Ever wonder what it would be like to see Jack Handy in a Leave-it-to-Beaver episode directed by David Lynch?
A month ago when I started this blog, I encouraged my dad, who is retired and has too much time on his hands, to start writing one too. Dad loves to read and write (he has a Ph.D. in English literature) but most of all, he loves to tell funny stories, and to force other people to parrot back things he finds funny, ad nauseam. I have often retold my Dad’s humorisms to other people, and thought it would be a really cool idea to get him to write everything down in his own words. So I set him up a free wordpress.com account, showed him how to use Windows Live Writer, and let him go. Bigdaddytype2 is the remarkable result.
My dad is one of the funniest, smartest, quirkiest people I’ve ever known, with a remarkable memory for the most obscure details from his childhood. He can remember the full name of every kid in his kindergarten class, and he can still recite verbatim many of his elementary school poems and speeches. Last year in an airport, he recognized a man he rented a car from once in 1964 while at Tulane, and he still remembered the make and model, and how much he paid the guy to borrow his car ($25). (Asperger’s, anyone?) For his blog, he vowed to stick to the truth on every single detail, and to retell everything exactly as he remembers it.
Read all 98 of them, and watch the odd patterns that emerge. All the posts are short, full of both mundane and surreal details, and often end up in a startlingly different place from where they started because… well, because that’s the way it really happened. They sometimes end abruptly, with no real punch line, in a way that reminds me of Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor. How could something about nothing be so unforgettable?
Here’s one he just posted tonight:
Tattoos
August 11, 2008 by bigdaddytype2
Got returned from a wedding in Pasadena, California. Most of the 20 to 30 somethings there had tattoos. These were not little flowers or anchors on the forearm, but big tattoos all across the back. Coupled with strapless dresses, this made for a disconcerting “We’re not in Kansas anymore” kind of feeling. From a distance I saw a shoulder to shoulder tattoo across the back of one particularly chunky female attendee that I could have sworn said “Impeach Earl Warren.” On closer examination, however, it said something else, but I am not sure what.
Just check out these other beauties:
- First Kiss – bizarre reaction to his first kiss
- Golf Course – how my dad feels when he walks on the nearby course
- Poop Mystery – strange unsolved case of 1959
- Fresh Eggs – cosmic convergence of farm fresh eggs, hospice and chihuahuas
- Walgreen’s Conundrum – how he dealt with an embarrassing question
Leave him a comment, or tell him a weird story of your own. It’ll make his day!
August 11th, 2008 at 9:12 am
I kinda like this blog-iverse world. I don’t really read many of them – just the ones that Amy conveniently placed on my home page, which are hers. I also love to read Big Daddy Type2. I like his quirky writing. These days there’s not enough time in a day to read a book to your child, prepare a delicious homemade dinner, exercise, but there’s always time to do a quick read of something funny. It doesn’t take much time and usually doesn’t have another task linked to it. I kind of look at as free, no-hassle, no strings attached fun.
I love how one of Amy’s clients referred to as “Blogilicious”.
Makes me want to sing….”to the B. to the L. to the O. to the G. It’s BLOGilicious”