Justin Halpern is an ordinary guy who curates an extraordinary Twitter page. In less than a year it's garnered over 1.3 million fans who follow Justin simply to keep track of the latest and greatest shit his dad says. Justin's talent lies in realizing the aforementioned shit was of a superior quality to that emitted from other dad's mouths. He also has a knack for conveying the underlying heart behind his father's seemingly harsh witticisms.
Raised on a farm in Kentucky, Justin's dad, Sam Halpern, is a man of few words - who knows how to make every syllable count. The exact opposite of passive-aggressive, Halpern, Sr. has never been backwards about coming forwards with his often-unsolicited opinions and words of advice. Growing up, this brutal honesty was difficult to deal with, but now Justin is reaping the rewards. His @ShitMyDadSays Twitter page has spawned a hilarious yet surprisingly touching book of longer vignettes -- brilliantly retold by Justin -- and a TV sitcom produced by Warner Brothers for CBS starring William Shatner, which was co-written by Halpern, Jr. in association with the team behind Will & Grace.
The @ShitMyDadSays phenomenon was precipitated by a very humbling experience for Justin. As the founder of the Holy Taco comedy site, a Maxim.com contributor and an aspiring screenwriter who was free to work wherever is laptop rested, he decided to move back from Los Angeles to his hometown of San Diego to share an apartment with his girlfriend who also happened to reside there. Things didn't go to plan however; Justin's love interest broke up with him the day they were supposed to start cohabiting. To add insult to injury, having already given up his LA apartment, at 28 Justin had little option but to move back in with his folks. Fortunately his story, or at least this chapter of it, has a happy ending.
SuicideGirls caught up with Justin, who now splits his time between Los Angeles and San Diego, to find out more about the upside of living in close proximity to your grumpy old dad (and the fun that can be had with irritable bowel syndrome).
Nicole Powers: Do you still live at your parents house when you're in San Diego?
Justin Halpern: Actually I don't. I've moved out since. I live with my girlfriend in San Diego but I'm at my parent's house quite a bit. When I'm in San Diego I work out of there because I have a shitty little apartment and I don't actually have enough room to work.
NP: And do you go home to do your laundry? (Sam Halpern: "I'd say I was gonna miss you, but you're moving ten minutes away, so instead I'll just say don't come over and do your fucking laundry here."
)
JH: I do go home still to do my laundry. Even when I'm in LA, I'll save it up until I have to go down to San Diego and then I'll do it at my parent's house.
NP: So on that point you're defying your father? It's complete dissension on the laundry front.
JH: Yeah. I feel like that was one of those things where he said it to get it out into the cosmos knowing that it was never going to happen.
NP: Your dad seems like a wonderful man in doses of 140 characters or less, but I can imagine he might have been a little tough to live with.
JH: Yeah. Growing up it was tense, but I feel that everybody has times when they're growing up with their parents that they wish that their parents didn't live with them. You go through those kinds of things, the only difference I think was that my dad never sugar-coated anything.
NP: What was the most brutal thing he said to you that still stings to this day?
JH: I think it's actually one quote in the book. Most people probably just glance over it, but I remember it being a formative moment in my life. I was really into Lego, but I was terrible at building things. I just was not good at it. He came by one time as I'm building some stuff with Lego. It just looked like a big mess on the ground. He's just come home from work and he goes, "Listen, I don't want to stifle your creativity but that thing you built there, it looks like a pile of shit." I remember when I was thinking of quotes to put in the book, when I saw that one I thought that one still stings a bit.
NP: So a promising career in construction ended before it began.
JH: Yes, but the thing is, I don't think I had a promising career in construction. The reason that stuck with me was because he was never afraid to tell me when I wasn't good at something. He always told me when I was, but he was like, "Hey, maybe this isn't your thing," and I definitely respect that now as an adult.
NP: I think that's what children need more of. I know that parents are often told by so-called experts to encourage their kids whatever. But if you say "good job" to your kids even when what they've done is a steaming pile of shit those words completely lose value. When you did get praise from your dad, it must have meant something.
JH: Totally. I grew up in a middle class community but right next to us was a really wealthy community. Everything they did their parents were, "Oh, it's fantastic. Everything you do is so great." My dad was never like that. Now, going back home, I see those kids a lot and a lot of them, they don't have jobs, they didn't graduate college. Basically, as soon as life gave them a kick in the nuts they just quit. And I never did because I was used to the realities of sucking at something and having to try harder, and try again or try something else.
NP: Your dad might have proverbially kicked you in the nuts but then he would also give you the flip side of that -- the genius of his comments is that they are very double-edged.
JH: Yeah. When I stopped playing baseball, my dad really wanted me to be a pro baseball player but I could kind of tell that that wasn't going to happen. I was good, but I wasn't good enough to be professional. So my junior year of college I quit the college team and focused on writing and filmmaking, and it was hard for him but he was like, "As long as you give one hundred percent at this and you're realistic with whether or not you have talent, then I'll be as supportive as you need me to be." And he was.
NP: You don't talk much in the book about when you actually decided to start writing. Are there any vignettes you can recall when you first showed him some of the early stuff you'd written?
JH: Yeah. In my first screenwriting class...you know, you're taking all these classes in college and every once in a while you'll get behind and you'll have something due the next day and you'll have to rush it. I remember I had to write the first act of the screenplay, and I had left it until the last, last minute. I read it and I'm like, "Oh god, this is not very good." I think I almost wanted to get shit on because I knew I had done such a bad job and I asked my dad if he could read it. He read it and he looks at me and goes, "You're not going to get a dime writing if this is how you're going to write. This is total shit and you should fail yourself. Don't even give it to your teacher, just give yourself an 'F' and take the class again."
I was so upset. I was like, "What are you talking about?" He said, "Can you honestly say that you tried with this piece of shit?" And I was like, "You know what? I didn't." And he's like, "Well I don't know what you're doing, because if you're not going try in the one class that you are supposedly studying then you should just give up and try something else." That was my wake-up call in terms of being a writer. It was like, I've got to take this seriously if I want to do it because I've got to see if I have any talent.
NP: What's the main thing that you know you should have learnt from your dad that you haven't quite got the hang of yet?
JH: I think the biggest thing is growing up with him I encountered a lot of awkward situations, because he says whatever he wants to say whenever he wants to say it. I felt like I was constantly giving a preamble before people would meet him or apologizing for something he said, even though it really didn't necessitate an apology. I'm still a little bit that way. I'm still a little bit too non-confrontational and I tend to err of the side of not hurting someone's feelings even if it's something that they need to hear. I tend to kind of wussy out and I wish I had a little bit more of his chutzpah.
NP: Although warning visiting friends that your dad might be wondering around the house naked is probably a good thing. People need to be prepared to see that.
JH: That's a necessary one.
NP: So where did your dad get his wisdom and humor from? Do you remember your dad's dad?
JH: Yes. My grandfather died when I was fifteen, so I did get to know him a little bit. My dad said he was the toughest human being he's ever met...The best story that sums up my grandfather is, my dad when he was ten, he was on a wagon at the farm and he fell off, and the wagon rolled over his arm. It mangled his arm and they took him to the emergency room in a small town in Kentucky, which was the closest hospital. The doctor said, "We're gong to have to amputate this arm or else your son might die." And my grandfather said, "Then let him die. There's no room in this world for a one-armed farmer." So they didn't amputate the arm, and they waited it out. My dad obviously survived, but that was the kind of guy my grandfather was.
NP: How does your mom cope with your dad's rather strong personality?
JH: Well she's the smartest person in the family by far.
NP: Which is saying something considering your dad a nuclear scientist.
JH: A doctor of nuclear medicine, yeah exactly, but she's smarter than he is. She's also quicker than he is -- and he's quick. If I try to verbally spar with my dad, it's pointless. He'll beat me into submission, but she can hang with him no problem. She runs circles around him. I mean part of the reason why she was attracted to him was because he's so honest and so truthful. She knew she was marrying a really honest and fair guy.
NP: Obviously your mom's good at the instant comeback, but are there lines you wished you'd said that just came to you too late?
JH: I would spend the next ten hours thinking of what I could say. He would saying something when I was growing up and it would just cut right to the bone, and I'd be just so pissed off. I would literally be sitting in my room or playing outside by myself just trying to think of what I could say if he ever said something like that to me again. It was so frustrating because he just does it so effortlessly and I'm sitting there, essentially in my own writer's room, by myself trying to figure out how to one-up a guy who just says stuff off the top of his head.
NP: How old were you when you started to see the wisdom in your dad's words?
JH: I think it wasn't until I had graduated from college. I started to see some kind of wisdom in what he was saying a little earlier than that but it didn't make me feel any better. I wasn't able to really process what he was saying until probably 24 or 25. I moved to LA and got a job as a waiter...That was right around the time I started to kind of enjoy the things he said, and was able to process the information and not have it be clouded by hurt feelings.
NP: At what point did you start writing down the shit that your dad said?
JH: I was probably about eleven or twelve. I mean, I wrote everything down. I was a really angsty kid who wrote a lot in journals. I wrote everything down and some of what was in there was things that my dad had said to me that made me upset. I didn't think they were funny at the time. Looking back, some of them were really funny, but at the time I didn't [see it]. I lost most of [the journals] but some of them I still have and they're just sort of like the kick and scratch and drawings of a kid that was a little awkward and upset quite a bit.
NP: Some of your dad's advice I love best is his dating advice. For a fuddy-duddy, he was really hip when it came to getting the girl.
JH: Yeah, it's weird, even now, he's like 74 and he'll admit it himself, he says he was never really a good-looking guy. He said he always looked a little older than he was, and he was never really that cool looking. But even now when women talk to him that are 30 years younger than him, he's pretty charming. He just has this supreme confidence. My brother says dad always acts like he could give a fuck if you would want to screw him or not. That's one of the reasons why I think women love him. I think when he was younger and he was single, he was never hitting on women, he was just being himself. He never acted like someone was out of his league. He would just ask whomever he wanted out.
I mean there's this story in the book about when he set my brother up with this woman who was a brain surgeon and used to be Miss Oklahoma or something. My brother was terrified and so upset that my dad had set him up with her, because my brother was 29 and living at home and washing dishes at Hooters. My dad was like, "Who gives a shit? You're a man, she's a woman."
NP: Your dad had natural game.
JH: Yeah, which was not passed down to any of his sons.
NP: But you've got a girlfriend now.
JH: I do, I do. It's the same girlfriend that I split up with in the book. Well when I say "I spilt up," I mean "she split up with me." We've been dating four years. We've had a couple of break ups here and there, but, yeah, I've had the same one for a long time.
NP: At what point did she take you back?
JH: Everybody asks that -- is she after your book money? No. We broke up right when I moved down [to San Diego], like the day that I moved down. Then we were probably apart for two months, and we got back together before any of the
Shit My Dad Says stuff had hit. But I didn't want to move back in right away, because it's like you're on shaky ground when you get back together -- you want to make sure everything's cool. So I took it really, really slowly and I stayed at my parent's house, and we kind of slowly got back together. So we started before any of this happened.
NP: The whole Twitter to book thing happened so fast, 'cause you only started doing
the Twitter page in August 2009.
JH: It's crazy yes. I can't believe [it]. I mean actually a year ago, pretty much, I moved back home with my dad. I had my tail between my legs and things were not going that well for me. I had a good job, but I had pretty much nothing else.
NP: The book came out May 4th. I love your account of how you didn't really know what to do at your first book signing.
JH: [laughs] Oh, you read
the blog. I didn't know if anyone actually reads it. Yes, I just did one last night too. I did my second one last night and that was equally as awkward. I got yelled at by the person who was running the bookstore because they were like, "You're writing too much when you're signing for people. Just sign your name." And I was like, "But they're coming out to see me. It's like so nice I want to at least write something personal." And they're like, "You're taking too long, the line's taking too long."
NP: And you've also been doing TV, Carson Daly?
JH: Yeah, that's been really weird, because I'm very comfortable when I'm writing. I'm even somewhat comfortable with small groups -- I like people so I'm pretty comfortable when I'm talking to people at book signings and stuff like that. But I'm not comfortable in front of a camera. I'm very self-conscious. I was very nerdy growing up, and I'm not comfortable being in front of a camera. That's taken me some getting used to and I still haven't gotten it. I watched that Carson Daily interview when I got home and it was like horrible because I was saying the word "like" every four words. I sound like some kind of like 13-year old girl from San Fernando Valley.
NP: I think that's just an affliction that comes with living in California.
JH: I know, it's not one of our finer [qualities].
NP: At least we've stopped saying "rad" -- look on the bright side.
JH: That's true.
NP: So did Carson Daly know that you'd farted in his ex-girlfriend's face? [Justin wrote a blog about his penchant for relieving the boredom of his old job as a waiter by
farting on celebrity customers, a questionable skill he can perform more or less at will thanks to his IBS issues.]
JH: [laughs] You know what? I talked to the producer, and I was like, "I really want to tell this story." It's the only story in my whole entire life that I've ever wanted to tell on TV. I told the producer, and the producer was like, "That's hilarious, but I don't know if we can could tell that story on the air." Carson was really nice and I never really talked to him about it. I was just told by the producer beforehand, "We want to stay on track, we don't want to tell that story." I was bummed.
NP: How can anyone object to
a decent fart story?
JH: That's what I thought. It had a beginning, middle and end. It had tension and conflict, there were characters involved, it was a very well rounded fart story.
NP: And fart stories are the bread and butter of comedy.
JH: Yeah, and who better to fart on than Jennifer Love Hewitt.
NP: So what had you been eating prior to the incident? Was there some Brussels sprouts or black beans involved?
JH: Yeah, I had had Mexican food. It was a hot one. I gave her everything that I had. I could feel it coming out of my collar because my shirt was tucked in -- that was how hot it was!
NP: Have you been back to the scene of the crime to see your former employers since you let that story out on
Holy Taco?
JH: Well the Crocodile Café, the one I worked at, no longer exists. But I went back to [the place where it used to be] yesterday for the first time since I had left there because my book signing was a couple of blocks away. It was a kind of surreal feeling. I actually did sit at the table that I farted on Jennifer Love Hewitt at.
NP: There should be a plaque there really shouldn't there?
JH: [laughs] I like your style. I wish you ran that restaurant.
NP: I'd put a nice brass memorial plaque there. It'd be a premium table.
JH: Exactly, exactly. History happened there.
NP: We'd have a velvet rope in front of it.
JH: [laughs] That'd be awesome.
NP: So do you still take pride in farting on celebrities?
JH: Yes. I do. I've farted on quite a few. That was the best one, but I've farted on quite a few celebrities to the point where there's kind of a small contingent of my friends that if we're out and we see celebrities, that's all that they're focused on.
NP: So what was the last celeb you got?
JH: Well, I don't know if this counts, it's a little gross, but I was in the Warner Brothers' building because that's where I have my offices now, and I went to the bathroom and Scott Bakula, the guy from
Quantum Leap, was in the bathroom next to me. We took a shit next to each other and during the shit I farted. I don't know if that counts. I think that counts as half, I'm not sure.
NP: I think that counts. It's like double points if you also got to dump side by side.
JH: Exactly. There's these moments you know when you've made it and that was mine.
NP: Yeah. I was proud of taking a piss next to Diana Ross but you've seriously trumped that one.
JH: That's pretty awesome though.
NP: I thought so too. It was on the Paramount lot, so it was a premium location and she was in full Diana Ross mode with the big hair.
JH: [laughs] I knew a SuicideGirls interview would be interesting.
NP: So if you're working out of the Warner Bros building, is that connected to the TV series?
JH: Yes. We actually shot the pilot already.
NP: Oh my god, with William Shatner?
JH: Yes. It was great. He was fantastic. He reminds me a lot of my dad in the sense that, he's not profane, he's very much a gentleman, but he doesn't want to engage in any unnecessary conversation or anything like that. He comes in, he does his work and he leaves, but -- I'm going to throw this word out there -- he's brilliant. You think he's not in on the joke, but he's in on
every joke. He knows exactly what he's doing. He knows the best way to deliver everything. He is really something.
NP: I know your dad hasn't wanted to get involved in any interviews or promotion, but presumably William Shatner wanted to meet your dad for research -- did that happen?
JH: They actually did meet, but he didn't ever ask to meet my dad. My dad came to the pilot taping and at the end of the show the executives were like, "Bring your dad down. Have him meet Mr. Shatner." I could tell that neither my dad nor Mr. Shatner were that interested in meeting one another. Everyone wanted them to take a picture together, so my dad walks down and Mr. Shatner says, "Hello sir." And my dad says, "Hello." They take a picture and then they turn in opposite directions and walk away from each other. That was it.
NP: I guess that was all that was required.
JH: Yes. It was the most perfect meeting. I was so happy. I was like, man, they both delivered.
NP: I'm surprised you even got your dad down to the taping.
JH: He wasn't going to go. He's like, "Can I show up late and stand in the back?" And I'm like, "It's not my fucking sixth grade play. You've got to come and sit for the whole thing." My mom talked him into it so that's why he came, but other than that he hasn't done anything.
NP: What was his reaction afterwards?
JH: It was funny, he ruined one of the takes of the show. It's a live audience and we're all sitting there and there's this moment where Shatner says he's going to think about something while he takes a shit, and all of a sudden I hear my dad in the audience go, "I do do that." He ruined the take.
NP: Bless. I think you should have kept that in personally.
JH: I know. If this show ends up getting picked up by CBS and we get on the air I will lobby for that take to go in there just for the ten people that read my blog and know that that happened.
NP: How's the TV show different from the book?
JH: Instead of the main character, who is basically me, coming back because his girlfriend has split up with him, he's coming back for economic reasons. He worked at a magazine and the magazine folded, and he's going under, he needs money, he needs a place to live. That's kind of the impetuous for the show whereas in my situation it was a breakup that instigated it.
NP: Whose choice was that to change it?
JH: That was mine. I co-wrote the show with my writing partner Patrick Schumacker, and then the two gentlemen that created
Will & Grace, very talented guys, Max Mutchnick and David Kohan. When we were pitching it we really wanted to touch upon [the current economic situation] because so many of my friends are out of work. They have college educations, and some of them have master's degrees, and they just can't find any work. We're having this generation of people who aren't lazy bums who don't want to get a job, these people did everything right and once they get out of school society just gives them the finger right now because of the times were in.
NP: I know, there's a whole generation of thirty and forty-somethings that are having to move back in with their parents so you're definitely capturing a moment.
JH: That's what we were hoping to do.
NP: But not everyone has parents like yours.
JH: That's true. I've been very lucky.
NP: Well I'm very much looking forward to seeing the TV show. I'm such a huge fan of William Shatner and love your Twitter page -- it's two of my favorite things in the universe colliding.
JH: Awesome. That's great to hear. You will love him in this. This
is him. He has absolutely nailed it. It's crazy. The audience is going apeshit for him in this role. When we were doing it, I was with all these TV veterans, these guys that have done
Will & Grace, and they're like, "You don't see this at a pilot taping very often. Soak it up."
NP: I would ask that your refrain from farting on William Shatner, unless you have a Denny Crane/Alan Shore moment over a cigar and he's OK with it.
JH: I will never, ever fart on Mr. Shatner. You can put that down. I would never do that.
NP: Well, I would say never say never, there may just be the right moment on the right balcony.
JH: [laughs]
NP: I just wouldn't want you to fart bomb him without his permission. I think he deserves a bit more.
JH: He does. He definitely does.
NP: Well, thank you very much for taking the time to chat, and for sharing your fart stories.
JH: No, thank you. This is by far the most fun I've had in an interview.
Shit My Dad Says is available at Amazon.com and all fine bookstores. For further info go to: ShitMyDadSays.com. 
I am going to stay in a dorm and I have never done that before! I am also not a social butterfly... cross your fingers that I won't be the awkward quiet girl, because I have already made bets that I am going to be the only black girl, can't have a double offense!
