Justin Halpern: Profiting from his father’s advice

Justin Halpern owes it all to his dad, says Brad Wheeler in the Toronto Globe and Mail. The 29-year-old humor writer last year started reproducing the acerbic, profanity-laced rantings of his father, Sam, a 74-year-old retired doctor, as Twitter feeds on a page called “Sh-t My Dad Says.” A sample: “A parent’s only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize and the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed.” Another: “I’m not a pessimist. At some point, the world sh--s on everybody. Pretending it ain’t sh-- makes you an idiot, not an optimist.”

Halpern describes his dad as “like Socrates, but angrier and with worse hair.” Still, he was stunned when his dad’s off-the-cuff diatribes attracted 1.3 million Twitter followers, leading to a best-selling book and an upcoming TV series starring William Shatner as his dad. Dad, though, couldn’t care less that he’s become a pop icon. “Since I started the Web page, he’s only mentioned it once, and that was to say, ‘Don’t put that on the page.’”

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