He’s a comedian. He’s a YouTube sensation. And now he becomes an author. Best known for his song parodies and riffs on yoga pants and homeschooling, Tim Hawkins now shares his perspective on life in the 21st century in his long-awaited debut book. Tim's topics are as wide-ranging as his stand-up comedy including marital communications (“Marriage needs a challenge flag, like in pro football”), worship music (“Pick the right key, because I’m not Barry White and I’m not a Bee Gee”), and food (“Eating a Krispy Kreme donut is like eating a baby angel”). Diary of a Jackwagon reveals a witty and relatable voice reminding readers that for life’s many difficulties, laughter is always the best medicine – when there aren’t any pills left.
He’s a comedian. He’s a YouTube sensation. And now he becomes an author. Best known for his song parodies and riffs on yoga pants and homeschooling, Tim Hawkins now shares his perspective on life in the 21st century in his long-awaited debut book. Tim's topics are as wide-ranging as his stand-up comedy including marital communications (“Marriage needs a challenge flag, like in pro football”), worship music (“Pick the right key, because I’m not Barry White and I’m not a Bee Gee”), and food (“Eating a Krispy Kreme donut is like eating a baby angel”). Diary of a Jackwagon reveals a witty and relatable voice reminding readers that for life’s many difficulties, laughter is always the best medicine – when there aren’t any pills left.
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Overview
He’s a comedian. He’s a YouTube sensation. And now he becomes an author. Best known for his song parodies and riffs on yoga pants and homeschooling, Tim Hawkins now shares his perspective on life in the 21st century in his long-awaited debut book. Tim's topics are as wide-ranging as his stand-up comedy including marital communications (“Marriage needs a challenge flag, like in pro football”), worship music (“Pick the right key, because I’m not Barry White and I’m not a Bee Gee”), and food (“Eating a Krispy Kreme donut is like eating a baby angel”). Diary of a Jackwagon reveals a witty and relatable voice reminding readers that for life’s many difficulties, laughter is always the best medicine – when there aren’t any pills left.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780718006983 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Christian Publishing |
| Publication date: | 12/19/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 210 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Tim Hawkins has forged a no-bones, no-bull comedy experience that entertains the entire family. Described as one part gifted and two parts twisted, Tim combines hilarious stand-up plus musical mastery to highlight the brokenness of human nature while marveling in its absurdity. He performs live for 200,000 fans at 120+ sold-out shows in 30+ states every year. His Jackwagon Crew continues to grow into a gut-busting revolution of multi-generational proportions with 300 million views on YouTube and a motley half million Facebook fans. Tim and his wife Heather live in Missouri with their four crud muffins.
Read an Excerpt
Diary of a Jackwagon
By Tim Hawkins, John Driver
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2015 Rockshow Comedy, Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-0698-3
CHAPTER 1
BLINKER FLUID
They say the best things in life are free. Well, whoever "they" are, they have obviously never tried to walk out of a Walmart with one of those cool Duck Dynasty shirts—with Uncle Si's huge beard plastered from top to bottom like a follicular monument to red-necks everywhere—without paying for it. Don't say the customer is always right if you don't mean it.
I never knew Walmart security guards were trusted by their superiors to wield such potent Tasers. Perhaps I missed my calling, because from my vantage point of that greasy tile floor while convulsing in an electrically charged puddle of my own urine, those security guys looked like they were having a lot of fun.
Negative. The best things in life are not free. In fact, they cost you plenty. Just ask my wife. Marrying me may have started off as a pretty inexpensive endeavor, but years in a marriage are like compounded interest. The cost, and some might even say the rewards, accrue at a different level than "normal" non-married life. My wife has been accruing from our marriage for over twenty years. For her, the cost has been high. Dollars. Years. Sanity.
For me? I'm like an A-list frequent flyer with endless rewards and benefits. This marriage thing is the jackpot. I get free drinks and she even helps me fasten my seat belt. "Emergency exits are located here and here and ... oh, just keep listening to your headphones, you dead-beat! I'll do all the work anyway."
Yep, I got the better end of this deal and it only sweetens with each passing year. I hope she never figures it out. Seriously, she doesn't need me at all. If she ever leaves me, I'm going with her. If you're a husband, then you know what I'm talking about. Most of the time, we just walk around the house wondering to ourselves, Why are we here? I feel like a catcher in T-ball.
I know this to be true, but I still find a way to be offended at the way my wife speaks to me: like I'm some sort of child. Look, I get it. I am a child. But you don't have to be so rude about it. I do stuff around here, too, you know. Well, not really. But that's not the point.
I don't think I'm the only man out there facing this criss-crossed communication dilemma between truth and embarrassment. Sometimes I will be out with my wife at a restaurant or party and I will witness the same communication between other well-meaning females and their victimized masculine counterparts. It is an epidemic and it is high time someone stands up and sounds the alarm for the hairy ones everywhere. We are just men. If you prick us, do we not bleed?
On a side note, please keep the pricking to the confines of the metaphorical, because as you have proven on countless occasions with your incessant picking at our every random zit and blemish, we do bleed pretty easily. The question was rhetorical, you sadistic animals.
The point is that women talk to men like we're idiots. We are not idiots. The greatest evidence of this kind of humiliating communication comes from the female propensity to use excessive hand gestures in addition to words. I see it all the time in my house. Just the other day, my wife, Heather, said, "Honey, go get me a box."
Now to any normal adult English-speaking human on the planet, these words would have sufficed. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I do have a pretty proficient working knowledge of basic shapes. Circles. Squares. Triangles. Yep, I'm a real Pythagoras—you know, his theorem and whatnot.
But apparently my wife did not agree with the fact that I have mastered my shapes. Thus her words, "Go get me a box," were accompanied by a fully dramatized hand pantomime of what a box looks like—the quick movements of her knuckles and fingers striking sharp, imaginary right angles in the air, outlining the delicate borders of the mystery shape. And I don't mean just once or twice. She persisted for some twenty seconds to make imaginary square shapes out of the various repositioning of her hands. She was like Madonna striking a pose—minus the pointy bra and ridiculous fake British accent, of course. I'm the only one who uses those in our home.
It was a foolproof visual aid—and also proof that to her I must be a fool. Why else would she need to resort to shadow puppetry to assist the slower, hairier hearer? She continued to whisper the word "box," each syllable of her slowly worded, obviously-meant-for-an-idiot sentence continuing to rest upon the visual aid of her happy hands.
I turned my head to one side and opened my mouth real wide. "Uuummm, do you mean a boooox? Me no know shapes good." I then let out the loudest donkey bray I could muster while dancing around the living room making horns on my head with my fingers. How's that for hand gestures?
Unimaginably, she had the audacity to be offended at my reaction. In fact, she returned another hand gesture I was not anticipating. You see? This kind of stuff has to stop. Men are real people too. In fact, there are a lot of things I would like to see women do without us. I know they like the idea of doing things without us because I see it on their bumper stickers all the time. So help me if I see one more white Jetta with a bumper sticker that reads, "Who needs men when we have chocolate?"
Next time you have a hole in the drywall, go get a Kit Kat bar to fix that bad boy. See how that works out for you. Try snuggling up to a Baby Ruth on a cold night—sure the smell would be better, but overall, I think you'd miss the man. We have purpose, even if it is not that evident on a daily basis in our own homes. Men should not be discarded simply because the women do the lioness's share of the household duties.
Yes, we do the occasional spackling and painting. Yes, we kill the insects you so instinctively fear. Yes, we change the oil in the cars. Hey, this one is worth all the trouble we bring. The other day I sent my wife to get the oil changed at our local Jiffy Lube. She just couldn't take the pressure of the whole affair. I suppose it's the bombardment of greasy clipboards and questions. Air filters. Wiper blades. Vacuumed floor-boards. You know, everything but the actual oil itself. She turned a thirty-dollar oil change into a six-hundred-dollar overhaul.
I got the bill and responded as any concerned Neanderthal would. "Uh, honey? What is this?"
She shot back at me a squinted look of absolute disgust. "Well, funny you would ask now. If Jerry down at 'the Jif' had not been so concerned, I probably wouldn't be here right now."
"The Jif?"
"Yes, Tim! Those of us who pay attention ..." She spoke slowly while gently knocking on my forehead as if a magic door might open to another dimension. I love it when she does that. She continued, "... we know that 'the Jif saves lives!"
"It does, does it?"
"Don't start with me, Tim. Jerry said we were totally out of blinker fluid. Oh my gosh! And I've been driving around this city for how long? Did you ever think to check the blinker fluid? Do you want me to die? Is that your plan?"
Yeah, some master plan that would be! Like she ever uses her turn signal anyway. Truth is, Jerry's master plan works a lot better: to bankrupt the Hawkins household over blinker fluid and lug nut butter. He and the Walmart guy must be in cahoots.
So chin up, Timmy boy. You know your wife is smarter than you. No doubts here. You know she works harder than you do. You know that she thinks you're an idiot. And yes, you know that she is right. But you, my friend, you do serve a purpose. Even if she does not always see it. Even if she doesn't vocalize it. You are still winning by a landslide.
And besides, no other area of need is greater than the actual time spent on the road itself. Without me around, I'm not sure what would happen out there on the highway. The other day, I allowed a rarity to happen: I let her drive and I rode shotgun in the passenger's seat. She had been driving for a while when she suddenly got the most curious look on her face.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"These roads are horrible!"
I hardly had the heart to tell her that she had been driving on the rumble strip for fifteen minutes, yet I soon found the heart to do so. Yes, that is my role. Honesty. Especially when it is painful.
She honestly did not know what they were, bless her heart. So I gently explained that when you drive off the highway the rumble strip makes noise and vibrates to let you know to come back on the road. Her answer was both true and priceless—and proof that husbands everywhere do indeed serve a purpose, even from their position of household and intellectual inferiority. Like a Christmas tree, she lit up with excitement. "That is so awesome for blind people." You should take a break from this book now, find a nice shady tree, assume the lotus position, and meditate on that last line until you lose the feeling in your butt cheeks.
So rest well, oh husband within. Your role in the home—and especially in the car—is both safe and secure. And yes, sometimes the best things in life are indeed free. And they flow from the mouth of my lovely wife.
However, there are certain things we husbands should never say back to our wives. That's why I wrote this song to remind myself—to the tune of Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)." Sing along in your head as you read and try not to cry.
Things You Don't Say to Your Wife
Hey honey, have you gained some weight in your rear end?
That dress you wear reminds me of my old girlfriend
And where'd you get those shoes? I think they're pretty lame
Would you stop talking 'cause I'm trying to watch the game
If you're a man who wants to live a long and happy life
These are the things you don't say to your wife
I planned a hunting trip next week on your birthday
I didn't ask you 'cause I knew it'd be OK
Go make some dinner while I watch this fishing show
I taped it over our old wedding video
If you're a man who wants to live a long and happy life
These are the things you don't say to your wife
Your cooking is OK but not like mother makes
The diamond in the ring I bought you is a fake
Your eyes look puffy dear, are you feeling ill?
Happy anniversary! I bought you a treadmill
If you're a man who wants to live a long and happy life
These are the things you don't say to your wife
If you're a man who doesn't want to get killed with a knife
These are the things you don't say to your wife
I should probably add a small note of interest here. Throughout these ramblings, I will include some short thoughts for future tweets. I thought long and hard about a creative way to brand them and I came up with "Tweet Thought" ... hey, I was having a rough week. At any rate, these are short, sweet tweets, so to tweet ... or speak. Eh, you'll probably get the gist.
CHAPTER 2PLAYGROUNDS
Kids are the best. They deepen the meaning of life, reminding me of what's important and what is trivial. They keep me on my toes—and occasionally, they crush my toes with their Razor scooters. Nothing makes you feel more alive than a detached toenail. Yep, like I said, kids are the best.
Today I spent several hours at our local playground with my little ones. These playgrounds today are pretty spectacular. I'm not sure how they afford to hire NASA scientists to design them—perhaps I'm in the wrong business. I mean, these playlands are unbelievable feats of engineering. They are huge. Once I lost one of my kids on Play Platform Level Delta for a full two hours. Thankfully, I eventually found him in the room of balls just outside of the glass-blowing exhibit—it was near the emergency phones posted every hundred yards or so. He had pushed the button and their security center called my phone.
These modern playgrounds are monuments to the merits of molded plastic. Complete with drawbridges, towers, moats, boats, computer rooms, flight simulators, intercom systems, and drawing rooms (for stealing away during teatime, not for actual drawing ... that's called the Drawing Quadrant down on level nine).
Oh yeah, monkey bars. Well, I don't think they call them that anymore. The National Association of Primate Businessmen got offended and threatened to pull their funding for future playground construction projects. I tell you what, those guys don't play around when it comes to their monkey business.
Some might even say that monkey business is no game. This makes me think of that fun fact my statistics professor always used to tell us: if you give a roomful of monkeys using typewriters an infinite amount of time, they could bang out the works of Shakespeare. I don't buy it. I'm convinced they couldn't come up with one sentence, what with the distracting screeching and poop throwing, although these haven't stopped me from writing this book.
When I was a kid, playgrounds were just a bit more primitive. They were built on cement or gravel or tiny pieces of broken glass, not on these soft Vitriturf floorings. This stuff today is like shredded rubber laced with shredded pillows laced with shredded lace. Hitting your head on the playground is like getting a relaxing temple massage. I should probably clarify that I am referring to the temples on the side of one's head, not the temples where people go to worship. That's another kind of temple massage that I know absolutely nothing about.
To my point, though, my kids love nothing more than to nosedive off the highest slide platform into the waterless pool of the playground floor. "Ooh Daddy, can I fall and smash my head again? It feels so dreamy." Sure, son, knock yourself out. If you can.
But in my day, we had no trouble knocking ourselves out. It was concrete. I sustained seven concussions just running to the water fountain—a water fountain that gave you tetanus, I might add. We also had some rides you no longer see on modern playgrounds, like the merry-go-round. There's a reason for that. There was nothing merry about the merry-go-round. It was more like the terror-go-round. The steel wheel of death. Yep, we had all kinds of names for it. You knew that ride was over when you were flung into the gravel. It was top choice for bullies who would always push you to get on it. "Come on, dude, you're going to love it!"
"I'm going to puke!" His point exactly. Mission accomplished. Score one for bullies everywhere.
I also have fond memories of the teeter-totter, or as some call it, the seesaw. That one taught us the concept of trust. It was like a double-sided human catapult. I remember it vividly. You sat down on—or rather, straddled—a hard wooden plank, thus positioning your most delicate parts for the highest potential of blunt force trauma. That's where the trust came in. As the other person entered the same vulnerable position by mounting the other end of the teeter-totter, the game was afoot—or as we veterans used to say on the playground, the game was acrotch.
If the two participants were both people of a reasonable disposition, it was the most fun imaginable. They could both be trusted to let the other push off with their legs and send their counterpart flying delightfully high in the air, and then the favor was returned vice versa. Maybe that's what they should have called the ride: the vice versa, emphasis on the vice.
But more oft than not, a kid of a reprobate mind would deceive his way onto one end of the teeter-totter and wait for his moment to attack. As I would joyously reach the pinnacle of the teeter, the villain would suddenly step off the totter, sending me careening crotchward toward the ground with the thrust of a blazing Patriot missile. From trust to thrust, it was now game over.
"Nice shot, dude," says Tim with the high-pitched Mickey Mouse voice. "I'll catch you guys later. Just going to head down to the emergency room for a bit. And while I'm down there, maybe I can get checked for hepatitis from the used cement sewer tubes I've been crawling around for all of my formative years."
Ah, but there was even greater carnage to be had on the medieval gauntlet that was my childhood playground. I remember the slide. Yep, that's the worst. Today's slides are usually made out of softer, more malleable materials like plastic. Ours? They were brutally forged into their shapes at hellishly high temperatures down at the steel mill. I envision a burly blacksmith beating the molten orange metal into submission for hours on end. Finally, he would remove his dark mask and wipe the gritty perspiration from his brow. A slide. Yep, our slides were made out of metal. What could go wrong?
Well, first of all, my most lasting memories of the slide come from those days when the temperatures reached into the hundreds. There it lay baking in the hot sun, just waiting for playful children to climb on and have some fun.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Diary of a Jackwagon by Tim Hawkins, John Driver. Copyright © 2015 Rockshow Comedy, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword, ix,Introduction, xi,
Chapter 1 Blinker Fluid, 1,
Chapter 2 Playgrounds, 7,
Chapter 3 Noah's Ark, 13,
Chapter 4 Roller Coaster, 19,
Chapter 5 Supernanny, 25,
Chapter 6 Wristband Cheat Sheet, 29,
Chapter 7 Colonoscopy, 33,
Chapter 8 A Homeschool Family, 35,
Chapter 9 Nook and Cranny, 41,
Chapter 10 Turquoise Toilet, 45,
Chapter 11 Yoga Pants, 49,
Chapter 12 Hedge of Protection, 51,
Chapter 13 Good Advice Too Late, 57,
Chapter 14 Challenge Flag, 61,
Chapter 15 Krispy Kremes, 65,
Chapter 16 Shoes in Twos, 71,
Chapter 17 Denominations, 75,
Chapter 18 Jim's Closet, 81,
Chapter 19 Slap Ya Mama, 87,
Chapter 20 I Don't Care Anymore, 81,
Chapter 21 Christian Cuss Words, 97,
Chapter 22 Recomputing, 103,
Chapter 23 You Can't Handle the Truth, 107,
Chapter 24 Tail as Big as a Kite, 111,
Chapter 25 One Crazy Relative, 115,
Chapter 26 Technology, 119,
Chapter 27 Eat What You Want, 123,
Chapter 28 Protective Padding, 127,
Chapter 29 Moon Man, 133,
Chapter 30 Christianese, 137,
Chapter 31 Smarter than a Fifth Grader, 143,
Chapter 32 Snickaloaf, 147,
Chapter 33 Kid-Friendly, 153,
Chapter 34 Wham-O, 163,
Chapter 35 I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, 169,
Chapter 36 Unicorn Laser Horn, 173,
Chapter 37 Oklahoma Shakespeare, 177,
Chapter 38 Masculine Songbirds, 181,
Chapter 39 What's in a Name?, 187,
Chapter 40 Laziness, 195,
Chapter 41 The Jesus Fish, 201,
Final Thoughts, 207,
About the Author, 209,