Successful people are boring, the mystery of hot bicycle seats, and one question you should never ask, among the deep thoughts we've been thoughtifying all week…

1. The greatest luxury in life is doing what you want.
2. Almost every day, I end up walking past a bike that’s locked up, but someone has stolen one of the wheels or a seat or the handlebars. And I can’t help but be amazed that there is actually a market for stolen bicycle parts.
3. I am going to change my name to Aaron Aaaba, so I can get called on faster and out the door. I missed a meeting a while ago because the people at my prior event decided to call on us by last name, like we're still in high school. Speaking of which, do they still stigmatize kids in school by seating them according to last name or, even worse, height?
4. I’ve gone through a number of periods when I’ve felt I’m on the outside looking in, but that's what other people think, too. Don't they?????
5. When someone regales me about their great track record in life or business, I lose interest in them pretty quickly. Mistakes are how we learn and they make for much more interesting stories. Tell me about the time you failed miserably and how you came back from failure. Now that’s worth a listen.
6. Never ask: How bad could it get? That's like a prayer that will absolutely be answered.
7. I'm saddened a bit when I hear about the first woman or the first black or other minority person appointed to some job. After more than a century of women's/minority rights efforts, companies should be embarrassed to admit they haven’t had a ______ in the role of _______ already.
8. Sometimes Jill and I will be at dinner and I will send the girls a text or a photo of our experience. Am I making them a part of our enjoyment or am I just plain rude?

 
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For some reason, I keep thinking chicken and waffles should be my favorite breakfast choice.

Fried chicken for breakfast. How can that not be great? It’s right up there on the food pyramid with bacon and, unlike bacon, I can eat it in front of my rabbi. Likewise for waffles, the breakfast food so delicious they named an entire restaurant chain after them. Put them together and you have a surefire winner.

Except, you don’t. My odyssey has been going on for about two years now and I have yet to find a place that serves chicken and waffles to die for, or even to get seriously injured.

The best fried chicken is moist inside, crisp outside, with breading that is almost a second skin. Great waffles have endless pockets of crust surrounding an inner body of chewy dough. There’s give and take, push and pull, crunch and gush, an ideal combination. Yes, there is an art to this, but it’s not like fried chicken and waffles are new inventions without 5 zillion how-to videos on YouTube.
 
You can find thousands of restaurants where they know how to make fried chicken and thousands more with great waffles. Doing both at the same time should not be close to impossible, and yet it is.

Part of the challenge, of course, is that both waffles and fried chicken are more complicated than their homespun legends would suggest. Making fried chicken with crispy skin and not too much breading, with meat that’s still moist and not overcooked…that’s a major challenge for everyone. Creating waffles that are almost crunchy without being a dry pile of crust is likewise a feat.

Even restaurants that get these basics right will find a way to screw it up, though. Some cooks think it’s a great idea to throw a couple of burnt chicken wings on a waffle, because nobody really wanted any edible “chicken,” while others deliver a thigh that’s still dripping with fat that ruins the waffle’s structure.

Some restaurants put no seasoning at all on the chicken, or come up with bizarre combinations like sriracha syrup with blueberry compote and ramp. A few places have decided corn is the absolute best flavor for a waffle, such as the restaurant that proudly served me a chewy concoction slathered in corn flakes and an ungodly agglomeration of spices I have never experienced before on Planet Earth.

Over the past two years, I’ve ordered chicken and waffles about 40 times at roughly 30 restaurants. This search has morphed from a fun excursion to a death march, as I slog through one disappointment after another. I feel like Prince Charming, doomed to touch every smelly foot in the kingdom in hopes of finding my true love.

After all this time, I’m in too deeply to call it quits. The search continues and it will not end until I find the chicken and waffles that are every bit as wonderful as I had believed them to be when the journey began.

Clearly, this is a noble quest.

​Just as clearly, I have way too much time on my hands.
 
You can follow this incredible odyssey (odd-yssey?) until its dramatic conclusion by subscribing to dadwrites. When we find the pot of golden waffles and brownish chicken at the end of our rainbow, you’ll be one of the first to know, but only if you click here to subscribe.
 

In a travesty that is repeated every year without fail, the television industry will bestow its Emmy Awards on Sunday without a single acknowledgement of the most deserving performers in the entertainment industry. I’m calling for a boycott of the event until its leaders atone for this transgression.
 
Of course, people who tune in can expect the usual bad jokes and awkward acceptance speeches from this weekend's telecast. We’ll see clips from shows we never got around to streaming and all kinds of virtue signaling from the woke allies in show business, along with the requisite memorials for the stars who departed since Emmy last.
 
Conspicuously absent, though, will be much deserved recognition for the finest actors, choreographers, singers, dancers and other artists of the small screen. When will the Academy bestow its honors on the people who deserve awards the most?
 
Which people? Glad you asked. Here are the new awards they should add immediately to this year's show:

1. Best adaptation of an iconic rock ballad to sell drugs for cholesterol, age spots, or opioid induced constipation.   (Does iTunes take returns?)
   
   
2. Best casting of people who think a Chevy and a Mercedes are the same car. (Omigod, the Cruze has four tires, too???)
   
   
3. Best choreography for people dancing through the park and high-fiving strangers after filling their prescriptions. (Cannabis, we presume?)
   
   
4. Best set design for erectile dysfunction ads, including most creative use of a football and tire swing. (Hmmm…what are they trying to say here?)
   
   
5. Most humiliating performance by an aging idol who gets paired with a cartoon character to sell insurance. (Just to be clear, it’s often more humiliating for the cartoon character than for the aging idol.)
   
   
6. Best dramatic performance by a woman in a furniture store ad who seems to achieve sexual release as she says, “and a free love seat!!!!” (I’ll have what she’s having.)
   
   
7. Most calming explanation of lethal, fatal, and otherwise deadly drug side effects. (Don’t worry, your results may vary.)
   
   
8. Best Abraham Lincoln impersonation for a mattress store. (Seriously, when Abe says his greatest achievement was invention of the box spring, it brings tears to my eyes.)
   
   
9. Best Actor in a commercial where a grandfather has to explain his asthma medicine to his grandchild. (There should also be a Best Supporting Actor award for the kid who has to keep a straight face while gramps whines about his asthma.)
   
   
10. Best portrayal of a woman who is overjoyed that her 80-year-old husband can get it up again. (Sorry, dear, I’ll be out grocery shopping for the next four hours.)

 
These are the performances that deserve the highest accolades of the profession. Anyone can do a good job with a solid script and good direction, but only the truly great can make us lose sleep over their zits. Join our boycott and let’s ensure that they get the credit they deserve.
 
 
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All of us at Dadwrites are about to begin a national movement. It’s a movement that will gladden the hearts of all Americans and heal the wounds of our universe. 
 
This is the one common goal left to humanity in the internet age. We are divided irrevocably on pretty much everything, but we finally have a cause to unite us and restore our faith in each other. We must rise up in an unrelenting and ultimately victorious campaign to move Labor Day to October.
 
As it stands, Labor Day is a depressing holiday, a last three-day weekend to mark the end of summer. Everyone slumps in their lawn chairs and talks about getting back to work while they complain that the fireworks were better on Independence Day. When it’s time for all the guests to leave, nobody talks about their plans for the week ahead, because everyone is planning to be in the office on Tuesday morning.
 
Alas, what began as a celebration of the labor union movement has deteriorated into a celebration of Mondays. Yep, we get this one off, but then we’re working every Monday until MLK Day 21 weeks from now. But Labor Day can be much happier, and more apt, if we make the logical choice to move it back a month. The reasons are compelling and, dare we say, irrefutable.
 
First, the equinox won’t come until September 23, this year, fully three weeks after we bury the season with a holiday marking the “official end of summer.” Insanity!!! Summer is a gift to treasure, not a curse to be canceled. Much like our participation trophies, regrets, grudges, and sixteen, we should hold onto summer as long we can.
 
Second, the weather is going to stay summery well into October in most of the country, because that’s how weather works.  Temperatures will still be warm, humidity levels will drop from their August peaks, and mosquito swarms will finally subside. We won’t notice it, though, because we all went back to work four weeks too early. What are we, nuts??
 
The sad reality is that September barbecues are never as relaxing or enjoyable as the same gatherings before Labor Day. Something is missing, and the missing ingredient is summer. We bury our best season prematurely at the start of September and then we just go through the motions. So sad.
 
But when we move Labor Day to October, we can finally return the holiday to its rightful role as a celebration of working stiffs, the people who build the buildings and plant the plants and assemble the assemblies. We can transform Labor Day into an upbeat extension of summer, rather than its forced execution. “Yeah, the days are shorter now that it’s officially fall, but we have about two weeks left until Labor Day,” we’d say, and we would be happier as a result.
 
When should the new Labor Day occur? We humbly propose the first Friday in October, which is the perfect date for a national holiday. Slotting Labor Day on a Friday will preserve the tradition of three-day weekends while dulling the sting of returning to work a few days later. At long last, people will have a real justification for all those TGIF memes.
 
Admit it. This is such a great idea that you’re already wondering two things:
 

1. Why didn’t I think of it?
2. How do I take credit for thinking of it?

 
We understand how you feel. The brainstorming team at Dadwrites is very proud of itself for this earthshaking idea and we are fine with sharing the credit with all the fans who inspire us to be creative geniuses. Or genii. Or whatever.
 
Enjoy your holiday and take heart. By this time next year, we will have achieved our goal and we will all be looking forward to another month of summer weekends.
 
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When hand crafting is no longer a plus, initial thoughts on diseases, and a blabst from the pabst, brought to you this week from a clean desk and a very cluttered mind…

1. So many questions about life on this blog. It's like Sex and the City, but without the sex.
2. I developed a new line of artisanal water, but customers got turned off when I told them it was hand crafted.
3. I was tired of having the same old cheeseburgers, so I decided to skip lunch and make tacos for dinner. Ground beef, cheese, tomatoes, onions…what a great change of pace.
4. Tasting wine is like telling the doctor whether your pain is from 1-10. It all depends on your expectations, your ego, and how much little things bother you.
5. Who decided that every illness should be known by its initials? Erectile dysfunction is ED, reflux is GERD, and constipation caused by opioids is OIC. Meanwhile, why couldn’t they come up with more meaningful acronyms, like Flatulence At Regular Time Sequences or Zillions of Irritating Teenage Spots?
6. Speaking of initial impressions, did you notice that Pabst Blue Ribbon only became hip when they started calling it PBR?
7. The other night, I drove to a neighborhood restaurant and found a parking space right in front of the entrance. I walked up and down the street to look for signs that prohibited parking or required a fee. Then, I asked two people who worked in the restaurant to assure me I was safe to park there. Clearly, the Meter Maids are a terrorist organization.
8. It took a long time, but I have finally run out of patience with adults who don't have basic computer skills. Yeah, it was almost cute in 1989, but you've had more than 30 years to learn this stuff.

 
 
Of course, all the people reading this post are incredibly tech savvy 8G gurus who can program a computer and surf the web and click on this button to become subscribers. Right?

Take a quick look at the photo that accompanies this post, the one with the panels from three comics that appeared recently in my daily newspaper. (Note to Millennials: Ask your parents to explain what a newspaper is.) Today’s post was supposed to focus on those comics, but it turns out that you won’t be able to read the story online.*
 
That’s because I have discovered the one thing you absolutely cannot publish on the internet. Yes, you can post pornography, threats, vile characterizations, fake videos and the worst moments of some stranger’s life. The thing you absolutely cannot post, though, is satire.
 
I tried, I really did, and my failure offers up a lesson about the medium that transforms the message.
 
Quick flashback: I was sitting at the kitchen table and I noticed that three comic strips all focused on the same topic on the same day: women’s hair. It’s pretty common that two comics might touch on the same theme on any given day, of course, because there are only so many general areas (family, money, exercise, pets…) that are universal sources of mirth. When I saw the trio about hair, though, it reminded me of Auric Goldfinger’s explanation that, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.”
 
Genius!! I had been meaning to put together a post about conspiracy theories, but I hadn’t found the right way to tackle the subject. This blog is a politics-free zone, which prohibits any comments about 99.9999% of all conspiracies. But the comics pages are perfect. Nobody could really see a conspiracy among cartoonists, so a funny riff on a comics cabal would be exactly right.
 
So I wrote a post about the conspiracy I had uncovered among cartoonists to undermine America with their flagrant attacks on women, families and other institutions. I added ALL CAPS and bold type and underlines and SOMETIMES ALL THREE to mimic the suspect screeds that arrive in my morning feed.
 
And it’s pretty good, at least in comparison with most of my stuff, so I put it in the queue to run today. But then reality set in. The problem with putting satire online is that so many, many, many, many…many people do not grasp the difference between real and fake. Our subscribers would recognize the post as satire, but it’s pretty much guaranteed that somebody somewhere would miss the humor and launch a boycott against Blondie.
 
I tried adding a spoiler alert of sorts to the beginning of the post, but that’s like trying to explain why a joke is funny. I thought of adding a note at the end of the screed, but that would work about as well as the “thanks for sharing the fun” announcement at the end of the War of the Worlds broadcast.
 
In the end, I gave up. If we were sitting in a bar and I leaned in close and told you about the comics conspiracy, we could have a good laugh. On the internet, though, we’d cause a panic.

Damn. Now I need to think of something else I can post today.
 
* If you’d like to read the conspiracy rant, just leave a comment (include your email in the appropriate info box) and I will send the pdf to you by email. Don’t share it on the internet, though, because innocent lives are at stake.
 
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