People always ask me which of my characters I would save if they were all drowning? My heavens, that’s like asking Hugh Hefner which of his registered nurses he prefers to cut and pre-chew his food for him. It’s almost an impossible thing to answer. But I suppose that if I had to choose, it would probably be a toss-up between Jiminy Glick and—oh, give me a break, Ed Grimley, and that’s no lie!
Born in 1977 on the stage of Second City Toronto, Ed not only helped me through some fraught moments with Nancy early in our relationship but also went on to have “a very decent time, I must say” on SCTV, Saturday Night Live, and even his own very hip Hanna-Barbera animated series, The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley, which ran on NBC for a year. For a time Ed was also available in toy stores as a Tyco talking doll; you’d pull the string in his back and he’d say things like “Gee, that’s a pain that’s going to linger!” (A mint Ed doll in its original packaging fetches a fortune on eBay. By the way, I don’t really know if that’s true, but that’s what I tell people.)
As I’ve already detailed, Ed’s peculiar manner of speaking was a combination of how my school friend Patrick and my brother-in-law Ralph spoke, and his shirt was salvaged from my teenage 1960s wardrobe (and eventually replaced with a series of look-alike shirts). But his signature verbal tic—“I must say”—was not there from the beginning. At first Ed simply punctuated his sentences, as many Canadians do, with the expression “Eh?” I have in my personal archive a rare clip of early Ed, circa the late 1970s, from a Canadian TV show I did for a season called Ferguson, Short & Ross. In it, Ed’s still wearing my actual childhood plaid shirt, which is in complete tatters at the elbows, and he says “Eh?” where you expect him to say “I must say”: “Sometimes people can be rude, eh? It seems sad when they are, but sometimes people can be rude, eh?”
But by the time I got to SCTV, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas had hit it big with their “Great White North” sketches as Bob and Doug McKenzie, ultra-Canadian brothers who called each other “hoser” and finished their sentences with “Eh?” And, you know, there just wasn’t room for yet another SCTV character who said “Eh?,” eh? So Ed’s “Eh?” became “I must say.” Oh, and I suppose it didn’t!
ED GRIMLEY
Oh, give me a break! I couldn’t be more excited to appear here in this literary memoir, I must say. Just the thought of it is making me go completely mental and my heart is beating like a distant little jungle drum.
What if this book goes on to win a National Book Award, I must say, or a Pulitzer in letters, or even the Nobel Prize in literature? I think I would be found dead amongst my own mental excitement, and my head would be, like, exploding with untainted elation. Oh, and I suppose meeting His Majesty Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden, wouldn’t be the best. Give me a break! Like, I suppose life could get better than that. No way! ’Cause it’s sad, in a way, but royalty have that special glow that commoners just can’t muster.
(SUDDEN SWITCH TO EXCITABLE ENERGY.)
What if we became best friends? Best friends ever, so that I could just like phone him and say, “Oh, is Gustaf there? Well, just tell him it’s me.”
(SUDDEN DESPAIR.)
Oh, and I suppose that would ever happen! Like the King of Sweden doesn’t have, like, a million billion friends already.
(SUDDEN BURST OF OPTIMISM.)
But then again, maybe he doesn’t! It’s difficult to always know!
Some of you have perchance been wondering where I’ve been aboding for the last thirty years. Well, it’s like, I’ve been dwelling in the “Characters Who Were Popular in the ’80s for an Hour” Home in Trenton, New Jersey. Don’t pity me. My rock bottom is still your wildest dreams.
(OVEN-TIMER BELL GOES OFF.)
Gee, my gingerbread cookies are ready! How pleasant.
(ED RUSHES TO OPEN THE OVEN DOOR. A HUGE CLOUD OF SMOKE BLASTS OUT.)
(ED PULLS OUT THE COOKIE TRAY.)
Gee, they do look very decent—and yet I can’t help but wish that I’d worn some sort of oven mitt.
(ED DROPS THE TRAY IN PAIN.)
Gee, that’s a pain that’s going to linger.
(SUDDENLY LEAPS INTO THE AIR WITH EXCITEMENT.)
But I don’t care, ’cause I’m in a literary memoir, I must say. Oh, and I suppose being in a literary memoir isn’t the best. It’s like a joke!
(THE STRAINS OF A HUNGARIAN CZARDAS FILL THE AIR. ED GRABS HIS TRIANGLE AND BEGINS TO DANCE.)
Yes, it’s time to dance the dance of merriment, for joy is my new middle name, I must say.