home is burning

My little sister, Chelsea, has an easier time getting dates than I do. This wouldn’t be so frustrating if she didn’t have a slight case of Asperger’s, which is supposed to make her a bit of a social retard. “What does that say about you, Dan?” I often think. “Are you a step passed a social retard?”

She’s recently been seeing a new dude, a little 17-year-old twerp named Patrick (She always dates younger guys, which might be a side-effect of the Asperger’s. I don’t know. I’m no doctor. Stop expecting me to be one, assholes). I tend to give her shit about anyone she’s dating, as she does me with anyone I’m dating or used to be dating. When it’s me giving the shit, I ask questions like, “Are you in love?”, or “How is all the making out going? Lips sore?”, or “How big is his dick?”, or “Are you fucking?”. She responds by denying that anything is going on and usually hits me in the face a couple of times before changing the subject to something dance or ballet-related (which might be a side-effect of the Asperger’s).

One time, I walked out on her and Patrick making out in the shallow end of our swimming pool (No big deal). They didn’t notice me because I walked right back inside, not wanting to see my little retarded sister get tongued by some teenaged cum-box. I did passively-aggressively bring it up the next day, however.

Me: How was swimming? You wear enough sunscreen and condoms?

Chelsea: What?

Me: Did you guys wear sunscreen and condoms? I saw you making out in the shallow end. You shouldn’t make out with someone without wearing at least a couple of condoms. Especially in a pool.

Chelsea: We didn’t.

Me: You didn’t wear condoms? You really should.

Chelsea: No, we didn’t make out.

Me: Really? Because I saw you making out.

Chelsea: [Hitting me across the face a couple of times] No, we weren’t.

Me: Boy, I hope you’re not pregnant.

Chelsea: [Pulling back and dancing off into the distance] I really want to get into this modern dance class.

The other day, Chelsea and I were talking about relationships and love after I told her I had talked to my ex-girlfriend over the phone. After answering a few of the typical shitting-giving questions like, “What did you talk about?”, and “Is she fucking anyone new?”, and “Are you guys getting back together?”, and “Do you still love her?”, I brought Patrick up again.

“Where’s your little swimming/make out/future-father-of-your-child buddy, Patrick, been?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s around. He’s coming over tomorrow,” she said.

“Wow, you guys are getting pretty serious, aren’t you?” I said.

“No. Not really,” she said.

“When are you going to get married?” I asked.

“We’re not going to get married. We’re too young,” she said.

“What’s his last name? Or I should say, what will be your last name once you get married to him?” I asked.

“Shut up!!!” she said.

“’Shut Up’ is a silly last name. ‘Chelsea Shut Up.’ At least you’re used to hearing it,” I said. “Are you going to be one of those people that hyphenates? You could be ‘Chelsea Shut Up-Marshall’?,” I added.

“His last name is stupid. I don’t want to say,” she said.

“Come on. What’s his last name?”

“His last name is Boner, okay,” Chelsea said.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Do you think that modern dance is cooler than hip-hop?” She asked, changing the subject as best she could.

His last name is Boner, spelled just like that, just like the word often used for a male’s erect penis. I mean, Jesus, sometimes God gives you these little gifts that make life so much better. I considered this to be one of those gifts. Making fun of Chelsea got so much easier. Almost too easy. It would be too obvious to ask things like: “When you go places, do you and the Boner really stick out?”, or “You and the boner going for a ride?”, or “Have you gotten the Boner’s boner yet?”, or “Is the boner coming… over?”

Patrick Boner did come over for some swim time the next night. I was drinking with some friends. We get pretty dedicated and focused on the drink, so Chelsea and Boner pretty much went unnoticed. But, the next morning I awoke to find Chelsea dancing around the house sporting two hickeys on her neck.

“Whoa!!! You got some hickeys from the Boner?” I yelled, laughing.

“No, I didn’t,” she said, covering her neck.

“Well, then what’s with those hickeys on your neck?” I asked.

She did a ballet spin in front of me and said, “I got them from dance. I was dancing really hard and I hurt my neck and these just showed up out of no where,” she explained. “They’re dance hickeys.”

I was ripping on myself the other day, which is the one thing my fat, ugly ass is actually good at. Every morning is a roast hosted by me about me. As I torn into myself the other day, my Mom stopped me.

Mom: Stop saying mean things about someone I love.

Me: What the fuck are you talking about? Let my fat, unproductive ass be.

Mom: I don’t like to hear people make fun of the people I love the most.

Me: Okay. What are you saying?

Mom: I’m saying that I love you and you need to stop being so mean to yourself.

Me: [Laughing] Okay Tony Robbins. Thanks for the little pep talk. Let me finish this burrito then I’ll go downstairs and try to suck my own dick.

(A short story-type thing by Danny Marshall)

The end of my life fucking sucked ass. I got this stupid disease called Lou Gehrig’s disease, named after some Yankee that was apparently a really nice man and played a lot of baseball games, but ended up having to quit baseball because all his muscles stopped working. He was great at baseball. Not so great at not getting terminal illnesses. I wasn’t a baseball player, nor did I really care for the sport, but that didn’t stop my silly, old body from getting Lou Gehrig’s silly, old disease.

All and all, the disease kicked the shit out of my ass. No matter how many times I said, “Fuck off, you silly disease,” and cursed it’s name, it wouldn’t leave me alone until it had stolen all my muscles from me. I couldn’t even fucking smile when the disease finally took my life. I wanted to smile. I wanted to smile, lift my middle fingers and say, “I guess you win, you stupid fucking disease,” but I couldn’t. I just had to lie there and watch my doctor turn down my respirator as my family cried around me.

So anyways, bad fucking disease. Boo-fucking-hoo. We all die. Who cares how?

The good news is that I’m up here in heaven now, so I can’t complain too much. Really, I can’t complain. Heaven doesn’t physically allow you to complain. Every time I try to complain, I can’t. Heaven shuts down my mouth and I end up saying something that isn’t a complaint at all. It’s like that Jim Carrey movie. What was it called? Oh yeah, Liar, Liar. My life is like that movie, but I don’t really look like Jim Carrey and, though I can lie, I can’t complain. Even though I can’t complain, I wouldn’t if I could.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.

Heaven is terrific. It’s like they took all the good parts of life on Earth and put them all together to create this mystical world. I didn’t think much of heaven when I was on Earth. Fuck, to be totally honest, I thought I was just going to rot away in the ground, having a bunch of worms eat my dick off and all that shit. I thought life on Earth was all we had, which is part of the reason I one time said, “We only live once!!!” and then did a line of cocaine. But we don’t live once. We live more than once, and heaven is proof of that.

I was warned about the whole heaven being awesome thing, so I should have seen it coming. This was before I was married, before I had kids. I was in a steam room at my gym and this guy with Tourette’s syndrome and probably schizophrenia started a conversation with me.

“Shit, I’ve been running around this goddamn gym all night, and I don’t know why, because I’m going to end up eating McDonald’s,” said the psycho. He laughed at his own joke, clapped his hands a few times, and made a few sounds that people with Tourette’s syndrome make.

“Yeah, McDonald’s is the great gym un-doer. They’re opposites, if you will,” I said, hoping he’d shut up.

“Shit yeah. I need to get back to New York. Los Angeles is for motherfuckers,” he said, looking at me as though he thought I fucked my mother.

“You got family in New York?” I asked, deciding to engage this psycho like a matador trying to get a bull to charge at them.

“No. I got no one. I don’t get close to anyone, because I’ll just fuck it up, or they will. They’ll probably murder me and shit,” he said.

“You got to get close to some people,” I said, suddenly concerned about this psycho not getting close to people, thinking that maybe that him never getting close to anyone was the cause of everything wrong with his head.

“This isn’t heaven where everyone is good and everything is fine. This is Earth. It’s a mix of the good and the bad people, the good and bad things. That’s why it fucking sucks,” said the philosophical and slightly religious psycho.

“Except for McDonald’s,” I joked.

“Exactly,” he said laughing. He then clapped his hands, cocked his head back a few times and said, “Boooooooooootttttttttttttty,” which I think is weirdo-speak for, “I have tourette’s syndrome, and I also love pussy and ass and thus will uncontrollably yell the word, ‘Booty’ in this, here stream room.”

Though this psycho probably thought his cat was a spy and that his neighbor’s were about to storm into his house like it was a beach in Normandy around the time of World War II, he was right. There are no bad people up here in heaven. Just good souls. And lots of booty. Booty everywhere. It’s fucking fantastic, and I can’t say that I don’t deserve it after all the Lou Gehrig’s disease I had, which I’ve already talked about and will probably mention a few more times because I’m so goddamn bitter about it.

Not to go on and on about how awesome heaven is or any of that, but the entertainment is endless. It’s like being in heaven, because it is heaven. You can literally do anything you want whenever you want. You want to ski? Come check out the best ski resort of all time. It has no lines, endless runs, and you don’t even have to take a chairlift up. You just point to where you want to go on the mountain, and you go there, which isn’t always the best system since I one time ended up on top of a tree after pointing out a bald eagle to a friend.

Any movie you watch in heaven is like watching The Godfather for the first time while getting a blowjob, but better. Heaven doesn’t mess around with bad movies starring Drew Barrymore. It’s all the best, all the time. And the best part is, if you, for example, want to see a hot chick in the movie, I don’t know, have sex, you can. Just like that. You just have to think about it, press your hand against the Imagine Plucker Co-Fibulation Device and poof: hot girl on screen gets fucked.

The best part of heaven? No consequences. You’re already dead, so what is unhealthy food or risky behavior going to do to you? On Earth we constantly fear death. It’s all some of us think about. And everything we do is to help us not die. We eat gross meals full of vegetables because, if we don’t, we’ll die. We wear seatbelts because if we get into a car accident, we might die. We build strong homes so we feel protected so we can keep the things out of our house that might make us die (murderers, mountain lions, lightning, etc.). It’s how we live our whole lives: trying not to die.

Well, when we’re dead we can just simply enjoy things. Food, for example. I don’t eat food in heaven to survive. I eat food because it’s delicious. I don’t drive in cars to get places. I drive in cars for the thrill. I even golfed during a lightning storm the other day.

Heaven is great.

You get it now.

Sorry if it sounds like I’m bragging. I fucking hate braggers. I hate them almost as much as I hate Lou Gehrig’s disease.

There is one huge drawback about heaven, though. It’s sort of gross and I sort of don’t even want to tell you, but I’m going to because it’s driving me crazy and really fucking up my stay up here.

Here it is.

In heaven, as some sort of sick, weird way to produce guilt and all that, you have to watch your living family members masturbate.

You heard me right.

Doesn’t that fucking suck?

Every time they do, everything goes black, super black, like Avery Johnson black, and a screen drops down from the heavens in heaven and you actually have to sit there and watch while your son, daughter, wife, brother, or sister beats off.

Isn’t that terrible?

They turn us into some sick, Peeping Tom-type figures that have to sit there and watch the most vile and private act humans ever invented, aside from eating Hot Pockets alone. I wouldn’t actually mind watching someone eat a Hot Pocket alone. But watching them masturbate? That’s just sick and wrong, especially if they masturbate before or after eating a Hot Pocket alone.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for my son, Jake. Jake masturbates about five times a day. Every time I’m about to do something fantastic, like take a hot air balloon over a sea of virgins, everything goes black, the screen pops down, and I’m forced to watch him pump away at his private parts.

I mean, it’s ridiculous. This little asshole beats off everywhere.

Just last weekend, he beat off in a tent with three other people in it. Three other people!!! He waited for all of them to fall asleep, then he masturbated all coyly, like no one was watching. I WAS WATCHING. I had to. I’m required to.

It’s gotten especially bad since his girlfriend broke up with him a few months ago, which is when all the crying while masturbating started. Have you ever watched a person beat off while they cry? It’s really sad and disgusting. Jake starts crying harder and harder and when the crying seems to climax, so does Jake. Then the cleanup is a shit show. He’s got the jizz to clean up, but also the tears, so he’s half cleaning up the jizz and half cleaning up the tears, and getting the two sets of tissues mixed up, so he accidentally starts wiping his tears with the same tissues he used to wipe up his jizz.

It’s so fucking gross.

I really wish they didn’t make us stay around for the clean up. But they make us watch every last second of it until the cock is in the pants and the person goes on with their day.

I think Jake needs to see a shrink or something, because, often times, he starts the day off with a mighty beat. What happened to starting your day with a cup of coffee? The morning beats are particularly annoying because I get up early and have this big, long exciting day planned where I’m going to water ski using alligators as skis and shit, and then Jake starts going at it, which would be fine, but he usually doesn’t cum that quickly in the morning time, so I have to watch him as he wastes the first 30 minutes of his day and my day trying to pump the poison out of his body.

When he finally finishes, I feel sorry for him because he has that moment of recognition where he realizes what a fucking loser he is. Sometimes he even says, “I’m such a fucking loser.” Can you imagine starting your day off by thinking you’re a loser? It’s tragic, truly tragic, and it makes me feel like shit for the rest of my day. Have you ever tried enjoying a day of water skiing on the backs of alligators after hearing that depressing shit? I doubt it. It’s sad, almost as sad as when he beats off back-to-back to the same porno clip and says, “That’s beautiful,” at the end of it.

The other night was baffling. He was on a date, so I thought I had the night off. I thus decided to splash around in some waterfalls with some topless nymphomaniacs while the Beatles preformed a live rock concert for only me. But, during the date, mid-meal, a few bites in, he excused himself to the restroom, cried a little bit, then beat off to his ex-girlfriend.

Can you believe that?

Then there was the time when everything went black and Jake appears on the screen in a wave pool. I start to think, “There is no fucking way he’s jerking off in a wave pool around families and other innocent, water park visitors planning on just cooling off and not swimming in cum.” But sure enough, he started making his own, little waves.

For Jake, it seems like masturbation takes precedence over just about everything. He was pumping one off while looking in the mirror at himself (which I don’t even know what to make of in the first place) and a spider, a big one, ran across his forehead. He didn’t stop. He just kept going and then dealt with the spider after.

That’s fucked up right?

I don’t know what to do.

I really feel like a nice, fun heaven experience is owed to me after how shitty the end of my life was with the Lou Gehrig’s disease and the slow, painful death and all, but all this masturbating by Jake is simply ruining it.

I might just have to go down to Earth as a ghost and see if I can’t get him set up with a new girl, or get him back with his old girlfriend. I know what you’re thinking. Ghosts don’t exist, you fucking retard. They do. You just have to apply to be one and jump through a number of hoops. They also go through a very intense screening process. Not everyone can be a ghost. You can’t, for example, become a ghost just to go down and fuck with people: flushing the toilet while they piss, standing at the end of their bed while they try to sleep, pushing all the buttons in an elevator, that sort of shit. Your intensions have to be good and pure.

Though my intensions are a bit selfish, they are ultimately good and pure. It’d be sort of a pain in the ass to go through all the paperwork and bureaucracy and interviewing and psychological screening, and then, on top of all that, having to figure out how to get Jake together with a girl so he stops masturbating all the time.

It’d be a lot of work.

But if it means getting Jake’s hand off his cock long enough for me to take a bath in delicious pudding or perform some other awesome, heavenly activity, then I’m all for it. I can enjoy heaven and Jake can stop masturbating away his life on Earth. If heaven has taught me one thing, it’s that there’s plenty of time to play with yourself and not plenty of time to play with the rest of the living world.

Oh Christ.

Everything is going black.

He must be at it again.

Anyways, thanks for listening to my rant, and wish me good luck as I turn into a ghost and try to end all this masturbation business. Next time you talk to me, hopefully it’s about how much I’m enjoying all the heaven-like aspects of heaven. Take care and fuck Lou Gehrig’s disease.

My mom can be hard to get along with. She’s rather demanding and she seemed to have her head up her ass most of the while. For example, she has burns on her neck from trying to curl her hair. My gay brother, Greg, can be a bit of a grouch when he’s not getting a decent regiment of cock either up his ass or in his mouth. He also fancies himself smarter than most and does nothing but read. He considered the non-intellectual, non-reading public to be a bunch of poor trash to stupid to realize how fucking stupid they are.

Anyways, I was heading to a movie with them. We were late because Greg, despite his talents at reading and judging others for not reading as much as him, he’s a bit of a fucking boner when it comes to getting on his shoes. He’s always lagging behind because of his shoes. I left him at home several times during high school because he couldn’t get his shoes on in time for school.

At the movie theater lot, I was rushing to find a parking spot. I saw one down the way, but a woman of Chinese origin darted out in front of me. I said a racial epithet, “Gook” being that epithet (I like calling people by the wrong epithets), and my Mom said, “Get out of the way you ugly, Chinese lady.”

My window was down and the music was low, so Greg thought it possible for the said Chinese woman to hear us, thinking their hearing to be at an elevated level just like their math skills.

Greg: Goddamnit Mom. Do you have to be so insensitive? She can fucking hear you.

Mom: No she can’t. Chinese people don’t hear well.

Greg: Yeah, she probably could, and do you have to display your lack of tolerance so openly, especially given the lack that you’re a lesbian now.

Mom: Shut up Greg.

Greg: [Thinking my mom had called her a gook instead of me] And don’t call her a gook. It’d be like if I called you a “Lesbian Cunt”.

Mom: Greg, that was hurtful. You shouldn’t talk to your mother like that. Plus, I didn’t call her a gook. Danny did.

Me: Sorry. That was my bad. That just slips out sometimes, usually during my Vietnam War flashbacks, but sometimes in movie parking lots that look like Vietnam movie theater parking lots.

Mom: I’m really hurt. You don’t call your mother mean names. How would you like it if I called you a “Fag”?

Greg: Well, you are a lesbian.

Mom: Or what if I called you a “butt fucker”? You wouldn’t like that would you?

I parked and we went into the movie. My mom and brother still looked pissed. “You cunts and butt fuckers okay?” I asked.

“We’re fine. We still love each other,” Greg said back.

I have taught my little sister, Chelsea, many things: algebra, farting, blocking out the sadness in the world through humor related to farting. I recently taught her how to play the game Doodle Jump on the iPhone (No big deal).

For those of you with iPhones, I’m sure you’ve played it before. For those of you without iPhones, I’m sure you know someone cool enough to own an iPhone and have heard them talk about it and how awesome it is. If you don’t know anyone with an iPhone, I suggest you look in the mirror and re-evaluate your entire life, starting with your list of friends, all of which, for whatever reason, are either too poor or stupid to own an iPhone.

Anyways, Chelsea got addicted to Doodle Jump like the rest of us wannabe crack heads too scared to try something that’s both addictive and dangerous. She got so addicted that she ended up asking my Mom to install it on her iPhone so she could play. She did.

One day, Chelsea was innocently playing Doodle Jump, probably about to get a rocket or shoot down a tractor beam alien spacecraft, when my Mom’s phone received a text message from her significant other. I’m not sure exactly what the text message said, but this is the text message exchange Chelsea and I had after she received the text.

Chelsea: Eew. I was playing Doodle Jump on Mom’s phone and Claire sent Mom the dirtiest text.

Me: What was it? Haha.

Chelsea: She said my pussy has been hungry for u all day. Eew. Goddamnit.

Me: Jesus Chelsea. Sorry you had to see that.

Chelsea: Haha. I know. What a freaking sicko. Mom tried to say she was kidding. Hahaha.

Me: On a lighter note, how’d you do on Doodle Jump?

Chelsea: Not too good after that. And now I’m not allowed to play any more.

I was flipping through the TV channels because TV is a good way to distract the mind away from the more important, stressful-realness of our own lives. I settled upon Sister Act with Whoopi Goldberg for a few minutes. I informed my gay brother, Greg, that it was playing because he really loves that particular movie and I wanted to do him a favor, let him be distracted for a moment by Whoopi’s glorious hair and demeanor. I don’t know, maybe I thought it would make his day a little brighter or better.

“Greg!!! Fucking get in here. Sister Act is on,” I yelled.

He walked into the room carrying a plate of food. “Oooh. I love this movie,” he said as he worked his way through a microwave burrito or some gross vegetable stir-fry mixture that he always seemed to be snacking on, obviously oblivious to the greatness of such treats as Hot Pockets or pretzels.

“No shit. You are, after all gay. What gay man doesn’t love Sister Act?” I replied.

We watched for a couple of minutes before I got bored with the set up, “You want me to hide out with these nuns?” Whoopi probably said. “Only for a month until the trial,” the white dude probably said back.

I flipped the channel and said, “Sister Act isn’t that good.”

Greg stopped eating. Shit was getting serious. He got that sort of gay that could be described as pissy or sassy, and said, “No, it’s brilliant.”

“Not brilliant. A good idea and premise, certainly. But not brilliant. David Foster Wallace is brilliant, or was brilliant, I should say,” I said.

Greg was irate and as offended as I’ve seen him in years, even after a round of me calling him “faggot” over and over again. He snapped. “No, it’s brilliant.” He looked like he was about to stab me with his fork.

“Jesus Christ, you little snap artist. It’s just a movie,” I said. “I like how you only get offended when I talk shit on things like Sister Act instead of something that actually matters.”

I flipped back to Sister Act. “Look, what am I gonna be? Quasimodo in the belfry? What is this?” Whoopi probably said as she looked around the church.

Greg resumed eating. “Well, sorry, it’s just that it’s brilliant.”

On a recent dance trip to Chicago, a pack of Mormon girls who were traveling and dancing with Chelsea pulled her aside and to mention to her that she would make a great Mormon because she already practices many of their values and beliefs. She politely turned them down.

She later explained: “Everyone thinks I would be a great Mormon. But then they get to know me and realize that I’m all about the cock jokes.”

Little Chelsea, my Mom and I walked our two wild golden retriever dogs through Salt Lake City’s Liberty Park, which, when the sun starts shining and melts away the snow and puts an end to many people’s Seasonal Affective Disorder, is a hang out for runners, Mexican families who want other people to watch them grill up cheap hot dogs, and hipsters zooming around on rollerblades to prove some sort of point no one else understands or cares about.

The walk was Chelsea’s consolation prize for not getting asked to her senior prom. Prom in Utah is a guy-ask-girl occasion, and no guys decided to take Chelsea’s goofy ass.

“Well, maybe you should put out more and be less of a goof ass,” I joked, trying to use humor and insults to cheer her up. “Or maybe you should stop having a slight case of aspergers,” I added.

She hung her head and said, “I know.”

“Hey, don’t get down. You can always go to senior prom next year,” I said.

“I’m a senior,” she said.

The dog I was managing, Mazie, who is the closest thing I’ve had to a girlfriend in the last two years, started sniffing a pile of shit. I tugged at the leash. “Stop it Mazie. You’re a lady.”

A giggling Chelsea chimed in, “Yeah Mazie, stop acting like such a fucking animal…. Danny, did you hear what I said? I told Mazie to stop acting like an animal, and she is an animal. Get it?”

“Yeah, Chels, I got it. It was funny, but not as funny as something I would say,” I said.

“Mazie would probably get asked to prom,” she added.

“Yeah, by me,” I said as I jerked at Mazie’s leash before she could sniff another dog’s asshole.

“God, I wish someone asked me,” Chelsea remarked.

“Well, maybe you should just show up, fill the gymnasium, or where ever the fuck they do prom now, with farts, and get the fuck out of there before the building blows and sprays your fart particles throughout the Salt Lake Valley,” I suggested.

“Nah, I don’t have to fart,” she said, while looking as though she was trying to push out a fart.

“Well, I went to prom because I was popular and would beat the shit out of nerds like you, but it wasn’t that fun,” I said.

“What happened?” She asked.

“My prom date secretly did cocaine and tried to rob everyone while they were passed out or in the hot tub. She didn’t try to rob me though, bless her little, coke-filled heart,” I said.

“Oh, wow, well, maybe it’s good that I’m not going… How many people tonight do you think will make out,” she asked, changing the subject.

“A million,” I said.

“And how will have sex?” she asked.

“All of them. Most of them twice,” I answered.

“Shit, that’s a lot of sex,” she said.

We walked passed Tracy Aviary, Salt Lake City’s bird prison. The dogs lapped up dirt-water from an old puddle. “Would it make you feel better if we tossed the dogs over the fence into the Aviary?”

“Not really,” she said, looking towards the aviary.

“Look, they have flamingos!!!” she said, finally excited.

“You like flamingos? They’re like the gayest birds of all. What do you like about them? Their pink color? The fact that they stand on one leg? The fact that they’re gay?”

“I just like them more than cats,” she said.

“What do cats have to do with it?”

“I don’t want to be a cat lady that can’t get a date, so I’m going to be a flamingo lady and fill my house with flamingos,” she explained.

I looked over at the flamingos standing in the murky pond. I pictured her hypothetical future home full of flamingos. It seemed like a pretty cool alternative to cats, and it wouldn’t come with the stigma. People might even really enjoy it. No one wants to see a fucking cat. It’s not like you walk into someone’s house or apartment and asked to see a cat. We’re all familiar. Some of us are allergic. But flamingos? Flamingos get people’s attention. Most people look at flamingos and say something like, “Shit, I haven’t seen a flamingo in years. What a treat!!!” And to have a house full of them? It could almost be a tourist attraction. “What should we do this summer honey?” a wife might say to a husband. “I read about this lady with a house full of flamingos. Maybe we visit that,” a husband might say back to a wife. I could see it working.

I pulled Mazie’s face out of the puddle with a tug of the leash, and said, “Shit, Chelsea. That’s a good idea. You should definitely become a flamingo lady. Too bad you didn’t think of that before prom. You probably would have gotten a date.”

During a recent, brief visit back home to Salt Lake City, Utah for Mother’s Day, or as I like to call it, Motherfucker’s Day, I had a conversation with our Polish, Holocaust-surviving cleaning lady, Stana, about Los Angeles:

Stana: Oh, Danny is home. How is Danny?

Me: Pretty good, you know, just living life and what not.

Stana: You is likin’, how called, Los Angeles?

Me: Yeah, it’s alright. It’s sort of a cluster fuck of anxious, high-strung, unemployed or nearly unemployed creative losers desperate to achieve any amount of success so they can have enough confidence to call home. Anyways, have you been in Los Angeles?

Stana: Yeah.

Me: And what’d you think?

Stana: Too black.

Me: What? What do you mean?

Stana: Too many blacks and Mexicans.

Me: Oh come on Stana.

I thought she was going to mention something about pollution or traffic, but nope. To Stana, Los Angeles is too black and too Mexican, and that’s way it sucks. She then went on to bitch about how all the Mexicans are coming into this country as immigrants, thinking this is their country, I guess forgetting that she too is a immigrant.

As always, my New Year’s Resolution was to stop being such a unhealthy fatass. I assisted in my reaching of this resolution by signing up for a gym membership at Bally’s Total Fitness (I would just say Bally’s, but you might get it confused with the hotel in Las Vegas, so I tacked on the “Total Fitness”).

My Mom sent me a text asking how things were going. I responded by saying, “Everything is going well. I joined a gym. Love you.”

Her response: “God for u! Is it near your house? That will be something you really enjoy, but Dan, u r NOT fat. You’re very good looking and u have intoxicating eyes and a great smile. You r fun, funny and a hoot to be with. I love u soooooo much, Dan, and I expect great things out of you!!!”

It’s good to know that even if I and the rest of the world doesn’t find me to be thin, attractive, or funny, at least my good old Mom does.