So I almost forgot that tomorrow is Friday and I really should say something about my week blogging here at Funny or Die. I think I probably will put up another one for the weekend, but if not, I want to thank everyone for reading. It's been a lot of fun reading your comments and getting to know you a little bit. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did, though you probably didn't. I want to give a special thanks to Amy and Lauren at FoD for giving me this opportunity. I hope you don't regret it and I haven't embarrassed everyone with my gross incompetence. Just a reminder, if you miss me, you can always check me out on my blog, www.hollywoodphony.com . Thanks and have a great weekend!

You know how when a sex offender moves to a new neighborhood, he has to go around with a cop and tell all the neighbors that he banged some kids? Well, I'm no sex offender, but my shame is on par with theirs.

You see, every time I apply for a job, I have to inform my prospective employer that if they receive any tax exemptions as a charity, I am ineligible to work there. 

This is because I was involved in what some would call a scam (U.S. GOV'T V. FILIPKOWSKI, 2004 ), but what I would term a simple misunderstanding or (at worst) a blurring of the lines between fraud and really just wanting to make your dreams come true. 

All my life, it has been my deepest desire to visit the Heinz Baked Beans factory in Fremont, Ohio. 

I know, it's weird. You don't understand it and frankly, you wouldn't want to understand it, judging by most peoples' past reactions to my story. So I will save myself a little bit of humiliation.

It's not some sick thing, I just like baked beans. 

MOVING ON!

So before I realized how jaded everyone is, I was operating under the assumption that everybody would like to see a baked bean factory. Maybe they weren't filled with as much passion as me, but if you asked them, they would say, "Wow, I bet that would be really neat!" 

This was probably naive of me.

I started the "Make A Wishh Foundation" in early 2002. I was sitting around my house, on paid leave from my old job because I was so affected by watching 9/11 on TV and I thought that I needed a change. I needed to go out and actively make the world a better place.

I thought if I started something where sick kids could "make a wish" and then I could grant that wish, then that would be spreading hope and love and all that good stuff out into the world, even if just on a small scale. 

Obviously, I wasn't the only person to have this idea, hence the extra 'h' on the end of my foundation's name. Again, I'm naive.

Looking back, the big mistake was thinking that I should be the one to decide what these kids would really wish for and telling them that even though they wanted a pony or a ride on the space shuttle, I had something better for them: a trip to a baked beans factory!

I won't deny my reasons weren't entirely unselfish, but like I said, I really thought they would enjoy it too. 

So they get to see how baked beans are made, take their mind off of their cancer or whatever, have a nice trip and if I come along and get to live out my own fantasy, what's the harm?

Well, apparently cancer makes you hate baked beans because none of these kids had a good time and their parents were pretty pissed off. Not as pissed off as me when the whining of these little brats almost ruined the whole tour, but pretty pissed off, nonetheless.

I don't know how you can look at getting a free trip to a baked beans factory and think that somehow you got "ripped off". I didn't tell anyone to cancel their trip to Disney World over it. They made that decision on their own. 

Personally, I get the feeling these kids' cheapass parents were thinking they could save some dough by getting themselves a free vacation instead. WHICH THEY GOT.

You can probably tell I'm still bitter about this, but I have to move forward. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that you should never help anyone. You should help yourself, first and foremost, because everyone is a bunch of assholes and even sick kids are gonna act like dicks some of the time.

If you can't be happy and have a good time at a baked beans factory, what's the point in living, anyway?

While I do believe that, if I had known the legal troubles saying it out loud would have caused me, I probably would have just kept it to myself.

 

How come I never get invited to gay hot tub parties?

I was asking my girlfriend about this the other day and she told me, "Um, probably cuz you're not gay?"

That really pissed me off! Just cuz I'm not gay I can't go to a certain kind of party?

What if I was black and couldn't go to a white people hot tub party? Would anyone share my outrage then? You bet you're ass they would (except in the South)!

She seemed to think it was no big deal and was all, "Do you even know what goes on at a hot tub party full of gay guys?"

Of course I don't! I've never been invited to one!

I assume it's gay guy stuff. I have no idea what that entails, but people are people, right? I like hot tubs and drinking beer. Maybe we'll play some lawn darts or bocce or something. I'm sure there will be some sort of delicious food.

Sounds pretty good to me.

Look, you may be thinking that this is all just a ploy to get some gay guys to invite me to their hot tub party and you are right. So please, if you are gay and having a hot tub party, why don't you just invite me? I'm not so bad!

**UPDATE**

OK, so after I wrote my blog, some gay guys did invite me to their hot tub party. I arrived with an open mind, ready to have some fun, but things quickly got out of hand. I apologize to these fellas and the gay community as a whole for saying I had to go to the bathroom and then running away, I have nothing against you and you have every right to celebrate as you see fit. I was just surprised. That's all.

I lifted up the lid of the recycling container and threw the heavy, over-stuffed garbage bag in.

I looked down at it, for just a moment. Then I slammed it shut and walked away.

Six months ago, I had been sitting at my computer, drinking a beer and perusing Craigslist for free stuff. That’s when I saw it.

“Free to a good home: One Barney the Dinosaur (like) costume”

I called the number. Surely, it was already gone.

Nope. Against all odds, it was still available and to be my disbelief, would fit my 6′5″ frame. At least according to the guy on the phone, Jim.

I drove out to his house, about 45 minutes away, at the tip of Orange County.

Jim was a few inches shorter than me, I tried to push away the pangs of doubt in my mind. I would make it fit.

“You’re not one of them, plushies, right?” I assured him I wasn’t. “I’m not giving this thing to some weirdo who’s gonna get his jack off sauce all over it.”

I told him it was for some comedy videos I was going to shoot. He seemed OK with that.

It was truly spectacular. He confided in me that it was from the actual show. His buddy was a crewmember on it and had gotten drunk one night and swiped it. He said it was a backup, so nobody noticed for a while. Sure enough, it had electronics in the head to make the mouth and eyes move, but without the cables and batteries and stuff, they just stayed in place.

All in all, it was quite a find.

I didn’t ask him why he was getting rid of it. He seemed like he was going to second-guess his decision at any moment. When he finally handed it over, he gazed at it with a wistful look. Then he turned his back and shut the door, without a word.

The drive home seemed to take forever. I pulled into my driveway, yanked it out of the trunk and proceeded to lug it upstairs. It was heavy as shit. I took that as a sign of quality workmanship.

It took me a few tries to figure out the proper order to put it all on, but once I did and managed to lumber myself in front of a mirror, I was amazed.

It was Barney the fucking Dinosaur, looking back at me!

I pulled the head off and grabbed my cell phone. I couldn’t wait to tell my friends. As my buddy’s number started to ring, I hung up the phone.

A weird feeling had come over me. I didn’t want to share this. Those assholes would probably want to wear it too.

I didn’t want anyone else in here. I didn’t want their BO stinking it up.

That was a realistic concern as this thing was hot as balls.

Plus, who knows what they’d want to do with it? What if they ripped it or broke it in some way? Got it wet?

My mind reeled at all the awful possibilities.

I would definitely have to limit its use to only when I was around and I should probably be the one in the suit.

I could see that getting old though. I knew, at some point, my laziness would get the best of me. I would say, “You know what, I don’t want to drive out to Malibu, you just take the suit. Just be careful with it!” But they wouldn’t.

It would come back stained, or missing a glove. How the hell do you replace a glove from a Barney costume? I couldn’t just call up the TV studio and ask them, they’d know I had their stolen costume…

Stolen. That’s what this was. I couldn’t go around showing people! What an idiot! It was obvious this suit was the real thing, it didn’t look like any cheap knockoff. It probably cost them thousands of dollars. I would guess 7. Seven thousand dollars.

Someone would see me in a video on YouTube and think, “hey, that’s our fucking suit!” Then I’d be in jail.

No, it was becoming clear that this was going to have to be my secret.

And that’s what it became. Each day, I would take it up to the attic and hide it behind the air conditioning pump. Then, every morning when my girlfriend and my roommates would leave for work, I would climb up there, bring it down and put it on.

At first, it was just fun to caper about, chasing the dog around. Moving those stubby purple arms around made me laugh every time.

But then it became something more. It was comforting. I began to feel at home inside my purple suit of fuzzy armor.

I started taking naps in it. One time, I woke up to the sound of the garage door opening. I had just moments to take it off and quickly shove it into the closet before my girlfriend arrived.

“Why are you sweating?” She asked me, alarmed.

“Umm, I was masturbating,” was the best I could do.

“To what??” She asked.

“To this,” I answered, grabbing under the bed for the closest thing available.

Unfortunately for me, it was the photo book of her as a baby.

“Right…” She slowly backed out of the room.

My roommates had also begun to ask questions, like why it was always so cold in the house when they got home. The utilities had gone up almost 600% in the past few months and it wasn’t even summer.

I felt as if the walls were closing in around me. It was only a matter of time before someone would come home early or stay home sick without telling me and walk out into the hallway to find me in my room, singing along to songs on the radio in my costume.

It had begun to consume my whole life. I was turning down invitations to have lunch with my friends, because I felt my time in the suit was too precious to waste on the likes of them. I dreaded the arrival of  weekends.

I became withdrawn and would snap at my girlfriend for what I would consider slights against the suit. The one whose existence she didn’t even know of!

All of this was too much for me. I couldn’t help but think back, knowingly, to the look on Jim’s face as he handed over his most prized possession.

Surely, there was some lesson here about getting something you really like but not being able to use it. Like a myth, or something? That sounds really familiar.

Anyway, I can see why he questioned me about the plushie thing. As I began to contemplate ditching my beloved Barney suit, I would think about it falling into the hands of some sick scumbag who might use it for his own perverted kicks. It almost made me throw up inside the head. Come to think of it, that might not have been a terrible solution.

Instead, I decided that it needed to be destroyed.

I laid it out on the bed, one last time. It deserved to spend its last day on earth in freedom, not cooped up in the attic.

I got in my car and drove off to Home Depot. I purchased a medium-quality chainsaw and returned home.

To my horror, my girlfriend’s car was in the driveway. I had left the suit out on the bed. My horrible secret had been discovered.

I tried to collect myself, as I got out of the car. I went to the trunk and I looked down at the chainsaw. I knew what I had to do.

I quietly tip-toed up the stairs, holding the chainsaw out in front of me. One hand on the bar and one on the pull cord. I figured that I could swing it at her to knock her off balance. That would give me enough time to start it up and begin my terrible deed.

I poked my head around the corner, there was nobody in the room, just the suit, still splayed out on the bed.

“What are you doing?” She asked, from behind me.

I turned around, holding the chainsaw, looking guilty.

“Um, nothing. Hey.”

“Where’d you get that suit? It’s awesome! Hey, you weren’t going to cut it up or something, were you?” She asked, looking down at the chainsaw.

“What? Um, no. Of course not. You like it?”

“Yeah, it’s awesome,” she said, “It’s too cool to show anybody though, you should just wear it around the house after everyone’s left, or when it’s just the two of us.”

I was in shock. This is everything I had always wanted to hear!

“Since you’ve got that chainsaw, do you mind cutting up the armoire and taking it to the recycling center?” she asked.

“Aww, but that’s the one you got from your boss! You love that thing!”

“I know, but it’s just too big, there isn’t enough room,” she seemed sad, but I knew she’d get over it.

I gave her a hug and did as she requested.

As I hoisted the bag containing the cut-up contents of the armoire into the recycling bin, I paused for a moment to consider what a great girlfriend I had and how I had almost murdered her for no reason!

When I was a kid, Sunday was the day my brother and I usually spent the most time with our dad.

He was pretty stressed out during the week and Sunday was his only real day off.

One of our rituals on this day was our trip to get some fast food.

My mom usually had to work, so it was his job to feed us. Given his love of anything fried or grilled and his hatred of actually having to cook something, it was a no-brainer that we usually ended up at McDonald’s or Burger King.

On really special occasions, he would take the extra fifteen minutes to drive us to the Wendy’s, one town over.

This was special for two reasons. The first being that we considered Wendy’s a step up from the usual fare. But the second was that we knew we would be laughing our asses off as my dad referred to all the employees in the store as “Wendy.”

“Hey Wendy, you forgot my large fry!” He would say to the guy behind the counter.

“There’s no paper towels in the john, Wendy!”

“Gimme a number 3 with a Coke, Wendy!”

Most of the time, they’d just take it and chuckle or pretend like they didn’t hear him.

Every once in a while, someone would get indignant and point to their name tag as they informed him that their name was actually “Peter” or “Shelly.”

He would calmly reply that the restaurant was clearly called “Wendy’s”. By his reasoning, if a restaurant is called Wendy’s, it implies that Wendy must be the name of the employees who work there. Or else it was false advertising.

I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it was usually good enough to get us some free Frosties when the manager inevitably came over to smooth things over.

One day, as we were leaving with our hush money Frosties, one of the employees my father had referred to as “Wendy” was outside, taking out the trash.

As we walked by, he muttered under his breath, “Enjoy your jizz-filled Frosty, dick.”

It was barely audible, but we heard it. Of course, I didn’t know what “jizz” was back then, but I could tell it was bad, from my father’s reaction.

“What the hell did you just say, Wendy?” He asked, getting in the punk’s face.

“I said, ‘Enjoy your jizz-filled Frosty, dick,” he said, much louder now. “Your name is Richard, right?”

Now, I know you’re thinking that’s not a big deal, that he just read my father’s name off of the credit card receipt or something, but keep in mind, this was back in the days before you used a credit card to pay for something like a 12 dollar fast food meal. Credit cards were for buying sofas and 27″ TV screens. My father was clearly taken aback.

“Yes, my name is Richard.” He said, cautiously.

“Well, “Dick” is a nickname for “Richard”, isn’t it?” asked the kid whom my father had referred to as “Wendy.”

Now, this was news to my brother and I. Wendy was establishing a precedent hereby we could legally call our dad “Dick” anytime we wanted! Our respect for our father was vanishing into thin air as the seconds went by. We wondered how he was gonna pull out of this one.

“That’s true, but you didn’t call me ‘Dick.’ You called me ‘dick’. There’s a difference.”

“I’m not following you,” said Wendy. We weren’t following him either.

“Well, in the one case, you said ‘dick’, you didn’t capitalize it, so it couldn’t have been meant as a proper name. You were calling me a slang term for a penis and you know it!”

Wendy just sat there, stammering and avoiding eye contact with my father.

“Buh buh buh buh,” said Dick, mocking him. We laughed. Wendy, who was now crying, tried to make a break for it, but Dick grabbed him by his apron. “Not so fast, I think you’ve got a job to do.”

“A job?” asked Wendy, in between his sobs.

Dick motioned for us to give Wendy our jizz-filled Frosties, which he made Wendy eat right in front of us.

“Whatever this “jizz” stuff is, it must taste pretty awful!” I thought, judging by Wendy’s expression and the gagging sounds he kept making. At one point, he threw up and Dick made him scoop up the contents back into his Frosty cup and continue eating it.

A small crowd had formed around this scene, but again, this was back in the 80’s and Dick just explained he was teaching this punk kid a lesson and that was good enough for the assembled masses.

When Wendy was done, my dad brushed off his apron and told him to get back to work. Wendy went inside, defeated. As he reached the door, he called out, “Oh hey, Wendy? Just so you know, you’re gay now.”

Wendy started crying again and ran inside as the crowd cheered.

My father had won back our admiration and respect. The rest of that day, my brother and I fought over who would get to bring him his next beer or change the channel for him.

That wasn’t actually the last I saw of Wendy. I remember sneaking out for lunch during high school with some friends and there he was. Only now his nametag said “Wendy” and he was wearing a dress. Also, he was black. Maybe it wasn’t him.

Irregardless [sic], I didn’t have the chutzpah to ask him how he knew my father’s name, that Sunday afternoon, so long ago. I can only assume it was magic.

I like to think it was though. For Dick’s sake.

Note: For some reason this blog got deleted, along with everyone's comments. Sorry about that!

Well, I guess I neglected to introduce myself, yesterday. I was just so eager to jump right in!

Anyway, I'm Eric Filipkowski and I like to go out to chain restaurants. That's really all you need to know about me.

All the important events of my life happen at and revolve around chain restaurants. Chili's, Applebee's, TGI Friday's. Not Bennigan's though.

It was at an Outback Steakhouse that I decided they need to make all seeing eye dogs really ugly. To the point where you don't want to pet them.

I guess since they are "service dogs" who are "doing a job," you're really not supposed to put out your hand and play with them or give them some of your Bloomin' Onion.

They are worried that you'll distract the dog and then the blind guy will walk off a cliff or into oncoming traffic or something equally hilarious. That's what I have surmised.

The thing is, when you see a cute dog walking through a restaurant, it's surprising and your natural instinct is to go over to them and start petting them, right? Plus, they're usually wearing a vest or something and animals wearing clothes are just naturally much cuter. Everybody knows that.

So my solution, that I thought up, is that they should take these dogs and maybe when they're puppies, they should throw acid on them or burn them or something. That way, they'll be super ugly and people will look at them and go, "Oh shit, that thing is scary looking. I'm not petting that!" And then the dog can go about its business and do its job.

Makes sense to me.

Maybe you think it's a little extreme to throw acid in a cute puppy's face, but I don't mean like the kind of acid that will kill it or nothing. Just enough to horribly disifigure it, without making it blind or incapable of doing its job.

So then the dog is really ugly, nobody wants to pet it and the blind guy doesn't care, cuz he's blind anyway. Everybody wins!

And then I don't get my trip to Outback ruined by some hothead screaming at me not to give his dog a chocolate bar.

I'm not sure if any of you are old enough to remember this, but there used to be a restaurant in Century City that was called "Dive". It was owned by Steven Spielberg and it was a submarine.

It closed a long time ago, right before I moved out to LA.

I can't really express to you how much that hurts.

My whole life, I have dreamed of eating dinner inside a submarine. My club foot has kept me out of the Navy, so when I heard about this restaurant, I figured that was my one shot.

I was going to make a special trip out here, just so I could live out my fantasy, but Mr. Cheapskate thought to himself, "Nah, save your money. Once you move, you'll go there every day!"

When I finally did make the big move, it was too late. It was closed forever.

Now I'm forced to risk getting my Annual Passport taken away because I try and sneak Fruit Roll-ups into Finding Nemo down at Disneyland.

It's just not the same.

I have a confession to make. Actually, I have a few.

First off, I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in over 20 years.

My average routine consists of a series of quick catnaps interrupted by nightmares, screaming and waking up in a cold sweat.

This is probably one of the reasons I can’t seem to keep a girlfriend. Because honestly, who the hell would want to put up with that?

I’ve woken up to find I’ve pushed girls right off the bed onto the floor while I slept, so violent is the turmoil going on inside my own head.

When I start dating someone new, I try to avoid us sharing a bed for as long as possible. I once told a girl I pooped my pants to avoid the truth, which I actually find more embarrassing.

You don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to trace the problem back to its roots in my childhood.

You see, I was a victim of child abduction.

Not once, but hundreds of times. 347 times, to be precise.

If there was a category for this kind of thing, I would hold the Guinness Book of World’s Records title for “most times abducted.” And I’m pretty sure that second place would be a a 3 million-way tie for all the people who were abducted once.

Let’s be honest, for most people, you get abducted and one of two things happen: either you get murdered or you get rescued; at which point, your parents watch you like a hawk and you don’t trust anyone else for the rest of your life and it never happens again.

Maybe if you’re super-gullible, it might happen twice. But after that second time, you’d be like, “Shit, I’m gonna lock myself in a safe room and never come out, because I’ll be damned if that bullshit’s ever gonna happen again!”

And then you have my family.

In second grade, I got an L.L. Bean backpack for my birthday. You know the one. It was blue and had a reflector stripe along the outside pocket. Everybody had one.

Well, if you order anything from L.L. Bean, they will embroider it for you for a nominal fee. So, my mom thought it would be a nice idea if she got mine embroidered with my name on the back. That way, since every kid in the world had the same backpack, I would know which one was mine.

The problem is, anybody could read my backpack and know my name. This includes child abductors.

When you are a kid, you get it drilled into your head over and over: “Don’t talk to strangers.”

When a man you’ve never met approaches you in the mall and asks you to take a ride in his van, you know to run away and yell for help.

But when that man knows your name and tells you that your mom was in an accident and she sent him to find you and take you to the hospital, your little kid brain gets confused.

If this guy is a stranger, how is it that he knows my name? In fact, how does he know I have a mom? He must be trustworthy!

Or, so I thought.

So my 8 year old self and my brand new embroidered L.L. Bean backpack got in his van.

Now here’s the twist you weren’t expecting: my mom was actually fine and he was a stranger who only wanted to abduct me!

He knew my name by reading it off of my backpack!

Seems simple, huh? Well, apparently not so simple to me and my parents.

In fact, I remember my parents coming to pick me up in the police station a few days later and the first thing my mom said when she saw me was, “Thank God he’s still got his L.L. Bean backpack!”

A few days later, it happened again. Different guy, slightly different story. This time my dad’s car had broken down (not really, this was all a fabrication to get me in his van.)

A week later, a man claiming to be an off-duty police officer told me I had to go with him down to the station because I had won an award and the mayor was going to give it to me, live on TV!

This was also a lie.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an idiot. I started to figure out that just because you’re a grown man and you own a van and somehow mysteriously seem to know my first name, it doesn’t make you a person I can trust.

It takes a little more than that to get me into your van, thank you very much!

Which is why I felt I was safe the time I was walking home from baseball practice, carrying my glove and bat and some extra balls in my L.L. Bean backpack and the man pulled up next to me and said, “Hey, you’re Eric, aren’t you? I hear you really like baseball. You should get in my van, the Yankees want you to try out for third base.”

Boy was I excited! Until I figured out that I wasn’t going to be trying out for the Yankees at all. I had been abducted.

Ditto the time I was walking my dog and this guy came up to me and told me that the local pet store had given him a 15 dollar gift card that they wanted him to pass on to me. When I questioned his story, he asked me, “Well Eric, if I’m not who I say I am and I’m actually just out to abduct you, then how did I know you own a dog?”

His story seemed to check out, which is why I was surprised when it turns out there weren’t actually any pet store gift cards in my future, just more child abduction.

And so it went, on and on, over and over again. We found out later that my story had gotten out and child abductors from all over the world had flocked to my quaint New England town for the easy pickins’.

Towards the end, when I was around 16 or 17, most of the people weren’t even professional child abductors, just regular folks looking to have a good laugh at my expense.

I’m only thankful I didn’t grow up in the age of YouTube, I can just imagine the possibilities. I would be a laughing stock!

For a long time, I was too embarrassed by my plight to tell anyone about it. I stayed in the shadows and made up excuses for why I never finished high school.

But I’ve learned you can’t run from your past. This is who I am. I’m not going to hide in my room. I’m not going to let it affect me in a negative way.

In fact, I still have my old backpack!

I’m going to take what happened to me and turn it into something positive. I make it my job to tell everyone I meet about the dangers of child abduction.

In fact, not 3 hours ago, I told my tale to my old college roommate as I finally paid him back that six hundred dollars he had loaned me that I didn’t remember ever giving him.

To be honest, I don’t even remember him being my college roommate and I’m pretty sure I never actually went to college, but like he told me, as he admired my L.L. Bean backpack, how would he know my name was Eric if he wasn’t really my college roommate?

If you enjoyed this story and want to experience my other stupid shit for jerks, please check out hollywoodphony.com .

Can't we consolidate our information from all these disparate sources and just have one-stop-shopping? Are those days long gone?