00:00Worried about is I'll turn out like Roderick, Manny will turn out like me, and eventually we'll all turn out
00:06like Bill.
00:06Rock and roll! Rock on! Yeah!
00:10Wednesday. I thought things couldn't get any worse when Mom told Roderick he had to start paying rent
00:16if he wanted to keep practicing with Loaded Diaper in our basement.
00:20I figured that would be the end of the band, seeing as Roderick's life savings consists of three quarters,
00:26a paperclip, and a faded Chuck E. Cheese token.
00:30But I underestimated Roderick.
00:32Instead of paying rent, he somehow convinced Mom that his lead singer, Bill Walter, was a musical tutor
00:39and therefore doing us a public educational service by hanging around.
00:44So now Bill is basically living in our basement.
00:48For a guy who was a 35-year-old high school dropout, he sure makes himself right at home.
00:53Yesterday, I caught him using my limited-edition twisted wizard toothbrush to comb his sideburns.
01:00When I yelled at him, he just stared at me with half-open eyes and said,
01:04Relax, little dude. Germs are just a corporate myth.
01:08The worst part about having Bill around isn't the smell, though it's a tight race between old gym socks and
01:15expired Funyuns.
01:16It's how he influences Roderick. Roderick thinks Bill is a total genius.
01:21Whenever Dad tells Roderick to take out the trash, Bill chimes in from the couch with something deep like,
01:27The man wants to bag your spirit, Roderick. Let the garbage be free.
01:32And then Roderick leaves a half-eaten burrito on the coffee table as a form of protest.
01:38Mom is completely losing her mind.
01:41She tried setting up a chore chart for Bill, but he just used her gold star stickers to cover up
01:47a hole in his leather jacket.
01:48I overheard her talking to Dad in the kitchen last night, pacing back and forth with a spatula like a
01:54weapon.
01:55Honestly, her panic kinda makes sense.
01:58She was practically hyperventilating.
02:00I wrote it down in my journal because it perfectly sums up the panic in this house right now.
02:05I realized that Mom's biggest fear is I will turn out like Roderick, and Manny will turn out like me,
02:12and eventually we will all turn out like Bill. I mean, I get where she's coming from,
02:17but I draw the line at eating cereal out of a frisbee, which is exactly what Bill was doing this
02:23morning
02:23because he was too lazy to wash a bowl. The real disaster happened when Manny woke up.
02:29Manny is Mom's little angel, but he's also highly impressionable.
02:33Bill was sleeping on the living room rug, and Manny waddled over, stared at him for five minutes,
02:38and then started demanding we call him Loaded Manny. By lunchtime, Manny refused to eat his apple slices
02:45unless they were shredded like a guitar solo. Mom almost had a complete meltdown when Manny
02:51walked into the kitchen wearing nothing but a temporary tattoo on his forehead and a bandana,
02:56yelling, Rock and Roll is my breakfast! Finally, Dad had to step in. He marched into the living room
03:03and told Bill if he wanted to stay, he had to get a real job by 5pm. Bill looked at
03:09Dad like he had
03:09just spoken a foreign language, muttered something about the suffocating weight of suburban capitalism,
03:15and wandered out the front door carrying a family-sized bag of our Doritos. I'm pretty sure he just relocated
03:22to the back of his rusty van in our driveway. So now we still have Bill around, but at least
03:28he's an outside pet.
03:29Bill around, but at least he's an outside pet.
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