Thanks to the magical power of compound interest, my $20 had grown to a whopping $24.

Life, as we all know, is a brutal series of letdowns and disappointments.

Now, I don’t love anything in this world except three things: corduroy pants, existential despair, and barbecue.

My big bro has two master’s degrees. He holds a black belt in kenju. He’s bad-ass at his job. He’s got tons of green and property. Yeah, of course I’m proud. But what really makes me proud? How goddamn good he is at poker.

But then the cards stopped coming. I’m not talking about premium starter hands; I’m not talking about decent hands; I’m not even talking about barely marginal hands. Nothing. I was catching nothing.

It’s bound to happen. A thing that’s really great can all of a sudden go south. That thing is the Friday-night poker game, though I hope it is only temporary.

I'm so proud of my big bro right now. Recognize.

I was as happy as a little girl whose parents chose not to go through with the divorce.

On Fridays, my writer sits next to me, lawyer-style, whispering suggestions for jokes and witty comments into my ear or handing me legal pads on which he’s furiously scribbled funny lines. Then if I stiff, I can blame him, throw a tantrum (talent can be so moody sometimes), fire him, tell him he’ll never work again, bad-mouth him all over town, say he's a thieving cokehead, try to write new material myself, fail miserably, call and beg him to come back, and then pretend that nothing ever happened.

And, I’m not gonna lie, I knew that I was in the middle of producing something really beautiful pretty much as soon as I began the cussathon. I was locked in, feeling the flow, and I wasn’t going to stop until the job was done. It went for almost two minutes, and it was probably the best writing that I have ever done, and, sadly, it’s lost to history.