October 22, 2009

Jason Mayo is Outnumbered by Christine Gerani

Long Island born Jason Mayo has raised the bar for bloggers everywhere with his super popular blog, Outnumbered.  Outnumbered chronicles his life with his beautiful wife Ronni, and their two adorable daughters Sophie, 7 and Ruby, 3.  A humorous blog about family life and parenting; Jason sometimes has to deal with controversy and guilt while also showing his tremendous heart.  We talk about his buddy’s fight with cancer and a day that changed both their lives forever.  Enjoy this wonderful interview with Long Island’s own Jason Mayo, a truly great storyteller.

Christine – Jason, tell us a little bit about where you grew up and your upbringing?

Jason – Well we moved from Rosedale Queens to Merrick here on Long Island, I guess I was going into the first grade.  I moved with my mom and my dad and my little brother.  Except for college, I’ve been here ever since.  My parents got divorced when I was probably 7 or 8, my dad moved to Jersey or Connecticut or wherever he was at the time.  It was me and my brother growing up with my mom.  My mom was a single working mom, she became a teacher.  So we were latch-key kids walking to school, coming home for lunch and after school.  You can never do that now. I don’t let my kid go two inches outside, ‘cause the white van will come and take her away.

I went off to Oneonta College and when I met my wife we moved to Forest Hills for awhile, and then we wind up back here in Bellmore.  It’s all full circle which is funny because growing up in Merrick we’re literally a town a way now from where I grew up, but  it’s like a whole different world for me.  I don’t recognize any of it.  I don’t have any recollection of Bellmore being close to Merrick.  As a matter of fact, when I was taking guitar lessons while I was kid, I remember going to this guitar center called Focus 2 Guitar Center.  That was years and years ago, I was about 13, I remember they used to have those little rubber guitar key chains.  I bought that electric blue guitar at Focus 2. I started taking guitar lessons again about 6 months ago at this place called Music Emporium which is right down the street from here.  I say to my instructor “Ya know what, this place totally reminds me of this place Focus 2 Guitar Center, where I got my first guitar but I know it was so far away”… and the guys like “Dude this is Focus 2!”.   Just goes to show you I basically grew up in this town across Sunrise Highway, but it might as well have been the Red Sea.  I don’t know where I am.  I just have a bad sense of direction too.

Christine – Let’s talk about your wife Ronni, you met in College?

Jason – Yea, she’s two years younger than me and it’s one of those meant to be things.  She was a junior and I was super senior.  I met her in my last semester.  If I never stayed [in College], she always jokes “If you weren’t as stupid as you were, we would never have met”.  I remember seeing her, we took chemistry together.  She didn’t know me and I didn’t know her but she was super hot.  She won the Greek Goddess Competition.  I always remember just looking at her checking her out a little bit but she was younger and she was quiet and I never used to see her out, and I was usually too drunk to remember.  But I remember seeing her at chemistry class and thinking I should talk to her.  So we had a Halloween party. It was my fraternity and her sorority and we never used to hang out fraternity – sorority wise.  I didn’t have a costume so instead of getting one I went and I shaved my head into a Mohawk.  I had long hair at that point. It was a long big huge Mohawk and my ex-girlfriend at the time put make up on me to make me look like King Diamond, he’s a Heavy Metal guy.  So I had a Mohawk, crazy devil worshipping make up on, black t-shirt, camouflage pants and I went to this party and that’s how I met her.  She was dressed like Winnie from The Wonder Years. So we started talking that night and for me at least, but definitely not for her, I guess because what I was wearing. It was like one of those, love at first site things.

As the months went on and we were boyfriend and girlfriend I remember my best friend and her didn’t get along. But I remember my best friend, Ladd Everitt and I, we got into a big argument about it.  So he’s being a total dick about it and I said to him “Ya know what – I’m definitely marrying this girl”.  He says “You’re not going to marry her, get over it, trust me”.  So I wrote down I will marry Ronni Berson and I wrote the date, I didn’t tell him but I put it in his junk draw and forgot about it.  Five years later on my wedding day, he gave me the envelope with the letter in it!  How cool is that!  That marked the first time that I’ve ever been right…and the last time.

Christine – So you have these two lovely ladies, Sophie and Ruby.  They’re very sweet by the way.

Jason – They are?

Christine – They’re the basis of your blogs!  BTW…I love “I Don’t Do Bath Time” about the bubble bath and the penis foams.  Tell us about the letter you wrote for your girls.

Jason – I had to, I was starting to feel guilty, it was consuming me.  I drop a lot of F- Bombs and things like that because that’s just how I talk.   I try not curse in front of the kids.  In the blog, I try to write like I speak.  It’s not always grammatically correct; I spell a lot of stuff wrong.  When I read I get bored very easily, I have A.D.D with that type of stuff, so I try to write as if I’m having a conversation.  A lot of what I talk about walks a little bit of a line as far as family, and sometimes people have a problem with that.  I always notice also that the people that hate what I write always comment anonymously and they say the nastiest things.  There was a blog recently that I wrote where I call the kids assholes and I caught a lot of flack from anonymous people on the site.  Even my mom who comments all the time says you should burn this one, and my wife’s best friend was like “What do you think they’ll think if they read that someday?”  Everything for me is in the name of humor and sometimes I feel that you have to say certain things for people to really get what you mean.  I could have said “jerk”.  I’m not trying to necessarily shock someone but if I’m having a conversation with my wife and my kid is being really super nasty, in conversation my wife and I would be like she’s being a so and so.  I just happened to write about it and I started to second guess myself.  I was going to take it down, and I thought that the whole part of writing this thing for me is that one day I want them to read this stuff and see, uncensored, how things went on, because I think it would hysterical.

Christine – Do they have any understanding yet that Daddy’s a famous blogger who writes about them?

Jason – Ya know I don’t know.  My oldest, Sophie, is extremely savvy on the computer and they are both super attentive to detail so they do pick up on a lot of stuff that goes on conversation-wise.  I remember a few months back I had bought Sophie her first real two wheeler bike.  An amazing Diamond Back, a gorgeous bike.  We were riding it and it sort of inspired me to write a blog entry about my first bike.  And really what it came down to after I started writing it is “Now that I think about it, my first bike was a piece of shit”.  It was like the gold Ross with the banana seat, it was the worst.  I thought it was completely amazing.  So I wrote this blog basically comparing, it was two boxes side by side; the old Ross and her Diamond Back and I referred to her bike as “Bad-Ass” which is a positive term.  The next day Sophie came up to me and said “I’m really mad at you” so I asked why and she says “because I thought you liked my bike”.  I said I love your bike and she said “But you called my bike bad-ass”.  Then I realized that she had gotten on the computer and seen the blog and read the whole thing.  Luckily that blog was not a filled with curses.  The tough thing was not really explaining the whole blog, but it took me 15 minutes to explain what bad-ass meant.  I knew that she’d be using it school that day, so I wanted to make sure she used it in context.  I don’t want her to call someone she hates a bad-ass, so I tried to explain to her what bad-ass meant.  It was a little bit of a misunderstanding, but I think was her first exposure to the blog.  God, I don’t want them to read it now, but I think she has an idea of sort of what it is and that people read it.

Christine – You commute to New York City where you work as Managing Director and Partner of the award winning visual effects and design studio, Click 3X, and the Interactive Design Boutique, Clickfire Media. Do you find inspiration riding the train?

Jason – I did an entry the other day.  I’d done this entry about my buddy Rich who has cancer, it might have been the first time I didn’t write something humorous.  It was something that really moved me.  So I wrote that and it was so heavy that I almost felt the pressure.  There was a point where I was thinking about not writing the blog anymore because I almost wanted to take that entry down.  Usually when I write something I can’t wait to get the next one.  I gotta move on, I get impatient.  If I don’t think it’s that funny, I want to write something better.  But there was so much meaning for me in it. If I stopped writing my blog today, I’d want people to still see that entry.  It was up there for 6 or 7 days which is kind of long for me.  I wanted to keep that alive on my blog,  but I had to get back.  The next entry I wrote, I wasn’t inspired by anything, I was feeling a little bit like there was pressure to be funny again, so I took the lap top out on the train.  I wasn’t planning on writing anything but I wanted to do something a little spontaneous, so I’m just looking around the train and I’m like “that fucking guy looks like Kenny Rogers”.  I look and there is a guy across from him and he looked like Kenny Rogers and there was another dude to the side of me and he looked like Kenny Rogers and I was like “There’s a bunch of fucking Kenny Rogers on the train!”  Three dudes on the train that look like him!  Then I look around there’s someone that looks like Bea Arthur. So I wind up writing this blog, and that blog it actually freed me.  I read it back, rarely do I start laughing at my own stuff, but I felt you know what…finally!

Christine – What’s your favorite blog that you have written?

Jason – “Things that Suck Most about Having Kids”. I thought it was funny because it was tearing apart the whole kid thing.

Christine – Sounds like a great title. Do ever think about writing a book one day?

Jason – I was thinking about writing some sort of a humor memoir about parenting but also anything I can do that goes to charity. So if anything getting more involved in Garden of Dreams, has inspired me to sort of think about possibly doing something to take the blog thing to the next level and turning it to some sort of charity effort.

Christine – We’ve talked about Garden of Dreams.  SpotonLI featured one of your blogs called “Hockey Heals” What was it like meeting former New York Ranger Adam Graves?

Jason – I’ve been lucky enough to meet a bunch of the 1994 cup winning Rangers in the past.  Adam in particular,  I had an experience where I commuted to Penn Station and I happened to be walking down 7^th Avenue and I wind up seeing Adam Graves coming across the street holding a cup of coffee.  So I see him coming across the street and I called out to him.  He looked at me and realized I was completely crazy.  I introduced myself and I said my name is Jason and I’m  a season ticket holder and I’m a big fan, and I just wanted to say hello.  He was just one of those guys that look you straight in the eye, shakes you hand, says your name, asks you if you have any kids, asked me how my family was.  We had a about a 5 minute conversation outside the Garden.  I was just really impressed by him.  He was exactly who I though he would be.  He does so much charitable work that you know he’s a good guy. So I had this experience meeting him, I called my season ticket guy and said I met Adam Graves on the street and I would love to get his email if possible just to say hey it was great to meet you.  So I got his email and I shot him an email that day.  The next day he emailed me back and said “It was great to meet you too hope to see you at the games one day!”  He’s super easy to talk to.

So fast forward to Garden of Dreams.  We’ve been doing season tickets for about 13 years, me, my buddy Rich and my buddy Jamie.  Every year we meet at the seats, we’re all great friends.  Jamie moved away to Florida with his family.  So it was going to be Rich and I going to the games.  Then we found out a few months back that he had cancer.  All of a sudden Richs’ health is a lot more important.  But in the back of my mind I was thinking this is our safe haven where we go to be together and have fun.  Jamie’s not there and my buddy Rich is fighting for his life. The weeks leading up to the game I said to Rich, listen I’ve got two tickets this year instead of three.  If we can go to the games we go to the games, don’t worry about paying for them, I’ll get rid of them if we can’t go.  You tell me when you can go and the ticket’s yours.  He says I just can’t commit but thank you so much!  It’s awesome!  A few days before opening night, and we never missed an opening night together, I said can you go?  He said he’d been throwing up a lot and was sick cause of the chemo.  He didn’t know but would call that day.  So the night before the game I was actually writing and I thought if Rich can’t go, I kind of wanted to do something to make him feel better because he’s been sick and hasn’t been moving around, and I know he hasn’t been in a great mood.  So I have Adam Graves e-mail and, since he responded that time, let me send him an email and explain the situation to him.  So I wrote this email to Adam explaining what was going on with Rich and how important it was to us.  The next morning I got up and my cell phone rings, I didn’t recognize the number so I picked it up and sure enough it was Adam Graves, and he says “Jason it’s Adam Graves”!  He asks how my buddy is feeling and if we’re going to make it to the game today.  I said I hadn’t spoken to him but I’d call him and find out.  He said “Listen, I got your email, I’ll do something nice for you guys, if your buddy’s on the fence tell him we’ll make it worth his while”.   I said alright.  So I called Rich and he said hadn’t been feeling too bad, he was going to definitely try to make it. I didn’t tell him that I had spoken to Adam.

So we go to the game, got to our seats and in between the first and the second period Rich leaves to use the rest room. Some kid in a suit came down to get us and said Adam is upstairs.  I said yea my buddy is in the bathroom he might be sick.  He said yea Adam told me all about Rich.  So they took us up to this suite and I thought maybe it might be a period in the box with a whole bunch of other people. We walk into the suite and it’s just Adam, by himself. My buddy Rich didn’t know what was going on.  I introduced myself and Rich says “Nice to meet you Mr. Graves”. My buddy didn’t realize this was for him and I turn to Rich and said we planned this whole thing and he just started balling.  He just realized and he just lost it. We hugged, I said I love you, he said I love you too, he’s like this is the nicest thing anybody’s ever done for me. Adam patted me on the back. It was a great moment. We watch the whole period, the three of us. He literally cleared the suite out for us so we can watch the period by ourselves.  It inspired me.  Adam is a charity guy. He works with the Garden of Dreams Foundation.  I realized this wasn’t a Garden of Dreams sanctioned thing that he did for us; it was out of the kindness of his heart.  He does that every day.  It got me thinking about this Garden of Dreams, because I just associate him with that and that’s what they do.  They find kids that are in crisis and they use the resources that they have with these Superstars at the Garden whether it’s the Knicks, Liberty or The Rangers and they arrange these special experiences with kids. The look in my buddy’s eye and then the look in Adam’s eye, I knew how important it was for him…this is what it’s all about.  It really opened my eyes to just doing something for the sake of just doing it.

Christine – You are now raising money for Garden of Dreams? What is your goal?

Jason – I said to Adam at the game, you really inspired me to make a difference for Garden of Dreams.  I explained to him I’m a blogger and I gave him my site.  I told him that I’ll put a widget on my site and I’m going to try and raise money.  At first the goal was to raise $5,000 and I’m 70% there which is amazing, it’s been up for a couple of weeks.  I wrote a letter to the chairman of Garden of Dreams and I heard back from her that week.  We actually have a meeting to talk about how I can get more involved.  I’m not Google or anything as far as traffic goes but I do have enough loyal readers who come that can help spread the word. I think the goal for me is to just try to keep getting the word out about Garden of Dreams and use some of that positive influence to do stuff. I was even thinking about if Rich can’t make games maybe there are certain ways that I can take somebody to fill that seat on certain nights.  Maybe I can sanction that with Garden of Dreams.  I know people don’t want to give their kids to me…drinking beers with troubled teenagers…

Christine – Not when you’re calling them assholes.

Jason – Exactly. But whatever it is, it’s really inspired me on a whole different level. It’s given me some purpose right now.

To read all of Jason’s wonderful blogs or to find how to donate to the Garden of Dreams Foundation, please visit Jason’s site at OutnumberedOnline.com

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