The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 2001-2004. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

Oh yeah? Oh YEAH? Well, let me tell you something, mister. One day I'm going to be big and I'm going to be rich and I'm going to be famous. I'm going to be more famous than GOD. I'm gonna have a hundred handlers around me at all times. Every time I go out for a drink, they're gonna have to shut down the neighborhood in a four-block radius, just like they do for the President. You're gonna have to get through my publicist just to get an autograph from my OTHER publicist, motherfucker!

Yeah, that's RIGHT! I'm gonna be the biggest, baddest, rock and roll literary SUPERstar anyone's ever SEEN! I'll grace the cover of major weekly magazines. I will have torrid affairs with Oscar-winning actresses. I will have even MORE torrid affairs with Oscar-winning ACTORS! Ah-hah! Rock stars will write entire albums about me! Colleges will dedicate entire classes to me! Borders will donate an entire section to me!

(Acting like customer) "I'm looking for a book by Jason Pettus."

(Acting like dumbstruck employee, pointing obviously to the corner)

I am going to be the most famous American author of the 21st Century! And when they are writing my unauthorized biography, you know, the one pieced together by a bunch of tabloid writers, with a bunch of blurry black and white photos inside, and one of those cheesy stupid titles like 'Jason Pettus - His Fab Life,' when they are writing my unauthorized biography, they will talk of a bar I used to go to, a good bar, a fun bar. A bar where all the greatest writers of the 21st Century used to hang out for some inexplicable reason. Stoned undergraduates who haven't even been born yet will one day read that biography and say to themselves, "Dude...how cool would it've been to hang out at that bar?" "Yeah...right on, dude!" (Performer gives himself invisible high-five)

So don't you sit there, don't you fucking sit there, motherfucker, and tell me it's a waste of time to come out to a bar every Wednesday night and read my work to a roomful of drunk people. Because it's not a waste of my time. Because one day I'm gonna be famous. And all these people around you, they're all gonna be famous too. And you, motherfucker...you're the first one we're all gonna forget!