Too many complaints about how sweet and nostalgic I’ve been lately have led me to think back upon what brought me down this road to who and what I am today. It’s not a particularly exciting tale, for the most part, but one worth sharing, perhaps in the hope that someone out there might glean from my story a bit of useful wisdom.

I was brought into this world in the fall – November 4, to be precise, 1383. It was a hard time for my parents and my 17 older siblings; money was tight, the crops had been turning in poorly for the past four seasons, and my poor father had recently contracted a disfiguring (but slightly comical) round of gonorrhea from the local bathing pool. It was indeed fortunate, though, that I arrived when I did, for my birth made my immediate family eligible for Scotland’s long-forgotten “Party of 20” lottery — which we won! Imagine the odds of actually taking home all of that money; I imagine that the McHenry’s still fume over the loss.

Some time in the late 1480s or so, after my family had relocated to Spain to try our communal hands at lemming farming, I found myself growing curious of the world beyond my perception. Rumor had it that there was a new world beyond the edge of the ocean, and I soon found myself urging my friend Chris to take me there (I would have learned boating skills, and well, but for my terminal fear of sea urchins). By the turn of the century, I was a full-blooded American.

Life remained by-and-large uneventful for the next four hundred or five hundred years, as I truly needed a rest. I had, after all, conquered the far southern tip of the North American continent (though, admittedly, the brutality that occured that weekend was purely an oversight on my own part, having forgotten to warn my crewmates that the Iraquoi tribe indigenous to the region were rampant homosexuals, and that refusal of the Shaman’s advances would lead to a prolonged and agonizing death, at best), mapped the major mountain regions of the area on foot, and created that ubiquitous time-killer that still lives to this day, the Cross-words puzzle. I settled ably in the southern state of Alabama, and spent my days forging ironworks of great detail and aestheticism. Night was a lonely time, but eventually that was solved by the introduction of Yelena Orzhikova, a Russian bride gifted to me by my close friend Jefferson Davis (not to be confused with the president of the Confederate States of America — my friend Jefferson was three years his senior, and had no interest in politics whatsoever).

The defining moment of my life — that one turning point upon which the fate of my world pivoted… Ah, that fateful, balmy Saturday night. 1968, Los Angeles, as the alcohol flowed and a young Jimi Hendrix tore holes in the universe with his shredding guitar style and crazy afro, I stood outside the party, watching a young Alan Alda as he boxed Robert Redford into a bloody, stumbling shamles. The fight was a mismatch from the word “go,” though Redford admirably refused to fall until the last crushing right hook, and did manage to leave two of his teeth embedded squarely in young Alda’s right hand knuckles. It was at 11:37 PM, PST, that three things happened in confluence, forever shaping my view of world events:

1.) Redford’s body hit the asphalt, unconscious and limp, and actually sunk slowly down about three inches into the Earth. It was as though that particular spot of road, much like so many others, had waited a lifetime to embrace Robert Redford’s near-comatose body.

2.) The 3 grams of pure heroin I was carrying (part of a rectal suppository experiment I had been conducting with a group of Columbians) were released into my unsuspecting system though a pinhole-cum-floodgate-sized opening in the condom in which it had rested peaceably for days. The resulting high and crash were a thrilling time for both my personal staff of physicians and Yelena, furious at my wasteful ways; as well, the source of my best-selling reinterpretation of the New Testament, as seen through the eyes of a common street urchin with a pronounced limp and Wernicke’s Syndrome. (A note: the book, entitled Whine Into Water: My Life with Jesus and Friends, was originally to climax with the infamous Rave scene, but the editor (that pompous fuck) had a problem with either the dancehall being named Club Foot or the idea of the Apostles taking recreational MDMA; the original edition, pre-edit, was much tighter and more concise, in my opinion).

3.) A particle accelerator located just south of Seattle, Washington, was switched off erroneously, much to the chagrin of the project coordinator, and one small substomic particle of anti-matter was released into the world. This anti-quark, against all expectations, managed to avoid all contact with positive matter, until it touched down just inland on the island of Oahu. There, it came in contact with a young vacationer named Martha Stewart, who would later serve as my acting Campaign Coordinator in my failed run at public office (state senator for Montana, 2004).

And thus, I imagine you have already gathered, I placed together the inspiration for the most evident and obvious source of fame and fortune, at least in my short lifetime: the writing of the second sequel to Deuce Bigalow: Deuce Bigalow: Electric Gigalo. I would like to thank each of you for supporting the film,and for those of you that purchased more than twenty tickets over the course of it’s eight-year box office reign: I owe you. A bottle of wine, at least. Boone’s Farm, anyone?