How to Make Dreams Come True
A friend recently brought it to my attention that All Kinds of Funny is ranked on Substack (#99 on paid humor, as of this morning). “How’s that make you feel?” he asked me.
My first feeling was gratitude. It’s nice to be on a list, especially one that’s a curation of comedy and an engine for dopamine. I’ve used All Kinds of Funny to make people laugh, feel joy, and forget, if only for a moment, that we’re all hurtling towards physical death and spiritual dismemberment. I mean, if I can’t be grateful for that…
The gratitude, though, got pushed aside by my ego. My punk ass ego was like, “#99?! That’s it! All this work, and we barely break the top 100?! I wanna talk to a manager. Do you have any idea who I am? I’ve done local modeling for Walmart!”
And when I pointed out to my ego that we were #128 on free humor, he just said, “Load the gun.”
“We don’t have a gun,” I said.
“I bet if we had a gun, we’d climb those rankings pretty quickly.”
This is when my common sense stepped in and reminded us that we don’t even really want rankings. Sure, they’re nice, and it feels good to be recognized, but it’s nothing to aim at.
This got me thinking a little more deeply about what I want for this little project, and I’ve started to scribble down some goals. I’m going to list them here because of something funny that happened a while back related to our house.
When our kids were in grade school, my wife and I dragged them to open houses. It got their wiggles out, and it got all of us dreaming about the house we’d like to own some day. We got bored with regular tract homes and started treating ourselves to some higher-priced, appointment-only “Property Showcases.” It was fun to see the realtors’ faces when we pulled up in our Hyundai Santa Fe.
One house in particular made our souls stir. Imagine if a château had a vagina and a rustic cabin had a penis, and the two of them had a romantic affair that gave birth to a dream home on 12 acres. It had a kitchen the size of Montana and a library with floor-to-ceiling shelves and a ladder on rails that must have been designed by the toymaker Geppetto. There were horse stables, a grape vineyard, a cedar tub jacuzzi on the master balcony, and a farmhand’s quarters. If Hemingway knocked up Coco Chanel, this is the house they would have built.
“So what’s your budget?” the realtor asked. He had listed the home at around $5 million.
“This is pretty much our ceiling,” I said.
We drove home, changed on a cellular level. The house was everything we wanted from this life, and because I spend most of my time in my imagination, I printed out a deed for the property, as if we already owned it, and in the section designated Use of Property, I wrote “For family, friends, creative pursuits, and general human improvement.” I signed it, dated it, and stuck it in my wallet.
We ended up buying another house a few years later, the house we’re still in, and it’s as if someone took that $5 million dollar architectural love child and scaled it down to something reasonable, something perfect for our family.
Fast forward to a fishing trip. My wife and I stopped to buy fishing licenses, and the clerk asked for my ID. I dug it out of my wallet and found that property deed I wrote up. It was dated June 12, which was the exact date that our new home closed escrow.
I know, I know. I count myself among the skeptics who normally roll their eyes at these kinds of coincidences. But it was still fun, and our skin felt like it was made of champagne for the next few days.
Anyhow, in that spirit, I’m going to detail my dreams for All Kinds of Funny so that the world gets busy making them come true. Here goes:
I would like for a member of my audience to get an All Kinds of Funny tattoo, something like this:
I would like to be invited to open for David Sedaris, preferably at Carnegie Hall, but that’s hardly a dealbreaker.
I would like to earn enough money to fund the research that interests me. I would start by throwing money at veterinary scientists on a mission to extend the life expectancy of dogs, specifically Miss Millie Butterbuns:
The most bootiful. And maybe even Captain Banjo Butterbuns, provided his gross lapse in judgment (to say nothing of taste) was a one-time slip.
We named him Banjo, but we also could have named him Sourdough. I would also fund research to decrease the life expectancy of tailgaters, fascists, anyone who thinks it’s a good idea to microwave fish, adult bullies, Kanye West apologists, bigots, flat earthers, people who use their speakerphones when they’re in bathroom stalls, and anyone who starts a sentence with ‘No offense, but…’
I would like to grow this All Kinds of Funny project so that when I finish production on the film I’m writing, directing, and producing, it will have a built-in audience.
I would like just enough public notoriety so that my kids respect me without me having to explain to them why they should respect me.
I would like to run a humor/memoir workshop with some of the people who read this substack.
I would like to receive a cease-and-desist letter from the Westboro Baptist Church because you’re defined by your enemies as much as you’re defined by your friends.
I would like to be a show runner on my own anthology show called All Kinds of Funny. One week it would be light, feel-good fare, the next it would be the razor’s edge of suspenseful hilarity—like when a man’s home is infested with bats and all he has to fight the off are a BB gun.
I would like to encourage people to read and write more, funny stuff, sure, but also horrors and tragedies and absurdities and flights of fancy.
I would like my headstone to read, “He made a lot of us laugh.” Not all of us but a lot of us. There are definitely people out there I do not want to make laugh. Like serial killers or Russian oligarchs or people who cut in line at the grocery store.
I’m sure this list of All Kinds of Funny dreams will grow and evolve, but this is a solid start. Who knows if any of this will happen? When I wrote up that deed for the rustic château, the universe played along—it played it a little differently, but it played along. So we’ll consider this list my new deed. My little contract with the cosmos. And sure, maybe that Substack ranking never cracks single digits… but as long as I can make someone crack a smile, it will have been worth it.
And if you want to contribute to the dreams, consider upgrading your subscription to support the laughter. It’s what this world needs. :)
And if you’re in the mood for characters who dream along more salacious and morally corrupt lines…
I think most of your goals are quite admirable.
Are you actually writing a movie? Very cool if so. Although Hollywood is a fickle beast, at best.
Bad news. Nothing you do will earn your children's respect. No. Thing.
Extending the life of (most) dogs is an admirable goal. (A few years ago, I was staying at my s-i-l and b-i-l's place. I get up to go to the bathroom and when I come back, their 70 pound Boxer is lying in the bed. I give Daisy the stink eye, and state very firmly "I am not Jesse" (their son). Daisy looks at me for a moment and then slinks off.)
I cannot imagine owning 12 acres. I'm on almost 1/2 an acre and I can barely keep up. (A family member bought an actual mansion a few years ago. When we toured it and came to the library, one of my children (who's as snarky as I am) asked sotto voce, has he ever read a book? I'm pretty sure no, was my reply.)
Tattoos! My youngest is a graphic designer, so by law, he has three tattoos (one for each member of the family). Personally, I am against all forms of self inflicted pain.
My left nut is #50 in paid humor here.