Chapter 42
GOING VIRAL CAN MAKE YOU SICK
It’s sort of gone viral,” says Donna. “Who knew my one itsy-bitsy little tweet about how unfunny you are would get retweeted, like, a bazillion times?”
“By the way,” Donna continues, “Biff Bilgewater from Hollywood Tonight is running a piece tonight about how sad it is that no one will ever see my magnificent performance in this show. Biff’s a CPF.”
“An accountant?” says Gilda.
“No, Miss Clueless. A close personal friend. Ciao for now. Great meeting you, Hilda.”
Donna sashays out of the dressing room.
Gilda and I both check our phones.
Donna wasn’t lying. The rumors are flying. It’s everywhere. Facebook. TMZ. People.com. Washed-up-people.com. There are even video clips of me staring blankly at the camera from last Friday.
“How’d they get that footage?” I mumble.
“Two guesses,” says Gilda, narrowing her eyes. “And they both should be Donna Dinkle.”
“Jamie Funnie?” Biff says in the video clip. “Not according to my inside sources. Yes, he was amusing in his brief guest shot on SNL because he was working with a true pro, Jacky Hart. But his own show? Sources tell me things look grim for young Jamie Grimm. Grim as in dismal, gloomy, abominable, atrocious, appalling…”
We thumb him off the screen and check out a few more of the one hundred and sixty-seven thousand results to our Google search of the key words Jamie Grimm stinks.
The general consensus seems to be that I’m not really funny. That I just got lucky when I won the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic Contest. That Jacky Hart, Tina Fey, and Charlie Garner made me “seem funny” on Saturday Night Live. Rumors are flying that the BNC network is either going to postpone or completely cancel the show before it even goes on the air.
“Well,” says Gilda, “looks like you’ve got something to prove again.”
Ever since the accident, a lot of people have made the mistake of underestimating me, the way they underestimate everyone in a wheelchair. Just because we can’t use our legs, they think we can’t do anything else, either.
Time to show them they’re wrong.
Again.