OK, I’ve been tagged more times than a blind kid at recess, so I may as well do this 25 Things, um, thing. Yes, I know that it’s not only jumped the shark but circled back around the shark to take a second leap, but I never said I was a trendsetter.
1) I have written three fan letters in my life. One to ALF, one to Webster as played by Emmanuel Lewis, and one to George Carlin. I told ALF that I liked his show and also hated cats because they made my lungs swell shut. He sent me a Sharpied pic, stamped with a paw print and the phrase “Yo! Your pal ALF!” so for the next several years, I signed everything from Christmas cards to credit card receipts as “Yo! Your pal J-Money”. When I wrote Mister Carlin, it was to tell him that I wanted to be a comic and to ask for advice. He replied with the quickness, telling me to “keep writing it all down and seek audiences frequently.” I never heard from that little shit Webster.
2) I did write it down and seek audiences frequently, spending a couple of years touring clubs and colleges, mainly in towns that smelled like gravy and ended in –ville, places where they’d inevitably play Prince on the pre-show PA even though it’s hard to party like it’s 1999 when you dress like it’s 1987. I miss the road, scratchy Days Inn sheets and all. A couple Septembers ago, your tax dollars and the Department of Defense sent me to Guam, the Marshall Islands, and every military base in Alaska to tell jokes for the troops and I’m not sure I’ve ever done anything I’m more proud of or that was more rewarding. I can’t wait to do it again.
3) I’ll always regret never writing George Carlin back to tell him I took his advice.
4) About 5 years ago, I sat beside Emmanuel Lewis on a flight from LA to Atlanta. Our takeoff was delayed while he argued with the flight crew because his one lonely piece of luggage—a JCPenney bag full of clothes—was too big for the overhead bin. He’d launch it at the compartment—showering himself with his own tiny shirts—and bark at another crew member before someone eventually just crammed it into an empty bulkhead seat. He calmed down enough to start shit with me because I wouldn’t swap him my swanky aisle seat in exchange for his middle one. I managed to diffuse the situation without pointing out that he was 18 inches tall and couldn’t possibly need the extra leg room.
5) If I ever have a surplus of money—like a vault full of gold coins that I can swim through like Uncle Scrooge or Oprah—I’ll commission Samuel L. Jackson to make a commercial just for me, in which he holds up a jar of peanut butter and says “Choosy motherfuckers choose JIF.”
6) Pro Tip: When you’re 18 and your mother asks if you’re sexually active, you shouldn’t say “No, I just lay there.”
7) I haven’t thrown up since I was in the 8th grade. I had to be excused from the Gifted class because I spewed into my copy of Puddin’head Wilson. That was the last time, despite having several Stoli-fueled nights in college when I prayed that I could hurl. Oh, and that one time I bought a 311 CD. I probably should’ve gotten sick for that.
8) Senior year of college the lead guitarist for a reasonably successful rock band came to my apartment after a gig, took all of his clothes off and stood naked in the living room trying to convince my roommate to wash his hair in the shower.
9) I’ve been fired from every job I’ve ever had.
10) I have a deep, unironic love for The Golden Girls.
11) I think Jennifer Aniston probably smells like a handful of pennies.
12)The first concert I ever went to was Conway Twitty at the West Virginia State Fair. I’m seeing Robyn Hitchcock next Thursday in London even though no one knows who Robyn Hitchcock is and I seriously might cockpunch the next person who asks if he’s related to Alfred.
13) My dog, Pigpen, is named after the late Ron “Pigpen” McKernan of the Grateful Dead. My friend Tommy and I spent almost two hours in a cemetery in Palo Alto, CA trying to find his grave and when we eventually did, we didn’t know exactly what to do so we took pictures. In retrospect, that sounds unspeakably creepy. Before we rolled out, I left my peace sign necklace on the inscription.
14) I once thought it was cool to have a peace sign necklace.
15) I’ll rock your face off in Beatles trivia. The reason I can’t learn math, foreign languages, or my neighbors’ names are because of all of the disk space Beatles tidbits take up in my head. And this goes way beyond song title or gold records. Stu Sutcliffe? The original bassist who died of a brain hemmorhage quite possibly caused by being kicked in the head during a fight. Astrid Kirchherr? Stu’s German fiance credited with giving them those iconic haircuts. Francie Schwartz? The bird Paul McCartney had a fling with until he got busted by his then-fiance Jane Asher who subsequently ended their engagement. Jesus. Moving on…
16) Sometimes I’m amazed that I’ve ever had sex with another person.
17) When I was 15, had a serious crush on Paul McCartney. I used to address all of my diary entries as “DPM” which stood for “Dear Paul McCartney” because I thought that one day—perhaps when we were engaged—I’d present it to him and he’d be impressed by how much Carnation Instant Breakfast I drank or how many buckets of golf balls I hit at the driving range. I also distinctly remember picking out a patterned silk shirt at the mall—one that I bought and never wore—because I was saving it for the day I met him. I eventually moved on and, sadly, the older he gets the more he looks like my grandmother.
18) I never thought about growing up to be anything but a comedian, save for two months during my seventh grade summer when I wanted to be a pathologist. My labcoat-wearing neigbor didn’t really enjoy it when I interrupted his Weedeating to ask questions about Rudolf Virchow.
19) I went from August 30,1993 to June 17, 1994 without missing an episode of The Late Show with David Letterman. My streak ended when the show was preempted to show OJ Simpson creeping down the 405 in a white Bronco.
20) The fact that I’ll never meet Johnny Carson makes my heart hurt.
21) I was in my mid-twenties when I heard Appetite for Destruction all the way through. When it came out, my neighbor copied it for me onto a cassette but my mother, armed with a copy of Tipper Gore’s Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society heard the opening strains of “Mr. Brownstone” and yoinked it out of my stereo. I always felt too guilty to buy a copy.
22) Despite England’s many contributions to world culture—from authors to artists to Doc Martens—none of them are as essential as the members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I would like to borrow John Cleese’s brain for a day and will argue that A Fish Called Wanda is the most perfect screenplay ever written. I’m the same age that Jamie Lee Curtis was when she got her Wanda Gershwitz on…and for some reason, I find this unsettling.
23) I can eat a Handi-Snack pudding cup in one bite. I can also touch my nose with my tongue. Just so you know.
24) I don’t have any tattoos but have considered getting inked on two occasions. The first was the night the Sawx won the ’04 World Series. I was in St. Louis standing in the lobby of the team hotel, watching champagne drenched players stream off the bus and weeping. I high-fived Bill Mueller as he stepped onto the elevator and was inspired enough to approach the front desk to ask for a phone book. Before I could tear out an ad, I realized that any tattoo I got at 2 a.m. in downtown STL would probably come with a side order of Hepatitis. The second time was after the Boston Marathon last year when I considered getting tatted with the Boston Athletic Association logo. Unfortunately, it’s a unicorn. If I run my goal this year (3:15) I may say screw it and do it anyway. Unicorns are awesome, right?
25) For reals, I think I’ll eventually be famous. Too many people believe that—and believe in me—for all of them to be wrong. Now I just need all of those people to also think that I can rub tongues with Hugh Laurie and/or grow up to become Tina Fey.
