Cake Boss

*deep voice*

I have a special set of skills.

Skills I have honed over, like, a year or something.

My skills suck.

Unless we're talking about designing pictures for birthday cakes. Then my skills approach mediocre-status.

I'm not sure how this all started, but with the advent of grocery store bakeries being able to take any picture and put it on a cake, my entire world opened up. Food tasted better. Colors were more vibrant. The air smelled cleaner.

I cling to the stupid things in life.

What these bakeries can do is to take any picture you give them, turn it into some kind of edible photo, and lie it on a cake.

Oh, Christ. I hope it's edible. Maybe I should read the instructions.

Nah. I've already eaten 14 of these pictures and haven't died ye-







I'll continue.

So I've started, instead, to design my own pictures for birthday cakes for the kids.

It all started with my son's birthday a few years ago. We were at the beach and he had an ice cream. I snapped a photo of him making the most ridiculous face with it.

On a side note, immediately after taking the photo, the ice cream fell off his cone and onto the ground and laughter ensued for the next 20 minutes or so.

I took that photo and, since we had both just become black belts, came up with this for his cake:

I cannot love this picture enough.

FYI, when singing 'happy birthday' and you put a cake in front of someone with this picture on it, the reaction is truly magical.

Next up was my daughter's birthday, and she was into Star Trek at the time, so....

I think this came out quite stunning.

Fast-forward one year where Star Trek took a back seat to her liking a goth band named "Black Veil Brides" and this is what I came up with:

Yes. That's black icing.

This is what it's like having an emo teen, by the way.

Then it was my step-daughter's turn and OH I BET YOU CANNOT GUESS WHAT SHE WAS INTO.

I honestly wish she'd let it go.

See what I did there?

I STILL GOT IT.

BUT...the king of all cakes made it's appearance last weekend.

My stepson, turning 10.

What does my stepson enjoy?

Pugs and Narwhals.

Yes.

Pugs. And. Narwhals.

On a side note, my wife had no idea that narwhals were real animals up until about a month ago, just in case you're wondering what kind of education you need to be a dental hygienist.

Love you, babe.

So, with pugs and narwhals in mind, this is what he got on his cake:

His face, on a pug's body, riding a narwhal.

GENIUS.

Also magical is the reaction of his grandmother when she saw the cake and was all, 'the fuck is that?'

I'll tell you what the fuck it is:

MAGICAL.

Want one? I'm available for parties. Price negotiable.

Enabling my Twitter fetish, one book at a time

Well, today is the day that "The Bigger Book of Parenting Tweets" goes on sale!

You can get your copy right here.

I managed to squeeze my way into the book by making some Tweets that were somehow deemed worthy of publicizing to more than my 5 followers on Twitter.

Like this one:

That said, you'll also find a shit-ton of other really funny people making their own Tweets about parenthood and why you'd probably be best to avoid becoming a parent if you're not one already.

Go get it.

Also, I already got paid for my input so I get no future royalties by asking you to buy the book. It's THAT funny.

I may need to restructure my contract for the next one.

The Power of Christ Compels You....to lie to people inappropriately

My son bought a new game for the XBox a few weeks ago called "Fibbage."

In a nutshell, you must come up with fake answers to questions and make the other players believe it's the truth.

Instead of "Fibbage" maybe it should be called "Marriage."

Seriously, honey. I was totally out with the guys last Friday.

The great part of the game is that you play on any internet-connected device. You sit in the same room as the XBox gives you categories. One player is randomly picked to choose the category. Then the XBox narrates the question, and you submit your answer using your own phone, tablet, laptop, etc., etc.

The first part is making up your own player name.

Here's how this goes in my house:

Keep in mind that most of these are names my children picked.

If there is a Hell, we are all certainly going to it.

I didn't take a screenshot of player names like "Anal Secretion" and "Nickelblech."

I regret some of my decisions.

Then you get the question, and the submitted answers from the players (one answer is always the truth). Here's what THAT looks like in my house:

So, that's what it looks like with the answers submitted and the missing word.

"Waxing his butthole" was mine. Yes, we are still playing with my children at this time. Yet another reason why they will need therapy at some point, I'm sure. The correct answer there was 'heroin.'

Here's another example:

The 'your mom' one never fails to kill me. I will laugh for 10 minutes straight.

On a side note, you'd be amazed at how many of these questions where 'your mom...OHHHH!' actually works as an answer.

Here's an example of the the correct answer, 'Cry' being shown - but with our other submissions listed:

My submission was 'saw a woman in half.'

No one picked it. I'm not sure why.

Also not sure why 'Your Mom..OHHHHH' wasn't submitted here, either.

It fits perfectly. Just like Your M-

Never mind.

of trampolines and white trash

We took the kids to an indoor trampoline park the other day.

If you've never heard of these, they are basically ginormous places where you spend $15 per kid to have them jump on trampolines for an hour and exhaust themselves to they can fall asleep around 6 pm.

It is SO WORTH IT.

We arrived at the trampoline place and found it packed. We all took our coats off and the kids took their shoes off and we promptly claimed a table by piling everything up on and under it.

Off the kids went.

The wife and I followed to go watch. She watched the kids while I watched all the moms jumping around with their own.

Boobs are funny when they flippity flop.

There was an area where the kids were able to joust "American Gladiator" style by standing on a beam over a foam pit and try to bash the other kid off using giant foam Q-tips. This was awesome, although I did get reprimanded by the attendant for yelling "NO MERCY" and "HEAD SHOT! GO FOR THE HEAD!" about 200 times.

We're a competitive family.

The wife and I decided to go sit down because at our age standing up for longer than 3 minutes at a time is probably unhealthy.

I'm not a doctor.

As we approached the table, we noticed two women had commandeered it. They were sitting in front of our coats and on the bench over all the shoes. My wife, mind you, had tested and passed for her green belt just the day before and was pretty sore. I was also pretty sore because of the 'no sex before a fight rule' and now I was looking at a good few days of no-nookie because she could barely move. My balls were killing me at this point.

"This is our stuff," my wife said to the women.

"This is ours," she said, pointing at OUR OWN COATS.

"Um...no," my wife continued. "These are our coats."

"Well, ours are over there," the woman said, pointing to coats on the other side of the table on the bench seat. "You can sit there."

"I think I'll sit here," and then my wife sat down.

Let me rephrase this.

My wife sat down PRESSED UP RIGHT NEXT TO THE WOMAN.

It was at this point that the woman seated right next to my wife began using words as "rude," and "bitch" and then - the kicker - "white trash."

My wife looked at me, fresh from her Kenpo test and said, "white trash?"

Uh oh.

The verbal argument that ensued between the two of them escalated when the OTHER woman started pointing at my wife.

"Why would you call me 'white trash,'" my wife asked. "You don't even KNOW ME."

"I know you're rude. I'm calling the cops."

This was getting good. Two women going at it. In my silence, I was trying to hide, like, the biggest boner.

After a minute of the back-and-forth, I could hold my silence no longer.

"White trash?" I said. "Really?"

I said this, looking at the two women, both in black jeans with greasy curly hair. They had really thick Boston accents (I have one, too) which didn't make their case any better.

"What are you?" one of the women said, "A midget?"

"I prefer dwarf."

"Go away, shrimp," the first woman said.

"I won't take insults from someone with Jeri-Curl hair."

"WHAT?" she said...and then...

"That's disriminitative. Jeri curl."

Um.

Huh?

I looked at her and crouched down to her seated level.

"Discriminitative isn't even a word."

My wife, at this point, got up and grabbed everything to move as the first woman pretend-called the police.

"Come on," my wife said.

"I can't. I'm being discriminitative. I have to find out what this means first."

But, my wife was right. We should probably move. I always hate being accused of discriminitative verbostitatiousness.

On the bright side, no one was killed. My wife didn't end up in jail.

And the kids were all asleep by 6 PM.

Like I said, so worth it.

Orthodontia and the Fish Incident

My daughter has braces and, therefore, must go monthly to her orthodontist which my ex-wife and I are keeping happily employed and driving a Mercedes.

In the Ortho office is a fish tank. It's pretty huge and divides the waiting area and the dental area - so you can see through from one side to the other. Like this:

My daughter was called into the office, leaving my son and I puttering around in the waiting room with all the other people going broke because of orthodontia.

That's when we noticed a girl at the fish tank. She was holding a handle to something against the glass, and it became clear to us that it was a tank cleaner. On the opposite side of the glass was a brush. The two pieces were connected via what appeared to be a pretty strong magnet, allowing the brush on the inside of the tank to be moved by the handle on the outside.

I could see my son salivating, waiting to try it.

Eventually, the girl was taken by the orthodontist as payment for her older sister's headgear, and my son immediately went to the fish tank to start playing with the magnet cleaner thingy.

Back and forth. Up and down. Side to side.

It was pretty cool. What was even cooler was that he discovered that if he moved the handle AWAY from the tank, the brush inside would just float to the bottom and stand up in the gravel. As it was weighed down. He could then put the magnet back to the glass and it would - WHOOMP - reconnect.

Then he flipped the handle upside down.

Flipping the handle upside down caused the polarity on the magnets inside and outside to repel. So he soon began playing with shooting the inside brush away from the side of the tank, and quickly flipping it to rejoin them.

That's about the time he flipped the handle near the top of the tank, propelling the internal brush out towards the middle.

He fumbled with the handle as the brush inside the tank floated away and down, it's weight carrying it away and towards the bottom of the tank when..

WHUMP.

It got wedged between two pieces of coral. Right in the middle of the tank. And not just wedged there, like, WEDGED there.

My son pushed the handle to the glass. The brush inside barely wiggled.

He looked at me.

I shook my head.

He tried again.

*wiggle*

Again. Again again AGAIN AGAIN AGAIN.

*wiggle*

At this point he had now started trying to rock the thing out between the coral like a car stuck in a rut. Back and forth back and forth. He moved the handle wildly around the surface of the glass when all of a sudden he stopped.

Everyone: his sister, doctor, two other patients and assistants were standing on the other side of the tank, just...

..watching him.

Frozen, still holding the magnetic handle, I could see his expression of 'oh, shit' as he stared at a sea of blank faces just wondering what in the Hell is this kid doing? Like a ten-minute mime project gone horribly horribly wrong.

Then, he looked at me...

...put the handle down very slowly, tip toed over to me like no one could see him any longer...

..sat down, and grabbed a magazine.

I died. I laughed so hard, I cried.

I don't know how much that ortho appointment cost me, but it was worth every penny.

Yogurtgeist

shika-shika

Huh?

I heard the sound, like a tiny little maraca, but ignored it and continued driving.

shika

shika-shika-shika

WTF.

I was alone in my car, driving to work, and kept hearing the noise. I had no idea what it was and had never heard it before.

Keep in mind that if my car makes ANY kind of noise that's out of the ordinary, I'm like a hound dog trying to figure out what it is and where the Hell it's coming from. Like that time I heard a squeak from the passenger side and immediately pulled over to open/close/pull/shake and slam everything within arm's reach trying to figure out what was making the noise.

Anal: thy name is Rodney.

shika-shika

GODDAMIT WHERE IS THAT COMING FROM?!

My eyes scanned the passenger side of the car for anything that could be making that noise. Nothing. Nothing there. I assumed that my daughter probably put something in the car door pocket just to purposely make me insane because that's what children do.

That's when I pulled into my work parking lot, stopped, and this caught my eye as it rolled out from under the passenger seat:

The Hell?

I picked it up.

Um.

Hm.

A yogurt.

A yogurt with Oreo cookie crumbles had rolled out from under the passenger seat. It was the little Oreo cookie bits that were making the shika-shika sound so I guess that explains everything except WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?!?!

You see, I don't eat yogurt.

My kids don't eat yogurt.

As such, I don't BUY yogurt.

EVER.

There is no logical explanation for how this particular yogurt got into my car and had taken refuge under the front seat before the laws of physics caused it to reveal itself when I stopped. There could only be one logical explanation:

Poltergeist.

A yogurt-loving poltergeist had stashed this under my seat.

Thank God this thing is a lease.

Now if we could only find a network....

My son is like me.

This is not a good thing.

He loves to draw and his sense of humor is way better than mine will ever be.

Put those two together and, well, you get stuff like this.

He came up with an idea for a game show and drew it on his notepad:

"So, um...do you like sports?"

Genius.

I'm Going to Kill my Daughter

I love cookies.

I love my daughter.

My daughter loves cookies.

My daughter loves to torture me.

I know this because I opened my cabinet to get myself some delicious Oreo Cookies the other day.

Mmmmm. Oreos.

I LOVE OREOS.

Sadly, so does my daughter. But the big difference between the two of us is that while I love the entire delicious Oreo Cookie, my daughter likes pretty much just the creme part of it.

Which is why I opened the pack of Oreos to find this:

I'm going to kill her.

My daughter had deftly scraped all the insides out of the Oreos and THEN just put the tops and bottoms back, leaving me with 20 empty Oreo shells. It was Geraldo finding that safe and then opening it up and THERE WAS NOTHING IN IT so thanks for wasting my time, Geraldo.

I was not happy. I texted her:

Yep. She was getting braces in 3 days.

No more Oreos for her or, really, anything deliciously crunchy.

She can still eat the creme, though.

Sonofabitch.

That Flinstone Kid is a Little Shit

Was pouring cereal the other morning when I noticed this.

I'm just saying that I'd kill my kid if he ever pulled this crap.

Cereal. EVERYWHERE.

Even prehistoric boys were little bastards.

In his defense, it's KIND OF like a banana

I was at my girlfriend's house taking a shower.

That, in and of itself, is trickier than you think because when said girlfriend has a 7 and 4 year-old, the shower basically resembles a toy store that has exploded and plastic cups have somehow found the ability to reproduce.

If you think stepping on a Lego in bare feet is bad, try stepping on "Shower Time Dora" with soap in your eyes. NO ES DIVERTIDO.

So I exited the shower, opened the closet, blindly reached in and grabbed a towel.

I dried my face and wrapped it around my waist.

The ends barely reached each other behind me, so I looked down to see this staring back at me:

Yes.

I had somehow managed to grab her 4-year old's Gorilla-hood towel and unwittingly had strategically placed said gorilla hood directly over my junk so now it basically looked like I was being fellated by a primate.

Man, if I had a nickel.

This is why we can't have nice things

Walked out of my shower one night to find that my lovely daughter had taken my childhood ventriloquist doll (don't ask) and sat it on my kitchen counter.

In it's hand, was this note:

It did, what?

Oh.

Awesome.

Me: "WHY?!"

Daughter: "He did poopies."

He did. Delicious, chocolately, childhood-ventriloquist-doll poopies.

Hey. Chocolate is chocolate. Doesn't matter how it got there.

My trip to the Science Museum.

I took my kids to the Boston Museum of Science where things are pretty awesome unless, of course, you took them last year and the Pompeii Exhibit isn't there any more.

Then it's just pretty boring.

So as we were wandering around we ventured into the computer/robotics section..where I noticed this on a giant screen:

 

So I grabbed the available paper on the counter that they gave us to answer the questionnaire and answered as so:

What do you use your computer for?
Porn

How did you do that before you had a computer?
Magazines I found in the woods and a vivid imagination after watching "The Benny Hill Show."

(Try asking your parents)
I'd honestly rather not ask my mom this.

Seriously, science. Don't ask me things you really don't want to know the answers to.

The Rain of the Goose

Have you ever thought how awesome it would be if - during certain moments of our lives - that our brains could take pictures that we could print out and save for later?

Just me?

Figures.

Regardless, the following is one of those times.

I was coaching my son's soccer practice when the most amazing thing happened.

My son's ball ended up being kicked WAY over to the left side of the field. My guess is that it was kicked by one of the kids on Prozac that I have the honor of trying to herd on a bi-weekly basis.

To the right of the soccer field, and unbeknownst to us..

..was a GINORMOUS flock of geese.

Like this:

As my son started running over to get his ball, a noise erupted that I can best describe as rush hour in Los Angeles and everyone's horn is stuck.

As I turned towards the noise, I saw 50 large Canadian geese rise from the grass.

I know they were Canadian because they left poutine everywhere and were complaining about the price of cigarettes.

They immediately formed and began flying away in the direction of the left side of the field...

..where my son was running to get his ball.

THIS? This is where I wish my mind could take a picture.

I watched in horror as the army of geese flew over my son, his back turned and unaware of the armada of flying beasts above him...

..and they began pooping.

"CAM! COVER YOUR HEAD!"

He swears he did not hear me say this and I probably didn't because I was dying laughing, because this is what I was looking at the best I can illustrate it:

It was like Armageddon but instead of brimstone and fire it was goose shit.

EVERYWHERE.

I could hear him screaming under my hysterical laughter as he tried to dodge the aerial bombardment cascading around him as he tried to reach his soccer ball.

And then they were gone.

My son returned, somehow unscathed and laughing himself. After 5 minutes of trying to compose myself, we continued playing.

On another field, of course.

So much goose shit.

This is why children should not have iPhones

Insight to just one of the many texts I get from my beautiful daughter:

Technology can be terrible.

Maybe my kindergarten was a little different

So I was at a wedding recently because people who get married think it's a great idea to 'share their day' and 'make people watch' and 'be bored' and 'OH MY GOD THEY HAVE OPEN BAR SO FORGET I SAID ANYTHING.'

Open bar is always an exception to ANYTHING.

During the ceremony, one of our friends got up and read quoted from the book, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten."

Of course, as she's reading them I'm thinking:

"This is such bullshit."

Sharing?

Play nice?

Be aware of wonder?

ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

So I started thinking about why MY list would be if I wrote about everything I learned in kindergarten:

1) If you beg like a monkey with a thermos cup on your head, people will give you their Cheetos.

2) There is no such thing as self-respect in kindergarten (see #1).

3) Never trust anyone named 'Craig.'

4) Paste tastes like shit.

5) White glue tastes worse than paste.

6) Kindergarten teachers apparently let you eat all their art supplies.

7) Even at the age of 5, you can pretty much tell who is going to end up in prison someday.

8) If a girl hates you then it means she likes you.

9) If a girl likes you then you should pretend to hate her.

10) If a girl likes you but you don't like her and you tell her then she will make up lies about you and write things like 'YOU ARE POOP' on your desk IN PEN.

11) There is no such thing as 'too many pencils' because they all disappear at some point.

12) If you put a tack on the chair of an authority figure, they will NOT be happy.

13) There actually IS such a thing as a free lunch. But it smells terrible, tastes worse and people will judge you if they see you getting one.

14) You can show people your new toys that you think are really cool and impressive but deep down no one gives a shit.

Man.

I wish I could have spoken at the wedding.

Yep. He's my son alright.

Took the kids to play laser tag because it's fun and I am usually high scorer and it's important during their formative years to impress upon them that WINNING IS EVERYTHING.

Except for the 2 times I came in second place. Total anomaly but still okay because I give myself a wide berth.

When you register for the games, you have to come up with a player name. Then they bring you into a room a debrief you (not literally because - hello - CHILDREN) and put your names on the screen.

This is what greeted me as the names were put up on the screen:

OMG he kills me.

Then I went out and kicked everyone's ass.

It's all about winning people. And guyfarting.

But mostly about the winning.

My house is weird

When you have two kids who are crazy practical jokers (stay tuned for "Book 2"), AND they have a father who also likes to pull his own share of pranks, none of what happens in my house should actually surprise me any more.

Take, for instance, when I came out of the shower one evening and found my childhood ventriloquist doll, Mortimer, sitting on my kitchen counter with this in his lap.

At which point, I look around the BACK of my doll sitting on the counter and..

..well..

Nice.

Then I ate the Hershey kisses because ventriloquist poopie or not, chocolate is chocolate.

That shouldn't surprise anyone, either.

My daughter could write lyrics to Def Leppard songs.

Ever since my daughter hit the age of 12, she's been filled with pre-teen angst and attitude and OMG I WISH I'D SAVED THE RECEIPT FOR HER BECAUSE I'M CONSIDERING A REFUND.

Lately she gives me more attitude than laughs, but every so often she comes up with something awesome.

The two of us were in Best Buy and she decided to look at the iPAD Mini which was right next to the iPAD Maxi and iPAD 3/4 Mid-Mini and iPAD Microscopic.

Less is more, Apple. Less is more.

She's been trying to learn to type and opened up "Notes" on the iPad and started typing away. It wasn't til after she was done that I noticed what she wrote:

"Hinga Dinga Dinga Durgan"

Of course I said it out loud. Trust me, if you say it out loud you can't help but sound like the Swedish Chef from the Muppets.

You just tried it, didn't you? Of course you did.

IT IS SO MUCH FUN.

The rest of the day we talked like the Swedish Chef and always - always - inserted 'Hinga Dinga Dinga Durgan' into the sentence and friggin laughed together like we hadn't in a loooooong time.

I guess I'll keep her.

April 1st is like Christmas for my daughter except with less presents and more TP

I had my kids on April 1st which is highly regarded by my daughter because she loves pulling pranks.

It's almost annoying.

So, when she found out that my son and I were skipping karate that night she immediately burst into tears.

Me: "What's wrong?!"

Daughter: "I had so many things planned! I was planning ALL DAY!! This is terrible!!"

So, being the good dad that I am, I took my son out with me for an hour or so, resulting in this Tweet:

Then we came home.

And do I know my daughter, or what?

Because THIS? THIS is what greeted me as I pulled into the driveway:

Awesome.

My daughter used an entire roll of toilet paper on MY HOUSE and then hung my clothes outside.

Then we went inside where I found this little ditty hanging from my bedroom ceiling fan:

That is my childhood ventriloquist doll, Mortimer (DON'T JUDGE ME), whom my daughter has somehow made even creepier.

This also greeted me in my lunch:

She's lucky I like her.

Of course, she also tried putting plastic wrap over the toilet but left 36 wrinkles in it (which led me to show her how to PROPERLY do it so I will only have myself to blame NEXT YEAR when I piss all over it).

So, payback being a bitch, I found a piece of my dog's toy that he had ripped off because that's what he does and deftly placed it in her bag of chips, so this is what she would see at snack time at school when she opened her bag:

Prompting this text from her around 10 am the next morning:


BAM.

Now I sit in the corner of my room in fetal position waiting for her payback of my payback.

She's way better at this than I am.

The Forgotten Folder

Before I start today:

My Book Trailer is currently in a book trailer contest. I would GREATLY appreciate your vote and spreading the word!!

Go here and vote for #5: Things Go Wrong for Me

Thank you!!

ONWARD!
****************************

At our karate dojo, my son and I each have a manilla folder that our sensei uses to keep us updated on events and tests and tournaments and stuff.

So, my son and I were in class one evening in late March, when I looked at him:

Me: "Hey. When's the last time you checked your folder?"

He looks at me, shrugs, then walks over to where the folders are kept, opens his...

..and pulls out THIS:



Son: "It's been a while."