FROM `THE PESTO OF CITIES’: You’re probably either anxiously awaiting tonight’s final episode of Seinfeld, or you’re bored to tears by all the press the show’s gotten and you’re glad it’ll all be done soon. Both camps might be interested in the Seinfeld create-a-plot guides on the Internet. Fill in the blanks and you’ve got your own wacky li’l Mad Libs-esque story, little more implausible than those the show’s actually used. I’ve used some of the categories on that list, and made up some of my own, to organize my own riff on the show’s familiar formulae:
Discussion/argument about a topic of profound unimportance: If Carly Simon wrote about somebody and wanted to get at him by saying “You probably think this song is about you,” but it really was about him, what’s the deal here?
Slightly unsightly sight gag: Sticking quarters onto your forehead.
Sexual euphemism: A soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend is derided behind his back for spending too much time “mountaineering” and not enough time “spelunking.”
Kiddie snack-food product, still remembered and/or consumed by the lead characters: Fizzies–the tablets that, when dropped in water, are supposed to create instant soda pop but actually create a vaguely cherry-flavored, non-medicinal version of Alka-Seltzer.
Celebrity name-drop: Charlene Tilton.
Humorous situation in which this celebrity appears: Fighting with one of the lead characters over an object of pathetic obsession.
Object of pathetic obsession: A M@xRack movie-ad postcard with Gwyneth Paltrow’s name misspelled, and hence potentially collectible.
Urban-etiquette peeve: People who make too many consecutive transactions at an ATM while others are in line.
Proposed solution to this peeve: Start a petition drive outside bank branches, demanding banks to set a two-transactions-at-a-time limit at ATMs during peak hours, punishable by “eating” the violator’s ATM card.
Ethnic guest character: An Italian-American mother who works at the clothing-catalog company.
Ethnic-slur aspect of that character: Demands accordion music at her daughter’s wedding reception.
Reason to start dating someone: She appreciates really good Dr Pepper, and makes special buying trips to New Mexico where the local bottler makes an especially strong version. She even knows to never spell Dr Pepper with a period, and publicly corrects anyone who tries.
Reason to stop dating someone: Goes into a hissy-fit at any restaurant (or wedding reception) that even deigns to offer Mr. Pibb as a substitute for Dr Pepper, and in fact screams to the whole world that she would rather drink cherry-flavor Fizzies.
`Wacky’ money-making scheme: The last known cache of big-E Levi’s jeans not yet sold to Japan; a cache discovered at the rural New Mexico general store that also has the world’s best Dr Pepper.
Why this money-making scheme’s doomed: Nobody bothers to figure out that, with the Asian recession, the bottom’s fallen out of the Japanese big-E Levi’s mania.
How the characters learn this lesson too late: At the wedding reception, the clothing-catalog owner is overheard casually mentioning this during a discussion about a new unusual garment concept.
Uunusual garment concept: Garanimals for grownup men.
Potential benefit of this new garment concept: You’d never look like an ill-dressed, color-conceptless dork in public.
Potential liability: If you’re a single man and you don’t look like a color-conceptless dork, women will presume you’re either gay or married.
Potential benefit from that potential liability: Attracting a woman who’s specifically after married men, because she’s turned on by the transgressiveness.
Potential liability from that potential asset: You’re now living an elaborate lie in order to keep this woman from leaving you, which she undoubtedly will do if she finds out you’re not really married.
Non-sequitur catch phrase: “Do I even look like your caseworker?”
Now go make up your own answers to these categories, or categories like them; then stick them into a standard four-subplot Seinfeld story arc. The result will probably be funnier than whatever’s gonna be on tonight’s finale. Submit your entries to clark@speakeasy.org. The best entries will be posted online, for all to share in the being and nothingness.
