Is She Sick?

by

01/24/2001

513 West 54th St., new york, NY 10019

Neighborhood: Midtown

I wanted to be a writer for The Jon Stewart Show and figured that sending them a resume would be like sending junk mail; it would get tossed. I needed to do something with impact.

So I did the logical thing. I bought a pair of white jockey shorts (size large, so there would be ample space for me to do my work) and I created some iron-ons.

I brought the iron-ons and the jockey shorts to my local dry cleaner and asked the owner if he could steam them on. When he was done, here’s what I had. On the front of the jockey shorts, in big black letters it said:

SOME WRITERS WILL GO TO GREAT LENGTHS TO WORK FOR THE JON STEWART SHOW

Below that–on the crotch–was a photo of Jon sitting on a stool. (I had gotten a color slide of him from his publicity people, and it was the perfect shape.)

The coup de resistance was on the back of the jockey shorts. There, ironed neatly onto the underwear, was my resume, which I had sillified for the occasion.

On the day that I went to the Jon Stewart Show, as the workers were showing us fans to our seats, I asked if I could hold up the jockey shorts when the cameras panned on the audience. They said they would check. They walked away with my precious cargo, then came back saying: “No, because white doesn’t show up well on camera.”

I started to be disappointed.

“But you can hand the jockey shorts to Jon just before the taping,” they added.

As soon as Jon came out, he said, “I understand someone brought something for me?”

That was the cue for a worker to bring Jon over to where I was sitting. Unfortunately, some huge piece of waist-level metal equipment created a two-foot gap between us, but there were Jon’s gorgeous blue television eyes, looking right into mine!

I handed him the jockey shorts.

“What’s this? You brought me underwear?” he said. “Oh, I must have forgotten them at your place the other night.”

“Look at the back!” I said.

He turned them over to reveal my resume.

“You put your resume on the ass? Are you sick?” he said. Then he turned to the audience: “Is she sick?”

He tossed the jockey shorts to a worker, and backed up to begin the show.

At some point during our brief interaction, I had mentioned having some ideas for using the underwear in a sketch. I said I’d e-mail them to the show.

My sketch idea was that Jon, accompanied by a camera crew, should go to the store where I bought the jockey shorts–I had purposely left the price tag on them for this reason–and ask to exchange them for another size. Of course, the store would say they didn’t have any others like these. They would say they had never carried these to begin with. Jon could then protest that they obviously came from that store, and that the price tag was proof.

Another sketch idea I proposed in my e-mails was that Jon could offer to donate DNA to TV newscaster Connie Chung. At that time, Connie was trying to conceive, to no avail. Jon looks like he could be the son of Maury Povitch, Connie’s husband, and Maury’s own TV show was taped in the very same building as Jon’s show. So Maury could have visited the set, even. It would have been much better than Dave Letterman’s years-long stalking of the happily-married Connie.

Since I was addicted to Jon’s show, I knew of a half-hour sketch show that aired right before it here in New York. It was called The Newz. I wrote eleven sketches with their actors in mind, and mailed them out.

Unfortunately, The Newz was canceled immediately. I scouted around for an agent to help me sell my sketches and was told there wasn’t a big enough market for them right now, and that I should instead write two episodes for an existing sitcom in hopes of getting work on another one.

So I wrote a Seinfeld episode and was all set to send it to an agent when I discovered it was too short.

Instead of taking the easier route of doubling the length of the script, I decided to videotape it. I found talented local actors who–the help of my hair and make-up person–seemed very much like the real Seinfeld gang. In fact, one day while taking a lunch break in Katz’s deli, my Jerry, Kramer, Elaine and George were approached by Midwestern tourist girls who thought they were the real deal.

It’s been a long labor, and my video is now in post-production.

When it’s done, I’m going to throw a big party and invite everyone, even Jon Stewart. But I’ll only let him in if he’s wearing the underwear with my resume on the rear.

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