by Dave Eggers
A LOGIC PUZZLE AND HANGOVER CURE
John Hodgman
1.
There is a room with seven chairs in it.
Eight people are standing in the room.
Some of them are Vampires.
Some of them are Normals.
Vampires always lie.
Normals always tell the truth.
The room has three enormous windows in it, all facing west.
It is six o’clock on an October evening.
Sunset may be seen through the westward windows. It is magnificent.
(By the way, the Vampires have been awake all day. The sun does not kill them. They’re not that kind of Vampires.)
The Vampires are very handsome and very beautiful at the same time.
They only tell handsome and beautiful lies.
The Normals are wandering around the room, spreading vicious truths wherever they go.
There are two large bottles of inexpensive wine on the table, one of which is poisoned, one of which is not.
Also, you are ruinously drunk.
Either a Vampire or a Normal touches your shoulder and suggests something that surprises you.
It begins as a statement and ends as a question.
Without feeling for fangs, and lying or telling the truth as you see fit, what three questions and two statements do you pose in order to determine whether you are standing or sitting down?
Hint: The wine is rosé.
2.
Combine the yolk of one egg with four ounces of flat club soda.
Add milk and vodka (warm) to taste.
Rent The Seven Samurai and begin watching it.
Drink the yolk/soda/milk/vodka combination while watching Tape One of The Seven Samurai, rubbing bare feet on the carpet.
Upon conclusion of Tape One, decide to take a shower, then change your mind.
Prepare a box of instant mashed potatoes as directed. Add one whole bottle of Tabasco and the juice of one lemon.
While mixing, remember high school until it becomes too painful to continue.
While sucking on one ice cube, watch Tape Two of The Seven Samurai until conclusion.
Reaffirm your faith that any effort to save a village of peasants from marauding bandits will always end in tragedy.
Sleep for ten hours.
Awaken at sunset and suddenly realize: Everyone is standing, including yourself.
Attempt to explain this to your wife.
If you do not have carpeting, substitute a bath mat or an old coat.
SOME PEOPLE DON’T LIKE CELEBRITIES
Michael Ian Black
SOME PEOPLE JUST don’t like me. I know this is hard to believe, especially when you consider the following:
1. I am a celebrity (very famous).
2. I give sixty percent of my income to “Jerry’s Kids.”
3. I hardly ever kick my dog.
Two of these things are true, and shouldn’t that be enough to ensure me a large measure of goodwill from my fellow man? After all, I harbor no ill will toward anybody (except for that motherfucker Paul Newman—he knows why).
This is why it was so surprising for me to learn that there are people out there, people I have never even met, who do not like me.
I first became aware of this after appearing on the VH1 television program I Love the 70s. You may have seen this show. According to the VH1 press release, it’s a “fun-filled ride through the music, movies, TV shows, products, fashions, fads, trends, and major events that defined pop culture each year of the decade.” Whatever. They paid me two grand.
For people who feel the need to share their thoughts about television shows with complete strangers, VH1 maintains an Internet message board. It was while perusing these boards that I first encountered several dispiriting posts under topics like “Michael Ian Black sucks,” “Michael Ian Black—DIE!,” and perhaps most painful of all, “Michael Ian Black is not that cute.”
Needless to say, I was blown away. I mean, look at me. I’m really cute.
My initial shock soon turned to numbness, followed by denial, anger, depression, a brief moment of total euphoria, and then back to depression.
I have decided to share some of those messages here, in an effort to confront the final stage in my grieving process: acceptance. Not to sound egotistical, but it is my hope that by accepting and honoring the writers’ feelings, I will not only heal myself, but will also literally heal the world.
´ ´ ´
From keithpartridge:
“[Michael Ian Black is] the most arrogant, self-absorbed, uninteresting, pretentious, cynical human being with no talent that VH1 ever hired to talk about something they have no knowledge about whatsoever ...”
(The grammar might be a touch clunky, Keith, but your message rings loud and clear. I honor your feelings. Well said.)
´ ´ ´
From Maddmaxx14:
“What does this snotnosed little **** think he knows about the 70s”
(The asterisks are Maddmaxx14’s, not mine. I don’t know what they stood for, but I think it was probably “faggot.” Thanks for having the class not to say it, Madd.)
´ ´ ´
From Hollandscomet:
“how long after his lobotomy did they tape his segments, anyway?!? This guy has all the personality of a doorstop!”
(Not to quibble, but there are some really whimsical doorstops on the market. Check out avalongarden.com for the “green rabbit” and “butch” doorstops; they’ve got personality in spades. Your point, however, is taken.)
´ ´ ´
From Born2Soon:
“MIB was crass enough to say that Arnold from Diff’rent Strokes should have been on Roots. Why? He didn’t say why.”
(The reason I thought Arnold should play Kunta Kinte is so he could say, “Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Master?” which I thought would be cute. Sorry about the confusion. I should have made this clearer.)
´ ´ ´
Another from Born2Soon:
“MIB looks like he’s had botox on his forehead. His forehead never moves, even when he moves his eyebrows or smiles, which is rarely.... He most likely had it done due to VANITY. That’s the usual reason.”
(It’s true. I have had some work done, specifically in the forehead region. Vanity, however, wasn’t the reason. It was because I was horribly burned in a fire.)
From Penlane 40:
“I was fast-forwarding through his comments after he said Benji and his girlfriend didn’t do it doggy style ... what an idiot!”
(I did indeed feel like an idiot after speaking to a number of veterinarians and learning that the only way Benji and his girlfriend could possibly have “done it” was doggy style. Mea culpa.)
´ ´ ´
There are, of course, more. Hundreds more. To those people, and to the thousands more who did not have the courage to write, I want to say this: I am really, really, really, really, really sorry. There aren’t enough “really”’s to convey how sorry I am. Further, know this: I have learned from this experience, and I have changed.
I only hope these same people will accept and support me on my next television project, Albert Schweitzer Can Suck Me, in which I use my winning sense of humor to rip the famed humanitarian a new asshole.
TIPS FROM JOKES AND HOW TO TELL THEM, PUBLISHED IN 1963
R. J. White
In this story, it’s the chimpanzee who has dignity.
You may not like the name “Jonquil,” but I do; that’s just a personal choice.
The waiter should sound just a shade British.
Moses and God are very matter-of-fact in their dialogue, a wee bit Bronxy.
The bird, a tough guy, has learned his English watching TV serials.
There is nothing to be done about joyboy.
If you’re telling this story out of the United States, better use Eisenhower.
To my knowledge, this story presents the only fallible ghost I’ve ever heard of.
Try to ima
gine the late Charles Laughton telling that one.
The policeman, of course, pantomimes his golf instructions at the end.
When the brother teaches the man to say “chicken sandwich,” he should articulate it very slowly.
The zebra wouldn’t be in pajamas, nor would the stallion think she was in them, it being broad daylight.
As in any story dealing with a mental aberration, the patient is very serious and you, the storyteller, do not make fun of them.
Also, it should be quite clear in your opening description that the Rabbi knows he’s doing wrong but can’t resist the urge.
The man in the gallery should cup his hands to his mouth and bellow the punch line.
The horse is just astonished as he blurts out his final line.
HOW IMPORTANT MOMENTS IN MY LIFE WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT IF I WAS SHOT TWICE IN THE STOMACH
Jake Swearingen
BIRTH
The doctor tells my mother to push while she also tells the nurse to get my father. My mother has been in labor for nearly forty hours. My father rushes into the room, his face a mix of pure terror and pure joy. I come out, nearly dead from blood loss. I appear on both Oprah and Donahue, being the only person ever shot twice in the stomach while still in the womb.
WALKING FOR THE FIRST TIME
I stand up on shaky, little-boy legs, and then promptly fall over, a pool of my own blood spreading out from underneath me.
FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
I walk in, nervous and scared and wishing I could go back home, and then stumble backward, clutching my stomach. “Aw, Christ! Aw, shit!” I say as I knock over a chair, looking down as dark blood seeps from between my fingers. I make three new friends that day.
FIRST KISS
She is the girl in my Business Tech class from school, and we have met in the recreation room of my church. She is wearing some sort of fruity perfume, and her hair is tied back. I lean forward, and my breath is coming in shaky little gasps. Our lips touch, and then I cough twice, blood slowly leaking out of my mouth. I ask her to call an ambulance, goddamnit, I’ve been fucking shot. I sob quietly that I don’t want to die here.
GRADUATION
I walk across the stage and shake the principal’s hand while he hands me my diploma. I collapse a few steps after, and the entire auditorium where graduation is being held goes deadly quiet. All you can hear is my girlish whimpering in pain and begging for someone to just put me out of my misery, for the love of Christ.
FIRST DAY OF COLLEGE
I step into my dorm and greet my new roommate. We talk for a while, learning about each other. I then lurch backward against the wall, a look of shock and pain on my face. My legs buckle beneath me and I slump to the ground, my eyes staring off into nothing, but suddenly I don’t look to be in pain. I look peaceful and almost happy, and I whisper, right before I go, “It’s not the end, is it?”
GETTING SHOT IN THE STOMACH AT CLOSE RANGE
This is actually pretty much the same.
NO JUSTICE, NO FOUL
Jim Stallard
WHENEVER I HEAR some historian on PBS prattling about the Supreme Court, I have to step outside for air. I know it’s a matter of seconds before the stock phrases—judicial review, legal precedent, activist court—will start rolling out, and I’ll feel my blood coming to a boil as I hear the scamming of yet another generation.
Are you sitting down? Everything you were taught about the Supreme Court and its decisions is bunk. For most of the nineteenth century and all of the twentieth, our biggest, most far-reaching legal decisions have been decided not by careful examination of facts and reference to precedent but by contests of game and sport between the justices. The games varied through the years—cribbage, chess, horseshoes, darts—even a brief, disastrous flirtation with polo. (Now do you understand Plessy v. Ferguson?) But ever since 1923, basketball has been the only game, and as the years rolled by and the decisions came down, the whole thing has settled nicely into place. Basketball has shaped the way our society is today, every contour, every legality, every way that one person relates to another in an official, sanctioned sense.
I know, I know—you’re thinking I got this stuff from radio signals in my head. Actually, the reason I’m privy to this info is really quite mundane. My father was a Supreme Court maintenance worker from 1925 until he retired forty years later. He started sneaking me in to see games when I was eight. I saw my share (though none of the landmarks) and heard from many sources about countless others.
Oliver Wendell Holmes hit on the basketball idea after attending a collegiate game in New York during the Court’s Christmas recess in 1922. He thought he had finally identified the type of contest that could involve all the justices, could be played indoors when the Court was in “session,” and, most important of all, did not involve horses.
Holmes brought the idea back to Washington and pitched it to Chief Justice Taft. The corpulent chief had been lobbying for Greco-Roman wrestling, but he was starting to realize none of his colleagues would go for a sport in which they might be killed. (The Fatty Arbuckle incident was fresh on everyone’s minds.) Taft finally agreed that basketball offered a superior form of jurisprudence.
After a little tinkering, the procedure came down to this: whenever the justices were evenly split over a judgment (four to four with one judge abstaining) and the deadlock persisted for more than a week, the issue would move to the hardwood. In general, the “teams” could be described as liberal vs. conservative, although as court watchers know, legal philosophies cannot be reduced to such simplistic terms. The justice voted most valuable player in the game was allowed the choice of writing the opinion or—in the case of a political hot potato—making someone else do it.
For the first twelve years, the justices scrapped in a dreary gymnasium tucked in the basement of the Capitol building. The floor was cement and the baskets were mounted flush on the walls so that every fast break or layup carried the threat of a concussion. (Owen Roberts became notorious for his short-term memory and was constantly being carried off the floor.)
When the new Court building went up across the street in 1935, the justices insisted that the fourth floor remain mostly vacant to house the real highest court in the land. Because of a mix-up in the architectural plans, the room had a ceiling that was far too low—a fact that made Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes livid and which has left its imprint on American history: many landmark decisions might have gone differently if the room could have accommodated justices with a high arc on their shot—Stanley Reed, Robert Jackson, and, most tragically, Abe Fortas.
Mind you, everything leading up to the actual decision was, and is, legitimate. The Court still accepted petitions on merit, they still read the briefs, listened (or dozed) during oral argument and then went into conference prepared to vote one way or another. When the deadlock came, however, the bifocals came off and the hightops went on.
Let’s look at some of the landmark games, with impressions gleaned from those lucky few who witnessed them:
Near v. Minnesota (1931)
A First Amendment ruling that came down in favor of a sleazy Minnesota newspaper being sued for libel after using ethnic slurs. Charles Evans Hughes (twenty-eight points, thirteen rebounds, seven steals) thought some of the newspaper’s comments were pretty funny, so he set out to win the MVP and the opinion that followed. “He was good, and he loved to talk out there,” said one observer. “I’m no choirboy, but some of the things he was saying had my face turning red. The ref finally gave him a technical to quiet him down.” Hughes’s mouth finally got him in trouble in the waning moments. After hitting nothing but net, he pointed at Justice Pierce Butler—a bookish sort who had been the subject of persistent rumors—waited a few beats ... and then yelled “Swish!” The observer recalled, “It was the only time I’ve ever seen a referee give two technicals at once to the same guy: One, two, gone.”
Hirabayashi v. United States (1943) {see fig.1}
The ca
se involved the rights of a Japanese-American citizen as the wartime government was herding his kind around California, but it turned out to be about so much more. Harlan Stone lured Robert Jackson into committing three charging fouls and turned the game around with a steal, a blocked shot, and a wicked bounce pass to Felix Frankfurter that left Owen Roberts and Stanley Reed glued to the floor, their mouths agape. Stone is credited by more than one as the person who remade the legal landscape in this century. “That was the start of a new kind of law,” says one observer who was privy to the Court’s biggest cases over decades. “No longer were people standing and taking two-handed set shots. No law is going to survive without being innovative and flexible.”
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
Those who watched remembered Earl Warren, “The Aircraft Carrier,” posting up and calling for the ball four, five times in a row and kicking it back out until he saw a hairline crack in the defense or a teammate left completely undefended for a jump shot. “So agile for a big man,” said one clerk. “They underestimated him at first, then they learned to play him tough. Not that it did them any good.” (Interesting side note: Rumor has it that during oral arguments for the case, Warren was sizing up Thurgood Marshall, pleading for the appellants, and sent a page scurrying off to find out how tall he was.)
Griswold v. Connecticut (1964) {see fig. 2}
The case that made contraception safe for America was a nail-biter. Thirty-three years later, a man who watched the game while clerking for Hugo Black was still bitter as he recalled the improbable thirty-foot shot William O. Douglas made at the buzzer: “Two defenders hanging all over him, absolutely no arc, and it goes in—I mean, he should have apologized to everyone. But instead of acknowledging he was lucky, he goes and writes that crap about the ‘penumbra of privacy’ to rub our noses in it. What a prick.”
Miranda v. Arizona (1966)
The case leading to the requirement that criminal suspects be informed of their rights. Warren again (fourteen points, nine rebounds, twenty-one assists), making it seem like there were eight players on his team instead of four. He also blocked out Stewart and defended Byron White so effectively that White threw the ball at Warren’s head and drew a costly technical. The Court’s legal historian put it in perspective: “Some justices—I’m thinking of Oliver Wendell Holmes here—had really high point totals, but their teammates suffered because of it. Earl made everyone else play better, and three men playing great is better than one any day.”