“Sounds like you got to be a lot funnier than he did,” I said, after getting over my surprise that Maury Kovalski followed basketball.
He snapped his fingers around the fork. This caused a bunch of juice to shoot out of the piece of gefilte fish on the fork and splatter against the floor.
“Exactly,” Maury said. “He was the straight man, to use a comedy term. Just as important a part of the routine, but a lot less glamorous. And so naturally, people focused on me, because I was the one getting laughs. Pretty soon, people wanted to book the Martian on TV shows, where there was no room for the Spaceman because the host wanted to do the interview himself. And what did I do?”
Maury sighed, and all of a sudden he looked much older and sadder.
“What?” I asked.
“I said yes. I let the attention go to my head, and I left Little Abie Mendelson in the lurch. I forgot about the most important thing in life—friendship.”
“So what happened to Abie?”
“We haven’t spoken in almost fifty years.”
“And the Martian?”
Maury shrugged. “I had a good little run. But it wasn’t as funny without Abie. And it wasn’t as fun. So I retired the character. And here I am.”
Maury pointed his fork at me. “Don’t make the same mistake I did, kiddo. Fix things with your friends.”
I knew he was right.
“How?” I asked.
“I gotta do everything around here? Figure it out yourself.”
“I’ll get right to work on it,” I said, forgetting entirely that before I could, I had to write an epic rhyming poem that was due tomorrow.
The Land of Splattamere
AN EPIC POEM BY GEFILTE JAKE LISTON
In a faraway land that was called Splattamere
Things were quite different from how they are here.
In everyday life, things were always absurd.
Goofballs were everywhere. Popular words
In Splattamere included booger and poophead.
The most common disease was to laugh yourself dead.
Nobody walked down the street without tripping
And landing headfirst in a coop full of chickens.
No one had names like Sam Jones or Ray Smith.
Instead, they had names like Amanda Huggenkiss.
In school, every five seconds somebody farted
So nobody got any lessons imparted.
The situation sounds cool but it was unbearable.
Yogurt and soup always ended up wearable.
And every time somebody tried to be serious
Some kind of shenanigans made him delirious.
The people were laughed out, exhausted and tired.
And then one fine day, a kid got inspired.
He had an idea that changed things forever.
His name was Gefilte, and he was quite clever.
He said to himself, Everything is so funny.
If someone was serious, people’d pay money
To sit and not laugh, just to have an escape
From the constant hilarity we always face.
So Gefilte sat down and he wrote some material
About weather and paperwork, Scotch tape and cereal.
He made it all boring and simple and plain.
And when it was all just insanely mundane
He got a microphone, then built a stage
And memorized everything on every page.
And then he put signs up all over the town
That said “On Thursday night, kindly come down
To Gefilte’s house—prepare to be bored to death
By an evening of guaranteed seriousness.”
He wondered all week if the townsfolk would come.
But on Thursday night, it turned out that everyone
In Splattamere had packed themselves into his basement.
He looked down and wondered where all of the space went.
And they looked back up at him desperate to hear
Something unfunny, and soon a big cheer
Erupted, for the first un-joke Gefilte delivered
Was so lame that the crowd gasped, and then they shivered.
Not one single giggle escaped from their throats
As Gefilte rambled pointlessly on about oats.
Then he switched subjects and told them a story
About ballpoint pens that made everyone snorey.
The crowd ate it up. They loved every minute.
They hung on each word—they were totally in it.
Gefilte could feel the room’s boredom increasing.
The pressure of their lives was slowly releasing.
And by the time he stepped down off of the stage
Gefilte’s new stand-up act was all the rage.
The people of Splattamere, with all their might
Begged him to perform again the next night
And the next and the next, and the next and the next
To counter the laughter that had them so vexed.
And from that day on, Gefilte was known
As the pride of the town, for inventing his own
Way of providing the lameness they craved
The only thing that kept the people behaved.
“Hurray for Gefilte,” the townsfolk all cried.
“Hurray for the night that the laughter died.”
And that, my fine friends, is the end of the story.
I hope you all found it unbearably borey.
Writing my epic poem pretty much wiped me out, and I sleepwalked through the next day of school.
But it was more of the same. Azure hopped right by me without stopping, like some kind of snooty kangaroo. In gym class, I booted a grand slam in kickball, and nobody said a word or high-fived me or anything.
At lunch, I didn’t even try to sit with my friends, because I was pretty sure they’d give me the cold shoulder.
Instead, I took my tray back to the rain forest and ate with Hotch, the snake. Even she seemed to be acting kind of weird toward me.
I knew I had to make it right, like Maury Kovalski said. A regular apology didn’t feel like enough. I wanted to do something big, something spectacular. Something that would show everybody that I understood taking comedy seriously didn’t mean I was allowed to be a huge jerk-face.
The only problem was, I had no idea what that something was.
I got off the school bus and walked home slowly, mulling it over. But when I turned onto my block, I noticed that something a little strange was going on.
More specifically, I noticed that there were approximately seven hundred thousand million people standing on the street and the sidewalk and my front lawn. Half of them were holding microphones, and the other half were pointing cameras at the ones holding microphones. Trucks were parked everywhere, with things like “KPDC NEWS” and “GOOD MORNING AMERICA” and “TOKYO EXPRESS” and “HELLO NEW ZEALAND” printed on the sides, and satellite dishes attached to the tops.
Before I could ask what was going on, the reporter closest to me, a woman wearing a red blazer and a ton of makeup, said, “Okay, Charlie—action!” and started talking in a loud, perky, morning-show-type voice.
Reporter: We’re here outside the home of Lisa Liston, one-half of the scorching-hot new group Conceptual Art Band, whose song “The Ballad of the Duck-Billed Platypus” has come out of nowhere to take the Internet by storm.
Me: (Gasps, swallows the wrong way, proceeds to cough and choke uncontrollably for twenty seconds. Recovers. Screams.) WHAT?
Reporter: Cut! Charlie, this kid coughed all over my intro. Let’s try it again. (to me) Beat it, huh, kid? She’s not signing any autographs today.
Me: WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW?
Reporter: What’s happening is, I’m trying to tape a piece about the hottest band in the world, and you’re standing next to me barfing up a lung. Now, please, can I do my job? (Hip-checks me out of the way and turns back to the camera.) Very little is known about Conceptual Art Band. The members, Lisa Liston and Pierre Le Crucet, have not given any interviews since their video debuted earlier today, racking up twenty-five million YouTube views in less than three hours. In fact, it’s possible that they don’t even know how famous they are….
It was too much. I staggered up the front walk and slipped into the house. The reporters didn’t seem to notice that I actually lived there. They were too busy foaming at the mouth.
“Hi,” I called out, nice and casual, from the front hall. “I’m home! Mr. Allen really liked my epic poem. I kicked a grand slam in kickball today. And oh, by the way, the entire news media of the entire world is camped out on our front lawn. Do we have any cookies?”
Lisa rushed up to me, her face flushed all red like she’d been leaning over a campfire.
“I know!” she said. “It’s pretty gnarly, right?”
Pierre sauntered in behind her, slurping on a Popsicle. “Pretty weird, right, C3P-Bro? We’ve been trying to figure out how it happened.” He took his phone out of his pocket and frowned at it. “I mean, sure, Taylor Swift and Prince Charles both tweeted about it, but that was, like, after it blew up, so…” He shrugged and took another slurp. “Who knows. Cool beans, though. Whatever.”
I looked at them both. “How are you guys so calm? There are a million reporters out there. Are you gonna talk to them?”
Lisa shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow. I kinda just feel like chilling right now.”
“It’s cooler if we wait,” Pierre agreed. “Plus, we should probably write another song.”
“Conceptual Art Band doesn’t have any other songs?”
“Not any good ones,” Lisa said. “We’ve only had this band for like three weeks, Bro-am Chomsky.”
“Do Mom and Dad know?” I asked.
“What, that we have no other good songs?”
“No, that ‘The Ballad of the Duck-Billed Platypus’ has twenty-five million views on YouTube in the last three hours!”
Pierre checked his phone. “Twenty-eight million,” he updated me.
“I called Mom at work,” Lisa replied. “She was psyched. But it didn’t mean that much to her. She and Dad don’t understand YouTube. Not that I do, either, really…” She reached into the fridge, pulled out a slice of leftover pizza, and took a giant bite. “We did get a cool email from the Society for the Appreciation of the Duck-Billed Platypus, though. That was rad.”
“And we’re making a nice chunk of change,” Pierre added. “From YouTube ads or whatever. Also, two movies and a TV show want to use the song.”
Lisa shoved her hand in her pocket and pulled out a roll of money. “Here,” she said, peeling off some crisp bills and shoving them at me. “That’s for you. For being in the video.”
I counted the wad. “This is eight hundred dollars, guys.”
“Yup,” said Pierre. “The movie people literally delivered us a briefcase full of cash. Enjoy it, dude.” He grinned. “I bought myself a Porsche.”
“A Porsche! How did you buy a Porsche? When did you buy a Porsche? Your song only blew up three hours ago!”
“I bought it online, Martin Van Bro-ren. They’re gonna deliver it tomorrow. No muss, no fuss.” He made a hand-wiping motion and grinned a big idiotic grin at me.
I stared uncomprehendingly at both of them, the way a manatee might stare at the Theory of Relativity. “This is a lot to process,” I said.
“Totally,” Lisa agreed. “Take your time. I’m going to make some popcorn and watch the reporters from the upstairs window.”
“Oh, man!” said Pierre. “Popcorn! That’s a great idea.” He checked his phone again. “Twenty-nine million,” he said. “Can we put Caesar salad dressing on the popcorn?”
“Absolutely,” said Lisa.
She made the popcorn, which was weirdly delicious with Caesar dressing, and I went upstairs with them. For the next couple of hours we just sat there, watching the reporters mill around and talk into the cameras.
“I wonder how long they’ll stay,” I whispered.
“Until we talk to them,” Pierre said.
“Watch this,” said Lisa. She opened the window, leaned outside, and waved.
“Hi!” she yelled. All the camera dudes scrambled to catch it, and all the reporters lifted their microphones and started screaming questions.
Lisa closed the window and giggled.
Eventually, my mom and dad came home with Chinese food. They snuck in the back door to avoid the media, and the five of us ate in front of the upstairs window, shoveling the food straight from the cartons into our faces, which normally my parents would have disapproved of. But we were all too mesmerized by the hullabaloo to bother with manners.
“They’re not going to sleep here, are they?” my mother asked. “Maybe I should bring them some blankets.”
“You two need to talk to a professional,” my father declared, pointing his chopsticks at Lisa and Pierre.
“You mean like a shrink?” I said.
“A manager,” he said. “An entertainment attorney. Maybe a financial planner. You’ve got to maximize this opportunity while you can. I’ll ask Uncle Rory.”
Lisa rolled her eyes. “Uncle Rory is a mailman, Dad.”
“In Beverly Hills! He knows all kinds of big stars.”
“Whatever, Dad. Does this mean you guys are on board with me taking a year off before college?”
My parents exchanged a glance, and then my mom said, “We’ll discuss it.”
Which is their way of saying yes without saying it. Lisa grinned and offered me a high five. I slapped her palm, which was a little greasy from duck sauce.
The excitement took its toll on us, and by nine-thirty we were all ready for bed. Pierre slept on the couch in the basement rather than risk going outside.
But when I lay down, all the craziness over Conceptual Art Band drifted out of my mind, like clouds when the wind picks up, and I remembered that I had a problem to solve. I had to make things right with my friends.
I still wasn’t sure how to do it, but now I had something I hadn’t had before: eight hundred bucks. And just like that, an idea hit me. What if I rented out the Yuk-Yuk, invited everybody who was mad at me, and threw a Friend Appreciation Night? I could pull out all the stops to show them how sorry I was and how much they meant to me.
If I could convince them to come, anyway.
On Friday, we all had to sneak out the back door to get to school and work without getting pounced on by the media—which had not stayed overnight but was back bright and early, clogging up our whole block. The neighbors had started to call and complain, and my dad spent half the morning apologizing for all the noise and traffic, and promising that we’d do our best to get rid of them as soon as possible, and offering everybody free tickets to see Conceptual Art Band whenever they actually got it together to play a show.
Lisa and Pierre wore disguises for added protection, even though the reporters didn’t actually know what they looked like, except for Lisa’s arm. The only disguises on hand were a bunch of old Halloween costumes, so Lisa went to school dressed as a Cruella De Vil from 101 Dalmatians, and Pierre went as Colonel Sanders. He kept making jokes in a bad Southern accent about drinking gravy, like “Ah onleh care about two thangs: wearin’ bolo ties an’ drinkin’ giant amounts ah graaaveh!” which Lisa thought were hilarious and I got sick of after a few minutes.
I still couldn’t believe how relaxed they both seemed, as if getting 43 million YouTube views and suddenly being famous was no big deal at all. It also made me realize even more what a to
olbox I had been to think my little stand-up set at the Yuk-Yuk made me some kind of big shot who could afford to act all snooty. I mean, if worldwide fame wasn’t going to their heads, why should a few laughs go to mine?
I called the manager of the Yuk-Yuk before school and arranged to rent it out on Friday night. So by the time we got to M&AA, I had a stack of invitations to hand out to everybody. Starting with Azure.
I walked up and handed her one.
She narrowed her eyes at it. “Friend Appreciation Night, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” she said, turning her narrowed eyes at me.
“It’s my way of apologizing,” I explained.
“So…to prove that you’re sorry for turning into a jerk the last time we came and laughed at your jokes, you’re asking us to come and laugh at your jokes again?”
I hadn’t quite thought of it like that, and so on the spot I made a decision. “I’m not going to tell any jokes,” I said. “I just want to show my friends how important they are.”
Azure handed me back the invitation. “You don’t have to do all this, Jake. An apology is good enough.”
“Conceptual Art Band is going to play,” I told her.
Azure screamed at the top of her lungs for about twenty-five seconds.
Twenty-five seconds is not a long time usually. But when someone is screaming at the top of her lungs, it feels like an eternity.
Jake the Fake Goes for Laughs Page 5