This nice, humanizing interview with Neal Pollack also proves: Neal Pollack has lost publishers a lot of money.

You might be wondering what Alternadad author Neal Pollack has been writing about lately. Oh, the same thing he's been writing about for years now—quotidian life with his five-year-old son, Elijah. (We've been on the campaign to make him stop.) Still? you might ask. Seriously? Yeah. But isn't Elijah going to hate him for this when he gets older? Yeah, probably! Latest essay: how he's trying to toughen up his son, who's a wuss like him.

Slate's family correspondent Emily Bazelon was relieved recently to learn that her 8-year-old son has no hits on Google. Not for lack of trying! She writes about her young son, Eli, occasionally, but obviously she doesn't want her child to be an Internet Persona, Fair Game for bloggers and commenters. But then, she's writing about him in Slate. And her husband's name, which is presumably her son's last name, is readily available on Wikipedia. She's dangerously close to crossing into the territory of the chronic familial oversharers whose crimes against their children she ponders in her essay. Like remember Neal Pollack? "His young son Elijah's bathroom habits are fair game for Pollack's blog, but his son's discovery of his sexuality, Pollack says, is not." Jesus, Neal, you just did it again. Dear internet: blogging about your children is child abuse.

Alternadad and struggling writer Neal Pollack (pictured, right) has, of course, his own "alternative online parenting publication" called Offsprung, and the site in turn has a chat section called "the Playground," and Pollack figures no one else should be allowed to ever use the word "playground" in the name of a parental discussion board. But that's exactly what Nerve.com founder Rufus Griscom (pictured, left) has gone and done, with his "Babble Playground," attached to his existing hipster parenting site Babble. And so the hipster parent flamewar is on. Cue the requisite nauseating, passive-aggressive bickering over which site is authentic and which site is derivative and tacky. To make things more fun, lawyers are involved.

"Yesterday's item reporting me taking Elijah to a Hives show in New York was flat-out wrong. I don't live in New York and wasn't in New York last week, with our without my son. There are dozens of eyewitnesses who can confirm this for positive. I'd really appreciate a correction. Thanks so much." So cut it out, guys! (To be sure, there were probably plenty of other Alternadads at the Hives show.)

The preponderance of outstanding evidence has finally and inexorably built up to the point that no reasonable person can avoid coming to the conclusion that "Alternadad" author Neal Pollack, who enjoys both chronicling and defending his decision to chronicle his young child, is just not much of a writer at all. Despite his background as a professional writer with the Chicago Reader, McSweeney's, Vanity Fair, GQ, and other respected outlets—as well as his ability to convince publishing houses to pay him money in order to write books—it is now impossible to deny the fact that Pollack is just not cut out for this whole writing thing. The scale-tipping work is his new Men's Journal profile of Woody Harrelson, in which the sheer lack of insight, or even cleverly redeeming turns of phrase, has us vowing never to read anything by this fucker again.

"At the Hives concert at Terminal 5... Thunder Music! Alternadad [author Neal Pollack] doing something approximating the Hully Gully through the most of the set; Alternakid looking embarrassed for him, which was kind of awesome. When I came back from getting empanadas, they were gone. Possibly because I kept turning around, pointing and mouthing "Alternadad!" at my companions."

The March issue of Men's Journal (not online yet; subscribe, why don't you?) features a cover story on Josh Brolin, the mustachioed leading man who is stalked by Javier Bardem in "No Country For Old Men." As if that wasn't exciting enough, the story is written by child-loving Josh Stein nemesis Neal Pollack! Pollack doesn't get a chance to talk about his kids in the piece, but he does throw in some mentions of Brolin's kids, like this telling, priceless anecdote: "We did this one trip to Scotland. Just me and my kids. We had absolutely no plan...We used to have a running joke where I'd yell, 'Where do you wanna sleep tonight?' and the kids would yell, 'We don't care!'" Hahahahaha! We mention this by way of pointing out that this is potentially the least insightful celebrity profile in any magazine so far in 2008. Brolin picks Pollack up, they get stuck in traffic, they drive to Palmdale, they eat tacos, they go home. This is a completely accurate summary. Judge for yourself by this post-taco excerpt, which is, without exaggeration, the crowning achievement of Pollack's story:

F/M/K: Neal Pollack, Neill Strauss, Neel Shah.

Our story so far: Neal Pollack's son Elijah and Josh Stein's son Mordecai have enrolled at N.Y.U., where they have begun learning about poor people. It is the year 2025.

I don't know about you but when I search Facebook for "Neal Pollack," I get two Neal Pollacks, neither of whom are the Neal Pollack that I want to find. (I'm looking for the Alternadad writer and blogger Neal Pollack who writes about his son so much!) But when I search from my friend's account, I get three Neal Pollacks, the last of whom is the Neal Pollack I want to find. How could we tell? Though we couldn't view his profile, we could view his friends. They include Timedouche columnist Joel Stein and his lovely wife, Cassandra Barry; Biblically-living author AJ Jacobs; Defamer editor Mark Lisanti; Gawker's once-upon-a-time editor Elizabeth Spiers; and Sloane Crosley, the indefatigable publicist. Come on, Neal! We want to poke you so hard!

Elijah and I decided to room together at the Dov Charney Washington Square Studiodrome, the new N.Y.U. dorm built where there used to be a park or something. No one understands me like him or him like me. Also, we get a discount on housing costs because the construction is crazy, which is a good thing since we need all the help we can get. My dad Josh and Uncle Neal say that since they became empty-nesters, the writing assignments have slowed to a trickle. And so I must contend with the clamor of jackhammers and the conversations of the rough-necked construction workers. Elijah counsels that one must needs be patient with the proletariat. Though they lack taste, he says, they do have souls. But frankly I find their patois poisonous. How am I to read Baudelaire's divine verse against a background of coarse and vulgar words?

It was a Tuesday morning and as I sat down to the computer, a mug of kombucha tea steaming at my elbow. I had made a breakfast ragout of autumnal vegetables (squash, pumpkin). The wife had taken our incredibly self-satisfied dog Leslie out for a walk and my four-year-old son Mordecai was in the other room, reading the Wall Street Journal "Puh-pah," he said, "when I'm in ur gardenz, prunin' teh plants, am I a hedge fund manager?" Smart kid!

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.

Understandably unhappy professional father Neal Pollack is understandably unhappy that yesterday we called his four-year old son Elijah the worst and predicted that in a few years he'll be a full-grown horror show. Why did we launch this "disgusting sneak attack," he asks, in an email blast to his "Friends, Colleagues, Supporters, and anyone else who might be interested."

When is it okay to hate a 4-year-old? Maybe when the kid's name is Elijah Pollack. Elijah is the son of Alternadad Neal Pollack, the author and oh-so-hip dad who has been remanded to blogging his existence away on Epicurious. This week, they visit a cheese store and, well, Elijah is the worst. Now we know both he and his portrayal are at the mercy of his daddy.He is essentially a formless mass that has been fashioned into what he is by his father. But if we were to come across a sculpture that resembled, for instance, a large penis, we would be remiss not to mention that fact simply because the statue was created by a sculptor and did not form itself. And if you think we are somehow being hyperbolic or unnecessarily cruel in being so harsh on little Elijah, let us show you.

"We're really into co-parenting," New York magazine "Breeding" columnist and author Amy Sohn said. "I mean, we only have a part-time nanny." The assembled crowd nodded sympathetically and shifted in their folding chairs, especially the children, who were beginning to get restless. They'd liked it better when Neal Pollack had been reading from his parenting memoir Alternadad a bit earlier. He'd used the word "shit" a lot, prompting a four-year-old girl in the second row to shoot me a way too knowing glance. Clearly, we were at the Brooklyn Book Festival.

In our item yesterday on writer Neal Pollack's idiotic ramblings on his child-rearing process, we forgot to refer to Mr. Pollack as "alternadouche." (We were distracted by someone in our office, quitting her jobs.) Boy do we regret the error.

Even though he's forsworn spawning again, Alternadad Neal Pollack is still milking all he can from his already existing offspring, Elijah. Baby's daddy has been blogging on Epicurious, Gourmet's site, about the curious and presumably whimsical culinary adventures of parenting, these include chronicling the very weird (and generically precocious) tastes of his 4-year-old.