So, according to Esquire, I fail at being a man because I know approximately three things on their list Things A Man Should Not Know. They even went so far as to make "Not" yellow so as to emphasis their point.

The items are:
1. How to say anything in Klingon.
21. The Chicken Dance.
36. The name of Rue McLanahan's character on The Golden Girls.

Now here comes the lengthy explanation in which I blubberingly attempt to justify knowing these things so that I can be welcomed back into the Brotherhood of Manly Men feeling cleansed. I seek absolution, if you will, for having sinned against St. Man. Here goes:

1. How to say anything in Klingon.
The fact that this was at the top of the list really does not make me feel better. Turning the page and starting off with this was a rather significant blow to the ego. However, it all stems from two incidents. The first was when we all started learning foreign languages in junior high school and it just wasn't cool anymore to swear in French or Spanish. The second was specifically when I was sitting in a restaurant and dropped a tomato slice in my lap -- thankfully, I had a napkin in my lap so it didn't get all over my jeans, but when I exploded out with "fuck!" my friends I was with gave me a look and one nudged me and said, "That five-year-old sitting behind you heard that -- and so did his mom." I realized at that point that if I was swearing that readily in public, I might accidentally let one fly during a conversation with a work client or something like that. So I picked up a few choice words in Klingon -- translated from our own curses -- and used them for a while. But that soon died out too.

Actually, that was a pretty pitiful excuse. I don't expect forgiveness on that one, but I'll still blubberingly ask for it.

21. The Chicken Dance.
Okay, so I'm Jewish. I've been to countless numbers of bar & bat mitzvahes, and I've been to a number of weddings. The DJ always plays this dumbass song. Eventually, you learn it just through osmosis. It's forced conditioning in my case. It's probably some kind of government conspiracy where we're all receiving subliminal messages, but we'll never know exactly what the trigger is or what we're being programmed to do. It's a good thing I still haven't heard "The Ketchup Song," because that's probably my unconditional trigger that will make me do something abjectly stupid like believe I'm saving the world by consuming all the mayonnaise in my ZIP code.

I have never made it a secret that I plan on getting a DJ for my wedding if/when I ever get married. And that DJ will receive a strict list of songs he/she can and can not play, with a threat that he/she will not get paid if any songs on the "do not play" list hit the speakers at any point during the reception. Hell, at this point, I'm considering just burning a few CDs and setting up some speakers and an amplifier hooked up to a CD changer. But rest assured, that The Chicken Dance is on the "do not play under threat of death and/or horrible dismemberment" list. If the DJ plays The Chicken Dance, I'll lock him in a room for four hours with only Andy Gibb's "Shadow Dancing" to listen to.

36. The name of Rue McLanahan's character on "The Golden Girls."
Okay, so I spent seven months on unemployment. And when you're unemployed, you tend to get stressed out a bit. This leads to insomnia. So when it's 4AM and 95% of the channels on TV are airing paid programming advertising The Jaguar Machine That Makes You Run In Mid-Air or the Incredible Baldness Cure That Involves Household Products Including Cat Urine and you've already watched all your VHS tapes and DVDs, you turn to the only channel airing something that's entertaining enough to pass the time until sunrise when you finally -- blissfully -- are tired enough to fall asleep. And that would be the Lifetime Network, which shows The Golden Girls at 4AM.

All in all, 3 out of 50 ain't bad, I suppose. So please... can you give me back my Brotherhood of Manly Men membership card and special permission slip allowing me to spit and scratch my crotch area in public and ogle women? I promise to run out immediately and do a keg stand before heading into a strip club.