My exes get into a room together....

All the girls I've ever hooked up with got into a room to discuss what that experience was like. Some winced, a few smiled, most said "who?".

The moderator reminded them by reading my self-penned biography called "Pork on my Plate: Confessions of a Guilty Jew". NYT bestseller if you ask me!

One girl had a hint of recognition. As she tilted her head into the prerequisite "I kinda remember" fashion, she spoke, "oh, him. We only hooked up because I was trying to get back at my anti-semitic father."

After that, various insults were hurled in iambic pentameter (the english major) and truncated half-english (the film major). They were mostly about my lack of finesse. That girl I "teethed" in 1995 spoke thusly, "my gleaming pearly whites clanked awkwardly against his yellowish coffee-stained chompers as if they were fighting in a 'Star Wars'-like fantasy film. I hate him and the past that I'm attempting to leave behind out of horrible shame".

It was like an "I despise Matt" convention, which interestingly enough, was very similar to my family reunions, except fewer middle aged people trying to convince me to go into Chiropody.

"What was something you liked about him?", the moderator quizzed my various exes.

Dead silence. Quiet as night, as if to say "yeah, he was OK, but in retrospect, Hitler was about 10% more caring".

Finally, that Italian girl with that hugely inappropriate Daffy Duck tattoo raised her hand, "Well, he didn't rape me. And he definitely had the opportunity. I mean, you gotta respect a guy who doesn't rape you". She shrugged.

They all clapped. Shouts of "yeah, no rape!" and "I was never intimidated by him!" were heard in the distance. One girl even shrieked, "He was crying so much after we hooked up, I thought I raped him!". Sorry, Enna, but it was totally worth crying about and yes, fingers should not end up below the male equator. Have you no shame?

Then all my exes convened for a vote - "was Matt kissing you or did you feel like he was a dainty lady - a delicate flower frightened of intimate contact for fear of blowing away, like a fragile piece of dust in the wind?" I can't legally announce the results of the vote, but sufficed to say, they pretty much thought I was a woman. I mean, yeah, my boobs are pretty juicy and supple, but me - dainty? Please! I'm much closer to being delectable. I'm a fucking delicacy, thank you very much - tasty and full of high caloric portions.

After the meeting was over, a few of the lady friends stuck around to talk to each other. They agreed on only three facts:

1) Matt enjoys super lame British stuff from the 80s
2) his tongue is like an electric eel that ran out of battery power and died a horrible, non-engergetic death.
3) there is no number thee because they can't remember enough about him to come up with three facts.

At dusk, the meeting hall was empty and all the women went back to their respective boyfriends. I sat alone, smoking some meat, wondering what would have happened with my life had I stayed with any of the ladies. Then my meat caught fire and a bunch of Mexican day-laborers died in the blaze. I realized that if I was still with any of those women, none of the laborers would have died. Then I became a republican and decided it was better for them laborers to die than for me to have continued dating any of these women. After all, illegal immigration is making our children gay! Where's the birth certificate? I hate health care benefits! Deny the fuck out of me! Reagonomic-gasm all over me!

Tasty!

My Beard Fills That Giant, Unhappy Void

My face was feeling lonely. "Matt", my face said, "I'm lonely". That's how I knew my face was lonely. I never did quite figure out how it was able to talk to me, but that's a different story and potentially a b-plot in a Young Ones spec script that I'll never write.

So, to appease my face, I grew a beard. The only problem is that I technically can't grow a beard. I've run many o' academic tests and the scientific result was "patchy rabbi beard". But regardless, I tried. Then I tried again...and again. This was the best that I could come up with:



So not unlike my sex and professional life, my best was not even close to being enough. I looked like Zachary Qunito after about 15 minutes of not shaving. After that little factoid hit me, I cried just enough so that each hair on my chin was duly watered.

But here I am, sitting beardful, wondering why being beardful is even worth mentioning (or indeed if beardful is even a word). At some point in your life you have to wonder if anything's worth mentioning. There hasn't been a time in the last 15 years that my father hasn't said "oh, you know, the same old" after I asked him how he was doing. The difference? I'm 30 and he's almost 70. I appear to have settled into a rut nice and early and this fucking beard is the most interesting thing to have happened to me since my local Fox affiliate replayed season 6 of The Simpsons. Epic, if you ask me. Who the fuck did shoot Mr. Burns? I know damn well it wasn't that baby.

So here I sit, gently fondling my beard, rubbing it up and down in a shake weight-style fashion, wondering if life isn't slowly passing me by.

But on the plus side, the faster life passes me by, the quicker my beard grows. That's when I no longer look like Zachary Quinto and if that isn't some little semblance of solace, I don't know what is.

Welcome to the 21st Century/Hell

Guy at coffee shop gets out of his seat and screams "YES. OH. MY. GOD! THIS IS FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE!". He clasps his hands on his head and runs his fingers through his hair in amazement, like a mathematician who has figured out how to divide by zero.  Literally no one responds, so he inches in to the dude sitting next to him and says, "I AM ON THE FRONT PAGE OF TWITTER!". 

The dude politely smiles and goes back to drinking his coffee. Our hero then jumps out of his seat and paces around the shop, yelling "OH SHIT, OH SHIT!" for about thirty seconds at a louder than normal voice. He heads  to the counter, and tells the barista "This...is...the...HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE! ONE OF MY TWEETS IS ON THE FRONT PAGE OF TWITTER!". The barista says "That's cool. Are you trending or something?" and he responds, "I'm not trending, but my tweet is one of the top tweets of the hour. Can you believe that?"

I glance at him for a brief second and he looks at me, shakes his head in disbelief and just says "YES", while giving a righteous fist pump usually reserved for oppressed minorities rising up against dictatorships.