I Even Funnier: A Middle School Story, page 1
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by James Patterson
Title Page
Dedication
Part One: Heard Any Good Jokes Lately?
Chapter 1: It’s Fun Being Funny
Chapter 2: Meanwhile, Back in Reality…
Chapter 3: Guess What I Saw This Morning?
Chapter 4: Where I Found My Funny Bone
Chapter 5: Bully for Me
Chapter 6: Who You Calling Chicken?
Chapter 7: It’s a Great Day–for About Two Minutes
Chapter 8: A Burger and Fries Fixes Everything
Chapter 9: If You Can’t Stand The Heat…
Chapter 10: Life is Funny–At Least, Mine is
Chapter 11: Diagramming My Death Sentence
Chapter 12: A Legend in His Own Mind
Chapter 13: Hysterical History
Chapter 14: Weeping with The Weedwacker
Chapter 15: Live from New York–It’s Jamie and Friends!
Chapter 16: Frankenfurter
Chapter 17: The Three Amigos?
Chapter 18: Two’s Company, Four’s More Fun
Chapter 19: Coming Attractions I Don’t Want to Attract
Chapter 20: Just When You Thought School was Safe…
Part Two: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before
Chapter 21: Hurry Up and Wait
Chapter 22: Free Joey!
Chapter 23: Calling All Gods!
Chapter 24: Wish This was a Basketball Court
Chapter 25: Mrs. Gaynor’s Excused Absence
Chapter 26: True Confessions
Chapter 27: Ride ’Em, Cowboy!
Chapter 28: Getting House-Trained
Chapter 29: How to Do Nothing, and Do It Well
Chapter 30: A Battle of Wits?
Chapter 31: The Big Laugh-Off
Chapter 32: Rafe What?
Chapter 33: The Scene of The Crime
Chapter 34: Bad Karma
Chapter 35: Fate Stinks
Chapter 36: Never Let ’Em See You Sweat
Chapter 37: Comedy Convoy
Chapter 38: Getting “Creme’d”
Chapter 39: Funny Meeting You Here
Chapter 40: Will Jamie Choke? Find Out Now!
Chapter 41: No Risk, No Reward
Chapter 42: And The Winner is…
Chapter 43: Hometown Hero
Chapter 44: Cool News
Chapter 45: Mad About Madison Avenue
Chapter 46: And in Other News…
Chapter 47: Speaking of Dumb…
Part Three: Viva Las Vegas–or Should I Say, Hasta La Vista, Las Vegas?
Chapter 48: Nose-to-the-Grindstone Time
Chapter 49: Stop and Smell The Sea Spray
Chapter 50: Family Time
Chapter 51: Beware The Mighty Meaty
Chapter 52: Carsick
Chapter 53: Even a Bad Joke is Good Medicine
Chapter 54: All Hands On Deck
Chapter 55: Calling It Quits
Chapter 56: Saturday Night Dead
Chapter 57: I Guess This is The End
Chapter 58: The Middle School Comedy Club
Chapter 59: The Best After-School Activity Ever
Chapter 60: Bringing Down The Schoolhouse
Chapter 61: Encore Performance
Chapter 62: Life is Like a Yo-Yo
Chapter 63: Knock, Knock! Who’s There?
Chapter 64: How Fedex Changed My Life–Fast!
Chapter 65: Flying High (With or Without an Airplane)
Chapter 66: Las Vegas or “Lost Wages”?
Chapter 67: The Fear Factory
Chapter 68: The Wild Wild-Card Contestants
Chapter 69: Who Am I? Where Am I?
Chapter 70: And the Winner Is???
Chapter 71: Homecoming King
Chapter 72: Girl Friend or Girlfriend?
Chapter 73: If I Had $110,000…
Epilogue
Copyright
About the Book
Get your laughs, whoops, yucks, chuckles, chortles, giggles, and guffaws right here!
Step right up and see me, Jamie Grimm, laugh my way through the roller-coaster ride called middle school!
Watch me joke my way to the top of the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic Contest!
Be amazed as I fend off the attention of thousands of starstruck girls!
Or something like that, anyway...
People say I can be pretty funny sometimes. But when things get really tough, I EVEN FUNNIER!
About the Author
JAMES PATTERSON is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. He is the internationally bestselling author of the highly praised Middle School books, Treasure Hunters, and the I Funny, Confessions, Maximum Ride, Witch & Wizard and Daniel X series. In 2010, James Patterson was voted Author of the Year at the Children’s Choice Book Awards in New York. He lives in Florida.
Also by James Patterson
I Funny
I Funny (with Chris Grabenstein)
Middle School series
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (with Chris Tebbetts)
Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! (with Chris Tebbetts)
Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar (with Lisa Papademetriou)
Middle School: How I Survived Bullies, Broccoli, and Snake Hill (with Chris Tebbetts)
Treasure Hunters
Treasure Hunters (with Chris Grabenstein)
Maximum Ride series
The Angel Experiment
School’s Out Forever
Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
The Final Warning
Max
Fang
Angel
Nevermore
Daniel X series
The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (with Michael Ledwidge)
Watch the Skies (with Ned Rust)
Demons and Druids (with Adam Sadler)
Game Over (with Ned Rust)
Armageddon (with Chris Grabenstein)
Witch & Wizard series
Witch & Wizard (with Gabrielle Charbonnet)
The Gift (with Ned Rust)
The Fire (with Jill Dembowski)
The Kiss (with Jill Dembowski)
Confessions series
Confessions of a Murder Suspect (with Maxine Paetro)
Confessions: The Private School Murders (with Maxine Paetro)
Graphic novels
Daniel X: Alien Hunter (with Leopoldo Gout)
Maximum Ride: Manga Volumes 1–7 (with NaRae Lee)
For more information about James Patterson’s novels, visit
www.jamespatterson.co.uk
Or become a fan on Facebook
For Jack, our house comedian.
—J.P.
For J.J. She funny, too.
—C.G.
Presented to the Pre-Primary Class of Palm Beach Day Academy by James Patterson in the Year of 2013
Caroline Anttila
Alexander Beyer
Nikolaus Beyer
Joan Borghi
Charles Briggs
Kendall Cohn
Sophia Curran
Kiley Ellender
Kayla Fanberg
Eloise Forrest
Thomas Forrest
Oliver Goodman
Malcolm Greene
Giulliana Marilia Haruvi
Sofia Hernandez
Karan Kececi
Wyatt Orthwein
Christian Quinty
Lorelei Riedesel
Francesca Roman
Samuel Selakovic
Sonny Sharmin
Sienna Sholl
i! I’m Jamie Grimm, and it’s really great to be back in front of an audience again.
A little while back, I won a couple of contests and was crowned the Funniest Kid Comic in all of New York. Not just New York City, but the whole state!
Now I have a shot at being the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic.
“The planet Earth?” asks Phineas of—you guessed it—Phineas and Ferb. “Or Mars? We built a portal to Mars for the science fair once.”
“Fun never falls too far from the tree house,” adds Ferb.
Yep! Phineas and Ferb, the two hysterical stars from the Disney Channel, are now my close personal friends. They even go to school with me.
Derek Jeter, the shortstop from the New York Yankees, shows up at Long Beach Middle School because he wants me to autograph a baseball for him.
Taylor Swift comes to town to ask me to be the opening act at her upcoming concerts. “Jamie Grimm, I hear you’re the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic!”
“Not exactly,” I tell her. “First I have to win a regional competition in Boston. And then there are the semifinals in Las Vegas. And the final finals in Hollywood…”
“He’s going to be a very busy boy,” says Howie Mandel, one of the judges from America’s Got Talent. He’s come to Long Beach to help me train for the comedy competition. “Jamie needs new material. New jokes. A new hairdo. You like mine?”
Of course my best buds—Jimmy Pierce, Joey Gaynor, and Gilda Gold—are with me, too. We’re on our way to school, where the principal has declared that today is Jamie Grimm Day.
“They’re gonna give you your very own pep rally, dude,” says Gaynor.
So after the cheerleaders do a “Jay-mee Grimm” cheer, our school principal, Dr. Heinz Doofensh
“Wait a second,” says Phineas. “Your principal is our evil scientist?”
I shrug. “I guess he likes the cafeteria food.”
Dr. Doofenshmirtz goes on with the quick speech. “Today, Jamie, we gather here to wish you luck as you prepare to take the second, third, and fourth steps toward your goal of being the Planet’s Funniest Kid Comic! Break a leg, Jamie. Whoopsie!”
When Principal Doof says that, I know this has to be a dream.
Because, you know, all those steps he mentioned? I’d be happy just taking one.
ometimes people in my dreams say crazy dumb stuff because they forget I’m in a wheelchair.
Hey, I don’t blame ’em. I’d like to forget it, too.
But I can’t.
Of course, I keep hoping that one day I’ll see a commercial for a new wonder drug called something like Spinulax that will magically make me walk again. Unfortunately, it would probably come with a list of gross side effects like all those other pills they advertise on TV: “Spinulax may cause constipation and diarrhea. Not to mention projectile vomiting. And sudden death syndrome—as in, oops, sorry, you’re dead.”
When I wake up, I’m in my bedroom. In the garage. Back in the real world. And I need to get my butt ready for school.
About my bedroom in the garage…when I moved to Long Beach to live with my aunt and uncle, the only spare room in the house wasn’t actually in the house. This is why my clothes often smell like a Home Depot.
I call my aunt and uncle’s house Smileyville because when I first got here, nobody ever smiled. Not even the dog, Ol’ Smiler. He hadn’t wagged his tail in so long his butt was brittle.
Anyway, I think I’ve finally figured out why the Smileys always look so glum.
It’s the oat gruel.
That’s what Mrs. Smiley serves for breakfast, every morning. You know how they say breakfast will stick with you? Well, her oat gruel sure will. It’ll stick to your teeth and the roof of your mouth. All day long.
Quick, somebody call one of those cable TV networks! I have an awesome idea for a new reality show: Breakfast With the Smileys! It’ll be the exact opposite of those shows about the Kardashians or the Real Housecats of Beverly Hills. No glitz. No glamour. No nothing.
“Have a nice day,” says my aunt, Mrs. Smiley.
“Don’t forget your lunch,” my uncle, Mr. Smiley, reminds me.
“Be home by six,” Aunt Smiley adds.
Yep. They’re even blander than oat gruel.
But they took me into their home when I had no place else to go.
And for that, I will always be grateful.
No joke.
s I’m heading up the sidewalk on my way to school, I see this really big, really green garbage truck grinding its way through something much worse than my aunt’s oat gruel. We’re talking mushy, juicy slop, slimier than the food scraps and sour milk sloshing around in the plate-scraper’s barrel at my middle school’s cafeteria.
And I start thinking about adding this to my comedy act.…
If Long Beach wants a big green monster to gobble up its garbage, they should hire Godzilla. I hear they kicked the big guy out of Japan. Something to do with him yanking the tops off too many Tokyo skyscrapers and munching on them like they were Nestlé Crunch bars. I think Godzilla ate a few subway sandwiches, too. The kind made out of real subway cars.
If Godzilla moved to Long Beach, he could stomp on down the streets, scooping up and emptying out Dumpsters. Even with his monstrous screeches, he’d be quieter than the guys who usually show up on our street at six AM to do drum solos on everybody’s trash cans. Thanks to the garbagemen, nobody on our block needs an alarm clock.
Of course, if Godzilla did move to Long Beach, every time he went to, say, an all-you-can-eat buffet, a dozen waiters would probably disappear.
And you know what you’d find between Godzilla’s toes?
Slow runners. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one.)
When I meet up with Gilda Gold at the end of the block, I tell her my Godzilla the Garbageman idea.
She laughs and whips out her iPhone.
“That would make an awesome short,” she says, starting to record. “We just shoot the garbage truck chewing up trash but dub in monster-movie music and really loud sound effects.”
“And voices,” I say. “Make ’em sound like they’re coming from people buried underneath the garbage. ‘Help meeeee!’”
Gilda laughs.
I smile.
Gilda has a really cool laugh. A whole room can be cracking up, but you’ll always hear her amazing giggle rippling through it all. It’s the kind of laugh that makes a kid want to keep on telling jokes for the rest of his life just so he can keep hearing it.
Yep. Gilda’s laugh is one of the reasons I want to be a stand-up comic more than anything in the world—even if I don’t exactly fit the job description.
unny movies.
That’s the first thing Gilda Gold and I ever talked about when my friends Gaynor and Pierce introduced us one day in the school cafeteria. Now she goes around Long Beach making short films. Maybe you’ve seen her latest video on YouTube—the one where two squirrels are watching a softball game while doing Abbott and Costello’s classic comedy act “Who’s on First?” I recorded the Costello lines, and Gilda did Abbott’s. I’m not sure how she made the squirrels look like they were talking, but I think it had something to do with nut nibbling.
We had such a good time making that movie. Gilda and I both love funny flicks. Whatever Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey, Chris Rock, and Kristin Wiig are up to at the multiplex. Also, any movie from Pixar. Toy Story 3 is my favorite, but Gilda thinks Wall-E and Ratatouille are the best.
“Man, that is so gross,” she says as the garbage truck dumps another load down its gullet. “What a great way to start the day.”
I wiggle my eyebrows. “Yes, I’ve had a perfectly wonderful morning. But this wasn’t it.”
Gilda laughs that laugh of hers. “That’s Groucho Marx, right?”
“Yep. One of the funniest comedians ever. I’ve seen all the Marx Brothers movies. The Three Stooges, too.”
When I was in the hospital, recovering from my accident, the doctors and nurses kept telling me “Laughter is the best medicine.” (But let’s face it: If you have a splitting headache, two aspirin might work better than a one-liner.)
They’d bring me all sorts of joke books and funny videos to help me feel better when I didn’t think anything ever could. I read and watched everybody: the Marx Brothers, Lucille Ball, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, George Carlin, Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, Robin Williams, Tina Fey, and more. I memorized entire jokelopedias.
I was recuperating for so long—doing rehab and physical therapy—I must’ve read, heard, or seen every joke cracked since the first caveman grunted “Knock knock” to one of his caveman buddies (and then conked the guy on the head with a club just so he could invent slapstick). And you know what? The doctors and nurses were right. All that laughing definitely helped me feel better. I almost forgot how miserable I was.
Almost.
You don’t have to be stuck in the hospital to need a sense of humor, though. I mean, just going to middle school is a pretty scary thing for a lot of kids, because the real Godzillas hang out there.
Gilda and I are reminded of that as we head into Long Beach Middle School together. Gilda sees him first.
“Uh-oh,” she says. “You know our perfectly wonderful morning?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s about to get a whole lot worse than Dumpster diving with Godzilla.…”
eet Stevie Kosgrov.
“Look at me, everybody,” Stevie bellows into a microphone he probably stole out of the chorus room. “I’m a big, stupid comedian, just like Jamie Grimm!”
His mic doesn’t have an amplifier. Stevie doesn’t need one. The guy’s a loudmouth.
“Well, if it isn’t Nick the Hick,” Stevie continues. “Nick’s family’s so poor, they eat cereal with a fork to save money on milk.”
Ladies and gentlemen, no matter what he says, Stevie Kosgrov is not a comedian. He’s a bully. Plain and simple. In fact, if it weren’t for certain Third World dictators, Stevie would definitely be declared Bully of the Century. He once slugged a teddy bear that said the wrong thing when he pulled its string.
