I should also mention it’s not a full-length movie. It’s a short film. But it’s awesome. It’s like the Spud Webb of films. If it got into a slam-dunk contest with The Hangover, it would do a double-reverse, 360 tomahawk jam then do the throat-slitting motion at The Hangover because The Hangover is just the same joke over and over again for 2 hours plus a guy with a beard who says weird stuff.

But enough about The Hangover. My friend’s movie is called If Walls Could Talk. After watching this film and knowing how it ends, it’s probably best the walls can’t talk, because they would give away the ending, and I’m pretty sure my friend wouldn’t want that. It would ruin the movie. The ending is good.

I guess I should tell you my friend’s name. It’s Steven Hoffner. He writes and stars in it. He may direct it too. I’m not sure. The video is password protected and I can’t remember what it is so I can’t check. He’s Canadian, so the password might be something weird like toonie or a regular English word with a “u” dropped in a weird spot, like mouvie. Nope, not that. Oh well. Let’s just say he’s the key grip.

There’s also a lady in the movie. Both are Canadian, as you can tell by the scene where they talk about going ootside in aboot five minutes to find oot aboot the horn tootings. No I’m just kidding. There’s no horn. But they do have Canadian accents, so it’s a foreign film. You should watch it when it goes public so you can sound cool when you tell your friends you saw this excellent short film that was made in another country.

Well, that’s all I have to say about this movie. It’s actually really well done with a solid twisty ending. He’s going to blurb me on his site based on this post. I hope he uses the graph where I call him the key grip. I thought that was funny.

Seriously, The Hangover sucks.

My programming does have an empathy chip that that sends signals to my brain that allow me to understand why another human being would get sad about that ending. After all, it is a human being dying up on the big screen. I can see where the person sitting next to me in the theater is coming from.

However, my chip lacks the ability to make me emotionally invested as to whether a dolphin lives or dies in a movie. It definitely won’t prevent me from laughing at you if you get weepy. So I’m sure when the makers of  Dolphin Tale, a PG-rated movie about a dolphin named Winter who must overcome the loss of her tail, created the TV ads for the movie, they weren’t trying to appeal to me. Well, if they were trying to appeal to the side of me that becomes filled with questions that lack answers, they hit the nail on the head.

I’m pretty sure there’s three ads being run in heavy rotation. I’ve seen them all. The first point I’d like to address is the fact one of the trailers reveals the star of the movie, the dolphin named Winter, is played by the dolphin named Winter. That’s right. Winter is playing herself in her first-ever motion picture. I’m really not sure how accurate the representation will be. Will Winter be playing herself, or will it be like Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm? Seeing as how this movie is based on a true story, I hope Winter stays true and doesn’t just become a caricature and start picking fights with people who have Parkinson’s.

But the bigger problem with the commercial revealing Winter is the star of this movie is this — the movie is all about how this dolphin has basically zero chance of living without a tail. According to the trailer, the dolphin as a “one in a million” chance at living. But if Winter is *IN* the movie playing herself, clearly she lived. It sort of sucks the drama out of a movie based entirely on a story that centers on whether the dolphin will survive. Imagine going to see a movie about whether a guy survives cancer, and it stars the guy who survived cancer. I’m guessing he came through OK.

Imagine how hilarious it would be if Winter died at the end. I’d plunk down 12 bucks right now. A theater full of kids all giggly about this dolphin, and in the final scene, the little boy runs out to the aquarium to find the dolphin hung herself because it was all too hard. They drain the pool and find the dolphin wrote, “Winter Was Here” on the glass, leading to Morgan Freeman doing his Shawshank speech. “The dolphin’s been in here fifty years, Heywood. Fifty years! This is all she knows. In here, she’s an important mammal. She’s an educated mammal. Outside, she’s nothin’! Just a used up dolphin without a tail! … They send you here for life, and that’s exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyway, which is the tail.”

Moving forward, let’s focus next on the odds of the dolphin’s survival — one in a million. Who is the person in Las Vegas setting the odds on the ability of a dolphin to regain its capacity to swim after it loses its tail? I know you can bet on virtually anything these days, but this seems pretty sick. What sort of empirical evidence are these odds based on? I’m guessing there must be a couple dolphins that have lost tails, but not a lot. Hey, was that the plot of 500 Days of Summer? Summer loses her tail, Joseph Gordon-Levitt mourns for 500 days because Summer dies from a lack of tail, then he meets Autumn on that job interview, she dies in the waiting area from a lack of tail, then he meets Morgan Freeman who says GET BUSY SWIMMIN’ OR GET BUSY DYIN’!

Sorry, I got lost there for a minute. I guess I’m saying I’m not on board with cutting the tails off of 999,999 dolphins in attempt to fix them and set accurate odds. However, I’d like to parlay the next dolphin who shows up sans tail regaining the ability to swim with the next bird who loses its wings regaining the ability to fly. Ten bucks to win a billion.

In the latest ad, I don’t know what’s happening. The little kid who finds the dolphin is talking with a dude in a wheelchair about life. The kid also looks up Morgan Freeman on the Internet and finds him and convinces him to help the dolphin. Does this kid have parents? I bet in the movie he does and they say things like SOMETIMES DOLPHINS DIE GO DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Then the kid sneaks out the window and boards a bus to wherever Morgan Freeman is and talks him into saving the dolphin’s life. All movies need villains and I bet they are the kid’s parents.

First off, ever meet a kid? Kids are idiots. The commercials will have me believe this kid rescued a dolphin, is instrumental in it learning how to swim again, and figured out a way to track down Morgan Freeman by Googling “Dolphins who need bionic tails” and found him, and he happens to live close by. It’s based on a true story so I guess it happened, but it all seems a bit far-fetched. Getting past all that, when Morgan Freeman shows up at the Aquarium For Disfigured Animals, the kid apologizes to Harry Connick Jr. because HOLY COW THIS MOVIE STARS HARRY CONNICK JR. the kid was afraid Harry Connick Jr. would be mad about SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS HARRY CONNICK JR. bringing in Morgan Freeman to help.

This raises a question or two about Harry Connick Jr. for me. Let’s say you’re him, and you work at the Aquarium For Disfigured Animals. That says, unlike me, you are extremely compassionate and are willing to do anything you can do help sick animals. Why would this kid think HC2 wouldn’t be down with bringing in a wise old man who specializes in prosthetic animal parts to help Winter? Would needing help hurt HC2′s standing in the disfigured marine animals community? Is part of the story that HC2 is up for a cover story on Mutilated Dolphin Monthly and letting this guy help take away some of his spotlight?

Or there’s option 2, that HC2 is racist. This is a PG movie so I doubt they’ll be delving into that topic, so I lean toward the Mutilated Dolphin Monthly option.

Of course, this movie is going to end on a high note, with Winter living and launching an acting career. Knowing the ending clearly didn’t hurt Apollo 13, so I doubt people will stay away because of that. But I think they need to ramp up the sentimentality for the ending. I want Winter to live, get drafted by the Baltimore Ravens to play to left tackle, have a catch with a young version of her dead dad in an Iowa cornfield, then blow up an asteroid to save the world.

Or have Winter die and let Morgan Freeman end the movie with, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. Except Winter the Dolphin. She was good and she died.”

Roll credits.

As diverse as my musical taste may be, pop and dance was never my thing. It still isn’t. Yet for some reason, one that will be debated by scientists until the world is eventually completely under water, I can’t get enough of Katy Perry’s “Firework.” It’s a sickness. The first step toward a cure is admitting you have a problem, but I’ve yet to find a 12-step program for Firework.

After about 50 listens of Firework, I’m convinced it is the worst written song since Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic.”

Firework just makes no sense. It’s as if it is written by someone who just learned English a year ago in night school. If you read the lyrics, it’s as if the song was written in Italian, dropped into Google Translator, then placed in front of Katy Perry to sing. It’s atrocious. It’s an atrocious atrocity of atrociousness.

To help me deal with this, I have decided to analyze the lyrics in the hopes of better understanding them. Chances are, this is not going to work.

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?

Never in the history of mankind — or I guess since we first started manufacturing plastic as a human race — has anyone ever said to themselves or to another, “I feel like a plastic bag that’s drifting through the wind and I just want to start again.” Never. Never ever. It’s perhaps the dumbest opening to a song ever. There’s no way anyone can read those words and not have a brain embolism.

I’ve watched American Beauty about a dozen times. That’s about all I have when it comes to a plastic bag. So let’s say a friend approached me and said, “Dave, I feel like a plastic bag.” Immediately, I would say, “Are you telling me you’re the most beautiful thing in the world?” Because as far as referencing feeling like a plastic bag goes, that’s about all there is. I can’t imagine how bad you have to be at selecting words to come up with feeling like a plastic bag. Talking to Katy Perry must be like talking to … I don’t know. An idiot? There can’t be much going on up there.

And let’s say you feel like a plastic bag. You’re thin, small, floating through the air. You’re lost, having been set adrift and at the mercy of the wind. What the hell kind of plastic bag wants to “start again?” And how exactly does a plastic bag “start again” anyway? Plastic isn’t a living thing. It can’t go back to an earlier time when it was just a piece of plastic. Do plastic bags secretly yearn to return to the supermarket and reattach themselves to the other plastic bags? Or when plastic bags get caught in the wind, is there an initial plan Katy Perry knows about when it comes to plastic bags? Are plastic bags like skydivers only they have no control over their parachute-like travels? Jesus H this is a terrible song lyric.

Do you ever feel so paper thin, like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?

I’m sensing a lot of extra words here, but that’s only because there are a lot extra words here. You see, all cards are thin. However, they are not paper thin. Cards are thicker than paper. Go grab a piece of paper and a 5 of diamonds. Notice the difference in thickness. I’ll wait. Go for it.

See? Definite difference in thickness. Now, let’s say I’m just being picky. That’s fair. I am. Still, my original point about excess words here is valid. Did Katy Perry want to differentiate from really thick playing cards? Let’s say the lyric was, “Do you ever feel like a house of cards, one blow from caving in?” You get the point, right? We all do. No one would hear that and say, “Uh, what about the cards on the awesome 1980s game show Card Sharks? Those cards were huge, Katy. God, you’re so unclear.”

Just like with the first lyric, no one has ever said they feel like a house of cards. That’s like I saying I feel like a shoelace or a sprinkler. It carries no meaning to any human being who hears it.

Do you ever feel already buried deep? Six-feet under screams but no one seems to hear a thing?

We’re finally getting to some decent imagery. Sure, everyone has felt buried. By responsibility, expectations, the burden of keeping up with Lady Gaga in shock value weirdness in an effort to cover up your lack of talent. My point is with the word “seems” here. It’s as if Katy Perry doesn’t understand how sound travels. Or how the word “seems” should be used.

The use of “seems” in this instance indicates that she believes that if you scream, someone should hear you. However, anyone who is six-feet underground can scream all they want. Their voice won’t penetrate the coffin and all that earth. It’s like saying, “My husband has been dead for 11 years, but no one seems to think he’s alive.”

Then again, Katy Perry never does specify under what exactly this person is buried. Maybe it’s marshmallows or kittens. Unless you’re diabetic or have cat allergies, that’s a pretty fun burial. Or maybe Katy Perry meant six feet worth of those balls at Chuck E. Cheese. If you scream under those, people should hear you. It’s how parents find their kids.

By the way, I will be referring to Katy Perry as Katy Perry throughout this piece.

After this opening, we’re igniting the night, owning the sky, fourth of July, baby we’re fireworks. This is the part where I start dancing. The lyrics don’t matter at this point.

But later on they do. This portion of the song is when we meet Katy Perry, expert meteorologist.

If you only knew what the future holds, after a hurricane comes a rainbow.

Katy Perry is from California, so her experience with hurricanes and their destruction is, at best, minimal. However, her meteorology degree does allow her to speak on topics like weather patterns, so I think we should hear her out. Being a weather lady requires you to know about what happens after hurricanes and predict the future, so couple that with her singing, this lyric is right in Katy Perry’s wheelhouse.

It is true that a rainbow can appear after a rainstorm, and what is hurricane but a really big rainstorm. However, there’s no guarantee that you’ll see a rainbow after a hurricane. However, you are guaranteed to see millions of dollars in destruction and flooding that can lead to loss of life and destroyed property. Very rarely do you ever see a family of four living in a shelter talking to a news person and the mom says, “Our house was washed away, our dog Snickers drowned and we’re not sure if we’ll ever get back our family photo albums that are filled with memories. But holy crap, did you see that rainbow as our dog’s body was swept away!?! It was awesome! Baby, we’re fireworks!”

Oh well. I guess Katy Perry wanted to keep it light. But she talks about weather some more not long after the hurricane/rainbow stuff.

Like a lightning bolt, your heart will glow, and when it’s time, you’ll know.

Katy Perry is a mystery writer, in that most of what she writes is a mystery to me. Is she singing about ET when he’s hanging out with Elliot? Because that right there was the creepiest friendship of the 1980s, and I don’t like thinking about it. We have no idea how old ET was and what his intentions were with Elliot. Maybe ET was treating Earth the way 40-year-old men treat visits to Thailand. I wish Spielberg would discuss that on the DVD.

As for the lightning bolt, does it actually glow? Does light glow, or does light make things glow? For instance, when you see a glow stick, it’s the stick that’s glowing, right? No one ever refers to the stuff inside the stick. The sky can light up. A person can have a glow. I’ve never once heard anyone talk about the glow of a lightning bolt.

Then again, maybe Katy Perry is getting Inception/snow level on us here and is simply painting a picture of what happens when someone takes a defibrillator to your heart. There’s a lightning bolt, your heart glows, and if it’s time to die, you’ll know. Wow, Katy Perry. That’s beautiful. I hope my heart gives out when I’m 77 and jazzercising to this song.

That ends the portion of the song where Katy Perry is waving around her college degree and starts speaking to us on our level. This part of the song is by far my favorite, and really shows you the many great things Katy Perry can do when it comes to song writing.

Boom, boom, boom
Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon
It’s always been inside of you, you, you
And now it’s time to let it through-ough-ough

Inside of me? Me? Me? Bra-vo, Katy Perry. You just rhymed boom with moon, and you did it three times. And, you remarked on the brightness of the moon. Even brighter than the moon, she says. We’re really setting the bar quite low when it comes to brightness, aren’t we? That’s like saying, “Even taller than Tyrion Lannister, -ster, -ster.” To be fair though, when it comes to boom, boom, booming and glowing, you want to start small and work your way up to the sun.

My follow-up question to Katy Perry is this — what exactly has always been inside of me? Boom, boom, boom has always been inside of me? The moon? Minimal glowing? Fireworks? I don’t have any of those things inside of me. But let’s say I did have the moon inside of me, where am I letting it through? It sounds like it would be a painful process. I think I’d like to let my body break down the moon and digest properly before letting it through, -ough, -ough.

That’s all I have. I guess I’ll still listen to the song because I’m an idiot. Oh! There’s also another part of the song where she talks about opening doors to roads. I don’t drive much, so perhaps there have been changes in traffic patterns where we now drive cars through doors. I wouldn’t want to spend 500 words questioning that imagery only to find out toll booths have doors now. The last thing I want to do is look like an idiot.

On a sheet of paper, a list of about 300 players was divided into 20 categories with 15 players each. Players were listed by position (even punters), and it was up to me to rank the players from 1-15. After that, I had to rank the categories from 1-20. The people who ran this league would put that information into a computer that would spit out your roster, and that would be your team for the week. Looking back now, it was the corniest thing I’ve ever done. There was no prize money, there were no friends in the league, and you couldn’t “draft” players.

Yet I’ve been hooked ever since.

Arian Foster hates me for it.

Detractors like to point out that the NFL doesn’t have fans, that it has people who watch games strictly because of fantasy football and gambling. Take those away, and no one is watching the NFL. Purists look down on people like me who can’t recall a time when fantasy football wasn’t part of the NFL experience. People like me look down on purists because they don’t know the thrill of getting a 5-yard catch from your tight end during the waning seconds of a Monday night game to win by six-tenths of a point.

While I can’t process what it’s like to watch football without fantasy football somewhere in the background, I don’t look down upon people who don’t participate in leagues. It’s their right. I understand the need to keep something pure. But some people hate fantasy football, like Arian Foster, for instance. I don’t understand why we can’t live in a world where we accept the existence of fantasy football and agree that there are many different reasons to love football.

If I took a beautiful woman and let her spend time with two heterosexual men for a year, it’s possible the two of them would find different reasons for enjoying her company. Maybe the first man is fixated on her beauty and loves staring into her light brown eyes from 1 p.m. on Sunday until about midnight on Monday, with a slight break from 11 p.m. Sunday till 8:30 p.m. Monday. Staring for any longer would be impolite. Maybe the second man would really grow to appreciate who the beautiful woman is as a person. He likes talking to her, spending time with her and can’t get enough of her intelligence and sense of humor.

At the end of the day, if both men agree they really like the beautiful woman and the reasons don’t matter, then who cares?

In Arian Foster’s case, it’s his right as the beautiful woman to express what he wants. If he wants to be liked for who he is, not because he looks like Tyson Beckford with the charm of Robert Redford oozing out his ears, that’s OK with me too. Deep down, no one wants to be liked for superficial reasons or feel like they’re being used. We all want people to like the real us. Foster wants to believe fans like him for him, not because he led your fantasy team to a championship or because you won a three-team parlay behind a big performance.

If you’re out there mocking Foster because millions of schmucks like me help pay his salary with my three fantasy leagues and he’s ripping those people, again, go back to the beautiful woman metaphor. A beautiful woman can say absolutely anything she wants. She can call you an idiot all day and night, and you’re still going to cut off your hand to get her in your possession for 17 weeks.

However, I’d like my lady, real life or metaphor, to not have her hamstring pop every time she exerts herself. But that’s just me.

But Thursday morning, a man will do just that. He will slice open my left arm, cut my triceps, peel it back, scrape away scar tissue that’s been sitting in there for two years and making my life moderately miserable, file down my bone, drill a hole in the bone to promote bleeding and good scar tissue, whatever the hell that is, re-attach my triceps with the aid of a screw, then make me spend a month in a sling and 6-8 weeks rehabbing the elbow area.

My doctor calls all this, “a simple procedure.” I call him an, “a-hole.”

But he swears it’s not a big deal, that people have this done a lot and I’ll be as good as new.

That hasn’t stopped me from thinking about it for the past three weeks. I’ve done all kinds of Googling on surgery, and I found out that the first modern surgery was performed in England by Sir Gery Blankenship in 1349. He was a nobleman and a doctor and some religious figure who was really sick had him operate on his heart. It’s amazing the stuff you can find when you do some research and just kidding on Sir Gery that’s not true.

I’ve pretty much envisioned every single way this surgery can go wrong, and in an effort to reverse jinx it, I will list all the scenarios here:

1. I die. That would suck so hard. But any time you get put under, there’s a chance you won’t wake up. People die from anesthesia complications all the time. It happened to Ricky Gervais once in that movie with the guy from Talk Soup. But then he was revived by Kristen Wiig, which might be worse than death. The point is I could die, and I’m not in favor of this. Also, please don’t have Kristen Wiig standing over me when I wake up. Thanks.

2. I lose the arm. This is where my free time to think hurts me. Who goes in for surgery like this and thinks they’ll wake up without an arm? But what if they dig in there, find a tumor and have to amputate? I’m asleep. I can’t say no to that. Personally, I’d rather go all Sam Elliot in Tombstone and let my dead arm hang in a sling forever. They should have that as a form you fill out before you go under the knife.

IN CASE OF ARM TUMOR, MAKE A CHOICE

• Amputate Arm
• Sam Elliot in Tombstone

I would grow a mustache and carry a gun everywhere I went. People would say, “That’s a sweet Sam Elliot in Tombstone costume.” Then I’d show them my dead arm and they’d run screaming. It would be so bad ass.

3. They operate on the wrong arm. This had me worried until Tuesday when a woman from the hospital called me to run through what I needed to do Thursday. It was the standard speech I’ve heard 6 times, but she added something to it. I thought she was checking to see if I was paying attention.

“OK, so when you come here, no jewelry, no piercings, no contacts, if you need to wear them, bring solution and a case, no food after midnight, no liquid, no mints, no gum, after you get here in the morning, the doctor will write his name on your left arm, bring your ID, insurance card…”

“Wait, the doctor will have his name written on me?”
“Yes.”
“You mean metaphorically or he’s actually going to write on me?”

He’s actually going to write on me! He’ll put his initials on my arm as to avoid confusion. That’s thoughtful. Too bad I’m going to mess with him by writing his initials on my butt. Operate on that, buddy!

4. I slip into a coma. That’s interesting terminology. Slip. It makes it sound like I’m clumsy when I’m highly coordinated. “What happened to Dave?” “Oh, he slipped into a coma during surgery.” “Oh that Dave, he should’ve been more careful as to avoid slipping.”

If I go into a coma, it’s going to be hardcore. I plan on crashing into a coma. No, I’ll dive into the coma. That way it sounds like it was my choice. Also, if I do dive into a coma, don’t pull the plug if my nurse is hot. I’m pretty sure that despite the coma, I’ll have an idea of what’s happening during the sponge baths. Let me have that for a year, deep sleeps and sponge baths. After that, pull the plug.

5. The surgery doesn’t work. Hey, it happens. The only thing worse than surgery is more surgery. Look at Kendry(s) Morales. Breaks his leg, has surgery, finds out months later he needs more surgery and has to miss an entire season of baseball. If three months from now I’m still hurting, I’ll just cut the thing off. I’m not left-handed, so I can still do a lot of stuff without complications. Pushups will be a lot harder, but way funnier. I’ll have to give up clapping and start fist pumping. I’ll never have to stand on public transportation ever again. I’ll always be the first guy on a plane. Then there’s the ladies who are into amputees, a world I can’t enjoy currently.

There’s all kinds of other stuff you don’t think about that goes into a surgical procedure, like the ride home. The hospital requires a responsible adult to drive you home, but I don’t know any responsible adults. I know adults with cars, and that’s good enough. It’s not that I don’t trust my friends, but I’ve seen them drunk way too many times in my life to ever look at them as responsible. Just off the top of my head:

• I had one friend take a shower with his clothes on instead of talking to a gorgeous blond.
• I had one friend intentionally puke not into one of the two garbage cans in front of him, but in between them.
• I had one friend pee on my refrigerator, then try to blame me the next morning.
• I had one friend ask me to hide his porn collection because his wife closing in on it.

All of these people have kids now, but I don’t know how responsible they are. I feel like when it comes to their kids, sure they’re responsible. But a ride home from the hospital for a groggy me? Pretty sure I’ll wake up in Central Park at about 8 p.m. on Thursday naked and not knowing my name.

There are other rules too, but the big one is no food after midnight. A lesser man would make a Gremlins reference here. What happens if I eat after midnight? Will I turn evil on the operating table and attack Phoebe Cates? I am a lesser man.

So I’m looking at a last meal about 11:30 p.m. tonight. Not sure what it’s going to be yet, but it’s going to be heavy. I’m thinking about having a massive meal from Five Guys, but if I died, it would leave me open for the best joke in the history of death jokes.

“Dave died like he lived, with Five Guys inside of him.”

There we were in the living room of our small apartment in Harrison, NJ, him on the couch and me on the floor in front of the coffee table that was likely a hand-me-down. Harry Carson, a linebacker for the Giants, did something wrong during the game. This is the fuzzy part. He either missed a tackle or dropped an interception or jumped offsides. That isn’t important. What is important was what 7- or 8-year-old me said aloud in front of my dad after Carson’s infraction.

“What a dumb nigger.”

Yep. I said it, and I said it in the same nonchalant manner I would have said, “What a delicious sandwich.” I also said it as casually as I had heard my mom say it a million times before when we’d be in the car together, sometimes with my dad present, a lot of times not. I’m pretty sure I had an idea of what the word meant, but I don’t think I understood the weight of it until my dad turned off the television and set the remote down on that stained coffee table.

He never raised his voice, probably because he was aware of where I heard the word and because I still slept in pajamas. Doing everything in his power to remain calm, he bit his tongue and explained to me why no one should ever say that word. He told me that just because mom says that word, it doesn’t make it right. He told me he never wanted to hear me say that word again. No threats of violence or the throwing away of my baseball card collection. Just a lesson for a kid that required the mashing of his teeth and nothing more, probably because he saw the fear in my eyes as I sat there on the carpet, half-afraid for my well-being and half-upset that we weren’t watching the Giants game anymore.

As an adult — one who isn’t a full-blown or partially-blown racist, I swear — sometimes I’ll remember stuff like this about my dad, who died a few years ago. We watched a lot of sports together when I was a kid — lots of football (we had New Jersey Generals season tickets) and hockey and even one time, we saw this team called the New Jersey Nets. I think we both learned that night that I was a better free-throw shooter than Chris Dudley and perhaps this NBA stuff wasn’t for us.

When we watched a game, we would just talk about whatever. He’d ask about school, and I’d usually give the standard pre-teen, teen-age answers of “I don’t know,” “nothing,” and, “Dad, you’re embarrassing me.” I can’t even begin to imagine what a pain it must’ve been to talk to me then, but dad would always throw in a piece of life advice that got over the walls of being a dumb kid and land directly in my brain forever. “When you get older, you should get a credit card, buy something small and pay it off right away. You’ll establish good credit and that will help you get a loan for a car or house. You want some popcorn?”

Sometimes I miss that. Now when I attend a game, it’s rarely as a fan. When it is as a fan, it’s always with friends. We don’t spend too much time discussing life with each other. The conversation involves lamenting our fantasy teams and figuring out whose turn it is to buy the beer. It’s loads of fun, don’t get me wrong. I just long for the days when my dad and I would just watch a game together. No beer, no fantasy sports, no gambling. Just watching a game.

When my dad and I watched a game, that was his chance to teach. It was also his chance to make me as uncomfortable as possible in public when he blurted out things like, “When you have sex, you better wear a condom. I’m not helping you raise a kid.” It was undoubtedly awkward, but he wasn’t going to sugar coat things for a 13-year-old who was still unclear on what third base represented with a girl.

There was also the conflicting lessons, like the non-stop talk about the importance of going to college and getting an education coupled with him incessantly telling me I should learn golf. All I wanted to do was play hockey and baseball as a kid, and I couldn’t get through one ride to or from a game without having to hear about how I should take golf lessons. I couldn’t get him to join a fantasy league, but he wanted me to graduate from college in four years and get my PGA Tour card an hour later.

Hey, the man wasn’t perfect. After all, he married my mom.

But once I got to college and realized how completely cool I was, those times with my dad were over. I’d spend NFL Sundays with friends, attend games with friends, take part in fantasy leagues with friends. My dad and I would talk sports during our drives to and from college, but even those were few and far between because I’d usually hitch a ride with a friend. As I got older, I had less and less in common with my dad, or so I thought.

My dad was a big Atlanta Braves fan. He wasn’t raised in Milwaukee or Atlanta, yet that was his team. I never understood it entirely, yet I also never noticed how my being a Chicago White Sox fan despite being raised in New Jersey made me my father’s son. When Andres Galarraga signed a huge free-agent contract with the Braves, I remember thinking how happy that would make my dad. Instead, he spent 10 minutes telling me how no one deserves to make that kind of money and how rising salaries made him feel disconnected from the players he cheered as a kid. It took me a while to pick up on that lesson too, but yeah, he had a point.

Now that I’m old enough to realize I was never cool and just a angst-filled jerk, it’s hard realizing those days are impossible to get back. I get it now. To enjoy a sporting event, you don’t need a three-hour tailgate, a bet on the over/under, the starting pitcher on your fantasy team on the mound or even great seats. My dad knew this when I didn’t, and now that I know it, it’s too late. Right after college, he moved to Florida and I rarely saw him. That time of innocently watching a game with your dad runs out for everyone, but I could have had more of it if I wasn’t so stupid. I’d give almost anything to be able to watch the early NFL games on a Sunday one more time. Who knows what I could still learn.

At least I’m not racist. Thanks, dad.

Like I said way earlier, I love baseball. I’d like to take baseball out to a nice dinner, listen to it tell me about its day, how other sports it’s friends with aren’t as pretty as it, nod intently, then take baseball home and make out with it on my couch before abruptly stopping and saying we should take it slow because I don’t want to spoil this because it could be the start of something really meaningful.

Then I’d walk baseball home to its door, thank it for a lovely evening, then kiss it on the cheek and whisper gently into its ear, “That was the longest three hours of my life. You’re so boring and I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

Baseball would cry, because I’m quite the catch, but then baseball and I would sit down and hammer out a plan for it to lose some of its bloating, to trim it down a bit. Sure it seems superficial on my part to make baseball lighten its load but hey, there are a lot of sports in the sea. Baseball needs to win me over by shortening the games it plays. I mean, it’s right there on my SportsFanDate.com profile — I’m not into games, at least unnecessarily long ones anyway.

If your game is so long that you demand fans rise up and stretch to prevent muscle atrophy — which I imagine was invented by lawyers to avoid lawsuits from fans who were collapsing upon standing after sitting for nearly 4 hours — something is wrong with your game.

So here’s my five-point plan for making the length of games more manageable and making it more attractive to the average male (or female, I’m open) sports fan:

1. Limit mound meetings – There is nothing more out of control in baseball today than the number of times a catcher will go to the mound to talk to his pitcher.

My guy’s in trouble — go to the mound.
Runner on second — go to the mound.
Big two-strike pitch — go to the mound.

After four of those in an inning, then the pitching coach will pop out of the dugout, walk his 68-year-old bones to the mound for a discussion of his own. If it’s Brian Wilson, I completely understand the attraction to talking to him. He’s out of his mind. If I was a catcher, I’d be out there every two seconds trying to get him to say something weird.

The rule is currently one visit from the dugout is OK and a second one results in the lifting of the pitcher. I’d change the rule so that any visit to the mound from anyone — even if it’s the third baseman coming over to ask the pitcher to strike this mothercusser out despite the fact you mistakenly slept with his wife who was out for revenge after seeing her husband, the third baseman, with another woman on TV — counts. A catcher is basically a pitching coach in pads anyway. The game would probably get shorter by 5 minutes instantly with this rule.

Some of you may be thinking, “But with a runner on second, the catcher needs to go over the new signals.” That can’t be done before the game? Of course it can. But hey, you’re allowed to go out there once. That’s it. You’re professionals. If you can’t get on the same page during the inning, tough. Shout to the pitcher what you want him to throw. That’ll be fun. Try throwing a fastball past Adrian Gonzalez when he knows what’s coming.

2. On the rubber, in the box – Basketball has a shot clock, football has a play clock. Baseball can’t even afford a watch.

People sometimes talk about the charm that baseball possesses because there is no time limit. Funny, I’ve never heard that theory applied to anything else. Nobody wants anything to last forever. No one wants to die, but can you imagine being alive at the age of 166? Imagine the sheer, intense pain you’d be in. Coincidentally, 166 people years is the equivalent to a Red Sox-Yankees game that last 4 hours, 30 minutes.

Just like when you drop food on the ground, baseball needs a 10-second rule.

Once the pitcher toes the rubber with the batter in the box, the pitcher has to make his pitch within five seconds or he’s called for a balk. No stepping off, no stepping out. I don’t care if a mosquito has flown directly into the batter’s eye. Suck it up. Tough it out.

I’m tired of hitters asking for time when a pitcher is in a groove. Be a man. Beat him fair and square. Gamesmanship is just a cute way of saying you can’t beat someone straight up. It’s also slowing everything down. Prematurely exiting the box or discarding the rubber when action is about to happen is a no-no in every possible situation.

Maybe you’re wondering about how this affects a pitcher when a runner is on first base. Some pitchers tend to hold the ball for a long time before pitching (or stepping off, which would result in murder in my new rules) to freeze the runner out. Won’t having a 10-second pitch clock give a huge edge to the runner?

Yep. Too bad. Maybe you and your team shouldn’t have allowed that guy to reach base. But everyone always raves when a pitcher works quickly, so this rule will make you a better pitcher and lead to less base runners. You did this to yourself. I just saved another 20 minutes. We’re down to a 2-hour, 35-minute game already.

No, I don’t eat food after it’s been on the ground for 10 seconds. Stop taking everything so literally.

3. Nine innings? Really? – I’m sorry, but nothing should last 2 hours, 35 minutes unless it’s a Batman movie written and directed by Christopher Nolan. Who came up with this arbitrary number? As a matter of fact, baseball leads all sports in arbitrary numbers. Why 162 games? What sadist decided that’s how long a season should be? Another random number is plate appearances to be eligible for the batting title, which is 3.1 per team game. Why not 3.2? Or 3.05? Or 3.14159265? I’d love to hear an announcer say, “Jose Reyes needs to get his plate appearances up to pi per game, which is coincidentally Prince Fielder’s diet plan.”

The rules state that once five innings is completed, a baseball game is official. So what the heck are we doing during the final four innings? It just doesn’t make sense. With the way the game is played now, we’re turning mediocre pitchers into millionaires so they can be seventh-inning specialists and mop-up men. If your job is mop-up man, you’re technically a janitor, and no one wants to watch a janitor work. Middle men are wastes of space too. I believe in going directly to the source and cutting out the middle man. Scott Proctor never has to work again in his life. Scott Proctor!

Chopping baseball games down to 5 innings is something everyone involved with baseball can get behind.

1) Fans – We have stuff to do. When you factor in driving to the stadium, watching the game and driving back, that’s a 5- or 6-hour day for some people. If we cut the game in half, that’s twice as much time you have to do something useful with your day or night, like watching the History Channel or punching a Kardashian. It’s important to mention once again that a nine-inning game is so long, the stadium urges you to get up and stretch during the seventh inning to prevent blood circulation problems.

2) Players – The longer you’re out there, the more susceptible you are to injury. Pitchers never have to hear about nonsensical pitch count numbers ever again. Five innings, 70 pitches, thanks for coming out to the ballpark. How many times does a fan need to see Alcides Escobar bat anyway? I guess since about six relievers will be unemployed now that we’re playing five innings, they won’t be happy. But are middle relievers really baseball players? I hate to get all philosophical, but it’s worth thinking about.

3) Owners – By cutting the game in half, they’re losing half of their concession revenue. But you’re assuming they wouldn’t simply double the price of everything, which they would. Maybe you’re thinking a fan wouldn’t pay $16 for 12 ounces of beer, but you’re forgetting people will pay anything for food and drink at a game. If you think fans wouldn’t stand for that, fans eventually decided they were OK with Mark McGwire basically spending a decade telling their kids to do steroids because you’ll be awesome at baseball, so another 8 bucks for a watered-down light beer that isn’t all that cold won’t even register.

Isn’t it amazing how much more excited you are about baseball? Suddenly the game is down to 90 minutes, but I think we can do better still.

4. Balls and strikes – Again with the arbitrary numbers. What was the reasoning behind four balls for a walk, three strikes for an out? Baseball has been around so long that three strikes has crept into things like legislation of crime and how many times you can ask a girl out and have her say no before you’re legally stalking her. But if Abner Doubleday or the guy who really invented baseball had decided it was 6 strikes and 8 balls, sure, the game would be twice as long, but our prisons would be half as empty and that girl from the laundromat wouldn’t have grounds to pepper spray me yet.

Four balls and three strikes is simply silly. If I was running things, I’m treating it like slo-pitch men’s softball, the greatest thing ESPN ever shows yet they only show it once a year. We can keep the idea of four balls and three strikes, but when you step into the batter’s box, the count is 1-1. Yeah, tough. The game is so ridiculous that batters are sometime encouraged to TAKE A STRIKE. Well, now you can take one without trying and get right down to business.

By erasing two pitches per at-bat, which would include likely include either a pitcher stepping off of the rubber for no reason, a foul ball that would result in the pitcher having to rub up the new ball or a pitch in the dirt that would result in another new ball, each at-bat now lasts half as long.

Just like that, we’re talking about a neat, tidy, 45-minute sporting event.

5. Tidy? Yeah, right. – Three outs per inning? Why so many? Let’s cut it down to two. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, let’s be real twice is enough. How many times do you have to prove you’re better than me?

Finally, we’re down to a watchable, TV-friendly, 30-minute show. But there’s still work to be done.

6. Extra innings? More extra I don’t think so-innings! – Even with all the great work we’ve done here today to make baseball better, we haven’t put a limit on the length of games. They can still go 100 innings in theory. Let’s close that loophole right now by saying if a game is tied after five innings, we go to a tiebreaker.

Your first instinct is to go straight to a home run derby, but your first instinct, despite popular belief, is always wrong.

Your second instinct is probably to have the team stage a monkey knife fight with each monkey wearing the hat of the team it represents. Again, your instincts are foolish, because monkey knife fights are illegal and we’d be killing 100s of monkeys for no real reason. It’s silly, disgusting, and I can’t believe you brought it up.

Besides, you ever try taping a knife to a monkey’s hands? It’s impossible.

That’s why I’d propose The Tom Emanski Tiebreaker, where we take a garbage can and rest it on its side at home plate and have a member of each team fire baseballs into it from center field. Each player gets five throws, most in the garbage can wins. If it’s tied after five throws, then we go to sudden death. It’s like a soccer shootout, only interesting.

Look how attractive I made baseball. It’s slimmed down, lean, doesn’t have to suck in its gut anymore. It’s beautiful. I can’t wait to get rejected by it eight times when I see it at the laundromat.

My current apartment totally blows. I never thought I’d be there for more than a year, but it’s been 2.5 years now because I’m completely lazy and my rent hasn’t gone up once. I can afford a nicer place, and now it’s just a matter of staying focused and finding a hey let’s write a blog post.

The major problem with my quest is motivation and timing. I can break my lease at any time, because my lease doesn’t exist right now, which means you can’t break or be bound to a thing that doesn’t exist. I think if my lease was up in a week and I had to find a new residence, I’d be less apt to say, “Yeah, let’s do happy hour. I haven’t played beer pong in forever. I can look at that apartment another time.”

The timing is terrible too because I’m having my left arm sliced open and fixed in mid-August and I’ll be virtually incapacitated until mid-September. I looked feverishly for a place that was available Aug. 1, but alas, finding a place around here is more depressing than that homeless baby example I presented earlier.

If we delve deeper into homeless baby, it’s not even really depressing. If you were a baby who could ask for formula, that in essence means you’re a talking baby. Not one of these terrible babies that drools and can’t form a coherent sentence, but a super baby who not only knows how to speak, but understands how important it is for it to get the nutrition it needs from formula.

If this baby was homeless in Manhattan, how long before some talent agent spotted it or heard about it? The agent would simply show up with a case of formula and a business card. The baby would say it’s not interested in being exploited, but thank you very much for the formula but I’d like to just keep doing what I’m doing, I don’t want to be tied down.

Of course, the baby would tear through that formula in weeks and need more. Like the formula junkie that baby is, it would pick up the business card it had been using to cut the formula powder into snortable lines and call the talent agent. Desperate, the baby would agree to the agent’s terms. With no parents, the baby’s income wouldn’t be drained, so that tragedy of dying during birth and the Arby’s stabbing isn’t a big deal. Since the agent knows the importance of protecting an invaluable asset like a talking baby, the agent would put the baby up in a super-nice Manhattan apartment, thus giving the baby a better place than me and making my situation more depressing.

Now that we’ve explained that situation, I just wanted to touch on a few things I’ve discovered during my passive search for the perfect new place.

1. If you look through enough ads, you’ll see the same realtor names over and over again. Many of these names are Latin, which is a very common thing in these parts. For instance, I see the name Juan Rodriguez on a lot of these ads. By itself, it’s nothing worth discussing. Juan Rodriguez is about 100 times more common than my name. But in every ad, he’s not Juan Rodriguez.

He’s Juan “Ralph” Rodriguez.

This intrigues me to no end. I’ve literally wasted hours of my life rolling this around in my mind. Where does Ralph come from? If it was Juan “Jack” Rodriguez, it makes sense. If it was Juan “Hell of a Guy” Rodriguez, I’d rent any apartment this guy has to offer. But Ralph? Where does anyone get Ralph out of that?

If I met this guy and didn’t know him and he said, “Hi, my name is Juan, but you can call me Ralph,” I’d say, “No, I’m going to call you Juan, weirdo.” He must’ve given himself this nickname. That’s my first thought. If I ever started referring to myself as Dave “Fernando” Lozo, I’d demand to be institutionalized.

But then I took it a step further. What if this is a nickname he got from friends? Maybe he’s one of those “drink till you puke” kind of fellas, and his friends started calling him Ralph for laughs and it stuck. I didn’t go to college with him, so I’d never know the inside joke about El Puke-o. But again, if that is really how he got his nickname, I’d rent all of his properties.

But then I took it to the snow level. Perhaps as a child, his English wasn’t very good and his parents were poor. They had a VCR and just one video he watched all the time to learn English — King Ralph.

Juan always bowled in his apartment and quoted the movie at school. “Teacher, let’s do some fox hunting!” Kids called him King Ralph, but then it got shortened to Ralph.

I’m tempted to schedule a viewing with this guy just to ask him, and when he tells me the real answer, walk away without saying anything.

2. There are several things that will result in the immediate dismissal of your apartment for rent.

a) No pictures. It’s 2011. I’m pretty sure a camera comes built in to everything. Why just the other day I was baking a cake designed to look like money and the batter was really creamy and delicious. So I flipped the cake mixer over to camera mode and snapped a picture and uploaded it to Facebook, Twitter and my Tumblr page, cakebattermoneyshots.tumblr.com.

Yet you can’t upload four photos to craigslist? You might as well not even list it.

b) Deceptive language. I love when a guy who took some real estate night classes at the local community college annex thinks he’s going to outsmart me in the listing. Perhaps you are not as well-versed as I am in this milieu. So here’s what I see when I read an ad (more subsets!):

i) Cozy — It’s a place so small you can sit on the toilet while watching TV and cooking dinner all at once.
ii) Sunny — It has windows.
iii) MUST SEE! — I don’t really need to see it.
iv) Eat-in kitchen! — It’s about as appealing as “crap-in bathroom.”
v) Unusual layout — You sleep in a closet, eat in the bathroom, shower in the backyard.
vi) High ceiling — Ceiling smells like pot and White Castle.
vii) Killer price — Previous occupant was murdered.
viii) Exposed brick — Ran out of construction materials.
ix) Charming — Apartment will flatter you in an effort to distract you from how terrible it is.
x) No pets — Animals can’t pee on the carpet, but we can’t stop you from doing that.

This apartment listing is my favorite, because it’s apparently the site of the first ever recorded baseball game. There’s something I care about. “Well, the location is terrible, I’m not all that happy about the living space itself, but hey! Jebediah Montgomery once caught a fly ball where that homeless guy is sleeping right across the street! You should double your broker’s fee!”

Another good term is “classic,” because it makes me think the apartment was designed for listening to fireside chats, making moonshine in my tub and contracting polio.

c) Exclamation points — Anyone who has ever texted/e-mailed/followed me on Twitter knows I don’t use exclamation points very often. You have to really earn them. Which is why when I’m reading an apartment listing and I see, “Hardwood floors!!!!!!” I immediately move on to the next option.

There’s really nothing worth putting an exclamation point after in an apartment listing. Laundry in building! Newly renovated! Available 9/1!!!! I don’t know what the exclamation points add. I’m tempted to call these people and just gush over stuff they exclaim for no reason in the listing.

“Hi! I want to see the apartment with the FIREPLACE! I’m really a big fan of FIREPLACES! They have FIRE! and it stays in one PLACE! My ex-girlfriend had a fireplace, but she didn’t have a FIREPLACE! like your apartment. I can’t wait to see the FIREPLACE! When we can we set up a time to see the FIREPLACE!?!?!”

I could do another subset about caps lock, but I would just be REPEATING MYSELF!

I guess I learned a lot of stuff in that second part. I can’t think of anything else special that I learned. I’m still pretty pissed off about that baby’s apartment. It probably has a doorman.

Personally, I don’t feel old. Sure, I’m a man who has lost 98.7 percent of his hair in a tragic genetic accident caused by having every male family member since the American Revolution look like Hank Kingsley at 25, but I rarely ever *FEEL* old. I’ve never told anyone to get off my lawn or lectured someone younger than me about how their music is too loud and lacks the soul of bands of my era, like Sublime, Third Eye Blind and Counting Crows.

But there are times when I feel as though I’ve got about two or three seconds before I die of old age. These are those times:

1. Fashion -- I was recently in my grocery store, buying calcium pills and denture adhesive (I’m old, get it?) when I decided to cut through an aisle to get to the checkout counter. In this aisle were two guys in their 20s who I will dub Tad and Thad. From everything I could gather from the five seconds I was near them, they seemed like d-bags. Sure, it’s unfairly judgmental on my behalf to decide on their personalities from just looking at them, but it doesn’t mean I was wrong.

Both were wearing golf shirts with popped collars, which I’m pretty sure is a universal sign that they are 22 years old and say chillax and brah every 40 seconds when they’re not putting GHB in girls’ drinks. One shirt was bright pink, the other bright yellow. If there’s one thing that makes me want to walk up to you and punch you in the face, it’s a popped collar. It’s the fauxhawk of fashion.

As I exited the aisle and turned the corner, I saw two more kids who were somewhere between the ages of 6 and 25. Unlike Tad and Thad, these two kids, who I shall call Rico and Tito, were wearing t-shirts. However, they were participating in another fashion trend that makes about as much sense as Jimmy Fallon’s success — they were wearing hats where the brim was completely flat.

Now, that alone doesn’t necessarily mean anything about age. However, both Rico and Tito decided that after making their purchase, they were going to leave the holographic stickers on the flat brim and wear the hat like that.

That’s when it hit me — anyone under the age of 26 bases all their fashion decisions on doing as little work with their clothing as possible.

When you take a shirt out of the dryer, the collar is always messed up. Now, most human beings would fix the collar, but not today’s kids. That’s too much work, brah. Let’s just chillax on the collar thing, brah. Now, let’s get dressed and go buy some Mike’s Hard Lemonade for the frat party.

Same thing goes for the hat. Boy, this White Sox hat (and it’s ALWAYS a freaking White Sox hat) sure looks dope. But I’m way too lazy to peel off the sticker, let’s leave it on the brim and go to my place to watch BET’s Sucka Free Countdown, because I refuse to watch a countdown with a single sucka in it.

There’s no other fashion trend involving people younger than me that makes me feel old like this, because even if I was 25, there’s no way in balls that I’d ever leave the house with a popped collar and a sticker on my hat. What other awful trends are there with dudes these days? Fedoras? I mean, now I think it’s awful, but I’m sure I’d have partaken in it. Those wool knit caps with the super-tiny brim? Again, I think it’s weird now, but I’d make sure I grabbed it on my way to the Kings of Leon concert.

But popped collars and stickers on hats? It makes me feel like I need a walker and one of those chairs that take you up and down stairs.

2. Conversation – Louis CK has a great bit (yeah, all of them) about what it’s like to talk to a 22-year-old girl. It’s more about girls vs. women, but that was the part that stuck with me because he’s right. And it’s not just about talking to a girl, it’s about everyone who is that age. God, it’s an uninteresting conversation. No one that age has anything good to say about anything.

That’s what makes me feel old. When I was 25, I’d sit through three hours of conversation with a 22-year-old girl if it meant there was an outside chance we were going to go back to her apartment when it was all over. Your cat? His name is Fluffy McWhiskerClaws? That’s so cool. I love cats. You hate that girl over there? Ugh, me too, she’s so fat. You like diet soda? No way! Me too! Your cat meows whenever you watch Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman? That’s incredible because I love cats and Dr. Quinn! Can I get you another Natural Light?

When that happens now, it goes much differently. Your cat? His name is Fluffy McWhiskerClaws? I couldn’t possibly care less and now I’m going to go over there and stand against the wall and do absolutely nothing for the next hour because that would be more interesting than hearing about your cat.

That right there might make me feel older than anything, putting quality of conversation ahead of youth and attractiveness.

But it’s the same thing for guys that age too. There’s nothing to talk about with them. I don’t care about anything they have to say, but was there anything more interesting in your life when you were 22 than talking with your friend about how you made out with a girl in a bar, puked in a cab on the way home, think the Mets suck and should trade Jose Reyes for Derek Jeter and how you want to build a beer pong table and paint the Entourage logo on it in your parents’ backyard?

Well there’s about 100 more interesting things to talk about than that now, including how you are 22 and suck.

While yes, it makes me feel superior, it makes me feel old, which as you may have gathered, is the point of this list.

3. My friends – All married, all with kids. Recently, we were in Denver for a weekend. Just five guys in the city to see a baseball game and do the stupid stuff we don’t do anymore. Beers, shots and bad decisions for 48 hours as we pretend we’re still 25 when it’s extremely clear we are not.

It took about two hours for me to realize these trips, which we’ve done yearly since 2002, just aren’t what they used to be.

We were dying for a quick lunch after a long flight, so we went to a place called the Tilted Kilt. If you don’t know it, it’s a restaurant where girls wear next to no clothes. Really, it’s wonderful. Our waitress had a body built for pornography and spent the first 15 minutes after we got there discussing such topics as her favorite sexual positions and where she’s pierced. Just a wonderful girl.

Well, my friends spent the next 45 minutes showing her pictures of their kids. I mean, guys, what are you doing to me here? You can look at your GD kids every day for the rest of your life. We’ve got a half-naked girl talking about kissing other girls. Can’t we just enjoy this? No one wants to see a 30-second video of your kid giggling on the beach, and no one wants to see it while we talk to what must’ve been the world’s perfect woman.

Also, my one friend who will be a dad in September pulled out — and I swear, I’m not kidding about this — a video of his baby kicking inside his wife’s stomach. Sexy time!

But that’s basically what I am, only without the pictures of the kids. I’m that old. If we were all 23 and talking to this girl, one of us is leaving the city with either her phone number or a rash. Now, when we leave the bar, she’s telling us to take it easy because men our age shouldn’t be out in this heat with protection from the harmful UV rays that can cause cancer. Well, she didn’t say that, but she was probably thinking it.

4. Sleep – Up until a couple years ago, I played hockey in a Tuesday night league for about 10 years. Then I stopped. Cold turkey. I love playing hockey. Not only is it fun, but I’m pretty good at it. It’s not as if I decided a couple years ago that I wasn’t good enough anymore. I could keep up and then some with punk 18-year-olds who thought they were great because they dominated the freshmen in their high school at the local rink. Breaking the spirit of someone with their whole life ahead of them was very rewarding.

It wasn’t the fact that the next day my legs would have welts on them or the general pain that made me stop playing. I once played for six weeks with a torn ligament in my finger because I loved playing so much. Pain heals, chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever. Thanks, Shane Falco.

But here was the thing about these games — they were all scheduled for 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. on a weeknight. Whenever the games before that ran long — which was every GD week — our games got pushed back. We once dropped the puck at 12:30 a.m. because some kid had his head cracked open and there was blood that needed to be cleaned. I think he blocked a shot with his face.

Then one day I woke up and realized I hated waking up on three hours sleep after playing meaningless hockey and that I’d rather sleep, because sleep is the greatest thing ever and not getting it on a Tuesday wrecked me for a week. I’d get home from work Wednesday and be ready for sleep. So really, by playing hockey on Tuesday, it was costing me two days of my week. In case you’re not getting it, this is how old people think.

If 20-year-old me knew that 30-year-old me was going to avoid hockey because of sleep, 20-year-old me would’ve smothered 30-year-old me in my sleep, because 20-year-old me would’ve appreciated the irony of murdering 30-year-old me in that way.

It’s not as if I won’t stay out till 4 a.m. anymore or won’t occasionally take a weeknight excursion to a bar and lose track of time. But hockey til 1 a.m. on a school night just doesn’t appeal to me like it used to. I’m perfectly healthy, able-bodied and assuming still skilled enough to have fun playing, but man, I’m like Grandpa Simpson now. Maybe you could get me out there one night, but I’m not doing it for 12 consecutive weeks. I’m old! I should’ve been out of the game years ago!

5. I can’t think of a fifth thing, which is somewhat re-assuring that I’m not old. I don’t have any dietary restrictions, but I’m pretty sure that putting hot sauce on everything I eat is going to result in either surgery on my stomach or colon at some point. I have no debilitating injuries that prevent me from running or working out, so I can continue to run and work out and not look I do either of those things. I’ve yet to see a piece of new technology that scares me or I can’t operate. I’m young, damn it!

Sometimes I think I’m old because I enjoy shows like NCIS. But then I remember I loved watching The Golden Girls when I was 14. I’m pretty sure Rue McLanahan acting all sexy in every episode wasn’t an effort to real in viewers like 14-year-old me, yet there I was cracking up every time Sophia zinged her.

When it comes to music, I’d punch Katy Perry and Lady Gaga in the face if I could, but I felt the same way about Debbie Gibson and Tiffany when I was a teen. I like what I like, which apparently is punching famous women. I’ll get help for that.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to watch this Matlock marathon and get ready for bingo night down at the VFW.

That relationship turns into a life lesson and helps you with future relationships. You figure out the things you could’ve done differently and apply them to your new love. It’s how people grow.

However, the cautionary tale of Family Guy shows what happens if after a breakup, you decide to return to the troubled relationship and stay together forever.

Imagine Family Guy is your first real, long-term, adult relationship. When you first met Family Guy, you were blown away. You’d never met anyone like Family Guy before. You were head over heels for Family Guy. It was new, exciting, different. Family Guy kept you on your toes. You couldn’t wait to spend time with Family Guy. You thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with Family Guy.

After three years, though, you had your doubts. “Boy, Family Guy and I aren’t really going anywhere,” you thought. “I’m just not into Family Guy like I used to be. There have to be better options out there than Family Guy.” You would always cherish your three years together with Family Guy, but in the end, it was best if you went your separate ways. You just weren’t getting from Family Guy what you were getting earlier in the relationship.

You still kept in touch with Family Guy, though. Family Guy seemed to need you more than you needed Family Guy. You started playing the field. You spent time with The Shield, The Wire. Heck, you were so into seeing what was out there, you found yourself with 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter. You weren’t proud of that last one, but you were just having fun.

All the while, there was Family Guy trying to win you back. Family Guy would call you at work and ask to meet for lunch under the guise of being friends, but really, Family Guy just wanted to give you some DVDs from your three years together. You laugh and reminisce about that time Stewie said that thing in that accent and laughed, or how Peter laughed in his funny way and was fat, or how Chris was fat. It was nice.

Still, you kept Family Guy at a distance because you know it didn’t work out between you two for a reason. You tried to start something special with Chappelle’s Show, but you knew Chappelle’s Show wasn’t looking for anything long-term. But everywhere you looked, there was Family Guy in syndication. You got lonely, desperate, started wondering if you would wind up old and alone.

After three years apart, you welcomed Family Guy back into your arms. It was safe, familiar. You remembered all the great things, as people tend to do years after a breakup. You started thinking, “Why did we break up again?” You couldn’t remember the lack of clever writing or funny jokes on a consistent basis. You just remembered the good stuff, the one or two great laughs you had and not the poor story telling and lack of true laughs despite the non-sequitur format allowing for the freedom to make jokes about absolutely anything.

It all came back to you after about a year with Family Guy, but at that point it was too late. You’d given up. You’d settled. Family Guy was back in your life for good. You couldn’t break up again, put yourself through all that again. This was the best you could do, and no matter how miserable you were with Family Guy, you would convince yourself that Family Guy was the best thing out there no matter how uninteresting you found Family Guy deep down inside.

And what do miserable people in marriages do to make themselves happy? They have kids, of course.

In your case, you had two kids with Family Guy — American Dad and The Cleveland Show. And your kids are just as awful as Family Guy, because you hate Family Guy and children that aren’t born out of love are soulless and awful. Everyone hates your kids. No one understands why you and Family Guy are together, never mind why you decided to make replicas.

But you have to love your kids, too. You have to tell yourself your kids are talented and full of promise even though you know your kids are so terrible and stupid that you have to constantly make sure they don’t go and stick and fork in an electric socket. Your kids are behind the other kids the same age, but you have to pretend not to see it. And all the while, Family Guy is walking around in a spaghetti-covered undershirt and beating you about the face and neck once a week.

And it’s all because you forgot why the relationship ended in the first place. If you had just stayed patient and independent, you and Community could be lying in each other’s arms every night. But no, you let Family Guy come crawling back with promises of wonderful times and Community is having a hard time finding someone despite being a great catch.