Jason Roeder

Thanks to everybody who came out to hear me read at Word Books last week. Really, there weren’t many of you, so every beating heart was appreciated. I didn’t expect a tremendous turnout, though. I’ve been in New York three months (unemployed for the duration), and it’s hard to put together a fan base when you’re spending most of your time writing cover letters about exciting opportunities you recently found on Monster.com. (”I feel this editing position allows me to combine my passion for mutual fund prospectuses with my longstanding interest in never being thanked. I look forward to meeting with you in person to discuss this position that will make me feel, not dead, but just kind of lingeringly stupefied.”)

Radar likes me. The Harvard Crimson does not. Regarding the Ivy League, all I can say is that most readers have appreciated not being treated like breakable objects. They recognize that the writer is one of their own.

Other people can tolerate “pointed humor” only when it’s not pointed at them.

As I left my interview at Cookie magazine (sort of a lifestyle magazine for upscale families), I saw a gnarled,* wheelchair-bound little girl singing “Part of Your World” from the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid. You may know that song as the one Ariel sings because she’s yearning to live among people—in other words, she wants functional legs. Yikes. Her mother—clad in a gray sweatsuit, arms folded—stood off to the side, monitoring. In about a minute, the girl earned about ten dollars, though her voice was nothing more than what you’d expect from any seven-year-old singing from the back seat of a minivan. I imagine the girl found herself busking in Times Square through one of two scenarios:

1. This little girl has seen performers on American Idol or some Disney Channel show of the moment. She says, “Mama, I want to sing like them. But look at me.” Mama says, “You listen to me. If you want to sing, you will sing. Maybe you can’t walk, but you sing like Jesus himself.”

“Can I sing The Little Mermaid song?”

“Well, I don’t know. That might be a little exploitative.”

“Pleeease!”

“Okay, but if it ever—ever—doesn’t feel right, you just tell me you’ve had enough, and we’re heading home.”

“Yay!”

2. This little girl is singing because Mama needs to raise bail for her boyfriend/rapist.

What do you think?

*Not meaning to be cruel, just apt. She was gnarled. That is the word.

With any luck, I’ll be able to fill in a March Madness bracket with good reviews (my only motivation for ever doing that). The Daily Gamecock out of the University of South Carolina says: “This book is a great read for anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a god of the social stratosphere, a feeble young introvert or just someone who might be a little shy.”

Last Thursday was my first reading. It was held at Lorem Ipsum Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s a small store, but the bookcases were on wheels, which allowed us to clear up space for about 25 chairs. Bookcases-on-wheels are, well, heavy, and the hardwood floor had some ripples in it that made maneuvering a little tricky. Our biggest fear was that a shelf would tip over, avalanching the floor. Of course, I imagined worse, having to find ways to distract the audience from the bookstore employee unable to feel anything overseen by the lower third of his spinal column. My slide show just isn’t that good.

It was interesting how some of my choicest punch lines curdled in midair, while text I sort of regarded as connective tissue got big laughs. At least I kept the gibberish under control. When I’m nervous, my speech sort of decays into a kind of labored mumble, the vocal equivalent of falling up a flight of stairs, if that makes any sense. If nothing else, I managed not to sound like an opium addict.

Sorry to brag.

Next up: Word Books in Brooklyn, November 1, at 7:30.

Another Radar list, with the help of funny types Mike Sacks, Ted Travelstead, and Todd Levin.

The Arizona Wildcat was kind enough to award my book 4 stars, which I assume is not out of 9.

Notice the itals. Maybe you thought I was referring to two people of my acquaintance who remind me of Felix and Oscar and that I’m about to tell you about this comically mismatched real-life pair. After all, under what circumstances would any non-Ebert have watched the actual 1998 sequel to the 1968 film The Odd Couple? In a word: Greyhound.

Some things are beyond your control on a Greyhound bus: the person sitting next to you will somehow produce an entire rotisserie chicken from her change purse, the person in front of you will recline steeply enough for a gynecological exam, and the least important person in the western hemisphere will carry on an hourlong cell phone conversation. And, if a movie is shown, you will watch it. You have no choice. The monitors are staggered along the ceiling in such a way that you really can’t anatomically avoid a view without a Navy SEAL sneaking up behind you and wrenching your head in a semicircle. (Think of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, but swap ultraviolence for Walter Matthau.) And you have to listen to the movie, too, because it’s broadcast from each and every speaker on the bus. Earplugs are useless, and what’s worse is that the passengers aren’t nearly as outraged as you are. Consider this scene, which got a huge laugh: Felix’s and Oscar’s children are getting married (to each other), but F&O find themselves stranded in the desert because their roadtrip falls victim to a series of hack misadventures. And now, they can’t even remember the city they were headed to!

Oscar Madison: Was it San Marino?
Felix Ungar: Not San Marino, maybe San Quentino.
Oscar Madison: Not San Quentino, San Sorina.
Felix Ungar: No not San Sorina.
Oscar Madison: San Mateo. San Clemente. Roberto Clemente.
Felix Ungar: Sancho Pancho. Pancho Gonzales.
Oscar Madison: Ferrando Lamas, Ricardo Montalban.
Felix Ungar: Ricky Ricardo!

This is a partial excerpt. IMDB left out “Aunt Jemima!”

That is not a joke.

I’ll let you know what I think of Quigley Down Under, which will undoubtedly be shown on my return trip.

If you’ve been reading this blog—and you haven’t—you may be wondering where I’ve been for the past few days. Well, my parents have been married 40 years—20 times longer than the sturdiest relationship I have ever achieved—and kinfolk from all around, Europe even, have converged on New York to celebrate. The official observance was yesterday at a restaurant on the Upper West Side, an area I think owes its existence to something that can only be described as the brunch-industrial complex. Really, brunch is everywhere. Walking up Amsterdam, you’d get the impression that the NYC zoning authority is in the pocket of Big Hollandaise Sauce. Anyway, it was just fine, though there were 12 of us, and I tend to get the people sweats in groups larger than, say, four. At one point, I had to leave the table just to stand outside, let my thoughts drain. I met a basset hound named Charlie. He was cute but had no job leads or, more likely, was keeping them to himself.

Actually, just a couple of days after I derided online job listings, I heard back from The Onion regarding the assistant editor position. Apparently dreams—or interviews for dreams contingent upon how my writing test pans out—do come true.

I’ve been fully unemployed for about three months. People have urged me to consider my joblessness as something of a vacation, but no. On vacation, you think things like, “Shall I jet ski today?” or “Hey, maybe I’ll go out and get spiral henna tattoos on my balls.” When you’re unemployed you think, “I bet I’d spend half as much on food if I ate pine cones and parking tickets.” You really do see things differently. That guy sitting outside the 7-11 in the tattered Space Jam t-shirt and snow camo cargo pants is my colleague.

I have been applying to jobs, of course, but I’m increasingly convinced that the job listings on Mediabistro, Monster, and other mondo career sites are fictional and that applications to these positions are simply skimmed and redistributed as targeted spam messages. I see no other explanation for “Jason, single asst. copyeditors in your area!” and “Many writer/editors say our Synthetik Pussy feels like real thing.” I am hoping my book opens a door somehow, but, if anything, I’m guessing it’ll just boost the prospects for a second book.

It has occurred to me that Astoria, to my knowledge, has not a single bookstore. Unless you want to buy a used copy of the novelization of “Robocop” from a sidewalk vendor, there’s really no place to go. I’ve never considered myself entrepreneurial, but if someone wants to hand me a stack of credit cards, I probably won’t say no.

Some excellence from Bill Maher on Salon.

I’ve co-contributed—along with funny guys Mike Sacks, Ted Travelstead, and Todd Levin—another Radar 100 to, of all magazines, Radar. This second list is in the November 2007 issue. I’ll link to it when it goes online. Meanwhile, here’s the list from last issue.

In 2005, I wrote a critique of my laundromat for the humor site Yankee Pot Roast. For example, I described the dryers thusly:

“Generally speaking, you can think of these as you would the porridge bowls from ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’—sometimes they’re too hot, sometimes they’re too cold, and sometimes they have food in them.”

Some people rage against the Chinese government; others, lint filters. Anyway, I recently received a solicitation from something called the Taj Mahal Review: “We would like to publish this one or such type of story in Dec. 2007 12th Issue of Taj Mahal Review, International Literary Journal. I invite you to contribute your short story so that it may be published.”

I cannot begin to imagine the how a journal that’s based in Govindpur Colony, Allahabad, India, and that stipulates in its guidelines that “Haikus can be rhyming and non-rhyming” found its way into the archives of a humor website named after a butchered, browned, and simmered cow. But if I can get the rights from Yankee Pot Roast, I’m doing it.