My husband and I are in the kitchen on a Friday night talking about the conversation he had with his sister and discussing the possibility of making some bacon jam.

He cooked a steak for me and it was really good. Which led to a discussion in which we began  talking about the last two times we cooked out and I thought..you know…there needs to be a dear Abby type of column that deals with ‘men’ issues.

Without further ado, here’s Dear Vincent:

Dear Vincent,

It’s Spring time and time for me to start grilling out. My problem is embarrassing and I didn’t know who else to turn to.  I’ve grilled the past two weekends and both times I over cooked my wife’s steak. She tolerates medium rare and I made them well done.  I feel like I’ve let her down.

Also, how  do you think our local college/professional sports will do in the activity relevant to the current season?

Yours truly,

Performance Anxiety

Dear Performance Anxiety,

Don’t be too hard on yourself. Usually, this happens to all men at some point.

Try to not over think it. I can almost promise you that you WILL get your grill mojo back. Also, don’t worry too much about your wife. If she’s still being polite over your overcooked meat, then it will blow over.

I’m positive the team that performs in my home town will bring home the ring or cup or trophy appropriate to the sport!

Dear Vincent

Is NOT saying anything a perfectly reasonable response in an argument? I don’t understand why my wife/girlfriend/non-gender specific partner gets upset when I choose to defuse a situation by completely ignoring a direct question?

Signed,

No..it is NOT being passive aggressive!

Dear Aggressive

Fuck yes, it’s a reasonable response!

What…she thinks you should SAY something and give her reason to be more mad? Better to completely infuriate her by a total refusal  to respond in any way. This works for me and my wife, we’ve been successfully not speaking to each other for 17 years.

Dear Vincent,

I’m finding some people at work to be distracting to the point I don’t even want to go to my job anymore.

I’m a miserable person; I’m talking a total wretch. This level of dissatisfaction has to be controlled before I go from gigantic asshole to actually being CNN’s cover story.

The way I deal with this is to be a complete dick to everyone around me. I’m talking about being a ‘skating all the way up to getting fired’ kind of dick. Some of my fondest work memories are the times I actually brought co-workers to tears. Here’s the problem. There are still some happy people at work. They smile, talk and live their lives like everything isn’t always about me or something.  I hate those dicks. I’ve tried to make other people understand how horrible they are by talking shit about them but nothing seems to work. Inconsiderate bastards. What can I do to bring them around?

Signed,

Giant knuckle dragging toofless asshole

Dear Asshole,

Obviously, you are not really committed to making everyone miserable. If you were, you make sure you monopolized every conversation you are a part of. Or not part of. It doesn’t fucking matter.

Also, you should be passing other people’s wit off as your own and for fuck’s sake, make sure you drive those jokes into the ground. It’s very important that everyone appreciate your stolen sense of humor while you talk shit about them. You should not only be right in everything you do, you MUST disparage ANYONE who does ANYTHING differently from you.

Last but not least, no matter how unattractive and old you are, you should really pant over the hot chick at work, because you TOTALLY have a shot. Once you rectify these things you will become the sociopath you are so desperately trying to be. Loser.

There you have it. One little conversation about the grilling being less than stellar and a whole new advice column is born.

Do you have any questions for Vincent? Randy and I really don’t do much on the weekends, and answering those questions while drinking some bourbon might be fun.