last night

I'm not the most technological sort - my cell phone is a rotary dial - but I'm smart enough to know this: With all this talk of stock market crashes and financial unrest, I've never been so happy to be poor. I quote Dylan: "When you've got nuthin,' you've got nuthin to lose."

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I hate to be judgemental, but you know that red-haired gal from "Sex in the City"? Cynthia Nixon? Well, have you checked out her 'girlfriend?' I'm sure she's a most pleasant young woman, but, ouch. Is her dad Captain Kangaroo?

Now Ellen, she has the right idea.

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What I Wish Would Come Back

1. Longer hair on guys. These things - styles - tend to ebb and flow. Made fashionable by Jesus, now taboo by Howie Mandel (who actually used to have long hair, the hypocrite), longer locks will probably come back around. Truth be told, I like it because the longer my hair is, the shorter my nose appears.

2. Bob Barker - True, he's almost hermetically sealed by this point. But we all have a purpose, and Bob's purpose was to the hold that anorexic mike on "The Price is Right" and get sexually harrassed by white-trash whackos. Caught a few minutes of Drew Carey hosting TPIR the other day; I haven't seen anything that awkward since McKenzie make McCoy walk in stilettos.

What I Wish Would Go Away

1. The song "Melt with You." Okay, it was a decent song upon it's 1983 release, when it accompanied Nick Cage and his strange triangle of chest hair in "Valley Girl." But enough already. It's a neck-and-neck tie to decide which phrase I've heard most over the past 25 years:

1. I'll stop the world and melt with you.
1a. No.

2. The combo handshake - We men still run across about, eh, 3-5 percent of fellow fellas who, when posed with a simple handshake, go instead with the handshake to "bro" to clenched fingers trio. About 1 percent will even throw in the index finger point while in the midst of the shake. It's uncomfortable, tricky to master amongst strangers and, moreso, just plain weird.
The handshake-to-hug combo, seemingly the new millenium greeting amongst buds, completely escapes me.

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Home last night with the kids while Jenn grabbed dinner with friends. I don't mind the single-dad nights so much. McKenzie plays me like a fiddle, usually squeezes an ice-cream run outta me, and McCoy runs around like my Uncle Saul - in his diapers alone. Together, we tempt fate as the kids run with scissors, me with hedge clippers. But we have some laughs, do the tandem bath bit, make a communal fort at bedtime. Needless to say, my leash runs longer than Jenn's.

The best part about manning the fort, though, is that I get dibs on the remote.

Like many a pop culture fan, I grew up a child of TV. Oh, I spent plenty of time patrolling the neighborhood on my low-rent Moxie bike, following a few pedals behind my buddies on their shiny Mongooses or sparkling Red Lines (envy still burns deep within me), or playing ball on makeshift diamonds while using a No Trespassing sign as home plate. No older than 8 or 9, we'd disappear for the day; today, I wouldn't let McKenzie out of the house on her own for 10 minutes, never mind 10 hours, without pepper spray and a shank.

But come evening, when the smells of meatloaf or spaghetti or pot pies called us home, I usually found the tube.

Hard to believe now, but back then three channels seemed enough to entertain. Gilligan (I was always a MaryAnn guy), Bewitched (black-and-white hottie), Three's Company (two hotties), I Dream of Jeannie (boy did I). The Hulk, Dukes of Hazzard, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat. Long before reality shows, they helped shape my reality as I cut my pop culture teeth. I loved them all.

Heck, even today, before I have a big decision to make, the following acronym always comes to mind:

WWGBD

Which, of course, is: What Would Greg Brady Do?

So it's admittedly disheartening to come to grips with the fact that I've forever lost the gavel.
See, Jenn also grew up within remote's reach, and her grip over such is militant. And with the onset of the DVR, her visual wingspan blankets the hours. Between Cheslea Handler, Oprah, Ellen, The View, I live with so many women, I feel like a flatscreen polygamist. And when you live with a dance teacher, as I do, and most everybody on TV is singing or dancing or juggling pitchforks while singing and dancing these days, you're going to get hit by the reality show anvil, too. I half-expect Chris Berman to come out in tights on Sportscenter.

But pity me not. Sure, there's McKenzie's movies, McCoy's cartoons and Jenn's shows, several of which our DVR devours each day, but there was that time in, what was it, May of '05, I did get to watch the last 9 minutes of a rerun of "M*A*S*H." Seems the theme song of "M*A*S*H" repulses Jenn to the point of nausea, so when I want to dig up her krytonite, I seek out Alan Alda.

Our evening choreography usually looks like this. Jenn, done with her myriad evening chores, tries to unwind in the corner pocket of the couch while McKenzie alternately dances, performs couch acrobatics and jockeys for Jenn's lap. McCoy jailbreaks, spraying papers, DVDs, toys et al in his wake. I stake out my slot and either pick guitar or read or gamely sit through another reality show. Sometimes I go upstairs to write or surf or watch some tube, but, what can I say, with all of us moving so often in different directions, I like to hang with the gang. Conformity is the only assurance of such.

So last night, with McCoy tranquilized and McKenzie doing the open-mouth bit on the couch, I settled in and watched a ballgame (USC lost to Oregon State, which makes Ohio State's 35-3 loss to the Trojans look even more silly). But after a quarter of ball and a pint of ice cream, I found the room cold, dark, quiet. Too much so, on all counts. I missed the chaos. I missed the shrieks and squawks. I missed the 'McKenzie get your brother out of a headlock's."

This, I figure, is my new reality TV.