Gawker
We recently launched a sneak attack against daddy-author Neal Pollack's adorable 4-year-old son, Elijah. Or more accurately, we launched a sneak attack against author Neal Pollack shamelessly exploiting Elijah for his own literary ambitions. Pollack responded. Fark weighed in. Facebook profiles were updated. Pollack expressed a realization: That his constant blogging of Elijah exposes the little tyke—or rather, the trite twee petite-bourgeoise portrayal of him—to public scorn. One might think this would prevent Pollack from sending little Elijah back into the baby mines. But then one would be wrong.
From Pollack's latest post on Epicurious:
went to the grocery store with my family today and wandered around in the haze of my most recent public identity crisis, dutifully loading the cart with apples, bananas, and whatever else Regina told me to get. My exchanges with Elijah were minimal. I swore that I wouldn't mine this trip for blog material. Enough already.We're having a realization of our own. Neal Pollack simply hates actually working.And then we reached the checkout line. Or at least my body did. My mind was somewhere far away, in a place full of waterfalls and self-pity. I heard Regina's voice echo in my skull.
"Neal," she said.
"Huh?"
"Look what your son is doing."
I turned around. Elijah was sitting in the shopping cart, smelling a pack of bacon, and going "mmmmmmmmm."
"Elijah," I said. "Why are you smelling the bacon?"
"Because it smells so good," he said.
He turned the package over.
"And the back of it smells even better," he said.
"Is he not supposed to be doing that?" I asked Regina.
"Well," she said, "it's a little weird, but I don't see how it's harmful."
So we let him smell the bacon until we had to put it on the conveyor belt. Later, at home, there was ham for dinner, at least for the boy. Regina and I knew that our dinner would be too spicy for him.
Comments
D'oh! This douche just can't help himself. The kid was smelling bacon...could he think of something less exciting to blog about with regards to your kid? My cat sniffs his own ass.
Smell the bacon? I say, "Smell the glove."
I smell bacon packages too. I just don't write about it. Well ... until now --urk! Ack! Damn.
I'm sorry, did he just write something about his kid smelling bacon?
please, neal. no dispatches from potty training, k?
Attention Gawker Media:
Before he leaves, there's still time to launch BALK: The Fragrance.
Honey Maple Glazed or Hickory Smoked?
@LolCait:
Indeed he did.
However, the greater sin is that it's positively BORING!
If he ever had a job in the business world, he would be destined for a life of middle management.
When I was a kid, we had to smell scrapple.
Doesn't he know that whole nonfiction writing old-school rule of not writing about people while they're alive?
He might want to think about it.
@Cesare_the_Somnambulist:
Can I haz cheezeburger smell, puleez?
@Koreanish: Or he could smother Elijah to death in mounds of fine-smellin' bacon. Birds, two. Stone, one.
Really, Elijah bringing home the bacon says it all right?
Huh. I would have figured Elijah as more of a pancetta kid.
My kid wants to wear a "zucchini" to the pool. Do I have what it takes to make it big in the blogs?
Neal, thank you! I am at deadline, and I was stumped. Now, I am going to turn in my gripping Charmin squeezing story to my editor. I smell Pulitzer, that's what I smell!
wait. why exactly was their dinner too spicy for "the boy"? (or, garcon if you prefer) did they buy some cajun spices i didn't catch? or was this a reference to pollack sex?
yours,
confused and eating bacon to help
I decided to remix this:
Our dinner was too spicy for Elijah.
So we let him smell the back of the bacon box, in his room, while we ate our spicy dinner. When we finished, he told us that the back of the box smelled better.
My exchanges with Elijah were minimal. I swore that I wouldn't mine this trip for blog material. Enough already, I heard Regina's voice echo in my skull.
Later, the boy could eat ham.
Wow. His writing makes Chris Crocker seem eloquent.
@Cesare_the_Somnambulist: Don't you mean beer-soaked or scotch-soaked?
@relunctantentity: ha ha brilliant
That would have been far more interesting had Elijah inhaling gasoline fumes while his father pumped and saying how nice it smelled. Interesting not because it's unique (so many kids do that) but the tailspin it would have sent his dad into.
Quick to the point/to the point no fakin'/cookin' MCs like a pound of (child-sniffed) bacon.
And yet Britney Spears is the one losing custody of her kids.
He won't talk to his kid in the grocery store for fear he might be tempted to mine the conversation for material?! I have dry heaves right now that all the bacon in the world won't help.
@relunctantentity: Regarding the minimal exchanges....WTF does that even mean? Since he got bitch-slapped about using his kid for material he can't even have exchanges with him?
Neal,
Dude. Stop USING your kid. But you should still talk (or 'exchange' with) to him. Jesus. You're a fucking idiot.
I'm smelling the back of Gawker's website now. mmmmmmmmmmm.
Everything smells better with bacon. It makes a great hand wipe, too.
"My mind was somewhere far away, in a place full of waterfalls and self-pity"
So... the catskills?
This kid will kill his dad when he comes of age, like bad, evil cheese.
All I got from this was "I am not going to talk to my child, because I cannot talk to him without blogging about it." That'll be, what #8 on the Elijah Pollack Therapy Top 10?
My kid farted this morning. Thought you all should know that.
My friend just came back from Barcelona and said she overheard some pretentious 4-6 year-old 'recommending' wines ('Ooh Daddy: how about a nice big bouncy burgundy?') to their father in the street. Cut from the same imported grocer's bag?
Do they live in a fucking grocery store?
The post goes on:
>> At some point, I looked up at Elijah. He was rubbing ham over his lips.
>>"Elijah," Regina said. "Don't do that. You just got out of the bath."
>>"But I want to smell like ham all night!" Elijah said.
Your dad REEKS of ham, Elijah. Like father, like son.
OMG..."I swore that I wouldn't mine this trip for blog material," writes Neal Pollack, while mining that trip for blog material.
Shall we all send Bacon Band-aids to Neal for the boo-boo on his ego?
And should a kid named Elijah be whiffing the unclean flesh?
I had a yogurt, an apple, oatmeal and a Pop-Tart for breakfast this morning, and I signed a 4-book deal with Knopf.
@SinisterRouge: Yeah, that's definitely one of the highlights. "If daddy can't write about you, daddy can't talk to you."
OK, I'm sure he didn't do that. It just . . . . really . . . kinda . . . sounds like he did.
I don't think that writing about your own children is by any means a terrible or unpardonable thing, but the Elijah Report is a bit of a strain.
it took me forever to respond to this because i fell into a coma from boredom.
Why hasn't anyone else thought about blobbing with their little miracles do? Somebody go tell the Park Slope mommies about this!
@cyanidecygnet: Eww, I know! I read this the same way. Spicy Pollack sex? DO NOT WANT!
whatever, when he starts sniffing bacon off of the boy's stomach, then I'll be impressed.
I let my kid eat raw bacon in the checkout line.
@Aatom:
doing lines of blowhard?
I was trying to think of something more banal than those last two sentences.
I couldn't do it. I'm stumped.
Sure, it starts with bacon, and then you're moving on to the harder stuff. Your loins, the occasional roast, maybe a giant prosciutto. Before you know it, your nose is buried deep in some pig's ass. All because your old man thought it'd be cute to blog about your harmless little cheese habit.
Well who's laughing now, dad? Huh, who's laughing now?!!1!1!
What can I say? I'm a veritable fountain of material.
Later, Elijah will open a package of gabba-ghoul, sniff it and proceed to have a panic attack that starts a whole, unfortunate sequence of events that ends, as all tragedies must, in a Journey song.
oh we're all just so jealous
You know Elijah tried sniffing a lot of other stuff before they got to bacon. "How about this, Daddy? It is funny enough when I sniff the bagged salad? How about these frozen waffles?" They didn't get to bacon until Elijah was sitting on the floor in the produce aisle sobbing and promising to be better at being amusingly quirky for Daddy's blog.
@ElijahPollack: Elijah, I'm sure you meant to say you're a veritable FONDUE of material.
Why has no one commented that raw bacon doesn't have a smell? I mean, it doesn't, right? I don't encounter a lot of raw meat because I'm too lazy/squeamish to cook it, but I don't think anyone's precocious enough to smell raw bacon through plastic.
@HappyHollister: That's when Daddy decided to teach me about wine.
Err, I meant @collegecallgirl: .
@sheistolerable: Elijah appears to be part golden retriever. Look at the photo.
Wait a second. How does he know which side is the front and which side is the back?