Part one: Me and my Bottomfeeder
My roommate has a real name, but we’ve taken to calling him “Bottomfeeder” after a song by a friend of mine named Steve Skinner in Aspen, Colo. And, for the record, Bottomfeeder isn’t sure this new column of mine is such a good idea. Of course, he's never been much a fan of the written word... mine or anyone else's.
“All of us learn to write in the second grade,” he told me. “Most of us go on to greater things.”
“Interesting point,” I replied. “Who said that?”
“I did,” he said. “Quote me.” Then he polished off another of my Molsons, lit up a Pall Mall he’d shoplifted from a convenience store on Wilshire, and began frantically searching for the TV remote as though there was a cigarette fire in the couch cushions. It was 7:30 a.m. Good news. Nearly his bedtime.
Bottomfeeder is my landlord’s nephew and he lives on my sofa here in Santa Monica. Not just sleeps there, LIVES there. Rent free. Like a homeless guy on a park bench, except with access to my fridge and beer and cable TV. Why? Well, due to a complex legal settlement — struck shortly after a cooking experiment gone wrong resulted in a large, ridiculously destructive grease fire in my building — well, I can’t get into exactly why he lives on my sofa.
I CAN tell you that Bottomfeeder is unemployed, out of shape, quite possibly in need of some sort of intervention, AND spends nearly all of his non-supine time figuring out creative ways to grow facial hair. He’s like the love spawn of Kramer and George Costanza from Seinfield.
He has several equally degenerate friends, and collectively they refer to themselves as the UBC — Unacceptable Behavior Club. They’ll start up in a bar: “Hey, are YOU-BEE-CEE?” I always wonder if they know that it could be taken as “Are you Before Christ?” But crossing them in bars is a good way to get a quick head-butting lesson, so I keep my comments to myself.
None of them have jobs either. They’re also, perhaps because of the head-butting, very loud talkers. And they’re always at my apartment, like somebody dropped off a group of agitated Doberman Pincers.
“Am I the only guy in the world who misses the bottom part of the screen?” the Bottomfeeder is shouting as I try in vain to complete this dispatch.
“What the hell are you talking about, man?”
“The bottom of the screen. THE BOT- TOM OF THE FRICKIN TV SCREEN!” he shouts, rifling through the channels for emphasis. “CNN, MSNBC, ESPN... they all got messages and numbers and reports and stuff constantly streaming across the bottom of the screen, blocking the view. Who cares about information? Most of it don’t mean nuthin! The newsbabe has a great rack and I’m getting stock quotes! The best stuff on TV is actually happening at the bottom of the screen! AND WE’RE ALL MISSING IT!!!”
See what I’m up against? The only reason I’ve not yet tossed Bottomfeeder out a window is that there exists the potential to make a lot of money off of his life. You see, despite his fantastic array of shortcomings, I have no doubt that Bottomfeeder will someday become famous. I know a few famous people, and they’re very much like him.
Perhaps his fame will come as a new kind of streetwise philosopher, or a circus act (he can fart the theme songs to several popular TV shows), or as the host of one of those cable shows aimed at misogynistic, beer-swilling louts. Sort of “The Man Show” meets “The Gong Show.” We’ll call it “Who Wants to Marry Exotic Facial Hair.”
Hell, with any luck at all he could be the Gen-X Bukowski. They say the best way to write a great novel is to live a great novel, so maybe Bottomfeeder’s on the way to creating a nice psycho-thriller.
Failing all that, it’s still fairly likely that Bottomfeeder will enter the public consciousness en masse in a “News of the Weird, Weekly World News cover story” sort of way. And when that happens, I’ll be ready, with family photos and signed release forms and free-clinic admission records...... because I’ve got the film, TV and newsprint rights to his life. That’s right — only cost me $500, too. Due to a burst of insane optimism triggered by a dream involving the Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleaders, he made some poor gambling decisions, then desperately needed to pay off an irate bookie. And I needed... well, something. He refused to move out in exchange for the dough, so we settled on a more creative, if somewhat long-term, option.
I bought his story. We whipped up a common-law contract modeled after that warning they give on major league baseball games, so I have rights to “descriptions, photos and accounts” of his life. I immediately mailed the originals to a trusted family member who agreed to keep the document tucked under his bar.
And now I wait, like a literary vulture. Even my friends think it’s a bit strange, but someday this sort of thing is bound to become common. Just watch, in five years the producers of shows like “Before They Were Rock Stars” will be running around the world signing buy-it-forward deals with every 12-year-old with a guitar and inferior playground skills.
And VH1 will own the first-time serial rights to one in three Seattle kindergarten students.
Or, not. I’m not saying it’s a sure thing. But, come to think of it, I’m cashing in already.
Because Bottomfeeder is already column fodder.
And there’s nothing he can do about it, even on the off chance somebody reads this to him. (Dan Dunn, a Santa Monica resident, writes for Warner Bros Online. For more FunHog fun, check out www.thefunhog.com)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 18, 2002. Read the original PDF.