I Drink for a Reason

by David Cross

  Have you ever been to the airport in Minneapolis/St. Paul? Or stopped in at a random Wal-Mart in wherever? They’re like fat museums, half the people crawling along in those scooters. I deeply resent the existence of those scooters, by the way. You know the ones, the “Rascal” and the “Git-Along Tubbys.” And they are becoming more ubiquitous by the day. I believe their initial intent was for use by people who had circulation problems or couldn’t move their lower extremities very well for whatever reason. Now people who are simply fat are using them because they’re just lazy… because they’re fat… because they’re lazy… because they’re fat… and on and on ad infinitum (because they’re fat). Not to say that Americans are not wonderfully grotesque simply because an evil company tricked them into thinking they were eating pure, sugar-free manna from heaven and not the irradiated, fatty, chickenish-like nuggets filled with nitrates and ground-up chicken bones and genitalia (although the nitrates were heaven-sent. Fact!). No, they know what’s what. It’s the same thing as someone under the age of 70 suing a tobacco company for millions of dollars for not telling them that cigarettes were addictive. I have mixed feelings when I hear about that. I am (because I read) suspicious of large companies when they claim through cynical, multimillion-dollar ad campaigns designed to “nice” up their image, that they are humanity’s best hope for cleaning up the mess they made in the ocean or air or ground or children. It is they and they only who are the ones who should be employed in getting impoverished communities cleaned up and lily white again. Too many people are too quick to carelessly glance at a bag of Professor McGulliver’s HyperHealthy Squiggle Rinds sold in the “health food” aisle of their local supermarket and see a guilt-free snack. In fact, in a brilliant and complete understanding of their target audience, there is a line of snack food called “Guilt Free.” Being “Guilt Free” can only be acquired by the practiced absence of guilt. And that’s not really a good thing, when you think about it. If we didn’t have guilt we’d all be figuratively fucking over our business partners while literally fucking sixteen-year-old girls in Thailand. It’s not simply a matter of the physics of nature. There is certainly no shortage of wistful daydreamers of the new-age, hippie variety in America. Hell, we invented them! India jumped on our bandwagon! And whether it’s Dr. Prometheus’s Magic Agave Butter Soap Soup, or Sista Mustaffa’s Hypo-Allergenic Hair Kinkifier with Nefertiti Oil, there is undoubtedly someone out there to unquestionably buy it for themselves for as long as they shall live (and/or the business isn’t shut down by the FDA). And they mindlessly do this with no questions asked. Does it say “organic” on the label? Well then, by Vishnu, it’s good enough for me.

  With this in mind, and with a nod toward the inarguable power of placebo, I present this guideline for use by the multibillion-dollar health-food industry in order to better exploit the gullible. I’ll see you on the Forbes 500 List!

  Anything with “Dr.” in the title is acceptable. It doesn’t matter if it’s food, vitamins, or sea sponges. And even if the doctor in question is a veterinarian from Greenland who got his or her license off of the Internet, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that a “doctor” has given his or her seal of approval.

  Make more “healthy” snacks featuring people of the clergy as mascots. Reverend Josiah Tumn’s Deuteronomy 4:12 Oat Pops, or Shiek al Abu’s Koran-ified Nutty Bumblers, something like that. L. Ron Hubbard’s Thetan-Free Pina Colada Practical Signifiers from Planet Teegeak would all be big sellers.

  Clearly, people like to feel better about themselves through a snack that is made by ex-hippies who promote meditation and astrology. And I know that it’s a bummer that sometimes those snacks have to be subjected to the vindictive whims of the Imperialist Facists over at the Food and Drug Administration. But really, no one cares about how much marmoset hair there is in a bar of Jeannette’s Flax Seed Spittle Bars! Let the lady sell her wares!

  I would encourage someone to market the following snacks based on the ghosts of heroes past: Harriet Tubman’s “Now That’s What I Call Freedom” Twisters, Doc Severinsen’s Beauty Flakes, Jimmy Cliff’s High Times Protein Photo-Shopped Cookies, Jim Valvano’s Pumpkin and/or Coconut Golden Bricks, Anne Boleyn’s Pussy Juice Bars. Ewww, really? Forget that last one.

  Also, one last thing, if someone could get back to me on it: I believe that there is a cream you can buy that is owned by the Dutch that has been marked down to around eight dollars. This cream, when rubbed liberally on your target area, will “melt the pounds off.” Why isn’t this cream more popular? People should know about this cream!! Tell people about this cream, godammit!

  I Think Rich People Are Boring

  WITH AN APOLOGY AND ALL DUE RESPECT TO LOUIS C. K., WHO has done a bit using this premise, I think rich people are boring (too). And by that I mean unimaginative. I’m sure they are at least somewhat interesting. Telling tales of throwing up in different countries with diplomatic immunity and hiring the Rolling Stones to play their daughter’s christening and then giving Mick an extra hundred to let them blow him in the bathroom while he hums “Start Me Up.” But besides the obvious, what do they do with all their money? Sure, they buy things, and companies, and peoples lives to assure their continued wealth for generations to come, but outside of that, what? I mean, if you’ve literally got billions of dollars and you buy an island, several mansions, yachts, and planes and shoes and lobster dinners and you still find yourself with 800 million left over, take at least some of it and have some fun! I saw footage from Jack Welch’s wife’s birthday where everyone was upset at the lavishness. I was way way more upset at how lame it was, given that he spent a gazzibillionish dollars on it. “Living statues?” Come on, that’s bullshit. You’ve got billions and billions of dollars! Get creative! How about choosing one species to make extinct. Just randomly pick one and buy them all and then kill them. You get to play God. That’s one thing that I might do.

  “I don’t want any more Nicklebacked Stingface frogs.”

  “Daddy, what ever happened to the Nicklebacked Stingface frog?”

  “David Cross bought them all and killed them.” Wow!!

  I would buy the rights to a word, maybe the word maybe. And every time you used it you would have to pay me. And you would have to pay me in kisses. Or every time you used it you would have to say “David Cross’s maybe.” As in, “Hey, if we get there early enough, David Cross’s maybe we can get tickets.” Or, “Fuck you! Did you ever stop to think that David Cross’s maybe, just David Cross’s maybe that I love you? David Cross’s maybe you’re right.”

  I would have a HUGE fireworks display, I mean the biggest, grandest one ever. It would be an annual event and it would last for, like, almost twenty-four hours. It would fill the sky and be able to be seen for miles. And I’d have it on July 3 on the Canadian side of the border.

  I would have bionic shit installed in me exactly like the Six Million Dollar Man. Actually, I take that back. It should be a lot more than that. I mean, what’s six million dollars to me? That’s like twenty-five bucks to you. So no, let’s make it 60 million dollars of bionic shit. The Six Million Dollar Man was on thirty years ago, back when six million meant something; now a third of all children under ten in America have six million dollars. “Hey kid, where’d you get that six million dollars?” “Oh this? The Tooth Fairy.” My bionics would get me super hearing and super seeing (but just in one eye), super touching, and the ability to do upper, genius-level yoga without an instructor present.

  I would have surgery so that I would literally fart a hundred dollars, so I could say to the condescending jeweler who I was trying to buy diamonds to have surgically implanted in my extra heart, in a very snotty, cavalier way, “Do I have enough money?! Dude, I fart hundred-dollar bills” and then prove it. People would be repulsed, but then they’d secretly be psyched also. You would be in an elevator and let one rip and everyone would be like, “That is disgust… oh… look at that.” And you could give them the hundred-dollar bill and say, “Sorry, here.”


  You could re-create Hell. Like Neverland Ranch or when you’re traveling down South and there’s a huge themed place some crazy town character has spent his life and fortune on. Like the Flintstones thing in South Dakota. And it can really be like Hell, too: It would be a thousand degrees (or whatever temp it says in the Bible), and there would be a huge, muscley, really cut Devil with a huge cock like in Japanime. And you could have tortured souls in a lake of fire, but since you couldn’t use people because it really is hot, you use animals dressed as people. Dress an antelope as Hitler and dolphins as SS men.

  And there would be very thick, fireproof glass so that you could tour and look through it. And you could have different rooms that held different real people based on the ideology of the tour group that was attending. Are they right wing? Hey, there’s Abbie Hoffman, and Larry Flynt, and Madalyn Murray O’Hare! Are they left wing? Look, it’s Margaret Thatcher, and James Dobson, and Karl Rove!

  I would buy a radio station in the middle of nowhere—some country/soft hits station outside of Cheyenne—and then hold a contest to win a truck or something. But the contest would be who can sit on top of a pole five hundred feet in the air for the longest without giving up or falling off. And the second place prize would be a year’s supply of Sindex, the “x-rated window cleaner.” Then I would just hire a helicopter and drop shit on them like hams and eggs and I would let some other rich friend of mine hover over them and take a dump! Ha!!! Don’t worry, I’ll pay for the charges.

  Minutes of the Development and Programming Meeting for FOX Television’s New Season

  MEETING STARTED AT 8:00 A.M.

  Meeting was attended by: Tina Wrash, Head of Programming; Dallas Treasure, Head of Marketing; Janet Woo, Head of Talent Relations; Cindy Fleer, Head of Comedy Development; Peter Branson, Head of Drama; Thurman Stye, Head of Dramadies; Lisa Quinn, Head of Reality Development and Implementation; and Dr. Owen Stillhog, Head of Publicity. On speakerphone from his blimp hovering just above the building was Rupert Murdoch, Owner of Most Everything. All were accompanied by various assistants who will be known simply by a number.

  8:02 Nova lox on the deli tray discovered by Tina to be “oily.”

  8:03 Lox thrown out of window into parking lot B. Meeting adjourned until new “less oily” lox can be secured.

  8:23 Meeting reconvenes. It was discovered that Rupert Murdoch had been on the phone the whole time. He wakes up and continues his money breakfast. Tina’s Assistant #3 reads from the Overnights. America’s Nudest Teens wins its time slot, retaining 86% of its lead-in, Monkey Rip!, and has the biggest share of the most coveted demographic, the 15-to-65-year-old-age group. Lisa Quinn buzzes for one of her assistants to run in and pat her back.

  8:28 There is some concern that the Friday night lineup is susceptible to the latest CBS offering, CSI M.D., Law Town, the latest number-one hybrid show. Lisa suggests FOX should counter with a show that has been in the pipes for a while now, a reality game show called Muslim Hunt. The show is being developed with the cooperation of the new Public Broadcasting System and everyone (mysteriously, she pauses to wink here) is really behind it. Dallas says that he has some great ideas for this one. He suggests that there could be a tie-in with American Idol or any of the franchise’s spin-offs, mentioning Algerian Idol several times and bringing up his desire to get “our hooks” into the New Iraq with Iraqi Idol. He notes that the number one show in Iraq is Blow Out. Tina interrupts Dallas to take a call from Assistant #3, who is seated three chairs away to her left. The assistant informs Tina that her meeting with Doug VanEllin, her lifestyle consultant, about a new iPod playlist that he has designed for her has been pushed back to noon.

  8:32 Dr. Stillhog brings up a problem he is having with some of the cast of Donovan’s Wharf. He has tried unsuccessfully to get both the teenage lead actors, Devlin Reece and Strawberry Williams, to participate in an online charity event to raise awareness for a fake disease, which is currently being configured based on polling the show’s demographic. Dr. Stillhog is asked what his course of action has been. He says that he promised them the covers of Paper magazine, appearances on the Tonight Show, as well as “bumping up” the gift bag with more secret swag from the FOX Swag Vaults in Yuca Valley. The reason they are hesitant to participate is that both of them get “grossed out” by diseased people. Tina asks what kind of punitive measures have been threatened, to which Dr. Stillhog replied that he had threatened a ban on scented candles or small dogs in the trailers. There was general silence until Rupert spoke up.

  “It’s Rupert. Just like the voice of God, hmmm?” Everyone laughed at this for over nine minutes.

  8:41 After the fake laughing died down, Rupert spoke up again. “These two kids, Devlin and Strawberry… kill them, chop up their bodies, feed them to the rest of the cast.” Tina argued that when that tack was taken with Hunter Rain from So, You Think You’re So Smart it backfired and there was a crew mutiny. “Bumblefucks!” said Rupert. “That was a reality show about NY waiters being switched with retarded summer camp kids! This is different!” “I was going to say that, too, Mr. Murdoch,” Lisa Quinn said. The issue was decided that they would base a reality show on which actor to kill and eat.

  8:47 Lisa Quinn pitches a new show. She said that she wanted to pitch a show based on the current success of Martha Stewart’s ability to convince people to look up to her although she had gotten caught and convicted of a crime in which she was, in part, lying to the feds. The show would be a reality show featuring a recently convicted celebrity wherein cameras would follow every moment of the trial and jail time. “Who’s the celebrity?” was asked by several people. Lisa Quinn: “Ummm, how about Megyn Nero? She’s the lady from CourtTV who got caught shoplifting upskirt videos from a store in Van Nuys.”

  Rupert again: “Bloody bushberries! Let’s do one better. Let’s frame a celebrity with a crime, and then we’ll be there from the very beginning! America will go apeshit for that!” Everyone was enthusiastic about this, and after debating various celebrities and crimes it was decided that Katie Couric would be framed for selling nuclear secrets to China as well as child endangerment and kidnapping, which would be accomplished by burying alive her son Vaughn in a 6' x 6' pit in the back of her house. “Git-r-Done!” Rupert said, imitating his favorite comedian.

  At 9:02 Assistant #2 (me) received a call that Andy Richter was downstairs and very upset, arguing with a security guard. It seemed that someone had thrown a bunch of lox all over the seat of his opened convertible. Everyone laughed and Tina opened the window and yelled down to Andy: “Hey Richter, did you see the overnights for your show?” She then started throwing all the food out the window onto Andy’s car. Andy started to half laugh. Then Rupert told the driver of his blimp to position it over Andy’s car. As it did, the bottom hatch opened up and Rupert’s bare ass was soon poking out. As Rupert started relieving himself (and you could hear the grunting over the speakerphone) he said, “Thank you.” And left.

  The following shows were discussed and are now being produced for FOX’s Reality Channel:

  America’s Least Favorite Horse!

  Infant Swap!

  Two infants from two different families are swapped for the first five years of life.

  Line Wait!

  I Can Make It Cheaper!

  Contractors bid on public housing contracts.

  So, You Think You Can Projectile Vomit!

  Now That’s What I Call A.I.D.S.!

  America’s Next Top Bottom (for the Logo Channel)

  What Time Is It?

  Judge Baby

  A three-year-old makes decisions in small claims court based on its dysentery.

  Are You Smarter than an Elderly Retarded Chicken?

  Delighted contestants from Oklahoma play tic-tac-toe with an elderly retarded chicken and sometimes win.

  Last Blogger Standing

  You Asked for It!

  Lawyers from one of America’s top law firms are covered in caramel and honey and
airdropped into the Amazon rainforest.

  Making the Cut A reality show about models.

  What the Hell?!

  Ben Stiller stars as the unfortunately but comically named Lenny Shittingsly, the neurotic but likable put-upon schnook who gets stuck with the unfortunate task of transporting his wife’s dog, who can’t stop farting, to the MTV Movie Awards (played by Will Smith), in this adaptation of the popular comic book character.

  Who Wants to Marry My Midget?

  It follows Exploiting Gullible Teens and How Low Will We Go? on Tuesday nights.

  I Ain’t No This or That

  IT’S BEEN NOTED BY LITERALLY HUNDREDS IF NOT THOUSANDS OF folks that I am contemptuous and patronizing. I think part of the reason for that is because I am an Athiest, and inherent in that belief system is “I think that I am right and therefore, since you believe the opposite, that you are wrong.” And inherent in that idea, hidden underneath layers of generational bebrudging but still civil respect, is the idea that people who have the benefit of freedom of choice, and still believe in their respective religion, are foolish. Or rather, it is a foolish thing to believe in, given the holes in logic and scientific refutation and plain, old honest facts and practical theories that go a long way toward postulating how the Red Sea could have been parted or how one day’s worth of oil could have been miscalculated and actually could reasonably last for eight days without God’s hand or how Mohammed would not have frozen his nuts off while ascending to heaven on his magical winged horse etc. etc.