Why I Shaved My Beard

Boris knows 10,000 ways to kill a man, or so he says. I myself was always skeptical of the 10,000 ways claim. I once listed the number of ways I knew how to kill a man, sort of as a control group, and I only made it up to 237.

The 10,000 figure seemed to me, then, to be highly suspect. I thought it was typical Boris posturing, just what you'd suspect from a two foot long sheep puppet slash accomplished Russian spy who has crashing at my place rent-free for the better part of ten years.

For one thing, I asked him, wasn't 10,000 a bit round for such a fickle number? Surely there must be a great deal of estimating there.

"I rounded down," he said.

For a journalist (or former), a plausible answer that is also an excuse is like a red flag to a bull. Suddenly I had to know. So I indulged him. I asked Boris to list the ways he knew to kill a man. So began one of the most disturbing half hours of my life.

Boris' answers were not just plausible, they were chillingly specific. Where as my written list of man-killers would read like "32. Gun," Boris's were like meticulously plotted novels. They were not limited to weapon, wound and way of escape, but included such nuances as time of day, geographical location, size and body type of the intended victim, and detail after disturbing detail.

It was just too much for me. After it became clear that Boris could easily match or exceed my number, I decided it was perhaps less important to verify Boris' figure than to avoid spending the rest of my life thinking about how he could disfigure my own. That was about a year ago.

I'd since let this incident pass in to an amusing memory of a horrifying moment. Then, last month, I'd been working on planning a conference in San Francisco, and I'd sort of let myself go a bit. I wasn't getting enough sleep, and I barely had enough time to shower.

On the plus side, I had grown a wonderful beard - well past a goatee, full facial, with lovely amber highlights I'd always suspected I had but had never known for sure. Sure, it was arguably a product of my own laziness, but I also saw it as a sort of badge of maturity and pride. No one else at work had managed such a significant beard, that was for sure.

Then, one day, I found Boris just sitting there on the couch, staring at me. Because Boris is a stuffed sheep with no internal means of locomotion, this would otherwise seem perfectly natural, but something about the way he was staring gave me an oddly familiar chill down my spine. I asked him what was on his mind.

"If I put that thing in your paper shredder, it would look like an accident," he said.

So that's why I shaved my beard.

Boris is Back From the Hospital

Boris, my friend the sheep / Russian Spy, just got back from a stay at Albert Einstein Hospital in the Bronx. Boris had sneaked on to a small cargo plane Phibs (penguin / criminal mastermind) was flying out of Islip, but Phibs figured out Boris was aboard, grabbed a parachute and a few kilos of cocaine he'd hidden on board in a new car, set the plane on a crash course for a LIRR train, and jumped out.

Boris, really more of a ground guy, couldn't gain control of the plane, and just before the crash, he hid inside the car. Of course the airbags protected him, but then the car caught fire and Boris was caught inside a car engulfed in flames inside a crashed plane inside a train. Thankfully, Boris remembered the biggest threat to people in a fire is suffocation due to smoke, so he opened a window.

Then a secondary explosion from the plane knocked the train off the tracks and in to the East River, where unfortunately it hit a water taxi full of tourists, all of whom were instantly killed. Now Boris was inside a flaming car inside a plane inside a train on a sinking ship. Of course Boris remembered that he needed to equalize the pressure between the boat and the river he was sinking in to, so he cracked his other window.

The boat, the train, the plane and the car sunk down in to the East River, where unfortunately a submarine was pulling in for Fleet Week and ran straight in to them. After exchanging insurance information with the captain of the vessel, Boris swam to the surface. He found himself within a few blocks of a subway stop. and as he walked that direction, he fell and sprained his ankle.

The hospital let him out the next day. Now he's fine.

Adventures of Boris: Prom Season

It is prom season here in the U.S., and my friend Boris the Sheep/Russian Spy just stumbled home after an adventure last night at a prom on the East Side.

Boris told me it all this started when he discovered that Phibs, the penguin/criminal master-mind, was planning to assassinate the daughter of the Hungarian ambassador. Boris got orders from Moscow to protect the ambassador's daughter (Hungary being an important strategic ally of Russia) and, early in the investigation, he was able to run down a few of Phibs's henchmen at a seedy underground poker joint up in Washington Heights.

Boris showed up there early in the night and was up $6,000 by the time Phibs's henchmen, a bookmaker named Sharky and a gorilla called Abe, had arrived. Abe and Sharky were both 38 hours in to a weekend-long bender and were ready for a blow-out game.

Boris staked himself. There were ten players altogether including Boris, Abe, Sharky, a French bear named Bearie and George the Mystic Rooster, who said he was an episcopal priest up from Kannapolis, N.C. but didn't much look it.

Boris played it safe at first. Over the first six hours, Bearie and George steadily won while Abe and Sharky steadily lost, and Boris stayed about the same, mostly by picking up the blinds when he was on the button. The others lost their stakes one by one. Around 4:00 a.m., Boris caught Bearie going all-in on a badly-timed bluff and cleaned out her roll with just trip 7s. He gave her $100 for a cab ride, and was such a gentleman about it that Bearie left him her number.

Boris, George the Mystic Rooster and the two henchmen were the only ones left in the game. By this time, Boris had befriended Abe and Sharky, and he could tell they were getting frustrated with George. Finally, after Sharky lost three big pots in a row to George and was ready to leave the table, Boris exposed the rooster as a mechanic. Boris had made him after the first hour, of course, but his sense of timing was impeccable. As Sharky and Abe happily kicked the feathers out of George, they offered to take Boris out for a night on the town.


Two hours later, somewhere between Chumley's and Lit, Sharky and Abe revealed that they worked for Phibs and that the assassination was planned for that very night at the U.N. School's prom. Later, at Hiro, Boris slipped a chemical agent in to Sharky's night cap while he was trying to order sushi, left a business card with Abe ((BORIS STOLICH - WOOL IMPORT/EXPORT)) and excused himself for the night.

Late that afternoon, Boris got the call he expected from Abe. Sharky was sick, he said, and Abe needed a second for the assassination. If Boris could take his place, he would be well compensated. Boris agreed, hung up, and immediately made another call.

He met Abe in the Garment District in the late afternoon. It was there he finally learned the details of the plan. Abe had coralled himself a date with a young filly named Gigi and had insisted on bringing his "friend." Once inside, Boris would poison the punchbowl at the U.N. School Prom just as the daughter of the Hungarian ambassador saddled up with her date. Then Abe would take a flop on the card table and scuttle the rest of the punch as she left (Phibs, who Abe called only "The Penguin," wanted to minimize collateral damage to avoid police attention.)

They would smuggle in the poison in a plastic flask to make it through the metal detector. Abe showed Boris the flask. Boris took it, opened it, took a casual sniff of the poisonous agent, closed the flask, and handed it back.

Boris said the plan seemed solid, but asked Abe why he didn't simply poison the punch himself. Abe admitted that he'd seen a picture of the Hungarian ambassador's daughter, Lisa, and she was cute as a button. He simply couldn't bring himself to do the deed.

Abe gave him a meaningful look. Boris would be able to go through with the plan, wouldn't he? Boris assured Abe that he would. Still, the Gorilla said he would feel more comfortable if he could hold on to the flask until the moment Boris had to strike. Of course, Boris said. There was one last detail - Boris would need a date to the U.N. prom. Abe suggested he call that nice bear from the night before. Boris agreed, and gave Bearie a call as they left to catch a cross-town cab.


Boris and Abe, dressed in tuxedos, met their dates outside the U.N. school just as the party inside got underway. Gigi turned out to be a tall girl with long hair, and Bearie looked radiant in a pink dress and large, matching bag. Though Abe was nervous, Boris was the picture of charm. They danced the night away until Lisa, the Hungarian ambassador's daughter, arrived, and she went straight for the punchbowl.

This was the moment of truth. Abe gave Boris the flask and ran interference with Lisa, engaging her in polite conversation while watching Boris out of the corner of his eye. Abe saw Boris pour the contents of the flask in to the punch bowl before releasing Lisa to her fate.

Lisa drank, and Abe immediately made the flop, knocking the card table down and spilling punch everywhere. It was Bearie, pushing past Lisa, who first came to his side. Boris arrived a moment later, apologizing for his "drunk friend" and, along with Bearie, helping Abe and his date outside. There, Abe, racked with guilt, excused himself and went back to his place alone. Later, Boris told me, he had made his own way back to my apartment.

Once Boris finished his story, I was flabergasted. What of Lisa, the beautiful Hungarian ambassador's daughter? I asked him. All of that was under control, he told me. With only one sniff, Boris had identified the poison. His next call had been to a Russian agent to whom he revealed its nature, using a code he himself had developed that made it seem like he was arranging a date.

It was Bearie, pushing past the ambassador's daughter when Abe was distracted by the flop he'd taken on the punchbowl, who had administered the antidote to Lisa, sticking her with a needle concealed in her oversized pink bag and leaving her and the rest of the guests none the wiser. Bearie was the other Russian agent - she had been in on it from the start.

It was an amazing story, I told Boris. I offered to take him to breakfast, but he waved me off. After Abe had excused himself, Boris had taken Gigi and Bearie both out for a night on the town, and they'd ended up at Gigi's place. He would eat later - the two girls had worn him out.

The Origins of Boris

Some of you may wonder what I'm doing awake at this hour. I'm waiting up for Boris, my friend the Russian spy, to get in from the airport.

Boris and I met at my obscure school in Wales, where Boris was charged with covertly monitoring Welsh agriculture. This being Wales, Boris chose to disguise himself as a sheep, which was relatively easy, because Boris is a sheep.

After smuggling himself in to a care package from my mother, Boris and I first met. Boris is about a foot and a half long and fluffy. He has a black face and ears and a friendly smile that makes him very popular with the ladies.

When we first met, Boris didn't speak at all, but one night when I had spent a particularly unaccountable period at the pub, Boris started talking to me.

"Hello," he said, in a thick and (I feel) very plausible Russian accent. "My name is Boris. Have you seen, perhaps, any official agricultural documents hanging around?"

Over the next several weeks, Boris would talk to me whenever I had a little bit to drink. Pretty soon after that, he started talking to me all the time. Soon after that, he started talking to my friends. And by then, of course, he was already hitting on women.

When I left Wales, Boris came with me to school, where he became involved with a Mexican beauty and Zapatista sympathiser, but that's a story for another day.

Women love Boris. The fluffiness, the accent, something about him drives them crazy, even when he's half-dazed with drink and seran wrap. Once I walked through the dining hall at my college with Boris poking his head out of my messenger bag, and no less than four seperate women in a five-minute period came up to him and yelled "Oh! What a cute lamb!" I finally had to tell him, "Boris. Stopping hitting on the pretty girls in the dining hall." He would not listen.

Despite his hard- and fast-living ways, Boris is a good friend to have. There's always vodka in the apartment, I know where to find a good poker game in the city, and I always feel safe because if anyone ever broke in, Boris would just call a hit on him. My only nagging doubt about Boris is that I think he might secretly be Latvian, but don't let it get around.

Tonight, I'm waiting for Boris's flight to get in from Bratislava. All of his missions are confidential, of course, but many involve an amoral, expressionless penguin named Phibs who, coincidentally, also lives in my apartment.

This particular time, I believe Phibs was involved in some sort of kidnapping of a subcontinental princess and the replacing of certain nuclear plans of attack with forged protocols that would mean any nuclear escalation would ultimately destroy walruses around the world. I believe Boris was successful in foiling these plans and rescuing the princess, but I'll know more after he gets back, any moment now.