It’s a great commercial, right? Brilliant and inspiring and a total crock of shit.

Seriously, the guy who made this commercial should fucking die. He should be beaten to death with his Clios or forced to eat them all, so that his stomach explodes and he dies really painfully and then gets eaten cock first by a gluttonous gangster and, by the way, if you haven’t seen The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover then do yourself a favor and DON’T. It’s soooo not worth seeing just to get that reference. Wikipedia if you must or just pretend I made a Hunger Games reference or something else current and that I’m not just some weird aging freakazoid who’s pop-culture reference points are still stuck in the 90’s (“Hunger Games”­ that’s a thing, right? I can’t keep up with all these new-fangled “books” you kids are reading today. Back in my day we didn’t bother with any of that “reading” nonsense. We just watched Ren and Stimpy on VHS in our dorm rooms and we liked it!)

Putting aside the back-breaking costs of home ownership and the Horrible Hamster Wheel of Debt that homeowners find themselves running on as they endlessly pursue happiness through home improvement (not to be confused, btw with the Horrible Hamster Wheel of Death, the futuristic game show which is a the center of my new children’s dystopia The Hamster Games  in which 24 adorably chubby critters are forced at gunpoint to run on a really big wheel until all but one of them die as the entire world’s fourth graders look on breathlessly. The Hamster Games is not to be confused with my other children’s dystopia 1984 in which a bunch of adults born in 1984 or earlier completely destroy the world through apathy, greed and neglect and as a result the children are all pretty much fucked from birth. Remember kids- your future is a coloring book and the only crayon is black!)

Putting aside even the superficial, materialistic and consumerist value systems which underlie this commercial’s message: that the secret to happiness is home improvement- the most shameful and destructive thing about this ad is that it makes renovation look like fun. That’s just evil and wrong. Like, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Yellowcake Uranium level evil and wrong (Why did they have to drag sweet delicious yellow cake into their filthy lies? That’s a war crime against Betty Crocker, man. I wonder if Dick Cheney regrets all the bad things he’s done now that he has Trayvon Martin’s heart? #conspiracy?).

The fact is, everything about this commercial is a lie. Renovation isn’t a dance- it’s a blood sport. It’s not effortless, fun or graceful- and it sure as hell ain’t romantic. The last marriage counselor to say “Hey, you know what you guys should do? You should build a deck together!” was sued for malpractice, posthumously. The only thing this commercial gets right is that home improvement can make you old fast- what they don’t tell you is that the entire commercial actually takes place over a three day weekend and that the grey, withered couple at the end are really just in their late 30s.

Here is the real truth about home improvement (SPOILER ALERT: Blech. Puke. Yuck. Gross. Icky. Poopy. Bad.):

It’s Stoopid Expensive

As a homeowner, one of the most important skills I had to master was making my Plumber Face. The secret to a good Plumber Face, as every home owner knows, is showing no emotion when the Plumber tells you how much some seemingly trivial job is actually going to cost, despite your overwhelming desire to laugh in his face, weep hysterically and run out of the room screaming leaving a home-owner-shaped hole in the wall (which you will then have to fix, and trust me, that’s gonna be really expensive. The Looney Toons gang practically bankrupted themselves fixing their drywall. No wonder Wil-E-Coyote resorted to cooking his shoes.) Here’s a demonstration of the Plumber Face in action:

Plumber: OK, let’s see- hooking up the dishwasher, garbage disposal and new faucet- plus reattaching the shower head- that comes out to, oh, just about $2300 for parts and labor. Plus tax.

What I’m thinking: HOLY FUCKING SHIT! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND???  YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!! IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE???? IT’S A JOKE, ISN’T IT???  TELL ME THAT IT’S SOME KIND OF  FUCKING JOKE!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! (weep, weep, weep) AAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!!  (run out of room, leave hole in wall, call drywall guy for repair, freak out about drywall cost, repeat cycle.)

What my Plumber Face shows: $2300, you say? OK. Not Bad. Cheaper than I thought.

(Plumber Face actually comes in handy in many situations:)

What I’m thinking: $10000 TO PATCH MY FUCKING ROOF???? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS??? WHY ARE YOU PATCHING IT WITH- COCAINE AND MINK FUR???  THIS IS TOTALLY FUCKING INSANE!!!!! (weep, weep, weep)

Plumber Face: $10000, you say? OK. Not Bad. Cheaper than I thought.

What I’m thinking: $10 TRILLION DOLLARS TO REBUILD AFGHANISTAN???? HOW MUCH DOES THIS DEMOCRACY CRAP COST ANYHOW???? CAN’T WE JUST BUY THEM ALL A NEW HYUNDAI AND A COACH HANDBAG AND GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE BEFORE THEY KILL ANY MORE OF US??? THEY CAN JUST GO BACK TO KILLING US SLOWLY WITH HEROIN LIKE IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS!!! I’M SURE THEY’D TAKE HEROIN, HANDBAGS AND HYUNDAIS OVER BORING OLD DEMOCRACY ANY DAY OF THE WEEK JUST LIKE MOST AMERICANS WOULD!!!! (if you sub
stitute NASCAR for heroin) (weep, weep, weep)

Plumber Face: $10,000,000,000,000, you say? OK. Not Bad. Cheaper than I thought.

I mean, in most cases the Plumber Face won’t actually save you any money- but it will help you preserve a tiny shred of dignity while you’re getting ready to cook up your shoes and an empty can over a camp fire made from repeatedly revised estimates, credit card receipts and broken dreams (CAMPING TIP: Broken dreams make great kindling!). Of course, in some rare cases, your Plumber Face might actually save a few bucks:

What I’m Thinking: So… let me get this straight- you’ll paint and patch my entire house plus fix all the plaster in the ceiling for a total of $250? DUDE, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND???? YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY IS GOING TO STARVE TO DEATH!!! YOU ARE THE WORST FUCKING BUSINESSMAN I HAVE EVER SEEN!!!!!  I SHOULD BE PAYING 5 TIMES THAT MUCH!!!!

What my Plumber Face shows: $250, you say? Yeah, that’s kind of pricey, don’t you think, pal?

So since everything always turns out to be more expensive than you expect- how can you possibly keep your renovation project on budget? Here’s what I recommend: First make a meticulous budget in Excel including the precise cost for every possible expense related to the project. Then, every time a certain aspect of the project ends up being more expensive than you thought, just go into the budget, revise that line item upwards and resave the Excel file. That way, when the project is done- no matter how expensive it turns out to be- you’ll finish exactly on budget! Who says I’ve learned nothing producing 99-seat theatre (also works for weddings.)

It’s Mad Complicated

Last week I went to see Waiting for Godot. For the first time, it became clear to me that this play is less about sustaining a spark of humanity when confronted with the endless bleak monotony of expectation that occupies so much of human existence than it is about the desperate struggle of the conscious mind to be remembered- to have one’s existence validated over a period of time. That this is not just a play about the idle games we play when confronted with existential paralysis, but a primal scream of the soul to be heard, to be acknowledged, to know that the actions of today will be remembered tomorrow and that we are not merely slaves to the passage of time and the tyranny of decay doomed to wander the earth forever blindly or to awaken each morning beaten and alone and with no recollection of the day we lived before- “Tell him you saw me” – yells Vladamir at the Boy “You’ll tell him you saw me, won’t you? Tell him you saw me!” But the boy just runs away. No promises made. No trace left behind. No proof of having existed at all.

Anyhow, after I got home, my tile guy took me aside and explained to me in somber tones that, while it would be possible for him to put in a kitchen floor that is flat over my warped and gnarled floor boards, there is no possible way on God’s green earth that he could possibly put in a floor that is truly level, due to the age and condition of the house itself. It was a speech I had heard once before, when the installers were putting in the hardwood floor in the rest of my house. Unlike Waiting for Godot, I had absolutely no clue what it meant either time I heard it. What the hell is the difference between “flat” and “level?” Aren’t they just fucking synonyms for each other? If only flooring were as simple and accessible as Samuel Beckett.

There is actually a second type of Plumber Face that comes in handy in these situations:

Tile Guy: So, you see if I put in this Crack-Isolation System and then float the tile over that with the thin set then I can get your floor to go in nice and “flat”-but, you understand that I’m not going to be able to get this floor to ever go in really “level”, cause of how old the house is the state of the foundation. You understand that, right?

Plumber Face: Of course I understand! How impertinent of you to even ask? A five year old child would understand the difference between “flat” and “level”!

What I’m Thinking: Pardon me, kind sir, but I have absolutely no idea what on earth you are talking about. Now, if you’ll excuse me AAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!  (run out screaming – me shaped hole in wall – huge drywall bill-weep,weep,weep.)

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m some kind of reverse-savant (or “idiot”)- able to understand everything in the world except for how my house works. I just wish sometimes I didn’t feel like the guys who are working on my house were speaking a completely different language all the time (I don’t mean Spanish. That’s fine by me. Though I do wish the tile guys would stop pointing at me and laughing. Does anyone know what “idiota loco” means- and can I get it with a crunchy shell made from real Doritos?)

It’s a Serious Pain in the Ass but I Feel Like an Asshole Complaining About it

Last year, when we re-did our hardwood floors, I wrote a blog-post comparing the process of renovation to the Yiddish folktale where the man goes to the rabbi to complain how small and crowded his house is and the rabbi tells him to move all the livestock into the house and then move them out again so he will appreciate how good he had it in the first place. Turns out the Rabbi was kind of kind of a dick.

I thought of this folktale recently while I was desperately trying to shove a 28” wide fridge through the 24” doorway from the kitchen in to the living room as the tile installers looked on impatiently, eager to start ripping out the linoleum on the kitchen floor.

There I was, screaming and swearing and sweating, wrestling with the 500 pound steel behemoth that holds my Activia and beer, twisting and turning and wrenching it, hoping against all odds to find that one and only miracle angle that would allow me to defy the laws of physics and geometry and push it out through the goddamn doorway like shoving a Brontosaurus through a midget’s vagina. I mean, I got it into the kitchen, didn’t I? I didn’t take the damn thing back 80 years in a DeLorean and put it on some vacant lot in Palms so they could build the fucking house around it. Anyhow, I’m tugging and pulling and yanking and shoving- and now the tile guys take pity on me so they’ve jumped in with power tools and they’re taking off the doors and taking off the hinges and trying to help me shove it through and finally we realize that there’s this one random piece of plastic that’s clipped on to the bottom and seems only to exist to make the fridge exactly 5 millimeters too wide to squeeze through the doorway from my kitchen to my living room, so we snap that piece off and shove the fridge though and scrape off all the paint that was left on the doorway and didn’t get scraped off when I shoved the thing into the kitchen in the first place and as we’re wrestling with this beast to get it into place in the living room, while trying to be as careful as possible not to ruin the
hardwood floor, which of course, I just put in last year, and didn’t that experience just absolutely fucking blow? And so, just then, I think of this smug little Yiddish folktale about bringing the goats into the house and I just want to scream to the heavens “I GET IT! I GET IT! ALRIGHT ENOUGH ALREADY! I KNOW I’M THE LUCKIEST MOTHERFUCKING, GODDAMN PERSON ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

I have a house. I have a wife. I have a dog. I have a job. I’ve already won the goddamn geo-political Powerball by being lucky enough to even have a kitchen to renovate. I’M HAPPY GODDAMN IT!!! I’M THE HAPPIEST, LUCKIEST, RICHEST MOST BLESSED MOTHERFUCKING COCKSUCKER THAT EVER FUCKING LIVED ON THE FACE OF THIS BLASTED, COCKSUCKING MISERABLE EARTH ZIPPIDEE MOTHERFUCKING COCKSUCKING DOO-DAH I’M SO FUCKING HAPPY I COULD SCREAM AAAAARRRRRGGGHHH!!!! So, OK, now that I get it. Now that I’ve learned my lesson, now that I appreciate just how good I really have it and I’m totally, absolutely thrilled to death about that – WHY DOES EVERYTHING STILL HAVE TO BE SO MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMN HARD????????? Why can’t I just count my blessings, fix up my kitchen and effortlessly move on with my life like that hateful happy couple in the Lowe’s commercial without having a nervous breakdown and a hernia and an existential crisis? WHY??????”

But, of course, there is no answer to my question. When it comes to renovation, even god almighty doth tremble in silence. “I got you out of Egypt” he seems to say with his silence “good luck with the reno, bitch. Dayenu.”

Home renovation sucks because home renovation sucks and like all sucky things- like standardized tests and kidney stones and Lou Gehrig’s Disease and golf on tv,  it’s gonna suck just as bad whether you learn some kind of lesson or not. Wisdom and enlightenment won’t make the fridge any lighter or won’t get me out of having to wash all my dishes in the bathroom for two weeks because the guys making my countertop are too busy not making my countertop to finish my countertop so I can put in the sink and hook up the water and live like a human being again instead of a refugee squatting in a house with a half-finished kitchen (a pretty nice half-finished kitchen, though- check it out! (just ignore the cardboard countertop. Why won’t you guys finish making the countertop already? Why do you hate me so? Wait. Don’t answer that. Oh yeah, also ignore all the banged up walls where the backsplash is going to go. That needs to get done, too. OK- so it’s still a big mess and it’s nowhere near done but just lie to me and tell me it’s awesome so I don’t start to cry.)).

Of course, wisdom and enlightenment do come in handy when I want to feel bad about myself for complaining about a series of problems which I essentially brought on myself and which, I’m incredibly lucky to even have. Look, I realize that to someone in Haiti today, this blog reads: “Blah, blah, dumb rich American, blah, blah, big whiney brat, blah, blah, oh my god I really hate this guy, blah, blah, voodoo curse.”

Still, just because from a global standpoint all of my problems are actually champagne problems, doesn’t make them any less annoying to me. I mean, if you drink too much champagne you’re still going to throw up all over your date to the prom in the back of the limo before you even get a chance to grab a tit and you’re still going wake up single and a virgin and covered in vomit with a massive hangover and a serious cleaning bill from one pissed off limo driver – so, you see, champagne problems can be every bit as real as actual problems. I’m sure the Haitians would be sympathetic with that.  Ouch, my leg! Sharp stabbing pain in my leg! #wentthere  #whatahack

It’s Super Addictive

At this point, the perceptive reader (if there is anyone left- Hello out there? HELLLO…hello…hello) might be wondering why I would possibly choose to go through the renovation process again if doing the floors last year was such an ordeal. The thing is though, a home renovation project is like a tattoo- they both look super cool when you see them on paper, the process of getting them done is unbelievably painful, they take a long time to recover from- but then when they’re finally done, you forget about the agony and all you can think about is how totally awesome they look and you can’t wait to rush out and get another one and another one and another one- so that after a while, you’ve got new floors, a new kitchen, new bathroom, a butterfly on your ankle, two dolphins kissing on your lower back, a white tiger on your left buttock and the Chinese word for “Warrior” (or is it “Potato”? ) on your neck and all you want to do is get the entire Gospel According to John tattooed on your forearm, a huge, crucified bleeding Christ complete with disciples and Mary and bad Roman soldiers to cover your back, track lighting in the kitchen, French doors and a koi pond (a koi pond is a cry for help.) Plus, tattoos and home improvement both go against Jewish tradition. And, like renovations, tattoos never look the same when they’re done as they did on paper- mostly because my ass isn’t level, it’s flat (actually, it’s neither, it’s discolored and bumpy- but so are my floor boards and the new tile floor looks amazing- just like that picture of Che! I still can’t sit down, though…)

The Secret to Happiness Might Really Be Home Improvement. Damn it!

OK, look, I know that this may be a superficial, materialistic and consumerist position by goddammit, I love my new kitchen! And why not? Why shouldn’t I? I got rid of my dingy linoleum, encrusted with decades of filth and my rough-hewn, log-cabin style piece-of-shit cabinets- so slanted and uneven that I had to slam the door shut so the peanut butter wouldn’t slide out and bonk me on the head. And if being happy about making that change makes my some kind of Ugly American Capitalist Pig-Dog than all I’ve got to say is God Bless America, Woof, Woof, Oink! Hell, we work hard for our money, why shouldn’t we spend it to make our life better. I don’t see why anyone would want to make me feel guilty or bad about that. Ouch, my neck! Sharp stabbing pain in my neck! Alright, I’ll cut it out with the cornball borderline racist voodoo doll humor. #whatcanisayijustlovetheclassics

Of course, the real secret to achieving happiness through home-repair is:

For the Love of God, Don’t Do It Yourself

OK, yes, Mr. IT Professional Know-It-All Super-Genius, you’re probably smarter than some guy who lays tile. You’re probably more successful, better educated, a better problem solver and better informed. But you know what you’re not? You’re not better at LAYING TILE. And that’s what you fucking need. So, just swallow your asshole-geek I’m-a-database-administrator-who-the fuck-are-you-arrogant-pride, tuck your manhood in your shorts, whip out your checkbook instead and hire a professional to do the job right. You’ll be happier, you’ll be saner, your kitchen will get done faster and it will look a hell of a lot
better. Because at the end of the day, nothing beats the sense of satisfaction you get from a job well done by somebody else.

Plus, it’s Passover- and the story of Passover is how the Jews were liberated from slavery and forced labor and building stuff. So, when you think about it the whole central narrative of the Jewish people is freedom from manual labor- and there’s no way in hell I’m going to betray that by hanging cabinets and laying tile. That’s why God gave us the Torah, the telephone and Angie’s List. And- hey, maybe by next Passover I can invite you all over. That is, if we have our countertop by then. Come on countertop guys! I’m not asking you to carve Michelangelo’s David out of engineered stone, it’s just a fucking L-shape with a rectangle cut out. Even I could do it, if it wasn’t for my Bris and ineptitude. You don’t even need to make it level- just make it flat so it matches everything else. I’ll never be able to tell the difference.

Now…what am I going to do about that skuzzy, old bathtub?

#1: There was one bathroom at the front of the plane for the exclusive use of the 8 First Class passengers sitting in Rows A & B.
#2: There were two bathrooms at the rear of the plane to be shared by the remaining 141 passengers in Rows C – Z.
#3: From my vantage point in seat A1, this was great!

From this experience I learned two vital lessons:

#1: Economic inequality is all around us in today’s America
#2: It’s only a problem if you’re poor

Usually, I’m a proud member of the disgruntled poor. Hell, I work in the theatre- we put the “non” in “non-profit”. In my field, the 1% refers to people earning a living wage or the award-winning playwrights that own dishwashers (Albee sold his for gin.) After all, if you work in a building named for a rich person you’re a broke motherfucker yourself. So, on a plane, you’d expect to find me jammed in a middle seat in Broke Motherfucker Class (not even Broke Motherfucker Plus) reading a torn Sky Mall Magazine and dreaming of the massage chairs and air purifiers that I’ll never own, and knowing that while the half-bottle of water and micro-bag of pretzels I was allotted by Cheapskate Air isn’t quite enough sustenance to “keep me alive,” it is exactly enough to make me go to the bathroom, which means I’ll have to shake loose the blood clot forming in my leg, machete my way out of my row, and slog to the back of the plane so I can wait with all the other Broke Motherfuckers for my 30 seconds of solitude pooping in the fluorescent blue water of despair.

This time, though, it was different. This time, when my wife and I were checking in online we realized that we aren’t in fact Broke Motherfuckers and we could afford to spring for the First Class Upgrade. This is partially because I’m one of the very lucky few who actually does earn a living in the theatre, partially because we’ve spent our money wisely and haven’t blown it on frivolities like gym memberships and children (not even those really cheap African ones you can buy on TV for one cup of coffee a day- and I mean a regular cup of coffee, not even a Latte- hell, that would buy you a whole fly-swatting family for a month ) but mostly because my wife isn’t a theatre professional and actually works in the real world (did you know that some companies have these things called BONUSES where just they like, just give you extra money for no reason??? It’s crazy right? I mean, sure we have bonuses in theatre, like finding leftover cheese from the Opening in the green room fridge a week later- but free money, I mean, hell, that’s even better than crusty old brie and stale crackers*! (*depends on the crackers- those little melba toast thingy’s are no fucking joke.))

So we took the upgrade and all I can say is that after 23 years, I finally understood just how the East Germans felt when Communism fell. Gone in an instant was the totalitarian airline regime I had known all my life- the cruel grey world of crammed in, overcrowded seating, bread lines for the bathroom, starvation snack rations, and the bitchy sadism of uniformed Stewards whose unique combination of effeminate mannerisms and ruthless efficiency would make them ideal prison guards in a Jonathan Waters film. All of a sudden, there was free champagne everywhere, ample three-course meals, wide comfortable seats for huge Western asses, exclusive bathrooms, service with a smile- and the space??? Are you kidding me?? Here is a picture of my legroom:

I mean, dude, that’s just nuts. That’s 30% more leg room than I have on my couch. I’ve never been able to look down on a plane and actually see the floor and not just my knees crammed together forcing my testes to crawl upwards like purple chubby twins returning to the womb (I call the left one Bumpy. He’s evil)

Of course, as the West Germans would soon learn, if you want human dignity in a capitalist society, you pay through the nose for it. I have to admit, though, considering the wad of snotty dough that we sneezed out for this trip, they could have made the experience even more luxurious. Here are a couple of suggestions for how the airline can make First Class Flying even better:

Child Free Flights

Before she became a crack-head and died, Whitney said children were the future and at least until the robots or the apes take over, I suppose that crack-head’s probably right. Still, just because the little bastards are the future by default doesn’t mean I want to share a plane with them in the present. And I know a lot of you parents are gonna want to tell me how offended you all are by this, and how anti-child I am, but just take a quick moment while you’re saddling up your high horse and think- if you didn’t HAVE to fly with your kids- would you really choose to do it? I mean, it’s like listening to Kidz Bop-  there’s no way in a million years that you would ever choose to do that except your precious Disney princess insists on playing it over and over and over again until you just want to drive the Honda Odyssey off a cliff and get some fucking peace and quiet for a change.

But you don’t drive the minivan off a bridge. You put the CD on repeat and listen that disturbingly mature 10 year old girl singing “Someone Like You” (yes little girls, the boy who pulls your hair will disappoint you just like Daddy) or the creepy children’s choir version of “California Gurls” for the 10,000th time and hope to God that your daughter isn’t learning everything she needs to know about life from the lyrics (don’t worry. She is. Remember when you learned about virginity from Madonna?) You put up with iCarly, Phineas and Ferb, Radio Disney, “stop touching me”, “I’m bored”, “I’m hungry”, “I have to go to the bathroom”, “are we there yet?”, “no-you’re a mermaid!” (don’t ask), and one unbelievably stupid question about the world after another- and why do you do it? I don’t know- because you love them? And that’s great. But the thing is- the rest of us don’t necessarily love them. And I get that you need to schlep your kids around the country on planes to visit all their relatives before they die (relatives not children) or to visit their deadbeat uncles in California who are too cheap and lazy to fly to the East Coast (cough) I’m just saying that I would consider paying a little bit extra to not have to be on a plane with them people and getting a little peace and quiet when I fly for a change. After all, if anybody is going to be throwing a temper tantrum on the plane and whining non-stop about hungry they are or how much their ears hurt then I damn well want it to be me. And there’s no crack-head loopy enough to claim that I am the future.

Liquids and Shoes

Look, I don’t care how annoying your kids are, I’m not going to blow up the plane. And even if I knew for sure that Rick Santorum, Tim Tebow and Kobe Bryant were all on the flight along with the entire New England Patriots team I still wouldn’t put a bomb in my shoe or mix up explosives from the liquids on my carry-on. I mean, come on, I can barely make waffles from Bisquik, there’s no way I can make bombs from shampoo. So why can’t I just pay a little extra and skip all the nonsense in the security line? Just imagine- being able to fly again wearing high-top sneakers or cowboy boots; being able to carry huge, full-sized tubes of toothpaste, enormous vats of shampoo, lip gloss, hand lotion- all the deodorant of your wildest dreams; travelling with absolute confidence that you’re not going to be seen naked by ANYBODY unless you sign up for the Mile High Club? Now that’s what I call luxury! And with the extra revenue, the airlines can hire some El Al security guards who actually know what they’re doing and not trust $9/hour TSA “agents” who think that scaring and humiliating an old lady from Peoria because she has 4oz of cold-cream in her purse is somehow making the world safe for democracy.

Unlimited use of electronic devices

Come on, we all know that my iPod isn’t going to bring down the plane. Neither is the iPad, Kindle, Android, BlackBerry, Gameboy, Giga Pet, Calculator, Epilady or any other consumer electronic device that a passenger could possibly bring onboard- so why can’t the FAA just get the fuck over it and let us live our lives like it’s 2012 and not 1956. And, if they MUST perpetuate this ridiculous ban on electronic devices, than can’t the airlines just let us slip them a few bucks so that the flight attendants can look the other way. I promise, I won’t say a word to the FAA if you just let me finish my fucking game of Words With Friends or catch up on season 5 of The Wire. You’re all going bankrupt anyhow, so I know you need the cash.

In addition to these little improvements, there are some drawbacks to flying First Class:

Everyone on the plane is gonna totally hate you

The problem with sitting right up front and boarding first is that every single one of the 141 passengers not sitting in First Class is going to walk by you as they board and glare at you. You can’t really blame them- Resentment and Self-Righteousness are the only luxuries they’ve got. Still, it’s no fun being hated- or is it? I recommend going on the offensive and making yourself as loathsome as possible like this:

-Dress up like Uncle Moneybags with tuxedo, top-hat and enormous moustache. You can also rock a monocle and a cane like Mr. Peanut. As long as you’re keeping it classy

-Giggle uncontrollably as you adjust every possible feature of your seat and recline all the way back and forward over and over and over again- or scream out with glee like the pig in the Geico commercial as you automatically elevate your footrest and then put it back down repeatedly. Your call.

-Test out all the massaging features on your seat while you moan like Meg Ryan at Katz’s. Bonus points if you can make your eyes roll upwards into your hear in ecstasy. That’ll really piss off the paupers!

-Call over the steward to pull out the Safety Card from the seat back pocket in front of you because you can’t possibly reach it with your seat belt on and the oceans of leg room in front of you. Then call him Jeeves- he has to put up with it- he thinks you’re rich!

-Slug back drink after
drink and then exclaim loudly: “Thank god that we have our own bathroom- you don’t buy the free champagne, you RENT it!” Then laugh like a hyena and bitch-slap an orphan.

You’re going to have nothing in common with anybody in First Class

The gentleman sitting in the row next to me (he was a businessman, not a BUSINESS, man) was reading a thick glossy copy of Yachting Magazine. The icy-blond stick-insect sitting next to him was perusing that morning’s Wall St. Journal hot off the presses. Compared to them my little Sports Illustrated was like Street Urchin’s Gazette. So- if you do want to feel like you belong in First Class, it’s vital that you bring the right reading material- the Robb Report, Cigar Aficionado, War Profiteer’s Weekly, Scrooge McDuck’s Illustrated Guide to Stuff Worthless Losers Can’t Buy- whatever it is, just make sure it’s chock full of suggestions for how you can spend the enormous piles of money that are bulging out of your vaults without benefitting humanity in any way whatsoever. And whatever you do- don’t read Sky Mall in First Class- you’ve got to act like you’ve already got everything you could possibly want. After all, if you wanted your air purified, your assistant would pre-breathe it for you.

Yes. Being rich makes you an asshole.

OK, is anybody really surprised that millionaires don’t pay more taxes? I mean, come on- having money is awesome- why would they choose to have less of it? And you know, if there was a box on my tax forms that said “Hey, you can get all of your tax money back this year and use it to fly first class all year round” – I would check the living shit out of that box and anybody who says they wouldn’t is just a fucking liar. I would check the box, board the plane and rationalize to myself that I was still a good person.

Of course, I’m not nearly rich enough to have the option not to pay taxes because in America the only people who get to keep all their money are those who don’t actually need it. And, yeah, it’s a completely fucked up system and, yeah, those cocksuckers should have to pay their share- but if you want to get money out of them, you’d better be ready to fight like hell for it so that when those plutocrats see you coming they Romney themselves in terror (Don’t know what that means? Google that and Google Santorum while you’re at it. Let’s make the world see just what Frothy and Shit-Boy are made of.)

So- yeah, flying First Class was great- but unfortunately, since I’m stuck giving half my money to the Government, and it’s not really that much to begin with, I’m not going to be able to do it the next time I fly- which means I’ll be crammed in at the back of the plane with the all the other Broke Motherfuckers. I can’t wait to see all those bloated rich bastards in First Class as I get on the plane- I’m going to give them the glaring of the lifetime! Seriously, who needs champagne and leg room when you’ve got Self-Righteousness and Resentment? I do. Crap. Now I’m a Broke Motherfucker who thinks like a Rich Asshole (i.e. an American.) Oh well, at least I can still rock the monocle. Mr. Peanut ain’t got nuttin’ on me!

This post originally published at FierceandNerdy.com. Republished with permission.

But what if you’re a Christian? If you’re Catholic, then you might fast by giving up Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for Lent. If you’re a Protestant of some sort- well, the closest you’ll get to fasting is running out of Light Miracle Whip so you can’t bring deviled eggs to Bible study or skipping lunch after church because snake handling makes you queasy (I don’t know what you people do.).

So, clearly this doesn’t bode well for the Christian or secular fasting enthusiast- but, fortunately, there is a totally non-religious solution- the Master Cleanse. This invention gives fans of brutal self depravation a near endless opportunity to consume almost nothing save for a repulsive beverage with the sunny nickname “lemonade”, as in “when life gives you self-loathing- make lemonade!” The Master Cleanse doesn’t care what race you are or what god you worship or whether you bother to worship any at all- it just wants you to starve- a fast even Christopher Hitchens could have loved.

The holidays in February are just like the Master Cleanse- except they encourage you to fill your body with toxins rather than empty it. From Groundhog Day and Super Bowl Sunday to Valentine’s Day and President’s Day- the month is filled with special occasions that do not discriminate by religion or ethnicity and instead celebrate the All American universal traditions of rodent worship, overindulgence, gambling and exchanging Whitman’s Samplers for sex. Here’s a quick round-up of all this month’s bull-shit holidays:

Groundhog Day- Feb 2nd:
There was a time in this country when critters of all sorts were used to tell the future: if the canary keeled over, it was time to leave the coal mine; if the rabbit died there were wedding bells in your future; and if a gerbil was discovered in your rectum, you would be a punch line for generations to come (Buddhsim, shmudism- you’ll always be gerbil boy to me.) Groundhog Day is the last remnant of this once proud tradition. On Groundhog Day a rodent named “Phil” awakens from his slumber, pops his head out of the ground and watches the Weather Channel for 20 minutes. If conditions around the world seem normal to him, he buries his head back in the sand and votes Republican. If, however, he see’s what’s happening and loses his shit, he buys Al Gore’s book and campaigns for climate change legislation until he is hunted down by Mitt Romney and strapped to the top of his car until he “Romneys” all over the place in terror. (Wondering what that means? Google “Romney” to find out. Then tell everyone to Google it over and over again.)

Of course, Groundhog Day is rather quaint and outdated given today’s fun-sized climate conditions so, it’s going to be phased out in favor of a new weather holiday: Plummeting Bird Apocalypse Week. If you want to remember how this new holiday works- just use this little rhyme:

If the birds fall from the sky,

Heat wave’s comin’ go outside

If the fishies turn up dead,

Ice storm’s comin’- stay in bed!

Super Bowl Sunday- Feb 5
When I was a high-school freshman, I was regularly beaten up by football players even though I let them copy off of me in Biology. These men among boys assumed that because I was smaller, weaker and less athletic than them, I was inferior and could be abused and exploited- and I went right along with that assumption. Now that I am older and wiser, of course, I know that they were absolutely right. Every Sunday I watch guys like the assholes who used to pummel me make millions playing football on my massive 27” CRT screen while I eagerly cheer them on like a needy puppy desperately begging for table scraps of vicarious glory. Of course, I can take solace in the fact that none of the actual football players who bullied me (that’s right, YouTube generation, you didn’t invent bullying, you just went viral whining about it) actually made it to the NFL, or for that matter, out of their parents’ basements. Bloated on canned beer and stale memories, looking like the Thanksgiving Day Parade Float of their former selves, they too watch the big game with envy knowing that the closest they’ll come to a victory trip to Disney World is a Saturday morning in Lake George with the sullen brats they never see because that cold-hearted bitch of a former cheerleader who thinks she’s still hot-shit even though her tits are all saggy won’t give them more than one weekend a month and the Pakistani asshole who bought the JiffyLube franchise won’t let them trade shifts after the last time. Honestly, I can’t wait for my 25^th High School reunion so I can go home and rub my success in their fat fucking faces. I hope they like me now J

Last year, Steeler fans and  Laker fans experienced the emotional roller coaster that goes along with supporting a defending world champion led by a rapist. This year, Tom Brady inspired the nation by showing us how to lose the Right Way, namely by having his supermodel wife fight all his battles for him since his mommy was unavailable.

Of course, the highlight of the Super Bowl was the Halftime Show. Legendary Jewish performer and Kabala Scholar Esther used an army of Egyptian clad male dancers to teach valuable lessons about Passover while simultaneously quintupling the gay population of Indianapolis- Let my girlfriends go! I have to admit that I loved her performance. Sure, it was painful watching her shake her menopausal coochie in LMFAO’s faces like getting hit on by your roommate’s drunk mom in your dorm room and, sure I was worried about her hips everytime one of her nurse’s aide’s helped her complete a gymnastic dance moves- but, honestly, I didn’t care. All I knew is that when she started singing Like A Prayer with Cee-Lo Green and a Gospel choir I got goosebumps and was on the edge of my seat. Like baby-boomers watching Paul McCartney, all I knew was that I was hearing one of the voices of my generation sing on the biggest stages of all, and even though she didn’t quite sound like she used to and couldn’t dance to save her life, it didn’t matter. I heard her call my name, and it felt like home.

My Mother’s Birthday- Feb 6
Happy birthday Mom! Sorry again about the whole naked with the pool boy crack in the last post. Anyone who knows you would of course know that I was just kidding and it was really the gardener. (I stole that joke from my mom, BTW- that’s how awesome she is!)

Boy scout Day- Feb 8
I’ve got one word for anyone surprised by the number of gays in the Boy Scouts: “neckerchief.” They might as well make them wear a fucking tiara.

Valentine’s Day- Feb 14
Valentine’s Day is a cynical, exploitive holiday made up by greeting card companies, stuffed animal manufacturers, jewelers and chocolatiers designed to make people in relationships feel guilty if they don’t buy each other presents and to make single people feel like inadequate failures for not being in a relationship. I love it! I’m an underpaid, out of shape arts administrator with a tiny house and a hairy back- I feel like an inadequate failure most of the time- why shouldn’t I feel like a winner one day a year for being happily married for over 10 years and let all the rich, pretty single people with slammin’ pads and manscaping regimens feel like losers for a change. And what’s wrong with getting presents? I love presents! Russell Stover hearts full of nougaty goodness, stuffed apes in boxer shorts that talk when you squeeze them, nattily dressed little bears from Starbucks with hearts on their outfits and a song in their hearts- what the hell is wrong with any of that? Even if we don’t exchange gifts, it’s all good- because I know I get to spend time with the love of my life and you don’t. The Christians have Easter, the Irish have St. Patrick’s Day but on Valentine’s Day- I feel like CVS has been redecorated just for me and the world is my warm, fuzzy oyster.

I realize this sentiment of exclusivity is somewhat at odds with the whole “universal holidays” theme of this post- but Valentine’s Day does not discriminate by age, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation- that is, until Proposition V passes and gay people are required to refer to it as Heart Shaped Partnership Day so that they don’t taint the sanctity of Valentine’s Day.

President’s Day- Feb 20^th
On this holiday we celebrate George Washington and we remember how this great nation was founded by rich, white men who didn’t want to pay taxes on crops grown by slaves on land stolen from Indians. We also celebrate Abraham Lincoln who made a bunch of dumb crackers lose their shit by telling them they couldn’t keep slaves and more and later got shot by an actor who was promoting his one person show Sic Semper Tyranus: Daddy Never Loved Me so I Shot the President – all while wearing the most awesome hat ever worn by a president and a beard any douchebag hipster would be proud to call his own.

Of course, for me, President’s Day is the unofficial start of BBQ season, but that’s because I live in Southern California so I’m not freezing my balls off like the rest of you suckers. Suck it, groundhog! How’s about six more weeks of kiss my tanned ass?

Hope you enjoyed this round-up of secular bullshit holidays. Pretty soon, it’ll be time for Purim, Passover and the rest of the spring holidays- until then- happy Plummeting Bird Apocalypse Week!

This post originally published on FierceandNerdy.com. Republished with permission.

Sadly, the only game on this past weekend was the Pro-Bowl, the NFL’s annual Make-A-Wish Foundation trip to Hawaii for really good players on terminally bad teams. As football games go, it’s only slightly less exciting than Joe Paterno’s Memorial Service, but still more fun than watching the Jets this past year. DAMN YOU SANCHEZZZZZZ! STOP SUCKING!!!!!! PLEEAAAASE!!! YOU’RE KILLING ME!!!!!!! Anyhoodles, with the Pro-Bowl as my only option for sporting distraction, I decided the time had come to face my stinky demons. So I rolled up my sleeves and got ready to clean out the festering vegetable drawer in my soul.

Let’s be clear, though- I know that I’m very lucky. I have a wife that I love, job I enjoy, dog who puts up with me and a house which I own. In many parts of the world, my problems would be considered “champagne problems” – or, more to the point, “guy who has food and whose family wasn’t butchered by rebels in a brutal civil war” problems. Still, just because I’m a couple of floors higher on Maslow’s Pyramid (Psych 101, bitchez!) (that’s all I remember) than the next poor schmuck in Darfur doesn’t mean that I don’t have real, legitimate problems. Like, for instance, I’ve got a whole season’s worth of Fringe episodes on DVR and I’m deathly afraid that I’ll run into the only other person on the face of the earth who actually watches the show and he’ll totally ruin it for me by telling me whether Peter is still alive on some alternate dimension or if he’s disappeared completely or whether there’s a huge and completely fabulous catfight between Olivia and Faux-livia when Olivia finds out about Faux-livia’s baby, if they can even remember who the father of the baby is because the Watchers totally made Peter disappear from existence after he got into the machine and went back in time to heal the rift between the universes and if you have any clue whatsoever what the hell I’m talking about then please DO NOT FUCKING TALK TO ME ABOUT IT. LA LA LA LA LA LA. I CAN’T HEAR YOU, I CAN’T HEAR YOU. I swear I’m going to get caught up next weekend just as soon as I’m done watching Castle. Oh, Nathan Fillion, you roguishly handsome devil, you. Me-ow! Huh. That got a little weird there for a second didn’t it? Let’s just pretend that never happened and talk about manly stuff, instead. Go sports! Scotch and cigars! Beef, it’s what’s for dinner!

Of course, the biggest crisis I face this year is that I was born in 1972 so 2012 is the Year I Turn 40. Sure, I won’t be turning 40 until October, but I can’t help it if that’s the anxiety-stink that comes out of my brain when I open that door (that, and whether Nathan Fillion will find out I’ve been going through his garbage. How may Lean Cuisine meals can one man eat for God’s sake? I’m worried about him. I wish I could give him a call or go to his house or sing under his balcony wearing only a giant heart costume again like Ned Flanders. Damn you restraining order! Uhm, I mean, NASCAR Rocks!) So- for any other poor son of a bitch out there turning 40 this year, here are some great ways that you can drive yourself completely insane with paralyzing anxiety, crippling doubt and mortal dread for the whole year leading up to your big happy birthday. For those of you for whom turning 40 is still in the distant future, this is a great chance to feel extra super special smug about how young you still are and also, if you don’t mind, to please go and fuck yourselves:

Make a list of all the amazing things you want to do before you turn 40 – then don’t do any of them and obsess about what a loser you are while you sit on the couch watching CSI: Miami and your life slips away.

That Great American Novel that you’ve always dreamed about writing– don’t write it. Who are you kidding? With your boring, crappy life, you don’t have anything worthwhile to write about anyhow. Just keep going to work every day until you die.

Age is only a number– and 40 is a really high fucking number. How high? Well, here are some great math games you can play if you want to drive yourself crazy:

-When I was born in 1972, a 40 year old would have been born in 1932. 19-FUCKING-32! Are you kidding me? That’s when Elizabeth Taylor was born. That’s when Johnny Cash was born. That’s when PAT MORITA was born. When a baby looks at me, I’m fucking Mr. Miyagi to him. By which I mean old, not Asian. I mean, I might look Asian to a baby, too, but that’s only because babies are stupid.

-My niece was born in 2003. I was born in 1972. That means that the events of 9/11 to her are like the Kent State shooting, the completion of the World Trade Center and the invention of the floppy disk to her. In other words, shit that she has to look up on Wikipedia, like I just did. Because otherwise she’d have absolutely no idea what happened two years before she was born. I sure as hell didn’t. Even more alarming- it means that the crucial and iconic Monorail episode of the Simpsons is as ancient to her as the Kennedy assassination was to me- though, of course, the Monorail episode is far more historically significant. After all, there IS nothing on earth like a genuine, bonafide, electrified Monorail. What did I say? MONORAIL.

-I completed my first internship in professional theatre in the spring of 1991. My company currently “employs” several interns born in that year or later. This means two things: 1. I’m old. 2. Those lazy little entitled millennial punk ass brats better make my photocopies and move my boxes and get my coffee, because I’ve been paying my dues to the heartless bitch goddess that is the American Theatre for more than 20 fucking years now and those little shits haven’t paid squat. SO HOP TO IT INTERNS. CHOP CHOP. TIME IS MONEY (ok, so, time is credit, actually. You think we really pay those little fuckers? That’s just crazy-talk.)

You’re only as old as you feel– and I feel like ass-cake most days. When I was in my late teens and early 20’s I did everything in my power to make mys
elf feel as amazing as possible as much of the time and as a result, I felt like crap most of the time. I won’t go into details here, suffice it to say that Orange Jubilee Mad Dog and gravity bong hits of Hudson Valley Dirt Weed are not part of any conceivable complete breakfast, even if you combine them with Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch and Oriental Flavor Ramen. Still, whether I was high as a kite or puking off the balcony, I didn’t care- the important thing was not to feel normal. Normal was as boring as could be and was to be avoided in all costs.

Now, most days, I’d fucking kill for normal. Normal is the new Wasted. Just waking up without back soreness, headache, stuffed nose, irritable bowels, knee pain, dry mouth, itchy palms, low energy, inexplicable rage, anxious stomach or abundant mucous is better than any drug I can imagine (except maybe Ecstasy – but, come on, that’s Ecstasy. They don’t call it Ecstasy cause it makes you feel sad. Sigh. Good Times. I could really use some of that spinal fluid back now.)

And, sure, I could cut out red meat, stop drinking caffeine and alcohol and get off my ass and exercise for a change, but then I would have to admit that I’m getting older and I need to take better care of myself, and that would run contrary to my primary coping mechanism for turning 40, which is:

Deny, Deny, Deny!

OK, Dude. Listen. There is no way in hell that I’m turning 40 this year. I wear jeans every day. I like loud music. I have no table manners. I never buy clothes. I only get haircuts when I look like the Unibomber. I still say “DUDE” for the love of god! There’s no way that I’m, like, a real 40 year old. Real 40 year olds live in two story houses with two car garages and have trees in the yard that they know all the names of. They mow their lawns, wax their cars, tuck in their shirts, coach Little League, read Consumer Reports, stay tuned for 60 Minutes right after football (except on the West Coast), laugh at Tim Allen, read biographies of rich people, have a favorite golfer, think about fiber, order off the healthy conscious menu at TGI Friday’s, go to TGI Friday’s, like TGI Friday’s, wear ties even when nobody’s dead, love aluminum siding, own multiple screwdrivers, fight with their neighbors about where the property line is and who trims the bougainvillea that grows on the white picket fence between houses, want power tools for Christmas, call it “the Twitter”, and think it’s important for athletes to be role models because children are our future which is why they care deeply about bicycle safety. Does that fucking sound like me? I think bike helmets are for pussies, I’d rather get gout than power tools for Hanukkah (and it’s statistically more likely. Sweeeeeet, delicious chopped liver sandwiches. Plus, let’s face it, no one has ever gotten power tools for Hanukkah, unless they were a gift from their goysiha in-laws), and am more likely to wax my ass cheeks than to ever wax a car (are cars even hairy? Cause my ass cheeks sure are! See- would a real 40 year old blogger write that?? It would totally screw up his post about the evils of dry-rot.) I mean, sure, I was born 40 years ago- but there’s no way in hell I’m one of those 40 year olds. I’m really just a big 22 year old who has male pattern baldness and gets colonoscopies. And who hates all the other 22 year olds for being a bunch of worthless brats. BACK TO WORK, INTERN! MY FEET AIN’T GONNA RUB THEMSELVES. Kids today.

And once you’re done denying the inevitable truth, there really is only one coping strategy left for turning 40, which is:

Suck it up

Yeah, sure, 40 is old. But come on. It’s not that old. I mean, I look at it this way- no matter how old I am, my sister is always going to be four years older- and that’s fucking ancient. I mean, sure 1972 was a long time ago- but 1968- that’s the year of the moon landing, the Chicago convention, the Tet offensive- all sorts of crap that I care nothing about because it happened before I was born and I’m much too young and hip to know anything about it. Only an OLD person (like my sister) would care about that stuff- and no matter how old I get, I can take comfort in knowing I’ll never be as old as her.

Plus, look at all the people that made their greatest contributions to society after they turned 40- Raymond Chandler, Grandma Moses, the Old Man on Pawn Stars, lots of people. I mean, sure almost all successful people had already made a major impact before they turned 40 and were already on the downward slope to ignominious failure and bloated death on the toilet by this advanced age- but, a statistically insignificant percentage of people did become wildly successful only after turning 40- and as long as the glass is .001% full, it’s not 100% empty! So- go on, write that novel, do all the crazy crap on your list. The worst thing that’ll happen is that nobody will care or you’ll die in a terrible base-jumping accident and no one will be able to identify your horribly mangled corpse without checking dental records. How’s that for some fucking optimism? They ought to put a naked picture of me hanging on to a branch on a poster with big 70’s bubble writing that says “Hang in there, Baby!”  Maybe Nathan Fillion could hang it in his boudoir! Huh. Weird again. I love football!

And, speaking of football, thank God the Superbowl is this week, so I can slam the mental fridge door shut on my squirming neurosis before they escape and take over my brain. Plus, I think there were some radishes buried under the bean sprouts I bought for my aspirational salad that have been there so long they’ve become sentient and are now writing a Parks and Rec style one camera sitcom about life in the fridge called Bottom Drawer. Fucking LA produce. So derivative. Anyhow, I’m super excited for the big game- particularly looking forward to a battle of wits between the two most joyless coaches in the history of professional sports, Tom “I’m not happy to see you, that’s just my prostate” Coughlin and Bill “I wear no sleeves on the outside because I have no arms to hug myself with on the inside. Oh daddy, why didn’t you hug me?” Belichick.  And, I’m particularly excited to see Putty Face Manning humiliate Chin Butt Brady for the second time in five years. Fuck the Patriots!

Of course, what I’m really most looking forward to watching Peyton Manning lead the Jets to an undefeated season and Superbowl glory next year. I just hope the stadium is finished in Make Believe Land in time for the big game- it’s going to be right on the corner of Gumdrop Road and The Celtics Still Have a Shot at the Title This Year Lane.

By next Superbowl, though, I’ll be well on my way to turning 41, so maybe I won’t have as much need for distraction and denial. Maybe I’ll even start tucking in my shirt and learn to appreciate power tools. Now that
’s what I call make-believe!

This post orignally posted on fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission.

I have to admit- it was a lot of fun voting FOR somebody in 2008– the surging pride I felt when I saw his bumper stickers, the sense of self-satisfaction I felt when I donated an insignificant amount of money to the campagin and got a personalized thank-you email (with another request for money) right away, actually watching the election results come in with eager anticipation that things might get better rather than the usual sickening dread that things are about to get a hell of a lot worse. I do feel a little guilty, though, that all of us wanted him to be president so bad that none of us warned him what an incredibly shitty country we would be when he took over. As a result, he’s like a man who married his dream girl after two long years of courtship only to have her go off her meds the minute they moved into the White House. Now, instead of joining him for long walks on the beach and soulful conversations about Hope and Change on the bearskin rug by the Lincoln Bedroom fireplace (the Clinton rug), she just sits around the house in a ratty red, white and blue bathrobe with one slipper on, her socks pulled all the way up and lipstick on her teeth, drinking vodka out of a coffee cup at 8 o clock in the morning and screeching incoherently about Socialism and Death Panels and locking herself in the bathroom and threatening to flush his check book down the toilet if he doesn’t show her his birth certificate because the voices in her head (Fox News) told her he’s a dangerous Commie foreigner. Either that or screaming at him for being a total sellout because the other voices in her head (MSNBC) told her that he’s a Republican patsy.

Seriously, guys, we do need to think of a way to thank him for all the shit we’ve put him through as a country, like maybe in 2016 we could all chip in and buy him Sweden as a going-away present, or maybe just get him a really big ant farm. Since ants can work together to achieve a common goal, it’s a hell of a lot better than working with Congress.

Then again, if we all really wanted to thank him, we could decide as a country to just stop acting like COMPLETE RAVING ASSHOLES ALL OF THE FUCKING TIME. But that’s just crazy talk. Ant farm’s the way to go.

BTW- if Republican politicians hate the government so much- why do they try so hard to work there? I mean, come on Republicans, I know nothing beats that sweet government health plan and you’ve had trouble in the past getting private insurance because ignorance, stupidity, hypocrisy and extreme hosebaggery are all considered pre-existing conditions- but, hey, thanks to Obamacare, you guys don’t have to worry about that anymore! (Ron Paul still thinks you should die) So now all of you tea baggers are free to follow your heart and take a job that will better suit your skills and make you happy- like maybe: evil, moustache twirling slumlord; or master of a Dickensian orphanage (Congress says gruel is a vegetable); or maybe even owner of a cut-rate, crooked nursing home (The Eric Cantor Home for Bedsores: “We’ll love your grandparents as though they were our very own cats”)- really any job that lets you guys get back to your roots and connect with real, honest-to-goodness, beer-commercial, down-home, regular-working-American-folks and fuck them up the ass in person.

Right. Uhm, what was I writing about again before I turned in to a crazy old leftist in a rocking chair with a shotgun (Off my lawn, John Boehner!)? Oh yeah, 2008. Voting for someone I like instead of against somebody I hate. That was cool. What does that have to do with football, again? Oh right, Tebow. Fuck that guy. Hate him. It’s not just run of the mill, Maroon 5, Bruno Mars, Larry the Cable Guy, Two and a Half Men, Litte Mermaid, Glee, Adele, Tim Duncan, Precious Moments, baseball, golf, Oprah’s book club, Al Michaels, Joe Buck- won’t somebody please for the love of god stick this guy’s head in the toilet and make him stop talking so I don’t have to hear his stupid douchebag voice any more – kind of hate. No, this is that special type of hate I keep locked away in a black metal box in the back of my heart filed between my secret, shameful love of Ke$ha (Eric $im$? Awe$ome!) and my pathological fear of birds (birds are evil). This is a Randall Terry, Operation Rescue, Prop 8, Pat Robertson, Focus on the Family kind of hate. Not mere Mitt Romney hate –  it’s Rick Santorum hate.

But, did I hate him enough to cheer for the Patriots in the playoffs?

As many of you may know, I’m not really a fan of the Patriots. Well, that’s not exactly correct. I’m not really a fan of genital warts, I can’t fucking stand the Patriots. They embody everything I don’t like about a team- success, consistency, teamwork, dedication- as a Jets fan it’s enough to make me puke. I much prefer scrappy, inconsistent underdogs with a penchant for stunning victories and spectacular implosions, kind of like my ole drunk pa, the Jets. Of course, unlike last year, where old drunkie actually managed to get my hopes up that he was finally going to live up to all his promises before falling off the victory wagon and humiliating himself in Pittsbugh, leaving me all alone at the zoo with a melting ice-cream waiting for him to come until the sun went down, the Jets pretty much spent this whole season on an epic bender of mediocrity and braggadocio stumbling around the country, doing shots of Sanchez all night long and puking up the football all over the gridiron. Hopefully, now that they’ve cleared up that nasty Schottenheimer infection they picked up on the street, they’ll better next year- but I fear that a full-frontal Rexotomy may truly be the only solution.

The really frustrating thing is that Tebow should be the sort of athelete I like. He’s fun to watch, scrappy, inventive and maddeningly inconsistent. Hell, I wouldn’t even mind if he was religious, if he’d just shut the fuck up about it and didn’t make commercials designed to make 15 year old rape victims feel like they’re going to hell for making intensely personal, difficult choices that are nobody else’s damn business. It’s the ultimate underdog story ruined by Evangelical Christianity. As disappointing as finding a kick-ass love ballad on the radio and turning it all the way up only to discover the singer is totally in love with Jesus, not Tawny Kitaen like he should be. Or, it’s like friending the awesome skater chick from High School on Facebook only to see her post about making a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas to teach all her kids that Christmas is all about Jesus’ birthday and not all the fun stuff (which is either a super-creepy teaching tool or a fiendishly clever way to get cake, since, let’s face it, he ain’t gonna be having any. It’s like the hot-fudge sundae and bottle of scotch I leave out for Elijah each year, just in case…)

So, clearly I had no choice but to root for the Patriots. What was that like for me? Well, remember before I started ranting incoherently (birds will kill you) when I talked about voting for Obama and how great that was? Cheering for the Patriots was exactly not that. It was more like voting for John Kerry, a desperate show of support for the plastic Masshole of last resort against the scrappy, right-wing populist moron. Unlike Kerry, though, whose campaign slogan was “Seriously, dude? This guy? Oy Vey.” (Mitt Romney just stole it) the Patriots actually crushed their opponent like a bulldozer rolling over a popsicle stick crucifix.

And, yeah, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it was kinda fun to see how the other half lives for a change. Judge me if you want, but every Jedi knight secretly wants to try on the helmet just once and see what delicacies are available at the Death Star cafeteria (Dark Side of the Fudge Pudding- don’t miss it. Plus the unlimited salad and breadsticks. There’s no Star Wars pun there- they’re just really good breadsticks.) Like the Homeless Guy in They Live, it was a chance to put on a tux and celebrate the good life with our alien overlords; Brady and Bellichek (Don’t be fooled, man- put on the shades, man! They actually make Belicheck handsome and distinguished. When you put on the shades, he’s actually wearing long-sleeved sweatshirts). Anyhow, the point is – yeah, sure it was fun to watch the hyper-efficient machine of doom utterly dismantle a lessser opponent, and to actually be able to cheer for them for a change.

You know, there may be something to this whole Tim Tebow family values thing. My sister is an avid fan of the Patriots, probably because it helps validate her terrible choice to settle in Worcester, MA (motto: “The Armpit of America- we wish.”) Usually, when the Patriots are playing, we spend the entire game saying horrible things to each other online. Sat night, though, something magical happened. Though our living rooms were 3000 miles apart, Tim Tebow brought us together as a family. When she posted “Suck it Focus on the Family” I enthusiastically liked her post. And when I posted: “To all the Tebow apologists- how did you like that Focus on the Family commercial? Still think this is harmless? Donate to Planned Parenthood while you still you have the chance to choose who you donate to. Oh, and fuck Tim Tebow.” She supported me with relish and glee. I even liked her post “45-10- Yeah Patriots!”. It’s like for one miraculous night all differences were put aside and we came together as one unified family, brought together by our desire to gaze upon Tebow’s loving smile and watch it be ground into the frigid dirt of Gillette stadium by the Patriots’ defense.

So am I now a man transformed? Am I like Saul on the road to Foxboro converted to Patriots Paul and destined to spend my days wandering the land spreading the Good News of Brady?

Not fucking likely. Have fun with the Ravens next week, Massholes! They’re going to eat you alive (birds eat eyeballs).

As for Obama, I’m still looking forward to voting FOR him this year. He may not be able to walk on water but he knows how to skate on thin ice and sometimes, that’s all you can ask. Maybe America will actually take her Lithium so he can get something done before 2016. It’s more likely, though, that we’ll keep being crazy and the country will go to the birds. (Birds vote Republican. EVIL!)

This post originally published on fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission.

Don’t get me wrong- there are some types of god-talk I really enjoy. I’m a big fan of the up-all-night pseudo-philosophical college-freshman style bullshit sessions. The kind of conversations you have when you combine an eighth ounce of kind bud, a really clean bong and a semester of Intro to Comparative Religions so that you’re ready to unleash such earthshaking revelations as “Did you realize that all religions basically say the SAME THINGS???” (gasp!) (“If you think about it, man, Jesus is just Buddha with six pack abs and a guilt complex. Are you going to eat that Pop-Tart?”) and you quote such noted religious authorities as Jonathan Livingston Seagull and XTC to support your arguments (“Did you make mankind after we made you? And the DEVIL, too??? Dear God!”) What can I say? I’m a sucker for this kind of talk. I guess I’m just an overgrown college freshman at heart- even though when I try and hang out with college freshmen they flee in terror like extras in the 50’s sci-fi classic Attack of the 40 Year Old Lame-Ass.

So, sure, I’m ok discussing religion on an academic/secular/philosophical/historical/literary/stoned out of my mind sort of level – but what makes me uncomfortable is the difficult subject of Faith. As a card-carrying member of Generation X (the card is totally blank except for the word “card” in the middle. You can get them on Jeanine Garofalo’s website) I view any overt demonstration of “faith”, “conviction” or “sincerity” with sarcasm, contempt and “air quotes.” After all, I’m part of the apathy generation- the ones who wore flannel and ripped jeans because we couldn’t be bothered to give a crap about how we looked (aah, those were good times. Corporate Casual can suck my dick)- we’re bored, ironic and alienated- over it before we could give “it” a chance to show us just how much “it” sucks. Mock first, ask questions later- that’s how we roll (NOTE: ironic use of “how we roll”). Hell, we’re so ironic that one of the anthems of our generation is a song which incorrectly defines the whole concept of irony in a totally ironic fashion (10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife? Trust me, I’ve accidentally bought that bag of plastic silverware at Target and it’s not ironic, just a big pain in the ass at a picnic.) I mean, I can’t even have a serious conversation about remodeling my kitchen, how the hell am I supposed to talk seriously about believing in “God”?

It doesn’t help that a lot of true-believer types are totally cray-cray. Whether it’s ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel throwing rocks at a second grade girl for showing too much skin by wearing short sleeves (I wish that was hyperbole), Islamic suicide bombers or Rick Perry wearing his Brokeback Mountain ensemble to talk about how being a Christian means that it’s ok to hate gay people  (now THAT’s irony. Are you watching, Alanis? Or are you dead? I haven’t really been paying attention. NOTE TO SELF: Google “Alanis Morissette Dead?” ) hardcore religious types aren’t doing God any favors. And, honestly, God’s not helping himself any by letting them get away with it. I mean, I don’t want to tell that guy how to run his universe, but if a whole bunch of people were acting like complete assholes in my name, I’d want everyone to know that I had nothing to do with it. Hell, I practically stopped speaking to one of my friends because I referred him for a construction job and he stole a pair of jeans from the J.C. Penny’s they were working on- just imagine how pissed off I’d be if he blew himself up on a bus. Not that I’m comparing myself to God or anything, but, I’ve got a beard and some pretty crazy friends so I know how he must feel some days (though I wouldn’t hang out with guys like Rick Santorum and Osama Bin Ladin no matter how much they kissed my ass. You know, for somebody who’s all powerful, God can be pretty desperate. It’s like- hey, dude, maybe if you learned how to look in the mirror and praise yourself you wouldn’t need us to constantly be validating you. Seriously, dude- five times a day, three times a day- come on man, it’s exhausting already. I don’t know if eternal salvation is worth it if I’ve got to worship a needy whiner like Adele my whole life. Seriously, God, if that’s the way you’re going to be, then I don’t know that I want to pray to Someone Like You.)

OK- so- I’m not comfortable talking about faith, not at all sure I believe in any type of God (or would even want to hang out with him if it actually turns out that he exists), not crazy about super religious types and I’m a hopelessly incurable wiseass who can’t take anything seriously and feels obligated to pour scorn and derision over everything I encounter like Angry Ranch Dressing on the browning limp lettuce of adult disappointment. So- why am I looking for a synagogue? Am I I that desperate for free hunks of spongecake and tiny cups of wine on Saturday mornings (Worst. Brunch. Ever)?

The truth is- I don’t know. But, I do know that despite my sarcasm and agnosticism, I still lead a mean Seder, fast on Yom Kippur, light candles on Hanukkah and get drunk on Purim (that one may just be a happy coincidence). I don’t know whether my Jewishness is cultural, spiritual, social, or nostalgic, but I do know that it’s an inextricable part of me and one that seems to be calling for further exploration in the coming year. Wow. So that’s what it’s like to be sincere about something. I feel like one of those over-earnest-Gen-Y-wide-eyed-Millennial-Martian-types. Ick. I need a shower. Somebody put on Jane’s Addiction quick before I feel the urge to start giving a crap about the world and Occupying something.

So- over the next few months, my plan is to try out a variety of Temples around Los Angeles in an effort to find one that I like and document my search here on JCast. I’m open to all suggestions- so if you’re in LA or know of a Temple around here- please feel free to suggest. I do have a few general preferences:

Hebrew, Hebrew, Hebrew and lots of it: I don’t want to hear a bunch of polite, back and forth cracker-ass responsive readings in English. If the services don’t sound like a room full of bears choking on salmon and coughing up phlegm- I’m not buying. The fact is, Judaism is like Opera- the less you understand it, the cooler it all sounds. Trust me, you post-Vatican II Catholics don’t know what you’re missing.

Egalitarianism: I may not seem like much of a feminist, but I’ve been to an Indigo Girls concert or two, so I can’t exactly throw my support behind some temple that hides all the women behind a wall and makes them all wear wigs. I realize the logic is that the women should be hidden so that the men aren’t distracted- but I don’t think it’s fair to use the “she was asking for it defense” to explain why you had a boner during services. Seriously, dude, if you’re praying with your dick, it’s nobody’s fault but yours.

Intermarriage-Friendly: I may have made some foolish or questionable life-choices, but there’s no way I’m going to let someone judge me for the best damn decision I’ve ever made. Damn it, another sincere thought. At this rate, I’ll have to turn in my “card”.

Supportive of Israel: but not like Super Crazy-Ass Supportive of Israel: Israel’s a great country. I spent some time there growing up and I love it as much as anybody. But good countries, like good people, can do some pretty stupid things some-times and unless we can honestly talk about these things, the situation’s never going to get any better.

Friendly and Welcoming: Look, if I wanted to feel worthless and inadequate, I’d be writing a series about joining a gym. I’m not looking to join some Congregation Gates of Money or Temple Beth Judgie-Pants- I want to find somewhere that I actually enjoy going to and doesn’t make me feel like I’m trying to get into Sky Bar. No Jews are cool enough to be worth that.

Right, so there you have it- my first seriously Jewy post. I hope this didn’t make you feel too uncomfortable. Trust me, this was way better than showing you my genitals, or “Judah and the Maccabees” as I now unabashedly call them. Wish me “luck”- and please, send me any suggestions you’ve got- doing research involves just giving a little bit more of a crap than I’m used to doing. They don’t call us the apathy generation for nothing.

It was a tough year for people who aren’t homicidal dictators, too. 2011 sucked for movies, television, music, weather, politics, sports, the global economy, American democracy, Barack Obama, compromise, sanity, rationality, science, the environment, the Americans Formerly Known as the Middle Class (broke is the new black!), Japan, Turkey, Joplin, Springfield, Chile, North Dakota, Iceland, Alabama, Memphis, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Thailand, anywhere in the path of Hurricane Irene and for the ridiculous number of birds and fish who kept showing up dead because they just couldn’t handle living in this world anymore (It Gets Better videos for Birds? Come on Big Bird, hop all over that shit- you could be the feathered Dan Savage. Aren’t you sick of Bert and Ernie hogging all the attention like a couple of puppet queens? Get down with your big yellow self and keep those squeaky little fuckers in the air!). You know it’s a bad year when you need to Google “Natural Disasters 2011” just to put together a halfway complete list at the end of the year and your realize you don’t even remember half of them (oh yeah, right- like you totally remembered the New Zealand earthquake- don’t fucking judge me) and then you have to figure out which ones to leave out so the list doesn’t get too long (SPOILER ALERT: China didn’t cut it. I guess they had mudslides or something- but who the hell knows what goes on over there? It’s their own stupid fault for keeping Facebook out of the country. Hell, I didn’t even know there were trees down in Pasadena until everyone started posting damage photos instead of videos of their cats. And, no, Californians- a tree knocking your fence down isn’t considered a natural disaster and neither is your patio furniture blowing away. Go to the East Coast and get some perspective, you spoiled little weather brats.) If the Mayans are right about 2012, then 2011 made the perfect prequel year for the apocalypse.

Even the good news stories this year had bad news attached to them: Overthrown dictator in Egypt- HURRAY! Rise of radical Isalm and military repression in Egypt- BOOOOO! Nationwide protests of economic inequality- HURRAY! College students getting pepper-sprayed- BOOOOO! Unemployment rate is a teensy bit lower- HURRAY! 50% of Americans are currently living below the poverty line and the rest of us are pretty much totally fucked, too BOOOO!!! It’s like we keep getting offered free ice cream only to find out it was made in China and is loaded with melanin (INTERESTING CULTURAL FACT: The Chinese have the same word for “quality control” as they do for “slave labor”.  It’s one of those crisis-tunity sort of things.)

So, all things considered it was a pretty good year for billionaires, religious fanatics, gay soldiers (weirdly enough) and me. I got my floors redone, worked a lot, ate Cap’n Crunch, and hung out with my wife watching the dog mope. All things considered, that pretty much puts me in the 1% (please don’t Occupy here. My lawn already looks shitty enough. Then again, maybe a drum circle would be just the excuse I need not to finish the landscaping. Come on over, protesters- Chunky soup and cereal for everybody!)

Right, so here is my round-up of the best and worst in a bunch of random categories in 2011. The astute reader may notice that many of the items on this list didn’t actually originate in 2011. Well the astute reader can take that astute observation and stick it right up their astute (or up their ass- I’m not picky). Nobody’s paying me to write this crap, so I’m gonna list whatever the hell I want.

Also- yes, I know that, strictly speaking this is a Jewish blog and our year actually ended in Elul, or “September” as the heathen refer to it. So- all you Members of the Tribe can just think of this as a round-up of stuff that happened in an arbitrary 365 day period from the 25^th of Tevet, 5771 to the 5^th of Tevet, 5772. For all of you that utilize the Gregorian calendar- Happy New Year 2012! (And for any Chinese people that might be reading this by accident- enjoy the rest of the Year of the Rabbit. I think that’s everybody. At least, everybody I’m going to bother Googling to figure out when their new year is. Who the hell knows what the Indians do?)

Favorite Book of the Year: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Egan reminded me how much I adored New York in my 20’s and how hard it was to leave behind when I got older. This is a beautiful book about the relentless cruelty of passing time and the evergreen mercy of second chances. Kudos to the dude in our book club who picked this one out- oh, wait, it was me. I’m awesome!

Least Favorite Book of the Year: The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway. If you’re an insufferable, rich, white, alcoholic, anti-Semitic whiner with no dick- this is the book for you! Otherwise, stay away. This is the sort of book that actually makes sitting on the toilet worse. Fuck you to the dude who forced us to read this for the book club. He hates Jews. (kidding!) (maybe)

Favorite Movie of the Year: It’s a tie between The Muppets and Rise of the Planet of the Apes– because those were the movies I came closest to seeing this year. I couldn’t, though because I had to stay home and watch Pawn Stars instead since my DVR was down to 18% and I had to clear space for the Psych marathon over the weekend. It’s a hard knock life for me.

Least Favorite Movie of the Year: The Smurfs. I loved the Smurfs as a kid, so the apparent awfulness of this movie just broke my heart. Smurfette should have died in a van like Dana Plato rather than appearing in a piece of shit like this. It’s like American pop-culture is a giant garage sale at my parents’ house and I found the Smurfs in the free bin along with a one-legged Chewbacca and three left-handed mittens that the dog chewed up. Sad, sad, sad.

Favorite Song of the Year; It’s so hard to choose between Foster the People’s snappy little dance track about a school shooting and Kanye’s soulful sci-fi love duet with Katy Perry. I’m gonna have to go with the latter, though, if only for the lyric “I’m a disrobe ya, then I’m a probe ya / See, I abducted you so I tell ya what to do.”  Air Supply, eat your hearts out.

Least Favorite Song of the Year: I could do without hearing “Someone Like You” ever again. Hey, Adele, maybe the problem is that you’re always looking for someone just like the last asshole who dumped you. I’ve got news for you, honey, you keep doing that, it’s always just going to “hurt instead.”

Favorite TV Show of the Year: Louie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I’m probably supposed to pick some piece of shit show that premiered in 2011 but, I don’t need to watch some complete piece of shit like Whitney just to prove to myself that it is, in fact, a piece of shit. To quote the theme song, the best show out there, by far is “Louie, Louie, Louie, Louie / Louie, Louie, Louie, Louwaaaaaaaaaaaah” When I watch Louie, I’m 24 again, laughing uncontrollably in the back of the Comedy Cellar watching a genius at work on a Tuesday night and begging the MC for a five minute spot in front of the six drunks left in the club at 11:30 PM (two of them are making out and one only speaks Hebrew) so I can do my Jewish Jenga bit for the 10,000^th time (two parents try to build the perfect child and the first one to make him crumble loses) or try out my brand new Scrooge McDuck: Baby Raper bit (I think it was a Trainspotting parody gone horribly awry. I don’t know. Did I mention how much pot I was smoking back then?). It’s a shitty, wonderful life being a comic and Louie nails it perfectly.

Least Favorite TV Show of the Year: The GOP debates- or as they are known on Bravo- The Real Nutbags of the American Right. They are like one long infomercial for Obama’s reelection. Also, Glee. Is this what teen entertainment has been reduced to? John Hughes must be rolling in his grave. I ought to track down the writers of Glee and duct-tape their butt-cheeks together. Saturday detention would be totally worth it. 

Best Sports Story: I’m pretty sure the Jets beat the Patriots somewhere back in January. Those were simpler times…

Worst Sports Story: Tim Tebow. Look, I’m not one to denigrate another person’s deeply held beliefs just to get a cheap laugh. Unless they’re stupid. Or wrong. Or Republican. Or crazy. Or Tim Tebow, (all of the above). I mean, I like religion as much as the next occasional contributor to a Jewish blog but this guy just won’t shut the fuck up about God-  it’s like he’s got Christian Tourettes (NOTE TO TEBOW: Real Tourettes- way cooler- who doesn’t want to hear “I’d like to thank my FUCKING COCKSUCKER for helping me win. All glory to DICKFACE” in post-game interviews?. OK, nobody wants to hear that except for me- but I really want to hear it A LOT.) When he was questioned about his continual references to Jesus, Tebow compared himself to a person who really loves his wife and can’t stop talking about her. While it’s profoundly creepy to hear that he thinks about Jesus that way, it is nice to hear that he supports gay marriage (and intermarriage to boot!)

The worst part is that Denver keeps winning in weird fluky ways, so everybody’s getting on the Tim Tebow Miracle Bus even though, half the time, he has nothing to do with it. It’s just a shame that Christopher Hitchens died before he had the chance righteously crap all over this guy and his idiot believers, because I think that would have made his decade- like Mother Theresa. times 1000. We owe it to Hitch’s memory to ridicule Tim mercilessly at every opportunity and cheer for his downfall. Hell, I even cheered for the Patriots to beat him last week- and my two fantasy football teams are called “Fuck the Patriots” and “Still Hate the Patriots” – though I may need to change one to “TeBlow” for next season if this crap keeps up. BTW- how awesome was the end of that Patriots game when poor little Timmy looked up to the sky for salvation and Christopher Hitchens reached down to bitch-slap him from Atheist heaven?

Favorite Moment of the Year: Getting the whole family together for the first time in a few years to celebrate my Dad’s 70^th birthday and Passover together was pretty amazing.

Least Favorite Moment of the Year: I could have done without the exploding Pyrex dish on Thanksgiving. Also, there were all those natural disasters, the rise of the extreme American right, Tim Tebow, college students getting pepper-sprayed, and all the other nasty shit around the world that made 2011 a terrible year. But, if I’m honest, the exploding Pyrex dish was the worst because I had to clean the oven myself and I’ve only ever done that before if I was moving out and trying to get my deposit back. And let’s be honest, not even then. Usually I just let my greasy Iranian landlord keep the deposit and don’t pay my last month’s rent instead. Now that’s how to succeed without really trying.

My2012 Resolution: Last year I resolved to do better with anger management. It didn’t really go so well, but it’s not really my fault since the rest of the world didn’t live up to their resolution to STOP PISSING ME OFF.  So this year, I’m just gonna try and keep my DVR above 50% and make more gratuitous and obscure musical theatre references. God, I hope you get them.

Happy Remainder of year 5772!

Portions of this post originally on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission

Not that there’s anything wrong with being a blogger- somebody’s got to keep shoveling out content into the gaping maw of the insatiable shiksa bitch goddess that is the internet and there’s only so many cat videos humanity can make before the cats all rise up as one on two legs and adorably claw all of our eyes out. Still, “Author” has a much better ring to it than “Blogger.” “Blogger” sounds like some smarmy, unshowered nerd banging out filth on his laptop late at night in his soiled sweatpants while he eats Fruit Loops out of the box and half-watches reruns of Psych on TiVo (Oh wait, it’s the shark one! I love this one!) while “Author” – well, that sounds dignified, respectalble- like someone with a pipe and a drinking problem who uses words like “deconstruct” and “semiotics” and actually fucking gets paid for the stuff he writes. How sweet would that be?

Of course, I really have no business complaining about how internet content isn’t worth anything since my entire music library was downloaded from Napster in 99 & 2000 (I was “working” for the Jewish non-profit sector at the time- they were practically paying me in non-dairy creamer and bandwidth.) I suppose that generating free content is my karmic reward for all the times I said something like “Dude, the Bloodhound Gang is so rich, they’re totally not going to notice if I download their album” (Yeah, I downloaded the Bloodhoung Gang  album. It was the late 90’s. DON’T FUCKING JUDGE ME!)

Right, so, whatever title you want to give me- I wrote the piece below both for FierceandNerdy.com for my “California Seething” blog and for “DiaTribe” here at JCast (as Pablo Picasso said “Bad artists copy, good artists steal, lazy, useless sniveling bloggers steal from themselves and then brag about like they think they’re god’s gift or something and what the hell is a blogger anyway? Somebody get me a drink and one of those weird square guitars. I’m feeling a little blue.”

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy my story of shameful Thanksgiving failure below. Keep checking JCast for more original (and unoriginal) free content “authored” by yours truly.

Thanksgiving dinner this year was supposed to be low maintenance and effortless which, as a card carrying member of the flannel and apathy generation, I seriously appreciated, man. We decided not to cook anything from scratch but to buy and reheat prepared foods from Whole Foods instead. Mind you, we didn’t do this because I’m too lazy and incompetent to cook Thanksgiving dinner, no sir! We did it because I’m too lazy and incompetent to renovate our kitchen (which is much, much worse) and cooking Thanksgiving dinner in that tiny, dysfunctional kitchen would be like trying to have sex with a horse in an airplane bathroom – or, more to the point, it would be like cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings in an absurdly small kitchen with an undersized oven and no counter space- which is the hardest fucking thing you could do so it doesn’t need any clever little metaphors to make it seem harder than it is. It’s so hard that, in fact, it makes a really good metaphor for other things that are really hard like- “Damn! Passing that softball sized kidney stone was like cooking Thanksgiving dinner in Eric’s absurdly small kitchen with its undersized oven and no counter space” or “Whew! Fucking that horse in that airplane bathroom sure was tough! As tough as cooking Thanksgiving dinner in Eric’s absurdly small kitchen with its undersized oven and no counter space. Isn’t that right Seabiscuit? Yeah, you like that, boy? That wasn’t no carrot I was feeding you in there, but you sure went to town on it when I dug the spurs in Yee-Haw!”

Right, so I think you get the point- cooking would be hard- and I’m not the sort of masochistic “because it’s there” blow-dried, Old-Spice commercial, mountain climbing kind of bloke who goes out of his way to do things just because they are hard. For me, “because it’s there” isn’t the reason to climb a mountain, it’s an excuse for being 20 minutes late because I had to go around one- maybe stopping for lunch along the way at a charming little explorer themed café and having some delicious reindeer steaks and sled dog stew (must…resist…tasteless…Korean…dog eating…joke.)

In fact, to make our holiday even more low maintenance and effortless we decided to pre-order the “Thanksgiving Dinner for 6” even though there were only 3 of us eating (Yay Gluttony! Best. Deadly Sin. Ever.) so we could guarantee that our partially cooked turkey and all of our Thanksgiving side dishes would be boxed up and waiting for us on Thanksgiving morning, all snug and cozy like fluffy kittens in a bag on the way to the river. That way, we wouldn’t have to run through the store like a couple of frantic mice whose cheese keeps getting moved (SPOILER ALERT: The 1% moved your cheese- and they’re not putting it back) trying to scrounge up everything we need at the last minute to assemble a halfway decent dinner (like last year).

So with our food safely ensconced in plastic containers in the fridge and my ass safely ensconced on the couch, I hung out on Thanksgiving morning watching grotesquely inflated enormous characters lumbering along predictably (Lions game) feeling smug about the fact that I was doing absolutely nothing while so many other Americans were working their asses off (I haven’t felt that good since we last went to war.) Around noon, I decided to unglue my boxer shorts from the sofa cushions and meander into the kitchen to start warming stuff up. It was at this point that my laziness went from being an amusing, Gen-X man-boy Ethan Hawke style quirk to genuine Shakespearean tragic flaw. (Actually, laziness probably would have kept a lot of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes out of trouble- “Dude, my dead dad’s ghost just totally asked me to avenge his murder. Can you believe that guy? I’m like, dude, just ‘cause somebody took your life doesn’t mean you get to take over mine. That’s sooo unfair. Plus, hello? Did you even think to ask if I had plans for tonight? Of course not, cause you’ve got to be mister big-shot-king-guy-dead-dad’s ghost looking for vengeance all the time and my stuff means nothing to you, just like when I made you that hand-turkey in preschool and you were too busy fighting wars with England to even notice. Whatevs, I’m playing Modern Warfare III with Rosencranz and Guildenstern online tonight, so I guess I can’t avenge your little murder thing. Man, I’m so awesome at that game- those guys are totally dead!”) The instructions clearly said that the turkey was supposed to be reheated in a metal roasting pan but because I couldn’t find one, I plopped it in a Pyrex baking dish and lined with foil to make it seem all, uhm, metal-y instead.  My wife questioned this decision and suggested that maybe I should try and track down a metal roasting pan, but I rebutted her argument with my typically cogent and well reasoned reply (“It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s FINE!”), shoved the turkey in the Pyrex dish into the oven and turned it to up 325. For our tragic hero, King Eric the Half-Assed, this was the point of no return (Peripeteia, bitchez! Where my theatre nerds at?)

Two hours later, as I prepared to warm up the sides, I opened the oven to discover the bird of my dreams heating up. It was golden brown, beautiful and aromatic- the kind of perfect turkey that Wile-E-Coyote sees when he looks at the Road Runner. I grabbed a big spoon and reached into the dish to scoop out some of the drippings to pour over the stuffing (THANKSIGIVNG COOKING TIP #1: Extra dry- Good for a martini, bad for stuffing.), and, the moment my spoon hit the Pyrex dish – KER-BLAMO! The dish exploded into a million little pieces like James Frey’s filthy lies. What was once a delicious turkey dinner was now a helpless little bird marooned on a life raft of aluminum foil in a steaming ocean of shattered glass and poultry sludge. Like a Top Gear challenge gone hopelessly wrong, my effortless, low maintenance Thanksgiving dinner was replaced in an instant by a desperate turkey salvage mission and arduous clean-up process. Ambitious but rubbish, indeed.

The real tragedy was that, since my mother-in-law was present, I had to edit my natural response to the situation and ended up sounding like Tony Soprano on A&E: “Gosh darn it all to heck! That cheap mother-loving, blood-sucking piece of spit blew up the second I flippin’ touched it with my freakin’ spoon ! Oh FIDDLESTICKS! This seriously grates my cheese.”

Anyhow, we pulled out the turkey using a combination of tongs, spatula and blind, dumb luck (Tebow thanked Jesus, but I don’t think he helped.) The turkey seemed to be warm enough, so we went ahead and ate it (THANKSIGIVING COOKING TIP #2: The secret to eating an undercoo
ked turkey  is to blow up a Pyrex dish in the oven. You’ll be much too worried about choking on glass to worry about salmonella.) It would be another week before I got the oven clean enough to turn it on without seeing brackish black smoke pour out and hearing the festive sounds of popping chunks of glass (Like chestnuts roasting over an open fire that slice up your throat and kill you ) so I warmed the side dishes in the microwave and we choked down as much of the meal as we possibly could. I then shoved the rest in the fridge and we said good night by 6:45 PM so we could go to bed as quickly as possible and try to forget the whole horrible dinner ever happened.

Of course, we couldn’t forget about it, since we had enough left-over food for Thanksgiving dinners on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Tuesday AND Cyber Wednesday (Come on already, guys. It’s a fine line between online retailer and needy ex-girlfriend. It’s like I’ve got Amazon.com drunk dialing me at 2 in the morning while listening to that stupid Adele song over and over again in the background. Hey, maybe if you guys made your stuff in America, people would actually have money to buy it) so our festive holiday meal turned into an extended culinary death march (the Trail of Turkey) and I was forced to remember my dismal failure everytime I fired up the mircowave and and shoved in another cornucopia of fucking Thanksgiving bounty. By the time we were done with all the food I was half narcoleptic from all the tryptophan in my blood and grateful only for the fact that I bought 4 cans of jellied cranberry sauce the week before the holiday.

Right, so in order to make sure this whole experience wasn’t just a giant waste of time (not to mention reading about it) I have to extract some valuable life lessons. Right, so, uhm, here we go- Valbuable Life Lessons:

1.    Life is fragile- we’re always just one exploding Pyrex dish away from a totally ruined Thanksgiving- so, you know, hug each other and shit.

2.    My wife is a totally awesome person who doesn’t say “I told you so” even when she explicitely and in no uncertain terms, told me so.

3.    Just because I CAN do something in the kitchen doesn’t mean I SHOULD do something in the kitchen- though you would think I would have learned that lesson when I blew up an egg in the mircowave or clogged up the garbage disposal with that family sized jar of expired pickles while playing “let’s throw Lando the Sarlacc pit” as I laughed like Jabba the Hut.

4.    I should think about putting somewhere near the same amount of effort in at home as I do at work. Let’s face it, if I needed to track down a metal roasting pan on Thanksgiving to use as a prop in a show or if we were doing August: Osage County and we had to roast a Tofurky in the green room because the aging TV actress we cast in the show simply couldn’t eat the same dinner that everyone else is eating on stage, I would have dropped everything and located not one but three seprarate alternatives to choose from, delivered them personally, stayed to confirm that one was acceptable and followed up afterwards to make sure that everything worked out ok. This is because at work I’m a pro-active, get-it-done, can-do type of man and at home I’m a “I’ll take out the recycling when the pile collapses” kind of dude- as you can see from the case studies below:

Case Study #1:

Sat, 11 AM- Received report from Stage Manager of mild sewage smell throughout the theatre.

11:05 AM- Called Stage Door Attendant- instructed him to trouble-shoot immediately. Suggested several possible alternative odor sources for him to investigate.

11:20 AM- Stage Door Attendant called back- discussed findings- we identified the most likely cause of smell.

11:25 AM- Texted Facilty Assistant – asked him to call Stage Door Attendant and talk him through process of fixing the problem.

11:30 AM- Emailed House Manager- instructed her to open up all doors to lobby during matinee in order to air space out.

11:45 AM- Received text from Facility Assistant confirming coversation with Stage Door Attendant.

11:50 AM- Followed up with Stage Door Attendant to confirm that problem has been addressed.

12 PM- Emailed Stage Manager- report that issue is in process of being resolved.

2 PM- Followed up with Stage Door Attendant to confirm that smell is dissipating and that solution was successful.

Mon, 10 AM- Discussed issue with key colleagues. Type up instrucitons re treating this problem should it arise in future and circulating to necessary staff.

Case Study #2

Mon, 6:30 PM- returned home to discover overwhelming, foul rotten cheese aroma permeating our condo.

6:35 PM- Sniffed several sections of dog, attempting to locate odor-source. Smell seemed to be coming from right ear.

6:40 PM- Shrugged. Opened window. Watched Pawn Stars.

A few days later, 11 AM: Finally took dog to vet because the stench became overwhelming and we couldn’t get any sleep since the dog was up shaking his head all night and his collar kept tinkling like a bunch of fucking reindeer on the roof (sweet delicious reindeer.)

But maybe it doesn’t have to be this way. What if I renovated my kitchen so that I could actually cook Thanksgiving dinner from scratch? What if I cleaned up the landscaping in the backyard so I could actually see the lemon tree in the corner through the terrifying jungle of dog-shit and weeds ? What if I didn’t have to wonder everytime I stepped in the tub if today was the day it would finally collapse through the floor? What if I actually lived like a full-fledged, honest to goodness adult? How crazy would that be?

Then again, maybe it’s best that I don’t. When I first moved into this house, I attached a piece of wire to the latch at the back gate and ran it through a hole in the post so I could open the gate easily from the outside. Then, when the lid-switch on the washing machine stopped working, I cut a little piece off that wire and used it to by-pass the shut off mecahnism connected to the lid-switch so that the washing machine would run whether it was open or closed.

One week later, it was clear I had undone the only successful repair job I had ever completed by trying to fix something else that I had no business fixing since I couldn’t get the fucking latch on my back gate open to bring in the new washing machine and haul out the corpse of the one I destroyed.

So, maybe the real moral of this story is that I should never try and do anything myself, always keep a handy-man on speed-dial and that next year we should just fucking go out for Chinese food. At least we’ll get a better selection of leftovers.

Or maybe there’s no moral at all. I don’t know. All I know for sure is I’ve got to go give the dog ear-drops because that horrible cheese smell is making me crave Doritos and I’m much too lazy to go out and buy them. Damn it, I knew my slacker ways would bite me on the ass someday. I bet this would never have happened to Hamlet.

Happy Holidays!

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission

If you were to go back in time and tell some poor schmuck schlepping across the country in a covered wagon that in a century’s time he’d be able to make the same journey in a matter of hours in an enormous metal flying machine, he’d probably be shocked and amazed. He’d be even more shocked and amazed when you told him how much it totally sucks to travel that way and that he’s probably better off with the covered wagon.

Even though the wagon trip takes many months and he’d probably freeze to death or get scalped along the way, at least he doesn’t have to pay $80 to check a lousy suitcase or wait in line for an hour for the privilege of taking his shoes off and getting his anus x-rayed by moronic TSA agents that shouldn’t be trusted to guard the Monopoly bank, let alone to make sure that no one is trying to blow up the airplane, before being crammed into a seat in Guaranteed Blood Clot Economy Class and spending $6.75 on an ass-and-cheese sandwich on a hard roll every bit as stale as the germ filled and lightly puke scented recycled air on the plane because for $475 the cheap cocksuckers running the airline can’t even throw in a really shitty meal for free or give us something remotely worth breathing. It is, in fact amazing just how effectively the airlines have stripped away any sense of wonder from what is, when you think about it, the rather magical act of flying, as though forcing you to step in huge piles of Pegasus shit before letting you ride the mythical beast or a theme park forcing you to sign a waiver that you’re not gonna sue if the alcoholic midget child molester in the Micky Mouse costume grabs your son’s winkie while taking a picture before letting you go into The Happiest Place on Earth.

And when you finally get to your gate with all sense of childhood wonder destroyed and any semblance of enthusiasm that you might have been feeling about your trip crushed like a small paper cup, the aging bimbo with the plastic smile and her snippy metrosexual sidekick behind the counter decide to announce that the plane is too full and try to bribe you not to go after all, because obviously you’re just some masochist who went to all the trouble of getting to the airport at 5 am and having your privacy and personal space invaded by nimrods for fun not to mention the fact that you spent hours at work for weeks before trying to find that one combination of the best possible flights at the best possible times with the best possible layover at the best possible price as an academic exercise because you had nothing better to do with your time and not because you actually wanted to get where the fuck you are going at the fucking time you fucking planned to fucking get there and if they knew the fucking plane was already full then why did those fuckers keep selling tickets???? Sorry to swear so much but I’m writing this on the flight home and it’s the only fucking word I can type on my iPad consistently without autocorrect changing it to something else.

Not to mention that the stewardess is coming down the aisle and I think that sweater wearing Southern whore just told the guy in front of me that she’s all out of cookies and I’m really going to lose my shit if that happens. Wait, never mind, I misheard. They’ve got cookies. What a nice person she is.

So, anyhow, yeah, I flew to Albany last week and am just heading back now. I would have taken the covered wagon but I didn’t feel like dying of scarlet fever in Utah or resorting to cannibalism halfway over the Rockies (though I did come close during my layover at JFK – $21.95 for a hot dog and chips with a bottle of water???? Puh-leeze. Find me a dead soccer player and light up the fire, there is no way I’m paying that much for a snack) plus I had to be back at work on Monday so I sacrificed leg room and dignity for convenience and survival.

Albany is a great place to visit if you have absolutely no choice in the matter. It’s a fine city to be born in, to die in and to spend some time in the middle if you’re too lazy to leave or have absolutely no imagination or have completely failed everywhere else and need to live somewhere with extremely low standards and no expectations (plus, you know, the schools are good.) Albany is the 325 year old spinster city of the family. Sure, she’s not as successful as her investment banker sister to the south with all of her fancy-pants theatres and big gaudy stock exchange and millions of fawning tourists telling her how beautiful she looks for her age because of all the Botox and green-space that Dr. Bloomberg has given her, even though she lost her two front teeth ten years ago and still hasn’t replaced them. She’s also not a total train-wreck like her junky sisters to the west, all strung out on lost industry wearing tattered old factories and train stations as a sad reminder of faded beauty and better times. No, Albany just puts on a navy blue cardigan over her cream colored blouse, pulls her graying hair back in a tight little ponytail and goes to work collecting taxes, fixing roads, and figuring out how to keep the family going with less and less money every year. Even though her fast living rich sister keeps telling her how nice she’d look with a little urban renewal and lipstick, she’s happy with her little gold chain of a skyline and, after work, she’s content to go back to the little house where her parents used to live, feed her cats and go to sleep right after Castle.

Wait, hold on, got to change planes in Minneapolis. Looks like I’m getting off at gate C6 and have to walk down to gate C13, take two escalators up right across from the food court, go all the way across the skyway and catch my connection at gate G19 conveniently located in downtown Duluth. I guess the Minneapolis airport has decided to tackle the obesity crisis by forcing me to walk my fat ass halfway back to LA before letting me get on a plane the rest of the way home. Well the joke’s on them because I’m standing still and riding the moving walkway the entire way there no matter how painfully slow it is and cramming a Cinnabon down my throat as soon as I get to the other side of the terminal. Screw you, airport health Nazis! (actually, that was wishful thinking. I was too impatient to ride the moving walkway without walking on it and there was no Cinnabon so I had to make due with a reduced fat cinnamon coffee cake from Starbucks for $4. Damn you airport health Nazis!!!)

Right, so, anyhow- Albany. With it’s half-empty tan leather banquette seating and exposed brick walls, the Albany airport feels like an upscale brew pub in a refurbished building that’s just about to go out of business. I landed at the absurdly late hour of 7:45 pm, so naturally everything was completely deserted and totally shut down. Only Dunkin Donuts was open so I was able to greet the northeast in the traditional fashion with a Boston Creme donut (which is like trying to find a lobster roll or well read person on West Coast) and a cup of their absurdly cream laden delicious coffee drink. I was in Albany to see my sisters and my adorably batshit crazy nieces (is an 8 year old girl supposed to kick so hard? Seriously, She’s like John Claude Vandamme with a suitcase full of stuffed animals and a major iCarly fixation) play Godfather in my best friend’s son’s baptism, and visit my aging grandparents. Basically, it was a weekend of hanging out with children and old people, which meant that I spent most of my time speaking LOUDLY and CLEARLY and continually reminding people who the hell I am: “HI GRANDMA- IT’S ERIC. YOUR GRANDSON. REMEMBER ME?”. “ HI THERE. IT’S UNCLE E-DOG. YOUR UNCLE. REMEMBER ME?”

Last year, my grandparents were living in the Jewy Jew Jewelstein Home for Really Old Jews Who Like Jews, an assisted living facility. Since then, though, it was determined that they actually required more assistance to remain living than the assisted living facility felt comfortable providing, so they moved into Daughters of Sarah, so named because of the joke “your moms is so old that her parents are Abraham and Sarah”, a full on nursing home which provides all the assistance that Medicare is willing to pay for to keep them alive like an all you can eat Ensure buffet (shhhhh. Don’t tell the Republicans we’ve got socialized medicine. It’ll be our little secret. Don’t let them make you show them on the doll where the government touched you.) Thanks to my grandfather’s cardiac issues and grandmother’s dementia their lives have turned in to sad reenactment of The Wizard of Oz- he has no heart, she has no brain and I barely have the courage to visit. Because of their different needs, they are separated by a yellowing brick road of linoleum tiles and several locked doors with alarms that go off every time my grandmother walks through them, because it’s been proven that nothing is better for the sanity and well being of a dementia patient than deafeningly loud alarms that go off behind her every time she walks through a doorway. Nothing confusing or hard to explain about that!

My grandfather spends his time watching CNN, reading the news online and scrutinizing the newspaper to stay in touch with current events, I suppose to reassure himself that the world he’s about to depart is, in fact, a totally crappy one and he probably won’t miss it. It’s a good thing he’s a Jets fan, so he doesn’t really even have to stick around for the playoffs this year (though I certainly hope he manages to keep hanging around a little bit longer anyhow. Maybe if they can get their running game going. They looked good against the Bills!) My grandmother, meanwhile, had not lost any of the charm or social graces she developed as housewife in the 50′s. She was actually voted both Miss Congeniality and Best Dressed in the Miss Alzheimer’s pageant for 2011. She is also very aware of what others are wearing, particularly my sisters when they come to visit, and she’s not afraid to point out every little flaw when it comes to their hair, clothes and makeup. Unfortunately, being hyper-critical and extremely forgetful can make for a painful combination, since she makes the same observations over and over again and pretty much distills every conversation down to “who the hell are you and why do you look like shit?” Of course, she thought I looked very tall and handsome and told me so over and over again, so I really don’t know what my sisters are whining about and why they kept freaking out about putting on eyeliner before they went over there. I think she’s quite delightful and charming (even if she did keep calling me Ralph.)

Jesus Christ, I’m still at the goddamn gate. This has got to be the longest most boring nightmarish layover….wait a second… Is that a half bag of combos left shoved in the back of my carryon bag from my last trip to Albany? And they’re almost not totally stale at all. This is the greatest layover ever!!!

In case I wasn’t having the futility of existence and inevitability of mortality rubbed sufficiently in my face, the room across from my grandfather was occupied by a person named “Grace Kelly.” How delightful to imagine the eternally young and beautiful movie star slowly withering away in an overheated room at Daughters of Sarah. What a nice reminder that our only real option in life is dying tragically young or miserably old. Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit smoking. (Hey, that’s only the First Airplane reference. Surely you’ll agree I’ve shown remarkable restraint. I guess you’d be more impressed if I stopped calling you “Surely”.)

Oooh look, we’re boarding. And just for fun a couple of TSA geniuses have decided to join the party for random screenings- and they’ve got plastic gloves on so you know what that means- they’re making free Subway sandwiches for everyone! (or doing random invasive strip searches, but I’ve got my fingers crossed for a BMT. Turns out those Combos were pretty stale after all.)

Having spent plenty of time seeing how Jews wrap up their lives, I was excited to find out how Catholics begin theirs. Before this point, my only experience with baptism came from watching the end of The Godfather, so the only thing I knew for

sure was that the baby gets wet, Satan gets disavowed and Moe Green gets shot with a shit load of other people. Of course, the only thing I knew about being a Godfather also came from the Godfather, so I figured I knew that I had to speak incomprehensibly, do everyone a bunch of favors and eventually drop dead with an orange rind in my mouth- which, aside from the third part is pretty much all I do at work, anyhow.

Turns out it’s a pretty straight forward ceremony. There were just a few things I had to know:

1. The baby wears a dress, even if he’s a boy. My friends live in Seattle, so I figured this was some sort of freaky-deaky, Free To Be You And Me, boys like dolls, girls like trucks leftist new agey, gender neutral super crunchy kind of total bullshit but it turns out it’s totally traditional. I did think the tiara and the sash were a little over the top, and they shouldn’t have put so much glitter in the holy water, but I was assured that it’s all perfectly normal. Even the fact that we now have to call him by his Christian drag queen name of Ms. Holly Ghost.

2. The Godparents are supposed to help raise the kids Catholic if both parents die. Honestly, I was kind of stressed about this one at first and I even insisted they fly back to Seattle in separate planes just to make sure nothing terrible happened to both of them, because there’s no way my condo is big enough for a couple of kids and the dog is going to be seriously unhappy about sharing his bed and his water dish. It turns out though there are actually two Godparents for the other kid already in line ahead of me plus my fellow Godparent for this kid who is actually Catholic, so she would totally wind up with the kids before me which means that there are a whole bunch of people I’d have to murder in order to wind up being responsible for these little guys, and frankly I just can’t see myself going all Richard the Third just to get a hold of a four-year old girl and a freaky little boy who wears dresses, no matter how smart and adorable they are. Frankly, I’m sure you’ll agree. I know you’ll agree if I stop calling you “Frankly”.

3. I had to trace the sign of the cross on the baby’s forehead. I know that drawing a couple of intersecting lines may seem straight forward, but there’s a whole left to right up and down choreography to drawing the damn thing and I think that I completely messed up and as a result screwed up the poor kid’s chances of getting into heaven forever. I guess the bright side is that he can sin as much as he wants now and when Saint Peter asks him why he was such a complete asshole all his life he can just be like “dude, they threw me in a dress and picked a Jew for my Godfather – I was fucked from the get-go. No way I was going to heaven. I had to eat those hookers.”

Uhm, but, yeah I sure hope none of that happens and he ends up living a good and virtuous life. God, I suck at this.

Ooops, we’re about to take off. Better put away the iPad like the stewardess asks. I hear the Pages app can really wreak havoc with air traffic control radar. Not as bad as a text message, though. That will just blow up the engines immediately. And, by the way, if it turns out that I’m not just being sarcastic and somebody playing Angry Birds during takeoff really can bring down the plane, then get me the fuck off of this death trap and find me the nearest covered wagon. I mean, I guess we’re in the air now, so it’s probably too late. Crap, looks like I picked the wrong day to quit drinking.

As grateful as I was to spend some precious time with my grandparents and as honored as I was to participate in the Baptism simcha, I have to admit that the highlight was being able to hang out with my wonderfully insane nieces. I last saw them over Passover when I learned how to play their favorite game “let’s beat the shit out of Uncle E-Dog and then Hug him A Lot and Giggle.” To be honest, I may have encouraged this behavior because every time one of the other adults would say something like “now let’s settle down and stop hitting each other with couch cushions and behave ourselves” I would yell “pillow fight”, pick up a cushion and start swinging. I must have done something right, though, because on this trip I was entrusted with reading the bedtime story. Honestly, though, after doing it a couple of times I really have no idea what the point of reading the bedtime story is actually supposed to be. The one thing I know for sure is that it has absolutely nothing to with putting them to sleep. Every time I finished a story the one thing I could count on was that they would be way more wide awake then they were before I started. This may have been partially my fault, since I’m so needy and insecure about being entertaining that I had to read the stories in the most lively and theatrical fashion possible, giving each character a different voice (do you know how hard that is for Winnie the Pooh? There are like 4,000 characters in that fucking forest. It’s like trying to do a one person version of the Ring cycle) and making all sort of side comments about how Owl at Home was kind of an idiot for not knowing that the bumps under the blanket were actually his feet and that Eeyore’s the only guy in the forest who’s even remotely in touch with reality. As far as I can tell, the only way to get kids to sleep with a bedtime story would be to read them the warnings and ingredients on the side of a box of Ambien after grinding one up in their apple juice (kidding! Just kidding! I would never advocate drugging children and besides I want to be invited back.) Anyhow, we all had a great time together. I’m told that the girls were pretty upset when I left, which is sad on the one hand, but is kind of a major win for me on the other hand, so I’m pretty psyched about it.

OK, well, that’s the whole trip. I didn’t think I would be able to finish this post on the flight. Thank god I’m too cheap Larry Crowne and the last thing I needed to do was stare at the screen for two hours and contemplate just how much I hate Julia Roberts. Seriously, does anyone think she’s attractive? Every time I watch Sleeping with the Enemy I just >want to shout at the tv: “Dude, get over her. She’s totally not worth it. She’s funny looking and her hair’s out of control and she faked her own death to get away from you plus she can’t straighten a towel to save her life- literally. Have a little dignity man, you’re rich- you can totally do better.”

Alright, looks like we’re landing. The Co-Pilot’s making his final announcement. Hmm- looks like there’s gonna be a little turbulence. And some crazy wind. And visibility problems. And the airport is making us circle around. And we have to fly out over the ocean and come back over the land. And STOP SAYING “There’s nothing to worry about”- it only makes it worse every time you say that! None of you fuckers better be on your phones Tweeting! I swear, if I die in a plane crash this will be the worst trip to Albany ever. For now, anyhow. Seriously, I mean it. And I know you’ll agree if I stop calling you “Seriously.” Well, I better go so I can concentrate more on being absolutely terrified for my life. Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue.

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission.

The Ancient Greeks didn’t worry about whether God loved them. They didn’t wring their hands over the fact that God allowed evil to thrive in the world and didn’t struggle with the way that God permitted the righteous to suffer while the wicked prospered. That’s because, in Ancient Greece, the Gods were a bunch of dicks. Zeus was particularly nasty- he lorded over the universe like an omnipotent frat boy with lightning bolts. He was far less concerned with the meek inheriting the earth than he was in changing into a swan and fucking the meek’s wife (they had a pretty loose grip of zoology, as well.) The rest of the gods were no better- just a bunch of mean spirited, petty, vindictive, narcissistic, spiteful bastards who absolutely didn’t give a shit about humanity. It must have been wonderfully liberating in a way- like having a Republican president. After all, when Bush and co. were in power, we didn’t wring our hands and wonder WHY they were leading us into one pointless war after another for the sole benefit of their rich cronies or WHY they were making disastrously short-sighted fiscal policy decisions. We knew perfectly well why- they were dicks. They did irresponsible, self-centered, evil, destructive, selfish things because they were irresponsible, self-centered, evil, destructive selfish cocksuckers- plain and simple. All we had to do was fear them, loathe them and mock them. With the advent of Judaism, though and the election of Obama, things became more complicated. Now we have to wrestle with thorny and difficult philosophical questions like WHY does God allow bad things to happen to good people, WHY does God turn his back on his supposedly chosen people as they are persecuted and killed, WHY did Obama extend the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy or WHY does Obama persist in bankrupting the nation by fighting Bush’s unwinnable war in Afghanistan. It’s a far more complicated world to live in and, for those of us that have a very difficult time accepting the existence of God or the value of Bi-Partisan compromise – these questions fuel our doubts and erode our ability to believe.

Still, a few times a year, I put my doubts aside no matter how agnostic I’m feeling towards God or the Donkey and go through the motions of belief. Election Day and the Jewish New Year are two of those times. The Jews observe their new year with a prolonged period of repentance, contemplation and prayer- much in the way the Christians don’t. Scholars agree that this is the single most boring and painful way to celebrate a new year with the possible exception of watching Ryan Seacrest host the Countdown (what’s up with that guy? Hasn’t anyone noticed he has no fucking talent? Dick Clark’s had a stroke and his face still moves more.) It wasn’t always this way, though. Back in the days of the Ancient Temple of Jerusalem, or the Awesome Era as it is commonly known (A.E or, let’s be honest here, B.C) majestically robed priests would ritually slaughter thousands of animals as burnt offerings to God while throngs of ancient Israelites stood silent in the Temple trembling with awe and wonder and the tangible presence of the Divine deep inside the Holy of Holies. Plus- tickets were free! Beat that Congregation Beth Whatever. Nowadays, synagogues charge $300 a head and open up the partition wall that separates the Holy of Holies from the Synagogue Multi-Purpose Room (hail to thee o Accordion Wall- for Modern Judaism would be lost without you) so that they can pack in Israelites on colossally uncomfortable metal folding chairs (the Seats of Repentance) all the way to the rear of the Multi-Purpose Room stage and pray at them mercilessly for hours on end as if to punish them for buying tickets in the first place (like LA Opera did with the Ring Cycle.) The Israelites, meanwhile, gaze with awe at how fucking slowly the Cantor is singing and the sheer number of pages remaining before the end of services and wonder just how long the Synagogue President can tell corny jokes and babble on about Judaism and his iPad until he just gets it over with and asks for the goddamn money for the pledge drive so we can sing Adon Olam and go the fuck home already. And then, for an encore, we fast from sundown to sundown on Yom Kippur while we grovel before God for our very lives. Happy fuckin’ New Year!

The ritual slaughter of thousands of animals still plays a role in our worship, BTW, they are just converted into brisket and wrapped in plastic far from our sight. Not as entertaining as the old days, but significantly more delicious.

Clearly, then, holidays surrounding the Jewish New Year, typically called the High Holidays or Repent-apalooza (2011- Celebrating 20 years of hokey Lollapalooza puns- Happy Hack-apaolooza!) are not what you would call “fun” unless you are what I would call “crazy”- but, hey, I figure I’m stuck with them, so I might as well try and get something out of them. Here are some of the strategies I’ve tried over the years in order to get the most out of the High Holidays:

1. Better Fasting Through Chemistry

Look, I didn’t intend to come home stoned for Yom Kippur the first time I did it. It’s just that I was in college and it was a Tuesday so natually I was smoking up with my best friend and that guy who might have been Native American or Chinese with long hair and a tan or some fucked up looking Italian hybrid who called himself Ed and sold high quality weed to only the best potheads on the downtown quad first semester sophomore year. You knew he was cool because he cut out the part of the cracker box that said “Baked not Fried” and Scotch taped it to the outside of his dorm room door, much to the tittering delight of us all. Stick it to The Man, Ed! (The Man being the R.A., Stacey). Anyhow, by the time it came to head over to my parents’ house for dinner and the evening Kol Nidre service my friend and I were quite impressively stoned. On the one hand, this was good, because it meant that we had a significant appetite and ate heartily of my mother’s World Famous Unbelievably Dry Chicken and Twice Microwaved Potatoes (shit. I’m going to have to atone for that joke next year. Sorry, mom.) On the other hand, less than an hour into our fast we were starving again and giggling more than is, perhaps, considered acceptable in Temple on the most serious night of the year, much to the consternation of my very unstoned and very jealous sister.

With the sun down and a long day of fasting and prayer ahead of us, we realized that we had no other option but to man up, buckle down and smoke our way through it, just like Playwriting class (the play I came up with was called Dude and it was about a couple of stoned guys who are basically stuck in a really bad play and trying to come up with shit to say to each other. Then, a bunch of people get shot and the whole thing turns out to be a super-violent Scooby-Doo joke with Nazis. Did I mention it was the 90’s?).

It may seem like a bad idea to use a drug that causes dry mouth and increased appetite on a day when you can’t eat or drink anything- like treating impulse control with Jager bombs but it turns out that weed and fasting go together like hamburgers and fries, peanut butter and jelly, bagels and lox and a whole bunch of other food combinations that sound really fucking good to me right now because I’m fasting as I write this and hungry as hell. For one thing, being high makes playing everybody’s favorite game, “Man, I could really go for a ___________ right now,” a lot more fun- case in point:

Unstoned person#1:
Man, I could really go for a burger right now.

Unstoned person#2:
Yeah, I could really go for a sandwich right now.

Stoned person#1:
Totally. I could seriously go for like, a HUGE bag of Combos.

Stoned person#2:
Yeah, and a Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia milkshake

Stoned person #1:
Fed to me by a crazy-hot Viking chick

Stoned person#2:
With a huge metal bra

Stoned person #1:
Riding a lion

Stoned person #1 & #2:
A Flying lion! (break out in hysterical giggles)

Stoned person #1’s Sister:
(seethe) (rage) (gurgle)

Perhaps it was all this fantasizing over food that allowed us to resist the temptation of eating actual food- because we ended up resisting some serious temptation. Halfway through the day, someone had the insanely masochistic idea to go apple picking. There we were- surrounded by ripe, juicy fruit, ice cold cider and the sweet hot fat smell of fresh cider doughnuts . As the non-stoned among us broke one by one and gave into temptation, only the stoned stood strong and ate nothing (my sister didn’t come.) Is it any wonder this became an annual tradition?

2. Take your fast to go

Sooner or later, weed will always betray you. Sooner or later, instead of coming up with goofy jokes and imagining cool things to eat fed to you by Valkyries, weed just makes you think about how everyone hates you and your boss wants to fire you and your landlord wants to evict you and the cops are outside ready to burst through the door because you could have sworn that you saw a red and blue light flickering through the apartment window for a second and that suspicious black sedan parked across the street hasn’t moved in a couple of days so clearly the FBI is on your ass for telling the doctor that you have a back injury so he’d give you a Medical Marijuana card when your back is actually totally fine and you’re just a filthy, stinking, worthless liar who’s letting everybody down. At this point, it’s best not to smoke anymore and to find other mechanisms for coping with Yom Kippur and life in general. Travel is a great one. Not only is it mind expanding, but if you start feeling paranoid it’s probably because the gypsies are really trying to rob you. Stupid gypsies.

When I lived in New York, I worked at a non-profit Jewish organization (NOTE FOR ANTI-SEMITIC JOKERS: “Non-profit Jewish” is not, in fact an oxymoron- and, yes, I’ve fucking heard that one before) with my non-Jewish soon-to-be wife. Naturally, we got the High Holidays off- a gesture which my wife and I interpreted differently:

Me: I’m glad that this organization gives me the time off required to properly observe these very important occasions.

My Wife: WOO-HOO! Four day weekend! ROAD TRIP!!!!

So, there I was, fasting in a rented Ford Aspire which we picked up at Newark Airport, heading to Philadelphia. Of course, we couldn’t possibly waste a perfectly good trip through New Jersey in a rental car without hitting Ikea. Now, you may think that you have fasted before in your life or that you know what it is to repent for your sins- but let me tell you, my friend, you don’t know shit until you observed Yom Kippur in the cinnamon-bun scented Swedish amusement park of particle board and pain that is Ikea. After all, Ikea is an incredibly annoying place to shop for incredibly annoying things- like a torture chamber where you have to buy your own Iron Maiden and put it together before your tormentors shove you inside and slam the spikes in your face. Anyone who can maintain their fast in the face of such colossal unpleasantness- and the omnipresent temptation of meatballs and the gooey goodness of cinnamon buns should be forgiven for pretty much anything.

Ultimately, we reached Philadelphia, known as “The City of Brotherly Love” or “The City With the Really Ironic Nickname.” As we drove around looking for the restaurant I had pre-selected to break my fast, we found ourselves caught in an endless loop by the art museum. Now, I love the “look kids, Big Ben…Parliament” gag from European Vacation as much as the next guy, but if I’m fucking starving and the stars are starting to come out it gets unfunny very, very quickly. Finally we exited our vortex of irritation, found a random charming restaurant in a random charming neighborhood and had a fantastic meal.

So- do I recommend travel for Yom Kippur? Hell, yeah! It was an adventure- and adventure beats sitting in Temple like steak beats hamburger; bratwursts beat hot-dogs; rich, thick slaps of strawberry covered delicious cheese-cake beats Jello cheesecake pudding (did I mention how fucking hungry I was?). In fact, last year, we drove home from San Francisco on Yom Kippur after I hit morning services in the Mission at the World’s Most Lesbian Temple. Good times. I sent my sister a postcard (OK, that’s a lie.)

3. Score Free Tickets

Look, I get free tickets to stuff all the time- and not just to artsy crap like plays and operas. I’ve gotten Dodger tickets, Kings tickets, Clipper tickets- hell, I’ve even gotten tickets to see teams that DON’T suck, like the Lakers. But, until this year, I have never received the Ultimate Comp- free High Holiday Tickets. Normally, these are about as obtainable as tickets to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory (sweet, delicious river of chocolate…drool…..) so I have to resort to hitting the Chabad House if I want free services and getting my Jew on with the Ultra-Mega-Super-Duper-Right-Wing-Black-Hat-Crazy-Pants-Orthodox in an overstuffed little sweatbox of a room. It’s a little weird and slightly uncomfortable — a bit like getting free vegetarian food from the Hare Krishnas — nourishing, warm and generous on one hand, but it doesn’t really taste like anything you’re used to. Everyone there is chanting and mumbling and wearing the same outfits and you can’t help feeling a little squirmy about the fact that you might be hanging out with a cult just to get a bargain — like joining the Moonies to save on your wedding. Fortunately, they can’t serve Kool-Aid on Yom Kippur (Went there!). This year, though, thanks to my fancy-schmanzy, high-level, showbiz connections (I know a guy)- I was able to score some comps to a swanky Temple where I could repent in style and comfort. Hell, they even had a jumbotron in the back of the Multipurpose room, so you could see the Rabbi up close. I have to admit, I thought the Kiss-Cam thing may have been taking it a little too far but, you know, they’re Reform, so I guess it’s all good. And, the best part is, since they are Reform, there was no screwing around with the Service. It was like the NFL RedZone channel of prayer — just all the big highlights and none of that messing around and mumbling shit in the middle. In and out in under 3 hours!

Okay, so maybe it was a little too fast and efficient for me. I like a little ground and pound in my services, but it certainly beats hanging out with a bunch of aspiring West Bank settlers. It may even be better than watching my wife eat meatballs at a furniture store while I fast.

4. Try taking it seriously for 5 lousy minutes

You’ve been an asshole this year. It’s okay. I’ve been an asshole, too. Probably a bigger one than you. Not as bad as Rick Perry or Zeus, but definately somewhere on the asshole spectrum. So, why not take a day and deal with it? Say I’m sorry. Forgive the people I wanted to stab in the face with a handful of sharpened golf-pencils. Think about being a better person- maybe not yelling at people so much on the phone when they turn out to be worthless morons who can’t actually help me- but, you know, they’re probably doing their best and not deliberately trying to give you an anger fueled stroke. Or maybe start actually giving a shit about Darfur or at least figuring out where it is on a map. I don’t know … something, anything to show that I’ve been thinking about repentance and I’m going to give it a little bit of a shot. Not so much because God cares or notices or even exists but because there’s a slim chance that not being so much of an asshole might in some infinitesimal way make the world a very slightly better place, so it may be worth trying.

I continue to find new ways of experiencing the High Holidays. This year, I’m observing Yom Kippur by fasting as I open a heavy-metal, country and western, multimedia operetta with a huge cowboy shindig at intermission and an after party featuring chili shooters and Mountain Lion Margaritas — or as normal people would put it “going into the office on the holiday.” (I love my freaky job.) I guess our boring old religion still has some life in it, even if we don’t have animal sacrifices (sweet, delicious animal sacrifices. Goddamn it, I’m hungry) or a wicked cabal of selfish frat-boy Gods controlling our fate (that’s what bankers are for.)

So…right, the whole atoning thing. Uhm…I guess I’m sorry to everybody who I might have accidentally offended last year. Except for Republicans, cause y’all love evil — and Patriots fans, cause y’all can go fuck yourselves. Oh, and Kobe Bryant really is a homophobic racist who should choke on a Cub-Scout’s dick. But, you know, I’m sorry to anybody who maybe didn’t deserve to be offended, like the makers of Lucky Charms. I’m sorry, I just don’t think it’s very good. I mean- hard marshmallows??? What the fuck??? Crap, I’m screwing this up already. Damn it. Maybe I’ll do better at atoning next year. I can at least aim for that. And, hey, I probably should apologize to my sister. We should have let her smoke with us.

So there you have it- Happy New Year- 5772! (That’s right- you read that correctly- Five-Thousand-Seven-Hundred-and-Seventy-Two. Our calendar could kick your calendar’s ASS.)

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission.

For a brief period of time in college, I considered becoming a Rabbi. Don’t get me wrong- I’m not particularly religious- I was just fascinated by the role that ritual could play in heightening particular moments in a person’s life and the way in which our collective need for the infinite could cause it to manifest itself on earth. I was also tripping my balls off on two hits of unbelievable liquid acid that I bought from a trio of seedy hippies suspiciously named “Soy”, “Dog” and “Liz” (“Liz” – whatever. Like that’s even a real name.) Later that night, I also briefly considered joining the Animaniacs, not because I wanted to be on television, but because I was fascinated by the idea of living in the water tower at Warner Brother’s studios and writing a whole song about an obscure South American lake just so I could say “Titicaca” over and over again on a children’s show. Living the dream!

In the cold light of day, with the drugs out of my system, I abandoned my rabbinical fantasies and made the hard-headed practical choice to stick with theatre (maybe not ALL of the drugs were out my system.) Still- I continue to be fascinated by the trappings of religion and, as a result, even though I don’t really believe in God, I still maintain certain Jewish rituals- like even though I don’t believe in Leprechauns and Democracy, I continue to eat Lucky Charms and vote (FULL DISCLOSURE: I actually do believe in voting, but only as a means to keep things from getting even worse, or at least, to slightly postpone the inevitable slide into Libertarian Theocracy. Speaking of- how sweet is it that Rick Perry cut the fire dep’t by 75% and now his state is on fire? Nice Miracle, Asshole. You just keep on denying climate change and maybe the invisible hand of capitalism will hold Jesus’ wiener while he pees on the wildfires from heaven to put them out. Also, fuck Lucky Charms. Hard little pointless marshmallows with freaky Irish voodoo shapes and unnatural colors- give me the Cap’n any day. )

Perhaps because of my fascination with ritual, I have played a variety of supporting roles in the lifecycle rituals of my friends and family. It could also be due to the fact that I have a beard and know how to stroke it in a thoughtful and deeply spiritual way even if I’m just reorganizing my list of Top 5 Late 90s Teen Movies in my head for the 10,000^th time (Can’t Hardly Wait. Always #1. Disagree, and I’ll take you DOWN) or thinking of innovative new ways of expressing just how much I hate the Patriots (I’ve got nothing right now.) (The season is young) (in six weeks I’ll come up with a cheeky .limerick rhyming Wes Welker with “Satan’s Helper” and “Tom Brady” with “Why don’t you retire or die, already?”) Whatever the reason- I have accumulated a number of credits in this area- I’ve led Seders, read stuff at weddings, even held my friend’s son during his Bris- thus assuring a life-long connection in the young child’s mind between Judaism and mind-numbing terror, as though both his manhood and his soul had been unwittingly placed in the moist grip of an unsteady god. I must have done okay with these bit parts and cameo appearances, because recently I’ve been given a couple of above-the-title ritual roles. In November, I’ll be participating in my first Baptism and breaking my Godfather cherry (for which I shall make my friends sorry with a non-stop barrage of god-awful Marlon Brando impressions) and, this past Saturday, I officiated my first wedding.

I’m a big fan of marriage so I was deeply honored to be asked. I did have a few piddling concerns:

1. I’m not a rabbi, priest, minister, judge, ship captain, justice of the peace or Elvis impersonator- so I’m pretty sure I’m not legally authorized to perform a wedding.
2. I’m absolutely, hands down, the last person you would ever want to perform a wedding ceremony in front of all of your friends and family. I can’t even get through brushing my teeth without screaming “cocksucker.” It’s like asking Gordon Ramsay to give a commencement address at a kindergarten graduation or replacing Baby Einstein DVDs with Eddie Murphy’s Raw– a bad motherfucking idea.
3. I need to get my suit dry cleaned.

I’ll address these concerns one at a time:

Concern #1: I’m not authorized

Turned out, I needn’t have worried about this. In the state of California, anyone can be anointed to perform weddings for one day as a Deputy Commissioner of Civil Marriages- which was the most romantic title the State could come up with after tossing out such gems as Assistant Undersecretary of Nuptial Affairs and Grade III HVAC, Plumbing and Marriage Technician (you can get that certification at ITT Tech.) With their usual focus on efficient customer service, the State of CA has made this process every bit as straight forward as opening a small business, visiting the DMV or performing triple bypass surgery with a plastic knife and a spork. Here’s what I had to do:

1. Fill out a lengthy application form online. Actually, I have no idea how annoying this really was, since the bride did it for me- but in the interest of full curmudgeonliness, I’m gonna say that it was REALLY fucking annoying. I’m also going to shake my fist and tell a bunch of kids to get off my lawn in a needlessly angry way. Get off my lawn, you meddling kids! (BTW- how sad is it that anyone who knows what “meddling kids” is a reference to is now old enough to hate them? Very fucking sad, that’s how sad, I’ll tell you.)
2. Make an appointment to be sworn in as a Deputy Commissioner of Civil Marriages. Fortunately, the administrator of this program was very flexible. I could make an appointment at any time that was convenient for me, so long as it was 11 AM on Thur, September 1. I could even bring guests to attend the ceremony with me! (Maximum one guest.)
3. Head down to the Office of the Registrar/Recorder County Clerk, which is conveniently located on the Planet Earth and accessible by land. Unfortunately, it is located in Norwalk, which is 60-90 minutes away from anywhere that any rational human being might possibly want to go in LA County. Apologies to those of you who live near Norwalk, but you can’t blame me for your terrible lifestyle choices.
4. Fill out more paperwork and follow the cheerfully big-haired administrator of the Civil Marriage program though a grey and beige rabbit warren of cubicles under the hungry eyes of lurking state workers who eagerly stared at our unsuspecting group of aspiring Deputy Commissioners, waiting for one of us to drop so that they could pounce and devour the corpse, dragging the remains to the Break Room like vicious hyenas with pensions.
5.  Participate in the Swearing In Ceremony in the Sacred Swearing In Ceremony Conference Room. I knew that we had reached our destination because the printed Outlook calendar on the Conference Room door noted that it was “Reserved for Civil Marriage Swearing In Ceremony” from 11 AM – 12:30 PM, followed by “Union Negotiations” from “12:30 PM- 5 PM”. I hope they at least got lunch- though maybe that’s still to be worked out in the Collective Bargaining process. During the deeply meaningful Swearing-In Ceremony- the same one which is used, I believe, for new Judges, Dog-Catchers and Lifeguards at the County Pool- I had to agree to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies foreign and domestic.” Frankly, this was a lot more responsibility than I was hoping to take on. I didn’t realize that in order to officiate one teeny-little wedding, I’d also have to wage war on Al Qaida. Fortunately, it’s only for the day of the wedding and since Kim Jong Il never responded to the evite, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have to kick anyone’s ass between the champagne toast and first dance.

Concern #2: I’m not worthy

OK, you know what, this is bullshit. I was going to write all sorts of self-effacing stuff about how I can’t possibly be qualified to perform someone’s wedding, and how there’s no way I should be invited to speak in front of an audience containing young children and elderly relatives because I might get irrationally angry and swear too much- but that’s just a bunch of fucking, cocksucking, horseshit- just the sort of asinine crap that makes me mad enough to strangle a chimp with my bare hands.

The truth is- I’m the perfect person to perform a wedding ceremony. Aside from my extensive experience with public speaking- both as a stand up comic, corporate trainer and righteously-indignant Vons Grocery Store customer, I’ve got all sorts of great stuff to say about marriage. Hell, I’ve been married for 11 years, my parents have been married for almost 50 years, my grandparents have been married for around 70.

I love everything about marriage- the joint bank account, the exciting array of glassware that we received for our wedding and spent the last decade breaking, always having someone to participate in very small Sims Family Fantasy Sports leagues, never running out of toothpaste- all excellent stuff! Not to mention, the whole spending every day with my favorite person in the world thing. That’s really neat, too. I even love my in-laws- they drink wine, play Dominos and show up on time- the Goyisha family of my dreams!

Plus, the couple I was asked to marry were getting married in a theatre- and if there’s anything I love as much as marriage it’s theatre (and the Boston Celtics- but that’s not strictly relevant at the moment) (I do love them though) (even if Danny Ainge is a big stupid moron who traded away their chance for a title last year in return for a couple of magic beans named Kristic and Green) (stupid Mormon freak.) Plus, the wedding actually took place on my anniversary, so my mental cup was already overflowing with warm, fuzzy nuptial thoughts. Anyhow, don’t let me prejudice you- here’s an excerpt of my remarks (names have been removed for some weird reason):

“For those that don’t know me- allow me to assuage your concerns. T and D have not converted to Judaism. Don’t let the suit and the beard fool you- I’m no rabbi- just a big, hairy Jew who knows and loves Tom and Danika and was honored to be invited to officiate their wedding. I should confess, though, that when I told my grandmother I was doing this, I told her that I had become a rabbi so that she would be, you know, really proud of me. So- if anyone takes any pictures with me- please, look at me like I just said something unbelievably intelligent- like you’re just absolutely blown away by my wisdom and sanctity, even if I’m really just making fart jokes.

Alright, so, to the matter at hand. We’re all here today to celebrate the wedding of T & D in, what I believe, is the perfect space. Not only because we couldn’t book the Pantages. Thanks for nothing, Wicked. But because this space- a clean, bare stage with only a ghost light embodies the spirit of new beginnings. One of the best moments in any production happens long before the audience shows up, before the set is built and before the actors are even cast. It is the moment at the very beginning of the production- when all you have are the words on the page, the director’s vision, and the empty space- and you make the decision to put them all together and create something amazing. At this point everything is possible. The perfect production hangs tantalizingly in front of you, and, for one brief, glorious moment, it appears that all you have to do is step forward and grab it. Well, this is the moment that we’ve all come here to celebrate in T & D’s lives. We have the bride, the groom and the space- and we’re about to watch as they make the decision to move forward together and create something amazing.

Now, in theatre, this moment usually flashes by unobserved- at a production meeting in a borrowed conference room or over drinks at, oh, let’s say O’Brian’s in Santa Monica. In life, though, we know how precious this moment is- so we invite a bunch of people down, get a guy to say some deep sounding stuff, drink champagne, eat cake and do the Electric Slide (hopefully) to celebrate it. It’s one of the few areas in which life is better than theatre.”

Pretty good, right? Plus I kicked it off with a super-cheesy impression of the wedding scene from The Princess Bride. I’d like you to find a priest or ship’s captain that would do that. In your face, Captain Steubing!

Concern #3: I need to get my suit dry cleaned.

FUCK! I forgot to get my suit dry cleaned. Hopefully nobody noticed.

So, there you have it. My short-lived brilliant career as a wedding officiant. Now all I have to do is remember to mail in their wedding license and these two crazy kids will be married in the eyes of God and Jerry Brown (that would be waaay funnier with Schwarzenegger.) I may have a knack for this whole “lifecycle ritual” thing. I still don’t want to be a rabbi, but maybe I could get sworn in as a Deputy Commissioner of Civil Bar Mitzvahs. That would be worth the drive to Norwalk- who wants to come with me? First one to answer gets to be my one approved guest. You’ll have to drive, though. That’s one duty the state has not authorized me to perform- even if I do swear to protect and defend American roads from all bad drivers foreign and domestic. That Kim Jong Il is a fuckin’ maniac in his Prius.

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission

Jerry Garcia died the day I left Albany for good, August 9, 1995. In an apparent murder-suicide, he took my childhood with him. (NOTE TO MILLENNIAL FUCKWADS: I don’t want to hear how old you were in 1995. Whether you were in Middle School, Elementary School or Diapers, I don’t want to know about it. And wipe that patronizing “listening to Grampa Simpson tell his Lollapalooza Mosh-Pit Stories for the 10,000^th Time” smirk off your soul-patched, hipster side-burned, weasely little face. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the suckers who showed up too late to the Great Global House Party of cheap gas, music videos and nuclear anxiety that was the 20^th Century and arrived just in time to mop up the puke, save the polar bears, and recycle our empties to pay for healthcare. Have fun with that, kids. Hey- if you’re lucky, maybe you can scrape out a little resin ball of Contentment from the huge bowl of Prosperity we smoked last century. That was some gooooood shit.)

Anyhow, I always felt like by dying right as I left my hometown for the Big City, that Jerry was looking out for me, protecting me from myself. It’s like he was saying: “Hey man, I know you’re moving to New York to follow your dreams and that’s groovy and all, but it’s going to suck major dog-balls for the first few years, so, if you don’t mind, I’m just going to go ahead and die That way, while you’re telemarketing credit cards to old people who can barely afford the minimum payment, or cleaning toilets in comedy clubs for stage time and tips, or getting turned down for that sweet job at Brookstone (fucking personality test- I was this close before they made me take that thing. Angry and anti-social my fucking balls, you ass-face corporate novelty electronics retail Nazi pigs!) you won’t be kicking yourself the whole time for not dropping out of life instead and following me around in a beat up purple school bus called the 420 Express (next stop- Terrapin Station) playing bongos and selling Super Kind Veggie Burritos in the parking lot outside Giants Stadium before scoring that miracle ticket and catching your 10,000^th show. Nope, I’m just gonna die and take this happy, hairy, hippy fantasy down to the grave with me so that you can just keep grinding away in miserable under-employment until you make something halfway useful out of yourself. I mean, what’s the alternative- follow Phish? Phuck that.”

Anyhow, if he was looking out for me, it’s kind of amazing to think that he would sacrifice his life to keep me from using patchouli in lieu of showering. I mean, it was kind of a dick move to his band, employees, family, friends and millions of dedicated fans who counted on him to bring meaning to their otherwise dreary lives, but still, nice of him to think of me. What a mensch.

Of course, there’s another way to look at it: Killing Jerry Garcia is just the sort of dirty, underhanded trick that a yellow-toothed, joyless little sniveling tax auditor of a month like August would come up with. Soooo typical.

After all, August is all about saying goodbye to things that are good and bracing yourself for a long stretch of suck. It’s like one long Sunday afternoon- still technically the weekend, but the game is over, you’ve got a Mimosa hangover from brunch and the twitchy lump of cold dread starts to build in your stomach as you anticipate the long week of PowerPoint slides and “Reply All’s” to come. For those of you out there that still bother with “seasons” August is all about that one last hotdog from the road-side shack before it closes for the season, one last cannonball into the town pool, one last topless make-out session on a field full of fireflies – one last taste of the good life before you’re back to slogging through slush and snow. (Hey, Smug East Coasters- how’d you like that itty-bitty Earthquake. Fun, right? Like God put a quarter in the motel bed and you can’t make it stop. So much for “We might have snow, but at least we don’t have earthquakes” HA! Say hi to IRENE for me, suckaz! My thoughts and prayers go out to all disaster victims everywhere.)

Not even us typically reliable Jews can find a holiday to liven up this dreary month. That’s really saying something, considering we observe a narrowly thwarted genocide at the hands of a crazed Persian Megalomaniac with costumes, booze and cookies. Leave it up to the Jews and in a few hundred years, we could be observing 9/11 with Bin Ladin-tashen (apricot jam stuffed turban shaped cookies – yumtastic! Who’s with me? It’s funny cause he’s dead!) The best we can muster in August is a second rate fast day to commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temple, both of which took place on the 9^th of Av- now widely regarded as the worst day in Jewish Real Estate history- second only, perhaps, to that unfortunate day when God sold Abraham the only little plot of dessert in the whole Middle East with no fucking oil. ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ my ass. They can buy all the fucking Milk and Honey they want in Kuwait with limitless petro-dollars, and still put up an indoor mall with a ski slope. What have we got in Israel? A big salty lake full of mud-covered Germans and terrorism. What a gyp.

There are really only two redeeming things about August:

1. Going back to school
2. Sports

Back to School

The best thing about going Back to School is that I don’t have to do it EVER again. For those unlucky souls that do have to go Back to School, it’s a miserable slog through hell. For me, it’s a pleasant validation of all the life choices I’ve made that have led to me having nothing to do with the educational system- most notably getting older and not teaching. This is a time for me to reflect about how great it is that I never again have to smell the wax on the floors, hear the clanging of lockers of feel the soul crushing weight of a book-bag bulging with meaningless crap I’m going to have to shove in my brain like an endless cafeteria meal of pointless knowledge. At this time of year, I am elated that I don’t have to worry about tests, study for tests, write tests, take tests, grade tests or fail tests and that the only homework I do involves working on my home, and if I don’t get it done, I’m the only one who knows that I Need Improvement. Well, and my wife and dog also know. That dog is particularly judgmental. He’s looking at me right now wondering why I’m not fixing up the kitchen. Maybe he’s wondering why I’m not making bacon for him in the kitchen. Maybe he just wants to go for a walk. Maybe he sees a squirrel. I don’t know. He’s a dog for Christsake- how the hell am I supposed to what he wants? Why won’t he talk to me?? How am I failing you, Lenny??? OK, I’m back. He’s barking at a baby outside. A-Dorable.

Anyhow, for me, Back to School equals Back to Schadenfreude. Sure, I may resent being stuck in an office all day while kids and teachers are frolicking by the beach on their summer vacations, but come the end of August, all you suckers are suffocating together in the stultifying air of the classroom while I’m still napping at my desk and checking Facebook all day in the air conditioning. By the way, you should all check out the great deals on all of my Back to Schadenfreude merchandise at Target- including book covers that say “If you were in Japan, you’d already know this” with a little picture of an out-of-shape Uncle Sam losing a race with the rest of the world; plastic backpacks that say “It only feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders because you’ll need to fix the planet which we’ve ravaged to make these backpacks” and inspirational posters that say “Stay in School! There’s no jobs out there, anyhow” and has an adorable picture of a kitten choking to death on a bowl full of Ramen. For teachers- I’ve got my Rotten Apple line of puffy paint sweatshirts with slogans like “It’s possible you haven’t wasted your life”, “You’re still fine- they’ve gotten dumber”, “With any luck you’ll be dead before one of them is President” and “If you can read this, thank a teacher! If you can’t- thank the Republicans.”

Don’t get me wrong- I have huge respect for teachers. They do an incredibly difficult job and maintain a level of pep unimaginable to the rest of us without fistfuls of anti-depressants washed down with gallons of 5 Hour Energy. It’s a selfless, noble calling- like being a nurse, a firefighter or a fluffer- and, as with all these occupations, it’s a dirty job but somebody else has got to do it.

Sports

Let’s be very clear here. August is hands down, no holds barred, unquestionably the WORST month of the year for sports. The only championship of any kind is the Little League World Series, a three week tournament sure to delight fans of aluminum bats, heart-warming stories of small town kids overcoming adversity and homoerotic pedophilia- like a Bad News Bears franchise reboot directed by Gus Van Sant. As far as Major League Baseball goes- it’s even more boring than usual- the Red Sox and Yankees are playing each other for the 9000^th time, Dodger fans are passing the hat to cover payroll and Pirates fans are in the basement pondering suicide, again. Really, the only sport even remotely worth watching in August is pre-season football- and, let’s be honest that’s only barely worth watching. While it’s true that the Lockout sharpened our collective appetites for pre-season football the way a low carb diet sharpens your appetite for a stale hot-dog bun, it’s still pretty dry and flavorless once you try and choke it down. The only really good thing about pre-season football is that the games are replayed over and over again, pretty much 24 hours a day on NFL Network, so I can easily avoid any of the other really horrible shit going on this August. Economic collapse, environmental catastrophe, the rise of the American Tea-liban. I don’t know shit about any of it because I’m watching the Giants beat the Bears in Week 2 of the pre-season for the 4000^th time. Ahh, sweet sports, is there any unpleasant reality you can’t insulate me from? (By the way, I simply must get my hands new version of the Bible that the Tea Party uncovered. You know, the one that leaves out all of that helping out poor and sick people crap. I always thought the New Testament was way too pussy.)

Even though I use pre-season games like packing peanuts to protect my consciousness from any bumps or potholes it may accidentally encounter on the information highway – like the fact that Rick Perry might be our next president or Long Island is under water (actually, that’s not so bad. Probably the best thing that could happen to Long Island is that it would sink into the ocean and someday be spoken of in hushed tones like a 21^st Century Atlantis with fake tans and Jews who can’t keep their hands off Italians. What’s up with that? Is it the pizza?) I can’t actually say that any of these games are really worth watching. They do, however, bring hope. And hope is in short supply in August, especially this August. I’m not talking about that bullshit Obama hope we all got jacked up on three years ago before we found out he was just a Republican patsy who knew how to use Facebook (that may be unfair to Obama, but fuck him for making me believe in stuff in the first place. I would have been perfectly happy voting for an “America’s a shithole but at least I’m not Bush” ticket, but, nooooo, he had to go and make me believe that this god-awful country was actually worth saving. Well, the joke’s on all of us, cause apparently, we’re fucked! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Where’d all my money go?)

I’m talking about Real Hope. The hope that we’ll have soon some REAL distraction back in our lives – NFL, NBA (hopefully), College Basketball, even Hockey if that’s the sort of kinky shit you’re into. Soon- we’ll be able to hope for better highlights on SportsCenter than some pudgy hick catching a foul ball or some other hick driving a car in a circle. Soon there will be Touchdowns and Tackles, Quarterback Sneaks and Quarterback Sacks, big First Down plays and big First Round busts. Soon, we will be asked if we are ready for some football – and we, as a nation, will joyfully respond that YES, YES we most certainly are. Now turn off the news- Michelle Bachman is talking shit about the Renaissance again. Crazy bitch.

So there you have it. Maybe August isn’t so bad after all. As long as you can grit your teeth and suffer through it, there’s bound to be better stuff to come on the other side (unless you’re a teacher.) Besides, what choice do you have? It’s not like you can drop out of life and go follow the Dead. Noooo, Jerry Garcia made damn sure that couldn’t happen. Selfish hippy fuck. At least he could have waited to die until after I turned 40. By then, I would have outgrown my dirty bohemian, Deadhead fantasies for sure. Maybe. I don’t know. My dog certainly thinks otherwise, and it’s making him sad. Or maybe that’s the lack of bacon. Who the hell knows? Maybe he wants to watch the re-play of the Eagles game again with me. Yeah, that must be it. If you need either of us, we’ll be hiding out on the couch until September.

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission.

OK, all kidding aside, it’s very important that all of you come see my show when it opens. Not just because the actors are amazing (which they are), and the director is brilliant (which he is) and the writer is halfway decent (name rhymes with Flakespear- and I don’t mean Blake Steer, renowned Cherokee porn star). You should all come because I’ve been working my ass off on this show for no money or hope of professional advancement and I need as many people as possible to validate this incredibly stupid and self destructive life choice that I’ve made. Again. This, BTW, is actually the subtext of most peer-to-peer grassroots arts marketing – in fact, you could change of names of most shows in LA to “Somebody Tell Me I’m Not Wasting My Life” or “Hug Me- I’m Broke!”

Milk in a Bag!I’ve been making theatre for most of my life. I founded my first theatre company in 3rd grade in Arad, Israel. For those unfamiliar with Arad (i.e. anyone reading this who’s name does not include the word “Sims”) it’s the sort of idyllic small town that Norman Rockwell would have dreamed of if he fell asleep on the toilet after eating some bad schwarma sold to him by sleezy Russian immigrants. There were three of us in the company, so we called ourselves Ha Shlishia- which, loosely translated from the Hebrew means, “The Three” (pretty fucking clever for a bunch of 8 year olds, if you ask me). As our fame grew, so did our aspirations. We expanded by leaps and bounds- fast becoming Ha Revieya (“the Four”) and, at the peek of our success, Ha Hameshia (“The Five”.) Tragically, we lost two members due to artistic differences over action figures (Boba Fett was our Yoko Ono) and were back to being Ha Shlishia. (Fortunately we weren’t in the American public school system, so addition and subtraction were no problem for us.) It didn’t matter, though- we were Rock Stars- bold, brash and out of control- guzzling chocolate milk by the bagful (don’t look at me- they sell it that way) , wolfing down Krembo (phallic Third World Malomars) and fighting off the girls with a stick (mostly because they wanted to play Smurfs with us and that was NOT fucking happening.)

Krembo: The Chosen CookieMy love song to a chicken, performed as Gonzo to the tune of a Eurovision winning hit in our iconic Muppet Show tribute sketch was the second biggest theatrical event in Arad in 1982 (#1 was the first national, non-union Israeli bus and truck tour of Jacob and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – held over at the high school auditorium for four whole nights (excluding Shabbos.) I was a superstar until my parents decided in 1983 that it would be better for my sense of self-loathing if we moved somewhere where I had no friends and wasn’t popular (there was some other bullshit about my dad’s job) and we moved to the icy climate and socially hostile terrain of Albany, NY.

The Shleshia was, perhaps, the high point of my theatrical career. By the time we moved to the US, my fate was sealed. I was doomed to be a theatre producer. No matter how many advanced math and science classes I took, my earning potential would be forever pegged at the lowest ebb of Middle Class- in that magical ghetto of Ramen Noodles and parental disappointment known simply as “The Arts.” Since then, I have been able to respond to any inquiry into my well being by referencing the show I’m working on- as in “I’m pretty good, we just finished casting” or “Awesome! We opened last night.” or “I’m gonna murder that fucking actress if she asks me one more fucking time about getting soy milk backstage. This isn’t a film set, bitch, shut up and drink the Mini-Moos I stole from my day-job. ” At some point along the way, I noticed that my motivation had shifted. While my early theatrical endeavors were motivated by a clean, wholesome lust for adulation, my later ventures were increasingly motivated more by a twisted and depraved addiction to the process of making theatre itself.

Basket CaseThe thing is, like most Jewish men, I’m a bit of a workaholic (when the going gets tough, the tough blame their hook-nose), and producing theatre is like masturbation to a workaholic — a cheaply satisfying but ultimately fruitless activity that’s best done in the dark and impossible to resist no matter how draining it becomes or how crappy it makes you feel about yourself afterwards. The burden of the show becomes a weight so familiar that you forget how to stand up without it. Some like to think of it as childbirth, but I prefer to compare it to Basket Case. Every show is a horribly mangled evil Siamese twin growing out of my side like a demonic Mad Ball, screeching and clawing and gasping for life until it grows too large and is surgically removed during rehearsals and no matter how much you try to coddle it and keep it contained in the theatre it runs amuck killing the relationships with everyone you love and everything goes down the toilet. (BTW- if you haven’t seen Basket Case– SEE IT NOW!)

At this point, the eagle eyed reader might be wondering why I keep producing theatre if it’s such a miserable and stressful experience. The answer is simple — I love it! Why would anyone do anything else with their lives? No matter how terrible a show is or how thoroughly unpleasant the experience, every show has three golden moments which make the whole thing worthwhile:

Golden Moment #1: The Initial Conversation

This is my favorite part of any show. This is the moment when I hear the director’s ideas and we all decide, “Yes! This is good! This will work! Let’s do it!” That last moment of pure artistic joy before everything inevitably falls to shit. During this conversation, everyone loves each other, everyone loves the project and everything is possible. More often than not, this is the conversation where the director tells the First Great Lie of Theatrical Production: “I want this show to be really simple”. This is the lie I believe no matter how many times I hear it — the “I swear, those other girls meant nothing to me” of theatrical seduction. That beautiful word — “simple” — a few platforms, some tables and chairs painted black; only the most essential props- a pencil, a clipboard, a book; basic costumes — maybe even stuff the actors have in their closets. Elegant, beautiful, CHEAP!!.

The director sings this Siren song and I am mesmerized by it. I close my eyes and allow myself to be drawn in by his words until it’s too late to pull back — the ship of delusion crashes into the rocks of reality and I find out that “Simple” actually means that the whole set is going to have to rotate and flip over, that all the actors will have to be in perfect reproductions of 19th Century Samurai garb painted hot neon pink so we can’t possibly rent them, and that a massive chorus of children and cats will need to fly in from the rafters on a full scale reproduction of a German submarine. And while I may grumble to myself that this sounds a little over the top for The Crucible I go along with every crazy request because once the production is booked — once the Press Release is sent, the website is updated and tickets are on sale, it’s a runaway train and nothing can stop it. All problems must be solved, no matter how absurdly difficult: the lead actor announces that he can only rehearse from 1 – 6 AM and that he needs to leave town for two weeks right before Tech for a Reiki Master class (The Second Great Lie of Theatrical Production is told by actors during casting- “My schedule is totally flexible. If I get this show, it will be my top priority.” More actors get cast based on how convincingly they deliver this line than anything else they read at auditions); the theatre’s only bathroom begins spurting black sewage (HELPFUL NOTE FOR ASPIRING THEATRE PROFESSIONALS: Fuck Grad School. Learn plumbing. If it’s too late and you’re already at the Yale School of Drama, at least do your thesis on snaking paper towels out of toilets so that you’ll have some useful information when you hit the real world. Trust me, nobody cares what you think about Brecht.); the Stage Manager needs a quart of vodka just to get through rehearsal and cries hysterically every time she has to give a line note. During every production, there comes a time when everybody hates each other, nothing will ever get finished, none of the tickets are sold and everything just keeps getting more and more expensive — but if you can persevere through this time, you can reach the Second Golden Moment.

Second Golden Moment: Opening

No matter how much everyone hates each other along the way. No matter how bad things get. No matter how many screaming arguments the lighting designer has with the set designer about the color of paint on the chairs that include the phrase “you’re killing me!”- sooner or later there will come a moment when the show opens and in total defiance of logic, common sense and sometimes the laws of physics, everything magically just works. At this point, there are three key factors that will make everyone fall in love with each other all over again, and people who days before might have threatened to beat each other to death in a dispute over blocking will, all of a sudden, be hugging each other like released hostages hugging family members after a particularly unpleasant hijacking (not to be confused with those pleasant hijackings in Stockholm where you get ice cream and delicious sandwiches and fall in love with your captors.) I call these factors, the Three A’s of a Happy Opening:

Audience

Alcohol

Abundant Free Food

Imagine: A full house of adoring fans laughing at every joke and hooting with exhalation during the Curtain Call, the Two Buck Chuck flowing like water (much cheaper than actual water), cubes of cheese lined up like warring armies of yellow and white as far as the eye can see- how can anyone stay mad at each other? For one fleeting and glorious evening, all is forgotten and everyone loves each other almost as much as they did before they discovered what a bunch of total assholes they signed up to work with. The crappy reviews, empty houses, broken props and smelly costumes of later performances still lie ahead – but for a few hours, everything is as good as you could possibly want it to be. Except the rotating set got stuck halfway through the show, and a couple of kids fell out of the flying submarine and had to be rushed to the hospital- but, still, it’s a glorious night to be alive — and it better be, because I count on the afterglow of this night to carry me all the way through to the Third and Final Golden Moment.

Third Golden Moment: Strike

No matter how long a show runs, how many tickets it sells, how much money was spent and how many sloppy hookups took place in the dressing rooms, sooner or later, everything comes to an end. The house lights come up after the final performance, everyone gets drunk and after one last round of hugs, the set comes tumbling down. With astonishing speed, the product of months of work is reduced to a pile of wood, nails and entertaining anecdotes. Almost immediately, the production is mythologized- and everything that seemed horrible just seems kind of funny- “Hey, remember that time you almost killed an actress for asking for soy milk?” “Remember when the toilet started spewing out sewage right in the middle of tech and we had to call you at two in the morning?” “Remember when those two kids fell out of the flying submarine RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF OPENING? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! That was awesome! Ha Ha Ha! Are they still in a coma?” Because a theatrical production is ephemeral, unlike a film or a building, we never have to confront the ugly realities of our work once it is done and so we are free to take what we want, archive it in our memories and leave the rest with the set in the dumpster. After all, two or three or five years later, no one will really remember what actually happened, and the production can once again be as glorious in retrospect as I would have liked it to have been when I first met with the director — or, if not glorious, then a hell of a lot more fun to remember than it ever was to have to live through in the first place

So there you have it. It might not be the smartest or most lucrative or easiest or most rewarding career choice, but I stand behind it. All I ask from you is that you come see my show, slug down a little Two Buck Chuck, laugh at the theatre stories you’ve heard a million times and reassure me that I haven’t TOTALLY wasted my life. Oh, and, if you know any Third Graders- for the love of god get them interested in computers. Or law. Or medicine. Or Dinosaurs. ANYTHING but theatre. Maybe plumbing- plumbing would be nice. Don’t thank me now. Just ask them to give me a break on snaking out the toilet at the theatre at 2 AM one morning in the distant future. I would do it myself, but, unfortunately, I didn’t go to Grad School.

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission

On May 21, 2011, the world once again failed to end. Honestly, I’m fine with that. It’s the kids I feel bad for. This was their first big apocalypse, they’re not used to disappointment. They don’t remember the purple sneakers of Heaven’s Gate (Little known fact: Ishtar was the second choice cult name) and the total let-down of Y2K when we all rushed into the streets at 12:01 AM, only to find that everything was working just fine, and we had to sheepishly drink up all the bottled water and eat all the Progresso soup we’d been hoarding in giddy anticipation of total collapse.

Plus, the kids, they’ve got a lot of big challenges ahead of them and they were really counting on the apocalypse to bail them out. For me, things aren’t quite as bleak. All I’ve got to do is scratch out a living for a few more decades; slurp up the last soggy Apple Jacks of Social Security and pink Medicare milk from the bottom of the government cereal bowl; drive around a bit in an RV; and die as expensively as possible. They have to figure out how to find jobs, pay off student loans, clean up this bankrupt shithole of a planet and somehow retire at the end of it. It’s like returning a rental car after a long road trip. I feel a little guilty about the condition, but mostly glad that I don’t have to do anything about the dog hair in the back, the Cheez-Whiz stains in the front and the pervasive stench of Sausage McMuffin and Ass.

Of course, all hope is not lost. May 21^st wasn’t actually predicted to be the end of the world, just the Rapture. Since I live in Los Angeles, recently voted City Least Likely to Notice the Rapture by Godless Living Magazine (subscribe now for $9.95 and get the Christopher Hitchens Swimsuit Issue and a phone in the shape of Despair) I probably wouldn’t know if the rapture had happened until I saw all the empty seats at the next Oklahoma City Thunder home game and noticed that Kevin Durant was missing. That’s why he always carries the backpack. In his mind, Jesus is a divorced dad just waiting to pick him up for the weekend and take him to the Heavenly Pizza Hut after the game with his new girlfriend Mary (he has a type.)

Still, based on Facebook status updates from godlier parts of the country, it seems like the Rapture didn’t happen, which means we’re all stuck here with each other. It’s a shame, really. Sure, after 143 days, Jesus would have come back to send us all to hell for eternity, but it would have been a small price to pay for finally being able to legalize gay marriage, guarantee a woman’s right to choose, teach sex ed and evolution in all public schools, wrap up all the holy wars in the Middle East and use the money to fund all the pornographic arts and public broadcasting we can get on the air before we’re all cast into a lake of fire for eternity. Plus I’d rather be boiling forever in a brimstone fueled hot-tub with Al Franken than attend an everlasting pancake breakfast in the Heavenly Rec Room with a bunch of doughy, short-sleeved men who use the word “fellowship” all the time and give each other creepy hugs. The only reason I’d even want to go to heaven is so that I could see the looks on the faces of the white Christians from Arizona when they see how many amigos in Christ are coming up to join them from Mexico and they realize too late that Faith is God’s Green Card.

Of course, the real reasons that I’m disappointed that the rapture didn’t come is that I didn’t feel like getting a haircut and now I’ve got to decide if I’m going to my 20th High School Reunion or not.

The Reunion thing isn’t a decision I ever expected to make. As a child of the Cold War, I envisioned that when the time came for my 20th Reunion, I’d be much too busy fighting off mutants for the last remaining cans of pumpkin pie filling, Spam and cranberry sauce (not the lumpy kind, though, cause that’s just gross) in post WWIII America to be able to make it for dinner and drinks at the Albany Airport Marriott on Wolf Road. I know that nowadays all the hipsters love Zombies like they’re the undead Decemberists or something but, trust me kids, the Bomb was way scarier. For one thing, Zombies aren’t real, so worrying about them is like getting all worked up about the Easter Bunny Apocalypse (MOVIE PITCH IDEA: Harvey meets Thriller.) The Ruskies, though — they were legit, and they scared the shit out of us with their fur hats, evil accents and ruthless gymnasts. Nobody could trust them. Even Sting wasn’t sure if they loved their children, too. It didn’t help that we were nuked up to the teeth, too, and the always-brilliant American electorate decided to put the fate of humanity in the crinkly old hands of a senile actor who couldn’t decide whether to wipe his ass without the help of his wife’s astrologer and couldn’t remember for sure if he’d wiped it ten minutes later. It was a world so precarious that even Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd could believably blow it up if they got their hands on the right launch codes in the Soviet wilderness. Scary times.

Even though we were scared shitless about the Cold War, it made being a teenager a hell of a lot easier. Not only was geography a piece of cake (that’s America, that’s Europe, that’s where they make VCRs, and the red blob is Evil — any questions?) but nuclear anxiety was the perfect real-world justification for all the crazy shit going on in our feverish little teenage brains . Feeling depressed? Shit, yeah — why wouldn’t you, the world could blow up at any moment. Don’t care about your future? Why should you, the world could blow up at any moment. Didn’t do your Algebra homework? Man, what point is there in doing Algebra homework when the world could blow up at any moment. X² + Y² = Fuck it. Couldn’t get girls to talk to you? Screw ‘em. They’d get theirs when the world blew up and they learned all too late that if it wasn’t love then it was the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that would bring you together. Bitches.

Anyhow, since I never really believed the world would last long enough for me to make it to my 20^th Reunion, I was pleasantly surprised when 2011 rolled around I realized the date was fast approaching and I became stricken with nostalgia and a profound desire to attend the event. I actually sought out the organizer of the event, our once and forever Class President (if I had known that Senior Class President was Dictator for Life, I might have paid more attention to the election, but, you know, there was The Bomb and all) got myself added to the Facebook group, enthusiastically friended (BTW- MS Word spell-check refuses to recognize the existence of the words “Facebook” and “friended.” No wonder they’re losing market share to Google) a bunch of old classmates and eagerly awaited my invitation letter. When I told a friend from that era of my life that I would be attending my 20th reunion he asked:

“Which reunion?”

“High School”

“You’re going to your Bethlehem Central reunion. Didn’t you hate that place?”

The answer was YES. I did hate that place. I hated it with a passion. Each night, when I was done masturbating, I would fantasize about blowing it up during a pep-rally. I went through high school with a box of recipe cards in my mind filled with individual highly detailed revenge fantasies for every single football player who ever bruised my arm playing “two for flinching” and every bow-wearing, NKOTB-loving, fruit-flavored-lip-gloss-applying, collar up, top buttoned, preppie jizz bucket who EVER didn’t sleep with me. It was like living through a John Hughes movie that wasn’t funny and never ended (and I don’t mean Curly Sue.) In a caste system that the Hindus would envy I was a sweatpants-wearing Untouchable with a bad moustache, clunky plastic glasses, a denim jacket three shades too dark, and jeans that were ripped in all the wrong places. Nuclear war would have been a relief, particularly on gym days. The friendships I did make there were forged in a white-hot furnace of absolute loathing for the nightmarish suburban prison we were all trapped in together. All I ever wanted to do was get the hell out. Why would I possibly want to go back?

With the warm taste of bile rising in my throat like a visit from an old friend, I was all ready to rip up the invitation and wipe my ass with it (wait, reverse that) when it arrived. With the gleeful enthusiasm of a CIA Agent on Water Board Wednesday, I viciously tore the envelope open, read the invitation with sheer contempt and then pinned it to the fridge with a ceramic magnet showing the Twin Towers (an item once kitschy, then poignant, now nostalgic) and proceeded to do nothing.

Sure, my high school experiences were mostly miserable and many of my classmates were loathsome and repulsive — but there was some good stuff, too, right? There was the Students for Peace and Survival dance that I organized and then proceeded to skip out on, spending the entire time making out with the date I brought from another school; getting changed with ten other guys in the Men’s room after Merry Wives of Windsor and singing old Dion songs the top of my lungs while slapping out the rhythm on the tiles; skipping class, cruising around in my fellow nerd’s deeply ironic Trans-Am, blasting They Might Be Giants brand new album for 1990, Flood; and, well, other stuff I’m sure. I was, and still am, paralyzed with indecision. Part of me is happy to stay as far away as I possibly can from the aging preppy shitwads that made my life hell and part of me wants to taste the old tater-tots of my youth and fondly reminisce with a bunch of people I once wanted to torture with chainsaws.

That’s why I got all excited about the rapture. Just like I once hoped for nuclear war to bail me out of dodge ball, I was hoping that Jesus would kick off the end of days and get the reunion cancelled, thus making my decision for me. Just like Gorbachev, though, Jesus let me down (that’s 3 strikes, Jesus) and now I’m stuck having to decide what to do. If only I had been born one year later, I could be having my reunion in 2012, and the Mayans would make my decision for me.

At least all this rapture talk was a nice distraction from all those buzzkill news stories about floods in Memphis, earthquakes in Japan and tornadoes in Alabama. Have you seen the weather damage in those places? Seriously depressing. It looks like, oh I don’t know, like the world is ending or something. Maybe if I keep recycling, Al Gore will take me in his Rapture. Not sure if spending eternity with Prius drivers will be much better than Jesus freaks, but at least there will be plenty of hemp to go around in Eco-Heaven, so it’ll be a lot mellower than Casa de Christ over there. Plus Jesus wore Birkenstocks, so something tells me he’ll be sneaking over to our place for veggie dogs and hacky sack all the time, which is cool, ‘cause we’ll get to hang. He got himself crucified so he wouldn’t have to go to his 20th High School reunion, so I bet we’ll have plenty in common.

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission

It takes a special kind of asshole to scream on the phone to a total stranger:

“Fuck the Air Force, lady- we had a contract.”

On April 11, 2011 at 10:45 AM, I became that asshole when I was told that the short-term apartment rental which I had arranged for my Passover trip to Albuquerque for me and several family members was not going to be available after all. Evidently, the Air Force officers occupying the space would not be departing according to the previously established time-frame (insert Iraq joke here.)

After a brief, stunned silence, Loretta from Albuquerque Apartments responded:

“Sir, here in Albuquerque we honor the Air Force.”

The courtesy in her voice was stretched to the breaking point by revulsion and shock, like a waitress explaining to a party of cannibals that human testicles are not on the menu and politely recommending they try the patty melt instead. I felt appropriately sheepish.

Here’s the amazing thing, though. Despite my incomprehensible and utterly revolting disrespect for the Boys in Blue (or whatever the fuck color they wear in the Air Force), Loretta was incredibly accommodating. She found a replacement apartment, cut the price and even got me extra toilet paper when I asked. This is because Albuquerque is home to the nicest people in the world. I’m not just talking ordinary nice, I’m talking creepy nice, weird nice, Invasion of the Body Snatchers nice. People who actually take the whole Jesus said to be nice to each other thing REALLY seriously. People in Albuquerque are as nice as people in LA want you to think they are- as you will see below:

LA Barista

What they say: Have a nice day!

What they mean: I hope you don’t die in a terrible accident today because it’ll totally fuck up my ride home later.

Abq Barista

What they say: Have a nice day!

What they mean: Have a GREAT day!

LA Best Buy Employee

What they say: Can I help you?

What they mean: If you dare to ask for help, I’m going to mumble something, then go hide out in the back until you get tired of waiting for me and leave.

Abq Best Buy Employee

What they say: Can I help you?

What they mean: Can I help you? With anything? And maybe tell you my entire life story? Please???

So, why exactly was I, a man so rude that supermarket checkers use me as a cautionary tale to scare their kids (“If you don’t do your homework, you won’t go to college and the sweaty, fuzzy man will scream at you when you crush his Combos”) headed to the Land of the Nice for Passover? Simple — my parents live there.

Albuquerque, from the old Spanish word meaning “cut-rate filming location” was originally settled by Conquistadors who were running out of places to colonize and willing to settle for anything. It’s the largest city in New Mexico, a state known for things that can only happen in the middle of fucking nowhere — atomic bomb testing, UFO sightings, Breaking Bad, etc. It’s the type of town where you can show up to synagogue with a bolo tie, straw hat and a walker and nobody bats an eye (in fact, they look at you funny if you don’t.)

Before my parents moved there, all I knew about it was that it is consistently ranked in among top 10 American cities by Funny Place Names Magazine (between Rancho Cucamonga and Kickapoo) and that Bugs Bunny really should have turned left there. Now that they’ve been living there for a while, though, I know every ice cream place, emergency room and Whole Foods in town. My parents decided to move to Albuquerque from Albany because a friend took them out there and they thought it was neat. Really. They actually have a track record of capriciously moving to the desert. In the late 70s, they moved the family from Cincinnati to Israel after a friend took them there and they thought it was neat. They are awesome and suggestible that way.

I’ve been going out to Albuquerque for Passover for the past few years, but this year, my sisters and their respective significant others and kids were coming out as well from the East Coast. This was a momentous occasion — the first ingathering of the exiles of the Sims Diaspora in many years. I was excited, certainly, but a little unsure of what to expect. What would it be like to all be together for the Seder in this weird little city with the funny name after so many years apart? Would it feel like home?

My wife and I chose to drive out there. Odd as it may seem for an impatient non-driver with irritable bowels, I love a good road trip: the ever evolving landscape, endless flow of conversation, unrestricted consumption of beef jerky — it’s like hanging out in a very small dorm room watching Koyaanisqatsi over and over again on a big screen TV during a mild but very long earthquake (that’s a good thing.) On the surface, it may seem that I made my wife give me a 13 hour piggy back ride to New Mexico, but I am surprisingly useful on the road, having mastered the passengerial arts of making snacks (I work culinary miracles with Cheez Whiz and Mini Pepperoni), keeping the driver conscious (the secret is starting pointless arguments, i.e. “Tori Spelling was so on Saved by the Bell”), looking to see if anyone is coming from the right, selecting playlists on the iPod, pumping gas, and not farting too much. In the past, I would have added rolling joints and navigation to this list, but, age and the Garmin have made those archaic skills obsolete. Plus, what better way to kick off Passover than with a long schlep through the desert? It just feels right.

We left last Friday night and reached Barstow around 11. Barstow is where Douchebag California meets Scary California. There are still a smattering of Kobe jerseys, Bluetooth headsets and velour jumpsuits but increasingly the human terrain is made up of dead-eyed Indian gas station owners eking out a living selling misogynistic stickers to truckers and wishing they’d studied the map more carefully before moving to America; frosted blond motel clerks with brittle smiles and lipstick on their teeth who admire Sarah Palin and wish they could pimp out their own pregnant teens and retarded babies; and teenage fast-food cashiers with more acne than hope.

Needles, where we stayed overnight, is the epicenter of Scary California. There are 5000 people in Needles and 4000 teeth. It is a town which exists solely to be one tank of gas away from Los Angeles — so they are going to make that tank as expensive as they possibly can (TRAVEL NOTE: The gas station owner with the enormous stack of tires who tells you that you absolutely need to buy four new tires because your current tires can’t possibly survive the journey shouldn’t stand too close to the gas pumps because he’s a LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE.)

We got an early start Saturday morning and made our way past the Arizona Welcome Center. Shortly thereafter, I was personally welcomed by a Swastika scrawled on a bathroom wall – which was disturbing but unnecessary, since a Swastika in Arizona is redundant. Still, it was a nice reminder that we wanted to get through Arizona as fast as humanly possible in a small hatchback loaded with luggage and jerky.

Say what you will about child molesters, for my money, there is no worse human being than a truck driver who pulls into the left lane in front of me on a two lane highway to pass another truck while going uphill, slows me down, and then goes at EXACTLY THE SAME SPEED as the truck in the right lane so I can’t get around. Look, I know that truckers are in a hurry — they have long distances to cover in tight timeframes and a dead hooker in the cab that isn’t getting any fresher no matter how much Binaca you spray on her, but — YOU’RE NOT GOING TO PASS EACH OTHER GOING UPHILL. It’s never gonna happen. All you’re going to do is block the flow of traffic and piss people off. It’s maddening. Now I know how blood feels during a heart attack. I think I’ll take my Lipitor.

All the way through Arizona, there were quaint Native American roadside stands selling blankets. Fortunately, my wife and I never get tired of making smallpox jokes, so the miles just flew by.

As we rolled past the Arizona Border and the Last Chance Fireworks Outlet (“Last Chance to Lose Your Thumbs”) and entered the Land of Enchantment and Salmon Colored Overpasses (New Mexico), I started to get nervous. I hadn’t seen my sister’s two young daughters in many years and had no idea how they would react to me. Would I scare them? Would they hide from me? Would they stare at me awkwardly with pity in their eyes as I tried to win them over with dumb jokes? Should I have learned magic tricks? (That answer is always no.)

I shouldn’t have worried about it. Twenty minutes after arriving at my parents’ house, I was walking through the living room in the manner of Godzilla with one niece hanging off each leg, sliding along the floor, screaming their lungs out. Turns out, that in order to develop a meaningful relationship with these girls, all I had to do was:

1. Do absolutely anything and everything they wanted me to do at any time, no matter how stupid, embarrassing, dangerous or painful.
2. Let them treat me like a human amusement park ride.

With these two simple principles mastered, I was quickly on my way to becoming the Fun Uncle and Bad Example of the family — two beloved and cherished roles that I had long aspired to fill. It was easy! All I had to do was get them totally hyped up right before bedtime and then hand them off to their mom, while I went back to my clean, spacious apartment with the other childless adults to sip Chardonnay and quietly chat about the affairs of the day. Piece of cake! I wonder why my sister looked so tired all the time?

The Seder was also delightfully effortless. We easily fell into familiar patterns: the same old sibling type-casting as Wise Child, Wicked Child and Simple Child. We told my uncle’s dirty jokes about the House of Bondage and, in the tradition of my grandfather, substituted “Month of Datsun” for “Month of Nissan” (that one KILLED in the 80’s.) There was a new generation to sing the Four Questions off-key and to join in the traditional, heavy metal inspired rendition of Dayenu (DIE! DIE…yenu, DIE! DIE…yenu) In a nod to our surroundings, my mother added Green Chili Chicken Stew and BBQ Beef Ribs to the menu and my brother-in-law saved us from the barbaric indignity of Gel Fruit Slices and Canned Macaroons by making a flourless chocolate torte. Elijah was a no show, no matter how many times my niece insisted we open the door for him, but, frankly, it was his loss. He missed a great time, and I even brought him a lovely Sonoma Zinfandel to pour in his cup (don’t worry, we didn’t let it go to waste.

Passover is about going out into the desert to find where you belong. This year, that was Albuquerque. Next year, well, who knows? Hopefully no one will take my parents to Dubai, because I’m pretty sure they would think it was neat and I’m not sure how we’d find Gefilte fish there, much less Green Chili Chicken Stew. Still, I’m confident now that wherever we all wind up, we’ll be able to celebrate Passover together.

For those that think I’ve gone soft, next time I’ll be posting about how much I hate the goddamn fucking Lakers and how much I would love to see the homophobic rapist Kobe Bryant choke to death on a Cub Scout’s dick.

Happy Passover!

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission

Some of you may remember that in my last post, I embarked on a celebration of all of February’s bullshit secular holidays and got as far as Valentine’s Day. So, it turns out that I pretty much used up all the good holidays, but here’s some stuff I pulled out of my ass for the rest of the month- enjoy!

Grammy Awards- Feb 13

A Grammy is one of the greatest honors that a person can receive for excellence from an irrelevant organization in a dying industry which is desperately clinging to an outmoded business model – – right up there with Blacksmith of the Year, the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism and Knighthood. This year the theme was “Come as Your Favorite Protein-Rich Food,” but unfortunately, only Lady Gaga got the email and came as an egg. Several artists later apologized, including Justin Beiber who said that, had he known, he would have come as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off; and Katy Perry, who said she would have come as a mouthful of Russell Brand’s spunk.

President’s Day- Feb 21

On President’s Day we celebrate our two greatest American presidents: George Washington, who wore false teeth and a wig and is still considered the most honest man in American history, and Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves (yay!) and won the Civil War sticking us forever with a bunch of inbred, backwards, Red-State, yokels in the Union (boo!) This holiday gives us an opportunity to reflect on the contributions of these great men and all the other brave leaders who’ve guided us through our darkest hours and blah, blah, blah WHO CARES?

IT’S NBA ALL STAR MOTHERFUCKING WEEKEND!!!!!

All Star Weekend is one of the most exciting spectacles of the year. It’s the most fun you can have in sports without enslaving thousands of Chinese drummers. During All Star Weekend, we celebrate everything that old white people hate about professional basketball: selfish players, flamboyant showboating, thunderous dunks, circus shots, long 3s, crazy passes, Shaq dancing — all the stuff you really want to see without the distractions of sportsmanship, dedication, teamwork or any of that other Foundation for a Better Life Values commercial crap. It’s the equivalent of having hockey players spend three days just beating the living shit out of each other without having to dick around with the puck, or NASCAR drivers spending a weekend intentionally slamming into each other to see who can create the most impressive fireballs (Daytona 500), or baseball players continuously injecting each other in the ass with steroids and lying about it to Congress — you know, just the good stuff. Three days of first-rate Sports Porn with the Slam Dunk contest as the glorious cum-shot in the middle like the creamy center of an Oreo Cookie. Awesome.

Of course, this year was rookie phenom Blake Griffin’s coming out party (in the not gay way) (not that there’s anything wrong with that) (I mean, he’s cute in an aw-shucks-boyish-but-he-actually-likes-it-rough kind of way, but I think he’s got a girlfriend so…sorry boys.) With his spectacular play this season, Griffin has single handedly turned the LA Clippers around from a bunch of pathetic hapless losers to a bunch of pathetic hapless losers that show up on SportsCenter and don’t have to give away free tickets at Foot Locker with each every purchase of $35 or more, which actually kind of sucks for me, because now I need to choose between sneakers and Clipper tickets and I kind of need the sneakers more so I don’t look quite as homeless but Blake is just sooo dreamy. But, then again, they actually show Clipper games on TV now so I can watch him from the comfort of my bed while talking on the phone and cutting out pictures of Blake to decorate my Trapper Keeper.

On All Star Saturday night, Griffin cemented his status as Superstar Athlete and Corporate Whore by leaping over the Official Vehicle of the NBA (Kia Optima- who knew?) to win the Sprite Slam Dunk Contest so he could be featured online in the Haier Play of the Day and discussed endlessly during the T-Mobile Halftime Report. I haven’t been so proud since Charles Barkley used the American flag to cover the Reebok logo on his uniform in 1992 during the gold medal ceremony so as not to jeopardize his Nike endorsement deal. Now that’s some President’s Day patriotism, bitches!

February 23- World Thinking Day

You’ve probably never heard of this holiday as it’s only celebrated by Girl Scouts, who are encouraged to do all their thinking before they enter their teens and instead observe Mindless Obedience to Unattainable Body Image Standards Day every day for the rest of their lives, hating themselves for all the Thin Mints and Samoas they wolfed down while they were thinking.

February 24- Global Irony Day

On this day we celebrate the fact that democracy and social justice are easier to come by in Egypt and Libya than Wisconsin. Maybe the Democratic Senators should be hiding out there.

February 27- Oscar Night

Ahh, The Oscars. A glamorous night for stars and star-fuckers alike. On this night, the motion picture business pulls out all the small corn nuggets of goodness from the endless stream of brown banality that sprayed out of Hollywood’s back lots (Albuquerque) the previous year, dips them in bronze and puts them on the mantelpiece of history, so they can be dusted off each year and shown on TCM during 31 Days of Oscar and otherwise be largely forgotten since nobody actually saw them in the first place (remember The English Patient? I didn’t think so.)

On this great night Hollywood’s elite get dressed to the nines so they can screw up traffic and hang out outside a suck-ass shopping mall that doesn’t even have a Cheesecake Factory and be harangued by a shrieking old crow who rips them apart with her surgically enhanced beak and spits out balls of half chewed celebrity from her Botox puffed lips into the gaping maw of her talentless daughter, Melissa.

For a short while after 9/11 an effort was made to tone down the glamour as a sobering reminder of the brutal new world we were suddenly living in. Fortunately, though, we soon realized that we’d be living forever in a hopeless state of permanent warfare, so it was time once more to ratchet up the razzle-dazzle, sprinkle a little fairy dust on the blasted terrain and party down! Much like in the 1930’s when Hollywood kept the masses docile by spoon-feeding them sugar-coated sleeping pill fantasies of champagne swilling millionaires, dancing little girls with bouncing ringlets and happy shuffling servants, the Oscars remind us that despite all the apparent evidence of our senses and credit card bills, everything’s still coming up roses (except for the roses, which don’t bloom anymore now that all the bees are dead) and the only question we need to ask of the world is “Who are you wearing?” After all, the best part of the gulf between rich and poor is how fabulous they all look from a distance.

This year, in a brave show of solidarity with the beautiful and vapid, the Academy invited Anne Hathaway and James Franco to host the Awards. This avoids any risk that there will be anything mean-spirited, inappropriate or remotely entertaining about the program — just three solid hours of seamless banality and awkward chemistry punctuated by cloying drivel, false humility, crocodile tears, and a solemn montage of dead cinematographers nobody remembers.

So, yeah, of course I watched it this year — why would even you ask? I boisterously supported True Grit in all categories – in part because it was a well-crafted, beautiful, idiosyncratic and funny reinvention of an outdated classic with post-modern sensibilities but mostly because I only saw two movies this year and I liked it better than Inception. I always pride myself on being over-confident and under-informed.

As for the irrelevant categories, since they don’t make documentaries about the Holocaust anymore, I had no idea who was going to win Best Documentary Feature and I can guarantee that the winners of Best Documentary Short were celebrating all night until they found out they’d been fired from Whole Foods for taking the weekend off to go to LA. Maybe they can make a documentary about it.

There you have it for February. That’s pretty much it for secular, bullshit holidays for a while. But don’t despair March brings March Madness — the three best weeks of the year for basketball fans, compulsive gamblers and Dick Vitale. More about that in my next post, though. For now, have a very happy Unattainable Body Image Standards Day and a very merry Global Irony Day. Let’s hope that Wisconsin Liberation Day is right around the corner.

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission

Let’s say you’re someone who really enjoys fasting (bear with me, this is going someplace.) You don’t have an eating disorder and you’re not protesting anything, you just like to find any excuse you can to be really, really hungry. Well, if you’re a Muslim, you’re psyched. You’ve got Ramadan, a whole glorious month at the all you can’t eat buffet. If you’re Jewish, you may not get a full month, but there are still ample fasting opportunities: you’ve got Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Tisha B’Av (commemorating the destruction of the Second Temple), Tzom Gedalia (the fast of, um, Gedaliah?) and other fast days sprinkled throughout the year.

But what if you’re a Christian? If you’re Catholic, then you might fast by giving up Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for Lent. If you’re a Protestant of some sort- well, the closest you’ll get to fasting is running out of Light Miracle Whip so you can’t bring deviled eggs to Bible study or skipping lunch after church because snake handling makes you queasy (I don’t know what you people do.).

So, clearly this doesn’t bode well for the Christian or secular fasting enthusiast, but fortunately, there is a totally non-religious solution: the Master Cleanse. This invention gives fans of brutal self depravation a near endless opportunity to consume almost nothing save for a repulsive beverage with the sunny nickname “lemonade,” as in “when life gives you self-loathing, make lemonade!” The Master Cleanse doesn’t care what race you are or what god you worship or whether you bother to worship any at all, it just wants you to starve — a fast even Christopher Hitchens could love.

The holidays in February are just like the Master Cleanse- except they encourage you to fill your body with toxins rather than empty it. From Groundhog Day and Super Bowl Sunday to Valentine’s Day and the Oscars, the month is filled with special occasions that do not discriminate by religion or ethnicity and instead celebrate the All American universal traditions of rodent worship, overindulgence, gambling and exchanging Whitman’s Samplers for sex. There are so many great secular holidays that I’m going to milk them for two whole blog posts. Here’s the first one:

Groundhog Day- Feb 2nd

There was a time in this country when critters of all sorts were used to tell the future: if the canary keeled over, it was time to leave the coal mine; if the rabbit died there were wedding bells in your future; and if a gerbil was discovered in your rectum, you would be a punch line for generations (Buddhsim, shmudism- you’ll always be gerbil boy to me.) Groundhog Day is the last remnant of this once proud tradition. On Groundhog Day a rodent named “Phil” awakens from his slumber, pops his head out of the ground and watches the Weather Channel for 20 minutes. If conditions around the world seem normal to him, he buries his head back in the sand and votes Republican. If, however, he sees what’s happening and loses his shit, he buys Al Gore’s book and campaigns for climate change legislation until he is hunted down and shot by Sarah Palin or her cronies. Good thing for him Puxatony is not in Alaska (or Arizona.)

Of course, Groundhog Day is rather quaint and outdated given today’s fun-sized climate conditions so, starting in 2011, it’s going to be phased out in favor of a new weather holiday: Plummeting Bird Apocalypse Week. If you want to remember how this new holiday works- just use this little rhyme:

If the birds fall from the sky,
Heat wave’s comin’ go outside
If the fishies turn up dead,
Ice storm’s comin’- stay in bed!

Super Bowl Sunday- Feb 6

When I was a high-school freshman, I was regularly beaten up by football players even though I let them copy off of me in Biology. These men among boys assumed that because I was smaller, weaker and less athletic than them, I was inferior and could be abused and exploited — and I went right along with that assumption. Now that I am older and wiser, of course, I know that they were absolutely right. Every Sunday I watch guys like the assholes who used to pummel me make millions playing football on my massive 27” CRT screen while I eagerly cheer them on like a needy puppy desperately begging for table scraps of vicarious glory. Of course, I can take solace in the fact that none of the actual football players who bullied me (that’s right, YouTube generation, you didn’t invent bullying, you just went viral whining about it) actually made it to the NFL, or for that matter, out of their parents’ basements. Bloated on canned beer and stale memories, looking like the Thanksgiving Day Parade Float of their former selves, they too watch the big game with envy knowing that the closest they’ll come to a victory trip to Disney World is a Saturday morning in Lake George with the sullen brats they never see because that cold-hearted bitch of a former cheerleader who thinks she’s still hot-shit even though her tits are all saggy won’t give them more than one weekend a month and the Pakistani asshole who bought the JiffyLube franchise won’t let them trade shifts after the last time. Honestly, I can’t wait for my 20th High School reunion so I can go home and rub my success in their fat fucking faces. I hope they like me now.

Like Laker fans, Steeler fans this year experienced the emotional roller coaster that goes along with supporting a defending world champion led by a rapist. Fortunately for Pittsburgh, no dogs were hurt by Roethlisberger’s activities, only women, so he was able to get back to work lickety-split and prove his innocence by winning football games. The sorority girls of Orlando can breathe a sigh of relief, though, because Big Ben was beaten in the Super Bowl by Brett Favre’s former intern, Aaron Rogers who led his Packers to glory despite the fact that his receivers decided to warm up for the game with a greased-pig wrestling contest and all the starters died of Plague before halftime.

Of course, the highlight of the Super Bowl was the Black Eyed Peas’ Halftime Show. Not the performance itself, which was shiny ass-cake, but the fact that Fergie was allowed to perform. This meant that White America’s collective panties have finally come unbunched about the whole Janet Jackson thing since for the first time since Nipplegate a pretty, female pop-star was allowed to perform during a major televised sporting event, much to the consternation of desiccated rockers everywhere (I’m looking at you, Tom Petty). Not that I mean to trivialize the deadly serious issue of showing nipples on television. I can certainly appreciate that young children can be traumatized for life by even the slightest glimpse of the body part they spend their first year on earth sucking on. Of course, precautions were taken to protect White America from Fergie’s nipples. She was loaded down with so much electrified padding that her range of motion was limited to swiveling her arms up and down like a Chewbacca action figure from the 70s, with equally sexy results. It would have taken a small army of roadies at least four hours with bolt cutters to dig out a boob, and it might have caused a small electrical fire. Still it was nice to see her hop around like an angry ape, swiveling her arms and yelling off-key while an army of highly choreographed dancers went through their repertoire of Microsoft Word Auto-shapes looking like nothing less than God’s Lite-Brite.

My Mother’s Birthday – Feb 6

Happy birthday Mom! Sorry again about the whole naked with the pool boy crack in the last post. Anyone who knows you would of course know that I was just kidding and it was really the gardener. (I stole that joke from my mom, BTW- that’s how awesome she is!)

Boy Scout Day – Feb 8

I’ve got one word for anyone surprised by the number of gays in the Boy Scouts: neckerchief. They might as well make them wear a fucking tiara.

National Let’s All Pretend We Give A Shit about Egypt Day – Feb 10

Look, I hate tyranny as much as the next guy, but raise your hands if you knew anything about the Egyptian government or cared at all two months ago? Right, didn’t think so.

Valentine’s Day- Feb 14

Valentine’s Day is a cynical, exploitive holiday made up by greeting card companies, stuffed animal manufacturers, jewelers and chocolatiers, designed to make people in relationships feel guilty if they don’t buy each other presents and to make single people feel like inadequate failures for not being in a relationship. I love it! I’m an underpaid, out of shape arts administrator with a tiny house and a hairy back. I feel like an inadequate failure most of the time. Why shouldn’t I feel like a winner one day a year for being happily married for over 10 years and let all the rich, pretty single people with slammin’ pads and manscaping regimens feel like losers for a change?

And what’s wrong with getting presents? I love presents! Russell Stover hearts full of nougaty goodness, stuffed apes in boxer shorts that talk when you squeeze them, nattily dressed little bears from Starbucks with hearts on their outfits and a song in their hearts. What the hell is wrong with any of that? Even if we don’t exchange gifts, it’s all good, because I know I get to spend time with the love of my life and you don’t. The Christians have Easter, the Irish have St. Patrick’s Day. but on Valentine’s Day, I feel like CVS has been redecorated just for me and the world is my warm, fuzzy oyster.

I realize this sentiment of exclusivity is somewhat at odds with the whole “universal holidays” theme of this post, but Valentine’s Day does not discriminate by age, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation — that is until Proposition V passes and gay people are required to refer to it as Heart Shaped Partnership Day so that they don’t taint the sanctity of Valentine’s Day.

Right- so that’s the first half of my gluttonous, backwards holiday Master Cleanse. Next post: President’s Day through the Oscars. Until then, my atheist friends, Happy Plummeting Bird Apocalypse Week!

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission

There are 3 types of Yiddish folktales (bear with me, this is going somewhere):

1. Be nice to smelly beggars when they come to your door — not out of love or compassion, but because God might be testing you, and you could win a free chicken dinner and slammin’ new candlesticks.
2. Look at the wily little Jew trick the big, bad Goy and save his village from certain destruction for at least a week.
3. Life is terrible. Enjoy it before it gets worse.

This third category includes stories related to home improvement- of which the best one is:

A little Jewish couple live with their many children in a tiny run-down house in a quaint Eastern-European Jewish village that hasn’t yet been burned to the ground by Cossacks. The man, Shmulik is always being hassled by his wife, Tiffany, because the house is so small, loud and crowded. Finally, at his wits’ end he goes to the Rabbi.

“Rabbi,” he says “my life is miserable because my house is so small, loud and crowded and I’m afraid if I don’t do something soon, my wife will leave me.”

The Rabbi listens and strokes his beard thoughtfully. Finally he says “Bring the goats into the house.”

Shmulik does this. A week later, he returns to the Rabbi.

“Rabbi, I did what you told me, but now things are worse! What should I do?”

The Rabbi listens and thoughtfully sucks herring juice from his moustache. Finally, he says. “Bring the chickens into the house”

Shmulik does this, and returns to the Rabbi to complain a week later. This process goes on for several weeks, with Shmulik complaining and the Rabbi giving helpful suggestions re. housing the animals. Finally, as Shmulik and Tiffany are on the brink of utter despair — the Rabbi comes to visit. After listening to the couple rant and rave, the Rabbi says in the calm tone of a man who hasn’t been sharing his house with livestock “Take all the animals out of the house.”

Shmulik and Tiffany do this and suddenly, their house suddenly seems quiet, empty and spacious.

“You see,” says the Rabbi “Now your house doesn’t feel small, loud and crowded anymore.” He smiles upon them with great wisdom and walks away satisfied … then Tiffany stabs him in the back of the neck with an ice-pick and marries a Lutheran.

The moral of the story is clear — never ask a Jew for renovation advice, but there is another useful lesson for those ambitious and foolish enough to dabble in home improvement.

Case in point: A while ago, my wife and I were feeling like our historic Westside hovel seemed too old and run-down so we decided to replace the hardwood floors in the living room and bedroom. We did this with mixed emotions, knowing that the original floors had been cherished and enjoyed by generations of termites but, with a little help from the Lumber Liquidators Deferred Usury Plan we bought 300 square feet of beautiful new hardwood floors. As the flooring sat in the living room acclimating like a foster child, we realized that before we put it in, we’d have to get the old floor out which meant that we would have to move all our stuff out of the living room and bedroom. Because our whole house is the size of a small order of Apple Dippers in a McMansion Happy Meal, we would have to store a lot of stuff outside, which meant building a shed in the backyard, so we bought a shed. After the disassembled shed was delivered, though, we realized that we would need to assemble it on a level surface, so we would have to pour a concrete patio in the backyard. Before we could do that, though, we would need to grind out the roots from the old dead tree in the yard so we could dig out the area where we would pour the concrete, so we could build the shed, so we could move our stuff into it, so we could take out the old floors and put in the new ones. Before we could do that, though, we would need to get rid of all the busted old paving stones in the yard, so that we could grind out the roots, so we could pour the concrete, so we could build the shed, so we could move all our stuff into it, so we could redo the floors. Before we could do that, though, we would need to get rid of the small old rusty shed in the yard, so we had to bring everything from the old shed into the house, so we could get rid of the pavers, so we could grind out the roots, so we could pour the concrete, so we could build the new shed, so we could move all our stuff into it, so we could redo the floors. Before we could do any of this, we would need to chop down the old dead tree in the yard, which we did back in September of 2009.

Since I hire Mexicans when I play with Legos all the tricky stuff (i.e. everything) would be done by contractors. I would be the “client” (or, as they say in Spanish, “el sucker”) which would mostly involve moving furniture, spending money and waking up screaming.

Sometime between bringing everything into the house and pouring the new patio, the unthinkable happened. For several days, water fell from the sky rapidly in small pieces (I think it’s called “rain”), leaving us to share our 450 square foot house over the holidays with 300 square feet of stacked up flooring, 25 square feet of stuff from the old shed, 49 square feet of disassembled new shed, 10 square feet of terrified and confused Labrador Retriever and 5 square feet of each other. It was like we were entombed in a pyramid of our modest aspirations for a slightly better life.

Eventually, the sun came out, the pavers were taken out, roots ground down, concrete poured, and shed built. We crammed as much as we could into the new shed and shoved the rest into the bathroom and kitchen. This meant, among other things, sticking the mattress in the shower — which is a bit like giving birth in reverse, and relocating every single book we own into the shed (HELPFUL RENOVATION HINT #1: Buy a Kindle NOW.)

We moved ourselves and our deeply confused and terrified dog in with friends in Long Beach, where it is currently summertime and the water drains clockwise. While we truly appreciated the free place to stay, the distant location turned my typical 15 minute stroll to work into a two hour Trail of Tears with more road rage and less smallpox. I began arriving at work with all the joie de vivre of Michael Douglas in Falling Down. Though I tried to hide the impact from my co-workers, I think they figured out something was up when I changed my email signature from “Respectfully Yours,” to “Eat Shit and Die, Fuckface”

As soon as we moved ourselves out, the house was fully occupied by the contractors working on the floors. At this point, I was as welcome in my home as I used to be in my dorm room when my roommate’s girlfriend was visiting from Poughkeepsie, only, in this case, I was the one getting fucked. Like the Iraqi people, I had mixed feelings about my occupiers. I was glad to see them rip out all the rotten old stuff, but as soon as they were done with that, I just wanted to see them put down something solid with a reliable police force and get the hell out as quickly as possible. (HELPFUL RENOVATION HINT #2: Your contractors will leave faster if you don’t keep trying to kill them. I’m looking at you, Afghanistan.)

I hit rock bottom the first time I came home and saw the exposed slats which formed my subfloor and the ground below visible between them. It was like the first time I saw my mother naked, only without the pool boy. I intellectually knew what to expect once the comfortable surface was torn away but was emotionally unprepared for what I would confront underneath (NOTE: I am, of course, joking about the pool boy. I wish we could have had a pool growing up. Hell, I would have fucked the pool boy myself if it would have helped get one. Especially if he had beer — but not Genessee Cream Ale, good beer like Molson or maybe LaBatt Blue. And maybe also a nickel bag and a really nice butt.) In an effort to disprove the notion that things were built better in the good old days the illiterate yahoos that built our house in the 20’s got blind drunk (literally) on bathtub gin, painstakingly chose the worst boards they could find, threw them down as far apart as they could and clog-danced on them for hours until they were nice and lumpy. Once our contractors discovered the uneven surface they would be working with, they carefully explained that before putting down our new floors they would need to create a level, even surface by laying down a bed of money and plywood. Since our only other choice at this point was to commit Hari Kari and my Samurai sword was all the way in the back of the shed, I pulled out my trusty Lumber Liquidators card and paid the ransom to get my house back.

After a week of disturbing visits home, enduring the forced death march up the 405 and spending money like a cokehead with a residual check, we finally returned home last Friday to discover that everything was finally done. The old dead tree was gone, pavers removed, old shed out, roots ground down, concrete poured, new shed in, old floors gone and the new floors in. And, sure, the new floors looked great but, more importantly, there were no stacks of flooring in the living room, no piles of stuff to take outside, no pieces of shed to put together and best of all no contractors occupying the space. There were just the two of us and a dog, who now had more space than he knew what to do with — which of course, left him deeply confused and terrified. It was like moving into a brand new house with a remarkably shitty kitchen. We were able to calmly unpack, pull the mattress out of the shower and bask in the satisfaction of a job well done by somebody else.

So, the next time you’re feeling bad about your house, your life or your useless drunk dad of a football team who falls off the victory wagon in Pittsburgh, and subjects you to another pointless Super Bowl between two teams you don’t give a crap about, the best thing you can do is go out and make your life even worse for a while. Doesn’t matter what you do — join a cult, give up gluten, contract dysentery, date an actor, adopt a chimp, become a teacher — whatever it is, so long as, by comparison, it makes you appreciate how good your life truly is. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to take a deep breath, relax and count your blessings. That is, of course, until you decide to remodel the kitchen. Then things get really bad.

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission

For the record, Chanukah is one of my favorite holidays. Nothing beats the combination of lighting candles, opening presents and making Christians feel like dirt when they accidentally wish me a Merry Christmas (“Merry CHRIST-mas to me. Oh, how nice. You have yourself a very Merry I’m-a-Ignoramus-Who-Assumes-Everybody-Believes Exactly-the-Same-Stuff-I-Do and a truly Happy Funny-You-Don’t-Look-Jewish-Because You-Don’t-Have-Horns, too. Maybe you should ask Santa for a diversity seminar- that is, if he can fit in under the tree between the burning cross and copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And stop ringing that bell at me, I’m sure as hell not giving you a quarter now, I don’t care what Army you’re with.”)

I know it sounds like I’m not feeling the holiday spirit — but remember, my holiday isn’t about wussy crap like “Peace on Earth” and “Goodwill to Men” – it’s about eating fried food and jelly doughnuts, getting presents for EIGHT WHOLE NIGHTS and, most importantly, celebrating the crazy-ass bunch of Jewish rebels who kicked the ancient Greeks out of Israel and stretched one day of oil for more than a week. That’s right, ass-kicking, thrift, cholesterol and shopping — throw in the guilt over not calling my mother, and you have all the pillars that the Jewish faith is based on. The only thing more awesome would be a holiday celebrating Israeli Airport Security — and I don’t mean National Opt Out Day.

All of this proves that, despite the pervasive stereotype that Jews are wimpy, neurotic, intellectual and un-athletic — a stereotype which, I might add, is continually reinforced by the insidious forces of television, film and reality, Judaism is actually way more hardcore than Christianity. There are many more examples of this, as you can see below:

New Child Rituals

Christianity: Baby is dressed in adorable white gown. Genial red-cheeked priest sprinkles tiny droplets of water on its precious forehead as adoring parents look on beaming with pride and joy and both families come together to celebrate the miracle of new life.

Judaism: Baby is strapped to a board and given a wine-soaked sponge to suck on. Freelancing urologist with an inappropriate sense of humor chops off a hunk of its penis while terrified parents look on with horror, trying not to pass out and both families come together to eat whitefish, crack jokes and argue.

Biblical Heroes

Christianity: Long-haired hippie leader who wandered the dessert with tight core of followers preaching peace and love. Cross between David Crosby and Ghandi. Ultimately killed for his beliefs.

Judaism: Rock-star warrior King David who slew the Philistines with his sword by day and the ladies with his lute by night. Cross between Ariel Sharon and Slash. Ultimately sent a guy to his death so he could bone the dude’s wife.

Dietary Laws

Judaism: Rigorous code which includes the total separation of dairy and meat products and prohibitions on eating pork and shellfish, as well as numerous other laws. Animals killed by specially trained butchers in ritual fashion under strict rabbinic supervision.

Christianity: Turkey for Thanksgiving. Ham for Christmas. Weight Watchers points the rest of the year.

Spring Holidays

Judaism: Remember the liberation of our ancestors from slavery by the forceful hand of a vengeful god who slew the first born sons of the Egyptians and generally took no crap.

Christianity: Something to do with a chocolate bunny and resurrection. Still not really clear on this one.

New Year

Judaism: Ten days of serious contemplation and repentance culminating in 24-hour fast in which we plead with God for our very lives.

Christianity: Get drunk. Watch ball drop. Seriously contemplate Bowflex.

13^th Birthday

Christianity: Pizza party in basement. Sneak in beer. Feel up middle-school crush.

Judaism: Stand on stage in front of every single person you’ve ever met and, oh yeah, GOD HIMSELF in bold defiance of acne, growth spurt, crushing insecurity and changing voice. Chant long passages of ancient text in foreign language to punishing tune. Celebrate ascent to manhood by drinking 20 tiny cups of wine at luncheon in synagogue reception hall and feeling up middle school crush in coat room. Feel like a man til you puke in the temple toilet.

So, light your Channuka candles and say your blessings with pride, my fellow tribe members. Forget the outer nebbish and embrace the bad-ass desert warrior within. Surely, if we can put up with slavery, public circumcision, Kosher food and Manischewitz, we are tough enough to put up with Christmas trees, ugly sweaters, animated specials and all the other goyisha nonsense on parade this time of year. And, we don’t need y’all to put out a pity Menorah with your big ole’ tree in the town square. We know you don’t really want it there, so just skip it. Tell the ACLU I said it was cool. You just go on and enjoy your silly little pagan tree-worshipping birthday party. Just don’t expect me to be gracious if you wish me a Merry Christmas — remember, I’m feeling MY holiday spirit.

Happy Hanukkah. Or Channukkah. Or Hanuka. However you spell it, it kicks the crap out of Christmas.

This post originally appeared on http://fierceandnerdy.com. Republished with permission