Famous

A long time ago I wrote a thing called the Ole Bald Angus Manifesto.

On a forum.

Where the Famous Janey was posting.

And the Manifesto was all about how I didn't want to be famous, sorta as a pig-tail pulling thing on "the Famous" Janey, which is always fun to do, 'cause she's a very serious person and a great straight man who also has the capacity to explode into hilarious and ingenious monologues.

But I was also being serious at the same time.

'Cause my gentle giant of a godfather, the cool-ass friend-of-the-family Uncle I got that was my real dad's buddy in Vietnam and one of the few human beings from real life that I actually look up to 'cause he was always more of a father to me than my real dad was, the one that all the kids loved especially because he always pretended to hate kids in a funny way, the one who shared his Groo Comics with me and taught me to like Conan, the guy that was the first dude to have Cable TV in the hobbit-like hippy neighborhood I grew up in where everybody partied and drove speedboats around on the river and played volleyball and set off fireworks every night, that guy, told me this thing once, when I was younger.

I said something about how I wanted to get rich and famous and steal him away from his job as a Truck Driver or something so we could travel around the world and party.

And he said something like, "if you got famous then I probably wouldn't like you anymore."

He meant it as a joke, he was the kinda guy that hardly ever laughed out loud but his eyes twinkled like Santa Claus when he thought something was funny.

But its things like that that are where the most wisdom is hidden sometimes.

That was a pretty serious course correction for me, I had to realign all of my atoms after that.

'Cause of a joke.

And I like myself better this way.

Oh, I learned my lesson five hundred times over the hard way, too, don't get me wrong, I'm the kinda guy that learns the most from my own mistakes, a good percentage of me is made out of scar tissue from all the stupid stuff I've done over the years, but that bit of wisdom about being famous has always proven right.

Its better to be rich than to be poor, but I'd rather be poor than famous.

That's Gypsy Wisdom, there.

And this world ain't so tough that I need fame to get what I want out of it.