Monday, September 24, 2012

You Know The Plotlines For The First 100 Episodes Of “Guys With Kids” Day!

They came to you in the middle of the night last night. Like they’d been beamed into your head. The plotlines for the first 100 episodes of Guys With Kids. When you went to sleep you weren’t even thinking about Guys With Kids. You knew it existed, but you figured it doesn’t need you to think about it to continue existing. Now that you know the first episode is about how even though the guys have kids, they’re still just guys (or are they?), and in the second episode the one guy with a kid asks the other two guys with kids for help moving an armoire, and in the third episode all three guys with kids have to go to the post office but the kids haven’t eaten in days, and in the fourth episode the guys with kids meet two other guys with kids but their kids end up being dolls (American Girl), and in the fifth episode the guys with kids get condescended to by a barista so they follow him home and set fire to his car (a Civic), you’re thinking maybe Guys With Kids actually does need you to think about it in order for it to exist.

Maybe if you stop thinking about it, episode six won’t be about the trouble with sippy cups, and episode seven will be about something other than anal polyps, and episode eight won’t address online gambling addiction, and episode nine won’t be the one where all three guys go to take their kids to a little-known catholic counsel to have their kids exorcized “just in case,” and episode ten won’t feature a Blythe Danner walk-on.

Maybe you’re the autistic kid staring at a snowglobe full of the characters from Guys With Kids.

That could explain why you know episode eleven is the one where they find out one of the kids can stop time, and episode twelve is the one where they go to Sweden to personally return an Ikea crib to the factory, and in episode thirteen one of the guys with kids decides to leave the group and the other two are secretly excited to be done with him but at the last minute he changes his mind, and episode fourteen is the demolition derby episode, and in episode fifteen the guys listen to the 9/11 phone calls, and in episode sixteen guy #2 doesn’t trust guy #1 so he tries to have him wacked but guy #3 gets killed instead, and in episode seventeen we find out guy #3 was never who we thought he was, that the real guy #3 (and his kid) are CIA and the guy #3 who got killed was just a North Korean spy wearing a disguise, and in episode eighteen the guys remember the first seventeen episodes and spend the last ten minutes sobbing, and in episode nineteen one of the kids starts a race riot and the guys try to help everyone keep a cool head but they can’t so the city burns and they have to move to Vancouver, and in episode twenty there’s an AIDS scare, and episode twenty-one is the Christmas episode, and episode twenty-two is the mole people episode, and episode twenty-three is the Ghost of Steve Jobs Is Haunting The Kid Of Guy #2 episode, and in episode twenty-four one of the guys loses his kid’s teddy bear and he spends the rest of the episode screaming at God.

Are you still dreaming? Or are you awake and you really do have all this knowledge? Could it be aliens?

Could it be that you really already know episode twenty-five is a tribute to the life of Jared from Subway and episode twenty-six is a parody of “Steel Magnolias” and in episode twenty-seven there’s just a black, silent screen for twenty-two minutes because sometimes we need to remember the vastness of empty moments, and episode twenty-eight has the guys trying to sell their kids to Colombians and episode twenty-nine sends the guys to Fiji for a lifestyle festival (sex thing), and in episode thirty the guys finally learn how to change a diaper?

The bigger question is, are you the only one? Do you alone know that episodes thirty-one through forty address gun control, hickeys, good cell phone service vs. bad cell phone service, car salesmen, flesh-eating viruses, getting thrown in “the dog house” by your “old lady,” naptime, the politics of hipster kickball leagues, denim washes, and whether or not the moon landing was faked? If not, how many others were chosen to know that episodes forty-one through forty-three comprise a three-episode arc about sexual promiscuity amongst the residents of senior communities, and episode forty-four is the one where the creator’s dead dog is fed to the guys with kids “as a warning,” and episode forty-five is the Yom Kippur episode, and in episode forty-six no one says the word “is,” and episodes forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, and fifty-two will all be shot on a military base with the scripts written solely to hypnotically activate brain-washed black ops sleeper agents?

Why were you chosen? For what purpose?

What use can it be to anyone that you know episode fifty-three will be about the creation of an Edie Brickell-type folk superstar, and episode fifty-four will be a funny spin on Revelations, and episode fifty-five has the guys competing to see which of their kids gets the last spot in the good day care, and episode fifty-six is kind of a scene-by-scene response to the episode of Cheers where Coach has to keep his daughter from marrying the wrong guy, and episode fifty-seven is about how guys with kids have to buy their ladies maxi-pads sometimes and it’s embarrassing, and episode fifty-eight shows what it would be like if the guys and the kids switched bodies, and episode fifty-nine has the guys worried they aren’t as cool as guys who ran off on their kids, and episode sixty is just a blood-bath, nothing but gore and shoot-outs, no explanation?

Why would someone need you to know all that?

Maybe you knowing episode sixty-one sends the guys with kids on a cruise will help stop a war one day. Maybe you knowing episode sixty-two is the all-nude episode will be necessary to keep the sun from exploding one day. Maybe you knowing episode sixty-three is about happy meals will help the President ease the tension in the Middle East one day.

Who knows?

All you know for sure is in episode sixty-four the kids find a bag of flame-throwers and the guys have to outrun the ATF or give the kids up, and in episode sixty-five none of the guys’ babysitters show up, and in episode sixty-six there’s a brief, alarming, but ultimately contained Ebola outbreak in the kids’ day care center.

You know that sixty-seven is about the collapse of Greece and sixty-eight is about a smores competition and sixty-nine is about whether or not to send the kids to Scouts, but you don’t know if all this information will disappear from your mind as quickly as it came into it.

Is it a tumor that lets you know episode seventy takes on dudes with too much nose-hair and not episode seventy-one, since in that one the guys with kids buy a Native American dream blanket and summon a vengeful spirit from beyond? Is it some kind of fever that makes you certain that seventy-two is going to reveal who the kids’ real moms are?

Seventy-three, seventy-four, and seventy-five: puppies, Katrina, and whether Latin should still be taught in schools. Why do you know this? If you die tonight, will someone else take over the task of knowing this for you? Should you write it all down?

You should write it all down. Write it in a letter to your little brother. Tell him not to open the letter until you’re dead, but let him know episode seventy-six of Guys With Kids is going to be about the day Macho Man Randy Savage died. Let him know episode seventy-seven is going to be about homelessness, and in episode seventy-eight the guys with kids buy a storm shelter to escape what they believe to be the coming wrath of Christ.

If you tell someone else, if you tell your little brother, maybe that will help make sure it all comes true.

Tell him seventy-nine is going to be Loretta Swit’s comeback cameo, and episode eighty is about the guys feeling sad because the training wheels are starting to come off the kids’ bikes. Tell him episodes eighty-one, eighty-two, and eighty-three all include subliminal flashes of footage from the Jodie Foster movie Foxes. Tell him eighty-four is about inhalants and eighty-five is the one where the guys and the kids all learn a little bit about tolerance.

Your little brother needs to know. When you’re dead, which will probably be very soon considering the strangeness of all of this, your little brother is our only hope that someone know eighty-six is the groin pull episode and eighty-seven is the painting party episode and in eighty-eight all the guys die and the kids have to go to an orphanage. Your little brother must carry with him the knowledge that in eighty-nine the kids realize the orphanage is run by a mysterious benefactor, and in ninety we find out the benefactor is you.

That’s right, by episode ninety, long after you’re dead, you’ll have your own storyline on Guys With Kids. It’s the story-line that carries the show over the syndication mark. You know all the plotlines of every episode because you run the orphanage that will usher the kids into manhood. You always have. In episode ninety-one you teach the kids about honesty. In episode ninety-two the kids have their first crushes and you help them through the heartache. In episode ninety-three you teach the kids to drive. Episode ninety-four is the one where one of the kids runs away but you chase him down and let him know he’s loved, and you can’t run from love. Episode ninety-five has the kids taking their SATs and episode ninety-six is prom night (one of their friends dies, they learn about drinking). In episode ninety-seven you find out you have cancer. In episode ninety-eight, you tell the kids that you are glad you ended your life in the corporeal world so that you could live here in the TV world and watch these beautiful kids grow up to be brilliant young adults, only to die again, but to die happy and proud. In episode ninety-nine the kids go off to college and in episode 100 the kids get word that you passed away, but you left them each a letter, and in each letter is the plotlines for the second 100 episodes of The Mindy Project.

Happy You Know The Plotlines For The First 100 Episodes Of Guys With Kids Day!

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Sink Your Dead Dad’s Boat Day!

Your Dad died and in his will he left you a yacht as well as a staff and food supply for you to live on it for the rest of your life. He left your brothers the family business and all other assets. For you, just the yacht. It can’t be sold until you die or you disembark and step back onto American shores. He wants you to live in the ocean.

“Away from my step-mother,” you tell the lawyer.

The lawyer doesn’t say anything. It’s just you and him. Your brothers and step-mother heard the will separately.

“So I have to either live on the Ocean for the rest of my life, or I stay on land and get a job.”

The lawyer nods. Your Dad played this perfectly. He knew you and your step-mother had fallen in love, he knew you were sleeping together behind his back, and he took precautions to make sure you couldn’t marry her once he was gone by ensuring you could never provide her with the life to which she’s accustomed. A life where a yacht is an added luxury, not the limit of her assets. She’ll never live on that yacht with you, and she’ll never live with you if all you’re doing is earning ends meet at a day job.

“You win Dad,” you whisper out loud.

The lawyer slides another pile of papers your way.

“These are the insurance documents,” he says. “Should the boat sink, you’ll need these to collect the insurance payment, which would be approximately ten million dollars.”

Insurance payment?

You scan the documents, and your solution is plain as day. You ask the lawyer, “Why you doing this?”

“I’ve been your family lawyer for a long time,” he says. “I saw your father and step-mother together. I think you two make a better couple.”

Shake the lawyer’s hand, then race down to the dock, get on board your yacht and start crashing it into some rocks until it sinks and you can buy your dead Dad’s third wife a brand new house to share with you.

Happy Sink Your Dead Dad’s Boat Day!

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Baby Namer Day!

You’ve been making a fortune as an artisanal baby namer. Forward thinkers bring their babies to you, you look at them, bounce them a little bit up and down, then you say, “Name him Pete.”

Today your business is going to go under. You’re finally going to be shown a baby you can’t name.

You won’t even look at the mother. Not until you stare at the baby for a few seconds, just long enough to know exactly where he got those eyes.

“Lauren?” you’ll say to the mother, without looking up from the boy.

She wasn’t sure if she wanted you in your son’s life. It was just a fling for you obviously. She was just a woman you met in a hotel bar. It was her fault she got knocked up, but getting knocked up is nothing but a biological process. Being a family is something a whole lot more, something you don’t want to do with strangers.

“Then I found you on the internet and I saw that you’ve built your entire life around babies. I knew it could only benefit our child to have you as a father,” she’ll say.

Your son will feel heavy in your hands. Though he’s not very big, he’ll feel heavier than any baby you’ve ever held.

“Name him,” Lauren will say.

And that’s when your business will fold. You had a talent for naming babies who mean nothing to you. Now that you have one of your own, naming him feels impossible. You’ll suddenly realize there’s so much in a name. You’ll stammer and struggle but you simply won’t be able to give your own son a name, and the pressure will extend to all the other babies that are subsequently brought to you, until you finally close up shop.

Since Lauren primarily came to you because she knew you were loaded, when you no longer have an income because you’ve lost your talent for naming babies she’ll fly back west and you’ll have to sue for visitation rights. You’ll get one weekend a month and every other Christmas. With no help from you, she’ll name your son Elliot.

Happy Baby Namer Day!

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Cabin Fever Day!

You and Clara’s husband Tim stayed behind because you both have leg injuries, while Clara and your husband Paul went hiking through the snow to try to find food and hopefully a ranger who can find a way to get you all down off this mountain.

“They could be gone for days and they might not make it back,” Tim says limping around the cabin. “We should start having sex now.”

“How can you—”

“Oh spare me!” Tim shouts. “The longer you play this game of being the loyal, loving wife grateful to her husband for risking his life for you, the less sex we’re having.”

“But they’ve barely just left,” you say. “Look, I can still see them. They’re waving.”

You motion for Tim to come to the window and wave back to them. Tim slaps you.

“Dammit you need to think realistically,” he shouts. “If we wait to have sex until we’re sure they’re dead, we might be too weak to even feel sexual, not to mention we’ll be trying to come to grips with the reality that our spouses have died somewhere out there in the snow, possibly never to have their bodies found by anything but packs of hungry wolves. Think you’ll be up for boning with the image of your husband’s corpse being torn apart by wolves on your mind?”

You concede that no, you would not. Neither would Tim, he says. He loves Clara way too much to cheat on her while her body is being eaten by animals.

“And supposing we do wait,” Tim continues. “And when we manage to have sex we find out we are the perfect mates for each other, that the sex is the best we’ve ever had. But, oops, we waited too long and we’re too dehydrated and hungry to have sex a second time. Almost more tragic than if we’d never had sex at all! We’d die regretting that we waited, regretting that we stood on formality instead of grabbing as much erotic opportunity from what little time we had left.”

You’ve spent too much of your life regretting things. Tim’s right. You love Paul, but waiting to be sure he’s dead before you have sex with Tim is just another instance of you living as if tomorrow is some kind of guarantee.

You take off your clothes and Tim enters you for approximately 30 seconds before Paul and Clara burst into the cabin with a half-dozen park rangers. The rangers had been hiking up the mountain when they bumped into Paul and Clara having frantic sex against a snow bank around 200 feet from the cabin’s front door.

Happy Cabin Fever Day!

Monday, September 17, 2012

Urban Outfitters Robbery Spree Day!

When you get up to the register to pay for a book called Faces People Make While Farting, the cashier will notice you’re nervous.

“You have no right to be nervous when you’re so cute,” he’ll say.

You’ll be flattered when you pull the gun on him and tell him to empty the register.

“A girl as cute as you shouldn’t need to commit crimes,” he’ll say.

You’ll blush as you whisper for him to empty the cash faster.

“If I knew armed robbers might look like you I’d have started working as a cashier a long time ago,” he’ll say.

Smile at him. He’ll smile back.

“You just live your life robbing Urbans then?” he’ll ask.

“And a few Madewells,” tell him.

He’ll hand you the bag of money. Your hands will touch.

“Can you run in those skinny jeans?” ask him.

He’ll nod.

Wrap your pinky around his thumb and command, “Let’s go then.”

He’ll hop the counter knocking over a display of iPhone cases that look like old tape cassettes and the two of you will run outside to your car and speed off on a cross-country spree of youth-marketed clothing chain robbery.

You’ll become folk heroes when during a robbery of an Urban Outfitters in Atlanta you win the favor of customers still in the store by giving them free armfuls of leggings and hoodies and copies of “Wreck This Journal.” That’s when the Feds will take an interest, when it looks like you’re getting the Robin Hood label, when you start handing out for free the youth that’s supposed to be sold to them.

The excitement for your outlaw adventure will build when security tapes hit the news, the two of you always making a point of kissing once, kissing sloppy, just before taking off with the money from every single store. Customers begin showing up at Urbans and Madewells just to kiss while snapping phone pics of themselves that they can post on Facebook.

Copycat robberies start popping up at J Crews and Forever 21s and even a few Gaps. Parents demand the police double their efforts to capture you. Magazines display you on their covers under headlines blaming the economy and pornography for your crime spree. In the midwest citizen militias voluntarily guard clothing stores intent on proving to their young ‘it can’t happen here.’

“How’s it end?” he asks you in a Super 8 bed in Sacramento, his arms wrapped around your naked body.

“We have to be gunned down,” you tell him. His kiss tells you he’s on the same page.

You’ll be shot to death outside an Urban Outfitters in San Antonio, TX. More than 600 rounds will be fired by more than three dozen police officers and you’ll each be hit more than fifteen times. Your fame will skyrocket and you’ll be idolized by kids for years to come, and Urban Outfitters will make millions selling tee shirts with your gun-toting silhouettes silk-screened across the chest.

Happy Urban Outfitters Robbery Spree Day!

Sunday, September 16, 2012

External Hard Drive Blues Day!

You’re a new hire in an IT department and you’re sitting in a music venue listening to your boss sing a terrible original blues number called “External Hard Drive Blues.”

The song is about how his “old lady” found his “girly movies” on his external hard drive and now he’s got “the blues.”

You want to keep this job so you didn’t think you had a choice but to come see him play when he handed you the flyer. At the end of his set your boss is going to come and sit at your table.

“You’re the first of my staff I could ever get to come out and see me,” he’ll say. “They don’t like to mix the personal with the office. They don’t think it’s right to work under someone after you’ve witnessed their art. That’s what they say anyway. But you’re different.”

Tell him, “You looked like you were really having some fun up there.”

He’ll say that you get him and he’ll ask if you want to make love to his wife while he watches.

“Come on,” he’ll say. “Don’t make me write a song called the Rejected Request To Have Sex With My Wife While I Watch Blues.”

Follow him home in his car and make love to his wife while he watches. Anything to keep him from writing another song.

Happy External Hard Drive Blues Day!

Saturday, September 15, 2012

The Crush Is All Day!

Stacey wants to know why you think you love her so much, she says it’s just a crush. You’re only 14, she’s only 15. It’s a crush.

“You can move beyond it. It’s a crush.”

Tell her the crush is all.

“Man loves for a day or a lifetime, it’s a crush,” you say. “On that day, in that lifetime, the crush is all.”

It’s all he breathes. It’s all he thinks about. His first thought on waking is the crush. His last thought at bedtime is the crush.

If a man finds himself thinking he’s going to die.

“If I find myself in trouble tonight,” you tell Stacey, ignoring her friends waiting and laughing by the door, her friends who want her to return to the dance. “In danger. If I find myself with a gun to my head or trapped under something that isn’t going to budge, or in a car crash or a plane crash, I’ll think about you.”

It’s what all the men think about in every movie ever made. The man in danger has someone he needs to return to, a love, a crush. It keeps him alive. It keeps him going. He stays alive thanks to the crush, because the crush is all he has to live for.

“The crush is all there is,” tell Stacey.

Tell her she can go back inside and spend the rest of the dance with Ron, if she wants, but it’s not going to change what you feel. It’s not going to give you a different thing to live for.

“You could save my life tonight, Stacey,” you tell her. “I’d be a fool not to love you tonight.”

Turn around and walk away. Walk like you still think she might go back inside. There’s no way she’s going back inside.

Happy The Crush Is All Day!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Maximum Helen Day!

Today’s the day you look in the mirror and say “Look out world, you’re about to get a dose of Maximum Helen.” Then you’re going to go out into your city and live your life in such a way as to impact your fellow man and your environment with the maximum expression of your personhood.

Start by going to the park, sitting in the fountain, and peeing. Then tell your coffee cart guy the names of every boy and man you ever loved who didn’t love you back, making sure to pee on his coffee cart while you do. Next, climb the fire escape of a building until you get to the top and start screaming at the people below a list of the skin rashes and infections you’ve had in your lifetime to distract them so they won’t realize you’re peeing on them until it’s too late. Then, go to work and spend eight hours filing with the greatest precision your coworkers have ever seen while making sure to dab just a droplet of your pee on every file-folder. When it’s time to clock out, join your coworkers for happy hour but don’t pee in their drinks (save it for the blue cheese dressing that comes with the buffalo wings). Finally, flirt with a man until he asks to go home with you. When you get back to his place, hold him down and pee on him unless he says he’s into that sexually because ew.

When the day is finally over, get some much needed sleep because giving the world a dose of Maximum Helen can be quite draining.

Happy Maximum Helen Day!

Monday, September 10, 2012

He Exhibits All Ten Warning Signs Listed In Yahoo’s “Ten Warning Signs That You’re In Love With A Cheating Man” Day!

He’s working a lot. Yahoo says when he works a lot it means he might be working on loving someone new.

He’s showering a lot. Yahoo says when he showers a lot it’s because he’s washing off the lingering scent of someone new.

He’s constantly singing love songs out loud without any cause for a love song to be sung. Yahoo says if he spontaneously bursts out into love songs it’s because those love songs are songs he has to sing when he thinks about someone new.

He occasionally shows up covered in mud. Yahoo says when your man shows up muddy it’s because he had to dispose of the bodies of the people who witnessed him giving all his love to someone new.

He bought seven new cars. Yahoo says a man has no reason to buy a lot of new cars unless he’s going on long moonlight drives with someone special, someone young, someone fun, someone who is anyone, anyone at all, anyone at all but you.

He has crabs. Yahoo says there ain’t no other reason for a man to have crabs unless those crabs side-glided off the body of someone new.

He’s been spending a lot of time in his secret second apartment and according to Yahoo a man should spend an average of no more than two nights a week in his secret second apartment unless he’s using that secret second apartment to spend secret time with someone secret and new.

He can sometimes be found with his penis inside another woman. In the immortal words of Yahoo, “There is simply no reason for your man to place his manhood upon or up inside the womanhood of a woman who, for all intents and purposes is not you, unless your man is interested in the womanhood under the operation of a woman other than you, AKA a woman who happens to be someone new.

He’s gone. Yahoo says when a man is gone there’s a very good chance what’s "gone” to you is actually the “arrival” at the doorstep of someone new.

He says he met someone new. If Yahoo is correct, a man never says he met someone new unless he’s decided that you are someone old and there’s another one, a different one, a one who in your man’s eyes is someone who alleviates that “I’m scared of not mattering anymore” feeling, a one who can only be described as someone new.

Since your man meets all ten criteria, it’s time to tell him that you wish him well but you understand that the heart cannot be tamed, girlfriend.

Happy He Exhibits All Ten Warning Signs Listed In Yahoo’s “Ten Warning Signs That You’re In Love With A Cheating Man” Day!