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.

And off they go, talking about David Brenner.

You wouldn’t believe the stuff they get into. Last night, my dad dug out our old tent, the one he bought when he thought we all liked camping, which we didn’t. Turned out only he liked camping, which he discovered after he bought the humongous tent, which has been sitting in the garage since 1999, a nice town house for spiders.

“Know what’s fun?” he asks my little brother.

“Toilets!” says my brother.

“Camping,” says my dad.

So Dad sets up this tent in the backyard, on the sod he put in last year that’s sort of brown, sort of green. “My Augusta,” he calls it. Right, Dad. As if Augusta has pee spots from the dog.

Anyway, you should see him putting up a tent. It’s like the tent is attacking him. Or, he’s stuck in the stomach of a big green serpent and can’t get out. If you know my dad, he’s capable of being eaten by any random thing.

“Help! Help!” he jokes.

“You can do it, Dad!” yells my brother, who is laughing so hard he almost vomits. “Come on, Dad!”

By the time my dad is done, he has used duct tape, bungee cords and three kinds of fast-drying glue. And that’s just on himself. On the tent, there’s even more. Then he stands back and admires his work, the Disney Hall of tents.

“Well, she’s leanin’ a little,” he admits.

“No big deal,” says my brother, shrugging.

“OK, let’s eat,” says my dad, and they make a bunch of s’mores for, like, the entire neighborhood.

Dad says he’s going to eventually open a restaurant that serves nothing but s’mores. Traditional s’mores. S’more wedding cakes. S’more pie.

He says he’s going to be the Bubba Gump of s’mores, my dad. S’more coffee. S’more pancake mix. Double-s’more chocolate milk.

“Like me, it’ll be cheap but delicious,” he says.

“I get the cheap part, Dad,” I say.

“Eventually, my fingers will be permanently s’mored together,” he warns. “Like a duck.”

“Why?”

“That’s the price of success,” he says. “You’ve just got to want it s’more than the next guy.”

OK, that’s it. Bartender!

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Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes .com. For more columns, see latimes.com/erskine.