Yearbook

by Seth Rogen

My grandmother was born while her family was in a caravan fleeing Poland as World War I was breaking out. She got to pick her own birthday when she was a little girl because her parents didn’t know her real one, which is some real Depression-era shit.

Because they grew up in the Depression, they would steal EVERYTHING. Every time we went to McDonald’s, they would empty the napkin dispenser and put them in a giant box that my grandfather kept in his van. If we were out at dinner and you heard my Bubby say, “Oh, this is a nice plate,” you knew the next time you ate at their place, you’d be eating off that plate, because she straight jacked that shit.

I also remember saying to myself: Hey, just ’cause you write something doesn’t mean anyone has to see it or hear it. It still exists just as much as anything else does, which is pretty fleeting.

Scott finally stopped coughing, but now the weed was starting to hit him. He was looking around the restaurant like a newborn baby taking in a dazzling environment.

I ran downstairs and opened my front door to see Kanye standing there with a basketball under his arm. Kanye: Wanna come out and play basketball? Me: I’m way too hungover. I’ll throw up all over the place. Kanye hung his head and walked off, sadly.

We go out to his big van, which essentially looks like the first-class cabin of a commercial airplane, except with more LED lighting. He pulls out a laptop, plugs it into the AUX cable, and brings up an iTunes playlist of about twenty songs. Kanye: Alright, so I only have the beats and some of them don’t have hooks, so I’ll just fill in everything else, okay? Me: Uh…yeah. Sure. He hits play, and the beat kicks in loud. Kanye: Alright, and I start rapping here, and I’m like: Bip bita BOP and a boom bita BAP, and everyone goes, THANK YOU (you, you, you, you). And then I come back in again rapping like: Boom whapa BAM and PA whapa BAM, and then I say, THANK YOU (you, you, you, you). And then Frank Ocean will come in here and be like: Baaaa ba booooooooooo.

He finished the song, and me and my wife applauded. Lauren: That was AWESOME! So great. So cool. When it’s done it’s gonna be amazing. Kanye: Alright, thanks. Here’s the NEXT song! And then he did the same thing to the next song, and the next song, and the seventeen songs after that. All in all, we were in the van for about two and a half hours as Kanye gave us a private performance. It was quite incredible.