Is This Anything? Page 2

  Take a penny off on my bill.

  Then he gives me the prescription.

  I take that home.

  Open up the bottle.

  There’s another cotton ball in there.

  The Cotton Ball Syndicate was always one step ahead.

  Dogs in Cars

  I love taking my dog out in my car.

  Lot of trouble in the turns, though.

  Doesn’t understand inertia.

  Legs get all tense and quivery.

  “What’s happening here…? What’s going on?”

  He doesn’t know whether to stand up, sit down.

  Dogs like the car because from the outside it looks like a regular person sitting next to you.

  They feel equal.

  They look over,

  “This is nice.

  This is more like it.

  I think we should sit together like this all the time.”

  Then every turn he just drops out of view.

  Until he can get back up again.

  I don’t know why dogs always stick their head out the window.

  I think they think,

  “If I could run this fast, I’d be King of the Dogs.”

  If you take your dog out into the world, it amazes them the things that you can do.

  Any time of the day you get hungry, you can stop somewhere, come out with a hamburger.

  This blows their mind.

  They look at you with the expression,

  “Where did you get that…?

  It’s not 5:30.

  It’s the middle of the day.

  How’d you get fed?

  That thing you are eating is the greatest thing I have ever seen.”

  The real difference between man and animal is one thing, pockets.

  It’s not opposable thumbs.

  It’s pockets.

  Dogs dig holes in the ground because they’re trying to make pockets.

  This is what has held the animal kingdom back.

  You may say,

  “Then why hasn’t the kangaroo advanced as a species? They’ve got pockets.”

  They do.

  But they’ve got those short little arms, they can’t reach the pockets.

  “I have money to buy things.

  I just can’t get to it.”

  Life Cereal

  Arrogance.

  Too much arrogance.

  Everywhere.

  Even the food industry.

  Where in the world do you get your balls

  to call a breakfast cereal LIFE?

  What do they see in their little square oat cereal

  that makes them think that it should be named after our very existence?

  “How about Oaties, Squaries, Brownies?”

  “Oh no, this is much bigger than that.

  This is LIFE, I tell you.

  It’s LIFE.”

  What other names you think they considered?

  How about “Almighty God”?

  Was that in the running?

  Who wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning to a nice big bowl of “Almighty God”?

  Or New, “Almighty God With Raisins.”

  And if you don’t like it,

  you can go to hell.

  Parakeet Mirror

  My mother would always talk to me about what she’s going to do with the living room.

  This was her obsession.

  She was gonna fix the living room.

  “I want to change the living room.”

  My mother would say,

  “You know, if you make one wall of a room a mirror

  people think you have an entire other room.”

  She believed this.

  What kind of an idiot walks up to a mirror and goes,

  “Hey look, there’s a whole other room in there.

  There’s a guy in there that looks just like me.”

  My parakeet would fall for this.

  I would let him out of his cage.

  He would fly around and he would go “BANG” right into the mirror.

  With his little head that was very smooth at the front.

  And the feathers would fly.

  And he’d hit the ground.

  Then he’d fly off in another direction a little askew.

  But even if he thinks the mirror is another room,

  why doesn’t he at least try and avoid hitting the OTHER parakeet?

  “Look—up!”

  What happened to bird’s-eye view and all that?

  There’s another parakeet coming right at you!

  Roosevelt Island Tramway

  I see they just finished the Roosevelt Island Tramway.

  That’s nice…

  The city’s going bankrupt,

  they’re putting up rides for us.

  Next thing you know, there’ll be a roller coaster through the South Bronx.

  That would be the first roller coaster where the people scream on the flat part of the ride.

  Superman TV Show

  For me,

  when I was a kid,

  I thought the Superman TV show was probably the greatest TV show there’s ever been.

  Have you ever seen a rerun?

  You go, “What was I, out of my mind for a half hour every day?”

  There is not one believable microsecond in this entire series.

  The Daily Planet. The newspaper.

  Largest circulation newspaper in the entire city.

  They had three reporters.

  Each week two of them are tied up in a cave somewhere.

  I always wanted Superman to one time tell Lois and Jimmy,

  “Look, you’re not helping. You’re only making my job harder.

  Would you both please just let me deal with crooks?

  Believe me, I can handle it.”

  Superman and Clark Kent are the same person.

  But no one knows because of the secret identity.

  The disguise?

  A pair of glasses.

  That’s it.

  No other difference in these two faces.

  Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane. Professional journalists.

  Able to observe and analyze every detail of their environment.

  They see no resemblance.

  These are two entirely different people to their trained eye.

  If a friend of yours gets new glasses…

  is it impossible to recognize them?

  Clark Kent didn’t even have lenses in the frames of the glasses.

  He would scratch his eye right through them.

  So, Clark Kent wears the Super costume underneath the business suit.

  We’ve seen him tear open the shirt.

  What about the Superman boots?

  They go inside the regular shoes? How does that work?

  “I see Clark’s got those red leather socks on again today.”

  Did Jimmy Olsen ever get suspicious seeing Clark Kent in the men’s room?

  (Peeing in classic Superman “fists on waist” pose)

  Dogs Vote

  I’m looking forward to being an old man.

  I have to.

  I can’t look back on it.

  Parents always like to blow you away with their “the way it used to be” stories.

  “Milk was a nickel. Car was a quarter.”

  And I always think, could the world possibly change that much again?

  So that we will have equally amazing stories…

  I wonder if young people will ever say things to us like,

  “Grandpa, you mean when you were a kid, no dogs could vote?”

  “That’s right, Jimmy.

  They had no say in the world at all.

  They were just pets.”

  “Woww…”

  Disneyland

  I never went to Disneyland as a child.

  That was never going to happen.

  My parents were not taking me to a different state,

  thousands of miles away, so I c
ould sit in a teacup.

  My mother and father were both orphans.

  Their attitude was,

  “You have a room. You have a bed. That’s your ride.”

  I couldn’t even speak the word.

  “Mom, Dad, there’s a place called Dis—”

  “What?”

  “Dis—… Dis-nuh…”

  That was the most I could get out.

  Dad’s Thermostat

  You can’t beat Adult Power.

  Unlimited television.

  Cookies any time you want.

  Plus you can go home tonight and screw around with that thermostat all you like.

  We are in charge of it now.

  My father got me so crazy with that thing.

  I didn’t go near a thermostat until I was 28 years old.

  I was in a hotel room in Pittsburgh when I finally got up the guts to move it a little bit.

  The whole night I couldn’t sleep.

  I was afraid my father was going to burst in the door,

  “Who touched the thermostat in here?

  You know, I set it there… for a reason.”

  For years I waited for my father to take me aside

  and explain to me the secret of the thermostat.

  And then one day he did sit me down,

  told me this whole story—

  The sperm, the egg, intercourse.

  I said, “Dad, who cares?

  Get to the part where the thermostat comes in.

  What does it really control?”

  Parents Look Like

  I’m wearing contact lenses now but I wore glasses at the age of 10.

  I thought I had to get glasses because I couldn’t tell what my parents looked like.

  I’d ask my mother for money and she’d always say,

  “What do I look like, a bank?”

  “Do I look like I’m made of money to you?”

  The truth is, when you’re a kid your parents are the bank.

  Where else am I going to get money?

  Am I going to walk into Chase Manhattan?

  They’re going to say,

  “What do I look like, your mother?”

  “Beat it, four eyes…”

  Adult Pockets

  One big difference between adults and kids is

  the number of pockets they go through when they’re looking for something.

  Adults touch every pocket on their clothes when they’re looking for something.

  “I thought… for sure… I had… that with me…”

  When you’re a little kid,

  somebody asks you if you have something,

  you just hold both palms straight out.

  “No, I don’t have it.”

  You don’t have to check.

  You have nothing.

  Anything you have is in your hand.

  You ask a kid, “You have change of a quarter?”

  (hold hands out palms up)

  He goes, “Nope.”

  Ask him to double-check, “Are you sure?”

  They just spread their fingers out wider.

  Pajamas

  I don’t know why the suit projects this image of power.

  Why is it intimidating?

  “We’d better do what this guy says, his pants match his jacket.”

  Men love the suit so much, we’ve actually styled our pajamas to look like a tiny suit.

  Three buttons down the front.

  The little lapels.

  Breast pocket.

  What’s that for?

  You put a pencil in there.

  Roll over in the middle of the night.

  You kill yourself.

  Ruin Appetite

  I really wanted adulthood at a certain point.

  I just couldn’t build one more balsa wood glider.

  I needed it to be over.

  I needed it to be:

  If I want a cookie,

  I have a cookie.

  I will have 3 cookies.

  6 cookies.

  Or 8 cookies, if I want.

  Sometimes in fact,

  I will intentionally ruin my entire appetite.

  Because as adults we understand…

  Even if you ruin an appetite,

  there’s another appetite coming right behind it.

  There’s no danger of running out of appetites.

  I can ruin 100 of them.

  Still have thousands left.

  Why are we being so careful with each one?

  I got millions of appetites.

  The Frigidaire Building

  The best toy I ever had as a kid was when somebody on our street got a new refrigerator,

  and I got that big brown cardboard box to play with.

  Because as a kid,

  this is the closest you’re going to come to having your own apartment.

  You crawl in, “I think I’ll just live here from now on.”

  Cut a hole for a window, stick your head out.

  “Mom, Dad, you must come over some time.

  We live so close.

  I’m on the front lawn.

  It’s the Frigidaire building.

  Apartment #1.”

  First Wallet

  I remember my first wallet.

  The brown plastic one with the little cowboy on it.

  It’s the only wallet where you take the time to fill out the I.D. card that comes with the wallet.

  Because you need identification when you’re seven years old.

  In case they check you getting on the merry-go-round.

  “Yeah, I’m old enough for the zebra… that’s me.

  I don’t know about these other kids,

  but I’ve got the card already filled out.”

  Jawbreakers

  Must be fun inventing new candy for kids.

  The nutritional leeway is unbelievable.

  We had candy called JAWBREAKERS.

  Candy so hard, it was conceivable you could break your jaw trying to eat it.

  We thought this was great.

  Kids never go,

  “Hey, what’s in this product?

  Jimmy, let me check the ingredients in these Jawbreakers.

  Artificial coloring isn’t the best thing to put in our system, you know.”

  Kids think,

  “Only 25¢ for a chance at serious injury?

  That’s good value.”

  Shoe Store Walk

  I think shoes are one of the toughest things to buy.

  You just look in the window of a shoe store…

  You can see people having a tough time.

  Brows furrowed…

  Just staring off into the distance.

  Why when we try on a new pair of shoes and walk around the store, do we have this vacant zombie look?

  (walking around slowly)

  “Yeah… these… feel… pretty… good…”

  Your brain is so focused on your feet there’s none left to operate your face.

  “Are these the 9…?

  Or the 9½…?

  I… just… can’t… seem… to… feel… my… feet…”

  Some shoes come in different widths.

  Some don’t.

  So…

  Do we need different widths or don’t we?

  Then you go over to that little one-foot-high mirror on the floor.

  So you can see the shoes from your cat’s POV.

  Or if I walk past a drunk lying on the street,

  “What do you think of these?

  I happen to know they look very good from that angle.”

  Cub Scouts

  I was a Cub Scout when I was 9 years old.

  Any ex-Cubbies here…?

  Anyone still go to the meetings?

  It’s tough to stay with it.

  But it stays with you.

  When you’ve had a little yellow button on top of your head you never forget.

  I remember I’d get the outfit all set up, blue pant
s, blue shirt, little yellow neckerchief.

  That giant metal thing to hold the neckerchief together.

  You go outside, get beat up, come back, put your regular clothes on.

  You’re not making it to school in that outfit.

  That’s why we formed packs.

  To survive.

  It’s also why they taught us to camp in the wilderness.

  If we had normal clothes we’d check into a hotel like anybody else.

  In that getup you want to be in the woods.

  I spent 99% of my time as a Cub Scout just trying to get my hat back.

  That was all I did.

  Running back and forth at my bus stop going, “Quit it…!”

  I think the first merit badge book was “Bear,” then “Lion.”

  I never got past “Bear.”

  I thought,

  “Bear, Lion, at this rate we’ll never get to women.”

  Even at 9 I was thinking,

  “Come on, nightclubs, birth control, pick up the pace.

  I’m not meeting a lot of bears out there.”

  Swiss Army Knife

  The Swiss Army.

  Never been involved in a war in two hundred years.

  It’s a lucky thing.

  Did you ever see this little Swiss Army knife?

  Corkscrews, bottle openers, nail file.

  You don’t want to go to war with this thing.

  Unless they’re in the war of the Dinner Parties they have no chance.

  “Come on, buddy, let’s go…

  You get past me, the guy behind me has a spoon.

  I got the toenail clippers out, so just back off.

  I’ll clip that pinky toe down to nothing.

  Take you three weeks to grow it back.”

  Gym Class

  Health clubs should be like gym class.

  Make everybody wear the little same color gym suit.

  Remember your gym suit?

  “Where’s your suit? You can’t take gym without your suit.”

  It was like a suit.

  Top and bottom same material.

  Jockstrap.

  It’s a three-piece suit.

  Strong elastic on those gym shorts.

  And those little pant legs that just came straight out.

  Really flatters the powerful physique most boys have at 11 years old.