you’re not doing it right

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though he was by no means 21D, i did manage to spend my flight from san diego to nashville (by way of phoenix) with a very engaging man.

sure he was one-dimensional, but you know, but who needs those extra two dimensions when you have me in stitches throughout the entire cross-country flight?

that’s right, in true “i only really read books this quickly when confined to a flying tin box” fashion, i lol-ed my way through michael ian black’s you’re not doing it right in its entirety on my early morning jaunt from america’s finest to music city usa this past friday.

and how could i not? MIB (michael ian black, not to be confused with will smith’s blockbuster hit) is ridiculous. and by ridiculous i mean, he’s actually ridiculous (he openly confesses to hating his baby when the little guy won’t stop crying for four straight months) and also ridiculously hilarious (he admits to looking at pictures of fat kevin federline (or FKF as he lovingly refers to him) to make him feel better about himself). and then, out of nowhere, he offers a really pithy life lesson. i mean, he’s basically a modern day renaissance man.

an oftentimes really inappropriate renaissance man who has an affinity for choice language and brutal honesty, but a renaissance man nonetheless.

so naturally i had no choice but to voraciously consume every last literary morsel of recounted life stories and “it’s not a chick car” volkswagon beetle references in four hour’s time.

because i mean, not just anyone can go from this:

“…Did you work?”

“Of course I worked. I got a lot done.”

Which is true, if you define “getting a lot done” as doing online retirement calculations, researching the world’s best cities to live, and spending three hours looking at photos of Britney Spears’ ex-husband, Kevin Federline.

For some reason, I am mildly obsessed with Kevin Federline’s weight gain which has been substantial over the past few years. A former backup dancer, he now looks like he ate a backup dancer.

I do not know why FKF (Fat Kevin Federline) holds such fascination for me. I’ve never met Kevin Federline and do not know anything about him as a person, but I project onto him all the worst fears I have for myself, fear of wasted potential, fear of failure, of losing my family, of making terrible hair decisions. When I see those paparazzi images of FKF, sometimes sporting dopey cornrows, sometimes waddling across some anonymous poolside deck with beer in hand, I imagine a guy who does not know who is, what he is supposed to be doing, or how he wound up in the unexpected circumstances of his own life. This is how I feel about myself 90 percent of the time.”

to this touching sentiment in the book’s closing chapter:

“…This is the real gift of marriage, I think. When people talk about “growing old together,” what they are really talking about is the desire to see somebody all the way through, to connect your life with somebody in such a deep way that the word old loses whatever scary power it might have had on us alone. Yes, we change. Of course we change. I am no longer the six-year-old on the Big Wheel, the nine-year-old receiving his first kiss, the fifteen-year-old getting his a** kicked in high school. Those are just stories I carry around like old seashells. Nobody cares about old seashells, but you can put them in a big glass and once in a while maybe you run your fingers through them and feel their surfaces. We keep them safe and add to our collection, one by one, over the years, and maybe the kids take some of them along when they start their own families, and in the end, I think that’s enough.”

and a man capable of this array of emotion is certainly a man who can accompany me on a flight any day of the week (three-dimensional gents preferred).

so, you know, read it.

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