Boxing Great

Random Memorandum™ to the legion of phony baloney “out-of-the-box” thinkers of the land — the marketing copycats, advert agency nitwits and double-talking digital doofuses who wouldn’t recognize an out-of-the-bloody-box idea if it bit them on their sorry arses: Famed Dutch Boy® painter Pieter Paul Mondrian is Celebrating a Deathday™ today. A graduate of The Academy of Fine Art in Amsterdam, Mondrian was originally an impressionist — as impressionable brush slappers and wall splashers of the time were wont to be — before gravitating to a cubist style that he made his own, colorful and precise as it was abstract. Those familiar with Mondrian’s starkly original drawerings — and who've spent a drug-fueled evening in his famed Sunset Strip hotel or passed out in the back of the Partridge Family® bus that appropriated his style — will attest to the power of his decidedly “inside-the-box” thinking. On a more cheerful note, Mondrian was the brains behind the Pieter Paul Candy Co. and gave the world the chocolate-drenched coconut Mounds® and Almound Joy® bars we enjoy at the station house to this day. Happy Anni-hearse-ary™ to Pieter Mondrian, laid to rest — in a box, presumably — January 31, 1944.

The Ballers Big Day: SuperBall Sunday®

As I Understand It™, today is SuperBall® Sunday across the pond and not a moment too soon, as one more fútbol game might send the right-minded citizenry right over the edge of the flat earth. Constructed of a space-age polymer from the planet Zectron™, the SuperBall, mystery ball of a ten or twenty thousand bounces, continues to delight children who enjoy rocketing rubberized balls over their rooftops into the clutches of the neighbor’s shrubbery, and older children who ought know better — hacky-sacky, dope-blowing University types, partial to hurling 50,000 lbs. of compressed energy at solid surfaces and having it ricochet back and bloody an eye. That it would have a day named in its honour — complete with booty-shaking, lip-stinking musical acts and a host of ho-hum adverts starring a parade of soon-to-be second-tier celebrities who’ve sold out every shred of dignity — is appropo of a presenting sponsor named Wham-O®. Break out the watery tall boy beers and rubbery foot-long submarine sandwiches, Citizen Sporting Fans! Superball LIVXYZ™ or thereabouts is upon us! Who's bloody playing? Who bloody cares?

A Vote for Sanders: Colonel Sanders!

Random Memorandum™ to fried chicken proprietor Colonel Harland "Bernie" Sanders: Delighted to fake your acquaintance, citizen! The exceptionalness of your poultry bird dinners cannot be overstated! Indeed, methinks your cast-iron skilletry stands Head & Shoulders® above the the dandruff-flaked lesser-thans serving weak tea in the stripped malls of America and 'tis high time you “flew the coop” from this rural London location into a properly franchised international QSR — “Quick Service Restaurant,” as the marketing dopes would have it — complete with garish storefronts, apathetic counter staff and "hard-working" direct-response commercials penned by ham-handed adman Howard Daft. But before you direct your stablery of chickens ‘cross the pond, allow me to offer a few suggestions to ensure that fame and fortune follow you: To begin with, do know that your military ranking is impressive and has great potential for drawering what they call "repeat customers." The same hungry charvers who would blithely walk past an overly enthusiastic "Bernie Sanders," would consider it an honour to dine with the noble Colonel Sanders. Colonel Sanders gets your vote! Brilliantine! Also of concern is the name “Bedfordshire Fried Chicken.” 'Tis too bloody English, mate, and potentially polarizing for the average cracker. Why not throw a little “south in their mouth" and adopt a rebel state, like Alabammy or Kanetucky? Shorthand it, if you like, to KFC. Everybody needs a little KFC, haha! Also, stir some mystery into the pot! Concoct a “secret recipe” of 10 — no, 11! — “herbs and spices” whilst piquing taste buds with a dopey slogan — “fingered luvin' good" or something of that order — and the birdbrains will line out the bloody door! Lastly, dandify your sartorial presentation—perhaps a white suit and bolo tie of sorts — and high-haired ladybirds, their drunk husbands and dimwitted brood will eat out of your hand. If you think me mad, Bern — sorry, Colonel — you may dismiss this communiqué. However, as someone who knows something about serving the citizenry — albeit, sans knife, fork and pre-packaged, moistened towelette — I'm hopeful you'll see the merits of my thinking and ring me at the station house for further discussion. Bring a box — no, a bucket! — of fried poultry bird for the mates. (Original, not extra crispy.) Yours Truly, Constable Dooley®.

Seeger, Beleaguered

Celebrating a Deathday™ (January 28, 2014): American folk music legend Peter “Bob” Seeger. Originally a member of “The Weavers,” Peter “Bob” enjoyed a decades-long run of radio success, starting in the 1950s on through the 1980s. He was also prominent in the progressive political causes of the day; indeed, he became the voice of a movement that dared to suggest that “We Shall Overcome” social injustice peaceably, via proper banjo and 12-string guitar picking. Later in his career, while other folkies were content to toe the coffeehouse party line, Peter “Bob” had the audacity to state, “I’d rather hear some blues or funky old soul,” even going so far as to exclaim, “I like that old tyme rock n roll,” which led to his immediate induction into the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Old Flames, over more traditional rock bands like Chumbawumba, Dexy's Midnight RumRunners and Men Without Bowler Hats. Call him a relic, call him what you will. Say he was old-fashioned and over the hill. We remember him fondly. Peter “Bob” Seeger, the original "ramblin', gamblin' man," dead at age 94 in New York City or possibly the Motor City.

Perfect Day for the last of the Bananafish

Celebrating a Deathday™: Writing deity Jay Dee Salinger ascended into heaven on this day (January 27, 2010), which was something of a good thing — you'll forgive me for saying — as funeral authorities couldn't get past the triple-dead-bolted doors of his Cornish, New Hampshire home to get at a body. Sadly, by the time he was carried away on angel wings to that great writing nook in the sky, the revered Salinger was more famous for being a press-whore-turned-recluse than he was a bloody writer, as his autobiographical tale of teen angst, “To Catch Her in the Rye”, was nearly sixty years-old. As a young man, Salinger was a minor league baseball "catcher," whose dreams of a professional career were dashed when he couldn't handle a knuckle ball, so he traded in his chest protector for a ballpoint pen and never looked back, except when he was being stalked by that Joyce Maynard bird who kissed and told on him later in life. Salinger named the rye-drinking, self-imagined sex maniac Holden Caulfield after the rye-drinking actor William Holden (his boyhood camp mate and pen pal, who died rather unheroically in 1981 after an incident with a rye bottle left him lethally cartwheeling into a cocktail table, but not before bedding Keith Partridge’s ex-wife Kay Lenz in a likeable bit of 70's fluff called “Breezy”.) In Salinger’s original manuscript, Holden Caulfield was a mouthy, prep school baseball catcher who ditches his traveling squad at a bus station to chase down some floozy in a farm field (pictured) and, later, more honourably, to take his little sister Phoebe Cates for a carousel ride. Salinger’s agent Seymour Somebody convinced him to lose the baseball angle and to change his Judeo-Christian birth name from Jerome David Salamander to the more approachable Jay Dee Salinger, as Jerome was thought to be a name more befitting a dance instructor and salamanders are loathsome and lizard-like. It was good advice and brought Salinger good favour for many years. His later work included the collection "Eight or Nine Stories," the carpentery instructional “Raise High The Roof Beams”, which met with mixed reviews — “Of course you raise the beams high,” tradesmen screamed, “they’re for the damned roof top, aren’t they?” — the foodie-themed stage play “I’ll Have The Bananafish”, and something called “Franny and Zooey”, which was made into the movie “Benny & Joon,” about a good-looking eccentric named Benny (or possible Zooey) who falls in love with the cute-if-flat-chested headcase named Joon (or possible Franny). After the film flopped, Jay Dee assembled his final press conference, where he announced to his fawning, ink-scribbling worship community that he would never again allow his work to be commissioned for film and, indeed, would never publish again whilst alive, though he was considering five works for posthumous release. And that was bloody that. Though he continued to write, he never published — never left the house, in fact, except in dead of night when he ran out of Pudding Pops® — which is why he’s largely forgotten by the youth of today, who if you asked to name a famous Jay Dee, they’d probably say Jay Dee Fortune, that wanker from the reality show “RockStar™: INXS”, who replaced the late Canadian singer Michael Hutchinson, who auto-asphyxiated himself to death, causing grave embarrassment to his family and bandmates, but alas, no greater shame than having Jay Dee Fortune shrieking like a banshee on stage in his place. But I digress. Today we pay homage to the saintly Jay Dee Salinger. And Holden Caulfield. And Franny and Zooey. And we raise high a glass — if not a roof beam — in their honor!

The Gitar Army

There is no justice in celebrity, and if it surprises you to hear a lawman call justice into question, how else to explain the annual omission of Eastern Europe's Czerwonych Gitar from the rolls of the music world's Granny Awards™? Formed in Gdansk in 1965, Czerwonych Gitar — "Red Guitars" — were "rzecywisty przedmiot" — the real deal! — from the git go. With their rented red instruments, paisley-patterned guitar straps, turtlenecks and neckties, the pastry-faced mop toppers in the “Gitar Army” had the chops — lamb and pork — to earn them respect worldwide, with tuneful ditties that explored universal rock 'n roll themes of first love, fast cars and traditional, creamed culinary. If you were as lucky as a young Dooley Johns to have dated a zaftig Polish lass, you too would have put on a Czerwonych Gitar record and danced your fool head off in her cluttered flat under the watchful eye of a drunk uncle and mustachioed grandmum. The hip-swivelling work of Messrs. Zomerski, Zomerski, Dornowski, Klenczon, and Skrzypczyk remains praiseworthy in any language, yet however mightily the station house lobbies the Recording Academy® for their proper due, it appears a lifetime achievement award is not forthcoming. So bloody be it! As the old song goes, "To tylko rock n roll, ale lubię to, lubię to." (Yes, I do!) "Nie pozwól, żeby ci dranie cię zawalili, Czerwonych Gitar!"

Charles in Charge

As I Understand It™, today is Chinese New Year. 新年快樂! (That's "Happy Chinese New Year!" in sign language.) Though not technically a "Holy Day" — as Far-Flung Easterners don't bow to the "Chalked-Asian Jesus™" — 'tis a "holiday," nonetheless. Around the papier-mâché globe, Chinese New Year is celebrated with non-sanctioned street parades featuring fire-breathing dragons, authentic "Oriental" cooking from Panda Expressions® and palate-cleansing Misfortune Cookies™ with their cryptic promises of deceit, mayhem and promiscuity. We salute the citizenry of the People's Republic of Communist China and send a special shout-out to their most honourable lawman Charles "Foster" Chan. In the days before C.S.I., C.S.I. Miami and C.S.I. Kansas City (the Missouri Side™), there was no more capable crime solver than the mustachioed, soul-patched Chan — with the exception of one Oliver Wendell "Sherlock" Holmes Jr — and no sidekick more haplessly dutiful than his "Namba Won," that is "Number 1," Sonny Boy. On a personal note, let me add: 我们可, 吓了 很漂亮, Charlie. 哦吗 可以去啵, Mr. Chan. 吓哦 嘿, 哦嘿你 们可以, 我哇 我们! Mazel Tov, or rather Tsingtao®, Citizen Ragin' Asian™!

Wise Cracking

If Memory Swerves®, 'twas on this day in history — January 24, 1928 —

that zoologist/anthropologist /no-apologist Desmond Morris was born in North Wiltshire. 

Educated at the Dauntsey School in Lavington and the University of Birmingham, Morris —

the original "monkey’s relation" — came to the public’s attention in the 1950s as a presenter on the television programme "Zoo Time." He later achieved a measure of fame with his book “The Naked Ape,” in which he posited that a woman’s cleavage — the oft-bejeweled "déco collage" — is a sexual trigger that mirrors — or "apes" — the cleft between the buttocks, which is unique to humans, as other primates have flatter backsides. (Well, la-dee-da, Dr. Morris.) The wise-cracking Morris is also said to have coined the rejoinder, “Half past the monkey’s arse, a quarter to his ballsack."

But that was many moons ago. Happy day, Citizen Arse-trologist.

Bless Me, Todd Rundgrend, For I Have Sinned

According to a recent Twitternet™ posting from self-described "superfan" Agnes Ravatn of Spoettrup, Denmark, “Todd is God," and so 'tis we begin this day with a Prayer of Catholic Contrition to 1970’s nerd messiah Todd Rundgrend: Oh my Todd®, I am partly sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins, because of thy justly punishment and/or drum banging. But most of all, because they offend you, my Todd, who art all good and deserving of the vinyl record store dollars that kindly listeners elect to bestow upon you. I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace and multi-instrumentalist production skillsets, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin — whilst pledging to police a "virtual" club appearance featuring a revolving trio of sidemen 'longside you on your interminable, synthesized guitar-soloing journeys. I ask this in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghostly Spirit, A Wizard, A True Star and Creative Force behind the curious musical foursome known as Utopia®. Amen†

You Can't Spell "Carpenter" Without "Carter"

Today in Side-Gigging, Do-Gooding U.S. Presidential History™ (January 22, 1977), Foreman-in-Chief Jiminy Carter — with lust in his heart, a tear in his eye, a gleam in his smile, a plug of Red Man® chaw in his jaw, a pack of Black Jack® gum in his overalls, a Bible™ in his toolbox, a Craftsman® hammer in his toolbelt, masonry nails in his mouth, starch in his dry-cleaned Carhartt®, a knot in his neckerchief, a careful bend in the brim of his cap, a light dusting of AquaNet® in his feathered hair, a penny in his loafers, a peanut butter sandwich in his lunch pail, a flexi-straw in his milk glass, an approval rating in the job site toilet and a Fred Rogers’ earnestness in his demeanor — issued a pardon to the nation’s Vietnam War draft evaders. ‘Twas an act that some — such as impish, friendless, 15-year old crybaby Sean Hannity, fresh off his umpteenth schoolyard beating — saw as evidence of cowardice, though tell that to the 20-something males who thought they’d be living out their dying days in bloody Canada, the coldest, most barren land this side of Siberia, unless you were fortunate enough to be canoodling under the covers with one of the Heart sisters. Also on this day in history, Italy legalized abortion. I’d like to deduce/invent a connection — the War on Birth? — but will leave Blaze® TV conspiratorialist Glenn Lee Beck to draw, or rather, venn diagram his own inconclusions.

 

Oh Dear-ierre

Spend enough time patrolling the bloody Twitternet™ and you learn that the world isn’t such a big, bad place. We are all the same, each of us the creation of a sturdy-jawed Higher Power whose picture graces our front hall and who requires a 10% tithe of pre-tax income, plus canned goods and gently-used London Fog® wear come holiday. We are all a collection of molecules and US Cellular structures, a deoxyribeyednucleic mashup of chromosonal something-or-others. We are skin and bones, citizens, some more skin than honed, and we're all desperate for Mommy's love, Daddy's approval and a young schoolteacher's admiring look that stirs something in our developing underbelly. White, black or a confectioner's milk chocolatey brown, we are all the very same deep down under our genuine Louis Prima® cotton drawers or giantine lacy unmentionables.

Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free milk at last!

As I Understand It™, today is MILK Day® across the pond, a national holiday celebrating the life of a humble dairyman who had a dream that all men and women, regardless of the colour of their skin or the contents of their pantry, might well enjoy the fruits of a bossy milk cow's labours or something. 'Twas his dream that all milk — whole, skimmed, non-fatted, 1%, 2% or buttered — would be created with equal degrees of protein and pasteurization, if varying measures of cream, and that on every third Monday in January, lactose tolerant citizenry of all stars and stripes would come together to enjoy milk's calcium richness for free. Alrighty, Almighty, America. Today is the day! Hoist a tumbler high and drink to your fatty heart's content!

Inaugurals Addressed

If Memory Swerves™, 'twas on this day in history — January 19, 1937 — that Franklin Eleanor Roosevelt was inaugurated to a second or third term across the pond, or reflecting pool, as it were. A former governor of New York City or possibly State, and a close ally of the finest statesman in all of recorded history — Winston Churchill — Roosevelt is best remembered for kicking Nazi and Kamikaze arse around the block in WWI or II, for his progressive New Deal policies and for writing that infernal election hymnal, "Happy Days Are Here Again!" Stricken with polio as an adult, Roosevelt remarkably overcame his handicap — he was said to be capable of stopping his wheelchair "on a dime," the very coin his visage would later grace — and he is considered to be the last of the great American presidents. Indeed, Roosevelt gave his bloody life for the job, dying just months into his fourth or fifth term in office. His heralded tenure was followed by a string of unlikely standard bearers, including Truman, the high school graduate, Eisenhower, the highwayman, Kennedy, the ladies’ man, Lyndon "Bird" Johnson, the Texan, Richard N. Milhaus, the rubber-faced crook, Jiminy Carter, the lustful peanut farmer, Reagan, the bad actor, Bush, the church lady, Clinton, the dress stainer, W., the mission accomplisher, Obama, the islander and Trumpeteer, the celebrity realtor. All were inaugurated on this day — January 20th — and some even had the audacity to have their likeness chiseled — or possibly, PhotoChopped® — into the side of bloody Rushmore to make it official. But not Franklin Eleanor. Unlike more recent inaugural celebrations — which feature booty shaking pop stars, play-by-play from Brian Steve Crest and the aforementioned sculpturing — Roosevelt's inaugurals were family affairs, held on the White House lawn and featuring an egg toss, balloon animals, potato sack races and a simple lunch of hamspread sandwiches on Nancy Martin® white bread, Libby's® canned fruit cocktail and Otis Campbell's Tomato Soup®.

Daniel's Day

Well I’ll be an Orangutan’s Auntie! If ‘tisn’t oft- celebrated, celebrity sentence-rememberer Daniel Dave Lewis! Where might you be headed on this blessed day, Daniel Dave? Perhaps to your beautiful launderette to hand wash your lacy unmentionables? Or a waxing salon to soften the shadows on your chiseled visage? Or, perchance, to a vintage apparel shop to procure a silkened scarf for your aging neckline? What’s that, you say? The costume and costumed jewelry provide you with necessary cover from shutterbugs, overeager fans and the fatal attractions of Glenn Close—who won’t be ignored, Dan, not after that funny business on the lift whilst the cunning linguist’s missus was out of town! Ahh, Daniel, my brother—as Sir Elton once warbled—you are older than me—metaphorically, of course. Your eyes have cried—convincingly so—‘tis why you’re a star in the face of the sky; however, candidly, methinks you’ve overplayed your shape-shifting, actoring hand this time as there are surely others more suited to play whatever role you’re awe-dishing for, but that being well said, you always carry yourself with a confidence that belies a lame, left-footed thespian, so who bloody knows? Carry on then, Daniel Dave Lewis. We hope to catch your chameleon-like skills at a picture show soon! Perhaps Ford’s Theater, as we think of it. 

Føkk Deg, Roald Amundson

If Memory Swerves™, 'twas on this day in history, January 17, 1912, that Royal Navy Captain Robert Falcon Scott survived immeasurable odds to become what was thought to be the first man to reach the South Pole — only to discover that the underhanded Norwegian Roald Amundsen had conspired to set a course that found him arriving on site a month earlier, handily beating the noble Englishman. Adding grievous insult to injury, a dejected Falcon Scott and his four heroic comrades tragically expired on the return trek, whilst the wretched Weegians revelled from midnight sun-up to sundown, guzzling glögg, howling at the moon and flagellating themselves like undignified, pagan beasts. To commemorate this day of devious triumph, all of Britannia extends a proper, one-fingered salute to the scheming Viking brute: "Føkk deg, Roald Amundsen, you filthy Nørsk køllesugeren."

Cracker Peril

Celebrating a Deathday™: Cracker Nation lost its Cracker-in-Chief on this day (January 16, 2012), when Mr. Dan Evins, founder of the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store®, passed away. He was 76. Cracker Barrel, I'm told, is quintessentially red, white & blue and the red-suspendered, white-skinned, blue-eyed Evins, bless him, was all that as well. The Ritz® brand cracker lover opened his first Cracker Barrel store in 1969 in the soda cracker white environs of Lebanon, Tennessee, the flakiest, crackerest state in all of America. Cracker Barrel took its name from the empty cracker barrels that country store patrons played checkers on whilst sitting on their Wrangler® cut-off trousered arses jawin' about the things crackers love most: the Andy Griffith Show, Hardley-Davison motorbikes, Moon Pies®, moonshine, farmers' daughters, biscuits 'n gravy, sodie pop, shotguns, shotgun weddings, shotgun dee-vorces, Friday Night Lights, Geoff Foxworthy, Keith Urban, Carrie Underwear, the Dallas Cowboys, the Nashville Predators, Family Fueled, Wheel of bloody Fortune® and theme park oddity Dolly Parton’s bosom. Evins is survived by 600 cracker-patroned locations and — presumably — a family of crackers who loved him. The station house is breaking out the Velveeta® and Nabisco® saltine crackers in Mr. Evins' honour. Happy Anni-hearse-ary™, Citizen Paleface.

Twat do we owe displeasure?

The Daily Mash® — a generally reliable UK news source on par with America's bloomin' Onion® — is reporting that a recent study indicates some "80 Percent Of Men Are Twats," which is bloody news to no one, least of all Yours Truly Dooley®. In my estimation, the percentage skews well higher, as an accounting of the men who cross my digital pathway reveals an endless stream of twats — arsewipes, nitwits, nobs, know-it-alls, knuckleheads, dickheads, morons, plonkers and prats. Twats, the lot of 'em. Jelly-haired twats, bearded twats, thieving twats, backstabbing twats, right-winged twats, left-limbed twats, anonymous trolling twats and twerpy anchorman twats like that moustachioed Matt Glauer buggerer (pictured) whose two-faced lechery besmirches the work of honourable, properly broad-shouldered broadcasters like Ron Burgundy. Their tell-tale twattery is no recent phenomena either, as grown men of no character have exhibited what the millennials call "douchey" behavior since Neanderthals bounced boulders off one another's noggins. The footnoted source of the aforementioned twat-istic is the "Institute For Studies," which we'll assume is a dopey "think stank" like "The Heritage Confoundation™," an association of pale-skinned mouth-breathers of which we  guesstimate 100% of the male members are twats.

Up! With People!

Well, as I live and breathe the vestiges of industrial, wartime pollution! If this isn’t a fine how-do-you-do across the ages! Tip-top of the Tuesday morning to you, citizens of the previous millenia! Mum always said that strangers are friends you haven’t met yet, so allow me to introduce myself: I am Doyle "Dooley" Johns, Internet Patrolman™. I have been dutifully attending to these digital pathways for some time now and am always encouraged to see a cheerful assemblage of new faces. I must say that your outstretched, stiff-armed wave has a curious salute-like quality to it. A salutation, come to think of it, reminiscent of the Queen Mother’s — hand rotating in semi-circular fashion, as though warshing the windows — not that the Queen would. Warsh windows, haha! No matter, today is your day, good-hearted patrons of the past. Your open-armed welcome to all races and creeds is the sign of polite society; something in short supply of late! I wish you good day, GodSpeedo® and gracious Sieg Heil smiles. Yours Truly, Constable Dooley.

Carol Wayne's World (Party Time! Excellent!!)

Celebrating a Deathday™: Platinum-blonde sweater-filler-outer actress Carol Wayne died on this day, January 13, 1985. The famously full-figured foil on 70's television's "Tea Time Movies with Art Fern" was born Bootsie Nightingale in the Second-Tier City™ of Chicago, and departed in her late teens for a top-heavy turn as a showgirl at the Tropicana Orange Mango® in Las Vegas alongside her leggy, look-alike sister Nina (later of “99 Luft Balloons” fame). Wayne then pointed her high beams west where she met the likes of "feature film freak" Art Fern, a loud-jacketed lothario cut from the same plaid-patterned cloth as "Tonight Show" phony Johnny Carson. Fern was more car dealer than movie reviewer and, for her part, Wayne was the willing sidekick, cooing and battling her eyelashes and heaving her outsized personality at the jelly-haired, moustachioed Fern, but somehow it all worked. Wayne was Matinée Lady in over 100 episodes of Fern’s show, the two of them bumbling their way through reviews and sponsorships with dumbbell appeal. ‘Twas a far cry from most on-air critics — chatty misfits named Gene — not to mention the legion of keyboard-pounders nowadays who fancy themselves Cecil B. DeMillionaires but couldn’t film so much as a children's birthday party themselves. Ms. Wayne bid adieu to movie reviews and went on, like so many B-level, C-cupped celebrities, to appear in harmless nonsense such as “I Dream of Jeannie (With the Light Bottle Blond Hair and Exposed Midriff),” “I Spy (A Serial Abuser In Sheepskin Clothing)" and "I Love Buggery, American Style.” Alas, in 1985, with her television career in decline, the thrice-divorced Wayne went on vacation in Mexico with an actual bloody car salesman — not Art Fern, but a ne'er-do-well named Ed Durston – and never returned, as she was found dead on the beach of a questionable drowning. It turns out in years prior, Durston was involved in another celebrity tragedy: He was the boyfriend of Diane Linkletter, daughter of Art (Linkletter, that is), and was in her apartment when she attempted to fly out a window with little success. Two more unhappy endings in the hell-on-earth that is Hollywood celebrity, if you ask Yours Truly Dooley®, but let's not shed too harsh a light on the dearly departed Ms. Wayne’s special day. Happy Anni-hearse-ary™, darlin’.

Chore Enough, It's Farm Assist Day!

As I Understand It™, today, January 12, is something called "Farm Assist" Day. Seems curiously timed given the inclemency of the season, but who are we to quibble? Strap on your dungarees, hike up your Wellingtons and commence to implemental farm assisting, citizens. (CORRECTION: We're now being told that 'tis, in fact, "Pharmacist Day." The station house regrets the error, but encourages you to support your nation's farm communities by eating food grown in the ground or something. And if you happen upon a white-smocked chemist, give 'em a wink and a smile.)