I'm Right Here, Fish-Cake

"[T]he humorous essay is the free throw made just before the buzzer:
If you sink it, you both score and win the game. If you don't, you begin to consider another career.
Jeffrey Shaffer ... has a good record at the line in I'm Right Here, Fish-Cake."
--Karen Karbo, Portland Oregonian

"In this quirky collection of short humor pieces ... the reader is treated to a peek at life in a parallel universe.
Satirizing every mode of communication and literary genre ... he zeroes in on the modern American psyche
with laser accuracy and loving affection. Here is mind candy that's actually good for you, high in intellectual
fiber but easy to digest. Devour it in one sitting, or ration it out and savor every bite-size nugget."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Modern culture ... reaches the soothing level of total weirdness in this collection.
--Faris Cassell, Eugene Register-Guard

A fugitive soda machine, the recovery of a chronic apathetic, a super hero who interviews for a job in a larger city, and the trial of the Cat in the Hat. I'm Right here, Fish-Cake is full of the odd and the unexpected. Food as nuclear material, a black-mailing trick-or-treater, the last comedy club in America.

Imagine The Far Side in prose as matter-of-fact as James Thurber's and you have some idea what jeffrey Shaffer's humor pieces are like. Shaffer employs his rich imagination to make the strangest situations and people seem just the way things are. He makes readers laugh as well as see things differently.

His humor comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from monologues and stories to letters, personals, even play-by-play. The pieces are full of parody, satire, storytelling, farce, surprises and flights of fancy, with a touch of pathos added for good measure. And lots of smiles and laughs.

Publishers Weekly has noted that this book was being published "in almost giddy defiance of all the humor trends in publishing." If you're tired of repetive, predictable, and sophomoric humor, Shaffer is the guy you've been looking for. Just like Catbird had been for years.

$12.95 paper, 192 pp., illustrated, ISBN 0-945774-30-3

Order from your local bookstore via Book Sense

Click here to read two sample stories from I'm Right Here, Fish-Cake,
or first try the excerpt from another story, below.

Excerpt from I'm Right Here, Fish-Cake

"Wake up! Wake up!"

My eyes snapped upen, and in the dim light I was confronted by the stricken, ravaged face of Florence Henderson.

"I have a headache THIS BIG!" she said frantically, stretching out her arms in both directions.

"Calm down," I said. "This is where you need to be."

Her hands were ice cold and trembling as I led her down the stairs. We sat at the kitchen table while she sipped a glass of orange juice.

"Tastes just like fresh-squeezed," she said, choking back tears. "Look, I;m sorry to barge in like this, but I didn't know where else to turn. Something's terribly wrong, and nobody will listen!"

"I know what you're going through," I said. "For years you touted the benefits of chicken fried in bubbling hot vegetable oil. Now you're seized by doubts about the true meaning of those statements, and your head is spinning with the echoes of other promotional claims." "My God!" she said. "That's what I've been trying to tell people!" She raised the glass to her lips and drained it with a determined expression. "Good to the last drop," she said, and then her shoulders sagged as she began to sob disconsolately.

At that moment, heavy footsteps thudded down the hall. We both looked toward the kitchen doorway as the rugged, imposing figure of Brigadier General Chuck Yeager (Ret.) loomed into view. His yellow flight suit seemed radient, and the lightning bolts on his helmet gleamed with a fresh coat of lacquer as he strode into the room. "Do you want to see something?" he said, slamming his fists onto the table. "My skin is so chapped that I can write the work 'dry' on the back of my own hand!" As we watched in awed silence, he carefully scratched out the large block letters with a fingernail. Then he did it again on the back of my hand.

"If I don't look good, you don't look good!" he cautioned. Florence opened her mouth to speak, but the feisty living legend of American aviation was out the door in two quick strides.

"What in tarnation is wrong with him?" she asked. "I knew he didn't have any manners, but I thought he only worried about spark plugs."

"He's confused and upset, just as you are," I said calmly, and there was a glimmer of recognition in her expression.

"You mean --?"

"That's right Flo. You're not alone. I a malady that strikes many celebrities without warning. The clinical term is Post-Endorsement Trauma Syndrome. PETS, if you prefer. It's characterized by a sudden inability to differentiate between major commercial campaigns, along with other symptons such as loss of self-respect and periods of uncontrollable rage."

"How do you spell relief?" she said. "Can anything be done?"

"You just have to learn how to take a licking and keep on ticking."

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