Beware the Angry Vagina

While sifting through a dense underbrush of resumes and headshots in response to an ad I placed in Backstage for actors to appear in comic videos, I was struck by how many women have appeared in one form or another in "The Vagina Monologues." It seems like vaginas, silenced for centuries, are now declaiming with a vengeance.

For example, one young woman's resume listed that she played the part of the "Angry Vagina" in that selfsame play.

Here are some other characters from that play:

The Manic-Depressive Vagina
The Nervous Vagina
The Happy-Go-Lucky Vagina
The Vagina with a Heart of Gold
The Vagina with a Chip on Its Shoulder
The Goofy Vagina
Mamacita Vagina
The Yodeling Vagina
The Tap-Dancing Vagina
The Vagina with a Criminal Past
The Mom-and-Pop Vagina
The "Are You Looking at Me?" Vagina
The Ventriloquist Vagina
The Stepford Vagina
The Special Needs Vagina
The Passive-Aggressive Vagina

Now drilling at a theater near you

Last night, I took the above photo of the marquee of Theatre Three in downtown Port Jefferson, Long Island. A production of "West Side Story" is the feature attraction, and the theater also advertises a Saturday night improv comedy show. But I was struck by the middle title: "Glenn R. Korsen, DDS." What is a dentist doing on a theater marquee? Does he have a solo act reading X rays of selected audience members? Maybe he does entr'acte root canal for the Sharks and Jets. I mean, I don't remember any character named "Glen Korsen, DDS" in "West Side Story." But my memory is sketchy; maybe along with the Sharks and Jets there was a dentists' gang:

"When you're a Dent
You're a Dent
From your first wax impression
To your last dyin' day.

When you're a Dent
You're the top cat in town,
You're the gold medal kid
Making a solid-gold crown!"

Dating in New York City...

The outpatients in pursuit of the in-patients.

In Seaside Heights/God: the ultimate Peeping Tom

I was visiting some friends at the Jersey shore this past weekend. One night, I accompanied my friend Mike while he took his 13-year-old daughter and her friends to the Seaside Heights boardwalk - one of the last vestiges of old, vulgar-beautiful America. A Fellini-esque phantasmagoria of proletarian carny splendiferousness. Rides such as the Moby Dick, the Pirates' Cove and the Skyscraper, which consists of two capsules at either end that perform elliptical revolutions (and that resembles a weather vane), the apex of which is several hundred feet off the ground, and even the thought of which made me nauseous. Ski-ball, pinball, test your strength booths, the haunted manor, Sno-cones, cotton candy, Sicilian pie, sausage and peppers, frozen custard, Dutch pretzels, calamari - even arepas, an indication that the largely Italian-American crowd of my youth has been a bit diluted by Hispanics, Asians and a handful of other tribes, all sporting oversized T-shirts, faded jeans, baby doll dresses a la mode, piercings and bare midriffs overhanging pants like a landslide of flab. (I say the following with some affection.) I always wondered where in the world all the girls who do porn come from? Now I know: Seaside Heights.

A background sonic drone of ringing bells and whistles, screaming kids and poorly mic-ed adolescents barking up prospective customers or declaring the winner of a stuffed bunny. We passed one girl desultorily swinging a Star Wars light sabre, her attitude signifying "yeah, getyourStarWarslightsabreswhogivesashitit'sasummerjobwhoneedsitsellingcheapplastictubestomoronsiftheythinkthisisarealStarWarssabrethey'reevenstupiderthanIthoughtIcan'twaittogetoffandmakeoutandsmokeajointwithmyboyfriend."

At the end of the night, as my two friends and I left the boardwalk my friend Mike suddenly said, "Hey, check out that guy over there." I turned my head just in time to see a small, older man standing in a dark driveway peering into the window of a bungalow right off the main drag. A Peeping Tom, who was startled by the sound of our voices and scurried away.

This led to conjecture about the man's motives. Could he be the bungalow's owner who locked himself out? Unlikely; otherwise why did he allow us to interrupt his mission? If he was a "peeper," at what was he peeping? Did he peep on a regular basis, or was this a special occasion? My friend Mike said he probably peeped all around the neighborhood, which led me to add that he was taking advantage of the town's "$9.95 All U Can Peep" policy.

We continued riffing in this vein for so long that it dawned on me that we were becoming as obsessed with the Peeping Tom as he was with, well, the object of his peeping.

Were we meta-peepers?

My friend Michael had the last word: "Since God knows all and sees all, isn't he the ultimate Peeper?"

Uniqueness of the masses

A current Time Warner Cable TV spot ends with the announcer's exhortation, "Share your individuality with people just like you."

Ingredients

I bought a package of caramelized walnuts from Balducci's. The ingredients listed were "walnuts, sugar, honey." Then in capital letters were printed the words "CONTAINS WALNUT."

It's as if they had to reassure you that the food you just bought is exactly what it purports to be.

And it got me thinking...Humans should come with their own ingredients list. A label on their clothing. For one thing, it would make dating much easier and allow you to completely bypass potential sociopaths (which comprise at least 75 percent of the population of Manhattan).

For example, you see an attractive woman at a party and start a conversation. She seems interested -- she's curious and enthusiastic about your work, she touches your arm frequently, smiles constantly and laughs at your jokes. Then you lean in (or perhaps turn her over) to read her label: "Ingredients: self-involvement, egocentrism, superficiality, materialistic bent, insensitivity, erratic personality. May contain nut."

Next, the "Overture to Lohengrin," but first the Philharmonic would like to congratulate Sammy Liebowitz on his bar mitzvah

Last night, I attended an event at Lincoln Center that was part of their outdoor "Midsummer Night's Swing" dance season. My longtime friend and virtuoso saxophonist Michael Hashim was leading an exceptional band in a program of the music of Billy Strayhorn. In other words, consummate musicians playing some of the greatest music ever written.

At one point, I was dancing with a young woman around 21. She had come with a group of friends to celebrate one of the friend's birthday. While we were dancing, she complained to me that she had asked Michael if he would announce the friend's birthday and he had replied, "Uh, no." She seemed to think that his was some sort of bar band whose duties included taking requests ("Hey, can you play "Money, Cash, Ho's"?) and announcing milestone events in the lives of audience members. She hadn't the slightest idea that she had been granted the privilege of attending an event of rare musical importance and sublimity. (The Billy Strayhorn Orchestra, as Michael calls the band, plays many obscure arrangements retrieved from the archives of Duke Ellington and elsewhere, and the costs in time and money for research, transcriptions, copying, gathering the musicians, rehearsals, etc., puts practical limitations on the frequency of such concerts. In fact, the band hadn't played at Lincoln Center in four years.)

But all this was unknown and probably incomprehensible to the young woman.

Can you imagine some bozo attending a concert of the New York Philharmonic and asking Lorin Maazel, "Oh, before you do Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring,' could you play 'Happy Birthday' for my girlfriend?"

Area 52

You ever watch one of those documentaries about people who claim to have been abducted by aliens? These incidents always seem to take place somewhere out West -- Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico -- and the subjects are always white people, usually lower-middle class, trailer park-types. I mean, have you ever seen a black person who claims he's been abducted by aliens? Of course not. Just don't tell Al Sharpton.

I mean, blacks have been abducted by white people. Even by other black people. But not by Pleiadians. Those guys don't abduct blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Italians or Asians. Or gays (who would admittedly love the anal probing). The aliens may look green, but they vote white.

They're goggle-eyed, hypercephalic space bigots -- the rednecks of the constellation Taurus.

They may or may not be a superior civilization, but they do have their own website: http://www.pleiadians.net/. On its home page, they claim that "We come to you with love and purpose ... from another dimension." Only when you scroll down to the bottom do you see that the Pleiadians are using an earthling, one Lia Shapiro, to write all their material. And that her/their book, Comes the Awakening: Realizing the Divine Nature of Who You Are, is available on Amazon. Maybe there they explain the reasons for their racial prejudice.

Either way, I wouldn't be surprised if all the groups that have NOT been abducted are considering some kind of class-action suit against the aliens. Out there in Area 52.

Don Rickles' Seven Habits of Highly Effective Leaders

Number five: Learn to delegate, you hockey puck!

Earth vs. the Alien Paparazzi

Strangest headline of the day comes from the Smoking Gun website:

Perez Hilton In Alien Paparazzi Suit

From what I can gather, this gossip columnist who changed his name to mimic that of a celebrity birdbrain because it would fraudulently steer Web traffic from the millions of boobs who can't spell "Paris" when typing it into a search engine, claims that he is being harassed by Martian photographers competing for a scoop they can deliver to their readers back on Mars, where Perez is presumably a celebrity.

General, the enemy has launched its super whoopee cushion!

From a story today on ABCnews.com headlined, "Fringe Science Yields 'Gay Bombs' and Psychic Teleportation" about how the Pentagon is spending $78 billion a year on whacked-out weapons and space research:

Scientists are exploring beamed speaker systems that only one person can hear and foam that makes the enemy slip and fall.

Other top-secret projects on which they're working include a giant squirting flower, an enormous dribble glass and the world's biggest banana peel...

Moses parts the FDR Drive or: The Ten Commandments for motorists

Earlier this week, according to a wire story, the Vatican issued a "Ten Commandments" for motorists to keep them on the road to salvation, warning drivers against the sins of road rage, abuse of alcohol or even simple rudeness.

While the directive didn't come straight from the Pope, but instead a mid-level functionary known even to Vatican honchos as a bit of a loose cannon, it did arouse my curiosity about the commandments. (They were not enumerated in the story, which only alluded to road rage, DUI and other mobile "occasions for sin" such as illegal passing.)

Then I took a cab uptown and suddenly had a vision of the motor vehicle Ten Commandments:

I. Thou shalt sport a “WWJD” bumper sticker.
II. Thou shalt not stop for hitchhikers unless they’re holding a sign that reads, "Vatican City or Bust.”
III. Thou shalt install special holy water cup holders.
IV. Thou shalt not remove thy hands from the wheel and “let Jesus take over.”
V. If thou gets pulled over and thou wishes to avoid a ticket, thou shalt offer the highway patrolman an autographed photo of Pope Benedict XVI.
VI. Thou shalt not commit road rage – except against heathens.
VII. Thou shalt not make any carved images, except for plastic dashboard Jesus. Also, thou shalt not allow the Styrofoam dice hanging from thou rear-view mirror to touch plastic dashboard Jesus.
VIII. Thou shalt not use a CB radio to speak in tongues.
IX. Thou shalt not park in a “handicapped” parking space, unless one is “blind, halt, lame, or a leper.”
X. Thou shalt not use thine cell phone while driving – unless thou is dialing the 1-900-CONFESS line.

The Aryan Nations personals

Wotan seeks Brunhilde. Single, proud Viking needs mate for enjoy grail-seeking, dwarves and other Teutonic fun times. Don’t let my love become a funeral pyre.

Aryan accountant, 45, never married. Looking for racially aware woman, any age, into national socialism, Quickbooks. Must be white enough to please Aryan mom.

Idaho movement activist seeks partner to keep survivalist tent neat and clean.

Athletic Caucasian seeks fit woman for hunting, fishing, etc. (not golf, which is making our race weak)

To “evabraun69”: Please resend your last email. My server ate it, and I can’t retrieve it. I know it is the work of the liberal elite who betray our country to illegals and others who dilute our racial purity!

Skinhead starting neo-Nazi group in Upper West Side. So far not so good. Would love to meet a smart, young pale babe. No kids, pets, Zabar’s shoppers.

Cute, slim anti-Semite with two tickets for a concert by Adolf the Cable Guy. Any hunky Aryans want to join me?

I'm laying a ten-spot on R2D2

On the scientific front:

Robots from 33 Countries Clash at RoboCup 2007

Nearly 300 teams from 33 countries are gearing up to compete at RoboCup 2007 Atlanta, the world's most renowned competition for research robotics, at the Georgia Institute of Technology July 3-10.
--Georgia Institute of Technology


The Russian Federation robot team was disqualified when they were found to be taking performance-enhancing RAM.

Entertainment Tonight in the monkey cage

From a 2/19/07 story on CNN.com:

In "Fame Junkies" Halpern cites studies that suggest fame is a factor in other animal groups as well. In one study rhesus monkeys were willing to give up their food simply to stare at a dominant monkey.

"Everyone thinks that the dominant monkey has it made. I'm here to tell you that is so not true. Oh, sure; at first you get off on it. The chicks throwing themselves at you. The non-alpha males staring at you admiringly, wishing they could be you, presenting their rump (too much information!). Your own personal trainer. Everything catered -- all the bananas, pears, ice cream, grubs and termites you could ever want -- and available 24/7.

But they don't warn you of the downside: Your total lack of privacy. The pressure to always be "on," to have a "heavenly body." The nonstop harassment by the paparazzi from Animal Planet. The fact that some zookeeper named you Mr. Jiggs. (Hell-O! That's a chimp's name.) The overentitled brats who think they can ride you. (Just try it, punk!) The ever-present threats from other males, who feign submissiveness by picking nits off you, but who you catch out of the corner of your eye shooting you those "silent bared teeth" and who might even bitch-slap you out of the blue if they think your guard is down.

No wonder we dominants only maintain our rank for two years. It's not because some other dude is bigger, stronger and has more bad-assitude. No way. It's that the fast lane wears you down. Always checking your ranking in the pack and worrying that some young upstart will take you down and put the moves on your babe. While you end up hooked up to an IV in some lab at Pfizer.

That's it for now. I'm having grub withdrawal. The others keep pushing me to enter rehab, but it's just an excuse to get me out of the way so that KoKo or Ling-Ling or Curious George W can take my place. But I'll have the last laugh. You see, I'm going to dish all the dirt in my memoir, A Million Little Rhesus Pieces.

Check it out."

The surge: 7th Avenue and 14th Street

The other night around 11 p.m. I was walking home up Seventh Avenue. When I got to the intersection of 14th Street, I saw a young woman standing close to the middle of the street frantically trying to hail a cab while blabbing to a friend on her cell phone. As this woman -- who was wearing sunglasses -- became increasingly frustrated, she blurted into the phone -- loudly enough for me to hear above the street noise -- "I can't get a cab here. It's like Baghdad!"

And that, my friends, is exactly the reason why we are still in Iraq.

This blog is so obscure...

...that some Russian hackers tried to break into it, but they couldn't find it and gave up.

Cyber-mating, part 5: Curse of the Cat People

Today a woman on the dating site FastCupid.com "winked" at me. A "wink" is a wordless overture from a member who is interested in you but too cheap to spend a buck or two that it costs to send an email message. Her user name is "babylambtbone."

This is how she filled out the last three sections of her profile:

Five items I can't live without

coffee, naps with my cat, something to read, positive reinforcement, chocolate raspberry rolled scones from the read

In my bedroom one will find...

me and my cat taking a nap or reading a book or the newspaper the cat doesnt really read tho

Why You Should Get to Know Me

i like real dates im old fashioned but i like loud music and im pretty noisy sometimes i love my cat i like quiet too sometimes i dont really take myself very seriously i like to take naps and stay up late

This woman is 43 years old, can neither spell nor punctuate, and from this evidence -- "i like loud music and im pretty noisy" -- has the sing-song syntax, unmediated mind and cultural predilections of a IM-mad ten-year-old. She describes her occupation as “yoga teacher/waiter” and spends far too much time in bed with her cat. She's the Collyer Brothers’ younger sister.

And it's a good thing that the cat can't read. He'd be appalled.

Bush's new World Bank president

Willie Sutton.

The zombie army

These days you hear a lot about zombies. They’ve become a hot item. In demand. If you want your party to be officially hip, you’ve got to invite at least one zombie. But if you want the zombies to keep coming back, you’ve got to make sure you also invite enough victims. They could be people you don’t like, exes who done you wrong, or just random passers-by. Party crashers make perfect victims. Because of the irony.

And there are a lot of zombies, apparently. They occupy whole towns and have taken control of several cities, including Washington. And yet, they're the ultimate outsiders. They didn’t attain power using traditional methods, like the electoral process. No way. They ate everyone who was in power until there was no one left.
They have their own institutions. Like the zombie army. Which is not to be confused with the Mahdi Army of Moktada al-Sadr, the Iraqi Shiite cleric. There’s a big difference. Sadr is Shiite; the zombies are Sunni.

I was wondering if it was easy to get into the zombie army. Or is it mandatory for all zombies? Are zombies obligated to perform two years of military service before resuming their bloody rampaging of civilians? Is it a volunteer zombie army? What would have to be wrong with you to be declared unfit for duty? I mean, they're already dead, which would get you an easy 4F in any other army. Maybe you get a deferral if you’re a vegan.

They all kind of move pretty clumsily, and I can’t imagine they have the coordination to handle sophisticated weaponry, or fly planes.

Digression: What if you boarded a 747 and it took off and the first announcement from the cockpit was “This is your pilot speaking. Grrrrrrr!!!!! And then the cockpit door flings open and out staggers a headless flight attendant! “Chicken or beef?” “Chicken or beef? Arrghhhh…..”

Back to the zombie army. Let’s say a platoon of zombies is going off to fight the enemy in Iraq. And they’re out in the yard getting broken in…

SERGEANT: Alright listen up, ladies! You call yourself zombies? I mean, look at you! You’re falling apart. Blood drooling out the sides of your mouths! The worst posture I’ve ever seen. You, Jackson, pick up that part of your arm that just fell off! And Francisco, stop gnawing on that human skull! Mess hall is over! Jesus, you’re the sorriest group of rooks I’ve ever laid eyes on.

Let’s drop the zombies into a typical Hollywood World War II flick, where the platoon has an Italian from Brooklyn, a naive, blonde farm boy from the Midwest, a Southern boy everybody teases about his drawl, a laid-back Californian. And a zombie. He’s considered the “odd one.” The other recruits pick fights with him until they find out he bites.

They’re about to head into the big battle, and the zombie, who can only grunt, takes out a grimy photo of his sweetheart back home in Zombieville to show the others, and she’s absolutely hideous, with half a head and generally leprous all over, and the Italian guy looks at it and of course he’s totally repulsed, but he tries to hide it and says to the zombie, “Bet you can't get back to her, huh?”

Then the battle begins, and at a key moment, the sergeant finds himself without a grenade and he calls out to the zombie, “Grenade!” and the zombie of course fumbles it and blows the sergeant to high heaven. Later, back at base, the rest of the platoon is too grief-stricken to eat, while the zombie gnaws on a Nazi jawbone.

Now what if the zombies had other ways to organize besides the army? Like zombie medical organizations – “Les Médecins sans les Cerveaux.” Let’s say you need surgery and you have really bad health insurance. You’re strapped to an operating table and in limps your zombie surgeon. And the only implement he’s holding is a rock.

No$talgia

You've seen those banner for Classmates.com -- "Find Your High School Buddies!"

If they were such good buddies, how come you need a search engine to find them?

The suicide love line

Some years ago, I met a woman -- can't remember where. She was a psychotherapist, slim and attractive in a Levantine way. (I also can't remember her ethnic background; there's a lot of lacunae in my memory bank, probably the result of trauma that I experienced from around, say, 1974 to 2001 or so.)

This was back in the 1980s, when sex moved in the express lane, and men and women had an unspoken "one-date rule." Thus, during a pleasant dinner, the therapist informed me that in addition to her private practice, she volunteered to be an emergency counselor on the Suicide Hotline. This required her to be home at 9:30 every other Saturday night and available to receive calls from desperate people who were seriously contemplating self-extinction. And then she asked if I would mind coming to her apartment. Again, I was younger, and the imminent possibility of getting laid prevented me from considering either the ethical dimensions of trying to seduce someone away from the outstretched hand of some bridge-jumper and the practical impediments to doing so.

I rationalized it by thinking that since she initiated it, she must have a way of multi-tasking that would accommodate both interests. She told me that some nights were very slow, and almost nobody wanted to off themselves. I hoped that something good was on television that night that would distract the suicides at least for a few hours. Maybe a good heavyweight bout.

We quickly removed our clothes and had reached a stage of advanced foreplay when the first call came through...

(to be continued)

Cyber-mating, part 4: Les hommes

If you are a man searching for l'amour via an Internet dating site, whatever you do, don't use a photo of yourself in a giant bunny suit (with the head off, of course), as one poor schlemiel did on a site that calls itself "the smart people's personals."

Here are some other examples of how men with presumably good intentions sabotage themselves by unconsciously revealing strange obsessions and off-putting personal neuroses.

Man #1:

i believe that one should believe that leprechans exist.
i believe when you are in ireland and come to a bridge you should get out and ask the leprechans for safety in your crossing, for fun.

This is one too many leprachaun references -- and besides, if you love 'em that much you should at least know how to spell their name.

i believe you when you whisper in my ear that you saw a mermaid

I would run screaming, but that’s just me.

i believe my friends keep me alive

They protect him from the leprachauns.

i believe what my friend told me about some mini guy who lives in the conch shell he brought back for me and spends his days lifting grains of sand from here to there building miniature igloos, fireplaces, snowmen, etc.

O.K., you’re clearly obsessed with small imaginary creatures, and need to seek professional help ... from a very teeny-tiny psychiatrist, who lives in a tree on East 11th Street.

Man #2:

If you're a widget maker, I'll try to pick up enough widget jargon so you can tell me about your day and I'll be able to keep up and ask the occasional intelligent question just so you'll know I AM listening (and to indulge my vagrant curiousity).

Translation: I’ll make a condescending, half-hearted attempt to learn how to feign an interest in your professional life.

Man #3

In my bedroom one will find...

A bed, Eames side tables, Voss water and a copy of American
Psycho ... I've been told that my apartment looks like Patrick Batemans.

Ladies: If you don’t hear the cries of “Danger! Danger!” ringing in your head, your weirdo detector needs a new battery. And just in case the foregoing isn’t enough warning, in the “What I’m Looking For” box, he writes...

And nobody crazy. I mean, crazy to the point of hiring a hitman to kill your ex (which actually happened to me once). So... if you ever tried to actually kill your ex boyfriend, I'm probably not interested in a relationship with you. Unless you're REALLY hot.

Man #4:

If you're a vegetarian, you'll get preferential treatment. If not, then at least be healthy in your food choices. Of course, everything in moderation, including moderation. Let's pig out on your favourite vice once in a while, and then back to the diet.

"Then, back to the diet”? Does this guy run a vegan cult?

Cyber-mating, part 3: Under the Bushwick Sun

On many of the popular online dating sites, members are required -- or at least strongly urged -- to fill out a personality questionnaire, which solicits not just essential information, but banal questions such as "What celebrity do you most resemble?" and to fill in the blanks in "Mad Libs"-like sentences such as "-- is sexy; -- is sexier." Another sentence that you're supposed to complete is "If I could be anywhere right now..."

A majority of the women answer, "Tuscany." No shit! You mean just like every other nouveau riche, unimaginative Yuppie in the world who read that book and saw those movies with Russell Crowe and Diane Lane playing overworked/traumatized/lovelorn Americans who discover the true meaning of life is to be found in sunshine, wine and the smiles of gap-toothed peasants? It's like wearing a T-shirt that reads, "I spent two weeks in Italy and all I got was a veneer of sophistication."

Well, my grandparents lived in Italy, and loved it so much that they endured a month in the fetid, tubercular steerage section of a passenger ship to emigrate to Newark.

The reality is that so many obnoxious American Yuppies have descended upon Tuscany that the Tuscans can't handle it. How would the lawyers and designers of Prospect Park like it if every summer their neighborhood was invaded by hordes of Italian young professionals, all smoking like chimneys? Worse still -- what if the Italians decided to start moving to Brooklyn? Yes, my friend, we're talking "My Villa in Bensonhurst."

And if they don't choose Tuscany, then it's another idyllic spot as designated by Conde Naste Traveler. One advertising industry woman claims that this year she went to Bamff, London and Rio, and says she’s happy as long as she gets to “explore new cultures.” As if you could explore a culture in a week or two while staying at the local Hilton. “Look, dear – we're in London! Oh my god, I'm having culture shock – they drive on the right!”

Here are some more examples:

Palazzo Sasso in Ravello (name dropping a five-star hotel)

Hanalei Bay

Greece during a full moon in August, dancing until sunrise. (Yeah, you and Zorba.)

A small pub on the side of a mountain in the west of Ireland listening to live traditional music and enjoying the grey sky...

Crete, watching the sun set into the Libyan sea. (Or in Libya watching the sun set into the Cretan Sea)

Mali (average life expectancy: 53, but what do I care? I love the music! according to the woman who listed it)

The irony, of course, is that the people who actually live in these places – Caribbean islands, rural Ireland, can’t wait to get the hell out of them. They’re usually poor and have to make their living/endure the intrusiveness of gouche American tourists, on whom they are, unfortunately, economically dependent.

But all that is lost to these cosseted suburbanites, who like to think of themselves, as one woman put it, as “world travelers” -- as if they’re Thor Heyerdahl and they rafted to Tahiti.

Perhaps the most horrific response came from a woman who declared that if she could be anywhere in the world right now, it would be "at a Prince concert that never ends."

I'm pretty positive that's against the Geneva Conventions.

Cyber-mating, part 2: Love me, love my hula hoop

From the FastCupid.com profile of “Have hula hoop, will travel.”

Call me crazy, but I like everything to be fun. I'm a playful, light-hearted, upbeat, spontaneous world traveler. Watch out what you suggest to me, or you might suddenly find yourself on a plane to Bali to surf with the dolfins. One of my favorite things to do is to sink into a new culture - the music, the food, the spirit – but there will always be a yoga mat and a hula hoop with me to make me feel at home. ... I manage to find adventures where ever I go, and not just in my own mind. It could be out in the world, and even at home - like a night of cooking, painting and hula hooping and whatever else it all leads to.

Most people don't know this, but if you're not careful, hula hooping can lead to more serious stuff, like yo-yo's or invisible dogs. Hula hoops are a gateway toy.

I also like her dare, "Watch out what you say to me, or you might suddenly find yourself on a plane to Bali to swim with the dolfins." {SIC} What's she proposing here -- extraordinary rendition? Is she part of a secret CIA plot that employs 1950s children's fads to entrap evildoers? "You'd better talk -- or we'll send in the Slinkys." And does "swim with the dolfins" the New Age version of the old Mafia threat?

In the section "More About What I Am Looking For," she writes:

Playful, fun-loving and adventurous.
A fearless traveler.
Sincere, creative, willing to create with me.
A doer – TV addicts need not apply.
Someone who is patient; you'll need to wait for my hula hoop at baggage claim wherever we go.

Yes, because the Homeland Security people know that the terrorists try to smuggle in dirty bombs in hula hoops. And Al-Qaeda operatives have been known to break out in public demonstrations of hula-hooping as a distraction while one of their guys sets off an IED.

To be this woman's man, one must worship the hula hoop, must endure traveling with a woman dragging her collection of oversize plastic rings through security checks and trying to stuff them in the overhead compartment, just so she can "feel at home." I wonder what "home" is. A traveling circus?

Here's a truly frightening thought: Does she bring it to bed with her? Talk about a woman making you jump through hoops...

Cyber-mating, part 1: Wanted -- Huck Finn with a fauxhawk

I've been doing too much Internet dating lately, and I'll be posting my observations here for at least the next few days. One thing I've noticed, at least among the women, is that many of them list criteria for their mate that are so rigid and unrealistic as to defy reason. The descriptions of the ideal man they're seeking read like the shopping lists of impossibly spoiled suburban mall-aholics.

For example, take this posted set of attributes from a woman who is clearly conscious of its absurdity, as evidenced by her defensive addendum:

This is Who I Want

you to be. between 6' and 6'4". dark hair. fauhawk perhaps, but in a conservative way. green, hazel, or grey eyes. not fat, not skinny, not chiseled but in shape. great sex drive. nice olive complexion but not brown. long eyelashes (Prince). work in finance because you have that edgy gambling personality. emotionally available. have a midwestern boy sense of humor age 27-35. like to party and like to talk. appreciate all things artistic. if you're out there, who would you want me to be?

for those of you who have time to waste with nasty responses because I know what I want...why don't you turn on the news to see what kind of results that attitude brings to humanity.

Does this or does this not read like the ramblings of a schizophrenic? First of all, what the hell is a fauhawk? Is it a toupee in the shape of a mohawk? Something grown in the lab of the Hair Club for Punks? A Native American imposter from a fictitious tribe, like, say, the Indian in the Village People? Let's assume that it is some sort of ersatz punk-rick hairstyle. How, then, can it be "conservative"? Maybe she means that it has a natural look and isn't dyed some day-glo shade of pink. Or possibly it's a removable mohawk that you can ditch before you leave for work at your job at Bear Stearns, or stuff in your desk when your boss comes down the hall. You can send it out to be dry-cleaned. (Wikipedia defines a "fauxhawk" as "essentially a mohawk hairstyle with none of the commitment," which is just about perfect. It goes on: "Hair on the top of the head is combed to resemble a small fan mohawk. The hair on the sides of the head is not shaved, though it might be shorter. These are generally worn by students of schools with restrictive hair codes." Other sources attribute it to metrosexuals. You can't say Gang of 60 isn't educational...)

Moving on, we discover that this woman wants a man who is "not fat, not skinny, not chiseled but in shape." She sounds like a demented Goldilocks. And she wants her man to be olive-complected "but not brown." You know, something to match her walls.

In terms of occupation, her ideal mate should "work in finance because you have that edgy gambling personality." You know, like those rebel accountants and bankers. Hell's Brokers. And like all gamblers, Ms. Diva's dream guy should be "emotionally available."

She wants a "midwestern boy sense of humor." You know, a guy who tricks you into leaning up against a freshly painted white picket fence. A Tom Sawyer type. With a fake mohawk. An edgy commodities trader who chews on a blade of grass while he gauges the fluctuations of the bhat.

And, oh, he has to have a great sex drive and appreciate the arts.

So, to summarize: an olive-skinned, emotionally available, pseudo-punk rocker/gambling sex machine with Prince's eyelashes, Huck Finn's Midwestern innocence and T.S. Eliot's keen aesthetic sense who likes to "party" and to "talk."

Last comes the paranoid disclaimer, as she anticipates a mob of outraged men bombarding her Inbox:

"why don't you turn on the news to see what kind of results that attitude brings to humanity."

Finally, the truth about why we're in Iraq.

Catholic School: The Reality Show

Musing on yesterday's post about the difference between Catholic and Croatian Orthodox nuns must've led the universe to place in my path (via my gym's bank of flat-panel TVs) a soundless snippet from a VH1 show that featured adult bimbos in what seemed like Catholic school uniforms -- plaid jackets, solid skirts and knee socks. I wondered if this was a new reality show called, "Catholic School." Even better would be "Celebrity Catholic School," the premise being that Paris Hilton, Winona Ryder, Richard Gere and other misbehaving icons (the list is endless) are remanded to a classroom run by, say, my fifth-grade nun and over a period of time, reduced from being pampered megalomaniacs to guilt-ridden penitents. For verisimiltude to my fifth-grade nun's Irish combativeness and pugilistic inclinations, let's call her Sister Evander Holyfield. In terms of gratuitous cruelty, she made Simon Callow look like a piker. (And if our political overlords actually wanted to extract information from "enemy combatants" and other matchstick enemies, they'd hire a bunch of nuns to work over the "terrorists.")

On my reality show, each week the celebs would have to endure some punishment that Sister Evander would inflict with no prior warning and for no discernible offense -- as well as chastisement fully deserved: driving without a license, shoplifting, culturally inappropriate kissing of Indian women. In each installment, in response to, say, a wrong answer about All Saints' Day or an unconscious smirk, Sister Evander would humiliate the sinner by having, say, Paris sit in a corner wearing a dunce cap or Winona stand in the trash can or Alec Baldwin hide in the closet. And each week, one of the contestants would be "sent to the principal's office" -- the principal being Mel Gibson, while another celeb, by obsequiously and disingenuously sucking up to Sister Evander, would earn a token of esteem. "Mr. Gere, come up and get your gold star. And take that pencil case out of your ass!"

Viewers of reality shows love "confessional" moments, when one or another of the participants bares her secret feelings to the camera. Well, who knows confession better than the Church? You could throw in weekly "confessions" with a camera inside the confessional. "Um, Father, why I'm here is because I pulled that bitch Winona's hair after she, like, totally dissed me and called me a bimbo." "For your penance, my dear, you must say a dozen Hail Mary's ... and oh, also eat a jar full of worms."

You could build suspense by tipping the audience that at one point during the show, Sister Evander was going to go apeshit on one of the celebs -- again, for no apparent reason. Like the time she slapped my face so hard my glasses went flying across the room, only because I accidentally knocked over a chair from its perch upon a desk, a quasi-military ritual we were forced to perform every day before the final bell. I was an A-student and far too timorous to ever misbehave and yet, in her eyes, I was clearly guilty of a heinous offense and a right cross to the jaw.

Maybe the idea isn't so funny. Well, neither are the Stations of the Cross.

Battle of the Christian Nuns

Last night, I attended a swing dance in the basement of a Croatian Orthodox church, which gives you an idea of my scintillating social life. I have to say, though, that it was probably the only club in New York City where the bartender was peddling a book by a Croatian dictator: Horrors of War by the general and fascist Franco Tudjman.

The coat check concession was manned by a Croatian Orthodox nun. It had never occurred to me that there were nuns other than the Catholic variety that haunted my childhood. This nun was slightly built and older, probably in her 60s, and at first glance she very much resembled my fifth-grade home-room penguin, whose name my memory has repressed to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder.

I wondered if the coat-check nun hit misbehaving Croatian Orthodox children with her ruler or, as my fifth-grade nun did, with an open fist. Were the Croatians as quick to rush to judgment as the Catholics, meting out punishment reflexively, without establishing guilt (because as Catholics, we were all guilty sinners from birth)? Which sect's nuns hit harder? In an ultimate fighting championship bout, which nuns would emerge triumphant? Would it be on Pay-Per-View?

In the short term, I had to remind myself to avoid mentioning to the nun my opinions on the internecine Serb-Croatian struggle in the former Yugoslavia, if I ever wanted to get my coat back...

Dorian Gray, Just for Men, and a shakin' in the bed

I'm a nocturnal creature, like the bat, the mole, the owl, Dracula, the Wolf Man (the monster, not the Freud patient) and just about every other supernatural menace/cinematic homicidal maniac. (What is it about monsters that makes them afraid to show themselves in broad daylight? They're wusses, probably liberals.) When I am not immersed in a textual deconstruction of fin-de-siecle MittleEuropean literature, I can be found on my sofa casually channel-surfing -- and generally wiping out. For overnight TV is a gallimaufry of infospiels, a six-hour block of unending tele-hypnosis aimed at the insomniacal, the elderly and the hopelessly delusional -- the "Loser" demographic. A block of lost souls who are dying to be saved by Jesus, miracle hair replacements and ab-flattening apparati.

Thankfully, I have a relatively full head of hair, so the likes of Avicore don't arouse my insecurity. However, I have spotted a few gray hairs among the dark brown. And so I found myself suspending my index finger -- the remote channel-changing one at the appearance of a startling ad for Just for Men.

Maybe you've seen this ad in all its nightmarishly exploitational glory. It's the one in which a certain man's career is going great guns ... until he gets a few gray hairs, at which point he starts falling down an elevator shaft. Suddenly this guy’s perfect haute bourgeois life turns into a Hitchcock film. Having apparently survived the fall and/or escaped from a snake pit, he locks himself in his apartment, a self-identified pariah. He has no social life and soon begins to resemble a refugee from a Hopper painting. From his look of existential angst, it seems that at any second he could break into “the Scream.”

The message is scary in a kitschy, futuristic way: A few streaks of gray and you're kaput, defective, a drain on society. Buy Just for Men or throw yourself off the Brooklyn Bridge. Or maybe you'll be herded into camps by armies of slackers (assuming they could summon the energy). It's like a rewound "The Picture of Dorian Gray." (Note: Not to be confused with the adult video "The Picture of Dorian Gay," in which a straight man acts increasingly swishy, while his portrait turns into Liza Minnelli.)

Just as I was adding, "Buy 'Just for Men'" to my do-to list and pondering the implications of Madison Avenue agism, on came an informercial for the “Bean,” a snythetic beanbag-shaped device that purports to give you six-pack abs and is more stable than an exercise ball (sometimes known as a Physio ball). It featured heartfelt testimonials from people who claim that the Bean enables them to do their sit-ups and crunches without having to worry about the instability of the ball. Yes, these mostly young people admit that they're too lame and/or uncoordinated to sit on a large plastic ball without risking grievous injury.

Perhaps their ballophobia isn't their fault. Perhaps it's caused by the Devil. That's what I inferred from a televangelist show I switched to next.

Two women from Texas were discussing demonic mischievousness. One claimed that friends of hers had demons “shaking their beds.” But because she has such strong faith, there was no “shakin’ in her bed. "That’s because I tol' the devil ‘Get.’” “Not ‘Get.’ ‘Git’,” replied the other. “That works on these Texas demons.”

So You Think You're Infallible?

The Hollywood Reporter today reported that the Vatican is forming its own TV channel, after decrying the "destructive" influence of commercial television on the human spirit.

The new network, to be called H2O, "will broadcast news and original entertainment programming worldwide in seven languages, according to a statement. Additional details were sketchy."

Caption for an un-illustrated hypothetical New Yorker cartoon

Two chickens. One says to the other, "Yes, but don't they ever think about where all the chicken soup comes from?"

Gay Rehab, or How to Become a Certified Heterosexual

Lessons learned from Reverend Ted Haggard and TV commercials

1. If you accidentally kiss a buddy with whom you work in an auto body shop while gobbling from one end of a Snickers bar, the other end of which is in his mouth, immediately hit him over the head with a tire iron to demonstrate your “straightness.”

2. If the same admittedly unlikely scenario were to take place again, immediately rip off your chest hair. If the “near-kiss” happens a third time, you should immediately look for a job at another auto body shop.

3. If while in the gym locker room, your bare leg happens to brush against the bare arm of another guy, immediately put your head in the locker and smash the door on it.

4. If you’re on a date at a posh eatery – say Thomas Keller’s Per Se – and the waiter brings you “chick food” (defined as anything not on the menu at Burger King), you are to immediately bolt out of your chair, renounce the “chick food,” storm out of the restaurant like a guy having an epiphany at an “Iron John” workshop about how up till now he has been emasculated by chick culture, while summoning your band of brothers who also happen to be having the same realization about the threat to their masculinity by haute cuisine and while singing an ode to manly food, march en masse to the nearest Burger King outlet and order a Texas Double Whopper with Jalapeno. If you can’t find a Burger King, you are given dispensation to find the nearest fast-burger emporium and order the closest approximation to the Texas Double Whopper with Jalapeno. If you are unsure if the food you are eating is chick food, feed it to the nearest chick. If she eats it, it’s chick food and you want no part of it.

5. If you’re an evangelical pastor and a gay escort accuses you of having sex with and buying crystal methamphetamine from him, voluntarily submit to an evaluation of the degree of your heterosexuality by a board of fellow evangelists and have them declare you to be “one hundred percent heterosexual.” If they refuse, based on solid evidence to the contrary, ask if they will grade you on a curve. If you cannot find a nearby board of evangelists, proceed to the nearest auto-body shop and ask the staff if while they were checking your alternator they also would be willing to evaluate your masculinity and declare you to be “one hundred percent heterosexual.” If they don’t hit you in the head with a tire iron, you flunked. If they tell you “Call us Tuesday for an estimate,” and the estimate turns out to be, say, sixty-five percent, get a second opinion at another auto-body shop. If you don’t live near a board of evangelists or an auto-body shop, I hear that you can get your heterosexual certification on the Internet at www.mestraight?.com

The Jolly Green Giant: Behind the Legend

On day in 1952, a 98-pound weakling named Elmer Druck decided that bullies had kicked sand in his face one too many times. He adopted the Charles Atlas bodybuilding program and started lifting weights. However, he became so obsessed with “getting huge” that he began taking mega-doses of synthetic human growth hormone he obtained from a defecting East German shot-putter, along with, well, way too much chlorophyll. (“I figured it worked with plants,” he later said.)

One morning, he awoke to discover that he had become a 50-foot green monster. What was even more traumatizing was that he wasn’t a buff, intimidating, macho creature like the Incredible Hulk, but a big, green poofter who wore what looked like a gown Bob Mackie had designed for Cher on Oscar night.

At first, he tried to pretend he was normal, but that delusion was shattered the first time he tried to buy a suit.

For several years, he knocked around, working odd jobs: furniture mover, door-to-door salesman, semi-pro wrestler. (He wrestled in Mexico under the name “Los Grandes Verde Enchilada,” and his matches against the Aztec Mummy are said to be classics.) Then one day, he happened to run into a copywriter from the Burnett agency, who told him they were looking for a giant green mascot to pitch canned vegetables and that he should drop by the office.

The rest, as they say, is history.

But life at the top was far from glamorous. The Giant soon learned the perils of fame, as he related in an interview with the author:

They took advantage of me. I had this “personal services contract” and basically signed my life away. I was famous – as a freak. Worked seven days a week, 12-14 hours a day, posing for vegetable cans, shooting those godawful commercials, being hustled all over the country for meet-and-greets with sales reps from Boise …And you know what really blows? I don’t even get royalties. Sure, I got some tail. There’s always women who want to brag that they slept with a 50-foot green guy. They even asked me to be in this porn film, “Monster Dicks and Monster Trucks.” But they totally overestimated me, size-wise. The truth is I’m that from takin’ all that juice, my ‘nads had shrunk to the size of peas. Talk about ironic. The chicks were always so disappointed. Someone set me up with the 50-Foot Woman, but, sheesh, talk about aggressive! Every time I’d take her out for a romantic dinner, she’d get up, leave the restaurant and the next thing I knew she’d be overturning this Chevy with her bare hand! … So, yeah, chicks. After a while it was just easier to pay for it.

“Like that song said, It ain’t easy bein’ green. And 50 foot tall. And standing in a valley day and night. You know what it’s like in the middle of winter in Minnesota wearing just a toga?...

Ho, fucking ho.”

Little-Known Facts:

• The “Valley of the Jolly Green Giant” is the Minnesota River valley around Le Sueur. Right before the valley, there is an enormous wooden statue of the Green Giant poking above the trees. At least, that’s what the town would like people to believe. What the city fathers kept secret is that for many years the actual Green Giant lived in a gated lair hidden in the valley behind an Indian casino, and that he got his late-night kicks leaping out from behind the statue and scaring motorists on U.S. 169.

• The Giant once recorded a rap song, “Green as I Wanna Be!” The lyrics were:

Yo I’m green, y’all
And I’m fifty foot tall,
You call me an ogre
Cause I wear a toga
Yeah, I chill inna valley
Wit my bitch named Sally
She my ho-ho-ho
Makin’ the wack scene
Eatin’ peas and green beans
Till I’m green all over
Like I slept in clover
Go ahead and diss me
Cause I look so sickly
Like a frog done kissed me
Yo I’m green, y’all
Green as I wanna be!
Green as the Benjamins
Green as the trees
Green as the … somethin’ else that’s green!
Green, green
Not green with envy
Green as men be
From Mars you see
Green, green
Green as I wanna be!

It sold eight copies.

• The copy for a famous Green Giant ad proclaims “I Stand for Goodness” and parenthetically, in much smaller letters, “In fact, I haven’t sat down since 1925.” The truth is that all those years of standing have left the Giant crippled with sciatica and that he now hobbles around on a 50-foot cane.

• The Giant stole his catchphrase, “Ho ho ho” from Santa Claus and only after being threatened with a plagiarism lawsuit, added the words, “Green Giant.”

• His diet consists completely of canned peas.

• It has been long rumored that the Giant and Little Sprout are gay lovers, although the Giant’s official line always has been “We just happen to live in the same valley.”

Famous Quotes:

 “Please – no more niblets!”

Hannity and Colmes

are like George and Lenny.

Whatever became of these commercial mascots?

Frito Bandito (Runs an international drug cartel with the Hamburglar)

Ronald McDonald (Troubled clown/kid-poisoning serial killer)

Energizer Bunny (Crank addict)

Mr. Clean (Gay man with OCD)

Spuds Mackenzie (Frat boy party animal turned indicted convicted Enron executive)

Marlboro Man (NRA member and leader of Aryan Nation)

Coppertone Girl (Porn star with “anal specialty” and melanoma victim)

Charley the Tuna (Relentless social climber, now “walker” of society matrons)

Snap, Crackle & Pop – The Rice Krispies (Embittered lounge act last spotted playing a seedy nightclub in Bangkok)

Tony the Tiger (Keeping a low profile; on endangered species list)

Old Spice Sailor (Original member of Village People)

Morris the Cat (Effete and bitchy food critic for Cat Fancy)

Aunt Jemima (Made civil rights history when she refused to sit in the front of the bus)

Michelin Man (Victim of Nazi experiment; carny freak; suing German government for reparations)

CinnaMon and Bad Apple – Apple Jacks cereal (Jamaican gigolo for rich white women and petty hoodlum, respectively)

Betty Crocker (High-strung housefrau and tranquilizer addict; in and out of Betty Ford more than Jerry)

The Burger King (Ousted in a “burger coup” by a rebel group from White Castle; now living in exile in Saudi Arabia)

The Hamburgler (Drug smuggler on FBI’s Most Wanted List, still at large)

Chef Boy-ar-dee (Mob-backed celebrity chef turned government snitch)

Sonny the Cuckoo Bird (Mental patient)

Count Chocula (Diabetic vampire who must be careful not to suck the blood of hypoglycemics)

Helping Hand (Result of industrial accident; freak celebrity)

Punchy (Hawaiian Punch punch-drunk palooka; challenged Rocky Balboa to title bout despite suffering from post-concussion syndrome)

Lucky the Leprechaun (Elusive IRA gun-runner)

Quaker Oats Quaker (Peace activist snuffed by Cap‘n Crunch)

Samuel Adams (Hophead bootlegger)

Uncle Ben (Spends his days in guilt-ridden anguish over his creation of the nightmarish “Perverted Rice”)

Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” Lady (Converted vegetarian and radical member of PETA)

It's inevitable...

One of these days, Hannity is just going to eat Colmes.

The Secret Life of Ronald McDonald (and other beloved commercial mascots)

You know that cute Aflac duck? A Loman-esque sad-sack life insurance peddler.

Mr. Clean? Not only is he gay but he’s got OCD. (That cleaning fixation? Hello!)

The Energizer Bunny? … I have two words: “Meth addict.” As he put it in his recent autobiography, Bang the Drum As Fast as I Can:

“The company never knew that I was cranked up. I told him it was Starbucks. After a while, I crashed and burned. Energizer let me go. I hit the skids. At one point, I was working as a bike messenger. I even did some gigs as the Easter Bunny, but they thought I was ‘too intense’ for the kids.”

And don’t even ask about Ronald McDonald, saddest of all clowns and slow-mo serial killer peddling trans fats to his child victims.

Cap’n Crunch. The Frito Bandito. Spuds Mackenzie. Mr. Peanut. These are universally recognized icons. Utimate branding symbols. Innocent reminders of childhood and objects of nostalgic affection for generations of Americans. These commercial mascots have moved product like nobody’s business and served as the benign face of multinational corporations.

But where did they come from? And, more to the point, what do they do when we’re not watching?

The official story is that these adorable characters sprung fully-formed from the heads of Madison Avenue hucksters – marketing’s brainchildren. We’re supposed to believe that the Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Jolly Green Giant are simply images on animation cells or CGI files, fictional imps that do their giggling and ho-ho-ho-ing and then disappear in the electronic ether.

However, here's the real story: These allegedly two-dimensional cartoon characters are autonomous creatures with secret lives that belie the feel-good corporate P.R. Lives that have seen more of their share of heartbreak, tragedy and scandal.

I have unearthed secret corporate dossiers that reveal the sordid, ironic machinations of these beloved product symbols, the shocking truth that the multinationals – often with the help of law enforcement – have buried.

You would be shocked to discover the grim reality behind the cheery façade of the characters you've grown to know, love and, often, eat. Facts such as:

• Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, who spent the best years of his life testifying that he was “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” has been in a padded cell in the avian wing of Creedmore Psychiatric Institution for the past nine years, diagnosed with an incurable case of chocarexia nervosa.

• The Michelin Man (a.k.a. Bibendum) was the victim of a Nazi experiment in which Dr. Josef Mengele tried to cross a Frenchman with a rubber tire. After the war, the beleaguered Bibendum worked as a carny freak, billing himself as “the rubber man” and asking for volunteers from the audience to “Go ahead and kick me.”

• The Cosa Nostra launched Chef Boy-ar-dee and once forced him to market Bonnan-Os, canned pasta in the shapes of Mafioso chieftains. However, he made them with such uncanny accuracy that the FBI was able to hunt down several of the Dons based on their macaroni likenesses. To escape the wrath of the Mob capos, Chef Boy-ar-dee entered the Federal Witness Protection Program and is currently living in an undisclosed location out West and working as a sous chef for Olive Garden.

• There is no greater symbol of the ravages of industrial capitalism than the Hamburger Helper’s “Helping Hand,” which was detached from the body of a worker in a meat processing factory mishap. The Hand is cryogenically frozen and partially thawed before each commercial appearance. The amputee has sued General Mills, the maker of Hamburger Helper, over ownership of the Helping Hand, while the Hand has become a grotesque celebrity who among other macabre stunts, threw out the first ball on opening day for the Kansas City Royals.

• Sure, we know that the Quaker Oats Quaker was a lifelong pacifist. But did you know he was also a political agitator? During World War II, he was jailed as a conscientious objector (and for wearing his goofy Amish-like outfit to his draft board induction). In the 1960s, his protests against the Vietnam War led J. Edgar Hoover to tap his phone, and he was finally killed during the invasion of Grenada by Cap’n Crunch. His remains were mixed with dehydrated berries and reintroduced as Dead Man’s Crunch, a short-lived breakfast cereal featuring the Grim Reaper on the box.

• Samuel Adams wasn’t the only Founding Father who made his own hootch. Madison, Jefferson and Hamilton all owned their own breweries, and recent scholarship reveals that the Founders wrote the Constitution during a keg party. (This may explain why Negroes were reduced to the status of three-fifths of a man, as well as the Electoral College.)

(Tomorrow, the true story behind the Jolly Green Giant.)

The Spoiler: Part 14: Haslop

Name: Peter J. Haslop. Position: President, Global H.R., ConRon International. Age: 42. Height: 6’2”. Weight: 185. Color eyes: Blue. Color hair: Dark brown. Born: Stockholm, Sweden, 1964. Married to Martha Jorgensen, 36, American of Swedish descent. Hobbies: Tennis, skiing.

Ya. I could do a Swedish accent. And my blue eyes and light skin allowed me to pass for a Scandinavian.

It certainly wouldn’t be hard to convince my new colleagues that I was at least as authentic as the Swedish bikini team. It was possible – though not likely – that one or two had seen a Bergman movie. Possibly a couple of the older guys might have in their mind moldy images of Sweden as a land of promiscuous, nude-bathing goddesses.

But even the Harvard and Wharton types would be lucky if they could find Sweden on a map. Their generation – American Meathead – were obsessed with making money. Swedish. Turkish. Vulcan. All the same to them.

Lutefisk for everyone!

I looked over the rest of my “dossier.” Peter’s educational and professional background, a bunch of newspaper clippings of articles either about Haslop or in which he was quoted.

I started to worry when I saw the photos of him – he had a high forehead, a small mouth and teeth like a large rodent. I didn’t resemble him in the slightest. When I brought this up to Paula, she waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry. He’s been in Indonesia since ninety-eight. Nobody reads the company newsletters, and no one here has seen him in years. Trust me, it’s not a problem.”

I started researching Haslop, or my version of him, anyway. I called the Swedish Embassy and Consulate repeatedly, asking to speak to as many people as possible and tape recording their replies so that I could study their English accents.

I Googled generic background information from Swedish tourist sites. Stuff like this:

At first, you may find Swedes a bit difficult to get to know. They may seem distant and reserved. But they can also make loyal friends once you get to know them.

And:

Swedes generally like hobbies and activities and pursuing them together with others is probably the easiest way to meet and get to know new people. If invited to someone's home it is customary to take off your shoes, especially in winter. This custom is upheld more strictly in smaller towns and rural areas. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, it may be a good idea to ask. It is also customary to be on time when invited to a dinner party. Eight o'clock means eight o'clock.

Reserved. Hobbies (tennis, skiing), remove shoes in winter, be punctual.

C-SPAN helped, too. Meetings of the U.N. and the IMF. I started to pattern my Haslop after the tweedy bureaucrats who were the “stars” of those programs.

I bought that Brioni suit (Paula put it on the ConRon tab) and had my hair lightened by a colorist at a local salon called the Hair Corps – their sign read: “the Few, the Brave, the Fabulous!” – I decided to test him in a comedy club. The hook? He would be bland, stiff and completely unfunny. I called up Lenny but he was still pissed at me for “blowing” the bar mitzvah gig and refused to book me anywhere. So I trudged down to Rivington Street, to an open mic at a new club called the House of Blue Laughs.

I’d read that the audience was hip and supportive, and that the club favored acts that were too cool to care about the audience reaction.

Once I got there I told the M.C. to introduce me as “Peter Haslop, president of global human resources for ConRon, Inc.”

The acts that went on before me:

• A young nerd who told jokes while he showed a series of video clips of his colleagues at a dot.com search engine company that he’d recorded with a “cubicle-cam.” The audience broke up at the grainy, funhouse images, and at the running gag: “It’s on the server!”

• A young, redheaded woman related the daily humiliations she experienced as a temp. They included an incident when her boss demanded she pay back five dollars for dry cleaning trousers on which she had accidentally spilled some ketchup – in an email with the subject line “Ketchup Pants.”

• A group who performed a sketch about a bickering husband and wife that included only set-ups followed by the words, “generic punchline.”

These performers had come to the same conclusion I had – that mass-produced nightclub comedy – let’s call it industrial comedy, if you will – was dead. But what they put in its place was not only not funny and pretentious as all get-out.

Of course, the scruffy, goateed audience loved them.

Finally, the M.C. called my name. I introduced myself as a corporate bureaucrat who had been told that he’d been invited to address a think tank forum on the globalized workforce. I got a few laughs, and I could tell they were with me. I read from a “policy statement” that I presented at a meeting of the World Trade Organization. It said that the workforce of the entire nation of Latvia would be turned into American slaves. More laughs. I pretended not to understand why an important global think-tank was being held in a Lower East Side dive. They loved it.

I decided to ask for questions from the audience.

Young Woman: Why are you pretending that this is like, some sort of think tank when it’s obviously a comedy club? (Was she serious? Or was she putting on my put-on?)

Me: Well, that is what my government told me. Also, I am from Sweden and am not familiar with your American customs. Perhaps think-tanks are more informal here. Perhaps you can serve Bud Lite.

Drunk Young Woman Pretending to Be Sober: Franz Ferdinand Rules!

Me: Yes, you are correct. He ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (I had learned this watching the History Channel.)

Drunk Young Woman Pretending to Be Sober: Huh? Anyway, they rock. (Her friends, who think she is making them look un-cool, pull her down.)

Art Student-Looking Guy (tall, gangly, goateed, paisley vest): O.K., you’re from Sweden, right?

Me: Ya.

Art Student-Looking Guy: Well, what’s the gross national product of Sweden?

Me: The gross national product? That would be meatballs.

Big laugh.

Me: Have you ever seen them? I mean, that is ... how you say? Gross.

Loud applause. Unfortunately, my time was up. But I’d proved that I could pass as a Swedish bureaucrat. And I got laughs.

I was ready to cast Haslop to the suits at ConRon.

The Spoiler: Part 13 -- Paula the debriefer

Paula Scardino was appointed to be my “debriefer,” the person in charge of getting me up to speed on ConRon, Dave Whiteman, and everything else necessary to prepare for the gig.

“Welcome aboard,” she said, her stiff arm thrusting out of a gray suit with faint white pinstripes. I never learned her exact position, but it was clear from her no-nonsense attitude and the deferential response she got from everybody at ConRon that she was someone you didn’t mess with. Someone who reported directly to Magnum.

She was in her late 30s, and acted mannish like most women who had climbed the corporate ladder. Her voice was deep, with a trace of an Italian-American accent – not East Coast, maybe Frisco. She also reminded me – and this was awkward – of a slightly older Miranda Piles, a porn star who made a big splash in the video, “Merkle’s Boner,” that I had once asked Katlyn to watch with me with the hope it would spice up our sex life.

“Judging from the questionnaire we asked you to fill out, you don’t know much about the company.”

“No, but you know a lot about me.”

“We need to be thorough. We are a Fortune 500 company and an industry leader in derivatives and hedge funds. We have certain … formulations – ”

“Insider trading?”

“Not according to legal. Besides, the Feds would be down here faster than the EMS.”

“Right.”

“Now, we’re here to get you up to speed on our company and the corporate world. After all, we can’t have a VP of global personnel who doesn’t act the part.”

“I hear you. I work hard and play hard.”

“Let’s start with the look. You’re going to have to wear a suit. Not too French-faggy. Preferably charcoal. With pinstripes. Understated. And Oxfords. Except on Casual Friday.”

“What is that – a religious holiday?”

She wrinkled her nose and her thin vermillion lips drooped into a smile-frown.

“Then you can wear a dress shirt and Dockers with loafers. But always socks.”
I noticed that her hair, which was fine and sandy, was pulled back in a bun so severe it could’ve been devised by the Taliban.

“To start, here’s some literature and a CD-ROM about ConRon and what we expect from our employees. There’s also a lot of useful info about proper behavior – you can skip the sexual harassment stuff, our lawyers made us put it in. The rest you should study. And don’t be afraid to ask questions. Be proactive, not reactive. Just make sure you run it by me first.”

She handed me a three-inch-thick binder, titled, “ConRon: Energy Solutions for Energy Problems,” and a CD, as well as an employee handbook. I flipped through it, pretending to be fascinated. One chapter heading that caught my eye was “The Super Bowl Party: Do’s and Don’ts.”

“Super Bowl Party?”

“That’s a big bonding event for the company,” Paula said. I later discovered that ConRon turned one of its on-site gyms into a sports bar for the occasion, with a dozen gigantic flat-screen TVs, “concession” stands staffed by a high-end catering service whose waiters wore the kind of white concessionaire jackets you see on the hot-dog vendors at Yankee Stadium – and who served Beluga and high-end champagne as well as hot dogs and Bud Lite (which flowed out of the penis of an ice sculptured reproduction of Michelangelo’s “David”). There were also video games and other diversions. All employees were expected to attend, and no spouses, lovers or the like were allowed.

Some of the “do’s” included:

• No matter which team you root for, wear the ConRon logo and paraphernalia at all times.
• Make ample use of the giant foam fingers and “bad-call bricks” – chunks of foam that “fans” of either team could disgustedly toss at one of the video screens to protest a referee’s decision. (Just to be safe, the screens were hung high enough to be beyond the reach of any Styrofoam missiles.)
• Cheer hysterically and give your nearest colleagues a high-five when the ConRon TV ads – “ConRon Energy. Only the sun does it better” – came on.
• Take part in the pre-game “tailgate party” held in one of the commissaries, where the company installed several SUVs and barbecue pits, in which brontosaurus-sized racks of ribs were grilled.
• Create new energy strategies based on the ones the two head coaches devised for the game. (Huh???)
The “don’ts” included some items that struck me as bizarre at the time but which I later realized were added to address “situations” that had occurred at previous Super Bowl parties:
• Don’t throw anything – or anybody – into the barbecue pits!
• Don’t attempt to stuff a colleague into a six-foot sub.
• Don’t tackle any of your colleagues, especially from behind.
• It’s O.K. to engage in illegal Internet football betting, but don’t use your department’s discretionary cash fund.
• Don’t horde Buffalo wings or any other foodstuff in your windbreaker.

“Wow, you guys ... really know how to party."

"Work hard, play harder, work hardest -- that's our motto."

"Ah, I'll keep that in mind. And I’ll take this home and study it. What’s next?”

“You’ll be needing a new identity and a resume to match. It’s in this folder. Any questions, feel free to call me.”

“This is all very impressive. But … well, isn’t this a lot of trouble to go to for a gag?”

“You mean, isn’t this taking me away from more important duties, draining company resources? No. First, if it comes from Magnum, I clear my desk. Besides, all the employees here are psyched to be with the company. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be here. Makes my job easier. Nice meeting you, Mr. Haslop. We’ll be in touch.”

She stood up and stiff-armed me a handshake.

Mr. Haslop?

The Spoiler: Part 12 -- A Spoiler is Born

Because there was a lot (five grand) riding on this gig, and because I believe that you can’t ever do enough preparation for anything in life, I thought I would try to book myself a test “spoil” or two. I placed an ad in the trades with the hope it would result in a couple of relatively low-pressure opportunities – my out-of-town tryouts for my new act. It read:

Need somebody to “spoil” your next party? Hire
“the Spoiler.” I’ll be your drunken brother-in-law,
the boyfriend that makes your husband jealous, and the
guy who when the priest asks if anyone objects
to your marriage, blurts, “I do.” Make your party an event to remember.

For responses, I got a wedding party and some eight-year-old’s birthday. For the wedding, they asked me to suddenly appear halfway through the proceedings, right after the wedding dance and before the “Bride Cuts the Cake” number, pretending to be the bride-to-be’s secret lover. Then they told me I would have to jump out of the cake and do a striptease. What they didn’t tell me was that it was an ice-cream cake. Nearly froze my ass off. Still, I made a big impression by developing a porn-star character I called (as it turned out, appropriately) Rocky Road. For authenticity, I even bought a penile prosthesis from a creepy surgical supplies store on Canal Street.

I tried not to dwell on the indignity of the thing, but worked more on what Marguerite called “inhabiting your character.” Also on the timing. They couldn’t give me a run-through, so I just worked out that I would make my entrance when they gave my cue. Which was something like, “Tracy, we know you’ve been a bad girl. So before we eat the cake – which, by the way, has no-fat and no carbs – let’s bring on your secret lover, Rocky Road!”

And out I jumped, gasping for breath and wrenching myself through the frozen chocolate muck like a Willy Wonka avalanche victim. While the entire wedding party – bride, groom, family, friends, cater-waiters and the band – stood there slack-jawed, I humped and bumped to a hip-hop tune called, “Love is a Booty-ful Thang,” all while ironically commenting on how idiotic the whole thing was. Except I don’t think they got that part.
The dance ended when the best man grabbed me by my prosthetic penis, which flopped out of my boxer-briefs (another unfortunate choice) and landed in the no-carb potato-salad. Two bouncers from the restaurant, a place called The Savoir Fare, in Orange, N.J., escorted me out, past about one hundred and eighty people pairs of averted eyes. One woman shouted that I should be ashamed of myself, and my dancing was so bad I should have had to tip her. (I later paid the videographer who had caught the entire proceedings to delete my scene. He said he would.)

Later I found out that the person who hired me, a barrel-faced man named Stu, was an ex-boyfriend of the bride who still carried a torch for her.

Though I wasn’t allowed to retrieve my clothes and had to blow most of the two hundred bucks from the gig on paying off the videographer and a car service to take me back to Manhattan, I considered the night a victory. I’d gained invaluable experience as a “spoiler,” plus I realized that the Rocky Road character could be fleshed out and added to my repertoire.

The kiddie birthday party? The woman who hired me, a soccer mom-type with harsh features who wanted to get back at the parents of the birthday boy in a dispute over access to a posh pre-school, wanted me to play “someone really scary.” After several days of brainstorming got me nowhere, I settled on Giant Baby George, an infant who was the victim of a human growth hormone experiment. I figured that with only minor adjustments I could turn Rocky Road’s boxer-briefs into an extra-large diaper.

How did it go? Well, outside of being totally shunned, making every single kid cry, causing a shouting-and-furniture-breaking melee, threatened lawsuits, and again having to make an impromptu exit (only this time I grabbed my raincoat on the way out), it wasn’t a bad night. And I learned something important: There are a lot of mean, sadistic people out there who are too chickenshit to act on their feelings. And a guy who is willing to act on those feelings for them could clean up.

The Spoiler: Part 11 -- Magnum

Stephens was a tall, trim man with graying temples who wore tailored English suits and alligator cowboy boots.

He took a second to scan his laptop and Blackberry while I checked out his corner office that overlooked the Hudson. From the vantage point on the ninetieth floor, I looked down at the Statue of Liberty. It looked weather-beaten, like an aging hooker. Very possibly a tranny.

As I would discover, Stephens didn’t spend much time here, or anywhere outside of Houston, which could’ve been why his office was furnished only with a desk, a couple of mahogany chairs and a massage table.

“You do massage on the side?” I asked.

“Stiff necks. Y’ever have ‘em?”

“Yeah. Terrible.”

“You got a masseuse? I can recommend mine.”

“I’m sure I can’t afford her.”

“Well, maybe we can write it into our agreement.”

“Sounds good. What kind of agreement are we talking about?”

“I need someone who’s quick on his feet.”

“You’re looking for a messenger?”

“That’s what I mean. You can zing ‘em off the top of your head-like. Just what I’m looking for. You see, one thing I’ve learned all these years navigating through the corporate jungle is that the workforce can’t get too complacent. Every once in a while, you’ve gotta shake the tree, so to speak. You know, suddenly you just fire a half-dozen of your top execs.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you lay off a couple, even ten thousand middle managers, hell, nobody bats an eyelash. But you surgically axe a few key players, maybe even the COO – well, everybody starts lookin’ over their shoulder and puttin’ their noses to the grindstone. And they pay closer attention to what the guy one rung up or down from them is up to.”

“I see.”

“It’s a management tip I learned from Stalin.”

“He was just paranoid, wasn’t he?”

“Whatever you want to call it. It worked.”

“I guess so.”

“Listen – didja ever see this old Vincent Price movie, ‘The Tingler’?”

“No. I never went to business school.”

“It’s about this … I don’t know I guess you’d call it … a slimy creature that is kind of born inside of people’s spinal cords who are kinda nervous Nellies. And the more scared they get, it sort of feeds the creature, the Tingler, until the thing grows inside them to be about the size of a raccoon. And then, when they get super-terrified, you know, screaming hysterically, the thing starts to pulsate and pops out of their – ”

“Like ‘Alien.’”

“No, you got it all wrong. Alien popped out the belly. Tingler come out through the spinal cord. Anyway, it starts going around killing people, even though it’s just a blob. It’ll kind of throw itself outta yer and squeeze the life out of yer. That kind of thing. And the only way to stop the Tingler is to keep your cool, not let the Tingler freak you out. To fight the fear. But you know what? Very few people can do that. Their spinal cords are like fear warehouses. Fear, you see” – and here he tilted his head forward and locked me in his industrial-blue eyes – “fear is the greatest motivator. That’s management rule numero uno.”

“I see. What exactly do you have mind for me?”

“Things have been gettin’ a little stale around here…”

“Time for the Tingler?”

“Unh-unh. Already axed too many chiefs. We’re tingled to the bone. I reckoned another motivator. That’s where you come in. You’re an actor, right? A comedian?”

“That’s what my card says.”

Stephens picked up my business card, which I’d put on his desk.

“‘Actor-comic-human being.’ Well, I don’t need the human being part. But the actor part, that I could use.”

Stephens proceeded to outline a scenario in which I would attend a ConRon board meeting, pretending to be a fictional vice president of worldwide personnel who had been touring the Far East recruiting the best of brightest of Bangalore and Ho Chi Minh City for outsourcing of certain key divisions. I would be brought in to a top-secret board meeting in the role of a “spoiler,” specifically to mind-fuck the regional vice president of personnel, a guy by the name of Dave Whiteman. What he called a “psy-ops.” I would pretend to fire him right after his big presentation on global redundancies and “put his whole sense of reality through a ten-speed blender.”

“We want to see what he’s made of. See I’ve been thinking of making him vice president personnel of the Americas. But that job, you gotta go up against some nut-busters: Teamster bosses, campesino activists, Subcommandante Marcos. Anyway, we want to test Whiteman’s mettle.”

There were other reasons for the job, Magnum confided in me. He wouldn’t tell me what they were. I think maybe he wanted to test my mettle, too. “You want to see if you can trust me, right?”

“Nope. We already know we can’t.” And then he pushed across the desk at me a manila folder that included my credit history, IRS returns for the past 10 years, bank records going back to 1998, my bankruptcy agreement with TwelveStepCapitolManagement, the agency that I’d used to consolidate my far-flung empire of debt, my New York Public Library card along with my complete history of all checkouts, research items requested (mostly books about comedy, such as Milton Berle’s autobiography, from the performing arts branch), and fines (“You checked out Al Franken’s book for six months? You could read that on the redeye”), a printout of every website I’d ever visited (“EskimoBabes.com? You got me there”), my college and high school transcripts, SAT scores, and my grade school report cards.

For the second time in weeks, my life was an open book to strangers. I could easily become a victim of identity theft, and probably the only reason I hadn’t was that the bad guys had concluded that my identity wasn’t worth stealing.

“How did you get all that – I mean, the report cards?”

“You remember Sister Virginia Mayo? From sixth grade? Sacred Heart School?”

“I can’t believe she’s still alive.”

“It’s all that sexual frustration. They can live off that forever.”

“What I don’t understand is why you went to so much trouble to dig up all my dirt? For a guy you’re renting for the afternoon?”

“Can’t ever be too sure you ain’t some undercover spy, from one of our rivals. Or one of them Yes Men.”

“Yes men?”

“You know, those lefty pranksters, they go around pretending they’re members of the WTO. Like that’s going to score poon? Anyway, you check out O.K. And we’ll overlook that TV show thing. We know you were set up.”

“Yes, I was. And at least I don’t have a criminal record.”

“I know. But we’ll use you anyway,” he said with a strange laugh that made me wonder how much he was joking.

“Uh, what if people in your company remember my face from the, uh, show? I mean, I was all over the Internet.”

“For what – a week? These kids, their minds, they’re like – you ever stick a stick in an anthill, they go running off every which way? Life moves too fast now. Faster than memory. Now go see Paula. Paula Scardino in H.R. She’ll brief you on your assignment and give you the lay of the land.”

We shook hands and I started out of his office, but not before asking one, gnawing question.

“How did you get that nun to give up my report cards?”

“Oh, we had something on her, too.”

Hitler's MySpace Page

Bio: Chancellor of Germany from 1933-1945, after which he escaped to Brazil and resurfaced on Broadway, where he is currently starring in “The Producers.”

Name: Hitler

Gender: Male

Occupation: Fuhrer

Interested in Meeting People for: blind worship, invasion of Poland, Final Solution.

Music: Wagner, oom-pah bands.

Books I Wouldn’t Burn: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Movies: Triumph of the Will, Olympiad.

TV: Vot’s dat?

Hobbies and interests: Restoring Fatherland, world conquest, Jew-hating.

Friends: Hess, Goebbels, Goering, the rest of the Nazi High Command. (See
Testimonials.) My ideal friend is someone who is cool, enjoys life and looks
good in a Prussian army helmet. And when I ask him how I am doing, tells
me we are winning the war and that the German people are totally behind
me.

Enemies: Jews, Bolsheviks...Did I say Jews?

Sympathizers: 20 million Germans and tons of other people around the
globe.

Turn-ons: Torch-lit mass rallies, blitzkriegs, SS, animals.

Turn-offs: Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, Catholics, blacks, and all other
miscelaneous people who aren’t Aryans.

About Me: My name is Adolf. I’m impulsiv but I have a long term plan. I love Germany but I’m not in love with it. I’m an Aries. I’m pasionate about what I love and what I hate. Most people think Im prety intenz but my favorite thing to do is chill and hang out wit my homies. At least that’s what I tole neville chamberlain. lol! im just lookin out for number 1. U will call me ur leader.

Who I’d Like to Meet: Mel Gibson, Judith Regan (hey, maybe she could get me a book deal: The Holocaust – If I Did It.)

Who I’m Looking For: Jew-hating vegan.

Hitler’s Details

Status: Single

Here for: Keeping Tabs, Spreading Propaganda, Meeting Valkyries.

Orientation: Aryan.

Hometown: Vienna.

Body type: Sausage.

Ethnicity: German. Wot? Why, to even ask such a question – Have this MySpace dummkumpf taken away!

Zodiac Sign: Aries

Smoke/Drink: Nein.

Children: All the German people are my children…except for the Jews.

Hitler’s Schools:

Vienna Institute of Art
Vienna, Austria
Graduated: N/A
Student status: 4F
Degree: Honorary
Major: Finger-painting

Otto von Bismarck Pre-School
Vienna, Austria
Graduated: N/A
Student status: Left back; did not play well with others. In fact, put others
into “concentration tree house”

Hitler’s Companies

National Socialist Party 1924-1945
Income: None of your bizness.*

Adolf’s comments: I just want to give a shout-out to MySpace. It has kept
me in touch with a lot people who I used to know but whom I had to have
assassinated or put away as political prisoners.

Favorite inspirational quote: What luck for rulers that men do not think.

Testimonials:

Eva –Adolf is duh man. He’s n awesome, sexy dude ‘n the
world’s numero uno dictator. Hi, hi, heil Hitler!

Joseph G. –I have non my peeps Adolf for long time and this bro can realy bring it. I saw him at the Nuremberg stadium and he, like, had the crowd, like, dey went like dey was lookin’ at a god. U no wat I mean?

Rudolf—ur probly the biggest Party person I know who is alive.


Herman--What can I say about one and only Fuhrer I know in my entire lifetime? He is an awesome guy, always laughing and smiling and ordering Jews to be round up! In fact no one can ever get Bored if they are with him, he can enjoy and not take life too seriously. If not for him then our Germany is way too boring.

Cool things to do:

Vote for me for best fascist dictator (dat Mussolini is a dummkumpf)
Volunteer for Wehrmacht
Snitch on Anne Frank
Block user and send him to forced labor camp on Eastern front

Groups:

National Socialist Party

Jews for Hitler

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Nazis

Ventriloquists for the Third Reich

Nazi Procrastinators (“Ah, we’ll kill the dirty Jews tomorrow”)


Buy:

Mein Kampf on DVD

WWII (the Fuhrer’s director’s cut)

Hitler’s Blog

April 20, 1939: Hey, today’s my birthday! Please bring me something nice and shiny, like the Sudetenland.

April 21:

Current mood: Wagnerian (Note: This should be conveyed with an emoticon, such as, say, a bust of Wagner or an image of Wotan.)

MAN OF HONOR!
YES THATS RIGHT! Hans, my most favorite SS officer, asked Ursula to marry him, i have been asked to be the man of honor! sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo excited! this means i get to plan and throw a kick ass batchelor party with All-U-Can-Eat vienerschnitzel, kegs a plenty and plotting the war against the dirty Reds!

April 22:

BUMMER!
Had to put Blondi to sleep. I found out she used to be owned by a Jewish family. Bormann said he got her at the animal shelter, but he is a lyer.

April 23:

Beer Pong tournament the 21st
Current mood: bouncy
Tommorow if U are playing in the National Socialist Beer Pong tournament, U need to be at 5201 Potsdamerplatz no later than 10pm. We will start playing at 1030, U will need to bring 5 deutschmarks and a 12 pack of Lowenbrau to play. If U do not bring those 2 things U will not be aloud to play, U will not even get to drink. We will also have Wop punch (as Mussolini calls it) available also for 5 dollers. If U have any other questions give me a call. Se U tommorow Night!!!!!!!!!

April 24:

BUMMER!
I lost big-time in the Beer Pong Tournament and at one point, the ReichChancellor was not me, but Fritzi Mueller, dat funny-looking guy who delivers the bratwurst to our Headquarters. Yes, I had bet my Fuhrership and lost to a short, funny-looking loser with a moustache! Thankfully, Herman G. convinzed Fritzi to give up being Fuhrer by taking him for a ride, especially since Fritzi’s one and only decree while in power was to put a bratwurst on the German flag. We are talking major dummkupf! Can U imagine if he was the real Fuhrer? Germany would be doomed.

May 10, 1940:

Current mood: accomplished
We rolled into France today and those frogz jes rolled over and practikaly begged us to liberate them from their stupid selves.
It’s celebration time, uh-huh! Tonight, at Reichsmusikkammer, it’s battle of the bands. Richard Strauss and His Straussafarians vs. Bert Kaempfert and His “Music to Heil By” Orchestra. The winner gets the Hitler Medal. The loser is sent to the Russian front.


April 30, 1945

The Bunker
Current mood: Bleek

It’s bad enuf that we are loosing the war and Berlin is in ruble, that my dream of a thousand-year Reich has gone down in flames and that I won’t get to see proud German tanks roll into New York…but when I asked Himmler “Am I fat?” he jes looked away and I knew that meant “Yes.”

*Adolf Hitler spent years evading taxes and owed German authorities 405,000 Reich marks – equivalent to $8 million today – by the time his tax debts were forgiven soon after he took power, claimed researcher Klaus-Dieter Dubon, a retired Bavarian notary and tax expert. (Reuters, December 17, 2004)

Frankenstein's MySpace Page

Name: Frankenstein

Gender: Not sure

Occupation: Scaring people

Interested in Meeting People: For organ transplants

Current mood: Confused

Bio: Made in a lab by a demented Brit. Troubled youth.

Status: Undead

About Me: Like the ladies … 6’9” of nuts-and-bolts pimp juice.

Friends: Wolfman, Invisible Man, Dracula

Enemies: Townspeople

Smoke/drink: Tobacco, wine – GOOD

Hobbies and interests: Grunting, lurching

What I’m Looking For: Bride

Music: Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216

Movies/TV: “Nip/Tuck”

What I’m Here For: To become fully human

Orientation: Grrrrrr!!!!

Body type: Hulking, lurching

Children: Killed one once

Things to Buy: Digital neck bolt

Inspirational quote: “When the going gets tough, the tough go on a rampage.”

Testimonials:

Popoca, the Aztec Mummy—“Frank” is one awesome dude. He realy helped me out when the Robot was beeting the hell out of me because … well, I’m still not sure, somethin’ to do with his evil master and I tried to put an Aztec Mummy curse on him but I guess it don’t work on robots. This was after Bat the masked wrestler tried to screw me out of my ancient tresure, because he worked for an evil Mexican mob who also wanted the tresure … Anyway, about Frank… him and me, we just … simpatico, you know? Even tho he doesn’t habla the espanol, I mean, he doesn’t really say much in any langwich, but then agen Im a man of few words myselv.

Im-ho-tep, the real (Egypshun) Mummy—First of all I wood lik to say that I hav been a mumy way longer than that cheap Mexican raghead, Popoca. Him and his kine are taking jobs away from real mumys becuz they will work for hav what we charge. They come to this country illegal and jes lie around and get mumy benefits. And sekondlee I have nown Frankenstein way longer than that wetback mumy Popoca. Frank you are alright in my book. But jes make sur you now hoo is a reel mumy from hoo is a fak mumy.

Creature from the Black Lagoon: lol .. what are u doin.. AND THANKS

FOR CALLIN ME A GOOBER!

Groups:

Jaycees, Friar’s Club.

Comments: You jes got to love yourself, even if your skin is green and your

scalp is stapled to your hed.

I want to go on the rekerd on something: I did not “meet” the Wolf Man. We

were at the same party, but he was wit his people and I was wit mine.

Friend…ster – Goood!

Frankenstein’s Blog:

(Undated): People r always hasslin’ me in my face they all want a peas a me. Deze freeks wanna challenge me to a monster duel or dey scream and light their torches and chase me through the woods with guns. Its hard for me even to go to the supermarket! Like today, I dezided to go to the mall and see if I culd get me some new boots at and no sooner than I go into the store than mall security gards surround me with chains and shit. I had to kill about six of them by punching them on the top of their head reel hard and one I grabbed by the throat and picked him up and shook him till he dropped. And Timberland didn’t even have my size – 35GGGGG.

(Undated) My hed herts. Today some kid comes up to me and asks are u Frankinstein the Monster? And I had to stop and think about it. You know I am having a hard time thinking mus be all doze elecctrik volts shooting into my brane. I dunno who I’m am anymore. Am I’m Frankinstein the Monster? Am I’m Frankenstein the Sensitive Guy who likes violin muzik? Or am I’m Frankenstein the Accountant? I no I’m am not Dr. Frankenstein, cuz I never went to medical school and besides that’s the name of that demented lunatic who made me. … Anyway, I punched the kid on the top of his hed and he ded now.