tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77689094597255333172024-10-04T18:59:43.440-07:00A One Man Focus Group With Little ModerationM.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-51121999557192117952011-02-18T10:23:00.000-08:002011-02-25T06:07:37.938-08:00

Lately, it has been tense at home. Making light of anything has been perilous. “We’re going to get eight to ten inches, tonight,” Hope said, as I came through the door dusted like a jam biscuit.“Oh goodie,” I say. “A porno!”“Why the f*#@ do you always have to f%$#ing talk that way? Jesus f@#*ing Christ!” “And I thought I was being X-rated?” And then she left. San Diego, she said. I presume

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-21434899922974312592011-01-20T08:28:00.000-08:002011-02-18T10:45:36.446-08:00

Happy year of the rabbit, reader(s). My more than a month-long absence from my beloved blog has been a trying thing. The reasons are many, the one that laid me down to be licked by the dogs was Scooter Braun not reading my previous post declaring my wish for him to shoot me to stardom as Senior Bieber. But let's no dwell on my minor setbacks. This post has to do with you--actually, me, but it

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-67877690939752685422010-09-29T11:51:00.000-07:002010-10-14T08:48:06.886-07:00

I want to go viral. That’s right, viral. I want to move through the Internet like a dose of salts. Capiche? Okay, in a nutshell, I want to be Justin Bieber. And, but for the thirty-year age difference, I don’t see anything getting in my way. If the Internet is ageless, then, why can’t I be?For anyone suffering from acute atrophication of their abiding hipness, Justin Bieber is a Canadian

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-761810861793976952010-08-25T03:04:00.000-07:002010-08-26T05:13:56.665-07:00

It isn’t that my turning 45 is a big deal, or anything. Age isn’t the concern, when mind and body are still willing. The problem is that sputtering into mid-life allows most of us to become the characterization of the person we feared people would discover, when we cared. Put succinctly, our cartoon selves. Perhaps I'm speaking from my perspective alone, but during puberty and through the most

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-85733198059931275272010-08-04T18:36:00.000-07:002010-08-09T10:51:49.651-07:00

In August, cool is the best way to describe the man cave. Dark, cool, sunless. I’m hanging here, the way a cured ham ages in some Italian chateau. The family and I have just returned from a week on Cape Cod, living high on the hog…guests at the country club and enjoying the recession proof luxuries provided by the Wianno Club. All I have to say is that real life sucks. It isn’t about being rich.

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-35410231917411860292010-07-02T05:24:00.000-07:002010-08-09T10:44:40.753-07:00

On this July morning with the family asleep I trundle down the stairs, literary ideas in tow, and catch this scene out of the bathroom window. Ah, 5 am is pastoral. Dewy grass, the first calls from the neighborhood birds and the unsullied perfumes of the garden are the rewards for making the effort to get up with the guy who delivers the newspapers through the window of his car. The sounds of the

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-17506596591945673622010-06-15T19:46:00.000-07:002011-01-25T11:16:57.851-08:00

When Samson was in utero, I started calling him “Baby Jihad.” You could say, I got caught up in the whole Iraq War debacle and was hoping other parents-to-be would catch on and send word of “resistance” to their unborn. Let’s face it, when it comes to resistance, our society is impotent. We are sheep. Herded by the judiciary as well as the economy; fearful of the most draconian legal system in

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-19945557417520624642010-04-19T03:12:00.000-07:002010-04-19T04:48:32.235-07:00

Hope said something interesting a couple of weeks ago. “You can have your man cave back.” I was evicted from my he-bunker due to the children’s need for a playroom and Hope’s need to remove their clutter, remember? I’m happy to report both parties are finding this arrangement to their liking. “Yes, if you go further into the basement,” she continued. “We can set you back up to the way it was.”

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-51280703365082015972010-04-07T03:56:00.000-07:002010-04-12T17:56:32.606-07:00

Our son, Samson, has informed his mother that he won’t be living with us for much longer, on account of the fact he wants to be a famous magazine writer. According to our future National Magazine Awards winner, famous magazine writers don’t live with their mamas and papas and so we should prepare ourselves for his inevitable departure. Not bad from a four-and-a-half year-old. Even in my darkest

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-20579362000870836212010-03-23T18:20:00.000-07:002010-03-23T18:49:38.572-07:00

Recently, my better half has become much more than that. She’s become the wealthier half: the whole loaf of our bread-winning duo. Big job. Bigger pay. If this were a race, between her profession (online marketing) and mine (magazine editing), the photo-finish would show hers crossing the line and that’s all it would show. Publishing has been ravaged, and I’m not talking bristle burn and nail

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-54797747101129328122010-03-14T20:12:00.000-07:002010-03-16T03:58:44.815-07:00

Once upon a time, when the Dow floated at an altitude of 11,000 daily traded shares and homes were ATMs with windows and gardens, men, as the advertising industry saw them, were the boobs of the boob tube. Portrayed in commercials as the foils to the era of movie-star aspirations for all and the “get mine” disclaimer for all disreputable behavior, the average Joe was the dinosaur in a clown suit,

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-66211414583423646772010-02-28T18:33:00.000-08:002010-03-03T06:00:17.992-08:00

I wonder where I can get a little consumer confidence? Any ideas? It’s harder to find, these days, since it’s on the same level as my subterranean den. I’d buy some, if there were any to be had, but, alas no dice. Seriously, most people aren’t putting their hands in their pockets for anything but the basics, because consumer confidence has gone the way of James Bond’s martini; its been shaken not

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-74728331262938258422010-02-21T19:13:00.000-08:002010-02-23T12:28:05.722-08:00

Welcome back. I’m ensconced, here, in the cave, though, for how much longer I can’t say. My wife is turning my lair into our children’s rumpus room. Stubbornly and with a modicum of passive aggressiveness, I shall continue to write until evicted by the press of oil-based Chinese-made toys, that my children adore and persistently chew.But enough about me and my spatially challenged home. When it

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-71631105682655460842010-02-14T04:07:00.000-08:002010-02-14T11:11:42.268-08:00

For those who haven’t visited, and I’m talking about 2 percent of the country, who are either on a space mission, doing “time,” or are banned from malls by their psychologist, Target, the mega store with everything, is the Ellis Island of our era. These days my wife goes alone. She prefers it that way. I prefer it too, since that one and only time around Christmas, two years ago. It’s not that

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7768909459725533317.post-7980382970888393472007-11-05T17:48:00.000-08:002010-02-14T11:09:24.240-08:00

It seems a little odd calling one’s blog “Confessions from the Man Cave,”since what’s there to confess about the contents of a den dedicated to the mindless pursuit of mainstream masculine recreation? The sin of Coors in the fridge? A sloping pool table? The vagaries of video games and the hidden meaning of the X in X-Box? My confession is this. This Man Cave…the one I’m writing from, is far

M.F. Perssonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04651764976321010096noreply@blogger.com0