Bream Gives Me Hiccups by Jesse Eisenberg

than the United States? And what are you doing about it? You’re writing a book! Wow! Thank you! Thank you, son, for writing an “ironic” book about talking chimpanzees in New York City! If it’s as “meta” and “reflexive” as you claim, it will probably bring us out of this recession! Take that, China and India! A “postmodern” book about talking monkeys!
    SIDE EFFECTS: This medication causes severe erectile dysfunction. And beyond any concern for your tawdry sex life, your mother would like grandchildren at some point and, with your sister currently gay, you’re the last Mohican.
    IN CASE OF OVERDOSE: Stick your finger down your throat and stand over the toilet. And don’t just run into the kitchen and throw up in front of your mother like you “couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time.” Everyone knows that’s a bullshit ploy for sympathy. But it doesn’t work. It just makes her nauseous.
    BRAND NAME: Haldol
    GENERIC NAME: Haloperidol ( HAL-oh-PER-i-dol )
    CLASS: Antipsychotic/Schizophrenia (Jesus Christ!)
    COMMON USE: Are you selling this on the street or something? How did you even get it? Did you tell your psychiatrist you hear voices or something? Well, hear this: If you want me to keep paying for your COBRA so you can pay this shrink, you need to get a job. How could you even trust a doctor like this? Who the hell is this guy? I told you to come home to New Jersey, don’t go to a shrink in the West Village. Your mother and I are right by the university. The doctors there are just fine and they’re half the price. You know, Howard asked me about you the other day and I accidentally told him you were taking this Haldol drug. It’s embarrassing to me. None of his kids take anything like this and Jenny’s dyslexic.
    SIDE EFFECTS: It’s probably too bad I was never prescribed these pick-me-ups when I was abusing my gay, schizophrenic children. I was probably too busy heaving alarm clocks at your head to indulge in a hoity-toity, West Village, $350-a-minute shoulder to cry on! And I turned out terribly, didn’t I?! Becoming the youngest partner at my firm! Buying a six-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath in Fort Lee! Twenty-six years married to the same woman and three Carnival Cruises together! Yeah, I’m a really awful person.
    IN CASE OF OVERDOSE: Don’t tell your mother.

MY NEPHEW HAS SOME QUESTIONS
    ME: I need you to buckle up back there, buddy.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: I just do.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: Because I care about you.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: Because you’re my sister’s son. And I care about her.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: Because I just do.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: Because, I guess, when I was born, she was three years old, and like any younger sibling I put her on a pedestal.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: I probably idealized her, which is strange considering your mom was not very nice to me.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: She was an only child and when I came along she was forced to share everything.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: We both had needs and I think it was difficult for our parents to satisfy us both.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: Because needs are so ephemeral. I think it was Maslow who said, “It’s a rare and difficult psychological achievement to know what we want.”
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: Because he was writing at a time when social psychology was bending toward humanism and self-actualization.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: Because there was this trend in post-Freudian behavior study that was vastly underexamined in Western psychology.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: Because the world was still sorting everything out. Well, not the whole world. The East, in its way, had already found answers.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: Because their societies were more fixed.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: Probably because of the Mongols. They unified these huge swaths of cultures by force.
    MY NEPHEW: Why?
    ME: I guess they thought that amassing land was