I have no idea who Cafferty or Hemmer are—nor do I care—and the elephant-playing-soccer thing isn’t exactly outrageously different, but this back-and-forth is positively surreal. I don’t want to say comical, because it would’ve depended in part on how the conversation went, what w/ inflection and all that. But it’s a delightful little dialogue (what some people would call a “transcript”).
CAFFERTY: Officials in Thailand… have organized a soccer game between elephants and inmates. … [The inmates] scored first, but the game ended in a 5-5 tie. One trainer said, quote, “The elephants quite slow, but they try their best.”
HEMMER: That is a classic. That’s in Thailand?
CAFFERTY: That would be in Thailand.
HEMMER: And those elephants are pretty darn good, too.
CAFFERTY: Not too bad.
HEMMER: And a 5-5 tie. Do you brag about that at the office the next day?
CAFFERTY: I don’t know how they…
HEMMER: A tie.
CAFFERTY: They don’t have an office. They go back to the license plate factory.
O’BRIEN: I was going to say, an elephant?
HEMMER: Not the elephants.
CAFFERTY: Oh, the elephants. I don’t know what the elephants brag about the next day.
HEMMER: Thank you, Jack.
(via CNN American Morning Transcript [June 22, 2004])