I was
watching this movie the other night. It was a World War Two movie and there
were Nazis in the movie. And I notice that the Nazis in those movies always had
two separate “Heil's.” They had the regular “Heil” that they would do, and
then, when they were around the offices, they had this casual “Heil,” where
they would just kind of show their palm. Remember that? They come in the
office, “Yeah, Heil, how are you? Is the kid back with the coffee yet? Are you
finished with the copier? Yeah, world domination, Aryan race, whose donuts are
those? Yeah, Heil, nice to see you. Mind if I take the last jelly?”
Unemployment, that’s a tough thing.
Even if you get a job, after you’ve been unemployed, they take unemployment out of your check every week and show it to you in that little box. How good can it be for your confidence that every paycheck has the word “unemployment” on it? You can’t get it out of your mind. You just got the job, they’re already getting ready for you to be laid off.
I have a friend who’s unemployed—he’s collecting unemployment insurance. This guy has never worked so hard in his life as he has to keep this thing going. He’s down there every week, waiting on the lines and getting interviewed and making up all theses lies about looking for jobs.
If they had any idea of the effort and energy that he is expending to avoid work, I’m sure they’d give him a raise.
I’ve never seen someone to such a tremendous job, not working.
Went out to dinner the other night, check came at the end of the meal as it always does. Never liked the check at the end of the meal system. Because money’s a very different thing before and after you eat.
Before you eat, money has very little value. When you’re hungry, you sit down in a restaurant, you’re like the ruler of an empire. You don’t care about the cost. You want maximum food in minimum time.
“More drinks, appetizers, quickly, quickly. Fried things in the shape of a stick or a ball. It will be the greatest meal of our lives.”
Then, after the meal, once you’re full, you can’t remember ever being hungry in your life. You see people walking into the restaurant, you can’t believe it. “Why are all these people coming in here now? I’m so full. How could they eat?” You’ve got your pants undone, napkins destroyed, cigarette butt in the mashed potatoes. You never want to see food again as long as you live. That’s when the check comes. This is why people are always mystified by the check.
“What is this? How could this be?” They start passing it around the table.
“Does this look right to you? We’re not hungry now, why are we ordering all this food?”
Hunger will make people do amazing things. I mean, the proof of that is cannibalism. What do they say? You know, they’re eating . . . “This is good. Who is this? I like this person.” I would think the hardest thing about being a cannibal is trying to get some really solid straight sleep through the night sleep. You’d think with any little noise they’d go “What is it? . . . Who’s that? . . . Who’s there? . . . Is somebody there? . . . What do you want? . . . You look hungry. Are you hungry? . . . Get out of here.”
And how about the professional wrestling referee? There’s a great job. You’re a referee in a sport with no rules of any kind. How do you screw that up?
The referee is kind of like Larry of the Three Stooges. You don’t really need him, but it just wouldn’t be the same without him. They must get these guys from the same place the Harlem Globetrotters get their refs. There must be this whole school where they teach you to just kind of run around and not notice anything.
They sit you down, show you a film of the rubout scene from St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and if you don’t see anything illegal going on, you’re hired.
The opposite side of this is the Olympic platform diving, where the judging is so
critical, it’s too depressing to even watch.
If the diver makes too big a splash going in the water, all the judges are like, “What
the hell was that? That was the dive? Well that’s no good at all. Too much
splashing. I didn’t like the splashing. A couple of drops almost got on me.
He’s just going to have to learn to slow down before he hits that water.
Don’t these divers ever get frustrated and want to just do a cannonball? Wouldn’t that be
great to just see a wall of water going over the judges’ table?
They’d be wiping their glasses, “I didn’t see the entry. What did you put down?”
The movies will always be one of my top all-time out activities. But to be honest, the peak moment for me is always being on the way to the movies. I love being
on the way to the movies.
We’re in the car, trying to get there in time. Maybe you’ll have good seats. Maybe it’ll be a good movie. Maybe everything’ll be good. You don’t know, and when you’re on the way it’s still possible. I love that I’m definitely doing something and I haven’t done it yet. That’s a pure life moment. After you get a job and before you have to do it. Nothing beats that. It’s the spaces between life that
I like the most.
There definitely seems to be an age gap in the hiring policy at most movie theaters.
They never hire anyone between the ages of 15 and 80. So the girl that sells the tickets, she’s 10. Then there’s the guy that rips it, he’s 102. So what happened in the
middle there? They couldn’t find anybody? It’s like they want to show you how life comes full circle. When you’re 15, you’re selling the tickets, then you leave. You go out, you have a family, kids, marriage, career, grandchildren. Eighty years later you’re back in the same theater, three feet away, ripping
tickets.
Eighty years to move three feet.
My most embarrassing movie moment is how often I get confused by the plot.
I hate to have to admit it, but I’m one of those people you always see in the parking lot after the movie talking with his friends going, “Oh, you mean that was the same guy from the beginning? Ohhh.” Nobody will explain anything to you while the
movie’s going on. You can’t find out.
I’m always whispering to the person next to me. “Why did they kill that guy? I don’t understand. I thought he was with them. Wasn’t he with them? Why would they kill him if he was with them? Oh, he wasn’t really with them. Oh . . . It’s a
good thing they killed him.”
There’s a lot of shushing going on in movie theaters. People are always shushing. “Shhh, shh, shh, shhh.” It doesn’t work because nobody knows where a shush is coming from. They just hear, “shh.” “Was that a shush? I think somebody shushed
me. I think I just got shushed, but I don’t know where it came from.”
Some people you can’t shush in a movie theater. They’re talking and talking, everyone around them is shushing them, and they won’t shush. No one can shush them.
They’re the “unshushables.”
The one movie ad I don’t get is this one: “If you see only one movie this year . . .” If you see only one movie this year, why go at all? You’re not going to enjoy it. There’s too much pressure. You’re sitting there, “All right, this is
it for 51 more weekends, this better be good.”
If we really stuck with the classic Greek priorities, a sound mind in a sound body, the only two places we’d ever go is to a library or a gym. What’s amazing to me about the library is that here’s a place where you can go in, you take out any book you want, they just give it to you and say, “Please just bring it back when you’re done.” It reminds me of this pathetic friend everybody had when they were a little kid that would let you borrow any of his stuff if you would just be his friend.
That’s what the library is, it’s a government-funded pathetic friend. That’s why everybody kind of bullies the library, “Maybe I’ll bring it back on time, maybe I’ll bring it back late. What are you gonna do, charge me a nickel? Oooh, I’m so scared.”
I always did well on the essay questions. Just put everything you know on there, maybe you’ll hit it. And then you’d get the paper back from the teacher, and she’s just written one word across the entire page, “vague.” I thought “vague” was kind of a vague thing to say. I’d write underneath it, “unclear,” send it back. She’d return it to me, “ambiguous.” I’d send it back to her, “cloudy.” We’re still corresponding to this day. Hazy, muddy . . .
Do you ever sneak down to better seats at the game, and get caught by the usher? When you’re a kid, it doesn’t matter because you’re always getting chased from everyplace anyway. But when you’re an adult, it’s really embarrassing to get caught. You have to pretend like there’s some confusion. So you put on this whole act, you’re looking at the tickets, “I don’t understand how this could’ve happened. Let me see . . . Oh I see the problem. These are very good seats, I have very bad seats. That’s the misunderstanding.”
To me, if life boils down to one significant thing it’s movement. To live is to keep moving. Unfortunately, this means that for the rest of our lives we’re going to be looking for boxes.
When you’re moving, your whole world is boxes. That’s all you think about. “Boxes, where are there boxes?” You just wander down the street going in and out of stores, “Are there boxes here? Have you seen any boxes?” It’s all you think about. You can’t even talk to people, you can’t concentrate. “Will you shut up? I’m looking for boxes!”
After a while, you become like a bloodhound on the scent. You walk into a store, “There’s boxes here. Don’t tell me you don’t have boxes, dammit, I can smell ‘em!” I become obsessed. “I love the smell of cardboard boxes in the morning.” You could be at a funeral, everyone’s mourning, crying around you, you’re looking at the casket. “That’s a nice box. Does anybody know where that guy got that box? When he’s done with it, you think I could get that? It’s got some nice handles on it. My stereo would fit right in there.”
I mean that’s what death is, really, it’s the last big move of your life. The hearse is like the van, the pallbearers are your close friends, the only ones you could really ask to help
you with a big move like that. And the casket is that great, perfect box you’ve been looking for your whole life. The only problem is once you find it, you’re in it.
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