I will not stop pestering The New Yorker until I either die or get published.

Big news!

 I started sending allegedly humorous columns to The New Yorker about a month ago, hoping to get one published in the Shouts & Murmurs section of the magazine. The magazine’s editors warn you not to expect a response and, lo-and-behold, nothing is exactly what I heard. But today, I was quite excited to receive two identical back-to-back e-mails from the Shouts department. Here’s what they said, followed by my enthusiastic reply:

The New Yorker:

Thanks for sending this.  We’re sorry to say it isn’t right for us, despite its humor. 
Thanks for letting us consider your work.

Best regards,

The Shouts Dept. 

Me:

Hello,

Thank you kindly for the rejection letter. I know that sounds odd, but it represents a significant step up from being completely ignored, and is the best news I’ve received from The New Yorker since I started e-mailing columns to you a month ago. Coming on a Friday, as it did, I feel I can approach my weekend with unexpected buoyancy. Perhaps a celebratory gin-and-tonic will be in order tonight!

If I may be so bold as to ask, is there somebody specific I could send future submissions to?

Also, is there something specific I could do as a writer to win over the Shouts department? If not, I’ll simply continue sending in columns until you either publish one, or threaten to break my fingers so that I can’t type anymore.

Again, thank you for the rejection letter. I anticipate more — please, sir, may I have another? — but remain cheerfully optimistic that I will be able to tell my mother I’ve been published in The New Yorker before she passes away. Not to pressure you, but you should know she’s in her 70s and might not have much time left.

Sincerely,

Michael Whiteman-Jones, humorist

Critics, and by critics I mean my kids and me, thought the funniest scenes in the Night at the Museum movies were between Ben Stiller and the capuchin monkeys. Imagine how much funnier it will be in the next one when the monkeys glow in the dark.

Many important scientific breakthroughs have changed the course of history over the last several hundred years, including the invention of the telescope, automobile and antibiotics.

But now researchers in Japan have engineered the most significant technological advance of all time: glow-in-the-dark monkeys.

Yes, I know it sounds impossibly Star Trek, but it’s true!

Scientists at the Keio University School of Medicine announced today that they’ve magically combined the genes of a jellyfish with the genes of a marmoset, giving the palm-sized primates hair, skin and blood that glows lime green under a special light. And now these frisky marmosets are mating and proliferating faster than disco dancers in the 80s.

I’m sure there are all sorts of useful applications for DayGlo monkeys. It’ll make them easier to find and catch if they escape from the zoo after hours, for example.

But I don’t care about any of that. I just like monkeys. They’re adorable, and their crazy hi-jinks make me laugh until my stomach hurts. I mean, have you seen the movies Night at the Museum and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian? Is there anybody here who doesn’t believe the wild-ass slap-fights between Ben Stiller and those ornery capuchin monkeys deserve an Oscar or two?

Let’s get serious here for a moment: There’s nothing funnier than monkeys, chimpanzees and great apes, especially when they act like humans, who share 99 percent of the same DNA with their hairier cousins. Who can forget Tarzan’s chatty chimp Cheetah, The Lion King’s wise yet goofy mandrill Rafiki, or that cheeky scalawag Curious George? When monkeys cross the threshold into our world and do human stuff like driving cars, cooking spaghetti and golfing, raucous hilarity is sure to ensue.

There’s only one way I could’ve imagined ratcheting up the entertainment value of monkeys, and that’s by making them glow in the dark.

But I didn’t envision it. I completely failed to see it coming. I could kick myself, too, because I should have known better. I should’ve paid more attention to really smart people like the famous futurist Ray Kurzweil, who predicts in his critically acclaimed book, The Singularity is Near, that science will soon meld humans with computers. Not in bad ways, not like it’s depicted in Terminator Salvation, but in wondrous ways that’ll enable us to become super nerds — pocket-protector-wearing brainiacs able to perform complex calculations at lightning speeds and lift heavy objects like my Uncle Earl. Uncle Earl got kicked in the head by a mule when he was a kid, but he’s built like a friggin’ gorilla. He’s not funny like you’d expect a gorilla to be, but he can move furniture all day long if you keep him stoked with M&Ms and beef jerky.

Anyway, I bet guys like Kurzweil saw the whole glow-in-the-dark monkey thing coming up Sixth Avenue. In fact, I’ll bet they’re already working on the next advancements in monkey technology. Stuff like monkeys that can talk, fly airplanes and bake a really good soufflé. Kurzweil says technology’s progress accelerates with time, and that’s got to be as true for monkey science as it is for anything else, right?

Technology is rapidly making Tarzan's pal, Cheetah, seem pretty outdated. Perhaps Director Peter Jackson can bring Cheetah into the now with Japan's glow-in-the-dark technology.

Plotted on a graph, Kurzweil says the forward march of research looks exactly like a hockey stick. It climbs slowly at first, like the blade, before shooting straight up into the stratosphere, like the shaft. Naturally, this hockey-stick analogy reminds me of another great monkey movie, MVP: Most Valuable Primate. It’s about a talented chimp with a wicked slapshot that makes it to NHL. I’m talking about an actual chimp here, not the Anaheim Duck’s Chris Pronger. At 6-foot, 6-inches tall and 221 pounds, Pronger’s actually bigger than most primates. But he’s nowhere near as funny, especially when he catches a tiny forward like the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Martin St. Louis behind the net during a game.

I hope Kurzweil is right about technology, and I hope those Japanese scientists are hard at work on the next monkey breakthrough because I can hardly wait for it. In the meantime, I think I’ll start writing a script for the next Night at the Museum movie. I’m tentatively calling it Night at the Museum III: Luminous at the Louvre, and you’re practically going to fall out of your seat laughing when see the unruly band of phosphorescent capuchins tossing blacklight paint on Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and slapping the hapless Ben Stiller silly.

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There isn't a better role model for teenagers than those rascals over at Abercrombie & Fitch.

Dear Dr. Teen Advisor,

My 14-year-old teenager wants to get a belly button ring. I say she has to turn 18 first, but my husband says she has to be, like, 40. What do you think?

Confused Longmont Mom

————————————-

Dear Confused,

You’re both wrong, but in ways that prove once again that women are from Venus and men are from some really disgusting planet that I hope nobody ever, ever visits no matter how bad things here on Earth get.

Your husband picked 40 as the age of acceptability partly because he knows it won’t matter by then: Your daughter’s once-flat belly will be such a floppy mass of cellulite and stretch marks that she’ll gladly keep it hidden underneath swaths of cloth so as not to frighten small children in her neighborhood. Hanging an attention-getting golden ring off her distended pooch will be the furthest thing from her mind.

This decidedly unsexy disfigurement will be the inevitable result of multiple pregnancies coupled with a handful of unfortunate lifestyle choices, including:

* Eating thousands of Hostess powdered donuts to relieve the stress of raising kids;

* Nipping at the Captain Morgan’s rum a little too often to relieve stress of raising kids plus a husband;

* And, to relieve the stress of being a fat, over-the-hill alcoholic mom, sitting on the couch night after night instead of exercising while she lets her mind drift into the imaginary world of romantic soap operas starring wafer-thin actresses like Ellen Pompeo of Grey’s Anatomy, who’s apparently too busy admiring McDreamy to eat at McDonald’s, or anywhere else, for that matter.

What your husband understands is that teenage girls who get belly button rings might as well screw red lightbulbs into their bedside lamps and start earning a little tax-free cash using what God gave them to work with. Why? Because they’re going to be very popular with teenage boys. This is because the hormone-addled minds of boys are….well, let’s just say their minds are less like romantic moonlight strolls on misty riverbanks and more like torrential monsoons that burst dams above villages, burying them under stinking piles of mud and muck.

Suffice it to say that when boys see a belly button ring dangling enticingly from a girls’ sexy bare midriff, only one thought crosses their single-track minds, and it isn’t, “Oh, that’s a lovely belly button ring! I wonder if she bought that at Tiffany & Co. in New York?”

Deep down, you know your husband’s right about the belly button ring because you were once a teenage girl yourself. You surely recall — probably with a faintly disturbing mixture of guilt and pleasure — that teenage boys didn’t ask you out on dates because they admired your intellect, sense of humor and deep spirituality.

But you’re willing to compromise a smidgen and let your daughter get a belly ring when she’s 18 for three reasons: One, you don’t want your daughter to be an unpopular misfit amongst her pierced peers forever; Two, you don’t want those other “progressive” parents in your neighborhood to think you’re a prude; Three, you know that if you don’t give in, you’ll soon need powerful anti-psychotic drugs to combat the rising insanity triggered by your daughter’s growing hatred for you, which manifests itself in constant yelling and temper tantrums.

But Dr. Teen Advisor believes it isn’t practical to force your daughter for wait for a belly button ring until she’s 18, let alone 40. She’ll just rebel and elope to Las Vegas with the first Tom, Dick or Harry who can afford a piercing and a $375 ceremony at the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel (that price currently includes a $50 gas card for the trip home, by the way). That option would be OK, except that guess who’ll be living in your basement for the next five years while the newlyweds “get on their feet,” and guess who’ll be their permanent, unpaid babysitter?

You might think you’re being a clever mom by asking her to put it off for four short years, but delaying it until then won’t help her make the culturally necessary step into the winner’s circle at school, and it’ll just make those other parents think you’re judging and condemning the choices they’ve made. That will make you the object of hatred at PTA meetings and neighborhood barbeques, not to mention demonized at home 24/7.

So, here’s my advice: Unless you and your husband want to be pariahs in your own neighborhood and house, don’t waste another minute worrying about this issue. Do what 99 percent of parents do and cave in to your daughter’s demands. Sign the permission slip allowing her to get the sexy belly button ring.

While you’re at it, drive her over to the mall for a visit to Hot Topic, Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria’s Secret. These fine retailers feature a selection of accessories that complement belly button rings, including see-through crop tops, short skirts, thigh-high black leather boots and push-up bras. Then head straight to Celebrity Tattoo and get her some tasteful body art — maybe a horny red devil with a lascivious smile or a sexy angel brandishing a whip — for her breast or inner thigh.

Whatever you do, try not to think of her new look as slutty or whorish. Times have changed, so consider her new look empowering — the modern teenage girl’s way of using her femininity to dress for success. Try to understand that she’ll be the envy of her friends and the center of attention with the entire high school football team.  But if you simply can’t get used to living with an underaged Dita Von Tease after a few months, just don’t glance in her direction when she leaves the house dressed like she’s headed to work at the local strip club.

One more thing: Comfort yourself with the knowledge that you can leverage the goodwill you gain by helping your daughter to fit in at school by talking her into occasionally joining you at Baskin-Robbins for a little sweet, old-fashioned mother-daughter bonding over two scoops of Rocky Road ice cream on a sugar cone. You’ll be a little embarrassed to be seen hanging out with Madonna’s  protégé and it’ll be pseudo-bonding, but that’s better than no bonding at all!

Happy Piercing!

Dr. Teen Advisor

If you have a question for Dr. Teen Advisor, please e-mail him at Dr.T@TooManyMornings.com.

Ann Hodges got hit by a meteorite in 1954. But she never played in the NHL like our son will someday.

We left Denver Wednesday and made our way by jet plane to Chicago, home of deep-dish pizza and deep-water concrete boots, for yet another hockey tournament.

This time, our future NHL phenomenon is skating at the U.S. Hockey League’s annual scouting showcase, which is a fairly big deal in the world of hockey. Gabe was very nervous about this event — much more than normal — but he’s playing extremely well so far, if you can trust a father’s judgment when it comes to evaluating his own son’s skills (I wouldn’t). Objectively, he knocked a few kids loopy and scored three goals and four assists in the first three games, which probably makes him the point leader on his team for the moment. The serious-looking pro scouts who wear the black jackets and sit in the stands scribbling notes on their clipboards make Gabe even more self-aware than his regular teenage self, but mostly, he’s having a lot of fun playing with some of the top players from some of the top teams in the country.

I wish I could accurately describe why we love these hockey-related events so much. From the outside, they probably don’t look like much fun. They’re less of a vacation and more of a frenzied blur as we race to the airport and hotel with all our gear stuffed in the trunk, then spend the next three to four days rushing to and from games in the early morning and late at night. The hours between games are punctuated by quick dashes to the nearest restaurants — usually cheap fast-food restaurants, I’m sorry to report – to keep the budding talent fueled up for the next game. When we’re not eating, we’re often zipping around on frustrating hunts for the nearest Target so we can find Gabe some orange juice to gulp down while the ice is Zambonied. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we have time to take brief naps, or maybe see a movie. Occasionally, we even get to do some sightseeing, but it’s rare.

Instead, we typically experience North America’s greatest cities — places like Chicago, Toronto and Fargo, North Dakota — almost exclusively through their hockey rinks. I don’t recommend it because, to be honest, they’re all very similar: cold, slightly sour smelling and filled with hundreds of anxious parents whose kids are headed to the NHL with ours. In fact, if everything goes according to the parents’ plans, someday all 30 NHL teams will be staffed solely by the kids we know.

Watching our kids play together in the NHL is going to be a lot of fun, not just because we’ll be getting free tickets to pro hockey games, but also because we’ll  be able to sit in the stands drinking beer and doing what we always do, which is to quietly yet authoritatively criticize other players’ glaring weaknesses. You can’t believe how bad the other players are, or how baffling it is that coaches keep picking them for teams. Sometimes it seems like the worse a player is the more likely he is to be picked for a really good team by a coach. It’s painfully clear to us parents that hockey coaches aren’t that smart and truly don’t understand hockey as well as they should. That’s obviously why they pursued careers as hockey coaches instead of real jobs as journalists, accountants, lawyers, stay-at-home moms, doctors, metalworkers, computer programmers and janitors. Nobody knows more about hockey than a hockey mom or dad, just ask one if you don’t believe me.

There is one way in which coaches might have one up on our family, though: They always seem to be able to find the rinks by game time. We’re terrible at that part of a hockey trip. We used to get lost all the time, most famously in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where we somehow managed to drive from the airport almost back to the U.S. border before we realized our mistake and turned around. That night, we arrived at the hotel about four hours later and 10 times more pissed off than the rest of the team. Another time, we arrived for an important game in Toronto early in the second period. Once, we got totally, absolutely and completely lost but still arrived on time because I hit speeds of 85 mph while driving the mini-van through the suburbs at 4 a.m. I won’t say what city we were in, just in case the police there are looking for me.

We’re better at finding rinks now, because we finally purchased a Garmin GPS unit. Now when we get lost, the stern, faintly Germanic  voice of Gurdy Garmin — Gurdy’s our affectionate nickname for Gertrude — orders us to make a turn here and a turn there, and before we know it, we arrive at the rink, usually just about on time. God bless Gurdy, I say; she might be an irritating bitch, but she’s probably saved our marriage many times now.

There’s no rational explanation for living this way, of course. It’s expensive, aggravating and time consuming, and the odds that any hockey player — no matter how good he is — will get a college hockey scholarship or make it to the NHL are about the same as getting hit by a meteorite.

But here’s the thing: People do get hit by meteorites. Or, at least one person was hit by meteorite. It happened in 1954 to Mrs. Ann Hodges of Oak Grove, Alabama, while she was sleeping on her living room couch. The 8.5-pound meteorite came crashing through the ceiling, bounced off some furniture and hit her in the hip and abdomen. Turns out Ann lived across the street from the Comet Drive-In Movie Theater, which probably explains why she doesn’t look more shocked and surprised in the photos they took of her after this remarkable accident.

I hope nobody in my family ever gets hit by a meteorite. It looks painful and scary. But it is nice to have a shooting star to wish on. I also believe it’s important to have a dream to follow. More than anything, though, it’s nice to spend time with our son and one another as we travel from hockey rink to hockey rink, even if we argue too much about whether to turn right or left, go north or south or eat at Wendy’s versus McDonald’s.

Yes, we could save the money we spend on hockey — and it’s not a small amount — for college, or retirement, or even for a trip to Italy. But would a fat bank account top seeing my fundamentally insecure 14-year-old boy struggle to suppress a proud smile after he scores a key goal at a big tournament and then privately re-live that goal again and again with him in stop-action detail at the dinner table? Would being able to quit work at age 65 instead of working until we drop dead beat watching him chuck bigger, taller, faster, stronger players into the boards to steal the puck and race down the ice?  Would a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Rome be more memorable than all the time we’ve spent being with our son while traveling to and from rinks in planes, trains and automobiles?

I doubt it very much.

That’s why I’m already looking forward to our next trip — wherever it takes us — even though this one’s only half over.

Manny did some stupid things. Maybe not as stupid as Eliot Spitzer, but still...

A lot of people are upset these days because their heroes–guys like baseball’s Manny Ramirez and former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer–keep getting caught doing drugs, other men’s wives and lots of other things that are too embarrassing to discuss in mixed company.

But I’ve got sad news, people: This isn’t shocking, it’s predictable. It’s been predictable for a long, long time. I’d say it dates back to at least the olden-Bible days of those troubled ne’er-do-wells Adam, Cain and Samson, for example. Or, if you need more recent cases from Christian history, there are always the well-documented foibles of Peter, Paul and Mary to talk about.

I mean, who did those folk-singing peaceniks think they were fooling with that Puff the Magic Dragon crap? Talk about a bad song! Talk about an embarrassing scandal! They must have been smoking dope or dropping acid when that was written, because musicians only write songs that terrible when they’re higher than Jerry Garcia on vacation in Jamaica. And Puff was a hit! It boggles the mind! Was the entire country stoned? The stupidity of the American public never ceases to amaze me!

But it only goes to prove my point: Nothing was ever pure, not even laundry detergent.

Let’s face the facts. People–even good people–do bad, stupid, hurtful things that screw up their lives, and sometimes the lives of people they love, let alone people they hate or don’t even know. That’s life in a fallen world, and saying it out loud doesn’t make it OK: It still stinks, pure and simple.

Sorry, just simple. Forget the pure.

I do wish some people would try just a little harder, though.