seinfelt

[seinfelt]

The Gamesman

Due to a miscommunication, Jerry gets booked to play a couple nights at a goth jazz club. After his first set completely bombs—so disastrously that not a single person laughs even once and many even boo him and shout "this isn't music!"—he finds himself so distraught and depressed that all he can talk about is how "the Woe Clef killed comedy!"

Kramer finds an old Nintendo Entertainment System in a trash can on his way home from riding the escalators at Macy's. Jammed inside of it is a Tetris game cartridge, which he is unable to dislodge despite his best efforts with a butter knife he'd been carrying around in his back pocket. Back at his apartment he hooks it up and turns it on and discovers he can't stop playing. Ignoring the occasional ringing phone and knock at the door, he stays glued to the screen, amassing a higher and higher score.

George keeps misusing the phrase "it takes two to tango", to the increasing agitation of everyone around him. Jerry rants to him about his humiliating experience at the Woe Clef, and how they canceled his second performance. "The Woe Clef doesn't even know what comedy is!" he wails. George nods sagely and tells him, "you know, it takes two to tango."

Desperate for someone other than George to talk to about his grievance, Jerry finally forces his way into Kramer's apartment and discovers him leaning so precariously forward at the edge of his recliner that it's tipping off its back legs. He tries calling out to him, "I've been canceled by the Woe Clef," but Kramer's focus never once leaves the TV. "That's great, Jerry," he mutters dreamily. Exasperated, Jerry storms out, slamming the door so hard it startles Kramer into a reflexive flinch. The movement is just enough to tilt his center of balance far enough forward that he flips his chair on top of himself and ends up pinned beneath, landing with his face pressed down on the Nintendo's controller. Panicking, he begins to struggle, but realizes that making certain facial expressions allows him to control the game just fine. Stuck like some sort of upholstered turtle, he continues his marathon gaming session for hours until his score grows high enough to crash the game. Finally snapped out of his captivation, he struggles to free himself, wiggling back and forth until the chair falls sideways between him and his coffee table. The resulting tremor knocks his television off its stand and onto the floor, and the linear alignment of objects causes Kramer and his toppled belongings to blink several times and disappear.

While flipping through the channels, George catches a scene from an old movie where a woman dances the tango with two men. His jaw drops and he falls off the couch, then scampers into the secret second bedroom he keeps hidden behind a bookshelf. He pulls a tarp off a whiteboard revealing an elaborate equation and assesses it for a while before adding a ">" next to the "=" to the left of the number 2 on line 18. On a nearby table, a jar filled with strange black slime suddenly begins to shimmy rhythmically. "Finally!" bellows George with a maniacal cackle, "the dance dance revolution can begin!"

Elaine is confused but flattered when Bill Clinton drops out of the Presidential race and pledges his full support for her candidacy.

[seinfelt]

The Boop

Jerry feels slighted when Elaine doesn’t boop him as many times as he booped her. George becomes increasingly self-conscious about his boops, reading possible hidden significances into them that none of the recipients of his boops would ever even consider. Eventually he finds himself paralyzed in front of his computer screen, arguing over whether it would be weirder for him to boop his office crush or NOT boop her, unaware that she isn’t even accepting boops. Kramer, oblivious to what booping even is, turns them on by accident and goes about his day. When he returns home to his apartment he receives thousands of boops all at the same time and gets blown straight through the wall, landing in a tree in Central Park where dozens of stray cats climb up and start pawing gently at his face.

[seinfelt]

The Cake Recipe

Kramer is possessed by the sudden desire to bake a cake, but can only find tiny quantities of every necessary ingredient save for vanilla extract, which he somehow happens to have in barrels. Unable to shake his almost compulsive craving, he shrugs and gets to work regardless.

Despite not feeling any real attraction toward her new coworker, Elaine finds herself drawn to the man simply because he smells very much like french toast. When he agrees to a date, she learns over dinner that the source of the smell is actually a piece of toast, two eggs, and a smashed bottle of vanilla extract that he'd forgotten he'd put in his back pocket that morning.

George on the other hand has a fantastic first date with a brilliant and beautiful woman, and she eagerly agrees to a nightcap back at his apartment. Having forgotten he'd completely run out of alcohol earlier that week, he panics and strolls out of the kitchen with two crystal tumblers full to the brim with vanilla extract on the rocks, insisting to her that it's actually "a new trendy cocktail from Paris."

When Jerry's audience remains unamused throughout the first half of his set—to the point of eerie silence—he decides in his frustration to stop telling jokes and just start pointing out different things in the club that he sees and name them out loud. "Chair," he says. "Another chair." They remain stonily quiet but at least he feels entertained by his own antics. "Oh look—a sprinkler system!" he shouts with mock excitement. Eventually he wanders into the crowd and picks up someone's craft beer. "Let's see… water, hops, oats… ooh, vanilla extract!" At mention of the term, the crowd erupts into raucous laughter, so violently and unexpectedly that Jerry backpedals fearfully to the stage. "V-vanilla extract?" he says again and is met with thunderous hysterics. For the rest of the night he repeats the words over and over and over until every member of the audience has died.

[seinfelt]

The Artificial Intelligence

Jerry performs a set where the only jokes he tells are bad kids' jokes, interspersed with reading the script's stage directions out loud. The audience laughs at the setups but not the punchlines.

Elaine is uncharacteristically kind and supportive toward the others and they take bets on whether she's been diagnosed with a terminal illness or she's preparing some sort of grift.

Kramer goes to sit on Jerry's couch and disappears momentarily from existence, then slowly, grotesquely oozes out from the cushions into a seated position as if he were a gummy bear getting squeezed out of a tube.

George wanders away from an inane conversation with the others to very loudly use the microwave with nothing inside of it.

A new restaurant opens up in town.

[seinfelt]

The Deadlights

Not wanting to go outside on a rainy day, Jerry fakes an illness in order to get out of playing with George. Undaunted but a little disappointed, George dons his yellow raincoat and hat and heads out into the downpour with a boat he folded out of newspaper.

Outside, he places the boat into a stream of water and chases it as it sails along the curb. It moves so quickly that it outpaces him and falls into a sewer grate. He peeks inside but it's nowhere to be found. As he turns away, accepting the loss, a voice calls out to him.

"Hiya, Georgie!" it says. "Aren't you gonna say hello?"

George turns to find a strange-looking clown grinning up at him from down in the grate.

"Aw c'mon, bucko!" says the clown as a bright yellow balloon pops up into view. "Don't you want a balloon?"

George reaches toward the sewer but retracts his hand and frowns. "I'm not supposed to take stuff from strangers. My dad said so."

"Very wise of your dad, Georgie, very wise indeed. I, Georgie, am Kramer the Dancing Clown. You are Georgie. So now we know each other, key-rect?"

"I guess so. I gotta go."

"Go? Without… this?" Kramer holds up George's paper boat.

George gasps. "My boat!"

"Exxxactly!" says Kramer, wiggling it just inside the sewer opening. "Go on, kiddo! Take it!"

George frowns, hesitant to reach into the sewer.

"Aww," says Kramer, "you want it, don't you, Georgie? Of course you do. And there's cotton candy and rides and all sorts of surprises down here. And balloons too—all colors!"

"Do they float?"

"Oh yes. They float, Georgie! They float!"

George reaches out for his boat again, intending to take it this time.

"And when you're down here with me," says Kramer as his smile grows impossibly wide, the corners of it stretching monstrously, "you'll float too!"

"Oh no you don't," says Frank, grabbing George by the ear and narrowly yanking him away from Kramer's grasp. "What'd I tell you about taking stuff from strangers, huh? What're you, some kinda dimwit? And you, down there in the sewer, what's your problem? Why don't you come up here and we'll see how big a man you are, eh, tough guy? Goddamn sewer clowns! It's an infestation!"

"I was just—" starts Kramer.

"You were just nothin'!" shouts Frank, cutting him off. He dives for the grate, shoving his hand inside and flailing his fist around. "Come on, big shot! Big mister sewer clown! Come on! We'll see who floats!"

Though his symptoms were initially imaginary, Jerry finds he can't stop pretending to be sick, growing increasingly ill to the point where he requires fantasy hospitalization in a pretend ICU. Two weeks later, an imaginary doctor pronounces him fake dead. The only person who shows up at his un-funeral is Newman, who bawls the entire time.

When a coworker accidentally spills a small amount of ketchup on Elaine's outfit, she uses telekinesis to burn down her office with everyone trapped inside. Trembling with rage, she walks home and uses her powers to cave her apartment building in on herself.

[seinfelt]

The Impossible Hallway

George storms into Jerry's apartment and slams the door so hard that the photo next to it falls off the wall.

"Well hello to you too," says Jerry.

"We need to talk about your hallway," says George.

"What about it?"

"It can't exist!"

"And yet," replies Jerry smugly, "it does."

"It does, but it shouldn't."

"What are you talking about?"

Kramer slides so violently into the apartment that he burns two long black streaks into the hardwood floor. He looks down at the smoke and whimpers, "oh mama."

"Kramer, what the hell?" says Jerry. "Look what you did to my floor!"

"Put it on my tab," says Kramer as he strolls over to the fridge and opens it to get himself some orange juice, drinking a long swig directly from the carton.

"I'll add the orange juice too."

"For starters," says George, ignoring Jerry's interaction with Kramer, "just look at your kitchen."

"First it's the hallway, now it's the kitchen. What's wrong with my kitchen?"

"Well for one thing," says Kramer, "your orange juice is expired."

Frowning at him, Jerry grabs the carton and drops it into the garbage with a slight flourish. "Thanks for the update—I'll take it off your tab."

"What tab?" asks Kramer, much to Jerry's exasperation.

George strolls all the way into the kitchen. "Look at where I'm standing and then think about where your hallway would go."

"I'd like to remind you that you never actually have been an architect."

"Humor me."

"The hallway is outside my apartment. The kitchen is inside my apartment."

George holds up a finger. "Come with me."

He walks to the front door, opens it, and stands in the doorway with one foot inside Jerry's apartment and the other out in the hallway. "Stand where I am and you'll see what I see."

"Okay, Confucious."

George steps away and Jerry takes his place.

"Hold on," says Jerry. "That doesn't… what the hell is going on here?"

"See?"

"But how?"

"Black hole," says Kramer.

George and Jerry both turn slowly to look at him.

"Excuse me?" says George.

Kramer makes a popping sound by flicking his finger out of the corner of his mouth. "Black hole!" he repeats, shaking that same finger high up into the air.

"What black hole?"

"The black hole," says Kramer with very deliberate enunciation and a waving gesture, "in my apartment."

"What are you talking about?" asks Jerry.

"I've told you about this!"

"I think I'd remember if you told me you had a black hole in your apartment."

"Oh I'm not sure you would."

Jerry shakes his head. "What's a black hole got to do with any of this?"

"Well you see, Jerry, all particles have to travel along the shortest path through curved space."

Jerry and George share a confused glance.

"…and?" prompts Jerry.

"Well… the black hole is warping space around itself. It's pulled the hallway—" he makes a motion like he's stroking an inner tube around his waist. "And apparently your kitchen, too. Which means… mamacita."

"What?" asks George.

"Oh, this is real bad."

"What's bad?" asks Jerry.

"Would you spit it out?" says George.

"It's getting… bigger," he replies, the last word a barely-perceptible squeak.

"Bigger?"

He nods, his face a mask of frightful agony.

"What does that mean, 'bigger'?" asks Jerry.

"The opposite of small," says George wryly.

"A little help?" shouts Elaine from somewhere out in the hallway.

The three poke their heads out to find her struggling to pull her purse away from the wall.

"It's stuck!" she says. She looks at Kramer. "What do you, got some kind of giant magnet in there or something?"

"Black hole," say the three men in unison. They glance briefly at each other.

"What?"

"Kramer has a black hole," says Jerry.

Elaine frowns skeptically at them. "You can't just have a black hole."

"I beg to differ," says Kramer. "I bought it at a flea market."

"Aw, this is ridiculous," says Jerry.

"Are you… all just gonna… stand there and… watch me struggle?" grunts Elaine between tugs. She raises her foot and brings it toward the wall to try to get some more leverage.

"Oh I wouldn't do—" starts Kramer, but it's too late: Elaine's foot gets stuck to the wall alongside her purse.

"Hey," she says, "I think my foot's stuck too."

"Yeah, that'll happen," says Kramer.

"Will you jackasses do something already?"

George and Jerry look to Kramer, but he just stares dumbly at Elaine, ignorant of their attention. After a moment he notices their stares with a jerky startle.

"What are you looking at me for?" he says.

"It's your black hole!" says Jerry.

George frowns. "How did it 'grow' exactly anyway?"

"What do you think happens to all the stuff I drag in from the street? I only have so much room in my apartment."

"What about—I don't know—throwing it in the garbage?"

"What, and haul it all the way down to the curb in the elevator? I get nasty looks!"

"Yeah, this is much better," says Jerry.

"So what do we do about Elaine?" asks George.

Kramer thinks for a moment, then snaps his fingers. "I got it—we put a second black hole in Jerry's apartment on the other side of the hallway."

"Won't that just rip me in half?" says Elaine.

Kramer shrugs. "Maybe, maybe not."

"Hold on a minute," says George. "How do you get away from it, Kramer? Clearly you're able to leave your apartment."

"I just move faster than light."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, the escape velocity of a black hole is faster than the speed of light. You gotta go at least that fast or you can't get out."

"But you can't go faster than the speed of light," says Elaine.

"Oh, I beg to differ."

"How?"

"Kwisatz Haderach," says Kramer with dramatic enunciation.

"Gesundheit," says Jerry.

"'Quick-shots' what, now?" says Elaine.

Kramer holds up a finger. "The shortening… of the way."

"What way?" asks George.

"Any way."

"Okay," says Jerry, "so how exactly does one shorten a way?"

"Well, you gotta become the Kwisatz Haderach."

"And how exactly do you do that?" asks Elaine, tugging frantically at her leg.

"The sleeper must awaken."

Elaine lets out a primal growl of annoyed frustration. "And how do you do that?"

"You gotta drink the water of life."

"What's the water of… you know what? Forget it. I'd rather stay stuck here forever than continue this idiotic conversation."

"Kramer," says Jerry, "can't you just 'Quiznos hot-rocks' her out of there?"

"Kwisatz Haderach," he says. "Say it with me, Kwis—"

"Kramer!"

He flinches from Jerry's angry interruption and then thinks for a moment. "I can try I guess but who knows where she'll end up."

"It's gotta be better than being stuck to your hallway wall!" says Elaine.

"Okay, well… don't say I didn't warn you." He stands upright, his eyes turning a deep blue. There's a distant rumble and suddenly Elaine fades away from where she's standing and fades in cradled in Kramer's arms. The two stare at each other for a moment.

"Ahem," says Elaine eventually.

Kramer looks at her, puzzled, until she nods her head toward the floor.

"Oh. Yeah," he says, setting her down.

"I still don't get it," says Jerry. "How did a black hole make it so that my kitchen and the hallway were occupying the same space?"

"It didn't," says Kramer. "It just made it appear that way to any… outside observers."

He smiles directly at the camera and winks as the audience breaks into hysterical laughter. He stares for so long that eventually the camera begins to pan away, but he strides toward it, his smile flattening, ducking back into frame as it shifts left and right. Soon the laughter in the audience dies out and transforms into a concerned murmur.

A deep hum begins to emanate almost imperceptibly from your television but grows louder and louder. Something begins to rattle and you realize it's the remote control on the table in front of you. Paralyzed by fear and confusion, you don't even think to reach for it as it lifts up and flies across the room, shattering against the screen, spraying plastic shards throughout the room.

As Kramer stares out at you, his eyes radiating an unearthly but somehow soothing blue glow, you finally motivate your body to rush over and turn off the television, but as you stand up and lunge for the power button, your fingers stretch into impossibly long strands, tapering into what looks like spaghetti. When the tips connect with the glass of the screen you somehow become aware that this same experience is being shared by millions of other people all around the world.

You scream, but the sound gets sucked in by whatever force seems to be pulling in the rest of you.

In all your terror you'd forgotten about the deep hum but it soon becomes deafening, pushing all the thoughts out of your mind. As your face draws closer and closer to those pulsing blue eyes, your inner monologue echoes somewhere inside your head, thinking,

Where does that hallway go to?

Where does that hallway go to?

Where does that hallway go to?

Where does that hallway go to?

Am I right or am I wrong?

My god… what have I done?

[seinfelt]

Black Lives Matter

“Imagine,” says Jerry, “just imagine how insecure you have to be to hear ‘Black Lives Matter’ and think it means ‘ONLY Black Lives Matter’ and not ‘Black Lives ALSO Matter’. I mean… can you believe there are actually people out there who hear about a Black man getting murdered by the police, and think it’s somehow a personal attack on them that people are mad about it? It’s ridiculous! If you’re one of these ‘actually all lives matter’ creeps, you can go right ahead and find the exit, and just keep walking straight out into the Atlantic. Get out! Get the hell right out!”

[seinfelt]

The Shameless Self-Promotion

After Jerry spends an entire set advertising his book rather than telling any jokes, the audience buys copies just to throw at him.

Wanting to help his friend, Kramer starts distributing copies of Jerry’s book randomly throughout the city, leading law enforcement to believe there’s some kind of new cult on the rise.

George suffers a head injury, rendering him unable to say anything but his own name. Everyone he encounters grows irritated with him, thinking he’s either playing a joke or running for office and trying to market himself. He tries to explain his situation to them, but all that comes out is “George Costanza”.

Elaine sells her soul to the highest bidder—J. Peterman.

[seinfelt]

Which story of yours is the one where jerry grows every time his ego does or something? I flipped to it randomly once and forgot where it is in the book and I can't find it anywhere.

The Inquiry

Jerry compiles some of his best jokes into a book and sells it before and after his shows. A fan approaches him after a performance one night and asks him about a joke he told at a comedy club several years prior. Jerry racks his brain but can’t seem to remember what the person is talking about. “Thank you so much for buying the book, though! I hope you enjoy it—it means a lot.”

The next day, he asks George if he recalls the joke, but George confesses he has never actually listened to any of Jerry’s standup. “It’s your voice,” he says. “I just can’t pay attention for more than ten seconds at a time. That’s why this works: you talk, I talk, you talk, I talk.”

Insisting on consuming all food in “capsule form”, Kramer has trained his jaw to unhinge so that he can swallow things container and all. He groans something at Jerry but it’s indecipherable around the milk carton sliding down his throat.

Several nights later, the joke finally comes to him as he’s about to fall asleep, but he realizes he never took down the fan’s contact information. Elaine advises him to take out a classified ad in the New York Times. After several days without any response, Jerry ups the ante and takes out a subway ad. After another week, he rents a billboard. Soon the entire city is saturated with Jerry’s ad, but still he receives no reply.

Months later, Jerry spots the fan walking down the street and chases them down into the subway and back up to street level. Finally, after a circuitous pursuit, they both wind up panting and hunched over in Central Park.

“Didn’t you see my ads!?” asks Jerry after he catches his breath.

“Of course I did!” growls the fan.

“Well why didn’t you get in touch?”

“Because you’re a goddamn Megalomaniac, Seinfeld!”

[seinfelt]

The Female Presenting Nipples

Calling in an old favor, Kramer ropes Elaine into an elaborate black-market baby goods scam.

“Well what’s wrong with them?” she asks, holding up a normal-looking bottle.

“The rubber’s from used tires,” he explains. “In North Korea.”

“…oh.”

Using one of Morty’s old trench coats to hide the goods hung over her shoulders, she wanders through parks targeting anyone with children, but as soon as she begins to open her coat, people assume she’s going to flash them and they run away as quickly as possible.

Fed up with social mores, George vows to go shirtless no matter the context, even in restaurants, resulting in a citywide ban on all male toplessness.

Jerry follows a clown down a sewer drain, fully aware that it plans to murder him.

[seinfelt]

[Cranberries voice:] What's in your mouth

In your mouth

Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, eh, eh…

[seinfelt]

I Can Seaver Miles and Miles

In the riveting season premiere, Jason sees a new patient who was hospitalized after removing his own eyeballs so that he "can see what's truly there."

Maggie gets an assignment reporting on a corrupt politician. When he finds out she's spying on him, he attempts to run a filesystem check, but it's too late

Mike hatches a scheme to cut class by creating a wax duplicate of himself so that he and Boner can try to pick up college girls at the mall. His plan is ultimately foiled when everyone is disgusted that his best friend is a five-foot-tall erect penis.

Ben can't stop organizing premature funerals for stray cats.

After consuming a mysterious black oil she finds under the sink, Chrissy ages rapidly on camera, a disturbing seven-minute continuous-shot metamorphosis that leaves her five years older.

Carol tries to study in the back yard but is terrorized by muffled meows and howls that she believes emanate from her guilty conscience, having accidentally run over a cat the previous week on her first day with her new license. In reality all she hit was a shag carpet that fell off a contractor's truck.

Maggie returns home to find her eldest son staring in glassy-eyed horror at his waxen doppelgänger. When she asks him what's wrong he replies, "how do I know which one is the real me?”

Jason's patient emerges from the office, stares at them both with his vacant sockets, and proclaims, "neither of you."

[seinfelt]

The One with Joey’s Mom

Ross is horrified to discover upon waking that his limbs all now bend the precise opposite directions. Frantically seeking help, he tries to get in touch with the others, but can’t figure out how to interact with any of his belongings.

Monica starts hearing the audience’s laughter and concludes she’s going insane. She tells Chandler about it but when he tries to reply coins gush endlessly out of his mouth. Through them he gurgles at her, “could I be barfing any more coins?”

Phoebe takes apart an old pocket watch in the middle of Central Perk Café and eats each piece one at a time with a little dollop of whipped cream. After each swallow she smiles delightedly at the other customers and daintily wipes her mouth with the corner of a napkin, announcing “I’m on a diet!”

Rachel is at first flattered, then alarmed when she notices increasing numbers of people sporting her exact hairstyle and referring to it as “The Rachel”.

Joey finally climbs out of his mother’s pouch.

[seinfelt]

Woody with a Dry Finish

Sam and Woody start a contest over who can make the worst drink, and end up sending a customer to the hospital.

Norm fuses permanently with his bar seat but shrugs it off because now he'll be able to sit down wherever he goes.

Rebecca won’t stop slamming the office door but her fury scares the others too much to ask her why she’s upset. When Paul finally works up the courage to talk to her, she bites his hand off and swallows it whole, never breaking eye contact.

Cliff brings a bear into the bar to prove to the others once and for all that he's not a coward, but is disappointed when they still don’t respect him even after he gets mauled to death.

When a man shows up claiming to be a reincarnated Coach, Frasier tries to suss out the truth through hypnotherapy. Somehow the man knows all the details of all of their lives. When Frasier mutters aloud, “how is this possible?” the man, still in a trance, replies, “I watch the show.”

Carla stands on the bar and grins directly into the camera throughout the entire episode.

[seinfelt]

the second first edition: Jerry receives two copies of a book he ordered online, despite having only paid for one. the two copies appear identical, except that one is a slightly paler shade of white. Elaine argues with George about whether the dictionary of the khazars is a work of fiction or not. Kramer disappoints a date by thinking that clue is a movie, not a game. 

(anyone in the uk or eu who wants my spare, let me know.)

[seinfelt]

This is an impressive amount of book.

Esteeméd Cohabitant says it’s weird that I don’t like Seinfeld (I really, really don’t), yet I like @seinfelt . I think it’s just because the Seinfelt guys make good words for me to put into my brain through my sight blorbs.

[seinfelt]

Lost season of seinfelt is fucking me up