Sh*t My Dad Says
By: Justin Halpern / Narrated By: Sean Schemmel
Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
This is the kinda jerk I am: Sometimes I wanna haaaaate something due to m’ own danged prejudices, but then danged if I don’t wind up laughing like crazy
P’raps right about here I should just clear things up and explain m’self: I haaaaate Social Media Stars!!! I’m soooo old that I keep finding myself thinking that people should earn their fame by doing things the hard way. And here in Sh*t My Dad Says, author Justin Halpern has gotten all famous cuz he’s started Tweeting out funny lines his dad has come up with. From just a couple of friends in on it all from the beginning, to several more followers, to ooooodles of followers and sudden calls asking for interviews, and then agents calling Halpern up for possible book deals? Oh gosh, dude, that annoys the beJESus outta me. Just watch the Kardashians for ill-earned fame, why doncha?
But then, as the things Halpern’s dad Sam says keep coming, oh gosh, did my chortling turn into bursts of braying laughter. If you happen to be somewhat delicate like an orchid and faint at swearing? Run, run like the wind AWAY from this because Sam ain’t no twinkling pixie sprinkling fairy dust gently over all and sundry. He’s bellowing his thoughts with some pretty aMAZing language that might cause the more timid of us to faint.
Expect the F Word, and expect the Lord’s Name Used in Mighty Colorful ways.
But you know what? Expect some really poignant times also.
Consider a Little League game where son Justin shares pitching duty with a total MESS of a kid who has a tendency of weeping whenst frazzled. A father from the other team spots this weakness in the poor kid, steps up to the fence and starts jeering, totally psyching the poor lamb out, leaving him a teary pile of nerves, unable to follow through with pitching skills. When the game is over, Dad tells Justin they’re giving the kid a ride home… but NOT before he goes over and bellows his profanity-laced thoughts at the offending/offensive father. What, he bellows, do you think you’re doing? This is f-ing Little League, and the kid’s dad is the town alcoholic. SHAME ON YOU for what you just did, and ain’t you just a worthless piece of turd for what you just pulled.
It’s a sobering comment about life in a small community, where weaknesses might be shown, but where Dad expects decent humanity from his fellow man, thus teaching young Justin what common courtesy, simple human decency means/is worth.
So there are QUITE a few really touching scenes, brilliant memories like this scattered through what is mostly just line after line, short quote after short quote. I WISH I could give you some lines that had me guffawing, but alas, they’re all mighty profane. Whether it’s a line about how things are okay for Dad, but for Justin, he’s sh*t outta luck, cuz Life Ain’t Fair, and Dad has already paid his dues in Life. Or it’s an episode where Dad had to take barely more than a tyke, Justin, to a lecture on Nuclear Medicine Dad is giving whereby Dad realizes it was no place for a child but that will NOT stop him from sequestering himself in the house to bellow The F-Word at the TOP OF HIS LUNGS before collapsing in a distraught heap.
Narrator Sean Schemmel canNOT handle the female voices in this audiobook (Nooooo!), and it took a while to get used to Dad Sam sounding like a cigar-sucking dock worker when actually he’s a well-respected expert in Nuclear Medicine, but I got over that pretty quickly and just soaked up the utter ridiculousness of Sam’s clear-eyed observations and assessments of Life in all it’s colorful and unfair glory. That he obviously cares a great deal about his family? Undeniable. He’d set up his son, living at home and a dishwasher at Hooters, with a veritable winner of a young woman, never seeing the young man as limited, only seeing him as worth the very best. Then too, he’d take his other son, Justin, to Denny’s for The Talk, which makes Justin writhe. THIS stops Dad not a bit, even whilst hungover college students, and the waitress, are all leaning in to listen. What, Dad howls, is wrong with you? You CARE what these losers, these strangers, think about you? THAT’S your biggest problem, cuz it shouldn’t matter!
Lesson taught, Lesson learned.
All in all, a worthy LITTLE listen, and probably best if listening in little bits throughout the day. It’s just a triiiiifle tiresome listening to snippet-sayings all in one go. -BUT- at least there are some parts that are a tad longer and crafted with care that show Dad’s character, his very good soul, in addition to his wry and oh soooo cockeyed way of looking at the world.
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