Jonathan Richman "There's Something About Mary"

This Week: Excerpts From That Novel I'm Never Going To Write.

I don't think I mentioned in my first post, that this story was intended to a comedy. Or at least to make you laugh a bit.

This next segment was one of the first profile/asides where I really did some research and tried to write some funny lines around it.

And at the time (1996 or so) I was pretty pleased with my "YKK" line.

Unfortunately, two years later "There's Something About Mary" came out, with a much funnier zipper joke. And I realized that anybody who read my zipper reference would think I was calling back to Ben Stiller's painful moment.

I made a note to myself to come back and somehow rewrite that section.

Never got around to it.

So here is my exploration of that everyday object and its complex life and etiology, The Button, zipper line in tact.


I think about the Amish sometimes.

Not so much about the hats. Or the barn-raisings. Or “Witness.” Or Kelly McGillis when her hair springs loose from the constraints of that dowdy kerchief and softly falls along the nape of her neck and her innocent--but no less ferocious--dormant sexuality becomes a warm rush that seeps to her core and radiates outward ten-fold.

That's not really what I think about when I think about the Amish.

Buttons.

Buttons is the answer. When the question is "What do I think about when I think about the Amish?" the answer is buttons.

The Amish consider zippers to be the tool of the devil. Those of you snickering have obviously never caught your wee-wee in a metal YKK. Yowch.

When I think about the Amish I think about the beauty of simplicity. I think about the Amish man, blinking awake with morning's first light, propping himself up on one elbow, shaking off his slow dreams of floating and spinning above sunny yellow fields. He rises, grounding himself in thoughts of the tasks of the day ahead. A simple, honest, ritualistic existence restarts anew with the fastening of the wooden buttons on his shirt.

From the buttoned-down executive to the button-fly fly-guys, buttons clasp together the fabric of our cotton/poly-blended lives, our cotton/poly-blended history. When blackouts during World War II threatened American nocturnal movement, what was the fashion industry's response? Buttons, chemically impregnated to glow in the dark. What put the town of Waterbury, Connecticut on the map? Buttons. It was in Waterbury that a small factory produced buttons for the Army and Navy when imported button supplies grew short during the War Of 1812. What made Shirley Temple so cute? Her Button nose--cute as a button that tyke. Who held the unprecedented feat of holding five major world figure skating titles (Olympic, world, North American, United States and European) all at the same time? The answer is Buttons. Dick Buttons. So? So, you say? You say, So? I say, Sew Buttons on your underwear. And button your lip.

And while you're there quietly thinking, answer me this--What do sitcom writers call the snappy crack that ends the scene with a big laugh?

Answer: The Button.