Multiple Authors and Titles
- Dave Louapre and Dan Sweetman, A Cotton Candy Autopsy (Started June 4 � Finished June 4, 2004; about 45 pages)
- Marc Hempel, Gregory (Started June 4 - Finished June 5, 2004; 119 pages)
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Shelpping around copies of my book has messed up my ability to keep up with my own stacks. Normally, if I�m getting close to finishing a book (nearing the 150 pages left mark), I carry around the next book, just in case I find myself in a situation where there is nothing to do but read. But lately since I�m always carrying around a copy or three of my own book, ready to foist it on some unexpecting person who knows me vaguely, I�ve had to make room in my bag, lest I ruin my back.
So when I found myself at my girlfriend�s house with nothing to read, she gave me stuff from her pile. I read these two books that night, finishing the second book around two in the morning. I finished two books. Hooray! Under the rules that I�ve made for myself, this meant I could buy another book from my hold shelf at work. But it also meant that my stack of books at home remained unchanged. Worse, since I bought a book, after reading two that weren�t mine, it meant that I was actually falling behind.
This is getting much more complicated that it should be.
Anyhoo, her ex-boyfriend, spotting my copy of Shakes the Clown at her house, recommended I read the Cotton Candy Autopsy book. I figured out why he suggested it after only a few pages, as it reads like a version of Shakes the Clown as directed by Tod Browning. The book has page after page of clowns and sideshow freaks drinking, burning down things, fucking with the public, and starting fights. The fact that this book came out a year before Bobcat Goldthwait�s movie makes me wonder if somebody wasn�t a little timelier in their reading than I.
If clowns and carnies fucking with people was all there was to this book, it wouldn�t be worth recommending. But the team of renegade clowns soon split up, and that�s where it turns from a one-joke premise to a very well written story. Never mind that it�s a story about an alcoholic clown and his romance with the two-headed woman. That�s just a perk.
As for Gregory, I had history with this character without even knowing it.
When the Seattle band Not In The Face came to town for a Bike For Beer event, I picked up a shirt, for a couple of reasons — I liked the band, I loved the name, and they gave the shirt to me for free. I thought Not In The Face was the best band name I had heard in quite some time. Just about a year ago, I learned how people may take something in an entirely different context. I�m a little dense sometimes.
See, when I thought of the name, I thought of old Mel Brooks films or Looney Tunes Cartoons. So I didn�t think twice about the picture, which turned out to be a small picture of Gregory, crouched in a fetal position in a padded cell.
So I�m wearing this shirt at work, helping the customers with their arms full of shitty romance novels and bad mysteries, when I notice that an elderly woman is staring intensely at my chest.
I�m pretty sexy, so I�m used to this. But she�s obviously not getting hot, though she does look bothered. I decide passivity is the best tactic and ring her books up silently. I put the books in a bag, hand them to her, and thank her for her patronage. She finally looks away from my chest.
�That�s the worst shirt I�ve ever seen,� she says finally.
�Really?� I say, genuinely confused. �Uh, it�s my friend�s band, but I�ll tell them you said that. Sorry.�
She shoots me a dirty look and storms off with her arm full of books about people killing and fucking each other.
I�m fairly careful not to wear shirts at work that will freak out the 80 year-old grandmothers, so I looked again to see what this lady might have a problem with. Then I realize: Not In The Face. Cowering little sad child.
She thinks I�m advocating beating little children!
Which I do, but that�s beside the point.
