Book Tour Blues

Not sure if I've mentioned this, but ol' Wharf Rat is on a book tour. I’m going on internet-radio and internet-TV shows, being a "Special Guest", selling a book. I’ve been on this tour two, maybe three weeks now. Maybe 10 weeks. Hard to tell. Been in a lot of time zones. Been on a lot of planes. Had a lot of complimentary honey-roasted peanuts whapped onto my tray table by hostile flight attendants. “Would you care for some peanuts, sir?” WHAP. Like that. The flight attendants hate us passengers, because we’re surly to them, because our flight is delayed. Our flight is always delayed. The North Koreans will never be able to get their missiles through the dense protective layer of delayed flights circling over the United States in complex, puke-inducing holding patterns.

Our flight is also always very crowded. This is because air fares are now assigned by a machine called the Random Air Fare Generator, which is programmed to ensure that on any given flight (1) no two people will pay the same fare, and (2) everybody else will pay less than you. People are flying across the country for less than you paid for your six-week-old corn muffin at the airport snack bar. Anybody can afford to fly these days. You see Frequent Flyers with bare feet and live carry-on chickens.

And so the planes are crowded and noisy and late, and everybody hates everybody. If armed sand worshipers had tried to take over any of the flights I’ve been on lately, we passengers would have swiftly beaten them to death with those hard rolls you get with your in-flight meal. Funny, isn’t it? The airlines go to all that trouble to keep you from taking a gun on board, then they just hand you a dinner roll you could kill a musk ox with.

Me, I eat the roll. A man's gotta eat.



Got to keep my strength up on the book tour, so I can be perky when I get interviewed by the cheerful talk-show host. You want to sound as perky and enthusiastic as possible on a book tour so your listening audience won’t suspect that you really, deep down inside, don’t want to talk about your book ever ever ever again. You have come to hate your book. Back at the beginning, you kind of liked it, but now you think of it as a large repulsive insect which cheerful hosts keep hauling out and sticking in your face and asking you to pet.

But you do it, because the alternative is gainful employment. You put on your perky face, and you chat
with the host about why you wrote the book. Why you wrote it, of course, is money. I’m very up front about this. “Buy my book,” I always advise the listening audience. “Or just send me some money in a box.”

I’ve had some fun times, on my various book tours. The most fun was when I was promoting a book about do-it-yourself home repair. This book was, of course, totally worthless, not a single fact in it, but I ended up on a whole bunch Of radio shows where the hosts, who had not had time to look at the book personally, thought I had written a real book about home repair. So the interviews went like this:

HOST: Wharf, what’s the best place to add insulation?
ME: Bob, I recommend the driveway.
HOST: Ha ha! Seriously, Wharf.
ME: I am serious, Bob.
HOST: My guest has been Wharf Rat.



I have also been on some very interesting internet TV shows. I was on a show streamed from Cleveland where the other guests were a Norwegian sex therapist and a Swedish gynecologist, who were supposed to have a sensitive discussion about the Male Perspective on sexuality with an all-male audience that had been bused in especially for the show. it turned out, however, that there was also beer on the bus, so the Male Perspective on sexuality consisted almost entirely of hooting and snickering. Somebody would ask the sex-therapist where the “G-spot” was, and she’d start to answer, and somebody in the back would yell: “It’s in Germany!” Then there would be a violent eruption of hoots and snickers and we’d break for a commercial.

Recently, in Boston, I was on a show where the other two guests were—this is true—a police officer who explained how to avoid getting your purse snatched, and a woman named “Chesty Morgan” who once served in the Israeli army and currently dances topless and has the largest natural bosom in the world. She said she wears a size double-P bra. She has it made specially in Waco, Texas. She has a very interesting and tragic life story, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the near future, she comes out with a book.



Last Edited by Wharf Rat on 10/04/2021 04:20 PM