Make Gibbons Laugh #28

When I was 16, instead of doing alcohol or smoking drugs, I spent most of my free time watching reruns of Family Guy, memorizing Dwight Schrute dialogue, and studying box scores in The Boston Globe. I was very cool and had to shoo away all the women at all the dances that I did not attend. I had Napoleon Dynamite’s energy with Jonah Hill in Moneyball’s interests (I also kept stats for the basketball team, which attracts a ~certain~ type of dweeb.)

In the spring of 2007, I was especially tuned into the Celtics, who were stumbling and bumbling through their worst season ever (the same year Red Auerbach died, which felt like its own kind of sign), poised to draft one of the two sure-thing, future franchise players: Kevin Durant and Greg Oden. Either, separately, would have been the most deservedly-talked-about college freshman since...Chris Webber? Jason Kidd? Magic Johnson? That they were freshmen the same year? People were BUZZING. Celtics fans were BUZZING. And rooting for the Celtics to tank. 

A few days before the draft lottery, sitting in a French class that lacked the Je Ne Sais Quois one might hope, I started doodling. And by doodling, I mean writing the names “Kevin Durant” and “Greg Oden,” over and over again, into my notebook, under “2007 Celtics Roster,” trying to will one of these young stars onto my notebook onto Causeway Street. I kept writing both names down. I looked at both names. I looked at “Kevin Durant.” I looked at “Greg Oden.” The word “green” LEAPT at me. Then the word “god” presented itself. 

I stopped writing, asked to go to the bathroom, instead scurried to the computer lab, and did what any nut-job fan would do: I emailed the featured Celtics columnist for The Boston Globe, Peter May, who emailed me right back. I remember he said something like, “huh. That’s a hoot. Can we use this on Sunday next to a piece we’re doing on Oden?” I said sure but asked if I could remain anonymous, thinking what I’d uncovered was as vital and urgent and bigger-than-myself as any Spotlight Investigation and warranted anonymity. (It’s so absurd to write that sentence now, but that was the state of my 16-year-old delusion.)

Two days later, it was in the Sunday Globe. This is the only remnant I could find online:

On Monday, I walked into our basketball coach’s classroom (I think I’d calculated something neurotic like our efficiency per possession in different offensive sets and wanted to share.). The assistant coach, Mr. Murphy, was there, too. I heard him before I saw him. 

“GREEEEEEN GOOOOOOD. That was you, wasn’t it, Gi-BONES?”

I hadn’t told anyone at school. He knew without knowing: the unnamed, word-scramble degenerate in the paper had to be the same degenerate as the one at the end of the bench, who’d scramble opposing players’ names then annoyingly report back during timeouts (“There’s a leftover F, Mr. Murphy, but you can’t spell REMY COFIELD, McDonald's All-American nominee, without MEDIOCRELY.”) 

For two years, Mr. Murphy almost exclusively called me GREEN GOD, which was as flattering as it was bizarre as it was amusing. I got “Green God” from teachers and “Gibboner” from classmates. 

I was reminded of all this recently while watching Arrested Development, of all things.

Tobias, in Season 4, gets a new license plate to commemorate and usher in a new era: ANUSTART. A New (or Nu) Start, he tells everyone. Anus Tart, they tell him. 

Tobias storms into Lucille's apartment to complain about something or other. Lucille doesn't flinch: 

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/08a64f2b-8144-4c2f-9676-03626d610537

“Hello, anus tart.”

Then Ron Howard, the omniscient narrator, lets us, the viewer, in on Lucille’s, uh, extent of knowing: 

“And she never even saw the license plate.” 

To me, that’s a perfect joke. (“To me, you are perfect,” reads the cloying sign in Love Actually.). 

People who called me GREEN GOD had seen the dumb write-up in The Globe just as pedestrians had seen Tobias’ new license plate. Lucille referred  to Tobias as “Anus Tart” without seeing the license plate. Mr. Murphy had seen the license plate and assumed I was the driver. 

It was the first time I’d watched the ANUSTART sequence in almost a decade. I laughed at Lucille’s assholery. I laughed at Ron Howard’s stoic voice of reason. I laughed, unexpectedly remembering GREEN GOD— not because those two words, alone, are funny but because the whole situation, now, almost 15 years later, is very funny: how earnest and superstitious I was, connecting GREEN to LOCAL PROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAM THAT ALSO WEARS THAT COLOR and GOD to 7 FOOT 19-YEAR-OLD HAKEEM OLAJUWON, how I needed to carry out this covert mission right before the draft lottery because time was of the essence, my own delirious Nic Cage National Treasure, reading the tea leaves of potential (Celtics’) four-leaf clovers, how, naturally, I needed to involve the Celtics’ columnist, how he very graciously indulged it all. It really cracks me up now. In the words of Ethan Hawke, “it’s gotta keep you up at night, and you gotta be able to laugh at it. Both.”

And then, of course, the ping-pong balls did NOT bounce the Celtics’ way. They got the fifth pick. And the Green God, Greg Oden, instead wore red and black in Portland and was out of the league after three seasons.

P.S. While we’re on the topic of NBA Prospect Wordplay: a few years ago, when Lonzo Ball was at UCLA, and his abrasive dad was hyping up Lonzo and his other two sons, LaMelo and LiAngelo, I said, out loud, to myself and only myself, “I can’t wait for two Ball brothers to make the NBA, so a real headline could be something like, HUGE NIGHT FOR BOTH BALLS.” This was a real thing that crossed my mind, sometime around March 2017. And then, moments later, I remember thinking, “actually, wouldn’t it be funnier if the headline were: HUGE NIGHT FOR ALL THREE BALLS?” So, for the sake of comedy, LiAngelo, we’re rooting for you, bud. 

P.P.S. Devon has the cleanest prose and the biggest heart. I had the privilege and joy of reading these stories a couple years ago, and the whole collection is, among many things, so tender and loving, admirably understated and restrained, remarkably witty and wise. Mako Yoshikawa put it best, in her blurb: “this collection will break your heart and put it back together again.” Buy their book! It’s a great holiday gift: https://www.splitlippress.com/my-share-of-the-body

Because here at Make Gibbons Laugh, the books we recommend—much like United’s unintentionally hilarious, pretentious-sounding seat-pocket instructions—are “literature only,” folks. 

(I’m picturing a condescending flight-attendant, scanning all the rows before take-off. “Sorry, sir. I’m afraid your book there doesn’t meet our Literature Standards. Unfortunately, we have to remove you from the airfact now.”)