When moving in with your parents can land you a book deal

Justin Halpern, right, and his father, Samuel Halpern, third from the right, attending the World Baseball Classic with Justin's friend Brad Lamers, sitting in the middle. Credit: Patrick Schumacker / For The Times

Having to move back home at the age of 28 almost universally signals defeat. Images of an unemployed, not-so-well-adjusted George Costanza character from "Seinfeld" might spring to mind.

In Justin Halpern's case, moving from Los Angeles to his parents' house in San Diego planted the seeds for a Twitter page that's quickly growing into an Internet phenomenon, attracting offers from literary agents and book publishers.

Once a day, Halpern, 28, posts a memorable quote that his dad, Samuel, had said the day before. More than 200,000 users subscribe to get their daily dose of Sam.

We should preface this story with a disclaimer: Justin and his dad use profane language. A lot of it. In fact, the very name of the Twitter page Justin runs contains a word synonymous with human waste that is unsuitable for a family publication. The tweets themselves contain still more naughty language. So, click at your own risk.

The site, which we'll prudishly call Stuff My Dad Says, contains droll, irreverent fragments of conversation, observation and, in many cases, expletives stemming from the retired 73-year-old's frustrations with his three sons, the mysteries of technology, and actress Kate Beckinsale. "Who is this woman?" he asks secondhand in one tweet. "Kate Beckinsale? Well, you can tell Kate Beckinsale she sucks."

Justin started Twittering his dad's musings on Aug. 3. In less than a month, the page has gotten shout-outs from "The Daily Show's" Rob Corddry, a popular San Francisco blog called Laughing Squid and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" star Kristen Bell. Corddry told his nearly 1 million followers it's "the best thing ever." Bell urges others to read it "unless you're allergic to laughing hysterically."

Sam, the unlikely star of the show, isn't really trying to be funny. Until last week, Sam had no idea his youngest son had been broadcasting his anecdotes for the world to read. But you could write a book about Sam. Indeed, Justin has already signed with an agent and is considering offers from book publishers.

The only aspect of Sam's character that might exceed his brutal honesty is...

... his insistence on absolute privacy. Before retiring, Sam worked in nuclear medicine for the University of California, San Diego. As you might imagine with a state-funded job that requires classified research, Sam kept many aspects of his life close to his chest.

Despite data that suggest that Facebook is popular among older people, you will almost certainly never see Sam on a social network. He keeps a separate computer from his wife on the other side of the house that isn't connected to the Internet.

"I wasn't worried it was going to get back to him," Justin said about Sam discovering the site. "He doesn't go on the Internet. It was like I was writing a newspaper on Mars."

In all aspects, Sam takes his privacy very seriously -- a detail not lost on his family. "You do not screw with my dad when he's in the bathroom," Justin said. "My brothers and I know this for sure. You never knock on the bathroom door when my dad is in."

Growing up, Justin and his two brothers were pretty scared of Sam. Heck, they're still scared of him. After telling Justin's brother, Dan, about Stuff My Dad Says, Justin remembered Dan laughing hysterically to the point of tears. Then, Dan's tone changed. "Dude, you can't tell Dad," Justin recalled his brother advising him.

So, the fact that Justin was getting offers for book deals and that the number of subscribers to the page had ballooned to about the equivalent of Glendale's population gave him reason enough to fear his father's reaction when he finally broke the news.

One night about a week ago, after walking a few miles around their neighborhood in San Diego to organize his thoughts, Justin gathered up his courage and dropped the bomb.

"I told him, 'OK, there's this site called Twitter.' And he was like, 'I know Twitter.' And then he was like, 'Now, do you have to go onto the Internet to access Twitter?' "

After providing a basic overview of the project, Justin prepared for the fallout. "I should have seen it coming," Justin said. "He gave the most perfect response. He laughed for, like, 10 seconds, and then he goes, 'I can't find my cellphone. Can you call it?'"

Somehow, disaster was averted.

Justin's other major concern leading up to the confession -- aside from his dad being furious with him -- was whether the awareness would change the things Sam said and how he acted. Fortunately, fame hasn't gone to his head. "He really doesn't give a crap," Justin said, but "I think he doesn't fully understand it."

Sam did have one stipulation after hearing about the experiment. "Keep the money from whatever you get. I have my own money," Justin recalled his dad saying. "I just don't want to do any interviews."

He reinforced that last week when The Times requested Justin pitch the interview idea again to his father, who is apparently a longtime reader of the newspaper. "'The L.A. Times wants to interv --' 'No,' " Justin recapped in an e-mail.

"He hates attention," Justin said about his dad. And he has reason to. Sam had a long career in a highly secretive medical field and fought in a very unpopular war. The son of a Southern sharecropper, he would help around the farm as a child, tending to the tobacco fields. Not exactly a glamorous lifestyle.

Sam inherited a unique trait from Justin's grandfather. "I probably saw him more often without clothes than I saw him with clothes on," Justin said about growing up with his dad. "I think they would just get done with the farming, and they would be really tired. And they would just strip down and walk around naked."

"It would be awkward because friends would be coming over, and I would have to be like, 'You know, you have to put clothes on,' " Justin reminisced. His friends have long loved Sam. They, too, have seen the grizzled man in the buff.

Justin has an almost endless number of hysterical stories about his dad. There was the time Sam coached Justin's little league team and got so frustrated with the players that he quit the gig on the spot, leaving a 9-year-old Justin to walk a few miles home.

"Even at 9, I knew this was going to end terribly," Justin said. "It was just me walking home, and I saw him driving. And he pulls up next to me and says, 'Aw, I forgot to pick you up, didn't I?' ... 'I'm not coaching that [expletive deleted] team anymore.' "

And then there was the time Justin filled Sam's Alfa Romeo Spider convertible with water. Or the time Sam had a bad day and declared, "I'll wear clothes if I want to wear clothes, and I won't wear clothes if I don't want to wear clothes," Justin recited. "And the fact that your friends are coming over soon is inconsequential."

Justin had been scribbling down his dad's rants and quips in a notebook since childhood. In the last year or so, he began updating his Google Talk instant messenger status with quotes to laugh about later with friends who know his dad. One of them, who had become quite adept at Twitter, suggested Justin use the service to actually preserve the fragments. (Google Talk statuses are not archived.)

For a week or so after he created the account at the beginning of August, Stuff My Dad Says had five followers -- all friends of Justin. His buddy, who runs a fairly popular Fake Michael Bay Twitter page ("EXPLOSIONS!"), asked Justin if he could give him a shout-out on the weekly #followfriday ritual, where Twitterers suggest friends to their followers.

"Nobody knows my dad, so it's not going to make any sense," Justin recalled telling him. (Justin's mom had the same reaction when he told her about the site.) Regardless, on Aug. 14, the tweet went out, and Stuff My Dad Says exploded. He began picking up a few hundred followers a day. Now, it's a few hundred per minute.

Justin places no ads by which to earn revenue on the page. Twitter doesn't have a platform for monetizing a feed -- not that Justin necessarily cares to.

"The reactions have been all really positive," Justin said. "And people telling me I'm a loser, which I'm fine with."

Contrary to the "28-year-old guy living with his parents" stereotype, Justin is, in fact, employed. (He says he moved back to San Diego to get away from the big city life in L.A.) He recently left his job writing for the humor website he founded, called Holy Taco, along with his co-founder, Cory Jones, to write for "Maxim."

"I wish maybe I wasn't living at home," Justin said during a phone interview. "But if you had to live at home when you were 28, this is a good situation. I really like my mom; I love my dad; I love my dog." At this point, Sam can be heard in the background quipping about how he loves the dog, too.

Sam may have wanted his son to be a professional baseball player after bonding for many years over the sport. (A recent Stuff My Dad Says tweet about the pair watching the Little League World Series read, "These kids are all fat. I remember when you were in little league.... You were fat.") But he fully supported Justin's pursuit of becoming a writer.

"He's a really good dad," Justin said. "He just doesn't let you get away with anything."

Corrected, 5:20 p.m.: The original version said Samuel Halpern worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In fact, it was at the University of California, San Diego.

-- Mark Milian

Follow my commentary on technology and social media on Twitter @markmilian.

Comments

[Patrick Schumacker]

That's a very nicely framed photo.

[Omar Clan]

A nice story. A story in which you want to believe in. It sounds very Springfield like indeed. You don't want to know whether half of the quotes is true; they are all juicy

[carol]

Kind of like that one but from a 6 year old girl. http://twitter.com/AvagraceSwanhil @avagraceswanhil Very funny.

[Tavis]

These are the kind of fathers we need today...blunt, abrasive, and honest = good, thick-skinned kids, not sissies who wet their pants when criticized for their own mistakes. Bravo.

[Brian H]

The first thing I noticed was how nice the photo looked. Patrick, do you freelance or do you solely work for the Times?

Justin, get a book out already. It's been over a month since you started your Twitter.

[Jonathan L]

The thing that people aren't getting is...this is life in 2009. All those friends bragging about how successful their kids are, generally are lying. I know these people personally and I have YET to see any mention of their kids success or hear it from their kids mouths. I think that older parents had the rug pulled out from under them. I know more older parents whose 38 and 48 year olds are moving home - 28 is nothing. 28 is actually now the age where a lot of kids are going to college because they were smart enough to wait to figure out what they want to do. Hardly anyone now has the ability to know, at 18, what they want to major in and also have the foresight to know it will get them a job. Couple all these things with the fact that relationships/marriages/kids just aren't happening for many of us, and our older parents, God Bless them, are who we have in our lives.

I am 35 and I'm one of those kids who is gay and lives with two of my best friends who happen to be my best supporters and parents. I didn't ask for life to be the way that it is but you know what? I've got 98% of the population stacked against me in terms of finding a relationship. I can't have kids. It's not that I don't want to get out there (I lived on my own for years), I just got tired of being alone and feeling like, what am I doing? At least with my parents I have a sense of family - and right now, that's something I want to hang on to. I live in Duluth, Minnesota; not huge but not tiny, and no gay people - but again, I wouldn't trade these years with my parents for anything.

[Kolie]

This sounds EXACTLY like my mom... minus the nakedness. But it's still hilarious!

[feefifoto]

I think the freakiest thing about this admittedly hysterical Twitterer is that the only person he follows is LeVar Burton. Kunta Kinte -- is that you?

[Joana flor]

this artist illustrates tweets daily http://www.twitter.com/morganritchie

[Tj]

Stop trying to make celebs out of people who use twitter. Some miserable old fart yammering away is NOT news or the least bit interesting!!

[Clark]

Before he passed, Norman Mailer said if he was a young writer he would have a blog. It's just a new way to get your voice out there. Good job

[Sandy]

More Hollywood-centric, but I think this funny one has a lot of potential.
http://twitter.com/how2failinholwd

[I AM AMERICA]

TJ:

Maybe its not interesting to you, but then again who asked you or who even cares what you think...go back to reading tweets by Perez Hilton and TMZ...

[John]

The Cat is Dead Put Her Out For Garbage

15 years worth of notes from my Mother. Updated almost daily.

http://www.twitter.com/thecatisdead
http://dearjohnlovemom.blogspot.com

[jk]

s*&^ I have to say: An agent and a book deal? These things used to be reserved for people with talent....and fame used to be reserved for someone who accomplished something! I see neither of these things in this story.

What has society come to that we reward a 28-year old man who lives with his parents and writes about what his dad has to say? Sounds like his father is more entertaining than him! Maybe we should cut out the middle man and give his dad the book deal and the agent?

Perhaps, with his new found wealth, this live-at-home-man-child can move out and get his own place...but then, what would he "twit" about?

...and this from a 28 year old woman :)

so sad.

[X]

Looks like a there are some jealous people out there. I mean it's not like he stole your book deal. Maybe if you had a sense of humor you could get a deal too.

[David Horgan]

I wrote a book called "When Your Parent Moves In" (Adams Media)with Shira Block. It could help Justin and his dad get along!

[Kwmma]

I have to say that as a mom, the line, "I really like my mom, I love my dad and I love my dog." kind of stings. lol

Justin, if you read this comment, for God's sake go and tell your mom that was an unintended slight, or that you were misquoted!

[Maureen Marinkovich]

I just want to say that I am one of the thousands who can't wait to check for Mr. Halpern's new quote of the day. Thanks for writing this entertaining story about the family. Justin's twitter business REALLY makes me laugh.
Maureen Marinkovich
Friday Harbor, Washington

[ehhh]

Amazingly funny twitter, but this article was so poorly written that by the end of it I didn't even want to be online anymore. This could have been written by a 10 year old that scored a phone interview. Terrible article, awesome twitter go check it out!

[KYS]

Hey jk, the article mentions that Justin is a 'Web phenomenon', which is no mean feat. How many Twitter accounts, blogs, or plain old home pages are there out there? Millions, I'd guess. Does everyone get a book deal? No.

Justin's Twitter feed has appeal for a growing legion of fans. With that type of following, attention from the entertainment industry is hardly surprising. Why begrudge him his success just because he's gotten attention through his online presence?

If you read the article, you would realize that he's a writer, so he must have a bit of that talent that you so desperately want to see in your idea of a celebrity. The fact that he is a writer makes offers from publishers entirely appropriate. Good for Justin for scoring these great opportunities; I for one am very envious--I admit it.

As for his dad being the source of the wit in Justin's feed, I believe the article goes into a fair bit of detail about how intensely private Sam is and how he abhors attention. I may be just guessing, but I suspect that *may* have something to do with why Sam isn't the one with book deal.

The bottom line is if you don't think Justin deserves the attention he's gotten, don't pay attention to any of the press that talks about him, don't subscribe to his Twitter feed, and don't buy whatever books he may write. It's a free country--exercise your right to ignore what's popular, but don't criticize Justin for gaining fame...it's not his fault that people like what he's doing.