This is Not an Art Blog

Please do not nominate me for anything in that category of blog awards. Leave that to the experts. I think I should be allowed to post about my artistic and martial arts skills from time to time though, without really crossing any major lines.

It starts with a little mishap the other day where I accidentally knocked over a folding chair in front of my family. I'm not sure if it was the Buster Keaton, the Jackie Chan, or the Hulk Holgan in me that made me try to pull this off as a sort of slapstick fall, leading into a martial arts turned WWF chair-throwing move.

Once I had picked the chair up and slammed it to the ground, I proceeded to give it a flying hammer.

"Look Laylee," I said, slapping my hand to my elbow and jumping as high into the air as my post-Magoo body would allow. "This is called a flying hammer."

Dan, who believes that knowledge is power, that with great power comes great responsibility, and that the responsibility of knowing how to administer the flying hammer is too much for a three-year-old in possession of a younger brother to handle, advised me against carrying on with the lesson.

What does he know? Who wears the yellow belt in this family?

That's right.

It's me.
(Yes I realize that is the ugliest picture I've ever posted of myself.)

Alas, once more his wise logic won out over my crazed need to teach our children WWF maneuvers.

But his victory does not mean that Laylee doesn't know which parent bears the swirling fists of fury at el rancho de los Darings.

Laylee and I were having a friendly coloring smackdown the other day. We drew pictures of each other (Although Laylee wanted to fill in her own face. I cannot take credit for her amazing face drawing skills. I think she spent an hour just shading her upper lip.)

What do you notice about these pictures, besides that her drawing of me is better than mine of her, that my hair is actually orange and green (I usually fix it in Photoshop before posting), that her skin is the color of cherry-flavored mud and that my ears are as big as my feet?

That's right. She was somehow able to capture in the wax medium the incredible speed and reflexes of my swirling fists of steel and fury.

I don't mean to brag, but my friends do tell me that I am quite skilled at mixing it up in the ring. I won't even go into my performance in cage matches.