Andrew Dice Clay

Full disclosure: Comedian Patton Oswalt, author of a new book of personal essays and other flights of whimsy called "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland," once invited me to his birthday party at the Lot, the former Warner Bros. studio in West Hollywood.

Oswalt was showing "The Warriors," director Walter Hill's disco-era-scented 1979 cult classic about New York City gang warfare. That he would screen "The Warriors" as though it were "Citizen Kane" tells you much about the cineaste's passion with which Oswalt approaches pulp, both offstage and in his stand-up act.

And so we arrive at the first chapter in his book, Oswalt taking us back to...