Semi-Pro

Big news everybody! Your humble correspondent has decided to take the plunge and have some of his "work" published.

Someone I know is starting up a Kindle (ebook) Publishing arm and asked me to come along. He'll do the actual hard work of getting my "work" out there to the public while my job will be to come up with enough booger jokes to make Dave Barry jealous.

Actually, during a pitch meeting I had with him, I threw out some ideas I had for some books, which would make both of us insanely rich (or just insane).

• Teenage vampires and werewolves in a town in the Pacific Northwest.

• Teenage wizards at a wizard college in England. The protagonist has a scar on his forehead

• A man beats a beautiful young woman for sexual pleasure but it is okay because he is rich and handsome. 

• A teenage girl kills a woman for her shoes and with three friends look to kill again.

• The creation of the universe until the end of time.

Unfortunately, it seems that all of those ideas have been turned into books. However, I have some other ideas.

I will be working on a book about growing up in East Cobb County (Georgia) in the seventies called Wierd.

It was a time in which East Cobb went from being the outer hinterlands of Atlanta (Neal Boortz used to say Cobb County was the armpit of Georgia) to a fancy-smancy suburb. 

For some reason, everyone I went to school with, even the brainiacs, misspelled the word "weird". (Also, for some reason, this word appeared a lot in my yearbook as in "Alan, you ain't too wierd. Ha, Ha. Seriously, don't call.") Hence the title: Wierd.

This book will have some audience participation. If anyone has a NON-LIBELOUS story about Wheeler High School and the students in the 70's, please feel free to message me on Facebook or leave a comment at the end of this blog.

Another idea I have is called My Presidents in which I review the Presidents from Eisenhower to Obama. It is hard writing a good Eisenhower joke, by the way.

I'm also tossing around an idea called Father of The Groom. As everyone knows, my son is getting married and my idea is to give fathers of the groom some advice on that big day because all I've heard is "Show up and sit down".

However, just to get a little personal here, I really appreciate the nice comments people make about the blog and my writing.  I'm sort of like a humor writing version of "Mr. Tanner".

"Mr. Tanner" was a song by the late Harry Chapin. Young people today have never experienced a Harry Chapin song. Harry Chapin's songs were very long, depressing and made you want to step out in front of traffic. He made Leonard Cohen seem like Jerry Lewis.

In one song, he was driving a taxi and met an old lover that was really rich but she really wasn't happy. Then in the next song, he was rich but had to take a taxi to her shabby apartment.

Of course, his most famous song is about ignoring his kid and then when he gets old his kid ignores him. Or his kid drives a taxi. I don't know, they all kind of blended together.

"Mr. Tanner" is about a dry cleaner in Dayton, Ohio that was a good opera singer. Everybody told him he was great and one day he went to New York to make his debut. In any other decade but the 70's, the song would have ended Mr. Tanner becoming the greatest singer EVER in America. But since this was the 70's, Mr. Tanner's debut fell flat and he went back to Dayton to drive a taxi.

But the refrain of "Mr. Tanner" has always stuck with me.

But music was his life, it was not his livelihood,
and it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart and he sang from his soul.
He did not know how well he sang; It just made him whole.

I'm sort of like Mr. Tanner except I write jokes when discussing accounts. Humor is my life, not my livelihood. It makes me feel happy and good when I can get people to laugh. I joke from my heart and I joke from my soul.  I don't know how funny I am. It just makes me whole.

And I'm hoping this endeavor will make me a whole lot of money.