My brother Nate and I went to Boston this weekend to host a benefit for local autistic children. We HATE autism. We hate everything about it. Everything. There is nothing good about autism.

Except for all of that math stuff. That’s pretty cool.

My sister asked us to host the event because her son, our nephew, is autistic, and the kids at his school need a new playground. Their current one is full of cockroaches and fire ants, not to mention a bench commemorating the death of an autistic kid that no one even remembers. Nate and I told our team of publicists to accept the invitation, that we would be happy to save a local playground from bugs and dead kids. We even paid for our own first class tickets*. We hate autism that much.

We arrived at the school for a pre-benefit tour of the offending playground. It was, in fact, unplaygroundable. I got splinters in my eyes just looking at it. I’m no private detective** but I’m pretty sure someone had let their dog defecate near the bottom of the slide fairly recently; within the last half-hour by my touch. And Fire ants were, indeed, all over the place, covering the ground as well as all of the toys. Thank god crappy jungle gyms can’t feel pain.***

Then we got to meet the children, a group that, my publicist tells me, I really, really love. Nate and I were in for a huge surprise. Who knew that autistic kids were such big Daily Show fans? What a treat for them! After we were finished autographing their tiny foreheads and answering all of their questions+ we gathered up our posse++ and headed over to the benefit.

A word about my four-year-old, autistic nephew Owen: we have some history. Ours has been a slightly rocky relationship. You see, a few years ago, my millionaire father died, leaving Owen his entire fortune and me an old convertible. So I kidnapped^ Owen and took him to Vegas where I put him to work counting cards. But my journey of revenge quickly turned into a journey of discovery. We stayed in a huge suite, I taught him how to slow dance, and we wore matching suits. Owen won an Oscar that year for best actor in a leading role.^^

The benefit went well. Nate drank his weight in Sam Adams and took control of the live-auction like he was a revivalist preacher let loose in a tent full of homosexuals. And those fags were bidding! Drunk on local beer and power, Nate single-handedly raised over ten thousand dollars pitting friends and families against each other in an orgy of bidding fervor. Nate truly found a second calling that night, conducting an auction for autistic kids. He was auction-tastic. He was auctistic.

I, on the other hand, drank Jack and Cokes and got into a political argument with an old friend of mine that had just bought land in Washington for when, as he put it, THE SHIT# goes down.

“Where is it?”, I asked.
“I told you, in Washington State.
He had, in fact, told me that.
“Where?”, I asked.
“I can’t tell you.”, he said.
“What?”
“I can’t tell you. I’m only telling my family.”
“I can’t come?”
“You’re too liberal.”
“That’s gonna matter when The Shit goes down?”
“My father hates you.”
“So what, he has cancer, he’ll never make it anyway.## What’d you do, email your family with instructions on what do and where to go when The Shit goes down?”
“Yes.”
(long pause)
“What kind of Shit are you prepared for?”
“We’ll be prepared for everything.”
“Radiation?”
“Yes.”
“Gasses?”
“Sure”
“Invaders?”
“Yup.”
(pause)
“Zombies?”
“Fuck you.”
“Because I’m good with a shovel.”
“We’ll have guns.”
“Guns’ll attract more Zombies you idiot.”
“We’ll use silencers.”

And so on…

Yeah, I did my part that night. Nate may have raised over ten thousand dollars for autistic children and their stupid haunted playground, but I convinced an idiot to argue, seriously, about the best way to kill a zombie. Who’s the real hero? Please refer to the footnotes.###

______________________________________
*We don’t ride coach. We are huge television stars and it would be confusing for people to see us paying for our own bloody mary’s
**But I “don’t play by the rules” like one.
***As far as we know.
+What’s Jon Stewart really like? Do you really interview those people or is it editing? Is the Peabody an international award? Etc.
++Publicist, sister, bodyguard, chef, autistic nephew, astrologer, etc.
^not my words.
^^He wouldn’t be nominated again until 1998 for Wag the Dog.
#THE shit.
##I didn’t really say that. That’s a comedy-joke.
###Me.


Rob Corddry is an actor. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.