Up My Conch

Some people think I’m a snob. And, maybe, they’re right. After all, I haven’t worn a pair of overalls since I was four, I don’t say things like “How you’s doin’?” and “I gots fitty cent,” and “I enjoy watching Dr. Phil,” and I’ve never driven a car with rust accents, spinners, or a confederate flag license plate.

I’ve also never eaten at Red Lobster.

You can’t get away from their commercials though. They’re insidious and infectious and invading one’s subconscious. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a “Red Lobster” commercial and viewed a powerful hand crushing a lemon slice, sending orgasmic spritzes of juice hurtling towards an unsuspecting lobster tail or succulent shrimp piled high on a bed of fluffy rice.

It’s sealicious.

Be that as it may, however sea-ductive (okay, I’ve got to stop that now) the commercials may be, I’ve never been moved to enter a Red Lobster. They’re… around, sure, and I loves me my Sebastian legs, but, for whatever the reason—attribute it to snobbery if you must—I’ve abstained up until this point.

No one’s ever said, “Hey, Apron-fucker, let’s pile into the Volvs and head on over to Red Lobster.” Of course, I’ve never said that either.

Sometimes, I feel guilty about this… call it avoidance of Red Lobster. I mean, what’s the fucking problem? I like seafood. I like reasonable prices. There really shouldn’t be any reason why I wouldn’t go there. Is it the chain-ness of it? No. Chain-ness doesn’t stop me from lustily mouth-fucking a #7 at McDonalds on certain inauspicious mornings.

Maybe it’s the feeling that seafood is somewhat more… special? That it shouldn’t be reduced to some corporate formula, passed down to dozens and dozens of restaurants nationwide?

Why not?

When we were younger and smoother, my parents used to take us all out for dinner maybe once a month at a restaurant called The Little Inn. It wasn’t terribly far from our house, and it was mainly a place that catered to the hearing aid/diaper population. Elderly men would take their wives there to indulge their social security checks and enjoy the waning hours of their autumn years by sleepily sucking down some lobster bisque. The men would dress in impossibly-hued green blazers the shade of astro-turf and the ladies wore Mennonite-style floral dresses and purple hair was the order of the day.

Oh, and there were fucking animal heads and guns on the wall. Lots of guns. Lots of heads.

You’d think that dead deer and fucked-up fowl taxidermized and staring at you would freak one out as an eight-year-old child, but it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I greedily wolfed down surf-and-turf like it was nobody’s business. Inevitably, there would be sibling squabbles, which eventually got so heated that we were banned from returning. Banned, of course, by my parents.

Maybe having never been to Red Lobster was due, at least in part, to the Little Inn Effect (“LIE” – ooh!) I might very well have been… conditioned, in a way, to believe that seafood was something that ought only to be consumed at tables dressed in starched white whilst being stared at by dead… voles, or whatever the fuck those things were on the walls.

Yesterday, though, in honor of my birthday, my Red Lobster cherry was popped. By my father. At 12:05pm, I arrived for our lunch date at a park located down the street from the hospital where I work, and, as I got out of my car, I noticed my father standing by a picnic table, and on it were two enormous take-out containers. As I walked up to him, I artfully inquired,

“What the fuck is all this shit?”

“Red Lobster, Mummy. You can choose which one you want—shrimp scampi or shrimp jambalaya.”

And so, two tall, dark, handsome Jews sat in the park together, on the younger one’s birthday, eating seafood from Red Lobster. And, you know what? It was fucking great. Those cheddar biscuits? Amazed my balls off. My father, who must have been in a nautical frame of mind yesterday, remarked,

“I asked your sister if she wanted to come to lunch with us, but she said, ‘no’, which is okay, because she has been so fuckin’ up my conch lately.”

Bottoms Up. To Life. Up My Conch. Happy Birthday. I love you.

The Pyramid Scheme... Birthday Party

So, it's Valentine's Day, which means nothing in our house.

Oh, not because we don't love each other-- we do love each other, very much (don't you pay attention when I write about my Mrs. Apron?) but because we started cyber-courting on February 16th, which gives us a very convenient excuse to say "Fuck you" to Valentine's Day. We celebrate our love for each other on February 16th-- and pretty much whenever we remember to do it. Like while we're in the car together, talking about linguistics, or operetta, or cop-killing, while we're baking or watching "Teen Mom 2" or whatever.

And, as I was driving to work yesterday morning (yes, I work every other weekend-- Saturday AND Sunday, which is gay. And by "gay" I mean that the fact of me working every other weekend is akin to a gentleman inserting his penile shaft into the anus of another man and moving it around and stuff.) I was thinking to myself, "Gee, if the anniversary of the beginning of our romance together is on February 16th, what holidays/special events in our lives come after that?"

I like to think ahead, see.

My sister's birthday is March 31st. But that doesn't really count. If you don't know why, read a couple posts ago. The one where I write about her moving across the street from me. They just signed papers yesterday. Kill me.

My father's birthday is April 2nd, as is my mother-in-law's.

And then, whoo, babytittycakes: It's mine.

Thirty-one.

Everybody knows that a person's thirty-first birthday is about as exciting as an eleven-year-old Mercury Sable. With cloth interior. Of course, the only birthday of mine about which I've ever gotten excited was my sixteenth birthday, because I could drive and was finally able to legally buy a jar of Vaseline and a box of Kleenex at the same time at CVS. It's been pretty much downhill from that point on as far as my birthdays are concerned. Excitement and joy for my wife's birthday (October 9, in case you're curious) have far supplanted any interest in my own natalness.

Because I don't drink, 21 was just... awkward. As were pretty much all the ones that followed-- except for my 26th, which I celebrated with my wife in Bali on our honeymoon, which easily kicked all of my other birthdays right in the dick. We went on a 20-mile bike ride and I opened presents on a gigantic pillow-top bed in a hotel that we could never afford in America unless I worked 86 hours a week for a year and sold my blood and semen for five months straight.

My 30th birthday was pretty cool, too. My wife kidnapped me and took me to a folk music retreat. I met Nathan Rogers. If you know who he is, you know that's pretty cool. And if you're Nathan Rogers and you got here by Googling yourself, it's okay. I do it, too. But, funnily enough, I never end up here.

But seriously, Crash Bandicoot, knowing that my birthday is a mere three months away got me kind of thinking about my birthday, which sounds like a really annoying thing to say but, hey-- you must be used to that sort of thing by now. I was thinking about how I'd like to spend my birthday, and all I could come up with, while driving to work on a Sunday morning, was "at home with my wife." I could care less about the dogs. They could be there, or not. Actually, maybe if they were somewhere else, that would be better.

Just looked at the calendar for May. My birthday's on a Thursday. Unless the world alters drastically, I will be working from 7a-3p. There goes that idea.

While making preparations for my thirtieth birthday, my wife sat me down and, with seriousness uncustomary, said, "You know, if you want me to invite a bunch of friends over for a party, I hope you'll be honest with me and let me know so I can plan it." I looked at her. "if... you know... that's what you want."

"Sure," I said, "that's actually a good idea. And then, instead of a cake, maybe you can jam a fork into my left testicle and twist it around like you're wrapping spaghetti around a meatball."

And we all had a jolly good laugh.

It's not that I don't like my friends, it's just that I barely have any. And the friends that I do have are all from such disparate sections of my life that I am convinced a gathering with all of them would probably be one of the most awkward, bizarre, unfortunate events with cocktail weiners to occur since Bill Gates was knighted. I mean, can you imagine the painful attempts at small-talk at that shindig?

We decided that what would be in order for the two of us would be a Pyramid Scheme Birthday Party, (it's the only way we'd amass enough people for a, um, party) where ambiguous yet exciting invitations were sent out to a select group of individuals. These unfortunates would be given a time (probably, like, tomorrow) and place (probably, like, some warehouse) to show up, but they had to bring with them at least three other people who would benefit from this once in a lifetime opportunity.

And there would be pie-charts on butcher-block paper on easels and some guy in a monochromatic shirt-and-tie combination with pit stains and thinning hair talking about widgets and things. And then we'd all eat cake.

Maybe I'd like that. Except for all the people.

Newts, Facebook, Ga-Ga, and Turning 30

Recently, Paige Worthy (whose blog is worthy of being read, hardy-fucking-har) gave up her Facebook account.

I am suitably jealous, not having the balltitude to give up my own.

Yet.

I threatened to do it a while ago, maybe a year or so ago, and my wife stopped me. I'm definitely jealous of Paige's balltitude because it's my birthday today, and I will most likely be inundated with banal, superficial, formulaic, unfeeling, truncated missives from people with whom I attended elementary school or summer camp-- people whose names I don't even recognize anymore because they've gotten married or switched their genders or go by their rapper names. I got a pre-emptive Facebook birthday strike on Monday, and it took me at least a minute to remember who the person was.

Note: if it takes me more than four seconds to recognize your name, you probably shouldn't be wishing me a happy anything.

I know, I know, I'm a big fucking grump. A sour-faced baby. A miserly little dollop of bat-shit.

"Poor you," my wife said mockingly a couple of days ago after a car-ride rant-fest of mine, "You've got to deal with a bunch of nice people wishing you a happy 30th birthday. Life is so hard for you!"

I suspect she was just playing her favorite role: the Devil's Advocate (love that movie-- "There's this chicken, plays Tic-Tac-Toe, NEVER LOSES!!!") because, really, she knows how superficial and stupid Facebook is. She just happens to be under the Aquarium spell, that's all. She promises me that, once she gets her second frog, she'll stop. Granted, her eyes are glazed over and drool bubbles from her lips as she makes this promise, but, hey-- a promise is a promise.

Right, honey?

It's funny. Before Facebook, I got depressed when I didn't hear from anybody on my birthday. Now, with Facebook, I get depressed when I do hear from people on my birthday. There is nothing more hollow, more unimpressive, more shamefully greedy and unmeaningly offensive than a slew of Facebook birthday wishes.

What will be, of course, quite humorous will be if I don't receive any.

That will serve me just right.

It's a shame, really. I had planned on this real blowout, funny post to ring in my 30th year, but I'm kind of not feeling it right now. And you shouldn't put on airs, just to suit other people-- certainly not on your birthday. Certainly not on your 30th anyway.

See, I have this little problem-- and, ironically, it isn't Facebook. My problem is that I only wanted one thing for my birthday, and I can't have it. Due to uncontrollable circumstances, I have to be at work today from 11:00am-9:00pm. I wanted to spend my birthday with my best buddy, my partner-- my wife. If I couldn't spend the whole day with her, well, then just the after-work hours would have done just fine. But, on May 12th, 2010, there are no after-work hours. It's the first birthday of mine in our seven years together that I've been thus engaged. Sure, there are other days, and, sure, she's planning some hush-hush extravaganza on Saturday, and, really, it's just a day like any other...

And, if I were alone, I wouldn't give a shit, I would work the full twenty-four hours if I were alone. But there's something about being with someone special-- someone who thinks you're special, too, that makes you want to do special things together. To enjoy moments in life that might otherwise be trivial or mundane or silly. To, well, celebrate. We don't do a whole lot of celebrating in our lives-- life is just too busy. And we're hardly cosmo.

I know, I know-- you're a grown up and you have a job. And people on Facebook "Like" you. Life is so hard for you.

My middle sister makes an unbelievably big stink about her birthday, and, inevitably, it goes sour. It stands to reason-- people made a huge fucking deal about the Titanic and the Hindenburg, too. Growing up and watching her act like a huge asshole taught me, generally, to do the opposite from her. So I was largely not into my birthday, even as a child when a big deal was made out of it by my father.

Children who attended my birthday parties held in our backyard went home with memorable party favors. Such as beta fish, hermit crabs, newts, and, at the height of his insanity: frogs. My mother sufficiently toned him down for the final year of live party favors: cacti. It's a good thing I'm not still having family-style birthday parties for friends. If you came, you'd probably go home with a manatee wearing a boutineer and a false moustache.

In spite of the fact that, because my father is an insane foreigner, my birthday parties were one of the most anticipated events of the year, they were events that I neither wanted nor enjoyed-- in fact, they filled me with anxiety and dread.

What if somebody chokes? Do I have to come? Will people talk to me? What if I get my head stepped on while playing Ga-Ga (Israeli ball-game that is dangerous and makes even less sense than Cricket) in the backyard? Where will Mommy be? Can I hide under her bed? What if the candles catch the rice-paper shades in the dining room on fire? Will this be my last birthday? When will everybody leave? Why do I have these dark rings under my eyes-- I'm only eight.

My wife asked me to please let her know if I ever wanted to invite "people" over to celebrate my birthday. I laughed. "People?" It's kind of funny, if you think about it. I have, maybe, three friends, and I see each of them maybe twice a year, for a meal or a coffee where old feelings of loyalty and love come surging back through my veins, and then are almost immediately supplanted by the depression of knowing it will be six months before I see them again.

Everybody else? I hate them. My best friend stopped talking to me almost a year ago to this day for questioning the trustworthiness of his girlfriend, who, I might add he's marrying, and, I might also add, I found out about this through Facebook. La-dee-fucking-da.

As for friends at 30? Well, there's Facebook. Other than that, I think you're pretty much it. At first glance, you're avatars and pseudonyms-- but, of course, so am I. And I'm broad-minded and worldly enough (dare I say "mature?") to know that you're all very, very real. And I'm grateful that you are, and that you're here. Especially today.

Sorry, though. No party, and definitely no party favors. Your mom said no more newts.

Brown-Eyed Curly-Top

The middle child is having her birthday today.

Maybe you've heard about it. As Joe Biden said about this historic moment in the history of the world, "it's a big fuckin' deal."

Really, it is.

She's 33, but her life reads like an episode of "Teen Mom." If "Teen Mom" were a book.

My sister is unlike anybody else I know, and she's certainly desperately unlike anybody I would ever choose to deliberately associate with. She's the most self-centered person I know, and that's saying a lot, because I majored in theatre as an undergraduate and, consequently, I know a lot of people who are convinced with absolute certainty that their decision to get out of bed in the morning or drop a meadow-muffin is a potent, powerful and positive message to the rest of the world.

My sister is more self-absorbed than any theatre major ever could be. And I doubt very much that she would be offended at my saying that, because it would mean that she's first at something-- best at something, and even if being first and best at being selfish is her reward, she'd wear that bright red ribbon proudly.

When her son was born about half-a-year ago, she could not possibly understand why people like my parents were more interested in the baby than they were in her. She grew instantly jealous of the attention that her beautiful, sweet son received-- like a petty older sibling might. Dissatisfied though she may be with my parent's wandering attentions and affections, she's still content to bring her son to them at least twice a week (and often for overnight stays) to be babysat, as well as heavy bags of her laundry, along with her husband's and her son's for my mother to do.

Did I mention that she's turning 33 today?

My sister is beautiful, and always was, and maybe that's part of the problem. She's been able to pretty her way out of traffic tickets and punishments and bad grades, her big chocolate and volumes of cascading dark brown curls just melting troubles and consequences away like a fresh spring rain clears the world of a lingering heavy snowdrift. My mother used to call her "Brown-Eyed Curly-Top." Some of the things that she's called my mother in the heat of battle, well, even I'm too embarrassed to reprint here.

But, then again, maybe I'm just an aging mama's boy who's jealous of his badass older sister.

Maybe.

My sister is unlike anybody I know, and that's for sure. I struggle in my relationship with her, like lots of siblings do, I suppose. I go through periods where I judge her, and spite her, and ignore her, and attack her, and support her, too. I try, but it never lasts long. An unreasonable demand or a self-aggrandizing comment, a cutting remark or an obnoxious text will plunge me back where I don't want to be but all too often find myself-- that place where I sit and brood and wonder just who the fuck she thinks she is anyway.

"Why is my sister the way she is?" I asked my wife as we were just about to descend into a haze of sleep last night.

"Why is my brother the way he is?" she replied.

"Well," I said, burrowing deeper under the covers, "I know your mom just blames your dad for him, but I don't think that's fair entirely. And I don't think it would be fair to just blame my dad for my sister. There's always more to it than overindulgence..."

Our pre-bedtime conversations aren't always this lucid. Most of the time they're totally incoherent and sometimes slightly disturbing.

We didn't come to any conclusions last night, and the conversation was not picked up this morning, as we struggled to find some Passover-friendly alternative to cereal for breakfast and make sure Molly made it outside without peeing all over the green rug in the living room, but I'm still thinking about it, obviously. And still hurting over it-- all of it.

Most of all, over the fact that I sat down determined to write a happy birthday blog about my sister, and this is what came out.

My Favorite Day

No, it's not Victoria Day (CAN).

Today, October 9th, is my favorite day. It's my wife's birthday.

All day long, I get to think about the woman that I married on October 22, 2006-- the woman with whom I commenced an almost instant online infatuation on February 16, 2003. All there was back then was a screen-name and words. Lots and lots of words. She told me that she had scared off guys before with her garrulous nature-- but with me, it was just another turn-on.

I get to think about my buddy.

Last night, I spent almost three hours meticulously adorning the dining room of the house we bought together in February of this year with streamers. I spelled her name in streamers on our window blinds. Every doorway in the dining room is framed in streamers, as is the wall air-conditioning unit. While I did my little work, I had an old LP, scratchily playing in the background. It is a 1966 D'Oyly Carte Opera Company recording of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Sorcerer. It is an opera all about love and the mixing up of love and losing love and finding love and love potions, and it is most appropriate that it was the musical selection for the night before my wife's birthday because, in February, she and I will appear in The Sorcerer together. I will be the title character-- the mysterious and Machiavellian magician John Wellington Wells, and my wife will be where she likes to be, in the chorus-- a place where she can deftly hide. A place where I never could.

And, as I painstakingly taped red streamers to frame the doorway to the kitchen, as the character Dr. Daly sang about how unmarried and unloved he is,

"Oh, my voice is sad and low
And with timid step I go –
For with load of love o'erladen
I enquire of every maiden,
"Will you wed me, little lady?
Will you share my cottage shady?"
Little lady answers "No! No! No!

Thank you for your kindly proffer –
Good your heart, and full your coffer;
Yet I must decline your offer –
I'm engaged to So-and-so!"
So-and-so! So-and-so!
So-and-so! So-and-so!
"I'm engaged to So-and-so!"

I thanked my lucky stars that I had married So-and-so.

My wife is my buddy, she is my partner, she is my best friend. She embodies all of my hopes and dreams for the future, and within her lies the vast majority of my happiness and my faith in the universe. For, if it aligned so that she and I could meet and fall in love, it can't be as bad as I'm often inclined to think it probably is.

They say that you can't expect your spouse to change for you, but you inevitably change anyway. I've definitely changed since I fell in love with my wife, and it's been for the better. She challenges me to think in different ways, she trusts me with our financial responsibilities, which to this moment rather floors me since I most commonly use calculators as paper-weights. But she trusts me. She trusts me... with money. She trusts me... in the kitchen. She didn't always, though-- at the beginning, when we would bake together, she watched me like a fucking bespectaled hawk. But she's stopped that since, and I've made my mistakes-- mistaking baking soda for baking powder on more than one occasion, resulting in inedible pumpkin bricks. But she's realized that, really, what's the difference if I fuck up a dessert every now and again? What's that worth, when compared to my dignity and autonomy? And, besides, she once made oatmeal cookies and forgot the oatmeal.

I've planned a weekend brimming with activities, and, honestly, some of them might bust. I don't know-- I've never been to any of these places before. It will involve a lot of driving, and I'll be behind the wheel, but I don't care. It's for my buddy. My right hand. My brain. My better half. My best friend. My partner.

Sometimes I look at her and can't really believe that it's all for real. We'll be sitting on the sofa or sitting across from each other at breakfast or in the car on the way to rehearsal and I'll look over at her and I'll just want to start crying. Instead, though, I just say,

"You know what? You're my favorite person. Did you know that?"

"I had a vague idea," she replies, her stock response.

I have to work today, but, as soon as I can, I'm going to get the hell out of here so I can spend the rest of my favorite day with my favorite person.

Good old So-and-so.

May 12th - Day of Justice

As you all know, it's my birthday today.

Now, I may be a 20something blogger, ("the bloggers with the biggest mouths") but I don't have my arrogant head so far up my taut, young ass that I don't recognize that there are other things going on out there in the greater, larger sphere today that bear striking import on the workings of our world.

(It is my birthday, though.)

May 12th, 2009 is not only the date in which I turn 29 years old, oh no-- it is a date that rings loud with the peals of justice. Today, accused former Nazi Ivan "John" Demjanjuk arrives in Munich to begin the arduous legal process of charging him with war crimes. Of course, we all know how slowly the wheels of justice move when it comes to prosecuting... well anyone, really-- especially elderly Nazis. Shithead McGee was first identified as a Nazi back in 1977. We all know he's going to keel over and die before any charges are ever formally brough against him, but the fact that he is arriving on German soil today, arriving in a country that once rewarded him for his brutal deeds-- now a country that wants to knock his flaccid dick in the dirt, well, I think that's pretty significant.

And I'm glad such a weighty event is happening on my birthday. Add that to the May 12th list, wikidorks!

Another significant event is going to happen today and it is also an event that would make even the most staunch arbiters of justice quake and quail, it is an event that is momentous in its portent and its power. It's not a Supreme Court decision, but, in the realm of our American culture, it's far more important-- for the only person who talks about Supreme Court decisions is NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg. Everybody, though, will be talking about this decision.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, on May 12th, the anniversary of my dubious birth, the decision is going to be made. THE decision. The decision about whether or not to strip Miss California, Carrie Prejean, of her sash. (Prejean, by the way, is no relation to famed death-penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean, which should be obvious to anyone who's seen them both naked.) We all know Carrie Prejean's crime: being photographed while topless. First, she said she was never photographed topless. Then, once one picture came out, she said that's all there were. Then three more came out. She's starting to sound like a politician!

Well, today is the day where all the world will finally know whether or not you can slut it up and lie about it in this country and still walk away with a sash and a crown. Not only is the momentously awesome decision going to be made today, on my birthday, but it is going to be made by a man with a sterling judicial and moral compass, no less an authority on decency and virtue than Mr. Donald Trump, the "owner" of the Miss USA Pageant.

Trump said that he "planned to review the racy pictures of Prejean" and that he will render a decision once he's all cleaned up. Well, I don't know about you, but the fact that I know without a shadow of a doubt that Donald Trump is, possibly right at this very moment, masturbating to pictures of some vapid, homophobic beauty queen on my birthday and will then undoubtedly say "Carrie, you're fired" to her while sitting in his ox-blood leather chair, with crumpled tissues stuck in between the seat cushions-- all on my fucking birthday-- is just pretty goddamn impressive to me.

I mean, wow. Weighty things are happening on my big day!

And a 29-year-old blogger just couldn't ask for more than that.

Beeeeeeee-day

It's almost my birthday.

May 12th. Buy me things.

I'll be 29 years old. I wonder if 20 Something Bloggers will take back my membership card a year from Tuesday. I won't give it up without a fight.

I don't know quite how I feel about my birthday these days. It's funny. See, on the one hand, I'm an attention whore. I am coming to terms with this. I mean, if you examine the things I like to do in my life (principally-- act and blog) my attention whoredom is pretty obvious. I'm only now just coming to terms with it, and I thank you for your assistance-- although that seems kind of ass-backwards, but that's okay. I don't thank you guys nearly enough.

So, being a self-proclaimed attention-whore, you'd think that I would eat my birthday up with a red plastic spoon and wash it down with some sugary cake. But the attention-whore in me is in competition with the influence of 28 years of my father poo-poohing his own birthday.

Dad: "Why do I give a fuck about my birthday?"

Me: "Um, because it's nice?"

Dad: "Nice? Please. Fuck that!"

When my father was growing up in Israel, they didn't used to have birthdays. They imported them from America back in the mid-seventies, after he'd come and gone. He doesn't understand his birthday-- the point, the purpose. He doesn't like being fawned over and, if we ever bought him a tie, he'd strangle us with it. A "World's Best Dad" coffee mug? He'd break it over our heads. He thinks all that shit is gay, and it is. The funny thing is, he understands the concept of the birthday perfectly well when it's my birthday, or my mother's birthday, or my sisters'. He just doesn't get his. And it's not just him, either. His sister doesn't even know her's, so they picked a day in early April-- you know, for the hell of it.

Dad: "I don't want a fuckin' birthday. Do you tell me that you love me every time we talk?"

Me: "Um, yes."

Dad: "Good. Then every day is my fuckin' birthday."

So there are these two parts of me working against each other. Part of me wants loving cards and pressies and, yes, attention-- and part of me kind of is sort of non-committally rather ambivalent. Well, it wants to be.

29 is going to be an interesting year. It's the first year where I'm starting to really notice changes in my body. As I look in the mirror, a cluster of ten or so white hairs is clearly visible near the front of my hairline. Mrs. Apron used to pull them for me, four or five years ago, in those heady days of youth when there were only two or three-- when we thought we could beat them. I've since asked her to stop. No matter how early you wake up, you can't beat the clock.

I was standing in the airplane-sized bathroom on our first floor a couple days ago and, in the tragic lighting situation I noticed horizontal lines going across my forehead. What does Joan Rivers call those things? Wrinkles? Yeah. I guess they're wrinkles.

I'm very fortunate, I realize, to have gone through almost the entirety of my twenties without my physical appearance changing very much. I was 134 pounds and 6'0" when I graduated high school, and I'm 136 pounds and 6'0" now. Thick head of brown hair then, thick head of (98%) brown hair now. Skin basically smooth. Penis goes up and down as specified in manual. Time has not ravaged me yet, but I do feel like it's picking my pocket.

Since it's my birthday soon, that means I get wishes, right? I guess my father gets wishes every day of his life. I hope he uses those abundant opportunities wisely. I know the big wish, the sacred wish, the one that just absolutely has to come true has to be uttered in silence before the blazing birthday cake, or else it won't come true. Don't worry, I know the rules.

Here, though, are my other birthday wishes. Are you listening, Santa Claus & Jesus?

* I want my athlete's foot and toenail fungus both to go away this year. I've tried Lamisil and baby powder and tough-actin' Tinactin and prayer and seances and nothing seems to work, so I think I'm going to try birthday wishing it away. I'll keep you updated.

* I want to go hot, one last time.

* I want to kick this bitch, right in the pussy.

* I want to still be writing this blog a year from now.

* I want to gain some weight. This is a tricky one, see, because Mohandas & Pete, the Birthday Gods, to go overboard with this particular request. So, I'll be specific: seven pounds or fewer please, thanks.

* I want reality television to be uninvented.

* I want Barack Obama to ditch the limo and start riding around in a car that is more befitting the first African-American president.

* I want to learn at least ten chords for the banjo, and I want to learn how to pick.

* I want happiness, health, safety, love and laughter for Mrs. Apron.

* I want more white hairs. Bring 'em on, motherfuckers.

Bring it.