Twitter Makes Dad a Star, Son Fields Book Deals

The delightfully profane dad who's the unwitting star of the August Twitter sensation "shitmydadsays," where his recently-moved-back-home son posts his cranky rants about making messes and dodging chores, may not be quite as clueless as he's been made out to be. Sam Halperin is actually a 73-year-old with a long career in nuclear medicine, the Los Angeles Times reports, and his Justin, is actually a writer at Maxim.

Justin still claims his father didn't know about the site until a week ago—by which time the son was already entertaining offers of book deals—since he never goes near the internet. "I wasn't worried it was going to get back to him," says Justin, 28. "It was like I was writing a newspaper on Mars." He knows now, and didn't get upset, says Justin, but he's not doing interviews. He says his  dad's penchant for secrecy—the product of decades of classified work—is matched only by his penchant for nudity, the product of growing up the son of a sharecropper, who stripped off his dirty clothes immediately after work, and, often as not, stayed that way.

(More Twitter stories.)