"Sound of the Funky Drummer"

I am an enormous pain in the hinders.

On the other hand, I am also a tuition-paying student at the Flava Flav School of Elusive Charm.


Flav and me? We tote our clocks; we sport our grillz; we hook up with statuesque Nordic types; we view life as a cost-effective backdrop to our own VH1 reality show; we throw down internal rhymes while honing prosody, cadence, and speed. In fact, we can only be distinguished from each other by the fact that he looks like a crack-addicted tambourine player in the subway, and I look like the long-lost Gabor sister exiting a particularly-harrowing roller coaster ride.

From the School's monthly newsletter, I've also learned that Flava and I share a dislike of getting up in the morning and becoming functional human beings. Sure, we has the kids, but we can't be bothered to raise them until at least mid-morning. Until 10:30 a.m., we just have to tape one of these


on our faces and put a like sign over the vodka and matches, hoping the wee ones are literate enough to decipher the message. If not, the resulting combustion of fire and booze is simply framed, for the benefit of the police, as "science."

Truth is, it's fortunate that Flav is a semi-absentee dad. And it's fortunate that I married the anti-Flav, the stand-up guy named Groomeo.

See, His Groomishness lets me have a lie-in whenever possible. Like the other day, after I'd been up 'til 2 a.m. grading online class assignments (and, admittedly, playing some Webkinz games to earn enough Kinz cash to redecorate the apartment of my birthday-gifted elephant, Cornucopia), I got up the next morning for about 45 minutes with the fam--throwing water and food towards the children--and then went back to bed. Up again at 11 a.m., I felt a fair bit refreshed. (Across the continent, I pictured Flav peacefully wiped out on a slightly-tatty heart-shaped waterbed, mouth wide open, sawing logs with dem toofs of his.)

At 11 a.m., although I was actually upright and speaking in staccato phrases, the kids were all bickery, with thirty seconds of harmony between them being a far-off dream. At one point, two hours into my wakefulness, they were fighting about whose turn it was on the big red balance ball and on what part of the floor the balance ball should sit when it was someone's turn and for how long that someone should be allowed to stay on the balance ball and why it wasn't fair that someone else would always get longer and a better spot on the floor when it was time to be on the balance ball and how they never actually got a turn for anything or a good spot for it, and it was all I could do not to dial 1-800-Flav and get my mentor on a jet to Duluth.

Cuz, Maynard? We may be podunkish here, but truth is that my city of 80,000 happens to be situated perfectly for refueling between California and England-type-lands, which means, hand to heaven, celebrities like Bono sometimes sit on our tarmac for the gassing up. And if Bono can do it, you better believe Flava could situate his wiry buns on some big, cushy seats and sip pomegranate martinis while coming to my aid. As a bonus, the flight attendant would help him re-set his clock when they landed, taking into account the time difference.

At any rate, as the kiddles impersonated Richard Burton and Liz Taylor at their finest that morning, I was hard pressed to be the adult--or even the Sandy Dennis--in the room, in the face of such a quarrelsome duo. I tried a bit of talky-negotiation, but they just ramped up more.

Exasperated, I finally proclaimed, "Well, then, you're both being buttheads, and you deserve each other" before marching up the stairs, where I turned to Groom and asked, "Would you call that my finest parenting moment of the day so far?"

Assuring me it was, and that I could hardly be expected to feel more kindly toward the ingrates, what with my having been up 'til 2 a.m. the night before playing Atomolicious so I could afford to buy my elephant a new reed-and-lily-pad desk, the Groom patted my arm with great affection.

Which is why I'm thinking it's fortunate I married him and not Flav. Were we the sole adults in charge, FF and I would've grated the kids into a bowl of grits (protein-fortification!) years before.

And then we'd have called in the cameras before picking up our spoons.