INSTRUCTIONS: Match the description of each individual with the specific manner in which they might be gellin’.
1. Urbane reader of droll food column.
2. Pittsburgh-area high schooler who scored a 1390 on the SAT:
3. Knighted performer who, in the twilight of his career, is delighted to discover his sexual orientation is no longer an issue.
4. Fact checker at Entertainment Weekly who has compiled the index for her boss’s unauthorized biography of Debra Messing.
5. Woman who is frequently told of her resemblance to the actress Susan St. James.
A. “Gellin’ like Carnegie Mellon.”
B. “Gellin’ like the television wife of McMillan.”
C. “Gellin’ like ‘Grace (comma) Will and’.”
D. “Gellin’ like Sir Ian McKellen.”
E. “Gellin’ like Calvin Trillin.”
Now you tell us how Liberian President Charles Taylor might be gellin’, and send your answers to our McSweeney’s Brain Exploders editor, Carlton Doby.
ANSWERS.
Last week, we asked McSweeney’s readers to tell us the specific manner in which Liberian President Charles Taylor might be gellin’ and we received hundreds of replies. The most common guess was some variation of “like a war crimes felon” but only one person, T.G. Gibbon, was able to provide us with the answer we were looking for:
(Charles Taylor is) “Gellin’ like a despot who came to power the same year I won my high school chess championship in a brutally one-sided match against Israeli exchange student Elron Yellin.”
We received many excellent runners up, however:
BEST ATTEMPT TO AVOID USING THE WORD “FELON”
Gellin’ like a war crimes appellant.
— Seth Blaylock
BEST REFERENCE TO THE MAN WITH THE ODDEST JOB OF THE 1980’S
Gellin’ like The People’s Court’s Doug Llewelyn.
— David Willems
BEST ANNOTATED PART I
Gellin’ like superglue, cause paper stick to him like kids to watermelon. (true: his nickname is superglue because paper i.e. money seems to stick to him.)
— Brent Hoff
BEST EXPOSE OF AN UNDERREPORTED ASPECT OF THE CRISIS
Gellin’ like his people’s lack of penicillin.
— Lionel Beehner
BEST “THE WEEK”-STYLE SYNOPSIS
Gellin’ like a warlord whose opponent-fellin’, diamond-sellin’ antics have set a lot of pre-teens to rebellin’.
— T.G. Gibbon
BEST ANSWER WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT REFER TO THE AUTHOR’S IMMEDIATE CIRCUMSTANCES
Gellin’ like there are people outside my window yellin’.
— Michael Wall
BEST ANSWER MAKING NO MORE OR LESS SENSE THAN THE ORIGINAL COMMERCIALS
Gellin’ like seedless watermelon
— Srin Murthy
BEST ATTEMPT TO NEGOTIATE A SOLUTION, RHYMING BE DAMNED
Gellin’ in the South of France in exile’in
— Adam Hardin
BEST REFERENCE TO EIGHTH GRADE HISTORY
As a leader who has consistently been wrapped up in imbroglios, insurrections, and questions of colonialism, I reckon that Charles Taylor is gellin’ like Magellan.
— Nat Logar
MOST WELCOME ARI FLEISCHER REFERENCE
“Gellin’ like the old lady who pisses (off) Ari Fleischer named Helen”,
— Tom Keiser
BEST ATTEMPT AT A LIMERICK
Liberian President Charles Taylor Is gellin’
Like someone avoiding a Samuel Doe-style killin’,
Where at his ears some fool is flailin’
With a razor while he’s yellin’
And later on, videos of it they be sellin’.
— Joe Miguez
MOST SURPRISING DEVELOPMENT: ONLY ONE ANSWER OF HUNDREDS REFERENCED A CERTAIN BRAND OF CANVAS SNEAKERS
Gellin’ like a fool who thinks that his shoes are what all the cool kids are wearin’.
— Frederick D. LaBrecque
BEST UNGRAMMATICAL ATTEMPT AT MAKING LEMONADE FROM LEMONS
Gellin’ like a string-bikini with Gisele in.
— Lionel Beehner
MOST INTERESTING NEW INTERPRETATION OF THE ILIAD
Gellin’ like the U.S. was Menelaus and he kidnapped Helen.
— Taylor Cope
BEST COMBINATION OF FOLK WISDOM AND APOCALYPTIC REVELATION
Gellin’ like a man giving us a new handbasket to go to hell in.
— TG Gibbon
BEST REFERENCE TO THE BRAIN EXPLODERÕS FAVORITE SCALE OF TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENT
Charles Taylor is ’Gellin like a deposed dictator whose country forgoes Fahrenheit in favor of Kelvin.
— Scott Newcomb
BEST ANNOTATED PART II
Gellin’ like the black market diamonds he be stealin’ and sellin (primarily to DeBeers Inc, actually.)
— Brent Hoff
BEST REFERENCE TO THE BEN CURTIS OF THE 1984 OSCARS
Gellin’ like Haing S. Ngor in the Fields of Killin’.
— Brian Shuman
BEST REFERENCE TO A GUY WE HAD TO GOOGLE
Gellin’ like Nigerian President Obasanjo Olusegun.
— Tom van den Bout