Spoiled Rotten America: Outrages of Everyday Life

288 Pages·2007·1.21 MB·English

by  Larry Miller

TO MY WIFE
(That’s it, and I had to. Seriously. We were out to dinner a few
months ago, and she asked how the book was coming, and I told
her it was good, and she asked about the dedication, and I said,
Well, the acknowledgments are going to be in the back, at the
end. And she said, No, the dedication. You have to have a dedica-
tion. And I said, Oh, okay, and she said, It should be to me. I didn’t
say anything right away, and she said, Really, it should. Well, we
don’t get out much, and it was a Thursday night, and I was just
starting my second drink and thinking about how later on, back
home, we might—you know. So I said, Okay. And we did. So I kind
of had to. I can’t speak for other writers, but that’s how you
get one from me.)
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION............................................................1

One ROYAL FLUSH ...............................................................5

Two SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY ..............................19

Three THE YOGURT OF WRATH ...................................31

Four MY SLACKS AT SAKS.............................................41

Five THE FIELD......................................................................57

Six I’M DREAMING...OF A
WHITE...CHRI—ER, HOLIDAYS .....................79

Seven NEVER? EVER? FOREVER? ..............................89

Eight GODFATHER III:
THE QUICKENING ..................................................101

Nine ADULTERY II:
THE QUICKENING ..................................................123

Ten DEBBIE DOES DALLAS II:
THE QUICKENING ..................................................143
Eleven WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE
IN SHOW BUSINESS..............................................163

Twelve TEACH YOUR CHILDREN
THAT LOU IS FUNNY ...........................................185

Thirteen THE FIVE LEVELS OF DRINKING .............199

Fourteen THE POETRY NOT
YET WRITTEN ...........................................................217

Fifteen DRINKING II: THE SLOWENING ................235

Sixteen JERRY ALLEN ...........................................................251

Seventeen THE QUICKENING II:
THE QUICKENING ..................................................273
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .........................................275
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CREDITS
COVER
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
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INTRODUCTION
I DON ’T KNOW ABOU T YOU, BU T I SP END HALF MY LIFE
looking at people through Norman Rockwell lenses: loving them,
seeing their decency and generosity, smiling at the foibles of their
children, feeling their sweetness and cheerful good manners in every
small encounter of the day; watching the gentle rustle of a tree in the
low, western sun and knowing, really knowing, the perfect joy of it;
and so, so grateful for the mysterious good fortune to be born here,
now, together.
The other half of the time, I look around me and think, “How
sweet it would be to kill them all.”
Do you know that feeling? Do you know what I mean? Of
course you do. We all do.
Most people swing back and forth between light and dark like a
silver-backed gorilla with nothing but time. Sometimes people act
out their good instincts. This is called charity. Sometimes they act
out their bad instincts. This is called strangling. And sometimes they
shuffle quietly from home to work and back again, simply puzzled by
it all. This is called The Rest of Us.
Remember that old game where you pull the petals off a flower
while saying, “She loves me . . . She loves me not . . . She loves
me . . . She loves me not”? (You know, t he one where we seek to
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confirm our affections by taking the most beautiful thing we can find
and then mutilating it?) I’m thinking of patenting an updated ver-
sion:“ She loves me. ..She can’t believe we ever went out ...She
loves me. ..She’s stunned by how the passage of time doesn’t make
my stories any funnier ...She loves me. ..She wants to bludgeon
me whenever I’m chewing cereal . . .”
Sunny Jim, that’s me. You, too?
I don’t know how long ago water glasses were invented, but I’ll
bet it wasn’t long before one of the designer’s cavemates held it up
and said, “Say, Og, what do you think? Is the glass half empty or half
full?” The nearest alpha probably responded with a narrow look and
a sudden, two-handed arc from one of those Geogassic bats they all
carried. Thus began our obsession with duality.
“Are you an optimist or a pessimist?” we ask each other
constantly, which would be the dumbest question in history if
it weren’t so busy being trite. I reject it, because I’m neither and
both. Don’t we understand? Macro isn’t bigger than micro; macro is
micro.
After all, what’s more noteworthy? A hundred thousand North
Koreans turning placards in unison at a stadium, or one bite of a
really good hamburger? (I know which one I’d rather have, and I’ll
bet you a signed glossy of The Dear Leader that the North Koreans
would agree.)
That’s what this book is about—the hamburger and the sta-
dium, the large and the small, the innocent and the cynical, division
and unity. The joyous sylph dancing ’round the glade, while the
plump bureaucrat glances up just in time to see Western Civilization
spiraling down like a gumball at the Guggenheim.
The American pendulum only swings to extremes. The news is
on all day, but we know less and less; there’s music in every mall, but
we don’t hear it; everyone has a phone but nothing to say. The chub-
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biest of us have the strictest diets, because we can’t learn to modulate
and moderate. It’s all or nothing. One bite of a cookie, and suddenly
you’re on a plane to Vegas with a hooker. Extremes. Contrasts.
Opposites. She loves me, she loves me not.
For centuries, the book world has been divided into fiction and
nonfiction. I’d like to propose a third category: friction. And, boy, am
I the guy for that job.
You see, to the Cranky Nitpickers of America—a club I’d join in
a second if I weren’t already its president—it’s long been understood
that the world is going to Hell in a handbasket. Concerning which,
there are three things to remember:
First, every generation in history has said the same thing since,
oh, forever.
Second. ..What in the world is a “handbasket,” anyway? Is it
significant that it rhymes with a-tisket, a-tasket? And why is hop-
ping one to Hell any worse than getting there the old-fashioned
way? I mean, at that point, I wouldn’t think it mattered.
Does anyone arrive in The Infernal Regions and buttonhole
Satan on the subject? “Now look, bub, I’m sure this is all going to get
pretty unpleasant, and probably stay that way longer than I’d like.
I’m also guessing you don’t have a very active complaint department
down here. Yes, yes, I see that poker you’re hiding, and I’ll bet I know
where it’s going, but before we start this wingding there’s something
I need to get off my chest: That trip over here in the handbasket was
no day at the beach, let me tell you. Here, look at that. See those
mesh marks? They’re probably going to scar. We’re like peaches in
my family. And while we’re on the subject, a Lubriderm concession
at the gift shop wouldn’t go amiss, either. Anything with aloe. Well,
I’m an idea man. Say, isn’t that Stalin?”
Third, and most important: Every other generation in history
was wrong. Ours really is going to Hell, handbasket and all. Luckily,
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the boatman on that gondola is as feckless as we are, and we’re not
there yet. Soon, though. Soon enough.
The world is about to see (a) a thousand years of horror, (b) a
giant battle of good and evil, or (c) a lot more of the same.
What better time for a collection of seventeen comic essays?
In any event, here they are. That’s the goal of this book, and that’s
what it’s about. To be funny. I think it is, and I hope you do, too.
Which, come to think of it, must make me an optimist.
She loves me ...She loves me not. ..
She loves me.
What other way is there to live?
—Larry Miller
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O N E

ROYAL FLUSH
MY WIFE JUST GOT A NEW DISHWASHER FOR US. SHE
didn’t tell me, she just got it. I discovered this the other day when
I came home from work and saw it being installed, but it was diffi-
cult to learn any more just then, since she was in the living room
with her friend Ilana, planning a party at our house that weekend for
twenty-seven or so Little League parents. I didn’t know about this,
either.
“Oh, you’ll love it,” she said, with a wink and a wave of her hand,
and turned back to Ilana, who was animatedly saying something
like, “I think the pasta station should go in the playroom.”
And I remember thinking, “You know, there may be some things
I disagree with about Arab society, but, on the whole, you’ve got to
admire the way they treat their women.”
The thing about the new dishwasher was, I’d just gotten used to
loading the old one. “It wasn’t cleaning well anymore,” she said after
Ilana left. “Yes, it was,” I said. “No, it wasn’t,” she said.
We could have batted this shuttlecock back and forth for a few
more hours, easy, but ultimately it would’ve led me to turning curt
and saying, “How would you know?” (Another night sleeping with
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