Canterbury Fails

Celebrating a Deathday™: The Canterbury chronicler — overpraised English scribe Geoffrey Chaucer — took his final, overwrit pilgrimage — up to the heavens or down to the fiery pits of hell, you bloody decide — on this day, October 25, 1400. Considered by many — but not Yours Truly Dooley® — to be the father of English literature, Chaucer was a medieval ink slinger of pomp and tiresome circumstance whose biography is as confounding as his endless and awful signature tale that I attempted to read in hopes of impressing a university lass in my youth. Though little is known of his early life, Chaucer enjoyed adult rank and privilege as an esquire, a courtier, a diplomat, a bureaucrat, an author, a philosopher and a poet. He is thought to have studied law, married a woman named Phillipa, sired an unnecessarily oversized brood of children who weaseled their way into society and all the rest of it. Blah-ba-dee-bloodee-blah-blah. Today, the Canterbury he immortalized — an enchanting cathedral city in southeast England — has been bastardized in name by an endless parade of insignificant parks, mediocre condominium complexes and lackluster golf courses. For that we can thank Geoff Chaucer. Dead and buried on this day, a thousand years ago. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Costumed, Partly

Random Memorandum™ to the inventory-deficient dummkopfs at online retailers Oktoberfest Haus: 'Tis the season for costumed folly, by golly, so you'll imagine "meine" disenchantment upon receiving e-mailed notification that your authentic Alps Yodeler regalia is on back order. Blutige hölle, gents, calibrate your Swiss watches! If you don’t have the full line of floppy peasant hats, cloth suspenders and embroidered knee breeches on shelves in late Oktober, methinks you best hike up your lederhosen, blow out das Puppenkerzen® candles and call it ein nacht. Adding insult to grievous injury, the alternative ensemble you proffer — the KnackWursten Schützenfest Dangler™ — is an affront to propriety, looking rather like something Austrian fashion atrocity Brüno Gerhard (pictured) would wear. Are you suggesting that I parade 'round the station house nearly nackt arsed? Do you Deutschbags™ think I was born yesterday on the side of a Bavarian mountain?

Bang for your Buck

If Memory Swerves™, 'twas on this day in music history, October 23, 1949, that diminutive Mafioso song darling Francesco Alberto Sinatra released the song-and-dance curiosity "The HuckleBuck®." Originally a polka number out of Patrick Cudahy, Wisconsin, "The ChuckleButt," as 'twas first called, was retooled by song plugger and Jerky Boy Juggy Gayles, on orders of Signore Sinatra himself who said, "I don't Chuckle...no ifs, ands or Butts" and just like that the "ChuckleButt" became the bloody "HuckleBuck," sweeping the hoop-skirted, shiny-panted dance halls like a giantine O-Cedar® horsehair broom. Also recorded stateside by twister Chubby "Checkerboard" Evans, the song was given a righteous jumpstart on this side of the pond by the suit-and-ascot-neck-tied Royal ShowBand from Waterford, Ireland (whose other claim to fame was having the young Beatle Brothers open their show at the Pavilion in Liverpool in 1962.) Truth be well told, we at the station house have become altogether re-enamored with the "ChuckleButt," or rather "HuckleBuck", especially during the QuaranTeam™, as "pushing our partner out, hunching our backs and throwing a little movement in our sacroiliac" seems to be just what Immunology Dr. Ouchi™ ordered. So if you're feeling down in this time of Corona® branded viral contagion, we suggest you follow this simple song advice: "Wiggle like a snake, wobble like a duck, that's the way you do it when you do the HuckleBuck." Right-O!

A Storied Tradition

Random Memorandum™ to the legion of storytelling giants in the business formerly known as Advertising, which is to say, Content Marketing: Stories are unique to human beings and have been passed down since prehistoric times, when citizen artisans self-published memoirs on the stone walls of their modest cave bungalows. In the Internet era, as I understand it, the "stories" people want to cuddle up with and read in a comfortable chair are the ones you tell on behalf of the soapy suds or sodie pop companies who pay you to tell them. You are no hawker of wares, however; no mere copywriter of tiresome features and benefits. You are a yarn-spinner nonpareil! A bonafide, business card-carrying "Teller Of Tall Tales™" in the tradition of the greats. Consider this brief list whose ranks you join and in some cases supersede: William Shakespeare was a storyteller. Charles Dickens was a storyteller. Jane Austen was a storyteller. The Bronte triplets were storytellers. William Faulkner was a bloody storyteller. Mark Twain was a muddy storyteller. F. Scott Fitzgerald, DHL® Lawrence and Earnest Hemingway were storytellers. Joseph Conrad and Patrick Conroy were storytellers. Kirk Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf and Thomas "Tom" Wolfe were all storytellers. Who else? Agatha Christie and Harper Lee Childs were storytellers. Edgar Alan Poe, Brahm Stoker and Mary Shelley were storytellers. Leo Tolstoy and that Solzhenitsyn prisoner fellow were both storytellers. Some Guy named de Maupassant was a storyteller. Celebrated candymaker O. Henry set the chocolatine nougat bar high for his storyteller endeavors, as did Henry James, James Baldwin and Alex Haley. Epic, dream-weaving storytellers, all! So raise your head and pen high, sir or madam! Spiller of ink, tugger of purse-if-not-heart-strings and generator of colorful, carefully vetted brand content! You are a storyteller. A scene-setting, character-counting Citizen Storyteller™! It says so right there on your SlinkedIn™ page!

Parlez-vous, Francois?

52 years of age is too bloody young for anyone to die, even a wanker like French celluloid splicer Francois Ford Truffaut. Parisian born and bred — French bread — Truffaut was raised — hair-raised — by an emotionally unavailable — which is to say, French — mother, and an adoptive — which is to say, alcoholic — father. His granny shared in much of his child-rearing — and can we all just agree that gents who receive toiletry training from nattering grannies and/or sherry-swilling aunties are doomed from the get-go? Possessing both a first and last name given to mispronunciation, Truffaut fancied himself a dandy of sorts, eschewing — which is to say, bunking off — traditional schooling. He took to the arts like a duck to an insurance advert, beginning his career as the lowest bloke on the totem pole — movie house janitor/film critic — mopping up after unintelligible French, Eye-talian and Swiss curiosities before deciding he could do better — which is to say, no better — on his own. He purchased a GAF® “Talking View Master” camera and was off to the bloody Grand Prix® races. I watched his first feature “The 400 Blows” with a couple mates from the Academy and felt as though I had received 400 Blows to the head, stumoch and lower back, a sensitive area that houses the kidneys or something. ‘Twould be the first of many head-scratchers that Truffaut shot in black & white through plumes of cigarette smoke, which naturally earned him untold honours, while visionaries like M. Night Shymalan and Ronnie Howard go unrecognized. ‘Tis this lawman/cinefile’s opinion that Truffaut’s best work would be in front of the camera, in the role of a UFO-obsessed, papier-mâché volcano constructor in Steven Schpielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third or Fourth Kind.” Sadly, Truffaut suffered a brain tumor that would lead to his final encounter with a hooded, scythe-wielding gent on this day, October 21, 1984. In addition to his debatable cinema brilliance, Truffaut will long be remembered as the founder of the French "New Wave," a vowel movement which resulted in foppish, now-unlistenable bands like The Human League, Duran Duran and The Cure — assemblages for which there are no known cures, haha — along with solo annoyances like blind scientist Thomas Dolby and horn-rimmed crank Aaron “Elvis” Costello. Happy Anni-hearse-ary™, then, Francois Truffaut.

Free Bird Flies High, Crash Lands

Jacksonville, Florida physical education instructor Leonard Skinner was a simple kind of man. “Nuthin’ fancy,” he’d say. Yet, according to the New York Times, this sometime charter pilot — and full-time vinyl record enthusiast — would become “arguably the most influential high school gym teacher in American popular culture.” Indeed. While he was known to have little tolerance for shoeless, floppy-hatted long-hairs, two of them, sadly — former students of his at Robert E. Lee High, brothers Ronnie and Steven Van Zandt — were killed along with Skinner, when the Convair CV-300 plane he piloted crashed in a Gillsburg, Mississippi swamp. We remember Leonard Skinner — pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nér — and all those who died on that fateful day, October 20, 1977. Fly high, free birds. But be mindful of your altitude and fuel level in the bloody tank.

Rocket, Manned

If Memory Swerves™, 'twas on this day in sporting history — October 19, 1957 — that Maurice “The Rocketeer” Richards of the Montreal Something-Or-Others became the first NHL® player to score 500 goals in a single game. Now, I don’t know much about  bloody hockey — other than that it’s popular among toothless men, is virtually unwatchable from any vantage point in-person or on the telly, and that it’s the national sport of cold places like North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota, Dakota — but I do know that the laws of time and space dictate that 500 goals in one 60-minute game are unlikely. For anyone other than Rocketeer Richards, that is! He was an imposing man, standing, like, 6 feet, 14 inches or something, and weighing nearly 375 pounds in full regalia, and with his rocket-fueled jet pack — designed by Apple® in California — he flew past opponents as though they were standing shakily atop steel-bladed shoes. He shoots, he scores! Shoots, scores! And so on and so forth, red goal light flashing like a traffic signal. Bloody hell, he scored more than a Cialis®-happy sixty-year-old with matching bathtubs outside the barnyard. He was the greatest to ever play the game, outside of Ted Williams, who played a different game, and when he retired, the sculptors got to work on memorializing him properly. Alas, the statue that stands outside of the BMO™ Harris Ice Center (pictured) is a bloody replica from the 1990 Hollywood biopic that portrayed Richards as more of a superhero than ice skater, though  hockey fans would surely say he was both. Bravo, Rocket Man Maurice Richards!

Holy Roller

Well I’ll be a Monkey’s Relation! If it isn’t the Living Christ himself: Skateboard Jesus®, in full-tilt Nazarene regalia! On a day of worship, no less, bustin’ sick moves at the skate park! You got some fierce rails there, long-haired Lamb of God. The better to mongo-foot through the half-pipe, kickflip off the vert ramp, robe flowin' and mad skillz showin'! Playa’! One imagines his loose-limbed Lordship having absolute control over the rotational inertia that keeps his Holiness spinning 180, 360 or 5-bloody-40, or a quick call to his Heavenly Father resets the centripetal forces in his favour. Brilliantine! Delighted to see you grabbin’ air — and consenting Gen X bum, one presumes, haha! — on this fine day. GodSpeedo®, holy rolling Citizen Deity!

The Importance of Being Ernest

Quick, name a famous Ernie. American cricketeer Ernie Bangs? Check. Ernie Douglas, adopted, four-eyed, third sonny boy of absent-minded professor/widower Steven "MacMurray" Douglas? Check. Ernie, the shorter half of the closeted gay Muppet® couple Bert and Ernie? We thought so! Well, way back in the previous millennia, an altogether different Ernie would've topped the list: Television's original country bumpkin, Tennessee “Ernie” Ford. Born, one would assume, somewhere in the hellhole-ish backwoods of Tennessee, Ernie developed his shtick for hillbilly music and cornball comedy as a disc jockey in the Army. The ole' pea picker — as they called him, on account of his annoyingly folksy rejoinder, "Bless your pea-pickin' heart" — Ernie eventually found his way to television 'longside Joker-faced camera hog Lucille Ball. His namesake show would run for five seasons, though if you happened upon a rerun today, you'd be hard pressed to sit through five minutes of the thing. Like most God-fearing phonies of the era, the pencil-moustachieod, novelty-singing Country Music Hall of Famer was no stranger to Kanetucky bourbon, which would eventually, sadly, lead to his demise on this day, October 17, 1991. But up until that day, he and his dutiful, which is to say, willing and swilling, wife Betty would throw weekly whiskey wingdings not seen outside of a Dean Martini™ chug-a-long. Whiskey old-fashioneds, whiskey sours, whiskey Collins, whiskey Manhattans, whiskey and whiskeys. "What'll we serve on the front porch gatherin' tonight, m'dear?" "How 'bout whiskey, Ern?" Neat! Tennessee “Ernie” was preceded in death by his trainwreck of a half-brother, dramatist Tennessee “Williams,” writer of the not-horrible hit song “16 Tons,” along with a number of over-the-top stage plays that haven't aged well. Happy Anni-hearse-ary™ to the man who put the "he" in bloody "Hee Haw®." Tennessee "Ernie" Ford.

Severed Heads Will Roll

If Memory Swerves™, 'twas on this day in history — October 16, 1793 — that infamous cakestress Marie Antoinette was beheaded before God and country, which just goes to show you can’t trust the bloody French. After all, this was their Queen, herself the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor. According to the history books — which is to say, a random lot of wholly unsubstantiated Twitternet™ sites — her marriage to the Dauphin of France was initially championed; the citizenry were charmed by Marie’s beauty and goodly nature, however the French being French — ill-mannered, provincial and dastardly in the extreme — soon turned on her like a Ronco® rotisserie, accusing her of all manner of unseemly ways, including kissing her husband with open mouth and decanting cheap Australian wine in the good crystal. Alas, 'twas an innocent aside in the buffet line at a fútbol tailgate party that was her ultimate, tragic undoing. After helping herself to the Swedish meatballs, jalapeño cheese poppers and boneless Buffalo wings, she snagged a state fair crème puff at the dessert table, while leaving the celebratory sheet cake untouched. “A shame to cut into a cake this lovely," she said, "I’ll leave it for the others.” But that wasn't what the wait staff heard! As their story spun out of control, Marie was said to have dismissed the hunger pangs of the peasants with her mean-spirited rebuke, “Let them eat cake,” to which the cake eaters responded, “Off with her head.” And so 'twas that only months after the execution of her husband King Louis XYZ — he for his own misinterpreted comment about the quality of cigars at a poker game — that she too was taken to the guillotine. But unlike those phony baloney guillotines seen at haunted houses ‘round Halloween, this actually did the trick — sans treat — and her head tumbled off like Bruce Dern’s down the stairs in “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Or You'll Waken Baby Jane).” There’s a lesson to be learned here, citizens, and that is: Keep your bloody traps shut, in private company and especially the digital chit-chat rooms. You never know who’s within earshot or how they'll respond to even a harmless aside. You might say, "Canadian nu-metal band Nickelback is over-rated,” and an irate fan might say, “Blow up his house.” You might say, “That's the cleaning lady's job,” and the cleaning lady might say, “Steal her identity.” You might say, “Let the kiddies eat cake” and your psychotic sister-in-law might say, “Why don’t you just inject them with Type 2 Diabetes while you're at it?” One never knows, least of all Yours Truly Dooley®, Internet Patrolman™.

Flipping Out

Random Memorandum™ to the pink-swaddled finger-flipper making his/her way 'round the Twitternet®: I don't give a goo-goo goddamn how bloody old you are. I care not one whit whether you've been photo-shopped, chopped or lopped into infamy. You, young citizen, are complicit in this disrespectful charade, all the same. I raised a child of my own, mind you. I know that decent, God-and-authority-figure-fearing lads and lasses are too busy sucking their thumbs to bother balling their fists defiantly for the camera. 'Twould appear to this Internet Patrolman (IP) that had your opposable digit been properly plugged up its suckhole, PhotoChopping™ the picture in the manner displayed here would've been bloody impossible. So shove that extended finger that some call "the bird" up your teenaged mommy's keister and, as soon as you're capable of forming words, tell her boyfriend — the digital hooligan responsible for this profanity — the boyfriend who's not your daddy and never will be — to sod off. Yours Truly, Constable Dooley®.

Believe You Me

Random Memorandum™ to the National Patrolman’s Registrar (NPR): Please accept this submission for consideration in your radio series, “This I Believe.” Whilst not a summation of the entirety of my life’s beliefs, it does offer a uniquely lawman’s stance — excepting the stance I assume at the latrine: “I believe in the hereafter, the here and now, and Now And Later® chewable hard candies. I believe that good things come to those who wait, unless you’re waiting in line at a discotheque for the return of face-painted, new-wave warbler Adam “Goody Two Shoes” Ant, in which case it will end badly. I believe experience is the best teacher, especially when compared to the punishment methodology employed at Our Lady of Perpetual Penance in Lincolnshire. I believe that every action has an equal and oppose reaction, but that an improper overreaction — flaming dogshite drop on a uniformed official’s front stoop — will land you in the lockup. I believe in walking softly and carrying a big stick of chewing gum for a welcome, mid-afternoon burst of fruit flavoring. I believe in the power of prayer, if by "power," you mean "utter bloody futility." I believe that powdered sugar on one's pant leg is a small price to pay for savoring a wedge of warm crumbcake. I believe that a Timex® banded wristwatch remains the most reliable, solidly fashion-forward timepiece on the market, no matter what the fancy pants at Swatch® would have you believe. I believe that a Greyhound® bus can take you places you never dreamed possible — hello, Branson! — pretty boy flyboy Richard Branson be damned. I believe that social media will transform traditional advertising, delivering marketers not only customers, but brand advocates. (Haha! I don’t believe that for a second!) I believe that when overactor Kenneth Costner said he believed in “long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days” in that “Bullmoose Mullarkey” baseball movie, he was talking out his arse. I believe he had some nerve in saying “I believe in the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch and that the novels of Susan Lucci are self-indulgent, overrated crap” and that if I had been within earshot when he said it — in mixed company, no less — he would’ve ended up in a jail cell without so much as a deviled hamspread sandwich to look forward to. This I believe — and I believe you've heard enough of it — Constable Doyle “Dooley” Johns, Internet Patrolman (IP).

Wondering Aloud

“Hello, Stever? Tip top o' the mornin' wood, young citizen! 'Tis Yours Truly Dooley, Internet Patrolman, calling. I trust I didn’t catch you at a busy time — sitting down to a heaping platter of breakfast bangers and jelly waffles, perchance — but not to worry and/or hurry; I’ll be as brief as my police-issued BVDs®. I just called to say 'twas on this very day — October 15, 1984 — that you were sitting atop the throne! No, not the toilet, my kimono-wearing friend, but the bloody Billboard® charts! Number One with a Constable’s bullet! You hadn’t forgotten, had you, chumley? ‘Twas a number of years ago — and judging from appearances, a good number of pounds, haha — so you’d be forgiven for not marking the occasion; though in my mind, ‘tis a special day, indeed. No New Years Day, mind you. No first of spring, no song to sing. No April rain, no flowers bloom. No wedding Saturday within the month of June. No summer's high, no warm July. No harvest moon to light one tender August night. But what it is, is something true, made up of these three words that I must say to you: I just called to say, 'I love you' — there, I said it — and thank you for a lifetime of “Wonder-ous”, tuneful pleasantries. Rest assured, I'll never turn a blind eye to you, if you catch my meaning, Citizen Sightless™. I mean it from the bottom of my heart.” (Click.)

Denver Nugget

Happy Anni-hearse-ary™ to nature boy-ish folk warbler John “Denver" Colorado. This “aw shucks” singer, songwriter, variety show host, game show contestant and sometime puppeteer will forever be remembered for his gentle ode to a lass named Annie, who filled up his senses like a night in the forest, until the lawyers got involved and — in protest over the divorce settlement — he took a chainsaw to the bloody marital bed. A real-life Appalachian Mountain man — and eldest son of prominent Mayberry jug band leader Denver "Pyle" Colorado — John Denver was a welcome, clean-cut change of pace from the hirsute — which is to say, hair-suited — dope tokers of the era. In his trademarked granny glasses, velour vests and Aussie® conditioned, fly-away straw bangs, this teetotaling troubadour got high on the sunshine on his shoulders, or possibly the sleepy blue ocean. When it came to lyrics — that is, the words, which often precede melody, but not always — Denver was a veritable statesman. He sang about the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where he witnessed hellfire raining in the sky. He sang of the country roads of Western Virginia and the sunshine — again with the sunshine! — in the Carolina in his mind. Alabammy, where the skies are so blue (and, we'll assume, sunshiney). Oklahoma, where the broom-handled wind comes sweeping down the plains. He sang of a Wichita, Kansas phone lineman and of American soldiers returning to a hero’s welcome on the shores of Galveston, Texas. What he didn’t sing was that goddamned “Delaware” song — “What did Delaware, boy? She wore a brand New Jersey. She called to say Hawaii. She sipped a Minnesota. She went to pay her Texas.” For that we can thank Perry Como or Jerry Vale or some other martini tosser of the day. Denver’s only misstep along the way was fathering a sandy-haired lookalike who took up residence as Cousin Oliver in television's cojoined Brady household, where bedlam ensued and ratings plummeted. Alas, 'twas the would-be pilot himself who plummeted — to his death — on October 12, 1997, after hastily scribbling a Post-It™ note on the counter of his mountain home — likely a log cabin with a compost-producing toilet. “I’m leaving on a jet plane,” the note read, “I don’t know when I’ll be back again.” True to his word, he never returned. We remember him with fondness, sadness and slight irritation over those movies with that cigar-chomping, wise-cracking centenarian actor bloke. "Oh God," is bloody right. John Denver, RIP.

Madman A' Crossin' The Water!

Well I'll be a Monkey's Relation™. If it isn't the swingingest Savior this side of bloody Bethlehem. On a day of worship, no less. Dancing Jesus®! Let me get a look at you, you old Son of Man®. Freshly-laundered knee-length whites, corded Gideon's Bible belt about your middle, open-toed leather-like sandals underfoot. Bravo! You look like a million farthings for Christ's — which is to say, Your — sake. Have you lost weight? A daily diet of fish and cloves will clean one out ten ways to Sunday mass, but it appears to suit you fine, your long-haired Lordship. Tell me, Dancing Jesus, what brings you out of the temple on this fine and lovely morn? A desire to catch some heavenly rays and shaketh thy tuchus atop the water? Brilliantine™! Let the self-righteous Citizen Messiahs™ beat their breasts and sermonize on the mountain about the evils of midsectional gryration. You've got moves to bust! Bikini'd bottoms to grind! Ecstasy® to drop! Get thee behind me in the conga line, Satan. Dancing Jesus is about to waltz on the bloody water!

Welles Run Dry

Celebrating a Deathday™: Mammoth, mercurial film-tard Orson Welles met his maker — "Maker's Mark®," if you will, and he did, with great gusto and thirst on a nearly daily basis for many years — on this day, October 10, 1985. Born Björsson Wellesinki, son of a wealthy newspaper publisher in Norway, Orson and his twin brother Thörrsson lived a Hans Brinker-like existence, ice skating and sledding about the snow-covered countryside until their lives — and their steel-railed sleds — were turned upside down with the death of their parents in a freak accident involving a snow globe. The young twins were moved across the pond and raised by a cheese wheel-making relation in Wisconsin — the Norway of the Americas™ — later moving to Chicago, where they caught the radio theater bug, performing as the improvisational duo Björsson and Thörrsson™ (pictured above) at the famed Second City. After modifying his birth name, Orson went on to a career in stage and cinema, while Thörrsson was content to stay in his brother’s giantine shadow, working as a set builder and a stand-in on movie sets. Orson's love of fine cuisine — Italian wedding soup, twice-baked potatoes, crumb-crisp-coated Findus® brand fish fingers — and drink — Mimosa's, White Russians, Asti Spumanti® — eventually led him to set aside his belabored and boring “Orwellian” film efforts for that of restaurateuring and wine-making. His chain of Rosebud® restaurants — managed by boyhood chum Jan Stangdilan — hosted galas across the celebratory spectrum and his Paul Masson® brand of rotgut wines were all the rage in the 1970's, a taste-deprived era of loose morals and looser stools not seen since the Roman Empire. Orson continued to make commercial appearances until passing away on his palatial Xanadu estate. His brother Thörrsson would outlive his famous brother by nearly a decade, settling back home in Norway, near a certain fjord where the cod gathered in great shoals.

A Fifth of Whimsy

If Memory Swerves™, 'twas on this day in music history — October 9, 1976 — while a horrified nation stood by helplessly, that a WordBlitzer™ church organist from New Yorkshire City named Walter Murphy watched his classical/disco mix-tape hybrid “A Fifth of Beethoven” reach the top of the Billboard® Charts. Number 1 with a Constable's bullet! The near apocalyptic event had been foretold in a previous chart-topper by Canadian faeirie duster Don McLean, who sang of “the day the music died” — for this surely was that day — in his not-awful-but-bloody-endless-and-oddball hit, “Bye Bye Mister and Missus American Pie or Resident.” While we imagine that Walter Murphy’s family was proud of his achievement, Beethoven — the composer, not the actor dog — was thought by scientists to have spun around in his grave at such a furious rate as to raise the surface of the earth’s temperature. Murphy and his make believe Big Apple Band would later attempt the same disco schtick with classics from Rimsky-Korsakov and George Gershwin, and was excommunicated from his church and, indeed, all of the human race for his efforts. He later attempted an apology tour, but no one outside of Wolfman Jack and the crew at the Midnight Special® wanted anything to bloody do with it and he was jettisoned off the face of the earth by the hand of a loving God — who, it should be noted, will suffer most any indignity other than this season’s Fall TV line-up and the misappropriation of classical music for the good of disco. Good riddance, then, and a fifth of arsenic to Citizen Atrocity Walter Murphy.

Empty Nest Eggs & Honey Baked Ham® Off The Bone

Random Memorandum™ to the producers of the 1990’s situational comedy “Empty Nest”: While other riotous offerings of the era enjoy success in syndication, yours has been relegated to the dustbin. Have you stopped to ask yourselves why? The reason appears obvious to Yours Truly Dooley™, as the term “Empty Nest” is one twinged with sadness, putting you at odds with the very people you hope to attract, the now grown-up audience who watched the show in its heyday — today’s hovering, helicoptering parents. As their little darlings have flown the bird coop and commenced to hoisting Solo® brand cups at universities dotting third tier towns 'round the globe, the thought of empty nesting isn’t so funny anymore. The once-fulfilled mum and dad hang on for dear life, seething side-by-side in their tattered recliners, macraméing talentlessly, farting willfully and quietly plotting one another's demise. Methinks 'tis time to bring a little nighttime cheer to these empty, pestering nesters with a re-airing of the old "Empty Nest" broadcasts, albeit with a new name. Slap a brighter title on the proceedings and Mulligan, McNicholas, Overalls, Isuzu and What's-Her-Butt will be reborn anew on Notflix™! Herewith, a few titular notions from our station house team: "Empty Nest Eggs & Honeybaked® Ham Off The Bone,” “Scrapbooking, Woodworking And Other Crafty, Oddball Ways to Occupy Your Time,” “Dad Just Friended An Old Flame” and “Mom’s Getting Awfully Familiar With The Widower Down The Block.” Haha! Cue the laughter track! P.S. to the feathered and fetching Missus McNicholas: You were bipolar — and bisexual — before it was fashionable. Bravo and Brilliantine™, Bi-Golly!

Bag Lady In Love

If you can’t say something good about someone, you ought  say nothing at all. 'Tis why I'm not saying — but am, rather, thinking — that someone’s impromptu visit to McDonaldland® with her girlfriend of six weeks is about to end on a very bad note, regardless of how well things have been going between the two — how they both gleefully use the term "awesome sauce," are obsessed with Tegan and bloody Sara, and are quite certain that their relentless romping atop the dormitory futon will somehow trigger the Richter® scale — one doesn't go modeling a french fry bag as a head wrap in public — no matter how darling it was for, perhaps, one nanosecond — and refuse to remove it for the entirety of an embarrassing walk through the campus quadrangle, adding insult to egregious injury by broadcasting the she-nan-agains in an Instagramatic™ photo ‘round the Twitternet™ with proclamations of love everlasting. Oh well, Hell's bells and cockled shells, Mum and Dad still love ya', darlin'.

So Proud of this Team!

"Winning isn't everything," American fútbol coach Vincenzo Lombardo famously proclaimed, hard salami wedged in the gap in his choppers, "there's also losing, but that's the thing we hope to avoid." Losing is the other side of the tossed coin, as 'twere, rarely championed on the sporting pages, yet the station house is doing so today with pride, as we offer an overdue doff of the patrolman's helmet to another coach, one Louis "Red" Klotz, and his team, the Washington Generals. Unfounded in 1952, this perennial nemesis of the famed Harlem Globetrotters has lost an astounding 17,000+ games to the round ballers from New York's Harlem borough, all with unfailing resilience; indeed, these clumsy-footed pale-faces continue to lace up their Red Ball Jets® and hike up their shorty shorts 'bout their nutsacks to face down Meadowlark Melon and his trick-shotting mates, eyeballs to distended belly buttons. Klotz once said the Generals were the Ginger Baker to the 'Trotters’ Fred Astaire, dancing madly backwards on a sea of air, and who can argue with that when you don't understand the reference? In any case, the Washington Generals will always be winners in our eyes, still standing tall after all these years, airballs at the ready!

Marquee Mark

Before there was Justin Beaver, there was Peanut Eminem, and before Peanut Eminem there was someone else, and before that guy there was Marquee Mark and — If Memory Swerves™ — 'twas on this day in music history (October 5, 1991) that he and his dope ass band of bruthas from anotha' mutha — the Funky Bunch — hit the top of the Billboard® Charts with “Good Vibrations.” Number One with a Constable’s bullet! Back in the day, the shirtless, street-hustlin' lil' mack daddy — and church-goin' kid brother of Magnum P.I. sidekick, screen chewer-upper Donnie Mark — discovered his gift for lookin’ fly in a bloody jailhouse mirror. When he met up with his homies in the yard — Scottie Gee, DJ-T and Hector the Booty Inspector™ — they commenced to bustin’ moves, flowin’ rhymes and exposing their BVD® underdrawers with streetwise aplomb. This was no run-of-the-gin-mill assemblage of punk ass bitches samplin' weak ass beats, neither. I have it on good authority — which is to say a random fan page from the previous millenia — that these gangstas had all kinds of muthafuckin' game, kickin' it new school, off the chain and/or hook, yo. Marquee would go on to produce a workout video and has enjoyed some success under his porn de plume Dirk Diggler, but his first turn in the spotlight was the shit. A doff of the backward ball cap to Marquee Mark — the original M&M — and the Funky Bunch. Playas!

Seventeen Or Thereabouts

She learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for bloody beauty queens—high school lasses with clear-skinned smiles, who married young and then retired—whilst those like her with ravaged faces, lacking in the social graces, desperately remained at home, inventing lovers on the blower. ‘Twasn’t all it seemed “At Seventeen,” when dreams were all they gave for free to ugly duckling lasses like she. Alas, today marks the honourary deathday (October 4, 1970) of that quintessential teen ode's author—the pock-marked Portuguese songbird, Janis Ian Joplin. The future Mrs. Bobby McGee and her band of hirsute, hippy dope blowers—the Mothers of Intervention™—would enjoy some success stirring the passions of the mud-caked fornicators at the Woodstock Aquarian Exposition®, but ‘twas her melancholy, autobiographical radio tale for which she is best remembered. Happy Anni-hearse-ary™ to Citizen Seventeenager Janis Ian Joplin. Stood up, sadly—dateless for all eternity—at that festooned bobby sock hop in the sky.

The Original Brush With Greatness

Well, as I live and breathe dangerous levels of Corona® branded viral toxicity! If it isn't the bloody Fuller Brush® man! In the "fleshy" — as defined by the Crayola® Crayon Company — handshake at the ready! Cleared-eyed and confidently manning his corner of the store, or rather, e-station!! Bravo, top-hatted young Citizen TanSuit™! Your toothsome, cheerful countenance, quality mop heads and bristly brushes are a welcoming sight, indeed. Dazzle us with your wares, sir! What's that now? A scrolling of your online offering indicates you carry multi-surface spray cleaners and citrusy de-greasing agents? Marvelous! We'll take one of these, two of those and another of the other. Tally it up and we'll have the debit numbers entered in a jiffy. Alright almighty! Do us the favor of having Master Bezos fire up the little helicopter thingy and drop our delivery at the station house door poste haste. Righto!

My Lotus, Limber Lassie

Random Memorandum™ to my beloved Mother Johns: Forgive the formal nature of this otherwise celebratory correspondence, dearest, as I'm overwhelmed with matters of enforcement and endorsement. (For the record, I endorse James Gordon for Commissioner of Gotham proper.) Where was I then? Oh yes! Happy Anniversary, darlin'! It seems like only yesterday — or possibly two or three days prior to yesterday, last week safely — that I stood 'longside the altar and watched your bloody dad glare contemptuously at me as he squired you up the churchly aisle. (Haha, I jest! If not for my side-splitting sense of insensitivity, what would keep us entertained as dark of evening falls and we're left to our own devices — remote control, cordless telephone and vibrating something-or-other.) Truth be told, Mother Dear, I am a lucky man, and you are as fetching and lotus limber as the day we met at the Brighton shore — and I don't mean "fetching" in the manner that our ball-less best friend Bloomfield might chase down a ragged chew toy. So then! On behalf of all here at the station house — with the exception of Mrs. Nitpicker, who has fallen prey to powerful gastrointestinal distressing and ghastly emissions that would fell a wilde elephantine beast — let me wish you a most cheerful of wedding anniversaries. Happy day, my sweet limber Lassie. (No relation to the collie from the golden age of television, though you could do worse!) Yours, Mine and Ours Truly, Constable Dooley®

Schlocktoberfest

Today is October 1 and you know what that means. It means that every knucklehead and his brother will be celebrating "Rocktober" with bloody abandon. Every godforsaken music programmer across the lands and digital space will be "Rockin' the 'Tober." Lame-brained marketers will foist thirty-one unremarkable days of Schlocktober™ upon the citizenry. Overpriced, under-delivering TGIFF theme restaurants will dial up the calories and ear-splitting volume in honor of the "sale-a-bration." The goddamned dormitories and infernal fraternal houses on university row will chug-a-lug their way through the ceremonies, as well. Did the goodly month of October consent to such a bastardization of its name? No, it did not. If October were a “brand,” the trademark lawyers would be out in force, challenging countless usage violations. Alas, the sonofabitchization goes unchecked and we don’t see an end to it. Coming to a waterway near you: Docktober! At the sweat-stained workout hellhole: Jocktober! Look for Crocktober at the Pottery Barnyard®. Flocktober at the Pentecostal-white church. Frocktober at the Mennonite furniture outlet. Locktober at the mortgage company — but strangely not at the locksmith, one of the only storekeepers with a shred of decency left. It’s Socktober at the fashion depot. Machtober at the motorcar speedway. Woktober at the Chinese restaurant. One supposes we have Germany's traditional Oktoberfest bock-a-nalia to thank for all this, but at least there you'll find fulsome, little-miss-lederhosens serving sausages and steins big as your arm. Adding insult to egregious injury, October is Black History Month in the UK and one awaits the arrival of various ill-conceived Bläcktoberfest events in the newsfeed soon. Bloody hell. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.