I am in a rock and roll band. We’ve made an album and it’s very good. The critics like it a lot, and one of them, a friend of mine who owes me ten dollars even called me a genius in the review he wrote for www.shityouneverheardof.com. I’m also multi-talented. I wrote a book called While I’m Dead…Feed the Dog. It’s really good and critics like it too, and a friend of mine who owes me ten dollars compared me to J.D. Salinger if he had a sense of humor on www.shityouneverreadorheardof.com. I sold the movie rights to Hollywood and he’s gang-raped it into a movie called Behaving Badly. I have a friend who writes movie reviews for www.shityouneverwatched.com, but he wouldn’t take the ten bucks and the review he wrote said it made Revenge of the Nerds 2 look like a classic.
Like most people in rock and roll bands who don’t have stripper girlfriends, to sponge off of, and like most people who trust Hollywood to live up to his contract, I have a day job – or in my case a night job. I deliver pizzas for Papa John’s.
It’s nine o’clock on Thursday and I’m just about to deliver another crappy pizza to another gourmet challenged asshole who thinks the dollar tip he is giving me is really going to make a fucking difference in my life when my iPhone rings.
“Hello?”
“Hello? Is this Ric Thibault?” a tired sounding voice asks.
“I’m on my way with your pizza…”
“I’m calling about a legal matter, not a pizza. Is this Ric Thibault, the author of While I’m Dead…Feed the Dog?”
“I can explain everything – Roger Debris and Hollywood deliberately fucked the movie as part of some “Springtime for Hitler” tax sche…”
“I understand your frustration but don’t really care. My name is Jeff Bezos, and I’m the CEO of Amazon.com. and the reason I’m calling is as part of a settlement agreement I signed with the Justice Department concerning price fixing on e-books, I have to call every author of every book my company has sold and see if you’re willing to accept my company’s offer. You’re book is number 177,850 in our Kindle store, and I’m willing to offer you the choice of a check for one cent in damages, which would cost my company seven hundred forty-six dollars in accounting time to produce or if you sign a release I’ll give you a free Amazon Fire Phone, our new cellular phone which sells for $199.”
“Fire Phone? How many rounds does it hold? I graduated from school quite a few years ago, but if it holds enough, maybe I could go back and blow away a few classrooms of…”
“The Fire Phone isn’t a gun,” Bezos interrupts, “ – but thanks for the suggestion and we’ll see if we can get a Bushmaster app in development – it’s a really cool 3-D phone which does things your iPhone can’t.”
“You mean it works most of the time?”
“No, our phone’s exclusive to AT&T, so no, it’s not that revolutionary… but what makes the Fire Phone so special is it has a feature where you see something you like, you push a button – and it uses recognition software to find it online and not only lets you know where you can buy it, but what the best price is.”
“That’s interesting, but I think I’d rather take the…”
“Before you make your decision, let me tell you, this is going to be the hippest most prestigious phone you can carry. You’ll be amongst the first in Hollywood to have one and the envy of all…”
“Sold.. I’ll take the phone!”
* * *
It’s Friday morning and UPS is at my door with my new Amazon Fire Phone. I drive down to AT&T and stand in line for an hour to activate it. I walk out the door only to see Megan Fox getting out of a limousine. I take out my Fire Phone and press the price button.
I glance at the Fire Phone’s screen and am impressed as it quickly responds, “You have entered a picture of Megan Fox,” It show a stock picture of Megan Fox and announces she is, “available for ten million dollars from….” She’s out of my price range and I don’t even bother reading further – and instead turn my attention back to Megan Fox who just as I look up stumbles as she steps on a piece of dog shit on the sidewalk. Seeing a possibility of making some money by selling a picture of Megan Fox covered in dog shit to TMZ, I snap another picture from my Fire Phone.
I look for my camera roll app to check out the picture, but by accident hit the price button. The phone responds, “You have entered a picture of dog shit, ‘Dog shit’ is the generic term for Behaving Badly, a movie which can be bought by any masochist for 7 Pounds Sterling on Amazon.co.uk or downloaded for free from any pirate torrent.”
Dejectedly I go back to my car where there’s still a box of Papa John’s pizza which I forgot to deliver last night. I take a picture of it. “You have entered a picture of shit. ‘Shit is generic term for Behaving Badly, a movie which can be bought by any masochist for 7 Pounds Sterling on Amazon.co.uk or downloaded for free from any pirate torrent.”