Backyard camping with Dad

SO MY dad took a couple of days off, allowing me to "guest host" his column for him again, a task I rank right up there with scrubbing pond scum off a canoe. Gee, thanks. As my father himself would say: "Bartender!!!"

"You know, this thing just isn't intuitive at all," he huffs.

That's Gunga Dad now. He's in the den trying to rewind the DVD, so he can take it back to Blockbuster. I keep telling him that you don't need to rewind a DVD. In fact, you can't rewind a DVD even if you want to.

"You can't?" he asks.

"No, Dad."

"And they call that progress?"

Yep, it's like hanging out with Einstein. I'm out of college now -- boyfriend, apartment, a job -- and I still have to help my parents with all their new technology. Their wireless Internet. Their software upgrades. My dad, I think he's better with the old technology. Like donkey carts and crossbows.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," he says when I'm done programming his new camera.

"Me either," I say.

"You know, it almost makes it worth it," he says.

"Worth what?" my mom asks.

"Worth having kids," he says, then goes back to the TV to scream at Leonard Maltin.

My dad likes to scream at Leonard Maltin. ("That knucklehead Leonard Maltin," he calls him.) I don't know how he can get so wound up over one chinless movie reviewer, but that's just him. My dad, he fights 100 small battles a day, one by one by one.

No kidding, he has spent most of this month yelling at Leonard Maltin and making strawberry smoothies with my little brother. He and my baby brother sit around drinking smoothies and talking about the stuff they see -- how much they hate Big Oil and how fun it used to be to tune a Chevy. They are like a couple of retirees, except one of them is barely 5 and the other is, like, 150.

"Know what I miss? Rotary phones," my dad says.

"Me too," says my baby brother.

"Rotary rules!" says my dad, and they high-five.

Next thing you know they are telling jokes to each other, seeing who can keep a straight face the longest. Dad tells everyone that our house used to be one of those Improv Comedy Traffic Schools, so there is residual humor everywhere, "especially in the master bedroom." He says our house is much like an Indian burial ground, except that the spirits all sound like David Brenner.

"Who's David Brenner?" asks my little sister.

"Just one of the funniest Brenners ever, that's all," says my dad.