It doesn’t have a name yet, nor has it been sold to a publisher, nor have I even finished writing the proposal. And while I hate to be cryptic and vague, I do have some things to share about this project.

At its core, the book is about popularity.

It’s a subject that has confounded me since I was a boy. What makes someone popular? Who decides what character traits or personal achievements warrant the attention of the masses? Perhaps these questions were easier to answer decades ago, before the marketing and public relations machines began to rev with the ferocity they do now, creating an environment in which virtually anything can be made popular when enough money is put behind it. But my interest is not in what that machine can do, but rather in what people see in one another.

Is there a way to put a price on popularity? What is it worth? For now, I can only answer that question for myself.

Before I started writing this blog, popularity was as familiar a concept to me as animal husbandry or neurophysics. I knew only my circle of friends, and was only known by them. But somehow the magic of the Internet somehow brought me a small army of faithful readers. Although I have never met most of you and therefore cannot know exactly what you think, circumstantial evidence indicates that I have attained—and it feels prohibitively narcissistic to say this—some small level of popularity.

I’m fortunate that I can quantify what that has meant for me, at least in terms of tangible actions (books sold, ad space filled, etc.), but I know that not everyone has that luxury. Some may not know they’re popular at all. Others may be aware that they’re adored or valued a large group of people, but oblivious to the light that popularity has cast on their lives, careers, and relationships. Again, no one really gives a shit how many Prada bags or Bentleys the cast of The Hills has bought because of their manufactured stardom. That’s not reality. That’s the machine. What I seek is authenticity. Homegrown popularity. Whether it exists now or in the past, what does being beloved in that way mean in the bigger picture?

That’s what I’m trying to find, and that’s what I’m compelled to write.

There is white plastic bag on the dining room table and from it I am retrieving four small cardboard boxes filled with takeout Chinese food. Each box has a tabbed closure on its top with the words Thank You printed in a pseudo-Asian font designed to make the eater believe his Moo Shoo is fresh from Beijing rather than the little hole up on First Street, across the strip mall parking lot from the cigar shop and DK’s Donuts. I open the box closest to me and am almost immediately engulfed by a puff of steam that smells at once disgusting and spectacular. Turns out its Mongolian Beef, but I liken the aroma to that of a really nasty fart ripped by really gorgeous woman.

“What are you talking about,” Hot Wife says, ripping a pair of wooden chopsticks from a cellophane package. “You have calves. I love your calves. Which one’s the Dynasty Chicken?”

“Honey, these aren’t calves,” I say, turning my back to her and standing on my tiptoes. “There’s barely anything there. It looks like someone attached a ‘light days’ panty-liner to my shinbone. That’s not what a real calf looks like. The guys I see look like they’ve sewn horse hooves to the backs their shins.”

“Those are professional athletes, Danny. It’s their job to have big calves.”

“No,” I say defiantly. “I’m talking about the people I see at the gym.”

Hot Wife snickers at me. “Danny. Be real. When was the last time you actually saw the inside of a gym?”

One of the things about my wife that really pisses me off is that she never lets me get away with anything. She’s right this time, too. I haven’t been to a gym in months – and the last time I was there was to cancel my membership. Given that I was paying twenty bucks per month and almost never going to the gym, it was the proper move financially.

Hot Wife is vigilant about her own physical health. She holds a degree in nutrition, regularly outworks the instructors in her step aerobics classes, and eats a diet so green and leafy that she may as well be a rabbit. In fact, the Chinese buffet spread out before us was an indulgence the likes if which we see about as often as Haley’s Comet. Conversely, my body is my sewer. I attribute my skinniness entirely to my genetic fingerprint because were I not predisposed to my slight build, my food choices would have long since put me among the growing population of overweight and obese Americans. I am the nutritional equivalent of a 10-year-old boy. I like meals that come with little packets of ketchup, a wrapper that makes the main course look like a present, and the option to upsize my medium-sized Diet Coke to a cup the size of an Iowan grain silo. My notion of what is and is not palatable is so skewed that I think the meal before us looks borderline vegetarian, what with the cut-up pieces of green onion in the chicken fried rice and the big chunks of celery in the Moo Goo Gai Pan and, wait!, is that a rogue shaving of cooked carrot in my egg drop soup?!

The thing is, this isn’t funny to Hot Wife. We’ve been married 13 years and she has tried valiantly over that time to help me (if not force me) to see the potential (if not probable) ramifications of my reckless lifestyle.

“It’s not just about you, Danny,” she told me one day when I came home with a Western Bacon Cheeseburger and an order of fried zucchini so greasy that the brown paper bag it came in was discolored and beginning to disintegrate. “I don’t want our kids to grow up without a father. And I don’t want to lose my husband. But it doesn’t matter how badly I want it because I can’t make you change. It has to come from you.”

It has not yet come from me. Oh, I’ve tried. Almost every time Hot Wife has confronted me with her concerns, I have pledged to work harder. I have promised to start eating better, to give up my $6-per-day Starbucks habit, to work out, to let her help me. And every time I have made such pledges I believed it what I was saying; it has never been about a lack of desire. But here is a humiliating admission: I’m horrible at keeping promises. I have failed. It’s so much easier to be lazy when I look in the mirror and see a skinny dude. How bad can it be if I still weigh 160 pounds? How desperate is the situation when I can take off my shirt and still see my ribcage?

I look across the table and see Hot Wife meticulously picking small bits of chicken out her fried rice, inspecting them, and casting aside the pieces she deems too fatty, too fibrous, or too closely resembling parts of a hen from Chernobyl Farms. She catches me watching her and knows I think she looks ridiculous, but she continues her examination unfazed. I return my attention to my own plate where I have been chasing the same evasive piece of beef around in circles with my chopsticks for at least sixty seconds.

“Come here, fucker,” I say.

“Danny!” Hot Wife says, motioning with her head to our living room where our children are singularly focused on Spongebob Squarepants after a scrumptious dinner of Costco chicken taquitos and edamame. “Watch your mouth!”

This is a dance we do. I say or do something immature or inappropriate, she corrects or chastises me, and I throw her my most playful smile. For the longest time the intended message behind that smile was, “It feels good to be bad. You should try it sometime, hard-ass.” But in recent years my position has morphed, my posture toward her reprimands taking a turn toward self-defense, as if to say, “This is who I am, honey.”

But something is different this time. The look in Hot Wife’s eyes registers not as condescending or controlling, but as disappointment. And as I finally drop one of my chopsticks and spear that elusive morsel with the tip of the other stick, I ask myself subconsciously, “Is that really who I am? Am I really the kind of person who wants to defend cursing in front of his children rather than model decency for them?”

It hits me at that very moment that I’m six months away from my fortieth birthday. I’ve known it was coming and I frankly haven’t cared. I’ve regarded age with great disdain because I’ve never felt my age – and perhaps that is because I have never acted my age. But as that day draws nigh I have begun to examine myself and reconcile it against that number: forty. Something doesn’t jive. There is a deficiency or a disconnect somewhere that can no longer be avoided or ignored in hopes that it will go away by itself, like squealing breaks or a developing zit.

When I was a kid, forty-year-old people were officially old. My parents and their friends were by no means young adults anymore. They were strict and principled and grown up, and I took some measure of comfort in that. Let’s face it: kids need structure. And I had it. There were rules that never changed. There was consistency, which I found terminally inconvenient at the time, but I see now how imperative it was to my development. Now I am the parent and I wonder if my kids are getting that structure and consistency from me. As disappointing and humiliating as it is to admit, when I look at my own behavior as a father I see someone who would rather be a friend and peer to my kids than the adult figure they need me to be. I like to break the rules with them, and I often turn a blind eye when they choose to do so independently. Their mother has endeavored to establish a healthy diet for them, but I’m the one who takes them to McDonald’s when she’s not home. Hot Wife is the adult and I am the saboteur. And beyond filling that role as a parent, I do it to myself, too. I undermine my own health, my own ability to be there for my family, by failing to keep myself fit and well. I need to change, not just for their sake, but also for my own. It is time for me to grow up in body and mind.

“I think I’m going to get myself into shape,” I say.

Hot Wife rolls her eyes. She’s heard that line many times before.

I’m not a superstitious person but I have a regimented routine when it comes to eating fortune cookies: I hold the cookie with both hands, break it apart in the middle, and eat only the half that holds the little fortune inside. In this case it’s the half in my left hand, which I strip of its paper passenger and pop into my mouth. As I chew, I open the small rectangular and look at my fortune. When my kids are around it’s my habit to invent phony messages and pretend that’s what it says on the paper. Something like, “Help! I’m trapped in a fortune cookie factory. Please send help.” But tonight, since the kids are in the other room, I read the real fortune.

It says, “You will take a chance in the near future, and win.”

I don’t know why I have been drawn to this subject, but I have sporadically throughout my adult life been drawn to books about how and what and why we eat. Fast Food Nation. The Omnivore’s Dilemma. And I’m currently reading Eating Animals. I’ve managed to summon the requisite level of disgust with each of these books—acknowledging that I eat meat from cows drunk on chemicals and chicken fingers made from chickens that eat their own excrement and products made with the big business, genetically modified corn that has put the vast majority of real farmers completely out of business. But with each of these books and each new horror revealed therein, my outrage has vanished immediately after I finished reading. I still eat meat. I still eat corn-based foods. I still know (but choose not to actually understand) that the food I eat is more an amalgamation of chemicals and fillers and bullshit (literally?) than it is the actual food I bought or the food shown on the menu.

What has finally repulsed me to the point of action is what I’ve read of the behavior of the enterprises involved in so-called “factory farming.”

There is no need to mince words on this: these businesses are inhumane, immoral, and irresponsible because it pays well.

I cannot separate in my mind what I have read about the business of food from what I read about Michael Vick’s dog-fighting ring. Cruelty for cash. Their businesses are so bloated with profit, so drunk with power, that in order to meet the high demand we Americans create they have actually gone so far as to fuck nature in the ass (and that is the proper tone to take, in my opinion because that is the attitude of these companies). I urge you, as strongly as I can, to read one or all of the books I mentioned above. I’m certain you will be shocked.

I do not wish to fire all kinds of gory details at you; there are plenty in the books. But imagine an industry where lobbyists fight to have laws rewritten so as to allow animal cruelty (therefore maintaining profitability). Imagine an industry that allows you package of eggs to be sold with the words “cage-free”, which sounds like the chickens are out running and pecking in a big expanse of land, but in reality means the chickens are stacked on top of each other in a small, dark, indoor box, shitting on each other, biting each other’s heads off, suffocating. I don’t want to support that crap in any way. Not with my wallet. Not with my appetite. Not with anything I have or own or control.

I assure you, I do not belong to PETA. I no longer have a dog, but when I did, I did not buy it sweaters or take glamor shots with it or have it cremated so its ashes could live with me forever. I’m just a guy who looks at the world in an average way, and I’m telling you I think this is wrong. Wrong on an existential level. 

There. I took a stand.

Now what?

Ugh. Am I really, seriously contemplating giving up animal products? I would never have predicted this for myself. I hate vegetables. They are a distraction to me—more of a garnish on the plate than fair game for my fork. Few things make me as happy as a plate of Buffalo wings and a cold beer. I love steak. Spicy tuna rolls speak to my soul. But lately, all I taste is shit. All I think when I’m eating is that I’m part of some big machine that feeds the big corporations that perpetuate this whole big orgy of cruelty, disrespect, obesity, environmental damage, disease, greed, and on and on and on.

The alternative—dare I say it aloud…(gulp)…”vegetarianism”—scares the piss out of me. I don’t want to change the way I eat. I don’t want to be that guy at the party who, when looking at a perfectly grilled chicken breast, says, “I’ll just have salad.” I despise that guy. I revile him. But more than ever, I understand him. And there’s this part of me that thinks I need to become him.

Because I don’t like to be fucked with.

1. Some idiot from Mississippi named his son "ESPN."

2. I have decided what I'm going to be buying my wife for Hanukkah.

3. Speaking of said wife, she is in Hawaii right now. I am not. Nor are our children. They are here with me, eating what I bought for them at the store yesterday: Trix, Pop-Tarts, Pringles, and chocolate-covered pretzels.

4. The McRib is back.

5. Yesterday I introduced my son to one of the funniest movies ever made. I wish I had the words to articulate how hard he laughed at this scene:

He liked this one, too.

Tonight, I'm introducing him to Anchorman.

Good night...and good luck.

CHORUS

So you wanna be a blog superstar, and live large.

A big mouth, mind scars, you're in charge.

Comin' up on the web, don't link nobody,

Gotta look over your stat counter constantly

I remember the days when I was on Blogger, growin’ up,

Looking at people’s blogrolls, dreamin’ about blowin’ up.

The blog crowd, make money, chillin’ with the Armstrongs,

Sign autographs or what ever my readers want from me.

Shit’s funny how impossible dreams manifest

And the ads that be comin’ with it, nevertheless,

You gotta go to BlogHer, but you don’t know shit

About the trolls, typos and tears,

And losing some of your readers

And losing some of your mind to the bad posts gone by

Hopefully it don’t manifest for the hate sites

Anonymous egomaniacs don’t know how to act

Stupid creeps, gonna kick their ass

Twitter gangster hack posts what he will,

Thinks he’s gonna make a mil

Still filling your head with drivel

Come with me,

Show me the sacrifice it takes to make the cheese

You wanna be a blog superstar, in the biz,

And take shit from people who don’t know what Captcha is?

I wish it was all memes and delurking days,

But the price of Moveable Type is high

And some can’t pay the way

Still trapped in what they’re blogging about

Tell me what happened when your mom found your blog

The route you took started to fog

No fans, no fame, no respect, no change, no ads

And everybody shits on your URL

(Chorus x2)

[Dooce talking]

People see blogstars, youknowhatI’msayin’?

But you still…try’na…get out more, like everybody else

It’s a fun job, but it’s still a job

Save your money, man

Save your money, too.

[Finslippy talking]

It’s fleeting

Don’t last very long, youknowhatI’msayin’?

I mean, you’re lucky in this game, too.

There’s always gonna be another cat comin’ out

Writin’ like me, soundin’ like me,

Somebody’ll come try to steal my traffic

(Chorus x2)

Have you ever had big dreams of makin’ Time Magazine?

Big shot, heavy hitter on the SXSW scene

You wanna look sweet on Technorati

Be a snob and act all snotty

You wanna have big fame, let me explain

What happens to these bloggers and their big names

First they get spammed like all damn day

Then you get dissed by the jealous and the sad

Things never stay the same way they began

I heard some never sell t-shirts or calendars

That’s why fools end up broke

Think everything’s fine in the big time

See me in my avatar with a venti chai

So you wanna roll far and live large

It ain’t all that goes with bein’ a blog superstar

(Chorus x2)

The study at issue seems to indicate that people do things a bit differently in North Carolina. But it's comforting to know that people like the man who said the following is around to police the moral code:

"I'm concerned about promiscuity also," Vetter said. "And to be honest, I don't have the solution. ... My concern is these students are in this developmental phase, and I don't think it's a good developmental practice to just tell somebody to just sit around and masturbate. I don't think that promotes relationships."

“Take copious notes.” Learn it. Love it. Live it.

Can you see where this is going?

A couple of weeks ago I drove up to Los Angeles to interview THE primary source for my new book. We met at a lakeside restaurant, ordered French dips and Diet Cokes, and I was effusive in my gratitude that this person—someone who is very much in the public eye—found the time in his crazy schedule to meet with me. And then we began the interview.

I hit RECORD on my little digital recorder, grabbed my pen, and began to ask my questions. I was taking notes in a black Moleskin—as I was trained to do—and all was well. My source was extremely articulate, completely candid, and more insightful than I could have imagined. As he spoke, I grew more and more excited about how much his words would help the book I’m working on.

Can you see where this is going?

Our lunch arrived, and like a moron I realized I’d forgotten to ask for my French dip to be made with no cheese—because I have a wee lactose issue and, given that had a two-hour drive home from the restaurant—I didn’t want to have to make an emergency stop at the Chevron station in Compton, where I would no doubt have been killed and THEN how was I going to write this book. So I performed the dietary version of the walk of shame, taking the top off of my sammich and scraping the melted mozzarella off of the meant, first with a knife and then with my right index finger.

When I was done, my fingers were greasy. I wiped them on my napkin, but the act of repeatedly handling the sammich, dipping it in the au jus, and all that shit just made it impossible to keep my hands in proper note-taking shape. So, seeing that the digital recorder light was still red, I surrendered my pen and kept eating.

We talked for 90 minutes—one of the longest and most insightful interviews I’ve ever done. I called my agent on the way home and told her all of the amazing things my source had said.

Two weeks later, after dismal failure in my attempt to find a transcription service that doesn’t charge, like, one kidney for each printed page, I sat down at Starbucks to transcribe the interview myself. I hit PLAY and this is what I heard:

"                                                   "

And that’s when I got up, took my clothes off, doused myself in hazelnut-flavored syrup, lit myself on fire, and ran screaming from the building.

I have changed my own definition of popularity.

In my younger days I viewed the whole concept the same way a lot of people look at an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. If one’s plate represents one’s circle of friends, the goal is to load up with as much food as possible. For some, one particular item on the buffet line—say, chicken fried rice—is so appealing that it stands alone on the plate, and I would equate this arrangement to the various cliques one finds in high school: the stoners, the jocks, and so forth. Conversely, there are those who love the all-you-can-eat buffet because of the pure, gluttonous variety it offers, from salad to buffalo wings, from California rolls to that nasty ambrosia salad stuff. The opportunity to overload one’s plate with such a diverse assortment of foods reminds me of the people in high school who had friends across the spectrum of cliques and groups on campus. If you were popular in high school, you had a plate piled high with food.

But the buffet disgusts me now. The food, like the high school friendships in most cases, is of poor quality, poor taste, poor consistency, and it generally leaves me feeling nauseous. Today, for me, popularity means quality, not quantity. It means sitting down at a restaurant, eating a properly portioned plate of good food. It means savoring the food, not devouring it like a pig being plumped so it can ultimately end up as the piece de resistance in some Midwestern family’s Christmas dinner. It means actually considering what I eat: what its made of, where it comes from, where its flavors come from.

I may not have a lot of food in front of me nowadays, but I have enough, and I know for fact that it’s delicious.

Although she has had four children, Jen is an avid runner (quick digression: I use the word “avid” way too much. I consider it a major shortcoming in my writing, especially given how many bitchen synonyms there are for it. Like “ardent.” Or “enthusiastic.” I suppose I could also use “eager,” but those of you who have read RAGE will understand my disdain for that word.). In fact, many of Jen’s running buddies are at the party with us. She introduces each of them to us, and vice versa, like so:

“Skinny bitch, this is my friend [Hot Wife]. We were in the crib together.”

In the MTV generation, I think the second sentence might connote something other than what Jen intends to communicate, but taken literally, it’s true. Jen thinks its hilarious to say this to her friends, and she pointedly asks me to blog about it. (Hi, Jen.)

“Dude,” I say to Hot Wife, “nobody here has any body fat.”

She scans the area to confirm my diagnosis. To our left is a woman in a risqué nurse costume. To our right is another. Behind us is a woman in a cheerleader costume. And none of them—not one!—has ever eaten a carb.

“You’re right,” she says.

(I think that’s the first time my wife has ever said that to me.)

We don’t really know anyone at this party, so we spend a lot of time standing around, eating taquitos, alternately eavesdropping on the conversations between the beautiful, lean people of Newport Beach and looking at their enormous calves (the body part, not the livestock). I feel the strong twinge of calf envy, primarily because the lower half of my legs look like the shaft of a five-iron.

(If you’re not laughing at the use of the word “shaft”, get off of my website right now.)

Throughout the evening, Jen returns to me time and again and demands, “You totally have to blog that.” I normally don’t take requests, but it’s hard to say no to a pirate with no body fat who was in the crib with my wife.

It should be noted here that Hot Wife and I were not in costume for this party, and that is because we are died-in-the-wool party poopers who take our lives too seriously and believe dressing up as pirates or sexy nurses or the fucking devil would undermine our very important lives and credibility.

Also because we like Pop-Tarts.

2) Stop playing with your burrito.

3) Your vagina is your business.

4) Dessert?! You barely touched your dinner.

5) Take your finger out of your nose.

6) Why do you always have to go right when the waiter brings our dinner?

7) Don’t just sit there and stare at it. Clean it up!

8) I thought I told you to keep your hands to yourself.

9) Don’t forget to flush it.

10) You still have shampoo in your hair.

11) Well mommy’s not here right now, is she?

12) Are you a baby? Then why are you talking like one?

13) Take your shoes off of the couch.

14) That’s it! Go to bed!

“Hey,” I said, “do you want to know what Mrs. Robinson said about you at our parent-teacher conference today?”

“Did she say I’m awesome?”

“Basically, yeah. She said you’re a pleasure to have in class.”

He pumped his fist victoriously. “What else?”

“She said you’re a fantastic reader, a good writer, and that you’re doing well in math and science. Lots of good things.”

“Did she say anything bad?”

“What do you think?”

“Talking.”

“Exactly,” I said. “She said you need to work harder on talking at the appropriate times because you’re a leader and when you start chatting during class, the other kids do the same thing and it creates a big problem for Mrs. Robinson. Can you work on that please?”

He shakes his head yes.

“One other problem,” I said.

“What?”

“She said you have terrible gas and you need to stop farting in class.”

“Nuh-UH!”

“Yep. She said you pooter all the time and a few times she’s even had to evacuate the classroom because your stinky butt makes it hard for your classmates to breathe.”

“Dad! You’re making that up!”

“Am I? Really, bud? Because I live with you and I’ve smelled you toots and honestly? I believe her.”

“OK, first of all, YOU’RE the one with the stinky farts, daddy!”

“[Gasp] How dare you!”

“And second of all, there’s no WAY my teacher would say that to you. She’d get fired.”

“For telling the truth?”

“Dad! I do not fart in class!”

“So you’re calling Mrs. Robinson a liar?”

“No, I’m calling YOU a liar.”

“[Gasp] How dare you!”

Suddenly, his face freezes. Five seconds pass.

“Hey, dad.”

“What?”

Fbrrrrrraaaappp!

“I rest my case, stinkybutt.”

I hope you appreciate this, Kristen.

Other book news:

1) I received my advanced copy of RULES FOR MY UNBORN SON by Walker Lamond and have thoroughly enjoyed it.

2) Jen Lancaster recommended I check out I AM A GENIUS OF UNSPEAKABLE EVIL AND I WANT TO BE YOUR CLASS PRESIDENT by Josh Lieb, an Emmy-winning executive producer on The Daily Show. As the title pretty strongly suggests, its hilarious.

3) I've started on a proposal for what I hope will become my follow-up to RAGE AGAINST THE MESHUGENAH.

Getting in touch with what’s really going on in my heart and head requires that I withdraw into my own head. I feel like a miner with a bright lamp on my head, looking around in the dark, rubbing my hands along the walls, trying to find something precious and valuable hidden in the deep recesses.

While this process is important and virtually mandatory, it is never quick—and the longer I stay isolated in my emotional mine, the more problematic that isolation becomes. I do not live a life of solitude. I have built my life around people, and those people have made me a part of their lives. When I take myself away from them—even if the cause of my isolation is a fundamental part of my creative process—they are left to wonder if my allegiance to them is fraying.

I eventually come out of the mine, but I can’t predict when. And that’s the hardest part.