My well documented fondness for alcohol, especially beer, goes back to when I was two and my father got up from his seat while watching a Cubs game to answer the front door. He came back a couple of minutes later to see me standing there, feet spread wide as if to brace myself for what was to come, a can of Hamm’s in my hand, the bottom pointing straight at the ceiling. I was chugging it. My mom wanted to call poison control immediately. My dad assured her that there wasn’t that much left, and besides, it was only beer. After watching me for an hour, my parents gladly came to the decision that they did not have to take me to the hospital where any future plans of winning Parents of the Year would have been forever dashed: “Our two year old is drunk.” Continue reading

I read this morning that Lindsay Lohan hit a man with her car and drove away. The headline made me laugh because it was literally the least surprising headline about Lindsay Lohan anyone could possibly come up with. Frankly, I wouldn’t be too surprised if tomorrow morning I read the headline, “Lindsay Lohan Visits Vatican, Fingers Pope, Huffs Gas With Snooki”. What would surprise me would be the headline, “Lindsay Lohan Gets Bachelor’s Degree”, or “Lindsay Lohan Discovers Higgs Boson”, or even “Lindsay Lohan Counts To Ten”. That bitch is a fucking train wreck. Continue reading

The problem with being an opinionative person is that no one asks you for opinions any more. And why would they? Anyone who knows you knows that it’s only a matter of time before you tell them how you feel about, say, Grape Nuts cereal, and so they can save their breath until you look up from the breakfast table one day and declare that Grape Nuts taste like a homeless guy just shit some kitty litter into a bowl full of gravel. Continue reading

Every March, I roll up my sleeves, get to work, and really put a fucking hurting on my family. I mean, I fucking whomp on ’em. Take no prisoners, give no quarter, and mercy is for the weak, that’s what I say. When I get through destroying my family, they will wish that they had never been born. I’m speaking, of course, about our family NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament pool. This is serious fucking business. Continue reading

Chances are that you’ve got a killer in your household, something directly responsible for over 1.2 million deaths worldwide every year. It is so dangerous, in fact, that you have to obtain a special license to use it. It is expensive to purchase, expensive to operate, and expensive to maintain. In addition to all of that, it is poisonous, contributing to pollution so severe that it claims an additional 1.3 million lives every year. If you even turn it on in a closed room, it will kill you within minutes. I’m referring to, of course, automobiles, specifically the one I had to take in with a blown master cylinder this morning. Fucking cars. Continue reading

I grew up on my mother’s cooking, and as my mother is French-Quebecois, I was not exposed to spices of any kind until I was well into my teens. Seriously, my mother cooks the blandest food known to mankind. English food seems daring and risky by comparison. It’s not her fault, she just cooks the food she happened to grow up on. Of course, as she became Americanized, she became a little adventurous. I remember being excited when she announced that she had found a recipe for chili and was going to make it for dinner. Chili! It sounded so exotic! Then I sat down to dinner and my mom served it to me. On a plate. Continue reading

I attended public schools growing up, which wasn’t as bad as some people would have you believe. At least it wasn’t out in the far suburbs of Chicago where the streets were more likely to be teeming with cows than gang members. I had my share of good teachers, a couple of them I’d go so far as to call excellent. Most of the teachers were competent, but average. They got the job done, kept control of the class, and managed to make sure that you left with a little more knowledge in your head than you came in with. But you take the good along with the bad: I also had a fifth grade teacher who was horribly inept and lazy, and an eighth grade teacher who was a living nightmare. That nightmare was called Lester the Molester. Continue reading

You know what I highly recommend? Being in a rock band. I was in a rock band when I was in college, and it was tremendous fun. We did band-like things such as rehearse, play gigs, do drugs, and get really drunk, but being in a rock band is so much more than that. It’s having the police bust up an outdoor jam session while you’ve got a bottle of whiskey and a bag of drugs in plain sight on a picnic table; it’s dumping a full garbage can out on another band’s gear in a recording studio because they had just been signed to a label and made the mistake of thinking that meant they could order another band to go buy beer for them; it’s the sheer exhilaration you feel when you realize you have a real fan, even if looks-wise she’s closer to a grouper than a groupie. Being in a rock band fucking rules. Continue reading

I read the other day that new evidence has surfaced that supports the claim of a man who had claimed that he was Hitler’s love-child with a young French woman. The first thing I thought was that I’m not so sure you want to be running around announcing that you’re Hitler’s son. I mean, it’s got to be hard to get second dates when you drop that little nugget of information into play during dinner. “Well, I’m an avid reader, I like to travel, and I’m the son of the mastermind behind the slaughter of six million innocent people. What about you?” At that point you may as well drop in that you’ve got herpes and that your name is Mel Gibson, because it won’t make things worse: You’re just not getting any action tonight, Adolf Jr. Continue reading

When my daughter was little, Hannah Montana was all the rage. She and her cousins all wanted to be Hannah Montana, and not just for Halloween. They had tramp costumes that they’d wear everywhere, makeup applied with a trowel, and you’d find pink tubes of glittery lip gloss with hearts and rainbows on them all over the fucking place. That was bad enough, but what was worse, they all started acting and talking like that horse-faced slut. When Hannah Montana hurled insults at Billy-Ray Cyrus, that was tolerable because that fucknut inflicted Achey-Breaky Heart on us, so fuck him. But when my daughter used the same line against me, the Disney channels were instantly blocked and remained so for the next six years. Continue reading