Five years ago today, on another Friday the 13th, in the midst of both my longest post-virginity loss sex drought* and my hardest-drinking stretch ever, unsure of the direction of both my personal life and my professional life, and completely bored to tears at work, I logged on to blogger.com and wrote up a little entry on this strange and nerdy internet diary thing called a “blog.”

[* Since surpassed.]

I was introduced to blogging by my homosexual former officemate a few months before. He discovered the blog of the guy he was sleeping with, a guy who apparently had a boyfriend, and shared this blog with me; I had never heard of a blog previously. A few weeks later, he discovered another blog, one written anonymously by a gloriously gay temp working on a case of mine, a blog in which said temp detailed his triumphs and travails in the world of trading blowjobs for money (scandalous!).

Once I stopped masturbating to these websites fifteen weeks later, I decided I’d start my own blog. Before the development of blogging, I was the douchebag who, at the behest of his closest co-workers/friends, sent semi-regular “Let’s All Hit Up Happy Hour!” emails to sixty of his colleagues. I knew all of the colleagues – we were all legal assistants, all between ages of 22 and 25, and all drank together regularly – so it was not as d-baggish as it sounds, but these emails were very involved and detailed, relating mostly to my ex-wife and the battle for our son, Justice, and how I was determined to drink through the pain, with or without co-workers, until I had defeated Dina and Justice was living with me again.

(Did I mention that I was not getting laid a whole lot around this time?)

Blogging gave me a semi-legitimate outlet for my attention seeking. Though I liked my job, I felt the need for something more, and realized that as good as a Practice Development Analyst that I was, it was never going to get me a threesome. Still, I didn’t have any master plan when I started blogging (still hate that word); I just wanted something to kill time at work, to write jokes on, and, most importantly, use as a tool for revenge against ex-lovers and former friends.

And now, after five years, 930 posts, and 1,065,810 (!) words*; one TV deal, one huge mistake by a national magazine during a slow year for bachelors, and two book deals (though still no actual book); millions of hits, thousands of emails, and five blowjobs (though still no actual threesome – ladies, my 30th birthday is July 17, just so you know), and here we are. Which for me means sitting at my desk in LA, body half-covered in a rash that has been determined to be both a fungus AND a yeast, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm so that I can go home and have twelve to fifteen cans of PBR before passing out in my living room. Not sure where you are. But I hope it’s better.

[Clark from San Diego, Unofficial JM.com Archivist, provided these numbers, along with this information: "Your millionth word was actually 'toilet' in the 'Day Three' post of 13 JUN 08, in this sentence: 'I could have saved the effort for all parties involved and immediately walked my plate into the bathroom and dumped it into the toilet, and then punched myself in the stomach three times.' Talk about kismet. I can think of no better word to sum up not only this blog, but my entire life, than "toilet." Just, wow.]

[Also, your average book is anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 words. If we take the middle number of 80,000 words, I've written the equivalent of 13.33 books. 13.33 really, really bad books, but enough material for 13.33 books nonetheless. Geez.]

I’d like to say “thank you” to y’all, but that would make me sound condescending. I mean, what am I thanking you for, making me the man I am today (see: rash, cheap cans of domestic beer)? I will express my thanks if and when I finally get that cocaine-filled swimming pool I’ve always wanted (again, my 30th is this July 17th).

So instead of thanks, let’s just both agree to keep on keepin’ on. No big fuss over the 5th birthday, which in blog years make this site about 58 years old. Let’s just quietly keep plugging away, until I’ve officially exhausted my store of dick/poop/fat/drinking/boobie jokes. I think I’ve got, oh, at least another two or three years before that happens.

(Fingers crossed.)

(And anyway, thanks for continuing to come on back.)

Make no mistake: I am a city boy. I was born and raised in a city (Philly), went to college in the suburbs but very close to a city (Boston College/Boston), studied abroad in a city (London), and after graduation moved to a city (NYC). I love me some cities. Cities, cities, cities.

However, I’m not so completely city as to be overly sheltered. I’ve driven across this great country and down its west coast. I’ve spent many luxurious vacations in mountain areas. I can load and properly fire many types of hand guns, thanks to visits to the gun range with my dad. One girl I made out with grew up on a farm. Or in a house. I don’t know – I wasn’t really paying attention. So while I admit that I’m city through-and-through, I do have some experience with the country and country-living.

Where I live now, in a suburb of Los Angeles called Redondo Beach, is by far the least urban place I’ve ever lived. That’s part of the reason why I’ve had so much trouble adjusting out here. For three years prior, I lived above an Italian restaurant in Manhattan’s Little Italy in a five-story building filled with about 150 Chinese people; now I have a two-story house with a lawn, my neighbors are well-off white people that do not sleep seven to a bedroom, and I don’t have a bar or restaurant within walking distance. I hadn’t eaten at a Domino’s or a chain restaurant in years; now Domino’s is the best pizza I can get and I eat at Chili’s so regularly that two different family members got me gifts cards there as Christmas presents. I don’t think “oh, how the mighty have fallen” quite applies, but it’s something like that.

On Monday afternoon, I got home from Vegas (more on this later). It was about 4:45pm and my two roommates were both gone. Having had just driven the whole way back, I plopped down on the couch and was contemplating ordering a cheesesteak when I heard a rattling in the heating vent directly above my head. I’d just turned the heat on, so I attributed the noise to the heater kicking on. But then it made another, louder noise, and soon it was alternating between “thumping” and “scratching”. Something was alive, and something was in the heat vent.

Turns out I was only half-right – whatever was making the noise was not in the heat vent, but rather in the ceiling between the first and second floors. I know this because I traced the sound all over the house, from the living room to the kitchen to the dining room, as this creature made its way all around my home. This thing was not some little mouse or squirrel – there was some serious thumping going on, but no crying-out animal noises. Therefore, I thought it was either a giant rat, a raccoon, or a small wolf and/or baby werewolf that was working its way through the ceiling, noisily banging around. When she got home, my roommate Selena was so freaked out by the noise that she called (in no particular order) the landlord, 911, the fire department, the police department, Redondo Beach Animal Control, Terminex, Orkin, 1-800-Critters, and a few animal trappers, all to no avail. However, the good news was that the noises soon stopped, so the animal either had found its way out or died. If the former, sweet; if the latter, it was going to get ugly and mighty stinky in a day or two.

Fast forward to last night (Wednesday night). I was at the gym, dominating (brah), when I got a text message from Selena, saying that she was sitting in her car because she was convinced either that someone was in the house or that the “monster” was back. Normally, she would contact our other roommate Mark in such dangerous situations, as he is much more manly and stronger than I am, and absolutely, positively does not own a single t-shirt with sleeves. However, Mark is in NYC all week, so I was the next best roommate. I told her that I was leaving the gym but it would take me an hour to get home (since I live in the middle of nowhere), and that, in the meantime, she should go to a bar to kill some time. She said she’d go to the mall, and I told her I’d call when I got close.

As happens when I am at the gym, I drink a lot of water. I do this because I am obese and sweat very much, but the upshot is that by the time I get home after my hour-long (and sometimes longer) drive, I have to piss so bad that I can actually hear my bladder starting to tear. To help with this, I have a nalgene-type water bottle on the floor of the passenger seat of my car to pee in in emergency situations. I have used this twice, but it is not the best option. First, I’m driving, so there’s that (but at least most of my windows are tinted, so I can’t really be seen). Second, after working out, my penis is actually nested inside the lower half of my torso, so I have to a) coax it out of my body; b) pull it out the bottom of the leg of my shorts; and c) aim it directly into the bottle. Even with traffic hardly moving, this is still a very difficult maneuver to pull off (no pun intended), and the last time I tried it, I’m convinced the guy in the truck in the lane next to mine watched me, and watched me so intently that he was slowing down to keep pace while I tried to do this. Long story short, after that experience, I’d rather not pee in the nalgene bottle while driving anymore, thanks.

On Wednesday, as I raced home, I had to pee bad. Like, real bad. I called Selena when I was within two blocks of the place and she was still at the mall. I told her that I wasn’t going to wait for her and was going to check out the house on my own, since I had to piss so tremendously. I knew that it was very unlikely that there was an intruder in the house and that it was much more likely it was the animal, trapped again in the ceiling. No big deal.

But still, as I parked my car in the driveway and started getting out, I grabbed the only “weapon” I had, a tire iron. I figured that if the animal actually was in the house, I’d need to hit it with something. And if there was an intruder, since everyone in Southern California (save for, well, comedians and comedy writers) is very fit, the intruder would be, too, and I’d need all the help I could get fighting him off.

Our house is two stories, the second much smaller than the first, so the first floor has a slightly sloped roof leading up to the second floor (kinda like this place, but we don’t have a porch, so the sloped roof ends at the front door). It’s a rapist’s dream, really; even I can stand at the front door, reach up and pull myself onto the sloped roof, and walk right up to either second floor bedroom’s window.

I was thinking about this as I marched up to the front of the house, but I was worrying less about the potential animal or intruder and more about how I was going to soil myself. Tire iron in my right hand, I reached in my pocket for my keys with my left hand, and as I pulled them out of my pocket and they made their jingling noise, I felt something move. I froze, stopping a few feet before the door, and looked up. There, perched on the end of the roof just above the door, was a ginormous raccoon.

After farting or pooing a little bit, I slowly backed away. The raccoon looked on, only mildly interested in the sweaty chubby guy before him. When I was far enough away, I called Selena and told her not to park in the driveway (the driveway is within striking distance of the roof). I warned her about the raccoon and after she parked, she got out, shrieked, and began calling all those authorities that she called last time, with similar results. All the while, the raccoon paced along the roof, as if he was daring us to step up.

As I do in all situations in which I don’t feel manly and need help, I called my dad. I explained the situation to him and he was perhaps a little disappointed, saying that I should throw something at it. This idea was not without its merits; I had a softball-sized roll of electrical tape in my car and got that ready, because I was sure I could hit the raccoon, giving Selena and I enough time to get into the place. But after we hung up and I stood there, watching the raccoon, which was now just sitting on the roof, more and more I thought throwing a roll of tape at it was a bad idea. For one, what if I missed and it jumped off the roof and came it me? Who do you think would win that one: the wild raccoon or the fat fuck who’s afraid of thunder and was asked “Do you need help?” three times just an hour earlier after completing a half-mile run at the gym? Alternatively, what if I hit it, chased it away, and Selena and I snuck into the house? Wouldn’t the raccoon then think “People in front of house = bad” and maul me the next time me, Mark or Selena came home? I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I like to drink a little bit, and I’m not exactly sharp after 1am on Friday and Saturday nights. I’d be eeeeeeeezzzzz pickins’ for a raccoon out for vengeance.

So instead, a good ol’ fashioned Mexican standoff developed. Selena stood across the street, I stood in the middle of the street, and the raccoon just prowled that roof. At one point I wondered if someone was going to call the cops on me – reports of a white male in his late 20′s, disheveled and sweaty, standing in the middle of the street in an affluent suburb with a tire iron in one hand and a role of electrical tape in other (my ether-soaked rag was in my sock). But no cops came. And we just stood there.

After about twenty minutes, it looked like the raccoon walked to the back of the roof, near one of the trees, and disappeared. We waited a little while longer and devised a plan: Selena would walk slowly to the front door, unlock it and leave it open. I would cover her, would throw the tape at the raccoon if it reappeared, and if not, would walk in behind her.

Fortunately, the raccoon did not reappear and we made it safely into the house. But this, obviously, is not an acceptable situation. I called my dad again for ideas as to how to get rid of the raccoon, and his suggestion was not exactly graceful: throw meat on the roof near the second floor window, take a knife, tape it “real good” to a broom, pipe or baseball bat, wait for the raccoon to come to eat the food, and stab it. Good for some, I suppose, but one of my biggest weakness is my lack of stabbing experience. After we hung up, I figured the best way would be to put some food laced with rat poison on the roof, but I’m not sure that would mean instant death. I don’t care about the raccoon’s instant death because I’m humane, but because if it kills it slowly, the raccoon might eat the poison, crawl into the ceiling, and die hours later. Then we’ll dealing with a fifteen pound animal rotting in the ceiling. I know I’m moving this weekend and all, but that’s not something I want any friends of mine to deal with.

Instead, I think that Selena has made arrangements for a trapper to come to the house tomorrow, since Animal Control will neither go into vents or onto roofs (so I guess they only take care of wild animals that walked up to them, smoking a cigarette, and say, “Hey brother, I think I’m ready to turn myself in” – thanks a bunch, Animal Control!). However, I’m not sure that this is the case, since Selena’s not speaking to me today, since I spent the rest of the night last night quietly weeping in my room. It was a traumatic experience. Also, I was hungry and cranky. But at least steps are being taken by people who are not me to resolve this problem. This is how I like things to get figured out.

And you know what? I totally forgot about peeing. I mean, I did eventually, but not once after I saw the raccoon did I think about having to take a monster piss. So I’m throwing away the pissy nalgene bottle and the next time I have to pee on my drive home, I’ll think of that raccoon perched on the roof. That should help.

(Or I’ll just piss myself. Whichever, really.)

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(email reprinted with permission)

10) Joe Pantoliano: I was walking into a pitch meeting about two years ago, and he was walking out. We have a mutual acquaintance who introduced us, and he enthusiastically shook my hand and introduced himself as “Joey Pants.”

Incidentally, Joe Pantoliano and I used to have the same agency representation. Every year around the holidays, Joe would get every single person in the agency – from the 22 year olds in the mailroom hoping to become the next super agent to the partner in charge of the agency – a small gift, like a pen or a paper weight or something. And on this gift was inscribed the same thing, to every employee in the agency, every year: “What have you done for Joey Pants today?”

For this reason, Joe Pantoliano is one of my favorite celebrities.

9) Lisa Loeb: When I lived in NYC, my friend Nicole and I would go out once a month to a fancy-pants dinner. All told, we covered probably two dozen of NYC’s finest restaurants on these “dates.”

At one restaurant (I forget which), Nicole and I were standing at the bar, having drinks and waiting to be seated, when I saw a woman who looked exactly like a girl that was a pseudo-ex of mine. I tapped Nicole and said, “That woman over your left shoulder looks exactly like [pseudo-ex] in about ten years.”

Nicole turned around, looked at her, looked back at me and said, “Um, that’s Lisa Loeb.”

Turns out, we walked by when we were seated and it was indeed Lisa Loeb. I don’t know…I know it’s trite, but something about the librarian-type glasses really gets me (which would probably explain why I’m a paying subscriber to cumonmyglasses.net.)

(I really wish that was a joke.)

8 ) Boyz II Men: In 1991 or 1992, I was walking outside the Gallery, the downtown mall in Philly, when, stopped at a red light, I saw a giant white SUV-type vehicle. In the front seats were two guys from Boyz II Men. I think it was Wanya and Shawn, but I may be remembering incorrectly because those two are the most distinct-looking of the group. Of course, I could be wrong entirely – in 1991, my experience with black people consisted of the Cosby Show and New Edition, so it could have been two black guys who only looked like the guys in Boyz II Men.

Whatever. It was Boyz II Men. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

7) Method Man: In late 2003, my roommate Brian and I were drinking heavily. Just as later I would develop my “Friday Night Special” – two sugar free red bulls (to be mixed with vodka) and six Bud bombers purchased every Friday evening on my walk home from work – back then we would buy and drink two bottles of vodka per weekend, splitting each between us on Friday and Saturday nights before going out. In a related story, I think that if you combined our sexual experiences from those months, we had sex a total of .15 times.

(With others, I mean, not with each other).

(Well, maybe .04 of that .15 was with each other, but now is not the time for that discussion.)

Because Brian was (and somewhat still is) a deadbeat, it fell to me each weekend to go to KGB Liquor on Essex Street, right around the corner from our apartment, to buy the vodka. There, I struck up a kind of friendship with the two Russian guys who worked in the store. In truth, I sort of admired them; they spent all day around booze, they were always drunk, and they were always happy. These were three things that I aspired to at the time, and these gentlemen were a big part of the reason that I decided to take Russian a few months later.

On day around this time, Brian and I were sitting in Rosario’s, our local pizza place, having a slice with our buddy Mike, visiting that weekend. I looked at the line and saw a familiar face, though it took me a second to place him. When I did, I said, “Hey Brian, look – it’s our Russian vodka buddy!”

Brian and Mike both looked at the line, and Brian said, “Yeah, and there’s Method Man standing right behind him.”

Whoops. In fairness, I was much more familiar with the mysteries of Absolut than with the 36 Chambers, but still, whoops.

6) Christina Ricci: I saw Christina Ricci a few times around NYC: in bars, at concerts, on the street, etc. So often, in fact, that I joked we were “dating”, which sounds mildly creepy, but even more so when I’d say it to a picture of her which I laid down on my bathroom floor and hovered above, doing the one armed push-up, masturbating furiously and angrily. That makes it a little more creepy.

An ex-girlfriend of mine actually grew up with Christina in the suburbs of North Jersey. However, in junior high, they had some sort of “major falling out” (her words) and stopped speaking to each other. One night the ex and I walked into a bar (Sweet & Vicious) and lo and behold, there was Christina Ricci, sitting right there with a guy. Before I even saw her, my ex grabbed my arm and said, “Ohmygod – don’t look over there. We have to go somewhere else.” Apparently, the falling out was so major that my ex did not even want to run into Christina, who she had not seen in years.

I wanted to say, “Honey, with all due respect, I don’t think this girl even remembers you. I think we can have a drink.”

Of course, we didn’t. Love is a series of bargains.

5) Tina Fey: Before she was super famous, outside an Elvis Costello concert. Very tiny. Cute. Absolutely nothing else to say about this one.

4) Zach Braff and Mandy Moore: My agency used to throw a party for the Up Fronts, which occur every year in May in NYC, at Marquee. I’m not exactly sure what the Up Fronts are – I think it’s something about how the fall lineups for networks are announced, and this affects advertising, or something like that. I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention every time this was explained to me, including about three minutes ago when I called my agent to ask “What’s the deal with the Up Fronts again?”

This party was a yearly occasion for me to douche-up and get into a club that I would never otherwise get into, based on my overweightness, homeliness and IQ over 110. I would usually bring an equally unappealing friend or two and we’d hit the club, enjoy the open bar, and gawk at the celebrities.

My buddy Bill, who was on Average Joe 2: Hawaii for a few episodes before being cast off, and I went one year and were standing meekly at the bar, sucking back Grey Goose orange and tonics (his call; don’t ask), when two people, madly making out, abruptly bumped into us. We were standing right near the entrance of the bar, and these two, who were both very tall, had just entered with a group of people and literally fell into us. It was, as you may have guessed from the #4 and their names in bold a few paragraphs up, Zach Braff and Mandy Moore. Zach apologized to by buddy Bill and my elbow touched Mandy’s back, which was sweet.

Hours later, I cried in the cab ride home.

3) Drew Barrymore: Also spotted several times in NYC, mostly with the hippie drummer from the Strokes, most notably in one of those lighting stores on the Bowery when I was determined to get better lighting in my apartment, until I saw how much said better lighting would cost. Cute girl. Also very tiny.

2) Ben Stiller: At Pastis, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, with his wife and some friends. I have no recollection why I was at Pastis, which I generally think is very overrated, on a Tuesday afternoon. They have good french fries. Ben’s wife is very pretty. Also tiny, but commanding, for whatever it’s worth.

1) Bono: As recently recounted, I was flying from LAX to JFK and because I fly Delta all the time, I got bumped up to first class. One of the benefits of getting bumped is getting to go through first class security – you don’t have to wait in line and you can look down at the hapless hoi polloi, trudging their way through regular-people security.

Alas, this was in the middle of a Thursday afternoon, so the airport was rather empty. As I stood in line, waiting for my items to go along the conveyor and biding my time until I walked through the metal detector, out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the gentleman behind me, a tiny man wearing pink sunglasses.

Being judgmental and awesome, my first thought was, “What kind of douchebag wears pink sunglasses in the middle of the airport?” When his phone rang, I detected an accent and turned slightly to get a better look at him. The d-bag was Bono.

Whoops.