My 12-year-old cousin called me this past weekend and asked me to give the aliyot at his Bar Mitzvah next January.

It is a great honor to give the aliyot, reserved for those family members who have had a deep impact on the young Jew’s life. It basically involves me standing at his Bar Mitzvah and performing an interactive reading from the Torah.

Aside from nearly getting my cousin drunk at Passover and taking him to a Nats game two months ago, I’m not sure how I have positively influenced his life. Still, I was flattered to be asked and eagerly accepted the offer.

The problem, though, is that giving the aliyot (or aliyah) will combine two of my greatest fears: speaking in public and speaking in Hebrew.

When it comes to public speaking, I can pinpoint exactly when my fear comes from.

When I was in 10th grade, I had to do an oral book report. I chose the book “The Natural”. I never read it, though, since I was too busy crushing on girls in my class and distracted by things far more important than learning.

When the day of my book report came, I decided instead to just go off the movie The Natural, one of my favorite baseball movies albeit a flawed one. I stood in front of the class and provided an in-depth examination of Robert Redford’s, er, Roy Hobbes’ life.

I delved into motifs, foreshadowing, and plot development, completing my masterpiece by comparing Hobbes’ epic homerun in his final at bat of the movie as the ultimate act of redemption.

My teacher, Mr. Sanchez, looked at me and asked, in front of the entire class, “Uh, did you read the book?”

Why did he ask me that, I thought. Could he see through my ruse? Was I not convincing enough? Act confident, he won’t suspect a thing.

“Of course!” I answered.

“Well,” he continued, “here’s the thing. In the book, Roy Hobbes strikes out in his last at bat. In the movie, he hits the homerun.”

Whoops.

The class “oohed” and “aahed”. I could feel my face burning with embarrassment. I stammered, trying to explain the disparity. Mr. Sanchez looked at me with disappointed eyes. He let me stand there, suffering, for what felt like hours, no, weeks, until he finally let me off the hook.

“Take your seat.”

I never got over that moment and, to this day, cannot make a speech in front of even friends and family without nearly fainting from shame.

So standing in front of hundreds of people, reading Hebrew from the Torah, isn’t exactly at the top of my bucket list. I don’t expect my family to heckle me (though I wouldn’t out it past my dad). I expect them to be supportive, pat me on the back, and tell me what a great job I did when it’s all over.

But I hope this time, I at least get the ending right.

In the past week, I have been told by two separate people, in two wholly different settings, that I look old.

The first came thanks to a picture GoPats took of me at a Nats game. The second, just a few days later, courtesy of my friend Beth at a happy hour, when she noticed how long my hair has gotten and how it, I suppose, has affected the way I look.

I have processed their comments, mulled their meanings over, and come up with this carefully constructed synopsis about my challenged youth: WHAT THE FUCK?

I have mentioned before how much I’m looking forward to old age and everything it promises, mainly a healthy amount of dementia and telling kids to get off my lawn. But I didn’t mean that I wanted to actually look old when it happened.

Luckily for me, my 12-year-old cousin is in town this week at some young whippersnappers’ leadership conference and he stayed with me for the weekend. I say “luckily” because what I have obviously needed lately is an injection of youth (emotional age not withstanding). My pallid countenance has been starved for an exuberance that can only be found by hanging out with a kid nearly a third of my age.

Before he arrived, I said to myself, Self, what should you do with this rapscallion? I mean, what does a 12-year-old boy actually like to do? What do they think about? Unfortunately, getting him drunk and taking him to his first strip club was probably not feasible. Possible, just not logistically plausible.

So instead, I decided to look back at what I liked to do when I was his age (20 fucking years ago) and what I would have wanted to do with my cool, older cousin. I found an old journal (not a diary, diaries are for chicks who believe in unicorns and dot their “i’s” with flowers) that I kept as a 12-year-old. After reading through it for clues, I realized something important. I was a weenie.

The journal centers mostly around my crush on a girl named Tina. I wrote some really anguishing sentences about her, like:

The only one who knows I like her is [Blue]. I love talking to her. Now when we talk, her voice doesn’t crack like it used to. OK, get this. Predita asked me to go to her birthday party this Saturday night. So I made up my mind. I was going to ask Tina to go. Not knowing she had already been invited, I asked Predita if I could invite her. She asks, ‘We have another Tina?’ I gave her a puzzled look. She continues, ‘I already invited her. Why, you two going together?’ She said it in a sweet voice. I told her no, I just wanted to know if she wanted to go. I was so embarrassed.”

You’re embarrassed, 12-year-old Arjewtino? How do you think reading this makes me feel?

I had picked him up at Dulles on Friday, bypassing the TSA security line with a special pass since his parents wanted me to meet him at the gate. While his flight disembarked, a Virgin America employee announced over the loudspeaker, “Will the parents of [my cousin] please come to the front?”

I started to walk forward when she saw me and continued on the loudspeaker, “…or the daddy?”

I got to the gate and started chatting with her. I mentioned that his parents had wanted me to meet him at the gate.

“Oh, you’re not the father?” she asked me.

“No, I’m the cousin,” I told her.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

“That’s ok,” I told her, “it’s perfectly conceivable that I could have a 12-year-old son.”

Yup, definitely not feeling old at all.

I ended up taking my cousin to the Nats game on Saturday. I was planning on buying some cheap $10 seats in the stratosphere, but when we got in line at the box office, some random dude came up to us and handed me tickets to two seats in the 131 section, three rows from the field.

“Just take them,” he said. I kept waiting for the catch but he walked away. The seats were tremendous. And though my cousin, who is from the San Francisco area, wore his Giants jersey which I threatened to trash, I wore my Dodgers jersey and we both put on Nats caps.

We stayed through the rain delay, eating chili dogs that looked like, according to my cousin, “barf”, and watching video games in the Playstation 3 center behind right-center field. I felt young, vibrant, like a kid again. Let’s see someone call me old now.

On our way out of the stadium, my cousin asked me for a bucket of cotton candy. I thought about how much I used to love cotton candy, how I used to beg my parents for some whenever we went to a carnival or a Dodgers game. Now, though, all I could do was wince.

My cousin looked at me and said, “You look like your dad.”

Yup. Not old at all.

There is a lot about becoming a father (someday) that fills me with hopeful bliss. Playing catch with my son and daughter. Watching them take their first steps. Teaching them that Jesus is magic.

But the one thing I am not looking forward to, the thing that fills me with dread, the thing that parents half-heartedly try to convince me isn’t so bad, is the potty training.

Look, I know it’s an unavoidable part of raising snot-nosed punks, but that doesn’t mean I want to go through it. Being 7 years older than my little brother, I still remember watching him cower in fear whenever he had to take a dump. He would claim he didn’t have to go, press his ass against the floor in denial, and scream like a little girl whenever I dragged him to the toilet.

I would have let him shit his pants for all I cared, but being the older brother meant more responsibility than just convincing him to trade me his best baseball cards.

But as a parent, you really have no choice. You have to step up and teach your kid what a crapper is and that it wont swallow you into the deep, dark recesses of hell. Still, the prospect is daunting.

Last year, while visiting my friends Zaimah and Sonny and their newborn son Rayban, I asked Sonny if his son ever took a whiz while he changed him. With Rayban lying on his back being extricated from a dirty diaper, he began to explain that it didn’t really happen often when, seemingly out of nowhere, Rayban let a stream of piss fly into the air.

I could not have been more startled if Rayban had started to climb the wall like a baby possessed. I ran to the other side of the room yelling “Why, God, why?!” as Sonny cussed up a storm and blamed me for planting the idea in his son’s head.

I have decided, in a very conscious way, what kind of dad I’m going to be, and it’s a lot like the dad in Calvin and Hobbes. My favorite strips were when Calvin’s dad would blatantly lie about things, like telling Calvin that old photographs were in black and white because in the old days, the world wasn’t in color. I liked the dad’s parenting strategy, one that says, “If you’re going to pay thousands of dollars to raise an ungrateful little shit, then you might as well fuck with them.”

I’m sure my parents applied this artifice on me. My mom used to tell me that if I ate my spinach I would become Popeye. Or that if I crossed my eyes when the wind was blowing it would stay that way. These lies, though, were told to get me to eat healthily and to stop me from sticking my head out of a moving car. I want lies to tell my kids for no better reason than it amuses me. Like, “Your Teddy bear and I hang out and chat when you’re asleep” or “Daddy is actually a pirate.”

Because you need to tell them something when they’re crying on the toilet.

PHOTO CREDIT via Neatorama.

“When it comes time to bring their A game and dress it up, most guys are lost.” Virgle Kent

This is not my suit. At least, it wasn’t my suit.

It belonged to my dad. When he was my age. Or younger. When wearing a blue, multi-pinstriped rayon suit with narrow lapels was fashionable.

It has been mine for several years now, a gift from a man who once wore it with pride. Talle 49. Industria Argentina. It had been in the back of my closet for a long time. Languishing on a plastic hanger, collecting dust.

I took it out of my closet yesterday morning with purpose. Happy hour after work. Cocktails at the Chi Cha Lounge. A desire to look better. Like “Superman putting on his cape,” VK said.

Kind of tight around the shoulders, though. Too bad. Still feels good. Looks good. Makes me feel like the Incredible Hulk. The Incredible Hulk in 100% rayon.

The Princess hates it. Calls it ugly. Says it’s old-fashioned. “You look like you belong in the 70s,” she told me. “Especially when you had that mustache. You could have been either of our fathers.”

I wish I looked like my father at his age. Strong. Determined. Ambitious. Married to a beautiful woman. Raising three kids in a foreign country.

I take it as a compliment. The suit is a stylish artifact. I wear it to work.

“Hey, look at you!” my boss shouts across the cubicles. “You’re wearing a suit.”

Good eye, boss. How’d you figure that one out?

“What’s the deal, got a job interview today?”

No, I tell her, just wanted to wear a suit. It was my dad’s.

“That’s your dad’s suit? Ha ha ha!!!”

It’s a classic. From the 70s. Made in Argentina.

“Hey, everyone, Arjewtino is wearing his dad’s suit!”

It WAS my dad’s suit. He wore it when he was my age. When he was cool, cooler than anyone I know. When his friends were brave and disappearing for speaking out against our military government.

“Well, it’s a nice suit.”

Thanks.

I go to lunch. I stand taller. More confident. Women look at me. A man in cargo shorts and a red t-shirt holds the door open for me at Chipotle.

I order and sit down at a table. I take off the suit jacket to protect it from my burrito bowl, laying it on the edge of a booth.

An old lady in a white hat and her three grandkids sit down in the booth. The suit is somehow in the old lady’s way. She pushes the suit, slides it away from her. I’m reading my book, face down.

She pushes it again and it falls to the ground. I look at her. She stares back. And continues to stuff her face with soft tacos.

I guess not everyone likes the suit.

My suit. My dad’s suit.

Like Superman.

“You’re not as much of an asshole as you used to be.”

These were my sister’s words to me this past weekend. My brother and I visited her in Portland, OR, an overdue trip paid for by my benevolent dad.

“Thanks”, I told her, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

And I did consider it one. Because her assertion is true. Growing up as the oldest of three, I wasn’t always the nicest brother to my hermanita and hermano.

I once locked my sister, who is one year younger than me, in our large toy trunk and told my parents she ran away. They found her a few minutes later banging on the inside of the door, crying to be let out.

I also used to make my brother, who is 7 years younger than me, cry by telling him he was adopted and that our parents didn’t want him. I thought it was cute when he sobbed hysterically.

I have probably caused some serious emotional damage to my siblings. But the truth is, I love them more than anything, so it was great to spend the weekend in Portland with them, just the three of us, all grown up and matured by time.

I hadn’t been to Portland since I was 4-years-old. It was the first American city my family lived in after emigrating from Argentina. I have no real memories of the city, the only images a few photos of me playing in the playground of our first apartment complex.

My first morning in Portland, we met up with our cousin David, who is related distantly to us through a family tree too complicated to remember. Six years older than me, he told me that when I was a kid, I was a VERY excitable child and liked to run around all the time, constantly asking him for “horsey rides”. He even gave me a horsey ride for old times’ sake.

He remembered one time when my family went out for a fancy dinner. Dressed in some white suit (thanks, Ma) and obviously feeling stifled, I had run out of the house to the muddy playground, where I played in the rain-soaked swings and threw myself into a puddle of mud. Yeah, I was that kind of kid.

The weekend in Portland started with my sister picking up my brother, who lives in LA, and me at the airport. On the way home, we stopped at Carl’s Jr. (not Hardee’s) for a deliciously disgusting Western Bacon Cheeseburger meal.

My sister drove up to the window and paid the cashier, who gave her my soda. She handed it to me, put the car in drive, and hit the gas.

“Hermanita!” I yelled. “You forgot the food!”

She couldn’t back up since the car behind us had already started to move forward. So we made my brother get out and walk to the drive-thru window, where he stood for several minutes waiting for my food while we laughed our asses off inside the car.

“It’s going to be that kind of weekend,” I told my sister.

And it was. Though we see each other two or three times a year, this was the first time the three of us had hung out alone without either of our parents there to make sure we got along. We spent most of the time reminiscing with old stories, laughing at stupid things we said, making fun of each other like we did (and do) when we were children, and enjoying the very first American city we ever lived in.

Sometimes we would regress to childhood and tease each other and fart in each other’s faces. Other times, we demonstrated how mature we now are by discussing Portland’s real estate market.

On Saturday afternoon, we visited an aunt who lives in the rich area of Portland (West Hills, I think). I thought we were visiting a nice, old lady who would feed us snacks. As it turned out, I was half right.

Aunt Marjorie is an awesomely sassy broad who lives in the most beautiful house I have ever seen, overlooking the city, and who has volunteered at Planned Parenthood for decades.

She showed us around her mansion of a house and told us about her experiences touring middle and high schools educating kids about condoms. You haven’t lived until you meet a 70-year-old woman who talks about reservoir tips and dispelling the myth that Mountain Dew works as a form of birth control.

(I haven’t had even a sip of the Dew since I was a teenager, but I’m pretty sure this proved that Oregon kids are much more stupid than those from California.)

In the evening, we met up with Hermanita’s boyfriend Jandy and had an early birthday celebration for my brother at his favorite place: a sushi restaurant. The sushi was served on a revolving conveyor belt (called Kaitenzushi) and we managed to put away 31 plates between the four of us.

The next day, Sunday, we spent in downtown Portland. We started by going to Powell’s Bookstore, which claims to be “the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world”. The store, though not as charming as The Strand, was huge, taking up an entire city block and holding an impressive amount of books. It was overwhelming and I felt unprepared since I hadn’t printed out my “to-read” booklist from GoodReads. Still, I bought about $50 worth of books (low for me) that were on sale.

We then went to Voodoo Doughnuts, which sells unique and irreverently named donuts, like Cock-n-Balls, from what appears to be a former biker bar. They were out of bacon maple bars, so I ordered the Memphis Mafia, a chocolate chip/banana/peanut butter glaze that was the largest donut I had ever seen or eaten.

After dodging a donut-fused heart attack, we ventured to Portland’s Saturday Market. I exhausted my sister with “jokes” reminding her that we were attending something called Saturday Market on a Sunday.

Though I expected the market to be the same sort of fair of trinket and food crap, I was surprised by how unique it was. Especially the people. For example:

A man playing the guitar (well) with only half an arm

Some dude also playing the guitar, but with a cape and both of his arms. Cheater.

A bicyclist performing tricks on the street. I secretly wanted to see him fall on his face.

A Goth girl giving out hugs as part of the now-famous Free Hugs Campaign. The hug she gave me didn’t fill me with light and happiness. It made me feel awkward. If you’re going to give them out for free you better improve your technique, Goth Girl.

Afterwards, we walked to Rogue, a brewery where we sampled several local award-winning beers and I let my brother and sister beat me at Connect Four. Seriously, I fucking suck at this game.

We ate at a Thai place that night that featured sunken tables. Toward the end of the meal, a man’s table fell into the sunken area below him, crushing his legs as he struggled to free himself. The waitress helped him. And by “helped him”, I mean she went over, grabbed the glass of water, and walked into the kitchen.

Overall, I liked Portland much more than I thought I would. I got to spend time in the very first American city my family lived in and with my favorite people in the whole world who are younger than me. I also bought an 80-gig iPod, taking advantage of Oregon’s lack of sales tax and my brother’s vast iTunes library.

It even made up for having to wake up at 4am on Monday.

Lindsay Lohan’s freckles nearly killed the Internet this week.

Obama took command in the race for his party’s nomination. Fidel Castro resigned as head of Cuba. Something good — or bad — happened in Kosovo. A lunar eclipse even threatened to alert the rebel alliance to our Earthly location.

But the biggest news, especially for those men who remembered what it was like to be teenage boys and smartly invested their life savings into shares of Kleenex, was Lindsay’s homage to “The Last Sitting”, Marilyn Monroe’s final photo shoot before her death.

New York Magazine released these photos online on Tuesday, making all naked images that have ever been published of anyone anywhere completely irrelevant. In the photos, which have since been right-click-save-image-as’d faster than anything ever, Lohan is wearing a blond wig and is covered by a thinly veiled sheet.

Many responded positively to the photos. WWTDD called their online release “the greatest day for nerds since the creation of Spider Man.” Others weren’t so kind.

Monica Corcoran wondered why Lohan needed to channel Monroe, asking rhetorically, “…why are you bouncing in and out of rehab and re-creating a photo shoot that precisely mimics a suicidal woman’s last flirtation with fame?”

In any case, these photos, the publication of which at one point crashed the New York Magazine’s servers, have since taken a once-hot celebrity with questionable self-control yet above-average acting ability and thrust her back into the public conscience and masturbatory fantasies.

But lost amid the teenage-boy-crushing and the spiteful-woman-hating was this — a complete and utter contempt of Lindsay’s freckles.

“She looks harsh, contrived, and is much too freckly to convey the soft artistry that she is aiming for,” wrote a commenter on a Washington Post live chat yesterday.

Too freckly? Too freckly? Since when does a genetically predisposed body’s ability to produce melanin in clusters a sign of imperfection?

The Superficial (fittingly) wrote:

“I don’t want to say Lindsay Lohan has a lot of freckles, but I don’t remember Marilyn Monroe having a topographical map across her chest.”

And some Einstein, on some online forum I now can’t remember, wrote:

“she realy gots a lot of frackels…that’s really ugly man… all over her body”

Growing up, I had freckles. A lot of freckles. And “frackels”. All across my face. I was what one might call “too freckly”.

My sister, who looked like my twin until later in life, always loved her freckles and even bragged about how many she had. I, however, tried to hide from them and felt deeply insecure about the way I looked. I would ask my mom if they would ever go away, but she would tell me she hoped they never did. Of course, moms have to say that.

I know a lot of people who do and did have freckles. The Princess’s freckles return every summer when the sun kisses her face across her nose, like a warm, brown strip that hugs her cheeks. When I asked her if she was ever insecure about having freckles as a child, she says she wasn’t — of course, she didn’t have too many.

My freckles did eventually fade, though their presence traumatized me enough that I still see them on my face whenever I look in the mirror.

But why are freckles considered ugly? I know I am not alone here since most people have had some amount of freckling at some point in their lives. And not everyone has had Pippi Longstocking’s overinflated self-esteem.

The lasting effect Lindsay’s naked body may have on our culture, after the zeitgeist moves on to the latest celebrity nude photos and these images fade from public consumption, is a return to hating freckles.

Or maybe there will be a reverse effect and people freckles will make a comeback. Maybe people will start painting or tattooing them on their faces and bodies. Maybe it will become the next “in” thing. That would be great.

Just don’t make them too freckly.

When I was in junior high, the predecessor to today’s middle school, there were three ways you could be cool.

The first way was to be vaguely connected to the TV industry. We had one girl named Carrie whose sister played Heather in the show “Mr. Belvedere”. Another dude named Mason starred in some toy commercial, which for some reason automatically made him popular.

The second way was to wear the right shoes. I once was teased by my very own friends because I was wearing non-brand name sneakers with Velcro across the top that my dad perpetually bought me for $10 from Target. I told my dad how I needed $100 Nike sneakers because the Target shoes weren’t cool and that I was being ridiculed by my friends, to which he responded:

“If they make fun of you because of your shoes then they’re not really your friends.”

Makes perfect sense when you’re an adult. But when you’re 12-years-old and trying to hide your boners behind your schoolbooks every time a girl walked by, these shoes were the difference between being popular and being that guy who wore $10 shoes from Target.

The third way to be cool, from what I could tell since I wasn’t, was to be able to make signs with your hands. By that age, a bunch of upper-middle-class white kids running around flashing the “BLOOD” sign was totally rad and copied by everyone.

I could barely contort my fingers to spell – let alone the ubiquitous gang sign, though I did learn how later on in high school. To this day, it takes me a few seconds to get it right as I struggle to fold my fingers and thumbs into the right letters.

Declaring to who or what someone belongs through hand gestures continues to be a pretty common practice, even outside of suburban Los Angeles. But unless you’re trying to stake your claim to gang territory, it’s probably best not to do so once you’re old enough to vote.

I recently came across a friend’s photo on Facebook that showed him and his pals flashing a sign I had never seen before or even knew existed. This is the “301″ sign, meant to affirm one’s devotion to that area code which denotes part of Maryland, particularly Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.

The sign is formed by curling your forefinger down and tucking it into the fold of your skin between that finger and your thumb. This leaves your middle, ring, and pinky fingers showing (3), the forefinger tucked into a circle (0), and your thumb idly sticking out (1).

Cool? I don’t know. I’m too old to decide if these things are cool or not. I pretty much rely on other people to tell me whether something is cool or reviled. Though I hear this Soulja Boy dance is going to be huge.

But the problem with this 301 sign is that many people in the photo, which I won’t show out of deference to my friend and his buddies’ privacy, were doing it wrong. Out of 13 people in the picture, only four flashed 301 correctly.

Many had it backwards (like the guy in this photo, who apparently lives in the non-existent 103 area code), which would make sense if they were Hebrew. Others showed the sign sideways, which made it look like they were flashing the letter “B” in ASL.

As a Takoma Park resident since 2006 (though I lived for 7 years in the 202), I am proud of the 301. It’s way better than being from, say, 703.

Still, throwing signs, whether you’re a tiny kid from the San Fernando Valley or a University of Maryland alum with a real job, should probably not be at the top of your “party tricks” list (unless you’re trying to entertain a fussy kid by casting animal shadows against the wall).

Like I said, I’m no judge on what’s cool anymore. But I will always be a judge when it comes to doing things the proper way.

Especially if I catch you wearing $10 Velcro shoes from Target.

Hermanita, Abuelo, and Arjewtino at a sidewalk café not named Starbucks

Starbucks recently announced it is invading expanding the company into Argentina, a cotuntry where, along with its traditions of great wine, beautiful women, and World Cup championships, is rich in coffee and café culture.

The prospect of ordering an acidic “cup of José” from a surly — yet gorgeous — Starbucks barista is pretty depressing. After all, stopping in to sidewalk cafés in Buenos Aires for a cortado is part of the charm of visiting the city.

I remember meeting my grandparents for coffee after school when I was 9-years-old. Mi hermanita and I would chat over glass-bottled Coca-Colas while people-watching on Avenida Cabildo. And on my most recent trip to Buenos Aires, joining mi abuelita for breakfast at her favorite café/restaurant was always the best way to start the day.

It’s not that I hate Starbucks or boycott its shops. My mom regularly sends me $25 gift cards to Starbucks for no reason, which I happily spend on dulce de leche frapuccinos.

It’s just that I know what Starbucks does. It takes over. It shuts down independent coffee shops and other chains as easily as Guatemalans bow down to Argentineans. It overruns local coffee commerce like Maradona shredding an England defense. It sucks the life out of unique, independent shops with its homogenized and ubiquitous green logo.

I really have no idea if my fellow porteños are excited by this infection expansion or not. I’ll e-mail my cousins soon to find out.

But for now, let’s hope the next time I visit Argentina and sit down for an espresso and medialuna, it doesn’t cost me more pesos than my uncle makes an hour.

Via.

Update: WiB sent me this photo of McDonald’s in Cairo; if you look closely at the left side of the photo, you can see the Little Caesar’s:

As I write this, Catalina Island is burning.

Marine helicopters are fighting the blaze and rescue workers are evacuating the small, mostly tourist island located roughly 20 miles off the LA coast. The fire broke out yesterday in the hills near Avalon, the island’s only city. The photo above is a Google hybrid map and the arrow shows the distance between my hometown of Woodland Hills and Catalina Island.

I went to visit the island for the first time nearly three years ago with Papi, Hermanita, and Hermano. We rented a golf cart and toured the island (no cars are allowed), did some sightseeing, and my brother nearly got arrested on the ferry ride home when he sassed an arrogant Homeland Security officer.

Tourism is Catalina’s only industry. When we were there, we spent money on food, karaoke (my dad sang Help! by the Beatles), and air hockey. This Mother’s Day weekend was supposed to be a cash cow for the island and now they’re fielding calls from visitors who don’t understand why their reservations won’t be honored.

This is a video my brother and sister shot while chasing me in the golf cart. I know it looks like I’m running like a girl but, in my defense, I was running downhill and trying to evoke pathos by acting like a dork (not much of a stretch, I know).

Men are weird.

We have weird handshakes, weird sports allegiances, and weird senses of humor. We are weird in ways that women are not.

We are so weird, in fact, that we actually joke about banging our friends’ moms. Banging. Our friends’. Moms.

A typical conversation between two guy friends might go like this:

Guy #1: I’m so tired.
Guy #2: That’s not what your mom said last night.

Since each of us is eternally a mama’s boy and takes offense to the slightest insult of our maternal makers, I find mom-bashing humor particularly mystifying. And though it might differ among cultures, it is typically acceptable to most men.

But women are different. Women will never say, “That’s not what your dad said last night” to each other nor call each other “fatherfuckers”. Women don’t have words like FILF and find even the smallest implication of their dads as sexual vomit-inducing.

I asked The Princess one night why this phenomenon exists for men and not for women and why she’s never joked to a female friend about banging her dad. She responded with one word: “Gross.”

I continued my research by e-mailing Gene Weingarten, the Washington Post humor columnist and self-described arbiter of all humor, whose WaPo live humor discussions returned this week after a long hiatus.

This was my question:

“Despite the prevalence of men joking through implication and innuendo that they’ve had sex with their friends’ moms, why don’t women equally (1) make the same kind of jokes and (2) find it gross that men do?”

Gene responded:

“Hm. I can’t help you. I am good friends with a twentysomething woman who regularly informs me that she has had sex with my mother. My mother is dead. This does not deter her.”

If even the mighty Gene Weingarten doesn’t know, there might not be an answer. Maybe women take these jokes too literally. Maybe the “Daddy’s little girl” icon is too embedded in their brains to be able to suggest — even humorously — their friends’ fathers are sexual beings. I don’t know.

I hope someone has an answer for me.

And no mom jokes. I’m looking at you, GoPats.