Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker

by Finder, Henry

  OUR STIRRUP PANTS DON’T COST AN ARM AND A LEG!

  You bitched about our stirrup pants. We heard you. Christ Almighty, everybody in the state heard you. We trimmed the legs, so, even with your fat thighs, you won’t look like a Buick. We stitched up the back to prevent pulling. You guys know what pulling is? It’s when the pants pull down on a chick’s ass, because the things are strapped to her goddam feet. Smart, eh? Like all anybody needed was a strap to hold pants down. What ever happened to straps that held pants up? Ever hear of belts? Broads. Don’t get me started. Look, this isn’t about backstitching, or yuppie fashions, or why a nickel is bigger than a dime. It’s about men and women. Screw it. I need a drink. AND THE SEAMLESS STIRRUPS MEAN EXTRA COMFORT!

  MEET OUR MOCK: THE TURTLE WITH A LITTLE LESS HUG!

  You don’t like turtlenecks? You say they’re too tight? What are you, some wussy? Can’t handle the pressure from a fifty-fifty blend? What do you know from pressure? You sit there in your chintzy house and you can’t deal with a turtleneck? Jesus Christ.

  You know, this pisses me off. You don’t know squat about running a business or about publishing a catalogue. You just sit there, looking at all the shiny, pretty pictures, and when you do finally call, you are the Customer, and the Customer Is Always Right, so the Customer can screw around and waste the time of men who bust their balls for a living, and it doesn’t matter that the Customer Is Full of Shit. Who taught you to buy clothes? You stupid, lard-assed deadbeat.

  That’s it. I’ve had it. I don’t care whose nephew you are. I don’t care who you’re boffing. You drive everybody goddam nuts. This catalogue costs big money, but what do you care? You get it for free. That’s the problem. You don’t respect what you cannot buy. Well, buy something, asshole. AND IT’S MADE IN THE U.S.A.!

  1994

  SCOTT GUTTERMAN

  GUM

  (Fade in old-timey fiddle music.)

  Title: “Something Like a Candy”

  (Slow zoom on single shot of eight-year-old boy, in mid-chew.)

  NARRATOR: It started as an idle pursuit: a way to pass the time, to occupy the slackened jaw of street urchin and steel magnate alike. (Hold on various stills of farmhands, factory workers, men in bowler hats.) But even in its infancy, when America wakened to its unfurling power like a slumbering giant whose nap had been cut short by the ambulance cry of its own withered soul, when gnashing, nattering demons fought for the very plinth of this great land, when the corn was as high as an elephant’s eye—even then it served as a salve to the spirit, a lulling reminder that there would still be a tomorrow, even if tomorrow never came.

  FYVUSH FINKEL: I used to take my penny down to the candy store every Friday. This is in New York City, on the Lower East Side, which could be a very rough place back then—not like it’s a big picnic basket today—and if you didn’t get run over by a pushcart on your way to the store, or beaten up by the Ukrainian gangs over on Cherry Street, which happened about every other day, you’d give your penny to the man behind the counter, and if he wasn’t the kind of fellow to rob you blind, which most of them were, you’d get, I don’t know, six or seven pieces of candy, and usually in there would be a stick of gum.

  (Hold on shots of tropical foliage, migrant laborers.)

  NARRATOR: The resin of the sapodilla tree was made to yield a chewable substance that could produce a kind of refreshment lasting all the livelong day. Mixed first with lye, then with iodine, and finally with sugar, it soon filled the mouths of schoolboys and stumblebums, of pugilists and prostitutes from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon.

  SUSAN SONTAG: You have to understand, gum was very much frowned upon by the rising merchant class, who saw it as a kind of repudiation of all that they had done to distance themselves from their very provincial, very backwoods sorts of backgrounds. So what you had was this tremendous excitement, this wonderful violation of the social code, whenever someone would “pop in a stick,” as they’d say. It was all really very exciting, really.

  (Hold on shots of robber-baron types.)

  NARRATOR: With the rise of “gumming” came the gum lords. They were ruthless men: cold, overbearing, quick to anger, bad of breath, unfriendly, rude, and, more often than not, not nice. They would hold the burgeoning gum world by its wrapper for more than three decades. It would be more than thirty years before the world of gum would be loosed from their very sticky and unpleasant grip.

  KEANU REEVES: “I intend to build me a gumworks the likes of which has not been seen east of the Mississippi, nor north of the Ohio, nor west of the Allegheny, nor south of Lake Huron. I will set it in the city of Chicago, for that is the place where I live, though not in summer, for it is too blessed hot.”—Colonel Harry A. Beech-Nut.

  NARRATOR: Men with names like Wrigley, Dentyne, and Bazooka would seek control of what quickly grew to be a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry (hold on shots of bubble-popping contests, kids at candy counters) built on the pennies of boys with names like Tommy, Frank, and Ken, and girls with names like Laura, Sandy, and Jo. Day after day, they came to stores with names like Pop’s, Morry’s, and the Pit Stop, to buy gum with names like Juicy Fruit, Beeman’s, and Big Red.

  SHELBY FOOTE: The mere fact that you could chew gum for so long, that it would last and last and not lose its flavor—although all gum would eventually lose its flavor—that fact alone made it a kind of metaphor for all that was regenerative in American life, the sense that you could go away and the place you left would still be there, it wouldn’t be gone like some vaporous illusion—it was the same with gum, you could go out, bowl a few frames, make a phone call, get back in your car, and you’d still be chewing the same piece of gum. That was tremendously important in establishing the whole entire gum mystique, which is to say legend.

  MARTIN SCORSESE: Sure, I saw all the gum pictures, uh, all the great, great gum-chewing heroes. Sam Spade, of course, comes to mind. The Thin Man, William Powell, Cool Hand Luke—What? They didn’t? Are you sure? It’s really very funny, because I always associate them with, uh, with gum.

  (Shots of clouds gathering, sound of thunderclaps.)

  NARRATOR: 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.)

  ANNOUNCER: 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

  MY 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

  THE 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:
<
br />   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: