These are some of the thoughts and sentences I wrote in the second quarter of 2008.

APRIL

You don’t fool me, Mr. You’ve Been Pre-Approved For An American Excess Platinum Card Junk Mail Envelope. What does that even mean? I’ve been approved because I have a street address? I’m approved because you think I might be dumb enough to make use of a credit card that dings me for 74.99% interest on all purchases? Got news for you, bud. Congratulations! You’ve been pre-approved to kiss my butt and formally make the acquaintance of my friend, Mr. Paper Shredder.

* * *

I’ve lived a one-sidedly suburban existence. I occasionally develop pangs of inferiority about it, too, supposing as I do that never having resided in a big city means I’ve missed something. Perhaps I’ve failed to prove to myself that I’m tough enough to survive outside of the burbs, or in any environment that isn’t pocked with mini-malls and minivans and cul-de-sacs. I ask myself, “How hardened can you really be when you can find a parking spot in fewer than 45 minutes and you’ve never been propositioned for hand-relief by a toothless heroin fiend of unspecified gender?”

* * *

That’s the great thing about young boys: they’re too dumb to argue with common sense.

* * *

On certain so-called holy days, Jews can do fun things, like dress up as some old, dead king with a funny last name, get hammered drunk and scream like a orangutan in heat every time someone mentions the name of the bad guy. That’s the holiday called Purim (pronounced POO-rim), and it looks very much like a frat party where all of the “brothers” are wearing little felt beanies on their heads and tapping keg after keg of shitty Jew wine that tastes like Aqua Velva.

* * *

Lately I’ve been thinking it’s time to take some risks with my underwear.

MAY

Momo Fali: "...can you tell me why men must have their hands down their pants while watching TV?"

Because that's where our balls are. Duh.

* * *

My body operates on its own biological clock, and after 38 years of observation I can predict with absolute certainty how I will feel and behave at given points of the day. I know, for example, that I’m a morning person and that my eyes will open at about 5:30 a.m. (give or take a few minutes based on whether or not I’m having a dream about Norah O’Donnell and an industrial-sized tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter).

* * *

It’s a game, pure and simple. You play it because you have to, because it’s your job to have a job, because you have a family to feed and that’s of paramount importance and sometimes you have to eat a giant scoop of shit in order to provide for them. But at some point you have to wonder, “What’s in it for me?” Someone once said the true definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. So I ask myself why, after 14 years of playing this game five days a week, would I expect to one day find that one little victory? I must be insane.

* * *

But it’s funny how seeing one’s own son get drilled in the nuts by a baseball changes one’s perspective.

* * *

Twenty years ago, I was frustrated with my inability to get a girl to take her clothes off for me.

Today, I’m frustrated by my inability to get a girl to put her clothes ON for me.

It appears I have come full circle, no?

* * *

The experience of fathering a five-year-old girl compares favorably to the experience of trying to put your pants on over your head. It’s impossible. Not only that, it’s stupid even to try. Certainly there’s a contortionist at a seedy, backwoods county fair who can do it, but I’m not that person. I can barely bend over to tie my shoes without tumbling to the ground, grabbing my hamstrings and shouting “CRAMP!”

* * *

So one night, about a year ago, I decided to quit dreaming. I sat down at my keyboard and began to write. I began to create the trappings of my dream in real life.

It has been the hardest year of my writing life. Rejection has reigned. Every small victory has been countered by enormous disappointment and despair. I have neglected friendships, responsibilities, family obligations. Phone calls and emails have gone unreturned. I have opened my soul to criticism, and I have convinced myself that this is my last best chance to accomplish something for myself – to escape the rut of cubicle jobs, financial desperation and career aimlessness.

Thursday morning, my agent called from New York.

“You have a book deal,” she said.

Just like that, the dream became real.

Just like that, my life changed direction.

JUNE

This little hottie who sleeps in my bed is going to be 40 years old in few months – and she hasn’t even broken her hip yet!

Because I know where my bread is buttered (so to speak), I have endeavored over the past couple of weeks to plan a birthday extravaganza for said hottie. I enlisted the help of her friend, Dr. Pam, beloved spouse of Gary The Amish-Chaser (who has asked me to come up with a new nickname for him because he’s afraid the Amish people of upstate New York are going to roll up in front of his house – in Southern California – in their covered wooden wagons and go all Witness on his ass).

Pam and I exchanged a few emails about Hot Wife’s party last week, and although our planning was only in the earliest stages, it was already quite clear that this was going to be shindig for the ages. We were going to hold it in Pam and Gary’s backyard (which happens to be the size of Vermont), and we were going to have chicks and guns and fire trucks and a petting zoo and Dippin’ Dots and little midgets wearing diapers soaked in champagne. Clothing would have been optional and vomiting would have been mandatory.

You would have wanted to be there. Trust me.

* * *

3. You write things that seem to make perfect sense when you started them and then realize when you’ve finished that they are neither germane to the story nor clearly intelligible nor particularly well crafted. And suddenly you’ll be sitting in front of two hours worth of work and facing the very real prospect that you’ll have to delete it, and somehow that just hurts you to your core. You’d rather chew your own leg off than waste all of that effort. Then, to distract yourself from the pain, you write a story about actually chewing your leg off. And it’s AWESOME!

* * *

After seeing the new Indiana Jones movie last week, my son expressed an interest in seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark. I rented it, only to learn when I got it home that I’m hopelessly old. Raiders came out when I was 11 years old – 27 years ago! Harrison Ford looks like a Bar Mitzvah boy in the movie. Still, I sat with my kid Sunday morning and showed him one of the formative films of my youth. His review? “This is boring. There’s too much talking.” How many years will it be until he starts saying the same thing about pornos?

* * *

I decided to buy the current issues of Glamour and Self, and to soften the effeminate blow with the premier issue of Shit Men Do With Grease and the Don’t Buy This Magazine Unless You Pee Standing Up magazine swimsuit issue. I put the dude mags on top and slid the whole stack toward the cashier, Rebecca, who scanned my first two items with nary a twitch of her pierced eyebrow.

When she got to Self – the issue with Liv Tyler on the cover, sitting in front of a pink backdrop and right next to the screaming FLAT ABS IN 5 MINUTES! headline – Rebecca looked at me the way you’d look at someone who invites you to move your hair to the side so he doesn’t disturb it when he chops your fucking head open with an ax.

“For my wife,” I said.

Rebecca scanned it through the bar code thingy, then reached out for the issue of Glamour featuring the absolute stone cold fox Charlize Theron on the cover. Again, she looked at me askance.

“What?” I asked. “A man can’t buy an issue of Glamour without getting the hairy eyeball from some gothed-out philosophy major from the community college?!”

* * *

THIS IS A LIST OF THE THINGS I LOOK FUNNY DOING
Running
Dancing
Singing/Lip-synching
Trying to look normal
Trying to look sexy
Trying to look like I'm in control
Parenting
Engaging in God-sanctioned marital congress

* * *

I miss you, Jim. There’s a hole in my life since you’ve been gone. If you were here, you’d see me floundering with this. You'd stand back and laugh for a minute, but then you’d say “Move!” and barge in and fix it for me with a shim or a kick or one of the many tools in my garage that I don’t know how to use.

* * *

While I’m very strict with regard to what I share about Hot Wife and the kids, my own personal existence is an open book. During the five-year existence of Dad Gone Mad, I’ve exposed the following heinous details about myself:

• I have two webbed toes.
• I have uneven nipples.
• I was clinically depressed.
• I had a vasectomy.
• I fart a lot.
• Generally, I’m a pussy.
• I’m physically unfit.
• I have no manners.
• I’m an unfit parent.
• I have no shame.

* * *

I can’t tell you why people feel compelled to tell me this, but I’ve heard it so many times that the words are practically emblazoned across my brain like a tramp stamp on a Midwestern stripper: “It’s better to be presumed ignorant than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

With your permission, I’d like to propose a slight modification to this sage morsel of wisdom. “It’s better to people believe you’re athletic because you’re tall than to pick up a baseball bat and prove without equivocation that you don’t have the athletic ability God gave the Southeast-Asian, Blue-Haired Nocturnal Shitmonkey.”

Comments

Your statements about trying to get your daughter to get dressed still make me laugh. I think it has something to do with the fact that I have sat there on many occasions begging, bribing or threatening the youngest into her clothes.

Your next mission, should you choose to accept it, is to top these thoughts and sentences in 2009.

This message will self destruct in five seconds.

"...never been propositioned for hand-relief by a toothless heroin fiend of unspecified gender?"

Duder, I have. It's...meh.

Happy New Year, Danny!

I think you should use more general terms when speaking of boys and dumbness. It's not just the young ones.

No way! I've also (recently) had a vasectomy. I'm now flirting with PVPS. Nothing says fun like pain in your nuts. Which was, incidentally, my high school's slogan.

Happy New Year!

So, thanks for the reviews! It makes it easier to giggle myself silly in bite-size chunks! Plus, I don't have to try and remember what post you said what in. Mucho appreciated, man.

Read each and every one of those remarks the first time around & they made me laugh again the second time!

Love love love this post . . . where did you get the thought bubble from my 5 year old?

Hey, I want to subscribe to your blog . . . can't figure out how. Any clues?