Laugh Yourself Silly With the New York Times Magazine’s “Funny Pages”

“You shot the four guys who drove their car into the roadhouse that time, all of them coming out armed and standing fairly close. One of ’em, Nestor Lott, the ex-federal agent gone bad, packed two .45’s cinched to his legs. Nestor pulled on you and you shot him and turned and shot the other three.” Gary paused.
Carl said: “This friend of Peyton’s, Venicia Munson, was an old-maid schoolteacher who drank Peyton’s wildcat whiskey and didn’t care who knew it. We’re sitting in her kitchen waiting for Peyton to show, she told me she was scared to death. I said, ‘Well, that’ll teach you to get mixed up with a bank robber.’ She said: ‘You’re the one scares me, not Peyton. I can tell you’d rather shoot him than bring him in.’ She said it was why I became a marshal, to get to carry a gun and shoot people.”

As soon as my father showed up, we started singing “Happy Birthday” in English. It would have been more natural for us to sing in Persian, but if you are part of a large Middle Eastern contingency these days, you’re already scaring people. Add to that a loud song with guttural sounds and clapping, and you have passengers speed-dialing the Department of Homeland Security.