Biden twinkled at the memory:  “If he knew that the air compressor from his Frigidaire was travelling the world talking about global warming he’d be spinning in his grave!  Pop-pop hated the Gores with a passion!”

Biden’s bizarre claim that he had been building robots from his youth — and had built Al Gore over a long weekend in 1983 — startled the crowd at the Washington Marriott hotel where he was giving a speech on trade quotas. “The man the world knows as Al Gore, Jr. is my final and my greatest creation!  Through him I have been able to build the internet and through him — I consider him my son, of course, and he calls me ‘Fa-fa’ — I have won the Nobel Prize!  But I’m happy to let Al have credit for both.  It’s amazing what you can get accomplished if you aren’t looking to take credit for it.  By the way, that’s my line, not Reagan’s!”

“Through Al and the internet,” he went on, raising his hands, “I control much of the known world today.  By any reasonable measure…  I am a god!  Behold me!!”

Biden said that Tipper Gore was “in on the secret,” but had bought into the idea of “marrying” a robot so that she could be “close to power.” “It’s DC power,” he said.  “Get it?! You gotta be quick!”

Biden went on:  “Tipper’d die if she knew I was talking about this! But a guy gets to a certain age and he realizes some secrets aren’t worth keeping.  Doggone it!  I’m the creator of Al Gore!! I’m damned proud of that!  That doesn’t mean Al does everything I want — but every ’son’ has to stray from his old man now and again to show he’s his own person.  The Lord knows Al’s not a person in the normal sense — you can’t have a rear end full of freon and be a person like you or I — but in every other sense Al Gore is his own person and I’ve respected that — even though I created his ass and he knows it!

“Besides,” quipped Biden, ” I could shut him down any time, so he better watch his step!  I’m the only one who knows how to keep those old servos working!!  Al has to report to me every few months or he’ll begin to whine and sizzle and spark!  The press just think we’re two veeps meeting for lunch, but Al and I know the real poop.  I’m extending his damn life!”

Angry GOP leaders said Biden was “a publicity hound who took credit for everything, including the surge in Iraq, which he and President Obama had originally opposed.  Let him take the credit for creating Al Gore.  That’s one he can have.”   The White House had no comment.

**

Eric Metaxas is the author of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (but were afraid to ask):  THE JESUS EDITION and the New York Times bestselling Amazing Grace:  William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery.

www.ericmetaxas.com DON’T GO THERE…

Biden: “We have overcome! Glory, Hallelujah!”

* *

BIDEN’S LAST GAFFE: DECLARES SELF “FIRST ‘NEGRO’ VP”

In the latest in a series of verbal gaffes, flub-ups, and super-bloopers, U.S. Vice President Joseph P. Biden yesterday proclaimed himself “America’s first ‘negro’ Vice President”. The staggering statement immediately sparked confusion and rancor in his audience, and led to widespread calls for his resignation.

The comment came late in the day, when the increasingly unpredictable 66-year-old Biden is known to go off-script, and capped off a series of bizarre statements that put him at odds with the President’s official policy.

But Beltway insiders saw the breach coming: Biden was known to be unhappy about recently being excluded from important Presidential meetings because of what some were calling “inappropriate behavior.” At a meeting of Senate leaders a week earlier, Biden kept grabbing at Nancy Pelosi’s neck skin, insisting she should have cosmetic surgery. “Don’t let the turkey-neck get you down!” he said, grinning.

Later, in a Cabinet meeting, he had playfully gotten the President in a prolonged bear-hug from behind, refusing to let go until the President said “Joe Biden’s the best-looking Vice President ever.” Aides said that the President was “obviously uncomfortable”.

The “bear-hug incident” had been a last-straw for the President, who was privately “seething” and decided to exclude Biden from future top-level meetings. But Biden wouldn’t take the snub lying down and on Monday had vowed “to be my own man, come what may.”

Speaking to a pro-Israel group that morning he shocked reporters by declaring that a missile strike on Tehran was probably “imminent” — or “certainly would be if I had a damn thing to say about it. They don’t listen to me.”

An hour later, Biden was at it again, telling a small group of gay activists touring the Capitol that he was ready to put same-sex marriage into the Constitution “if that would help heal our nation.” He also said: “But you gays have to tell your buddy Barak to give me the access I was promised in the campaign!”

White House insiders were irate and immediately contacted the Vice President’s staff, demanding he issue clear retractions before the day’s news cycle came to a close. Biden’s advisers begged him to reverse course firmly and swiftly, with a press conference. Ironically, it was in an effort to do just that that Biden made what critics are calling the “worst gaffe of his gaffe-filled career.”

Biden understood that he needed to apologize and make it “crystal clear” that he was on the same page as the President. But in the process, he seemed to get carried away.

“Make no mistake, my friends,” he said, squinting thoughtfully and grasping the podium with both hands, “the Vice President is appointed by the President and serves at the President’s pleasure. And whatever I might have said to indicate that there was the slightest bit of daylight between my views and the President’s is sheer hogwash and tomfoolery! I am part of the Barack Obama administration — period — so by definition, whatever he stands for and whoever he is, I am a part of that, legally and politically and every other way you want to imagine. And that’s not my opinion; it’s how our government works! Read the Constitution!”

Then he seemed to be lost in thought for a moment. “Holy Cow!” he suddenly said, apparently thinking out loud, “I’m the first negro Vice-president!”

“I’d never thought of that before,” he muttered to himself, evidently as shocked as his audience by what he had just said. His statement was greeted with baffled silence and then scattered boos. Biden quickly sensed he’d said something amiss. “I probably shouldn’t say ‘negro.’” he said, “But back when I was a boy in Scranton, Pennsylvania, we used to say ‘colored.’ Negro was a step-up! So you’ll have to forgive me.”

“I know I’ll catch heck for it tomorrow, so let me set the record straight: I’m the first black — correction, I’m the first Afro-American Vice-President! I stand behind the policies and racial make-up of my President on every level! If he’s black, I’m black. And I’m damned proud of it! I stand shoulder to shoulder with Barack and Michelle and all of the blacks in this administration! And thank God there are so many of us! It’s about time!”

He then lifted his arms triumphantly, saying: “We have overcome! Glory, hallelujah!”, finally adding: “The President and I are soul brothers! Heavens to Betsy! Wait till my mother finds out!”

Reaction was swift, with condemnations coming from all quarters. Former President George H.W. Bush said he found Biden’s comments “appalling”, adding: “The fella’s gone plum loco”. Hollywood comedian Wanda Sykes was less measured: “That fool’s about as black as Rush Limbaugh’s double-wide ass! Dag! I must be going blind, cause if Biden’s black, Wesley Snipes is a damn albino!”

The Obama administration immediately distanced itself from the remark, with a White House official telling reporters: “President Obama has great affection for Joe, but we can make no more sense of the statement than any of you can. Joe Biden speaks for Joe Biden.” END

Enjoying a laugh before the recent difficulties.

A Modest Proposal (with apologies to Henry Aaron and Nate Hawthorne)

THE BALLPLAYERS AT THE OAKEN DOOR of Bud Selig’s office had decided: something must needs be done about Barry Bonds! The badass numbers he’d put up might stand forever — but mightn’t their gaudy brightness be veiled, and their jive-ass splendor somehow muted? Mustn’t this pumped-up fellow pay some price for the anabolic sorcery that had catapulted him — like his juiced longballs — into the upperdeck pantheon of Ruth and Aaron? And so they were here to demand justice, and to vent.

Beside the grim portal of Selig’s door sat a potted Pete Rose bush. Its blooms were withered, like the dugs of an old sow travelling the sports memorabilia circuit, and it stood there now as a stern warning that gambling would not be tolerated, at least not under this Commissioner’s otherwise blind eye.

At last the door opened! The jostling throng approached the high ebon desk at which Selig sat, imposing in black gown and white starched ruff. Enclosing his sweating head, and seeming almost to pinch it spitefully, was an oversized powdered wig. His face was wan and drawn, doubtless from the great weight of his many important indecisions, and from the infernal wig. It was thought that Selig had exiled himself here to his office to escape the elephantine scandal that with each Bonds homerun seemed to raise its massy trunk and blast him backwards with an explosive cataract of water: kerflooosh!

At last Ye Commisioner spoke. “Wherefore glare ye at me so? Art thou all in league with the fans and press? What wouldst thou have me to do?”

The leaders of the mob had prepared for this moment. Quickly producing a spool of thread and a penny-farthing’s worth of scarlet-colored flannel, they presented their simple solution. And at long last, just as the early hour was announced — quack quack — on Imus’s new Sirius radio program, an agreement, such as both parties thought befitting the no-win situation, was struck.

* *

One week later, at AT&T/Balco Field, the door of the clubhouse was flung open and there, filling it’s frame like the massive onyx statue of some bull-headed Egyptian god, stood the buffed, admonished figure. He it was who stood there, and none other than he was there a-standin’. How he stood!

As he stepped onto the field now, he bore an air of hurt dignity, for the endless jeers and boos stung, as did the rounds of dried flaxseed which some fired sarcastically at him with homemade airguns. His unnaturally brawny forearms were clutched across his curiously vast chest, as if to conceal something. But then, self-consciously, he let his arms drop… how they dropped! And there — there — on the breast of his uniform, in fine red cloth, surrounded with fantastic flourishes of golden thread, was a large embroidered asterisk! The rumors were true — and the goggling crowds drank it in: the Scarlet Asterisk!

To some it seemed a living symbol of his now at-long-last officially mitigated stats — a blood-gorged tick vengefully draining the very life from him and his puffed-up achievements! “And doth it not serve him right?” clucked one goodwife to her pimp, Shasta.

Most were giddy to see Bonds get this long-deserved come-uppance — and Selig, now hailed as a hero, penned a light-hearted memoir of the episode, titled Asterisky Business.

For many the scarlet notation had the effect almost of a spell, taking Bonds out of the ordinary relations with his fans and other team members, inclosing him in a sphere by himself, with three lockers and his own Barca-lounger and flat-panel tv. There quickly grew up around this blood-red flower of shame a morbid fascination, as though it were some palpable blister of evil, some inexpungable birthmark — a latter-day mark of Cain, just for steroid-crazy sluggers!

Outrageous stories now appeared, mostly in The New York Post. Some had claimed, upon Page Six, that Bonds was bewitched, and that when he ventured abroad in the night, the asterisk did glow with an infernal fire! Others said that the six-arms of the asterisk were changed into the wheeling arms of the demon-goddess Kali, and that Bonds was a lousy tipper. One ancient coach said the asterisk was a succubus which decamped from Bonds whilst he slept, and flew into the forest where it “did consort with other daemon typography, which gyrated grotesquely about a flaming printing press” and in this wise called up their “Inky Father,” Johannes Gutenberg, who, appearing in the fire, bade them “frolic no more now, g’night.”

Bonds soon became a sideshow freak such as the culture produced from time to time, or weekly, depending upon which was more frequent. But wherever he roamed, he bore the scarlet asterisk, honoring his lifetime deal with the canny Comish.

Then, in latter years, whether seriously or merely to befuddle the media, the surly fellow began to treat the shameful symbol as a badge of distinction, as though ’twere a bright boutonnier in his lapel! He took to crowing about the asterisk, thrusting his chest out when cameras appeared out of the bushes at Spago or in the Men’s Room at “21″. He even wrote a coy yet brazen book titled If I Took ‘Em that was never published, and to great acclaim. No one knew if it was all an act, and some said Bonds himself didn’t know, that he’d long since forgotten what the asterisk meant anyway, or perhaps had never known. Others said he’d made his peace with it at last, that he no longer regarded it as an enemy, but as a friend, a companion, a randy lover.

Later, in what seemed a final deranged stab at the media Bonds demanded — through a p.r. spokesperson — that he no longer be referred to by his own name, but by the glyph itself! The asterisk was henceforth to appear wherever his name should have appeared, and in as flattering a typeface as possible. He even demanded that it always be printed in scarlet ink!

Few took seriously this final outrageous demand of the aging, raging slugger. It wasn’t long before they instead sarcastically referred to him as “the Athlete Formerly Known as Barry Bonds.”  And then as “the ‘roid nut with the restaurant on the Avenue of the Americas.”  But as the years passed Bonds kept up the bold pretense.  “Talk to the asterisk!” he would sometimes shout to reporters, who were unaware that he had secreted a microphone in it, and was being perfectly serious.

A compelling hint to his true feelings appeared in one of Bonds’ mistresses’ tell-all books, That’s Not Flaxseed, Fool! It relates a vivid and disturbing dream Bonds had. In the dream he found himself facing a grotesque pitcher whose very head was an asterisk devoid of human features, though it may have been Randy Johnson. But in this curious dream the pitch was an asterisk, too! Bonds knew this was his chance! He’d blast this damned asterisk out of the stadium — and the record books — with his custom-made $500 slugger, the one that did his talking for him!

The hurled asterisk approached. And now Bonds swung! How he swung! It was a very thunderclap — on steroids! But wait… what happened?! He had only caught a piece of it! O! — most foul! And it was caught by the catcher for a third strike!! Nuts! And then he saw that the catcher’s head, too, was an asterisk, grinning and cackling! And everyone in the entire stadium had an asterisk for a head! Talk about a bad at-bat!! Then Bonds looked at the Jumbotron and as a last indignity he saw that he did too!! He, too, was a juiced-up asterisk — a freaking typographic superfreak!! At this point he woke up in a sweat and said “Honey, you won’t believe what I just dreamt. Don’t tell a soul…”

As the years passed, asterisks came to be inextricably linked with the name and feats of the man. Schoolchildren everywhere took to calling the tiny star-like symbol a “barrybond”, accenting the first syllable, and it caught on. And, though the reason is less clear, ampersands, tildes, and umlauts came to be called the Alou Brothers.

* *

But let us return now to the inauspicious portal of the Commissioner’s office. The potted Pete Rose bush still clung to life, perhaps still hoping for a spot in the Hall. But as the years passed, it not only survived, but somehow it flourished! It surged with unnatural life — as though it had found a second botanical youth! Say what?! But whether it so throve by the addition of some illegal admixture matters not, dear reader, for exactly how it trebled the flower production of its previous best seasons is the bee’s wax of no mortal man! Let us gaze instead upon its swollen blooms, these sumptuous scarlet monsters the size of juiced Major League baseballs! We pluck one and present it to thee. Doth it not smell like victory?

And so today, those pilgrims who pass that ancient bush, so robust in late life, invariably comment that its flowers resemble scarlet barrybonds in April. . . April! When the lusty team-owners smack their lips with expectation, and the record books are again opened for business. Play ball!

Although buried in the unadorned manner appropriate to a woodcutter’s daughter, Gretel was found hunched beneath an absolutely astonishing heap of treasure and antique foodstuffs. Among the discoveries were two well-preserved panes of sugar-glass from the witch’s edible cottage, a petrified gingerbread rain gutter of singular beauty and a gaily decorated amphora-style vase containing the internal organs of the deceased. Other notable artifacts taken as swag from the witch’s residence included several pails filled with pearls and golden coins and a magnificent little pewter bust of Rumpelstiltskin. There is also said to be a nicely preserved straw broom with a working altimeter.

No trace of brother Hansel was found in or around the tomb. Local legend has him snapping under a lifetime of cruel taunts for being saved by his little sister and fleeing in disgrace to Constantinople, where he fell in among alchemists. When an experiment backfired, Hansel — enjoying a snack of lollipops and icing — was blown sky-high. His mortal remains are generally believed to be circulating in the jet stream, although a horse’s rib fobbed off as his left femur by a youthfully impetuous and financially strapped Ulm made the rounds of the auction houses some years back.

The discovery of Gretel has inspired archaeologists the world over. In England, eminent Cambridge paleologist W.P. Fenton-Slwyygye is considering the startling evidence of a gigantic humanoid skull, fully four feet in diameter, which appears to have sustained a considerable fracture owing to a fall of some thousands of feet, after which the subject was apparently pelted quite badly by several hundred tons of plummeting beanstalk. Further searches in the area have yielded a fossilized cache of curiously large beans. But efforts to rehydrate the somewhat menacing pods have fallen through because of a lack of funds, dashing hopes of starting a new crop of sky-scraping beanstalks that could forever abolish world hunger, or at least provide Fenton-Slwyygye access to the deceased giant’s cloud-locked loot.

And at the University of Kentucky one month ago, paleologists reported discovering the crumbling remains of a cottage deep in the woods of the Black Hills, which they believe to be the actual abode of the three bears of folkloric legend. “There was black bear fur everywhere,” says Donny Glass, a doctoral candidate who oversaw the dig. “It was an incredibly fresh find. Most of the fur was still loaded with parasites. Then we discovered a crudely fashioned chair, which we believed to have been used by Papa Bear, as well as the badly splintered remains of a similar, but much smaller, chair — but it was still too early to say anything. When our intern, Flip, said he’d found an intact strand of blond human hair intermingled with the fur… well, we knew we’d hit pay dirt. The Champagne hasn’t stopped flowing since. Hey, where’s Flip?” And finally, exhaustive analysis of the veritable mountain range of bear scat has at last isolated four bona fide porridge molecules.

As much as they can confirm the veracity of our myths and folktales, some such discoveries are equally apt to jolt us out of our reveries. The badly pulverized condition of Baby Bear’s chair, for example, would indicate the mass of a person who was less the girlish slip of our imaginations than a corpulent, even hulking, lass, probably characterized by an over-fondness for figs and sugared johnnycakes. And the bears’ charming crockery jars, far from containing the brown sugar and oatmeal cookies of our childhood wishes, were evidently filled to overflowing with fat, juicy grubs and other wriggling insect larvae.

But breaches in the wall separating myth from history continue to open up. Two weeks ago, a shepherdess led Scotland Yard detectives to a mummified corpse of what they described as a middle-aged leprechaun near her home. The little man’s greenish skin had been perfectly preserved by the very peat bog into which he had fallen some thousand years ago, no doubt chased by an ogre, banshee, or rogue unicorn. He is said to be wearing a hat of soft green felt topped by a splendid feather, which, in a typical rite of passage among the wee folk, he would have plucked from the downy breast of an invisible bird. He is also said to be wearing a weensy Harley-Davidson belt buckle.

This parallels the findings of an Austrian couple who, when a small mud slide occurred behind their motor home in a suburb of Salzburg, discovered an unusual toadstool-shaped structure containing the diminutive skeletons of several gnomes, whom DNA studies have identified as the infamous “five screwy grandsons of Sneezy.” A portion of Sneezy’s scalp reposes in the Smithsonian, beside Dopey’s kidney and Happy’s exploded sedan chair.

So it continues. As of this writing, University of Bonn scientists are investigating the moldering carcass of a large gray wolf whose ribcage seems, inexplicably, to be filled with stones, as well as the perplexing half-buried remains of a vast shoe containing 20 or so cramped chambers filled with poorly patched children’s clothes, candles, and bed linens. And lastly, NASA spacecraft using infrared technology to map the dark side of the lunar surface have confirmed early reports of a shallow crater bespattered with terrestrial cow flops.

**  This piece was published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in 1995 **

END

Historical purists ought to know up front that some small liberties have been taken with the facts; for one thing this Gandhi’s no 97-pound weakling. But rest assured they’re all more than made up for in some absolutely riotous summer entertainment! The tale of Gandhi’s physical make-over is a story in itself. Initially Disney’s animators set out to turn the tables on the traditional image of a frail Gandhi, pumping him way up for fitness-conscious 90’s audiences (insiders say Liam Neeson and Sly Stallone were the chief inspirations) so that he looks more like a bronzed, shirtless Mr. Clean than anything else. To soften the effect, they subsequently incorporated features from Michelangelo’s “David” and later, Oscar Wilde. Still, something seemed to be missing, particularly in the hunger-strike sequences. Somehow Gandhi just wasn’t sitting like a hunger striker. At much publicized expense, Disney flew its animators around the globe in search of the real article. I still don’t know what kind of celluloid sorcery can make cartoons look hungry, but three trips to the concession stand tells me it worked.

In case there’s still someone out there under the age of 90 who hasn’t heard yet, the voice of Mohandas is provided by none other than the self-styled king of pop himself, Michael Jackson. Jackson’s shy, tentative voice, particularly coming from Gandhi’s newlv chiseled torso, seemed incongruous unless one thinks of Mike Tyson. (Yes,they did actually consider him for the part.) But one listen to the singing quickly puts an end to any lingering doubts: the songs are absolutely fantastic. The first of them, a moving coming-of age ballad titled “The Man in the Diaper” is sure to make a blubbering wreck of anyone over the age of four — especially Jeff Katzenberg, who has just got to be eating his heart out. Its liquid riffs and in-your-face lyrics are the ethereal stuff of which Grammys are made:

Won’tcha look beyond my shyness
And my childish pride?
Don’t let this diaper fool ya
I’m a man inside!

There’s also a jazzy Hinduistic number, “We’re All Part of That Great Big Something (So Let’s Not Kill Nothing),” which will have children canwheeling and slap-fighting with one another for years to come.

As one might expect, some politically correct themes are in evidence. For example, Whoopi Goldberg provides the voice of the sassy Sacred Cow, a radical vegetarian and animal-rights advocate who becomes Gandhi’s chief political adviser. The audience I watched this movie with went into hysterics when she saucily declared: “I’m a burger hater, baby. You got a problem with that?” then launches into an over-the-top rap-style number titled “What’s Your Beef?” On her shoulders perch the two reincarnated Jiminy Crickets of this film, a pair of endlessly spatting lovebirds named Tandoori and Vindaloo, who feature the brilliantly — if implausibly –matched voices of George Plimpton and RuPaul.

The boldest liberty taken with the facts of Gandhi’s life is the addition of a tempestuous love affair with the ultra-left-leaning daughter of a pompous and periwigged British magistrate. (Tracey Ullman pulls out all the stops in both parts, though the evil magistrate looks suspiciously like Jeff Katzenberg.) This episode doesn’t add much to the overall story, but the incredibly brutal pillow fight that ends their relationship — and nearly costs Gandhi the use of his lower jaw — is an animation wonder to behold.

Gandhi’s fetish for khadi, homespun cotton cloth, is covered as well: taking a page out of the Beauty and the Beast anthropomorphic-happy book, they’ve got Jackie Mason as an animated and endlessly mugging Schpinning Vheel that spouts Yiddishisms and Borscht Belt one-liners– not to mention the poignant tune “Khadi, Khadi, Khadi on My Mind.” There’s also a — hold onto your hats — leering, animated loincloth! Here, in giving voice to Gandhi’s less noble aspirations, Jack Nicholson, Jim Carrey or Robin Williams might have easily stolen the show. Unfortunately all three of them were busy with sequels (Cuckoo’s Nest 11, Dumber and Dumberer and Popeye Returns). One would have still hoped for Dana Carvey, or even Michael Keaton, but instead we end up with Chevy Chase, who panders rather shamelessly to the youngest members of the audience by relying on embarrassingly lowbrow sound effects.

But the one place Mohandas! truly dazzles and outdistances even Disney’s previous animation masterpieces is in the dance sequences, which are downright stunning. Of particular note is the famous 240-mile march to the Dandi seashore to protest the tax on salt, an eye-popping, high-stepping terpsichorean extravaganza that employs a conga line of cobras, two funky jackals that “do the hustle” and a sea of slamdancing, pogoing pachyderms that recalls — and surely outdoes — the famous pirouetting hippos sequence from Fantasia. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Mahatma Gandhi leaping, tap-dancing, break-dancing — and of course, moonwalking — his countrymen toward self-rule and independence. For the premiere, Ben & Jerry’s and Fruitopia are co-sponsoring a Sacred Cow-In in Central Park; Christo’s wrapping the Statue of Liberty in a monster-sized loincloth, and rumors continue to circulate — keep your fingers crossed — of temporarily defrosting Walt! See you real soon!

**(Originally appeared in The New York Times Magazine, 1996)

When the yellow brothers make their forced peace,
The long silver coach signals imminent bloodshed.

On my mother’s grave, it was practically unreadable — like Chinese caricatures! Then it hits me: yellow brothers… Chinese… Not for nothing, but there’d been a Tong War in Chinatown that same week, only it was all called off when Guiliani threatened to confiscate all their firecrackers. Freaking Guiliani! Anyways, that’s what the “yellow brothers making forced peace” must’ve meant. I couldn’t believe it. So now my mind’s going in every direction. Bang! Boom! Then I remembered that Dino Gigante’s consigliere had just turned up at some landfill — at a couple of different landfills at that — and Gigante wasn’t none too happy about it. He was on the warpath. Could that be the “imminent bloodshed” part? And everyone knew he didn’t go no place without his silver limo… Was that the “long silver coach” Nostradamus was talking about?

Anyways, I didn’t get much sleep that night. The next day I showed Billy the Weasel the book and he turned white as a ghost. He was a paranoid about Gigante to begin with on account of he’d stiffed him on that hijacking operation a few years back and he was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. So he reads the bloodshed part and becomes convinced it’s talking about him — he’s gonna get it from Gigante!

Well, he read the whole frigging book cover to cover over coffee and some zabaglione in his sister-in-law Angeline’s kitchen. You’d kill your own mother for zabaglione like this. And her coffee! Maron! Anyways, from what he could figure, his best bet was to lay low while he tried to figure Gigante’s next move — some story about “striped cloud of opprobium” and whatnot. You see, it was all there in Nostradamus, he just had to interpret it!

But then somebody must’ve blabbed and word got out in the neighborhood that Billy was reading Nostradamus!! You see, as soon as Gigante found out about it he’d pick up a copy of Nostradamus himself and figure out what was going on! It was all over for Billy! I mean, this was like a nightmare, right? Well, that really threw some scare into Billy. He’s shaking like a scared frigging leaf. He figures it’s either him or Gigante. I mean, he wasn’t going to risk his life in some faggy poetry-interpreting contest! So he decided to whack Gigante outside the King Kullen’s by Rockaway Beach that afternoon.

Only on the way he stopped off to get some breadsticks from Patriarca’s Bakery — you know, to take the edge off. My God, these were some breadsticks!! They were baked right there! And the smell! Anyways, at the cash register he spots a paperback of Nostradamus! It was right there on the counter! Well, naturally he couldn’t resist. So he picks it up and turns to the part about the silver coach and the bloodshed again to get psyched for what he was about to do. Only in this version it wasn’t about no silver coach, it was about some silver friggin fish!! And in some footnote he seen that the medieval French for “fish” and “coach” are similar! I think the coach was “cabriolet” and the fish was “gabrillette” or “gabagool” or “capicola” or some bullshit! Nostradamus was making up a pun! What a kick in the ass! This was no time for frigging puns!

Now Billy don’t know what the hell to do! Does he whack Gigante, or call up a Nostradamus scholar, or what? Then the cashier explains that “silver fish” is also usually interpreted to mean some kind of submarine — which is amazing, on account of subs weren’t even around in Nostradamus’s day. Not that it cleared up nothing. Anyways, Billy decided to cool his jets and lay low. Then two days later Gigante’s limo turns up at the bottom of Sheepshead Bay! With Gigante at the wheel!! That’s what the silver sub business must’ve been about! You couldn’t write this stuff! It just got crazier and crazier.

Well it was bound to happen, but pretty soon all the wiseguys were big into Nostradamus. He was the biggest thing going. You couldn’t show your face at no meetings unless you knew at least a couple of quatrains by heart. Some guys tried to fake it, but they didn’t last. One time Johnny Calumbino’s son made some crack about how his teacher said Nostradamus was a big phoney. Everybody just looked at him and said nothing. I never saw him after that…. People got very touchy about the whole thing.

Toward the end it got to be too much. I still remember the night Jimmy Peaches let off some steam about some version of Nostradamus’s prophecies he thought was badly translated — only he doesn’t realize he was talking about the same translation that just happened to be Frankie the Bunion’s favorite! Peaches could be a real motormouth when he was drinking. Anyways, Frankie just sat there smiling, only inside he’s thinking how he’s gonna give Jimmy payback… Well, the minute Jimmy went to the can I said I had to go home and feed my fish — which was a lie on account of my mother feeds them — and I ran in and told Jimmy he’d better apologize to Frankie the Bunion right away. And he did, saying he was really thinking about an earlier edition — the one with the wordy preface. But it didn’t do him no good. “That preface might be a little wordy,” Frankie says, real ominous, “But you might’ve spoken a few too many words yourself from time to time, right Jimmy?” Then he put his feet up — that was always the sign — and they took Peaches away. He didn’t even get to finish his zeppolli! Maron, you never tasted zeppollis like this!! On my mother’s grave! He didn’t get to take another bite! There was still sugar all over his face!

Next thing I know Nostradamus was a big sore point with everybody. Then a new translation came out tying everything Nostradamus said to the whole millenium bug, which turned out to be a lot of bullshit, but whatever. It was all about how the world was gonna go up in flames and whatnot — but supposedly just after that the Kennedy’s would be resurrected and it said there be “a thousand day reign of the little Camel” — only in French it comes out “Camelot”! A new Camelot! That’s all we needed was to see that pretty boy googatz Peter Lawford all over the place again! A thousand days of him is a thousand days too many! I remember years ago he used to promote those candygrams on television and I ordered one for my mother for Mother’s Day and all the chocolate was rock hard, the sonofabitch! You never tasted candy like that! It was like hunks of frigging wood! My mother still mentions it! I’m turning red over here!

But it wasn’t just him. The Kennedy’s brought up a lot of sore points with all the wiseguys. So now you don’t know what to say. Do you forget about Nostradamus or do you make fun of him or what? It got very complicated.

Then one night I’m hanging out with Marty Tits and he’s got a copy of this book on that whole new Bible Code book thing. Forget about it. He says it turns out the whole Bible is a some jumbo word search and if you find your name in it you got major problems — not that he would know how to spell Marty Tits in Hebrew! But anyways, by then everybody knew Junior Gotti was big into those wordsearch books, which he would do to pass the time while under house arrest. He was a real whiz with those things. So when he heard about the Bible Code it became the new big thing overnight. Suddenly Nostradamus was ancient history. It was like he never existed. Still, if you ask me, Peter Lawford should watch his rear. Am I right?

Here are some new titles you won’t want to miss:

FLAUBERT’S PANDA by Boolean James.

This one is part biography, part literary criticism, part prose poem, part fire hydrant, and part decayed wolf’s pelt — in short, the post-modernist novel at its best. That the giant panda was undiscovered by the West until 1937 — more than fifty years after Flaubert’s death brings into question the very notion of “time,” and we are forced to consider various questions such as How might the great prose stylist have cared for such a pet in nineteenth-century France? What were his options? Does his fierce dedication to a prose style somehow anticipate the rare animal’s discovery fifty years later? Also, What’s the French for panda? Proust’s Hedgehog, by the same author, will be published in the fall. (350 pages, 425 psi.)

THE ANNOTATED CURIOUS GEORGE by Jacques Derrida.

As a primate, George straddles the line between “chaos” and “meaning”, but what is he doing when he puts too much soap in the washing machine? We know that he is “making a mess,” but Mr. Derrida suggests that he is “making a text” as well. Here is the pre-linguistic troublemaker at his mischievous best. (525 pages, with a foreword by Koko.)

THE NAME OF PETE ROSE by Umberto Umberto, translated by Joe Garagiola.

Descend into a medieval world of hermeneutics and double plays… Umberto provides a serious lesson in semiotics, as well as countless batting and fielding tips. Divided into the eighteen innings of a twi-night double header at Shea, this “Po-mo” masterpiece begins by taking an entertaining behind-the-scenes look at “Charlie Hustle” in nine typical at-bats.

Chapter One, “In which the bases are loaded, and that is all,” and Chapter Two, “In which Mr. Rose is caught looking, and strikes out,” start us off rather slowly. But one’s inevitable fear — that this is going to be a pitchers’ duel — is put to rest in Chapter Three, “In which Mr. Rose, after taking three outside pitches, slams a change-up to left center, and, after being called out at third, invokes the name of the Antichrist and is suspended from play.”

Then things take a strange turn. Chapter Four, “In which a discourse follows on the unlikelihood of the umpire’s longevity,” and Chapter Five, “In which there is something about an Aqua Velva man,” speed the novel toward evidence that the author’s grand vision reaches well beyond this double header, to the terrifying center of a dark mystery about the very nature of the National League itself. Semioticians in particular will appreciate Chapter Fifteen, “In which Mr. Rose gets the green light to swing away, but, in misinterpreting the signs, offends the third-base coach. Then there is a fight.”

The book also includes an epilogue, “In which we encounter the enigmatic figure of Yogi, a Yoo Hoo man, who declares that the ball game is not only not over until it is over — but it is also never over.” (442 pages, with illuminations.)

MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD by Peter Welton-Cook.

This remarkable first novel is written from the point of view of a pen writing a novel titled — you guessed it — Mightier Than the Sword. At first it appears that we are concerned with two separate novels, but when the pen addresses the author directly, we sense that something wonderfully post-modern is afoot.

The core of the novel consists of a touching and valuable dialogue between the author and his unwilling pen, but the action explodes when the hitherto deferential pen, having in the course of the novel developed a sense of self-esteem, boldly decides to take a break, triumphantly marking time with periods and commas until the end of the chapter. After this victory the pen refuses to form semicolons or commas, or conjunctions of any sort, reducing the prose to a series of simple sentences, and thereby cleverly accelerating the pace of the novel to its abrupt ending, seven pages later. (57 pages.)

¡HOLA, BUZZY!: Memoirs of an Argentine Insect
by Tomas Yrastorce.

In this revealing portrait Yrastorce gives us another in the long tradition of picaresque heroes — although unusually small and with a thorax — and makes use of the tremendous narrative scope afforded a fly, which in this book takes us from the gorgeous boudoir of Eva Peron to the twitching rump of a frisky horse grazing on the pampas.

One is inevitably reminded of Julio Cortazar’s novel Hopscotch, whose pages can be “shuffled” and read in any order the reader pleases. Yrastorce’s pages, however, can be not only “shuffled” but also rolled into balls and “juggled.” Later they can be combined into eye-catching shapes, and “fondled.” Eventually they may be incorporated into a large paper raft, which, with some caulking and a basic understanding of ocean currents, may be used to re-enact the Ra expedition of Thor Heyerdahl. (320 pages, with sunscreen and flare gun.)

VEAL FUSELAGE by Giovanni Tomanioni.

This one brings into question the very notion of “book,” made as it is of large steel girders and fur — and it renders all but meaningless the standard “book questions” having to do with character development and plot line, let alone issues of “translation” and “paperback rights.”

Despite a simple appearance, the book’s narrative structure is phenomenally complex: each girder corresponds to an exit on the Jersey Turnpike, with graffiti spray-painted in the “style” of that exit. The author seems to be tipping his hat to Joyce, particularly in the girders that begin, “Dear Mr. Joyce…” Other girders reveal various and disparate influences, such as Picasso’s blue period, Handel’s Messiah, the outfielding techniques of the three Alou brothers, the Green Giant jingle — and, inevitably, the forearms and eyelids of Julie Nixon Eisenhower. (25 girders, with tollbooth.)

* where applicable

* *

It is no secret that the great minds of history transcend time, although Pythagoras was a real stickler for punctuality. The issue is complicated. Society’s reactions to its visionaries throughout history has been mixed. At worst, they have been misunderstood and persecuted for their beliefs. Sometimes they have been put to death, as in the cases of Socrates, Joan of Arc, and perhaps, someday, Cher. At best they have been invited to party after party. In either case, such figures have often been said to be “outside of time” — although this is not to say that they “ignored” time, or “hated” it, but rather, that in “making their peace” with it, they somehow “escaped its strictures,” or “gave it the slip.” A few geniuses such as Galileo, Thoreau and Milton best effected their “transcendence of the temporal” while “doing time,” although Milton’s jailor often remarked that the great poet whined horribly when his mutton was overcooked. It is impossible to speak accurately of “transcending” time, and discussions aimed in this direction generally succeed only in producing a prose gagged with quotation marks. This is to be avoided and so we will proceed to some concrete examples almost immediately.

GALILEO GALILEI (1564 -1642)

Galileo’s experiences before the Inquisition in Rome spelled trouble from the beginning. He first found himself “in the papal doghouse” when he published his “Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” (1632), a work supporting the Copernican notion that the earth is not the center of the universe, although Galileo said not only is it not the center of the universe — it’s not even close. To make matters worse, he said that although he wasn’t positive, he thought we were at the edge of a galaxy called “The Milky Way,” and that if you looked at things from an intergalactic perspective, we’re “very peripheral, to put it mildly.” A prison sentence was suggested so that Galileo might have time to reconsider his ideas, and it was there, in the physical and intellectual poverty of his cell that Galileo returned to his work. At first his progress was slow, because no on was checking up on him, but in time, Galileo learned that he shouldn’t work to please other people, and everything proceeded swimmingly.

Now things began to click for him as they never had before, and he hoped that, in time, he would have something “really special for the Pope.” He did. After months of undisturbed effort, Galileo came to the unexpected conclusion that space is curved. This was something more than he had bargained for, and now, instead of something in the way of a simple clarification, Galileo faced the unpleasant prospect of having to explain a four-dimensional universe to the Grand Inquisitor. A translation of the original Vatican transcript follows:

Inquisitor: Okay, Galileo. What did you find out?
Galileo: Please, call me Leo.
I: All right…
G: Leo.
I: Yes, yes… Leo… Let’s have it.
G: Er, I don’t know how to tell you this…
I: Eh?
G: Give me a minute…
I: (Impatiently) C’mon, c’mon…
G: Leo…
I: Okay… C’mon, Leo! Out with it!
G: (con brio) I don’t mean to get technical, but do the words “space-time curve” mean anything to you?
I: Very funny. Take him away.
G: But—!
I: Next!

In addition to his many other distinctions, Galileo has the notable honor of being the only contemporary of Milton’s included in the poet’s great epic poem, Paradise Lost. Milton had originally slated hundreds of friends and relatives for the verse epic, but the printer, fuming when he couldn’t find his name among them, bumped them all for what he later explained as “lack of space, pretty boy.” All, that is, with the one exception of Galileo, whom he mistook for a verb.

ISAAC NEWTON (1642 -1727)

Newton is considered by many to be perhaps the greatest scientist who ever lived. While still in his early twenties he discovered the law of universal gravitation — “it was right under our noses” — and began to develop the Calculus, although that eventually cleared up. His theory that light is composed of particles — large, furry particles, eight feet in diameter — was not well received, and this assertion is generally attributed to the natural hyperbole of youth. Newton’s more mature observations on light were published in his Opticks (1704), a work that dominated light theory until the nineteenth century, when the misspelling was discovered.

In 1708 Newton published a discursive sequel to his theory of gravity, entitled “A Theory of Levity”, in which he chronicled the meteoric rise and fall of comedian Lenny Bruce, who wouldn’t be born for more than two centuries. At first members of the Royal Society perceived the work as a brief but somehow necessary departure from his earlier theories, most of which were almost completely lacking in good jokes, but a blitzkrieg of similar treatises on the Marx Brothers (see Principia Gummo) – and then the monographs on Gallagher (1711) and Foster Brooks (1713) — seemed to signal something like a trend. It had, and on Good Thursday Newton was seen walking along the river Cam in a gorilla suit.

Sensing a drop in his credibility as president of the Society, Newton called a special meeting to be held at noon the following Wednesday, for the purpose of demonstrating his mysterious new “theories”. This was generally taken as a positive sign, but when asked whether he would arrive by coach or on foot, Newton shot back, “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll get there,” and winked. On the day of the meeting Newton was nowhere to be found. Many members of the society feared he had only been kidding them, but at the stroke of noon precisely, a cannon blast propelled Newton across the public square, through an open window, and into his accustomed position behind the Society’s lectern — an entrance that, while unorthodox, illustrated an assured grasp of trajectory and projectile theory. Sporting goofy wax teeth, implausible floppy shoes, and a flamboyant orange ruff, Newton was the very picture of levity. Moreover, he had teased his already sizeable bouffant into a monstrous sphere –a hirsutely self-conscious parody of his own early theory on light particles.

When the murmuring finally died down, Newton executed an expert backflip, and then demonstrated several incipient gags which seemed to anticipate the double-take, spit-take, and pratfall respectively — then one that seemed to anticipate all three at once. Indeed, a full two centuries before vaudeville, Newton had mastered most of the comic techniques of the twentieth century, not the least of which was an overblown and high-pitched Nazi accent. Next, armed with a seltzer bottle, joy buzzers, squirting carnations, and a golden blunderbuss that fired sneezing powder, he began darting about the room while shouting snippets from Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s On First?” routine, followed by a spirited pie-throwing exhibition that anticipated the foolery of future gagman par excellence Soupy Sales. In no time the room was in a state of pandemonium, and there appeared to be no end in sight. At several points during his fantastical demonstrations, Newton paused to carefully remove an egg from his mouth. The horsing around came to an abrupt halt, however, when Newton thoughtlessly gave the Marquess of Cleves a hotfoot, unaware that His Lordship’s parents had both perished in the Great London Fire of ‘66. Members of the Society were outraged at Newton’s insensitivity, although everyone admitted that, gag for gag, his timing had been excellent.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706 -1790)

Wearing the various hats of author, statesman, printer, inventor, diplomat and scientist, Benjamin Franklin embodied the very spirit of early America — but in the grand vision that fueled these pursuits, he remained thoroughly unfettered to the constraints of the age: to wit, his fierce obsession with hitch-hiking.

We know from some early notebooks that no less than 150 years before Karl Benz completed his plans for a gasoline engine, the young Franklin was formulating a detailed system of hitch-hiking etiquette, the echoes of which are with us to this day. Some modern hitch-hiking aphorisms generally attributed to anonymous sources first appear in his Poor Richard’s Almanack in a slightly archaic form, such as the maxim from his Almanack of 1738:

IF THIS COACH IS A-ROCKIN’
THOU OUGHTEST NOT TO GO A-KNOCKIN’

As well as the niggardly admonition:

GAS, GRASS, OR ARSE,
NO ONE RIDETH FREE.

Hitch-hiking and the lure of the open road were interests that remained close to Franklin’s heart throughout his life. He was said to be intensely guarded and sensitive on these topics, and once, in a meeting of the Continental Congress, when James Madison made some disparaging remark regarding a scheme to market fuzzy dice and “other automotive gew-gaws” in the Louisiana territories, Franklin left Independence Hall in a huff. Not to be daunted by a little colonial heckling, he spent the last decade of his life working on a “low-flying kite in the shape of a thumb,” though no one was sure why.

It is for this famous experiment with a kite during a thunderstorm that Franklin is generally credited with “discovering” electricity, although what is usually not mentioned in the history books is that in the course of his rich and varied life, Dr. Franklin achieved similar successes with natural gas and hot water, for a utilities hat-trick.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879 -1955)

Einstein was always gaga about pop music, but it wasn’t until 1917, with the publication of his famous paper “On the Necessity of a Subatomic ‘Groove’,” that the world learned of his passion. In the beginning Einstein’s scientific colleagues greeted his musical explorations with skepticism, and then, later, with scorn and ridicule, but Einstein would not be quieted. He insisted that at the highest levels music and mathematics were intertwined, and he once told Niehls Bohr that late at night, while working out difficult quadratic equations, he felt an urge to dance.

By 1917 Einstein was already well-known for his advances in quantum physics, having published his Special Theory of Relativity (1905) and his General Theory (1916), but now the world saw a different Einstein — a “now” Einstein — an Einstein who, according to fellow Nobel-winner Enrico Fermi, “moved like a cat on the dance floor — and I mean moved!” Most people didn’t know what to make of the sudden change, and the publication of a subsequent paper, “Brownian Movement, Get Down, and Boogie”, (1919) only added to the confusion.

More and more he devoted himself to this passion, frequenting nightclubs and eventually purchasing a shiny tenor saxophone. When the sax broke Einstein turned to the familiar tools of mathematics and quantum physics, which he applied to contemporary music theory with typical Einsleinian gusto. In time he would predict nearly every musical development of the next century, including Mama Cass, Abba, and the Eurythmics. Many of his critics insisted that his predictions were purely theoretical, but time and time again the pop charts bear him out. His earliest efforts in this direction led him to the premature discovery of rockabilly, and then to the home Carl Perkins, who was only eleven at the time and building a tree fort. It is worth noting that in addition to his many Top 40 calculations Einstein ventured other speculations. For instance he ruled out as mathematical impossibility the existence of a fifth Beatle, and estimated to within millimeters the length of Kiss guitarist Gene Simmons’ tongue. Some of his more complicated calculations even postulated the probable existence of a sixth and seventh Jackson.

Throughout his life, Einstein suffered much humiliation at the hands of envious colleagues, most of whom couldn’t carry a tune, but at a Princeton faculty get-together in 1951, Einstein drew a favorable reception by successfullyn “moonwalking” backwards across a parquet floor and, for an encore, inverting himself and spinning on his famous physicist’s head. In his last years Einstein sought to bring together the disparate field of jazz, motown, and bebop, but in the end a “Unified Funk Theory,” as he called it, would elude him.

EPILOGUE

There are yet among us today certain individuals whose vision extends beyond the present, often into the very future itself. I am thinking again of Cher, as well as of various other vocalists. The most fascinating instances, however, occur when one of these visionaries looking into the future is able to “see” yet another visionary — a future visionary — who may be looking yet further into the future — something akin to a bucket brigade of prophesy. Such occurences are extremely rare, however, and thus far the only known instance of such an event involves an obscure Nostradamus quatrain on Ted Koppel.

END

N.B. This piece was purchased by the Atlantic Monthly in 1987.  Publication pending.

Kate Buss brought lots of people to the house. She brought Djuna Barnes and Mina Loy and they had wanted to bring James Joyce, but they didn’t.
–Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

The feud that raged between James Joyce and Gertrude Stein in Paris between the years 1921 and 1939 is without doubt one of one most significant spats of any era. That these two powerful personalities coexisted in the same city at the same time is alone worthy of our close scrutiny, evoking as it does the disturbing image of a pair of unruly knockwursts vying for space on a single bun. But records of the relationship are virtually non-existent and mark a curious ellipsis in 20th century letters. The unwillingness of scholars to tackle the Joyce-Stein relationship is understandable, though. The sheer complexity of such a project is rather daunting, to say the least, although in recent years it has become increasingly thinkable with the advent of X-treme sports and digital technology.

Despite the bitterness and intellectual violence that came to characterize the relationship, it is probably worth mentioning that things actualy got off to a promising start between them. At first mutual acquaintances even hoped that Joyce and Stein would become close friends. In the beginning the two would sometimes meet at the Paris zoo—a favorite haunt of Joyce’s—although already at this point his eyesight was such that he often mistook the backs of people’s heads for wildlife, usually Coco the Brown Bear, or on some occassions, for the crippled wildebeest, “Jacques.”

It was not until a year later that things first came to a head between them. They had been strolling together as they so often did, discussing the creative process and whether it could be patented, when Stein confided in Joyce that she had composed most of the poems in her book Tenderbuttons while “on a sugar high you would not believe.” On hearing this, Joyce immediately pinched Stein’s abdomen, saying that from the general look of things she had been eating lots of sugar lately, hadn’t she? “What was it?” he asked impatiently, “caramels?” With this Stein immediately lost her composure and berated Joyce for his breach of etiquette, but Joyce refused to back down. “Aha,” he continued, “so it was caramels after all!” That evening Stein told Alice Toklas that if Joyce should call at the house to inform him that Miss Stein was not at home and, if possible, to pinch him in the abdomen.

Meanwhile Joyce found himself growing bitterly jealous of Stein’s literary output. While he struggled for weeks to produce a single paragraph of prose. Stein seemed to pop off one book after another as though she were exhaling smoke rings. Their attitudes toward writing were clearly different. Whereas Joyce was obsessed with matters of spelling and punctuation—he admitted having once spent all of Lent with a jeweler’s loupe and a pair of mischeivous semi-colons—Stein seemed to be deliberately careless, sometimes reading her proofs at a distance of twenty paces with a weak flashlight.

In an effort to distract her from her work, Joyce invited Stein to his house one afternoon for cognac. Joyce behaved like a model host, assiduously refilling Stein’s snifter at every opportunity, but, unbeknownst to her, pouring his own drinks into a concealed spitoon. When she began to feel drowsy, Joyce invited Stein to take a nap on his couch, and when he was satisfied that she was fast asleep, he placed her hand in a bowl of warm water and retired to a secret place behind the drapes to watch the fireworks.

During his first year in Paris, Joyce pulled pranks like this all the time, but the book he was working on didn’t seem to get anywhere nearer completion. Nora Joyce believed it was because her husband never stuck to his original plans, and it was true that Finnegan’s Wake strayed considerably from his original intentions of it as a “light, accessible whodunit.” But it was also true that Joyce’s work evolved as he went along-for instance his book Portrait of the Artist was first conceived as a children’s book about a clumsy unicorn, while Dubliners had begun life as a how-to book on whitewater rafting.

News of the feud between the two giants immediately rocked the literary world, and as time passed, many people got a big kick out of it. One evening at a literary soiree, Joyce made a statement to the effect that Stein’s sweet-tooth kept more than one Parisian patissier in the financial pink. Stein took of tense at this suggestion, vehemently poo-poohing her alleged passion for strudel and marzipan, particularly of the cheaper store-bought variety. But Joyce countered smoothly. “Oh, I see,” he said, “Then perhaps this is an optical illusion, n’est pas?” patting her ample belly and looking around the room for the big laugh.

People who remember such episodes all vouch for Joyce’s incredible sense of timing with a joke, the way he would pause to let it sink in and then jump in with his own cackling laughter to encourage any titters among his audience. Stein usually remained aloof to such kidding, but sometimes she would chuckle along, slapping her thigh and stamping her foot good-naturedly, although at this point Joyce could be counted on to feign fright and grab onto the furniture as though an earthquake were taking place.

Many people felt that these shenanigans were in poor taste, but coming from an intellect like James Joyce, such childishness was a refreshing change of pace and it was impossible to keep from giggling. It got to the point where with mere mention of the word “blubber,” and then with the “bl” sound alone, Joyce could send any room into a drunken spin. Even Ezra Pound, who publicly disapproved of such pedestrian antics, privately admitted that he “could see what Joyce was getting at.”

Friends and acquaintances seemed comfortable with the intellectual back-and-forth, but balked when things got physical, as on the night Ezra Pound and Ford Madox Ford suggested chickenfights. There was a lovely fountain just off the Boulevard St. Germain with a small wading pool and before anyone knew what was happening, everyone had rolled up their pants and was getting into the water. Joyce immediately jumped on Ford’s back and Pound jumped on Stein, while Alice Toklas held Stein’s purse. Ford was a large, powerful man, and Joyce was very light, and together they easily outmaneuvered the confused duo of Stein and Pound. Pound was quick to buckle in situations of pressure and this time he snapped immediately, windmill-beating Stein about the head and blocking her vision, so that for most of the contest they only circled around inanely, while Joyce and Ford snuck up from behind and took potshots. Frightened onlookers decided to call it a draw before things got too out of hand, although it was nearly dawn before anyone could peel the shaken Pound from Stein’s back.

Most people hoped this ugly episode would soon be forgotten, but Stein couldn’t seem to get it out of her mind. How out of shape she was! It seemed only yesterday she’d been a young girl turning cartwheels outside her parent’s home in Pennsylvania… Where had the years gone? For nearly a month afterward she moped around the apartment at 21 rue de fleurus, bemoaning her poor performance. Then one morning at the crack of dawn, she showed up in the doorway of Hemingway’s favorite gym, demanding a fresh towel and some talcum powder. People who remember her that day say she had on a large hooded sweatshirt that, in concert with her short hair, gave the austere yet somehow comical impression of a Capuchin monk. But before any of the regulars in the gym could issue a wisecrack, Stein was leaping around the room like a wild animal—jumping rope, working the heavy bag—there seemed to be no end to her energy, and by the time Ernest Hemingway strolled in she was a mere blur on the pommel horse, executing leg-cuts with an intensity unheard of in French literary circles.

The change of heart was dramatic. For several hours she kept up the punishing pace, and in the afternoon she stepped into the ring with Hemingway and his young wife, Hadley. The three of them sparred vigorously for several rounds, although at one point a stinging hook by Stein opened up an old wound between the Hemingways and they left in a huff.

Although Stein continued to work out like this for several weeks, she eventually came to feel dissatisfied. She complained that the gym was much too enclosed—it had a roof and four walls—and the people there were forever perspiring. She longed to find a freer means of physical expression—something that, like her writing, was liberated from the old-fashioned constraints of meter and rhyme. Then one bright January day while she was walking along the frozen Seine with Alice and their little dog—the one who would later bite Hemingway—she observed a pair of skaters gliding effortlessly over the ice and before Alice could stop her Stein had rented a pair of skates and was staggering across the river like a blindfolded sailor with two peglegs.

In the weeks that followed, Stein skated up a storm. She confessed to a sense of freedom and happiness unlike anything she had ever experienced. Alice bragged that Stein had taken to the ice like a duck to water, although Stein was quick to point out that ice was merely frozen water, and that alas, Alice’s well-intentioned analogy had made her out to be a frozen duck! But she was enjoying herself immensely, and that was the main thing. Joyce bitterly scoffed at the whole affair, saying, “If only that monstrous nose of hers resembled a carrot more, she might make a plausible snowman, eh?” But Stein was unstoppable now, and on the ice she was pure Stein—terse, intelligent, and devoted to the Cubist movement.

For the remainder of the winter Stein wore her skates everywhere. She refused to go out of doors with regular shoes, arguing that it would weaken her ankles. Alice could often be seen nervously ushering Stein through the busy snow-covered streets, steadying her now and again where there were difficult curbs to negotiate. The effect of this on the Parisian literary world was incalculable. Wherever one looked one saw aspiring poets and writers skating about the city—one could hardly consider oneself a proper Bohemian without a decent pair of figure skates.

Stein once persuaded Picasso and Cezanne into crouching on the ice while she leapt over them. She was always involving others in her antics, whereas Joyce was something of a lone wolf, and he would often skulk around on the shore secretly observing her with a periscope. Stein liked the idea of leaping over Picasso and Cezanne so much that she made a regular habit out of it, sometimes recruiting lesser-known painters whom she thought possessed talent. The idea snow-balled, and in time Stein boasted plans to leap a dozen modernists. Joyce was convinced such a feat was impossible, and he argued his point eloquently in a well-received monograph entitled, “On the Gravitational Limits of Some Planetary Bodies, Ahem,” which appeared in a special pop-up issue of the Transatlantic Review.

On the appointed day, a large crowd had turned out for the event, and it was said that if Stein made the leap it would better her previous mark by three Cubists. When the time came and the twelve modernists had assembled themselves on the ice, Alice fired the signal shot to start Stein, but the ice was slick that day, and the recoil from the weapon propelled her speedily away from the action. The crowd held its breath, and Stein leapt, easily clearing her mark, but the momentum of her robust figure was too much for the thawing March ice, and when she landed it gave way under her with a loud pop. Immediately all twelve modernists were on their feet ooh-ing and ah-ing over her predicament. Presently Cezanne scooted off to fetch a length of rope, while Magritte pirouetted in the direction of a gendarme, but in the end it took Juan Gris and a human chain of eight minor poets nearly three-quarters of an hour to fish her out.

Toward the end of their lives, most of their time together was reduced to chance encounters on the street, and here, due to Joyce’s failing eyesight, Stein had the advantage. At first she avoided him by standing still until he passed, but as time went on she grew bolder, and once, by cleverly disguising her voice she wheedled him into subscribing to a defunct quarterly.

The two were last seen together in 1939, only a few weeks before the publication of Joyce’s masterwork Finnegan’s Wake. Stein had been walking along , the street, whistling in that giddy, girlish way she had, when she saw Joyce walking toward her on the sidewalk. For some reason she was in an especially playful mood that day and, knowing Joyce loathed cats, she got down on all fours and watched him approaching. Just as he was upon her, though, it occurred to Stein that Sherwood Anderson was the one with the aversion to cats, not Joyce. But now it was too late, and she would have to go through with it. Passersby began to take notice of the situation. “Isn’t that Gertrude Stein?” one asked. “Why, yes. I’m sure it is!” another answered, “And isn’t that gentleman with her James Joyce?” A crowd formed.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” Joyce was saying, “that’s a good kitty,” as the burly author of Three Lives arched her back and meowed.

The trouble is there are just no outlets for literary humor these days. So you can imagine my happiness when the New York Times Sunday Magazine premiered its humorous “Endpaper” column a few years ago — and then decided to publish some of my own humor pieces. Someone pinch me!

Well, someone did, and I’d like to tell you about it. It began when the editor said he’d be calling me up after the fact-checkers had gone over the piece. Fact-checkers? Understand we are talking about a humor piece titled “Gretel’s Skull Discovered!”, on the incredible discovery of Gretel’s tomb in the Black Forest. (Incidentally, for those of you skimming this, that never really happened. It will be important for you to play closer attention from here on in; no more parenthetical heads-up)

Anyway, the piece (click here to read it, if you like) related other faux archaeological discoveries from the realm of fairy tales and folklore: the moldering cottage of the three bears, the Yugo-sized skull of the giant in the Jack and the Beanstalk story, and so on — all pretty far-fetched, n’est-ce pas? I wondered what the fact-checkers might have to say about the mummified remains of my non-existent braid-wearing heroine.

Actually, the first “factual difficulty” had to do with Hansel. In the piece I had written I had him emigrating to Constantinople where he opened a candy store and was eventually killed by an exploding mortar shell. I was informed that mortar shells weren’t around in 1453, before Constantinople fell. Fair enough. But did it matter that Hansel wasn’t around then either? That he’d never breathed a single, solitary, sugary breath? Still, some level of verisimilitude does help the humor. So I changed his method of death to an alchemical explosion. So far, so good.

The next difficulty involved young Jack, of beanstalk fame. I’d written that a cache of gigantic, fossilized beans had recently been discovered in England, but that efforts to rehydrate them had fallen through “due to lack of funding.” “‘Due to lack of funding’ is wrong,” said the editor. “The Times doesn’t use that phrase.” Yes, yes, but it sounded funny. In its wrongness. Hadn’t Mark Twain used “gwine” and “nome” to comic effect? This was evidently not a negotiable point. Again, I acceded. This time I could hear hundreds of grammarians and prose stylists across the nation breathing a collective phew of relief. I’d envisioned Strunk and White all set to spin in their graves. On 43rd Street in Manhattan, William Safire had just come in off a high window ledge.

Then there was a problem with Sneezy, one of Snow White’s seven abbreviated friends. “A portion of Sneezy’s scalp reposes in the Smithsonian,” I wrote, beside his brother Dopey’s kidney and Happy’s exploded sedan chair.” I was informed, with complete seriousness, that Sneezy and Dopey were not brothers, but merely colleagues. Colleagues? I stifled a giggle. “Uh, are you sure?” “Yes.”

I couldn’t believe this was happening. Had my editor forgotten we were talking about forest-dwelling gnomes? Or had the howling ridiculousness of the name Sneezy been lost on him? I was stunned. Would he now cite the incontrovertible datum that there are no mummified kidneys in the Smithsonian? And what of poor Happy’s exploded sedan chair? Wasn’t it, in fact, true that explosive devises weren’t used in anarchic acts against wealthy gnomes until a full century after Happy’s death? And who would object to Happy’s filially being linked to Sneezy anyway? Was there some litigious “Society of the True Descendants of Sneezy” waiting to take on The New York Times? A large silence loomed on the other end of the phone. The word “brother” would have to be removed.

Well, you would think the labyrinth couldn’t wind much further into itself. We are talking about a mere thousand-word humor piece. You would be wrong. There was yet one final indignity to be borne, and as a perfectly humiliating little fillip — a kind of sharp, parting kick — it had to do with the decorative feather in a leprechaun’s hat.  I had written that a shepherdess had found the mummified body of a middle-aged leprechaun in a peat bog near her home, and said that the weensy creature had worn a diminutive felt hat with a feather which, “in a typical rite of passage among the wee folk, he would have plucked from the downy breast of an invisible bird.”

I learned that the fact-checkers had scoured Irish folklore — the verb “scoured” was actually used — and had not found a single instance of, nor allusion to, this charming little rite. I took a moment to compose myself before explaining that this was because I had invented it out of whole cloth in an effort — mirabile dictu — to be humorous. Didn’t writers sometimes just make things up? No?

But then it sort of hit me: maybe they had a point after all. You can’t have people blithely blurring the line between fact and fiction as though it didn’t matter. Didn’t that sort of misinformation lead to violence? Before you knew it people would be roaming the Emerald Isle jacklighting trolls and lynching leprechauns. Unicorns might even become extinct. Just like literary humor pieces. Which reminds me: “Endpaper” folded two years ago. Good night, Sneezy. And Gesundheit.

** (This essay was first published in Regeneration Quarterly.)