JON ZAL

Your front-row seat to my nervous breakdown

Wall of shame

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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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U2? Me too!

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U2 "3 Nights Live" ticket

The odds of me getting that ticket were so infinitesimal, I almost didn’t try. Seriously.

Look, I’ve been in this game a long time now, and I’ve gotten hooked up for some pretty exclusive gigs, but U2 in a tiny Boston-area theater, playing for less than 1,000 people, most of whom were contest winners from around the country? I know rejection when I see it, and this was rejection on steroids with a tire-iron in its hand, just looking for an optimist it could clobber the hell out of.

But I had to give it a try, right?

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Berated by Bono

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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’ …)

Another mouth to feed

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I can’t believe I forgot to introduce you all to the newest member of the family! Where are my manners?

Baby Alive Tink & Poops

This little bundle of joy is Baby Alive Tink & Poops. No, that’s not her real name, but that is what Jayna has been calling her since, like, a year ago when she first saw the commercial. As you can probably surmise, the “Tink & Poops” part means she not only urinates—which is just so yesteryear—but she also defecates. And if there is one thing we need around here, it is a fake baby who shits herself, amirite?

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A new beginning

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Obama shirt
Old enough to remember when easily-taken selfies weren’t a thing.

I bought this shirt about a year ago, not long after President Obama (President Obama! Sweet Jumping Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, I love saying that!) won the Iowa Caucus. At the time, I still thought he was a bit of a long shot, but, after having started off the campaign season convinced that Hillary was my candidate, I suddenly found myself swept up in the excitement of Barack Obama’s candidacy. The man moved me — and still does. And, thankfully, he also moved a majority of the voting public last November.

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And the Academy Award for Best Parent in an Improv Performance While Operating an Automobile goes to …

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Tuesday is my morning to chauffeur the lovely Miss Jayna to her nursery school, and doing so is always a bit of a crap shoot, because I never know which Jayna I’m going to get. Will it be the “Yay! School!” Jayna, or the “I DON’T WANNA GO TO SCHOOL! [weeping and crying and screaming]” Jayna?

This morning, it seemed to be the middle ground: she was neither psyched nor horrified by the prospect … and when your child is balancing between the realms of “Best Possible Outcome” and “Worst Possible Outcome,” ye must tread lightly and be on the lookout for potential landmines, for one wrong move and BOOM! And that explosion, brothers and sisters, will topple your little bundle of joy from the balance beam of ambiguity into a very clearly defined emotional realm, and you will wish you could put your fingers in your ears and curl up in a ball until The Screaming and The Crying have stopped.

And you definitely, definitely, de-fin-ite-ly do not want The Screaming and The Crying to take place as you attempt to part with your little bundle of joy during the preschool drop-off, because then you have yourself A Situation—or, worse yet, A Scene.

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Still headbanging after all these years

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Welcome to the early aughts, children … when taking a selfie meant holding up a standalone camera in front of the mirror. I was seated atop my dinosaur at the time I snapped this one. -JZ, 2022

There are so many things wrong with this photo (not the least of which is the fact that I was standing in the bathroom at midnight taking a picture of myself in the mirror), or at least why this photo came to be, that I hardly know where to begin.

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