Obituary of Sorts: Stanley "Duke" Dockett, Coin Collector

As related to Funion Philosopher of Death, Pete "the Bog" Potterson, by Stanley "Duke" Dockett's best friend and roommate at Ricky Randolph's Retirement Resort, Poppy Bills.


Stanley "Duke" Dockett, so nicknamed for his attendance at Duke University, class of '37 -- a time and place in which donning harmless blackface was not just part of a normal, fun time, but celebrated to the Heavens (but those were different days, simpler days, perhaps BETTER days) for its cultural and historical significance and the joy it would bestow on anyone who gazed upon it -- the white American male face of blackness! -- for what is wrong with a little shmear of shoe polish on one's mug, a sprinkling of a flour-water mixture on one's kisser, some Charleston dancing with one's best gal? You do that now, with the blackface, and it's a fucking national emergency. Duke loved to do it, you know, so excuse me for honoring the poor fucker's fucking life.

(The Bog here. Loyal Funion Followers probably remember my three-part series on Grace Topher, the stand-up comedienne serial killer, Laughing in the Face of Death: She Killed it! - The Grace Topher Story, produced for this publication back in 1974, when the Funion was a weekly print broadsheet distributed exclusively to halfway homes. That story rendered me a sobbing, bed-wetting mess. I had, and still have, nightmares every night involving Grace Topher. A recurring one is especially debillitating: an enormous comedy club called Maniax, about the size of an airport, with as many wings and floors and signs and public restrooms; essentially it is an airport that has been converted into a comedy club. The bar is in Terminal A. I approach the bartender, a beautiful woman, and she says very loud and very slowly, as if she and only she has been captured in super slo-mo, "What... the fuck... do you... waaaant?" She has the voice of an old woman; very old, like ninety. Everything is blacklit. The beautiful bartender with the old lady voice's teeth are glowing. House music is thumping. I am staring into this beautiful bartender's mouth as she is slowly speaking then slowly closing her mouth, all the while very anxious because the show is about to start and the stage is all the way in Terminal C. I say, "Just give me hot tea, please, and hurry!" and the beautiful bartender's face morphs -- very slowly and gradually, remember -- into one of abject horror, because behind me is Grace Topher, with her red hair pulled back tight in a bun, wearing prison orange, stabbing me up the anus with a footlong knife, all of which I can see in the mirror at the bar behind the beautiful bartender -- who is now crying hysterically in super fast motion -- and I wake up with my ass on fire, so to speak, my butt cheeks tingly and still asleep, and a rock-hard, sore erection.

What does this dream mean? Why did Grace Topher terrify me so? I won't get into all of the details [if you want to learn more about Grace Topher, you'll have to read my three-part series, available by mail order from Funion HQ, P.O. Box 3, Evanston, IL 60201. Simply send in a postcard with "Request: Laughing in the Face of Death: She Killed it! - The Grace Topher Story -- ALL THREE PARTS -- by Pete "the Bog" Potterson, Funion Philosopher of Death 'YOUR ADDRESS'" written on the back and you should receive a typed copy of the manuscript in your mailbox in 4-6 weeks]. But I will say that I became obsessed with death. I truly felt, after so many interviews with Grace, after so many vividly horrifying nightmares, after so many crime scene photos, that I could die at any moment. It wasn't that I feared death. It was more like I started to live with death, like death was a non-human, non-verbal, intangible friend, but a friend that really intimidated me; a friend I wanted to impress. Each day I would think long and hard about death, usually at a coffee shop, the atmosphere of which is not unlike a morgue -- patrons with sleep-deprived, lifeless faces, staring at screens and books, ignoring every sign of life around them, in fact shutting them all out and getting pissed when anything disturbs them and brings them out of their self-imposed death trance -- and I would sit and ponder and people-watch, dreading my approaching bedtime, my inevitable Grace Topher nightmare, which is how I originally came across Stanley "Duke" Dockett.)

Duke was a good man. He never married, but he loved many girls in his day. He was something of a Casanova, a very handsome man with large, powerful hands, fingers like submarines, which made his line of work -- technical writing for kitchen appliance manuals -- difficult. He could barely type! He mostly wrote by hand, which caused terrible, painful cramping. He would get angry when his hand cramped up, so angry he'd slam it against his desk and shout, "TWAT!" at his cramped hand, trying to shame it back into functionality. One time he broke his hand and had to miss two months of work, which nearly put him in the poor house. It was during this time, with nothing else much to do, that he began to collect coins.

(The Bog again. I am indeed writing the above obituary, but not in my voice, but rather in the voice of Poppy Bills, Stanley "Duke" Dockett's best friend and roommate at Ricky Randolph's Retirement Resort, who told me all of this information. Aside from the occassional literary flourish that can only come from the mind of the Bog, the voice is all Poppy's. I do not condone blackface, in any generation. When I showed up at Ricky Randolph's Retirement Resort, Poppy was all blackfaced out, in honor of his friend, and I was aghast and taken back to one of my Grace Topher nightmares in a sort of P.T.S.D. flashback, the one in which Grace is a dominatrix, wearing a black leather mask, beating me mercilessly with my mother's prized twirling baton -- the one she twirled and threw and caught to victory in the State Finals. When I came to I was on Poppy's floral-patterned couch with a wet coffee machine filter full of wet coffee grounds on my forehead. Poppy's blackened face was staring down at me.

"Duke wrote the manual for that there coffee machine," he said, pointing. He sat down at his kitchen table. I removed the filter from my forehead and placed it on the nearby end table. Streaks of black water ran down my face. I looked as if I had been crying my mascara-lined eyes out. I sat down with Poppy at the kitchen table. He was flipping through old photographs.

I should point out that the trouble with writing this obituary is that I'm not sure how sound of mind Poppy is, and what to believe and what not to believe of what he tells me. Did Duke actually enjoy putting on blackface? Or was this just an obssession of Poppy's that he dementedly projected onto Duke? Did Duke really write the book on this coffee machine? I'm not sure Poppy knew how to properly use it -- let alone know who wrote the manual -- given his apparent belief that the filter and the beans and the water combined to make a cold compress with restorative qualities. Though it did seem to make me come to, and I didn't have a head ache -- which I usually did have after a P.T.S.D. nightmare attack -- so maybe Poppy just knew something I didn't.

Let me go back to when I first saw Duke. I was sitting outside on the patio of my favorite cafe, The Roast Institute, sipping a cup of French-pressed Belgian Toffee-toasted Shaved Walnut Strawberry-blonde Roast, thinking about what it would be like to drown in salt water, when a man came walking by, an older gentleman, nicely dressed in slacks, Rockports, a sweater over a plaid shirt, bald, glasses, looking for something on the ground as he strolled. He passed me and glanced underneath my table. I watched him make his way down the street. He stopped at a newspaper dispenser and put two fingers in the coin slot [they barely fit] like he was pleasuring a woman. Same thing at a payphone. He then turned the corner and vanished.

How strange. It had a profound effect on me. This man just seemed so interesting. He was a man on a mission. He appeared to be looking for change, but also appeared to be a man who was not in need of spare or loose change, given his nice, clean wardrobe. I sat down in the same spot everyday for weeks, and each day at the same time Duke would come strolling by looking for change in every crevice he could find, but never asking anyone for change, like he was too proud to do so.)

Duke was a proud man. He took pride in his appearance, like a Senator, always the perfectly manicured head of hair, clean slacks, crisply starched shirts. He commanded respect. People feared him. He was a Duke man. He could knock out an Irishman with one punch to the gut. Yes, a punch to the gut from old Duke would black out an Irishman's world. Curtains. But Duke was also very loving. He loved children. He kept balloons in his work desk that he would blow up and deliver to children playing in the park across the street from the office during his lunch break. He did not eat lunch. He'd rather spend the break with kids. Nowadays a man can't do that, because what the fuck has the world come to? A man can't give a kid a fucking balloon now? You try to do that now, and the mother comes over screaming, "KEVIN!" and grabs Kevin's hand and leads him to the shade underneath a tree and kneels down to look Kevin in the eye and says, "Kevin, do not accept anything from strangers like that, ok? Say, 'Ok, Mommy.'" Like Kevin knows what the fuck "accept" means. Meanwhile the good-intentioned man is standing there holding a balloon like a fucking idiot. You tell me what the world has come to. Duke never wanted to fuck no little boy, which you can quote me on. Just because a guy's got no wife means he wants to suck a tiny dick? Duke loved his beloved ex-girlfriend, Elizabeth.

(Paging Dr. the Bog. Back at Poppy's kitchen table, he's looking at the photos like he's got a great poker hand. He pinches one of them and places it on the table. He surveys the hand again. He pinches another and places it on the table next to the first one. He then folds and tosses the remaning photos into a shoebox on the floor. He picks up the first one.

"This is the love of Duke's life," he says, showing me the photo. It's very old, but the girl appears to be beautiful. "Even in Duke's death. I say 'is' because love never fucking dies, right?" I agree. He tells me that the girl's name is Elizabeth, and she and Duke were romantically involved at Duke University. One night they had agreed to meet at a party that Duke's fraternity was putting on. Duke was so excited. He loved her and that night he was going to ask her to marry him. He got ready for the party really fast, put on his blackface really hastily, brushed his hair swiftly, and generally did himself up really sharp-like. He was the spitting image of Al Jolson. Real handsome. He went downstairs to the main room of the fraternity house where people had already begun to mill about. He started to dance. In comes Elizabeth and starts to look around for Duke, but she doesn't see him. She doesn't recognize him with the blackface on. Duke sees her and goes right up to her and says, "Here I am, baby!" Now Elizabeth came from a real Methodist background, a real enlightened type of broad [again, these are, for the most part, though not a direct transcript, Poppy's words], read a lot of books, had respect for everyone and everything, and she was fucking horrified. She couldn't believe that her boyfriend would play the blackface game like a fucking "neanderthal." She left right away and ignored Duke for the rest of their time at school, and he never really talked to her again. And he never put on blackface again. And, despite dating a lot of girls, never loved again.

I ask Poppy if he was there, did he go to Duke University with Duke? He said no, that Duke just told him all of this, and that Duke gave him this picture, the second picture, which just looked like a kitchen appliance. I ask Poppy, "Is that a blender? Did he write the manual for that? Was that the first manual that he ever wrote?" Poppy says, "No. It's his time machine that he built himself, but he never told me where it was." I sort of chuckle, and Poppy stands up angrily. "It's true! He built a fucking time machine, because he was fucking Stanley 'Duke' Dockett! And he told me so. And if Dukie tells you something, it must be so!" Poppy goes outside, slamming the front door.

                                              $

After I had watched Duke walking along the street, looking for change, for several weeks, I finally worked up the courage to approach him. I caught up to him about 100 feet away from the Roast Institute.

"Excuse me, sir," I said. "What are you looking for?"

"A coin," Duke said.

"You mean change, like several coins, in order to buy something you want to buy?"

"No," he said. "I'm looking for a quarter. A 1936 quarter."

"So you're a collector," I said.

"No," he said, and walked away quickly. It was the first and last time I talked to Stanley "Duke" Dockett. He died a few days later -- the news of which reached me through my inside source at Ricky Randolph's Retirement Resort, who tells me of all the deaths that occur there, given my work -- at Ricky Randolph's Retirement Resort, which I proceeded to visit, where I met Poppy.

                                              $

I go outside and Poppy is sitting on his stoop. I tell him I know it's hard, death is intense stuff, that it's only been a few days since Duke died and it will get better.

"His time machine was coin-operated. It worked. Duke went back to the nineties all the time."

"How?" I ask.

"If you put a 1995 quarter into the time machine, it would take you back to the day that the quarter was made, in 1995."

"How interesting," I say, trying not to sound like a dick.

"Ever since he made the time machine, like fifteen years ago, he searched for a 1936 quarter that would take him back to his days with Elizabeth, so that he could skip that blackface party and take Elizabeth to a nice restaurant instead and propose to her there, or at the beach or something." Poppy is now crying. "He ain't never found it." Poppy stands up and walks toward the cafeteria, a squat one-floor building in the middle of a semi-circular formation of houses, presumably to get some food.)

Duke is dead, but Duke will never actually die. He leaves behind no one and nothing but the memory of Elizabeth, who may still be alive somewhere, and his time machine, the location of which is unknown. A memorial service will be held at Ricky Randolph's Retirement Resort on Saturday at noon.

(One last time, the Bog, signing off. Now instead of just thinking about death in the abstract, I think about Duke's death, and Poppy's imminent death. Did Duke actually die? Or did he succeed and travel back in time to 1936 and just didn't tell Poppy about it? But I've been to Duke's grave. I've read his tombstone. I think it's quite possible that Poppy is simply descending into the Hell that is dementia. But if so, why was Duke looking for that particular coin? He told me that part himself, after all. A lot to ponder. But now it's late, and a nightmare awaits me. I hope eventually my nightmares will be replaced by dreams of Duke and Elizabeth together. And I really hope I don't have that one about Grace Topher vomiting blood into an enormous feed trough for what feels like six hours until the trough overflows with the blood and brains and smiles of her many victims, at the end of which she turns to me, smiling, blood dripping from her chin, and just screams at me until I wake up. Either way, from the Bog himself, Pete Potterson, Funion Philosopher of Death: Sweet dreams!)  

My Experience on "Check, Please!" was Most Unsavory

By Jad-Marc Tailor

Reposted from Jad-Marc's Blog, "The Finer, Diner and Winer Things in this Crazy Beautiful Thing I call, 'LIFE.'"

It was showtime. The lights... no wait, it was, like, a minute before showtime, because we were commencing taping at 4 pm, I believe, or thereabouts, and it was 3:59, for I distinctly remember glancing at my watch at that moment, when Alpana raised her spotless wine glass, quarter-filled with Cabernet Sauvignon (2004, hint of mint, splash of oak: superb), and said, "To new friends, good food, delectable wine, a fine crew," grunts of approval from behind cameras and lights, "and an amazing show! Cheers!" Glasses clink, held by Alpana herself, Joseph Pettibon (Elementary School Principal - Albany Park), Stephanie Yang (Bartendress - Wicker Park), and me, Jad-Marc Tailor (Investment Banker - Lincoln Park). And it was all downhill from there.

Truth be told, I knew it would be all downhill from there, because the restaurants my two co-stars (or perhaps "adversaries" would be more appropriate) chose were patently abysmal; pedestrian, at best. What I didn't know was how much of a disaster the actual taping would turn out to be. But first, in case you missed the episode, the restaurants:

Joseph Pettibon chose Stephen's Tex-Mex Building in Albany Park. I went there with my girlfriend on a Friday night after drinks and dancing and Karaoke (I completely nailed Staind's "It's Been a While") at Starbar. We took a cab and got to Stephen's Tex-Mex Building at around 3 am and it was CLOSED. My girlfriend and I were both deeply perturbed and after she threw up on Stephen's restaurant's front stoop we got in another cab and went home and had sex.

Flash-forward to the show:

"Wait, Jad," says Alpana, in her delightfully cute squeak of a voice which I vividly imagine enveloping my cock as she gags on it.
"Jad-Marc," says I.
"You mean to tell me that you didn't even go to Stephen's Tex-Mex Building?"
"I did go. It was closed."
"What time did you go?"
"3 am."
"3 am?"
"Christ, Jad-Marc," says Joseph, bent-out-of-shapely. "It's a family restaurant."
"But it was a Friday," says I. "On weekends, sir, with all due respect, I don't, nay, can't eat dinner until I'm drunk."

And we moved on:

Stephanie Yang chose Restaurant of Chinese Fair Delicacies Within (big surprise) in Chinatown. When I received the notice in the mail from the "Check, Please!" producers, I exclaimed to my girlfriend, "Fuck, babe. We have to go to Chinatown for this shit," to which she responded, "You're on your own then, hun. I'll go out with my other boyfriend." So I called up my other girlfriend and we headed down to Restaurant of Chinese Fair Delicacies Within last Saturday. We got there at 2 am after a night of drinks and dancing and Karaoke (I completely nailed that one Journey song that was the White Sox theme song when they won the World Series that one time) and, luckily, it was still open, and would be for the next several hours, and the next several hours after that, and so on until the end of time because the restaurant is open 24 hours and the Chinese are pagans who don't celebrate holidays.

The show:

"So," says Alpana, reluctantly turning to me, "Jad-Marc. Dare I ask what you thought about Restaurant of Chinese Fair Delicacies Within?"
"Well," says I, composed, collected: the essence of amateur restaurant criticism, "The service was fantastic and felt like good old Chinese hospitality. A very noble people, and their conduct reflected as such," insightfully. "The food was fast, but it sure wasn't fast food!" I, intelligent, clearly, yet down to earth, jocular with the folk, as shown by laughter erupting from mouths of adversaries.
"Sounds like you liked it," Alpana says, composing herself, wiping tears from her eyes.
"It was delicious. I got the Egg Foo Yong, and I had to scarf it all up before my date stole it!" Again jocular, again laughs, again Jad-Marc: capturing hearts. "I said to my date, my girlfriend: 'Oh, don't you worry, sweetums, you'll get plenty of egg in your mouth later, but just the whites.'" That's right, Jad-Marc, reel 'em in. The money shot. Don't stop now. "And my girlfriend just laughed. People were staring at us. 'Or maybe you want those egg whites now, baby, huh?' And I forced her under the table and she sucked me off right there in the middle of Restaurant of Chinese Fair Delicacies Within, me alternating between slapping the table and her ass, exposed now due to my ripping of her skirt, and cooks out from the kitchen, three of them, standing not ten feet away from us, laughing and jerking, jerking and laughing." Silence in the studio, aside from my seemingly resonating and reverberating disappointment in my adversaries' attitudes, as we all slowly sipped our wine.

I chose The World Diner in Lincoln park, housed in which is every single taste you can ever imagine. Every single delicacy from every single corner and nook and cranny of this crazy spinning rock orbiting this crazy solar system can be found here. And you can mix and match and create your own tastes, too! Want a curry-fried-green-chile rice pizza? Will be ready in 3 hours. Want a Yakburger with Filipino eel-fries? Will be ready next week. Want a Jaegerbomb? Have three while you wait for your strawberry-gyro-pie! It is located underneath Lincoln Park, in a sort of multi-level cave dwelling, a la Gangs of New York. To enter, you must rub the Goethe statue's marble genitals not once, not twice, but thrice. After doing so, the earth itself opens up, and the World Diner awaits one hundred feet below. Unfortunately, neither Alpana nor Stephanie nor Joseph could find the elusive restaurant, and after the taping I was immediately and hastily escorted out of the WTTW studio.

On Novel Writing.

Sir Terry Toynbee Windus, gent.

Veni, Vidi, Dormivi

Surprise be it to me that, upon reaching jolly Londontown againe, after the customary pause and rest of a fortnight anon three days in Willy-Wompus-Whole-Upon-Hamptonshire, I was celebrated, besmitten, and dined by the gentle LORDS and LADIES of that noble CITIE, and for nothing more, it seem’d to me, then my latest, SAUCY WORDS regarding Prime Ministers, CHURLS and CHARLATONS—sine cume patrium. Aye, I report, supple goose-legs dunked in a-goat’s milk! wrapped in rabbitsbutter’d liverwinkle and DELICIOUS London SAUCE! And, oh by Mount Parnassus, the welcoming I received in Heathsbridge! A gentle masque, produced for my HONOUR, with forty and a hundred boys in feathers, caste unto the air, a’covered with colored tunics of parrot hues a million, twisting and turning and twisting so as to herald God’s own GLORIE, and not that of their own soft NETHER-PARTS. But, Hark! I thought, in a flashe—not un-alike the jowly beard and glinting eye of ZEUS himself. What be this? What do these city gentles know of my WORDS and OPINONES? How have they a’read them, scanned them and weighted them for their WORTH? It appeared, they explain’d, a noble, rich, ambitious PAMPHLETEER had acquired them, without my knowing, and published them in a pamphlet—City Town Opiniones of noble worth and KNOWING, and of Noblisse and Towing, concerning the Body-Health a’Politick of London and its Surrounding Regions, of the North, the West, but not of the East etc. A wonderous title, me thought. But what scourge! What betrayel! I left the masque inflammed and marched across towne to this word-thief’s home. Bloated with ale, dripping with LAGER, I demanded an answer and REBUFF, for all his many INDECENCIES. Aye, but his wit was stronge, his purse was deep, and he knew how best to TAME me, and now I write to you, with happy hand and full, the new SERIAL writer for TOBIAS TRUNKET’S WONDER PAMPHLET, of GOODE SIZE and SHAPE, NOT THIRTY PAGES or MORE, DELIVERED EVER’Y THURSDAY ON MID-DAY, THE WEATHER, TRAFFIK, AND OUR LORD GOD PERMITTING.

Now my station is secured, I wonder, what to write? I scanned my brain for topics of wholly pamphlet worth. These new LOCOMOTIVES, perhaps—vile, black, dusty things that tear across the earth with the speed of Hermes’ winged brain, blowing and gushing with black-headed smoke and low, lonesome wails. But what does a country gentle know of traines? I am a sporting man, of the muddy earth and natural oak brambles. Of the horse’s flexing LOINS, his powerful chest, and sweaty FLANKS. I eat supper at home, in the glinting care of Margarate, my wife, Joseph, my son, and Ishmael, his barrel-chested Island Topangan friend. Eat well I do with leek and potato belly stew, pine cone pie, and macaroons. Nothing of blackened steel do I know. Away with you, low trains. Of you I have no use!

But, lo, I think: what of novel writing? This new fashione to sweep the gay parties of Londone, Oxenford, and Cambridge? Not a once have attended a masque or curtain party and not heard of the latest release from the jolly publishers on Cranklin Street. Words, ah yes words! My downy bedfellows! My companions, deepest friends and confidants. The happy vessels of my thoughts! The lusty hoppers of my brain! Of words I know and trust. Of words I shall write! The novel--Away! 

The history of this most peculiar of art forms is most peculiar of its own. It is whispered, in St. John’s wood and beyond, that a Sarah Horon Billingsdick wrote the first English novel, all of her own, the duration of her imprisonment atop Billingsdick tower, near Bristol, which she was serving for the humble crime of knocking clam pails with a Welshman. Her father was of Norman blood and proud, and had no use for the clam sucking Wester, locking his daughter away for nigh twelve years, though much the lady did protest! But a prudent mind the Welsh-leaning Billingsdick possessed, writing forty two novels in those long years. Not of a horses turd are any a one of them worth, though every Englishwoman, from Hastings to York, now emulates Lady Billingsdick in drawing pen to paper and letting their bouncy chests burst free with eager thought and emotion. Fathers be damned! Try and draw your young daughter away from a Billingsdick serial and face certainly being bitten, clawed at, struck— the ravenous screams of your prim rose of the most startling and unsavory STOCK. Some NOBLE English minds agree, the novel is a SCANDAL, and not for the nation builder, the clophopper, the tree chopper, the English Man, to participate in.

Aye, but bouncy chests aside, the novel can be a lusty ship for the haughty Englishman to board as well. Jarvis Jellybutton, Marvin Baumer, and Soothy Hall Summerton—three of the most broad shouldered, long-bearded, well be-sausaged Englishman this modest island has at once produced all a three write novels. But, their sterling packages not forgotten, these three craftsmen have seemed to begotten dull blades in recent years. Their cutting humor, shimmering wit and musky prose have seemed to wither on the page. If these three outdoors men, fine riders all, cannot satisfy the burning need, the heaving chest, the eager crotch of an entire nation and its literary tastes, what hope is there for us mortal Albions?

End of Part 1...

Lost Chapters Un-Lost: Ernest Hemingway

The following is the first in a series of lost writings from famous American wordsmiths. Composed early in his career, when his bold, muscular prose was first coalescing into a unique style, this newly discovered chapter is an alternative opening to Hemingway’s first enduring work, The Sun Also Rises. The Funion Institute of Angry Writers and Their Lost Work is both honored and excited to bring you fresh writing from this embattled American icon.

Harold T. Schnobb, Director of the Funion Institute of Angry Writers and Their Lost Work

The Sun Also Rises, an alternative opening.

Jews are good at boxing. I went to Princeton. I met a Jew there. He was good at boxing. I think he was good at boxing because he was so small. And because he was a Jew. He liked to punch people in the face because they made fun of him. That’s why he got so good at boxing. People made fun of him and he had to punch them. Right on the nose.
This good-boxing Jew got married right after college. I did not get married right after college. I drove ambulances in the war. What a bite that was. I suffered. But my Jew friend did not get to go. He had jaundice at the time, and webbed toes. The doctor took one look at him: “No.” He said, “You cannot be in this war.” So my Jew friend did not suffer. He had a rich mother. She died, he got a little cash, and he left for Europe with his wife. They didn’t work. They just lived off this cash, see.
This wife of his was jealous. She was not a Jew. I think she was Anglican. She was jealous of my Jew-friend-boxer because he was dark, and small, and he boxed. “What girl would not love that?” She thought. She thought too much. After a few years, when I was working in Paris, my Jew friend got a mistress. She was young. She was a student. My Jew friend got real scared. “What if his wife found out?” He thought. He thought too much. He decided to leave his wife. He wanted to go to South America.
“Come to South America, Jake.” He said, sitting in my office. He looked up at the ceiling.
“Why would I do that?” I said. I had work to do. I did a lot of work.
“There are beautiful women there.”
“There are beautiful women here.”
“That is true. But there are truly beautiful women in Brazil. Everyone is beautiful, in fact. You walk down the street and think, ‘My God. What is going on with these people? They are so beautiful. Where have I gone?’”
“That sounds nice.” I lied. I had work to do. At least that’s what I told him. Why would my friend want to leave Paris, I thought. “All places are the same.” I said. “You’ll go to South America and then you will want to leave. Maybe you will want to go to China. Who knows?”
My Jew friend got sad. He left, tipping his hat to me. “See you at dinner.”
At dinner we ate rolls and fish and we drank wine. It was my friend, his wife, and I. I wanted to cheer my friend up.
“Maybe we can go to Genoa.” I said.
“Really?” He asked.
“Why not? I know a girl there. A real swell girl. American, I think. She’ll show us around. Great legs.”
His wife got mad. She looked at me. She looked like she was going to hurt me. She stepped on my foot under the table. “Really great legs.” She stepped on my foot again.
Later on I was sitting on the Rue de Saint Mart, watching people walk by. A girl walked by on the street and she smiled at me. I smiled back, sipping some absinthe. She walked up to my table and sat down.
“The river looks beautiful.” She said.
“Yes it does.” I lied. I sipped some absinthe.
“Is that absinthe?” She said.
“Yes.” I said.
“May I have some?”
“Of course.” I said.
“Have sex with me.” She said.
“No.” I said.
We looked out at the river.
One time I was in Michigan with my father. He had a long rifle. I wasn’t old enough to have one. My uncle was with us. He was drunk. We were walking through tall grass. We were hunting duck. We came to the edge of the grass and the water popped out. The smooth-shouldered lake was so bright my uncle and father stopped. The ducks flew up. They could not see them. The ducks got away. The lake was beautiful and we looked at it. Later on my uncle shot his foot cleaning his gun.
I sat watching the river with the French girl. She may have been Corsican. She was ugly when she smiled and I was getting sick of her. I wanted to leave Paris.
"Sweet sweet darling lips," Brett said to me. "Leave Paris with me." So I did. 

THE END

Disgruntled Onion Reporter Leaks Next Week’s Headlines

In the interests of brevity, anonymity, and eroticism, here is a little taste—a flash of the brassiere, as it were—without any ado:


Stimulus Package Stimulates Area Man’s Package

Amtrak Customer Approaches Ticket Counter, Requests “Three-Way” Ticket

George Clooney: Does Anyone Want to Hang Out in Milan for a Few Weeks?

Married Actor Really Looking Forward to Using On-Screen Romance as Springboard for Real-Life Adultery

Using the Word “Awesome” in Office Memo Costs Intern His Job, Life

Salman Rushdie on Fatwa Drought: “Blasphemy Just Isn’t What it Used to Be”

Unfinished Album Cover That Will Never be Finished

By Kevin

Tyler Perry Single-Handedly Disproves Basis of Capitalism

HOLLYWOOD—With the impending release of the latest installment in the Madea franchise, Madea Goes to Jail, writer/director Tyler Perry has irrevocably cast doubt on the conceptual and practical undergirding of the capitalist system. According to the once-thought immutable laws of supply and demand, consumer demand for a particular good or service accounts for the very existence of that good or service, while determining its widespread or limited availability. The ubiquity—in a glut of maudlin, unfunny movies over the last few years—of Perry’s favorite character, Madea, without any corresponding public affinity for her, completely contradicts the aforementioned laws.

“What we’re seeing here is a contravention of hundreds of years of capitalism,” says Gerhard Mortimer, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. “Every once in a while an independently-wealthy maverick will bypass supply-demand strictures and force his product or half-baked vision on the public. But the system always rights itself; consumer demand will respond to those efforts by either embracing or crushing them. What we have here, however, is utterly perplexing.”

Other economists have moved beyond trying to explain what has come to be known as “The Perry Phenomenon” and are making predictions—mostly apocalyptic—for the future. “It’s not a matter of quality,” says Boston University economist Humphrey Lee. “You knew those step-dancing movies Hollywood kept making were awful, but you also knew that an equally awful part of our population was seeing those movies. There is no indication that anyone, anywhere has any desire to see these Madea movies.

“The capitalist system as we know it, based on supply and demand, has collapsed. The doors have opened for the production of unbelievably asinine products for phantom consumers. We’re not far away from some, I don’t know, reverse bathrobe being produced and marketed to us as some sort of new age blanket. Just watch. What? Are you serious???”

By a Sporting Benediction, Mine Super Bowl Prediction

By Lord Taylor Percy Keatsridge

Funion Poet Laureate











In summer, spirits are highest as
The audience, soused and silly, cheer on their crews.
The kickoff of the leather orb commences,
Sent into the outstretched arms of the Cardinal,
And the bowl, of most superior importance,
Is underway.

Come autumn the challenge remains deadlocked,
As summer proves unfruitful for each battalion.
Winter is fast approaching, the death of beauty looms,
As the mighty Roethlisberger, built like Ajax,
Fleet of foot like Achilles, humbly bows and takes
A knee.

The autumnal harvest offers no sustenance
To each family, as neither touches softly down.
Yet they rest, while The Bruce of Springsteen
Rings in the solstice with a swinging song.
The players are rested and ready, to take on the
Winter months.

The Steelers, that Pittsburgh Proletariat,
Receive the leather and swiftly steal away,
Scoring immediately, and put on extra.
The deadly sins, the days of creation,
The points by which they lead the Westerners:
Seven.

And so ends winter, and so starts spring.
The men are rejuvenated, like blossoms in bloom,
And proceed down the cavernous stretch. The
Cardinals enter enemy territory, but are stopped
Short of paradise, suspended in purgatory, and settle for
Field Goal.

And nothing further, as the mighty Roethlisberger,
On humble knee once more, liquidates the remaining
Ticks, and the Champions of the Bowl are named:
The Proletariat has risen, the Cardinal theocracy
Thwarted. Steelers score seven, Arizona only
Three.

Interview with a Cowpoke Riding in a Posse (Excerpt)

….Funion: Now, Mr. Johnson, I just finished your book, which I love by the way. I have to ask: what are the major influences behind your writing style? Where did you pick up such a succinct, individual second-person voice?

Cowpoke: OOOoooo WEE boys! We got ‘em on the slide now, yes we do! Bobby! Bobby. Where in the hell’s bells is that bo—oh Bobby, there you are. Good. Now listen, hear? You ride on back to Hadleyville and get Pepper Joe and Sam Waters and the marshal, don’t forget the marshal, too. I want to see you fly boy. I want you riding faster than a jackrabbit’s pecker at high moon. Go on now, get! What’s that? I told you what to do boy and you better get on and do it. Right as my left elbow. You ain’t but sixteen, son, they’ll be plenty a’more posses for ya. Sure as I’m breathin’. I’m going to send Frank and Jimmy around that steppe there and me and the rest will circle ‘em down at the pass. We need that marshal’s big-balled Peacemaker all right—cut those turd cows in half. And we need Pepper Joe’s rope. Now get!

Funion: Interesting. I take it that wasn’t something you acquired, it was just a natural voice for you?

Cowpoke: [Sound of hoofbeats]

Funion. That’s what I thought. Fascinating. Well, what struck me most about your book was the use of light imagery. Very subtle, very controlled. Especially in the jailbreak scene—the figures coming out of light, moving into dark, moving into shadow. There is a sense there, I guess, of imprisonment in life. Life in general, in its totality. The jail is lit, the night is moonless. Very profound, I thought. Any comments?

Cowpoke: Will you look at that! Sonuvasteer’sdick! Look at those rustlers move! Riding for keeps, they is. Keep those six-shooters smokin’ boys, we don’t ketch ‘em at the opening there we’ll lose ‘em for the night. That’s for sure. Where is that cabbage-headed boy, Bobby? GAAAAWD-damn! That boy's a turkey gullet. Looks like we’re by our lonesome’s boys, keep those sixers loaded, keep ‘em hot. Lordy, my crotch is burnin'--like a limestone on the sierra at noon. It's baking all-right. But I ain't lettin' Frank Miller get us beat. No sir. That lowdown rustlin', high brow cussin', ankle-bitting, shoulder scrappin', head boppin', steer's ass wrapped in butterscotch cream son of a snakeskin ain't makin' it out of Hadleyville again! Did you get a sight of Cap Johnson's face? Did ya see what the man did to it? Made it look like a baby's bottom after a hot springs soak! No sir. He and his boys ain't a goin' to make it now, no way.

Funion: Oh, my. That's right! I had never seen that connection before-- between the jail break sequence and the final scene...truly fascinating. Well, I'm a huge fan, as you can probably tell. Thank you so much for sitting down with me Mr. Johnson. 

Cowpoke: Mary Lincoln Todd and the Pope's Nose! We've been had boys! That ain't Frank Miller a'tal just came out of the pass. By the holy ghost's yellow belly, where'd that rustler go? There ain't but two ways outta there and we just as well took the one. That is daring, boys. I'll give him that. No two ways around it. Daring for sure. Sure as I'm plum drunk. Let's make it back, this posse ain't a going to make no purchase tonite, riding in the black. Better go on and tell the Marshal we been--what in hell? Frank Miller is that yo---

What I Think: Obama Working Too Much From Home

What I Think! is a Kenneth Albright bi-weekly editorial. Albright is Senior Funion Politico and Television Watcher.

As some of you may or may not know, this Barack Obama has been under a lot of scrutiny lately. Oh, for at least a month or so, maybe more. I've seen it myself: on CNN, FOX News, Des Moines' own News Chat with Ricky--night after night panelists, newspapermen, District 203 teachers all come on and discuss everything about the man-sized man, from his economic stimulus package to just his package, straight and simple. It drives me absolutely bonkers. Eight hours a day of Wolf Blitzer, John King, Lou Dobbs, King Blitzer, Ricky Richards can be exhausting. What did Barack eat for breakfast? Is he getting enough vitamins? Will he close Gitmo today or tomorrow? Bonkers! If I had senior journalists looking over my shoulder at the East Iowa Recycling Center like that I'd be in trouble, boy, let me tell you! No three lunches a day for me! Ho, ho! But I have to admit: something has been troubling me. I've got subscriptions to the Des Moines Star, the Des Moines Shield, The 'Moiner, the East Iowa Review of Words--all the biggies. Not a single one has mentioned this problem. Nobody else has seemed to notice: Just how lazy is Barack Obama exactly? And why is he working so much from home? 

I realize it is some sort of American political tradition for US presidents to live in this, "White House." Apparently, US presidents have been living there with their broods for something like 300 years or so. You see, it was built in 1603 by Dutch-Indian settlers who wanted a gentleman's club on the Potottototomac River. They disappeared, for a reason lost hundreds of years ago, and left us the house as a gift. My son, Robert, also told me they have spaceships underneath in case things get hairy here on the surface of the planet. And that 400 pastry chefs live in the basement. Smart thinking. I have a little confession: I always thought when you got elected president you just had to paint your house white, hence the aforementioned "white house" I told you about. Boy was I wrong. I guess this thing is HUGE! right smack dab in the middle of the capital. Geez, what will they think of next? 

Anyways, here's something you probably didn't know. Barack Obama has, in the THREE days he's been in office, built a thing called an "Oval Office." A home office, basically, right in the middle of this house! Try to picture it! The first president in US history to actually build his very own home office. I tried to clear out the garage last summer to make a little office for myself and I never got it done. The whole summer it took me, and I failed. It took this guy three days! And he succeeded! Don't get me wrong: I think home offices are great. A fine idea. But should the "leader of the free world" be working out of his home? I think it looks tacky. A little cheap, if you ask me. I talked to Charlotte Robins next door. She agreed with me. Just a little, you  know, unrefined. I mean, how are political leaders from around the world going to take it when they see a US president in sweat-pants and a v-neck signing bills from his own him. Geez! 

And know one is on his back about it, either! Last month I took three days off to "work from home" and I was getting calls everyday: "Ken, when you comin' back?" "Harumph! When you comin' back, buddy?" "Get your ass back here or your fired, asshole!" Stuff like that. It might be a good idea of somebody politely told Mr. Obama that this home office idea is not a good idea. He might get fired if they don't. But that's just what I think!