No, Not Like the Bug : The Nat J Gruca Story
In His Own Words
Little is known about this enigmatic character who is said to be the preliminary beacon of motivating force behind such critically-acclaimed projects as the Guggenheim Restoration Epic, the Food 4 Trampz Movement and the newest, most zaniest half-hour of revolutionary game show technologies, This Is Crazy!, hitting television waves this fall.
Nat was born tragically into a poor, white farming community with little to no prior knowledge of what the outside world was like. Armed with a solitary ear of corn and a handful of pigs to keep him company, the blossoming young prodigy was trained to utilize his imagination to the fullest extent, honing this defense mechanism to a fine art which proved useful later in life. In these first few formulative years, Nat found solace conversing amongst the rare intellectuals that visited briefly from distant locations and later in the midst of other bright-eyed hopefuls that appeared occasionally throughout his lackluster education.
Shortly after completing his required studies, Nat was quick to brush off the idea of a communal de-sobering and opted not to attend University. Instead, he decided to travel the world and seek out the many wonders he had so often read about. Unfortunately, finding himself financially impotent and born with an acute sense of apathy towards low-maintenance labor, he found he was unable to afford even the short commute to the local Aeroplane Port and was reduced to associate himself with the closest and most affordable-looking school, University State College.
Affectionately referred to as “the place where the world goes to stew in its own inequity” by those who have the distinct pleasure of not having to associate directly with the institution, it was here that Nat soon found the power to transform himself into a brittled shell of a former human being, casting off all compassion for living life itself, and taking to a more Holden Caulfieldish mindset. During this period of conversion, the burgeoning artiste found it increasingly difficult to converse with others and easier to escape his bleak surroundings by pouring out meaningless drivel from a rusty typewriter in the corner of his squalid living quarters.
Finally, after two months of being surrounded by drunken debauchery and exerting antisocial tendencies, the man known as Nat J. Gruca cast off the oppressive titles of “student” and “tax-paying citizen” in favor of a more relaxed lifestyle of not going to school and not paying taxes at the end of each year.
Currently, he divides his time between his villa in Hoboken, Idaho and chalet in North Westershire, England. To make ends meet, he contributes regularly to the non-profit comedy website, pluckedfromobscurity.com, where he methodically refuses each attempt at payment for his efforts. Once quoted as saying the warm, fuzzy feeling he gets from participating in the charitable cause is more than enough to put food on the table, this statement is still being investigated for evident reasons.
Nat J. Gruca wishes one day to be wealthy enough to afford his own personal hospital and conjoining emergency wing, as he is prone to receiving bouts of mildly irritating ennui, the effects of which include loss of appetite, appreciation of others and mind. He enjoys adding to his collection of pretentious film titles on the latest medium of movie-viewing equipment, and boasting to others about how he frequents perfumeries without getting chronic nosebleeds.
“I am exactly like Patrick Swayze without the debonair, 80s charm and acting ability,” said Nat during a press junket he snuck into. “Though I all but own the dated, boxy hairstyle and camp value associated with many of his works.”
The Epic Tale of the Legacy of an Odyssey: Nat J. Gruca
Do you ever find yourself covered in popcorn that you’ve spilled all over yourself like what’s happening to me as I write this? Well, just think of Nat J. Gruca. His clever antics, banter, and hairdo will get you smiling again. That’s right, he has a clever hairdo. I think he puts a lot of thought into it. Anyhoo, the story between me and Nat is like a movie worthy of a Tom Cruise role, so hold onto yours seats.
As Nat was walking along the road one day to Bethlehemtown, he came upon a baby soaked in sodium pentothal. The baby showed Nat visions of what was to come, because sodium pentothal is truth serum, and the baby could only tell the truth. I, Justin, was one of those visions. Nat vowed to the baby that he would go through the necessary steps to create me, and the infant wiggled its cute little stump of an umbilical chord. The chord fell to the ground and exploded into a chrysanthemum of light, creating a list of ingredients in the stars. The baby then died because it had no mother and had not eaten for several days, but its spirit visibly rose up to the heavens and a dew drop tickled Nat’s cheek, a sure sign that the baby was watching over him, always.
The first ingredient on the star list was an Orange Julius from the mall. However, taxes on Orange Juliuses had risen so high due to the Orange strike of 1984 that Nat couldn’t afford one. He did the only thing he could and submitted a plea to the king of Orange Juliuses, Orange Julius Caesar. The king agreed to see Nat because he was sick of hearing the same jokes his jesters were telling over and over about an orange juicer named Brutus walking in and stabbing him to a pulp. Nat kneeled before Orange Julius Caesar and said “O grate one, I have brought gifts.” Orange Julius Caesar watched as Nat dropped vanilla into the fountain of orange juice located in the king’s castle and made the king taste his concoction. Nat had invented dreamsicles! Orange Julius Caesar thanked Nat profusely and gave him a lifetime supply of Orange Julius. Unfortunately for Orange Julius Caesar, a giant fish stick on wheels which was pushed into the castle as a peace offering from Kraft contained spies and they infiltrated the king’s domain and stole the dreamsicle recipe, and Orange Julius Caesar lost the patent rights.
The second item on the list of stars was Christopher Walken. It is said that if, on the night of a blast from the past, you catch a big fish and then murder a penguin with a boomerang, Christopher Walken will emerge from the tree of hell. This is precisely what Nat did. He then caught him in a giant net and Christopher was all, “Oh my God, help me, he’s gonna kill me!” with his fingers half in front of his face, spread out like jazz hands, and with his eyes all squinty, just like he would in the movies. But Nat didn’t kill him, of course! He just fed him Orange Julius until he was plump and unable to move but for crawling.
The third and final step was to rub Christopher down with magic elf dust, which he acquired from Corri because she’s Santa Claus. When the magical ointment was applied, Christopher’s belly burst and he split open, allowing me to pop out of his chest cavity like an alien. He didn’t die, of course, because Christopher Walken is the coolest man ever and wouldn’t die in such a brief and unglamorous way.
And that leads me to the present day. I am eternally grateful that Nat decided to pursue the baby’s vision and create me. Nat and I have a sort of father-son relationship because of this; a very weird and twisted one, that is, considering I had no mother and was birthed from the elf-dust slathered chest of an immobilized Christopher Walken.
Nat is a very warm individual. That is, I don’t think his body temperature is any warmer than a normal human being’s, but his personality could be classified as “warm.” We spent many a day relaxing down by the dock fishing with bamboo poles, using birds we had netted from his many backyard birdhouses as bait while listening to Norman Blake play some Olde Tyme Country Music. Nat donates $5 to the animal rescue league every year, and that’s a lot for someone who works in data entry.
I didn’t know this about Nat, but he has an incredibly good singing voice. I have recently viewed “Jedi Brine Tricks” from the site’s video projects and him singing the One Step at a Time theme song brought several tears to my eyes. Here are the lyrics, also written by Nat J. Gruca:
laughing and living and learning and marching now,
right through this mess we call life,
with the help of an old jedi master now,
they’re taking one step at a ti-i-ime.
I can hardly control my fingers after typing it; the song touches and moves me so much. In that order. It touches me so that I am notified of its presence, and then it moves me out of the way. Out of the way, out of a door that opens to a brand new world of understanding, yoga, and peppy alternative rock!
There is so much to be said about Nat J. Gruca, but I’ll leave you with this: He is a super stew of uber-crazy. He was voted best actor in high school, beating out certain others whom I loath, and that’s good enough for me.
-justin “No E” milligan
Nat J. Gruca’s Mutual Agreement and Slight Cinematically Historical Rant
First off, let me assure you that I do not think highly of people coupling me with the thoughts of spilt popcorn, nestled in the various nooks and crannies of their overall body type. It’s just not something I intend to have my name associated with. However, I have comprised a non-threatening list of various instances where I and my numerous and prominent litigator chums have agreed that my face and/or name be brought to the forefront of one’s mind in order to lighten their current mood:
–That feeling you get when you eat too much but still want pie so bad.
–The inner remorse that occurs when you bite off a particularly large hangnail and the pain hasn’t quite reached your brain yet.
–Whenever you hear a really crummy song from the period of your youth, setting forth an entire series of depressing “if only’s” regarding lost significant others.
–That dull, overall self-loathing that accompanies the purchase of any film, book or other popular culture device that has something to do with John Travolta.
–The immense displeasure connected with the word association after reading John Travolta and being reminded of his hideous face.
–Anything to do with not having a nose.
Now that the dull specifics have been settled, I can continue on with my follow-up to Justin “No E” Milligan’s biography about myself. Generally speaking, most of these events are true, although I might allow myself to nitpick just an error Justin wrote while regaling the tale.
First off, I disagree with Justin’s idea that the creation of our friendship is worthy of a movie dealing with heavy doses of Tom Cruise. My opposition to this opinion is strongly in part due to the fact that there actually was a movie made about this very event, and the actor who portrayed me did a decent enough job. To think of greenlighting a shoddy remake that starred someone as amateurish as Cruise is both laughable and slightly demeaning at the same time, creating a new adjective that wordologists refer to only as “lamdeanghingable.” They’re currently working to get it added to the dictionary, but little progress has been made.
The film I am speaking of, is, of course, A Friend for Me, directed by Francis Berg in 1987. And the star who portrayed the rough depiction of the role that I played in the actual events was none other than the Buddy Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt, who had for years been a huge success in the comedy world for his well-known routine of being Jewish, jumped at the chance to star in the movie, which was his first (and unfortunately last) motion picture. Before breaking out onto the silver screen, Rosenblatt had dwelled entirely in stand-up and books, one of which, easily his most well-received, was entitled I Hate My Jew Self, which still sells well to this day.
To me, Rosenblatt was the perfect choice to head the movie, not only because he was Jewish and pretended to hate himself and that’s why he was funny, but because he also brought attention to the fact that he disliked being of a Jewish upbringing. It was a monumental decision on his part, and I was thrilled to have someone so proudly hateful of his family and faint religious beliefs to be in a movie that resembled something that sort of sounded a bit like what had happened to me in my quest to create Justin “No E” Milligan.
Sadly, the movie flopped and it was never heard of again, possibly because after it was released in fifteen theaters nationwide, Christopher Walken threatened everyone involved with a tire iron in the most amusing way. He suggested a few things he’d do with it in relation to the various orifices found on our bodies that were so ground-breakingly unique that we applauded after his frothing rant. He was so pleased at the reception his monologue got, he decided to star in a movie that did really well and forgot about us. It is rumored that popular film director Quentin Tarantino is so intent on making movies that are so completely infused with unoriginal ideas, that he borrowed several tire-iron-to-body-orifice-pain inspirations and continues to make movies that invoke similar feelings on the audience after a viewing.
As for Buddy Rosenblatt? He still hates himself and regularly gets free deserts at eateries across the nation for playing the race card. And it’s still funnier than ever.
–nat j gruca
El Cuento Verdadero de Nat J. Gruca
(The True Tale of Nat J. Gruca)
While many stories have been circulated throughout the years involving the illusive character that is Nat J. Gruca, from his humble beginnings, to his exciting and troubling teen years, through the peak of his talent and fame and ultimately to stipulations of his current whereabouts. Most of these tales have at least some air of inaccuracy if they are not total fabrications. I am here to give a first-hand account of the goings-on of Mr. Gruca’s life and to provide some insight into what has shaped him into the cinematic genius that now stands before us. Get ready, because this is El Cuento Verdadero de Nat J. Gruca.
While he spent most of his childhood exploring the fields and treetops near his own home, his creative genius was being put to work designing and knitting mittens and scarves for his family and friends out of corn silk, while his parents thought that his early break into the fashion industry was a sure sign of where his career was headed, Nat knew that his calling lie elsewhere. In 1987 his talent was discovered, by none other than Rodriguez Mendoza the famous motivational speaker who gave us the widely circulated uplifting and inspirational tagline “Nada es impossible.”
Mendoza, acting as Nat’s mentor lead him to have a series of career-boosting script-writing gigs for late 80’s Spanish-language sitcoms, even making guest appearances in a few episodes of Mis Niños y Mi Gato as the ice cream-eating neighbor child. It was slightly after this time that I had my first encounter with this bright-eyed, bushy-tailed youth. Having mysteriously forgotten the English language (one can only speculate this was due to the over-exposure to sub-par acting in a foreign language) our first meeting was one of misunderstanding in the struggle to overcome a language barrier.
He requested that we meet in a Mexican Restaurant, Tasty Taco, which ended up being a good idea since the first two hours of our conversation mainly revolved around food since those were some of the few Spanish words I knew. As his knowledge of former dialects came back to him and my Spanish vocabulary gradually increased, I was drawn in by his obvious creative imagination and his knack for witty dialogue.
We developed a fast friendship for a number of years during which time we had numerous creative planning sessions. We had a brief falling-out period in mid-February of 1993 during the infamous Blue Bunny vs. Black Bunny campaigns. Nat’s candidate Black Bunny won the election, but only because he played the race card when his polls went down late in the race. We reconciled our differences when we both joined the Boron Lovers of America and worked for a joint cause to promote the conservation of this wonderful element.
We joined forces together again in the famous oatmeal battle of ’97, the year of the Quakers vs. the Apple-Cinnamon-Sugar’s with a dollop of honey. And then once again in the glue drive, which raised funds for underprivileged crafters and popsicle stick artists. While our relationship has not always been one of ease and understanding, we have always had the privilege of sharing a good flour taco now and then.
–corri lade