A Narrative of the Recent History of My Thoughts Told Through Hyopthetical Internet Search Terms

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Be The Noodle

One night last week I found myself alone in a crowded, trendy "gastropub" near my office scoping out a seat at the bar within view of a big-ass television on which to watch Game 6 whilst imbibing a red ale from a microbrew that you've probably never heard of and scarfing down bold reinventions of classic American comfort food resulting in a bill big enough to feed a family of 12 at a place that served classic American comfort food, minus the bold reinvention, which I think means cilantro. Or sea salt.

That's not what happens most nights. Most nights I go home to my family and boldy reinvent whatever I do or don't feel like boldly reinventing on my own damn time. And that's the way I've come to like it, by Jimminy!! But I had an evening to kill before a softball game, so there I was. I found a seat, eventually, and watched the game and ate the sea salted delicacies and drank the Very Earnest Beer. I was sitting right next to a couple of Japanese dudes wearing waiter uniforms from what I presumed to be a Japanese dining establishment having a conversation in Japanese and drinking Bud Light and eating turkey burgers, I shit you not. About halfway through the game the first guy got up to go smoke a cigarette (as I gathered after the fact by the the smell on his clothes when he came back) and the other dude very drunkenly decided to engage me in conversation. The conversation consisted of him holding his iPhone up to my face and showing me pictures of food while loudly saying, respectively:"Japanese Noodle! Japanese Noodle!", "Japanese Steak! Japanese Steak!", and finally "Japanese Cake! Japanese Cake!"

It went on from there. A few beers in I was playing international fucking pictionary with the guy and his friend trying to tell him, Hey, I stayed in Roppongi once for three days! In good time we parted in good company, left with no fucking idea what the other party said throughout most of the conversation. Later, I thought, wait....did that guy show me all those pictures of food because I'm so fat? Because I kind of think he did. I'm Godzilla to that dude. He was taking the piss, as the British say.

But everybody plays the fool, like the man says, so fuck it. Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn't. You can choose to stay home all the time or to not stay home all the time. You can choose to just connect, like the other man says, or you can just turn it off.

Later that night I ejected myself from the softball game in the 9th inning for telling a guy to go fuck himself after coming dangerously close to a fistfight for the third time in the last few months and then got mad at my wife for not showering me with sympathy when I got home and before I fell asleep I thought: Japanese Noodle, motherfucker! Accept the noodle. Or at least the picture of the noodle. Slurp it up. No...Be the noodle. Be the fucking noodle.

So I'm going with it. I'm a Tom Noodle! I'm a Tom Noodle!

Stay tuned to see how that works out. As if you don't already know.

Mi Padre

I figured out that my dad was different somewhere around the same time I figured out that most people are kind of just assholes, really, somewhere around the time when "different" started to mean "better." And so I was never really embarrassed, not really, not where it mattered. In case you don't know my dad lost his voice to cancer of the larynx when I was 2 years old. Thereafter he had a hole in the middle of his throat through which he breathed, and he spoke with an artificial voicebox that he held up to his neck, and he sounded like a robot, and that was just how my dad sounded and it never seemed weird to me, not for years, because that was just my dad and so the fuck what? And by the time I understood what the fuck what, I was smart enough to know that what the fuck what didn't mean fuck-all for fuck's sake, so go fuck yourself, motherfucker.

I think actually that my dad taught me was how to be happy and smart and sensitive and special in a place like Vista, which means really in a place like Anywhere, which means really how to be different, how to be happy, how to be who I am. How to love the things I love and do the things I want to do and then just kind of filter out all the rest of the bullshit one piece of bullshit at a time.

And no matter how tight I hold my kids today, no matter how warm and safe and loved I feel today, no matter how much I enjoy Father's Day as a "father", I still am also and ever and always a son, and of course it breaks my fucking heart. It breaks my heart not to have my dad here, in my patio, eating steak and bratwurst and watermelon and pistachios and strawberry shortcake. No to have my dad here by my side watching Game 3 of the the NBA Finals, with my puppy in his lap fast asleep. It breaks my fucking heart and I miss him so fucking much.

Goodnight Dad. I love you.

This Man's Art and That Man's Scope

I stood inside a boat this evening that was docked to the shore and mildly rocking with the tide, and within a minute I broke out in a sweat and then didn't want to go down the stairs and then had to come back up the stairs and look out at the horizon and then suddenly had to get off the boat, right away, with the dog in my arms and everything. And as I stood on the dock, in my socks, as my wife and children waved from the deck, I thought--yep, I'm the guy on the dock, in his socks. I will always be that guy.

And in the past at points I may have felt sorry for myself for being the guy on the dock, or romaticized myself for being the guy on the dock, or been angry at myself for being the guy on the dock, or vowed then and there that I would get my shit together and figure out how to stop being the guy on the dock by the time I turned thirtywhatever. But tonight I just thought--that's cool, I'm the guy on the dock. Look at all this cool shit I can see from the dock! I think maybe I'm actually kind of done trying to be what I am not, and I understand that I am most happy when I am being who I am, or at least engaged in an activity that I think will help me understand who it truly is that I in fact am. Or maybe I'm just tired of wanting to be someone else.

We are, all of us, weak and fragile creatures, subject to the winds of circumstance and the fluctuations of time. I've chosen my constants, the things from which I will not waver. Everything else is just a change in the weather. My heart is my reason. My body is only an umbrella.