Upsetting Day: This Is For You, U.S.A.! 🌭

How many ways are there to celebrate America? Let’s see, there’s Nebraska. Scottie Pippen. Masters of the Universe Evil Pit of Gruesome Goo Playset. Pigeons. Actually, let me check my local library. It’s possible someone wrote a book about this and I can save myself a lot of hard work. Oh! Here we go! Perfect:

Gregory J.P. Godek is one things. A romance author, and a romance author. So when I saw he wrote a book about America, I thought “Finally, someone learned how to fuck this great nation.” This is not that. This is something so much less. Maybe less than anything has ever been. 1001 Ways to Celebrate America is -25% of an idea. It’s something a below average goldfish would think from a can of lead paint.

Instead of clips, I chose to scan entire pages. I really wanted you to see the emptiness of Godek’s thoughts on America. I also worried you might not believe it was real. There are twelve more words in this sentence than there are on the opening page of this book. And, sure, the words so far are fine. They’re not his, or profound in any way, but they do communicate the book’s real intent: filling space at any cost. To Greg Godek, there is no difference between good and bad writing– only numbers checked off and numbers not checked off. He writes like he just Quantum Leaped into a bridesmaid giving a wedding toast.

What are we in the brainstorming meeting for the book we’re fucking reading? This isn’t how you celebrate America. This is how you publish the unedited notes of a middle school president’s concession speech. This sounds like a Tesla commercial after a racial scandal.

This goddamn moron, this soulless piece of trash, has only written 20 words so far, 13 if you don’t count repeats, and he is already rearranging them. It’s page three. Greg Godek has run out of ideas on the third page of his America book. Fuck his desperate, coughing, childlike brain. He thinks the completion of the assignment itself is the goal of a writer, that the simple act of saying 1001 vaguely American things is a victory. But is it? Are there readers out there going, “Nine hundred ninety-nine, one thousand, one thousand and… by god, he did it! He really did it!” I’d argue no. I’d argue fuck no. These are dumb answers to a quiz a fool gave himself for no possible audience, and the subtext of each thought seems to be “Um, technically that one counts!!”

Sure, random quotes from the miscellaneous. You’re welcome, America. I’ve read Godek’s other books, so I knew it was going to eventually be grandpa trying to remember things, but he got there so fast. He skipped right past hula hoops and REO Speedwagon to get to “noises the TV makes.”

Have you heard of holidays? Because if you haven’t, buckle the fuck up. They happen every year, and if you think they all have normal-colored eggs, egg again. What are we reading, and who is it for? These sound like memory implants a clone would reject before it thrashed free of its pod. Best-selling author Greg Godek wrote a baby book with no pictures for the elderly.

Say something, anything, about something, Godek. You set out to list famous things and failed to connect them with any thread of context. There’s nothing to give or take from this. There’s not even a discussion to be raised. After reading this someone could say, “What about the 17th largest pancake?” and Godek would have to say, “Yes! Precisely!” Or maybe he would say, “No, no, big foods don’t belong on this list of six paintings, historical events, landmarks, or spaceships.” It wouldn’t matter either way, because these aren’t ideas. This is fluid dripping from the ears of a basic bitch killed with a hammer.

So after seven pages of almost pornographic emptiness, pages 8 and 9 are hugs. I think Godek is really going through something. Maybe we’d better stop to try to figure it out. Did he write this while being strangled? Did he only recently hear about America? I think I could be the man to solve this. Because like anyone could if they had 75 cents and a GoodWill nearby, I own all of Greg Godek’s books. Here, look, I took this photo in my home:

See, in 1991, Greg wrote 1001 Ways To Be Romantic. It was a hit! Unfortunately, it was not a good book, he wasn’t a good writer, and he never had another inspiration. So he updated and reissued the book a few times, wrote a “sequel,” wrote another “sequel,” wrote a parody, chopped it into parts to make smaller books, and adapted it into coupons several times. By my count, 1001 Ways to Celebrate America was Godek’s 22nd book, and it is, without question or exaggeration, only the second thing he’s ever written.

In the year 2001, Greg was running out of idea. For a full decade, he had been taking words from his inexplicably successful book and shoving them around, polishing the pizza grease on his obvious and square dating advice. And then a smaller tragedy happened. Someone flew a plane into a building. Because, yes, 1001 Ways to Celebrate America was a shameless attempt to cash in on September 11th.

Greg Godek dedicated this book, this assortment of loose thoughts from a saccharine fuck, to the victims of 9/11. He had only 1,001 things to give them, and one of them was “Make a wish on the wishbone at Thanksgiving.” Which reminds me of something I recently heard: this is a loose assortment of thoughts from a saccharine fuck. Is that because it was rushed? How soon after the towers fell was this published?

Two thousand and one!? That means that while a nation mourned, Godek pitched, wrote, edited, and printed this book in under 111 days. That’s fast. Air traffic controllers leapt into action with less urgency than Greg Godek on 9/11. His first through fifth stages of grief were wondering how the situation could make him money, which I guess is pretty American. And maybe I’m being too hard on him. Three and a half months is a decent amount of time. It’s not like he published his 9/11 book in…

… holy fucking shit, OCTOBER OF 2001? How!? Godek had to have already been working on those Easter egg tips (“Color eggs at Easter.” if you don’t remember) while they were still watching the towers burn. Debris was falling from the sky and he was hunched over the keyboard saying, “Hug your Mom. Okay, think, Greg, think. What else, what else… Hug your… that’s it! Dad!”

When he told his wife he’d already finished the first 100 pages of his 9/11 book, her response was, “A second plane has hit the tower.”

Let’s keep reading this gift he lovingly, thoughtfully gave to the survivors.

“Captain Ahab,” said Greg Godek to the shell-shocked survivors of September 11th. His words came as a comfort, a resource in short supply. “Marilyn Monroe. Mae West,” he concluded, for some reason. America had lost so much. We were attacked in our home by an enemy wielding terror as a weapon, but this brave romance author refused to give up. He said seven celebrities or politicians or fictional characters, in no particular order. Our wounded nation could not have asked for a more noble savior.

“The basic idea of cookies,” said Greg Godek over the course of an entire page of his 9/11 book. “There’s no fucking way that’s true,” your mind might respond. Yet it is. All of it. He summarized the process of making and enjoying cookies, and enjoying was three of the four steps.

It’s easy to dismiss this book as a senile man jotting down the last of his memories, but look again. It’s not quite even that. He’s asking the reader to do that. To all the victims of the horrific bombings of the World Trade Center, know this: Americans can name George Jetson’s dog, Archie Bunker’s wife, Charlie’s Angels. By the way, there’s no answer key. If you’re a 9/11 survivor who doesn’t know the name of George Jetson’s dog, add this page to your suffering.

What’s frustrating is that I don’t mind nostalgia, or evoking shared memories. There are a lot of ways to say “think about Batman” where I will agree with you. But this sucks so hard. Godek is talking like he’s on a date with 1971’s dumbest 14-year-old. He didn’t come up with a cute framing device or any kind of trivia game. This is a rat scientist who got confused by his own maze. Greg might as well be begging his reader to remember things for him.

Yeah, like that, Godek. Certainly these moments in our great history deserve a place of honor here, across from the sentence, “A talking horse.” It’s frustrating because Gregory is almost stumbling into punchlines. Deliriously recalling bloody military battles in the same breath you sort of remember the Brady Bunch is so close to funny. And yet it’s also so far past absurd there’s no parody for it. I could say, “Remember the Holocaust, Tiananmen’s Square, and laughing along with Gilligan,” but why? That’s almost exactly what he already said!

It’s important not to take nuanced work like this out of context so here is Gregory Godek’s Way to Celebrate America, Number 180ish, in its entirety: General Robert E. Lee.. “Fruit Loops, car tires, breakfast cereal,” he no doubt considered instead. I think he made the right call.

What’s this? What good will a list of celebrity couples from the 1960s do me? What am I, the opening comic for a child magician in a hospice?

“Proms.

Pom-poms.”

You can’t improve on perfection. Hate him or hate him, sometimes Godek is right.

It’s crazy this man is a romance author, because this is what you’d say if you were a wizard casting a spell to seal all the world’s vaginas. This is a script Dan Aykroyd would call, “Exactly what I needed to show off my comedic range.” Read this out loud. There is no one in your life who loves you enough to not shoot you in the head before you get to “And awayyyy we go!”

Again, there’s never been any published work so close to nothing as this. You can’t say less than the names of 19 baseball players. Like, if you said the names of 18 baseball players I’d call it a tie.

This is a test you’d give your students if you taught a course on Not Indulging Every Little Fleeting Thought. You’d ask them “A list of abbreviated organizations… is that anything?” and fail everyone who said higher than maybe. A big part of talent comes from knowing when an idea is bad before it’s fully executed. Any competent writer would have seen this concept as a dead end. But to not see how fucking worthless it is afterwards, after you’re sitting there looking at a tower of random letters? That’s what makes Godek special. He was proud of this. Gregory J.P. Godek kept his name on this book. He thought his name helped.

And yet maybe there was a part of Godek that knew what he was doing was wrong. Because this page makes no sense if you’re a grieving 9/11 survivor hoping to learn new ways to celebrate America. But it does make sense if you’re an exploitative piece of shit’s subconscious crying out from the space between old sitcom memories.

He’s done. Godek is spent. This is the background noise of a boomer brain when they forget to bring a magazine to the toilet. He has been so utterly and completely defeated by the challenge of “say 1000 things, dumbshit.”

I’m in a relatively unique position to understand Godek’s struggle since I spent a decade at a website that specialized in generating massive amounts of lists. But I did not know there was a stage of the writing process like this. This is more raw than anything I’ve ever jotted down. For instance, a real line from my notes file is “that dinosaur cop movie had to sue Whoopi Goldberg to be in it, other movies where similar happened?” and without touching a word, I’d put the value of that up against any of these lists Godek fully edited and published to honor the 9/11 dead.

I think we can all appreciate the nimble and creative mind of Gregory Godek who somehow thought of the movie Groundhog Day while he was talking about Groundhog Day, but look at his glorious tip for 9/11 survivors celebrating Valentine’s Day. He suggests being romantic, great Valentine’s Day advice, and then plugs his other book. Which is, oh no, it’s another situation with no analogy. Because this is like sneaking in an advertisement while you’re in the middle of exploiting September 11th for profit. I don’t know where to go from there. I’d have to say something beyond ridiculous like, “That’s like telling someone to read Mein Kampf in a Gregory Godek book.” And I would never. That would be cartoonish nonsense; a hack joke beneath my contempt.

Oh f-fuck.

Sure, hug Mickey Mo– no. No. How did that happen? Did I somehow conjure that? I refuse to believe we live in a universe where a bestselling author wrote a book about the 1001 ways to celebrate America and one of them was, word-for-word, “Read Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.” How did reading Mein Kampf even crack the top– I mean, were there no contenders who could push Hitler into 1002nd place? Like, off the top of my head, sunflower seeds, rustic fencing, read Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler. Huh. I guess it always finds a way in.

I’m almost positive the hardest, most time-consuming part of Greg’s creative process was figuring out how to look up “songs with U.S.A. in their title” on the 2001 world wide web.

He’s checking his AOL keywords for more America songs? This is a sick mind dry heaving. It might as well say, ★Shapes I saw while being dragged from a motorcycle in the USA: triangle, chickens, blue, Read Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler..

I don’t know how to describe this. Is a list “eclectic” when it’s only five things long? Is his brain really out, entirely fucking out, of things? I’m making fun of him, but I honestly don’t know what he’s trying for here. I don’t know what links these people or what he left off this list. Maybe Pizza Hut? A lawn dart injury? Why did he stop? I can’t imagine what ideas he would reconsider if he left Hitler in.

Jesus Christ, the ABCs of America? Godek has stopped his list of random things to write a smaller list of random things. I’m going to add the concept of alphabetized lists to the casualties suffered in the terror attacks of September 11th. Let’s jump ahea– oh my god. No.

That monster. He did it again 44 pages later. Which would be a lot in a different book, but you’ve seen what Godek pages look like. I skipped him naming shirt colors and remembering I Dream of Jeannie. That’s ten minutes of work, at most. Which means smoke was still rising over the devastated New York City skyline while Godek was polishing the line “Enjoy freedom” in his second “ABCs of America” list that day. You know what might be fun? Let’s see how this creative genius handled the alphabet’s tough later letters.

Ha ha for the letter Y he went with “Yup!” which is, of course, short for “Yup! We celebrate being American!” Ha ha ha what a goddamn fucking stupid fuck. Greg Godek is the Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler of books.

I’m about to make it worse.

This is not the first and second time Greg Godek has been writing a big, dumb list only to stop and make a small, dumb list based on the English alphabet. He first did it before back in 1991 in 1001 Ways to Be Romantic:

This one wasn’t so bad. It’s a nice tight list of romantic words like Panties and Pizza. Also, Quebec, Quiche. Restful. All the words you need for romance. And including only Sex for the letter “S” is as close to cute as we’ve ever seen Godek be. It shows restraint. It had to have been tough to resist putting in Salad and Signed Copy of Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.

You might see where this tangent is going, but Godek did this alphabet shit again in his followup book, 1001 MORE Ways to Be Romantic:

In this book, his “ABC” section spanned numbers 1465-1490 because each letter counts as its own entry. A. B.old C.hoice! D.ogshit E.thics, F.ucking G.odek. H.a I.‘m J.ust K.idding. L.et’s M.ein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.

His worst version of the idea came in 10,000 Ways to Say I Love You, which is a hilariously impossible number for an author who, after pizza and Hitler, knows less than 400 things.

On number 7966, SEVEN THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX, Godek took this concept, the kind of poem a tiny child would write, and turned it into a coupon! But not a fully realized coupon! It’s a coupon you, the reader, gets to come up with based on your lover’s… favorite letter? I can’t be reading this right. Oh, good. Here’s a nice normal one from The Portable Romantic:

Again, he makes you do most of the work but he still counts it as 3 entries because he gave you A through C. I don’t know what any of this means in relation to his tribute to 9/11. I don’t know why I’m documenting it. There’s no need for it. We all understood this man was intellectually and creatively bankrupt. But there’s something fascinating about a man whose eyeballs turn to dollar signs when there’s a terror attack and who shouts “eureka!” whenever he remembers the alphabet. Anyway, here’s an unrelated clipping from his book, Romantic Essentials.

Sorry, that’s the same one as– no, this is the right clipping. It was Godek who accidentally copied three entire entries of his other book. Oh well, everyone makes mistaKampf, by Adolf Hitler. By this point Godek knows we know he’s the ABC guy and he’s not embarrassed. For him, being a tired cliche is a time saver. In the next entries, instead of typing out complicated instructions on how to do the alphabet at home, he simply says, “A-to-Z Romantic Gifts: I think you know what to do!” followed by just the worst goddamn examples of gift ideas:

You get it. Buy her 26 gifts. Aretha Franklin albums, Baileys Irish Creme. . . etc. If she figures out what you’ve done, and she won’t because she’d probably alphabetize those items under “F” and “I“, she won’t know why you did it! You insufferable maniac!

When Godek was writing his book Romantic Mischief, he had another brilliant idea: the alphabet!

It’s 90% identical to one from the last two books.

I don’t know if “C–Come closer, my honey bun!” is better than the previous version, “Come closer– never leave me!” It doesn’t matter because any reasonable woman would C.all the police and C.ut your dick off. You’re welcome for the C.omedy.

Oh, look. He did it again in the same book. We need to keep this moving, so I’m going to skip to everyone’s favorite, the pizza and sex part.

Okay, this is a little different. Godek has been making changes, tinkering with his love advice. In this revised version, he’s removed the pizza and added… socks. Why? That’s plainly worse, Godek. You went from fucking on pizza to dry sex in socks.

Now hold on, I know this is a tangent within a tangent, but I’m going to look something up.

This is the index from 1001 Ways to Be Romantic. Godek didn’t include one in 1001 Ways to Celebrate America because when your book is only a list of things, an index is nothing more than the whole book again. But back to my point– you can see what young Godek thought was important. Pizza(!) appeared on four pages and was categorized with an exclamation point. And you’re reading that correctly– six of his other romantic tips were Playboy magazine. That’s more than pizza! This was a horny, hungry man ready to take on the world.

Now let’s see what happened when he went back and made his revisions:

Later editions only mention pizza twice. That’s barely more than section “Play,” subsection “it again, Sam.” I don’t know what I’m trying to prove. That he once stood for something? Definitely not. That he used to have more pizza and masturbation in his life? I guess. I can’t believe this discount Hallmark card of a man created a work so awful I’m sitting before you saying, “His earlier stuff was better.” For instance, in 2001’s 1001 Ways to Celebrate America, he’s still going with this bullshit:

Yes, America gets mentioned sometimes in music, Greg! I swear this fucker writes like the dumbest team member on a Family Feud episode that never existed.

What? Okay, so Andy Rooney was the old man who told viewers of 60 Minutes that paper clips were better than staples and if you ask him, trains should be horses. Maybe Godek means Mickey Rooney? Either way, if Andy OR Mickey Rooney crack your top ten of all-time comedians, you died of misery-related causes over 85 years ago. What the shit is this book, Gregory?

As a writer, there’s something about ending each of these boomer memory fragments with a period that feels obscene. It’s like Godek is counting “Bob Hope.” not only as one of the 1001 Ways to Celebrate America, but as a complete sentence. This is going to sound racist, but I hate it more than the Confederate generals and Hitlers.

Greg wants us to “Learn about Native American cultures.”? And then, in a totally separate entry, “Honor them.”? To Godek, to a mind like his, what could that mean? Respectfully look them up in an Encyclopedia? Reenact an entire Cherokee Corn Mother ceremony? Indigenous artifact museum heist? “Honor them.” isn’t enough to be helpful. If you’re an Applebee’s waiter with a name tag I will spend 50% more words thanking you for a refill on my water than Greg Godek said about honoring Native American cultures.

Greg, buddy.

It’s fair to joke about this list of things no longer being true because of senility and natural causes, yet I think it’s more important to remember this is how Godek honored 9/11. We were all sharing this horrible emotional trauma, and this pizza fucker thought it would help to say, “Americans . . . can sing the theme song to ‘The Brady Bunch.'” Though I guess… I guess he’s right. Yeah. Yeah! Americans can sing the theme song to “The Brady Bunch!” Better luck next time, terror!

Oh damn it, I thought it was over. That would have been a good ending. But Godek couldn’t wrap his book up without listing the nine players or coaches of basketball. America salutes you, basketball men Greg remembers!

This is new. Up until now there had been no editorializing, only judgment-free lists. Godek was like, “Remember peanut butter. Enjoy a Qur’an. Give Hitler a shot.” And now, after 232 pages, he’s got opinions? Four of them? And one of them is “Twinkies are a dubious achievement?” What!? I don’t know, I guess anything is better than watching an old man struggle to remember every last song that name drops the country.

God damn it, Godek.

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