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JON ZAL

Your front-row seat to my nervous breakdown

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Life

I’m kind of like a superhero who saves people … except the people I save usually aren’t in any real danger other than that which I’ve conjured up in my own wildly neurotic imagination, but still …

December 19, 2010 17 Comments

Last weekend, my mother-in-law treated me, my wife, our kids, our nephew and WW’s older brother to the Philly Pops’ annual holiday concert at The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts — or, as I like to call it, The Anxiety-Provoking Center for the Provocation of Anxiety in the Overly Neurotic Parent Who Fears the Accidental Falling from Great Heights and Subsequent Premature Death of His Children and Nephew.

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Filed Under: Life, Parenthood

No, really: This job-search thing is like shooting fish in a barrel

May 13, 2010 21 Comments

Pretty sure the fish in the metaphor are presumed to be swimming, but, still … live fish, dead fish … put ’em in a barrel and they’d be easy to shoot is the point, amirite?

OK, seriously: What’s with all the hubbub about high unemployment rates in this country? Because I’m still two business days away from my lay-off, and already the job offers are coming at me faster than I can keep up with them. You jobless whiners out there must be a bunch of losers; this job-search shit is even easier than kicking my kids’ asses at Candyland.

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Filed Under: Greatest Hits, Life, Portfolio

Man, this finding-a-new-job thing is going to be easier than I thought

May 12, 2010 32 Comments

Turns out I have a bright future ahead of me ... in a field about which I know nothing
Turns out I have a bright future ahead of me … in a field about which I know nothing

Since learning last week that I’ve been laid off from my job of the past 10 years, I’ve been feeling a bit anxious and unsettled. So imagine my relief when, this morning, just a few short days after uploading to CareerBuilder.com a copy of my résumé, I received the following email:

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Filed Under: Greatest Hits, Life, Portfolio

I FINALLY got to use my passport!

January 8, 2010 26 Comments

Passport

In my mind, I am a worldly, tuxedo-wearing, international man of mystery, jetting to and fro, blending seamlessly with my surroundings … by all appearances a high-class, streetwise native of whatever far-flung, exotic locale in which I find myself.

In reality, I rarely leave the house.

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Filed Under: Life

Wall of shame

April 8, 2009 20 Comments

Oh, Scott. Things were going so well. So well indeed. Alas …

You see, Scott, I am a major control freawok … but, unfortunately, I am neither qualified nor equipped to install Verizon FiOS. Thus, I begrudgingly had to relinquish control and allow you to have free rein around the inside and outside of my house today.

Don’t take it personally, Scott; I get twitchy and anxious when anyone is doing any work on my home of any kind. I always worry that the person performing the work is going to accidentally fuck something up and leave me with a new problem that didn’t exist until they dicked around with whatever it was with which they had to dick around.

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Filed Under: Life

Berated by Bono

March 12, 2009 5 Comments

Bono berating me from the stage.

Um, well, actually, Mr. Bono, now that you mention it …

(Sorry, kids. You’ll get the story, but not tonight. Aiming for tomorrow.)

(Also, FYI: This kind of unfortunate incident can be avoided in the future if one of you would like to make an enormous donation to the “Help Jon Zal Quit His Day Job” fund. I’m just sayin’ …)

Filed Under: Life, Music, Parenthood

Example of why I have learned to mostly quit while I’m ahead

September 12, 2008 3 Comments

iPhone

Me to my wife after running outside and catching her before she backs out of the driveway so that I can hand to her the cellphone she left on the kitchen counter—the one that I can never reach her on:

“Please keep this on you.”

“I do.”

“Apparently not.”

“Yes, I do. That’s why it was inside.”

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Filed Under: Life, Marriage

Hey, Dad, guess what: I also pay a guy to fix my car

August 20, 2008 8 Comments

Four years ago this month, my wife and I closed on our house and joined the ranks of the “homeowners” (a misnomer if ever there was one, because, I assure you, we SO DON’T own this house; Countrywide Mortgage owns not only this house, but, thanks to the plummeting real-estate prices of the past several years, everything in it … but I digress).

At the end of our first winter here, it became apparent to us that the previous owners, in order to make the house they were selling look pretty for the least possible cost, slapped a coat of paint on it with little or no preparation. Their plan worked; we gave them an assload of cash for their pretty house, they vamoosed, and, after less than one year here, we had a house that looked like a giant, pale-yellow scab.

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Filed Under: Life

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FEATURED POSTS

Is it November yet?

Turns out I have a bright future ahead of me ... in a field about which I know nothing

Man, this finding-a-new-job thing is going to be easier than I thought

Zombie Dinner Party … with your chef, Dr. Hannibal Lector

Daddy Vader

If not for The Force, Darth Vader would have totally gotten his ass kicked, because that suit? Not very practical.

Gene Simmons on stage

Dear Gene Simmons of KISS, a.k.a. My Childhood Hero: I think there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. Either that, or you’re an overly sensitive dick.

Van Halen (or, The Band That Ate My Life)

An Open Letter of Apology to President Barack Obama

No, really: This job-search thing is like shooting fish in a barrel

Hell hath no fury like white-male privilege threatened

There must be a reckoning

ABOUT ME

Jon Zal @ The Massachusetts State House, Boston

I was born in 1970, raised just outside of Boston, and now live near Philadelphia. As a child, I thought I was going to be…
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