This painting was hung in the Museum of Modern Terrible Dead Art (MoMTDA, pronounced: “Mom! Ta-DAA!”) and ten minutes later the building committed suicide.
OR
Paul Pope’s work is not what it used to be. (Obscure comic book artist joke, sorry.)
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Category: Uncategorized (Page 358 of 1031)
1959 is not just the past, it is of a different era. 1959 is the Post-War years, and we’re not in those anymore. The past few (ten?) years have been the first little bit of the next era, the one with the internet. Younger Enthusiast, you wouldn’t believe how different it was: there was something called Missile Mail, which is precisely what it sounds like. The Navy tried it, and mostly succeeded, but mostly is an unwelcome adverb in a sentence about missiles. The project was terminated on the grounds of being “unfeasible” and “batshit insane.” But those folks in 1959, in the Post-War years, they believed in the power of technology. That it would save them, and not just create entirely new problems.
Good thing we’re smarter than them.
The very first Xerox machine was introduced in ’59. If you wanted something copied before that, then you needed a typewriter. If you wanted something copied way before that, you needed a monk. And if you wanted to make a whole lot of copies, then you needed a mimeograph machine. Revolutionaries loved mimeograph machines: they’re personal printing presses. Typewriter attached to a stencil; stencil gets washed in ink in a giant barrel against paper; paper comes out with propaganda or advertisements or math tests. There was, Younger Enthusiast, a mimeograph machine in every school in America, and all of your elders right now are smelling that faint, fruity aroma that rose from the dittos–once printed, the paper became called a “ditto”–that were waxy and wanted to roll into a scroll if the teacher had not let the stack sit under a heavy weight for an hour or two. Sometimes you would get them fresh; they would be still warm and you could smear the blue ink if you were not careful.
By the time I got to high school, the ditto machine had been scrapped, and the teachers got into fistfights over the copier, instead. This is the nature of change.
People also put lions on their teevees in 1959.
“Get in there, you little pussy.”
“Fuck you, Steve.”
“Listen, Kush–”
“Don’t call me that.”
“–that fucking tweet has been up for 58 goddamned minutes. This looks bad.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“It’s not. It’s a bad look for the commander-in-chief to leave a butt-tweet up for more than an hour.”
WATCH-CHECKING SOUND
“It’s an hour. Get your big nose in there in grab that phone.”
“First of all: fuck you, you whiskey golem; second: why? It’s already up, and everybody’s taken screenshots of it.”
…
“You’re not actually very bright, are you?”
“What?”
“It looks like he had a stroke on social media, shithead, and no one’s doing anything about it.”
“Oh.”
“Check your Twitter.”
…
“Oh, no, that’s not good.”
“Not at all.”
“Steve, is Twitter just in America, or can the other countries see it?”
“All the countries, Jared.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“You go in. He likes you.”
“He likes you better, Jared. That’s why he had you talk to the Russians for him.”
“Yeah. That really was an honor.”
“Uh-huh. An honor. Hey, where’s your wife? Send Ivanka in. He’d love that.”
“She can’t. She’s unclean.”
“What now?”
“We’re orthodox Jews, and so when Ivanka goes through her menses, she confines herself to a mikvah.”
“A mikvah?”
“A ritual bathing place. We bought one in Foggy Bottom. Nice townhouse.”
“Yknow, people ask me why I dislike the Jews, and I give them solid reasons like that bullshit right there, and then they call me an anti-Semite. Go figure. Get the fuck in there.”
“Oh, wait: there’s Eric and Donald, Jr. Hey, guys, we need you to do some work.”
FWOOSH!
fwappityfwapfwapfwap
…
“I didn’t know they could turn into bats.”
“They can.”
“Okay. Jared, go.”
“This is not that bad.”
“Jesus cotton-picking Christ, I can’t believe that I’m the voice of reason in this building. Get in there and delete that fucking tweet, you little twerp. Covfefe? What the fuck is that, Jared? What the fuck is that to leave the fuck up on Twitter for an hour and a fucking half when you’ve got the fucking nuclear codes? What do you think our enemies are saying right now? What do you think Russia’s saying?”
“I could call them and find out.”
“Just get in there.”
“Steve. Please. He sleeps in the nude. Above the covers.”
“Jared, do it for America. Do it for the brave young men at Valley Forge, and Chosan, and Manassas. Think of all this great, grand land of ours has done for you, Jared. Can you smell the flag? I can. Do it for Lincoln, Jared, and the preservation of the white race. We need to–”
“Excuse me?”
“–think of something more than…what?”
“White race?”
“My favorite.”
“Dude.”
“Get in there, you little shit, or else.”
“Or else what?”
“I know about the office building in Ankara.”
“Do you think I should wake him up, or just try to grab the phone?”
“Add that decision to your portfolio. In ya go.”
PUSHING NOISE
You look like you’re about to rumble with the jocks.
“Well, have you met ’em, man? Really not where it’s at, those types.”
Then why the hell are you joining the Army?
“I’d like to kill some Viet Cong.”
What?
“Stab ’em in the face with a bayonet, man. To protect democracy.”
You’re pulling my leg.
“Well, it was right there, right? C’mon, man, it’s 1959. It’s either go into the Army or take your chances getting drafted by the Navy or Marines. The thought of being cooped up in one of those boats gives me night sweats. Other people seem to really take to it, but that’s their experience and reality, right?”
What about the Marines?
“Fuck, no.”
I don’t think you’d do well in that milieu.
“The entire organization is built on yelling. And I couldn’t bear to think of what I’d look like with that haircut.”
Your pompadour looks like a greasy lobster tail.
“Get stuffed, man.”
(These no-longer never-before seen photos come via the great Eric Schwartz, who hosts Lone Star Dead on KNON in Dallas, Texas, and should be visited here.)
Hey, Mickey.
“I was wondering when you were gonna get to me.”
It’s a long summer, buddy.
“Great summer. You see how many drums I got?”
Many.
“The most! I checked around. No one touring this summer has more drums than me.”
Congratulations?
“You’re welcome.”
You having a little party?
“Oh, yeah. Getting drunk with Black Phil and Girl Justin.”
Reya. She is your daughter.
“I knew the second part.”
Why are you all so bad with names?
“Decades of substance abuse.”
Sure.
“Also, I don’t hear ’em when people tell ’em to me.”
Also true. This is sweet that Reya’s going on tour with you.
“It’s great, man. Having adult children is a blessing.”
I think you just mean “children.”
“No. They’re fucking terrible when they’re kids. I avoided that whole thing.”
Probably for the best.
“Can’t get drunk with children. I mean, you can.”
You shouldn’t.
“No. Kids can’t drink for shit. Sloppy little fuckers.”
You’re cursing more than usual.
“This is my sixth margarita.”
Gonna be a good summer.
“I’ll drink to that.”
Cosmic Charlie
How do you do?
Struffing and a-sliving
Down the avenue-oo.
Rosie red and electric blue
Yubba dubba
Dooba dabba
Avenue-oo.
Say you’ll stay there
If you can
Jefferson Airplane
Is a band.
But first,
I farted,
And then
I pooed.
A little bit of older
And-a we could have time
Slucking up the furgles
With a wicky-dicky whee-eel.
Cosmic Charlie
Ohh, baby.
We gotta go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Town Father Sentenced
Convicted of bribery, assault,
vote-tampering, grave-robbing,
other.
By IFFY BOULD – There was chaos in the courtroom as the long-running trial of Stanchion Potts came to an end today. When Judge R.J. Fulsome read out the sentence of twenty years, several of Mr. Potts’ supporters and members of his family attacked him with previously-concealed weapons, including a katana and a chainsaw. Four bailiffs were injured, and the statue of Justice was decapitated.
After order had been restored and the statue’s head duct-taped back on, Judge Fulsome detailed the reasons for the harsh sentence. Mr. Potts had not only betrayed his constituents’ trust, the judge said, but done it in such a brazen fashion as to be insulting. Judge Fulsome mentioned the hole Mr. Potts had cut into his office door at Town Hall labeled “Bribe Slot.” Upon hearing this, Mr. Potts wriggled free of the bailiffs restraining him, urinated on the prosecutor’s table, and shouted, “I had to cut the Bribe Slot! I didn’t want criminals in my office!”
[CONT – A6]
Courthouse Chief of Security Fired
Numerous incidents cited; chainsaw
was “last straw.”
By OMONA KORYOKU – There was chaos in the courthouse today after Chief of Security Amble Danitz’s short tenure came to an end, with officials citing gross dereliction of duty, specifically “failure to find a chainsaw with a metal detector and a patdown.” Upon receiving the news, former chief Danitz picked up the very chainsaw that was his downfall and began swinging it around wildly. The statue of Justice was further damaged, as were several jurors who were minding their own business.
[CONT – A6]
One Dead In Hotel Synod
Foul play, drugs, suspected.
By ERNESTINE BURTON – Most of Magnificent Amberson, 22, was declared dead at the Hotel Synod early this morning. The Little Aleppo Police Department is not releasing the details of the scene, but unnamed sources within the LAPD (No, Not That One) have verified to The Cenotaph that while several organs from Miss Amberson, a local musician, were missing, the neighborhood does not have another Harvester on the loose.
“This appear to be a drug-fueled crime,” the source who is definitely not Officer Sigmund Absence said. “Quite frankly, you’d have to be on drugs to even dream up some of the stuff that was done to this body. Who makes a habitrail out of intestines? And where’d the gerbil come from?”
Forensics is expected to take six to eight weeks if the evidence doesn’t get lost.
“We lost the evidence,” the source told a reporter.
[CONT – A7]
Potts Sentence Fair, Just
By the EDITORIAL STAFF – Stanchion Potts has not gone quietly. From his arrest, when he barricaded himself in his office and jerry-rigged a flamethrower out of deodorant and a lighter, to his arraignment, when he still had the flamethrower, to his trial, which featured at least three lawyers that turned out to be ninjas, to his sentencing, the blood stains of which are still being scrubbed from Courtroom 2, it has been a roller coaster that all of Little Aleppo was forced to ride.
In his ten years in office, Potts was an ethical embarrassment even by Little Aleppos’s lax standards. A partial list of his transgressions: declaring eminent domain on the property that would become Tower Tower while silently partnering with Tower Gildersleeve on the building’s ownership, letting all those perverts into Harper Zoo after hours (the wombat has still not recovered), suplexing Cenotaph reporter Omona Koryoku, doctoring secretly-made audio tapes of his enemies to show that they were communists (or capitalists; whichever was more damaging), grave robbing.
It was, in The Cenotaph‘s opinion, the brazenness of Mr. Potts that led to his downfall. Many a Town Father has been known to sell his vote, but only Mr. Potts went so far as to hold an auction on the steps of Town Hall.
Mr. Potts has used the power of his office to harass his rivals, threaten his enemies, and sabotage his opponents. He has rented out the Main Drag to movie productions, shutting down all traffic and business for the day, while keeping all the money. He has militarized the meter maids. He has attempted to foment ethnic hatred, but only against the Icelandic, and there are no Icelandic people in Little Aleppo, so the whole thing was a wash.
His behavior during his trial was just as bad. Mr. Potts attempted to both tamper with and molest the jury. Three successive legal teams presented his defense, as they kept quitting when Mr. Potts wouldn’t stop objecting to his own side. He kept throwing tennis balls at the judge. Four faked heart attacks. A kangaroo was brought into the courtroom one day to demonstrate that, in Mr. Potts’ words, this was kangaroo court. The judge declared the metaphor too on the nose, and added an additional charge: grand theft marsupial.
Stanchion Potts is not the first Town Father to go to jail. He will almost certainly not be the last. No student of the neighborhood’s history would even place him in the top five worst Town Fathers. Nevertheless, he deserves his sentence, and we deserve to be rid of him.
Letters To The Editor
All letters are [sic] and unedited.
Send your letters to LttE, 1 Greeley Square.
Or just accost our reporters in bars, like usual.
You motherfuckers,
The hysteria of The Cenotaph has been on full display lately. The willful collusion between the media, the courts, and the zoo to persecute a fine American civil servant such as Stanchion Potts is appalling and, I believe, criminal. You have slandered a good man’s name who could have made a fortune in the private sector, but chose to do so in government. That’s sacrifice.
Town Father Potts is a patriot, and a hero. Only he had the bravery and integrity to warn us all of the incoming Icelandian hordes, or as he called it: Really, Really White Genocide. How long are we going to wait before we round these people up and throw them out of Little Aleppo? Until they move in? That’s playing defense, and Americans don’t play defense.
Why is no one talking about Town Father Dubrow’s crimes? Everyone knows that he used one of the columns in front of Town Hall to pay off his gambling debts, and not even cool gambling debts. Keno. This man cannot be trusted, and he is also a voodoo priest who keeps many zombies, but yet you in the vicious press insist on crucifying–yes, crucifying–a man who loves his mother and dogs and American mothers and God.
There is a sickness in the country, and the outbreak stems from your newsroom. Your are liars and cowards, the lot of you, and you are trying to kill this country which we love so much.
Sincerely,
Gary Spumanti
Dear Letters to the Editor,
In the May 12th edition of the Kitchen Kittie’s Kountry Kooking column, there was a recipe for cranberry tarts. Perhaps it would have been appropriate to warn the readers not to read the recipe out loud. We had to trap the demon in the rumpus room.
Get on the stick!
Sincerely,
Antonia St. Expiration
Dear Letters to the Editor,
There used to be a Rapunzel Street, right? That’s a rhetorical question: I know there was a Rapunzel Street, because I lived at 131 Rapunzel Street for sixteen years, and now it’s not there.
Someone has replaced my right foot with a copy. It is identical to my right foot in every way, but it is not my foot.
I don’t know if I have a dog.
Sincerely,
Bummer Berlin
Blue Oxen Edge Generals 41-37
By TAWNY MUSSELS – Pitcher Christian Rock and first basemen Hux Grange led the Paul Bunyan High Blue Oxen to victory over the Washington High Generals 41-37.
“Their lead-off guy got on, right? And we start talking, and we’re like ‘Baseball is boring as hell,’ and people heard us and agreed, so we all just decided to play flag football,” Mr Grange reported to The Cenotaph.
Arts & Culture
Live music review: The Snug at the Davidian Theatre
By DAN DRUFF – They didn’t show up.
Obituaries
Alan Lamp, 92 – Alan Lamp died in his sleep Monday night at the age of 92. He follows his wife, Hetty, and is survived by two sons, five grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
Born in Little Aleppo in either 18– or 19–, Mr Lamp was educated up until the sixth grade, and then sold to a carpenter for twelve dollars. Mr. Lamp would apprentice with that carpenter, Edwin Fleense of Dancer Street, for the next decade. After Mr. Fleense’s still unsolved murder, Mr. Lamp took over the shop and quickly became Little Aleppo’s woodworker-to-the-stars.
Tables for movie stars, kayaks for pop singers, terribly fancy toothpicks for travel writers: Mr. Lamb crafted masterpieces by the dozen, and commanded the highest prices. A chest of drawers he made for the Pope recently sold at auction for $28,000, despite recent revelations that the Pope never took custody of the chest, nor did he ask for it or have any idea that it existed.
Aside from his commercial work, Mr. Lamb also gave back to the neighborhood. The Tyndale Pagoda on the campus of Harper College has become a local icon and a visual shorthand for the school. His son, Alan, Jr., said that his father “loved that the students appreciated his pagoda, but didn’t like all the sex they had in it, especially the interracial kind. I love my father, but he was a bit, you know, old-fashioned. Don’t write this part down, okay?”
Mr. Lamb will be buried next to his wife, Hetty, in Foole’s Yard.
Magnificent Amberson, 22 – The majority of Magnificent Amberson was discovered in Room 100 of the Hotel Synod Monday morning. Ms. Amberson had recently moved to the neighborhood from Cascabel, Texas, and was the bass player for a local punk-rock band, The Fucks. She is survived by her mother and father, Maybelle and Gulch, and her twin brothers, Northrup and Grumman.
Ms. Amberson’s mother contacted The Cenotaph and asked that we share her a portion of her daughter’s final letter home.
…
Mommy, you should see the hills. There is nothing in Cascabel as green, and I’m counting Jimmy Niemark’s Chevelle. You always know which way you’re going because of them. It’s almost impossible to get lost here.
I can’t lie: I was scared my first few weeks. There’s so many people! And they’re different people. There are some of the differentest people I’ve ever seen in Little Aleppo!
Do you remember what you used to say to me when I was little? About everyone being the singer of their own song? I have to be honest and say that I never understood what you meant. This morning, I was walking up the Main Drag and caught eyes with a stranger. He was a man I had never seen before Wearing a suit. Just some man.
And then I understood what you meant. He had the same amount of brain behind his eyeballs that I did, and just as much history, and problems, and things he wasn’t going to tell anybody unless he was drunk.
I think people are all about the same, Mommy. Same size, same shape, and same stuff. I mean the stuff inside. And I don’t think we give each other credit for it. And I don’t think we forgive each other enough.
Maybe we should forgive each other as much as we forgive ourselves.
We’ve got TWO shows next week, and we are starting to get fans. When we played Schoolejandro’s on Saturday, the audience was singing along with some of the songs. They knew the words! I almost started crying, and after the show I went and found everyone that was singing and hugged them.
I hope you are not worrying about me, because you have more important things to worry about!
I love you and will see you soon,
Maggie
There will be a memorial concert for Ms. Amberson at Schoolejandro’s on Friday night. All are welcome.
Ooh-ee! That suit is you!
“Right? I feel like a waiter in a restaurant I can’t afford to go to.”
You’ll get some leg tonight for sure.
“Huh?”
Tell us how you DOOOO it?
“Ah, shit.”
C’mon.
“No.”
Pleeeeease?
…
“C’mon, TotD, gimme a break.”
One break…coming UPPPPPPP! Unchained! And ya hit the ground runnin’! Unchained!
“I don’t want to be a part of this anymore.”
Should’ve been an accountant. Who are these folks?
“This is Tafetta Puce, my date.”
Lovely corsage.
“And that’s Mamie Eisenhower.”
Really?
“Just a coincidence.”
Okay. We’re going clockwise?
“Sure, man. Guy in the black tie is Teddy Ponyboy.”
These are very 50’s-specific names your friends have.
“Everyone notices that.”
Sure.
“Right next to him is Officerina Krupke.”
No.
“You wanna see her driver’s license?”
Nope. Not her name. Who’s the tall Asian guy?
“Bruce Lee.”
Precarious’ brother?
“No, it’s the real Bruce Lee.”
It is not.
“He grew up in the Bay Area. Without looking it up, you can’t say for sure that it’s not.”
…
Dammit.
“Even as a kid, I’m smarter than you.”
Nothing to be proud of.
“I know, man.”
Hey, Bobby. Whatcha doing?
“Karate time.”
Oh, goddammit.
“He’s not here.”
Phew.
“Yet.”
Oh, sure. Can’t have a summer tour without Elvis showing up for some reason. Bobby?
“Uh-huh?”
Why does it look like you’re playing in a Sam Ash?
“The lack of presentation.”
I’m just saying that at this point, it’s almost a hassle to be this bush league.
“Well, you know: the fans expect a pretty high level of not-giving-a-fuck.”
True.
“Deadheads come to the show and there’s not road cases strewn all over the place lazily, then they feel cheated.”
Give the people what they want.
“Unless they want money.”
Yeah, sure.
“It works the other way. They give us the money.”
And then someone steals it from you.
“Right. It’s a system.”
If it never quite worked in the first place, don’t fix it.
“Exactly.”
Memorial Day is an American holiday, but soldiers are soldiers no matter where they’re from. They’re dirty and tired and they want to go home, but sometimes they don’t get to. If you prick them, they bleed, but it’s far more efficient to shoot them or drop bombs on them.
World has droughts, and the world has famines, and there’s never enough love, but the world always has more dead soldiers than anyone knows what to do with. Tough enough to remember the ones we have; maybe we should stop making more for a while.
So here’s to the Spartans, and the Sacred Band of Thebes. The Redcoats holding their lines, the Red Army holding Stalingrad, the Red Chinese at Panmunjom. From Apache to Boxer to Zulu.
And Easy Company. The 442nd, too. The Tuskegee Airmen, and the crews in the Liberators and Flying Fortresses they shepherded. The 54th from Massachusetts, and the Florida Irregulars. The Rough Riders. The Huey pilots in the gunships and slicks up in the sky, and the tunnel rats under the jungle soil. Deuce-and-a-half drivers supplying the front line along the Red Ball Express. Jimmy Doolittle and his Raiders, and the men still at their stations on the Arizona.
All the boys over there, and the ones under our feet, too.
There won’t be a Christmas eventually. It’ll go the way of Saturnalia. There will always be a Memorial Day, because there will always be a reason for Memorial Day.
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