DEPICTIONIST

An NBA fan walks into a bar. He says ouch, because it is a bar and walking into it hurts him, and the whole thing makes for a pretty good gag. But he keeps walking into it, even though it keeps hurting him and the bar doesn’t move or flex or emote; it just stays there and holds its place, its immobility and inevitability a sort of tight, tacit mockery. He continues to walk into it, mostly because he’s always known that inside that bar (which is actually a whole different kind of bar, which is the whole thing!) he can exhale and enjoy his chosen method of having fun in a world that too infrequently affords opportunities for that. And his forehead is bruised and he’s got a splitting headache, but he likes what he likes and he wants what he wants, so he keeps walking until he knocks himself out. The bar never moves; it just waits for him to wake up, dust himself off, patch his wounds and come back to it, because it knows he’s a sucker.

—Dan Devine, painfully funny as usually.