MY ALTERNATIVE FACTSJanuary 27, 2017

What’s all the fuss about President Trump calling his inauguration crowd the largest ever? And why bother with photos comparing Mr. Trump’s crowd with those of former president Barack Obama? Last Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” presidential counselor Kelleyanne Conway set us all straight. There are alternative facts. I find that comforting.

Alternative facts get down to ultimate truth. For me, that’s particularly important. My family and friends only think they know me. My alternative facts reveal someone else:

More people attended my bar-mitzvah than any of the fifty Super Bowls. The value of my gifts exceeded the combined ticket revenue and beer sales of last year’s game… When I attended Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning back in 1966-67, General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, called me weekly for consultation.

My hair is so beautiful my stylist tips me. So other men won’t get jealous, I die it gray… I’ve won more literary prizes than Meryl Streep has acting awards… My manhood is so large, New York’s American Museum of Natural History requested that it be exhibited there (after my death)—if they can find a room large enough… The Nobel Prize committee intends to honor me in three categories they plan to create just for me.

I not only coached the post basketball team at Fort Sam Houston, I played. In a twenty-point exhibition ass-kicking of the NBA’s New York Knicks, I held Hall of Famer Walt Frazier scoreless… When Carolyn and I visit London, we stay at Buckingham Palace. Queen Elizabeth thanks us for giving two weeks’ notice so she can find alternative accommodations… Three of the Bible’s most compelling characters were modeled after me.

My Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita is the world’s most expensive automobile. After a pigeon left a white spot on its hood, I donated my first to charity and had another made… In Churchill, Canada, I didn’t just feed wild polar bears out of my hand. I rode them… I once toured with the Rolling Stones, singing side by side with Mick Jagger. Calls rang out from adoring crowds: “Who’s that guy with David?”

I have more Olympic medals than last year’s publication totals of romance/erotica novels… My home is so palatial I have views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Las Vegas Strip… The New York Times’ Sunday magazine plans a book-length profile of me—unless the New Yorker wins its Supreme Court case claiming exclusive rights to my story… I star in the world’s top-rated video game. No one plays. They just stare awestruck at the screen.

Dos Equis beer based its advertising campaign, “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” on my life. For credibility’s sake, they underplayed everything… The President of India greeted Carolyn and me when we arrived last October. Three times I turned down his request to rename the capital, New Delhi, Davidpur… Cosmopolitan magazine named me to their “Sexiest Men in the World” list—not just number one but also spots two through ten.

There’s more to a person than meets the eye, an organ prone to repeated failure. When we want the truth plain and simple, all we need is alternative facts. Which make it easy to live in an alternative reality.

If you enjoy these posts, suggest to family and friends that they check out davidperlstein.com. And please don’t support my running for president in 2020. The office would be a demotion.

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