The Bassoon King

by Rainn Wilson

  7:00–9:00 p.m.: Do all of the next week’s homework while watching Columbo.

  About once every month or two we would forgo a day of gaming in order to head out to one of the rare gamer/comic stores in the Seattle area. The best one was in Kent, Washington, which was a two-hour bus ride away. The trip would be a daylong event but totally worth it. A bus full of dork meat, meandering its way to the hobby shop, where we would stock up on the little metal miniature figurines of orcs and trolls and warriors and the model paint to adorn them with, the multisided dice that drove the game, and, most important, the dungeon maps and books of monsters and spells that were our bible. I will never forget the musty smell of those stores and the mystery of their aisles, filled with magical possibility and the strange, almost-always-bearded man grumpily gargoyled at the cash register, reading The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks for the seventh time.

  Before Hollywood discovered the world of comic book nerds and sci-fi geeks, before the cultural tastemaking explosion of Comic-Con, there was a special yearly event at the saddest Hyatt in the world: Norwescon.

  This was (and still is!) a yearly fantasy and sci-fi convention that would draw out all the nerd vermin from the mossy burbs of Western Washington. There was a huge bookstore and D-level actors who had once guested on Star Trek signing glossies. Favorite sci-fi authors like Philip José Farmer and Frederik Pohl were treated like rock stars there, signing copies of their books and walking the halls like members of House Lannister. And the capper was a big party called the “Masquerade” on Saturday night, where you were encouraged to dress like a Klingon or barbarian or alien.

  My dad would go every year to sign a handful of copies of his book and speak on various panels, and I would proudly watch him among the other author-gods. Yes, there were actual panel discussions on science fiction, fantasy, comics, and gaming. I remember once ducking into the back of a conference room where a team of dandruffy professor types were intensely pondering whether it would be in character for Conan the Barbarian to boil water during his travels.

  There was a “screening room” (i.e., dilapidated conference room) that had movies showing in it twenty-four hours a day. That is where I first saw Silent Running with Bruce Dern, Zardoz with Sean Connery, and The Fearless Vampire Killers by Roman Polanski. The unwashed sci-fi hippie contingent who didn’t have the money to get a hotel room would simply sleep in the screening room in their sleeping bags with loud, poorly projected sci-fi movies blaring and flickering around them all night long.

  I even played an elven thief in a Dungeons & Dragons competition, taking second place at age fifteen. A group of ten lost souls sat in a boardroom at the Hyatt, playing various imaginary characters for an entire day, while outside in the real world, hearts were broken, sacrifices undertaken, connections made, babies born, tears shed, and lives lived. Not in the Evergreen Room at the SeaTac Hyatt, though. There, chaotic-neutral dwarves and half-orc magic users pranced about in imaginary caves for hour after hour seeking treasure, glory, and magic scimitars.

  Eventually, because of my dweeby exploits, I would be given the key to a magical, mythical city. A city that others can only dream of. The renowned municipality of Nerdopolis. I would also be made its lord, mayor, and spokesperson (as you’re about to read).

  Chapter 5

  THE BASSOONIST

  —

  I ask you to savor the following sentence: For several years, off and on, I was a member of the following clubs at school: marching band, pep band, orchestra, debate club, computer club, chess club, Model United Nations, and pottery club.

  Note: The above list does not include my aforementioned role-playing gaming, Baha’i youth activities, medieval weapons sketching, kung fu movie obsession, or vast Columbia Record and Tape Club* cassette collection featuring Journey, Styx, Asia, and REO Speedwagon.

  And then, if that wasn’t enough, I decided to play the bassoon.

  Boom. Universe explodes, then implodes. Then explodes again, quickly folding in on itself, only to create infinite other bassoon-shaped universes.

  —

  Let’s dig a little deeper, shall we?

  Having studied piano as a kid and then clarinet at Kellogg Middle School, I went to my band teacher and told him I wanted to quit clarinet and play tenor sax. Saxophone was way cooler, you see. Guys in the sax section would crack jokes and wear sunglasses in class sometimes. Clarinet wasn’t pathetically loser-ish (I mean, it wasn’t French horn!), but it certainly wasn’t the most masculine of instruments. Sure, there was a clarinet-like instrument in the cantina scene in Star Wars, but let’s face it, clarinets are for girls in braces and Woody Allen. (Who loves girls in braces. Ba-dum-dum!)

  My band teacher, John Law (real name), really pulled a fast one on me. He said something to the effect of “Well, you could play the sax, but we’ve just got so many saxophones right now. Wait a minute . . . ,” he paused for dramatic effect and lowered his voice conspiratorially, “you know what’s really cool and unique?” I was all like, “What? What’s really cool and unique?!” He was like, “The bassoon.” And I was like, “Wow. What’s that?”

  And with that ridiculous manipulation, a bassoonist was born.

  The bassoon is absurd. They should be banned for being horrible, unnecessary, and adenoidally grating.

  It takes like an hour to assemble one. They’re enormous and are made out of Lincoln Logs, aluminum twigs, and paper towel tubes. There are these tiny double wooden reeds that you have to soak and trim and tend to all the time. There’s a strap that you actually have to sit on when you play so the whole thing doesn’t fall onto the floor like a bundle of garbage. And, after all that folderol, it ends up sounding like an anemic donkey with laryngitis.

  Later, after I was digging into my bassooning, Mr. Law was thoughtful enough to let the entire class know that originally the bassoon was called the fagotto in Italian because it resembled a faggot (bundle of sticks) when unassembled. That went over really well. People just loved commenting on me and my enormous fagotto.

  I ended up playing the bassoon for the next five years until I graduated high school. For better or worse, I spent my adolescence tethered to that bastard woodwind, my siren, my spirit animal, my nerd crucifix.

  I would also occasionally play in the pep band and marching band as a . . . wait for it . . . xylophonist. My eventual high school, Shorecrest, was known as the Highlanders and thusly the marching band wore kilts and knee-high socks. If you went to a Shorecrest game or pep rally in 1982 or ’83 and saw a tall, pimply, gangly teen in a tartan kilt with a xylophone strapped to his skinny chest, that was probably me. Also, it should be noted that the “cool” guys in marching band would go “commando” under their kilts as they played “Tequila” and “On, Wisconsin!” and floppily marched around like pubescent idiots.

  As if the bassoon, xylophone, and science-fiction obsession weren’t enough, I then took up an interest in chess. It’s as if the sirens of dweebdom lured me inexorably into their pimply lair, from which I never really returned.

  So I joined the chess club at Shorecrest High School. The team was centered around two guys whose names sounded like shoe: Terry Hsu (Chinese dude) and Jeff Schuh (white dude). They were really good at chess and taught the rest of us giblets a ton. Terry was first board and Jeff second. Other team members were Blake Kremer (third board), me on the fourth board, and George Evans coming in at number five.

  You see, a chess team is comprised of the five best chess players, and you put them in order from first board to fifth. When you play another team, they bring their five best and you both have at it in a silent room with a handful of awkward, acne-draped spectators. We did pretty well with the “shoe” brothers and went to the state championship one of the two years I was on the team. We even beat the fancy-pants private school, Lakeside (alma mater of Bill Gates). We crowed about that victory quite a bit, I can tell you.

  Once the
cheerleaders mockingly made a bunch of chess team banners for the school entranceway that said things like CONGRATS CHESS TEAM STATE CHAMPS 82! and stuff like that. Everyone at the school snidely guffawed and thought that was a total hoot, and we slunk past the banners in shame. Jeff Schuh, however, had purchased a chess letterman’s jacket with a giant knight’s profile on the back and wore it around proudly. He was a nerd rebel and didn’t care what the majority of Highlanders thought of him. Like Spock and Potsie Weber from Happy Days, he immediately became our dweeb hero.

  Sometimes we would attend weekend-long chess tournaments. I played in several of these and got my ass handed to me by the chessfarts of the greater Seattle area. At one of these competitions, I saw the most peculiar detail of nerddom that has ever been witnessed before or since by man or immortal.

  I dare anyone to top this: a guy with mold growing in his ear.

  IN. HIS. EAR.

  I can’t remember what this chess spectator looked like, but I won’t ever forget the yellow-orange fuzzy mold growing in his ear hole. It’s seared into my adolescent memory banks more starkly than my Farrah Fawcett poster.

  Let’s ponder the reality of this ear for a moment.

  Something was probably in his ear hole to begin with. A clump of debris or a speck of food or something. And then, realistically, for mold to begin growing it would take at minimum a week, right? And then for it to fully bloom into a dull yellow flower the size of a sugar cube, another two or three?

  I’m no hygiene expert, but that means that this person had, at the minimum, not showered for three to four weeks. Probably he had not let water or a washcloth touch the interior of his ear hole for over a MONTH!

  Now, let’s take a moment to ponder what might have been growing on other areas of this person. His murky bits. The clammy, ripe nether regions. Picture the furry tendrils of fungal growth that must have been entwining his taint and scrotuscus. Close your eyes and imagine you smell the moist, spidery growths that might have been carpeting his armpits.

  I think of you often, ear-mold guy at the chess competition. Where are you now? Engulfed in mold somewhere, like a carcass on the floor of the jungles of Borneo? Being trod on by ants? Swarmed by roaches? Perhaps you are the mold king now, perched on a fungal throne, crowned in yellow fuzz, chessboard in hand.

  —

  Sometimes, after a long day of role playing (not the sexy kind), or chess battles, we nerd hooligans would sneak out at night, toilet-paper some houses, set off some illegal fireworks, and run around the neighborhood like skinny commandos. This gradually became a more and more regular part of our weekend adventures. There’s something exhilarating and powerful about sneaking through yards and scuttling down dark suburban streets at three a.m., the normally bustling neighborhood silent except for the occasional dog or delivery truck. We would “T-P” friends’ houses and strangers’ houses and enemies’ houses, leaving spiderweb-like strands of toilet paper all over their trees and cars and mailboxes. Eventually, toilet paper got a bit boring and we dreamed up more and more exotic defacing strategies.

  We would buy jumbo boxes of plastic forks from the local Safeway earlier in the week and “fork” someone’s house. John Valadez had the idea of “Cheerio-ing” someone’s house and eventually, in a brilliant turn of dadaist surreality, we would “taco” people’s houses, using hundreds of taco shells to decorate their lawns. We called ourselves the Taco Terrorists and would leave the initials “TT” in whipped cream on the victim’s driveway. This was all great fun and seemed to be building to greater and greater Banksy-like stunts until one night we got arrested by the vicious scum at the Lake Forest Park Police Department. The guy at the local 7-Eleven had dropped a dime on us after we bought a huge bunch of toilet paper and Cheerios at four a.m. After there was a whoop! of sirens in the 7-Eleven parking lot and a searchlight hit us, four or five of us (minus John Valadez, who scuttled over a nearby fence) were stuffed into the backseat of a cop car like sardines, and we had the brilliant idea to stash all our contraband under the car seats.

  I remember feeling gloriously innocent as we told the officers that we were simply out for a late-night walk, and then it all came crashing down as the other cop walked in from the car with an armful of toilet paper, Cheerios, shaving cream, taco shells, and fireworks. “Oldest trick in the book,” the officer said, Baretta-style. They called our parents to come get us, which was incredibly humiliating. I was terrified about what my dad might say or do, but he was silent the entire way home and then, as we pulled into our driveway, turned to me and said wisely, oddly, “If you’re going to do that kind of thing again, the important thing is not to get caught.” That ended the fierce but brief campaign of the Taco Terrorists cell of Lake Forest Park, Washington.

  —

  Let’s descend ever deeper into the nerd museum (nerdseum?) of my past, shall we?

  Model United Nations is pretty much the greatest thing ever.

  Similar to Dungeons & Dragons, MUN brings escapism, imagination, and role playing to its participants. Instead of warriors and monks, however, you pretend to be diplomats representing a country’s best interests on an international level. You see, there’s an imaginary UN conference and you, or you and a pal or two, show up to represent a country of your choice, like China or France or Bolivia or Costa Rica. The goal is to team up with allies of yours and attempt to pass resolutions that work in your country’s best interest as well as blocking the diplomatic efforts of your enemies. You know, like how the world works.

  It’s total mayhem. Resolutions are drawn up. Notes are passed. Votes are taken. Debates rage. Countries are courted and insulted, variously. And, if you do your research on your country and its history as well as the faults and incongruities of other countries over the preceding decades, the interactions can get both passionate and intellectually stimulating. And the coolest thing? Getting to sit behind a little placard with your country’s name on it. Also, getting to pretend that you just flew in on a jet, secret documents in tow.

  The most fun was to represent crazy, rogue states that were a little off their rocker. Nicaragua and China were a lot of fun. Arab League states were a total blast and Iran sublimely, nuttily awesome. Plus, you could wear towels arranged like turbans on your head. The resolutions you could introduce could be completely unreasonable and you could rally the entire Muslim, anti-American world to get behind you and cause total imaginary global chaos in a high school gymnasium or conference room.

  One time, at a weekend conference at Seattle University, my MUN pals and I decided to represent the US of A. Boy, was that a mistake. We were the punching bag of the entire conference. Having to stand up there and defend all the various boycotts, invasions, embargoes, bombings, military fundings, and hypocrisies our country was engaged in was a near-impossible task.

  The greatest fun of all was attempting to effectively emulate the perceived cultural identities of the countries we were representing. It was a great precursor to my acting days. Only instead of roles, I would portray countries! Along with my main partner in eggheaded crime, John Valadez, I represented at various points in my career as an imaginary diplomat: Saudi Arabia (crazy), Syria (batshit crazy), North Korea (triple batshit crazy), the USSR (evil empire), China (rogue nation!), Cuba (double weird rogue!), Chad (love the name), France (boring), and Canada (so boring it makes your head throb until you pass out and find yourself watching curling reruns at three a.m.).

  At MUN conferences there would be a ratio of about 85 percent dork dudes and 15 percent smart girls. And you can bet your UN Security Council resolution 286-B that the entirety of the attention of the 85 percent who were dork dudes was entirely focused on the remaining 15 percent. Needless to say, it’s entirely preposterous to be looking to meet girls at Model United Nations conferences. But that’s how my posse rolled, yo. I remember I was completely crushed on a girl from Shorewood High School, our school’s archrival, who was representing t
he United Kingdom. Even though I was Saudi Arabia, I went along with everything she proposed because she looked like a cute, pimply Tina Fey. John Valadez was the only one with the cojones to go up and actually talk to her. And he actually got a date!

  John Valadez was my best friend growing up. He was half-Mexican and we idiots called him “spic” and “wetback” because we didn’t really understand how racism worked back then. For some reason, he hung with the nerds even though he was good with girls and good at sports. He was a little dude and I was a tottering Sasquatch, and together we made a preposterous pair. Our love for D&D was matched only by our love of band and MUN and kung fu movies and especially, above all else, comedy.

  It was John and I who shared a sense of humor. We would stay up every Saturday night in those first years of SNL to watch Steve Martin and Elvis Costello and Buck Henry and Devo and the ne’er-do-wells and scalawags of comedy. We played our Steve Martin, Cheech and Chong, and Bill Cosby albums until they wouldn’t play anymore. When we had sleepovers, we would watch Johnny Carson’s monologue in case there was a stray joke that we could actually understand at the age of twelve or thirteen. It was he and I who memorized Monty Python sketches from top to bottom. In fact, I would take my toaster-size Panasonic cassette recorder and put it up in front of our boxy color television to record entire episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus as they played on PBS at midnight. I had all of Monty Python and the Holy Grail recorded on a series of cassettes that John and I would play over and over, singing every classic Eric Idle ditty and reciting every John Cleese catchphrase.

  John and I later became roommates in college at the University of Washington and eventually both went to NYU together, where John would go to film school. He went on to make many very successful, award-winning documentaries for PBS and is still quite short apparently.