THE CHINESE HAVE THEIR SIMPLE WOK

The Chinese have their simple wok.
The Germans have their cuckoo clock.
The French have all that savoir-faire.
The British have wool underwear.
Brazilians have their sugar cane
and Indians their monsoon rain.
Hungary has got the gypsy.
Vino makes Italians tipsy.
I don't know who had Attila
but Japan has got Godzilla.
Argentina has their gaucho
and we Yankees love our Groucho.
May the land that you inhabit
breed more joy than wanton rabbit.

ZIPITOR

ASK YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT ZIPITOR TODAY
IF YOU HAVE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING
HEALTH PROBLEMS:

Yeast or West Infection.
Trouble spelling 'conglobulate'.
An adder in your bladder.
Colitis, entritis or bursitis.
The whim-whams.
Fainting spells after ten martinis.
Marthambles.
Jeepers without the creepers.
Difficulty retching at Mel Gibson movies.
Sweet tooth gone sour.
Dutch elm disease.

ZIPITOR IS DOCTOR-TESTED AND GUINEA PIG APPROVED! FIVE OUT OF FOUR PATIENTS TREATED WITH ZIPITOR REPORT RESULTS WITHIN TEN YEARS. NOW AVAILABLE IN BUS STATION REST ROOMS!

Side effects may include insomnia, pink elephants and death.
Do not take with steroids, milk products, solid food, alcohol, chocolate, water, liver & onions, or any type of licorice.
Pregnant women should consult a physician since a few thousand studies indicate there is increased risk of birthing a giraffe if you even get near the stuff.
Use with caution if you are bigger than a breadbox.
People with allergies should shut up about them already.
Tell your doctor about the following:
Mickey Mantle.
Anwar Sadat.
The War of the Austrian Succession.
Star Wars.
Why Harry Potter is still a virgin.
Who should take Zipitor:
Hillbillies.
Latvians.
Neocons.
Fans of Don Knotts.
Pixies.
Can I take Zipitor with other medications:
What do we care as long as you pay for our stuff?

Zipitor is a registered trademark of the Hanna Barbera Studios, along with the Flintstones and Quickdraw McGraw.

LIMA BEANS

Why do they have lima beans?
They taste just like old window screens.
They're mushy & green
and bring out the mean
in parents at unpleasant scenes.

THE ORPHAN'S MOON

Nobody talks about this event and those who actually participated in it claim they don't remember it or that it never happened so-shut-up-Torkildson-and-stick-to-writing-limericks.
But it did happen and I aim to tell-all. First, though, you need some background on circus publicity.
Now Ringling left no stone unturned, no clown undisturbed, when it came to promoting itself. The publicity department would send an elephant over Niagra Falls in a barrel if that could glean just a photo in the newspaper. The big circus stars knew all about this and consequently had it written into their contracts that they had final approval of all publicity stunts concerning themselves. If they didn't like the idea they could veto it. Period.
Not so the lowly clowns. Our contracts specifically pointed out that we were on call 24/7 for any and all ideas the publicity gurus might come up with for us. This wasn't neccessarily a bad thing -- it got me on the Tonite Show, on Phil Donahue, and even an appearance on Sesame Street. But it also meant that I had to get up at ungodly hours to put on my makeup and fly around some metropolis while the pilot did a traffic report. Don't ask me why the publicity department wanted a clown on board during a fly-by traffic report at 7 in the morning -- but they did, and I was the unlucky wight picked to do it. I nearly lost my Barnum's Animals when the plane went into a stunt dive.
The clowns were always being asked to give up their precious free time to go visit hospitals, nursing homes, libraries, schools -- anyplace that might garner some free media coverage. But the media was getting jaded with Ringling Brothers. They'd seen it all before so they stopped covering a lot of our clown appearances. Naturally this sent the publicity boys into a tizzy. They had to come up with something new that would get the flashbulbs popping and the videocams rolling or face having to find honest work somewhere else.
We got word of their latest brainstorm in Raleigh, North Carolina, on closing night. Our next stop was Baltimore. Clown alley was looking forward to the long, leisurely train ride up there so we could catch up on our sleep. But Charlie Baumann, the fearsome German Performance Director, spoiled our dreams by striding into the alley to announce that all clowns must take their costume and makeup with them on the train that night and be in costume and makeup the next morning at eight o'clock sharp as the train slowly went past the largest orphanage in Baltimore. The publicity finks had arranged for all the adorable little orphans to be out by the tracks as we went past and the clowns would be waving madly from the vestibules and windows. The media had been alerted and, sensing enough schmaltz in this thing to grease even a Congressman's palm, they had responded enthusiastically. It would get national coverage, not just local coverage!
A low mutinous murmur went round clown alley, but no one dared contradict or argue with Herr Baumann. Sullenly we took our things with us back to the train that night.
Most of us clowns lived in one car, which we affectionately nick-named the Iron Lung. There were twenty roomettes in it, just big enough for a sink and a murphy bed. As the train moved out that night we kept our doors open to grumble across the hallway to each other about this raw deal. The more we grumbled the madder we got and the madder we got the thirstier we got. Many bottles of beer had to be downed to quench the outrage. By the time the train creaked into the sunrise near Baltimore we were a pretty happy bunch, glad to use our god-given talents to brighten the lives of those poor little orphan kids with no momma and no poppa -- god bless 'em! The swaying of the train made us a tad unbalanced as we applied the greasepaint and stumbled into our baggy pants.
Then, just as the train slowed almost to a standstill someone, I can't remember who, had a brilliant idea. Instead of waving at the poor little orphan kids, which is not something they'd remember very long, why don't we moon them? They'll talk about that the rest of their poor lonely lives! In our crapulous state this appeared as sheer, unadulterated genius.
So we did it. As soon as the poor little orphans hove into sight we dropped everything covering the southern hemisphere and stuck our fannies out the windows and vestibules. It was chilly work that raw spring morning, but it was all for the poor little orphan kids -- god bless 'em.
True to their word, the national media were out in force. After a quick double-take they began recording this truly historic circus moment. I'd swear on a stack of AA manuals that I heard them licking their chops and baying like wolves in delight.
Mission accomplished, we straggled back to our rooms, washed off the makeup, and, most surprisingly, everyone decided they needed a nice long nap after breakfasting on aspirin and Pepto Bismol.
That evening one mad German came storming into clown alley to put the fear of god into us. Almost speechless with teutonic rage, Baumann finally spit out that by heroic efforts the media had been dissuaded from using any of its priceless footage. The scandal had been averted, but heads, clown heads, would have to roll. He demanded to know who the ringleaders were. We gazed back at him, not exactly as innocent as angels -- more like hungover dimbulbs -- and honestly answered that we didn't know, we all thought it would be kind of a good idea. He snarled and brandished his whip (he was also the tiger tamer), then stalked out. Feeling too punky to worry about it, we finished our makeups and got on with the show.
Strangely enough after that the clowns were not called on very often to do publicity anymore. I guess the publicity guys had run out of idea for us.
I keep my eye peeled whenever I'm on eBay for some of those photos to show up. Some day they will, and I bet the bidding among circus fans will be astronomic.

THE EXPLOITS OF BRITTENY SPEARS

The exploits of Britteny Spears
keep well-oiled the media's gears.
We can't get enough
of that sordid stuff --
which certainly makes us her peers.

SOMALIA (a prose poem)

Ricky Scott wanted to borrow
forty dollars from me.
What for? I asked. He
said take a taxi out to
my daughter's in Edina for
Christmas Day. She's still sore
at me for missing her law school
graduation. That was five years ago
I said. Yeah, he said, I figure no
one can turn their own father away
on Christmas day.
I'll drive you out myself
I told him. I doubt
there'll be any cabs about
on that day -- even the Somalis take
it off. Notice how many they
drive now?

You wouldn't catch me behind the wheel
of a cab having to deal
with all the nutbrains out there.
Now about that forty said Ricky.
I'll drive you, remember? I'm not picky
what I do Christmas day. My kids
are scattered and gone down the street
like leaves. What time should I meet
you?
But now he was stuck on Somalis. How
they honored the marriage vow
and they had no nursing homes to
put you away in. Listen you,
I nearly yelled, everyone's dead
over there from civil war I read
in the paper. The survivors are all
over here, driving our cabs and
cleaning every school in the land.
The husbands get five wives each.
Hey, said Ricky, that's pretty neat.
Five wives working and I'm not a deadbeat
anymore.

Then he started again: if you can't swing
forty how about thirty? Anything
would help. If the buses run I'll get
her a present, see, and I bet
we'll be pals again like when she was little.
She always liked peanut brittle.
I paid for her gold fillings, dammit.
I offered you a ride not money
I told him. Y'know it's funny
you never see Mexicans drive
cabs. Ricky said they're all illegal
but Somalis respect the law, they're regal
the way they carry themselves -- ever notice?
They're all descended from kings so their pride
is intense. I grabbed his arm. A ride,
do you want it or not? I ask one
last time. Let's have lunch,
my treat he says. We hunch
against the dirty cold wind
outside his efficiency in St. Louis Park.
Your treat my ass I bark
at him. You'll stick me with the bill
as sure as the grass is green.
He says there's a Somali place I've seen
over on Lake Street. Saffron rice
and goat meat. Let's go there.
At this point I don't care
about Somalia but I say hop in
and we go over to the place
on Lake Street. It's got lace
curtains but no table clothes.
The rice is outstanding. We eat our fill.
It's cheap enough. I pay the bill.
I drop him off at Walgreen's.
With my forty bucks.
He waves and then ducks
inside to buy Rogaine.
He's such a mooch, that Ricky Scott.
And he still thinks he has a shot
at the girls.

IF COLLEGE IS YOUR CUP OF TEA

If college is your cup of tea
then grab every loan you can see.
It is a sure bet
that your student debt
will lead to a fine bankruptcy.

SWEDE JOHNSON

Swede Johnson chain-smoked unfiltered Chesterfields and looked about ten-thousand years old. He told me that as a teenager he had been shanghaied in Denmark, then jumped ship in New York. Not speaking English and with his stomach touching his spine he took the first job he was offered, that of a rodeo clown. The job was simple. Whenever a bull threw its rider Swede ran out onto the rodeo grounds with a big sturdy barrel. He would wave a red rag at the bull until it would charge at him. Then he would jump into the barrel so the bull would butt him around the rodeo grounds sothe rider could scamper to safety.
Swede said he kept that job until he found something safer -- becoming a lion tamer for the circus. That particular job lasted for the next thirty years, until the big cats tore up his legs. Then he became a circus clown with Ringling, which is where I met him. I never saw him remove his slacks. Ever. The sight of his legs must have been ghastly.
I can't give you his definite age. He never told it, but sometimes bragged he shook hands with Teddy Roosevelt before the Rough Rider became president. His face in repose looked like a discarded accordion, all saggy and creased. His ample nose took a decided tilt to the left and his ears hinted at kinship with the Buddha. He was reed thin and whippet fast. When not in clown regalia he always wore wooden clogs, yet the blur you felt rather than saw running by when the paymaster yelled "Eagle's flying!" was him. First in line for his money. Always.
You couldn't call Swede's clown makeup and outfit fancy. He did a whiteface with a broad red grin, a dab of red on his nose and a few penciled crow's feet around his eyes. He wore an ancient orange wig that sat on his head like a wet mop. He had two outfits. His favorite was a black keystone kop outfit. It may not have been a Mack Sennett original but it surely hung together by a thread like one. With it he sported a large red velvet billyclub, used with gusto out in the ring to enforce his cranky authority. His other outfit was a black silk top hat with a black swallowtail coat and black dress pants with the shiny black stripe down the side. To add some color to this doleful uniform he wore a red and white checkered shirt and white nurses shoes. In this getup he looked like a mortician attending his own funeral.
His nickname for me was pinhead. I felt honored that he even noticed me at all. He had been around for so long that he simply ignored ninety-nine-percent of the newer clowns; never bothered to learn their names or give them the time of day.
The first year I knew him the show sweltered in Philadelphia during July for three weeks. Despite our best efforts at sanitation, fumigation and ventalation most of us got crotch rot. Things were really nasty and painful south of the border. Talcum powder gave but temporary relief. We were tucked into our clammy costumes for so long each day that nothing had a chance to dry out completely.
After several days of this purgatory I gave in and saw a doctor. It took him all of forty seconds to glance casually at my glowing nether regions and prescribe an ointment. I slathered it on. The relief was immediate.
I sauntered into clown alley that afternoon as cool as a cucumber, foolishly waving my tube of magic ointment around.
I should mention that Swede was never bothered by this horrible ailment even though he never took his regular slacks off before putting on his clown pants. He sat by his trunk, puffing on a Chesterfield, as the mob of itching, sweating clowns surrounded me. They demanded a dab of my magic ointment. I tried explaining that if I gave them each even a teensy-weensy sample there'd be nothing left for me to ward off the evil fungus the next day. Did they care? Not on your tintype! I was about to be engulfed when Swede spoke up.
"Hey you greaseballs" he yelled over the hub-bub. "Can any of you read?" The crowd hesitated, the lynch mentality abated.
"Sure Swede, you know we can all read."
"Then throw me that tube of ointment, pinhead" Swede commanded. I did. Swede squinted at it through the haze of cigarette smoke. "Sez here the main ingredient is zinc oxid. Now, you motherless chicks, go get your tins of clown white and read what the main ingredient is . . ." He threw the ointment back at me. A dozen clowns scuttled to their trunks, picked up their tins of Stein's Clown White and read aloud in a chorus:
"Zinc oxide!"
Clown alley was at half mast in the wink of an eye. In two winks, as the blessed zinc oxide kicked in, the collective sigh of relief could be heard out on the midway.
For the rest of that humid summer before any clown put on his face he slapped on the good old clown white down where it would do the most good.
When I asked Swede why he hadn't told me about this sovereign cosmetic balm before I wasted my time and money at the doctor he gave me a kindly, lopsided grin and said:
"Buzz off, pinhead".

That's the kind of guy Swede Johnson was -- tough on the outside but soft as nails on the inside. I still get a lump in my breast whenever I think of him.

THE MINIMUM WAGE IS DEFINED

The minimum wage is defined
by people who don't know the grind.
Their purses are cold
with silver and gold.
They think "poor" a mere state of mind.

MEAT PACKING IS FUN DOWN AT SWIFT

Meatpacking is fun down at Swift.
You won't even finish your shift.
If your name's Jose
they take you away
and all of your troubles go pffft!

IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT ME

My scale says I'm fat.
My bank says I'm thin.
My boss says I'm out.
My phone says I'm in.
My car doesn't start.
My kids never end.
My thoughts are not straight.
My back doesn't bend.
My luck's running cold.
My feet are too hot.
My life is a dash.
My faith is a dot.

I'M WRITING TO YOU

I'm writing this to you. Yes, you. A Hallmark card or a bill overdue. I'm writing to you because I care about your life or to order Tupperware. I sign my name. See here, right here. Either out of love or fear. I've dated it on cream-colored stock that I bought especially with you in mind or that I got from the office and didn't get caught. I'm writing this to you. Yes, you. Yesterday I phoned. Tomorrow I'll email. But today a stamp I found by the lamp gives me an excuse to walk a block, get some exercise, and fling this thing in a blue metal box. Now thousands of people should work all night to bring you my message. The King of Norway never had it so good.

SUDOKU

Sudoku is all the new fad.
You scribble away on a pad.
It makes me gloomy.
It's all Greek to me
and looks like a math quiz gone mad.

PYOO - SEE - KAT

You're only young twice -- once when you're a kid & once when you're on your honeymoon. Otherwise you have to be a grown-up all your life, taking grief and giving it back and knowing in the backroom of your skull that there is nothing fantastic left to look for. So I'm going back to the glory that was Axel and the splendor that was Roundhouse Rodney.
Ah yes, those venerable TV kiddy shows in the Twin Cities, when Eisenhower ruled the land but didn't suspect there was such a place as Axel's Treehouse.
National television had Captain Kangaroo and there was something I vaguely remember as Romper Room but they were strictly dullsville -- unless the Captain put on that old vaudeville clown, The Bannana Man. That guy, with his chirpy squeaks and infinite watermelons, brought a breath of refreshing chaos into my life -- something I craved from the very first time I was told "Don't be so silly!"
There is the crux of the whole thing. Being silly. Pee Wee Herman tried to revive that old-time kiddy show manic silliness but he couldn't bring it off. He worked at it too hard, just like Jerry Lewis worked too hard at it. Truly great silliness is like an orgasm -- it comes after a great deal of comic foreplay and can only last a few seconds. And in most cases you feel guilty after it's all over because you've experienced something so unbelievably strange that you want it again right away yet know you can't get it again for a while . . . maybe a long while.
As kids in those pre-cable days my pals and I were always trolling the three available TV stations (Public TV didn't count) for those cherished moments of indecent foolery. Groucho Marx did it twice in his movies -- first in Duck Soup, where he solemnly proclaims: "The British are coming from near and far . . . with a hey-nonny-nonny-and-a-hot-cha-cha!" and then again in Night At The Opera, where he leans over a balcony, leering, and recites: "Boogie-boogie-boogie!" Nonsense syllables that had nothing to do with the plot or character -- just spontaneous bursts of pure silliness. We never heard those lines as kids without coming close to peeing our pants from laughter.
That's why the local TV kiddy shows were so important to us, to me. In a world where knock-knock jokes ruled and the Ed Sullivan zombie seemed to control all the major and boring talents, I waited for something unexpected and inarticulate to happen on Clancy the Cop or Lunch with Casey or Axel's Treehouse. I relished the way Axel said the word 'pussy cat'. In his weird Scandihoovian brogue it came out as 'pyoo - see - kat'. It somehow sounded indecent. I can still remember my mother clucking her tongue everytime she heard Axel say that word; she didn't approve of the way he said it but couldn't come up for a reason why except to say thinly "it's so silly".
I didn't know it at the time, but what I was searching for was purely existential; something that had no meaning, no definition, no purpose, but just was for the moment and then disappeared. Control and reason and sanity were all on the side of the adults; I only had a barely supressed anarchy going for me
This kind of thing happened on live TV with kiddy programs. A moth-eaten puppet would lose an arm. Casey's lunch would inexplicably slide off his checkered tableclothe. Willie Ketchum would forget the punch line to a joke he was telling Clancy the Cop; to cover his gaffe he just said one word -- 'waffle'. Axel's telescope, two pieces of cardboard tubing taped together by a demented kindergarten teacher, was so powerful he could peer through it and proclaim "by golly, I see the back of my head!" and then watch mutely as the tape came undone and the tubing fell in half, right there in the tree house. The anarchy was complete when a pie was pushed into Axel's or Clancy's or Casey's face. These role models and authority figures were revealed as genial ne'er-do-wells who needed a blob of shaving cream in their kissers to end a program. From them I learned that the world will end not with a bang or a whimper, but with a tinfoil pie plate full of Burma Shave.
Instead of Lord of the Flies it was Lord of the Pies. On a show where nothing could go wrong because nobody cared what happened I discovered the perfect world-view.
Little has happened since those chintzy play actors left the boob tube to convince me I was wrong.

WHY I DON'T WORK FOR RINGLING BROS ANYMORE

This is the last time I tell this story. I'm sick of it and I don't think it's so funny, but the people who get me to tell it always laugh uproariously. I suspect they are laughing at me, not with me.
My last season as a clown with Ringling Brothers Circus was in 1978. I had just completed a two-year voluntary mission for my church in Thailand and was stone broke back in Minneapolis with no palatable options for work outside of my old job at the circus as a clown.
So I called up Old Man Feld, the guy who bought the circus from the last of the Ringlings. He liked me, said I was a real nut and just the kind of zany to bring new life into clown alley. He said fly to Cleveland this weekend and there'll be an opening for you in clown alley. At a salary of 250 a week. For a Ringling clown that was okay money. I borrowed the plane fare from the folks and showed up at the arena Sunday morning with my makeup, costume, and musical saw. I was in the show that evening, doing odds-and-ends around the other clowns and their gags.
Getting paid to goof off and living on the train in my own dusty roomette while we traveled all over the country --for a single guy like me it was a pretty sweet deal. The only canker in the bud was the Mighty Michu.
The Mighty Michu was billed as the World's Smallest Man. He came up to my kneecap. He was from Czechoslovakia -- before that country was hyphenated. He liked to drink. And for some unaccountable reason he was put in clown alley. I was given the job of carrying him around in my arms during Spec -- the big costume parade that precedes intermission. His little legs couldn't get him around the arena any too quickly. I carried him and he waved gaily at the crowds, all the while cursing me in hair-curling language under his breath every time I jostled him in the slightest. There was no love lost between the Mighty Michu and me. But outside of the piggyback ride I gave him during Spec we went our separate ways, avoiding each other with studied politeness.
Until, that is, one Sunday near the end of the season.
It was my habit on Sunday mornings to get up early whilst everyone else wallowed in their beds to go to morning services at church. I didn't rub it in anyone's face that I went and didn't think of myself as any better than those who did not succumb to the beat of Onward Christian Soldiers. I went because I was used to going and enjoyed the company of my fellow worshippers.
This particular Sunday I returned to the arena in a foul mood, with hardly a Christian sentiment left in me. I usually got a ride back to work after church from a friendly member, but this Sunday when I asked in Sunday School if someone could give me a lift I was met with stony silence. So I had to pay for a cab back to the building. On 250 per, that put an unexpected gouge in my pocket. Plus the cab driver was a dunce who didn't know where he was going, so I was late scuttling into clown alley. Charlie Baumann, the formidable German Performance Director, gave me a deep scowl on my way in and rumbled that I'd better hurry it up, dumkopf, or I would miss the pre-show warm-up the clowns were obligated to do.
I sat down at my trunk as tense as a rubberband around a phonebook. Attempting some sanity before getting on the war paint, I flipped open my scriptures to read a passage or two to regain some Christian composure.
That is when the Mighty Michu ambled over, three-sheets-to-the-wind. He had a bottle of beer in his tiny hand. I ignored him as I struggled through a passage in one of Saint Paul's epistles. Michu calmly poured the beer all over my leather-bound Bible.
Now what would you do? Write a letter to the editor?
I'll tell you what I did. I picked up that drunken little momser and put him inside his own wardrobe trunk. And then locked it. Then I cleaned myself off and started to put on my makeup.
Someone let him out after five minutes of banging and screaming. A few minutes later I was arraigned before the awful Charlie Baumann on the charge of Molesting one of the Little People -- a treasonable offence in the circus world. I denied nothing, simply pointing out that my expensive Bible was ruined, my Sunday slacks smelled like Joe's Bar & Grill, and that Michu was continuing to curse me in fluent Czech and coarse English, and that he was in no condition to go out in front of those trusting boys and girls since he was as likely to give them the finger as to wave at them. Baumann agreed with me, but could not save me from the prescribed sentence. Banishment and exile from Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows.
Since then I have worked for just about every other circus in America. Some were glamorous and paid very well; some were mudshows that redlighted me without a dime in my pocket. All in all, it's been, shall we say, a savory experience.
And the Mighty Michu, what of him? He soon left the circus when he got a better offer to be the animating spirit of Alf, the lovable space alien on TV. He worked that gig until the show was canceled and then, if the rumor is true, settled into a frowzy apartment in Burbank where he lives off of his rerun checks and guzzles pilsner until it flows out his rat-like ears.
But I hold no grudge. I wish him well -- and you know what well rhymes with . . .

FOR XMAS DEAR SANTA I CRAVE

For Xmas dear Santa I crave
a Congress both willing and brave.
Where lobbyists are
disdained from afar
and honesty's sprung from the grave.

KBTO

One morning twenty-six years ago I was agonizing over a rent-due notice in Provo, Utah. I and my bride arrived in Provo six months earlier on our honeymoon. I was enrolled at Brigham Young University on a skimpy scholarship that barely covered room and starvation. Jobs were hard to come by -- or rather it was hard for me to come by any jobs I wanted to take. Either way, the rent was due and couldn't be paid.
The crumpled bill had barely fallen from my palsied hand when the phone rang. I answered it listlessly. Two minutes later I was a new man. Out of the blue a radio station in North Dakota wanted me as their news director. Not only that, but since it was just going on the air I would have free rein in setting up the news department any way I wanted it. The dead hand of precedent and tradition, so baffling and discouraging in my prior radio news jobs, did not exist.
Even more wonderful, the general manager, Alan Henning, seemed not to know the basic skinflint rules about radio hiring practices. When he asked me on the phone how much I'd want to come work there I meekly quoted him the same salary I had started at in radio several years earlier. He brushed it aside, commenting that he didn't think a person could live on so little, and offered me substantially more. When I got my voice back I quickly closed the deal, telling him we'd be in Bottineau in four days.
But the wonder was not quite over yet. Before he hung up Henning informed me, almost as an afterthought, that all station employees and their families were getting Blue Cross/Blue Shield coverage at no cost. Twenty-six years ago in radio this was more progidgal than anything the Aga Khan could come up with.
I informed the gleefull wife. We both jumped up and down like giddy schoolgirls. A steady job with free health insurance -- and our first child was on the way. Glory be!
I am ashamed to own it but we spent the rest of that day packing everything we owned -- and a few things we didn't --from the apartment into our blue Ford station wagon and after dark cautiously pulled out of the driveway headed due east, stiffing the landlord. That's the only time I ever ran out on the rent. The landlord, I recall, was an elderly lawyer. I'm sure he's gone to his reward by now but if his heirs read this and wish to prosecute for the estate I will be glad to hand over the one-hundred-and fifty bucks.
Have you ever driven out of the mountains into the great, overarching prairies of Montana with a new job, a new destiny, in your pocket? The vast horizon and tremendous clouds sailing along in a crystal blue sky seemed to match my confidence and ambition. This was it; the job that would lead to fame and fortune.
Our spirits were somewhat dampened when we arrived in Bottineau in the dead of winter. That season is shabby and mean-spirited up there near the Canadian border. The only place we found to rent was a dilapidated house under the shadow of the tallest building in town, the grain elevator. The sun shown in our hovel for about ten minutes each day. Otherwise the gloom was palpable. One of the bedrooms had a running fungus on the walls. We shut the door and sealed it with a plastic sheet. The air ducts were filled with beer bottles. The carpet had no discernable color to it, having been previously used as burlap sacking on a whaling vessel back when Moby Dick was a tadpole. That house had more strange, discombobulating smells to it than a combination charnel house/chicken coop.
But when your ship comes in it comes in like a house afire. In a matter of weeks the wifey found a snug cottage for sale and we moved in without having to make a downpayment. Mortgage payments, I clearly and achingly remember, were one-hundred-and-twenty-five dollars per month.
My job. Oh, my job. I decided that there was no need for news before eight in the morning, so I got there at seven. The AP teletype chattered away in a disused bathroom --it was too noisey to put anywhere else. I sat on the toilet seat and culled whatever looked interesting to read. No board shift for this boyo, so I wandered the town and county digging up whatever I felt like pursuing. The county sheriff and the police chief, never having dealt with the broadca media before, were friendly and obliging. I didn't have to call them, they called me whenever something happened they thought was newsworthy. One of the evening announcers worked in the town bakery during the day; he innundated the station with bread and sweet rolls, cornish pasties and great puffy things stuffed with kielbasa sausage and sauerkraut. Henning was a heavy drinker. His wife tried to wean him from the sauce by filling the station refridgerator with chocolate milk and fresh-squeezed lemonade and we could take our fill of it whenever we wanted. I ate at home only on weekends. Come to think of it, I never worked a weekend. Always had it off. Amy and I would drive the ninety miles to Minot on Saturday, stay overnight with friends, attend church Sunday morning, and then drive back up Sunday afternoon, often going through the town up into the Turtle Mountains to watch the sun set over Bullhead Lake.
A beautiful moment in my life, now mere gossamer. That imp of the perverse that bedevils all geniuses and ne'er-do-wells finally convinced me I couldn't be happy unless I lived in Florida. Don't ask me now why I had to follow that willow-the-wisp. I did, and the wife and baby dutifully followed me into disaster at a place just outside of Haines City, Florida, called Circus World.
But that is a tale for another day.

A POPULAR BRAND

E. coli's a popular brand
for people all over the land.
They get it with greens
or Taco Bell beans
and cruise ships all keep it on hand.

THE UNFULFILLED LONG JOHN

Before I left for Mexico I had a very fine meal at a Vietnamese place where they serve chicken and fried potatoes over rice. With lots of scallions. It was delicious, as I was frequently reminded by the rich belches that accompanied me out the door after paying for the meal.
Such a meal demanded a fitting end, a simple but hearty dessert. Luckily there was a Byerly's Food Store just around the corner. Now up here in the Land of Ten Thousand Pot Holes nothing spells 'swank' like Byerly's. They are the creme de la creme of supermarkets for the upscale food enthusiast and they have a superb bakery. I waddled into their place and made a bee line for the pastry section. Sunk deep in thought, I ignored the blue-haired grandmothers shoving past me and the gentrified clerks yakking on their cell phones as if Wall Street hung on their every word. The crullers looked good. So did the cinnamin kringles. I was on the point of ordering a poppyseed kolache when my greedy eye alighted on the Bavarian Creme-filled Long Johns. For just ninety-cents. "That's the ticket" I exclaimed to myself, beckoning the bakery girl over to me with an imperious wave of the hand. The girl was swarthy and wrapped in some kind of shower curtain burnoose; undoubtedly a Somalian. Nothing wrong with that I thought benignly as she pulled out my long john, wrapped it in tissue, put it in a bag, and handed it to me. It takes all kinds to run a bakery, and if she wanted to traverse half the globe in order to fill me full of sugary calories on a fine day like this so much the better. Live and let eat, that's my motto.
I paid for my goodie and took it out the door, already relishing that filling. Those Bavarians sure know how to wallow in a good, thick, tasty creme. With visions of jolly fat Bavarians stomping away in vats of creamy froth I began to unwrap my long john.
That's when it all began to unravel.
The girl had wrapped the long john too firmly with the tissue. As I peeled it off most of the chocolate icing remained glued to the tissue, not the long john. I've had this happen to me before, so I didn't panic. I gingerly patted the tissue paper as I continued to remove it from the long john; that way most, but not all, of the icing stays on the top of the long john. I was not distraught, merely a tad disappointed. Still, there was all that yummy filling to look forward to.
My first bite was dainty. No need to rush the pleasure. Just the tip of the iceberg. No filling yet, but that often happens with these things -- undoubtedly that pregnant bulge in the middle of the pastry contained the mother lode. I could take it like a man and survive a few more cremeless bites to hit the jackpot. But a few more bites led me to nothing more than an arid waste of sweet dough. Not a drop of filling was to be had for love nor money. Now I began to panic. I took several big bites, then stared unbelieving at the heel of my long john. There had been no Bavarian creme, not even a molecule.
Indignantly I walked back into Byerly's, straight on to the pastry section where the Somalian girl was staring off into the distance remembering a long lost swain or camel perhaps.
"See here" I began, "I don't like to roil the waters of international felicity -- (I often talk that way when I'm in high dudgeon) -- but you have sold me a pig in a poke, the opposite of a Trojan horse, in short, a Bavarian Creme-filled Long John without any Bavarian creme in it!"
I waited for her abject apology. I waited in vain. She silently stared at me as if I had antlers growing out of my head. At last she deigned to speak:
"You want to buy another one?"
I gave her my Franklin Pangborn #2 withering look -- gauranteed to cut anyone but a megalomaniac down to size -- and icily asked to speak to her manager. With a vast shrug that indicated the inbred fatalism of the Bedouin she sauntered into the back of the bakery.
Instantly out popped a round little man, all pink and moist, with gold-rimmed spectacles perched on the very tip of his button nose. A character right out of Dickens, was my first impression, though I later amended that to Dostoyevsky.
Not waiting for him to cry "Ere now, what's all this, Ducky?" I waggled the heel of my counterfeit Bavarian Creme-filled Long John under his cute little nose and succinctly gave him my tale of woe. At the end of my narrative he ran the tip of his tongue back and forth between his lips as if he were a cat savoring the last of Tweetie Pie.
"You must have got a plain long john" was the brilliant deduction he finally came up with. "If you wanted creme-filled you should have specified."
"But I did order a creme-filled one and I saw the gal take one out and give it to me!"
"You just said there was no creme in it. You sure you know the difference? Maybe you got a maple-iced one. These long johns can be hard to tell apart."
Not caring to bandy any more words with the man, I quietly and patiently asked either for a refund or for the real McCoy.
He did the tongue business again, then shrugged like the Somalian girl and pulled out another Bavarian Creme-filled Long John for my inspection. We both peered at it intently. The tell-tale little puncture wound on the end gave promise of the good stuff inside so I thanked him profusely and carried my hard-won prize away.
Do I have to spell it out for you? Nothing. Nada. Bupke. It was as empty of creme as the last one.
This time I would brook no more shennigans from these people. They call themselves bakers, I huffed to myself as I strode back inside Byerly's -- they couldn't bake themselves out of a paper bag. Hah!
Disdaining further debate I merely ordered another Bavarian Creme-filled Long John from the girl. Taking the bag from her hand I slowly pulled out the long john in front of her. By this time Mr. Pickwick had joined us from the back. As they stared at me, mesmerized, I smartly broke the long john in two to hoist them on their own petard.
The proof, my dear Watson, would be in the lack of pudding!
That Bavarian creme sure makes an awful mess when it's spattered all over counters and glass cases. I offered to help them clean it up but as they were busy consulting the store manager about calling the police I just pulled up stakes and silently stole away.
Next time I'll get a rice krispie bar. And I'll get it at the Piggly Wiggly.

IN THE SOUP

We really are deep in the soup
to want an Iraq Study Group.
Committees that whore
around with the war
are made up of dupe after dupe.

SYLLABUS FOR NEW DEMOCRATS IN CONGRESS

WELCOME to our junior members of Congress!
We know you've had a long, hard haul to get to these hallowed halls, what with kissing babies, shaking hands, making promises and collecting millions in PAC money and slush funds. We'll try to make your introduction to lawmaking as easy as possible, but there are some fundamental rules that need to be followed and we have some suggestions that will ease your transition from campaigning reformer to contented toady. We can promise you that if you follow through on the below items you'll probably be reelected as many times as you want -- or can stand.

• An effective legislator never shows his or her face before noon. Remember, CNN is broadcasting this stuff and we want you to look well-rested and confident when your face might be on the camera. Being wined and dined by lobbyists until the wee hours is pleasant and is certainly expected, but don't let the public see that hangover or they'll jump to the conclusion that you've caved in and sold out long before our spin doctors can spread the word that you're simply tuckered out from burning the midnight oil on behalf of an organic farming bill.
• Don't send any Emails. Ever. Have your secretaries and interns take care of it. Anything of a personal and private nature you have to communicate with someone should be whispered in their ear on a busy street corner, preferably with a John Phillip Sousa march blaring in the background.
• It is not required that you kneel before Ted Kennedy anytime he passes. A simple tug at your forelock will do.
• Stay away from David Letterman until at least your second term in office. By then you'll have a stable of writers better than his.
• Dress conservatively. Hippie and yippie and preppie attire worked out on the campaign trail, we know, but you're in the Big League now. Our tailors will see that you have nothing but dark hues and dull neckties or necklaces. You have to blend in with the enemy in order to avoid notice by Rush Limbaugh or O'Reilly.
• Do get on Larry King as quickly as possible. We've had him in our pocket for ages. He's knows all the right questions to ask and has perfected a great technique for asking 'hard' questions --he poses something embarassing and then immediately cuts to a commercial so you are never seen floundering around like a beached whale.
• No gum chewing.
• No smoking, except on golf courses.
• Spouses and children are encouraged to move to Washington; it'll give you that much more motivation to go on fact-finding trips to Bangkok and Acapulco.
• Your committee assignments are decided by bankbook. VISA is accepted for all minor transactions under a hundred dollars. Otherwise it's cash on the barrelhead, baby.
• You will be assigned a Hollywood star during your first month in office. Make sure you get to know him or her well; at fundraisers they bring in more money than a lapdancer -- and we provide those, too.
• You will be expected to enter rehab before your picture is on the front cover of National Enquirer, not after.
• Should you find a naked, grubby man sleeping on the sofa in your office do not call Capitol security -- it's just Bill Clinton.
• It's up to you to find your own lesbian black woman who is blind and was left homeless by Hurricane Katrina -- we've run out of 'em around here.
• And finally, no, we can't tell you yet who will be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008. We're working on the DNA of JFK taken from an old dress of Marilyn Monroe's, but getting it grown and prepared in under two years is no picnic. There's a taser in the upper right hand drawer of your desk -- use it if John Kerry or Al Gore stop by asking for support in '08.

ANIMAL CREDO

The leopard cannot change its spots.
Your early bird finds a good meal.
Hyenaes are foolishly gay.
And snakes get around as a wheel.

No sparrow shall fall unavenged.
A horse will be led but not drink.
The wolf hides in lanolin deep.
And basilisks turn you to zinc.

An elephant never forgets.
The chickens will come home to roost.
So every dog shall have its day.
And golden eggs come from the goosed.

EMILY DICKINSON

I've tried to read her pious stuff
for years past counting, then
have waded through long pages more
from some biographer's pen.

Afriad of sexist attitudes
I"ve kept an open mind
but felt she threw away the meat
to nibble on the rind.

So Lady Poet, fare-thee-well.
I haven't time to waste
with someone who subsisted on
New England library paste.

FIRST SNOW

Silent ballet from the sky,
scattered with a flannel sigh.
Soft upon the grasses shy . . .
go pick on some other guy!

Take your dainty lacework hence.
Touch not flower, rock or fence.
Tell me, have you any sense
just how much you make me tense?

Freeways slick with frozen fear.
Driveways choked with your white cheer.
Shovels rend the atmosphere.
Rusty backs go out of gear.

There will never be a truce
with you out there on the loose.
But there's hope I can produce --
global warming cooks your goose.

A FISH TO A MAN IS A MEAL

A fish to a man is a meal.
But hungry again he will feel.
So teach him instead
to lie for his bread
and watch as he fills up his creel.

FLU SHOT

I went for a flu shot today
and overheard my doctor say
make sure that the charge
is obscenely large
in case his insurance won't pay.

EFFRONTERY

Effrontery is all it takes
when flipping a house like pancakes.
The faucets that leak
are merely antique.
The termites are better than snakes.

ON PATROL

The power to control traffic, to stop a car dead in its tracks on a busy street, is heady stuff for a sixth-grader.
That power was briefly mine when Tuttle Grade School invested me with a bright orange patrol flag. I don't remember having any type of uniform or insignia to go with the sacred flag. We were issued a sort of Sam Brown belt that had a metal hole in the middle where we could rest the flag butt, but nothing else. But that was okay by me. That flag, kept in a musty cellar room of the school that smelled of stale milk and mildewed Dick & Jane readers -- as well as tattered copies of Little Black Sambo -- gave me the right and responsibility to guard the lives of my classmates as they scurried to and from school.
Back in those easier days parents were not considered derelect if they pushed their kids out the door ten blocks from school, telling them briskly to hoof it. Even grade school kids were expected to fend for themselves as they encountered mad dogs and bullies, walked past spooky old houses with crazy old men and women cackling behind partly-opened shades, warily navigated roads where big-finned Buicks barreled pell-mell past them at just under the speed of light. And weather? No sympathy there from the parents, my little hob-goblin! Howling blizzards and pea-soup fog were all the same to them; they bundled you up in woolen coats and mufflers and gloves and stocking caps, crammed black rubber galoshes over your tennis shoes, and sent you on your merry way. A waterspout could be heading directly for your house and still your mother cavalierly kissed you on the top of your doomed head as she gently nudged you into the great outdoors. School buses were for the crippled and blind, nobody else. We survived this daily ordeal somehow, to become the pill-popping, dope-smoking, binge-drinking and thoroughly neurotic Baby Boomers of today.
The only concession to safety made by the adults was the school patrol, who stood bravely at the four corners of the school block with their orange flags waving to warn motorists to slow down, stop, and let the kiddies cross the street in giggling gaggles.
As Mark Twain wrote about his tenure as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, so a member of the school patrol felt; there was no finer calling on God's green earth with such absolute authority that we could have out-hubrised Napoleon or that rascal in the Kremlin, Stalin.
Just how I got accepted to the school patrol I no longer remember. But the astonishment of being accepted into that august society is still with me after all these years. I was a puny and meek child, not to say strange. Strongly influenced by The Three Stooges, in the winter I would often pause by a frozen puddle to act out one of their violent scenarios; I'd lift a thin sheet of ice from the puddle, snarl at myself "Watch it, porcupine!" and then break the ice over my head, stagger a bit, and utter a high-pitched "woo woo woo'. Nosy neighbors watching this performance were sure to spread the world that the Torkildson boy was not playing with a full deck.
My schoolmates did not think much better of me. My bologna sandwich was often snatched from me at lunch. I rarely did anything about it, except whimper quietly in a corner and gnaw on my mushy apple. My mother had some kind of genius for picking out brown, mushy apples at the Red Owl supermarket. However, I did possess some native cunning; one time I took my bologna sandwich out of the sack prior to leaving for school and ladled horseradish on it. When some stupid bully grabbed it from me at lunch I had the satisfaction of watching him tear up and gag. That was a beautiful day in my young life.
As I say, I don't recall how I got picked for school patrol. Once I was in I relished every minute of it. I grew five inches taller when I had that flag with me. And especially so when I could finagle to get The Corner. There were four corners that we guarded. Two of them were quiet residential streets that saw nothing more dangerous than a squirrel come zipping by. But the other two corners were on Como Avenue, a very busy artery into downtown Minneapolis. The corner at Como and 18th was busy, true, but that's about it. There was no other action. But then there was Como and 19th . . . The Corner. It had Harry's Grocery Store on it, and Harry allowed the school patrol member on duty at his corner to come into the store and pick a penny item from his wonderous glass candy case for free. It was graft, I suppose, to keep us on his side in case the authorities ever wanted to press specious charges against him -- or so I thought, anyways. When I was on duty at The Corner I would march into Harry's with my flag nonchalantly drapped over my shoulder, somewhat like a cape, and give Harry a friendly salute, then drool all over the glass counter as I picked my little bit of payola. There were Tootsie Pops and Sputniks and Atomic Fireballs and my favorite, the All Day Jawbreaker. This luscious item was the size of a minature bowling ball and would not desolve in a vat of hydrochloric acid, much less my mouth. Each one lasted me about a month.
The only drawback to this idyll was crabby Miss Henderson, the fourth grade teacher. Hatchet-faced, with a voice like ten-penny nails drawn across a blackboard, she was in charge of the school patrol. She made sure the flags were stacked neatly in that smelly cellar hole after the morning and afternoon shift, and in the winter she made something slimey and evil that she cruelly called hot chocolate and made us drink it. It's hard to take something as simple and sweet as hot chocolate and turn it into a sickening brew that sweet-toothed children loath, but she managed to do it. Her hot chocolate tasted of chalk dust and disinfectant, and she kept each mug cooling on the table before she'd let us have it until a skin, an honest-to-goodness skin, would form over it. We were all afraid of her and didn't dare turn down her noxious witches broth. I still remember with a shudder that hot chocolate blob attaching itself to my lips as if it were alive and ready to crawl up my nose to suck out my brains like a movie space alien.
One snowy morning I just couldn't take it anymore. When I thought she wasn't looking I surreptitiously dumped my hot chocolate into a nearby wastebasket. But the eagle-eyed Miss Henderson missed nothing. Fixing me with a stare that would frighten a basilisk she icily asked if perhaps I didn't care for her hot chocolate. Struck dumb with terror, I could only flap my lips and make blubbing sounds. The next day I was drummed out of the school patrol.
No more freebies from Harry's Grocery Store. No more glory. And now the bullies not only swiped my bologna sandwich at lunch but they would take the mushy apple, too.
I'm telling you, it was tough being a sixth-grader in Eisenhower's America.

MY HOLIDAY SHOPPING

My holiday shopping ain't hard.
I buy everyone a gift card.
I'm done in a trice.
My friends know their price.
Old Santa must really be jarred.

WE INVADED THE WRONG COUNTRY

Mr. George W. Bush
President of these here United States
Washington, DC December 5, 2006


Dear Georgie;

Long time no see! Maybe you don't even remember me. We were in Skull & Bones back at school. A long time ago, I know. But then maybe you remember that you and I flew a couple of missions together in the National Guard over in 'Nam? Those were the days, hey? Strafing Charlie Cong with napalm all day and loving the ladies all night. Say, I don't mean to be a nag or anything but whatever happened to that Purple Heart you promised me after you got to be prez? I mean, we'd both had a coupla brewskis when you made that promise, but c'mon, man, you can still pull some strings for your old war-time bud, right? Or do you have to run it by Old Man Cheney? Some buzzkill, huh?
Me, I don't put much stock in those stories that you're the Charlie McCarthy to his Edgar Bergen. You always were your own man, man. But they say politics is stranger than fiction, so I dunno. If it's too much hassle to get me the PH how about a snug little job counting bricks or somethin' when you're putting up that wall down south? I'm kinda strapped for cash right now, know what I mean? I've been workin' in the old factory for a month of Sundays now and they say the place is closing down soon . . . something about all the jobs going to India or Burma or Timbuctu. So I could sure use some steady bucks to tide me over; the ex is howling for all that back child support and you know how that goes . . . a man can't scrape together an honest dollar no more without some bimbo wanting to grab the biggest piece of it. I guess me and women are kinda like you and Congress -- pay lip service to 'em but watch your back.
But anyhow, that's not the real reason I wanted to write to you, Georgie old pal. The real reason is because me and a coupla of the guys were knockin' a few back at the Yeller Tap the other night and got to talking about this Iraq thing. You know, all of our guys over there gettin' their head and legs blown off by those crazy moslem dudes. Bad scene. Real bad. Now we understand why you had to send us, the good guys, into that hellhole to knock the crap out of those bad guys. They were cruisin' for a bruisin'. But hey, now that they've learned their lesson we should get the heck out of there and invade some place better.
Dude, you gotta admit that fooling around in a hot, dirty desert loses its appeal after about a half hour. And there's no lovely ladies to spend the long evenings with like we had back in 'Nam. So the guys and I are thinkin' that our troops need a break from all that crap.
We're thinkin', see, that of course you gotta invade some country or other just to keep the public off balance and distracted from domestic thingies, like Social Security, that aren't goin' too well for you. We got your back on that, cousin. The military needs to flex its muscles somewhere, right? Right!
So anyway the guys and I are thinkin' wouldn't it be way cooler to invade some place like France. For one thing, it's closer. For another, they got good grub there. Our soldiers wouldn't have to eat crickets and drink canal water like they do in Iraq. Nope, instead they could be feasting on frog legs and patty de fwa grass and chugging that famous French wine. And get this, one of the guys at the Yeller Tap -- and he should know cuz he went to the local community college for a whole two semesters --one of the guys says that France does have weapons of mass communication or whatever the crap it is that you used as an excuse to go into Iraq. We've got the goods on them, man, so we don't have to hassle with the United Nations. We can just say hey baby here's a country that can kill off a lot of Americans and we're not going to stand for it so bombs away and Next Stop Paris. Be honest, Georgie boy, wouldn't you rather let our guys go nuts and tear down the Eiffel Tower while the Frenchies just stand by picking their noses? There's no religion in France, so there won't be any of those crazy religious suicide bombers to mess things up. The French are pussies; they won't lift a finger against us when we come marching in. We take over for six months, make them hold some kind of election, and then get out with plenty of loot from the Louvre and all the vino we can handle. Maybe our boys in the intelligence unit can even crack that DaVinci Code thing while they're there; I hear tell it's a real humdinger. Purple Hearts for eveyone all around (not forgetting yours truly) and we can bring the boys and girls back home and get 'em ready to invade another country like, say, Norway. Lots of oil money up that way, so sez the community college guy. And the skiing is fantastic. Our troops surely need a little R & R after rushing ramrod over those evil Frenchies. Besides, those Nordic girls are bound to be a pushover for our studly soldiers. (Just between you and me, Georgie -- if you decide to go into Norway better invest in some Kodak stock beforehand cuz I'm tellin' ya all our troops are gonna want to get pictures of that place, what with the Fords and the mountains and stuff and they'll want a million of those handy disposable cameras-- you'll make a killing, sure as rain!)
Just think about it, that's all we're askin' ya to do. Okay? And if that old crab Cheney wants to put a lid on it why all you gotta do is wait until he's in the hospital for a hair transplant or something and put it over real quick-like. By the time he gets out it will be a fate accomplice (that's French, by the way).
And don't you worry, Georgie boy, the American people will back you one-thousand percent if you do invade France. We took a pole here at the Yeller Tap and nobody but the bartender even knows where exactly France is. You can get away with it, I'm tellin' ya. And the best part is once we're in France all those crummy Democrats that have been snapping at your heels will just have to go over and have a look-see for themselves. Chances are they'll get liquored up in some brothel and never come back. So you kill two birds with one stone.
Give it a chance. That's all we're askin'. Give it a chance. And let us know if you are goin' to do it, cuz we'd like to all join up again to get in on the action. Nuff said, bro . . .

LIVE AND LET LIVE

Now cops don't say live and let live.
But if you are white they will give
you much better odds
that their blazing rods
won't fill you with holes like a sieve.

HAPPY HUMBUG

Old Scrooge had it right, before they brainwashed him. The holiday season is humbug, pure and simple.
To properly celebrate the coldest, darkest and meanest time of the year we should lock our doors. Hunker down with the remote and a bag of Cheetos. Give our cell phone away. And brood.
Life is too short to clutter up with happy thoughts and joyful song.
So burn that tree and douse the yule log. Dump the eggnog and snap the candy canes. Scatter those carolers with buckshot. What has Santa and his pint-sized minions ever done for you, except conjure up unfulfilled desires? The only good reindeer is one you can serve up as a steak. I say we use this time of year to write poison pen letters to ex-spouses and our ungrateful children. Deck the halls with black crepe. Eat prunes and cracked-wheat bread. Trade Jack Frost for Jack Daniels. Dribble Frosty the Snowman with colored syrup and make sno-cones out of the dumb SOB. Put every stinking CD of Bing Crosby, Andy Williams and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir into a nuclear warhead and shoot it at Tehran -- Season's Greetings, you whirling dervishes!
Tell your children that not only is there no such thing as Jolly Old Saint Nick but that there ain't even enough good air for them to breath past their twenty-fifth birthday.
Purge Rudolph and the Grinch and Charlie Brown from every form of media. Make mention of their name good for a one-way ticket to Guantanamo.
And for goodness sake stop prating about peace on earth and goodwill toward men! We've just elected more people to prolong the bloodbath in Iraq.
Then, and only then, will we be undistracted enough to ponder that manure-stained hovel in Bethlehem, where angels could sing but man could only tremble.

MORNING MEMO

Wake with an ache.
Rise making sighs.
Shave while you're brave.
Stare at your hair.
Brush in a rush.
Sit without wit.
Eat mangled wheat.
Dress for distress.
Leave on a peeve.

WHEN TAKING AN OATH

When taking an oath one should scan
the book if it is a Koran.
I think I'd enjoy
to pledge on Playboy
or even a plate of warm flan.

THE CHEAPER THE CLOCK

The cheaper the clock
the louder the tick.
The duller the blade
the deeper the nick.
The softer the ride
the steeper the fare.
The thinner the love
the colder the care.

MEXICO MIME

The first time I went to Mexico was in 1973. I settled in the sleepy village of Patzcuaro, in Michoacan, to study mime with Sigfrido Aguilar.
Here's why.
Two years earlier I signed up with Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus as a first of May, a new clown. I found out much later that the only reason I was hired was because I was as skinny as a toothpick at the time, so could fit into any of the show costumes that Ringling had hanging up awaiting svelte bodies to fit 'em. Of humor, wit and skill I had none. This was made evident to me quickly as I sat at the feet of master jesters like Prince Paul, Mark Anthony, Swede Johnson, Dougie Ashton, and, most importantly, the fantastic Otto Greibling. Otto was the Picasso of pantaloons, the Byron of buffoons and the undisputed master of melancholy mirth. Like Chaplin, but without the treacle, he could make you laugh and cry at the same time. His sad tramp wandered the circus arena, hoping against hope for a crumb of affection and understanding from the audience. He spun wonderful sagas charged with emotion using nothing but a dirty rag or a tin pie plate. And he did it all in complete and dignified silence. Otto had lost his voice to throat cancer years before. He would lose his life to the very same thing the same year I got to fleetingly know him.
I tried to emulate these great clowns, my head fizzing with comic ideas that I was certain would lay 'em in the aisles. But when I would put one of my risible conceptions into practice the silence was so profound you could hear a pin drop, as well as my self-esteem. I was unable to translate my comic dreams into slapstick reality. Very frustrating.
I thought about quitting. Thought about the peace and intellectual nirvana of a job flipping burgers somewhere. No more great, welling thunder clouds of so-called inspiration rattling around my head wanting to burst out as new gags. I had nearly laid my ambitions to rest when I heard from Sigfrido Aguilar. Sigfrido had taught mime at the Ringling Clown College when I studied there for a month. His pantomime of a hapless taco vendor who unwisely eats all his own wares and then is afflicted with uncontrolable fits of gas was, and is, a great favorite of mine. He used no props, just his body. Sigfrido was starting a mime school in Mexico; did I want to go study with him? Did I?! Wild pachyderms couldn't have kept me from cashing in my meager savings for a ticket to Mexico. Here was a chance to learn how to communicate with a large audience using just my body. It was a new language I was determined to learn.
And I did. Sigfrido was a masterful teacher. There were four of us in the group. We spent mornings doing yoga and classical mime exercises from the French masters Etienne Decroux and Marcel Marceau. Boring stuff. Like finger exercises for the beginning piano player. Then came a long afternoon siesta. I and my compatriots, yankee gad-abouts who were not going to waste any time snoozing in the hot sun, would wander through the town square of Patzcuaro or attend a bull fight or try to haggle with vendors at the outdoor market over the price of an over-ripe mango. We came back to the mime studio in the cool of the evening, and that's when the fun began. Sigfrido gave us little stories, brief situations, to try to mime. Roller skating. Washing a pet dog. Eating an ice cream cone. Swinging on a swing. Simple and basic. But you try to do them as pure mime. Whew! Initially awkward and incoherent, Sigfrido patiently coached us how to give the appearance of fighting gravity and pushing against the nonexistent. Months went by. Two of the students quit. There was just me and a fellow funnyman from Ringling, Steve Smith. One evening as we rested from our ethereal labors Sigfrido gave us a significant nod. We were ready, he said, to put together our own stories in mime. We would henceforth dispense with the evening exercises. That time was ours to cook up some narrative pantomimes for his inspection and approval. Should we prove minimally competent he was ready to form us into a group, to be called Los Payasos Educados, and start touring Mexico as a mime troupe under the aegis of the Mexican government -- we would be paid in cold hard pesos for our work! Hot diggity dog!
I worked like a navvy, putting my old comic filibusters into mime form. Smith and I collaborated on a few of his comic dreams, too. After a fortnight Sigfrido looked upon our work and pronounced it good, so we hit the road.
We toured public schools, mostly. Our stage would be the flag-stoned patio with no backdrop save the adobe walls. And we were a hit. At long last I could translate my funny thoughts into funny actions and be understood. A very fine feeling, let me tell you. I still recall at one school the English language teacher, an ancient gringo, came up to me after the show to shake my hand. "You" he prnounced, "are a combination of Stan Laurel and Harpo Marx". To this day I have never received a more heartening plaudit.
Who said all good things must come to an end? Whoever the original wet blanket is I hope they trip and fall into a pit of telemarketers. The last performance of Los Payasos Educados was in Guadalajara, at the Teatro Degollado. The grand opera house. High society. Huge stage. Over a thousand in the audience that night. We opened with one of my original pieces. Doctor & Patient. I'm the doctor. Sigfrido and Smith are the patients. One by one they come in with whimsical diseases and I cure them. The last patient of the day is Smith. He is depressed. Suicidal. He is going to kill himself. In artful silence I convince him that life is a beautiful poem that has just begun and he is cured. He shakes my hand in great joy. I modestly demand my fee. Pulling his pockets out into the thin air he indicates he hasn't a centavo to his name. Nettled, I make a hangman's noose and slowly dangle it in front of him. With a maniacal gleam in his eye he grabs the rope and hurries offstage.
We were a great success that night. Sigfrido talks of a tour of South America, paid for by the Mexican government. But subterranean noises and movements in my gut cut my brilliant career short. I come down with amoebic dysentary. Bedrest for several weeks, if not months.
I bow to the inevitable. Move back to the States to recuperate. Smith takes a job with Ringling again and when I am better he calls me to say old man Feld, the owner of Ringling Brothers, wants the two of us to work together as an advance team of clowns to publicize the circus. We work well as a team. And like all teams we are basically just riffing on all the themes that Laurel and Hardy originally invented and displayed so well. Sometimes I'm Laurel, sometimes I'm Hardy. It's all good.
I don't know where we could have gone together as a team. Maybe nowhere. The heady days of slapstick comedy were already on the wane then. Clowns were becoming passe and, with the advent of the cursed Stephen King, would soon become monsters, something to scare little children with -- not entertain them.
My church called me to labor in Thailand for two years as a missionary, so I broke up the team, sidetracked the karma, to go knock on bamboo doors. I don't regret it for a moment. But Smith took it hard. We never worked together again.
And now, thirty years later, I've stopped doing mime and physical comedy. I'm fat and I move slow and don't care for the smell of stale greasepaint backstage. Unlike Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in the movie Limelight there will be no poignant and splendid comedy coda -- with an audience laughing helplessly at inspired and antiquated shennanigans.
No. I've found a new partner I'm dazzled with. A new way, for me, to search out funnybones -- but it's an old and honorable way for many. I'm talking about me and the English language. There is still much to be written and rhymed in this crazy old world. And I'm just the boyo to do it. Perhaps it'll happen while I'm an English teacher in Mexico. Perhaps not. But come along for the ride, won't you? It promises to be interesting . . .

SPY STUFF

In Britain if you are a spy
they feed you polonium pie.
The crust is a dough
that keeps you aglow.
The filling will just make you die.

The Scoop on . . .

A recent jaunt in Mexico provides me with, among other things, the strong desire to write about shit.
I normally disdain using the vulgar but really, is there a better word for the product of defecation? Feces. Crap. Poop. Doo-doo. Number Two. Brown loaf. Bowel movement. Guano. There just isn't an informal way of referring to the natural product without sounding coy, childish or geekish.
And while I'm on the subject I wish to recall that during my youth we had a wonderful phrase to express how exhausted we were: too pooped to pop. Adults used it. My parents said it. It even cropped up on the puritanical TV programs of that era and was always good for a sound-track titter. Nobody says it anymore. Why? (Andy Rooney, get on this right away). I shall bring it back, single-handedly. Next time you bump into me and ask how'm I doing I will pull myself up and utter jocosely "I'm too pooped to pop". Let the chips fall where they may.
I am reliably informed by several books on the English language (for instance WORDLY WISE, by James McDonald) that the early Anglo Saxons referred to the product in question as 'squit', and that one who produced a squit was a 'squitter'. By the nineteenth century the q and the u were dropped and an h was placed in its stead, producing our modern variant. Up until then one used a squitpot for the daily double and a pasty-faced individual was referred to as a squitface. I'm not sure when opprobrium first settled on the modern word. Lazy scholar th at I am, I will hazard the guess that it all began during the Victorian era and leave it at that. For those intellectuals who would like to clean up their language, the next time you have occasion to mention someone's 'shit-eating grin' you can loftily call it the grin of a coprophages -- any zoologist will tell you that a coprophages is an animal that eats fresh dung.
But getting back to Guadalajara, which is where I'm staying for the nonce, I wish to warn all those that plan on visiting this large, smoggy metropolis that squit is frequently to be found on the gaily colored tile sidewalks. And I don't mean doggy squit. There are very few dogs here, and those that do exist are penned up behind cement block walls and never taken out for a walk. One of my chief joys in stumbling around this city is that you never see anyone out walking their dog. Mexicans don't think a dog needs to go out anywhere for any reason -- sound thinking, if you ask me. The next gringo dog that sniffs my crotch while on a leash is going to get blue added to their black nose.
No, on the sidewalks of Guadalajara you need to keep a watchful eye peeled for the human stuff. There are no public restrooms in this city and there are many individuals who make their home on the streets. The climate is salubrious and a park bench layered with cardboard is just the ticket for a good nights rest for these folk. Since there are no public facilities for them they simply squat and squit to their heart's content. No one seems to mind. It gets swept up by good-natured homeowners or shopkeepers in a day or two. But I've already ruined two pairs of flip-flops by stepping in squit that not only stays plastered to the bottom but tends to curl upward and inward, contaminating my socks and feet.
As a patriotic American I am proud to say that even a homeless wino in the meanest part of the grungiest city in our fair land can find a public restroom as easy as pie. Consequently, our sidewalks may be full of everything else under the sun but you won't find humanity's squit on it. Now that's a campaign idea I hope will be used by one of the candidates in 2008. Most likely John Kerry.
Traveler's diahrrea, as the guidebooks so quaintly call it, has given me the squits this past week or two. I contend that the confounded guidebooks need to get honest with us and call it something less cozy and more revealing, like The Cramping Death that Smells Up Your Pants. I have been cautious and prudent down here in Mexico. I touch nothing that has not been sterilized, irradiated or otherwise rendered null and void as far as rotaviruses are concerned, but still my gut has gurgled and gasped and I have hugged the ceramic bowl to my bosom, so to speak, as my best friend. As they used to say on Amos-n-Andy, I'm regusted. All my precautions have been in vain. Each meal I partake of leads inevitably to nothing but wind and sound . . . and squit.
So please let me eulogize and reminisce about that homely function that I may never get back to again, the solid morning bm.
There are many joys attending the moment of awakening each day. Birdsong. A luxurious stretch. Perhaps a loved one snuggled up against you, all pink and warm and obliging. Yes, many are the blessings of that moment to which we all look forward to. But to me the best moment of all, the crowning achievement, is the quick walk to the bathroom where you pull down your pajama pants and unload yourself. It dispells the bad humors. It rids you, the textbooks tell us, of worn-out blood cells, germs, and the undigestable fibers from last night's binge on Cheetohs and Ding Dongs. Afterwards you feel light on your feet; the fog is momentarly lifted from your noggin. Appetite stirs. Yessiree bob, it's the greatest feeling in the world you can get without illegal drugs or illicit sex. You have actually accomplished something, unselfishly given something back to the world. But the poets never write about it. Our pundits, gnashing their scrawny teeth over the Middle East or other taradiddles, never analyze it. Those talking heads on TV dare not mention it. Wouldn't you feel safer and more secure if that blathering nitwit who serves you your first dose of news in the morning on TV or radio just sat back a moment with a contented sigh and exclaimed "Boy oh boy did I have a good bm this morning"?
I tell you what, the next broadcasting job I ever get I'm going to say that word for word. Bring a little credibility to my announcing.
Then file for unemployment again.

Snivel War

Let us be tough and not snivel
that war in Iraq has gone civil.
When push comes to shove
their brotherly love
is simply attached to a swivel.