Money Pizza Respect

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Imagine going out and partying HARD. I'm talking binge-drinking and administering drugs through your butthole (they work faster that way). Now imagine waking up the next day in all your clothes, ragingly hungover, in a stranger's house, and someone immediately asks you to recount the events of the previous evening.

You can't. It's simply impossible.

That's kind of like this book. I can't remember a lot of details about what happened to me, so some of the stuff definitely happened, some of it kind of happened, and then some of it absolutely, positively, never happened at all. What can I say; I'm an idiot. Sorry.

So everyone just relax, and don't freak out about the accuracy of every tiny detail. Take it all with a grain of salt. Don't be a dick.

Enjoy!

FOREWORD

When Fat Jew first asked me to write the foreword to his book, I was humbled and honored. He is a man of many talents and he'd already told me that he'd read one of my books, so he knew what kind of a writer I was. So I felt validated by him asking me, author to author, as well as man to man.

The one thing that everyone needs to know about Fat Jew: He is one funny dude. He will have you laughing out loud within minutes of hanging out. I know a lot of funny guys, but this one really gets me going. That being said, I wasn't exactly sure what kind of book he was going to come at me with. But I was surprised to find that this book is much more of a real memoir than I would have expected. Josh has really put his life out there on the page for all to see. Sure, there are still the hilarious and ridiculous moments that you'd expect from a guy named Fat Jew, but there are also some seriously heart-warming stories about family and relationships as well.

Josh has accomplished a lot of things over the past few years. He is a true businessman in every aspect of the word. He has a social media empire, a very successful wine business, a television career, and now he has written a really impressive book. Like me, he is an "Ideas Man." He is constantly thinking about ways to monetize and brand himself. I can really relate to that. He has an idea, then he immediately starts to figure out how to make it a reality. Ambitious, strong willed, and hungry. All of these traits can describe this funny man, who has the body of a human Shrek, and the hair of a giant adult baby.

I honestly couldn't stop reading this book, and I don't think that you will be able to either.

I'm all about people pursuing their hopes and dreams. Most people are too afraid to reach for the stars. They are afraid that they are going to be burned, and I get that. But when I come across someone who has no fear, who finds the love of god (or whatever you feel like calling it) inside their heart and uses that to create good in this world… I applaud that courage. Fat Jew makes me proud to be an American.

Tyrese Gibson

August 2015

INTRODUCTION

I GOT A BOOK DEAL/THE WORLD IS ENDING

Hahhahahahah I wrote a book.

The fact that I actually wrote a book still amazes me and my mom, and my dad, and pretty much anyone who has ever met me. And it wasn't easy. I slaved over this thing. I started working on it the very day that I got the book deal. Sort of.

I was sitting in the office of my literary agent (hahahahahaha I have a literary agent, why??) waiting to sign the contract for my book. This book. The one you're reading right now, where I compare myself to Steve Jobs on the cover. It was a surreal moment. The fact that someone would actually pay me real dollars to write a book makes me LOL, hard. I sat in my agent's office, staring at a signed photo of him and Bill Clinton, noticing that we've reached a bizarre fucking time in our culture when people like me, who don't really have a legitimate reason to be famous or write a book, are getting amazing opportunities to write books.

"You should be really proud. You really earned this deal. You're really talented," my agent told me.

"I mean, I guess I kinda earned it by building up a big audience on social media. But writing a whole book seems like a fucking daunting task."

"You'll be fine. It's not that hard."

That seemed like it was good advice. That's what I pay him the big bucks for. To tell me how great I am.

That night I was getting very pumped. It did feel like all the work I'd been doing for the past few years had been validated. It had paid off.

So I sent out a group text to all of my boys.

The responses from my friends were very typical.

Once we were all gathered at Julius (a gay bar for tough gay dudes who watch sports and can kick your ass), I knew I was in for an epic night of drugs and debauchery. My friends are the literal worst, in the best possible way. Once I got four or five whiskeys in me, I began to poll them about what they really thought about me being an author. We stepped outside the bar to smoke cigarettes and a joint that was unnecessarily large (like cartoonishly so, but like so big it was mechanically difficult to deal with and ended up being annoying and I wished it was smaller). I guess now would be a good time to explain that that night can be broken down into drug phases. It will help you, the reader, better understand where I was emotionally throughout the evening.

Let's call this

DRUG PHASE 1 OF THE EVENING:
WEED VIBES

As we smoked on the corner, my buddies shared some fun ideas for me about how I should go about writing this book. Such as moving to Phoenix, getting addicted to crystal meth, and then writing about that. Or take all the money that I got in the advance and blow it on prostitutes and exotic animals—but mostly on the animals. One friend even suggested that I take the process really seriously, which I thought was hilarious. Then…

"There is no way that you will get this book finished," offered my oldest/richest friend, David.

"A tremendous boost of confidence. Thanks so much for that, you fucking dick."

"What do you want from me? You're obviously smart, but you're also a fucking buffoon who farts in the bathtub and tries to bite the bubbles. Instagramming and making web videos where you get in a Jacuzzi filled with pasta is very, very, very, very, very different than writing a book."

"I guess. Sort of."

"Ummmmmm… Not sort of. Definitely. Writing a funny caption under a picture or a blog post is a lot fucking easier than writing an engaging narrative about your life over the course of three hundred pages or whatever this publisher has you on the hook for."

I got what he was saying, but I also kind of disagreed.

"Writing a caption is not easier than writing a chapter of a book. It's just different," I said, trying to convince myself as much as I was him.

The conversation was making me feel very, very, very not great. Ungreat. Could I actually do this? Was I capable of writing a whole fucking book? About my life? Did anyone care? The weed was kicking in and giving me massive anxiety. Or maybe it was my level of drunkenness, or a culmination of all the insecurities I'd had as a child. I started to panic. Paranoia was not my normal weed vibe, but given the pressure I was suddenly putting on myself to write a fucking #1 New York Times bestseller, I was feeling trés paranoid.

I had to get out of my head because I was spiraling into a deep hole of depression and self-doubt at warp speed. Which is why I immediately agreed with my boy David, who suggested that we all go this rave in Queens.

DRUG PHASE 2:
MOLLY VIBES

"Everything is amazing!!! I got a book deal. I relish that challenge!!" I screamed at my friend Will, who was definitely not listening to me, because he was actually fingering a Korean eighteen-year-old in the middle of the rave over her Pokémon costume pants.

"I'm going to crush this book. People are going to love it. I'm gonna learn so much about myself. I have a great team around me who supports me and loves me. The book will just write itself. I'm so fucking excited!!!!!"

There was no response from David, but I really didn't care. I felt like the luckiest man on the planet. For the next few hours I had the best time that anyone has ever had at a Pokémon rave in Maspeth, Queens. I danced, I had an androgynous Asian dressed as Pikachu rub ice on my chest, I told anyone who would listen about how much they were going to love my book (most of them definitely did not speak English) and how it was going to be a long journey for me, but how I was so willing to put in the time and hard work to deliver a book that people would be talking about for years to come.

I really was on top of the world.

Then the molly started to wear off and my emotions became very mixed. (The comedown on molly is way better than on classic '90's ecstasy, but it's still no cakewalk.) All of my friends must have been coming down at the same time, because like magic, we all found our way back to the front door at the exact same time.

"An Uber is going to pick us up in exactly nine minutes and I scored a ton of coke off of this tranny named Tran!" screamed David. Yes, a transvestite named Tran. So good.

Fast forward to ten minutes later: In the Uber. The molly is officially done, and now we are all jazzed up on cocaine. I've now shifted from proud and emotional to just very fired up.

DRUG PHASE 3:
COKE VIBES

"You know what I'm gonna do," I start repeating as we careened down the highway, "I'm gonna go write this book right fucking now!!!! Let's do this shit. Like, no time but the present, right? I mean, what if I got like half of this fucking book done tonight? Like what if I just kept writing for like the next twelve hours? Is this insane? I feel like I'm being insane right now, but like good insane, like smart insane."

I had the driver stop at the first pizza place we saw so I could fuel up to write my book. It was four a.m. at this point, and we were all standing on the street eating a slice when it hit me that I needed a title. We tossed around a few ideas:

But then it occurred to me that I have had my title tattooed to my body already:

I've had that tattoo for years. And Money Pizza Respect has been my motto for as long as I can remember. It was clear to me that this would be the perfect sentiment for the title of my book. (So either I'm a genius or I'm lazy because I never came up with anything better, obvi.) In my blaze of drug-fueled inspiration, I saw the lights of a pawn shop across the street, shining like a beacon of hope for new American authors. I decided that I would write my entire book on a typewriter, in an attempt to steep myself in the heritage and tradition of these United States.

OK.

This is the moment when my drug plan began to fail (as they always do). This was a fucking pawn shop that was open at four a.m. on a Tuesday. They obviously did not have an old-timey typewriter, because the only pawn shops that are open at this hour are for junkies to pawn stolen watches and electronics for cold, hard smack money. The owner of the shop, who looked like Owen Wilson (but black), showed me this crazy, chunky Gateway desktop computer from 1997. It was perfect. I grew up as a child of the Internet. I'd cut my teeth on a machine just like this one, and now I would be writing a book because I'd made something of myself on the web. There was a karmic and poetic harmony to me finding this exact computer in a pawn shop in Queens. It felt like a real watershed moment for me. Also it was only $74.99. Even while fucked up, I enjoy getting a good deal.

I paid the pawn man, told him that he was now a part of history, and got into a cab with my huge new computer. I was buzzing with literary ideas. Making lists in my head about what stories from my life would make the book.

It was only when I got back to my apartment in Manhattan and started setting up this monster that it occurred to me that it wouldn't be able to connect to the Internet. It was only compatible with dial-up, and I only have wifi, because it's 2015. Then I called Time Warner Cable, which is always to be described as horrible. But trying to figure out if there is some way to get dial-up on this computer, while coked the fuck up at 7:40 in the morning, that is the definition of hell.

DRUG PHASE 4:
REGRET

I swear I spoke with fourteen thousand Time Warner Cable employees that night, only to fall asleep while on hold with Shaquon, one of the customer service representatives. I woke up at noon, my drool covering the keyboard of the Gateway and Shaquon nowhere to be found. Her shift had probably ended. I hadn't written a word of my book. I felt like death. It was at that moment that I realized I didn't need the Internet to write this book because I was writing in Microsoft Word.

After I showered and ate some egg whites (those undo the ill effects of a drug binge, right?), that computer went straight into the trash. Like I literally threw it into a Dumpster. I couldn't stand the sight of it. I swear on my dead aunt's grave that I didn't write a single word of this book until at least two months later. But that's pretty much par for the course. Whatever. Enjoy the book. Or don't. Just kidding, please do. I need this book to be popular to pay my fucking rent.