Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (10 page)

U
HURA:
Captain, I’m getting indications of a Klingon presence.

K
IRK:
Mr. Spock?

S
POCK:
I confirm at least six Imperial Klingon warships, Captain, and heading toward our position at Warp 7.

K
IRK:
No, the Captain’s log. Why won’t it record?

S
POCK:
Might I suggest, Captain, that we first remove ourselves to a more secure sector and then address the matter of your log? That would be the . . . logical approach.

K
IRK:
There’s nothing logical about this instruction manual. Chekov?

C
HEKOV:
Keptin?

K
IRK:
Try this. “With the Rec-On day flashing, press the 5 key.”

C
HEKOV:
I did already, Keptin.
Still
negative function.

S
ULU:
Captain, I’m having difficulty holding course.

K
IRK:
Shut down engines. Chekov, “Press the number for the day. For Sunday, press the 1 key, for Monday, the 2 key, and so on.”

C
HEKOV:
Affirmative, Keptin. Still negative function. Perhaps ve should go back to page 15, vere it said to press Rec-Off time and enter two digits for hour.

S
POCK:
Captain, the Klingons are arming their photon torpedoes.

K
IRK:
Engineering.

S
COTTY:
Aye, Captain?

K
IRK:
Mr. Scott, we’ve got a malfunction in the log. We’re going to need full deflector power while we get it fixed.

S
COTTY:
I canna guarantee it, Captain. The systems are overloaded as it is.

C
HEKOV:
Keptin, the flashing 12:00 disappeared!

K
IRK:
Good work, Chekov!

C
HEKOV:
Den it came right back.

K
IRK:
Damn it. Analysis, Mr. Spock.

S
POCK:
It would appear, Captain, that this instruction manual that you and Mr. Chekov have been attempting to decipher was written in Taiwan.

K
IRK:
Taiwan?

S
POCK:
A small island in the Pacific Rim Sector, formerly inhabited by a determined people who believed that the adductor muscles in giant clams,
Tridacna gigas,
conferred sexual potency. In the later twentieth century, they became purveyors of early video equipment to what was then the United States. They were able to successfully emasculate the entire U.S. male population by means of impenetrable instruction manuals. It was this that eventually led to the Great Conflict.

K
IRK:
But this is 7412.6. How did a Taiwanese instruction manual get aboard the Enterprise?

S
POCK:
It is possible that a Taiwanese computer virus was able to infiltrate Star Fleet Instruction Manual Command and subtly alter the books so that not even university-trained humans could understand them.

K
IRK:
It’s diabolical.

S
POCK:
On the contrary, it is perfectly logical. Their strategy was based on an ancient form of Oriental persuasion known as water torture. In this case, instead of water a digital rendering of the hour of twelve o’clock is flashed repeatedly and will not disappear until the unit is correctly programmed.

K
IRK:
And for that you need a manual you can understand.

S
POCK:
Precisely. Unless . . .

K
IRK:
Spit it out, Spock.

S
POCK:
You have Star Log Plus. A small device that permitted the Americans to bypass the instruction manuals and program their units so that they would not end up with six hours of electronic snow instead of “Masterpiece Theatre” or, more likely, “American Gladiators.”

K
IRK:
Could you make one of these things, Spock?

S
POCK:
It would take more than the one minute and twenty seconds that we have until we are within range of Klingon weapons.

D
R.
M
C
C
OY:
Jim, you know I hate to agree with Spock, but he’s right. We’ve got to get out of here. There are hundreds of people on this ship, young people, with homes and families and futures, and pets—little hamsters on treadmills, Jim. You can’t sacrifice them just because you can’t figure out how to program your damn log!

K
IRK:
I know my responsibilities, Bones. Spock, would it be possible to beam the flashing 12:00 into the Klingons’ control panel?

S
POCK:
Theoretically, yes.

K
IRK:
Do it.

U
HURA:
Captain, I’m picking up a Klingon transmission.

K
IRK:
Put it on screen.

K
LINGONS:
QI’yaH, majegh!

K
IRK:
Translation, Spock.

S
POCK:
It appears to have worked, Captain. They are surrendering.

K
IRK:
Take us home, Mr. Sulu. Mr. Chekov, try pressing the OTR button twice.

1993

FRANK CAMMUSO AND HART SEELY

GLENGARRY GLEN PLAID

EXCERPTS FROM THE NEW LAND HO! CATALOGUE, AS IT WOULD BE WRITTEN BY DAVID MAMET

OUR FLANNEL SHIRTS ARE AS WARM AS A CUP OF COCOA!

The great flannel shirts you had, what do you remember about them? Not the pattern. Not the sleeves. Maybe it was the collar, the way it caressed your neck. Maybe it made a smell. Maybe it was the easy way it hung on you, like a drunk temp at an office party. Friend,
this
is a flannel. Most flannel shirts weigh eight ounces, they’re crap. This weighs
ten
ounces. When it’s so cold outside your balls shrink up like croutons, those extra two ounces are ounces of
gold.

But you can’t have these shirts.

They are not for the likes of you. These shirts are for
preferred customers.
If you called last year, you could have bought one, maybe, but not now. It’s too late, they’re sold out. They won’t be avail— Huh? What’s that, Gladys? We do have a few in stock?
Tonight only?
Well, pal, you just got lucky. You’ve got eight hours to get in on the ground floor. Of course, you can talk it over with your wife. How many should I put you down for? Seven? Nine?
AND THE ALL-COTTON FABRIC GUARANTEES COMFORT!

ALL HAIL CHINOS! EVERYONE SHOULD OWN A PAIR!

You think chinos are queer? Let me tell you something: Everybody’s queer. So what? You cheat on your wife? Live with it. You own a pair of bell-bottoms? Deal with it. At least these chinos have a fly that stays up, and you’re not paying a hundred dollars for some piece of puke-colored polyester. Right now, you’re asking, What do I want from a pair of pants? Comfort? Durability? A name?
An investment?
Listen: When you’re in the accident, and they’re cutting off your blood-stained trousers in that emergency room, who cares if you’re wearing an expensive label?
MACHINE WASHABLE, TOO!

OUR STIRRUP PANTS DON
’
T COST AN ARM AND A LEG!

You bitched about our stirrup pants. We heard you. Christ Almighty, everybody in the state heard you. We trimmed the legs, so, even with your fat thighs, you won’t look like a Buick. We stitched up the back to prevent pulling. You guys know what
pulling
is? It’s when the pants pull down on a chick’s ass, because the things are strapped to her goddam
feet.
Smart, eh? Like all anybody needed was a strap to hold pants
down.
What ever happened to straps that held pants
up
? Ever hear of belts? Broads. Don’t get me started. Look, this isn’t about backstitching, or yuppie fashions, or why a nickel is bigger than a dime. It’s about
men and women.
Screw it. I need a drink.
AND THE SEAMLESS STIRRUPS MEAN EXTRA COMFORT!

MEET OUR MOCK: THE TURTLE WITH A LITTLE LESS HUG!

You don’t like turtlenecks? You say they’re too tight? What are you, some wussy? Can’t handle the pressure from a fifty-fifty blend? What do
you
know from pressure? You sit there in your chintzy house and
you can’t deal with a turtleneck?
Jesus Christ.

You know, this pisses me off. You don’t know squat about running a business or about publishing a catalogue. You just sit there, looking at all the shiny, pretty pictures, and when you do finally call, you are the Customer, and the Customer Is Always Right, so the Customer can screw around and waste the time of men who bust their balls for a living, and it doesn’t matter that the Customer Is Full of Shit. Who taught you to buy clothes? You stupid, lard-assed deadbeat.

That’s it. I’ve had it. I don’t care whose nephew you are. I don’t care who you’re boffing. You drive everybody goddam nuts. This catalogue costs big money, but what do you care?
You
get it for free. That’s the problem. You don’t respect what you cannot buy. Well, buy
something,
asshole.
AND IT’S MADE IN THE U.S.A.!

1994

SCOTT GUTTERMAN

GUM

(Fade in old-timey fiddle music.)

Title: “Something Like a Candy”

(Slow zoom on single shot of eight-year-old boy, in mid-chew.)

N
ARRATOR:
It started as an idle pursuit: a way to pass the time, to occupy the slackened jaw of street urchin and steel magnate alike.
(Hold on various stills of farmhands, factory workers, men in bowler hats.)
But even in its infancy, when America wakened to its unfurling power like a slumbering giant whose nap had been cut short by the ambulance cry of its own withered soul, when gnashing, nattering demons fought for the very plinth of this great land, when the corn was as high as an elephant’s eye—even then it served as a salve to the spirit, a lulling reminder that there would still be a tomorrow, even if tomorrow never came.

F
YVUSH
F
INKEL:
I used to take my penny down to the candy store every Friday. This is in New York City, on the Lower East Side, which could be a very rough place back then—not like it’s a big picnic basket today—and if you didn’t get run over by a pushcart on your way to the store, or beaten up by the Ukrainian gangs over on Cherry Street, which happened about every other day, you’d give your penny to the man behind the counter, and if he wasn’t the kind of fellow to rob you blind, which most of them were, you’d get, I don’t know, six or seven pieces of candy, and usually in there would be a stick of gum.

(Hold on shots of tropical foliage, migrant laborers.)

N
ARRATOR:
The resin of the sapodilla tree was made to yield a chewable substance that could produce a kind of refreshment lasting all the livelong day. Mixed first with lye, then with iodine, and finally with sugar, it soon filled the mouths of schoolboys and stumblebums, of pugilists and prostitutes from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon.

S
USAN
S
ONTAG:
You have to understand, gum was very much frowned upon by the rising merchant class, who saw it as a kind of repudiation of all that they had done to distance themselves from their very provincial, very backwoods sorts of backgrounds. So what you had was this tremendous excitement, this wonderful violation of the social code, whenever someone would “pop in a stick,” as they’d say. It was all really very exciting, really.

(Hold on shots of robber-baron types.)

N
ARRATOR:
With the rise of “gumming” came the gum lords. They were ruthless men: cold, overbearing, quick to anger, bad of breath, unfriendly, rude, and, more often than not, not nice. They would hold the burgeoning gum world by its wrapper for more than three decades. It would be more than thirty years before the world of gum would be loosed from their very sticky and unpleasant grip.

K
EANU
R
EEVES:
“I intend to build me a gumworks the likes of which has not been seen east of the Mississippi, nor north of the Ohio, nor west of the Allegheny, nor south of Lake Huron. I will set it in the city of Chicago, for that is the place where I live, though not in summer, for it is too blessed hot.”—Colonel Harry A. Beech-Nut.

N
ARRATOR:
Men with names like Wrigley, Dentyne, and Bazooka would seek control of what quickly grew to be a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry (
hold on shots of bubble-popping contests, kids at candy counters
) built on the pennies of boys with names like Tommy, Frank, and Ken, and girls with names like Laura, Sandy, and Jo. Day after day, they came to stores with names like Pop’s, Morry’s, and the Pit Stop, to buy gum with names like Juicy Fruit, Beeman’s, and Big Red.

S
HELBY
F
OOTE:
The mere fact that you could
chew
gum for so long, that it would last and last and not lose its flavor—although all gum would
eventually
lose its flavor—that fact alone made it a kind of metaphor for all that was regenerative in American life, the sense that you could go away and the place you left would
still be there,
it wouldn’t be gone like some vaporous illusion—it was the same with gum, you could go out, bowl a few frames, make a phone call, get back in your car, and you’d still be chewing
the same piece of gum.
That was tremendously important in establishing the whole entire gum mystique, which is to say legend.

M
ARTIN
S
CORSESE:
Sure, I saw all the gum pictures, uh, all the great, great gum-chewing heroes. Sam Spade, of course, comes to mind. The Thin Man, William Powell, Cool Hand Luke—What? They didn’t? Are you sure? It’s really very funny, because I always associate them with, uh, with gum.