Good Christian Hate Mail

Today’s lesson in irony: Nothing pisses off people like humor. Yesterday the magazine I work for came out with its latest edition. My so-called humor column touched on religion and the important role family fights play in properly celebrating the holidays. I thought I made it clear that my theft of the “Keep Christ in Christmas” sign was a faith-filled, deeply respectful effort to mock my agnostic brother. But, no, it didn’t work. Yesterday I received an e-mail making it clear at least one Latina Catholic wants to reassemble the Inquisition and burn me at the stake for heresy.

Please. The line forms to the right.

“Your column this month was anything but funny,” she wrote (I’ve taken the liberty of cleaning up her multiple spelling and punctuation errors for clarity). “I believe the latest sport, or fun, is making fun of and ridiculing Catholics and their faith. I dare you to write a similar column making fun of either Islam or Judaism. That would probably get you flogged, not by your kind mother-in-law, but by the media or even the law.”

Because, as even Mel Gibson knows, a super-secret, anti-Catholic cabal of Jews and Muslims, closely working together in amicable fashion, control the world’s governments and media outlets. All that nonsense about Middle East conflict is just a front.

Sigh.

She wasn’t done administering her spiritual work of mercy. Announcing she was from South America, where Catholicism is “not only respected but nurtured and loved,” she concluded, “Please send me an e-mail or call me. I will be very glad to inform you more on the Church of which you have not a clue nor information.”

Because having a dozen related-by-marriage Latinas already pissed off at me and wanting to set me straight just isn’t enough for one man.

The poor lady apparently missed the irony at the heart of the column: that the most outwardly devout were the quickest to anger and judgment. This is why I generally avoid being deep; I’m usually the one that drowns.

Nevertheless I now feel compelled to assure everyone that the current state of my festering soul is not the result of profound ignorance. Indeed, it’s the finely honed product of twelve years of very expensive, private education – including 45 minutes daily of catechism and theology – in the nation’s best Catholic schools.

So happy holidays to you! (Oopsie!)

Christmas Prep

Our traditional Christmas/Hanukah extravaganza at the girls’ godmothers’ house is this Saturday. As part of my holiday shopping for this event, I stopped at the Goodwill Superstore. You can officially put this one in the column of Stinky Skanky Things I Won’t Ever Do Again. The Goodwill Superstore Supersmelled like an old lady’s closet. An old lady who’s taken all of her personal hygiene items and locked them up tight into a five-year certificate of deposit bearing 2.97 percent interest and containing extreme penalties for raiding it early.

Super Duper Pooper Old Lady Smell. I kept expecting someone to come up to me and assault me with Bengay.

Of course, I can’t really tell you why I went to Goodwill. That would spoil Saturday’s grand, mind-blowing surprise (which woke me this morning at 2 a.m. with a minor anxiety attack). But I’m pretty sure that even after I blog next Monday about it, stopping at Goodwill this morning will still make absolutely no sense to anyone.

But that’s pretty much how all guys shop for Christmas. It’s why they invented the Internet – to keep losers like me from blocking the aisles, cluelessly scratching our butts, while we look fearfully around for the old hag carrying the Bengay.

Thanksgiving, however, was great fun. I even planned on adding a few more Thanksgiving leaves here over the weekend, but was having too much fun killing my brother-in-law and nephew on the Xbox to turn on a computer.

As we do each year the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we set aside yesterday for acquiring our Christmas tree. Annually it’s a big day. But this year, one word captures the day. Debacle.

Perhaps it was the fact that the tree kept falling on my head. Or the fact that we bought it too late in the day to put anything on it after I got back with a new tree stand. Or the fact that the girls were so sleep-deprived from the weekend that they kept bursting into tears when we told them we couldn't decorate it at 10 p.m. Or the fact that, in a moment of weakness during dinner, I let the girls decide that we’d change from white lights to colored lights for the tree. Or the fact that I went to Wal-Mart for the second time that day (the first foray produced extension cords and a power strip) and bought 900 lights for the tree. Or the fact that I still ran out three feet from the bottom.

So, this morning, I have a naked, crooked tree standing in the living room that is three-quarters covered in trailer park Christmas lights.

Call me a snob, but I’m opposed to colored lights on a tree. Most Americans don’t know this, but the color of lights you put on your Christmas tree determines whether you are middle or upper class. It’s one of those super secret class rules – like whether you wear flip flops to a White House State dinner.

You think Bill Gates has colored lights on his tree?

No.

But I do.

And I just did some Christmas shopping at Goodwill.

So what’s next in my bleak, middle class future?

I’m thinking a baseball cap that says “Gone Fishin!” and a black T-shirt that says in blurry letters: "If you can’t read this, you’re DUCKING FRUNK!"

Thanksgiving Leaf II

This morning I give thanks for mental health and self-control. I’m going out on a limb here. People who lack mental health and self control are generally unaware of it. I could be a raving lunatic with a meth addiction who lives under a bridge with delusions of a stable middle class family life. But this morning, one of my persistent hallucinations (the one I call my wife) told me I needed to clean the bathrooms before my nephew and his girlfriend get here. And since hallucinations don’t generally encourage you to clean bathrooms, I’m going to guess that, today, I’m grounded in cold, harsh, toilet-brush wielding reality.

I mention gratitude for mental health and self control today for less humorous and more poignant reasons. On Sunday night I learned that a dear friend of mine was hospitalized for the third time for mental health issues. His personal struggle with illness strikes too close to home. We’re the same age, have the same educational backgrounds and have wonderful wives and children. Our childhoods were remarkably similar – private Jesuit prep schools up north, well-regarded universities, wildly dysfunctional Irish Catholic families and all the insanity that goes hand in hand with growing up with an alcoholic parent. He’s generous, funny, kind, gregarious and, otherwise, completely and utterly typical.

Yet somehow, through either the injustice of blind luck or some small blessing of which I am utterly unworthy, I have managed to find myself this gray November morning on a different, easier path. For reasons unclear, I find this truth more disturbing than reassuring. Whenever the phone rings with news of my friend’s latest struggles, a wave of melancholy laced with fear sweeps over me. Why not me? If this could so dramatically affect someone whose mental health I never questioned a decade ago, what keeps me a step removed from the abyss?

Whatever the causes, I am grateful for where I stand today. It is, in part, by choice. I have chosen to be a different man, a different husband, a different dad than my own remarkably self-destructive father. Yet, my friend has made similar choices. And so, it is also, in part, due to fate. Or luck. Or chance. (But not God’s hand, for that would be cruel injustice.)

Whatever it is called, I am thankful for it. And this morning I wish and pray that it touch all whom I love dearly.

Especially my friend and his family.

Thanksgiving Leaf I

One of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions, strangely enough (given that I’m usually mocking such societal convention), involves giving thanks. Each Thanksgiving, Maria has the kids cut out autumn leaves from construction paper. As dinner begins at my in-laws’ home with the 30 billion individuals who manage to squeeze into the three tables we jam into the dining room (which spill into the foyer), we each take a leaf. Then we fight over the three dried-out markers we managed to find in the kitchen utility drawer in order to anonymously write those things for which we are most thankful. During dinner, my father-in-law (a.k.a. Abu) reads them off and we all try to guess who the particular leaf belongs to.

It’s my favorite tradition, in part, because I enjoy sneaking fake leaves into the basket. These forged leaves make specious announcements. My sisters-in-law give thanks for non-existent pregnancies and my brothers-in-law give thanks for coming to terms with their sexual orientations, which tend to make mashed potatoes squirt out of Abu’s nose.

But the whole tradition is also quite touching and so I’ll try to post some genuine leaves here this week.

Today I am grateful for Cody.

Cody is my neighbor’s white, frou-frou, yappy lap dog. This weekend, because my neighbors went to Disney, we took care of Cody.

In our house. Which, not counting my mother’s visit over the summer and the squirrel I had to get out of our attic last fall, is the first time we’ve knowingly let a crazed, allegedly domesticated animal co-habitate with us.

Cody had a bed that is far nicer than any I was permitted to use as a child. Yet he refused to use it, preferring instead to camouflage himself by lounging on our formal white sofa in the front living room. This made me profoundly nervous. While Cody was all white, the stuff that came out of his ass at various times over the weekend wasn’t. And, despite being frou-frou, Cody wiped less consistently than even The Grump.

I’ll admit it. I’m a bit high maintenance. I also maintain some pretty high expectations for my daughters. This, I suspect, makes me rather unbearable at times. Yet Cody’s presence here this weekend also gave me a glimpse of a side of my daughters I had recently been blind to. The Papaya, Elf and The Grump actually took care of Cody this weekend: walking him, feeding him and yes, picking up after him whenever his ass exploded. Most of the responsibility really was undertaken by Papaya, 10. And watching her with the dog made me realize what a smart and super responsible kid she is. Elf, 7, was profoundly sweet with Cody, reminding me what a generous and loving heart she has. And The Grump, 4, usually timid and fearful in new situations, had a blast, running through the house with Cody, reminding me of how much I treasure her joyously unmatched belly laugh.

Which is a rather roundabout way of saying that I’m really grateful for my three wonderful daughters and the opportunity, this past weekend, to see their hearts with new eyes.

Soccer Season Continues: Screech and The Return of Bam Bam

My high risk foray into the field of athletics continues to go well. While everyone still pretends they’re not keeping score, The Super Shooters, which I am kick-ass-istant coaching, are completely undefeated. The team has only one tie, but it doesn’t really count. The weekend after that tie – right after we strategically brushed up on some defensive tactics like clothes-lining and tripping our opponents – we crushed the exact same team and sent their clipboard-carrying coaches home grumbling.

U-7 Coaching Rule: If you want all the other adults on the field to ridicule you, be sure to carry a clipboard and two different colored dry erase markers.

My assistant coaching responsibilities continue to challenge me to grow in unexpected ways. These duties, as I’ve mentioned before, largely entail running into the scary forest beside the field to retrieve balls that have been kicked in there. Recently, Skittles, who is usually a little slow on the uptake, realized this is how I spend the majority of my waking hours. So the little pendejo started purposefully kicking balls in there – as deep into the forest as he possibly could.

At least until I told him, in my official assistant coach voice, that I was going to kick his sorry ass into the scary forest if he kept booting the balls in there.

And while Bam Bam missed the first half of the season with his arm in a cast, he is now showing up to all practices and games, which has prompted me to consider breaking his other arm. Bam Bam plays soccer like I shoot pool with my pool-hustling father-in-law. Bam Bam and I just wail the little white ball hard, hoping something, somewhere will drop in our favor.

But pool has six pockets and soccer only has two goals, so it’s largely a losing strategy for Bam Bam, especially since he tends to wail the ball toward the wrong goal. This is where my assistant coaching responsibilities also come in handy. On the sidelines, I begin screaming like an old lady who's just had her purse snatched: “NO, BAM BAM! THE OTHER WAY! THE OTHER WAY!”

Bam Bam, of course, just keeps wailing cluelessly away, striving mightily to score for the other team.

Until we send Skittles in there to kick him into the forest.

But the eye opener on the field this past weekend wasn't Bam Bam. It was Screech, who played for the other team.

Screech got massively beaned in the stomach by a towering boot from our best player, Dash. It made me wince. It made me wince because, in warm ups just prior to the game, Dash beaned me in the back, which made my left kidney liquefy and pour out my ear.

Post-beaning, Screech went off like an air raid siren. He just stood there, mid-field, as this alarming, end-of-the-world, undgodly sound poured from his U-7 body. He didn’t move. The ref didn’t shrug or stop the game. Screech's own coach ignored it. Finally, some adult, fearing that actual planes might start bombing the park if he wasn’t silenced, escorted him from the field. It left most of us Super Shooter fans perplexed. In outrage we showered Screech with Attaboy applause as he left the field.

Five minutes later, Screech was back in.

Another Dash boot.

It took out Screech’s head.

The air raid alarm went off again. Again, the boy stood immobile mid-field. No one moved. The sound was ungodly. Like a Confederate rebel yell from an entire Virginia regiment. Or the collective sound an entire exploding planet makes when the Death Star visits.

Coach Anders turned around, his eyes wide, his mouth open, struggling to stifle an awkward laugh.

The Super Shooter compassion was gone. Spent like trailer trash lottery winnings. All of us finally understood why no one from the other team had raised a finger when the poor kid got beaned the first time.

He was a serial soccer screecher.

So we all just waited until the escort removed him from the field again.

To no applause.

So, as a highly trained assistant soccer coach, I offer two possible solutions.

Either sign Screech up for the pea knuckle league next spring.

Or toughen him up a little.

Perhaps New Mexico’s Women’s Soccer player Elizabeth Lambert can help. Just click here to view Gentle Elizabeth’s Rough and Tumble Anti Screech Solution Clinic.

Graduates get a hug and a certificate suitable for framing.

Just tell her Dumb Daddy sent you.

Wal-Mart High Fashion

As a card-carrying member of the Bald Dudes of America, I know nothing about fashion. This is because the fashion industry never includes bald men as their models. (Really. Go look at yesterday’s flyers. You have a better chance of spotting Mama Cass in boxer briefs.) Because of this, the Bald Dudes of America have sworn to have nothing to do with fashion until we bring the fashion industry to its knees.

In the meantime, all I know about fashion can be captured in two Dumb Daddy Fashion Corollaries.

Fashion Corollary Number One: While I have no idea how you should dress, for a very clear idea of how you should NOT dress, visit a Super Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon. For a few handy examples, you can visit The People of Wal-Mart. I’m fairly sure all of these photos were taken at the Wal-Mart on Gunn Highway in Tampa, where I can buy my underwear, my ammo and my Cheerios all within 30 feet of each other (This, I’ve been told by my nephew’s girlfriend Alison, is illegal in sensible countries like Ireland and Azerbaijan).

Fashion Corollary Number Two: You can tell how fashionable a young woman is by the gargantuan size of her sunglasses. The bigger they are, the more fashionable the woman is. I know this because She Who Controls the Universe watches the Kardashians. And the Kardashians are both shameless and highly fashionable. And they have the strongest necks in the world. In fact, just one lens from most of their sunglasses could reverse global warming.

Which is why, while waiting for Maria to order a new box of contact lenses in the optometrist’s cage in the front of the Wal-Mart on Sunday afternoon, I seized the largest pair of sunglasses I could find from the women’s section. Busting a hernia while hoisting them to my face, I whirled about and shouted, “Look! I’m a Kardashian!”

You may think this is not very funny. But, I assure you, the optometrist lady laughed very hard. Maria, however, pretended not to know me.

But, I assure you, it was definitely not funny. I realized this the moment I took those pie plates off.

Then it hit me, nearly snuffing out my meaningless life: a suffocating wave of cheap women’s perfume.

Perfume which had been secretly coating those Kardashian glasses. Perfume which had once been super-douched onto the face of one of the Female People of Wal-mart. Perfume which was now super-douched by extension onto my face.

People of Wal-Mart Perfume was on me like that black alien goop that made Toby Maguire go disco in the last Spiderman movie.

On me. On my body. Specifically on my face. On the bridge of my nose, which I now wanted to saw off my bald head.

I reeked just like a woman in spandex with a tattoo teetering above her butt cleavage.

“What is that smell?” The Grump kept asking.

We went home and I dunked my head in isopropyl alcohol.

And so, on this very afternoon, I swear to you on my sweet grandmother’s grave: I shall never, ever be fashionable.

Even for cheap laughs.

Toy Hall of Fame

Big news! The National Toy Hall of Fame announced yesterday that this year it was inducting the ball.

What? You didn’t know the Toy Hall of Fame existed?

Neither did I. It’s apparently in downtown Rochester right between the Furniture Hall of Fame and the Clothing Hall of Fame.

This is apparently what wealthy people do when the get together to brainstorm. They establish the Air Hall of Fame and then take 10 years to induct oxygen.

Since its opening in 1998, the Toy Hall of Fame has inducted Barbie, the Slinky, Mr. Potato Head, and the Atari Game System. (Click here to see all 44 of the Hall of Fame’s honored toys.) Last year they inducted the stick. They finally realized sticks are really just toy guns and swords when their front office secretary ran across a stick marked 20 percent off in Wal-Mart’s toy aisle.

The announcement that the ball was finally inducted -- long after the View Master, Etch-a-Sketch and Easy Bake Oven -- prompted me to wonder what the Toy Hall of Fame in Zimbabwe must look like.

So I googled “Zimbabwe Toy Hall of Fame.” Turns out it’s in some kid’s closet in Hwange. It consists of a rock, a stick, a pair of his mom’s panties…

And a ball.

I’ve traveled pretty extensively in the developing world, where the AA batteries for a Nintendo Game Boy (another 2009 inductee) cost a week’s salary. In one country I visited, the kids spent hours cutting reeds, stripping them of their leaves and taking turns bouncing them off a slab of concrete to see who could make them leap into the air and fly the farthest. Kind of like a third world version of shuffleboard (which, contrary to popular conception, is actually named after the people who play it in America).

And the kids played with balls. Balls were everywhere.

So do something really unexpected this holiday. Go into a toy store and buy a ball for your kid.

If they have them.