They Must Hate Me At the Post Office. Or Love Me. I'm Not Sure.

You might have noticed that I have not been posting as regularly as usual for the last three weeks or so. That’s because an extraordinary amount of my time and energy has been devoted to finishing out various crowd-funding campaigns for The Weird Accordion to Al book. 

I was very fortunate in that my 500 page book about “Weird Al” Yankovic’s life’s work did VERY well on GoFundMe, Kickstarter and Backerkit. 

I wracked up something like 550 orders through Kickstarter and Backerkit. I knew then that I would need to purchase a large quantity of my own books to sign, personalize and send out to patrons. 

What I did not realize then was that many of those 550 orders were for more than one book. I sold an awful lot of bundles pairing the extended version of The Weird Accordion to Al with Weird Al: the Book and plenty of folks chose to buy more than one copy of The Weird Accordion to Al. 

So that 550 number is actually deceptively low. In actuality,  I’ll end up sending out something in the area of 700 or 750 books. That’s great but it also entails an insane amount of exhausting physical labor on top of the enormous amount of work involved in writing The Weird Accordion to Al itself. 

Every morning I wake up, drop my oldest son off at school, then I come back home and take a Lyft to the post office with a giant bin containing twenty five packages with signed copies of the Weird Accordion to Al inside. 

I try to go to the post office when it’s empty because I do not want to inconvenience other patrons. I would not want to wait behind a dude at the post office mailing twenty-five packages so I go first thing in the morning. 

Then I go back home and bring a rolling cart with 15 more books back to the post office to ship out to patrons. 

I’m worried that the nice man behind the counter sees me trudging over with a big blue bin full of packages and thinks, “This fucking guy. What did I do in a previous life to deserve this?” 

But I have to send out these packages. I am morally, professionally and legally obligated to send copies of my book to everyone who was kind enough to pre-order one or purchase a signed copy through my website. 

My morning trip to the post office is satisfying as well as exhausting. I may be stuck at home indefinitely but my beautiful, beautiful book is traveling all over the country, having adventures and meeting amazing people who feel so passionately about “Weird Al” Yankovic that they bought copies of my book long before it was even finished. 

For the last three weeks or so, I’ve been shipping out 40 books a day, every day, come rain or shine. I’ve gotten an enormous amount done but I still have well over two hundred copies to send out.

So if you pre-ordered The Weird Accordion to Al and haven’t gotten your copy yet, you better believe that it’s on its way.

The crazy thing is that when I finally finish sending out all the books, which should hopefully happen within the next two weeks or so, I’m going to miss this exhausting, draining but validating ritual because I love my book and its readers so damn much. 

I’m guessing the local post office will not feel anywhere near as melancholy; they’ll just be grateful I’m not monopolizing their services anymore. They must hate me over at the post office. Or love me. I’m not quite sure. 

Help ensure a future for the Happy Place during an uncertain era AND get sweet merch by pledging to the site’s Patreon account at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace

Also, BUY the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of  THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL, the Happy Place’s first book. This 500 page extended edition features an introduction from Al himself (who I co-wrote 2012’s Weird Al: The Book with), who also copy-edited and fact-checked, as well as over 80 illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro on entries covering every facet of Al’s career, including his complete discography, The Compleat Al, UHF, the 2018 tour that gives the book its subtitle and EVERY episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season as the band-leader on Comedy Bang! Bang! 

Only 23 dollars signed, tax and shipping included, at the https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or for more, unsigned, from Amazon here