Someone asked me if I would tell this…story. A long time ago… It’s a wierd story. 'Twas out in Los Angeles and I was at a party with a very big Hollywood producer, and at that time he wanted to make an elaborate cinemascope musical comedy out of the Dewey Decimal System. And they wanted me to work on it, and I go out to the producers building in downtown Los Angeles,and I walk into his elevator, and there are no people in the elevator, no buttons on the wall or anything. And I hear a voice say “Kindly call out your floors, please.” And I look around, and I’m alone. And I panic, and I read on the wall, that is a new elevator and it works on a sonic principle and it all sound. All I have to do is say what floor I wanna got to, and it takes me there. So I say “Three, please”, and the doors close and the elevator starts going up to three. And on the way up I began to feel very selfconscious, 'cause I talk, I think, with a slight New York accent, and the elevator spoke quite well. I get out of it, and I’m walking down the hall, and I look back, and I thought I heard the elevator make a remark. I turned quickly and the doors closed and the elevator goes down, y’know, and I…didn’t wanna get involved at the time with an…elevator in Hollywood, but - this is the strange part of the story, the other was the normal part - I have never in my life had good relationships with mechanical objects of any sort. Anything that I can’t reason with or kiss or fondle, I get into trouble with. I have a clock that runs counter-clockwise for some reason. My toaster pops up my toast and shakes it, burns it. I hate my shower. I’m taking a shower, and somebody in America uses his water. That’s it for me, y’know, I leap from the tub scolded. I have a tape recorder, I payed a hundred and fifty dollars for, and as I talk into it, it goes “I know, I know.”
About three years ago I couldn’t stand it anymore. I was home one night. I called a meeting with my posessions. I got everything I owned into the living room. My toaster, my clock, my blender. They never been in the living room before. And I spoke to them. I opened with a joke. And then I said “I know what’s going on, and cut it out!” I have a sun lamp, but as I sit under it, it rains on me. And I spoke to each appliance, I was really articulate. Then I put them back, and I felt good. Two nights later I’m watching my portable television set, and the set begins to jump up and down, and I go up to it. And I always talk before I hit, and I said “I thought we had discussed this, what’s the problem?” And the set kept going up and down, so I hit it, and it felt good hitting it, and I beat the hell out of it. I was really great, I tore off the antenna, and I felt very virile. And two days later I go to my dentist in New York. I had gone to my dentist, but I had a deep cavity, and he’d sent me to a chiropodist. I’m going into a building in mid-town New York, and they have those elevators, and I hear a voice say “Kindly call out your floors, please”, and I say “sixteen” and the doors close and the elevator starts going up to sixteen. And on the way up the ellevator says to me “Are you the guy that hit the televison set?” I felt like an ass, y’know, and it took me up and down fast between floors, and it threw me off in the basement. It yelled out something that was anti-semetic.
