Two stupid human tricks I tried to learn

1.
Once I saw Telly Savalas guesting on some non-Kojak show. He did this bit where he could shake a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket, and then toss it from there into his mouth. Oh, wow. This was brute force cool. He did it in the middle of a conversation and while smiling, too. I’ve long believed that no one possesses more natural coolness than Isaac Hayes, but Telly was closing fast with this bit.

So I tried to do it for an hour or so when I should have been studying for a Russian midterm. It was a hell of a lot harder than he made it look. Eventually I could hit it about every fifth or sixth time; the rest of the time I was just bobbing my head, absurdly snapping my lips shut on air as the cigarette hit the floor. And I couldn’t deploy this trick until I was batting .990 or so; after all, success meant 10 cool points, but failure meant -50 cool points. I had to be pretty damned sure before I could try it with the fairer sex present. I never was, so I never did.

2.
I saw a guy on Johnny Carson once who could hum the melody from “Stars and Stripes Forever” and whistle the piccolo solo simultaneously. It was nifty. I can hum and whistle at the same time, and I can hum one note and whistle another. But I have trouble separating them enough mentally to go in two different directions at the same time, particularly when one is as complex as that solo. I still try this one sometimes.

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6 thoughts on “Two stupid human tricks I tried to learn”

  1. I can pull my left shoulder out of joint and snap it back into place. Hurts like a sumbitch (I know you’re shocked).

    I can down a 12 oz glass of beer in 6 seconds flat.

    I can break my voice into two distinct tones at once, though I have no control over the pitch of either when I do it.

    I can break down and reassemble an M-16 blindfolded in under a minute. Ok, I made that one up.

    Reply

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