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Jason Lassen

Goodreads Author

Website

http://thehollywoodclown.com/

Twitter

hollywoodclown

Genre

Nonfiction, Memoir

Influences

David Sedaris

Member Since

April 2012

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/JasonLassen

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“Dad, I want to write a book.”

“Sounds good to me, son.”

I was 8 years old at the time and I remember the moment well. My parents were recently divorced, I was living with my father on a farm (that became my home for the next 14 years) and I was watching him shave. I’m a creative type and I believe the confused and angry 8-year-old me was dying to express himself. Unfortunately, I was not blessed with legible, pleasant-to-look-at handwriting, and was often told, “You have bad handwriting.” All I heard was, “Bad” and “Writing.” So as far as other people knew, I stopped writing. I would still write stories, songs and the occasional love note to girls I deemed special to me. After they were written, I would go into the woods, read them one last “Dad, I want to write a book.”

“Sounds good to me, son.”

I was 8 years old at the time and I remember the moment well. My parents were recently divorced, I was living with my father on a farm (that became my home for the next 14 years) and I was watching him shave. I’m a creative type and I believe the confused and angry 8-year-old me was dying to express himself. Unfortunately, I was not blessed with legible, pleasant-to-look-at handwriting, and was often told, “You have bad handwriting.” All I heard was, “Bad” and “Writing.” So as far as other people knew, I stopped writing. I would still write stories, songs and the occasional love note to girls I deemed special to me. After they were written, I would go into the woods, read them one last time, get angry that my handwriting was so incredibly terrible and burn them.

Publicly, I found something I did excel at: making people laugh. I wanted to get as far away from Jason Lassen as I could, and acting allowed me to do just that while making others laugh.

Without ever literally putting a pen to paper, I found myself often “writing” skits to perform and film. This continued for years and at the age of 17 I started working for our local news station, WNNE 31, filming and writing sports stories. Ironic because I’m not a big sports guy. My handwriting was not an issue because they had a machine I could type my stories on. But really, how difficult is it to recycle color commentating such has, “Joe Blow takes the ball coast to coast for 2!”

My first week in college I started a class called “Freshman Seminar.” Our first assignment was to make a log and keep track of all our activities for the entire quarter. This way we could see where and how we spent our time so that we could learn to manage it properly. Most of the other students didn’t even do the project correctly; they would just fill in what they thought the professor would want to see. Not me, though. If I was taking a shit, getting drunk, or having sex, it was going in my chart, damn it.

After the class ended, I found myself still keeping a notebook of my daily activities. My journals started off very vague and eventually became full-fledged, very descriptive novels that included my feelings on what was going on in my life. In one year I can fill a five-subject notebook or more.

My entire life since moving to Los Angeles in 1992 is chronicled; all the jobs I’ve had, the people I’ve met and the adventures along the way.

I'm currently working on making a TV show based on my book HOLLYWOOD CLOWN. ...more