I notice that you keep a large manila envelope with you at all times.

I recommend it to everyone. Nothing gets you out of a jam and on your way faster. Picture this: you’re about to be pigeon-holed by someone you run into on the street who wants to “chat.” Out comes the envelope, with, “Sorry, but If I don’t get this to my lawyer in six minutes I’m on the streets!” Or, say you’d like an afternoon off. Just stagger like a zombie into your boss’ office after lunch, hold up the envelope — if you can, you’ve had quite a shock — and blurt out, “I just got some… bad medical news.” That’s all you need to say. Your fake test results are your own business.

Moral atrociousness aside, Joe McCarthy’s empty envelope packed with commies was a genius move.

Have you ever thought about how you might die?

Why do you ask? It’s my skin, right? It’s grey? Like a thin steak at the grocery store, with a whole bunch of “reduced to clear” stickers all over it? Oh God, I feared this day…

Oh, you’re just curious. Whew.

In fact, I have thought quite a bit about my death, as I’m sure many other people have.

About my death, that is. For years I imagined, or more accurately, assumed, that one day I would finally become so angry over not so much one thing, one setback, as the accumulation of a lifetime of them, that I would attain a rare state of apoplexy reserved exclusively for people like Michael Corleone, or professional hockey coaches, and would simply start shaking, spitting and snorting until I literally erupted. (To my surprise and even delight, my invented term for this colossal event, apoplexia major, is actually referenced in a 1672 Latin medical text that seems to be about deadly moon phases, written by a noted pioneer on nasal mucous no less, so maybe I’m onto something.)

So recently, after a physical exam revealed a cholesterol level that the doctor described with the medical term “really terrible,” I finally started to take my health seriously, which of course means Googling all kinds of diseases and conditions. And when I discovered that apoplexy wasn’t just a state, one I’ve visited and purchased souvenirs from countless times, but an actual medical event — basically a stroke with a lot of messy bleeding— I became less sure that that was how I wanted to go. Mostly because I always imagined my eruption being so powerful that I would explode into complete nothingness (I tried to resist a crack about dying as I lived, but I’m weak): a death star, a blinding Hollywood blast seen and felt for miles, you get the gist. But internal bleeding, confusion, losing consciousness: where’s the epic in that?

So I’ll need to think about it. Do they still have debtor’s prisons? Where they lock you up and forget about you, and you just shrink and shrivel away, like a banana? That’s a lot cleaner. And way more likely.

Any thoughts on an obituary?

I only hope that whatever people write, even if it’s, “Yesss!!!”, or, “About time”, or even, “The world is not only a safer place today, but with much less complaining, too,” that they don’t make any typos.

I was recently binge-reading obituaries after a friend’s mother died, and came across one that described an elegant octogenarian’s great passion for “breading poodles.” And I thought, okay, you’d hope that you’d try a little harder to not have the final image of poor Eleanor be one of her standing in her sunlit kitchen, elbow-deep in butchered dog carcasses, singing away as she dumps a skinned toy poodle into a bed of her famous bread crumbs.

I guess a case could be made for the writer being too overcome or hurried to spell check. But it could also be deliberate, a wince of jealousy turned into a permanent, indefensible (but indescribably satisfying) indignity foisted upon an unsuspecting heiress by a struggling obituary writer who never had two cents to rub together. Take that, Eleanor, you and those yappy shit-cannons.

You referred to Shakespeare as “Shakesbore” and “Macdeath?”

This is getting blown way out of proportion. I not only fully recognize the towering genius and legacy of Shakespeare, but have read dozens of synopses of his plays. What I meant was that the plays (from what I can glean) tend to get a little sluggish around hour five or six, so there might be an opportunity at that point for a little of what I like to call, “fresh air.” And as we all know, nothing wakes up a theatrical audience quite like a character walking in with a giant prop. They don’t even have to say a word — just have Macbeth’s wife walk across the stage with, say, a huge scrubbing brush, and maybe even throw in, “If this doesn’t get that damn spot out, I’m packin’ it in!” — and voila: a big laugh from an instantly re-energized audience, so appreciative of your clever reinterpretation, and all set for the next nine acts.

This could also work with a large fruit or vegetable.