UNREMITTING FAILURE

At Pickett's Charge

We suffer a charleyhorse. While our compatriots storm into a hail of miniballs, we make ourselves at home at the minibar back at the Blue and Grey Inn. We can hear the cannonade as we polish off the little bottles of vodka and tear into a package of smoked almonds. Out there in the wheat field our friends and neighbors are getting their asses shot off. It is enough to make a man heartily sick for humanity. We pick up the phone, to call room service. This is goddamned war, and we require hookers.

It Was the French Revolution

No way we were going to stick our neck out.

Oh, we went along with the crowd storming the Bastille, but our heart wasn't in it. We didn't want to be a bit player in a Dickens novel to be written later.

We wanted to disco!

Everyone was crying, Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!

We were crying, Bee Gees!

It was our belief, even then, that no good revolution could succeed without a mirrored disco ball. We didn't want Robespierre, we wanted Studio 54.

Given our choice between the guillotine and "Dancing Queen," we'd have definitely chosen the latter. But the French were not ready to do the Hustle. They wanted terror. We wanted KC and the Sunshine Band.

Do a little dance? Make a little love? Get down tonight?

Not on the agenda.

Long Live Andy Gibb!

The Hundred Year War

Was no picnic. Believe us when we tell you those were a long 100 years. Why couldn't we have had a 30-years-war, like other people? If you ask us, a hundred year war was at least seventy years too long. But nobody asked us. They handed us a pike and said, "See you in a hundred years. You can pick up your paycheck at the office."

After 50 years or so, your arms got tired and you were, like, over it. You just wanted a little peace and quiet. It was like, when am I supposed to pick up my dry cleaning? We were too busy laying siege and slaughtering and raping and burning to even program our Tivos. It totally sucked.

We marched here and there and as the decades passed nobody even remembered the score. Who was winning? Who was losing? Once we stormed into our own village and burned it to the ground. We didn't even know where we were. That was an embarrassing moment. Until you've sacked your own home town, you don't know the meaning of "I fucked up."

We are present at the Reformation

Martin Luther: what a prick. Not only is the guy a Class A antisemite, he's a religious nut. Unlike the local priests, who pretty much mind their business so long as you throw them the occasional altar boy. But hey, we're Martin Luther's publicist, so we have to make the best of it.

We're booking his public appearances and in-stores and stuff, and we keep telling him to put the lid on the fireeater stuff, unless he wants to find his appeal limited to the nutball crowd.

"ML, baby," we say, "Lighten up, already. Stop being such a Negative Nellie. Speak out in favor of legalized marijuana or something. You're coming across as a real bummer. And we have to come up with something better than the Diet of Worms. How about, A Thousand Points of Fun?"

"Bah," says Luther, whose thunderous scowl is hardly going to win him a booking on Oprah. Jesus H, Hitler's more fun than this guy.

Take the 99 theses. Why can't he come up with one more, make it a catchier 100? But no. He has 99 theses, and he will not bend. We make suggestions.

"How about something involving drinking gooseberry wine and having sex with your cousin? That would make 100 and end on a more upbeat note. All work and no play, you know?"

But Luther won't bite. This guy is the biggest downer in the history of Europe. It's like he read about Jesus, and all he got out of it was a case of the crabs, and it made him angry at the world. He should pick up some Plutarch, try to get with the whole Renaissance Love Vibe. Maybe take some ecstasy or something. But he just doesn't have it in him. There is no Reforming the guy.

We Got Tickets for the Great Plague

We were under the impression that he was some kind of magician. Wait until we get our hands on the guy at Ticketron. Because it was hardly the best decade of entertainment we've ever experienced. We wandered around Europe, watching the bodies pile up. We quickly noticed an interesting thing. None of the village idiots died. Not one. So we ditched all our Oprah's Book Club selections and stopped pulling up our zipper. We were lucky to find a position as village idiot in the Franconian village of Krummersdorf. Seems their previous village idiot suddenly got smart, and ran off and bought all off Oprah's Book Club selections. He was dead in a week. We quickly got the hang of the job. It involved a lot of pointing at nonexistent objects in the sky and shouting, "Hi Mom!" We actually liked it, except for the buttering of genitals part, in order to entice farm animals. But, hey, when the guy came by in the cart shouting, "Bring out your dead!", we weren't one of them. And we had weekends off. Village idiots were the first people in the world to enjoy a five-day work week, you can look it up. A good bennies package, too.

We run down to the tar pit

No dinosaurs have fallen in. There goes tonight's entertainment. We hurl our spear at squirrels, halfheartedly. It's going to be another stupid caveman day. Suddenly Krog appears. He's the guy who invented the wheel and believe us when we say he thinks he's hot shit. The wheel! Big whoop. We're reserving our admiration for the guy who invents jello with fruit suspended in it. Krog is wearing some new kind of permapress animal skin. Who does he think he is, Versace? He has mastered the art of boasting in grunts.

The skies open up. A giant meteor hits the earth and the shudder throws us up into the air. Krog says, "This is our punishment for still dating apes!"

What a jerk.

"Krog", we say, "Why don't you make yourself useful? Discover fire or something?"

If I Had an MC Hammer

MC Hammer--whose celebrity was wholly based on his amazing ability to actually outsuck Vanilla Ice--celebrates a birthday today.

fortunately, his parachute pants refused to open

A Poem by Our Brother Jeffrey

Witches & Devils

(For Albert Ayler)

Whose hobgoblins now?  These are the old-time base of the brain beliefs

winched up from the deepest well of what we are, broken stumps tangled

with tupelo roots & the kind of mud that can talk to ghosts, in king snake,

magpie, & harm.  It’s a wild world, & this is its first parade.  Three men

stepping creole through a Louisiana swamp playing a feral march music

like a swarm of bees.  Neutral is a nothing word.  They are already here,

they are already advancing, & that’s your ass, up on ahead.  Step heavy.

Perched in a fork of a dead cypress tree a screech owl shrieks into flight.

When sundown settles & the fires break out their scratch & start to feed. 

Some People Blame The Stars

We blame the European nation of Liechtenstein.

The tiny double-landlocked principality has had it in for us from the start.

In elementary school, Liechtenstein made sure it got the seat behind ours, then proceeded to harry us with spitballs, nudges, and pencil pokes.  Our grades suffered accordingly.

In junior high school, it was Liechtenstein that heckled our performance as "leg amputee guy" in our first and only one-person show, a musical adaptation of 30 Seconds Over Tokyo. 

In high school, the vindictive little nation state was constantly "setting up" our locker, so that all the books toppled onto our head whenever we opened the door. 

And so it has gone.  We are hard pressed to explain Liechtenstein's remorseless campaign of harassment, except by suggesting that Liechtenstein is jealous.  Yes, jealous.  And no wonder.  Whereas we got sleep on the top bunk above our little brother, Liechtenstein's 33,987 citizens had to sleep on the bottom bunk, below Switzerland.  That rankled.  Oh yes it did.  And from this tiny aggrievement little Liechtenstein never recovered, but spent years rubbing its 67,974 little hands together while plotting a suitable revenge.

Liechtenstein, you have been letting the air out of our tires for years.  Liechtenstein, we are tired of your late night phone calls asking us if we have "Prince Albert in a can."  Liechtenstein, the burning bag of dog poop trick has gotten pretty old.  Liechtenstein, we know it is you who enrolled us in a clinical trial for men suffering from degenerative crotch rickets.

Liechtenstein, back off.  You do not even have your own currency.  You have zero AM stations.  Your only export product is MC Hammer harem pants.  And if you keep harassing us, we are going to tell your mom. 

Today Is Celine Dion's Birthday

Today is also Eric Clapton's birthday.  Obviously, today is a day of great evil, during which a portal opens to a timeless dimension of bland, sucking celebrity.