Blue in the Face Page #5

What's up with that?

They get you started, you know?

- A butt.

- What happened to the one I just gave you?

I sent it home. They're cutting down

on the butts at home.

A butt!

A match.

Thanks.

Pays to have friends.

Yes, I'm smoking cigarettes

and many of my friends have died of it.

On the other hand,

while I am smoking cigarettes...

I am not downing a bottle

of Scotch... in 15 minutes.

So looked at from that point of view,

it's a health tool.

I can't remember the first time

I had a cigarette.

I can remember the first time

I had a thing...

you would know 'cause you're from

Brooklyn, called a punk.

Do you remember a punk?

Punk was this long, green piece of wood.

It was a slim piece of wood,

this big, dyed green...

with God knows what

caked on it...

about three inches down

all the way to the end.

You lit it

and pretended to smoke it.

Of course you couldn't inhale it

because it's solid wood.

And you'd walk around with it.

It was called a punk.

Am I right?

That I can remember.

When that turned into

an actual Marlboro...

uh, I honestly don't recall.

It's... It, along with most of my childhood

memories, are not available to me.

My childhood was so unpleasant that I

absolutely don't remember anything, I think...

before, uh, age 31.

- Tommy.

- Yeah.

Pete.

- Pete? Peter?

- Pete.

- Pe-Peter Maloney?

- Peter Maloney!

- Oh, my God! Oh, sh*t!

- Tommy! Tommy...

- Come on.

- Facimimimi.

- No. Uh, uh. Fennili. Fennili.

- F***in' who?

Fennili.

Tommy Fennili.

- You're Peter Maloney, Midwood High.

- Right.

- Double A-plus in Algebra.

- Yeah.

You're the guy that wiped out the curve.

How you been?

- How you been?

- Good. Good. I'm good, yeah.

I went to Harvard.

Got my B. A. At Harvard. Went to Yale.

Got a Ph. D. In the disciplinary studies,

philosophy and biology.

- Whoa.

- Yeah. So, what're you... This is your place?

- Uh, yeah, it's my place. Yeah. Kinda.

- Still in the neighborhood?

Yeah. I love the neighborhood,

you know? Hey, wow!

- You mind if I sit down? Thanks. That's great.

- No, no, no. Sit down.

My glasses...

represent probably

the future of glasses...

for a certain segment

of the population.

I've approached, uh...

I went to the patent office first about

my glasses, and that was because...

Let me explain

what the glasses are.

The glasses

only have lenses on top.

We basically go out and we,

and we survey people at random.

And then we take their answers and funnel

them into, into a philosophy basically...

that'll help

improve their life.

I have... Do you want to do a survey?

Can I ask you some questions?

- Who, me?

- 'Cause I have a quota...

and you'd really

be helping me out.

- Right here?

- We can just... We can do it here.

S- Sure. Sure. I got nothin' to lose.

Why not? Let's do it.

Do you believe in God,

Tommy?

- Yeah, I believe in God.

- Okay. Yeah.

- Really?

- Well, don't you?

I think there's a god.

And I'm not it. Okay.

Is there anyone you hate enough to want dead,

and if somebody said they'd kill that person...

and the crime wouldn't be discovered,

would you let them go ahead and do it?

L... That's a hard one.

I don't want anybody dead.

- This is Pete, Tom. You can tell me.

- All right.

- Maybe, uh... Maybe one guy, okay?

- One guy.

There's always that one f***in' guy,

you know?

- That one f***ing a**hole.

- One f***in' guy.

One f***in' guy.

That's right. Okay.

Do you look at your bowel movements

before you flush the toilet?

- Oh, come on, Peter.

- Just humor me.

Look, come on.

Is it... whoa, a foot-long floater.

You don't even want

to say good-bye to it.

You give it a name,

you know.

All right. Yeah, I look.

Who doesn't look? You look, right?

Abso-f***in'- lutely,

I look.

I went to

a space shuttle launch.

As the shuttle was taking off...

I could put binoculars right in...

Straight through my frames

because there's no lenses there.

The space scientists

were all huddled around me.

"How can I get a pair of glasses like that?

How can I get a pair of glasses like that?"

Because they're all standing there with

those tacky little strings around their neck...

with glasses hanging or they've got them

on their bald heads.

Or I'll be in a restaurant, and when I go

to read the menu I flip the lenses up.

And people come over and say,

"How can I get a pair of glasses that do that?"

So I saw what my future was.

Th-That perhaps

my future lay...

uh, in eyeglass

frame manufacturing.

Or being sponsored

by a frame manufacturer.

And I was gonna call it

"Lou's Views."

- Are you satisfied with the size and shape of your penis?

- Oh, cripe!

Peter, come on. That's a personal

question. That's a personal question.

These are not... No one's gonna know

this is you. There's no name.

- Who's gonna see this stuff?

- It just gets processed into a computer.

- No. But who is?

- No. You're not satisfied?

What is it? Girth, no distance?

Distance, no girth? No girth, no distance?

Between you and me?

No, I'm... The length is good...

the width is questionable, and I got a

little... It curves a little to the left.

- You got a curved one?

- You know, it leans a little bit.

A leaner. Okay.

That counts in horseshoes.

How much money would it take

for you to eat a bowl of sh*t, Tom?

Hey! I'm gonna tell

you somethin'. That I won't do.

Every man's got his price, right,

but not me. No, no. Not Tommy Fennili.

- No. Me? Uh-uh. I don't eat sh*t.

- No sh*t for Tommy.

It's against my religion.

What religion is that, Tom?

The religion of sanity, Peter.

You should try it sometime.

I belonged. They excommunicated

me. Let me tell you something.

In an insane society,

the sane man must appear insane.

San... Okay.

"Insanity is the logic

of an accurate mind..."

- "Overtaxed."

- "Overtaxed"!

- Oliver Wendell Holmes.

- Yeah, I heard that.

Goddamn it, Tommy!

Goddamn it, thank you.

One thing that you do

get here in Brooklyn...

which I now know from having driven around

the country and looked elsewhere for it...

you get plastic bags

stuck in trees.

And it really drives me nuts.

It's like a flag of chaos.

A bag in a tree.

It's a symbol. It just...

And I used to see them and just...

They would bug me.

And then one day I realized, you know,

you could get it out of the tree.

So a friend and I made

a long bag snagger.

For which we are currently

applying for a patent, in fact...

because no one ever made

something to take bags out of trees.

And it works very well.

It's a long aluminum pole.

And we can actually reach now

almost, I would say, 50 plus feet.

It's fun. It's exercise. It's...

Holding a big pole up and stretching.

We walk a fair amount.

And it definitely makes things nice,

you know. Improves the tree.

This is your basic bag

in a tree.

This can be recorded on film.

We know that it existed.

And when you come back, it will be...

only an image on film...

because I will

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