The Know-It-All

by A. J. Jacobs

  Incidentally, the Reggie era was about the last time I really had a handle on sports. I think I know less about current professional athletics than any fully functioning man in the United States, including your average Amish dairy farmer (who, by the way, runs a very high risk of inheriting knock-knees, also known as dysplasia).

  I’m not 100 percent certain why I lost interest in sports back when I was fourteen. I don’t think the World Series incident had much to do with it. My theory is this: I began to recognize the vast gap between my enthusiasm for sports and my ability to play them. So I stopped paying attention.

  After twenty-one years, it’s gotten embarrassing. I go to meetings at Esquire, and they’ll talk about the weekend’s games, and I have to avoid all eye contact in hopes I won’t get called on. I’ll be studying a particularly interesting floor tile, and my friend Andy, who knows that my sports awareness ended in 1982, will say, “Hey, A.J., did you see Graig Nettles hit a double this weekend?” And then everyone will crack up. I feel as emasculated as a crab after an encounter with a barnacle (barnacles consume crab testes).

  As any high school football coach will tell you, the best defense is a good offense. So that’s what I’ve started to do. I can’t compete with other men on this year’s stats or trades. I don’t even know the names of the more obscure expansion teams (the Guam Jaguars? the Lynxes? the Cheetahs?). But thanks to the Britannica, I can thrash my fellow men in the history of sports. When the topic of sports comes up, I just make some noises about how athletics today are such a dirty business, just an extended Gatorade commercial. I much prefer sports from times gone by.

  If it’s baseball: The very first games had a second catcher behind the regular catcher, whose job it was to field foul balls. Also, before the New York Yankees, there were my favorites, the New York Highlanders and the New York Mutuals.

  If it’s football, I say: The 1905 college season was so violent, no fewer than eighteen players died from injuries on the field. Teddy Roosevelt called a presidential commission to investigate. From that came the legalization of the forward pass.

  If the topic is tennis: Long before the Williams sisters, the Doherty brothers dominated the sport. They ruled from 1897 to 1906—and one brother lost only two matches in four years.

  The reaction varies from mild interest to perplexity. But that’s better than ridicule. If it were baseball, I’d call it an infield single as opposed to a strikeout.

  Jacobs

  I’m no more narcissistic than most Americans. Well, maybe a little more narcissistic. I get an embarrassing amount of pleasure from entering my own name into Google and seeing what turns up. So here we have six pages of Jacobses, which promise to be excellent reading for me. They start with the father of all of us Jacobses—Jacob of Bible fame. I had forgotten that he was so duplicitous (he stole his brother Esau’s birthright by impersonating Esau to his blind father), which taints my name for me just a bit. But I forge on.

  There was urbanologist Jane Jacobs and folklore scholar Joseph Jacobs. But even more impressive, there were no less than three Jacob movements: the Jacobins (French revolutionary extremists), the Jacobites (supporters of the exiled King James II) and the Jacobean Age (referring to art produced during the reign of King James I). I was happy to learn that Shakespeare, in his later tragedies, is considered a Jacobean playwright, which somehow, in my mind, makes Shakespeare and me related. Two Jacobean writers, me and the Bard.

  In my defense, I’m not interested only in those who share the name Jacobs. I keep track of other name coincidences, as well. In the fishing entry, I learned about a Kalamazoo man who, in 1896, invented a revolutionary type of fishing reel. His name was … William Shakespeare. Yes, just like the Jacobean playwright. This man’s parents must have had quite the sense of humor. They must have thought: “What name can we choose for our son that will ensure that he will (a) be mocked until long after puberty, and (b) always have a nice sense of failure about him, because he’ll never be able to live up to the other guy?” Well, they dost hit the mother lode!

  There’s more. Kathy Bates was an Oscar-winning actress who hammered James Caan’s ankles, but she also, apparently, wrote the text to “America the Beautiful.” And the National Enquirer? No need to be ashamed to read it anymore. Back in the 1800s before the Civil War, there was another National Enquirer—a famous abolitionist newspaper that had very few articles about Jennifer Lopez’s love life. So you could always say you got confused, that you thought you were buying an antislavery publication at the checkout line.

  I’m not sure why I’m fascinated by these name coincidences. I don’t think they reveal anything excessively profound—except maybe that names are imprecise and repetitive and arbitrary. But whatever the reason, it’s another interest that I inherited from my father.

  A few years ago, I was working with a friend named Albert Kim at Entertainment Weekly. My father was working at his law firm with an associate named … Albert Kim. So my father arranged a lunch between the two Albert Kims and the two Arnold Jacobses. In theory, it seemed like a good idea. We got to the restaurant, and the two Albert Kims greeted each other and we all had a nice laugh. And then they asked each other their respective middle names. And then … it became quite clear they had pretty much nothing else in common besides their first and last names. And we hadn’t even ordered the entrees. It didn’t become an annual event.

  James, Jesse

  The greatest robber of the Wild West died in 1882. He was shot in the back by a gang member while he was at home “adjusting a picture.” That doesn’t seem right. Being shot in the back is bad enough, but while adjusting a picture? A notorious bandit shouldn’t end his life engaging in interior design. Well, at least he wasn’t crocheting throw pillows.

  Jefferson, Thomas

  More confusion. With Jefferson, I’m seeing the flipside of the Attila the Hun effect. Just as Attila had his good side, even the most amazing, accomplished, original, justice-loving men have their dark side. I knew about Jefferson’s hypocrisy on slaves, which is evil enough to fill a couple of lifetimes. But it also says here that Jefferson paid newspaper reporters to libel his nemesis John Adams. That I didn’t know about. What a horrible fact. Do people have to be sleazy to succeed? I hope not, but if even Jefferson does, it makes me wonder.

  In other news, Thomas Jefferson had very clean feet. Every morning, he rose at dawn and washed them in cold water.

  joke

  It’s April Fool’s Day today. The timing of April Fool’s Day, by the way, seems related to the vernal equinox, when nature “fools” mankind with sudden changes in the weather. The victim of the practical joke is called a fish in France and a cuckoo in Scotland.

  At work, people aren’t quite as interested in these facts as they are in the question of who left plastic dog poop on all the editors’ chairs.

  Jonson, Ben

  I knew a lot of things could save your life—a helmet, a good lawyer, cholesterol medication—but this one was new to me: the ability to read Latin. If you know your E Pluribus from your Unum you’ll live a lot longer. At least if you’re an accused criminal in 16th-century England, as was Ben Jonson.

  I remembered Jonson vaguely—he was the second most successful Elizabethan playwright after Shakespeare, the Pepsi to the Bard’s Coke. What I didn’t know was that he was a rascal—an angry, stubborn man with a homicidal temper. In 1598, the same year he had his first big hit play—Every Man His Humour—Jonson killed a fellow actor in a duel.

  The strange part, though, is how he escaped capital punishment. The accused playwright invoked a legal loophole called “benefit of clergy.” The concept of benefit of clergy started in 12th-century England when the church convinced the king to offer immunity to priests and other ecclesiastical officials. By the 16th century, however, the definition of “clergy” had stretched to include anyone who could read the Fifty-first Psalm in Latin.

  On the one hand, this is a crazy law—elitist, unjust, arbitrary. On the other hand
, it’s kind of nice that reading and scholarship were once so highly valued that they had the very tangible benefit of stopping a hatchet from removing your head from your shoulders. It’s beautifully clear-cut: You read Latin, you live. You don’t read Latin, you’ll soon be experiencing a nice case of rigor mortis (though you won’t know the definition of rigor mortis, you illiterate jackass).

  juggling

  You should know that juggling has gone through historical stages. Nowadays, your top jugglers tend to stick to three or four balls, but do their juggling from unusual and surprising places—on horseback, or on a unicycle, for example. This as opposed to 19th-century juggling, when ball quantity was king. The more the better. Back in the 1800s, Enrico Rastelli made a name for himself by juggling with ten balls, which the Britannica calls “an almost miraculous accomplishment.”

  I admire Enrico. He’s my kind of man, and ten-ball juggling, that’s my kind of accomplishment. Enrico’s a welcome break from the usual Britannica fare. I get dejected reading page after page of men who created vaccines or opened trade routes. I know I’ll never do anything like that. I just don’t have it in me. But I can see myself doing something along the lines of Enrico. A lesser accomplishment, one that doesn’t save lives or change the world, but nonetheless makes people marvel and say, “Now that is impressive.” Or else, “Jesus, what a massive waste of time.”

  There are a handful of these types sprinkled throughout the encyclopedia. Like Peter Bales, a 16th-century Brit who was famous for his microscopic writing, and produced a Bible the size of a walnut. Or Blondin, a tightrope walker in the 1800s, who tiptoed across Niagara Falls, stopping in the middle to make and eat an omelet. Admittedly, that’s not my thing, especially if the omelet wasn’t egg white. But still, I love Blondin’s passion and commitment.

  And now, for the first time in my life, I’m feeling the same passion and commitment. I’ve got my own quest, one that causes a handful to marvel, and far more to ask me, “What the fuck?” I know my accomplishment of reading the Britannica won’t get me into the Britannica itself. But it’s a start. And maybe next time I can conquer something even more impressive, like reading the walnut-sized version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  jujube

  Julie’s throwing an Oscar party. Not just a haphazard, casual Oscar party. This is serious Oscar party. This is the most well-organized Oscar party on the Upper West Side. Movie posters suddenly appear on the walls. Fake Oscar statuettes frame the television. There are prizes, pools, Oscar trivia. The tables fill up with Junior Mints, Twizzlers, popcorn, Jujubes (the name Jujube, I learn, comes from a plum-sized Chinese fruit. The etymology of candy—another gap in my education I didn’t even know I had).

  If you attend Julie’s Oscar party, you should come prepared. All the twenty guests are encouraged to wear costumes that represent a movie that was released that year. Julie has selected a red devil outfit and an accompanying pitchfork; she’s Far from Heaven. My costume is a little less elaborate. I’ve got on jeans and a T-shirt and plan to sit silently in the corner. I’m The Quiet American.

  An hour before the guests arrive, Julie flips on all three of the TVs. She likes to have each of our TVs going just in case anyone happens to be walking through another room. She doesn’t want them to miss a single self-congratulatory moment. It gave me a little thought.

  “We should do a past posting scam,” I say, as I arrange the Twizzlers in a bowl.

  “What?”

  “Past posting—it’s a scam I read about in the con game section. I’ll watch the Oscars on the office TV, and you and the guests can watch on TiVo in the living room. But the trick is, you delay the broadcast a few minutes on TiVo. So I’ll know who won before you do. And I’ll saunter in and bet on the categories and we’ll win hundreds of dollars. You know, like in The Sting.”

  “Is that what they did in The Sting? I saw it when I was young and never understood it.”

  “Yeah, well sort of. But they faked the whole thing. But that’s the idea.”

  “And they didn’t have TiVo.”

  “Right, no TiVo in The Sting.”

  “Past posting—that’s interesting.”

  Ha! She liked that one. Nothing better than that. I love having her on my side. Maybe I should confine my facts to ones that help illuminate the plots of old movies.

  The party went off splendidly, though Julie did put the kibosh on my scam because she didn’t want me ruining the surprise for her. A reasonable if costly decision.

  Julie

  Sandwiched between Julich (a duchy of the Holy Roman Empire) and Julijske Alpe (the Alps that run near Slovenia), there’s a little note in blue ballpoint pen. It reads: “Where’s Julie?”

  I laugh out loud when I read this. Julie has snuck into my J volume and done some defacing. I go into the living room and tell her that she’s probably under her maiden name, Schoenberg, and they just haven’t had time to update it.

  jump rope

  It’s about midnight, and Julie’s asleep. I’m in the extra bedroom, getting my daily dose of knowledge, my butt planted on the white couch, my feet kicked up on the coffee table, reading about jump rope’s most popular chants (as in “Apples, peaches, pears and plums / Tell me when your birthday comes”).

  I look up for a second, and I see it silently cruising across the light blue rug. A cockroach. A German cockroach, to be precise, sometimes erroneously called a water bug. It’s one of the most primitive living winged insects, basically unchanged for 320 million years.

  And it’s about to die.

  I take my J volume—I should have grabbed volume 16 of the Macropaedia, the one that says Chicago–Death on its spine; that would have been more appropriate, but I didn’t have time to be witty. I hold my Britannica at shoulder height and drop it, like the payload from a B-17 bomber (a plane so big it was called the Flying Fortress). It lands with a satisfying thud.

  I pick up the book, and am annoyed to see the determined little vermin has survived the assault. It just keeps cruising along like a tiny tank, heading toward the safety of the radiator.

  This time I slam the Britannica down and mash it into the floor with my foot. Victory! I must say, the Britannica’s leatherette covers are very easy to wipe down. No bug juice stains at all. So at the very least, even if the whole knowledge thing is a bust, the encyclopedia has come in handy as pest control.

  I get a lot of that—people telling me the different uses for their encyclopedias. My cousin hurt his wrist while playing squash, and his doctor prescribed physical therapy with the encyclopedia. Another friend said that when he was young, he drove his parents crazy by using a volume of the Britannica as a drum in a makeshift percussion set.

  I recently read an article that said that explorer Ernest Shackleton lugged the entire eleventh edition with him on his expedition to Antarctica. (So I can never whine when I lug one onto the downtown number 9 subway). In any case, Shackleton, while stranded over a freezing winter, ended up using the Britannica’s pages for kindling.

  Which makes me realize there’s something great about the physicality of the Britannica. It’s not disembodied information, not a bunch of encoded 1s and 0s on a microchip the size of an Indian mung bean. It’s a big old-timey book, a massive object that can squash bugs and light fires and make thuds. I know I sound like a crotchety old grandfather on the porch reminiscing about the good old days of rumble seats, but I believe in pages you can actually turn.

  K

  Kafka

  THERE ARE FEW things more annoying than a busybody friend, the kind who thinks he knows what’s best for you and ignores your wishes.

  Like Albert. Several years ago, when we were both working at Entertainment Weekly, I confided to him that I had a crush on an ad sales girl named Julie Schoenberg. But, I said, that is strictly confidential; you cannot tell a single person, especially Julie. Which he interpreted to mean: “Please, feel free to tell anyone at all, especially Julie.”

  Within two hours of my c
onfession, Julie and Albert were behind closed doors, dissecting my crush and laughing.

  The only thing more annoying: when your friend turns out to be right. If Albert had honored my wishes for secrecy, I probably would never have acted on my crush. I’d still be single, lonely, and have no idea what a sconce is, much less have several in my home.

  All this was on my mind as I was reading about Kafka, who had the biggest busybody friend in Western history.

  First, some relevant background on Kafka. As I figured from what little I knew, Kafka had some self-esteem issues, most of which came from having a tyrant of a father. So Kafka, unable to commit himself fully to literature, got his doctorate in law and found a day job at an insurance company. While at law school, Kafka met a minor novelist named Max Brod. The two became lifelong friends.

  While he was alive, Kafka halfheartedly agreed to have some of his strange stories—including Metamorphosis—published by avant-garde literary publications. But on his death from tuberculosis at the age of forty-one, full of misgivings about his work, Kafka left Brod a very clear note: Destroy all unpublished manuscripts. Which Brod interpreted to mean, “Publish all unpublished manuscripts.” He even somehow interpreted it to mean “Become Kafka’s posthumous publicist, biographer, interpreter, and archivist.” If not for Brod, we would never have known The Trial, The Castle, or Amerika, to name a few.

  After reading about Kafka, I decide I’m going to call my friend Albert and tell him to burn my unfinished manuscripts when I die. He’ll know what to do.

  Kama

  An Indian angel who shoots love-producing flower arrows. His bow is of sugarcane, his bowstring a row of bees. I have to say, Kama with his fancy bow and arrow makes our Cupid look kind of second-rate in comparison. Cupid just flies around in a diaper shooting regular old love arrows. It is odd, though, that two cultures have these love archers. Does this say something profound about the human mind? Maybe about violence and love? The damn Britannica raises these questions in my mind but doesn’t answer them.