Our “spotlight” articles take a minute to highlight someone in the community of dads who we at THE FATHER LIFE think is noteworthy. This time around we’re shining the spotlight on Danny Evans, one of the three finalists in the category “Hottest Daddy Blogger” in the 2007 Blogger’s Choice Awards. Danny’s dadgonemad.com proudly proclaims the slogan “embarrassing my kids since 2004,” and his posts are, well, hilarious. We’ve got a sample post below, selected by Danny himself. But first, a little Q&A:
THE FATHER LIFE: How about some introductory/background info… Who are you? Married? Kids? (That one better be a “yes” if you came in as a finalist under the title “hottest daddy blogger”!)
DANNY EVANS: I’m a 37-year-old guy with a God complex and a Honda. I’m married to the hottest little filly ya ever did see. I’m lactose intolerant. Two kids (one of each). We live in SoCal, where we root for the Anaheim Ducks and resist the urge to get breast implants for the whole family. I also have this web site where I talk about my kids’ poop, my consistent pattern of failure as a role model, and my penchant for sullying all that is good and right in the world.
TFL: What’s your “real job”?
DE: I stand in a wooden shack at county fairs and charge people $2 a pop to see my enormous wang.
TFL: How long have you been blogging? How did you get started in the blogosphere?
DE: I started Dad Gone Mad in 2003 as an act of self-preservation. I was having my soul sucked dry on a daily basis in Corporate America and I needed a distraction of some kind. My first post was about road rage. It was awful.
TFL: What piece of knowledge is absolutely essential for us to understand who you are?
DE: I was once forced to eat cabbage at the home of our rabbi. I hate cabbage. I puked on his floor. I don’t think it’s particularly kosher to puke on the rabbi’s white carpet.
TFL: Any final words of wisdom?
DE: If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat.
And now, a highlight from dadgonemad.com: 10 Minutes and a Cloud of Smoke
I was escorted back to The Room Where Testicles Go To Die by a short, heavyset Hispanic woman in white scrubs. It was a standard medical examination room, but there were a few unusual props: a surgical tray draped on blue cloth and loaded-up with sharp, shiny metal instruments and an archaic-looking machine in the corner. There were two wires connected to the machine. As I followed them with my eye I found that they led to a small metal plate resting on the examination table. In the middle of the tray was a dollop of KY jelly so large that I wondered if I had mistakenly been led to the orgy room instead of the vasectomy room.
“Get undressed below your waist, climb up on the table and put your right butt cheek on this metal plate,” she said. “The doctor will be with you in a moment.”
I looked at her, asking her with my eyes to confirm that I wasn’t being Punk’d, and she shot back a look that seemed to say, “Don’t ask me, man. I’m just a nurse’s assistant. Just drop your drawers and stick your ass in the goo, OK? Please. Just stick you ass in the goo.”
Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Gardenburger entered the room looking all chipper and reaching out his hand to shake mine. We exchanged pleasantries (and let me just tell you this: you’ll never feel like a man until you are alone in a room with another man, you have no pants on, you have one butt cheek in a puddle of goo and the other quivering on that crunchy paper they drape over examination tables (which I think is the same crappy paper used to make disposable ass gaskets for public toilets) and you’re talking with the doctor whose about to sterilize you about college football). And the Dr. G sprung into action. He dragged a heat lamp on wheels over to the table, focused its beam on my sack and pulled back the paper blanket to expose my freshly shorn ballbag.
“Nice heatlamp,” I said. “I feel like a Quarter Pounder with cheese.”
Unamused, Dr. G begins to describe that he is going to use a needleless anesthesia, which therefore hurts less but is just as effective. As he speaks, he begins to pinch and squeeze and flick at my scrotum with a very uncomfortable ferocity.
“You know, I don’t normally let people do that to me until after they’ve taken me out for dinner and a movie,” I say. “Have you seen Rent?”
“I’m looking for your vas deferens,” he says.
He apparently found them because what followed was the first excruciatingly painful blast of needleless anesthesia a sharp, direct hit on the lower left hemisphere of my teste satchel. The pain causes my toes to curl and my asshole to pucker, and I immediately begin to feel lightheaded. He repeats the procedure seven times more (I counted) and by the time my nuts are numb, I am at DEFCON 4 on the nausea scale. I burp. I cover my eyes with my hands. I breathe. And I go to my happy place (which, considering the circumstances in which I found myself, could have been the streets of Fallujah for all I cared).
Dr. Gardenburger slaps and punches my nuts a few times to confirm the effectiveness of his teste torture. Satisfied, he continues. I am still trying really hard not to puke and am not at all interested in looking down, so all I feel is some tugging and some pressure and the sensation that perhaps I mistakenly put on my five-year-old son’s Power Rangers underpants this morning and their tightness has rendered me numb.
I breathe. I try to think about nice things, like hockey. And boobies. And boobies playing hockey. But I am yanked from my vision by the low hum of a motor followed by the sizzling sound of a steak being placed onto a hot barbecue grill. A moment later, the aroma of overcooked mac-and-cheese wafts into my nose.
“[Sniff. Sniff, sniff.] Must be lunchtime,” I say. “Smells like someone is microwaving a Lean Cuisine or some Hot Pockets.”
“No,” Dr. Gardenburger says. “What you smell is me burning closed the openings in your vas deferens.”
“Oh. OK.”
More tugging. More pressure. More boobies. More smoke. And then, after roughly 10 minutes of hell, Dr. G declares the procedure a success. He tells me to sit up slowly, scoot myself off of the table, get dressed and meet him at the nurse’s station. I say OK. He leaves.
I sit up. I scoot myself off of the table and wipe the KY off my ass with the paper blanket. And just as I turn my head to find my clothes, I see the surgical tray in my peripheral vision and on it I see two small pieces of overcooked macaroni coated in marinara sauce. Oh. Those are my vas deferens.
“Hockeyboobieshockeyboobies,” I say, this time out loud. The room spins and DEFCON 4 gets smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror and I am forced to sit my bare ass back down in the KY. “Hockey! Boobies! HOCKEYBOOBIEEEEEEEEEES!”
A moment later, the heavyset Hispanic woman cracks open the door. “Is everything OK?” she asks.
“Fine,” I say. “No problem. I was just getting dressed.”
Five minutes later I emerge from The Room Where Testicles Go To Die and waddle out to the nurse’s station. Through the glass, I see Hot Wife and force a smile. She sees me, too, and she throws me a look that says, “Holy sh**, dude! You’re white as a sheet.”
I give her a look back that’s intended to say, “Dude, you have no idea how close I came to puking up that PB&J sandwich you made for me before we left. Seriously, that sh** was crowning at my uvula.”
I grab my prescription for Vicodin and head out, walking gingerly but briskly.
I still don’t know what the KY was for.
Ben Martin is the CEO of THE FATHER LIFE. He lives with his wife and five children in the Rochester, NY, area.