Amazing Tom Green interview

[Guest ()Papaspyrou()]

From his 4th date on his rap tour:

When Tom Green invited us to join him on tour in support of his new rap album, we expected the lewd jokes, the dancing Hooters girls, and the Jägermeister-infused scrambled eggs. What surprised us, once the mic was off, was what it really takes to be the king of shock

By Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall

Photographs By Eliot Shepard

'I'm not humping a dead moose in a vacuum.'

Remember that sentiment as you read this, for this is a story about Tom Green, introspective shock comedian, cancer survivor, and rapper extreme. Here are some things that will happen during the course of it, not necessarily in this order:

A 400-pound bodyguard will be intimidated by a 500-pound man named Tiny. A card-carrying member of the World Rock Paper Scissors Society will face his idol in a showdown on a big yellow school bus. Thousands of abandoned teddy bears will be released back into the wilds of Ontario. A professional skateboarder will make five dozen plates of scrambled eggs. Tom Green's father, Captain Dick Green, will attempt to crowd-surf in a club with the same name as Tom Green's famous ex-wife, whose honour Tom will valiantly defend. Four hundred whacked-out fans will attempt to be silent for five minutes. An intrepid, imbedded journalist will make a cardboard and tinfoil robot costume for Mr. Green. The two of them will take a train to Toronto together, at which point Mr. Green will be forced to expound on supposedly lewd, off-the-record insults about his ex-wife, as well as the importance of not sexually compromising a deceased moose out of context.

The first gig in this story is actually the fourth gig on Green's 'My Bum is on Your Lips' tour in Ontario, promoting his latest project, an old-school rap album. Green and his crew have already bled, retched, rapped, and cooked their way through London, Hamilton, and Barrie. They're now in Kingston, home to university students and ex-convicts. The Elixir Nightclub is full of both tonight. Whale sounds pumped out over the speakers for the past hour are doing little to calm the crowd.

Backstage, the author of this story holds up the half-made robot costume he's been working on.

'That sucks!' says Tom Green. 'The tinfoil's all wrinkly! What kind of robot costume maker are you?'

'Actually, I'm a . . . .'

'Don't worry. It's great . . . sort of.'

It's kind of fun being razzed by Tom Green, but at the same time, he seems genuinely agitated. It might be the unseasonable humidity, or that the crowd is chanting, 'Drew Barrymore sucks!' Then again, maybe it's just the inadequacy of the robot costume.

Whatever the case, Tom has to focus. He gathers his peeps around him for a shot of Jägermeister. 'This club's a little gnarly. Not much respect, eh?' The others nod.

'You know why that might be?' says DJ E.Z. Mike. 'They haven't seen us in our jackets yet.'

Tom appears to choke down a laugh. His face takes on an unnerving serenity as he reaches for his plasticky purple jacket. On the back, 'The Keepin' it Real Crew' is emblazoned above an insignia of a boom box with wings. The others do the same, pulling on matching trucker caps.

'They shall see us in our Jackets! And our Caps, too!' Tom announces boldly. 'Oh, shall they see us!'

Moments later, the whales have stopped singing. Along with rapper Shawn Anthony and 'Playboy' Jeremy Klein of skateboarding fame, DJ E.Z. takes the stage. He drops the beat, and now Green is out of the green room. He is in the house, the rhyme bursting out like it's always been there, just waiting for the right man to grab it: 'My bum is on your lips / My bum is on your lips / And if you don't like it / You can suck my dick!'

To put things in context, the writer of this story, upon accepting this assignment, was neither a fan of Tom Green nor of old-school rap. As such, he was not prepared for his first 'Keepin' it Real' gig. Then again, nobody would have been. Here are a few things that would surprise just about anyone:

1. Tom Green can really rhyme. Really.

2. The beats are just wicked. They are made, mixed, and scratched by DJ E.Z. Mike, who is Mike Simpson, who is one half of the Dust Brothers, and who helped produce Paul's Boutique by the Beastie Boys, Odelay by Beck, Bridges to Babylon by the Rolling Stones, and 'MMMBop' by Hanson.

3: They let Playboy Jeremy Klein have a microphone. Granted, he can't figure out how to turn it on, but he's smacking it, shouting at no one in particular, chugging ludicrously from a bottle of Jägermeister, breaking VHS tapes over his own head, and antagonizing the crowd. When his mic finally kicks in, he quickly resurrects the chant of 'Drew Barrymore sucks!'

4: Tom Green wants none of it. He tells Klein to shut the hell up about his ex-wife, then drowns out the crowd?s chant with a sure-fire hit containing the creepiest phrase in modern musical history, first spoken in 2001?s Freddy Got Fingered (Green?s grotesque filmic fantasy of a horse-masturbating deer-disembowelling umbilical-cord theiving man-child who tries to make it big in Hollywood). It is, ?Daddy, would you like some sausage? Daddy, would you like some sausage?? It?s oddly moving.

5: Justin, the 400-pound bodyguard, is not the biggest man in the room. A 500-pound man named Tiny towers above the crowd like a tattooed tidal wave.

6: Five Minutes of Silence. Playboy Jeremy is frying up scrambled eggs onstage while Green rhymes it all out: ?When someone hands you a plate / what do you do? / You eat the fucking eggs!? The Hooters girls are still onstage from the last number (appropriately named ?Hooters?); Jeremy is pouring Jägermeister into the eggs; Tom is rapping from a fetal-position on one of the speakers, then diving back into the crowd; the crowd is chanting, ?You eat the fucking eggs!?; girls are pulling up their shirts; Tiny is creating small tornadoes in the steamy air with the pumping of his massive fists; and then all the madness stops. This really should be Surprising Thing #1. After all, one could expect good beats and rhymes, and crowd participation from any live hip-hop show. And from a Tom Green performance, one could feasibly expect scrambled eggs, Hooters girls, incoherent skaters, and Drew Barrymore slurs. What one could never expect of any professional performer is that, at the exact moment the fans have given themselves over entirely ? absorbed, adoring, rocking and rolling ? he would shut down the beats, stop the rhyming, and declare five minutes of silence:

?Never before has this been done in hip-hop!? Green exclaims to the revved-up crowd.

?This is what?s going to happen! We?re going to put the whale music back on, sit down on the floor, and, for five minutes, be totally silent! It?s going to be fucking awesome! A first! This has never been done before, people! So far, Barrie has tried it! (Barrie sucks!) London has tried it (London sucks!) Hamilton has tried it! (Hamilton sucks!) Well, actually, Hamilton is winning so far. But you can beat their fucking asses! It?s time to make history!? Those in the crowd are looking at each other, laughing awkwardly. ?It?s time to sit down, people! It?s time to be quiet!?

Bewildered by Green?s sudden self-sabotage, I decide to use the five minutes of silence to finish my scrambled eggs and reflect on Mr. Green?s rap sheet.

In 1992, at seventeen, Green started doing standup at Yuk Yuk?s in Ottawa. Just three years later, Tom (a.k.a. DJ Bones) released Organized Rhyme: Check the O.R., which earned him a Canadian Juno Award Nomination. He took a TV production course at Algonquin College a few years after that, and now, thirteen years later, he is launching his solo rap debut, Prepare For Impact, set to release on September 20.

Between then and now ? while hosting The Tom Green Show, first on Rogers Community Television in Ottawa, then nationally on the Canadian Comedy Network, and eventually around the world on MTV ? he has fondled a horse, sucked a cow?s udder, tongued a mouse, pulled the hair off the tail of a dead cat, dumped a dead skunk on the desk of Mike Bullard, starred in Hollywood movies, and even allowed his fiancée to invite Courtney Love to their wedding.

He has also accomplished public feats of a far more sophisticated nature. Those, however, will take more research, and our five minutes are ticking.

Tom has finally got the last holdouts in the bar ? a surly punk with a Mohawk and the bouncer at the door ? to sit down on the floor. The only one left standing is Justin the bodyguard. Every time the crowd gets reasonably quiet, however, Playboy Jeremy blabs something incoherent into his mic so that Green has to restart the time: ?Stop it, Jeremy! You?re fucking it up for everyone. Okay, then. We?re starting . . . now!?

For a moment, all is quiet and cross-legged. The whales are moaning their barroom dirge in relative peace. But then something surreal, even by Tom Green standards, happens. From the sea of dutiful sitters, a swell has begun to rise in the form of the giant Tiny. He reaches full height with the help of a white cane and launches upon the stage, washing over the seated forms of the Keeping It Real Crew, then crashes down into a large, plush chair in the centre of the stage. This is not part of the show, and yet no one moves to stop him ? not even Justin the bodyguard, who seems frozen in fear.

For a while, the whale song is the only sound, as small-town skaters and chicks in tit shirts shift on their bums. Master Green gazes upon them with his focused, bug-eyed stare. The silence stretches on, and with all this new nothingness, it really does begin to feel like something is happening here.

?This sucks!? shouts Playboy Jeremy, seated at the flip-flopped feet of Tiny. ?I can smell this guy?s feet! And he?s being a dick to Shawn!? Rapper Shawn Anthony, seated on the other side of Tiny?s chair, is wrestling the white cane out of Tiny?s hands as Jeremy hammers his mic on the giant?s apparently pungent feet. ?Why is he even on the stage?? shouts Jeremy. Finally, Justin the Bodyguard strikes out to confront Tiny. But Green is already on his feet.

?Way to fucking go!? he calls into his mic. ?Now we have to start all over! Five minutes, starting . . . now!?

This is not, typically, how you keep an audience captive. And yet the room again goes quiet. It seems there is more to Mr. Green than most people suspect.

There are, in fact, many examples of the artful, media-savvy side of Tom Green, one preoccupied with manipulating expectation. Once, during a Mark Rothko exhibit at the National Gallery in Ottawa, Green managed to smuggle in his own Rothkoesque painting of red and orange stripes, entitled ?Tiger/Zebra,? and hang it on the wall, complete with its own little plaque. His cameraman taped people interpreting the ?Rothko? and kept the camera rolling as Green stepped out from a guided tour with a magic marker to add a little more.

Back in 2000, when any station would have traded their top anchorman for the first Monica Lewinsky exclusive, Green ? having befriended Lewinsky through his buddy Tony Hawk ? called a Tom-and-Monica press conference, to be held on the roof of the Little Beaver, a portable-trailer restaurant in Ottawa. There, before a sea of cameras, satellite transmission trucks, and reporters from all over the world waiting for the big news, Tom and Monica held up a gaudy purse made out of Tom?s parents? bedspread, and announced Monica?s new line of designer handbags. The media machine was forced to report it. For Monica it was both payback and publicity. For Tom, as his camera filmed the falling faces of the mainstream media, it was, as always, all about the reaction:

In 1952, the composer John Cage wrote ?4'33".? It consisted of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. Every time it was performed, it was a different piece. The music was the reaction of the people in the crowd ? their sniffles, their whispers, their breathing. Like Cage, Green knows exactly what he?s after ? the effect of silence on Playboy Jeremy, Justin, Tiny, the fans, the crew, the bald dude puking on the speaker. He checks his watch, and rises.

?That,? he declares, ?is fucking it!? The crowd jumps to its feet, yelling, slobbering, delirious. Tom Green knows his art.

?That was awesome! The best one ever! This is old-school!? proclaims Green. And then he begins: ?Kingston is the quietest! Kingston is the quietest!? until the crowd is chanting along, Tiny and Shawn Anthony in a makeup embrace, DJ E.Z. Mike dropping his beats with victorious, hypnotic ecstasy.

The house rocking again, Bones, E.Z., and Anthony dropping rhymes as tight as the shorts on a Hooters girl, it?s hard not to notice the pretty skater-boy Playboy Jeremy Klein belching belligerently into his mic, swatting gracelessly at kids in the crowd, contributing nothing but obnoxious frat-boy distraction.

?Why the hell?s he even up there?? I blurt out.

?I?ll tell you why,? says Brian, who?s standing beside the stage with me. Brian is one of Tom Green?s oldest hometown friends. ?I figure it like this: Jeremy is Tom?s id. He?s there so Tom doesn?t have to do that stuff, so he can focus on the show.?

?Oh. Yeah. I guess that makes sense.? It makes so much sense, in fact, that I wish I?d figured it out for myself.

Green is collecting his robot costume from the side of the stage. The rest of the Keeping It Real Crew have already donned theirs. Every night they make new ones backstage, out of cardboard, duct tape, and tinfoil ? then let the fans take them home or just trash them.

?I usually make this thing myself,? calls out Green, awkwardly pulling the tinfoil-covered box I made him down over his torso. ?But you know you?ve made it in hip hop ? ? he squeezes his mic through the one jagged arm-hole ? ?when you?ve got someone to make your robot costume for you!? The crowd is cheering. ?You people in Kingston ? you are robot costume makers!?

The beats boom out, and ?The Robot Song? starts. ?Science is everywhere / Computers are everywhere / Robots are everywhere.? At the side of the stage, a new Tom Green fan in the guise of an objective journalist beams with pride.

The school bus is quiet as it pulls away from the Kingston Travelodge. Tom?s already sore throat has become worse over-night, and the rest of the crew wants to rest. The only one talking is James Keezer, who spent last night in his pup tent in the parking lot.

A clean-cut twenty-three-year-old Tom Green fan with a boring desk job in Barrie, Keezer has been hitchhiking from show to show, and now Green has offered him a seat on the big yellow school bus to the final show in Ottawa.

?What?d you think of the show last night?? I ask Keezer. I should be sleepy, but the kid?s giddiness, though well disguised, is keeping me awake.

?Just awesome. I didn?t want to get up front and look like a moron trying to vie for his attention. I just watched it. I really respect him a lot.?

?What do you respect, particularly??

?He?s funny. He?s brave and he?s smart, and he?s done things nobody else would do. Painting his parents? house plaid, the Slutmobile [Green airbrushed a striking reproduction of naked cavorting lesbians on their car] ? that stuff was so different. This was way before Jackass and Punk?d and all that stuff. And he was poor. He paid for all that stuff out of his own pocket, living in his parents? basement. It was inspired. People who badmouth him haven?t really paid attention.

?And he?s smart with it all. People say he just does gross-out humour and poo-poo jokes. So what does he do? He pulls a piece of shit out of the toilet and carries it out to show his TV audience. A guy in the front row who didn?t believe it, he stuck his finger right in there. You should have seen his face. Tom had a tiny little bed on his desk, and he tucked the poo under the covers. I thought that was really cool.? The kid nods respectfully towards Green, who is dozing at the back of the bus as we roll down the highway.

DJ E.Z. Mike Simpson ? who produced for Linkin Park and was the co-creator of Tone-Loc?s ?Wild Thing? ? stirs in his seat. ?Green is the real article,? he says. ?This tour is one of the best things I?ve ever done, scratching it all live onstage. Tom started making beats on his computer, creating raps, and then eventually we got serious and it just became this amazing album. And it?s unheard of, going to a gig where nobody?s heard any of the stuff before and two minutes in they?re all singing along. He?s a hero to these kids. They worship him.?

Shawn Anthony, an old-school Louisiana rapper, growls as he opens his eyes: ?I didn?t know much about Tom Green before this gig. But man, he is way more than I could have expected. He could serve 85 percent of rappers today just rhyming. Hip hop is just one dude telling the world the way he sees it. Tom can do that, and on top of that, he can rap his head off. And on top of that he?s doing it all old-school ? live DJ ? and he?s hitting it full on.?

Though out of earshot, Tom Green wakes with a cough. ?Breakfast!? he gasps, pressing his face against the flip-out window.

Breakfast is staged in a non-descript strip-mall diner, with the whole crew: cameraman, embedded reporter, hitchhiking fan, and a boom mic hanging over the booth. One of the purposes of this small-town tour of Ontario is to create an accompanying DVD for the upcoming Prepare for Impact CD. Tom Green looks up from his newspaper and orders minestrone soup, a bagel lightly toasted with cream cheese, and an orange juice. The waitress asks what kind of act she?s serving.

?We play country tunes,? says Tom Green. ?And whale music. Actually we?re a street gang.? He?s in a bit of a mood today. She shrugs good-naturedly and walks away.

?What did you order, Tom?? I ask, to make polite conversation.

?You?ll see when it gets here,? mutters Green.

?I enjoyed the show last night, Tom.?

?Yeah, I heard. Must be pretty hard to do your job when you?re hitting on chicks the whole time.? Apparently DJ Sore Throat isn?t aware that his road reporter spent at least part of last night becoming a Tom Green fan.

?Are you questioning my professionalism, Tom??

?No, not at all. I?m just saying it must be difficult, trying to get the story and trying to get laid at the same time.?

?Do you often order minestrone soup for breakfast??

Mr. Green shoots a glare, a half smile, then tosses a section of his newspaper across the table. ?You see this review in The Globe?

It?s actually one of the better ones I?ve got, and still the guy got three important facts completely wrong. I didn?t go to high school in Pembroke, and I was never in Petawawa. That?s just fine, though. The thing about the Web: more people read my blog than The Globe and Mail. Somebody writes something bad or just wrong about me, I can just take them down.?

?You?re kind of threatening me a tiny bit, aren?t you, Tom??

?I?m just saying . . . . Hey, you might know the guy who wrote that one.?

?I don?t know him, but I do know the name.? I hand the paper back to Green with a laugh.

?You?re kidding!? blurts Green. ?Bruce Farley fucking Mowat! Look,? he says, shoving the article at Shawn Anthony. ?He?s got to put the Farley in to make sure people know who his daddy is!? [bruce Farley Mowat, for the record, is not related to the novelist.]

The Keeping It Real Crew doesn?t get it, but Green and his attentive scribe ? the only two Canadians at the breakfast table ? are cackling as the soup arrives. ?Write this in your story, okay? Bruce Farley Mowat, son of Farley Mowat, is a bad journalist because he doesn?t check his facts.?

?How?s the soup, Tom??

?It?s amazing.? Green calls out to the waitress, ?This soup is really amazing!?

Some facts about tom green (each one checked at least twice ):

Although he can seem a bit testy when losing his voice on the final stretch of his first-ever old-school rap tour, for the most part Green is actually kind, protective, introspective, gracious, and sensitive.

He is a dog lover.

In 2000, he convinced MTV executives to pick up The Tom Green Show by showing them a clip of himself, dressed as Captain Kirk, sucking a cow?s udder, after which he stood before the room of suits, covered himself in whipped cream, got up on the boardroom table, and thrashed around, screaming, ?I want to be on MTV! I want to be on MTV!? Having grown up in Canada, he?d never actually seen MTV.

He became a star. He did Oprah and Letterman. He starred in the hit movie Road Trip.

Green went to Seattle, and filmed a music video in homage to the birth of grunge. The night before the shoot, the film crew booked and ready, it occurred to Green that he might need a song. Pounding the Seattle streets for inspiration, he suddenly recalled a Cancun cruise-ship kerfuffle a few weeks earlier: A Mexican security guard had physically obstructed his delivery of a raw red-snapper sandwich to the ship?s captain. Whilst manhandled across the deck, Green began an improvised narration: ?Look! My bum is on the handrail! My bum is on the handrail? My bum is on the plant, My bum is on the plant?.? It was pretty damn catchy.

Green came to the video shoot in a superhero costume. ?Lonely Swedish (The Bum-Bum Song)? took North America by storm. It hit number one on Total Request Live. Eminem even mocked it in one of his songs.

Just three years after moving out of his parents? basement, Tom Green had become a world-famous talk-show host, movie star, swimmer, and superhero pop singer.

And then he moved to Hollywood.

Back on the school bus the crew is discussing where in Ottawa the best place to get teddy bears is. In every town on tour so far they?ve raided thrift stores for unwanted stuffed animals, over a thousand of them, to date. It was originally assumed audiences would toss them around with reckless abandon, pelting the stage. Thus far, however, the crowd has clung to the plush projectiles as if they were orphans in need of a home.

?Let?s go to the Salvation Army,? says Green.

?Uh, Tom. Tom?? James ?The Hitchhiking Kid? Keezer has apparently decided to make his move. He is lurching down the centre aisle, a small laminated card in his hand.

?Tom,? he says, ?this is? this is something I like to do.? He offers the card to Green, hovering in the aisle.

Tom looks at it, then says, ?So you are a freak after all. I couldn?t figure out why you hitchhike around by yourself when you seem so normal. But you are weird, eh??

?It would mean a lot to . . . it would really be such an honour to . . . to battle with you.?

?You?re a freak, dude,? says the man who once sawed a dead raccoon in half before a studio audience. He drops the card on the bench next to him as he reaches out his hand. The card reads, ?World RPS Society Official Membership. James Keezer, Executive Director, Disciplinary Forces. This card certifies that the name above holds the honourary title listed and is a member in good standing of the World Rock Paper Scissors Society.?

They pump fists. ?One . . . two . . . three!?

The Executive Director of Disciplinary Forces loses Scissors to Rock. ?Two out of three?? offers Green.

?One . . . two . . . .? The EDDF of RPS lays down his Paper too soon. ?I?m sorry,? he stammers. ?I?m really nervous.?

?One . . . two . . . three!?

Green takes it, Paper over Rock. ?Three out of five?? he says. The member in good standing of the Rock Paper Scissors society, with all those hours of practice and competition, is visibly shaken as they lock hands. You can practically hear what he?s thinking: For some, genius and talent is a birthright. ?One . . . two . . . three!?

More facts about tom green: After hitting the big time and relocating to Hollywood, Tom Green moved into a house owned by William Shatner; fell in love with Drew Barrymore; dined with Prince Charles; was diagnosed with testicular cancer; had one of his balls removed; co-wrote, directed, and starred in Freddy Got Fingered; nursed his father through prostate cancer; moved in with Drew Barrymore; won a record-setting five Golden Raspberry Awards for Fingered, ?The worst movie ever?; watched his father being heckled by Courtney Love at his own wedding; divorced Drew Barrymore; and will never hear the end of it, no matter how long he lives.

But Tom is a resilient man. Within a month of his debut solo album hitting music stores this fall, the film Bob the Butler ? in which Green stars opposite Brooke Shields ? will take to the theatres, and the paperback of his autobiography, Hollywood Causes Cancer, will land on bookshelves.

And now he?s almost home.

The final gig is a big blowout at Barrymore?s, an Ottawa institution. It?s the best place to do a show in town, and Tom refuses to recognize the irony of it. He?s nervous enough as it is. This is his hometown. His parents are in the audience. And his throat is killing him.

I express concern, then ask Tom when the hell we?re going to be able to sit down for an interview. Tom Green, after all, has barely said a thing ? for two friggin? days!

?I know,? he whispers. ?It?s like you don?t even know me yet ? like you haven?t seen the real me. I swear I?ve never been like this, with my throat. Usually I don?t shut up. After the show, okay? We?ll talk it all out after the show.?

The show is exceptional. It is everything a homecoming should be. When Green made it big and moved to the U.S., Ottawa felt jilted for a while. That is long over. The crowd chant and rhyme with him, shout out in awe when he looks upon them with his glazed, devil-fish, gummy-bear gaze. They howl at him when he goes fetal and spastic. And when the stuffed animals are released, his fans go berserk ? whipping them at each other, at Tom Green.

?Don?t throw the teddy bears back,? he pleads. ?They are presents. They are presents for all of you!?

They tear the teddy bears to pieces. They love and understand Green. And none so much as his parents, who have, over the years, put up with more video-taped and publicly aired embarrassment than any other parents on the planet. Before the show, they were nervous ? not for their son, but for what he might put them through. But now they?re having a great time, standing on their seats in the balcony, whipping stuffed animals back down at the masses as their son raps about smoking dope and macking on chicks.

?This is good!? says his mom. ?It?s funny. Classic Tom!?

?Yes,? says his dad, a tank commander who served in Germany and Vietnam. ?Very impressive. It?s . . . .? But Tom interrupts, shouting from the stage.

?Hey! Mom and Dad! Come up here, will you! Get the fuck up here, folks!?

?Does he have to swear about it?? says his mother as they move through the crowd, but the both of them are smiling.

And moments later, Captain Richard Green, decorated tank commander, is crowd-surfing with perfect form as his son, his wife, The Keeping It Real Crew, ?Rock, Paper? Keezer, and even Shirley the bus driver holler from the stage. Our writer, meanwhile, is helping to duct-tape an energetic punk to the bar rail. The crowd is deafening.

?And now,? says Tom, ?five minutes of silence!?

On the train from ottawa to Toronto the next morning, Tom Green is finally ready to be interviewed.

There was no hope of talking after the show. The club we went to afterwards was in a Tom Green frenzy and there were girls dancing on the bar. When it closed down, we went to the Lebanese diner next door, where Tom performed for the customers an impromptu play of the grotesque between himself and a chicken shawarma while the owner cranked up the music and danced on the counter for old time?s sake. Then we continued on.

And so now, on the train, Bloody Caesars are imperative. The Caesar is the only cocktail containing vitamin B12, a hangover remedy, and it is uniquely Canadian. Tom and I discuss the Caesar until the train runs out of vodka. I ask for two glasses of Clamato and pull a bottle from my bag.

?You carry vodka around with you?? asks Tom.

?You want a drink or not??

Tom nods, and starts to talk.

Over the next three hours he talks about his recent USO tours to Kosovo and Iraq ? ?It was really gratifying. You didn?t even have to tell jokes ? maybe just get on the radio when you weren?t supposed to and order a pizza? ? his passion for old-school rap, his testicular cancer, and his reasons for writing the autobiography ? ?After cancer, I felt like it was time for me to do something that was not ?in character,? but a more honest look at what I do.?

?And how about . . . .?

?What, Drew?? Green has been through a lot in recent years, but this last one is all reporters ever ask him about ? that and the dead moose. ?What do you want to know??

?That first night, backstage ??

?Shit. You?re going to write about that, aren?t you? That was gnarly. We were just goofing around. I would never have said that on record.?

No doubt that?s true.

Taken out of context, what Green said that first night is the type of quote that would be picked up by every tabloid in the country. That would be the reaction.

But here?s the context: The crowd is chanting, ?Drew Barrymore Sucks!? Somebody in the green room says, ?We should put that on T-shirts and sell them at Planet Hollywood.?

?She?d just get a kick out of it,? says Tom Green, fondly.

?What would piss her off?? someone asks.

?I don?t know,? says Green. ?Maybe if someone said, ?Drew Barrymore is a smelly . . .?

? ? and here Green utters a string of expletives I won?t repeat. There is a brief pause. Drew Barrymore, I?ve just learned, must be one tough woman to offend.

?I?m sure glad the [DVD crew?s] camera?s not on,? he says. Then the reporter holds up the robot costume he?s been working on, and Green winces.

?It?s weird,? says Green, as the train rolls on, ?to have your failed love life be so public. I loved her a lot. We were together two years before we got married. But then you have to turn it into almost like a joke to be able to deal with it. It?s like it never happened in my mind ? or like it was a character. Like I married Mickey Mouse. It?s too difficult to see it as real any more.?

?That?s kind of sad. So what about the moose??

?It?s not about the act,? says Green, happy to change subjects. ?It?s about the reaction. After all, it?s not like I?m not humping a dead moose in a vacuum.?

[ToasterCoaster]

Simply fantastic