Chapter 24
WHEN WRITE BECOMES WRONG
The next day, I roll into the writers’ room, where things are really buzzing.
I hope these guys are cooking up some hot ’n’ fresh material, because the idea of doing my TV show live is still freaking me out. It means that the whole country will be watching if I make a mistake or something goes wrong. And something always goes wrong.
“All right, guys,” says the head writer, Stewart Johnson. “Let me hear your best one-liners about school.”
He bangs a hotel bell.
The writers start slinging out one-liners.
Nothing’s very funny, so I try pitching in.
“How about…”
“Hang on, Jamie,” says Johnson. “We’re brainstorming. Just spitballing ideas. Seeing what sticks.”
“I know, I thought I’d toss in a few ideas. I mean, I wrote all my own material when I won the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic Contest.”
“A registered trademark of Joe Amodio Productions,” mumble all six writers in unison.
“Okay, Jamie,” says Johnson. “Hit us with a zinger.”
“Well, I’m not really sure we should be doing ‘zingers.’ Most of my humor is observational. For instance, how is a kid in a wheelchair supposed to carry books between classes? If I stuff them all in my backpack, maybe my chair would topple over. Books are heavy. And I can’t really tuck them under an arm because I need both my arms to power my chair. So, let’s say I’m cruising down the hall with books stacked in my lap, and all the other kids think I’m a human library cart, so they start piling more books on top of mine. Then the librarian comes out and hits me with a huge fine because all the books in my lap are overdue.”
I raise my eyebrows, awaiting a reaction.
Silence. Dead silence.
“Interesting,” says Stewart Johnson with a very slow head bob.
Everybody else just clears their throats. Politely. Emma Smith sharpens her pencil.
I slump down in my seat. Try to disappear.
“How about,” says one of the other writers, “Jamie comes to school with a big banana cream pie on his lap? In fact, he brings a dozen pies to school. Maybe two dozen! Banana cream, coconut cream, Bavarian cream…”
“They’re all cream pies?” asks Johnson.
“Have to be or the gag doesn’t work. Jamie takes his pies to geometry class, where the teacher says that formula… you know the one… for finding the area of a circle…”
“Pi times r squared!”
“Bingo! And Jamie shakes his head and tells the teacher, ‘No. That’s wrong. Cakes are square, pies are round!’”
“And he throws a pie in the teacher’s face!” says Emma Smith. “And he has to go to detention hall, and that’s where the big pie fight takes place.”
Johnson spins around with a big grin on his face. “Whaddaya think, Jamie?”
“Um, a pie fight is kind of Three Stooges–ish.”
“You’re right. We need seltzer bottles, too!”
The writers spend another half hour milking the pie-fight bit for all the cream and seltzer they can squeeze out of it.
After a quick bathroom break, Stewart Johnson runs a clip from my comedy act on his computer screen.
It’s a bit about Stevie Kosgrov.
Johnson slams down his laptop lid. “That’s it! The pilot is all about how Jamie came up with this one bit about the bully.”
“What about the pie fight?” asks Chip, the writer who’s been shadowing Stevie.
“We save it,” says Johnson. “For the second episode. Or maybe season two.”
Or maybe never, I’m thinking. Never would work for me.
“I don’t know, Stewart,” says Chip. “For a bully, this Kosgrov is a real lightweight. Now, there’s this other kid, Lars Johannsen. He’s huge and hysterical. Yesterday, he stuffed Stevie Kosgrov inside a locker—right after he made Kosgrov gobble down a dozen bean burritos in the cafeteria. Talk about a gas trap.”
Johnson springs out of his chair. “Jamie?”
“Yes?”
“We’re going on a field trip. We need to go back to school and see Stevie and Lars side by side! We need to pick our bully.”