Cross - I Drink for a Reason

Copyright 2009 by Liberal Jew-Run Media Productions, Inc.

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

We Have Got to Stop Calling People Heroes, Oh, I Forgot You Could Do That, and For the Love of God! were previously published in Vice magazine and are reprinted with permission.

Letter from the Future originally appeared in Playboy magazine under the title Dear Friends, Get Me the Fuck Out of Here and is reprinted with permission.

Top Ten CDs to Listen to While Listening to Other CDs is reprinted courtesy of Pitchfork Media.

Grand Central Publishing

Hachette Book Group

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New York, NY 10017

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First eBook Edition: August 2009

Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

ISBN: 978-0-446-55088-8

For me.

I couldnt have done it without you.

HELLO. THIS PREFACE WAS ORIGINALLY ONE HUNDRED AND NINE pages long and one hundred percent unnecessary. But a contract is a contract. Especially if its legally binding and written in lambs blood on parchment from olden times. I love to write. And, at the very same time, I hate to write. Its kind of a pain in the ass and really impedes my video-game playing and completion. Ive written in several formse-mails, award-winning sketches, movies, Post-it note reminders to let the baby out, award-winning gravy-soaked possum biscuit recipes, instructions on how to use the cable remote for guests, French lessons, The Whos #1 in drying cementbut never a book until now. I like very much the idea that Im writing a book and by extension am now a writer, because lets be honest, no one considers sketch or stand-up writing, even though of course it is. But writing a book, well, that puts me in the same rarified air as Voltaire or Sue Grafton or Tim LaHaye. The bitch of it all is that writing is at complete loggerheads with my desire to not be writing right now. Theres a good reason Im known for having the softest hands in showbiz, and I am loathe to jeopardize that title. Its amazing what I will let myself be distracted by or pretend is suddenly important and urgently needs attending to, merely so that I can put off, for however brief a time, the writing that needs to be done. For example, heres a partial list of things Ive thought and ways in which I have dillydallied while trying to get this goddamn fucking pain in the ass thing written:

I need to get ready for Thanksgiving.

My eyes feel funny.

I should check out some porn for inspiration.

My dog wants to play probably, I think.

Wait do you hear horses?

I should really see if that wines still good. That shits not gonna drink itself.

Really? St. Louis is playing Pittsburgh? Huh, I should check that out. (I dont care about either team in whatever sport you first thought of.)

Maybe if I jerk off Ill be able to concentrate better. (This is then followed by an hour and a half of surfing for just the right 42-second porn clip to jerk off to.)

I swear to God I hear horses.

I should really think about doing twenty push-ups and then eventually not doing them.

Is that painting crooked?

This place is fucking dusty!

Theyll be calling any second now, and rather than get started just to have to stop, Ill start writing after the call.

That call took a lot out of me. Im wiped. Naptime!

Thats not to say I dont want the riches and rewards that come with being a fancy-panted writer (author, on the East Coast), although how this book will get written is still a mystery at this point. Perhaps an as-of-yet invented computer program called AutoWriter or something like that will come about. Then I can just punch in a few lines and run it through the Pithy program and that will be that.

I imagine that I will be asked to attend marvelous parties where witty bon mots and cutting retorts meet each other in midair where they joust in a gentlemens game to the death. In fact I am quite sure that I will be feted at the rather large Upper West Side co-op of someone Ive never met but who will host my literary coming out party. Her name will be something like Deidra Harwick, granddaughter of Knute Harwick and heir to the Harwick fortune. (Knute Harwick invented the non-disposable condom, look it up.) She is very generous with her time and money. Just some of the numerous charities that she works for include Operation Hang Upside-Down for Africa, Friends United to Eradicate Blind Indians, Society for the Improvement of Performance Enhanced Athletes, and Diamondcology, to name a few. I can only imagine (cause it hasnt happened yet, silly!) what one of these soires would be like. First theres the invitation. I suppose its creative and artsy. Perhaps a gilded canarys head with the script written in rubies and AOL stock certificates. It is most likely hand delivered by an old Punjabi man with a sophisticated British accent. It comes at the bottom of a refreshing glass of Bombay gin over ice. I thought that was a canarys head! I will say with delight as I drain the glass and break it just inches away from the Punjabi mans head. Of course I accept this fine, fine honor. I will see you in one fortnight. Heres a hapenny for your troubles, good sir.

Then the big day arrives. Because I am so cool, I will ride my bike up to the imposing building, feigning ignorance that there is a town car that theyve sent waiting forlornly outside my East Village apartment. Oh, shoot. Sorry about that, I had no idea. I just rode my bike up here. No worries. Its a beautiful night out, and I rode through the park. I liked it. They will now look on me as a real person with no pretense or shame.

Tight, elderly women will grab me by the arm and direct me toward various groups of well-behaved and turtle-necked adults. Look, theres Joan Von Whistler, author of And the Devil Went to the Bathroom. She very much wants to meet you. And in the kitchen is Donovan Yeast. He wrote that wonderful On a Winters Wind Well Ride: A Susan Gerber Mystery. I will meet them all and look down at my shoes humbly, although I will be in quiet ecstasy. I will laugh softly and secretly play with my erection through the hole in my pocket. Ha ha! That hole is from my nine-year-old pair of pants that Ive kept as a reminder of when I was poor and irresponsible. Now look where they are! In a rich ladys kitchen! If my penis only knew! I will entertain no, delight strangers with true stories of my semi-tragic youth. My broken family. What it was like to be a poor Jew in suburban Atlanta. Will there be any amongst them that can relate? Will someone step up and, through the use of a clever but not particularly apt analogy, be able to capture what it was like for me in one pithy comment? If not, I will provide the analogy myself and move on, in a feigned attempt at not wanting to make my hosts uncomfortable. Yes, yes who wants another Pimms Cup?

I will of course be invited to accompany my new friends on their little vacations to all kinds of glamorous and colorful locales. No, Ive never eaten a Plush Fruit before. Ive never even heard of it, Ill say, resulting in overdramatic and urgent inhalations followed by pleadings that I must promise that I will go with them on their boat to Guigjna Island, where they have the best, THE BEST (!) Plush Fruit in the world. You can pick it right out of the basket that the local children put all their just-picked Plush Fruits in after scampering down the tree trunks. I will be sort of a mascot for these Richie Richsthe personification of their charity and largess.