Brett Berk

When the Gay Uncle was younger, he had a Canadian friend who possessed an intriguing verbal tic. Whenever he’d use an idiomatic expression, he’d curtail it: skipping the second half, and substituting in the ever so Canuck term, “Eh?” So, for example, when discussing the difficulty of forcing someone to do something, he might come out with, “You can lead a horse to water, eh?” Or when commenting on the superiority of the sure thing, he might opine, “A bird in the hand, eh?” Why is Gunc plaguing you with this information? Because it’s Mother’s Day, and as we all know from personal experience, and/or from watching Schoolhouse Rock, most of the great inventions that ushered in our excellent modern era–including The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting–were born of maternal desperation. In other words, “Necessity’s the mother, eh?”

The G.U. is celebrating Mother’s Day exactly as he should: far away from any parents or kids, in an inn in rural Alaska. But that doesn’t mean he’s not thinking of all you mommies out there. And to you, he raises his Bloody Mary and says, “Thank you! (Eh?)” Without you and your need for his expertise, he wouldn’t have a career. And his life would be boring, empty, and meaningless.

Happy Mother’s Day.

What does it look like in Alaska at 11:30 p.m. in May? Just like this. That’s right, while it’s nearly midnight here, the purple mountains still loom majestically in the daylight, birds twitter, and people are awake and out walking around the lake or fixing their roofs. It’s amazing that the kids can get into any trouble here at all this time of year, since they have no cover of darkness under which to operate. Of course, the Gay Uncle supposes that the opposite is probably true on the other side of the annual spectrum, and that during the long Alaskan winter it’s dark all the time, and there’s nothing for the teens to do but fuck.

The Gay Uncle had a spectacular time at the Jewish Education Center preschool in Anchorage Alaska yesterday (frozenchosen.org) He spent the morning hanging out with the little frontiersmen and frontierswomen, talking about tundra and dinosaurs, and answering their questions about what the hell he was doing at their school. (Gunc: “Good question, Jedediah.”)

Then, that evening, he returned to the school, and took his place up on the Bimah (Altar, for you Goyim) and proceeded to read, make snarky wisecracks, and answer parents’ and teachers’ excellent and honest questions for a couple hours (“What do you do if one of your children is extremely manipulative?” “How do I keep the Kindergartners from ganging up on me?”) He then signed and sold a couple cases of books, which, as far as he can tell, means that he now has influence over about 10% of the state’s population. He looks forward to seeing how this plays out during the next gubernatorial election.

Anchorage is surrounded by pristine inlets, glacial lakes, and spectacular snow-covered mountains, and is ringed by a well-maintained coastal trail that offers extensive walking and biking paths. The Gay Uncle knows because he walked about six miles of them yesterday and at each turn came upon another astonishing view of the natural landscape. But that doesn’t mean that the first thing he spotted wasn’t a scangy, spottily facial-haired, shirtless, 26 year-old guy giving a lap dance to his fat girlfriend on the public access ramp that led to the shoreline trail. Oh, and this graffiti.

It’s not instructive. And it doesn’t have anything to do with kids. But it is delicious. What is it? A giant floret of Alaskan smoked salmon that showed up at the Gay Uncle’s room in Anchorage this morning as part of his room service breakfast. He is now off to visit Congregation Beth Sholom to ensure that his handlers have communicated his need for the proper bottled fizzy water and that the multicolored rose petals that will be scattered along the path he’ll walk this evening before his reading are pink, red, and orange (not the tacky yellow they had strewn about at some of his other events. Ugh.) He also wants to hand select some (attractive and inactive) children to be part of a photo op.

The Gay Uncle leaves for Alaska this afternoon. “What the fuck?!?” you ask. Well, he’s been invited to do a reading from his stellar book The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting at the preschool at Congregation Beth Sholom in Anchorage (frozenchosen.org No joke!) He has no idea what to expect up there–besides an adoring audience with every parent in the city–but is salivating over a planned meal of arctic wolf, bald eagle, baby seal, and grizzly bear bladder (and flossing afterward with blue whale baleen). His boyfriend and fellow Guncle, Tal, will be accompanying him, so they’ll be visiting the big park in Denali (and probably every junk shop that exists in the entire state). And he was hoping to finally have an opportunity to wear the Robert Rauschenberg-style coyote fur coat on which he wasted his last royalty check, but thanks to global warming (and spring) it’s apparently in the 70s up there, so oh well. (Fur is forever.)

He will keep you posted on every occurrence during his voyage North-to-the-Future (follow him on Twitter for full effect), and is planning a big article about Parenting in the Frontier, as well as one on how Levi Johnson is going gay-for-pay.

Kid cursing? Who the fuck cares? Read the Gay Uncle’s counter-intuitive take on how to handle an incipient young garbage mouth in his MOMLOGIC column this week. Go ahead, click the shit out of this link!

Looking for that perfect gift for the mom in your life? Get her a copy of The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting. Use this secret link to purchase a copy that has been personally inscribed to the mom of your choice and signed by the Gay Uncle himself (must order by Wednesday, 05/06 at noon EST). Or use any of the individual links below and to the right under the image of the book on this page (just scroll down a little and look right) to pay the same price for an unsigned copy from Gunc’s cooperating chain or independent sellers: Amazon, B&N, Powell’s, St. Mark’s Books. Guaranteed to make any mother laugh at least once.

First the widespread adoption of gay marriage in the heartland, then all this piggy peril, then the hot winds of hell collapsing the Dallas Cowboys’ practice bubble in Irving Texas. And now???? The Gay Uncle’s friends at MOMLOGIC are reporting on a trend of mothers using Twitter to give the play-by-play on their labor. And he’s not talking about factory work. He’s talking about 140 character, serial, sometimes sardonic delineations of the whole push-and-shove of hustling a baby out their va-jay-jay. The existence of this practice leads the G.U. to ask two interrelated questions.

a) Why?
b) How?

In honor of Twit-Moms Trendies, Gunc is going to run a contest this week. Best 140 character (or less) fake labor/birth tweet wins a copy of Romi Lassally’s True Mom Confessions: Real Moms Get Real. Leave your entries in COMMENTS below.

The Gay Uncle received a very compelling question this week, one that takes as its subject a twining web of resentments, involving young children, objectionable gifts, and mother-in-laws. “Dear Gunc: I am having trouble with the grandmothers giving copious, unwanted gifts. These gifts normally are from China, overly packaged, cheap and are often relegated to the bottom of the toy box moments after opening. There have been times when a certain grandmother has been told she may not buy our daughter something while at the store. On a later date, the same grandmother has returned to the store to purchase the item. I used to go by the philosophy that gift giving was a grandmother’s prerogative. However, my daughter now greets her grandmothers with, ‘what did you bring me.’ I feel embarrassed every time I need to over-fill the recycling bin or go to a second garbage can because of all the toy refuse. Please address.”

The Gunc abides. The short answer is that parents should feel entitled to set whatever boundaries they want for what comes into their house. It’s their one absolute fiefdom, and until a tree lands on it or it gets foreclosed on, they should be able to enact any restrictions they see fit, so long as they’re not physically injurious to anybody and don’t involve silly costumes or nudity. If your child had a nut allergy, you wouldn’t allow grandma to bring a can of cashews over just because she wanted to or because she thought they looked cute. Of course, if you want this to work, you can’t be passive (or passive-aggressive) about it. Set the rule, discuss it with the M-I-L, ask her to respect it, and set up repercussions if she doesn’t abide (e.g. We’re not coming over for Memorial Day, or We’re sending you to a home.)

Of course, every good solution requires a trade-off. (That’s why it’s called compromise: you feel compromised whenever you do it.) In this case, you must adhere to the understanding that grandma does not have to abide your rules at her house. Her casa is her domain, and she can implement whatever protocols she wants over there, so long as they’re not physically injurious to anybody and don’t involve silly costumes or nudity (and no Pig-Latin either; it’s asinine). This patented Gay Uncle formula affords a sense of control, achieves balance, and conditions all parties to practice mutual respect. Try it!