Chaplin can chill. Selleck can simmer down, and The Most Interesting Man in the World needn’t moveth over. After a clandestine, and often scratchy, two week trial the results are in. I, Michael Fred, can not pull off facial hair. Humbly — and clean shaven — I present the photographic evidence: 
MichaelFred.Com
the world according to a writer/director/producer/plus size hand modeling sports aficionado
The new face of obesity is…
ME!!!
In case the private shock wasn’t proper provocation, Gold’s Gym went ahead and posted the following flyer to include fellow gym members in my now very public fight against obesity:
I can’t thank Gold’s Gym enough for their Machiavellian support of me achieving a genetically impossible body type. I will fight. I will work out hard, and if that’s not enough, I will find the right combination of malnourishment, exercise, steroids, diet pills and laxatives to achieve the American health dream… the human caricature.
wine-ing
Things you’d rather not see upon returning from a two week trip — where you missed a historic heat wave — to your apartment that doesn’t have air conditioning.
Well… it’ll truly be an adventure in every bottle.
conversations i never thought i’d eavesdrop on in a missouri truck stop
55 year old trucker #1: “Boy my aunt and uncle could really jitterbug in their day.”
60 year old trucker #2: “Yeah.”
55 year old trucker #1: “Heck yeah. They’d glide across that floor like a bowlin’ ball on a freshly slicked lane.”
60 year old trucker #2: “I like ‘em slick.”
55 year old trucker #1: “You know who could really get on on a dance floor?”
60 year old trucker #2: “No.”
55 year old trucker #1: “That Patrick Swayze.”
60 year old Trucker #2 (clueless): “You don’t say.”
55 year old Trucker #1: “If I had it to do all over again I would have taken some of them dancin’ lessons.”
60 year old Trucker #2 chews up the awkwardness with the longest bite of burger ever.
55 year old Trucker #1: “You’ve seen Dirty Dancing. The ladies love a man that can move.”
60 year old Trucker #2 says nothing and keeps eating.
things that happen the day before a trip
Leftover broccoli and chicken for breakfast.
Hammer > Brinks Home Security Safe > Paper Clips (in my hands)
What do you do when you’re going as a 1920′s fella and the sweet pocket watch your amazing sister — who as part of her amazing-ness happens to be an outstanding attorney in the DC area — gave you for college graduation is locked inside a Brinks Home Security System, and you’ve lost the keys?
You take out a hammer, and some screw drivers, and you bash that shit… with a few precise blows, or many if you have a lot of angst to excise. Game 6 of the World Series was on so I went for the quickest safe kill possible. How great was that game!? Two comebacks! Both down to the last strike! Come on! Sorry… but that game was great. Back to my MacGuyverin’.
I’d be lying if I told you that was my first plan of action, or one that I had come up with on my own. By the bashing point, I had already wasted 15 minutes watching a Youtube how-to video using paper clips. They were futile in my inexperienced, law-abiding hands. So I called my much smarter, engineer father and discussed the prospect of enlisting a locksmith. His retort, “A locksmith is going to cost more than that safe you’ve got. Hit it with a hammer.”
Ends up a locksmith does cost more than a Brinks Home Security Safe, which should have been a hint to the amount of security i had purchased for my stuff in the first place. Though my stuff isn’t valuable enough to warrant purchasing a safe that actually saves. A protective quandary. Or conundrum. Ah, at least I get to hold this piece de resistance tonight…
