Max "Bunny" Sparber

SAILOR MARTIN produces what sounds like his version of the scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy meets the Munchkins, except, in this instance, he has been shipwrecked, eaten some potentially poisonous bark, and may be hallucinating. The song is recorded over an MP3 of a Tatar song called "Kuk Kugercin," recording date and original artists unknown. The song was made by recording new lyrics into a Casio Exilim camera on digital video mode, exporting the sound as a WAV file, editing the WAV file in Audacity, then combining the new lyrics with the original Tatar recording in Garage Band.

"SAILOR MARTIN'S SHIPWRECKED SONG" LYRICS:

I'm sailor Martin
I come from the ocean
I was in a shipwreck
On a nearby shore
I have been starving
I tried to eat a sea shell
I drank up my own urine
And tried to kill a parrot
I tried to eat some tree bark
It made my stomach sore

Won't you please help me
I want to eat your buildings
They are made of celery
Can I eat some moldings
Some shingles from your roof
Or the hinges off your door

You are all singing
While I am still here starving
You dance your dances
While I am needing food
You are so tiny
I'm so hungry I could eat you
Pop you in my mouth
Swallow you with a gulp
You'd be in my belly
Would you think that that is rude?

Your little costumes
They are made of licorice
And buttons made of gum drops
I think that you are edible
But maybe I'm delirious
From the tree bark that I chewed

LISTEN TO "SAILOR MARTIN'S SHIPWRECKED SONG:"



DOWNLOAD SAILOR MARTIN'S SHIPWRECKED SONG AS AN MP3

More Sailor Martin.

SYNOPSIS | HISTORY | COMMENTS | DOWNLOAD | ADDITIONAL MEDIA

SYNOPSIS: Inspired by the life of author Truman Capote, Cruelties follows, in reverse chronological order, the downward spiral of a popular author after writing an immensely successful crime book.

HISTORY: The first production of this Cruelties was as an Equity Showcase in New York in July of 2001, supported by the Drama League and directed by Rob Urbinati. The production later inagurated the Blue Barn Theatre's 15th season in 2003, paired with chelsea (from a to b and back again).

COMMENTS: I began writing Cruelties after seeing a rather remarkable interview with Truman Capote, rebroadcast, in part, on a documentary about the author. In it, Capote appeared to be suffering a nervous breakdown. He was flighty, flirty, drunk, and obviously enormously unhappy. I based my entire play around that one scene, working my way in reverse chronological order back from an author's death to the moment that defines his decline — in this instance, witnessing the hanging of a murderer, but one with whom the author had a very deep friendship.

Cruelties does not claim to be a biography of Capote. I did very little research on the author, instead, taking some of the framework of his life in order to build a fictional story. I wrote it, as I had written Minstrel Show, without naming any of the characters or offering any stage directions. Instead, the script consists of a series of monologues, with all of the dialogue from the main character running down the left side of the page and all the dialogue from the additional characters running down the right side of the page.

Rob Urbinati, who has directed this play twice, describes this style of writing as a "fetish" on my part, and, to an extent, I think he's right — I often tend to write with rather rigorous rules set out for myself, and they are often very limiting rules. Even when I write stage directions, I write few of them, and I don't bother to name my characters when I don't think it matters. In this case, naming any of the characters in the play, including the Truman Capote-styled main character, would literalize the script to much. If I called the lead Truman Capote, he would be Truman Capote, and I would be bound to write a biography as honestly and honorably as I could. But if I were to give him another name, say, Jonathan Mackelwhite, he would not be Truman Capote at all, and it might as well not borrow from the author's life at all. So I stayed firmly in the middle, by not naming my character, meaning that sometimes he explicitly is Capote, and sometimes he explicitly isn't, and I can choose which I prefer based on the dramatic needs of the story. I did the same thing with chelsea, in which my unnamed lead character is based on Andy Warhol.

Urbinati directed Cruelties as an equity showcase in Manhattan in July of 2001, and I traveled out to see it, which was rather fun. The production was good if necessarily suffered from a hurried production schedule, and I was able to attend the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island (there's a picture of me doing so here.) Urbinati later directed the play again in Omaha at the Blue Barn Theatre, which has been most often the home of my plays, and it is that production that I remember best.

Urbinati benefited from more time and a somewhat larger budget, and the play benefited from an extraordinary cast that he assembled. Omaha has a surprisingly robust theater scene, and the Blue Barn is particularly notable. The theater was founded by a group of graduates from the SUNY Purchase theater program, two of whom, Nils Haaland and Walkinshaw, are particularly fine stage actors. Cruelties featured both, with Haaland in the lead role. Also in the cast was a terrific actress named Pam Carter, who I mention both because she was magnificent in the play and because, to our enormous shock, she died suddenly a few years ago.

Cruelties was the first of four scripts I wrote that comprise something of a quartet of plays about homosexuality in the 20th century (it was followed by chelsea, The Older Gentleman, and Buddy Bentley. I did not intend to write four plays on the subject, I did not realize when I wrote them that they would be linked in theme and mood, and I do not necessarily plan to return to this subject matter. I am not gay myself, and I suppose I gravitated toward this theme because I am interested in the experience of the disempowered — two of my earlier plays dealt with riots against Jews and blacks. But I wouldn't say that there was any real process in deciding to write these plays — the stories simply appealed to me when I began to write, and so I wrote them. I don't, at this moment, know what I will write about next, but eventually I will stumble on a story that seems especially appealing to me, and I shall write it.

With the release of Capote in 2005, Cruelties has been rendered somewhat redundant, unfortunately. Both the film and my play address the exact same subject, that of Truman Capote's artistic incapacity as a result of his experiences writing In Cold Blood, although we approach the question in significantly different way, and, to be perfectly frank, I think my play is better. Nonetheless, it is a little much to expect that a play that has been produced twice, once in Omaha, might attract any attention after Capote, which won Academy Awards, particularly when it was then followed by yet another Truman Capote movie, Infamous, the following year.

This is the problem with stealing from history for drama -- it can't be copyrighted. Interestingly, when I first wrote Cruelties in 2000, I was asked who I imagined in the lead role, and I said Philip Seymour Hoffman. Perhaps some time in the future I will have the opportunity to steal Hoffman from Capote's writer and director for a near-identical project of my own.

DOWNLOAD Cruelties here.

To read the script, you will need a copy of Adobe's free Acrobat Reader program. Download it here.

ADDITIONAL MEDIA: At the end of the play, the character referred to as the Cowboy sings a song, which is pretty common in my plays, as most of what I have written for the theater are musicals masquerading as dramas, and somebody eventually bursts into song.

LISTEN TO "WASN'T WE A PAIR":



DOWNLOAD "WASN'T WE A PAIR.".

More plays of Max Sparber.

DOGGEREL WEEKLY MAGAZINE
Limericks, Bawdy Songs, Drinking Songs, and Other Poetic Marginalia
Volume 1, Number 20--January 28, 2001
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

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CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Don't Even Ask Me About It
2. Letter: Oh, My Head
3. A Toast
4. Poem:
5. Dope Song: Junker's Lament (Lewis "Nimble-Finger" Normandy)
6. Limerick: One Morning a Hapless Young Haitian (Horst Zweibach)
7. Poem: Bad Little Sister (Tallyho Wantsack)
8. Limerick: A Young Celibate Couple from Bowdoin (Chris O'Carroll)
9. Poem: Bright Shining Spear (Llewtrah)
10. Classic Doggerel: Alas! (Rufinus)
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Don't Even Ask Me About It

It was painful, it was humiliating, and I can't believe that it was broadcast on national television. I simply can't. I have spent the past few weeks recovering, and the doctors think it would be best if I just threw myself back into my work. So here's the latest issue of Doggerel Weekly, and look for more in the weeks to come, unless my humiliation wells up again and I go into seclusion once more.

No, no, I see you getting ready to ask. Don't. I won't answer. Let's just let it go, won't you. I just want to forget about it.

Max Sparber, editor

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LETTERS: Oh, My Head!

Oh, that really smarts! Why did you do that? What on earth were you thinking? Look what you've done! I'm going to have to get stitches for this, you know! You're lucky you didn't kill me, hitting me like that! Was it meant as some sort of joke?

Ow, you've hit me again! Will you stop doing that? Put that down please. Honestly, you're really starting to scare me now! I'm feeling a little woozy, and my head is in terrible pain. Won't you call a doctor for me?

Are you going to hit me again? Please don't. Please.

Signed,

I asked you not to, and you went ahead and hit me again.

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TOASTS: We toast another week without prosecution

A drink, my lass, in a deep clear glass,
Just properly tempered by ice,
And here's to the lips mine have kissed,
And if they were thine, here's twice.

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POEM: Let the Band Play On
by Max Sparber

The band is in the streets
They're playing a sad melody
Let the band play on, my angel
Let them play I prithee
Pay them for the song they're playing
Ask them to play it again
A fitting end to this affair we're having
It needs a fitting end.

We seemed so young when we began this
And now we seem so frail
The lies I fear have aged us darling
The capers and wassail
You were never mine to have, my angel
And soon you will be gone
So let's listen to this mournful song, dear,
And let the band play on.

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DOPE SONG: Junker's Lament
by Lewis "Nimble-Finger" Normandy

There are things that God never approved of;
And there are acts that would corrupt a monk;
There is a tar that is mixed up by Satan;
O I'm not a man who can say no to junk.

It's a sin but I am a sinner;
And it's a crime but I'm not one for law;
If there's a needle I won't be far behind it;
O Junk has a remarkable draw.

I've traded my soul for the poppy;
I've ransomed my life and I'm sunk;
The bliss is short-lived but I'm hooked, lad,
O I'm not a man who can say no to junk

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LIMERICK: One Morning a Hapless Young Haitian
by Horst Zweibach

One morning a hapless young Haitian
Gulped his keys down along with his ration
If you'd like to know,
Where then they did go,
Use the process of elimination

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POEM: Bad Little Sister
by Tallyho Wantsack

Sister Grace, draped in black,
devoted to things divine,
walked the hallways silently
secretly swilling wine.

Her hollowed Good Book
contained things of questionable taste
and after receding to her room each night
her praises always came posthaste.

A smile would ignite under her habit
after her nightly prayers had been said.
She never liked getting up early, it was noted,
but she indeed liked going to bed.

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LIMERICK: A Young Celibate Couple from Bowdoin
by Chris O'Carroll

A young celibate couple from Bowdoin
Groaned, "Our will to resist is erowdoin.
We may soon be doing
Some long-deferred scroing,
'Cause right now our hormones are explowdoin."

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POEM: Bright Shining Spear
by Llewtrah

A knight of the realm on his charger bay,
Rode the paths of Hertfordshire,
And upon the road he met a maid,
Who greatly admired his bright shining spear,
Who greatly admired his bright shining spear.

"Kind sir, kind knight," the maiden said,
"What brings you riding round 'bout here?
Your armor is silver, red plumes on your head,
But I most admire your bright shining spear,
But I most admire your bright shining spear!"

The knight he spoke to the maiden bold,
Who stood in his way and showed no fear,
"Young maid, you stand 'twixt me and my goal,
Beware you're not pierced by my bright shining spear,
Beware you're not pierced by my bright shining spear."

The maiden laughed slyly and winked her eye,
It seemed her intention was clear,
"So won't you dismount and then by and by,
You may pierce me with your bright shining spear,
You may pierce me with your bright shining spear.

The knight he dismounted and put down his shield,
Took the young maiden and drew her near,
Kissed her and pressed her and she did yield,
And then she was pierced by his bright shining spear,
And then she was pierced by his bright shining spear.

He kissed her and pressed her and she to his charms,
Succumbed to the knight in his gear,
Then afterwards she did rest in his arms,
"You've wounded me deep with your bright shining spear,
You've wounded me deep with your bright shining spear!"

The blood it ran red from the maiden's cunt,
From the sweet wound that never will heal,
That bleeds when at first it suffers the brunt,
Of a man who does pierce with his bright shining spear,
Of a man who does pierce with his bright shining spear!

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: Alas!
by Rufinus

Once plighted, no men would go whoring;
They'd stay with the ones they adore,
If women were half as alluring
After the act as before.

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THE FINAL WORD: An Epitaph

FRANCES CHERRY:
HIC JACET PECCATORUM MAXIMUS
[Here lies the greatest of sinners]

(Shottesbrook, England, 1773)

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ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

LEWIS "NIMBLE-FINGER" NORMANDY is 100 percent man and 100 percent American, brother. Sure, he's got his vices, but, hell, the war does hard things to a fellow and, you know, whatever it takes to get you through the night. Hey, he served out flag and did honor to our military, and he didn't even get a thank you when he came back--people spit at him! And at night, when he closes his eyes, he can still see the fires, and still see the mass graves, and still see the dead, empty eyes of all those children. If you had seen what Lewis has seen, buddy, you wouldn't be so quick to judge him.

HORST ZWEIBACH is a canal-barge operator's mate in the Ruhr Valley. Following a distinguished academic career at the Stuttgart School of Canal-Barge Operation. When not composing salacious limericks, Horst enjoys folk-dancing, meerschaum-carving and photographing terns.

TALLYHO WANTSACK is currently employed as a bagger at a Mississippi farmer's market. She is also trying to bag herself a new beau, setting her sights high toward, "a man with more'n five teeth." After all, a lesser man wouldn't be able to enjoy her "Charmlette," the pride and joy of the Mississipp' State Fair cook-off. Don't get excited, she's keeping the recipe for her famous omelet to herself. She is willing to divulge one little tidbit though, "The surprise is what's inside, darlin'." So true for many things Tallyho, so true.

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. Additionally, he is a singer/songwriter famous for his hot ukulele licks and his Tin Pan Alley-styled compositions. Find out more about Max at his Web page: http://ukuleleking.50megs.com/.

CHRIS O'CARROLL is an actor, stand-up comedian, and author of "Take These Rhymes ... Please: Rude Limericks and Other Crimes Against Literature. " So he has three ways of not making a living. No person of taste and refinement would have any use for his anticdisposition.com Web site, but you folks are another matter. See you there.

LLEWTRAH is a 35-year-old Brit with an insatiable appetite for classic and new bawdry, especially songs, though she can't read music. To the dismay of her family, she began writing perverted verse and odious odes as soon as she learnt "those words." To the continued dismay of her husband, she never "grew out of it." She also has several pussies (of the feline kind).

Read more Doggerel!

THIS WEEK, Max jet packs passed two locations in Wisconsin. The first is Lake Pepin, the widest naturally occurring part of the Mississippi River, located between Wisconsin and Minnesota. The second is a farm house in Stockholm, Wisconsin, that once per week serves freshly cooked pizza made with ingredients grown right on the farm. Delicious, and just what an exhausted jet packer needs to fill his hungry belly.

MORE FROM THE JET PACK TOUR!

SYNOPSIS | HISTORY | REVIEWS | COMMENTS | DOWNLOAD

SYNOPSIS: boyELROY tells the rather strange secret lives of cartoon characters, from the eponymous Elroy Jetson (in this play a genetically created toy for his father) to Archie (who tells of his multiple kidnappings at the hands of visitors from space). A blend of satire, science fiction, and folk tales, boyELROY consists of a series of monologues that can be presented in any order, staged in any way, and, as the author has placed the text of the play in the public domain, can be performed by anyone at any time.

HISTORY: boyELROY was written in 1999 and performed as part of the Blue Barn Theatre's Theatre 'Round Midnight series. It was directed by Tim Siragusa and ran for a five week run, finding a surprisingly avid repeat audience.

Additionally, Manbites Dog Theater produced a staged reading of boyELROY in 2007.

REVIEWS: "A one-hour trip through pretentiousness." — The Omaha World-Herald

"A friend who accompanied me to boyELROY whined that he didn't like theatre and was completely prepared to be bored. I promised him this wasn't classic theatre and catered to people like him. Fifteen minutes into the show, he leaned over and said, 'This is incredible. I love it.'" — The Reader

COMMENTS: Here is a one-act play that I have an unaccountable fondness for. I wouldn't feel right about demanding money for other people to produce it, but I think it features some fine, fun writing from me, and I was extremely pleased by the Blue Barn production. The play is a series of monologues, and is written without any stage directions, which I have done with several other plays (Minstrel Show initially had no stage directions, and Cruelties still doesn't.)

The monologues themselves are rather grim, from Natassia (the villainess from the Bulwinkle cartoons) describing her sexual slavery at the hands of the Americans during the United States' occupation of the Russian town of Archangel to Shaggy (of Scooby Doo fame) confessing that his adventures in the Mystery Mobile were part of a revolutionary Maoist sex cult. People who came to the show expecting that it would be a comedy were often startled at the script's brutality and frequent melancholy. Fortunately we were blessed with a good cast, and they created quite a lot of comic business that saved the production from simply being grotesque. The director, Tim Siragusa, had a long background with Omaha's famous, wildly experimental Magic Theatre. He encouraged the performers to explore unexpected physical gestures and deliberate mispronunciations, and also chose a startling soundtrack of techno remixes of world music. He dressed the performers in minimal costumes, and they wore knee and shoulder pads. The resulting production was great fun, although the critic from the Omaha World-Herald, Jim Minge, declared the show to be a "one hour trip through pretentiousness."

Reading his review, we printed up hundreds of handbills with his photo on it, capped by an Elroy Jetson hat, surrounded by the words "This is your last weekend to see the play that Jim Minge declared a one-hour trip through pretentiousness." Minge was a young man who had been granted a column called "pop musings" that provided a cursory, bland look at youth culture, and these handbills helped us sell out that weekend, whereupon we extended the play for another week.

DOWNLOAD boyELROY here.

To read the script, you will need a copy of Adobe's free Acrobat Reader program. Download it here.

More plays of Max Sparber.

DOGGEREL WEEKLY MAGAZINE
Limericks, Bawdy Songs, Drinking Songs, and Other Poetic Marginalia
Volume 1, Number 19--December 13, 2000
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

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CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: We're Back and Better Than Ever--Wait, No. We're Back and Exactly Like We Were Previously!
2. Letter: Um--Would You Believe That I Was Held Hostage by a Terrorist Group and Made to Rob Banks for Them?
3. A Toast
4. Poem: Fetchin' Gretchen (Tallyho Wantsack)
5. Dope Song: The Risks of Tourism (Donald Pollydoodle)
6. Limerick: One of Them Was His Father (Lamont Cranerry)
7. Poem: The Sad Song of Age (Sam McDougal Magoo McShane)
8. Limerick: The Trouble with Little Dogs (Max Sparber)
9. Poem: Bright Shining Spear (Llewtrah)
10. Classic Doggerel: Two Irishmen, Two Irishmen
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: We're Back and Better Than Ever--Wait, No. We're Back and Exactly Like We Were Previously!

Hello friends,

Ah, how refreshing a little, unannounced break can be! I did some of the things I have always wanted to do: I starred in a student film, I wrote a one-act play for a local theater, and I spent an inordinate amount of time playing ukulele. Hey, it keeps a guy busy! But I am back on track with Doggerel now (and have been working on the Web page all this time as well--man, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to get listen on search engines!)

So keep those poems coming! Nothing will stop us now! We're going to plow forward, without pause, without hesitation, without sign of letting up--until I get a little tired again, of course. They I shall take another break.

Max Sparber, editor

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LETTERS: Um--Would You Believe That I Was Held Hostage by a Terrorist Group and Made to Rob Banks for Them?

Dear editor,

It's been three weeks. Where the hell are you? I need my fix of Doggerel!

An anxious fan,
Falasha Springs, Idaho

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
WHAT IS THAT THING IN YOUR HAIR?

Oh, horror, get it out! Get it out! It's CRAWLING on you!

Oh, no, my error--it is just the latest copy of Doggerel Magazine. Share this great novelty item with your friends, parents, and school teachers. A hit at any party! A guaranteed conversation starter! Simply press that "forward button" on your email program and watch the yucks begin!

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TOASTS: We toast another week without prosecution

A glass in the hand's worth two on the shelf--
Tipple it down and refresh yourself!

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POEM: Fetchin' Gretchen
by Tallyho Wantsack

Peasant Gretchen's cupboards were bare
Her cellar empty of meat,
So down the path to market she ran
To fetch something to eat.

It wasn't something sweet she craved,
No pastries or candy for her,
Past the shops with fresh produce too
She wanted a warm meal to serve.

To the livestock barn
Gretchen hurriedly skipped
Ignoring friendly small-talk,
It was a hot meal she craved so badly
Her mind was set on cock.

The one she wanted was spotted quickly
It was the biggest of them all
For when she went to pick it up
She began to bawl

Her muscles strained
And her brow began to sweat,
But famished peasant Gretchen
Would not give up yet.

She sank to her knees
To better her grip
On the bulky, stubborn cock,
Envisioning it in her oven
To help her endure the long walk.

Back home
She fell
To the floor of her kitchen
Under the weight of the magnificent beast.

"I'll eat for a week!"
Gretchen exclaimed with glee
Then fervently began to feast.

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DOPE SONG: The Risks of Tourism
by Donald Pollydoodle

When I traveled abroad to Tijuana
I smoked some mind-numbing marijuana
I awoke in distress
Packed in ice and undressed,--
And one of my kidneys was gone-a!

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LIMERICK: One of Them Was His Father
by Lamont Cranerry

That illegitimate fellow, Sam McShane
Has a preposterously elongated last name
As if McShane wouldn't do
He's got McDougal Magoo
And says his three-timing mother's to blame.

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POEM: The Sad Song of Age
by Sam McDougal Magoo McShane

I was a lad not long ago
And where did my childhood flee?
When did I turn to chasing girls,
And why won't they chase after me?

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LIMERICK: The Trouble with Little Dogs
by Max Sparber

His desires could not be contained
And his efforts to resist left him pained
At last he gave in
And he sinned and he sinned
And left the poodle bewildered and stained.

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POEM: Bright Shining Spear
by Llewtrah

A knight of the realm on his charger bay,
Rode the paths of Hertfordshire,
And upon the road he met a maid,
Who greatly admired his bright shining spear,
Who greatly admired his bright shining spear.

"Kind sir, kind knight," the maiden said,
"What brings you riding round 'bout here?
Your armor is silver, red plumes on your head,
But I most admire your bright shining spear,
But I most admire your bright shining spear!"

The knight he spoke to the maiden bold,
Who stood in his way and showed no fear,
"Young maid, you stand 'twixt me and my goal,
Beware you're not pierced by my bright shining spear,
Beware you're not pierced by my bright shining spear."

The maiden laughed slyly and winked her eye,
It seemed her intention was clear,
"So won't you dismount and then by and by,
You may pierce me with your bright shining spear,
You may pierce me with your bright shining spear.

The knight he dismounted and put down his shield,
Took the young maiden and drew her near,
Kissed her and pressed her and she did yield,
And then she was pierced by his bright shining spear,
And then she was pierced by his bright shining spear.

He kissed her and pressed her and she to his charms,
Succumbed to the knight in his gear,
Then afterwards she did rest in his arms,
"You've wounded me deep with your bright shining spear,
You've wounded me deep with your bright shining spear!"

The blood it ran red from the maiden's cunt,
From the sweet wound that never will heal,
That bleeds when at first it suffers the brunt,
Of a man who does pierce with his bright shining spear,
Of a man who does pierce with his bright shining spear!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLASSIC DOGGEREL: Two Irishmen, Two Irishmen

Two Irishmen, two Irishmen were digging in a ditch,
One called the other a dirty son of a--

Peter Murphy had a dog, a very fine dog was he.
He gave it to a lady to keep her company.

She taught it, she taught it, she taught it how to jump.
He jumped right up on her petticoat and bit her in the--

Country boy, country boy sitting on a rock.
Along came a bumble bee and stung him on the--

Cocktail, ginger ail, five cents a glass.
If you don't believe me, you can shove it up your--

Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies.
If you get his with a pail of shit,
Be sure to close your eyes.

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THE FINAL WORD: An Epitaph

Here lies John Racket
In his wooden jacket,
He kept neither horses nor mules;
He lived like a hog,
He died like a dog,
And left all his money to fools.

(Woodton, Norfolk)

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ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

TALLYHO WANTSACK is currently employed as a bagger at a Mississippi farmer's market. She is also trying to bag herself a new beau, setting her sights high toward, "a man with more'n five teeth." After all, a lesser man wouldn't be able to enjoy her "Charmlette," the pride and joy of the Mississipp' State Fair cook-off. Don't get excited, she's keeping the recipe for her famous omelet to herself. She is willing to divulge one little tidbit though, "The surprise is what's inside, darlin'." So true for many things Tallyho, so true.

DONALD POLLYDOODLE has heard that "Polly-Wolly-Doodle-All-The-Day" song, yes, thank you for mentioning it. Yes, he is quite familiar with the song, and, yes, he is aware of how funny it is that his name sounds vaguely like the song. Thank you.

LAMONT CRANERRY was not blessed with power to cloud men's minds in his constant battle against evil, alas, but mix him with a little bit of water and he does wonders for clearing up a urinary tract infection.

SAM MCDOUGAL MAGOO MCSHANE just read the poem that Lamont Craberry wrote about him, and is quite upset.

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. Additionally, he is a singer/songwriter famous for his hot ukulele licks and his Tin Pan Alley-styled compositions.

LLEWTRAH is a 35-year-old Brit with an insatiable appetite for classic and new bawdry, especially songs, though she can't read music. To the dismay of her family, she began writing perverted verse and odious odes as soon as she learnt "those words." To the continued dismay of her husband, she never "grew out of it." She also has several pussies (of the feline kind).

Read more Doggerel!

AIRPLANE CRASH films had a strange vogue in the Seventies, beginning, of course, with 1970's Airport, which not only managed to make more than $100 million at the box office, but garnered a surprising number of Academy Award nominations and spawned three sequels. The film was based on the novel of the same name by Arthur Hailey, who had actually kicked the whole trend off 14 years earlier with a script for a 1956 television movie titled Flight Into Danger, about a rash food poisoning aboard a flight that incapacitates its crew. This was adapted into a feature-length film titled Zero Hour! a year later, and was actually the source material for Airplane!, the film that satirized the whole genre.

In Flight Into Danger, Haily also created the structure that airline disaster, and, for that matter, pretty much all disaster movies, would hew to. Rather than follow a single character, the film follows a disparate group of characters, all experiencing their own little dramas, although we are introduced to them quite briefly and most of their dramatic arc takes place during the disaster. This is the structure Haily returned to for Airport, and it was borrowed for such popular disaster films as The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and just about any other film that involved a large cast and something blowing up. It was also the structure for Hailey's soap opera-like Hotel, which was sot of like disaster film without the disaster, and was used extensively in shows such as The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

Disaster movies were especially popular on television, where, after all, Hailey had instigated the movement. Shatner made several, including the a strange blending of airplane disaster and supernatural thriller called The Horror at 37,000 Feet. The genre was so popular that when Shatner made his second airplane disaster film, 1978's Crash, the true story of the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, it was the second time that year the story had been adapted to the small screen.

Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a Lockheed L-1011 that plowed into the Florida Everglades in 1972, and was notable for two reasons: It was the first crash of a wide-bodied aircraft, and, after parts of it were salvaged and installed in other airplanes, they prompted stories of hauntings. The first of the 1978 televisions movies about flight 401 was about the hauntings, but this one recreated the crash itself, and doesn't stray far from the typical structure of an airline disaster film. The film features a large cast of television actors, all playing characters in the middle of a crisis. There is a woman who has just discovered she is pregant, played, I believe, by Cagney and Lacy's Sharon Gless (the characters are introduced so quickly, it is hard to remember who played who). There is a feuding couple, played by Lorraine Gary and Ed Nelson, although the source of their feud isn't very clear. There is a young Cuban woman and her new husband, and a businessman whose company is failing, and Ron Glass of Barney Miller, who doesn't seem to be experiencing any life crisis at all, but merrily works his way through computerized printouts of the inventory for Gimbels.

Shatner plays Carl Tobias, an airplane inspector, and so he isn't on the flight when it crashes, which it does early on, and spectacularly. In a series of extremely brief shots, we see people flung from their seats, their clothes unaccountably torn from their bodies, as entire sections of the airplane drop off into the Everglades. The film as directed by Barry Shear, who had helmed a film called Across 110th Street a few years earlier, which is famous primarily for being among the most violent Blaxploitation film produced in the 1970s. Even in a genre that was notorious for excessive bloodshed, Shear managed to make his mark with machine gunnings, burning corpses, and a combination crucifixion/castration. So Shear had a taste for hysteria, and, the moment the plane comes to rest in the Everglades, it starts. This is not one of those films where people find a surprising calm in themselves after a disaster, and grimly set about finding fellow survivors and tending to the wounded. No, the swamp is filled with floating bodies, and the survivors instantly start screaming bloody murder. The bloodshed is lensed demurely -- this is, after all, a television movie -- but Shear gives an effective sense that the aftermath is a slaughterhouse. And it was -- 101 people died in the crash.

This is where Shatner comes in. For those following his 70s career, his performance as Carl Tobias is unexpected. Unlike the weak, indecisive characters Shatner specialized in throughout the decade, Tobias is aggressive and no-nonsense. He sets through the swamp, pulling survivors to safety and searching the wreckage for the flight recorder, and he's all business. There's a familiarity in his bravado, and to his clipper, curt line delivery: It's the first time in most of a decade that Shanter seems to be borrowing mannerisms from Kirk. And after watching him play a parade of nervous, alcoholic, emotionally crippled characters, it's a bit of a surprise to see just how commanding Shatner can be when the role demands it. At one point, toward the end of the film, his superior begins to pressure him to wrap up the investigation in a way that will exonerate the airline, Shatner turns toward the man and places his hand on his jacket. It's a casual gesture, but filled with real menace, and the man shrinks away as though he were about to be slapped.

It's hard to know whether Shatner's 70s film career was based on external limitations -- if he played a succession of spineless and morally vacuous men because those were the roles offered to him, or if he was deliberately attempting to distance himself from Kirk, and demonstrate that he had broader range. Whatever the case, even though Crash is a minor offering in Shatner's career, it's interesting to see that he was still capable of seizing command when the role called for it. A year later, Shatner would be back on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, back in the role he is best-known for in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and it's interesting to see this film as a sort of test-run, getting Shatner back into shape to play Kirk.

More films of William Shatner.

HERE IS THE ENTIRETY of Minstrel Show, Or The Lynching of William Brown, presented in five parts. The video was taken from a production by the Blue Barn Theatre in February, 2006, directed by Rob Urbinati and starring Kelcey Watson and Carl Brooks.

PART ONE


PART TWO


PART THREE


PART FOUR


PART FIVE

THE ODD INGESTER is a fan of regional candies. Anybody with extensive road-tripping experience will know the experience of walking into a gas station off the side of a highway and being confronted by a candy they have never heard of. A quick look at the candy reveals it to be manufactured nearby, and that candy will show up in every single gas station for several counties, or even several states, and then abruptly disappear, never to be seen again. At least, not until the return trip.

King Bing comes from Palmer's Candy Company in Sioux City, Iowa, and is a three-pack of a candy generally sold in grouping of two, called Twin Bing. The company has been around since 1878, and created the Bing all the way back in 1923, and they've obviously maintained a degree of popularity in Iowa. It seems you can't go into an Iowan gas station or grocery store without seeing Bings, although once you cross the border, into Nebraska, for example, or Minnesota, all of a sudden there is no Bing to be found. I suspect the candy may be available in Minnesota, but I've never found it.

The Bing is not a very complicated candy bar. It's a mound of lumpy chocolate surrounding a cherry flavored core. The chocolate is lumpy because it is filled with crushed peanuts, and the whole thing has a very light consistency as a result. The peanuts and chocolate are particularly good, while the cherry middle has a marshmallowy texture and a too-sweet, almost artificial cherry flavor that may turn some people off. But the cherry flavor might also be an acquired taste -- The Odd Ingester wasn't crazy about the flavor of the Bing when he first had it, and has grown to enjoy it. Every time he passes through Iowa nowadays, The Odd Ingester picks up a pack of Bing; he might not eat it regularly if it were easily available in Minnesota, but as a snack on a road trip it's an enjoyable novelty.

More from the Odd Ingester!

SYNOPSIS | VIDEO | HISTORY | REVIEWS | COMMENTS | DOWNLOAD | ADDITIONAL MEDIA

SYNOPSIS: Minstrel Show; Or, The Lynching of William Brown retells the story of the real-life murder of an African-American man in Omaha, Neb., in 1919, through the narration of two fictional African-American blackface performers.

VIDEO: The entirety of Minstrel Show can be watched online, in five parts, as a digital video. Click here to see Minstrel Show.

HISTORY: Minstrel Show was first produced by Omaha's Blue Barn Theatre, under the Artistic Directorship of Hughston Walkinshaw, in March of 1998. The original production was directed by Laura Partridge and starred Jonathan Wilson and David Lewis. It was performed in the rotunda of the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha, the actual site of the history lynching.

Since then, Minstrel Show has been produced seven additional times, including a production by Queens Theatre in the Park in Queens, New York, in 1999, and the Connelly Theatre in Manhattan later that same year. Both of these productions were directed by Rob Urbinari, who has directed the play several additional times.

REVIEWS: "Mr. Sparber has taken a shameful, little-noted event in American history and fashioned a raw, gripping work. He has woven two strands of storytelling artfully and seamlessly into a striking tapestry. ... 'Minstrel Show' is not, to be sure, a comfortable evening’s entertainment. Recent protests about the theater’s use of blackface images in its advertising attest to the work’s power to provoke controversy. But it is a play that bears unrelenting witness, a crucial part of the search for truth." -- The New York Times

"Unsettling and compelling, Max Sparber's 'Minstrel Show or the Lynching of William Brown' re-creates a harrowing true story about the 1919 lynching of a jailed black man, as seen through the eyes of a couple of fictional song-and-dance men. The season opener for New Jersey Repertory Company begins on a light note with a couple of knockabout minstrel comics singing "yahoo" songs from the cotton fields, then quickly turns into a graphic narrative of angry crowd hysteria." -- Variety

"The playwright Max Sparber has taken the startling step of telling the story of a 1919 lynching in Omaha, Nebraska, through the testimony of two fictional blackface minstrels who witnessed it all. It’s easy to forget how much intelligence and sheer talent it takes to transform pain into any kind of crowd-pleasing humor; the triumph of this play — realized by two subtle, powerful actors, Spencer Scott Barros and Tim Cain, and the director, Rob Urbinati — is that the audience is constantly entertained but never allowed to forget about the minstrels’ degrading world. In that context the lynching seems entirely normal — and all the more horrific for it. In the end, what may be the most startling thing about using these entertainers to teach us our history is the disturbing resonance it creates within our celebrity-filled era." — The New Yorker

"A powerful piece of theater ... . It’s a window into the past — and the present." — The Denver Post

"We become dumbstruck bystanders of events too terrible to fully comprehend. And as the reality of what happened that fateful September night slowly sinks in, we ultimately find ourselves rendering the only verdict we’re able — a silent, absolute assent — [at] the drama’s final words: 'We’re witnesses to history. We want it told, and we want it told right.'" — Westword

"It’s a horrific, compelling, masterful story: enough to take the starch out of anyone’s collar." — CurtainUp

"I can’t stress enough that this play is not to be missed. The power of this performance ... is monumental even in its starkness." — The Omaha Reader

"Sparber's impeccable attention to history and its silences underlines the edification and the entertainment the minstrel show and the melodrama offer." — The Independent Weekly

"A hard-hitting, must-see tour de force." — The Omaha City Weekly

"Max Sparber’s Minstrel Show, or the Lynching of William Brown, is artful and entertaining, but primarily a triumph of storytelling that recreates those dark hours with theatrical power. More amazing, it does so unflinchingly, without laying blame or “lest we forget” sermonizing." — The Omaha Reader

"Once in a great while, a locally produced show comes along that truly rates that adjective: great.

Minstrel Show, or the Lynching of William Brown, is historically rich, contemporarily relevant, compelling, evocative - and great - theater." — The Omaha World-Herald

"Riveting and harrowing ... one compelling theater piece." -- The Newark Star-Ledger

COMMENTS: I moved, somewhat without planning to, to Omaha, Nebraska in 1996. I had never visited the city, and so, my first week, set out to read a little about my new home. At the library, I discovered a book written by the Federal Writer's Project during the depression that offered a map of downtown labeled with interesting historical tidbits, such as former brothels and gambling houses. Wandering around downtown, visiting these sites, I eventually reached the Douglas County Courthouse. Standing before it, I read an astounding, horrifying account of a lynching that had occurred on that spot in 1919. William Brown, a man crippled with rheumatism, had been accused of molesting a white woman, and thousands had stormed the massive, bunker-like courthouse to get him. During the course of the assault on the courthouse, the mob even attacked their own mayor, hanging him from a lamppost, where he would have died had not policemen rescued him.

I spent the next year researching this story, reading the newspaper accounts of the era. At the same time, I had become friends with Hughston Walkinshaw, who had cofounded and was then artistic director of Omaha's remarkable Blue Barn Theatre. He had invited me to oversee the theater's late-night season, called Theatre 'Round Midnight. I approached him with the idea of dramatizing the lynching of William Brown, and he at once agreed, placing it on the schedule for the theater's next season before I had ever even written one word of the script.

To our surprise, we were granted the use of the rotunda of the Douglas County Courthouse, the actual site of the lynching, to perform the play. It was the subject of some controversy when it opened: State Senator Ernie Chambers, without either reading or seeing the play, condemned it, calling for a black boycott of the production. He was mostly ignored, and the play enjoyed an extended, sold out run. Shortly thereafter, the Omaha production was invited to Denver, and also played one weekend in Carmel, California.

Rob Urbinati, a director based out of New York but formerly a student in Omaha, heard about the play and requested a copy. He brought the script to Queens Theatre in the Park, where he is an artistic director, and the play inaugurated a minority theater project in 1999. The Queens Theatre also brought the play to Manhattan, coproducing it with Chain Lightning Theatre, later that year, where it recieved generally good reviews.

The play has continued to be produced since then, finding venues in Long Beach, Cal., Colorado Springs, Col., Pittsburgh, Penn. (it had a weekend run at the Warhol Museum), and, most recently, two productions in Durham, NC. In February of 2006, the play returned to Omaha's Blue Barn Theatre, with a brief transfer to the John Beasley Theatre, again under the direction of Rob Urbinati.

DOWNLOAD Minstrel Show here.

To read the script, you will need a copy of Adobe's free Acrobat Reader program. Download it here.

ADDITIONAL MEDIA: Minstrel Show features three songs drawn from field recordings of prison songs, as well as one so-called old-time hokum blues. The original recordings of the songs are available for download below, as a reference tool for productions of the play.

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LISTEN TO "EARLY IN THE MORNING":



DOWNLOAD "EARLY IN THE MORNING."

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LISTEN TO "I'M GOIN' HOME":



DOWNLOAD "I'M GOIN' HOME."

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LISTEN TO "COCAINE" (CONTAINS "FURNITURE MAN"):



DOWNLOAD "COCAINE."

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LISTEN TO "NO MORE, MY LORD":



DOWNLOAD "NO MORE, MY LORD."

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More plays of Max Sparber.

DOGGEREL WEEKLY MAGAZINE
Limericks, Bawdy Songs, Drinking Songs, and Other Poetic Marginalia
Volume 1, Number 18--November 15, 2000
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

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CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Rot
2. Letter: We Could Make an Origami Swan
3. A Toast
4. Poem: Mickey Wicked (Max Sparber)
5. Dope Song: Opium (Terrence Carroll)
6. Limerick: life in a trailer park (Lady Xaviere Night)
7. Poem: Untitled (Tallyho Wantsack)
8. Limerick: Dinner from a Pair of Misbehaving Sons (Jimmy Sodden)
9. Poem: Rambling Jack (Llewtrah)
10. Classic Doggerel: A Taking Girl
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Rot

Well, here it is, friends. With the leaves off the trees in our part of the world, we at Doggerel Weekly can only think of one subject, and it shows up again and again in this week's issue: Rot.

Yes, the stench of decay is in the air, and being true to our muses we must write about it. Again, I think this shows our daring: How many poems found in Reader's Digest deal explicitly with foul odors, as we do? I would guess none. Likewise, how many poems published in Yellow Silk would dare to find humor in decomposition? Not enough! But there it is, around us all the time, from the forgotten yogurt that molds in our refrigerators to the unfortunate squirrel putrefying by the side of the road--and we dare to point a finger at these awful things and say, "Yes! This too is funny! Damn you and your sophisticated, hoity toity humor, this is something we can really have a laugh at! You moneyed poets with your finger bowls and tea cozies may sit around and titter in your genteel way at jokes about the stock market and little bon mots about the decline of socialism, but you will never know the deeper, earthier pleasures of looking into a shallow grave and gibbering hysterically at what you find buried there!"

Well, friends, our tastes may be baser, but they are more honest, and so I say gibber on, friends, gibber on!

Max Sparber, editor

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LETTERS: We Could Make an Origami Swan

Dear editor,

It is only rarely that I write letters to an editor, and usually then only to editors of those magazines that have shown themselves to be of national importance: Time, Guns and Ammo, The New Yorker. But I must say, your magazine has struck me, and I cannot help but write. I will ask you the same thing I ask the larger magazines, and I hope that you will be kinder than they. So here is my question: What do you make of this rash?

Itching in Denver

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
DO YOUR PART FOR DEMOCRACY

Forward Doggerel Weekly to everyone you know and encourage them to subscribe. Will that help democracy? It can't hurt!

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TOASTS: We toast another week without prosecution

To alcohol: the cause of--and solution to--all of life's problems!

(Homer J. Simpson)

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POEM: Mickey Wicked
by Max Sparber

Look here, it's Mickey
See how he's running!
His eyes they do burn
With his wit and his cunning.
He's stolen before
And he'll be stealing again
Because his fingers are nimble
His nimble fingers ten.

He fancies himself dashing,
And the girls they adore him.
He savagely loves them,
And they savagely bore him.
What starts with filched presents,
Ends with wide bruises.
Someone bleeds every time
Mickey whores and he boozes.

He keeps a knife in his boots
And razors in his pockets
And he slashes at old ladies
And he pilfers their lockets.
Mickey's a runt, mate,
Yeah, you heard what I said;
We all mourned at his birth
And we'll dance when he's dead.

He's not the first like him
And there will be more;
Some simply are rotten
And sick at their core.
They think themselves slick,
With their flash talk and curses
But their flash it just makes them
Pretty corpses in hearses.

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DOPE SONG: Opium
by Terrence Carroll

When the night stretches on forever
And morning it will not come
I press the pipe into my mouth:
Three cheers for opium!

My hands they shake with pleasure now
And my tongue it is struck dumb
As I sink into the blissful sleep
That is brought by laudanum.

I will not drink that murderous whisky
Nor sip the demon rum;
Instead I look to the poppy seed
that brings forth opium.

I've spent up half my fortune now,
Which is half a mighty sum,
But I will pay the other half
To purchase laudanum.

Some say I'm a filthy wretch
A wastrel and a bum,
But my beloved habit drowns them out:
Three cheers for opium!

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LIMERICK: life in a trailer park
by Lady Xaviere Night

whorey sandy from down the street
entertained by day an entire fleet
they come to her stiff
and then leave with syph
they should have covered their meat

too goddamn many cats in this park
too many fucking dogs that bark
a guy behind me hammer a pounding
this kid with his rap music, noise is astounding
either i slit my wrists or get out of this park

the smell here is making my nose bleed
rotten tomatoes, bad incense, garbage and weed
those cats under us are beginning to rot
the druggies will never be caught
only in a trailer park can my habits i feed

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POEM: Untitled
by Tallyho Wantsack

Some prefer silk pajamas
And some favor cotton
But I myself
Like it best
When I'm wearin' nothin'.

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LIMERICK: Dinner from a Pair of Misbehaving Sons
by Jimmy the Banjo

How could you let this rot, my lad?
How could you have let this meal go bad?
It's gone gray and it's stinking
And it's got me to thinking
That maybe we should feed it to dad.

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POEM: Rambling Jack
by Llewtrah (reworked from the folk song)

As I was out walking out to Moreton Marsh Fair
With laces and ribbons and my Sunday best wear
I met many the laddies, of suitors no lack,
But the one that I fancied was Rambling Jack.
Rambling Jack--
And the one that I fancied was Rambling Jack.

Twas on the first mile on my way to the fair
I saw this fine lad with dark eyes and black hair,
I gave him a smile, and he smiled back at me,
"Would you care to walk with me, my pretty Nancy?"
Smiled back at me--
"Would you care to walk with me, my pretty Nancy?"

From very first steps that we took arm in arm,
He spoke to me kindly and I fell for his charms,
But he was the young fellow called Rambling Jack -
Who would ramble away and would never come back.
Rambling Jack--
He will ramble away and will never come back.

He said, "Pretty Nancy, you've such a sweet face
That I have half a mind to stay here in this place,
Though I am the one they call Rambling Jack,
I won't ramble away from you, ne'er to come back."
Rambling Jack,
He will ramble away and he'll never come back."

On the way homeward we strayed from the road,
We found us a quiet place behind a hedgerow,
And that's where he laid me, so soft on my back,
My virtue surrendered to Rambling Jack.
Soft on my back--
My virtue surrendered to Rambling Jack.

Down in the hayfield, there Jack laid me down,
There he untied my laces and he lifted my gown,
Behind the hedgerow he led me astray,
And as I slept there, Jack rambled away.
Led me astray--
And as I slumbered he rambled away.

The harvest is over, now I am disgraced,
For to my dismay I grew stout round my waist
My shoes wouldn't buckle, nor apron strings tie,
And Rambling Jack he had gone, by and by.
My apron won't tie--
And Rambling Jack he had gone, by and by.

The winter has passed and the springtime has come,
And this fallen maid has a fatherless son,
His eyes they are dark and his hair it is black,
All the village now knows I was tumbled by Jack.
His hair it is black,
All the villagers know I was tumbled by Jack.

So, all you young maidens, now listen to me,
With those jolly young fellows don't make over free,
If a sweet-talking fellow lies you on your back,
Make sure he will wed you, unlike Rambling Jack.
Lies you on your back,
Make sure he will wed you and is not Rambling Jack.

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: A Taking Girl

She took my hand in sheltered nooks,
She took my candy and my books,
She took that lustrous wrap of fur,
She took those gloves I bought for her,
She took my words of love and care,
She took my flowers, rich and rare,
She took my time for quite a while,
She took my kisses, maid so shy--
She took, I must confess, my eye,
She took whatever I would buy,
And then she took another guy.

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THE FINAL WORD: An Epitaph

Suddenly and unexpected was the end
Of our esteemed and beloved friend;
He gave to all his friends a sudden shock
By one day falling into Sunderland dock.

(Whitby)

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ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. Additionally, he is a playwright whose play "Minstrel Show" recently traveled from Manhattan to Colorado Springs, for no clear reason, where it was universally applauded.

TERRENCE CARROLL was once among the brightest minds of his generations, but now spends his days wandering through the streets of Hong Kong with a stick in one hand and a burlap sack in the other, picking up aluminum cans to raise money to feed his awful habit. "It might not be an ideal lifestyle," he explains cheerily, "but a man must have a job!"

LADY XAVIERE NIGHT lives in an Indiana trailer park, and surprisingly not a castle. A starving artist amongst garbage, cats, and tin, surprisingly she has no dialect, and no mustache. She has been writing for as long as she can remember, (amazingly she can remember anything). Mostly she is a vampyre that only comes out at night, and sleeps in a very elaborate coffin with a high lid. When she's not writing something sick and twisted or dark poetry, she can be found dying her hair a myriad of colors, talking to her cats, or prowling the streets for her next victim.

TALLYHO WANTSACK is currently employed as a bagger at a Mississippi farmer's market. She is also trying to bag herself a new beau, setting her sights high toward, "a man with more'n five teeth." After all, a lesser man wouldn't be able to enjoy her "Charmlette", the pride and joy of the Mississipp' State Fair cook-off. Don't get excited, she's keeping the recipe for her famous omelet to herself. She is willing to divulge one little tidbit though, "The surprise is what's inside, darlin'." So true for many things Tallyho, so true.

JIMMY SODDEN is drunk again. Damn you, Jimmy! Don't you see what it's doing to you! Don't you see what it's doing to us! I can't continue like this, Jimmy--I just can't. I'm packing my things and staying with my mother, and I don't want to hear from you until you've straightened out!

LLEWTRAH is a 35-year-old Brit with an insatiable appetite for classic and new bawdry, especially songs, though she can't read music. To the dismay of her family, she began writing perverted verse and odious odes as soon as she learnt "those words." To the continued dismay of her husband, she never "grew out of it." She also has several pussies (of the feline kind).

Read more Doggerel!

DIRECTOR MICHAEL CURTIZ is an interesting cypher in Hollywood's history. He was an exceptionally skilled craftsman, and, as a result, helmed more than a few of the most highly regarded films ever made, including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Mildred Pierce, and, most notably, Casablanca. And yet he was almost totally devoid of any personal vision for a film, as though he set out to create a resume that would repudiate the French theory of the auteur, in which the best films are the ones in which a director superimposes a clear personal vision onto a film.

Curtiz's vision, if he could be said to have one, was exclusively visual, and he favored cluttered mis-en-scene, an almost-constantly moving camera, and high-contrast shots where characters appear almost white in front of deep wells of blackness. He applied these almost universally to his films, whether he was lensing a pirate movie (such as 1935's Captain Blood) or a holiday musical (such as 1954's White Christmas), and why not? His films always looked great.

Curtiz was not an actor's director. His English skills were weak and he had a habit of bullying his cast (he notoriously once fired an extra by saying, "More to your right. More. More. Now you are out of the scene. Go home.") He was incapable of shaping a film from beginning to end, which became glaringly obvious when he took over production responsibilities for a film. Here is a director who was only effective within the studio system, which could hand him great scripts, great actors, immensely skilled technicians, and producers who had strong visions for films. And yet Curtiz is easily as important a director as, say, Ernst Lubitsch, a true auteur with far less classic films under his belt than Curtiz.

François Truffaut was so enamored with the auteur theory that he maintained that even the worst films of auteur Jean Renoir were more interesting than the best of studio director Jean Delannoy. He may have had a point, as Renoir still has a huge international audience while few of Delannoy's films are available outside of France, but, again, Curtiz's career seems designed to undermine the argument. Because Curtiz's films were generally extremely interesting.

Case in point: 1933's Mystery of the Wax Museum. The film has been unjustly left out of the canon of 1930s horror, in no small part because it was thought lost for years when its original elements were burned in a fire, and also in part because of the popularity of the 1953 remake starring Vincent Price. But Curtiz's version is arguably a better film.

The story, briefly, is about a wax sculptor who is hideously burned when his business partner sets fire to their London wax museum for the insurance money. The sculptor, played by Lionel Atwill in a Van Dyke Beard and contemptuous mannerisms, relocates to the United States, rebuilding his wax museum from a wheelchair while barking orders to his assistants. His statues are queerly lifelike, and it is no coincidence that the wax museum is opening after a rash of morgue robberies.

If you've seen the Vincent Price version, this story is familiar. Price's wax sculptor is a bit hammier than Atwill's, but they share the habit of talking to their wax statues as though they were alive, as well as a deaf-mute assistant and a terrible secret about the extent of their burns that is not revealed until the film's climax. But Curtiz's version of the film has a knockabout, screwball sensibility that the remake lacks, thanks to a screenplay that seems inspired by the 1928 hit Broadway play The Front Page, in which slangy, wisecracking newspaper men foil a plot to frame a man for murder. The Front Page would be adapted to the screen many times, perhaps most famously in 1940 as His Girl Friday, a Cary Grant comedy in which one of the script's newspapermen was made into a newspaperwoman, but Curtiz's film beat Cary Grant to the punch.

You see, the main character in Mystery of the Wax Museum is one Florence Dempsey, played by Glenda Farrell. Dempsey is a gum-popping investigative reporter who rattles off staccato tough talk at a dizzying speed; Farrell would later turn this sort of character into a cottage industry when she played a character named Torchy Blane in seven films in the late 30s. (Incidentally, Torchy Blane was the basis for Lois Lane in the Superman comics.) Farrell is great fun in this performance, a pint-sized blonde with a flapper's swagger and a lightning fast wit. As Mystery of the Wax Museum was made prior to the enforcement Hayes Code, Farrell is given license to misbehave in an unexpectedly adult way. When her editor threatens to fire her if she doesn't get a scoop, she heads on over to the police station and casually flirts with all of the police officers, catching one reading an erotic magazine. Later, when she leads the police to a coffin filled with bootleg hooch, she immediately starts filling her arms with the bottles. When the police chastise her, she shoots them a dirty look. "You'll get your cut later," she tells them.

Farrell's character is unlike anything found in 1930s horror, where the non-monstrous cast members tended to be awfully dull. Helen Chandler and David Manners, the Mina and John Harker from the classic Dracula, barely register. Bruce Cabot's character from King Kong has almost no personality at all, and Fay Wray has little to do in the film but scream. In fact, Fay Wray is also in Mystery of the Wax Museum, and serves the same function (spectacularly, it must be said.) But Glenda Farrell dominates this film, wisecracking with every character and creating mischief wherever she goes -- she even flips the lights out in the police station when she leaves. If the French theorists' concern was that films be interesting, well, Farrell is about as interesting as anything ever put on screen, and she infuses the whole of The Mystery of the Wax Museum with madcap life. And she managed to do it without a single auteur around to help.

Watch The Mystery of the Wax Museum on Archive.org.
Watch The Mystery of the Wax Museum on Brightcove.

More of the weirdest and wildest films from the public domain.

IN THE WORLD of hardboiled crime fiction, the writings of Chester Himes rank among the most idiosyncratic. His novels of Harlem police detectives Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones hardly seem like they should share a shelf with the sadistic semi-fascism of Mickey Spillaine’s Mike Hammer or the alcoholic bottom-feeders of novelists Dave Goodis and Charles Willeford. The latter authors write of men and women in tatters, moving from dockyards to clipjoints to diners in vast anonymous cities, where they brutalize each other in pathetic, doomed attempts at escape. Himes’ Harlem isn’t anonymous, and Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones are the sort which singer Desmond Decker once described as “a walking razor.” They’re natty, silken-smooth, and utterly deadly, and they glide through a Harlem of pimps and petty hustlers like they owned it.

This town is the powderkeg Malcolm X described — full, fused, and just waiting a spark, and in Himes fiction simple things like a bale of cotton (Cotton Comes to Harlem) or a country boy chasing down a pretty city girl (A Rage in Harlem) threaten to blow the whole thing sky high. Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones might not be very good cops (Ed has a vicious temper and a loose trigger finger, while Grave Digger spits out cynicism and bile with every sentence), but they know what the cost will be if Harlem pops; it’ll be a cost paid in fire and blood, and there’s enough humanity buried under these detectives’ cruel exteriors that they won’t stand to see the city burn.

Any of Himes’ half-dozen novels in the series are good starting places; I chose The Real Cool Killers pretty much at random, but it’s a doozy. Here it’s the murder of a massive white man in a gray flannel suit that starts the ball rolling. The novel rushes forward, in tight, clipped sentences, and before we know it we’re surrounded by a street gang called The Real Cool Moslems — they strangle a boy with a clothesline while Coffin Ed’s daughter looks on, and their leader (“The Sheik”) is the last word in juvenile psychopathology since Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. In Himes’ fiction there’s always a sense we’re rushing headlong into madness, that the whole world itself might suddenly deteriorate into the sounds of gunshots and cracking bones, and we’re only protected against this by a thin line — not the blue line of most of the police force, whose incompetence is only matched by their idiocy. This thin line is black, and brutal, controlling the madness with sheer physical violence. Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones might not be likable characters, but they’re indispensable, and this is crime literature at its manic best.

More from the Sparber Bookshelf.

SYNOPSIS | HISTORY | COMMENTS | DOWNLOAD | ADDITIONAL MEDIA

SYNOPSIS: Based on a historic antisemitic uprising in the East European city of Kishinev, this play tells of a young Hasidic girl, beset with supernatural visions, who rises to lead a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews during a pogrom.

HISTORY: Kishinev was originally written in screenplay form, but was quickly adapted to a stage play. It is epic in approach, with a running time that approximates three hours and a cast that nears one hundred. It has never been produced.

COMMENTS: I began writing this play in 1996, when I was a Jewish Studies major at the University of Minnesota. It draws equally from the true story of the Maid of Ludmir, a Polish woman in the early 19th century who rose to unusual prominence in her Jewish community, and my own family history.

I am descended, on my mother's side, from Wolf Kitzes, a Hasidic rabbi, as well as a contemporary and follower of the Ba'al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism. My family passed through Kishinev, the capital of Besserabia and long a major Jewish center, until an antisemitic pogrom decimated the community in 1903.

In this script, I created the character of Lilith Kitzis, a fictional descendent of Wolf Kitzis, who demonstrates an early mastery of Jewish law that eventually leads to her taking control of the Hasidic community in Kishinev. Lilith also suffers strange, otherworldly visions, some of which presage a violent attack against the Kishinev Jews.

The role of Lilith's father was intended for my mother's cousin, Judd Hirsch, who would be playing a fictionalized version of one of his own ancestors. My mother sent the script to Judd, who demurred. Years later, when my play Minstrel Show received a positive review in the New Yorker, the show's director dropped off an envelope with the play's notices at a theater where Judd was then appearing in a play. He never acknowledged it.

DOWNLOAD Kishinev here.

To read the script, you will need a copy of Adobe's free Acrobat Reader program. Download it here.

ADDITIONAL MEDIA: At one point in the play, the characters perform a song called "Shir Hashirim," which is a song I remember from a collection of Hasidic tunes I owned when I was young, and is, I believe, based on a Napoleonic marching song. I have remembered it to the best of my ability and recorded an a cappella performance of myself singing the song, as follows:

LISTEN TO "SHIR HASHIRIM":




More plays of Max Sparber.

DOGGEREL WEEKLY MAGAZINE
Limericks, Bawdy Songs, Drinking Songs, and Other Poetic Marginalia
Volume 1, Number 17--November 8, 2000
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

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CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Strike Up the Band!
2. Letter: We Hate You Too
3. A Toast
4. Poem: Four Burma Shave Signs (Melton Biddle)
5. Drinking Song: Gift to a Loyal Servant (Max Sparber)
6. Limerick: The Unfortunate End to a Perth Laddie (Vincent Gangly)
7. Poem: A Request from Sir Toby Longtooth, Age 98 (Toby Longtooth)
8. Limerick: Advice During a Political Campaign (Orrin Halfpenny)
9. Poem: The Goose Song (Llewtrah)
10. Classic Doggerel: The Budget
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph for a politician
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Strike Up the Band!

At this writing, the United States still has no new president in one of the closest--and most hotly contested--elections in history. We at Doggerel Weekly cannot help but pay attention, as there is no greater a source for satire than the world of politics--in fact, we once contacted Minnesota's notorious governor, Jesse Ventura, to ask him to contribute a few verses to our sordid magazine. The wrestler-cum-action hero-cum-radio personality-cum-political animal declined to even answer our request, but we shall persevere! There is, after all, a long tradition of elected officials scratching out silly poems; President Woodrow Wilson, for example, once penned this limerick:

I sat next to the Duchess at tea;
It was just as I feared it would be:
Her rumblings abdominal
Were truly phenomenal,
And everyone thought it was me!

Until we begin to receive regular submissions from politicians, however, we shall just have to mock them in out own way--so it is with great pleasure that I present you with Doggerel Weekly's first issue of political satire. Of course, we've mixed in a little bit of our usual crassness to please the portion of the population who finds politics and utter bore, and so here we have it: a heady mix of sex, sin, and politicking not seen since ... well, yesterday, I suppose, given the state of politics as it is. Never let it be said that Doggerel Weekly doesn't hold a mirror up to society, friends. Neither let it be said that we don't put mirrors on the ceiling above our beds, because we do. Oh, yes, do we ever!

So enjoy!
Max Sparber, editor

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LETTERS: We Hate You Too

Dear editors,

I hate you.

Don Spiteful,
Charlottesville, NC

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
DO YOUR PART FOR DEMOCRACY

Forward Doggerel Weekly to everyone you know and encourage them to subscribe. Will that help democracy? It can't hurt!

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TOASTS: We toast another week without prosecution

Here's to politicians.
The distiller's true friend.
For wherever you find four politicians together
You're sure to find a fifth.

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POEM: Four Burma Shave Signs
By Melton Biddle

I.
He went down
She shot up
Said
"Shave that muzzle,
Saucy pup!"
BURMA SHAVE

II.
Two girls in love
A sixty-nine!
With
Pubes so smooth
They're mighty fine
BURMA SHAVE


III.
Your boss is gay
He's fey and arty
But
Don't teabag him
At the office party
BURMA SHAVE

IV.
A lick in the back
May be the hottest
But
No one likes
To rim a forest
BURMA SHAVE

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DRINKING SONG: Gift to a Loyal Servant
by Max Sparber

Have been drinking? I haven't!
And it's long overdue I say.
Get me a pint of brandy for breakfast,
A pint then to start off my day.

And I'm hungry, so get me an egg, please,
And break the thing into a beer,--
Oh, and see if I still have some rum cake;
If not, well, just bring some rum here.

I'll take a short bath this morning
And you know that I bathe in champagne
Ordinarily I skip this toilette, as
It's no good to mix the grape with the grain

But I'm feeling quite robust this morning;
I could drink down a barrel full of gin;
In fact, hand me my towel, would you?
It's a grand idea, and I think I'll begin.

Is that my lawyer? Yes, show him in please,
We need to work on my will.
And get two cordials. Oh, one for him too!
Bring three cordials, then, won't you, Bill?

Ah, Mr. Fergus, how grand to see you.
I've sent Bill away, and must say
He's been an awfully grand butler to me,
and I'm going to add him to my will today.

He's served me for twenty-odd years now,
Catering to everything I ask.
He'll run a mile to fetch me some whisky
Even if I've whisky right here in my flask.

And all this time, him, a teetotaler!
Not a sip will pass the man's lips!
I weep for him, honest, Fergus, I do!
Because lips, why, were made to take sips.

I'm an ill man, Fergus, you know that;
My doctors give me less than a year.
But it's a fate that I can face quite bravely,
Because the liquor takes the edge off the fear.

Listen, Fergus, this is what I'm asking,
And it will seem just a trifling odd,
But when I'm dead I want to be cut open
Before I am placed in the sod.

Yes, Fergus, have them take out my liver
And give it to Bill, and here's what you ask.
Tell him to boil it into a stew, please,
And decant it into my flask.

Bill should carry it with him always
And when times look a little bit bleak
Tell him to take just a small sip from it
And he'll be drunk for the rest of the week!

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LIMERICK: The Unfortunate End to a Perth Laddie
by Vincent Gangly

A lonely young fellow from Perth
Asked a lisping prostitute her worth
"I mithundersthood him," she said,
"And tho I thmashed at hith head,
And he wath carted away in a hearth!"

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POEM: A Request from Senator Toby Longtooth, Age 98
by Toby Longtooth

Would you dare stare at me so boldly?
My dear, have you utterly no shame?
Here I stand, naked before you;
Here I stand with my manhood inflamed!
But not a gasp crosses your lips, dear,
Nor do your hands move to cover your eyes;
Instead you lift an approving eyebrow
And comment on my prodigious size.

This behavior, I must say, is unseemly,
Unladylike and appallingly poor.
I told the service I wanted good manners;
Instead you're very much like a whore.
You should say, "Why sir, why--I never!"
You should say, "Oh, you wicked old man!"
You should burst into tears upon seeing me
Instead of scrutinizing with that knowing élan.

No, this won't do; No, not at all, dear;
It's no fun unless you cry our in dread
And ball up your fists and then strike me
And tremble as I drag you off to bed.
It's a game, dear--one I'm quite fond of playing
In which I'm a brute, and a lout, and a cad,
But my brutality ceases to amuse me
When I'm just one of the brutes that you've had.

Now leave, dear, let's start this thing over:
Knock gently, and let out a cry
When I spring upon you and tear off your petticoat--
I'm paying you, so give it a try.
I want weeping and pleading for what I pay you,
I want scratchmarks and bruises tonight.
Do it for me, dear, I'll make it worthwhile,
Because it's no fun unless you put up a fight.

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LIMERICK: Advice During a Political Campaign
by Orrin Halfpenny

Do not neglect, sir, to wear some protection
When exercising your incumbent erection
As voters can't handle
A venereal scandal
And it would be bound to cost you the election.

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POEM: The Goose Song
by Llewtrah

When I was a young lad and very naïve,
Girls told me they loved me and I would believe,
It was not for my money, they valued my mind,
But this was all fiction, as I would soon find.

Then somebody told me not to be so footloose,
To give up on girls and settle down with a goose,
They're faithful and friendly though sometimes they hiss,
But a goose is far nicer than a gold-digging miss.

I went out next day to our small village pond,
And persuaded a Canada Goose to abscond,
All summer we mated, the feeling was nice,
I'd found my own goose and a goose mates for life.

As soon as the cold winds of autumn rolled round,
My wild goose would fly to its wintering ground,
But come the springtime, my heart filled with glee,
To see my goose flying back home in a 'V'.

But soon I got bored of this seasonal game,
And found me a goose that was flightless and tame,
Now all through the year when I fancy a bonk,
I call to my goose with an amorous honk.

A turkey will gobble, if that's what you like,
And some aviphiles swear that gobbling's quite nice,
But when gobbling palls and you're once more reduced,
To self-satisfaction, you should have chose goose.

A chicken is fine if you're hoping for eggs,
But a goose is the best thing, by far, on two legs,
If you don't like the hissing you might try your luck,
With the avian charms of an Aylesbury duck.

I once tried a swan, though it now sounds perverse,
Inspired by Leda but with sex roles reversed,
Now for avian frolics, well I won't be obtuse,
Just go down to the farmyard and grapple a goose.

When I'm much older and wiser with years,
I'll look back on my life, but won't shed any tears,
Given the option, I'd still need no excuse,
To curl up on a cushion with Gertie the Goose.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLASSIC DOGGEREL: The Budget
(Submitted by Llewtrah)

Glossary at end for non-Brits!

NOTE: This item was in a folder of "office humor" recently inherited from a former colleague. It was evidently Xeroxlore from the mid 1970s when the Labour party were in power in Britain (it was on a very faded bit of "wet-copier" paper). I reckon it's from around 1978 because of the reference to Jeremy Thorpe who was involved in a homosexual scandal (Britain was still very homophobic back then). A nice example of politics-inspired bawdry, to my mind.

The country was in such a terrible state,
Then the Commons arose for a Budget debate,
It was quite a few minutes before Healey spoke,
And then he said, "SEX will cost one quid a poke"

Whether you're short, little, long, fat or thick,
The tax will be paid on the use of your dick,
Then Jeremy Thorpe said, "now look Dennis dear,
Will this tax apply to the boys who are queer?"

Then Ted Heath arose and looked rather glum,
"Will I be exempted --I only like bum?"
Mr. Healey replied and he sounded quite airy,
"The tax will be doubled for you, you old fairy."

Mr. Foot then arose to tremendous applause,
He grabbed Margaret Thatcher and ripped off her drawers,
He straddled across her and rode her at will,
Then shouted at Dennis, "Put that on my bill!"

Mr. Wilson then shouted, "I think I'll resign,
I haven't had sex for a very long time,
I dream every night of a fanny that's hairy,
But I get not response from my darling Mary."

The debate carried on, oh my what a sight,
David Owen was wanking the whole of the night,
The speaker then said, "Let the voters decide,
But I think they'll all settle for one quid a ride."

So now in the bedrooms of Britain at night,
There's many a fanny that's closed good and tight,
We're taxed on our booze and we're taxed on our smoking,
But we didn't expect to be taxed when we're poking.

If one quid a grind is the price we must pay,
The answer is this, with ourselves we must play,
To quench our frustration we now have to wank,
And for the state of the country we've got Healey to thank.


Commons: Lower house of Parliament, where the Members of Parliament (MPs) do their stuff (the Upper house is the Lords where the Peers sit).
Quid: slang for one pound sterling (currency)
Healey: Labour MP in charge of budget (Chancellor of Exchequer)
Foot: Labour MP
Wilson: Labour Prime Minister
Heath: Conservative MP
Thatcher: Conservative MP, later to become Prime Minister
Thorpe: Liberal party MP, outed as gay (UK was homophobic at the time)
Owen: MP who later went on to be leader of Social Democrat Party
Speaker: keeps House of Commons in order during debates--a bit like a kindergarten teacher!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph for a politician

The body of
B. Franklin
Printer.

Like the cover of an old book,
It's contents tore out,
And stripped of its lettering and guilding,
Lies here, Food for worms,
But the work shall not be wholly lost;
For it will, as he believed, Appear once more
In a new and more perfect Edition
Corrected and Amended
By the Author.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

MELTON BIDDLE is a live-bait inspector for the Alabama Department of Hunting, Fishing and Wrasslin'. His interest in roadside signs and attractions dates back to his childhood when, as the son of an itinerant shoelace repairman, he saw many billboards from the rear while riding in the back of his father's Model A flatbed truck. Melton is partial to blackstrap molasses, calico handkerchiefs and French postcards.

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. Additionally, he is a playwright whose play "Minstrel Show" recently traveled from Manhattan to Colorado Springs, for no clear reason, where it was universally applauded.

VINCENT GANGLEY runs the Rhode Island School for Wayward Boys, as well as hosting a yearly festival of poems and plays by Oscar Wilde.

TOBY LONGTOOTH served in his state senate for 38 years before a shocking series of scandals forced his early retirement. He now spends his afternoon waddling about in his palatial estate throwing muffins at curiosity seekers who peer over his fence to try and catch a sight--and sometimes a photograph--of the distinguished gentleman in his dotage.

ORRIN HALFPENNY has been a political advisor since 1968, when he advised Robert Kennedy to avoid anybody whose first name was exactly the same as his second name. Kennedy ignored Halfpenny's advice, to which Halfpenny comments: "I bet he wishes he hadn't!"

LLEWTRAH is a 35-year-old Brit with an insatiable appetite for classic and new bawdry, especially songs, though she can't read music. To the dismay of her family, she began writing perverted verse and odious odes as soon as she learnt "those words." To the continued dismay of her husband, she never "grew out of it." She also has several pussies (of the feline kind).

Read more Doggerel!

BRUNO SCHULZ was a contemporary of Franz Kafka (and authored a translation of The Trial) and was likewise from Poland, and his slight literary output -- confined to two collections of short stories and a lost manuscript -- is often compared to Kafka's. Murdered in the streets by the Gestapo a scant five years after his first collection was published, the Nazis (and later the Communists) suppressed his work, which after its initial international acclaim quickly grew obscure. While he shares a certain surreal poetic sensibility with Kafka, there's never been an author like Schulz, and the tragedy of his death is compounded by the tragedy of his anonymity.

In his own words, his works "attempt at eliciting the history of a certain family, a certain house in a provincial city -- not from documents, events, a study of character or of people's destinies -- but by a search for the mythical sense, the essential core of that history ... That dusky, allusive atmosphere, that aura that thickens around any family history, can only occasionally disclose to a poet it's second, mythical face: an alternative, a depth in which the secret history of blood and race is hidden." He approaches autobiography as an invitation to art, and in his short stories about his childhood tells fables of almost hallucinogenic intensity. In "Birds," for example, Schulz tells of Father (his recurring and most eccentric character), who collects eggs of rare birds and stores them in his attic. Soon, the eggs begin to hatch, and rare birds fill the house.

Father's obsessiveness grows along with his aviary: he plots marriages for the birds and dances among them, flapping his arms and letting out long whistling calls. Soon, he's disappeared among them, with nothing but the sounds of beating wings and crowing coming from the rooms which house the birds. Eventually this behavior becomes too much for Father's cleaning woman, who throws open the windows to the rooms and beats at the birds with a broom to drive them out. The story climaxes with these words: "My father, waving his arms in panic, tried to lift himself into the air with his feathered flock." A climax so strange as to only have parallels in folk literature, but rendered with remarkable artistry and sympathy. These aren’t simple inventories of grotesqueries, Schulz's stories are deeply sympathetic to his characters.

Schulz’s influence is slight nowadays, but when visible instantly identifiable -- think of City of Lost Children, a French film which plays like a fairy tale told by Schulz, or the remarkable animated adaptation of Street of Crocodiles by the Brothers Cray. Like their source, these films seek out the hidden mythologies of childhood memories, and like Schulz they balance beauty against pain. As do the best writers, Schulz explodes the possibilities of writing, finding language not only for things we’d thought beyond language but also for things we never knew existed.

SYNOPSIS | HISTORY | COMMENTS | DOWNLOAD

SYNOPSIS: The Substitute Bride: Or, Alice in the Maze is a theatrical sequel to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland beginning on the eve of Alice's 16th birthday. The story follows Alice's experiences in a bewildering Victorian maze, where she is bedeviled, quite literally, by the retinue of a Middle Eastern demonic prince, as well as finding herself manhandled by a self-absorbed modernist composer, a bachelor party of pistol-wielding anarchists, and a murderous butler haunted by the ghosts of the family he murdered.

HISTORY: The Substitute Bride was written in 1992 as part of a theater program for homeless Hollywood teenagers founded, and briefly headed, by two-time Academy Award-winning actress Shelley Winters. The play was workshopped extensively over a six month period, and participants in the workshopping included Clare Carey and Jesse Borego. The play has never been produced.

COMMENTS: This has long been one of my favorite scripts, and I include it here, despite the fact that its epic scope renders it prohibitive to produce. Initially, I was writing a long-lost script called Santa Muerte, based on the actual experiences of the homeless teenagers involved in Shelley Winters' theater program. The script was unsatisfying to write and the results were extremely unpleasant, enough so to cause Ms. Winters to drop out of the program she had founded. She had planned my script to be a companion to Clifford Odets' depression-era classic Waiting for Lefty, which she viewed as having parallels to the Bush-era economy. Upon reading my script, she called an emergency meeting at her house in Beverly Hills, meeting us at the door in nothing but a surgical gown and complaining that she felt we were writing psychodrama rather than theater. She feared that my script my actually hurt the homeless teenagers who wouls appear in it, and what she had hoped I would write was something like a homeless version of Laugh In in which indigent teenagers would say surprising and comical things.

Santa Muerte was abandoned, and, wanting to quickly replace it for fear our project would completely fall apart, I wrote the first draft of The Substitute Bride (then called Astonishing Contortions) in one week. The first read-through (which my perhaps faulty memory recalls Don Cheadle as participating in) ran well over three hours.

The script was workshopped over a period of many months, including the participation of the artistic staff from a Los Angeles theater called the Hudson Theatre and a designer from Pee Wee's Playhouse, and a single scene of it was transformed into a short film script, with the intention of filming it to try and help raise the enormous production cost the script would require (believe it or not, Daryl Hannah expressed interest in playing the lead). However, the project never came to fruition, and the script has languished ever since.

DOWNLOAD The Substitute Bride: Or, Alice in the Maze here.

To read the script, you will need a copy of Adobe's free Acrobat Reader program. Download it here.

More plays of Max Sparber.

DOGGEREL WEEKLY MAGAZINE
Limericks, Bawdy Songs, Drinking Songs, and Other Poetic Marginalia
Volume 1, Number 16--November 3, 2000
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Halloween
2. Letter: To Our Youngest Reader (Isn't He Adorable): Yes, It Will Be Our Little Secret
3. A Toast
4. Poem: Tom Brown (Max Sparber)
5. Drinking Song: A Drink with a Newsman (Phillip Sawyer Edelstein)
6. Limerick: The Fiend and His Appetites (Merton Tuscanini)
7. Poem: Tip Your Hat (Yma Thrombone)
8. Limerick: This Morning's News (Chester Pogdiglang)
9. Poem: The Legend of Chernobyl Sam (Llewtrah & the Test Engineers)
10. Classic Doggerel: Three Gruesome Limericks
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Halloween

Here, belatedly, is the special All Hallows' Eve edition of Doggerel Weekly. We've got it all, folks: ghost stories, violence in the streets, fiends stalking the moors, Day of the Dead images, severed body parts, and even a story of a giant creature created form radioactivity. And people complain that poetry is dull! Once again out humble magazine has proven that there is no theme too bold, no viewpoint to crass, and no sexual practice to abhorrent to be addressed in the poetic form. We should pat ourselves on the backs, my friends, for our continued success in one of the greatest literary experiments of the new millennium! So pour yourself a glass of wine, my friends, and raise your glasses to toast our continued success. We must do so now, as in a few weeks we shall all be in jail, or under clinical observation for our delusions of grandeur. At least, I know that's where I shall be. If you see me there, say hello, won't you?

In the meanwhile, enjoy!
Max Sparber, editor

NOTE: Our short story contributor, Tom Hopper, is taking the week off. He will be back next week with an entirely new story.

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LETTERS: To Our Youngest Reader (Isn't He Adorable): Yes, It Will Be Our Little Secret

daddy says i'm no longer alowed to read yur magazin becuz he sez that it is ment for grownups. i am 4 yers old. daddy sez that yur a bad man and you want to do teribal things to littel boys and girls. he says that if he finds out hoo you are, he is going to hit you very hard. but i like yur magazin. i don't want daddy to hit you. so this will be our littel sekret. ok?

billy

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
YOU MAY BE GOING TO HELL!

According to Father Mirvish Dickensheets, there is a special place in the netherworld for selfish humans who refuse to share Doggerel Magazine with all of their friends.

"Oh yes," says Father Dickensheets, "Satan's imps are down there now, stoking the coals, with their beady little pig-eyes focuses right on YOU. Don't give in to the deadly temptation of hoarding Doggerel to yourself! Don't place your immortal soul in the taloned hands of grinning archfiends who want nothing better than to feast on your heart and entrails! Tell everyone you know about Doggerel, and save yourself an ETERNITY OF CONFLAGRATION!"

Listen to Father Mirvish Dickensheets. Subscriptions to Doggerel Magazine are free, subscribers will not be spammed, and they can unsubscribe at any time.

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TOASTS: We toast another week without prosecution

Now let us sit and drink and make us merry,
And afterwards we will his body bury.

(Geoffrey Chaucer)

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POEM: Tom Brown
by Max Sparber

He woke up one morning with a Los Angeles gal,
He married her money and then he buried it all
In guns and gambling and debt and Champaign,
And love for Tom Brown is love spent in vain

He met up one evening with her father’s ghost
Who asked Tom which he loved the most:
The touch of his wife or the sting of cocaine.
He said love for you, Tom, is love spent in vain

He was seen the next week with young Polly May;
He told her sweet things and then he bore her away.
Mention him now and she cries out in shame--
Because love for Tom Brown is love spent in vain

Her brother he insisted that Tom Brown would die
And he gathered his pistol and said his goodbyes;
He was beaten to death with a brass walking cane
And love for Tom Brown is love spent in vain.

Damn you, she cried, god damn you, Tom Brown!
She sickened and died and was buried in town;
He grieved and he mourned and made a show of his pain
But love for Tom Brown is love spent in vain.

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DRINKING SONG: A Drink with a Newsman
by Phillip Sawyer Edelstein

Allow me to buy you a drink, sir,
You must be parched after that frightful row.
Look at your hands, sir, why, they're shaking;
Look at how you've knitted your brow!
Take a drink then to steady your nerves, sir,
And some ice for that gash on your lip;
It will sting if you drink all at once, sir,
Here's whisky, sir, drink it in sips.
Tell me, how many rogues set upon you?
Was it bare-knuckled, or did they have planks?
Did they curse you and then spit upon you?
Did they doff hats and offer you thanks?
Tell me, sir, did they rob you of your wallet,
Or was it blood that these rogues longed to see?
Ah, here's our photographer to take a fast picture;
Show your wounds, sir, I'll hold your whisky.
Now drink up, now there's a good chap.
I think we've got all that we need.
Right then, off with you, we're done here,
And, sir, please mind where you bleed.

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LIMERICK: The Fiend and His Appetites
by Merton Tuscanini

A fiend is said to haunt the moors:
It's hairless with great running sores.
Passers-by? It beats them,
The robs them and eats them,
And then spends all their money on whores.

MORAL: Venereal disease can make a man into a beast,
So if you're going to catch a social disease
At least save up some money in advance
To Pay for the prostitutes.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
POEM: Tip Your Hat
by Yma Thrombone

The bones they dance and sing a cappella,
Then take their guitarron and play;
So tip your hat for the dead mariachis:
"Ai yai yai yai yai yai," they say.

What bony hand is leading the carriage?
What ghostly man kneels down to pray?
So toss a coin to the dead mariachi"
"Ai yai yai yai yai yai," he say.

The skull he wears a big sombrero,
He's laughing loud and full and gay;
So have a dance the dead mariachi:
"Ai yai yai yai yai yai," he say.

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LIMERICK: This Morning's News
by Chester Pogdiglang

A ghastly affair in Dunwares:
Two heads were found propped up on chairs
And then poor aunt Hadley
Began cackling quite madly,
Saying, "There's seven more under the stairs!"

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POEM: The Legend of Chernobyl Sam
by Llewtrah & the Test Engineers

This is the sad legend of Chernobyl Sam
Who lived by a nuclear power facility,
And, when the tale began, was an ordinary man,
With ordinary abilities.

One dick and two balls, no more and no less,
That was what Sam had fitted
And with that tackle he felt blessed,
For his chums were all likewise fitted.

That was before Chernobyl went bang,
And leaked that radiation,
Life it changed for Chernobyl Sam,
Due to nuclear mutation.

He was out on his farm in a turnip field
Vigorously wielding his hoe,
Well all of a sudden he'd doubled his yield
Cos he'd felt something grow,

And there in his pants, to his surprise
Was not one dick, but two,
Well Sam he couldn't believe his eyes,
It looked too good to be true.

It may be Chernobyl got me into this fix,
Said Sam with nary a frown,
He thought of the fun he could have with two dicks,
And he drove straight into town.

There he met Charlotte, the local harlot,
Chernobyl's three-titted town whore,
Eyes wide with surprise, the girl went scarlet,
When he showed her his double bore.

"You've got quite a couple, so I must charge double,
If you do it with both," she cried,
Sam gave her his roubles, he didn't want trouble,
Dropped his pants and yelled "Open wide!"

Well it may be a sin, only one would go in,
There wasn't room for the pair,
Those dicks were too thick, they should've been thin,
So he stuck the second elsewhere.

He thrust them in turns, till the friction burned,
And Charlotte cried "no more!"
One in the churn and one up the stern
Was too much for the doughty whore.

If you do double entry, you gotta go gently,
As all good accountants know,
So when she got dented around both entries,
She chucked him back out in the snow.

Now Chernobyl Sam felt twice a man,
As he checked on his two cocks with glee,
But his prideful glance down his underpants,
Showed him not two balls but three!

Those knackers hung low, they swung to and fro,
He could swing them onto his shoulder,
Tie them in a knot or tie them in a bow;
It made him feel much bolder.

There was no concealing the elation he was feeling,
As they reached to the floor when at rest,
He got a horny feeling as his bollocks hit the ceiling,
With two cocks and three balls he was blessed!

With a smile, not a frown, he went back into town,
With his balls tucked into one boot,
Another tart he found and threw her to the ground,
Took aim and prepared to shoot.

The whore took it all, that great double tool,
She wasn't deterred by girth,
Like a demon fueled by his triple balls
Sam fucked for all he was worth,

He sighed in bliss as he came with a hiss,
And his balls hung down to his toes,
His old single dick not at all was missed,
As he shot her a double load,

He sighed in pleasure as he gave her full measure,
And a double stream of juice,
But after those endeavors he tripped over his treasure -
Those balls hanging low and loose.

For if you please, they'd wrapped round his knees,
Then round both ankles wound,
And when he tried to ease his testicles free,
He fell pole-axed to the ground.

Around both ankles were his balls entangled,
And he could not prise them free,
Or else he'd mangle those bollocks which dangled,
And maybe lose all three.

It's sad to tell, how he tripped and fell,
And shuffled to the door,
Or how Sam felt as his balls began to swell,
In front of the laughing whore.

Chernobyl Sam swore at his great double bore,
At the balls on which he tripped,
They stretched then tore, in a gout of gore,
As the skin of his ball-bag ripped.

With no more fuel to power that tool,
In dismay Chernobyl Sam wept,
Leaving all three balls in a red bloody pool,
Back to his fields he crept.

Two balls and one dick, is enough to do the trick,
You don't need anything more,
Be it thin or thick, be grateful for your prick,
And for balls which don't hang to the floor.

But if you're jealous tell me true, just what is the ruddy use
Of owning a double-barrel gun,
Mighty fine it may look, but it's not good news,
If you've got no ammunition.

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: Three Gruesome Limericks

I.
There was a young man from Jodhpur
Who found he could easily cure
His dread diabetes
By eating a fetus
Severed up in a sauce of manure.

II.
An old couple just at Shrovetide
Were having a piece--when he dies.
The wife for a week
Sat tight on his peak,
And bounced up and down as she cried.

III.
There was a young man from the Coast
Who had an affair with a ghost.
At the height of orgasm
Said the pallid phantasm,
"I think I can feel it--almost!"

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THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

POOR MARY SNELL, she's gone away
Her would if it could,
But her couldn't stay:
Her had sore legs and a baddish cough,
But her legs it were that carried her off.

(Devonshire, England)

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ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. Additionally, he is a playwright whose play "Minstrel Show" recently traveled from Manhattan to Colorado Springs, for no clear reason, where it was universally applauded.

PHILLIP SAWYER EDELSTEIN is the former editor-in-chief of Last Word Features. Since voluntarily resigning that position, he has spent time as a fry cook, temping in an office, and working in a soup kitchen. For the next four years, Mr. Edelstein will be working in the library of a correctional institution--and we here at Doggerel Weekly wish him the best.

MERTON TUSCANINI was an international chess champion as a child, but lost his mind at the age 14 and was found naked in a freezing cold river, flagellating himself with a tree branch. He has been confined to an institution since then, and writes poetry about his experiences, which his sister smuggles out and emails to small press journals across the United States. Tuscanini has been writing poetry for 12 years now, and his sister has been submitting his verse for as long, but this is the first time any of his work has seen print.

YMA THROMBONE is famed in her native Brazil for cutting the topiary of her palatial estate into a variety of pornographic tableaus. She has developed quite a reputation for writing epic erotic poems in Esperanto, such as the widely banned "Artikita Perversulo" ("The Articulate Pervert"). This is her first foray into writing poems in English.

The less said about CHESTER POGDIGLANG, the better.

LLEWTRAH is a 35-year-old Brit with an insatiable appetite for classic and new bawdry, especially songs, though she can't read music. To the dismay of her family, she began writing perverted verse and odious odes as soon as she learnt "those words." To the continued dismay of her husband, she never "grew out of it." She also has several pussies (of the feline kind).

Read more Doggerel!

JUST A FEW BLOCKS from my old residence in New Orleans' French Quarter is The Old Absinthe House, an intriguing cultural legacy of the city. It is still possible to get a drink there that swept the county at the start of the last century, the Absinthe Frappé, which inspired a song of the era ("At the first cool sip on your fevered lip you determine to live through the day.") The drink is now made with Herbsaint, a local variation of absinthe made without the potent — and sometimes poisonous — wormwood herb that makes East European absinthe so bitter. In fact, it's a terrific drink, although not likely to inspire the sort of excesses of poetic imagination famously brought about by absinthe.

In fact, were it not for a certain sense of antiquity and the presence of the frappé, along with a few other historic drinks, the Old Absinthe House would seem like just another Bourbon Street bar. The bar's ceiling is hung with football jerseys, its atmosphere raucous and filled with loud music, and, when I once asked for a traditional sazerac, a drink invented in New Orleans in 1853 and sometimes considered the first cocktail, I was informed that it was made with a whiskey base and did not contain absinthe. The bartender was wrong — the original sazerac was brandy based and the cup was coated with absinthe, and you would think a bartender at the Old Absinthe House would have known this. It's hard to sit at the bar, even with its antique marble fountains and brass faucets, and imagine that this is where Aleister Crowley, The Black Beast, sat and sipped absinthe frappés and wrote odes to the drink, in which he declared "Art is the soul of life and the Old Absinthe House is heart and soul of the old quarter of New Orleans."

Well, so goes the fortunes of absinthe. New Orleans drinkers of the green liquor tend to be goths who have read of the stuff in Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Bright novels, or heard of Marilyn Manson buying the stuff by the crateful, and drink it in a pirate themed café in Pirate's Alley, where the bartender serves them Absente and indulges in the East European tradition of setting fire to a sugar cube before dropping it into the alcohol — a terrific floor show, but one that would have disgusted Rimbaud. I was once accosted by two drunk youths, who demanded to know where there might be a bar that served real absinthe, the underground stuff, the illegal stuff. I did not know, nor care — absinthe can be ordered online, or extract of wormwood (which Absente also sells) can be dropped into wormwood-free legal variations, if someone is interested. But the case has not been well made to me that wormwood is the key factor in true absinthe. The active ingredient, thujone, is also present in southernwood, which is used in making both Absente and Herbsaint. Whatever the case, whatever these drunken lads were looking for, they weren't likely to find it, except, perhaps, in the pages of Phil Baker's excellent The Book of Absinthe: A Cultural History.

Baker starts with the story of Swiss peasant Jean Lanfray, who murdered his family in 1905, supposedly under the influence of absinthe, and from there takes a winding, discursive look at the notorious drink. Baker is less interested in establishing a history of absinthe as he is in exploring its social environment, and so he tends to look at things out of sequence, and spends as much time on the fiction (or, more properly, fictions) of absinthe as on the facts of the drink. After all, it was the favorite beverage of fin-de-siecle bohemia, and, while temperance activists were writing stories of men destroyed by absinthe, poets and novelists were composing lyrical odes to the liquor, even as they destroyed themselves with it.

A short list of the artists presented by this book is a virtual who's who of the artistic avant guard of the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th centuries: These include Oscar Wilde ("What difference is there," Wilde asked, "between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?"), Charles Baudelaire ("It is necessary to be drunk all the time."), and Arthur Rimbaud (who drank his at the Dead Rat Café, which, Baker informs us "had crockery bearing a picture of two rats fighting a fatal sword duel, complete with top-hatted rats as their seconds.") Pere Ubu author Alfred Jarry was also a keen drinker of absinthe, and grew dissolute from it, dying young, as happened with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, poet Ernest Dowson, and inventor Charles Cros. Baker's book, as a result, is frequently an inventory of tragedies, one that temperance authors might have used as source material. But even as Baker recognizes the almost metaphysical mystique of absinthe (there is a reason Crowley was fond of the drink, and to this day it is rumored to have hallucinogenic properties), the author simultaneously argues that the drink's reputation is mostly a cultural creation. Looking at these artists' lives, it is obvious that it was not absinthism that drove these men to their early graves, but mere alcoholism, long a curse of bohemians (additionally, many of the artists detailed were homosexuals, as with Wilde, suffered disabilites, as with Toulouse-Lautrec, or were depressive, as with, well, of them really; each of these conditions has their own history of alcoholism). Absinthe was the drink of choice for several reasons: It was inexpensive, it got you drunk very quickly, and it had a certain romance and ritual to it that Bohemians found appealing. But it wasn't the wormwood in the drink that was poisoning these men while inspiring them to crazed fantasies, it was the alcohol.

Wilde, speaking of Dowson, said "You shouldn't regret that a poet is a drunk, instead you should regret that drunks are not always poets." Even on their way to oblivion, the artists described in Baker's book created fantastic art about absinthe, and Baker quotes extensively from it. This is his book's real strength as well — decadent authors such as J.K. Huysmans are not much read anymore, and Baker's book, filled with anecdotes and quotes from the authors, should be enough to reignite a passion for the artistic experiments of the end of the 19th century. Even anti-absinthe literature had a marvelous quality to it: Baker quotes at length from Marie Corelli's Wormwood: A Drama of Paris, which, in the most melodramatic pitch possible, tells of the destruction of an man by absinthe, including a lunatic sequence in which, in a absinthe fever, he hunts and murders another man. It's not great literature, but it is great fun.

More from the Sparber Bookshelf.

OF COURSE, if you don't know how to dance The Bop, you can count on a rather dull-eyed Siamese called "The Cool Cat" for instructions. Enclosed is an eight-page instructional book, reproduced here. Click the images below for the full-sized image.



DOWNLOAD HOW TO BOP AS A PDF (19MB)

More Vinyl Oddities.

DOGGEREL WEEKLY MAGAZINE
Limericks, Bawdy Songs, Drinking Songs, and Other Poetic Marginalia
Volume 1, Number 15--October 25, 2000
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Tsk, Tsk, Tsk
2. Letter: A Note from a Rejected Poet
3. A Toast
4. Poem: My Great Long Strumming Thing (Max Sparber)
5. Drinking Song: The Morning After (Lawrence Titmouse)
6. Limerick: Barracks Graffiti, Sparta Command (anonymous)
7. Poem: Vile Little Willie (Lolly Sasparilla)
8. Limerick: A Randy Young Blind Girl Named Berit (Aethelstan A. Thigpen)
9. Poem: The Corpse Song (Llewtrah)
10. Classic Doggerel: Humoresque
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Tsk, Tsk, Tsk

Sex, sex, sex--it seems to be the only thing people are capable of talking about anymore. I can't go out to a quiet lunch without hearing strangers discussing the most intimate details of their boudoir behavior. Not a day goes by that I don't receive some sort of foul email, containing language that makes my already thinning hair drop from my head like autumn leaves. The little hair that stubborn clings to my head rapidly turns gray and then white as I clutch at my heart, thudding in my chest, and groan in horror.

Even presumably respectable people seem unnaturally preoccupied with the subject of conjugal relations. I received a late-night telephone call from a well-known politician (I shall not name him) that left me literally faint with shock. Why, the things he told me are illegal in most states, and certainly immoral! It is a sad state of affairs, indeed, and the more I think about it, the more I believe that I have made an excellent decision to begin publishing this magazine. I might cry out in shock and terror, my friends, by I shall do so all the way to the bank!

Keep the naughtiness coming!
Max Sparber, editor

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LETTERS: A Note from a Rejected Poet

I am disappointed that you have not published any of my poems. I appreciate your criticism--which has seemed honest and fair--but how can you possibly say that my poems seem somehow unfinished? I consider each of my words carefully, and map out the structures of the poems so that they might begin big, build even bigger, and end with a thundering climax. I feel your opinion is mistaken, and furthermore

E.L.
Spahn Valley, Ohio

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
PSST

Hey kid. Yeah, you. I got something for you. Come here. Now, you got to promise never to tell anybody what I am going to show you. Do you promise? Yeah? Well, look at this then.

Ever see anything like this? It is called Doggerel Weekly Magazine. I'm showing it to you, kid, because you seem all right, but it is not for everybody. Sure, anyone could forward copies of the magazine to all their friends. Sure, they would immediately become popular, and everybody would invite them to parties, and they would go out on dates with all the cutest gals, but we're better than that, aren't we, kid?

Kid?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOASTS: We toast another week without prosecution

Here's to the temperance supper,
With water in glasses tall,
And coffee and tea to end with--
And me not there at all.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
POEM: My Great Long Strumming Thing
by Max Sparber

I met her at a fairground;
Her great beauty did I see.
But what could I offer her?
O ugly, wretched me!
I am not a handsome man,
I do not work or sing.
The only thing that I could offer her
Was my great long strumming thing.

She introduced me to her girlfriends
And we agreed to meet for tea,
But I forgot the biscuits I'd bought
O stupid, thoughtless me!
I felt quite like a fool then,
As no cookies did I bring.
The only thing that would give them joy
Was my great long strumming thing.

We met then with her mother
And with her sisters three.
They peered then down their noses
And did not think much of me.
I did not have a dime to my name
And had not worked since spring,
And the only thing that impressed them
Was my great long strumming thing.

I took her to the garden
And dropped down on my knee
And begged her then to be my bride
And asked her to marry me.
I don't want to wed, she said,
And I don't want no ring.
All I want is another look
At your great long strumming thing!

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DRINKING SONG: The Morning After
by Lawrence Titmouse

I fear this is the end of me,
My sweet darling fair:
My stomach it is upturning
And my head it ain't all there.
I ain't touched the whisky,
and I ain't drunk the wine;
I feel certain, my dear wife,
That I am surely dyin'.

You're a fool, my dear husband,
And a pox upon your head!
And if this world were a just one
You would soon be dead.
It's true that you shunned whisky
And no wine did you quaff,
But you bought three pints rum, man,
And one by one
You finished them off!

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LIMERICK: Barracks Graffiti, Sparta Command
by anonymous

There once was a young cyborg named Ace
who wooed woman at every base
but once they glanced at
his special enhancement
they vanished with nary a trace

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POEM: Vile Little Willie
by Lolly Sasparilla

Vile little Willie
With his schoolbook wrapped in ribbon;
His thick and drooling open mouth
Makes a giggle like a gibbon.
His hair in greasy patches
Unkempt, mottled, and gray;
His nurse pulls him along to school
But Willie won't learn today.

You remember little Willie--
Horrid, nasty fellow, he
Once bit into a teacher's hand
And said it tasted just like brie.
Vile little Willie,
His nurse tugs him along the way.
With his wagging tongue and rolling eyes
He won't learn a thing today.

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LIMERICK: A Randy Young Blind Girl Named Berit
by Aethelstan A. Thigpen

A randy young blind girl named Berit
Tried to masturbate using a carrot,
But her first attempt failed,
And her pet bird she nailed,
Up her cunt went an unhappy parrot.

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POEM: The Corpse Song
by Llewtrah

CHORUS:
And it's corpse! Corpse! I want a corpse!
I have never had anything quite like a corpse!
I've had many women, a dog and a horse,
But I've never had anything quite like a corpse

When I was a young lad I used to like girls,
One hand in their panties, I'd fondle their curls.
Till one day I contracted a bad case of syph,
Now you'd never get caught out that way by a stiff.

I've had many lovers in fields and on farms
I've serviced my women in beds and in barns
Taken my pleasure from deception or force,
But I'd never known service till I serviced a corpse.

Now when I'm in need of a very good lay,
I follow the mourners right down to the grave,
I've even had pleasure with dead queers and faggots,
But it's best with a girl corpse who's writhing with maggots.

Women like pearls and diamonds and cars,
I spent all my money on them in bars,
But a corpse is content to be left on a slab,
While I find other corpses to make my heart glad.

I've stuffed dead beasties, I've had lots of thrills,
Patrolling the highways in search of roadkills,
Dead cows and mashed possums and flat dogs an' all,
But it's just not the same as a screw in the morgue.

Someone suggested I molest a moose,
That was a challenge I could not refuse,
So I took out my shotgun and I crouched in the gorse,
Shot Bullwinkle stone dead then buggered his corpse.

I've found many women attracted to me
A few of them have had me over for tea
Some say that they love me (and my money of course)
But I'd trade the world's women for one lovely corpse!

Now I've broken the laws in this god-awful state
They've put me in prison and locked up the gate
They say that tomorrow I'll be full of remorse
But my last night I'll spend with a good sexy corpse!

Well, now that I'm old, near the end of my days,
I have to admit that I'm set in my ways,
I will have my fun and you can have yours,
And when I am dead you can bugger my corpse!

(Tune: Sweet Betsy from Pike)

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: Humoresque

Passengers will please refrain
From flushing toilets while the train
Is in the station. Darling, I love you!
We encourage constipation
While the train is in the station.
Moonlight always makes me think of you.

If the ladies' room is taken
Never feel the least forsaken,
Never show a sign of sad defeat.
Try the men's room down the hall,
And if some man has had the call,
He'll courteously relinquish you his seat.

If these efforts are in vain,
The simply break a windowpane--
A novel method used by very few.
My occupation after dark
Is goosing statues in the park;
If Sherman's horse can take it, why can't you?

If you wish to pass some water,
Kindly call the pullman porter,
He'll place the vessel in the vestibule.
If the porter isn't here,
Try the platform in the rear--
The one in the front is likely to be full.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

Here fast asleep lies SUANDERS SCOTT,
Long may he snort and snore;
His brains are now in GORMAN'S pot,
That us'd to strut the streets before.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. Additionally, he is a playwright whose play "Minstrel Show" recently traveled from Manhattan to Colorado Springs, for no clear reason, where it was universally applauded.

LAWRENCE TITMOUSE has battled a wasting illness for close to 35 years. Hell, he's outlived many of the doctors who predicted his death, and he doesn't show any sign of slowing down. He careens around his palatial estate in a motorized wheelchair, terrifying his nurses, and pauses only long enough to read out loud a new poem he has written. This terrifies his nurses further. "What could be more delightful?" he asks Doggerel Weekly. "What could be grander than a screaming nurse?" We're sure we don't know, Mr. Titmouse.

We don't really know who our ANONYMOUS author is, but there are rumors. Some say it was probably written by the development team of "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri," a computer game. Whatever the case, we fully expected to get sued for republishing the poem.

LOLLY SASPARILLA is the only woman ever to have climbed Mount Heroditus--not a mountain, by the way, but a small college in upstate Connecticut that teaches an honors program in Divinity. Once atop the tallest building at Heroditus, Lolly stripped off all her clothes and, speaking through a megaphone, called out, "Here is what you should be worshipping!" She then performed an unspeakable sexual act. Now she bores all of her friends by telling this same damn story at every single goddamn party she goes to. For God's sakes, Lolly, we've heard that story a million times. Just drink your tea, dear, unless you have something new to say.

AETHELSTAN A. THIGPEN is a minor functionary in the Royal Bureau of Mines and Fisheries in British Guyana. After reading Economics at the University of Northumbria he worked as a union organizer among the lorry drivers of Gibraltar. Aethelstan's prose and poetry have appeared in the Johannesburg Evening Post and the Tulsa Democrat.

LLEWTRAH is a 35-year-old Brit with an insatiable appetite for classic and new bawdry, especially songs, though she can't read music. To the dismay of her family, she began writing perverted verse and odious odes as soon as she learnt "those words." To the continued dismay of her husband, she never "grew out of it." She also has several pussies (of the feline kind).

Read more Doggerel!

1968. IT's A SLOW MONDAY NIGHT at Diamond Jim's, an oversized building with a vaguely Barbary Coast facade with a square, flat sign spelling out the venue's name in colored lights, the word "private" painted below it. The band is Freddy Powers and The Powerhouse IV, a five-piece combo that plays an engaging sort of uptempo ragtime that includes Oriental oddities from the 20s with titles like "Egyptian Ella." The bandleader, Freddy, is a grinning man with a dapper mustache whose career will eventually include writing songs for Merle Haggard and playing guitar for Willie Nelson. At this moment, however, he's been touring the country with his band, playing banjo, singing "San Francisco Bay Blues," and generally working the sort of seasonal and short-term gigs that formed the novelty act circuit back in the 60s -- in fact, they're recent shows have found them traveling from Vegas to Lake Tahoe to Puerto Rico. It's a grind they've been working since 1962, when the band appeared twice on "The Today Show," giving them enough national exposure to leave their Texas day jobs behind and hit the road full-time.

While in Minnesota, the band decides to cut an album at a little recording studio on Nicollet in downtown Minneapolis called UA Recording -- it's the sort of thing they can sell after a show to the assorted tipsy middle-aged businessmen that make up their audience. UA Recording, formerly known as Kay Bank, hasn't got much experience with ragtime -- they've been recording music by the likes of Dave Dudley and The Trashmen, and will eventually record Prince's early demos. So the album cover is a little odd, designed in eye-busting day-glo colors, but, hey, it looks mod, and that's hip nowadays. But it shows up well on display at Diamond Jim's, and every time a businessman brings his secretary to the club and orders her a six or seven Brandy Manhattans, she always demands he buy her the record. Reading the text on the back, she inevitably notices that it includes a recommendation by a local writer and radio announcer: "One of my top favorite acts, and I see them ALL!"

"Ooh," the secretary slurs, amazed. "That was written by Bill Diehl! Isn't he somebody?"

"Sure, baby," the businessman says ingratiatingly. "Everybody's somebody."

More Vinyl Oddities.

DOGGEREL WEEKLY MAGAZINE
Limericks, Bawdy Songs, Drinking Songs, and Other Poetic Marginalia
Volume 1, Number 14--October 18, 2000
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: October
2. Letter: Concerning Tom Hopper
3. A Toast
4. Poem: Four Hateful Epitaphs (Max Sparber)
5. Drinking Song: We Drink Because We Must (Robert Sugar)
6. Limerick: Penis Envy (Jill Anderson)
7. Poem: Stout Anna Possum (Thin Robert Possum)
8. Limerick: I Spotted a Sweet Senorita (Llewtrah)
9. Poem: Little Bicky Barker (Bonny Mike McCourt)
10. Classic Doggerel: In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: October

Something about October always brings out the folklorist in me. I can't explain it, but when the leaves turn red and brown I inevitably turn to my books of fairy tales and nursery rhymes, or I read about quaint, forgotten holiday customs. Ah, there was a time when no Halloween would have been complete without at least one ceremonial cat drowning. But that was a time of simpler pleasures, and probably won't be seen again--God damn our modern world! I remember such things fondly, and so I expect a certain autumnal tone will pervade Doggerel Weekly until winter blankets the city in a sheet of snow. Then, of course, we will return to the full-on hardcore pornography you have all come to know and love from this magazine. What else can there be to warm up a chilly afternoon? Or, for that matter, a freezing evening? Or a frosty morning? And what of brunch? And lunch break? And Sunday morning, as you are exiting church? All good times for hardcore porn, and Doggerel shall provide it!

In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy our current selections of poems, limericks, and drinking songs. I imagine Doggerel Weekly as being something like a Victorian parlour game that has gone horribly, horribly wrong: the charades game has ended in fisticuffs, Uncle Mortimer is making obscene shadow puppets on the wall of the study, and both the Vicar and young Hetty Trueblood are missing, and all we have found is their shoes and undergarments. But then, this is the exact scenario I imagine when I think of going to the dentist, or plan to visit a retirement home, so perhaps I am simply delusional.

Whatever the case, enjoy,
Max Sparber, editor

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LETTERS: Concerning Tom Hopper

We are not fools, sir! You continue to claim that these "Tom Hopper" stories are authored by a feline--sans one forepaw--who lives at the New York Public Library, writes poetry, and communicates with you via email. I put it to you that this is a boldfaced lie, sir, a willful deception! You cannot take us for such imbeciles or children that we would believe such a story. No, sir, I say no! I shall not have it! Cancel my subscription at once!

Ringo the Talking Dog
Ashton, MO

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
LISTEN TO THE DRIPPING

As methods of torture go, this is deceptively simple, but terrifyingly effective. You see how we have tied you down. You see the faucet above your head. We will simply drip water on you continuously until you break. It seems foolish at first. Sometimes it takes hours before the bruises start forming. It can take days before the water starts bubbling the skin, and before infection sets in. Sometimes fungus takes root. But worst of all is the sound. That constant drip, and the slight sting of the splash, repeated endlessly, for days, weeks, and even months--it has driven the strongest soul mad. Listen to it now: DRIP, DRIP, DRIP.

You can end the torture before it begins, simply by forwarding Doggerel to everyone you know. It's not too much to ask, is it? Our request seems very reasonable, doesn't it? We are not cruel, and we do not wish to hurt anybody, but if you defy our request you shall give us no option. We wait your answer, our hand on the spigot that will begin the flow of water.

What will it be? CAN YOU STAND THE TORTURE?

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TOASTS: We toast another week without prosecution

Some delight in fighting Fields,
Nobler transport Baccus yields,
Fill the bowl I ever said,
'Tis better to lie drunk than dead.

(Toast of 1766)

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POEM: Four Hateful Epitaphs
by Max Sparber

I.
Betsy Bell
Are you in Hell?
If you are
It suits you well.

II.
You were not liked
Donovan Tate.
Someone fed you poison,
Which you ate.

III.
You fell down
And crushed your head,
And Mrs. Brown
We're glad you're dead.

IV.
When we heard you burned
In a terrible fire
We let up a cheer
Mr. Martin Dwyer.

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DRINKING SONG: We Drink Because We Must
by Robert Sugar

I have found when I am sodden
All my sins are fast forgodden,
But when I put the gin away
My sinful thoughts they stick and stay.
So to a man of sinful thinking
I say there is no sin in drinking.
For such a man the only sin
Is to hide away the fifth of gin.

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LIMERICK: Penis Envy
by Jill Anderson

Now if I had a winkie I'd wank it
What to do with a monkey but spank it?
How I'd polish my knob
How I'd butter my cob
Then I'd grab right ahold and I'd yank it.

You might think that I'd wear it to shambles
With my randy rambunctious preambles
But you know the old saying
There's no gain without pain
So I'd wrap it up tightly in brambles.

After trying the route of the sadist
My next role would be that of paradist
How I'd wiggle my fob
To the general mob
'Til it grew to its latest and greatest

After trying the path of exposure
I would seek out an ending most kosher
I would have a grand bris
And in circumcised bliss
I would swallow my foreskin for closure

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POEM: Stout Anna Possum
by Thin Robert Possum

Stout Anna Possum
Is a poor wife to me.
She won't share my small bed
But she drinks up all my tea.
She eats every muffin
Which she covers in jam
And then demands I make mutton
Which she follows with ham.
She takes from my wallet
And spends without care,
But when I ask her for kisses
The kisses ain't there.
She won't take my hand
Or sit on my knee--
Stout Anna Possum
Is a poor wife to me.

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LIMERICK: I Spotted a Sweet Senorita
by Llewtrah

I spotted a sweet senorita,
And plied her with neat margarita,
A quart was enough,
To finger her muff,
But a gallon before I could eat her.

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POEM: Little Bicky Barker
by Bonny Mike McCourt

Little Bicky Barker
Wrote with his marker,--
He wrote a little ditty
And it made him laugh with glee.
How teacher she did scold him:
"You are wicked," teacher told him,
"To tell tales of three sailing men
And the things they did to me!"

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree

In the shade of the old apple tree,
I got all that was coming to me
In the soft dewy grass, I had my piece of ass
From a maiden that was fine to see.

I could hear the dull buzz of the bee
As it sunk its grub hooks into me.
Her ass it was fine--but you should have seen mine--
In the shade of the old apple tree.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

Grieve not for me, my husband dear,
I am not dead, but sleeping here;
With patience wait--prepare to die--
And in short tine you'll come to I.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. Additionally, he is a playwright whose play "Minstrel Show" recently traveled from Manhattan to Colorado Springs, for no clear reason, where it was universally applauded.

ROBERT SUGAR is single-handedly responsible for the dazzling return to popularity of the word "coxcomb." "There may be no place in this modern world for the conceited dandy or the foolish fop," Sugar says, "but I care not a whit. I *am* a coxcomb, damn you all, and shall be to the day I die!"

JILL ANDERSON is an actress and playwright whose original play "How Ghetto Claus Funked Christmas" (written with Tim Siragusa and based on a character created by Max Sparber) recently won the Theatre Arts Guild award for Best Original Play.

THIN ROBERT POSSUM is a plucky soul--a better man you're not likely to meet! Sure, he ain't the best looker, and he can get a little melancholy sometimes and go on and on about his wife, but that's no reason to avoid the fellow! C'mon, mates--you've all been down in the dumps at one time or another. Be a saint, say a cheery hello to Bob when you see him. It won't do you no harm and might do poor old Bob a world of good.

LLEWTRAH is a 35-year-old Brit with an insatiable appetite for classic and new bawdry, especially songs, though she can't read music. To the dismay of her family, she began writing perverted verse and odious odes as soon as she learnt "those words." To the continued dismay of her husband, she never "grew out of it." She also has several pussies (of the feline kind).

BONNY MIKE MCCOURT is the finest looking toffer in seven counties, and has more lasses on his arm than a pear tree has fruit. But watch out, gals--Mike is something of a bounder, and if you fall in with him and his gang, you'll be in for some hard times.

Read more Doggerel!

PRAY FOR THE WILDCATS is a strange companion film to two other Shatner films, also lensed in 1974. Here we have a movie about a morally decadent psychopath, played by an unlikely television actor, as in Impulse, and it's a crime-driven road trip movie in which Shatner sleeps with Angie Dickinson, as was Big Bad Mama.

But the similarities are superficial. Shatner's film and television work -- and this was made for television -- was simply too idiosyncratic to yield movies that resembled each other very much. All they really had in common was that Shatner tended to play weak characters in the Seventies, as I have mentions, and this might be the most notable of his "weak man" roles. Because Pray for the Wildcats follows Shatner's movement from milquetoast ad executive (his boss even pulls him aside to complain about his square appearance, as he wears thin lapels and oversized glasses) to anti-establishment hero. And all he has to do is take a dirtbike trip to Baja and kill Andy Griffith, if he can.

Those of you who are only familiar with Griffith as the moral center of Mayberry, R.F.D., or as folksy southern attorney Ben Matlock, might be scratching your head just about now. What kind of circumstances could possibly put Shatner in a duel to the death with Griffith? Well, Griffith had a dark side, if you can believe it, perhaps most famously demonstrated in the 1957 film A Face in the Crowd, in which he played a malevolent bully named Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes, who skyrockets to success on the radio. Here, Griffith plays Sam Farragut, who might be "Lonesome" Rhodes 15 years later, now enormously wealthy, corrupt, and perverse. Farragut had begun making a habit of spending the weekends dirtbiking with his advertising staff, headed by Shatner.

Shatner obviously loathes the man -- he can't look at him, and makes only curt, icy comments toward him. But Shatner is easily bullied, as is his sales staff, played by Robert Reed of The Brady Bunch and former child preacher Marjoe Gortner. Additionally, Shatner is on his way out, in more ways than one. His company is easing him out of his position, obviously looking for someone more dynamic for the job, and Shatner -- well, Shatner is planning to ease himself out in another way altogether. He's increased his life insurance and has started looking for opportunities to manufacture a deadly accident. His mistress, Angie Dickinson, suspects his plans, but his wife, played by Lorraine Gary (from the Jaws movies) is oblivious.

Most of the film takes place in Mexico (although it was filmed in California), as Griffith and the advertising team race along dirt paths near the pacific ocean, and the soundtrack plays trippy but vaguely menacing music, as though a psychedelic guitar and bongo band were playing 1970s cop show music. In Mexico, Griffith bares his fangs -- he forces himself on a young girl in a cantina and assaults her boyfriend when the man intervenes. Later, finding them setting up camp near the ocean, he pushes money at the bearded young man, offering to pay for time alone with his girlfriend. Griffith is positively delirious in the scenes, hunched over and grinning at the like a Cheshire cat, saying "I'm a kind of a hippie myself. I'm a hippie with money. No old-fashioned rules about right and wrong; just hang loose and let it happen." (Watch the scene.)

When the young hippie rejects his offer, Griffith takes up a hatchet, and this is the moment when the moral courage of the three advertising men is challenged. Reed and Gortner fold, covering up for Griffith in exchange for promises of high-salary jobs, but Shatner responds differently.

Perhaps it's the outfit he wears in the movie. For whatever reason, his biking uniform consists of knee-high black leather boots and a gold-colored mock turtleneck with black trim, and its impossible to look at it without seeing Shatner in his Captain Kirk uniform. Admittedly, eight years after the show had debuted, Shatner had put on a few pounds and had lost the commanding swagger that was Kirk's signature. But, frankly, out of his accountant's glasses and in the thin-collared shirt, he doesn't look quite so beaten, quite so weak anymore. (Robert Reed has an almost identical uniform, but with a red shirt, and as a result audiences are liable to spend most of the movie waiting for him to die, as did so many red-shirted extras in the original Star Trek.)

Eventually, Shatner does demonstrate his character's previously untapped moral courage, taking off on his dirtbike after Griffith to have an extended, and surprisingly well-filmed, battle -- much of it is shot by cameras affixed to the dirt bikes, so these climactic scenes approach the high-speed, low-tech intensity of Mad Max.

Shatner is, for the most part, unusually restrained in this film, but during the climax he drives his dirt bike into the ocean itself, leaps off it, and begins thrashing around in the water, wailing and weeping, his milquetoast manner replaced by the emotional burbling I've mentioned before. It's delicious; vintage Shatner. Honestly, Shatner's burbles function in the same way that elaborate song and dance numbers function in musicals, expressing emotions too powerful for mere words. And this might be the best burble in Shatner's entire career. It's magnificent. Forget that image of Kirk screaming "Khan!" that everybody adores. This is epic.

More films of William Shatner.

UNFORTUNATELY, responding to a four-alarm fire in their native Eveleth, Minnesota (that's right, home of the Polka Mass), the Sundowners were badly injured when their polyester leisure suits and pink polyester shirts melted onto their bodies.

More Vinyl Oddities.

DOGGEREL WEEKLY MAGAZINE
Limericks, Bawdy Songs, Drinking Songs, and Other Poetic Marginalia
Volume 1, Number 13--October 11, 2000
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Give the Man a Kewpie Doll
2. Letter: What Do You Mean, The Test Came Back Positive?
3. A Toast
4. Poem: A Poem Meant for Moral Instruction (Mercer Bloomswreath)
5. Drinking Song: Poorer Rewards by Far (Douglas Hoffenstuger)
6. Our Winning Limerick: A one liner Rhymer from Khymer (The Man from Nantucket)
7. Poem: Alas! Alack! (Chester Vistelle)
8. Limerick: The Frenchman (Lolla LaRonde)
9. Poem: Juanita, The Mexican Whore (Llewtrah)
10. Classic Doggerel: The Virtues of Carnation Milk
11. Lllewtrah's Guide to Bawdy Resources
12. The Final Word: An Epitaph
13. About Our Contributors

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Give the Man a Kewpie Doll

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in our Doggerel Weekly Magazine First Annual International Limerick Contest! It was tough going for our judges, slogging through the literally tens and twenties of submissions we received, but our winner is (appropriately enough) a gentleman who goes by the moniker "The Man from Nantucket." As his prize, Doggerel Weekly Magazine shall be sending him a copy of Ed Cray's "The Erotic Muse," not just the finest scholarly work written on American bawdy songs and poetry, but also (ahem) one of the *only* such books. Now our winner, Mr. Man, can sit back at his home (which, based on reports about his unusual physical characteristics, I imagine would cause him to look something like a tripod) and enjoy such classics as "The Keyhole in the Door" and "The Hairs on her Dicky Di Do." Happy reading to you, Mr. Man!

Selection was difficult, as the submissions made to Doggerel Weekly were uniformly excellent, and many of the also-rans will appear in this magazine over the next few months. As I believe that every new bit of doggerel composed helps erode our fragile, common humanity, as well as bringing about a general decline of the condition of literature, I would like to think that this contest produced no one person who was a winner. Instead, I would like to believe that we have all lost something, something precious, something that can never be reclaimed. There are no winners here, folks--none whatsoever.

Er, rather I mean that we are all winners. Yes! Hurrah!

Oh, golly. Excuse me, I think I must stagger back to my liquor cabinet. In the meanwhile, keep those poems coming.

And, as always, enjoy,
Max Sparber, editor

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTERS: What Do You Mean, The Test Came Back Positive?

You told me that your little sore meant nothing at all! You promised me that you were faithful to me! I know that this can be cured with a shot of penicillin--it is not the disease that angers me, it is your betrayal! To think that I trusted you.

Well, this explains the rash and the searing, burning pain. I shall deal with this on my own, thank you. Don't contact me again, and cancel my subscription at once.

T.L.C.
Scottsdale, Arizona

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
OH, OH YES! I WILL!

This moment couldn't be more perfect, my dear: the beautiful location, our wonderful day together--and now you down on your knee, holding out a ring to me!

I love you, darling! You're what I have always wanted! You're sophisticated, dashing, wealthy, and you have excellent manners. More than that, you really know how to make me laugh. Oh, the merry times we have shared together, reading issues of Doggerel Weekly out loud to each other and composing our own silly verses. And you're so diligent, forwarding each issue of Doggerel Weekly to all your friends, so that they might share in our joy.

What's that look on your face? You DO forward each issue, don't you ... tell me you do, my dear, and we'll be wed this week.

Darling ... ?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOASTS: We toast another week without prosecution

Here's to the college boy!
With his funny clothes and hideous yells;
Who studies football tricks and footlight belles;
Who is always foolish but never bad,
Who spends all the money earned by his dad;
He's the village pride and his mother's joy,
So here's long life to the College Boy.

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POEM: A Poem Meant for Moral Instruction
by Mercer Bloomswreath

The miser, Bartholomew Haversham
Lay in his deathbed, a very wealthy man.
How he had suffered, he scrimped and he saved--
What awful privations Bartholomew braved!
His shirt was moth-eaten, so too was his suit.
He survived 40 years on a diet of roots.
Too cheap for candles, he kept his house dim,
And Bartholomew's eyesight, it failed him.
His teeth they were broken, his hair it was gone,
His posture was twisted, his complexion quite wan,
He was an ugly, angry, unhappy old coot,
And he spoke from his deathbed as he clutched at his loot:
"Now that at last my long life is ended
I wish it to God my money I'd spended!
I cannot speak of a more tragic affair
Than to go to the grave still a millionaire!
I have this last comment on the whole affair:
Nobody dies happy still a millionaire."

MORAL: You can't take it with you,
So spend it on me.

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DRINKING SONG: Poorer Rewards by Far
by Douglas Hoffenstuger

Horses in the winter,
Carriages in the summer,--
Such for the life
Of the whisky drummer.

Fever in the autumn,
Coffin come the spring,--
Such for the man who
Makes the churchbells ring.

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OUR WINNING LIMERICK: A one liner Rhymer from Khymer
by the Man from Nantucket

A little known poet from Looe
Penned Lim'ricks that stopped at line two

A Limer-ricker from South Bend
Wrote Lim'ricks without any end
When they got to line three

A poet I know was fated
To write verses that were truncated
From the end of line four
There just weren't no more

A hardworking poet named Clive
With tremendously, effortful strive
While penning his Lim'ricks
Eschewed any Slim'ricks
And made sure that they went to line 5

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POEM: Alas! Alack!
by Chester Vistelle

My beloved mother, Emma Vistelle
Collapsed her lungs blowing on a whistle;
And my poor father, Elliot Vistelle
Choked to death on a bit of gristle;
My departed sister, Maribeth Vistelle
Tore an artery in a patch of thistle;
And my parson bother, Gaylord Vistelle
Suffered a stroke while writing an epistle;
That leaves just me, the last Vistelle,
And what am I to do
With this loaded pistol?

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LIMERICK: The Frenchman
by Lolla LaRonde

That sensual Frenchman, Luc Piggles
Seduces with gyrations and wiggles
But when he cries out, "Zut!
I'm going to nut!"
He leaves the poor girls with the giggles.

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POEM: Juanita, The Mexican Whore
by Llewtrah

She was the best whore Mexico ever produced,
Was famed through country and town,
She was wild and willing, fast and loose,
No man alive could peg her down.

Tales were told of One-eye Juanita,
There were stories quietly spoke,
Of how that cunning Senorita,
Was a whore that couldn't be broke.

When Juanita screwed, she screwed for keeps,
Few cowpunchers ever survived,
They were buried in pits and piled in heaps,
And the rest were cripples for life.

Down from Texas came Bullyboy Bob,
That crab-ridden roper of cattle,
With his sixteen pounds of aching knob,
And an appetite for battle.

Up to her shoulders she hitched her skirt,
And showed him her pube-lice crawling,
She diddled herself with a leather quirt,
Asked, "Who d'ya think ya're fooling?"

Bullyboy laughed and flexed his tool,
Like an actor taking his cue:
"I've fucked wild bulls and an unbroke mule,
I've screwed much worse than you!"

Well all the cowhands found a seat,
And the rest they cursed their luck,
Stood by the whorehouse beating their meat,
Just to watch Juanita fuck.

Bullyboy Bob got himself stuck in
To Juanita's hairy snatch,
And though she flexed her practised quim,
That whore had met her match.

She tried the twist and the double bunt,
But the cowhand rode her still,
She tried all tricks what's known to cunt,
And set him a pace could kill.

She screeched like a wildcat on heat,
Bucked like a rodeo steer,
The boys were sat on the edge of the seat,
Cuz at last that whore knew fear.

At first it looked to be dead heat,
It looked an even match,
Bullyboy with his sixteen pound of meat,
And Juanita with her snatch.

But Bob was with her every twist,
Like a half-broke horse she bucked,
She fought damn hard, but he never missed,
Till at last that whore was fucked!

At last Juanita had to stop,
Her cunt was torn and tattered,
For Bob had nailed her to the spot,
And left his jism scattered.

Then Juanita gave a sigh,
As Bullyboy Bob withdrew,
She breathed her last and closed her eye,
And that was the last she knew.

In memory of that lice-bit whore,
And Bullyboy's epic ride,
They nailed her drawers to the shit house door,
To scare away the flies.

But Juanita had the final say,
When the Bullyboy died of syph,
They writ upon that cowpoke's grave
"Bullyboy Bob--forever stiff."

Every once in a while the desert shakes,
The tremors ring the whorehouse bells,
They say it's Bob and Juanita cause the quakes,
As the pair of them fuck in hell!

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: The Virtues of Carnation Milk

Carnation milk is the best in the land;
Here I sit with a can in my hand--
No tits to pull, no hay to pitch,
You just punch a hole in the son of a bitch.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LLEWTRAH'S GUIDE TO BAWDY RESOURCES

If you're seriously into writing off-colour material, you might be interested in the following info. These are my most used resources when writing bawdry.

"Swearing," by Geoffrey Hughes, Penguin Books, (ISBN 0-14-026707-7). "Tracing the history of swearing from ancient Anglo-Saxon traditions and those of the Middle Ages, through Shakespeare, the Enlightenment and the Victorians, to the Lady Chatterly trial and various current trends .... contemporary developments, such as the growth of Political Correctness." "A deliciously filthy trawl among taboo words across the ages and the globe."

If you like writing bawdry set in various historical periods, the book is extremely useful. It is currently in print and is probably carried by Amazon (there is a US edition, but try amazon.co.uk if amazon.com doesn't have it). It is a little out of date and I disagree with some of the 'modern' sections, but I find it essential when looking for historical bawdy words.

My other indispensable book is "Your Mother's Tongue" by Stephen Burgen, (ISBN 0-575-06131-6) which calls itself a "book of European invective." I sometimes find a foreign word fits nicely into a verse and can be understood perfectly due to the context. My version is hardback, but I have seen it in print in paperback recently. Amazon (probably the UK site) or booksonline may have this in stock, otherwise the UK bookshop Foyles (of Charing Cross Road) have a Website and do mail order.

Also, Roger's Profanisaurus from Viz magazine. Compiled from worldwide contributions received at the Viz web site. A lot of it is dialect and I suspect that much of it is made up by contributors, but it really plumbs the depths of vocabulary.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

Son of Timothy Hoskins, Jr.

This rose was sweet awhile,
Now its odour is vile.

(Westmoreland, New Hampshire, 1813)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

MERCER BLOOMSWREATH will not speak to his brother until the bugger admits that, yes, it was he who placed that cruel note in Mercer's bed when both were away at camp. Childish? Bosh! Just look at the note--JUST LOOK AT IT!

DOUGLAS HOFFENSTUGER is the author of a non-fiction collection of essays titled "Our Horrible Animal Kingdom."

THE MAN FROM NANTUCKET is the very first winner of the Doggerel Weekly Magazine Annual International Limerick Contest, which alone should be enough to render him a creature of posterity (to say nothing of the rumors I have heard about him!) Besides his considerable talents as a poet, he was born since WW II, makes a fair living painting (fine art) and a bit of sculpture. Our Nantucket fellow is married with three children (plus wife) and one dog.

CHESTER VISTELLE is now deceased in a tragic gun-cleaning accident. I can't speak f it any more. Oh, it just makes me weep to think of it. So young! So terrible, the way he was found! Oh, Chester, Chester!

LOLLA LARONDE has spent the past six years abroad. Before that, she was a fella. Ouch! Why did you kick me under the table? No, I don't think it was an awful pun. No, I happen to think it was very funny. Stop kicking me!

LLEWTRAH is the pseudonym of 35-year-old female British bawdiologist with taste for bawdry due to working in male-dominated environments such as her informal position as onetime archivist and poet-in-residence for rugby-loving colleagues. Llewtrah is currently researching/writing an article on female attitudes to bawdy/scatological/generally perverted verse, collecting rude schoolyard rhymes, and local variants of classic bawdry. She has been writing poetry since age of seven, and dirty ditties from mid-teenage years, but has never mastered the art of reading music!

Read more Doggerel!

"WHAT TENDS TO BOTHER ME about people going, 'Oh. let's make a circus' is that it is an art form and takes incredible amounts of training," second-generation circus performer Gypsy Snider complains in the introduction to J. Dee Hill's scrappy new book, Freaks and Fire: The Underground Reinvention of Circus. "All too often," she continues," people take it lightly. They say, 'Oh, isn't it fun?' It is not fun."

For the most part, the homemade circuses Hill writes about are the sort Snider is complaining about (although she does admit that a few of them "have blown my socks off.") Hill essays a handful of loose-knit groups that have sprung up in the past few decades, most of them creations of spur-of-the-moment whimsy, and quite a few of them more beholden to the rough-and-tumble tradition of the sideshow than the elegant physical mastery of the circus. There is more Jim Rose here than Cirque du Soleil — quite literally, in fact, as one of Hill's interviews is with the legendary (and legendarily difficult) contemporary freak show proprietor. Another interview is with Zamora, one of Rose's early stars, a self-professed "Torture King." Yet another is with the horned, eccentrically tattooed Enigma, another former Rose performer.

There was a cartoon in the New Yorker a few years ago that claimed the subtext of every tattoo is "Ask me about my parent's divorce." If we can ascribe such a petty neurosis to a little bit of inked skin, what are we to make of performers who have split their tongues, drive nails into their noses, run needles through their muscles, and hoist six-packs of beer from their genital piercings? Hill finds no one answer in her book; in fact, she finds no one circus. In the case of the calamitous End of the World Circus & Know Nothing Zirkus/Zideshow, she details a rolling, anarchic group of general misfits whose gormless, ill-formed performances seem an inevitable outcropping of a sort of homeless, daredevil drunk-punk subculture. In the meanwhile, Seattle's Circus Contraption displays a more cohesive approach, an obsession with an affected, Edward Gorey-styled Victorian universe of vaguely menacing jugglers and aerialists who act out dreamlike tableaux to the music of an accordion and a chorus of performers blowing into beer bottles. Zamora, from his new show in Las Vegas, present his experiments in pain mastery (he regularly skewers himself with long needles) as a sort of contemporary Sufiism, which he details precisely. "A lot of people don't understand what a fakir is," he complains. " … Sufis are actually in a state of protection. I'm not trying to overcome pain, I'm protected from it."

If there is no one single aesthetic to these contemporary circuses, Hill nonetheless finds in them a similar inventive spark. Just about every performer Hill interviews is a creative misfit, although in the case of the Know Nothings, the emphasis here is more on "misfit" than "creative;" the group itself complains of having picked up a massive collection of hangers-on who developed no act whatsoever, and yet traveled cross-country with the group, eating the group's food, drinking their beer, and, in one instance, losing an eye and both legs in the process. With each of these groups, the myth of the circus is that of a haven for runaways and oddballs, a vagabond counterculture in which personal idiosyncrasies or deformities that would ordinarily invite disgust are instead treasured. The Bindlestiff Family Circus, as an example, has a performer known as Scotty the Blue Bunny, whose entire act seems to consist of dressing in a rabbit outfit, performing some rudimentary tregetour routines, and haranguing his audience with his homosexuality. Keith Nelson, the Bindlestiff's cofounder, points to this as an example of the circus's ability to transform transgression into entertainment. "An audience member can have this tranny sitting on his lap, and just for a moment accept this is reality because this is circus," he says.

I used to know one of the book's interview subjects from the French Quarter: Eddy Joe Cotton, a rather dapper 30-something self-made hobo and cofounder of the Yard Dogs Road Show, who had recently relocated (presumably by hopping a train) with his girlfriend, a burlesque performer with unexpectedly shy mannerisms. His Yard Dogs makes explicit a link between two American outsider cultures — that of the tramp and the circus performer. Hill tells us that Cotton wrote a book about his experiences on the road titled Hobo: A Young Man's Thoughts on Trains and Tramping in America, and in the intro he opined: "When a tramp is calling into the jungle, it is similar to a clown walking onstage. The tramp must have his spiel or skit prepared … A clown will ride freight and a tramp will work under canvas. At times the clown and the tramp are one and the same." He's right, of course — not only have hobos always filled out the circus's rotating crew of roustabouts and bally operators, but they are the most common character for the American clown.

Eventually, I saw the Yard Dogs, and their performance matched Hill's description: The Yard Dogs' show looked very much as though one had wandered into a hobo jungle, shared some mulligatawny stew with them, and then, without warning, the tramps had pulled out musical instruments and a collection of medical curios and began swallowing swords and drawing fire across their bare chests. There's something inspiring about this. Gypsy Snider is right — circus arts are demanding and hard-won. But they are also a poor man's art, despite the gorgeous, baroque excesses of the Ringling Brothers and Cirque du Soleil circuses. You don't need gilded elephants to have a circus. If you have the proper skills, an extraordinary performance can be fashioned out of scrap iron and two dollars worth of greasepaint, and can pop up anywhere that somebody has the inclination to perform. The most extraordinary thing about the circus, after all, is the simplest: That there are people who embrace their oddness and transform it into art.

More from the Sparber Bookshelf.

BEFORE HAR MAR SUPERSTAR, before The Suburbs, before Prince, even before The Trashmen, it was a local polka band that attracted national attention to Minnesota and signed to a major label. H. Loeffelmacher’s Six Fat Dutchmen, which actually featured 11 fat Minnesotans, enjoyed national distribution through RCA Victor, and the company found the perfect illustrator to represent the band’s oompa-oompa sound on the cover of their first album. That illustrator was Jack Davis (who I have written about before), of Mad Magazine fame, and the imaginary crowd of lederhosen-clad musicians he created is, for our money, the single greatest image ever placed on a Minnesota album. Some of the details Davis crowded into his picture: a band-aid on the drum, a nude painting of a portly woman on the back wall and his and her steins. This is what we want polka bands to look like, and they never do.

More Vinyl Oddities.

DOGGEREL WEEKLY MAGAZINE
The Weekly Magazine of Comic Verse and Bawdy Songs
Volume 1, Number 12--October 6, 2000
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Who Do that New Brew that You Brew So Well?
2. Letters: Don't Say That!
3. A Toast
4. Poem: Rain Falls (Max Sparber)
5. Drinking Song: The Bitter Best Man (Gavin Towelticker)
6. Limerick: Legends of the Briny Deep (Captain Stuart Eelbottom)
7. Poem: Before You See Me Wed (Jeremy Allan-Adaile)
8. Limerick: From the Arts Pages (Bernadette Fluffer)
9. Poem: Molly Barlow (Llewtrah)
10. Classic Doggerel: Liquor and Longevity
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Who Do that New Brew that You Brew So Well?

Well, I have returned from crossing the United States via bus, automobile, and airplane (that's an "aeroplane" to our international friends), and I think I am due for a drink. My throat was parched as I bussed from Minneapolis, Minn., to Omaha, Neb.--although I must confess my desire for alcohol was partially slaked when I downed several White Russians while singing along to the song stylings of Bob Opal. Mr. Opal is a lawyer who doubles as a ragtime pianist, leading small groups at the Omaha Press Club in singing such lost favorites as "When Rebecca Came Back from Mecca" and "(Say It's Only a) Paper Moon." I drank, I sang, and when I had drunk and sung enough I got up and danced a Charleston with Ms. Jill Anderson, a frequent contributor to Doggerel Weekly.

Opal was magnificent, singing with a full-throated warble that Anderson aptly described as a combination of "strangling and choking"--not since Jimmy Durante had a man barked out songs with such enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm was infectious. I would have stayed for days, requesting my own lost favorites of ragtime ("She's a Cutie from Beirut-ie"), but Bob had to go--and so did I! I was off, via automobile, on a three-day road trip through Colorado, New Mexico, and finally Arizona. Had my driving partner not thoughtfully packed two bottles of champagne, the trip would have been dry indeed. But for a brief stop in Las Vegas, New Mexico (where my bartender was kind enough to give me my vodka/orange juice mix in a "to go" cup), we saw the insides of no bars at all. Fortunately, a little bubbly goes a long way. I drank, and sang happy songs, and my voice echoed throughout the butte-studded deserts as I hollered out the lyrics to "So I Ups to Him and He Ups to Me."

Now I am back in my native Minneapolis, and again inspired--to drink a little, and sing a little. So join me, won't you, as I toast the end of the third month of publication? As you will see, this issue has an abundance of poems about alcohol. Feel free to pour yourself a tall one wherever appropriate.

And, as always, enjoy,
Max Sparber, editor, doctor of mixology, internationally unknown song stylist

NEXT ISSUE: Doggerel Weekly announces the winner of its First International Annual Limerick Composition Contest! Stay tuned, friends, same limerick-time, same limerick-station!

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LETTERS: Don't Say That!

Don't say that! I can see you opening your mouth, I can see the words forming on your lips, and I beg you: Don't say it! It is not going to make anybody happy, you know, and will, in all likelihood, upset more than a few people.

Oh, is that a sound I hear coming from your mouth? Please, rethink your actions before it is too late! This is neither the time nor the place for that sort of talk. Must you embarrass me?

There, you have said it. I asked you not to, but you went ahead and did it anyway. Look what you've done. Everybody is angry, and mother has gone and fainted, and why? Because you couldn't keep your big mouth shut.

I am not angry; I'm just disappointed.

Dad
Raleigh, N.C.

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WHAT IS THAT THING IN YOUR HAIR?

Oh, horror, get it out! Get it out! It's CRAWLING on you!

Oh, no, my error--it is just the latest copy of Doggerel Weekly Magazine. Share this great novelty item with your friends, parents, and schoolteachers. A hit at any party! A guaranteed conversation starter! Simply press that "forward button" on your email program and watch the yucks begin!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOASTS: We toast another week without prosecution

Leave the flurry
To the masses;
Take your time
And shine your glasses.

(Old Shaker verse)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
POEM: Rain Falls
by Max Sparber

Simon Fontaine
Has gone insane:
Riding the falls
In a barrel of hickory grain.
He gives a toast to the minister,
A toast to the town,
And a toast to the river:
"Damned if you'll take me down."

Simon Fontaine
Has gone insane:
Riding the falls
In a barrel full of rain.
Hammer to the nails,
nails into wood,--
Christ, you know the minister's prayers
Won't do him any good.

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DRINKING SONG: The Bitter Best Man
by Gavin Towelticker

Here's a toast
To the man with the most
And the bride who makes him gladder.
And another toast
To the wife of our host,--
There's not a man here ain't had her.

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LIMERICK: Legends of the Briny Deep
by Captain Stuart Eelbottom

It is said that the masturbating whale
Will drown thousands of seamen without fail
While the monstrous kraken
When he starts a-whackin'
Showers seamen into the air like hail.

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POEM: Before You See Me Wed
by Jeremy Allan-Adaile

Old Tom's at the alehouse
He's drinking like an ox
He's got a tuxedo on his backside
And a ring in a padded box
There's a gal he's supposed to marry
Who he'll never see again
She's weeping at the church
And he's singing this refrain:

Mates, you'll see me buried
With me toes above me head
And me arse sticking out of the ground
Before you see me wed.

I'll stand up at the steeple
With my bullocks painted red
And a sign reading "ring these bells!"
Before you see me wed

Before you see me wed
Before you see me wed
I will take a knife and end my life
Before you see me wed

Tom's ordered another round
And he's laughing with his mates
While his bride somewhere curses him
As the bastard that she hates
It's not a son that they lose, says he
But a daughter that they gain
And then he takes another drink of ale
And he sings out this refrain

I won't be drinking alcohol
But kerosene instead
And I'll wash it down with a lighted match
Before you see me wed

I'll strip down to me skivvies
And stuff me shorts with bread
And you can let your goat chew on that
Before you see me wed

Before you see me wed
Before you see me wed
I will take a knife and end my life
Before you see me wed

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIMERICK: From the Arts Pages
by Bernadette Fluffer

A diabolical opera conductor
Stalked a diva and planned to abduct her.
Her protestations were minimal
As she was aroused by the criminal
And sang arias whenever he fucked her.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
POEM: Molly Barlow
by Llewtrah

She left her village in Somerset, for London was she bound,
To seek perhaps her fortune in the theatres of that town,
And when she got to London, the streets were not paved with gold,
The rain was just as wet, my girls, the wind was just as cold.

She stood outside the playhouses, dejected, cold, ignored,
And watched the painted actresses go in and out the doors,
She dreamt that she'd be dressed like them, in satin and brocade,
But the only work that she could find was as a tavern maid.

And that's how Molly Barlow, to the City of London came,
With just the clothes she stood in, not a shilling to her name,
And being just a country girl she didn't know the danger,
Or that there's a hidden cost for the kindness of a stranger,

When Molly passed the crippled man who begged upon the corner,
He gave her ha'penny back to her and tried in vain to warn her,
To leave the filthy London streets, they'd bring her only pain,
For more than one girl's fallen or achieved a different fame.

But when a handsome stranger to that tavern came one night,
He spoke to Molly of her dreams, how they would turn out right,
And Molly left her work that night, went with the kindly stranger,
Went with him to another life, so heedless of the danger.

He dressed her up in satin fine, in silks and fancy lace,
With all the latest cosmetics he dressed her hair and face,
Then stood her by the theatre door and rearranged her curls,
And then he charged each man a crown to bed the country girl.

She stood outside the playhouses, with twenty other whores,
And watched the painted actresses go in and out the doors,
Once she'd dreamt she'd be like them, she'd not dreamt of the danger,
Nor of the price she'd have to pay for the "kindness" of a stranger.

He took the coin that Molly earned, she had no need of those,
The smiling stranger would provide her with shelter and clothes,
He'd put the food into her mouth, a roof above her head,
And if she worked the London streets he'd keep her clean and fed.

Those years outside the theatre doors soon stole away her youth,
She'd only twenty years of age but looked twice that in truth,
The men who paid for girls for sex, they would not pay the crown,
And so her owner cut the price and trimmed her 'wages' down.

Now Molly's old, her looks are gone, she dreamed her dreams in vain,
She caters for the worst of men in seedy Gropecuntlane,
The stranger long since cast her out, she'd lost her looks and charms,
And another country innocent had fallen in his arms.

She stands in seedy Gropecuntlane, far from those theatre halls,
And charges men a paltry price to fuck against some wall,
Moll dreams her dreams of Somerset and knows in vain she dreams,
And she knows a stranger's kindness is rarely what it seems.

She rued the day she'd left her home to go in search of fame,
She rued the kindly stranger who had put her on the game,
She cursed the first who'd paid for her and pricked her maidenhead,
She cursed the wages of her sin, earned on her back in bed.

And when at last she lies at rest, and mercifully alone,
Molly Barlow wants these final words engraved upon the stone:
"If you seek fame in London, girls, your fortune will be danger,
A life of sin's the hidden cost for the kindness of a stranger."

Notes:

[1] "Molly" is slang for "prostitute"
[2] London really did have a lane called Gropecuntlane.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLASSIC DOGGEREL: Liquor and Longevity

The horse and mule live 30 years
And nothing know of wine and beers.
The goat and sheep at 20 die
And never taste of Scotch or Rye.
The cow drinks water by the ton
An at 18 is mostly done.
The dog at 15 cashes in
Without the aid of rum and gin.
The cat in milk and water soaks
And then in 12 short years it croaks.
The modest, sober, bone-dry hen
Lays egg for nogs, then dies at ten.
All animals are strictly dry:
They sinless live and swiftly die;
But sinful, ginful rum-soaked men
Survive for three score year and ten.
And some of them, a very few,
Stay pickled till they're 92.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

Here lies John Racket
In his wooden jacket,
He kept neither horses nor mules;
He lived like a hog,
He died like a dog,
And left his money to fools.

(Woodton, England)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. In addition, Mr. Sparber is the theater critic for City Pages in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Samples of his reviews can be found at http://www.CityPages.com on the Internet.

GAVIN TOWELTICKER knows darn well he can do without Broadway, but can Broadway do without him? They must have found out at Times Square that he passed his destination, they sent messengers all over to get him to head the celebration!

CAPTAIN STUART EELBOTTOM is the last of the great privateers, pirating boats that sail the Mississippi River and plundering their goods. He does this for the city of Council Bluffs, Iowa--the last city to still employ privateers, paying them entirely in free drinks at the strips clubs and in used pornographic novelties.

JEREMY ALLAN-ADAILE scampers through the woods in green tights and a feathered cap, stealing from the rich and giving back to the rich. What about the poor? Jeremy says he "can't stand them."

BERNADETTE FLUFFER got her start in the world of poetry when she was voted "The Misses Who Gives the Most Kisses" in her middle school. She was asked to write a paragraph for her yearbook, and she wrote these words: "Kisses on the lips are very nice / It leads to throwing bouquets and tossing rice / But I think kisses are much neater / When I am on my knees in the back row of the theatre."

LLEWTRAH is the pseudonym of 35-year-old female British bawdiologist with taste for bawdry due to working in male-dominated environments such as her informal position as onetime archivist and poet-in-residence for rugby-loving colleagues. Llewtrah is currently researching/writing an article on female attitudes to bawdy/scatological/generally perverted verse, collecting rude schoolyard rhymes, and local variants of classic bawdry. She has been writing poetry since age of seven, and dirty ditties from mid-teenage years, but has never mastered the art of reading music!

Read more Doggerel!

TO HER CREDIT, writer Mary Roach has a healthy attitude about corpses. "Cadavers are our superheroes," she writes in her introduction to Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. "They brave fire without flinching, withstand falls from tall buildings and head-on car crashes into walls. You can fire a gun at them or run a speedboat over their legs, and it will not phase them."

Roach is not particularly interested in bodies that simply deteriorate in their graves — although, in a long chapter on embalming, she makes a case that simple may not be exactly the right word for our transition from person to soil. Instead, her interest is in corpses that, for one reason or another, didn't take a direct route into the ground, or, as happened with the rash of body snatching in the 1700s, made it into the ground only to be pulled back out by curious, if unscrupulous, medical students.

Potential readers should be warned that this is a rather gruesome book, filled with an astounding assortment of disturbing images. Were you, or your family, to donate your body for science, you could not possibly know what will become of it, and Roach makes the case that you probably would not want to know anyway. Who expects, after death, to have their heads severed, placed in a roasting pan, and then set alongside 40 others so that plastic surgeons can perfect the details of facelifting? The idea of a room filled with 40 severed heads is immensely disquieting, an image conjured from our worst nightmares. In Roach's book, cadavers are shot, blown up, hit with windshields, even crucified, all in the name of science.

Fortunately, Roach has a breezy style of writing and an ear for a well-turned comic phrase, and, as a result, Stiff is less grueling than darkly funny. Take, for example, the opening paragraph of a chapter about the University of Tennessee's Anthropological Research Facility, which has set aside space to set out bodies and, quite literally, simply let them rot in order to document the various stages of decay. This sort of research is highly useful for, say, medical examiners who are trying to determine a time and date of death for a badly decomposed body. Still, the results are something we might not have imagined existed: a tract of land filled with bloated, liquefying corpses. A writer without Roach's light touch might have begun with the gruesome physical details, sending a large percentage of readers fleeing. Roach, instead, begins her chapter with an virtuoso comic sentence:

Out behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center is a lovely, forested grove with squirrels leaping in the branches of hickory trees and birds calling and patches of green grass where people lie on their backs in the sun, or sometimes the shade, depending on where the researchers put them.

From there, it's necessarily into the morbid medical facts of the process by which our bodies, rather impressively, recycle themselves into nutrient rich soil. Thanks to Roach's garrulous, often hysterical descriptive sensibilities, these details are rendered fascinating rather than horrifying. She, quite kindly, renders her own shock at the site of a corpse swarming with maggots into a sharp comedy routine by refusing to name the insects — she instead insists on referring to them by a random, unrelated word. She calls them "haciendas," as in this sentence: "Unlike older, larger haciendas, the little ones can't eat through skin."

There is much in this book that, were it not true, would seem like crass exploitation. Roach talks of heads, severed during the French revolution, snatched from their baskets and seen to still be rolling their eyes and moving their mouths. She describes experiments in which the heads and forelimbs of recently euthanized puppies are then sewed onto the sides of living dogs, where they briefly regain consciousness and snap angrily at nearby hands (these experiments date back almost half a century, by the way; Roach does not detail any similar experiments occurring nowadays; presumably, none are.) She talks of cannibals and body thieves, including two 19th century men who supplemented their incomes by providing fresh corpses for an Edinburgh anatomist who claimed to be unaware that these men were creating the corpses themselves by killing off neighbors (the name of one of the killers provided the once popular slang term "burked," meaning smothered.)

Heck, it might still be crass exploitation — Roach is upfront about her morbid curiosity — but it is also history, and interesting, and useful. It's helpful to know that, without donors, medical students will simply take to stealing corpses, and this encourages a cavalier, charnel-house approach to the study of gross anatomy. Contemporary anatomy students, dealing with bodies that were willed to science, are far more respectful, going so far as to have tearful memorial services for the cadavers they have dissected. This is quite a change: Composer Hector Berlioz abandoned medicine in 1822 upon a visit to an anatomy lab that was so horrific — filled with fragments of corpses, some being fought over by rats and sparrows — that he leaped out a window to escape it. Left to their own devices, bodies still rot in pretty much the same way they always have. It is how we treat these bodies that has changed. Roach provides a lively, endlessly interesting account of these shifts in human temperament when it comes to the dead.

More from the Sparber Bookshelf.

PETER JACKSON'S FIRST FULL-LENGTH FEATURE FILM, made when he was 25, is a hard film to recommend. It's not so much a movie as it is a gag reel: a series of inventive scene, strung together with virtually no narrative cohesion, and following a small group of barely distinguishable non-actors. Admittedly, man of the film's individual scenes are quite creative, and, if you're the sort of person who has an affinity for blackly comic special effects gore sequences, there's a lot to like here. But the really interesting thing about Bad Taste, which tells of a paramilitary group putting down an alien invasion, is how much was done for so little.

Five years before Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi for $7,000, bad taste was the industry's miracle of microbudget filmmaking, having been lensed for about $24k. There's a lot of superficial similarities between the two films: both films were shot on 16mm Bolex cameras, both were filmed without synced sounds (all dialogue was dubbed in afterward), both are genre films that indulge their roots in exploitation. Rodriguez and Jackson are similar as well, in that both wrote, directed, acted in, acted as cameraman for, and created all the special effects for their first film. But at just four times the budget of El Mariachi, Jackson's accomplishment is astounding.

You see, Bad Taste is rooted in special effects filmmaking in a way that El Mariachi couldn't even approach. So while El Mariachi and Bad Taste share an unexpected skill in staging budget version of Hollywood shootouts, Jackson's film includes copious amounts of cartoonish violence. Heads are hacked open, brains spill out, characters are chopped in half, and dozen of characters spontaneously transform into pink-headed aliens. At the climax of the film, Jackson destroys a Victorian house via missile, and then sends the thing into space, all done through unexpectedly effective miniature work, all built by Jackson and his small crew, who doubled as his cast.

Additionally, Jackson did as much as he could to recreate the tools of Hollywood. He rigged a Steadycam for himself, built cranes and dollies, and, most amazingly, an armory. The film's four-member paramilitary force has an assortment of pistols, machine guns, and a rocket launcher, and the aliens are similarly well-armed, and Jackson himself built all of the weapons out of metal pipes, hunks of wood, and plasticine, and then glued them together. These weapons look and act like real guns, having hammers that cock and removable clips that can be filled with bullets, and, seeing them onscreen, it is impossible to believe they aren't the real thing.

The case can be made that all this labor has been put to the service of nonsense. Jackson spent four years making the movie, which grew out of a 10-minute short, and the film's story suffers. Scenes don't blend seamlessly into each other; instead, each sequence is a stand-alone gag of some outrageous act of mayhem, and almost never emerges logically from the preceding scene. The dialogue is mostly spear carrier stuff, albeit written in a strange sort of Kiwi deadpan -- every line, no matter how serious, is delivered as though it were a lark, and the cast smirks throughout the film.

But, then, the film never aspires to be art. And the truth is, little of what comes out of Hollywood aspires to be art either, and, when it does, it often fails. Movies are a visceral, energetic medium, originating in hucksterism and exploitation, and that's the sort of thing the cinema does surpassingly well. It can be art, yes, but that's no reason to pinch your nose and make disgusted faces when filmmakers decide instead to explore the more exploitative elements of the medium.

In fact, a case can be made that without exploitation, there wouldn't be independent filmmaking. Hollywood always had the money for the finer flourishes -- the finest actors, the exquisite set designers, the Broadway playwrights. But what they couldn't keep for themselves was the cheap stuff: Blood made out of Karo syrup, costumes made out a rubber, guns made out of wood and plasticine. When Hollywood was celebrating itself with the first Academy Awards, Poverty Row movies were churning out cheap gangster films and the 40 Thieves were touring America with cheaply shot movies showing real childbirth. The independent market in the 50s and 60s were in the drive ins, and they specialized in horror. The same has been true of every new market that low-budget filmmakers could turn to, including direct to videocassette releases and microbudget digital filmmaking.

This is where the independent spirit lives in filmmaking, even though it is frequently decried for violence and gratuitousness. Well, there's an art to that as well, and it's a poor man's art, and should be celebrated instead of condemned. Of course, many of these low budget schlock shockers are abominable, but some, such as Bad Taste, show honest and dazzling talent. After all, just three films after Bad Taste, Jackson was helming the Academy Award-winning Lord of the Ring trilogy, which gave free reign to his extraordinary visual imagination. It seems like its a far journey from exploding heads to Gondor, but the lesson here is that if you can spend four years and $25k building big headed aliens, automatic machine guns, and houses that fire themselves into space, given four years and $300 million you can build the whole of Middle Earth.

Watch Bad Taste on Archive.org.
Watch Good Taste Made Bad Taste, a documentary about the making of Bad Taste, on YouTube.

More of the weirdest and wildest films from the public domain.

OF COURSE, it’s illegal to hunt them now, but the North Woods used to be so filled with Parrish Brothers that after a weekend of hunting, my father had enough meat to stock the freezer for the entire winter, and we’d have enough spangled blue jumpsuits with flyaway collars to last the whole school year.

More Vinyl Oddities.

DOGGEREL WEEKLY MAGAZINE
The Weekly Magazine of Comic Verse and Bawdy Songs
Volume 1, Number 11--September 26, 2000
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: The Politics of Our Longer Name
2. Letters: A Word From the Government
3. A Toast
4. Poem: My Gal is the Blushing Type (Max Sparber)
5. Drinking Song: The Moose (Charlotte the Harlot)
6. Limerick: An Early Taste for Flesh (Dr. Bernard Chaparalle)
7. Poem: The Bad Voice (Octavio Blume)
8. Limerick: The Luxurious Smoker (Merce Longue-Chamoise)
9. Poem: The Fraternity of Aging Bachelors (Woolcot Snickerdill)
10. Classic Doggerel: Two Appeals to John Harralson
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: The Politics of Our Longer Name

Attentive readers will notice that the title of this ezine has gotten a little bit longer--as of this week, we are now Doggerel Weekly Magazine, rather than Doggerel Magazine. This is so that we will not be confused with a poetry journal called, simply, Doggerel. Not that there is much of a chance of that, as the other poetry magazine only comes out twice per year and publishes just 250 copies, whereas we come out weekly and have a distribution that is four times as large. In fact, if we may toot our own horn for a minute, with 1,000 readers worldwide, Doggerel is larger than 80 percent of the poetry journals published. Not bad for a magazine that is less than three months old, eh?

I'd say our accomplishment is even more impressive when you consider the sort of poems we publish, which can be pretty ragged and deal with all sorts of unpleasant subjects. And consider also that most of our poets publish using pen names -- in fact, looking over this issue, I see that I am the only contributor who has used my own name. And that hardly counts, as I am, in fact, simply a front for almost two hundred blacklisted writers who publish under my name. I have never written an original word in my life. I am, in fact, quite illiterate (this paragraph, for instance, was actually written by Konstanin Klekhov, who was blacklisted in 1956 as a result of his connections with the Esperanto movement). Sure, I worry that some day people will discover that I can't even construct an intelligible sentence -- shopping for shoes last week, I simply pointed at the pair I wanted and shouted, "Me want big shoes good price for me now!" But I am happy to live with the fear of discover if it means helping the poor sons-of-bitches who can't get work doing the only thing they love -- writing filthy poems.

So hurrah for our first thousand readers, and hurrah for the blacklisted writers who make up twenty percent of our subscriber base! Someday this damned blacklist will end, and great writers such as Uri Kompecko (blacklisted in 1907 for his attempt to introduce a streamlined version of chess) and Yasha Baumgartner (blacklisted for being named Yasha in the Great Yasha Blacklisting of 1996) will once again be able to work under their own names. Perhaps if we can get a thousand more readers, we will even be able to pay these writers for their tireless work. We need your help, fellow lovers of freedom. If each of our reader sent just ten copies to people they know, with appeals for subscription, we would quickly be able to develop the kinds of numbers that would help us overthrown the blacklist. Join us now, brothers and sisters! Viva liberty! Viva fraternity! Viva bawdry!

NOTE: This week's issue has gone out a day early, as the editor will be spending the next week traveling cross-country from Minneapolis, Minn., to Phoenix, Ariz. As a result, the next issue will, in all likelihood, be a day late.

Enjoy,
Max Sparber, editor

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LETTERS: A Word From the Government

Dear Mr. Sparber,

We know that you have had contact with Yasha Baumgartner. We must remind you that is you publish any of Mr. Baumgartner's poetry -- even under a phony name -- you will be in direct violation of the laws and regulations regarding the Great Yasha Blacklisting of 1996. Not only will you lose your ISSN number, making it impossible to file your publication at libraries worldwide, you also will be eligible for blacklisting. This is a dangerous game that you are playing, Mr. Sparber, and if you think that you can outsmart the U.S. government--well, you are very much mistaken. We are keeping out eyes on you, Mr. Sparber, and if you slip up just once, we will be on you like a pack of feral dogs, snapping at your throat and tearing at your flesh. There are consequences to your actions, Mr. Sparber, and you will not enjoy them. If you value your ISSN number, you will think very carefully about your next step, and do the right thing: turn yourself in.

Det. Michael Rockstreet, ISSN Agent

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
DO WE NEED TO SAY ANYTHING MORE???

Look at that letter from the ISSN Department! Doesn't it make your blood run cold? Forward Doggerel--for God's sakes, forward the damn thing! We must take a stand, and we must take it now!

Wait--somebody's knocking at the door. I'm going to turn the lights out and pretend nobody is home. They're still knocking. THEY'RE BREAKING THORUGH THE DOOR!

I have just enough time to mail this out. Join the revolution--do not let our voices be silenced! They're in the apartment! Quick! Forward this magazine to everyone you know! THEY'RE RIGHT BEHIND-------

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TOASTS:

Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt,
And every grain, so merry, draws one out.

(John Wolcott)

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POEM: My Gal is the Blushing Type
by Max Sparber

My gal is the blushing type--
She giggles and she flinches
When I place into her hand
My trusty old twelve inches.

"Oh," she cries, "it hurts me love!
It squeezes and it pinches!"
But her complaints turn to shouts of joy
When she beholds twelve inches!

My gal makes the queerest noise
Like the squawking of the finches,
And she warbles and coos all night long
When I give her twelve inches.

My gal is a mechanical genius
With pulleys and with winches.
She must rely on these resourceful devices
To hoist up my twelve inches.

Her father is a violent man--
What he cannot beat he lynches.
But he turned and fled in terror
When he saw my twelve inches!

Moral: It is not the size of the tool,
Unless it is utterly enormous,
As mine is.

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DRINKING SONG: The Moose
by Charlotte the Harlot

Here's a small tale I heard long ago,
Concerning a moose who loved his beer so.
From out of the woods, the moose traveled far,
Searching and searching, 'til he found the bar.
McGillicutty Inn was the name of the pub
And just inside was some beer in a tub.
Now the moose started snorting and pawing the ground,
For he knew inside his beer was found.
As he charged, the swinging doors flew wide,
All the people inside scattered far and wide.
The moose skidded across the floor on all fours,
Hit the bar and flopped over onto the floor.
He landed hooves up, snout under the tap,
A steady stream of beer flowed into his yap.
The moral of this story to all who would hear,
Is never ever keep a moose from his beer.

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LIMERICK: An Early Taste for Flesh
by Dr. Bernard Chaparalle

In utero a cannibal's fetus
Seemed suddenly to be struck with St. Vitus.
Mother asked, "What's it doing?"
And the doctor said, "Chewing--
My God, I think the bugger plans to eat us!"

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POEM: The Bad Voice
by Octavio Blume

There were passages that, written,
Drew from madness for their humor
And suggested as entertainment
O the slashing of rich men's throats!
There were those who were offended
And they rose and left their box seats
And then stormed out to the lobby
Red in face and overcoat.
It was written with a bad voice,
And it stirred up men of conscience
To turn anger into action
And to bar the theatre door.
They stood there for six hours
As the rain ruined their tophats
Succeeding in blocking the performance
Which would play there nevermore.

There were passages that, written,
Could be seen as demanding violence
Against those who made their fortunes
O by breaking poor men's backs!
This was seen as irresponsible
In this climate of class tension,
And there were those who took it upon themselves
To publicly burn it black.
It was written with a bad voice
O and none were any sadder
When they laid hands on the author
And he was beaten by the crowd,
Who later related to their children
How he bled and then apologized.
Impressed by their civic-mindedness
The children burst their buttons, proud.

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LIMERICK: The Luxurious Smoker
by Merce Longue-Chamoise

She blew patterns of cigarette smoke
With curlicues and filigree baroque
But she said with a sigh
As I unfastened my fly,
"If I try to blow that, sir, I'll choke!"

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POEM: The Fraternity of Aging Bachelors
by Woolcot Snickerdill

Ain't this just the last thing ever?
The last thing I ever expected!
What have we got here--a party?
How did this come off undetected?
All right, pour me a drink then,
And let's raise our pints for a toast.
I salute you, my dear bosom friends,
No better can any man boast!
Tell the band to play us a fast song
As I'm ready to dance with the girls.
Look there, lads, they're waving and laughing
Dressed up in their sequins and pearls!
Forgive me if I get a little maudlin,
Forgive me if my voice breaks a bit,
As I stand here before you to thank you
And dust off my celebrated wit.
I'm sure there are jokes I've not told you
And I'll amuse you, my fine gentlemen,
And I'll smile as I think back upon this,--
Tonight, when I'm alone once again.

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: Two Appeals to John Harralson

(Editor's note: During the American Civil War, the following notice appeared in Selma, Alabama, newspapers: "The Ladies of Selma are respectfully requested to preserve the chamber lye collected about their premises for the purpose of making nitre ... Signed, John Harralson, Agent, Nitre and Mining Bureau."

The reason for this unusual request was that the Confederacy needed nitrogen for the creation of saltpetre, used for making gunpowder, and were not about to waist any resource--even if it came from a lady's chamber pot. This prompted an angered Rebel response and a mocking Union verse, as follows:)

An Appeal to John Harralson

John Harralson, John Harralson, you are a wretched creature,
You've added to this bloody war a new and awful feature.
You'd have us think while every man is bound to be a fighter,
The ladies, bless the pretty dears, should save their p--- for nitre.

John Harralson, John Harralson, where did you get this notion,
To send your barrel round the town to gather up the lotion?
We thought the girls had work enough in making shirts and kissing,
But you have put the pretty dears to patriotic p------.

John Harralson, John Harralson, do pray invent a neater
And somewhat less immodest mode of making your saltpetre:
For 'tis an awful idea, John, gunpowdery and cranky,
That when a lady lifts her shift she's killing off a Yankee.


A Yankee View

John Harralson, John Harralson, you've read in song and story
How women's tears through all the years have moistened fields of glory,
But never was it told before, how such scenes of slaughter,
Your southern beauties dried their tears and went to making water.

No wonder that your boys are brave! Who wouldn't be a fighter,
If every time he shot a gun he used his sweetheart's nitre?
And, vice-versa, what could make a Yankee soldier sadder
Than dodging bullets fired by a pretty woman's bladder?

They say there was a subtle smell that lingered in that powder,
That as the smoke grew thicker and the din of battle louder,
That there was found to this compound one serious objection:
No soldier could sniff it without having an erection.

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THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

He that was sweet to my Repose
Now is become a stink under my Nose
This is said of me
So it will be said of thee.

(Cheshire, Connecticut)

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ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

CHARLOTTE THE HARLOT works for a saloon in a small dusty western town. She write a little in her spare time when not pouring shots for cowboys and gunslingers. Charlotte's hobbies include catching rattlesnakes and rustling the occasional cowpoke.

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. In addition, Mr. Sparber is the theater critic for City Pages in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Samples of his reviews can be found at http://www.CityPages.com on the Internet.

DR. BERNARD CHAPARALLE specialized in medical oddities, teaching a course at Zurich-Zveiger Medical called "That Lump on Your Back is Your Unborn Twin Brother: Examining the Freak."

OCTAVIO BLUME is the lyricist and songwriter for Rose Fedelia, one of the world's most famous song stylists. Some of Mr. Blume's more famous compositions include "In With the Boys" and "You're in a Nasty Mood My Dear."

MERCE LONGUE-CHAMOISE has not worked in 27 years, instead spending all his time sitting in an overstuffed sofa at his men's club and sipping brandy. Mr. Longue-Chamoise will never work again, if he can help it, as work is "so dreadfully common and distasteful."

WOOLCOT SNICKERDILL has the world's largest collection of shrunken heads, willed to him by his famous uncle, Mycroft Snickerdill, who was a naturalist for the Exploration and Heritage Foundation for over half a century.

Read more Doggerel!

THE ODD INGESTER visited Omaha this past weekend, and, while their, stopped by one of his favorite stores, Nobbies The store is filled with all sorts of entertaining diversions, including prank devices, costumes, things that glow in the dark, and strange candy. The Odd Ingester made quite a few purchases from the last category on the list, and will be documenting them over the next few days.

Fist up is this strange orange plastic device, designed to look like a human mouth, albeit a grotesquely distorted one; I would suspect cartoonist Basil Wolverton, but this oddity comes from China, and I doubt the creator of Lena Hyena fakes his death in 1978 to move to the Middle Kingdom to design candy dispensers.

This device is electronic, and releases a tiny glucose candy ball and a very satisfying prerecorded belch when activated. It's own label reads "Yuck!" and "How gross!", but The Odd Imbiber can't help but feel it is not gross enough. The packaging suggests it might have once been called "Big Barf," which would make sense, as the mouth is actually vomiting up a candy ball. So the dispenser might have been made with electronic heaving sounds. And the candy it produces are sweet but undistinguished sugary confections of bright primary colors, rather than the slushy and foul-colored upchuck that our stomach actually expels. Nonetheless, The Odd Ingester must credit this candy for being an especially bizarre innovation, even as he criticizes it for not going as far as it might have. Although there is a real risk in taking a joke as far as it will go. Had this candy actually resembled upckuck, who but the family god would eat it?

Here is a video of the candy dispenser in action:



More from the Odd Ingester!

MAX AND HIS TRUSTY JETPACK take a quick trip through Omaha, Nebraska. In the picture above, Max zooms past The Diner, a beloved greasy spoon in downtown Omaha. Below, Max flies by The Homey Inn, declared by Esquire Magazine to be one of the best bars in America, and the only place Max knows where you can get champagne on tap and order Italian food from the Beatles-themed restaurant across the street. Also, Max zips past Jonny's Cafe, a classic Omaha steakhouse, featured in the film About Schmidt and John Hodgman's book The Areas of my Expertise, and which uses saddles as barstools and has its massive dining area supported by wooden beams in the shape of huge t-bone steaks.



MORE FROM THE JET PACK TOUR!

MINNESOTA THRIFT STORES are often cluttered with the music of Father Robert E. Kapoun, better known as "The Polka Padre" -- he has at least 18 LPS to his credit, each of them featuring a cover worthy of inclusion here. "It's Polka Time" features the priest in a grey leisure suit and brown turtleneck sweater standing in front of a brick and blue-grey wood structure that somewhat resembles a ski chalet (although the awning, above and to the right of the Polka Padre's head, has been painted with a typically Scandinavian decoration).

The album itself is as blandly cheerful collection of ethnic Eastern European music, with titles like "Fisher Girl Polka" and "Woodchopper's Ball." The music consists of simple orchestration, including the Reverend on piano and organ, a small brass section, and a drum kit. Several of the songs feature Kapoun's languid voice crooning cheerfully.

Kapoun, a St. Paul native, was chaplain in North Oaks, Minnesota, at the time of this recording -- which looks to be the early Seventies. In the Nineties, he would resign in disgrace, the subject of several court cases accusing him of molesting young parishoners. Interesting, one parishoner who originally won a settlement against Kapoun would later have that settlement reversed, with a higher court determining that he had filed his claim too late, as the statute of limitations had expired. Two weeks later, Kapoun and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed counter-claims against the abuse victim in an attempt to recoup some of their legal expenses.

One imagines that this is when former fans of the Polka Padre began emptying out the LP collections of Kaoun's records, glutting area thrift stores.

DOGGEREL MAGAZINE
The Weekly Magazine of Comic Verse and Bawdy Songs
Volume 1, Number 10--September 20, 2000
ISSN No. 1531-6920
"In thermulas intremus"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: A Very Special Issue of Doggerel
2. Letters: Just Keep the CDs
3. A Toast
4. Poem: Innocent, I Tell You, Innocent! (Max Sparber)
5. Poem: Police Procedural (Basil Ellingsworth)
6. Limerick: The Modern Clergy (Father Alvin Delinquent)
7. Poem: Mucka, Mucka (Will Clinger and Jim Fitzgerald)
8. Limerick: Latin for Murderers (Pranks Woolsey)
9. Poem: I Wandered London's Streets So Loud (Llewtrah)
10. Classic Doggerel: Two Classic Limericks
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: A Very Special Issue of Doggerel

In this week's issue, we explore some of the issue that are on everybody's minds: Infidelity, murder, cross-dressing, the clergy, prostitution, and ... uh ... wicky-wonkas. Some say that poetry is a dead art form, practiced only by very annoying men with unpleasant affectations and by teenage girls who are convinced that their two-month-old relationship with a reedy boy in thick glasses constitutes one of the great romances of the ages. But we say poetry is more--more than the words that fall from the tobacco-stained lips of men who have read "Iron John" one time too many! More than just the thin verse of adolescent longing!

We say that poetry still has meaning, and is still the strongest medium for addressing the issues that are ripped -- RIPPED -- from today's headlines! Poetry can turn complex ideas into direct, rugged language, and these words can be sung in the beer halls and from the stages, acting as a literary equivalent to daily, partisan newspapers, detailing the evolution of a great movement! Yes, friends, poetry can be the words of revolution, finding itself on the tongues of working men and women across this great land as they rise and say, "No more, I shall have no more of it! THIS WORLD SHALL CHANGE, AND WITH THE VERSES I SHALL CHANGE IT!"

We look forward to the day when this happens. Until then, here are some more dirty rhymed couplets for your entertainment.

Enjoy,
Max Sparber, editor

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LETTERS: Just Keep the CDs

Dear Doggerel,

It's been long enough. You still have a bunch of CDs and some of your clothes at my apartment, and if you don't come get them by Thursday, I will throw them out. And stop with the telephone calls -- I tape-recorded one and played it for my brother, and if he sees you around, oh boy, he's going to kick your ass. I don't know what I ever saw in you. I should have listened to all my girlfriends, because they all told me you were an asshole. This is all my fault, because I did not see what a prick you are. I suppose you can't help it -- I mean, you're still basically an infant. What sort of 32-year-old man still lives in his parents' basement and doesn't know how to drive a car? I should never have expected you to be mature and to treat me properly, and so I shouldn't have been surprised when you turned out to be such an idiot. I have other things that I want to say to you, but I won't, because I'm a loving, generous person, and I refuse to be mean to you just because you were a total asswipe to me.

L.S. in Ohio

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
WE KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING RIGHT NOW

Oh yes, we're always watching you. You know it too--you can feel our beady eyes upon you, staring jealously through keyholes and in through your windows at night. You can hear us snickering in the darkness and scheming, always scheming! It is enough to DRIVE YOU MAD!

Even now, one of us is under your bed with stainless steel acupuncture pins, waiting to poke them into you when you sleep and render you unable to move, unable to scream, as you watch us enter your room with our infernal devices. Distract us--quickly! Send us a copy of Doggerel Magazine! If you can keep us busy reading, we won't have time to carry out our nefarious plots, will we? ACT NOW! FORWARD DOGGEREL NOW! IT MAY ALREADY BE TOO LATE!

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TOASTS: We begin Doggerel with a toast to celebrate another week without prosecution

Here's to Eve--mother of our race;
Who wore a fig leaf in just the right place.
And here's to Adam--daddy of us all;
Who was Johnny-on-the-spot,
When the leaves began to fall.

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POEM: Innocent, I Tell You, Innocent!
by Max Sparber

She was an innocent creature
Poor pretty Sally Ann
Until she met a preacher
A wicked, randy man
She did not know what he did then
And so she didn't complain
She was innocent, I tell you, innocent!
Even when they did it again.

She moved then to fair Larkspur
Innocent Sally Ann
And she met there with a farmer
And his dozen farming hands
They made brazen suggestions to her
And she innocently said yes
She was innocent, I tell you, innocent!
As she flung away her dress.

She vacationed by the ocean
Virginal Sally Ann
And a navy ship was stationed there
With two hundred sailing men
They lined up at her door then
Drunk on rum and applejack
But she was innocent, I tell you, innocent!
As she begged them to come back

She agreed then to marry me
My beloved Sally Ann
And on our wedding night I whispered
My wonderful, wicked plan
She slapped me in my face then
And said that won't do at all
I'm innocent, I tell you, innocent!
And I'm not that sort of gal.

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POEM: Police Procedural
by Basil Ellingsworth

Do not trust the witnesses
And do not drink their brandy
Their scalpels may not be obvious
But they've always got one handy.

Record their answers carefully
And check their stories twice
But caution! When the lights go out
Or the incisions will be precise.

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LIMERICK: The Modern Clergy
by Father Alvin Delinquent

A transsexual nun from Decatur
Required dozens of pills to sedatur
She continued to weep
As she slipped into sleep
That the Bishop had attempted to fellatur

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Subscriptions to Doggerel Magazine are free, subscribers will not be spammed, and they can unsubscribe at any time. To request a subscription to Doggerel Magazine.

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POEM: Mucka, Mucka
by Will Clinger and Jim Fitzgerald

(Intro:)
He's your favorite college crooner
Not to mention quite a spooner
For the ladies he has plenty of allure

As for jokes he'll tell some kickers
While his hand is up your knickers
He's the one and only Rudy Vallour

(Rudy sings "Mucka, Mucka")
We'll just spread our blanky-wanket 'neath the mucka-mucka tree
And I'll kiss your bickey-boodle with my hand upon your knee
If I look under your mimsy will I see your duckey-dear?
Come and make my cock-a-doodle with your winkie in my ear!

If you'll touch my wacky-woodle, I'll squeal WACKA-WACKA-WOO!
Let me squeeze your wicky-wonkas and I'll swear that I love you.
Then we'll munna-runna mucky 'til our faces turn green
You'll say "micky-macka-mama" and I'll know just what you mean

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LIMERICK: Latin for Murderers
by Pranks Woolsey

With father it was patricide,
And brother--why, fratricide!
But when I put mother's head
On one end of the bed
What could it be but a mattress side?

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POEM: I Wandered London's Streets So Loud
by Llewtrah,

(With apologies to Wordsworth)

I wandered London's streets so loud,
Among the hordes who must commute,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of lovely prostitutes;
Beside the kerb, before the doors,
Fluttering and dancing gilded whores.
Beckoning me with practised smiles,
And kohl-rimmed eyes in painted face,
They worked their false and female wiles,
From Centre Point to Torrington Place.

A dozen saw I at a glance,
Tossing their curls in coquette's dance.
Some passing tourists saw them, jeered,
As they their tawdry trade did ply,
Some city broker stopped and sneered,
Mimed unzipping of his fly.
I gazed, and gazed, had little thought
What shame their trade to them had brought:
For oft, when I must masturbate,
Or lie alone in contemplation,
I wonder "what's the going rate?",
Should I succumb to their temptation.
And then my hand with pleasure fills,
Through fantasies of working girls.

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: Two Classic Limericks

That illustrious author, Dean Howells,
Had a terrible time with his bowels.
His wife, so they say,
Cleaned them out every day
With special elongated trowels.

When Paul the Apostle lay prostrate,
And leisurely prodded his prostate,
With pride parabolic
His most apostolic
Appendage became an apostate.

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THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

Eliza, sorrowing
Rears this marble slab
To her dear John
Who died of eating crab

(Crouton)

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ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. In addition, Mr. Sparber is the theater critic for City Pages in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Samples of his reviews can be found at http://www.CityPages.com on the Internet.

BASIL ELLINGSWORTH's play My Brother's Virtuous Wife is now in its seventh year of sold-out booking at the Square Bottoms Town Hall Theater.

FATHER ALVIN DELINQUENT is known as "The Nasty Priest" for his uncontrollable habit of blurting out anything on his filthy mind. His superiors attempted to impose a vow of silence, but Father Delinquent refused, saying, "Oh, fuck that, you stinking piles of manure--I will say whatever I fucking please!" He has since been assigned to a parish in Finland, where he tends to a congregation of three deaf-mutes and a senile old drunkard. When he is not teaching himself dirty words in Finnish, Father Delinquent composes limericks.

WILL CLINGER AND JIM FITGERALD are contemporary vaudevillians. Their contribution in this issue is taken from their musical revue "Rice and Shine."

PRANKS WOOLSEY is on the nickel, his hat in his hand, asking: brother can you spare a dime? You know me, mate--we was friends long ago. You went your way, and I went mine, and now I'm on my uppers, and I got nothing to spend, pal, but time. You cal walk past me, mate, and I won't say a word, but brother, won't you please spare a dime?

LLEWTRAH is the pseudonym of 35-year-old female British bawdiologist with taste for bawdry due to working in male-dominated environments such as her informal position as onetime archivist and poet-in-residence for rugby-loving colleagues. Llewtrah is currently researching/writing an article on female attitudes to bawdy/scatological/generally perverted verse, collecting rude schoolyard rhymes, and local variants of classic bawdry. She has been writing poetry since age of seven, and dirty ditties from mid-teenage years, but has never mastered the art of reading music!

Read more Doggerel!

PLEASURE PLUS the true, unashamed story of the beautiful sexy women who have turned the need for pleasure into a billion dollar business. Unlike such so-called shockers as DEEP THROAT and LAST TANGO IN PARIS, this book is the real thing. It is the absolutely true-to-life account of what really goes on behind the closed doors of the modern pleasure palaces.

That's what it's all about --

More Dirty Books!

THE SOUND PASSED from house to house in the village. One by one, each cottage was filled with the squabbling, clattering chaos that accompanies a child who is screaming at top volume: doors being thrown open, cats mewling, dogs howling, and the strained voices of worried parents who can't calm their hysterical child.

Ah, Carl thought, nodding sagely. The circus is in town.

More Vinyl Oddities.

DOGGEREL MAGAZINE
The Weekly Magazine of Comic Verse and Bawdy Songs
Volume 1, Number 9--September 13, 2000
"In thermulas intremus"

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CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Send Us Your Original Limericks, Win Prizes!
2. Letters: Correct, Except the Part About the Author Being Unknown
3. A Toast
4. Poem: Complaint to a Marriage Counselor (Edmund Smudge)
5. Poem: Their Favorite Lass (Max Sparber)
6. Limerick: How to Know a True Poet (Sally Whistlebottom)
7. Poem: Ode to a Feather Duster (Jill Anderson)
8. Limerick: Two Turkish Tales (Sir Richard Burton)
9. Poem: The Sootikin (Llewtrah)
10. Classic Doggerel: Uncle Joe and Aunty Mabel
11. The Final Word: An epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Send Us Your Original Limericks, Win Prizes!

It is with great pleasure that I announce the first annual Doggerel Magazine Limerick Contest. This contest is only open to original limericks, so no reprints please (and we will know, believe me, we will know). Limericks may be on any subject, and may be any number of stanzas, but must use the classic limerick structure (AABBA, for those who know what I'm talking about). All limericks must be submitted no later than Oct. 4, 2000, and the winner will be announced, and published, the following week. The first place winner will receive their very own copy of Ed Cray's "The Erotic Muse." But even if you don't win the first place prize, you still have a chance of having your limerick published in the largest weekly poetry magazine of humorous verse and bawdy songs in the world, and that is nothing to sneeze at!

Enjoy,
Max Sparber, editor

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LETTERS: Correct, Except the Part About the Author Being Unknown

Dear editor,

I can't help but wonder if you aren't doing all this for posterity. After all, nothing seems to last longer than a dirty joke--some of the classic doggerel that you have published is hundreds of years old, and has outlived a vast majority of the poetry of its era. I have a sneaking suspicion that your interests are suspect. I wager you hope that a hundred years down the road, somebody will lift their glass in whatever sort of run down taverns they have on Mars, and recite one of the nasty little poems you have written, without even knowing who the author is. Am I correct?

T.L.
River Falls, North Dakota

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
YOU MAY BE GOING TO HELL!

According to Father Mirvish Dickensheets, there is a special place in the netherworld for selfish humans who refuse to share Doggerel Magazine with all of their friends.

"Oh yes," says Father Dickensheets, "Satan's imps are down there now, stoking the coals, with their beady little pig-eyes focuses right on YOU. Don't give in to the deadly temptation of hoarding Doggerel to yourself! Don't place your immortal soul in the taloned hands of grinning archfiends who want nothing better than to feast on your heart and entrails! Tell everyone you know about Doggerel, and save yourself an ETERNITY OF CONFALGRATION!"

Listen to Father Mirvish Dickensheets. Subscriptions to Doggerel Magazine are free, subscribers will not be spammed, and they can unsubscribe at any time.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOASTS: We begin Doggerel with a toast to celebrate another week without prosecution

Those dry Martinis were too much for me,
Last night I felt immense,
today I feel like thirty cents;
It is no time for mirth and laughter
In the cold gray dawn of the morning after.

(George Ade)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
POEM: Complaint to a Marriage Counselor
by Edmund Smudge

Though I try as I might to love my wife
I truly grow to hate her
For she calls out names when we make love--
The name of her vibrator.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
POEM: Their Favorite Lass
by Max Sparber

She's been known to be forgetful
Shopping at the shoe store
She lifts her legs to the salesman
Saying there's something I shoulda wore
I'm not missing me long gloves
And me big hat I have got
Why you silly girl, says the salesman,
It's your knickers you've forgot

She went to see a professional
And then she bent down on his knee
And she handed him a ruler
And demanded his specialty
He said it's from me you ask this favor
And it's me that you'll be thanking
I'll be happy to oblige you, dear,
But I specialize in *banking*

She's their favorite lass
She's their favorite lass
It wouldn't be crass to tip a glass
And toast their favorite lass

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIMERICK: How to Know a True Poet
by Sally Whistlebottom

A poet, reciting at a theatre
Heard a woman interrupt his metre
He set his chapbook aside
And to recover his pride
Seized up his cane and then beatre.

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POEM: Ode to a Feather Duster
by Jill Anderson

The ostrich plumes that float upon the air
Debase themselves with dust and lint and hair
Such lofty, fine and nature blessed things
Which garnished velvet caps for hist'rys kings
Now whipped about to dust a figurine
By Precious Moments ... oh, the galled spleen!
A pox on that vituperative pup
who dares to take the feather duster up
And lay its sacred, graceful, rev'rent plumes
On foul pitch. I meditate his doom!

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LIMERICK: Two Turkish Tales
by Sir Richard Burton

The Turkish potentate Abdul
Has a long, scimitar-shaped tool
As long as his thing is
When he asks who the king is
The ladies reply: Sir, you rule!

His British-born brother Abdullah
Has a tool that is longah and cruellah
It would be grand
If he were Lord of the Land
But his peckah, alas, is his rulah.

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POEM: The Sootikin
by Llewtrah

Who was it dropped a sootikin,
Upon my little footikin -
Was it highbred lady, tavern wench or whore?
A sootikin forms quick,
In them that wear no knickers,
Till it grows so big it falls down to the floor.

So whose vaginal cheese,
Got mixed up with soot and fleas,
With menstrual blood and smut and other smeg?
For how many months did sit,
Between labia and clit,
Till that little mouse-shaped lump fell from her cleft?

With the ladies do I flirt,
Slip my hand beneath their skirts,
And pick out their sootikins with finger-nails,
Some are small and ripe and stink,
Others drop out and make a clink,
Or I chip them out with chisel if all other methods fail.

It's said that Good Queen Annie,
Grew a big one in her fanny,
Which dropped a-floor when she rose to leave the church,
Now a woman that well-born,
Should have under-garments worn,
Not let royal reputation be by sootikins besmirched.

(While websurfing, I discovered that a sootikin was a mass of general yucky stuff which got trapped between the labia of women who didn't bathe and didn't wear panties. Eventually the accumulated yucky stuff waxed large and dropped out. It apparently resembled a little mouse and became extinct in England during the 1800s (thanks to the obsessive Victorians).

Note: In UK, fanny = cunt.

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: Uncle Joe and Aunty Mabel

Uncle Joe and Aunty Mabel
Fainted at the breakfast table.
This should be sufficient warning:
Never do it in the morning.
Ovaltine has set them right;
Now they do it every night.
Uncle Joe is hopping soon
To do it in the afternoon.
Aunty Mabel will agree
It hits the spot at half-past three.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

Here lies the
Jones boys twins
As dead as nits:
One died of fever
One of fits

(Sierra City)

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ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

EDMUND SMUDGE believes that he can change the weather by waving at the sky a homemade contraption constructed of coat hangers and aluminum foil. Once, when waving his gizmo, it rained caterpillars on his hometown of Hoboken, New Jersey. This event is widely documented, and is known as The Great Hoboken Caterpillar Downfall, about which Mr. Smudge is currently authoring an epic poem.

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. In addition, Mr. Sparber is the theater critic for City Pages in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Samples of his reviews can be found at http://www.CityPages.com on the Internet.

SALLY WHISTLEBOTTOM wandered out of the sea at Dunkirk and began lurking in nearby cemeteries, always dressed and calling out odd poems in a haunted whisper. Schoolchildren sometimes follow her and write down her poems, but if they get too close she swats at them with her handbag.

JILL ANDERSON is an actress, playwright and singer/songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska, as is as yet the only contributor to Doggerel to have an obsessive fan site dedicated to her. Information about Ms. Anderson's musical activities can be found by going to her own, slightly less obsessive Web page.

SIR RICHARD BURTON authored the first English translations of the Kama Sutra and the Arabian Nights. He has been dead since 1890, but Ms. Sally Whistlebottom claims that she is in contact with his spirit, and he has taken to writing naughty limericks.

LLEWTRAH is the pseudonym of 35-year-old female British bawdiologist with taste for bawdry due to working in male-dominated environments such as her informal position as onetime archivist and poet-in-residence for rugby-loving colleagues. Llewtrah is currently researching/writing an article on female attitudes to bawdy/scatological/generally perverted verse, collecting rude schoolyard rhymes, and local variants of classic bawdry. She has been writing poetry since age of seven, and dirty ditties from mid-teenage years, but has never mastered the art of reading music!

Read more Doggerel!

I WORE DRESSES till three or four years old, my hair in long curls till six and one half years old. But so did half the infant boys of that period. I wore "sissy" Buster Brown hats and suits (patterned after a "bad boy" comic strip), but so did many other boys in our small town.

I remember my neighbor and playmate, with his straight "Dutch bob" -- he made a perfect Buster Brown, while my own "naturally curly" hair did not make for perfection. I remember my mother combing my curls with resulting pain, her twisting the hair around her finger to fall in a perfect curl, my getting them caught in the belt of the old treadle sewing machine, and most vividly of all the trip to the barber where I was shorn of my long curls midst tears and cries of protest. Each Auntie received a curl, the forelock with its white ribbon intact, joined my mother's keepsakes. I have it today, as soft and silky and as perfectly curled as it was that fateful day fifty-five years ago.

They could not, at the time, have known that I would one day be as famous for my golden curls as I am for my adventures. I spoke to an appraiser last week, and he estimated that this single shorn lock from my childhood could fetch upwards of a half-million dollars at auction. Not that I would ever sell it, of course. It is a reminder of the time before my hair turned gray. It is a reminder of my quiet childhood, and of all my childhood friends, in their knee pants, tunics, and sailor caps or flat caps with peaks, each of us cherubic and girlish, whatever our gender, each of us small Buster Browns. It was when my mother was alive. It was before the adventures began.

You might have read the books. The accounts of my escapades were quite popular for many years, and were adapted, at first for the stage, and later for a serial film series. The books are now out of print, and I am not recognized so often when I go out in the street. However, It is still possible to go to any costume shop and purchase a wig patterned after my distinctive curly locks, and sometimes, late at night, when I have trouble sleeping, I will turn on the television to discover they are broadcasting an episode of the serial. Just last night I saw Curly Locks in The Ocean, which recounted a fictionalized version of my trip to Atlantis via submersible. The story was sensationalized and exaggerated, of course. There was no cyclops in Atlantis, and, when I escaped, I battled at most 300 sharks, not the several thousand the movie would have you believe. Nonetheless, the actor who played me, a former body builder named Thomas Everett Kinkade, was one of the better actors to have taken the role of Curly Locks. He was a good-looking man, but also a surprisingly subtle actor. I must admit I got a little teary eyed at the scene in which he carries the King of Atlantis into his shell-shaped bedchamber, only to discover the king was already dead, strangled by the giant squid. Kinkade played that scene with great tenderness. He had talked with me at length about the actual event, and brought a depth of futile grief to the scene that mirrored my own experience, when the Atlantean King actually did die in my arms. Kinkade was never recognized for his work in the Curly Locks films, and should have been. Additionally, among all the actors who played me, he had the best hair.

Most actors had to wear wigs, but Kinkade shared with me a fullness, thickness, curliness, and almost supernatural blondness of hair. He had kept his hair very short, thanks to a career in the military, and, later, because long, flowing tresses were discouraged in the world of competitive body building. But he began to grow his hair out when he was hired for the Curly Locks films, and, by the shooting of his second adventure, Curly Locks and the Incan Gold, he had produced an astonishing set of curls. He was very dedicated to his craft, and quizzed me often about how I maintained my hair. Curly Locks and the Incan Gold is one of the worst in the series, unfortunately, but there is a scene in the film in which Kinkade battles an entire tribe of blowgun-bearing tribesmen in the foothills of the Andes, all the while massaging his scalp with coconut butter. That scene is absolutely authentic, and coconut butter remains an important part of my daily hair care regime.

I was discussing Kinkade with Sir David Cromwell last week, and Cromwell told me that Kinkade was at first quite embarrassed about having to wear the famed Curly Locks. Cromwell told me that Kinkade at first tucked them up under a cap when he went out, and used some of his profits from the film serial to build a gymnasium in the basement of his Bel Air house, as he had been teased mercilessly at his regular gym. But Kinkade quickly found that his curly tresses were irrestistable to woman, who were hypnotized by their shape and color, and would spend many long hours stroking and toying with his locks, which would then lead into an amorous escapade. I had not known this about Kinkade, and, frankly, it surprised me. He had taken such great pains to learn my techniques for the care and treatment of my hair, and here he had repeatedly violated the first and only inviolable rule: Nobody touches the hair. Ever. It's no wonder Kinkade eventually went bald, and, of course, killed himself.

Some of you may be surprised that I have discussions of this sort with Sir David Cromwell. We meet for cocktails every Thursday night, most often at the back room at Musso and Frank's, and there are always a few people who come up to us to express astonishment. After all, Cromwell played Volton, and was the only actor who ever played the character -- he is as closely associated with his performance of the Martian warlord as Bela Lugosi was with playing Dracula. People gasp to see the two of us sitting together, even though the British actor and I have been the best of friends for 20 years. They look at him and they see Volton, the monster who kidnapped my mother and murdered her on the rust colored plains of the Angry Red Planet, starting my adventures. But Cromwell is nothing like Volton, although his performance in the role was so good that even the actual Volton was known to disguise himself and make furtive trips to earth in order to watch Cromwell play him on the screen. In fact, this was how Volton was eventually captured, and the basis for the final film in the serial, Curly Locks at the Movies.

Cromwell gets frequent fan letters from Volton, and has visited him many times in prison -- or, more properly, the extra-dimensional chamber that contains him. The once mighty Martian warlord has become a very frail, frightened old man. His armies have abandoned him, his great torture chambers have been shut down, and Mars has become a planet of peace. None of this might have happened had Volton not kidnapped my mother, and, as painful as it is to think of her lonely death on an alien world, it comforts me to know that her death eventually brought about the liberation of a planet that had been in bondage for a million years. She is regarded as a saint by the Martians.

Here is a story that you haven't heard. We never leaked it to the press, for fear that it would be treated with thoughtless sensationalism. Once, six years ago, I accompanied Cromwell to visit Volton. There, in the great extradimensional chamber that will serve as his eternal home, we shared tea and talked for many hours. He is not the haughty, murderous monster he once was. He is weak and old and sick, and is tortured by regrets. He expressed surprise upon seeing me, particularly upon seeing that my hair had gone gray. "Its was so golden once," he said. "It was so beautiful, just like your mother's."

He had taken her, he explained, because he could not resist her hair. And we wept together, and made peace. He was a mad man, yes, and a monster, but as last I understood why he did what he did, why he committed the act that set me on a course of revenge that would define us both for decades, bringing two worlds to war with each other, and finally ending in this otherdimsensional prison.

I understood him at last. Because my mother really did have glorious hair.

Read more of I'm Just a Bad Boy, a Fake Memoir.

THANKS TO VATICAN II, which popularized Masses done in regional languages, Father Frank Perkovich of Eveleth, Minn., led his church in prayer to Serbian, Croatian and Polish melodies played by the Perkatones and the Polka Massters Orchestra. One imagines even Jesus would have been inspired to lead Mary Magdalene in a triple-step, a scoot and a strolling vine.

More Vinyl Oddities.

DOGGEREL MAGAZINE
The Weekly Magazine of Comic Verse and Bawdy Songs
Volume 1, Number 8--September 6, 2000
"In thermulas intremus"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Great Artists Steal
2. Letters: King's Coronation, Tom Hopper, and Don Marquis
3. A Toast
4. Poem: Stick or Knife or Gun (Max Sparber)
5. Poem: Ode to a Paper Grocery Sack (Jill Anderson)
6. Limerick: Song of Langley Ives (Langley Ives)
7. Poem: Kubla Khan's Other Decree (Llewtrah)
8. Limerick: An Irish Affair (Henry Peckelsdown)
9. Poem: Telephone Sex (Waterloo)
10. Classic Doggerel: The Sexual Life of the Camel
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Great Artists Steal

Our two letters this week concern Doggerel's feline correspondent at the New York Public Library, Tom Hopper. Both letters comment on the similarities between Tom's stories and those of Don Marquis, the creator of Archy and Mehitabel.

I had noticed the similarities myself. Archy, a cockroach, wrong short, comic, philosophical stories by flinging himself against a typewriter keyboard, producing works that were entirely lower-cased and lacking in certain basic punctuation. Tom, due to a missing paw brought about by a bungled attempt on the part of the library to oust him, writes in a similar manner. Both collections of stories deal with the odd, sometimes cruel universe of animals with poetic souls.

Tom Hopper himself is very happy to be compared with Don Marquis, a comparison he describes as "flattering, even if the similarities are entirely in form." "mr. marquis wrote wonderful literature," Tom wrote me in a recent letter. "i am proud to consider myself a student of that tradition--although i should point out that don marquis wrote fiction, whereas all my stories are true."

So there.

Astute readers will note that once again Doggerel is sans its usual feature story--no Doggerel Saints or CD Reviews this issue, alas. We shall write more when we get the time, but until then, please enjoy our ongoing (and shockingly randy) selection of comic verse.

Enjoy,
Max Sparber, editor

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTERS: King's Coronation, Tom Hopper, and Don Marquis

Dear editor,

I'm enjoying your periodical and especially the Tom Hopper series you've just begun. Inspired by the works of Don Marquis perhaps? Tom's typing woes certainly sound like Archy the Cockroach's. Good work and keep it up.

Thanks,

Adastra,
The Wizzard of Jacksonville

*****

My Goode Man:

I use the turme loosethly, for 'tis notte that ye goe unsmircht, but in my tyme A Goode man was yon borne unbrydled and quicketh of witt, and also quicke with Titte, and master of the pickle; "Forsoothe, says I, an aye for an eye, I say - Ye have my permission to render y'er edition, as longe as ye pays yer dues; Fer if'n ye dare, I hafe one t' spare, but if ye mis-step but once, ye lose."

I digresf,
My reason for writin, me name is G. Llytton
Not Bulwahr but Bulrohre, me ken..
We're often mistaken, I've been taken for Satan,
And t'other's a flit wi't a pen.

Our writin's not sim'lar, 'is bulb is muche dimmler
My pedigree's wrought from my game;
Though his verse is muche stronger, I be'n at it muche longer
'An mye 'ead ain't ser 'eavy fromme fame.

My reson fer writin' yer 'alf witted mag (I'll slip outt 'o verse, 'tis a curse ta be terse) Whoops, sorry...

It's true I did fer years sail on th' Queen's goode fleet An bawdy songs were enjoyed by ev'ry grog-swilin' swab a-berd the foine vessel. But when ye talk 'o the goode Kinge, ye've gott th' thing reverst.

"Balls, said the Queen" as we all new it; " If I had to, I'd be King!"
"And the King smiled; not because he wanted to, but because He had two."

Furthermore, yer New Yawk library feline stohl the verry concept of the "Capital i."

It was well known in days of yore, from Harriman's pen, no less...
A friend of Ignatz who lived in the type-writer, name of Archie the cockroach, I guess.
Back in '22, wrote the fabled tales of lore of life in the philosophy of the insect guild;
The owner of the olde Remington (or was it an Olympus?), an editor of waning build,
Happ'ly, took credit for Archie's outpourings which appeared every morning,
On a fresh sheet of pauper he (the editor) left under the hopper;
And poor archie would slave all night long making great copy by dawn
By jumping from the frame to the keys. The problem was that
He was light as a gnat, and eventually broke both his knees.
He couldn't work the shift lever, and while he endeavor'd
I became i ... from where he lit, like a fly
The W looked like a M, and vicey-verse,
So he occasionally erred, as wares became mares.
But the editor had obviously seen worse.

epilog...
The cockroach "i" s became "cock-eyed", evolved into a cricket, with eastern good-luck influence, and was stolen by Disney and renamed Jiminey in Pinoccio. Or so ive heerd it.

better go for nom,

G. Llytton Bulrohre
Master Hutchkeeper
Grabrabbitt County, Wales
-- former free-ranger, sea entrepreneur, and lighthouse painter, now retired.

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
HELP DOGGEREL GROW BIG AND STRONG

Sometimes we worry about our little magazine. Sure, we feed him stewed cabbage and carrots, and every night at bedtime we give him a tablespoon of cod liver oil, and the doctor says that this will help. Then we see him the next day, seated in the corner with that strange look of ennui in his sunken eyes, playing idly with pieces of a puzzle or staring blankly out the window. We dare not utter it, but we wonder: Is our little boy doomed to forever be the outsider, the sickly child who refuses to play sports? Will he be the sort of boy who, if he talks to other children at all, only talks about his allergies to bee stings?

As caring parents, we want more for our magazine, and so we are asking you--our dearest friends--to help. Show the magazine some encouragement. Introduce him to your friends. Include him in your games, or ask him along when you go to the movies. We know that with your help, our little darling will simply blossom.

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TOASTS: We begin Doggerel with a toast to celebrate another week without prosecution

I drink as the fates ordain it.
Come fill it and have done with rhymes.
Fill up the lovely glass and then drain it
In memory of dear old times.

(William Makepeace Thackeray)

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POEM: Stick or Knife or Gun
by Max Sparber

The apartment was empty
but for a carpet and a chair
and bloodstains on the wall
and a body slumped down there
He was naked from his waste up
Revealing a tattoo on his chest
His throat it had been opened
and a knife had pierced his breast
And everyone who knew him
said it was bound to happen to him
Everyone we spoke to said
this day was bound to come
He was fated for an early death
And every word and every breath
said that somebody would have at him
with a stick or knife or gun

No one shed a tear for him
when they put him in the ground
The detectives asked few questions
and the killer wasn't found
His was a death with little meaning
After a life that meant much less
He started dying years before
A knife plunged in his breast
And everyone who knew him
said it was bound to happen to him
Everyone we spoke to said
this day was bound to come
He was fated for an early death
And every word and every breath
said that somebody would have at him
with a stick or knife or gun

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POEM: Ode to a Paper Grocery Sack
by Jill Anderson

Oh vessel, perfect proof of gods divine
Thy vasty hollow yet cannot confine
The admiration, love, yae, high esteem
That we would pack thee with like sunny beams
For then with heat thou mightst erupt to flame
O'er-warmed with honeyed utt'rance of thy name
And foolish mortals, we, who meant to praise
Our precious structure to the ground would raze
No, no, we must pretend to not perceive
And from our inclinations we must cleave
And masquerade at mere utility
For 'twould be simple gross futility
To fan our fawning accolades to fire
And with infernal love create thy pyre

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LIMERICK: Song of Langley Ives
by Langley Ives

An ugly old pauper named Langley
Was pungent, toothless, and gangly,
But had gals by the score
And each delightedly swore
That he was as thick as was dangly.

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POEM: Kubla Khan's Other Decree
by Llewtrah
(With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

In London Town did Kubla Khan,
A sleazy pleasure zone decree,
Where Paul Raymond's Revue Bar ran,
And strip-shows called the sex-starved man,
With live pornography,
And twice three streets of worn-out whores,
Will beckon the punters from paint-peeled doors,
And there are neon signs with sinuous scrawl,
Which beckoned many a money-bearing he,
And there are worn posters peeling from each wall,
Enfolding grimy clubs' debauchery.

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LIMERICK: An Irish Affair
by Henry Peckelsdown

That massive old Scotsman McGinty
Was known to be rather minty
An Irish affair
Left folks in despair,
Asking, "Did he Fitzpatrick, or di'n't he?"

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POEM: Telephone Sex
by Waterloo

I once had a girlfriend called Katie Mallone
who would fondle my dick while I talked on the phone.
She'd unzip my fly while I joked with my brother,
roll back my fore-skin while I mumbled to Mother
But when I'd hang up and was ready to rumble,
she'd hang me up too and deny me the tumble.

I begged her for nookie, to give me release
but she wouldn't. She threatened to call the police.
I pleaded with Katie to massage my meat
but eventually had to admit my defeat
So, when I got horny I'd call Information
and try to keep talking despite her fellation.
I'd ring up the airlines who'd put me on hold
and I'd mumble some bullshit while Katie got bold
I'd press a few buttons
hear instructions in Spanish
All the while I was panting
for her panties to vanish.
Then, at last she climbed on
and she parted her lips
as my call got connected
with rings, beeps and blips
"Hello!" said a girl's voice.
"My name is Mary!"
as my shaft entered into
that place dark and hairy
"This call may be recorded
for Quality Control"
Katie gyrated on my pleasure pole.
"How can I help you?"
said Mary in my ear
as I reached out to fondle
a breast swinging near.
"I'm Coming!" I told her
and that was no lie.
As my sperm-dam burst open
I thought I would die
Some moaning from Katie
drown out her response
as she ground on my pubic bone
with her brown silken mons
And as we both lay there
our lust now requited
I heard in the ear-piece
"Thanks for flying United"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLASSIC DOGGEREL: The Sexual Life of the Camel

The sexual life of the camel
Is stranger than anyone thinks.
At the height of the mating season,
He tries to bugger the sphinx.
But the sphinx's posterior sphincter
Is clogged by the sand of the Nile,
Which accounts for the hump on the camel
And the sphinx's inscrutable smile.

In the process of syphilization
From the anthropoid ape down to man,
It is generally held that the Navy
Has buggered whatever it can.
Yet recent extensive researches
By Darwin and Huxley and Hall
Conclusively prove
that the hedgehog
Has never been buggered at all.

We therefore believe our conclusion
Is incontrovertibly shown
That comparative safety on shipboard
Is enjoyed by the hedgehog alone.
Why haven't they done it at Spithead
As they've done it at Harvard and Yale
And also at Oxford and Cambridge
By shaving the spines off its tail?

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THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

Here lies the body
Of Mary Ford
We hope her soul
Is with the Lord:
But if for Hell
She's changed this life
Better live there
Than as J. Ford's wife.

(Sowersby)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. In addition, Mr. Sparber is the theater critic for City Pages in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Samples of his reviews can be found at http://www.CityPages.com on the Internet.

JILL ANDERSON is an actress, playwright and singer/songwriter from Omaha, Nebraska, as is as yet the only contributor to Doggerel to have an obsessive fan site dedicated to her. Information about Ms. Anderson's musical activities can be found by going to her own, slightly less obsessive Web page.

LANGLEY IVES is the youngest of the seven writing Ives brothers. Lost in the shadows of his older brothers' massive literary achievements, Ives has chosen to live the life of a hermit, occasionally writing crude limericks, but otherwise doing very little other than subsisting entirely on a diet of carrots and weak tea.

LLEWTRAH is the pseudonym of 35-year-old female British bawdiologist with taste for bawdry due to working in male-dominated environments such as her informal position as onetime archivist and poet-in-residence for rugby-loving colleagues. Llewtrah is currently researching/writing an article on female attitudes to bawdy/scatological/generally perverted verse, collecting rude schoolyard rhymes, and local variants of classic bawdry. She has been writing poetry since age of seven, and dirty ditties from mid-teenage years, but has never mastered the art of reading music!

HENRY PECKELSDOWN once ate 17 snails on a bet, and was hospitalized for a week. There is very little Henry won't do on a dare. He was once dared to write 3,000 limericks, This is his first. We imagine we shall be seeing quite a bit of Henry's work in the future.

WATERLOO is the nom de plume for an expatriate Brit who presently resides in Arizona, where he is working on his second unpublished novel and earning his meager living by photographing weddings.

Read more Doggerel!

FIRST, a brief note. It has come to my attention that The Curious Shopper is not the only of his sort out there; in fact, there are several people already calling themselves Curious Shoppers. Never one to compete, The Curious Shopper has decided to rename himself something as distinctive as his tastes. He will, therefore, from here on out be known as The Odd Ingester, which seems more appropriate anyway, as his whole gimmick is devouring strange things.

Now, on to today's find, which happens to be another Chinese candy. The Odd Ingester has developed a particular fondness for Chinese candy, because it tends toward an eccentricity that other candies rarely achieve. Take the Animal Licks Lollipop, as a superlative example. Here we have a candy that is disguised as a hippo's tongue (although you can also get it in zebra or giraffe, if that's your preference.) Because who hasn't looked at the semi-aquatic Artiodactyla and thought, man, if I French kissed that baby, I bet it would taste like cherries!

Actually, it doesn't. There's a slight cherry flavor, but mostly the candy just tastes ... sweet. And artificial. Never mind. If you've gotten to first base with a hippo candy, it's too late to worry about flavor.

More from the Odd Ingester!

THERE WERE TWO ENORMOUSLY POPULAR Gothic horor novels during the Victorian period. There was, of course, Bram Stoker's Dracula, which introduced the contemporary model of the vampire, and continues to influence horror literature today. But the second one was a strange little impersonation of William Makepeace Thackeray's satiric novels, by an English author named George du Maurier. The book was called Trilby (1894), and mostly detailed the failed love affair between an emotionally delicate painter and his model, Trilby O'Ferrall, set in a highly romanticized and fictionalized Paris. Class difference doom their relationship, and here the book takes a turn for the weird. Trilby falls under the spell of a strange Jewish musician, Svengali, who hypnotizes her and makes her perform as a singer. She lives for years in this hypnotic state, until Svengali dies of a heart attack on stage; she dies a few hours later, unable to live without their psychic bond.

Svengali is every bit the monster in this book, and his monstrousness is based on antisemitic stereotypes. He is a cruel and filthy man, and, in the book's illustrations by du Maurier, he has a hook nose, a pointed beard, and batlike ears. du Maurier's antisemitism was puzzling, although not atypical of the era -- he seemed to view Jews with both horror and fascination, and remarked in the novel that most Gentiles have some Jewish blood: "most of us have in our veins at least a minimum of this precious fluid." He also made his hero part-Jewish, and spoke highly of Spanish Jews, who he viewed as somewhat less menacing than European Jews. Nonetheless, it's a little disconcerting that the two great monsters of the Victorian era were a vampire and a Jew, and both were treated as strange, supernatural creatures.

Trilby was adapted to the popular stage and then turned into several silent films, generally under the name of the book's antagonist, which was a good idea. After all, Bram Stoker called his dark romance Dracula, not Lucy; the monster is always the star.

Perhaps the most famous adaptation is the 1931 sound version, starring John Barrymore, the greatest film star of the silent era, a scion to one of America's great theater families and paterfamilias to a dynasty of film actors, including Drew Barrymore. This version makes two smart decisions -- it trims the novel so that Svengali and Trilby's relationship dominates the plot, and it skirts Svengali's Semitism by referring to him as "Polish or something." Barrymore affects the pointed beard, sharp nose, and black costume of du Maurier, but selects an idiosyncratic accent that is distinctly not Yiddish and performs without any of the stereotypical mannerisms of the caricatured Jew. In fact, Barrymore is great in this film, assisted by a genuinely madcap screenplay by J. Grubb Alexander.

Barrymore's Svengali is an entertaining Bohemian for most of the film, teaching singing lessons, playing pranks, and begging money off his friends, who treat him as a sort of eccentric source of fun. Two Scotsmen who share a room decide to throw him in a bath -- a holdover from the book's stereotypical depiction of Jews as dirty. But when they steal Svengali's clothes and go to get their friends to join in the fun, Svengali creeps out of the bath and takes one of their suits, which happens to have a pocket filled with money. These scenes are performed with the good-natured bonhomie of friends who tease each other, and, in fact, nothing about Svengali is stranger than the two Scotsmen. Like him, they have excessive facial hair and funny accents. In doing this, the film effectively strips the antisemitism from the original novel. The issue with Svengali is not that he's Jewish, as his Jewishness is uncertain, and he is no stranger than anyone else in Fin de Siecle Paris. The trouble with Svengali is that he's a hypnotist.

We first get a hint of this when a young woman, one of Svengali's students, comes to call. He sits down to play piano, and asks what they were doing when they last met. "You don't remember?" she retorts, coyly. "I mean musically," he says.

And there, in just a few words, the film has established Svengali as a womanizer. But Svengali now has a problem. His pupil confesses that she has run away from her husband to be with Svengali, and that she left with nothing but the clothes on her back. Svengali responds with astonishment, repeatedly quizzing her on the money she might have taken from her cuckolded husband, but didn't. Finally, mood black, Svengali tells the woman to look at him.

The next day, her body is found floating in the Seine.

Svengali is set on expressionistic sets, which don't resemble Paris at all. Instead, the whole film seems to play out in a series of cavernous, slightly rounded rooms, which are generally empty of all but the simplest furnishings. It's as though the movie were filmed in some huge, recessed alcove in a church, and, initially, when the movie is in its knockabout comedy mood, the sets seems strange. But then Svengali meets Trilby, played with wide-eyes, a long page-boy haircut, and an abundance of moxie by Marian Marsh. He hypnotizes her to cure a headache, and, later in the evening, stands in the window of his apartment, looking out over Paris. His eyes glow with a strange light, and, in a bravura act of filmmaking, the camera pulls out the window and flies over a miniature model of Paris to find Trilby's window, where she rises in a hypnotic trance. It's not a very good effect, technically speaking -- the city is obviously a miniature. But it works, because the miniature they built is strange and angular and without true details, like a dream version of a city. There was once a term for this approach to filmmaking, Caligarism, from the carefully constructed artificial environment of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a 1920 film about another mad hypnotism. Svengali borrows sparingly from Caligari, but, when it does, as is this scene, it's damned effective. Suddenly the film is no longer a puckish comedy about Bohemian Paris -- it's a horror movie.

From here, the film steamrolls toward a variation of the conclusion in the book, and it feels abrupt and badly paced, perhaps because Svengali spent 50 minutes setting up its story and now must wrap it up in short order. But, then, the hypnotized Trilby isn't a very interesting character -- she stares glassily into the middle distance and speaks with a dull monotone. As Svengali puts her to work as a singer, and begins to enjoy the success, his wardrobe improves, but his character degenerates -- he almost seems to disappear from the film, appearing only now and then in outlandish dress uniforms to bark angrily at servants. It's hard not to miss Svengali when he was a prankish beggar. Then he chuckled often and had the unconscious avuncular gesture of patting girls on the cheek. Now he seems a bullying rich man. And so it is for the best that the end of the film is abbreviated. The wealthy Svengali isn't a monster. He's just a jerk.

Watch Svengali on Archive.org.

More of the weirdest and wildest films from the public domain.

LAKE STREET, in Minneapolis, and University Avenue, which stretches between Minneapolis and St. Paul, are notably odd streets. They're both quite long, and pass through an assortment of neighborhoods, some richer, some poorer -- quite a lot poorer. And both streets are lined with local businesses, serving regional (and sometimes neighborhood) needs that chain businesses don't even know exist. Lake Street features a saddle shop right next to a punk record store, which is, in turn, just down the block from a puppet theater. At the far end of University, in a neighborhood with the unlikely name "Frogtown," near the state's capitol building, is a cluster of Hmong supermarkets.

Photographer Wing Young Huie has published two monographs inspired by these locations, or, more properly, inspired by the people who inhabit these locations. Frogtown, published in 1986, peeked into a neighborhood that, to this day, is probably best known for the series of prostitution arrests that that it produces, and that the St. Paul Police publishes on their Web page. Huie's journalistic black and white photographs, coupled with paragraph-long interviews and produced simply by walking around the neighborhood with a camera and knocking at doors, found a racially and ethnically diverse neighborhood, culturally vibrant if sometimes casually lawless.

In 2001, Huie tackled an even more ambitious project with Lake Street USA, peering at an entire street, rather than one neighborhood on it. Huie's monograph contains a much larger selection of photographs and interviews, and was originally displayed in an extraordinary way: as enormous placards hung up along a several-mile stretch of Lake Street. Huie's photographs show an astonishing swash of humanity in an amazing variety of activities: a punk getting a mohawk, cowboy hat-wearing Mexicans close-dancing with their grinning partners, a child pinching the bridge of his nose before a giant blackboard, a shirtless young man hidden behind an inflated silver alien balloon. These are neighborhoods that suburban Minnesotans often display an unaccountable terror of, treating them as places you drive through with the windows rolled up and the doors locked. Huie looks into these neighborhood and at the people who live there, and finds, not a besieged wasteland of drugs and crime, but churchgoers, ethnic musicians, paradegoers, Buddhist monks, and hundreds of others, living quietly fascinating lives.

More of the Sparber Guide to the Twin Cities!

FROM THE LP'S BACK COVER: “In the spring after Pearl Harbor, Jack and one of his brothers enlisted in the Marines. Four years later after many harrowing experiences and being buried alive by the enemy on Iwo Jima, he returned to the States and spent some time in a Navy hospital. In this Universal Audio album, Jack sings some of the songs he has written. As they are varied in topic and tempo, he hopes they will have wide appeal.”

More Vinyl Oddities.

DOGGEREL MAGAZINE
The Weekly Magazine of Comic Verse and Bawdy Songs
Volume 1, Number 7--August 30, 2000
"In thermulas intremus"

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CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Tom Hopper
2. Letters: Two Brief Words of Praise
3. A Toast
4. Poem: Flossie Mandias (Llewtrah)
5. Poem: Untitled (I. Brassil)
6. Limerick: Untitled (Anonymous)
7. Poem: Won't You Let Me Pocahantas (Will Clinger and Jim Fitzgerald)
8. Limerick: The Secret That I Dare Not Tell (Martin Tuppence-Brawly)
9. Poem: Another Land (Max Sparber)
10. Classic Doggerel: The Night of the King's Castration
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Tom Hopper

With this issue, we introduce a new section: a serialized poetic novel called The Tales of Tom Hopper, which we will be sending out as a separate mailing.

When I began Doggerel, I started receiving emails from a poet who identified himself as Tom Hopper, and sent me little stories from his life, always including a poem or two. What makes Tom's submissions unusual are that he claims he lives at the New York Public Library, and that he claims he is a cat.

According to Tom, he usually goes unnoticed by the library's staff, but many years ago they made a botched attempt to oust him, during which Tom lost one of his forepaws. Tom has a taste for drinking songs, fighting songs and the like, and now that the library has installed computers for public use he has taken to submitting his poems via email. This is a complicated process, as he must balance on his hind legs on a chair and type with his one good forepaw. The results are that Tom is unable to type capital letters and certain punctuation. Tom is endlessly apologetic about the fact, but I think it ads considerably to his style.

Tom has promised to continue sending stories for a while, and I have promised to continue publishing them, so you can look forward to a new story from this peculiar author every week.

Enjoy,
Max Sparber, editor

NEXT WEEK: Poetry designed to drive you MAD; Another Doggerel Saint; More Tom Hopper; Exotica, erotica and perhas a few verses from Eroica.

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LETTERS: Two Brief Words of Praise

I'm enjoying the mag. I'm glad I was invited, the stories and poems are great!

M.F.


I applaud your efforts to bring versiflasters and others to the public stage. I plan to single you out in the September 1st issue of The Lemon Basket: The Best and the Worst of the Web # 68

F.D.

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
LISTEN TO THE DRIPPING

As methods of torture go, this is deceptively simple, but terrifyingly effective. You see how we have tied you down. You see the faucet above your head. We will simply drip water on you continuously until you break. It seems foolish at first. Sometimes it takes hours before the bruises start forming. It can take days before the water starts bubbling the skin, and before infection sets in. Sometimes fungus takes root. But worst of all is the sound. That constant drip, and the slight sting of the splash, repeated endlessly, for days, weeks, and even months--it has driven the strongest soul mad. Listen to it now: DRIP, DRIP, DRIP.

You can end the torture before it begins, simply by forwarding Doggerel to everyone you know. It's not too much to ask, is it? Our request seems very reasonable, doesn't it? We are not cruel, and we do not wish to hurt anybody, but if you defy our request you shall give us no option. We wait your answer, our hand on the spigot that will begin the flow of water.

What will it be? CAN YOU STAND THE TORTURE?

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TOASTS: We begin Doggerel with a toast to celebrate another week without prosecution

Too much work, and no vacation,
Deserves at least a small libation.
So hail! my friends, and raise your glasses,
Work's the curse of the drinking classes.

(anonymous, adapted from Oscar Wilde)

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POEM: Flossie Mandias
by Llewtrah (with apologies to P.B. Shelley)

I met a traveler from the red light zone,
Who said: "I met a pert and painted whore,
Stood at the corner near to bright strip-shows,
Skirt short, she plied her trade outside their doors.
Her painted face and sneers of cold contempt,
Told that some master did her earnings take,
Men inside cars, did contemplate that wench,
Roll down their windows and cold bargains make.
Ten years ago she enticed men to buy her:
'My name is Flossie Mandias, whore of whores:
Look upon my tits, lads lusty, and desire!'
No more her beauty reigns--too long abused.
Her once voluptuous form, toothless and spare,
With sagged and sunken flesh too often used."

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POEM: Untitled
by I. Brassil

I feel like some anthropologist. Or Gaugin,
who ran away. But no, I'll not be an apologist
and you've got your paddle. Let's play.

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LIMERICK: Untitled
by anonymous

beneath me silken sheet
three fetishists and I meet
they tongue the toes
my dicky grows
You beasts! Get off my feet

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POEM: Won't You Let Me Pocahantas
by Will Clinger and Jim Fitzgerald

Well I've found an Indian maiden
That I knew right from the start
Was gonna take that bow and arrow
And hit this cat right in the heart

All I wanna do is hold you
And feel that smooth red skin
Won't you help me pitch my tent
And then we'll both just move right in

(chorus)
Won't you let me Pochahantas
I know your daddy don't want us to
But let me Pochahantas right away!

Now I would like to smoke a peace pipe
With that squaw and fly away
But every time I try,
That Captain Smith gets in the way.

I wanna keep your wigwam
And I like your teepees too
Why don't I come on over
And show my tomahawk to you.

Won't you let me Pocahantas
I know those braves don't want us to
But let me Pocahantas right away.

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LIMERICK: The Secret That I Dare Not Tell
by Martin Tuppence-Brawly

Her fiendish desires had brought her
And as much as I screamed and I fought her
The strength my sister
Made it impossible to resist her
So I made love to my father's mad daughter

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POEM: Another Land
by Max Sparber

Their hotels stink like coffins
And their women all are whores
What was a country is now a brothel
And I came here with the war
I'm down to my last dollar
Let's use it to bribe the band
Perhaps they'll play a song I know
I'm in another land

There's money to be made here
Smuggling opium on the trains
There's a black market in children
It's a market I won't explain
If they don't hang you when they catch you
They will saw off both your hands
It's brutal but its justice
When you're in another land

I came here as a ruined man
To this land of ruined souls
Misery lines the rich man's coat
And fills the beggars' bowls
The desert should sweep over us
And bury us with sand
It would if God were merciful
In this other land

I dream of evil that I've done
And when I wake I weep
You're crippled here or you're dead
And you sleep badly if you sleep
There is little point in praying
When you're among the damned
It's the brothel or the graveyard
When you're in another land

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: The Night of the King's Castration
Submitted by Ed Cray

(Herewith the version of "The Night of the King's Castration" as collected by Dean Burson at UCLA in 1959 from an unidentified fraternity brother.)

'Twas the night of the king's castration; the royal ball was coming off. Counts, discounts and no-counts stood around the courtyard, camel-dunging one another, for bullshit was as yet unheard of.

Then in came Daniel with his balls slung over his shoulder. "What ho!" cried Daniel.

"Asshole," said the king.

"Then suck it!" roared Daniel, thereby scoring a point for the common people.

Now this made the king very angry, and he ordered Daniel to come forth. But Daniel slipped on a lion [camel?] turd and came fifth. This made Daniel so furious that he picked up the lion turd and threw it at Random. But Random ducked and it hit the king.

Now, this made the king even more angry, so he ordered Daniel to be thrown into the den of lions. There was Daniel in the midst of all those roaring, snarling beasts. But of course you could easily recognize Daniel by the large green parasol which he always carried.

Suddenly, one of the lions seized Daniel by the left gonad. "Ouch!" cried Daniel. "It tickles."

"What tickles?" asked the king.

"Testicles!" roared Daniel, thereby scoring another point for the common people. Upon hearing this, all the ladies in the courtyard took out their tits and tittered.

Now this made the king exceedingly angry, and so he inquired, "Where's the queen?"

"M'lord, she is on the royal crapper."

"And is she well supplied with paper?"

"M'lord, she has forty reams of the finest linen."

"It is good," said the king. "And where's the princess?"

"Oh, she is upstairs in bed with laryngitis."

"I'll kill that fucking Greek!" cried the king. "Oh well, fuck the princess!"

And fifty thousand loyal subjects were trampled in the rush, for in those days, the king's word was law, and the king ruled with an iron hand.

This made the king exceedingly angry, and in exasperation he cried, "Oh, shit!" And fifty thousand loyal subjects squatted and grunted in unison, for in those days the king's word was law, and the king ruled with an iron hand.

Later in the evening, the king entered the royal boudoir and beheld the queen, lying in nature's attire. "Roll over!" cried the king.

"I'll be fucked if I will!" said the queen.

"You'll be corn-hauled [sic] if you won't!" cried the king.

Upon hearing this, the queen shit a gold brick, for in those days a square asshole was [a] symbol of royalty.

When the king saw this, he cried, "Balls!" not because he wanted to, but
because he had two.

And the queen replied, "Balls? If I had two I could be king!"

(I would appreciate hearing from those of you who have heard of this recitation, or recall portions (or other versions) of it. It is unusual, for it has contributed at least four rather well-known "jokes" or "witticisms" in oral tradition. Many know one- or two-liners from it.)

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THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

In memory of Jane Bent,
Who kick'd up her heels
and away she went.

(Rochville, Eastern Massachusetts)

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ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

LLEWTRAH is the pseudonym of 35-year-old female British bawdiologist with taste for bawdry due to working in male-dominated environments such as her informal position as onetime archivist and poet-in-residence for rugby-loving colleagues. Llewtrah is currently researching/writing an article on female attitudes to bawdy/scatological/generally perverted verse, collecting rude schoolyard rhymes, and local variants of classic bawdry. She has been writing poetry since age of seven, and dirty ditties from mid-teenage years, but has never mastered the art of reading music!

IVEY BRASSIL is a visual artist who writes. Credits include www.conspire.org. She is gearing up for a fall 2001 show of her paintings in an academic setting, makes work mostly about the shady terrain of sex and sexuality, and considers herself less repressed than your average joe.

ANONYMOUS is a man (or woman) of mystery. This masked poet is often seen racing through the streets of our fair metropolis in the anonmobile, pursuing arch-criminals and subduing them with a few well-formed verses. Some say Anonymous is simply a crazed vigilante--we say that he (or she!) is a hero.

WILL CLINGER AND JIM FITGERALD are contemporary vaudevillians. Their contribution in this issue is taken from their musical revue "Rice and Shine."

MARTIN TUPPENCE-BRAWLY was the ghoulish host of "Monster Madness at Midnight" in Mumford, Illinois, for over a decade. He was famous for his wicked laugh and his sharpened teeth, which had been sanded to numerous fine points by a helpful dentist. Mr. Tuppence-Brawly died last September, but his poetry lives on, thanks to the tireless efforts of his wife Joanne, who also had her husband's teeth removed and donated to the Mumford Museum of Curiosities, where they are currently on display.

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine. In addition, he is an accomplished instrumentalist on the ukulele and penny whistle, as well as being a songwriter of some renown.

Read more Doggerel!

"INGESTERS OF STONES, stoats, and swords have long compelled my attention and motivated me to wield my pen," writes Ricky Jay. This line, typical in its pseudo-scholarly tone and near-Victorian diction, is the opening to an essay titled "The Ultimate Diet: The Art and Artifice of Fasting," which includes the odd story of one Bernard Cavanagh. In September of 1841, Cavanagh had just been confined to a garret in London for a full week without food or water in order to prove that he needed neither for his survival. Further, Cavanagh contended that he had done without victuals and drink for more that five years, as he described in an odd exchange with a newspaper reporter.

Q: Answer my questions in a straightforward manner. In this little book which I had given to me at the door, I find it stated that...you "refused both meat and drink." Is this true?

C: (quickly) Yes, it is; I did refuse.

Q: But did you eat anything notwithstanding your refusal?

C: Why, I don't wish to make you believe if you won't.

Q: I am sorry you are a countryman of mine, for I am afraid you are a sad impostor.

Of course, Cavanagh was a fraud--Jay tells of his later exposure after a laborer's wife caught him devouring a cooked dry sausage, threepenny bread, and a quarter pound of ham, "cut particularly fat," according to her account.

Ricky Jay's interest in Cavanagh is not that he was a fraud, but rather that he was a showman, admittedly one with a rather unusual and deceptive show. Jay's essay chronicles an ongoing public obsession with fasters, which transformed them into minor celebrities (and Kafka characters, too). "The annals of peculiarity are filled with similar tales of abstinence going back to antiquity," Jay points out, and then he tells of a Japanese holy man who claimed to eat nothing but leaves (another fraud: he had rice buried in the floor of his dwelling), a Westphalian wonder girl who claimed not to have eaten in a year (after only seven days of observation she pleaded for food), and Margarete Weiss of Speyer, who in 1542 claimed that she was fed by magical wafers that floated down from the heavens, prompting a mass pilgrimage to Weiss's side (she, too, broke down under close observation).

"Frankly, I don't understand people who are not interested in this sort of story," Jay confesses via telephone from Boston. "I have always loved variety acts. When I was a boy, I was constantly around ventriloquists and the like. My grandfather was a great amateur magician, and these were all his friends."

Jay's whole career seems to represent an extension of this childhood obsession with performing curiosities. Jay himself became a professional sleight-of-hand artist and is widely regarded as being among the world's best in close-quarters magic, particularly tricks involving a deck of cards (he can throw cards across the room with enough force to drive them into a watermelon). As an actor, he has appeared in every film directed by David Mamet, who shares his obsession with artistic misdirection. Mamet often casts Jay as a superb con artist, such as in the recently opened Heist, where Jay played a morose and dapper-suited jewel thief who casually flings himself in front of a car to distract a pair of police officers.

As a scribe, Jay is the author of the perpetually popular Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, an anecdotal history of odd variety acts. In the early Eighties, as an extension of his research for Pigs, Jay produced a series of small-press monographs on the subject of peculiar entertainments. "I wanted a really first-class production of the material," Jay says. He titled the results Jay's Journal of Anomalies, and it is here where you will find his account of deceptive fasters. He published the journal approximately four times a year to a small base of a hundred or so subscribers who paid $90 per annum.

To these few readers Jay told stories of such obscure performers as Tommy Minnock, who in the 1890s sang "After the Ball Is Over" while nailed to a cross, as well as the Fakir of Oolu, who would cause his own daughter to levitate. The journal boasted meticulous design by Jay and printer Patrick Reagh, including gaudy and frequently arresting reproductions of circus posters, playbills, and lithographs, most from Jay's own extensive collection. All this has recently been republished by Farrar, Straus & Giroux as a sumptuous hardback.

"For me, it's always either the most simple, beautiful images," Jay tells me, "or the most crazy. Or both. I have a picture in my house of a rider riding a horse. The rider is blindfolded." Jay chuckles. "The horse also has a bag over his head."

The journal is filled with images intended to astonish: Mrs. Everitt and her son, the Gigantic Infant, in an engraving from London, circa 1780; a woodcutting of a nose-amputating knife, taken from an undated Peck & Snyder catalog. The latter shows a chubby man with a grim countenance and a Ben Franklin hairdo, his plump nose bisected by what looks to be an enormous butter knife. Alongside this image, Jay tells the story of a New York thug from the 1930s, "Bob the Nose-Biter." In his typically droll and densely worded text, Jay informs us that this goon "made the etymologically inclined recall the textbook definition of the word 'mayhem' (to bite off the nose or the ears) when he used his teeth to defile the noses of those silly enough to disagree with him."

"Researching this stuff is just a real pleasure," Jay says. "Wherever I go, I spend my time researching, I go to all the major institutions, such as the British Museum. I just spent the day today at the Harvard Library, looking through their extensive collection of books on the theater.

"It's much more than a lifestyle," Jay adds, "this interest in the strange and the ridiculous.

More from the Sparber Bookshelf.

YOU CAN ALMOST HEAR the photographer taunting poor Dale: “Just come up the steps and we’ll take the photo, Dale,” he’s saying. “What’s the matter, Dale? Don’t you want your photo taken for the cover of your album? Why won’t you join me at the top of the stairs, Dale?”

Dale, always a good spirit, smiles at the photographer’s joke. But, inside, Dale is crying.

Note: When I have posted this in the past, I have gotten angry notes from Mr. Lundgren's grandson, who insists his grandfather was a wonderful man. I don't doubt he was. The point of Vinyl Oddities is not to mock the musician, but rather to explore the comic potential of some poorly conceived or unexpectedly evocative album cover art.

More Vinyl Oddities.

DOGGEREL MAGAZINE
The Weekly Magazine of Comic Verse and Bawdy Songs
Volume 1, Number 6--August 23, 2000
"In thermulas intremus"

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CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: New Day Dawning
2. Letter: Shame, Shame, Shame
3. A Toast
4. Poem: The Hootchie-Cootchie Parade (Max Sparber)
5. Poem: Opposite Sexes (Larry A. Tilander)
6. Poem: On History (Linus Huddlesworth)
7. Poem: Why I Remarried (Charelton Fiddlesticks II)
8. Poem: Vasectomy (Llewtrah)
9. Classic Doggerel: Two Classic Limericks
10. Doggerel Saint: Benjamin Franklin
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: New Day Dawning

Regular readers will note that I have moved the publication day from Monday to Wednesday. You may expect Doggerel every week on this day, approximately midway through the day, unless you are one of our subscribers who lives in Australia or Japan or India. If that is the case, you can expect Doggerel at a different time altogether.

Congratulations to the winner of last week's "Translate Our Motto" contest, E.M. in Texas, who gave a roughly correct translation of " In thermulas intremus." For those who are curious, we at Doggerel translate our motto as "Let's get in the hot tub." For her facility in the dead languages of antiquity, E.M. won a copy of the "Viper Mad Blues" CD, reviewed in last week's issue. New readers, if you are interested in glancing through some back issues of Doggerel, simply direct yourself to the Internet and point your cursor to the words "archive." With a single click of your mouse (or the button on your joystick, for those of you who have mistaken Doggerel Magazine for being some sort of odd video game) our complete history of publication will reveal itself to you.

NEXT WEEK: New vaudeville songs! Filthy verses! Vice! Madness! And all the other wonderful things you have come to expect from Doggerel Magazine.

Enjoy,
Max Sparber, editor

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LETTER: Shame, shame shame

Shame on you. SHAME ON YOU. Poetry is meant for the liberation of the human spirit through lofty, glorious, mellifluous language, and you have turned it into a base, filthy thing. Your fascination with foul sexual practices and terrible violence (both of which you seem to find *funny*) points to a shallowness of the soul and a sickness of the mind. I will pray for you tonight, but first I shall cancel my subscription. I don't know what sort of prank you thought you were pulling when you invited me to join your magazine by promising that it contained "Moral Instruction and Words of Praise," but I do not appreciate it.

Mona Christensen

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
WE KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING RIGHT NOW

Oh yes, we're always watching you. You know it too--you can feel our beady eyes upon you, staring jealously through keyholes and in through your windows at night. You can hear us snickering in the darkness and scheming, always scheming! It is enough to DRIVE YOU MAD!

Even now, one of us is under your bed with stainless steel acupuncture pins, waiting to poke them into you when you sleep and render you unable to move, unable to scream, as you watch us enter your room with our infernal devices. Distract us--quickly! Send us a copy of Doggerel Magazine! If you can keep us busy reading, we won't have time to carry out our nefarious plots, will we? ACT NOW! FORWARD DOGGEREL NOW! IT MAY ALREADY BE TOO LATE!

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TOASTS: We begin Doggerel with a toast to celebrate another week without prosecution

Though life is now pleasant and sweet to the sense
We'll be damnably mouldy a hundred years hence.

(Old pirate toast)

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POEM: The Hootchie-Cootchie Parade
by Max Sparber

Sam he was a suspicious man
With a furtive, resentful mind
He was certain there were schemes afoot
And plots to rob him blind
He carried with him a little book
And he jotted all that he saw
Noting that his boss had an unbuckled belt
And lipstick on his jaw

Sam was sure his boss despised him
And Sam he had a plan
If he could uncover an indiscretion
He could lord it over the man
Why would Sam need fear his boss
If he knew secrets of the man's life?
What peccadilloes could Sam uncover
And threaten to tell the man's wife?

He followed his boss that day after work
And was sure he had done so unseen
And Sam found himself at a vast old mansion
With a great hall and mezzanine
And guests arrived in fives and tens
All flappers and top-hatted men
And Sam he wrote down all he saw
And Sam he hid and peered at them

A band they played a Dixie song
Called "The Hootchie-Cootchie Parade"
And the flappers they hoisted up their skirts
And they danced as the band played
The men took off their tophats
And then they dropped their drawers
And some of the men did handstands then
And some crawled around on all fours

As the music grew louder the party did too
And caused Sam to clutch at his heart
A couple he saw were atop the piano
And three atop the drink cart
There was a group of maybe seven
All unbuttoned and undone
Some from the group climbed atop the others
And some atop the chaise longue

Some they carried a bathtub in
And they filled it up with gin
And they tore the clothes right off a flapper
And then they pushed her in
They proceeded to drink with much delight
By lapping with their tongues
And the flapper she called out with glee:
"I hope for this you're hung!"

Sam he felt his head go light
And he slumped down on the floor
And his book and pencil left his hands
And Sam could write no more
He was not noticed for many hours
As the guests were occupied
And by the time they saw him there
Well, poor old Sam had died

They all stood above him then
And looked and shook their heads
He could have joined in what we did
But instead, look here, he's dead!
While we were in actus coitu
This fool was taking notes
So write these words upon his tomb:
"What he should have done, he wrote."

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POEM: Opposite Sexes
by Larry A. Tilander

Well little Susie said to Johnny,
"This all makes me cry
Are you the opposite sex, John,
Or could that sex be I?"
"Well," Johnny said to Susie, "then
I'm stumped, now let's compare;
Just come with me behind the barn,
I'm sure the answer's there."
Then standing there out in the woods
Young Johnny answered plain,
"The answer's clear, no doubt at all--
No need to ask again.
I swear the opposite is you;
'Tis plain when clothes we doff:
You're so opposite, you went
And tore your stuff all off!"
Then Susie said to Johnny, "Then
I'll share your stuff with you."
He told her, "Not a chance, I'm scared
You'll rip this piece off too!"

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POEM: On History
by Linus Huddlesworth

Our founding father, Benjamin Franklin
Was celebrated for his love of spanklin'.
When he'd spankled schoolgirls, forty score,
He turned and spankled forty more.
So those who like floggings had best be a-thanklin'
Our founding father, Benjamin Franklin.

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POEM: Why I Remarried
by Charelton Fiddlesticks II

Take your first novel and throw it in the ocean;
It can't possibly be good, Hemmingway said.
But I forgot my damned manuscript
On that day I went yachting,--
So I flung in my first wife instead.

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POEM: Vasectomy
by Llewtrah (to commemorate Humpto's vasectomy woes)

Scrotum
It is fucking enormous,
For three days it's been swelling,
Now it resembles
Two watermelons
Now my scrotum has filled up with blood,
And my balls begin to ache.

Bollocks
Hurt like fuck when I get wood,
Should this really be happ'ning?
No I don't think it should,
I remember
First night they were like tennis balls
Let my scrotum shrink again.

Cut the gusset,
From my pants
'Cos every seam was chafing,
Swollen bollocks,
No more sexual frolics,
My bollocks took a pasting [1]

Grapefruit,
Just last night they were grapefruit,
Then I got an infection,
My balls are bleedin' wrecks,
When the horn comes,
It's fucking agony too,
Will I ever again have sex?

Swollen bollocks, hemorrhaging,
Cannot stand this swelling,
Watering eyes,
Can't do up my flies,
Over these damn melons.

Touch me?
Oh please do not touch me!
I've just had a vasect'my
And infection's set in.
If you touch me
You'll understand what agony is, [2]
Look my ball-bag is swelling.


Notes:
[1] UK slang. Take a pasting = to be severely beaten up
[2] Humpto's family also understood what vertical take-off was!

For those who wish to sing along, this poem can be set to the melody of "Memories" from the musical "Cats"

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: Two classic limericks

A certain young sheik I'm not namin'
Asked a flapper he though he was tamin',
"Have you your maidenhead?"
"Don't be foolish," she said,
"But I still have the box that it came in."

There was a young man from St. Paul's
Who read Harper's Bazaar and McCall's
Till he grew such a passion
For feminine fashion
That he knitted a snood for his balls.

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DOGGEREL SAINT: Benjamin Franklin

Even a diligent historian would be hard-pressed to find a more celebrated figure from American antiquity. Benjamin Franklin's accomplishments are so voluminous, they can only be expressed as a list, like this: Successful printer, inventor of bifocals, the only person to sign all four major documents of the founding of the United States (the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace with England), founder of the American Library system (along with hundreds of other public works). Here I must pause to gasp for air, and I have hardly begun to recount the extraordinary details of this fascinating historical character. For example, I have not yet mentioned the cult of celebrity that sprung up around Franklin when he was America's first ambassador to France. The French were so taken with him that hundreds of them began to affect Franklin's modest, Puritan-style of dress--and his one great flamboyance, a coonskin cap.

But we are not here to praise Franklin, we are here to bury him. Because while the man might have dressed modestly (when he was dressed at all, as Franklin was a notorious early nudist), and while his autobiography includes his ruminations about how he would begin each morning asking "what good can I do today," Benjamin Franklin had a side to him that isn't taught in school.

Humorless American teachers to this day continue to fill the ears of little children with treacly words of advice from Franklin's popular "Poor Richard's Almanack," such as "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" and "A penny saved is a penny earned." But these words only tell part of the story of Franklin, and as he himself once wrote, "Half the Truth is often a Great Lie."

There is more to the "Almanack" then these teachers let on, and more to Franklin then the honeyed words teachers adore. After all, only recently the blackly comic cannibalism film "Ravenous" paused briefly to quote Franklin. Picking at a stew made from butchered soldiers, actor Robert Carlyle considers a particularly thick bit of gristle. "Eat to live," he proclaims, "don't live to eat."

This scene comes close to the lost Benjamin Franklin, who was so famous for his satirical edge that, according to a recent republication of the "Almanack," when "Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence ... reportedly the other Founding Fathers did not trust him to write the proclamation for fear he might put a joke in it." This is, after all, the writer who included such bits of wisdom in his "Almanack" as "Ne'er take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in" and "Love well, whip well." While the latter undoubtedly inspired Mr. Huddlesworth's ode to Franklin in this issue of Doggerel, you can be sure that Huddlesworth did not first hear this excerpt from a prim grade school teacher.

Neither is it likely that any teacher has explained Franklin's ingenious method of undermining the competition for the "Almanack": Franklin simply declared that the publisher of the most popular competing almanac would die soon. Franklin wrote of his competitor, "He dies, by my calculation, and at his request, on Oct. 17, 1733, 3 ho., 29 m., P.M., at the very instant of the [here Franklin inserted several symbols from the horoscope]." Titan Leeds, the competitor who Franklin had just sentenced to death, was justifiably bewildered and furious, and began his next almanac by declaring Franklin to be "a Fool and a Lyar." Ah, Mr. Leeds, but it is Franklin who graces the American $100 bill, and not you.

Franklin enjoyed this sort of prank--perhaps too much. Throughout his career as a writer and publisher (most of which predated his fame as an American statesman), he had a habit of writing satirical pieces, and then printing them under a pen-name, without explanation that they were meant as satire. In 1747, for example, Franklin wrote "The Speech of Miss Polly Baker," a hoax that was widely reprinted. In it, Franklin writes from the viewpoint of the fictional Polly Baker, a woman who is giving testimony while being prosecuted in a New England court for having given birth to a bastard child. There is little that is funny about the story; It is, for the most part, a passionate argument against then-current laws and morality, which Franklin obviously felt was unduly harsh toward a woman who has had a child out of wedlock. However, when Franklin reaches his final paragraph, his passion grows to a point of absurdity, very nearly becoming an argument in favor of free love. As Polly Baker, Franklin writes these words:

"What must poor young Women do, whom Custom have forbid to solicit Men, and Who cannot force themselves upon Husbands, when the Laws take no Care to provide them any; and yet severely punish them if they do their Duty without them; the Duty of the first and great Command of Nature, and of Nature's God, *Encrease and Multiply*. A Duty, from the steady Performance of which, nothing has been able to deter me; but for its Sake, I have hazarded the Loss of the Publick Esteem, and have frequently endured Publick Disgrace and Punishment; and therefore ought, in my humble Opinion, instead of a Whipping, to have a Statue erected to my Memory."

Bravo! A sentiment certainly worthy of Doggerel, even if its form is not poetic. But had Benjamin Franklin written nothing but prose, he would not find his way to these pages. Fortunately for us, the man was as poetic as he was satiric, and often combined the two into short couplets that seem surprisingly well-suited to the pages of Doggerel. For example, there is this ode to deafness, from the "Almanack":

Deaf, giddy, helpless, left alone,
To all my friends a Burthen grown,
No more I hear a great Church Bell,
Than if it rang out for my Knell:

At Thunder now no more I start,
Than at the whisp'ring of a Fart.
Nay, what's incredible, alack!
I hardly hear my Bridget's Clack.

Then there is Franklin's song of tippling, which he titled "The Antediluvians Were All Very Sober," which reads:

The Antediluvians were all very sober
For they had no Wine, and they brewed no October;
All wicked, Bad Livers, on Mischief still thinking,
For there can't be good Living where there is not Good Drinking,
Derry Down.

'Twas honest old Noah first planted the Vine,
And mended his Morals by drinking its Wine;
He justly the drinking of Water decried;
For he knew that all Mankind, by drinking it, died.
Derry Down.

From this Piece of History plainly we find
That Water's good neither for Body or Mind;
That Virtue and Safety in Wine-bibbing's found
While all that drink Water deserve to be drowned.
Derry Down

So For Safety and Honesty put the Glass aorund.

Bodily functions? Drinking songs? Why, Franklin couldn't be better suited to Doggerel if he had written bawdy songs--which, in fact, he did. Here, then, is his poetic meditation on the subject of cuckoldry, titled "Time to Learn":

Says Roger to his Wife, my dear;
The Strangest piece of News I hear!
A Law, 'tis said, will quickly pass
To purge the matrimonial Class;
Cuckolds, if any we have here
Must to a man be thrown i' th' River.
She smiling cried, My dear, you seem
Surprised! *Pray, han't you learned to swim?*

Let us close with a few more learned words from Benjamin Franklin, one of the fathers of the American Revolution. Again, we feel sure that these important Moral Lessons for the Edification of the Very Young and Innocent have yet to be taught in any classroom:

A Man of Words and not of Deeds,
Is like a Garden full of Weeds.
A Man of Deeds and not of Words
Is like a Garden full of _______.
(I have forgotten the Rhime, but remember 'tis something the very Reverse of a Perfume.)

More of Benjamin Franklin's satirical stories and verses can be found in the book Fart Proudly, edited by Carl Japikse. Order the book from Amazon.com.

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THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

Here doth lie the bodie
of JOHN FLYE, who did die
By a stroke from a sky-rocket
Which hit him on the eye-socket.

(Durness, Scotland)

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ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel Magazine, as well as being a published author of science fiction and fantasy.

LARRY A. TILANDER has written this poem, by way of introduction:

I was born in Toronto in the fall of fifty seven
Learned to read when very young and books took me to Heaven
Moved out to the country in the year of sixty five
Fought with all the yokels, man I hardly stayed alive
The two room school in Marlbank was primative indeed
On about grade six it closed, they bussed us all to Tweed
High school was in Madoc and we smoked a lot of pot
Met a gal named Norma, the library was our spot
Didn't graduate back then, said, "Screw the quest for knowledge."
Worked a while then turned around and headed back to college
Many long years later someone said, "Are you a fool?
Gotta finish what you start, go back and do high school."
Graduated finally then in nineteen ninety eight
Haven't gotten married yet, I hafta masturbate
Hold a job, but lazy and don't like to work too hard
Working in security, I like to be a guard
Write a lot of stories now, and poems, all sorts of bunk
Come and see my website and start reading all the junk

LINUS HUDDLESWORTH was once voted "The Most Elegant Man in Bringham," but his title was stripped from him when it was noticed that he only polished the pearl buttons on his chaps fortnightly, rather than weekly.

CHARELTON FIDDLESTICKS II is the pen-name of one of the most famous stage actors currently strutting the boards in Bangladesh.

LLEWTRAH is the pseudonym of 35-year-old female British bawdiologist with taste for bawdry due to working in male-dominated environments such as her informal position as ometime archivist and poet-in-residence for rugby-loving colleagues. Llewtrah is currently researching/writing an article on female attitudes to bawdy/scatological/generally perverted verse, collecting rude schoolyard rhymes, and local variants of classic bawdry. She has been writing poetry since age of seven, and dirty ditties from mid-teenage years, but has never mastered the art of reading music!

Read more Doggerel!

DESPITE THE NAME, Jaka's Jamaica Rummy's don't come from Jamaica; they come from Holland. Bit there is actual Jamaica rum in it -- 1%, which is enough to give the candy a very strong taste of the molasses-based liquor. These are tight, hard little balls of chocolate covered with sprinkles, which surround the confection with the tight-fitting precision of a mosaic.

The Odd Ingester purchased the rum balls at the Kramarczuk Deli in St. Anthony, which is full of attractive curiosities, several manufactured, like this candy, with alcohol; The Odd Ingester shall return soon for a vodka-based dessert. In the meanwhile, the Jamaica Rummy's is quite pleasing. The rum favor makes gives it a sharper flavor than regular chocolate -- it fact, its a stronger flavor than you'll find in most rums, reminiscent of a very dark rum. The chocolate flavor is quite good as well: European chocolates lack the unpleasant waxiness of American chocolate, and use less milk, and tend to be darker and richer as a result. The Jamaica Rummy's may, in fact, be a little too strong for some American tastes; it's a bit of a jolt, and lingers in your mouth long after the candy has been consumed, like a very strong Turkish coffee, which also displeases some people.

More from the Odd Ingester!

THE FELLOW in the back—that’s right, the grinning man in the plaid jacket and enormous freaking tie—is none other than former Minnesota State Senator Florian Chmielewski, otherwise known as “the Swinging Senator.” So you know the Chmielewskis were in for a fun time when they all hopped into their long red Chmielewskimobile, tossed the boys up on the roof, and headed out to tour the North Country with their accordions. Oh, there were endless games of “Name Six Products Manufactured on the Iron Range” and “List Every Single Secretary of the Interior,” but the real challenge was to stump the old man at his favorite travel game: “Speak Extemporaneously on The Subject Of —” and then a Chmielewski would fill in a political topic culled from the day’s headlines. Of course, one day Florian Jr. called out the subject “marijuana” from the roof of the Chmielewskimobile, and the old man hit the brakes so hard that junior nearly flew all the way to Crow Wing County.

More Vinyl Oddities.

DOGGEREL MAGAZINE
The Weekly Magazine of Comic Verse and Bawdy Songs
Volume 1, Number 5--August 14, 2000
"In thermulas intremus"

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CONTENTS:

1. Editor's Introduction: Translators, To Thine Latin Books!
2. Letter: The Wall Street Journal of Smut
3. A Toast:
4. Poem: The Filly at the Races (Llewtrah)
5. Poem: They No Linger Sin Like They Once Sinned With Us (Max Sparber)
6. Poem: Pruning my Hedges (Daniel Kufahl)
7. Limerick: To Lee, The Latest News (Merton Tuscanini)
8. Poem: The Best-Man's Toast (Waterloo)
9. Classic Doggerel: The Scotsman's Kilt
10. CD Review: Viper Mad Blues
11. The Final Word: An Epitaph
12. About Our Contributors

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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Translators, To Thine Latin Books!

A quick note to point out that Doggerel Magazine now has a motto, which can be found just below our issue number at the top of the page: "In thermulas intremus." I shall not tell you what it means; instead, to the first person who can correctly translate our motto, I will give a free copy of the CD reviewed in this week's issue, Viper Mad Blues.

By the way, attentive readers will note that this week's Classic Doggerel is the very same song our letter writer from last week asked about when she wrote "if any of you are familiar with that one about the Scotsman passed out in the ditch who wakes up to find that his dick has won first prize, let us know." Within two days after the question was posed, two readers had sent in their versions of this naughty exemplar. Our readers' knowledge of bawdiology is wide, deep, and prompt--and I envy them, as the best that can be said of me is that I am narrow, shallow, and sluggish. Thus the lateness of this issue, which I usually like to have ready to mail by noon on Mondays.

NEXT WEEK: Doggerel Saint BEN FRANKLIN; All new POETRY; More TOASTS and EPITAPHS!

Enjoy,

Max Sparber, editor

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LETTER: The Wall Street Journal of Smut

Just a quick note to express my gratitude to you for creating a delightful little ezine. I have shared it with many friends and we all enjoy reading your naughty verses. To have wonderfully dirty rhymes that are actually cerebral is refreshing and exciting. I also appreciate the plain text format of your zine; it is reminiscent of the old Wall Street Journal, and I have no doubt that Doggerel will establish the same reverence in its readers. Best wishes and keep up the fine work.

Koko Valentine

----------------------- ADVERTISEMENT ---------------------------
WHAT IS THAT THING IN YOUR HAIR?

Oh, horror, get it out! Get it out! It's CRAWLING on you!

Oh, no, my error--it is just the latest copy of Doggerel Magazine. Share this great novelty item with your friends, parents, and school teachers. A hit at any party! A guaranteed conversation starter! Simply press that "forward button" on your email program and watch the yucks begin!

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TOASTS: We begin Doggerel with a toast to celebrate another week without prosecution
(Submitted by Tom in Claremont)

Here's to you, and here's to me,
And may our friendship always be.
Yet, if by chance we disagree,
Then fuck you and here's to me!
(Traditional)

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POEM: The Filly at the Races
by Llewtrah

I went for a day at the races,
I was up on the Epsom Downs,
In the parade ring I saw a nice filly,
Who needed a good rub down.

She looked a sure bet in the paddock,
She looked very fine in her stall,
I laid ten to one I would ride her,
That I'd bed her down in the straw.

She had a good eye and good carriage,
She held her head high as she moved,
Her fetlocks were shapely and clean,
Her rump was compact, her gait smooth.

I followed her onto the gallops,
Watched her warm up on the grass,
She'd sweated up in the sunshine,
But she'd plenty of speed in her ass.

I slipped my hand under her girth-strap,
I made sure her crupper was loose,
Ran my hands down her fore-quarters,
And from haunches right down to her shoes.

I removed her tack and my trousers,
Then had her down on the turf,
She lifted her ass up to meet me,
Half-way as I knelt behind her.

She gave a quiet nicker as I entered,
When I thrust, gave a full throated neigh,
She tossed her fine head in excitement,
And climaxed with a trumpeting bray.

She welcomed me like a fine stallion,
She had stamina and a fine turn of speed,
My filly was no untried maiden,
She completed the distance with ease.

I'd have ridden her hour after hour,
But a jockey dismounts when race ends,
She rolled her brown eyes as I left her,
And tightened her girth-strap again.

I made my way back to the paddock,
Where a pretty dark mare caught my eye,
But she was saddled with bridal,
So I made my way home by and by.

It was only one day at the races,
I rode like a jockey inspired,
But the filly's in foal since that meeting,
And I'm to be named as the sire.

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POEM: They No Longer Sin Like They Once Sinned With Us
by Max Sparber

I stayed two nights with the cannibals
And dined with them on chimpansee;
I was arrested and then beaten,--
They claimed I stole their recipe.
I was saved by a Qalif
With a harem of dancing brides;
He gave us many gifts of treasures
And we sold them to our guides.
His anger was quite terrible
And we fled to save our skin,
Which would have been cleaned neatly
And then hung up at the gym.
Now I hear boasts of peccadilloes
And I laugh at them as frivolous
Because, you see, they no longer sin
Like they once sinned with us.

We sailed with a merchant
Who was headed for the coast;
He insisted that we join him
With sherry, for a toast.
He lifted up his glass and said:
"I drink to my lares and Penates"
He hadn't realized, of course,
We'd stashed them in our shipping crates.
He found out soon enough, I'm afraid,
And made us walk the plank;
But we already knew what we needed:
His combination, his safe, his bank.
Now I hear boasts of peccadilloes
And I laugh at them as frivolous
Because, you see, they no longer sin
Like they once sinned with us.

I was asked to join a college
As a professor, and then teach
High Mathematics to the children
In a schoolhouse near the beach.
If you spare something, you spoil something,--
I can't remember which,
So even when the students behaved quite well
I beat them with a switch.
My best pupils were an Archduke's son
And a banker's pretty daughter;
The ransom was refused, and so
They perished in the water.
Now I hear boasts of peccadilloes
And I laugh at them as frivolous
Because, you see, they no longer sin
Like they once sinned with us.

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POEM: Pruning my Hedges
by Daniel Kufahl

Pruning my hedges one summer day
I met a fair lady who called herself Faye,
But she turned quite ugly and had
Pointed teeth, and when she smiled
Out came a half digested potent and
Asked me if I had any cheese. I replied
"No," and went on my way, and I'll never
Forget the woman called Faye.

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LIMERICK: To Lee, The Latest News
by Merton Tuscanini

The doctor had a mind like a sieve, Lee:
Instead of saltpeter, he prescribed laxative. He
Found the psyche ward upended
And the perverts he tended
Masturbating like fiends in the privy.

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POEM: The Best-Man's Toast
by Waterloo

The Best-Man rose to give his toast,
his eyes on the bride's firm breast.
He thought of a time
When those nipples sublime
to his own hot lips were pressed.

He remembered, with a sigh,
how he'd kissed her inner thigh
on the lawn in his father's garden.
He could still smell the grass,
hear the soft slap of her ass
as he buried his aching hard-on

Now champagne sips
wet those ruby lips
that caressed his swollen member
on many an occasion
with little or no persuasion
on those hot weeks in September.

But now she was clothed,
sat beside her betrothed,
in a white gown of satin and lace
and she looked up at him
with a faint little grin
so he kept a straight look on his face.

The guests called for hush
as he pictured her bush
and the way her hairs clung to his penis
And today she's to marry
my big brother Harry, he thought,
"So, it's over between us!"

"A toast to my Brother!
Whom I admire like no other
To Harry and his lovely young wife
We'll be her family
While my brother's off at sea
Drink with me!
And wish them a good life!"

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CLASSIC DOGGEREL: The Scotsman's Kilt
(Submitted by Llewtrah and by Tom in Claremont)

A Scotsman clad in kilt left the bar one evening fair,
One could tell by how he walked that he'd drunk more than his share,
He fumbled round until he could no longer keep his feet,
Then stumbled off into the grass to sleep beside the street.

Chorus:
Ring ding diddle diddle i de o,
Ring di diddle i o,
He stumbled off into the grass to sleep beside the street.

'Bout that time, two young and lovely girls just happened by,
One says to the other with a twinkle in her eye,
"See yon sleeping Scotsman so strong and handsome built,
I wonder if it's true what they don't wear beneath their kilt?"

They crept up on that sleeping Scotsman quiet as could be,
Then lifted up his kilt about an inch so they could see,
And there behold for them to view beneath his Scottish skirt,
Was nothing more than God had graced him with upon his birth.

They marveled for a moment then one said, "We'd best be gone,
But let's leave a present for our friend before we move along."
As a gift they left a blue silk ribbon tied into a bow,
Around the bonnie spar the Scotsman's kilt did lifted show.

The Scotsman woke to nature's call and stumbled toward the trees,
Behind a bush he lifts his kilt and gawks at what he sees,
Then in a startled voice he says to what's before his eyes,
"Lad I don't know where you've been but I see you won first prize."

Our Scottish friend still dressed in kilt continued down the street,
He hadn't gone ten yards or more, when a girl he chanced to meet.
She said, "I've heard what's 'neath that kilt, tell me is it so."
He said, "Just put your hand up miss, if you'd really like to know."

She put her hand right up his kilt and much to her surprise,
The Scotsman smiled and a very strange look came into his eyes.
She said, "Why sir that's gruesome," and then she heard him roar,
"If you put your hand up once again you'll find it grew some more."

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CD REVIEW: Viper Mad Blues (Jass)

The original cover artwork for this compilation CD featured an illustration by Milton Knight, whose distinctively seedy, urban anthropomorphic characters populated Ralph Bakshi's film "Cool World." Once you have seen a Knight character, you're not likely to forget his style: gorillas in zoot suits chewing on oversized cigars; wolves with darting eyes twirling knives on chains; and, in the case of the Viper Mad Blues cover, a snake with a pointed moustache, a hand-painted tie, and a feathered pimp hat. The snake offers a tightly curled joint to a naked couple, presumably Adam and Eve. Knight's wily serpent is coiled tightly around a tree, and the ground beneath it is littered with various animals holding pipes and wrapping their arms around one another as clouds of thick smoke waft into the air toward the moon. Even this celestial orb, in Knight's illustration, grins serenely as it puffs on a one-hitter.

The cover is an inspired introduction to the "25 Songs of Dope and Depravity" this CD promises--a promise that Jass Records has merrily fulfilled. Comprised of blues and jazz numbers, dating from between1927 and 1943, and featuring such diverse talent as Cab Calloway (who starts things off with his vaguely menacing "Kickin' the Gong Around") and Ella Fitzgerald (swinging to the up-tempo, horn-driven "When I Get Low, I get High"), this compilation is nothing less than a full-tilt romp through the midnight jive sessions and coke-fueled jams of the Chitlin Circuit.

Listening to these songs, we can almost imagine ourselves seated on wooden planks in the corner of some Harlem gin joint, where a board has been set across the door to the kitchen, atop which a round-faced woman in a crinoline dress sets a pot full of red beans and rice. She then hollers out that bowls of the stuff are for sale, and is met with cheers. Opposite her, at a battered upright piano, a young man gingerly takes a seat, clutching a harmonica. This is Larry Adler, a Jewish boy who tours the vaudeville circuit and is known as one of the best harp blowers working--word is he has played with George Gershwin. He tinkles out a few notes, and then begins to sing, his voice high and sweet:

It's the kind of stuff that dreams are made of;
It's the stuff that white folks are afraid of.
Up in Harlem we go on a marihuana jag.
Smokin' reefers to get beyond the misery
Go away you misery--Go away, go away!
Smokin' reefers to get beyond the worrying
Go away you worrying--Go away, go away!

Must wake up to work in the morning
I must get by the broodin' at night
Oh, you can't change this world you were born in
But I declare you can be walking on air
By smokin' reefers.

With this, the small audience of 20 or so erupts into delighted howls, clapping their hands together--Jewish or not, this wiry kid with his slick hair and nervous smile is talking a private language--that of the viper, the dedicated partaker in the same stuff that caused Cleo Brown to call out in 1935 (fortunately preserved on this record) "The Stuff is Here and It's Mellow!"

Lock the windows and close the door
Start the party up once more
Hey, hey, let's get gay, 'cuz the stuff is here!

And the stuff *must* be here, because the Cats and the Fiddle just blundered through the door, a quartet of hepcats who play a unique mix of guitars, double-bass, and ukulele as they sing tight, multi-part harmony. These are good-time boys, always guaranteed to fire up a crowd, but also guaranteed to be completely forgotten in a few years (in fact, it is currently only possible to get their music on an expensive import CD, and the song featured on Viper Mad Blues was never released in any form, appearing only in the film The Duke is Tops). But whether they are creatures of posterity or not is beside the point once they launch into "Killin' Jive," which is paced so fast that as the band races through the song they turn visibly purple, singing:

He's the man who smokes that jive
That jive will take you for a dive
Wonders if he's still alive
When you smoke that killing jive!

By now, everybody is up and dancing, either with a partner (which involves gravity defying twists and flips) or singly (which involves whiplash inducing rubberlegging and frequent hand-clapping and hollering). And from somewhere in the crowd comes that distinctive, heady, sickly sweet odor as a tiny joint is palmed, furtively dragged upon, then passed with a nonchalant handshake.

Before this evening is done, the varieties of slang expressions you will hear to describe marihuana will astonish you: ashes, banji, birdwood, black mo, fennel, goof, lobo, ,osky, straw, sweet Lucy, yerba. In fact, it is possible that people are making up expressions on the spot: One thin man in a seersucker suit nudges the small, heavyset man in the porkpie next to him and whispers, "Share the Teddy party, wouldja?" Porkpie raises his eyebrows. Teddy party? Then he shrugs and passes along the joint. Whatever you call it, people at this party know what you are asking for.

You can purchase your own copy of Viper Mad Blues through Amazon.com.

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THE FINAL WORD: An epitaph

Here lies the body of Mary Ann Lowder
Who burst whilst drinking a seidlitz powder;
Called from this earth to her Heavenly rest
She should have waited till it effervesced.

(Bruleigh, New Jersey)

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ABOUT OUR CONTRIBUTORS:

LLEWTRAH is the pseudonym of 35-year-old female British bawdiologist with taste for bawdry due to working in male-dominated environments such as her informal position as sometime archivist and poet-in-residence for rugby-loving colleagues. Llewtrah is currently researching/writing an article on female attitudes to bawdy/scatological/generally perverted verse, collecting rude schoolyard rhymes, and local variants of classic bawdry. She has been writing poetry since age of seven, and dirty ditties from mid-teenage years, but has never mastered the art of reading music!

MAX SPARBER is the editor of Doggerel. Besides that, he is the former editor-in-chief of The Reader, a newsweekly based out of Omaha, Neb. Mr. Sparber is also a frequent contributor to monk.com, the Web presence of the editors of Monk Magazine.

DANIEL KUFAHL is a songwriter, bassist and singer with the band Ophelia's Sweet Demise, based in Milwaukee, Wis.

MERTON TUSCANINI was an international chess champion as a child, but lost his mind at the age 14 and was found naked in a freezing cold river, flagellating himself with a tree branch. He has been confined to an institution since then, and writes poetry about his experiences, which his sister smuggles out and emails to small press journals across the United States. Tuscanini has been writing poetry for 12 years now, and his sister has been submitting his verse for as long, but this is the first time any of his work has seen print.

WATERLOO is the nom de plume for an expatriate Brit who presently resides in Arizona, where he is working on his second unpublished novel and earning his meager living by photographing weddings.

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BUNNY GRACEFULLY jet packs past Porky's Drive-In, a St. Paul fast food landmark.

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QUEEN S*H*E*B*A (Secret Hormone Extract Booby sexed Army) was the beautiful, diabolical leader of an organization that was making men feel queer and women feel like men, all faithful to her. The ultimate goal: world conquest.

(fanfare of trumpets) To the rescue, Lee Crosley, code name LADY CROWN, number one espionage agent for the ultra-secret S.I.S. (Society for International Security). Her mission: get Queen Sheba, no matter what the price!

What happens in the next 160 pages is too much to believe--but boy, will you have fun.

This is the pow, bang, sock, ugh, crack, oh, oh, oh, book of the year.

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THE ODD INGESTER'S friend Lesley discovered this product at Target and immediately purchased it as a gift for The Odd Ingester, thinking