#80—Right forearm. Each one of these tally marks represents a million views on that first video we uploaded of me singing the national anthem. Since it’s just a bunch of fucking straight lines, I’ve actually been doing these myself, but every time I see Optimus, he tells me what a bad job I’m doing. He’s like: How could you fuck up a straight line, bro? But I’m like: Dude, what are you talking about? These look fine.

The day after all the shit with Oddvar, I threw a little party at my place celebrating Mandy getting into college.

It was the Fourth of July, so I was planning on having a little get-together anyway, but I was feeling really proud of her, you know, and I knew she wasn’t gonna do anything for herself, so I turned it into a college acceptance party instead.

And we didn’t have a chef or anything—it was just me and Bob on the grill—and my mom was there, and Lenny, and Curt and Mo and Patrick and Gloria and Amelia, and Deez and Trick, and Kelly, and some of Mandy’s brothers and their kids, and all of my mom’s friends, and the camera crew, and we just sort of like, had some beers and set up the slip-and-slide in the backyard and played some music and celebrated.

Bob seemed like he had chilled out a little bit since the show premiered. He was still kind of mad for a while after that screening, and my mom was saying he was still being shitty around the house, but then when The Winstocks actually came out a few weeks ago and it had the kind of impact that it had and it brought in all the numbers that it did, I think Bob just sort of realized that even if the show didn’t turn out the way he had imagined it, it was still gonna be this cultural force, you know, and he could either be a part of it or not. If the point was to use the format of a reality show to connect with people and get into their lives, The Winstocks was definitely doing that, and so if Bob wanted to ride that wave in any capacity, he was gonna have to chill the fuck out and start being more supportive of my mom, because there was no changing the fact that she was at the front of the surf board: It was all gonna happen with or without him.