I know you’ll be as excited as I was to learn that Living Social is offering substantially discounted subscriptions to the magazine, Garden and Gun.

Imagine the thrill of getting all your mulching and armor-piercing bullet information in one glossy monthly, and saving 50% to boot.

Consider the advantages of learning how to grow sunny yellow daisies that you can then insert into your 12-gauge and blow right through the torso of an unsuspecting deer.

Picture the rewards of burying that guy who stepped onto your property wearing a hoodie under your stunning new tulip bed!

Really, the uses for a magazine this comprehensive are virtually endless.

You can shop for Garden & Gun-branded shooting shirts and beer cozies (two things that always go well together) while pretending to read an article about Eudora Welty.

You can savor the high-quality photos of a dead moose surrounded by English wildflowers.

You can even join the Garden and Gun Club and be invited to periodic events where, one presumes, a bi-racial busboy is festively decorated with turkey feathers and given a head start across the woods.

My only real disappointment in such a valuable offer is that the subscription is for one year only. After that, if I wish to continue blending the zen art of gardening with the – some would argue – slightly less zen art of blowing holes in living things, I’ll have to pony up an extra $10.

And I’ll probably need that for bail.

I don’t know how I’ve surrounded myself with people who are so annoying.

A very close friend of mine and I recently took a weekend trip. Lars (not his real name) and I have traveled together dozens of times over the years and always had a blast. He’s so funny he makes me pee, and I am as comfortable with him as any human being on the planet.

But on this particular weekend, I knew things were gonna go downhill fast when we arrived at the hotel (which I had paid for) and he had issues with the décor.

“It’s just trying too hard,” he sniffed.

Then, he had issues with the hotel’s clientele.

“These girls’ dresses are so short, you wouldn’t even need to lift the hem to insert.”

And with the guy talking too loudly in the spa.

“Inside voice, please! Or do they not have those in Appalachia?”

He had issues with the non-working refrigerator in the kitchen.

“I’ve already unpacked,” he announced when the front desk clerk volunteered to move us to another room, “my unmentionables.”

He had issues with having to pay a brief visit to female friends of ours.

“Why can’t they come to us? Did Gloria Steinem empower women to do anything besides torch their boulder holders?”

He had issues with having to change hotels for the final night (which I had added on at the last minute).

“What are we, on the lam?”

 In short, he was thoroughly cranky and unpleasant.

When I returned home, I told my partner about all the nasty remarks and difficult behavior. I was appalled, absolutely appalled that someone I was so close to could behave so abominably.

“All I was trying to do,” I complained, “was give the two of us a fun getaway, and he turned it into an endless barrage of criticisms and tense moments. Why am I being so tormented?” I outstretched my arms in a subliminal Christ-like motion.

“Remember when we went on that cruise to Mexico,” my partner said gently as I unpacked, “and you hated the room and pouted for about a day and a half?”

“THAT,” I replied, “was different. It was under the pool!”

“Or when you couldn’t get the car you wanted in Portland and you threw a hissy fit at the counter?”

“I wanted a hybrid! I was trying to be green!”

“Remember when we were in New York and you said ‘Moving around this hotel room requires lube and a diet plan”…?

“And your point is…?” I snapped.

“You’re friends with Lars so that your rough edges can rub up against each other. You see in him some of the same behaviors you don’t like in yourself. He’s a mirror for you.”

This from a man who claims to have never heard a Marianne Williamson lecture.

“Well,” I said haughtily, “a funhouse mirror, maybe.”

“And God knows,” he added as a highly unnecessary afterthought, “what rough edges you’re scraping all over him.”

But I knew he was right. Lars and I have been major teachers for each other on a variety of awkward, uncomfortable, super un-fun topics for years. ( He could doubtless write a dozen entries just like this, about which the less said, the better.) I’m Oprah to his Gayle, he’s Edith to my Archie. He has his bad days, and, I sure as hell have mine. But hopefully, bad days like this one teach us both a little something about ourselves.

So I guess I should thank Lars for being my mirror. But next time, I think I’d rather him be my Dorian Gray picture.

My partner and I just returned from Australia, where we celebrated our tenth anniversary. Fortunately, since he travels for work, and since I’m a miles whore who will open any kind of account (credit card, checking, sperm bank) for free frequent flyer miles, this gave us enough mileage to fly business class.

Many of us have probably had some occasion to ride in the front of the bus on a domestic flight, which mostly consists of some free booze and a seat with almost as much legroom as coach seats had in 1978. But business or first class internationally, on the Airbus A-380? It’s like you’ve died and become the Sultan of Brunei.

Okay, there aren’t any solid gold fixtures on an A-380. Or Death to America posters (usually). And no virgins waiting to be deflowered, although I have heard rumors about what goes on among the flight attendants when we’re all asleep.

But there are egg-shaped seats (that turn into lie-flat beds) so far apart you could stage Riverdance in between them. Nonstop almost-delicious meals and snacks. Enough cocktails and wine to require the presence of a liver transplant surgeon. Designer amenity kits. Pajamas (the size of which are determined by your flight attendant, which can be incredibly flattering or a giant bitch slap). Ever-changing mood lighting. A small lounge and snack bar. And so many first-run movies on your personal entertainment system that you feel like Louis B. Mayer sitting in his private screening room firing underlings.

Sandy and I had never been on the A-380 (since they’re only used for flights that are long enough to require haircuts and a calendar). But I think we should do ALL our travel this way.

I would like to arrive for work fresh from enjoying a truffle omelet and a Bloody Mary. I would like to travel to my in-laws’ house while watching Moneyball, swathed in a duvet. I would like to make a supermarket run wearing Qantas PJ’s and an eye mask that makes me look like a pretentious homeless bank robber. Performing my day-to-day travel via the A-380 would mean that I arrived fresh, sparkling, and slightly tanked.

So if someone could lend me $300 milllion, I’d really appreciate it. I’ll pay you back, really. ‘Cause opening enough credit cards to get a $300 million cash advance should get me a shitload of miles.

Are you one of those irritating people who knew, from a very young age, what you wanted to do with your life?

If you are, and you achieved that career goal, well, bully for you, congratulations and get off my website.

But if you didn’t know who you wanted to be, or you knew and never quite got there, I think you and I may have a profound kinship that should be celebrated over appletinis and fried cheese.

You see, for my money, there’s nothing wrong with standing in your bedroom in your 20′s (or 30′s, and well, actually, maybe your 40′s) singing, “Who am I, anyway…am I my resume?”

This is a Chorus Line reference, and if you didn’t get it, clearly “Broadway Star” was not the future career you envisioned. Broadway Star WAS one of the future careers I envisioned. Along with Trumpet Virtuoso, Nationally Syndicated Newspaper Columnist, Travel Writer, Advertising Mogul and Television Sitcom Creator.

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not being clear about your goals. I mean, from a very young age it was obvious to me that I was destined for greatness (although this appeared to be news to everyone else, who considered my litany of widely varied career options a desperately unfocused need for attention). As far as I was concerned, it just wasn’t clear how that greatness was gonna manifest.

Example: after being blown out of the water by a trumpet player who had the temerity to upstage me at the high school state band finals (a minority student who, by my calculations at the time, should have been busy dealing smack or selecting a tasteful gang tattoo), I decided to abandon the dream of becoming the next Miles Davis.

Example: following an audition for the Six Flags theme park show, where I sang Some Enchanted Evening while performing a tap combination, and the judges just stared at me open-mouthed, I determined that my fame did not lie on the Broadway stage.

Example: when the editor of the college newspaper found my column too “breezy” for the school newspaper (even after I reminded him that it was a humor column, not a series of op-eds on the Iran Hostage Crisis), I concluded that newspaper syndication was a pipe dream.

Although I knew there was something great out there for me, I was always ready and willing to move on to the next career possibility.

Hmmm. It’s funny. Now that I look back, perhaps I wasn’t being patient in my search for greatness. Maybe I was just being too willing to give up. Maybe I was being too thin-skinned. Because, truth be told, whenever somebody implied I wasn’t good enough, I not only believed them, I agreed with them and then ran home to eat Ding Dongs and cut myself.

In fact, I became so good at this self-flagellation that when the actress Tracey Ullman called me in to meet with her about a spec script I had written for her HBO series, and she praised me to what felt like a ridiculous and distinctly unwarranted degree, I tried to unwrap a Ding Dong right there.

But then, sometime in my 30’s, I turned the corner. I began working in television marketing and realized that I was pretty darn good at it.

And then I decided to write a memoir. And I didn’t give up. Even as everyone around me clucked their tongues and said, “Well, at least you’ll get it out of your system.” (After all, I create promos for television series for a living – I couldn’t possibly write something entertaining that was longer than 60 seconds. Could I?) And even as my partner, who was trying to protect me, said, “Don’t be hurt if it doesn’t happen. About 1% of authors actually get published.”

But I kept pushing forward.

And then an agent at William Morris decided to represent me.

And the editor of The Help bought the book.

And Sony and Adam Sandler’s company optioned it as a TV series.

And wow…as I look at those things, I realize that I finally achieved a teeny, tiny bit of greatness.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m hardly retiring on the profits. I’m not lunching with Oprah (sadly) or The Kardashians (praise Jesus). But I published a book. And I’m writing two more.

So maybe I’m just a late bloomer. And if you’ve taken a similar route, maybe you are, too. Because, look, if I can finally achieve some miniscule measure of fame and success, maybe the only thing stopping you is a razor blade and a box of Ding Dongs.

Me:  “Oh my God, look – 60% off a coffee enema!”

Virtually Everyone Within Earshot:  “You really need to see someone about this.”

I am, as almost anyone will attest (if properly threatened) a man of extraordinary taste. Regrettably, I am a man of ordinary means.  And short of a career in shoplifting – which, although chock full of excitement, danger, and hard-to-remove security tags, also comes brimming with untimely incarceration and the bothersome issue of morality – I realized years ago that if I wanted to live in the kind of style to which I’d like to become accustomed, I had no choice but to embrace coupons.

And that notion always seemed like a giant, inconvenient, badly dressed bummer.

Until Groupon came along.

Did you know that these daily deals – offered on everything from fast food to facelifts – can fill you with enormous satisfaction and pride in your own fiscal cunning? You are, after all, getting liposuction for 60% off.

Of course, the fact that I don’t really need liposuction – or that giving it as a gift can set a friendship back ten years – is really beside the point. And since these coupon clubs like Groupon, Living Social and Travelzoo have apps that you can check from your phone – first thing in the morning, on the toilet – there’s really no limit to the amount of money you can save.

Which appears to be the problem.

As someone who has now amassed an impressive collection of pilates classes, psychic readings, bouncy house rentals and beekeeping suits, I’m saving so much money that I’m going broke.

Me:  “Look, a customized bobblehead for just $69 – regular $149!”

Anyone With Sense:  “I’m taking away your phone.”

Of course, it’s not like I have a problem. I mean, sure, I have taken to keeping a log of my purchases and their expiration dates so that things don’t slip through the cracks.

And I’ve begun to forgo group outings, because all my dinner coupons are for two.

And I do occasionally drive all over town to three different branches of a store because they’ll only accept one coupon per visit.

And there’s that pesky issue of refusing to go to any establishment for which I do not currently possess a voucher.

But I am just someone who appreciates the value of a dollar. Someone with a keen eye for financial conservatism.  Someone who understands that a defibrillator at 72% off is the kind of bargain that just doesn’t come along every day.

Now if I can just find someone who’s having a heart attack.

Oh, wait, my partner’s opening the VISA bill. That should do the trick.