WHAT TO DO IF YOUR BROTHER GETS PRETENTIOUS So my kid brother is going to one of these schools, you know the type(it's not an Ivy, but it kinda thinks it is. Like Stanford or Johns Hopkins or Rutgers or Cornell). Anyhow, he's taking a lit class and he comes up to me the other day and says, "Rich, can you help me? I've got to write this term paper. It's due tomorrow." "No prob. You start the coffee, I'll heat up the crystal meth. What's it on?" "I'm supposed to deconstruct Hamlet." "Hamlet deconstructs itself. Now leave me alone." "*I* know that. *Everyone* knows that. But the prof won't accept that as a paper." "Bastard." "I got some ideas." I was afraid of this. "All right. What?" He took a deep breath. I cringed. "Well you know how in Hamlet everyone is interpreting everything everybody says, you know, reading each other?" I nodded, distracted. "And like, Hamlet's madness, even if it appears feigned to everyone else could be very real to him, right?" "So? You got any herb?" "Don't you see, it's a classic appearance/reality--" Oh no, if I didn't watch my step here, he'd be trying to work in Antonioni's 'Blow-up' and Roeg's 'Don't Look Now.' He was really breathing hard now. "Don't you see? Horatio, draw thy breath in pain to tell my story. My story! Hamlet's story!! Il n'y a pas dehors du texte. History exists only as a function of present discourse!! Yes yes yes I will yes I do YES!" So I sucker-punched him. "Thanks." "Il ny'a a pas dehors du texte my ass. Try de la droite." "Huh? Il n'y a pas dehors de la droite." He stared blankly. "Oh, never mind. You got any other ideas for this here 'deconstruction'?" "Well, we can break Hamlet up into 'homme lit'. 'Man reads'. Don't you see? Man reads! It's all just so like, there." "Slow down a second, Piper Cub. It seems to me that Hamlet sounds a lot more like 'omelette' than anything. . ." His eyes brightened like a schoolgirl at her first dance and he ran to the kitchen. "Yes, yes!" "Put the eggs in a bowl of water first. Bring em to room temperature." "Sheesh," he called out. "I'm not stupid you know." True. He's got two more years to get really stupid. MY BROTHER THROWS A PRETENTIOUS PARTY Let's see, gang. When we last saw my brother he was cooking up a couple of omelettes. Let's check in on him and see what's up: "Heat the plates first," I said. "I know," he called out. "I'm not an idiot." "Yeah, all right." "Hey Rich, I'm having a party here next Friday." "Thanks for letting me know. What kind of party?" "Just some friends from one of my classes." I perked up, remembering that he was taking two theater classes. "Which class?" "English 405--" My heart sank. "Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction: The Politics of Contemporary Literary Criticism" It hit the floor. "Can you DJ?" "What, you think I'd let a roomful of postmodernists anywhere near my 12 grand Nakamichi?! Yeah, I'll be here." "Cool. All the ubiquitous people'll be there." "Oh joyous day." The ubiquitous people were what I affectionately called all those people on campus that we seemed to see everywhere. I suppose, to be fair, that I was one of them, simply because I was no longer a student but still hung around campus a lot. But I didn't wear nearly as much black as a true ubiquitous person, nor was my skin quite that pale. FRIDAY NIGHT--PARTY PREPARATIONS I was going through my records, putting away the Naughty By Nature and dusting off some old Scritti Politti and Pop Will Eat Itself. As I did this I chewed on some Dramamine, trying to fight down the nausea that was already starting to rise. The first to arrive were about five pasty-boy ubiquitous- person wannabes. My brother called them the marginal guys because they showed up in all his classes but never said anything, just looked around a lot. Some women had arrived, including one fine arts student who I called my Buchenwald baby because of her severely short haircut, hollowed-out cheeks, suspicious eyes, and black cape(?!). She was in a corner, dancing to some private beat while Pop Will Eat Itself spouted banalities: ". . .Alan Moore knows the score . . .Alan Moore knows the score." The pasty-boys were standing against a wall, all taking notes. I asked my brother about this. "Oh, they're deconstructing the party. It's the latest thing." I wiped the vomit from my lips and said, "No. Just no." "Honestly. They are. Sure, you can talk about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and how the presence of the observer changes the observed phenomena all you like, but it's undeniably fun. Besides, who's gonna dance with those guys?" When he's got a point, he's got a point. My gaze returned to my Dachau darling, who was doing that strange ubiquitous-person dance, all severe angles with lots of odd elbow and knee movements and strange, disturbing glances. I really hated it. I looked over at my Naughty By Nature album and started to weep. "Play Scritti Politti. Play Jacques Derrida!" I was besieged with insipid requests. And I was getting bored. But I had an idea. I queued up that old Chakha Khan song "I Feel For You" on the turntable and plugged in my microphone. My brother saw me and hurried his way over. "Rich," he pleaded. "You can't rap here. You just can't." "Relax. I've got a plan." I started the record and started singing over it. "Jacques Lacan. . .Jacques Lacan. . .I wanna hug you wanna love you wanna squeeze you too. Do you feel for me the way I feel for you? Jacques Lacan, Jacques Lacan. I fee-eel for you, and I think I love you. . ." It worked. After that, the party rocked. Now I'm swamped with requests to DJ ubiquitous-people parties. Only problem is, none of my clothes are black.