INTERVIEWER: Chemical engineer Dr. Chesel Amniotiv is looking resplendent in orange gabardine, with cobalt accents of actual cobalt. Let’s see if we can get a word in… Dr. Amniotiv, who are you wearing this evening?
DR. AMNIOTIV: This is a Bob Mackie lab coat whose hem-to-seam ratio is equal to that of Rackam’s Theory of Saltine Dynamics. Plus big shoulder pads.
INTERVIEWER: And your date this evening is this very handsome, impeccably groomed golden retriever. And she’s wearing?
DR. AMNIOTIV: Also a Lab coat.
INTERVIEWER: What’s your next project?
DR. AMNIOTIV: I’ll be studying the production of artificial enzymes through fermentation in low-gravity environments and serving as guest judge on the next season of The Voice.
INTERVIEWER: Thank you, Dr. Amniotiv. Over here, we see Dr. Fritz Berman, three-time Nobel nominee in physics for his roles in Vector/Victoria, What That Quazar Do? and who could forget his tour-de-force performance in Nano Nanette. Dr. Berman is nominated tonight for advancing techniques in spectroscopy to isolate cancer cells, a role for which he gained thirty pounds. He is turning heads tonight in a teal tuxedo with a thread count so dense it’s bending time and space. Dr. Berman is now simultaneously a seventy-three-year-old scientist and a nineteen-year-old shortstop from Osaka, circa 1963. Dr. Berman, a word…
DR. BERMAN: Exothermic.
INTERVIEWER: Good one, Dr. Berman. This is your fourth Nobel nomination. Are you feeling confident?
DR. BERMAN: I think we are all winners tonight. I mean, Dr. Zorritz, converting charged lepton particles to neutrinos exclusive of Pauli’s exclusion principle? I laughed, I cried, I singed my eyebrows. And my dear, dear friend Dr. Lola Sweeback in Law of Thermodynamics 4: Entropy/Shmentropy. Such a brave performance, breaking herself down to quantum particles. It shattered me. Not as much as it shattered Dr. Sweeback, but still…
INTERVIEWER: Thank you, Dr. Berman. I see from the hullabaloo on the red carpet that it must be, yes, it can only be Dr. Marianna Morgenstein, one of 6.7 scholars nominated for this year’s economics prize, a number that is forecast to decline 2.35 percent by the end of the fiscal evening or after too many mai tais. She is dazzling in a Christian Dior off-the-shoulder gown that, like economic theory, is both dynamic and static. In the exact saffron shade as a 1998 US Series I Savings Bond, this evening’s outfit is an obvious homage to Norway’s Trygve Haavelmo, 1989 prize winner for his clarification of the probability theory foundations of econometrics and, as they say in Norway, “a cewty vert a boowty.” Hello, Dr. Morgenstein.
DR. MORGENSTEIN: Hello, potentially nice to see you.
INTERVIEWER: You’re nominated for demonstrating the complexity of stabilization policy influenced by fluctuating market tendencies, but what everyone is absolutely dying to know: You and the Spanish minister of finance—is romance in the air?
DR. MORGENSTEIN: Carlos is a wonderful friend. We share an affinity for Keynes and amateur cockfighting.
INTERVIEWER: And you also shared glances at Davos. Would it be fair to say his “interest” in you has “compounded” since your time on his yacht in Yemen?
DR. MORGENSTEIN: I’m just happy to be here tonight as we celebrate excellence in economics and look on passively as the global markets slide inexorably into a cataclysmic chaos that will destabilize the very underpinnings of society.
INTERVIEWER: As are we all, Dr. Morgenstein.
[A loud crash, people shriek.]
INTERVIEWER: Dear god. Seems we need to address the elephant in the room—it’s a literal elephant on the red carpet, and the elephant appears to have crushed three literature nominees, though probably no one you’ve ever heard of.
[The elephant trumpets, people scatter everywhere.]
INTERVIEWER: It’s complete bedlam right now, but I can confirm that the elephant is being ridden by President Donald Trump, who is not being nominated this year and was not invited. He is wearing a Vera Wang cummerbund and not much else.
[Trump steers the elephant into more nominees.]
INTERVIEWER: All of this would seem to be a metaphor for something if President Trump understood metaphors. But it is nonetheless true that he is crushing the competition here on the red carpet, including Peace Prize nominee Suu Khin Nwe, who was wearing an ankle-length burgundy gown before it got caught on the elephant’s tusks. Professor Khin Nwe fostered constructive dialogue in Myanmar by promoting emotional-support cobras, but the only thing fostered here this evening is utter panic as the president-piloted pachyderm continues to trample Nobel laureates and fans alike.
[The elephant barrels into a table. Nobel awards fly everywhere, shattering into pieces.]
INTERVIEWER: Fortunately, our Nobel nominee for medicine is on the scene. Dr. Lou-Frédérick Feradeau is now assisting the victims… Correction: Dr. Feradeau is not administering medical care, merely conducting research.
[Trump pulls out paper towel rolls from his cummerbund, and tosses them to victims.]
INTERVIEWER: It’s complete anarchy here on the red carpet, folks. The clothing-compromised commander-in-chief is now standing atop the elephant and shouting something about Mother Teresa and toilets, though it is hard to understand him above all the pandemonium and the horrible sight of his Vera Wang.
