06/03/2006: "My Brother/Stand Up Comedy"

Hi All,

First, a little about my novel.

I sent back the copyedited version of THE FIGHTER today; my thanks to Karen, my copyeditor, who had a lot of good suggestions, beyond the basic grammatical corrections I so sorely need.

I let you all know this because, based on the huge # of pre-orders on Amazon.ca for the book (0), I can tell a lot of you are “chomping at the bit” to get your hands on this novel. Come on, people—don’t wait for the book to come out and THEN buy it; that the way suckers do it! What you do is pre-order it on the internet, 7 or 8 copies depending on your financial situation or level of psychosis, then, when the people at Penguin see all those pre-orders they go, “Oh, my heavens, look at the interest in this title!” Then they ring the print shop and say, “Double your output on this title! Pronto!” Then when all those extra books come out and nobody buys them, they are donated to local artisans who turn them into papier mache sculptures, thus completing the cycle of artistic life. So, what, are you a supporter of the arts or not?

And let me tell you, your money will be well-spent. I got a look at the cover the other day and, well, let’s just say it gave me a semi. I got a nice bold font this time round (the only thing I didn’t like about Rust and Bone’s production was that the font looked a bit mincing, if a font can be said to look mincing, which probably it cannot). This time I got a nice big ass-kicker of a font, a font called “Scorpion Deathlock” or “Dropkick Spinebuster” or something, the sort of font that, when you open the book it’s gonna rock you back on your heels like you’ve been kidney-punched and you’re gonna say, “Holy shit, now that is one MEAN-ass font!” I mean, you combine that cover with that font and we’re talking FULL arousal. We’re talking novelistic Viagra. If you’re wearing track pants in the bookstore, don’t look at my book or it’ll be Tentpole City. It’s gonna be embarrassing for you. I suggest you wear a raincoat.

All that’s left is the proofreading stage, but by that point the layout and pagination is set pretty rigidly, so I can’t make any real changes. It would be like God having set down the 10 Commandments and Moses going, “Y’know, God, I really don’t like the wording of Commandment number 7, there’s really a lot of wiggle room there, and I also think we should add an extra Commandment or two, to keep the Israelites extra pious.” So, since I don’t want to risk some wrathful production designer at Penguin Fed-Exing me a lightning bolt or something, I probably won’t touch much at that stage.

But the point of this post is not to hawk my wares like some yard sale buffoon. (Well, yes, it is, but only partly). I mainly wanted to give some props to my bro, Graham, who is making big strides on his standup comedy career. The progression is actually a lot like the way my own career went: at first he played a lot of amateur nights, 5 minute sets for free (same as me selling my stories for copies or 1/4 cent a word); but now he’s getting consistent gigs, corporate gigs, and what’s best, getting paid. He’s doing this corporate gig for the Niagara Firefighters Association, 100 bucks for 25 minutes. I’ve never made 100 bucks for 25 minutes’ worth of writing, ever. Anyway, I think he’s awesome, a very funny guy, he works his ass off and is going to go places.

His myspace page is: www.myspace.com/grahamdavidson so go check it out and get the rundown on his upcoming shows (4 or 5 in June, in and around southern Ontario), and come on out if you’re in the area. I’m going to be staying at his place in mid-June, so I’ll probably be out at a few of those shows myself.

I always thought I might try stand-up myself, though my act would consist of my favorite time-waster: “The Re-Wording Movie Titles Game.” The gist of the game is self-evident: you take a movie title and re-jigger it into a defamatory title. So my entire stand-up routine would go something like this:

ME: Hey, hey, great to be here. Great crowd, great crowd! Let’s hear it for my opening act, the ghost of Sam Kinison! He was great, but he's on his way back to Hell now for the sinful life he led! So anyway, I just saw that Will Smith movie, I Robot. [comedic pause] I Robot? Hah! I BLOWbot is more like it!

[rimshot] Uproarious laughter.

ME: Yeah, yeah, and it was a double feature at the drive in, with The Fantastic Four. The Fantastic Four? Hah! The BLANDtastic BORE is more like it!

[rimshot] Massive eruption of laughter. A man’s spleen explodes. A woman goes into cardiac arrhythmia she’s laughing so hard.

Either that, or I’d do my Gene Shalit impression, which is really only a derivation of the Movie Titles game.

ME [pasting on a bushy fake mustache]: So, yeah, I saw that movie The Transporter the other day—the only place it transported ME was out of the theater!

[rimshot] People are vomiting, they’re laughing so heartily. People are begging me, on the lives of their children, to stop making jokes because they’re literally choking to death on good cheer.

Well, maybe it’s best I leave the comedy to my brother, who really is the professional of the family. Plus, I stole that Gene Shalit joke from my buddy Tony.

One thing you will notice is that in both Graham’s and I’s pictures (mine here on the blog, Graham’s on myspace), we both look to be in pretty good shape. Graham’s actually in great shape, I’m okay. Now the funny thing is, if you saw photos of us ten years ago, you’d be saying, “Geez, those two porkers are a shoo-in to displace that pair of fatties with their cowboy hats and dirtbikes as World’s Fattest Siblings in The Guiness Book of World Records.” I probably went 250-60, Graham 240 maybe. We were giant beastly things.

And I think it might’ve been somewhat of a mystery to our folks, how we managed to balloon up to such ungovernable proportions. My Mom always kept decent food around the house, so, short of us eating bricks of shortening while her back was turned, she must’ve wondered at how we got so girthy under her watch.

I won’t bother going into specifics, all the clandestine gorgings and all-u-can-eat pizza and Chinese buffets, the way me and Graham would fight like wild dingoes over the last ice cream sandwich. But I will say that me and my brother were two of the most cunning fat lads in all of Christendom, and we knew how to get out fussy, pudgy little paws and anything and everything even remotely edible.

For example: sometimes our folks would head out for an evening and leave us 20 bucks for dinner. “Twenty bucks,” was I’m sure their thinking, “How much food could those boys get for 20 bucks?”

The answer: a gorger’s feast.

First we’d ring up the local pizzeria and order up a nice hot pizza pie—x-tra large, 24 slices. The pizzeria was conveniently located beside the convenience store, so we’d waddle next door with our change. We’d buy 2-liters of chocolate milk (each) and then browse the aisles to ensure our parents got zero cents change from their $20.

This is where we made a crucial “Gluttony on a Budget” discovery: if you are willing to eat things that have gone stale, they’re really much cheaper.

The most obvious example of this is day-old donuts. Back when I was in highschool (the last time I ever went down this particular road) a dozen day-old donuts cost 50 cents: basically, that’s the break-even price after you factor in the plastic bag they’re stuffed into and the twist-tie to cinch the bag, plus the labor involved to pack and sell the things. Now your more upscale donut emporiums, your Tim Horton’s and Dunkin’ Donuts and the like, they don’t even sell day-old donuts; they just toss them in the trash at the end of the shift. But your skeezier establishments will cater to cheapskate salad-dodgers like me; and listen, from my perspective, I was getting everything I wanted—all that sugar, all that congealed lard—they were just a bit...chewier, that’s all.

The convenience store didn’t have day-old donuts, lamentably, but they did have the full range of Vachon products—Joe Loius, Passion Flakies, Carmelos, etc. (for US readers, Vachon is the Canadian equivalent of Hostess, your basic convenience store pastries; UK readers, I don’t know what your equivalent would be—Sgt. Peppers Custard Cremes?). And, despite all the preservatives the Vachon company loaded into their wares, they did eventually reach a point where they were judged “unfit for human consumption” (the four sweetest words in the universe for my brother and I). Now most scrupulous convenience store owners will take the loss and toss the stuff in the trash once it reaches this point; thankfully our convenience store was operated by thieves and chiselers. An expired 12-count box of Passion Flakies (pastry squares filled with unidentified whipped topping and strawberry something-or-other; I always felt the “Passion” bit was needlessly erotic) ran 75 cents.

So we’d cart our booty back home and stuff ourselves watching Melrose Place. I recall the Passion Flakies being so unremittingly stale that the pasty SPLINTERED when we bit into it, cutting up our lips; I’m sure particles of dust puffed out of them, as well. It didn’t matter; we were like buzzards tearing into carrion. Taste was secondary; filling our bellies to bursting was key.

At some point out folks would come home to find this scene: my brother and I surrounded by the wreck of our consumption, the empty pizza box and Flaky wrappers strewn about, chocolate milk stains on our shirts as we sat comatose in the flickering glow of the TV.

“How?” they must have wondered. “It was only 20 bucks...only 20 bucks...only 20 bucks...”

Anyway, go check out the lean, mean, new and improved Graham Davidson at his comedy gigs in and around Ontario this summer. I promise you’ll dig him.

All best, Craig.