Let teachers teach stuff like this, and I guarantee kids will come to school early and stay after class voluntarily.
What Is It With Bankers?
FIRST PRINTED SEPTEMBER 2000
IS IT SOME SORT OF fundamental sociomathematical principle? “Wealth times sense of humor equals a constant,” perhaps? That would help explain why writers of humor so often die broke…
Bankers handle vast amounts of our money every day. Let’s presume they must be very smart, to be in that position, and God knows they can afford to dress better than the rest of us. So why are “banker” and “cool” antithetical concepts? Something about the profession seems to require, or perhaps merely causes, total atrophy of the sense of humor gland. If I really strain, I can come up with maybe two bankers I can picture grinning…and neither is expected to get out of the joint any sooner than 2015. If a banker appears in a joke, it’s a safe bet he’ll be the butt of it—and it will get a big laugh.
Wouldn’t you think bankers, of all people, could afford to spin themselves a better public image? On the contrary, they don’t seem to care what we think of them. Remember: these are the people who have traditionally provided, for the use of their customers, the cheapest, shoddiest pens it is possible to buy…and chained them in place to prevent their theft. Deaf to all irony, they must be…
I normally treat the business section of any newspaper as something impeding access to the comics, but my humorist’s eye was caught a while back by an account of a six-year David-and-Goliath legal struggle that ended in victory for the little guy. In this case the “little guy” has assets of just under $2 billion, so you might want to pause just a moment here and adjust your own sense of humor. Nevertheless the term is apt—because the big bullies who got their comeuppance are worth, literally, more than a hundred times as much: the kind of fellas who might well say “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money”…but without intending it as a joke.
Six years ago, Richmond Savings Credit Union of British Columbia, the little guy, launched a witty ad campaign known as the “Humungous Bank” campaign. It centered around the slogan, “We’re not a bank. We’re better.” Sadly, I missed it, but Mr. Constantineau says it “portrays Canada’s big banks as gigantic, uncaring institutions staffed by robotic employees.” One can only imagine the shock and consternation this controversial allegation must have provoked in Richmond.
Well, sir, major executives of some of Canada’s truly humungous banks decided to make it absolutely clear to the whole world that they are, in fact, exactly the sort of pompous, humorless bullying dweebs they were being called out there in Richmond. So the mighty Canadian Bankers Association, representing over two hundred billion dollars, dropped heavy lawyers on the tiny Richmond Savings Credit Union from a great height, seeking to prevent it from trademarking the offensive slogan, “We’re not a bank. We’re better.” They spent six years and God knows how much of their depositors’ money arguing, absurdly, to the federal Trademarks Opposition Board that the credit union had “used the word ‘bank’ to describe its services.” (If I say I’m smarter than a banker, I have not used the word “banker” to describe my own intelligence. Nor flattered myself much.)
The CBA had to do this, says a spokesman, because “Humungous Bank was a negative campaign, and banks were concerned about the effect it had on their staff.” He did not describe this effect, but one can easily imagine the brutal trauma that must have been experienced by employees of very large banks when they were accused, doubtless for the first time in their lives, of being “robotic” servants of “uncaring institutions.” Except, perhaps, for the tellers, who in recent years have by and large been replaced by their caring employers with ATM robots and Internet software…
I empathize with alien creatures for a living. I can picture myself, at least momentarily, in the shoes of a CBA bigwig—doing as they did, saying what they said. But here’s where my empathy, or perhaps merely my imagination, fails: I cannot, even for an instant, see myself doing it without giggling. Uncontrollably.
That’s why they’re never gonna let me run a really big bank. Nothing to do with that bunco thing at all…
In any case, after all that time and effort, the bigshot bankers failed: the Trademarks Board recently ruled against the CBA and in favor of RCSU—which, vindicated, now plans to relaunch the Humungous Bank Campaign this fall. Good for them, I say: may it bring them many new customers. Smiling ones.
Don’t big bankers realize their very humorlessness makes them an irresistible target for mockery? Thirty-five years ago, my anarchist friend Slinky John (who wore at all times a button that read, “Go, lemmings, go!”) became annoyed with an officious official at his bank. So one day he presented the man with a cheque for $100.17. Firmly ignoring the frivolity of the odd amount, the banker soberly counted out five twenties, a dime, a nickel and two pennies. Slinky John picked up the twenties, tipped his hat, and headed for the door.
“Sir?” the banker called. “Sir!”
“Keep the change,” Slinky John said grandly, and left.
(Kids, don’t try this at home! For one thing, the rules have changed since those days. For another, bankers nowadays are more likely to have studied martial arts than they were back then…)
I’ve been reading humor for forty-five years and writing it professionally for twenty-five, and if there is anything funnier than tipping a banker, I can’t think of it at the moment. I heard it was more than forty-eight hours before someone higher up the chain figured out a way for that guy to account for the seventeen cents, close out his drawer and go home to his family. I imagine he remembers the incident to this day…and still doesn’t understand that if he had only laughed, Slinky John would probably have come back and retrieved his change.
I believe there’s even some sort of proverbial expression regarding what should happen to people if they can’t take a joke, isn’t there?
“More than enough is-a too much…”
FIRST PRINTED MAY 2000
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Isn’t it?
Commenting recently on a friend’s manuscript about six characters pursuing a public billion-dollar prize, I expressed the opinion that only a fool would think a sixth of a billion dollars is a good thing to have. I think I startled him. “Are you seriously saying you’d turn down $167,000,000?” he e-mailed back. “Really?” Here’s an edited version of my reply:
In a hot second. No question in my mind. I’d go as far as murder, if that’s what it took.
$167,000.00, I’d accept. Eagerly. I would consider $1,670,000—if there were a strong nondisclosure agreement. But a public award of 167 million? In US dollars?
I’ve never met, seen or heard of anyone with that kind of money who looked or sounded happy to me…and I’m certain I wouldn’t be. I have few friends, but good ones, and I cherish my privacy. Why would I want a guarantee that most people I’ll meet henceforth will be vampires or freeloaders, that they’ll keep coming out of the woodwork until years after I die and that from now on the only folks I’ll ever spend time with who don’t envy and resent me will be, by and large, either predators or compulsives…who’ll mistake me for one of them?
That kind of money destroyed one of the great friendships of this century, and the greatest songwriting team of all time. Lucre, not Yoko, broke up the Beatles. Having money on that scale is not merely a fulltime 24-7365 job, it’s one that calls for someone who enjoys the work.
Hiring other people to do it for you won’t serve. Ask the surviving Fab Two. How can you trust your employees? It’s hiring junkies to guard your smack. Nearly everybody has a jones for money.
I’m not romanticizing poverty. It sucks. People who are dirt poor aren’t necessarily any better company than the rich. But I think EXTREME wealth is as bad as extreme poverty. In the last century I can think offhand of only a single human who, given hundreds of millions, continued to produce exceptional creative work. Chap named McCartney. (A rule-proving e
xception in many ways: he also never spent a single night apart from his late wife, except when in jail.)
Picture your character A, handed all that money. Suddenly she is fat, juicy prey for a thousand predators—people who’ve not only been screwing others all their lives, but were born with a taste for it and would probably do it for free. In what fantasy universe could she possibly cope? How would she tell a champion from a viper? Her only hope would be to give it all away so fast she was tapped out before they could gear up to come after her. And she wouldn’t know how…
So far I’ve never once worried that someone might kidnap my daughter to get leverage on me. One single minute of such worry…No, 167 mill doesn’t come near being compensation enough for that. Never mind worrying about my wife’s security, or my own…
…which brings me back to the Beatles. Specifically George Harrison. Safe in his own bed in his own mansion on his own estate, a few years before his death, protected by the best security system and guards he can buy. At four A.M. he hears glass breaking and sits bolt upright in bed. Twenty goddamn years since his old comrade was murdered in New York, and he still wakes instantly at a noise in the night. And behold, it turns out he’s right to do so: at that, he’s just barely alert enough to save his own life, with his wife Olivia’s courageous help. How much do you suppose The Quiet Beatle would have paid for one really sound night’s sleep?
These are all practical considerations. Morally and ethically…I have a fairly large ego, like any artist, but I just can’t persuade myself that in ten standard lifetimes I could produce work worth 167 megabucks. That much money would be like a Hugo Award for a book I didn’t write—to keep it would inevitably erode my self-respect. Yet the dispersal of that much raw energy back into the eco(nomic)system would be a task fraught with moral and practical ramifications, one I don’t hanker for and am certain I would bungle.
Money’s only fun in medium to medium-large denominations. Name a multibillionaire you’d really like to trade places with…or even be trapped in a long conversation with. Do you really think Bill Gates is having more fun than you are? Look at him. He obviously can’t stand to look in a mirror, or he’d get a damn haircut. There can’t be many people on the planet who love him, or ever will, and he knows it. Nearly everything he sells, he took from its actual creators; all one can really admire him for is good judgment and ruthlessness. No wonder he gives historic sums to charity.
The philosopher Marx astutely observed, “More than enough is-a too much.” (I speak here of Chico.) I’d certainly like to be richer than I am now. But the most I want, the upper limit, is Enough. I haven’t worked out the exact sum…not in years, anyway…but if some hypothetical benefactor gave me sufficient funds to
cover existing mortgage, taxes, fuel, food, drink and recreational substances costs,
buy my choreographer wife half a dozen trained dancers and a studio,
buy myself one CD and four books per week,
take one trip a year to somewhere,
upgrade my computer platform every third year and
anonymously bail one friend per year out of, say, a $10,000 hole,
then that, for me, would be Enough. I’d be done, then. (I have free medical here in Canada, remember.) I don’t know what that number is, in today’s dollars, but I’ll bet it’s not much more than a megabuck, invested prudently.
That’s “My Wildest Dreams,” right there. Any more would be a nuisance, like more ice cream than you can eat before it’ll spoil. A less sedentary person than myself might well be able to burn up, say, three or four times as much money. But 167 times as much?
I don’t want, never did want, As Much As Possible. I don’t even need More Than Any Other Kid On The Playground. All I want is Enough. I’ve been baffled every day of my adult life that anyone would ever want anything more. But apparently most folks do.
As the narrator of my latest novel says at one point, in a different context, “I’ll never understand people. Even being one doesn’t seem to help.”
Please Don’t Talk About Him ’Til He’s Gone
FIRST PRINTED OCTOBER 2000
OCTOBER 9, 1981. My wife Jeanne had been invited to perform with Beverly Brown Dancensemble in New York that autumn, so I was there rather than home in Halifax. There had been no publicity anywhere about the date, but I didn’t need any. I told my six-year-old she was playing hooky today, and we took a bus to Central Park West.
To the Dakota. Where we found several hundred other people milling about who also had not needed anyone to tell them whose forty-first birthday it was that day.
There was no organization of any kind to the group, no common denominator except a palpable sadness. Many were silent. Many wept aloud. Some sang his songs together, fighting not to cry and failing. Some held banners. Some held candles. Some held babies. This was New York, of course: dozens of busy pedestrians passed through the crowd without noticing its existence. But there was enough commotion to slow traffic. I took my child across the street and lifted her up so she could get a better sense of it.
She naturally wanted to know why these people were all here and why they were all so sad—why we were here and why I was so sad. A man had been murdered on this spot ten months before, I said, a man who had written many songs that changed the lives of everyone, and we’d all come to pay our respects on his birthday. Just then a stretch limousine glided to a halt before us. Its tinted rear window powered down to reveal a woman about whom two things were instantly clear: she was at least ninety, and she had always been wealthy enough to buy Donald Trump for cash.
Her puzzlement was clear and understandable. Central Park West is not a neighborhood where they tend to get a lot of spontaneous gatherings of…well…not-rich people. Especially with guitars. She wasn’t annoyed, but she was curious. “Excuse me, what is the occasion, please?” she asked us.
I went blank. I couldn’t think how to explain it to her—the gulf seemed too great. I gestured helplessly at the building across the street, and a man standing next to me pointed there too and said simply, “It’s his birthday.”
She glanced where we were pointing, and I saw her recognize the Dakota, and then a split second later I saw her get it, saw her face change as realization dawned. It hit her like a slap—this woman who had almost certainly never been slapped in her life. Suddenly and explosively, she burst into tears. “Drive on,” she sobbed.
That universally loved, Johnny was.
“Who killed him, Daddy?” my daughter asked a little later. And as I began to answer, the man standing next to us, the same guy who had said, “It’s his birthday,” leaned over and said to her, very softly and very kindly, “We do not say his name.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“He says he did it because he wanted to be as famous as John,” the man told her. He shook his head and turned his gaze the Dakota. His voice was still soft, still kindly, but with a steely undertone now then that made my daughter cling tightly to me as he finished, “We cannot permit that.”
I agree. John Lennon was murdered by He Whose Name We Must Never Mention. That’s HWNWMNM for short, and it’s supposed to be unpronounceable. The enormity of what was done can never be diminished…but the utter insignificance of the twerp who did it can never be overstated. Or that of the horse he rode in on.
I don’t want to ever know any more about HWNWMNM than I do right now. I don’t need to understand his incomprehensible motives; I don’t care to be privy to his unthinkable thoughts; I don’t wonder what was failing to go through his mind at the moment he backshot his better; I’m not at all curious what his life is like in prison or what his family think of him now or what friends remember about him or his thoughts on the nature of violence. If he has a biographer, someone please offer that person honorable work instead.
Lawrence Block, in his most controversial (and arguably his best) novel, Random Walk, dares suggest that perhaps killer and victim find each other, that in some sense the prey needs the predat
or too and in some mystical way seeks out its own death. It’s easy to be infuriated by this theory…but in the case of John Lennon, believing it is tempting. Everyone knows the irony of his song on the White Album, “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” But how many know the eerily prophetic lyrics of “I’m Scared” (from Walls and Bridges, his penultimate post-Beatles solo album), in which he flat-out predicted that hatred and jealousy, “the green-eyed, goddamn, straight from the heart,” would kill him? Consider the very last album the Beatles ever recorded together, Abbey Road: most people think the first sound they hear when they play it is John saying, “Shoop—” But listen carefully on good headphones, or check the outtake on the Anthology CD package: what he actually whispered over and over, and what the whole world heard in the manner Dubya calls “subliminable,” were the retroactively blood-chilling words, “Shoot me…”
So it is just conceivable that, given twenty years, he might have forgiven HWNWMNM—as the little bastard had the audacity to suggest before his recent parole hearing. But I have not. Nor has anyone else: a Compuserve poll asking whether he should be granted parole drew a flood of responses, every one negative…and unsurprisingly the parole board agreed. All the publicity about his parole hearing, in other words, has been worse than pointless, playing right into his hands, giving him just what he wanted: delusions of worth.
If history must record who did the awful deed…let it use no name, but only what George called him: “one who offended all.” Let him not even have an obit when he finally dies. What he did, any bacterium could have done…and for cleaner motives.
“There are not many places to go once you’ve killed John Lennon,” Time quotes him as saying on the twentieth anniversary of Johnny’s death.
The Crazy Years Page 13
