Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (49 page)

Specifically speaking, how does a stock exchange work? One would require approximately how many tables and chairs? And then what?

As fledglings, we are excited to be initiating such a body! Having in readiness for our members a fifty-litre samovar, we now await merely your input on final refinements of procedure.

Gratefully,
F
REE
M
ARKET
P
LANNING
C
OMMISSARIAT

British Humane Society

London, England

L
ADIES AND
G
ENTLEMEN:

Begging your advisory as per the ensuing hypothetical. Someone on my street, not me, keeps surrealist parasites in his basement as a hobby. Supposing he decided to release them from the holding pen—what would be the safest way? Should he just smash the pen open with a hammer and then run? I heard there is a danger that uninhibited specimens have a difficult transition phase and might form roving packs of killer strays. Is this true, or would they reenter the natural population?

Very truly yours,
C
ONCERNED
S
IBERIAN
C
ITIZEN
(R
ET
.)

Editor-in-Chief

Le Monde

Paris, France

E
STEEMED
C
OLLEAGUE:

Our best regards to you and your enchanting wife.

By the way, how do you decide which are the news stories and which are the editorials? Is it by word count or, rather, a collective decision reached by secret ballot? Or perchance you leave this matter in the capable hands of your delightful spouse. In that case, might we consult with her now and then, purely on a professional basis?

With felicitations,
I
ZVESTIA
E
DITORIAL
B
OARD

P.S.: Please forgive the ironic idiocy of the above query if yours is one of the Western press organs which have been taking their instructions from us. Someone told us to forget about all that, so we had to.

Supervisor

Cook County Board of Elections

Cook County, Illinois, U.S.A.

D
EAR
S
IR OR
M
ADAM:

Knowing your reputation far and wide, we were just wondering. What if there occurred some voting machines of a highly democratic technology—for example, allowing multiple choice by means of extra slots and levers? Is there some method, in its sophistication a mystery to us, for insuring that a candidate with more votes does not obtain an unfair advantage over a candidate with not so many votes? There could be a situation where the latter is more deserving, due to family needs or health problems, etc., yet is passed aside by a hasty or whimsical electorate for a candidate they think they “want.” Then idealism would cry out on its hands and knees to serve a higher justice. Is there a special device for this?

Also, do you happen to know how to get the ballots out of the machine—smash the whole thing open like a piggy bank, or what?

Sincerely,
S
UPREME
E
LECTION
R
EFORM
C
ENTRAL
C
OMMITTEE

Mr. Akio Morita, Chairman

Sony Corporation

Tokyo, Japan

D
EAR
M
R.
M
ORITA:

This is not your problem, but in our admiration for your fantastic acumen we hope to presume upon your farseeing wisdom and topnotch business sense.

A woman named Yoko Ono has made us a firm offer of $30,000 in hard currency for eight hundred thousand hectares of state-owned pasture in the northeastern Urals. She asserts managerial skills such that over a five-year period she can transform the area into a profit-making dairy farm equipped with automated milking system, carriage barn, historically restored rustic stone walls, manor house with large deck, hardwood floors, antique lighting, Tulikivi radiant fireplace, all-electric kitchen, aluminum siding, up-to-the-minute recording studio, and much more, and will then rent it back to us on terms to be mutually deferred.

Naturally we are tempted to gobble this while her enthusiasm is still at fever pitch. But the wife of our deputy agro-industrial minister suggests we ask if you know a hard-nosed tactic to sweeten our end of the deal.

Most respectfully,
L
AND
D
EVELOPMENT
I
NSPECTORATE

Hughes Tool Company

U.S.A.

T
O THE
B
OARD OF
D
IRECTORS:

No doubt it is something out of the blue, receiving a letter from an unknown woman in Russia. I have selected your company because my husband is a fan of your unique oil-drilling equipment, which he appreciates only by remote lore and word of mouth but aspires someday to purchase for his business here. Having started from a single informal kerosene drum in a shed behind our dacha on the Black Sea, he has created over the years quite a formidable oil-and-gas-pumping endeavor, and now stands in position to operate on a mammoth regional scale.

However, I am concerned that he is the victim of a fairy tale about capitalist management principles. A small cohort of men visiting from your state Utah have attained influence over him. They are causing him to discharge fond employees of loyal longevity, and to sign many papers, and now they have him in a reclusion, lying in bed with long fingernails, watching a videotape of a film, “Ocean’s Eleven.” Recently he sent out to me an elaborate pencil memorandum explaining how I should open herring jars in a certain way so germs from my hair cannot tumble in. He said that titans of capital have to protect themselves from poison elements, but I believe this to be a propaganda romance, indoctrinated by the Utah men. Finally, would it be a fact that executive decision-making power is enhanced by hourly injections of the substance “codeine”? This is what they proclaim, although they themselves are fanatically abstemious when it comes to even vodka or tea.

As I am too typical of our national unfamiliarity with these parts of the free-enterprise system, I pray that you can inform my perspective before it is already too late and I smash open the attic with a hammer.

Desperate

T
O
W
HOM IT
M
AY
C
ONCERN:

I am free. What should I do?

1991

NOAH BAUMBACH

KEITH RICHARDS’ DESERT-ISLAND DISKS

Each month, the editors of Pulse magazine ask a rock-and-roll star to list which ten CDs he or she would bring to a desert island. Keith Richards selected the following:

Little Richard: “Lucille” or “Tutti Frutti”

Beethoven’s Third Symphony

Anything early by the Nat King Cole Trio

Everly Brothers: “That’s Just Too Much”

Robert Johnson: “32-20 Blues”

Big Bill Broonzy

Louis Armstrong: “Pratt City Blues”

Blind Willie McTell

Carla Thomas

Otis Redding

Brenda & the Tabulations: “Who’s Lovin’ You”

•
DAY ONE

Rigged a distress flag with me gypsy scarf, but it droops like Mick’s jowls. While waiting for it to fly, played all ten disks. Ate a peanut-butter-and-Fluff sandwich the missus packed for me dinner and washed it down with me new poison of choice: Stoli and Sunkist. Smoked a Marlboro Red and watched the sun go down. Was lulled into me forty winks by the island’s own music, the flop flop of the waves and the caw caw of the parrots.

•
DAY TWO

Went combing for shells for me bungalow back home. In the uninhabited spots, one gets first pick, so to speak. Dragged back a whopping conch! Chilled out with me CDs. The sign of good music: if it’s got some soul, ya know, you can listen to it over and over. That cat Little Richard must’ve had a desert island in mind when he wrote “Tutti Frutti.” Scanned horizon.

•
DAY THREE

Do I really need both Big Bill Broonzy and Blind Willie McTell? Thinkin’ I should’ve put some Buddy Holly on that list, or maybe some Four Tops. Had a real craving for “That’ll Be the Day.” Spent the afternoon scouting for other signs of life and listening to “Tutti Frutti” on repeat.

•
DAY FIVE

Can’t get “Tutti Frutti” out of me head. Perhaps “Lucille” would’ve been a better pick. Opened me Big Bill Broonzy CD to discover me little one, Theodora, had switched it with the soundtrack to “Elmo in Grouchland.” Cheeky critter. I must’ve missed it before when I was wrestling that monkey for coconuts. Been using the Shuffle option Patti showed me on the disk player to give those ten disks a new life they badly needed. The local birds and monkeys bop along to the tunes; one parrot in particular seems a bit more on key than Don Everly. It’s me own Voodoo Lounge. Me Zippo ran out of fluid, so I’m reduced to lighting me Marlboros with two stones.

•
DAY SIX

The bloody CD player got sand in it and it took the better part of the day to clean it out. Pissed me off. Wanted something to clear “Tutti Frutti” from me brain.

•
DAY EIGHT

Must remember to put the disks back in their cases: Carla Thomas and Beethoven’s Third got warped in the sun. Just me luck, only had a chance to listen to them four dozen or so times. Started using “Tutti Frutti” as a shaving mirror. Man, the crooked reflection really makes me look like that Celine Dion bird. Next thing you know, like, I’ll be banging me chest with me fist. Listen to Nat King Cole enough, you can detect a slight lisp. Ran out of Stoli. Have started mixing Sunkist and salt water for a kick even I’m not quite used to. Ten butts left. Horizon a bloody blur.

•
DAY TEN

The distance from me chin to me groin is exactly five CDs!

•
DAY ELEVEN

Tried to signal a passing ship for help—or at least some different disks. Played “Who’s Lovin’ You” on top volume and accompanied it with me Fender. Ship didn’t hear me, man, and I blew a tweeter, so I ejected the disk and tried to reflect little rays of CD light at the craft as an S.O.S. The ship sailed on. In all the excitement, I trampled me sand castles. A real downer. Man, Robert Johnson is depressing: “I’m down this, I’m down that.” Otis Redding’s Mr. Pitiful and me all-black threads ain’t much cheerier. I don’t know if it’s me ocean-water intake or the fact I’ve been smoking sand for a week, but I started to see Chuck Berry playing Kadima on the beach with Muddy Waters. “I got a gal named Sue”—I try to keep morale up, but me fear is that “Tutti Frutti” is inhabiting me mind.

•
DAY THIRTEEN

Me ten favorite books: “Moby-Dick,” “The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing,” “Tutti Frutti,” “Gravity’s Rainbow,” “Tutti Frutti” . . . Ah, hell!

•
DAY SIXTEEN

Tried to play the Everlys backward to look for hidden messages. Big Bill Broonzy is starting to sound too much like that little red Muppet monster. Broonzy ain’t so big; I could whup him. Keep finding meself humming variations on “Tutti Frutti”: “Loosy Goosey” and “Ittut Itturf!”

•
DAY EIGHTEEN

Let it be known that this was the day I realized I could put all ten CDs on me ten toes. Makes me look a bit like a princess.

•
DAY TWENTY-THREE

Aha! Discovered “Tutti Frutti” is inhabiting me conch. Little Richard is evidently
very
little and trapped inside me shell. Can’t hear the ocean at all when I put it up to me ear. Turned in around five and me silver skull ring tried to bite me in me sleep. Woke up with a cut on me finger.

•
DAY TWENTY-FIVE

Had a bitch of a row with some parrots who prefer Mick’s solo outings to mine. Creatures are mocking me. Parrots singing “Tutti Frutti” like they invented it. I shut up one cheeky bird by stuffing his beak in the hole in the Everlys. A monkey took me side and I offered him Billy Wyman’s bass position. Horizon slowly unravels.

•
DAY THIRTY

Re-formed the Stones with the monkey on bass, meself on guitar, a seagull on drums, and a parrot named Daisy singing lead. The bird’s a real prima donna, but can belt it out like bloody Sam Cooke. Played that old chestnut “Tutti Frutti” till the creatures’ bedtime.

•
DAY THIRTY-ONE

Bloody bird left the group to go solo. Bitch.

•
DAY THIRTY-FOUR

“I got a gal named Patti, she almost drive me batty.” Not bad. “I got a parrot named Daisy, she almost drive me crazy!” The monkey and me are trying to pry wee, tiny little Richard out of the conch shell. Want to sing him the Patti/batty rhyme. “Tutti Frutti au rutti, too-ttay froo-ttay, au roo-ttay—”

•
DAY FIFTY-TWO

“A bop-bop a-loom-op a-lop bop boom!”

1999

WORDS
OF
ADVICE

UPTON SINCLAIR

HOW TO BE OBSCENE

I
HAVE
made a discovery almost priceless to authors. If I were a selfish author, I would keep it to myself and live on it the rest of my life. Being an altruist, I pass it on for my colleagues to make use of.

You spend a lot of time writing a book, and then maybe no one pays any attention to it. The season is dull, and there are mountains of books on the desks of the literary editors; you have got lost in the mob, your book is dead, and your wife and kids can’t go to the seashore this summer.

But then some good angel puts it into the head of a Boston preacher to read your book and take it to the Boston police, and the police go and arrest a bookclerk for selling your book, which is obscene. Instantly the press agencies flash the name of your book to every town and village in the United States, and your publishers get orders by telegraph from Podunk and Kalamazoo. The literary editors grab the book out of the pile they had set aside to be turned over to the secondhand dealers. The printers of your book have to telegraph to the mill for a carload of paper for a new edition, and the royalties from the first three days’ sales pay your expenses while you travel from California to Boston, to enter a protest against the action of the censor, and ensure the sale of the new edition before it has gone to press.

Last week I was a guest of the Kiwanis Club of Boston. They gave me a very nice luncheon of cold meats and potato salad and ice cream and cake, and we saluted the flag, and sang songs about it, and then I told them about this wonderful situation—using the Kiwanis dialect, which, as you may know, is closely related to the Rotary and Lions’ languages. I said: “Under this arrangement we authors are using the rest of the United States as our selling territory, and Boston as our advertising headquarters.”

IF it were necessary to write really obscene books, I wouldn’t recommend this plan, because real obscenity is altogether foreign to my interests. But the beauty of the plan is that you don’t have to write anything really harmful; all you have to do is to follow the example of the great masters of the world’s literature, and deal with the facts of life frankly and honestly. That is what the Boston police call “obscenity,” and as soon as the rest of the country understands that, it will be an honor to have the Boston advertisement. So far they have conferred it upon H. L. Mencken, Percy Marks, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser and myself. I am now engaged in trying to get them to confer it upon William Shakespeare and the author of the Book of Genesis, but they say these classics don’t need advertising.

You don’t have to give very much space in your book to the forbidden subjects. Under the Boston law, they can pick out a single paragraph, or even a single sentence which they do not like, and on the basis of this, they can advertise an entire book, which may be otherwise quite all right from the prudish point of view. Nobody has to read the whole book save a Boston police clerk; he picks out the passages which tend to corrupt his sensitive religious nature, and marks them. These passages are sworn to in a complaint, and after that they are the “evidence,” and if you try to read any other passages, you are out of order.

THIS matter is of such great importance to authors that I am sure they will want full particulars, seeing that I am here on the ground, and have got all the data. Just what must one say in order to annex this free Boston advertising? In the case of my novel “Oil!” which they are now boosting for me, they specify nine pages out of a total of 527—and you can see how easy that makes it for any author.

To begin with, one must not mention that such a thing as birth control exists. In Boston they have arrested Margaret Sanger several times, and they make desperate efforts to keep all knowledge of contraception from the masses of the people. Boston also has its Watch and Ward Society, whose purpose is to keep you from mentioning the passionate aspects of love in any place but a medical treatise. This was explained to me by Mr. Fuller, proprietor of the Old Corner Book Store, and chairman of the committee of the booksellers which is trying to persuade the police to arrest the authors instead of the booksellers. Mr. Fuller talked very eloquently to me for an hour, to persuade me that it was my duty to get arrested. I tried to oblige him, but the courts wouldn’t let me. They thought I had had my share of advertising.

It is very simple, after all, to get this Boston police advertisement; all you have to do is to take any book of the great standard literature of the world, pick out the passages dealing with love and courtship, write something of the same sort in your book, and then mail a few copies to members of the Boston society. Get “The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,” for example, or “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”

DON’T write anything really obscene, of course, and don’t think that I mean any such thing. I have never written anything of the sort in my life, and police advertising couldn’t tempt me. Not for a million dollars would I put into a book of mine any words as vile as those
Hamlet
addresses to
Ophelia
in one passage of that play. (I think some cheap actor wrote it into the script, but there it is, a part of standard English literature, taught in all high schools.) And not all the wealth in New York could hire me to write a story as foul as the tale of what Lot’s daughters did to their drunken old father in Genesis
XIX,
30–38.

1927

ROBERT BENCHLEY

FILLING THAT HIATUS

T
HERE
has already been enough advice written for hostesses and guests so that there should be no danger of toppling over forward into the wrong soup or getting into arguments as to which elbow belongs on which arm. The etiquette books have taken care of all that.

There is just one little detail of behavior at dinner parties which I have never seen touched upon, and which has given me personally some little embarrassment. I refer to the question of what to do during those little intervals when you find that both your right-hand and your left-hand partner are busily engaged in conversation with somebody else.

You have perhaps turned from what you felt to be a fascinating conversation (on your part) with your right-hand partner, turned only to snap away a rose bug which was charging on your butter from the table decorations or to refuse a helping of salad descending on you from the left, and when you turn back to your partner to continue your monologue, you find that she is already vivaciously engaged on the other side, a shift made with suspicious alacrity, when you come to think it over. So you wheel about to your left, only to find yourself confronted by the clasp of a necklace and an expanse of sun-browned back. This leaves you looking more or less straight in front of you, with a roll in your hand and not very much to do with your face. Should you sit and cry softly to yourself, with your underlip stuck out and tears coursing unnoticed down your cheeks, or should you launch forth into a bawdy solo, beating time with your knife and fork?

OF course, the main thing is not to let your hostess notice that you are disengaged, for, if she spots you dawdling or looking into space, she will either think that you have insulted both your partners or else will feel responsible for you herself and start a long-distance conversation which has no real basis except that of emergency. So above all things you must spend the hiatus acting as if you really were doing something.

You can always make believe that you are talking to the person opposite, making little conversational faces and sounds into thin air, nodding your head “Yes” or “No,” and laughing politely every now and again, perhaps even continuing the talk from which you had been cut off, just as if someone were still listening to you. This may fool your hostess in case her glance happens to fall your way (and sometime we must take up the difficulty of talking to hostesses whose glances must, of necessity, be roving up and down the board while you are trying to be funny) but it is going to confuse the person sitting opposite you in case he or she happens to catch your act. If one looks across the table and sees the man opposite laughing and talking straight ahead with nobody on the other end, one is naturally going to think that he had better not take any more to drink, or perhaps even that he had better not go out to any more parties until some good specialist has gone over him thoroughly. It is this danger of being misjudged which makes the imitation conversation inadvisable.

You can always get busily at work on the nuts in front of your plate, arranging them on the tablecloth in fancy patterns with simulated intensity which will make it look as if you were performing for somebody’s benefit, especially if you keep looking up at an imaginary audience and smiling “See?” Even if you are caught at this, there is no way of checking up, for anyone of the dinner guests might possibly be looking at you while talking to somebody else. It isn’t much fun, however, after the first five minutes.

IF you have thought to bring along a bit of charcoal, you can draw little pictures on the back on either side of you, perhaps even spelling out “Repeal the 18th Amendment” on one of them to help along a good cause, or, lacking charcoal and the ability to draw, you might start smothering the nicer-looking back with kisses. This would, at least, get one of your partners to turn around—unless she happened to like it. As time wears on, and you still find yourself without anyone to talk to, you can start juggling your cutlery, beginning with a knife, fork, and spoon and working up to two of each, with perhaps a flower thrown in to make it harder. This ought to attract
some
attention.

Of course, there is always one last resort, and that is to slide quietly out of your chair and under the table, where you can either crawl about collecting slippers which have been kicked off, growling like a dog and frightening the more timid guests, or crawl out from the other side and go home. Perhaps this last would be best.

1932

ROBERT BENCHLEY

IT’S FUN TO BE FOOLED . . . IT’S MORE FUN TO KNOW

H
ERE
are some of the tricks of sleight-of-hand which I used to do when I was a small boy, together with complete explanations of how each trick was done.

I may be incurring the ire of the Society of Magicians, as certain cigarette advertisers have done, by giving away these secrets of the Black Art which I have guarded for so many years (that is, if I can remember them), but times are hard, and Magic has become more or less a pedestrian trade, and I feel that I am quite within my rights in sharing with the world the details of my erstwhile relationship with the Forces of Darkness.

You must remember that my only equipment in this legerdemain, aside from the natural dexterity of a boy of eleven, was a set of implements forwarded to me by a soap firm in Glastonbury, Connecticut, in return for some slight favor I had done them in connection with soap wrappers. The entire set could be easily concealed in a wardrobe trunk, and, when brought into the room where the feats were to be performed, attracted no more attention than a traveling dog-and-monkey circus would have done. A great many of my audience often detected nothing unusual about my appearance other than several bulging pockets, which might have come from carrying small puppies in them, or possibly a slight indistinctness in speech due to my mouth being full of odds and ends of apparatus, such as coins, eggs, and flags of all nations. Aside from these items, I was innocence itself.

THE BEWITCHED FLOWERPOT

ILLUSION:

What seems to be an ordinary tin flowerpot (except that it is the size and shape of a rolling-pin) is opened to show the audience that it is completely empty. In fact, the magician’s wand is inserted into the opening and moved gingerly about to prove the point.

The cover is then readjusted and tapped several times too many with the wand. During this tapping an almost imperceptible move is made turning the pot upside down, and, when the cover is taken off again, a rose bush in full bloom is disclosed. Well, perhaps not a rose bush, and perhaps not in full bloom, but at any rate a bunch of red-paper flowers, slightly crushed. The audience is astounded.

EXPLANATION:

The flowerpot is not a
real
flowerpot, but a contraption with
two separate compartments,
one containing nothing (which the audience is permitted to see first) and the other containing the rose bush in full bloom. The almost imperceptible movement turning the pot upside down really
does
turn it upside down, so that the empty compartment is on the bottom and the rose compartment on top. The rest is easy.

THE GHOSTLY FINGER

ILLUSION:

A derby hat is borrowed from someone in the audience, or one belonging to the magician is used. It is passed about for examination to prove that there are no holes in it (yet) and is then held, top toward the spectators, and a handkerchief is wrapped around it. (Possibly the magician’s back is turned to the audience for the fraction of a minute, as if he were looking for something behind him, while a running line of clever patter distracts the attention of those present.) On removing the handkerchief, the magician’s forefinger is seen
protruding from the top of the hat,
to all appearances having been thrust
through the material!
The handkerchief is then wrapped again around the hat, the back possibly turned again for a few seconds, and, when the handkerchief is removed, there is no finger
and no hole!
Several of the more nervous ladies swoon.

EXPLANATION:

A
wax finger,
with a long pin attachment, is used in this trick. The magician “palms” the wax finger (“to palm,” in the lingo of the Devil’s disciples, is to conceal an object in the palm of the hand so cleverly that it looks as if the hand were empty, or at any rate merely convulsed in
rigor mortis
). When the handkerchief is being wrapped around the hat the first time, the pin is inserted into the top part of the derby and grasped by the hand which is inside the hat. This, unless the pin is pushed only halfway in, gives the effect of the finger actually coming through the hat. Otherwise it gives the effect of the finger
and pin
coming through the hat, which is not so mystifying. When the handkerchief is passed again, the finger-pin is pulled out and palmed once more, care being taken this time,
of all times,
not to drop it on the floor.