Just a quick note that you might be too old to be dancing like that at the Cha Cha Lounge. Actually, you might be too old just to be there. I’m too old probably, but you have like 20 years on me.

I mean, it’s a hipster bar. And not like I’m super down with the scene, but you were wearing bright white K-Swiss and what I believe to be denim shorts.

And it’s the very fact that you were dancing, too. Don’t get me wrong, we all like to shake loose now and again. But like I said, it’s a hipster bar. In order to fit in you need to act like you don’t want to talk to anyone, you need to pace silently about, and ONLY dance if you are SURE it is an ironic dance. You were not dancing ironically, sir.

I don’t know if I’m trying to make fun of you or the bar. Maybe I’m just trying to say that it was disconcerting. Also, was that your daughter you were dancing with? Or your niece? And who was that older woman that appeared next to that table? Your wife? Your mother? It was so damn FRUSTRATING watching you. I couldn’t figure anything out. I’m the one who’s supposed to be awkward at that bar. It’s MY thing.

Sincerely yours,
Barak

This might be a new series: Things I’ve seen that can be better.
#1 Mothers smelling babies’ butts for poop.
Now I know that kids crap themselves. Fine. And that parents don’t always know when that happens. Sure. But in NO other part of society is this an acceptable act. No one looks at someone crying and thinks, “Hey, there’s probably a good chance that person has gone the bathroom in their own clothes. I better put my face real close and try to breathe it in.”

Every time I find myself feeling my years and thinking about starting a family, I see something like this. The single man’s life is relatively poop-free, and this is how we like it. We can barely acknowledge our own defection, much less be elbow-deep in another’s.

Is the only alternative to this act “Sticking your finger down there to try to get proof of the poop on that finger?” I SAY NO. This is AMERICA. We can do better! I don’t know how, but we have robots and the Japanese. Let them figure it out.

#2 Playing with digital dogs while perfectly adequate dogs sit nearby.

Man, now I’m sounding like my dad. Those darn video games. But really, I feel that video games should be about two things: Shooting other people or blowing other people up. Anything more than that is ridiculous. (I’m talking to you, Wii.)

But now we have all these little kids playing with little digital dogs and cats. Like the audition I was waiting for the other day. This little girl was sitting and waiting for her mom playing with her fake dog, petting it, feeding it, swinging it around by its leash. And her feet were not 1, but TWO of those tiny dogs. It’s bad enough we’ve shrunk God’s creatures to the point we call them “Toys”, but now we’re ignoring them.

It’s like shooting a platoon of alien warlords on your Gameboy when there are totally awesome ones to slaughter SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU.

We can do better. We have to, America.

Okay, I kind of get the need some guys (and I’m assuming it’s only guys. I have NO idea what goes on in the ladies room) have of writing all over bathroom walls. Fine. Write something funny. We can all use a laugh squatting down gingerly in the Oakland airport.

Oh, you’re going to write your name? Uh, okay. Like you’re claiming this stall as your territory. Like I’m doing my business in “BOXOX’s” turf and I better be cool.

But here’s what I don’t get but think is awesome: When these guys write their names on the toilet seats. And here’s why: If you really want to disrespect something, like a flag, you burn it. Just ask the Middle East, they’ll tell you. You find a symbol and burn it. But if you REALLY want to belittle someone (and even our Arab neighbors don’t go this low) why you just piss all over it. I can’t think of a way to put you down more than to write your name somewhere and pee on it. Perhaps we could all defecate on it.

So that’s why I really appreciate the egocentric guy who feels the need to Sharpie or scrape his moniker into the seat. It’s like they’ve taken the trouble to put their name in the one place where it’s a certainty someone is gonna ‘miss the mark’ and piss on their name. Awesome. Brilliant. Kudos.

You’ve taken the work out of it, vandals! Cheers to you. Thanks to your tireless efforts, “TRAYTRAY”, people shall be smearing their dump all over your identity. Good call. Myself? I shall be layering tissue paper over tissue paper over it, but the effect is the same.

This is why I only tag my name on national monuments and cathedrals.

I love vans. For two weeks in our travels we got to ride on a band’s tour bus. Yes, it was nice. But I miss Wendy, our van and our woman of the road. I miss the vans that came before… Old Fasty, Old Newey, the nameless cargo vans. We should go get tattoos of their names on our arms. We should confess to our future wives the love we once held for these sturdy old girls. Their windshields would fill up with oil change reminder stickers and the flies of a thousand lands, but to us they were love notes. Their seats cradled us asleep, floated us upon endless miles of interstate. If we were poets, we would write sonnets for them. If we were musicians, we would write solid gold records about these E-350’s, these Dodge Rams.

No one would write a thing for Old Coldy. Long may she rot.

Our friend John wasn’t driving his beat up conversion van, and we had our first tour to think about. Chip had a Honda CRX and I had a small pick-up, so those were out of the question. Through a little begging John tossed us the keys. Aha! Obstacle overcome! As the day approached to pack up and leave on our two week tour from Tampa Bay up through New York state, Kyle and I huddled with our duffle bags. We hadn’t sent the van yet, we didn’t know what to expect. Chip pulled her into the driveway, and I’ll admit, she was pretty. She was roomy and looked comfortable. We hopped inside and did what any guy would do. We fiddled with every knob and floatation device we could find.

Mid fiddle Kyle discovered there was no heat. There was the switch, just no heat. As a Floridian I overlooked this, but Kyle was on the ball. “Chip, it’s gonna be cold.” He was right. It was January. Kyle grew up in Buffalo, so he was smart about hose things. Chip agreed it would be cold and walked off to phone John. We were only really making enough to cover meals and gas. Five minutes later he returned with advice. John wouldn’t pay to fix his heater but said to buy an “Inverter” and a space heater. It would cost too much to fix the heater. When it got cold, John said, just plug the inverter into the cigarette lighter and we would be toasty as could be. Heck yeah. I had no idea what an inverter was, but we hit the highway.

By northern Georgia we were more than chilly. While pumping gas at a Flying J, we split the cost of an inverter. I remember pretty well being filled with the gratifying feeling of cleverness as we reentered I-75. We outsmarted winter. Finally tearing through the steel-strength plastic encasing it, Kyle plugged in the new inverter and into that the space heater from home. Oh boy, did it get warm for twenty seconds. I learned something that day about fuses and electricity. Apparently the energy needed to light a cigarette is less than the energy needed to heat air. Huh. And apparently if you don’t know that, fuses will break and you won’t be able to use that outlet anymore. And apparently, if you keep trying that with all the cigarette lighters in the conversion van, they will all blow. I did not know that.

By North Carolina, we were wearing everything in our duffle bags. The space heater sat on the floor, alive only enough to smile and laugh. You know, growing up in Florida, you get sentimental about snow. It looks so fun in the movies. Driving through West Virginia we hit a blizzard, and we began to hate the stuff.

John’s conversion van had some interesting quirks about it. You know how cars have their names on the side, along with some little bragging line, like TAURUS “Fuel-Injection,” or Celica “Really-Fast Wheels”? John’s van said RAM “Power Windows.” Another fun little thing about the van, besides its amazing Power Windows and weak little cigarette lighters, was the arctic wind tunnel around your feet. I’m no car expert, but I had just assumed there should be some sort of, you know, non-hole between the outside of the car and the gas-pedal. Newly named “Old Coldy” had holes, the effect being that your feet freaking hurt so bad. Our progress north to our first show slowed, stopping a few times every our to get out and stomp around a KFC parking lot to get the feeling back in our toes and heels.

At some point we got lots of plastic and duct tape. Chip and Kyle taped off the back of the van, forsaking the back seats and luggage like sailors tossing off cargo in a storm. It was dead to us. All that mattered was keeping the minimum amount of air needed for life. While they figured out how to tape off the footwells while leaving movement for, you know, the gas and brake, I found a hunting store and bought wool socks and chemical hand-warmers.

By New York I hated the van and improv and New York. We were grumpy and stiff, and a little rashy from placing the chemical hand-warmers in places that were not suggested on the packaging. I finally became confident that Santa Claus was really a myth that day because that sleigh wasn’t even wrapped in plastic and duct tape. That dude was in the elements. We became desperate. You know that scene in Empire Strikes Back where Han crams Luke inside the stomach of that snow camel thing? Yeah, something like that.

Somewhere around our fifth day we were stocking up and mittens and thick hats at a farmer’s implement store when something caught our eye. A propane heater. We huddle around and whispered very seriously. “It could work.” “No it will kill us.”

“No it won’t.” “Yes it will, I’ve watched shows on it. Carbon Monoxide and stuff. It will kill us.”

“What if we just tried it?” “I don’t know. I think we’d get all drowsy and die.”

“Dude, it’s cold.” We bought it. There’s a story I read in the eighth grade called To Light a Fire, about a man who freezes to death. The author draws you into his character’s misery and desperation as he carefully builds fire after fire to stave off his painful end. We drew back the plastic draping Old Coldy’s soulless cab and struck a match, hoping to succeed where he failed. We lit the heater and drove on.

Fifteen miles down the road we ripped down the plastic and rode naked through the Empire State. From then on, we rented our vans.

From an email-  

“Another saga regarding my kids watching your videos….P.B.V.S. (Post Barak Video Syndrome) My kids, and all of my siblings kids are all at my parents house on New Year’s Day. They are all playing in the basement. My son, Luke (4 years old), is always pretending he is a pirate… So anyway, my mom goes in the basement to check on the kids, and finds Luke with his shirt off. She says to him, “What are you doing Luke? You’re going to freeze down here without a shirt on.” He then replies, “But Grandma, everyone loves a sexy captain! Barak said so!” 

 At the end of the day, I can relax, for I am a hero to four-year-olds.