These are the emotions that washed over me the day I turned 37.

1) Complete Flabbergastedness
I got to chill with Wondersis and her family yesterday, and at one point we started playing a game called “Raise Your Hand If You Like…” We ran through the basic litany of candy and chips and breakfast foods – which seemed to indicate universally positive agreement on anything containing sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and big-time calories from fat.

When it was my turn again, I said, “Raise your hand if you like Slurpees.” My kids raised their hands, but my nephew did not.

“You don’t like Slurpees, dude?” I asked him.

Wondersis answered for him, and this is what she said: “He’s never had a Slurpee. Never had Coke either.”

The horror! I felt strongly that I should call Child Protective Services, stat! I can understand wanting to raise healthy children and all of that bullshit, but to take away the boy’s inalienable right to Slurpification is beyond the pale. Shame on you, Wondersis. I thought I knew you.

2) Excitement
King of the Cubicle is gaining momentum and is poised to take a giant leap forward in credibility (meaning from zero to something slightly beyond zero). Some of my favorite people on the Web have agreed to contribute guest posts and will be submitting their hilarious prose in the coming days and weeks. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do (especially if you’ve ever worked in a corporate environment).

3) Nervousness
Everyone in my family – The Original Dad Gone Mad, my mom, Wondersis and moi – has a birthday in April. To celebrate, the entire family (spouses and children included) went to a big ol’ buffet brunch-type thing. They had oysters there. I’ve never eaten an oyster, so I figured I’d try one (despite the irrefutable fact that oysters look and feel like the manifestation of a stage five sinus infection). Wondersis is an expert oyster eater, so she hooked me up with a small one covered in cocktail sauce. When I chugged it, I was pleased to learn that oysters taste like horseradishy snot.

4) Buzzedness
My wife and sister found a recipe in some chick magazine for frozen lemonade slushies with coconut-flavored rum. I’m not typically a rum drinker, but holy shit was that a tasty cocktail. Before I knew it, I was stumbling and slurring my speech and singing happy birthday to myself.

5) Tension
If forced to pick one team from one sport for which to pledge my allegiance, I’d pick the Anaheim Ducks. Love hockey, love the team, hate the name with extreme malice. My Ducks are in the second round of the playoffs and had an important game against the Vancouver Canucks (pussies!) last night. When the Ducks are on, everything else in the world becomes an annoyance and an issue that must wait until the game is over (possibly longer if the Ducks lose).

“Daddy! Daddy! My hair is on fire and there’s purple Kool-Aid shooting out of my ass! Help!”

“Game’s on. Go tell mommy.”

I was extremely focused on the game last night. My fists were clinched and my eyebrows were furrowed and I practically jumped out of my own skin when the Ducks scored the game-winning goal. If they had lost, my birthday would have been ruined. And I might have cried.

6) Disturbed
While we were out and about Sunday, everybody I know called our answering machine and sang happy birthday into it. The gesture was phenomenal and appreciated, but it became abundantly clear that all of my friends and family sing like water buffalos in estrus. The only exceptions to that categorization were my two-year-old nephew and Fruit Cup Dave’s four-year-old son. To the rest of you I say this: next year, an e-mail will suffice. I’m an old man now and my frail eardrums can’t take that much abuse.

Birthdays have always felt a little inconsequential to me. Since my twenty-first, which was exactly 16 years ago this Sunday, my birthday seems to come and go with very little fanfare: a love letter from Hot Wife, some weird QVC whozeewhatsit from my folks, and a Rorschach drawing from the kids (“That’s you, daddy. Right there under the giraffe.”).

Until last night, I presumed this birthday would be the same rote routine. But that changed when I sat down to watch Celebrity Fit Club last night.

It was the first episode of the season, which meant they needed to introduce all of the celebrities and tell a bit about their weight problems. It was the usual cast of goofballs, has-beens and D-listers (I’m looking at you, Screech). Until they got to Maureen McCormack, better known as Marcia Brady from The Brady Bunch. They ran this little montage of her years in the spotlight, showed a few Brady Bunch clips, and then showed how she looks today.

Then they said she’s 50 years old.

Read that again. Marcia Brady is 50. Fiff. Tee. Five zero.

It hit me right between the eyes. With apologies to Suzanne Sommers and Farrah Fawcett, Maureen McCormack was the first woman (girl?) ever to make me feel that horny, pubescent tingle down where my bathing suit goes. I loved her. When Greg threw that football and drilled her in the nose, my heart broke. I wanted to comfort her and stroke her hair (and possibly try to touch her boob).

At some point in my mid teens, Maureen disappeared from the TV, and therefore from my consciousness. She never participated in any of the Brady Bunch reunion trainwrecks, presumably because she’s far too classy to try to capture what’s clearly gone. She’s above that bullshit. So she basically receded into the shadows, a la J.D. Salinger.

She reappeared last night wearing glasses and wrinkles and quite an unbecoming schmata. And she’s fucking 50! My first true love is part of the AARP, FiberCon, dinner-at-4-pm crowd. She’s practically a blue-haired octogenarian in a motorized cart.

And that makes me old by association.

I realized last night that I was watching The Brady Bunch with obsessive regularity when I was about nine or ten years old. That’s 27 years ago! Following that thread a smidge further, it occurs to me that many of my most significant coming-of-age milestones are now just tiny black specks in the rearview mirror. My Bar Mitzvah was 24 years ago. I got my driver’s license and my first published byline in 1988 – 21 years ago. And although I will not reveal when, after strenuous campaigning, I finally lost my virginity, suffice it to say that I’ve been bona fide for roughly two decades.

The bottom line is this: I’m on the precipice of fuddy-duddyhood. Birthdays are no longer inconsequential because who knows how much longer I’ll be able to chew birthday cake (as opposed to drinking it through a straw). And while my spirit and maturity level are still in Huggies, my body is withering away to a skeletal, rigor mortised carcass with vultures pecking away at my pecs.

All I want for my birthday this year is the lucidity to remember it next year.

Now pass the prune juice.

By some stroke of momentary, commerce-driven insanity, we bought our son a pair of shoes with wheels on the bottom. I believe they’re called Heelys. Among all of the needless stuff he claims to “really, really need,” he was the most vocal about these shoes. Perhaps we thought buying them would make him quit his bellyaching (which is a stupid, brainless, dipshit parenting move on par with handing the kid a book of matches, a loaded gun and a set of steak knives and saying, “Mommy and I are going out to get hammered drunk. There’s Grolsch in the fridge if you get thirsty. Buh-bye.”)

Anyway, it’s clear to us now that those shoes are instrument of Satan. They should be called Hellys.

I woke up at 5:20 this morning and immediately remembered that we were out of milk. In our home, running out of milk is like running out of oxygen, so it was imperative that I get to the store before you-know-who woke up. I got up, threw on yesterday’s clothes and shuffled out to toward the front door. Along the way, I noticed that our son was awake. He was watching Power Rangers and picking his nose.

“Dude, what are you doing awake at this hour?” I asked.

“Dunno. Just couldn’t sleep anymore. Wait. Why are you dressed? Are you going somewhere?”

“Going to the store. We’re out of milk.”

“Oooh! Can I go with you?”

“I guess so.”

He runs to his room, throws on some tragically mismatched clothes – and steps into his Hellys. And so it began.

The second we parked in front of the store, he was out of the minivan and gliding to and fro around the parking lot. He rode over to the big, metal rack where you put your cart after you’ve unloaded it (The Cart Corral?) and started attempting goofy skateboarder moves.

“Hey!” I barked. “There are cars around here. Chill out and come into the store with me.”

So what does he do? He glides back toward me and rolls himself right in front where I was going to step – so close that I had to stop in my tracks and make that errrrrrttt sound with my shoe against the pavement.

I didn’t say anything, but when he looked back at me I gave him a serious stink-eye – the kind that says, “You’re about one more of those fly-bys away from being encaged under an upside-down shopping cart, boy.”

He said OK, but he didn’t really mean it, did he? No, he didn’t. The twerp.

Since it was so early in the morning, the supermarket floors still were smooth and shiny from their overnight polishing with that little Zamboni-like thing. It looked like an ice rink. And The Champ treated it as such, rolling down the cereal aisle like an Olympic speedskater and very nearly knocking down the entire display of Vitamin Water.

I’ve had it now. Not listening. Not stopping. Not paying attention to the other shoppers.

“Hey!” I yelled to him from the milk and Coffee-Mate fridge. “Come here right now.”

He knew he was busted. I must have had anger in my eyes because he approached me very timidly, as though he thought I might pierce his torso with laser beams shot from my nostrils. That wasn’t the look I was going for. My intent was to behave like a cop pulling someone over because he was swerving and spazing through traffic like he’d just left the bar after a four-day bender.

Although we’ve already stipulated that these Hellys are the most certainly devil’s footwear, they do have one parent-friendly feature: you can take the wheels out. GENIUS!

So right there, in front of the white-haired Amish dude on the Oatmeal box and the little leprechaun guy on the Lucky Charms and all of the other cereal box characters, I repo’d my son’s ride.

And after I’d confiscated them and stuck them in my pocket, I told him to be careful as he pulled back out into traffic.

*****
No post would be complete without a little whoring, right? And since my birthday is this weekend and I'm feeling extra spicy, I now present The Most Blatant Attempt At Manipulating People Into Action Ever Recorded.

1) These kinds of things don't usually matter to me, but this site being completely humiliated over at the highly subjective, altogether meaningless daddy blog competition. Losing is fine, but by a 2-to-1 margin? Rock the fuckin' vote!

2) King of the Cubicle. That's all.

3) Spring has sprung and with it returns the glory of t-shirt weather. What's better than frolicking outdoors and feeling the fresh spring air on your forearms? Oh, what a stunning coincidence! I just happen to have right here some absolutely divine couture for both men and women.

Here endeth the prostitution.

There are two hidden stashes at Evans World Headquarters – two tiny little havens established exclusively for mommy and daddy and their impenetrable adherence to the seven deadly sins. These are places where children dare not go, lest they become scarred and warped and prematurely introduced to the glory of no-holds-barred grown-upness.

The first of our secret hideaways is The Drawer of Sex and Violence.

The second does not yet have a name, but I suppose it doesn’t need one. It is the top shelf of the kitchen cabinet mounted just above the toaster and the coffee maker. The kids can’t reach it. So far they’ve never seen it either.

It’s the shelf where God lives.

More specifically, it’s where Hot Wife and I keep our own private candy store – M&Ms, Dove chocolates, Hot Tamales, Hershey Kisses, chocolate donuts, leftover Halloween candy, and so on. (I think there might also be a few vials of heroin up there, too, but you didn’t hear that from me.)

As a parent, there are times when your life depends on taking a sunrise and sprinkling it with dew. Amid the insanity of refusals to bathe and the flow of tears over oatmeal that turned out too runny and the buzzkills from coitus interruptus, sometimes the chance to sneak into the kitchen and mow down a bite-sized Baby Ruth is the only thing standing between you and the ledge of a fortieth story window.

But I blew it. I gave it away.

I was in the kitchen the other night, cleaning up after dinner, when I remembered that the package of Entenmann’s chocolate donuts I bought had gone horribly stale (“horribly stale” = cracked molars). When I reached up to the shelf to grab the box (intending to throw it out), my son walked in.

“Whoa,” he said.

I screamed “Fuck!” inside my mind.

“What is that, dad?” he asked.

“What’s what?”

“What’s all of that candy up there for?”

“What candy? I don’t see any candy. Candy?”

He points. “Right there, dad. I see packages of M&Ms and stuff.”

“Oh, that candy’s no good,” I said. “It’s where mommy and I keep all of the spoiled candy.”

He cocks his head and looks at me with a distrusting expression, as if to say “I wasn’t born yesterday, old man.”

“You don’t believe me?” I asked.

“No.”

“Well let me prove it to you,” I said. “Here. Try one of these chocolate donuts.”

I hand him the stalest of the bunch. It feels like a chocolate-covered hockey puck. He grabs it, examines it for a second, then brings it to his mouth to take a bite. As he does so, he winces. He can’t even get his teeth through it to take a decent bite.

“See?” I said. “Stale. Hard as a rock.”

He removes the donut from his mouth and immediately tosses it in the trash. The he turns and walks away.

I guess the moral of this story is that sometimes parents have to lie to our children in order to maintain the wispy shred of sanity to which we cling.

*****DANGER: BLATANT WHORING AHEAD*****
Hey! Speaking of wispy shreds of sanity, there's a new entry up at KING OF THE CUBICLE.

Since no one reads blogs on Mondays, today is a good day to take care of some DGM community housekeeping issues.

1) Today is Wondersis' birthday, and an important one at that. The old bag turned 39, which means liver spots, broken hips and eating dinner at 4:00 are in the not-too-distant future. I called her this afternoon and she pleaded with me to write a post about her. But I really don't think it's possible to improve upon what's detailed in this post. Because there ain't no laughin' like the laughin' you do when your mom pukes in your sister's face.

2) Many of you have written to find out when the two podcasts referenced lately -- SXSW and Sirius Radio -- will be available to you. The answer is: I have no idea. I've hounded both "keepers of the 'cast" to motivate action, but my efforts have been fruitless. It's my understanding that the Sirius interview will be accessible later this week. I'll post the link the very second it becomes available.

3) I'm trying something new. It came to my attention that working in a cubicle provides a steady flow of really good blog material. I think it's something to which anyone who's ever worked even a part-time office job can relate. So I have started a new blog on that very subject:

www.KingoftheCubicle.com

Worry not. This does not mean the end of Dad Gone Mad. Quite the contrary. KOTC is simply another outlet for posts of a specific nature. Better still: no ads! For now I've posted three archived DGM posts about working in Cubicleville. Swing on by and say hello.

Not long after he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali, a challenger of Ali’s, Ernie Terrell, callously continued to refer to him as Cassius for the weeks leading up to their fight. Ali swore he'd make Terrell pay. On the night of the fight, Ali pounded on Terrell for 15 rounds, yelling at him throughout: “What’s my name? Say my name! Say my name!”

Ali took a lot of heat for his behavior, but this has always been one of my favorite sports stories. I have a poster in my office of Ali standing over a fallen Sonny Liston, whom he knocked out in the first minute of the first round. I tell it here because it articulates a particular struggle I’ve been having at work.

The ad agency for which I work has been hired to help a company rename itself. This company, which is owned by a very large company you’ve definitely heard of, performs a service you and I would never be able to afford. Its minimum gig is $50,000, and some of the work it does costs several hundred thousand dollars. Obviously, the new name has to appeal to the rich snot-holes who live just a few steps from the beach, have guest bathrooms in their mansions larger than my whole house, and employee people like me to dry their ass with a chamois after they arise from the bidet.

We’ve spent a month on this project. During that span, we’ve come up with about a dozen strong, viable names – each of which has been rejected for one of three reasons:

1. The parent company doesn’t like it.
2. Someone else has already trademarked it.
3. The dot-com URL is taken.

The latter of these three is an enormous pain in my ass. It might surprise you to know that despite the relative youth of the internet, the dot-com address for every single variation of every single word or phrase in every single language on earth has already been purchased, usually by some crazy company that buys these random names in an effort to resell them to someone else for quadrillion dollars.

FuckKnuckleForBreakfast-dot-com. Taken.

StopStaringAtMeYouCrazyOneEyedFreak-dot-com. Taken.

DecrodedMonkeyPissSmoothiesMmm-dot-com. Taken.

OK, you say. We’ll give this company a name made from a construct of two different words. Something no one’s ever said before. Those URLs will surely be available, right?

McSchnitzlePoo-dot-com. Taken.

Absutivagenessity-dot-com. Taken.

Clambustivignaged-dot-com. Taken.

(As an aside, the dot-com sales sites like GoDaddy always come back with a message that while McSchnitzlePoo-dot-com is taken, you can have McSchnitzlePoo-dot-gov or McSchnitzlePoo-dot-name right now for $8.99. To my mind, that’s like saying “Sorry, we’re out of Diet Coke today but I’d be happy to kick you in the nuts if you give me nine bucks.”)

So we are left with what’s behind door number three, which is to invent a new word altogether: a string of eight consecutive consonants or five vowels and an X – some utterance that means nothing in particular, other than that the agency was desperate.

Imagine you’re the client. Your big shot agency comes into present its awesome new name to you. You dim the lights, focus in on the creative director and he says, “Picture this: you’re a well-to-do person who seeks to acquire this certain brand of high-end things your company sells. You shop around for the best quality product, which this company obviously has. And what name connotes high-end quality better than…

…GRZTMSDYXLVZ…”

We’ve been back to our client’s office twice now with new rounds of name ideas. Each time, we’ve been sent away with our tail between our legs. We’re supposed to go back this week. And I have this terrible feeling that we’re going to end up feeling like the knocked-out fighter. But instead of Ali, it will be our client standing over our bruised, beaten carcasses and shouting, “Say our name, bitches! Say it! Say it!”

Writing about one’s own mental health on the Internet is probably not the smartest of moves. When I have done so in the past, I’ve been careful to describe my own sanity (or lack thereof) with just the right measure of evasiveness. I do this because I have to – because there are varying degrees of craziness and I certainly wouldn’t want to be perceived as even one level higher on The Cuckoo Scale than the other folks who write about mental illness from time to time. So yes, I want you to think I’m Crazy Lite – same great taste, but without all of that pesky psychosis and suicidal ideation.

Within the circus of my own mind, I have glommed onto the aforementioned self-assessment with some semblance of real belief based on one irrefutable fact: though I have taken two or three antidepressant over the years, no head-shrinker has ever seen fit to write me The Mother Of All Prescriptions. I’m talking about Prozac.

Based on my own immeasurable ignorance, I’ve always viewed Prozac as the pharmaceutical equivalent to napalm. In Vietnam, we deployed troops into the battlezone to conduct pinpoint attacks against the enemy – a scenario that translates in my mind to prescribing smaller, lesser-feared antidepressants into the battlezone of a depressed brain. But when the shit got too thick for us in Vietnam, they pulled all of the troops out and dropped a shitload of napalm on the area, torching it (and anyone hiding in the weeds) to an ashy, black crisp like a piece of pumpernickel in a busted toaster. In my twisted, uninformed mind, that’s the effect of Prozac on depression, too. And the simple fact that it had never been prescribed to me made me feel as though my brain wasn’t the quagmire I though it was.

That changed last week. I sat in front of a doctor and was asked to take stock of how I’ve been feeling. I’m not depressed; I actually feel great. But there have been some lingering symptoms that I can’t seem to shake. Specifically, I cluck like a chicken in my sleep. Sometimes I spontaneously stop my car in the middle of the freeway and break into song. And I shit my pants every time my cell phone rings. Other than that, I feel fantastic.

Hearing this, the doctor suggested perhaps it was time to try a different drug. And then she said it: “Have you ever been prescribed Prozac?” I don’t really remember anything after that.

Pride be damned, I started popping The Mother Of All Prescriptions late last week, hoping against hope that it might corral my brain and my bowels. Which it did not. Unless you consider feeling like you haven’t slept in three weeks an improvement over normal human functioning.

But the Vitamin P did have one interesting side effect.

It turned me into the most irritable, angry, short-tempered fuckwad in the entire recorded history of fuckwads.

Everything pissed me off. Quiznos put too many shreds of lettuce on my turkey sandwich. That motherfucker in front of me on the freeway is talking on the phone and driving 35 mph in a 65 mph zone. And that natural male enhancement commercial with the whistles in the background and that goofy smiling assclown? Pure, unabashed hatred.

I yelled, and I am not a yeller. I told my daughter that I’d take a giant shit in her room if she didn’t go to sleep, and I am normally very responsible with my feces. Some dickhole took a gratuitous snipe at my kids in the comments section of this site and it took every ounce of restraint I had not to get in my car and drive to wherever 128.91.256.088 lives and open up an enormous can of whupass all over his head and his dog and his toothbrush.

I was swimming in anger. Hot Wife, in her infinite sweetness, noticed I wasn’t myself. She put her hands on my shoulders and gently asked if everything was OK with me.

To which I replied, “Your mother sucks cocks in hell! And you will know my name IS THE LORD! when I lay my vengeance upon thee! Now go make me a chicken pot pie! And make it snappy, sister!”

(See? Just like napalm.)

My five-day experiment with Prozac ended yesterday, and today I feel like my old self again. I’m breathing. I’m writing. No more rage. No more yelling. And I’ve chosen to let 128.91.256.088 live out the rest of his pathetic natural life.

I have a message for Prozac. It comes from my favorite punk song, Institutionalized by Suicidal Tendencies. “I’m not crazy. You’re the one that’s crazy. You’re driving me crazy.”

Check that. You’re driving me Crazy Lite.

NOW WHERE'S MY GOD-DAMNED CHICKEN POT PIE!?

Is it me or is this site is starting to look like the outfield wall of a minor league baseball stadium? Ads on the right, ads on the ceiling, t-shirts on the left, sell, sell, sell, buy, buy, buy, anything for a buck. The unbridled whoring going on here is like a Ron Popiel infomercial on acid. “This offer is available for a limited time only and is not available in stores. Call now. Operators are standing by.”

I recognize the very obvious fact that these ads give me the appearance of a soulless, sellout, shell of a man – and I’m OK with that. But you should know that there are two important reasons for this rather unsightly development.

The first is that I am the blog world’s version of a skanky prostitute. I will write or say or do anything for a handful of spare change. For paper money, I might even take off my pants and show you my tushie.

The second reason is that I see a day in the not-too-distant future when I am going to need a healthy therapy and “happy pills” budget in order to “work through” the post-traumatic stress wrought by the Little League team I coach.

I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet about this year’s team, certainly far less forthcoming than I was last year. This silence is a result of the team’s makeup, which I still can’t quite understand. There are three or four kids on the team who clearly “get it.” They can hit. They can throw. They understand the game. Conversely, there are other players on the team – two in particular – who are entirely oblivious. Their attention spans are about as long as it takes for a stick of Juicy Fruit to lose its flavor. I practice with them how to swing a bat properly at least 30 times before each game, yet when the game starts and they’re in the batter’s box, they flail and spaz like kids trying to swat a bee out of mid-air with a wet noodle.

The rule in our league is that each player must play at least two innings in the infield – even the boys who still think third base is the pitcher’s mound and wear their gloves on the wrong hand. This particular rule is the bane of my existence. When the Little League gods decreed this law, they certainly failed to consider the fact that making some of our less-coordinated six-year-olds stand that close to a batted ball is exactly like handing them a square-point shovel and instructing them to bash themselves in the head until they pain goes away.

There is one player on our team who seems to have difficulty with even the most rudimentary of tasks, such as remembering that you have to remember to bring a bat to the plate with you when it’s your turn to hit. For our purposes here, we’ll call this player Woody. Saturday morning, I asked Woody to play third base – in part because it’s the position closest to our dugout and therefore the most likely spot on the field from which he can hear us yelling at him to take his glove off of his face and pay attention.

Woody lives in a world you and I have never seen. It is a world where everyone wants him dead. It is a world in which he must kill or be killed (there are more than enough dead bees, bugs, and blades of grass in the outfield to illustrate this fact). It is a world in which words spoken by mortal earthlings, like a baseball coach for example, elicit the same kind of perplexed, head crooked response one might expect to see from a dog after it hears a high-pitched whistle.

Saturday morning, two consecutive batters hit sharp line drives toward Woody at third base. After the first, which he neither touched nor even considered touching, he stood there, stunned – the way people in the movies do after they get shot in the stomach. Woody held that posture for a full 30 seconds, well into the next hitter’s at-bat. And at just about the time he reanimated, another line drive went whizzing past his right ear on its way out to left field. This time, instead of freezing like a statue, Woody turned to me in the dugout with a desperate look on his face.

“They’re trying to kill me!” he yelled.

“What?” I said.

“The other team is trying to kill me! They just hit the ball right at my head two times in a row!”

“No one’s trying to kill you, bud.” I said. “We’re just playing baseball. You need to be ready to catch the ball. People call third base ‘the hot corner’ because the ball comes at you fast when you play there. Get your glove up and try to knock those balls down.”

But nothing I said could convince Woody that what had occurred was NOT an assassination attempt.

On its own merit, Woody’s momentary disconnection from reality would have been quite hilarious. But it didn’t stand alone.

It occurred during the same game that a boy’s grandfather reprimanded us from the stands that his grandson’s swing was fine and we should therefore “leave him alone” (despite the fact that the boy’s hands were stacked upside down and he was holding the bat like a golf club).

It occurred during the same game that my own son realized in the second inning that he’d forgotten to put on his belt, which he interpreted to mean he is a horrendous baseball player and generally a failure as a human being.

And it occurred during the same game that our second baseman was so hopped-up on sugar and organic enthusiasm that he felt the need to make every play on the field, teammates be damned. He ran from right field to home plate to tag a runner out. He ran from left field to first base to attempt another tag-out. And after we’d finally convinced him to throw the ball instead of hand-delivering the out, his throw from third base sailed over the first baseman, over the other team’s dugout, over the right field bleachers and into the parking lot.

It may say “Coach” on the back of my hat, but my real title is Powerless Babysitter To 10 Screaming Banshees And One Six-Year-Old Conspiracy Theorist. Obviously, the only way to survive such a clusterfuck is therapy. Lots and lots of therapy. So I’ll thank you to quit your bitching about the ads.

P.S. -- Thanks to whomever initiated THIS.

Good morning. Hello there. Hi. Nice to talk to you. Top of the morning. Hey. My pleasure. Shalom.

If you really want to unleash a torrent of anxiety and self-esteem issues on yourself, there’s nothing quite like being a guest on a national radio show. I can vouch for this because I was up at 3:45 a.m. Wednesday morning obsessing over how I would say hello when I was introduced to America. Can you even fathom how fucked up that is? I mean, I know I present the image of a confident, stoic, bulletproof sumbitch (yeah. right.), but I think this one revelation alone makes clear the fact that I’m a dyed-in-the-wool, Depends-wearing, scared-of-my-own-shadow puss. And don’t you dare judge me for it.

To her credit, the host of Be Happy, Dammit! -– Karen Salmansohn (don’t call her “Salmon-son” because she’ll seriously fucking cut you) – got me on the horn a few minutes before our on-air discussion and expressed her great pleasure about the DGM commenter who mentioned in an earlier post that Karen has a nice rack. The boobie talk calmed me a bit and that calm switched-on my creative juices. As a result, my greeting when I went on the air was “Good morning, dammit!”

And it was all downhill from there.

Here, according to my recollections (which may be a bit skewed because we did the interview at 8 a.m. EST, which equates to The Hour When Only Cops, Tweekers And Fish Mongers Should Be Awake PST) is how the conversation continued:

Karen: “Why don’t you tell us how Dad Gone Mad got started.”

Me: “Um, I had this, like, job. And, um, I like hated it and everything. And so I just like decided to like start writing, you know. It was cool.”

Karen: “Well. Ahem. That sounds very…interesting.”

Jonathan (another guest): “Did you know that the average father spends just seven minutes a day with his children? And that kids watch an average of fours of television each day?”

Me: “Really? Awesome. I know my kids love ‘em some Barney and Hi-5.”

Karen: “But do you spend more than seven minutes a day with your kids?”

Me: “Pfft. No. What am I, Mother Theresa?”

Bill Brazell from Federated Media: “I understand you’ve been having some trouble at your house with snails. Can you talk about that a bit?”

Me: “Yeah, well, we have these, like, snails? In our yard? And I was totally talking to them and, like trying to get ‘em drunk. It was so bitchen. You guys shoulda been there, man.”

Suffice it to say I came off sounding like Jabba The Hut after an all-night Zima bender. And I have metrics to prove it: On the day of this site’s greatest exposure ever in the history of all time? Traffic was DOWN! By a lot! And by “a lot” I mean the sound of crickets.

When I was in college, I had a sports talk show on the campus radio station. Over the course of two semesters I had exactly one caller (and that was my roommate) (who called because he wanted to know if I was the asshole who drank his last three Meister Braus) (and yes, I was the asshole). As long as I had the studio to myself with no one listening, I tried to hone my on-air chops. I played Smiths records (on a sports show!) and tried to time my intro to end just as the singing started. I tried to sound less like a Bar Mitzvah boy and more like Casey Kasem. And by the time I graduated, I felt as though I’d polished myself into an ass-kickin’, golden-throated, Smiths-playin’ radio ninja.

Turns out that was total bullshit. Dammit.

Something terrible has happened.

Our son has learned how to read.

I’m certain you can see how catastrophic this is for a marriage. Like any parents, Hot Wife and I once reveled in the competitive advantage we held over our children – the advantage inherent in command of the English language. Whenever we wished to discuss something the children shouldn’t hear, we’d simply spell the key words and phrases. “Honey, how ‘bout some s-e-x tonight?” And so forth.

I can’t count the number of times this advantage worked in my favor. I was able to consistently arrange and articulate all kinds of wonderful things – copulations and compromises and clever tricks to play on the little ones – while the kids sat right there, feeding their broccoli to the dog under the table. They were oblivious to our deviance. We could watch TV together and share hateful, nasty commentaries about Sanjaya (k-i-l-l-h-i-m-s-i-m-o-n) or Britney (h-a-v-e-a-n-o-t-h-e-r-m-a-r-t-i-n-i-b-a-l-d-y) or the president (t-o-t-a-l-f-u-c-k-i-n-g-d-i-p-s-h-i-t) without fear of scaring or scarring the children. For all they knew we were speaking Portuguese or some ancient Sanskrit dialect or whatever language they speak on Uranus. There has never been a more perfect manifestation of the whole “ignorance is bliss” thing.

But that’s all over now. It’s over because my son’s god-damned kindergarten teacher taught him how to read. And spell. God, this sucks.

Some friends of ours babysat the kids Saturday night so Hot Wife and I could go out and actually, you know, talk. We had some great Mexican food and too many margaritas and lots of eye contact, which in my view is the perfect recipe for gettin’ some. We were therefore motivated to pick up the kids, toss ‘em in the tub and get them to bed right away. We had an assembly line going in the bathroom: I stripped them down, she washed them.

At some point during the process, I said this to Hot Wife: “Let’s get this done fast so we can get n-a-k-e-d.”

To which our son replied, “Nn…nak…nak’d…NAKED! You just said NAKED! You’re going to get NAKED!”

Blink. Blink-blink.

I looked at my wife. She had a look on her face that seemed to say, “Try to weasel your way out of this one, smart guy.”

Blink.

“No, bud,” I said. “Not ‘naked’. I said ‘nacked’. Don’t you know what ‘nacked’ means?”

“Oh yeah!” he faked. “Wait. What does it mean again?”

“Nacked means getting ready for bed,” I said, teetering perilously close to The Bullshit Zone From Which No Lie Can Return. “What I said to mommy is that I want to get her nacked just like you guys because she’s had a long day and she looks pretty tired.”

“So…like…we’re getting nacked right now and then after we go to bed, mommy’s gonna get nacked, too?”

“Exactly.”

And guess what. For the two nights since then my son has stood up on the couch and declared aloud, “Welp, it’s 7:30 everyone. Time to get nacked.”

Literacy is a terrible inconvenience.

We attract and perpetuate a lot of strangeness at Evans World Headquarters, but nothing quite compares to The Great Snail Invasion of 2007. For the last month or so, our front yard has been overrun with snails and slugs and these other squishy crawlers that look like a snot rocket fresh from the nasal cavity of someone with The Mother of All Sinus Infections. Every morning, they gather near the sidewalk and begin their slow, slimy offensive, slinking en masse across the lawn toward the house.

I like to imagine there is a general leading the charge, like Patton. He perks his antennae up like a pair of little snail head boners and hollers in his gruffest, meanest voice: “Alright, troops. Saddle up! Our target this morning is that big agapanthus plant next to the cement walkway. We’ll rendezvous there at oh-five-hundred. Keep your shells down and your cocks dry, cuz if that giant guy with the huge nose sees us when he comes out to get the newspaper, he’ll grab the water cannon and unleash holy hell on us. Now move out!”

The water cannon to which General Shell refers is a garden hose, which is the tool I have used to force the snails’ retreat in the most humane way possible (you may recall e-kicking my ass the last time I wrote about inhumane treatment of snails). The water jet doesn’t kill the snails but it certainly puts them back on their heels. (I mean that figuratively because it’s my understanding that snails have no feet, and therefore no heels.)

Sadly for the snails, my repeated attempts to wash them away only delay their onslaught for a day. The next morning, they launch their attack anew. So the time came this weekend for a more aggressive defense of Evans World Headquarters.

Naturally, I mean beer.

I recall hearing somewhere that snails are attracted to the scent of beer – so attracted in fact that if you leave a dish of it where they like to chill, they’ll crawl into it and drink themselves to death (which, if you think about it, is not altogether unlike being in a fraternity). Plus, death by beer could be considered a “green” method of vector control – no poison or napalm involved whatsoever.

I’m no idiot. I’m not going to waste my good beer on snail annihilation. So I went to the supermarket and looked for the cheapest, nastiest, snail-killingest brew I could find. The winner: a 32 oz. bottle of Miller High Life for $1.49. A 40 of King Cobra was only a dime more, but I have too many fond memories of the Cobra from my college days – and then again, no memories at all – so I stuck with the High Life. I brought it home, poured some into a disposable pie pan and set it strategically next to their targeted plant. I killed the lights and went to bed.

I woke up with a smile the next morning because I knew there was a small army of dead, drunk creatures floating tits-up in the beer. Without even brushing my teeth first, I walked outside to survey the carnage.

But there was none.

The pie pan was filled only with the flat High Life and a fallen leaf. I was pissed. I mean what the fuck? Who do these snails think they are? But instead of freaking out, I remained calm and did what any intelligent homeowner would do:

I went to talk to the snails.

I found them gathered near the sidewalk. Some were playing cards. Some were smoking unfiltered Camels. One of them had a magazine turned sideways and was checking out the centerfold. Pretty typical wartime setup.

“Hey!” I barked, kneeling down. “Who’s in charge here?”

The snail with the centerfold put down his magazine and nodded toward the curb with an antenna. “General Shell,” he said. “He’s in the war room, over by the water meter.”

So I march over, careful not to step on the snail soldiers, and I find a lone snail looking over a map.

“You Shell?” I ask.

He takes off his glasses, sets down his compass and looks up at me. “Aye. I’m General Aloysius P. Shell.”

“Yeah, well, I’m Danny. I own this house. Didn’t you are your men see the beer I left out for you last night? I was trying to throw you guys a party.”

“You call that swill ‘beer’?” he says. “Our unit across the street at Jimbo’s house got Bud Light. That’s no high-class brew either, but at least it’s better than fucking Miller High Life.”

“Oh, I see. You snails are beer snobs.”

“Call it what you want, Danny. But just because we’re snails doesn’t mean you can treat us indecently. We have standards, and we’re not going to get our antennae all crossed up over carbonated pisswater.”

“Pray tell, General: what brand of ‘pisswater’ do you and your unit prefer?”

“Personally, I’m a Red Bull and vodka, snail. But I think the men would probably let you pass with Newcastle or Bass or one of the other English ales.”

“’Let me pass’?!” I repeat flabbergastedly. “This isn’t Señor Frogs, dude. I’m trying to kill you motherfuckers, not cater to your high-brow palates. I’m willing to upgrade to a domestic light beer, but nothing more. If you’re going to be an asshole about it, I table this whole beer thing and start stepping on you people.”

“No-no-no,” Shell says. “Domestic light will be fine. But no Coors Light. That stuff tastes like shit and it gives me a headache. Are you amenable to Bud Light?”

“Fine. Bud Light. Do we have a deal?”

“Deal,” he says.

I turn and walk away with a big smile on my face. I was totally willing to go all the way to Heineken or Amstel, but that dumb snail buckled at Bud Light. Snails are such shitty negotiators.

Shortly after I declared myself a journalism major in college (despite the protestations of almost everyone I knew, many of whom declared that a degree in journalism is like a degree in scooping up lemur droppings at the zoo), I attended a lecture about “word economy.” This is a term hammered into the heads of budding scribes because it concisely articulates a journalist’s need to write his submission using as few words as possible – to “economize.”

If you read this site with any regularity, you know that word economy is an unwelcome entity here. If a sentence doesn’t run on for 15 lines or contain profanity or exaggerate situations beyond the limits of gravity and decency and possibility, we give it the hairy eyeball and tell it, “We don’t serve your kind here, fella.”

Conversely, I arrived this morning at the realization that my children are top-notch word economizers. Their communication with me is taut and streamlined. They waste not even a single syllable when they speak to me, and they use only the words that convey their intention or desire. No more, no less.

I was at the computer this morning when my daughter awoke, opened her bedroom door and walked bleary-eyed into the room. I said good morning.

“Daddy, I need to see Nick.”

“Nick? Who’s Nick?”

“Nick.”

“Is Nick your friend,” I asked. “I’ve never met him.”

“Yes. Nick. On Barney.”

Aha. Nick is a character on Barney. I put on a Tivo’d episode of the show and went back to my computer (where I most certainly was NOT looking at porn).

Four minutes later: “Daddy, I need some milk.”

“One sec, honey,” I said. “Just finishing something up.”

Two minutes later: “Dad! Milk!”

And so on.

When I come home from work at night, the kids run to the door and hug me, but they don’t say hello or welcome home or they missed me. In the church of word economy, salutations are frivolous. Hi should be understood – a given. “We missed you, daddy,” should go without saying, so it does. When I walk into the house, I get this:

“Can we go out for dinner?”

“Can you play catch with me?”

“Did you bring me anything?”

I suppose some folks could look at this behavior as rude and disrespectful, but I’m just proud of my kids’ efficiency and streamlined communication chops. And now, when I see other kids who take 30 seconds to ask if they can run around the house with a pair of scissors, I just sit back and smile. Because in the amount of time it took little Stevie over there to spit the words out, my kids would already have asked the question, been denied, and initiated their tantrum.

I'm looking into printing some bumper stickers that say "My kid freaks out faster than your kid."

*** PROOF POSITIVE THAT I HAVE A FACE FOR RADIO***

I’ve been invited to be a guest on a radio show called Be Happy, Dammit.

The show is described as “engagingly fun…each show offers empowering interviews and advice from experts in all areas including love, sex, career, health, travel, nutrition, entertainment and more! Learn how to put the secrets of happiness and success into action and lead your most fulfilling life.”

I’m crestfallen to report that the show’s host, Karen Salmansohn, will not be asking for my expertise on sex or nutrition (although I might volunteer something about how wheatgrass-flavored lube and a Dirty Sanchez can make sex fun AND nutritious). Instead we will discuss how “keeping a sense of humor can add to one’s happiness,” specifically when one is a parent who has nothing whatsoever to laugh about because one’s children are – Hey! Put down those matches!

The interview will air live at roughly 8:35 am (EST) next Wednesday, April 11 on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 114. A podcast will be made available shortly thereafter and I will most certainly post a link to it.

Here’s where your contribution would be helpful: I have been asked to submit a short list of questions or talking points around which the interview can be framed. I’m at a loss. Is there anything specific you’d like to hear on this topic? I’d love your input. And be forewarned that if you call in to the show and ask me about anything incriminating, I will find you give you such a horrendously painful wedgie that the doctors will have to remove your underwear through your throat.

Monday nights at Evans World Headquarters are called “Family Dinner Night.” It’s the one night of the week when we put the world on hold, throw on some tunes, and cook together (although the definition of “cooking” in our house is subject to interpretation, meaning what I call “food” starkly contrasts with Hot Wife’s definition of the word, meaning I like to eat things that have been processed and sweetened and chemically altered to taste good whereas Hot Wife chooses to throw down fresh pluckings from nature’s bounty, even if it tastes like leafy green puke).

The great thing about Family Dinner Night is that each week we rotate who picks what we’ll make. When we first started these shenanigans, we bought a couple of kid-friendly cookbooks and tried to find recipes that didn’t end in “fingers” or “bites” or “surprise.” But after a few Mondays it seemed as though following the advice of Emeril Lagasse or Rachel Ray was far too literary and intellectual for the kids. By their point of view, reading should be about stories and bedtime, not couscous or rigatoni. So we’ve begun to wing it, choosing recipes that either live within the recipe book in our minds or are concocted on the fly, like macaroni and mustard sandwiches.

But it seems we’re falling into a predictable rut. No matter whose turn it is to pick the meal, we seem to have rotated for the past six weeks or so between homemade pizzas and the all-too-popular “breakfast for dinner.” Between the two, pizza is the clear favorite for the kids because I started a tradition that we can’t start cooking until all four of us have a dusting of flour on our noses so we all look like real chefs even if we can’t cook like one.

But now there’s a rut inside the rut, and that has to do with the pizza toppings. For the kids, it’s always the same: pizza sauce, cheese and a “meat” product, which means either pepperoni or Canadian bacon, although the over-thinker in me begs to argue that neither of those is actually a “meat” but rather an amalgamation of ground-up rectums, anuses, snouts and hooves. (Wait. What’s the plural of rectum? Recta? Recti?)

Hot Wife and I try to mix it up a bit in the area of topping design. We’ll throw down some olives or mushrooms or artichoke hearts from time to time. And sometimes, when we’re feeling risky and dirty and subversive, we’ll throw some pesto on that motherfucker instead of pizza sauce. The children don’t particularly care for pesto because it’s green and stinky and looks a little like upchucked grass from our backyard. Fine with me; more for us.

Last night, someone crossed the line and put the future of Family Dinner Night in doubt.

It was her.

“Daddy, can I help you put stuff on your pizza,” she asked.

My first reaction was that I should let her help. My second reaction was that I give up EVERYTHING for this child – the remote control, my dignity, my money, my threshold for playing with dolls – and there are just some things a man has to do by himself. For himself. With himself. (Actually, scratch that last one.)

“I think I’ve got it covered, honey,” I said. “Why don’t you and your brother set the table? That would help me, too.”

Cue whining.

“But daddeeeeee. I wanna help you with your peeeetzaaaaaah.”

Is there no God? I mean for fuck’s sake! There is no “yes” or “no” in my house. It’s “yes” or “listen to me whine for hours and hours until your only recourse is to stick toppings in your ears.”

So I let her help (because I’m a pussy) (and because it gives you guys another opportunity to tell me what a weak-ass, spineless disciplinarian I am) (which kiss my ass).

I roll the dough. I drop it onto the cookie sheet. I hand her a spoon and tell her to put some pizza sauce on it. I turn around to wash my hands and when I turn back my dough is wearing an inch-thick sheen of red shit. Don’t panic. Stay calm. Just scoop up some of the excess and pretend this didn’t happen.

So I turn around again to wash the extra sauce down the drain and when I turn back my pizza is plastered with about nine pounds of shredded mozzarella.

“Whoa! Hold up there, cowgirl. That’s way too much cheese for me.”

“I thought you like cheese, daddy,” she says.

So I do what all parents do when they need to explain a new concept to their children: I refer to myself in the third person.

“Well, honey, daddy has a condition called lactose intolerance. Can you say that?”

She shakes her head no.

“What that means is when daddy eats too much cheese or ice cream, it makes his tummy hurt.”

“Is that why you always have those stinky tooties all the time, daddy?”

“Yes, sweetheart. That’s exactly right.”

Once, a long time ago, I posted some song lyrics I liked. What followed was an avalanche of other cool lyrics in the comment section, and a good time was had by all. Let's do that again. Make a dedication. Stick it to The Man. Whatever.

Here are mine...

The Red Hot Chili Peppers (for Hot Wife)

Look at me can't you see
All I really want to be
Is free from a world
That hurts me
I need relief
Do you want me girl
To be your theif
Aw baby just for you
I'd steal anything that you want me to

Paul Simon (for my daughter)

I'm gonna watch you shine
Gonna watch you grow
Gonna paint a sign
So you always know
As long as one and one is two
Ooh ooh
There could never be a father
Love his daughter more than I love you

John Lennon (for my son)

Out on the ocean sailing away
I can hardly wait
To see you come of age
But I guess we'll both just have to be patient
'Cause it's a long way to go
A hard row to hoe
Yes it's a long way to go
But in the meantime
Before you cross the street
Take my hand

The level of control I maintain in our household is on par with the level of interest I have in being castrated, which is to say none. None control. I think this simple household truth is most plainly evident in the frequency (or lack thereof) with which I get to watch my own television.

Because we are raising our children to be lazy, lethargic, 900-pound, mouth-breathing couch potatoes, we pacify them with TV. In so doing, we have empowered them to believe they have complete control of the living room and all that comes with it. They have instituted dictatorial rule over the room and decreed that no mommy or daddy shall enter unless he or she brings gifts to shower upon the sovereign leaders of this carpeted nation, and those gifts must include (but are not limited to) chocolate milk, baby carrots with ranch dressing, or a wedge of apple with the peel cut off. Failure to comply with this regulation is punishable by incessant whining from The Great and Powerful (although very short) Dictators.

Ninety-five percent of the time, I abide by this dictum. I elect to avoid the blood-curdling screams and instead travel the path of least resistance, which leads directly to the dust-covered TV in the garage. But on occasion I do launch a revolt and initiate a hostile takeover of The Living Room. I generally time these offensives in coordination with large-scale sporting events. I storm up to the thrones of The Great and Powerful Dictators and declare, “Hear ye! Hear ye! It is my turn to watch TV in The Living Room. All heads of state must yield the remote forthwith.”

The Great and Powerful Dictators resist, unleashing their unique weapons of war: tears, tantrums, claims of not liking me anymore. To which I respectfully reply, “Then so bit it, little ones. For I shall still like you and pledge never to permit Maisy or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to interfere with my allegiance to your highnesses. Now make haste, for the game is nigh.”

But oh how crafty The Great and Powerful Dictators can be. At seven bells last evening, I settled in with my trusty steed and a chalice full of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke to enjoy the opening night of the baseball season. But alas, the remote control is nowhere to be found. Such divisiveness can only be interpreted as an act of war, and its perpetrators must bear the full might of The Revolution.

“Will The Great and Powerful Dictators please join me in the foyer?” I shout. “The Revolution seeks an audience with your majesties.”

They mope down the hall and join me in The Living Room. I address them.

“If it please the King and Queen of The Living Room, your humble servant wishes to know the current location of the kingdom’s remote control device.”

“Why are you talking like that, daddy?” the Queen asks. “You sound silly.”

“With all due respect, your grace, please zippeth thy trap. “The Revolution requires an answer to its inquiry. Where is thy remote?”

“I dunno,” the King replies. “She had it last.”

“Your Queen hath been implicated,” I say to her. “Do tell: where hath the device been hidden?”

“What are you even talking about, dad? I can’t understand you.”

“Where’s the remote?!” I begin to lose my composure.

The Queen says nothing. She merely shrugs her shoulders.

“So be it then!” I say. “The Great and Powerful Dictators of The Living Room shall be cast into exile until such time as the remote is returned to its rightful owners: the people of The Rev-ah-loose-ee-own! Please retreat to your quarters, and may God have mercy on your souls.”

Never did find the remote, but at least I showed ‘em who’s boss.