| In early 2017 FWIW ran a contest on Facebook in a number of groups and threads to see who could come up with the funniest and most ridiculous 4 word phrases that would ruin a first date. I was floored by the number of responses— over 1,500 (!) Here, appearing for the first time on the site itself, are the Winners and Runners Up— and for the first time altogether, the Runners Runners Up |
Well friends, the Results are in from January’s impromptu literary improv Contest asking you to “Ruin a first date using 4 words.” I must say, I was floored by the number of responses— over 1,500 (!) from a dozen or so Facebook groups and threads. Suffice it to say, it was extremely challenging to select the relatively small number of Winning (25) and Runner Up (15) entries.
Since I didn’t wholly trust my own comedic judgment (or stamina) when reading so many, I recruited my good friend, writer and humorist par excellence Matt, as co-judge. Thanks Matt for being so magnanimous on short notice!
Even then, the results must be taken with a proverbial grain of salt, for they reflect our idiosyncratic preferences and addled minds. Really, a small committee was required, and others surely would have made some different picks. Hopefully though, we were able to winnow out most of the funniest and most clever.
And thanks to everyone who, to my amazement, kept responding… and responding… and responding. Hope you enjoy this list 
Runners Runners Up
Marie Pé
My girlfriend is insane
Consent is a fad
I have fifteen cats
You, me, golden showers?
One minute, dealer calling!
College: waste of time
Anna L
Ignore the tracking device
I am still married
I enjoy restraining orders
Are you poisoning me?
Ian Steel Matheson
Call me ‘The Hammer’
Seth DeFayette
Your drink is poisoned
You laugh like Skeletor
Let me feed you…
Don’t look behind you
Self destruct in 0
God, no, just no
Marianne Lorthiois
Aleppo? What is Aleppo?
Ashwin Gandbhir
Like my clown suit?
Hold this colostomy bag
Honestly, astroglide or lard?
I traffic rhino horns
Matt Murphy
My bestiality’s under control
I am into coprophagia
Hamid Farzaneh
Is your dad single?
Joshua Budman
This won’t take long
Nguyen Dinh
You look better online
Chris O’Bray
I have no head
Erik Jacobsen
My wife just called
Zachary Soucy, Robert Henderson
I really love you
Michael Riat
I suppose you’ll do
Jason Kearney Thibault
Legally, I must inform…
Jen Starr
You have a tongue?!
Kathy Anders
My herpes is active
Bill Shifflett, Ed Logan
Mind if I fart?
Mike Fitzpatrick
I have a woody
Charles J. Swedish
Here, put this on
Yuck… smell my finger.
Dave Jewett
Watch this snot rocket
David Isurushin
Are those things real?
Ed Logan
Ever tried autoerotic asphyxiation?
Does Walgreens sell condoms?
Let’s make a baby
Your hair looks real
Just visualizing you naked
I bathed for you
Where’s the nearest hotel?
That’s my spit cup
We are not schizophrenic
The voices chose you
You look right tasty
Could you shut-up?
Paula Smith
The voices told me
Hold my crack pipe
Hugh Duncan
Those? Scars. Old girlfriend.
David Fairn
Your Dad is pretty
Richard Wysham
Got a hundred bucks?
Hugh Duncan
It’s okay, I’m famous
Bill Shifflett
Heroin helps me sleep
Nicole Kazonie
Haven’t slept in weeks…
All in the negotiations…!
I have a questionnaire
Randy Benjamin
Parole officer likes you
Bill Faulkner
Wanna see my crawlspace?
You allergic to zipties?
Our safeword is xzwqpkjmgfdulrdswv…
I party like Caligula!
Come see my van
Dammit! I just came
Curran Jeffery
My Mom dressed me
Laura Rooney
First date since prison
David Olson
You are a Cunt!
Nilsa Rivera
Could it be AIDS?
You ever killed someone?
Hil O’Brien
What about salad instead?
Edwin Marcus
My wife is calling
Angelica Lindo
My pimp’s monitoring us
Aliens abducted me twice
You looked better online
I’m on house arrest
I guess you’ll do
James Wait, Danny Hughes
Will you marry me?
Neal Shannacappo
Are you on medication?
Curtis Berry
You have lovely wrinkles
Carpet match the drapes?
You don’t look scared
Fetch me a beer
This smell like chloroform?
I admire older women
Brought you a ham
Get ready for inspection
Have you ever hooked?
Hitler was so misunderstood
Josh Gaines
Your skin oughta fit
You sleepwalk? I sleepshit!
Lara Lo
I sleep with dolls
I speak Pig Latin
David Mendoza
When are you due?
Frank Baker
My wife (husband) is coming
And if you’re curious, here is a list of the responses we came up with. I thought of mine sporadically over a few days. Matt came up with his in, like, 20 minutes.
Jason
– I have the clap
– I voted for Trump
– Biggest heroes: Allen. Polanski.
– Grandma?? What the fuck?!?
– I looove children! Literally.
– Follow me on Instagram
– Bedbugs are my friends
– My name is Mephistopheles
– I’m 9 months pregnant
– I brought my therapist
– I’m from the future
– Fancy a foot massage?
– U brought a diaphragm?
– Prefer to pee clothed
– I have two heads
– Hamster. Tube. Enough said.
– The KGB sent me
– I have anger issues
– Fucky sucky? Sucky fucky?
– What is your rate?
– Global warming doesn’t exist
– I followed you here
– You gotta snort this!
– Let us say Grace
– Wanna buy a condo?
– What’s your ATM pin?
– Your deformity arouses me
– Want to swap children?
– I’ll be filming this
– Reading is for fools
– Ignore the parole officer
– Rapists have feelings too (agh, this one is awful!)
– First sign this contract
– This too shall pass
– Wanna join my Ashram?
– Let’s Netflix And Chill
– I own twelve concubines
– Pee into this cup
– Remind me to douche
– I love your cranium!
– This is becoming interminable
– Girl, you so freaky
– Let’s steal the silverware
– Just robbed the register
– How much an hour?
– Fried bedbugs are delectable
– Too legit to quit
– Don’t fear the Reaper
– I’m a mischievous proctologist
– Satan, get thee back!
– More cowbell
Matt
– I forgot my mantra
– It rubs the lotion
– Yeah, you’ll regret this
– Blackness. All is Blackness.
– Well this is awkward
– Let’s contemplate the nothingness
– Nothing will save you
– Let’s just not talk
– Endless dread, that’s all
– Limitless humiliation, my life
– Masturbation is my religion
– Masturbation is God, ok?
– I overmasturbated today, sorry
– My life is grim
– Want to discuss Schopenhauer?
– Despair, ye Gods. Despair!
– Systolic. Diastolic. Bucolic. Whooo! (a very inside joke)
– I’m a dandy, see!
– I rage against God
– Sweeeeet Caroline, dum, dum –
– Blade sharpens blade, petunia
– Remember Jewel? So great
– Remember Everclear? So great
– Remember Hanson? So talented
– Step on my dick
– My name is Cardamom
– Contest Was Held In Jan 2017
Well, so long my friend. 🍷✍ 
Leonard Cohen is a hero of mine. I was fortunate enough to see him in concert four times– his first in Toronto after his fifteen year hiatus (on a sort of pilgrimage for the very purpose), at a beautiful ornate ramshackle theater in a rundown part of Connecticut, and twice in NYC. His impact on my life over the years, and on my art, has been inestimable.
Yesterday it occurred to me that it might be nice to share some of his wonderful lesser known songs.
Here is a list of some of my personal favorites. I’ve included those I imagine people moderately acquainted with his body of work still might not know. Of course, everyone has their idiosyncratic favorites. It’s amazing how many great songs there are in his oeuvre. And he has very few I’d actually consider ‘bad’; the occasionally musically lackluster ones are often redeemed by great lyrics.
Hope you enjoy these selections. I’ve included video links to each song as well.
• Teachers (1967)
• One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong [Live] (BBC Broadcast 1968)
• Story of Isaac (1969)
• Avalanche (1971)
• You Know Who I Am [Live] (Live Songs 1973)
• Nancy [Live] (Live Songs 1973)
• Lover Lover Lover (1974)
• There Is A War (1974)
• Do I Have To Dance All Night [Live] (rare Live In Paris single – with Laura Branigan 1976)
• The Guests (1979)
• The Gypsy’s Wife (1979)
• If It Be Your Will (1984)
• Take This Waltz (1988)
• Anthem (1992)
• Boogie Street (2001)
• The Letters (2004)
• Steer Your Way (2016)
• It Seemed The Better Way (2016)
Also considered including Master Song (1967), Stranger Song (1967), Waiting For The Miracle (1992), and Who By Fire (Live In London 2009), but I’m guessing moderate listeners already tend to know these
P.S. At the bottom of the post are a few photos I took during the candlelight vigil at LC’s house in the Plateau, Montreal, a ceremony whose mournings and somber festivities extended for many days
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note: Clearly these links will not work in every country, and some of them will be removed from the internet over time.
• Teachers (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzotawVmmVc
• One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong [Live] (BBC Recording 1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON7-tf0-3Ys
• Story of Isaac (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzSSeeJRn2c
• Avalanche (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQe88ybEIe8
• You Know Who I Am [Live] (Live Songs 1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAPhSmlfnmo
• Nancy [Live] (Live Songs 1973)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr7nkyRK9bQ
• Lover Lover Lover (1974)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYkJuAb0mMk
• There Is A War (1974)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncdY2nGKzBs
• Do I Have To Dance All Night [Live] (rare Live In Paris single – with Laura Branigan 1976)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqzdk6NhAs4
• The Guests (1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxY_8Tu1CoI
• The Gypsy’s Wife (1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cky05oQAIsc
• If It Be Your Will (1984)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Qk_4emjEs
• Take This Waltz (1988)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytdjYjM-cLg
• Anthem (1992)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCS_MwkWzes
• Boogie Street (2001)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rswKZ0PNY_0
• The Letters (2004)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFcrn8Dg2LI
• Steer Your Way (2016)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nyMrjGX2vk
• It Seemed The Better Way (2016)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nyMrjGX2vk
– Nov 12, 2016
|
This is the definitive author’s cut, published with permission of the author, of the titular story that appeared in Harper’s Magazine and was edited down due to length considerations therein. This version reflects the author’s ultimate vision. To compare it to the original, please see the Harper’s version.
|
That Doubling Is Always Observed (Author’s Cut)
On the Kupuestra
It is not supple. It communicates nothing. The kupuestra is mute; brittle; many-cornered, the body as polygon; the choreographic equivalent of Ak-Mak crackers but without the sesame seeds. It is performed without music. It is performed without face or torso. It does not arouse the passions in the manner of, say, the tango. It does not stir the heart, the pathetic object of that old wadded-up valentine the waltz. The kupuestra is not old. It is not wadded-up. Like weeping, it is colorless. Like Tuesday, it has no scent. Most performances (not all) go unnoticed. The great artists of the medium (save one: see On Lop, below) are unknown; all owe their anonymity to their unwholesome pallors and pretzel bones; all die before the age of forty. (This last is an inference. What we know with certainty is that no artist of the medium greater than the age of forty has been observed.) Because of the way the heels are brought together, then snapped violently into the inner thighs and locked there (enremmeta, “as if kissing the private parts”) in the dance’s most recognizable kinetic, the critic Eugene Genova has compared the kupuestra to the communal dining of jackals (which begins at the entrails and moves skinward) and labeled it savage and reprobate.
Genova is misguided. The kupuestra is not savage and its merits are obvious. It is a dance for our time.
On Early Training
Children are chosen for the academy at age three. The principal criteria for acceptance are an unfathomable facial expression; skin of a dreadful hue; want of ambition; and a willingness to be placed in enremmeta and to remain so without complaint. During the audition the applicant is suspended from cables to test for infirmity of purpose— “like a dead marionette,” as Genova put it famously.
Children remain at the academy until they have nothing more to forget. They train intensively, usually at night, gradually advancing through twelve degrees of ignorance. Communication with parents is forbidden. Snacks and bicycles are forbidden. On completion of their studies, students are awarded monogrammed napkins and sent packing. Most are never heard from again. What they do with their training, or their napkins, is unknown. (Exception: See On Lop’s Napkin, below.)
On Performance
Performance is the wrong word. The kupuestra is come into. It is assumed. Imagine wool. Imagine Emily Dickinson asleep. Such images convey the lumbering poetry of the dance— its arrested couplets, its elevation of inertness to a majestic level. Once enremmeta is achieved, nothing remains. Genova has, predictably, attempted comment, without success. Between stanzas short bursts are permitted, as the dancer moves blindly along the collapsing boundaries, clueless as to the outcome. And then it is over— or not, as the case may be, depending on many things.
Solos are not unheard of, but true kupuestra jigsaws and so requires clusters. The ideal setting for an assumption is a pit or a quarry, or any brown place without trees. Observers go there single file. They surround it. What they see they shrug off at once.
On Vekner
Edward Vekner was the father of the kupuestra, albeit an unwitting one, a man whose understanding of the dance did not exceed a lizard’s understanding of algebra. He once admitted that until he was twenty he believed that motion on the dance floor was a tidal phenomenon brought on by the gravitational pull of the moon. Vekner’s passion was hay rides. As a child he dreamed he would one day ride a hay bale into battle. This never happened. Instead, he became a designer of cemeteries. (Genova provides a plausible explanation for the farcical trajectory from military hay rider to graveyard architect: the flip side of a live soldier atop a heap of alfalfa is a dead one beneath a field of poppies.) The cemetery designer does the best he can with a bad situation, and Vekner assuredly did that. However shallow his understanding of the dance, his landscapes were wide, his holes dark and deep.
On Vekner’s Epiphany
Vekner didn’t know a two-step from a turnip, but he had a pair of eyes and he knew what to do with them. Business took him to Reefmeer. There he happened to meet Hepple, the well-known foundation excavator. During their conversation, which began vaguely and continued ambiguously, Hepple mentioned the recently discovered mass grave on the Aupuene and offered to show it to his new friend.
The following morning found the two men traipsing toward the site single-file, along with hundreds of townsfolk. As they reached the spot, a depression that was neither large nor small, nor was it medium, they shambled along the lip, circling, until all had found suitable vantage points. There they paused and gawked.
What is there to say? It rose up. It was there. It was stately, in a way, but with zing. It was a kind of too much (but not totally). Interlocking could be inferred. At the summit of the pile was Enremmeta, a house painter. Hepple remarked on the doubling back of the legs, heel-to-thigh, and mentioned that the pose had been seen at the summit of other such piles.
Vekner felt a crushing pain in his chest. Struggling for air, he stumbled back to his room, aware that his life was in danger. After the Aupuene he traveled to Juulena, then Dalveddian, then Meriol. At the time, few such piles were known. Driven underground like a common thimblerigger, the poor man was forced to abandon his family, his business, his golden retriever, and come into his life’s work fortified only by emergency rations of bewilderment and chagrin.
Had he lived today, in our time of a kind of too much, when every cardiopulmonary system is engaged and every town has its pile, he might have been spared much grief and been led to his celebrated discovery in short order. As it happened, seven years were to erode beneath his feet before he had seen what he had seen and resurfaced to announce his astonishing findings: that whatever the why, that however the unraveling, that whenever the inquiry, that wherever the gawking, that whomever the heap—that doubling back of the legs, heel-to-thigh, is always observed. And this: that although he knew nothing of the dance, he knew it was like a dance.
On What Happened to Vekner Next
He did not end up in a pile himself. The man enjoyed a brief celebrity. After the fuss he returned to his family, his business, and his golden retriever, welcomed by all except the latter, which sniffed at him as she might have addressed a new hassock in the family room. There were commissions, consultations, a tiny award for good grooming. He was invited to snip the ribbon at the ground-breaking for the academy. He developed pains in his legs, the lingering hoofprint of an old hay-ride injury. Chiropractic produced a quick cure. Life went on and then it didn’t. At an age too soon Vekner went blind, then mad. On the fifth day of the fourth month of his thirty-seventh year, he choked to death attempting to swallow his tongue. He ended up in one of his own cemeteries, beneath a stone reading Aboveground at last.
On Lop
Lop was a many-angled Cremeran. The kupuestra was made for her, or her for it, or something. Thousands have danced; only Lop sank in. She was unfathomable, she was cracker-like, she was the color of bacon grease, yet she was not shrugged off. Old-timers recall not wool but Lop at the top— spindly needle-nailed fingers scratching at the sky, horned hips, notched brow, sawtooth chest zagging against the breathless frozen-night drift of the moon. The remembered usually defy convention. Lop defied astrophysics. There was always a moon, or Antares, or a frolicking galaxy when she danced, even on the stage at the local civic center. Vellone, who loved her, wrote of Lop in enremmeta—
crooked as a cow path but floating in a spiral
nebula of pink argon
but
Others who danced embodied earth. Lop embodied space. Therein lay her secret. Even in an airless cluster she found elbow room. Even in enremmeta she became void. The kupuestra communicates nothing, and Lop did not say that void is good or that it is chilly or even that it contains fish. Void with good or with trout is not void. Lop said that void is void. If you insist on meaning you are as misguided as Genova (who hated Lop and really hated Vellone, whose saccharine rhapsodies he compared to frilly underpants); but here, try this: Lop said that void is void, by which she meant that sooner or later you will end up in a hole in the ground, but relax, it won’t be as bad as you imagine, because a hole can contain nothing— not you, not fish—so that wherever you are must be somewhere. If you find this exegesis comforting, fine, but you are missing the point; if you find it mindless, well done, you are floating in a spiral nebula of pink argon but.
On Lop’s Birth
It would be stirring to relate that Lop arrived on Earth in an empty envelope from the planet Zook, but it would also be untrue. She arrived on Earth in the normal fashion— screaming, flailing, seething, burning for revenge; the unfathomable, cracker-like, grease-colored daughter of two frightened parents who had expected a bundle of joy but received instead what appeared to be an enraged porcupine. The child would not be calmed. From behind a hastily constructed barricade, a recent medical school graduate assured the small, bewildered parents that, like all thorny babies, little Lop would grow up to run a successful business; moreover, within five minutes she would succumb happily to warm milk and a bath, at which time the prickers would retract and contented cooing commence.
All of which was, of course, wishful thinking— more wishful than thinking, as it turned out. The recent medical school graduate was wrong. Lop never cooed. The prickers never retracted.
The child’s most notable feature, even including her color, her consistency, and her rage, was a halo. Cerulean in hue, murky as the Lotus of the True Law, it surrounded her little spiked head not as Giotto or Cimabue might have installed it— like a ring of Saturn— but instead cubically, like a packing box for a Rand-McNally globe. Within, she wailed.
All children are born with the crushing realization that they have just been transferred from a vile, suffocating prison to one even more vile and more suffocating. Yet through the direct application of mushy kisses and teddy bears, parents are able to drive this intelligence underground, behind the medulla oblongata, beneath the logos and the anima, into the remote, cavernous tunnels of Plot Central. There it is snipped into enough story lines to supply a lifetime of nightmares and neuroses. Deprived of the truth, denied the lowdown on their origins, the children grow up to be useful voting citizens.
Little Lop was different. Her halo acted as a hermetic shield. Kisses and teddy bears, no matter how thickly applied, could not get in; the crushing realization could not be suppressed. On the contrary, it orbited her head like a communications satellite, coming face-to-face with her face once every ninety-six minutes.
The rest of the time she breathed free. Other babies, smothered by love, had no rest of the time. They grew short of breath. Lop grew long of breath. She developed space. She developed comets and asteroids. She became a star in her own disturbing universe. Her halo gave her an edge over other babies, wisdom none of them had: Only disconnect, it counseled. Fight only for air. Her head swam in a revelation of blue. At the age of two days she decided on her life’s work.
On Lop’s Napkin
She made of it a small boat. This upon departing the academy at an advanced age, still struggling to achieve even elementary ignorance. It was decided that although she hadn’t forgotten everything (she had, in fact, forgotten nothing), she had forgotten as much as she was capable of forgetting, and therefore, technically, had fulfilled the requirements for release. At a festive snack with the institution’s spiritual director— a descendent of Vekner’s— Lop was presented with her own napkin, which was buff-colored and heptagonal. She immediately folded it into a replica of a slave galley. Beneath the monogrammed “L” she drew a poor sketch of herself in enremmeta. Then, in tiny letters, she wrote:
If you find me
Look right through me
I am nothing
If you are folded, decrease
If you are cleaved, depart
Follow nothing
Seek the nothing in all things
(Signed) a dancer, but
Then she excused herself, went into the bathroom, tossed the little boat into the toilet, and flushed. The vessel descended with a choking sound, as though there were passengers on board. It passed quickly through the town’s sewer system and out to sea. For seven years the craft plied the world’s oceans, seven years of valor and fury. At last it made land— at a beach near Fendago— where Vellone, an unpublished poet, retrieved it.
Reading the message the old man was greatly cheered. He had sought nothing his entire life! The napkin still carried Lop’s many-cornered scent and her depth. Pickled by the pungent vapors, bewitched by the abyss, the man who sought nothing determined now to continue his quest by setting out to find the boat builder. Her scent led him quickly to the city of Kantrice, her depth to a bakery, where he located the object of his search in enremmeta, floating in a spiral nebula of pink argon but.
In accordance with Lop’s wishes, he saw right through her. He saw a priest with a yo-yo. He saw a mountain wearing a hat. He saw a drawer full of vanilla beans. He saw, above everything, a rainbow advertising hiking boots. These were not drug dreams or chimeras: Lop’s universe was hung thick with them! They were Arcturus and the Pleiades. They were the quarks and the leptons in void. They were the benevolence of the woman, the reassurance that it is never as bad as you imagine.
Vellone watched for as long as shapelessness allowed. Then he began to write.
On Lop’s Final Years
Vellone’s little collection, That Doubling Is Always Observed, sold eleven copies. Lop claimed that the author had mistaken the artist for her art; Vellone did not respond. In the city of Kantrice, needless to say, he had become the why. He was discovered there, years later, in enremmeta.
Lop’s edges, meanwhile, transmogrified; she remembered things she had never known; her legs straightened; she walked by the sea, enchanted.
One day she decided to take off her halo. She placed it on the beach beside something narrow yet smooth. The excellence of the halo was carried off by the next storm, but no matter: a yellow skiff came in sight, searching for things to rescue. Lop waded out to greet the craft. She received a hearty welcome from the captain and the crew. And soon they departed on the April tide. Like Vekner, she was thirty-seven. Like Vellone, she watched for as long as shapelessness allowed. She is somewhere, with the others.
The End
About the author, Robert Leonard Reid
© Robert Leonard Reid
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