“‘It’s very hard living with a man who is learning to play the violin,’ she said, handing the detective the empty revolver.” -Richard Brautigan

My friend Larry is a formidable Scrabble opponent. We’re usually pretty even, but the last time we played was a holocaust. The prick had subjugated every reachable triple word score, wielded two-letter words like daggers and scored a handful of bingos before I ever scored one. By the time we got to the endgame, I was behind by 150 points, with nothing in my rack but redundant vowels and a board so tight it had all the scoring potential of Gary Coleman in a slam-dunk competition. So I forfeited. (more…)

Well, here comes springtime: time for young lovers to plan their big, badass, expensive weddings. Naturally, I have advice: Don’t you do it! Blow off your over-priced, over-produced, big, badass wedding plans before it’s too late. Yes, I know, many of you ladies have been dreaming your whole life about walking down that aisle. But, trust me, the dream is a lie.

Your wedding will not live up to your fantasy, and the reality is depressing. The average American betrothal costs between $20,000 and $30,000 and will take about five years to repay. And the worst part: It all goes by in a flash. After years of planning, thousands of dollars flushed and all the heartache that typically accompanies preparation, the wedding will end before you barely realize it started.

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I recently read that one of the ways you can make your death easier on loved ones is to let them know what kind of funeral or memorial service you want in advance.

What a stellar idea!

It makes perfect sense to take the guesswork out of funeral preparations. So, dear loved ones, you may consider this my official sepulchral request.

Firstly, my funeral should be two things that most funerals are not: cheap and fun. Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a good time. As for the cost, everyone knows the death industry is an enormous, inflated flimflam machine. Take heed, my beloved grieving widow, and do not let some sleazy funeral director exploit your diminished capacity and coerce you into buying a bunch of overpriced crap I certainly won’t be needing: not the diamond studded pall bearer gloves, nor the laminated package of 1,000 prayer cards with micro perforation, the Cyprian torchiere lamps with pinkneck bulbs and ruby vigil glass. And for god’s sake, do not let him up-sell you on the 20-gauge, gasketed, stainless steel Essex Monarch casket with the otter-fur inner lining and central air conditioning! Just put me in an unfinished plywood box with my New York football Giants blanky and call it a day.

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W., and I are watching television. She is on the couch with the remote control, flipping around the dial searching for something good to watch and I’m on the recliner, staring at her with love and amazement and thinking, This woman is the worst remote control channel flipper ever.

Of course, she doesn’t get her hands on the remote all that often as I am a bit of a control freak. But in the rare occasion that she does stake claim, she always sends us spiraling into a substandard world of Television Suckland–so much so that I find myself directing her flippages from across the room–”Keep going, keep going, keep going, wait, wait! Go back…”–until the clicker comes sailing through the air toward my head–forcing me to duck–then crashes into the wall behind me and breaks into about three or four pieces, which has me always running over to the injured remote.

“Oh no, no, no–are you all right?” I ask the tattered motherboard lying lifeless in my hands, then carefully rebuild it with duct tape and rubber bands, point it at the television, breathe a sigh of relief when the television responds appropriately and shoot angry glares at the heartless devil woman who did this terrible thing to my beloved remote.

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In a previous column, I wrote about a pregnancy scare my wife and I recently had. For those who didn’t read it, on a slightly drunken evening, I forgot to use a condom and feared the worst.

As soon as the column hit the stands, we started getting all these wise-ass e-mails from our condom-hating married friends asking snotty questions like, “Hey, knucklehead, haven’t you heard of the birth control pill?” and “Why not just get a vasectomy, dummy?” as if the rubber is the red-headed step-bastard of marital birth control.

I received so many e-mails and blog comments from all these contraception snobs that I couldn’t help but respond to them here in print, all at once. My response is this:

Kiss my lambskins!

W. and I have our reasons for not using any of the aforementioned contraception options, and they are very private, which is why I’m only going to write about them here, and maybe blog about them as well.

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I was flipping through the TV channels the other night and came across The Ring 2. I tuned in just before the scene where the horse flips out on the boat. It is, for me, the scariest part of the movie.

In the scene, Rachel is traveling by ferry to the house where Samara, the creepy, dark-haired, damp girl, lives. At one point, Rachel notices a horse in a trailer and approaches the animal, which, as if it sensed something malevolent living inside Rachel, goes utterly berserk. The horse kicks its way out of the trailer, rises on two legs, stomps a car, chases Rachel to the edge of the craft and leaps over the rail into the black water.

The reason the horse scene scared me so much, even more than evil Samara herself, is because I can relate. Horses hate me, too. There have been multiple incidents in my life when a member of the equus caballus species has tried to hurt or murder me. It’s a great mystery because animals usually love me: Dogs like me. Cats like me. Hamsters totally dig me. Goldfish and I go way back. Iguanas don’t get me, but we maintain a civilized rapport. Even piranhas are kinder to me than equines.

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This past Christmas my wife and I visited my family in New York. We had a merry time hanging with the parents, siblings, nephews and in-laws for 10 solid days of Christmas tidings. It was such successful visit that there was only one notable family argument.

See, my parents bought me an Xbox 360 for Christmas, and, because I am a raging geek, I promptly hooked it up to the TV in their den and flitted on up to Xbox Heaven.

Now, my sister Barbara Jean has two boys: Little Michael, 10, and James the Barbarian, 7. Like most boys their age, they love video games. The minute I hooked up the console, they were bugging me to play. The problem was, the only Xbox games I had were all about death, and screams, and murder, and, worst of all, blood splatter–especially on head shots that, in one particular game, shatter your victim’s brains like an M-80 in a can of red paint. The game is called “Call of Duty 4″, but it should be renamed to, “I Murdered You in the Face with Lots of Blood Splashing 5: The Sickening.”

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This story is totally and utterly true.

In the spring of 1994, I fell in love with an extraordinary woman. She worked in a local coffeehouse owned by the owner of the bar I worked in at the time. The two venues were adjacent, connected by a shared backroom door.

Michelle had brains, beauty, gusto, and grace. She had Newcastle hair and coffee-bean eyes. She also had Hodgkin’s, though it had been in remission for two years.

Before each bartending shift, I used to come through the backroom door into the coffeehouse and request her special triple mocha mint masterpiece — as well as a few moments of her enlightened, enthusiastic conversation. My heart fluttered from espresso and infatuation.

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