No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

If ever there will be an auto-biography, this is it. Personal accounts are woven throughout a hilarious narrative of the top stories of 2016. The book is a foreword, followed by an expansion of certain items into chapters of their own. Longer anecdotes and more personal material. A few delicious rants but not a single harangue.

These are among the top news stories of 2016:

1. Trump won.

2. The other side blamed Putin, who

3. Got mad.

4. I worried it was my fault. I was then writing ‘Tom Irregardless and Me,’ my first book and I licensed out to the media video of my flying fingers for reasons of cash flow. Now, I like a good shot after every meal, and I unfortunately left the bottle of vodka in plain view by the keyboard. The media jumped to conclusions. Trump himself came closest to the truth. ‘It could be Russia, it could be China, it could be some 400-pound guy in New Jersey.’ Wronnngggg! – I’m in New York, not New Jersey. And I’m not 400 pounds (yet). At the next debate, they brought out a 400 pound guy – was he there to rattle Trump? They seated him behind a skinny guy, so that he looked 600 pounds.

8. Bob Dylan accepted the Nobel Prize for literature, then ignored it, then accepted it again, then said he would send a helper to pick it up. For crying out loud, it’s the Nobel Prize, not a Tupperware dish!

12. As the campaign teapot was boiling over, Billy Fucillo launched yet another bombastic car ad with: “Folks, everyone’s talking about the election, but I’m not one of them!” Yes! I bought 15 Hyundais that day out of gratitude. All was forgiven! Even though he desecrated Also Sprach Zarathustra elsewhere, ripping the needle from the record when the ad was done. It was hardly his fault – they all do it. Richard Strauss, from the grave, has cursed the day Stanley Kubrick ever thought to use his little ditty for ‘2001 – A Space Odyssey’ because everybody since has latched on to sell cars, carpets and mattresses.

13. Oh, and also during the year, a mattress company began using a guru to contort on their products, strongly suggesting that the purpose of life was to sell mattresses. My wife and I bought one of them, for we are moving in with Pop. It’s time. Our own place we’ll let out to cultivators, like the man Jesus told of. Surely they’ll take good care of it.

21. A spate of celebrities died to much lamentation. I borrowed Paul’s time machine to see what people had said about my death. “He didn’t have a nice bone in his body,” said one person. “He’d take the shirt off your back,” said another. ‘Good riddance!’ said Genral Garrett on CBS This Morning. I burned rubber heading home.

23. Rio hosted the Olympics.

25. Police shot some people and nation-wide riots ensued.

27. Someone launched a program to search for and destroy ‘fake news.’ I was ecstatic. I had become so thoroughly fed up with looking like an ass when my blockbuster exposé would be itself exposed as resting upon a pillar of fake news. I broke out the vodka to celebrate. But while I was yet celebrating, I forgot to clean the cat’s litter box and my wife let me hear about it – it’s not the first time that cat has made me trouble. To prove my repentance was genuine, I posted online: “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. I hold myself accountable. I take responsibility. I have reformed my ways. I will never, never, ever forget to clean the cat box again. I promise. You can depend upon me.” It only made things worse. My wife saw the words the next day - Facebook had stamped them ‘fake news!’

30. Thoroughly upended by a villainous year, I opened the Christmas card from my attorney*: ‘We wish, but by no means guarantee, you a Merry Christmas.’