AMONG MANY OTHER THINGS, IN MY NEWEST MEMOIR
ONE WILL...
1. Read my vivid memory of the time I had
amnesia.
2. Read about how a captain-to-be was
drummed out of the Mexican army when he blew off his
hand with a giant firecracker.
3. Read as I savage Prentice
Hall/Regents for discontinuing my book.
4. Read and watch me lay waste to tall
country crooners and their ridiculous hats as well.
5. Read of smashed dreams and a sunken
Swedish freighter.
6. Read of how a devout Baptist was
accidentally sent to Catholic heaven for four
hundred years!
7. Read how my parents followed a
trail of blood and found me at the end of it!
8. Read about how my dentist was
afraid that he and I would be shot down together over
Taiwan.
9. Read how a cowboy bass player had
classmates who liked to hunt while he only wanted to
write poems about the animals.
10. Read about how the same bass
player started the Paul is Dead rumor in
1969.
11. Read how my third grade teacher
destroyed a classmate for outing me as an atheist.
12. Read and learn that a frog pond
isn't really a frog pond when it's a palm frond.
13. Read about the whale and the
popsicle sticks.
14. Read about the hallucinogenic
properties of heavily hopped India ale.
15. Read about the demise of the green
sunfish in Arizona.
16. Read of how a girl sold a song to
Bing Crosby when traveling in the family car.
17. Read of how my brother discovered
the legendary Samuel Eddy Crappie Hole.
18. Read how Sonny Bono and I both got
fired with the same telephone technique.
19. Read how I broke my carburetor
cable while flying a Cessna 150 over Texas.
20. Read how to have a Hemingway
conversation by using expressions like,
"You're a worthless rummy, aren't you?" "You're a
miserable rotter." Christ on a crutch, you
bastard! and "You say the most bloody awful
things!"
21. Read of the overwhelming fear
publishers had that allowed me to sell them my books in
the 1990s.
22. Read about mysterious eels lying
on the sand.
23. Read about how the ukulele is the
most underrated instrument.
24. Read how I wrote down the
introduction to Hoagie Carmichael's Stardust in
every key at the same time.
25. Read a comparison and see examples
of my father's penmanship at age eleven and mine!
26. Read about fairy shrimp swimming
in the rain-filled hoof prints of steers.
27. Read about Gammarus desperatus
a new species of amphipod found in Roswell New Mexico.
28. Read about how Ranger Doug toured
as a singer for nine months after losing his voice to a
mysterious malady.
29. Read about how I twisted myself
into a pretzel in kindergarten.
30. Read the shocking tale of what
happened in kindergarten when I dug up an earthworm.
31. Read how I was to shoulder a
tremendous responsibility in kindergarten!
32. Read the perfectly logical reason
why I sent 17 letters to fictional people with names
like Colin Haunchsquat and Rose Fish who lived on
streets with names like Brisketslapper Avenue, East
Spaghetti, Chillipunch Street, and Ferris Wheel Avenue.
33. Read about how I sang
Prairie Lullaby to Grammy winner Woody Paul
because he couldn't remember the words to his own song!
34. Read how I played my song
"Lorelei!" to John Denver's guitarist who liked it
so much that he invited me on stage to sing it with him!
35. Read how I made Grammy award
winner Joey Miskulin puff up in joyful pride with a
single well-placed compliment.
36. Read about how an alien from outer
space put an end to bullfighting.
37. Read of the Yaqui church in the
desert that I found and found again forty years later
burned to the ground.
38. Read about a man who was always
embarrassed because his crazy parents named him Jesus!
39. Read about how I got in hot water
by buying a stuffed iguana in Mexico when I was twelve.
40. Read how a drawling drugstore
cowboy fiddler wrote "Inertial, Viscous, and Finite-Beta
Effects in a Resistive, Time Dependent Tokamak
Discharge." to get his Ph.D in plasma physics from
M.I.T.
41. Read how God screws up big time
and says, No, no! It is I....I who should
apologize!
42. Read of how a mysterious cassette
tape of Herb Jeffries magically appeared in my guest
bedroom and transformed my life.
43. Read how I almost won a class
prize but was disqualified for playing with my milk
carton.
44. Read about a student who thought
that somehow her teacher had married the entire Parent
Teacher Association.
45. Read about the lyrics I made up in
third grade for a song in class that weren't used and
how I was finally able to share them with a classmate 54
years later.
46. Read of how our business failed
because we couldn't get ant lions to mate.
47. Read of the remorse I felt after I
had stepped on and killed forty cockroaches on a Mexican
dock in 1963.
48. Read about a treasure hidden in
the desert.
49. Read about an ancient 24-foot
dug-out canoe that fetched loose off some lonely beach
in Baja and drifted across the Sea of Cortez and onto
the Mexican beach in front of our house.
50. Read about my friend who
disappeared one day never to be seen again.
51. Read about my six-foot-six
impostor from Alberta, Canada.
52. Read of how snapping shrimp drove
me out of the water in Guaymas, Mexico in the 60s.
53. Read about the 90-year-old park
ranger who liked to sing and who had a
treasured friendship with my dad.
54. Read about how I told a dental
surgeon that he had bad Karma.
55. Read about the blue-eyed man who
was too black to be white and too white to be black and
had to darken his skin with makeup to be the lead singer
of the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
56. Read of how a schizophrenic French
girl wrote an absolutely perfect description of the very
same recurring dream that I have.