Althouse: "Lobsters? This is how I wind up after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?"

April 4, 2009

"Lobsters? This is how I wind up after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?"

"The Lord works in strange ways... Take Phil Pinchuck. The man keeled over with an aneurysm, he’s now a hamster. All day, running at the stupid wheel. For years he was a Yale professor. My point is he’s gotten to like the wheel. He pedals and pedals, running nowhere, but he smiles."

22 comments:

David said...: In a larger sense, aren't we all hampsters?; 4/4/09, 9:48 AM
Automatic_Wing said...: Lobsters can be dangerous when cornered.; 4/4/09, 10:04 AM
ricpic said...: I see Woody Allen is still fobbing off painfully unfunny shtick as funny by attaching Jewish names to it.; 4/4/09, 10:13 AM
John Burgess said...: So... have lobsters become Kosher or are New York Jews nonobservant?; 4/4/09, 10:19 AM
traditionalguy said...: The American dream was always that a man could eat the fruit of his own (private property) labor and worship freely a God that he trusted to sustain him. The Government was to protect the Property from thieves here and in London (and the other areas of Europe that were once Rome), and establish a common defense by a military that was only a Guardian, in the tradition set by Generals Washington and Jackson. Since 2004 we have watched silently while our lives have been set-up for surrender to a World Mob stealing America back by using Socialist promises while actually arranging confiscatory taxes on us, the destruction of our currency by inflation, and a UN/Government Control of all energy use, and air use on what is clearly a fraudulent pretense that CO2 was ever a threat to anyone. We better get back to a guardian type of leadership that is untouchable by this Mob Leadership running wild today, before it becomes too late to defend ourselves.; 4/4/09, 10:28 AM
Peter V. Bella said...: traditionalguy
And how does your comment relate to reincarnation and lobsters?; 4/4/09, 10:41 AM
Unknown said...: Yeah I'm stumped, Peter.

Unlike ricpic I thought the piece was worth a few chuckles.; 4/4/09, 10:48 AM
Anonymous said...: I thought another headline was funnier, the one about how our NATO allies support the new strategy in Afghanistan 100%, which is: the US is sending more fighting troops and our allies are sending...security guards!; 4/4/09, 10:57 AM
BJM said...: David, yes we are and we best get used to turning the tax wheel as fast as we can if this forecast is accurate.; 4/4/09, 11:13 AM
Paddy O said...: "It was his cruel fate to be delicious."

Come on, that's funny. I don't even like Woody Allen, but that's good stuff. Maybe because I know the feeling.

Not a hamster running on a wheel, mind you, but here's a hamster trying to run out of a wok.; 4/4/09, 11:22 AM
Ernesto Ariel Suárez said...: Abe died AGAIN??; 4/4/09, 11:31 AM
I'm A Feline said...: from This Living Hand by Dean Young

It's not only the word roses
lurking inside neurosis or the fact
that most of my formal education
occurred in the midwest, so too
my summer job inhaling industrial
reactants should be considered.
It's an unstable world, babe.
Always an inner avalanche
as they say in receiving.
I'm sure if I'd gotten a shot
of Karl instead of Zeppo Marx
in utero, things would have turned out
differently. Instead, my mother
went right on eating lobster.
But where were we? . . .; 4/4/09, 11:39 AM
ricpic said...: While we retreat to our warm beds on chilly gray April days
The buds are budding and the green is advancing, come what May.; 4/4/09, 1:06 PM
Jeremy said...: Whether you like Woody or not, this was one of the funniest pieces he's ever written.

My favorite comment was having to wait in line to jump off a building.

His last few films have also been very good.; 4/4/09, 3:00 PM
Ernesto Ariel Suárez said...: Jeremy said...
[...]

My favorite comment was having to wait in line to jump off a building.

[...]

3:00 PM

Do you have your number in that line yet? Should we reserve you a place?; 4/4/09, 3:20 PM
traditionalguy said...: Peter Bella... I can't remember how it relates to reincarnation as a Lobster, after playing 18 holes of golf. I suspect that the Lobsters attacking Madoff triggered some thoughts that we at least try to defend property rights before we all become dinner for the Fairy Tale artists in and out of the Washington DC/News media axis.; 4/4/09, 6:12 PM
Ron said...: Fav Woody joke:

"You see this watch? On his deathbed, my grandfather sold me this watch!"; 4/4/09, 6:20 PM
Anonymous said...: I've lost interest in Woody Allen, as an artist and a man.

Sad.; 4/4/09, 8:14 PM
Revenant said...: No matter what his failings may be, Woody Allen knows how to make me laugh. :); 4/4/09, 11:27 PM
rhhardin said...: Hiding lobster at Kroger supermarket.; 4/5/09, 1:39 PM
Tibore said...: Pfff... what's Abe bitchin' about? He could've come back as a flea, and then where would he be? At least he's valued by the denizens of the city he used to inhabit, at 20+ bucks a pound. :D

Besides, didn't he do this to himself??

"(What a person comes back as) depends on the karmic potentialities (or "seeds") they have created with their actions and upon their state of mind at the time of death. If we die with a peaceful mind, this will stimulate a virtuous seed and we shall experience a fortunate rebirth; but if we die with a disturbed mind, in a state of anger, say, this will stimulate a non-virtuous seed and we shall experience an unfortunate rebirth."

Source: Wikipedia on reincarnation

I mean, Abe must'a done something to end up as dinner, right? So, what could he have done? Piss off a grouper (they eat lobsters)? Annoy a Maine lobsterman? Have nightmares of being on a platter at Locke-Ober (yeah, I know that's not in New York; gimme a break, I can't think of any iconing seafood restaurants outside of that one)?

;); 4/6/09, 9:31 AM
Old RPM Daddy said...: My favorite Woody bits:

- Hard boiled private dick Kaiser Lupowitz breaking up an intellectual call-girl ring (you'd meet the girl at the Plaza, see, and she'd talk Melville or Milton with you for an hour).

- The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.; 4/6/09, 11:06 AM