I don’t know if I want a man-sized version of this kid’s t-shirt, or a t-shirt of this picture itself, or just want to rent the kid for a day or so:
You can order your own t-shirt here, but the kid himself is probably a little more pricey.
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Everything’s unwrapped, the champagne’s gone flat, and even the hangovers are over. While my holidays were full of warmth and good cheer and that uniquely Simmermon brand of stressed-out love, I’m glad to be entering that great grey yawn of real winter. Running around outside SUCKS until mid-April and when I have my daily panic that my life is slipping past, I can look out the window and feel fine about having a laptop strapped to my face. In the factory-blended oatmeal that is an East Coast winter, every numbing day that ends like all the rest is at least one day closer to spring.
My New Years’ was spent having cocktails and a home-cooked meal with my girlfriend, best friend, his wife, and their new baby. My New Years’ celebrations in years past have also involved copious amounts of booze, screaming and vomiting, but this years’ was different.
While the first decade or so of David Allen Browne’s life is going to be happy and full of love, he’s going to have no choice but to become grim, selfish and willfully ignorant in order to rebel against his hilarious, brilliant and loving parents once he hits puberty. Hopefully he’ll snap out of it before it’s time to take the SATs.
Christmas was different, too. I brought my girlfriend home, for one thing. It’s a big deal for me to bring somebody home for a number of reasons:
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Behind that adorable black face, behind those sweet mournful eyes lies the soul of an unapologetic shit-eater.
For real.
That is not a metaphor. She’s gone from stealing fruitcake and puking it under the tree last Christmas to full-blown coprophagia, gobbling it right up from between dead leaves on the ground at night. Cold and hard or piping hot and still steaming, she doesn’t care and she does it quick, too, too quick to catch sometimes. She just can’t help herself.
Layla’s my sister Jess’s dog, half-beagle and half lab with incurable separation anxiety. She was taken from her mother too young, and consequently has massive incurable anxiety. Jess has tried training camps, reading dog books, everything. Nothing works. Every time Jess is gone for a little while, Layla overindulges in something she shouldn’t: fruitcake, shoes, a purse, now fecal matter.
All training methods exhausted, my sister now just spoils the dog completely rotten, talking to her in a high, squealing voice, carrying her in her arms like a large infant and allowing the dog to “kiss” her directly on the lips.
A few weeks ago, Layla vomited a five-inch turd onto my parents’ living room carpet. My mom called Jess up immediately to report the news, saying only
“Your dog has vomited a massive turd onto the carpet. Yes, a turd. Go ahead and let her lick your lips again. As a concerned mother, I hope you’ve got good health insurance,”
and hung up.
Such was the climate of the household this Thanksgiving. Everyone was exhausted and frustrated with this new habit, this repugnant fetish for a newly repulsive creature that’s far too cute to kick.
Jess and I spent Thanksgiving day over at my aunt and uncle’s taking care of my grandparents. They moved in sometime last summer for a few weeks while my grandpa recuperated from an operation, and it’s become clear that they’re in no shape to live independently. My grandpa’s 88 years old with congestive heart failure, kidney failure and diabetes. He needs a walker to get around now and can’t lift his legs by himself.
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AOL laid off over 2,000 employees worldwide today, including 750 at its Dulles campus. Some of those people are my friends and former coworkers, and my heart goes out to all of them — even the bitches. My former boss, who I like and respect immensely (although I am not sure the feeling is mutual) felt the axe today. He’s been there ten years.
Predictably, ValleyWag is having a field day with this, and Bobzmudaguy’s got another round of t-shirt designs out. Some of those are pretty funny, too … especially this one of Dick and Mary Cheney. Mary Cheney works at AOL. Nobody really knows what she does officially, apart from enrage her gay coworkers by simply existing.
The rage, bitterness, and sadness in the comments on this and this are alternately funny and heartbreaking. Funny in a “laugh when you’re stuck on a burning sinking ship” way, and heartbreaking because that’s real pain.
I know this, because it happened to me and 499 others last year.
Rumors of massive layoffs the next day had been flying around for months. I spent the night before wide awake, exhausting myself in the consoling embrace of my girlfriend, lurching into that 9 am meeting on three hours’ sleep. I was completely numb in the meeting, and didn’t hear a word of anything until they mentioned the severance package. Once it sunk in, I started cackling maniacally.
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Now that I’ve had 24 hours to piss and moan about my block — and had my public self-flagellation indulged with some very nice comments — I’m trying something else.
I’m going through the And I Am Not Lying, For Real Official Photo Archives (aka my hard drive) and running my better photos until the words come back.
Like this one:
Click here for a larger version.
I took this on Coney Island this year, during the first week of January. It was freakishly warm, and people were out walking around the boardwalk in an approximation of warm-weather behavior.
Some asshole was even rollerblading up and down the boardwalk in a pair of little tiny shorts. Right attitude, wrong coast, I say.
There are certain people that can ONLY exist in New York tri-state area, like this guy:
Let’s have a closer look:
This guy makes me think that maybe the Sopranos is not so fictional, after all. Don’t get me wrong here — I’m not pointing and laughing. You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen a Southern man with a 48-inch belly and 36-inch pants down around his upper thighs and held on with suspenders.
All I’m saying is that this guy, this image, and the whole day was this strange kind of awesome I’ve never seen before. The crowds of Russian immigrants and people playing in the weak winter sunset were so fun and beautiful — but it all felt like a memory that we’d share after the seas rose.
We’d be sitting around a campfire on the beach somewhere in Indiana, hiding from America’s army of prancing headless dogbots and someone would say “Man, remember Coney Island?” And maybe my writing partner (who is duh, a good friend) would scurry closer to the fire and say “Yeah, we went there in the wintertime, right before the big sheet melted off of Greenland, remember that, Jeff?”
And I’ll look over the gnarled head of my staff and nod affirmatively, slipping backward in time to relive those hot dogs, the cold breeze, and that incredible blood-red sunset …
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