I like to think that I’m a pretty competent parent. I don’t try to be my stepkids’ buddy. I have raised them to be kind, compassionate, and honest, and I’ve impressed upon them the importance of living an honorable life. I’ve tried my very best to help them understand that education = opportunity, and always encouraged them to be the very best Ryan and Nolan they can be. For ten years, Anne and I have raised the kids with natural and logical consequences (good and bad) for their choices, and I’ve always loved them unconditionally. Along the way, it’s been incredibly fun, the hardest thing I’ve ever done, a completely frustrating and thankless task, and the most wonderful and rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life. I have a fantastic relationship with both of the boys, and when I occasionally catch little flashes of my influence in their behavior, it’s all worth it.
But I still screw up from time to time, and last night I pulled a parental Bill Buckner.
I sat on the couch with Ryan and Nolan, and watched the two-hour finale of CSI. It was an intense and creepy episode, and by the last ten minutes of the second episode, we were all on the edge of our seats.
After a particularly tense and disgusting moment featuring fire ants, Nolan said, “Why don’t we have CSI on DVD?”
“Because it’s on TV fifteen times a day!” I said.
We went back to watching the show. After a minute or so, my parental sixth sense told me that Nolan had a dark little cloud over his head.
I replayed the last few moments, and immediately knew that it was my fault.
When Nolan said, “Why don’t we have CSI on DVD?” what he meant was, “Man! This is so cool! I love this show, and I love that we sit down and watch it together every week!”
And when I said, “Because it’s on TV fifteen times a day!” what he heard was, “I don’t care.”
I felt really bad, and after the show was over, I called him into the kitchen and told him how sorry I was.
“I wasn’t trying to put you down, or make you feel bad,” I said, “I just think it’s funny that CSI is on TV so much, is all.”
“Wil, it’s only on twice a day,” he said.
“Really? I thought it was on more.”
“Nope, just twice a day on Spike.”
“Oh. Well, that’s not the point, really. I feel like I hurt your feelings, and I wanted to apologize.”
“Okay.” He said.
He hugged me, I hugged him back, and he walked out into the dining room.
I stood alone in the kitchen and wondered if I’d made it better or worse. I couldn’t tell, which is pretty common with two teenagers. A few seconds passed, and Nolan poked his head into the doorway.
“Wil?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Nolan.”
Well, I guess I did okay this time.
As a post-script, if I may be so bold as to offer unsolicited advice to all you parents out there: I have found that it’s important to respect and be aware of your children’s feelings, and never minimize or invalidate them. I have also found that it’s even more important to be aware of how your actions impact your children, and when you screw up, it’s best to take responsibility and apologize. Your child will see that you’re not perfect, that you’re not afraid to admit that you’re not perfect, and will learn firsthand the importance of respecting other people’s feelings.

Stephen Lynch, who wrote the article in the NY Post I linked yesterday, sent me a link to his personal website, where he has the full text of his original draft:

Geekdom is a clique like any other, and there were those who felt things have gotten out of hand lately. Like a cult rock band that scored a top 40 hit, geek entertainment got too big, ruining the fun.
Only the truly dedicated will stick with it, Wheaton enthuses.
“There are so many geek poseurs. Putting on Weezer glasses does not make you a geek,” he says. “Until you have tasted the sting of a dodgeball on your face, you are not really a geek.”
Mikki Halpin, author of The Geek Handbook: User Guide and Documentation for the Geek in Your Life, believes “there will still be comic book conventions and sci-fi movies, but the line won

While looking at Sean Bonner‘s Flickr photos from E3 yesterday, I discovered that my name is a Flickr Tag. That’s . . . a little weird. It sure makes it easy to send pictures to my mom, though.
And my friend Andrew told me that I am mentioned in a story at MSNBC about season five of CSI:

Best guest star: Pruitt Taylor Vince, as Marty Gleason in “Swap Meet.” It was a small part, but this character actor made the most of it. He played a crime-scene cleanup man, who broke into a Southern accent when talking to the victim

I saw Phil Hellmuth at E3 today, in what I think was the Yahoo! Games booth (I’m not entirely sure, you know, with the cold medicine and everything.) He was taking questions from a huge crowd about poker, and doing what Phil does best: talking about how great he is, and how he only loses when some jerk puts a bad beat on him.
Phil is truly one of the greatest players to ever sit at a table, and he can absolutely beat anyone in the world, but his Shatnerian ego makes it very hard to enjoy watching him play.
However, ginormous ego or not, I just read that Phil did a really cool thing: he was all set to host the Phil Hellmuth Poker Challenge this weekend in Houston, Texas. Somewhere between 600 and 1000 players would pay $500 to attend a seminar taught by Phil, and then they’d play in a tournament that would send the winner to the Main Event in the World Series of Poker next month in Las Vegas. Best of all, the event would raise an estimated $250,000 for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
That is, until some anti-gambling busybodies in Colorado caused the charity event, which would raise money to help people who are stricken with breast cancer, to be shut down.
The whole story is at Pokernews.com:

“It looks like we have been shut down,” said Chuck Frierson who, along with Dale Hunsucker, were the local organizers for the event. “Players who have pre-registered will be receiving a full refund.”
“It started to unravel last week,” Frierson told me. “It seems a person from an anti-gambling organization in Colorado heard about this event and contacted the Harris County Sheriffs Department regarding its legality. We were looking to hold the event at Reliant Park, which is part of the Reliant Stadium grounds that are overseen by the county. Reliant Park gave us a great area to present the tournament and the expected crowd that would be there for the festivities.”

Isn’t that awesome? Some anti-gambling nutjobs decided that it was very important to spread their crusade to an entirely different freakin’ state, and shut down a charity event.

“It’s very sad, because we have run these type of events in the past without an issue. Recently, we raised $105,000 for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The $105,000 was after any expenses we had. It was a great tournament for a great cause and we thought this one was going to be bigger.”
“We were expecting about 600 people,” lamented Frierson. “With that number, it was conceivable that we could have raised around $250,000 for breast cancer research. If we had 1000,” Frierson paused, “it could have been $350, maybe $400,000…The charity is the one who is hurt the most, with the players who wanted to participate being hurt as well.”

Wow. I hope those douchebags in Colorado are proud of themselves.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Stephen Lynch, who is a writer for the New York Post. He wrote:

I’m doing an article, the working theme of which is “the end of the geek golden era.” By the end of May, “Star Wars” will be over, “Star Trek” will probably be over. The “Lord of the Rings” movies have been wrapped up, no more “Matrix.” What do we look forward to now? Will geeks still rule the world?
I admire your blog and thought you would be a great person to comment on this. Thanks for your consideration.

I have learned to be wary of the Mainstream Media, but after a quick review of his articles, Stephen seemed like a good guy and the subject he was covering is something that I’m pretty passionate about.
I wrote back:

I actually think it’s the beginning of a new golden era for geeks: technology is putting massive computing power in our hands, we’re never more and a few hundred feet from the internets, we’ve got our own network (sci-fi channel) and the big summer blockbusters are all inspired by comic book movies. HHG comes out this year, it looks like Peter Jackson is going to do The Hobbit, there’s talk about a movie based on The Watchmen in 2006, and there’s a Firefly movie due out as well. Don’t overlook Sin City, or Hellboy, and don’t forget the new Battlestar Galactica! (Ron Moore is even connecting with geeks using the unprecedented medium of podcasting commentaries *for free* on all the new episodes, as well as communicating directly with the show’s fans via his blog.)
I think the end of Star Wars is long overdue. The new movies are an absolute abomination. It’s hard to figure out which sequel to The Matrix was worse, and Star Trek Enterprise had little in common with Star Trek beyond the name. There was an explosion of geeky goodness in the last few years, and now it’s time to step back, and . . . well, thin the herd, I guess. We’re at the dawn of a new geek era. The sun is only setting on the prologue.
This is just off the top of my head. If you’d like to talk with me, let me know and I’ll give you a call today. If you’d like to use any of this material, let me know and I’ll rework it just a little bit so it sounds less like e-mail.

So Stephen and I played phone and e-mail tag for a few days, but we finally connected and had a great conversation about geeky movies, where I tried to make it clear that, though I really hated Episode I, and nearly walked out of Matrix Reloaded, I am very optimistic that we are at the dawn of a new era of geeky goodness. I expanded my thoughts about thinning the heard, by pointing out that there is so much great fantasy, sci-fi, and comic book stuff out there now, the audience is less willing to accept any pile of crap that happens to have a laser gun or a dragon in it. Studios have realized that they can make movies which appeal to geeks and mundanes, without alienating either audience. This means that we should see more Spiderman, and less Catwoman.
Stephen’s article We Fans Bear Up for a Long Geek-end (har) ran in today’s Post. It’s absolutely hilarious:

May 19, 2005 — If you feel a sharp pain today