After baseball practice last Saturday, The Champ dispatched one of his woeful, heartrending manipulations, claiming that if we didn’t have lunch at McDonalds he might shrivel-up and die. Worse yet, he might whine all day. So I acquiesced, partly because I was too lazy to make him lunch at home and partly because McDonalds french fries make me feel all weird and tingly down where my bathing suit goes.

The rest of the story is so painfully predictable that it humiliates me to share it. Father buys son a Happy Meal. Son couldn’t give half a shit about the “food” because all he really wants is the toy. The toy is a ninja turtle with an orange headband. Son makes the connection that the new ninja turtle movie was released this weekend. Son begs father to take him to see the movie because, as we have previously established, the father folds like a three-legged card table every time the boy makes a request. Father takes son to the movie. McDonalds’ decision to direct its marketing toward children (who in turn influence their parents to spend money on them lest the children think they’re unloved) takes down another spineless dad.

As it turned out, I took both kids to the movie. Because of timing, we had to see it at The Theatre Where They Don’t Know What The Fuck They’re Doing. At the snack bar, where you can buy a large Diet Coke for about the same price you’d pay for a Buick, the pimple-pocked dipshit handed both kids an Icee cup. As I was rooting into my pocket to fish out a twenty, I heard the kids giggling and squishing around in something. I turned to see that they had unleashed a flash flood of red and blue slush – and exactly NONE of it was in their cups. After I wiped them down and helped them with their drinks, we moved on to the crown jewel of The Theatre Where They Don’t Know What The Fuck They’re Doing – the area where they tear your ticket stub AFTER you’ve gathered all of your snacks. To show them my staunch disagreement with this out-of-orderness, I put my all three of our tickets in my mouth (because my hands are loaded-up with popcorn and whatnot) and made the flunky, gothed-out ticket-taker chick retrieve them from my grill by herself.

When we finally get to our theatre and find seats we like, the movie begins. Four minutes into it, I call bullshit. There are four upright turtles, each named after a famous painter (e.g., Michelangelo, to whom the others refer as “Mike”). They’re all teenagers. They’re all mutants. And they’re all ninjas. Their sensei is a rat with a goatee. One rides a skateboard and talks like Jeff Spicoli. The whole thing feels like Animal Planet on acid. But the kids seemed to like it.

About 45 minutes into the movie, my daughter became tired of fighting with the theatre chair that kept trying to fold-up on her slight, short little girl frame. She crawled into my lap and her brother scooted over to the seat next to me. Five minutes later, I looked down and discovered that they were both asleep (which is not exactly a ringing endorsement for the film or the sugar saturation levels in the Icee).

Perhaps you can appreciate the feeling of torture and paralysis one might feel when one of his children is asleep in his lap and the other is asleep with his head against his shoulder and the only thing upon which to direct his attention is a stupid movie about talking turtles with opposable thumbs. Sometimes dads have to eat a little shit to make their kids happy, but this was a double-stuffed shit burrito with a side of shit and a shitshake. I vowed right then not to ever let the kids forget this. The next time they get frustrated and accuse me of being mean and not loving them and not treating them fairly, I will remind them about this moment. And then I will unleash a gnarly baloney sandwich burp and blow it in their faces.

A bit later, after two of the turtles had rumbled on the roof of a skyscraper, I looked down at my daughter. She was stretched out on my lap, her head slung to the side, snoring that soft, precious little snore that you can barely hear. I wondered how many more times I’ll be able to have this kind of closeness with her, how much longer I’ll be the daddy she runs to the door to hug and kiss when I get home from work. She barely fits in my lap anymore, and I know a day will come when she doesn’t want to be babied and she won’t feel like cuddling and my opportunities to hold her while she sleeps will disappear. So I just sat there, staring at her, feeling those feelings and trying to lock them away in some corner of my mind so I can recall them when she’s older. No emotion I have ever experienced can touch the way I feel when I hold my little girl.

I looked over at her brother, who was leaning against my right shoulder and drooling down my sleeve. Sometimes I forget that he’s only six year old. My mind takes me to places with him that it shouldn’t. When I see him hitting a baseball, I project my own boyhood dreams onto him, imagining that someday I’ll sit in a Major League ballpark and watch him play and excel and be carried off the field by his overjoyed teammates. But he doesn’t need my dreams; he’s developing his own. My job is to teach them how to get there – to train him how to cultivate his own happiness. On those sporadic moments of clarity when I’m able to wipe away some of my own biases and see the boy for who he really is, I see a spirit in him that makes me want to weep. I see the things any father would want to see in his son: enthusiasm, pride, desire, compassion. I see in him things I wish I could see in myself.

So perhaps an afternoon with the ninja turtles turned out to be worth something after all. It gave me a chance to look at my kids, literally and figuratively, and to remind myself of the goodness in my life.

Can’t wait for the sequel.

I’ll start by telling you I watched An Inconvenient Truth last night and it’s clear to me that we’re all going to die soon. Please adjust your schedule accordingly.

Given that the end is near, I’m paying close attention to the efficiency of my actions. I’m endeavoring to live a “green” life, streamlining things so I don’t want to waste time or energy on extraneous, inessential tasks like bathing or changing my socks everyday or paying my taxes. We don’t have much time left, and when the polar ice shelves melt and sea level rises 20 feet and my house becomes submerged under the Pacific Ocean, I don’t want to find myself dog-paddling for the surface and wishing I’d spent more of my time on this planet flossing.

Sadly, my wife does not share this sense of urgency. She’s still content to spend the time she has left on the most frivolous of tasks, summarily thumbing her nose at the looming Armageddon.

For example…

At our daughter’s birthday party, we must have snapped 500 pictures of the kids running and jumping and coughing on each other. Not long before it was time for our birthday girl to blow out her candles, the little battery-shaped icon on the camera started blinking. Probably only a few shots left, and I didn’t have extra batteries with me. I walked over to inform Hot Wife of the situation. Her response:

“Make sure you save enough juice to take a picture of the cake.”

“What?” I asked.

“I want a picture of the cake before we cut into it,” she said.

Not this again.

Throughout our 14-year relationship, Hot Wife has been insistent that we take photos of the food spreads at various important occasions. During our honeymoon in Jamaica, she demanded that I take a picture of the buffet. At our son’s bris, she made me take a picture of the cold cuts and rye bread. And I have been commanded to take a photograph of each birthday cake at every one of our children’s birthdays (that’s 11 pictures of cake) (11 pictures of inanimate slabs of frosting and red piping that says the same thing every single time).

So Sunday, despite the prospect of imminent death by global warming, she saw fit to have me take another stupid picture of food – pictures I feel confident to say will NEVER again be viewed. Because who’s really going to give a fuck what a $20 Costco sheetcake looked like when it’s 150 degrees outside and our nipples are melting?

“No way, dude,” I said to my wife. “I’m not taking a picture of the cake. I refuse.”

And you know what’s funny? When my darling wife looks at me with hate in her eyes and her arms crossed defiantly and that one-eyebrow-up thing that I interpret to mean I must comply or I’ll never again eat solid food, global warming doesn’t seem all that terrible.

So I took the fucking picture.

And here’s the REAL inconvenient truth: I forgot to use the flash and the picture didn’t come out and I’m writing this from the office of the proctologist who is attempting to remove Hot Wife’s boot from my ass.

They’re all screaming. Twenty-one kids, all of them barefoot, all of them too young and too short to ride anything cool at Disneyland, are screaming. The screams aren’t directed at anyone or anything in particular. They’re just the gleeful, adrenaline-fueled, eardrum-eviscerating squeals four-year-old girls emit when they’re excited. It’s probably how the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would sound if they all spontaneously combusted.

We’re subjecting ourselves to this symphony of screams because it’s The Artist Formerly Known As Barney’s Biggest Fan’s fourth birthday party, and in America we celebrate such occasions by watching our children completely lose their shit. And at the precise moment when it seems the kids might be running out of steam (and scream), we re-energize them with an enormous slice of sugary birthday cake with a two-inch-thick layer of butter cream frosting. “First kid to fall into a diabetic coma gets to have a sleep-over tonight!”

All of the kids want to punch me in the nuts. It’s not clear to me if this is because my junk is at eye level for most of them or if they simply don’t like me and wish to inflict pain on me. Either way, I’d prefer they not do it – because though they are small, they can see the target with stunning clarity and just the right amount of leverage to cross my eyeballs and send me to the floor in a blubbering mass.

On two occasions I have made catastrophic errors in coordinating important life events with important athletic events. I married Hot Wife in late October, right in the middle of the World Series, which contractually obligates me to miss an important game in the Series because I have to take her out and actually, like, talk to her and shit. I also agreed to conceive a daughter whose birthday falls right at the juicy part of March Madness. Not smart, Danny. Could be home watching the North Carolina/Georgetown game, but noooo.

There were a total of three men at the party: Billy the Greek, Brian the Ambulance Chaser and me. Billy brought a newspaper to read. Brian brought his Blackberry. I would have killed to have either one of those options, but I had to “engage” and “participate” and “play with” 21 screaming banshees.

Though my daughter appears to be having a great time, she has elected to supervise her friends instead of participating in the games. While all of her friends are jumping on a huge inflatable thingamajig, she stands there with her arms crossed, as though this is the kiddy pool and she is the lifeguard. She’s bossy. She directs traffic. If someone makes a misstep or an error in judgment, she admonishes them with her hands on her hips. I walk over and suggest that perhaps she’d have more fun if she just got in there and played with her friends.

“I can’t talk to you right now, daddy,” she says. “I’m keeping an eye on things.”

Every single present her friends give her is decorated with the three Disney princesses – Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. A princess gardening set. Princess pajamas. A pink princess purse with a stuffed poodle inside it.

My daughter has named the poodle “poodle.”

 

***BONUS NONSENSE: TRACEY’S MEME***

Seven songs I’m listening to nowadays. Per Her Majesty.

I’m The Man/Joe Jackson
“Skateboards: I’ve almost made them respectable
You see I can’t always get through to you
So I go for your son
Give me all your money
Cause I know you think I’m funny
Cant you hear me laughing?
Cant you see me smile?
I’m the man!”

Love Reign O’er Me/The Who
“On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool, cool rain.
The nights are hot and black as ink
I can’t sleep and I lay and I think
Oh god, I need a drink of cool, cool rain.”

Sea Legs/The Shins
“Girl, if you're a seascape
I'm a listing boat, for the thing carries every hope.
I invest in a single lie.
The choice is yours to be loved
Come away from an emptier boat.”

Sugar, We’re Going Down/Fall-Out Boy
"We're going down, down in an earlier round
And Sugar, we're going down swinging
I'll be your number one with a bullet
A loaded God complex, cock it and pull it"

Grand Designs/Rush
“So much poison in power, the principles get left out
So much mind on the matter, the spirit gets forgotten about
Like a righteous inspiration overlooked in haste
Like a teardrop in the ocean, a diamond in the waste
Some world-views are spacious
And some are merely space”

Moonlight Mile/The Rolling Stones
“The sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind
Just another mad, mad day on the road
I am just living to be lying by your side
But I’m just about a moonlight mile on down the road”

Testify/Rage Against The Machine
“Mister anchor assure me
That Baghdad is burning
Your voice it is so soothing
That cunning mantra of killing
I need you my witness
To dress this up so bloodless
To numb me and purge me now
Of thoughts of blaming you

We found your weakness
And it's right outside our door”

I’ve taken quite a shine to Indian food lately, but I still can’t get over the fact that most of it looks like vomit. There’s only so much chopped parsley and pieces of purple cabbage can camouflage, and it becomes clear when you scrape all of that aside that you have to examine and take a risk that what lies beneath is lentils in sauce and not the remnants of someone’s hard-partying Thursday night. As the old Dr. Demento song goes, “My God, that’s moose turd pie! It’s good though.”

I was enjoying a heaping plate of rice and green, spinachy throw-up with some friends this afternoon when the conversation turned to dreams. One friend said she’d had an amazing dream last night and hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Something about a field of flowers, a bare-chested construction worker and several bong hits.

She then asked us what we dream about.

I thought about it for a sec.

“All of my dreams are about nailing celebrities,” I said.

“Seriously?” she asked. “Which celebrities?”

“It varies by my mood,” I said. “If I’m feeling peppy and virile, it’s Jessica Biel or Kate Beckinsale or Ginger from Gilligan’s Island. If I’m pissed off I seem to dream about the rebellious, angry women, like Pat Benatar, Gina Glocksen or that hot brunette from the Dixie Chicks.”

“Pat Benatar?!”

“Don’t judge me.”

“What if you’re in a grumpy, depressed, woebegon mood like the one you always seem to be in at work?” she asked.

“Excellent question. You might find this very surprising – and possibly repulsive – but in times like those I find myself fantasizing about…women who are…less…young…than the others.”

“Such as?”

“I’d rather not say,” I said sheepishly.

“You don’t have a choice, Danny,” she said. “You can’t just tee it up like that and leave me hanging. I need names.”

“Barbara Bush.”

“Ewww-uh! Guh-rosse! Who else?”

“Carol Burnett. Mary Tyler Moore. Maude.”

“You are a fucking sicko, dude! Those women are old enough to be your grandmother! Check please!”

Her brow furrows and she turns red and she starts digging in her purse for her pepper spray. I start to laugh.

“What’s so fucking funny, freak? Didja just see a hot octogenarian or something?”

“Dude. Dude! I was joking. Relax.”

“Are you serious? You were joking? Honestly? Because if you weren’t I’m going to mace your ass.”

“Completely joking,” I said. “I never dream of anyone older than Soledad O’Brien.”

“Good,” she says, visibly relieved.

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” I say, “I’m going to get another plate of puke.”

I’ll open with a caveat.

My goal with this blog has never been to tear people down or judge their worth as a human being. I have always shied away from politics and class structure and other people’s religious beliefs because those issues are highly flammable. This song is not a rebel song. If you choose to worship an overripe cumquat or believe in your heart that the Bjork should be the next American President, you’re obviously an undermedicated freak but you're still welcome here.

That said, I think John Edwards is bleeding cocksore.

I think that because I just read the following sentence:

“Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said Thursday his wife's cancer has returned but his bid for the White House will continue.”

But wait! There’s more!

“Edwards said tests this week had shown his wife, Elizabeth, had cancer in a rib on her right side. He said the cancer is treatable but not curable.”

Perhaps I’m a little sensitive to this issue because a very close friend and a very close relative are currently brawling with cancer, but I find old Johnny’s decision-making here to be outrageous and sad. Her cancer is “treatable but not curable,” which I interpret to mean they can hold it off for only so long – with treatments that will probably make her quite ill – but it will ultimately kill her. (I'm not a doctor, but I play one when I'm really pissed off at someone I've never met.)

And heeeeere’s Johnny: “Honey, I’m sorry you’re going to be miserably sick and fearing for your own life and all, but…um…I’m a little too focused on Me right now to help, mkay? But while I’m working 24 hours a day for the next year, begging for votes and tearing apart my opponents’ dignity and reputations from sea to shining sea, I’ll still have my cell phone with me. So if the shit gets really bad, you call me and I’ll call you right back. OK. Well. Um, I have to catch a flight to Des Moine right now, but, um…GOOD LUCK! Hope you don’t, like, die or anything. But if you do, can I have your ring back? That thing could generate much money on eBay.”

(For what it's worth, I'm a registered democrat.)

Am I overreacting here? Possibly. Maybe her illness isn’t quite so life threatening. But does that even matter? I like to consider myself a pretty realistic person and I always believe people have good in their hearts, but you’ll have to forgive me for saying that a man who chooses to pursue his own glory instead being with his (terminally?) sick wife is a hollow, heartless asshole and certainly not the kind of person I want in the White House.

Think about it! Running for president must be one of the most stressful, consuming, full-speed-ahead pursuits imaginable. It seems to me that’s not an environment that could empower one to be a caring, supportive, compassionate husband to a woman who genuinely needs that right about now. The human – dare I say “presidential” – decision would have been to withdraw from the campaign. But that’s not the way Johnny thinks. Rather than even suspending his run for glory and power and lots of big bombs, he gathered the media this morning and told them, “Yeah, it’s not looking so good for Elizabeth right now, but you know what? Fuck it! Let’s go to Washington, boys!”

But here is how you know this cat is nothing but a hypocritical, gum-flapping politician: in November, Johnny Rotten released a book called...wait for it...a little longer..."Home."

Down with Johnny Rotten.

This morning, just after my son smelled what I was doing in the bathroom and exclaimed “Geez, daddy! Light a match!" I realized that sometimes the things we teach our children come back to kick us square in the balls.

I’ve written before about the persistent struggle I’ve had balancing the role of father with my desire to have goofy, irresponsible fun with my kids. I admit openly that the line between the two has at times become blurred, if not completely obliterated. But with increasing frequency, the little jokes and colloquialisms and attitudes I’ve handed down are repeated out in the real world, and I come out of it looking like I’m raising a pack of feral malcontents.

To wit:

When I taught my son to burp the alphabet after three swallows of Diet Coke, he repeated it. In his classroom. During circle time. His teacher sent him home with a note that said (paraphrasing here), “Your son is a disgusting pig. And he forgot Q.”

When I told him that our next Little League game is against the Rockies – a team of six- and seven-year-olds taller and stronger than me and built not for fun but for complete annihilation of anything in its path – I threw in a line about them killing us and selling our carcasses for parts. Or something like that. When we showed up for the game, he strode out to the field and asked his teammates if they were ready to die.

When I whispered to my daughter that I was going to drive us to the mall because “mommy drives like an old woman with cataracts,” she repeated the line to Hot Wife, who in turn advised me that my only lover for the next two weeks would be my own right hand.

What’s a dad to do? Why don’t these frickin' kids understand that sometimes the things I say are a secret? Why can’t I tell them to “keep it real” when I leave for work in the morning without them repeating that phrase to the teacher, the rabbi, the mailman, the grandparents and the day-laborers who come by to litter our porch with solicitations for landscapers and tax preparers and “discreet” Asian massage parlors?

Maybe the problem is that I see too much of myself in their behaviors and the obvious takeaway from it is loud and clear: I’m a freak. I’m not TRYING to escort them into freakdom, but that seems to be the side effect of living with me and swimming around in my genes. The Evanses have always been known for three human traits: weird toes, big noses and a general display of…you know…idiocy. One need not look any further than my sister for resounding evidence of the latter.

Advertising people work in the dark heart of humanity because we try to get people to buy things they might not need by convincing them our product is to their lives what Renee Zellwegger was to Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. It completes them. Without it, their lives aren’t even worth living. And everyone’s doing it so don’t you want to do it too, lest you be viewed by others as uncool and lame? So yes, we in the ad biz are all scumbags.

(Wanna buy a t-shirt? It will make you feel whole again. And if you don’t have one, it’s pretty obvious to the rest of us that you are a catastrophic failure as a human being, if not the devil himself. So you really have two options: buy the fucking t-shirt or guzzle a bottle of Drano and wait for the burn. Your call.)

The sordid world of advertising’s only real charm lies in the fact that it has a vocabulary all its own. The lexicon of this industry is replete with words no mortal human being would understand: comps and vectors and full bleeds, oh my! But beyond that, we get to make up new words on the fly and they stick because, shit, we get to decide what other people think. That's our job. But sometimes the words and phrases we invent are so patently absurd that there is no recourse but to roll our eyes and snort with laughter.

I was discussing a new print ad for one of our clients the other day with some colleagues. Once the messaging had been established – “If you don’t buy this video game, you’re a poor, pathetic mama’s boy who wouldn’t know fun if it stuck its hand down your throat and pulled out your spleen.” – we started to talk about the design of the ad. During the brainstorming, one of our designers said this:

“I think we need a box shot.”

“Yeah,” another one said. “A box shot. Definitely.”

I started to laugh. They mean a picture of the video game box. But that’s not how I hear it.

“What’s so funny, Danny?”

“You mean you don’t know?” I asked. “Honestly?”

“No, we don’t. Please enlighten us, o wise one.”

“To me, there is something pornographic about the term ‘box shot,’” I say. “Sounds dirty.”

Blank stares. Long pause.

I continue.

“You guys have obviously heard the term ‘money shot,’ have you not?”

The new intern speaks up, says she’s never heard that term. “What does that mean?” she asks.

“Well,” I say, “I’d tell you but we’re tip-toeing very close to the sexual harassment line. Let’s just say it’s a term used regularly in the porn industry.”

“Oh,” she says. She turns red.

“Wait a sec,” the designer says. “You’re saying ‘box’ means vagina, aren’t you? And so a ‘box shot’ would mean a picture of someone’s snatch?”

“Something like that,” I say. “I have a dirty mind.”

So guess what. Everybody is running around the office now saying “box shot” with chilling frequency, sometimes completely out of context. It’s a comfort for me to know that my sick little brain can have such a resoundingly positive effect on those around me.

Next week, I’ll see if I can get them to work the term “Dirty Sanchez” into their conversations.

He’s pulling me over. I cannot fucking believe this. He’s pulling me over.

I meander across two lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, park along the curb and kill the engine. I cannot believe this. He pulled me over.

The officer parks behind me, opens his door and slowly approaches my driver-side window. He has his hand on his gun and he walks gingerly, as though he thinks I’m going to jump out of my Honda and go all Scarface on his ass.

He’s wearing those humongous policeman sunglasses – the kind that make policemen look like they’re prepared to do some emergency welding at a moment’s notice.

He finally reaches my window and leans down to speak to me.

“Afternoon, sir,” he says.

“Hi,” I reply.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

“No idea.”

“When you were moving into the left-turn lane on First Street you clipped one of the large reflector bumps,” he says. “Those are there for a reason. They’re designed to keep you out of the turn lane until you get past them. Can I see your license, registration and proof of insurance, please?”

This can’t be happening. Traffic is at a virtual standstill, I’m late for my son’s Little League game (and I’m the COACH!), and I’m being questioned about running over a reflector bump?! It’s clear that Officer Poncharello here is about to finish his shift and needs to meet his quota of written tickets quicklike. There can be no other reason for this. Unless maybe he hates the Jews.

“Have you received a ticket lately, Mr. Evans?” Poncharello asks.

“No. Not since I was in my early twenties.”

He’s reviewing my papers. Because people who run over reflector bumps are usually hardened criminals who need very close scrutiny. I could be Al Qaeda for all Poncharello knows. This may even require a body cavity search.

“You in a hurry to get somewhere, Mr. Evans?”

“Actually, yes,” I say. “My son has a baseball game at five and I’m his coach.”

It’s 4:40.

“I’ll be right back,” he says. With that, he strolls back to his cruiser with my papers.

My default reaction is to be polite and cordial with police officers, in part because I don’t know their threshold for sass and am not interested in being hauled off to the clink to be ass-raped by a gang banger with diamond-studded teeth and an anger management issue. But as I watch through my rearview mirror and see Poncharello writing me a ticket, I begin to wonder if this is an appropriate time to unload some profanities. And perhaps a big, nasty snot rocket.

Poncharello returns.

“OK, Mr. Evans,” he says, handing me his little clipboard thing and a pen advertising an erectile dysfunction medication. “I’ve cited you for an illegal left turn. By signing the ticket you are NOT admitting guilt. You are simply acknowledging that you are aware of the ticket.”

I click the pen and begin to sign my name. As I do so, I mutter the following words under my breath: “This is such fucking bullshit.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Poncharello says.

“I said ‘THIS IS SUCH FUCKING BULLSHIT.’ As in, there are five gazillion cars on the road right now, many with illegal aliens in the trunk, traffic is not moving and yet you see fit to write me a ticket for a violation any reasonable person would deem extremely minor. Don’t you think letting me off with a warning would be sufficient here?”

“Well, Mr. Evans,” he says with an arrogant smirk, “you’re free to take that up with a judge if you’d like.”

“Fuck you and your stupid judge. You can both gargle my balls.”

“Mr. Evans, I suggest you watch your mouth.”

“And I suggest you go find yourself a real criminal, Officer Krupke. There must be some little old lady out there who’s changing lanes in her Ford Escort without signaling. That crazy bitch needs to be locked UNDER the jail. She’s a threat to public safety.”

We’re RIGHT there: right on the line between simple frustration and criminal mischief. I know this, and yet I’m still fired up. I hand his stupid ticket clipboard back to him. He tears off my goldenrod copy, hands it to back to me and says, “Have a nice evening, Mr. Evans. Be careful merging back into traffic.”

“Yes,” I say in a voice drenched in sarcasm. “You have a lovely evening, too. But can I ask you one more thing?”

He’s silent, which I interpret to mean yes.

“Why did you ask if I was in a hurry and then write me a ticket even though I answered in the affirmative? Were you taunting me?”

“Your affirmative answer confirmed that you had run over the traffic barrier in an effort to save time,” he says. “You proved my suspicion that you broke the law on purpose.”

I sit there staring at him with my mouth open. I’m stupefied. And I watch as Poncharello rolls away, presumably to nail someone for J-walking or playing his car radio too loudly.

As he drives away, I scream out to him: “I’ll see you in traffic court, Poncharello!”

I don’t think her heard me.

***DGM BONUS TRACK***

A DGM reader named Vic emailed me last week and asked if he could interview me for his own site.

I said yes.

Here is the interview.

1. People who write. Like. This.

2. The term “Zero Trans Fat.” Next time you see that term on a food label, look at the nutritional information on the back. The food-makers use that trans fat line to distract you from that fact that their product is drenched in saturated fat, sodium and sugar.

3. Fox Television’s blatant self-promotion and product placement. Can you move the ads please? I’m trying to watch the game.

4. People who refer to people as “people.” OK, people? Cut it out, people? Cut. It. Out.

5. Traffic. Who’s leg do you have to dry hump to get some viable public transportation in Southern California? Must it take me 45 minutes to go 12 miles every night of the week? And if I see one more driver going 25 miles an hour and stopping traffic because he’s more interested in his cell phone conversation than keeping me from blowing a gasket, I’m going to blow a gasket. But I suppose that was implied.

6. The nightly struggle of getting the kids into the bathtub. Guys, we do this every night. You take your clothes off, you get into the bath, you get washed and you get out. Do we really have to go through the whining and complaining and deal-making? Do I have to wrestle you to the ground and rip your Garanimals from your bodies? Fine. Be dirty. See if I care. But don’t come crying to me when the flies start to attack.

7. Browsers who are directed to this site based on Google searches for “pussy.” This is not a porn site. Unless you consider pictures of women in Hot Wife t-shirts pornography, in which case I think we need to talk. Actually? Scratch that. I don't walk to talk to you. You sicko.

8. Washed-up celebrities trying to sell stuff on infomercials. Honestly, is anyone really going to buy that combination smoothie-mixer/dog-walker just because Potsie from Happy Days thinks it’s cool?

9. The price of concert tickets. Who can afford $250 to see The Police at Dodger Stadium? Do you know how many Pop-Tarts I can buy with that money?

10. Perez Hilton. OK, dude. We get it. You like to draw pee and muff and boogers on pictures of celebrities. Very nice. Now go away.

11. The stupid on-set banter between local television anchors and weathermen. “So whaddya say, Fritz? Am I going to be able to get some golf weather tomorrow?” “Heh-heh. Well, Flip, I hope for the sake of the other golfers out there that we get a blizzard.” Kill me now, God.

12. Spam. It’s not even clever. I got this one today: “Cult questions scheduling generation equipment sell. Operation officer thank wirehaired work closer. Be left out join? Trouble charlies angels codes ago suddenly.” Whoever wrote that is a douchebag with really bad syntax. You guys should hire some real writers, for shit’s sake.

13. Famous people being criticized for adopting children from other countries. They need parents. Who gives a shit where they come from?

14. This country’s mind-boggling resistance to legalizing medical marijuana. There was a story in the LA Times this morning about a woman from Oakland who has 12 chronic illnesses, including an inoperable brain tumor. Pot’s the only thing that works for her, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says she can’t have any. Why? The judge who penned the opinion wrote: “The possibility exists that [the terminally ill woman] could make a miraculous recovery or find a legal alternative to pot, undermining any justification for such a shield.” I find that disgusting. When did we become a country who believes in denying people effective medicine just because other people use it improperly in an uncontrolled environment? By that logic, we should also ban glue, cold medicine, spray paint, spoons, lighters and paper in any form.

15. Horrible imitations of Borat. He’s not Italian. Not Russian either. And he's certainly not from Jersey.

16. Taking my shoes off at the airport security checkpoint. Come on, guys. Leave us a little dignity. Do you want me to lift up my balls too so you can see if I’m concealing an open water bottle in my taint?

17. McDonalds’ failed attempts to McPlacate people who eat healthily. What health nut in her right mind is going to choose McDonalds over a restaurant NOT known for making people fat? Why not just embrace the fact that your stores aren’t the place for health-conscious people to eat? Stop trying to be everything to everyone. Be what you are, which is a purveyor of well-packaged shit.

18. My son’s displays of frustration and disappointment. Chill, dude. Seriously. You need to simmer down before we sell you for parts. There’s going to be a lot of frustration in your life but you need not freak out like an orangutan with syphilis every time something doesn’t go your way. You didn’t see me blowing an O-ring when no one bought the new Dad Gone Mad t-shirts, did you? You did? Oh. Never mind then.

19. Anaheim Angels general manager Bill Stoneman. Said he was going to sign a big hitter to bat behind Vlad Guerrero. Didn’t do it. He’s a hack.

20. The presence of large corporations in every facet of our lives. Politics. The environment. Social change. The media. Drug costs. Get out of my fucking way.

21. The stigma attached to mental illness. If you have a problem in your heart or your gut or your mouth, no one says boo about getting medical care for it. But if it’s in your brain, just cheer up and tough it out.

22. The cost of health insurance. One third of my net income goes toward the family’s premiums. That’s obscene.

23. The death of investigative journalism. In his keynote speech at SXSW, Dan Rather said the American media need a spine transplant. Brilliant choice of words. Reporters need to stop exchanging cooperation for access. Stop trying to maintain friendships with your sources and start finding real news. This country needs it. Badly. The corporations who own the newspapers also own the TV stations and film studios, so it’s no wonder we read everyday about who Paris Hilton is fucking and who is the latest convert to Scientology. It’s good for business, right?

24. This weird competitiveness among bloggers. There seem to be cliques everywhere. It’s like high school, but without the locker fires and the guy cranking Twisted Sister in his Mustang. The big-timers only talk to the big-timers, and they never leave comments anywhere. The new and lower-traffic bloggers talk shit about the big-timers. It’s weird. Am I making this up? I feel like I should be failing calculus and not making the basketball team any second now.

I was in a car accident this afternoon.

I’m fine. Nothing a few beers and a clean pair of underwear can’t fix. The same cannot be said for my buddy’s Ford Focus, which demonstrated the legendary toughness and brut strength of American cars by folding-up like a lawn chair when it was rear-ended. Making matters even worse was that the offending SUV was driven by a woman teetering right on the edge between simple shortness and being a bona fide dwarf. When we got out of the car to examine the damage, she too exited her car and I was so stricken by her stature (or lack thereof) that I accidentally said, “Hi, Dopey. Where are Grumpy and Sneezy?”

I think we can all agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with being run into by a little person. If we have anything when we get hit it’s the opportunity to draw sympathy from people because of what we’ve been through. But when the violence is wrought by someone shorter than the average second-grader, we’re completely robbed of our power to be pathetic. “How bad could it have been?” they say. “You got hit by Elmo, for fuck’s sake!”

My last car accident was 20 years ago, when I was a junior in high school. I had used the money given to me as Bar Mitzvah presents to buy a goldish-beige Toyota Celica, which my sister aptly named “The Chicken Nugget.” It had an eight-track tape player and a cup-holder on the left side of the steering wheel. I loved The Nugget like a fat kid loves cake.

On my way home from high school one afternoon, I looked down to swap out my John Denver eight-track for the soundtrack to The Jazz Singer (the Neil Diamond version, not the Al Jolson version) (idiot), and when I looked up there was a car six inches from me. And I was moving.

Screeeeeeech! CRUNCH! I hit it. Right in the ass.

When I finally caught my wits and took stock of what had just happened, I saw that the car I had rear-ended was a pale green Dodge Dart – which I later found was the 1980s version of a Sherman tank. The Dart was completely unharmed, but The Nugget looked like it had fallen of a cliff and landed on its nose.

To make matters worse, the elderly driver of the Dart wasn’t moving. I felt certain that I had killed her.

I eventually summoned the gonads to step out of The Nugget and approach the Dart to confirm that she was dead. I can remember that short walk down Cochran Street like it was five minutes ago. As all of my classmates drove around the accident and eyeballed the wet stain in the front of my light blue chords, I leaned in and knocked on the window of the dead woman. On the second knock, she moved. “Hallelujah! She’s not dead! She probably just broke her neck and will never walk again. What a relief.”

The cops came and rerouted the traffic and made sure I was alright.

“I’m fine,” I said. “But I think the lady in the Dart is a paraplegic now.”

Since the accident occurred right in front of a strip mall, I retreated to an insurance office and asked if I could borrow their phone to call my mom. [Ed. Note: I was alive and old enough to drive before cell phones were invented. Does that make me old?] When she answered the phone, I began to cry. I blubbered as I spoke to her, incessantly doing that thing where you involuntarily inhale while crying and practically swallow your bottom lip. (That reflex is referenced below as “thfip,” since that’s what it sounds like.)

“Ummmm…thfip…thfip…um, mom?... I just… thfip…ran into… thfip…somebody. But she’s not dead. Thfip.”

“Well are you OK?” she asked.

“I think so…thfip…”

“Good. I’ll be right there.”

“Mom?” I asked. “Are you coming here to kill me for…thfip…destroying my car? Because… thfip…there are policemen here and…thfip…they might arrest you if they see you kill me.”

“Danny, I’m not mad at you and no one is going to kill you,” she said. “I’m just glad you’re OK.”

And then I shat my pants.

****T-SHIRT PIC OF THE DAY****
Stephanie representin' from Australia. She has given us her word that she is NOT the fifth Wiggle.

The night before Hot Wife and I left for Austin, we had some family over to celebrate our daughter's fourth birthday. We ate pizza and sang to her and watched her smear chocolate frosting all over her face.

After the festivities had died down and the kids had finally gotten into the tub, a few of us wandered over to the computer to look at some clips on YouTube. I wanted to show them a hilarious clip I'd seen of Borat on The Late Show. We watched it and giggled and marveled about how Sascha Baron Cohen is able to stay "in character" when any mortal soul would have died laughing.

Without our knowledge, my son had emerged from the bathtub and was standing over my right shoulder just as Borat mentions the third of his three favorite hobbies (after table tennis and disco dancing):

We only noticed The Champ was standing there when he began to laugh hysterically. At first I thought he couldn't possibly understand the statement. Perhaps he was just taking a cue from Letterman's audience.

Shortly thereafter, Hot Wife walked over.

"What's so funny?" she asked.

With perfect comedic timing, my son replied in his best Borat voice, "I like to take photograph of ladies when they make toilet."

I slept on the couch that night.

The first thing you notice is the dorks. They’re everywhere. It’s “Night of the Living Dorks.” Austin, TX in early March is for computer dorks what Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory was for short, orange-haired, song-happy survivors of the Vermicious Knid invasion. It’s heaven. It’s a sanctuary. It’s a great big dork sandwich.

This morning after this panel, I saw The King Of All I.T. Dorks – a six-foot-five, bespectacled nerd wrapped around a dork inside of a geek, topped with a big scoop of nimrod. He had long, greasy brown hair (possibly blonde if he ever elected to step away from the developers’ message board and bathe himself) in a mangled ponytail and an Adam’s apple the size of a minivan.

Yep, if you want to feel normal and stable and cool, come to SXSW – where no one showers, everyone chews with his mouth open, and sometimes you’re afraid to introduce yourself to new people because you fear they won’t understand any language other than HTML. “Hi, my name is . What’s you’re a h-ref equals link-to quote target slash a?”

It’s easy to feel frightened and overwhelmed by the inconceivable magnitude of dorkosity here. I’m sure these are all wonderful human beings beneath their mouth-breathing and unkempt neck hair and Flaming Hot Cheeto breath, but it took only a few hours for me to recognize that these weren’t the people I came to see. My people speak English. They use soap. And they can finish a meal without having to fish half of it out of their beard.

Prior to standing face to face with the fellow bloggers I came to meet and drink with and tease, I had no independent verification that they weren’t dorks, too. But I had reason and the circumstantial evidence to believe – based on their writing and the pictures I’ve seen – that they were somewhat less robotic and physically repulsive than the run-of-the-mill CSS junkie or Linux hack. Well, some of them anyway. (I’m looking at you, Storch) If you aren’t familiar either personally or cyberly with Kim, Marrit and Asha, you’re really cheating yourself. Not sure I’ve ever been so enamored with anyone so shortly after meeting them as I was these women, the holy trinity of warmth.

By now you’ve also read about the others I went to meet – the dweedle-dee and dweedle-dumb of “Diaper Diarists.” When I knocked on their hotel room door Friday afternoon, I heard a scream inside the room. When they opened the door to hug me, about two-thirds of Amy’s hair flew into my mouth and I had to pick it out before I could speak to her. And Tracey, for all the shit she’s had to deal with lately, is as cool and smart as they come. All you haters better recognize.

Our panel, which started at 10 am Sunday morning, was intended to articulate the ways in which parent bloggers can make money with their sites. In the Green Room before it started, we estimated the over/under on attendees for such a nonsensical topic was 10 people. I took the under, but I was pleased to see the number was well past 10. More like 35. I was just as shocked as they were to discover that the topic of monetizing a blog actually had some legs. Many people asked questions. The viability of corporate recruitment of parent bloggers for large-scale family sites was a prevalent topic. And I was able to work the words “fart” and “poop” into my diatribes, which is my way of saying I kept it real.

What really struck me about being with other parenting writers is the sense of unity we share almost automatically. Because only one of us relies upon blog income to sustain our lifestyles, we are able to avoid the trap of taking ourselves too seriously and believing that every entry we write about potty training or Elmo is powerful enough to change the world. Still, there are “issues” to confront when you invest so much of yourself in a pursuit like this. How can we take advantage of our hard work and good fortune without alienating our readers, who made us what we are, and our passion for the work? Is snagging a paying blog gig worth sacrificing the control of our own writing pace and content and self-satisfaction? There was even discussion about the exceptionally low number of dad sites (in comparison to moms’) and why that disparity exists.

A podcast of our panel will soon be available HERE.

A review of our panel on the Austin Chronicle’s SXSW blog is available HERE.

1. You know how they say everything’s bigger in Texas? They’re not kidding:

2. Just because Bush was governor here doesn’t mean everyone here likes him:

3. They have designated places to chill:

4. Sometimes really popular "Diaper Diarists" with weird east coast accents come here and write with their knees in their mouths and their hair covering their faces because other "Diaper Diarists" want to take pictures of genius in action:

5. Texans are very polite. They have to be. It’s the law:

6. You can see some really ironic things here, like two boys falling off of their skateboards right in front of the Department of Public Safety:

He says “Daddy? How come you have to go to Texas?”

“Because there are some people there who want me to talk to them,” I say.

“What do they want you to talk to them about?”

“Well, you know that web site I write? Some people call that a [*finger quotes*] blog [*/finger quotes] and they want me to tell them if they can make money with their own blogs.”

“What was that?” he asks. “What was that thing you just did with your hands?”

“This?” I ask, flashing the finger quotes again. “You don’t know what this is?”

As the question leaves my mouth, it dawns on me that I’ve never taught my own son what finger quotes are for. It’s the most widely utilized finger gesture since the invention of “the bird” or that one where you make a circle with your left thumb and index finger and then penetrate the hole with your right index finger, and my son is oblivious to it. Shame on me.

There is so much to know about finger quotes. It’s more than just the visual; it’s the voice inflection and the body language and the self-discipline it requires. Dumbing the whole thing down into basics a six-year-old can digest is among the most difficult experiences I’ve had as a father, second only to watching some blind spaz (also known as a “mohel”) slaughter my boy’s foreskin on the eighth day of his life. Fortunately, finger quotes involve no sharp objects and he can keep his pants on the whole time we discuss it.

I tell my son that if he harbors any desire to become a kiss-ass middle-manager who talks a lot but says nothing of value or substance when he grows-up, just like daddy, he will need to master the finger quotes. He will also need to over-use the term “synergy” and invite his colleagues to take a discussion “off-line.” But those are lessons in mediocrity and ugly American showmanship we can have another day.

I admonish him that the potency of his finger quote usage will be determined by the way he does them. Lots of folks in the modern business environment become so maniacal about being able to use their hands for something other than wiping the boss’ shit off of their noses that they become cartoonish and spastic when they finger quote. Some over-use it. Some pulsate their fingers in the air four or five times to finger quote one word. Some accompany their finger quotes with wide eyes and a lean-in for extra emphasis.

“That’s all extraneous bullshit,” I tell him. “One pulsation. No extra body movements. And don’t overdo it. Act like you’ve been there before.”

“OK, daddy,” he says, smiling. “I think I get it.”

“Good,” I say. “Do you want to practice a little bit?”

He stands up and adjusts his pose as if he was an Olympic figure skater waiting for the music to start. I can see him thinking of something to say. This is a good sign.

And then he says, “Daddy, when you go to [*finger quotes*] Texas [*/finger quotes] will you please bring me back a [*finger quotes*] souvenir?” [*/finger quotes]

“Of course,” I say, smiling at my little prodigy. “What kind of [*finger quotes*] souvenir [*/finger quotes] do you have in mind?”

“I dunno,” he says. “What do they [*finger quotes*] have [*/finger quotes] in Texas?”

“Well, they have lots of [*finger quotes*] cows [*/finger quotes] there. Would you like me to bring you a [*finger quotes*] cow?” [*/finger quotes]

His brow furrows. I think I pissed him off.

“No,” he says angrily. “Do you think I’m some kind of [*finger quotes*] idiot?” [*/finger quotes]

I’ve never been so proud. My little boy is becoming a man.

There is no delicate way to put this, so I’ll just throw it out there: my children have the most heinous and repulsive farts I've ever smelled. And because I grew up in a house where people took great joy in ripping a cheek flapper that sent the entire family scurrying for shelter and breathable oxygen, you can believe me when I say that if there were an Olympic medal for busting ass, my kids would give my dad a serious run for his money.

Truth be told, the kids’ lineage is replete with gifted scud-launchers. It’s in their DNA. My father, the patron saint of floorboard lifters, has been known to peel wallpaper with his colonic skills. My mother, who wishes to be portrayed as a dainty, well-mannered lady, is actually no such thing. I can remember one occasion after a taco dinner when I thought the house was going to cave in. And let’s not even talk about Wondersis. Actually, scratch that. Let’s talk about her. Let’s talk about how I swear to god I thought she had a dead body in her lower intestine when we were little because that’s the only thing that could possibly smell that bad.

Obviously, I’m a guy (that IS obvious isn’t it?) and guys love farts. Even in my lowest of lows, a strong ass blast makes me laugh out loud. I think I’ve written here before about my gift for delivering a “fruit cup,” during which the suspect cups his hand near his tush, farts into it, closes his hand around the gas, and then opens it under the nose of his victim. That skill alone has probably destroyed two-dozen friendships, but I’m OK with that because it’s so damn funny. When I was in college and eating a lot of Top Ramen, I used to wake up every morning with an enormous trouser cough and pronounce, “I love the smell of gas in the morning. It smells like…victory.”

But even a guy who loves and embraces and even plays with gas has a threshold where farts become unfunny – and for me that threshold is right about where my beautiful, lovely, precious daughter (who will turn four on Thursday) emits something that makes my eyes burn and my septum sting and glasses fog. “Jesus Christ! Where did that come from? Did you just eat the dog?”

As a father, you have to learn to live with a lot of things when they’re babies. Spit-up that looks and smells like heavy cream left in the sun since the Truman administration. Diapers full of brown substances of varying consistency, sometimes containing whole raisins or beans or pieces of crayon. Trying to wipe hardened pieces of poop from the various nooks and crannies in their butts and genitals, which is like trying to wipe melted butter off of an English muffin. But we somehow find a way to live with it because they’re babies and they don’t yet know how to control it and if it’s too gross we can always have our wives do it.

But now they’re older. They can walk and speak and feed themselves. And O, how the kids love to disgust me.

“Hey, dad! Check this one out…WOOOOONNNNNNNKKKKK! Eww! That one smells like Grape Nuts!”

At first I saw their propensity for flatulence as disrespect. But that’s a particularly “un-fun” way to look at things. I am their father and it’s my job to make learning fun and interesting. That’s why I have dubbed myself The Butt Whisperer and taken it upon myself to show the kids they’re not as talented as they think they are.

“Daddy, listen to this… WAAAAAAAAAABAWABBAWABA!” [Laughter ensues]

“Pfft,” I say. “You call that a fart? It sounded like a newborn kitty making his first meow sound. Now THIS…THIS is a fart…”

At which point I lift my left leg off the ground slightly and unload the entirety of my innards in three-part harmony, just like Peter, Paul and Mary used to:

FLERRRRRRWABBAWERRRRRRRRTHUWAAAAAAAAAP! FLERWAP! FLIGGITYWABBA!

It’s important for kids to know where they stand with their parents. And I think I’ve made it abundantly clear that I am their superior, their teacher and the standard by which their success should be measured. I’ve spent almost 37 years honing my craft and I’m certainly not going to let some six-year-old with no front teeth or some four-year-old hair-twirler come into MY HOUSE and try to one-up me.

This weekend was marked by a Jewish holiday called Purim, which can best be described as a hybrid of Halloween, Mardi Gras and the Renaissance Faire. I have personally lobbied to the great and inappropriately hairy rabbis in Jerusalem to have the name of the holiday changed to The Day When Jews Completely Lose Their Shit.

At our synagogue, Purim was commemorated yesterday with a big picnicky, fair-type thing at a park. There were game booths and face-painting stations set up for the kids and lots of unhealthy, borderline-unkosher food for the adults. My responsibility was to set up soccer, volleyball and baseball games for all in attendance.

After lunch I walked over to a large swath of browning grass and saw two boys I’ve never seen before playing baseball with a Wiffle ball. They looked about nine years old. I chatted with them, introduced myself and asked if they wanted me to pitch to them. They excitedly said yes, and we all had a great time. For about four minutes.

Up walks a kid with curly black hair and a smug little smirk on his face like he’d just come from peeing in the lemonade. He walks up to where I’m standing and declares, “I’m pitching.”

“Uh, no you’re not, dude,” I say. “You can go wait your turn like everyone else.”

“Nah,” he says, trying to position his body between mine and home plate. “Watch out.”

He has picked up a purple softball. As he brings his arm back to pitch it, I snatch it out of his hand. He turns and stares me down. His glare indicates complete obliviousness that a) I’m twice his height, b) I’m more than three times his age, c) I have paper cuts older than he is, and d) I took karate lessons for two weeks when I was 10 because all the kids at school were picking on me, which you may interpret to mean I have the martial arts chops to severely injure any ladybug or cricket that tries to fuck with me.

“What’s your name, kid?” I ask.

“What’s YOUR name,” he snaps.

“My name is Go Sit The Fuck Down Before I Rip Your Head Off And Shit Down Your Neck.”

“Psht!” he says, slapping at the air with his hand. “Whatever, man.”

“Whateverman. That’s an interesting name,” I say. “Is that the name they gave you in juvee?”

Defeated for the time being, he walks away. As he shuffles toward home plate, I decide I will blog about him and refer to him as Satan Goldberg. (Jewish yet evil.)

When Satan get to the plate, he rips the black plastic bat from the hands of another boy, bumps the boy out of the way with his hip and yells, “I’m up! Bring it!” He then taps the plate with the bat in an attempt to intimidate me. The responsible parent in me wants to redirect the boy and help him think of better ways to communicate with his elders. But I then realize that this little fucker is not my child, which therefore absolves me from any parenting obligations. So I let him hit.

In stark contrast to the lobs I was throwing to the other boys, I decide little Satan Goldberg needs to taste some heat. I rear back and fire, and the ball zips right under his chin. If his mouth had been open, his bottom jaw would now be on the back of his head.

“What’s the matter, whateverman?” I say. “You can’t hit the high fastball?”

“Throw that pitch again and I’ll hit it right up your ass,” Satan says.

“What?” I say, furrowing my brow and walking towards him. “Did you just threaten me?”

“It’s not a threat, old man. It’s a promise.”

OK, whoa. WHOA! A 10-year-old just threatened me with bodily harm. A 10-year-old! I’m aware of the responsibility I have to protect this child’s safety, but a line has been crossed. I am now more than an adult; I’m a man. And what kind of man is going to stand by and let a 10-year-old threaten him? I’ve got chest hair that’s been gray longer than this brat has been alive. I’m pissed.

So I bean him. Right in the ear. Because I’m a man who knows karate.

Predictably, little Satan Goldberg gets to his feet and starts running at me. He has hate in his eyes. But he also has a fruit punch moustache and he’s still only 10, so when he gets to me I sweep him off his feet, carry him to a nasty metal trash can and drop him in head-first, right on top of someone’s discarded chicken bones.

And then I walk away.

Because I’m a man.

***FILE UNDER "THIS CAN ONLY END BADLY"***

Y'all know I'm speaking on a panel at SXSW next weekend, right? Well peep this:

A very generous blog-reader from Austin has made the catasrophically misguided decision to open her home to nearby readers of Dad Gone Mad, Amalah and Sweetney. She says she has hardwood floors from which puke can be easily wiped-up.

Here's how Amy, Tracey and I have defined the party amongst ourselves:

"Come one, come all! Join your three favorite moderately talented, socially retarded, anti-anxiety-med-drunk, freshly shorn, God-complexed, money grubbing hacks for a party at the house of SOMEONE THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW! It's the can't-miss event of the year for people who have nothing better to do."

Here are the details:

Saturday, March 10th
11 am - 2 pm
3303 Hemlock Ave, 78722 (between 38th 1/2 and Manor Rd, just east of UT)
512/220-8781 (in case you get lost)

If you're anywhere near Austin, Tay-hass this Saturday, you need to stop by and embrace the carnage. Come by and say hello. I'll be the one with no hair and no chin.

Hot Wife and I have carved-out some clearly delineated parenting roles and responsibilities. She’s the one who makes sure they brush their teeth and teaches them to chew with their mouths closed and chastises them if they don’t look both ways before crossing the street. I’m the one who lets them skip their bath if mom’s not home (*cough* last night *cough*) and teaches them how to slash at their opponent’s hands with a hockey stick and teaches them the slang terms for various parts of their bodies (*cough* the purple-headed trowser snake indiginous to the desert wastelands of Testicula *cough*).

(A quick shout out to the readers who will, as they have in the past, email to tell me I’m a moron because my kids need a father, not another buddy: I fart in your general direction.)

Naturally, Hot Wife is not terribly fond of some of the things I do with the kids. Primary among her beefs is that I take the kids to McDonalds from time to time. As I have mentioned before, she has a degree in nutrition, she exercises incessantly, and she likes to eat weird vegetablish things that taste to me like the bottom of a bare foot that just walked through a public restroom. Her body is a temple. My body is a drive-thru. And never the twain shall meet.

For the longest time, I’ve never thought twice about taking the kids out for some McLunch. It’s clearly not the most healthy or nutritious grub out there, and I’ve tried hard to block out what I read in Fast Food Nation. But this AMERICA, and in AMERICA each child is entitled to life, liberty and an occasional Mighty Kids Meal (formerly known simply as a Happy Meal, but McDonalds is nothing if not skilled in the art of making kids believe eating a piece of tapeworm-infested botulismburger makes them MIGHTY!). This is what American kids do. It’s a rite of passage. If you don’t like it, move your ass to China. And take your sprouts with you, freak.

But I have a confession to make. Fast food is starting to scare me.

When I was a child, fast food was about fun. The burgers came wrapped up like a little present. The Happy Meal toys were sharp and dangerous. And the playground equipment wasn’t coated in an inch-thick sheen of toe jam and throat yogurt.

Fast food is not about fun anymore; it’s about consuming as much McHorror as one’s body can endure without spontaneously exploding. It’s not about a nice, enjoyable meal and can I have your pickles if you’re not gonna eat ‘em and ohmygodthesefriesaresoawesome. It’s about strapping-on a feedbag and going for it.

I’ve read the stories about the skyrocketing number of kids who qualify as obese and the parents who claim it’s all McDonalds’ fault. For the longest time I yelled at those nitwits through the radio. “It’s not McDonald’s, lady! It’s you! Tell your kid to drop the Thin Mints and go play! Idiot!” I still feel that way, but it’s pretty easy to see those parents’ point of view when you order from a fast food menu nowadays:

“It’s a great day at Fast Food King. Would you like to try our new Triple Bypass Burger today?”

“Uh, hi. I’ll take combo number three, no cheese, and a Diet Coke.”

“Are you sure, sir? For just 30 cents more you can have The Triple Bypass Burger, which comes with three hamburger patties, three slices of headcheese, bacon, ham, sausage, tripe, caked pig blood, cow brains and it’s all topped off with a three-inch layer of pure lard. It’s really yummy.”

“No thanks. Just the number three.”

“OK. Would you like fries?”

“Yeah. Sure. Fries.”

“And what size drink would you like? We have small, medium, large, super-sized, diabetic-coma-sized, and the enormous size that doesn’t have a name but it’s big enough to make your bladder explode and flood your body with enough urine and turn your eyeballs yellow.”

“I’ll take a medium.”

“Thank you. Please drive around.”

So you pull around, hand the pimpled adolescent flunky with his hat on sideways a $10 bill and wait five minutes for him to take off his shoes so he can calculate your change. And though you assume you’ve ordered a modest lunch, you are handed a bag that ways more than your head.

Have you seen the size of the slop they dish out nowadays? A hamburger is now the size of a Miata and the bun doubles as a bomb shelter. It’s no longer adequate to give one leaf of lettuce; they give you the whole head. And what you thought was a medium is NOT medium. It’s enormous. It’s Lake Michigan and a straw.

But it’s convenient and it tastes good. So while we feign outrage and swear to God and Jesus and Wayne Gretzky that we’ll never eat that shit again, we know we will. We surrender our soles to the Reverend Ronald Henry Pius Alexander Joseph Aloisius McDonald. Can I get an amen?

And do you know what’s going to happen? By the time we’re all in our 60s, we’re going to be 800-pound, mouth-breathing slobs who develop excruciating body sores from the number of Flaming-Hot Cheetos that get stuck between our fat rolls without our knowledge. We’ll never be able to see our feet. And having sex will necessitate a crane, an elaborate pulley system and the blessing of a building code inspector.

Hey, honey? Where ya going with those sprouts?

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Check out Lena from The Cheeky Lotus.