the kind where people dial the operator on their cell phones to report a child abduction and the Amber Alert Signs start flashing nationwide.

He clearly did NOT want to leave his playhouse.

I turned to Susie over the screams and said "THAT'S the reaction I was looking for. This is something the child MUST have."

Susie agreed. The kid has a playroom full of toys. So many that he'll never be able to play with them all.

So instead of getting him several more toys that will just be tossed in that playroom, we'll get this playhouse and toss the toys in THERE.

Smart thinkin'...eh?

For the record, by the time we had driven one quarter of a mile, Andrew's crocodile tears had evaporated and he was joyously chomping down on a cracker.

Damned faker.

Yeah...I know I said that Vanilla Diet Coke tasted like cold monkey phlegm a few weeks ago ... but that's before I embraced its phenylalanine goodness and gave myself fully to it, letting it bust open my Vanilla Diet Coke cherry like a hyperactive Mexican kid bashing a pinata.

Damn.

This be some mighty fine shit now.

Once you get past that whole "Seriously...Coke's producing Cough Syrup Flavored Coke now?" thing.

Andrew is a totally changed kid since he had tubes put in his ears.

It's like...he's hearing everything clearly for the first time. He laughs hysterically at everything and is positively giddy. He's rolling around on the floor just squealing...running from room to room squealing...eating and squealing. It's like the boy is half pig all of a sudden.

Already...not three days after his surgery, his babbling is becoming more phonetically ....uhhhhh...perfect. Sorry...couldn't think of the right words there.

Last night, we were counting his flash cards and he clearly said "Two....Three" when I got to the second and third cards. That was a first.

Well..."Three" sounded more like "Fee". But it was the first time he's done that.

Then he pointed at this pillow that has the entire alphabet on it and pointed at each letter while I announced the letter. "A...B....C....D" etc. He grinned the whole time as if to say "So THAT'S how that letter sounds."

Thanks to all of you who reassured me that getting tubes in his ears would be the best thing we could do for him. Already, he's a changed kid and I get the feeling he's going to change a little more each day.

I was thinking last night...I'm honored to be this guy's Dad. He's just so incredibly cool to be around ... as long as you're not a stranger, which damned near every adult other than Susie and I are ... I can't help but get the feeling that he's going to be one cool-assed kid as he gets older.

My time here is up. I was going to report on last night's Christmas Cantata at the Church and how much it positively SUCKED, but I've gotta get rollin'.

Then again...maybe the Cantata was alright.

Because something has filled my heart with much love this morning.

........Nah........

.......It's the new DVDs that did that.