RANDOLPH AIR FORCE BASE, Texas – In a desperate bid to retain officers, the Air Force has commissioned comedian Jerry Seinfeld as a major general who will lead the Air Force Personnel Center (AFPC), sources confirmed today.

Seinfeld, world-renowned for his standup comedy, television and movie success, was appointed during a moving ceremony held at The Improv, a comedy club in Los Angeles with absolutely no tie to Air Force history.

When asked why he was chosen over career officers, Seinfeld said, “Every time somebody promotes an officer, he’s always the best. ‘Oh, is he good?’ ‘Oh, he’s the best. This guy’s the best.’ But we can’t all be the best. There can’t be this many bests. Someone’s graduating at the bottom of Officer Training School. Where are those officers?”

Sources say that Seinfeld has gotten to work immediately. Soon after he greeted airmen around his office, he looked down at some of their shoes and said, “First, I wanna talk about these low quarters. What kind of shoe is that? Who calls shoes ‘low quarters?’ To me, a low quarter is when you see one lying in the street. It’s a quarter, it’s worth twenty-five cents. You want to pick it up, you’d be twenty-five cents richer. But you don’t know where that quarter’s been, so you stand there for a minute, undecided. And then you get hit by a car. You know what I’m talking about with these shoes.”

As aides furiously took notes, Seinfeld then turned to the Air Force’s acute pilot shortage. He put out a Notice to Airmen comparing leaving the service to a coat that you try to return to a store.

“My friend Maj. Kramer tried to return a rather colorful coat to the store,” he wrote. “But the police arrived and arrested him for pimping. Why would they assume he was a pimp? Just for his coat? Or was it his commission? And that’s just like flying. When you fly, the cops can’t catch you up there, they only catch you on the ground. So stay in, keep flying and keep out of jail!”

Since Seinfeld’s appointment, AFPC’s mission statement has changed to, “One Team, One Puffy Shirt… Making Airmen Laugh and Stay In.”

“I think it’s working,” said Seinfeld. “We’ve given over one hundred puffy shirts to people who stay in, so we don’t need those expensive pilot retention bonuses anymore. Score!”

Later, speaking at his first AFPC commander’s call, a senior enlisted leader asked Seinfeld how he was enjoying military life. Seinfeld walked over to a stage with a brick wall behind it and, as a spotlight switched on, stood in front of a microphone and spoke.

“I gotta tell you,” he said, “I’m really enjoying being a general. You can do whatever you want. For example, if I want a new promotion test, I can have a new promotion test. I can have three tests or four tests or eleven tests. It’s like eating cookies, you can have as many as you want when you’re a general. I joked with the senior NCOs about making another test, and they laughed so hard they had to run out of the building, never to be seen again. I don’t know where they went, maybe to make another test.”

At press time, Seinfeld was seen coaxing his deputy commander Brig. Gen. Costanza out from under his desk, where he’d built a flight simulator.