Friday was an interesting day. And I use the word “interesting” with loaded meaning (couldn’t find the right smilie to indicate that, so here we are).

High point: finding out with an hour to spare that I would get to do a phone interview with Joss Whedon. All I really remember was that I was focusing on not sounding like a doofus, my painful discovery that it’s a big, big mistake to pound down a large Sprite to calm your nerves when you’re afraid to leave the phone long enough to pee, and that when he did call and we talked I sounded like a doofus.

With luck it’ll appear online Tuesday and in the paper later in the week. Only really new thing in it that I haven’t seen anywhere else: the Dr. Horrible episodes will appear on drhorrible.com pretty close to 12:01 am on their launch dates. Didn’t get if it was PST, I’m hoping to hear back about that. My favorite quote was when I was asking about his knack for attracting obsessive fans:

“That’s what I am, that’s what I grew up as. The things I love, I love very hard.”

Low point: immediately thereafter, when my car blew a head gasket on the way home and my brother-in-law and I spent four fun-filled hours next to Beville Road trying Bars Head Gasket Fix in the desperate hope that mine had blown in just the right way for this to work and save me many hundreds or thousands of dollars that I don’t, strictly speaking, have.

Results: I have an interview which I have now transcribed and will tomorrow edit, modulate, and possibly remaster until I sound like David Attenborough, am now working on my article. Car is running well if not smoothly, the oil has been changed, and we’ll see how that goes.

All in all, best thing about the weekend? Watching the little videos Teres took of the concert with our camera, where her fangirl shrieks can plainly be heard over the din. She’s been blushing nonstop, I’m working on making one of them my Windows startup noise.

Teresa has decided to become a full-time groupie.

Not just the type who gushes about her band online, pins posters around her room and writes “Mrs. Bon Jovi” on her notebooks, although she does that too (not the Mrs. part, she said she has no interest in leaving our marriage or breaking his; I believe she has in mind more of a sophisticated arrangement, like a time-share). No, she plans to be the one who follows her band, concert to concert, city to city, country to country, becoming friends and confidant to the road crew. The fact that we’re broke has no bearing on this. You can’t deny your calling. She has already begun looking into which countries allow you to sell your children.

Yesterday, on an extended and carefully planned last minute whim, she flew to Boston to see Bon Jovi in concert. She’s even now in the air on her way back, possibly without waiting for the plane. With her are the well-wishes, advice, and (in some cases) open envy of the other ladies on the Bon Jovi forum she frequents. They have kept up on her doings from other forum members at the concert who are calling in song-by-song updates, and from me, as I’ve been hearing from Teresa and posting on her behalf with her account. (I am, apparently, “Mr. Teresa.”)

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This conversation occurred when my wife Teresa and I were in the car listening to Scott, Jay, and Zack discuss their “lists” on MIX105.1 one morning. By “lists” they meant the list of celebrities for whom their usual vows of fidelity would not, temporarily, apply. It’s a cute topic of discussion for very secure couples who giggle together about once-in-a-million coincidence-type fantasies.

“So who’s on your list,” Teresa asked me playfully.

“Don’t have one,” I replied, watching for a safe place to pull over if this got violent.

“C’mon, no holding out. Which celebrity would you want to fool around with if you had the chance?”

“You first.”

“No one, I’m obviously not that kind of girl.”

“Uh huh. If Johnny Depp suffered a freak sky-diving accident and landed in our back yard, you wouldn’t tie him to the bed and swear to the police you’d never heard of him?”

She stared straight ahead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Just warn me so I don’t sit on him by mistake.”

“There’ll be a note on the door.”

“Thanks.”

“C’mon, who do you fantasize about, anyway?”

“Honestly? No one. Or at least, no one specific. Too much work.”

“And in your twisted world, that means…?”

I sighed. “My subconscious is a very logical critter, and is not easily fooled. He knows full well that the only way a celebrity would get with me would be to get hostages released, and even then she’d negotiate.”

“And so?”

“And so in high school if I wanted to fantasize about a girl I had to construct elaborate fantasies involving heroic rescues from orphanage fires, or daring rescues from exploding classrooms, or exciting rescues from national disasters before I could make myself believe that a cute girl would fall into my arms. My fantasies took hours. Some of them required notes. ”

“So your fantasy life relies largely on unreasonable gratitude.”

“Exactly. Also, rappelling. I’m honestly still not sure how I lucked into you, but I’m glad I did.”

“Because of the way you daringly rescued me from a rampaging bull.”

“Ah, I remember now. Wacky fun.”

“Seriously, you wouldn’t be tempted for a quick fling with Christina Ricci if her limo broke down in front of the house?”

“I couldn’t do that to her. She’d never get all the shame off.”

“Stop it, anybody would love to be with you.”

“You’re basing that on your own psychosis and it’s sweet, really, but my subconscious is laughing and laughing.”

She turned to me with as close to a serious expression as she gets. “You need to fantasize about someone, it’ll bring up your self-esteem. Go ahead, start. I’ll watch the road.”

“You’re just afraid you’ll have to let Johnny go if I don’t have anybody.”

“Of course I am. Go ahead, who would you stalk?”

“Really, I’m not interested in jumping on anyone, famous or not. Things would get complicated. But,” I said.

“What? Something uncomplicated? Blindfolds?”

“I could see myself becoming friends with someone famous. Getting calls for career advice, or requests to write a song or fix a screenplay because no one else can do it. I can’t make myself believe that I’d end up in a half-naked paparazzi photo but I can easily see myself sitting next to Alyson Hannigan while we eat pizza and shoot fire extinguishers out of a 22nd story window.”

“Fair enough. So who would you hang with? Chill with? Buddy up on?”

“Please stop that.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m not talking sex so it can be male or female, right?”

“Stick with female, I’m still looking to even-up for Johnny. And maybe James Marsters. And Bon Jovi.”

“OK. Joan Cusack.”

“Ooh, she’s fun. Can I hang around you guys?”

“Get your own girl. Ellen DeGeneres. Carol Kane. Summer Glau. Um, Geena Davis.”

“Really?”

“For ‘The Long Kiss Goodnight,’ if nothing else. Marisa Tormei. Kate Hudson. Catherine Zeta-Jones.”

“The phone commercials got to you, huh?”

“And the Sonny’s B-B-Q girl.”

“Excuse me?”

“On the billboard on I-95, I pass it on the way home every day. Big grin, got one arm stuck out pointing to the exit? Cheers me up every time I see her.”

“Little young for you…”

“Ah, but we’re not talking sex. I’d just take her out for some ribs.”

“Not exactly Maxim girls. You like them quirky, don’t you?”

“Of course,” I said, and I kissed her on top of her head. “And I married their queen. So, does that equal a Depp and a Marsters?”

“Of course not, but I’ll let it slide. So this is your list? No playmates, no supermodels?”

“Nah, silicone makes me break out. Am I good? Do we need a written policy?”

“Nah. If you do anything wrong I’ve still got plenty of rope left over.”

This May my teenage son, Tony, complained about needing money during his summer break at UCF. My wife, Teresa, said, jokingly, “Hey, I’d pay you to take your brother away.” Tony asked, in all seriousness, how much. And the Summer of Unexpected Delight began.

For a bit less than it usually cost us to board, feed, and amuse his 12-year-old brother, James, we offered to pay Tony to act as a one-boy summer camp. Provide a couch, Internet access, take him to the pool and to movies and generally keep him occupied. Arts and crafts were optional. Before either son could think this through we dumped James — along with his computer, his TV, enough gaming consoles to launch a successful invasion of the eastern hemisphere, a handful of clothes, and a toothbrush — at Tony’s Orlando apartment and we drove off, laughing gaily and high-fiving each other.

We knew it couldn’t last. We weren’t entirely sure they wouldn’t beat us home. Tony and James, seven years apart, have a healthy and spirited fratricidal relationship that would have fit right into any of your more common Greek tragedies. We fully anticipated seeing James back within a week, and then only if we changed the locks on the sixth day to slow him up. But hey, even a quiet afternoon would be a nice change of pace.

And then, the impossible happened. The boys didn’t kill each other. Not even once.

We failed to realize just how desperately Tony wanted the extra money, and how much James enjoyed pestering the heck out of him without referees present. Somewhere in there a shaky ceasefire emerged, undoubtedly after many civilian casualties, and aside from a weekend home or two and the inevitable requests for more cash we didn’t see either son for two and a half months.

It was glorious.

You see, in two decades of living together my wife and I have never, ever been alone for more than 24 hours unless surgical sedation was involved. From apartment to apartment to house, our home has always been crammed with family members, roommates, friends just crashing for a few congressional sessions, and kids, not all of whom were ours. Suddenly and without warning it was just … the two of us.

Try and comprehend this, fellow parents: when I came home from work there was, miraculously, the same number of drinks in the refrigerator as there had been when I left. Toys were not underfoot. Books and videos were oddly unstrewn. The TV in the living room stayed off for weeks. There were no mysterious and unaccountable jelly stains on the ceiling fan. No experiments involving the dogs, a bag of rubber bands, and a disposable razor. Representatives from the local emergency centers called periodically to make sure we were all right.

And, best of all, Teres was always waiting for me bright-eyed, cheerful, and hardly wanting to murder anybody at all.

Exciting and life-enriching things awaited our newfound freedom. The remodeling and the yardwork. Teres’ art projects, and the writing I wanted to do. The yoga classes and fitness courses and horseback riding and traveling and oh, all the new things in our bright and uninterrupted future.

Of course we didn’t do any of them. Mostly we snuggled up every night, picnicked on the bed, watched DVDs, and enjoyed the silence. Sometimes we would go out to a restaurant that didn’t serve chicken fingers or hamburgers, and we’d just giggle to ourselves.

This has been, bar none, the best and least productive summer of my life. It was like a honeymoon, only without the bills and sunburn and embarrassing discoveries at Customs.

All good things must come to an end, thanks to unreasonable regulations regarding child abandonment, and so Camp Tony closed its doors and we welcomed James back home last weekend. I found I even missed the little guy until he started eyeing the dogs’ fur.

Now we have school to get ready for, and clothes to buy and shots to get, and we huddle in our bedroom trying to identify where he is by the crashing sounds. But we have our memories of one glorious summer.

And we’re saving for next year. I’ll bet the boys would like Mexico.

After a great deal of consideration and argument, we have decided to redo our living room in classic Addams Family style. The argument was over whether to redecorate at all, of course, since usually we’re too lazy to remodel anything we can’t reach from the couch. Once we made the commitment, actually deciding on the theme took about fifteen seconds.

Teres and I have been “Addams Family” fans since we were both children. Something about the subversive nature of it appealed to us, even then. The Addamses weren’t quite evil, per se, but they were probably related to it by marriage. The whole family was relentlessly cheerful and accepting of just about everyone they encountered, where the reverse was most certainly not true. And while “The Addams Family” may not have been the first sitcom to show a husband and wife in bed together (that was, oddly enough, “The Munsters”) it was the first sitcom to suggest the parents had a sex life. Also, bear traps.

This, we knew, was something we wanted to embrace in ourselves. And in our living room.

Friends, family, and authorities making “checkup” calls can attest that this is not new for us. For over ten years our front door knocker has been a wooden hand. A plastic gargoyle found a home over our entrance back in ‘89. Black and violet holiday lights from Christmases past can still be found winding around our window hangings. When we threw a silk cloth over Teres’ upright piano and covered it with goblets, weaponry, and small chests full of fake gold coins for her “Pirates of the Caribbean” birthday party two years ago we liked it so much we left it that way.

Unfortunately we can’t quite match one aspect of the Addams family’s life: we’re not rich. If our house was to be a museum where people come to see ‘em, we knew it would have to be the smaller, economy model.

This is trickier than it sounds. You can’t just buy some discount Halloween stuff and throw a few rubber bats around. We don’t want to force weirdness into people’s faces, we just want to provide a pleasant living area that encourages comfort, an occasional double-take, and, with luck, an involuntary scream accompanying the temporary loss of bodily control. Is that too much to ask? Subtlety, that was our watchword.

Of course I’m saying that because I don’t know where to buy a stuffed and mounted swordfish head with a foot sticking out of its mouth. Maybe eBay…

Like any young homeowners we’ve been anguishing over the details. A dusting of mold on the walls, or just dust? Is the disembodied arm under the couch too noticeable, or should we move it farther back? Do you need a permit to install a trap door in your foyer? What if it’s more or less non-lethal? How many maces and axes are just right without being ostentatious?

(You’re reading this, waiting for the joke. There isn’t one. We really do think like this. Walk carefully in my home, and brace yourself before opening innocent doors.)

Fortunately I have in my wife a marvel of shopping expertise and sick, twisted ingenuity. For the last few weeks I’ve been getting messages at work: “Found the perfect clock but we’ll need more spiders for it,” and “Do we want people scared as soon as they come in or should we wait until they realize they can’t get out?”

So far we’re going with a comfortable Victorian look with lightly scattered strangeness. She found an understated Edvard Munch “Scream” candleholder at fantasy-gifts.com, and haunted portraits at GoreyDetails.net . HumaneTrophies.net has stuffed animal heads we can modify to our nefarious needs. Various sites offering horror props, medical supplies, and medieval weapons will benefit mightily from our surfing. Teres picked up an ornate gold-leaf Princess phone at Goodwill and we have our eyes on their assortment of cast-iron offerings, which should go along nicely, in a vaguely unsettling way.

Soon we’ll be able to enjoy our new room — Teres in a form-fitting black shroud, me in a smoking jacket, standing on my head — and welcome new visitors, possibly quite briefly.

Especially if they use our new downstairs bathroom.

Friends and neighbors, I come before you today to say the Internet is not just an invaluable tool for researchers, not just a best friend to every lonely single guy in the world, not just a source of entertainment and community and wonderment and video game cheat codes. It’s also the greatest boon for hypochondriacs ever created.

I know this, because I live with one.

Actually my wife Teresa is more of a hypochondriac hobbyist. She doesn’t panic or stalk her doctor around the ninth green with meticulous charts of her bowel movements and the latest Reader’s Digest list of trendy diseases. Instead, whenever she feels ill she looks up all the possible medical conditions she could conceivably be suffering from, no matter how obscure, and picks the absolute worst one imaginable. Only then can she relax, take a couple of Tylenol, and go back to bed, strangely content.

This was fine when she was forced to read through medical books the size of engine blocks to find her favorite infirmities because it kept her occupied and just picking the things up was good cardio. But now, thanks to www.medical-library.org, www.yourdiagnosis.com, www.easydiagnosis.com. www.wrongdiagnosis.com, www.ecureme.com, and many, many more, I get instant messages at work like this:

Teres: I have Hansen’s disease.

Chris: What?

Teres: Paucibacillary Hansen’s disease. Or maybe multibacillary. I’m not sure yet.

Chris: You’re telling me you have leprosy.

Teres: All the signs are there. I even got a second opinion from a different site.

Chris: You have a rash. A small rash. And you got it right after you planted flowers next to that three-leaf plant.

Teres: You know, it’s that kind of discrimination that forces people like me into leper colonies.

Chris: What people like you? Crazy people?

Teres: I’m going back to bed now, I’m exhausted. Don’t nudge me when you get home, something might fall off.

My browser suddenly sprouted bookmarks for Lyme disease, ulcerative colitis, and endometriosis. One whole summer she was convinced she had benign prostate hyperplasia. I tried explaining that she didn’t, medically speaking, have a prostate, but she simply said, “That’s why it’s benign,” and smiled a sad, brave smile.

Last Saturday I threw my back out.

As is required by law, it was while doing something meaningless. I bent to open a bag of dog food and spent the rest of the evening eating Advil, walking like Mr. Burns in a high wind, and staying in the shower until I’d used up all the hot water in the Volusia County area.

Just for the heck of it, purely for fun and to get my mind off the spasms that woke me at 4 a.m., I went online and tried looking up “lower back pain.”

An hour later I was spinning (carefully) from all the possible disorders that might have struck me down. I could have transverse myelitis, Cushing’s syndrome, or a herniated disc. I could have gall stones, kidney stones, or intercostal neuralgia. Pancreatic cancer! Scheuermann’s disease! Post streptococcal glomerulonephritis! Even worse-sounding stuff! Some with pictures!

Here I’d been thinking it was because I was out of shape, had terrible posture, and hadn’t lifted anything heavier than a bagel since 1986, but no! I was host to a veritable plague of potential plights! Suddenly I didn’t feel helpless any more.

I felt afflicted, which is way cooler.

I wasn’t suffering from a lame-sounding problem that happens to old guys in sit-coms. I was a victim of random and possibly malicious diseases I had no control over. And some of them were rare indeed, which made me special. How many other guys suffer from chlamydia, huh? Huh?

Now I take quiet pleasure in discovering new and exciting conditions to adapt as my own. Japanese encephalitis? Had it last week. East African Trypanosomiasis? It’s a struggle, but I get by, I get by. No longer just some guy with a bad back, I am now the guy with the really interesting out-sick excuses and the cough that can cause a public health emergency if even half the stuff I found out is true.

And now I have to go lie down. All this typing wears you out.

“It’s a good thing I was born a female, or I’d have been a drag queen.”
–Dolly Parton

If you ever been in a state of such utter manic boredom that you were curious about what it might be like to spend time with my wife and me, all you have to do is run right out and rent “The Birdcage”. The movie with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as a homosexual nightclub owner and his lover and star attraction. We’re identical.

Not exactly, of course. Robin Williams’ character (Armand Goldman) was a much better dresser than I am, and he was in better shape. But aside from a minor difference in sexual preference, watching his basic style and his deadpan, sarcastic delivery is very much like spending an evening with me. Sad, isn’t it? Their home decor is even close to ours, although we have more nekkid lady artwork and way more laundry laying around. And every time Albert (played by Lane) yelps, I look at Teres. She just smiles and looks puzzled. Who, me?

It’s true. She shrieks, at every caprice of fate, real and imagined. Spilled soup. Yellow traffic lights. A ringing phone. Abrupt oral sex. Flash bulbs. Getting a question right while watching “Win Ben Stein’s Money”. And if you combine all these, it gets worse. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year as the temperatures start to dip and a frosty, holiday tang creeps into the air, my loving family gathers around the dinner table to begin our heart-warming, age-old tradition: planning for the after-Thanksgiving sales.

This is not something done lightly. My wife Teresa is an experienced, battle-hardened shopper, veteran of a thousand garage sales, merciless wielder of coupons and walking encyclopedia of comparison prices. No sales escape her eye, no markdowns evade her grasp. And this, this is her finest hour.

Every Thanksgiving, as we sit around the table and groan in a celebratory manner, Teresa and her brother Rodger spread out the ads and begin making their plans.

“Best Buy’s always a rough one. Anything worth it this year?” she’ll ask.

Rodger will look up from where he’s marking out troop deployments on a map of the Volusia Mall. “DVD player,” he’ll mutter. “We’re taking it, and taking it hard.”

Neither one will have eaten much, despite the fine meal. Too encumbering. On the day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday — the slow and the weak get left behind and an extra slice of turkey could mean you don’t get the last half-price digital camera.

Black Friday is the retailer’s day of reckoning, when they reckon people will sudden wake up from their turkey-induced comas and realize there’s less than a month left until Christmas. It seems to work. Last year we spent over $7 billion dollars on Black Friday. That’s we-the-country, not we-my-family. My family accounted for less than half of that.

Retailers, delighted that they have their own national holiday, have jacked up the excitement by offering incredible deals for just that day, sometimes for just the first few hours of business. Of course this results in shoppers politely helping each other find the best deals in a spirit of wholesome togetherness.

Just kidding! It’s a consumer bloodfest, more exciting, more graphic, and more dangerous than any video game on the market. Which isn’t a bad idea… Coming soon: “Medal of Honor: Wal-Mart.”

Most savvy shoppers, wary from previous years, pick up some basic maneuvers. They learn to get to the stores early, possibly hours before they open, because every store gets maybe 10 units of one insanely priced item and grappling for position starts long before the pimply-faced guy opens the front door. You come in pairs or teams so that you can spread out over the store and snag more bargains at once, often coordinating by cell phone or walkie-talkie. Sneakier shoppers might even buy the desired item a day early so they can refund and re-purchase it the morning of the sale to get the lower price without hassle.

Amateurs.

Teresa and Rodger chuckle at such feeble antics as they move through the store like figure skaters on a SEAL team. They work in effortless tandem, although both have their own individual styles.

Rodger favors distractions, such as yelling “Hey! $20 iPods in the children’s clothing section! Wow!” and then avoiding the stampede by doing a shoulder-roll into the electronics department where he can shop at leisure.

Teresa, the retail Mata Hari, prefers the covert approach, cultivating moles inside the stores to hide choice items in obscure places for her to casually pick up while the ignorant crowds skirmish around the floor stacks. For tricky purchases she has a variety of colored vests so she can browse the warehouse stock without arousing suspicion. Waiting in line is for beginners.

Lately there’s been an upswing in online Black Friday sales, which somehow takes all the fun out of it. How can you say you’ve truly acquired something if you didn’t have to defeat a rampaging mob to get it?

Online shopping is not for us, not this day. Already the cars have been gassed, the phones have been charged, the water bottles have been readied, and the credit card holsters have been oiled. Brace yourselves, shoppers. My wife is coming for you.

She loves the sound of Muzak in the morning. It sounds like… victory.

Don’t come by our house when sunlight is spreading its golden glory. Don’t look for us in the park, at the mall, or swimming at the Y. Don’t even think about calling before midnight. Our family has become nocturnal.

Up until now it’s been just our teenager that takes back the night. Every year after school let out he would start sleeping later and later until finally he was getting up just in time for dinner. From May to August he became a virtual recluse, a shadowy, shirtless figure glanced out of the corner of the eye during late night bathroom runs, a suburban myth who lives on canned ravioli and navigates via sonar and reflected television light.

By the second month his skin would be nearly translucent. The jeans he’d been wearing since graduation gradually hardened into a tough, protective shell. Over time the deposits of blankets and fast food wrappers in his bedroom would become a teenager-shaped cocoon from which he could strain nutrients while he stared at his computer monitor. He no longer needed to blink. Legends said he could only be killed by the rays of the sun.

During the rare times when our paths crossed he told us he prefered the night. It was quieter. Cooler. He didn’t have to fight for access to the bathroom or TV or refrigerator. He could read or play video games for hours without interruption. His only problem was the abrupt shock of flipping his circadian rhythms back the day before the new semester, and that’s how it’s been for several years now.

Except this year he’s not alone. Our younger son has begun to emulate him and his dawn-to-dusk lifestyle. At first he was doing it just to bug his brother but then he discovered that Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim cartoons were the animated equivalent of independent film, only with more jokes about flatulence. Soon he too was snoring the day away.

As concerned parents we were, frankly, concerned, at least at first. But the truth is that things got a lot simpler once the kids joined the ranks of the undead. The house stayed quiet during the day. Our laundry dwindled to one load a week, including towels. My wife and I actually got to look at each other during meals. Once, we even had a conversation!

For once, summer vacation was a break for us as well. It was like sending the kids away to camp, only without paying for anything. Housekeeping was now a matter of flinging some slipcovers over their unconscious bodies and adding some throw pillows for style. A taste of early retirement.

Then, almost against her will, my wife started sleeping later and later. As a stay-at-home mom her schedule is largely defined by which kid she has to drive to what activity at what time anyway, and when they became denizens of the night she found herself helplessly following along. This behavior received a material boost from the Florida summer which insists on rollercoaster atmospheric pressures and daily thunderstorms that just scream naptime.

As the only one in the household with regular hours I became the family’s ambassador to the waking world, running the daylight errands and dealing with the living. I wandered amongst their sleeping bodies, feeling like the maid in a funeral home, wondering if I should be turning them or something.

Instead, I started joining them on weekends.

It’s wonderful. Our living room looks better out of direct sunlight anyway and there are never any phone calls to deal with. The VCR timer can handle any TV scheduling problems and DVDs, like cereal and pizza, can be enjoyed any time. I can walk to the car and back without breaking into a sweat. Walks around the neighborhood are bathed in silvery moonlight. And I can see my family again.

So far the only problem this has caused has been for the teenager, who’s had to start getting up at 6 in the morning to get some time alone. Poor kid. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.