Greg Gutfeld, co-host of Fox News’s “The Five,” and the star of Saturday night’s “The Greg Gutfeld Show,” has written The Plus, a self-help book for those who do not like self-help books. Employing his trademark barbed, self-effacing humor, Gutfeld espouses maintaining a positive attitude and trying to think and act in an unconventional manner, even if this doesn’t seem to always carry one toward one’s goals. It is the very act of being unconventional and positive that is the goal, Gutfeld argues. This is the essence of living an authentic life.
So let me tell you about one authentic life I know something about.
Behold the Punk. In some ways, he’s like the Dude from “The Big Lebowski.” I’ve never met anybody quite like him. He’s sui generis. At the same time, he is representative. Iconic. He’s got a flashlight. I have a crowbar in my hand. We are breaking into an apartment building somewhere in Georgetown. It’s a Sunday morning in the summer of 1988.
The building is in the midst of an interior demo and renovation. The Punk has been squatting in the apartment building—before squatting was ever a thing—as the construction crew that has been slowly renovating the place, working one floor at a time. The Punk is squatting on the third floor, and they haven’t reached that far yet.
Or maybe the third-floor place used to be the Punk’s apartment and he simply failed to move. My memory is hazy on that point. The problem is that, while getting into the building is easy—there’s a gaping hole in the concrete instead of a front entrance—the crew has changed the locks to the stairwell, perhaps suspecting someone was living in the building. The elevator has no power. So the Punk is separated from his stuff.
What this stuff is, I have been trying to imagine. Suits? Shoes? A portable bar? The Punk is something of a clothes horse in his way, and drinks—a lot. It can’t be toiletries. I know the Punk has been taking showers at the Arlington YMCA, where he also works out like a fiend from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. every morning in the weight room, no matter how long he stays out the night before. The Punk is a 5 foot 4 bundle of sinew and muscle. At 5 foot 8, I feel tall and lanky when standing next to him.
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