Foremost among Jim Katcavage’s many attributes is the ability to set your watch to his haircut. The Atomic Clock at the Bureau of Weights and Measures in Washington DC is less accurate than his crew cut. I actually owned this football card and found it to be the least inspiring card ever produced. This card spoke to me with the same passion as a man hole cover. I’m thinking it wasn’t Photo-shopped and was probably cropped by the Indiana Home for the Criminally Insane. The background color was selected by Zsa Zsa Gabor. And of course hair and make up was provided courtesy of General Motors. Suffice to say this card possesses the artistry of a blast furnace.

This “Big Ugly” grunted in the NFL trenches from 1956-68 — when men were stereotypes and “Mad Men” women were strictly scenery. I’d go back to the New Frontier, but I probably couldn’t see through the haze of Chesterfield cigarette smoke. I predict a mania is about to occur for this phosphorescently florid football card. Katcavage’s blockheaded still life will soon grow to iconic status much like Marvelous Marv Throneberry or Warhol’s soup cans did. Some will call this mania Kat Cavage Fever. Others will refer to him as The Fab One. The larger point is; Rosie Grier, Andy Robustelli, Dick Modzelewski and Jim Katcavage once formed a forbidding defensive line for the NY football Giants and their bravura performances and fierce camaraderie paved the way for what today we call luxury boxes.

Mr. Katcavage, who died in 1992, had his last haircut on October 28th, 1962. And although it grayed as he aged, it never dared to grow out in defiance of its owner’s wishes. He was the master of his hair follicles. When all the world was in tumult one merely had to look to his unerring crew cut and revel in the surety that there was indeed order in the cosmos. Time and tide stop for no man, but once upon a time, long ago, it did at least slow down for Big Jim Katcavage.

To fully appreciate this tale you’re going to have to know a few things. English would be nice. Although Para Español oprime número dos. If you’d like this story to entertain you, blink once. If you’d like this story to inform you, blink twice. If you blinked at all, please seek psychiatric care immediately and then just read the damn story OK.

I’ll set the stage. The year was 1976 and as a 15 year old hormone factory living in frigid Syracuse, NY I was privileged to work on the most mega-ginormous off road equipment ever built. I use the non-word mega-ginormous to convey my sense of adolescent shock and awe at the sheer enormity of these machines. I’m talking monumental dump trucks, massive front end loaders and colossal excavators. My route to this “It’s a Large World” Disneyland of construction equipment was through my family’s glass and mirror business. Whenever I wasn’t in school I was immediately and profitably absorbed into the work force doing anything from cutting glass (actually scoring glass, then exploiting the fault line) to slapping up mirrors in cookie cutter tract homes. Great work if you can get it, or are fortunate enough to be born into a family that has it. In any event, one of our heavy industry accounts was LB Smith. LB Smith was a General Motors dealer, but not in the traditional sense. They were a dealership in GM’s steroidal Terex division. This division didn’t manufacture Impalas or Corvettes, instead they produced the world’s largest collection of outrageously gargantuan off road equipment the universe had ever seen. Bigger even, than a Dolly Parton wig. Read the rest of this entry »

When I meet with a proposition beyond finite comprehension, I abandon it as a weight human strength cannot lift, and I think ignorance in these cases is truly the softest pillow on which I can lay my head — Thomas Jefferson corresponding with John Adams 1820

Few fantasies would give me more pleasure than stealing a couple of contemporary hours in the cherished company of that revered forefather and complex Renaissance man Thomas Jefferson. Oh, would that I could lovingly lay before him the fantastic national landscape he carefully cultivated so many years ago. Patriots everywhere herald his Declaration of Independence as the Big Bang in our 232 year old Colonial Chemistry set and I’d thrill to show him all the new elements discovered in our federal laboratory. If only God would grant me a few precious moments with Thomas Jefferson, I’d promise never to tax without representing. I’m not asking much, merely the transubstantiation of matter, energy, space and time. Jesus got to do it. Why not me? Read the rest of this entry »

God Speaks with One Voice…Through 7 Billion Translators

After our Lord created the Universe, I found him lolling on a chaise in the lobby of the Hotel Sui Generis, blithely reading, “A Catcher in the Rye.” So typical of him. I recognized the Lord from peripheral glimpses I’d stolen during orgasms or that time I almost choked to death on red skin potato juice while trying to heal a spastic colon. He knew who I was but feigned ignorance. Our relationship is freighted with misconception.

So this was my frame of reference when I confronted his Plasmatic Manifestation. It seemed my entire life had led to this moment when I could finally posit the irreconcilable question that troubled me most. His numinous response would gracefully dissolve ignorance, remedy years of tedious inertia and remove the veil of happy distraction so common to postmodern man. I wasn’t asking much. I was only asking everything. Not hesitating for an instant I strode over to the Godman, got right in his face and earnestly posed my momentous query: “Why do people ask rhetorical questions?” Read the rest of this entry »

Inside the bathyscaphe there’s an eerie background din of whirring fans and humming battery packs pinging off the smooth white enamel paint. An other worldly reality pervades the spherical submersible as Colonel Jack Wisdom and Major Fillmore Artery meticulously unwrap that evening’s dinner rations and slowly begin chewing on their extruded sustenance. The now stuporous crew is obviously suffering from either too much or too little oxygen. They eyeball each other like a psychiatrist stares at his diploma; not knowing what to say, but knowing that if anyone does say something, it will be very significant.

Colonel Wisdom (his left foot resting on a ledge that warns in red stenciled letters: No Step): Y’know Major, I’ve known you for what, five years now. And in that time I’ve heard you talk a lot about how much you like pizza. <10 second pause, strokes his chin> But y’know something Major – In all that time I’ve never seen you actually eat pizza.

Major Artery: Hmmm. Wow. <10 second pause, strokes his chin> I guess that’s true – kinda like with you and bobble heads.

Colonel Wisdom: <10 second pause, strokes his chin>

Major Artery: <gazing wistfully out the porthole, strokes his chin> It looks so cool out there. When are we going to go outside for a walk on the lunar surface?

Colonel Wisdom: That sounds great Major. If we we’re on the moon you jack ass. <10 second pause, strokes his penis by mistake>

With that statement Col. Wisdom unthinkingly steps up on the ledge he’d been resting his foot on, which of course breaks off, causing him to rocket down the smooth enameled walls of the spherical bathyscaphe where, after a few pendulous swings up and down the interior surface, he comes to rest at the bottom sprawled out like an overturned turtle. Meanwhile Major Artery prepares for his space walk by donning scuba gear and stating, “I’m just gonna step out and get some fresh air.”

 

Author’s note: Do we continue the story?

 

 

 

After a moment of reflection I remembered something my father told me many years ago; “Ask not for whom the bridge tolls, for it tolls for thee.”

Sector Q Counterinsurgency Task Force – Alpha Group 

Dateline Yemen:

Corpsman: The combatants have dug in at the oasis just beyond the mirage.

Captain: Good work soldier. We need to know their numbers. How many enemy Yemeni are there?

Corpsman: Iraq my brain and I still don’t know how many enemy Yemeni.

Captain: This is really what I’m asking you.

Corpsman: What Israeli?

Captain: Oh, please be Syrias. We’ll need our face masks for the firefight. Where are they?

Corpsman: I am being serious. Damascus on the table. They were very expensive.  

Captain: Yeah the masks were expensive; Egypt us.

Corpsman: Who jipped us?

Captain: No. Who, is the guy on first base.

Corpsman: What about that Jew on second?

Captain: Lowenstein is not a Jew. That Israeli true. Ikanstan this anymore. I’m too old and my knees hurt. And no matter how much they hurt – you can’t Sudanese.

Corpsman: Oman. That is really true.You can’t sue the knees but you can Suez.

Captain: That Israeli true. Tell me about it. In fact Tel Aviv.

Corpsman: OK. Hey Aviv. Do you know how many enemy Yemeni are at the oasis?

Aviv: No, the whole thing’s a mirage. Fallujah, didn’t I?

Shoo fly shoo!

 

Flies in the buttermilk

Shoo fly shoo!

 

Flies in the buttermilk

Shoo fly shoo!

 

Skip to my Lou my darling

This traditional children’s nursery rhyme seemed innocent enough until the flies made a federal case out of it. Few realized then that Flies v. Old MacDonald would become a rigorous litmus test for future Supreme Court nominees. Offshore Law Review Quarterly has published a summary of the case, and, with their implied verbal permission, I’ve reprinted it below. Read the rest of this entry »

The Immaculate Conception may be the most mysterious explanation a wife ever gave a husband for carrying someone else’s baby. But when God comes-a-knockin’, what are you supposed to say, “Not tonight Lord, I’m shampooing.” His will be done. If he can make the the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, he can certainly make this serenely humble peasant from Nazareth. To those who dismissively say, “The Immaculate Conception is inconceivable,” I say go choke on your contradiction in terms. I mean you’ll doubt the Immaculate Conception, but you’ll fully embrace Pringle’s and OctoMom. What is wrong with you people?

Let the skeptics chortle in smug elitism at the improbability of the Immaculate Conception. My truth is in possessing a strong affinity for Nativity scenes. I’m drawn to them like a vegaholic to a salad bar. I’ve always been this way. Maybe it’s because I was born in a Bingo Parlor. Maybe it’s because my favorite hat is a crown of thorns. But for whatever reason, frankincense and myrrh were at the top of my Christmas list. Mom never new quite what to do with them so for about a month after Christmas she’d make us frankincense and myrrh sandwiches for our school lunches or F&Ms as we called them. My attraction to mangers is so compelling that to this day I sleep on a bed of straw. It’s very transformative. In fact I used to sleep in a chilly barn, but mother made me stop because I kept waking up a little hoarse. Read the rest of this entry »

With tender apologies to all who’ve been devastated by the obscenity of suicide, I offer an irreverent antidote to this sorrowing scourge. Yes, a light-hearted look at a different way of dying. Can it be done? Well, I’ll try to walk this tightrope with the same delicacy as the late aerialist Karl Wallenda did. Mr. Wallenda, you’ll recall, died doing what he loved most – plummeting to earth at terminal velocity.  And in the spirit of Mel Brooks embracing the brutal outrage of Nazis in “The Producers”, I endeavor to do the same with the sad barbarity of suicide. But whereas Mr. Brooks had talent, I can only offer chutzpah. I really hope you like this piece, because if you don’t I swear I’ll kill myself.

Few things are as ugly and sobering as suicide. Among the infernal competition of berserk human expressions, suicide always medals. It’s a depressing subject that usually isn’t discussed much or written about; and I know what you’re thinking – Why did it take so damn long for someone to develop luggage with wheels on it. My God, it was like dragging an 80lb. headstone through the airport sometimes. Wouldn’t it be easier to, oh I don’t know, put some wheels on this manhole cover.                               You were thinking that weren’t you? Read the rest of this entry »