Bear with me here. The Decemberists (yeah, your mom's favorite new band) and Michael Schur from Parks and Rec (yeah, the only show you watch on 'broadcast,' whatever that means now) have come together to re-enact a scene from Infinite Jest for a Decemberists' video. The music vid uses elements from a Risk-like tennis game described in Infinite Jest called Eschaton, where all the preppy tennis players are stoned and participate in a mockup of geopolitical warfare.
As a lot of commenters on NPR note, the music video of “Calamity Song” is not an exact retelling of the chapter, but nevertheless, longtime Jest fans will probably like some of the obscure names and concepts come to life for a few minutes (just put it on mute, if you must).
Schur wrote a thesis on Infinite Jest in college and so quickly agreed to do the project. He says at NPR:
The Decemberists are my favorite band, and Infinite Jest is my favorite book. This was tantamount to telling me I had just won two simultaneous Powerball lottery jackpots, on my birthday, which was also Christmas.
The sentence structure is a little confusing, but Schur was apparently stoked to do it. See the video below.
