You May Think I'm Uncool, But I'm Not, So Shut Up

It's the last one, probably ever

Well, hello again! As some of you know, I’ve transitioned all my writing to Substack and my forever-upcoming book. This change went into effect over a year ago, and the blog you’re now reading has gathered some serious Internet dust ever since. Ordinarily, I’d just let it sit here forever and ever, but two things are preventing me from doing so: This website has been hosted on my wife’s server…

Just wanted to give a heads up that I’ve moved all my writing over to Substack. It’s slightly different than a blog in that you can read an entire post right in your email inbox, in addition to their website and smartphone app. Also, there are subscription tiers, but you can read almost all my stuff for absolutely free. The Premium members get a few perks–including a special weekend edition–but…

In my own head, I’ve been trying to get work as a writer ever since I posted my first blog in 2005. It’s a lie I tell myself, of course. I’ve never once applied for any writing job, created a resume, or even tried to find an agent. Truthfully, the only way I could’ve possibly gotten paid work is if a publisher or newspaper editor broke into my house, held me at gunpoint while sifting through my…

Around 2015, Evgeniya and I were taking in some kind of street festival on Ditmars Blvd. in Astoria, when I caught the faintest glimpse of someone I thought I recognized. I took a another quick glance and, well, her hair was way different, but I think it’s her! It was her. She was a semi-famous headlining comedian from the East Coast of Florida whom I opened for a couple of times before I moved…

“What’s Wrong, Butthole?”

At some point earlier in the year, I declared that my book would be published by the end of 2022. Absolutely, definitely, no-doubt-about-it that thing was as good as done, mark my words. However… …unless an extraordinary amount of unusual productivity happens in the next two days, I will have to admit that I was a filthy lying liar that you should’ve never believed in the first place.…

Thanksgiving Memory of Memories

About twenty years ago, sitting at my parents’ house for Thanksgiving Day dinner, my mother offered me the cranberry sauce. “Mom, when will you finally remember that I hate cranberries?” “You don’t like cranberries?” Dad said. “I don’t like–“ “I know, I know, you don’t like canned cranberries, but you like fresh ones. Then I tell you I’ve always hated cranberries, because they look delicious…

11/10/22 Journal: A Handslap to Humanity

On the news last night, I saw an interview of someone who lives directly in the path of Hurricane Nicole. The reporter asked, “Did the devastation of Hurricane Ian affect your thought process about whether to stay or evacuate for this storm?” The local woman just kind of smiled and said, “Nah, not really. We’ll be fine.” On the one hand, yeah, she probably will be fine. Nicole has mostly been a…

Thank God Sasha’s Birthday is Almost Over

By the time you read this, it’ll be my oldest daughter Sasha’s fifth birthday. And thank God, too, because I’m sick of hearing about the plans for it. I’m not kidding. I think my wife Evi started talking about this shit in February. Over the months there were mentions of a Disney trip, a ‘Princess Party’, a kids’ talent show, and even renting an actual unicorn. A unicorn! I thought those were…

10/5/22 What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been…

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching the news with my family and learned that some hurricane–I already forgot its name–missed Florida entirely, but went up the Atlantic and inflicted extreme damage up in Canada. My only real thought at the time was: um…Canada? Yes, Canada. I made some crack about how maybe there really is Global Warming if freaking Canada is stealing our weather. Isn’t a…

TRAVEL LOG, Hurricane Ian, Part 3:

In “The Firm”, John Grisham’s phenomenally successful early ‘90s book about a young lawyer who unwittingly took a job with a law firm owned by the mafia, there was a part near the end where the protagonist, Mitch McDeere, and his wife were hiding from both the FBI and mob hitmen in a small motel along the panhandle of Florida. The book describes pretty vividly how Mitch, an Ivy League graduate…

9/22/22 Journal: The Girls’ Costumes

I came home kinda late last night, like around 6:30 PM, to find both my daughters wearing princess costumes. This would probably be surprising to most people, but I didn’t bat an eye; my kids are always dressed up. I don’t know where they get this desire from, and I sure as hell don’t know where they get the costumes, but it’s not unusual for me to turn around see, for example, Rapunzel begging…

9/21/22 Journal: The Color-Based System

Evi recently instituted a new policy wherein both our kids are graded on their behavior via a color-based system. There’s a letter paper-sized magnet on our refrigerator with horizontal color bars, the middle one being green (I think? I’m not getting up to go look) and as you go down it goes to yellow, orange, then red. If you go up, it goes–ah, hell, I don’t know. Bluish or some shit. The girls…

My Kids Have More Fun Than I Do

9/19/22 Journal: Alarm Clock

It’s annoying for me to look at this blog and see that the last post was on 9/6. That’s only 13 days ago, but it’s starting to look abandoned, like so many hundreds of thousands of forgotten blogs, gathering dust on the Internet. I swear I won’t allow that to happen to this one, despite the fact that it wouldn’t really matter to anyone other than me if it did. The numbers here aren’t amazing.…

Sometime around late 2005, my sister Lori and I were over at our parents’ house, minding our own business, when out of nowhere Mom attacked us with pictures from her and Dad’s Carnival cruise. There was no way out. The only choice was to endure; telling ourselves it will all be over soon. “Here’s us next to our port window,” Mom said. “Did you know it costs extra to get that little window?…

Sometimes, I feel like an imposter. Like I’m not a writer at all; I’m a pretender, a charlatan, a fraud. There’s actually a name for this: Imposter Syndrome. When writing an essay, nine times out of ten, by the time I get to the part when I’m about to hit ‘submit’, I truly hate everything I wrote. “Boy I’m really posting a piece of shit today,” I’ll mutter as I wait for the page to refresh,…

8/29/22 Journal: Not Really About Sky Zone

This morning, Evi and I took the kids to Sky Zone Trampoline Park, where they can jump up and down all they want and I don’t have to yell at them for it. They used to run some kind of special on Sunday mornings where you could bring toddlers for a reduced price for a couple of hours, but I guess this particular Sky Zone got sold and the new owners changed things. It ended up benefitting us, since…