INTRO AMIR: You're watching Zack and Amir! JAKE: Jake and Amir. AMIR: Okay, we don't want to spoonfeed the audience. [Amir and three others are dressed up as a barbershop quartet.] QUARTET: [singing very off-key with each other] Bluuue moooooooon, you saw me standing alo-o-o-o-o-one... [Jake walks in, plugging his ears.] QUARTET: [singing] Without a love... JAKE: Sorry-- just-- shut up. All of you just shut up. AMIR: [The rest have stopped singing] ...of my owwwwwwwwn-- guys, you gotta work through that, okay? We're gonna be heckled a lot harder than that, protesting the kindergartners' graduation tonight... JAKE: You're an asshole. AMIR: Why is it when you pick up a hobby, you're, like, a nice guy, but when I do it, I'm an asshole? JAKE: I have this theory that you're, like, such a bad combination of mean-spirited and dumb that everything you do makes you an asshole. AMIR: Are you just mad at me because I haven't done any work in the last couple days? JAKE: Yes. AMIR: Or is it that I'm so good at singing now-- JAKE: It's the first one. AMIR: --that it makes everything you do seem--... what's the word I'm thinking of? Uh, I-- I'm so good at something, that you are now... JAKE: It's the work one. AMIR: ...bad. JAKE: Bad. Wow, that was the word you were looking for? It was bad? AMIR: 'Cuz if it's the first one-- JAKE: It is. AMIR: --I'll shut up... JAKE: Thank you. AMIR: ...but if it's the second one-- JAKE: I'm so surprised at how many times I've had to tell you it's the first one. AMIR: Okay, fine, new rule, then: if it's the first one, we're good. But if it's the second one, it's the opposite of good. It's, um... LERRENCE: Bad! AMIR: Don't butt in, Lerrence. JAKE: Sorry--... who named you Lerrence? LERRENCE: A fisherman found me when I was nineteen years old. He named me Lerrence, and he raised me. JAKE: You know, by nineteen, you really should've been pretty much raised. LERRENCE: Yeah, but-- JAKE: And named. LERRENCE: That's fair. That's more then fair. AMIR: Okay-- will all jealous parties just vacate the room? Or I'll make-make the boom. [There is a very long pause. Eventually, a member of the quartet dejectedly walks out the door. Jake and the remaining trio stand in silence.] JAKE: Yeah, I think I'm gonna leave too, but, um... I'm not jealous. [The trio has begun singing again.] TRIO: [singing] She's my little deuce coupe! She don't knowww what I got-- little doop-boop-bidda-budda-d'I got... JAKE: Yeah, there's a crowd of people booing you guys outside. TRIO: We know. END [Jake has joined the quartet.] QUARTET: [singing] There she was, just a-walkin' down the street, singin' [very off-key] Doo-wa-diddy-diddy-dum-diddy-doo! Snappin' her fingers... [The self-exiled quartet member watches longingly from outside.]