ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is the Acknowledgements Section, where I am supposed to thank everyone who has contributed to making this book. I was going to take this golden opportunity to finally use the Academy Award acceptance speech I have been waiting in vain to use for the last forty years, since my chances of winning an Oscar are getting slimmer by the day (in direct opposite of my waistline,) but upon further review, I thought better of it. As much as I would like to thank my dialect coach, personal trainer, personal chef, key grip, best boy, Covid compliance officer, VFX department, boom operator, weapons wrangler, foley artist, and gang boss, they really had nothing to do with the making of this book. (Although I would like it noted that no animals were harmed during production of this work, except my dogs, who did not get walked nearly enough for the last few months.) And even though I explicitly do not want to thank the Academy, there are a few people I would like to acknowledge for their support and assistance.

If you end up hating this book, it is my agents’ fault. There I was, minding my own business, when Ryan Martin and Scott Kaufman approached me with the idea of publishing my story, so this whole fiasco is their doing. They somehow convinced Jarred Weisfeld, the publisher at Start Publishing, that he could sell enough copies of this book to pay for all of the ink and paper that go into making one of these things, so thank you Jarred for prioritizing putting my story into the public square over your children’s college education. David Krintzman, Michael Diamant, and Aileen Gorospe are the crack team of lawyers who have been my sherpa guides into the publishing world, and their understanding of the statute of limitations on a variety of potential felonies has been invaluable in the editing of these stories. Rene Sears has been the editor of this book and has shouldered the weight of the work, trying to make English sense out of all the words I put into every sentence and thought and bringing clear-eyed, clarifying, illuminating, simplifying, elucidating coherence to sentences that have too many words in them and seem to run on and drift into other thoughts but always able to bring them back again, like the swallows of Capistrano returning in the spring to where they had once come from, but who was unfortunately on vacation when it came time to write and edit the Acknowledgement Section of this voluminous volume. She has been the English teacher I never had. Ashley Calvano is an up-and-coming editor at Start who has been instrumental in keeping me on track and focused on the light at the end of the tunnel. With a full head of steam, she has kept the trains running and supplied all the technical bells and whistles to get us to the end of the line. (Although she could not prevent this train wreck of a metaphor.) Jennifer Do brought her artistry to making the book cover. She was a lifesaver, since my original idea was deemed “too costly,” and the Pope didn’t seem that willing to let us do a photo shoot at the Vatican anyway.

My brother David is the writer in the family and his encouragement and support means everything to me. I had originally hoped he would write the book for me but instead, he instilled a false sense of confidence in me, sent me on my way, and dodged the bullet of being trapped in a room with me for months listening to me drone on about myself. (Speaking from experience, it was hell.) Well-played, bro. Well-played. I want to thank all my friends who read early drafts of this (or pretended to) and agreed to write a blurb for the book. It has been quite embarrassing to have them all be asked to write nice things about me. On the other hand, it is just a blurb, which isn’t really asking a lot. (Blurb is a very odd term by the way. It sounds like a mash-up of blurred, burp, herb, and turd, which, come to think of it, describes my writing process pretty well.) I have already dedicated this book to my family, friends, and fans in world-class poetic and inspirational words (see Dedication Page) but I am new to the rules of book etiquette and want to stay on everybody’s good side, so in this section I want to acknowledge this group of people again. Let me say to you all with acknowledgement, “Look at you. There you are.”

I guess the last thing I would want to acknowledge in this book is the Power of Love. (I have not been able to find a place in the book to say this so I figured I would place it at the bottom of the Acknowledgement Section, which very few people will read anyway.) It astounds me to realize that all life on planet Earth is powered by love. Every living thing, from a tiny mouse to a human being, survives on love and the primal need to be connected, protected, erected, respected, projected, and perfected. I get so busy during the day sometimes (like spending three hours with a rhyming dictionary for that last sentence) that I can forget this simple truth. And so I want to acknowledge that the greatest power in the world is love, and my wish for the reader is to have as much of it in their lives as is humanly possible.