The Boy

When Stryker was 8 years old going on forty, he decided to be Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes for Halloween. To wit, he put on a striped t-shirt, slicked back his hair with a few strategic upward shots, and memorized the lines he would enthusiastically offer at every single unsuspecting door.

Friends, imagine this. The sweet decaying sixty-year old neighbor answers the RING of the bell, all nostalgia and sentiment. There's a bright young boy on her doorstep who appears dressed as, well, just a boy. So this old woman - and actually, everybody else because why aren't you in a costume, kiddo? -- says: "And who are you?"

You've said those words yourself! She knows it.

And this is what you get.

"I'm yet another resource consuming kid on an over-populated planet raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you are old and weak."

Then he hands out a copy of the Calvin and Hobbes strip and makes speedy retreat with his booty. Reactions at the door varied. The Matron apologized more than once.

He was 8.

Today, the Matron staggered in with her actor child at 10 pm to discover that Stryker has created a blog. His plans? Oh, just about par with the Matron's for her own fine self, all that skinny jeans, wealth and fame.

His angle? This is a child weary of Waldorf and Montessori, of the parents with rules regarding media or fear of instant messaging, text-rolfing or whatever. He wants to be fully wired, even as his mother shows him increasingly frantic yoga poses and strategically places oil paint and clay in his eye shot.

He IS Technology and the 21st Century and is striving to make a buck, at barely 12. His blog will review and discuss media--movies, games, books, televison--aimed at the younger set and his underlying philosophical concerns are twofold: get as MANY ads (and therefore make as much money) as possible on his blog and debunk the outdated parental concept that children should not be completely saturated with media.

She will post the link soon, the second the masterpiece is completed. What's up so far is half adorable and alarming.

And Stryker also informed the Matron that Barack Obama would totally be behind this plan. So she should be, too.