The Norman and Phyllis Show

The Norman and Phyllis Show is a memoir about my parents. It's a humor book about my eccentric Jewish family in Chicago.

Norman and Phyllis were my parents and, well, they were crazy. Growing up with them was like being on The Norman and Phyllis Show, a bad sitcom the producers forgot to cancel.

They were the uncrowned royalty of the Chicago restaurant scene, where Norman taught Mexican waiters broken Yiddish and was a member of The Golden Tipper's Club. They had to go to restaurants. Phyllis was a terrible cook.

Between Norman telling Barack Obama during a campaign stop in Chicago that he had seen him naked in a health club locker room, and Phyllis talking incessantly about her bowel movements, there was no way I could have turned out normal.

Phyllis stocked the fridge with enough prune juice for a nuclear war, but I needed something stiffer to survive. After talking to medical specialists, I learned that insanity is, in fact, hereditary.

For years, I thought the job of parents was to embarrass their kids in public. Then I went into therapy and learned otherwise. It was called love.

It was still hard work raising my parents. But I think they turned out alright. This is their story. The story of The Norman and Phyllis Show.