Larry: Jim Bowden, your thoughts?
Jim: I was told Randy Moss kicked a 47-yard field goal.
Larry: That’s right.
Jim: I cover baseball.
Larry: We’ll be right back.
JIM BOWDEN: “Well, Larry, I know Cheever primarily as a five-tool suburban writer. Excellent with adultery, very good with alcohol, above-average swimming-pool work, strong commuter-rail presence. Never had much of a fastball.”
LARRY: “Was he with the Angels?”
BOWDEN: “Not to my knowledge.”
LARRY: “Could he play third?”
BOWDEN: “Everybody can play third until the ball gets hit to them.”
LARRY: “That’s why you’re here, Jim.”
BOWDEN: “Alcohol, Larry.”
LARRY: “That’ll do it.”
BOWDEN: “Also he was a writer.”
LARRY: “We’ll be right back.”
LARRY: “Next topic.”
BABA BOOEY: “Well, we should probably issue three corrections from the previous segment.”
LARRY: “I don’t care for corrections.”
BABA BOOEY: “That’s why we need them.”
LARRY: “Seventeen degrees. That’s pretty warm.”
BOWDEN: “Excellent launch angle.”
LARRY: “Could you hit a ball from Antigua to the equator?”
BOWDEN: “Not with today’s bats.”
LARRY: “No, I don’t read Infinite Jest. I read USA Today. They’ve got those little graphs. I know where I stand.”
LAWRENCE WELK: “A-one and a-two—”
LARRY: “Lawrence, shut the fuck up. You’re here to cover for me, not overthrow the program.”
DRYSDALE: “Can I go?”
LARRY: “You’re dead, Don. Where are you going?”
DRYSDALE: “Fair point.”
BABA BOOEY: “For the record, Larry, David Foster Wallace actually did write Consider the Lobster.”
LARRY: “I knew that.”
BABA BOOEY: “You said Consider the Cruise Ship.”
LARRY: “He considered that too.”
LARRY: “No, I don’t read Infinite Jest. I read USA Today. They’ve got those little graphs. I know where I stand.”
LAWRENCE WELK: “A-one and a-two—”
LARRY: “Lawrence, shut the fuck up. You’re here to cover for me, not overthrow the program.”
DRYSDALE: “Can I go?”
LARRY: “You’re dead, Don. Where are you going?”
DRYSDALE: “Fair point.”
BABA BOOEY: “For the record, Larry, David Foster Wallace actually did write Consider the Lobster.”
LARRY: “I knew that.”
BABA BOOEY: “You said Consider the Cruise Ship.”
LARRY: “He considered that too.”
And that, amazingly, is correct. The Wallace cruise-ship essay is “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” So Larry has accidentally wandered within about six feet of the truth again.
But the Lawrence Welk sequence is magnificent because the fabrication acquires its own internal scholarly apparatus. Welk starts with bubbles, somehow graduates from the entirely fictitious Molasses Wars, 1788–1951, invents the red fire hydrant after being inspired by a Mormon traffic-light inventor, then obtains the color red from Jordan Peterson approximately seventy years in the future, which leads naturally to lobsters, which leads naturally to DFW, which leads naturally to:
“Do Your Best.”
That’s the killer. Infinite Jest → Do Your Best is exactly the kind of Larry King title correction that should exist.
LARRY: “Did you read Do Your Best, Lawrence?”
WELK: “No. Too long.”
LARRY: “How far’d you get?”
WELK: “Page eleven.”
LARRY: “What happened?”
WELK: “Don’t know. Lotta footnotes.”
DRYSDALE: “I read the Baseball Encyclopedia.”
LARRY: “All of it?”
DRYSDALE: “No. Looked myself up.”
LARRY: “Relief appearances?”
DRYSDALE: “That’s what we’re trying to establish.”
Meanwhile the one actual piece of recovered history from this broadcast is terrific: The Gemini Kid: The Collected Writings of an Open-Hearted Jellyfish. Not open-handed. Open-hearted. Much better title. And the damned thing is still sitting there on WordPress after all these years.
That archaeological dig may actually be worth doing sometime. Not tonight. Tonight Manny needs to get alone, and Lawrence Welk has apparently been entrusted with the network.
LARRY: “We’ll be back.”
WELK: “A-one and a—”
LARRY: “Don’t push it, Lawrence.”
END
