I must preface the telling of this deranged, despicable story with a humiliating admission.

I’ve been working on my colon.

Last weekend I became fearful that all of the nutritionally catastrophic food I’ve eaten over the past (almost) 38 years has probably done quite a number on my insides. When my friend Jimbo was engaged in a full-scale attack on the cancer in his liver, he told me he’d twice endured the indignity of “colonic hydrotherapy,” which is an alternative treatment whereupon some poor soul shoots a water cannon up your butt, and then the cannon gets shifted into reverse and sucks the water back out with the enthusiasm of a Dyson taking a power-hit from a crack pipe. Jim said the outgoing water was bejeweled with the remnants of all of the steaks and burgers and hot dogs he’d eaten over the years. I barfed when he told me that.

Notwithstanding that glorious-sounding treatment, I knew there must be a method by which I could improve my digestive and colonic health without having a water propulsion device coming anywhere near my back door. I found some help in the form of dietary supplements – pills that raise the amount of fiber in my gut and other pills that, for lack of a more appropriate term, “lubricate” my pipes so that the fiber operates in something like a big, abdominal slip-and-slide.

One of the unexpected side effects of this treatment is (all together now) gas. Lots of it. It’s not especially pungent, but the entertainment value is off the charts. These are the kind of farts that sound like a box-cutter ripping through cardboard. The kind that makes my butt cheeks clap at breakneck speed. The kind that lets you know there’s a frat boy in the vicinity.

Fast-forward to this afternoon.

I took the book I’m reading over to Wahoo’s, a popular SoCal fish taco restaurant. This particular Wahoo’s sits in the back of a very large shopping mall. I sat and ate and read. When I came to the end of a chapter and the end of my meal, I looked at my watch and noticed that I still had about 15 minutes to ride the escalator down to the Apple Store and ogle the merchandise like a lunatic.

I stood up and walked toward the downward escalator. As I did so, I felt that familiar little rumble that tells me there’s a cardboard box that needs cutting. Some little gas bubble was about to earn its wings.

When I stepped onto the escalator, that sumbitch was right at the gate and ready to fly.

Right then, a mother and her three-year-old son stepped onto the escalator. They were three steps behind me.

The fatherly instinct in me kicked in. I knew I had to protect the boy, which is to say I needed NOT to unleash my gastrointestinal shock and awe campaign right in his face. But the thing was crowning! It was way past the point of no return.

I groaned audibly as I clenched my cheeks with all of my might. I turned to look again and saw that the boy was clearly inside the blast zone. Squeeze it, Danny. Squeeze it. A bead of sweat dove down from my forehead and onto the tip of my nose.

Fbbbbrrrrppp.

It beat me. The god-damned fart beat me.

With the cheek-clapping came a modest but potent cloud of ass that wafted into the air.

And the poor kid rode right through it. I crop-dusted him.

Young man, if you’re reading this, I’m so terribly sorry that you had to experience that. Wrong place, wrong time, dude. My bad.

Unless you thought it was funny like I did, in which case you're way cool and we should totally hang out sometime and talk about farts. I'll bring my son.

There are certain phrases a man never wants to hear from his wife because they make clear the fact that the man is completely and irreparably fucked. Here’s one of those phrases:

“Honey, don’t forget we’re going to the theatre with my parents tonight.”

This is what my wife said to me as I walked out the door this morning, and I don’t think I even need to tell you this part: I didn’t take it well. She might as well have said, “I hope your balls get run over by a bus today, honey.”

I love my in-laws. They’re wonderful, generous people. And although I haven’t been to the live theatre but three or four times in my life, I always find a way to enjoy myself when I do go. But I shall now enumerate the reasons why my wife’s reminder caused me to whine like a six-foot-three baby whose sippy cup full of spiked milk had run dry:

1) Between work and money and the kids, my stress level this week is already somewhere slightly north of “Don’t even come near me!” but a notch or two south of shaving my entire body with a spork and lighting myself on fire.

2) My Anaheim Ducks play the worst team in the league tonight (I’m looking at you, Los Angeles), and when it comes right down to it, I’d rather watch bad hockey than good theatre.

3) I asked Hot Wife what play we were seeing tonight and she said, “I don’t know, but it’s supposed to be funny.” That’s code for, “Something you’ll probably hate because it’s set in 14th century England and the actors will keep saying ‘fare thee well, m’lady’ and incessantly twirling their lavender parasols and shit like that.”

4) I went to the theatre’s web site to find a more specific description of the show and it turns out the cast is comprised of three men, one of whom wears a cowboy hat, thereby eliminating the possibility that there will be nudity in the play.

5) My in-laws – the aforementioned wonderful people – take the theatre very seriously. I do not. They are punctual, respectful and gracious. I am not.

I know: I’m whining. As many of you so frequently and eloquently remind me in the comments, I should “just suck it up” and go and keep my mouth shut. But what kind of blog material would that be?

So this is love. This is what a man does when he loves his wife and respects her wishes and wishes to remain in her good graces. Despite my myriad passive-aggressive protestations and the publication of my grievances for all to see and the lengths to which I must go in order to satisfy her request, I am going because my wife wants me to.

And also because if I play my cards right, there might be more than one purple parasol twirling tonight. (wink, wink)

I drank four bottles of Guinness at a party hosted by Adam The Ambulance Chaser on Saturday night, which is kind of like drinking two loaves of alcoholic bread, which meant Sunday morning was as welcome to me as a root canal sans anesthesia. But there was no time to dilly-dally. (Who the hell says “dilly-dally”? What am I, Miss Daisy?) Sunday morning was Bring One Of Your Parents To Sunday School, Even If They’re Like Way Hung-Over, Because We’re Going To Make Some Dumb-Ass Arts And Crafts That You’ll Be Too Embarrassed To Display In Your House Anyway Day.

So there we were, at the butt crack of 10 a.m., seated in front of two square slabs of gray clay. They looked like my life felt.

“Welcome, parents,” the chipper woman said, “and thank you all for coming.”

In my mind I told her to suck it.

Our assignment was to make a pair of candlesticks out of clay, which I immediately identified as a task requiring far too much dexterity for someone in my condition. I demoted myself to be my son’s subordinate (as if it’s not ALWAYS that way).

“What should we make?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “How ‘bout a hockey puck and a hockey stick?”

“YEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH!“ he said. (One point for dad.)

I want to digress here for a moment so we can speak to one another frankly. Let us all put aside our biases and agree to this: kids are shitty artists. Can we agree on that? If I had left him to his own devices he would have created some horrible monstrosity that I would have had to sneak out of our house and dispose of in a dumpster behind the supermarket. And that’s just the truth. If you don’t believe me, ask God.

He picked up the first slab of clay and tried to cut enough off of the corners to make it a round shape. About 15 seconds in, he got frustrated, threw his little plastic knife down on the table and had a fit. (He gets that from his mom.) Have you any idea what a tantrum sounds like the morning after four bottles of bread? It sounds like this: “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

I slid the clay and the knife over to my spot at the table and “helped” my son create his hockey candlesticks – and by “help” I of course mean that I took over and did the whole thing myself. Because I’m controlling. And because there are scary people who hang out near the dumpster behind the supermarket. And because I don’t want to die.

Thirty minutes later, we had a passable puck and stick, each with a candle-sized hole in the center. I picked them up and carried them to a table, which is where we to assemble them on a cookie sheet to dry.

Someone walked by and complimented our creation, and I was all, “If you think that’s rad, wait until you read my blob, lady. Prepare yourself for a category five nipple boner.”

Right after this woman’s compliment, as I looked down and smiled at my son, as if to say, “Dude, we rock,” some old bag a few feet away got all uppity and shit and was all, “It’s only good because the dad did all the work.”

In my mind I told her to suck it.

I looked at her and said, “Excuse me?” to imply that I must not have heard her correctly because I could swear she’d just said something rude, which I knew she couldn’t have done, because she must have known that if she said something rude I was going to have to write her a strongly worded letter that contained multiple uses of the term BITCH-ASS HO.

“Just saying,” she said. “I didn’t see your son doing much work on it.”

Then, out of nowhere, my son piped up.

He said, "Well, uh, ma'am, we'd love to stay and, uh, chat with you about our candlesticks and which one of us made them and everything, but, um, you're a total bitch. So, uh...bye!"

I shall call him "Mini Me."

Little League baseball season is in full swing again (get it?) and for the first time since my son began playing, I am not his head coach. I’m helping out where I can – reminding the boys to keep their heads down when they swing, to use two hands when fielding a grounder and to stop punching themselves in the nuts to see if their protective cups are still working – but other pursuits made impossible the time commitment required to act as head coach of the Red Sox.

The opportunity to take a step backward, however small it is, has given me a new perspective – and I like it. A lot. I credit that to the fact that I can now focus more regularly on a certain little stud who wears number seven, bats left-handed, and looks a lot like me.

I have tried before to portray myself in the role of “entirely objective observer,” but I now see the preposterousness of that line of bullshit. I DO live vicariously through my son. I do. I can’t see myself becoming one of those overzealous Little League dads who screams at his kid when he swings at a bad pitch, but I’m certainly my son’s biggest fan. And because I have disavowed my objectivity, I don’t mind telling you that my son, number seven, is a very good player.

[A quick digression to tell you how much MORE objective I am than Hot Wife. We are in the process of completing our will, and the other night when we were discussing the kids and savings and all that, my beautiful wife said she’s certain our son will be playing Major League Baseball and that he’ll need someone parental to help him manage his millions in the event that she and I are both killed in a tragic weed-whacker accident.]

I was late to The Champ’s game last night because traffic sucked and it took me a moment to quell the homicidal thoughts I was having about a certain coworker. I arrived in the second inning, while the Red Sox were in the field. I ambled up next to Trevor, another assistant coach, and asked him how we were playing.

“Most of them are playing like shit,” he said, “but I’m having a really good time watching your son play catcher.”

“Is he all over the place?” I asked, assuming Trevor was making a joke.

“NO!” he said. “Look at him! He’s making plays back there. He’s not afraid of the ball like most of the other kids on this team.”

I liked hearing that. Trevor’s one of those no-bullshit guys who says what he means and knows what he’s talking about. I knew he wasn’t blowing smoke up my ass. And after a long, soul-crushing day in the office, his thoughts were like a big bong hit. I felt my shoulders relax and the tension leave my body. I felt myself exhale.

I spent the rest of the gaming watching my son, and I felt myself getting emotional as I did so. It wasn’t because I was living vicariously through him as he hit line drives and deftly fielded hard-hit ground balls. It wasn’t because I thought his strong play was somehow a reflection on me or the efficacy of my coaching, my fathering, my own passion for the game.

It was because he was having fun.

It’s as pure as anything I’ve ever seen: a seven-year-old boy playing baseball, getting dirty, sliding when there’s no need to do so just because it’s fun to get dirty. He had a bright blue Gatorade mustache. He was wearing a heavily weathered helmet that dwarfed his head. And the smile almost never left his face.

When you watch a lot of youth sports, you begin to notice the attitudes and postures of the kids. Some hate it and look miserable. Some play because they want to make their parents happy. Some try their hardest and strike out every time, but they persevere because once they’ve hit the ball a single time and felt the euphoria it brings, they can’t wait to feel it again.

It’s a lot like what grown-ups experience. Some of us are miserable and depressed. Some of us do what we must because we feel obligated; it’s our job. Some of us are pure blue collar, clocking in and out everyday because it’s all we know, all we expect, all we can do. And like the boys, we persevere. Because we feel love. We feel loved. And once you’ve felt that, you can’t wait to feel it again.

What I felt yesterday had nothing to do with baseball; it had to do with life. And love.

And where that's concerned, I'll NEVER be objective.

Yesterday, because we were celebrating my daughter’s birthday, and because I love her, and because sometimes that love is so entirely consuming that it blinds me to the scams and ruthless tricks perpetrated upon loving parents by retailers, I spent two hours and $150 with three five-year-old girls at a store in which the children can build their own stuffed animal (which naturally makes it a store from which any self-respecting man would be a-running in the opposite direction with great haste) (and now you know a little more about my self-respect).

I remember a passage in Fast Food Nation wherein the author describes the procession of cattle marching into a slaughterhouse in single-file, and then taking a deathblow to the forehead. That image is recreated at the stuffed animal place, with the parents representing cattle. The scene is virtually identical, right down to the single-file path through which customers are funneled – past the unstuffed carcasses, the stuffing station (note to self: possible name for a whorehouse or an all-you-can-eat buffet – The Stuffing Station), the rows and rows of stuffed animal clothing (which you are a bona fide asshat to say no to), the computer where you name your animal, and ultimately to the deathblow – a pimple-pocked, brace-faced teenager with a lateral lisp who says, “Your total ish one hundred forty-sheven dollarsh and sheventy-shixsh shents.” And…scene.

Oh, they try to make it look snazzy. You leave with a stuffed baby chick with a name and a birth certificate and a little stuffed heart inside. And they put it in a nice big cardboard box built to look like a little house. But scrape away the marketing and branding and you realize you’ve just been HAD! Big time!

I should be wearing a scarlet letter today.

An M, for moron.

A D, for dumb-ass.

Or perhaps an O, for Ouch, as in Ouch I took one in the poop chute yesterday because I’m weak and I love my kid and I let her manipulate me like a dork with a Rubik’s Cube.

When we got married, we bought a couch. It was blue denim, which was the style at the time, or at least it was the style that was on sale. It was perfect for a young married couple because it was comfy, basic, and modest enough to be schlepped up the stairs to our second-story condo/townhouse/apartmentish thing.

The couch was treated the way one might expect a couch to be treated by a newlywed couple, which is to say all we ever did was watch Seinfeld. And by “watching Seinfeld” I mean we were naked and sweaty and virile on it. We also ate on it, drank on it, farted on it, cried on it (not because of the farts though) and possibly, hypothetically, in a manner of speaking, got high on it. Perhaps. But I can’t be certain. And even if I was, the statute of limitations has long since passed so cool your jets, you stinkin’ narc.

Of course, this all went down when we were first married, which is coming up on 12 years ago now, and we’re much different people now. We have children and a house and a minivan. I have a blog, for goodness sakes. We’ve moved on.

But the couch hasn’t.

We still have it. It’s in our living room. A few years ago when the blue denim had finally been sun-blasted into acid-washed whiteness, Hot Wife bought a big blue denim cover to put over it. And now even that cover has been crusted by spilled juice boxes, errant toothpaste and the bright orange detritus of 10,000 sloppily snarffed goldfish crackers. It’s gotten to the point that even the idea of “watching Seinfeld” on it makes me think I need a tetanus shot first.

You think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. If our couch were in your refrigerator, it would be the opened package of stinky cheese hidden behind the orange juice for so long that it had grown those hairy, white bacteria balls and the distinct green color of death.

A very close family friend who recently visited Evans World Headquarters has rather blatantly confirmed my assessment. He was so appalled, so afraid for his personal safety, that he offered to pay for a new couch. All we had to do was pick it out.

Which brings us to my wife, The Undisputed Queen of Analysis-Paralysis: the woman who drove every minivan on the market (some of them twice) before finally, excruciatingly, mercifully making her choice. This offer has stood for the better part of a year now – a free couch! – but she has not yet found one that suits her taste. I have personally accompanied her to showroom after showroom and planted my ass in at least two dozen couches. Yet despite my fervent advocacy for one couch or another, the 12-year-old, faded denim Petri dish still sits in our living room like a big hairy mole in the middle of someone's forehead.

But wait! There’s more!

One of Hot Wife’s dearest friends, Dr. Pam (wife of Gary the Amish-Chaser), called the other day. Do you want to know what she said to me? She said that the night last weekend when her kids slept over at our house, she and Gary went out and bought a new mattress and a new couch and something else. A pony, I think. Boom! Just like that! In one night!

Ugh. I need to sit down.

Don’t worry – I’ve had my shots.

1. Candy Girl by Diablo Cody. It should come as no surprise that the screenwriter of Juno has written one of the funniest and more original memoirs I've ever read.

2. My son’s aptitude on a baseball diamond. (Yesterday: 4-for-5, two doubles, stellar defensive play.)

3. The final month of the NHL regular season.

4. Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own by U2.

5. The comical “analysis paralysis” displayed by Hot Wife as she tries to find us a new couch.

6. Moleskin notebooks.

7. The bravery displayed by Crystal at Boobs, Injuries and Dr. Pepper as she chronicles her recent hospitalization.

8. Incubus. "Pardon me while I burst into flames."

9. Grape G2

10. Watching Hillary squirm.

11. The unfathomable literary and personal support given me by the authors of Girl’s Gone Child, The Random Muse, and Baby On Bored. Please buy their books.

12. Nature Made organic flaxseed oil softgels. Because a clean colon is a happy colon.

13. The decision by Good Housekeeping to publish my work in its June issue. Because when you think of Dad Gone Mad, you think of Good Housekeeping, right?

14. Chris Kunitz and Sammy Pahlsson of the Anaheim Ducks.

15. Let It Die by the Foo Fighters.

16. The Pepsi commercial where Justin Timberlake gets drilled in the head by a flat screen HDTV just as he’s about to make his move on a hottie.

17. The persistent, reliable brilliance of several blogs, including (but not limited to) Finslippy, Jennsylvania and McSweeney’s Lists.

18. My daughter’s penchant for cuddling with me for no good reason.

19. The fact that Hot Wife spent 90 minutes last night making dog food for the fast-fading Rusty and then freely admitted that our 13-year-old golden retriever eats better than the rest of us.

20. The readers of this site, who stay loyal and supportive even when I post shitty entries like this one.

I have a friend – one of my very best friends, in fact – who holds a Psy.D., has three little kids, and lives on Maui with her husband, Dave, who was the Best Man in my wedding. With credentials like those, it’s easy to imagine her as one of those stuffy, snobby chicks who never smiles and wears brand name shoes that cost more than my life.

But that’s not Heather.

Back in the day, she was the person who got mad at me because I didn’t share her fanaticism for Black Sabbath. She’s the one who stands up in the middle of a meal and declares with a straight face that she has to go “she-she.” And she’s the one who is probably going to have to engage her mad hypnotism skillz to convince her friend Hot Wife that when we go to Vegas this summer, she can have a good time without worrying that I’ll bet our entire life savings (all $57 of it!) on a single hand of blackjack.

Indeed, H-Dawg is no ordinary friend, and no ordinary shrink.

If I had a dollar for every time we’ve called Heather and said, “Dawg, the kids are freaking out again and I think one of them might be possessed by the ghost of Anthony Wiggle and the other one just painted an exact replica of Guernica in the hallway with her own excrement! What do I do, Heath! What do we dooooooo?!”, well, I could practically double our aforementioned life savings.

She always comes through for us. And now it’s your turn to ask her for help and insight.

The H-Dawg has launched BabyShrink, a web site she created in order to help parents like you and me understand why our kids act the way they do. If you care about your children, you’ll become a BabyShrink reader and question-asker. If you don’t, there will probably be a flaming bag of dogshit on your front porch tonight. No pressure though.

And because she loves me (even though I don’t like Black Sabbath), Heather has graciously provided a platform from which I can dither on about what it means to be a dad.

CLICK HERE to read The BabyShrink Interview with a guy who probably will end up gambling away everything we own. (But they’ll have to pry my blog out of my cold, dead hands.)

By some stroke of dumb, vapid luck, our TV landed on a sadistic game show during which some dim-witted, attention-thirsty cretin was answering a series of uncomfortably personal questions in front of her closest family members and a live studio audience. As per The American Way, the potential earnings grew larger as the questions grew more humiliating. The game ends when you find the courage to broadcast to the entire free world that you secretly harbor a desire to kill your husband and eat his glutes with sashimi rice and low sodium soy sauce.

We have a winner!

Right about the time they asked this ditz if she’d ever had sex with someone who attended her wedding (and mind you, her husband was sitting 10 feet away), my self-respect got all antsy with me and I turned off the TV.

“So fucking stupid,” I said, throwing the remote onto the couch in protest.

“Totally,” Hot Wife said.

Five minutes later we’re in the bathroom. She’s brushing her teeth. I’m peeing in the sitting position because she likes it when I warm the seat for her with my butt heat before she places her tender little tushie the cold, plastic shitter.

“Can I ask you something?” she said through her toothbrush.

(If you’re not married, know that this is the single worst sentence you could hear from your spouse. It’s like getting a call from a police officer whose first words to you are, “There’s been an accident.”)

“If you must,” I said, resigned to my impending doom.

“Do you wish you had sex with anyone who was at our wedding?”

(See what I mean?)

“Ummmm…I don’t know. Do you?”

“I asked you first.”

“Well, honey, you’re really testing my memory here,” I said. “That was more than 12 years ago.”

“Oh come on. You know who was there.”

“Lemme think.”

“Any of your work friends…? My friends from high school…?”

“Yeah, I guess there were one or two chicks I can think of.”

(Did you just hear that? That was the sound of every married man in the world calling me an idiot.)

“Who?” she said, smiling coyly, but also seething.

“Not telling. Your turn to answer.”

She stumbled and tripped on her tongue a few times, then said, “I think there were a couple of guys who I would have, like, kissed. But there was only one guy there who I wanted to go farther with.”

“I KNEW IT!” I shouted, standing up from the toilet seat in protest. “IT WAS THAT SLIMY LITTLE SHITBAG WITH THE LAZY EYE, WASN’T IT?! THAT GUY YOUR MOM MADE US INVITE! I FUCKING KNEW IT!”

“Chill, dummy,” she said. “I was talking about YOU!”

“Oh,” I said, deflated. “Thanks.”

Then I sat back down on the toilet seat. She likes it warm.

I have challenged myself lately to follow through on the threats and promises I make to my kids (especially the threats) because I’ve gotten the sense that they think I’m a push-over. Perhaps they’re right. Perhaps I’m all bark, no bite. All sizzle, no steak.

Hot Wife emailed me at work last night and, in a tone of exasperation I could actually identify in her text, told me she didn’t have the time or patience to cook dinner. We agreed to meet at 6:30 at Souplantation – this all-the-healthy-food-you-can-choke-down salad bar place near the house. I arrived first, and when the family rolled up in the minivan, I walked over to greet them.

The side door opened and out drooped a whining seven-year-old with tear-stained cheeks.

(Translation: Buckle up, dad. It’s going to be one of those nights that make you wish you were born a eunuch.)

According to my sly detective eye, he was pissed because a) his sister wouldn’t share the video game, and b) he didn’t finish his homework before dinner and his mean mom made him bring it along to Souplantation. When you’re seven, the convergence of (perceived) depravation with (oppressive, dictatorial) obligation is the spiritual equivalent of stepping barefoot into a pile of dogshit. In other words, and I quote, “Waaaaaaaaaah!”

My son is already despondent when we grab our trays and begin to pile on the lettuce and shredded carrots and jicama (which, in my opinion, tastes like death) – and then tragedy strikes again. While playing with the mechanical pencil he brought along – the one with which he was going to do the aforementioned homework – he inadvertently and unknowingly spilled the lead out onto the floor. We looked for a moment, but it was nowhere to be found.

Captain Crazy, take us to DEFCON 3.

Tears, snot and indignity fly every which way, and no effort to help the boy keep the problem in perspective can penetrate his tough exoskeleton of waaaaaaaaah!

As is my pattern, I come to the rescue. (What? What’s so funny?) I borrow a blue ballpoint pen from the cashier (the one wearing so much makeup that she’s made her head 15 pounds heavier) and hand it to the boy.

“Here. Quit your crying and do your homework.”

We are sitting now, and his assignment is to count the row of nickels and pennies on the page and write the sum of their value in the blank. He’s not concentrating, and somewhere along that row the value of a nickel goes from five cents to ten. Against my best judgment, I point this out to him.

Captain Crazy, take us to DEFCON 4.

Waaaaaaaaaah!

This one, he says, is my fault. I got him a pen, not a pencil, and now he can’t erase his mistake, which obviously means the world is going to open up and swallow us all whole and oh my God we may not live to see Zack and Cody release a sex tape wherein they tag-team Hannah Montana and you suck dad oh my god you’re so mean bad bad bad waaaaaah!

Or something to that affect.

At this point, I’ve seen enough. Bring on the threats.

“Dude, listen to me. You have to keep it together. Everyone in the restaurant is looking at you, which means they might see me, and that could have a significantly detrimental impact my ability to be an A-list Internet superstar. If you can’t chill the fuck out, I’m taking you home. Ya got me?”

Deep breath. I crack a few jokes, stick a piece of cucumber on my head and pretend it’s not there, and so on. The boy calms. All is well.

“Daddy, can I have dessert?”

I look at Hot Wife. She looks at me. The prospect of introducing sugar to this volatile mix scares us both. But we acquiesce. Because we’re wimps.

I march with him over to the soft serve ice cream machine, pull down the handle and let about three-quarters of a turd length ooze into the bowl.

“Here,” I said.

“WHAT?!” he wails. “THAT’S ALL I GET?!”

“Yes. That’s all.”

EVERYBODY GET DOWN! SHE’S GONNA BLOW! CAPTAIN CRAZY, TAKE US TO DEFCON 5 AND SOUND THE ALARMS! SHE’S GONNA BLOW!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Total inner-core meltdown.

“OK,” I said matter-of-factly. “I’m done. Let’s go home.”

I set the ice cream down at our table, tell Hot Wife the boy and I are leaving, and then apply the Vulcan Death Grip to his left bicep. I maintain my stranglehold all the way through the restaurant and all the way through the parking lot.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

And you know what was funny about this? I was smiling. Like a goober. Because I was following through.

I’m pretty sure that makes me an evil bastard, but I’m OK with that.

I must preface this entry by revealing that I agreed to stay home alone with the kids last night so my wife (my WIFE!) (as in “female”) could go to a professional hockey game (a rematch of last year’s Stanley Cup Finals!) with her friend. Can you even imagine a scenario so absurd?! I’ve spent all morning trying to visualize a reversed-role equivalent to a sacrifice so unfathomable, but the best I’ve been able to conjure is Hot Wife hanging with the kids so I could accompany a buddy to an afternoon tea party at Chez Foofiefuffle.

It’s not the sacrifice that mortifies me. I’ve been married long enough to know that sometimes you have to “take one for the team” in order to maintain peace, harmony and an acceptable level of carnal engagement. But I think we can agree that this is beyond the pale. Can we do that? Can we agree that what I did was less like diving on a grenade than it was like sticking a cruise missile up my butt so that my spouse could go to the Ducks game and call Daniel Alfredsson a pansy-ass douchebag (which he is) (because he pulled this crap) to his face?

Lest I be labeled an ingrate, I will stipulate that my wife, in her inimitable grace and charm and beauty, has made sacrifices for me on a regular basis for the past 15 years (not the least of which was agreeing to lower her standards far enough to marry me).

It’s just that I really NEEDED hockey last night. I needed to scream at someone for being a prick, not necessarily because he IS one, but because I needed to blow off the steam that has built over the fact that I can’t think of a name for my book. My, ahem, “literary representative”, who has essentially taught me how to write and endured almost-daily panicked calls from me, requests that I not unveil too much detail about this subject because editors may be reading the blog and we wouldn’t want them to know how completely fucked in the head I am over this issue. But I feel comfortable showing you, my trusted and loyal readers, a glimpse into the names that have been tried on for size and very quickly discarded for the sake of my dignity:

• When Nice Jewish Boys Attack

• Better Living Through Porn

• The Secret Lives of Guys With Big Noses

• This One Time, At Jew Camp

• Rage Against the Meshugenah

• Dude, Where’s My Blog?

So yeah: I needed some hockey last night.

P.S. -- Suck it, Alfie.

I was a film major for freshman and sophomore years in college, and during that time I threw that claim of distinction around to strangers because I thought it made me sound cooler and deeper than I really was. Whenever I met someone I wanted to impress – for example, any female on the face of the earth with breasts and opposable thumbs – I’d shoehorn “film major” into the first two minutes of the conversation.

I thought making such a declaration – “Hi. I’m a film major. Wanna go back to my place and play with my projector?” – sounded a note of superiority and mysteriousness, not unlike saying, “I work in the adult entertainment industry” or “I don’t believe in wearing pants.”

(For the record, the projector line worked about as well as you might expect. Suffice it to say I stayed home most nights and played the role of “key grip”.)

I’m 20 years more mature now (yeah, right) and there is no need for superiority or mysteriousness in my world. My tastes in film have changed significantly, for now instead of trying to get inside the mind of the director or looking for metaphor in every film, I admit freely that I’m a sucker for the movies in which shit gets blown up for no reason. Given my druthers, I’d watch Caddyshack, Porky’s, Talladega Nights and The Bourne Ultimatum on a repetitive loop for the rest of my life.

Still, every once in a great while I find myself awe-struck by a film. It doesn’t happen often, but it has happened twice in the last six months, and I think that’s something to about which I can be excited. Therefore, I feel compelled to share with my first-ever official movie recommendations – two movies currently in theatres that you’d be a total asshat not to see:

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
You know I’m highly prone to hyperbole, but this is the honest truth: the best movie I have ever seen.

There are more than an ample number of reviews online to suffice, so I won’t delve into the details of the plot here. I’ll simply tell you that I have never seen a film that so perfectly blends script, performance and cinematography to tell its story. I left the theater awestruck. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since it ended.

The film was shot by a cinematographer named Janusz Kaminski, who has won Academy Awards for his work on Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List. There is a supporting performance by Max Von Sydow that in my view sets a new standard.

I implore each of you to seek out and see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I have not been solicited or paid to say that. My only objective in doing so is to share with you what I deem to be an exceptional expression of spirit, humanity and compassion.

U2 3D
Gary the Amish-Chaser and I went to see it last night and I could not recommend it more emphatically. Beyond the unfathomable bitchenality factor of the 3D, the film gives us a pure, unfiltered view of what I believe is the greatest band of my generation. At its base level, U2 3D makes you feel as though you are standing amongst the crowd at one of their concerts. And even if you're not a fan of U2 (in other words, even if you're a fucking douchebag), the pure efficiency and passion of the band is impossible to overlook.

The set is amazing, the set list is perfect, and the opportunity to see the band as though you were standing right next to it is one of the most thrilling movie experiences I've ever had. The live versions of Where The Streets Have No Name and Sunday Bloody Sunday are worth the price of admission alone.