Author Archives: A.J. Jacobs

Published: Monday, July 31, 2006

Insane Clown Politics

I’m pretty sure Pfizer somehow took control of the media this past week to boost sales of Zoloft. Every headline is depressing. It just depends what shade of depressing. The sports doping scandals? Mildly depressing. Mel Gibson’s Wagnerian ranting? Weirdly depressing. The Mideast crisis? Depressing depressing. Miami Vice’s mediocre box office revenue? Well, not that depressing, actually. I’ll get over it.

There’s one other not-totally-gloomy story I’ve read in the past seven days.

It’s about a Venezuelan comedian named Benjamin Rausseo. He calls himself the “Count of Guacharo” and tells obscenity-laden jokes wearing a straw hat, shorts and flip-flops.

Also: he’s running against Hugo Chavez for president of Venezuela. (Hugo Chavez being, of course, the America-detesting leftist leader — the one Pat Robertson thought it’d be a good idea to assassinate).

The Count seems the modern equivalent of one of my favorite historical characters: Dan Rice. Dan was the 19th century’s most famous clown. He wore a top hat, a star-spangled costume and beard — and is thought to have inspired Uncle Sam’s look. He owned a tightrope-walking elephant. He was friends with Abe Lincoln. He liked to put on parodies of Shakespeare.
And, in 1868, he made a serious run for the Republican nomination for president.

So that cliche about politicians being clowns? Sometimes — perhaps not often enough — it’s no metaphor.

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Published: Friday, July 28, 2006

Wiki Humor

I may be way late to this party, but I loved the Onion’s parody of Wikipedia.

As someone who uses Wikipedia too much (sorry Britannica!) I thought it was a nice reminder that finding a few dozen backup sources is probably a good idea. Especially since Wikipedia once said a friend of mine is gay, when, last time I checked (which was yesterday) he has a wife and two kids. (And no, my friend is not the star of MI-III).

Speaking of Wikipedia, I looked up its entry on Doping today because of the Tour de France scandale. The Wikipedia says that ancient Greek Olympic athletes used to eat sheep’s testicles to boost testosterone. I can’t vouch for whether they were, in fact, sheep’s testicles instead of bull testicles or tiger testicles. The Britannica doesn’t say. But thought you’d want to know.

By the way, I’m starting to think all sports should start a separate league in which athletes can swallow as many performance enhancing drugs as they please. The MLB Ultra. Or the NBA Plus. Or something. Because, honestly, it’d be pretty interesting to watch. Who wouldn’t want to see a 1400-foot home run?

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Published: Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Reege-onomics

I just came across amazingly detailed analysis of my Who Wants to Be a Millionaire strategy by someone who is much smarter than I am. I wish I had talked to this guy before humiliating myself on the show.

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Published: Monday, July 24, 2006

The Tunguska Literary Event

Great news for fans of massive, unexplained Siberian explosions. The Tunguska Event is finally getting the highbrow literary treatement it deserves.

An article in the Guardian says that Pynchon’s new novel – his first in nine years – features the T.E. as a plot point. The Guardian says:

A description of the still-untitled book – apparently written by Pynchon himself – has been posted on Amazon.com. It offers a tantalising glimpse of the coming work.

“Spanning the period between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after world war I, this novel moves from the labour troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

I have to say, that is one awesome teaser. I would buy it just for the T.E. chapter alone. As I wrote in the Know-It-All, the Tunguska Event has long been a fascination of mine. If you’ll allow me to quote myself ever so briefly:

“The Tunguska Event was an ‘enormous aerial explosion that, at about 7:40 AM on June 30, 1908, flattened approximately 500,000 acres of pine forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, central Siberia in Russia. The energy of the explosion was equivalent to that of 10 to 15 megatons of TNT. Uncertain evidence of various kinds suggests that the explosion was perhaps caused by a comet fragment colliding with the Earth.’
I had more than a passing acquaintance with the Tunguska event. For a couple weeks there, when I was 8 or 9, I was obsessed with it. I had read about the massive Siberian explosion in a collection of unsolved mysteries, and I can now recall the black and white drawing of thousands of trees splayed out on the forest floor. I looked it up in other books after that. I knew all the theories–that the Tunguska event was really the result of a UFO doing target practice, or that it was a chunk of anti-matter that somehow took a left turn and sailed into our atmosphere. Naturally, I worried–if it can happen in Siberia, why can’t it happen in Manhattan? Who’s to say that I won’t be vaporized in the 82nd Street Event.”

The Tunguska Event has also been featured in a story co-written by sci fi writer Bruce Sterling and a handful of movies. But Pynchon’s will surely be the Sistine Chapel of TE-based fiction.

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Published: Thursday, July 20, 2006

Canned Laughter, Emoticons and the French

In case you didn’t pick up the Sydney Morning Herald the other day, columnist David Dale wrote a funny piece about canned laughter, and was nice enough to quote from my section in the Know-it-All on this very important topic. I wrote about the Golden Age of canned laughter, which occurred during 19th century France. This was when every theater owner hired claques — audience plants whose job it was to whip the real audience into a frenzy.

And the brilliant innovation the French came up with was specialization. Each claque member had his or her own important job to perform: There were the rieurs, who laughed loudly during comedies. There were the bisseurs, who shouted for encores. There were the commissaires, who would elbow their neighbors and say, “This is the good part.” And my favorite of all, the ‘pluereuses,’ women who were paid good francs to weep at the sad parts of tragedies. I love this idea. I’m not sure why the networks never thought of canned crying.

David Dale says that Aussies are even less tolerant of canned laughter than us Yanks. I can’t say for sure whether he’s right. But I do know canned laughter seems strangely vestigial nowadays. I can’t watch Seinfeld anymore because of the laugh track. It feels like I’m watching something from another era, like Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

On the other hand, the textual equivalent of canned laughter seems to be going strong. Emoticons. Am I crazy, or have they gone from hopelessly dorky to kind of cool? If not cool, then at least socially acceptable.

Here’s my prediction: Emoticons will soon go Hollywood. I predict celebrity emoticons. You’ll be able to end your sentences with a head shot of Ray Liotta doing his evil laugh from Goodfellas. Or you could end a sad sentence with a shot of the native American crying in the 80s PSA about pollution.

Does this already exist and I’m hopelessly behind the curve? ;)

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Published: Monday, July 17, 2006

Um. Sorry about that

I had to hunker down in an undisclosed location (aka my living room) for a couple of weeks there. I’m desparately trying to finish my upcoming book, and my poor blog got ignored.

But I’m back, and I promise to water and feed my blog much more often. (And since I’m following the Bible, I have to keep my promises).

By the way, in reference to my deadbeat blogging, SAEllie wrote “I can hear crickets.” Point taken. Though I should add, in case it helps my cause, that crickets are Biblically-approved. They are one of the few insects that Leviticus says you are allowed to eat. (Grasshoppers and locusts are okay as well).

You notice that Bush was caught using the S-word today? Personally, my favorite cussing by a public figure was General Patton’s obscenity-laden speech. It’s crazy. The movie version by George C. Scott is cleaned up beyond recognition.

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Published: Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Buttons, Jam and the Amish

I just came back from a much-delayed trip to visit Pennsylvania’s Amish country for my Bible book. I had the pleasure of hanging out with Amos Smucker, a distant relative of the Smuckers of strawberry jam fame. I liked him enormously.
Amos probably won’t be going on the road with Dane Cook anytime soon, but he did give me a little taste of Amish humor. Including this joke:

Question: What happens when an Amish woman marries a Mennonite man?
Answer: She drives him buggy.

There you have it. Not bad, given that Amish comedy is working with some pretty constraining preconditions.

I also learned that my beloved Britannica made a mistake in the Amish entry. Well, perhaps not a mistake, more of an overstatement. The EB says that the Amish refuse to wear buttons, instead opting for the hook-and-eye system. For reasons unknown, this fact has stayed in my brain. So I was shocked to see Amos’ suspenders attached to his pants with — yes — buttons. I asked, and it turns out that, at least in modern times, buttons are allowed every day but Sunday.

More soon.

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Published: Monday, June 5, 2006

Death of a Grateful Dead

I just read that Vince Welnick died over the weekend. He was the keyboard player for the Grateful Dead. In honor of that, I thought I’d reprint the Grateful Dead section from the heartwarming bestseller The Know-It-All.

By the way, as of yesterday, I’m feeling better, eyelids and all.

Grateful Dead
I’m no Deadhead–I attended one Dead show, which I found about as interesting as the diagram charting the life cycle of bread mold in the Fungi section. Still, I know enough about the classic stoner band to hold my own. I know about Jerry Garcia, LSD-laced punches, Terrapin Station, etc. And I certainly know more than my mom, who called me the day Garcia died to ask me if I knew who “Jerry” was. She came home to a barely coherent 10 minute message on her answering machine from a deadhead at a gas station. He had just heard the news about Jerry, and was apparently too bummed out to dial the phone correctly. In any case, I probably already know everything the Britannica has to say about the Grateful Dead.
I start to read: “In folktales of many cultures, the spirit of the deceased person…” Well, I’m not even through the first sentence and I feel like quite the moron. I had always figured Jerry and co. had come up with the name The Grateful Dead out of their acid-addled heads. But no, it’s a sly allusion. Just so you know, the grateful dead folktale goes like this: A traveler finds a corpse of a man who was denied a burial because he had too many unpaid debts. The nice traveler pays for a burial, and goes on his way. Sometime later, the spirit of the corpse appears to the traveler in the form of an animal and saves him from some danger. Finally, the animal reveals himself to be the grateful spirit of the dead man and offers the traveler two free tickets to Red Rock and some really awesome hash brownies. Well, I embellished there at the end. But you get the idea.
The Grateful Dead bait and switch is not unusual. I have a similar forehead-slapping revelation every few pages, and they always make me feel dumb as a box of extrusive igneous rocks. It’s making me paranoid. I’m realizing there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of allusions I’m missing every day. They’re hiding everywhere–in my medicine cabinet, on my bookshelf, on my TV screen–just waiting to make me look stupid. I’m not talking about Finnegans Wake. I wouldn’t feel too bad about missing a couple Joycean allusions to Druidic runes. I’m talking about everyday things like Lorna Doone, which I thought was a Nabisco cookie, but turns out to be a famous swashbuckling novel by English novelist Richard Blackmore. Or corvette, which isn’t just a car, but a small naval vessel.
Sadly, the Grateful Dead isn’t even the first band name I learned about in the Britannica. I got the same feeling when I read about Eurythmics–which isn’t just Annie Lennox’s 80s band, but was originally an early 20th century method of teaching music involving the tapping of feet and clapping of hands. Or about Supertramp, which came from the title of a William Davies book called “The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp.”
I’m not up to N yet, but I figure ‘N Sync is a revolutionary faction in the Ottoman empire or something.

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Published: Tuesday, May 30, 2006

You and your eyelids

I haven’t been a very responsible blogger recently. The reason: I’ve been sick for two weeks. An unpleasant flu that makes me sleep as much as the average koala (22 hours a day).

Since I couldn’t muster the energy to do much else, I searched for “diseases” in the notes I took while reading the encyclopedia. This was probably a bad idea. It just reminded me of the alarming number of things that can go wrong with the human body. Like eyelids. I could write an entire book on the various and horrible eyelid malfunctions. A sampling:

Entropion – the turning in of the border of the eyelid.

Ectropion – the sagging of the lower eyelid

Albrecht von Grafe – the discovere of “Grafe’s sign,” a disease in which the upper eyelid fails to follow the eyeball when looking downard.

Keratitis – when the eyelids are unable to close. Also called ‘hare eyes’ after the ancient belief that rabbits don’t close their eyes.

Okay, so it wouldn’t be a very interesting book. But I’ll tell you this: I will never take my smoothly functioning eyelids for granted again.

In other news, we got a Dr. Seuss book which featured a weird elephant-like animal called a “Blogg.”

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Published: Friday, May 19, 2006

Basketball (and a bonus Vollyeball fact too!)

I’m no sports expert. To quote the bestselling book The Know-It-All, “I think I know less about current professional athletics than any fully functioning man in the United States, including your average Amish dairy farmer — who, by the way, runs a very high risk of inheriting knock knees.” (I only quoted myself so that I could have an excuse to mention that I’m visiting the Amish this weekend for my new book on the Bible. Very excited).

I lost interest in sports when I was an early teen, about the same time I cancelled my Ranger Rick subscription. I’m not sure why. I suspect it had to do with the wide gulf between my love of sports and my ability to play sports. We’re talking a huge gap. Canyon-sized. It was just too depressing.

My son Jasper has taken up the slack. He’s obsessed with sports. He reads the NYT sports pages every day. Not so much the articles on performance-enhancing-drug scandals; he prefers the photos with spherical objects of different sizes and colors, so that he can weigh in with his commentary: “BALL! BALL!”

But anyway, thanks to Jasper, I know it’s basketball playoffs. So here’s some random basketball trivia:

1) Volleyball was invented for businessmen who found the new game of basketball too vigorous. Volleyball was just a bunch of fat, lazy guys. If that’s not sad enough, it was called ‘mintonette.’ Has to be the most emasculating sport name in history

2) In the first pro basketball league, there was a chicken wire fence that separated the players from the fans. The players were in a cage. Which they might want to reinstate to prevent another Pistons riot situation.

3) The silhouette in NBA logo is former Lakers star Jerry West. There’s also a vicious rumor that the guy in the MLB logo is Harmon Killebrew, but it turns out to be an urban legend. The real baseball guy is…no one. Just a generic pre-steroid-enhanced player.

4) In early basketball, the laces were on the outside of the ball, so dribbling was dangerous. The ball could shoot off in weird directions.

5) Basketball was banned from YMCAs soon after it was invented, so they moved to halls where they had to deal with obstacles like pillars, stairways and offices — the precursor to the Jordan-Byrd McDonald’s ads of the 90s (even I saw those).

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