Читать книгу Stories I'd Tell My Children (But Maybe Not Until They're Adults) - Michael N Marcus - Страница 3

This book’s title may seem strange. You might wonder why I didn’t name the book, Stories I Told My Children, or Stories I’ll Tell My Children.

I can’t use those titles because I don’t have any children that I know of, and I’m not likely to have any.

Unless some unknown offspring shows up to claim a percentage of my income, the closest I’ll get to parenting is with Hunter, my Golden Retriever.

Though he’s not human, Hunter is a pretty good substitute. He receives and returns a lot of love. He’s a good communicator. He’s empathetic. I don’t pay for college. I just pick up poop.

He listens while I tell him my stories. He smiles, holds my hand, licks his weenie and licks my face. But he can’t laugh.

I need an audience that laughs. So I write.

I don’t often dwell on my lack of human children. My wife Marilyn and I tried to reproduce, but we didn’t; and adopting seemed like too much of a gamble. Hunter, however, was adopted, and he’s just fine. If I had to be a dog, I’d like to be like him. But I’d want parents like us, to spoil me.

Sometimes I feel that by not reproducing, by not fully participating in the human continuum, I’ve never really grown up. Maybe I became my own kid—and that’s why I do some silly stuff (like this book?) and buy myself so many big boys’ toys. Maybe I’m like Peter Pan. (I won’t grow up and I hate to wear a tie.)

OK. That’s all the serious stuff I plan for the book. Now we can move on to the fun and the filth.

This book could be considered a “coming-of-age” book, with young male silliness and horniness in the tradition of Animal House and Porky’s. It is that, but there’s more to it.

It’s a collection of more than 100 stories that span 55 years starting when I was six. The stories are mostly short and funny. One is long and funny, and weird and chilling. Culture clash is a frequent theme. So are food, phoniness and incompetence. There’s lots of sex, drugs and rock & roll. Even the sex and drug stories are funny. Some stories were written as revenge for bad teachers and evil bosses. I also talk about some wacky relatives.

There are stories about the women I thought about marrying and the one woman I did marry (and what she had to do in bed to defeat the competition). And there are stories about painful encounters with Macy’s and Walmart, and a report on an excruciating software upgrade.

The stories took place in New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. There are four murders. If I get killed for writing this, there will be five and someone else will write the sequel.

Different parts of this book were written for different reasons.

The teacher stories started out as a warning, and later evolved into revenge and entertainment. People have said that living well—or looking good, or success, or just surviving—is the best revenge. Telling stories works best for me.

In 1963, when a guidance counselor asked what I most wanted to get out of high school, I shouted, “ME!” I’ve had a few wonderful teachers, but they’re not much fun to read about. My strongest memories are of the bad ones and nutty ones. Some were amusingly inept. But others hurt.

In the 1950s and 60s there were no “student rights.” Parents insisted that teachers should not be criticized, and must be respected no matter how evil, incompetent or deranged they were.

When I was in the sixth grade, way back in 1958, I was the victim of the first of those shitty teachers. I promised myself that someday I would tell the world what most of the kids’ parents refused to listen to. It took me over 50 years, but I’ve kept the promise.

I can still visualize exactly where I was standing when I made the decision to write about a sadistic, egomaniacal, lazy, ignorant bitch named Julia Quinn. I’m calling her a bitch because I decided not to use the “c-word” in this book. If people enjoy this book, it may be the only good thing that the evil horrible despicable cu—er, bitch—ever accomplished.

If I go to hell I’m going find Quinn and beat the crap out of her. But I may have to wait in line for my turn. If you think I didn’t like her, you’re underestimating my passion. I hated her fucking guts. And I still do.

The rest of the stories were written because I like to tell stories. I like to make people smile and laugh. I don’t perform on the stage, just on paper.

How do I know the book is funny?

I just know it.

My “previewers” said it’s funny.

Even my serious wife laughed at the few parts I let her see.

For comparison, Marilyn also laughs at I Love Lucy, Boston Legal and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I, too, think Lucy is extremely funny, but I think the Larry David character on Curb Your Enthusiasm is an asshole. I can’t stand watching him, so Marilyn watches him with the dog. However, Larry is a good writer.

Where’d I get my sense of humor? It might be genetic. My father was very funny and my grandfathers, Walter Marcus and Dr. Jay N. Jacobs, were like George Burns and Jack Benny. Grandpa Jay could juggle while telling jokes.

There was a lot of laughter in my house even before we got a television, and we were one of the first families to get a television. Pop introduced me to MAD magazine. All fathers should do that. It’s as important as teaching about the birds and the bees.

My old man messed up that lesson. He skipped the fun part. He never told me how the “pollen” got from the daddy to the mommy. I first thought it flew through the air and I couldn’t figure out how it reached the right mommy and got inside her. Now schools teach sex—probably a better idea.

No foreword. No preface. A foreword is usually a short section at the beginning of a book that’s written by someone other than the author.

The person who knows me best is Marilyn. I don’t want her to read the book until after it’s been printed so she can’t nag me to change it.

Another reason not to have a foreword is because some people would think I spelled it wrong, and that it should really be “forward.”

Furthermore, unless a foreword has only one word in it, like “Hi,” it should be “forewords.”

A preface is written by the author and it tells the story of the book’s origin and development. I put that here, in what I’ve called the introduction. Everyone knows what it means and how to pronounce it. I don’t want to hear dumb hillbillies saying “pree-face” instead of “pref-iss.”

Autobiographies usually start at the beginning and progress in chronological order, but this is not an autobiography. It’s a bunch of stories, meant to be entertainment, not history. I’m over 60. I can’t remember exactly when things happened (or where I put my keys), but it shouldn’t matter.

Readers can simply choose any chapters that sound interesting. The many short chapters make this book good for reading on planes or while waiting for one. It’s also good for reading during TV commercials or while sitting on the toilet.

I hope it won’t be used as toilet paper.

I don’t want to get in trouble like the “Oprah authors” who were lying, so I say the book is at least 80% true. That’s a better guarantee than you get on the Internet or with restaurant menus.

There’s a good chance that the “Maine” lobsters were trapped in Massachusetts and that the “French” dressing was really made in the Wish-Bone factory in Kansas City—not in Paris or Bordeaux. It tastes fine anyway.

Actually, I merely assume it tastes fine. To be 100% truthful (or at least 80% truthful), I really don’t like French dressing and I never eat it. But I do like Italian, Japanese and Russian dressings even if they’re made right here in the good old U.S.A.

There’s a good reason why there’s no English salad dressing eaten in America. English food sucks. Steak and kidney pie?

Yuck. No fucking way!

The English use something called “salad cream.” It’s sort of like mayonnaise, but is so disgusting that you can be arrested for eating it in the United States.

The venerable and authoritative British Broadcasting Corporation recommends putting the yellow glop on cold pizza and mashed potatoes.

It’s no wonder that the Brits lost the Empire and their teeth.

Are the names real? I changed the names of some nice people to maintain their privacy. I changed the names of some bad people if I’m no longer as pissed off as I used to be and I don’t want to embarrass them or their descendents. Or if I think someone might sue me or beat me up.

I’m a writer, not a fighter.

The names of some very bad people have not been changed, and I’m not afraid to “say ill about the dead,” especially if they pissed me off.

Dead people can’t sue me. Fuck ’em.

What’s so funny? My wife often complains that I have a reckless sense of humor and I “go too far.” She’s afraid that I’m going to get into trouble like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin. I think artistic expression outranks domestic tranquility. In my domicile, we have much more expression than tranquility.

Like Penn and Teller, Bart Simpson and the folks on Jackass, I’ll do almost anything for a joke.

Other people have occasionally described my humor as sick, tasteless or black humor. That’s because I can find humor in almost any situation, and that can make people uncomfortable. I designed and wore this shirt when I went to the hospital to be treated for a kidney stone. It made people laugh. Laughter is the best medicine. Most people are too serious most of the time. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.

I’m almost embarrassed to say this, but back in 1963 I came up with a joke about President Kennedy’s assassination within a few minutes of the shooting. I don’t remember the joke, and it wasn’t as grotesque as the necrophilia satire that Paul Krassner published in The Realist with Lyndon Johnson copulating with JFK’s bullet hole because he was so happy to become president.

But I’m frequently able to find humor where others can’t, like that pee-pee shirt.

My day job is running a company that sells phone equipment. Other companies describe the color of a certain kind of wire simply as “blue and yellow.” I decided to use flavors instead of colors and call it “blueberry-banana.” Even the straitlaced Pentagon procurement officers order many thousands of feet of our blueberry-banana wire. And strawberry-clam.

It’s good for bureaucrats to lighten up. One of my basic rules is, “If it’s not fun, don’t do it,” and I’m often able to make dull things amusing. More people should try it.

General William Tecumseh Sherman said, “War is hell,” but Hogan’s Heroes, McHale’s Navy and MASH made war funny. Some day the war in Iraq will seem funny.

I enjoy finding bloopers, errors and inconsistencies. In movies, I look for cavemen wearing watches and shoes. I love typos on book covers and in ads and on big signs that were checked dozens of times.

Even menus make me laugh. In a typical Greek diner, the price of a slice of ordinary cheese can range from a dime to a dollar or more, depending on what it’s attached to. In a Chinese restaurant, you can pay $3.95 for a small order of fried rice, or $2.95 for four chicken wings with the same rice.

Most recent TV sitcoms do nothing for me. I watched exactly one episode of Seinfeld and hated it. I never watched Cheers. Nothing done in recent decades seems to equal Lucy, The Honeymooners, Bilko, The Beverly Hillbillies or Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Among latter-day sitcoms, my favorites are Married, With Children and Modern Family (both with Ed O’Neill). I miss early SNL and Johnny Carson, but I watch parts of Leno, Letterman and Conan. I find little to laugh at on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report, but I do like Real Time with Bill Maher, 30 Rock and the Saturday radio comedy shows on NPR.

Boston Legal and The Sopranos can be hilarious, but they’re not full-time comedies. The Simpsons is. And so are South Park and Family Guy. I wish I had time to watch every episode.

Like most males and unlike most females, I like the Three Stooges and Howard Stern. I love Jay Leno’s “Jay Walking” segments and when Dave Letterman dropped stuff off the roof to smash in the street.

I think this picture is funny. You first notice her hair and the hand on his mouth—but count the hands.

I don’t like it when comedians pick on nice people, but I do like taking funny pictures of friends and relatives. (Those are my sister’s kids.)

I also like elaborate pranks, spoofs and put-ons. I’m very good at manipulating the media and circulating believable phony news—a talent I inherited from my very funny father.

I try to make enforcers realize the absurdity of the rules they are enforcing. Logic is good. Illogic is funny.

I sometimes obey the letter of the law but not the spirit. In high school we had to wear ties, but there was no rule against wearing extremely ugly ties.

I like deflating pompous people and institutions.

When I was an editor at Rolling Stone, I attended press conferences and speeches at the fancy-shmancy 21 Club in Manhattan with friends from other magazines. The 21’s dress code required that men wear jackets and ties, but three of us were noticeably informal.

Our corporate hosts had paid big bucks for 21 to feed us, so, despite our scruffy appearance, we were too important to be rejected by the stuffy maître d’ in the tuxedo.

Other customers wore $200 “power ties,” but we had real power and dined sans cravate. The restaurant was lucky we didn’t decide to dine sans pantalons.