1970-2000    THROOP ROEBLING     R.I.P.

Eyeshot Executes Throop Roebling
for Imprecise Description

Just before shuffling off to forever roam the Ein Sof, Throop Roebling sincerely expressed that he would like to be more generous toward women to whom he is less attracted. He will not have the opportunity on this earth, however. Executed by Eyeshot yesterday just after the Yankees took Game 2, Throop (a former Mets fan) had been a figment, a ghost, and now he is even more so. He was totally damnable to hell for preferring the cheap laugh over niceness, exaggerrated detail over sensitivity. He has been killed, very quietly, by his preferred mode of execution: tickled with soft/long feathers while passages were read from his childhood copy of "The Big Book of Jokes & Riddles" as his veins were opened and centipedes sweating little beads of venom were coaxed inside.

It went down like this . . . Eyeshot received a transmission from the United Nations. It stated that the description of Colleen Werthmann's reading at McSweeney's Big Night (held september-something in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn) had been negative. The U.N representative "infer[red] from the mostly negative description of the reading that Ms. Werthmann did not live up to your standards."

The late Throop Roebling, however, would like it to be widely known that, before being executed, he said he "liked Colleen Werthmann's story and laughed a lot." In fact, he said, "I really didn't intend to be a meany. Any negativity was just my lack of control. Sorry if giving a shit about the sensitivities of an unknown U.N. representative got in the way of my descriptive furies on a bender . . .  "

Throop Roebling further defended himself, saying that "she really was psychotically intense. It helped the story, especially following Mr. Bradford's show-stopping opening theatrics. Hendrix always closed the show for a reason, right? And she really was in red leather pants, and like from where I stood -- way in the back -- she actually looked a lot like Jim Carrey (for what it's worth: Zadie Smith looked like Terence Trent D'Arby)."

Mr. Roebling also had a chance to see Colleen Werthmann at a Neal Pollack reading in midtown a few days later. He said, "she seemed much more casual." Throop apparently was surprised that Ms. Werthmann was acting at the Galapagos event, especially since it turns out she's actually an accomplished actor appearing on a popular italianate weekly on HBO . . .

In fact, Throop's dying words (said through a foaming grimace brought on by a two-pronged cascade of giggles and centipede toxins) were a real nice intonation of sincere-seeming apology: "Any negative inference the U.N representative might have like picked up on might have had something to do with me using the phrase she tried her hardest to use pell-mell and padded and whatever . . . But she did stress those words (and they were all perfectly selected for the proper McSweeney's gloss), it was all like part of the act, the funny overblowness, like Mr. Pollack, like all of it. She did a great job. Everybody laughed. Me too. Shit, I would have collapsed if I had to read in front of that many people." Mr. Roebling's nervous system then caved-in. And although the preceding apologetic phrases were his last words, they came too late to compel the administration of an anti-venom . . . Although the Eyeshot Executioners whispered as sweetly as possible into Throop's ears, it was too late to revive him with the two syllables he'd been muttering to himself, as a sort of affirmative mantra, ever since the McSweeney's event:

(1) Zay
(2) Dee