I just had a very enjoyable dinner with my dad. My pa. The old man. The tree to my nut. The ol' block which produced this chip.

At one point he tells me that a friend of the family has died. It was really this guy's wife that was the friend of my mother's. Here was the conversation.

Dad: You know that, um, what's his name died? Connie's husband.

Me: Oh, no I didn't know that. Cancer, right?

Dad: Yeah, he was down to like 75, 80 pounds.

Me: God damn.

Dad: Yeah. He was an asshole, though.


This struck me as hilarious. I never did really know the guy, wouldn't recognize him if he punched me in the face, but by most accounts, he really was an asshole. I just love the fact that my dad worked that one in there about 7 seconds after he informed me of his death.

Perhaps there is no hell. We might all be in heaven or whatever just floating around, but your real punishment is to hear what people have to say about you after you died. You know what people had to say at the guy's funeral was all roses and sunshine, but I'm sure when they were in their cars driving from the church to the cemetery, they said what they thought of the man. That's where the truth comes out. The car ride. I've heard things about relatives that I never heard until that car ride. Many car rides from a church in Queens to a graveyard in Brooklyn. Many truths told.

One other thing of note that happened this evening I should probably save for my secret blog, or at least my own personal diary beneath my bed with the lock on it, was this -- I was talking to my dad about how I've been watching a lot of old movies, classics that everyone should see, and I mentioned that I watched "Some Like It Hot" and how funny the movie still is, and he said, "Oh yeah! My father took me to see that." My dad's dad (technically, my grandfather) died when my father was only 15, so he doesn't have a lot to say about him, so this totally caught me off guard. He hardly ever mentions the man. But when he said that, I got chills all of the sudden. Of course, I immediately thought of Haley Joel Osment telling Bruce Willis that the chills you get on the back of your neck are caused by dead people. So this was the first time I ever really had any contact with my grandfather on my dad's side. My grandpa. The older man. The root of the tree. I never had the chance to be in a car during a funeral to hear about him, but I've heard a bit. He didn't seem like a nice man. But he took my dad to see a funny movie, so this is the first time I've ever had an image of him laughing. Ain't that some shit?