‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,’ by Kurt Vonnegut. Sort Of

Don’t judge. There was a lot of coke-fueled art back in the ’70s.

I cred­it (or blame, as the case may be) my friend Todd and my friend Rob for turn­ing me on to The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the GalaxySo let’s talk about Kurt Von­negut.

Von­negut1 was one of those impor­tant authors who make you feel vague­ly guilty, giv­en that you’ve nev­er read any of his stuff except maybe Slaugh­ter­house-Five. And while some of his stuff is dystopi­an or mild­ly sci-fi, where do I get off say­ing he, not Dou­glas Adams,2 is respon­si­ble for a sprawl­ing sci-fi epic like The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy?

Stay with me here: In 1965, Von­negut pub­lished God Bless You, Mr. Rose­wa­ter, which includ­ed a lengthy excerpt from a fic­tion­al nov­el titled Venus on the Half-Shell, by a fic­tion­al author named Kil­go­re Trout.3

Kil­go­re Trout showed up fre­quent­ly in Von­negut’s work as a lit­er­ary alter ego for Von­negut him­self, but Trout’s name was also a poke at Von­negut’s friend, sci-fi author Theodore Stur­geon:4I think it’s fun­ny to be named after a fish,” were Von­negut’s exact words (he may have been a great writer but appar­ent­ly part of him nev­er left mid­dle school).

Anoth­er sci-fi author, Philip Jose Farmer,5 was so amused he snagged the Venus on the Half-Shell excerpt in God Bless You, Mr. Rose­wa­ter and fluffed it up into an entire book.

And so, in 1975, Venus on the Half-Shell hit the book­stores, just three years before The Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy began on BBC Radio. The byline read Kil­go­re Trout, but the author was real­ly Philip Jose Farmer, using char­ac­ters cre­at­ed by Kurt Von­negut.

Got all that?

What does this have to do with Dou­glas Adams or Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy? Adams was a huge fan of Von­negut, for one thing. That’s not tan­ta­mount to pla­gia­rism, of course. But if you’ve ever read, lis­tened to or watched Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy, you’ll notice some star­tling par­al­lels:

1. The Everyman Galactic Wanderer

Some­one for­got to explain this to the cov­er artist.

Both sto­ries fol­low the adven­tures of an every­day schlub snatched from his every­day schlub’s life into an inter­galac­tic adven­ture. HHGTTG stars Arthur Dent, who worked in a small radio sta­tion before roam­ing the cos­mos in a bathrobe.

VOTHS, on the oth­er hand, stars Simon Wagstaff, a folk musi­cian who likes wear­ing fad­ed jeans and com­fy old sweat­shirts. He has curly dark hair, a big nose and looks a lot like Kurt Von­negut.

2. The Earth Gets Destroyed by Bureaucrats

When Hitch­hik­er’s Guide begins, Arthur Dent is lying in the mud in front of his house, block­ing the bull­doz­ers that have shown up to demol­ish his house. At the begin­ning of Venus on the Half-Shell, Simon Wagstaff and his girl­friend are hav­ing sex on the head of the Sphinx in Egypt.

Oh. This would be a good place to explain that accord­ing to Von­negut, Kil­go­re Trout was a hack who wrote a lot of thin­ly-dis­guised porn and was pub­lished most­ly in adult mag­a­zines.

And Philip Jose Farmer was the per­fect ghost writer for Trout, giv­en that Farmer’s favorite themes were sex, reli­gion, aliens, sexy reli­gion, alien sex, reli­gious sex, sexy reli­gious aliens, alien reli­gious sex, sex as wor­ship, alien sex wor­ship, wor­ship­ful sex with aliens—you get the idea.

Any­way, Arthur and Simon are both mind­ing their own busi­ness when aliens show up and destroy the Earth: The Vogons blow the Earth out from under Arthur to build a hyper­space bypass, while in Venus on the Half Shell, the Hoonhors decide Earth is too pol­lut­ed and clean things up by trig­ger­ing a world­wide flood, a la Noah. Turns out they cleaned up Earth a few thou­sand years ago already but are unhap­py things are already so dirty again.

3. Pursuing the Ultimate Question With Neurotic Robots in Stolen Spaceships

Arthur man­ages to snag a ride on a Vogon ship and lat­er winds up roam­ing the galaxy on a ship called Heart of Gold, which was stolen ear­li­er by one Zaphod Bee­ble­brox, looks like a giant run­ning shoe, and is named after a Neil Young song.

Con­verse­ly, Simon leaves Earth on a Chi­nese ship chris­tened Hwang Ho, which looks like a giant chrome penis and is named after the Yel­low Riv­er (remem­ber what I said about Philip Jose Farmer being a religious/alien sex fiend?).

Arthur is trav­el­ing with a small hand­ful of human and alien friends, plus a neu­rot­ic robot named Mar­vin, who resents being a low­ly main­te­nance robot when he has a brain the size of a plan­et, and Eddie, a ship­board com­put­er who tries way too hard to be cheer­ful.

Simon’s on the go with Anu­bis and Athena, his dog and owl, plus a neu­rot­ic robot named Chor­wk­tap, who has free will and far too much intel­li­gence to enjoy being a sex robot (this does­n’t stop her and Simon from hav­ing lots and lots of sex any­way–ref. P.J. Farmer, the sci-fi sex fiend author, again). Tzu Li, the Hwang Ho’s com­put­er, is just a com­put­er, despite Chork­tap spend­ing all her free time try­ing to prove Tzu Li is self-aware but shy.

Our heroes have the fastest space­ships ever made and a uni­verse to explore, so they set out for some answers:

“What’s the ulti­mate answer to, you know–life, the uni­verse and every­thing?” Arthur wants to know.

Simon’s ques­tion is this: “Why were we cre­at­ed only to suf­fer and die?”

4. The Genius Vermin Secretly Running the Show

As they trav­el and enjoy var­i­ous hijinks in pur­suit of the truth, Arthur and Simon dis­cov­er the Vogons and Hoonhors are just what they appeared to be at first glance: Clue­less, care­less and cal­lous bureau­crats. It turns out there are mas­ter­minds behind the scenes who have been run­ning things all along, hyper­in­tel­li­gent beings every­one mis­took for harm­less or annoy­ing ver­min. They don’t real­ly mean Arthur or Simon any harm, but they aren’t exact­ly nice to them either–the ver­min mas­ter­minds, it turns out, are using Arthur and Simon as part of exper­i­ments to answer the same ulti­mate ques­tions.

In HHGTTG, Arthur dis­cov­ers mice are the most intel­li­gent beings on Earth. They’ve been manip­u­lat­ing sci­ence all along while pre­tend­ing to be lab­o­ra­to­ry test sub­jects; in real­i­ty they’re pur­su­ing the answer to life, the uni­verse and every­thing.

Drink beer for all eter­ni­ty with cock­roach­es? Meh. I’m fine with that as long as we don’t have to share glass­es.

Simon, on the oth­er hand, dis­cov­ers a myth­i­cal alien race called the Clerun-Gow­ph, who acci­den­tal­ly pop­u­lat­ed most of the uni­verse with messy sci­en­tif­ic out­posts that dumped waste prod­ucts into the pri­mor­dial soup of the plan­ets they were study­ing. And the Clerun-Gow­ph, Simon is shocked to learn, are cock­roach­es.

This is a huge blow to the ego: Arthur dis­cov­ers he’s noth­ing but a test sub­ject in an exper­i­ment run by lab­o­ra­to­ry mice, while Simon real­izes all life on Earth is just, as he puts it, the end of a process that start­ed with cock­roach crap.

5. The Planet-Sized Computer

Every seek­er of truth needs an Ora­cle, and our heroes are no excep­tion. In HGTTG, it seems Earth and all life on it were an enor­mous com­put­er built in pur­suit of the answer to life, the uni­verse and every­thing (I know, I know — it was built to specif­i­cal­ly help ask the ques­tion after anoth­er giant com­put­er gave an accu­rate but use­less answer — the point is that the whole plan­et is a com­put­er).

When Simon, on the oth­er hand, final­ly meets the Clerun-Gow­ph, he dis­cov­ers they built a plan­et-sized com­put­er to answer all the ques­tions there are. Hav­ing noth­ing left to dis­cov­er or learn, they decide to quit exploring/fertilizing the galaxy and devote them­selves to drink­ing beer.

6. The Useless Answers (spoiler alert!)

At long last, our pro­tag­o­nists are about to learn the ques­tion to their ulti­mate ques­tions. The prob­lem is that in both cas­es, the answer is use­less:

  • Arthur’s ques­tion: “What is the ulti­mate answer to life, the uni­verse and every­thing?”
  • Answer: “42.”
  • Pos­si­ble alter­nate answer: “We apol­o­gize for the incon­ve­nience.”
  • Simon’s ques­tion: “Why are we cre­at­ed only to suf­fer and die?”
  • Answer: “Why not?”

Don’t give me that look. I said they were use­less answers, did­n’t I?

Some Disassembly Required

I know how to prove that men and women are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent:

Put a man and a woman into sep­a­rate rooms alone with a new appliance—say, a bread machine—and watch what hap­pens. The woman will make some bread. On the oth­er hand—bear in mind that this is a brand new appli­ance, right out of the box—the man will take the bread machine apart to see how it works.

There’s a corol­lary here: I have a sermon/demo I’ve pre­sent­ed in var­i­ous church­es, where­in I break a stack of con­crete blocks, then talk about how break­ing con­crete blocks with your bare hands is just exact­ly like becom­ing a Chris­t­ian and going to heav­en.

After I’d done it a num­ber of times I real­ized that when I said looky here; I’m going to smash all these con­crete blocks with my bare hands, the audi­ence response is divid­ed right down the mid­dle between men and women:

The men would say, “Cool!”

The women say, “Why?“1

I’m not sure what dri­ves men to take things apart. Maybe some psy­chi­a­trist has it fig­ured out. If so, I bet the psy­chi­a­trist is a man. Why? For the same rea­son psy­chol­o­gy has tra­di­tion­al­ly been a male pur­suit: Psy­cho­an­a­lyz­ing peo­ple is very much like tak­ing them apart to see how they work.

I think the dri­ve to take things apart is genet­ic, not learned. For instance, I saw a TV show once about Under­writ­ers Lab­o­ra­to­ries. This com­pa­ny takes new prod­ucts, dis­as­sem­bles them down into mol­e­cules to see how they’re designed, and then fig­ures out inge­nious ways to break them.

Under­writ­ers Labs pays the guys in white lab coats you see on TV com­mer­cials who build a robot arm to open and close a refrig­er­a­tor door 38 bil­lion times in two weeks. All guys, mind you—you nev­er see women in the com­mer­cials. These are the men who send cars hurtling into con­crete walls at 90 miles an hour to see what will hap­pen to the dum­mies inside.

I’ve often dreamed about work­ing for one of those com­pa­nies that blow up build­ings so that they col­lapse into their own base­ments.

Odd­ly enough, their research has con­clu­sive­ly proven over and over again that the dum­mies (sur­prise!) get demol­ished. But for some rea­son, they still find it nec­es­sary to crash an aver­age of 10 cars a week.

Don’t tell me it’s all about safe­ty and research—these guys are hav­ing the time of their lives. I’m not sure why Under­writ­ers Labs even both­ers to pay them; most men would prob­a­bly work there for free. I know I would.

I’ve often dreamed about work­ing for Under­writ­ers Lab­o­ra­to­ries. I’ve also dreamed about work­ing for one of those com­pa­nies that blow up build­ings so that they col­lapse into their own base­ments (c’mon—you have, too, haven’t you? Let’s see a show of hands, guys … I knew it!).

My favorite destruc­tive fan­ta­sy, though, involves work­ing for one of the big auto man­u­fac­tur­ers. Their research depart­ments have teams that secret­ly buy com­peti­tors’ cars. Then they com­plete­ly dis­as­sem­ble the cars and mount all the parts on sheets of ply­wood, which they hang in a ware­house.

You must under­stand, though—when I say they dis­as­sem­ble a car, I’m talk­ing a lev­el of dis­as­sem­bly rarely seen on this earth. If a butch­er ren­dered a cow the way these guys take on a car, he would need 17 square acres of coun­ter­top. Every sin­gle part in the car is bro­ken down com­plete­ly: The door locks are tak­en apart into piles of tiny springs and wafers. The engine is trans­formed into a heap of pis­tons, rings, bolts, bush­ings, springs, valves and bear­ings. The starter motor is unwound to see how much wire is in the arma­tures.

Every hook, pin, screw, nut, bolt, gear, spring, bush­ing, sta­ple, clip, clamp, strap and wire in the car is unfas­tened, until the engi­neers have thou­sands of parts to cat­a­logue and mount on the boards. They even unstitch all the uphol­stery, sep­a­rate glued-togeth­er pieces, and cut all the welds apart until they have the orig­i­nal pieces of met­al that make up the body and frame.

They say this is done to help them bet­ter under­stand their com­peti­tors’ designs. But it sounds like a labor of love to me. I bet they draw straws to see who gets to take things apart and who has to do the paper­work.

Yep, I’d be real­ly good at that sort of thing; I’ve always been a cham­pi­on dis­as­sem­bler myself. When I was 8, my par­ents gave me a watch. I pried off the back to see how it worked (and my moth­er has nev­er quite for­giv­en me). Since then, I have dis­as­sem­bled elec­tric razors, toast­ers, an elec­tric knife, radios, car stere­os and tape decks, a vari­able speed drill, an elec­tric gui­tar, a See ‘N Say, and any­thing else I could get my hands on.

Last year I sawed an 8‑foot-wide alu­minum satel­lite dish in half.

When I was 19, I took the engine out of my car and put it back. It was so much fun I did it again a year lat­er. Last year I sawed an 8‑foot-wide alu­minum satel­lite dish in half (don’t ask).

I sup­pose (I said don’t ask!) I can under­stand why, when my par­ents gave me a bicy­cle for my 24th birth­day, my moth­er looked me right in the eye and with a straight face said, “Now don’t go tak­ing this apart to see how it works!” She need­n’t have wor­ried. Bicy­cles were kid stuff; I was in the big leagues by that time.

The all-time high­light of my decon­struc­tion­al­ist career was when I mur­dered a piano. My room­mate, George, had bought an old upright piano for $100. This beast was made by a Ger­man com­pa­ny called Gul­bransen, and it was so heavy it took eight peo­ple to move it into our house. I think mov­ing one of the rocks at Stone­henge would have been eas­i­er. The piano’s wheels left ruts in the wood on our front porch, it was so heavy. In fact, I think the Ger­mans designed that piano to hold pill­box doors shut against ene­my mor­tar fire in World War II. It was that kind of heavy.

Any­way, after we all got her­nias mov­ing this bat­tle­ship anchor of a piano, George dis­cov­ered it had six keys that did­n’t work at all. The remain­ing 82 were so far out of tune they made my dog howl when we struck them. George called a piano tuner, who came over, lis­tened to the piano, and then left, laugh­ing so hard he was drool­ing.

Need­less to say, George did­n’t want to take the piano along when he got ready to move out a year lat­er. The prob­lem was that he had no way to dis­pose of it, and he was too kind­heart­ed to sell it to some oth­er sucker—I mean, vic­tim.

So while George was at work one evening, I decid­ed to sur­prise him: I took the piano apart and put it in a Dump­ster in a park­ing lot behind our house. I used pli­ers to cut the strings; a crow­bar took care of every­thing else (cham­pi­on dis­as­sem­blers don’t need hun­dreds of tools; that’s for wimps like Tim Allen).

Over the course of an hour or so that night, my friend, Dave, and I stealth­ily car­ried the dis­mem­bered piano to the Dump­ster, arm­load by arm­load. Final­ly, only two pieces were left: the back frame, which was made of huge oak beams, and the harp, a thick steel frame­work over which the strings had been stretched. These pieces weighed sev­er­al hun­dred pounds each and were the only parts that were dif­fi­cult to maneu­ver into the Dump­ster.

The Dump­ster squat­ted at the end of the alley like a land mine as George and I glee­ful­ly peered out the upstairs bed­room win­dow.

George near­ly had a heart attack when he got home and found noth­ing but a major dent in the car­pet where his piano had been.

At 5 a.m. the next morn­ing, George woke me excit­ed­ly. One of those trucks that picks up Dump­sters and turns them upside down to emp­ty them was rum­bling up the alley toward the Dump­ster. The Dump­ster squat­ted at the end of the alley like a land mine as George and I glee­ful­ly peered out the upstairs bed­room win­dow.

The dri­ver posi­tioned the load­er’s arms in the slots on the Dump­ster’s sides and turned on the hoist. George and I clutched our sides with laugh­ter as the truck­’s engine roared—and noth­ing hap­pened. The dri­ver scratched his head and put the hoist into a low­er gear. With the truck­’s engine bel­low­ing in protest, its sus­pen­sion groan­ing and the hoist’s gears screech­ing, the Dump­ster slow­ly left the ground.

As we held our breath, the Dump­ster turned over, the lid flipped open and the harp and frame tum­bled out into the truck­’s bed, which—and I knew God loved me when I saw it—was emp­ty. The harp and frame land­ed flat in the truck­’s bed with a resound­ing, thun­der­ous boom. The rest of the pieces slid out on top, crash­ing and rat­tling into a heap atop the frame.

The noise echoed up and down the predawn street; lights began appear­ing in win­dows. The dri­ver and his helper stag­gered out of the truck, hold­ing their ears, and climbed the side of the bed, no doubt think­ing an aster­oid had just land­ed in the truck.

They looked over the side of the bed in aston­ish­ment. I could hear them excit­ed­ly ques­tion­ing each oth­er: “How on God’s green earth did a piano get in there?” the dri­ver said in amaze­ment.

I closed my eyes and sighed wist­ful­ly, know­ing I would prob­a­bly nev­er again expe­ri­ence a moment so sub­lime this side of eter­ni­ty.

A Churnin’ Urn o’ Burnin’ FUNK!

Back in ’82, I went over to my friend Rob’s house one sum­mer day, and for some rea­son he had a black laun­dry mark­er and a bunch of let­ter sten­cils, and he want­ed to put some slo­gans on some shirts.

For some reason—quite pos­si­bly the same rea­son Rob had a black laun­dry mark­er and a bunch of let­ter stencils—we were wear­ing iden­ti­cal gray tank tops, and this all reeked of por­ten­tous fore­shad­ow­ings.

Alco­hol may have been involved.

We had one T‑shirt each, so first drafts and revi­sions were out of the ques­tion. Despite alcohol’s pos­si­ble involve­ment, we had to do some adult­ing and set­tle on our shirts’ mes­sages.

So we sat down and watched an Incred­i­ble Hulk rerun titled “Meta­mor­pho­sis,” in which Bruce Ban­ner lands a sound engi­neer posi­tion for a punk rock­er played by MacKen­zie Phillips, because if you need a sound engi­neer, every­one knows you look for an expert in gam­ma rays and cel­lu­lar biol­o­gy.

Some­one slips Ban­ner acid, so of course he gets scared, and we get to enjoy the Hulk stag­ger­ing around trip­pin’ balls while MacKen­zie Phillips sings her ear­split­ting hit song “Neck­tie Night­mare” in front of a gigan­tic pair of high-volt­age elec­trodes shoot­ing per­fect­ly safe 50-foot light­ning bolts across the stage, and the also-stoned fans think it’s part of the show, so MacKen­zie Phillips ditch­es her punk bonafides to turn into Amy Grant.

No, real­ly. I could­n’t find a clip of it, but as a con­so­la­tion prize, you can enjoy  the Hulk get­ting into a bar brawl, which is almost as sil­ly as the Hulk break­ing Las Vegas or the Hulk land­ing a dam­aged 747.

Mean­while, we got to laugh­ing so hard Rob fell off the couch and I almost wet myself.

After the Hulk was fin­ished with “Neck­tie Night­mare,” and after more con­tem­pla­tion and dis­cus­sion, along with more of the pos­si­bly involved alco­hol, we set­tled upon mes­sages to sten­cil on our shirts, mak­ing them T‑shirts that would have helped Bill and Ted’s music to bring har­mon­ic bal­ance to the uni­verse much ear­li­er if Bill and Ted had been wear­ing shirts with the most total­ly excel­lent and boda­cious sten­cils we cre­at­ed

Rob’s shirt said PRO.

My shirt said DENTAL FLOSS TYCOON.1

With our new world-chang­ing T‑shirts fin­ished, and after some more pos­si­bly involved alco­hol, we decid­ed we need­ed to get out there and let the world see them. The T‑shirts, that is. Not the impres­sive pile of emp­ty beer bot­tles.

So we hopped into my car, aka the leg­endary Charles the Deep Breather, and engaged in one of our favorite pas­times: Dri­ving around and drink­ing beer while enjoy­ing music gen­er­at­ed by the vig­or­ous pelvic thrusts of the renowned Pio­neer Super­Tuner and lusti­ly pumped out through the inim­itable Jensen 6x9 Tri­ax­i­als.

As we cruised up Tope­ka Boule­vard, we saw that the Kansas State Fair was under­way, so we parked and wan­dered around with a cou­ple of warm, over­priced state fair beers rather than the cool­er full of ice and ice-cold rea­son­ably-priced beers wait­ing for us in Charles the Deep Breather’s back seat.

As we passed all the rigged games, a carny guy look­ing for some­one to blow $80 to get a nasty-smelling import­ed ted­dy bear that was prob­a­bly stuffed with asbestos accost­ed us.

Seri­ous­ly? I mean yes, this is played for laughs on a TV show where every­one was in on the joke. But while teenagers can be abysmal­ly stu­pid (watch any hor­ror movie), no one would think an unshaven mid­dle-aged carny with B.O. that could kill Godzil­la was a nice fel­low teen who want­ed to dis­cuss T‑shirts. Yeesh.

“Hey there, fel­las!” he said.

Rob lit a cig­a­rette and crimped an eye at him. “Yo.”

“Those are nice T‑shirts!” the carny guy said, look­ing as con­vinc­ing as that “How do you do, fel­low kids?” meme with Steve Busce­mi, no doubt think­ing the fel­low kids said, “Why, there’s that groovy cat with the skate­board (or nasty-smelling ted­dy bear)!” rather than “Here comes Chester the Moles­ter again–run!”

DENTAL FLOSS TYCOON?” he said, point­ing at me. “What does that mean?”

“It means I might be mov­ing to Mon­tana soon,” I replied.

“Oh, cool!” he said, the way you would say “Oh, cool!” to a guy car­ry­ing a chain­saw and wear­ing a space hel­met who told you he was the lovechild of Carl Sagan and an alien from Prox­i­ma Cen­tau­ri V, hop­ing to dis­tract him long enough to make a run for it. “Does th—“

“Just to raise me up a crop of den­tal floss,” I inter­rupt­ed.

“That’s inter—“

“With a pair of heavy-duty zir­con-encrust­ed tweez­ers!” I inter­rupt­ed again.

He gave up and turned to Rob. Appar­ent­ly he wasn’t a Frank Zap­pa fan. The car­ni­val guy, that is. Rob was a Zap­pa fan. Still is.

“What does PRO mean?” he said, sound­ing des­per­ate.

Rob squint­ed at him again, tak­ing anoth­er drag of his cig­a­rette.

“Pros­ti­tute,” he drawled.

The carny guy turned on his heel and stomped away. I don’t know what got his dud­geon up; you’d think some­one who trav­els with a car­ni­val wouldn’t get offend­ed at the word pros­ti­tute.

It wasn’t always like that, though. If you’re brac­ing your­self for a sto­ry about how I had to walk 10 miles to school bare­foot, relax. What I mean is that you could buy T‑shirts when I was a kid that these days would make woke peo­ple pass out.

Take this charm­ing, whim­si­cal 1970s T‑shirt ad, for instance. Before Rohyp­nol, Jethro Tull T‑shirts were, alas, the only way a lot of guys could get laid.

The strug­gle is real.

Here’s the text:

Reprise leer­ing­ly invites you to win a T‑shirt that will

DRIVE THE GIRLS WILD WITH DESIRE!

You say you’re not mak­ing it with the local lovelies? That when you make Paul McCart­ney eyes at allur­ing lit­tle hon­eys in vio­let hip-hug­gers they respond by frown­ing and sug­gest­ing, “Jerk off, los­er”? That even the offer of a seat next to you at a Led Zep­pelin con­cert is insuf­fi­cient induce­ment for a far-out nubie to spend part of the evening with you?

Then, fel­la, whatch­oo need is a SUPER-OUTTA-SIGHT-JETHRO-TULL-T-SHIRT of the sort worn by the fullest-hand­ed rakes every­where.

These eye-catch­ing sar­to­r­i­al groovies, which are guar­an­teed to reduce even the haugh­ti­est of lovelies to a mound of hot pul­sat­ing flesh, are a divine shade of yel­low designed to to flat­ter even the swarthi­est of com­plex­ion, are the three-but­tons-at-the-neck style recent­ly made all the rage by your sharp­er Eng­lish groups, appeal­ing­ly reveal the wearer’s fash­ion­ably skin­ny arms (being short-sleeved) and fea­ture an entic­ing like­ness of sexy Tull leader Ian Ander­son some­where in the vicin­i­ty of the right boob. Avail­able in the splen­did sizes of medi­um and large, they may be worn with equal suc­cess by mem­bers of any sex.

We, in our cus­tom­ar­i­ly fis­cal­ly unsound way, are giv­ing 1,000 of these won­der away. Free!

All you have to do to win one of your very one is: 1) fill our coupons below; and 2) give it back to us com­plete down to the exact play­ing time of the first side of Jethro Tull’s lat­est hys­ter­i­cal­ly acclaimed album (sure­ly you don’t expect us to give you some­thing with­out first try­ing to trick you into buy­ing some­thing first), which infor­ma­tion may be gleaned from the album’s label, which you have to remove the cel­lo­phane to get to.

So why don’t you in a real hur­ry send us the required so that we can rush you a Tull T‑shirt that’s cer­tain to trans­form you overnight into a churn­ing urn of burn­ing funk.

I like Jethro Tull and I do have fash­ion­ably skin­ny arms, but I’m not sure I’d like Ian Ander­son sit­ting on my right boob. Also, do I want to be a churn­ing urn of burn­ing funk? I hon­est­ly don’t know. A churn­ing urn of burn­ing funk might be a slick-talk­ing studly chick mag­net.

A churn­ing urn of burn­ing funk could also be an over­flow­ing Por­ta Pot­ty doused with gaso­line and set on fire.

In ’77, when I was in Catholic high school—and I must empha­size that this was not just any Catholic high school, but Hay­den Extreme­ly Catholic High School—the math teacher, Sis­ter Rose Celine, called a guy named Bri­an up to do a prob­lem on the chalk­board.

Awww–how adorable!

Now Bri­an had been wear­ing a hoody all day because he was wear­ing a T‑shirt that said “Your Prob­lem Is Obvi­ous” on the back, along with a draw­ing of some­one with his head stuck up his ass. He’d been col­lect­ing snick­ers and gig­gles all day from oth­er stu­dents.

But now it was the last class for the day and it was pret­ty warm out, so he shrugged off the hoody and left it draped over his chair.

And when Sis­ter Rose Celine called him up to do a prob­lem, Bri­an for­got about the hoody.

Just as he was about to pass by Sis­ter Rose Celine, he real­ized why the rest of us were sti­fling gig­gles and whis­per­ing “Pssst!” at him, and with­out miss­ing a beat he piv­ot­ed 90 degrees to the right, fac­ing Sis­ter Rose Celine, and sidled up to the board. He filled out the math prob­lem with his left hand, fac­ing Sis­ter Rose Celine all the while.

“Very good, Bri­an,” Sis­ter Rose Celine said. “You may sit down.” Bri­an began slid­ing side­ways back the way he came as the muf­fled snick­ers neared a crescen­do. Sis­ter Rose Celine glanced up at us, then at Bri­an. Being a math teacher, she put 2 and 2 togeth­er and stood up.

And because nuns are ter­ri­fy­ing, Sis­ter Rose Celine didn’t yell or throw things or grab a ruler or any­thing like that. All she did was to qui­et­ly say, “Stop.”

Bri­an froze in place; every­one else stopped gig­gling. We stopped breath­ing, in fact.

“Why are you walk­ing side­ways, Bri­an?” Sis­ter Rose Celine said.

Bri­an said, “…eep?

“Turn around,” she said.

Bri­an turned and showed her the back of his shirt. She stud­ied it for a moment and said, “Class, you will work on the rest of the prob­lems in your books until the bell rings and class is over.”

She walked to the class­room door, opened it, and wait­ed. Gulp. This meant Sis­ter Rose Celine and Bri­an were about to vis­it the prin­ci­pal, Father Ax, a vis­it. Dead man walk­ing.

No, that’s not a joke. His last name real­ly was Ax. Father Ax was the prin­ci­pal and the school’s box­ing and wrestling coach.

Clar­i­fi­ca­tion: Father Ax was prin­ci­pal of Hay­den East, which was in down­town Tope­ka, across the street from the state capi­tol. Hay­den East was for 9th and 10th graders.

11th and 12th graders, on the oth­er hand, went to Hay­den West, which was across the street from Gage Park. And the Hay­den West prin­ci­pal was (I’m still not mak­ing any of this up) Father San­ta.

And I just real­ized Father San­ta looked an awful lot like Prin­ci­pal Carter in the movie Porky’s, and that the actor play­ing Prin­ci­pal Carter was named Eric Christ­mas.

Okay, I’m hav­ing a pan­ic attack here. I’m gonna go lie down.

Don’t let the teeth fool you. He’s not smil­ing; he’s bar­ing his fangs.

I didn’t attend Hay­den after 10th grade, so while I have no direct 411 to share about Father San­ta, I sus­pect he was even scari­er than Father Ax. But let’s get back to Father Ax:

Father Ax was about 5 1/2 feet tall, 3 feet wide, and weighed about 220 pounds, all of it sol­id mus­cle.

Father Ax was not the kind of guy to have an avun­cu­lar chat with a way­ward stu­dent and invite the way­ward stu­dent to come see him if he ever want­ed to talk.

If Father Ax answered the phone instead of Liam Nee­son in Tak­en, Father Ax would not threat­en to kill the kid­nap­pers. The kid­nap­pers would drop dead the instant Father Ax picked up the phone.

The rea­son you hear all those jokes about Chuck Nor­ris being so tough and also about how Bruce Lee killed Chuck Nor­ris in a movie is only because they were both way too smart to even joke about fight­ing with Father Ax.

Father Ax had a large pad­dle in his office made of 3/4‑inch oak. It was labeled “Board of Edu­ca­tion.”

Father Ax was a Viet­nam vet, but he was not rumored to have been a Navy SEAL or in Spe­cial Forces or a sniper. Father Ax was rumored to have tak­en the Board of Edu­ca­tion to Viet­nam and sin­gle­hand­ed­ly end­ed the war in less than a week.

Father Ax had no inter­est in, patience for, or mer­cy upon any wiseass churnin’ urn o’ burnin’ funk T‑shirt, and even less for the stu­dent wear­ing it.

The next morn­ing, every­one was whis­per­ing about poor Bri­an. No one knew what tran­spired in Father Ax’s office; Bri­an wasn’t talk­ing about it and every­one else was afraid to ask, although we did notice Bri­an winc­ing when­ev­er he sat down, so we assumed Bri­an had had a talk with the Board of Edu­ca­tion.

Any­way, Mom and Dad had 4 chil­dren, but I was the only one they sent to Catholic school. I have no idea why.2

First Sis­ter did­n’t care; She’s three years old­er than me, so we nev­er saw each oth­er in school.

Thing 1 and Thing 2, on the oth­er hand, are a year younger than me, so when I was sent off to Extreme­ly Catholic school, they wel­comed not hav­ing to say yes, that weirdo is our broth­er but he was adopt­ed because his birth par­ents dropped him on his head a lot.

A lit­tle Extreme­ly Catholic high school would­n’t have hurt them, though. I mean, thanks to Sis­ter Rose Celine and Father Ax and Father San­ta, I stayed out of trou­ble (or was care­ful enough not to get caught). And thanks to Bri­an’s ter­ri­fy­ing fate I espe­cial­ly avoid­ed provoca­tive T‑shirts (at least until after grad­u­a­tion).

Sec­u­lar pub­lic school, on the oth­er hand, deprived Thing 1 and Thing 2 of impor­tant, nur­tur­ing, eter­nal val­ues; val­ues like cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment, sheer ter­ror, and flu­en­cy in raunchy slang and raunchi­er T‑shirts .

And so one sum­mer when they were maybe 13 or 14, Thing 1 and Thing 2 went to Worlds of Fun with some friends. Worlds of Fun was okay, but it was real­ly just Acres of Fun.

Be that as it may, it was still fun, and that evening their friend’s mom dropped them off; they were sweaty, dirty, sun­burned, over­stim­u­lat­ed, greasy, and sug­ary from eat­ing junk food all day. Job well done, Worlds of Fun.

Mom was sit­ting on the couch read­ing a mag­a­zine while Dad and I watched a movie. She said, “Go get a show­er before you sit d…”

She trailed off as she glanced up and saw what Thing 1 and Thing 2 were wear­ing. They’d saved up their mon­ey and bought match­ing T‑shirts. And this is what was print­ed on their match­ing T‑shirts:

I laughed so hard it made me snort and then hic­cup; Dad was shak­ing his head and try­ing unsuc­cess­ful­ly to look stern.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 were still look­ing hap­py, but a lit­tle puz­zled.

Mom fold­ed down the page she was read­ing, set the mag­a­zine down gen­tly, and said very qui­et­ly, “Where did you get those shirts?”

Uh-oh. She sound­ed just like Sis­ter Rose Celine. I’d for­got­ten: Mom and Dad had both grad­u­at­ed from Hay­den Extreme­ly Catholic High School in 1958. Back then, things weren’t as kind and for­giv­ing and touchy-feely as they were 20 years lat­er when I was there.

“We got them at Worlds of Fun,” Thing 2 said. “Um… is some­thing wrong?”

“They had those shirts at Worlds of Fun? They let you buy those shirts at Worlds of Fun?”

Thing 1 and Thing 2 have this thing they do. They’ll glance at each oth­er; maybe one of them will raise an eye­brow and the oth­er one will shrug. It’s like all the hand sig­nals in base­ball, except instead of a short mes­sage like “Walk this ass­hole,” they exchange an ocean of info in the blink of an eye.

“Did­n’t your friend’s mom say any­thing?” Mom asked.

Thing 1 and Thing 2 glanced at each oth­er to dis­cuss their strat­e­gy. It’s impor­tant to note here that Thing 1 is a prac­ti­cal, take-action type, while Thing 2 is more intro­spec­tive and philo­soph­i­cal.

“Well, no,” said Thing 2. Mean­while, Thing 1 qui­et­ly left the liv­ing room and head­ed down the hall.

“I see. Do you know what that means?”

“What what means? Oh, on the shirt? It’s, uh…”

By now Dad and I were des­per­ate­ly try­ing to keep straight faces. Mom glared at us for a sec­ond, and look­ing back I just now real­ized this sit­u­a­tion was eeri­ly sim­i­lar to a famous scene in the movie Porky’s:

A group of horney—I mean, horny—guys were caught peep­ing into the girl’s lock­er room show­ers. One them sticks his, um—can we please call it a tallywacker?—he sticks his tal­lywack­er though the peep­hole and almost gets caught by Girl’s PE Coach Beu­lah Bal­brick­er.

Bal­brick­er wants Prin­ci­pal Carter to arrange a line­up of naked teen boys so she can iden­ti­fy the scoundrel. Mean­while, the Boy’s Coach­es Good­e­nough, Brack­ett and War­ren are des­per­ate­ly try­ing to keep straight faces as Prin­ci­pal Carter says no, a short-arm inspec­tion is absolute­ly out of the ques­tion.

Coach Brack­ett says, “Mr. Carter, we can just call the police, and we have ’em send over one of their sketch artists. And Miss Bal­brick­er can give a descrip­tion. We can put up Want­ed posters all over school: ‘Have you seen this prick? Report imme­di­ate­ly to Beu­lah Bal­brick­er. Do not attempt to appre­hend this prick, as it is armed and dan­ger­ous. It was last seen hang­ing out in the girls’ lock­er room.’”

At which point every­one, includ­ing Prin­ci­pal Carter com­plete­ly los­es it, and Miss Bal­rick­er stomps out. I still admire Nan­cy Par­sons, who played Miss Bal­brick­er, for keep­ing a straight face. I would have had a stroke.

This all hap­pened years before Porky’s was released. And it’s worth not­ing that Thing 1 liked Porky’s so much she had a per­son­al­ized license plate say­ing “PORKY1” for a num­ber of years.

But I digress. Thing 2 was try­ing to come up with a def­i­n­i­tion for hor­ney that would would keep her and Thing 1 out of trou­ble, espe­cial­ly since they didn’t know what it meant any­way.

“It means,” Mom start­ed. “It means, uh, well.. *ahem.* When some­one is “hor­ney,” it means they’re… um… sex­u­al. I mean, excit­ed in a sex­u­al way.”

Thing 2 rumi­nat­ed on that for a few sec­onds. “Sure, I’ve heard that,” she lied, “but it’s kind of like the word ‘crazy.’ There’s ‘crazy,’ where you see things and stuff, but it’s also like, you know, ‘wild and crazy guy.’”

“So what’s the oth­er mean­ing of hor­ney?” I man­aged to choke out between snick­ers. Mom glared at me again, and I real­ized I might have to explain how I knew what hor­ney meant if I didn’t shut up. So I shut up.

Thing 1—who is, as I said, the prac­ti­cal take-action type—came back down the hall, say­ing, “Hey, what if we just wear them like this?”

She’d hitched her jeans up as high as she could, then tucked in the Smile If You’re Hor­ney shirt so tight it was stretched out of shape, so instead of this:

 

It looked like this:

And we all—Mom, Dad, me, Thing 1 and Thing 2—we all lost it as thor­ough­ly as the coach­es in Porky’s.

It’s not fair. When­ev­er Thing 1 or Thing 2 got into trou­ble, they’d do some­thing to make Mom or Dad laugh and they’d get away with it.

“Go take a show­er,” Mom said, pick­ing up her mag­a­zine. “Change clothes and bring me those shirts.”

Thing 1 and Thing 2 sur­ren­dered with dig­ni­ty, glad they were off the hook.

And by “sur­ren­dered with dig­ni­ty,” I mean “exe­cut­ed a strate­gic retreat to dis­cuss flank­ing maneu­vers.”

The next day, when we were all called to the kitchen for din­ner, Thing 1 was last to arrive. She strate­gi­cal­ly exe­cut­ed a not-quite-late arrival, dur­ing which she showed up just as Dad was about to repeat Mom’s chow call, mean­ing every­one would be wait­ing to see what was going on.

She stepped into the kitchen, wear­ing the “Smile If You’re Hor­ney!!” shirt that she’d been ordered to destroy, and said, “Hey Mom! How about this?”

She’d secret­ly rum­maged through Mom’s sewing sup­plies and found some embroi­dered let­ters, one of which she’d sewn onto the offend­ing shirt. And this is what it looked like:

Dad, who hero­ical­ly man­aged to keep a straight face, said, “Smile if you’re CORNEY?

Golf clap to Thing 1. I’m still in awe.

I don’t remem­ber if Mom and Dad let Thing 1 and Thing 2 keep the shirts.3

Assisted Twister

You’ve heard this say­ing: “If you don’t like the weath­er in (wher­ev­er you are), just wait five min­utes and it’ll change!”

This, my friends, is Fake News. I’ve lived in, or spent enough time in, enough states to get an idea what the weath­er is like: Ore­gon, Wash­ing­ton (State and DC), Col­orado, Texas, Ari­zona, Flori­da (and Aku­mal, Mex­i­co and Guangzho, Chang­sha, and Hong Kong in Chi­na).

But I grew up in Kansas1 Kansas is the only place I’ve ever lived that has weath­er, and I can prove it. To do so I need to talk about cof­fee:

Back some mum­bledy-sev­en years ago, I worked after­noons at the state hos­pi­tal and got off at 11. Depend­ing on how much mon­ey we had, my friend Rob and I would either dri­ve around and drink beer till the wee hours, or go down­town to Pore Richard’s, pay for one bot­tom­less  cup of cof­fee each, and drink cof­fee till the wee hours of the morn­ing.

Pore Richard’s was a restau­rant and café where you could spend a lot of mon­ey on steak or lob­ster or oth­er pricey munchies, or you could spend $1.25 on a cup of cof­fee and get refills until you start­ed to vibrate.

Being broke, and giv­en that Nin­ten­do and iPhones and Android and X‑Box and restau­rants with dozens of TVs show­ing every chan­nel there is at ear-shat­ter­ing vol­ume were all years in the future, we had to find some­thing else to do. So we’d talk and argue and talk with the servers and argue about things with them, all of which are alas becom­ing lost arts.

But most often we would whip out Road Notes and get busy.

Road Notes was a big 200-page col­lege-ruled spi­ral note­book (sev­er­al, in fact; I still have about 10 of them and I’m pret­ty sure there were more).

And upon the pages of Road Notes we would inflict song lyrics; goofy draw­ings; vignettes; short sto­ries writ­ten back and forth between us, two para­graphs apiece; all man­ner of things.

One night I was noodling around in Road Notes and the Wham song—oops; I I mean the WHAM! gong—“Careless Whis­per” come on the table juke­box, which meant some­one at one of the oth­er tables had dropped a dime in their table juke­box.

Then it came on again. And again. And again. Now, I like this song and I liked it back then. It wasn’t as bad as some­one play­ing “What’s Up Pussy­cat?” over and over, but it was wear­ing thin. I sac­ri­ficed a dime from pet­ty cash (aka the serv­er-tip­ping cash) to play some­thing else, but some­one in the restau­rant had just bro­ken up with some­one else and was drown­ing his or her sor­rows in a tsuna­mi of dimes to hog the juke­box.

Rob grabbed Road Notes from me and start­ed draw­ing. A minute lat­er he hand­ed back a pair of draw­ings. One was a cred­i­ble forgery of the old “Loose Lips Sink Ships” poster labeled “Care­less Whis­per,” except the sol­dier gab­bing at his girl­friend had a bull­horn aimed right at Hitler and was blow­ing his hair and mus­tache off.

Next to that was a draw­ing of a bald woman, labeled “Hair­less Sis­ter.”

I said, “Hair­less Sis­ter”? Rob said, “Wait; don’t tell me you haven’t heard this. The “Hair­less Sis­ter” song? On Dr. Demen­to?”

I hadn’t, but I did lat­er: “Hair­less Sis­ter” was a spoof of “Care­less Whis­per,” in which a high school guy’s sis­ter shaves her head, and her broth­er is singing about how he’ll nev­er go to school again, because an embar­rassed mind can do no learn­ing.

So I grabbed Road Notes back and drew an old woman yelling “Get me some pears!”, labeled “Pear­less Spin­ster,” which set off a pret­ty damn good pun war, which end­ed like this:

After sev­er­al more rounds, Rob drew a pic­ture of Dee Snider with a corkscrew stick­ing out of a big lump on his arm. It was titled, “Twist­ed Blis­ter.”

I looked at him and said “Twist­ed Blis­ter”? You HATE Twist­ed Sis­ter! What song is this, “We’re Not Gonna Lance It”? He snick­ered and said, “Your move!”

I made a few false starts and then inspi­ra­tion struck: I drew a pic­ture of a house with a tor­na­do head­ing its way. There was anoth­er tor­na­do on the oth­er side of the house.

The first tor­na­do was say­ing, “Hey, help me knock down this house!” The oth­er tor­na­do said, “Sure!”

I titled it Assist­ed Twister.

I pushed Road Notes back at Rob. He looked at Assist­ed Twister and start­ed to laugh. So did I.

Before long we were both howl­ing and falling out of the booth and try­ing very sin­cere­ly not to wet our pants and/or have asth­ma attacks.

So I—yes, I know it’s a hor­ri­ble pun. But that was wh—What? Look, you had to be there. Any­way, we—okay, shut up and sit down. You don’t have to like a bad pun. You just have to respect its courage to be seen in pub­lic.

I went to col­lege in Ore­gon; one day I was walk­ing to a class with some­one, and he said “You’re from Kansas? Weren’t you alla time scared of tor­na­does?”

I said, “You’re from Port­land in spit­ting dis­tance of five vol­ca­noes; ain’t you alla time scared of the floor being lava?”

If you live in Port­land, you can’t wait five min­utes for the weath­er to change. Port­land doesn’t HAVE weath­er. All the weath­er folks on the news have to say is, “Fore­cast: damp. Cur­rent con­di­tions: about to rain, rain­ing, or just fin­ished rain­ing.”

Arizona’s just the oppo­site: The weath­er in Prescott Val­ley is always mild and sun­ny (unless you’re in Phoenix, where the weath­er is always boil-your-eyballs hot and sun­ny), except for it rains a few weeks late in the sum­mer, which they call “Mon­soon sea­son,” like we’re in Tahi­ti.

But Kansas—Kansas has WEATHER. I remem­ber try­ing to dri­ve to work once, but it was so cold the trans­mis­sion flu­id was like molasses and the car couldn’t move an inch.

Lat­er that same win­ter, on New Year’s eve I left work at 11pm and it was a balmy 75°. When the sun came up on New Year’s day it was 20 below zero, and a lot of peo­ple couldn’t get to work because the tem­per­a­ture extremes made a grain ele­va­tor explode, cov­er­ing I‑70 with a 30-foot-high wheat­drift.

Lat­er that spring I was attempt­ing to dash from my car to my house dur­ing a nasty thun­der­storm, and I took a rac­quet­ball-sized hail­stone to the nog­gin that almost knocked me uncon­scious.

I’ve seen it cold enough in Kansas you could spit and it would freeze before it hit the ground. I’ve seen it hot enough that recent­ly resur­faced roads soft­ened up, leav­ing cars mired in asphalt.

Kansas folks are tough enough to deal with apoc­a­lyp­tic weath­er, but Kansas just doesn’t get any respect.

In Dia­monds Are For­ev­er, the evil vil­lain Blofeld asks Bond, James Bond, how he should set about extort­ing the world with his giant space laser.

“I sup­pose I could destroy Kansas,” Blofeld says, “but it would take years for any­one to notice!”

Hyuk hyuk hyuk. But con­sid­er this: If Kansas was destroyed, all that real weather—frozen spit, boil­ing asphalt, Mama-said-knock-you-out hail­stones and tor­na­does, oh my—would have to hap­pen in oth­er states, where peo­ple talk about how the weath­er changes every five min­utes but don’t have a clue what’s in store for them.

Think about that the next time you’re mock­ing Kansas with your hilar­i­ous Wiz­ard of Oz jokes.

The Helicopter Song

When I was 4 or 5 my par­ents had some friends over for a bar­be­cue. Every­one was milling around in fine bar­be­cue fash­ion, and then the radio played a song I’d nev­er heard before. It was amaz­ing! There was some­body laugh­ing and then heli­copter sounds, but it did­n’t have any lyrics.

I planned to ask Mom and Dad what the song was, but they were busy doing things and I for­got.

A cou­ple of days lat­er Mom was putting some­thing on the record play­er, and I remem­bered the bar­be­cue and said, “Play The Heli­copter Song!”

“The what?” Mom said.

“The Heli­copter Song! There was a guy laugh­ing and heli­copters! And there weren’t any words!” Mom had no idea what I meant. I did, but I could­n’t describe it well enough. I gave up, frus­trat­ed.

A cou­ple days lat­er we were dri­ving some­where and the heli­copter song came on the radio.

“That’s The Heli­copter Song! That’s The Heli­copter Song!” I yelled.

“That’s the song you meant?” Mom asked.

“Yeah! It’s The Heli­copter Song!”

And it turned out that the heli­copter song was… (drum roll])1

“Wipe­out,” by The Sur­faris.

Lemme ‘splain: When I was a kid in the ear­ly 1960s, we lived in Tope­ka, KS, about 7 miles north of Forbes Air Force Base. Air­craft often flew right over us com­ing to and from Forbes; usu­al­ly heav­ier car­go air­craft; once every­one in Tope­ka got to watch a brand-new Air Force One land at Forbes for the first stop in its inau­gur­al test flight, fuel up, and take off again.

This was much ear­li­er, though; maybe 1967 or ’68. The war in Viet­nam was rag­ing along full blast, and we often heard large chop­pers fly­ing thump­ing along over­head: long-range spe­cial-ops copters like the Siko­rsky MH-53, aka the Jol­ly Green Giant, or Boe­ing CH-47 Chi­nook dual-rotor heavy car­go heli­copters.

It hap­pened often enough that I didn’t con­scious­ly lis­ten to them, but they still made a hell of a lot of noise.

And so it hap­pened that when I heard “Wipe­out,” the long drum breaks, heavy on the bass and toms, remind­ed me of all the big chop­pers fly­ing over­head.

I didn’t know how to explain this when I was so young. So years lat­er, when I was in my ear­ly 20s, a friend of mine was show­ing me how to play “Wipe­out” on gui­tar, and I sud­den­ly remem­bered: THE HELICOPTER SONG!

I told Mom and Dad about it, but they did­n’t remem­ber any of this.

So either I’m hal­lu­ci­nat­ing or The Sur­faris tricked me.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p13yZAjhU0M[/embedyt]