I first heard about
SMITH Magazine's six-word memoirs on Facebook and wrote a few of my own on
SMITH's site. The new
SMITH/Harper Perennial collection
It All Changed in an Instant used one of them.
I share a page with T.O. I'm on page 198:
It was inspired by an ancient
Tonight Show clip I once saw in which George Gobel asked Johnny Carson if he ever got the feeling that the world's a tuxedo and he's a pair of brown shoes. I wrote those little memoirs a while ago, before I started including my middle initial in everything I do to distinguish myself from other guys with the same name.
I wish the
It All Changed in an Instant editors used one of the other memoirs I wrote (like "So broke, can't afford longer sentence" or "Nothing kills boners like yacht rock") instead of the one they chose. But still, I'm honored to be in the same book with the following people whose work I've enjoyed:
Andy Borowitz, Andy Richter, Bob Odenkirk, Brian Baumgartner (
Kevin!), David Wain, Duff Goldman of
Ace of Cakes, Eugene Mirman (his heartwarming memoir is "I've fucked at least eight people"), Henry Rollins, Henry Winkler, Joe Queenan, John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, Kathy Najimy, Leonard Nimoy, Linus Roache, Margaret Cho, Neil Patrick Harris, Rick Parker, Rob Riggle, Shepard Fairey, Tommy Chong and
Sound of Young America host Jesse Thorn, who started out at the same radio station where I first deejayed.
Parker, whom I met at
San Diego Comic-Con last year, and Fairey submitted a couple of my favorite memoirs, which they drew:
Daily Show alum Riggle's memoir "I love my big, big balls" would probably get him into a heated balls-measuring contest with
a certain fellow TDS alum (I bet he'd respond with "But mine are bigger, Rob Riggle").
But my favorite memoir comes from
Lalah Hathaway, a singer like her legendary father
Donny Hathaway: "So I only get six words?"
