Finished Products

New from the makers of Foaming Hand Soap…

Broken-in sneakers! The tongues are frayed, the soles are worn smooth, the laces are about to snap, several eyelets are missing. Why enjoy something functional, when you can have the same product with its best features conveniently removed? Continue reading »

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Non-Innovative Comedy

If I were a stand-up comic, I would not be a groundbreaking one. I would be painfully outmoded. I would be the opposite of cutting edge. I would be the inverse of innovative. I would follow all the familiar formulas, in particular the Seinfeldian one known as “observational comedy.” This brand of humor was a big hit, but became pretty widespread, to the point of tedium and self-deprecation by its chief practitioner (and perhaps inventor), Jerry Seinfeld. In one episode of the show Seinfeld, George was introduced to Jerry as a stranger; George derided the “comedian” occupation, asking Jerry, “What, you do those ‘You ever notice’ kind of jokes? Yeah, very funny.”

I would continue to mine this form without any new twists. My bits would not even be groaners, they would just elicit confused silence, amplifying the hollow hiss of air ducts and chair legs scraping on floors.

To wit.

I got a new toaster this week. Cheap thing. Like $9 at Target. How do they make any money on these things? You got molded plastic parts, you got the metal frame, it’s kind of attractively curved. Functional. That’s gotta be designed. You got the cord, the coils, the Styrofoam packaging, the box, the printing on the box, someone to write the words on the box, the shipping, the marketing, the licensing, the branding, the fire hazard safety specs, the manual, the import tariffs or whatever. If I had to make one of these, it would cost me like $400. I could sell it to you for $450 to make it worth my time.

What the fuck?

Who’s gonna buy a toaster for $450? I’d be out of business in a day. I’d have to file for bankruptcy and have a clearance sale. Toaster: $325. Was $450.

Here’s a question. What is it with the two slots and the toaster-maker’s insistence about which one gets used? If you’re making two slices, fine: one piece of bread in each slot. No problem. But if you’re only making one—for some reason, you know, you live alone, or you’re married to someone who’s allergic to toast, I don’t know, maybe she’s on a toast-free diet or something. But if you’re only making one slice at a time YOU MUST USE THIS SLOT AND NOT THE OTHER. They aren’t kidding. This is so essential, they go through the trouble to engrave this on the metal. SINGLE, with a little arrow. THIS ONE!!! God, what are you doing? One slice? Don’t risk your life using the other! Put it in here! Are you crazy?! (At this point, I would yell and scream exaggeratedly for effect.)

It’s nuts. What will happen if you use the other? Will it explode? I mean, I watched while my bread was toasting. I looked down in there. I gotta tell ya, the slots looked the same. You got thin orange coils on either side of the bread, they’re glowing. Same thing in the other slot. They don’t look that different, people. But I’m not gonna mess around with it. (deadpan) I don’t want to void my warranty.

I’ll tell ya where they should put a warning like that, one where it’s more important than when slightly heating bread, and that is operating a motor vehicle. Yeah. They should engrave that warning on the passenger side door, by the handle. "If it’s just you driving, get in the other side. We’re serious. We can’t vouch for what will happen otherwise."

Thank you. You’ve been a great audience. Remember tip your people who brought you drinks.

Then I’ve got a bit about how bagels are a super-conductive material. You ever notice how hot they are when you take them out of the toaster, etc. And I propose, humourously, that the world’s energy problems might be solved by making unsold bagels into roof-mounted solar panels. It really takes of from there, trust me.

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A Scene

"Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit producer of ‘Sesame Street’ and other kids’ programs, is cutting about one-fifth of its work force because of the economic downturn. The New York-based company said Wednesday that it’s eliminating 67 of 355 staff positions."

—Associated Press, March 11

A Scene

>> Next.

>> Hi there! How are you today?

>> Fine, thanks. Mister—

>> Bird.

>> Bird. Right. Have a seat.

>> Why, thank you! Don’t mind if I do!

>> My god, can you fit in there? There’s a couch in the lounge, if—;

>> Just made it! A-OK!

>> Good God, look at you. Your legs have giant rings on them. I’m sorry. Okay, it says here, Bird, Big. Well, you’re not joking, are you?

>> No, sir!

>> Well, I’m Arlen Knudsen, your employment agent. Thanks for coming in to RandCorp Temps today.

>> Great to meet you, Arlen! Your name starts with the letter A! Like apple! And annnnnnnchovie! Do you like anchovies, Arlen?!

[peculiar silence]

>> Okay. Um, let’s start with your details. You’re 44. 6 foot 6. A yellow canary. You didn’t put down a social. I’m gonna need that.

Today’s job search is brought to you by the number seven!

>> What?

>> And the letter M!

>> Mr. Bird, could you excuse me one moment? I’m just going to check in with my supervisor.

[Knudsen smiles falsely, gets up, crosses the room, and leaves, with a stiff back and bulging eyes, trying to appear normal and calm, hoping that it can be proven that the recent long hours and endless interviews with applicants have caused a delusion and in fact there is not a overlarge canary sitting in the chair before his desk which, he reminds himself, has been occupied recently by a series of delivery drivers, accountants, hedge fund managers, and so on, all of whom were perfectly real and not imagined. In the kitchenette, he drinks three paper cones of water in succession, and takes a deep breath. His supervisor would actually be annoyed to be consulted, and anyway doing so might put Knudsen on the other side of his own desk, should his brain be playing tricks on him. When he returns to his office, the bird is singing happily to himself in a nasal voice, neither exactly male nor female, far too loudly and cheerfully.]

>> Sunny day! Everything’s right as rain!

>> Okay, sorry about that. [Knudsen sits again.] It’s been a bit crazy around here lately.

>> That’s okay, Arlen! I’m glad you came back!

>> Where was I? Residence? It just says "Sesame Street." No city, no state?

>> Won’t you tell me how to get! How to get to—

>> Just the street is fine. How about qualifications, Mr. Bird? The nitty-gritty, eh? Tell me about that.

>> I like to sing songs, and talk to my friends, and read books and learn!

>> Mm-hmm. And your work experience. Do you have any? Lemme guess—coal mine, ha ha?

>> I don’t know what you mean! I’ve been singing songs about the alphabet and talking to my friends and going to Mr. Hooper’s shop and learning about shapes and colors for all my life!

>> Is that so?

>> Right as rain, Arlen!

>> Great, great. [Knudsen speaks with a degree of condescension now, thinking if he can just pacify this fantasy until reality returns, or until maybe it is revealed as a practical joke perpetrated by his coworker Jim, intending to be a stress-reliever, something to break up the monotony, then he'll be fine and not have an actual full-blown crack-up.]

>> That IS great!

>> And what kind of work are you interested in, Mr. Bird? These are very tough times, you know. Demand is high, we’ve got Ph.Ds on the books with nothing for them.

>> I was thinking something federally mandated! You know, get a piece of those stimulus dollars! Maybe paving roads!

>> That’d be perfect, Big B! I have hundreds of jobs like that. It pays a thousand dollars an hour, has full benefits, and a company car—a BMW 530. I tell you what. I’m going to need some references. Is there a former boss I could call, maybe some letters of recommendation?

>> Today’s job search is brought to you by the letter M!

>> No, no, not those types of letters. Who are your friends?

>> Gosh, there’s Oscar the Grouch, Elmo, Grover. So many! But my best friend is Snuffle-upagus.

>> Snuffle-upagus?

>> Yes! The only problem is— [for once, Big Bird hangs his head and speaks in a sad tone] — no one else knows he exists. No one else has ever seen him. And no one believes me when I say he IS real!

>> Oh, don’t worry. We get that all the time.

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Covering My Bases

"I didn’t think they were steroids. That’s part of being young and stupid. It was over the counter, it was pretty basic, and it was really amateur hour…It was two guys doing a very amateur and immature thing. We probably didn’t even take it right."

—Alex Rodriguez, Feb 17 Press conference

Covering My Bases

Thank you. Thank you for coming today, especially in this nasty weather. And thank you for giving me an opportunity to address this issue, an opportunity I am humbly grateful for, given how I will have betrayed your trust at some point in the future. A trust you so faithfully put in me, and are so faithfully putting in me even as we speak, and which I will so foolishly abuse. Allegedly, at a time yet to come.

Today I apologize for that deed which I will certainly do, or error in judgment I will most probably make. For it—or them if there is more than one—I deeply and sincerely apologize. I am sorry. I will have acted stupidly, selfishly, and/or arrogantly.

I only hope in time you can understand the pressure that will have been heaped upon me by you after gaining the limelight which I am so vigilantly, tirelessly seeking, with the bloodlust of a rabid hyena, now, in my every action and word, every moment of every waking day, aside from today, when I obviously am here addressing you, and later, uptown, addressing Katie Couric and then later still the folks at something called "The Forgiveness Forum with Don Mackintyre." I hope you can see how the hurly burly of the media circus I presently want nothing more than to gain the attention of inevitably will skew my moral compass. And I hope you can forgive what will almost surely arise as an unpardonable breach of social etiquette, a wince-inducing abomination, violating any and all codes of decency and an affront to good taste which, moronically, I thought would be understood for its playful good humor and satiric intent. But sorely, sadly, will not have been. When it happens. As it must.

To my fans, I am sorry. To my friends and family, I am sorry. To my dear wife, I am sorry. Honey, I love you. To my legions of support staff: my editors, my agents, my former advisors and tutors, my fellow fiction workshoppers, from both the US and the UK,—neither of which countries will receive my gruesome blunder with the comic appreciation I will hope for, especially when I am seen the following morning leaving the apartment of my alleged accomplice, and especially more after making the ill-considered admission to the Access Fictionwood cameras that he or she and I will have been, or had been the night before, when the malfeasant act was performed, "very shit-faced." To all you, I convey my deepest regrets. Your forgiveness, should I receive it, will have been and will from then on continue to be, a most undeserved but welcome blessing.

Thank you. Thank you. I will now sign autographs at the autograph kiosk. Please queue in an orderly manner.

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