Let’s make some resolutions

Patch Adams combines all the fun of clowns with cancer.

Here’s the life update you’ve been waiting for: The idea for my new comic book series didn’t take off quite like I expected it to.

Long story short, I spent months meticulously drawing my comic book, holed up in my room, taking breaks only to eat, drink, and play 16 hours of video games a day. Once I was done writing the first issue, I sent it to every major publisher I know. (Editor’s note: I sent it to 1 publisher.) I was sure to include the following pitch:

The Douchebag League follows the adventures of four douchebags as they travel the world and save it from every threat, including monsters, supervillains, and dudes who play World of Warcraft. When they’re not saving the world, they bang freshman girls. I’ve enclosed a drawing of one of the scenes in which Captain Affliction Shirt woos and subsequently bangs a freshman girl. You can keep it.

Sounds like a pretty compelling pitch, right? It took me a long time to write that pitch. I watched Dead Poets Society five times before I even started, just to make sure I was inspired. (Editor’s note: Bonus inspiration – that movie is full of douchebags.) I even had my friend Barry proofread it. He never got back to me, though. He just took the drawing and went home and I haven’t seen him since.

But still, soundly rejected and the proud recipient of multiple cease and desist letters.

The way I see it, 2013 is a new year. (Editor’s note: That is 100% true.) Now I’ve never been one to make resolutions, mostly because I’m a free spirit and I can’t be tied down by some commitment I made a few days ago just because the calendar changed. Yeah, I said I’d eat healthy, but that was before I knew my mom was making chocolate chip cookies. (Editor’s note: Resolve to have Mom make more chocolate chip cookies.) But 2013 is a big deal because we weren’t even supposed to be here for it. (Editor’s note: In your face, Mayans.)

Barry said I should resolve to move out of my Mom’s house this year. That seems noble, but I can’t afford to live by myself and Barry won’t let me move in with him because he says I can’t afford to pay rent and there’s this girl next door he really likes and he just thinks I’d probably get in the way. I told him it’s not a problem and wondered if maybe she has some friends or something that wouldn’t mind if I hit it and quit it and he hung up on me. And since Barry’s really the only other person I know who isn’t homeless, I figure I’ll just chill at my mom’s for a little while longer until I meet the woman of my dreams. (Editor’s note: The woman of my dreams is a mermaid with a house I can live in.)

Anyway, here’s my working list of resolutions:

1. Watch Dead Poets Society
2. Become best friends with Robin Williams
3. Convince Robin Williams to star in my sequel to “Patch Adams”
4. Have Robin Williams write, produce and direct my sequel to “Patch Adams”
5. See if Robin Williams knows Anne Hathaway
6. Have Robin Williams convince Anne Hathaway to go on a date with the guy who got Robin Williams to write, produce, direct and star in the sequel to “Patch Adams” and she doesn’t have to commit to going back to my place later or anything but maybe we can have a nice dinner and go mini-golfing and just kind of see where the night takes us. (Editor’s note: It takes us back to my place.)
7. Learn to make pizza from scratch

So, cool, I have 1 of 7 done already and the year just started. At this pace, I’ll be done by mid-February and can just spend the rest of the year chilling out.

Taking applications for a new best friend

It's all this lady's fault.

If you follow me on Twitter, (Editor’s note: You don’t.) you probably noticed that last week’s Funday Monday festivities were, at worst, pretty solid and, at most, the things we’ll be telling our grandkids about:

#fundaymonday was pretty cool. Barry met some girl and I had some mozzarella sticks. Can’t wait until next week.

Sounds good, right? Until a week later I call Barry on Sunday night to decide if we’ll be starting this week’s Funday Monday at Chuck E. Cheese’s or back behind McDonald’s where we hang out with all the employees on their smoke break. That’s when Barry asks me if it’s cool if Donna, the girl he met, comes along.

I have nothing against Donna. She’s a lovely woman who worked as a riveter during World War II and I think she makes Barry really happy. But Funday Monday isn’t about inclusion. It’s about Barry and me painting the town red and maybe seeing some boobs.

So I told Barry you have to choose between me or Donna and he chose Donna. So I was left sitting alone on the funnest day of the week while Barry and Donna went out and painted the town red and probably saw all kinds of boobs.

Now I’m left with a few choices:

1. Hope that Barry and Donna break up between now and next Monday.
2. Hope that Donna dies between now and next Monday.
3. Hope that World War III starts between now and next Monday and Donna has to return to her work as a riveter.
4. Get a girlfriend of my own. But the local community college won’t let me on campus anymore and I won’t date anyone over the age of 20.
5. Go it alone on Funday Monday, but then who will be there to hear my jokes?
6. Find a new best friend.

So unless No. 1 or No. 2 happens between now and next Monday, it looks like I’m probably in the market for a new best friend. I don’t know if I can replace Barry’s entrepenurial spirit and his hair that always smells like strawberries, but I don’t really have a choice.

Anyway, here’s the job description if you’re interested or if you know anyone else in the market for a best friend.

My New Best Friend

Looking for someone who can not only be a sounding board for some pretty intense and amazing ideas and who can help run my presidential campaign and is free on Mondays for some really good times.

Essential Responsibilities

• Various best friends things including listening, talking, eating with me, and hooking me up with your hot friends. (Editor’s note: No dude friends – unless you’re friends with Brad Pitt.)
• Letting me borrow money sometimes because I might have busted a window over at Mr. Johnson’s house because I’m still mad he called the cops on me when I decided to try and make a little extra cash by letting people park on his front lawn for the Fourth of July parade last year, but he knows my mom’s yard has too many trees to park cars on and I wasn’t going to allow any heavy vehicles to park in his yard but what was I supposed to do because that bus was already committed to parking in that spot and there was no way the driver could have turned around without causing some kind of massive pile-up and at $5 an axle I was really set to cash in and if he’d have just let me explain I’d have told him that I was going to cut him in at 1% of the profits minus my 10% cut for being the middle man in the transaction.
• Coming over and holding my hand at night when I have that dream about the bear eating Michael Knight.
• Transcribing my thoughts that I scribble on Wendy’s napkins in to blog posts that generate tens of page views.
• Distracting my mom while I try and get her nice couch out of the living room because I might have accidentally posted it on CraigsList for sale and now there’s no turning back since the guy who bought it has pretty much told me to produce the couch or he’s going to kill me.
• Making sure my mom doesn’t find out I traded her couch for Applebee’s gift cards.

Required Skills and Experience

• Drive a really fast car.
• Demonstrated ability to let your best friend borrow your really fast car for driving and for boning in.
• Making mozzarella sticks, either from scratch for from those T.G.I. Friday’s frozen ones you buy at the grocery store.
• A recent bank statement showing enough available funds to buy some kind of rocket ship. I’d like a new one, but I’d settle for one of those Russian ones they used to use all the time as long as the dead space monkey isn’t still in it.
• Connections in the radio, television, and film industries as well as some decent mafia connections, just in case.
• Refusal to accept February 29th as a real day and act accordingly. In other words, anything that happened on February 29th, didn’t actually happen, and I’m fairly certain a jury of my peers would agree. (Editor’s note: Fingers crossed.)
• Knowing some mermaids would be a really big plus. As long as they aren’t fat mermaids. Or dude mermaids.

It’s pretty easy work. You probably won’t get paid for it, but I did find this kind of cool investment opportunity and all I have to do is get 10 of my friends to invest and once they get 10 of their friends to invest and those friends get 10 of their friends to invest this thing should really bring in a lot of money, so then maybe I’d pay you a little bit. But probably not.

It’s Funday Monday!

What a douche.

A few years ago, my friend Barry and I saw this great movie called “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Seeing this movie resulted in two things:

1. It started my own personal cold war with Matthew Broderick. It would have been a real war, but the stupid government wouldn’t let me get a gun because my background check wasn’t up to snuff. Apparently if you accidentally point a realistic looking toy gun at a flight attendant demanding peanuts “now or everyone on board’s going to get it!” one time, it sticks with you forever.
2. It made Barry and me realize that we weren’t really maximizing our potential and living life to its fullest. In fact, while Ferris was faking sick to stay away from school, we were doing everything we could to be at the school because nobody serves hotter, cheaper lunches this side of the soup kitchen, and neither of us likes soup.

So we decided we needed to do something to make our lives a little more fun. Not that Barry transcribing my thoughts that I’ve written on Wendy’s napkins in to blog posts isn’t fun, but sometimes you need a break from the daily grind and sometimes Wendy’s gets tired of you sitting in their dining room for six and a half hours a day without ordering anything.

That’s why we instituted Funday Monday. We were going to go with Monday Funday, but Barry’s brother, a disbarred attorney, told us he thought the senior center in town used that for their Monday bus trips to the fabric store and he didn’t want us to get sued for copyright infringement. We also thought about maybe having Fondue Friday, but that’s probably a bit much to take on until Funday Monday gets off the ground and I think we were both hoping that the other would actually know what Fondue is. I guessed that it was some kind of foreign car and Barry thinks it might be a type of tree.

So Funday Monday is our day of fun and living.

We decided that, from the minute we wake up until the minute the sun goes down, we would maximize every second of the day. That’s roughly 90 minutes, so we have to pack a lot in. Activities vary, but our favorites include:

• Cross-checking my spreadsheet of Bob Barker’s tie color with DVR’d episodes of The Price is Right.
• Running up and down the street alongside the neighborhood cats.
• Finding every book in the library about chickens and telling the lady at the check-out that we’re doing extensive research on cocks.
• Bare-knuckle boxing with homeless dudes over behind the liquor store.
• Taking bus trips to the fabric store with the local seniors.
• Playing a little game we like to call “See it, eat it” where we walk up and down the sidewalk and have to eat anything we see on the ground. (Editor’s note: Barry cheats because he walks with his eyes closed.)
• Head over to the lake and look for beached mermaids so we can bone them.
• Paying kids at the high school money in exchange for their tater tots, because Monday’s tater tots are the best.

I can’t tell you everything we do because “the man” is probably reading this, but I promised Barry my run for President wouldn’t interfere with Funday Monday, even if I got elected. I figure the President is pretty powerful and can take three-day weekends whenever he wants.

The blog is back and I’m running for President

I think this little fella' is running for President.

I was sitting outside my ex-girlfriend’s house yesterday, lurking in the bushes, and she had CNN on. I’ve never really watched or heard of CNN, but apparently there’s some kind of election going on this year and apparently there are a lot of people who want anyone but some dude named Mitt Romney to win. And apparently there are a lot of other people who want anyone but some Irish dude named Barack O’Bama to win. I think there’s also a newt running, but I’m not sure how that works.

(Editor’s note: I Googled one of the other candidates and the library revoked my Internet access again.)

As I sat there and stared at my ex-girlfriend unkowingly lounging on her couch, I came to the realization that I’m totally anyone but those guys. And considering I have experience running for President already thanks to my unsuccessful run in 2002 that was derailed by, among other things, misleading ads by my opponent, voter apathy, and the fact that there wasn’t a Presidential election in 2002, I’m more than qualified to run again in 2012.

So it’s decided. I’m throwing my hat in the ring. I think that’s what people say when they run for President. My friend Barry is on board, too, though he’s ruled out jumping on my ticket as Vice President. First off, he’s still trying to get his start-up electronics business off the ground and he doesn’t have the time to dedicate to being Vice President. He’s really close to getting his first 3D TV built. He just needs to finish making a bunch of those paper glasses with the red and blue lenses and also figure out how to make a 3D TV . Second, he’s part of a local citizens’ group that “wants to reverse the result of the Revolutionary War and go back to a time when the King of England was still the king and we got tea by the boatload.” That probably wouldn’t go over well for a Vice Presidential candidate. So far the group consists of just Barry and a drifter named StarFly, but he said he’s been getting some emails from people who want to join. There was a third guy in the group, but they kicked him out because they found out the only reason he joined was to “kill some Injuns and maybe beat up some French guys.”

But Barry’s cool with managing my campaign which is good because his start-up electronics business has given him a chance to learn how to make some sweet-looking pamphlets in Microsoft Word and he’s got a bunch of old cardboard boxes that we can make yard signs out of. I think he’s cool with being the campaign treasurer too, but I haven’t asked him. I’m just going to start giving him the money from donations and hope he doesn’t say anything about not being the treasurer. If he does start to complain, it’s probably nothing a good punch in the neck couldn’t fix.

As far as my platform goes, I’m pretty much just a man of the people – basic stuff like the right to have guns and money and bone lots of mermaids. And I’m willing to bend on the guns and money thing.

I don’t know if they’ll let me in to the debates, but I sent that Barack guy a letter telling him to meet me in my mom’s basement some time and some of our neighbors will probably come over and we’ll have refreshments (BYOB) and we’ll talk about stuff like how to make America more awesome and how to get those jerks in Canada to stop looking at us funny. So far I haven’t heard back, but one day these two guys in an unmarked van showed up outside my mom’s house and they follow me everywhere I go, so I figure he’s just doing some advance scouting. By the way, if anyone has a couple of lecterns I could borrow and some connections with Wolf Blitzer, I’d really appreciate it.

It has been too long

A lot of people have been asking me lately if I’m going to start blogging again. And by a lot of people I mean my cat asked me in a dream the other night. Then before I could answer he turned into a bear and ran down to the river to catch a salmon, except the salmon was actually a freshly-microwaved Applebee’s steak that had learned to speak and was about to tell the bear that was actually my cat the meaning of life but then I woke up. (Editor’s note: I’ve still got it!)

Anyway, my posts have been few and far between in the year 2010 and I have some pretty solid reasons for this. First, I got a little confused on that whole Mayan calendar thing and thought the world was supposed to end on May 17, 2010. Turns out the card on my refrigerator with that date on it was actually for a dentist’s appointment that I ended up missing. Needless to say, I woke up the morning of May 18 feeling pretty stupid, especially considering I woke up shirtless in a dumpster next to a hobo that I vaguely remember telling of our impending doom and then accepting his offer to enjoy some of his tasty Jack Daniel’s. (Editor’s note: I asked if he wanted to get some breakfast but he said he really had to get going and would call me. … Which he hasn’t.)

Second, I’ve been on a little book tour for my yet-to-be-published and still untitled teen masterpiece about vampires and werewolves. (Editor’s note: Team Legarm!) It seems odd, I know, to do a book tour for an untitled book that isn’t finished. (Editor’s note: I’m officially 8 1/2 paragraphs in.) But I consider it a bit of a preemptive book tour. Rule No. 1 of proper promotion is to whet the consumer’s appetite. (Rule No. 2: Release topless photos.) I figure if I show up to various bookstores across the country it’s going to get people buzzing about my book which I hope to have released by the end of the world – a deadline that seems much easier in hindsight. After my tour is over I plan on starting a huge social media blitz, as well, whatever the hell that means.

If you want to come to one of my book tour stops, you’re more than welcome. We’ll be at Borders next weekend. Once you park, go around to the back of the building by the dumpsters and look for the folding table. I may or may not be sitting there – depends on if I want a smoothie or not because I hear there’s a really great smoothie place across the street. Either way, try to keep it down a little bit because we’re not really supposed to be there and my friend Barry is going to be keeping a lookout for someone taking out the trash and when he gives the signal we all need to get down really low behind the dumpster so nobody sees us. Also, if anyone has a pen they could bring along, I’d really appreciate it. I’ll sign anything. And by anything I mean boobs. (Editor’s note: I won’t sign wangs.)

So I think you’ll forgive me for not posting, what with the book tour and the whole end-of-the-world confusion, but I promise that I may or may not start posting regularly again. I can tell you that I’ve put completing my book on hold for another project that I’m guessing you’ll be seeing right here soon. It’s going to be pretty badass. (Editor’s note: It might not be pretty badass.)

My quest for an Oscar continues

The Academy Awards were last Sunday night and that’s always a bittersweet night for me. Bitter because it’s the perfect excuse to wear that strapless black dress that’s both daring in its subtlety and pushes the boundaries of fashion with its “I’m special because I don’t need to stand out” vibe and unfortunately I have yet to be invited to the Academy Awards despite my on-again off-again relationship with Julianne Moore. (Editor’s note: It’s mostly off-again. … And made-up.)

It’s a sweet night, however, because it allows me to close my eyes and imagine myself up there accepting my own Academy Award. To be honest, I’d take any of the awards, except for Best Soundmixing. That award is for nerds. (Editor’s note: And weirdos.)

I actually dabble a bit in filmmaking myself. And by “dabble” I mean I “think about it night and day.” And by “I think about it night and day” I mean “I’m not entirely sure what filmmaking is but I think I might like it.” So it’s only natural that I get a little misty-eyed whenever I hear someone’s name get called and see them run up on stage and give their acceptance speech because I know one day it’s going to be me.

You see, I’m currently in the brainstorming stages of a little documentary called Yes I Can: The Story of One Man’s Dream to Tear Down the Walls of Sexual Discrimination and Play in the WNBA. Some of you may know that this isn’t the first documentary I’ve undertaken. My first film, Alex Trebek: Game Show Host or Puppy Massacrer won critical acclaim at the third annual Legarm Film Festival and walked away with awards for Best Documentary, Best Soundmixing (though I refused to accept) and Most Accurate Portrayal of a Canadian Asshole Gameshow Host Who Won’t Let Me Compete On His Show During Kids Week Just Because I’m Not a Kid. (Editor’s Note: That award is actually three trophies because all of that won’t fit on one trophy.) To quote the film festival’s resident critic, my friend Barry, the film:

“… served as a reminder to us all the blatant age discrimination displayed by the formerly mustachioed gameshow host in his never-ending quest to belittle Americans and murder puppies. While the documentary was preachy at times, it made it clear that Mr. Trebek not only finds great pleasure in creating death and destruction everywhere he goes, but also murders puppies. I can only shake my head in disgust when the narrator makes this final, damning point: We’d never let Pat Sajak get away with this. And he’s right. We wouldn’t. Especially the part where he murders puppies.”

I’d post the documentary here for you to see, but it’s currently in the possession of the courts due to Mr. Trebek’s lawsuit against me and my lawyers say it would be a bad idea to share it with anyone else since they still think there’s a chance they can make it appear the documentary was not made by me despite my name appearing over 42 times in the closing credits and my outbursts in the courtroom demanding recognition for such a powerful film. I also demanded we order out for Chinese during the next recess, but I don’t think the judge heard me since I’d already been escorted out of the room and was being held for contempt of court. (Editor’s note: I loves me some sweet and sour chicken.)

But back to Yes I Can: The Story of One Man’s Dream to Tear Down the Walls of Sexual Discrimination and Play in the WNBA. It involves all the things people love in movies including but not limited to:

• Underdog stories
• Gun fights
• Boobs
• Explosions
• Basketball
• Nicholas Cage
• John Travolta
• John Travolta stealing Nicholas Cage’s face
• Full frontal nudity
• Kittens

Take the following scene for instance. I’m and underdog at the local gym trying to hone my skills. A coach who happens to be a woman and refuses to wear a shirt sees me and thinks maybe I’d make a good protege. Unfortunately, another basketball coach, none other than Nicholas Cage, notices my skills at the same time and decides he’d like to coach me. Their argument over me bursts into a gun fight and Nicholas Cage guns down my would-be coach and wins the right to coach me. But it turns out it’s not actually Nicholas Cage. It’s John Travolta wearing Nicholas Cage’s face. Travolta tells me that there’s a bomb somewhere in the gym but Nicholas Cage’s brother is the only person who knows where the bomb is. But Nicholas’ brother won’t talk to anyone but Nicholas who happens to be in a coma so Travolta stole Nicholas’ face so he could talk to his brother but it turns out Nicholas doesn’t actually have a brother. So we don’t know where the bomb is and the whole gym ends up blowing up. I’m the only one who survives, but the blast ripped all my clothes off, so I arise out of the rubble completely naked with my arms raised skyward screaming, “Damn you Nicholas Cage!” And so I try to make the WNBA in John Travolta’s honor. I also buy a kitten in his honor.

Is it better than Alex Trebek: Game Show Host or Puppy Massacrer? I don’t know. But I do know it’s going to be a hit. And hopefully give me an excuse to wear that dress.

I’m facing a bit of a dilemma

So I know I haven’t posted anything in a while, but to be fair it’s been a tough few weeks. It all starts with this:

I’m building a robot.

For the record, this has nothing to do with the time machine I’m working on, though there was a time when I thought maybe I’d build the robot to drive the time machine. But that just doesn’t make sense.

I’m actually building my robot for a number of tasks, not the least of which are landscaping, dentistry and the occasional reorganization of my filing cabinets. To answer the question I know you’re asking, I have at least four filing cabinets (that I know of) and they are all at least a quarter full of non-alphabetized recipes, diary entries and robot blueprints (which would really come in handy right about now if only I could find them in my completely disorganized filing cabinets).

In a perfect world, my robot would also be used for companionship, but I think a robot is awfully high maintenance as it is and robot sex seems awkward … and a bit creepy. (Editor’s note: By “creepy” I mean “awesome.”)

So anyway, I was working on my robot and I decided to head over to the local fabric store in search of some buttons I could use as eyes. I was going to use gum drops for eyes but realized those might melt or get eaten by the small children my robot kidnaps. (Editor’s note: My robot is also for kidnapping small children.) So I decided on buttons and I think it will ultimately be a good decision.

If you don’t know, the fabric store is a horrible place. It’s nothing but scented decorative items and old people. I’m not a fan of old people. Not because they scare me, but because I find it unnatural to live past the age of 40 and I plan on not doing it. If things go my way, I’ll die at age 39 in a fiery skiing accident and leave all my worldly possessions to my robot.

So I grabbed a couple of buttons out of one of the button drawers and I was standing in line and this old lady behind me asked me why I was buying so many buttons. Not wanting to divulge too much information, I told her it’s for a project and she asked what the project was and I told her it’s top-secret and she just shrugged and went back to waiting in line and I told her it’s for a robot I was building and I probably just told her too much and from there one thing led to another and I ended up kidnapping her and tying her up in my mom’s basement.

Needless to say, I’m now in a bit of a pickle. My mom rarely goes down to the basement, but the next time she decides to mop the kitchen floor (which could be soon since I just spilled two gallons of Juicy Juice everywhere and I’m sure as hell not going to mop it up) she’s going to need to go down there and she’s going to find that old lady and I’m going to be screwed. If my robot were done, I’d set him to evil for a few minutes and, I would assume, during his tirade of destruction he’d eventually kill the old lady and I’d be pretty much guilt-free because I wasn’t the one that stabbed her in the neck with a fork, but that’s not a reliable option. I also could hope that nature will run its course and she’ll die of old age in the next day or two, but my friend Barry came over and checked her out and he said she’s perfectly healthy. Barry’s not a doctor but he has every John Stamos season of ER on DVD, so he knows his stuff.

So I told my mom not to go in the basement for a little while because I needed to sleep down there because it was too hot up on the roof of the garage, which makes no sense because it’s the middle of winter so I set the garage on fire so my excuse would make sense. But that’s only going to keep her from getting suspicious for so long because I’m not really supposed to be in the house at all and the aforementioned Juicy Juice incident will only expedite her inevitable trip downstairs.

As a last-ditch effort, I offered the old lady a job helping me with my robot. You’d think that in this economy she’d be more grateful for the opportunity, but she just spit on me and told me her husband was a World War II veteran and he would kill me once he found out I kidnapped her. So now I not only have to figure out how to keep my mom out of the basement but I have to study up on trench warfare and buy some barbed wire, too, because I’ll have a crazed World War II veteran coming after me. (Editor’s note: Is there any other kind of World War II veteran?)

Barry and I decided it was time to call an emergency meeting. He invited a friend of his named Dale. He’s a bow-hunter and I guess he applied for a job with the CIA, but they turned him down because he’s a little too dangerous for them.

Dale told me he could take care of the old lady for me, which sounded good until I realized what he meant by taking care of her. (Editor’s note: He didn’t mean feed her, bathe her and take her for walks.) He also wanted $5,000 to do it. I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my life, but I’ve never had anyone assassinated and I wasn’t about to start now. Plus, I don’t have that kind of money to spend on assassinations, at least not in cash form. I asked if he took Discover, but he didn’t, which is good since I don’t have a Discover card anyway.

Meanwhile, the old lady’s getting mad (and starting to smell a little) because she’s apparently hungry and needs to use the restroom and she’s still kind of upset about the whole being tied up in my basement thing, though I think she’s kind of warming up to the idea. I looked up Alzheimer’s disease on WebMD, but it seems unlikely for that to just set in and bail me out because she suddenly can’t remember who I am, where she is or that the cardigan I’m wearing actually belongs to her.

So that’s what I have going for me right now and it’s really putting me behind schedule when it comes to finishing up my robot that I haven’t even started and it doesn’t help that when my mom goes to the basement she’s going to have me arrested.

The moral to this story: Don’t go the fabric store. It’s an awful place.

Matthew Broderick thinks he’s so much cooler than me

Have you ever seen the movie War Games? If so, consider yourself lucky to have gotten a glimpse into what my life is like.

Not so much the part where Matthew Broderick (played masterfully by Ferris Bueller) almost starts World War III. Or the part where he has a girl in his room. Those are two things I’ve never done. But the parts where he’s sitting around playing video games on his computer – that’s about right.

As an aside, on the subject of how awesome my life is, this video is also a lot like what my life is like:

Or, at least, that will always be the dream: to open up my own auto repair shop complete with singing, dancing and men wearing cut-off shirts. Though no way am I riding off on a motorcycle with my uptown girl. I’m deathly afraid of motorcycles.

(Editor’s note: I’m hoping my uptown girl is a mermaid.)

Regardless, you’re right, my life is pretty sweet, but my friend Barry seems convinced that Matthew Broderick is way cooler than I’ll ever be. What he doesn’t realize is that I’ve already started laying the groundwork to marry one of the actresses from Sex in the City and as soon as the “Please stop sending me mail” letters from Kim Cattrall turn into “I’d love to meet you for coffee some time” letters, Broderick and I will be on even footing.

Barry also doesn’t realize I had originally planned on running into Matthew Broderick in the street and having the following conversation with him:

ME: Hello. Shall we play a game?
BRODERICK: Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?

And while that conversation makes no sense whatsoever, I would have proceeded to beat him thoroughly at said game and, thus, I would have then been greater than Matthew Broderick, moving me up to 138th on the list of coolest people in the world.

(Editor’s note: Vin Diesel is at the top of the list.)

It hasn’t happened, though, and when I wake up every morning and look in the mirror, all I see looking back at me is a guy who’s still ranked behind Matthew Broderick on the list of coolest people in the world.

(Editor’s note: Sometimes I like to pretend my nipples are eyes.)

And I think that’s bullshit (the rankings, not the nipple eyes), because Matthew Broderick is married to someone from Sex in the City and that is so 2001.

(Editor’s note: If Kim Cattrall is reading this, you’re not so 2001. We can still get married. Also, are you a mermaid?)

And even though Matthew Broderick is a famous actor with millions of dollars (and a horse) and all I have is my failed mango farm and a high school diploma that may or may not actually belong to Gerald Lawson and I may or may not have run across the stage at graduation to punch him in the face and steal his diploma to roaring applause (and by “roaring applause” I mean “the horrified screams of his mother”) doesn’t mean a thing.

(Editor’s note: If you are currently a member of a jury of my peers sitting on my trial for assault, you should probably not have read that last paragraph.)

So I challenge Matthew Broderick to a contest. We shall bare knuckle box shirtless, preferably in a room with metal spikes on the walls, but if we can’t find a room with metal spikes on the walls I can settle for some broken beer bottles scattered about or if we can’t find a room with broken beer bottles scattered about maybe I can smash my watch on the floor before we fight because all the little gears and parts are pretty sharp and could hurt if you fall on them just right. Of course, it’s a digital watch, so there aren’t any gears, but when the alarm beeps, it gets kind of annoying and it hurts your ears a little, so maybe we can figure something out with that.

But I digress, Broderick. All you need to do is set a date, time and place. Though I’m not allowed to cross state lines at the moment, so keep that in mind. And I have a doctor’s appointment next Tuesday. So nothing before 3:30. I’ll tell you what, how about you just e-mail me your schedule and I’ll send you mine back and we’ll set up a time for our people to negotiate a time for us to fight.

(Editor’s note: I don’t have people. Also, I don’t know how to fight.)

My foray into teen literature

I don’t often discuss my hopes and dreams with people, but I consider this blog a bit of a friendship, a mutual respect between you the reader and my sweet writing skills. So in the name of friendship, I’ll open up and tell you that I’m a bit of an aspiring author, if by aspiring I mean completely awesome.

Originally, I wanted to be a children’s author. Primarily because children’s books are short but also because most kids are dumb, I figured it would be an easy undertaking and I had even come up with a main character for my book, an elf named Richie that taught life lessons by locking children in cages when they didn’t eat their meals or they didn’t pick up their toys. Of course the publishers I presented this to thought it was outrageous (which isn’t unexpected because the publishing industry is just another propaganda arm of the liberal media) and were particularly disturbed by the fact that Richie got his energy from eating babies. To be fair to myself, he only ate ugly babies and nobody cares about ugly babies.

So my children’s literature career is on ice, at least for a while and pending copyright trials based on my recently released book The Dog in the Hat which is (allegedly) just a rewrite of The Cat in the Hat with every mention of the Cat in the Hat replaced with the Dog in the Hat. According to my attorney, I’d have had a better chance of getting away with it had I (a) actually written the book instead of just using a Sharpie and a pen to make my changes and photocopying it, (b) changed all the references to the Cat in the Hat as opposed to just the one on the cover (Who knew there were more?) and (c) not sued the estate of Theodor Geisel claiming he posthumously stole the idea for The Cat in the Hat from my self-published children’s book The Dog in the Hat.

Methinks it’s going to be a long process, so until this is all worked out I’ve decided to take up the realm of teen literature. This is a pretty basic progression since I think I have a good idea of what teenagers are into these days because I regularly pose as a high school student during lunchtime in order to take advantage of the school’s free lunch program. Based on this experience, teenagers really like pizza and also enjoy throwing other teenagers – or at least 20-somethings posing as teenagers in order to get free lunch – headfirst into trash cans.

I’ve decided to excerpt part of my rough draft here on the blog for all of you. I’m kind of hesitant to do this because my friend Barry told me once that Charles Dickens got the idea for A Christmas Carol from an excerpt in a blog and I don’t want anyone to steal my idea (especially that Dickens guy), but it is Christmas time so I’m feeling generous and also no one will read any of my book unless I trick them into it, so here it is:

“Frank stood in the locker room after his teammates had left, the light glistening off of his finely chiseled chest still warm from another intense and awesome football practice. Frank liked two things: football and boning cheerleaders. The school was still buzzing about the big rivalry game last season when he successfully combined the two.

“But Frank was alone right now because he had a secret. A dark secret. Every teenager has them. Like when I was a teenager, nobody knew that I had drilled a hole in the locker room wall so I could see into the girls locker room, except it wasn’t the girls locker room on the other side, it was the janitors’ changing room, only I didn’t know it until much later … which in hindsight explains a lot.

“Frank’s secret, though, was nothing like that. Not even close, really. No. Frank’s secret was much darker. And more exciting. And possibly worthy of a movie deal. Frank waited alone in the locker room because he knew that if he stepped outside he’d have to face it head on.

“Oh, it was easy to take on football opponents in such a manner. The crush of sweat-drenched bodies in their physical prime was nothing compared to what Frank had to face. For Frank was a werewolf. And not the cool, Teen Wolf kind of werewolf. And he found solace only when he was with other werewolves just like him. And there were others like him. Three others to be exact – Kev, Rick and Vladimir. Also, there was Dale. He wasn’t a werewolf but he wore a gorilla suit pretty regularly, so the werewolves let him hang out with them.

“But alas, Frank had done the forbidden and fallen in love with a non-werewolf, thus threatening the delicate balance between the werewolf world and the human world. I’m not really sure what happens if that balance is thrown off. I hired an intern to do some research on it, but he got mad and quit when he found out that the internship wasn’t for Stephen King despite what the ad in the newspaper said. I told him if he kept at it he’d meet Stephen King before the end of the internship, but he didn’t believe me, and with good reason since the claim was based solely on the hope that we’d run into Stephen King on the street on our lunch break one day.

“Frank, though, had fallen in love with Claire and really wanted to take her to prom. He had wanted to take her to Homecoming, but he already had a date lined up. And then he had wanted to take her to the Valentine’s Dance, but he got the flu. And then there was the Sadie Hawkins Dance, but you know how that works where the girl needs to ask the guy and Claire didn’t really want to go so she didn’t ask anybody, but Frank was going to ask her to prom.

“Kev, Rick and Vladimir knew what was on the line if Claire and Frank went to prom and then kissed (and most likely boned). Dale, the kid in the gorilla suit wasn’t really sure what the big deal was, but he liked hanging out with the werewolves and wasn’t about to jeopardize that opportunity. So the four boys would stop at nothing to prevent the likely prom coupling of Frank and Claire.”

I’m no literary expert, but that’s pretty solid if you ask me. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the best part is probably going to be when the kid in the gorilla suit gets rabies and starts running around and biting people. Turns out he wasn’t a kid in a gorilla suit at all, but an actual gorilla.

I’ve got to make some money

I might not be as dashing as the man on the cover, but I'm close.

In a perfect world, there would be no crime or war and I’d be able to Taser people with my mind. As it is, I have to stun them instead with my vast knowledge of Hollywood Squares and my ability to list every color tie that Bob Barker wore during his last 500 episodes of The Price is Right. I’ve got it all on a spreadsheet if you’re interested.

Unfortunately, neither of those things are “marketable skills” and they fail to impress employers when featured on my resume. So somehow I need to acquire some sort of valuable training but I can’t because the stupid community college won’t accept me because technically I didn’t finish high school. In reality, I did finish high school, but they wouldn’t let me graduate because I failed all my classes, which is stupid. I was there. I put in my time.

So I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do since my mom is insisting that I start paying rent to live over the garage. And since my freelance architecture business is growing a little slower than expected I just don’t have a regular source of income. All of the places I’ve applied to have fallen through because they refuse to meet my salary demands, even though $75,000/yr. is an awfully reasonable request if you ask me. Stupid Burger King.

I applied for a job in my friend Barry’s electronics start-up business and he seems like he’s impressed with what I have to offer but just doesn’t have the resources to hire me. Once he makes his first sale, though, he’s going to revisit my resume and see if maybe I can help out building high-definition TVs or something. I’d kind of like to build rockets for him, but he said that’s a little later in his business plan and he’d like to hire an astronaut to help out in that department. But he assured me that if I became an astronaut, he’d be totally down with me joining the yet-to-be-created rocket science department of his company.

That’s a great fall-back, really, but I just don’t know if I have that kind of time, especially since my mom has already started advertising the garage sale to sell all my stuff this weekend. I looked around on-line for some fast-track astronaut classes, but the only ones that I found never called me back even though I gave them my credit card number. Joke’s on them, though, because my card is maxed out to its $450 limit.

Ultimately, though, I don’t really want to be an astronaut. Space freaks me out with all those stars and dead space monkey corpses floating around up there. I just don’t think it’s a very safe environment for someone like me, and on top of that I’m incredibly fair-skinned and it would be a bad idea for me to be that close to the sun. Also, NASA gets mad at me when I call them and ask, “How big is Uranus?”

If you don’t think that’s hilarious, you’re dumb.

Looking back on high school, I did have a meeting with my guidance counselor once, and he asked me what I wanted to be when I was older. When I said I didn’t know, he told me to figure out what I was passionate about and strive to make a career out of it. That’s easy since I’m really only passionate about one thing and that’s mangoes. I found some nice land and tried to start a mango farm, but that ended quickly once Mr. Jenkins found out I had covered his backyard in mango trees without his permission. On top of that, I had accidentally planted apple trees because I don’t actually know what a mango is.

The longer this plays out, the more I realize the community college is my only real option. If I could just show my mom that I’m committed to getting a real job someday, maybe she’ll let me stay. So I’ve started courting the president of the community college in hopes that if I can get into a relationship with her, she’ll let me in despite my “poor academic record” and “questionable criminal history.” (Those are exact quotes from my last rejection letter.)

So far she hasn’t returned my advances, however, and recently she informed me that she was not interested and that her husband worked out. Little does she know that, while I don’t work out now, I finally figured out how to put together that bench press I bought two years ago and I plan to work my way up towards using it by doing a series of light curls and three to five push-ups per day for the next two years. So I’ll be pretty ripped some day.

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