Finding the Hope

Some things have happened before my time that I retroactively mourn. For instance, Mitch Hedberg’s untimely death happened when I was in college, but I only found about him in my friends’ eulogizing Facebook posts. And now I can’t help thinking about how many more jokes he’d have come up with even in five additional years.

Now that's a nice rock

I feel the same way about the Hope Diamond. The gem is stunning. But when it was first mined in India, about 450 years ago, it was twice the size it is now. The original diamond was known as the French Blue because of its ownership by French royalty. Louis XIV was the first proprietor; it passed to his son Louis XV and then to the much more ill-fated Louis XVI. After #16 and his famously ostentatious wife were beheaded, the French Blue disappeared never to be seen in quite the same way again.

This is where my heart breaks just a little–the French Blue was butchered into smaller stones, the largest of which is the Hope Diamond. Sure, a large diamond being somewhat larger would not make any impact on my life, yet it seems so needlessly cruel to destroy something so lovely (I feel similarly despondent about the extinct fauna of Madagascar such as elephantine birds and giant lemurs).

But I suppose we should be thankful that the Hope Diamond persists at all. The recutting could have gone much worse, and there are several owners who were somewhat incautious with its care. Evalyn Walsh McLean, its twentieth-century American owner, would deliberately misplace the stone around her property at parties and make a children’s game of “finding the Hope.” And, when Harry Winston decided to donate the diamond to the Smithsonian, he sent it in a brown box through the US post office, insured for just under $150.

I’m not the only one who’s thankful that that box arrived at the museum–the Hope Diamond is the second most-visited piece of art after the Mona Lisa, and there’s little wonder why. Only 1 out of every 100,000 diamonds has any color whatsoever, and blue is the rarest color of all. A tiny number of boron atoms interspersed in the carbon structure give the diamond its “fancy deep grayish blue” coloring (yes, that is the technical term). In addition, if exposed to short-wave ultraviolet light, the diamond shines brilliantly red. No wonder people thought it was cursed. So even though we may never know how gorgeous the original stone was, there’s still Hope to be found (ha ha!)–the Hope Diamond is utterly breathtaking.

Travelers’ Century Club, or, I’ve been everywhere

People love listing the countries they’ve visited. We do it on Facebook, we do it by putting pins in maps (Mitch Hedberg: “I want to hang a map of the world in my house, then I am going to put pins into all the locations I have traveled to, but first I will have to travel to the top two corners of the map, so it won’t fall down”). But I always feel a little sad when I realize how paltry my list of approximately 9 countries visited looks against the full list of nearly 200 countries.

The North Pole...seems a little extreme, doesn't it?

Enter the Travelers’ Century Club, a group of people who have travelled to no fewer than 100 countries. Now, there are plenty of countries I’d still like to visit, but 100+ countries seems excessive. Do club members really enjoy their time in each country, or do they just step foot in them just to be able to cross them off a master list? What does one do on holiday in, say, Uzbekistan? And who has the time to hit each island in the South Pacific?

At this time, apparently, there are 14 people who claim to have visited EVERY country on the TCC list. This list actually includes 321 lands, some of which are not countries in their own right but are geographically separate from the parent country, such as Alaska or Easter Islands. John Clause from Evansville, IL was the first (by his account) to reach every country in the world, and was recognized in the 1995 Guinness Book of World Records as the most-travelled man. At that point it starts to seem like a compulsion. I wonder if these ultra-travellers get excited about the thought of new countries, or if they dread civil wars and the resulting border reconfigurations. Let me guess, last month there were immediately 14 tickets booked to South Sudan. I hear the weather there is excellent in August.

Mitch Hedberg: a joke for every season

Last week when it was blisteringly hot, I set up an oscillating fan in my room and asked it questions that a fan would say no to. “. So I like to ask it questions that a fan would say “no” to. “Do you keep my hair in place?… Do you keep my documents in order?… Do you have three settings? Liar! My fan lied to me!”

Of course, this is a joke first dreamed up by Mitch Hedberg (“I’m sick of following my dreams; I’m just gonna ask ’em where they’re going and hook up with them later”). He died tragically early, and yet in his relatively short comedic career he came up with a joke related to just about every situation I’ve ever been in. When I pass a broken escalator I’m reminded how escalators can never really break; they can only become stairs.

When I took tests in college I’d wish I was in a restaurant, because the customer is always right.

Whenever I pull out a sweater from my closet I think, “This sweater is dry-clean only, which means it’s dirty.”

When I see protests on TV, I think, “I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.”

And once when a friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana, I said, “No, but I want a regular banana later…so, yeah.”

Mitch is one of those people I wish had a much, much longer life. I can only imagine how many more little things would make me laugh every day if he’d come up with applicable jokes.

What’s your favorite Mitch Hedberg joke?