When you’re a parent, you learn to ready yourself for those inevitable panicky moments. You see your child take an awkward fall off of a swingset, you get a call from your kid’s school out of the blue, or you find a pound and a half of heroin in your daughter’s closet. (Luckily, it turned out she was just holding it for a friend. Whew!) You catch your breath, your heart skips a beat, and that familiar sinking feeling in your stomach sets in. It’s a terrible, sickening feeling, but luckily it goes away by the time your child turns thirty. Continue reading

Frank cracks me up. Did you hear a click? “NOOOOO!”

I looked at the weather forecast at work today and damn near fell out of my chair (from surprise, not drunkenness). We’ve got a 70% chance of precipitation tonight with a low of 32 degrees Fahrenheit. For those of you with brain damage (or on the metric system) that means one thing: Snow! Of course some of you are no doubt sick and fucking tired of snow (I’m looking at you, Buffalo!), but down here in Phoenix snow is rare enough that we enjoy it, especially since we don’t have to shovel it, remove it from our rooftops before it crushes us, or dig through it to find the frozen carcasses of loved ones. Continue reading

My two sons, four and six, like to wake up early. And by early, I mean they wake up at hours that I haven’t experienced since I was in college, and even then I only saw them through the bottom of a bottle. It’s not unheard of for them to wake up at 2:15 AM and loudly begin having Maximum Fun before storming into my room to demand that I allow them to go outside to play. This is what is known in parenting circles as bullshit. After a brief showdown during which I may or may not threaten to have Santa’s hands and feet cut off, my boys will settle down for upwards of thirty minutes before starting the process all over again. I could club retarded baby seals for a living and still make Santa’s Nice List just based on the fact that I haven’t once put my sons in leg irons (although I have frequently considered it). Continue reading

I fixed a toilet today. And when I say “fixed” I don’t mean I jiggled the handle or any of that pussy toilet-fixing shit. I disassembled the toilet into individual toilet molecules and put it back together again because I am a man, and that is what a man does: Fixes toilets and celebrates with seventeen beers. For my next trick, I”m going to show off my knowledge of sports by discussing inscrutable statistics, ogle a passing woman’s breasts, and if there’s any time left over I may scratch my ass and belch. Continue reading

Every once in a while, a story in the news catches my attention for no other reason than the fact that it’s just plain crazy. I remember 18 years ago (Jesus, really? 18 years?) I was putting together a desk in my apartment in Tucson when my roommate told me, “Greg, come here and check this out. The cops are chasing OJ Simpson, and he’s driving like 15 miles per hour!” It was nuts, and it captured my attention, as well as the rest of the world. (Robert Blake, meanwhile, didn’t get in a car chase and as a result, no one gave a rat’s ass about his murder trial. Hell, he can’t even get himself arrested these days. Wait, I guess that’s a good thing.) Continue reading

I was driving home from work the other day when my check engine light came on. That is the worst fucking feeling in the world. I’ve had radically weird shit happen with my body, and the first sign of trouble never bothers me as much as my check engine light going off. That’s because most of the time whatever ailment you have is trivial and you’re just out an office visit copay. Not so with cars. You will never, ever go in to the mechanic and have him tell you, “Yeah, there’s something going around. Just don’t drive it much for a couple of days and make sure it gets plenty of liquids.” It’s always clutch this, or transmission that, and the end result is you have to give the mechanic all of your money because you desperately need to have your windows rotated. (Note: I know jack shit about cars, so I’m assuming that rotating your windows is a pretty standard thing. Also, do mechanics normally own yachts?) Continue reading

I’ve already discussed my four year old’s penchant for holding it in until he’s ready to fucking explode, but last night he took a different approach to things. A couple of hours before his annual daycare Christmas Recital (which could more accurately be described as the annual Sit In A High School Auditorium While A Bunch Of Toddlers Forget The Lyrics To Jingle Bells Recital), he decided that it would not be in his best interest to suffer through an acute episode of I’ve Got To Poo! on stage, and so he told me, “Daddy, I’m going to get the poo-poos out before I go on stage tonight!” Continue reading

Now that my daughter is twelve, I find that I can watch actual movies with her. You know, movies that don’t involve princesses, or Care Bears, or anthropomorphic sponges. Honest to God movies with characters that aren’t for sale in Toys R Us. Sure, she still likes some utterly worthless crap (*cough* Twilight *cough*), but that’s to be expected at her age. But I can sit down with her, pop in a movie, and we can watch it for more than 30 seconds without her saying, “This is BORING! I want to watch Spongebob!” which is pretty much all my kids have ever said in regards to the TV when I control the remote. Up until now, that is. So I’m enjoying the fact that I can sit down with my daughter and watch some nice, wholesome entertainment with her, like Blue Velvet. Continue reading