The pod people kids are /away this week, and Anne was out most of the day, so after I ran a bunch of errands, unsuccessfully shopped at the mall for the coolest watch in history, and did my laundry and the dishes . . . I rewarded my Big Boy behavior with a little online poker.
I’ve been playing the $22 SNGs at PokerStars.com for a while (thanks to the Sit-N-Go chapter in the 3rd edition of Lee Jones’ Winning Low Limit Hold-Em, I’ve finished in the money in each one I’ve played over the last two months!) and I thought it would be fun to play a little bit today while there isn’t a gorgeous wife running around who I’d much rather play with . . . and I wanted to fill some space on the blog with the two best things about it.
Thing the coolest happened on the first hand of heads-up play:

Seat 6: michael97045 (11265 in chips)
Seat 9: Wil Wheaton (2235 in chips)
michael97045 said, “ok… now that it’s just me and you…. are you THE wil??”
Seat 6: michael97045 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 9: Wil Wheaton (button) (small blind) collected (450)
michael97045: posts the ante 25
Wil Wheaton: posts the ante 25
michael97045: posts small blind 100
Wil Wheaton: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Wil Wheaton [Qc 3c]
Wil Wheaton said, “i guess so, yeah.”
michael97045 said, “i didn’t want to be the nerd guy to ask”
michael97045 said, “lol”
Wil Wheaton said, “wait. unless you mean Wil Smith.”
michael97045: folds
Wil Wheaton collected 250 from pot
Wil Wheaton said, “I’m the other one.”
michael97045 said, “i’ve spent most of this game reading your site”
Wil Wheaton said, “are you serious?!”
michael97045: calls 100
michael97045 said, “lol”
Wil Wheaton: checks
*** FLOP *** [3c 2h As]
michael97045 said, “yep”
Wil Wheaton said, “that’s totally going on my blog”

Thing the next -coolest:

PokerStars Tournament #11618125, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $20.00/$2.00
9 players
Total Prize Pool: $180.00
Tournament started – 2005/08/22 – 15:42:24 (ET)
Dear Wil Wheaton,
You finished the tournament in 1st place.
A $90.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account
Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.

Yeah! I was out-chipped 11000 to 2200, and I managed to claw my way back and win it. It was teh awesome.
I’m going to put together a private WWdN tourney real soon now, with a $10 +1 buy-in, so it’s affordable for most people to play. If you’re interested, sign up for PokerStars, and watch this space for tournament details in the near future.

So this weird thing happened two or three weeks ago: in the middle of the night, some aliens or MIBs or something snuck into my house while we were asleep, and they replaced my sweet, reasonable children with Teenagers.
Overnight, I went from pretty cool to really annoying, and questions that were usually answered with phrases like, “Okay,” or “I’ll do it in just a minute,” or “Yes,” were suddenly met with “Whatever.” or “GOD!” or my personal favorite, stony silence with the rolling eyes and exasperated sigh.
It’s so weird, man. And the thing is, my doors were all locked, and my windows were all closed . . . so my theory is that the Aliens or MIBs or whatever don’t actually enter the house. Instead, they use some sort of parabolic mirror to direct a tractor beam through the walls, which we can’t see or hear, and they pull the old switcheroo from orbit. I have no idea what they do with the sweet, reasonable pre-teens they take away, though. The current operating theory is that they need their youthful exuberance for fuel or something, but it’s just a theory.
I called my mom, and told her how things had suddenly gotten really challenging as a parent, and you know what she did? She put her hand over the phone, and shouted to my dad, “Finally! It’s Payback, Rick!” I’m pretty sure I heard my dad shout out something like, “Woo!” or “Yeehaw!” from another room . . .
Anyway, I’m taking a crash course in parenting teenagers, which is fundamentally different from parenting pre-teens. It’s not even like switching from vi to emacs . . . it’s more like switching vi to emacs and someone re-assigned your keyboard and changed the language and now the damn thing reboots randomly and though occasionally it makes sense, most of the time you’re so goddamned confused you wonder why you bought a fucking computer in the first place. The weirdest thing is how suddenly the pod-people arrived. It really did happen overnight (or maybe in the span of two days, but not longer than that.)
A couple of things I’ve learned, that I offer up, free of charge, to anyone parenting a teenager, or about to parent a teenager:

1. When we say, “no,” what they hear is, “ask me again in a slightly different way in about ten minutes, and act like it’s the first time you’ve asked me. Or you could go ask your mom, and pretend that we haven’t talked. The most important thing is, you must act as if we haven’t had this conversation, and keep asking me until you get whatever it is you want.”
2. No matter what we as parents do, we are so unreasonable.
3. No matter what my parents say, I was never this irrational when I was a teenager.
4. Whatever it is they want to do, all their friends get to do it, with their parents’ blessing.
5. Music is better when it’s so loud the bass distorts. (Yes, I realize the irony of my “If it’s too loud, you’re too old” T-shirt from 11th grade.)
6. Even though they may act like they totally hate us, they still love us. It’s just that their brains are all fucked up right now, and they need our help to figure out what the hell is going on (but won’t admit it, and don’t know how to ask for it).

Interesting note: for a few reasons that are nobody’s business, Anne and I limited TV and withdrew the video games recently, and once the storming around and exasperated sighing (which, I’ve learned, is the base currency of all teenage communication) ended, the first thing the kids did was ask if they could get my D&D books out of my office and play with their friends. So Ryan is learning how to DM, and Nolan is making a Drow (He is a huge fan of Drizzt Do’Urden and the Forgotten Realms). While they were in my office, Nolan pulled out all my old DiscWars sets, and has been teaching all his friends how to play it (and extracting promises from me to play with him as soon as I get a chance to re-learn the rules.)
So there’s this interesting-and-cool thing happening: naturally, because they’re teens, they’re pulling away a little bit, figuring out who they are, and pushing against Anne and me as we define their age-appropriate limits, so a lot of the things we used to do together are so lame now . . . except for nerdy gaming. They LOVE the nerdy gaming, and it has become a conduit for me to communicate with them, as well as remain a part of their life. Ryan even told me the other day, “I want to start a club at school that’s for nerds to do nerdy stuff, but I want to have, like, Masonic Degrees for nerds.”
“What degree are you?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said, “But you are a 33rd degree nerd.”
I didn’t ask him if there was a secret handshake, because I didn’t want to be so lame.
On the alt.country binge: I bought two from the Asylum Street Spankers, who remind me of Squirrel Nut Zippers, but bawdier, and Joe Henry‘s Trampoline the oher day from iTunes (look out for those iTunes benders! Before you know it, you’ve spent 50 bucks, if you’re not careful!), and so far I love it. In fact, I’ve been listening to it while I write this, and it’s a perfect soundtrack for this entry. Gods, I love it when music does that, don’t you?
To bring this back full circle(-ish): In all honesty, the kids are mostly good and still enjoyable, and I know better than to take the normal teenage behavior personally. Learning how to deal with them as teens has been very helpful for me and Anne . . . but my family (and raising kids who will become productive and respectable members of society) is more important to me than anything else in the world, so contributions to my blog will probably slow down for the very near future while I master this new set of skills I’m picking up . . . though Shane recently threw down a gauntlet at me, e-mail-style, that may result in a giant pile of writing over the next few weeks.
Or not.
Stay tuned, if that’s your thing.
Editorial note: Please, please, please see the humor in this entry. My life isn’t falling apart, everything is really fine at home, and my relationship with my stepkids isn’t faltering or in danger or anything like that. Thanks.

If you like Wilco or Uncle Tupelo, you must get Son Volt‘s first album Trace.
Heh. If the 1990 me ever met the 2005 me and discovered that I’d become a fan of alt.country, I think I’d kick me in the nuts. Goddamn know-it-all 18 year-olds.

Last week, I went up to Tahoe with Anne and the kids for our annual August Family Getaway.
I absolutely love Tahoe, and I really want to move up there when they get out of high school.
I’ve got lots of interesting stuff to write about, including my trip to Vegas for BARGE, the bear that broke into our cabin in Tahoe, and reviews of some great books I read while I was gone, but I have a mountain of “real” work to tackle first.
Until then, I present last week’s Games of Our Lives, which is probably my favorite one so far: Time Pilot

Gameplay: Most airplanes can only fly through the air, but you’ve managed to get your hands on a plane that flies through time! Unfortunately, it only allows you to travel into horde after horde of pilots who want to kill you. Quit your cryin’, nobody said time travel would be easy.
Could be mistaken for: Time Pilot ’84, Gyruss, an evening with that one roommate who incessantly flips between SciFi and The History Channel. Jesus Christ, Eddie! Pick a fucking channel and stay there! Jeez!

The entire AV Club website has been redesigned, and I think it’s pretty cool. All of the contributors have biography pages; here’s mine.
Speaking of The Onion, I was reading the July 27th issue last night after dinner, and I think it’s got some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen in months, including “Armchair Publicist Would Totally Reign In Tom Cruise” and “War On String May Be Unwinnable, Says Cat General” (You’ve got to see the picture — don’t look at it while drinking, though, or it’s coming right out your nose. You’ve been warned!)

I read my book (current read: From a Buick 8, which I’ll finish tonight) while I waited in the departure lounge for my plane today. I did my best to tune out the bickering children behind me, so I only caught a little bit of the conversation a guy had on his cellphone when he sat down next to me.
“Wait.” He said, “so you thought it was a girl, but it was a dude?!”
I stopped reading. My eyes looked at the phrase I craned my neck to look and wasn’t exactly surprised to see Huddie Royer — and behind him, Eddie.
Something was said on the other end of the conversation, and the guy said, “Oh shit, man! Did he grab your weiner?”
The guy laughed about as hard as I would have, had I not bitten down on my cheek, as he got up and walked away.
Later, when I walked down the jetway, I was behind six guys who were clearly all lifelong friends.
“What do we tell the girls when we get back?” One of them said.
In unison, they all replied, “We drank, and we gambled!”
“And then we drank some more!” One of them added. The guy nearest him punched him in the arm, and they all laughed together.
Only in Vegas.