Meat Book

"Read me my rights, pig. Then read me Lady Chatterly's Lover, but just skip to the dirty parts."

I read this funny book and I've been telling everybody about it. I haven't read all of it, just parts of it, really. Okay, one part. And everybody's telling me it's a newspaper, not a book, but you can't brag about reading a newspaper so I say book. But it was still really funny, like a book. There was this cat and he's trying to eat lasagna and—hey, I don't want to give it away. E-mail me if you want to read it and maybe we'll form one of those Oprah clubs or something.

If I don't read books, it's not my fault. I've given it an honest effort, but they always start the book off with this really boring information about who wrote it and who it was published by, and a "c" in a circle and then the year and… see? I fell asleep while I was typing it and fell out of my chair and broke my nose. Imagine being one of those people who actually finished a whole book without skipping around.

My friend Richie Castro has written 26 books over the years, the guy is a dynamo. He makes each book two pages or less 'cause he thinks all that plotting, pacing, and drawing out of the characters is bullshit. Richie writes "the real meat," like he says it. His next book will be done soon and it tells the story of how his girlfriend, this double-timing bitch-whore who dyes her hair, she was two-timing him behind his back and sleeping around with his cousin and then ends up running off with the guy, even though he's got no job. Actually, that was the whole book so I guess I saved you from having to buy it. Richie's going to be pissed.

My dad used to read to me before he died—or faked his own death and disappeared, my mom still can't prove either one. Dad would read to me from record jacket liner notes since there were always plenty of them on hand. It's a shame dad and me didn't get more time together in the end. One of these days I'm going to have to find a copy of Lionel Richie's self-titled album and see who else he thanked. But every time I hear "Truly" I'm going to think of dad.

I would recommend reading to your kids, I think that's a good thing. I plan on doing it myself some day. Maybe you could send me an e-mail and we'll schedule a time when I can come over, and if you got the books that's even better since I only have a copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller and it's a little hard to get through—that guy thanks a lot of people, even his brothers, all by name. I wish I had a brother so then I could make an album and thank him for being there for me, but he'd probably end up being more Marlon than Jermaine.

The nice thing about reading newspapers is they put the important parts in the biggest type, so you can read them and know what you need to know, but they also put that real small type there so you can pretend you're reading that and looking smart. People are really, really impressed when I tell them I read 15 newspapers a day. E-mail me and I'll tell you other things that are really impressive and then tell you how I'm able to do them without working hard.

Basically what I'm saying is I want e-mail.

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