two reasons for wanting this book to be successful.
One is, I want to buy a pair of white Gucci loafers. I’ve never owned a pair of white Gucci loafers, and I don’t know anybody else who has. I think a pair of white Gucci loafers would look great on me after a game of golf as I sipped a cocktail in the Men’s Grill at my golf club or at a Julio Iglesias concert.
(I once got kicked out of an Iglesias concert at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta for singing along with him on “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.” If I’d been wearing white Gucci loafers, they probably would have figured I was the Italian version of Willie Nelson and allowed me to stay at the concert.)
I also hope the success of this book might awaken the Pulitzer Prize committee to the fact I’ve been writing a newspaper column for twelve long years and I still don’t have my Pulitzer.
It’s not the money I want from a Pulitzer Prize. You don’t get much more than a thousand. It’s the pride and the prestige involved, and the fact that if I win a Pulitzer, even when my syndicate calls and says, “Your columns have been a little stale lately,” they’ll have to say, “Your Pulitzer Prize-winning columns have been a little stale lately.”
I don’t know why I can’t win a Pulitzer, too. I try just as hard as the next columnist, and during my career I have broken much new ground, what with my exposes of salad bars (they put these little tomatoes way in the back where you can’t reach them so they don’t have to buy any new little tomatoes), buttermilk (It comes from cows that eat dirt. That’s why it tastes so bad), Muammar Qaddafi (he’s the same person as baseball pitcher Jacquin Andujar), the Greyhound Bus Company (they pay people to sit next to you and cough), oxygen masks that are supposed to fall down over your seat in airplanes in the unlikely event of cabin depressurization (they don’t actually exist), Meryl Streep (she’s ugly and I don’t care how good she can act), buttered popcorn at movie theaters (It’s a ripoff. The only popcorn that gets any butter on it is right at the top), the fact that The Accidental Tourist was an awful movie (William Hurt played a piece of Velveeta cheese), members of the National Rifle Association (if they can’t find anything else to shoot, they shoot their trucks), and I was the first person to interview God. He said to tell Jimmy Swaggart he was fired.
I’m not certain how many more years I can keep up the grind of four columns per week. I’m almost out of typewriter ribbons, and I lost Detroit because they hired a new woman editor who canceled my column because she said I was a sexist. The dumb broad probably doesn’t shave her legs.
So, I want my Pulitzer and I want it as soon as possible. And I want you to enjoy this book. And if you have read this far, go on up to the counter and pay for it. The guy at the Gucci store said if I could get up the down payment for my white loafers, he’d finance the rest of it.
1.
A Kinder, Gentler Nation
Making America a Kinder, Gentler Nation
George Bush has asked for a kinder, gentler America, and I want to do my part in 1989.
Understand that I am usually a kind and gentle person. I am kind to animals, except cats, and I am gentle when it comes to children, unless they are screaming in the seat behind me on an airplane.
But I must admit there are things that cause me not to be kind and gentle, and these are the things I want to learn to accept and be kinder and more gentle about in 1989.
Let us start at the beginning:
Cats: The thing about cats is, they are not to be trusted. A friend of mine’s cat snuck behind me once and jumped on my head, causing me to spill the coffee I was drinking. It went all over my lap (the coffee). The cat stayed on my head and danced the merengue.
I did not handle the situation with kindness or gentility. I reached up and removed the cat from my scalp and bit one of its ears off.
Ever tasted a cat ear? They’re terrible. But I’m a new man now. If a cat jumps on my head in 1989, I’m not going to bite its ear off. I’m going to poison it, but with a quick-acting potion so it won’t suffer for long.
Screaming children in airplanes: I’m not going to ask the flight attendant, “May I have a napkin so I can gag the screaming child?” I’m going to buy the kid a drink. Maybe it will go to sleep.
People affiliated with certain religious organizations who ring my doorbell at an inappropriate time in order to save my soul: Normally, I take out my Uzi machine gun and attempt to blow these people away. From now on, I’ll fire a few warning shots before I attempt to blow these people away.
People who drive eight miles an hour in the passing lane on interstate highways: I hate people who do that. They should be arrested and flogged. But that’s the old me, not the kinder, gentler me.
From now on, I’m not going to get behind such people and pretend I’ve got machine guns behind my headlights and fire until the cars erupt in flames.
I’m simply going to take down their tag numbers and find out who they are, where they live, and then I’m going to their houses and bite their cats’ ears off.
People who cheat in the express lane in supermarkets: Previously, I have dog-cussed these people and put curses on them like, “May your children grow up to be liberal Democrats.”
I’m not going to be that mean-spirited anymore. What I’m going to do is go to the vegetable bin, grab a large cucumber, and beat them about the head and shoulders with it.
Telephones: Telephones never work for me. I either can’t get a dial tone, or I get one of those awful noises that sounds like a cat who’s just had its ear bitten off, and I slam the receiver down and throw the telephone against the wall.
Not anymore. All I’m going to do now is throw a rock at the television every time I see Cliff Robertson.
Liberal Democrats: I have no use for these people, and when I’ve run across one at a cocktail party, I’ve said things like, “Well, how many vicious criminals did Michael Dukakis furlough today?”
But in the immortal words of Dan Quayle, “That was uncalled for.”
From now on, I’m going to sneak up behind them and jump on their heads. I’d bite off one of their ears, but it might make me sick.
Call It a Conundrum
Somebody broke into the birth-control clinic at Grady Hospital in Atlanta recently and stole sixteen thousand condoms. I swore I wouldn’t write about the incident.
At the time, it seemed too easy. All I would have to do is sit down in front of my typewriter and come up with a few cute lines about condoms, and I’d have a quick “no-brainer” and I could take the rest of the day off.
Anybody could write about the theft of sixteen thousand condoms, couldn’t they? Sure they could. But let them try to make up something funny about Yassir Arafat not being allowed to speak at the United Nations or animal rights.
But then I began to act and think sensibly. Somebody steals sixteen thousand condoms only once in a columnist’s career. I decided I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
In fact, I’m not sure this wasn’t the first condom heist in history, and even
