I am asked on a fairly regular basis to tell more stories of my youth, specifically stories that took place in college when I was supposed to be earning a degree, but instead spent half a decade pickling my brains. This is because a lot of my readers like to live vicariously through me living vicariously through my past self. (That’s two generations of vicarious living in case you are keeping track, which you aren’t). I’m usually more than happy to oblige because these stories always bring a smile to my face, especially when one of my friends consequently sends me an email to remind me of something related that I’d totally forgotten. “Dude, that’s so funny! And then you rode that police horse around the quad while wearing a Speedo made out of duct tape and parking citations! Hahahaha!” Uhhh, yeah. Continue reading

If it weren’t for my kids, the 80’s wouldn’t seem as if they were so far away. They’re not that far away, really. Not to me at least. Any time I want, I can close my eyes and conjure up visions of… AAAUUUGGGHHH!!! Who the fuck thought dressing head to toe in neon colors was a good idea? And what was with everyone’s fucking hair?!? Jesus, what a vapid decade: Menudo, Chia-Pets, parachute pants, and Where’s the Beef? No wonder I started drinking as a teenager. Anyway, the 80’s, for me, are instantly accessible in the recesses of my mind, but for my kids, they may as well be a hundred years ago. And so when I have to explain that when daddy grew up, phones were attached to walls and they look at me as if I just told them that I rode a dinosaur to school, I think to myself, well of course, the 80’s started over 32 years ago… And then it seems really far away, and distant, and I feel old. So I ground my kids to their rooms for a couple of weeks and drink in front of the TV watching reruns of Cheers until I feel young again or the police tell me that they have the house surrounded, whichever comes first. Continue reading

The last couple of months of my senior year in high school were, in many ways, very common. I, like many other students, had front loaded so many classes throughout high school that the last semester consisted of just a couple of classes and lots of time fucking around with my friends on Senior Bench, a large bench that ran the length of the hall that contained senior lockers. Since I had been accepted to my university of choice, I could do almost anything I wanted to without fear of it having negative consequences. I can’t emphasize this enough: That kicked fucking ass. School is so much more fun when you aren’t weighed down by actually having to learn anything. The spring of 1987 seemed to roll by in slow motion, sunny skies, green lawns, and endless fun with my friends. Even then I knew it was something special, which is why, in an effort to spend even more time there, I volunteered to become the manager of the girls soccer team. Continue reading

I was alerted to some shocking news from France today: The French have four whole people willing to take up weapons and actually use them. This, of course, comes as a big shock to anyone familiar with World War II in which France played a crucial role because, hey, someone had to flee the battlefield crying like little girls. The news comes from “one of France’s largest festivals of medieval culture”, which, let’s face it, is just another reason for them not to shower. Anyway, here is the first sentence from the AFP report: Continue reading

I got my hair cut today, something that always leaves me with mixed feelings. I was cursed with fine and very straight hair, which means that the only way it looks good is to keep it short. I’m ok with this now, but when I was growing up I desperately wanted to have hair like Robert Plant or Jimmy Page because look how much pussy those guys got! They were… So. Fucking. Cool. But even when I got to the age when my parents let me grow my hair (in other words, the age when I stopped listening to them), my hair would not fucking cooperate and instead of looking like Robert Plant, I wound up looking like the offspring of Axl Rose and Gollum after having gotten out of a pool. It was not a good look for me. Continue reading

I want to live on a farm in Vermont. Well, not an actual farm. I grew up in the Midwest, so I understand the dreamy, romanticized vision most people have in their heads when they think of farm life. Farms are nothing like that. Farms are hot, smelly places where backbreaking labor does nothing to guarantee success. And even if, against all odds, harvest time has come and everything has gone right, with no drought, or flood, or pestilence, or fire, or anything else crazy getting in the way, and you find yourself with an actual crop to sell, some motherfucking asshole from the city will pipe up and complain that eighty-nine cents is way too much money for an ear of corn that you’ve worked from dawn till dusk for an entire season to produce, and the next thing you know, you’re sitting in the county jail, charged with Murder by Combine. Continue reading

Do you ever find yourself thinking about really strange things? Have you ever been lost in thought during a meeting at the office and then snapped to, realizing that the things that you were thinking were so off the wall that had your coworkers any inkling of what was going on in your head, they’d have you fucking keel-hauled on general principle? Yeah, that’s me. I think of weird shit all of the time, such as what Pac-Man’s sex life must be like. Continue reading

Regular, long time visitors to this site may recall a momentary fascination with Japanese WTF band BabyMetal. They were even considered (along with Mini-Kiss, Nudist Priest, and Fat Benetar) as an act for the first annual Dogs on Drugs liver-stomping party and AA recruitment drive. But if I have learned one thing during my brief stay on this planet (and I haven’t), it’s that people give you sidelong looks when you’re a grown man trying to hire thirteen year old girls in any capacity, let alone one in which they must fly across the globe to shake their asses on stage for a room full of howling drunks. It just doesn’t look right. Continue reading

Zooey Daschanel has been making cameo appearances in my life all too often lately. Everywhere I go, I either see Zooey on a TV show, in a commercial, on a magazine cover, or even being prominently mentioned and discussed in the websites that I visit. The other night I walked through the living room and glanced at the TV: Zooey was on a panel of judges for some moronic television show. (I’m surprised that they have any contestants. The day Zooey Deschanel sits in judgement of me is the day I sit down and eat the barrel of a handgun for lunch.) But the real problem is that once you notice the ubiquity of a certain person, the less able you are to ignore it. I see Zooey Deschanel everywhere. Continue reading

The internet is a wondrous invention, providing entertainment to billions of people across the globe. Mostly, this entertainment is provided in the form of videos of dudes being blown by midgets. But the internet is a source of valuable information as well, a tool that we may use to enrich our minds and, indeed, our very lives, or at least it is until you stumble across WebMD and quickly freak yourself out, convincing yourself that you are dying of ball cancer. Continue reading