Git - R - Done

Book by Larry the Cable Guy

Chapter 1

GIT-R-DONE!!!

WELL, HERE WE GO. This is the first book I've written since 1975, when I was in the 7th grade and wrote Boogers Are Good Eatin'. Regardless of the title, that 27-page pamphlet earned me a C+ as well as several ass beatings from the class bully.

When they approached me to do this, I thought there's no way I could possibly find the time. I have all these other projects. I have a CD to put out. I have my tour schedule. I have to get a lawyer in Florida to help me fight the Supreme Court so I can keep the air hose in my blowup doll. So little time.

But after several days of . . . meditation . . . medication . . . masturbation! That's it! I not only decided to do it, I promised myself that this book would make Boogers Are Good Eatin' look like a seventh grader's pamphlet.

Set the bar high, that's what I always say.

I figure the thing most people want to know about me--other than how I keep my ass so muscular and hard--would be how I came by the name Larry the Cable Guy, and how I started doing social commentaries for radio stations across the country. Good questions, so let me get into this incredible story full of intrigue and dick jokes. (I'm glad no one is askin' about that time I was sodomized by Dick Van Patten.)

Since I don't want to waste your time with that boring "good old days" crap, I'll give ya a brief summary of how I came about in this world. My dad was a preacher; my mom ran the Tilt-a-Whirl at the fair. Somehow they met, had some teeth fixed, and got married.

I was born in 1963, as a C-section baby. I was born in section C of a Waylon Jennings concert! My dad thought they had good seats until my mom's water broke. They were great parents and the only blemish was when my dad beat me after reading my 7th-grade pamphlet Boogers Are Good Eatin'.

I started doin' stand-up comedy in 1985 right after I blew out my knee doing porno movies. Speakin' of the porno industry, there's a drive-in porno theater next to my log trailer here in Florida. It's pretty big. They call it the Herpes Simplex 2. Last week I went there to see a double feature, Red Patch Adams and Citizen Cankor. Before the second feature, I got arrested for car jacking!!!

(Already this is either the funniest book you've ever read or the dumbest, and I know it ain't the dumbest if you've read Boogers Are Good Eatin' or Al Franken's last book.)

OK, time to fess up: I actually didn't work in the porn industry. I blew out my knee tripping over an Alice Does Anal tape while runnin' for the phone.

Which reminds me . . . I used to date a girl named Alice. I met her at Hooters. She was really unique. She didn't have big boobs, but she could turn her head in a circle just like an owl.

But enough about Alice (isn't that an old Glen Campbell song?), let's get back to my story.

In 1991 there was a radio station in Tampa called 95 YNF. It was an awesome station that at the time no one could touch in the ratings. The station had hired a good buddy of mine, a comedian, to be a sidekick. He called me one day and said he needed some friends to call in and do some comedy.

I wanted to do this so bad that I had the phone checked on the top of the pole. Every day I would climb up and down it just to be heard by households across the bay.

I started callin' in as Iris, an old Jewish woman from Boca Raton. She was a fun character to impersonate until my throat started hurting from doin' her raspy voice all the time. I then became alarmed when I suddenly found myself stealing food and Sweet'N Low packets from buffets; I also developed this obsession with playing bingo and started askin' strange questions like who was running for the condo board.

And I didn't even own a condo.

I had to do something. I tried changin' my character's name from Iris to Rose. Unfortunately, I was still using that same raspy voice, so I ran into the same problems except for one thing: Rose didn't like Sweet'N Low.

For the next few months I would do all these different characters for the station. Some I rated as pretty good: the Fartin' Retard (pure genius), Cowman, Pigman, and various queer voices. Some came out pretty bad: Penis Pete, the Human Turd (that could have been funny if just given a chance), and various queer voices.

I could never find one I really could put my heart into until I realized I could call in as myself if I just changed my name. WOW! What a brilliant concept! Be myself and change my name! Y'all are probably already asking how I could possibly get away with that, right? Let's read on!

To understand how I came up with my name, y'all first need a little background on how I grew up. Ya know, when I did the Blue Collar Tour, I was the only guy there that wasn't born in the South. I was the only guy that wasn't born with the accent. And I was the only guy that had auditioned for Hustler on Ice.

I was, however, the only guy on the tour that actually grew up on a farm and lived the life.

My parents raised me on a pig farm outside a little town called Pawnee City, Nebraska. Ya might say it was a small town. The city hall came up to my chin. Pawnee City had around 1,200 people at the time. However, if ya counted critters, we would have been only a little smaller than China. But since we're not countin' critters . . . But come to think of it, Mildred Green could have counted as a critter considering she had more body hair than most collie dogs, so let's put the population at around 1,199.

Anyway, to make a long story even longer, I grew up in this town doin' most things country boys my age do: ridin' horses, feedin' cattle, lettin' the dog lick peanut butter off your privates . . .

I know. That sounds disgustin' but, hey, gimme a break! There were only 12 girls in my whole class. Besides, I was young and needed the money. I do regret the peanut butter thing, though. I can just see that turnin' up on TV one day and ruinin' my career:

"LARRY THE CABLE GUY'S PEANUT BUTTER TAPES ON THE NEXT ACCESS HOLLYWOOD! FOLLOWED BY AN ALL NEW EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND."

The other boys in Pawnee City hunted a lot. I was never that big a hunter. Don't get me wrong, I love to hunt; I just never have time. When I was a kid, I did get a BB gun after I got confirmed, and my dad said to only shoot what I wanted to eat. So I went out and shot my neighbors' redheaded daughter in the ass. Hey, I was hungry for some pumpkin' pie, by God! Nothin' wrong with a little dessert for the holidays.

I do like to hog hunt a little down at the country bar after 2 a.m., but ya don't need guns for them girls. Just put a couple of oatmeal creams in your pockets and they follow ya around like you're the fat girl Willard.

I don't know what my point is here. I just love the sound of the phrase "fat girl Willard"!

Like I said earlier, I never actually grew up in the South, but I've always loved everything about that part of the country. I love the people, the food, the weather, the way the girls talk to ya when they're moving their fingers seductively through your back hair at the strip club on Fridays (totally nude by the way after 10).

I actually acquired my accent back in '79 when I moved from Nebraska to Sanford, Florida. Since I grew up around livestock and Mildred Green, I automatically gravitated to the farm kids. They all sounded like they had just come from a Dukes of Hazzard casting call. I've always been a dialect chameleon, so I started speaking with a thick accent. From that point on it was my way of speech and I love it. Don't get me wrong: I can come in and out of it anytime I want; I just feel more comfortable in a southern dialect.

The cool thing is my family actually has a strong connection to the South. A great-great grandpa (there might be another great in there, I'm not sure) offered a gun and a horse to anyone that would join the Confederacy back in '64. Who cares if it was 1964. Give the guy a break. He had Alzheimer's and thought he was Jefferson Davis.

I know, ya think that's sad. Well, how do ya think I felt havin' to empty Jefferson Davis's bedpan every night?

When I went to college at Baptist University of America in Decatur, Georgia, my roommates were from Beaumont, Texas, and Dalton, Georgia. They pretty much frosted the dialect cake for me. By the end of my college years I sounded like a roadie for the Marshall Tucker Band.

I had a blast in college. I had a double major. Everyone had to major in Bible Studies and one other thing. My one other thing was looking at Andrea Koler's titties. (Lord, I apologize.) By the end of the school year I could quote the entire book of Luke AND get a bra off with 2 fingers in under 11 seconds.

Those were the days.

So now ya know a little bit about where I grew up and how I acquired my accent. That brings us to how I created my next character for 95 YNF, the guy who was really myself only with a different name (man, this is getting complicated).

This is how it happened: I was sitting on the couch at home watching Three's Company and wishing I was Jack Tripper when my phone rang. It was my buddy from the radio station. He said they had been waiting on some cable guy to call them for a few days but they hadn't heard from him. So he asked me to call in and pretend to be the cable guy.

At the time I did a five-minute bit in my act about a cable installer coming to your house. I never thought of doin' it on the radio, mostly because I was tryin' to get my voice back from impersonating that old Jewish woman character. I also still had two months probation left after goin' down to the dinner theater, stripping naked, and sticking my wiener in between my legs to taunt Rosie O'Donnell.

But after much thought and half a bottle of Jim Beam, I agreed to call in the next day. That night I wrote out a bit where I would do social commentary as the cable guy. Then I went to bed and dreamt I was Jack Tripper nailing both roommates while Mr. Furley was at the Regal Beagle spreading rumors about me being a homosexual.

I'll never forget my first time on the air. Just before the phone call my stomach got upset from the seven bowls of Cap'n Crunch I had consumed the night before. I was miserable the whole morning. I could have pooped through a screen door and not touched a wire. However, throughout all the complications from the Captain and his crunch berries, I persevered through three minutes of radio hilarity.

I really can't remember right now what exactly I talked about; evidently it was funny enough, 'cause they asked me to do it again. In the beginning, I just introduced myself as the cable guy and never really attached a first name with it. When someone finally asked me to give one, I didn't want to use my real first name; I just popped out with Larry. That was kinda easy. Lawrence was my middle name, taken from my grandma.

I know. It's weird havin' a grandma named Larry, but just think how her mom, Earl, felt.

Names from the old days were weird. I've actually met old dudes named Connie and Sue. Back in the day, Bertha and Mildred were really popular names. I've never met anyone under 75 who was named either one of those, but I bet there used to be a Bertha that was a piece of ass. Somewhere back in 1932, I'm sure there was some pathetic sumbitch rubbin' one out while thinkin' about Mabel and Mildred and Bertha. The antique Charlie's Angels.

Today, ya wouldn't think of a Bertha bein' hot. You never see a sexy Mildred or Bertha. I'm sure I'll never be watching the country music awards over at my brother's log trailer and hear the announcer say, "And now here are the nominees for female country singer of the year: Faith Hill, Shania Twain, and Bertha Cramps." It just wouldn't sound right.

Back in 1932, I'm sure Bertha Cramps was turnin' heads left and right. Nowadays, though, she's that fat old lady wearin' the hairnet and servin' up mac and cheese in the lunchroom.

But gettin' back to my grandma, ya know, the one I got my middle name from? She actually was a stripper in a brothel back in '41. Grandma Lawrence is kind of losing it as she gets older and every now and then she gets back into the stripper frame of mind.

Last week, for example, she accidentally sent two naked pictures of herself to Good Housekeeping magazine. Then she sent a picture of her peach pie along with the recipe in to Hustler. The good news is that she won pie of the month in both publications (we're so damn proud of her).

But enough of my prostitute grandma, let's return to me. . . .

After those first few call-ins to the radio station, the name Larry the Cable Guy began to stick as a recurring character. I never realized how popular my calls were becoming because I phoned in while I was touring the country with Riverdance and doing a little stand-up. I never had time to hear the broadcasts.

Meanwhile, I ended up quitting Riverdance; I enjoyed performin' but the costume pinched my nuts so bad during the leg kicks, I ended up herniating myself. I swear my left nut swelled up to the size of one of those medicine balls. It was very painful, but for 11 days I got a great workout.

With my dancin' career behind me, I concentrated on doin' stand-up and pursuin' my first love: making scenic murals out of nipples cut from various porn publications.
From the Hardcover edition.