Here’s some FUNNY to celebrate Funny and Interesting’s 50th post. It comes to you in the form of another home movie this time about pirates, orphans, australia, and treasure. Enjoy!
One Legged Pneumatic Pirate: Cameron Russell
Co Orphan #1: Linnea Russell
Co Orphan #2 who meets an unfortunate end: Reyna Pollack
Voice Over in an Australian accent: Andrew Elliott
My little sister Linnea has short fluffy brown hair, long legs, can recreate any good Johnny Cash song in perfect pitch, and recently became a model joining me in LA to shoot the new ck1 fragrance commercial. One weekend in July we shot a home video together pretending to be spies—her code name “Agent Russell;” mine “Agent Slotska.” I emailed the video to my agent and later the same afternoon he called to tell me he’d forwarded it to Steven Meisel and he wanted Linnea to shoot ck1. (Yes, Meisel has now seen me jump out of a bush screaming with a ninja move.) Below is the home video and the ck1 commercial— see if you can tell the difference!
http://www.ckone.com/
After reading too much Harry Potter Linnea becomes magic. For real.
One day my friend Lee Swillingham admitted to me that he suffered Pareidolia.
“What is that?” I asked him.
“It’s like when people see Jesus in their hamburger,” he said.
“You should take pictures of everything you see,” I suggested. “Then other people can tell you if you’re crazy or not. If you really are delusional then people won’t understand what the pictures are of. If, on the other hand, people can see what you’re talking about when you frame it for them, then you’ll know you’re much more observant than everyone else. “ He agreed and a month or so later sent me these.
People have many different interpretations of Pareildolia. Doing some brief internet research I found that some describe Pareildolia sufferers as crazy and insane, religious fanatics and worse. But there are those who see Pareidolia as an advanced human trait. The leader of this camp being Carl Sagan, an astronomer, who wrote,
“As soon as the infant can see, it recognizes faces, and we now know that this skill is hardwired in our brains. Those infants who a million years ago were unable to recognize a face smiled back less, were less likely to win the hearts of their parents, and less likely to prosper. These days, nearly every infant is quick to identify a human face, and to respond with a goony grin (Sagan 1995: 45).
Of course trusting a scientist who uses the word “goony” isn’t easy.
I think it is Clarence Irving Lewis that provides a good middle ground. Founder of the philosophical school of Conceptual Pragmatism Lewis argued that one has no way of knowing whether or not perceptions are “true” in any absolute sense; all one can do is determine whether one’s purpose is thwarted by regarding it as true and acting on that basis. According to this approach, two people with two different purposes will often have different views on whether or not to regard a perception as true.
And so, here are the photos of what Lee sees. After you look at them leave a comment telling us whether you think he’s insane, advanced, or just one person with a unique perspective he has no reason not to believe. 
My grandparents had a dog named Beebe. Beebe smelled like rotting flesh, a smell my mom said came from deep inside his ears. He was an old dog that would stand up slowly and often skitter into door jams and walls. He would also hump my grandmother’s embroidered throw pillows on the couch with a vitality only negated by the wheezing breaths that shot through his nose, leaving a spattering of snot that dampened the top of the pillow as well. People often say you become your parents when you get old. Following this logic my parents, who are middle-aged, will eventually become like their parents, and that by the time I’m old I’ll be like my grandparents also. And that means I too might have a strange attachment to a wheezy old stinker of a dog.
As a child I never had a pet bigger than my fist. I’m not sure if that was a rule or simply coincidence but either way it’s very lucky. Fishy, Bernard, and Acorn’s horrific deaths would have been exponentially worse had they been larger. My goldfish froze mid stroke during the winter, my “boy” mouse had 26 babies, ate them all, and consequently died, and my hamster came to an untimely end when my three year-old sister speared him with a pencil.
As an adult I generally hate pets. This is not because I am a cold person. It’s not because I don’t like big-eyed fluffy creatures. On the contrary, I love to cuddle puppies, hold toads, brush gerbils, chase ferrets, feed fish, and talk to parrots. But experience has tempered my affections. So when on a summer Sunday morning my friend Frank asked if I could take his bush baby for a week, it was odd that I agreed. As I walked away from his house holding the rustling carrier I went through the checklist list of potential problems: Bubbles didn’t smell like death, he didn’t appear to be pregnant, it was too warm for him to freeze, and I had put sharp objects away in a drawer (my little sister was also now living in a different city and 15 years old).
Bubbles was cute enough for a seven year-old bush baby. Sure his eyes no longer seemed disproportionately large, and his fur was more tufty than it had been, but he had a sweet disposition, by which I mean he didn’t make any noise and when you held him, he didn’t pee in your hand. At Frank’s, Bubbles had a free run of all three rooms, though he preferred to huddle in the dustiest corners where the wall to wall carpeting had collected a fuzz indistinguishable from Bubbles’ own fur. So when we got back to my place I let him out of his cage and watched him wander back and forth looking for a nest-like corner—something made difficult by the lack of lint and the hardwood floors. Bored with watching his pacing I went out on an errand and left him in the apartment to finish his search. When I came back hours later, he was gone.
As a jaded pet owner who had seen much more gore than most, I wasn’t worried. It was likely that he had burrowed somewhere unexpected and would emerge in an hour or so hungry for his canned mushed meat. By nightfall there was still no sign of Bubbles but squeaking sounds had begun to punctuate the stillness of my disregard. I followed the sound across the apartment and ended up next to the radiator, where the water pipe enters the floor through a hole much larger than it’s silver circumference. Using the light from my cell phone I peered down the hole. Although I couldn’t see much, the light was accompanied by much louder squeaking and I concluded Bubbles was most like lodged in the radiator pipe shaft. Luckily it was summer and the heating was off. To be safe though, I turned the dial on the radiator to zero.
My first instinct was to lower a string down the hole. I imagined that Bubbles, in his old age, might be wise enough to cling on to it with his small five toed hands. However after lowering much more string than there was distance between me and Bubbles down the hole, I realized the string was likely piling on top of Bubbles’ head just causing extra irritation. My next idea was chewing gum. I had a large pack of Wrigley’s spearmint gum in the kitchen so I chewed six pieces as quickly as I could and waded them onto the bottom of the string. Jaw still sore I lowered the sticky gum ball down the hole. After attempting some fishing-like motions of dangle-and-pull-back dangle-and-pull-back I gave up on this. I needed something to make the gum stick to Bubbles’ fur.
The string and gum retracted (with a few Bubble hairs attached) I pulled on my sneakers and ran to the hardware store. Tools, which mostly I didn’t know how to use, took on their own creative utility in this problem. Wood glue that didn’t dry right away, but did get very sticky very quickly (said the shop owner), could be smeared on the gum ball for extra strength stickiness. A long metal curtain rod could be used for poking. I bought both and rushed back to Bubbles. The squealing had subsided in my absence. I stuck the gum to the end of the curtain rod and coated it with wood glue, blowing it to the sticky dry stage. Then I stuck the contraption through the hole slowly until I felt resistance and heard squeals. I didn’t want to push to hard, for fear of losing Bubbles to the depths of the building, so applied a little more pressure and decided to wait until the glue had time to adhere. Minutes passed and the frantic squealing continued. Giving a slight pull upward I felt Bubble’s body dislodge and the new weight on the end of the curtain rod. I moved him up slowly. After forty or fifty long seconds, Bubbles tufty fur appeared at the hole. I grabbed onto some of it and pulled.
Perhaps it was the excitement and anxiety of being stuck in a radiator shaft that made Bubbles puff up, but somehow he was larger now than he was when he went in, and he couldn’t fit back through the hole. I taped the pole to the wall with duct tape and stacked some books on either side of it so it wouldn’t slide. Maybe I could wait for Bubbles to shrink? But then maybe the glue/gum wouldn’t hold forever. I decided that sometimes things shrink when they’re cold and that pouring a pitcher of ice water over Bubbles would make him return to his normal smaller size. I filled the pitcher and slowly poured it over Bubbles. Then I gave his fur, of which there wasn’t much to grab on to — most still below the hole and the rest covered in gum — a yank. Bubbles screeched out of the hole wet but saved. The tumor of gum stuck to his back was now my biggest concern. Most of it cut off with hair scissors and I decided to put him back in his carrier before attempting to cut the remaining bits off. He was terrified and scrabbley. Back in his cage he enjoyed water and mushed meat and them went to sleep.
When I returned Bubbles a few days later he was doing much better. Besides his patchy coat he was fine. The shaking which had gripped him the day after the radiator incident had stopped for the most part and now just appeared to be an occasional shiver. Frank held him in his hand,
“What happened?” Frank asked, rubbing his finger on Bubble’s new bald patch.
“Nothing serious,” I said. “He got stuck to some gum.”
“Cool,” said Frank. He paused. “Do you wanna keep him?”
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m not really a pet person.”
…I was doodling. What do Columbia’s economics, writing, and statistics classes all have in common? Inspired doodling. After you look through the highlights of my semester, decide if you spend your time better than I did. Then send doodles to funnyandinteresting@gmail.com to enter the WHILE YOU WERE STUDYING worldwide contest! Winners will receive their own personal doodle by email.
At the Providence, Rhode Island stop the Acela conductor comes onto the loud speaker and announces “Ladies and Gentleman, this is a full train. Please take all your belongings off the empty seats and remember you only bought a ticket for one person and one seat.” Then he chuckles on the load speaker, coughs, and goes off the air. I dutifully remove my bag and newspaper from the seat next to me and make space for an oncoming passenger who turns out to be a middle aged woman, pale skinned, wearing a baggy hand made jean dress and a habit. A habit (I had to look this word up) is the headscarf nuns wear. She sits down next to me, gives me a serious judgment day look, and leans back closing her eyes. She opens her eyes, after this moment of silence — or prayer? — and takes out of her handbag a giant green ruggish thing: a book called Handbook of Workplace Spirituality and Organizational Performance.
“Ticket Ma’am?” says the conductor.
The woman leans over and picks up her purse. She shuffles through it concernedly.
“I can’t seem to find it. Oh no. I must have misplaced it!” She looks up at the conductor sorrowfully.
“It’s okay sister,” the conductor says and pulls a cross out from under his uniform.
“Thank you so much. God bless,” she says holding his hand in hers. He then punches a stub for her and moves on down the train. The woman then turns and looks at me with an unusual smile on her face. I take it as an invitation to chat.
“So where are you headed?” I ask.
“Manhattan. I’ve lived there for years.”
“Do you live in a nunnery there?”
“Oh no, I’m not a nun,” she laughs as if I have made a ridiculous assumption. I look up at her habit and she explains, “Oh I just wear this for fun.”
“The conductor called you sister.”
“He did. People just assume I’m a nun.”
“And you don’t mind?” I ask.
“No I love it. That’s why I wear this thing,” she flips the bottom of the habit. “People are always doing nice things for me when I wear it.”
“Yeah. I suppose the conductor was extra nice about that lost ticket.”
“Lost nothing! I never bought one.”
“Wow,” I say. She gives me another weird smile. Toothy and exaggerated. “So are you religious?” I ask.
“Oh no, not really.”
“But you’re reading about spirituality,” I say looking down at the book in her lap.
“Yes. It’s fascinating stuff,” she says and opens the book.
We sit in silence for the rest of the train ride. I desperately want to ask her more questions but I feel awkward intruding upon the silent meditation of a nun, even if she is a fake nun. When we finally get to Penn Station I find myself helping her with her bags in the overhead luggage rack. I hand them to her and she says, “God bless,” and exits to the station.
In short, I visited my grandma and she doesn’t have Internet. At length,
Saint Augustine is a small town an hour south of Jacksonville, Florida. It is full of shops with misspelled names—Grampa’s Music, Olde Tyme Candy Shoppe, etc.— and old white people who still whisper the word homosexual, wonder whether one is supposed to use African-American or Black, and who like to tell stories about their grandkids who work for the World Wide Web. It is also where my grandma lives. And it is also the name of a saint. Saint Augustine, the place, is endearing, despite the impression I may have given you. It is also the reason I haven’t posted in awhile. Like I said, my grandma doesn’t have Internet. Although she lacks in Internet, G-Shirley, as we call my grandmother affectionately — also to bring her name into the twenty-first century — does not lack in much else. Her wardrobe consists of layered galabayahs (from her years of living in the Middle East) and shiny “fancy” things from second-hand stores and yard sales, all of which she embroiders, appliqués, prints on, and ultimately drapes so that at 5’ 10” she stands a towering piece of folk art. Even in her bathing suit, onto which she has sewn beads and embroidered in gold thread around the neck, she manages this look. She has jewelry she can “go to the pool in.” She has a selection of waterproof watches and swim caps to match. And her house is a living museum. Living because there are in fact bugs living in multiple unexpected places, because St. Augustine is in the American tropics because, and also because she is constantly updating, or perhaps adding-on is a better phrase, more and more flair. A museum because everything she has comes in a collection and there is a lot of art. G-Shirley does not lack in friends either. Generally she introduced me to them saying, “This is my granddaughter, the one I told you about, the supermodel. Tell them how much you weigh and how tall you are.” After this pronouncement I try to simultaneously shake hands with the person and pretend that I don’t know the lady introducing us. This is nearly impossible so I usually look down or away after shaking hands and pull my little sister in front of me. “Cute as a button,” they’ll inevitably say when they see her, and I will be saved. Among the many people we were introduced to and places we swam while we were not on the Internet, Gladys the shell lady and the water aerobics class stood out from the rest. Gladys is shorter than my sister who is shorter than me, so in short, she is short. She is older than both of our ages combined times two plus twenty. She lives in a clean wall-to-wall carpeted house with adjoining garage and green lawn and paved driveway a couple blocks from the ocean. Despite all this, her house smells like glue. It is not an unpleasant smell. Everything in her house has small shells meticulously glued to it, so in fact it is not a surprising smell either. Mostly it is an odd smell, one you don’t expect to linger, but does, hanging around casually staring at you, while you try to ignore its presence. Gladys fired statements posed as questions loudly at my sister and me, “I HEAR YOU LIKE TO SWIM. IS THAT TRUE?” Yes,” we both said. “DID YOU SAY SOMETHING?” “YES,” we both said. “SO YOU LIKE TO SWIM?” “YES.” “THAT’S GOOD, ISN’T IT?” “YES. GOOD.” And like that we were distracted from awkward glue and preoccupied with the awkward conversation. “DON’T YOU JUST LOVE SHELLS?” “YES, THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL.” “I LOVE MAKING THINGS WITH SHELLS. I WANT TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING; IT’S A SHELL BALL. DO YOU LIKE IT? “YES. IT MUST HAVE TAKEN YOU A LONG TIME TO GLUE THOSE SHELLS ON!” “WHAT?” “A LONG TIME TO GLUE THE SHELLS ON!” “YES I LIKE GLUING THE SHELLS AROUND.” Eventually we negotiated our way out and got back on our bikes to head to town. It was only after we got there I realized that the exhilarating hilariously swooping laughing hysterical bike ride to town might have been caused by Gladys’ Glue that we had forgotten about. An odd moment of vulnerability fell over us as we imagined being kidnapped by Gladys and covered in glue and shells. We would be set out on the glass coffee table to dry. “DON’T THEY LOOK PRETTY LIKE THAT,” we heard her yelling at her next victims. Water Aerobics was an entirely different experience. Rather than feeling kidnapped, my sister and I consented to our grandmother’s request that we join her at the health club for the 9am class. We thought it would be amusing. And it was for the first fifteen minutes while older ladies, keeping their powdered faces and permed hair out of the water, bobbed up and down to Rhianna’s Umbrella –ella –ella –ella. My grandmother wearing her Girls Gone Wild baseball cap and embroidered swimsuit took the prize. “Do you know what Girls Gone Wild is?” asked my little sister. “Yes my swim coach told me it is a show where girls reveal their bosoms. It is funny.” The group is very amused with the idea of Girls Gone Wild and everyone laughed. At the end of the class my competitive grandmother asked us to race. My grandmother is twice our ages combined plus sixteen, or eighty-two. “Forty lengths,” she challenged. “I won’t beat you on speed but I will on endurance,” G-Shirley boasted. My little sister who was never on a swim team looked worried. “How about twenty lengths?” she asked. “No it must be forty! C’mon, don’t be a baby.” Take a pause and imagine my grandmother in her Girls Gone Wild hat taunting my little sister. Obviously, my sister couldn’t resist. We began to swim. Out of the three of us, I was the only one who could flip turn so I lapped my sister and grandma almost immediately. Understand that this is not boastful; rather I hope to make you appreciate the situation I was in. Forced to race my sister and a competitive old lady. Of course you understand that I couldn’t let my sister win, that’s just the way it is with younger sisters. You start letting them win and soon enough they think they’re better than you and you can’t make them get you breakfast. Competitive grandmothers are a special breed, if you have one you’ll know that there’s no real decision. You have to beat them. The glory of beating anyone will lead to hours of bragging, photographs taken at the scene, emails and phone calls to relatives, visits to neighbors, driving to the Dollar Store because they carry ribbons, awarding the ribbons (first and honorable mention) to all participants, and no, I’m not being facetious. In the end I beat them both and feel guilty for doing it. When my grandma finishes she says, “If you were 82 you wouldn’t have beaten me so it’s kind of like you cheated.” My sister concurs. This more or less concludes my lengthy explanation. In short I could have said I wasn’t posting because I was high off glue and busy beating old women and children in swim races, but then that doesn’t really explain it.
An impressive number of people sent explanations for last week’s odd occurrences to funnyandinteresting@gmail.com. Even more mailed me claiming to be the people I observed. But the majority of emails I received asked me entirely un-related questions. Thus, picking the winners was no easy task and I have included the top three explanations, though only the first is the true winner. The explanations for this conundrum were most curious. The only person who really got close to a feasible reason for the shoe tag was Wesley from Massachussetts who said,
So Jenny comes in second, not for explaining anything, but for her honesty.
I have no idea what Stefano is talking about but I admire his commitment to explaining so many occurrences. I figure since he’s Italian I can chalk up my misunderstanding to some sort of language or cultural barrier.
Who are the three synchronized texters in Battery Park?
Stefano, you sound like a true performance art critic! I like this interpretation because it’s totally bizarre, totally New York, and on top of that, probably right.
Spencer comes in a close second for obvious reasons. Genius.
Dan comes in third for thinking exactly the same thing as me.
What type of party was going on in the sushi restaurant?
First place goes to Chris. While many submissions cited ninja’s in their lengthy explanations, Chris showed himself to be from the inside of ninja culture, Zen, and understanding that the Ninja needs no explanation.
Aggie deserves second because she kept her Ninja explanation short and cited only the obvious pieces of evidence—ninja’s need nunchucks, they obviously wear dresses.
I give Stefano third place for his sheer creativity and his commitment to explain. However, his insinuation that I unknowingly went on an acid trip puts him in third—come on Stefano, you have to play to the judge! Also, Stefano had so many other good explanations I don’t feel bad putting him in third here.
Why did my neighbor say the chairs were not free, when they are not for sale either?
I’m sorry Sammy, as creepy as your explanation was my neighbor’s doorbell has his name on it, and it’s not Sammy. However, seeing as this is the only explanation I was emailed, I say congratulations on a first prize from funnyandinteresting.
Why did the couple with distinctive luggage see the need to mark their bags with green elastic?
Fiona wins and is uncontested. Apparently this was less weird than I thought. Good job Fiona for being reasonable and understanding of ugly luggage.
Thank you all for your creativity and participation.
At the airport a middle aged French man sat two rows ahead of me on the bus running between terminals. He wore brown leather lace up shoes and black pants cuffed pants. On his right shoe a paper luggage name label was nicely attached to his laces. Perhaps in case he lost a shoe under his seat?
Waiting in an airport line behind an older couple with practical American clothing and practical short hair I couldn’t help but notice the excessive luggage. The husband’s matched bags were snapped together in three descending layers from his larger wheeled jungle pattern suitcase. As the couple approached check-in the wife unzipped from the smallest outside luggage pocket neatly coiled green polyester straps with silver fasteners. They unfurl each belt and then put the Kelly green belts methodically around each of the already unmistakable suitcases so that now they will be easily seen on future luggage carousel?
In Battery Park three men in matching dark blue pinstripe suits sit on the bench across from mine. The first takes out his sunglasses from his breast pocket and the two others follow. All the sunglasses match. Another takes out his blackberry and begins to type a message and the two others remove their blackberries and begin to text as well. The make occasional eye contact, but it is brief and spy like. Synchronized, they all stand up and leave five minutes later.
Last night I was eating sushi in the East Village when a fifty something man dressed in a suit and tie carrying a black leather brief case sat down and ordered six Sapporo beers. He opened one and drank it. A woman also in her fifties then came in and sat with him. She was dressed in a loose dark-turquoise pantsuit. She refused a Sapporo and ordered green tea. They chatted and were very much engaged by each other, so much so I don’t think they noticed me staring. As I finished my ice cream five young Japanese women, none older than twenty-four or five came into the restaurant and sat down with the man and woman. They were dressed for a night of clubbing in tight red and black dresses, their hair ironed, their makeup fresh. The Sapporos were passed around. Conversation continued jovially and everyone appeared quite at ease with each other. The girls seemed comfortably intimate with the older couple and laughed and told stories at length.
My neighbor takes three chairs and a fan out of his apartment and leaves them on the landing. He puts a sign on them that says These Are Not Free. When I pass him in the hall I ask if they are for sale. “No,” he says, “Why would they be?” “Well if they’re not for free…?” I begin to reason. “They’re not for anybody, not for you, not for sale!” He has been unlocking his door while we converse and punctuates the now awkward silence by opening the door slowly, allowing it to screech while we stand too close and without conversation in the hall.
So many inexplicable events have led me to two conclusions. The first is that assumptions, that if something is not free it is for sale, that baggage tags are for luggage, and that women twenty-five years younger than the men they dine with are either daughters or prostitutes, have gotten me nowhere. The second is that I should stop staring at people because they are probably creeped out.
I’ve decided to turn this blog post into a contest of sorts. If you have an explanation for any of the above events, or if you are in fact one of the subjects of my confusion, or if you wish to report another odd event send an email to funnyandinteresting@gmail.com. The winners for the best submissions will be posted on the blog and will receive my hearty email congratulations; e-cards may or may not be involved.
