John Steinbeck's Head

A disembodied head floating in a jar at the Head Museum of the year 3000, John Steinbeck's Head is what remains of the Nobel-winning novelist, preserved centuries past his natural lifespan. He shows up among the other bottled luminaries, gruff and unimpressed, a serious literary man stuck as a punchline in a candy-colored future.

The joke is the mismatch: Steinbeck, chronicler of dust and hardship, reduced to bobbing in a jar next to novelty celebrities. David Herman gives the voice a flat, weary gravity that plays against the absurdity rather than into it, so the gag lands harder for being delivered completely straight.