In his past appearances on Mr. Media, I pretty much swooned over the arc of Mike Edison’s career as a writer and editor: Editor, High Times magazine. Foreign correspondent, Hustler magazine. Paid letters writer, Penthouse magazine. MIKE EDISON podcast excerpt: "When my dad died, he was pretty abusive and a bully, to me. But when he died, I cried a lot. Of course I did, like any son would when their dad died. I had an odd sort of closure because his last words to me were, 'You are a complete disappointment.' And he was just getting started." Contributor, the Huffington Post, Daily Beast, New York Observer, Spin, Interview, and the New York Press. Author, I Have Fun Everywhere I Go and Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! Screw the guy in the Dos Equis commercials; for my money, Mike Edison is the most interesting man in world. In his third and – I suspect – not last memoir, You Are A Complete Disappointment: A Triumphant Memoir of Failed Expectations, we learn how much childhood and adult grief Edison has overcome in his life at the hands of a disinterested mother and a criminally, emotionally abusive father. MIKE EDISON podcast excerpt: "No matter how successful you are, no matter how much money you make, you cannot improve on meatball pizza and root beer and Elton John on the jukebox! My father never got that. He didn't know how to live in the moment." The title comes from the last statement the senior Edison said on his deathbed, in Arizona, to his son. The good news is that the man is no longer walking the earth. The bad news, as Edison writes on page 117, is that he is still only a phone call away: … the fact that, years later, his voice is still on the outgoing voice-mail message on my step-mother’s house phone does strike me as somewhat ghoulish. I can imagine it must be traumatic to erase it, but imagine how people feel hearing it? When I want to call his wife to check in – and I do – I always call her cell phone. I can’t handle the old man telling me to leave a message – or do anything, for that matter – from beyond the grave. Key interview moments: • 2:45 Mike Edison explains the title to his book, his finally "inspiration" from an abusive dad; • 18:15 Memories of eating meatball pizza at the White Birch Inn in Metuchen, New Jersey; • 35:30 Parents, you know those dirty books you think the kids don't know about on your nightstand? You're wrong. "I went on to become a pornographer!" Edison says. "I went to write Penthouse letters!" Mike Edison  • • • •