Jeezy Brown on Race City, USA

In my quest for everlasting love, I had resorted once again, to trolling the internet. Online dating, to be specific.

I began talking to someone who we’ll call “Kelli”. Not her real name, of course. Her real name is spelled with a “y” at the end. But I digress.

Kelli and I began chatting and after a couple of weeks decided we should meet. Included in all this talking we have done was some pretty graphic descriptions of how our meeting might go.

I believe the media has termed such conversations as “sexting”.

What a terrible term.

So we made plans. I left work and texted her about where, exactly she lived. Her response sent chills down my spine -- Mooresville, North Carolina. I don’t like driving the 3 minutes down the street to get my debit card back from the bar every Sunday afternoon, let alone 45 minutes into the country where Jethro Billy Rae lives with his mullet, mustache and walkman.

Now I’m an open minded guy. I freaking love the South and living in North Carolina. But I cannot for the life of me imagine why people would choose to live so far away from civilization. Where your closest neighbor is three miles away. 

And that neighbor is a cow.

Literally, not figuratively.

Regardless, it had been a while since I had gotten lucky, so I gently told the 1997 Mitshibutshi Galant that we would be testing her limits (38.5 mph). That we would be seeing what she was made of (crap Japanese parts). And that I had confidence that she could do it (although I had less confidence that we would ever find the source of that strange smell that permeates the interior of said car).

So we (the car and I) set off on this journey to get laid. Engine violently shaking as I pushed the Galant to her limit. Dark clouds formed on the horizon. Or they would have if it hadn’t already been dark out. Drivers honking furiously as they passed my car. An amish guy in a horse driven wagon gave me the finger as he sped past.

But after a long, perilous drive I had finally arrived in Race City, USA. 

That last line is not a joke. They really call their town Race City, USA. Home of NASCAR.

That’s when you really know you’re in the deep south, boy.

I continued to follow the GPS on my phone, fearing that I would lose phone service any moment as I crossed into areas that had not yet been mapped by satellites. I turned from one dark, abandoned street to another in an endless maze of suburbia.

At long last, I saw a flickering light in the distance. Feeling that God had finally come to put this experience out of my misery, I pushed the Galant towards the shining beacon.

As I got closer, I could see that the light was not, as I had thought, a gateway to the afterlife, but rather a mosquito light zapping away like crazy. I had arrived at Kelli’s.

Once inside, I noticed that Kelli was already half in the tank. She murmured something about having already had a glass of wine to calm her nerves. But she failed to hide the empty bottles that littered her kitchen counter. She also said she hadn’t slept in 30 something hours.

My usual modus operandi is that I ply girls with enough alcohol to make some bad decisions (me). But Kelli had already done my job for me. Maybe that’s what threw me off that night.

We sat down and we started with the usual small talk. And we continued to talk. And talk. For hours. She was mostly unconscious as I rambled about baseball, fantasy football, Star Trek Online and blogging. And anything else that bores 99.9% of the population.

“Hey!” I slapped her face to keep her from passing out. “Don’t you agree? Kirk is absolutely the better Captain as referenced in ‘Balance of Terror.’ You’re such a good listener.” I said as she slept with her eyes open.

It was 3 or 4 am before I remembered why I was in this forsaken town. I made my move, which startled Kelli into waking up. We kissed passionately, like animals.

You know, if animals could kiss.

My fingers slowly moved down to unfasten --

“I have a rule …” Kelli spoke for the first time in hours.

“Oh God, no.” My head fell towards my chest.

Jeezy does not like rules.

“Yeah. I’m sorry.” She wasn’t going to put out because this was our first “date”. 

And that was the end of the festivities. Because we had been drinking and I lived far away “as the crow flies”, it was pre arranged that I would be sleeping there that night.

I tried telling her that I can only sleep naked with the window open, but she wasn’t buying what I was selling.

Stupid, stupid rules.

In the end, though it was for the best. Kelli didn’t put out and we kept going out because I figured I had already put my time and energy into it -- that she was bound to do so next time. And before you know it we were in love, and now we’re planning my move to Mooresville in the next two months. I’ll have to grow a mullet and a mustache, as well as trade in my mp3 player for a walkman, but she’s worth it.

Jeezy Brown on Dude Write With the Gum Story

This is a shortened, edited version of an old story for Dude Write.

The urinals where I work are far too low. They were installed as if it were an elementary school. When expelling bodily fluids in a low urinal with a quick and steady stream, it creates a lot of back splash. Basically you end up smelling like a hobo.

So I sit down to pee at work. It gives me an opportunity to pull out my phone, check Facebook and lament the fact that the Carolina Panthers are destined to always SUCK.  On this particular day I was chewing gum.  The gum having lost its flavor, I simply widened my stance and spit the gum out between my legs into the toilet.  

Or so I thought.

About thirty minutes later, I felt what can only be described as funkiness in my crotch. I went back to the bathroom and saw that the white, sticky stuff (the GUM!) was everywhere. The warmth and moisture from moving around had created quite a mess among my man-scaped pubes. Pulling at it proved to be a futile and painful idea. Since there is no peanut butter in the mens room (usually), I was stuck.

As a brother and fellow man, surely my boss would understand my need to go home and take care of this situation. I pleaded my case.

“No.”

Just like that. I was subjected to many more hours of walking around with gum stuck to my pubes. It really makes for an odd walk. Add in the hearing aids and glasses and, undoubtedly, people thought I was a special needs hire that the company would be compensated for.  

That’s how I now have the scrotum of a 10 year old.

Jeezy Brown on Conspiracies, Guns and the Forever Declining American Society

“You were THERE!  You saw it happen!”  I screamed at this guy.  People around the restaurant were looking at me.

It was September 11th, 2011.  The 10 year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on United States soil and the milestone was dominating the media discussion that week.  Of course everyone was discussing the question du jour, “Where were you when the towers went down?”

But there is also another issue when discussing September 11th … or any major event.  With the JFK assassination, it was the man on the grassy knoll.  The moon landing was filmed on stage in Hollywood.  And now people were saying that the US government were responsible for the attacks as a pretext for … something.  I don’t really know.  

What I do know is that there is a difference between a conspiracy theory that involves a single man being assassinated and 3,000 people being killed on live TV and watching the bodies jump from the tallest windows.

They believe that someone in the federal government concocted this scheme, got thousands of people to help commit mass murder and then kept everyone silent about it.  For 10 years.

So I started screaming at the guy.  We all watched this horrific event unfold on TV.  We saw the same videos that CNN saw as they found it.  Our hearts went out to everyone who knew someone in one of those planes.  We cried as people started posting pictures of missing people throughout the city.  We prayed together.

And then a couple years later everyone’s memories started playing tricks on them.  A couple documentaries came out that made people question what they saw.  And before you know it an entire segment of the population is accepting this ass-backwards theory as fact.

Then came the birthers.

Auora, Colorado.

Now we’re onto Newtown.

You remember Newtown, Connecticut right?  Where the government agents got to Adam Lanza and convinced him to kill two dozen children so that the anti-gun movement could move forward.  Actors were hired to play the roles of grief stricken parents and coffins were filled with … I don’t know … unsold DVDs of “Battleship”.  

Wait, is that not what happened?

In the aftermath there was talk of how we were going to get the mentally ill some more help in this country.  That we needed some kind of way to get them into the “system” before they commit crimes.  Get them help.  That would be noble and worthwhile if done right.  However, the talk of helping the mentally ill has died down a bit.  I think for two reasons.  #1, At first it was a way for the NRA to deflect off questions about gun control.  #2, conspiracy theorists realized that if we were targeting the mentally ill, well … then we were targeting them.

Let’s be honest.  If you believe this shit, then there is something mentally wrong with you.

Don’t get too offended.  Maybe you think it’s the “cool” thing to do -- belittle the senseless death of little children so you can make a little tongue-in-cheek joke about how the government must be behind it.

And then there are those who really believe.

I'm looking at you, Glenn Beck!

It seems more and more in this modern age that people do not subject themselves to facts.  All the information in the world at the tip of their fingers and they will believe what one nutjob says, but not, say, the police chief in Newtown, Connecticut.  Scientists and journalists and government officials are not to be trusted because they LIE.

Where is the critical thinking here?  Where is the logic and common sense?  20% of the American public believe the President was born in Kenya.  The thousands of journalists that have investigated that claim and found it to be untrue must have been paid off!  Blackmailed!  There’s no way, no possible way a black man could legally become President!

There’s a broad discussion to be had here about why people are thinking like this more and more.  Are we failing them in the education system?  Not teaching them that A + B = C?  Is it the power of the internet that allows these mentally ill people to find like-minded thinkers and in doing so, create an echo chamber that allows them to suspend the power of logic?

Now I would love to write more, but it turns out that Facebook is going to start charging us to use it unless I get 2 trillion likes on a photo.

Good Night, Sweet Prince

Breath in …

“Ahhhhhhhh …”

The man lay there, his mouth slightly open as he slept.  Every breath he took in resulted in that long, rattling sigh.  There would be a beat or two before his took his next breath in.

Breath in …

“Ahhhhhhhh …”

He was a shell of his former self.  His face pale and shallow, his long battle with cancer having claimed his vitality that used to be so evident by just looking at him.  There was a sadness behind his eyes now, but they would still twinkle at you as if you and he were the only ones in on the joke.

His family surrounded him in what was surely his last hours.  At once reminiscing about the world that used to be and swatting away the dark clouds that were coming in the next few days.

A family man, a writer, a philosopher, an artist and a musician.  Skilled in anything and everything with something profound and insightful to say on nearly every subject.  Politics, religion, society.  Paintings, history, Literature.

He would come home and start espousing some soliloquy from Hamlet randomly.  The family would watch and roll their eyes and laugh.

He would sit at the piano every chance he got and masterfully move his fingers to the keys and produce the most beautiful music.  He would involve the family in trying to sing together, or he’d let his kids sit next to him on the bench while he pounded on this old, beat up piano.

The crux of a man couldn’t be reduced to his interests or his family.  It’s how he would treat those around him.  Everyone was a friend he hadn’t met yet.

Breath in …

“Ahhhhhhhhh …”

“Jesse, I think he’s in pain …”

I looked over at my father.  Pain?  Pain didn’t even seem like a concept I knew all of the sudden.

“Give him some more morphine.”

I looked over to the hospice nurses who were hugging the wall, doing a job nobody in the world should ever want to do -- go to the homes of the dying and help them with the process of watching their loved ones die.

They stood there, stoic and humble.

***

My father was given one month to live after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer -- one of the most aggressive cancers there are.  He went on to live 8 months.  My mother and I had spent those 8 months being my father’s nurse.  

Now that this nightmare was coming to a close my mother wasn’t here to tell me what to do.  She had missed her last two dialysis appointments to be with my father who the hospice nurses warned us was approaching the end.

Breath in …

“Ahhhhhh …”

Pain?  I pushed some buttons on the morphine regulator.  Nothing would happen, of course.  Only so much morphine can be given out at once.

One by one family members started taking me aside to tell me their opinions.  That my father was in pain and I needed to do something about it.  Or that I should trust my judgement.

It was condescending in a way.  I think you should do this, but you do what you need to do.

The minutes waiting for my mother to come home to decide what to do was absolute agony.  A hell that no one deserves.

“Jesse, give him more morphine.”

I’d go over to the morphine regulator … push the buttons.  More for show then anything else.  It’s not like I could give him more than had been prescribed.

The hospice nurses just stood there.  Their mission having been carried out, they could only offer empathic support.

“He’s in pain.”  “Do something.”

Time slows at 4:00 on a Friday.  This was time being completely still.

It wasn’t until my mother came home that I just broke down.  She was weak from the dialysis, but I fell into her arms anyway.  I told her I didn’t think her husband of 30 years was in pain … but he was ... sighing.

I didn’t want him to die.  Not yet.  Not now.

My mother agreed.  She thought he was building energy for every breath.

Breath in …

“Ahhh …”  Okay.  Let’s do it again.  We’re not giving up.

Breath in …

***

My family retired.  My sister left to go home.  My father’s sister and husband left for the hotel room.  My father’s mother retired to her room.  My mother got ready for bed.

Jay Leno was on for background noise.  It was about midnight and I was saying goodnight to my parents.  Hoping against all hope my Dad would still be there in the morning.

Billy Joel and Elton John were doing a tour together and they were sitting at opposing pianos at the set of the Tonight Show and they played Piano Man.

My mother and I were transfixed.  We held each other as we listened to the swan song of my father’s life.

Sing us a song you're the piano man

Sing us a song tonight

Well we're all in the mood for a melody

And you got us feelin alright

It would be impossible not to see the hand of God in that moment.

I kissed my mother.  I kissed my father and I went to my room.

10 minutes later my mother came in and said my father had passed on.

***

For a humor blog, this is pretty depressing stuff.  But the anniversary of my father’s death was 2 weeks ago and I had forgotten.  You never really forget, but the day came and went with zero fanfare.  I hadn’t taken more than a second to notice.  When I looked up, the day was gone and I thought back to that night.  The pressure, the sorrow, the anguish.  Sometimes you just need to write it all down.  And I need to share.

There’s a line from an old movie called The Pawnbroker about a holocaust survivor that I love.

I didn’t die.  Everything I ever loved … was taken away from me.  But I did not die.

We get back up.  We don’t die.  We move on and we move forward.  The memory of those we love stay with us.  But it is on us to share those memories with everyone else.  To say yes, I had a father, he was a great man.  Or yes, you had a grandmother, she was a great woman.  Yes I loved this person and let me tell you what kind of person they were …

Jeezy Brown Deals With Crazy

Working in a Christian retail store, I deal with far more than my fair share of crazy people.  More often than not, they are customers.  

But not always.

As is my custom, I was a few minutes late for work yesterday.  I parked a fair distance away from the store where the employees are supposed to park.  As I got out of my car, a woman was standing just a few short feet away.  She startled me.

“Jesse.  You’ve got to help me.”

“Deborah?”  My co-worker was in disguise.  She was wearing a cap, large sunglasses and an oversized coat.  Deborah was a bit crazy -- and I should know.  Having grown up with the people I call my family, I am no stranger to identifying crazy behavior.

“Yes.  I need a cart.  Can you get one from the store and bring it to me out here?”

“Uh … sure.”

As I walked inside I reflected on this colleague of mine.  She had been working for us for a few months and although we worked in separate areas of the store, she seems to have taken a shine to me.  My suspicion is that she was the “secret santa” that got me a nice Calvin Klein wallet for Christmas.

I came back out with a cart and Deborah was standing at the passenger door of her car, her eyes darting around the mostly abandoned parking lot.  

“Here, let me show you what I’m doing.”  Deborah mentioned me over and despite my sixth sense tingling, I was curious.  She pulled out a 2-liter bottle of Sundrop soda and showed me a Valentine’s Day card that was on it.

“To (Boss’s Name) From Princess Leia”.  She covered the bottle with heart stickers and glued to the sides of it was doll hair that was curled and tightened into a bun … Princess Leia style.

She proceeds to tell me she had more of these for our boss and was planning on hiding them throughout the store for him to find.  Like an Easter Egg hunt.

“What do you think?”

I said what anyone would say in the face of an overwhelming crazy person.

“Uhhh …”

I excused myself as quickly as I could and walked back inside.

I had thought that Deborah was a bit off her rocker for a while.  I just didn’t know how bad it was.  When she started I made the mistake of asking her what kind of work she had done before she started working with us.  She told me that she worked for the Department of Homeland Security.

I couldn’t imagine this 60-something woman holding a badge and a gun and being sent overseas to capture leaders of the Taliban, so I assumed she was a secretary or something.  Or maybe that’s how she managed to disguise herself so well with the cap and sunglasses.  Maybe her training was so thorough that she didn’t know how to turn it off.  Kind of like Jason Bourne.

But wasn’t this just a bit … creepy?  This might be something you would do with kids or with your significant other … but at work?  With our boss?  Believe me he’s not the type to play games in the workplace.

I walked back inside and found the first person I could.  “You’re not going to believe what’s about to happen …”

Sure enough, Deborah snuck in behind me and no one noticed as she started placing dressed up bottles of Sundrop throughout the store.

During store hours.  With customers shopping all around her.

Naturally, the best course of action was to distance myself from this crazy person and her crazy doings.  But she found me anyway.

“Jesse!  I need you to do something else for me.  I need you to get on the PA system and tell (assistant manager) there’s a ‘package for him from H. Bunny’”

“I … can’t do that.”  I was drawing a line here.  Anyone who works with me knows that I am hardly a professional person in the workplace but this was absurd.  You know that if I’m drawing a line, than you had better look behind you because that’s where everyone’s line is.  And behind that line is my boss’ line.

“Jesse, they know my voice.  I can’t page them.  It has to be you.”

I wondered if she had been waiting in the parking lot for me, specifically.  Because this shit does not happen to other people.

I also wondered if she had been drinking.  It was 10 a.m.

“No.  I can’t.  Why are you doing this today?  Valentine’s Day isn’t until tomorrow.”

“Because I’m off today, and they won’t suspect that it’s me.”

“I’m going to get asked about this, they’re going to think I did this.”  I really, really didn’t want anyone to think I had any involvement.  

“Be strong.  Tell them nothing.”  This was her Homeland Security training kicking in.  “Tell them you’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

There was a pause before I sighed and headed towards the phone to page my assistant manager to tell him about this “package”.

“Your disguise is fantastic.  Flawless, really.”  I told Deborah as I picked up the phone.  Struggling not to laugh as I did this, I paged the assistant manager.  Deborah watched me as I did so and I was reminded of Silence of the Lambs.  I imagined Deborah in a poorly lit basement with one lone light bulb swinging from the ceiling as she glued Star Wars outfits to bottles of Sundrop.  Goodbye Horses playing in the background as she smears lipstick on herself.

“‘Assistant Manager … to the front desk … there is a package for you …” I paged, hearing my voice reverberate throughout the store.

“Tell him it’s from ‘H. Bunny’!” She whispered to me as I finished making the announcement for the whole store to hear.

“ … from … H … Bunny.”  I added before hanging up.

“Okay, now page (boss’ name) and tell him there’s a package from Princess Leia too.”

“No.  I can’t.  This is … no.  Just … no.”  This whole thing was too creepy for words.

“Come on!  You have to!”

So I did.  Deborah left me to go to the floral department and watch the reactions as the Assistant Manager opened his package from “H. Bunny” to reveal … Honey Buns (get it?).  And the Store Manager looked quizzically at the Sundrop before he announces to everyone, “I bet Jesse did this.”

For the next hour, we found several other bottles of Sundrop (from Obi-wan Kenobi and Halle Berry).  I quickly made it clear to everyone that would listen that I had nothing -- NOTHING to do with this crazy, creepy behavior and that Deborah was loony as a toon.

In our professional lives, as well as our personal, we all must make a decision for how much crazy do we want to bring into our lives.  How much crazy do you want to buy?  When we date hot girls, we know the other side of that coin -- batshit crazy.  But we have even less control over the people we work with.

How many people do you work with that you suspect throw feces at home?

Jeezy Brown and Man Meat

It’s very easy to sneak up on a deaf guy.

I’ll come home to an empty house and will presume to be alone while I have my pants-free time.  I won’t hear the roommates come in and when, after they have been home for 20 minutes, they see me in the kitchen with my back to them they’ll say something terrifying that will scare the bejesus out of me.  Something seemingly innocuous like, “Hey.”

And I’ll jump 4 feet in the air, scream like a little girl and give myself a heart attack.

Recently my girlfriend and I went to a very fancy Brazilian steakhouse.  Although we were seated against the wall, these Brazilians were like ninjas sneaking up behind me with their foot long carving knives and meat on a stick and saying something innocent.

“Would you like dog steak?”

And I would jump in my seat and squeal like a Kardashian at an NAACP convention.

But in a very manly way of course.

“What?”  I would reply after getting my heart rate back down.  “Yes … yes I would love your delicious meat.”

It would happen again and again.  Waiters would rappel down from the rafters wielding machetes and waving them in front of my face.

“Sir?  Would you like human meat?”

“Is it male or female?”  I would ask.

“Female.”

“Oh okay, good.  Because eating man meat is gay.” I quoted the great philosopher Rainn Wilson.

Because we were in a large, crowded, open room it was very hard for me to understand these illegal immigrants.  I had a sneaking suspicion that if I yelled “INS!” it would spark a stampede of waiters towards the emergency exits.  But I would probably get in trouble for that -- like yelling “bomb” on a plane or “fire” in a theater or “homo” during military boot camp.

I kid, I kid.

But of course, being in this fancy, nice restaurant allowed us to see how the 1% lives.  And they live very, very well with an unlimited supply of amazing, mouth watering exotic meats.  We were definitely the poorest people there, couldn’t comprehend the prices of the wine list and quietly spoke amongst ourselves about heady topics like who should play Christian Grey in the upcoming movie and not, as you might suspect, the fall of Gaddafi and it’s effect on Arab-West relations.

So what if we couldn’t afford a tip for the complimentary valet?  Tonight we were Kings and Queens feasting.

“Bring us more!”  We would declare by flipping a button over and a waiter would apperate next to us.

“Unicorn?”  He would ask, preparing to carve a huge chunk of mystical meat onto my plate.

“Of course!”

When it was all said and done we left with intestinal blockage and bits of meat hidden in napkins.  As we walked to the car several blocks away, a man snuck behind me.

“Could you spare some change?”  I jumped out of my skin, of course.  As I looked over his drab wear I couldn’t tell if he was a hipster or homeless.  His unwashed face and long facial hair screamed “hipster”, but his messenger bag was really more of a trash bag.

“I’m sorry, we don’t have any money.”  I said, hating myself for having gorged on such an amazing meal, but not having any cash to give to this struggling man.  If I did have cash, would I even have given it to him?  He could have a drug addiction, be an alcoholic or maybe he’s just down on his luck.

So we kept walking to the car and I wondered if any of the 1% would have helped that guy ...

Jeezy Brown and the Decline of Western Civilization: A Humor Blog

“Jeezy, how would you like to earn some drinking money?”  My old boss asked me.

“Oh boy, would I!  What would I need to do?”  I asked.  Drinking is a very expensive habit in these trying economic times.

“Every Thursday you would need to get up at the asscrack of dawn and go to the local grocery store and change out the magazines.  Pull out the ones from last month and put the new issues out.”

Multiple magazines for the chicken lover.

“Sounds amazing!”

This is what I’ve been doing for a couple of months, rather than, say … writing a novel or updating my blog.

It’s an interesting job.

Now I don’t know how much attention to pay to the magazines at your local store.  If you’re anything like me, you believed there were about 20 magazines in print.  Time, Cosmo, GQ, Rolling Stone, ect.

That is an absurd idea.  There are literally THOUSANDS of magazines out there.  And for whatever reason people are BUYING them.

Because ADVANCED Birding requires more than
laying seed on the ground.  Apparently.

In an age of google and e-how, what the hell can a magazine print that I can’t find online?  

But no matter.  I was happy to earn a few more dollars because despite what you may believe, there is no money in blogging.

It also afforded me an opportunity to actually look at these magazine covers.  People, US Weekly, OK magazine, Life and Style and inTouch.  I can actually see with my own eyes the decline of civilization as we obsess ourselves with Brad and Angelina, Jen and the Kardashians.

I’m not going to lie, when people first started talking about the Kardashians, I thought they were talking about Star Trek …

You must admit, the do look similar ...

We used to care about icons like Marilyn and Audrey.  Now it’s Octo-mom and some whore named Brittney.  If you can get on TV you too can become tabloid fodder.

While I put out about 50 copies of People every week, I was putting out just 5 copies of Time.  And Newsweek went bankrupt.  Obviously people buy the trash and leave the news analysis to the brilliant folks at Comedy Central, Fox News and the hottest meme on Facebook.

What’s equally remarkable is that we encourage children to buy these magazines too.  Setting them up for a lifetime of subscriptions and decaying brain cells.  They can read all about One Direction and Justin Bieber and get the latest gossip on Bert and Ernie.

Read the latest on the characters from Cars.

Weird people buy these magazines.  The people who have model trains also need a magazine to give them the best tips on … I don’t know … something weird?

Are you into Horses?  Well we have a Horse magazine for you.  Naked horses in the centerfold for you to look at.

Fishing?  Sure.  Want to get specific?  We have bass fishing, fly fishing and crappie fishing.  

Guys who live in their parents basement used to buy magazines to masturbate to scanly clad women.  Now they buy magazines to look at the hottest assault rifles and jerk off thinking about killing school children.

Oh yeah, show me your mane ... Yeah, that's it!  Yeah!

I’m telling you, our society has brought this on ourselves.  For years and years we have consciously made a decision to watch Jersey Shore instead of PBS.  We traded Julia Child in for a douchebag who calls himself “The Situation”.  We traded Maya Angelou for Stephanie Meyers and 50 Shitty Pages of Anna Blushing Furiously.

We, collectively, made these decisions.  We’re all guilty.  Myself included.  I just feel bad for the children that are growing up in this world everyone else chose for them. I mean, after all ... isn't all about the children?

You're seeing this right ... Fifty Shades of Grey ...
 the magazine.