The Whiteboard Chronicles: Dead & Gone

Once you've shuttled off this mortal coil, in what way would you like your name to live on? I always thought I'd be honored to have a library named after me - -what better way to immortalize a name with silent "T" than by affixing it to a place where you're supposed to be silent?

I recently put this version of the question up on the office whiteboard: "When I'm dead and gone, I'd love to have ________ named after me." The results -- all of them hilarious -- can be seen above.

Among my favorites are "a Photoshop filler," and "a form of revenge," and "the embarrassing way I died."

A Remembrance of Pranks Past

I don't "do" April Fools' Day pranks any more -- for a variety of reasons -- one of them being that, as Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller fame) told me during an April 1st visit to his prison-themed home on the outskirts of Las Vegas for a 2004 Los Angeles Times story: "It's for amateurs."

But I recently ran across a guest column I had penned for my hometown newspaper (I'm not sure of the exact year, but my best guess is 1993), and thought it would be a good way to fondly look back at my pranking past. And don't worry about the tiny type -- you can click on it to make it larger.)

Some things never change, and I fully expect at least one family member back east to try something.

Only this time it won't be on the phone -- it'll be a Facebook post.

- Adam

"Practically foolproof," was originally published in the Bennington Banner, April 1, 1993.

Food for Thought: What Will They Eat at Your Funeral?

Tom Junod wrote a thought-provoking article in the March 2011 issue of Esquire magazine titled "The Last Supper: A Few Thoughts on What They'll Eat When You Die." Thought-provoking to me, anyway, as a lover of food.

I didn't find an on-line version of the piece to link to (it's worth the cover piece for this article alone, though) but in the article he riffs on the notion of Funeral Food (and yes, I concur that it deserves initial caps) about which he says: "Indeed there is an inevitability about Funeral Food that completes the inevitability of the funeral itself. You can't get away from it, any more than you can get away with it, and if you do, you end up displaced -- deracinated -- at the very moment you are said to have 'come home.'"

First, mad props to TJ for the use of "deracinated," second, it got me wondering what people might be serving up -- and scarfing down -- after I've shuffled off this mortal coil. I don't think of it as macabre, but strangely comforting, to think not of the foodstuffs that define you (that's easy: jambalaya and cheeseburgers come to mind) but that are the reflexive comfort food of your tribe upon your passing.

Whatever it turns out to be, part of me hopes it ends up tasting just a bit funny.

-- Adam

Photo: Pineapple upside-down "cakelets." Credit: Adam Tschorn, 2010