Well, Sneeze Out Some Cheese, It's... DEAR APRON!

Do you remember those commercials John Cleese used to do for Magnavox? God, I miss those. It was like-- was there really a time when people in this country needed to be persuaded by the zenith of acerbic English comedy to buy a television set? Amazing that such a time existed, in the space of our lives.

I humbly regret that I have no ex-Pythons at my disposal to promote my blog, but, if I did, it would most likely be Terry Jones, who was easily the funniest "woman" of the group, and I'd stuff him into some awful, floral-print dress, a babushka strapped unceremoniously over his wig, an obscene amount of lipstick and, in his best screechy voice, I'd have him say,

ALLO, LOVE! WELCOME TO ANOTHER RIGHT BALLS-UP EDITION OF...

DEAR APRON:

I'm a 16-year-old gangbanger looking at spending the rest of my life isolated in a little bird cage. Every day I ask myself the same question. Was it really worth throwing my life away? All I did was help a "homeboy" from getting hurt. I got caught and was convicted on eight charges that led to more than four consecutive life sentences. That ain't no joke! The sad part of it is that the so-called homeboy turned his back on me when I needed him most. I should've pulled away when I could've.

The main reason for this letter is to help parents and teens like myself who are choosing the wrong path to realize what you're getting into while there is still time. Tell parents out there, if you see your kid is messing up in school, using drugs, hanging with the wrong crowd, anything that would lead to gang affiliation, reach out and help them while you still can before they're in too deep. They (teens) turn toward gang life in search of the love they need from their family. Or they want to fit in and be cool.

To all the gangbangers who think you're cool and being a gangster, get away from it while you still can. It may be fun at the moment, but it's not when you get caught and you have to spend the rest of your life behind bars. There's better things to do in life than hang around all day frying your brain from all the drugs and alcohol. Trust me, when you're behind bars thinking about what you did, you'll be missing your family the most. You think your homeboys are going to be there for you? Well, let me tell you this ... they're not! I guarantee you that the only people who are actually willing to change places with you are your parents. Your real family. Do you think your homeboys want to do time for you? Hell, no!

I hope this letter helps some people out there. I just want to make a contribution to society before I get locked up in the dungeon forever. This is to show you not all gangbangers are evil and cruel. Life is short. Live it smart, not stupid. Now I can finally answer the question I ask myself, "Was it all worth it?" The money, the girls and all the material things go faster than you think and could all be taken away with the snap of a finger from the split second of a decision you make. It's not worth your life. -- HOMESICK HOMEBOY

DEAR HOMESICK HOMEBOY:

Are you fucking serious?

I'm sorry-- I just don't believe that this letter was written by some cap-poppin' gangsta-ass mothafucka named "Cop-Killuh" or "W8sted" or "Niggwich". I have my sneaking suspicion that this letter was ineptly written by some Methodist prison warden who spends his Sundays fantasizing about giving the church organist's breasts 5-to-10 in solitary.

If, however, on the exceedingly off-chance that this was written by a genuine "16-year-old gangbanger" then I have only one thing to say to you: I hope you get the electric chair. Not for your crimes, though. For that letter.

DEAR APRON:

I am madly in love (infatuated?) with my surgeon. I had a bilateral mastectomy and he saved my life. The cancer is gone.

It has been almost a year, and I need to return for a checkup. I haven't stopped thinking about "Dr. Dreamy" this entire year. We are both in our 40s; I'm single, he's single. Would it be unethical if I act on my feelings and let him know? Should I get another doctor? Or do I just go to the appointment and "grin and 'bare' it"? Help! -- "GEORGE" ON MY MIND IN PHOENIX

DEAR THAT'S NASTY IN PHOENIX:

I'm tempted to advise that you sit on that sixteen-year-old gangbanger's lap in the electric chair for the "grin and 'bare' it" line in your letter, but, because it's Thursday and you're a cancer survivor and I'm feeling horny, I'll let it pass.

No, it's not unethical for you to act on your feelings and let him know. You're a patient-- you're not supposed to have ethics. You certainly didn't swear to a Hippocratic Oath. He's the only one who has to worry about an ethics violation, the loss of his medical license, a potential lawsuit and being shunned by his colleagues, peers and superiors by playing Hide the Tongue Depressor with you in his exam room.

Instead of just coming right out with it, I always suggest stalking first. That tends to warm potential lovers up and it shows them that you have invested significant time in researching their financial history, family tree, the engine intake displacement of their personal vehicle, the level of asbestos/termite infestation in their home and any irregularly shaped moles they may happen to have on their bodies through your purchase of high-caliber, infrared AN PVS-5 Night-Vision binoculars that you will utilize to gaze at him through his bedroom windows late at night.

Remember-- nothing, not even a restraining order or a chemical eye-irritant spray, can stop love.

(Infatuation?)

DEAR APRON:

I'm writing you about a disgusting, rude and, in my opinion, obscene habit -- the bride and groom shoving wedding cake in each other's faces. The couple are all dressed up in their beautiful finery. They have a wonderful ceremony and a perfect reception table. How rude and insensitive to the person he or she has just promised before God to love, honor and cherish -- not to mention disrespectful.

What do you think of this "custom," and do you agree with me? -- FAITHFUL LITTLE ROCK READER

DEAR FAITHFUL:

I love it. Most people write in to these columns ostensibly seeking advice but, really, they just want their own feelings/perspectives validated by the writer of the advice column. While this is really just a fallacious appeal to authority, it's a natural human inclination to want people to side with you in times of emotional turmoil. I really respect you, Faithful, for just coming out and asking, "do you agree with me?" and not pretending to ask for advice you don't actually want.

Yes, in fact. I do agree with you. I think the practice of a newly-married couple shoving cake into each other's mouths is deplorable. I think the groom should shove his fist into the mouth of the oldest living wedding guest and forcibly remove their dentures. After he does that, the groom should attach the dentures to the panties of his blushing bride and use the dentures to grip onto the panties and pull them down around her ankles. After he has the bride in a "plowing the field" position" (legs up in the air while she is on her back) he should shove his portion of cake straight into her vagina. The bride, once thoroughly incakeinated, should then rise and punch the groom as hard as she can in his throat. While he is reeling backward in pain, blood spurting from his nose, she shoud remove her earrings and jam them into both of his nipples. The groomsmen, who would all be performing the ceremonial circle-jerk onto the officiant's head, would tackle the groom and remove his trousers, bending him over the altar so that his rear end is exposed and the photographer has a good angle. It should be the responsibility of the Best Man and the Bride's father to pull apart the groom's asscheeks at this time. The bride and bridal party should then consume as much of the remainder of the cake as they can and then force themselves to throw up the contents straight into the groom's gaping asshole while the entire cadre of wedding guests gleefully shout:

ARISTOCRATS!

That, I think, would be far better suited... to my tastes anyway.

Why Couldn't It Have Been the Butter Face Lady?

I know I mentioned a while ago on here that, as a child, I routinely read the obituaries in The Philadelphia Inquirer, I would joke, "to see if I'm in there."

I was only half kidding.

Today, I sometimes spend a little time sifting through the obituaries in The New York Times for a slightly less bizarre reason. I like to learn about interesting people. And it's funny how most interesting people, similarly, in fact, to uninteresting people, don't seem to get much attention until after they're dead. Sure, there are heaps of feature articles on Susan Boyle or whatever, but how many in-depth pieces do you remember reading about Peter Falk until recent unfortunate events?

Today, I got to learn a little bit about Norma Lyon and, because I found her interesting enough to read about, and write about, you're going to learn about her, too.

THey called her the "Butter-Cow Lady", and it's not because everything about her was awesome, but her cow. It's because she devoted a significant portion of her life to replicating animate and inanimate objects out of, you guessed it my little honors track student: butter.

The Iowa State Fair was a far creepier and more wonderous place with Ms. Norma around, because she would routinely enter gigantic, often life-sized sculptures in the fair, and I doubt she had much competition.

She was a devoted wife of 61 years, and mothered and raised 9 children, and yet she still had time to make a grade AA salted butter version of "The Last Supper," a full-sized dairy cow, and a 23-pound sculpture of Barack Obama's head to accompany her (solicited) 60 second radio endorsement while Obama was running for office.

"He knows our kids need opportunity here in Iowa so they don’t have to leave home to follow their dreams," she said in the ad. "Even if that dream is 500 pounds of butter shaped like a cow."

Hey, it sounds like some of the dreams I've had after eating chips and salsa too late at night.

It might seem like I'm poking fun at the late Ms. Norma Lyon, but really I have nothing but the purest admiration for not only her talent, and her passion, but for achieving mastery. That's something I've never done-- at anything. Certainly there are things that I'm good at, things at which I can admit I do well, but I've never achieved mastery at an art form, or mastery at a job-- I always leave too soon. Norma Lyon crafted things out of butter, and she was no amateur at doing so, and I respect and admire that.

I used to think that being a professional meant you got paid to do something. I don't know how the Iowa State Fair worked out its arrangement with Norma Lyon, but, whether she got paid or not, she was a goddamned professional. A couple years ago, I was cast in an industrial film to play an insensitive prick doctor to teach medical students how not to be insensitive prick doctors, and I got paid $20-an-hour for a week-long shoot. There was a make-up artist and a costumier, a film crew, a lighting crew, a sound guy and even a director flown in from California.

"I have to split the shoot in two, guys," he told us around the dinner table, "so I can fly to France to shoot Salma Hayek in a perfume commercial."

As I bit into my leaky wrap, I laughed quietly in my head as I pictured this guy shooting Salma Hayek. Then I quietly pictured things I wanted to do to Salma Hayek.

The point I'm trying to make here is that, while I got paid for this film, there was nothing "professional" about it, least of all my performance. I hope that, one day, I will achieve mastery at something. It may be being a husband or a father, I don't think achieving it as a son or a brother is going to pan out by this point, or it may just turn out to be at a craft. We'll have to see.

One thing is for sure-- today I will be thinking about Norma Lyon, aged 81. The Butter Cow Lady.

Norma: this pad's for you.

Buzz-Cut

I can have an ethical dilemma, even about hedges.

During our honeymoon in Bali, ethical dilemmas confronted us everywhere we went. In the artsy city of Ubud, it was the ethical dilemma about whether or not we ought to haggle on the street with a vendor with three teeth and five children to get an $11 painting down to $6.

In beach-front Lovina, it was the ethical dilemma of whether or not we should participate in the environmentally unfriendly, exploitative tourist-trap of going out into the Pacific Ocean in a tiny little boat, racing a bunch of other tiny little boats crammed with a bunch of sweaty Australians for the chance of seeing a few dolphins.

Back in Ubud, it was the ethical dilemma of whether or not to spend time at a dog shelter, playing with dogs we knew we would never even be permitted to adopt, even if we were crazy enough to do so. I fell in love with a dog named Bruno, and I donated $25.00, and bought a bumper sticker that said, "I <3 Bali Dogs" that my Focus wore proudly until the red heart faded to pink, and we traded the car in for my wife's Fit.

"Look," I would say to my wife as we fought ass-crack sweat tramping down unfamiliar streets, trying not to get hit by mopeds or eaten by feral dogs, "I just want to have a good time-- I don't want to have an ethical dilemma about everything."

An every-now-and-then ethical dilemma can, of course, be a good thing. It means we're not sociopaths, and that's kind of a good thing not to be. Too much of that horseshit, though, can be mentally and physically draining, as we found out many miles away in Indonesia.

Which brings me back to Pennsylvania, and our hedges.

We bought our house February of 2009. Our house is a charming little twin, built in 1928-- good bones. It has no lawn to speak of, certainly none that requires mowing-- it's all pachysandra. There are, however, hedges that ring the edge of our property, and run all the way down the side of our house, separating it from the neighbor's abode, and these hedges do require some suburbanite upkeep.

Otherwise, neighbors look at you. They keep the tsk-tsk'ing quiet, but their looks are loud.

Since we moved in, I have been tending to our hedges with a pair of manual hedge-clippers. You know the type-- they look like gigantic scissors. In 2009, these fuckers worked like the dickens. Nice and sharp, they sliced through those leaves and little twigs like a champ. Last year, I noticed that they had definitely lost some of their vim and vigor-- or I had. Really, though, I blame the hedge-clippers. Their blades were dull, the nut-and-bolt that held them together was loose and tenuous. Sure, I could have taken them to some hardware store and had them sharpened, probably for half the cost of what I paid for them in the first place, but I didn't think that was very smart. So, like a smart person, I persisted in trimming my hedges throughout the summer of 2010 with dull, fucked up hedge-clippers.

This late spring and summer, which has been unusually hot and unusually rainy, I have trimmed the hedges three times already. And, from the first snip, I knew the manual hedge-clippers days were numbered. On Sunday, I noticed that our hedges, after being trimmed last weekend, were sprouting bizarre, wayard leaf-arms, extending from the even base.

"Listen," I said to my wife, "I can't do it anymore. I'm going to ask my father if I can borrow his fucking electric hedge-trimmer."

Because, really? I didn't want to have an ethical dilemma about it anymore.

Sure, I'm still relatively young and (don't snigger) strong-- and, really, I should be able to take care of our hedges with a set of manual hedge-clippers. But, in temperatures that routinely hover at around 90, with humidity constantly over 80% and little gnats landing in your ears and sweat stinging your eyes-- why the fuck should I? Because an electric trimmer wastes electricity? Because it adds to the already increasingly nascent amount of noise pollution that is plaguing our neighborhood?

Look, whether I use the electric trimmer or not-- this one's still power-washing her deck with a gasoline-based machine, this one's using a power-mower, this one's buzzing her grass with a weed-whacker. There are rotating blades and little engines all over the fucking place. And, if one more is going to help me get the hedges done in half-an-hour instead of an hour-and-a-half so that I can spend more time doing something I actually give half-a-turd about: I'm all for it.

My father dropped off the electric trimmer Sunday afternoon.

"Here you go, Mummy," he said, handing it over to me like it was a golden calf, "and here is the power wire (see: extension cord) it's 100 feet."

"Thanks," I said.

"Now, Mummy-- you have used it before?" he asked, his brow furrowed in anticipatory concern.

Desperate to be spared of a lengthy tutorial in his loud and dubious version of English I lied and said, "Oh, yeah-- a couple times."

"Okay, good-- but listen, this is a trick I learned from Dr. Porter-- always, always run the cord through your belt loop, that way it is impossible for you to slice the cord with the blade."

Oh, Dr. Porter. Our next-door neighbor when we were growing up. An ancient, five-foot-tall troll-like humanoid with thick, black glasses, a nose that looked like the hood of a Volkswagen, and suspenders that hiked up his trousers to his nipple-line. He used to refer to my mother (to her face) as "The Bod" and, in casual conversation, he would routinely ask neighborhood kids if they were "getting any." He was a thoroughly ridiculous individual, but, nevertheless I heeded his safety warning. After all, how could you ignore a self-preservation tip from a man who fell off an eight-foot ladder into a honeysuckle bush below while trying to get a raccoon out of a tree with a broomstick?

No ethical dilemmas for that sonofabitch.

Understudy

I like underdogs.

I like antiheroes.

I like the singing of songs unsung.

I like it when people who may not always receive the prime opportunity get their chance to shine.

I like understudies.

I have a friend who is making a go of it at professional theatre in New York City, and, for a long time, he was inviting me to see shows for which he was understudying. Mrs. Apron and I went to New York to see a show for which he was understudying both male roles. And, the day before, he went on. The performance we saw, he didn't. I was hoping he would, because I love my friend and it's exhilerating to see him perform in a professional venue, and I admit there's a modicum of professional jealousy there for me, because I know it is something I will most likely never do myself-- but I do get a charge out of seeing him do it.

Always have.

(Bloody voyeur.)

Understudying is a funny business. I can't imagine that the people who do it actually want to be doing it, but it's a way of paying your dues, and getting paid, of prepping and working with excellent directors and performers, of staying fresh in your craft, of staying busy, of staying involved. But it's got to be hard-- much harder than being the principal performer, I think, because you must hold yourself in abeyance in the event that your services are required. And, really, aside from your friends, nobody really wants to see you. Nobody wants to pay $150 a ticket to see that little paper insert in the program saying that you are taking over for Kelsey Grammer or Catherine Zeta Jones.

When Mrs. Apron and I went to New York to see the revival of one of my favorite musicals, "A Little Night Music", we were greeted by one of those little slips of paper indicating that the role of Desiree would, this evening, not in fact be played by Catherine Zeta Jones, but by her understudy, Jayne Paterson. We didn't give a shit, because we were there to see a show-- not an actor.

And Paterson was excellent. Because she's a professional, Broadway perfomer-- she just isn't married to Michael Douglas and isn't hot as bubbling ballsweat.

When we saw "Wicked", it wasn't Idina Menzel defying gravity, nor was it even the chick who was doing the Broadway tour-- it was Coleen Sexton, who blew the shit out of the Academy of Music with her powerful voice, astonishing looks (yes, we had good enough seats to tell) and sensitive portrayal.

Last night, we found ourselves at the Academy again, having procured rush tickets to see "Next to Normal". Again, the slip of paper told us that Diana Goodman would not be played by the supersonically famouse Alice Ripley, but by Pearl Sun. She was fantastic, in a performance that had me craning forward (and not just because they were 2nd Balcony seats) riveted and moved.

In an age where people are flocking to Broadway in droves to see big names-- and big film names, no less-- and not works created by accomplished playwrights and festooned by visionary directors and designers, we have our understudies to thank for opening our eyes to the fact that professionalism and talent do not necessarily have to come prepackaged, that theatre can stand on its own merits, and that there is more to top billing than a name encased within a star on Hollywood Boulevard.

The next time you go see a Broadway or Broadway touring show, and you see that little slip of paper in your program-- try smiling instead of complaining, because chances are you're about to see something, and someone, very unexpected, and very special.

I Wear Ties, Part II

You might recall part one of I Wear Ties. Or not. I don't care.

It was a poem. This will not be a poem, because it's too hot to write one. Part One was written on November 25, 2009 when, apparently, it wasn't too hot to write one.

Whether you remember Part One or not, this is Part Two.

Thanks.

-----------------------

So, I wear ties.

Most people who wear ties, I wager, wear them to work. Forever an anomaly, I wear ties when I am not working.

"I must be crazy," a library patron said to my mother while returning some books, "but I thought I saw your son last weekend mowing his grass wearing a shirt, tie, and a hat."

"No," my mother smiled, "you're not crazy. That was him."

I wear ties when I'm not working because I love ties. Always have. Regrettably, I can't wear ties when I am working. As many of you know, I work at a psychiatric hospital and some patients would just relish the opportunity to choke the balls off me were I stupid enough to wear a tie at work. Some of them are quite grabby, and you don't want to give them anything to grab-- especially if it's something that's around your neck and has the potential to cut off oxygen supply to your brain.

When you wear ties out in the community in the year 2011, people think you know things. I wish I had kept empirical data, but I only have anecdotal evidence that drivers who are lost routinely pick me to ask for directions more frequently when I am neck-bedecked than when I am not. There's something about a tie that inspires confidence or gives off the air of authority. When Mrs. Apron and I were walking around downtown Lexington, Virginia on our vacation last month, two lunatics in a thirty-year-old Winnebago stopped and asked me for directions to the nearest hotel. And I, of course, was wearing a tie.

When I was seventeen, I was at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia waiting for a train. For some reason-- I can't really recall why-- I was dressed in a dark blue, three-piece suit. I was standing around with my hands behind my back, just gazing vacantly off into space, and some random person came up to me and started asking me questions about train schedules.

"Um, I'm sorry-- I don't work for AMTRAK," I said apologetically. But why was I apologizing? I wasn't the person who assumed that the kid in the suit was actually somebody who knew something. Maybe the guy just thought I must have had Aspergers and had memorized all the train schedules for fun.

Wearing a shirt and tie to CVS will result in people asking you if Ban deodorant is on sale or where the Depends are kept.

Just yesterday, my wife and I were at Target for grapes and paper towels and other unbelievably exciting things. As soon as we entered the store, Mrs. Apron said, "I'm going to go pee-- will you wait for me by the carts?"

Sure. Of course I will. And so I stood there, in my olive green trousers, light blue short-sleeve dress shirt and plaid tie, close to the exit door. Too close, apparently. A fifty-year-old guy in a wife-beater and his eighty-something-year-old mama, huffing and puffing the way that people with COPD do, were shuffling towards the exit. The son was excitedly holding his receipt, perseverating, "I gotta find out if I'm an instant winner! I hope I'm an instant winner!" As he propelled himself towards the exit doors, his mother yelled, "BILL! BILL! WAIT! YOU'VE GOT TO SHOW HIM YOUR RECEIPT BEFORE YOU LEAVE!"

I looked up, because I knew she was referring to me. The man marched up to me and shoved his receipt in my face.

"That's okay," I said, smiling wanly, "you don't have to show me anything."

I Hope They're Not Boys

So, I promised that this wasn't going to turn into a Daddy Blog, but, as those little buggers are kind of on my mind (and on my wife's bladder) a lot, I'm allowed to nattle on on about it a little bit, aren't I?

When you announce that you're having twins, people say stupid shit to you. They can't help it, though-- they're sort of like dogs who impetuously slam their muzzles into your balls. You can't really yell at or blame the dog, it's just something it does. People who have heard that you're having twins are no different. Except for the fact that they're not (usually) placing their faces in your crotch.

I won't go through the litany of annoying and repetitive questions people ask you, but there is a pre-determined formula or script, believe me, and, somehow everybody knows it, because everybody recites it with very little variation and, at work, I go through this kind of annoying Q&A session with people regularly.

My wife brought home this book called "Twinsense" from the library, and it was written by some chick whose name is "Dagmara", which is funny to me because, obviously, if you're reading a book about twins, you're thinking about baby names. And there is no way in hell you're going to be thinking about "Dagmara".

You know, unless you're an idiot. But you're reading this blog, so, clearly, you're not. Unless you're one of those idiots who got here by Googling the phrase "donkey porn". Do me a favor? Stop Googling my site looking for donkey porn.

Anyway, this book, "Twinsense" features the exhaustive list of things people say to you/ask you a.) When you tell them you're having twins and b.) Once you've had and are parading around with your twins. It's funny, because people really do say this shit. What's even funnier than that is that she goes on for quite a while about how politeness is the way to deal with people who ask inane/inappropriate/annoying questions about twinnage. And I was reading that thinking, "Mm, that's mature." Except that, on the next page, she creates an intensive list of fresh/snappy/snarky retorts that you can use to answer every single question/comment listed on the previous page. And I was thinking, "Mm, that's mature."

Mrs. Apron and I are going to find out the gender, in approximately six weeks. We're not going to tell you, though, or anybody, really. It's not going to be a secret, because we'll know, but it'll be our secret, because we'll know. If it were just one, we'd leave it alone until birth but, with two, we feel like we need to know.

Mostly, in my opinion, to cut down on the amount of names we need to come up with. Seriously, it's no fucking joke. Girl names we're good on. In fact, the more baby name books I read, and the more websites I look at, I end up adding more. Boy names are, um...

Well, let's be blunt: boy names blow. They suck. They're for shit. They're fucking awful. And most of the good ones end in the letter "n", and my last name begins and ends with the letter "n", so those "n"-ending names are pretty much out, because, with my last name, those names sound ridiculous.

Let me tell you something, if these kids both turn out to be boys, we're really fucked. Not only is there going to be pee ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE, and I'm including our walls/ceilings/hair/food as part of "ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE", but these kids are most likely going to end up with some terrible-ass names.

She likes Jewish names.

I am trying to convince her that our children will have the map of Israel tattooed on their faces and their airplane hangar-sized noses such that they will not necessitate being branded with Hebjew names that scream out "JEW, JEW, JEW!"

I like names descended from the U.K.

Surprised?

Regardless of the ethno-friction between us delicious little marrieds, the simple fact remains that, even if we agreed on which nation/people the boy names ought to be descended from, they're all basically awful.

I mean, sure, there's "Hrothgar". But what if they're both boys? What boy name goes well with "Hrothgar"?

I Want

No, this isn't going to be a post about the iPad 2, an antique VW Beetle, or the opportunity to watch a chick from the Middle East take a leisurely shower. Though, in a way, I guess it could be. Because I've been thinking a lot about fantasy, and the role fantasy plays in our lives.

I've always been a bit of a daydreamer myself. I don't necessarily engage in Family Guy-style flashbacks or dream-sequences ("Don't say doin' your wife, don't say doin' your wife, don't say doin' your wife..... Doin' your... son?") but I allow my mind to drift to some pretty off the wall places, and I realized recently that a lot of that fantasy in which I engage has nothing to do with wanting to inseminate some female who's not my wife or become President of Texaco Oil or something like that, but it has to do with restraint.

Restraint is kind of how I live my life. Sure, I've been known to be very silly at times, but I always know just how far to go. I always keep my audience or my company in mind, and I know what I can say or what I can do that will most likely be perceived as funny or amusing or charming or just weird enough to not cause alarm in context, and I don't stray from the boundaries I've set up for myself, and that society has set up for me, which was so nice of society to do, by the way: wasn't it?

The things I want to do are never really things I would ever do, but they are thoughts that pop into my head every so often that I find particularly funny, and they almost always involve breaking societal conventions or expectations. For instance, I can recall a terrifically awful class I took back in college that was called... well, I don't remember exactly, but it was "The Somethings of Ancient Japan." The "Ancient Japan" part I remember very well. And I can also remember very well being thoroughly disappointed on the first day of said class when I walked into the room and found at the front of the class not a Japanese individual, ancient or otherwise, but an obese, saggy-faced pumpkin-assed bastard of around sixty, with a bushy beard, thick glasses, and mashed-up teeth. He had a vacant stare that could anesthetize a carton full of manic puppies. He lectured in a tired, thoughtless way, and, during his lectures, at least two or three times a class, he would stop mid-sentence and gaze out the window for a very uncomfortable length of time.

And, while I sat there, in the first row, absolutely mesmerized at this man's capability to turn stories about samurai and ronin into the most painfully dull material on the face of the earth, all I wanted to do was jump on his back and shout jubilantly like a cowboy as I rode him around the room.

That never happened. But I wanted it to.

When neighbors come up to me to chat while I'm walking the dogs, I want to be honest with them and say, "Molly won't shit if you keep distracting her, so, could you please just go about your business and pretend we're not here? I don't want to talk to you anyway." But we all know I can't say that. I force myself to smile and be polite and talk with these insipid, mannerly people, thus extending my dog walk by at least ten minutes.

I want to lie down in the beds of people's parked pick-up trucks. Then, when the owners return to their trucks after doing whatever they're doing, I want to bolt upright and scream, "CHICKENTITS!!!", thus scaring the everloving Christ out of those motherfuckers. I've talked about doing that to someone since I was a kid, but I've never done it, which, I suppose, is part of that tenuous cord that separates me from the clientele with whom I work. I have that golden chalice filled with the liquid of impulse control, and they don't. Which is sad for them, because it gets them tased. And I, most likely, will never be tased.

It'd probably be worth it, though, for the exhilerating thrill of doing something impulsive and stupid that you've always wanted to do. Because, let's face it: it's been a while since I was exhilerated.

Throw Your Hats Up in the Air, Motherfuckers!

Chances are, I'll never be invited to speak at a graduation.

I don't mind admitting to you that this makes me sad, and angry, and interested in the geographical coordinates of the nearest cat, whose pink nose, charming whiskers, and electric eyes I then might acquaint with my closed fist.

It takes great, significant achievement to become someone who would not only be cordially invited, but thoroughly compensated, to speak at a commencement ceremony. I mean, usually it does-- Mumia Abu-Jamal got to speak (recorded, of course) at a graduation ceremony in California and he just had to shoot a policeman in the back and in the face. That's a significant achievement, though I wouldn't call it "great". That piece of shit is, though, the extreme exception to the rule. And that's good. We can only heap praise and honor on so many murderers before the whole world starts to think we're irreprably fucked up.

I long ago came to terms with the fact that I'm never going to be a celebrity of any kind. I mean, outside of this blog, where I get to be a celebrity in my own mind which, don't get me wrong, is nice. And I didn't even have to shoot anybody!

There are precious few things about the fact that I'm never going to be a celebrity that bother me anymore, but I have to say that being denied the opportunity to address a graduating college class is one of them.

I have to be honest about why, though. It's not that I think the graduating classes of the future, or even the present, are being denied the opportunity to tune in to some great orator, because I am definitely not that. I remember giving a reading of a chapter of my book at a signing years ago, and my tongue was so thick you'd have thought I had prepped for the event by giving head to a rolling pin.

I may be a decent actor, but a great public speaker I am not. Nervous, fidgety, lacking in confidence and authority, I carefully script out every word, and grip onto the podium like it's my tandem parachute buddy.

Though I have very distinct memories of being a real cut-up at my friend Eric's Bar Mitzvah back in 1993. He moved away to Pittsburgh when we were twelve and he invited me to his Bar Mitzvah and I accepted, taking my first ever flight in an airplane. From Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. I think the total hangtime was 38 minutes. For some strange reason, Eric asked me to deliver a speech at the reception. For some stranger reason, his parents didn't intercede. I stood up in my suit and tie, holding a champagne flute filled with sparkling cider, and I proceeded to roast the kid, unscripted, for twenty minutes. The children, seated on the parquet floor in a semi-circle around me were laughing and jabbing each other in the ribs. The old fuckers were roaring.

"Okay, okay," I said, "seriously now, everybody raise your glass in a toast to Eric."

Everybody raised their glasses.

"Okay, now, put them down, I just wanted to see if you'd all do what I said."

These people thought that was the funniest fucking thing they'd ever heard in their lives. And they all put their glasses down, too. I suppose Pittsburgh's not that funny a place.

Come to think of it, you never know, really-- I suppose I could, through some incredibly ridiculous circumstance get asked to speak at a graduation. I mean, why the hell would I ever be asked to speak at a Bar Mitzvah? There is absolutely no reason that ever should have happened. But it did.

I wonder which of my personalities would come out were I asked to speak at a graduation. Would it be me, or Mr. Apron? Would I go on some verbally abusive, masochistic rant, or would I be sentimental and make some inept attempt at pathos and inspiration? I suppose it's possible that, if I were feeling particularly skilled, I would make some attempt at merging the two. I'd definitely write the speech the day of, because that's kind of what I do, even if it's really important.

Especially if it's really important.

Not that graduation speeches are especially important. I know they're really built up in everybody's mind, but that doesn't make them important. It just makes them built up. And things that build up generally aren't good. Take arterial plaque, for instance. And rage. Or... a blocked colon.

I fantasize, sometimes, about what I would say. There are lots of funny things to say to people who are sitting there in their caps and gowns, the perfect rubes they are.

"Okay, let's be honest: raise your hand if you're naked under that stupid thing? Two hands if you're naked and shaved."

Yeah. That's one of the things that would be funny to say. But you can probably only get away with that shit if you're Jon Stewart.

Happy Graduation, Motherfuckers. You can't have my job.

Happy Brainniversary

It's quite possible, for you, that June 22nd, 2004 was just like any other day.

Then again, maybe it wasn't. I don't know. Maybe your nephew was getting Bar Mitzvahed. Maybe you scratched-and-won. Maybe you twisted your ankle in a pothole while walking to a bar for a blind date with the woman who ended up becoming your wife. Maybe it was the night you saw your first Broadway play or the day you first tried venison or the afternoon you stood in line behind Gene Hackman at Starbucks.

June 22nd, 2004 wasn't just like any other day for me. And it certainly wasn't just like any other day for Mrs. Apron. June 22nd, 2004 was the day she got wheeled into an operating room at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where she was put to sleep while surgeons shaved an inch-or-so line on her head, like a headband, sliced, pulled the skin down, sawed through her skull, drilled holes in her head, dug around in there, snipped, clipped, and drained, for approximately 9 hours before they finished up. And put Humpty Dumpty back together again-- just like she was before.

Almost.

I tell her that she's funnier now, and maybe that's true. I don't know. I don't remember quite as many zingers before she underwent brain surgery-- but maybe I just didn't know her well enough at that point for her sense-of-humor to really come out. After all, mine tends to dwarf most people's.

And that's what she said.

To think that Mrs. Apron's surgery was seven years ago is pretty amazing to me. There are certain things I remember about that day that will never be erased. I remember the way she smelled-- and it wasn't good. Her smell scared me. It was a mixture of sweat and blood and gore and unclean hair and antiseptic and burned bone.

I kissed her and cuddled her anyway. In her hospital bed. And the young resident, whose name was Hunan, walked in and saw us spooning in the Stryker bed and he smiled. "You guys have got the right idea," he said.

There are things I've forgotten, but I remember most of it. Between the two of us, we remember most of it. Her mother playing harp in her hospital room, me unable to eat salad in the cafeteria with my parents, sleeping on the floor in the waiting room, her falling against a trashcan while trying to prove that she was ready to be discharged.

Which she was. Against medical advice, of course.

I know when my wife is about to start crying now, because the left side of her mouth curls down before the first tear makes its appearance. It's the only thing about my beautiful bride that's ugly. It's ugly not even because the fact of her lip curling down is physically ugly, it's ugly because it's like a slap in the face for me, a memory of the most truly awful day and weeks and months I ever experienced-- the time where my love was broken and healing-- slowly.

There are bumps on her head, too, where the skull is imperfectly mended. If you move her hair around, you can see the fleshy, pink spots where no hair grows. I kiss the top of her head a lot, and I feel those bumpy little ridges all the time on my lips.

It could have been much worse. I know.

I don't cry anymore, when I think about it-- at least, I haven't in a while. We were sitting together on the couch in our old place watching TV or something and, out of the corner of my eye, I spied her cane, long since forgotten about, just leaning innocuously against the wall, and I cried. She had tied a pink grosgrain ribbon all along the cane, and it looked like a maypole. When Mrs. Apron, her sister, and I went to see the fourth of July fireworks that year, Mrs. Apron said she would keep people away from our blanket by hitting them with her "whompin' stick". And we laughed. But, much later, seeing her whompin' stick made me cry.

As we prepare to embark on the journey of becoming parents of twins, I am actually relieved that we have already been through something like neurosurgey side-by-side. It showed me that the world may be big and bad, but so are we. My mother wrote Mrs. Apron and I a card while Mrs. Apron was recovering and she wrote, "Together, You Can Do Anything."

Thank you, Mom.

Happy Brainniversary, Mrs. Apron.

I love you.

I'm Not Herbert Lom

But, these days, I look like him.

Of course, I don't look like him, really. I look more like Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfuss, the character he made famous in the "Pink Panther" films, being tortured into madness by the ineptitude of Peter Sellers' Inspector Jacques Clouseau. Clouseau's rampant and limitless bumbling, paired with his inexplicable and accidental good luck at solving the most complex heist cases, grated on Lom's character, who developed a tell-tale eye twitch whenever in the presence of Clouseau, or even just when his name was mentioned.

"CLOUSEAU!" a psychiatrist yells at the supposedly-healed Dreyfuss during a session at a mental hospital-- to assess Dreyfuss's response. The patient reacts with perfect calm and ease. Until, less than 10 minutes later, he has several unfortunate encounters with a pond because of his nemesis, the moustachioed and impossible to understand Clouseau.

It would seem that Lom's character Dreyfuss and I are kindred spirits, as I have developed a twitch under my left eye. It first appeared perhaps a year ago, stuck around for a few days, and went away-- whatever little muscle it was, I guess, no longer felt the need to assert itself and make its presence known so insistently. This time, though, it has come back with a passion. The twitch re-emerged early in June and it's been hanging around pretty consistently. Sometimes it's a quick pulsation, going up and down with great energy and verve, other times it's slow and faint. No matter the rate or force, I've got to tell you, it's fucking annoying.

And I feel kind of silly writing about it, because it seems like it's the kind of thing one might choose to write about if one were grasping at straws for something to write about, and if that's what it seems like to you, that's because that's true. I was rather stuck, actually, for a topic today, and I felt like asking someone for advice-- a friend or a wife or whatever-- but then I usually end up not using that person's suggested topic, and that probably makes them feel like monkey vom, and it makes me feel guilty for soliciting an idea that I'm most likely just going to shitcan anyway.

But I suppose you're supposed to write about what's on your mind, and what's on my mind most frequently is breasts, but I wasn't really in the mood to write about breasts, although I did recently have an illuminating conversation about breasts a couple days ago-- maybe that's why I don't feel the need to write about them-- and so I thought I would go to a topic that really can't help but be on my radar, and that's this ceaseless twitching below my left eye.

I wonder what people think when they talk to me for any length of time. If they're making any reasonable attempt at eye-contact, they've got to notice it. It must be very unsettling to look at. Most people are probably too polite to say anything about it. Anyway, what would they say?

"Jesus, how about that nasty-ass twitch you've got there, fella! What's the matter-- your eye have Parkinsons?"

I'm not terribly polite, at least, not with people I know well. A friend of mine is pregnant and I haven't seen her in a few months. She's going to pop next week. Anyway, I saw her for the first time in months last weekend and she is so fucking pregnant it's not even funny. And she's growing out-- straight out. It looks like her baby is wearing a hoop-skirt, for Christ's sake. She was wearing a size 2-XL t-shirt. And she was trying to talk to me and my eyes kept going, quite unabashedly, I might add, to her belly.

"I'm sorry, Amy," I said, "I'm just not even listening to you-- I can't stop staring at your fucking belly!"

Which, in a way, was probably a good thing, because she probably didn't notice my eye-twitch that way.

I'm thinking of naming my twitch "Herbert" after Herbert Lom. Since we found out that we're having twins, we've been talking a lot about names. Everything's a name thing now. We were watching Michael Palin's "The Missionary" last night, and one of the actor's names is Denholm Elliott.

"What about 'Denholm'?" I said to my wife.

"That's funny," she said to me. And I presume it wasn't about the movie. In reading up about Denholm Elliott for this post (yeah, I do research. Sort of.) I learned that he was diagnosed with HIV in 1987, and died of AIDS-related tuberculosis in 1992. That made me sad. Herbert Lom, however, who was born five years before Denholm Elliott, is still living, apparently. Lom is ninety-four, if you can believe that. I don't think Mrs. Apron will let me name the kid "Herbert" either.

Lom, originally from Prague, was born Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchacevich ze Schluderpacheru.

Now that's something to twitch about.

Your Father's Gay. At Least You Heard it From... DEAR APRON!

A nap on the couch.

A nap on the hammock.

A nap with your head by the toilet bowl with your new striped tie getting absolutely saturated and stained inside the toilet bowl.

Ah, Father's Day...

Thank God that horseshit's over, because it's time for a more 55% more avuncular edition of...

DEAR APRON:

I have been in a relationship with a great guy, "Jonah," for four months. We get along well and enjoy a lot of the same things. At times he can be jealous when other men notice me, but we have never had arguments about it. Only one thing about me really bothers him -- it's my infatuation with actor Mark Wahlberg.

Jonah is so upset about it he refuses to see any of Mark's films with me and gets annoyed when I mention him. It irks me because I know being with Mark isn't a realistic option, but Jonah acts like it is. What can I say to make him see that he (Jonah) is the only one I want to be with and Mark is just a fantasy? -- STAR-CROSSED LOVER

DEAR STAR-CROSSED LOVER:

I'm sorry-- I don't get this at all. Are you talking about Mark Wahlberg, the star of such films as "We Own the Night", "Boogie Nights" and "I Heart Huckabees" (seriously, he was in that-- but I had to IMDB it to make sure)? Or are you referring to Mark L. Walberg, the cloying, sychophantic chimp-douche from "Antiques Roadshow"? I mean, I could see it going either way, frankly, depending on your tastes. I hear both of them are killer in the sack.

I wonder if either of them are Jewish. Not that that's at all relevant in any way, I just... wonder about that.

Sometimes.

Regardless of whichever M.W. hottie-pants you're talking about, I think Jonah has some serious insecurity issues that he ought to address. Then, after addressing those issues, he should probably kill himself because, really, compared to Mark Wahlberg and Mark L. Walberg, he's basically just a worthless piece of shit. Whether one, both, or neither of them are Jewish.

DEAR APRON:

I am being married at the end of the summer. It will be a formal wedding. I have a biological father I see once or twice a year, and a stepfather who has been a big part of my life.

I would prefer my stepfather to walk me down the aisle, but I feel guilty about what my biological father and other relatives might think. Should I worry about their opinions or just do what makes me comfortable? -- TOUCHY DECISION IN OHIO

DEAR TOUCHY DECISION:

Yes, you should worry about their opinions, and no, you should not just do what makes you comfortable. Thank you for writing. You are very brave.

P.S. Where the fuck's my invitation, you whore? You can forget about that Keurig.

DEAR APRON:

Our daughter "Melanie" is finishing her master's degree in social work. She's excited about pursuing her future career; however, when we tell our friends about her, we get disappointing -- and sometimes, hurtful -- responses. Some samples: "Whose idea was that?!" "You know she's going to starve, don't you?" "Oh ... they don't make much money," and, "I'm sorry!" These comments come from people with whom we've had warm relationships for years.

We know our daughter won't be rich. That's not her objective. We're proud of Melanie's choice and how hard she has prepared. We think she'll be a wonderful social worker. We have always been supportive of our friends' children and their choices. Is there a way to respond to these people without being rude? -- PROUD PARENTS IN DES MOINES

DEAR PROUD PARENTS OF SOON-TO-BE IMPOVERISHED CHILD IN WHO CARES, IOWA:

I'm sorry that you have to deal with people who give insensitive and unsolicited responses to the fact that your daughter is a burgeoning social worker. You should not only be receiving supportive comments, but monetary donations because, let me tell you, that bitch is done for. Soon, she'll be making her own clothes out of used tea bags and brushing her teeth with twigs covered in rat poison.

Fortunately, she'll most likely burn out on social work after a year or two, at which point she will either be institutionalized in one of our nation's finest, fleeting state psychiatric hospitals and/or spending inordinate amounts of time poking around in dumpsters outside vacant Blockbuster Video stores muttering to herself about treatment plans.

DEAR APRON:

After moving out of your parents' home, is one expected to knock on the door when visiting, or is it OK to just open the door and walk in? -- HEY MOM, I'M HOME!

DEAR HEY MOM, I'M A LESBIAN!:

I don't know. A knock on the door is just so... predictable. So formulaic. So... boring.

Personally, I've always been a big fan of thinking outside the box-- you know what I mean? Instead of a knock on the door, why not try something new, like attaching a pound or two of C-4 to the garage and detonating it to announce your arrival?

Nothing says, "Hey, guys, I hope you made extra egg salad because I'm visiting for dinner!" like hurling a Molotov Cocktail through the second-floor bathroom window or climbing up on the roof and taking a big, heaping shit down the chimney. If you're really ambitious, try dressing up all in black with a black ski-mask and making terroristic threats to your parents in a Northern Irish accent through a megaphone while standing on the front lawn playing with yourself?

Points for creativity, man.

Mad.

Points.

My Little Swedish Borderline

Impulsive.

Attention-seeking.

Unpredictable.

Erratic.

Sometimes unable to function in society.

No, I'm not describing both of the women who played with my penis in college, I'm talking about my car.

It's an automotive borderline.

Fortunately, it hasn't resorted to self-injurious behavior or a suicide attempt, though that reminds me of the scene in "The Love Bug", where Jim brings home the Lambo and Herbie tries to kill himself by throwing himself off the Golden Gate Bridge. When you think of live-action Disney films featuring scenes of attempted suicide, you often forget to include "The Love Bug," but there it is. The film was actually going to be called, "Herbie: the Car that Cannot Contract for Safety" but the test-audience declared the title a bit too cumbersome.

Anyway, my 2002 Volvo S40 is not attempting suicide, at least, I don't think it is, but it is definitely behaving in an attention-seeking way.

In the past three weeks, it has been to my mechanic twice, and to Volvo service once, and, if symptoms persist, another trip back to Volvs Central will be on the horizon, and this time, instead of an observation bed, it will be an inpatient commitment for up to three days.

The behavior the car is exhibiting is as intermittent as it is troubling. When left overnight, the first start of the morning seems to take forever. The engine hesitates and complains and resists turning over for sometimes as long as a minute until it finally gives in and there is ignition and the obligatory Swedish purring. My mechanic changed the battery, even though the old one was holding a sufficient charge. The next morning, it happened again. Back to the mechanic, who, frustrated that the battery change didn't work, yelled at me and told me not to bring it back, "UNTIL YOU HAVE A REAL FUCKING PROBLEM!"

But... I wasn't inventing this issue to get attention. I'M not the borderline-- it's the car!

Last Sunday, while pulling into a parking space, the car sputtered and stalled.

"Oh, fuck you," I said, "don't make me go all Basil Fawlty on your ass."

(If you don't get that reference, you need to watch the "Gourmet Night" episode of "Fawlty Towers." Preferably, with me.)

The car started right back up again. Typical borderline bullshit.

When I brought the car to Volvo service on Friday after work, they were kind enough to give me a loaner so that I could get to work on Saturday morning.

"We've got a loaner, if you're not picky," they said.

"Not picky?" I asked, "what are you giving me? A 1976 Dodge Coronet?"

(Part of me hoped that's what they were giving me.)

No, though. Turned out those of us who are "not picky" get a 2010 Volvo S80, the flagship, top-of-the-line sedan that retailed new in 2010 for around $50,950.

When I returned the S80 yesterday (they practically had to break my wrist to get the key fob back) they told me they were "unable to replicate and diagnose the issue" with my car.

So, I left with my car, having spent no money, receiving a coupon for a free car wash, having no answers-- nothing but the opportunity to commute for 24 hours in a car that cost just a few ass-hairs less than the down-payment on our house. One might say that I cooked this whole hesitant starting business up so that I could, if just for a moment, experience what it feels like to drive a large, modern, super-luxurious sedan, sitting atop at least ten slaughtered, supple cows to be king for a day. But I'm just not like that-- I swear. Of course, that's probably what they all say. The goateed customer service rep at Volvo Service shook his head at me and said, apologetically,

"No fault-code came back in the computer when we hooked up the car."

"Did you try Borderline Automotive Disorder?" I asked, receiving a blank stare.

Apparently, that's not one of the fault codes. But it should be.

You Won't Find This Want Ad on Craigslist, Bitches

They say you can't buy experience. Then again, they also say you can't buy happiness, but I'll bet that anybody who's ever nailed a Taiwanese prostitute will tell you that you can definitely rent it.

Every employer, it seems, wants somebody with experience. And not just a piddling one year's worth, either. No, those days are definitely over, I guess because employers have realized what I've always known in the back of my mind, and that's that pretty much all you do the first year of any job is fuck up royally.

Maybe that's why I only last around a year or so at most jobs.

Many white-collar jobs want even more experience than 3-5 years. 5-7 is a number I saw frequently when I was sifting through endless, dead-end jobs back in the heady days of, um, August. The thought of being at a job-- any job, really-- for 5-7 years is kind of inconceivable to me, and kind of makes me want to cut out my own tongue, shit it out, put it in a blender, skull-fuck some Taiwanese prostitute and then pour the shredded up tongue mung into her eye socket.

See? I shouldn't be working. Anywhere.

It seems that shitty jobs in America aren't the only entities that want experienced workers. al-Qaeda wants experience, too. They've been hurting for experienced leadership, apparently, since Whatshisname got capped, Corleone-style. And, really, how do you replace the leader of one of the most sinister, if not the most reviled, most lethal, most shmata-wearing terrorist organizations on the planet? I mean, you can't just stick a bunch of slips of paper with funny-sounding names into an upside-down sombrero, close your eyes and hope to pick a winner.

Can you?

No, dear. You can't do that.

You search for someone with experience. And this kind of experience isn't picked up after years slogging behind a desk or through commanding an organized file-o-fax. The skills needed to stand at the helm of a terrorist organization as vast, complex and far-reaching as al-Qaeda are diverse, difficult to come by, and delicate to articulate.

al-Qaeda announced a few days ago that it had named a successor to Bin Laden, and that man's name is Ayman al-Zawahiri. (His birthday's Sunday-- on Father's Day!!! You should send him a Virtual Bouquet, or maybe a nail bomb-- that would be so ironic!) al-Zawahiri seems to fit the bill in every way as a man who can take on al-Qaeda and continue its mission of spreading fear, uncertainty, random death and horror throughout the world-- but looks can be deceiving.

According to some NPR pundits (who, let's face it, probably weren't wearing any trousers) al-Zawahiri is somewhat lacking in experience.

Seriously. They said that.

And I was thinking to myself-- what sort of experience, pray, is this man lacking? What exactly is it that qualifies you, or doesn't, to be the Bobby Big-shit of al-Qaeda? Obviously, these aren't questions that are readily answerable, so I thought I'd try my hand at creating a want ad for the position of al-Qaeda leader, because, let's face it, even if you're against the idea of terror itself, nobody really wants a poorly-run terrorist organization. Who benefits if al-Qaeda orders 7000 staplers from Office Depot instead of 700? I mean-- really? That doesn't help anybody, because it's wasteful, inefficient, and it's just silly.

Nobody wants a silly al-Qaeda.

So, in the spirit of promoting an efficiently-run organization with an eye towards fiscal responsibility, accountability, an adroit human resources division and logistical profit-sharing, here we go:

WANTED: Leader of al-Qaeda

al-Qaeda Terrorism Endeavours, Ltd., is an international bloodletting fear-mongering enterprise looking to dynamically incorporate a skewed vision of Islam with an unpredictable, undetectable and imaginative penchant for mass-murder. We seek to undermine capitalism and Western ideals of liberty and life by wantonly attacking and slaying as many people as we can, while protecting our own interests and increasing our capital gains. If devoting your life to genocide and your afterlife to engaging in endless anal intercourse with bronzed virgins seems appealing to you, then you will want to become al-Qaeda's Chief Executive Officer.

The ideal candidate for this position will...

* have possess the ability to multi-task. This position will frequently involve making international telephone calls from throw-away cellphones with no IMEI numbers while approving explosive device prototypes, interviewing potential candidates for the positions of Entry Level Suicide Bomber I and II, and plotting international coordinates for new attacks.

* be proficient in MS Office Suite, Outlook, Windows. Knowledge of DOS is helpful but will train.

* have public speaking/on-camera experience. This position will involve frequent pre-recorded appearances where you will be required to appear serious, grave, and threatening, sometimes in unfavorable lighting conditions such as underground caves deep in the heart of Pakistan. Superior focus is essential, as frequent giggling and/or calling for "line" hampers video production.

* be experienced handling large-caliber automatic firearms, rocket-propelled grenades, IED devices, and a variety of hand-held weapons. Chances are, you will never use any of these yourself, but you must look good on camera posing with these aforementioned devices.

* possess a melifluous speaking voice. Remember, you are asking people to die for you with this voice, you are commanding the world to fear you with this voice. If you sound like Randy Newman, this is probably not the job for you.

* possess, or be in the process of obtaining, a valid driver's license, at least a class-c is required, as is the ability to operate a standard transmission.

* have approximately 10-15 years experience in business administration with a minimum of an MBA degree, and/or a combination of commensurate experience.

* have approximately 15-20 years experience in planning, plotting, devising acts of terror, murder, mayhem and/or destruction of life and/or property, or a 4-year degree from an accredited mass-murder institute plus 10 years experience as either a hairdresser and/or phlebotomist.

* be male. Women bleed and must be killed. Unless they are virgins. In which case, we'll be seeing them later.

*NB: al-Qaeda Terrorism Endeavours, Ltd. is an Equal-Opportunity Employer. Please, no Jews.

Dorit

Hello, my little Masonites: meet Dorit.


If you're looking at this picture thinking to yourself, "Jesus Titmouse, old Apron's finally cracked-- two dogs, impending twins, AND he got himself a fucking cat!" please, calm thyself. We didn't get a cat. This cat currently resides approximately 330 miles away from my home base. It lives and thrives well below the Mason/Dixon Line, and there it shall remain, until its owner, Bernie, the shoeless bed-and-breakfasteer extraordinaire deems otherwise.

Mrs. Apron and I befriended this cat during our all-too-brief, and all-too-ballsweat-hot stay in Lexington, Virginia last month. We first set eyes on her the first day we arrived, and she was curled up in the lap of some random woman on the generously-sized front porch of the Federal-style B&B, and we assumed that the woman was Bernie's wife, and that the cat belonged to her. We were wrong on both accounts. Bernie's wife was deceased (it's amazing how quickly you learn about people at B&Bs, and, frankly, awful) and the cat belonged to Bernie, not this random woman who was, in fact, a guest. Her husband was hiking the mountains daily and she hung out at the B&B getting drunk on wine and beer with Bernie.

It wasn't until the next day that the cat decided to make our acquaintance, and that I decided her name was "Dorit."

That next day we actually met quite a few cats. A cadre of them, or a gang, if you will, hung out in the gravel parking lot of Duke's Antique Barn and, as I noted in an earlier blog, one of them was kind enough to demonstrate the awesomely fountainesque spectacle that is male cat urination/spray. It was indeed a sight to behold. Not only that, the sight of eight or nine cats sprawled out unceremoniously on the gravel, warming themselves in the insistent sunlight reminded me of a bunch of strung out opium-addicts. Except these cats use their tongues as toilet paper, which I don't think most opium-addicts are capable of doing.

Then again, I haven't met many opium addicts.

Later that night, when Mrs. Apron and I came back to the B&B after a heady day of antiquing and romping through a nature preserve, we were greated by this beautiful cat, just sitting on top of the outdoor table pictured above. She looked up at us almost questioningly, and responded well to a few well-timed head rubs. She was more into me than Mrs. Apron, but there's no accounting for taste.

Later that night, sitting outside as the sun set, I sipped on an unreasonably thick chocolate milkshake as the cat came bounding over to me like a dog, and leapt up onto my lap, inserting its claws leisurely into my knees and thighs. I was taken with her that I bit my lip and bugged my eyes and tried not to make too much of a fuss.

"What do you think her name is?" Mrs. Apron asked me.

"Well," I said, "Bernie's English, so she's got to have an English name." I cocked my head to gaze into the cat's electric eyes. "You're a little Dorit, aren't you?"

She responded by injecting her claws into my leg and purring seductively. I love a girl who gives mixed messages.

People I've spoken to about Dorit have said that the name sounds more Jewish than English. "That's because you're pronouncing it "Dor-EET", which, yeah, sounds Hebraic. I'm thinking more "Dahr-it"."

Of course, upon looking the name up online, it's a fucking Greek variant of "Dorothy" or "Dorothea" so go blow, right? It means "Gift from God" which, the more I look at baby names lately, it seems like that's the English translation of about half the fucking names out there.

I don't know if she's any gift from God, but she's sure a cutie. The next day, I asked Bernie what her name was, even though I knew whatever he was going to say was going to be a disappointment.

"Misty," he replied.

Hmpf, I thought. Fuck that.

Watching The Movie

The windows at my parents' house on the first floor are fabulous. They're big and comprehensive and, essentially, the entire out-facing wall of the dining room and the living room are windows. They're covered by these sexcellent rice paper shoji screens framed in angular black wood. Once, when I was fifteen and an idiot, I was filming a history project with a friend of mine (who is now a famous singer-songwriter that you can hear on Pandora-- weird) and there's a scene where we're dressed in periwigs, frilly blouses and waistcoats pretending we're from the mid-eighteenth century and he, of course, throws a pie at me. Well, I'm laughing and I move slightly to the left as the pie is about to make contact with my face, and the vast majority of it goes flying onto the shoji screen. The cameraman, a real pro, kept right on filming until the end of the scene.

And then he screamed his fucking head off at us.

God bless my father-- he's really been put through it. You can still, to this day, see the discoloration on the section of rice paper that got besmirched by whipped cream.

Years before I was filming movies in front of these wonderful windows, I was watching movies through them. As a child of five or six, whenever a huge storm would be brewing outside, my mother and I would turn two of the dining room chairs around to face the windows, push all of the shoji screens out of the way, and we'd sit together and gaze in amazement at the storm outside. It's funny, the two most neurotic people in the house, sitting together, absolutely mesmerized by nature's fury. And we watched some pretty badass storms together, my mother and I.

We called it "Watching the Movie."

At the first crack of thunder, I would run into her room or into the kitchen or wherever she was and excitedly cry,

"Mommy! Mommy! Let's go watch the movie!"

And I would tug her into the dining room, shove the shojis out of the way, and come face-to-face with whatever the wicked world had to offer. Maybe it's because my mother and I were so afraid of, well, life, that we were the ones who gathered together-- maybe "huddled" is a better word-- and maybe I liked the comfort of being with my Mommy when there was tumult and tempest going on outside. Maybe I liked the idea of calling it the "movie", as if it were not something that could come through a television screen or a window pane and harm us, maybe that made it okay.

Or maybe it was just something silly my mother and I used to do when I was young and wore my hair like Moe and was clad in monochromatic sweatsuits.

It's getting windy outside right now-- I can see it battering about the very tippy top of a tree. I'm watching the top of that tree bend and sway, but most of it's blocked by the house next door, and most of that's blocked by the computer monitor, and, really, it's just not the same. No shoji screens with tell-tale whipped-cream discoloration, no big dining room windows. And I'm in my house, and my mother's in hers. A few nights ago, there was a huge storm, and my mother called me "to make sure you're all alright."

"Yeah," I said, "we're watching the movie."

"Oh," she said, "what movie are you watching?"

And I smiled and shook my head.

"Mommy-- look out the window." She paused for a moment.

"Oh! That movie," she said, laughing a little bit to herself.

"Don't you remember?" I asked.

"Of course," she said, "I remember everything."

And she does. Of course.

These Are O. R. Scrubs

It seems like it was written in the stars.

It seems to have been ordained from the start.

Before they were conceived by Wes Anderson, we all knew I was going to love them.

Aside from "Bottle Rocket" (too unintentionally uneven) and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (too intentionally droll), I've been pretty much in love.

And, it's like-- obviously. I wear glasses. I'm emotionally overwrought. I'm eccentric. I'm... white. Why shouldn't I, wouldn't I, couldn't I love Wes Anderson movies? Is there any reason, conceivable or otherwise?

No. There isn't.

There are people I know and care about and respect who don't like these movies, and I can appreciate that. I understand and acknowledge that. But I can also remember seeing "Rushmore" in the movie theatre in Manayunk with a good friend of mine who's long since moved away to Minnesota and we maybe talk once every three years, if that. And I can remember, as Rod Stewart and "The Faces" clanged along with their guitars and their off-key piano as Max Fisher and his teacher met on the dance floor to complete his, and Wes Anderson's, fantasia-- I cried. It wasn't the hysterical, heaving, heart-bursting crying that came out of me, and my two sisters, as we arrived at the end of Tim Burton's "Big Fish", it was a much more restrained, tears forming and rolling kind of crying. More like falling, it was. And we could spend a lot of time talking about what that was and why that was, but I don't really see much of a point in doing that.

It just... was.

I was having a chat with a friend of mine recently about Wes Anderson movies, and it's not easy having a chat with a new friend, about anything, really, but it's made extra tricky when he's a great deal more intelligent than I am, and knows more about pretty much anything that we happen to discuss. He is an extroardinary film buff, and so I tread lightly in conversation. I like to listen to him talk, and I am much happier when I'm listening to him than when I'm talking to him. But I realized something very interesting (at least, it's interesting to me) during our chat about Wes Anderson films. My friend was talking about how, in the "Darjeeling, Ltd" there wasn't a central location that the action centered around to ground the film, and that bothered him. In "Rushmore" it was, well, Rushmore Academy. In "The Royal Tenenbaums", it was 111 Archer Avenue. In "The Life Aquatic" it was the submarine. I argued that, in "Darjeeling, Ltd" it was the train, and noted the meticulous care that was taken to paint the train and to treat it as another character in the film, but I don't think my friend was buying it. And, frankly, I wasn't buying it either, because I couldn't conceive of how something like that even mattered. And it made me realize that this friend of mine and I look at film in an entirely different way. He conceptualizes and is engaged by construct and directorial intent. His way of looking at films is technical and almost clinical.

I fall in love with the characters. I crave them. I ache when they try to connect with each other and cannot. The scene where Chas drags Royal into the old closet filled with board games to rip him a new asshole. The scene where Mrs. Fox tells Mr. Fox she never should have married him. The scene where Francis tells Peter and Jack, "I want us to become brothers again, like we used to be." The scene where Miss. Cross offers Herman a carrot.

I just... I don't know.

This past weekend, Mrs. Apron and I took my aunt who's visiting from Australia to an Art for the Cash-Poor art show in Northern Liberties. If you know Philadelphia, you won't be surprised to hear that it was a hipster art show. Chicks with sleeve tattoos carrying ironic dogs. Dudes in little plaid shirts and skinny jeans and wax-tipped moustaches. One vendor was selling computer-art renderings of Wes Anderson film posters. Another vendor was selling oil-on-canvas paintings of scenes from Wes Anderson films-- Baumer sitting on the bench waiting for Margot to step off the Green Line Bus, etcetera. I was instantly embarrassed by my love for these films, these movies that I seemed pre-destined to connect with. Of course, I bought three of the posters anyway. Because, let's face it, you can't stop love.

Ooh-La-La...

Youstress

Everybody reacts to stress differently.

Though we might not think it at first, I'm willing to bet that stress, what we generally think of as purely emotional, causes a whole host of physiological responses in your body. Ever get the volcanishits before a big test, or while you're in the waiting room before seeing the BIG BAD M.D.? WITH HIS BIG, BAD, BOWTIE?

GAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!

Some people get those "tension headaches". I've never been a big fan of that term myself. "Tension headaches". It just doesn't seem necessary to me. Like "testicular torsion". What else could you be torsionizing besides your testicles? I mean, come on already.

Some folks get those sweaty palms, others get tingling sensations in their fingertips or their hands (or is that a heart attack?), and there are still others who pee, just a little, when they get all anxiety-ridden and out-of-sorts. Some people get klutzy, others have an insatiable urge to eat, drink, drug, or fuck. Some just can't stop listening to Stevie Nicks, and I don't know what that's all about.

Still, when you think about it, your physiological reaction to stress is probably, usually rather benign-- and I don't mean to minimize, because I hate it when people do that to me, but, generally speaking, you're probably not going to wind up in the doctor's office or the hospital because of a somatic manifestation of worry.

Enter: me.

(Wow-- good thing that colon was right there. And... that's what he said.)

I stress a lot-- so much so that you'd think I'd be quite good at it by now, and by "good at it" I mean that I would glide effortlessly into the seductive waters of worry without it having the slightest effect on me. Obviously, that's not the case or this wouldn't be much of a post.

My body reacts extraordinarily negatively to stress. Now, if you're a medical student or an actual doctor (do any doctors read this blog?-- besides Doctors of Musical Arts, thank you, Su-- because that would be both exciting and disturbing) you're probably going to write something pedantic and annoying in the comment section about how the diseases/syndromes about which I write are not triggered by stress but in fact by some weird sex I had at some point when I engaged in weird sex or because my paternal grandparents were blood-related (talk about weird sex, right?) but I'm going to pretend that they all had to do with stress, and there's not much you can do about it.

DOCK-TER!

The first time I can remmeber getting inordinately stressed out (you know, about something real) was when my wife had her head cut open to remove an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) on June 22, 2004 (whoa! Brainaversery coming up!) They broke open her melon and went digging around in there for a long time and, when my buddy woke up, her head and limbs were swollen up so much that she looked like a big baby and she smelled like antiseptic and blood and she could barely move her left arm and it made us all cry. I slept on the floor of the neurosurgery waiting room, developed a roaring sinus infection, got prescribed a whomper of a dose of antibiotics, and then...

I got thrush!

If you don't know what thrush is, that's great for you! I'm about to ruin your life. Thrush is basically a rapidly-producing fungal infection that occurs, of all awesome places, in your mouth! Plainly put: for days, my tongue looked like a polar bear's dick.

Then there was the time where Mrs. Apron and I moved, and I changed jobs and got a new car, all in the same month. The result? Shingles! You probably know what shingles are but, in case you don't have a crispy, elderly relative who's endured it, you might not. It's HERPES! But not the cock-cunt kind! And I got it on my back! ALL OVER MY BACK!

YAY!

It's the most painful thing in the fucking world. Every time I sat down in a chair or in my car, I felt like I was getting a massage from Edward Scissorhands.

Then, we decided to become Mr. & Mrs. Apron. I proposed to her at Mark Twain's house in Hartford, Connecticut. This spawned much happysex and stressful wedding planning. During which time, I developed,

say it with me now:

PITYRIASIS ROSEA!

What the fuck is that, right? It's a skin rash, and it was all over my stomach and my back, and it looked like this:



Ah, memories! At least I've never stressed out so much I've gotten a prolapsed rectum. Don't worry, I won't post a picture of that. I'm too scared, frankly, to Google Image that shit.

So, now that we know each other so much better now: what happens to you when you stress?

See You in the Funny Pages

Remember the unequaled pleasure of sitting around on Sunday morning reading the comics as a kid? Maybe, for you, this wonderful, languid time took its place on the floor of your old family room, the newspaper spread out on top of endless acres of shag carpeting or, if you're a bit younger, berber. Perhaps you curled up in your father's favorite armchair, eating dry cereal out of a plastic Kellogg's bowl with your fingers as your youthful, unaided eyes scanned the colorful pages, taking in the latest follies of Calvin and Hobbes, or the misadventures of Dennis the Menace, or the alcohol-infused domestic violence of the Lockharts?

Seriously-- what the fuck was that kind of shit for children to read? That comic strip is singlehandedly responsible for my penchant for attending dinner parties with my tie askew, imbibing single malt liqour, insulting my wife and then punching her repeatedly in the face.

Anyway, I used to love reading the Sunday comics when I was a child. My sister and I would fight over them, of course, and then my father would scream at us for eating our "Cinnamon Toast Crunch" too loudly. The fighting with each other never seemed to bother him, but the loud crunching noises drove him fucking bananas. I loved when he would yell at us, because it was hilarious.

"FACKAN SHEET! VILL YOU SHAT DA FACK AHP WITH THAT CRANCHING SHEET ALREADY?!!"

Oh, Israelis... there's just nobody like them. No. body.

When you do enough of something as a kid, eventually you end up wanting to do it yourself. And I read a lot of comics growing up, and not just the comics in the paper on Sundays, I read the black-and-white ones on the weekdays, too, and, from a very early age, I made my parents buy me comic books. And I'm not talking about that fucking ginger-asshair loser Archie. The comic books I craved, for whatever reason, were Bloom County books, by Berkeley Breathed and Doonesbury by Gary Trudeau.

I was reading these books beginning in third grade, and I didn't just read one or two, I collected them. At one point, I had six Bloom County books on my bedroom shelves. Looking back on my childhood, I'm trying to think of something that I watched or read that wasn't completely age-inappropriate, and I can't really think of anything-- except for, I guess, the Dukes of Hazzard-- but I'm not particularly sure that six-year-old me should have been looking at Catherine Bach's tits as much as I did. I could have told you, at that age, exactly where the mole was on her breast, and what shape and color it was. If she had one. But she didn't.

A... mole, that is... Um...

Right, so: comics. When you read enough comics, you want to draw your own. Obvs. Now, I talk a lot on this here soapbox about my talents. You know what they are by now. Because you've never heard me talk about visually-artistic proclivities, I'm sure you've assumed that I don't have any.

YOU'RE RIGHT!

And yet, I tried. In elementary school, you'll pretty much try anything because you're generally too stupid to care very much about impending and obvious failure. Such was the case with me and comics. I don't remember what my comic strip was called (Dog Days, maybe?) but its star was a balding, middle-aged man in a shirt and tie, and I think his name was Stan. Stan was a hapless schmoe who owned a dog and a car that was perpetually breaking down (was this little me planning for the future?) and Stan worked at a dead-end desk-job and the vast majority of his non-working life consisted of taking his car into the garage. I was drawing these comics when I was maybe eight or nine. Stan's car had a habit of falling off the hydraulic lift at the mechanic's shop, which caused Stan great distress, as it tended to elevate the already steep bill exponentially.

I also drew comics of people having sex. Those were totally unrelated to the comics I drew of Stan. Stan didn't have sex, because, in my young, still-forming mind, there was no room for the concept that even luckless schmucktards still managed to, occasionally, achieve intercourse.

The comics featuring people having sex were, of course, discovered by my friend's mother during a sleepover, and were reported to my parents, who said nothing to me about them. This was the style of parenting they preferred, and I preferred it, too. It molded me into someone who detests confrontation and uncomfortable situations, and someone who still does, says, and writes pretty much whatever the hell he wants.

The drawings of Stan and his nowhere job and his falling-off-the-lift car were, of course, never discovered by anyone. Sadly, no child will ever crunch too loudly on Cinnamon Toast Crunch while reading "Dog Days"-- or whatever the fuck it was called-- while their father screams at them to "SHAT DEE FACK UP ALREADY!" and I guess I'm okay with that.

Well, Tongue My Groove and Let's Bomb MOVE, It's... DEAR APRON!

Partly because I'm too lazy to come up with a completely original post, and mostly to allay your fears that "My Masonic Apron" is henceforth going to become some randomly tearful, mushy-assed, goateed Daddy Blog, I decided to bend you over the sofa and forcibly introduce you to another fondlicious edition of...

DEAR APRON:

"Kyle" and I have been good buddies for 10 years. The problem is I'm crazy about his younger sister. She and I have been talking over the last few months. Kyle knew we were talking in the beginning, and he told her to stay away from his friends. I think I understand his reasons, and I tried to talk to him on my own.

Kyle said he doesn't want to deal with me calling him eventually about problems that may arise between me and his sister.

Now when I hang out with her we have to be secretive. I would like to be open about being with this awesome girl. Can you please help me? -- JOHN IN PENNSYLVANIA

DEAR JOHN:

As a fellow Pennsylvanian, I feel I am uniquely qualified to give advice on matters such as these, and I'm glad you came to me, even though you neglected to come up with a clever, alliterative pseudonym-- like "Passionate for Paul's Sister in Pennsylvania". Of course, you'd have to have changed "Kyle" to "Paul" for that to work, but you weren't clever enough to think of that, and for that, I challenge you to a duel. Shall we say pistols at dawn?

Now, John-- from one Pennsylvanian to another, let's level with each other here. A Pennsylvanian's relationship with one's sister is a... special thing. It may well be that Kyle is especially possessive of his younger sister because he may have, you know, intentions for her. Trust me: you don't want to get into an incest turf-war, love triangle, cumming match with your best bud.

If, however, you are absolutely insistent on pursuing this chick, you might want to ease your way into this episode of "Family Ties" by offering Kyle a three-way. To make it less awkward, if you decide to go that route and end up moaning out his name as he massages your balls while your dick is undulating inside his sister's mouth, you might want to call him "Paul".

DEAR APRON:

I am a 48-year-old single male. I teach an adult Sunday school class. Two women who have joined our group have made it plain they would like to have a romantic relationship with me.

I'm not sure how to handle this. I'd like to meet someone special, too, but I'm not certain this is the right way. Please advise. -- TROUBLED TEACHER IN THE SOUTH

DEAR TROUBLED TEACHER IN THE SOUTH:

Let me get this straight: two women made it plain that they want to have a romantic relationship with you? Do they want to do it at the same time? Are we talking about a southern-fried two-fer? Jesus Christ-- that's better than fucking some Pennsylvanian's sister!

If you don't do this: you are totally gay. Don't ever write to me again. Unless it is to say, "Pistols at dawn."

DEAR APRON:

I need your help with a problem I'm having with my husband, "Fred." He is very territorial over his laptop and other personal items such as his phone. It is so bad that I'm not even allowed to hold his phone -- even if he is trying to show me a video on it. His laptop is password-protected.

I have asked Fred numerous times why so much privacy, and he says, "Because these things are mine." I feel as if he is hiding something. I know I shouldn't be paranoid, but since he was unfaithful in the past, I have my suspicions. Please let me know what I can do to solve this. -- LEFT OUT IN LITTLE ROCK

DEAR LEFT OUT:

You're right, you shouldn't be paranoid. People who have paranoid ideations are evil and bad and wrong, and everybody is out to kill them. Their apple-sauce is poisoned, their cars are rigged with C-4 explosives, and there are water-resistant videocameras hidden inside their toilet bowls. I am coming to Little Rock to put a fucking bullet through your eye, just like Moe Green at the Tropicana.

Pistols. At. Dawn.

Herbie. Rides. Again. (!!!!!!!!)

The sequel's rarely better than the original. That said, everybody likes a triumphal return.

"Herbie Rides Again" isn't a very good movie, in spite of some admirable performances by Ken Berry and dame of stage and film, Helen Hayes. The sparkle and charm of the original movie, though, is gone. The A-list celebs are nowhere to be seen: Dean Jones, Michelle Lee, Buddy Hackett, and David Tomlinson all said, "Thanks, but no thanks," to once again co-starring beside a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle. As sequels go, it's about average, but, much unlike the original, it's nothing special. But there's something about the title that indicates that the film, or at least its namesake, aspires to greatness. There is something valorous that we all like about an underdog getting up to fight again, to shake off dirt and failure that threatens to be permanent, but is really momentary to emerge hopefully victorious.

In 2009, Mrs. Apron and I miscarried, and we were heartbroken. We had told people we were pregnant, and we had told them far too early, and then we had to untell. Fortunately, with most people we knew, we only had to untell them with our eyes. One look at us and they knew. My director of "Pirates of Penzance" knew. We were staging "I am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General" and, when the piano tinkled, I doddered and fuddled appropriately, but, during the downtime, while choreography was hammered out, or choral notes were finessed with the assistant music director, the director, a close friend of mine, watched me. During a break, she took me out in the hall and held me for what seemed like a very long time.

"I love you," Julie said as she ran her hands along my back and I stifled sobs in the hallway. Years ago, she'd lost her son-- all but 19-- in a car accident while he was on his way back to college after winter break. She knew all about loss. It doesn't go away.

"Sometimes," she said to me, "I get in the shower, run the water at full blast, and I just scream and scream and scream."

I never screamed about our miscarriage, not in the shower or anywhere else. That's not to say that I didn't grieve-- it's just not how I grieve, I suppose. I wanted to scream, and rage, and throw things, but I didn't. What I think I might have done, looking back on it, was displace a fair amount of my grief and I probably morphed a significant portion of it into worry and despondency for my wife. In that respect, one might say I didn't exactly "own" the loss, and one could definitely make that argument. And I wouldn't argue.

I think one of my greatest fears is dying before I get a chance to do the things in life at which I will excel. Fortunately, I've acted in a fair number of plays, musicals, and operettas, and I've been appreciated by audience members. I've written a lot that has been seen, and I've written a lot that has never been seen. I've been an efficient friend and confidant to probably enough people, and I've been a loving son and brother. Not gonna lie: as a husband, I think I'm pretty much the shit. The only thing, really, that I haven't had the chance to do that I think I'd be good at is being a father, and so, when the miscarriage happened to us, I think I focused on the fact that I might not get the chance to, well, do that.

Well, this is my sequel.

We're twelve weeks pregnant. And, yeah-- there's two of them in there.


And that's scary, and that's amazing, and that's actually maybe a little dramatic for my taste, which is an admittedly funny thing for a former theatre major to say, but it's overwhelming, almost like I'm pushing the shock-factor a little too hard.

But it's true. There's two.

1

and

2

Come to me, my little love bugs. Let's dim the lights and start the sequel.

It's Friday, Fuckers.

People get so excited about the fact that it's Friday. Not just that it's this specific Friday, but Friday in general. They can't wait for the week to be over. The feeling that I think a lot of people get is like they've been holding in their doodie all week long and then, on Friday, they finally get to take this mongantic dump all over the place and they get to walk listlessly with that rapturous, cathartic feeling all day long as they drift effortlessly into the weekend.

I'll bet more people, statistically, shart themselves on Friday than any other day of the week. I have absolutely no research whatsoever to back up that assumption, just my good ol' gut, but if you're wise, sista, you'll put your paycheck on my gut. You know-- like a shot of... um... alcohol, that people put-- you know, they drink it out of peoples' navels. Not when they're standing, obviously-- I mean, if I understand it correctly. It's, like... They-- nevermind.

I don't get particularly sharted up about Fridays anymore, and I suppose part of the reason that's true is the fact that I work every other weekend: Saturday and Sunday, 7a-3p. So, Friday takes on rather a different flavor to it. The nice thing about my work schedule is that my paycheck gets automatically deposited into my checking account each of the Fridays of the weekends that I work, which definitely serves to soften the blow that I'm spending half of my weekends on-duty at a psychiatric hospital.

But only just so much. Because, let's face it: that's a pretty hard blow. And, yeah-- she said that. While wearing knee-pads and a goalie facemask.

While, as I admitted, I don't have any research about Friday shartings, I do have research that backs up a believe that I've long held, and that's that nobody (or hardly anybody) reads my blog on Fridays. I don't know what it is-- at first I thought, Jesus, I must have a lot of Orthodox Jewish readers, but I sort of kind of doubt it-- but the rate at which my weekly readership/click-throughs/hits declines on Fridays is as alarming as it is regular. Each week, it's always the same-- pretty much ever since I started this ridiculum.

So, I was thinking to myself, as I sit here absolutely stewing in hog's anus 102-degree heat, if nobody's reading this on Friday, I can pretty much say whatever I want, and it won't really matter a Goddamn. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Come on, Apron-- don't you pretty much say whatever you want no matter what day of the week it is?"

And the obvious answer is: No.

No, I don't.

Sure, I say a lot of shit, and some of it is what I want to say, and some of it is offensive, to someone, probably (remember when I royally pissed off that chick with diabetes? And what about when I maligned that asshole singer Sean Hoots? That was awesome.) but do I really let myself go, totally unrestrained by the conventions of grammar, style, and, yes, propriety? Of course I don't. Because I have an audience, however small and skintimate it may be, and I have a lot of respect for you. I mean, not for your taste in literature, obviously, but I have a copious cumbucket-loads of respect for the fact that you choose to read this, instead of or amongst tons of other online detritus that you could be using to rot your synapses.

You're choosing to be here. And that's, frankly, unbelievable-- to me, at least.

I love you. I wouldn't love you more if you were covered in bacon and chocolate sitting on top of the hood of a 1963 VW Beetle playing the oboe solo from the overture to the "Yeomen of the Guard".

You're here.

Why are you here?

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself that question?

Meh-- on second thought: don't.

I had this idea that today's post would consist of every offensive, hateful, disgusting, perverse thought I could dream up and put down, because, really, if no one's reading it, what does it matter. Sure, it'll get picked up and read eleven months from now when some racist masturbator types "cum-nig" into Google while, Anchluss, his German Shepherd is licking precisely-placed peanut butter out of his asshole, and I'm okay with that.

Seriously, this post was just going to be a list of terrible, awful, nasty things. But I thought taking a minute to let you know how thankful I am for you would be a better way to spend my time. And yours.

Besides: it's Friday, Fuckers. Let's all shit ourselves or whatever.