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“How long would you microwave this for?” my son asks, holding a bowl of refried beans and chopped chicken.

“I’d start out with a minute,” I say.

“A minute?!”

“Yeah. Is that too much?”

“It’s too little.”

“Well, I’d rather start out by undercooking the food a little bit because I can always cook it some more, whereas once I’ve fried it into a flaming gob, I don’t have any recourse.”

“You’re weak,” he says.

“Okay, do it your way, Volcano Joe.”

My son has a math test today. He was up till 3 a.m. studying for it.

In my experience, a positive mindset is essential to successful test-taking, so on the drive to school, I give him a piece of advice.

“Walk into the classroom,” I say, “look at the teacher and lay down a challenge, like ‘Let’s do it.’”

“It’s not her test,” the boy says.

“What does that mean?”

“It means every class takes the same test — Schneider, D’Antonio . . .”

“THAT DOESN’T MATTER,” I say. “The important thing is to lay down the challenge. ‘Stop bitin’ on my styles.’ Granted, that one doesn’t make any sense, but it gives you the positive mental framework that you need for mathematical success.”

My son’s half-Asian — his mom is Thai — and he feels like he’s missing out on an important Asian tradition.

“On Chinese New Year,” he says, “Chinese kids get wads of cash. Koreans have a holiday where kids go to relatives’ houses, bow to people and get wads of cash.”

He mentions a Korean friend of his who raked in 180 bucks the last time this holiday rolled around.

“Why isn’t there a Thai holiday where kids bow to people and get wads of cash?” he asks.

“Isn’t that how pretty much every day goes for you?” I ask. “Without the bowing, I mean. Handing you wads of cash though — that part is in full effect.”

As my son comes downstairs for dinner, he says, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune –”

I finish it with him: “– must be in want of a wife.”

“We spent 45 minutes in class today analyzing that one sentence,” he says.

“It’s a very famous sentence,” I say. “The next sentence will probably go faster.”

At Northwood High School, Honors Euro Lit is known by its acronym — HEL (pronounced hell) — and widely regarded as the hardest class at the school.

In order to get an A in the class for the first semester, my son needed a very high score — around a 98 — on the final exam, didn’t get it, and finished with a semester grade of 89.27 — a high B.

If he’d had at least an 89.5, the teacher would have rounded it up to an A. So out of 1,000+ possible points over the course of the semester, an 89.27 means you missed an A by only three or four points.

I’ve always encouraged the boy to be proactive with his teachers. Some people call this “sucking up” but I’ve been a teacher myself and I can tell you that teachers like students who are engaged and make an extra effort. When there’s a close call on a grade, those students may get the benefit of the doubt.

Being a public school teacher is unrewarding in many ways. You’re not going to get rich, for one thing. And you’re not going to be held in high esteem because the conventional wisdom is that public education in America is a disaster.

The only real attraction of the job is that every day you have an opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives. And even there, in most cases you will fail.

“Make sure the teachers know that you want to do well in their class,” I tell my kid. “Ask them what you need to do and they’ll tell you. They want to help you.”

After his final score was posted in HEL, he went in after school to talk to the teacher about his grade. They went over some previous assignments and exams, including a Macbeth exam where the teacher found a question that he felt he “didn’t teach very well.” He gave the boy four points back on the question, which gave him an 89.55 for the semester. That’s an A.

Father knows best, suckas! Academic success is not (just) about academics.

It poured rain all the way from San Jose to Los Angeles . . .

“It’s a good day for cows,” I say to my son, as we drive by a field of happy-looking bovines.

“It’s raining,” he points out.

“I don’t think cows mind a little rain. They get to eat lush, moist grass. Instead of dry grass. Do you like to eat a dry salad with no dressing? You don’t, right?” No answer. “I’m trying to think like a cow here.”

“My phone would go out right in the middle of a text message,” the boy says.

“That’s awful,” I say in mock sympathy.

“It is,” he says. “It was a thoughtful, heartfelt text message.”

“How thoughtful and heartfelt can a text message be? Aren’t you limited to 160 characters?”

“Not to Verizon numbers.”

“Oh. Well, that is disappointing then.”

We’re driving past an agricultural area with nothing but four- to five-foot sticks in the ground as far as the eye can see.

“What are they growing here?” he asks.

“Sticks,” I say. “It’s a stick farm.”

When I pass trucks on the highway, I always signal before pulling back in front of them.

Most people treat truck drivers and their vehicles just as obstacles to be bypassed. I treat them as real people with real feelings.

I think it makes life better for everyone . . .

Last night in the hotel room, I was lying on one of the beds reading and my son was sitting on the other bed doing something on my computer. At one point, in my peripheral vision, I thought I saw him waving at the screen.

“Were you just waving at the computer?” I asked him.

“I was testing your webcam,” he said.

“Oh. Does it work?”

“Yeah.”

Semifinal

This one was like a replay of the third round-robin game.

Final Score: West Coast Warriors 2, Devil Dogs 0

“They couldn’t buy a goal,” one of the moms said.

“Are you allowed to buy goals?” I asked.

“We need to make a new rule for that,” she said.

The Warriors went on to lose 5-1 to NorCal Riot Black in the 16U final. That score surprised me, since NorCal couldn’t score on the Devil Dogs and the Devil Dogs couldn’t score on West Coast.

I’ve got to find out if any parents stayed to watch the final. How did NorCal get 5 goals on the West Coast boys? Whatever they did, the Devil Dogs should start doing it . . .

Originally uploaded by lippo

At hockey tournaments, especially travel tournaments, there’s a lot of down time between games. I usually bring a book to the rink so I have something to do. Nobody else does this. Nobody. In hockey circles, I’m known as the guy who brings books to the rink.

This weekend, we’re at a tournament in San Jose. One of the dads from our team — I think he’s a copier salesman — says to me, “I can’t understand why anyone reads fiction.”

He says it, not in a rude way, but not in a complimentary way either.

I say, “Oh. Well, I can’t understand why anyone lives his whole life inside his own head and never gets curious about what life looks like to other people.”

So I probably won’t have to talk to him the rest of the season.

Later the same day, this guy knocks back a couple of double Scotches at a team dinner and proceeds to make gay sex jokes — loudly — the rest of the evening.

Please forgive me…but sometimes I get very emotional…when I talk about my son…. My heart…fills with so…much…joy…when I realize…that this young man…is going to be able…to help so many people…. He will transcend this game…and bring to the world…a humanitarianism…which has never been known before. The world will be a better place to live in…by virtue of his existence…and his presence…. I acknowledge only a small part in that…in that I know that I was personally selected by God himself…to nurture this young man…and bring him to the point where he can make his contribution to humanity…. This is my treasure…. Please accept it…and use it wisely…. Thank you.

— Earl Woods, 1996

I’ve learned to trust the subconscious. My instincts have never lied to me.

That’s why I know I can handle all this, no matter how big it gets. I grew up in the media’s eye, but I was taught never to lose sight of where I came from. Athletes aren’t as gentlemanly as they used to be. I don’t like that change. I like the idea of being a role model. It’s an honor. People took the time to help me as a kid, and they impacted my life. I want to do the same for kids.

— Tiger Woods, 1996

A young lady named Hope Xu — from University High right here in Irvine — scored a perfect 2400 on this year’s SAT exam.

I’ve advised my 16-year-old son that henceforth, when he’s faced with a tough decision in life, he should ask himself the question “What would Hope Xu do?”

I know one thing she wouldn’t do and that is to run into her dad’s bedroom at 11 p.m. and start doing flying front kicks when he’s trying to sleep.

“Why are you doing that?” I ask him.

“I just drank a Red Bull,” he says, then dances back out the door singing a song I don’t recognize . . .

Worked some physics problems with my boy last night . . . the subject at hand was torque, which his textbook expresses in units of mN.

“Back in my day, we used to measure torque in foot-pounds,” I said. “What’s mN? Millinewtons?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess so.”

“OK, we’re off to a great start!”

I say to my son, “Now there’s a Firefox plugin so you can dislike stuff on Facebook. I disliked three things already.”

“Cool,” he says, walking out of the room. “I gotta get that right now.”

He comes back in with his laptop. “First I’ve got to download Firefox,” he says.

“You’re downloading Firefox just so you can dislike stuff on Facebook?”

“That’s right.”

• To know what one really wants is not comparatively easy but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. – Erich Fromm #
• RT @Aimee_B_Loved: Now that I have a job, I'm gonna make it DRIZZLE! *throws a stack of ones in the air*…can I please have those back now? #
• RT @capricecrane: Sean Penn's son was arrested at school for drugs. Chavez & Castro are reaching out to the principal for leniency. #

My owner bought me a new kind of dog food called Wolf King. A wolf king is like an alpha pug.

“The bag says it’s for large-breed dogs,” his son said.

“Lightning is a large-breed dog,” my owner said.

“No he isn’t.”

“Except for his size, he is. He has the heart of a much larger animal.”

— Lightning

We were trying to figure out what time the boy needed to wake up to get to the PSAT test on time. The test is at 9 a.m., check-in starts at 8:40, it takes 10 minutes or so to drive to the school, and 30 minutes for him to get out of bed, have some breakfast and get ready to go, so I was thinking he’d need to get up at 8 a.m.

“WHAT?!” he shouted. “That’s too early! I’ll be the first person there!”

“OK,” I said, “what time do you think would be good?”

“8:05,” he said.

My son’s team won the tournament, my wife gave blood, and I bought 3 snickerdoodle cookies for $5 at the charity booth and ate them.

All in all, a triumphant day for the whole family . . .

High school roller hockey starts tonight. To prevent the use of ringers, each kid has to turn in an enlarged color copy of their school ID card.

I reminded my son about that requirement last night as he was doing homework in his room.

“Why don’t you go ahead and make the copy now while you’re thinking about it?” I said.

“I’m not thinking about it,” he said.

“You are thinking about it.”

“What am I thinking about?”

“Okay, do it your way,” I said, and left.

“What did you come in here for?” he called after me.

Hilarity is really going to ensue when he shows up for the game tonight and can’t play because he doesn’t have a copy of his ID card . . .

My son’s a junior in high school now . . . tonight he went to a school homecoming dance instead of watching the USC-Cal game with his dad.

Sing it with me:

The cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon . . .

This morning he went with his mom to buy a dress shirt and a tie. When they’d narrowed the choice down to two ties, he took a photo of them with his phone and sent them to the girl to see which one would go better with her dress . . .

Sometimes I’ll say something to my son, who’s 16 now, ask him a question . . . I know he’s heard me but he doesn’t answer. So I wait or I ask him again, and when I do get an answer, I can’t understand it because he’s mumbling.

Someone was telling me that she works with a boy whose mother shot all of his siblings. Why didn’t she shoot him too, you ask? I don’t know — out of ammo?

To be sure, killing your own children is taking things too far, but I’ll bet you that boy answers up promptly when his mom says something to him . . .