Nun the Wiser

When my life went to hell in a hand-basket, part of me wanted to throw myself into my work. They only issue was that I didn’t really like my primary work and my second job – covering high school sports for a local newspaper, which I did very much like – I had to quit so that I could be a half-of-the-time single father.

Not having the standing writing gig left me with a void any time that Martin and Casey weren’t around. For most of a year, I just filled that emptiness by feeling sorry for myself. It’s amazing how much self-loathing you can squeeze into a couple of days by yourself.

Eventually – thankfully – I got tired of wallowing in my own pity. I explored the option of getting a part-time job again, but it turns out that most employers have trouble working around an amoeba-like child custody agreement. The one offer that I got was willing to work around my time with the boys…if I committed pretty much every free minute that I had to them.

I was so tired of being in my house by myself that I actually considered that…right up until I started to remember the physical and mental toll that working 80-90 hours a week used to take on me.

Still, I really was sick of sitting around during the times that my sons weren’t around, so I started casting about for another idea. It took a while, but the thought of volunteering occurred to me.

Now, my initial thought was, “Heck, there’s gotta be a ton of places that could use a volunteer like me.” Well, that might be true for some people but it wasn’t for me. It didn’t dawn on me at first, but the same issues that I had with a part-time job – the fact that I have a rotating schedule of single fatherhood – was a hindrance for most organizations as well.

I was on a website looking at volunteer opportunities when I stumbled upon one for a convent…as in a place where nuns live. I was raised Catholic. I went to parochial school until junior high. Nuns are all right, I thought. So, I sent an e-mail asking for more information.

Within an hour, the volunteer coordinator was calling me to find out my availability. It didn’t take long after that for me to agree to become a part of their volunteer group that helps out with activities for elderly Sisters.

My initial gig there was to run a weekly trivia hour for whichever Sisters wanted to join in. The crowds were small, but it was fun to try to find trivia questions that are appropriate for nuns. (There’s a whole lot that aren’t.)

Part of the reason that I was asked to do that is because I actually do have a wealth of useless information in my head. Unfortunately, an awful lot of it revolves around pop culture…entertainment, sports, that kind of thing. As it happens, nuns that have devoted their lives to making the world a better place don’t really care which TV actor wasn’t allowed out of his contract to take the role of Indiana Jones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Even if you just tell them the answer, they don’t really know nor care who Tom Selleck is…not even when you explain what an awesome mustache he has.

Instead, I would go to subjects like geography or who is the patron saint of what or history. The questions were rarely too hard, but when you’re in your 70’s and 80’s facts that you might have learned when you were in school years ago don’t come to you quite as quickly as they once did.

My absolute favorite point in doing the trivia was when a question would spur a brief discussion of a topic. For example, one of the questions that I asked touched upon the Second Vatican Council from the early 1960’s, which led to things like Catholic services being done in languages besides Latin and advocated allowing nuns and lay people be more involved in services. I hadn’t picked the question – I honestly don’t even remember what it was – for any other reason than I thought they would know the answer to it.

What I ended up with was a 20 minute discussion and lesson from a group of women who had already taken their vows by the time of Council and the subsequent changes. The struggle to figure out who the first American president was that was born a U.S. citizen was replaced by passionate discourse and insight from people that didn’t just watch it from the outside, but saw the history up close and personal. I’m not even particularly interested in the Vatican II reforms, but it was fascinating to watch.

Late in the summer, a construction project at the convent interrupted the ability to do the trivia hour, so the volunteer coordinator asked if I would be interested in teaching a creative writing workshop. It felt kind of odd to offer writing tips to nuns that could very easily have been friends with the ones that taught me to read and write, but I agreed.

The Sisters at this convent have done things like provided humanitarian aid all over the world and helped build schools and medical centers in Third World countries (and some Second and First World ones as well). For most of their time on earth, their real lives have been plenty interesting enough without having to use creative techniques to jazz up the telling.

Still, I was given a group of six very willing Sisters as my class. They came in, sat down and stood at the ready to take notes. It was like the kind of weird dream that second grade me might have had.

Over the course of the six weeks, I asked them to do various writing exercise and one overarching assignment of creating a short fictional story based on an event from their real lives. It was fascinating to watch these women whose entire lives have been grounded in working in very real service capacities try to take the ropes off of their imaginations.

It was awesome when one of them would just completely go away from their training and come up with something that was a complete flight of fancy. It was just as satisfying to see them stretch and add some flair to events that had happened in their lives. Most of them were so used at looking at those events in black and white that it was fascinating to watch as they added color.

And, I can honestly say that I never would’ve thought that I’d be using the parables of Christ as a way to get into a discussion about using creative imagery to make a larger point, but that’s exactly what I found myself doing.

The biggest thing that the entire experience has done, however, is to keep me from feeling sorry for myself. No matter how bad my day might have been – no matter how challenging recent events might be in my life – it’s hard to sit across from women that sacrificed themselves for a cause. You don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate the fact that these women have spent a lifetime trying to make things better…oftentimes for the least amongst us. Maybe some people can face that and still complain, but I can’t.

It ended up being just what I needed. I’m not sure that you can ever actually plan to get more out of something than what you put into it, but it sure is a happy occurrence when that’s what you get.

Maybe I’ve even bargained down some time future Purgatory time for the rotten way I behaved as a child in Catholic school.

(And, just in case anyone is actually wondering about the presidential trivia question referred to somewhere in the post…technically, it’s John Tyler because he was the first president born after the Constitution was ratified. Martin Van Buren was the first president born after the Declaration of Independence, so he’s the first that wouldn’t have just been considered a British citizen at birth but really he was kind of born without a country. The rest of the first group of presidents would’ve started out as subjects of the crown.)

Little Villains

Do you think the parents of Hans Gruber knew that they were raising perhaps the greatest movie villain of all time?

I don't mean Alan Rickman's parents. I'm sure that somewhere along the line those Brits realized that they had a pretty good actor on their hands. No, I'm talking about the fictional Teutonic two-some that gave life to young Hans. At what point did their sweet little boy turn evil?

If you're not one of us that pulls out "Die Hard" to watch every Christmas (yes, it is a Christmas movie, but that's an argument for another day), then here's a reminder of the brilliant Mr. Gruber:

Here's why I'm asking...I think that there's a possibility that I'm raising a pair of budding super-villains in Marty and Casey. In particular, the youngest of my progeny seems to be cultivating an evil genius persona. I tried to tell him that one of the pre-requisites to being an evil genius is that you have to actually be a genius. I mean, it's right there in the title.

He rebutted with all of the stupid things that evil geniuses do that get them caught, so obviously the title "evil genius" is an honorary one.

Last year around this time, Casey actively recruited a henchman. He picked out the biggest kid in his grade and involved him in his schemes. This was through no fault of the other child, who is in reality a big sweetheart. No, Casey seemed to be doing it without the other child knowing.

The biggest indicator of this came when Casey convinced two different teachers and a bus driver that his henchman was to come home with him. The other boy was led to believe that he was going along to a birthday party...which is the same deception that Casey used on the adults. It wasn't until he showed up at the daycare with his henchman in tow that my son's plot was thwarted. Of course, the grown-ups had to figure out where the extra kid was really supposed to be.

Last night, as brothers do, the two of them were fighting. Recently, when these arguments have arisen Casey has taken to cribbing lines from the old Bill Bixby-Lou Ferrigno TV version of "The Incredible Hulk." Only he's ammended the famous line of, "You shouldn't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

Casey keeps saying, "You keep pushing me right to the edge, and you do not want me to go over. You don't know what I'm capable of...nobody does!"

Typically, that leads to Marty accusing Casey of being overdramatic, which is a personal afront to the acting ability of the younger one. "NO...I'M...NOT!" is usually the reply.

Since Thursday of this week, they've been arguing over a library book. Yes, I said a library book. Casey took out a book that Marty wants to read, and now won't let him read it until he's finished with it. Just for fun, Casey is reading the book at the rate of about one page a day. There are 216 pages. He quickly brushed aside the idea of just letting his brother read the book first because...well, I guess it's because that isn't what an evil genius would do.

Things came to a head last night and suddenly my home became the set of a really bad Sylvester Stallone action movie. (Do you say "really bad Sylvester Stallone action movie" or is the "really bad" just implied from the rest of the statement?)

I walked into the kitchen and Casey was standing in the middle. When I entered, he slowly turned and looked at me. "You say that payback is not the answer, but I say that it is. I'm about to get my revenge on. For eight years, I've had to put up with that brat and now it's time to get even. Oh, Marty! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

Luckily, Casey only weighs about 40 lbs. so it wasn't that hard to grab him as he tried to run past, ready to get his "revenge on."

Now, I'm sure that from this it sounds like I've only got one super-villain walking around...but in my opening I included Marty. He's just a little less committed to the role. Sure, he likes the idea of world domination as much as the next guy, but he's a little more squeamish about getting there.

However, after Casey had repeatedly kept pushing buttons after his grand speech, Marty had finally had enough. He suddenly lunged at Casey and hissed through clenched teeth, "You think you know discipline? You don't know anything. I'll teach you discipline."

I managed to stop him before he tied up his brother and started reenacting the torture scene from either "Lethal Weapon" or "Casino Royale."

The funny thing is that neither of them ever actually watches movies like that. The closest they ever come are the Marvel superhero films...which have some of that stuff, but they're not quite in line with the Stallone-Schwarzenegger-Willis school of bang-bang, boom-boom filmmaking. Joss Whedon can write a lot of quippy lines, but he's never quite gotten to the level of "I'll be back" or "You're the disease, and I'm the cure" or even, "Yippe-kay-yay motherf***er." (And, yes, action geeks, I'm aware that only one of those lines was uttered by a villain.)

Casey even dresses the part. For two of his last three school pictures, he's worn a black tie on a black button-down shirt. He's asked repeatedly to be allowed to buy a suit. It's only a matter of time before he makes the transition to the tailored European fare sported by Hans Gruber and his ilk. If Casey is going to be an evil genius, he plans on being one of the nattily attired ones.

Thankfully, having known Marty and Casey all of their lives, it seems much more likely that they are preparing for a career making movies about bad guys that give cheesy speeches before their doom than to actually be one. Both hate any kind of pain and they both hate getting into trouble...and while they like to argue with each other, neither is particularly enamored with fighting.

Considering, however, that I've heard them argue over which would be better at taking over the world, I'm sure there will always be a flicker in the back of their minds of the path (hopefully) untaken.

Unemployment

I'm not sure why anyone would think otherwise, but make no bones about it...being unemployed sucks.

Wait...I take that back...being unemployed doesn't necessarily suck. There's plenty of free time. I recently discovered that a local channel shows old shows from my childhood in the afternoon, like "Emergency!" and "Dragnet" -- not the black & white one but the color version with Harry Morgan where Joe Friday keeps saying that all the kids are hopped up on drugs. Were I a stoner, I would be in total nirvanna.

Plus, it's almost fall. The weather is really nice and I can take advantage of the kids being in school to take long walks in the woods and find myself. I'm the catch and release sort, so when I do occassionally find myself, I just look for a minute and then let me go free.

Not having a standing income and having to try to find work is what sucks.

I hate looking for work. Part of the reason that I've spent my adult life working a series of jobs I didn't particularly like is because I hate looking for work.

Being a writer as well as a business professional gives me the chance to apply for both working stiff office jobs and freelance writing work at the same time. Basically, I have double the amount of people that can judge me and reject me.

Luckily, thanks to my early days as a writer I'm so used to being rejected that it almost doesn't register. I can tell from the first sentence that I'm looking at a rejection e-mail or letter and I stop reading at that point. A friend recently said, "But what if they tell you what you did wrong."

What I learned a long time ago is that if someone thinks that you suck or that your work sucks, they aren't going to tell you anything that you don't already know. The reason that they think you suck is based on their own perception. Either it was just their opinion or your work really did suck...and I know that I'm self aware enough to have probably already known that when I submitted. Reading the letter where they reaffirm it for me doesn't do any good.
There are times where they say that you suck and your tempted to say, "What the hell are you talking about? That was at least better than average!" or "My qualifications were exactly what you said that you were looking for!" The problem is that your opinion really doesn't matter. I've hired people before and I know that the opinions of the people that I didn't hire were pretty inconsequential to me. No sense railing at someone that couldn't care less about what you're upset about.

Originally, I wasn't planning on including a chapter in my forthcoming book "My Boss is an Idiot...Now What?" on searching for work but this is making me rethink that. After all, that idiot that you interview with today could be your idiot boss tomorrow. I'm fairly certain that my own idiocy as a boss started right from that first phone interview.

I'm going to add that to my chapter outline right after I get done checking Indeed.com and Media Bistro for the fourth time in the last hour.

After all, it's been a full 12 hours since the last time that anyone has told me that I suck. 

Go To H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks

My sons have developed a fascination with swearing. I don’t swear around them and neither does their mother. That lack of exposure has led them to be curious about the social constraints regarding swearing.

They don't actually swear, but they like to point it out when they see a bumper sticker with a curse word on it or when they see an ad promoting "Kick-Ass 2." Sometimes that can be amusing, such as when I heard them arguing about whether shit was the ‘S word’ or the ‘SH word.’

The other day, and not for any other reason than sometimes I say things like this, I said, “What the H-E-double-hockey-sticks was that?”

Casey looked at me quizzically and said, “What does that mean?”

“That I don’t understand why that person just pulled in front of me,” I explained.

“No,” he said. “What does H-E-double-hockey-sticks mean?”

Suddenly, I was in a parking lot trying to explain to an 8-year-old kid that hockey sticks kind of look like L’s…even if it’s just barely...so I was kind of spelling hell instead of just saying hell. As my sons are wont to do, he immediately told his mother about his newly found knowledge at the earliest opportunity.

The troubling part is that I inadvertently added spelling as an option for swearing. I’m sure that it’s only a matter of time before I hear, “Why don’t you go f-u-c-k yourself?” coming out of his mouth.

Casey has already amped up his use of substitute words like ‘heck’ and ‘fricking.’ I thought about trying to get him to switch to ‘frack’ instead…you know, to at least give him some geek cred…but then I would’ve had to borrow a season of “Battlestar Gallactica” from a friend and then try to explain the socio-political undertones to him.

Grown-ups didn’t swear around me when I was a kid, at least for the most part. I learned about profanity the old fashioned way…from comedians.

While the generations prior had learned various naughty words from listening to Red Foxx albums when the adults weren't paying attention, I was at the forefront of using bad stuff from cable television.

My older sister was the first person I knew who had cable in the mid-1970’s. She tapped into the new medium early enough that HBO wasn’t even in existence when she first had it. When the premium channel was first added to her lineup, the now titan of the entertainment industry wasn’t even broadcasting full-time yet.

Thanks to HBO, I was able to learn George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine around the time that I was Casey’s age now…making me, I believe, one of the first of a new generation that heard Carlin’s routine for the first time while watching him say those words on television.

I didn’t even know what two of the words meant (hint: one rhymes with hunt and the other had something to do with a rooster lollipop). When you’re watching Carlin on the sneak, you can’t just go off asking people what the words that he used mean.

 While that earned me an unending appreciation of Carlin – when I saw him live for the last time before his death, he was still closing some shows talking about words that you’re not supposed to say – there was another comedian had a stronger influence on my thinking regarding profanity.

Freddie Prinze – not the Sarah Michelle Gellar/”Scooby-Doo”/”I Know What You Did Last Summer” one, but his father – was an actor who I liked on his sitcom “Chico & the Man.” Then I saw his stand-up routine. Suddenly, the sweet and safe generically Hispanic guy from the sitcom was a cocksure New Yorker who hung out in comedy clubs. Instead of the pat lines produced by necessity by network sitcom writers, Prinze on cable seemed inclined to say whatever he felt like saying.

When you’re eight, having the realization that you can be two different people if you want – one in polite society and another if the setting is more relaxed – can be pretty liberating.

 

However, I’m finding it hard to teach that to my own children. It’s probably just one of those things that they have to learn on their own…but I’m impatient and would just as soon help them figure it out quicker. Of course, there’s a possibility now that I might need to rethink my lessons on patience.

If you can’t teach your kids the “Seven Words That You Can Never Say on Television” – most of which now get said even on network broadcasts with regularity – you might as well find something else to teach them.

Not to be overly sappy, but I still remember where I was when a newscaster announced that Freddie Prinze had shot himself (he died the following day). There’s a scene in the movie “Fame” where the high school student that wants to be a comedian talks about Prinze’s influence on him...that scene almost made me cry when I first saw it as a kid.

 

It’s not every role model in your life who teaches you about freedom, death AND the skillful use of profanity.

Here’s a clip of Prinze’s HBO special from when I was a kid:

(Disclaimer: One, yes, I realize that he doesn’t actually swear all that much in his routine, but I was eight when I saw it. Saying hell a few times would’ve qualified to me. Two, I also realize that the routine would now not be considered politically correct. It was 1976. There was no such thing as politically correct. I apologize for not being able to go back in time and adjust the social mores of 40 years ago.)

For those wondering about the debate from the opening paragraph, the floor eventually resolved that since they couldn’t figure out another ‘S word’ that the more streamlined designation would be used instead of ‘SH word.’ It’s so nice when profanity can be used as a civics lesson.

Swearing Addendum

There was a story from my youth that came up in the writing of the post about profanity that subsequently didn’t really fit in. However, never one to edit myself down, I decided to just include it separately.

When I moved to rural Michigan as a youngster, it was because my mother married a jackass who was originally from there. Now, you might be thinking that you’re not supposed to say anything if you don’t have something nice to say about a person. While I normally appreciate that line of thinking, the fact of the matter is that the guy my mother married was a jackass…empirically.

I did not swear in front of my family when I was young. I don’t really swear in front of my family now. In an Irish household growing up, using the Lord’s name in vain (“Jesus!”) was infinitely better than telling someone to fuck off.

One evening when I was around 14, I was sitting on the floor watching television while my mother and her jackass husband were behind me. For reasons that I have no recollection of, her husband began flicking me in the back of the head. Perhaps I had done something that annoyed him, or more likely he was just doing it because he was a jackass.

He seemed to have it in his head that he was going to get his shots in on me while I was still skinny as a rail and before I grew to the stature of my brothers…who are 6-foot-4 and 6-foot-8, respectively.

That’s the kind of person that he was; only pick on someone when you clearly have the upper hand.

I started out casually saying, “Quit it.” When that didn’t work, I
upped the volume of my “Quit it!” as the anger built.

Finally, I reared around and yelled, “Keep your fucking hands off of me, old man!”

As soon as I realized what I just said, I took a look at my mother
whose back had stiffened at the offensive language. For a brief
second, it looked as though she was going to explode at me.

Then our eyes met. I’m not sure what expression I had on my face, but I watched as my mother became less sure of what she wanted to say, eventually deciding not to say anything and then finally moving her gaze away from mine.

I went back to watching television and her husband kept his hands to himself for the rest of the time that I was sitting there.

That didn’t last, of course. Being a jackass there were plenty of
other occasions where he tried to pick fights with me, but I learned quickly that it got me nowhere to take the bait and figured out how to control myself.

That actually led to one of my favorite stories about him, even if it
doesn’t cast me in the best light. One time, I thought that the
fighting between he and my mother was progressively escalating into something that might become physical. So, I waited until a point when it was just the two of us – he and I – and said, “You better make sure that you keep your hands off of my mother.”

He sneered and said, “Really? What are you going to do about it if I don’t?”

Quite calmly I looked at him and said something along the lines of,
“I’m not going to do anything by myself. The first phone call I’m
going to make will be to my brother-in-law explaining the situation and asking him to arrange for things. Then I’m going to have him fly out here with my 6-foot-8 brother – you know, the crazy one – and I’m going to tell him that you hit our mother. We’re then going to lock the two of you in a room for a little while and let him do whatever he wants to you. Once he’s done, we’re going to bring in my other brother – you know, the 6-foot-4 one with all of the military training – and let him finish the job. He’ll then tell us how to clean up and dispose of you so that no one ever knows what happened. Then we’ll all go back to our normal lives and forget that you ever existed. That’s what I’ll do.”

By the time that I was finished, he wasn’t sneering anymore.

Funny thing…he also didn’t act like he was going to hit my mother any more after that.

Robin Thicke Has a What?

Let me first start with this...while this is normally a family friendly -- mostly -- blog, this post is a little bit less so. So, what I'm trying to say is that my own sons should stop reading now.

One of the dangers of being single and unemployed is that you can also become a little bit out of touch. And, sure, being a dad seems to automatically veer you towards the clueless.

When a friend asked yesterday if I had seen the video for Robin Thicke's song "Blurred Lines," I had to admit that I had not. Heck, I hadn't even really paid that much attention to the song the couple of times that I had heard it. I vaguely remembered reading in Entertainment Weekly about the controversy over the lyrics and Thicke's comment about "what a pleasure it is to degrade women."

Since it's Robin Thicke, son of Alan and from a lineage that produced the theme to "The Facts of Life," I didn't worry too much about it.

It wasn't until later that I learned about the copyright controvesy, with Thicke suing the estate of Marvin Gaye and Funkadelic/George Clinton in order to prove that they didn't steal from Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" and Clinton's "Sexy Ways."

That isn't what this post is about, but just to give my two cents, "Blurred Lines" does sound like "Got To Give It Up." However, it wasn't so obvious that I immediately thought of it. And, if you're going to steal, stealing from Marvin Gaye and George Clinton at least shows that you have taste.

No, the only reason that I bring any of this up is because of the video. My first thought in watching the video -- well, right after "those are certainly nice boobs" and who's the other guy besides Thicke and Pharrell Williams (so sue me...I couldn't remember T.I. right off the bat) -- was, "Is this video an homage to Robert Palmer or George Michael or both?"

For comparison's sake, here's Thicke's "Blurred Lines" video:

 

 

(If you want the full on nudie version instead of the cleaned up version above then feel free to click here.)

 

Here's the video for Palmer's "Simply Irrestible":

 

 

 

Finally, here's Michael's "Freedom 90":

 

 

 



Let's see...we've got Thicke, Pharrel and T.I. in evening attire while models wear vapid expressions. That points to a tribute to Palmer's iconic mid-80's videos...including his breakthrough hit "Addicted To Love."

Depending on the version, the models are either pretty naked or really naked. While there aren't out and out nipples in George Michael's video, there are some really famous super models (Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, etc.) that aren't wearing much...or in the case of Cindy Crawford are enticingly nude, although strategically filmed.

By the way, if you forgot about what we all thought about Ms. Crawford back in the day, watch the video and I'm sure the memories will come flooding back.

In Thicke's video, the models show that even really beautiful women can look kind of goofy dancing naked. In Palmer's videos, the models also move in a uniform, automoton way...making them look kind of goofy.

Palmer's videos and "Blurred Lines" are both set against fairly generic backgrounds.

Double points to Palmer.

George Michael doesn't even appear in the video for "Freedom 90," let alone hashtag his own name as Thicke does nor did he use inflatable letters to brag about the size of his appendage.

Then again, maybe neither Robert Palmer or George Michael felt like they had to brag about their manhood.

So, while others will debate whether Thicke and Pharrell plagarized "Got To Give It Up," I will continue watching the video for more clues about who they were ripping off with that.

Purely scientific. Nothing at all to do with the boobs.

While it seems unlikely that there might be someone reading this that doesn't actually know Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up"...well, one you probably do and just don't know that's the title. It gets played on every Lunchtime 70's radio show in the country and was in both "Boogie Nights" and "Menace II Society." If that doesn't help you, then here's a clip of Gaye performing the song on "Soul Train":

New Life

If you’ll take a look at the post history of this blog you’ll notice that there is a significant gap between the previous post and this one. What was I doing, you might ask?

Well, even if you didn’t ask I’m going to tell you because this is, after all, my blog. The primary reason for the break in a blog about the joys of my domestic life is that I got a divorce. Since the point of the blog was that my life as a husband and father frequently resembled the sitcoms that myself and many of my friends either write for, wrote for or tried to write for, suddenly not having a wife presented a problem.

Turns out that I didn’t think much of anything was funny about the divorce.

Having had about a year to digest it all…well, I still don’t think the divorce part was funny. I’m pretty sure that there aren’t too many worse things that you can have happen to you than to believe yourself to be happily married only to find out that only one of you feels that way.

With time, though, you start to find more things funny. Little by little, I’ve started to find the humor in life again. Like when my cousin seemingly forgot how to talk after an afternoon of drinking beer in the sun. Of course, first we had to verify that he wasn’t having a stroke but once we were sure that it was just the demon booze it quickly became funny. The paramedics might not have thought so but I did.

Just as things had seemingly settled down from the whole divorce brouhaha and kids were settled into a routine of going back and forth between parents, I subsequently lost my job. Unlike the divorce, that one I kind of find funny.

I didn’t particularly like my job. I was an empty suit in middle management not really doing much of anything of use to most people. It’s hard to feel bad when you loose something like that. The only problem is that I’m an adult with responsibilities…I have to pay child support now for God’s sake. I might have hated the job, but the fact of the matter is that I wasn’t just working as a drone for the fun of it. They paid me real money for kind of, sort of doing some things.

When I was younger and was a struggling writer in Los Angeles, not working a real job had a certain amount of cache. You were working on your material. You were available for meetings any time that your agent or a producer might want to see you. The fact that no one ever wanted to see you was irrelevant. Plus, it’s easier to go see movies by yourself in the afternoon…and you probably won’t be alone for long once you spot three or four of your “struggling artists” writer friends taking their own mental break to see a matinee.

Being single and unemployed as a 45-year-old dude in the Midwest is a lot less fun. I can try to call myself a struggling artist around here, but the more official term used by the local citizenry is “bum.” I can’t even ride the rails and upgrade to “hobo” since I still have to care for two children.

However, if being Irish has taught me anything it is this: When life hands you lemons, go trade them for some beer and get pissed.

I’m going to go back to looking at the bright side of life, as Monty Python famously taught me as a youngster.

You, gentle reader, are invited back to partake of my ramblings and amusing stories about my life, many of them tied to the darndest things that my sons continue to utter. And, if you happen to know of anyone hiring empty suit, middle management types that are also failed writers...well, I'm easy enough to find and less picky than a chess club geek on the eve of prom.