Apparently publishers only want to publish memoirs of people who “did something,” or “are something,” or “snort something(s).” The problem is that I haven’t “done” any of that. So to make my memoirs publishable I am still going to try to kill the voicemail lady, but I am also going to make Mohammed funny again. Because seriously, who doesn’t enjoy a good Mohammed cartoon?
You can't see Mohammed's face, but he is cracking up right now.
My wife inquired this morning about my legacy…about doing something worthy of a published memoir. Kill the voicemail lady yet?
Nah. She’s wily.
Yep. Although I somehow doubt that her wiles are your foil.
Hey. I looked up from my sketch pad and the New Yorkers I had laid out on the table. I am nine hours behind the toughest target I will ever track–
–Oops that’s the Bourne Supremacy.
And like the comely and competent Joan Allen, I need help, Sweetheart. I need allies. I can’t do this on my own. I can be the vanguard, the voice, the inspiration, but I’m not Jason Bourne. I’m Max Fischer. And the world needs both. I looked down to my sketches.
Whatever. She took a New Yorker from the table.
Besides, I can’t help but think that jihadists are really falling flat with the potential humour of this whole thing.
What?
Mohammed. I think the jihadists are really missing some opportunities here with Mohammed. Their jokes are flat.
They don’t joke about him, Max.
They will once they see these cartoons. Who doesn’t love a good Mohammed cartoon?
JIHADISTS.
Because they’ve never seen one. I tell you, this will cement it. This is way beyond killing the voicemail lady…or is it? I rapped my mechanical pencil against my felt tipped pen. If I can get jihadists laughing, then convince them that the voicemail lady is Jewish…oh this could be easier than I thought. I returned to my rewrites of Mohammed and Dracula discussing Benazir Bhutto and could not stop giggling. I could not stop giggling.
Another chapter of my memoirs will be devoted to my repeated assassination attempts of that idiot voicemail lady. I have made this a mini-life quest (outside of getting my memoirs published), a mini-legacy if you will, something about which my grandchildren will boast when that d-bag Timmy starts in about the deer his d-bag dad shot. Yeah? Well my g-pa shot the voicemail lady dead! Oh snap! (They will probably say something else by then.)
Does that lady really think that we still need to be told that whomever we called is unavailable? Wasn’t that obvious when the call went to voicemail? And does she also think that we need or want to sit through her spelling out all ten digits of the number we just called? We don’t even go by those numbers anymore. We have no idea what in the sam-hill she’s talking about. As if we memorize phone numbers anymore. What is this, the nineties? And on top of all that does she think that we are so dumb that we don’t know when to start speaking? Or don’t know what to do after we are done speaking? She is more obnoxious than Seacrest.
In fact now that I think about it, we every one of us would benefit from her timely, painful, public execution. This should be something that we all have a part in. My grandchildren can boast that their grandfather spearheaded the lynching of the voicemail lady, and I’d well-up and choke it back and say I did it for you kids. And for me. So who is with me? Who will toss a mere six bones into the kitty to encourage some down-on-his-luck hothead to go whack this shrew?
It would be impossible to chronicle my life, expound on my id, my existential metanarrative, me, without an exhaustive directory of the Upper-Deckers I have bestowed. Just off the top of my head (not exhaustive):
1. Dan Todd’s house; Cincinnati
2. Dan Todd’s parent’s master bath; Ludington, MI
3. Church; Ludington, MI
4. Matt Given’s house; Scumdelein, IL
5. This guy I know who still drives a Hummer; North Charleston, SC
6. Scottville High School locker room; Scottville, MI
7. Wal-Mart; everywhere I see one
8. Old Yankee Stadium (final season) (so sweet)
9. Omar Shrine Temple; Charleston, SC
Post Script: Some of these do not invoke pride or any sense of accomplishment. An Upper Decker must not be used lightly, and I, at times, was far too indiscriminate in my bestowals. (I am sorry, guy who still drives the Hummer. I know the resale on those things is awful.) (Dan Todd and The Shriners, however…I’d lock my doors.)
My good memoirs will be well-served by some good data that supports the good life of letters I have lived so well. So I am compiling well a running total of the good number of times during a good day that a well-meaning English speaker will incorrectly respond to me with “good” even after they have heard me correctly respond with “well” to the question “How are you?” They might very well mean to say that they are not sinning that much today, except against grammar, but I doubt it. And I doubt it good.
3 so far today. 3.
In response to the recent grassroots, grindstone, populist campaign to convince me to here publish more of my life-worthy, discernment-laden proverbs, I will condescend. Rake the leaves from my Tree of Knowledge:
Goatees are like Bon Jovi. They are not back.
Younger than 8, older than 65. Any poop-stains in between…it’s time to rethink some things.
America has forgotten that nothing lasts forever in the cold November rain.
Torture always works. (If you just want to torture someone.)
I will likely need to devote a chapter or more to the many-splendored proverbs I have written. Though I doubt I will have to name those whom I have discipled or counseled with said proverbs. You know who you are. Here are just a few:
A man in flip-flops is about as helpful as Jazz in the daytime.
Being in a book group is an irresponsible way to live.
Catholic is a dirty word. Even to Catholics.
The bad reign of a bad ruler drags on longer than a James Bond chase scene.
The email forward might very well die with our parents. But what if it doesn’t?
1) I resolve to be this resolved (about completing my memoirs) when my resolve is tired, hard to come by, and boring. That is usually in “November.” (By “November,” I mean “March.”)
2) I resolve to get some minority friends in the hopes of getting my hands on one of those handicapped-parking passes to hang from my rear-view mirror.
In this age of the memoir, we seem to be eager and quick to concoct a number scandalous secrets which, instead of embarrassing us like they would other people, we plan to exploit for cash. We will expose our own secrets, and then use them to set up a straw nobleman to make us look brave and stoic. How could I handle such horrors? Or be such a horror? Here’s how…and our full disclosure is all the justification we need. We are exonerated. James Fry can now write a memoir about how he completely made up his memoir, but he told the truth and it was brave.
Would my memoirs be better if I had more than just a divorce in my childhood? If I had some real, tangible, debilitating hardship in life, like abject poverty, Spina Bifida, Catholicism, or cheerleading? I don’t think so. My memoirs are for the rest of us: Normal, middle-class folk, mostly white, reasonably coordinated, daringly funny (for the suburbs), and employed, with enough disposable income to not only buy stuff, but to be able to shop regularly at Target rather than at America’s Fissured Anus (Wal-Mart).
My poetry, however, could use a third nipple. Something hearty, substantial, easily seen through a shirt, with an areola bigger than a man should have. One that makes me continually self-conscious, and aware. One that makes removing my shirt, even in private, intensely awkward and rare. What dance could I then put down with words? How looming, and weighty, would be my inner life…so much to bear that I could not bear it, save that my heart should splatter though pen onto parchment? Would you even confuse my prose with my poetry because the flow and rhythms and syncopated timing would all work in you to steal your breath?
I believe so. Even an outie belly-button would help. Or shoulder hair.
Chapter 5 of my memoirs is probably going to be a running list of inappropriate jokes I have made in public. Like when I wished a happy Black Friday to the black girl behind the counter at Chick-fil-A. Or when I released my bowels in the dentist’s chair and tried to act like I died under the nitrous. Or a little later when I called the cops from the lobby and told them my dentist gives me nitrous without an appointment.
