Brillstein is Dead
By Brandon Moglen

It has been 3 weeks, and I am still trying to grapple with Eli Brillstein’s death. I was present at the embalming, and at his daughter’s request, brought the Pine Sol, but few of us could think of anything but our pain.

Brillstein was constantly obsessing over his funeral plans, and once told me, "I much prefer embalming to a typical burial, and both to Mrs. Brillstein’s corned beef hash." In the end, he donated all his organs to Yale Medical School, which returned them when the foot pedals didn’t function properly.

I can still see him with his light brown loafers. Always preoccupied with the great questions of the universe, he often forgot to remove the shoehorns. I can still see him with his light brown loafers. Always preoccupied with the great questions of the universe, he often forgot to remove the shoehorns. I reminded him once at a rhinoplasty convention at Johns Hopkins, and he smiled generously and said, "Let those that question my theories know that at least I suffered for them." Three days later he was committed to Bellevue for doing a sudden triple backflip during a conversation with Churchill.

When he was dismissed from the faculty of Columbia University for his controversy with the then head of the school, Joseph Pulitzer, he waited for the renowned journalist with a slide rule and smacked him until he ran for cover in a mosque. (The two men had a bitter public disagreement over whether a door was designed to let people in, or to allow people to leave.)

Brillstein had always hoped to die a quiet death. "Like my brother Peter, while letting nature take its course." (Peter had died in a restroom after a meal of breaded prunes and an ox.)

Who would have thought that while Brillstein was at a hernia convention observing a workshop on power lifting, a barbell would slip and bounce off his head? The blow caused massive shock and Brillstein expired with a large grin. His last, insightful words were, "No dairy for me, I’m riding bareback these days."

Finally, another book on My Lai. This one in iambic pentameter. Brillstein had always been obsessed with the concept of life after death, and concluded heaven only really existed if you could get a time-share in a cumulus cloud.

Communism was for him merely a reaction against societal norms, a position he would impress upon his friends, just before yanking up their underwear as high as he could. It’s easy to criticize his position on Stalin at first, but one must consider his own philosophical writings. He had rejected contemporary ontology, and insisted that man existed before infinity, but without many frequent flier miles. He differentiated between wisdom and Wisdom, but forgot which one belonged to the owl. Human freedom for Brillstein consisted of being aware of the absurdity of life. "God is humble," he was fond of saying, "now if we can only get man to shop at Mervyn’s."

Ultimate truth, reasoned Brillstein, could only be achieved on solar eclipses, and even then it required the aid of hair extensions. Brillstein was constantly challenging himself, and often he would tap himself on the shoulder and then quickly run around to the other side when he wasn’t looking. "Man," according to Brillstein, was not to be understood, but to remain an eternal mystery, not unlike the ingredients that give snack foods their shelf life.

His term for life process was "giltenverd" loosely translated as "True guilt" and suggested that even if man could have his cake and eat it too, he would keep a receipt. After much intellectual reflection, he became convinced that he didn’t exist, his friends didn’t exist, and the only thing he could be sure of was he hadn’t gotten laid in years.

Persecuted after giving a lecture on the merits of a life without purpose, he fled to Russia. Everywhere Brillstein went in Moscow, people rallied to help him, awed by his reputation. On the run, he found enough time to write "Infinity, The Cosmos, and Ed McMahon," and his delightfully lighter treatise, "101 Romantic Ideas for People in Hiding."

After the war, he settled in the French Riviera, and remained there until his death. His last few years were spent taking long walks on the beach, where he was fond of saying, "Wow, look at the tits on her."

In his later years, he donated to many causes, and during the floods in Honduras, no one went without neckties. A philanthropist to the end, he insisted that his ashes be donated to the Salvation Army. Brillstein will be missed. «

Brandon Moglen, an author, comedian, and journalist, puts the THuNDeR in CHoCoLaTe THuNDeR. He is this little wreck's first official contributor.