(via nataliedee.com)

A lady love of mine emailed me this picture today, because it sent her into hysterics. I’ll explain.

As you might imagine – and I’m sure many of you imagine this quite a lot – I am a very, ahem, unique lover. Not so much in the actual execution of the love-making – I’ve written before that my process of seduction is i) start making out, ii) count (in my head) to 30, and iii) stick it in – but rather in everything surrounding the love-making, including how to make it happen. Which, I guess for our purposes, we’ll call my Arsenal (with a capital A, of course).

For example, one of my perhaps less-endearing go-to’s in my Arsenal is derived from the theme song of the Monday Night Football, which climaxes (get it?) with Hank Williams, Jr. bellowing, “Are you ready for some football???” (If you are not familiar with the song, you can go to the 45 second mark in this video to hear the line in question. Also, welcome to Earth.)

When I am in the mood for sexual intercourse, I will often announce this to whatever lady love I am involved with by imitating Hank and scream-singing at her (wait for it), “Are you ready for some fucking???” There is also almost always a dance involved, sometimes in the nude, and occasionally I will add lyrics after this line (“We’re gettin’ ready to do it!” or “We’re gonna get really naked!”). Then, hopefully, the love-making. This song has been my mating call for almost the entirety of my sexually active life. Charming, I know.

(And ladies, please try not to swoon at the thought of a chubby, bearded guy seducing you by dancing around naked and singing, “Are you ready for some fucking?” And they say romance is dead.)

Anyway, back to the picture. One of the characters I’ve been doing for a number of years is Babushka. For those not familiar with the term, a babushka is both a scarf tied under the chin like the one in the pic above, and it’s also the Russian word for “grandmother.” Now, I hate to use the word “character” – there is nothing worse than a funny person discussing the characters they do; it’s so douchy, it’s cringe-worthy, but just roll with it – but ever since college (or thereabouts) what I’ll do is grab a towel, tie it around my head like a babushka, and go up to friends impersonating a gypsy or old Russian woman, saying “Babushka? Babushka?” over and over again in a beseeching/imploring tone, and more or less claw at them like I’m begging for money. This can last for a really, really long time, and usually only ends with them walking out of the room or pushing me away or saying, “I get it! It’s not funny anymore! Fucking knock it off!” I do this to everyone; everyone knows I do it; it’s just one of my things. I think it’s hilarious; others, sometimes not so much.

How does this relate to my Arsenal, you ask? Let me give you a scenario. Say I’m at a wedding or something with a lady love and we are in a hotel room. Say for whatever reason, I become aroused and want to have sex. Instead of initiating sex by, say, kissing the lady love or even walking up to her and poking her in the back or leg or arm with my semi-erect penis, I’ll instead walk into the hotel bathroom, strip nekkid, take a (dry) hotel washcloth, wrap it around my penis as a babushka would wrap around one’s head, and walk out of the bathroom with my babushka bird in my hand, and then start the imploring/beseeching “Babushka? Babushka?” pleas, as if my penis were begging for money or help or some lovin’. Then, hopefully, the love-making.

(And I know what you’re thinking – I should never, ever be monogamous, because I owe it to God, earth and all of womankind to provide this experience to as many females as possible.)

So today, when this lady love came across the above picture, she cracked up pretty good because, well, I mean, it looks like a penis wrapped up in a babushka. And so, like many women before her, she thought of my bird, and she laughed. A lot. Hysterically.

What are you gonna do.

[Happy Friday!]

Hear ye, hear ye: the 12th Annual Flood-Mulgrew “Drink Until You Shit!” tour will take place on Saturday, July 10 in North Wildwood, NJ. We will start at 3pm at Casey’s at Third and New York and go from there, before we end our pub crawl where so many pub crawls in the greater Philadelphia area end: Wawa. As in years past, t-shirts will be available for purchase. As in years past, they’re fucking awesome.

I gotta be honest – it’s gonna be tough to top last year’s DUYS. At the time, I was living in LA and the tour was around my 30th b-day, so I convinced about ten or so friends to come down from NYC and join the tour. Thusly, we took over almost an entire floor of a beachfront motel and really ripped it up. However, this year, familiarity breeds contempt: my NYC buddies see me all the time, and so they are no longer inclined to brave the weekend shore traffic just to watch me get drunk by the beach. Also, this year’s tour is a week before my 31st birthday. Not sexy at all (both the birthday and me).

However, as the case every year, I’m still looking forward to DUYS. I mean, how often do I get the chance to get drunk with many of my oldest friends and my family, nearly all of whom are wearing a t-shirt with my name on it? Let’s just hope that this year my now-preggo sister doesn’t drink during the tour (fingers crossed!).

[Speaking of, I was home a weekend or two ago and found my dad’s pot in a coffee cup in his cupboard. He and I and my sister were then later talking about pot (though I didn’t admit to finding his stash) and though he’s aware that my sister shouldn’t drink while pregnant, he’s emphatic that yes, she absolutely can smoke pot whilst knocked up. Like, not even joking, totally thinks it’s fine. I tried to tell him that it wasn’t, and my sister, the nurse, tried as well, but to no avail. So in Dennis Mulgrew Sr.’s book, you can smoke pot while pregnant. So if you’re knocked up and in his presence and feel the urge to light up, he won’t judge.]

Not to mention that, though the regrettable subtitle to the DUYS tour is the “Quasi-Celebrity Drinking Tour,” this is the first year that we’ll have a real-live author joining the tour. Namely, me. I’m trying to tie in some promotion wherein I’ll do something special for those who bring a copy of my book on the pub crawl, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle the emotional damage when I’m walking home at the end of the night and I see a dozen or so copies of the book strewn about the streets of North Wildwood, having been dropped or lost by their drunken owners and now crushed, muddied and stepped on by all the foot traffic. That’s just not gonna be good for the ol’ ego.

Any and all are welcome to attend. If you are interested in doing so and require more information, email me at jason@jasonmulgrew.com (I was going to do the “jason_at_jasonmulgrew_dot_com” thing to reduce spam, but really, I don’t care). Though there will no longer be an official motel – last year’s headquarters, the North Wind, is all booked – I’m still looking for places for myself, since every year on this thing there’s a 50/50 chance that I piss myself while sleeping, and I really don’t want to do that to my Aunt Maureen and her lovely couch. Also, I’m sure that at least two of my NYC buddies will email me Friday at 3:48pm the weekend of the crawl and say, “Dude, are you still doing that shore pub crawl? I WANT IN!”, so I’m going to need a place to sleep.

Hope you can make it, but if you can’t, just come to a reading and buy me a beer when I’m in/near your town and we’ll call it even. If you are coming, you’d better start practicing your drinking and your shitting now.

[If you’d like to join the DUYS Facebook group, you can do so here.]

As part of the SUMMER OF EVERYTHING IS WRONG WITH ME, I’ve got some updates on two readings/signings that I wanted to pass along to y’all.

The first (which I’ve already pimped to those of you on the Facebook and the Twitter) will be on Wednesday, June 23 at 7pm at the Borders in Eatontown, NJ. This one could be interesting because I’m taking the day off, renting a car, driving to Eatontown (which is only about 30 miles away from NYC on the Jersey shore), dicking around on the beach, and then doing the reading. So at the very least, I will be sunburned and possibly even drunk (note: I will not be drinking and driving, which is no laughing matter, but I will make a friend come with me and drive me around – these are the perks of being a real-live author). The other good news is that I don’t really know anyone that lives in or near Eatontown, so if you come out for this reading, there’s a good chance that I don’t read from a podium but actually sit next to you, look deep into your eyes, and read you a story about my tiny penis. If this isn’t just about the perfect way to spend a summer evening, well, I dare you to find a better way.

The second will be on Thursday, July 22 at 7pm in Los Angeles, at the Borders in Sherman Oaks. Ah, yes – I’m returning to my old stomping grounds (even though I’ve been back, like, three times since I moved away). That should be a fun one, and if at any time you hear booing, know that it is most likely coming from my agent, Joel (or, for that matter, his wife, Liz). I’d like to say that if you make it to the reading in Sherman Oaks, there will be tons of celebrities in attendance, a veritable who’s who of the Hollywood scene, but again, probably mostly Joel and Liz. And my buddy Dan, mouthing the words “You suck” at me from his seat. Then we’ll all get drunk after and high-five each other. Again, just a perfect summer evening.

I expect to have details finalized in short order for Cleveland, Chicago and Milwaukee, and I’m still waiting on NYC and Boston, and eventually Denver and Seattle (and possibly DC).

And thank you all again for making the book a success. Please keep recommending it to friends, writing about it on your blogs, status updates, Tweets, etc, and generally pimping the shit out of it. And remember, it’s summer! So when a friend asks, “Hey, do you know of any good beach reads?,” feel free to say, “Why, yes – yes I do.”

Finally, to summarize:

Eatontown, NJ
Wednesday, June 23 at 7pm
Borders
135 Highway Route 35, Monmouth Plaza
Eatontown, NJ 07724

Los Angeles
Thursday, July 22 at 7pm
Borders
14651 Ventura Boulevard
Sherman Oaks, CA 91403

Somewhere, probably in a bachelor apartment in Silver Lake or Hollywood, a 30-something with an MFA in Writing for Screen & Television from USC is grilling his last bologna sandwich on the hot plate in his kitchenette, putting food in his cat’s bowl one last time, burning all of his spec scripts, and preparing to hang himself in the bathroom.

I had never been to a book club before my book came out. Is that bad? To be fair, I don’t know many guys in their late 20’s/early 30’s who prefer canned domestic beer and AC/DC over coffee and Gabriel García Márquez and who are more likely to name the two starting quarterbacks in Super Bowl XXXV than two non-Hamlet characters in “Hamlet” that are in book clubs. Though I can probably nail the Hamlet question (I did play Laertes in a seventh grade production of the play, a performance called “stunning” by the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Gazette), this is me. And these are the people I roll with.

It’s not that my friends and I are not smart. One of us is a doctor, so that’s pretty impressive. And it’s not like we don’t like to read, either. I read a ton, and particularly am an expert on the works of Robert Ressler and John Douglas, two former FBI agents who have written extensively about criminal profiling and serial killers. So that’s good. And a look at my friends’ Facebook pages finds that, yes, many of them have gone so far as to fill out the “Books” section (though three of them list Motley Crue’s THE DIRT as their favorite book).

But for whatever the reason, book clubs were an enigma to me. And then, my book came out.

On or around the day of my book’s release, my friend Erin sent me an IM, asking me if I would sit in on her book club if they read my book. Sure, I said. Anything to help get the word out and sell a few more copies (and I mean anything – wink wink). But because I was unfamiliar with book clubs, I didn’t know what to expect. I mean, do we just sit around and discuss the book? Would people ask me questions? What if it was awkward and the discussion slow-moving? What if someone said, “You know, I thought it sucked?” What if this was all a big ruse that Erin had created just to get me to an unfamiliar location to stab me? (This one was a big concern, actually.) And at any rate, my understanding was that my book was not particularly book club-ish; I always thought that book clubs read heavier books, like that Afghanistan kite book or the one about the woman who gets divorced and then travels a lot or whatever Oprah tells them to read. Was my memoir, “a touching and hilarious story of a precocious young boy growing up amidst the chaos of his Irish Catholic family in South Philadelphia in the late 70’s and 80’s” (- Jason Mulgrew), really book club-worthy?

So in preparation for the book club, I did everything I could to ready myself. This included, among other things (telling multiple people where I’d be, picking out a very thick shirt, doing push-ups to strengthen myself in order to fend off a possible attack, etc), creating a list of questions and discussion topics for my book. I figured this was the least I could do, and would help move the discussion along if it happened to drag. Also, right before I showed up, I had a couple of drinks at a nearby bar. That helped. A lot, actually.

And then it was show time. And as soon as I walked into Erin’s apartment, I knew everything would be just fine. I was seated on a couch, a glass of wine was placed in my hand, and then we started chatting. There were questions about the stories in the book, questions about the style of the writing, questions about why and how I wrote the book, questions about the publishing process, questions about the subjects in the book and what they’re doing now – questions, questions, questions. Though I didn’t need to, I then passed around my questionnaire, which we used as a springboard for more discussion. Some of the topics we touched upon:

- Why is it that I was the first born, but my younger brother Dennis was named after my father? Please be brutally honest in your assessment.

- What is the tenth word on page 143? No looking, please.

- Early in his career, Elvis Costello said that he wrote all his songs for two reasons: guilt and revenge. Why do you think I wrote this book?

And I was loving it. We were laughing and chatting and laughing, and maybe chatting some more. It was, by all accounts, a resounding success – book clubs and me, it was love at first sight.

Since that night, I’ve sat in on probably eight or nine book clubs, both here in NYC and in LA when I’ve been out there, either those of friends’ or of friends of friends’. And somewhere between book clubs four and five (or thereabouts), it occurred to me that I may have found my life’s calling: to sit around with a group of women and homosexual men while drinking wine and eating dip and discussing all things me.

And so I present this offer: if you live in an easily-accessible part of the NYC area (read: somewhere I can get to without a car or a gazillion subway transfers and does not require me to get on a boat) and your book club reads my book, I will sit in on your discussion. We will talk, you can ask questions, I will sign books, we will have fun. I have only one rule, which is no stabbing (of me). In return, I will not steal anything from your apartment – but if the club meets at a bar, I can’t promise that I won’t steal anything from the bar (sorry).

An offer that you can’t (but probably should) refuse, to be sure. But don’t worry, you’re in a good hands. I’m book club regular.

Last night was the premiere of a show that I had been looking forward to for some time, “Expedition Great White.” It is pretty much what it sounds like: scientists and fisherman go on an expedition to capture great white sharks to study them. Even better, to capture them, they basically wrangle them onto this underwater hydraulic lift off the side of a boat, raise the hydraulic lift above the water, and study the shark, right there, as it sits on the lift above the water, the big ass shark flopping around while humans stand and poke and prod it. It’s pretty awesome, in no small part because as a viewer you can’t help but look at this shark, flailing around helplessly with humans all around him, and think, “Well, you ain’t so tough are you now, eh, bitch?”; in some respects it’s like watching a bully get browbeaten by his mother.

Two things you should know before we continue:

1) My DVR has become my best friend over the past few weeks. Uncle Jason has been extremely busy as of late. Not only has my regular day job been crazy, but since the book came out, my dance card has been filled with a number of things, like sitting on NYC book clubs who’ve read my book (more on this tomorrow), having drinks with various peoples, working on two (yes, two!) new projects, planning a road trip for events in Cleveland-Chicago-Milwaukee and events in Denver and Seattle (still waiting to hear on readings in NYC, Boston and LA), etc.

Are these good problems to have? Absolutely. Should I be complaining about them? Nope. And I’m not, really. To be honest, in many ways, I couldn’t be happier – I’m meeting great people, creating stuff that I genuinely like/think is good, etc. Things are awesome right now.

But still, it’s jam-packed, non-stop, go, go, go (and I don’t have a cocaine problem, sadly). So when I have some free time, I love nothing more than blasting the AC, crashing on the couch, consuming an obnoxious amount of calories, firing up the sweet, sweet DVR, and just drifting away into complete intellectual and physical passiveness. It’s glorious.

2) I now apparently love fishing (or at least, shows about fishing). One of my new DVR staples is “River Monsters,” a show on Animal Planet in which a British sliver fox travels the globe, meeting local peoples and fishing for, well, river monsters. Fascinating show, both because of the fish and the look into native cultures. And of course, the silver fox doesn’t hurt, either.

So when I saw the ads for “Expedition Great White,” I immediately added it to the DVR list. And so last night, after watching the Flyers get crushed and realizing that I care about the Celtics-Lakers series about as much as I care about Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, I fired up “Expedition Great White.”

And I was really, really disappointed. Sure, the sharks are pretty cool and huge and whatnot. But seemingly all the characters are rather unlikeable – the main fisherman who butts heads with the doctor is especially so. But that wasn’t my main problem.

What they’re doing in the show is attaching this radar sensors/trackers to the dorsal fins of the great whites before releasing them. When the dorsal fin comes above the water in the shark’s day-to-day cruising, the sensor shoots data to a satellite (in space!) and records the shark’s progress. This is, I think, to determine the shark’s migratory patterns, which is something important to learn about, because, well, I guess it’s important because they’re great whites and they’re cool.

And this is where I felt not only disappointed, but really, really fired up.

To be clear, I do nothing, in any way, shape or form, to help either the earth or humanity. My life is solely about me. During the day, I work. At night, I work, but on more fun stuff. On the weekends, I get drunk and try to finger girls. Somewhere in there is an insane amount of sports consumption, as well as laziness. But that’s pretty much what we’re looking at. I am dedicated to me and me only.

But if, by chance, I was to dedicate my life to some cause – if I were to throw myself full-bore into something I was passionate about, something that I thought could really make a difference, something that I’d spend many hours a week and weeks a year and years of my life doing at considerable personal/financial/emotional cost, I’m guessing a cause to which I would not dedicate myself would be FUCKING SHARKS.

Really? We need spend millions and millions of dollars on a giant boat with a hydraulic lift, on a hundred or so of these trackers, and on a goddamn satellite (in space!) so that we can study the migratory patterns of sharks? Are these patterns going to cure cancer? Or HIV? Homelessness? Poverty? Lead us to a pot of gold? Lead us to just regular pot? Anything?

I’m not knocking those with passion. I wish I had more of it (that is, passion for anything aside from VH1 Classic). And I don’t mean to get all lefty on you, but twice in the span of a one hour walk a few days ago I saw two homeless men take out their penises and pee in public, the second one doing so right in plain view of a few people drinking at an outdoor bar. Now, of course, I set out that day to actively locate homeless men’s exposed penises, but that’s not that point here. The point is that with all the ills in society, ills that affect actual living human beings, someone, somewhere, thinks it’s ok to dedicate their lives figuring out where sharks swim. And what’s worse, someone (or some body or institute) is willing to foot the mighty expensive bill for all this.

[I’m not kidding about the homeless guy’s birds, either – that really happened. Certainly a fun highlight to a late spring evening’s constitutional.]

Again, I know this is a simplistic view of things, but facts are facts: millions of bucks to figure out where sharks swim while homeless dudes all over America are taking out their birds and peeing in public. So – crazy idea – instead of spending the money on the stupid shark shit, why don’t we take that money, use it to round up all the homeless, and throw them in the ocean? (I’m kidding – that was too easy.)

This got my so fired up – and into a related tangent with a friend over IM about how NASA’s shit just seems to break all the time – so much so that even though I DVR’ed a second episode of the show, I can’t watch it. The fact that someone is spending all this money on sharks has completely turned me off to the show.

So what does this mean? A couple of possibilities:

- I have, at 30, already entered the “grumpy old man” stage of my life, and thus am looking to complain about anything.

- I am really biased against sharks. (For example, what if all this money and energy was spent discussing the merits of different Elvis Costello songs? Would I be so pissed then?)

- I am absolutely, totally correct here.

- All of the above.

I think it’s the last one. And in the meantime, to hell “Expedition Great White” – I’ve still got “River Monsters,” as well as a massive amount of murder shows from the ID channel. At least these shows aren’t trying to do anything but entertain and possibly educate me; Uncle Jason doesn’t like to get his hackles raised in his down time.