The whole class (except, of course, Vincent O’Neil) is laughing. So is Mr. Johnson.
“Yeah. History is funny. For instance, Millard Fillmore stopped Napoleon the Third from taking over Hawaii and making it French. Seriously. Can you imagine that? All those Hawaiians running around in hula skirts and little berets, draping leis made of goat cheese and garlic over tourists’ necks? Thanks to Millard Fillmore, it never happened.”
I pause, waiting for the chuckles to die down. Then I wrap it up.
“Who says thirteen is an unlucky number? I say America was lucky to have Millard Fillmore as its thirteenth president!”
Everybody, including the teacher, applauds.
Well, not Vincent O’Neil.
He stands up at his desk.
“Not bad, Grimm. But let me tell you guys about President George Washington. Did you know they had to bury him standing up because he could never lie?”
The room groans.
Vincent keeps going. “Then there’s Abraham Lincoln. At my old school, the teacher asked if I knew his Gettysburg Address. ‘Gettysburg?’ I said. ‘I thought he lived in Washington.’ ”
More groans. Even Mr. Johnson rolls his eyes.
I’m the only one smiling at Vincent and his bad puns. Believe it or not, he’s actually helping me with my mission to win the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic Contest.…
Now I know what jokes NOT to tell in Boston.
Chapter 14
WEEPING WITH THE WEEDWACKER
It’s night.
I’m all alone.
There’s no one here to laugh at my jokes.
And my garage bedroom smells like wet concrete mixed with motor oil.
I’m not all weepy like one of those black-velvet portraits of a bawling clown with tears streaking down his cheeks, but yes, I am feeling a little blue.
I’m sitting here thinking about my mom and dad, and my little sister, Jenny. And how the only family I have right now are the glum relatives who keep me tucked away in the garage with all the other junk that has wheels. It’s the snowblower, the lawn mower, and me.
Plus, I just spent several hours tutoring my psychotic cousin, whose favorite subject so far is history—specifically the Spanish Inquisition and Attila the Hun, who was famous for torturing his enemies by hooking up four horses to their limbs and shouting, “Giddyup!”
Okay. You’re right. I’ve also got Uncle Frankie. And if I had my choice, I’d be living with him. But it wasn’t my choice. It was the judge’s.
I guess this is why they say you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.
But wait a second. What if you could?
That’s it. I’m opening up a fresh notebook and jotting this down.
I feel a comedy routine coming on!
What if there were a TV game show where you could “Choose! Your! Family!”
I’d go with, I don’t know, the Trumps. Then at least my wheelchair would be solid gold. Too heavy to budge, but classy.
No. The Hiltons! They own hotels. Hotels have swimming pools. I can’t kick, but I sure can float. Of course, that might mean that Paris Hilton would be my stepsister and she’d ask me stuff like: “Walmart? Do they like make walls there?” (Seriously. She really said that once. I kid you not.)
Wait. I’ve got it. The Mannings. Yes! Eli and Peyton Manning could be my brothers. How cool would that be?
I’d get to go to all their games and warm up with the team. It’d be a blast. Except that my warm-up would be stone cold.
But they wouldn’t care. Afterward we’d all go out for pizza and burgers and ice cream and strategize for the next week’s games. Or maybe we’d just talk about movies and girls and other normal “brother” stuff.
Because when you get right down to it, that’s what’s really eating me up tonight.
I have friends, and I’ve got Uncle Frankie. Heck, I’ve even got the Smileys. But I don’t have the closeness of a real family anymore.
And no joke will ever make that hole go away completely.
Chapter 15
LIVE FROM NEW YORK—IT’S JAMIE AND FRIENDS!
That Saturday, the most amazing thing happens.
Seems Uncle Frankie entered some kind of lottery (not the one with the lady popping the Ping-Pong balls out of the tubes) and actually scored four tickets to—drumroll, please—Saturday Night Live!
“An old yo-yo teammate of mine works on the show. Now,” Uncle Frankie says with a twirl of the yo-yo and a twinkle in his eye, “I need to find three people to go with me. Any ideas, Jamie?”
Faster than a land shark delivering a candygram (a classic Chevy Chase bit from the very first season of SNL back in 1975), I say, “Pierce, Gaynor, and ME!”
This is the biggest, coolest surprise ever! When I was in the hospital, I watched every single episode of the late-night comedy show—going back all the way to 1975.
Since I’m in my chair, we get tapped by the NBC staff at 30 Rock for “floor seats.” We’re herded onto an elevator and whisked up to Studio 8H on the ninth floor.
The show opens with a funny bit about Santa Claus wrestling the Easter Bunny, and a cast member shouting, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”
The special guest host is one of my all-time favorite comedians, Steven Wright! His opening monologue has everybody—not just me—rolling in the aisles.
“There was a power outage at a department store yesterday,” he says in his deep, sleepy voice. “Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.”
A little after midnight, three of the female cast members put on ridiculous green costumes and do a skit that makes me feel like I have a solid start on my material for Boston. It’s called “The Real Godzillas of Tokyo” and totally reminds me of my Godzilla the Garbageman bit. Theirs is a spoof on The Real Housewives of New Jersey and all those other reality TV shows where rich women get into fights and throw drinking glasses at each other.
The scene starts with the three big green dinosaurs (you could see their faces, like when Eddie Murphy did Gumby) casually hanging out on top of these really cheesy cardboard skyscrapers.
But then one of the Godzilla Girls says, “Green makes your butt look big,” to one of the others. All three launch into slow-motion attack mode, shrieking “Reeeeee!,” Tyrannosaurus rex–style. The three Godzillas take out the Tokyo Skytree tower.
After the show, Uncle Frankie, Gaynor, Pierce, and I hang out with the crowd on Rockefeller Plaza and snag a few autographs from the cast members.
And even though it’s almost one thirty in the morning, our night isn’t over.
“Who’s hungry?” says Uncle Frankie.
We all raise our hands.
“Good. Time to hit the umbrella club!”
Chapter 16
FRANKENFURTER
I was kind of hoping that the Umbrella Club was one of those trendy celebrity hangouts in the city, with hidden entrances that you need a secret password and a bodyguard to get into.
Close, but no banana.
Uncle Frankie leads the way along the sidewalk to a hot dog cart (with an umbrella, of course) that’s doing brisk early-morning business with a hungry mob of Rockefeller Center tourists.
We each get a hot dog with the works: mustard, ketchup-soaked onions, and sauerkraut.
After everybody’s chomped down two or three bites, I improvise a quick bit.
“So, do any of you guys know what hot dogs are really made of?”
“Stray wiener dogs?” says Gaynor. “From like the pound?”
“Nah, that would be gross. But they do use bubble gum scraped off the sidewalk. If you reheat it, it gets sticky and helps glue all the meat together. Especially if you toss in some library paste, too. Of course, I use the term meat loosely. It’s mostly mashed cow nostrils, pig ears, turkey butts, congealed cafeteria scrapings, and dehydrated water. They grind up the gunk in a cement mixer and pump the goop down a funnel into pink bicycle tire tubes.”
“What ab
out rat droppings?” asks Gaynor. “I heard that sometimes rats poop in the meat vat.”
“That’s what they call all-natural flavorings.”
“Delicious,” says Uncle Frankie. “I think I’ll have another. How about you boys?”
“Definitely,” I say, tucking my arms up near my chest and screeching “Reeeeee!” like those Godzillas from SNL. “Jamie hungry!”
We all go back for seconds.
Because really, who cares what’s in a hot dog, except maybe our moms, or, in my case, Aunt Smiley?
Okay. Gilda Gold would care. So would Cool Girl. Maybe even Cool Guy.
But us regular guys? We think hot dogs are great anytime, anywhere, any way you want ’em topped.
Including extra rat droppings. You know—the green chunky stuff the umbrella cart man calls relish.
Chapter 17
THE THREE AMIGOS?
Okay. This is nerve-racking. Gaynor and Pierce may be my best friends, but there’s something I’m not sure even we can get through together. And it’s all Gilda Gold’s fault. I’m getting the shakes just thinking about it.
Let me back up a little bit (something, by the way, that’s much easier to do in a wheelchair than, say, a La-Z-Boy recliner).
It’s Thursday. We’re all in the cafeteria—me, Gilda, Gaynor, and Pierce. The four of us are trying our best to ignore Vincent O’Neil, who’s dropped by our table just so he can remind me that I only have three weeks to prepare for the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic regionals up in Boston, and that he is now “a million times funnier” than me.
I have to give O’Neil credit. The guy is totally oblivious—even when he’s bombing. He’s like that Energizer Bunny. Even if no one is laughing, he keeps going and going and going.
He points to Pierce’s burger. “Hey, you know what they call a cow with no legs? Ground beef! Get it? Because without any legs, it’s on the—”
“I got it, I got it.”
Gaynor tries to hide inside his hoodie.
“Hey, Joey.”
Too late.
“What color is a belch?”
“I don’t know, and, dude—I don’t really care.”
“Burple! Get it? It’s like purple, but since a belch is a burp—”
“I GOT IT!”
Gilda is smart. She whips out her iPhone and starts fiddling with an app. Her eyes are glued to the screen.
So Vincent turns to me. “Okay, Grimm-meister. What goes ‘Ha, ha, ha, plop’? Wait. You wouldn’t know because you’ve never heard it. It’s the sound of somebody laughing their head off! Get it? ‘Ha, ha, ha, plop’?”
“Yes, Vincent,” Gaynor, Pierce, and I say in three-part harmony. “WE GOT IT!”
“Ooh,” says O’Neil. “I hope it’s not contagious. Later, gents. Need to entertain the troops at the next table.”
“Is he gone?” asks Gilda, without looking up from her iPhone.
“Yep, he’s annoying Brightman Kornegay III and that bunch,” I say.
“My heart bleeds for them,” says Pierce.
“My nose, too,” adds Gaynor.
“Get this, you guys!” says Gilda, swiping her fingers across her iPhone’s screen. “My Boyfriend Is a Vampire and a Werewolf III opens this weekend. Wanna go?”
“Sure,” the three of us say in unison.
Gilda finally looks up. Smiles. “Great. It’s a date!”
Okay, I’ve heard of a double date with two guys and two girls, but three guys going out with one girl? Who’s gonna pay for the popcorn? Gaynor, Pierce, and I exchange nervous glances. Then they both nod in my general direction. I’ve been elected to speak for the team.
“Um, with whom?” I say.
“Huh?” says Gilda.
“You said, ‘It’s a date.’ We were kind of curious about with whom.”
“Oh,” says Gilda. “All three of you. I’ll meet you there at seven!”
Chapter 18
TWO’S COMPANY, FOUR’S MORE FUN
Hey, Jamie, Joey, Jimmy!”
Gilda waves at us from the movie theater box office as the three of us arrive for our Friday-night date.
“You guys know I only date boys whose names start with J and end with an ee sound, right?” Gilda jokes.
We three J-ees laugh. Nervously.
We also inhale one another’s colognes. Guess everybody raided his dad’s or stepdad’s medicine chest tonight. Pierce smells like a pine tree. Or hay. Something farm-ish. And I’m pretty sure Gaynor dipped himself into a vat of Axe Body Spray.
Me?
Well, Uncle Smiley doesn’t have much in the way of what you might call cologne. So I splashed on a little something in the kitchen. Yes, I smell like vanilla extract. But hey, who doesn’t like cookie dough?
“I did the math,” says Pierce, our resident statistician. (He once told me there’s an average of 178 sesame seeds on a Big Mac bun.) “If the three of us chip in to buy Gilda’s ticket, then we each—”
“You guys don’t have to buy me my ticket.”
“Um, I think we do,” I say. “Otherwise, it’s not officially a date. In fact, Vincent O’Neil would probably call it a prune.”
Gilda laughs. “Well, I’m paying for the popcorn and drinks—”
“Nope,” says Gaynor. “It’s all covered.”
And then, as our eyes pop out of our heads, Gaynor pulls a wad of cash out of his pocket.
“My mom gave it to me,” he explains. “She said I should treat everybody to everything tonight!”
“Wow,” I say. “We need to swing by your house tomorrow and say thanks.”
“Nah,” says Gaynor. “She’s, you know, busy tomorrow.”
“Well, what about Sunday?” asks Pierce.
“Busy,” Gaynor says. “All next week, too. She’s totally jammed. You guys can write her a thank-you note or whatever. Come on. The movie starts in like five minutes.”
And of course, by five minutes, Gaynor means fifteen, maybe twenty. Yes, the lights will dim in five, but then we get to watch behind-the-scenes shorts that are really commercials for TV shows, and then movie trailers, which are, well, commercials for movies. Going to the movies is a lot like staying home and watching TV, except at the movies you can also get your eyeballs fried from the glow blasting out of an annoying texter’s smartphone.
Of course, movie theater food is way different from the food you’d eat at home. For one thing, it’s always huge. You order a small drink and it’s the size of a toilet bowl. The “jumbo” drink is so gigantic that sometimes you’ll find baby seals floating along on the ice cubes. The popcorn comes in trash barrel–sized containers, and you can smother it in fifty gallons of butter-flavored topping shot straight out of a golden-grease spigot.
By the way, whenever something is called BLANK-flavored, chances are there is absolutely no BLANK in it.
Gaynor’s mom treats us all to jumbo sodas; enormous, crinkly boxes of Junior Mints, Goobers, and Raisinets; cardboard containers of nachos smothered in coagulated orange gunk (it might be cheese from a radioactive cow); and tubs of butter-flavored popcorn.
Believe it or not, the triple date (or whatever you call this) actually works. Since I’m kind of stuck in the theater’s only handicapped-seating slot, Gilda and the other two Js shift seats periodically so Gilda ends up sitting beside each one of us for an equal amount of time. Pierce worked it all out on a flowchart. Something to do with combinations and permutations.
Who knew math could be so helpful? I mean, besides math teachers.
Anyway, My Boyfriend Is a Vampire and a Werewolf III is, in this critic’s opinion, better than I and II. For one thing, when there’s a full moon, the guy attacks himself. For another, my three friends and I are having an extremely good time—screaming, laughing, stuffing our faces.
By the way, in case you’re counting, that’s three incredibly cool things in a row: Saturday Night Live, the late-night hot dog feast, and now an awesome movie.
Sounds to me like my good luck is about to e
nd.
Chapter 19
COMING ATTRACTIONS I DON’T WANT TO ATTRACT
I was stupid to think that Stevie Kosgrov would leave me alone if he ever found out I was out on a date.
He and his thug friends—Zits and Useless—tromp up the auditorium aisle swinging flashlights back and forth like, all of a sudden, they’re ushers. Zits is even rattling a tin canister filled with coins—the kind they sometimes use to raise money at the movies for the Jimmy Fund, a charity that’s been fighting cancer since 1948.
I think these guys are collecting for the Stevie Fund. It’s been fighting everything it can punch since the day Stevie Kosgrov was born. Legend has it that at his birth, when the doctor slapped him on the butt, Stevie slapped back.
“Give it up, people,” cries Stevie, totally ignoring the No Talking During the Feature Presentation rule, not to mention the theater’s No Being a Jerk regulations.
Zits rattles the money can.
Stevie starts his charity spiel. “Folks, both the vampire and the werewolf want you to dig deep and give us everything you’ve got. We’ll take cash, coins, and shoes. That’s right, shoes. Preferably Nike or Adidas if you’ve got ’em.”
“Sit down!” someone shouts from the darkness.
“Who’s gonna make me?” Stevie shouts back, swinging the beam of his flashlight around the darkened auditorium, looking for his heckler.
And he finds me instead.