Book 'em, Danno!

Thanks to everyone who emailed me requesting more excerpts from my book, "Nobody Likes a Quitter (and other reasons to avoid rehab)." Really great to hear you're digging the tome. May I also suggest BUYING THE FRICKIN' THING!!! It's easy, CLICK HERE, spend two minutes placing the order, and within days a brand-spanking-new copy will be waiting on your doorstep. In the meantime, here's a little teaser...

Step 6: You know what they say about guys with small chapters…

We were dead at Fox, and everyone from Polly Holliday to Tracy Nelson to Nick Lachey’s personal trainer’s assistant was threatening to sue me, so Fisher really had to earn his ten percent of nothing to get me another meeting in town. It wound up being at MTV, where I met with a twenty-two-year-old African-American development exec named Blake Shipley to discuss an idea I had for a reality TV show called Ride My Pimp! — sort of like The Amazing Race meets HBO’s Hookers and Johns. Fisher thought the idea had legs, and that there’d be ample opportunity for promotional tie-ins…mostly from gun manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies that specialize in penicillin.

I recall being excited when I learned that Blake Shipley was black, because at that time, in yet another misguided attempt at bettering myself, I’d taken to incorporating “street” jargon into everyday conversation. I’d found that when dealing with, say, some of the more youthful magazine editors or folks from the entertainment industry, simply tossing in a few words and expressions co-opted from hip underprivileged youth really added extra validity, or “cred” as they say in the giddyack, to whatever message I was attempting to convey. Fo-sniffle! Then again, I also found that it didn’t always work out that way.

“We hired a market research firm to evaluate the show’s prospects, and the results of a comprehensive study were extremely encouraging, especially in the highly-coveted 18- to 34-year-old male demographic,” I told Blake, adding, “and the concept is the shiz-nit, bee-otch!”

“Excuse me?” Blake said.

“You know...the shiz-nit. Abra-cadabra. Crescent fresh as all get out. Dope. Da’Bomb.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not quite following,” said Blake, his gaze drifting from my FuBu skully down to the brand-new Malcolm X t-shirt I’d worn for the occasion.

“The doo-doo. Phat. The goot,” I continued. “Off the hook. Super saucy. The kind of show that will really bring in the advertisers, so that you and I will be rolling in the luchini. I’m talkin’ mad stacks to the fullest.”

“The what?”

“The benjamins. The downs. Dead presidents. Bones.”

“Look, can you just tell me, in as straightforward a manner as possible, what this show is about? What happens in a typical episode?”

“Okay, we got these pimps — outgoing, photogenic pimps with great personalities. And they’ll be carrying prostitutes on their backs in a series of timed challenges...like racing against each other...away from the cops, gangbangers, etcetera. Plus, to amp up the drama, all the contestants will be living together in the same house. A crack house.”

“Pimps and hookers running around a crack house. And you want us to put this on MTV?”

I nodded enthusiastically.

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“Uh, well, there’ll be some comedy, sure. But I see it as more of an action–thriller–suspense kind of reality program. I don’t think that’s been attempted before.”

“With pimps and hookers?”

“We don’t have to call them that, if that’s an issue,” I reassured Blake. “We could go with juggalos and hizzos, for instance.”

“Look,” he said. “We’re not interested, and furthermore I really don’t appreciate you coming in here and—”

“What’s the dilly, yo? Why you playa hatin’? You some kinda bosepheus or something?”

“Bosepheus?”

“Yeah, you know, a brutha who has no funk. Much like Carlton on The Fresh Prince, this brutha is said to have ‘honky’ tendencies.”

“Who you callin’ a honky, wegro? I’m black!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, my man, be juggalo...keep it greasy. We cool,” I told him. “There’s no need for us to be griffin’. I wasn’t trying to jank you or nuthin’. And besides, some of my best friends are black.”

At this point an angry Blake, clearly envious of my superior ebonics skillz, pressed a button on his intercom and asked an assistant to summon security. Having been in similar situations before, I knew it was time to vamoose.

“Man, I don’t get why you’re so angry,” I said with one leg already out the window. “You didn’t happen to talk with Barry Silver from Fox recently, did you?”

“Just get out, man. Please!”

“Word,” I replied. And with that, I was jailtrottin’ down the street. I decided then and there that I was done swallowing my pride just to make it in Hollywood.*[footnote: *I also decided not to share that information with Fisher.] After all, I had a hell of career going already. So what if script doctors and television series creators made more scratch than a rabid cat in a flea-dip commercial? I got paid to get potted and tell people about it. Who wouldn’t want a job like mine? Aside, that is, from people in AA, those poor bastards on the waiting list for liver transplants, and anyone interested in living past fifty?*[footnote: *Statistics show that spirits writers live an average of only forty-nine years, but on the bright side, many of us continue to work well into our seventies.]

Jeah, boy-eeeeeee!!!!!!

*****

When I got home I shared the news of my showbiz emancipation with Bottomfeeder, who greeted me with all the enthusiasm of a kid who’d been routinely denied entry to the candy store. It was 11:15 a.m. and he’d been up all night parked in front of the television drinking Chambord straight from the bottle and surfing the 24-hour news channels. It’d been days since he’d showered, spoken, or even moved off the living room sofa, distraught over having been beaten out for a role in an upcoming David Lynch film by the kid who played Bud Bundy on Married...with Children. It was not an ideal time to engage Bottomfeeder in conversation — but then again, when was it ever?“Everything okay?” I asked delicately, so as not to further agitate him.

“Well, first off, fuck David Faustino,” he spat. “That midget couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag...and what does that mean, anyway? In what scenario would acting ability be necessary as a means of escaping from a bag?”

I nodded and said nothing, having learned from experience that it is best to remain silent whenever Bottomfeeder began arguing figures of speech with himself. On the television, California’s Governor Terminator was delivering a “state of the State” address in which he vowed to weed out the special interests he claimed were compromising the integrity of the legislative process.

“Yeah,” Bottomfeeder barked. “And by ‘special interests,’ he means the interests of people who disagree with him. What a bunch of bullshit! They’re all a bunch of fucking cocks, you know that?”

“Yep. Cocks,” I said.

That exchange was followed by a rather lengthy lull in the conversation, in which Bottomfeeder picked at his skin and I tried unsuccessfully to get comfortable with the notion that we might have just shared a moment.

“Do you know Faustino?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Faustino. You know, Bud Bundy. I thought you might know him.”

“Why would you think I’d know Faustino?”

“Well fuck, man, you like Married...with Children, doncha?” came his fiery retort, as if that nebulous connection made perfect sense.

“I like Guns & Roses, too, but I don’t know Slash!”

“You wanna meet him?” he asked.

“Who? Slash or Faustino?”

Bottomfeeder’s face reddened. “For chrissakes, man, screw your head on straight! What the hell would you want to meet Faustino for? The guy can’t act to save his life!”

Before I had a chance to answer, Bottomfeeder launched into a heated one-man debate over the likelihood of ever needing to deliver a great performance in order to stave off the Grim Reaper. On television a talking head was babbling about the push for campaign finance reform, and I tried to ascertain whether the stench in the air was emanating from stale ideas or my besotted roommate. Mostly, I couldn’t help wondering how awesome it’d be to meet Slash. I bet that would be an especially interesting experience. So I called Fisher and asked him to try to arrange a meeting. He said he’d do his best, but in light of his disappointment over what had transpired at MTV, I wasn’t really counting on it.

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