Hits and Misses: Stories

by Simon Rich

But Ben could still make out a few details, including an open moleskin notebook. He couldn’t read the baby’s handwriting. Still, he could sense the work was confident.

So then everything just fall apart. I go from licking brewery puddles to licking distillery puddles to just licking whatever puddles I can find, like, who cares, get it in me. And I find myself trotting around glue factory, thinking maybe I knock on door and tell them, Go ahead.

Their friends were all recovered artists of some kind, former aspiring actors or directors who had quit their selfish dreams to embrace the realities of adulthood.

“This is an intervention?” “We know you’ve been making art again,” Tom said. “We know about the song. We know everything.”

Only a few written accounts of his life remain, and even among these there are numerous discrepancies. The Gospel According to John differs wildly from the Gospel According to Matthew. And neither account is as accurate as the Gospel According to Hector. (Incidentally, Mordecai is in charge of protecting the Gospel According to Hector, and I am 90 percent sure he’s lost the scroll. One time I flat-out asked him where it was. “It’s in my tent,” he said. So I was like, “Great. Can I see it?” And he was like, “It’s under a lot of stuff.” How much stuff can he possibly have? The man is a monk.)

“I drove Tom Hanks to the airport once. He was normal the whole ride. Didn’t scream at me or threaten my life. Craziest thing: he stayed in a seated position the entire time. No levitating.”