Foreword

      Before my son convinced me to call this work This Book Is Great, I was going to call it This Book Sucks.

      I got a strange look from my fiancé when I told her, “I’m going to write my memoirs and call it, This Book Sucks.” I quickly corrected the false impression by adding, “No, my life doesn’t suck...this book sucks.” I then added, “I have beautiful children, plenty of money, and I get to screw you all the time. So you see, my life doesn’t suck…well…it might suck now that I said I get to screw you all the time. If that pisses you off, and you break up with me, then my life will suck. You, my dear, are the only thing in my life that I want to suck. And I mean that in a good way.”

      (Note to self: Try to get out of the first paragraph of the foreword without talking about the woman you love in the same sentence as the words screw and suck.)

      The reason this book might suck is that I’ve never written a book before. Therefore, this book might suck. Also, I may be so intellectually challenged that I don’t know for sure whether or not I’m smart or stupid.

      Let’s see, sometimes people don’t get my jokes and they usually disagree with things that I say.

      Hmmmm....well, Robin Williams is super smart and I’ve heard him tell jokes and seen people giggle but not really get it.

      Albert Einstein, now there was a smart guy, but some people in 1904 may have disagreed with him on that energy being the same as mass thing. I’m sure everyone knows this now, especially the Japanese. What about that time being the same as distance thing? Hell, most of you don’t even know that time and distance are the same thing in the year 2007!

      Perhaps everyone else is stupid and I’m the real comic genius. But then, how do you explain my belief that the Texas Rangers will win the pennant or is that, by definition, comic genius. No, I’m pretty much thinking that I’m the idiot. Perhaps the point of this book should be to answer the burning question, “Is Levystien an idiot?”

      You should understand that I’m not an activist and I’m not selling anything. Since I'm about the only one who can say that then maybe I am an idiot.

      I’m not trying to say that every little detail I’m professing is accurate. I’m trying to paint some broad-brush strokes here and in order to illustrate my points there will be a lot of ground that I cover. I’ll take you on a ride from Little Big Horn to the island of Gozo in the Mediterranean to Big Tex to the Eagle Nebula to Charles Bukowski and his penis and even to why it’s better to have more than one God. (Hopefully, I overwhelmed you with the image of Bukowski’s pecker and you failed to notice that little thing about more than one God.)

      All I ask is that you focus on the big picture for one lousy moment, please! I’m sorry, I’m arguing with anticipated counter arguments. Does it mean that I’m smart or stupid because I argue with myself?

      Now, where were we? Oh, yes, what exactly is the point of this book? This Book Is Great is a book about nothing and it is a book about everything. I wish to make you laugh, frown, cry, wonder, and get really, really pissed-off and offended. (Hence, the inappropriate profanity and reference to Charles Bukowski’s penis.)

      For example, let’s try a little test vignette on the ever-popular subject of religion to see if I can do all of these things. We’ll call it St. Joseph.

 

St. Joseph

 

      My fiancé is a Russian Orthodox Christian and I’m some weird combination of Jewish, Episcopal, Methodist, and Zen Buddhist on a good day. So, if I want to keep screwing her...whoops...OK, let’s see...ahm...if I want to keep “making love” to her then I need to convert to Orthodox Christianity and marry her in the Orthodox Church.

      Actually, the English language is not her native tongue and she has never heard the colloquial expression “to screw” as meaning to have sex. Therefore, she has no negative emotions in connection with the off-color use of the verb “to screw.” In fact, she has only just learned it and thinks it’s funny. Unlike her feminine American counterparts, she is not offended at all. So, I can unabashedly say, “If I want to keep screwing her…”

      OK, I need to have an orthodox name and I need to have a patron saint. An orthodox name is easy. Every guy in Russia is either Vladimir or Alexander or Mikhail. But choosing a patron saint takes a little time. I mean…this is a person who represents my personal values and what I stand for. Am I going to pick some guy who they burned upside down on a stake? And how do I know that Peter and Paul didn’t have some ulterior motive for getting everyone to follow them. Maybe they were just looking for Mary in order to form a band. And what about Mary? Perhaps she really did love Bret Fav-rey after all.

      So, “What about Mary?”

      Even the blessed mother of Jesus supposedly comes home one day and tells her fiancé, Joseph, “I’m pregnant...but guess what...I’m still a virgin!” Sainthood for these folks seems at least somewhat controversial to me.

      But Joseph, on the other hand, now here’s a guy who actually marries a very pregnant Madonna. Then, he raises her baby as if it’s his. So, I’m looking at a lot of these so-called saints with a crooked eye but Joseph, now there’s a Goddamned saint!!

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      OK, that was just a small taste of what this book will be like.

      Are you feeling OK?

      Did you laugh, frown, cry, wonder, and get really, really pissed-off and offended?

      Most of all...Did you think? I suppose that the real purpose of this book is to awaken you and make you think. However, I implore you to remain very well aware of one overriding and possibly catastrophic little point, we don’t really know for sure whether or not Levystien is an idiot.

 

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