Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (11 page)

(Shots of clouds gathering, sound of thunderclaps.)

N
ARRATOR:
But a dark cloud hovered on the horizon: a bubble-gum-versus-chewing-gum conflagration that would rend the land asunder. Brother would be set against brother, in what came to be known as the Big Gum War.

(Station break.)

A
NNOUNCER:
The twenty-seven-part television event “Gum” will return in a moment with Part Two: “Bubble Trouble.”

1994

MICHAEL GERBER AND JONATHAN SCHWARZ

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT DOUGHNUTS

M
Y
friend Jim Forrer was talking. Jim Forrer is a professional fish measurer, and sometimes that gives him the right.

We were sitting around the kitchen table drinking gin and smoking. There was Jim and me and his wife, Elizabeth—Lisa, we called her, or sometimes Frank—and my wife, Carol.

There was a bowl of peanuts sitting on the table, but nobody ate many of them, because we were drinking and smoking. We were talking to ourselves like this: “Some of us are drinking more than we are smoking, and some of us are smoking more than we are drinking. Some of us are drinking and smoking about the same amount.”

We went on drinking and smoking for a while, and somehow we got on the subject of doughnuts. Jim thought that real doughnuts were nothing less than spiritual doughnuts. He said he had spent ten minutes at a seminary before he had gone to fish-measuring school. He said he still looked back on those ten minutes as the most important minutes of his life.

Lisa said that the man she lived with before Jim had really liked doughnuts. She said he liked them so much that sometimes he would shoot at them with his gun, or flush them down the toilet. Sometimes, she said, he would put them on the living-room rug, climb up on the coffee table, and then jump off directly on top of them.

“It was scary,” she said.

Carol and I smiled at each other.

Just then I dropped a peanut on the floor. It rolled behind the refrigerator. It was hard to get it out. It was very hard. But not so hard as other things. Other things had been harder.

“I LIKE doughnuts as much as anyone,” said Jim. He took a sip of his drink. “I like them at breakfast, and sometimes lunch.”

“Now, hon, you know that’s not true,” said Lisa.

“What do you mean?” said Jim. “I like doughnuts a lot.”

“No, you don’t,” said Lisa. “And I’ve never seen you eat a doughnut at lunch.”

“Has it ever occurred to you once in your goddam life that I might not always tell you when I eat a goddam doughnut? Has that ever occurred to you once?” said Jim.
“Christ.”

He took a sip from his drink, and then stopped, so he could smoke.

Jim’s dog was scratching at the door, but we couldn’t let him out. We were drinking and smoking.

WHEN I met Jim he was still married to Nancy, his forty-fifth wife. They had been very much in love, but one day she inhaled too much helium and just floated away. Then he met Lisa.

When I introduced Jim to Carol he said that she was “a real person.” I was glad, because my college girlfriend, Hillary, was a facsimile person. She was warm and loving, and with the proper equipment could be sent across the country in seconds. But things didn’t work out.

“Has anyone ever seen a really big doughnut?” said Carol. “I did once. At a pawnshop in Maine.” She paused. But she didn’t say anything afterward, so actually it was less like a pause and more like a full stop.

“No,” said Jim, taking a sip of his drink, “but I ate some miniature doughnuts once.” He took a sip of the gin he was drinking. “I ate ten or twelve of them.” Jim leaned back, rubbed his temples, and took a sip from his glass. “I thought,” he said, pausing to take a sip of his drink, “that they were pretty,” he continued, sipping from his drink, “good.” Jim took one last sip, this time of my drink.

WE reminisced about the best doughnuts we had had in our lives.

“The best doughnut I ever had,” said Jim, “was when I was working for Harry Niven. Do you remember Harry, honey?”

“Of course,” said Lisa.

“Compared to him I can’t measure fish at all,” said Jim. “I mean, there was a man who could measure a fish!”

We went on talking.

“The best doughnut I ever had,” said Lisa, “was when I was dating Daniel.” We all knew about Daniel. They had been deeply in love and on the brink of marriage when Lisa realized that he was a hologram.

“Hold on a second, hon,” Carol said to Lisa. She turned to me. “Do you want to get divorced?”

“O.K.,” I said.

Carol and I left and got divorced. Then we came back with our new spouses, Dave and Terri.

We all sat there talking, the six of us in the dark. We went on talking and talking, even after the gin ran out. Talking about doughnuts. Talking about doughnuts in the dark.

1999

PAUL RUDNICK

TEEN TIMES

People, Vogue,
and
Cosmopolitan
have each recently introduced a separate teen edition, aimed at a friskier demographic. It’s only a matter of time before other magazines follow, offering their own youthful rethinks, complete with age-appropriate cover lines.

TEEN SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

If the Universe Keeps Expanding, What Will It Wear?

Cancer: Shut
Up!

Are the Ice Caps Melting? Blame Enrique!

Penis Grafting—Is It the Answer for N’Sync?

Is the Earth Over Two Billion Years Old—Like Your Dad?

TEEN TIKKUN

Make Your Own Wailing Wall—Just Styrofoam and Post-its!

Five Pounds by Purim—Lose That Arafat!

Are All Jewish Girls as Pretty as Their Parents Claim? Our Survey Says Yes!

Which Backstreet Boy’s Facial Hair Could Almost Be Orthodox?

Intermarriage: What If He’s Only a Paralegal?

TEEN U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT

Ethnic Deep Cleansing: Kiss Albanians and Blemishes Goodbye!

Britney vs. the Taliban: Oops, They Stoned Her to Death

Milosevic—Now He’s Got Time for You!

Famine—Does the Weight
Stay
Off?

Is the Pope Catholic? Your Surprising Letters!

TEEN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Tribal Makeovers: It’s Called Clothing

The Strange, Ugly People of Other Countries

Australia—Is It Too Far Away?

The Elephants of India—Of Course They’re Lonely

The Pygmy Prom—Don’t Worry About Your Hair

TEEN NATIONAL REVIEW

Sex with a Republican—Your Best Ten Seconds Ever!

Abortion: You Could Be Killing Ricky Martin, Jr.

Sweatshops: Can’t They Make Our Clothes Without Touching Them?

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell—How It Saved My Parents’ Marriage

12 Ways to Make Him Buy You a Handgun

TEEN PSYCHOLOGY TODAY

Why Everybody Hates You—Duh, It’s Called “They’re Jealous”

Eating Disorders—Which Ones Really Work

Electroshock and Split Ends—We Tell You the Truth

Attention Deficit Disorder: The Article You Won’t Finish

2000

THE
FRENZY
OF
RENOWN

GROUCHO MARX

PRESS AGENTS I HAVE KNOWN

T
HE
little fellow climbed upon my lap and tugged me gently by the beard. “Tell me, grandfather,” he said, “about your first press agent.”

I gazed into the fire. Unknowingly, the child had touched a tender spot. It had been years since I even thought of the affair. But now something within me stirred. My whole body seemed on fire. I seemed to catch a faint odor of hyacinth. Ah, youth! Those moonlit nights! Those first interviews! Those passionate scenes! Those notes! Those notes—

(From the Spokane
Spokesman
)

Groucho Marx, a member of the Four Marx Brothers, spends his spare time collecting pipes. He now has 762 pipes of all sizes and varieties. When asked about his hobby, Mr. Marx said slyly, with a twinkle in his eye, “Yes, I collect pipes. Let me show you a rare piece of lead pipe.”

I claim to be an authority on press agents. As soon as I have finished my present opus, “My Fifty Years on the American Stage,” or, “From Weber and Fields to an Institution,” I intend to write the long-awaited work, “Press Agents I Have Known, or Regretted.” These few notes will constitute my introduction:

First of all, there is the stunt press agent. The fellow who pops into your dressing-room, all smiles, and says, “What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?”

“Fixing the coil on my still,” I say, all hope abandoned.

“Oh, no, you’re not,” he insists cheerily. “You’re going to sit on top of the flagpole on the Paramount Building with a sign on your back: ‘Hello Mars! The Marx Brothers in “Animal Crackers” send greetings.’ ”

“But my lumbago—”

“It’s all arranged. I’m going to have fourteen reporters, a flock of cameramen and the ship-news reporters. What a break it’ll be! It’ll go all over the world! For the good of the show!”

That always gets me. I don’t know why it should after all these years, but it does. . . . After I get vertigo reaching the top of the Paramount Building, I find that the reporters have been called away to cover a big fire and the flock of cameramen consists of two disagreeable little fellows who seem quite bored with the whole proceeding.

“Climb a little higher,” they tell me. “Can’t you do better than that?—this will make a terrible picture.”

They probably figure that if I climb any higher they won’t have to use their plates at all. They are right about one thing. It makes a terrible picture. Two weeks later, the press agent comes bounding into the dressing-room, waving the evidence of his genius. The picture is published on page 34 of
The Billboard.
That’s the way it goes all over the world. The caption reads:

CLIMBS FLAGPOLE

G. Merks, of the Three Merks Brothers, vaudeville acrobats, climbed the Paramount flagpole last month to pay an election bet.

Let’s consider another species—the press agent who keeps phoning you: “Wait until you see what I have to show you! Articles in seven newspapers and each one different!”

They are. He finally struts around to show you the stories. The first one starts: “
Les frères Marx, maintenant—
” (That’s all I can read—it’s in the Paris
Matin.
) The next article begins: “
Die Marx Brüder,
” and is in the Berlin
Tageblatt.
You get the idea—he gets us swell publicity in some of the world’s greatest newspapers, including the Stockholm
Svenborgen,
the Portugal
Estrada,
and the Riga
Raschgitov.
Nice little articles for the scrapbook, to read before the fire some rainy night.

Then there is the highbrow press agent who spends weeks interviewing me. He corners me for hours at a stretch to ask me such questions as, “But, Mr. Marx, don’t you feel that Pinero was undoubtedly influenced by Aeschylus?” I’m all a-twitter when he tells me he has placed the interview. It finally appears in the
Dial,
which comes out once a month and is great for business.

Then there is the fellow who has been a circus press agent and can’t forget his early training. He’s a dangerous character. No weather is too bad for him to lead you out to Central Park to be photographed with the animals. After risking my life trying to appear as if I were teaching a hippopotamus to sing (the press agent cleverly gets the hippopotamus to open his mouth by holding out a frankfurter—from the other side of the fence), the animal always gets the credit. The picture appears with the hippopotamus covering seven-eighths of the space and my picture looking like the frankfurter. And the caption reads:

CHARLIE, CENTRAL PARK HIPPO, RECEIVES CONGRATULATIONS ON HIS THIRD BIRTHDAY.
Picture shows Charlie receiving the best wishes from one of his admirers, a well-known Broadway hoofer.

And then there is the press agent who
schmeichels
you into doing his work. “Mr. Marx, I could get stories about you in any paper in New York, but I know perfectly well I can’t write as well as you can. So why don’t you dash off one of your brilliant articles for the
Times,
a clever autobiography for the
Sun,
and one of your screamingly funny pieces for the
American.
I’ll take them around myself to make sure they get in.”

Then the press agent who never gets you in the papers unless you play at least three benefits a week and appear at the opening of a new butcher shop to throw out the first chop.

And the press agent who gets you all steamed up about the story he landed for you in the
Tribune.

“What’s it like?” you ask, all agog.

“Wait till you see it.”

He finally sends you a copy. The story runs like this:

Among those present at the dance of the Mayfair Club at the Ritz on Saturday night were Eddie Cantor, Mary Eaton, Gertrude Lawrence, Beatrice Lillie, Walter Woolf, Peaches Browning, Ethel Barrymore, Will Rogers, Lenore Ulric, Alice Brady, Katharine Cornell, Tammany Young and one of the Marx Brothers.

I mustn’t forget the press agent who gets such wonderful publicity for himself. After getting me all on edge about the interview he has landed, I buy a paper and read the following:

AN INTERVIEW WITH GROUCHO MARXBY ALAN J. WURTZBURGER

I’ll admit that I was terribly excited when I knocked on Mr. Marx’s door, ready to interview him. My heart pounded rapidly. Then I recalled the time I interviewed Otis Skinner, my
tête-à-tête
with Pavlowa and my heart-to-heart talk with Doug Fairbanks.

So I walked boldly in. Mr. Marx received me cordially and after asking me to sit down, admired my cravat. “I always wear that tie when I’m interviewing a celebrity,” I told him, to make him feel at ease. “I’ll tell you an interesting story about that cravat—”

And so on for two columns about that fascinating fellow, Alan J. Wurtzburger.

ALL these varieties of press agents are pretty bad, but the fellow I had last spring was positively vicious. He used to drop into my dressing-room, smoke my cigars, and spend his time, not in interviewing me, but giving me advice on the market. The only things worse than my cigars were his tips. He was the reason I had to spend the summer delighting audiences in motion-picture houses.

Maybe I’m unduly hopeful, but I’m still looking for a press agent who will get me some publicity without making me roller-skate down Broadway to demonstrate that
STAGE STAR SOLVES TRAFFIC PROBLEM BY SKATING TO THEATRE.
I want a press agent like Hoover’s got. Look at the stuff that chap landed for Hoover during the election. And I’ll bet Hoover didn’t climb any flagpoles either.

1929

JAMES THURBER

THE GREATEST MAN IN THE WORLD

L
OOKING
back on it now, from the vantage point of 1940, one can only marvel that it hadn’t happened long before it did. The United States of America had been, ever since Kitty Hawk, blindly constructing the elaborate petard by which, sooner or later, it must be hoist. It was inevitable that some day there would come roaring out of the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence, background, and character successfully to endure the mounting orgies of glory prepared for aviators who stayed up a long time or flew a great distance. Both Lindbergh and Byrd, fortunately for national decorum and international amity, had been gentlemen; so had our other famous aviators. They wore their laurels gracefully, withstood the awful weather of publicity, married excellent women, usually of fine family, and quietly retired to private life and the enjoyment of their varying fortunes. No untoward incidents, on a worldwide scale, marred the perfection of their conduct on the perilous heights of fame. The exception to the rule was, however, bound to occur and it did, in July, 1935, when Jack (“Pal”) Smurch, erstwhile mechanic’s helper in a small garage in Westfield, Iowa, flew a second-hand, single-motored Bresthaven Dragon-Fly III monoplane all the way around the world, without stopping.

NEVER before in the history of aviation had such a flight as Smurch’s ever been dreamed of. No one had ever taken seriously the weird floating auxiliary gas tanks, invention of the mad New Hampshire professor of astronomy, Dr. Charles Lewis Gresham, upon which Smurch placed full reliance. When the garage worker, a slightly built, surly, unprepossessing young man of twenty-two, appeared at Roosevelt Field early in July, 1935, slowly chewing a great quid of scrap tobacco, and announced “Nobody ain’t seen no flyin’ yet,” the newspapers touched briefly and satirically upon his projected twenty-five-thousand-mile flight. Aëronautical and automotive experts dismissed the idea curtly, implying that it was a hoax, a publicity stunt. The rusty, battered, second-hand plane wouldn’t go. The Gresham auxiliary tanks wouldn’t work. It was simply a cheap joke.

Smurch, however, after calling on a girl in Brooklyn who worked in the flap-folding department of a large paper-box factory, a girl whom he later described as his “sweet patootie,” climbed nonchalantly into his ridiculous plane at dawn of the memorable seventh of July, 1935, spit a curve of tobacco juice into the still air, and took off, carrying with him only a gallon of bootleg gin and six pounds of salami.

WHEN the garage boy thundered out over the ocean the papers were forced to record, in all seriousness, that a mad, unknown young man—his name was variously misspelled—had actually set out upon a preposterous attempt to span the world in a rickety, one-engined contraption, trusting to the long-distance refuelling device of a crazy schoolmaster. When, nine days later, without having stopped once, the tiny plane appeared above San Francisco Bay, headed for New York, spluttering and choking, to be sure, but still magnificently and miraculously aloft, the headlines, which long since had crowded everything else off the front page—even the shooting of the Governor of Illinois by the Capone gang—swelled to unprecedented size, and the news stories began to run to twenty-five and thirty columns. It was noticeable, however, that the accounts of the epoch-making flight touched rather lightly upon the aviator himself. This was not because facts about the hero as a man were too meagre, but because they were too complete.

Reporters, who had been rushed out to Iowa when Smurch’s plane was first sighted over the little French coast town of Serly-le-Mer, to dig up the story of the great man’s life, had promptly discovered that the story of his life could not be printed. His mother, a sullen short-order cook in a shack restaurant on the edge of a tourists’ camping ground near Westfield, met all inquiries as to her son with an angry “Ah, the hell with him; I hope he drowns.” His father appeared to be in jail somewhere for stealing spotlights and laprobes from tourists’ automobiles; his young brother, a weakminded lad, had but recently escaped from the Preston, Iowa, Reformatory and was already wanted in several Western towns for the theft of money-order blanks from post offices. These alarming discoveries were still piling up at the very time that Pal Smurch, the greatest hero of the twentieth century, blear-eyed, dead for sleep, half-starved, was piloting his crazy junkheap high above the region in which the lamentable story of his private life was being unearthed, headed for New York and a greater glory than any man of his time had ever known.

The necessity for printing some account in the papers of the young man’s career and personality had led to a remarkable predicament. It was of course impossible to reveal the facts, for a tremendous popular feeling in favor of the young hero had sprung up, like a grass fire, when he was halfway across Europe on his flight around the globe. He was, therefore, described as a modest chap, taciturn, blond, popular with his friends, popular with girls. The only available snapshot of Smurch, taken at the wheel of a phony automobile in a cheap photo studio at an amusement park, was touched up so that the little vulgarian looked quite handsome. His twisted leer was smoothed into a pleasant smile. The truth was, in this way, kept from the youth’s ecstatic compatriots; they did not dream that the Smurch family was despised and feared by its neighbors in the obscure Iowa town, nor that the hero himself, because of numerous unsavory exploits, had come to be regarded in Westfield as a nuisance and a menace. He had, the reporters discovered, once knifed the principal of his high school—not mortally, to be sure, but he had knifed him; and on another occasion, surprised in the act of stealing an altarcloth from a church, he had bashed the sacristan over the head with a pot of Easter lilies; for each of these offences he had served a sentence in the reformatory.

Inwardly, the authorities, both in New York and in Washington, prayed that an understanding Providence might, however awful such a thing seemed, bring disaster to the rusty, battered plane and its illustrious pilot, whose unheard-of flight had aroused the civilized world to hosannas of hysterical praise. The authorities were convinced that the character of the renowned aviator was such that the limelight of adulation was bound to reveal him, to all the world, as a congenital hooligan mentally and morally unequipped to cope with his own prodigious fame. “I trust,” said the Secretary of State, at one of many secret Cabinet meetings called to consider the national dilemma, “I trust that his mother’s prayer will be answered,” by which he referred to Mrs. Emma Smurch’s wish that her son might be drowned. It was, however, too late for that—Smurch had leaped the Atlantic and then the Pacific as if they were millponds. At three minutes after two o’clock on the afternoon of July 17, 1935, the garage boy brought his idiotic plane into Roosevelt Field for a perfect three-point landing.