Stories I'd Tell My Children (But Maybe Not Until They're Adults). Michael N. Marcus
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.
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 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
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 don’t like it when comedians pick on nice people, but I do like taking funny pictures of friends and