#31
#30 #29 #28 #27 #26 #25 #24 #23 #22 #21 #20 #19 #18 #17 #16 #15 #14 #13 #12 #11 #10 #9 #8 #7 #6 #5 #4 #3 #2 #1
Believe It Or Not
He Isn’t Done
With the Story of How He Ruined His Pajama Pants
Which Had Seemingly Reached a Natural Conclusion Last Week
But during the night, uh, some sort of a tear I had made in the—whoa! Pan, are you okay? Pan just, uh… are you gonna have a hairball or somethin’?
[Stomach growling? Cat purring?]
Well, what I’m trying to say is that I…
[Cat purring.]
My pants fell down because I had opened up a rift [laughter] in them.
[Cat purring.]
That whuh… expanded during the night.
[Cat purring.]
You know, the… waistband no longer held. What it—maybe I had… you know, that little part of the waistband, that… that elastic portion, I suppose… the…
[Cat purring.]
It—I had severed something vital and the pants would no longer stay up.
So I had to throw ‘em away.
And, you know, and I couldn’t even give ‘em to Goodwill or anything because they’re trash now! I made them into garbage. They were beautifully made… uh… wonderfully comfortable… uh… of the finest… fabric… and I… made them into trash. You know, when I could have easily gone into the bathroom—gotten the scissors out of the… kitchen drawer—gone into the bathroom, cut the tag off… taken my, uh, pants off first! So I could see what I was doing, and then cut the tag off.
Another thing I could’ve done…
Thanks, Pan! Pan just licked me on the… back of the hand as a sign of affection.
[Cat purring.]
She has so many… gray hairs now.
[Cat purring.]
Look at all those little white hairs.
[Cat purring.]
White hairs do not become a black cat.
Paraphrasing something.
Oh, I know, probably something from Hamlet.
[Cat purring.]
About gray hairs… Thank you, Pan! She did it again.
Not becoming a fool. Or whatever it is.
[Cat purring.]
I’m no… genius.
[Rattling sigh merges into throat clearing.]
I think I interrupted my own hypothetical, uh, alternative history, in which I —oh! Yes. I know what I was going to say. I was going to say another thing I could’ve done is live with the minor irritation of that tag, which, you know… I may have… not even experienced subsequently. Maybe the next time I put on the pajamas, I wouldn’t have felt the same—it wouldn’t have scratched me in the same… way. What am I, the Princess and the Pea?
But no, I chose to destroy that which [stifled laugh] gave me pleasure.
“Every man… kills the thing he loves.” What is that from? First of all, it’s total crap. Isn’t it? What…? I need to… I’m gonna Google that up real good. Because…
[Sigh.]
Oh! Now to tell you the story of a man…
We’re getting back to my dislike of a certain word I was telling you about.
I’ll use his… ah… he must be long deceased.
I don’t know why I think that.
[Pause.]
His name was **** *****.
Is that a humorous name?
And he… ran a storage facility out in, you know, Hollywood, USA.
And this is many, many years ago when my friend Darby and I were making a… oh, and Dirk was involved with this, too. It was packaging. That’s what we call… this is just… the lowest form of… televised entertainment.
But we had a set that needed to be stored… you know… rrrrruh, we would come out and shoot once a month for a week or so, I think, and then the rest of the time the s—the props and the set would be in storage. And we had this guy who ran the storage company, his name was ****… *****. And he would, uh, one thing I recall… is he told… quite obscene, a, a terribly off-color story about Chuck Connors, the… I’m sure you won’t know who Chuck Connors is. Who are you? [Laughter.]
But Chuck Connors starred in a television series called The Rifleman. He was a big TV star.
And, d-uh…
Boy, **** ***** knew some, some… first of all, some striking personal details about Chuck Connors, which shouldn’t be related outside of the boudoir. And then he also told really—not just an off-color story, but a… brutal… I thought, an ugly story… involving accidental—the accidental death of a poodle during the tender act of love.
Let’s leave it at that.
Nothing… you know, nothing untoward, sexually, happened with the poodle, but the… crass and offhand manner in which the… uh… dispatch of the poodle was… the punch line of the story… involved the cruel… uh… demise, however… you know, however… it was not premeditated is what I’m trying to say. There was no… animosity toward the poodle… [laughter] God!
Let’s just skip over th—all this h—horror. And, and get onto the thing that made me… reminded me of this guy… is that…
[Throat clearing.]
Is that he would always say… okay. After… and remember, this is a guy who was capable of… he was strangely… prudish in some… way… considering the content of some of his conversation.
[Long pause.]
Oh, his, his delight in describing the [stomach growling] length and girth of Chuck Connors’s, uh, manly, manly attributes [laughter] was breathtaking. He… uh, nuh, in not only verbal but, you know, a lot of hand and arm gestures went into that, uh… unforgettable portrait of a man and his genitals. But…
He was concerned about the… what he saw as the small amount we were willing to pay to store our sets, and… the way he put it… [laughter] He would always say, “I’m takin’ it in the cheeks! I’m takin’ it in the cheeks!” And… perhaps that’s where my aversion began for that word, “cheeks.” It… it seemed… it seemed… worse.
This way, please, for the next part.
Jack Pendarvis has written five books. He won two Emmys for his work on the TV show Adventure Time. During a period of light employment, he spoke into a digital recorder whenever the mood struck him and transcribed the results, accumulating the two thousand pages from which this column has been extracted.
Each comment or response costs a tiny ETH fee of 3.0E-5 (about 5¢ in Ethereum cryptocurrency), payable from your Metamask.io wallet (the wallet is free, and takes just a moment to add to your browser). This system helps protect Popula conversations from trolls, fakers, Cambridges Analytica and other malign influences.
If you haven’t got any ETH yet and you’re a Popula subscriber, please write to hey@popula.com with your subscriber email address and MetaMask wallet address, and we’ll send you a little bit to get started! It’s pretty easy and a lot of fun to use, Yay.
If you’d like to learn more about cryptocurrency, Ethereum, and how Popula is using these new technologies to help protect speech rights and the free press, please visit our FAQ page.
We’re having trouble checking your subscriber status. Try refreshing the page.
Welcome! To leave a comment, you’ll need to log in, and also have your MetaMask wallet ready with some ETH cryptocurrency available.
It’s easy! Just visit metamask.io to install an in-browser MetaMask wallet. If you’re a new subscriber, write to hey@popula.com for $2 in free ETH crypto!
Thank you for being a Popula subscriber! As a subscriber, you may leave comments, but you have to be logged in as commenter here first. This is an additional login—the login for your commenting privileges—and you’ll stay logged in after you log in the first time.
We’ve sent an email to your registered address at … with your commenting details. Please follow the directions in the email to open your commenting privileges and then come back here to leave your first comment!
Thanks for registering! Please log in and you can get started commenting.
You need to connect to the Main Ethereum Network before you can leave a comment. Click on your MetaMask icon so the window pops up, then select ‘Main Ethereum Network’ from the network-chooser dropdown at the top.
You’re logged in and ready to leave comments! All you need is a MetaMask wallet and a little ETH cryptocurrency, just like with our microtipping system.
If you know what MetaMask is and have it installed, activate MetaMask and refresh:
Each comment costs 5¢ in Ethereum cryptocurrency to post! Just write your comment and click the green button. Thank you, Popula subscriber, for joining us in the new world of cryptoeconomics! Please don’t forget to set your wallet address in order to receive tips on your comments.
Alas! commenting is not yet available on your mobile device. Each comment costs a little ETH cryptocurrency to post, and for now that requires a regular computer.
So please go to your laptop, install the MetaMask browser plugin, and hold forth!