Social Tip #120 - BE THERE

My dad explained a scene to me from the original "The Taking of Pelham 123," and I disappointed him by not laughing as hard as he was.

"I guess you had to be there," he said.

You guess I had to be where? In the movie theater, when the scene happened? Or alive, when the movie came out?

Scenes from TV or movies are never funny secondhand. Yes, Curb Your Enthusiasm is a great show, but if I wanted to enjoy it, I would watch it. Stop trying to drown me in your bucket of yawns.

Social Tip #117 - TOUCH UP YOUR ROOTS

Tomorrow I visit Philadelphia, best known to me as being the city that was romantic enough for my parents to conceive me, but disgusting enough for them to need to move all the way to Arizona before finding an environment suitable for birth.

*I searched 'hair" and "Philadelphia" hoping to find a picture of embarrassingly teased out hair, but the first thing that came up was for a picture entitled "Found: Hair Track/ Weave, on South Street." Congratulations, Philadelphia, you are even trashier than I hoped. Thanks for taking pictures of your hair before leaving it on the sidewalk.

Social Tip #113 - LET PEOPLE IN

I recently tried to re-enter the US at the Canadian border, and was confronted by the smarmiest border guard. He studied my passport, looked at me, and asked, "What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a writer," I said.

He looked at me doubtfully, "Does that pay the bills?"

Who the hell does this guy think he is? He's a glorified tollbooth worker! It was like I was being inspected by my dad. This is how it should have gone instead:

"What do you do for a living?"

"I am also a border guard."

"Where? I don't have any record of that."

"Between New York and New Jersey. Its the same thing as what you do. People pull up, I tell them they can come in, but they can't bring their eight dollars in with them."

Social Tip #111 - WISH YOURSELF A HAPPY BIRTHDAY

I am a cheap person who prefers to remain mostly detached from society, and as such use a no-commitment Virgin Mobile cell phone on which I spend the majority of my minutes explaining to callers that "Jazzy" no longer deals drugs from this number, but if they do get a hold of him, I would appreciate the connection. This week I am in Canada where it turns out that Virgin Mobile does not provide any service at any cost. Ordinarily, no problem, I hate to talk on the phone, but today is my birthday, and I am obliged to answer or return phone calls from my family who are obliged to call me. In an attempt to alert them of the impossibility of receiving their birthday wishes I sent them an email explaining the situation, and promised I would conduct the following imaginary (read: inflammatory) conversation in place of a real connection:


:Ring Ring:

You: Happy Birthday!

Me: Thanks! You too! (Josh only*)

You: You know what time it is?

Me: 3:43pm, the exact time of my birth. How thoughtful of you to remember. (Mom only**)

You: Right! And guess what else?

Me: As a present you are sending me a new cell phone and service that reaches all the way to Canada?

You: Right again!

Me: Wow, that is really too much. I can't accept.

You: I insist!

Me: No.

You: Yes!

Me: It's too nice, but I really appreciate the sentiment.

You: You are keeping it. Don't make me fight with you on your birthday.

Me: Okay, okay. Thank you so much, you really shouldn't have.

You: My pleasure. What do you plan to do to celebrate?

Me: I'm going to try heroin for the first time.

You: You've never tried it before?

Me: Never.

You: Oh man, it's awesome! (Heather only***). Have a great time with it!

Me: How could I not?

You: Good point.

Me: How is everything with you?

You: My life is working out perfectly, thanks.****

Me: Wow, really?

You: I am currently dating many women who are young enough to not expect anything out of me. (Dad only)

Me: Great! Well, thanks for calling. I have to get going, I promised Cosby I would help him out with a couple punchlines before his big show Saturday night. You know how it is.

You: Not really. Happy birthday! I love you!

Me: I love you too! Bye!

You: Bye!

Me: .....

You:....

Me: You're supposed to hang up.

You: I was waiting for you to hang up.

:Click:

*Josh is my twin brother. It is weird to call my twin on our birthday. It feels like I am being more self-indulgent than nice, like I am forcing him to wish me a happy birthday. Being a twin is strange. When we were little my mom used to dress us up the same to amplify our cuteness factor, only we are a boy and girl, so people didn't get that we were twins. They just thought we were part of a dance team.

** My mom always calls at the exact time of our births. Yes, this is corny, but the upside is I always know exactly when she will call and will not be taken by surprise. Also I know the call can only last seven minutes before she will have to hang up to call my brother at the exact time of his birth. Ahh, the privilege of being born first.

***Heather is my older sister. She is not a drug addict, but instead is the "good" child, and I thought I would convince the rest of my family that she does heroin as a birthday present to myself. I, on the other hand, would do heroin all the time if I could figure out Jazzy's new number.

**** No one in anyone's family ever has their life work out perfectly. This was another birthday gift to myself. Thanks, me. I'm welcome.

Social Tip #52 - Meat

During high school I lived with my father and brother in my childhood home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Despite the fact that none of us cooked or cleaned anything ever, we had a second dishwasher, oven, microwave, and refrigerator/freezers. We hid the extra refrigerator in a laundry room that was buried in decaying clothes, dusty children's shirts and tennis whites that were too out-of-date to wash and too dirty to donate. They were left there the day we moved into that home, long before my mom stopped doing the laundry.

No one ever used the second refrigerator except for my dad because he signed himself up for the "Meat of the Month" club. My dad considered the meat to be too precious to cook, so he banked his cow parts in the freezer.

Some time after the meat membership lapsed, that refrigerator died, and went untouched for many months, possibly years, until out of curiosity I made the mistake of opening it. I was met with a force powered by death. I smelled that smell with my entire head. All of my other senses were shut down and my entire existence became that smell.

I slammed the refrigerator shut and abandoned it, and over time the entire east wing of our home smelled like the slaughterhouse I had already come to associate with the city of Scottsdale. That smell gave me a purpose in life, a challenge waiting to be met. I spent years building up the courage before I reopened the refrigerator, dumped gallons of bleach into it, and dragged it out into the backyard where it stayed until sometime when I was in college, right next to the second of two grills that were never used.

R.I.P

Social tip #31 - Technological Advancement

My Dad loves Myspace.

He put a lot of work into his profile. His headline says, "Party with me." Under who I'd like to meet he wrote, "Hot friendly affectionate chicks, party animals, rock stars, porn stars, Alicia Silverstone. Get the picture?" Under the category of children he wrote, "I don't want children."

Here is a message I got from him on Mysapce:

Subject Line: Phone etc

Body: How r u? Your phone's dead. Did u get evicted? Where r u living?

My father, ladies and gentleman. He is 57 years old (47 on Myspace), and he logs onto a dead social networking site to befriend strippers he has met while out "clubbin,'" and to ask me serious questions about my life in text abbreviations. This is what I wrote back...

Subject Line: Evthang Kewl

Body: I H8 evikshun. Sold my phone 4 drugs LOL. Livng on street with crakt out homeless man etc. TTYL!

It reminds me of the time my sister texted me to tell me about my grandfather.

From Heather: Grandpa died. Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld.

Social Tip #18 - Respecting Superiors

I used to wear a shirt that read MY FATHER DIED IN A BAKING ACCIDENT. It's a line from a play I was in during high school, everyone who performed in that play got that shirt.

I wore it to work, and my boss asked me what the shirt was about. I told him that a bunch of them were handed out at my father's funeral. There was a terrible oven explosion that took his life, but he had a wonderful sense of humor and would have seen the irony in his death. He would have loved the shirt.

My boss said, "Oh, I'm sorry about that."

I said, "I'm just kidding. My father is a dentist. He is still alive."

My boss said, "My father died from cancer."

I said, "Oh, did you get a shirt?"