Ten years ago, I was living in Allston, a suburb just a few miles east of Boston. Rent was cheap in Allston, so it was filled with minorities and college students. My parents had just bought me my first car, an old Toyota Creole (I'm not so good with car names, sorry), and I kept it parked out in the tiny parking space behind our apartment, between the dumpster and the guy committing suicide.

The radio in the car only received two stations, and those simultaneously, so I drove around with a beat-up boom box in the passenger seat. One night, like an idiot, I left the boom box in the front seat. I should have just decorated it with Christmas lights and put out a plate of cookies for Homeless Claus to snatch it.

I came back the next day to find it gone. Not just the boom box, but the car itself.

After living in this city for any length of time, one's first thought is that one's car must have been towed. In Boston, towing companies are like mischievous pixies, magically transporting cars from one location to another in the wink of an eye. Unlike pixies, however, they can be bribed. If you went to the lot to pick up the car, you'd be out at least $50, plus the cost of the ride. If you caught the guy towing your car, though, you could just slip him a $20 and he'd take it off right there. It was a like a corrupt valet service.

I called the police and they confirmed that my car had been towed. I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the news. "Where can I pick it up?" I asked.

"Saugus," they replied.

"Huh?" Saugus is a working-class suburb 25 miles north of Boston.

"Looks like somebody took it for a joyride," said the cop on the other end of the line. "They ran out of gas in Saugus."

Silently, I thanked the Lord. Being a poor college student, I never kept more than $1.50 worth of gas in my tank at any one time.

When I finally retrieved the car, I found that the thieves had jimmied open the door, popped off the ignition lock, and used a screwdriver to start up the car. My boom box was gone, of course, as was my gas. And thanks to a police mixup, I had to pay several hundred dollars in towing and "storage fees."

I made an appointment with a local mechanic to get the ignition fixed, who couldn't fit me in until the following day. In the meantime, I had to park the car somewhere for the night. The locks were broken and the ignition was waiting for anyone with a screwdriver and an amphetamine buzz. I put another $1.50 of gas in the tank, and drove it back to the apartment. I didn't know what else to do. "Besides," I thought in my foolish youthful naivete, "it's only one night." I created a high-tech anti-theft system which consisted of a blanket draped over the steering wheel so no one would see the broken ignition. Later, I invented Lojack.

I woke up in the morning to find the car was gone. This time I knew it was not the towing pixies.

I called the police anyway. "Yeah, we towed it," said the same officer with whom I had spoken the day before.

"Where is it?"

"Saugus."

This is one of those impossibly coincidental details that will convince you I'm making everything up, but I swear it happened this way: apparently the same group of hooligans had stolen the car a second time, taken it for the same joyride, and run out of gas on the very same street in Saugus.

Sure, I had to go retrieve the car (twice), and shell out an awful lot of cash I didn't have. But I like to think that I had the last laugh. After all, they had to find a ride home.

I met Jay through a mutual friend at Berklee College of Music, where we were both rock stars in training. The only thing I remember about those days of yore -- besides the incredibly itchy tumor that I sported proudly from the back of my head -- is eating in the dining hall with Jay, who would crack me up by imitating Dana Carvey imitating George Michael. That, in the comedy business, is what we call a "double imitation." On several occasions he imitated Johnny Carson imitating Robert DeNiro imitating Liberace, and drew a crowd of onlookers at this rarely-attempted triple comedy imitation. One night, slightly inebriated on Miller Ice, he tried imitating Joan Rivers imitating Al Pacino imitating Richard Nixon imitating a dog, and had to be hospitalized for four weeks.

The next semester, I was supposed to be roommates with Jay, but I dropped out instead to become a missionary. The following year when I returned to Berklee, Jay had dropped out to become a data scientist, which was a far less noble calling than being a missionary, and we lost touch.

Several years later, Jay phoned me unexpectedly, just to see what was going on. We found that our post-college lives had taken eerily similar twists, and thus began the phenomenon of what Jay calls our "parallel lives." We do have a mild Twilight Zoney vibe, and important events in our lives often happen simultaneously. For instance, when I recently got in trouble with the police for dumping trash in a doctor's dumpster, Jay got arrested for eating trash out of a doctor's dumpster. (He claims he was "getting down with the coons," whatever that means.)

Discovering that we had both become not rock stars but computer geek rock stars, we set out to create our first production, "The Post-College Years," a comedy novel about the joys of locating a job after college, which may eventually find its way to ZUG if we can ever restore it off the old floppy disks that have since melted into the bottom of my filing cabinet. It used an innovation called "hypertext" which consisted of underlined words which, when clicked, took you to another page. Later, we invented the Web.

As my business partner, Jay once described himself as "the wind at my back," which is both accurate and an oversimplification of what he does on this site. Whereas I selfishly hog the spotlight, like a bratty five year-old girl, Jay is the unsung hero of ZUG, full of enthusiasm and dedication.

So today, on his 30-somethingth birthday (he asked me not to tell ... all right, I was too lazy to do the research), let's give it up for Mr. Jay Stevens.

Happy birthday, Jay.

Wednesday, February 20, 2002

Continuing yesterday's theme about scamming free stuff in return for working on this website, I recently received a package in the mail from Nestle, in response to a prank e-mail I wrote a few months ago about their Lean Cuisine French Bread Pizza. I had complained that the words "New! Italian-Style Flavor" on the package were insulting to Italian-Americans, since there is nothing new about Italian-Style Flavor:

Dear Lean Cuisinarts:

Yesterday I was eating a Lean Cuisine french bread pizza when I noticed the words "New! Italian-Style Flavor."

I'm completely baffled by this. What's new about Italian-Style Flavor? Were the old Lean Cuisine pizzas made by Indians, or Israelis? Were they manufactured in a Korean sweatshop? You don't advertise "New Chinese-Style Flavor" on your frozen eggrolls, or "New Hispanic-Style Flavor" on your beans and rice. Italian-Style Flavor has been going on for over 2000 years, and here you come along and act like you invented it.

As a fifth-generation Italian-American, I take the deepest offense at this thoughtless, insensitive product packaging. If I do not receive a prompt reply, I will be forced to switch my loyalty to Hungry-Man. They're not as healthy as your frozen dinners, but at least they respect Italians.

And you'll be getting a call from my uncle.

That's a promise, not a threat,
John Spinelli-Hargrave

When I received a note of apology along with a promise of free Lean Cuisine coupons, a few of you expressed disbelief that I would actually receive the coupons. Well, lookee here, suckahs:

When I sent in an additional prank e-mail as a follow-up, they sent me another apology note along with another handful of coupons. I now have enough free Lean Cuisine coupons to last me through a small famine:

In my seven years of doing prank e-mail, I have never seen such a thorough response to my silly requests. I hereby proclaim Nestle's to have the best customer service of any consumer goods company in America.

Apparently there is such a thing as a free lunch. You just have to pose as a deranged Italian mobster in order to get it.

Tuesday, February 19, 2002

For a Christmas present, a bunch of folks from the ZUG message board got together and prepaid ZUG's hosting fees for 2002, which was a way better present than, say, a fruitcake. We're thanking them by putting "This month's bandwidth brought to you by..." at the bottom of each page on ZUG. A bunch of people contributed less than a month's hosting, which is still way better than a fruitcake, and we'll thank them at the end of the year.

I am amazed by this generosity, because in a time when everyone says no one will pay for Internet content, these fans voluntarily ponied up. Which (as I write in a forthcoming article for BBC Online) is perhaps ZUG's new revenue model. Maybe we do this site without a salary, but we're repaid in merchandise and services contributed by ZUG's fans.

For instance: a few weeks ago, I wrote about a favorite childhood book called Who Needs Donuts? I asked if anyone out there could get it for me. Lo and behold, a ZUG fan named Cara Gerard owned the book and began scanning me high-res images of each page. Considering this book is going for over $100 on eBay, that's a pretty sweet deal. Cara rocks ass.

So here's the deal: I want a Tivo. But I don't want to pay for a Tivo. If I have to pay for it, that defeats the purpose. "But the Tivo makes you watch more TV." I already watch more TV, because I have a baby. Half my day is spent feeding him, and TV is the only thing I can do. Tivo would improve the quality of what I watch, and, uh, give me more, that is, relevant material to talk about. Yeah, it would improve John's Journal, that's the ticket.

John's Journal is read by literally hundreds of thousands of people. Surely, one of you out there has an old Tivo, or a brother who is a Tivo account rep, or is a compulsive shoplifter. (Hey, I won't ask where it came from.) Somebody find me a freaking Tivo.

I don't care if it's the entry-level model. I'm not even asking for the lifetime subscription. I just want a Tivo. But not if I have to pay for it.

Tomorrow: John's birthday, which is, by the way, April 1!

Monday, February 18, 2002

My head is pounding. My eyes feel like two gaping gunshot wounds which are trying to close. If I were a cartoon character, I'd have little toothpicks propping open my eyelids like pup tents. I am exhausted.

This weekend, we tried to get the baby on a normal human sleep schedule, rather than the sleep schedule of a rabid bat. (I don't know what that means, either. I'm out of my mind here.) There are various strategies for getting kids to sleep through the night, from letting them cry themselves to sleep to knocking them on the head with a frying pan. (That's a joke. You should never hit anyone on the head with a frying pan, except Popeye the Sailor Man.)

The leading thinker in this field is Dr. Richard Ferber, whose book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems is considered Holy Writ by parents of infants. They refer to it, and I'm not making this up, as "Ferberizing," which sounds like they're either installing complicated ductwork, or dry-cleaning the tot.

"Your baby smells so wonderful!"

"Thanks, just had him Ferberized."

I can sum up the Ferber technique like so: let the baby cry at gradually longer intervals. That's it. That's the whole ball of wax. But of course you have to buy the book and wade through all the testimonials and the Ferber PR. It's filled with "success stories," which are designed to build your self-confidence:

Before we tried Dr. Ferber's technique, our baby had not slept since the Reagan administration. Now our darling son won't get out of bed! In fact, he hasn't moved in weeks! Wait a minute ... YOU BASTARD! HE'S DEAD!

Over the weekend, we started the process. The first night, we set aside our regular nighttime ritual of rocking him to sleep using a complicated Native American tribal dance while softly humming early Led Zeppelin. Instead, we set him in his crib, turned out the lights, and walked away.

Predictably, he screamed. And didn't stop screaming until ... well, he didn't stop screaming. "This must be how Hitler got his start," I kept muttering to my wife. It was emotionally excruciating. There we sat, listening to the wails of a helpless child, knowing that before long we would be a Reader's Digest feature story on child abuse.

The first night was the worst. The second night, though, was really the worst. I was so tired from the previous night that I kept falling asleep, and my wife had to resort to pro wrestling moves to wake me up. At 2:15 am, she utilized a figure-four leglock. At 3:36, she laid down a pile driver. And at 5:18, she broke a wooden chair over my head.

Last night was the third night, and I'll be damned if he didn't sleep the whole night through. All right, I'll be damned then. But he did fall asleep within five minutes of being put in his crib. All 475 times.

So I guess I've got the religion. Dr. Ferber is the shizznit. Though if he really cared, he'd come over during the night and let us get a few minutes of sleep.