A brain-damaged man residing in an assisted living facility has a battle of wits with the smartest man in the world...

The smartest man in the world was in Reno and I got to go see him. Because I was by the phone in the kitchen when HAPPY 101.2 had this contest, and because one of the staff people had the radio on, and the phone was unlocked; and so I called and answered their Skull Buster Question. They were giving people one week to figure it out, but it seemed to me like there was only one answer it could be, and I was right. But they got amazed when I called them so quick. Too bad the contest wasn't you got took to Hawaii or something but it was something at least, and the only thing I ever won that I know about.

And what that was, was that I got to go ask this man one question when he came to the Pioneer Events Center to talk about the universe and everything, and about his book, called I AM THE SMARTEST MAN IN THE WORLD, HA HA or some crap. And I got to see him for free instead of it costing the $35, which I think is way too much money to watch some guy just talk.

It must be he can prove it (like if he did better on tests than anybody ever or went all through school when he was still a baby...) or by now somebody would of said "Hey, you liar!", so I guess he really is all super high-function like he says. And with SMITHSONIAN HARVARD III for a name you better be. Those places are smart!

But you got to wonder if the only thing he can do with all this smartness is not to invent 3-D television like they should have by now, or to write orchestras so big and boomy and wonderful they make you feel like you could jump up and fly, like those Beethoven ones Dr. Cheryl burned for me and I play all day, until it makes whoever is on staff yell: "Not again, dammit!", or makes Allen Hill say: "Oh go be the oven..." because Allen thinks Beethoven spells that, and for him this is suppose to be the best joke, but it just ticks me off! Because those Beethovens rock, better than anything, and all they make that dippy Allen Hill do is wave a pencil around to be funny!

But all it seems like this Big Famous Brain can do is to write some question-answering thing for those PARADE magazines they put in the Reno Gazette Journal on Sunday, where he answers mostly questions you can't prove, like about if God wears shoes or if somebody's pet turtle ever dreams.

I use to like those PARADES after they found out I could learn reading, and put me in Dr. Paul's class, but after a while I didn't and now I like Reader' Digest which has so much in it you can go on one all day (so it's lots better!) with funny jokes they stick in all over, and wisdoms from Henry Ford who invented the car or that airplane guy who discovered France; and not so many ugly weird adds for stuff like MIRACLE-TRUSS HERNIA BELT or that clock with 12 Classic Hot Rods on it that goes "VROOOOOM" every time it's an hour and looks boss and is only $14.99, but it turns out to be junk when you get it. Or Hummel Figurings, which are these ooey-gooey little animal and kids like bums with patches on them and too-big eyes, and a bunch of other creepy junk you might see in some Old Grannie Nick-Nack Heaven...

But you knew Dorrie would go nuts over something that sucks so bad. She found a stamp and I helped her fill out the thing and she sent for them, all ten of them the same one- of that baby elephant playing in the wading pool and squirting water out his trunk with a beach ball up on top of what's suppose to be the water ......... Until that one counsellor What's-His-Name who didn't work there very long had this huge fit and yelled "Do you have any idea how much that would COST?!?" and made her send them back.

Cheryl said maybe one of us should go with Nick (that's me) to the contest thing, but Dr. Laszlo told her Nicholas (that's me too) is our star pupil and he will be fine. But first he took the man and woman from the radio station place to the side and whispered at them, and their faces got all mopey and one of them said loud: "Oh great! We can't stick him in the still for publicity; I told you we should of let my friend win it! And what are they pulling making us do this geeky contest like a damn math problem? It should have been something that somebody NORMAL could give a crap about!"

We went there, and it was a big deal with lunch first at the Red Lobster, and a real limosine with a guy who won't let you open your own door but he does, which he says is how they do it down in Protocol where he came from. And Pasqual was shy and pretended he doesn't eat so I ate with just the two DJ's...

They were making fun of my pants and the pompom on my hat and that I asked for Pop Tarts at the Red Lobster (but they said I could have anything I want!). And they kept calling me "Champ" and "Ace". Maybe somebody like Dorrie wouldn't notice and would just be glad for the attention and to get out of the home for a while and do stuff. But when you sorta remember how you used to be treated different then it's bad.

But you know it might not of been about me. They kind of act like that about everything, and yelled at that table-cleaner guy like you wouldn't treat a cockroach. They act like they are some big movie stars or something just because they talk and laugh real phony like jerks between the songs on that boring "soft hits" station Cheryl likes to put on. But if nobody a hundred miles away ever heard of them it's not like they're famous. Not like they think they are. But the girl one, Kandi, was a total hot babe just like her voice on the radio, so too bad she was just as mean and big-ego acting as that other one Lance...

They get most of the shrimp cocktail off my shirt and then we go watch Smithsonian Harvard give his talk. He is very boring and everybody but me is all dressed up because its this charity for this Inactive Science Museum they want to stick downtown to make people come to Reno and push buttons to make all the different little atom dealies light up and see food go through people instead of playing cards with some Indians over in California like they do too much now...

And when we get to the Events Center I think: “What the hell am I doing here?" Because Quantum Leap is on the Sci-Fi channel and it's one of my favorites where he goes back to Noah's Ark; but at the end it's all just a dream he is having, because the man Sam went into had a fever so bad it scared all his friends on that raft made out of junk, who were all Mexicans from Cuba like him who liked baseball and had moustaches and wanted freedom.

I look through the book by the guy that they gave me, and what do you know? It really is called I AM THE SMARTEST MAN IN THE WORLD, HA HA!

And it's a crappy book, and it gave me this feeling... A feeling like I could of wrote a better book if things had went different for me. Like on Quantum Leap, how one thing changes and it changes everything. Maybe this bunch wouldn't think mine was better but to me it would be, because of being fun to read and having a story.

So my whole prize-thing was turning out to be a drag, and I was getting P.O.'d at all his bragging, and all these people here, and how he kept going "How you say..." like he was joking he was some foreigner when he isn't, and knows darn well how you say it, whatever it was he said after he said how-you-say...

So finally he went: "You can ask me your questions now, but this first one is from our, how you say..... local contest winner. Let's get this one out of the way, shall we?" And then I knew I was really going to do it, that thing I thought of, and not chicken out!

When that manager guy asked me what my question was gonna be I told him I wanted to know what would happen if two black holes hit head-on going real fast. Would they just gloop together into one big one? Or would the crash and them being even heavier from going so fast bust them up and dump out all the mooshed up planets and junk?

He liked this Question; and Lance the DJ did too, back in the restaurant, when he said, "That is a very smart question for a retarded guy"; and I said I am not retarded but had a head accident, and now some of it in there doesn't work so good but some of it works a whole lot better. It's a doctor thing with one of those expensive names: Trauma Induced Savancy.

And Kandi said is this what that Forrest Gump had? But I warned them don't even get me started on that stupid movie! Nobody could have all those things happen to them like that, being everywhere something from history ever happened and meeting everybody famous from just luck! That would be like tossing a coin a jillion times and having heads always come up; when the honest truth is it is mostly just boring being dumb, like how they don't let you drive. And I remember I got myself so worked up over how crazy that crazy movie was when we watched it that Dr. Josie made me leave the day room, so I still don't know how it ended. She said I was scaring Timmy, but Timmy gets scared of the ice cream truck!

And Dr. Josie said this movie was like it was because it was a fable. But fables have animals in them, and that stupid Gump with his stupid haircut didn't even have a dog, which you know will be the very first thing I get when I move out and into to a normal-people's apartment like I used to have; and that they might let me go do after I finish a few more classes about how not to burn down your house and to dial 911 when you do...

But my question about those gravity holes was just what I told people I was going to ask him, and it really is a thing I want to find out some day, but not now. So I did what I learned to do back when I use to call talk radio and make farty noises at the guy if he was a big-mouth jerk, until Dr. Laszlo put the lock on the kitchen phone. Because the radio is sneaky and only wants your question if it makes the guy whose show it is look good when he answers it. If you tell them "I want to make farty noises" they won't let you get on there. I sure found that out! I argued at the station manager guy about what it says in my I'M A CITIZEN TOO book. But he said, "Free speech isn't noises, only speech, and this is our radio station, with a license from the KFC and costing us money to run, so you can go to the park and get up on a box and make all the farty noises you want..." . Some Freedom!

So after this I figured out to make my voice different and tell them I wanted to ramify the Federal Augmented Surplus Deficit, and they put me right on. And then I'd go: "Hey Rush! P-P-PPPTTHHHHHT-T-T-TT!!!"

Anyway, so I asked this Smartest Man In The World...

Okay, maybe it was rude, and maybe I deserved to get grounded like I did when I got home, but he was such an asshole! I mean anybody who goes around with one of those things on his head when he ain't graduating from school or someplace is just asking for it! And also the way he was coming on to Kandi Kayne before his talk, with that ugly not-there look in his eyes, and muttering smutty stuff to her in Roman (even I know what 'puta' means)- what a dirty creep! Because Kandi isn't really so bad, and I am starting to think maybe she just has to act that way for her job, it's what those listener-people out there want, all snotty and tough. Like they think this is ATTITUDE and how to be cool. But I think she got stuck that way from doing it so much and now she believes it herself, so she's a bitch when she don't got to be.

And so the question I asked him, I said it all deep and serious like some big-shot professor, going like: "What I want to know is something that was wondered since the first caveman looked up at the stars, and all the philosophists and religions and wizards and everything, because it's this big huge puzzle that nobody anywhere ever answered yet, and everything really gets down to this..."

That part made him get all hyper, like a dog does when he sees you are going to throw the stick! He even started jerking his head around like a dog. He went: "Yes?! Yes?! The question?! The question?!!"

And I said, "Okay, well the question is..... ARE YOU SO FULL OF SHIT BECAUSE YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE, OR ARE YOU AN ASSHOLE BECAUSE YOU'RE SO FULL OF SHIT?!!"

But Smithsonian Harvard III was not an asshole or any other part of a person! Because when I said that he started to get all huffy and how-dare-you for a second, but then my question put its roots in his brain! It was a logic-loop thing for sure, and then he was shaking and rattling and shot out sparks until he blew up, and guess what??? HE WAS A COMPUTER BRAIN ROBOT GUY!

He made a few last screechy “Urk! Glipp! Blunk!!” noises and his head was a smoky caved-in wreck that had one eyeball boinging up and down on the end of a spring! And everybody was going spastic and yelling like they were scared, but not even sure what they were scared of, or what to do...

And then a bunch of little bald men in long white scientist coats, all with these big bushy moustaches and big thick round glasses came running out from behind the curtains yelling, "Ark Mine Got! The Mark One, he is ruined!!"

Well we still had the limosine for four more hours, and now the DJ's thought I was pretty cool after all after that; so we decided to go over to Virginia. And halfway up Geiger Grade they told me to stop bothering the driver with making him open and shut that neat inside window, and so then we all got quiet for a while...

Then I said it was weird how the guy blew up like that. But Lance Boyle said, "Gee, I don't know. I thought he handled it pretty calm. But it was perfect and hilarious how you did that! He was a real pompish jerk!"

I said, "What do you mean he handled it?! He was a damn robot and his head exploded!!!!"

"You got a freaky sense of humor there, Chief!" said Lance. And I could see he really meant it. Like all he saw was that the robot basterd just sighed and made a tired face at me, and then asked if anybody had any REAL questions.

And okay, maybe. Because that's what those funny scientists kept telling us over and over really happened, when they were making us look at that whirley thing and repeat everything they said. And they talked all sweet and loving to us like they were everybody-there's daddy, and seemed smart and like they were running things, so they should know. And it did make everybody calm down and stop freaking out about his head blowing up, so we could all stand around and talk to him, eating celery and cheese and sour cream Triskets and drinking wine in plastic cups after the little Germans screwed his new head on and got it talking right and not so buzzy and made him stop yelling stuff like "R.-A.-G.-G.-M.-O.-P.-P.-mine-ears-have-been-blinded-by-the-smell-of-it!!" while we had our nap.

When we got to Virginia City (which is this whole town they built to look like the Gold Rush Gulch Casino), Lance and Kandi told me: "Surprise! Today is the day they have the turkey races here every year! And you friend are gonna love this!"

And it's a dumb thing to ever try to race because those turkeys don't want to run, or not in a straight line or against each other, so all these hairy fat men like pretend-farmers with corn cob pipes stuck in their beat up hats chased them down the track with those paper blowers that curl out and make a funny tweetilling sound! Those turkeys really hated this, maybe they thought it was snakes flapping at them and so they ran, and the fake hillbillies ran and tooted their party-blowers at them, and one of them kept slipping and falling down in the mud!

And the whole stupid deal was so weird and goofy and useless that I laughed until that thing happened with my nose...