"Who Can Eat at a Time Like This" by Caroljean Gavin
This is the introduction to What I Thought of Ain’t Funny, an anthology of Mitch Hedberg-inspired stories published by Malarkey Books and our friends at Mythic Picnic. Guest edited by Caroljean Gavin.
I don’t know where I was when Mitch Hedberg was making waves. I was probably hungover and oversleeping in some guy’s nasty apartment. I was not paying attention. I wish I had been paying attention.
In January 2020, in the span of ten days, my mom went to the hospital with a brain bleed, had surgery, was in a coma, and died. I was a mess of nerves, electricity, grief, chest ache, stomachache, heartache, smoking ten cigarettes in a row, and trying to roar down the walls. My husband was trying to try anything to make me feel better, so in our garage with cigarette butts and ashes overflowing from a rusty metal flower pot, he took out his phone and put on Mitch Hedberg’s Comedy Central special. Within moments, I was lighter, laughing, bubbling over with childlike giggles, fucking silver beams and joy shooting out of my eyeballs.
Mitch Hedberg has that effect on people. Present tense. He’s been gone for fifteen years, but all you have to do is quote one of his jokes and people will reflexively respond with their favorites, a goddamned twinkle in their eye.
Mitch Hedberg opened up reality, looked at it sideways, through his glasses, through his hair, through his smart-assness, and his silliness, and told us what he saw: a ridiculous place, full of wonder. A place where words mean what they say. A place where fake plants will die if you forget to water them. A place of race car passengers, and studio apartment cheese and drummers with magic wands accidently turning their bandmates into cans of soup. Dr. Scholl wasted his time on a medical degree. If Reese shows up you have to give him the peanut butter cup, it’s his. There is an apostrophe.
I was struck by how hard Mitch Hedberg must have worked on his jokes, how hard he must have worked them. I didn’t know shit about him at that time, but my impression was that he was kindred, that he was a writer, that he knew not only how to think of something funny, but how to craft it, how to work and work on those words, and that was a reason he was so critical of himself. He was taking notes in the moment, trying to make the jokes tighter, trying to make them better. My impression was that a great deal of his feeling of self-worth was wrapped up in the creation and successful transmission of those jokes. He was a writer.
As a writer of strange stories, I became interested in using Mitch Hedberg’s work as keyholes. Just had to stick a pen in, wiggle it around and see what it opened up. Just get in there and “yes and” the hell out of what was inside.
I wanted the writer in me to recognize and honor the writer in him.
Initially, I was just going to write a Dufresne story because I really wanted to know what happened there. Then more ideas for more stories kept coming and I knew that not only did I not want to write them all, but I wanted to see how Mitch’s jokes spoke and resonated in the imagination of others.
I wanted the writers in us to recognize and honor the writer in him.
This was about Mitch. It was about connecting art with art, and it became about finding something magical in an increasingly fucked up world.
Miraculously Malarkey Books and Mythic Picnic liked the idea and writers submitted their weirdo stories and it was all so much bigger and so much better than I imagined.
I still wanted to write a Dufresne story, but it would be tacky to include a story I wrote in an anthology I edited right?
Who Can Eat at a Time Like This
Molly D.’s red chiffon twists into her hips. She can’t sway. She can’t move or flounce or dance or kick up her heels and feel sexy. The heels of her pumps are pumped against Roger’s cheek. They’ve lost so much. They can’t add his eye to the heap of irreplaceable things. His stiff cuffs rub against her nose. It is something that happens when he breathes. She sneezes, and her sneeze propels her up, but there is no up, only the lid of the trunk, like a hand, “No, no, no.” It says, “You’re not going anywhere. Who do you think you are? Some people get Fettuccine Alfredo and happiness and some little piggies get none.” Maybe the trunk door doesn’t really say that, still that’s what it feels like. They were going to be a family. They put their name on the list. But then Roger wanted to go outside for a smoke. Of course they started arguing. Molly pushed him in. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her with him. Maybe it was the wind that slammed them in there, or some change in the gravitational pull, or another couple more eager.
The pager between them stopped buzzing, rumbling, and flashing ages ago. It could be any time in the world. It is most certainly five o’clock somewhere, but here there is only the smell of mud, grass, manure, and cherry candy. Here there is only hunger.
“I can smell the bread sticks,” Roger says.
Molly’s stomach rumbles. “I can smell the salads.”
“The fuck you can,” Roger says. There is no room back there for gestures. Barely room enough for an eye roll.
“The tomatoes,” Molly says, “are red and juicy. I can smell them. Like the ones your mother used to grow. So heavy you could cradle them in the palm of your hand.”
“I don’t want to talk about the things my mother grew.”
“Red onions,” Molly goes on. “And . . . I can’t tell if it’s iceberg or romaine.”
“You don’t have to know everything.” Roger sniffles. There is enough room for sniffles. “You can’t know everything. You couldn’t have known everything. You don’t have to . . .”
“There’s a middle-aged couple and their grown-up son. He has a super-warm smile. Semi-shiny shoes. Looks like he makes money. The Bushes. That’s their name. They are healthy. Their joints are super loose. The waitress gives them a hug. She says welcome home. She says when you’re here you’re . . .” There’s not a ton of air in the trunk. And it’s hot. Molly is losing her breath.
They can both see the plastic tag. It glows in the dark for the both of them. All it would take is for one of them to crunch up enough strength, stretch out enough just to tug it, letting oxygen in, releasing them both. At any time. They could disentangle from one another, take part in the never-ending pasta parade of life. Focus on the ficus, on the fingerfood, on the stars on the rim of their wine glasses, the sparkles on the tips of each other’s teeth, on the skin on skin of their hands clasped across the table. They are still here.
“My leg’s asleep.” Roger flops his foot into Molly’s knee cap.
“I feel the same here.” Molly taps her chest, the place a son would have rested his head when he was tiny and hungry and sleepy and warm. Roger’s knee climbs up her body and she swaddles it in her chiffon.
“I smell the salads too,” he says. “Is that cracked peppercorn?”
The seventeen short stories in this anthology are amazing and I don’t want to spoil them for you. Some of the jokes you’ll recognize right away, others maybe not at all. These stories are funny and these stories are not funny. They take the perspectives and ideas Mitch Hedberg explored in his jokes and pull them open into full fucking chasms and canyons of humanity and experience.
This anthology is for Mitch.
This anthology is for the power of art and comedy to connect us, to lighten us, even distract us for a moment while everything hurts so much around us and within us.
This anthology is for you.
I sincerely hope you love it . . . or hate it . . . or think it’s okay.
Also available on Bookshop, Indiebound, and Amazon.
Comedian Mitch Hedberg’s creative legacy is celebrated in this collection of seventeen short stories inspired by his most-loved jokes.
An acid trip, a quest to reclaim the sesame seed, an underground association of sandwich enthusiasts, the first ever suburban koala infestation, a Nyquil-tipsy priest, a view from inside the parade, a very, very hungry diner, a girlfriend who isn’t, and an apartment where every few feet is a bedroom, the seventeen stories in this anthology “yes, and” the jokes of late comedian Mitch Hedberg. At turns hilarious, poignant, silly, haunting, and rife with word play, What I Thought of Ain’t Funny, an anthology of short fiction based on the jokes of Mitch Hedberg pays tribute to the imaginative ingenuity and the writing genius of Mitch Hedberg, opening up the ridiculous of this world, and hanging out with the complicated human beings who live inside it.
With stories by:
Hal Ackerman
Janelle Bassett
Dan Bern
Jon Dunbar
Allison Fradkin
TJ Fuller
Chisto Healy
Maggie Nerz Iribarne
Gracie Beaver-Kairis
Marco Kaye
Veronica Klash
Bethany Marcel
Jon Chaiim McConnell
Katie Runde
Jenn Stroud Rossman
Amy Stuber
Jennifer Wortman