Rainn Wilson - The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy

By Dwight Kurt Schrute

I am the regional manager of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I have been chosen at random to write a foreword for this book. The request came in a letter that my cousin Mose first mistook for a sweepstakes win. He ran around our farm, waving the letter for the better part of an afternoon. But I am not gullible like my cousin, who is more book smart than worldly smart.

When someone asks me to do a task, the first thing I do is determine whether the request is some sort of trick. If the request is a trick, then I do not do that thing. If the request is not a trick, then I do the best version of that thing that man or beast has ever undertaken. (You would be surprised how often it turns out to be a trick. If Michael Scott asks me, I do it anyway, though.)

I cannot adequately determine if this request is a trick, so Im just going to do the thing in a regular, normal way.

I have never written anything like a book foreword before. In fact, I mostly write requisition forms, harvest inventories, and performance reviews. I am very good at these. An example:

Harvest Inventory

Potatoes: 60 lbs

Onions: 51 lbs

Beets: 1,240,567 lbs

I think the above work speaks for itself. It needs to, otherwise it is a useless list.

Once, I wrote a term paper on why there should be no taxes, using examples from postWorld War I Germany and preWorld War III Germany.

Once, I wrote a letter to a girl in my high school named Ilona Staller. She never wrote me back. Her loss. Ilona, if you are reading this, you made a tremendous error as you could have gotten with THIS (I am pointing to my genitalia).

Let me be perfectly clear: I dont like this book. I dont care about funny stories regarding some stupid actor. Other than Charles Bronson and anyone from the cast of Game of Thrones. And Bruce Lee. And Lackawanna County Honorary Deputy Sheriffs Paul and Mira Sorvino. And Alexander Godunov from the movie Witness. And I love Sam Neill from Jurassic Park and Omen III: The Final Conflict. How come hes not in more stuff? Hes got such a long, thin mouth. Id definitely read his book.

Also, I once read The Dolph Lundgren Handbook: Everything You Need to Know About Dolph Lundgren when I was nineteen. But there were no funny stories. Just FACTS about perhaps the greatest Swedish actor of the 1980s. Did you know that Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago punched Sylvester Stallone so hard during the filming of Rocky IV that he put him in the hospital for nine days? NINE DAYS!!! I would love to be put in the hospital by Dolph Lundgren.

I do not read books for funny stories or whimsical insights. Ever. If I am reading a book, it is for the purpose of absorbing factual information about what is happening on Planet Earth, Middle Earth, Westeros, Galactica, Asgard, Mount Olympus, or Lackawanna County.

This writer, Rainn Wilson, is a laughable idiot. He thinks hes funny, but hes merely pathetic. Unless you think stories about weird religions, nerd-loving parents, bassoons, and acting are fascinating. I sure dont.

Ooooh, you did live plays in the theater. Big deal. So did the cast of Glee and nobody cares about them anymore.

Oooooh, so you were an actor on TV shows. Well so was Jack Bauer. You dont see Jack Bauer writing a book about his life. (Hes got serious work to do, plus his life is classified. And when the hell would he write, anyway? Ive seen every minute of his day, the guy doesnt even have time to urinate!) Actually, maybe he has written a book about his life. I wouldnt know. The last time I was in that section of the bookstore was a long time ago, and I stormed out in anger because they did not have a book by Sam Neill that I had gotten my heart set on during the long drive to the Wilkes-Barre Borders (now defunct) from my farm (still in business, thank you very much).