Lunatics

by Dave Barry

  “What is this place?” asked Peckerman.

  “It’s a television studio,” said Ismail.

  “And why are we here?” I asked.

  Ismail said this is where Peckerman and I would be uniting all Arab nations in laughter with our own show on the Al Jazeera network. Followed by jihad.

  CHAPTER 44

  Jeffrey

  I’m not saying I’m Jay Leno. But I have done some television. You might have seen me, if you ever caught a show I hosted called Forensic Plumbing!, which ran on local-cable-access TV in parts of northern New Jersey.

  The problem was, they gave me a shitty time slot. I asked for prime time, like eight p.m. on a weeknight, but the asshole station gave me, get this, six a.m. Sunday morning, when there’s nobody in front of a TV except three-year-olds and drunks passed out from Saturday night. Here are some of the shows that had better time slots than I did:

  — Candle Dipping for Seniors, which was one solid hour of this guy who talked like Mister Rogers on quaaludes dipping a string into a pot of hot wax over and over and over and over until you wanted to just shoot the fucking television.

  — Ask the Rhododendron Doctor, which was this guy who fielded calls from the public about rhododendron diseases. Except the public never called. All the calls were from the guy’s wife, who tried to disguise her voice—like she’d try to talk in a low pitch and claim her name was Steve—but you could still tell it was her. Plus every now and then the asshole would slip up and call her “honey,” even when she was allegedly a man.

  — Compost It!, which was a bearded hippie dipshit going through his neighbors’ garbage cans and pointing out what they could have put in a compost pile. He’d find, like, a grapefruit rind, and get all excited, like it was the fucking Hope Diamond. The only time the show was any good was when people would come out of their houses and yell at the hippie to get away from their garbage cans, and he’d brandish the grapefruit rind at them and yell that they were raping the Earth. I admit, I got the idea for putting an exclamation point at the end of Forensic Plumbing! from Compost It! But the guy really was a dipshit.

  — Hilda and Gloria’s Wide Universe of Books, which was these two fat old broads talking about a book they supposedly read that week, only half the time you could tell neither one of them had finished it, so most of the show consisted of one of them, Hilda I think, talking about medical complications arising from her hysterectomy, which she claimed was botched, and the other one going, “Oh my God, that’s awful!”

  These were the kinds of assholes who were getting better time slots than I got, which was a total joke because Forensic Plumbing! had some real meat to it. The set was me sitting in a chair next to a potted tropical plant. I opened the show every week by breaking the ice with a couple of plumbing-related jokes. Like: “Did you hear that somebody broke into the police station and stole the toilet? Police have nothing to go on!” Then I’d move on to that week’s Plumbing Whodunit, which would be an actual forensic plumbing case.

  Like there was one fascinating case where a forensic plumber was called in to investigate how come a high-rise building got flooded. His investigation determined that a plumbing contractor had been called in to unclog a toilet on one of the middle floors. This guy ran a cable through the carrier and the four-inch horizontal waste into the six-inch vertical stack, where it got stuck. So the plumber, assuming the cable went down the stack, went looking for it on a lower floor, where he tried to cut into the riser with a band saw. But his blade got jammed, so he gave up and just left the blade there, if you can believe that, with a come-along still attached to the riser. The other end of the come-along was attached to a two-inch galvanized cold-water header in the pipe chase, which was what broke and caused the actual leak. But here’s the kicker: The cable never went down the vertical stack in the first place! It got turned around in a tucker fitting and actually went up. Seriously. You can’t make this shit up.

  Every week on Forensic Plumbing! I would take the viewers through cases like that. Midway through my presentation, to add variety and action, I’d get up from the chair and go to a dry-erase board, where I’d diagram some of the key points. What made that a little tricky, productionwise, was that my camera operator was this older Italian guy from my neighborhood, Joe Stampone, who was legally blind. To be honest, you didn’t really even need the “legally” part: He was blind as a bat with a bag over its head. The funny thing was, he still insisted on driving, being Italian, so his wife, Marie, had to ride with him and yell “It’s turning yellow! Slow down! Now it’s red! Stop the car stop stop forgodsake Joe STOP!!”

  The thing was, Joe was the only person I could find who would go with me to the studio at six a.m. on a Sunday, so I had to use him on the camera. He was okay when I was sitting at the desk, but when I made the move to the dry-erase board, his aim was sometimes off, so if you were watching you’d hear me talking, but what you’d see on the screen was the tropical plant. So I came up with a system where I’d signal him to move the camera by snapping my fingers. If I snapped once, that meant move the camera left, and two snaps meant move it right. But Joe’s memory wasn’t much better than his eyesight, so sometimes I’d snap and you’d hear him saying, in what he thought was a whisper, “Wait, is it your left, or my left?”

  But the point is, I had some experience in front of the camera, so when the Hamas guy, Ismail, told us we’d be doing a live international broadcast on Al Jazeera, which is a major network I have heard of, I right away had some ideas. My thought was a talk-show format, with me as the host, maybe opening with a monologue and interviewing guests. I saw Horkman in more of the Ed McMahon role—his job would be to laugh at the monologue, then shut the fuck up, move down the sofa, maybe get off camera altogether.

  I explained my concept for the show to Horkman while Ismail was talking with the TV people in the cave. I expected Horkman to argue for more airtime, but instead he told me he didn’t want to do the show at all. He didn’t want me to, either.

  “Don’t you see?” he said. “They’re just using us for propaganda, like Tokyo Rose, because we’re American Jews, and they want to . . .”

  “Who the fuck is Toyota Rose?”

  “Tokyo. I said Tokyo, you idiot.”

  “Okay, so what the fuck does Japan have to do with . . .”

  Horkman grabbed my shoulders and leaned in close. “Will you just listen to me?” he said. His breath smelled like bananas. “We cannot do this. They’re going to use us to promote jihad.”

  “So we promote a little jihad,” I said. “What’s the harm?”

  “A little jihad?” Horkman said. “What’s the harm?” He took a deep breath, looked at the roof of the cave, then back at me. “Listen,” he said. “You have to get this into your tiny brain. We can’t do this. We have to figure out a way to . . .”

  He shut up then, because Ismail was coming back.

  “All right, gentlemen,” Ismail said. “If you’ll come this way, we’re ready for you on the set.”

  He led us over in front of the cameras. It turned out the “set” was just an area on the cave floor, totally empty except for a dead scorpion.

  “You will stand here,” said Ismail, “and speak into the camera.”

  “Waitwaitwait,” I said. “All due respect, this is not a good visual. It looks like we’re in a fucking cave here.”

  “We are in a cave,” said Ismail.

  “Exactly,” I said. “That’s the problem. It’s called production values. Are you familiar with an American TV show called Forensic Plumbing! by any chance?”

  “What kind of plumbing?”

  “Forensic. The show is Forensic Plumbing!, with an exclamation mark.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, anyway, it’s a show that’s been on for a while, and I happen to be the producer, so I know a little something about the medium
of television, okay? It’s all about creating an image. Now with this set here, the image you’re creating is, you’re a cheap half-ass operation that can’t even afford a studio. That’s not going to impress your viewers. They’re going to tune in and see two guys standing in a shithole cave. They’re going to think, ‘This outfit can’t even afford chairs! I don’t want to buy whatever these losers are selling!’ They’re going to change the channel. But if you dress this set up a little, get some curtains, some nice chairs, maybe a plant and a desk I could sit behind as host, then you have some credibility. The viewers will be like, ‘This is obviously a first-class operation! Maybe I’ll give this jihad thing a try!’”

  Horkman made a sound like a bullfrog trying to give a blow job to a buffalo.

  Ismail shook his head. “We prefer the image of a cave.”

  Not to stereotype, but this is exactly why these ragheads are still riding around on fucking camels.

  “So gentlemen,” said Ismail, “as I said, we want you to stand here”—he pointed basically at the dead scorpion—“and speak to the camera.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but what’s the format?”

  “As I said in the car,” said Ismail, “we just want you to be yourselves—two humorous Jewish American men, respected international terrorists, bantering in an amusing fashion, perhaps making a few jokes about how Israel is an oppressive racist state that must be destroyed.”

  Horkman’s face was now the color of a baboon’s ass.

  “Also,” continued Ismail, “at a certain point, which I will indicate to you by raising my hand, we would like you to read a brief statement, which we have printed on a card for your convenience.” He held up a white card. On it, handwritten, were these words:

  SOMEONE LEFT THE CAKE OUT IN THE RAIN.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  “It’s a code,” said Horkman. “To trigger the jihad.”

  “I hate that fucking song,” I said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Ismail. “Nevertheless, I must insist that you read it exactly as it is written, when I give the signal.”

  “What if we don’t?” said Horkman.

  “Yeah,” I said. “What if we don’t?”

  “We will decapitate you on camera,” said Ismail.

  “Okay, then!” I said. “Not a problem. We were just curious.”

  “Very good,” said Ismail. “We will start the broadcast in”—he looked at his watch—“ninety seconds. To summarize: We want lighthearted banter—easygoing, joshing camaraderie between two humorous friends, interspersed with playful references to the need to exterminate all Jews from the planet. When I give the signal, you will read the card precisely as written. If you do not, I will have to call upon these men to intervene.” He nodded toward the far cave wall. Two men I hadn’t seen before were standing there. They had black hoods over their heads. And they were both holding swords.

  Ismail said, “Do you understand?”

  “Absolutely!” I said.

  Horkman didn’t say anything.

  “Excellent,” said Ismail. He looked at his watch again. “Fifteen seconds.” He stepped out of camera range.

  “Have fun with it, gentlemen,” he said. “You’re on.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Philip

  I had been on television only once in my life. I was fourteen years old and my parents took me and my sister into New York City to see a taping of The Price Is Right. My seat was on the aisle, so if you were watching at home you got to see the left half of my face when they showed the audience after Bob Barker yelled “Come on down!” and that contestant was actually coming on down.

  That was the extent of my resume as a performing artist.

  So when the Hamas stage manager started counting down the seconds until we were on the air, I was nervous, thanks to the combo platter of performing comedy on live television, the message we were to deliver on live television, and the threat of having our heads separated from our bodies on live television by those two black-hooded gentlemen brandishing very large swords.

  Very large swords with very dull blades, mind you. Back in the days when my parents forced me to go to Hebrew school, I remember learning that what made a kosher chicken kosher was that it was killed with a knife so sharp that when the rabbi cut the chicken’s head off, it actually felt no pain. It was that quick.

  But dull blades? A dull blade is used by a decapitator to make the decapitatee feel as much pain as possible when they take their time sawing his head off. Lovely.

  So, while Peckerman and I stood there side by side looking into camera, I resigned myself to do all I could to not screw up and to be as funny as possible.

  “Five, four, three, two, one . . .” said the stage manager, before pointing to us. We were on television. Peckerman lead the way and I followed.

  “Good evening, fellow jihadists. Welcome to Peckerman and Horkman.”

  “Why is your name first?” I asked.

  “Because I spoke first,” he said.

  “So if I spoke first, the name of our show would be Horkman and Peckerman?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then can we start the show over and I’ll speak first?”

  Peckerman looked into camera and pointed to me.

  “Typical Jew,” he said.

  Ismail, the stage manager, and the cameramen started laughing.

  “How does that make me a typical Jew?” I asked.

  “Because you’re whining like a Jew when he doesn’t get what he wants.”

  “You mean like the Gaza Strip?”

  They laughed some more.

  “Yes,” answered Peckerman.

  “And the Left Bank?” I asked.

  “You mean the West Bank, don’t you? The Left Bank is in Paris.”

  “I know. But Jews want that, too.”

  More laughter.

  “Really?” asked Peckerman.

  “Oh yeah. We Jews want all the banks.”

  Even more laughter. From everyone. Including, I assumed, the decapitators because their black hoods were now bobbing like turds in the ocean.

  Encouraged by the appreciative audience, Peckerman and I kept going.

  “So tell me, Horkman, did you hear the one about the old Jew who was walking down the street in Nazi Germany?”

  “No, I don’t think I have.”

  “Well, this old Jew was walking down a street in Nazi Germany when a car pulls up and Hitler steps out. Hitler sees a pile of dog shit on the sidewalk, takes out his gun and orders the old Jew to get down and eat it. So the old Jew bends down, eats some of it, looks up, grabs the gun away from Hitler and orders him to get down and eat the dog shit. So Hitler gets down and eats some of it. Later the old Jew went home and said to his wife, ‘You’ll never guess who I had lunch with today.’”

  This brought the room to the brink of hysteria. Loud sustained laughter. High fives. Clapping as if they could already taste the victory that would assuredly ensue thanks to this barrage of anti-Semitic jokes.

  “If we’re all laughing,” Ismail said to one of the cameramen, “I can only imagine how jihadists everywhere are united in laughter as well.”

  Thrilled that his instincts were correct in having me and Peckerman do this little dog and pony show, Ismail then reached down and picked up the card that had that inane lyric from that dreadful song written on it.

  But Peckerman and I pretended not to see it, knowing full well what the result would bring. So we stalled.

  “You know, Horkman. There must be literally thousands of Jewish jokes we can tell on our new show.”

  “Thousands?” I said. “I’d bet there’s tens of thousands.”

  Ismail, giving us the benefit of the doubt that we hadn’t seen the card, st
arted waving it while clearing his throat to get our attention.

  “Tens of thousands?” said Peckerman. “Okay, let’s tell them all.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  But after I said that and we both turned forward, Ismail knew it was impossible for us not to have seen the card and deduced that we were defying his orders. So he looked over at the two black-hooded gentlemen, who instantly took a step toward us.

  “Let’s start by making fun of Jewish women, shall we?”

  Exactly what we expected to happen by delaying the inevitable is anyone’s guess. A miracle? One that would save both Israel and our necks as well? Probably. Yet it did cross my mind that any shot we had with the God of the Chosen People intervening on our behalf was becoming less and less likely with the riddles we were now telling.

  “What’s the difference between a Jewish woman and Jell-O?” Peckerman asked.

  “I give up,” I answered.

  “Jell-O moves when you eat it.”

  Aside from our own nervous giggles, there was no other laugher in that cave. Apparently the comedy portion of our show was over, as Ismail glared at us and the two decapitators-in-waiting took another step in our direction.

  “What should we do?” I asked under my breath. And when I heard the sound of my voice cracking, it scared me more than I already was.

  But that was nothing as compared to how scared I became about a second later when a seething Ismail held the white card up for what I knew was going to be the last time and Peckerman looked up and blurted.

  “Someone left the kike out in the rain!”

  “Huh?”

  “Kill them!” yelled Ismail.

  Pandemonium broke out as the hooded guys raised their swords and rushed toward us. Having no desire to see just how far our heads would fly before hitting the ground, we knocked over two of the cameras that were between us and the black-hooded guys, and started running.

  Because the mouth of the cave was crowded with members of Hamas who we felt would be less than willing to aid in our escape, we went in the opposite direction, which took us deeper into the base of the mountain with the black-hooded guys already bearing down on us.