My Kid Loves This Book And It Sucks

Sometimes Aiden feels like this book is repetitive and stupid and that is not ideal.

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My son is currently a toddler, which as a phase is about a 50/50 split between desperately wishing it was over and savoring every second with the bittersweet realization that it will one day end. He provides non-stop entertainment, dreaming up new and original phrases every day, and basically living next to the engine room of his own emotions. It’s inspiring and exhausting. You get to experience all the taken-for-granted wonders of the world through new eyes every day, but also it’s like babysitting your most wildcard, blackout drunk 20-year-old suitemate from college, if every couch he puked on or mailbox he destroyed was your sole personal responsibility.

“Put your shoes on. Can you please just put your shoes on? Do you want to go to the birthday party or not?”

One of the things I’ll miss the most, of course, is reading to him every night (and by “every night,” I mean the one out of every 12 nights he doesn’t howl for his mommy until she does it again, but you know what I mean). It’s fine, I get the fart jokes and wrestling, she gets anything involving comforting. Once in a blue moon I get to kiss a boo boo, and I cherish those moments. The other day he just walked up and slugged me in the nuts. I think he was just being friendly.

Anyway, there’s one book that he asks for all the time, and it sucks. Lots of his books suck, but this one has by far the most overlap between how much he asks for it and how bad it is. I’m not even sure where it came from, whether someone bought it for him, or whether it was a hand-me-down from his older brother, cousins, or mom. It’s called “Little Aiden: A Feelings Book for Toddlers.”

Here’s how the book goes: “Sometimes little Aiden feels… sad. And that’s okay. Sometimes Aiden feels… happy. And that’s okay.”

The book goes through a dozen or so emotions separately with zero deviation from this same basic pattern and then it ends. “Aiden feels all these emotions and they are all okay. Do you feel these emotions too?”

That’s it. That’s the whole book. Well, actually not quite, because then there’s a special author’s page with a picture of the “real” Aiden and a note from his parents, who are also the authors, about the things Aiden likes and the reasons why they decided to write the book.

I know, I should be thrilled that these folks wrote a book that my son begs us to read almost every night. Can we really blame them for clearly knowing their audience so well? I’m sorry, but yes, we can. And the author’s corner page seals it. Not only did they have to write a dull, repetitive book that makes parents groan internally every time they have to read it, they inserted a little Inside The Actor’s Studio corner, where they take a victory lap and raise the curtain on all the fascinating reasons they chose to write it. AS IF THAT WASN’T ALREADY CRUSHINGLY OBVIOUS.

In the past I’ve referenced the story about getting in trouble at my old job for giving Inside Out a mixed-negative review (I stand by it! I had no idea I was “ruining” the 100% RottenTomatoes rating!), so I understand that I may be risking “Guy who hates stories about children’s feelings” becoming my brand here. But I swear, it’s not the feelings part. Many, if not most children’s books begin from the premise of some key values the storyteller wishes to impart. Explaining to the very young that having emotions is normal seems a worthwhile enough goal.

Fine. But can we show just a crumb of a guile in the process? It seems a lot better when a children’s book incorporates its message into a fun story rather than just restates the theme over and over in rote recitation until it ends. Isn’t that the part that inspires creativity, imagination, and empathy for characters in at least slightly different situations than a toddler experiences every day? A lot of the other books my kid loves do just that — The Pout Pout Fish, the old stand by Where The Wild Things Are — and they do it with language that’s a lot less boring to read and pictures that aren’t so dull to look at. This is just a basic lecture with pictures!

The pictures in Little Aiden are really the only even slightly evocative part, and the other night I finally took a closer look at the cover, which I’d mostly skipped over in readings past. “Written by Albert and Anna Choi. Illustrated by Bettina Braskó.”

Yep, unlike Maurice Sendak, they didn’t even draw the pictures. They just wrote the scintillating dialogue, in lines like “sometimes Aiden feels silly, and that’s okay.”

This is what you’re taking a victory lap over?? Fuck outta here.

Homeless Bill Bellichick Briefly Escapes Den, Grumbles, Then Returns

In other book news, the takes-o-sphere is all abuzz with Bill Bellichick’s “horror” interview with Tony Dokoupil from CBS Mornings. Considering the venue, and the sentient haircut asking the questions, it was surely intented as a fluff interview to promote Bellichick’s new book (which I’m sure he totally wrote all by himself!), The Art of Winning: Lessons from My Life in Football.

Unfortunately (fortunately?) for Bellichick, he’s also a 73-year-old dating a 24-year-old former cheerleader and soon-to-be beauty pageant contestant named Jordon Hudson. Naturally that’s all anyone wanted to talk about. Certainly more provocative than a vanity book about sprots. The clip that went viral showed Hudson shutting down a question about how the two met.

@yahoosportsBill Belichick's girlfriend Jordon Hudson shut down a question about how they met during an interview with CBS 👀 (via @CBS Mornings) #billbelichick #jordonhudson #tarheels #newenglandpatriots

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In fairness to her, everyone now knows the two supposedly met when they sat next to each other on a flight in 2021. TMZ claims it wasn’t the only moment of the interview that Hudson tried to control.

We're told outside of that baffling moment that made the final edit, there were numerous other instances of Hudson butting in -- even when the legendary coach was answering questions about football, she would stop and correct him.

Our sources say Belichick only arrived at the interview with Hudson -- no one from his publishing company, the University of North Carolina, or any other rep was with him ... which was a bit of a head-scratcher to CBS producers on set.

The story is everywhere now, with every clickmill on the planet now rushing out their own recap, usually with emphasis on painting Hudson as some kind of Svengali Lolitazilla.

More interesting to me was the shirt Bellichick was wearing:

Bellichick has long been known for wearing sweatshirts with the sleeves cut off just below the elbow on the sidelines, and now it seems he’s doubling down on his persona with a shirt it looks like he dug out of the trash can. Has he become self-aware, Adam Sandler-style, and now he’s leaning into the persona? There’s no way he wore it by accident.

It makes sense as a strategy, but Bellichick being that self-aware and versed in memes seems at odds with everything else we know about him. And with… well, him being 73 years old. Should we assume that this was a branding strategy cooked up by Hudson? Considering she was also wearing a Navy sweatshirt (not the school Bellichick coaches at, by the way, which is UNC-Chapel Hill)… yeah, that seems like a safe bet.

I hope they enjoy the attention while it lasts, because if Alec and Hilaria Baldwin’s reality show on Max is any indication, these kinds of relationships get more boring the more you pay attention to them.