Innocent Bystander

The Professor explains...summer movies.

It's time for another rare visit from our friend, esteemed colleague, raconteur and expert on everything, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff. Today, dear reader, Professor Wagstaff shall discuss the summer blockbuster movies.

Rack on tour? Whose rack is it? Is it coming soon to a city near me?

No...no, I meant as in storyteller.

Storyteller? Listen, I knew a woman once whose breasts arrived 3 minutes before she did. Oh, the stories I could tell...

Summer movies?

You're right, some ARE movies. Some are just stories. Now then...where were we?

Um...blockbusters.

That's right! Blockbusters. Say...doesn't that bring us right back around to that woman? Oh, movies. that's different. 'Tis the season and all that. You can go now. Here's a dollar. Go buy a clue. Better yet, give me that dollar back and stay just the way you are: clueless.

Now then, baboons, summer movies. Each summer Hollywood--you all remember Holly Wood, don't you? If she wouldn't, her sister, Ever, would--unleashes on the unsuspecting world a veritable barrage of major motion pictures packed with special effects and A-list stars. And if there's one thing I've learned in Hollywood, it's what that "A" stands for. The bigger the star, the bigger the...

Professor...family audience.

Are you still here? And I'll ask you to kindly keep my family out of this. Haven't they suffered enough?

Now then. Where was I? Ah, yes. At the corner of Hollywood and Blockbuster. This summer is no exception. It will be hot and sticky and star-filled. Some of the stars themselves will be hot and sticky. Let's look at some of them. Please keep your hands and feet inside the tram until we've come to a complete stop and if you've heard any of this before, stop me completely.

First, we have Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III. I personally missed the first 2 Mission Impossibles. I was trying, each time, to strap my great Aunt Minnie into her corset. Talk about impossible missions! Of course, Tom Cruise does not wear a corset. That we know of. I think it's against his religion. In fact, I'M against his religion.

Next comes X-Men: The Last Stand. I love the X-Men movies because Wolverine loves a good cigar and I love a man who loves a good cigar, if you know what I mean. Hmmm...maybe I should rephrase that...no. No. In the spirit of the movie, I'm going to stick with that statement and let the chips fall where they may. Be careful where you walk. I would be so bold to say that this movie was both magnificent and neat. In fact, it was Mag-Neato. And that's an awfully long way to go for a pun that bad, but don't let that stop me.

Jack Black stars in Nacho Libre, which is either a snack or a drink, I'm not sure which. It's from the director of Napoleon Dynamite, which I'm pretty sure is a drink. Yes. It's definitely a drink. Bring your dog around and I'll buy him a drink, too.

Superman Returns? I didn't even know he was gone. When did this happen? Why wasn't I told? The nerve of this guy...he comes here, strange visitor from another planet and we welcome him with open arms. We even stayed open until 10:00, 10:15 some mornings, before knocking off for lunch and our 3-hour afternoon nap and he just up and leaves. The idea. There's my argument. Restrict immigration.

I had a Miami Vice once, but I threw it out after getting my head caught in it repeatedly. It's a long story, that involves 2 Cuban strippers, a box of Havana cigars, a bottle of rum and Baravelli, the ice man, and I can't recount it here, because I can't re-count that high. And I do mean high.

I think that just about covers everything...

Professor?

Yes? What do YOU want?

Well, what about Cars?

What about them? I thought we were discussing movies, motion pictures, the thee-A-tur. Now you want to talk cars? Tell you what, come by in the morning and we'll fix you right up with a nice little Edsel. Why I have a lot full of them out back and people are just dying to get in them. In fact, most people that remember the Edsel are already dead, and I wish you'd join them. Good-bye now. Leave your name with the woman outside and if there actually is a woman outside, give her my name, too.

This day in history...

We now turn over the writing reins of this blog to a sometime guest for an important announcement.

An important announcement? Why, you weasel. I'm calling you that because I'm fairly certain no weasels read this blog. I don't want to insult the other weasels.

You worm. You cad. Important announcement my Aunt Fanny. Today is my birthday. And you almost forgot it.

Yes, folks, one hundred and fifteen years ago, I, Julius Henry Marx, entered this world, kicking and screaming and sans cigar. I exited my womb with no view and became just another mouth to feed for Sam and Minnie. I was, of course, the cutest baby ever born, but as Harpo once said, that goes without saying.

I don't remember much of my youth, because I was born a small child. For a number of years, I was a baby and there are a number of people who may attest to the fact that I was also a baby later in life. But I studiously avoided a test-ing for most of my life, so there you are. And if you aren't there, I don't know where you are. I soon graduated--with honors--from babyhood and moved on to childhood. Ah, childhood! For a long time, I was a child in rompers. Mighty pretty country around there, let me tell you.

And then, armed with a truancy notice from the third grade, I entered my formative years, where I spent most of my time studing the female form. Luckily, the tests for that were pass/fail, and I mostly passed. I especially passed when the girl's father entered the room. In fact, sometimes I passed so fast I forgot my pants whilst diving out the window. Those were lean times, except for that one girl in Milwaukee.

And so, I grew up. I conquered vaudeville (some might say my brothers and I helped kill it, but if we did, it was a mercy killing), Broadway, radio, movies, and television. I wrote books, which is not half bad coming from someone who barely made it past the third grade. I had 3 wives, all beautiful, all drunks. Some people will tell you I drove them to drink. Not so. I may have dropped them off at the liquor store, but I never drove them to drink.

In my own way, I became a legend. And what becomes a legend most? A stamp! Where's my damn stamp? Shouldn't there be a Groucho stamp by now? There's been an Elvis stamp, and he died the same WEEK as me and was 40 years younger. Why, the very idea! Not only did he have Ann-Margaret before me, but he had his own stamp first! Now honestly, wouldn't you much rather be licking Groucho than Elvis? Since we're both dead, I would imagine that's the most revolting thing you've heard all day.

Well...it's early yet.

The one, the only...

I opened my tiny mailbox last week to find a large padded manila envelope stuffed inside. My postman...gotta love him. No matter how big the package, he'll try his darndest to stuff, compress, fold, bend and mutilate it to the point of fitting it into my narrow little mailbox. What a trouper.

And imagine my surprise when I realized it was from the ultimate trouper, Frank Ferrante. Frank sent along a DVD copy of Groucho A Life in Revue and an autographed copy of his CD, Groucho Sings Kalmar & Ruby. I just watched the former and have transferred the latter to my iPod for future listening.

A Life in Revue is very different than the show I saw in Escondido back in March (and reviewed here). This one is the one co-written by Groucho's son, Arthur and Robert Fisher. It's Groucho's life in the limelight, starting as a boy soprano and all the way up to his Carnegie Hall performances in the early 70s. Ferrante plays 3 distinct ages of Groucho, movie Groucho, TV Groucho and old Groucho, as I like to call them. He plays each of them exceedingly well, but it's as old Groucho, with the beret and sports jacket, where he outdoes himself. The slow, quiet voice, the excrutiatingly painful shuffle that replaced the energized lope, Ferrante's aged Groucho is charming and almost difficult to watch, just as the real old Groucho was.

The play (and that's what it is, a shot-on-video performance) also takes a warm look at Groucho's relationship with his brothers, Chico and Harpo, particularly the former. Roy Abrahmson is wonderful as both (NOT an easy task), but his Chico, given more stage time and a chance to talk, is particularly engaging. Marguerite Lowell has the unenviable task of playing 10 separate female roles, including good ol' Margaret Dumont, and she's wonderful in all of them. But it is, after all, Groucho's show, and as such, Ferrante shines once again. While this one doesn't have the ad-lib action the live "Evening With Groucho" had, there's still moments when you can tell Frank has stepped away from the script.

This DVD is available online (here at Amazon) and also at Tower Records. It's the closest thing we have to a NEW Marx Brothers movie. I would love to see a TV mini-series that portrays the entire story of Groucho's life (starring Frank, natch). It's an epic tale, as Groucho himself would tell you, no doubt. This play also touches on Groucho's love life, in a moving scene with 1 woman representing all 3 of his wives. There's clearly no love lost between Groucho and his son, the author, Arthur. But then again there's no doubt there was love found, either. Arthur just tells it like it really was, and that's refreshing. It's not exactly warts and all, but it's not peaches and cream either, to mix my metaphors. And if you stop by, I'll mix your metaphors. Bring your dog along, and I'll mix his metaphors, too.

Summer rerun...

I am at Comic-Con all week, and as such, blogging time is at a premium.

In the meantime, here's something I wrote on my second day of blogging and I'm still quite fond of it. Oh, excuse me...Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, our learned expert on everything, wrote it, and HE'S quite fond of it. Ladies and gentlemen, I present our only summer rerun:

From time to time in this blog, we will call upon experts in various fields to discuss matters of importance. Today, I'd like to introduce you to an old friend of our's, a man who really needs no introduction, an expert on everything and someone we will turn to on a regular basis for information, history and elucidation. Ladies and gentleman, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff.

Thank you, thank you. Well I thought my razor was dull until I read that introduction. Now then, baboons, what's today's topic? Oh, yes...blogging! When did blogging begin, you may ask. Who was the first blogger?

Well, friends, it's a little known fact that blogging actually started in caveman times.The first caveman, Og, who may or may not be responsible for both fire and the wheel (or at the very least, this wheel on fire), was also the first blogger. In fact, the word "Blog" comes from Og's name, combined with the early word for bullshit, "Bl" (the caveman tended to keep everything to one syllable and the word "shit" wasn't discovered until Roman times when there was a lot more of it in the streets and somebody finally stepped in it). Hence the word "Blog," meaning literally "bullshit from Og."

Now, then...let's skip ahead to Moses. I love to skip, don't you? It's so much more fun than walking. Moses, who, as we all know, looks just like Charlton Heston with a long fuzzy beard, was the first high-profile blogger. He did all his blogging on stone tablets and in fact, the Ten Commandments were blog entries. He broke the tablet on his eleventh commandment and got disgusted so he moved the whole family to Miami Beach where he retired and lived on a fixed income (the vet had the income fixed before Moses picked him up).

Now from here it's easy to draw a simple straight line from Moses to the blogger of today. Go ahead, draw it. I'm pretty much through, since I just realized I'm not getting paid to do this.

Thank you, Professor!

The Professor explains...

As usual, in times of holiday and celebration, we turn to the reknowned expert on everything, that horsefly of gadflys, that paragon of knowledge, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, Today the Professor will entertain us with a song, in celebration of Father's Day.

(Play it, Don.)

Today, father, is Father's Day,
and we're giving you a tie.
It's not much, we know,
it's just our way of showing you,
we think you're a regular guy.
You say that it was nice of us to bother,
but it really was a pleasure to fuss.
For according to our mother
you're our father,
and that's good enough for us,
yes, that's good enough for us.

Happy Father's Day! Now stop reading and go try on the goddamn tie.

The Professor explains...

Seeing how today, Friday, April 15, is Tax Day, we thought we'd invite back our esteemed colleague and raconteur, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, to explain the ins and outs of income tax to us. Prof. Wagstaff is not only an expert on tax law, but runs his own income tax preparation service, H&R Crook. Professor, why do we pay income tax?

I hope you're not including ME in that "we." I am very proud to say, I have NEVER paid income tax in my life. Nope, not me. Not once. Why should I pay the government? They should be paying ME for being such a fine, upstanding citizen. Why, the idea. Me, taking my hard-earned cash, and giving it over to the IRS? Why I audit know better than that, and yes, that was a long way to go for such a bad pun. I hope it wasn't too taxing for you.

Now then, baboons, here's a short history of income tax. Back in the 30s when we were all footloose and fancy-free (no one I knew had a fancy to their name, sad to say), our President decided it was time to dig his greasy little palms deep into our pockets. It was right after the great depression, and it was quite great, because Prozac had not been invented yet, and whisky was outlawed. Can you imagine? How was a movie star to commit suicide or check into Betty Ford without booze and anti-depressants? No wonder the 30s begat the 40s and World War, Too. But I ingest...

FDR was President then, and this was before he became a street in New York. While I'm sure income tax existed before him, he was the man who reached up, plucked it from the tree and made it into apple sauce for mass consumption. Now with income tax we pay a sliding scale, and the more we pay, the more we slide: into depression, into debt, into a much smaller apartment outside of the city with a small yard and a small dog and a small income. Some people are on fixed incomes. This is when they take their wallets to the veterinarian and have them neutered. Some wives also have this procedure performed on their husbands, thus making a performance by their husbands a difficult procedure.

April 15th is the tax deadline day. The word deadline comes from the Latin, "deadlino," meaning dead in line. This is how you feel if you happen to visit the Post Office today. Of course, in some Post Offices across the country, people literally end up being dead in line. This is known as going postal, from the Latin "going a postalo," meaning grabbing an AK-47 and killing people indiscriminately. And haven't we come a long way, baby, when killers don't discriminate? But I digest.

At my own income tax company, H&R Crook, we will save as many tax dollars as we can for you. Of course, we will then do our best to take them from you. We too work on a sliding scale, the more questions you ask, the more we charge. Why, I'm certain that given an hour or so, we'll make you more than pine for an audit from the IRS. And if you don't pine, you can spruce. In fact, you should spruce up a bit. You're looking awfully frowsy around the edges. But the IRS will do that to you.

In conclusion, and as the Beatles and my big Aunt Fanny once said, in the end, you can be sure of one thing: Exactly that. The IRS will always get you in the end. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go tell the next person in line to bend over...

An Evening With Frank Ferrante...

Yeah, yeah...I know what the graphic to the left says: An Evening With Groucho. That's the official title of how I spent tonight, but really when you go to see Frank Ferrante as the one, the only Groucho Marx, what you really get is an evening with Frank. And while Frank stays Groucho all night long, he leaves his written act as much as the original Julius Marx strayed from the scripts of George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind and others. Watching Frank do Groucho is the closest any of us will ever get to seeing Groucho in his Broadway heyday, when every night was a different show and Kaufman himself had to pause in mid-sentence because he felt he actually heard one of the original lines he had written.

Tonight, at the California Center for the Arts in Escondido, Frank took the stage. Literally. He was sitting in the audience at the start of the show, when his musical accompanist, Jim Furmston, started the night with a piano medley of Marx Brothers music. He was the guy who kept applauding. After Jim's opening number, Frank got up from the audience, introduced himself and the show and donned Groucho's traditional greasepaint mustache and eyebrows and trademark glasses. And from then on, it was like the audience was at a seance and Groucho was being channeled onstage by Ferrante.

The show itself--that is the SCRIPTED show--is an enjoyable history lesson about the boys, primarily their life in vaudeville, Broadway and films. Little is said about Groucho's later life, including You Bet Your Life, and in fact, Ferrante is "Movie Groucho" all throughout the show. He sings all the great Groucho film songs including songs from Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup, plus the great "Dr. Hackenbush" song dropped from A Day at the Races, and what could be the greatest Groucho song of all, "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady," from At the Circus. He also sings such Groucho standards as "Shoe Me A Rose," "Omaha, Nebraska," and "Father's Day." The show itself is very reminiscent of Groucho's 1970s stage show, An Evening With Groucho, both in song and storytelling.

But--and here's where Frank really, really shines--Groucho literally comes to life when he interacts with the audience. And that's the brilliance of both the show and Frank, because without donning "older" make-up, or sitting on a stool behind a podium, Frank invokes the Groucho of You Bet Your Life, "TV Groucho," as I call him, by jumping off the stage and talking to the audience. He was pretty merciless with a couple of couples in the first row, one of which was a donor to the Center for the Arts. The woman he was with, "Kumiko" (supposedly, but looking at the list of donors in the program, when you look for the gentleman's semi-unusual first name, there's only one such person, so I'm thinking Kumiko was an alias), was one of those people who gets intensely embrassed when anyone calls attention to them. So, naturally Frank played with her all night long, even sending someone from the audience out to buy a bourbon for her so she'd loosen up (she drank it in one straight shot). They were good sports, (The man even allowed Frank to pump his leg, ala Harpo during one song. I said PUMP, with a P. Get your minds out of the gutter. The very idea. I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse.) Other targets for Frank were the couple who showed up in the second act (they thought it started at 8:00pm). "Escondido's finest," he called them. And the father and son from San Diego. Frank took the 10-year-old son up on the stage and gave him a greasepaint mustache. The kid was a great sport, too. Frank worked pretty much the entire first-floor audience, threatening at one point to come up to the balcony (I half expected it to happen). The balcony was rowdy and Frank kept mentioning them, just to have them make more noise.

The audience was an older-skewing (I said SKEWING. NOW STOP IT.), appreciative crowd, and was about 3/4 full. The show flew by, running about 90 minutes or so, with a 20-minute intermission. Ferrante's singing voice is wonderful and his musical accompanist, Jim Furmston, who has been with Frank for over 20 years, is great at the piano. It's a bare bones set: the piano, a leather overstuffed chair, an old-fashioned divan, and a make-up desk that Frank uses once and only once at the beginning. No frills. A simple spotlight. A hat-tree for Captain Spaulding's pith helmet. (I said PITH. And you're really starting to pith me off, so stop it. I've been waiting since the first paragraph to use that joke.)

The highlight of the show, for me, personally, came afterwards. I hung around while Frank and Jim signed VHS copies of Frank's Groucho: A Life In Revue, which is also due out at the end of the month on DVD (click here for details). I stayed until the end of the line and had a little introduction to myself all planned out in my head, and when I got up to re-introduce myself to Frank, he held out his hand and said, "Gary, I'm so glad you came." He remembered me! I was really quite touched by that. Seems he had Googled himself last week to see what kind of press was being done for the show, came across this very blog and remembered my comic and the times we met in the past. How cool is that? It was the perfect personal capstone to a great evening at the theater, an evening not only with the one, the only Groucho, but also the one, the only Frank Ferrante.

(You can read more about Frank and his shows at Grouchoworld.com. We've also added this site to our permanent list of "Other Sites of Interest," to the right.)

The Professor explains...

Once again, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff joins us to discuss a topic of great importance...

I would like to take a moment here to talk about what I think is a peculiarly male phenomenon: reading in the bathroom. Oh, I'm not talking about cozing up in the tub with a juicy romance novel amidst candles galore. You remember Candles Galore, don't you? She was the missing Gabor sister, the one with the even-more incomprehensible accent. She was a stripper. A paint stripper. Get your mind out of the gutter or at least move on over so I can join you down there. Can you pass me that wad of chewing gum, please?

Now then, where was I? Ah, yes! Reading in the bathroom. No, not in the tub...on the terlet. The john. Or as the British call it, the loo, which of course is short for Louis the XVI, the inventor of the toilet. Well, he invented the commode. The seat came later. In fact, the seat came much later, and if you come too late to the show your seat will not be there. But I digress. In fact, I digress a number of times each day, everytime I eat, but that's neither here nor there, except when my stomach rumbles. And go ahead, pick a stomach from one to ten...oh, wait...that's not right. The idea!

The theory we are about to expound upon here relates to the peculiar male habit of reading in the bathroom. What? I already said that? Now, we're getting somewhere, and I wish you'd leave now. Reading is one of the great joys in life and reading while taking a dump, i.e., e.g., to wit, and in lieu, one of our most primal moments. It is, of course, a God-given gift. In fact, God created books to be read in the toilet, so we could discover toilet paper. Read a page and tear here. I'm sure you get the picture. And we have a very nice special on frames this week to go along with that picture. So frame this, baboons.

Do you know why babies can't read? Because they can't use the toilet, that's why! The reading/toilet connection doesn't come to light until much later, like when their father's copy of Playboy arrives, unless they have a postman who sneaks a peak and drops it off the next day, the cad. Why, when I was a mere whelp (whelp! whelp! whelp!), we didn't have Playboy so our postman had to settle for having sex with our mother. Imagine that. No, on second thought, don't imagine that. I don't even want to imagine that. I'd slap my own face if I wasn't busy typing.

Reading on the toilet is as natural as peanut butter and jelly, and in my case, the more peanut butter I eat the more reading I get done, if you catch my drift. And if you do catch my drift, can you please send it back to me? I miss my drift, most of the time, and on the ocassional time I do catch it, it's almost always a rerun. That famous statue, "The Thinker?" He's constipated. If he would have been reading a book, he would have been sitting on a toilet, and then, of course, the statue would have been called "The Stinker," but that's a whole other topic for another day, because my time is up here. So is yours. Goodbye. Don't forget to put the seat down on your way out.

Hello, I must be going...

One of the best times I ever had in the Thee-A-ter was when I saw a revival of The Cocoanuts off-Broadway. It must have been October 1996 and it was the final night of the World Series. The Yankees won the whole enchilada that night and New York took on a more festive atmosphere, to say the least. But that night I was safely huddled in a smallish theater watching Frank Ferrante take the stage as Groucho. He had replaced the original actor playing Groucho just before I saw this performance, and the cast was still getting used to him. And on that night, Ferrante wasn't just playing Groucho, he was channeling him. The audience was treated to ongoing Yankees scores, and ad libs galore. You could see the other actors not quite knowing what to do. It was a great night at the theatre.

I wrote about this in Innocent Bystander #3, my all Marx Brothers issue and lo and behold, got an actual fan letter from Frank himself. Frank wrote:

"I just finished gobbling up IB3. Now, I've been featured in hundreds of publications: The New York Times, The London Times, you name it, but nothing has thrilled me more than your inclusion of me in your Marx Brothers issue (page 14 to be exact).

Though I direct for the stage and have played many roles in the theatre, the world of comic books and Mad Magazine is what first inspired me. Soon after came the Marx Brothers. Thanks for bringing it all together for me with IB3."

I actually met Frank once, at one of Paul Wesolowski's Marx Brothers open houses. Paul is one of the leading collectors of Marxian memorabilia in the world, and his house is a shrine to the boys, filled with all kinds of amazing things. I'm pretty sure it was at the first one I attended (probably in 1995 or so) and before I did the Marx Brothers issue. He was a really nice guy, and was there as just a fan, too.

Frank still plays Groucho these days. Here's a link to his 2005 schedule, including one close to home here on March 5 in Escondido, that I hope to attend. But I'm "burying the lead" here. As you can see from the above illustration, Frank has a new DVD coming out. His PBS special, Groucho A Life in Revue, debuts on March 29. You can order it here at Amazon. I know I will.

Frank brings a lot more to his Groucho performances than just imitation. He refines Groucho and shapes him through his own experiences. Frank is funny, fast and witty on his own, and his Groucho contains all of that, plus an incredibly detailed and moving recreation of the one, the only, himself. If you have a chance to see him perform live, grab it. If not, than this DVD will be the next best thing.

Let's dig this thing out again...

Today, I'm feeling a little

(Silly, whimsical, strange.)

For the entire scale, look for the entry on Dec. 20th, 2004 titled "A new public service..."

A visit from the Professor...

It's been a long time since we had a visit from our old friend, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff. As we mentioned when we first launched into the Blogoverse, from time to time, we would have commentary and advice from our learned friend, someone who we, ourselves, have learned much from over the years. As we welcome him back from his worldwind tour for the holidays, we're going to leave the floor open for the Professor's thoughts and comments.

Why in the world would you do that? Leave the floor open. The very idea. Aren't you concerned about falling through? Why you could hurt yourself that way.

Well, friends when I was last here...waitaminute! WHEN was I last here? What? Dec. 20th? Was I drunk that night? Did I show up with a blonde on one arm and a bottle in the other? Just the bottle? Boy! Am I relieved! I thought I had misplaced another blonde! When I was last here I tried to sharpen your dull minds with some commentary on the holidays. And now, as I look out over your eager faces, I can tell the holidays beat you to a pulp. You're fat, you're bloated, you look like something the reindeer dragged in. Well, am I wrong? Of course not! I can't be wrong, and you can't be right and what do you get when you combine the two? You get awfully tiresome after a while, especially when you insist you're always right.

Now then, baboons....where was I? Oh, yes! January. The darkest month. It's a well known fact that all of us get a little testy when there's less sunlight. Now, a little testy is fine, it's the pop quizzys that bother me, and don't forget, I'm the Professor. All that grading. Grades. Competition. Allow me a Strange Interlude...

You scramble for grades, the whole sorry lot of you. I pity you. Simple letters. A. B. C. D. F. Whatever happened to E? What's wrong with E? Is it the whole E for Effort thing? Shouldn't we be giving everyone an E for Effort? Isn't that what made this country great? Why just the other night I was awarded 12 Es for Effort at a bar near the college for trying to pick up coeds. And you know what you get when you pick up a coed, don't you? A runny nose, that's what. But grades...grades...jockeying for position, for what? Validation? You can get validation at the Starbucks up around the corner, 3 hours free parking with their stamp. Go ahead, I'll wait...

Are you back yet? Because I can't be kept waiting. I can't be kept at all. I will not be a kept man. I have better things to do. Lolling around all day, at your beck and call. The very idea. What kind of cheap, 2-bit gigolo do you think I am? What? A 3-bit gigolo? Well, I see here we have room to maneuver. Maybe even room to rumba. Do you rumba? Well pick a rumba from one to ten and call me in the morning. I have to go now. I'm sorry. I must be going...

Thank you, Professor!

The Last Days of Groucho Marx...

As promised (or threatened, depending on your point of view), I've posted a new photo album containing the previously-unpublished Innocent Bystander story "The Last Days (and thensome!) of Groucho Marx." It's only 4 pages, albeit 4 dense pages, so it's a fairly quick read. This was produced (I think) in 2002, although it may be as old as 2001.

As an aside, the final fate of Erin Fleming is known. The "actress" who latched on to Groucho late in life took her own life in April of 2003. Not many more details are available beyond that.

Scroll down to reveal the Photo Album links on the left. It's the final album. Click on the image or text to enter the album and read all 4 pages, one-by-one.

A new public service...

In a better effort to serve the public with this blog, we now introduce our own Advisory System. This system is offered to alert the readers of the content of this blog on a day-by-day basis.

Due to the overwhelming numbers of new visitors to this site each and every day, we feel compelled to offer this service to both new and old readers.

We will continue to utilize this system until something happens in the real world to make us feel guilty about it, or until we, ourselves, get sick of it. Whichever comes first. (We're really hoping it's the latter.)

Please click on the image above for a larger view of the complete color-coded system. A brief explanation of each component of the system follows:

Bitingly sarcastic, witty, urbane.

Silly, whimsical, strange.

Bewildering, confusing, punny.

Amusing, mysterious, vaguely familiar.

Not funny. No, sir. Not funny at all.

Today's content has been deemed:

.

The Professor explains the holidays...

Once again, it is time for us to call upon that learned expert on everything, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff. Today's topic is the holidays, or more precisely, coping with the holidays. Professor, tell us please, with such a high incidence of depression this time of year, how can one cope with all the feelings and pressure of the holiday season?

I'm sorry, were you speaking to me? I'm busy writing a letter to Santa. How do you spell "prostitute?" Look it up. Go ahead. Look in the phone book. Look under "escort services." If you don't find them there, look under the table...there may be one left over from last night.

Depression and the holidays go hand in hand. In fact, just the other day, I saw them check into a sleazy little motel over in El Cajon. One way to cope with this is to take time out for ME. Think ME for the holidays. Be a "ME-person." I don't mean YOU. I MEAN ME. What are you getting me for Christmas? Oh, don't let the fact that I'm Jewish AND dead stand in your way. The dead-since-1977 thing hasn't kept me from setting up an Amazon.com wishlist. A nice little gift will be just fine, nothing ostentatious. In fact, nothing in Austin is tasty-ious, and that's a long way to go for such a lame pun, and I wish you'd leave now and get a head start.

Now then, where was I? Laying down and about to take a nice long winter's nap, with mama in her kerchief and I in my cap...oh, yes. The holidays. As I was saying, take time out for yourself. Curl up with a good book. I have Barbara Book's phone number right here but that will cost you a pretty penny. In fact, I have Pretty Penny's number, too. But I digress.

There is an alarming rise in suicide during the holuday season, and my best advice about this is kids, don't try this at home. Suicide, when done correctly, with or without adult supervision, often times has lasting repercussions. In fact, all this talk of suicide now has ME depressed. Thanks! I come here to give you advice and you talk me down. I'm a naturally effusive person, I'll have you know. It happens every time I eat radishes. And in addition, I'm a fairly happy-go-lucky guy. Or is that lucky-go-happy? I can never keep that straight. But I must go now. You go, too. Go on. Scat. Leave your number with the girl outside. And if there's a girl outside, send her in.

Thank you, Professor!

A short history of blogging...

From time to time in this blog, we will call upon experts in various fields to discuss matters of importance. Today, I'd like to introduce you to an old friend of our's, a man who really needs no introduction, an expert on everything and someone we will turn to on a regular basis for information, history and elucidation. Ladies and gentleman, Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff.

Thank you, thank you. Well I thought my razor was dull until I read that introduction. Now then, baboons, what's today's topic? Oh, yes...blogging! When did blogging begin, you may ask. Who was the first blogger?

Well, friends, it's a little known fact that blogging actually started in caveman times.The first caveman, Og, who may or may not be responsible for both fire and the wheel (or at the very least, this wheel on fire), was also the first blogger. In fact, the word "Blog" comes from Og's name, combined with the early word for bullshit, "Bl" (the caveman tended to keep everything to one syllable and the word "shit" wasn't discovered until Roman times when there was a lot more of it in the streets and somebody finally stepped in it). Hence the word "Blog," meaning literally "bullshit from Og."

Now, then...let's skip ahead to Moses. I love to skip, don't you? It's so much more fun than walking. Moses, who, as we all know, looks just like Charlton Heston with a long fuzzy beard, was the first high-profile blogger. He did all his blogging on stone tablets and in fact, the Ten Commandments were blog entries. He broke the tablet on his eleventh commandment and got disgusted so he moved the whole family to Miami Beach where he retired and lived on a fixed income (the vet had the income fixed before Moses picked him up).

Now from here it's easy to draw a simple straight line from Moses to the blogger of today. Go ahead, draw it. I'm pretty much through, since I just realized I'm not getting paid to do this.

Thank you, Professor!