My Father-In-Law is a pretty decent guy. He and I became friends before I married his daughter so we didn't have that whole uncomfortable time period where he was constantly thinking "Hey... This guy is doing my little girl".
We appreciate the same things, golf and ski together and he just helped my wife and I get our first cottage (and bought us a barbecue as a cottage warming present).
He likes a dry martini, always has beer in stock, enjoys spending time with us and has a pretty good sense of humor.

What he lacks, every so often, is an appropriate sense of timing.
So when he excitedly gave me a copy of The Poo Bomb: True Tales Of Parental Terror (as well as latex gloves, some salad tongs and a pair of goggles… see the front cover of the book) I was slightly less than appreciative.
Of course, the wife was 8 hours in to a 16-hour labor (pre-epidural) and I had other things on my mind at that moment.

Ten days later, when I came up for air for the first time, I cracked the book and discovered why my F-I-L was excited.

THE CONCEPT:
I say concept instead of plot because this book feels more like some twisted scientific experiment in the progression of human intelligence and development than it does a story.
It’s a journey of eye opening discovery in the first year of Jeff Vogel’s parenthood. We follow him while he goes through the trial and error of being a new parent on a week-by-week basis, as well as his observations of all things baby.

Cast Of Characters:
Jeff Vogel- A 32 year old computer geek who at best describes himself as an ambivalent parent and at worst is highly skeptical and the “Anti-Cute”. One reason he cites for having a child is to get his parents to shut up.

Mariann Vogel- Jeff’s 28 year old wife and five foot, 2 inch delivery system for the new child. Also, the pragmatist and the only one of the two with any experience in small children.

Cordelia Vogel- The Baby. No kidding… some people actually still name their kids things like Cordelia. Wild. She’s named after King Lear’s niece… not after the Buffy The Vampire Slayer character. She complete lacks rational thought and motor skills.

George & Sharon Vogel- Jeff’s parents. They don’t own a home but spend all their time touring the U.S in their RV. From time to time they swoop in to rescue Jeff and Mariann from the fate that is their life.

Ilona Krizsan- Mariann’s Hungarian mother. Ex-Nanny and #1 baby sitter for the family.

The Teletubbies- “Four short, furry, babbling imbeciles”

The book is divided up into roughly 3 main chapters; The First Three Months: Baby Learns To Breath, The Second Season: It Still Can’t Move and The Third Season: Twenty Percent Human.
Each Chapter is divided in to subsections so you may end up reading a short note entitled I Am Her God or The Proper Way To Drop The Baby or Awww, A Little Brown Bath Toy.

What to say… This book covers off everything that most baby books don’t even mention. Jeff revels in talking about all the things that most if not all new parents only wickedly think. He travels from Meconium (or as I like to call it, "The La brea Tar $hits") through the compulsion to check your child every 2 hours to make sure it’s still breathing, and in to the forbidden zone of messing with your child’s brain or feeding it Ice Cream for dinner.
With perverse glee, he teaches his newborn daughter that her mirrored reflection is actually an entirely different living entity called “Rival Baby” whose sole purpose is to compete against her in everything.
He discovers that the easiest way to get his daughter’s affection is to use his wife’s hand to knock a toy away from her and then make a big showing of “DADDY” giving it back to her.. or feed her small amounts of chocolate.
He reviews the decisions and actions that are supposed to effect her for the rest of her life…soothers from birth, eating a pound of floor lint and will it increase her immune system, religion and what to teach her, celebrating Christmas and over feeding her so that she’ll sleep through the night.
How long will you survive before you bring out the Baby Tylenol? How pathetic are you going to feel when you find out you don’t have a trendy, top of the line mobile?

And, through his games and cynicism, we see Jeff begin to become the kind of parent that most other non- child rearing people are annoyed by.
He becomes a proud and affectionate father who realizes that he is completely responsible for the health and well being of Cordelia. He watches in fascination as she starts to make her first sounds and her focus improves.
His Sub Chapter titles move from the cynical (Yet Another Reason To Hate Parenting Books) to the upbeat and uplifting (Our Baby Could Kick Your Baby’s A$$).

In the end, while he never descends in to the cutesy garbage that sickens most men, we do see a man who will be a good stable parent and one who will pass his humor on to another.

MY THOUGHTS:
His style is so funny that you WILL end up reading parts of this book aloud to others. They may think you annoying at first but that will quickly change when they are laughing till their ribs hurt. I kept the wife awake a few nights going through the choicer lines.
The book measures five and a half inches, by eight and a half inches by…. wait… what am I doing?
Measuring a book is ludicrous.
It’s roughly book sized… how’s that?
The book is a fast 250 pages and is written in an almost stream of consciousness style. He touches on each new experience the moment he’s faced with them.
He isn’t Steinbeck and this isn’t the next great American novel. It is written as most people would talk which is possibly why I was attracted to it.
That, and the humor really is pretty bent.
His dissection of baby foods and their different flavors is definitely one of the funniest pages I’ve ever read.

To give you a feel of his humor, I have included a brief segment:
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“Brief Words On The Alleged Meat In Baby Food
You ever see gyro meat? You know. That rotating meat log in Greek restaurants and state fairs? Granules of flesh from mysterious animals, compressed like particleboard? Meat that has been ground and rendered and processed and re-rendered and reprocessed until it’s basically a collection of meat molecules? Meat that’s been so heavily altered it should be considered vegetarian?

I strongly suspect that the meat in baby food is the stuff they won’t even put in gyros.
And that’s all I have to say about that.

No It Isn’t
And consider cow anus. I imagine, when they put cow anus in gyro meat, they only use the succulent, moist, fresh cow anus. On the other hand, the cow anus that they dropped on the floor, and picked up, and wiped the lint off of it, and dropped it again, and picked it up, and decided not to bother wiping off? That’s the cow anus they grind up and put in to baby food”
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See? Funny stuff.
Here’s the only problem I have with Jeff. Proper tense and grammatical mistakes aside (he writes like someone who doesn’t write much), he tends to repeat himself.
One-liners that he used on page 101 may be used again on 103. It’s not that he’s spacing out a running gag or using the joke to wrap up a specific familiar essay idea, it’s that he liked the line and wanted to see it again.
He does this just often enough that it becomes a bit annoying and I had to take one star away. Luckily he doesn’t do this with his best lines and his best lines are good enough to forgive him for repetitiveness.

All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone who is about to have a child, or has ever had a child. Probably the best bang for the buck would be reading this just as you are experiencing it.
The humor will be fresher and more relevant.

Now, I can say “Thanks Brian. This was a good pick for me. Sorry if I’ve been a bit distracted”

P.S- even if you don’t read this book and you have a newborn, avoid feeding it Gerber’s Veal & Veal Gravy… milk fed babies to milk fed babies… just creepy.


Recommended: Yes