by Dan Gutman
“How did he know that one?” I yelled. “Nobody knows that one!”
“GIVE UP, FUNNY BOY,” said Dr. Denny. “YOU CAN’T BEAT HIM. YOU AND YOUR PATHETIC WORLD ARE FINISHED.”
Tupper, Punch, and Bob Foster were sobbing uncontrollably. It was the end of the line. I had just one robot joke left. If it didn’t work, Dr. Denny would drill a hole in the Earth and split it in half like a giant pistachio nut. The tension was so unbearable that I wasn’t even able to make a joke about bears. I gathered up my courage, took a deep breath, and did a few other stalling tactics to build even more suspense.
Okay, finally it was time to let loose the last joke I had.
“What’s silver,” I asked, “and lays in the grass?”
There was a long pause. RoboDent 2000 didn’t move, but it looked like he was thinking.
“He doesn’t know the answer!” yelled Tupper.
Smoke started coming out of the robot’s ears. It started flailing its arms around.
“I GIVE UP,” admitted RoboDent 2000. “WHAT IS SILVER AND LAYS IN THE GRASS?”
“R2 Doo Doo!” I shouted triumphantly.
“HA!” said RoboDent 2000. “HA HA! HAHAHA! HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“You did it, Funny Boy!” Tupper shouted. “He never heard that one before!”
RoboDent 2000 was laughing uncontrollably, slapping itself on its metallic knees, and wiping away the oil that was dripping from the video cameras that functioned as its eyes.
Dr. Denny, Halitosis, and Gingivitis frantically started scooping up the dental equipment and running to put it back inside their spaceship.
“THE POWER OF FUNNY BOY’S HUMOR IS JUST TOO STRONG!” yelled Dr. Denny. “WE MUST LEAVE EARTH IMMEDIATELY!”
“Put an egg in your shoe and beat it!” I hollered after them. “And don’t come back!”
“Hooray!” Tupper shouted. “Hooray for Funny Boy! You are my hero!”
Well, that’s the story. Thanks to my incredibly immature toilet humor, I had driven the evil aliens away. I had saved the world and made it safe for A lists and B movies, X games and J-walking, iPads and D cups, L trains and G ratings, C biscuits and E books, T parties and . . .
“See?” said Punch. “I told you there would be a happy ending.”
“Some folks just can’t take a joke,” I said.
WELL, YOU HAVE WASTED COUNTLESS HOURS READING THIS NONSENSE WHEN YOU COULD HAVE USED THAT TIME TO CURE A DISEASE, SOLVE THE ENERGY CRISIS, OR DO SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE WITH YOUR LIFE.
Stay tuned for Funny Boy’s next amazing and hilarious adventure . . .
Funny Boy Meets the Evil-Smelling Eggs from Europa (Who Erase Emails)
A Biography of Dan Gutman
Dan Gutman was born in a log cabin in Illinois and used to write by candlelight with a piece of chalk on a shovel. Oh, wait a minute, that was Abraham Lincoln. Actually, Dan Gutman grew up in New Jersey and, for some reason, still lives there.
Somehow, Dan survived his bland and uneventful childhood, and then attended Rutgers University, where he majored in psychology for reasons he can’t explain. After a few years of graduate studies, he disappointed his mother by moving to New York City to become a starving writer.
In the 1980s, after several penniless years writing untrue newspaper articles, unread magazine articles, and unsold screenplays, Gutman supported himself by writing about video games and selling unnecessary body parts. He edited Video Games Player magazine for four years. And, although he knew virtually nothing about computers, he spent the late 1980s writing a syndicated column on the subject.
In 1990, Gutman got the opportunity to write about something that had interested him since childhood: baseball. Beginning with It Ain’t Cheatin’ If You Don’t Get Caught (1990), Gutman wrote several nonfiction books about the sport, covering subjects such as the game’s greatest scandals and the history of its equipment.
The birth of his son, Sam, inspired Gutman to write for kids, beginning with Baseball’s Biggest Bloopers (1993). In 1996, Gutman published The Kid Who Ran for President, a runaway hit about a twelve-year-old who (duh!) runs for president. He also continued writing about baseball, and the following year published Honus & Me, a story about a young boy who finds a rare baseball card that magically takes him back to 1909 to play with Honus Wagner, one of the game’s early greats. This title stemmed a series about time-travel encounters with other baseball stars such as Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and, in Ted & Me (2012), Ted Williams.
In his insatiable quest for world domination, Dan also wrote Miss Daisy Is Crazy (2004) and launched the My Weird School series, which now spans more than forty books, most recently Mayor Hubble Is in Trouble! (2012).
As if he didn’t have enough work to do, Gutman published Mission Unstoppable (2011), the first adventure novel in the Genius Files series, starring fraternal twins Coke and Pepsi McDonald. There will be six books in the series, in which the twins are terrorized by lunatic assassins while traveling cross-country during their summer vacation. These books are totally inappropriate for children, or anybody else for that matter.
Gutman lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife and two children. But please don’t stalk him.
Gutman and his sister Lucy in New York in 1956.
A young, stylish Gutman at home in Newark, New Jersey.
Gutman in his Little League uniform in 1968.
Gutman with two babies born in 1990:
the first baseball book he wrote, and his son, Sam.
Gutman in Liverpool, England, at the site of the real Strawberry Field. “I idolize the Beatles and they inspire all my books,” he says.
Gutman and his dentist at play (we hope).
Gutman in the midst of adoring fans at
Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, Illinois.
When he’s not writing, Gutman’s busy with his favorite hobby, biking.
Gutman and his wife, Nina, at the spot where they met in 1982.
Gutman’s wife, Nina, with their children, Sam and Emma.
“After thirty years I made the New York Times bestseller list,” says Gutman, posing with the second book of the Genius Files, his hit series.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Dan Gutman
Illustrations © 2012 by Mike Dietz
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN 978-1-4532-6115-6
Published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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