by Rainn Wilson
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Copyright © 2015 by Rainn Wilson
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ISBN 978-0-698-16143-6
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Version_2
For Holiday and Walter, my blue skies
SPECIAL THANKS
—
I want to thank the publishers of this book for allowing me to have a special thanks section in which to thank them. I want to also thank Greg Daniels, Paul Lieberstein, and B. J. Novak for their help on the foreword. I also want to thank Mindy Kaling for being so yucky. I want to thank Aaron Lee for being a true friend and one of the funniest people alive. I want to thank the stars of our galaxy for reminding us of how small and significant we are. Matthew McConaughey, thank you for that loan. I want to thank the Germans for all the good times. Hummus. Thanks to Jill Schwartzman for being a terrific editor. Oprah, thanks for the loan. I’ll pay you back once I get my next residual check. Call me. Mark Schulman and Richard Abate, thanks. I want to thank my various parents for their patience and understanding. I imagine it must be hard to have your story be written by a minor-TV-celebrity son without having a chance to respond. Also, my dad taught me about art and faith, and for that I’ll always be grateful. Phil Pardi, gracias. Thanks, Office cast. Miss you guys! Rhett Diessner. Ken Bowers. Mark Bamford. Thank you, everyone who bought this book, and double thanks to you if you actually finish it. Thanks, Matt Hoyle. Thank you, divine spirit mystery of the universe, for letting there be music and children and language and hummus. Kevin O’Neill and Holly and Dylan Reid. Thank you, television and Nick Offerman. Thanks, Mose. Thanks, NBC. I want to thank George R. R. Martin and Marshawn Lynch and Thom Yorke for their awesomeness. Editors, please cut this sentence. If it’s still in the final version of the “Special Thanks” section I’ll know you didn’t actually read the book. Thank you, Arnold Palmer, for the most delightful of beverages.
Most of all I want to thank my wife and soul mate, Holiday Reinhorn, the best writer and person I know, for her expert notes, incredible heart, and, as in all things, her invaluable support. Also, thank you for lending me that money, honey. I’ll pay you back. Later, though. I gotta pay Oprah and Matthew back first.
CONTENTS
—
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Special Thanks
Foreword by Dwight Kurt Schrute
Chapter 1: WHAT SHALL WE NAME BABY FATHEAD?
Chapter 2: THE WORMS OF NICARAGUA
Chapter 3: MY SEVENTIES SHOW
COMPENDIUM OF COMIC SIDEKICKS
Chapter 4: THE NERD OF GOD
Chapter 5: THE BASSOONIST
Chapter 6: HOW ELVIS COSTELLO MADE ME AN ACTOR
THE GREATEST ALBUMS OF THE EARLY EIGHTIES (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)
Chapter 7: A CHORUS LINE MATINEE
Chapter 8: THE ONLY LIVING BOY IN NEW YORK
Chapter 9: AN ACTOR REPAIRS
SHITTY JOBS
Chapter 10: THE FACE OF GOD
Chapter 11: VOLCANO LOVE
ADVENTURES IN THEATER
Chapter 12: I BOMBED ON BROADWAY
Chapter 13: WELCOME TO LOS ANGELES
ADVENTURES IN FILM AND TELEVISION
Chapter 14: DWIGHT K. SCHRUTE, ASSISTANT (TO THE) REGIONAL MANAGER
Chapter 15: ALMOST FAMOUS 2
RANDOM OFFICE MEMORIES
Chapter 16: SOUL PANCAKES
TEN THINGS I KNOW FOR SURE
Addendum: THE BAHA’I FAITH
About the Font
Photos
FOREWORD
—
By Dwight Kurt Schrute
I am the regional manager of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I have been chosen at random to write a foreword for this book. The request came in a letter that my cousin Mose first mistook for a sweepstakes win. He ran around our farm, waving the letter for the better part of an afternoon. But I am not gullible like my cousin, who is more book smart than worldly smart.
When someone asks me to do a task, the first thing I do is determine whether the request is some sort of trick. If the request is a trick, then I do not do that thing. If the request is not a trick, then I do the best version of that thing that man or beast has ever undertaken. (You would be surprised how often it turns out to be a trick. If Michael Scott asks me, I do it anyway, though.)
I cannot adequately determine if this request is a trick, so I’m just going to do the thing in a regular, normal way.
I have never written anything like a book foreword before. In fact, I mostly write requisition forms, harvest inventories, and performance reviews. I am very good at these. An example:
Harvest Inventory
Potatoes: 60 lbs
Onions: 51 lbs
Beets: 1,240,567 lbs
I think the above work speaks for itself. It needs to, otherwise it is a useless list.
Once, I wrote a term paper on why there should be no taxes, using examples from post–World War I Germany and pre–World War III Germany.
Once, I wrote a letter to a girl in my high school named Ilona Staller. She never wrote me back. Her loss. Ilona, if you are reading this, you made a tremendous error as you could have gotten with THIS (I am pointing to my genitalia).
Let me be perfectly clear: I don’t like this book. I don’t care about “funny stories” regarding some stupid actor. Other than Charles Bronson and anyone from the cast of Game of Thrones. And Bruce Lee. And Lackawanna County Honorary Deputy Sheriffs Paul and Mira Sorvino. And Alexander Godunov from the movie Witness. And I love Sam Neill from Jurassic Park and Omen III: The Final Conflict. How come he’s not in more stuff? He’s got such a long, thin mouth. I’d definitely read his book.
Also, I once read The Dolph Lundgren Handbook: Everything You Need to Know About Dolph Lundgren when I was nineteen. But there were no funny stories. Just FACTS about perhaps the greatest Swedish actor of the 1980s. Did you know that Dolph Lundgren as Ivan Drago punched Sylvester Stallone so hard during the filming of Rocky IV that he put him in the hospital for nine days? NINE DAYS!!! I would love to be put in the hospital by Dolph Lundgren.
I do not read books f
or funny stories or whimsical insights. Ever. If I am reading a book, it is for the purpose of absorbing factual information about what is happening on Planet Earth, Middle Earth, Westeros, Galactica, Asgard, Mount Olympus, or Lackawanna County.
This writer, “Rainn Wilson,” is a laughable idiot. He thinks he’s funny, but he’s merely pathetic. Unless you think stories about weird religions, nerd-loving parents, bassoons, and acting are fascinating. I sure don’t.
Ooooh, you did live plays in the theater. Big deal. So did the cast of Glee and nobody cares about them anymore.
Oooooh, so you were an actor on TV shows. Well so was Jack Bauer. You don’t see Jack Bauer writing a book about his life. (He’s got serious work to do, plus his life is classified. And when the hell would he write, anyway? I’ve seen every minute of his day, the guy doesn’t even have time to urinate!) Actually, maybe he has written a book about his life. I wouldn’t know. The last time I was in that section of the bookstore was a long time ago, and I stormed out in anger because they did not have a book by Sam Neill that I had gotten my heart set on during the long drive to the Wilkes-Barre Borders (now defunct) from my farm (still in business, thank you very much).
OOOOH, YOU’RE A MEMBER OF AN OBSCURE, STRANGE-SOUNDING RELIGIOUS MINORITY. WELL, WHY DON’T YOU RENT WITNESS AND WATCH THOSE TEENAGE PUNKS DAB ICE CREAM ON ALEXANDER GODUNOV AND LET’S SEE WHO’S BEEN PERSECUTED WORSE!
Also, why is this privileged Hollywood windbag writing a memoir when he’s in his forties? It doesn’t make any sense. He’s not even close to death. (Although, after reading this pile of steaming goat feces, I wish he was.)
Fact: NO. ONE. CARES.
So why am I writing the foreword at all?
Easy. The money. The publisher agreed to pay me three hundred dollars ($300!!!) for the first 1,000 words of this foreword and 33 cents a word thereafter.
Take a word like “at.” Watch this: AT—boom! Thirty-three cents! (And another 33 cents for the boom!) This whole diversion is about $7.59. (But enough about the math, I’m not paid for numbers.)
Suck on this, publisher:
Oafidjf;aksdj; vkjna sd;kjvn;kasdjnvkjansdlk vjnalskdjnvlkasjndv kajnsdkjn adkvjna klsdjn laksdjnvkajs ndvkjnas djknvdkj n;ad ksjnvakvjnkasdjnvk anvddsvd siufhlauk hclkruhvl kvavhkrjclakrjh znlkrj.nkjnr.kjn>KJ N>KEJN.kJN>KjN>KJNiu4f hliaeuhae rufo a84oiufahhi 4uakh43h iufaosdfao ijdf;lasdj;cijaei jejksck jh.zu ekh.ku hsj.jndc 123456789 asdf asdf asdf
Well, who’s the sucker now, Dutton? (A division of Penguin, which is a division of Penguin Random House, which is co-owned by Bertelsmann, a German media conglomerate that was the single biggest publisher of Nazi war propaganda in the ’30s, which many of your readers would conclude is a very, very bad thing.)
Need a few more words . . .
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.
That sentence uses every single letter in the alphabet, FYI.
So does this one I just came up with:
Zachary’s X-ray is very jubilant, wanting pom fokd q.
Actually, let me use this opportunity to discuss books that I want to write. Or read.
There is a definite lack of cookbooks that focus on venison and woodland game. Let’s say you have a freezer full of skunk steaks and the back half of a bear and you want to make a delicious meal in twenty minutes armed with only an acetylene torch and an ax. What do you do?
The answer will be available in my new bestseller, Meat Me in the Freezer, a novel by Dwight Kurt Schrute.
Other book ideas:
Mennonite Ghost Stories
Some of the scariest ghosts don’t use any technology and have big round hats.
Conspiracy Theories: Who’s Really Behind Them?
The book they didn’t want you to read and will probably kill you if they ever find out that you have read.
Seeds for Idiots
Soy, corn, wheat, sorghum, rice, barley, beet, etc. . . .
Short-Sleeve Shirts
Effortless style in a world gone long-sleeve bananas!
Hold This Book over a Candle
Fun games for kids written entirely with my own secret invisible ink. Ink that comes from a special pen I keep in my pants.
How to Make Love Like the Kaiser
Sex tips from pre–World War I Germany and pre–World War III Germany. With a foreword by Angela Martin!
Rolling in the Bones of Oxen: A New Generation of Schrutes
A pictorial history of my son, Philip. Over four thousand photos!
—
Ultimately, I wanted to be a part of this project because as a lifelong employee of a paper company, and this being a book, tens of thousands of trees will have been chopped down and processed in the making and binding of it. You are reading this waste of a book on one of the most practical, renewable, and flat substances known to man. I hope you’ll buy it, have a book-burning party because of how terrible it is, and then buy another one just for the hell of it. This may not be economical or convenient, but it’s good for the paper business, which in turn is good for me.
And if you want to write angry letters to the publishers I hope you’ll choose Dunder Mifflin’s twenty-weight bond. Treat yourself right with DM’s smooth-writing, high-rag-content bond in cream, white, and ecru!
Oh, and if you are reading this on a computerized reading machine, F@*& YOU!!!
*Note for the editor: That was 1,400 words. Now 1,408. 1,410 total. 1,412. You owe me $300 plus .33¢ x 419.
I’ll give you this last sentence for free as a bonus.
Chapter 1
WHAT SHALL WE NAME BABY FATHEAD?
—
I had the biggest, fattest head of any baby that was ever born into the human species. My head was—and remains—a combination of the head from the alien in Alien and a prize-winning albino casaba melon from the Iowa State Fair.
I feel truly sorry for my parents, Patricia (Shay) Whitman and Robert (Bob) Wilson, when I imagine them cradling my doughy giganticness in the rain-soaked winter of 1966 on their houseboat in Seattle. I was one of those tots that you see and gasp under your breath in quizzical horror. I wasn’t one of those babies that made it easy for viewers to hide their surprised revulsion. I’m sure no one knew what to say when they saw my white, bloated, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade head lolling about on my snowy, damp, potato-sack body. I was like some kind of larva. I was the color of grubworms that have never seen the sun. Picture an ashen manatee with a tiny human face. Now picture this creature screaming to have its diaper changed.
You get the idea.
No, you don’t. I need to keep going.
I’m not sure if you fully understand the large-headed, pale horror of baby Rainn. If there were a maggot with vaguely human features, wrapped in swaddling clothes, that would have been me. The University of Washington hospital probably bleached the entire pediatric ward after I left due to my resemblance to a life-size white blood corpuscle. I was like Louie Anderson with the head of E.T. (Note: I wanted to include a baby photo here, but the publisher refused, citing research that 80 percent of people read celebrity biographies while eating lunch.) If the nurse at the hospital had swapped me with a big-eyed albino hippo baby, that would have explained everything. Instead, my parents were handed a lumpy, Jabba the Hutt–like infant that made sounds like a calf being strangled by an octopus. Me.
Okay, now you get the idea. Moving on.
Obviously I don’t know much about my infancy and early childhood. Just weird little details I’ve gleaned from my curiously uncommunicative, bohemian, proto-hippie parents.
From what I understand, after I was born a furious debate raged between Bob and Shay over what to name me. You see, in case you didn’t manage to gather it from the cover of this book, or from the title credits of The Office or Backstrom, my name is Rainn. R-A-I-N-N. Two ns. How did I come to have this moniker? How did my parents arrive at it? It’s
quite simple actually.
Weird name + weird kid = weird parents.
To call my parents odd is perhaps the biggest understatement any person could ever make. Kind of like calling Hitler mean or Warren Buffett well-off. There will be much written about my parents. All of them.
—
My mom, Patricia, changed her name to Shay in 1965. She was raised on a farm in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, and spent a year living with chickens. I’m not exaggerating. Her brothers and sister were all older. Her mom died when she was two (appendicitis) and her dad didn’t have the ability to watch her and farm the farm at the same time.
(Note: I don’t actually know what Grampa Rollie Whitman did on that farm other than what I’ve gleaned from TV shows like Little House on the Prairie and books like Charlotte’s Web and the Bible. He probably “sowed seed” and drove a tractor around with a floppy hat. Actually, it was probably a baseball cap because he was pretty macho and it was Wisconsin. I imagine there were animals to “slop” and various things that needed trimming, etc. I know there’s a time for planting a time for harvesting and for everything there is a season, turn turn turn. This I know from the Byrds.)
So Rollie Whitman would leave my three- or four-year-old eventual mommy, Patty (soon to be Shay), in with the chickens and pigs for a good part of the day. She would play with the chicks and the worms and the corn kernels and piglets and pebbles and mud balls in said coop and wait for her older siblings to come back from the one-room schoolhouse several miles away. That experience alone is enough to drive any person nuttier than Björk or Cher. Throw in a lot of rampant alcoholism and a family that was only capable of expressing one emotion, anger, and you’ve got a recipe for weird.
My dad, Robert George Wilson, also had a pretty miserable childhood. His dad, Chester Wilson, was an alcoholic who looked like Gollum’s fat Midwestern uncle and allegedly stole his lightning rod company, Wilcor Grounding Systems, from his very own brother and made millions off of it while his brother moved back to Minnesota and had to run Wilson Brothers Auto Parts in Thief River Falls.