When Christine celebrated her 40th birthday in February, she gave me this edict: She must have enough activities to drown out the sound of her fading youth. It was a good plan, so I decided to follow it when I turned 40 on Wednesday. Of course, my fading youth made a lot more noise, what with the herniated disc. It pinned me down on the floor on a cushion, forcing me to listen to the sound of my bones deteriorating. Fun stuff.

Fortunately, I recovered enough for a week of activities. It started last weekend, when I borrowed my sister's vacation house in the Berkshires for the use of me and three of my male friends. It was a smaller-scale recreation of my 2003 bachelor party, in which a bunch of us rented a random house in Vermont. It followed the broadest definition of a bachelor party, in that we all acted immature. But on the micro level, there were no strippers, gambling, or porn. No, we just sat around making pop-culture jokes, watching a DVD of Pink Lady and Jeff, and cracking jokes about my cousin's epic masturbation habits. If I told you that the memorable moments of a bachelor party weekend were dubbing a small shed "the spank shack" and making 412 jokes about the large number of sinks in the house, you might think it was a colossal failure. And yet I would dub it THE MOST FUN WEEKEND EVER.

This weekend was the same, albeit with fewer attendees. It was four out of five members of what we call "The Barbecue Club," a sporadic get-together which started after the bachelor weekend; we go out and eat unholy amounts of meat and make really infantile jokes and then all go home and clutch our stomachs in paunchy regret. So this weekend we barbecued a lot, made really infantile jokes, and, to make matters even more nerdy, plugged in my friend Brian's portable karaoke machine and sang until 4 am, including a six-song run of Billy Joel in which many lyrics were changed to refer to his topical divorce. Wow, it was like singalong David Brenner!

From there I drove to Massachusetts, where I met Christine and the girls at my parents' house in Lexington. Then we promptly dropped off the kids and went away for a weekend on Plum Island on the north shore of Massachusetts. Our room at an inn had a small patio that was right up against the beach. It was rainy and cold, and yet that somehow made it all the better. It removed all pressure to do anything physical: our only option was to sit on Adirondack chairs watching the waves and read and sleep. It was like if someone built a Supermax prison in the Bahamas.

Anyway, it was a glorious week, made all the more special by returning to my parents' house and reading that both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson had died…and I was not at work to have to deal with it. I hate to look at someone's death only in the way it affects my workload, but there you go. I know my coworkers have been working their asses off, and I would just like to pay my highest respects and resist the urge to write, "Suckers!" A 40-year-old just wouldn't do that sort of thing.

It was weird reading the news of Michael Jackson's death. I went on Facebook, where there was just a long line of updates on how shocked my various "friends" were, and multiple YouTube postings of various Jackson performances from the pre-weird days. For a few blissful hours, gone were the mundane postings of "Joe Schmoe is thinking about making roasted potatoes." Everyone was so serious about it; every time someone would post anything remotely noting Jackson's second career as an alleged pedophile (and pretty strongly alleged, I might add) they were roundly chastised for being crass in this moment of national mourning.

I can't really get behind this. Granted, Michael Jackson was not a seismic force in my life. Thriller was certainly part of the soundtrack of my youth, and yet for some reason I don't even get as many reflexive warm fuzzies from hearing, say, "Beat It" on the radio as I do from "Sister Christian." I understand what a mammoth star/influence/pop cultural icon he was, but I don't get why it was suddenly classless to allude to his second life as a creepy weirdo. If anyone had made a Michael Jackson joke the day before, it would have been considered fine. The only objection would be that at this point, Jacko-fondling jokes are just hacky. So why the moratorium in death? I get that upon death we are only supposed to reflect on someone's good qualities, but I think that one reeeeeally bad quality can trump anything else, regardless of any context of him being a sad, damaged weirdo. Any sadness at his relatively young death and depressing devolution leading up to it are overshadowed by what certainly seemed like unforgivable misdeeds with kids. Isn't it fair to think that that could overshadow his musical legacy? Put it this way, which of these sentences make more sense:

Sure, he was a great artist, but let's not forget the inappropriate shit he was accused of pulling with children.

Sure, he was widely believed to be a pedophile, but let's not forget about what a great artist he was.

The views of joshwolk.com about gropiness and pajama parties at which said gropiness might or might not have occurred do not necessarily reflect those of Entertainment Weekly. Gropey.

Quick health update. Turns out the “prominent disc bulge” was actually a herniated disc. Not sure which one sounds worse, but I do know from careful scientific study that the herniated disc hurts like a motherfucker. So I really don’t have much to report, other than sometimes I lie on my left side, and sometimes my right. And then there are the days I lie on my back. That way I can smother the sounds of its moans. It’s amazing that this thing hit about three weeks before my 40th birthday. You know how a piece of electronics always craps out the day after a warranty ends? I feel like my entire body has gone to shit just as my 40-year warranty is up.

I try to go for short walks every day to get the spine moving and the juices flowing. (Sorry, should I put that in layman’s terms?) I considered it a good day yesterday when I passed an 80-year-old man. I’ve walked Lila to school a few times this week, during which she likes to babble and not pay attention and slowly zig in from my side to right in front of me, making me stop short, which causes me to feel a sharp pain zap across my lower back. I told her multiple times, “Lila, PLEASE do not walk in front of me,” and she laughs and then continues walking and then swerves right in front of me like a tiny little drunk. Yesterday I finally said, “You have got to stop this. When you walk in front of me, I might trip and fall on you.” She said, nervously, “Will I get a booboo?” and then proceeded to ask me about twenty times whether she would be injured by my toppling. I was about to point out that the point is that I might be hurt. But then I realized that that was even more self-centered, considering I’m six foot seven and she—my landing pad—is only three feet.

Things are getting a tiny bit better. Today I feel that the pain is actually easing a skooch. It was a big revelation when I sneezed and, miraculously, did not feel like I had just shat out my spine. For the last two weeks, I have dreaded sneezing and coughing like Dracula fears sunlight: I know when it hits, I am going to be in agony.

The other day I had to go to the movies for my EW.com column. Sitting isn’t good for my back, or all that comfortable. And if I attempted it in the soft, broken chairs of my local cinema, I most likely would never be able to extract myself, and the last thing I want to do is call for help from the indifferent employees. You have to tell someone nine times that the picture is out of focus before you get results; I don’t want to know how many times you have to tell them there is a weeping man stuck in the seats before they get around to checking it out. So for most of the movie I stood in the back, leaning against the wall. The movie, Land of the Lost, was pretty bad, so at no point did I lose myself in the action. I was never an avid jogger, because no matter how many times I tried to make it a habit, I have never ever lost myself in the run; rather, every minute of every run I am thinking, “Okay, am I done now? No? How about now? Just imagine how awesome everything will be done when I am no longer running!” Runners high, my ass. I had the same thoughts during LOTL: “Is it over? No? How about now? Just imagine how much better the world will be when I am no longer watching LOTL!”

There were only about four people in the theater, all of whom were probably playing hooky. And there is no bigger buzzkill when you’re young and in love and skipping school to go to the movies than a tall wincing guy hovering in the back of the theater. The wall I was leaning against ran up to the last row of the theater on the right side, so most of the time I was out of sight of those seats. But at one point I inched forward to change my position, and slowly loomed into view, and in that row were a couple of teenagers making out. They stopped and stared at me and slowly separated. I did what not even Land of the Lost could do: quashed adolescent passion.

One other non-back-related thing that’s going on. Lila has an imaginary friend, but it’s one she coopted from TV. On her favorite show, the animated Charlie and Lola, Lola has an imaginary friend named Soren Lorenson. For the past year or so, Lila has mentioned how Soren is her imaginary friend, too. But recently, Soren has turned into a real dick. Lila keeps saying things like, “Soren pushed me today” or “Soren Lorenson was calling me bad names.” It seems worrisome that someone that she invented would turn out to be such a bastard. I mean, he’s from her brain, she could make him do anything, yet she chooses to have him be a nasty jerk? When Philip Roth makes Nathan Zuckerman act like a jerk, at least he has him do it to other characters, and not himself. (Dear True Rothites: I know, I know—The Counterlife. But I last read it in college and can’t remember whether Zuckerman is a jerk to Roth. Dear People Who Haven’t Read The Counterlife: Never mind.) Adam Gopnik once wrote a great essay for The New Yorker about how his daughter had an imaginary friend, Charlie Ravioli, who never had time to play with her. I’d rather Lila had an overprogrammed imaginary friend than a cruel one.

As a father, hearing that someone is teasing my daughter makes me want to protect her. Yet how do I do it when that person is an invisible puppet who Lila is controlling? It’s like if Kermit the Frog punched Jim Henson in the nuts. Technically, it’s a victimless crime.

Because of some technical difficulties, it went up late, but it's up now.

Again, sorry for the bad pick. Man oh man, did Land of the Lost stink. Pairing Will Ferrell and big-budget CGI action is like mixing chocolate and ball bearings. Not a tasty treat at all.