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About the book:
Billy Burton is a strange boy. Or, at least, that’s what everyone tells him. He lives inside his head; thinking and thinking and dreaming and scheming. But this year—1973—his twelfth year on earth, is like no other. He is constantly under threat from the school psychopath; his dad is under investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Watergate; the odd girl across the street has taken a keen interest in Billy (and him, in her); Bob Woodward is after his dad (unless Billy can stop him); his dog (Mr. Pooch) is out of control and cannot be found; Billy has come into possession of a book entitled “The Happy Hooker” (and intends to decipher the meaning of all things “sexy”); he realizes his new (and only) friend is a juvenile delinquent; and he has somehow come to know the iconoclastic physicist, Richard Feynman (Nobel Prize winner), whose motto is, “Damn the torpedoes!”—which has become Billy's motto too.
1973 is going to be a wild ride for one Billy Burton.
A message from Billy Burton:
So this director guy (I don’t know, he supposedly directed some movies that are probably crappy, I don’t know), but anyway, this guy (Phil Joanou) he decided to write a book about me (Billy Burton), and yes, I’m 12 years old, and yes, that will most likely turn you off because you think it’s gonna be a book about bratty little punks so it must be written for bratty little punks like me. But it’s not. (I think.) No, it’s written for old people . . . like say, 20 — or even older. I can’t say much about anyone older than 40 because I really only know about my parents and they definitely will NOT want to read this book because they are in the book and I’m not so sure they are gonna be so happy about what this Joanou guy wrote, even though he thinks he “got inside my head” (ha!) and knows what I really think about things, which I will tell you, is not true—but I just let him think it is.
Anyway, this book is the story of my life back in 1973, and now you’re thinking: “Who in the hell gives a damn about 1973!” Well, a lot was happening back then; my dad was under investigation by the Senate Committee on Watergate, I met a strange girl, a Nazi moved in down the street, we were visited by the ghost of Diane Arbus, I stole a book called “The Happy Hooker,” my dog got kidnapped, Bob Woodward was after me, and Richard Feynman (the Nobel Prize Winning Physicist) became my friend. Plus some other stuff.
I told this writer guy (Joanou) that no one would care, but he kept on saying, “So what? It’ll be fun!” Well, I’m not so sure about him having “fun” with my life, but I will say, a lot of “funny” things did happen that year. (And, to be honest, some not so funny things.) But all in all, I think that’s what he was going for: a feeling of Fun(!) and Adventure(!), along with some other stuff about Love and Sex and Loyalty and Betrayal and Family and Friends and Girlfriends and First Kisses, and did I say, Sex? (No, not sex-sex! What do you think this is? I’m only twelve!) Anyway, that’s all I really know because I haven’t even read the damn thing. I mean, why would I? I’m the one who lived it.
p.s. And just so you know, that part in the story where some people get shot? I had nothing to do with that. The Joanou guy made that part up all on his own . . . I swear.