GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #276: TRUTH BE TOLD

It's a hard truth to admit to. I've been writing stories for a long time. In fact, as of this Sunday, I will have been writing stories for thirty-three years. Every day writing. Every day editing. But when my grandfather fell ill and died, I dried up. There were a few other factors, one of which I have been strictly forbidden from talking about, but that was the main one. Days went by without writing. Sometimes weeks. I hid in a bottle for a while. I had a nervous breakdown. Shit got horrible for my creative life.


I tried to get myself together, but I did something stupid. I tackled a very, very personal thing for me and tried to turn it into a novel. Everyone advised me against doing so. I should have listened. Sure, I got my 2,000 words a day on it, but I fucking loathed every minute of it. I finished the first draft, and I was disgusted with it. Maybe someday I will try birthing it again, but not anytime soon.


I continued writing after that, but it was not a regular thing. I didn't like any of my output. Speaking as someone who wrote every day for decades, it horrified me.


Do you know what turned me around? If you follow me on Twitter and Facebook, you know that I've been working on this horrendously offensive thing. It might even be the most offensive thing ever written in America. I offended myself writing it.


Those of you who know me really well know that I thrive on being offended. Not like other people, who become offended and feel that their voice matters enough that they spout it on social media. Being offended, for me, is a rarity. I've led a fucked up life. It takes a lot to offend me, so when someone pulls it off, I'm awed and impressed. The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum deeply offended me. It's one of my favorite books ever. The same for A Serbian Film. I'm talking art, not real life. It's easy to offend me in real life. The idea that we, as Americans, are the bad guys in the world right now offends me to a ridiculous level.


But we're talking art right now. I offended myself with this thing, which surprised me and made me happy. I loved working on this thing every day. The first draft is done, and it got me back into writing. Now I've written several stories that I'm in love with. I'm working on a novel that pleases me greatly and a short story that thrills me. Without this super-offensive thing, I would not be where I am today.


I'm not publishing that one under my own name, by the way. That's how offended I am. Some day you all might read it and be just as offended. Please know one thing, though: that piece of fiction saved my ability to write. It brought me back from the brink. The world will hate it (and my pen name will get a shit-ton of death threats), but this horrendous thing saved me.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . . . A review of LEGIT

Considering his lifestyle and the stories told about him, comedian Jim Jefferies should have been dead a long time ago. His stand-up is incredible, and his sensibilities are, while not exactly condoned by society, spot-on. What with all the booze and drugs he’s done, he should have certainly gone the route of Bill Hicks and died at an early age.



Nope. Now that he’s got a kid, he’s cleaned himself up, and now that he has a TV show on FX, it’s probably a good idea for him to keep his shit together. But just because he’s clean doesn’t mean LEGIT is a wishy-washy, pale imitation of his stand-up material. In fact, the premier episode kicks things off with one of his most questionable jokes.


If you haven’t heard his album, ALCOHOLOCAUST, you should do so before watching the show. At the conclusion of this one, he tells a story about taking his dying, wheelchair-bound friend to an Australian whorehouse so he doesn’t die a virgin. It’s a very detailed story, very offensive, and very, very funny. This is the subject of the first episode of LEGIT. The friend, Billy, played with mischievous glee by D.J. Qualls, is brought to Vegas instead (since the setting for the show is America), along with his brother Steve (played with a neurotic frenzy by Dan Bakkedahl), make for great awkward situations, especially since their parents are involved. Jim Jefferies, playing himself, staggers through the episode in a drunken stupor, and every single thing he says is either incredibly offensive, harshly abrasive, or just fucking dirty as all hell. One way or the other (or the other), it’s all funny as shit.


In the second episode, Jim decides to break Billy out of the hospital where he’s waiting to die. Inadvertently, they take along a guy with Down’s Syndrome, an uncanny ability to bowl a perfect game on Wii, and an unhealthy obsession with the Donald. The authorities think he’s kidnapped the poor guy, but when they send a nurse to pick up Rodney, she hangs out and gets drunk and/or high with them, instead. No subject is considered taboo on this show. Jefferies, who once told a joke on stage about a guy getting killed in a war zone, even goes as far as to joke with a suicidal Billy later on in the second episode.


If you like your humor in nasty, offensive packages, you need to start watching this show religiously. If you don’t think laughing at dying people in wheelchairs is funny, well, go fuck yourself. It’s all in how you look at it. Besides, even in the throes of the ugliest humor you can imagine, Jefferies does it from a place of love and good intentions. Billy is his friend, and he wants to help him enjoy the rest of his all-too-short life here on earth.


LEGIT is on FX on Thursdays at 9:30 pm Central Time. And don’t forget that Jefferies has an awesome backlog of stand-up comedy. Get on this shit, just in case he relapses and dies of a drug overdose. Then you can say you were a fan before he became posthumously famous.