I saw Travolta’s face grow wider. Not over time, not for a role, but instantaneously — like my bath toy Godzilla that mushrooms when I dunk it in the water.
No joke. I was at the Hairspray premiere afterparty, just chatting it up with him, and I saw that shit move. Naturally, I said: “John, did your face just gain a millimeter of girth?” He pulled me aside and broke down a little. Said he didn’t know who else to tell. He wanted to tell me that he had been suffering from Travoltosis for 30 years.
Travoltosis?
I didn’t know who that was. But I was enthralled by my friend John’s stupid fat head. When I got home from the party, I went on the internets and Googled “Travoltosis.” As it turns out, John’s condition was the subject of some controversy amongst the medical research community.
In short, the majority of fat face experts believe that John’s face will continue to expand indefinitely until he dies. But there is a rogue fragment of the research community that believes John’s cranial gravity will eventually curtail and could reverse, perhaps resulting in a Big Crunch that could rupture space-time itself.
Interestingly, physicist Steven Hawking has weighed in on the subject, as evidenced by his much-publicized wager with colleague Brian Greene. The famed quadriplegic genius maintains that my friend’s face will soon boast its own event horizon, beyond which light will not escape. I think my other buddy Djimon Hounsou has one of these things already. He is dark. When he goes to night classes, they mark him absent. I heard that somewhere.