It is a longstanding tradition to publish the letters of famous authors. But now that no one writes letters, how will we overanalyze the correspondences of great writers to pad our dissertations? I know...we’ll publish the emails of famous authors.
I recently worked with a stable of Ernest Hemingway scholars to sort through the late novelist’s emails, and am currently shopping the collection to big name publishers. A small sampling:
To enabler123@___
Let's grab a drink after dinner. Doesn't matter where.
Sent from my iPhone
To enbabler123@___
Sorry about last night. That bartender was so ugly I had flashbacks to the Italian Front. Let's get a breakfast drink.
Sent from the bartender’s bathtub
To enabler123@____
Remind me never to drink waffle daiquiris again.
Sent from a medic’s iPhone
To otherlostexpat@___
I got so drunk last night I dreamt that Detective Comics was going to do a Nick Adams vs. Batman comic book series. Guess I should stop drinking wry. [LOL!]
Sent from Mall of Mojitos, South Havana location
To great.gatsbeer@___
I bet I could take Jack Dempsey.
Sent from a bipolar high
To great.gatsbeer@___
Dempsey’s punches hurt more than trying to write sober.
Sent from a bipolar low
To publishyourrubbish@___
I think Fitzgerald has a mancrush on me. Will anyone still be reading my books in a world where people say things like “mancrush?”
Sent from a safari undertaken in mounting desperation
To Mother_Earth@___
Please unsubscribe me from your planet.
Sent from Ketchum, Idaho
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Hot Women who Never Hit the Wall
Beauty doesn’t last forever, and sometimes, it barely lasts at all. At some point, most women seem to undergo an abrupt change for the worse. Even beautiful women. One minute they’re hot enough to power Satan’s tanning bed and the next minute they’re just another face in the crowd. It isn’t easy to explain, and isn’t always a function of age. And once that special something vanishes, it never seems to reappear. My friends and I call it “hitting the wall.”
Occasionally there are stunners who dodge Father Time’s cruel machinations and retain the freshness that made them stand out from the other standouts. Some that come to mind:
Chris Evert: Tennis champ, girl next door, and the reason white skirts were invented. The fact that she has aged so well is even more remarkable when you consider how much time she spent in the sun. Ms. Evert played her best tennis at the French Open, where she even managed to appear ladylike while covered in red clay. There is a mud wrestling joke to be made here, but we’ll swerve around it out of respect for this classy specimen.
Alyssa Milano: Definite contender for most attractive Alyssa of all time. A woman whose looks remained top floor even as her career hid in the basement. Usually when the resume gets spotty, the face follows suit. Not in this case. A woman who looks dirty and sweet with her sex drive on repeat. And being a vegetarian, you know the wet spot wouldn’t smell like nitrates.
Marisa Tomei: This perennial knockout might even be getting better with age. And allegedly, she has a lust for uncool sitcom characters. Given my resemblance to Bud Bundy, it is virtually impossible for me not to be in there.
Salma Hayek: In the truly elite stratum of cartoonish sex appeal. Still going strong at 44, motherhood and all. So smokin’ that a source close to the U.N. tells me they are considering a bill that would change the expression to “Gentlemen prefer brunettes.”
Faye Dunaway: So hot in Bonnie and Clyde she should have been preserved in amber and used to create a Jurassic Park full of hot chicks. So hot in Chinatown she made an already tragic story more tragic. You have heard of cheekbones that could cut diamonds. Unlike diamonds, Ms. Dunaway’s cheekbones truly are priceless. It has been said that Helen of Troy had “a face that launched a thousand ships.” If Helen had gone clubbing with Dunaway, she would have spent the first half of the night buying her own drinks and the second half alone at home, wearing sweatpants and reading The Bell Jar for the 75th time.
My Twitter feed is as gorgeous as ever: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne
Occasionally there are stunners who dodge Father Time’s cruel machinations and retain the freshness that made them stand out from the other standouts. Some that come to mind:
Chris Evert: Tennis champ, girl next door, and the reason white skirts were invented. The fact that she has aged so well is even more remarkable when you consider how much time she spent in the sun. Ms. Evert played her best tennis at the French Open, where she even managed to appear ladylike while covered in red clay. There is a mud wrestling joke to be made here, but we’ll swerve around it out of respect for this classy specimen.
Alyssa Milano: Definite contender for most attractive Alyssa of all time. A woman whose looks remained top floor even as her career hid in the basement. Usually when the resume gets spotty, the face follows suit. Not in this case. A woman who looks dirty and sweet with her sex drive on repeat. And being a vegetarian, you know the wet spot wouldn’t smell like nitrates.
Marisa Tomei: This perennial knockout might even be getting better with age. And allegedly, she has a lust for uncool sitcom characters. Given my resemblance to Bud Bundy, it is virtually impossible for me not to be in there.
Salma Hayek: In the truly elite stratum of cartoonish sex appeal. Still going strong at 44, motherhood and all. So smokin’ that a source close to the U.N. tells me they are considering a bill that would change the expression to “Gentlemen prefer brunettes.”
Faye Dunaway: So hot in Bonnie and Clyde she should have been preserved in amber and used to create a Jurassic Park full of hot chicks. So hot in Chinatown she made an already tragic story more tragic. You have heard of cheekbones that could cut diamonds. Unlike diamonds, Ms. Dunaway’s cheekbones truly are priceless. It has been said that Helen of Troy had “a face that launched a thousand ships.” If Helen had gone clubbing with Dunaway, she would have spent the first half of the night buying her own drinks and the second half alone at home, wearing sweatpants and reading The Bell Jar for the 75th time.
My Twitter feed is as gorgeous as ever: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
IT'S ALL TRUE!!!
I hate it when someone tries to get me to see a movie, and when I tell them I have no interest, they say, “But it’s based on a true story!”
So what? Not all true stories are interesting. Hollywood must agree with me; otherwise they wouldn’t make their “true stories” 98% false.
So you like true stories, do ya? GREAT, check this one out: Today I woke up and had a sandwich. What, not entertaining? That sweet anecdote came straight from the headlines. Only way it could be truer is if I dropped the sandwich crumbs on your plate.
So what? Not all true stories are interesting. Hollywood must agree with me; otherwise they wouldn’t make their “true stories” 98% false.
So you like true stories, do ya? GREAT, check this one out: Today I woke up and had a sandwich. What, not entertaining? That sweet anecdote came straight from the headlines. Only way it could be truer is if I dropped the sandwich crumbs on your plate.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The Plight of the Short Man
Having spent every breath of my existence as a man of below average height, I'm well positioned to give a macro view of being micro. It is a tough life, and the worst part is that it is the one cosmetic defect no one has sympathy for.
You think fat people have it worse. Think again. Fat people have a buffet of folks taking up their cause. Books, magazines, support groups, after school specials, and all the daytime talk shows are constantly drawing attention to the way society treats the larden; especially those “big girls.” In school we had it drilled in our heads: "Don't make fun of big girls, or they'll end up with eating disorders!" I don't recall many counselors warning: "Make fun of short men, and we'll have a society full of Mustangs with 20-foot spoilers!”
Fat women do have it very rough. Slim chicks are worshipped in every way imaginable. Free drinks, undeserved job promotions, and lucrative scam marriages are just a few of the perks of being a size zero. And without a doubt, the fat chick zinger is a constant in our national chatter.
However, because any woman of any shape can always walk into any bar in the world at any hour and find a suitor, large women still have plenty of options (at least relative to short men). A sizable portion of males even prefer big women, so if the large lass lands a guy craving "more to love," she can eat her cake and be shaped like it too.
[Note there is no equivalent term of affection for short men. We aren't said to have "less to hate."]
What about fat men? While it might not be a picnic to be a fat gent, they are at least assumed to be jolly. This is why fat guys get to play Santa Claus; the bringer of joy to children everywhere. Meanwhile short men are left to play the tragic, wandering elves.
When it comes to judging appearance, one of society's quirks is the nonchalance with which women are free to admit they find short men unappealing. Consider how many commercials, magazine articles, and sitcom episodes you have seen unapologetically articulate the notion of women dismissing short men. If I'd grown a millimeter for every slam of this kind, I’d be chronicling the perils of being 40-feet tall.
[Note how the media is harangued for "making women hate their bodies" and compare it to the silence about the media's bluntly negative take on short men.]
It isn’t just isolated to the media. Repeatedly I have had women I'd known for all of ten minutes casually volunteer that they would never go for a short man…without my soliciting their opinion on the subject. A few even used me as an example, as in, "I would never date a short guy. You know, someone like you."
These weren't women I was trying to pick up. They were strangers I just happened to be around. Apparently, they assumed their total lack of interest in short men was essential to introductory conversation.
NOW...just imagine if I were sitting at a table with a big girl I had just met, and I said I found fat women less than luscious while using the big girl as a king-sized prop…the room would freeze and everyone within a 50-mile radius would despise me for the rest of my life. A few schemers would even use my comment as a opportunity to hook up. "Can you believe that guy? What year is it? Guys like him make me embarrassed to be a man. Did I mention I drive a hybrid? Sure it has a backseat..."
But when a short guy is the target, not only does no one notice, but if the short man protests even slightly, he gets bashed for not being a "good sport.” "Where's your sense of humor?" the hypocrites chant. Predictably, they always end up claiming the short man's supposed inability to laugh at himself is symptomatic of his lack of height.
The reasons chicks don't dig short men aren't cryptic. It is more nature than nurture, and has to do with concern about the next generation. The pomp and circumstance of courtship is just a scenic route towards potential reproduction, and no woman wants short kids. This means that at 5'5", I have to undo 200,000 years of evolutionary training to ignite her loins. For those wondering why I look so tired after dates, there’s your answer.
So what is a 5'5" bloke to do? Do I target women hovering around the 5'0" mark? Not unless I want to be a monk the rest of my life. Really short women are even more conscious of height, because they know if they don't breed with some Paul Bunyan clone they're bound to crank out a litter of hobbits.
That is why I defer to Payne's Law. Payne's Law posits that there is an exact correlation between how many inches below 5'8" you are and how many inches above 5'0" your potential woman may be. Example: A 5'7" man can prowl for women as short as 5'1".
Being 5'5", this limits me to the 5'5"-5'3" range, and let me tell ya, there ain't exactly a bounty out there. My best hope is with women exactly my height, and if I am wearing a sharkskin suit with a dry martini sewn into the pocket, I can maybe pull a girl as short as 5' 3". But once a woman dips into the 5'2" range, I am magically transformed into the Accidental Celibate. Charming and virile though I am, one look at my stature and her womb starts running filmstrips of her offspring getting tossed in lockers.
This is yet another area where the fat man has it over the short man. A petite chick will take a fat tall guy over an athletic short guy 365 days a year. Sure the sultan of sweat isn't her ideal choice, but she will settle for him. Besides, if she's homely enough, she is going to have limited choices anyway. And because women's rules about weight aren't as stringent as their rules about height, a woman will go for someone fatter than she, but almost never someone shorter. She will stay single first. She will have plump kids before short ones. So the short man can spend 6 days a week at the gym and still lose out to the 6' 2" chap who spends Monday through Friday giving the ice cream man post-traumatic stress disorder.
This means the short man cannot even rely on his female counterpart for companionship. The short girls he has no choice but to chase want to get as far from him as their stubby legs will take them. Again, the edge goes to the overweight. When the going gets tough, plus sized people can always fall back on each other. A desperate obese man can usually at least link up with a similarly obese woman (and vice versa). An obese tall man may even be fortunate enough to pull a petite chick. Likewise, the big girl may be able to pull a normal guy, provided her target has the appropriate fat fetish.
Are you feeling the plight of the SBM (small beautiful man) yet? Fat women have decent options. Short women have lots of options. Fat men have, well, options. Only the short man is excluded from this love rectangle.
But somehow, fat people are the ones mourned by society as victims of cosmetic circumstance. Allow me to point out the 800 lb. human in the room by reminding everyone that being fat and being short aren't even comparable physiologically, because fat people can at least do something about their weight. They can diet. They can exercise. They can even have their stomach stapled. They might not become thin, but they can at least slim down. But there is no remedy for being underheight. You can't comb over a foot of skeleton from another part of your body. Your freakdom is a life sentence. The only doctor that can help a short man is Kevorkian.
Use your microscope to find me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne
You think fat people have it worse. Think again. Fat people have a buffet of folks taking up their cause. Books, magazines, support groups, after school specials, and all the daytime talk shows are constantly drawing attention to the way society treats the larden; especially those “big girls.” In school we had it drilled in our heads: "Don't make fun of big girls, or they'll end up with eating disorders!" I don't recall many counselors warning: "Make fun of short men, and we'll have a society full of Mustangs with 20-foot spoilers!”
Fat women do have it very rough. Slim chicks are worshipped in every way imaginable. Free drinks, undeserved job promotions, and lucrative scam marriages are just a few of the perks of being a size zero. And without a doubt, the fat chick zinger is a constant in our national chatter.
However, because any woman of any shape can always walk into any bar in the world at any hour and find a suitor, large women still have plenty of options (at least relative to short men). A sizable portion of males even prefer big women, so if the large lass lands a guy craving "more to love," she can eat her cake and be shaped like it too.
[Note there is no equivalent term of affection for short men. We aren't said to have "less to hate."]
What about fat men? While it might not be a picnic to be a fat gent, they are at least assumed to be jolly. This is why fat guys get to play Santa Claus; the bringer of joy to children everywhere. Meanwhile short men are left to play the tragic, wandering elves.
When it comes to judging appearance, one of society's quirks is the nonchalance with which women are free to admit they find short men unappealing. Consider how many commercials, magazine articles, and sitcom episodes you have seen unapologetically articulate the notion of women dismissing short men. If I'd grown a millimeter for every slam of this kind, I’d be chronicling the perils of being 40-feet tall.
[Note how the media is harangued for "making women hate their bodies" and compare it to the silence about the media's bluntly negative take on short men.]
It isn’t just isolated to the media. Repeatedly I have had women I'd known for all of ten minutes casually volunteer that they would never go for a short man…without my soliciting their opinion on the subject. A few even used me as an example, as in, "I would never date a short guy. You know, someone like you."
These weren't women I was trying to pick up. They were strangers I just happened to be around. Apparently, they assumed their total lack of interest in short men was essential to introductory conversation.
NOW...just imagine if I were sitting at a table with a big girl I had just met, and I said I found fat women less than luscious while using the big girl as a king-sized prop…the room would freeze and everyone within a 50-mile radius would despise me for the rest of my life. A few schemers would even use my comment as a opportunity to hook up. "Can you believe that guy? What year is it? Guys like him make me embarrassed to be a man. Did I mention I drive a hybrid? Sure it has a backseat..."
But when a short guy is the target, not only does no one notice, but if the short man protests even slightly, he gets bashed for not being a "good sport.” "Where's your sense of humor?" the hypocrites chant. Predictably, they always end up claiming the short man's supposed inability to laugh at himself is symptomatic of his lack of height.
The reasons chicks don't dig short men aren't cryptic. It is more nature than nurture, and has to do with concern about the next generation. The pomp and circumstance of courtship is just a scenic route towards potential reproduction, and no woman wants short kids. This means that at 5'5", I have to undo 200,000 years of evolutionary training to ignite her loins. For those wondering why I look so tired after dates, there’s your answer.
So what is a 5'5" bloke to do? Do I target women hovering around the 5'0" mark? Not unless I want to be a monk the rest of my life. Really short women are even more conscious of height, because they know if they don't breed with some Paul Bunyan clone they're bound to crank out a litter of hobbits.
That is why I defer to Payne's Law. Payne's Law posits that there is an exact correlation between how many inches below 5'8" you are and how many inches above 5'0" your potential woman may be. Example: A 5'7" man can prowl for women as short as 5'1".
Being 5'5", this limits me to the 5'5"-5'3" range, and let me tell ya, there ain't exactly a bounty out there. My best hope is with women exactly my height, and if I am wearing a sharkskin suit with a dry martini sewn into the pocket, I can maybe pull a girl as short as 5' 3". But once a woman dips into the 5'2" range, I am magically transformed into the Accidental Celibate. Charming and virile though I am, one look at my stature and her womb starts running filmstrips of her offspring getting tossed in lockers.
This is yet another area where the fat man has it over the short man. A petite chick will take a fat tall guy over an athletic short guy 365 days a year. Sure the sultan of sweat isn't her ideal choice, but she will settle for him. Besides, if she's homely enough, she is going to have limited choices anyway. And because women's rules about weight aren't as stringent as their rules about height, a woman will go for someone fatter than she, but almost never someone shorter. She will stay single first. She will have plump kids before short ones. So the short man can spend 6 days a week at the gym and still lose out to the 6' 2" chap who spends Monday through Friday giving the ice cream man post-traumatic stress disorder.
This means the short man cannot even rely on his female counterpart for companionship. The short girls he has no choice but to chase want to get as far from him as their stubby legs will take them. Again, the edge goes to the overweight. When the going gets tough, plus sized people can always fall back on each other. A desperate obese man can usually at least link up with a similarly obese woman (and vice versa). An obese tall man may even be fortunate enough to pull a petite chick. Likewise, the big girl may be able to pull a normal guy, provided her target has the appropriate fat fetish.
Are you feeling the plight of the SBM (small beautiful man) yet? Fat women have decent options. Short women have lots of options. Fat men have, well, options. Only the short man is excluded from this love rectangle.
But somehow, fat people are the ones mourned by society as victims of cosmetic circumstance. Allow me to point out the 800 lb. human in the room by reminding everyone that being fat and being short aren't even comparable physiologically, because fat people can at least do something about their weight. They can diet. They can exercise. They can even have their stomach stapled. They might not become thin, but they can at least slim down. But there is no remedy for being underheight. You can't comb over a foot of skeleton from another part of your body. Your freakdom is a life sentence. The only doctor that can help a short man is Kevorkian.
Use your microscope to find me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greatMikePayne
Friday, April 1, 2011
Playing to the Back of the Odds
Recently I tried explaining to a non-comic why comedy is such an irrational, unsatisfying pursuit. Making it to a respectable level in comedy is about as probable as winning the lottery. Now, think of the kind of people you see playing the lottery regularly; babbling, unclean, unhinged freaks you would never want to spend time with. Now give that guy a scuffed up psyche and a need to "get back" at some girl or high school clique that rejected him and you have a portrait of most comics.
Would you want to spend time in a cramped green room with such duds? Worse yet, would you want to watch duds like that pass you in the business? The madness of it ends up tipping the few sane comics toward insanity.
Society mocks lotto regulars (the odds usually crush you), society condemns gamblers (the odds usually crush you), but society applauds people who pursue a dream in the arts, where the odds usually crush you. Something is wrong with this picture.
You're going to ask why I keep doing it, so I'll answer: because breaking up with comedy is hard to do.
Would you want to spend time in a cramped green room with such duds? Worse yet, would you want to watch duds like that pass you in the business? The madness of it ends up tipping the few sane comics toward insanity.
Society mocks lotto regulars (the odds usually crush you), society condemns gamblers (the odds usually crush you), but society applauds people who pursue a dream in the arts, where the odds usually crush you. Something is wrong with this picture.
You're going to ask why I keep doing it, so I'll answer: because breaking up with comedy is hard to do.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Phrases that Need to be Retired
Second place is the first loser.
As we go to print, there is still not one documented case of an actual winner using this phrase. In reality, those who say it are ironclad losers trying to sound like their life is one big trophy case.
Size matters.
You will find this sentence in every commercial and magazine article, yet writers and advertisers present it like they're breaking a taboo. Even worse is the way they act like there is still some debate raging about whether size matters. I should capitalize by selling bumper stickers that say: "Size matters…and I vote!"
Palin is dumb.
I'm not sure who is dumber; Palin, or the people who say this like it is an original thought. When I hear this line, I reply with the equally insightful, "Wrestling is fake."
I like real women.
A guy usually states this at high volume in the presence of a girl who is self-conscious about her weight (i.e., every girl). And if he's really feeling it, he adds the old "emaciated women are disgusting" chestnut, followed by a shot at a "disgusting" chick like Heather Graham. Of course Heather Graham would actually be his first choice, but Ms. Graham would never settle for this pandering rube. So to score points with the human fish bowl he might have a prayer with, he pretends he is not "shallow" by saying he prefers the look of a “real” woman. Somehow everyone misses the fact that a preference for the "real" look is still a judgment based on looks. Wake up and smell the coffee ice cream.
As we go to print, there is still not one documented case of an actual winner using this phrase. In reality, those who say it are ironclad losers trying to sound like their life is one big trophy case.
Size matters.
You will find this sentence in every commercial and magazine article, yet writers and advertisers present it like they're breaking a taboo. Even worse is the way they act like there is still some debate raging about whether size matters. I should capitalize by selling bumper stickers that say: "Size matters…and I vote!"
Palin is dumb.
I'm not sure who is dumber; Palin, or the people who say this like it is an original thought. When I hear this line, I reply with the equally insightful, "Wrestling is fake."
I like real women.
A guy usually states this at high volume in the presence of a girl who is self-conscious about her weight (i.e., every girl). And if he's really feeling it, he adds the old "emaciated women are disgusting" chestnut, followed by a shot at a "disgusting" chick like Heather Graham. Of course Heather Graham would actually be his first choice, but Ms. Graham would never settle for this pandering rube. So to score points with the human fish bowl he might have a prayer with, he pretends he is not "shallow" by saying he prefers the look of a “real” woman. Somehow everyone misses the fact that a preference for the "real" look is still a judgment based on looks. Wake up and smell the coffee ice cream.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Pavlov and the Plus Sized
If you don’t have a crazy comedic pressure point, you’re probably not a real boy. It may not be a coincidence that your daddy’s name is Gepeto. Those of us without strings have certain situations, objects, and words that for some reason trigger outbursts of laughter that can’t be controlled.
One of my comedic pressure points is the sight of a really fat man in a suit. I don’t mean a mainstream overweight guy. I’m talking about a full-on, tanker-sized porkheap sporting his Sunday best. I see the buttons straining, I hear the pockets begging for mercy, I watch the tie hanging on him like a used condom, and my manners just evacuate.
One time I was headed to a meeting, and as I got in the elevator, I was joined by a well-dressed chap who was larger than life and most other things. And like this man’s belt buckle, I immediately started to come undone. I could feel the laughter rising, climbing, rising, and knew I would erupt if emergency measures weren’t taken.
I tried making myself sad by going to one of the dark places in my head, starting with the classics:
Chicks don’t like you.
People who could help your career don’t like you.
You don’t like you.
No effect. Not even the chains of self-hate could tie down this laughter revolt.
Making a bad situation worse [pregnant pause] I was headed for one of the top floors, so I had a long way to go. Plus it was mid-day--lunchtime--so the elevator was packed and stopping on almost every floor. The stars were against me.
I started bursting. Cheeks fluttering, ears popping like an airline passenger during takeoff. I’m not just shaking with suppressed laughter; I’m palseying with it. And there is nowhere to run. A few more seconds and I am going to unleash enough inappropriate giggles to get me kicked out of civilization forever.
Whatever crumbs of my brain weren’t busy indulging the spectacle kicked in just enough to give me an idea. I grabbed my cell phone and pretended I’d just gotten a hilarious text, then threw my head back in the well known “This is so funny I need to give my skull a headstart” fashion, and right as the guffaws started flowing, the elevator doors opened. It was my floor.
I jumped through the doors and lost it. It was the kind of laughter not usually heard outside asylums.
A lot of trembling. A lot of panting. More mucus than I would have liked.
Suddenly I remembered where I was and why I was there. I was there for a meeting, and needed to be on-point, or at the very least, not laughing at things no one else could see. Knowing this did not calm me at all. I'd held the laughter so long the tension of suppressing it had created a monster.
I’m not sure exactly how long it took, but the laughter eventually stopped. I looked up, and through the transparent security door, I could see I was being gawked at by the receptionist for the firm I was supposed to visit.
Awkward.
I now had to approach the security door and hope that a woman who had just watched me stand alone in a corridor laughing myself spastic didn’t deem me a security risk. I think it would have been better if I had just hit the intercom and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but I just saw a really fat guy in the elevator who was wearing a suit.”
Better to be labeled crass than a mentally unsound curiosity.
Now you’re all wondering: did she let me in?
Did Oswald shoot Kennedy?
One of my comedic pressure points is the sight of a really fat man in a suit. I don’t mean a mainstream overweight guy. I’m talking about a full-on, tanker-sized porkheap sporting his Sunday best. I see the buttons straining, I hear the pockets begging for mercy, I watch the tie hanging on him like a used condom, and my manners just evacuate.
One time I was headed to a meeting, and as I got in the elevator, I was joined by a well-dressed chap who was larger than life and most other things. And like this man’s belt buckle, I immediately started to come undone. I could feel the laughter rising, climbing, rising, and knew I would erupt if emergency measures weren’t taken.
I tried making myself sad by going to one of the dark places in my head, starting with the classics:
Chicks don’t like you.
People who could help your career don’t like you.
You don’t like you.
No effect. Not even the chains of self-hate could tie down this laughter revolt.
Making a bad situation worse [pregnant pause] I was headed for one of the top floors, so I had a long way to go. Plus it was mid-day--lunchtime--so the elevator was packed and stopping on almost every floor. The stars were against me.
I started bursting. Cheeks fluttering, ears popping like an airline passenger during takeoff. I’m not just shaking with suppressed laughter; I’m palseying with it. And there is nowhere to run. A few more seconds and I am going to unleash enough inappropriate giggles to get me kicked out of civilization forever.
Whatever crumbs of my brain weren’t busy indulging the spectacle kicked in just enough to give me an idea. I grabbed my cell phone and pretended I’d just gotten a hilarious text, then threw my head back in the well known “This is so funny I need to give my skull a headstart” fashion, and right as the guffaws started flowing, the elevator doors opened. It was my floor.
I jumped through the doors and lost it. It was the kind of laughter not usually heard outside asylums.
A lot of trembling. A lot of panting. More mucus than I would have liked.
Suddenly I remembered where I was and why I was there. I was there for a meeting, and needed to be on-point, or at the very least, not laughing at things no one else could see. Knowing this did not calm me at all. I'd held the laughter so long the tension of suppressing it had created a monster.
I’m not sure exactly how long it took, but the laughter eventually stopped. I looked up, and through the transparent security door, I could see I was being gawked at by the receptionist for the firm I was supposed to visit.
Awkward.
I now had to approach the security door and hope that a woman who had just watched me stand alone in a corridor laughing myself spastic didn’t deem me a security risk. I think it would have been better if I had just hit the intercom and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but I just saw a really fat guy in the elevator who was wearing a suit.”
Better to be labeled crass than a mentally unsound curiosity.
Now you’re all wondering: did she let me in?
Did Oswald shoot Kennedy?
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