The Wit’s Guide to Elevators

Or, all the way up to the roof

Courtney Barnett and a sad alpaca in the excellent video for Elevator Operator

Whoa hey, thanks for holding the door! I mean, assuming you were pushing the doors-open button and not the doors-closed button, haha. Ever wondered what to say in awkward conversations like this one? Why not point out that the fundamental duality of the elevator is captured by the two nouns it most frequently modifies? If you’re delivering an elevator pitch, it’s the tightest, fastest, and most compelling version of your story. If you’re playing elevator music, it’s the slowest, dullest and least compelling version of your song. Hinky, eh? Wow, look, we’re already at my floor.

“We’re all one beat away from becoming elevator music.”
—Don DeLillo

Groucho Marx’s daughter fell in love with a man she met in an elevator, and her father found this location significant. “Was the elevator going up at the time, or down?,” he asked her in a letter. “This is very important, for going down in an elevator one always has that sinking feeling and for all I know you may have this confused with love. If you were going up, it is clearly a case of love at first sight and it also proves that he is a rising young man.”

“If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the up button.”
― Sam Levenson

The elevator is a rare and thus powerful metaphor for intelligence. In awe of Stanley Kubrick, Michael Kerr observed that “most writers are manic-depressives, while movie directors are like generals, outward bound, out there and putting it out there, full of pep, talking story, brainstorming, performing schedules, highly conceptual, totally practical. This is compounded with Stanley by what I would have to call his intellectual fearlessness. His elevator goes all the way up to the roof.”

“Every time I get in an elevator, the operator says the same thing to me: ‘Basement?’”
― Rodney Dangerfield

Though it travels in a straight line, in a roundabout way the elevator is responsible for the emoticon. Here’s the story from Gretchen McCulloch’s essential 2019 linguistics book Because Internet: In 1982, a bunch of nerds on the Carnegie Mellon University computer network began joking about the physics of an elevator in free fall. What would happen if there were a drop of mercury and a lit candle in such an elevator, someone asked. To which another user responded, “WARNING! Because of a recent physics experiment, the leftmost elevator has been contaminated with mercury. There is also some slight fire damage. Decontamination should be complete by 08:00 Friday.” 

And then normies logged on and started to worry that there was actually a problem in what they then called reality and what we now refer to as the meatspace. To prevent anything online from ever being misinterpreted again, computer scientist Scott Fahlman proposed 

that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use

:-(

“And I thought, ‘Holy shit, if I can write like this and get away with it, why should I keep trying to write like the New York Times?’ It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

And then consider the importance of the elevator in the early writing life of John Cheever, before he drowned in scotch and repressed sexuality. He lived in a New York City apartment building with his wife and young daughter and would get on the elevator to go to work every morning with all the other 9-to-5ers. 

All these grey-suited men got off on the ground floor, naturally, but Cheever “would proceed all the way down to a storage room in the basement, where he’d doff his suit and write in his boxers until noon, then dress again and ascend for lunch.”

“Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator.”
― Daniel Handler

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Hey, here are some things for paying subscribers!

ReccoMention 

Did you know that highfalutin (and presumably also lowfalutin) elevator operators have been known to declare themselves members of the Vertical Transportation Corps? This fact is contained within A Dictionary of Euphemisms & Other Doubletalk, this week’s paid subscriber bonus issue.

Riposte Card 

Next week is June, and I’m excited to share the artist I’ve recruited to draw next month’s Riposte Card for my founding subscribers. But I remain excited about this month’s installment by Gwendolyn Le Cunff. So much excitement!

Riposte Card No. 15: Mortal meringues!

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Quote Vote

“The space elevator will be built about 50 years after everyone stops laughing.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

You guys, I’ve recently seen a bunch of terrific bumper stickers in the last few weeks and I think there’s something there. You think?

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Get Wit Quick No. 256  studiously avoided mentioning the Aerosmith song Love in an Elevator, though clearly there’s enough subtext and nuance in that one ballad to launch a separate newsletter. :-) Also, Douglas Adams’ sentient elevators, who quickly become depressed and sulk in the basement. My book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting can hold the attention of one person or 500 pounds. Press the  ❤️ button to shoot the elevator through the roof and meet the Vermicious Knids.