My Point...And I Do Have One

succeed.
    Here are some affirmations that have helped me. Use them if you’d like. They’re yours free (except for what you paid for the book; if you borrowed this book from a friend or the library and you feel you should send me a few bucks, that’s fine, too).
    I am the world’s tallest midget.
    I’m a little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle, here is my spout.
    I bet nobody knows I’m crazy.
    I look good in bell bottoms.
    Archie would rather date me than either Betty or Veronica.
    I can walk through walls. Ouch! No, I can’t.
    I mean for my hair to look like this.
    The Great Spirit smiles on me. On me and only me. The Great Spirit hates everybody else. We’re best friends.
    I don’t need to exercise. I have the perfect shape.
    I’m smarter than my dogs. Well, smarter than one of my dogs.
    I look good with back hair.
    Being grubby equals being cool.
    I sing better than Bonnie Raitt. I have as many Grammys as Bonnie Raitt. I am Bonnie Raitt.
    It’s not important to know what everybody else seems to know. I don’t care how much they laugh at me.
    La la la la la la la la la la la—Talk all you want, I can’t hear you—la la la la la la la la. La la la.
    If I put my mind to it, I could do anything. I just don’t feel like putting my mind to something. So there.
    I have X-ray vision. Wait a minute. I don’t. These glasses are a rip-off.
    I meant to get ripped off.
    I’ve fallen and I can get up.
    I’m good at watching TV.
    I can come up with better affirmations than these.

ellen
degeneres:
road warrior
or

sometimes you need a map,
sometimes you need a globe,
sometimes you need a map and a
globe—but not very often

    “A unt Ellen, tell us a story.” It’s so cute when the kids from the neighborhood drop on by.
    They just love to hear me spin a tale. It’s either that or they love that I buy liquor for them no matter how young they are. You’ve got to learn to drink sometime, so it might as well be with someone you can trust.
    “Please, Aunt Ellen, please tell us a story,” Little Tori pleaded between sips of her Margarita. Then suddenly, “Ahhhhhh! My head hurts.”
    “You’ve just got an ice-cream headache, dear,” I assured her. Then I told her that it would go away if she pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and held it there for a little bit. (This really works.) Within seconds her headache was gone. “I feel so much better. You know so much, Aunt Ellen.”
    “Well, I’ve been drinking for a whole lot longer than any of you,” I quipped.
    We all laughed at that. After we stopped laughing and I freshened everyone’s drink, I said, “So, you want to hear a story, eh?”
    “Yes, yes we do, we surely, surely do! Oh yes, in-deedy, doddy, duddy, we do, Aunt Ellen,” Tori, Tony, Toni, Tone, Toby, Terry, and Pedro said in unison. “We want to hear a scary story.”
    “How about if I tell you how I broke into show business? I originally wanted to be a singer. I used to perform with the Judds. In those days we were known as Two Judds & A DeGeneres. And, well, I was always known as the funny one.” I laughed.
    “That’s not a story!” the children cried. “We want a
scary
story. Aunt Ellen, not some old joke from your stand-up.”
    Kids are so cute. I have no idea where they get their ideas. I never did that joke in my stand-up. I may have mentioned it on Leno or
Regis and Kathie Lee
, but I’m prettysure I didn’t do it in my stand-up. Well, not more than once or twice.
    “I’ll tell you the scariest story I know. It’s about bad gigs that I’ve had.” Gigs, for those of you who don’t know, is plural for gig. I lit a cigarette and started my story.
    “There have been many, many bad places that I have played. One of the worst was a long, narrow, dingy restaurant that may have had fifteen tables (or, if you only counted tables that didn’t wobble … no tables). There was no way that it was created for any type of art form, whether music or comedy or anything. It was barely created for the consumption of food. I don’t remember what town this was in. It could have been any town. Though, on second thought, I don’t think there is a place called Anytown. I’m pretty sure it was either in the Midwest, the South, or on the East or West Coast. Or it could have been in Canada. I was traveling. I was on the road. It was the mid-eighties, when it wasn’t considered cool’ to know where you were.
    “I was with some comedian, and I didn’t know who he was