Justin Halpern, 28, decided to move back in with his dad after a bad breakup with his girlfriend. It’s an interesting trend — moving back in with parents -— that has resulted in several books, such as The Film Club, where a son learns lessons from his dad, not by going to school, but by moving back in with him and watching and discussing movies every day. Unlike that book, in S#*! My Dad Says, the only thing Halpern learns is how to swear in all sorts of comically effective ways.
The blue streak of blue language got turned into popular Twitter posts that gave Halpern (“senior writer at Maxim.com,” it says on the book) over a million followers. He basically tweeted the cantankerous outbursts of his father and turned these into a book (also a TV series for CBS, starring that master of cantankerous outburst, William Shatner. The show is terrible, according to -— ironically — online TV reviewers).
Nothing wrong with all of this. In these post-industrial times, turning rapid-fire phenomena into quickie books is just one of the ways people stay ahead of the declining job market. (Another guy turned his “Stuff White People Like” blog into a snarky book deal. Apparently that’s one of the things that white people do.)
What’s interesting is how young people get their material nowadays: they don’t necessarily go out into the real world and learn stuff, encounter strange new cultures, find an interesting job, go into battle or volunteer somewhere; no, they head home, sit on the sofa with a laptop, spy on their dad. Or they pick up Julia Childs’ cookbook and decide, in a fit of low ambition, to replicate the recipes therein and blog about it. Because this is a lot easier than actually learning how to cook in Paris and writing your own book.
Uh-oh. Now I sound snarky.
Anyway, Halpern does gather useful information from a culture that is distant and puzzling to many at his age: the culture of his father’s generation. One thing the couch trip does for young slackers: it forces them to learn something about a separate set of human beings, maybe even with a little history thrown in. Kind of like watching a nature show on National Geo or Discovery.
Now, obviously, S#*! My Dad Says is loaded with foul language. But it’s not like Halpern’s dad even thinks when he uses the same four-letter words over and over again. He just throws them out for emphasis, to bolster his point, much in the way that teens (and rappers) latch onto “offensive” language. It almost becomes punctuation.
Apparently, this practice began when Halpern was just a wee lad. How he manages to reconstruct verbatim quotes from his dad when he was only four years old (unless he tape recorded everything) remains a bit of a mystery:
On toilet training:
“You are four years old. You have to s**t in the toilet. This is not one of those negotiations where we’ll go back and forth and find a middle ground. This ends with you s**tting in the toilet.”
On my first day of kindergarten:
“You thought it was hard? If kindergarten is busting your ass, I got some bad news for you about the rest of life.”
On spending the night at a friend’s house for the first time:
“Try not to piss yourself.”
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 f***ing gas chamber, and you want a Skittles?”
Each string of tweets is sandwiched by a chapter that covers a main topic — such as “A Man’s House Is His House” and “Do Not Be a Goddamned Liar.” The chapters are an opportunity for Halpern to explain who his dad is (a doctor who lectures on nuclear medicine), and that he’s not just some blowhard who verbally abuses his son and everyone else in sight. Besides being funny and grouchy, the old man actually does seem to have a sense of justice. Halpern, fortunately, doesn’t descend too heavily into Oprah territory; you just have to read between the lines to notice that, despite all the cussin’ and fussin’, the old man does, indeed, love his kid.
On getting in trouble in school:
“Why would you throw a ball in someone’s face?… Huh. That’s a pretty good reason. Well, I can’t do much about your teacher being pissed, but me and you are good.”
It’s that gentle acknowledgment of “Yeah, you definitely were provoked into hitting that kid, but you still have to face the consequences of your actions” that occasionally lifts S#*! My Dad Says above a mere string of amusing tirades and shows that the old guy may actually have something to teach after all.
But you’re not likely to confuse this trifle of a book with Tuesdays With Morrie. There are no big revelations on life, deep explorations of what makes dad tick; no hugging, no learning. Just a lot of juicy, foulmouthed quotes.
Most of the quotes in the book deal with Justin as an adult, so you have to guess that Halpern has grown accustomed to having such a crusty old bastard for a dad — someone who criticizes his looks, dress sense and career choices on a regular basis. For fun and sport. When Sam Halpern (the father) learned that son Justin wanted to pursue a career as a screenwriter, he told him, “Son, get ready for a f***ing of biblical proportions.” He was properly flabbergasted when he found out his son was publishing a book — about him and his unbridled comments, yet. “I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this. I mean, they gave you money to do this. YOU. Amazing.”
Maybe twitting is the best revenge.