Reviews Of Books I Have Read

There's A Chance Rosenblatz and Goldenberg Might Be Dead

Though I don't turn my nose up at the thespian arts (unless I have a nosebleed of course), reading plays has never been my cup of tea or coffee or even a nice, soothing mug of beef bouillon, especially after my landlady has locked me out of the rooming house on a cold winter day because she thinks I've been peeing all over the toilet seat. Plus a play, in print form, is usually very meager in the page department and thus not very good for crushing silverfish unless you get a good flex to your downswing, in which case sometimes the damage is even greater and more satisfying than say, from an encyclopedia volume or large print edition of War And Peace. Waiting For Godot? I think not. More like Waiting For Silverfish. But that's neither here nor there because in the end the play's the thing and if anyone has broken a leg on the theatrical stage it's my good friend and brother-in-law, Schmeltzy Gimmeldick, philosopher and owner of Gimmeldick's Hardwood Flooring Outlet. Well, he can now add dramatist to his well-rounded resume after the play he's so recently penned is ready to be put through its paces and whose pages he rushed right over to me, the paper still warm from his inkjet printer. A freshly born and swaddled baby couldn't have been more comforting, inspiring or better smelling.

The playwright, philosopher and hardwood flooring expert extraordinaire, not to mention my brother-in-law, Schmeltzy Gimmeldick. Here he can be seen preparing for a role in his very own play using his patented "Gimmeldick" method acting exercises that make Stanislavsky look like a Sunday walk in the park holding a hot fudge sundae between your buttocks while an escaped Boston terrier that has recently undergone brain surgery bites your legs and urinates on your flip-flops.

Schmeltzy and I go way back because he married my sister who won't talk to me but that hasn't stopped Schmeltzy from keeping me leashed to the family tree which includes visiting me from time to time to bring me frozen TV dinners and cans of chili and beans and spotting me a few bucks occasionally because I know he fooled around on my sister with his secretary, Mitzi, whose no looker (being wall-eyed and having legs like the balustrades on a decaying staircase) but neither is Schmeltzy unless you like copious amounts of back hair. Oddly, the rest of his body is as bare as a baby's bottom but his back is tufted like a silver back gorilla. Anyway, that's water under the bridge or off a duck's back or wherever that water goes.

Lest you think Schmeltzy is a neophyte in the dramatic arts, people should know he comes from a long and esteemed theatrical lineage. His mother, Verna, pictured above, was a popular ventriloquist in her day with her dummy sidekick, Milton. As adept at throwing her voice as she was with flower arrangement, the highlight of her act came when she would breastfeed her dummy. "Does little Miltie need some of mama's milk?" she would coo and Milton would roll his eyes and clack his jaw and stammer out a "Yes, mother," while the crowd would go crazy, turning over their seats in their haste to get a better view and eventually the police would arrive and close down the gymnasium and then Schmeltzy's dad, Boris, would have to bail her out of jail but not before she finished her show for the boys down in the 23rd precinct and got a few phone numbers to perform at private birthday parties. If that's not a showbiz trooper and show stopper I don't know what is. On a side note of interest, Milton survives to this day and works as a salesman at Schmeltzy's hardwood flooring outlet.

So with a proffered twenty smackers paper-clipped to his manuscript along with a stack of Swanson Hungry Man dinners in a shopping bag that he placed at my feet, I was all eyes and ears to see and hear where his dramatic urges had taken him. Little did I realize at the time that it was old Shakespeare himself whose door Schmeltzy would be knocking at and then banging on, belligerently I might add, when Shakespeare didn't answer, although I mean that figuratively of course. In reality it was actually Schmeltzy banging at my rooming house door but my sleep was deep, due to a previous night's combination of NyQuil and instant chicken soup (not that I'm sick-it's just a recipe I'm currently working on), and so it wasn't until he started bellowing my nickname, Fuckface as he so fondly calls me, through the cheap veneer door paneling, that I awoke from my slumber, my eyes lightly crusted with the downy dew of my dreams and overactive mucous membranes. And so there we sat, two worldly men of words and weltschmerz (not to be confused with the welts that Ethel inflicted upon Fred Mertz and known as weltsmertzes), as I probed Schmeltzy about his recent foray into the world of stagecraft.
"Shakespeare was a jackass," Schmeltzy informed me, pushing my pile of word searches off the bed  to make room to sit down (I find that word searches sharpen my mind and keep me honed and better prepared to detect the subtler nuances in the great literary works that I rarely, if ever, read). "I mean I read this Hamlet shit back in high school and his two best characters, those Rosenblatz and Goldenberg guys are just wasted, playing second fiddles to all those other boring jackasses. I know 'cause I Googled it and what I saw didn't make me too happy. So I decided to remedy that situation. I mean if I were Shakespeare and knew which side my bread was buttered on, I would've made these two guys front row and centre but I guess that's why I'm a hardwood flooring king and he's just some old dead guy with a fancy collar who couldn't get no royal pussy and died of syphilis in an outhouse on the outskirts of Salisbury. And then this Tom...Tom...I don't even know his fucking last name but I think it's that guy who hosts America's Funniest Home Videos and that shit-ass Dancing With The Stars show, he decides to write a play focusing on these two schmoes but he gets it all wrong making them all funny and cute instead of being the backstabbing son-of-a-bitches that would fuck your sister behind your back and then make you sniff their fingers fresh from your sister's ass though you don't know that's where they've been before going off to maybe kill your cat or salamander or whatever the fuck kind of pet you have or love to death. I mean, I wouldn't hire that guy to sell hardwood flooring to overweight bingo-callers strapped to mall scooters in Sudbury, let alone write a play that people might like and recommend to their friends and family not to mention getting a little goddamn historical accuracy because that kind'a shit matters if you wanna be a playwright. Am I right? Eh? Am I right or not? Oh yeah, and he covers up the fact they're Jews. Both him and Shakespeare, coupl'a anti-Semites goosestepping their way through some crappy barbaric finger-sniffing sister-banging century if you ask me."

Schmeltzy's mother actually was a bingo-caller and also confined to a mall-scooter, so he didn't just toss that phrase out there without a touch of authenticity. Known for her vivacious and bubbly personality when she wasn't drinking and her ability to run over and sometimes crush people's toes with her scooter when she was, Zora was in high demand from Napanee to Winnipeg to Moosonee. She brought a level of professionalism and expertise to the bingo-calling profession that many said hadn't been seen since Floyd Dudendum had passed away, on the job I might add, calling B-23 just as a huge cerebral hemorrhage brought him to his knees and then eventually onto the industrial carpeting, the last flickers of his breath softly rustling a losing cardboard pull-tab flap that had been discarded close to where his face came to rest. Here's a rare photo of Zora before a game. She liked to arrive early and just meditate and get a feel for the space to help her prepare for a frenzied night of bingo-calling. It's this same focus and concentration that Schmeltzy brings to the stage (he did a wonderful one-man Pirates of Penzance in the hardwood-flooring warehouse one lunch break that brought all the shippers and receivers to their feet calling for an encore and another twelve-pack of beer), and is sure to make his play a success once he finds some actors at the detox centre or homeless shelter because, as Schmeltzy says, "those are the people from the school of hard knocks who have the theatrical chops and deep sense of character that you can't get from any Russkie method-acting school where everyone's pants smell like vodka and pickled herring farts plus these homeless alcoholics really bring a role to life not to mention they work for peanuts, literally, as long as you throw in a couple of bottles of barrel wash."

"I couldn't agree with you more, Schmeltzy," I said, eying the stack of Hungry Man frozen dinners.
I didn't want to tell Schmeltzy that he had the wrong Tom and that I believed he meant Tom Stoppard, a British playwright whose works I'm well not acquainted with but who did host a TV game show on the BBC called Name That Meat Pie in which contestants had to name the meat filling of various pies for cash prizes and/or dental work. Of course that was well before he made it big with his absurdist plays and his Tom Stoppard fashion line of men's hosiery and undergarments (the play-writing business unfortunately doesn't pay big money so Mr. Stoppard, instead of putting all his eggs in one basket, put some into cheap knock-off socks and underwear that he has manufactured in sweatshops and then ships over to London where he jacks the price and puts his logo-TS-on the packaging and when people ask him what TS stands for he smirks and says, "tits and socks," which leaves people bewildered but gets them talking and buying his product and every year, in conjunction with the London Royal Repertory Theatre's Production of Shakespeare's Frights, Fights & Delights, a review of Shakespeare's greatest hits from his best plays set to music and with laser lights, Stoppard puts on his own variety show he calls Stoppard's Cock-Of-The-Walk Cavalcade Of Tits & Socks, which allows him to market both his designer line and his thought-provoking plays so someone's laughing all the way to the bank and it sure as hell isn't Shakespeare even though he's dead so it's a moot point but if he were alive a bank would be the furthest place from where he'd be, especially with Tom Stoppard standing there counting all his moolah, licking his absurdist chapped lips and holding up the line. Either way, Schmeltzy was happy that I was in complete agreement with his Shakespearean theories (I know which side my bread's buttered on and mine comes with a frozen entree), and it was then that Schmeltzy persuaded me to make a run-through reading of his play and I agreed because I'll pretty much do anything for a heat'n'serve Salisbury steak with instant mashed potatoes, peas, carrots and gravy, all beautifully compartmentalized in its own foil serving tray. To me it's like being on an airplane taking off on a soul-searching and adventurous journey without having to leave the comfort of my lumpy bed or feeling homesick for the warmth and comfort afforded by the rooming-house odours of moldy dishtowels, boiled cabbage and mouse feces.

This is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow as far as I'm concerned and it should be noted, to keep on a theatrical theme, that Salisbury steak was named for the 4th Duke of Salisbury who, in the 15th century repelled the forces of King Richard the III who had teamed up with the thieving and murderous sons-of-a-bitches, Prince Vimrod and Queen Jagenstoffle of Norway who King Richard had fallen in love with and promised her the city of Salisbury as part of his betrothal package deal, but the whole affair ended in tragedy when Prince Vimrod was accidentally impaled by King Richard III's fake unicorn that he had fashioned out of mutton and a narwhal's tusk as a gift for Queen Jagenstoffle to be presented on their wedding day. The Duke of Salisbury vanquished the invading troops, their morale already broken by Vimrod's tragic death and the event was commemorated with the invention of this special dish. The theatrical angle comes into play when one realizes this is where Shakespeare is buried, after contracting a venereal disease at the local brothel and passing away on his chamber-pot, mulling over his penis sores and varicose veins. Unfortunate for the world of literature because at the time he was working on his unfinished play, tentatively titled "Those Murdering Norwegian Sons-of-a-Bitches," about this tragic moment in British history that, alas, never saw the light of day nor the stage.

Now that we have all that background information out of the way it's on to Schmeltzy's play. I took the part of Rosenblatz and Schmeltzy played Goldenberg in our rooming-house read-through and I must say Schmeltzy punched all the theater of the absurd tickets with this magnificent tour de force of existential angst, apathy and the resulting constipation that these two formidable forces wreak upon the body. Something I'm no stranger to when you've consumed a pound of T.V. dinner Salisbury steak. Honestly, it's like Waiting For Godot but with smoked meat. Or Sartre's No Exit but in a deli. Here's a sampling.

Act I. Curtain goes up on a delicatessen setting where two men are sitting at a table. 
Rosenblatz: Why did you order the double meat?
Goldenberg: Are you crazy. I always order the double meat. How many years have we been coming here and you ever see me order anything but the double meat? You got Alzheimers of something?
R: You've ordered the kishka before.
G: I've never ordered the kishka here. You must be thinking of the kasha. One time, what, five years ago, I had an upset stomach so I ordered some kasha. So, sue me. A man orders kasha once, from that day on it's just kasha, kasha, kasha. Do I look like a kasha eater to you? Granted, my grandparents were big kasha eaters back in Russia in the shtetl but they didn't have much else to eat after the Cossacks made off with all their wives and goats and sheep and fire-making tools. But me, hey, I haven't done too bad as a zipper manufacturer. Who wants kasha when you can have pastrami or corned beef or even a smoked tongue sandwich, especially with the kind of money I make.
R: Hey, I make just as money as you with my button factory and you never hear me complaining about having a nice plate of kasha from time to time. Nothing wrong with a little kasha. Once I was over at Hymie's place and he put out a big platter of pickled herring and smoked whitefish but I said, "Hymie, I don't mean to be rude but you wouldn't by any chance maybe have a little kasha to go with this?" Hymie understood. He's a kasha man. Kishka too. Hymie would never turn down a plate of kishka.
G: Kasha, kishka, kasha, kishka, who th'hell cares? I didn't order it, I'm not eating it, I don't wanna talk about it anymore. Now how about this Hamlet guy. This is something we need to discuss. He's been underselling me with his own zippers, cheap zippers, such crap you wouldn't believe. I wouldn't put them on my grand children's pants. He's giving the zipper industry a bad name. I mean people think a zipper is a simple thing. Oh yeah, go ahead and make them cheap. What is it anyway? Just a bunch of little metal teeth with a thingamajig that zips them up, how hard could that be? Well, I'm telling you, my friend, this from a man who has devoted his life to zippers. They're more complicated than nuclear fission, anti-gravity machines, toaster ovens for God's sake. And this, this gonif thinks he can take business away from me. You know what I say? Eh? It's time to murder this son-of-a-bitch. Kill this Danish prick and his family if we have to.
R: (sleepily), Danish? Mmm, what kind? Lemon or poppy seed? I like a nice danish.
G: Not that kind of danish, you putz. This Hamlet guy, he's from Denmark. Anyway, are you up to killing this thieving son-of-a-bitch or do I have to do it myself?
R: Yeah, yeah, what's your hurry. Let me finish my corned beef first. It's not like he's leaving the country. Oy, I think I've got gallstones. Or kidney stones. Can you get stones in your kidneys? I don't even know. Maybe I should go to the doctor. Have you seen my walker? I can't kill anyone if I don't have my walker.
G: You know, maybe you should take it easy. Stay here, have some nice rice pudding, my treat. I'll take care of things (looks offstage to a suggested figure working the deli counter). Hey, Moishe, you busy for the next few hours. I gotta go kill somebody and I could use a little help. Nothing big. Kill a guy, maybe his wife too, he's got a Cadillac, it's yours if you tag along.
(from offstage comes Moishe's voice)
M: Sure, sure, just give me a second. I've gotta get this brisket out of the oven. A Cadillac, eh? What colour?
G: Maroon.
M: Maroon. I love that colour. And it rhymes with macaroon. And raccoon. I love raccoons, especially the way they wash their food. I once saw a raccoon wash a kreplach in a pail of dirty water and cooking oil in the alleyway out back of the deli. It broke my heart. And I still have my old maroon leisure suit hanging in the back of my closet. You wouldn't believe how much pussy a schmekel like me could get with a maroon leisure suit and a pound of pastrami. I'll tell you all about it later after we kill this Nazi Danish son-of-a-bitch and we're driving back in my new Cadillac.
Lights dim. Curtains go down. End of the first act.

If anyone should think Schmeltzy was exaggerating when he had Goldenberg describing the intricate mechanics of zipper technology, look no further than this diagram. Seemingly simple at first, this is actually a formulaic problem that confounded even Einstein on his best days, making him bite through so many pipe stems his wife made him take up cigar smoking, if only to save his teeth. Working against gravity and atomic and molecular entropy, the zipper redefined all our previous preconceptions about the laws of physics. Oh, sure, you could say. It's just teeth, tape, slides and stops but the only person you'd be fooling is yourself. The next time you're zipping up remember the laws of nature are totally against this process. The only thing more unnatural than a zipper is a lobster operating a backhoe to dig out a swimming pool for its children, an event which did occur in a suburb of Toronto until the neighbours wised up and called the police and the lobster was arrested, not only for trespassing as it didn't live on the premises, but also for destroying private property and disturbing the peace since lobsters are nocturnal and it did most of its digging at night.

My only wish is that Schmeltzy lives to see his play performed on the stage or local gymnasium or shipping dock because talent like this shouldn't go to waste. Nor should those Hungry Man dinners he brought me. I've offered to volunteer my time in any way Schmeltzy can use me, from stage director to actor, understudy to set designer because a play like this would stop Stoppard in his tracks and throw Hamlet into an omelette of contemporary thought where thankfully poor Yorick would be buried under such well-laid and beautiful hardwood flooring that no one would dare disturb its highly polished surface just to dig up some old moldy, maggot-ridden jester's skull, let alone make a speech about it. So if this play hits the limelight on Broadway, off-Broadway or in that doughnut shop parking lot off the 401 highway as you come off the Orillia 32B East off-ramp that takes you to the Trillium Star Casino and Clancy's Golf Centre if you continue for another 4 kilometres, I suggest you zip your lips and let the actors do the talking. Schmeltzy turns the theatre of the absurd into so much cheese curd that wouldn't be out of place on a plate of poutine, on the stage or crusting the front of Marlon Brando's underwear back in the day when On The Waterfront meant a pair of cement shoes on the East River and your severed penis jammed into your mouth could easily be mistaken for a cannoli bobbing in the waves, the only witness being Samuel Beckett (or Uncle Sammy as he was known in Hollywood and at Phil's Heating & Duct Cleaning in Milwaukee) and Uncle Sammy wasn't saying anything. In my humble opinion all I can say is that one day this play is sure to become as great as TV dinner Salisbury steak, with or without the apple crisp dessert option.

Reviews of Books I've Never Read

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Here's the Jonathan Franzen Freedom Action Figure doll that came out as part of the novel's novel marketing campaign. The beauty of this doll is that it was loved by both adults and children alike and as kids played with the doll at their parent's slippered feet, gunning down the invisible enemy behind couch legs or wherever they might be, the adults sat comfortably in their wing-back chairs by the roaring fireplace, riveted by Franzen's magnificent words and plot devices and using the Franzen Freedom doll's light-up gun scope to further illuminate the pages and reduce eye-strain.

First off let me say Jonathan Franzen is like eating peanuts. You can't have just one. Or if you don't like peanuts, maybe he's more like potato chips or crispy pork rinds or pretzel sticks. Or any snack food that you enjoy and can't stop eating, even though you know it'll make you sick. You just eat and eat and eat or in this case read and read and read until a mad diarrhea dash to the bathroom is the inevitable outcome.

I'm also impressed by the size of this book. The silverfish literally quake in fear when they see me approaching with this magnificent tome. So many contemporary authors get away publishing these weenie little books, no thicker than a Vienna cocktail sausage, but Franzen really knows how to pile up the word count and stack the pages in the process and I can always count on him to produce a silverfish crushing piece of work that in a pinch could also squish mice, flies, even hairless mole rats if need be. Indeed, it would be a huge disappointment if an author of Franzen's stature and caliber was not up to the task of creating such wonderful vermin exterminating books. But hats off to Franzen for here's an author who never lets his Franzen-ites down and when I'm down on my hands and knees on the bathroom's linoleum tiling, whacking the bejesus out of silverfish armies, I'm always, silently, thanking Franzen for his profundity and prolific output. And if you can get your hands on a large print edition of this book you're pretty much an angel of death as far as silverfish are concerned and they should be concerned when they see you coming waving Freedom in your hand because freedom is just another word for death to all those many-legged vermin who would enslave us with their antennae-waving ways and their uncanny ability to subsist on disgusting skin flakes for days, months, even years on end, which, in my case, due to extreme psoriasis, means an endless free lunch for all those parasites and their friends that they have no hesitation about calling up and inviting over for an all-you-can-eat buffet off my body while I'm happily snoring away. Like the scourge of communism, these creatures threaten our very free-wheeling, fun-loving existence not to mention our many styles of underpants and hoisery options, and I, for one, won't settle for this and if such transgressions were allowed to continue, I would surely roll over in my grave, once I die or course and have a grave to roll over in but in the meantime I will roll over any other person's grave in the cemetery so if you're paying your respects to a dearly departed loved one and see a man rolling about on a grave plot, have no fear for it's just me doing my small part to stop the insidious influx of insects and their communist societies.

An exercise designed to help you train in the event that one day you might have to roll over in your grave. If you don't have access to such a specialized piece of equipment, a simple stepladder, a kitchen chair sawed in half, a loofah sponge, the business end of a scythe and the perch taken from the cage of an obese cockatoo should suffice.

Now, as Dickens had reached his pinnacle with Oliver Twist, Melville with Moby Dick and Mickey Spillane with My Gun Is Quick, you could say that Freedom is the culmination of all of Franzen's finest thoughts and ideas, all congealed like cold oatmeal in a breakfast nook whose smog-smudged windows overlook a gas station where Mr. Renaldo Gillespie will die of a heart attack while pumping gas and passing gas simultaneously because, as some of you may not know, one of the side effects of a heart attack is farting uncontrollably, a sure sign to any innocent bystander that a heart attack is occurring and a tragic event might very well end in death.

Still, with a plot that begins with all the bang of a sick budgie vomiting undigested birdseed on to the newspaper flooring of its cage before falling off its perch and landing on its cuttle-fish sharpened beak, lulling the reader into a sense of banal domestic intrigue, Franzen quickly revs it up, going from 0 to 60 with a double cam and re-blocked V8 and though it's no Maserati this is America and freedom we're talking about, not some whiny European import whose exhaust smells of foie gras, mortadella, burnt berets, one-eyed chicken hoarding gypsies, stolen Greek friezes, rickets, sweaty cricket pants, the Industrial Revolution, Charles Dickens' jockstrap, bad shrimp and old women with mustaches and hairy moles where other people have facial features and/or limbs attached to shopping bags.

Basically, this book is the story of Gubba and Teddy Fenoodee, their teenage son, Ranch, and their twenty-something daughter, Serafina-Bitskin. Add to the picture Teddy's old high school buddy, the tormented conceptual artist, Seymour Parfo, recently moved back to the city after success and then failure in the dog-eat-dog-that-drinks-out-of-the-toilet-bowl world of international art and you have a recipe for disaster, renewal, restraining orders and jello molds complete with luncheon meat and tears of bitterness imbedded deep in their quivering centers. Teddy has never strayed far from his roots, marrying his college sweetheart and making a life for himself and his family in his hometown of Mount Olive, North Carolina, pickle capital of the U.S.A. Working as a chief quality control expert at the local pickle factory, Teddy is a socially and environmentally conscious individual who cares both about Mother Earth and the pickles she provides so selflessly so that others may enjoy the fruits of her loins, labours and the headiness of her brine. Not to beat a metaphor like a dead horse that lost the Kentucky Derby, but the combination of the pickles and Mother Nature's insinuated vagina (which has always been rumored to lie just outside of Mount Olive beneath the overpass leading on to the Interstate I-40) are an obvious subtext to the fecundity of the community and the many suburban couplings that undermine the moral efforts of the residents and their strict adherence to adhesive products and the binding family ties these products suggest. Let me just say duct tape is used both for the purposes of good and evil, pleasure and pain, do-it-yourself plumbing and upholstery repair and a random kidnapping, all occurring in the same rec-room no less, sometimes by people with no pants on and I'll leave it at that so as to not give too much of the plot away and keep your anticipation building for page 193 of the book, which isn't even the halfway point but after you finish this passage you'll be sweating like the proverbial pig and wishing the whole thing were over with already, especially if you're like me and allergic to your own sweat causing you to break out in a nasty rash so repulsive not even your aging landlady (who herself has underarm fat so prodigious it hangs like the wattles of a thousand chickens or the mudflaps on a Kenworth semi-trailer and trails sweat like oil slicks on a heavily-traveled rain-soaked highway), will rub lotion on it.   

Due to Mr. Franzen's continued success and high profile in the literary community, not to mention his frequent Oprah appearances that keep him in the limelight, he's found it necessary to wear a disguise when he goes out in public so as to not be swarmed by the mobs of adoring fans who would tear him to pieces in grocery check-out lines or while picking up his dry cleaning (Mr. Franzen is known for his natty attire, not to mention his fabulous eye wear, and his dry cleaning bills are legendary among the literati). But this intrepid reporter, based on some well-based hearsay, has found out Mr. Franzen has been walking the streets dressed in a pickle costume, thus thwarting the Franzen-ites, as his fans have now taken to calling themselves. In this way he was able to roam the suburban neighborhoods of Mount Olive, North Carolina, where he did much of his research for this novel. Amazingly, this costume attracted no attention from local residents since the town is known as the pickle capital of the U.S.A. and thus, someone wandering around in a pickle outfit is no more out of place than beans in a bowl of chili or the snout on a pig. Witness the above two photos, snapped surreptitiously by my good friend and investigator par excellence, retired security guard, Clifford Niblet, as he followed Mr. Franzen around town, chatting with passersby, doing some banking and stopping for doughnuts and coffee, completely unrecognizable to prying eyes.

The real hinge point of this plot line, where the story suddenly swings in an unexpected direction, is when one day, inexplicably, Teddy Fenoodi wakes up at his usual 6am, bright and crisp as an Ice Capades performer on metamphetamine, but instead of his sensible breakfast he wolfs down his daughter, Serafina-Bitskin's Sugar Krinkles cereal that she keeps hidden in her underwear drawer (the Fenoodees run a healthy household and all sugary junk foods are thus banned from the pantry). His wife, Gubba, is so astounded and then alarmed that she checks his forehead for a fever and implores him to stay at home in bed. She wants to leech him but Teddy puts her mind at rest, then at ease, and then into a semi-comatose state through the infusion of massive amounts of cold medicine in Gubba's morning tea. He then goes to the leech cabinet and amply helps himself to handfuls of leeches that he  applies to Gubba's body in the hopes that the combination of cold medication and slow and gentle bloodletting will keep Gubba immobilized for a few hours. As Gubba settles into a gentle slumber in Teddy's La-Z-Boy recliner, Teddy drives to the pickle factory, marches right past his pickle quality control station, bowls his way past pickle company president Mr. Chornbluth's secretary, Leonarda, looks straight into the upraised unibrow of Mr. Chornbluth himself who's on speaker phone with a phone-sex operator that specializes in wet noodle whipping fetishes and quits his job with nary an explanation or even a curt goodbye. "What's the meaning of this?" Chornbluth exclaims, even while, loud and clear over the speakerphone, the phone-sex operator is screaming, "Yes, yes, whip me with your wet fat noodle you great big pickle king, don't stop until the brine runs down my legs," but Teddy Fenoodee barely registers these sentiments as Chornbluth tries to hide his erection beneath his desk blotter (a father's day present no less from his ungrateful children who fashioned the blotter from the remnants of clothing left under bridges by homeless people as part of their art therapy detox project). Shame colours his face but not enough to make him forget the immense amounts of money he has socked away in offshore accounts or where he murdered and buried his last wife in the Grand Caymans under an underused coconut tree. All part and parcel of the Franzen grand scheme of things. Fact is, and as Franzen leads us to believe, if you're rich enough and decide to wet your pants in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria or The Ritz Carleton, soon everyone will follow suit, wetting their pants too and there'll be a whole new clothing line introduced by swanky designers celebrating public pants-wetting and all its nuances, whether it be in a hotel foyer or a crowded subway car. But I digress with this whole pants-wetting treatise as Franzen sets his sights on much higher themes in which public urination plays only a small part in the sweeping weltschmerz of a specific time in American history, the ennui of suburban enclaves and a nation in conflict with its own past glory.

What few people know is that the model for the clown on Serafina-Bitskin's favorite cereal was none other than Lee-Harvey Oswald. Before he became a communist and scourge of the nation after the JFK assassination, Oswald was a stand-by clown for circuses, rodeos, children's parties, business retreats, presidential elections and any consumer product where clown imagery was needed. Is it just coincidence that Franzen uses Sugar Krinkles in his novel or is he making sly reference to the Oswald-JFK connection and furthering the conspiracy theories with insinuations that there was indeed a second shooter named Bozo or Bongo or Mr. Boggles, hired by the CIA, well-camouflaged in full-clown regalia (after all, who notices a clown in a parade crowd), and hopped-up on sugar-coated rice treats until he was a walking timebomb, a veritable Manchurian Candidate although in this case he was from Des Moines, Illinois and ran a carpet cleaning business that did very well, especially with stubborn blood and pet stains, whether ingrained in shag, Saxony or Berber loop-pile.

With Teddy Fenoodee apparently unemployed, his wife, Gubba, in a distraught state of mind, takes up with an old high-school friend who made it big on the international art scene but has returned, mysteriously, to Mount Olive, where he's working at Zarathustra's Car Wash & Schmaltz Herring Factory. It is none other than Seymour Parfo, known for his controversial video piece, Chicken Bum Licking Man in which he licked the bum of a chicken that was dressed in a tiny Gestapo uniform over a twenty-four hour period, taking breaks only for visits to the bathroom and to replenish his body with nourishing bonito flakes and head cheese wrapped in light, fluffy pastry. On the strength of this video piece alone, Parfo garnered rave reviews and accolades from even the sternest, stuffiest and staph-infected of art critics worldwide and he was soon the darling of billionaire jet-setters and influential galley curators, getting him the best seats in restaurants, airplanes and first dibs at the dizzying array of supermodel lips, both facial and vaginal, sometimes both in one evening. The money and fame also allowed him to acquire the world's most comprehensive collection of antique milking machines, which he kept in a deserted airplane hangar on the outskirts of Berlin where, it was rumored, certain members of the Luftwaffe had taken extensive Watusi lessons in the event that Germany secretly landed on American soil during the war and needed to blend in before the final takeover when Hitler would call them into action using a special dog whistle invented for his beloved two-headed hermaphrodite Doberman, Plitzy, and that could be heard all the way from the fields of Tipperary to the shores of New Jersey.    

Are you still with me, because I'm not. I'm queasy, I'm dizzy, I think my landlady poisoned my tea with wolf bane or else it's just some bad liverwurst with an attractive green fuzz that I found in the back of the fridge. Nevertheless, damn it, I'm going to finish this review because what's a little pain, abdominal cramping and projectile vomiting when Franzen is at stake. So, the stage is set. Parfo's back in town, dallying around with Gubba and meanwhile Teddy, unbeknownst to his wife, family, friends and neighbours, has been engaged by the U.S. military, working on a top secret project that involves disguising guided missiles as pickles to fool the enemy. Teddy's vast knowledge of pickle bodies, be it their shapes, bumps, varying shades of green and even their distinguishing aromas, has placed him as the head of the pickle missile armament division and the fact that his pickle expertise has made him a key figure in tactical weaponry eventually goes to Teddy's head and he begins a second life of war mongering and a fascination for wearing Tilley Endurable hats, pants and safari jackets with more pockets than the Pope has rings.

Meanwhile Serafina-Bitskin begins a romance with the boy next door, Plippo Guntzverhooven, a strapping young lad who, growing up, was strapped daily by his staunch Republican parents, Filtron and Myrtle. This strict upbringing has turned Plippo into a rebellious young man and although the Fenoodees have had nothing to do with their neighbours due to opposing political beliefs, their kids carry on an illicit canoodling, like Romeo and Juliet minus the poetry, pantaloons and pus-filled wounds from drunken swordplay. But as Teddy Fenoodee finds himself more hawk than dove due to his pickle-missile project, he and Filtron discover themselves suddenly friends instead of foes, much to the puzzlement of their wives and children. As for the Fenoodee's son, Ranch, he's seemingly so placid throughout the novel it comes as no surprise on page 295 that he's actually been dead from the outset of the book. Why he died remains a mystery, as does the fact that he's left rotting in his room listening to his iPod but that's the beauty of this work. Mystery abounds and sometimes it just bounds like a gazelle escaping a lion on the African savannah, much like Franzen's words which all leap and bound with a kind of graceful fear that only animals that can both run and poop simultaneously possess and there is a beauty in this that is almost beyond words but not so beyond them that Mr. Franzen wasn't able to find a few and string them together in such a manner as to make readers drool and book club members wet their adult undergarments, especially with the arrival of tea, cookies and a cheese tray during the twenty minute break. Further mysteries confound. Why does Parfo give up an illustrious international art career to return home to wash cars and brine herring? Why does Ranch suddenly rise from the dead and become a senior chartered accountant in a firm that works for a major multinational corporation whose worldwide plastic fabrication plants are killing acres of geoducks with contaminated waste. Why is a manatee driving the school bus? Why does Franzen hint that Serafina-Bitskin's boyfriend's mother was once Lee Harvey Oswald's babysitter, watching the little tyke while Oswald's mother went to various underground communist meetings and threw lavish fondue parties. As they say, the apple never falls very far from the tree unless it's a baked apple with half-baked schemes and if you've ever tried to throw a baked apple then you know what I mean. Franzen's writing is like a uranium deposit for the brain, unstable, radioactive but sure to light up your synapses like a lightning bolt hitting a golfer holding a putter and an umbrella on the 8th green and who also happens to have a metal hip replacement so that the glow from his charred body can be seen from the clubhouse bar. 

There are a select few Franzen-ites who have glommed on to the fact that Mr. Franzen has been evading their spying eyes by dressing in a pickle costume. In the above photo, a group of Franzen-ites from Churchill, Manitoba, in honor of their favourite author, have attired themselves in pickle outfits, ingeniously made by the woman on the far left, Irma Gishkin, which almost rhymes with gherkin, but doesn't. Irma has said that you she used Polski Ogorki dill pickles as her model but others feel that cornichons are closer in resemblance.

What more can I say? He's a modern day Dickens crossed with Slim Pickens with just a touch of Harold Robbins thrown into the mix for a little swank factor. He brings ennui out of the Victorian era and into the contemporary American suburban landscape with a kind of character psychology that resembles topiary of the human psyche, which is nothing to sneeze at (except if you have allergies) when you consider how difficult it is to shape certain types of shrubbery. Especially if you're trying to depict a poodle or a wallaby. 

The author's father and sister loosening up the crowd before a Franzen reading during a book tour with a game of "kick the pickle," based upon an old Pre-Civil War practice of punting pickles back and forth over the Mason-Dixon line in order to inspire the ire between the northern and southern states. It now lives on as a tradition at college football games, especially between Alabama and Notre Dame when they meet at the Pickle Bowl.

In the words of my friend, Schmeltzy Gimmeldick, famous philosopher and hardwood flooring expert (you might have heard his slogan, "If Your Heels Don't Click It's Not A Floor By Gimmeldick), "What is freedom? Freedom alas, freedom avast, freedom ahoy, freedom oh boy, freedom al fredo, al fresco, al dente or with tomatoes." All I can add is that if you like the taste of freedom then this is the book for you although I don't suggest you eat the thing but if you must, do it page by page, in which case you need to chop the paper up finely and put it on maybe a nice piece of rye or sourdough with hot mustard or mayonnaise. Goes down easy just the way freedom should.

 

Reviews Of Books I Have Read

Contusions & Confusions by Lipsy Narvin

Just looking at this image of the author, one immediately knows they're in for some great humour. With a twinkle in his myopic eyes and a chin that quivers like jellied calf's liver after each hefty guffaw, Lipsy Narvin is a delight and national treasure, both at parties and on the literary scene. "Hurrah, Lipsy's here," is the most common refrain when he walks into a room and "Aww, Lipsy's gone," can be heard from the saddened gathering when he leaves.

My tastes in reading have always leaned towards the more serious and heavyweight leaders of the literary arts and their highly-efficient silverfish killing works (hit a silverfish with any edition of Don Quixote, War and Peace, Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers or any of Proust's volumes of A Remembrance of Things Past and you'll be hard-pressed to find any evidence of the silverfish's previous existence on planet earth), but I have been known to occasionally whack my funny bone on humorous writing and the odd end table and sometimes it's not my funny bone but my boner that I whack on a piece of furniture, deliberately I might add, to deflate the unexpected erections that befall me at the most unlikely of moments like during the Lord's Prayer, the national anthem, images of Muuamar Gaddafi's offspring playing polo in Leipzig or reruns of Murder She Wrote that I sometimes watch with my landlady while she darns her support hose. Either way, I find humour energizes the mind for more serious pursuits, especially after I've squeezed the last laugh from my belly and all the other places that last laugh may hide, for example in the sphincter muscles, prostate gland, urinary tract and occasionally the upper parts of the nostrils near the sinus cavities. In fact, it's this practice of extreme laughing that has led to my use of adult diapers as sometimes laughter is not the only thing that streams from my body copiously when the moment catches me, but it's of my opinion that any release, whether auditory or bodily, is good for the body, mind and soul, though perhaps not so good for the carpeting or upholstery.

I call these protective undergarments "soul catchers." As laughter floods from the body, so do some of the body's earthly essences, a completely natural expression of the body's reaction to humour and an indicator of the healthy soul that lies deep within. I've always felt to lose these precious juices and liquids is such a waste, not to mention costly because of the constant cleaning to get the stains out of your pants, but I feel the moniker, "adult diapers" does no justice to the essential and life-affirming function these undergarments perform as the soul is invigorated and the bowels and urinary tracts cleansed when laughter, such as that induced by the works of Lipsy Narvin, reaches its crescendo.

But enough about my undergarments, my undercarriage and my unconscious. Let's get on with the review and to do that we must first examine the source of Lipsy Narvin's humour. They say every great comedic mind is born out of tragedy, depression, self-loathing, rage, low self-esteem, bad diet and ill-fitting shoes. The effects of corns and bunions on a person's psyche cannot be underestimated, especially if they're already predisposed to the other conditions mentioned. Add a bunion to a person already primed to fly off the handle at a moment's notice, especially one who has been fed only corn chips, corn dogs, burgers, bratwurst and canned chili and you have a recipe for disaster and a probable roundhouse to the old schnozzola. But with Lipsy Narvin, as befitting a great humorist, the psychological makeup runs deeper than that and the bunion and bratwurst and burger on a bun is just the tip of the iceberg for below the frigid waters of a tumultuous sea of the human psyche lies the foundation of Lipsy's inspiration. For Lipsy was born a girl, lovingly named Lipodestra upon birth, coddled and cuddled and cared for as any beloved daughter would, but alas, Lipodestra was not to be. For Lipsy felt the calling, the yearning the urging, even at the earliest age, before full consciousness and motor controls and potty training had set in that she was a man at heart, regardless of whether there was anything to circumcise. As Lipsy has said in his great, rib-tickling essay, Penis Prima Donnas, "We judge so much of a man by his penis when really it's all about the neck muscles, nostril hair, preference for stubby heels and sweat glands that may demand more than just a light feminine product to mask the musk of a male trapped in a woman's body as in my case, so that, if one has a vagina rather than a dingdong for instance, and the above criteria are a match, well, so long sister and hello brother and you can stuff your pink ribbons and bow ties up your keister because this girl's going places in a man's world, with or without an Adams Apple or scrotum-cradling underpants."

Does the woman on the far right remind you of someone? Yep, that's right. It's Lispy Narvin before the sex-change when he was the beguiling Lipodestra and a singer in a religious trio. Their number one hit, Jesus, Use Me Like A Hooker In Bethlehem Behind the Dumpster Of An Olive Garden, took the Bible Belt by storm, causing many a man to loosen his belt when the wife wasn't looking and give a little squeeze to Jesus' staff before whacking it on a bible to expel such demon thoughts. As an added twist, once the sex-change was complete, Lipsy married the woman on the far left, Gladdis Lorbog, known not only for her formidable beehive hair-do but also her lilting soprano voice that was said to be able to drive the rabies right out of a mad dog frothing and convulsing on the pavement.

It was not long after Lipsy's sex-change that he hit his stride in the world of humour writing, regaling community center audiences both small and large (larger audiences usually turned out on $1.50 hot dog with a juice box or pop nights), with his painful, poignant, piquant but always funny observations. Borrowing from both his personal life and from the lives of his friends, enemies, strangers, his dentist, tax accountant, butcher, Vietnamese masseuse at the Grateful Endings Massage Parlor he liked to frequent and the one-armed man named Fred that he played tennis with every second Friday, soon publishers were breaking down the door of his basement apartment trying to get first dibs at publishing his essays. It's been many books later but Contusions & Confusions still remains his seminal work, maybe due to the fact of youth being on his side at the time and thus his semen production running at full tilt, not to mention the willingness to take risks that's an inherent trait of the young. Then again, maybe it was due to his new penis and the freedom of knowing that with it he could pee anywhere he liked, either incognito or just waving it around in a public display of power and urine spray. But as he writes in the title piece, all this new strutting around and cock-of-the-walk behavior was not without its setbacks. The opening paragraph says it all and each time I read it I weep, I laugh, I even emit a little gas, such is the power of a Lispy Narvin sentence and the degrees of depth his humour hits, like the submarine in Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea that's always getting in trouble and sinking to the ocean's bed.
After my first contusion I was very confused. I awoke in the gutter lane of a bowling alley wearing a beehive hair-do and clutching a rolling pin. Not a bowling pin mind you, but a rolling pin. Like I'd just come from Satan's kitchen and dead kitten sausage was on the menu. This contusion had me completely confusioned. And if that's not a word so be it, I'll eat my delusions and the inserts in your bowling shoes too. After they've been deodorized of course. Not that I mind stinky feet. My feet smell like old meat. Vultures circle me constantly thinking I'm some decomposing carcass. I'm just a hop, skip and jump away from being floated down the Ganges. Anyway, my forehead was black and blue from where I had been struck with a nine-iron and my blood had clotted, covering my face in what I perceived, upon first lick, as a very tasty crust. But pizza this was not. It was all coming back to me or maybe I was coming back to it. Or maybe me and it were meeting somewhere in between, some kind of neutral common ground where the barbed wire didn't catch our pants so easily. Either way, I knew I'd double-bogeyed on the 16th and my partner had gone all methamphetamine Arnold Palmer on me. Not that I blamed him in the least. A double-bogey, especially on a par 3, can drive any golf partner crazy and it's a good thing it wasn't a triple-bogey or you could've fed my innards to the gophers after I'd been gutted like a pig on the green and putted my testicles into the cup from a good eight feet. But I'm a bowler and not a golfer so I had plenty of excuses but excuses are only for the weak or those who can't lift a bowling ball with their scrotum.  

Here's a couple of Lipsy's pals sharing a laugh at the scene of Lipsy's bowling alley contusion experience. From left to right, Al Horstein, Reggie Botswold, Frank Yuntsmeyer and Seymour Kakinfrance. You can just make out Lipsy's hand and foot behind the pin setting machine, re-enacting his delirious state as the bowling balls rolled down the lane relentlessly.

In his next essay in the collection, Daughter of a Ditch Digger, Son of a Bitch, Lipsy vents a little spleen, spits a little venom and spritzes a little aftershave on his confused upbringing and the inability of his parents, Fritz and Gertie Narvin, to understand and deal with the masculine yearnings surging beneath his prettily flowered dress and pig-tailed head. Fritz, a ditch digger with the county and winner of the Pickle Lake Ditch Digger's Award for Exemplary Service to the Community, does have a moment of illumination when he realizes that the son he never had actually resides in his daughter's body and might turn out to be a ditch digger like himself and carry on the family tradition (the Narvins come from a long line of ditch diggers dating all the way back in their ancestral family tree to Bulgarian gypsies that settled in 16th century England and were soon digging ditches for royalty and stealing their poultry). Gertie, meanwhile, secretly blames the whole thing on her affair with Morty DeMarco, foreman at the local meat-packing plant and who is actually the father of Lipsy/Lipodestra Narvin. If you compare the picture of Lipsy today and the image of DeMarco in the photo below, the resemblance is uncanny as is both of their insatiable cravings for goat meat and the fact both men have prized hacksaw collections.

Here is Morty DeMarco, the real father of Lispy Narvin. Foreman at the Calypso Meat-Packing and Rendering Plant, one of the major employers of most Pickle Lake residents, DeMarco is also a meat home hobbyist and is seen here with his patented goat and lamb meat-shaving lathe and his treasured hand-forged knives made by the blind Albanian monks of the St. Galoobian Monastery. Don't let his intimidating appearance fool you. DeMarco is very popular in the Pickle Lake community and he and his meat-shaving lathe are frequent guests at children's birthday parties where the kids are allowed to shave as much meat as they can eat from the ample carcasses DeMarco so generously donates to the family's birthday festivities. He's also been known to set up his captivating slideshow illustrating how he smuggled his beloved knives out of Albania by dressing as a Russian prostitute in fetching hot pants and supplying free hand-jobs to border guards. Though these experiences still give him nightmares and he's been know to wake up screaming out the names of obscure Albanian villages, Morty never regrets the choices he made and treasures each of his knives as if they were his own children.

As Lipsy recounts in the essay: Once I found out that Morty DeMarco, that gourd of a human being was actually my father, I was just happy that my other father, Fritz, was dead by then (by the way, as a celebrated ditch digger he actually dug his own grave only days before he died in some kind of strange premonition of the brain aneurysm that was to take his life), and didn't live to learn the truth about Gertie and her whoring ways. When Morty DeMarco, on hearing of my father's death, offered to put Fritz on his meat lathe and take off some of his body weight as to make him more presentable for an open-casket funereal, I almost spat in DeMarco's face. But then I remembered that I was the son of a ditch digger and had a reputation and my father's legacy to uphold in the community so I simply grabbed DeMarco's testicles, gave them a hard squeeze and muttered, "Give me a light, shrimp, and make it snappy," as I waved a long, Cohiba Lanceros Cuban cigar in his face. Let me tell you, I've never seen a man drop a hacksaw faster than DeMarco did at that moment, except for my friend Muncie who cut off his thumb in wood shop in the 7th grade. I actually found the severed thumb under the vice bench but I quickly hid it in my pocket, dried it out and to this day I wear it like a talisman around my neck and occasionally kiss it, like you would a picture of a saint or the toes of Jesus Christ on the cross or the Virgin Mary's image baked into a breakfast croissant, to bring me inspiration. In fact, I truly believe that if it wasn't for that dried-up old thumb, I'd still be lingering like a moldy old odour or my Uncle Glutzy on the pull-out sofa at Thanksgiving, in my basement apartment rather than living in a swanky penthouse suite with my cheese emulsifiers and antique hacksaw collection, having my pick from any of the women with unwanted body hair that I meet at the laundromat I frequent to keep myself grounded and in touch with the proletariat class from where I once came and still come, but in vaginas rather than in old dollar-store dishcloths or lint-covered athletic socks that I find under my Louis IV canopied bed which I bought with my first royalty cheque. But back to DeMarco. He couldn't get his hand under his blood and meat-grease smeared apron quick enough fishing for a disposable lighter and when he finally found one and lit my cigar with a trembling hand, sweat beading his balding, gourd-shaped head from fear and my unrelenting grip on his testes, I hissed in his face, close enough that he could smell the rotting goat meat between my teeth, "One day I'm going to turn you on your own meat lathe while you're still alive and once you're flayed I'm gonna make you dig your own grave and line it with used gauze from the hospital trauma ward and then throw you in there and make you sing an Olivia Newton John medley while I cover you with dirt until you're buried alive." That was the second-to-last time I saw Morty DeMarco. The last time was when he was squeezed back into his hot pants and working a truck-stop glory-hole outside of Ethelsville, Alabama, after being run out of Pickle Lake due to a tainted goat meat scandal at the Calypso meat-packing plant. Need I say I succumbed to the temptation, especially with my new penis in place and though Morty couldn't see whose penis he was fellating due to the wall between us, I somehow felt this avenged my father, Fritz, for being deceived by Morty and my whore-mongering mother, Gertie, and subsequently going to his grave not knowing the travesty played out behind his back by Morty and Gertie on a wide range of stained and squeaky motel beds while Fritz slaved away unwittingly in the cold ditches of Pickle Lake. The oddness of being given a blowjob by my own illegitimate father was not lost on me and the added strangeness of my recent sex-change making this event even possible in the first place really was a bit of a brain twister but hey, that's why we have guys like Sigmund Freud and I realized I didn't have time to decipher such things. I had places to go and people to see and a blowjob from my backstabbing father through a glory-hole in an Alabama truck-stop wasn't going to stop me from achieving my dreams. 

In the above passage, Lipsy makes mention of calling Morty DeMarco a 'shrimp' and this is no coincidence. The DeMarco family, for generations, have all been dwarfs and midgets, as evidenced in the above photograph taken at the annual DeMarco family reunion seance and picnic. Morty was actually the first in the line not to be born a little person and for this he has garnered both the admiration and disgust of his extended family. Some felt he should have been drowned in the river at birth, others have been only more than happy to use him to reach items on the higher shelves at the grocery store on their shopping trips. As an added note it is amazing how much food these little folk can put away at the dinner table.

Whew! That's all I can say when Lipsy Narvin starts laying down the words like he's driving home railroad spikes into the brains of unsuspecting readers. The above selection carries all the poignancy of a baby seal being clubbed to death on a barren and icy Arctic sea and yet the humour shines through because if you don't get a chuckle out of that last little scenario in an Alabama truck-stop then maybe you should have your funny bone examined. Or possibly removed. Honestly, stuff like this doesn't grow on trees and if it did I wonder what fruit it would bear and whether you could even make juice out of it or a nice compote or jam or jelly. Nevertheless, fruit-bearing or not, Lipsy is mining the fruit of his loins or someone's loins and it's loin chops and loin cloths for everyone as far as this reader is concerned. The final essay in the book is a fitting denouement to Lipsy's many adventures and astute observations. Entitled, Hacksaws and Rabbit Paws, it's truly an insight into Lipsy Narvin's go-getter attitude and his refusal to take 'no' for an answer, even when surgeons told him he'd make an even uglier man than a woman. It's also a wonderful testament to his entrepreneurial spirit, even if a few hundred cute bunnies had to lose their feet so Lipsy could fulfill his dreams. But let's let Lipsy tell it best in this side-splitting excerpt.

As well as being a preeminent humorist, Lipsy is also know for his authoritative works on hacksaw techniques. The top diagram is from his manual, Hacksaw Do's & Dont's, A Primer For Beginner Hacksaw Enthusiasts, and whether you're a neophyte or a pro, this volume is filled with indispensable information for all your hacksaw needs and queries. Felcher Blangford, president of the North American Hacksaw Society, has stated that no one should even be allowed to handle a hacksaw until they have read this book. Pictured directly above is Lipsy's revered hacksaw collection, framed, for display purposes by large, machinist's hammers. Once a year Lipsy opens his collection to the public and line-ups form around the block of the condo development where he lives as hacksaw lovers from around the world gather for a glimpse at this hacksaw mecca.

 All I knew, even at an early age, smart child that I was, was that penises didn't grow on trees so if I wanted to ditch the old hoo-hah and get myself a ding-dong, it was going to take a little more than wishes made while blowing out birthday candles or asking Santa for a shiny new schlong with a purple bow tied around it. What I really understood, as a ditch-digger's daughter, was that you had to work hard for your money, whether you wanted to buy a Thanksgiving turkey, a pogo stick, a carpet sample book or hormone treatments. No one was going to hand you a penis on a silver tray although I do believe in the surgery, it did lie on a stainless steel silver-hued tray for a while before they attached it to my body. Anyway, one day while out foraging for flugleberries and fungus in the woods near my parent's place, I realized, after hearing so much rustling and bustling about in the surrounding shrubbery, that Pickle Lake was rife with wild bunnies. At that moment I had a brainstorm that hit like a spark from a downed power line and I thought, "Hello rabbits, goodbye penis envy or goodbye rabbits, hello testes," and so my fortune was made. The residents of Pickle Lake are a superstitious bunch and banking on that and the fact that people everywhere were probably pretty much the same, I decided to start my own lucky rabbit's foot business and make ends meet while adding the meat to my end and in the end the end justifiying the means as the dead, footless rabbits started piling up around me. Truth be told, I did shed a bit of a tear each time a little thumper met his or her maker, pink noses twitching in anticipation of the carrot I dangled in front of them while my other hand located a ball-peen hammer for stunning them and then a hacksaw to finish the work. It turned out my lucky rabbit's foot business was a hit and the orders were keeping me hopping, even though my quarry could no longer hop but that's the cost of free enterprise. It wasn't long before I was branching out to neighbouring townships and counties as I had decimated the local Pickle Lake rabbit population but ambition and penis envy drove me forward through the slaughter like a Viking trying to achieve Valhalla. Do I regret the little bunny lives it cost in order for me to realize my dreams? A good question but the answer is best left for another time because I'm having too much fun melting urinal pucks with my steady and copious stream.

There you have it. Lipsy Narvin at his best. It's no wonder the man is so revered for both his hacksaws and his humor because when you're an original everything is second best and no doubt made overseas, whether it be a rabbit's foot, a penis, an adult diaper, a hacksaw or a humorous essay. All I can say is Lipsy's words will leap right off the page, land on your pants and give you a lap dance, albeit one from an overly large and very hairy man but you won't notice from all the gas-passing and laughing you'll be doing. Kudos to you Mr. Narvin, kudos to you. May you live another day to suffer another contusion so that your legion of fans everywhere might bruise their funny bones on the sofas and end tables of your despair and confusion.

Reviews Of Books I Have Not Read

The Selected Poems of Wallace Stevens

I found this book on the free shelf of my local community center and it's no wonder someone gave it away when presented with this author's photo on the cover. With a mug like this who wouldn't give you away. Except your mother maybe. Nevertheless, here is Wallace Stevens in all his latter year glory, finally come into fruition like a rotting pear on a Sunday morning, as the full-blown renowned poet whose enigmatic work could, in the words of Stevens scholar, Prof. Phil Runts, of Nibster's Community College of Omaha, from his essay, "Bird Songs and Droppings in the Poems of Wallace Stevens,""make a nightingale sing loud enough to erase all traces of Maurice Chevalier."

Let it be said that the photo of the author adorning the cover of this volume shows a smartly dressed but dour man and the image does not betray the reality. For dour he was, toiling away for years at the Mutual of Omaha head office, upset that he didn't get the role of host on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and instead was left at a desk adjusting insurance premiums while Marlin Perkins got to cavort with very personable chimps and all manner of wildlife he encountered on safari. Meanwhile, Stevens lived a dullard's life and, ironically, it was this routine that was the impetus for him becoming the great poet that we remember today. His words took us to places we'd never been, nor had he for that matter, holed up in Nebraska most of the time except for the odd occasion when he traveled out of state with his bowling team. They were the mid-west bowling champions of 1964, eliminating Moe's Milwaukee Marauders in a nail-biter that required a recounting of every frame. Stevens composed an epic ode to the event, "Gutter Ball of Bathsheba." Here's the first stanza.

Gutter ball screamed the parakeet;
How often its disgusting little feet gripped the
glint of false light
of morning,
heroics left to the shadows of
naked dwarfs bulging with
the rocking of ramshackle clouds
after the railroad train
pulls out of Peking
and the creamery shutters
bang in the piebald heat.

One might say this stanza is exemplary of Stevens' poetry. Personal and yet detached, the embracing of the everyday but in abstract thought, contemporary and yet classic, all contextualized with an underlying sense of revulsion for life that makes one think Stevens must have thrown up after finishing each line. In fact, the Smithsonian has, in its archives, some vomit splatters attributed to Stevens on Mutual of Omaha letterhead paper upon which were the jottings of an early poem, The Bananas of Doctor Horst. This poem is famous amongst lovers of Stevens' poetry because it documents his first foray into cosmopolitan life after a rare visit to New York to see a highly recommended podiatrist for his severely fallen arches. Is he the Dr. Horst to whom Stevens alludes? And what is the connection between podiatry and bananas. The poem vaguely answers this in Stanza Six although Doctor Horst still remains a bit of a mystery as does his relationship with bananas. Doubt me? Read this!  

Back at the Waldorf
The world hummed in his handkerchief,
Naked tragedy clawing at the tunky-tunky-tunky
planks of bananas, masculine and feminine crowded like poodles under parasols.
Oh, mother, do not enter the foliage
where paratroopers with unhealthy appetites
bear barren fruit of bleak illusion,
and an old man on a mountain is only the anatomy left of tragic puppet spray.
Plinky, plinky, plonk, piano keys of loquacious salad beds,
never were the sounds so unsmelled
than in the labial gardens of Dr. Horst and his bananas,
the arches of Minneapolis fallen in the savage debris of disillusionment.

The great sweep of Stevens' philosophical questioning, his charm and wit and irony are all as evident in this piece as the melanoma moles upon his face and his stoicism is surprisingly derailed by an underlying fecundity as lusty as overripe breadfruit that hang like the well-suckled breasts of a mother of sixteen (Stevens had sixteen siblings and so this simile is not so far off the mark of Stevens' impressions of his own mother's breasts, especially since he was the last born and those breasts were ready to fall from the tree, in a manner of speaking, by the time he got his little lips around their life-giving, albeit, somewhat hairy and saliva-eroded nipples). On the subject of his mother, Clutchy, Stevens' love of her was so great that in later life he sought a marriage partner who could have been his mother's doppelganger. Thus his betrothal to Tilly Svenson, a loathsome girl from his old neighbourhood where he grew up, who blossomed into a loathsome woman with strong-as-an-ox buttocks from her obsessive-compulsive butter-churning disorder and a fetching smile that many storekeepers and trolley car operators always said could've landed Tilly in the moving pictures industry if she'd only stop carrying her butter-churning bucket clutched to her hefty bosom, was a marriage made in heaven from Stevens' perspective. Her cool, Nordic blood turned out to be a good match for Stevens' deeply buried lusty urges, which he was usually only able to release through alligator-wrestling.

The loathsomely fetching Tilly Svenson (on the right), seen here posing with Stevens' mother, Clutchy and his grandmother, Yeggdrasil (sitting). Three peas in a pod? You betcha and it's difficult to say, if I hadn't told you, which of these women was not born into the Stevens family, so alike are their features. It's as if Tilly Svenson could have been sprung from the very loins of either of the other two women in the picture. The photo, incidentally, was taken at Tilly's engagement party where she churned butter relentlessly while reciting ancient Nordic sagas about the death puffins that line the fjords of Bjornvalhallagoothen and carry the souls of great Viking warriors across the water to Jornsen's Furniture Outlet and Broadloom Emporium.

On the subject of reptilian roughhousing, it was Stevens' talent for alligator wrestling that he was sure was going to secure him the spot as Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom host. For Stevens, wrestling alligators was like a kind of poetry in motion, so it's no great mystery that when the 'gator wrestling didn't pan out, Stevens turned from reptiles to rhyme. Still, that didn't help to lessen the blow when he wasn't given the Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom host position, even after providing upper management with breathtaking photos of himself wrestling these fearsome beasts and demonstrating his own special move that would later, in 'gator wrestling circles, be dubbed the Stevens Gator-ator Sleeper Hold.

In his younger years, Wallace Stevens was a formidable alligator wrestler, a difficult pursuit when you realize Nebraska is not an alligator epicenter. It was this photo that Stevens submitted to Mutual of Omaha when they were launching their Wild Kingdom TV show, figuring the skills displayed in this image would make him a shoe-in for the host of the program. After losing out to Marlin Perkins, whose mustache Mutual of Omaha was taken with not to mention he looked better in a safari suit, Stevens turned his back on wildlife and the foliage it liked to hide in and embraced poetry in the great sorrow that was to shadow his life until he died. Hence, one must only witness the constant references to parakeets, goats, rattlesnakes and mating orangutans to understand that his initial dreams never left him, but were transferred, and, one might add, transcended, the commonplace into beautiful poetry in a voice so modern, many critics could only shake their heads in bewilderment, disbelief and occasional bouts of ptomaine poisoning.

In fact one of Stevens' most famous poems, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, was originally composed as Twenty-Nine Ways of Looking at and Rasslin' an Alligator, but he was convinced to change it by his friend and fellow insurance agent, Mortie Shugmeyer, who felt the alligator imagery might dissuade readers from enjoying the more lyrical passages and subtler metaphors of the piece. Amazingly, some of the original stanzas still exist on a waxed paper sandwich wrapper found in the back of Stevens' desk at the insurance office where he toiled until his death. Here's a sampling.

   I
A man and a woman and an alligator
Wear sagging pantaloons
And smell of summer fields, skeletons and meat gravy,
Their shadows traced by blotchy blackbirds with grim hallucination.

  II
I was of three minds,
The alligator, the blackbird and a discarded mouth-organ
Left on the shore of a blobby sea
Dark marine with the hems of beggar's capes,
Happy fecundity
You phantom glass-blowers of North America.

 III
Yowzah, yowzah, yowzah
O thin tailors of Vesuvius,
Your warbling is like the blindness of ground beef,
The inescapable rhythm of newspapers blown by the coughing
That brings poetry
To the pineapples of artifice.

 IV
Is that an alligator in your pants
Or do you just want to rassle me
Under the sassafras tree
Greased with the jelly of a perplexed machine.
The alligator rests but the blackbird is wary, taciturn,
A paper mache ventriloquist dead on a sofa near Lake Geneva
Knows this and remains as bitter as a dried leaf
Pressed between the pages of a nudie picture book
Begetting tubas and purple prunes of engorgement.

The above diagram illustrates the four essential steps for performing the Stevens Gator-ator Sleeper Hold that has been adopted by 'gator wrestlers from the Everglades to the Louisiana bayous. Little did Stevens know that as his poetry would gain immortality so would his famous alligator wrestling move. Circulating amongst and influencing these two cultural circles, one could say, was Stevens' greatest accomplishment, bringing poetry in all its forms to both the common man and the higher spheres of learning. Many's the time Stevens was quoted as saying, "Any poet that can't wrestle a 'gator is a poet I'll never understand."

Again, Stevens' acuity and versatility with language makes one forget that he was raised in a chicken coop as a child and until the age of ten could only scratch in the gravel with bare feet and cluck whenever pleasure or pain was visited upon his body. But if it's true that childhood provides the most formative years, one can only wonder if he wouldn't have become as erudite and philosophically far-reaching if he hadn't first lived among the chickens and gained a sense of nature and its disharmonious relationship with the growing modern world, understanding that one day chickens and insurance agents would never see eye to eye despite the fact that in the past they both pecked happily from the same overfilled trough. But then reason flies out the window with poetry, as well it should, because if you've ever tried to shove the two of them through one windowpane, well you'd end up with a lot of broken glass, splintered wood and a repair bill that would seriously deplete your beer and pickled egg fund. And yet, paradoxically, Stevens was able to meld the two realms, reason and poetry meeting on uncommon ground as his insurance acumen and poetic perspective and embodiment, right down to the socks and boxer shorts he wore, pushed the boundaries of verse and provided policy holders with something to think about when their houses burned down or their property was stolen while they were having martinis with the Lundquivsts at the tennis club. Circumstance, happenstance or just part of the cosmic dance, all questions one has to ask as it has been rumored Stevens was prone to burn down the homes of policy holders to teach them the hard lessons of poetry. There is a cruelty to his beauty and god help anyone who dismissed him, especially if there were any sharp objects or flammable materials around. And yet Stevens was not above the lighthearted and lyrical touch as evidenced so well in his famous poem, The Emperor and the Ice Cream Truck, reprinted without permission below.

Roll out the barrel,
And yell hap-hap hallow,
For the wench is but a horny-footed cataleptic polymathic hierophant vassal
Born of Mrs. Pappadopoulos.
Ice cream, ice cream, we all scream
With gawky beaks
And the emperor rubs himself
With weak facts and an old fantouche,
Lacking a personalia and a dog-eared vocabulary,
It's just booming vulgarity
In vanilla or chocolate.
So don't even ask for coconut
You lewd opiate of chastity and musty teeth.

So affix your fuzzy wig
To your swollen and knobby head,
And inhale the odors of the fantails of Oklahoma,
And then ask yourself with trembling lip and palaver of hand
what do you want, a rifle-butt or sugar cone?
Beep, beep,
Don't touch my bumper of doom
You concupiscent curd of an excuse for a human,
for I am the Emperor of the ice cream truck
and no, I don't have any pistachio.

Here is Stevens displaying the full range of his poetic maturity, or as Stevens scholar, Prof. Phil Runts of Nibster's Community College of Omaha, has put forth, it's this poem above all others that makes him itch as if he were being eaten alive by fire ants. This simile proves to be all too apt for it's this discomfort evoked by images of comfort that makes Stevens' poetry the equivalent of sleeping on an old sofa bed where the springs protrude and the mattress is stained with urine and withered cherry blossoms. Such beauty cannot be held in the hand or mouth or even kept in an old shoebox in the back of the closet with the mothballs and silverfish. It can only be felt and held in the heart except if you have a pacemaker, in which case you might need a good-sized piece of Tupperware, preferably with a properly fitting lid. Or in the case of Prof. Phil Runts, the full impact of Stevens' poetry can best be enjoyed by employing his patented Wallace Stevens Head Harness. Either way, Wallace Stevens is here to stay and if you have a problem with that, well, then, go wrestle an alligator and see if you don't get your head chewed off. Then maybe you'll understand the greatness of this man who had the soul of a poet, the heart of a reptile and a face not even a mother could love.

Pictured here is Prof. Phil Runts demonstrating his patented Stevens reading device. The volume of poems is strapped to each side of the head as Prof. Runts has discovered that the poetry is best enjoyed and deciphered using extreme peripheral vision. How he has come up with this theory remains a bit of a mystery but I have tried the device out myself and can only say am wowed by my new understanding of Stevens' work, although I did get a splitting headache and was wall-eyed for a few days.

Reviews Of Books I Have Read

The Gloxpusian Chronicles by Morton Clancy Snitzler IV
I'll guarantee this. The next time you're at an all-you-can-eat baby shrimp buffet you'll never look at these delicious creatures in the same way after reading this wonderful book of speculative fiction. Now I'm usually not one for fantasy or science-fiction but this book knocked my socks off, no mean feat when you realize my socks are so old and crusty, most nights I have difficulty peeling them off my feet. For the record, I keep my socks this way on purpose in order to cure my athlete's foot. By attiring my feet in lazy, unwashed socks I'm attempting to stifle my feet's athleticism, leading by example, so to speak, encouraging my feet to become sluggish, lethargic, almost lifeless and thus drive every element of their athletic fungus from the core of their being and the strange bit of webbing between my toes that I've been blessed with. I guess you could say it's a sentiment such as this, feeling blessed by an abnormality that makes a good segue into the heart of this novel.

The author posing with one of his detailed diagrams that helped him to better envision his creations and keep track of the many intertwining plot lines that make up his magnificent novel of the future. The diagram shows the highly advanced vacuuming device that the Gloxpusians used to suck up all the baby shrimp from the earth's oceans along with storage container-like constructions used to transport the baby shrimp back to their planet.

For the Gloxpusians, a highly-intelligent race of beings from the Frederick R. Gladstone galaxy, six hundred million light years away, are crazy for baby shrimp. How they became this way is a cause for speculation but the author hints at an abnormal biological trait and a series of stray enzymes that cannibalize their host bodies unless subdued and eventually satiated by tiny crustaceans. The enzymes go rogue speeding up the Gloxpusian metabolisms and soon all the baby shrimp in the universe are threatened. Either way, Gloxpusians crave baby shrimp, need it, yearn for it so much so that the vast quantities they consume actually alters their body chemistry, much like that of an opiate addict, until they cannot live without ingesting at least two pounds of baby shrimp per Gloxpusian a day. The author himself has admitted to a dangerous periwinkle habit and in an interview has revealed consuming up to fifty of these sea snails daily and so is not stranger to these kinds of urges or this type of subject matter.

Here's the baby shrimp in all its glory. Even if you're not a Gloxpusian what's not to like about this delicious little creature. In my younger days when I was still filling out my britches, I could eat a bucket of these crustaceans, carapace and all. And contrary to what people might tell you, there's a lot of meat in those spindly little legs but you have to suck them just right to get it out.

As the story unfolds we learn the Gloxpusians have been visiting earth for some time, quietly and discreetly pillaging our oceans of their baby shrimp bounty but as the Gloxpusian's need for this delicacy grows, soon buffets all over the world are feeling the baby shrimp depletion. First to sound the alarm is Ardolfo Hispalari, banquet manager at the famed Borshines Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas strip. When his baby shrimp supply runs dry and he's subsequently told by his supplier that he's not even sure if he can procure any more, Ardolfo goes crazy, pulling out his mustache hairs one by one, a painful process that takes him most of the afternoon and part of the evening, so great is his reputation aligned with Borshines renowned all-you-can-eat shrimp hour that he's willing to exfoliate himself in this manner. Next, in Vargasburg, California, at the esteemed Mendel's Mollusk Barn, Mendel Johnson throws himself from the roof, breaking a wrist and losing his toupee after learning that there's no more baby shrimp for his Shrimp Gorge Festival Days. As Mr. Snitzler piles tragedy upon tragedy with the good citizens of earth trying to take their lives or at least harm themselves in unusual ways as the shrimp news hits them hard, we, the readers, feel their pain, so strong is the characterization and descriptions Mr. Snitzler conjures up in his oddly perfunctory yet almost baroque style that reminds me a lot of a young Flaubert before he had that accident where a monkey mistook his head for a coconut at the Jardin du Palais Royal, twisting and twisting at his cranium causing severe whiplash, a concussion and acting as a catalyst for post-monkey-mistaking-head-for coconut stress syndrome that forever cast a pallor upon Flaubert's future work.

Oddly enough, Flaubert befriended the monkey that mistook his head for a coconut and with no hard feelings between them, they soon became inseparable as evidenced in this photograph. They would often go out on the town, visiting the Folies Bergere or dining at Les Maggots du Morte and became such a pair in Parisian high society that Toulouse Lautrec immortalized them in a painting that hung in a brothel on La Rue Couchon, frequented by wealthy patrons, many with wooden legs, glass eyes and toupees made from the wings of bats. The monkey was also known for his impeccable dress and in later years even Coco Chanel was known to ask his advice on certain occasions and the monkey was particularly taken with her because the first four letters of her name were the same as those in the word coconut.

 As usual with novels of a genre nature, there is always one bad guy, willing to align him or herself with the invasion forces that menace society with the promise of great fortune, power, infamy, a place in history and a pick from any fish in the sea, and by fish I don't mean shrimp or fish or anything that lives underwater and eats plankton for sustenance or in the words of Mr. Snitzler, "I'm talking about a broad with luscious lips and shapely gams and bazoombas that could stop an elephant in his tracks."  In this case, the villain in cahoots with the aliens is one, Sgt. Milton Dewlap, of the Utah State Police who meets the Gloxpusians one summer night while out patrolling the desert looking for illegal ground mice. Here, things get a little convoluted in exactly how Sgt. Dewlap's role in the great Gloxpusian shrimp takeover works, especially with Utah being a landlocked state with nary a shrimp to be seen, but it all has to do with Dewlap's ability to astral project his body, only when he's wearing his magic hosiery, and in this invisible form penetrate NATO Command Defense Centers, shutting down air and ocean radar systems so that the Gloxpusians can safely descend, virtually undetected and vacuum up all our shrimp. The plot thickens when the Gloxpusians become dissatisfied with Dewlap's assistance due to a few Portuguese man-o-war incidents that I won't give away but, suffice to say, Dewlap is beamed aboard the Gloxpusian ship and given a good talking to.    

On board the Gloxpusian ship, the Gloxpusians accusing their only ally earthling, Sgt. Milton Dewlap of the Utah State Police, of not sufficiently alerting them to the dangers of the Portuguese man-o-wars they inadvertently sucked up with their supply of baby shrimp, causing many Gloxpusians to be stung into coma-like states (the Gloxpusians are far more susceptible to Portuguese man'o'war poison than human beings due to their double bladder system and over-active mitochondria).

Feeling the Gloxpusian heat, Dewlap escapes from the ship using his astral projection techniques (his astral body acting as a kind of placeholder fooling the aliens while his real body beats a hasty retreat), and back on earth goes directly to the CIA to report on the Gloxpusian shrimp cloak and dagger thievery. The CIA then enlists Dewlap as a spy to run a counter-espionage scheme, promising him immunity from prosecution for helping the Gloxpusians in the first place if he can report on all their nefarious plans and help aid the CIA in launching their own diabolical plan to counter-attack the Gloxpusian High Command.

Sgt. Milton Dewlap's astral projection technique is not some whimsical flight of fancy that one would read on some nut-pants' website, but rather founded on hard, scientific fact as demonstrated here in these revealing photos from Dr. Natasha Onklure's Institute of Phenomenonological Research, based in Beaverton, Ontario. Located kitty-corner to the Wal-Mart and right next door to Fledgling's Love Shop & Marital Aid Emporium, the Institute has been furthering investigative techniques into paranormal sciences as well as doubling as an end-of-the-roll carpet warehouse to fund its various experiments. In this series of images, Dr. Onklure, demonstrates sensory transference between the subject and his astral body using her specialized navel swabbing method and measuring responses via her patented feedback helmet and astral-vision goggles.

In this final section of the book the plot really picks up steam with all sorts of devious endeavors from both the earthling and alien parties, culminating in one of the CIA's most successful campaigns, waged with the help of state trooper Sgt. Dewlap and the U.S. Marines. Dewlap, still working undercover, notifies the Gloxpusians that there's no more shrimp in the sea but that he's found a new food source that they're sure to enjoy with equal fervor. Sweet baby chick meat is the solution and once the Gloxpusians taste this lovely and savoury delicacy, they go baby chick meat crazy and the feeding frenzy is under way. The CIA then puts its plan into full swing using bearded mannequin heads that attract the baby chicks who believe the bearded plastic heads to be their various mothers (Snitzler lays out some hard evidence as to why this natural phenomenon occurs but I remain skeptical, but nevertheless, grant him fictional license in this plot twist). In this manner, the CIA is able to attract thousands of baby chicks to various mannequin head hotspots across the country and inside each head is a surveillance camera and high explosives ready for detonation. And detonate they do, blowing Gloxpusians to smithereens as they attempt to gather the baby chicks (by hand this time as they haven't perfected a baby chick vacuuming device), the CIA watching their every move via the mannequin head surveillance cameras so that the Gloxpusian death and casualty toll is maximized. It's this kind of efficiency that makes you take heart and equally makes your heart skip a beat with pride in the secret organizations that protect our countries from purported alien species. I will not spoil the book by giving away the nail-biting finale to this amazing novel but I will say the Gloxpusians are no pushovers and when push comes to shove the Gloxpusians are more than able to give the earthlings a taste of their own exploding medicine. 

In this photo, only recently released from secret CIA files, we can see that Snitzler's baby chick/bearded mannequin head attraction equation is founded on some groundbreaking experimentation. Snitzler again demonstrates his veracity in all things scientific, grounding his work in some of the most covert exercises practiced in underground laboratories worldwide. In this example, the KGB had been experimenting with baby chicks and Bolshevik heads for what devious means only those in the know know for sure. 

Does this all seem a little too far-fetched? Well, look around you or don't look around you because you probably won't see anything anyway or if you do see something you won't know what you're really seeing, so set and mired down as you are in your earthling ways, and if you aren't and have acute eyesight, like me, I suggest you still don't look around because you won't like what you see because there are those who walk or slither among us who have combination tentacle-pincers where other people have ears or arms or knees. That's the lesson Snitzler hands down to us through this science fiction parable, a work of such expansive thought and shocking concepts that its time is perhaps too soon and yet long overdue. It's no wonder Ray Bradbury's brother-in-law, Fred Lingshorn, states, with no doubt wavering in the voice-box that is his voice (after a rabid squirrel claimed his larynx), that next to The Martian Chronicles the Gloxpusian Chronicles is the finest book of speculative fiction with the word chronicle in its title that he's ever read and he'd even go so far as to say it's the best except his brother-in-law, Ray, just bought him a new car so he's obligated to side with Mr. Bradbury, especially since Cadillacs don't grow on trees. I, for one, have not received a Cadillac from Mr. Bradbury so I have no qualms in saying this chronicle would make even Mr. Peanut drop his monocle in astonishment at this vision of things to come. Enjoy your baby shrimp now because tomorrow you might have to skimp and save just to limp through the lineup at the all-you-can-eat algae and barnacle buffet.