I picked this little book in Barnes and Noble in Palo Alto (as one does... can you name-drop places?) nearly a year ago as a little light entertainment for a train or plane or something. Somehow, however, I never read it. Until last week, that is, when I scanned the "unread books" part of the shelves to see what was lurking there.
Halpern explains its origins at the outset. He was brought up with his brothers in middle class San Diego by a pair of hard-working parents, both of whom came from quite tough backgrounds. We only glimpse the mother occasionally, mainly because his father is the show stealer. It is his way with words, and an attitude to life you might summarise as no-bullshit-enlightened-macho, that single him out as the subject of this book. At some point, Halpern decided his father's earthy pronouncements deserved wider appreciation and created a Twitter feed (@shitmydadsays) to pass them on. It was only meant for friends, but spiralled quickly to a following of over a million, and ultimately a book deal was proffered.
The Twitter feed is still there, you can join nearly three million others in perusing the sayings of Halpern père at your leisure.
I suppose the book could just have been one of those "collections of wit and wisdom" things, but Halpern decided to make it more of a mini-memoir, anecdotes from his San Diego childhood with his remarkable dad. Short chapters, relating events over his tender and youthful years are interspersed with (sort of) relevant fatherly sayings, for example:
On receiving straight As on my report card
"Hot damn! You're a smart kid - I don't care what people say about you!... I'm kidding, nobody says you're not smart. They say other stuff, but not that."
On silence
"I just want silence... Jesus, it doesn't mean I don't like you. It just means right now, I like silence more."
On asking to have the candy passed to me during Schindler's List
"What do you want - the candy? They're throwing people in the fucking gas chamber, and you want a Skittles?"
On friendship, part II
"I don't need more friends. You got friends and all they do is ask you to help them move. Fuck that. I'm old. I'm through moving shit."
On breaking the neighbour's window for the third time in a year
"What the hell is the matter with you? This is the third time! You know, at this point I think it's the neighbour's fault... No not really, it's your fucking fault. I'm just in denial right now that my DNA was somehow involved in something this stupid."
On video game systems
"You can't have one... Fine, then go play it at your friend's house. While you're there, see if you can eat their food and use their shitter, too."
On picking the right college
"Don't pick some place just because you think it'll be easy to get laid there... No, no, that's a very good reason to pick a lot of things, just not this."
OK, one more...
On realizing he was starting to shrink due to old age
"I'm five foot eleven! I used to be six feet, goddamn it. Boy, going bald and shitting infrequently ain't enough for God, huh? Gotta rub it in, I guess."
I could go on, but don't let me spoil it for you.
I said it was rather touching. Well, it is. The dad portrayed in the stories told in the short chapters corresponds to the distilled wisdom in the quotes above, but the episodes related also fill out the picture of the relationship between a father and son, revealing (notwithstanding his - erm - direct style) a supportive and affectionate father and a son who would have his dad no other way.
It is important to say that Halpern pulls off this portrait-of-an-under-it-all-warm-and-loving-man without lapsing into sugary Hollywood mode. Put it like this, I don't think Hollywood would have done the last aphorism in the book, on one one of life's more momentous decisions, exactly like this:
On the right time to have children
"It's never the right time to have kids, but it's always the right time for screwing. God's not a dumb shit. He knows how it works."
Recommendation? It's fun. Read it if you think any of that was funny.
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| The Halpern boys with their dad. The author is the little one |
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