Sibling Ribaldry

As I Understand It™, today is International Siblings Day and the station house sends an overdue shoutout to our favourite brothers from another mother, the Flying Karamazov Brothers®! Blood relations of the long-winded Russian inkspiller Fyodor Dostoevsky or possibly cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, these elite, long-haired, goateed, juggling jokesters from the United Soviet States of Mother Russia have been performing internationally since the 1970s, having become skilled at the art of throwing objects back and forth at each other's heads at a young age, starting with salt shakers around the dining room table as their father slammed vodka shots and mother stewed the fish heads. Born in St. Petersburg, they would later emigrate to St. Petersburg, where they were met by a welcoming horde of Floridians with flaming pick axes. The brothers turned things around in short order, however, grabbing the pick axes and commencing to juggle them to the great delight of the sense-challenged southerners. Their mastery of juggling all manner of household items would soon grow along with their curlicued pony trails, as no item was out of their reach, be it meat cleaver, bread box, bowling pin, tiki torch, Channellock® brand pliers, Fiskar® scissors, Scotch® tape dispensers, fireplace pokers, candle holders, garden shovels, hammers, ukuleles, skillets, screwdrivers, champagne bottles, Rowenta® steam irons and Xavier Hollander® brand vibrating sexual aids. After conquering theater circuits 'round the globe, they enjoyed a turn in the Hollywood spotlight, appearing 'longside famed cunning linguist Michael Douglas in cheese puff movies like The Jewel of the Nile, Romancing the Stone and Shellacking the Shillelagh, and taking a turn in the American sitcomedy The Seinfeld Chronicles. The Karamazovs have opened for centuries old musical acts such as The Who and The Grateful Dead and are said to be open to considering offers to return to the sheds this summer, if only someone would be kind enough to ask. Long live the Flying Karamazov Brothers, namely, the eldest Fyodor, and in succession, Dmitri, Zossima, Alexei, Pavel, Nikita, Maximov, Ivan, Aloyosha, Misha, Rakitin, Vanka, Kuzma, Smerdyakov and, briefly, comedian/cousin Yakoff Smirnoff®.

Rubens, Sandwiched

Celebrating a Deathday™: Masterful Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens took his brushes, pigments and palette thingamajig up to that unfurled canvas in the sky on this day, May 30, 1640. Known for his richly-wrought Baroque overtones and bare-arsed depictions of pale-skinned tub-a-lards, Rubens was inspired by early Renaissance show-offs like Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Caprio, before bringing his own flamboyance to the form. Highly-regarded among European nobility, the Catholic Church and 17th century storage container pickers who fetched a fair shilling for rare finds sold on consignment, Rubens would later see his artistic renown eclipsed by a scandalous second marriage to his voluptuous — which is to say, beefy — 16-year-old niece and, more recently, by the unfortunate cinema hall flagellations of his great, great, great, great, great grand nephew — the impish, public masturbator Paul Rubens, a.k.a., Pee Weeee! Herman. On the other hand, Rubens — the brush stroker, not the other sort — has benefited from his association with another great, great, great, great, great, grand relation, one Peter Paul Halajian of the Peter Paul Candy Company™ — maker of Mounds®, a "Rubenesque" bit of chocolate and coconut if there ever was one. Methinks a lighting of a proper Dutch Masters® cigar is in order — indeed, let’s break the seal on a whole bloody box of Perfectos® for all the Peter Pauls in the pantheon — sins forgiven! — with the exception of botoxed balladeer Peter Paul Cetera, who once proclaimed that karate chopper Ralph Macchio was a man who would fight for our honor, who’d be the hero we were dreaming of and who'd live forever, an unlikely feat for even a man of exemplary skill like Peter Paul Rubens, whose feet were gutted with gout and down he went at age 62. Happy Anni-hearse-ary™, Citizen Dutch Boy.

The F*ck You Looking At?

Halt! Hold it right there, cold-eyed young e-Citizen Defiant™! While I am not unsympathetic to the discomfort you're experiencing at both the southern and northern ports of the gastrointestinal canal, I cannot allow you to display such visible contempt for a uniformed police official in plain sight! On my watch, you are well advised to conduct yourself with proper baby child cheerfulness in your interactions with all elders — frightful aunties, drunken uncles and helmeted, mustachioed peacekeepers — messy toileting business notwithstanding! Turn that bloody frown upside down, young man or mannish young lady, and commence to cooing playfully, kicking your fatty legs and waving your stumpy fingers with enthusiasm, and take some comfort in knowing you'll be having a pleasant go at mummy’s bosom soon enough.

Unfunny business

Celebrating a Deathday™: Former Saturday Night Live® funnyman — and cereal spokesman — Phil Hartman died in his sleep on this day (May 28, 1998), but if you’re thinking there are worse ways to take one’s eternal leave than in the midst of an evening slumber, we should mention that Master Hartman’s was not of the “golden slumbers” variety, as his troubled Hollywood missus put a bullet in his noggin, hastening his exit, stage left. ‘Twas sad business and methinks a misjudgment on the Grim Reaper’s part, for surely there were ex-SNL-ers more deserving of the actor's hook — bleached, brain-breached Victoria Jackson comes immediately to mind. Hartman was a native of Canada whose family moved to the states, where he was art-schooled in his first love, designing album covers for sensitive, fringe-jacketed bands like Poco, America and CSN — a tissue-soft rock ensemble that former Hollies singer Graham Nash was so embarrassed about, he preferred the initialed moniker than having his name on the marquee — before Hartman stretched his creative skills into acting. He enjoyed a lengthy run at SNL — that American institution of only occasional humor, Hartman being a rare bright spot in the pantheon of dim-bulbed lesser-thans to cross its threshold, many graduates of The Second Rate City™, itself infamously unfunny. Hartman later veered into film and commercial work, where he would make his mark as a spokesman for Colon Blow® cereal. High fiber was the rage in the late 1990’s, as gents were forced by their well-meaning mesdames to eat oat bran until it was coming out their ears — not to mention the southernmost port — and if it took 30,000 bowls of oat bran to equal the fiber in one bowl of Colon Blow, then Colon Blow, Colon Blow snack treats and Colon Blow protein shakes it ‘twas! Soon Hartman was sponsoring colonics and such and it seemed his career post SNL was set. Alas, wife number 3, Vicki Jo, later Brynn — whom he had met a decade prior on a blind date arranged by unfunnyman Jon Lovitz — had other, despairing ideas. She took Phil’s life, then her own, leaving the kids to fend for themselves at their bloody aunties, all of which goes to show you that blind dates are scary business — crikey, Hartman’s role in the movie “Blind Date” should have told him that — and I would advise anyone to steer clear of the fakery that a blind date affords, unless you are of the actual, visually-impaired blind variety, which I heartily endorse, especially if you’re capable of “seeing” your partner’s face by running your mitts over his or her lumpy surface. That’s a good trick I never tire of.

Poseur Exposed

Random Memorial Day Memorandum™ to one-time celebrity jailbird and some-time rock ‘n roll front man Scott Weiland: ‘Tis not the uniform that makes the enlisted man, but the actions of the man — or woman — inside it. Foot soldiers, airmen, midshipmen, coast guard and, yes, constabulary wage different battles, but we serve the citizenry all the same. Ours is a uniformed alliance whose bonds of duty and honor are undeniable and unshakeable. You, however, wear the uniform for sport or costume. The red leather necktie, the vinyl trousers with visible male business in front, the loop-dee-loop earnings — all of it reveals fakery at forty paces. You are well-advised to remove the phony baloney cap and military regalia at once! Writhe around on stage shirtless or wrapped in bloody velveteen, for all I care. Strut and squawk like a turkey bird, but not in an unauthorized uniform! Not on a day dedicated to your nation’s elite fighting forces! Not on my watch! (Administrators Note: We're being told that, sadly, Private First Class Weiland took permanent leave on December 3, 2015 at the too-young age of 48. No word whether Weiland was given an officer's burial, but the station house set our flags to half-mast in his honour. RIP, Citizen Not A Soldier.)

Tall Tail

You can lead a 9 ft. tall horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. As I think of it, you can’t make a 9 ft. tall horse do anything he doesn’t want to do. I would not advise mounting a 9 ft. tall horse, not without a saddle the size of a small rowing craft. If you do insist on riding him — which I wouldn't encourage — you’ll need a ladder of some sort, or one of those infernal garden trampolines to launch yourself aboard. It goes without saying, but say it we will: Never look a 9 ft. tall horse, gifted or otherwise, in the gummy choppers. You'll require goodly sustenance — say, carrots the size of a yardstick — to feed the mammoth creature, however, don’t be fooled by his docile nature.

A hungry, 9 ft. tall anything is liable to make a meal out of you. Make a bloody note of it.

Bedwedders

If Memory Swerves™, this weekend marks the 50th Anniversary of an event that shamed not only the bearded and beloved Beatle Brother™ John Lennon, but his put-upon bandmates and all of bloody England. On May 25, 1969, Lennon staged a week-long “bed-in” with his showboating Hawaiian housewife Yoko Ono® — his new wife, truth be well told, as this was their honeymoon — at the Hilton Hotel® in Amsterdam (and another, the week following, at the Queen Elizabeth in Montreal). Intended as a civil protest over one bloody thing or another, the televised “Bed-In For Peace®" was a twist on the “sit-ins” of the era that, alas, was judged a shameful exercise by the citizenry on either side of the pond. However goodly Lenny's intentions, the shame ran deep: He shamed his Auntie Mimi and Uncle George Smith, who raised young John as their own, often suffering for their efforts. He shamed his real mum Julia and dad Alfred, who were, admittedly, shameful characters themselves. He shamed his first wife Cynthia (Powell) Lennon and young son Julian, whom he had shamefully left behind to hook up with the twice-married Ono. He shamed his ex-bandmates Stuart Heathcliffe and Pete West, all of the Quarrymen, the Kinks, the Hollies and every other English band hoping to graduate from the Top of the Pops® to American Blandstand™, with the possible exception of The Pollywoggs™ — John, Paul, George, Zingo and Yours Truly Dooley® on broomstick bass. Lennon shamed his classmates, the faculty and good names of the Dovedale Primary School, Quarry Bank High School and Liverpool College of Art. Crikey, the only one who wasn’t shamed by the incident was the avant-gardener "Yoko Ono" — literally, “one yolk, scrambled” — whom, after posing in the merkined altogether for the cover of “Two Virgins,” appeared to have known no shame. Then again, it all seems rather harmless now. All they were saying was, “give peace a chance,” but all we were thinking was, “give us a break, Len.”

Angel In The Centerfold Chokehold

Celebrating A Deathday™: The original, raven-haired kitten with a whip and/or wire brush — Bettie Mae Page — yes, you may, my darlin', as often as you like — went to the great cathouse in the sky on this day, May 24, 2013. She was 85, which is to say 85-36-63. The pure-as-the-plow-driven-snow, plus-size pin-up was popular in an era when “tasteful, never tawdry” was the photographer’s credo. Unlike the filth found littering the roadsides of the vast and serpentine Misinformation Superhighway™, the girlie posters displayed in the army barracks and dormitories of Ms. Page’s era were neither objectionable nor exploitative. The depiction of fair-skinned milk maidens, smiling winsomely from the pages of True Detective™ magazine, were colorful, playful and always respectful. No nuditity, not on your life, sir! The slight suggestiveness in a model's exposed brassiere strap or faraway look in her eyes was enough to spur the imaginations of the pimply-faced boys and salt-petered military men, who professed unrequited love for Bettie in droves. When she was deemed “The Notorious Bettie Page” 'twas only for her adamant—notorious—refusal to bare so much as the back quarter panel of her gluteum maximus. Bravo, Citizen Sexy Lady! May you rest in peace. A tasteful one piece.

Joan Us, Brother

If Memory Swerves™, on this day in history (May 23, 1431), religious rabble rouser Joan of Arc was captured by Burgundian troops — whoever they bloody were — and delivered to the British, who later burned her at the stake for heresy or something. But that’s old news, everyone makes mistakes and besides, another Joan is in the revisionist history books today! Light a birthday candle for British starlet Joan Collins, born May 23, 1933 in Paddington. As any red-blooded male between the ages of 56 and 102 will attest, Joanie is sex appeal personified — which is to say, she’s a person of sexified appeal! Joan's been turning heads since she first tightened her bustier and took to the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. After heading for Hollywood, Joan appeared in a number of dopey movies in the 50’s and 60’s — “Lady Godiva Rides (Bare Arsed) Again,” “Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys,” blah, blah, blah — as well the usual backlot Western television fare of the era — “The Virginian,” “The South Carolinan” — before her breakout performance as Alexis Colby, first wife of John Cameron Forsythe on the nighttime soap opera “Dynasty,” where she famously wrassled Grecian Maestro Yanni Chryssomallis’s wife Lynda Evans in the fountain out front the mansion. Today, Joan is still making heart pacemakers go pitter patter, whether on stage or via her steamy paperbacks. That’s right, the method starlet followed in the high-heeled footsteps of auteur sister Jackie Collins, penning salacious novels such as “Love & Desire & Hate,” “Scandal” and “Ravenous” — or perhaps those are the names of her perfumes. (Haha!) Married and divorced 4 times, Joanie is now living with husband number five, who's presumably seen the Playboy® pictorial from the 80's that one hopes remains on file at the station house. Happy Day, your ladyship!

Less Misery

Random Memorandum™ to hunchbacked French Canadian novelist, dramatist, poetist and, possibly, ventriloquist Victor-Marie Hugo (pictured): We — and by we, we mean me — count ourselves amongst your fans, yet a question nags: Were you not confident that "Les Misérables" was a work of great magnitude when you submitted the manuscript to the publishing house? Surely you had some notion that this was no mere page-turner to be enjoyed by candlelight. But if you believed the voluminous document to be destined for great things — if you had an inkling that it would live on in perpetuity on stage — why on earth give it such an unwieldy title? What mortal among us would have the capacity to correctly pronounce "Les Misérables" on the first, second or third attempt? Is it “Lay Miserable?” “Lay Misarablay?” “Misarablays?” “Less Miserable?” Bloody hell, methinks Jean Valjean himself would have had trouble with this tongue-twister! Would your art have suffered if you simply entitled it with the proper English translation — “The Miserable One” — and called it a fortnight? Would that have been a criminal act? Or was it all a joke to you, sir? Did you take this joke to your deathbed on this day May 22, 1885? 'Tis with admiration — and some displeasure — on this day that we remember Master Hugo "Montenegro" (of "Notre Dame.")

Rom® Jeans

Today in "Ask an Internet Patrolman™," jelly-haired, denim-bottomed, hard-charging U.S. Centaur Milton "Wilt" Romney weighs in with enthusiasm and with what may eventually become a question: "Love is in the air, Ambassador Dooley! What a many splendored thing love is! I love my country! I love my family! I love the invented prophecy of my magic religion! I love the central tenet that says I can "man up" with multiple wives — adoring Mrs. Romneys all! — conceiving as many strapping boys as my blue-pilled prescription will allow. I love hard-fought tennis on the home court and tall glasses of sun-steeped lemonade afterwards! I love the innocence of a Troy Donahue matinee — Sandra Dee, be still my heart — the boy-next-door appeal of Pat Boone records and the other-wordly prose of L. Ron Hubbard. I love my Utah Jazz, but — strangely enough — not jazz music — too untethered! I'm a car nut, I love the road-tested luxury of a Cadillac. I'm a foodie, I love the endless shrimp at Red Lobster® and the fruit goodness in real Fruit Roll-Ups®. I love to drench State Fair corn dogs with spicy mustard and fellate them hungrily. I love Peaches 'n Cream — not "impeaches," for the love of Brigham Young — Georgia peaches! — toppled with brown sugar, baked and swimming in vanilla iced cream! I love flying first class and collecting the little pilot wings the stews hand out. I love tandem cycling on a bicycle built for two! I love reaching out and helping those less fortunate than I — and asking them for their vote, haha! — and reminding them that God — which is to say, Brigham Young — helps those who help themselves! I love welcoming bilinguals, biracials and non-practicing bisexuals under this big political tent! I love the hustle here in DC — which is why I love the loose, easy fit of my over-the-hip Sedgefield® blue jeans! You might think the Sedgefield brand had disappeared from the blue jean landscape, but you'd be wrong, sir! I am in possession of a warehouse the size of an offshore Bahamian holding company filled with Sedgefield jeans — tags and all — which I purchased in a "beveraged buyout," where we plied the jeanmaker with distilled spirits and got him to sign his life away for a song. (Haha!) All of which brings me — finally! — to my question: I'm considering hiring a team of Amish tailors to do some rudimentary restyling of the jeans — tapering the flair, sewing in the labels — while also enlisting the creative services of advertising chieftain Leo Burnett to introduce the new brand: Rom® Jeans! (And Rom® Jean Shorts!) The slogan: 'Rom® Jeans. They're not just for Mom anymore!' My question, Internet Ambassador Dooley: Do you see an online audience for these high-waisted fashion statements?" Dear Mitch: While your enthusiasm is as curious as your many nicknames, I'm of a mind to "green light" this endeavor — as the equity arsewipes would have it — if for no other reason to avoid your brain seizing up and watching you take your death of a massive stroke, leaving your seven or eight male offspring without a father. In any event, we're dangerously close to exceeding our allotted word count, so I'll ask you to zip up your non-flame retardant Sedgefields, slick back your oil mane  and go about your business with gusto. Jeers™!! Yours Truly, Constable Dooley."

Sunday Best

“This is the day the Lord hath made” — Mum used to say, this being Sunday — “let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Alas, ‘tis a blessing that Mum never suffered all I've seen, for there is no rejoicing on Sundays in the lockup, where the weeks end wreckage — the drunkards and delinquents, the urinators and fornicators — are piled atop one another like so much flotsam and jetsam at Brighton Pier. ‘Tis a wonder these jailed sods know their own names, having awok from a night of polluted misdeeds and back alley revelry to discover they’ve lost their wallets, along with their bloody decency. Sunday is also the day that the suit-and-tied defilers — spillers of the community — drag their deceitful arses en masse to mass, quivering in the church pews alongside their shamed spouses, begging forgiveness for their unholy ways — the chat room wankery and anonymous sexting of their genitalia. Crikey, Mum, if this is the day the Lord hath made, be thankful He or She made six others, for the sinfulness that I once witnessed as a uniformed foot soldier has only escalated in my online patrolling capacity. Perhaps Monday will hold greater promise.

Just the Five Of Us

Ode to polygamist patriarch Kody Brown and his stable of child-bearing cohabitants, the Sister Wives: Love is patient, love is kind, love is plural, love is blind. Love is not easily angered, though it keeps a detailed record of wrong-doing and retaliates in goodly measure. Love never fails to find fault. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in group fore — or rather four — play and costumed role reversing. Love is self-seeking, but never self-pleasuring, not to the best of anyone’s knowledge. Love is boastful, bottomless and sensibly-heeled. Love shares, love swaps. Love competes, confronts and confounds. Love climaxes in multiples of four, daily.

O Captain! My Captain! (Apparently Not Her Captain!)

Halt! Hold it right there, helmet-haired Citizen Songbird-of-the-Seventies™ Antoinette “Tony” Tennille! I will not sit idly — side-saddledly — by and allow you to sully the good name of the late, sailor-hatted melody maestro Daryl Dragon® whilst you make your way from one Kraft® service table to the next, eating every Toaster Strudel® in sight as the daytime television stylists tend to your trademarked mane. Madam, with all manner of respect due, methinks you've forgotten upon which side your Kings Hawaiian® bread is buttered. The Hostess® cupcake-noshing hostesses on the talk show circuitry may delight in your tawdry tales of muskrat lovemaking, or lack thereof, but I’m not bloody having it! Nor will the libeled ivory tickler's legion of fans! Say all you want about the good Citizen Seamen's testosteroid deficiencies, I have it on some authority that the esteemed Captain capably delivered on your pleas to "Give it to me one more time" for the entirety of your near 40 years as man and strife and if his output at this stage in the game isn’t exactly sire-worthy, so bloody be it! Methinks you ought buy — forgive me, “adopt” — a bloody dog or kitty cat and get thy snuggle on without taking your disco pajamas off. Leave the deceased Daryl's Dragon out of it, curiously coiffured madam!

Iron Maiden

If Memory Swerves™, twas on this day in vehicular history (May 17, 1991), that UK design engineer Trevor Whitehouse patented the infamous London Wheel Clamp®. Also called the "Standing Hampton" — named after the Sharpie® rendered pudstaff and nutsack graffiti often adorning its facing — the wheel clamp was a menace to motorists but a hero to the traffic patrolling community. Few things give a properly uniformed meter maiden greater pleasure than “clamping down” on a ticket scofflaw’s deadbeat ways and Whitehouse's design proved itself one of the more ingenious crime deterrents of all time, secondary only to the electric chair, or possibly the taser gun, handgun, hand grenade, handcuff, nunchuck, night stick, cricket bat, cattle prod, switchblade knife, steak knife, slingblade, bow and arrow or iron bloody maiden. All proper instruments of weaponry and enforcement!

Nuts to you, Mister PayDay Nut Roll Candy Architect

Celebrating a Deathday™ (May 16, 2019.) The station house salutes the life and works of

I. M. Pay, the legendary architect responsible for such structures as the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, the Louvred® Glass Pyramid at a Paris Museum whose name escapes us, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Old Flames in Cleveland or Cincinnati, the Beanlike Object in Chicago's Grande Park and the Milwaukee Arena. I. M. Pay was also known for his teenage invention of a nutroll he could take on class trips without loose peanuts soiling his trousers. His salty sweet creation was "rolled out" in the '30s as the PayDay® bar, enjoying popularity to this day. Indeed, he himself credited it with being his fondest personal triump. "I.M. most proud of nut-rolled candy bar that bear my name," the salty nut lover said back in 2000. Pay died at age 102 in Manhattan, where one imagines you can find his buildings and a plentitude of his namesake

PayDay bars in nearby bodegas. Happy Anni-hearse-ary™, citizen.

Beaver, Cleavered

Celebrating a Deathday™: The original "beaver cleaver," Ward Cleaver of Mayfield, USA took his final curtain call on May 16, 1982. He was 73. Born the son of a farmer in Shaker Heights — Iowa? Tennessee? — Cleaver was a theology student, fraternity lad and aspiring theater actor at the University of Chattanooga when he met Barbara June Billingsley, pom-pom squadron leader for the Chattanooga “Choo-Choos.” The two would marry and settle in Mayfield — Ohio? Kentucky? — with their two boys, Wally and Gerald “Beaver” Cleaver. As it happened, the family made the acquaintance of television funnyman Allen Funt whilst he was filming “Candid Camera” at a local donut shop. Ward and Barbara June consented to appear in the ground-breaking reality TV show, “Leave it to Beaver,” after Funt was taken in by their wholesome, humorous, interactions, and assured them that nothing would strengthen the family bond like having cameras installed in every room in the home. Unlike other fathers of the day who drank, smoke and cursed their rotten, no-account kids who'd never amount to anything — we’re talking to you, Fred Rutherford — the adored and pompadoured Ward Cleaver was a gentle man who delighted in "fudge packing" with his boys and was only occasionally “hard on the beaver,” as Barbara June would scold him from across the room in her detached marital twin bed. Cleaver catapulted his portrayal of a real-life suburban breadwinner into fictional roles as the necktie-wearing dad in popular shows such as “Father Knows Reasonably Well,” “Make Room for Daddy's Alcholic Brother," "The Donna Reed Show," starring Hope Lange, and "My Three Sons And Their Deranged Uncle William Demarest." Sadly, Cleaver's passing prevented his appearance with the family, alongside Mayfield scoundrels Eddie Haskell and Lumpy "Rutherford" Mondello in the beloved reunion offering, “Return to Mayfield (After A Brief Pit Stop In Mayberry)". Happy Anni-hearse-ary™, Ward Cleaver. Not to worry, old boy. Who among us eager gents hasn’t been a little rough on the beaver now and again?

Lady and the Tramp Stamp

Celebrating a Deathday™: Blue-eyed, later blue-haired, Eye-talian American singer/actor/horse beheader Francesco Alberto Sinatra (not pictured here, though that could be his hat) died on this day May 14, 1998, but then, so did journalist/ feminist/ environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas (pictured here in Frank Sinatra's hat) and she lived to be 108 years old, why should she be given short shrift on her last day, especially with all that she accomplished in her lifetime in comparison to a chain-smoking, mafia-connected little Napoleon who foisted Frank Sinatra Jr. onto the planet? Marjory Stoneman Douglas almost single-handedly saved the Florida Everglades, petitioning and writing about it at great length, persuading the normally dimwitted Florida politicians and populace of the wetlands merits, thereby stopping the blood-sucking developers from draining it and building a bloody jai alai or shuffleboard stadium atop it. Meanwhile, Mr. Frankie Goes to Hollywood was draining martini glasses and squiring one broken woman after another down the aisle — first wife Nancy, second wife Ava, or possibly Eva, Gabor, or possibly Gardner, third and fifth wife Elizabeth Taylor, fourth wife Mia Farrow — whose baby Rosemary went on to marry misguided clarinetist Woody Allen — and, somewhere in there, his beloved Barbara. Granted, the sawed-off womanizer could sing — as could daughter Nancy in her plasticine mini-up-to-her-hoo-ha skirts — and sing he did on standards like, “Strangers In The Night (Exchanging Glances and, Likely, Fluids),” “My Way (Which Is To Say Paul Anka’s Way)" and “The Lady is Tramp Stamped.” Meanwhile, Marjory Stoneman Douglas was singing a different song, on important issues such as women’s suffrage and civil rights, along with the aforementioned role she played in the protection of the Everglades, an activity she began when she was 79 years old. Bloody hell, Sinatra only made it to 82! A giantess of a crusader — even at 5 ft. 2 inches tall — Stoneman Douglas was a tireless reporter, op-ed columnist and fiction writer whose stories were published in The Saturday Evening Post™, and about whom ‘twas said that only death could shut her up. Sinatra, on the other hand, hasn’t stopped yapping and continues to woo ladybirds from the A.M. radio dial. We wish a fond Happy Anni-hearse-ary™ to this unlikely pairing, who share a deathday, if not the same otherworldly space, which is to say Heaven and Hell.

Amen-ities

We begin this week with a prayer: Dear Lorde™, concentrate on making life better for me alone today. Act as a genie — or rather, Jeannie® — on my behalf and grant me untold wishes. Ignore the pleas of others whose troubles appear greater than mine, for their burdens are not my problem. Worry about the rest of humanity tomorrow — or possibly next week — after you’ve had adequate time to devote to my needs. And when I say “needs,” Lorde and Savior, I don’t mean in a spiritual sense, for that’s your realm, Citizen Spirit Master™. My needs are more concrete, such as desiring a new motorcar, vacation home or limitless supply of Milk Bone® Bakery Biscuits for our ball-less best friend Bloomfield. Lastly, my Lordeship, free me from the bonds of humility, selflessness and forgiveness. Do not cause me to consider how I might share my blessings with others. Help me keep the focus on the Holy Trinity of me, myself and Irene. I ask this in the name of the Father, the Sun and the Holy, Ghostly Roman Empire. Amen, which is to say, Yours Truly, Internet Patrolman Dooley™.

Dear Prudence

Today we remember my dear, sweet mum Prudence Elderberry Johns. (The same "Dear Prudence" of 60's song fame, for the vinyl record, but we'll endeavor to fabricate that tale another time.) Of all the Elderberry sisters — Penelope, Prudence and Paulette — only Prudence (pictured here, center) was able to avoid periods of prolonged prison confinement. Indeed, 'twas my father — the late Royal Air Force Officer Aldridge "AJ" Johns — who saved her from that miserable fate. When he witnessed the comely, which is to say, criminally attractive, nineteen-year-old stealing from the parson’s coffers, he gave her an ultimatum: Agree to be his betrothed or be thrown at the unmerciful feet of the Queen's Court. ‘Twould be the last of her thieving ways and the start of a life that would take her far away from her hardscrabble roots. Alas, her Twisted Sisters™ were another story — a sad, disgraceful one — and my memories of them are not so dear — paddling my arse with a cast iron skillet, washing out my mouth with Amway® detergent soap and locking my brother Milton Jessup, sister Missus Wigguns and myself in the shed when Mum and Dad were on R&R, or possibly I&I. So on this, the weekend of the bloody Mother of all Days, I send blessings to my late Mum — and to all devoted Citizen Breeders™ — but to my evil Aunties I send this message postage due: May you find peace, and by peace I mean piece — a piece of fatty meat you can roast over the raging hell fires of your eternal damnation. Yours Truly, Constable Dooley.

Pink, Eyed

If Memory Swerves™, 'twas on this day in music history — May 12, 1967 — that velveteen-panted surrealists The Pink Floyd® performed at the first-ever surround-sound concert. Dubbed the “Games For May®,” the event featured the art school noisemakers’ Quadrophonic™ sound system, which consisted of four chest-high, wood-veneer Marantz® cabinet speakers placed strategically at opposing ends of London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall — two on the stage facing the audience and two in the rear — giving the impression of a veritable book-ended orchestra of unwashed long hairs in residence, earnestly banging away on their keytars, strings and gongs to curious, cosmic fare such as “Interstellar Kallifragilistic Overdrive,” “Set The Controls To Blast Off” and “Ummagumma,” with its trademark choral chant, “Ooga-Ooga-Ooga, Chaka Ooga-Ooga.” Audiophiles and fashionistas alike were mesmerized as the high frequency, encoded signalry bounced haphazard, 4-channel sound from one speaker to another, the echoing effect controlled from the stage with a “ joy stick” dubbed the “Azimuth Thinga-majigger®,” or possibly "The Flux Capacitor." The soap bubble-machine was chug-a-lugging, the kaleidoscopic light show was a-flashing and the roadies were tossing daffodils and chemically-laced Charm® Pops into the crowd, making for an altogether sinfully intoxicating scene. The show was a high-water mark for "The Floyd" and pointed the way to future shenanigans; in time, Quadrophonics gave way to Ocotophonics, as they upped their aural ante with alarm clocks ringing, cash registers chiming, hearts thumping, ladybirds shrieking, dogs barking, pigs squealing and giraffes bleating in an infernal racket that made the "Games For May" seem like a bloody Zamfir pan flute show. Sadly, the group’s leader Syd Barrett (pictured, as best we can determine, second from right) would fall prey to a mysterious shape-shifting malady, but for that one night in '67, he and the lads were all comfortably numb, shining on like crazy pink diamonds.

Zither And Yon

Today we remember — as best we bloody can — the musical mother of all string pickers, Mother Maybelle Carter of The Carter Family™, born on this day, May 10, 1909 in Nickelsville, Virginia. Now if you’re thinking that “Mother” Maybelle was more famously a “Mother-In-Law” — to one John R. “Johnny” Cash — you’d only be partly right, for while she was, indeed, a relation to the pill-popping Man in Black, and mother to his wife Virginia June Carter Cash, Mother Maybelle was famous in her own right. Widely respected as a gee-tar player and banjo plucker of prowess by the Grand Ole Opryland Casino & Amusement Center®, Mother Maybelle was the matriarch of the Nashville scene long before her sonny-in-law entered it. What’s more, Mother Maybelle “gave birth” to a style of chorded-zither strumming — cradling the instrument in her arms, up about her shoulder as though she were burping a gassy baby child — a style that continues to be embraced by today’s generation of jam-banding zitherists, such as Marcus Mumford and Yngwie J. Malmsteen. Before Maybelle’s time, zithers and autoharps were played in one’s lap or atop a table, but Maybelle's maternal instincts caused her to pull the stringed sound box up into her arms one night and she commenced to play more lovingly after that. Later in life, Mother Maybelle grew frightfully possessive of her beloved zither and was rarely seen without the instrument, carrying it with her to the supermarket, the sodie shop or the big-tent church services popular among concealed-carry gun toters in the southern U.S. Her family and friends dismissed the matter — “Oh, Mother's just cookin' up the chord structure to another ‘Wildwood Rose’,” they’d say publicly — but in the semi-privacy of their own home, surrounded by F.B.I wiretaps, their concerns were more pronounced. “Mother, put down that goddamned zither and eat your apple sauce!” Johnny would exclaim in a fit of lost patience after another fall off the wagon. Ahh, but did she not leave us with a treasure trove of sweet, intricate folk and country tunes as a result of her obsession? (Don’t ask me, I only know the one bloody song, haha!) In any event, we’re lighting a candle atop the station house crumb cake today in honor of Maybelle Carter of the Carter Family. Well done, Mother!

Chastity, Belted

Celebrating a Deathday™: Chastity died on this day — and by chastity I mean “the condition or quality of being chaste” and not “Chastity Bono,” who’s alive and well and adjusting to life as a goateed, 48-inch waisted male. (Not that there's anything wrong with it, God bless his or her heart.) Yes, chastity, virtue and honor all took a back seat — as it were — with the introduction of the combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP) on May 9, 1960. Developed by a team of sex-and-opiate crazed scientists in Amsterdam to prevent ovulation, "the pill" encouraged promiscuity among climaxing feminists — Erica Jong, Joan Baez, Barbara Walters — and their bed-hopping, hippy boyfriends — David Crosby, Bob Dylan, Hugh Downs. No longer would decent young men relieve testel pressure with an icy cold shower, while their galfriends clutched their diaries between their legs and rocked themselves to sleep. The “pill” signaled the start of the sexual revolution, which was not an actual revolution with muskets, but rather one with bayonets, of sorts, that poked and prodded with urgency, but only between consulting adults. 'Twas a sad and somber time for moral married folk who questioned their sexless unions in the face of rampant, free-loving fornication. Also on this day — May 9, 1949 — doe-eyed pee-yeah-no man, Billy Joel was born in Brooklyn or the Bronx to a mum who sadly didn’t have the COCP pill available to stave off his arrival — 70 years ago today — or that infernal "We Didn't Start the Fire" business that he gave bloody birth to.