by Jeff Strand
I went to bed and dreamt of romance.
* * *
Travis came back around two in the morning. This time, instead of brain-fried he looked freaked.
“What happened?” I asked, as he turned on the light. “Jeez, Travis, are you hyperventilating?”
“I’m going to hell,” he whimpered.
“What’d you do?”
“It started out nice. We went out and got a pizza. We talked, found out that we had a lot in common, and I was thinking, wow, I’d like to spend more time with her. Then we went to the graveyard, where she spoke to her grandmother’s tombstone for about an hour. She tried to get me to participate, but I was a little uncomfortable, so she settled for having me sing ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider,’ which was her grandmother’s favorite song.”
Travis wrung his hands together. “So, then she starts wrapping it up, and I’m thinking that we finally get to leave, when she gives me this slow kiss on the lips. Then leans over and whispers in my ear that she wants me! Right then and there!”
“Next to grandma’s grave?”
“On grandma’s grave! She said she wanted her grandmother to know that she was happy!”
I gave him an incredulous look. “And you did it?”
“I...I...it wasn’t my fault!”
“You actually had sex with her on top of her grandmother’s grave?”
Travis looked distraught. “Oh, God...this makes me evil, doesn’t it? What if she got pregnant? It’ll be Satan’s child!”
“So what did you two do afterward? Smoke a cigarette and sacrifice a goat?”
“I haven’t even told you the worst part. She was a wild woman! Totally out of control! I tried to calm her down, but she was just going nuts, and...”
“And what?”
“And she hit her head on the tombstone and gave herself a concussion. I had to take her to the hospital.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“Yeah, she’ll be fine. I got to meet her parents. They seemed nice.”
I stared at him for a long moment. “So when’s your next date?”
“I’m never going to date again. All I’m going to do is study. That’s it. Study, study, study, and write our skit. No social life for me. I’m done.”
“Congratulations. Join the No Social Life Club and get some sleep.”
“Do you think her grandmother could hear us?”
“Go to sleep, Travis.”
Chapter Fourteen
“The Birth of Out of Whack”
You may be looking at the title of this chapter and thinking “It’s about damn time!” Well, stop that. It’s rude.
My first day of classes consisted of Biology 101, Sociology 101, and English 112. Aside from discovering that I had approximately $350 worth of books to purchase, and that 66.6% of my teachers were blithering incompetents, the day went fairly well.
I was done with classes by four, so I waited until Travis finished at five and we went to the cafeteria for a delicious dinner consisting of Ooze on a Bun and cold, wet French fries. Travis seemed to have mostly recovered from the trauma of last night (at least he was eating solid foods again), and after our meal we headed back to the dorm room to write.
“All right,” I said, taking out my official-looking notebook. “The official Seth and Travis comedy brainstorming session has begun.”
“Should we have caffeine for this?” Travis asked.
“Yes, we should,” I declared.
Twenty minutes later, we returned from the convenience store with a twelve-pack of Mountain Dew and a large bag of Raisinets.
“All right,” I said, taking out my official-looking notebook once again. “The official Seth and Travis comedy brainstorming session has begun.”
“Hold on, I have to take a leak,” said Travis. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, I leave you my artificial turnip.”
Travis had owned this stupid plastic turnip for as long as I’d known him. He couldn’t remember where he got it and had no particular use for it that he was willing to reveal, but he didn’t want to throw it out.
He returned four minutes later, so I was saved the hassle of forming a search party. “All right,” I said, clenching the official-looking notebook tightly. “The official Seth and Travis comedy brainstorming session is about to begin, unless member Travis is willing to have his heart removed with his own toenails.”
“I’m ready,” said Travis. “Where should we begin?”
“Probably with a cool name,” I suggested. “The Comedy Duo of Seth and Travis isn’t all that spectacular.”
“Nope,” Travis agreed. “Though The Comedy Duo of Travis and Seth has a nice ring to it.”
“Bite me hard and for a long time.”
“Getting all the sophisticated humor out of your system before we start writing?”
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll spend the next few minutes just coming up with as many names as we can. I’ll write them all down and we’ll decide which ones are terrible later. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“Let’s begin.”
I still have the official notebook, by the way. And right there, on the first page, are some of the name ideas that we rejected:
The Amazing Travis Darrow And His Pet Nerd
A Couple of Idiots
You Suck If You Don’t Laugh
Fallen Weebles
The Amazing Travis Darrow And His Twistable Tongue
Chucklefodder
Overstepping the Boundaries
Levity Loonies
Mayhem
Over The Top (Not the Sylvester Stallone Arm Wrestling Movie)
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!
We Do Funny Skits And Stuff Like That
Ugh: The Group
I read off the list. “Which one do you like best?” I asked.
“Ugh: The Group.”
“Ugh: The Group doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s part of its appeal.”
“Personally, I like Overstepping the Boundaries best.”
“Nah.”
“What if we shortened it? Out of Bounds?”
Travis considered that. “Hmmmm...that’s not so bad, actually. Are you sure you won’t go for Ugh: The Group?”
“I’m positive.”
“Okay, then Out of Bounds works for me. Let’s go with it.”
“No, wait!” I said. “Out of Whack! That’s what we should call it! Out of Whack!”
Insert an incredibly dramatic pause here.
“Nah,” said Travis.
“Oh, come on! It’s perfect!”
“What’s wrong with The Amazing Travis Darrow and his Twistable Tongue? Think of the groupies!”
I pointed toward the door in horror. “Behind you! It’s the rotting corpse of Chi-Mao’s grandmother! And she’s horny!”
“That’s not funny,” Travis said.
“Actually, it was,” I corrected.
“I’m just messing with you. Out of Whack is fine. So who gets to be Out and who gets to be Whack?”
I ignored him. “Now, we need a skit...”
Four hours and eighty-seven arguments later, we had one.
* * *
[ Travis will be seated behind a desk, dressed as a newscaster. ]
TRAVIS: Good evening, and welcome to the evening news. Our top story: False flashers have been sighted around the parks of our fair city. These trench-coated fiends seem like genuine flashers at first glance, but when they throw open the raincoat their collective doodles are covered with signs reading “Fooled You!” thus robbing our women of even the tiniest glimpse of the Six Inch Delight. And in more local news, Vinnie Faltermeyer was found dead in his apartment last night, apparently the victim of a stabbing, as evidenced by the knife protruding from his chest.
[ Travis looks at the newssheet more closely. ]
TRAVIS: Wait a minute...I know this guy! Yeah, I remember Vinnie!
[ He calls off-stage. ]
TRAVIS: Hey, Chuck! V
innie Faltermeyer’s dead! Yeah, Vinnie! The beer-chugging king bit the dust!
[ Seth, in the glorious role of Chuck the stagehand, walks over to him, holding a sandwich. ]
SETH: Are you serious? Dang, I liked him.
TRAVIS: Remember that one time when you and me snuck into Vinnie’s dorm room and shaved his armpits? And all the next day Vinnie was walking around going “Hey, who shaved my armpits?” and we blamed it on that geeky guy at the end of the hall who never bathed and ate soap?
SETH: That’s right! And remember how Vinnie could make that really cool popping sound with his belly button and he would call people he didn’t know and not say anything but just make that popping sound into the phone and then hang up?
TRAVIS: Man, those were some times.
SETH: You’re not kidding.
[ Seth walks off-stage. Travis continues with the news. ]
TRAVIS: The president has just been shot. We’ll have more details as they trickle in. And now here’s Butch with sports.
[ Seth is at another desk, wearing a different sweater to signify that he is no longer Chuck the stagehand, but Butch the sports guy. ]
SETH: In football, this blue team played this red team, and I think the blue team won. In bowling, a couple of players got strikes, and one guy picked up a spare. In swimming, nobody drowned. And another four cities banned the sport of squirrel hurling. Back to you, Jim.
TRAVIS [ calling off-stage ]: Hey, Chuck, remember that one time when Vinnie got so drunk he couldn’t remember who he was, and so we changed his identity and sent him to live with those Amish people? Boy, was he mad!
SETH [ as Chuck ]: But that beard did a lot for him.
TRAVIS: This just in. The home at 431 Tucker Street burned to the ground today. Nobody was injured, though neighbors expressed regret that, and I quote, “the weenie didn’t get roasted.” Firemen say...
[ He realizes something. ]
TRAVIS: Oh...oh, this is just great. Dammit, I told my wife again and again, the grill is for outdoor use only! But does she listen? Noooooooooooo. She’s too busy cooking her precious shish kabobs!
[ He flips through the remaining newssheets quickly and without enthusiasm. ]
TRAVIS: Okay, we’ve got a burglary, a festival, another murder, a tax hike, a glee club bake sale, some reject with a big cabbage, blah blah blah, that’s the news, I’m done.
[ The end...or is it? ]
- An Incomplete Catalog of Arguments -
1. Who would be playing the newscaster. (Resolved with a line reading after the skit was completed. I was forced to admit defeat and Travis got the role.)
2. Whether “collective doodles” or “collective penises” was funnier. I fought for doodles. I won. I’ll let you make your own decision.
3. How long the Six Inch Delight should be. We debated everything from two to eighteen inches. If you knew just how long we spent discussing this, I guarantee you’d shake your head sadly and sigh.
4. Nearly two dozen names were rejected before we agreed on “Vinnie Faltermeyer.” I kind of wish my own name was Vinnie Faltermeyer sometimes, even if thoughts like that do make me a nerd.
5. Travis wanted to exaggerate the stabbing gag to “apparently the victim of a stabbing, as evidenced by the six knives protruding from his chest,” but my gift for subtlety won him over.
6. Vinnie could have been “the nose-picking king”, “the distance-spitting king”, “the kitten-sniffing king,” or even the “yak-tugging king.”
7. Travis thought the shaved armpits bit was stupid. I agreed with him 100%, but I wanted to keep it in. There’s a blatant lack of good shaved armpits gags in comedy today, and I aim to change that, once and for all!
8. We narrowed it down to “ate soap” from virtually every disgusting substance it is possible to put into one’s mouth. Be glad you weren’t there for the conversation. If you don’t believe anything else I’ve said in this book, trust me on this one.
9. We didn’t argue about the belly button pop, but Travis wasted a good three minutes trying to do it. He never could, and the world is a better place.
10. I didn’t want to add the line “We’ll have more details as they trickle in” after the president had been shot, but Travis thought it worked better that way. I was forced to concede since he’d let me have the armpit hair bit.
11. On the sports bit, we agreed on everything except the colors of the teams. Go figure.
12. Travis had a really vulgar alternative to the part where we changed Vinnie’s identity. I mean, it was filth in its rawest form. I personally would not have stood in front of actual people and recited these foul lines, and absolutely refused to put them into the skit. I’m not going to divulge what he wanted to include, but for those of you who are into mathematics, if you add every bit of non-G-rated humor in this book so far, plus all of the vulgarity to come (and there’s plenty, including a really cheap “come” double entendre that you may have just missed), it still won’t be as obscene as what Travis had in mind. He called me a wimp.
13. When we were at the burning home news story on the first draft (this was after three hours of working on this thing), Travis wanted to quit for the night. I called him a wimp. He called me a name inspired by the rejected material I mentioned in #12, but stuck with it until we finished the skit.
Now, we had a name. We had something to perform.
Like that giant maggot in the remake of The Fly, Out of Whack was born.
Chapter Fifteen
“Comedy is a Frightening Thing”
The day of the Saul Rawlins Comedy Competition started like any other, with a huge THUMP and bits of plaster falling into my open mouth. Every time the guy upstairs would jump off his bunk bed, we’d get a plaster rainfall. I was trying to get out of the habit of sleeping with my mouth open, both to avoid getting poisoned and because I’d often wake up with my mouth so dry I’d have to stagger out of bed making gasping noises in the back of my throat and rush to drink the melted ice from an old glass of Coke.
Anyway, on this fine Friday morning, I got up, performed the requisite hygiene duties, plucked my eyebrows with a pair of fingernail clippers so they’d be their pluckedest, and went to class, where I promptly discovered that I’d forgotten about the English quiz. One “F” later, I went back to the dorm and looked over my lines again.
We’d practiced over and over to the twenty-seventh power, and I thought we had it down pretty well. We’d argued over several of the line readings, explaining to each other in very sarcastic detail why it was funnier to emphasize one word over another, or why a line should be divided up into two breaths, and finally had compromised with an “I’ll read my lines any damn way I please, and you read your lines any damn way you please” deal.
Aside from preparing for the competition, nothing overly exciting had been happening in my first three weeks of college.
I’d made a few friends and gone to most of my classes, but not much else. I spent an incredible amount of time thinking about Laura, usually when Travis reminded me by saying something like “That’s as stupid as when you spilled beer on that girl.” I hadn’t seen her again, though. Travis had seen her entering Sniper Hall a couple of times, but I was too scared to try and find her there.
Travis had gotten over his little dating trauma, and the previous Friday had burst into the room. “Seth, buddy, paragon of generosity, I need the room tonight.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. I met this girl at Snorty’s and she came back with me. We need the room.”
I gasped in mock surprise. “Travis! Are you suggesting intercourse!”
“Yes, I am, and unless you want to watch my gyrating butt all night, you’ll sleep in the lounge.”
“The lounge has rats.”
“So does the room. What’s the big deal?”
I shook my head. “I just don’t know. I’m expecting an important call.” At last! Revenge for the Brady Bunch song in eighth grade, all the more precious because of t
he delay!
“I’ll take a message. C’mon, you know I’d do the same for you.”
“Where is she now?”
“In the bathroom throwing up.”
“You’re going to take advantage of her in a drunken state?”
“She’s not drunk. Stomach flu.”
“Travis, where do you find these women?”
“Can I borrow the room or not?”
“For ten bucks you can. Half that for anything under five minutes.”
“I’m not paying you ten bucks!”
“Why not? That’s probably less than the girl cost.”
“Oh, ha-ha. You’re hilarious.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Please, from one hormonally hyperactive male to another, get the hell out of the room.”
“Will you buy me a cookie?”
“Yes, I’ll buy you a stupid cookie. Can I use the room?”
“With milk?”
“Yes, with milk.”
“Vitamin D milk?”
“I’ll get you breast milk if you want it, just go away!”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go. Just let me pack a few things and tidy up a bit.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Don’t you hate dealing with a smart-ass?”
I figured I could always crash on somebody’s floor, so I folded up my blanket and got my toothbrush out of the closet.
“Oh, one more thing,” said Travis as I headed for the door.
“Yes?”
“Ummm...you know how my bed has those uncomfortable springs...?”
“No way! Uh-uh! You’re not using my bed! Absolutely not!”
