No.1 New York Times Bestselling author of Shit My Dad Says, JustinHalpern is back with a new book, I Suck At Girls. In stores now -- buy it here -- it's pretty much amust-read for dudes. We guarantee it will make you laugh aloud. Check out this excerpt andtell us if we're wrong.In May 2008, after being dumped by mygirlfriend of almost three years, I moved back home with my parents. After patting me onthe back and telling me not to “leave my bedroom looking like it was used for a gangbang,” my retired seventy-three-year-old father soon started treating me as hisfull-time conversation partner, the proverbial wall against which he’d fling all hiscomments to see what stuck.One day I decided to start chronicling the absurdthings that came out of his mouth in a Twitter feed called Shit My Dad says. What began asan attempt to take my mind off my heartache, and make a couple friends laugh, exploded:within two months I had more than half a million followers, a book deal with a majorpublisher, and a TV deal, which is all the more ridiculous when you take into account thatit was solely because I was just writing down things my dad said. They weren’t evenmy words. To say I was “lucky” would be inaccurate. Finding your wallet afteryou’ve left it in a crowded bar is lucky. Getting a book deal and a TV show based onless than five hundred total words is a level of luck reserved for people who surviveplane crashes or find out they’re Oprah’s long-lost sister.Butnone of the events of the past year and a half would have occurred if my girlfriend,Amanda, hadn’t broken up with me. If she’d never dumped me, I would never havemoved home. If I hadn’t moved home, I would never have started chronicling the shitmy dad says. And if I hadn’t started doing that, I would probably still be sittingin the public library next to a homeless man, just as I am right now, but I wouldn’tbe writing a book. I’d be stealing rolls of toilet paper since I couldn’tafford to buy them.A couple months after I moved home, before I even startedthe Twitter feed, Amanda called and said she wanted to meet for lunch to talk. It was thefirst time we’d spoken since the breakup, and I wasn’t sure how I felt aboutseeing her again. We had dated for almost three years, and though calling someone“The One” makes her sound like she was chosen to lead a rebellion against anevil ruler of the galaxy, I genuinely thought Amanda was the person I wanted to spend mylife with. It had taken me the two months we hadn’t spoken just to start feelingnormal again. So the thought of seeing her now was frightening. Seeing someone you used todate is a lot like watching highlights of your favorite team losing in the Super Bowl:just the sight of it hits you like a punch in the gut and makes you remember how upsetyouwere when it all went down in flames.After I got off the phone withAmanda, I hopped up off the air mattress on my bedroom floor and walked into mydad’s office. I told him that Amanda wanted to talk with me and I wasn’t surewhat to do.“You’re not fucking perfect,” he said as heswiveled his chair away from me and back to his desk where he was writing.“What? I didn’t say anything about being perfect. I just wanted to know whatyou thought,” I said, shifting my weight from foot to foot in his doorway.He swiveled back toward me. “That’s what I think. I think you’re notperfect.”I explained to him as patiently as I could that I hadabsolutely no idea what question he was answering, but I was pretty sure it wasn’tthe one I asked.“Human beings do dumb shit. You do dumb shit. She doesdumb shit. Everyone does dumb shit. Then, every once in a while, we have a moment where wedon’t do dumb shit, and then we throw a goddamned parade and we forget all the dumbshit we did. So what I’m saying to you is, don’t do something, or not dosomething, to punish someone because you think they did something dumb. Do what you wantto do, because it’s what you want to do. Also, bring me a grapefruit from thekitchen and some salt and pepper.”I decided to have lunch with Amanda. Continue Reading

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