The Slanch Report

You can call me a dork, but this piece from McSweeney’s makes me very happy. Titled “Recovered Scenes from the Tragedy Plaxico by William Shakespeare” it is both hilarious and smart, just like me! If you don’t read this, then you’re just an asshole.

I particularly like the Eli Manning soliloquy:

Act III, scene iv.

The Meadowlands, locker room.

Enter ELI MANNING.

Eli
O Miasma, rank with sweat unlaunder’d!
Effluvium most foul, I have thee ponder’d.
All my vict’ries—aye, today’s included—
Are, with odors stale, at last concluded.
Always thus: to men of great conceiving
Parasitic stench is ever cleaving.
Could Alexander, in his conquest wide,
Lack e’er the scent of flesh’s crimson tide?
Or awesome Khan, unmatch’d in worldly earning,
Escape the fetid balm of Asia burning?
And so, unslak’d, each triumph of ambition
Is companied by fragrance of perdition.
Verily, this soul is parch’d with wanting—
Plaxico, thy glory is my haunting!
I have a brother’s shadow overstepp’d,
And from repute to fool so stead’ly crept.
The barber has with insult grown absurd,
And obsolete the writer’s scornful word.
But, though I’m toasted past what thirst could bear,
The spirits are a swill I cannot share.
Alas, that nature is so firm affix’d,
And not with wisdom’s fairer visage mix’d!
But by the very devil am I urg’d
To fast assure that Plaxico is purg’d;
And, being to my cause so tightly bound,
I hereby cease to plead the wav’ring sound.
Forsooth, this loaded gun shall serve as arm
By which his head is lock’d in crux of harm.
I wrap it now in semblance of a gift
And set it in our locker room adrift,
Where’pon it be discover’d and display’d
And as a nameless gift to him convey’d.
And bless us, Fortune: dimly Plaxico
Shall bear the arm unwittingly, and so,
In time unholy, wholly walk red-handed,
Likewise caught, and as a sinner branded.
Tolerance would not be further carried—
A vain receiver’s legend thus is buried!

And, should this hatchèd plot take wing and fly,
I am the apple o’ the Apple’s eye.