Golden Monkey
“Humorous” may be the wrong word to describe this book. “Hilarious” better fits the tone. – JD Jung, Underrated Reads
Little Lance Pototschnik wanted to grow up and play pro football, but that pipe dream got smoked by his lethargic growth hormones and a terrible skin disorder. The death of his childhood aspirations did, however, plant the seeds for Lance to find comedy in rejection and suffering.
In this gaspingly funny collection of stories, Lance’s battle with disease, his overbearing parents, and his maniacal bosses push him toward the startling discovery that the daily grind–which strips the gold off even the best of us–is the very thing that reveals what we are truly made of. This book is for every intellectual slacker whose very soul is straining against the chains of a dead-end job, a disease, or bad culture. Golden Monkey is a hysterical and bittersweet look at the dark moments that define us, and the triumphant aftermath when we get to say, with all our hearts, that we know exactly who the hell we are
Excerpt
Oddly Old to Still Believe
The Easter Bunny lived in our front yard under a Chinese elm tree. Dad talked to him sometimes.
“I’m going out to talk with The Bunny,” he would announce, always in the early evening, while we all were waiting for some creature’s shoulder to soften up in the oven. “Don’t follow me,” he would tell us kids, “or else you’ll all get a load of bunny crap in your baskets this year, understand?”
We kids would crowd in the big front window and watch Dad as he walked diagonally across the front lawn puffing on a White Owl cigar. He would stop in front of the big ugly elm tree — like a spider plant on steroids — and knock on the bark. Then he’d step behind the fat trunk, as if he had been invited inside for a chat, and disappear from our view.
A few minutes later, he would step out from behind the tree with a family-size bag of jelly beans in his hand, and we would cheer him from the window.