By Jay Gish
Once you have the opportunity to pick a brain like Mike Devine’s, you don’t want to waste it. When he sat down with me for a quick interview…I wasn’t ready. But I thought quickly…Mike’s a tough looking guy…what if he were a professional a football player, instead of a comedic entertainer?
As you may or may not know, before draft day, potential NFL quarterbacks are issued an I.Q. test, called the Wonderlic. Supposedly, the test tells coaches which young men are smart enough to remember and call plays.
How would Mike Devine respond, in their place? I’d say, “with belligerence.” But you can judge for yourself – by viewing his answers to the following Wonderlic exam questions:
1. Look at the row of numbers below. What number should come next?
8 4 2 1 ½ ¼ ?
T-Bone: A question mark is not a number! This is obviously a trick question because it clearly says ‘the row of NUMBERS below.’ I refuse to answer trick questions!!!
2. Assume the first two statements are true. Is the final one:
1. true 2. false 3. not certain?
The boy plays baseball. All baseball players wear hats. The boy wears a hat.
T-Bone: First of all when you assume you make an ass of you and me. Second, I refuse to answer a sexist question where only boys can play baseball. This isn’t the 50s.
3. Paper sells for 21 cents per pad. What will four pads cost?
T-Bone: answer to #3 above. This isn’t the 50s – paper does not cost $0.21 a page, let alone for an entire pad. Have you been to Kinko’s lately. I refuse to play in your fantasy world.
4. How many of the five pairs of items listed below are exact duplicates?
Nieman, K.M.
Neiman, K.M.
Thomas, G.K.
Thomas, C.K.
Hoff, J.P.
Hoff, J.P.
Pino, L.R.
Pina, L.R.
Warner, T.S.
Wanner, T.S.
T-Bone: Finally a serious topic. No two people can be exact duplicate even if their names suggest otherwise. Factors of nature and nurture must be accounted for and taken into consideration. For instance if K.M. no. 1 was raised by an affluent family where the mother and father were in a loving relationship and K.M. no. 2 was raised in a ghetto where rats ate at his (or her) toes each evening and lead paint peeled from the walls all while K.M.’s single mother had to provide sexual favors to the landlord just to avoid eviction because her three jobs don’t provide enough to care for 5 children from 3 different fathers – 2 of which are in prison and the third dead – where was I? Oh yeah, the third set is an exact duplicate.
5. RESENT RESERVE • Do these words
1. have similar meanings, 2. have contradictory meanings, 3. mean neither the same nor opposite?
T-Bone: That reminds me, I’m beginning to resent this test. I should have followed my initial reservations.
7. A train travels 20 feet in 1/5 second. At this same speed, how many feet will it travel in three seconds?
T-Bone: 300 feet.
8. When rope is selling at $.10 a foot, how many feet can you buy for sixty cents?
T-Bone: For heaven’s sake, is this test taken from the first book ever printed. From the tablets Moses brought down from the mountain? Perhaps translated from hieroglyphics? Maybe if the costs provided were even slightly realistic I’d be able to answer, but even someone of my obvious intelligence can’t be expected to stretch the limits of believability to such an extent.
9. The ninth month of the year is:
1. October 2. January 3. June 4. September 5. May
T-Bone:. . . when you get a call from that girl you had sex with in January.
10. Which number in the following group of numbers represents the smallest amount?
7 8 31 33 2
T-Bone: To stigmatize one number in a group as being smaller and less important than the others is not what I’m about, Jay Gish. Why can’t all the numbers take joy in their individual talents and contributions to the group at large?