I Even Funnier Read online

  Really? Wow.

  Now Mrs. Kressin, the drama club adviser, who’s a little flaky and dresses like she might be an elf on weekends, comes up to me.

  “Be not afraid of greatness, James,” she says very, well, dramatically. “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them whilst in the Athens of America treading the boards.”

  “Huh?” I say.

  “Don’t worry, I speak Shakespeare,” says geekmeister Pierce, stepping in to translate. “Mrs. Kressin just said you’re awesome because of what you did up in Boston.”

  “Oh. Thanks!”

  I pump Mrs. Kressin’s hand. She curtsies. I guess that’s what an elfin princess would do.

  A lot of the teachers want to tell me their favorite jokes. To be honest, I don’t write any of them down in my notebook.

  All in all, it’s a great way to start the new week.

  Until lunchtime, when Vincent O’Neil shows up in the cafeteria.

  “Sorry I couldn’t catch your act in Boston, Grimm. I was busy. Organizing my toenail clippings. I guess you won on the sympathy vote, huh?”

  “No,” says Gilda, blood rising to her cheeks in my defense. “He won because, unlike you, Jamie is funny.”

  “Really? Well, here are a couple of cripple jokes I’m working into my act. Figure I could go onstage with a pair of crutches.”

  “For the last time, Vincent—”

  He cuts Gilda off.

  “What do you call a woman with one leg?”

  “Ilene,” grunts Gaynor.

  “What? You’ve heard it before. Did you steal my Ilene joke, Grimm?”

  “Why would anybody steal a joke that horrible?” asks Pierce.

  “Yeah,” says Gilda. “Why don’t you make like a tree and leave?”

  “Oh, oh, oh!” O’Neil sputters. “You stole that one, too?”

  And finally, for the first time ever, our whole table actually cracks up because of something Vincent O’Neil said.

  Chapter 44

  COOL NEWS

  On our way home from school, Gilda fills me in on all the latest school gossip.

  And then she drops a bombshell.

  “Suzie Orolvsky and Malibu Ken are no longer an item.”

  “Who?”

  “That new kid from California. Ethan Prettyboy. He and Suzie are over.”

  Okay, I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but I am suddenly deliriously happy. If Cool Girl has broken up with her Hollywood hunk, maybe I have a chance. Maybe we’ll even kiss again.

  “Apparently,” Gilda continues, “Suzie really wanted to hop on a train and come see you up in Boston on Saturday. But Ethan didn’t want to miss that picklefest in Brooklyn.”

  “Wow,” I say. “I can’t believe Cool Girl and Cool Guy broke up.”

  “Who’re these cool people?”

  “That’s what I call Suzie and Ethan.” I tap my head. “In my mind.”

  “Oh.” A queasy frown wiggles across Gilda’s face. “You think she’s cool?”

  “I guess. Yeah. I mean, the way she acts. The way she looks. The way—”

  “Okay, okay. I get it. She’s Cool Girl.”

  And I’m Dumb Boy. I’ve hurt Gilda’s feelings.

  “You’re cool, too,” I say, without thinking.

  (Note to self: Next time, think.)

  Before I can explain, Gilda turns away.

  “This is my corner. Have a great night, Jamie. Congratulations on being the most famous person to ever go to Long Beach Middle School.”

  And she basically runs away.

  Girls. They make being a guy very, very difficult. Sort of like being on the bomb squad. Do I snip the red wire or the blue wire or just wait and see what blows up in my face next?

  I decide to take a little detour and head over to the boardwalk to think about how I can fix things up with Gilda, who really is a great girl friend—as in, a friend who is also a girl.

  But then I see her.

  Cool Girl. Sitting all by herself on what I like to call our kissing bench.

  She looks so sad.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey.”

  “You okay?”

  “Not really.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Okay.”

  And we just sit there, not talking to each other, for like fifteen minutes.

  And then Suzie says, “You’re nice, Jamie.”

  “So are you.”

  “Not according to Ethan.”

  “Well, what does he know? He goes to pickle festivals. I hear he drools whenever somebody says the word gherkin.”

  Suzie smiles. And then she laughs.

  We don’t kiss. Or hold hands. Or say much else.

  But I think Suzie is glad I dropped by the boardwalk. I guess even Cool Girls get the blues.

  And it’s a comedian’s job to chase those blues away.

  Chapter 45

  MAD ABOUT MADISON AVENUE

  Uncle Frankie and I hold a strategy session for the semifinals in Las Vegas.

  We decide I need to broaden my horizons, to take in some new experiences so I can develop a ton of fresh material.

  “Face it, kiddo,” says Uncle Frankie. “You got lucky winging it up in Boston. To win out in Vegas against the best of the best, you’re gonna need to bring your A game and a trunkload of new routines. Lucky for you, I know somebody who can get us into the perfect place to work on some new material.”

  Turns out one of Uncle Frankie’s regulars at the diner has a nephew who works in—medieval trumpet fanfare, please—advertising! A comic gold mine. “He’s what they call an account executive at J. Walter Thompson, one of the biggest ad agencies in the world. And since this coming Friday is a school holiday, we’re going to his office in the city.”

  “What’s an account executive do?” I ask.

  Uncle Frankie shrugs. “Nobody really knows, Jamie. But they all wear suits, so it must be something important. And probably hilarious.”

  Friday morning, we hop on the Long Island Rail Road and head into Manhattan.

  J. Walter Thompson’s New York offices are on Lexington Avenue, even though everybody thinks the entire advertising business is on Madison Avenue. (And that’s why, Uncle Frankie explains, some people refer to the whole industry as Madison Avenue. Maybe they need a new map.)

  Anyway, the offices look like a really cool futuristic hotel on the moon, with lots of bright colors and glass-walled meeting rooms that remind me of goldfish bowls. Without the water. Or the fish.

  And Uncle Frankie is right—the place is truly hilarious (even though I don’t think the people working there know it).

  In one conference room, extremely intense people sit around a table and point at charts. They’re saying super-serious stuff about fast-food joints, which they call QSRs. It stands for Quick Service Restaurants… or Quality Sure Reeks. One of those.

  In another room, creative people in blue jeans and lumberjack shirts are presenting a storyboard (they told me it’s kind of like a comic strip that shows what a TV commercial might look like) to several people in suits.

  The people in suits are frowning.

  “I don’t know. Do we really want to say our new skin moisturizer for pets is the cat’s meow? Won’t that offend the dogs in our target audience?”

  “We could focus-group it,” suggests an account executive with gray hair.

  “We sure could,” says an assistant account executive with no hair.

  “Focus groups are good,” says a junior account coordinator with a whole head of hair.

  “We love focus groups,” say all the clients.

  The two creative types holding the storyboard look like they might cry.

  A focus group, I find out, is where a bunch of average, ordinary people talk about a product or what’s wrong with a commercial while advertising people watch them from behind a one-way mirror and take notes.

&nbs
p; But what’s really funny about advertising is how serious everybody is—especially about trucks and cars. J. Walter Thompson has a small test track on the top floor, where cars and pickups zip around while company writers try to come up with new words for fast or rugged.

  These people are even serious about acne cream.

  “We’re not selling pimple remover,” says a lady in a business suit. “We’re selling confidence in a tube.”

  Hey, if that’s what acne cream can do for a guy, sign me up. I could use some confidence in a tube in Las Vegas.

  I wonder if it works on armpits, too?

  Chapter 46

  AND IN OTHER NEWS…

  I’m cranking away like crazy on my Vegas routines, filling brand-new notebooks with ideas and jumping-off points. For instance, confidence in a tube. I could riff on that for hours. I mean, what else could they put in a tube? Happiness? Boredom? Oh, wait. Boredom in a tube is TV.…

  Fortunately, Gilda has volunteered to help me turn my material into what she calls solid gold.

  Yes, she has forgiven me for my Cool Girl goof-up.

  Or maybe she remembers how I (in a fit of improvisational fury) called her hot onstage in Boston. Maybe hot is better than cool when you’re a girl.

  Anyway, I’m glad Gilda is in my corner. She’s a pretty good critic and coach.

  “Okay,” Gilda says one day after school, “let’s look at what Letterman and Leno do.”

  “Well, they usually come out and do a monologue of jokes at the start of their shows.”

  “Exactly. And what’s the monologue about?”

  “I dunno. Stuff. Whatever happened that day.”

  Gilda touches a finger to her nose. “Bingo. Current events.” She pulls a newspaper out of her backpack. “You ever hear of a comedian named Mort Sahl?”

  “Sure. Instead of doing one-liners, he’d just walk onstage with that day’s newspaper and go.”

  Gilda hands me the paper. “Go!” she says.

  “Really?”

  “Go.”

  “This is the Style section.…”

  “Go!”

  “Okay.” I scan the headlines.

  MODEL WEARS MOST UNFLATTERING DRESS EVER

  And I go.

  “I don’t know if you people heard about this demon dress in New York City. Apparently, it came alive and started saying stuff like ‘Yes, I make you look fat. I also make you look dumb. Why dumb? Because you’re wearing me, the most unflattering dress ever.’ ”

  Gilda’s grinning her face off. “Exactly. Just do that a couple of times a day,” she suggests. “Find a random headline and do something wacky with it.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “Phineas and Ferb,” says Gilda. “Beavis and Butt-Head. What makes these people funny?”

  “Well, for one thing, they’re not people. They’re cartoons.”

  “More, please.”

  “Well, Beavis and Butt-Head are like a pair of six-year-olds trapped inside the bodies of teenagers.”

  “You mean they’re idiots.”

  “Yeah. That’s why they’re funny. Everybody thinks they’re smarter than two idiots like Beavis and Butt-Head.”

  Gilda nods. “They’re rude and ugly idiots, too.”

  “That’s even funnier. Beavis and Butt-Head say whatever’s on their minds with no editing. Just like Cool Girl.”

  Gilda rolls her eyes. “Again with the Cool Girl?”

  “No, I’m just saying…”

  “What? Suzie Orolvsky would be the ‘hot chick’ in your ‘hot red Staaang’ instead of me if you knew how to pronounce her last name?”

  I smile.

  For one thing, it’s nice to know Gilda remembers what I said about her in Boston.

  For another, she just gave me an awesome idea for a bit.

  “That’s great,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Picking a girlfriend based on how easy it is to pronounce her name. I mean, it’s hard enough for guys to call girls without getting all tangled up trying to say their names. ‘Uh, hello, is this, uh, Onyi Nwokeji? Er, Onyay Nowaykeyjee. Onion Nwookiee.’ Or what if they have a horrible last name and you have to meet their parents? ‘Oh, hello, Mr. and Mrs. Buttington. Fanny has told me so much about you.’ ”

  Gilda’s laughing and shaking her head. “Fanny Buttington? That’s just dumb.”

  “Yep,” I say proudly. “Beavis-and-Butt-Head dumb.”

  Chapter 47

  SPEAKING OF DUMB…

  In the middle of my intense training for Las Vegas, Long Beach Middle School decides to toss a monkey wrench into my well-oiled comedy machine.

  And by monkey wrench, I mean report card.

  It’s not close to what it should be, unless you have a fondness for the third and fourth letters of the alphabet.

  “Ha!” says Stevie when he sees all the Cs and Ds lined up in a tidy grid. “You’re supposed to be tutoring me?”

  Even worse, my “effort” grades are pretty crummy, too.

  Uncle Frankie shakes his head when I show it to him.

  His yo-yo stops spinning. Just kind of droops sadly on its string.

  “This is bad, Jamie.”

  “I know. But, well, I’ve been focusing on my act and—”

  “You should’ve been focusing on your schoolwork, too. They call that multitasking. Like flipping burgers while looping-the-loop. To make it in this world, kiddo, you’ve got to be able to handle more than one thing at a time. I don’t like doing this, but… Jamie, you’re grounded.”

  I have never seen Uncle Frankie look so disappointed in me.

  “Are you taking back the Mustang, too?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway. But no more comedy rehearsals, no more field trips to scout out new material, no more nothing—not until you buckle down and get these grades up.”

  To make it official, we pay a visit to the Smileys.

  “I agree with your uncle Frankie, Jamie,” says Mrs. Smiley. “And I’m speaking for Mr. Kosgrov, too.”

  “How about Ol’ Smiler?” I ask. “Does the dog get a vote? Because I think he might be on my side. I used to let him lick my gruel bowl.”

  Nobody laughs.

  Not even Ol’ Smiler. He kind of groans and flops on the floor with a disappointed sigh.

  That night, Uncle Frankie comes into my room for a man-to-man talk.

  “Look, Jamie, you probably think we’re all being pretty hard on you. But getting good grades is your primary job right now. It’s your meat and potatoes. Doing comedy, performing in Vegas, that’s the extra stuff. The gravy.”

  “But comedy is my life.”

  “I know. And when you have a dream, you should chase after it with everything you’ve got. But, and this is a very big but…”

  (I would’ve laughed at that very big but except I’m not supposed to be thinking about comedy or butt jokes until my grades improve.)

  “… even when you’re dreaming, you need to take care of your primary responsibilities. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. I’m glad we had this little talk.”

  “Uncle Frankie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The Las Vegas semifinals are only four weeks away.”

  “Good. You have a whole month to turn some of those Cs and Ds into As and Bs.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Uncle Frankie pauses, then shakes his head. “No Vegas, kiddo. Sorry.”

  PART THREE

  Viva Las Vegas—or Should I Say, Hasta La Vista, Las Vegas?

  Chapter 48

  NOSE-TO-THE-GRINDSTONE TIME

  For the next three weeks, it’s all schoolwork, all the time.

  I try not to think funny thoughts. I put down the joke books and pick up the textbooks. I don’t even read the funny pages in the Sunday newspaper.

  Cramming for my American history exam, I realize I now know a bunch of stuff that I’ll probably forget the day after I take the test. Like the names of every presid
ent of the United States in order (plus the fact that Warren G. Harding’s middle name was Gamaliel). I’m not sure how much more I can squeeze into my brain at this point.

  I’m also pushing Stevie Kosgrov like crazy, trying to drag him across the finish line from an F to maybe a C- or a D+.

  Stevie does not wish to be dragged. In fact, he is still threatening me with serious bodily harm.

  “Don’t even think about making me think, Grimm. It hurts my head.”

  I try to explain to Stevie that his brain is like any other muscle. “Sure, it’ll be sore when you use it for the first time. But the more you work with it, the less pain you’ll feel.”

  And then Stevie explains all the pain he is planning to inflict on my head. With his fists.

  But we both need to ace our semester exams for me to make it to Las Vegas. Stevie’s parents, my legal guardians, are the ones who have to sign the consent form for me to take the flight out west and appear on TV. That’s right: The semifinals of the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic competition will be a television show like America’s Got Talent or American Idol. Millions of people will be watching.

  So I keep pushing.

  “Okay, Stevie, memorize this sentence: How I wish I could calculate pi.”

  “Why?”

  “It’ll help you remember the first decimals of pi.”

  “Oh, yeah? How?” He cracks his knuckles.

  “The number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit in pi: three one four one five nine two.”

  I think Stevie is actually taking it in. I can see his lips moving.

  “Here’s another: I Viewed Xerxes Loping Carelessly Down Mountains. That gives you the order of Roman numerals: I, V, X, L, C, D, M.”

  Because I make studying a game where Stevie learns a few tricks that’ll help him beat the test and his teachers, he actually starts getting into it. Pretty soon, he’s teaching me.