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Abstract

wo thoughts:I didn’t realize this was a co-ed jail.This girl is trouble.The second thought came because I recognized her accent. I had successfully navigated my temporary life among Aryan Nation guys with Mississippi accents, Latin Kings from East L.A., and even a Ponzi-schemer from Boston who dropped all his Rs. But when any of us heard a Canadian accent, it was time to worry. Especially from Western Canada. Something about fighting moose in sub-zero weather 11 months out of the year makes them irritable.Anyway, totally disregarding the fact that I was watching a prison-approved showing of The Avengers (all fight scenes, language, and Scarlett Johansson in leather edited out; it ran 17 minutes), Lindsay starts peppering me with questions: What are you in for? Are the other inmates nice? Can I get a teardrop tattoo under my eye like that big guy over there? Do you have a prison nickname like Shotgun Sal or Johnny No Nose? Back home they call me the Hempster. Want to see my scar?I answered with short grunts: You never ask that question. No. I hope not. Yes, they call me Do I Look Like I Want to Talk To You. The Hempster, seriously? And no, no scars, thank you very much.Deciding my brief replies were an invitation for further conversation, she pressed on. On the TV, the film jumped from a scene of all six Avengers standing in a circle on the street poised for a fight to them eating shawarma in a diner. The warden had clearly cut something out. God hated me.“I really shouldn’t be here,” she said, echoing every inmate in the history of inmates. “It’s a huge misunderstanding.”“It always is,” I said.“See, I was in Mexico,” she pressed on, ignoring my comment. “I saw on YouTube that there’s this little island in the middle of a river near Mexico City with all these weird, eyeless dolls strung up like lights at Christmas, and that if you stand in the middle of the island at midnight on Halloween and spin in a circle three times while repeating your heart’s greatest desire your wish will be granted.”I turned to face her for the first time.“What the hell?”“No, it’s true,” she insisted. “It was on the internet; it has to be true.”“Ummm, okay…” I said. “What did you wish for?”“I want to be the Queen

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of Cringe.”“The what?”“The Queen of Cringe. On the websites I write for. You know, I want to write stuff that makes people more than a little uncomfortable but that they can’t stop reading because they’re laughing so hard.”“That’s not a thing,” I said, hoping it wasn’t but fearing it was.“Is too. It’s a vast, untapped market and I am going to dominate it.”“So did they arrest you for trespassing on the island or for making this extremely odd wish?” With the laws in Mexico, it could have been either.“Oh, neither of those,” she said with a laugh.“What then?” I know I said never to ask what someone’s in for, but now I had to know.“The Border Patrol found 75 pounds of weed in my Toyota Camry. That stuff is so expensive in Canada and so cheap in Mexico, I figured I’d just pick myself up a little while I was down there. I was sure the US had eased up on those silly cannabis laws.”“This ain’t the US, honey. This is Texas.”“Yeah, that’s what the Border Patrol guy said.”I expected that Lindsay was in for a long stretch with us here at the Rio Grande Motel Six, but as happened so often in my life, I was wrong. That same day the Canadian Ambassador to the US (not some flunky, the Ambassador himself) showed up to spring her. They even let her keep the weed.I got out of the joint four years later, my sentence having been extended for punching a guard who said Born in the USA was Springsteen’s best album, to find the world completely changed. Everywhere I looked I saw Lindsay: magazine covers, billboards, CNN and Entertainment Tonight. Ben & Jerry’s had even named an ice cream flavor after her: Lindsay’s Cringeworthy Cookies and Cream.I tell you all this mainly because the Daily Mail paid me $5 grand for my story, and being an ex-con money is tight. I’m using it to head to that weird doll island in Mexico to make a wish of my own. It clearly worked for the Queen of Cringe.This semi-fictional tale was inspired by Lindsay’s plea on Vocal for people to write a story about her; be careful what you wish for, Linds. I also know others out there have similar stories that the world needs to hear about our new matriarch. Be sure to tag them with “QueenofComedy” so we can easily find them. Knowledge is power.</article></body>

How I Met Lindsay Rae Brown Before She Was the Queen of Cringe

The story I refused to tell until the Daily Mail paid me for it

There has been a lot of chatter lately about Lindsay Rae Brown, the newly crowned “Queen of Comedy.” Some of the more notable fawning profiles have come from such esteemed writers as Gerald Holmes, Simon Dillon, and the dude who writes the Garden column and obituaries for the Thunder Bay Weekly Gazetteer. Well, before we make her birthday a national holiday in the US and Canada like Turkmenistan did last week, you should know a little of the backstory, starting with the fact that, as often happens, a word got changed during her meteoric rise. She never set out to be the Queen of Comedy; her goal was to be the Queen of Cringe.

Unlike many today, I am not a latecomer to Lindsaymania; I knew her before Joe Biden started dropping her name in State of the Union speeches and Russia was naming nuclear subs after her. Where did we meet, you ask? One word:

Prison.

Yes, dear unsuspecting reader, I met Lindsay not on the red carpet at the Met Gala but on Cellblock D at the Laredo Federal Medium Security Correctional Institute, better known to us inmates as the Rio Grande Motel 6. Are you shocked? Then you better take a seat, because it’s about to get weird.

I was nine months into a three-year sentence for “Excessive Noise Disturbance” after blasting Springsteen’s The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle on repeat for six straight days, allegedly causing permanent hearing damage to both my neighbors and the DEA agents sent to stop me. Screw them; Bruce rocks.

Anyway, I was minding my own business in the Rec Room one day when this woman, who was maybe knee-high to a grasshopper, plops down next to me on one of the plastic chairs that were bolted to the floor to discourage their use as a weapon. I immediately had two thoughts:

I didn’t realize this was a co-ed jail.

This girl is trouble.

The second thought came because I recognized her accent. I had successfully navigated my temporary life among Aryan Nation guys with Mississippi accents, Latin Kings from East L.A., and even a Ponzi-schemer from Boston who dropped all his Rs. But when any of us heard a Canadian accent, it was time to worry. Especially from Western Canada. Something about fighting moose in sub-zero weather 11 months out of the year makes them irritable.

Anyway, totally disregarding the fact that I was watching a prison-approved showing of The Avengers (all fight scenes, language, and Scarlett Johansson in leather edited out; it ran 17 minutes), Lindsay starts peppering me with questions: What are you in for? Are the other inmates nice? Can I get a teardrop tattoo under my eye like that big guy over there? Do you have a prison nickname like Shotgun Sal or Johnny No Nose? Back home they call me the Hempster. Want to see my scar?

I answered with short grunts: You never ask that question. No. I hope not. Yes, they call me Do I Look Like I Want to Talk To You. The Hempster, seriously? And no, no scars, thank you very much.

Deciding my brief replies were an invitation for further conversation, she pressed on. On the TV, the film jumped from a scene of all six Avengers standing in a circle on the street poised for a fight to them eating shawarma in a diner. The warden had clearly cut something out. God hated me.

“I really shouldn’t be here,” she said, echoing every inmate in the history of inmates. “It’s a huge misunderstanding.”

“It always is,” I said.

“See, I was in Mexico,” she pressed on, ignoring my comment. “I saw on YouTube that there’s this little island in the middle of a river near Mexico City with all these weird, eyeless dolls strung up like lights at Christmas, and that if you stand in the middle of the island at midnight on Halloween and spin in a circle three times while repeating your heart’s greatest desire your wish will be granted.”

I turned to face her for the first time.

“What the hell?”

“No, it’s true,” she insisted. “It was on the internet; it has to be true.”

“Ummm, okay…” I said. “What did you wish for?”

“I want to be the Queen of Cringe.”

“The what?”

“The Queen of Cringe. On the websites I write for. You know, I want to write stuff that makes people more than a little uncomfortable but that they can’t stop reading because they’re laughing so hard.”

“That’s not a thing,” I said, hoping it wasn’t but fearing it was.

“Is too. It’s a vast, untapped market and I am going to dominate it.”

“So did they arrest you for trespassing on the island or for making this extremely odd wish?” With the laws in Mexico, it could have been either.

“Oh, neither of those,” she said with a laugh.

“What then?” I know I said never to ask what someone’s in for, but now I had to know.

“The Border Patrol found 75 pounds of weed in my Toyota Camry. That stuff is so expensive in Canada and so cheap in Mexico, I figured I’d just pick myself up a little while I was down there. I was sure the US had eased up on those silly cannabis laws.”

“This ain’t the US, honey. This is Texas.”

“Yeah, that’s what the Border Patrol guy said.”

I expected that Lindsay was in for a long stretch with us here at the Rio Grande Motel Six, but as happened so often in my life, I was wrong. That same day the Canadian Ambassador to the US (not some flunky, the Ambassador himself) showed up to spring her. They even let her keep the weed.

I got out of the joint four years later, my sentence having been extended for punching a guard who said Born in the USA was Springsteen’s best album, to find the world completely changed. Everywhere I looked I saw Lindsay: magazine covers, billboards, CNN and Entertainment Tonight. Ben & Jerry’s had even named an ice cream flavor after her: Lindsay’s Cringeworthy Cookies and Cream.

I tell you all this mainly because the Daily Mail paid me $5 grand for my story, and being an ex-con money is tight. I’m using it to head to that weird doll island in Mexico to make a wish of my own. It clearly worked for the Queen of Cringe.

This semi-fictional tale was inspired by Lindsay’s plea on Vocal for people to write a story about her; be careful what you wish for, Linds. I also know others out there have similar stories that the world needs to hear about our new matriarch. Be sure to tag them with “QueenofComedy” so we can easily find them. Knowledge is power.