Roastbeef’s Promise

One of the best pieces of humorous fiction that I have ever read, June 14, 2009
By Charles Ashbacher “(cashbacher@yahoo.com)” (Marion, Iowa United States(cashbacher@yahoo.com)) – See all my reviews

The premise in unusual yet carried out so well that it is sometimes hysterically funny. Jim “Roastbeef” Hume’s father is suffering from a severe case of Alzheimer’s Disease, a lifelong hater of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he now believes that he is Roosevelt and making executive decisions. In his last hours, he asks that his body be cremated and his ashes scattered throughout the 48 contiguous states of the United States. Jim is a mediocre college student with no money, so even though his father was demented when he made the request, to Jim a promise is a promise, so he embarks on the journey, which starts in the Washington D. C. area.
Jim travels by car, bus, moped, bicycle, truck, train, and on foot. He bums rides, jobs and almost everything else when he can’t find enough work to continue the journey. In a very funny book, the best part by far was when he was describing his “Uncle Spud.” “Spud” was a member of his father’s army unit in World War II and he received a Purple Heart for his wound in “hand-to-hand combat” with a German woman armed with a potato peeler. Spud is an unmarried Professor of agriculture at Cal Poly and the description of this colorful character had me laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.
This is the most unusual road story that I have ever read, Jim struggles with adversity, everything from getting his car stolen to being thrown in jail to having the container of his father’s ashes overturned and stolen. Yet he perseveres, meeting some of the oddest people ever to appear in a story, so quirky that they were plausible. It is one of the best pieces of humorous fiction that I have ever read.

Lately my publicist has been getting lots of radio phone-in interviews for me to talk about “Roastbeef” with radio stations around the country. Most of the interviews take place during morning drive-time which means that when I’m talking to the East Coast or Midwest, I’m getting up very early in California. I’ve never been much of a morning person, which makes it extra difficult to be funny, witty, and chipper.
My alarm goes off around 5am, I make some coffee and take a quick walk around the block to get some fresh air and my blood moving, and then get on the phone. I call the radio station and they put me on hold for a couple minutes and then all of a sudden – wham!
“Heyyy, Heyyy!!! It’s Johnny & Jimmy in the morning!”
The party is instantly on with Cleveland’s wacky, high-energy morning team, so I need to immediately raise my energy level from 0 to 100 miles per hour, telling stories,laughing, back-and-fourth, give-and-take, and then 8 minutes later it’s all over and I hang up. My house is dark and quiet and now I’m completely wired like I did a beer bong full of Red Bull!
I need to go back to bed for a couple more hours of shut-eye, but that’s not going to happen in my “amped” condition, so I take another walk around the block to try and cool down. Suddenly I have a better understanding of why Elvis got addicted to uppers and downers, and a strong desire for a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.

I can’t take credit for this one, but I laughed out loud when I heard it, so I thought I’d share it on my blog.
“Did you hear about the new Octo-Mom breakfast special at IHOP? It’s 8 eggs, no sausage, and somebody else pays the bill!”

10. $250 million in H&R Block gift cards for Obama’s tax-cheating cabinet members.
9. $1.4 billion for “green” rechargeable batteries for the “Hope & Change” robots.
8. $700 million for an environmental impact report on “trash talk” in pro sports.
7. $200 million for construction of a Ticket Scalper’s Hall of Fame.
6. $500 million to study the correlation between collagen lips and the obsession of collecting babies (study subjects: Angelina Jolie and Nadya Suleman).
5. $1.2 billion in partial unemployment benefits for people who “don’t really like their job that much ‘n stuff.”
4. $5 million in oral hygiene products to clean Michele Obama’s enormous horse-like teeth for four years.
3. $200 million for… oh, somethin’
2. $40 for a carton of smokes for the nicotine-addicted Chief.
1. $500 million to study why Asian guys turn red when they drink booze.

For Chinese New Year I took my kids to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate the year of the Ox with some bad pizza and loud arcade games. I knew it probably wasn’t the smartest move, but my kids wanted to go, and a good parent always does what their kids want to do (ref: Veruca Salts).
The county jail must have furloughed prisoners with kids that weekend and they all went to Chuck E. Cheese. The dads had tattoos running down their entire bodies. Starting with a sweet-ass neck tat that trickled down their shoulder, briefly hidden by the shoulder strap of their wife-beater Ts to their arms, and concluding on their calves like a continous scroll of black print reminiscent of the orginal butcher paper manuscript of “On The Road.”
The moms, dressed like teenage skate rats, bought-off their ticket-hording, coughing kids with shiny gold Chuckie tokens while they texted on their cell phones and sloppily ate salad.
It was so crowded that we actually had to wait for a table, and when we finally got one it was next to this “Bob The Builder” ride that every crying toddler with a runny-nose wanted to ride. It played the “Bob The Builder” theme song over and over, until I started thinking “can I break it? Yes, I can!”
When our $15 hunk of flattened dough arrived, my kids each ate one piece and quickly wanted to return to the games to touch more bacteria on the joysticks.
The teenage employee in the rat suit walked by greeting children which scared the hell out of my youngest son who jumped up into my lap knocking my Coke over.
Happy Chinese New Year!

So I just heard that for this year’s Super Bowl, our fighting men and women in Iraq will be allowed TWO BEERS while they watch the game! TWO BEERS?! These guys are in the prime drinking years of their lives… When I was 18-22 TWO BEERS on Super Bowl Sunday wouldn’t have gotten me to the pre-game show!! Is stingy Uncle Sam gonna ration the bean dip too?
Are they giving out peanuts by rank? Privates get 4 peanuts, corporals 6, …. and the General gets the nachos!
That’s why I’m starting a charitable foundation called “Kegs-4-R-Fightin’ Kids.” With your help we’ll get our fightin’ kids good and liquored up this Super Bowl Sunday! To donate, go to your neighborhood liquor store, grab a 30 pack of Bud and walk right out of the store. If they stop you, tell them it’s for our Fightin’ Kids, and they’ll probably salute you and tell you that you’re doing God’s work.” If not, you may be spending Super Bowl Sunday in the klink, where you can make some of that “prisoner wine” from fermented raisins in your jail cell’s toliet (I learned that on Lock-up) God bless our troops!