And That’s a Wrap 2015: Library Death Zone 4

Goodbye, 2015. We hardly knew ye. Here are my highlights:

1. Library Death Zone 4
The last day before Christmas break my son Luke had a big dance performance at school. I told him ‘Dance like there’s nobody watching, because your recital is the same time as your brother’s football game.’

If you’ve followed this blog over the years you know I’ve made a lot of jokes about my youngest son Luke, aka The Fonz. But while I was distracted making my jokes, he turned into a fairly impressive kid. Last year he gave a Tedx talk and started teaching a Programming for Beginners class at school. This year he received a Young Entrepreneur award from a local magazine for a successful business he started. For Christmas he made his mom the librarian a library-themed video game called Library Death Zone 4: Attack of the Plagiarism.

Perhaps you’ve noticed an inverse correlation in his decision to become a responsible well-behaved child and the frequency of my posts. He just doesn’t produce the same quantity of material.

2. Eavesdropping Greatest Hits
Sometimes I catch snippets of conversation that I find myself still pondering months or even years later. Here were my favorites of 2015:

I was on a bus from New York to DC and the woman in front of me answered her phone, started giggling, and whispered, ‘Don’t tell Demetri.’ Who’s Demetri? I’m not in on the specific secret, but I’m in on the existence of a secret, so I’m still one step ahead of Demetri.

A man on the same bus answered the phone and said, ‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh. You went to the gym to sober up?’

I was at an intersection in New York and two women were talking:
Woman 1: She discovered it in Spain.
Woman 2: Who? Your sister?
Woman 3: Yeah, she was a late bloomer.

3. At First I Was Nervous
My son Paul, aka Optimist Prime, completed a second tour of China and Indonesia as part of the London Palladium’s touring production of Sound of Music. While he was away he wrote a bunch of jokes and upon his return he did his first stand-up comedy open mic in Shanghai. My favorite of his lines: ‘At first I was nervous, but then I remembered even Gandhi peed his pants his first time on stage.’ He absolutely destroyed and my friend Andy said, ‘I don’t envy the poor bastard who has to follow your son,’ not knowing that it was me. It was a tough act to follow.

4. The Last Five Years
I starred in my favorite musical The Last Five Years. This had been my dream role for years.

5. New Yawn Record
I yawned for 34 seconds. My son timed it.

6. Stand-up Comedy
I performed as a stand-up comedian at venues throughout the US and Asia and I was a contestant in the San Francisco International Comedy Competition. I accepted a gig as the entertainment for a business conference and found out later that the keynote speaker following me was Ann Coulter. She was very nice and laughed as much as anybody so I tried to be supportive when she got up and I laughed at all her anti-immigrant jokes, but after ten minutes of nobody else laughing I realized, wait a second, she’s not joking.

7. Favorite Tweets
My sister is raising her 8-year-old as a single parent. I think that’s way too much responsibility for an 8-year-old.

If you’re willing to search for a needle in a haystack, you’re probably overestimating the cost of a new needle. They cost a nickel.

8. Goals
I asked Luke if he had any goals for 2016. He said, ‘When you set goals you limit yourself. To goals.’