My Masonic Apron

Flunk, Fail, Flail, Flucked

2012-01-31T11:23:00.001-08:00

I can convince myself of anything as long as it's bad.

Negative.

Self-defeating.

Unfortunate.

If I work hard enough, I can convince myself that I don't know something that I know I really know. I can convince myself I don't know how to tie my shoes. I can sit on the edge of my bed in the morning, pick up my right shoe, stare at it, sigh in that familiar, disappointed way I've perfected after so many years of self-hatred and disappointment and say to myself, "That-- you can't do that. Look at that knot, it's doubled. It's doubled and you're singled and you can't undo what's been done." And an eyebrow will rise slightly, and my head will cock to the side a bit, and I'll pull the tongue of the shoe from the heel and I'll jam my flat, misshapen foot inside of it, stretching out the leather and decreasing the life expectancy of the shoe I paid for with my hard-earned money I received from the auspices of the employer of the job that I oftentimes convince myself I don't know how to do.

I don't know how to do my job.

My job is someone else's job. At least, it should be.

I didn't go to school for my job.

I went to school for another job, a job that I also don't know how to do.

What I do know how to do is fake things. I'm a brilliant faker-- I remarkable faker. I perform in operettas, but I don't know how to sing. Not really. I imitate professional performers who do know how to sing, who spent decades under the stern tutelage of foreign voice coaches and sipped countless mugs of honey-imbued lemon tea to coat their throats and I mimic them and fool audiences, some of them even discerning ones, that I know how to sing.

But, I don't know how to sing. I've convinced myself of that. Some day, someone will find out, and I will be outed, possibly in the midst of a performance. They'll be sitting in Row L and they'll stand up, hitch up their trousers unceremoniously and scream, "FAKER!" and he won't even bother pointing at me, because everybody will instantly know whom he's speaking about.

And I'll be crestfallen, but, in the back of my mind, I'll admire him for having the balls to do what no one has done before: expose me.

That I've lived 31 years and graduated high school even though I cannot perform the most rudimentary mathematical equations without the aid of a calculator and life support, the fact that I've held multiple jobs, some of them dealing with actual life and death, the fact that I've been compensated for ineptitude and indifference and incompetence is startling, shocking and scary.

I guess it's because I'm white and wear glasses and I tuck in my shirts. I can do anything.

A friend of mine hired me to do freelance editing and copywriting work for her a while ago. My name's on her company's website. She sends me jobs, I do them. I have no idea what I'm doing. Does she know? I don't know. These companies that accept my copy-- I can't believe they do it. I don't know what I'm writing about. I don't know the first thing about these corporations or what they do or what they expect from me or what they want. I don't know what they're selling or to whom, I don't know the target audience or the demographics. I stumble through my work blindly and, the second I'm finished, I send the fakery, the lunacy, the ridiculum to my friend without editing it, without looking at it because it makes me sick. I pray it's good enough. I pray no one catches on that I'm a fraud, or, as Holden would say, "a goddamn phony".

Some day, someone will get it. Some day.

I don't know how to be a father. I hold and kiss and change and burp and swaddle and shush and dress but I don't know what I'm doing. I'm faking it. And I suppose being a father, the most important thing I've ever been in my life, is the only thing in this world that's acceptable to fake, because every man who's ever reproduced as faked his way through it.

It's all the other stuff I've ever done that you're supposed to be good at before you do it.

Me No Read

2012-01-25T11:34:00.000-08:00

I'm six-and-change weeks into my FMLA "Paternity Leave". I'm going back to work in two-and-a-half weeks. Back to the psych hospital. Back to locked doors and lots of keys and leather restraints and groups of dubious moral, educational, and spiritual value. But, despite how that last sentence probably sounded, I love my job, and I'm really looking forward to going back. And not just because the twins are driving me insane, and not just because I'm irrepressibly stir-crazy, and not just because I long for adult conversation that doesn't revolve around the merits of Pampers vs Huggies (Huggies, you are shit and, well, holding in shit), but because I like to work. I like interacting with the staff and the patients. I like making money. I like being active. I like writing my reports and walking the halls and saying "Good morning" to people who are shuffling around while not wearing pants like it's just any old thing.

I like that.

That said, of course, I also like being home.

A lot.

And because of that, I have very much enjoyed this time with my wife, my buddy, my best friend, my partner, and my two new, small, nice-smelling (most of the time) buddies.

I have to say, though, that when I look back on the nine weeks I'll have spent at home, I think I'll be most disappointed by one immutable fact: I haven't read.

Anything.

No books. I've barely skimmed a "Car & Driver", and I did so listlessly and in such a disconnected fashion I couldn't tell you if I read about the new Passat or about the new Porsche Cayman.

Forget about books-- I'm not sure I even know what a book looks like. I ordered "The Art of Gilbert & Sullivan" by Gayden (suppressed snicker) Wren to get Free Super Saver Shipping on something else and I fanned through it, instantly turned off by how Wren was overtly judging and critiquing Gilbert's product quality in the later operettas like "Utopia, Ltd" and "The Grand Duke", when Gayden Wren himself is responsible for one of the most regrettable stage productions ever, "A Gilbert & Sullivan Christmas Carol". Don't even get me started.

I couldn't read more than fifteen pages. It's on the shelf with the two-dozen other G&S related books and libretti and scores. Moo.

I don't read blogs anymore so, if you write a blog that I used to read, forgive me. I still love you, but I just... I don't know. I don't read anymore. You're probably doing something really awesomeballs that I don't know about because I don't read your blog anymore, but it's not that I'm too cool for school, it's that, I don't know. Maybe it's the sleep deprivation. I am writing portions of this blog with my eyes closed-- and I can do that thanks to my 6th grade typing teacher, Mrs. "F. J. Space" Dougherty who, in addition to being strict as a nun, was a world-renowned emetophobe. All you had to do to be excused from her typing class was say you felt sick to your stomach. You wouldn't be welcomed back for two weeks.

My sister-in-law told me, just after we'd had our children, that new parents' I.Q.s diminish by twenty points.

"So I suppose that means that parents of twins lose forty points," I said, surprising everyone in the recovery room that I could muster up that math after such a traumatic, intelligence quotient-lowering event.

"Probably," she surmised. "It's only temporary, though," she said, attempting reassurance.

But, how temporary? Like, when does it come back? And, does it come back gradually, like at a ratio of a point a year or something like that? I've never had an I.Q. test. I think, to get into the Challenge program in middle school you were required to take an I.Q. test, but my parents told me that was ridiculous and that they wouldn't sign the form, so I never got into the Challenge program and I never got an I.Q. test. Frankly, I'd be scared to take one. I know it doesn't hurt, but I don't like engaging in tests that reveal something about me. This is why I've never taken a "Cosmo Quiz". If I have puffy areolae or way too much in my purse, I'll let you know, damnit. The only exception the self-revelatory test aversion is the occupational aptitude test I took in high school-- I enjoyed that. Though I'm very sorry I never got to become a forest ranger.

I suppose I could read about forest rangers, though. You know, if I ever read again.

America's Comeback Kids

2012-01-23T10:14:00.000-08:00

The New York Times headline read, "For Giffords, House Comeback is One Too Many."

It's funny to me how a mere headline can hit you, instantly, and make you feel something you didn't know you were going to feel. I mean, if I understood my college journalism class (which I took over the summer so I could have an occasional awkward coupling with my Catholic girlfriend who was doing summer theatre, thank you very much) that's part of what a headline's supposed to do. It's supposed to be quick, sharp, and it's supposed to hook you, to con you into reading the rest of the story.

Well, this headline kind of worked. It was quick and sharp, and it hooked me-- but I didn't read the story. Blame it on the Amazing Shitting Twins, who prevent me from doing, well, anything these days. Except blogging. YOU'LL NEVER TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME, YOU LITTLE SPIT-UP PARASITES!

*Ahem.* Sorry.

Maybe I should read the article before writing this post. That's generally how it's done. The best lesson I was ever taught as an undergraduate theatre major was "never audition for a play you haven't read". I mean, no shit, right? But I don't have the time to both read AND write these days. So, I'm going to be one of those people I can't stand, who comment on something they haven't read. Actually, sort of, but sort of not. See, I'm only commenting on the headline, which I have read.

The headline in The New York Times, to me anyway, reeked of a sort of intrinsic disappointment. It was as if to say that Giffords recovery has been remarkable, inspiring, (warning, the word I hate) amazing, but it's just.... short of perfect. Just shy of the American ideal of the person who beats all the odds, who defies all the expectations, who does the un-doable.

To me, the fact that Gabrielle Giffords is still alive today, that she is a living, breathing human being after taking a bullet to the brain is comeback enough. Why should she be expected to return to Congress? Now, she may have had that expectation for herself, and that's fine, one cannot poo-poo a person's expectations for him or herself, but what about what we expect. Had she returned to Congress, this country would have gone apeshit, falling all over itself to post laudatory Facebook status updates featuring pictures of her in her smart business suit, sitting in her tufted leather chair in the House. But why would that be something to celebrate? Why is Gabrielle Giffords going to her physical therapy appointments not something to cheer about? How about her eating a bowl of cereal? Why do we encumber the sick or the injured or the unfortunate with these inflated and conflated ideas and ideals about what "comeback" and "success" and "recovery" mean?

After my wife had her brain surgery, I had to bathe her, and make her meals, and drive her places. I had to endure conversations with her where she spoke at such a high pitch and such a fast rate of speed that I could not understand her. She learned to drive again, to use her left hand again. She went back to work. She regained her place in society. But she can't play the bassoon anymore.

Is my wife just short of the ideal American recovery?

We're the country that invented the phrase "the comeback kid". We love that shit. We eat it up. Runners with one leg beating the balls off their able-bodied competitors with the use of a prosthesis. The homeless girl getting the scholarship. The black kid from the ghetto going to Harvard.

What's... wrong with us? Unfortunately, our warped notions of what it means to be successful in this country inspire people to do things that might be better for us and our egos and our insecurities than things that are necessarily better... for them.

Watching the news, I just want to stand up and scream, "LEAVE THIS WOMAN ALONE! STOP IMBUING HER WITH YOUR OWN FAULTY EXPECTATIONS! GET YOUR FUCKING CAMERA OUT OF HER FACE AND OUT OF HER LIFE!"

It's not bad enough she had to get shot in the head on camera, now the cameras, and the expectations, will just never go away.

On September 11th, 2001, I remember how the late Peter Jennings and other dapper news anchors like him lauded the first responders who went back to Ground Zero again and again and again and again. Shift after shift after shift, police officers, medics, firefighters working seventy-two, eighty-four, ninety-six hours straight with no break. No masks. No fear. Well, I'm sure there was fear. And we ate it up-- the footage of those men and women in the prime of their life sifting through the rubble looking for their fallen brothers and sisters, looking for the fallen brothers and sisters of New York, tirelessly, frantically, endlessly, and we all cheered them on. But there was nobody there when those formerly healthy police officers and paramedics and firefighters were diagnosed with a plethora of cancers, and the great American public was not at their too-soon funerals, as the bagpipes bleated out their mournful dirge for these former heroes who, well, couldn't quite overcome adversity.

But, damn, they tried-- didn't they?

Well. Almost.

This Old House...

2012-01-19T16:55:00.000-08:00

...can suck my dick.

When my wife were young and stupid, and childless, and when she wasn't my wife, we'd go traipsing around quaint neighborhoods and looked at lots of charming old houses, because that's what we liked.

In the end, we bought a house that was more old than it was charming. We made it charming inside, by painting its walls all kinds of fucked up circus colors, and by adding our tchotchkies and our touches and our random piles of shit.

We have such charming random piles of shit.

1928 was a long time ago. It was before the stock market crash. It was before color television and before women going to work and women going to war. 1928 was before the "Wizard of Oz"-- that's how long ago 1928 was. Do you believe there was a time before that movie?

Our house was built in 1928 and, thus, it is eighty-four years old. When you're young and stupid, the idea of living inside a thing built before your parents were built doesn't seem absurd at all. Having lived in this house for some time, it does now. Noam Chomsky is eighty-four years old, and I wouldn't want to live inside him. I can't stand the fucking guy. Shirley Temple, I just learned, was also born in 1928. Somehow, living inside her sounds better, but only marginally.

At first, the old home was fun-- it gave us things to do. Old lady wallpaper? Let's strip it and paint! Nasty linoleum floor the color of a three-year-old's vomit? Let's rip the bejesus out of the floor and replace it! Old windows-- caked in decades and decades of lead paint? Let's....

FUCKING SHOOT OURSELVES!

See, 'cuz window replacement people don't like dealing with lead paint. And a new law was passed recently that says that they don't have to-- that the onus is on the homeowner to get an environmental hazard specialist into the home to either remove or encapsulate all the lead paint and provide the window people with a certificate of non-PB-ness before they can proceed with the work.

Can you say:

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Because, with two month-old children bleating their tiny genitals off in the next room, I sure as Christ can't!

These days, it seems that everywhere I look in this old house of ours there is something to be replaced, fixed, updated, re-done, dealt with. The windows are the obvious priority. Last year, before this fucking regulation was passed, we replaced half the windows in the house. The downstairs, mostly new windows, is toasty warm. Our bedroom and the rest of the upstairs, mostly old windows, is like living inside Shirley Temple's Kelvinator. After two horrifying nights spent shivering in our bedroom with the twins, we moved "OPERATION NEW LIFE" downstairs. The twins sleep in a pack-n-play in the dining room, the parents sleep on the sofa in the living room.

That's right, we're crashing on the couch in our own goddamn house, and we have been for over a month. And we will continue to do so until the windows are all replaced.

There's water damage on the wall in the nursery. There's water damage in the wall in the 1st floor bathroom. The roof's probably falling in because it was clearly installed by a guy with a sixth grade education. When you're feeding and changing and clothing and burping and wiping two little children, projects are no longer fun, old houses are no longer charming. You finally get why young couples buy pristine, 4.5-year-old homes in developments where the biggest dilemma they have is choosing the white, the off-white, the bone, or the creme one.

I get it now.

You win.

I can't take it anymore.

If I have to spend another month on this sofa, it's not going to be pretty.

Don't get me wrong, I love this house. We're not going to go live in a gated community because we've got "a few holes in the floor, the odd door missing" (to quote Basil Fawlty), but you can love something that makes absolutely no sense. It's nice to know that, even though we went and got married and had kids and got a mortgage and two dogs and two cars and some more gray hairs, that I'm still basically just as fucking stupid as I was before.

I was worried there for a second-- weren't you?

Purportedly Supported

2012-01-17T17:03:00.000-08:00

*** If anybody still reads this shit: I'm really going to get it for this post. I can taste it. And it tastes strangely like breastmilk. ***

So, my wife is doing the best possible thing she can be doing to preserve and protect our twins. No, she's not dressing them in identical Osh-Kosh B'Gosh overall outfits and teaching them Spanish. She's breastfeeding, and I couldn't be happier about it.

I don't need to sit here and go over why breastmilk is infinitely superior to formula, or feeding your children shredded cardboard boxes or veal parmigiana or wine-soaked seat upholstery from a 1992 Chevrolet Cavalier. If you don't understand why breastmilk is better for infants than something concocted in a laboratory by balding men with swamp-ass and taint pimples, then there's nothing I can do for you. Leave this blog at once.

(But not before leaving a comment! Apron <3's comments!)

What my wife and I have had to learn through the birth and one-month-ness of our twinners is that doing what's natural isn't always easy. Breastfeeding the children was hard at first-- in the hospital neither would latch particularly well, and feedings were a miserable, stressful experience, especially since our daughter was sick and our son was underweight-- the pressure to get them nutrients was palpable, and it nearly drove us utterly crackers. What I failed to realize was the emotional piece of breastfeeding, that, when a child doesn't latch to its mother, the mother cannot help but feel rejected, and wounded. I was panicked that the children were losing weight, so I put extra pressure on Mrs. Apron to keep at it, and I wasn't as sensitive as I should have been, and, hence, I should be shot and then have the bullet-hole fingered by an agnostic gorilla.

As the weeks went on, though, feedings got easier. Still, Mrs. Apron, seeking resources and information, joined a breastfeeding support group on Facebook. Because she and I are basically joined at the hip while I am home from work caring for the children, I am frequently next to her on the couch while she is on her iPad ($$$$$$$$!!!!!!!) checking out the latest questions and answers from the women belonging to the breastfeeding support group.

And I've got to tell you, after you read enough of that shit, you want to kill yourself.

I have no problem with people who join support groups-- hell, I should probably be in at least eight different ones, but who has the time?-- but, like anything, it can be taken a little too far. Sometimes I feel like groups such as these pray on people's insecurities, their need for validation, or for convivial indignation, or to assuage their fears or to proclaim them to be normal.

Normalcy.

We all want to be normal, or we all at least want to think that we're normal. So many of these questions are:

"I do ____________, is that normal?"

"My child does ___________________. Any other ladies had this experience with their kids?"

"My son/daughter used to feed like ___________________, but not s/he only feeds when ________________________ is on the radio and the clothes dryer is on-- is that weird?"

Yes. It is. Move the fuck on.

The worst, though, are the women who ask questions of their peers that should only be directed at medical professionals.

"Does anyone out there know if (insert name of prescription drug) can be excreted in breastmilk?"

"I'm breastfeeding and I'm taking (insert name of prescription drug), is that okay?"

Are you fucking kidding me?

If it's a PRESCRIPTION DRUG, that means that a medical professional PRESCRIBED IT for you. Ask him or her, don't ask random boob-marms on Facebook. Jesus Christ. While you're at it, why don't you ask the gals if that abdominal discomfort you're having means you ought to have your spleen removed?

This is where online "support groups" move from helpful, past irritating, to downright dangerous. It would be fine of everyone out there realized they were unqualified to answer the question and chose to shut up, but of course questions like these get dozens of frequently redundant and specious replies. Inevitably, there's a genius or two that replies, "you should probably ask your doctor, but..."

Groups like this, with inane, endless reply-strings that are endlessly extended by that one last person who just has that one last thing to say, that one nugget of advice that nobody can do without, become no better than online news sites that permit the dregs of society to comment on stories, no better than the online version of "Foxtrot", where readers can compare the antics of Jason and his friend Marcus to their real-life children. The banality never ends and the most important thing about the experience is about giving your two cents, it's not actually about helping anybody.

You might say that female breastfeeding doctors are also members of the support group and can offer advice. Well, that's not their job. Doctors go to med school so that they can work for a hospital or a practice or a clinic and have appointments with people, people that they get to know, people with whose medical histories they become acquainted, people who are seen and evaluated in a clinical setting. Dispensing medical advice through Facebook is a mistake, and these groups are no replacement for directing important medical questions to a medical professional.

A support group should be just that, a place to get support. Maybe comments like,

"I can hear you're having a hard time breastfeeding, it was really challenging for me, too. I hope things get easier for you. They did for me."

That's... support. Recommending pump products, talking about football hold versus cradle carry. Cheering on a mother whose confidence in herself is flagging.

Advice? You heard it here first: stay away from support groups, especially ones that pretend to be one thing and turn into quite another.

Down to Zero

2012-01-13T14:48:00.000-08:00

"Oh the feeling
When you're reeling
You step lightly thinking you're number one
Down to zero with a word
Leaving
For another one

Now you walk with your feet
Back on the ground
Down to the ground
Down to the ground."

My wife and I have been spending a lot of time recently watching "Homicide: Life on the Street". It's a police procedural-- well, it's a lot more than that-- that was filmed in Baltimore, and Fells Point, from 1993-1999, and it was one of my favorite shows on television when I was in middle and high school. There's a picture of me, somewhere, standing in front of the building that was used as the headquarters, in Fells Point-- and I'm grinning in that picture about as big as I can.

I can remember well watching Pembleton, who made suspenders look cool, scream a confession out of some moke in The Box, or Bayliss going through some existential crisis, or Munch never doing any actual police work-- just cracking wise, or paranoid. I can remember the brilliant Yaphet Kotto astonishing with his performance as Al Giardello, expertly towing the line between rabid attack dog and sensitive mentor. I can remember watching this show in 1998 when I decided to enter college as a theatre major, but I can remember watching "Homicide" in my parents' basement dreaming not of becoming an actor, but becoming a cop.

Instead, I became a father. I wrote a book about cops. I appear in local theatre plays. And, in 2011, I'm still watching "Homicide", with my best friend beside me on the couch-- and she loves it-- while she breastfeeds our twins, or pumps.

The song lyrics at the beginning of this blog are from the Joan Armatrading song "Down to Zero". The song plays at the end of the Season 5 episode of "Homicide" called "Prison Riot". I love Joan Armatrading's voice. It's a lot like Tracy Chapman's, and it's frequently confused for hers, but there's an earthier quality, a more impassioned fervor to Armatrading's voice. Something. If I knew more about music, or anything, maybe I could tell you what it is, but I don't know.

The older I get, the more I realize that there's a lot I don't know.

Life's funny. On December 15th, my twins were born. I didn't get to cut the cords, because the O.R. was way too chaotic, and my son came out white as a hospital wall. I was hurt, bummed-- diminished, I suppose might be a better way to describe it. My daughter had jaundice, my son had to have help to breathe, but we all went home together, and they grew, and we fell into a new routine, of feeding, and pumping, and watching Kay Howard, Meldrick Lewis, Mikey Kellerman, John Munch, Tim Bayliss, Frank Pembleton slug their way through another shift on the dirty streets of Bal'more.

Maybe four days after we got home with the twins, my brother-in-law was diagnosed with lung cancer. Stage 4. Metastases in his stomach, his liver, his brain. Multiple masses in the brain, including one that was so huge it was growing even while he was hospitalized. A mass that's 9 centimeters in his chest. He's lost thirty pounds in no time at all.

No time at all. Down to zero.

Down to the ground,
Down to the ground.

I was reminded, in thinking of all this, of the story of a young New York City patrolman who, on one particular shift in the early 1970s, shot and killed a suspect who had pulled a gun on him, and, several hours into the same shift, delivered a baby. That's how fucked up life is-- that these things happen like that. That life can come in and go out so soon, so close. My brother-in-law's life has not gone out, but it feels as though it is on its way out, as the lives of my children begin.

And what's to be done? My mother-in-law wants to send them lasagna, and cookies. She wants to festoon my nephew's room and life with an abundance of toys to make up for the fact that his father won't see much of 2012, let alone 2013. People want to clean their house and hold beef-n-beer benefits. People want to pay their bills, and I guess I hope they do. Me? I don't know what I want to do. It sounds cruel, but I have two children to raise and provide for, and I don't know how to do that, and I feel like I've got to start figuring that out. I never figured me out, and I guess that's going to have to wait until, I don't know-- retirement?

Maybe.

In the meantime, I'll be changing diapers, and receiving more bad news texts from my sister, and watching "Homicide" with my wife while our twins snore on our chests.

Since news of my brother-in-law's ill health broke on New Year's Day, I know now what Joan Armatrading is singing about, about being down to zero-- at the beginning, or at the end, it barely makes a difference. Sleep-deprived, half-psychotic, half-dreaming, in love, in mourning, in despair, infatuated, indefinable.

Down to the ground,
Down to the ground.

Well, Hold Onto Your Pampers and Swaddle Me Timbers, It's... DEAR APRON!

2011-12-31T10:47:00.001-08:00

I know, I know, this blog post is a desperate attempt by me to hold onto my pre-fatherhood acidic wit and caustic disdain for all humanity, to prove to you that I have not lost my mettle or my resolve to junk-punch Middle America as it searches vainly for wholesome advice to its banal problems and quandaries.

So? Sue me, bitch. And, after you're done doing that, get a load of...

DEAR APRON:

I'm a 25-year-old woman with no future. I am the youngest of three daughters. My parents are divorced and my sisters are both married. Mom has no income of her own, so it's mainly me.

I have come to realize that I'll never be able to have an apartment of my own or fully live my life because of her. She's controlling and always finds a way to make me feel guilty about going out or enjoying myself. I have never had a relationship because she has always found a way of sabotaging any relationship I'm in.

I think she's bipolar, but she doesn't believe in medication or that it's even real. I feel as if I'm being forced to take care of her, and when I finally have a chance to have a real life, it will be too late.

I have discussed this with my sisters, but they haven't helped. I'm very depressed and don't know what to do. If I bring this up with Mom, she gets angry and won't talk to me for days. Please help me find a way out. -- TRAPPED IN CHICAGO

DEAR TRAPPED:

I've got to say, the first sentence of your letter absolutely takes the fucking cake as the single best, most awesome-sauce-coated opening line EVER.

Eh. Vah.

"I'm a 25-year-old woman with no future."

Just look at that, standing there alone, all by itself sort of... hanging there in a gentle abyss. Isn't it glorious, my dears? I just keep reading it, over and over again, loving the way it sounds on my tongue.

So. Good.

And not just limited in its wonderfulness to the context of this advice letter. I think you should use it as your calling card on pretty much every document you compose. Certainly it should be used to commence:

Greeting cards

Christmas letters

Employment cover-letters

Match.com/e-Harmony online dating profiles

Fundraising appeals

Thank you notes

E-mails to insurance companies, mortgage lenders, bill collectors, utility companies, etc.

Suicide notes

WHICH, quite neatly, actually brings me to my suggestion for you. Most people with absolutely no hope, who identify as "trapped" and are looking for "a way out" at some point consider taking their own lives.

Just a thought!

DEAR APRON:

I recently found out that my boyfriend of three years -- the only man I have ever been with -- cheated on me with a woman I thought was a good friend. I love him and have decided to take him back and fight for what we had. He assured me that he wants to be only with me, that what he did was "stupid" and he has learned his lesson.

Apron, although I have forgiven him, I can't bring myself to forgive her. I have never been someone who holds a grudge, but I have so much hate for her that it scares me. I did get professional help, but it didn't work.

I don't want to be like this. This is not who I am. I'm worried about how I might react when I see her. I can't avoid her since we work in the same industry. Why can I forgive him but not her? -- MOVING FORWARD IN TEXAS

DEAR MOVING FORWARD:

I'm not sure that "MOVING FORWARD" is the right pseudonym for you. How about "GON' CUT A BITCH"?

Seriously, though, your intense feelings of hatred will never be ameliorated until you cage fight this slut whilst the both of you are slathered in Newman's Own Mesquite (with Lime) Marinade. It tastes great and it's only 180mg of sodium per 1 tablespoon serving. I would strongly suggest not only selling tickets to the event, but also live-streaming it as well so maybe you can make some money off your boyfriend's infidelity.

Oh, wait-- sorry, he didn't have anything to do with it. He just lay there on the grass clutching his erect cock with this naked hussy tripped and fell on top of him while tripping through the daisies.

See you in the ring.

DEAR APRON:

My friend and I have a massage therapist, "Shelby," whom we hire on a regular basis because she does an excellent job. However, it's hard to get a completely relaxing massage because she likes to talk the whole time.

What's the nicest and most polite way to inform Shelby that we prefer peace and quiet so we can enjoy the massage? -- RUBBED THE WRONG WAY IN COLORADO

DEAR RUBBED:

Do I even need to say anything here?

DEAR APRON:

My marriage has been on the rocks since 2008, when I caught my husband talking to other girls online. He swore he would never do it again and I trusted him, only for it to happen again and again. We have a 2-year-old and I'm pregnant with our second child.

He has now placed another ad online stating that he's a single dad. I am torn. He keeps telling me he loves me and wants only me, and he doesn't know what's wrong with him. He is bipolar and not taking meds for it. He promised this time he will get help and try to get better.

This is the fifth time he has placed an ad or chatted with other girls online. I don't know if I should call it quits or keep trying. I love him and want us to be a family, but I don't know how much more I can take. -- TORN IN CALIFORNIA

DEAR TORN:

You should definitely keep trying. Marriage is a sacred institution well worth fighting for, even though homosexuals are trying to desecrate it by fighting for their right to be treated as equals and get married themselves.

I mean GAY MARRIAGE?

WHAT?!!!!!

Anyway, back to your particular issue, keep working at it. I'm sure you and Single Dad have a really bright future together.

For the (t)Win

2011-12-24T16:31:00.000-08:00

"We depart as two,
Wee-hee, wa-hoo!
And return as four,
No less, no more."

That was the Facebook status update I wrote on Wednesday as my wife and I prepared to leave our home for the hospital to commence our induction. The twins, it seemed, were running out of room in my 5'0" wife's womb, and they weren't going to cook till today-- their scheduled due date.

Returning as four almost didn't happen.

They almost kept our little girl at the hospital due to jaundice. Hyperbilirubinemia, they call it. Thanks to my stupid blood type, our daughter's red blood cells were breaking down and a substance called bilirubin was forming, and she had that tell-tale yellow tint to her skin. So, on our first night together as a family, they took our daughter from us and sent her upstairs to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for phototherapy.

There was talk of sending me, my wife, and our son home, and keeping our little girl.

It's a funny thing. You meet someone for the first time and, instantly, you can't bear to be separated from them. The thought of going home as three, and not as four, ripped me apart inside, and it did that and more to my wife, whose insides were already ripped apart anyway. A very sympathetic nurse pushed our discharge time back hours upon hours so they could test our daughter's bilirubin number to see if it would go down before we absolutely had to be kicked out of the hospital and, finally, it did. And we left as four.

Our tiny house is positively crammed with Fed-EX boxes, cards containing beautiful sentiments, gifts, diapers, burp-cloths, impossibly small socks, and the uncommonly sublime smell of babies (just changed babies, that is).

They say you lose a part of you when you become a parent, and that's true. I'd like to say that I don't mind that loss, because I'm so in love, but that's not true. Well, the I'm in love part is true, but I do mind the loss. I think that's what I was mourning when I broke down and cried hysterically on Sunday-- or Monday night-- I forget which. On my knees in the living room, sobbing hysterically, inconsolably, shaking, clutching at my wife as if I were adrift in the Atlantic and she were a life-raft. And, really, she is. It is her ceaseless love and support that keeps me afloat, that keeps me rising at 3am to stumble blindly about the house and change diapers and feed children and do the dishes and take out the recycling and miraculously find time to get a haircut from the man who gave me my very first non-mommy haircut.

Our son is gaining weight. Our daughter is losing her yellow. My wife is amazing me at every moment. And I am still here, a piece of me lost, and the gains are just beginning.

A Sentimental Man

2011-12-13T04:48:00.000-08:00

"I am a sentimental man,
Who always longed to be a father.

That's why I do the best I can,
To treat each citizen of son of Oz
As son or daughter.

So, Elphaba, I'd like to raise you high,
'Cuz I think everyone deserves the fly.

And helping you with your ascent,
Allows me to feel so... parental.

For I am a sentimental man."

That's how my favorite song from "Wicked" goes. Yes. I'm a 31-year-old straight guy, and I have a favorite song from "Wicked". Wanna fight about it?

My favorite song from that show is not in the "Wicked" Easy Piano songbooks that pony-tailed tweens used at creative arts summer camps for a few years so that they could sing "Popular" and "For Good" at low-budget showcases and talent shows the world over.

"A Sentimental Man" didn't turn into a smash hit, and it isn't very memorable, or complicated, or vocally or musically interesting either, I suppose. It isn't particularly long, so it's easy to forget. One minute and seventeen seconds, the way Broadway legend Joel Grey does it anyway. Back when I worked in the creative arts, I tried to find the sheet music to the song so I could sing it at an outdoor cabaret, but I couldn't locate the music. So I sang Eric Idle's "The Galaxy Song" from "The Meaning of Life" instead.

That's life sometimes.

It's funny, because "The Galaxy Song" is a funny song, about the dimensions of the universe and the insignificance of our mortal toils and foibles, and it's sort of a modern interpretation of a patter song, the type I love to sing in G&S operettas, and, to many folks who know me, that's the sort of song they might use to identify me. But I think, to those who really know me best, "A Sentimental Man" says more about who I am, what I feel inside, how I operate, what I value and what I long for most.

Tomorrow night, at 7:00pm, my wife and I are to arrive at the hospital so that she can be induced. If all goes as it should, the twins should be making their appearance on Thursday the 15th. And my life will change forever. Because, of course, it will no longer be my life.

Well, that changed some time ago, I suppose. On October 22nd, 2006, under a chuppah covered in radiant sunflowers, I married my best buddy. A girl whom I turn towards in the car or on the couch or in the bed and sometimes just look at, because I like the way it feels. I like to look in her eyes, or at her cheeks, or her lips, or her chin. She's shorter than me, by a decent margin, and, when we hug, I like to hold her head against my chest. I love the shape of her head-- I know that sounds goofy, but sometimes I'm like that. Her head feels great against my chest and in my hand.

From that day forward, it was no longer my life. It was ours. And now ours is getting a wee bit bigger.

I had a terrifying moment of insecurity last night. As my wife and I dined in the restaurant where we had our first date, as we ate our meal alongside her father, an intelligent though disheveled psychiatrist, I suddenly felt very small in his shadow. The shadow of his expectations and his value system, and his romance with formal educational success, of which I had not very much to speak of. I'm a reasonably talented writer, but I couldn't tell you what a gerund is. To me, it sounds like a weapon used against Jews in the Holocaust.

Speaking of Jews, I felt excluded-- muted-- as my father-in-law and my wife discussed Torah portions as if they'd both just read them yesterday. I can tell you what a Torah looks like, and I know how heavy one is to carry, but that's about it. And I shared my feelings of intellectual insecurity with my wife as we lay on the couch together after the meal was over and her father meandered his way back to his hotel.

"What am I going to be able to teach them?" I asked her, "What am I going to be able to help them with?"

"You're going to teach them about how to be good people," my wife said, which, I have to say, didn't make me feel much better.

There's an insidious air of intellectual superiority about my wife's side of the family. Conversations always seem to revolve around mocking or critiquing "simpler" people in their neighborhoods or schools or workplaces when they lived in upstate New York. My father-in-law is keen to present himself as the one who's always correcting other psychiatrists medical errors, or mis-diagnoses, or over-prescribing tendencies where he works, and my mother-in-law is always one to express judgement over how other people live, but she'll be the first one to correct you if you try to do it. And maybe they do it to cover up their own flaws, or maybe they don't know they're doing it. Or maybe it's just my perception but, as many a psych patient has told me at work, "My perception is my reality".

I wish I could tell you that my terrifying moment of insecurity passed after a good night's sleep, but it hasn't. And I can't lie to you. When I first married my wife, I was petrified that I wouldn't be good enough-- not for her, for she had affirmed, by slipping that orange blossom-engraved ring onto my finger, that I was her beloved, and she was mine-- but that I wouldn't be good enough for her parents. Now I'm scared that I won't be good enough for my children.

"I guess what I am is going to have to be enough for them," was the shaky conclusion I came to last night, as my wife rubbed Hydrocortisone cream over her impossibly huge belly and its accompanying itchy stretch marks, "because I'm all they've got."

And, in the end, maybe being a sentimental man will prove to be of infinite and inestimable value to the life and heart and values and experience of a child.

Children.

Holy Dickstain, It's... MY MASONIC APRON'S LAST BLOG POST!

2011-09-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

Well. That got your attention, didn't it?

Good.

I've gotten your attention for some time on this blog, and that's been nice, to varying degrees, but I'm done doing that now.

Looking back on many of the posts I've written, I've noticed that I have a habit of starting out many a paragraph with the phrase, "Life's funny", and I do that because it is-- life is funny-- and because I'm stalling while thinking of something to say. Thinking on my feet. Something you're not really supposed to have to want to need to do while you're writing. That's more of a talking thing to have to do. But I think on my feet when I write, because I don't plan out what I have to say, because that would bore me.

Well, thinking on my feet while writing has started to bore me. It's probably started boring you, too. I can feel it.

It's easy to know when something's over, but it's harder to admit it. This blog was over a while ago, but I kept it going, like people do in relationships, because the sex is good, or because your toothbrush is at her place, or because he has a car and you don't or because she makes a mean bolognese.

I was comfortable here, not happy. There's a difference. You can be both and survive just fine, like I do in my marriage: comfortable and happy. On my blog, however, I was just comfortable, and that just doesn't last.

"My Masonic Apron" was a challenging exercise for me. Be interesting, engaging, funny, topical, witty, passionate, silly, obtuse, frustrating, apathetic, empathetic, ridiculous, superfluous, just be... something.

And I did that. For a while, I did that.

And I'm done doing that.

Last August, I threw in the towel on this shit for a brief time while searching for a job, because this blog was an unnecessary distraction from seeking gainful employment. And I found gainful employment, and I came back. But now I'm facing new challenges. Twins are around the corner, and I need to figure out a way to take an essentially desperately unmarketable person and turn an hourly wage into a salary, a job into a career, a boy into a man. I need to re-Bar Mitzvah, and gifts are graciously accepted.

(Fuck yea.)

I won't pretend that I'm not going to miss this. But I'll also confess that it's less about the blog, and less about the blogging, and less about you, than it is about missing the comfort of something that has become so routine.

I love routines, you know. You know that. You know everything.

Well. Not everything.

No.

You know what I tell you, but I know so very little that you can't know more than a very little.

I won't be deleting the blog-- that would be kind of stupid, and it would rob future generations of trouser-free Googlers the joy of stumbling upon this site upon entering search terms like, "sheep fuck apron" and "alastair atchison" and "mumia abu-jamal" and "totes mcgoats".

Such a colorful array of topics. Such a charmed life I lead.

I'll bet I'll be tempted to come back here and spew bile about the Fort Knox-like protections on our orange juice bottle, or memorialize Finley when he dies, or to brag about the twins when they're born, but I don't think that will be happening. When I say goodbye, it's usually not "so long."

I wanted to get to 1,000 posts. Really I did. But, really, what's the fucking difference? A thousand, nine hundred-and-whatever-- who cares? I'm also tempted to delude myself into thinking, if I'd put more energy into creative writing since 2009, I'd be a published author again by now, but that's probably nonsense. I peaked at 21-- ask anybody I went to college with. Just not the girls I fucked. They definitely wouldn't agree.

I kept my identity a secret on this blog because I have/had aspirations of being a teacher-- and I am a teacher in a lot of ways, and I work with psych patients, and I don't want to get fired because I have a potty mouth. I'm always afraid of getting fired, of being found out, and my therapist opined last week that maybe I was most afraid of finding myself out.

I think he's right.

I'm writing this on Sunday night-- September the 11th-- and I was going to have it auto-post at 7:18am, the usual time, but I kind of can't wait, so I'm going to let it go now. I'm kind of excited to start my new life, free from, well, this. I think it's going to make me sad, like any loss does, but I think it's going to feel better in time.

I think I'm going to be better, in time.

I can't tell you how proud I am of this thing-- this thing that eventually made me sick-- but I'm far prouder of the fact that it was my writing that brought you into my life. You know, back in 2003, it was the bizarre, sardonic, clever J-Date profile that successfully seduced the girl who would eventually become my wife and the mother of our twins. And it worked on you, too.

Sucker.

I love you.

Anger and Love

2011-09-11T04:18:00.000-07:00

I've got to tell you, I really worked myself up about whether or not to write a September 11th post-- like what I do or don't do, on this space, and in life, matters a damn.

That's the thing about me: I vacillate so between the two extremes of taking myself way too seriously on the one hand, and thinking that I'm probably one of the most insignificant and ridiculous beings on the face of the earth. It's kind of annoying to have both an inflated sense of self-importance, coupled with self-confidence the size of a whitehead.

I thought about writing about something totally unrelated to September 11th, because I often do that when there is media saturation about something-- I tend to go the other way. But then I thought, "you're just doing that to be an asshole, and you're asshole enough without doing that."

Once I had decided (seven minutes ago) that I would write a September 11th post, my thoughts turned to how I ought to approach it. Would it be the acerbic, sardonic "Dear Apron" voice that is crass and crude and obscene, mocking the vaunted solemnity and vacant pageantry granted to the 10th anniversary recognition of that terrible day, or would the tone be more philosophical, introspective, careful and considerate, weighing the colossal tragedy of the actual terrorist act against the unhinged and seemingly intractable military operations that have occurred in its wake?

And... after at least six-and-a-half minutes of scattered, distracted deliberation: I can't decide.

What's a fella to do?

I thought I might tell you where I was when the first plane hit-- but nobody really gives a shit about that except me and, actually, I don't really give that much of a shit about that either. I don't know why this culture is so fixated on that where-I-was business. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, is where you were when such-and-such a thing happened really that relevant to not only the event, but to your memory of the event? I never understood that.

But, anyway.

I'm writing this post, as I do with all my posts, a day ahead-- on September 10th. So, I don't really know how I'm going to feel on the actual 11th. Maybe much different than I do right now, which is ambivalent and disinterested, by the way, but I don't know. Maybe I won't. I'll be working at my psych hospital on September 11th, hanging with a bunch of folks who, for a time anyway, aren't among the general population. On Saturday morning, one of the ladies asked what the date was.

"It's the 10th," I said.

"Oh," she answered flatly, "and tomorrow's September 11th."

"Tomorrow's September 11th," I repeated, somewhat mechanically. You learn in this business to keep your voice as even as possible, lest any untoward inflection betray how you really feel about things.

"September 11th made me angry," the patient stated, simply, tersely, plainly.

I paused for a second.

"That makes sense," I said, because, in a world where people do and say things that make no sense whatsoever, you've got to acknowledge when things do make sense.

I'm glad I'm going to be in a psychiatric hospital for eight hours on September 11th. For a lot of reasons, mostly though to be in a place where not making sense is as okay as making sense. Because September 11th, even after 10 years, doesn't make sense, nor does anything that came after it.

Or before.

I have vague memories of floating through a surreal, faded version of my college campus on that day, and I can remember watching endless hours of CNN-- not really watching it, acknowledging it maybe. What I remember most was my creative writing professor arriving half-an-hour late to class, breaking down into barely controlled sobs, and sending us away.

And I think, for that one quick, fleeting moment, I fell in love with her. Well, maybe not with her, really-- but her humanity, her dignity, her frailty, and her deep beauty. She ascended, I think, in that moment, as she delivered her news and her tears and her love, in a way that was not quite human anymore. Like the Pieta she was, Mary cradling us all, limp and wounded, in her arms.

It was the single most arresting moment of my college career.

I'd thought about writing about the horror of terror, the anxiety faced by millions in the wake of the attacks, about my forever amplified fear of flying, about life in the city, about recovery and rebirth, but I suppose, in the end, September 11th for me is best summed up with two words:

Anger, and love.

Well, It's Finally Happened...

2011-09-10T04:18:00.000-07:00

... I want to un-friend just about everybody I'm friends with on Facebook.

Pretty much all 343 of them. They're annoying. Attention-seeking. Clever. Phony. Obnoxious. Self-aggrandizing. Vacuous. Disingenuous.

Come to think of it, make it 344, because I kind of want to un-friend myself.

Note: I didn't say I want to delete my Facebook account. I just kind of what to un-friend everybody.

I'm not going to, though, because that takes energy and motivation. It's purposeful and there are steps involved that one must take, and repercussions, possibly. And I'm not into repercussions. Or step-taking, for that matter. I'm not really into much of anything, frankly. Too many thoughts of diapers and strollers and vomit and shit that looks like watered-down peanut butter.

I'm feeling crabby, I think. I'm in a But-I-Don't-Wanna mood. You ever get like that?

I don't wanna take pictures of the twins and Blackberry them up onto Facebook from the delivery room so people I went to middle school can "Like" them. I don't want thirty-seven "Likes" for the fact that my wife just squeezed out our children. I don't want to read, "Awwww! So cute!" ten times and see all those fucking thumbs-ups.

I don't want it.

It's so cheap. So cloying. So clickably satisfying.

I know, I'm being an asshole. I can't help it. It's how I feel, right now. Maybe I won't feel this way on Sunday, or Thursday. But it's how I feel right now. And, like I said, I don't want to cancel my account, mostly because all my goddamned pictures are up there-- I just kind of want to have a Facebook account, because basically everyone else does, but I kind of want to have one in a vacuum, just sort of by myself. I want to put stuff up there and say witty or crabby things, but I don't necessarily want to hear anything from anyone else. It would be the equivalent, I guess, of the cork bulletin board we keep upstairs in our office. There's a bunch of random crap on it-- pictures and cards and quotes and whatnot, but people don't say anything about it, because nobody else comes up into our office.

Nobody "Likes" the picture of my wife, my sister-in-law, and I standing in the market in our hipster formalwear, each of us clutching a squash like a baby, though, I expect that, if I scanned said picture and put it up on Facebook, that would earn at least 6 Likes and a "LOL!" for good measure.

I was scrolling through Ye Olde Walle yesterday and I was getting so... blargh. I don't even know what I was getting-- enervated? Irritated? Exasperated? I suppose Facebook and all the self-glorifying inanity thereon reaches a point of saturation after a while. There comes a point where you just can't look at Facebook anymore without wanting to give yourself a tonsillectomy with a broken paperclip.

I just wanted to make it all go away. And you can Log Out, but it never really goes away, unless you make it go away. For real. And then you become the antidisestablishmentarianistic hermit-like bowl of ass-sweat that everybody thought you were in college.

And I don't know if I'm really that.

Maybe, though. Maybe.

LOOK OUT: Your Nurse Navigator Is Here, Motherfucker

2011-09-09T04:18:00.000-07:00

When I worked in the non-profit sector, I marveled at the seemingly endless amounts of nondescript, nebulous, official-sounding job titles were out there, and all of them essentially amounted to the same thing: file jockey. Data entry schmendrick. They were job titles (all pulled directly from Idealist.org, btw) like this:

Program Coordinator
Program Assistant
Programs Manager
Project Manager
Project Coordinator
Programs Assistant
Assistant Program Officer
Foundation Assistant
Strategic Director
Senior Program Manager
Team Support Administrator
Coordinating Manager
Project Liaison
Program Intake Specialist
Program Associate
Program Operations Manager
Program Specialist
Communications Specialist
Programs Generalist

I mean, are you kidding me? Come on. What the fuck is that shit?

In my time, I held a couple of those fictitious titles myself. And that is really what they are: made up. They're as made up as all of those well-intentioned bullshit names people are giving their kids these days:

Braydon
Kaedon
Jaydon
Radon
Rabies

Etectera.

The jobs are made up, too. The non-profit world is brilliant at making up jobs and job titles to go with them. You wouldn't think they'd have so much money to throw at the random-ass people who end up filling these utterly non-essential, meaningless, clerical, stress-inducing jobs but, when you're only paying them $21,000 and no health insurance, it's not that big a deal for most non-profits to handle.

And, after a year, most of them quit or get fired anyway.

The for-profit world doesn't really get into the habit of making up jobs or job titles. The CEO of a company is the handsomely-graying white guy in the $2,000 Italian suit getting hummed by his secretary behind his black lacquer desk. There's no mistaking what that's all about. Likewise, and down a peg or two, a machinist is a fucking machinist. There are no Senior Programs Machinists or Machinist Liaisons. There aren't Intake Machinist Specialists. There are just fucking machinists. And they work on fucking machines. Because they're machinists.

A car salesman, in all his balding, pot-bellied, yolk-on-his-tie, sweat-on-his-upper-lip glory is a car salesman. Period.

You wouldn't think that the healthcare industry would be one for inventing job titles and positions (a doctor's a doctor, a paramedic's a paramedic, an oncologist head-butts cancer, and so on) but you'd be wrong. The medical sector has, in what I think is probably only the last couple years, worked to contrive and confabulate an entirely new subset of the nursing profession called:

THE

NURSE

NAVIGATOR

As if tacitly acknowledging that healthcare, health insurance, and the entire experience of going into the hospital even for a "routine" procedure has become utterly indecipherable and unknowable for the average schmuck-stain, the position of Nurse Navigator was created, ostensibly to navigate you, the loser on the gurney, through the vast and heretofore un-navigable (I guess) intricacies of the hospital system.

It isn't because hospitals were faced with the increasing burden of nurses that have been in their positions for too long, have become long in the tooth and fat in the ass, short on patience and long on exasperated tirades, nurses who haven't kept up with advances in technology or medicine or culture or all of the aforementioned, nurses who have ingrained themselves into the very fabric of the hospital and cannot be fired, but are utterly useless with patients because they shat out their bedside manner decades ago, and nurses whom doctors secretly fantasize about strangling, (and not in the sexual way either) and so, instead of gracefully putting them out to pasture, they created this odd, undefined position to give them a job that doesn't mean anything, but pretty much gets them out of everybody's hair.

I mean, call me a cynic, but...

If you don't believe me that the job is undefined, don't take it squarely on the chin from me-- here's one newly minted Nurse Navigator on an RN chatboard:

"I have recently been promoted to a nurse navigator type role. I wanted to know are there any nurse navigators here that could help me develope [sic] this new position at our hospital. I am the first one here HELP!"

And then she put a little crying emoticon, just to underscore her complete and utter helplessness.

So, here's a Nurse Navigator, asking other Nurse Navigators to help her (say it with me now) navigate her job.

Folks: don't get sick (or pregnant) in America. We're basically fucked.

A Strange Man

2011-09-08T04:18:00.000-07:00

Remember the part in "Crimes and Misdemeanors" when Woody Allen shuffles, dazed, into his bedroom, and Joanna Gleason is in bed, and Woody sits on the bed, a bit slumped, sort of staring off vacantly and says,

"A strange man... defecated on my sister."

If you don't remember that part, of (worse) if you've never seen "Crimes and Misdemeanors", then don't come back here until you have.

I think every creatively-inclined Jewish guy in this life and time experiences a very complicated relationship with Woody Allen. It's not something we decide to experience, like pot or upside-down sex-- or cake-- it's just something that... I don't know... is.

We can't help it, and I wonder if he can't either. I wonder if he knows the power he wields over us. I wonder if he cares.

See? ARRGH! Look at me-- wondering if Woody Allen cares about something. This is exactly what I'm talking about!

Annoying.

There's a piece of us, and by us I mean "Jewish American boy-and-then-manhood" that fervently wants to separate ourselves from him, to distinguish ourselves from his typification of THE NEBBISH-- the schnuffling, neurotic, befuddled, myopic, pseudo-intellectual in the big glasses obscuring the mawkish punim. There's that piece of us that can't wait to say, "Well, at least I'm not like HIM," and this is juxtaposed, of course, with our insidious, troubled, and very real desire to be not just like him, but him precisely.

And I don't mean necessarily that we want to adopt an Asian girl and then fall in love with her and then fuck her and then marry her, or whatever order in which he did those steps, I don't really know, but we want to taste the life he's led up to this point. Woody Allen's life, and his characters' lives. We want to struggle with philosophical and ethical dilemmas, and we always want a clever, annihilating quip to slide effortlessly out of our back pockets like a wallet. And, truth be told, we wouldn't mind hooking up with 1996 Julia Roberts along the Italian riviera while wearing baggy corduroys.

Woody Allen is the ultimate Hollywood paradox. The anti-Semites of the world will happily gnaw your ear off (especially if your ear is Jewish) telling you all about how Jews control the media and the entertainment industry but, when they talk about those Jews, they're not talking about Woody Allen, they're talking about Jeff Zucker and Michael Eisner but, really, I don't think there is a Jew alive today who has more influence over mass media than Woody Allen. If you mention his name in Europe, especially Italy or France, the country swoons. Here, a wide cross-section of the country can remember laughing its ass off at "Bananas" and "Sleeper" and I remember, even as a young child, finding that bespectacled ginger trying to play cello in his high school marching band in "Take the Money and Run" pretty priceless.

The importance and relevance of influence of his wit and his style on cinema today may be disputed, but it cannot be denied. And, yet, how did this little stereotype do it?

I can remember being critiqued in Acting I in college by the professor.

"I love your face," she said to me, "it'll never be the face of a leading man, but, if you want it, you'll find a profitable and stable career getting character roles-- Woody Allen type stuff."

And while I could have been stung by that comment, I was buoyed by it-- for a time anyway. The paradox, though, about Woody Allen is that, except for when he's doing cameos in other people's films, like in the one-scene scene-stealer in "The Impostors", he is the leading man. The unlikeliest leading man ever. The leading man whose sister gets shat on. The leading man who chases after lobsters in the kitchen. The leading man whose attempts at intercourse are comic and painful. The leading man we can't stand, but would have over for coffee above any other.

Sometimes I wonder if Christian kids have complicated relationships with Ryan Gosling or Ralph Fiennes. Maybe, but I kind of doubt it.

I never gave myself the chance to see if my Acting I professor's prediction about me was right-- I never put myself out there to see if I could score that steady stream of character work, the awkward co-star, the unfortunate best friend, the bewildered accountant or the wry uncle, and maybe that's just as well.

Maybe.

Me-ness

2011-09-07T04:18:00.000-07:00

Mrs. Apron and I went to the King of Prussia mall together on Saturday. It was the first time I had been back at the mall in years. When I was a child, when my family was bereft of things to do, we all inevitably piled into my family's Oldsmobile, or Buick, or Toyota, or Pontiac or, finally, Saab, and went to the mall. It was the Saab that my father was driving when he ran my foot over in the parking lot in front of Bloomingdales when I was fifteen. That traumatic event marked our last family trip to the mall.

Those treks were getting a bit long in the tooth by 1995 anyway.

As Mrs. Apron and I parked the car at Bloomingdales, I stared at the facade of the immense retail space and said, "That's where he ran my foot over with the car," pointing to the curb cut by the entrance, "right there." I shook my head and laughed to myself because, really, it's funny. And I instinctively reached for my wife's hand, and she took it.

When my family would go to the mall together, my sisters, my mother and father and I, we would invariably split up. My sisters would shop for girl things with my mother, and my father and I would pal around together. I would drag him all over the place, to the K. B. Toys, where my dilated pupils would hungrily gaze at all the enormous die-cast cars in 1/18th scale. It was at K. B. Toys where my father first noticed me, as a nine-year-old, standing in the aisle, bent over, rubbing my hand against the small of my back like an octogenarian with spinal stenosis.

"Mummy," he asked, his brow furrowed, "what is the matter with your back?"

"It hurts," I said simply, my brow furrowed, too.

Scoliosis. Thanks, gene pool.

I would also take my father to the Electronics Boutique, where I would show him the backs of all the computer games I wanted. I invariably chose ones that our computer did not have sufficient memory of graphics capability, (remember VGA vs SVGA, 256 color requirements?) to run correctly, or at all. And these wastes of money that would not perform on our home P.C. were invariably not returnable because, in my excitement to use them, I had torn the box to shreds till it resembled hamster bedding.

That man wasted a lot of money on me.

Looking back on our time at the mall, I can't remember one time-- not one single time that he and I were together that he made me go to Macy's with him to look at sweaters for him, or... anything for him. Those trips were all about me, to fuel my interests and my desires and my wants and my perceived needs, and I had no idea.

On Saturday, I accompanied my wife to the mall for no other reason than for her to purchase new bras at Bloomingdales, because our impending twinnage has caused her to appreciably outgrow her current bustenhalters. Okay, we also got Auntie Ann's pretzels, too, but the bra shopping was the main event. And it took an hour. And all the while I stood out among all that lacy and frill and cups and straps looking like part husband and part pervert-- which I am both-- and I texted a friend to ameliorate my feelings of awkwardness by giving voice to them in those text messages.

And it helped.

I suppose I could have gone somewhere in the mall for myself that Saturday, but I had no desire to do so, and it wasn't just my counterculture distaste for the mall.

As we exited, we passed through the men's department (or "menswear" as they used to call it on "Are You Being Served?") and I saw a handsome cardigan, stylish and conservative at the same time. Ralph Lauren. My wife and I both went to it at the same time and investigated it. I didn't look at the price tag, but I didn't have to.

"I can't have anything for myself anymore," I said, half-jokingly, "because we're having twins and my life is over."

Mrs. Apron smiled at me.

"Or, you could say that it's important for you to still have things that you like so that you don't lose your me-ness," she said.

"Right," I said, "the me-ness of penis."

I don't know what that means, I just said it because it rhymed and it's sophomoric.

My me-ness.

Antique typewriters
Old telephones
Eyeglasses
Short-sleeve dress shirts
Skinny ties
Wing-tip shoes
Monty Python
Gilbert & Sullivan
Thrift shopping
Amateur theatre
Writing
Bacon
Coffee
Chocolate
Brash humor
Sensitivity
Introspection
Brooding
Crappy TV
Cuddle time
Worrying

I don't know what parts of my me-ness I'm going to lose once these twins come-- I suppose every parent loses some, as my parents did. Some of it is willing, some of it gets lost with a fight, and I guess what ends up after being funneled and distilled and wrung out by time and diapers and sleep deprivation and sacrifice will be the essence of my me-ness.

Whether I like it, or whether I don't.

Hey, Oprah: Where's My Fucking Endorsement?

2011-09-06T04:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Oprah,

So, it's Monday night. I'm sitting here at the old desktop (btw, do you have a desktop, sweets? Probably not. You've probably got one of those tab jauns. Do people say "jaun" anymore? I'm horny.) knockin' back a little CFDC and I just happened to glance at this book on the desk in front of my monitor.

It's called "Baby Bargains", and, while it's penned by Denise & Alan Fields (who, I'm guessing, are more than just co-authors, n'yah mean?) their names aren't the most important names on the cover of this book.

Guess who's is, though?

THAT'S RIGHT, MEGALOMANIAC TO THE STARS-- it's YOUR NAME!

Your. Name.

Whoa!

The first words, in fact, that appear on the cover of this book are:

"AS SEEN ON OPRAH!"

Well, howdeyalikethemgranniesmithsnicencrispy,huh?

Oprah, I've gotta tell you, you're lookin' fine these days. And I don't mean you yourself, curvy lady, I mean you as in "your brand."

Show me that O-face, kid!

Mmmmmmm! You know what daddy likie.

Oprah, when I Google your name, do you know how many hits come up?

90,600,000.

(Approximately.)

That's 1,260,000 more hits than materialize when I Google "Ozzy Osbourne" (or, when he Googles himself, though I doubt by now he can actually spell his own name, much less type it out on a keyboard and then press "Enter".) and you've gotta believe that, if you're rockin' our a million more hits than Ozzy, then you're pretty much hot shit.

Oprah: you, baby, aren't just hot shit. You're a steaming pile of it. Sizzling on a Chicago sidewalk. Getting crisp. Fresh. Ripe. Hot shit doesn't even begin to describe it.

People think Moses slid out of your birth canal. Just slid right out of there-- GLORP!-- just like that.

Here's what: I want you to endorse my blog.

Now, I know, I know-- you have standards or whatever, but we all know that broken up little pieces guy kind of put a fly in that particular jar of ointment, so let's not kid ourselves, baby-- it's all about money.

How much do you want? I've got, like, $12 in my wallet at this current juncture. Give me 20 minutes to hit the ATM and I could probably come up with $400, plus the $12 I already got. Well, actually, I'm going to need gas this week, so I'd kind of like $45 or $50 to fill up the old Volvs, if you know what I mean. Oh, and it's going to be my wife's birthday next month...

Okay, forget about money. What you really want is someone else to kiss your ass and extol your virtues to the world so you don't have to do it yourself all the time because, let's face it, that shit can get tiring after a while. I mean, look at you-- you already had to retire from that exhausting show you did or whatever. I mean, GIRL! Take a rest already! You've earned it!

All I want, and really, it's not that much to ask, is for some Harpo skinny-assed intern to look over one or two posts on here, declare them worthy of your name and let me slap your image all over this bitch so we can make some fucking benjamins, because, really? That Volvo is one thirsty cuntsucka!

I'M TALKIN' GAZZOLINA!

Oprah, I'm being serious. I would cut off my left nipple and send it to the C.E.O. of Domino's Pizza as the modeling inspiration for their new pepperoni slices if you would just endorse the cum out of my blogdick.

Please. Make me squeel like a pig, O.

Love,
Mr. Apron

A Holiday or Something

2011-09-05T04:18:00.000-07:00

Happy Labor Day or whatever.

I feel like the average American knows more about Tu B'Shevat than they do about Labor Day. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to recently have mentioned something about soldiers in reference to this holiday. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the poster in the cafeteria where I work featuring the Labor Day menu has a picture of a soldier on it. As far as I know, it doesn't have anything to do with soldiers. That's Memorial Day.

I think.

Most people who work normal jobs are off today, enjoying a three-day weekend some place nice and sunny and warm. Maybe I'm just jealous because I'm putting in another eight hours at the funny farm, but isn't it kind of counterintuitive to give people the day off from work on a day that is designed to celebrate industriousness and, you know, work?

Shouldn't you be slogging away at your spreadsheets today? Shouldn't you be grinding those... gears a little harder today? Shouldn't you be swilling coffee at a meeting or drilling your secretary behind your firmly closed office door while your executive desk toys spin or twirl or smack their little silver balls against one another while you're slamming your balls against the back of her inner thighs?

Since my wife became pregnant, the idea of Labor Day sort of takes on a new meaning for me. Wouldn't it be fun if we celebrated the whole notion of procreation? Not Mother's Day-- that shit's different-- but a day devoted to going through actual, painful, vag-ripping labor?

The Russians do that shit-- sort of-- or, at least, they used to.

This is, in fact, a vintage Russian "Medal of Motherhood", Second Degree, that was ceremoniously awarded to, well, chicks who squeezed out some puppies. I don't know specifically what you had to do to earn the Second Degree designation for you and your womb-- maybe bust out a set of twins?-- but there it is. Wouldn't this be some kind of crazy country if we did that-- if that was our labor day?

I think it's kind of funny that the Soviet nation, where people ate potatoes and stockings for breakfast and thought that three-speed manual transmissions on the column was advanced automotive technology was awarding women for bringing more mouths into the world it could not afford to feed. You'd think they'd give women medals for not going into labor.

But, you'd be wrong.

As my brain turned to thoughts of some mustachioed man in a fur hat pinning a medal on my wife's coat for bearing twins, I then thought about "Days" devoted to other life events that people go through that might not yet be readily recognized by the calendar or the government:

* Tuberculosis Survival Day

* Motorcar vs Pedestrian Accident Avoidance Day

* Albino Chinchilla Adoption Day

* Correctional Officer Beating Day

* Getting Up from Chair Without Groaning Day

* Scissor Position Intercourse Day

* Gingivitis Awareness Day

* Awkward Silence Awareness Day

* Physical Comedy Day

* Protracted Conversation with Insufferable Neighbor About the Weather Day

* Offenbach Overtures CD Listening Session Day

* Jugular Vein Twitch Day

* Apathetic Sigh Day

* Frequent Urination/Overactive Bladder Day

* Belated Adult Circumcision Day

* Throw Up Because You Saw/Heard/Smelled Someone Else Throw Up Day

* Make Fun of Other Cultures Out of Ignorance &/or Fear Day

* Put Syrup on Absofuckinglutely Everything Day

Happy Labor Day or whatever. Enjoy your barbecue, I guess.

I just don't know anymore.

Ah, Live Garden

2011-09-04T04:18:00.000-07:00

I've learned precious few lessons in this loopy little life of mine, but, if there's one thing I have learned, it's that when you're bumming around on a Saturday with a twice-pregnant lady, and it's 3:40pm and you haven't had lunch yet, there's a very high probability that you're going to end up at Olive Garden.

I haven't been to an Olive Garden for probably nine years-- maybe more. I don't know. The mind plays tricks on one, like a cheap whore or a street mime. I can remember being at an Olive Garden-- the same Olive Garden, in fact, at which my wife, unborn twins and I dined yesterday at 3:40pm, and I can vaguely remember where I sat, but I have no recollection of with whom I dined, and/or under what circumstances. I'm reasonably sure it wasn't another pregnant lady.

Whatever the reason-- call it refinement or snobbery or circumstance or a typically logical and appropriate scheduling of breakfast and lunch, or a generalized ambivalence towards heaping portions of cheese-infused cheese, Mrs. Apron and I don't tend to end up at Olive Garden.

Yesterday, though, meals got screwed up-- way too much time had elapsed since breakfast, and there we sat, in chairs with casters, staring at a menu that was essentially coated in cheese, looking at meal options that were...

...expensive.

I mean, maybe to us they seemed expensive, and, to you, paying $16.50 for a lunch entree would be no big thing, and that's okay, because that's what makes America great-- that we all look at things differently, but I was kind of blown away. And not in the good way, where you're blown away by a cheap whore, or a street mime.

Anyway, not including the tip, our meal came to $31.47. Now, sure, I got a wildly overpriced Diet Coke, but we don't drink alcohol (neither do the twins), and we don't get appetizers, and so, frankly, to me, that's a large price to pay for an impulse-driven lunch.

At Olive Garden.

Sure, I get that they're building the cost of their unlimited salad and breadsticks into the cost of their entrees but still. Come on. This is basically dog food. And I say that with all due respect to the nation's Olive Gardens, their loyal patrons, and this country's pet food manufacturers, purveyors, distributors, and consumers.

(Disclaimer: This is where the post gets racist.)

So, Mrs. Apron and I couldn't help noticing that we were practically the only white people dining at the Olive Garden. I didn't really know what to make of that, except for the fact that this particular Olive Garden is located on the sort of dividing line between the suburbs of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia of Philadelphia. It's also right on the major SEPTA bus line, and I don't think it's terribly offensive to make the contention that minorities are heavy consumers of SEPTA mass transit services in the Philadelphia area. So, maybe it's just this and similarly-situated Olive Gardens, or maybe it's a blacknomenon. I don't know. And I don't care, it was just interesting.

You know, in that racist way.

The meal itself was fine-- unremarkable, I guess, if only for the fact that the waitress asked if we wanted grated cheese on top of our already superfluously cheesy meals, which I thought was uncheeselievable. While we were eating our salads, she came over with our entrees, looked at us, paused briefly, furrowed her brow and asked,

"Is something wrong?"

I wanted to say, "Yeah, there isn't enough cheese on this salad," but I didn't. When we declined her offer to further inflate our already-outlandish bill with dessert, she curled her lip down like a child pouting in a toy store. It was bizarre. I wanted to punch her in the face. Instead, I gave her a 20% tip because, sometimes, logic just doesn't enter into it.

I guess food at the Olive Garden is to Italian cuisine what No. 1 China takeout is to traditional Chinese fare. The one has absolutely nothing to do with the other. But we eat it anyway, because we like cheese and unlimited salad and breadsticks and cheese and it's 3:40pm when the waitress says, "Good evening, my name is Miika."

The Long, Slow End

2011-09-03T04:18:00.000-07:00

Right now, there is a dog upstairs with me in the office as I type out these words. Her name is Molly. We call her Molly McButter, because, really, she basically looks like a stick of butter. When we adopted her from the Morris Animal Refuge, she was called "Miley", but we weren't going to have that happy horseshit. So we changed it. She didn't get it for a little while, but then, she did.

Right now, there is another dog in this house, but Finley isn't upstairs with me in the office. He's downstairs, in the living room. Incessant panting and sporadic yelps that echo up the staircase indicate that Finley wants to be up here in the office with me and Molly (well, okay, probably just with me) but it seems that Finley's upstairs days are over. On Thursday night, for the first time since he came bounding stupidly into my life in March of 2003, he and passed an evening on different floors of the same home.

If you could affix a lighted taxi sign to his hind quarters, it would flash "Out-of-Service". His back legs just aren't functioning anymore. They are atrophied, quivering shadows of their former selves. In the morning, he cannot rise up of his own strength. I have to scoop my hands underneath his big old gray butt and force him to stand up, while he tries to brace himself on his two front legs, which are going, too. I won't pretend that, once, I didn't accidentally shove my finger into his cornhole. I washed my hands five times that morning, but that finger smelled for hours.

Recently, the situation has crept perilously towards untenable, especially considering the impossible-to-blink fact that we've got twins on the way, and they are going to require scads of our time and attention, and having an ailing, failing dog on our hands, who is miserable, unpredictable, frequently unmovable, is, well, troubling.

On Friday, I thought Mrs. Apron and I were taking him to the vet for the last time, and that all we would return with was a leash. But that didn't happen, partly because Mrs. Apron declared herself unready to part with our big, gray friend. Partly because the vet encouraged us to try a last-ditch effort of Tramadol, anti-inflammatories, a new diet, and glucosamine supplements.

Is this going to reverse the damage that 13 (or is it 14, or is it 15?) years have done to deteriorate this dog's muscle tone, will it reverse or at least stabilize the probably severe joint pain he is enduring at every moment? I don't know. I have lots of doubts but, really, I don't know.

And maybe I'm a coward for not insisting that Finley be put to sleep in our arms as we sat on the floor of the vet's office and cried ourselves blind, like so many other dedicated and foolish and lovestruck pet owners have done before us, and will continue to do after-- but I don't know about that either.

I suppose that every pet owner ends up writing something like this, sooner or later, or, at least, they think about it. They feel it. They go through it. This is something you must go through as someone who loves an animal. I've owned a dog since 2003, but I've never gone through this-- the end.

The long, slow end.

I don't know what this is supposed to look like, all I know is what it's supposed to feel like. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, to protect my dog, to protect my wife, to protect myself. I don't know if I am to follow doctor's advice, or defy it.

In her post about this, my wife went back in her memory and shared on her blog memories of Finley, from when he was young and spry and fun.

I can't do that. I won't let myself go there. It's rather the same way that I won't take out old pictures of my wife and I, when we were new to each other-- not because we were happy then and we aren't now, but because I'm too afraid of looking back. When I was a boy, I would bring my baby album to my mother, climb up on the couch with her and say, "Mommy, let's reminisce." I had a vague notion, I suppose, of what the word meant, but I didn't realize that you can't really reminisce until you've grown old enough to experience memories in a more tremulous, fragile and, oftentimes, painful way. When you get older, I guess, there is that knowledge that what's passed cannot be repeated-- not the expression or the sentiment or the emotion or the circumstance. You can look at wedding pictures and you can even go back to the place where you got married, and it can feel good, and it can feel sweet, but it will never feel the same way it did on October 22nd, 2006-- it just won't.

And you can go back to the dog park, too. But Finley has to stay in the living room.

Eating Out (With) Celebrities

2011-09-02T05:06:00.000-07:00

I don't think I'd do real well at a celebrity lunch.

This, of course, is just mere speculation. I really can't say for sure, because I've never dined with a celebrity. Once, I ate dinner at a small, swish restaurant in Westchester County and Stanley Tucci was eating with a stunningly attractive woman two tables over. I was with my ex-girlfriend, her parents, and two elderly Italian men. I had no idea who they were, all Catherine said was that they were "friends of the family" which I took to mean "mobsters." They were a Laurel and Hardy team from the old country-- one was rail thin and easily eighty years old, the other one looked like a water buffalo shoved into a pair of shimmery slacks and a dress shirt with the first four buttons undone, to show off his broccoli-like chest hair plumes and several gold-hued medallions. They drank grappa and ate ossobuco all night and spoke Italian to each other. With Stanley Tucci at what was basically an arm's length the entire time, it was hard to fathom that I was not unwittingly cast in a movie.

In fact, to this day, I'll occasionally IMDB myself, just to make sure I wasn't. Of course, I could be listed as "Uncredited," so maybe we'll just never know.

Anyway, I got to thinking about celebrity lunches recently because 88.5-XPN, the University of Pennsylvania radio station is holding some contest and one of the main prizes is a meal with indie musician Amos Lee. Now, I kind of like Amos Lee. While I think his voice sounds like Ben Harper and David Gray and Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson and all those other assholes, I still like his music.

Kind of.

Now, I don't like him nearly enough to want to enter some gay-ass (sorry, gays) contest for the sole, express purpose of having an awkward lunch with him. I don't need a contest for that-- I can have an awkward lunch with anybody, any day, any time I want. In fact, I can have an awkward lunch, even when I don't want one. Whether I'm with somebody or whether I'm by myself, lunch is awkward. As Charlie Brown says in that fucking monologue I can't stand: "I think lunchtime is the worst time of all."

No shit, you bald, hydrocephalic motherfucker.

I was joking with a friend of mine once a long time ago when he moved into a new apartment. I asked him if he'd installed the mirrors on his bedroom ceiling yet and he, ever the self-deprecator, said, "I can't think of a bigger turn-off than watching myself have sex."

That's kind of how I feel about the idea of having lunch with a celebrity. Let's just forget, for a moment, the exceeding likelihood of me vomiting on him or her-- because the anxiety that these thoughts provoke simply go without saying. Let's just address the mere fact that I would have to eat in front of this person. Now, it takes me weeks, sometimes months, to get comfortable enough around another person to ingest food in front of them. This is what is known in professional circles as "fuckedupedness." I have anxiety about every part of eating in front of someone.

They're going to judge...

What table I choose to sit at

That I'll make a fuss if it's not a booth, or if it's too close to other patrons

How I sit at the table

Where I put my napkin

How much meat is in what I order

How expensive my meal is

How I use my utensils

How I chew

Whether stuff comes out of my mouth while I talk and eat

If I choke

If I get stuff on my shirt or trousers

If I get stuff in my teeth

If I show my teeth too much

How I cross my utensils like a British prep-school student from the 1950s to indicate that I'm done

The sort of tip I leave

Whether I pay with cash or debit

How many times I get up to use the bathroom because I can't stand the awkwardness

The awkwardness of my conversation/my behavior

And, of course, even if I could get past all that, I don't think I would be able to get past the ridiculousness over the artifice of the situation: here I am with a celebrity who is being paid to eat with me, someone he/she doesn't know or care about, someone with whom there will be superficial, stilted, worse-than-first-date-with-a-nun-or-a-platypus conversation, and no contact ever thereafter, a celebrity who probably wants nothing more than to insert the fork into his/her own eye for ever agreeing to participate in this dumbfuck misadventure in the first place.

See? I'd be way too consumed with guilt and empathy for the celebrity's position to enjoy my basted chicken or bison-tits or ossobuco or whatever I'd get. I know someone who entered to win a lunch with Tim Gunn. If I won that, I'd probably shoot myself.

I certainly wouldn't make it work.

Something Was Definitely Missing...

2011-09-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

As it turned out, it was squirrels.

When you go away to a different land, there are things that you notice right off the bat that are different from the place where you were raised, and then there are things that are less obvious, that maybe you don't notice at first, that you have to really think about. Or, not think about and they just come to you at some moment when you're thinking about something else. Like perhaps the way ponytails bob and whip around when college-aged girls are out jogging.

For... example.

When Mrs. Apron and I were honeymooning in Bali, one thing we noticed straight away were all the dogs. There were goddamned dogs all over the fucking place-- stray dogs, feral dogs. Dogs eating garbage, dogs sniffing incense and rice and banana peel offerings left out on the sidewalk for this god or that god. Dogs masterfully avoiding getting run over by speeding mopeds containing entire families.

The Bali dogs.

The guidebooks we read mentioned this phenomenon, but we would have noticed anyway, because they were everywhere, and you'd have to have your head stuffed pretty far up your own ass to not notice it. I'm talking, like, smelling-your-own-spleen territory here.

One of the things that was less obvious to notice about Bali was that everybody spoke English. I didn't pick up on it for a couple days but, I can remember energetically bargaining with a street art vendor on a painting I really wanted and thinking to myself, "Holy shit-- here I am, all these thousands of miles away from... anything remotely English or American, and every goddamn person I've run into here speaks at least some English."

Even if it's, "Jut loo-keen, okay!" from a shopkeeper or a somewhat bewildering "un, too, see, por, pibe, six, seben, ten" count-off from a Balinese traditional dance instructor.

Something that was even less obvious than that was the observation that nobody seemed particularly anxious about, well, anything. And maybe that's a stupid thing to say-- anxiety is universal.... I suppose, and I admittedly wasn't sitting at the kitchen table of a Balinese couple trying to make ends meet, but you know how you can walk along the streets of Boston or Philly or D.C. or New York and see some anxious-looking motherfuckers? Brows furrowed, hands thrust deep into pockets, eyelids absolutely creased in worry? I don't know, maybe I'm just a dumb tourist, but I didn't see... that. And it led me to think that maybe anxiety isn't as universal as we may be tempted to think it is. Maybe it's more of a Western construct. Maybe it's manufactured by Woody Allen and Pfizer to keep us all in check and in analysis and in the pharmacy lines.

In Ireland, the thing I noticed immediately was that the cars were different.

Renault Clio

Skoda Octavia

Peugeot 308

Nissan Micra

Volkswagen Caddy

Toyota Avensis

Ford Mondeo

Opel Vectra

Renault Laguna

(And those are the ones I remember, just off the top of my head. Which is... desperately sad.)

It wasn't until two days into our trip when I remarked to my wife, while strolling through the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin, that, as far as I could tell, there weren't any squirrels in Ireland.

Which, for a native of the Philadelphia area, is disconcerting. And wonderful.

Come On, Apron, Make it Hurt So Good

2011-08-31T04:18:00.000-07:00

"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."

Samuel Langhorne Clemens

People are funny, and some of the things they do are even funnier. If you don't believe me, watch YouTube. Or reality television. Or scripted television. Or your neighbors.

Or yourself.

One of the funny things, I think, that people do is blog. Since I've sometimes been described throughout my life as "funny" I guess it stands to reason that I'd be one of those people out there, doing that funny thing. According to Wikipedia, which is only wrong when it's really important, there are approximately 156 million public blogs in existence. Of course, not all of them are funny-- intentionally or by accident, and not every blogger is funny.

This, obviously, doesn't mean that there are 156 million bloggers out there, because lots of bloggers write multiple blogs. One blogger might have a personal essay blog, a Hamburger Helper-based recipe blog, a Kama Sutra position blog, a Dow Jones Industrial Average blog, and a Davy Jones celebrity-follower blog. I tried to find out how many bloggers there are in 2011, and it wasn't really going anywhere, so I was like, eh-- fuck that.

A lot of personal blogs out there may look a lot like a lot of other personal blogs out there, but I suspect that the motivation behind creating a personal blog is very different for one blogger as opposed to the motivation stemming from another blogger. As I said earlier, people do funny things in life, and I wonder sometimes whether, if we knew the reasons behind their actions, would their actions be more funny, or less?

If you asked me what my motivation was to create my first blog, back in 2008, and then this one, in March of 2009, I'm sure I could spout off some horseshit that might convince you that I knew what my motivation was, but, really, I don't think I knew. And I don't think that I know, either. I've been giving it some thought, though, of late, and while I don't really know what my original motivation was, I think I'm beginning to see why continuing it is so attractive, so seductive, so important to me.

After doing this approximately 905 times, I'm starting to understand something about this space here that I didn't understand before. Forest for the trees, let's say. Here, I have a voice. Now, don't get me wrong-- in life, too, I have a voice. Light-baritone, actually. And the voice I have in life is soft and quiet-- it's patient to a fault, perhaps, with everybody but me, and it's afraid to be used too much, or too loudly. This voice is occasionally sarcastic, it's sometimes inappropriate, but only when I'm reasonably sure that sardonic comments won't be misconstrued, or taken badly, or reported to some sort of authority. The thing about the voice I use in life-- the voice that's attached to my face and my body and my sound is that it is hardly ever capable of hurting people.

I've hurt people before-- mostly, though, I'm realizing, through the written word. That's always where my balls have been, and it's not the anonymous, avatar-driven nature of the internet that's to blame-- I've been like that for a long, long time. When I was thirteen to about age sixteen, I wrote angry letters-- to Kraft Foods, Inc., Franklin Mint, Stiftung Mozarteum in Salzburg (don't ask). Vile and vitriol, printed out loudly in faded ink on thin, dot-matrix paper. There were also letters, and, later, emails to friends. Painful ones, angry ones, frustrated ones. Then, God invented the text message. "Thank you, God," as Basil Fawlty says, "thank you so bloody much."

But I've rarely hurt people with my voice. Because I'm scared to be that which scares me-- a bully, a tyrant, someone who wields power over others. And I suppose this blog, slick with sarcasm and snark and cruelty, is an outlet for anger, rage, frustration, despair and pain-- which is so much of what comedy is comprised of, if you think about it.

Just ask Mark Twain-- he'd tell you, if he could.

Hey! I'm Going to Kill Myself If You Don't Read... DEAR APRON!

2011-08-30T04:18:00.000-07:00

DEAR APRON:

Sometimes my secretary says things like, "I could just kill myself" or, "Just shoot me!" Apron, my son took his life by shooting himself two years ago. She knows what happened because we live in a small town.

I don't know what to say when I hear her utter those phrases, but it feels like someone has reached in and torn a piece of my heart out. Have you any advice for me? -- STILL GRIEVING FOR MY SON

DEAR STILL GRIEVING:

First, I'm very sorry for your loss. Your son was terribly handsome.

Now, I do have advice for you. Which is a good thing, since this is an advice column. If you wrote to me asking for advice and I didn't have any, why I'd probably feel so guilty that I'd kill myself.

With a gun.

Here's my advice to you: stop being such an overbearing, demanding, taskmaster of a boss. Don't you see that it's your unrealistic expectations, your incessant micromanaging, your constant need for anal penetration, and your ignorance of the pitfalls and intricacies of Microsoft Excel that are causing your secretary to experience and express suicidal ideation? Believe me, if you weren't such a heartless bastard, your bespectacled, desk-jockey prostitute wouldn't be having such a rough time, and you wouldn't have to be re-traumatized by her statements.

Now, please, lighten up around the office, will ya, before I stick my head in the goddamned oven.

DEAR APRON:

I was at a party where guests were exposed to salmonella that was on one of the vegetables served as an appetizer. At least 11 people were affected by it. The hosts talked to only one or two of the people who were affected. Some of us were concerned that the hosts didn't contact everyone and warn them of what had happened.

Don't you think they had a responsibility to contact all their guests and advise them of the problem, and even express concern and apologies? -- SICK IN CALIFORNIA

DEAR SICK:

OH MY GOD!

Are you OKAY?!

Did the veggie-wedgies hurt my little bubbie-wubbie's tummy-fummy?

Yes. The hosts of this mass-murder-attempt absolutely should have contacted every single one of the guests and informed all of them of the insidious, calculated, and not-terribly-well-thought-out plan to commit eleven counts of homicide in the first degree through biologically-altered vegetables at a staged dinner party. Not only should they have contacted each of the guests, including you, but they should have gone to the local police station with the intention of turning themselves in to the authorities, but, at the very last moment, they should have wrestled a 9mm Glock from the holster of the desk sergeant and done a murder-suicide job on themselves.

God, just shoot me!

DEAR APRON:

I recently got out of a two-year relationship. He broke up with me without explanation. I'm not over him and it still hurts, but at the same time I am starting to have feelings for someone else. The problem is I'm afraid he's just the "rebound" guy. What should I do? -- READY TO MOVE ON IN OHIO

DEAR READY TO MOVE ON:

Wait-- are you a guy, too? 'Cuz, if you are, you should probably just kill yourself.

DEAR APRON:

I am a man who has tried to lose weight for my health and failed. I am trying again now and have lost 40 pounds. A couple of years ago I did the same thing, and then before I knew it I gained it all back. I'm really trying to keep it off this time.

A co-worker said, "You look good with the weight loss, but do you think you'll be able to keep it off this time?" I had no idea what to say. I told him we all have our vices, but I am trying. Apron, the comment hurt my feelings. How would you suggest handling the situation? -- SMALLER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

DEAR SMALLER IN NEW HAMPSHIRE:

I think it's great that you're trying to lose weight again, and that you're finding major success this time, with the excellent loss of 40 pounds!

Did you lose the weight by taking large amounts of laxatives? I know a chick who did that, and she looks FUCKING AWS! Seriously, if you saw her, you'd totally want to fuck the shit out of her. Speaking of shit, if you lost the weight using laxatives, you probably shit yourself a lot-- but it's worth it, isn't it?

Being fat is no joke, like suicide is, and I think it's really important that my readership understands that. Unlike suicide, obesity is a serious issue. Just ask First Lady Michelle Obama. She could have picked suicide awareness or some other issue in the mental health sphere to be her pet cause, but, no, she picked improving the lives of tubby round kids who eat too much Kraft Macaroni n' Cheese. Isn't that shit good? Oh, man. It's so oooey and gooey. Just like my shit after taking too many laxatives.

Stream Away, Apron

2011-08-29T04:18:00.000-07:00

They say you should never sit down to write something before you actually know what you're going to say.

And I'm like, "Fuck that-- I pretty much do that every day."

But, really, that's not entirely true. A lot of the time, I have a rough idea of what I want to talk about. Like the lesbian post from yesterday-- I knew, obviously, that I wanted to write about that after my wife was finished telling me the story. I was reasonably sure I knew what I wanted to say about it, but I hadn't formulated a fucking thesis or anything, a cogent argument. No. It's not like that. I think up some main bullet points that I want to hit and the post just sort of creates itself as I go, because, while I write, other ideas come into my head and, because I have no ability to edit, I invariably end up including all of them in the post.

Which rounds it out quite nicely. Don't you think?

But, today for example: no fucking clue. I don't know what I want to write about or what I want to say or why I'm even doing it. The only thing I decided on was that the piece was going to be sort of stream-of-consciousness because that style has always interested me and yet I so rarely engage in it because I'm somebody who leads a rather structured life and stream-of-consciousness writing isn't really my thing. Usually, when I end up writing something without knowing what I'm doing, it sounds like it's come from somebody with some form of psychosis and/or substance abuse issues, neither of which accurately describes me, but there we are.

Today, a coworker of mine announced that her "asshole is hungry". I thought this was a glorious statement, but I didn't tell her that. I mean, what do you say to someone who tells you that her asshole is hungry? "Um, I have a peach upstairs?" No, you don't say that. You just look at her like she's a total lunatic, which is what I did, because that's basically prescribed at this point. And so I looked at her like that, and she laughed, and she explained that, by saying that her asshole was hungry, she was stating that she was having wedgie issues. I thought it was a pretty clever way to let your coworker know that your underwear and pants are riding up your asscrack, and, frankly, I love love love that I work in an environment where people feel comfortable enough to share that sort of information.

On Saturday, I worked a full day wearing underwear that was on inside-out. The seam bothered me. Obviously, wearing inside-out underwear isn't nearly as bad as wearing underwear backwards (with the crotch part by your asshole) but the inside-out underwear was very uncomfortable, and I didn't understand why I was in such discomfort until I got home from work and observed that the underwear was on, in point of fact, inside-out.

This is what happens when you get dressed in the dark so that you don't wake up your wife, who doesn't work every other Saturday like you do because you're a schlep who works in a psychiatric hospital. Getting dressed in the dark could be an extremely complicated endeavor, but I've taken a lot of the adventure out of it by laying my clothes out the night before, even going so far as to loop my belt all the way through all the belt loops. But, even after such diligent planning, sometimes your goddamn underwear goes on top of your hungry asshole inside-out.

I am way overdue for a haircut. I can't believe that I let it get this long, and I've done this for the past year, I think. I used to go a month between haircuts, now I'm pretty sure I'm going about two-and-a-half to maybe three months in between. I look like a douchebag, truth be told. I look like a fuckjob. A hungry asshole. I look like an idiot, basically. "When your hair's longer, you look more Jewish," my wife said to me on the couch.

I'm getting a haircut on Tuesday.

Life's funny, you know? Everybody thinks I'm all psycho-anal safety man and everything, but Mrs. Apron and I didn't start looking for the flashlight on Saturday night until it was already, like, nine o'clock and the lights had already started to flicker. And it's times like that where I think to myself, "People just don't know shit about me."

And then I blog.

Then You're Wrong

2011-08-28T04:18:00.000-07:00

My wife takes pre-natal yoga.

I, um, don't.

Before all you virulently Vassarish former English majors cyber-stone me, husbands aren't allowed, actually. Oddly enough, though, there's a pregnant women in my wife's class, and her lesbian partner is allowed to attend the pre-natal yoganess.

Which, I feel, is discrimination against us heterosexual husbands who might actually want to support our wives and possibly even participate in some downward doggedness.

I thought about blogging about this discrimination in my typically entitled, tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek, annoyingly cloying way that I've become decidedly un-famous for throughout the blogosphere, but Mrs. Apron told me something yesterday after yoga that incensed me to the point where I figured I'd better take a minute to actually be serious for a minute.

This post is going to be about the lesbian couple, but not about how the acceptance of the lesbian partner into pre-natal is unfair and discriminatory to me. I'm not in that kind of a mood today. Maybe it's the fucking hurricane.

So, lesbian couple was legally married in Massachusetts. Regrettably, for whatever reason(s), these married lesbians made the ill-fated decision to establish residence in Pennsylvania, the land of Rick Santorum and rabid sports fans whose attempts to climb up lampposts when their teams win (or lose) are thwarted by a police department that coats said lampposts in bacon grease.

(Close your mouth, dear. I'm serious.)

So, because Pennsylvania is about as backwards as a retarded elephant's fart, gay marriage is not only illegal, but funny. In Pennsylvania, this legally married couple is a mere domestic partnership. Now, retarded Republican elephants have been trying to convince the modern world that granting homosexuals the status of "domestic partnership" while heterosexuals can enter into the legal and/or holy bonds of matrimony is somehow just, appropriate, and fair.

With liberty, and justice, for all.

Mm-hm.

Anyway, this couple, obvs, is preggers or they wouldn't be at pre-natal yoga. At the beginning of each class, there is a "share" where the participants and facilitator wax rhapsodic about the joys of morning sickness and the impending joys of episiotomy. Yesterday, though, the lesbian mother dropped a yoga-style bomb on the class. She mentioned that her partner is currently busily filling out paperwork-- adoption paperwork-- to enable her to have parental rights to the as-yet unborn child.

But, wait-- there's more!

The pregnant lesbian, the woman who is actually pregnant with and gettin' her gestation on with this child, is filing adoption paperwork, too.

That's right, kids: this woman has to file-- actually petition-- to adopt (yeah) her own fucking child.

You know how they tell you that what you think can't be wrong? Well...

If you think that you live in a country that celebrates equality, you're wrong.

If you think that America doesn't discriminate against its citizens, you're wrong.

If you're married and you think granting homosexuals the right to marry would somehow diminish what you have with your spouse, you're wrong.

If you think it's appropriate and right and just and fair to grant some people rights and deny some to others, you're wrong.

If you think that any parent should have to file papers to adopt their own child, you're wrong.

If you think that we don't have miles to go before we sleep, you're wrong.

I know that sometimes I've been accused of having a rather inflexible moral compass, and I know that sometimes I come on a little strong, and I know that sometimes I make light of issues that other people are serious about, just to be silly because being silly is more fun than being serious, but I guess I just can't be that today.

And I guess I don't want you to be that, either.

I suppose I've cultivated an audience that doesn't really need to read this piece. I suppose I'm sort of preaching to the choir on this one. But, really, if you think I'm going to stay quiet while the rights of citizens in this country are being blatantly ignored, dismissed or forgotten in the fervent lust for a vote or a payoff or a blowjob or a spiff or an endorsement or a perk, well, you're wrong.

How to Die in a Hurricane

2011-08-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

So, we're all going to die this weekend.

In case you haven't heard, Hurricane Irene is strapping on a big, spiked, poison-tipped dilly and is going to fuck the East Coast up the poopocket with force, alacrity and zest, and everyone in her rabid, penetrating path is going to perish. Lots of people are posting tips for how to successfully survive a hurricane. Ever the pragmatist, I am posting tips for how to successfully die in one:

1.) Cross-dress

Give a little thought to the torment and trauma the first responders are going to go through in the days following the wave of unimaginable death, devastation and horror brought on by this hurricane. Just picture these brave men and women, many of them volunteers, sifting through the obliterated homes, the unidentifiable rubble that was once the homes in your neighborhood, poking around to find the broken, dessicated remains of humanity. Why not give these poor schleps a humorous jolt from beyond the grave by taking the initiative to cross-dress before the gale-force winds blow out your living room window, sending shards of glass careening through your neck muscles? EMTs and firefighters love macabre humor, and nothing gives a 45-year-old, pot-bellied, alcoholic volley the giggles like the sight of a twisted up body wearing alternative-gender clothing. If you're a married couple-- mix-n-match duds. It'll be a HOOT from the afterlife!

2.) Pre-destroy your own property

Hurricane Irene's coming, but that doesn't mean she should have ALL the fun! Why not take a little fate into your own hands by beating the everloving shit out of your home and/or car? Tonight-- get blazed out of your mind, and then take a baseball bat or a large hammer to the facade of your house. Smash out all the windows, kick the goddamned door in, piss all over that thing. If you're feeling real ambitious, why not spring for a can of turpentine? Pour that go-juice all over your porch and light a match! It's all going to get blown to Hell anyway-- so why not? Same thing with that car. Irene is going to toss it around like it's a Micro Machine, so I would suggest you rent a chainsaw from your local Home Depot and saw it in half. Don't stop there-- climb into the driver's seat and careen the front end of the car straight into the burning wreckage of your home. Make sure, if you're a guy, that you're wearing a dress first, because you probably won't get another chance at cross-dressing.

3.) Write out a legal document leaving your worthwhile possessions to...

...me! Let's face it-- while your life is basically over, my life as a father-to-be of twins is just beginning! And I'm a poor motherfucker, so we're going to need a little help from you on this one. Please send me an email for my real name and contact information so that you may include all of that in your Last Will & Testament, and don't forget to have that shit notarized.

4.) Buy a flashlight

That way, you can tell kooky ghost stories and read R. L. Stine books, huddled together in the dark with the ones you love before your ceiling falls down, flattening all of you to a gory, unrecognizable, cross-dressed death.

5.) Call your boss

Tell him/her to go fuck himself, and that you've been having an affair with his/her wife/husband/cat for years. If it's true, so much the better!

6.) Have sex with a cat

Come on, you know you've always wanted to try it. Since you're gonna die in this huge fucking storm, now's the chance!

7.) Replace your Brita filter

Having your body identified by your local rescue while you have an expired Brita filter in your fridge is like being identified by your local rescue squad while wearing dirty underwear. And we all know you're going to be wearing clean underwear. Panties, if you're a guy.

8.) Make sure you film the storm

This a critical component of dying in a natural disaster. Instead of taking appropriate cover in some secure area or shelter, you MUST be standing around near a window (or, better yet, outside) operating a cellphone video camera, or a flip, or a vintage-style camcorder (with the intention of putting that shit on Facebook, if you survived) to film the "fucking UH-MAZE-ING" storm. This act of intense stupidity will ensure that you are properly annihilated during the extreme weather event.

9.) Pray

Prayer never fails to kill people. Do you have any idea how many religious whackjobs died in Pompeii whilst in a position of prayer? Trust me-- if you've got your heart set on dying in this storm, get down on your knees, motherfucker.

10.) Read "My Masonic Apron"

'Cuz, man: at least you'll die happy.

Goddamn, Thors and Thorettes: It's My Masonic Apron's 900th BLOGDAY!

2011-08-26T04:18:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are, kids.

When I started this ass-crap, on Friday, March 13th, 2009, I was not just a 20something Blogger but, as that moniker would imply, a twenty-something.

Now, I'm a thirty-something. And not a 30something Blogger, because that website is all about Cialis and shit. And I can still get it up.

(Obvs.)

Speaking of which, as you know, in mid-to-late December, I'll become a father to two assuredly charming and awkward children. The way I figure it, my impending fatherhood will coincide nicely with the termination of this blog, or at least the obsessive, habitual, ritualized nature of the postings on this blog. I somehow don't think I'm going to manage keeping my marriage together, changing scads of freshly-sharted diapers, doing feedings, tummy-time, G&S lullaby-singing, working, and maintaining my sanity whilst blogging daily.

Will I still write on this site? Sure. Probably. We'll see. When my mother used to say, "We'll see" to me, it always, universally meant "No" but, when I say it, I really mean it.

We'll see.

At the rate I'm going, and have been going for some time, I'll reach a thousand posts before the children are born, and that'll be good, because reaching a thousand posts will satisfy that itch I have for roundness-- must be why I've always been a breast man. Lots of zeroes in a thousand. Lots of big, round... things.

900 is a good number, too, though-- don't get me wrong. But it's not the kind of number to crap out on, necessarily. Not at all.

Mrs. Apron suggested that, on this 900th post, I reflect on what I've been doing on here lo these many months, but I'm a little resistant to that idea. See, there's a fine little line between healthy self-analysis and a kind of neurotic self-absorption that threatens to envelop bloggers throughout Blogsylvania. And I don't want to be enveloped.

Unless it's during sex.

I go back and forth on whether or not I like blogging. If you're doing something for the 900th time, you'd think, "Well, fuck-- I'd better like this." But, even after all this time, I'm still not sure. I've always expressed myself better through the written word than I have through speaking. I get tongue-tied, emotional, my voice starts to break. I get confused, stymied, lost, unhinged, distracted. Caught up. Caught off guard.

Unguarded.

I don't like being caught off guard, and I don't like being unguarded. It's kind of a big reason why I don't do drugs, or drink. Or talk.

Writing is a way to bring it in, real thin. It's a way to make yourself vulnerable, and yet, at the same time, to keep everything firmly in check. Edited. Restrained. Controlled. Guarded. Even my work that appears to be the most wild, the most revealing, the most off-the-cuff, well, isn't. It's the illusion of familiarity and manufactured freedom. It's the performance aspect. It's me letting go, but not.

I think people who meet me after reading me (I make sure that there aren't many of those people) must be phenomenally let down, in a way. And bored. And confused. There's so much... quiet in me. So much furrowed brow and rumpled shirt and half-finished phrases and thoughts-- so much vacant glancing at my own shoes and socks. It's a good thing I usually wear interesting socks.

Or maybe not. I don't know.

I'm kind of surprised, in many ways, that we're here together, you and me. 900 posts. I sort of didn't think I had it in me-- the scourge of the sea, just little old me. Mrs. Hook's little baby boy.

(Sorry-- "Peter Pan" moment. It happens to me sometimes.)

In another way, though, I knew we'd get here. Because I couldn't let us not. I'm not ready to let go of... whatever this is.

Not just yet.

See you tomorrow, Pan.

Caviar and Doritos

2011-08-25T04:18:00.000-07:00

Dear God,

I wish you would shut the fuck up.

I know that, in the old days, when you talked to people, it was a miracle or some shit. These days, we call it psychosis. People in 2011 who hear your voice are prescribed medication and are generally believed to be experiencing auditory hallucinations.

That's the popular belief, anyway.

You might think you're doing this sector of the population some kind of really big favor by giving them instructions or advice or commands, but they're actually doing some pretty terrible shit to others and to themselves because, in their warped, cobwebby minds, they believe they're somehow serving you by fasting or breaking themselves.

They're not saying their novinas, getting down on their prayer rugs, nor are they baking challah bread and lighting candles on Friday nights, that's for fucking sure.

I realize that it must be rather boring for you, keeping watch to see who's been naughty or who's been nice (that's you, right?) and making sure I'm not eating too many pastrami-and-cheese sandwiches, but, if you're really starved for something to do, why don't you try talking to yourself for a change? Believe me, we've got enough problems down here on earth without you mixing up trouble by whispering in people's ears.

They can't handle it. Believe me.

You know what would be a real miracle? A cure for schizophrenia. What are your thoughts on that, big guy? Do you think maybe, in your spare time, you could swing that? You'd be sure to fill the pews after a humdinger like that, that's what I think. Of course, who am I to say? I'm nobody, really. Certainly nobody who's ever heard the Word of God.

Way back when, when this whole organized religion thing was cooked up, and you first thought it would be a great idea to start talking to folks to give them guidance, you came up with some seriously crazy shit, I have to say. Or, they did. Or... anyway, it was shit and it was pretty crazy. It was all nice and opportune, too. Mortality was as big as the Beatles and people needed explanations for the terrible things that were happening, and they didn't necessarily require these explanations to be logical.

After all, logical explanations require, well, logic. And we all know that logic and religion go together about as well as caviar and Doritos.

So, I guess what I'm saying is: while you have probably psychotic folks like Moses and Abraham to thank for getting to be all exalted and shit, I think it would be great if you would quit while you're ahead. Don't worry, though-- crazy people will still be crazy without your assistance. They've got a bevy of creative delusions-- they'll still believe that there's microchips implanted under their skin and that people from the CIA are following them and that they're working for the Russian government. But they'll all get along just fine without hearing your funky ass as they fight through an endless forest of other demons as they try to find their way to the first peaceful night's sleep they've had in months, or years.

So, really-- shut the fuck up.

Sincerely,
Mr. Apron

P.S. See you on Yom Kippur or whatever.

Me n' Qaddafi

2011-08-24T04:18:00.000-07:00

I have some very warm memories of summertimes past.

One of them is vacationing with my family in 1985 in Beach Haven, NJ. I was too young to be that disturbed by the amputated limbs, soiled hospital gowns, and hypodermic needles that were regularly washing up on the shore at that time. I can remember playing miniature golf with my family, wearing red shorts, and blue, red, and white striped shirt, and a captain's hat-- the type favored by Alan Hale, Jr. on "Gilligan's Island".

Another of my favorite summer memories is plowing, teeth first, into a fresh, delicious lobster roll, photographed by the bemused and probably slightly horrified Mrs. Apron on a vacation several summers ago.

I also fondly remember hunkering down in the computer lab of the creative arts day camp of my youth, avoiding the swim counselors who were searching for me, playing "Oregon Trail" and "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

Those were the heady days of 1991, and those are the days that come back to me most clearly in light of the recent events in Libya. Doesn't make sense to you? Well, unzip my noggin and come take a swim in there for an hour or two. You'll get the picture quick enough.

The hunt is on for Muammar el-Qaddafi. A couple months ago, the seemingly interminable search for Osama bin Laden culminated when he got Swiss cheesed by a bunch of Navy SEALs in Pakistan. Swim counselors hunting me down for cutting instructional swim as I mercilessly sought the location of the notorious Carmen Sandiego and her V.I.L.E henchmen.

That bitch stole the Khyber Pass,

The controls for the Panama Canal,

The Ngorongoro Crater,

(and, my personal, sentimental favorite...)

The salt from the Dead Sea.

As the revolutionaries or rebels or whatever you want to call them are beating the brush looking for Qaddafi, I just feel compelled, for my own personal safety, to point out the following:

* I never had sexual relations with that man.

Now it is true that Qaddafi and I went out for Starbucks together a couple of times, and that he visited me in Pennsylvania on what he referred to as "matters of state" but at no time did we ever enter into acts of intercourse at the Conshohocken Marriott on April 13-17, 2001 or in a rented Hyundai Sonata at the Philadelphia International Airport long-term parking garage by Terminal B on the sweltering afternoon of July 9th, 2002.

* I am not currently in contact with Qaddafi.

In fact, the cheating bastard un-friended me only two weeks ago AND he rescinded my Google + invitation, just to really make me mad, I guess. That's okay, I didn't want to go on that shit anyway.

* I have no knowledge of his current whereabouts.

While it is true that Qaddafi once told me that, if he was forced to go into hiding that he would most likely choose to seek employment and shelter at The World of Beatrix Potter Attraction, located in Bowness-on-Windemere, in the heart of the English Lake District, I have no firm knowledge that this is where Qaddafi is currently-- though, were I a Libyan rebel, I would be sure to carefully scrutinize every nook and cranny in Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle's kitchen.

* He's not in my house.

I swear to God. That swarthy, dark skinned, boisterous man you see hanging around my property sometimes is just my father.

Now, if you'll excuse me, the snow from atop Mt. Fuji has gone missing...

Once, I Thought I Was an Intellectual...

2011-08-23T04:18:00.000-07:00

...it didn't last long.

Nowadays, I'm sure that I'm not an intellectual. A thinker. Someone who enjoys wrestling with, and perhaps even creating, problems, existential questions, crises of the heart and of the head, engaging in spirited debates with like or different-minded others about politics or philosophy or psychology or other issues of portent that begin with the letter "p". I, once upon a time, thought that I was someone who would spend much of his life grasping onto the issues of today, yesterday, and tomorrow and steadfastly refuse to let go until I had methodically explored the hows and the whys and the wherefores of these matters.

I was eighteen or so when I realized that this, really, wasn't me.

For one thing, I was masturbating too much to be a real intellectual. Intellectuals masturbate when they are intellectualizing-- it's not literal masturbation, it's just talking. An intellectual engaged in the process of hearing him or herself talk is basically masturbating, and can actually achieve a surreptitious, tangible orgasm while so doing. This is why so many intellectuals wear tweed trousers, because stains don't show.

I noticed, too, that I get restless, frustrated and, sometimes even angry when I try to engage in an intellectual conversation or argument with somebody. Sometimes the anger and frustration is pointed at the other person, but, oftentimes it is self-directed. I know a little about a lot of topics, but I only know a lot about precious few topics, and so I get annoyed with myself at being bereft of facts and/or background knowledge that would otherwise make me a keen and cogent debater on, say, the subject of Syria's place in the Middle East or the ethics of mandatory decanoate shots for severely, chronically psychotic patients.

Of course, I know that you can't rationally expect yourself know everything, but, when you hold yourself to impossibly high standards, rationality doesn't enter into it. And, if it does, you just masturbate until it goes away.

The other thing is-- I find I lack the attentional capabilities required for sustained bouts of intellectualism. When talking to someone about a thick, meaty, marbelized matter, after only several minutes, I find my attention wandering. I am easily distracted/distractable. I'd love to blame it on ADHD, but I don't have that. I think it's more that my brain is filled with things to worry about, obsess over, become horny about, perseverate on that I just can't engage in an intellectual debate about something. I can be in a two-hour play, but that's because all that other shit turns off because I'm a character, and the character isn't distracted and focus must be maintained because there's a paying audience who will boo and stone me if I start thinking about my mortgage payment and begin wandering around the stage aimlessly looking for a cheesestick in the middle of a Chekhov short.

When I was fourteen, I wrote a letter to Prime Minister John Major (Queen Elizabeth II was cc'd out of consideration) about the arming of British police officers. This event, which garnered a reply from both sources, marked my last official recorded act of intellectualism.

When we're young, delusions of grandeur are fanciful and often remarked brought up at the dinner table when reunited with our parents. When you get older, delusions get you committed to psychiatric facilities until they (the delusions) are medicated out of you. I'm glad that, today, I no longer suffer from the delusion that I am an intellectual. I'm pretty much a realist about who and what I am.

I'm an amateur performer, I'm not an actor.

I'm a blogger, I'm not a writer.

I'm a husband, I'm not Dick Van Dyke.

I can play six chords on the banjo, I'm not a musician.

I'm a relatively okay person, I'm not perfect.

And I'm certainly not an intellectual.

Well, Pour Me a Sippy Cup and Smack Me My Bitchy Up, It's... DEAR APRON!

2011-08-22T04:18:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night, my wife and I firmly established ourselves as middle-aged by irreversibly crossing the threshold of American balding/paunchy Hell: American Signature Furniture and, just to twist the broomsticks in our assholes, Raymour and Flanigan.

The most upsetting thing of all? We actually found a couple sofas we didn't detest.

If you feel the need to un-follow me now, I would understand. Just promise me you'll come back every once in a while and slip your sweet, tender fingers beneath my

DEAR APRON:

A friend recently purchased a mother's ring from a pawn shop. When "Caron" told me about it, I told her she didn't have the right to wear one because she's not a mother. I discussed it with some other friends and they agreed with me, but Caron says I "overreacted" and that everyone is on HER side.

Caron says it's "just a ring" with different colored stones and she has every right to wear it if she wants to. The women who agree with me say a mother's ring is set with varied birthstones to commemorate the birth of a child born in a certain month, and that's why Caron has no right to wear it.

Caron says I'm crazy and need a therapist. She's ending our 10-year friendship because I will not agree with her. Am I right or wrong? -- RING OF TRUTH IN ARKANSAS

DEAR RING OF TRUTH:

Boy, am I glad you wrote to me, honey. You have EVERY RIGHT to dictate what other people should or should not buy, and what they should or should not place upon their person. If your friend "Caron" (that's a fabulous pseudonym, by the way) does not understand that a friend is not a true friend unless they're vetting purchases you make at secondhand stores, then she's just no friend of yours.

"Caron" might think that it's "just a ring" but she's wrong. Not only is she wrong, she's dead wrong. In fact, she should be dead. And, when she dies, if she's lying there stinking up that casket and wearing that ring, I want you to go into that funeral parlour and slice it off her finger with a rusty fruit knife.

Cunt.

By the way, you're crazy and you need a therapist.

DEAR APRON:

"Maria" and I lived together for two years. She had wanted eyelid surgery but couldn't afford to pay $5,000. I offered to give her $2,000.

A few months ago, Maria told me she didn't love me anymore. (She now has a new boyfriend.) She called me yesterday evening asking for the money I said I'd give her for the surgery.

Do I owe her this money? She's the one who ended it. I told her to ask her new boyfriend to pay for it, but she claims I need to keep my word. -- SEEING THINGS DIFFERENTLY

DEAR SEEING THINGS DIFFERENTLY:

Well, I have to tell you, Bucky, if I were in your pants, I'd be seeing things differently, (clever pseudonym, by the way) too. I certainly wouldn't be giving this bitch $2,000, much less $5,000.

See, the thing is, though, you did make a promise you'd help her out with the eye surgery. So, because you sound like a mature, reasonable adult, I'd do what mature, reasonable adults do in most situations: offer a compromise. Tell this rotten skank that, even though she ditched you for that guy with capped teeth and a spray-on tan that you're not going to totally leave her high and dry on this eyelid shit. Make sure she knows that, while you're not coughing up the dough anymore, that you'd be happy to perform the surgery yourself, right in the comfort of her own home.

At-home surgery is nothing new-- the Norwegians have been doing it for centuries (Wackipedia)-- and, if you follow a few simple guidelines, it's perfectly safe.

* Buy lots of plants for the "operating room"

Plants oxygenate shit or whatever. Medical research stuff says that it's really good for patients to be around oxygen. It probably couldn't hurt you, either.

* Be Asian or Indian or something

It's a generally accepted fact that the most competent, skilled and successful surgeons are from "the Orient" or whatever it's called now. Maybe this is just me, but I wouldn't want anybody cutting into my face who wasn't Indian or Asian. Well, except for maybe a Jew. But NOT a Jewish woman. I mean, come on already.

* Make sure the patient is asleep and not dead

Hospitals have expensive monitors and "machines that go 'ping!'" for this express purpose, but, chances are, you've only got a sofa and maybe a couple chairs and a coffee table in your living room. So you're going to have to take care to critically discern whether your patient, (in this case, "Maria") is asleep or dead. While the goal, obviously, is to operate on the patient in the living state, keep in mind that there are advantages to operating on a deceased patient. For instance, if she's dead, then you won't have to be nearly as careful during the operation as you would if she were simply asleep.

Just sayin'.

* Use a pneumatic staple-gun

When completing your surgery, (called "closin' up shop" by the pros in green booties) you've got to staple that bitch's face back together. After hours of tedious, energy-sapping surgery, your hands are going to be as tired as a mothafucka, and, trust me, you're not going to want to operate a manual Swingline. No, for ease, speed, and precision, you can't go wrong with the Pneumatic Crown Air Stapler by Makita.

Pumping out 18-gauge, 1/4-inch crown staples at 120 pounds-per-square inch, the #AT638 is available for only $179.99 (guaranteed lowest price) from Northern Tool + Equipment and is the top-rated pneumatic staple-gun, recommended by 9 out of 10 in-home amateur surgeons.

DEAR APRON:

I love my grandmother, but she constantly puts my grandpa down, even in front of the family. I know some of the harsh words she uses could be resentment built up over the years from past hurts. Still, if she talks so rudely to him when we're around, I wonder what she says when they're alone.

Grandma loves her family very much, especially the two of us grandkids. It just hurts that she's so mean to Grandpa. Immediately after she insults him, I'll ask her why she did it, but she acts like she has done nothing wrong.

I know it must hurt my grandfather to be treated that way so often by the woman he's been married to for more than 50 years. Should I address her about it in private? -- WORRIED GRANDDAUGHTER

DEAR WORRIED GRANDDAUGHTER:

You don't love your "grandmother" (awesome pseudonym, by the way), you miserable, disgusting liar.

If you really loved your grandmother, you'd buy her a 115-Volt, 20 GPM Fill-Rite Fuel Transfer Pump.

That's right, model# FR700VNT, available in eye-catching Fire Engine Red from our friends at Northern Tool + Equipment for the low, low price of $519.99 has an explosion-proof (not resistant, proof!) motor with ball-bearings that'll transfer diesel, gasoline, mineral and white spirits and, probably, all manner of bodily fluids.

So tell old Grandmama to say "goodbye" to that pesky Foley catheter, and say "hello" to the Fill-Rite Transfer Pump!!!

Shocked, and Horrified

2011-08-21T04:18:00.000-07:00

This post might offend some of my readers. If you think I'm going to apologize for that, you might want to re-familiarize yourself with Magpie's disclaimer at the top of the screen there, Punky Jewster.

I read in the paper yesterday morning that there was an accident at an airshow.

I know, right? I was stunned, too. Let's spoon each other till we both get over the shock.

Now, I know that I've been accused, by many a person, both smart and dumb, of great cerebrally-based crime of thinking too much. If it makes you feel better, I haven't given this subject matter much thought at all, but I have to say I've given at least a little bit of thought about the subject of airshows, every now and again, and I have to confess that I just don't understand.

I don't know whose idea it was in the first place. I doubt it was one of the Wright brothers, they seemed far too serious about the whole aviation thing to turn it into some sort of testosterone-fueled spectacle that would inevitably culminate with fire, gasoline and huge chunks of metal raining down on slack-jawed spectators.

It must have been some asshole who came along later.

Someone, perhaps, with roots in the circus. Some carnival barker type with a beaver-fur top-hat and a monocle who was like, "I know a way to make lots of money and scare the bejesus out of people-- all I need are a couple cheap planes and a few drunken, divorced pilots who aren't afraid to die-- or who perhaps might want to."

What I don't understand even more than airshows are the people who go to airshows. Now, this is the part where I might offend somebody, but, if you go to airshows, there's something seriously wrong with you. You want to see people die. There, I said it, and, you know what, it feels orgasmic. You're a sick, twisted duck-fucker and you'll crane your neck in any way possible so that you can get a better look at some Blue Angel's torso falling to the earth whilst engulfed in flames.

Not only that, you may even be vaguely suicidal. In that annoying, passive way, though. You're content to just kind of sit around on some tacky, plastic lawn chair and hope that you get killed by a piece of turbo fan or a pilot's neck traveling at some high rate of speed.

You're not there to be amazed and awed. You're there for death. Carnage. Horror.

(The horror.)

I like reading articles about airshow crashes-- they inevitably say something like, the airplane crashed to the ground in a fireball in front of "shocked and horrified" spectators.

Please. They're not shocked or horrified. They're thoroughly nonplussed and suitably pleased. In fact, if an airshow goes off without a hitch, I'll bet there's inevitably some maniac who goes and asks for his money back.

You know what would have been really coolballs? If, during WWII, we took every Japanese pilot who was captured as a POW and made them perform in airshows to entertain the American public. I mean, we'd have to make sure they were totally the kamikaze guys, and the airshows would consist simply of them either crashing into each other in mid-air or just making spectacular nose-dive, dive-bomb runs to the earth.

I think that would have boosted our national morale in a big way.

If that idea sounds too mundane, perhaps, for an extra fee, the high-rollers in the crowd could be sold or rented a surface-to-air missile launcher to try to take out some of the airshow participants. I mean, call it "Audience Participation" night or something. I think that would be immensely popular, because, that way, you're not just hanging around in that tacky, plastic lawn-chair just waiting for the eventual inevitability of an airshow accident, you can make it happen!

Shocked and horrified? Please.

Feed the Gallan Tree

2011-08-20T04:18:00.000-07:00

"A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which

appalling experiences are survived with grace."

Tennessee Williams

Gallantry.

It's such a... I don't know-- Victorian word. Cast in finely engraved silver, frozen in daguerreotype, clad in a thick wool coat emblazoned with chevrons and brazen gold buttons, gallantry is a long time ago word. A bushy, unironic mustache-and-sideburns word. It's a parade-grounds word, a lace-and-satin word, a word that was used when heroes who didn't dribble a basketball or take off their clothes in movies roamed the earth.

It's a word that has gone out-of-style. Out-of-use. I tried to use the quote at the top of this post as an inspirational quote on the schedule at work a few days ago, and my supervisor, God bless her, didn't even know how to pronounce it.

"What's ga-LAN-tree?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," I said, "now can you pass me that stapler so I can staple my eyelids shut?"

We have no more use for the word gallantry than we have for the acts which once defined it. Or, maybe, we have more use for the word and the acts which once defined us than we can even fathom.

I don't know.

148 years ago, the soldiers of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment who came swinging down Little Round Top because they were out of ammunition and could do nothing else to repel another Confederate attack were said to have acted with "gallantry".

The Navy SEALs who felled Osama bin Laden were said to have kicked terrorist ass, fuckin' aye.

I'm not quite sure what gallantry would look like today. Back in the day, it looked like this:

I mean, look at the way that one guy crosses his legs when he sits. Gays in the military or not, if we had a soldier pose for a picture sitting like that, well, that just wouldn't fly. Nowadays, we like our gallantry looking a bit more, um, buff:

Nice, eh? The ginger, by the way, is Prince Harry.

I suppose, to live a life of gallantry these days, appalling circumstances or not, one must abandon all hope of achieving the personification of the word by running through a field at full tilt brandishing a gleaming sword or struggling passionately for some noble cause or other. One must simply treat others with dignity and respect, to try your best to do the right thing wherever and whenever possible, and to forgive yourself when you don't.

And, if that's as gallant as it gets, I think I'm okay with that.

It's Not Amazing, It's Genderiffic

2011-08-19T04:18:00.000-07:00

I know something you don't know.

I know something you don't know.

I know something you don't know.

(!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Seriously, I know something you don't know.

On Tuesday, August 16th, the gender of our twinners was revealed to me and to my wife. The ultrasound tech obviously knows, but she's been sworn to secrecy by the HIPAA monster. She did mention the genders to our OB/GYN out in the hallway while my wife and I were cooing over the ultrasound picture print-outs, but I guess HIPAA doesn't cover release of medical information from ultrasound techs to OB/GYNs.

Of course, if I find out one day that it does, I'm totally suing that bitch.

See, here's the thing about this whole gender issue: Mrs. Apron decided, when we both said that we wanted to find out what the genders of the twins are, that she wanted to keep the information secret from the rest of the world. Well, the rest of the world that gives a sparrow shit. Her reasoning is that she doesn't want us, and, consequently, the twins inundated with a bunch of gender-assigned gacky shit in traditional boy/girl/lemur colors.

And I can understand that, and I can respect that. And so I am understanding that and respecting that by going along with Mrs. Apron and not revealing the genders of our twins until such time as they see fit to enter the glaring spotlights of all those papparazzi camera flashbulbs as they exit my wife's vagina, or stomach, whichever way this thing plays out.

I've got to say, though, watching those two goofballs rolling around inside her womb on that ultrasound screen was pretty amazing. And I don't use that word lightly, or even often, because it has the propensity for being annoying.

"Oh, that Bee-Gee's coverband was UH-MAZE-ING!"

"Whoa, trans-gender Thai prostitute, watching a streaming video of you having sex with that semi-retarded donkey was UH-MAZE-ING!"

"This two-for-one deal on Chobani yogurt at Genuardi's is uh. maze. ing."

That Ron Popeil Flavor-Injector you're always threatening to violate me with?

(Amazing.)

But, really, I suppose any expectant father (of TWINS! GAAHH!!!) is permitted to use the "amazing" word when staring at grainy, blue-tinged representations of his children bumming around inside of their expectant mother.

What are they going to be like?

What are they going to talk like?

What are they going to be into?

What are they going to want on their birthday cakes?

What are they going to think of their Christian friends who go on about Santa Claus?

What are they going to think of... me?

(Not to be a fucking amazing narcissist or anything, but...)

(Oh, God...)

(Sorry.)

I'm already in love, and you know how I know that? I think about them all the time. Sure, sometimes it's more worrying and less thinking, but, one way or the other, they're always on my mind. Always. Constantly.

It's kind of perseverative.

Kind of Aspergian.

I'm sort of like that.

I'm listening to "Comfort" by Deb Talan right now, and that plays frequently enough on my computer to make me wonder if I have Aspergers. I'll bet Pandora does that to lots of people.

Stupid bitch and her fucking hot box.

I suppose that what I'm trying to say is that, yeah, I don't want this to become a Daddy Blog, and I'm pretty sure I said that they day I announced that we were knocked up, but I do want this to be a place to celebrate those two nutter-butters doing somersaults and tumblebumps inside of the woman I adore.

'Cuz, let's face it, this is all pretty fucking amazing.

No Need for a Curly

2011-08-18T04:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I spent eight hours at my job, and two hours at my mechanic's job.

I joked with my wife, after I'd finally arrived home, that "my day was great until I left work." And, for someone who works at an inpatient psychiatric hospital, that's saying something.

Actually, spending two hours with your sixty-eight-year old Israeli mechanic and his indeterminately-aged though much younger Chinese assistant isn't a half bad way to decompress after spending a full working day among 70 psych patients and some similarly-afflicted staff members. At least, at the garage, you've got the bay doors open and the sunlight is streaming in, and you're surrounded by cars, in various states of disrepair. Cars and mechanics-- simpler both than your average psych patient.

Soly and Jack have been working together since "1996 or '97, I can't remember," said Jack when I asked him yesterday. Soly, the sunburnt sabra, screams and curses. Jack, the obedient Chinese assistant, dutifully and quietly takes abuse. Soly is very much like hot-tempered Moe, and Jack is definitely Larry-- hapless, in the way, liable to get his hair pulled and his face smacked.

The only thing missing in that garage is a Curly, but I don't see any twinkle-toed, obese, balding men with high-pitched voices and a propensity for playing the spoons entering the picture anytime soon. Though I don't think it would surprise me if one did.

I went to see Jack and Soly yesterday because, on Tuesday, they changed my tires and noticed that I needed new front brakes and rotors.

"Why?" I asked.

"WHY?!" Soly screamed into the phone, "because the FAH-KEENG ESS-HOLE who owned your car before you put brakes on WITHOUT CHANGING THE ROTORS! Volvo, BMW, and Mercedes, if you change the brakes, you HAVE TO CHANGE THE ROTORS!"

And now I know that. And so do you. The person who owned my car before me obviously didn't know that, and now she was being maligned by some short, angry Israeli in a dirty work shirt and shorts that she'd never met.

This is what life is.

And so, yesterday, I went to Soly and Jack's to have my brakes (AND ROTORS) put on. But they didn't fit.

So they ordered another set to be delivered to the shop. They arrived forty-five minutes later, during which time I watched Soly fight with two customers and turn someone away who wanted to buy scrap metal from him for $0.15 a pound.

"What am I, a fah-keeng retarded?" he asked me, rhetorically, I presumed.

The second set of rotors didn't fit either.

"Oh my God, wat dee fak! JACK! Call Jeff and tell him to get me rotors here now. GODDAMNIT!"

I stared at my car, up on the lift, with the two front tires off. I wasn't going anywhere fast, so I sat down on a rickety wooden chair and enjoyed the atmosphere and the conversation. Mrs. Apron had been there earlier that morning to get her oil changed and her car inspected and to get new wiper blades on.

"So," Jack said to me as he was yanking a 16-inch tire off the rim of a 2009 Ford Econoline van that had just failed its emissions inspection, "you gonna have twins-- you the big daddy. No more money."

"That's right, Jack," I said, smiling, "so enjoy swiping my debit card today-- if you guys ever get the right fucking rotors here."

He laughed.

Other people might have been indignant about spending two hours in a garage, especially after they'd just worked a full day, but I wasn't. Because we could talk, about having twins, about mortgage rates, about what it's going to be like for my father if my wife and I have at least one boy.

"Let me tell you," Soly said, "for Iraqi Jews, if you have a son-- forget about it. That is eeet! He going to have your father around his finger, for good."

"I sure didn't have him wrapped around my finger-- my sister was always the favorite."

"But you are good," Jack said, furrowing his brow, "you always do the right thing, you grown up."

"Jack, shut up!" Soly yelled, "dat's not what eet is about! The sister is like the father, so he look like he like her more. But he is good. You are good. I didn't go to school for a fucking psychology, I can talk to you for five minutes and I know that you are good. And your father would facken' kill himself to make you happy."

It's funny, discussing the dynamics of your family with your car mechanics, but we've known Soly and Jack fifteen (maybe fourteen) years. I took my first car for its first oil change there. The barber who gave me my first haircut. The doctor who gave me my first shot. These connections mean something to me, and I cannot let them go.

And, even after two hours and three sets of rotors, I don't much want to.

AH-ha.

2011-08-17T04:18:00.000-07:00

Many several years ago by now, my wife (who was, back then, my girlfriend) was babysitting for two children belonging to this family who lives nearby. She sent me a text message earlier in the night saying that she was craving a pickle, and that there were none in the refrigerator in the house occupied by the two children belonging to the family who lived nearby.

So, I procured a pickle from a local establishment which trades in such things, and I brought the chick who was, at that point, my girlfriend, a pickle.

She was elated. She invited me inside and, although we didn't have sex in these people's master bedroom as I'd been lead to believe we would by Hollywood, we did have an enjoyable conversation. At some point during my visit, my wife left me alone in these folks' living room so she could go do something babysitterly like put children to sleep or fold up the Twister mat or whatever. While she was gone, I was left to eyeball the immense, floor-to-ceiling bookshelf belonging to these people who lived nearby.

Philosophy.

Cooking.

History.

Theory.

Humor.

Literature.

Biography.

While the subjects and the heights and spines and the colors and the ages of these books all differed, one from the other, there was a common element that united all of these published, literary works, or unified most of them, at least.

Jewish.

Jewish authors.

Jewish themes.

Jewish titles.

Jewish slants and bents and perspectives.

My eyes narrowed and moved to the music collection, which I only had a brief moment to study before my then-girlfriend now-wife returned from upstairs.

Jewish composers.

Hebrew lyrics.

Jewish singer-songwriters.

Israeli orchestra.

Irritated, I abruptly cut my visit short and left the house, noticing, as I walked out, the "Evil Eye" hamsa by the front door as I passed.

I would qualify the rest of this post by saying, "I don't have a problem with being Jewish" but, clearly, that would be a lie.

I do. I do have a problem with it. In fact, I kind of can't stand it. I reek of Jewishness.

"I've got a friend who's Jewish, but he doesn't look Jewish," a coworker of mine said to me recently, "but you really LOOK Jewish."

That might sound horrible and inappropriate and offensive, but he ain't just whistlin' Hatikvah.

In Dublin, my wife and I arrived at the departure point for our tour bus on Friday, August 5th. There was an elderly lady standing in front of the steps to the hostel, her bags packed, her slicker on, her teeth-- well, I don't know where her teeth were. Probably in her suitcase. But her eyebrows were drawn on and she was ready to go. We made superficial smalltalk with her about Ireland before my wife said, "I need to go get breakfast, do you want to come with me?" I said no, because this lady was starting to get entertaining, I thought. She had just checked her watch (which read five minutes of nine) and announced, in a thick German accent,

"Ah. Zey are late."

There was no way I was going to miss an opportunity to hang around this woman, I thought, so I said to my wife, "No thanks, you go on ahead. I'll stay here in case the bus shows up."

My wife rolled her eyes at me, thinking she was trying to rescue me from this woman's clutches, and disappeared around a Dublin street corner. The woman, who I silently named "Gerta" chatted amiably for another couple minutes until a natural silence interceded between us. She broke it with,

"You are from Israel."

Notice the distinct dearth of any interrogative punctuation mark. Another silence, this one less natural, took its place before I replied with,

"Uh-- no. We're... I'm-- we're American."

"Oh," she said, "AH-ha." She peppered her conversation with "AH-ha's", making sure to really emphasize the first syllable. "But," Gerta said, "that is where your people are from. Israel."

Again-- no question mark.

"Yes," I said, suddenly wishing I'd gone for that croissant with my wife as sweat trickled into my asshole hair-forest, "my father is from Israel."

"AH! AH-ha!" she ejaculated, with a satisfied smile, indicating "Got one!" on her face. "Your nose, though, your nose," she continued mercilessly, "is Persian. You have a very Persian nose."

Yes, I thought, and you have no teeth or eyebrows. Did you lose them in the war?

Instead of saying that, I came up with, "Well, my father was born in Iraq."

"AH-ha."

I spent a good healthy portion of my 55 minutes in the chair yesterday talking about what it means to me to be Jewish, both at home and abroad, about what it's like having the map of Israel (or Persia) tattooed onto your face, about being perceived as weak, nebbishy, schmecky, cheap, stuck up, intellectual, a nerd, a schdork, a minority, with a big nose. And kinky hair. In 1993, "Frasier" first came on the air, and introduced the world to Niles Crane, the hopelessly pedantic, more hopelessly romantic brother to Frasier. He was always dressed in a suit, and had a head of beautiful, flax-colored, thin, soft, WASPish hair.

When I was thirteen, I went into the barbershop owned by the man who, many years before, had given me my first haircut.

"Bob," I asked, "can you do something to my hair to make it look like David Hyde Pierce's."

He looked at me with a mixture of sympathy, confusion, and despair.

"I don't think so," he said. "But you've got beautiful, thick hair. You'll appreciate it some day."

I'm still waiting, Bob.

You Know What I'd Do?

2011-08-16T04:18:00.000-07:00

It's raining right now. Usually, I like the rain. But now, right now, I'm kind of just not that into it. See, it's dark out, and part of the joy of the rain for me is watching it come down, diagonally, searing through the sky, pummeling trees and cars and squirrels and shit as it comes down with a vengeance.

Usually, I like the rain. But, tonight... tonight? Not feelin' it.

I'm kind of feeling like... I don't know. Aggressive. I am having aggression towards the rain. Maybe I'd even go so far as to call it homicidal ideation towards the rain. Simply put:

Rain, I want to kill you.

You know what I'd do? You wanna know? You wanna know what I'd do if, if, if the rain had... if it had, like, a face? I'd fucking punch the rain-- RIGHT IN ITS FACE!

YEAH!

No, not YEAH!

FUCK! YEAH!

Fuck yeah, rain, I'd fuckin' punch you right in your goddamned mouth-- your wet, rainy little mouth, and I'd break all your rainy miserable fucking teeth-- all wet with droplets of rain because you're raining inside your own mouth because you're rain.

YEAH. RAIN. FUCK.

FUCK FUCK RAIN!!!!

Can you just picture me, in, like, the middle of a street, like, with a headband around my forehead-- not a headband like girls wear, not with, like, a flower on it or "Hello Kitty" but like Rambo wore-- or like that guy in Street Fighter wore. Not the chick who was dressed like an elevator operator-- what the fuck was her name? Ping? Anyway, I'd be all there in the middle of the street, and Rain would be standing across from me, and we'd be adopting the fighter's stance, and then I'D KICK RAIN RIGHT IN THE MOTHERFUCKING JEWELBOX!

TOASTED OATSIES! I'D RAM MY FOOT RIGHT INTO YOUR GODDAMNED NUTS, FAIRYFART!

Because you're rain, and you ain't got shit on my shoes, you little moist pissant.

The rain would go down, and I'm talkin' DOWN! This ain't just shit-talkin Apron here-- this is real deal city. I'd go ape on the rain. I'd go yeti on the rain. I'd go Throatwobbler Mangrove on the rain.

I'd curb the rain.

Remember that shit, from "American History X", when he fucking curbed that guy and then the cops pulled up and he just put his hands up? That shit was fucking crazy. Do you think if you ever saw some motherfucker curb some other motherfucker that you'd throw up all over the guy who just got his shit curbed? Like, you'd puke all over his fucking busticated jaw and his tongue all hanging out or whatever?

Yeah?

WELL, FUCK YOU, RAIN! Because it's dark and I can't see you do your pretty diagonal thing and you know what I'd do about that?

I'd punch.

Punch punch punch.

The rain would be assaulted by my fingers whilst they would be engaged in a closed position enabling my hand to form the shape commonly known as a fist which I have seen in certain pornographic motion pictures performing unfortunate tasks and I would then connect my said shaped digits

TO

THE

RAIN!

I'd hit it!

Me! Little old me. Would fuck the rain's shit up.

You think you're so wet? Is that what it is, rain? You think you can out-wet me?

Well, let me tell you: No. Yeah! That's right! I said, "no". There's more to life than being... wet! Just ask Robert McNamara. I mean, fine, he's dead, but, if you'd asked him while he was alive, he'd tell you.

Ask Bernadette Peters. Yeah! Ask HER about the rain. And she'll give you a what for.

Bernadette Peters wouldn't take that shit from the rain. So why should I?

I'm grown and I pay bills, and if I want to street fight the rain dressed up as some Asian chick from a 1990s-era video game, well, I ain't waitin' for Hallo-fuckin'-ween, bitches.

The beauty of the rain?

I don't think so, Dar fucking Williams.

What a Riot

2011-08-15T04:18:00.000-07:00

Is London burning?

That's what the headline in some paper somewhere asked. I didn't think anybody still read the paper, like, the actual paper paper until I went to Dublin and saw a shit-ton of people in cafés and on benches and just sort of hanging about, reading the actual paper paper.

Most of those people were reading about the riots.

They were reading articles about who burned or broke what and how many police cars were torched and who fucked who's shit up and how badly. They read about who communicated with whom and how they did so. They read about BlackBerry Messenger and Facebook and Twitter and Foursquare-- the means to the end. The modern-day, techno-handy rallying cry. The 21st century's bugle's call.

Zoot-Suit Riot.

(Riot.)

As the riots quieted down, as riots do when people run out of vitriol and steam and gasoline for their petrol bombs and zeal and motivation and interest, the articles people read in the paper paper centered more around reporting the minute-to-minute fires and lootings, and switched to that more in-depth, introspective blame-assigning that journalists and politicians love to engage in, because, let's face it: it makes it look like they're doing something.

Also, it's fun.

Predictably, blame got assigned to the police. Scotland Yard. The Metropolitan Police Department. The bobbies on the beat. Once enjoying a trusted reputation among the GBP (Great British Public) the police are now perhaps the single most despised uniformed collective of fellows-- aside from the Pakistani cricket team.

A "New York Times" article tried to explore why that shift happened, but it didn't do a very good job.

I suppose assigning blame to the rioters would be too simple-minded. No-- wouldn't be much of a story there, I guess. After all, it's not open-minded, fashionable, politically-correct or intellectually-engaging to place blame for mayhem and destruction at the feet of mobs of angry young people holding fire-bombs and running into stores and carrying out electrical goods in the name of a young, armed man who died at the hands of the police.

Blame the rioters? But that's just crazy.

It's a sad thing: watching any community tear out its own asshole like a tick-ridden bloodhound because of poverty, racism, frustration, anger, fear, and blatant opportunism. These riots had nothing to do with the traffic stop and slaying of Mark Duggan (whose unfortunate death, it certainly appears at this stage, was the result of his own actions) and to couch violence, looting, murder, and wanton destruction under the guise of political unrest or protest is a despicable slap in the face to the memory of any man-- justly slain or not.

Could the police officers charged with keeping order in Tottenham and Hackney and other cities and towns have engaged in different tactics to minimize the devastation that occurred last week? Perhaps. Were they competently outwitted by tech-savvy, mobile and spry mobs? Most definitely. Will the department, bruised as it is, learn valuable lessons from these terrible days and apply them in the future? Certainly. Will we as a society continue to refuse to place blame in the hands of the perpetrators of violence in favor of clamoring energetically for academic and removed sources to assign culpability? Yeah. We probably will keep doing that.

Because we're petrified of starting a riot.

Snoogle Up Close

2011-08-14T04:18:00.000-07:00

Pregnancy, I'm told, does funny things to a woman's body.

"Things just aren't in the right place," my wife is fond of saying. And I suppose I know what she means, but only sympathetically, not empathetically. I can guess what she means, is what I'm saying. Like, there's two babies in there, pushing up against her bladder or whatever, taking up room, being weird and turny and tumbly and shit in there.

They're shitting. in. there.

Gross.

And her breasts are huge-- they're not where they're "supposed to be" either. They're everywhere, actually. Her belly isn't where it's "supposed to be".

Nothing is where it's supposed to be.

This makes things like reaching for a glass in the upper kitchen cupboard tricky for my 5'0" wife, because her belly is round and it goes up against the counter and it gets in her way because, you know, it's not where it's supposed to be. The counter or the belly-- more the belly, though.

Sleeping's kind of a biatch, too-- for my wife and, consequently, for me, too. It's a bit of a shit because, during this time of pregnancy, while the children are all ensconced in amniotic fluid and plasma and Jell-O or whatever it is, we're supposed to be getting all the sleep we're not going to have again for the next fifteen-or-so years.

And yet, at 21 weeks, we're not sleeping.

There was little sleeping in Ireland, because my poor wife is besotted by body parts that aren't where they're supposed to be. If Mrs. Apron could go back in time and star in a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch, she'd be in the "Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things" because, in her life as a pregnant biddy, things are most definitely on top of other things.

And she can't sleep.

And, consequently, I can't sleep.

So, on the recommendation of several of our friends, we went to Babies R' Us on Friday afternoon to purchase a maternity sleeping implement, called "The Snoogle".

It looks like an enormous tapeworm. Or a big, white, turd.

Don't ya think?

It set us back $64.99 (plus tax) but, hey, I reasoned with myself after spending approximately $3,000 in Ireland, if it helps Mrs. Apron sleep, it's going to more than pay for it on its first night.

And it sure did.

Mrs. Apron passed a snoozeful night's rest on Friday night. I, however, had a terrible and fitful night's sleep. See, I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but this Snoogle is gigantic-- and we have a full-size bed. And we have two dogs-- fortunately one is elderly and arthritic and can't get up on the bed anymore. But the smaller, agile one sure can, and does. So, there's six of us up on this bed:

Mrs. Apron
Molly, the dog
Mr. Apron
Twin A
Twin B
The Snoogle

So, while Mrs. Apron was wrapped around the Snoogle, Molly was pressed up against me, and I was jammed up against the Snoogle. I woke up constantly, which was problematic for me, because I had to work on Saturday, and the alarm was set for 5:15am.

I didn't make it that long.

I woke up at 3:31am, with a bladder so full I'm sure my eyeballs were yellow, so I peed. Then I got back into bed and, eventually, I fell asleep.

And, apparently, it was at some point between that moment and 4:25am when I had sex with my wife's Snoogle.

I wish I could deny it, but there was copious, um, DNA evidence to suggest that's what happened.

I was dreaming about this Jamaican girl, who wasn't really Jamaican, but was a wizard, and, if I had sex with her, she would lose all of her magical powers and become a regular Jamaican, non-Jamaican human or whatever-- and, evidently, I got it into my head that freeing this woman of her wizarding powers was a good thing, so I balled her.

More accurately, I balled my wife's Snoogle.

I never thought of myself as the kind of guy who'd be unfaithful, the idea of cheating on the woman I love more than anyone else in the world is unfathomable to me-- the callous disrespect and disregard for her emotions and for the vows we made to each other on October 22nd, 2006 would be unthinkable to me. And yet, on Friday night, I cheated on her. In our own bed. While she was lying there, in a blissful, heretofore fleeting sleep, only a snoogle away.

A Tramp Abroad

2011-08-13T04:18:00.000-07:00

It wasn't cackling, I don't think.

And I wouldn't call it "cavorting" either. That almost sounds too refined. Too many syllables, I think.

Braying, maybe. Because braying implies assery and, as a contestant on last week's "Project Runway" stated, "It's either classy, or assey."

Well, these guys were assey. As in, behaving like asses.

At Dublin Airport.

At a gate reserved for U.S. Airways passengers.

Americans.

And, as I sat there, with my legs tightly crossed and my fingers bracing against my temples as they hooted and yelled and whooped and cut through the air with accents that would have put the street urchin flower seller Eliza "Awoowaaowwaaah!" Doolittle to shame, I wanted to dig up the flooring of that airport terminal and disappear beneath it.

"This is what it is," I said to Mrs. Apron, "this is what I have been struggling against so hard for ten days-- to not be associated or lumped into a category with these... people.

Categorius Americansus.

Universally despised and stereotyped for having no manners, no class, no appreciation or respect for other cultures, no indoor voices, no knowledge of another culture's history (much less their own), garish, harsh, inconsiderate, packed to the hilt with complaints, cellphones, and bad attitudes.

Oh, and fat. At least we all know I'm not that.

The lady on the plane smushed up against my poor wife for seven hours and forty minutes was, though. Hailing from New Jersey, she smelled like New Jersey-- an odd combination of old tires, a toilet, and bay water. Easily tipping the scales at around four hundred pounds, she billowed over into Mrs. Apron constantly.

"Eating left handed sure is a challenge on these planes," she said to my wife.

"It's all challenging," was Mrs. Apron's demure reply as she dodged a dough-like elbow to the chin.

I'm discovering that I am very much encumbered by a desire to always do "the right thing", to "behave", to "be good". Those compunctions were amplified a thousand-fold on this vacation to Ireland, where I was hyper vigilant about not being the last one back on the tour bus. ("Oh, we're waiting for the Americans.") To not make uninformed comments about the history of the Northern Ireland/Southern Ireland/British conflict, to not turn my nose up at the local food, (black pudding? Seriously?), and to not say or do the wrong thing culturally, morally, ethically, etceterally.

All of this, I am sure, made travelling with me at times uncomfortable and annoying for my dear wife. And I regret that. Could I have done anything differently to ease up a little bit? Probably, but, in the moment, it's hard to say. It's a terrible thing, being hyper vigilant-- about anything really, because your asshole never unclenches quite enough for you to actually enjoy a good shit, or to just enjoy yourself-- whether you're shitting or not. I know that, at home or abroad, I'm a good boy, and that I shouldn't have to walk around apologizing for the fat, braying troglodytes who came before me and who will come after me, no more than white folks down south who are trying to lead normal lives shouldn't have to walk around apologizing for slavery.

Unless they're racist pieces of shit, of course.

Thank God

2011-08-12T04:18:00.000-07:00

Thank God I'm back.

I was beginning to run out of ideas!

Actually... I think I have.

Shit.

Okay-- you're up. What should I write about for tomorrow?

I mean, sure, I'll be tempted to regale you with tales of how I got oral herpes from hooking up with The Blarney Stone (I was warned that locals urinate on it-- like I had any intention of kissing the fucking thing in the first place) and how our tour bus murdered four dozen defenseless sheep, but I can't imagine that sitting you down to tell you all about our vacation is going to be endlessly fascinating for you. I mean, it smacks very much of those not-so-distant days when people invited friends over to sit on plaid couches to show them slides of their vacations.

While serving chips and dip.

I mean, I wouldn't do that to you. I'll just put the pictures up on Facebook because, somehow, that's much cooler than a slide-show.

Gratty-tood

2011-08-11T04:18:00.000-07:00

I hate Thanksgiving, or any prescriptive time where we're supposed to be doing something because it happens to be a certain day of the week or month. I would never barbecue on the Fourth of July or Memorial Day, for instance, because that's when you're "supposed" to barbecue and it's like: what the fuck are we all, mind-controlled or something? What if I want to have crab cakes on July 4th? And what if I want to make them in a fucking pan?

I guess I'm a communist.

I don't like Thanksgiving because it forces the idea of command-style gratitude on us and, while it's great to be reminded that there are things in life to be thankful for, I don't especially think we need to have it marked on our calendars for us. So, with that in mind, I'm going to tell you today, on some random day in August, what I'm thankful for and, if you feel so moved, you can feel free to reciprocate.

No pressure. And no fucking cranberry sauce either.

I am thankful for:

* ties, of the neck and bow variety.

* Monty Python

* my travel mug

* folk music

* hiking

* Richard D'Oyly Carte, for bringing together Gilbert & Sullivan

* my parents

* air conditioning

* books about, not necessarily by, Mark Twain

* you

* that my eyesight is bad enough to warrant glasses, but not poor enough that I'm supremely dangerous to myself or others without them

* boxer shorts that don't do the army crawl thing up my asshole

* my banjo

* the ability to communicate through the written word

* those who've stuck around

* my job, imperfect as it is

* my beautiful wife

* the ability to not be embarrassed when I repeat myself

* my beautiful wife

The Pretty Teenager

2011-08-10T04:18:00.000-07:00

I hate sounding like a broken record, but I hate this phenomenon more, so I guess I'll take one more swing at it.

I don't have any statistics about how many young people go missing in America every month, but I'll bet it's a shitload. And, more than that, I'll bet that young people in this country who go missing hail from every single socioeconomic, ethnic, geographical, cultural realm in this diverse nation.

Which ones, though, invariably end up on the national news programs?

Good looking white ones.

It doesn't matter what age they are, either. They can be infants. As long, though, as they're Caucasian and photogenic, you can bet that "The Today Show" is going to hang onto them like a dog with a bone and not let go for as long as they possibly can. I could cite dozens of examples, but I just can't-- it's just too disgusting and too macabre to sort through. You know, though.

If they're eighteen, and white and attractive, that's media gold. When Sarah Townsend, of Burlington County, New Jersey, went missing, the nation sat up and took notice.

Why? I'll let you decide.

After making national news, and after an extensive search for the girl who was believed to have run away, Sarah Townsend's body was found in a pond and, accordingly to toxicology reports, there was a "significant" amount of cocaine in her bloodstream. A suicide note was found in her abandoned car.

This post is not about the immense tragedy of the loss of her life, it is not a post about teen suicide, it is not a post about the unimaginable pain and suffering her family must be enduring, this is a post about the shameful, reprehensible and revolting media practice of paying inordinate amounts of attention to white, attractive missing persons and/or crime victims as compared to the rest of the population.

The article I read in "The Philadelphia Inquirer", written by staff writer James Osborne, about this case even goes so far as to refer to Townsend as "the pretty teenager". So much for journalistic objectivity. James, your use of the word "pretty" to describe Townsend is offensive and irrelevant, and your editor who allowed that go to print is an asshole.

I thank God that I never went missing as a child, because I sure as shit would only have found press on the back of a milk carton.

Side of the Road

2011-08-09T04:18:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to convince myself that we don't need this.

I'm not doing a terribly good job, though. See, the thing is, I kind of want to need it.

Is that weird? Forget it, you don't have to answer. I know it's weird.

It's not that I don't like my car-- I do. I don't love it, but I like it. After eighteen months, I haven't gotten tired of it and, for a thirty-one-year-old who's owned eleven cars, that's kind of saying a lot. But, with twins coming, my car is looking decidedly small. Not necessarily in interior room, though it's pretty small that way, but in the trunk/storage area. It's hard to conceive of schlepping around twin-related gear in that trunk. Maybe part of that is because my trunk is, currently, filled with shit.

Maybe it'll look bigger once it's cool enough outside to clean it out.

Maybe.

Or maybe we'll capitulate and go for the station wagon. Oddly enough, I don't think I would feel like a lame-ass sell-out loserballs driving a station wagon. I'd certainly feel that way driving a minivan, but a station wagon is almost retro enough to be anti-cool in that schdork sort of way. I sort of feel like I'm destined to drive a station wagon. The impending arrival of the twins is sort of solidifying that belief.

I snapped a picture of that Volvo 940 wagon (191,178 miles, new exhaust system at a cost of $700, according to the Post-It note attached to the window-- I don't know how much they want for the car, but I'm guessing it's more than $700) while on my way to take the dogs to get their immunizations updated for purposes of boarding. Immediately upon seeing the car, I wanted it.

Of course, I'm not going to buy it. I'd have to get rid of my car first. And, anyway, the 940 is probably six or seven years older than my S-40. The 940 wagon has far fewer airbags than my car has. It's rear-wheel drive. Basically, it's all wrong. But I wanted it. I'm that way with most cars I see parked by the side of the road with a For Sale sign wedged in the window. It doesn't matter if I'd never previously thought about that specific car in an I-could-own-that-and-be-happy sort of way before, the moment I see one up for grabs, I get grabby.

Maybe I feel sad for it, as someone who was raised on "The Love Bug" and, hence, became very attached to the idea that cars have emotions. It's sitting there, abandoned, unwanted, its map pockets and glove box devoid of all of the love and affection and family memories it experienced through the years. And I want to save it, whether it's right or not, whether it makes sense or not, whether it's rear wheel drive or not.

I know it'll go to a good home, or, at the worst, it'll be donated to public radio or to the Shriners or to the local fire academy so they can train their boys and girls about rescuing trapped occupants, and they'll saw it to pieces with the Jaws of Life, and it'll have served its purpose.

Can't save them all, I suppose.

Noise

2011-08-08T04:18:00.000-07:00

I'm learning that I need noise in my life.

It's rare that I can drive anywhere, for longer than 10-ish minutes without the radio on in the car. Every morning, I listen to NPR, as I do every afternoon. I can't drive in silence. I mean, I can-- but I don't like it.

When I blog, there is music on. Always. Right now, it's The Finches, singing "Leviathans Home!" I've never been able to write without music on in the not-so-background. I don't know if it's fuel or momentum or if it's inhibiting something potentially greater than what I'm producing from taking flight (gee, wouldn't that be nice?) but it's been a part of my creative process for as long as I can remember.

Sleeping is, confusingly, when I require the most noise. The air purifier (which I call "the noisemaker") has to be on-- not because it's helpful for an asthmatic with two shedding dogs and dubious dusting habits to have an air purifier on at night, but because the thrum of the machine is very soothing to me. The ancient window air-conditioning unit, which sounds like a front-end loader starting up, also helps too.

I don't know if it's silence itself that bothers me or my reaction to it that is most troublesome. The thing is-- I don't really even know what my reaction to silence is. I suppose my reaction is to fill it, to negate it, to make it go away, to overpower and control it with... noise. Noise is familiar and comforting and it occupies a place in my mind that might otherwise be filled with unpleasantness.

Not necessarily, but maybe.

That's the thing about the mind-- it sort of does what it wants if you don't provide it with enough distractions. I suppose that's why I talk a lot. I like to joke with Mrs. Apron that, "I talk a lot-- but I don't say very much."

If you've stuck with me this long, I'm sure you'll agree.

Our Fellow Jack

2011-08-07T04:18:00.000-07:00

Jack was like most boys-- willful, smutty, and charming, hackneyed in thought, dress, expression of opinion and deftly lacking even the slightest ability to experience the world from anyone else's point of view. He was quite charming that way.

He had a peculiar talent for correctly identifying pieces of classical music, played on the local public radio station, as belonging to W. A. Mozart. He could not, nor did he try, to match a concerto, sonata, symphony or overture to a single other composer-- a particular combination of notes was either by Mozart, or it wasn't. Although it is admittedly tempting to exaggerate these sorts of things, our fellow Jack was never wrong.

The boy's parents, Alice and David, despised the word "precocious" and they would not permit its use by anyone seeking to describe, always with the best of intentions, their son. Certainly, propriety dictated that they not directly challenge a friend or teacher or even casual neighborhood acquaintance if a well-meaning person should happen to use the word in reference to Jack, but privately the parents disapproved of the word immensely. Though they were frequently of divided opinion on many a subject, including many facets concerning young Jack's upbringing, on this point they were united.

Instead of the rote, succinct responses favored by teachers of their pupils in those days, Jack's classroom replies were oblique, perplexing and, quite often, wrong. His teachers were, collectively, an odd lot-- a wiry-haired, aging ex-carpenter, an occasional Lutheran minister, an inordinately tall German immigrant with a gentle lisp and an outlandish mustache. They were not unprepared-- just put upon-- perhaps not quite up to the challenge, as indeed most of them felt some mornings upon waking up and realizing that Jack was part of their job that day. After completing primary school, Jack asked each of his teachers, from Kindergarten through grade six, to gather in the courtyard so he could take a photograph of them standing together with the camera David had purchased for him. Only the occasional Lutheran minister accepted the invitation. And Jack took his picture.

(Okay, so, I've given you four paragraphs. By now, you've got a good idea of the style/voice of the piece, how it goes from one idea to the next. I guess this is more of a creative writing assignment than a blog-- but, in the comment section, I want you to continue the story. What becomes of our fellow Jack? If I like what you give me, I might very well steal it ['cuz I'm like that] and turn this into something. Who knows? Stranger things have happened, I'm sure.

Right, so....

Ready?

Go.)

The Long Arm of the Law

2011-08-06T04:18:00.000-07:00

After that rat-bastard in Norway killed all those people, (props for you for not being a media-saturated shithead if you still remember that this event even happened) there came about a debate about whether police officers in Norway ought to be armed, as many are not.

It's funny, but I can think of a lot better things to debate than that: like, Fruity Pebbles vs. Fruit Loops, for instance.

Before you write in angrily to give me shit about trivializing an event as horrific as the brutal murders in Norway unquestionably were, I'm not doing that at all. What I'm doing is trivializing a debate about a question that should not even be a debate, let alone a question. The whole point in having police officers in the first place is to have a uniformed group of specially-trained individuals who will act in a professional, procedural manner to protect law and order, life and property.

When shit goes awry, they are the end of the line. Confrontations between psychopaths and ordinary citizens are supposed to be effectively terminated by law enforcement officers as quickly as possible. How police officers can be expected to perform those aforementioned duties/tasks while unarmed is absolutely beyond me.

I realize that the American way of doing business is not the only way of doing business, and I wouldn't presume to forcibly rape other cultures with our own big, swaggering dick, but I think that any nation that puts uniformed police officers on the street without deadly weapons should be ashamed of itself for asking ordinary human beings to do Super Man-style deeds, for putting police officers (and citizens) in unreasonable jeopardy and risk without giving them the tools that they require to do their jobs effectively.

Is it true that a police officer's gun can be taken from him/her and used against him/her by a determined, enterprising, and physically overpowering suspect? Of course, and it's sadly been done many times. Does that mean police officers ought not to be armed? No. It doesn't.

Is it true that, sometimes, police officers use deadly force when they should not? Of course, and there are also times when officers should have used deadly force but did not, and that is also tragic. Still, that does not mean that law enforcement officers should not carry weapons.

Is it true that gun violence in countries where police carry firearms is higher than in countries where officers do not carry guns? I don't know-- I haven't seen research to that effect, but it's probably true, however, I doubt very much that the relationship is causative. Take away police officers' guns in America and you won't see a drop in gun violence, you'll just see an increase in police funerals.

I'm always willing to hear new angles on this debate, but it just never has made an ounce of sense to me. You're welcome to try, though. After all, it is audience participation week.

External Genitalia

2011-08-05T04:18:00.000-07:00

Dicks and balls are hilarious. I think it's great that I'm heterosexual because, if I were straight, I can only imagine what my first reaction to seeing a real, live male set would have been. I'd probably have laughed hysterically, which most likely would have made the owner of said male set sad and flaccid, and then I probably would have laughed even harder.

Then, I'd probably have gotten punched in the throat. Because I'd probably be attracted to guys who'd vent their frustration like that.

Dicks. Balls. Sweaty, hairy, hanging, dangling, bobbing, bouncing.

Crazy!

I hate to be a grass-is-greener kind of a guy, but I think things like that are probably better on the inside, don't you? I mean, when I'm rolling around in bed trying to fall asleep, or when I'm trying to cross my legs, or when I'm trying to masturbate, I feel like I'm strangling the poor fucker. It's really quite absurd.

Okay, here we go:

Ladies-- how did you react when you saw your first set?

Gents-- if you could shove yours all up inside until you actually needed to use it for something, would you?

There Oughta Be a Law

2011-08-04T04:18:00.000-07:00

There's a journalist in my town named Chris Satullo. An imposing fish in the little pond that is Shitadelphia, he's kind of a big deal around here. That's how he comes off on the radio when he speaks his piece on Mondays on WHYY 90.9-FM. He's pretty brash and opinionated and, for that to bother someone like me, you know he really must be over the top.

Anyway, he did a column recently called "There Oughta Be a Law" about his opinions about what ought to be outlawed and/or regulated around these here parts. It was two parts snark and one part sincerity, and the alternate ratio would have been more appreciated, I think.

In that spirit, however, there oughta be a law against

the phrase "sit back, relax, and enjoy our production of ______________" said by creepy-looking, unpaid assistant-stage-manager interns wearing black clothes and bulky headsets before theatre performances. Theatre companies that continue the "sit back, relax, and enjoy" announcement should be given one warning and, after further infractions, should be sentenced to 3-5 years of producing only Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. Sit back, relax, and enjoy that shit, motherfuckers.

Okay, here's where the audience participation part comes in: what do you think there ought to be a law against where you live?

(And please, don't say, "Jews." We all know there ought to be laws against Jews.)

My Masonic Vacation

2011-08-03T04:18:00.000-07:00

Having queer little psychological personality quirks/disorders is a bit annoying. It's not like a full-blown thing that everybody's heard of that one can read all about and cite clever examples of "famous people who had this Axis and were still cool" or take medicine for in the hopes that symptoms would become manageable.

While I haven't been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I have been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. The main difference between OCPD and OCD is twofold: 1.) I don't do super annoying shit like tap my wife on the shoulder thirty-seven times to make sure she doesn't die today or go around licking mailboxes and 2.) people with OCD have largely unwanted thoughts and/or feel shame relating to the things they do and think-- people with OCPD take pleasure in their rigidity and routines, and often are convinced that their thought processes and behaviors are correct. OCPD is classified by

* feelings of excessive doubt and caution;

(check)

* preoccupation with details, rules, lists, order, organization or schedule;

(check, mostly re: details, rules, order, organization. I'm not big on lists.)

* perfectionism that interferes with task completion;

(check, though it doesn't usually interfere with task completion, but only because I used to take 15-minute lunches)

* excessive conscientiousness, scrupulousness, and undue preoccupation with productivity to the exclusion of pleasure and interpersonal relationships;

(major fucking check)

* excessive pedantry and adherence to social conventions;

(check)

* rigidity and stubbornness;

(CHEEE-YECK!)

* unreasonable insistence by the individual that others submit exactly to his or her way of doing things, or unreasonable reluctance to allow others to do things;

(no check here, I'm way too scrupulous and conscientious to allow myself to insist that others do anything)

* intrusion of insistent and unwelcome thoughts or impulses.

(check. Why, right now, I'm thinking about having impulsive sex with your mother. Think I welcome that?)

While having Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder can be a real drag at times (read "always") the thing that's good about it is that, while my wife and I may very well be in Ireland from now until August 11th, you will benefit from my funny little Axis II, Cluster C personality disorder because you will get a new post every single day we're away!

Vacation? Not from blogging! After all, it's not a job, so why would I take a vacation from it? That would be... oh, what's the word I'm looking for here... unscrupulous!

See, I thought about blogging from my smartphone whilst in Ireland, but the guy with the pussy-tickler at the AT&T store was talking all kinds of smack about purchasing a whole new data plan for some ricockulous amount of money, and I wasn't about to do that. So, what I've decided to do is pre-load a whole mess of blog posts (while under undue preoccupation with productivity to the exclusion of pleasure). I'm doing this on Tuesday, July 26th, which is my last work-day off until my wife and I go bye-byes on the plane. Admittedly, they're not going to be anything like the posts that are traditionally viewed on this site under normal circumstances but I knew I needed to have something new go up here every day because you need something to read.

Oh, no, wait-- that's not why. Oh, right-- it's because I have a fucking DISORDER!

Okay. Good. At least we're being honest with each other. That feels better.

Here's the thing: while I'm away, what I'm going to require from you lot is a bit more audience participation than I normally get around here. I mean, I know that there's folks who like this blog, and read it with at least moderate regularity. There's my main harem of regular commenters: Mrs. Apron, (who, not gonna lie, is, like, as addicted to this shit as she is to GoComics.com) Paige, Curly Su, KLo, etc, and they're pretty much in an ivory tower as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, and there's my troll, who can go fuck himself up his own asshole repeatedly with the pitchfork from "American Gothic".

But, the rest of you need to step up your game a little bit. Because, while under normal circumstances this blog is really about me, we're going to turn the tables a little bit while I'm laughing it up with those crazy, inebriated sheep-molesters (or are those the Scots?). I'm not saying that you have to comment more-- fuck that, commenting is for babies-- I'm talking about participating. See, in order to make the posts that are to come, every day, as scheduled, 7:18am, EST (remeber: DIS-ORDER!) interesting, you're going to have to pitch in.

How?

You'll see.

I love you-- unless you're the troll. I hope your penis gets caught in a sewer grate. And I can say that because I know you're a guy. No girl could be make James Joyce that fucking annoying.

Me Chinee, Me Make Joke, Me Make Pee-Pee on... DEAR APRON!

2011-08-02T04:18:00.000-07:00

You remember that scene in "Glenngary Glen Ross" where Jonathan Pryce and Al Pacino are sitting around philosophizing, and Pacino says to Pryce, "All train compartments smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don't mind it."

Yeah... that's kind of how I feel about the people featured in...

DEAR APRON:

My husband, "Vinny," and I were growing apart after 10 years of marriage. It was both our faults. Vinny reconnected with a woman at his class reunion and started an inappropriate, secret relationship with her.

I discovered some of their emails and saw they had been texting numerous times a day. When I "busted" Vinny, he denied everything until I showed him the proof of what I knew. We have had issues in the past with him not being honest, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

We have told our children that we have decided to divorce. It was the most difficult decision I have ever made. We are still living in the same house and haven't told many people what happened.

I don't want anyone thinking I strayed or that I was responsible for this. Would it be inappropriate for me to say why I'm divorcing him? I don't want to take his feelings into consideration after what he did. My neighbors are gossipy -- it's like ... WISTERIA LANE

DEAR WISTERIA LANE:

You have me really cheesed, woman. It isn't often that someone makes a reference that forces my hand to Google. The street where the characters on "Desperate Housewives" live.

Really?

Hon-bun, I've never seen that show, but I'm willing to bet that you wish your meaningless cow-flop of a life was anything like the lives of those STD-ridden soccer moms who "live" on "Wisteria Lane". Now don't ever write to me making reference to something I don't know about because I eschew pop culture, or I'll gut you like a motherfucking halibut.

Oh, and if you're looking for a way to let everyone else on "Wisteria Lane" know that you're perfect and that your soon-to-be-ex husband isn't, sew a goddamned red "A" onto all of his shirts and leave me the fuck alone.

DEAR APRON:

My husband and I have dinner with friends a couple of times a month. The wife likes to kiss and hug me. She even patted me on the behind once. This makes me very uncomfortable.

I enjoy being affectionate with my children, grandchildren and my husband, but I do not like being touched by women. What should I do about this? -- HANDS OFF IN HOLLISTER, CALIF.

DEAR HANDS OFF:

New experiences can often be uncomfortable and intimidating at first. Many hardcore lovers of the fish taco have said that, the first few times they attempted intimate contact with other women that the situation was awkward and fraught with anxiety and uncertainty.

You say that you and your husband dine with this swingin' pair "a couple of times a month". Obviously, if you're still "very uncomfortable" with the intimate contact with the female in this quartet, you need to start going out more frequently. The more you are exposed to her sexual advances on you, the less uncomfortable you will be with the inevitably escalating contact between you and this woman. Also, I would not limit your engagements to double dates at restaurants. You might want to try going on roller coasters, strolling down open air Italian markets, purchasing Peking duck, and hanging upside-down on ceiling-mounted meat hooks with this woman as well. Trust me, you may be a frigid, antiseptic, thin-lipped prude right now but, if you give it a chance, you'll be happily gumming away on each other's lumpy walrus nipples in no time.

DEAR APRON:

I have found my soul mate. We have a newborn son and are very happy. We plan to be married next year, after we have saved enough for the wedding.

I have been hiding a secret from him. I have had bulimia for 20 years. Should I tell him before we marry? I am terrified it will harm our relationship. How can I tell him without hurting him? I'm afraid he won't understand what it will take for me to heal myself. He will be worried about my health. Please advise, Apron. -- KEEPING IT TO MYSELF

DEAR KEEPING IT TO MYSELF:

This letter was, regrettably, written in code. Allow me to decipher the letter for you, using my Enigma decoder machine. The translation will be in italics:

DEAR APRON

"DEAR ALMIGHTY GOD"

I have found my soul mate.

"I have found someone who is oblivious, emotionally fragile, and is the perfect enabler."

We have a newborn son and are very happy.

"I told him I was on the pill so he would unwittingly impregnate me. We have a newborn son and I am very happy."

We plan to be married next year, after we have saved enough for the wedding.

"If I threaten to kill myself every time he decides he wants to leave me, I will eventually be able to trap him into marrying me, assuring him a life of misery, frustration and closeted despair."

I have been hiding a secret from him.

"Everybody knows I'm as bulimic as a member of the Roman senate."

I have had bulimia for 20 years.

"I have had bulimia for 37 years."

Should I tell him before we marry?

"I have a fetish-fueled desire to involve him in my bulimia, and have fantasies about sneaking off to his closet and vomiting into the breast pocket of every one of his shirts."

I am terrified it will harm our relationship.

"I am terrified that he will involuntarily commit me to an eating disorder treatment facility, which I don't want, because I love being bulimic."

How can I tell him without hurting him?

"If he interferes with my bi-hourly vom-party, I will stab him in the back of his neck repeatedly with a pair of scissors."

I'm afraid he won't understand what it will take for me to heal myself.

"If I really wanted to stop, I probably would have done something about this somewhere within those thirty-seven years."

He will be worried about my health.

"He will leave me for someone less fucked up, forcing me to get those scissors."

Please advise, Apron.

"Excuse me, but I have to go eat a half-ton-weight of lasagna, four cartons of Breyer's chocolate ice cream, seven dozen packages of microwavable bacon, fourteen boxes of orange Peeps, a bottle of Maraschino cherries and re-enact the Mr. Creosote scene from "The Meaning of Life".

Diecation

2011-08-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, Mrs. Apron and I are leaving Pennsylvania for Ireland. It's kind of like leaving Joan Plowright for Halle Berry. While I feel kind of badly for Pennsylvania, it's not like we're not coming back. Halle Berry's just a fling (that'll MAKE ME FEEL GOOD!) but we all know that my heart and soul belong to Dame Plowright.

In short, in spite of the fact that we're going to a historically-significant, lush, beautiful, cultured part of the word where it's approximately 60 degrees during the day: we'll be back.

In case you lack certain powers of observation, due to some cognitive disorder, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, or the fact that you're half Betta fish: I'm pretty excited about the fact that we're going on vacation. We haven't been overseas since our honeymoon to Bali, and that was.... wow.... four years ago. We've been to Maine twice since then, but this here trip coming up is the real deal. The dollar against the euro sucks lumpy walrus nippies, and I'm kind of disappointed by that. In Bali, we were able to live like early 19th century plantation owners-- staying in five-star hotels for approximately twenty-two American dollars a night. In Ireland, it's not going to be that way. Of course, I haven't lowered my standards any to accommodate for the poor exchange rate; we're just going to basically go broke.

But that's okay, because it's not like we're saving up for anything important and supremely expensive coming up on the horizon. You know, like twins.

But, really, we know that we need this. This last opportunity to see strange sights without little knuckleheads screaming in the not-so-distant background, to have quiet meals, to have casual, kind of loud sex in another time-zone, to viciously judge (and not be) the annoying couple with ferociously wailing children on the airplane.

We need this. We need Ireland. And we're taking it by its sweet, pale, freckled titties.

I just hope we don't die.

There's lots of ways to die on vacation.

Don't look at me like that. If you think about it, you'll agree with me, because it's true. I won't even go into the airplane ride, which I am dreading. I'm really trying to not talk about it too much, but, obviously, I'm failing at that. I know all 136 people just survived that Guyana plane crash, and that's great for them, but two people were just killed in the Wright brothers replica plane crash. And these things happen in threes.

N'yah mean?

Seriously, though, it would be so cliché if we died on this plane. The "Today Show" and everything would make a huge deal about it, because we'd be two of the annoying Americans who died, and, of course, they would elevate our otherwise relatively meaningless deaths beyond any and all reasonable proportion because we're pregnant-- WITH TWINS!

Oh, God, I can't stand thinking about Matt Lauer's carefully creased brow and Ann Curry's empathic hand-wringing on the desk next to her "Today Show" coffee mug. Of course, we'd get lots of media coverage because we're white, but we're not blonde and/or hot, so maybe the coverage wouldn't be as extensive as it otherwise would be. You know, if we were hot and/or blonde. But we're definitely white, and definitely pregnant (WITH TWINS!) so that would get us on at the 7 o'clock hour for sure for realsies.

Aside from the obvious possibility of perishing in an air disaster, there are tons of ways to die once in Ireland. While provisional violence has calmed down recently, there's always the chance that some IRA lunatic will blow up a department store or a café that we happen to be walking past. Our tour bus could hit a suicide sheep rigged with explosives. We could be mugged and killed so some red-headed thug can make away with the waterproof shoes I just bought at Salvation Army for $5.99 in preparation for our trip. An inebriated pub patron could fall into us, causing us all to tumble down like dominoes, causing fatal noggin injuries on the curb.

Sorry, "kerb".

Weirdos.

We could fall to our deaths at the Cliffs of Moher. It happens. Apparently, in 2007, two people died there, though the Garda Síochána ruled it a murder/suicide, probably to keep the tourism trade humming along.

All this is to say that my wife deserves a shitload of props, because traveling with a neurotic asshole can't be all that much fun. This is also to say that, of course, having sex with Halle Berry might be extraordinarily jubilant, but it's probably safer to ball Joan Plowright.

Goal!

2011-07-31T04:18:00.000-07:00

If you happen to be sort of lolling around at 10:00am, EST today-- think of me. I'll be at work, running a group on Goal Setting. I was thinking that maybe there should be a dash between "Goal" and "Setting," but it didn't look quite right, but I'm still unsure about it. And then I was thinking, should a person who isn't even sure if he should hyphenate "goal setting" be running a group on goal setting?

Probably not-- but there we are.

There's a lot of things that I probably shouldn't be doing, but I do them, either because they're my job, or because I feel compelled to do them, or because no one else seems to be doing them, or because we're out of toilet paper in the second floor bathroom, or because there's something in between my teeth, or because I love my wife, or because there's traffic or intense humidity or external expectations.

Or threat of imminent per/prosecution.

Goal setting might end up being a tricky thing for me to teach, even at a psych hospital, because my goals are murky at best, non-existent at worse. It's hard for me to articulate what my goals are, to be honest with you, and that's kind of a scary thing to confront about oneself. Obviously, one of my goals is to be a competent, nurturing, gentle, insightful father. One of the things I will be talking about in group will be about how a goal is like a puzzle, and the steps that one must take in order to achieve one's goal are the pieces to that puzzle, and it's a matter of seeing where and how those pieces fit together.

Does that sound a bit camp? Probably. It kind of sounds like it came out of a self-help book I should have read at some point but didn't because I was too busy listening to Amber Rubarth songs.

(Seriously-- she's good. And hot.)

I don't have very many long-range goals other than the whole father thing. Which, again, is scary. I'll be talking about short and long-range goals in group, too. I'm pretty good with short-range goals, I think, though, sometimes, it's hard to tell. When you work at an inpatient psych hospital, where some patients are delusional, psychotic, assaultive, aggressive, and/or unpredictable, my immediate, short-range, eight-hour goal is, in the words of Andy Breckman: don't get killed.

(Seriously-- he's good. And Jewish, but decidedly not hot.)

Obviously, my short-range goals at work are to be as useful to the patients as humanly possible, to lend a helping hand and an empathic ear, to proffer support and positive reinforcement, and redirection as required, but, mostly, I'm trying to go home in one piece. Because, if I can't do that, then I won't be able to come back and be of the same level of use the next day. And because me with traumatic brain injury would probably not be so pretty.

I suppose I have things that I want to accomplish before I die, and I guess that makes them goals.

I want to own (another) antique Volkswagen Beetle.

I want to be published (again).

I want to star in a drama, or a comedy-- something without music, something written by a noted playwright-- preferably Sam Shepard or Harold Pinter.

Oh, and I want to play Salieri in "Amadeus".

I want to grow a real motherfucker of a walrus mustache, like a real full, bushy, Mark Twain-style bastard, that sweeps all the way down to my jawline-- but I know I'll have to wait till I'm old to do it so people will take me seriously.

I want to shake hands with a Python. And there's only five left...

I want to play the highland bagpipes.

I want to perform a leading patter role in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia with the Savoy Opera Company, even though they're basically a bunch of lushes with inflated egos.

I want to retire to the country with the woman I love, where the nearest neighbor will be so far away s/he won't be able to hear us having gross, creaky old people sex.

I want healthy, eccentric, affectionate, relatively stable children. (Two, please.)

Wish me luck as I spend the remainder of my days searching for the pieces to these puzzles. But not today. Today it's my job to help some other folks do the same for themselves.

Trololololo, Memeabago Man

2011-07-30T04:18:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I was reading "Car and Driver", like a dutiful little motorhead, and I came across a small blurblette, reviewing the documentary film, "Winnebago Man". It sounded entertaining-- a film documenting old outtakes of a supremely angry Winnebago pitchman trying, in vain, to make an industrial film back in 1987, and said clips winding up on YouTube as an internet sensation.

So, I rented the film, and I came away from it feeling somehow unsatisfied, though it was difficult for me to put my finger on exactly why. I found the film's pacing to be a little laconic, and self-serving for the director at times-- that he made too much of his own existential struggle with the protagonist, ex-Winnebago pitchman, Jack Rebney. The filmmaker sought out Rebney, who was, at first, bewildered at all of the attention he was receiving all of a sudden, courtesy of YouTube, the internet, and its legions of meme-hungry attendants.

"I just cannot comprehend what possible interest you could have in any of this," Rebney said in a recording left on the filmmaker's answering machine. Clearly, Rebney did not comprehend the power of the internet. If he didn't understand it then, he's since gotten the message loud and clear.

Memes that announce themselves with intensity have a tendency to pass me by, and I don't mind. I suppose you don't mind what you miss because you've missed it. I pick things up, or people send me things, or I don't, and they don't-- that's sort of just the way it goes. I can remember one of the last arguments I had with my former best friend was over a clip of an SNL skit featuring Natalie Portman cursing, rapping, being a total badass, and then breaking a chair over an interviewer's head. I mentioned to my friend that I had seen the clip and enjoyed it, and he laughed at me. And not in the way I was used to being laughed at, in a snarky, derisive way, that hurt. For good measure, he added:

"Wow-- that came out, like, last year. Where the hell have you been?"

Well, I thought, obviously not sitting at the cool kids' table.

Not that I ever have sat there, at any point in time, but this was another acute reminder that I never would. A few nights ago, a coworker of mine sent me the "Trolololololo" video, of Russian singer Eduard Khil singing his famous song. I was captivated, as I'm sure you were, too, by not only the bizarre music, but principally by Khil's disturbingly psychotic grin, his moving-through-Jell-O choreography and his stalwart refusal to play to the camera-- one envisions him performing the song for the *ahem* benefit of some poor, frightened woman tied to a chair with electrical cord with an apple stuffed into her mouth. To cheer up a friend, I shared the clip with her, and ended up feeling sepia once again, as if I had been cryogenically entombed for the last year, only to emerge with no internet-based cultural knowledge whatsoever.

The fact of the matter is, you don't just have to observe a meme, you have to be amongst the first to see it, to be the discoverer in your circle of friends, or your enjoyment doesn't count for anything. There are people who have seen "The Book of Mormon", and paid exorbitant amounts of money to do so, and the rest of us who've heard some of the songs in passing. We'll get around to seeing it when the touring company comes around.

Maybe.

When my wife and I saw (the touring company production of) "Next to Normal" I ran into one of my private monologue coaching students on the steps of the Academy of Music, waiting for rush tickets. She is sixteen years old.

"Oh," I asked stupidly, "have you seen this before?"

"Yeah," she answered, raising a perfectly-groomed, judging eyebrow at me, "this'll be my fourth time."

Ah. Yes. Back at the schdork table, where I belong.

It's funny-- when I started writing this post, it was originally going to be a critique of meme-culture: how vacuous and vapid it is, how we as a society are content to supplant carefully-constructed, scripted entertainment that takes months to prepare with a cheap laugh at the expense of some Russian singer from the 1970s, or a Winnebago pitchman swatting furiously at fuckin' flies, or some moron orgasming over double rainbows, but it's turned into a post about my own inferiority, and maybe that's where my anger is most properly directed. Maybe it's just another thing that I just don't get.

I'm not alone, though. Eduard Khil didn't get it either. His son says that Eduard "keeps asking, 'Where were all these journalists 40 years ago?'"

The fact of the matter is that the type of journalist who would be interested in Eduard Khil for the purposes that we are interested in today wasn't alive in the nineteen seventies. That's a product of modernity, or memedernity, and only the cool kids are apathetic enough to give a damn.

At least until the next status update.

Running Away Into the Night

2011-07-29T04:18:00.000-07:00

When Mrs. Apron and I go to see shows, as soon as the cast takes its last company bow, we outtie.

I clutch her hand, we make a mad grab for our jackets, and we're flying down the aisle to get the fuck out of there. This is especially true if we've seen a show downtown and the car's in a parking garage and we just can't seem to remember if the lot is a 24/7 dealie or if it's open 24 hours a day. Once, we gambled and lost. The parking lot gates were locked, with our car inside. Had to call a friend who lives downtown to pick us up and drive us home. Had to pick up the car the next day. Had to feel retarded.

When we go downtown to see a musical, or an opera, or an offering of that charming in-between genre, an operetta, we jet quickly, as is our custom. Most normal people, I don't think, exit theatres like we do, as if they are engulfed in flames. They stand up, they stretch, they gather up their things, they take one last glimpse in the program to see where the hot girl who played the maid went to college so they can stalk her on Facebook, they use the bathroom, and they amble out of doors into the crisp, confident night.

We flee.

Other folks flee the theatre after a show, but they don't look like us. They're not holding onto playbills or ticket-stubs, they're not glowingly praising or cattily slashing the performance that just ended. They're dressed in black from head to toe, and they've either got large, black cases strapped to their backs, or they're wheeling impossibly huge silver or black cases in front of them. They're the pit orchestra members, and they're getting the f outta H.

And, I guess, why wouldn't they? It's not like they've got to hang around to be showered in adulation and approbation after a show. They may have done their part exceptionally well, providing soul-stirring music and they may have been a deft compliment to the onstage performers, but, when those lights go down, that's it. There's nothing for them.

And they know it. And they run.

Sure, in days of old, they got a perfunctory round of applause after the eight or nine minute overture, and the markedly shorter entr'acte, and they get acknowledged when the company indicates the pit during curtain calls, but, really?

I feel for the pit. I do.

The closest people care to get to most pit orchestra musicians is not after the show, but during intermission, where there's always three or four awkward-looking men in Dockers and/or plaid button-down shirts who wander aimlessly over to the pit and peer down there. I like to watch these people during intermission-- I call them Pit-Gazers, and they do gaze, in this slightly ambivalent, slightly interested, slightly dazed manner, craning their necks ever so slightly as they peer down into that musical abyss with a look on their faces that suggests they are casually regarding a moderately interesting zoo exhibit.

Ah, giraffes. Mm. One's sleeping. Mm-hm.

I got to thinking about pit orchestras yesterday when I came home from work and my wife was watching "Ellen". There was some blonde country-ish performer singing some vaguely twangy song that somehow mainstream America has decided it likes for whatever reason. She was just singing, not playing anything-- because anybody famous enough to be popular enough to be on "Ellen" can't possibly sing AND play an instrument. So, she was accompanied by a guitar player, a mandolin player, a fiddler, and some guy on a drum set. All the band members were vaguely lit, while the singer was bathed in Heaven's stage lights. When she finished singing, the audience went absolutely bucking fananas. Ellen stepped onto the stage and hugged and kissed the performer like they had gone to grade school together, and what followed was particularly embarrassing-- the guitar player standing to the singer's left stepped forward and offered Ellen his hand. And it was so awkward because, for a split second, she looked at him like he was crazy, like-- why would I shake your hand-- who the fuck are you? All you did was rock out on the guitar like a really talented musician. Anyway, she looked incredibly puzzled, and she hesitated, but then shook his hand limply, and I sat there on the couch and shook my head.

That poor bastard, I thought-- he doesn't get it. The only person who gives a shit that he was on "Ellen" was his wife or his girlfriend or, if he has both concurrently, both. I felt so ashamed by our culture that refuses to accept and reward talented musicians in favor of those who are "supposed" to be "featured", and I felt embarrassed, too. It kind of made me want to go running away into the night.

Sleep Away

2011-07-28T04:18:00.000-07:00

In much the same way that going to college was never on the table for my mother, it was roundly assumed with more than a modicum of certainty by my parents that offering me the option of attending a sleep away camp would not be necessary.

I've always been a homebody, for as long as I can remember, and I am no different today, though the location of my home has changed by half a mile.

"Well," my mother said to me when I was eight, with a look that might suggest she were a oncologist confronting me with a terminal diagnosis, "we've got to do something with you this summer."

"Can't I just stay at home with you?" I asked, sitting on a piece of porch furniture, my legs crossed like a girl. It seemed like a sensible question to me.

"No, honey, you can't," she said, "I'm getting a job-- I'll be working."

...................

J... ob?

Did. Not. Compute.

Mommy?

Jo.... b?

Why was she getting a job? As far as I knew, my mommy hadn't had a job since she was nineteen, when she worked leisurely hours stringing tennis rackets at a pro shop, my eldest sister playing with her stuffed animals under the store's counter. My eight-year-old brain almost imploded under the pressure of this new, unwelcome, cognitively dissonant information. She explained to me that she had gotten a job as a part-time librarian's assistant at the public library just up the street from our house. She looked at me intently, trying to discern my innermost thoughts through the windows of my eyes. I was trying to convince myself that she was serious and, simultaneously, trying not to pee in my overalls.

I think crossing my legs like a girl helped.

They sent me to a camp close by, probably in case I wigged, but I hated it. Every morning I asked if I had to go back, and the answer was always "yes", until the last day of camp, when I asked the question, just for the sake of consistency, and the answer was finally "no." The next summer, they sent me to the same camp, but enrolled me in the computer program, thinking that my newly-acquired eyeglasses must have meant that I would have some sort of aptitude for computers. Turned out, I had an aptitude for asking if I had to go back there the next day, too.

My tenth summer, they finally got it right. They took a big risk, though, because they sent me to a day camp that was approximately 45 minutes away. That was the down-side. The up-side was that it was a creative arts day camp, where awkward children flourished whilst engaging in activities such as ceramics, choir, circus arts, instrumental music lessons, and, of course, theatre. Basically, I could do whatever the hell I wanted, and I did. They mandated that you attend instructional swim, or your free swim privileges were revoked, but I reasoned with myself that I didn't give a shit about free swim, so I routinely cut instructional swim. At first, lifeguards fanned out across the camp looking for me, and I didn't bother hiding very well. Finally, they gave up, and I would go to the pool area and just hang around during the instructional swim period.

One day, three or four awkward boys between the ages of 11 and 13 were hanging around chatting in an elevated sort of tone, and, during a lull in their conversation, I randomly leaned in to them and out of my mouth popped the following gem:

"Excuse me, but did you know that John F. Kennedy had sex with Marilyn Monroe?"

Obviously, they took an immediate liking to me and accepted me into their little gang. In fact, their poolside pow-wow was actually a meeting to discuss plans to produce an original play of theirs called, "The Gang" and the most talented one of the group, a tall, bony kid with moderate acne and piercing eyes, agreed on the spot to write in a part in the show for me.

I stayed there for three summers as a camper, and returned to work there for four summers. I would still occasionally ask my mother if I had to go back, but I didn't do it every morning which, I guess, is a considerable improvement. Looking back on it now, I'm amazed that the late President Kennedy's sexual proclivities, in some circuitous way enabled me to experience my first and lasting summer friendships, but I'm grateful for that fact nonetheless. And I'm grateful that my parents didn't send me to overnight camp.

Who the hell knows what would have happened there?

Going to Moscow

2011-07-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

Of all the memories I have of my childhood, none are as vivid and, at the same time, opaque and nebulous as my memories of flipping out in the living room.

When we ate at the dining room, as we did every night as a family together, it wasn't the idyllic, stereotypical family atmosphere that is portrayed in televised depictions of a bygone era. It was boisterous and loud and often profane, often happy and filled with laughter-- typically at someone else's expense. I was commonly called upon to do impersonations of people in our sphere, or tell elaborate, funny stories for the entertainment of my parents and sisters. And there were frequently arguments that sprang up like pimples or psychotic dogs due to frisky personalities and opinionated children, but these arguments were quelled relatively quickly, and usually by my mother. The dinner table might have been an exciting place, but it was meant for theatrics, not dramatics.

The living room, by contrast, was a venue where one could thump one's chest and rail against the indignities and inequities of the cruel, unforgiving world, where one could loudly assail the misfortune of having a tempestuously frustrating adolescence. I can remember many an evening, standing at the center of the room yelling at the top of my lungs in that misunderstood way that teenagers do, being hysterical about this or that, things I hated, people who had wronged me or, my favorite topic, how much I hated myself. I would pace the floor, hungrily, like a lion, in a fervent and bloody thirst for validation of my feelings, only to receive idiotic cheerleading from my father, and despairing head shakes by my mother.

In short, it was the room in our house where both growing up and regressing happened concurrently.

When they'd had enough of my rantings, my mother would inevitably retire to the basement to do laundry, and my father would commence doing stomach crunches or push-ups on the living room floor.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING THAT FOR?!" I would scream, practically apoplectic.

"Mummy," he'd say, in between a crunch, "I have to exercise-- go on, I am listening."

But, really, he wasn't. And I don't necessarily blame him, either. I certainly don't blame my mother for disengaging to go downstairs to do laundry, either. I would have needed a break from me, too.

"I think about those times now," I said to my therapist yesterday, "and I think about how they must have just wanted to be like, 'Jesus-- just shut up and go have some ice-cream or something. Go masturbate. It'll all be okay.' Must have been so tempting to say."

The thing is, they couldn't tell me that, because I was too important to them, even if the psychologically purging horseshit I was spewing all over them at one particular night or another wasn't. And I really appreciate the avenue for expression they gave me in that living room, with all its attendant strange pottery and its ineffective lighting and the superbly ugly Ben Shahn painting on the wall.

When I go to their house now, the living room is filled with my nephew's baby toys. The round, glass table that had been a fixture in that room since I was born has been banished to the basement, and we sit on the overstuffed, ugly furniture and talk in even tones, about nothing at all. It's like a Chekhov play, except nobody's even pretending that they're going to Moscow.

Well, Sass My Curmudgeon and Halve My Hyperbole, It's... DEAR APRON!

2011-07-26T04:18:00.000-07:00

In college, my favorite hobbies included being pretentious, illegally downloading music from Kazaa, playing said music using Winamp (which really did whip the llama's ass, by the way), watching endless hours of Court TV, and masturbating.

Nearly ten years post graduation, my favorite hobbies include being pretentious, legally listening to the same eleven songs over and over again on Pandora, watching endless hours of bullshit online, masturbating, and tellin' it like it is (read: "helping people") by whipping up a steaming hot shit-storm's worth of advice with...

DEAR APRON:

At age 60 my mother ignores basic safety rules. She drives her older model car with the doors unlocked. I have tried explaining that she's making it easy for a carjacker to gain entry, but she insists "that won't happen to me."

Mom walks her dog alone at night and leaves her front door unlocked, claiming, "If anyone tried to get in, I'd see them." Not true. She goes for long walks, and while she's walking, she chats on her cell phone, completely oblivious to what's going on around her.

She actually nailed a key ring with the key to her back door (labeled as such) outside next to the door. Anyone could scale the short fence and walk right in. She also leaves the key to her front door under the mat on her front porch for anyone to find.

Mom makes me crazy with worry. I don't know if she's aware of the risks she's taking. I have begged her to lock her door and hide the keys, but she says I am "paranoid" and that nothing could ever happen.

Now she has bought a gun and claims it will keep her safe. I say it's better to exercise common sense and prevent the break-in and possible assault in the first place.

At age 30 I feel like I'M the parent. Am I being unreasonable? -- WORRIED SICK IN DALLAS

DEAR WORRIED SICK:

Normally, I don't re-post letters as long as yours, because I figure, if my attention is wandering to thoughts of dutch-dooring it with blaxploitation film star Pam Grier and the Today Show's Natalie Morales, chances are the average schlock-face who reads this shit wouldn't make it to the other side of a letter that long either. However, I found your situation interesting (read: "comical") and so I thought to myself, "Meh."

Clearly, it's not your mother's bizarre, asking-to-get-anally-violated actions that are the problem here, it's her "It won't happen to me" attitude about said actions that's the problem here. The answer is quite simple: people like this do not change behavior until there are clear, negative consequences. Simply stated: things need to start happening to her. And who needs to start making these things happen to her? That's right, Bucky.

While the idea of sneaking into one's own mother's kitchen through the back door and bludgeoning her into a coma with a rusty hammer might feel slightly uncomfortable and off-putting at first, please keep in mind that you are performing this vaguely criminal act in an effort to keep her safe. Sometimes as we age, the relationship between child and parent changes in such a manner as to allow the child to become the teacher for the parent, whose synapses are dulling and whose brains are melting.

That said, you have some serious stalking to do. The next time your mother drives into town, I want you there at a choice, sparsely-populated intersection, ripping the driver's side door of her Oldsmobile open and smashing her in the mouth with the butt of a 9mm Glock.

"HAND OVER THE MOTHERFUCKIN' KEYS, CUNT-BUFFET!" I want you to scream at her as blood pours out of her mouth.

It won't happen to me? Oh, guess again, Mom.

DEAR APRON:

What do you do when your husband doesn't like your best girlfriend? She keeps asking us to go on double dates and vacations. Should I be honest and tell her he doesn't like her, or continue to make excuses? It really gets on my nerves. -- IN A PICKLE IN OHIO

DEAR IN A PICKLE:

This is indeed a real problem-- the veritable definition of "in a pickle" if you ask me. I don't see a reasonable way out. Do you? I mean, look at it objectively: you love your husband, you love your best friend. You don't want to hurt either of their feelings. In fact, you couldn't LIVE with yourself if you hurt either of their feelings-- could you? No. No. No, clearly you couldn't. It just couldn't happen.

NO!

IT WON'T HAPPEN! We won't allow it to happen.

I'm in a panic-- you are too, right? I'm panicking. Sweat. Tremors. Headache. Anxiety. Diarrhea. Oh! I spelled that right on the first go! Sorry-- dizziness, racing pulse. Gotta get out of here! MAKE IT STOP! PLEASE! Just KILL YOURSELF ALREADY! DO IT!

AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DEAR APRON:

My daughter watches TV sitcoms along with her precocious 4-year-old son who is being exposed to many "adult" themes, terms and politically incorrect infractions. She doesn't see the harm. Do you? -- NOT A TV FAN

DEAR NOT A TV FAN:

No, I don't see the harm in it at all. Human sexuality is very mysterious, and drawing conclusions about a person's sexual practices from third party hearsay is not only dubious, but uncalled for. People express their love an affection for other each other physically in a wide variety of different ways. Urinating on one's spouse or engaging in carefully-structured physical violence is a preference in which some people engage.

It is up to you and your partner to make mutually-agreeable decisions about what is and what isn't permissible in the bedroom, or whatever room you happen to use for the purposes of sexual congress. Just remember, it is best to seek the advice of a licensed medical professional if ingesting human or animal feces is a consistent component of you and your partner's sexual activities.

DEAR APRON:

A dear friend, "Harold," passed away suddenly from a heart attack. Since we knew his wishes, he was cremated. Harold always hated having his picture taken, so the only photo available for display at his memorial was his driver's license photo, and he looked like a deer in the headlights.

I wish we'd had a few candid shots of Harold to remember him by. I would have loved to have kept one for myself. Please urge your camera-phobic readers to permit family and friends to snap a shot or two of them every once in a while, before it's too late. Thanks. -- MISSING HIM IN ILLINOIS

DEAR MISSING HIM:

His DRIVER'S LICENSE?

That's fucking HILARIOUS! Thanks for the yuck.

All Apron's Bitches

2011-07-25T04:18:00.000-07:00

I had this idea for a book.

I say that a lot. It must get annoying for the people to whom I say it. They're probably like, "I have this idea for a friend who isn't you."

But, seriously, I have this idea for a book. I'm going to tell you about it now. Why? Because, you choose to come here, so you kind of deserve whatever you get.

Here's my idea for a book:

It's a biography, of sorts. See, Americans love to eat (so you'd think it'd be a cookbook, but I just told you it's a biography so you know it's not a cookbook) and we love to eat processed shit that comes out of a box or a package, because we're largely (and large) too stupid and lazy to cook and bake things from scratch.

So, we like things that are made for us, because we're largely large Americans. Invariably, these packages and/or pre-packaged meals have pictures on them featuring the kindly faces of females who, the corporations would like to have us think, had some hand in either cooking or baking these tasty treats for us, or that they originated the recipes or that they developed some of this shit in their Hobart ovens in, like, the forties or whatever.

So, I thought it would be a good idea for a book to write a biography of all of the women featured on food. I mean, these ladies all have stories and, for the most part, they are untold-- hidden, concealed, unknown. Well that, I think, is kind of a tragedy or whatever, and I'm determined that, once our twins have graduated from college, I'm going to remedy that by dragging these food femmes out into the spotlight by their hair and exposing them for whatever they are. A lot of careful research has already been done in preparation for this project and I'm happy to share with you the preliminary biographical sketches for some of the subjects for the project I have given the working title of:

"All Apron's Bitches"

You might be tempted to think that Dolly Madison was the wife of U.S. President James Madison, but you'd be wrong and, additionally, a sexual deviant. Dolley Madison was James Madison's wife, and she wasn't much to look at if we're being honest with each other. It was Dolly Madison who brought much edible happiness to American families through snack-cakes and other engorging foods marketed by Hostess Foods.

While Dolly Madison was not, in fact, James Madison's wife, she was, in fact the twin sister of President Madison's wife, Dolley. Dolly and Dolley Madison were born on May 20, 1768 to Fred and Elizabeth Schwartzburg, of New Garden, North Carolina. Fred and Elizabeth, (both amateur comedians and frequently shared the stage, singing lighthearted duets about subjects such as hangings, slavery, and multiple orgasms) shared an uncommon sense of absurd humor and thought it would be a "real gassbag" if they named their twins the same name, but just adding an "e" to the name of the twin who came out second.

The joke never quite took. In primary school, the Schwartzburg girls were ridiculed mercilessly. In high school, they were sexually molested by the members of the school's rugby team, with moderate mercy.

While Dolley Madison flourished in polite society, eventually marrying the man who would become the president, Dolly Madison never quite found her way in the world. "Her misshapen head and rather obscenely-proportioned breasts made her somewhat of an anomaly amongst the streetwalkers and Presbyterians of the day," historian and amateur fencing instructor G. F. Jarlsburg commented in a recent interview. "She was never quite facile at mid-afternoon tea or dinner parties, preferring to spend most of her time inside empty oil barrels impersonating members of the Ottoman Empire and pigeons. She did marvelous impersonations of pigeons."

Mary Frances Catherine and Shira Tziporah Rhavannaptrum were born by J-Section on April 12th, 1961, and then again on April 16th. They lead a relatively happy, carefree life in Camden, New Jersey. "We were just kids havin' a blast. The crackpipes strewn about the ground never bothered us," Shira recounted in an interview for "Time" magazine, "we just used them to smoke crack."

"We had no idea how to ride a bicycle when they shot those commercials," Mary Frances remembered, "so they just paid two homeless, black teenage boys $10.00 each and dressed them up like us. Major credit goes to Hazel Whittfield who did all the make-up for DoubleMint's ads and commercials. I mean, is she amazing or what?"

It is popular legend that Mary Frances and Shira were appearing in a low-budget porno film when they were discovered by DoubleMint casting agent Rick Tickler, "but that's not the case," says Shira, "the budget on 'Zulu Cock Artists' wasn't low at all."

This bitch is a fucking illegal immigrant. She came here from Cuba on a goddamned 1951 Ford truck riveted on top of a motherfucking life-raft. After hocking bananas to the unsuspecting populous in an effort to turn every last one of us into a fucking ape, she was shot by immigration authorities after pointing what was believed to be a handgun at them during a nighttime confrontation outside the Cuba Libre. Turns out, it was a fucking banana.

Regrettably, no photographs of Mrs. Paul exist. The long-time, and long-suffering wife of author J. D. Salinger, Mrs. Paul reveled in her late husband's notorious reclusive nature. It was reported that Mrs. Paul (nobody knows her real name, birthplace, age, or blood-type) fed only fish-sticks to her husband every day of his life, and did so intravenously. She is reported to be a devout vegan and a sporadic Methodist.

According to local legend, Mrs. Paul is still living inside the remote house she once shared with her husband and his collection of unpublished manuscripts and human feces. It is rumored that she carries at least five concealed firearms on her person at all times, and that her left breast is made of copper.

A Nazi sympathizer and war criminal currently being hunted by the Mossad. If you have any information as to her whereabouts and/or are concealing her from the authorities, you are advised to contact the Israeli consulate at once, because, you know when it's real.

Once Upon a Time

2011-07-24T04:18:00.000-07:00

Celebrities are never quite as interesting as their deaths.

When Canadian singer-songwriter Stan Rogers died in an airplane fire in 1983, he was little known outside his native Canso, and perhaps Hailfax, where he gave his last full-scale concert. His brother, Garnet, wrote the song "Night Drive" about Stan's death, and their lives together.

"They lost sight of you,
As your legend's grown,
But this road and I,
We remember."

"They" lose sight of everybody famous, after the flame dies out. Don't they?

Don't we.

It's what we do best-- lionize and memorialize and tributize until we're as blue in the face as the waxen figures whom we celebrate.

Stan continued the seemingly obligatory tradition of musicians dying aboard airplanes. Lots of performers, though, dramatic and depressed and desultory as they sometimes tend to be find their end in lots of jarring ways. Some take their own lives, sometimes fueled by drugs or drink-- sometimes not. Some are violently felled by those who supposedly loved them, like the painfully talented Phil Hartman.

A celebrity died on Friday, but it wasn't in one of those newsworthy, exciting ways. Not only that, his death is certainly being overshadowed by the recent death of another celebrity-- Amy Winehouse-- who perished under traditionally dubious circumstances.

It's hard to imagine that the celebrity's death that I'm referring to, has played out in the penumbra of some markedly-talented, tortured young lady, but it is-- much in the way Farah Fawcett's death paled in comparison to the passing of Michael Jackson.

It's hard to imagine that a profound actor like Tom Aldredge, who commanded leading roles on Broadway's stages for over 40 years, could be upstaged by anyone, but that's our funny little world, in a funny little nutshell.

You might not immediately recognize his name, but, if you've ever been fortunate enough to see the PBS "Great Performances" recording of "Into the Woods," you'd know his face. And his gentle, sturdy, fatherly voice.

He stood tall, in his gray, flannel suit as The Narrator, effortlessly welcoming and alternately toying with the audience as he held our hands, sometimes too tightly, on our journey into the woods. He stood, stooped over and grizzled, with a funny voice, as he struggled to connect with his estranged son, The Baker, offering him only barbs and riddles in Act I, and a sweet, tender, and contrite duet in Act II.

It's a fine, kind performance by a veteran of the stage who seemed to understand that the integrity of the show and the humanity of the role was intended to come before him, that his body and his voice were simply conduits intended to communicate a playwright and lyricist's intention, message, and heart.

In 1997, my high school announced that it was producing "Into the Woods" as its spring show. For years, I had enjoyed and respected Aldredge's performance, and I set my sights on the part of the Narrator and the Mysterious Man. I was only seventeen, but, for three years prior, I had returned to my old middle school to assistant-direct the musicals there and, in so doing, I had served as a mentor to the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. As they grew older and became freshman and sophomores with me, my role as mentor changed to friend, and I was privileged enough to call three of those children my friends.

One of them would be Little Red in this show, one of them would be The Baker, and the third, the only one who is still my friend to this day, was cast in the funniest role of all in that production: my dresser. Responsible for the dozen or so quick changes, getting me out of my Narrator suit and into my Mysterious Man clothes, running outside of the theatre (we didn't have a backstage passageway) in the rain on some nights to do quick changes in mid-run, it was a true adventure.

The director had originally wanted to cast me as The Witch (yes, the Bernadette Peters part) and it wouldn't have been the first time I'd have put on a dress to honor Thespis, (or the last) but he was convinced that The Narrator and the Mysterious Man would be a better fit.

To this day, I can't listen to a recording of the song "No More," that special duet between father and son, without my throat getting thick and tears welling up in my eyes.

"Trouble is, son, the farther you run,
The more you'll feel undefined.
For what you have left undone, and more,
What you've left behind."

Thank you, Tom, for sharing your gift with the world, once upon a time.