Authors: B. J. Novak
One More Thing (26 page)
The Duke of Earl, raised in privilege and ensconced in luxury, but recently agitated by the achingly beautiful tones of Technicolor in the movies of the palace theater and by a glamorously faded silhouette of the Marlboro Man on the back of a once-glossy magazine that had somehow made its way to the coffee table of the family lake house, decided that it was finally time to see America.
He requested funds for an official state visit, and his request was immediately granted. But he was nervous as he flew in his well-appointed private airplane to the vast and open and young and casual and confident nation. He already knew he liked America, but he didn’t know if it would like him.
He went first to the capital, Washington, which was the perfect place to start, as its proud and polished formality spoke a language reassuringly familiar to the duke in him. Then to smart and unruly New York City, and its lovely suburbs in deep and
shallow Connecticut; then to Chicago, the tall city in the middle of the wide country; and from there he was taken to a representative handful of farms, big and small, in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. He visited a rodeo in the state of Texas, which to his extreme delight was almost exactly as he imagined it; he saw the Grand Canyon of Arizona; and he traveled by train among the optimistic and neatly dressed middle classes to San Francisco, a city so light in every way that he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.
This must be what gave them the idea for Technicolor
, he thought, looking out at it; it even made him chuckle out loud now and then, girlishly and by himself, at how pretty it was, yes, but more than anything else how
light
, its hills and its colors and bridges and water and attitudes and people and skies. It made him feel he might somehow float up out of his heavy black shoes into one of the many clouds sitting atop the sunny city, but not just any cloud, a cloud from a children’s drawing, puffed and friendly, right next to a sun wearing a movie star’s plastic sunglasses and smiling.
And everywhere he went—everywhere—when he introduced himself as the Duke of Earl, the people he met would burst into a wide, friendly grin. He had been nervous, and for fair reason: Americans had no royalty, of course, but beyond that, as every student learned in school, the nation had in fact been born out of a rebellion
against
royalty! And, while anyone in the world might be naturally expected to be at least a little starstruck by, say, the queen of England or the princess of Monaco … who, to be honest, had ever heard of the Duke of Earl?
But the Americans, it seemed, to his deep and enduring relief, could not have been more delighted. “Are you really the Duke of Earl, now?” they would ask with that bright, true American smile. One could see the charm lighting up their eyes from some source deep inside them. “Well, isn’t that something! The Duke
of Earl! I can’t wait to tell people I met the real-life Duke of Earl.”
And then came the most incredible part: always—inevitably, invariably—within a few moments of being introduced to them as the Duke of Earl, he would catch the Americans humming or gently singing a happy little tune to themselves. But the even more magical part was this: no matter where he was in all of America—the wide streets of Texas, the lawns of Ohio, the pubs of Boston or Philadelphia—
everyone was always singing the same song
.
It was an upbeat song: lovely, happy, sincere, full of joy and life. It was an unmistakably American song. It seemed to be mostly gibberish sounds and melodic repetitions, but there were a few phrases he could make out when people got carried away.
“Yes, I …” “Oh I’m gonna love you …” “Oh oh …” “Nothing can stop me now …” “ ’Cause I’m …”
“What’s that song?” he would ask, and the Americans would always immediately snap out of it. “Oh, I didn’t realize …” they would say, very often blushing. They had never even noticed they had been singing. “Just this silly song, I guess.”
“Well, I like it,” the Duke of Earl would say. “I like that silly song.”
After three weeks, the Duke of Earl returned home. He never went back to America, but he never stopped thinking about it, never stopped talking about it. He had a responsibility, of course, to love and serve the people of Earl above all else, and that he would do—that of course he would do. But in his heart at night, always baffling and delighting him, was America, the vast and varied land where everyone was singing the same song.
The Pleasure of Being Right“I’ll never get over it.”
You will, everyone told him.
“I’ll never be happy again. It’s over, it’s all over!”
Of course you will be, they said. Happier, even! You just can’t see it now.
But they were wrong, and he was right. He was miserable for forty years, and then he found out it was time to die.
What had they known, after all? They were just saying all that. They didn’t have any information that he didn’t.
In fact, they’d had considerably less information than he had. They just knew what they thought they were supposed to say, so they said it.
In his final half hour, as he lay in his hospital bed, alone except for a dreadlocked attendant in blue who spoke a different language, now at the end of a life that was indeed defined by despair and meaninglessness—just as he had insisted it would be—his spirits first sank and then lifted as he felt himself slip into a deep and private joy, recognized by all who feel it but known only by a few: the pleasure of being right in the end.
Strange NewsMan Returns to Bank He Robbed for Smaller Bills
BISMARCK, ND—A North Dakota man who had robbed a local bank was arrested after he returned to the same bank window two days later and attempted to exchange his hundred-dollar bills for smaller denominations. “If he wanted twenties, he should have just asked for them the first time,” said bank manager William Long, who recognized the suspect’s voice from the robbery. “Or just stuck with what he had—I’d say a bag of hundreds can get you pretty far in today’s economy!”
Indeed, the world’s economy is based entirely upon the collectively held assumption that numbered pieces of paper issued by governments correspond to specific, tangible, and transferable real-world values. These presumed values fluctuate every second in relation to the perceived value of numbered pieces of paper printed in other countries, and also to pieces of metal (see Regular News).
Moose Interrupts Town Meeting on Wildlife Protection
WECK, ID—A town council meeting on whether to vote to extend wildlife protection in a local park got a surprise visitor on Friday: a moose!
Officials say the animal, an adult bull moose, wandered in through an open loading-dock door and interrupted council business for nearly an hour as animal-control workers untangled the antlers from a string of seasonal holiday lights. “I’m a devoted hunter, and I can say I’ve never seen antlers that big,” said Councilman Thomas Ross. “Those were some major antlers.”
Scientists have determined that antlers are a result of an imperceptibly incremental evolutionary adaptation over the course of millions of years, a process that began with one single-celled carbon-based life form which traces its own origin to an infinitely small dot of arguably infinite energy that exploded 13.7 billion years ago due to reasons that are thought to be best understood by a man in a wheelchair who speaks through a computerized voice box (see Regular News).
World’s Largest Tomato to Become Tomato Sauce
NAPOLI, ITALY—A tomato declared by
Guinness World Records
to be the world’s largest tomato will now become tomato sauce, says the farmer who grew it. “We already have the record, now let us celebrate!” said Elio Bianchi III, 52. “What is the point of watching it rot, with so many hungry people out there smacking their lips for delicious pasta?”
Indeed, worldwide totals of food production and of
people living in poverty simultaneously hit all-time highs this year (see Regular News).
Man Sues Brother over Glass of Flat Beer
WIKOSHA, WI—A man took his brother to small claims court to demand compensation for the “annoyance and emotional distress” caused when Saver’s Pub, the bar owned by his brother, allegedly served him a glass of flat beer. The man is suing for $160, claiming that the experience “ruined [his] whole night” and that his brother’s offer of unlimited Coca-Cola in its stead was “designed to humiliate” the man and “to show everyone that I’m still just his little brother, still drinking Coca-Cola even though I’m a grown adult at a bar.”
Coca-Cola, a beverage that was originally designed for the purposes of recreational cocaine use and subsequently adapted as a concoction of uniquely flavored and sweetened carbonated water devoid of nutritional content, spent the past year as the world’s most popular and profitable product brand (see Regular News).
Man Finds Coat Button After Twenty-Two Years
KASHMIR—A soldier in the disputed region of Kashmir found a missing button to a coat he was wearing—after twenty-two years!
The button had been lost while his late father, a soldier in the same conflict, took refuge one night in a cave on the battlefield. The son, sleeping in the same cave, and wearing the same coat twenty-two years later, came across the button as he brewed tea.
“It fit perfectly,” said the soldier, Kanhaiya Makhan, 23. “The coat looks much better now.”
Endless war over minor ideological differences remains one of the most defining aspects of human life well into the 21st century (see Regular News).
Man Receives Text Message from Deceased Relative
INDIANAPOLIS, IN—A 36-year-old man received a text message from his mother reminding him to “stay warm this weekend”—six hours after he had paid his respects at her funeral.
The cell phone provider apologized, citing a rolling power outage at a cellular broadcast tower that led to delayed delivery of some messages for up to three days.
The company offered the customer its apologies as well as a free phone with a year’s worth of unlimited data, but the man says he may not take them up on it. “I kind of feel like the message was from her, in a way,” said Alex Rossini, 36. “Plus, it’s just a phone and a data plan. I think I’m set in that department.”
Indeed, most human beings in the developed world already carry a device that can instantaneously access essentially all of the recorded information in history, and the average price of such devices recently hit an all-time low (see Regular News). Nobody knows what happens after death (see Opinions).
Never Fall in LoveThe day she started as a secret agent, her boss told her one very important rule.
“Never fall in love.”
But she did fall in love, almost immediately. Within a month, she was hopelessly and endlessly in love with another secret agent, a kind, warm man named Bob. He had big hands and a lot of brothers and sisters, and there was no falling out of love with Bob.
She went to her boss’s office and handed him a letter of resignation.