Am I The Only One Who Thinks Like This?

Augsten Burroughs, Continued.

Original Passage, from Dry:
Jim is great. He's an undertaker. Actually, I suppose he's technically not an undertaker anymore. He's graduated to coffin salesman, or as he puts it, "pre-arrangements." The funeral business is rife with euphemisms. In the funeral business, nobody actually "dies." They simply "move on," as if traveling to a different time zone.
He wears vintage Hawaiian shirts, even in winter. Looking at him, you'd think he was just a norbal, blue-collar Italian guy. Like maybe he's a cop or owns a pizza place. But he's an undertaker, through and through. Last year for my birthday, he gave me two bottles. One was filled with pretty pink lotion, the other with amber fluid. Permaglow and Restorative: embalming fluids. This is the sort of conversation piece you simply can't find at Pottery Barn. I'm not so shallow as to pick my friends based on what they do for a living, but in this case I have to say it was a major selling point.

Notable Stylistic Elements:
His odd sense of humor.
He's descriptive, and somewhat sarcastic.

Context:
Describing his drinking buddy, Jim.

Imitation Passage:
His bright, optimistic grin gave the impression that he was an innocent, happy young man, chasing his dreams. That was half right. He was relatively happy, and he was chasing his life-long dreams, regardless of the limitations people tried to set. But, he wans't innocent, not really. Every other word that left his lips would make his mother cry, and his liver was suffering because of his drinking habits.
He was nice to be around, though. His laughter was contagious, and he turned everything into jokes. He wanted to write, and write what he wanted. His awkward, almost ADHD style made it hard for him to get published. He worked as a bartender at the bar on 7th Avenue, which was more than fitting for him. His drunken customers became his characters, and their drunken problems became his ideas.
He was lost. Stuck between reality and his dream land, not really knowing the difference between them. That was how he wanted to live; he wanted distractions from the fact that his dreams were still out of reach.