Seinfeld: the book of life

As you might have noticed, I haven’t been so good at updating my blog. Perhaps I’m entering a new phase of my life, where blogging doesn’t figure as prominently.

A few weeks ago, I was at my friends’ place on Elizabeth Street. Paolo was saying how he was going to get up early the next day and drive to Hampshire to do work. Beryl said that she would join him, but wondered if he could leave a little later, like 10 or 11. He insisted that they leave by 9, to which Beryl agreed. I pointed out that I was very skeptical that Beryl would actually get up that early, and the rest of the people in the room seemed to concur with me. I was so confident in this that I bet Beryl a dollar that she would not get up. The following morning, I received a text message from Henry, one of her roommates, that said, ‘Beryl owes you a dollar.’ Sometime later, I ran into her on the bus, and demanded my dollar, knowing all the while that I wouldn’t get it. She explained to me that she didn’t in fact owe me a dollar because she had decided that she didn’t want to get up, because she hadn’t slept well. That was the whole point of the bet, I said. If outside circumstances, such as a snow storm or even the alarm failing to go off, had prevented you from going, then you would not owe me a dollar, I said. Of course, I didn’t get the dollar.

This Friday, we watched an early Seinfeld episode where Kramer proclaims that he is going to take out all of the furniture in his apartment and build ‘levels’ – like ancient Egyptians did. Jerry bets him a large sum that he won’t do it. When it comes out that he did never modify his apartment, Jerry confronts him. Kramer claims that he doesn’t owe Jerry any money, on the grounds that he decided that he “didn’t want to do it anymore,” or something to that effect. Jerry naturally finds this logic ridiculous. Those of us in the room – sadly Beryl was not one of us – who were there for the incident described above found this segment particularly amusing.