You're Making Me Hate You (22 page)

Let’s talk about something horribly inappropriate now.

Most babies are really ugly, man.

Sorry, that shit is true. I’ve seen infants who look so bad, you know for certain they are
never
going to grow into their faces. So it’s everything I can do to keep from losing my shit when I hear parents speak glowingly about how beautiful this ugly-ass cherub is. Oh brother—seriously? You don’t see what’s wrong there? His nose is backward! Her eye looks like it drifted down the side of her face, and that’s her
best
feature! Your kid looks so fugly I want to call Ghostbusters. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I’m here to tell you plainly: the beholder can also be fucking blind. I’ve seen cuter kittens thrown into sacks and tossed into rivers. Y’all need to get your damn prescriptions checked, and I’m talking eyeglasses and medicines, whatever they may be. Jesus on a skiff …

I’ve had to walk away from my friends when they ask questions they know damn well I’m going to answer honestly. There’s
too
much truth, you hear me? I have a friend with a daughter who looks very severe in the face. If I were forced to testify in court, I would swear the kid looks like a popular
Harry Potter
character. She asked me point-blank one day whether I thought she was pretty. I didn’t know what to do, so I turned to a simple series of movements I have dubbed the “nonoffensive committal.” Next time you find yourself in a
sticky
situation (snicker), try this shit on for size.

It starts with a narrowing of the eyes, like you’re trying to see something that’s too far away. For those of you with perfect eyesight, pretend you’ve sniffed out a cat box and you’re trying not to smell while you breathe. Then slowly but surely—and this is key—SWIVEL YOUR HEAD in a languid manner, fast enough that it looks like you’re nodding yes but slow enough that deep down you
know
you’re shaking your head no. As you’re doing this, you have to give a sort of “Mmmmm …” sound, which
could
mean yes or could mean no. All of these things really rely on whatever the other person is looking for in an answer. If they want positive reinforcement, they will see a person emphatically agreeing with them. If they feel like the kid could use a “facelift,” they’ll see someone else who sees the problem. All kids are beautiful … on the inside. Some of them look like they’ve been initiated into a gang recently. I know, right!? That shit
is
fucked up! But you don’t know whether I’m talking about your kid or not …

And you might never know.

The fucked up thing is that’s not even the worst thing that me and mine say about your kids. Should I tell you how bad it gets? Shit, might as well—no one in the fucking world would believe it. How many of you are familiar with football pools? You know what I mean: you chuck your money in the kitty, pick a winner, and pray that something goes well for your team. This can be applied to any sport and has been for many years now. People make out like bandits. You get enough people chucking money in the pot, that shit can look quite tempting. It makes you do some crazy shit. It makes you consider applying the same stakes … to whether certain kids are going to grow up a certain way.

I know, but I’ve routinely warned you all that I am
not
a good person. I don’t know why you keep coming back here …

Yes, my friends and family and I bet on whether specific kids are going to grow up to do things like, oh I don’t know … rob a bank, fail in school, wear another person’s skin as pajamas—you know, normal shit that kids grow up to accomplish. I’ve got $20 bucks on a kid right now who I am convinced is going to stir someone’s guts up with a paint scraper. Trust me: if you saw this kid and talked to him—
or her
—you’d never fall asleep unless you had a few locked doors between you and he—
or she
. Yeah, it’s a fucked-up thing to bet on, the absolute collapse of a child’s potential and sanity. But hey … football season only lasts so long. And if most of you didn’t suck at raising your kids, I wouldn’t have a reason to bet on their almost inevitable social destruction.

This chapter has of course gone off the rails (that seems to be the way I write books), right on schedule … get it? Rails? Schedule? IT’S A TRAIN JOKE! And this is a chapter about sucky kids! Right? I know, it’s
flawless
! Well, I had to say something to make this seem more like humor and less like my manifesto against the younger folks of the human genome. Seriously, I don’t hate all children—just yours, really. They’re all little boogers dedicated to ripping up your shit, hitting you in the face, and leaving enough food in their wake that cockroaches around the world consider your home the Tahiti of the insect world, with manna from heaven and streets made of candy, or in this case, old Cap’n Crunch and slivers of turkey sandwiches. I’m no mind reader, but I’m going to guess that you didn’t buy that house to attract vermin from any and all continents and feed their millions of babies. So why do you let your fucking kid get away with that shit?

I’ve been watching this all, and it’s getting worse with each round of generations and kin: people too busy fucking and
procreating to think beforehand about whether that’s a good idea. Then when they have those kids, they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing and get super-butt-hurt when you deign to offer some advice, something like, “You might want to keep your kid from putting his mouth on that dumpster, Marge …” You’d think the smell would’ve warned the kid away from trying to taste the trash, but I think some kids are just dicks so they can prove they exist, even if that means risking their tongues to the gods of garbage. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m
going
to laugh. But I won’t like it.

Part of being a parent is of course keeping the kid alive until he or she can do it themselves, but the other part is teaching them
not
to be a fucking asshole, and I’m sorry, but you’re all becoming very fucking derelict in those goddamn duties. I am not condoning physical punishment—God knows, I took enough of that shit to last my kids and
their
kids several lifetimes—but there is nothing wrong with an occasional swat on the behind to remind them that there are consequences for bad behavior. I don’t give a shit what the fucking hippies say; it’s not abuse to give your kids a spanking. I think it’s worse to raise a spoiled little shit. Then again, if you raise your kid right, you won’t have the need to give them a swat. These are all parts of being a parent—not parking your kid like a bike at the park so you can go shopping.

Every time—and I mean
every time
—I am away from my kids my guts are torn up, I have a hard time sleeping, and I never feel totally happy. Seeing as I’m away from them a lot, you get the picture on what it’s like to be C motherfucking T. But that little time I get with them I try to be the best dad I can, whether that means playing with them, teaching them, or keeping them in check. This shit is hard, man. It’s not easy being a
good
parent;
it’s a lot of work. That’s why not everybody takes the time to do it. Sure, they’ll fuck like bunnies and have the kid so they can post shitty selfies with their baby in the background, but they won’t raise it right, feed it right, treat it right, and they won’t give a fucking shit because it has nothing to do with
them
. Selfishness is breeding our children into ungrateful monsters, and there’s only so much I can do about it.

But you just wait. Someday you’re going to turn around because you need something from your kids or someone else’s kids. You’ll show up at a store or the DMV or the airport (fuck that place) or Long John Silver’s (FuckING MILT!), and you know what you’re going to get? You’re going to get a fucking adult who acts like a teenager because they weren’t taught early on to respect and be responsible. You’re going to need them to help you, like really help you. You’re going to need someone to take care of you. You’re going to need someone smart and savvy and supportive because you can’t do a lot for yourself anymore. You’re going to look to this generation, a generation raised through glass and watered on pitiful liquids, and ask for help. You’re going to ask them to be people and act like people who care. You’re going to need empathy. You’re going to need intelligence. You’re going to need some fight other than fists and madness. You’re going to think about how you raised your kids and how your friends raised theirs, and you’re going to get worried. You’ll hope and pray that things will be okay.

You’re going to need help. You’re going to need your kids to be someone that, unfortunately, you didn’t raise them to be. You’re going to need them to be stronger and better than you raised them to be. You’re going to close your eyes, whisper “please,” and turn around, reaching out with a hand that needs desperately to feel warmth, safety, and strength. You’re going to need
that help from your son or daughter or son and daughter. You’re going to turn around.

No one’s going to be there.

And it will be your fault.

I MAY BLOW
a million minds right now, but I have a confession to make. We’re talking worldwide exclusive here. So here goes …

I fucking
despise
the show
Glee
.

Seriously, I fucking hate it. Now before you go off on some crazy tangent about how they depict diversity, acceptance, and a positive view on how young people can get along together in a perfect world, it has nothing to do with that, although the acting is mediocre and some of the ways they’ve deified the Monteith kid are gross and inappropriate. No, my level of maximum vitriol has nothing to do with any of that; it’s what they do to the music. Never mind the originals—that music is pure trash and the fact that some of those songs are hits is a travesty to the term “hits”; it’s the way they treat other people’s material. The way they auto-tune, “modernize,” and flagrantly neuter some of
these songs is a fucking joke. The only good by-product of the “
Glee
bump,” as it’s known in certain circles, is that the artists who
wrote
those songs get a surge on iTunes and record sales. The irony is that many of the children who watch that show don’t have a fucking clue that the cast is ruining songs that were written maybe ten to twenty years before they were born. But listening to the “teenage” performers destroy these classics is like watching Wolverine trying to detail an Aston Martin DB7 with his claws out. I can only thank Satan that by the time this is published,
Glee
will be no more. As I’ve always said, good riddance to bad rubbish.

Many of you are very familiar with my opinions about music. Well, if I never write another book again, I am going to take this opportunity to really present how I feel about the notion of “popular music” today. Hopefully this will put an end to the constant questions I am bombarded with in every interview I have ever done.

Every day I am assaulted by garbage. I wake up in the morning, turn on the TV, and instantly get stung by a million mediocre bees in the form of crappy writing, weak synth pop, gargling vocals, and nasal so-called rock ’n’ roll. It all sounds the same: every song has the familiar quirky keyboard/acoustic “riff,” a moaning attempt at a verse by college dropouts, and a falsetto melody disguised as a hook that serves as the big “chorus.” They may be in different keys and performed by different bands, but EVERY SONG IS THE SAME. And it gets worse: every fucking song is designed to get you to buy something. That’s because every “popular” song you hear is attached to car insurance, real estate websites, Apple products, expensive headphones, tablets, auto dealers, and anything else that’s trying to take more of your money. Commercials are the new music videos now, and every
channel on television is MTV. It’s genius and it’s crass and it’s slowly but surely killing my soul.

If you watch closely, most commercials that feature these songs have the band name and song title embedded at the end like the list of stipulations assigned to a Labor Day weekend car sale. That’s how they get away with it: the bands convince themselves that it’s the best way to get their “art” to the people. They sell out their integrity, if they ever fucking had any, to get a quick little taste of what might have been before the age of the Internet, the truest killer of giants. Because of the Internet, every way that bands could make a living righteously was destroyed or dismantled. Record sales, videos … hell, even live shows in a way—these were all supplanted with the push of a button and the click of a mouse. Suddenly everything you worked for could be downloaded illegally. Instantly music videos had no safe haven on TV anymore, and even though YouTube has given them a new life, it wasn’t the same. The structure had been scheduled for demolition, and no one cared.

Then those clever little Indie hipster bands figured out they could help shill for The Man and get their crappy half-assed single on the telly by licensing it to the corporations, thereby making them all neither independent nor hip. Their ideals became transparent, their style became a crock, and it opened the floodgates for hundreds of copycats willing to fake a genre to get ahead. The band Fun was nominated for a Grammy award for an album that had two singles featured in at least eight commercials, and that’s just off the top of my head. Pop songs are nothing more than hamburgers and high-end shoes now, commodities used to scrape for the last thing we hold precious in the world—money. Everything’s about money. Everything’s about capital. Everything is afforded a price tag
that we can’t possibly afford in the end. It’s fucking disgusting, and the fact that it’s my industry, my way of life, the only thing I’ve ever been good at or cared about in the world makes me want to pull open the planet’s mouth and throw up into it uncontrollably. I am ashamed to be a singer. I am embarrassed to be a songwriter. What’s worse is that I don’t really know what to do about it.