Facebook, 1995.

I'm so giddy today, I feel like I've just dug up a chest filled with pieces of nine. Yes, that's right, an entire piece better than eight!

You see, I found some old computer screen grabs from back in 1995, when I participated in a Facebook prototype focus group for a then eleven-year-old Mark Zuckerberg. Although he was a cocky, pre-pubescent upstart, I sensed an "it" factor in the young buck back during those waning days of the grunge era.

Anyway, I'd like to share with you some early Facebook posts, most of which were logged in at least ten years before the social networking world was turned on its pierced ear.

In reviewing these, I couldn't help but realize what a solid young dad I was, given my lack of experience. You know what they say, "There's no parenthood manual." Enjoy.

How about those nuggets, eh? And just so you know, for those of you who are just starting out as parents to sweet little youngins in need of a little gentle discipline, my door is always open.

Burn the Witch...Again.

If you don't mind, I'd like to start your week off with a little self-examination. 

Not the kind you give yourself in the shower, even though I would encourage my fellow middle-aged compadres to perform that task periodically.

No, today I'm requesting that you take a little inventory of your mental stockroom, maybe blow the dust bunnies off some of those old crates of conviction and boxes and bins of beliefs. Here's my question:

Throughout your lifetime, would you say that society's attitudes have slowly evolved, that our collective outlook has inched toward a shimmering beacon of enlightenment?  

Or not? A lot of empirical data can be sited to support the affirmative. 

Despite his sinister upbringing in the Islamo-Marxist madrases of Kenya and Indonesia, Barack Obama, our first African American president, presides over his second term in that roundish office, perusing our children's text messages with impunity and snickering at their profound illiteracy.

Nancy Reagan's best efforts notwithstanding, the war on drugs has shriveled up like her husband's leathery urethra. Finally realizing the futility of stifling supply by drenching forests of coca with flame throwing commandos, we're slowly shining a floodlight on the demand side of the equation. The coach has finally asked the healthcare sector to find its helmet and get into the game; oh, and make sure you high five the prison system when he heads to the sideline. He's been in for quite a while and he looks like he's cramping up.

And finally, after generations of gay people spending their entire lives sitting at a red light without one of those motion detectors, a few of our states have opened the metal box and manually switched it to green. At last, those who can look at each other eye-to-eye while urinating can stand together on the altar.

So, yeah, I definitely see a little progress, but I'd like to discuss an area where I don't see even a sliver of hope. I'll probably piss some of you off, but hey, opinions are like racist uncles, right? Everyone's got one. 

My wife and I recently watched a documentary entitled West of Memphis. It's the story of the three teenage boys who came to be known as the West Memphis Three. In 1993, they were tried, convicted and sentenced to death for the sexual mutilation and murder of three eight-year-old boys. 

Did physical evidence place any of the teenagers at the crime scene? No. Not one particle of trace evidence contained the DNA of the accused.

Did eye witnesses provide incriminating testimony? Um, nope. In fact, several witnesses vouched for the suspects' whereabouts at the time of the killings.

Did the police interrogate any other persons of interest? Once again, no. They arrested three kids who stood out in the sleepy little burg of West Memphis, Arkansas. Damien Echols, the alleged ring leader, was a black-haired "goth" kid, an introspective smart ass with a passion for the occult. Local law enforcement maintained that Echols held the other two boys, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, under his spell and manipulated them into carrying out his satanic blood ritual.

The three spent eighteen years in maximum security prisons before a groundswell of public outrage and the high-profile support of Peter Jackson, Natalie Maines, Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp, precipitated their release in 2011.

Just like Salem in 1878, just like the Japanese American internment in 1942, just like the McCarthy hearings in 1954 and just like the systematic corralling of Muslim Americans in 2001, the usual suspects were rounded up. It was yet another case of Bible Belt justice, and this belt again cinched around the necks of a group who dared to be different. 

Here's where some of my Christian friends may pull the cord on this bus. I blame Christianity. 

I don't blame Christ. Jesus' gang could have easily been dubbed "The West Jerusalem Twelve," judging by their ragtag credentials. He didn't organize angry mobs and he didn't threaten nonbelievers with damnation.  I hold accountable all the pious and hypocritical white Christians who worship a Jesus who looks more like a member of Supertramp than he does a dark-skinned north African Hebrew, because you are perpetuating this endless cycle of mistrust and loathing.

If Jesus doesn't look like us, we don't understand him. If we don't understand him, we fear him. If we fear him, we hate him.

I suppose we'll just have to make sure he looks like us.

From School Bus to Party Bus.

Wow, back to school. 

It's here again, and doesn't take a stoned flock of Byrds to know that the season has turn turn turned, especially when the ads start showing up in the newspaper right next to the "Get a Bang out of your Fourth of July" male enhancement specials.

Pencils, paper, notebooks and Elmer's School Glue have invaded the grocery store end caps like an unwelcome visit from the entire Dugger clan. Lunch boxes aren't really boxes anymore; they're more like bags designed by NASA. No longer can you cruise home from Pay-n-Save with your metal Gilligan's Island lunch pail, complete with a matching Thermos that lasts about half a day until you drop it on the linoleum and infuse your milk with millions of colon-perforating glass shards. Oh well, tomorrow you'll have room for an extra Ding Dong.

I wonder if you can still get three Pee-Chees for a buck. What's a Pee-Chee, you ask? Never mind, young grasshopper, but please, read on.

The back-to-school aura in our house is slightly modified this season, as one of our resident scholars will venture north to commence her collegiate studies. Since her list of essentials has jumped considerably in size, the university kindly mailed us a pamphlet for incoming students. The cover is graced with the smiling mugs of thirteen students—nine white, three Asian and one guy who's possibly one-third Latino. 

Holy crap. Thank God she went to high school with some black people.

Listed inside are a few items most eighteen-year-old wouldn't think to pack along, like wash cloths, spray cleaner and laundry soap. Notice the basic hygiene theme there? The brochure also reminds the students to bring their cellphones, which is like reminding an inmate that he's got a quart-sized balloon full of meth in his rectal cavity. Always within reach, those doggone things are.

Candles and incense are prohibited in the literature, as are toasters and hotplates. Dang, I'm just glad those were okay back in my day. Nothing enticed a co-ed into my dorm room like the fresh aroma of a butterscotch mango candle, paired with freshly toasted Pop Tarts and beef-jerky-infused Top Ramen. 

Even without such props, the sartorial splendor of my wide-leg jeans and tight terry cloth shirt provided all the magnetism a young, feather-haired stallion could need. Okay, I took that line from a 1978 Penthouse Forum, but shoot, no hotplates or incense? Hunger and stench are the two enduring descriptors of dorm life throughout the ages.

We've got about six weeks before our girl takes off for Bellingham, so I've still got time to give her the scuttlebutt on college guys. I'll tell her that, while most of them mean well, their frontal lobes are profoundly underdeveloped and virtually no difference in higher thinking capacity exists between them and adult golden snub nosed monkeys. Both groups are prone to throwing things that originate inside their bodies, so steer clear.

It's true, look it up.

Where's Gloria Gaynor When a Guy Needs a Hug?

Have you ever watched a movie, one that's based on a true story, and before it's even ended, thought, "Egads, I wonder what happened to those characters. What happened to all those actual dudes from the 1980 USA Olympic hockey team who were portrayed in Miracle?"

Thankfully, films about real-life events can't be followed by sequels, since people's lives don't work that way. It's not like that same hockey team could regroup twenty years later and stage a stunning defeat over the Hungarians in water polo.

Most of these movies get us up to date before the credits roll  plastering information across the screen like, "After scoring the winning goal against the Soviets and then defeating Sweden for the gold medal, Mike Eruzione settled in Duluth, Minnesota. He and his wife currently raise emus for pets and/or food. Believing that nothing could ever exceed the bliss he experienced in Lake Placid that winter, Eruzione lifts his hockey stick only once every year to bludgeon his prized emu for the Eruzione family Thanksgiving feast.

"Don't judge until you've savored the wonder of emu giblets."

Wow, how did I arrive there?

Anyway, I'd like to get you caught up on the events of a day I wrote about about six weeks ago. Presuming that you must be aching to know what happened with the same intensity as your concern for the Von Trapps as they scaled the Alps packing along nothing but a couple of acoustic guitars and a foxy new step mom, I'm here to ease your mind.

On June 12, about six weeks ago, three milestones transpired in our household:

My daughter graduated from high school.

Update: Her summer is going quite well, thanks. She's only got  fifty-eight days, eighteen hours and thirteen minutes left to play beach volleyball, admire her abs and guzzle massive goblets of Jamba Juice before starting college. I feel so bad for her, don't you? By the way, she still hates the words "moist" and "ointment," even after becoming an adult.

Our kitchen remodel was completed.

Update: Since then, we've painted a lot and slightly lamented our dark counter tops. Those things show more dirty rings than a Prince Albert piercing kiosk. We've sprinkled the rest of the house with sparkly new accouterments from Pier 1, IKEA, Target and maybe even a smidge of Craigslistishness.

I received an email from a literary agent asking for the full manuscript of my middle grade novel.

Update: I'd heard stories of writers persevering for years before getting an agent to fly into their empty mayo jar of hope, so I was really excited. Last Saturday night as I checked my email shortly before going to bed, this message sat into the old in-basket:

Dear Mr. Haywood:

Thank you for the opportunity to consider your work.

I read the pages you sent with interest. Unfortunately, after careful consideration, I have concluded that Ben's Fall is not a great fit for my list. Fiction, as I’m sure you know, is just about the toughest thing to sell in this very difficult market, and I am signing up projects very selectively in this category as a result. While the premise was intriguing, I'm afraid I didn't fall in love with the novel, so I wouldn't be the appropriate agent to represent it.

Best of luck in your search to find an agent and publisher.

Sincerely,

(Name redacted, but we'll call her "Agent-who-just-burst-my-dreams-like-bubble-wrap"—the kind with the larger bubbles).

Crap. I'd assumed, obviously incorrectly, that once she'd feasted her eyeballs on my masterpiece in its entirety, it was all over but the spell check. After she'd writhed on my roller coaster of joy, humor, angst and grief, I figured she'd say something like, "We're thinking we want to get you on a book tour as soon as possible. You don't get car sick in limos, right? It's funny, because Roald Dahl hurled all over my go-go boots once and after that I rode up with the driver."

Yeah, nope.

Oh, well. We don't write for fame and fortune, do we? Writing should be a passion, an itch that demands scratching on a daily basis, one that doesn't require validation from anyone but us.

I'm going to say that's somewhere around sixty percent true.

Really, it's totally cool. I've faced rejection more often than Kenny Rogers' face has been pulled with a sterile metal instrument. I've been broken up with, picked last at recess—hell, I once had a roommate whose girlfriend loved every rejection letter I received while looking for a job after college. She'd often walk into the living room, glance down at the torn letterhead and say, "Aw, did you get another rejection letter? That's too bad."

Schadenfreude much, you heinous she-wolf?

Here's a shot of me taken back in 1967. It was my sophomore year at Syracuse and my girlfriend happened to have her camera with her right after I was cut from the ultimate Frisbee team.

I held it together pretty well for this photo, but it was indeed a dark day in clammy upstate New York.

I will rise again. Like Nixon. Wait, not like Nixon, like Anthony Weiner. Wait, not like Anthony Weiner. Wait, I know...

I will rise again...like Brittany Spears. Yep, her.

The Real Iron Lady.

After dubbing him in an interview as "the worst president in all of American history," it was the first time she'd been called upon in three years. The ninety-year-old grand dame of Washington journalism had already been ostracized and marginalized, no longer representing a major news bureau and relegated to the back row of the cramped press room. Nodding in her direction, George W. Bush timidly waved his meaty hand, allowing Helen Thomas her first query of the Rhinestone Cowboy since 2003.

Had she learned her lesson? Had she finally been knocked to the canvas enough to understand who she was dealing with? The president had confiscated her voice, and by God she wouldn't be getting it back for long unless this question had something to do with his dog or Laura's newest passion of starting a First Lady Petticoat and Corset Museum next to the Lincoln Bedroom.

She needed to throw him a softball...or else.

"I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, [about] your decision to invade Iraq ... It has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis and every justification for the attack proved false. Why did you really want to go to war?"

Oh, man. Ouch. So much for heeding the old Bush family meat sword of intimidation.

Beginning in 1961, Helen Thomas sat front row center, staring down the slickest, most powerful men on the planet. From JFK to GWB and all nine in between, her five-decade career blazed a path for any female reporter whose boat isn't floated on a sea of sassy first lady hairdos or where LBJ and Ladybird plan on summering this June. Nope, in a world measured by gonad mass, Ms. Thomas cultivated herself one substantial pair.

"I don't believe there are any rude questions," she once said. "If you want to be loved, go into something else."

Let's step back for a second and take a gander at the concrete interstate this woman paved. A pioneer in gaining equal footing with men in covering hard news, Ms. Thomas became the first female officer at the National Press Club and the first woman to serve as White House Bureau Chief for a major wire service in 1974. In 1972, at the President's request, she accompanied Richard Nixon as the sole female reporter on his historic trip to the People's Republic of China.

Credentials aside, the woman was a pistol. And yeah, while among his peers, Bush was the mental equivalent of that really small, brownish grape that falls to the bottom of the plastic bag, the dude was still the president. And heavens to Betsy Ross, the guy usually stood about four feet away from her behind that podium with that eagle and all the arrows and shit. 

I used to fantasize about what I'd say to Bush if given the opportunity, but I'm sure I would have just stammered, drooled and drizzled a fine rivulet of urine down the leg of my new Costco gaberdine slacks.

She was a staunch foe of executive secrecy and intrigue. It's easy for me to pop off here while stretched out on my cyber foam mattress, but if I had to gaze into Bill Clinton's puffy red eyeballs and point out that he could have avoided a lot of embarrassment and handled things internally with a little invention called Spray-n-Wash, I may have balked.

If I had to stare down a young and foxy Jack Kennedy and ask him why he so easily grounded Cuba's missiles, yet couldn't keep his own minute man in its silo, I quite possibly would have dry-heaved and fainted.

And while I may have been highly tempted, I don't think I could have managed to advise Ronald Reagan what a complete wanker he looks like in this get-up. 

It's like he'd just discovered his uncle's old merchant marine foot locker up in the attic.

Okay, maybe I'm making a few of these up, but I have no doubt Helen Thomas could have executed each and every one of them with a smile on her face. To her colleagues, she was the unofficial but undisputed head of the press corps, her status legitimized by her signature line at the end of every White House news conference: “Thank you, Mr. President.”

No, thank you, Helen Thomas.

Meet Me at the Best Western. Bring Wine Coolers.

Am I just too uptight? 

There's a slim chance I just can't fathom this level of tolerance and trust, this selfless and pragmatic attitude which flies in the face of my traditional yet hypocritical self-righteousness.

Or just maybe, I'm a light, misty aquamarine shade of envious. 

You see, Russian pop star Masha Lopatova, married for the past six years to fellow countryman and Utah Jazz forward Andrei Kirilenko, has allowed her husband one night per year with another woman of his choosing.

Wow, as Jan Brady might whine, "Masha, Masha, Masha!"  

In an interview with ESPN The Magazine, Lopatova stated that "it's the same way raising children—if I tell my child, 'No pizza, no pizza, no pizza,' what does he want more than anything? Pizza."

Okay, a couple of things here. First, her husband is a grown man—not some kid begging his mom to take him to Shakey's for a large double pepperoni and some Space Invaders afterwards. Sure, he's a dude and everyone knows that men are frequently weaker than Taylor Swift's voice, but he shouldn't be treated like a child by his own bride.

Secondly, mmm, pizza.

Ms. Lopatova purported to understand the temptations NBA players face while traveling the country seven months per year. She joked in the interview that "girls will be lining up outside his hotel door," and I tend to agree. Look at him:

Any red-blooded female roaming the earth back in the Eighties is probably still warm for his form after seeing what he did to Apollo Creed in Rocky IV:

I've heard rumors that a couple of years back, one lucky lady left his hotel in the morning with a nice memento which recently surfaced on eBay:

Although I've no idea who originally coined this phrase, it nonetheless enters into my consciousness with great regularity: 

Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

You know, that last glass of wine right before bed that leads to a nice little wakey wakey morning headachey, that extra half hour in the sun that transforms your shoulder blade skin from a smooth crimson to a bubbly purple?

Or this ultimate of slippery slopes that Andrei Kirilenko is navigating in his size twenty Air Jordans.

Four Tickets to Paradise.

Wow, it's been a while. Good to see you.

My family and I just got back from Cancun. It's a little hard to say that without sounding all Thurston Howell the Third-ish, like "Lovie and I simply adored summering on the Yucatan Peninsula," but yep, Charlie and his three angels did in fact spend the past eight days in the land where Corona flows from the Caribbean and Pacifico from the... Pacific, I suppose.

Cuervo is also available.


Some people like to post vacation pictures while still vacationing. That's cool—go ahead and show me that photo you just took of your polished toenails against a backdrop of azure tropical splendor:

I'm not going to lie; I'm just too paranoid. How do I know that just one of my two-hundred-ninety-one FB BFFs won't decide to bust into Casa de Nardwood and abscond with my dusty baggie of Berlin Wall chunks and my rare collection of Bobby Sherman B-sides?

Too tempting with eBay and all.

The flight over was exhausting, as you can see:

When you're used to sleeping more hours per day than a roofied cat, arising at 2:00AM for a ride to the airport seems unattainable. But they dug deep.

We met up with my sister, her husband and their daughter at the Cancun airport and the bacchanalia began. After a couple of days spent on the beach emerging from the profound fog of the two-hour time difference, it was time to sample the charms of this Latin American Eden.

Our first major excursion was on the outskirts of Cancun for a twelve-part, two-mile zip lining adventure. The driver swung the van door shut on our seven sticky, white bodies and motored quickly out of town toward the thick jungle above which we'd be zooming on a thin cable. What could possibly go wrong?

We were given stickers on which to write our names. Scratching the ever-present itch to be someone I'm not, I scrawled the name "Jzeert" on my name tag, in honor of all the IKEA furniture I've assembled.  Unfortunately, my wife dubbed it merely another of my attention-seeking ploys and called me "Jeerk" for the remainder of the trip.

No waiver? No problem. Only then did I realize how uptight our country is about safety, all that paperwork just to have a little fun. Just makes the lawyers richer, right?

We climbed a wooden stairway that would have made M.C. Escher gargle his Oreos. Finally above the tree line, one-at-a-time we clipped in and launched into the sultry abyss.

What a freaking rush. It was one of those experiences where you want to freeze time just to allow your senses to absorb everything around you—the sounds, the smells...the sights. On the third leg we were given the option of repelling upside down, accompanied by a guide. Although we don't have photos, this is what it looks like:

Holy shit. Not since I'd been allowed to slide down the pole at the Sumner Fire Station on my third birthday had I felt that kind of visceral jolt to my monkey brain stem.

By the time we'd reached the sixth segment, I noticed water dripping down the stairs behind me. Wait, that's not water, that's me! I looked down and the kid behind me had given himself about a six-stair cushion in order to dodge the onslaught of perspiration from the panting Rush Limbaugh above him.

My t-shirt was soaked like it had just been pulled from a washing machine. I had no choice but to purchase another shirt from the gift shop afterwords. For no additional charge, they offered to print my name on the front, and half and hour later, I peeled on a fresh dry t-shirt with the name "Jzeert" in bold green letters.

We stuck closer to our home base for the rest of the time. While most of us engaged in traditional, healthy activities like boogie boarding:

My sister chose to explore her darker side and capitalize on Mexico's more permissive, laissez-faire attitudes:

We ate. And ate. And then ate some more, with my daughter falling just shy of the twenty-taco milestone. Here we are in a Mexican restaurant eating Mexican food, but down there it's just called being in a restaurant eating food.

I'd like to close this post with an image my daughter photographed from our table at our favorite establishment, a place called "Captain's Cove," and a poignant observation from my favorite philosopher, Jack Handey:

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."

Via con Dios.