Rick and I are always in more of a hurry to share bad news with each other than good. I think the issue is that sharing good news can easily begin to feel like bragging, which is a terrible, antisocial habit, and is also one of the tell-tale signs of something we both find offensive: healthy self-esteem.
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Back in my old office job we had these weekly social events every Thursday afternoon, just to blow off steam. Usually, little pockets of conversation would form in different parts of the room. This is way back while they were filming the movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A few of us office nerds were pretty excited about it. While we were discussing the casting I said, “They got Alan Rickman to be the voice of Marvin.”
This apparently got the attention of a coworker across the room, whom I will call Jim.
Jim semi-shouted at me, “Who’d they get?”
Bear in mind that he stayed where he was, across the room from me, as he interjected himself into my conversation.
I said, “Alan Rickman,” now self-conscious because all other conversation has stopped and Jim and I had the room’s undivided attention.
Jim said, “Oh. Who’s he playing?”
I said, “He’s the voice of Marvin.”
Jim thought about this for a second and said, “Oh. Huh.”
I said, “Yeah, I think it’s a good fit.”
Then Jim asked, “What movie is this in?”
And I said, “Man, why do I even talk to you?!”
It’s a miracle that I by accident found my way into an office where they would not only tolerate me talking to a coworker that way, but where it got a big laugh from the entire room. I was later told by more than one coworker that they had often asked themselves why they even talked to Jim.
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I have known people that, if they had liked me, I would have been forced to reevaluate my life.
I once had to share a hotel room with a comedian who announced out of the blue that he was going to call his wife and try to get some “phone sex.”
His opening gambit was to tell her, “You need to lose some weight.” After that, he listed many of the sex acts he would do “to” her if she did lose weight.
If he had thought I was his kind of guy, I would have been inconsolable.
Also, I’ve always liked to think that as soon as he hung up the phone, his wife began carb loading to make sure she didn’t lose an ounce.
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If anyone in Florida asked where I was from, I said Seattle, because people knew where that was, and I had lived there most recently.
If people in Seattle asked where I was from, I said “The Yakima Valley,” because they knew where that was, and really, people from Seattle view anything east of the mountains as the planet Tatooine. (Making the city of Yakima the Mos Eisley Spaceport.)
If I meet someone from Eastern Washington, I tell them I’m from Sunnyside, then tell them that, yes, I am aware of the terrible odor from the feed lots that constantly envelop the freeway that passes the town, and I explain that when you live there you go nose-blind and stop noticing it.
If I meet someone from any of the towns immediately around Sunnyside, then I tell them the real truth, which is that I grew up in Outlook, a “town” 15 minutes away from Sunnyside that consisted of a post office, a church, a school, a Grange hall, and what used to be, before it closed down, the world’s least convenient convenience store.
Why do I bring this up now? Because if you ever meet someone from Outlook, you do NOT want to mention that you’ve heard that the astronaut Bonnie Dunbar is from Sunnyside. They will explain at great length and top volume that she was born and raised in Outlook, and that the you see sign as you enter Sunnyside stating that she came from there is inaccurate and needs to be torn down.
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I have never been a sports fan, but during the current lockdown situation I have found myself watching marble racing and a bit of cornhole. It makes me wonder if my problem isn’t with sports so much as it’s with successful mainstream sports. Maybe I need an element of kitsch, or some twist that makes the sport vaguely pathetic.
Thinking about it now, the only sports program I have ever made a point of watching was the short-lived game show, Let’s Bowl.
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I never thought about it before, but talking to a friend about your plan to “ask someone out” is similar to talking about your plan to “call someone out.” The intent is the opposite—fighting vs. hopefully not fighting—but the sentence structure, the hushed tones of the conversation, and, sadly, the discomfort caused in the person you’re discussing can be very much the same.
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Shameful admission time. I have only ever seen The Evil Dead once, and I never saw the modern remake. I kind of consider The Evil Dead 2 to not be a sequel so much as a second draft.
The movie I want to see is a documentary about the period of time in the early ’80s when Bruce Campbell and Sam Rami shared an apartment with the Coen Brothers, Francis McDormand, Holly Hunter, and Kathy Bates. That’s a lot of talent and strong personalities in a confined space. There must be some great stories there.
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For the record, this strip is not about a trip to Arby’s. It refers to some other purveyor of seasoned curly fries. I happen to like Arby’s every now and then. I like roast beef. I like seasoned curly fries. I like the vaguely coffee-ish flavor of a Jamocha shake. If you know a more convenient place to obtain these items, I’d like to hear it.
Arby’s gets a lot of abuse, and I don’t really understand why. Their food is certainly no worse than any other number of fast food chains. I think it’s just that it’s different. In a sea of burgers with ketchup, tacos with hot sauce, and chicken fingers with ranch, their French dip sandwiches with “horsey sauce” stand out, and as they’ve learned, standing out has its disadvantages.
I will admit, though, that their current slogan, “we have the meats,” has made “the meats” into a euphemism for intestinal problems in our house.
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Of course, I’m not really any sort of expert on proper formal communication. When this comic was written I tended to finish my emails with “End Transmission.”
For a while, back when I was a comedian, I ended emails with “Your hatred nourishes me.” It was a catchphrase from my act, which should give you some idea of how my career was going.
Just so you know, at that time Ric ended his emails with “Yours in perfect manhood.”
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