everything is wrong with me

The closest we could get to an Easter outfit picture: running down the hall with his ukulele and his little hat, like a goddamned cabana singer escaping the wrath of the cuckolded husband of the wife he romanced earlier in the evening (notice the dropped blackberry in his wake). Happy Easter, everyone!

My son pushed away his French toast and ate exclusively from my creamed chipped beef. CALL OFF THE PATERNITY TEST!

Thank you for your support and more soon. 

Happy nine months to my son Patrick, shown here watching Sesame Street and eating puffs, wearing a shirt reminiscent of a gay Canadian stripper from the 1980's. The most fascinating thing I've ever seen is watching you learn and explore new things. The least fascinating thing I've ever see is you standing on the side of your playpen, screaming at me for 15 minutes straight in the morning as I get ready for work while I plead with you, "Please, I just need three more minutes!"  Mommy and Daddy will miss you this weekend and early next week when we're in Dublin, but that's why they have all that Guinness.

Sung mostly by Maureen, but one of my favorite Velvet Underground songs. 

Sundays and encased meat. Perfect together.

I would pay literally USD $5,000,000 for someone to come to my apartment and teach me how to play George Michael's "Freedom '90" on the piano. Note that I have no formal training in piano, but through a series of YouTube clips, I taught myself to play a passable version of the outro of "Layla" when I was in hyper procrastination mode while finishing 236 LBS OF CLASS VP.  PS - This video is FANTASTIC. Brings me back to being 11 years old and thinking, "Something about this is appealing to me, and I feel something going on in my crotch. Not sure of much more than that, but definitely sure about liking this and the crotchal-area stirring." 

I finally, mercifully, finished all five books in the Game of Thrones series. I bought all five in one bundle for my Kindle, so that when I started, it said that I had about 80 hours left of reading. Here are a few NON-SPOILER takeaways:  1) The start of the fourth season of the TV show is going to be awesome. Wow.  2) I could not care less about Bran's story (which, by the way, got pretty weird). I mean, Brandon Stark? More like borophyll? AMIRITE?  3) Speaking of shit getting weird, what the eff with Arya?  4) I am only vaguely, possibly 60% aware of everything that went down from about the middle of book four until the end of book five. Once you get past the 150 main character mark, it gets a little hard to follow. This is especially true with all the Daenerys stuff.  That's all I can really get into without giving anything away. One thing I will say is that I would not recommend reading the books. I don't read as much as I used to and it took me forever to get through these (provided, they are almost 5000 pages altogether). My main issue is that the show does a good job of distilling the most important characters and their storylines, whereas - I'm not joking - there are about 150 main characters by the end of book five; as a writer, the thing I am most amazed by is how the eff did this author name all these people? (I usually look on Facebook for character names.)  Any non-spoiler thoughts?

This is nice; I'm honored to be included on a list like this. And to this day, every time I see this cover, I really wish I'd gotten the author photo with the custom-made replica suit for the back of the book. Maybe for the reprints. 

American men's obsession with little hats NEEDS TO STOP RIGHT NOW.

As many of you know, I spend an inordinate amount of time reading and writing in the shower. Late afternoon on Saturday, I headed out to New Jersey to hang out with two buddies, one in from London, and to go to the NY Red Bulls game. My wife sent me the attached photo, saying that about an hour after I left for NJ, Patrick crawled across the apartment, down the hall, and plopped himself in front of the bathroom door. There, he sat yelling and banging on the bathroom door – because he thought I was in there and he wanted me to come out.  Isn’t the song “Cats in the Cradle” about a dad who doesn’t spend enough time with his son because he’s always reading and writing in the shower? I mean, yowzers. Looks like I might have to start reading and writing in, say, the living room, like all you normals.

Side eye while crushing a bottle at the park. PS - We are not bad parents because Patrick is not wearing socks; he pulls off both his socks approximately eight seconds into every walk and besides it's a lovely morning.

Dad of the Year. (This happened while I was making my tea. Not while I was four rooms away playing video games. Swear.)

(Seriously: I am probably the world's best at looking at NYC apartments on Trulia and saying things like "Are you serious?" and "You have GOT to be kidding me." My favorite was the dilapidated rowhome around the corner from my current apartment in our not-cool-at-all neighborhood in Brooklyn. It was 1500 sq ft, needed to be completely redone, and the second full bath was in the kitchen. All this for the low, low price of $700,000. STEAL, they said.)