Conceived
My wife and I conceived sometime in January.
I love the term “conceived.”
It makes it sound like I actually thought of something.
“Yes, I conceived of the whole thing.”
“Is that your child?”
“No, it’s just an idea I had.”
Baby Born
So, the way they do it is they have this huge sheet.
And I am positioned north of the equator.
The baby’s born.
The doctor picks the baby up.
Her head just pops up from behind this sheet.
It’s like a Kukla, Fran and Ollie show.
So, instead of experiencing the most poignant moment of my life,
I’m thinking,
“This is the greatest puppet show I’ve ever seen.
It’s so lifelike.
And it’s got my face in it.”
Baby Products
Why does every single baby product in the world have to have a picture of a baby on it?
The food, the toys, the wipes.
We know it’s for babies.
Is anyone buying Huggies by mistake?
“Hey, these aren’t elegant dinner napkins.
This is, like, for a baby’s ass or something.”
Birthday Clown
I go to these kids’ parties…
The birthday party clown always corners me
and wants to talk to me about his comedy career.
I don’t know what to tell him.
“Listen, dude,
I don’t know how to get from these parties to having your own show on TV.
I just went from having my own show on TV to these parties myself.
I don’t know how to do it in reverse.”
* * *
I think the hardest part of being a clown,
would be that you are constantly referred to as a clown.
“Who is that clown?”
“I’m not working with that clown.”
“Did you hire that clown?”
“The guy’s a clown.”
How do you even know that you want to be a clown?
I guess you just get to a point where your pants look so bad
it’s actually easier to become a clown than have the proper alterations done.
Birthday Kids Jumpy Castle
Then they have this other thing at these parties
called a Jumpy Castle.
Basically,
it’s a small portable insane asylum for children.
You insert your child into the slot.
The child turns around and shows you what their real personality actually is.
By the time they get out,
they’re in such a psychotic frenzy,
all you can do is just load them back into your minivan-paddy-wagon,
strap them into their little car seat straitjacket and drive away.
“Go ahead and scream, you’re out of your mind anyway.”
Circus
This is why the circus is still around after 15 centuries of no one enjoying five seconds of it.
Parents think kids like it.
Kids think, “I guess my parents needed me to see this for some reason.”
No one’s got the guts to stand up in the middle of a circus and go,
“What the hell is this even supposed to be?”
Watching flexible immigrants fleeing for their lives
from these deranged animals
jacked up on Thorazine trying to survive
on a diet of sawdust and peanut shells.
No one’s laughing at the clowns.
Because we all know somewhere underneath all that bright color,
there is a man who is not right.
And I don’t want to be too down on the clowns.
We are colleagues in a certain sense.
I think a certain professional respect is appropriate.
Annoying Line
And I would love to tell you some stories about all the cute little things
that our new daughter does.
But I’m not going to do that.
Because I’m not exactly sure where the “annoying line” is.
I know it’s right around me somewhere here.
And I also know it’s very easy to cross,
because I sure as hell don’t want to hear about all the funny things your kid said.
Or did.
And how you “don’t know where he gets it from.”
I’ll tell you where he gets it from.
He gets it from you.
Because you’re boring.
He’s boring.
Your whole damn family is boring.
* * *
I would like to hear the parents of dumb kids
talk about how they always know exactly where the kid is getting it from.
“We’ve tried everything.
MTV, rap music, the Internet.
He’s just not picking up anything that surprises us in any way.
He never says anything that we don’t know exactly where he got it from.”
Family Member Stickers
I would describe myself as very “pro” family.
Very “anti” wanting to hear anything about anybody else’s family.
Particularly regarding the row of little white family member stick figures,
on the back window of your minivan.
No one’s going,
“Hey, look, three girls and a ferret.
Let’s catch up and find out more.”
“There’s two lesbians, a Rottweiler and a Korean kid.
I want to meet them.
Let’s congratulate them on those very specific choices.”
* * *
We don’t need to know more.
We see you’re in a minivan.
Doesn’t that tell us enough?
You’re just trying to get a group of people from birth to death
as comfortably and efficiently as possible.
* * *
I’m also not seeing any stick figures getting out of these vehicles either, by the way.
I’m seeing the bumper come up about a foot and a half when they disembark.
How about some stickers on the backs of some of these fat asses?
“Cake, fries, soda, pudding pops, Ho Hos, Clark bar.”
They seem to be part of the family too.
Daddy’s Home
There are two basic male domestic instincts.
First, we see our daily return to the home as an event of great momentousness.
We announce it at the door, “Daddy’s home!”
As if family members will drop to their knees
and weep at their good fortune.
They do not.
Because they know once our coat is off,
that concludes our involvement with anyone or anything in the house.
Which is the second male domestic instinct:
Avoidance.
The only thing ever heard about Dad around the house is,
“Where… is… your… father?
I saw him at the wedding,
and that is the last we know of his whereabouts…”
In the ’50s fathers spent a lot of time working on bomb shelters.
They’d be underground digging huge holes in their own backyards
more comfortable dealing with a nuclear holocaust than a nuclear family.
Golf
Avoidance is the male domestic instinct.
Golf the ultimate avoidance activity.
A game so nonsensically difficult
so pointless
so irrationally time-consuming.
The word “GOLF” could only possibly stand for,
“Get Out Leave Family.”
And I have a lot of friends that play.
They all love to play.
“You would love it, Jerry…
It’s�
��a—very—challenging—game…”
Yes. I am sure that it is.
It’s also challenging trying to throw a Tic Tac
100 yards into a shoebox.
In the fantasy mind of the golfing father,
when he comes home,
the family will come running out,
to hear the exciting stories,
of his golfing adventures.
In reality:
No one is even aware that he has left or returned.
From 8½ hours of idiotic hacking
through sand and weeds,
while driving drunk in a clown car
through a fake park.
Kids in Bed
My wife has been bringing our youngest one in the bed
every night at 3 o’clock in the morning.
This is another beautiful experience.
It’s like sleeping next to a laundry bag that has
a live goat tied up inside.
All night long the goat is punching and kicking, trying to get out.
He has somehow mounted himself onto a rotating display wheel that works its way around the bed
raising his body temperature to 189 degrees.
How does that little body pump out all that heat?
God, it’s hot in there…
And not only is it romantic to sleep with your wife like that,
but you wake up feeling refreshed and ready to go.
The Idea of Dad
It takes time for the idea of dad to sink in.
It was years into my children’s lives I’d see them looking at me
from across the room like they were going to
come over and say,
“I’m sorry, is someone helping you…?
Mom, the horsey ride guy’s here again.
Do we need anything?”
Thank You Monkey
Why do all parents now have to turn their kids
into battery powered, cymbal clapping, thank you monkeys?
“Thank the yogurt lady.
Thank the bus driver.
Thank the man for not abducting you and making you grow up in a tent in his backyard.
(clapping cymbals)
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
They do this because all they want
is for some other parent to say,
“Oh, your child has such good manners.”
No, he doesn’t.
He doesn’t know what’s going on.
When trained poodles walk around on their hind legs, they don’t think,
“Oh, look at me! I’m progressing to a higher level of species.”
They think,
“I don’t want any more beatings, so I’m going to do this.”
Mob Boss
When I say I love being a parent,
I certainly don’t mean to give you the impression that I am in any way effective at it.
I tell my kids to do things.
But they say, “No.”
And so I have been reduced to threats, fear and intimidation.
I have become a small-time mob boss around my house.
I figure out what they like, and then I threaten to hurt those things.
“I notice you’re becoming quite fond of that little stuffed Curious George
that sits in the corner of your room.
It would certainly be a shame if something were to suddenly happen to him.
He sits so close to the stairwell.
And with you being at nursery school all day.
He seems so vulnerable.
I was just looking at the box he came in,
and I think I noticed the word ‘flammable.’ ”
Sometimes they make little Play-Doh animals.
And when they go to sleep at night,
I break the heads off of the animals,
and leave them at the foot of their bed for them to discover
when they wake up in the morning.
Nothing wrong with sending your child a little Sicilian message once in a while.
Other Kids over My House
Sometimes they bring kids over my house,
which I don’t get.
“We have kids.
Why do we need these other kids?”
Do you find that other people’s children… never look quite right?
Their faces always seem Silly Puttied into some compressed or elongated shape.
Too wide. Too narrow.
“Is that boy’s head supposed to be like that?
He’s a melon head…”
Then the parents come to pick him up…
“Oh, they’re melon heads, too.
It’s just a big melon head family.
He’s fine.”
Most children I meet are either sticky or crusty.
I think they start off sticky,
roll in whatever debris,
it adheres to them,
and they become crusty.
To me, all these kids that are coming over my house are just Pecan Logs that talk.
I have never felt concerned when these little kids would hurt themselves
while they are in my home.
“Well, sure you’re crying, you just drove your head into the side of that television set.
… That was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen, by the way.
No hesitation. You lowered your melon head and went right into it.
That’s a very valuable lesson you just received.
You learned, Dumb = Pain.
You’re going to be learning this many, many times in your life, I have a feeling.
Because when you’re dumb, life hurts.”
Star Wars
I watch a lot of Star Wars with the kids.
Don’t care for it, personally.
I can say that publicly because they were never going to put me in Star Wars anyway.
I’m wrong for the tone.
You don’t want a character that during one of the lightsaber fights says,
“You know, all these backflips, splits and cartwheels?
No one is scared of anyone that can do these things.
You can flip all you want.
It doesn’t hurt the other person.
If you want to go to a different platform, just step down to it.
Someone’s trying to kill you. You need to focus.”
* * *
I’d like to be in a casual scene with Darth Vader.
I really want to ask him,
“So, are you able to go anywhere without the music?
If you get up in the middle of the night to pee,
does it come blasting on, waking everybody up?
If you stop does the music stop?”
Sucks and Great
Things we do to convince ourselves
that our lives don’t suck.
Tomorrow you’ll be walking around,
“My life doesn’t suck.
I saw a comedian that had a TV show in the ’90s last night…”
Even though the truth is your life does pretty much suck.
I know that because I know that everyone’s life sucks.
Your life sucks, my life sucks too.
Perhaps not quite as much…
But in the vast suckness of human living,
everyone’s life sucks and that’s okay.
Never feel bad that your life sucks.
Because the greatest lesson you can learn in life,
is that “sucks” and “great” are pretty close.
People want you to think that these are the
polar opposite ends of the spectrum, but they’re not.
They’re right there.
So sick of hearing about some “great” restaurant that everyone says “you have to” go to.
You know how your friends just single you out for some reason?
“You have to go.
You would love it.
Wouldn’t he love it?
He would love it.
You would love it, yoouu…
You have to go because… You.”
“Did you like it?”
“I didn’t care for it myself, but you.”
* * *
I don’t like great.
I’m looking for “Not bad.”
“How’s the food over there?”
“Not bad…”
“That sounds great.
Let’s just go there and get this over with.”
If you go to a great restaurant,
they’ve got to tell you the Specials.
“Would you like to hear the Specials…?”
“No.
If they’re so Special, put them on the menu.
I’m not interested in food that’s auditioning to get on the team.”
I don’t understand all the words they use, anyway.
“We’re going to pan-sear it,
we’re going to herb-crust it.
And then we’re going to drizzle it with something that’s a reduction of something else.”
They’re always drizzling in these places.
Stop drizzling.
We can’t take the drizzling anymore.
“Maybe if you didn’t reduce it so much, you wouldn’t have to drizzle it.”
The meal takes two and a half hours.
Your ass is hurting by the end of it.
It’s not half as good as a bowl of Lucky Charms and Pepsi, anyway…
The check always comes in that special book like it’s
“The Story of the Bill.”
Yeah, here’s the story:
“Once upon a time, you got ripped.”
That’s the story.
You’re standing on the street afterwards with your friends,
“Was that great…?
I don’t know if it was great…
Actually, I think it sucked.
That great place sucked.”
Then you go to a baseball game.
You have a hot dog.
The hot dog is cold.
The bun is not toasted.
The vendor is an ex-con in a work-release program.
Is This Anything? Page 21