No One Wants to be Joey Noodles

So, a couple of years ago I hired this electrician, Joey Noodles, to install some wall receptacles and a
ceiling fan and he stayed two years without completing the job. Every day he would come with some
sort of horrible story about his life, drink a cup of coffee and make up an excuse to leave.

Christmas was like this; everybody used to come to my house because my dad wouldnt go to anyone
elses house. It always started out with good intentions, everyone coming over, my aunts would come
and my Uncle John. Uncle John didnt care what holiday it was, he just wanted to know the score. He
was a bookie. My grandfather, who was hard at hearing cause he worked in the mill, a bunch of
different places, everywhere that was loud. So he would be there screaming at the top of his lungs for
everything. He was a big guy who you couldnt reason with, cause on the account that he was, well, not
slow, but a little slow.

So, dinner itself was a screaming match, cause everybodys telling three separate stories and nobody
listening to anyone else and everybodys yelling and Uncle John had turned the volume on the
television all the way up and put the knob in his pocket. Uncle John never worked for a day in his life,
except for one time when he had to do community service answering the suicide hotline, but they let
him go because he didnt give a shit.

So after that he got a job at one of his bookie buddys markets, selling overpriced meat to
underprivileged people. I got a job there too, selling velvet Elviss to Puerto Ricans. Nah, they love it!
Those Puerto Ricans, they buy velvet Elviss and velvet Jesuss and sad fucking clowns, and those
PRs would scoop them up like hot cakes! I didnt understand who the fuck would buy this shit. I couldnt
believe it!

Uncle Charlie is my fathers brother, but my father says hes my father, but my mother said thats not
true, cause I kinda act like him from time to time. My father never admitted I was his son, hed say, Go
see your uncle, he owes you money, or, Go ask your mother if Uncle Charlie slipped one in on me.
Hes a somewhat bald cigar smoking guy who had the world by his balls but he liked to chase women.
Hes been single his whole life and to this day has the same furniture I had in my apartment when I was
17. Nothing in the bank, as long as he had his cigars he was fine.

My Aunt Mary was my grandmothers sister. She owned a bar and was married to Uncle John, but not

technically, because John doesnt exist on paper. He doesnt. But the credit card company thinks he
owns an amusement park. He has credit cards a foot thick. He would have like 75,000 dollars worth of
credit card debt and it wouldnt matter until the next football game. When football season wasnt in, he
would smuggle fireworks from down south by the truckload. I had a better display on the fourth of July
than the fucking township.

One day Uncle John gave me this Saturn Missile Base. It was a huge thing. The size of a birthday cake
with thousands of bottle rockets all jammed together. And Im begging my Dad, Let me light this thing!
And hes like, All right, fine. So, we bring it out to the back yard and I light the main fuse. And the first
one shoots 150 feet into the sky and I Im thinking this is great. But the force of the rocket tips the
whole cake over pointing the remaining 999 at the house. And each time one hit the house, it would
leave a large black poofy mark in the siding and my dad would kick me. I spend the rest of the summer
repainting it, but it was worth it just to see the expression on the old mans face.

When I was 13, my dad was freshly divorced from my mother; at the time I didnt know anything about
it. All I knew was that they divorced, I lived with my dad, and the rest went with my mom. So its the
70s and my Dad went into this John Wayne stage; he wore cowboys boots and chewed tobacco. Now
its Christmas Eve and my dad, who hates to go out anywhere in public, had to go to Palmer Mall to pick
up a present for his new girlfriend. So Im like, Ill go with you. The fucking Santa is outside ringing the
bell, snow flakes are floating in the air and christmas songs on the radio. Its a real festive time, but
traffic at the mall is crazy. So were looking for a parking spot, Dads swearing as usual, and theres the
stop sign. The guy in the car in front of us pulled out and hits the brakes. Now Dad was looking left and
bumped into his car. It was nothing, just a tap. The guy in front of us was driving one of those BMWs
and my dad hates them to begin with, so I knew there was going to be an issue. The guy gets out of his
car and my Dad says to me, Stay here. Ill be right back.

Im singing along with Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer when I see this scarf wearing coglione,
sporting a pair of John Lennon glasses, poking my dad in the chest and getting in his face, Are you
drunk? I smell blah blah blah. So after the second poke, the old man smacks his hand out of the way
and grabs him by the fucking collar. The next thing I know hes on the fucking windshield of our car.
Everything flies off, my dad picks him of the hood and slam him into the road in front of the car and
steps on his fucking throat. I thought he killed him, his feet were flying up. I was just sitting, thinking
This is Christmas time with my father, this is normal. Santa stopped ringing the bell, everyone stopped
to see what was going on, and I can see some kids from school saying, Hey, thats Joes dad! I was
famous at school. So when the guy got tired of not breathing, my dad let him up and called the cops.

They came, but back then they were like, Nobody got hurt? Great, we got other shit to do. We ended
up getting in the mall and getting some perfume, so I hope his fucking girlfriend enjoyed it.

When I turned 13 or 14 my dad started to act funny, it was like expected of me to try to beat my father
up. My dad would like, Anytime your ready! I guess when I started to get older, it was thought that I
was gonna take a piece of my father. When my dad had his back operated on I went to visit and he was
in traction. I walk in and I go, How you feeling Pop? And he goes, Well, nows your chance, Mary.
And Im thinking, Dad, youre out of your fucking mind.

My dads friend Moose liked my father but he hated Italians, Jews, everybody unless you were German.
He used to pick me up and babysit me when I was 9. He was like 66, 300 pounds. I learned a lot from
him. Every time he took his his monocle out, he would speak to me like Colonal Klink, and I ate it up.
Hed go, Ello, leetle boy, vat is your name? Vood you like some stroodle? And he hated Jewish
people severely. There was one old lady, Mrs. Auspitz, who hated Germans as much as he hated Jews,
who would go to his antique store downtown to buy stuff and try to beat him down on the price. It
always ended with him chasing her out, he hated this fucking lady. So one day the lady was riding her
bicycle and got hit by a truck outside of his store, and he didnt even help her. He stood in the middle of
the street yelling shit like, Die, you fucking Jew. She didnt die though; years later, we found out that
she and Moose were involved in this sexual role-play thing, and thats just a little too fucked up to talk
about.

My dad uses vulgarity and swear works like artist use clay and paint, it was his medium. He would put
sentences together like, You fucking syphilitic fucking cock sucking dick licking fuckface! Pass the
ketchup. And youd be like, Holy shit! but then like, That was pretty good! But because of the way
my dad speaks, my wife banned him from the house five years ago. Ive got this Sicilian wife whos a
fucking hardass; nobody comes to the house because theyre either banned for eternity or dead. My
grandmother was banned because she throws shit. My Uncle Leo was banned for breaking into the
kids piggy bank. My cousin Sal doesnt come back in because he doesnt shower enough.

Kids are awesome, I just cant deal with the Sicilian wife. The foods fantastic. First wife? Couldnt cook
worth shit! But Id have sex with her 3 times a day and shed have sex 5 times a day! Thats why were
not together anymore. But nobody tells you. Not like I didnt have the signs. Shed come home at 3 AM
smelling like booze with bite marks on her neck, so I knew that wasnt gonna work out.

Anyway to make a long story short, at the end of Christmas dinner, my Dad would get on top of the

dinning room table and go, Is everybody done eating? Did you have a good time? Great! Now, get the
fuck out of my house, your phones ringing at home! And everybody got their coats and left.