Fire Rolls Down the Line

Dear Pardners,

Every cow puncher that rides through these parts has a yarn to tell. Now me, I like the man that keeps it neath his hat. I reckon them flannelmouths who play to the gallery will fetch themselves a punch in the nose every time.

But if you're fixing to rustle cattle in Culberson County, Son, maybe you'd better bend an elbow and pay mind to a ditty I've got for you. This here tune is about our ace high lawman, goes by the name of Oatmeal. Now there's a man you can ride the river with.

Oatmeal. Now, that's a powerful strange thing to call a man, you might say, and you'd be right. But should you ever cross trails with Oatmeal, why you'd best not speak those words to his face. Not lessin' you're hot to wind up on the business end of an Arkansas toothpick.

Oatmeal's brought in more desperadoes than a whorehouse on nickel night. The scuttlebutt is that he keeps his Black Eyed Susan with five beans in the wheel, so that he gets to kill one outlaw in six with his bare hands.

I saw him once with my own two eyebones, down at the Buckhorn Saloon. Some saddlebum by the name of Fess Dalton got roostered on the coffin varnish and started looking for a dog to kick. Oatmeal saunters up to him, slow and easy-like and says, "Fire rolls down the line, Son." That's all he ever says, I reckon, and no one really knows what it means. He just lowers his hat and utters, "Fire rolls down the line." Well, Fess and his four brothers come flying at Oatmeal all horns and rattles but faster than you can say 'cream gravy,' Oatmeal is unshucked and fires three times. Three shots, and all five boys bite the ground directly.

Now I swear that story is as true as the hawse between my knees. There may be some rubbings down and chippings off as might happen in the passing from mouth to mouth, but if you think that's all a bunch of burro's milk, you should try asking one of the other banditos or Bunko artists that Oatmeal put in the bone orchard...

Rusty Buck Judson, Beauregard Booker, Chick Shackleford, Duke "Curly Pete" Willbarger, Hiram "Burly Pete" Hayes, Jethro "Man Boobs" Haskell, Neck Oil Holbrook, Gunner Knox the Cow Chip Hustler, Maverick Ford and the three Jebs, Lyndon Montana "Black Biscuits" McGrady, Slapjack Hayes, Go Fish Jones, Amarillo Jed Crowley, Link "Sutton County Chili Cook-off Second Place" Waller, Fletcher Skunk Eggs Ketchum, Mose Bareback, Leaky Amos Franklin, Austin Hoopskirt Bridger, Crowbait McGinny, Chester Prairie Dew Pecos, Man-hug Crosby, Sonny Last-Nameless, Spur-Lickin' Buddy Williams, Doc Barbecue Calhoun, Rowdy "Holy Heck" Chavez, Loping Tom Kinney, Asswhip Laredo, Deadeye Wiley Graham, Pants-down Oakley, Boone Giant Belt Buckle Nolan, Too Fancy William Crane, Linus Bootsingravy Connors, Whistlin' Jethro Harrison, Dusty Clem Snakehide, Soapy Briscoe, Jasper Hogg, Stagecoach Jim, Appaloosa Jim, Jesus Christ Jim, Nine-toes and That's All on One Foot Jim, Much Too Tall Hank, Cactus Crash Hardy, Brown Gargle Van Zandt, Red "Bad Balls" Redmond, Jericho Bull Moose Durant, Decatur Quint Burgandy, Dreamy Cleve Jefferson, and Kid Slim Kit Doc Duke Tex Sly Jones.

No, Pard.  Getting away with rustling cattle in Culberson County is harder than catching a weasel asleep. Oatmeal is out there somewhere, biding his time for the big roundup, and he won't rest until he sees you and your kind hanging on the Texas Cakewalk.

Best turn your diggers, put on your best bib and tucker, and make for the sunset, Pardner. You might be fixing to say something you'll regret, so remember: The bigger the mouth, the better it looks when shut. All I want to know from you is one thing... What holds up a train?

Bad men.

Get it? Bad men. That there's a joke, Son, so you better start laughin' lest you want to get your plow cleaned directly.

With warmest regards,
Zach

I Do Not Use Drugs, I Have Not Used Drugs...

Dear Friends,

If romantic things make you gag, you may asphyxiate completely when you hear "Sweetly Sleepy," the charmingly saucy new Hard Taco song. Remember that you can always pierce your own larynx with a pen to maintain your airway, although I suppose you could substitute a fork for the pen, and a chicken tender for your larynx.

...And I Will Not Use Drugs Until Elected
For the first couple years of high school, the only retailer other than Taco Bell that wound up with a healthy percentage of my spending money was Wax Stacks, a tiny used record store on the north side of Milwaukee. The checkout counter at Wax Stacks rested on an elevated platform, from which the owner could look down on the customers like a benevolent deity or guy playing Sim City.

One day, my friend Daniel pointed out that the owner was always sniffing. He wasn't sniffling, but sniffing, and that was an important distinction. He's on the nose candy, Daniel told me. Coke heads are always sniffing and rubbing their noses. I walked over to the register where I had a direct sight line into the owner's nostrils. I lingered a bit too long gazing up into his snout, so when he looked down at me from his platform, I felt obligated to say something.

Me: Um, hi. Do you happen to know something for me? Where can I find Supertramp?
Owner: The rock section (sniff) is right behind you. It's alphabetical, so look (sniff) under S."
Me: Okay! Great! So, um, which album is the best? I've got a cool record collection already, but I'm, you know, just starting to get into Supertramp.
Owner: (Shrugging) (Sniff)
Me: Okay, well, I'm going to go take a look. (Pause) I'm mostly interested in first pressings.

I can't remember exactly what I saw inside that nose, but I know it was convincing. Yep, cocaine for sure. I turned back to my friend with my eyes bulging, and we nodded knowingly at each other. I had just talked to a real live junkie! What's more, by buying records from him, I became an enabler... an accomplice! Whoa.

It occurred to me that the owner might have thought we were people like him... drug-doing people. We certainly were not! Still, I was quite curious about what he thought. Because maybe after I said I was primarily interested in first pressings, maybe that appealed to his sensibilities as a music aficionado. And maybe that helped him start to see me in a new light, like I was the kind of customer who might peruse Zeppelin records in the afternoon and go home to do some drugs in the evening. If it was a quiet night, maybe he pictured me doing a single serving of drugs and curling up with a good book. If there was a good party or some kind of function that night, maybe he figured I was taking drugs by the handful. Wait, can you actually touch cocaine with your hands or are you supposed to use some kind of standardized scoopula? Anyway, he probably even thought we were bigger cokeheads than him... vicious dope fiends with great music taste and enormous willpower to suppress our own sniffs.

Well, if that's what he was thinking, he was dead wrong. Sorry to disappoint, but no thanks! I'm just a music junkie, and that's it. I'm strung out on life.

Later that day at Taco Bell, Daniel and I talked about the fact that the sniffing guy had watery eyes, as well, a sure indicator that he was a regular user of other drugs besides just cocaine. He probably mixed them together, Daniel postulated, which you're never supposed to do unless you don't give a crap about anything.

Damn, I thought, shaking my head slowly. That would explain why he didn't seem to have a favorite Supertramp album.

Years later, when I heard that Wax Stacks went out of business, a thousand scenarios ran through my mind. DEA raid? Some kind of dealer-initiated violence? Maybe the owner OD'd on his polysubstance cocktail, and his heirs had to sell off the whole record collection to pay for their drug habits! Yeah, or maybe he just went out of business because no one was buying records anymore, and the sniffing was because of seasonal allergies.

No, no, that's not it, because he was definitely sniffing, not sniffling. It's an important distinction, you know.

With warmest regards,
Zach

Postcards from Panama, part 4

Dear Friends,

  The Hard Taco song for August, "Goblin Bride," features a solo by an instrument at a formant frequency that is imperceptible to human ears.

With warmest regards,
Zach


Postcards from Panama, Part 4
(This has become an annual installment. You can review the rest of the series here: part 1, part 2, and part 3.)

5/22/2012
Dear Karen,

I wanted to send your father something for Father's Day because when you and I marry, he will be my dad too! Isn't that weird? I emailed my own parents and asked them if your dad has a career, and they wrote back that he is a some kind of medieval executive. What an intriguing job! This information has substantially helped me focus my gift search. I am now debating whether to get him a monogrammed chalice, tankard, goblet, or little glass potion bottle. Since you probably see him more often than I do (I haven't seen him in over 20 years), can you fill me in on the type of monogrammed medieval vessel that he would most like to store his fluids in at work?

I will also need to know his middle initial.

Do you think he'd prefer to be called Pop or just Karen's Dad? I will use whichever term is better for expressing the utmost respect.

With warmest regards,
Michael


6/1/2012
Dear Karen,

I went back and reread the email from my folks, and I realized that they were calling your father a "mid level executive," not a medieval one. I'm embarrassed! Please don't tell him I'm dyslexic, because I'm not. I haven't seen a neuro-psychologist to verify this, but I'm pretty sure I just misread that one word. If you want me to see a neuro-psychologist, I will, but just for reassurance.

I have decided to proceed with sending your father the monogrammed chalice, tankard, goblet, and potion bottle for Father's Day, if that's okay. The way I see it, he will need to remain well-hydrated if wants to become an upper level executive!

I also bought him a monogrammed flagon.

Do you think Karen's Mom would like a monogrammed flagon, as well? What is her middle initial? Even if your parents don't work at the same office, they can both drink from their respective monogrammed flagons at a predetermined time and feel some kind of interesting marital connection. I know you and I will have that kind of connection! :)

With warmest regards,
Michael


7/3/2012

Dear Karen,

There is a church a couple blocks from my apartment called Iglesia de Plácido Domingo ("Church of Calm Sunday.")  They do weddings there, sometimes. I made an appointment with the local padre and recommended that he put up a sign, close to the street, with interchangeable letters. He didn't realize that all of the best churches in the U.S. have these.  Once I saw a particularly pithy church sign that said, "To prevent sinburn, use Sonscreen." The padre didn't seem to understand why it was so pithy, even when I translated it into Spanish. Nonetheless, he was clearly impressed when I told him that such a sign would increase his congregation by 10%. 

I confess (to you, not him) that I made up that figure, but good news: when I got home that day, I went through the calculations, and it turns out that my estimate of 10% was almost exactly correct!

With warmest regards,

Michael

7/16/2012

Dear Karen,

Do you wonder why I keep sending you dozens of post-cards instead of just sending you one or two really long emails? Part of the reason is that I need to use up several sheets of hammerhead shark-themed postage stamps I bought a few months ago. A percentage of the sale of these stamps is going to protect this misunderstood species from the poaching nets of vigilante fisherfolk.

Also, I don't have your email address! Please send it to me as soon as possibly convenient. Don't worry... you'll still be able to see scenic and historical images of Panama, because I plan to scan new postcard pictures and send them as attachments with each email! I don't know whether or not it's legal to scan postage stamps without canceling them first, but I'll find out. In the meantime, I've been practicing canceling them by hand, just in case that is what I'm supposed to do.

With warmest regards,
Michael


7/19/2012
Dear Karen,

The dwarf lanternshark is the smallest shark in the world. That is probably why it is featured on the one centisimo stamp. I bought several pages of dwarf lanternshark one centisimo stamps just in case the postal rates go up, but they have not, so I've started putting a couple on each postcard as a gratuity for the postal worker. Gracias! I admit that two centisimos is a modest gratuity, but postcards aren't very heavy.

I will start tipping more if you worry that I'm being stingy.

With warmest regards,

Michael

7/23/2012

Dear Karen,

I tried to get an appointment with a neuro-psychologist to help prove I don't have dyslexia, but the person I called turned out to be a handwriting analyst. Her name is Señora Chen, DSSH. I didn't know if I could trust a stranger with a full handwriting sample, so I sent her a couple pages of lower case m's. She studied it closely and told me that I was spirited, wary, and ignoble. Impressive, right? If you ever write me back, I would like your permission to have Señora Chen, DSSH analyze your handwriting, too. I'm not sure what the letters after her name stand for, but I think it is some kind of advanced degree that will qualify her to tell us that you and I are a good  match for each other.

With warmest regards,
Michael


7/27/2012
Dear Karen,

I've happened to notice that you haven't written me back. Probably this is because you would like for to send you a template.  How is this?

"Dear Michael, it's Karen here, hand writing a letter for easy analysis. I agree that postal workers should get a very small gratuity for each postcard, but that it will add up over time.  Here's a funny word I heard. <____________> ! If you don't think it's funny, I guess you had to be there! I miss you and I'm sorry I haven't written in recent years. Here is the email address I use for personal communications: <___________>. I check it regularly. XOXO, Karen."

With warmest regards,
Michael

The Wide World of Wendell

Dear Friends,

Lauren works for a company called Bosch. This great organization is based in Germany, where it has a proud history and an austere, athletic workforce. I didn't go to business school or anything, but I think they should consider adapting the new Hard Taco song, "The Kibosh," as their corporate jingle. True, they'd have to change the name of their company, but just a tiny schnipsel, and you don't climb to the top of the Vermögen 500 by shying away from risk. Besides, the prefix "ki-" has a well-established track record of imparting a congenial feeling to things. Would you rather that your Geisha have a kimono or have mono?

Granddad always said that you don't get to be all this (spokesmodel pose) without accumulating a few skeletons in the old closet. Today, I'm going to dig out one of my own skeletons and wrestle with it a little on the bedroom floor.  Here goes: Long before I was a provocative newsletter distributor, I endeavored to be a terrible cartoonist.

This was almost, but not quite as hilarious
when it was drawn in 1990.

I came of age in an era that may some day be referred to as The Canadian Invasion, when The Kids in the Hall briefly aired on CBS instead of CBT. Two of the songs in the top 10 were Canadian... "Everything I Do, (I Do it For You)" and, "(Everything I Do), I Do it For You.* There was even a comic strip, For Better or For Worse, that shattered all kinds of stereotypes by showing that regular everyday families in Ontario could remain boring for three uninterrupted decades.

If For Better or For Worse failed to tickle my funny bone, the saccharine malapropisms of its contemporary, The Family Circus, treated that bone to a violent compound fracture. Billy, Dolly, Jeffy, and that heartwarming little shit P.J. have induced more groans than a salad bar full of brains at a zombie-infested Ponderosa. Have you ever noticed that all four Family Circus cherubs have their mother's Kool Aid pitcher-shaped head, while dad and grandma have vertical egg-shaped heads? So tell us, you little bastards, who is your biological father? Not Me! Ida Know! Can I have more pa-sketti? Graah! Brains!!! 

So it was probably a reactionary impulse that led me to draw my own comic strip.  What I lacked in talent, I made up for in misplaced elitism.  Bloom County, as I asserted to anyone who dared stand within shouting distance, was the shining gold standard to which all other comic strips must be held. Possessing this conviction was the only qualification I had, or needed, to author my own strip.

Wendell and his not-at-all-based-on-Opus
stuffed penguin, Quacketta.

And so I set to work on Wendell Comix. Hold on... you just laughed out loud when you saw that inappropriate 'x,' didn't you? I knew you would! Let me fill you in on a little cartoonist trade secret: replacing the letters "cs" with an "x" inflicts busting on all nearby guts. Try saying this out loud: The lunatix who support eugenix don't know that the Special Olympix are in Tuxon. Ouch, you're good!

Unfortunately, the gratuitous 'x' was about the only thing that Wendell Comix had going for it. The characters and situations were derivative. The artwork was abysmal, and I was only able to draw Wendell facing left. The jokes were will-worn puns, and many of them were frankly plagiarized. Here are some of the stronger Wendell Comix punch lines:

• Now THAT's what I call animal magnetism.
• Never use God's name... in veins!
• You really pack a punch. (Said to a person packing Hawaiian punch into a suitcase.)
• Assault... to taste!

Dad looks skeptical. He suspects a pun is coming.

In December 1990, I photocopied a few dozen books of Wendell Comix and sold copies to my classmates. I'm sure most of them were thrown away by the end of the school week, but I live in fear that an errant copy will find its way into the hands of one of my coworkers. It's kind of like that feeling you get when you make fun of the Ayatollah on the playground without realizing it's him, and then spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. I hate that feeling.

Not sure what the joke is here. Maybe the Bart Simpson
look-alike can't drink root beer because he doesn't
have elbows? Or maybe this was supposed to be
one of the heartwarming ones.

So the lesson is that we shouldn't equate fanhood with personal talent. The poster child for this platitude is not me, but Francis Ford Coppola. Remember that time he was on his way home from a party, and realized that his deep appreciation for being wasted qualified him to own a vineyard? Next thing you know, he's blowing good money on grapes when he should have been saving up for canvas chairs, megaphones, and those little snapping rectangles that the production assistant closes when he requests action.

With warmest regards,
Zach

*  Nomadic parentheses, Bryan Adams? Seriously, what's that all aboot?

Happy Summer from all of us here at Wendell Comix!

HAI to the Victors

Dear Friends,


Did you know that my family is part of a citizen diplomacy network that creates and strengthens partnerships between international communities? Yeah, that's us, because we live in Ann Arbor, so we've got this:

This month, let us lay a wreath of delicately arranged respect at the feet of one of our beloved sister cities: Hikone, Japan.

People of Hikone, I looked at your municipal website and it is BREATHTAKING. I'm so so so sorry that you got stuck with Ann Arbor as your Sister City. There's a chance that you'll dig the Naked Mile and the Hash Bash, but if you're expecting us to go toe-to-toe with you on lakes and castles, our cultural exchange is sure to disappoint.

I only hope that I can mitigate that disappointment by contributing something to our inter-metropolitan communion.  People of Hikone, I offer you this month's Hard Taco song, "Sushi Fun Song," and dedicate it to your rich history and rich natural surroundings that I keep reading about on your website. "Sushi Fun Song" is essentially indistinguishable from your own traditional music, except that it is many times better, because it is not gong-based. On behalf of my mayor (who is indistinguishable from your own), we hope that this familiar sonic landscape will prime you for more adventurous cultural intercourse in the years to come.

People of Ann Arbor, when you're done sprinting through the Diag, I invite you to put some clothes on for God's sake, or at least cover up with a towel or something, and meet your Sister City.

Hikone, Japan

Population: 110,132
Emblem: A majestic volcano slurping noodles
Flower: Raw horse meat arranged beautifully
Tree: The bonsai version of the Michigan state tree, whatever that is.
Nickname: The Fugitive Whaler-Harboring City
Motto: "Shave your head and apologize more."
Exports: Valves, kendo sticks, blush saké, carp-shaped wind socks
Pokemon of choice: Woobat
Traditional Sodoku series, horizontal: 346 791 528
Traditional Soduku series, veritcal: 378 124 569 
Current Mayor: Hiko Nyan, defender of Castle Hikone

Introduction:

Hikone, an historical city in the prefecture of Shiga, is where ancient tradition meets early 20th century tradition. The same kimono-clad, umbrella-bearing women that shuffle around the city by day may later be found at a singles bar, sporting English language T-shirts with provocative messages such as, "Do not small parts in mouth avoid eating" or, "Measurable which designated prudently alive please."

Culture:
The people of Hikone take pride in being among the most apologetic in Japan. Often, the greeting yee watashia moto ko wishinay is repeated twice by each party upon meeting. It means, “No, I repent more. No, I repent more.” A popular bunraku puppet theater production features dozens of elaborately crafted puppets trying to shout this sentence over each other for four and a half hours.

Useful Phrases, by setting:
At a restaurant:

美味しいふぐ

• We pray for the lasting prosperity of the poisonous blowfish.

醤油の販売店

• A nation weeps for the dealer who sold you this soy sauce.

相撲胃イコル

• With rice, please bring me something that was scraped from beneath the sumo wrestler's colorful belly band. 

味噌納豆納豆味噌

• My miso has natto, my natto has no miso. (Apparently, this is a pun that can mean two things depending on your inflection. One meaning is high political satire and the other is crude joke about earthquake-induced radiation damage. Be sure to use the former inflection, because it is too soon for the latter.) 

At a business meeting:

本質的な子孫が成人で遊ばせてください

• My benefactor derives his supremacy from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power.

9月まで閉鎖

• Silence! Respect-for-the-Aged-Day is celebrated on the 3^rd Monday in September. That is months from now.

大きな塔、小さなペニス

• It is said that a man with so many roofs on his pagoda must be compensating for something.

地震に対する安全性

• I will remove my shoes and put on slippers before stepping onto your ritual elliptical trainer.

At a nightclub:

セクシーなトビウオ

• Forgive me if I'm too forward, but would you enjoy hanging this carp-shaped windsock from a pole?

愛好家の永遠

• Nice to meet you, too. Please cut your sash and bind us together so we will look beautiful in death.

私は平均マカクよ

• There are no tigers in Japan, so I will call my autobiography, “Battle Hymn of the Snow Macaque Mother.” 

月見の時間

• Pardon my wheelbarrow. There are 1,945 Japanese characters and I really wanted a full keyboard on my smartphone.

At a tourist center:

私は敵の神社を汚す

• I wish to defile an enemy shrine. Is there one nearby?

歴史的な餃子は私達に誇りを与える

• Where can I find dumplings that have survived from the peaceful Edo period (1603-1868)?

あなたの仕事でひどいです。

• Ikebana is the art of Japanese flower arrangement. I should not have to tell you this, because you work at a tourist center.

With warmest regards,
Zach

The Six Greatest Maritime Mysteries of All Maritime

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for May is called, "Mary Celeste." The Mary Celeste was a ghost ship that was found adrift in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872. There was plenty of food and the cargo was untouched, but the crew was missing, prompting the ship's discovery to be dubbed the greatest maritime mystery of all time. Here are the other maritime mysteries that round out the top six.


# 6 The Bermuda Triangle

I'm not sure whether it's due to magnetic anomalies, rogue waves, or aliens, but most of us are able to accept that the lines connecting Miami, San Juan, and Bermuda form a three-sided figure. 

The concept of the Bermuda Triangle was conceived by a bored guy with a newspaper subscription, a map, and some pushpins. I don't know who this guy was, but I'm sure Scotland Yard could have tapped into his unique skill set to track and capture serial killers. 

Gentleman, if you look at my map and pushpins, you will see that all of Jack the Ripper's victims lived in this England-shaped island just off the coast of Europe. But why? Detectives who are used to doing things the way they have always been done may now go home to your families, but I'm going to stare at these pins deep into the night until I see the connection.

#5 The Loch Ness Monster

Like a prehistoric Keyser Söze, the greatest trick this camera-shy plesiosaurus every played was convincing the world she didn't exist. Even with a brain the size and texture of a golf ball, Nessie has enough gumption to sustain herself at the bottom of a lake for thousands of years, and enough savvy to evade every five letter acronym we've thrown her way... SONAR, RADAR, LASER, and even SCUBA. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we won't have better luck finding her with TASER, SEALs, NAFTA, NSAIDS, or BiPAP.


#4 Atlantis 

I've heard that the History Channel has dedicated hundreds of hours to exploring the mysteries of this ancient sunken island-city, but I remain unconvinced of its existence. Anyone who understands the basics of plate tectonics knows that there is no scientific justification to support the presence of such a thing as the History Channel on basic cable.


#3 The Edmund Fitzgerald

As a child, I loved sitting in the bathtub and trying to guess the relative buoyancy of different objects. I experimented with whatever I had at my disposal... Paperclips. Crayons. Apples. Aluminum foil. Urine. Larger humans than myself have applied this experimental method to other hypotheses: Witches float. Floats sink. Sinks also sink.  Steel sinks, but ships made out of steel float, a puzzling fact that engineers are often challenged to explain at job interviews. All we know is that when a ship goes down, our fundamental assumptions about flotation are rocked to their very cores. (Exception: When Gordon Lightfoot sings about those assumptions, they are merely folked to their very cores.)

The E-Fitz, as we serious buoyancy-enthusiasts call it, sank in a storm in 1975, somewhere in L-Supe. The usual culprits have been blamed... rogue waves, icebergs, sea quakes, aliens, ice sculptures, fresh-water pirates. Gordon Lightfoot biographers agree that one of these was probably not much of a factor, but which one?


#2: The Laugh Track on The Love Boat

Here's the thing: there was no laugh track on The Love Boat. According to legend, dozens of studio audience members died during the filming of the pilot when they were trapped in the soundstage during a grease fire. Throughout the nine year run of the show, the victims of that fire haunted the post-production suite, their ghostly laughter mysteriously appearing after every punch line. There were even peals of corpselike chuckling following topical jokes that shouldn't have made sense to people who died in 1977. How did they even get those jokes if they were too dead to follow the news?

If we knew the answer, it wouldn't be the second greatest maritime mystery of all time.

With warmest regards, 

Zach

Fanfare for the Featured Townsperson

Dear Friends,

Off-Broadway, here we come! The Hard Taco song for April is called, "Happy in My Neighborhood," and with all the Off-Broadway potential this song has, you'd think my middle name was Lloyd. (In other words, this song has no potential, and I should go back to being a famous purveyor of organic architecture.)

Why do we love musicals? They touch us and inspire us with images of cowboys who do gymnastics. Orphanages teeming with aspiring tap-dancers. Sparkly-eyed heroines who look so beautiful from the seats you can afford, but grotesquely over-painted from the first few rows. Musicals transport us to a world where all people yearn for the same thing... an excuse to stop doing whatever it is they are doing and sing about it instead. This difficult transition can be eased by an effective lead-in line. A good one creates a tension that can only be broken with a full scale musical show stopper. Let's test your musical theater IQ and see if you can remember the lead-in lines to these well-known numbers.

1: "Summer Nights" - Grease!

2:  "If I Were a Rich Man" - Fiddler on the Roof!

3:  "Food Glorious Food" - Oliver!

4:  "Hard Knock Life" - Annie!

5:  "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats" - Cats!

6:  "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" - Evita!

7.  Every song in Les Miserables (or for the English speaking world, Those without exclamation points.)

ANSWERS

1: "So Danny, what happened to your eyebrows? Yeah, tell us!" 

2: "Lord, you made a lot of poor people.  But what would have been so terrible if I got to feel up Geri Halliwell just once?" 

3:  "Is that grid-cut pizza?"

4: "That pizza isn't grid-cut. Not a smidge!"

5: "If you thought that was effeminate, watch this!"

6: "Come on, girls. You believe in love? 'Cause I got something to say about it and it goes something like this."

7: "The babysitting service wouldn't have sent a leprechaun... would they?"

Detractors of the genre complain that characters breaking into song is unrealistic and disconcerting, but I find it more difficult to relate to straight plays. I hardly ever die in childbirth in Grover's Corners and come back to re-live just one bittersweet day. Three or four times an hour, on the other hand, I stop doing whatever it is I'm doing and sing about it instead, often accompanied by tap-dancing orphans on a nearby stairwell. 

Why Lady Fiona Grosvener, do you not simply relish the the-a-tre?

I have only one significant gripe with you theater people. I despise (with all my soul) the spelling of the word theater with the r and the e in the wrong places. In this world, there is nothing good or pure that ends in "tre." SPECTRE, Jean-Paul Sartre, The Sallow Harbour Townshippe Shopping Centre... this is not the company you want to keep.

"Theatre" is nothing more than vulgar Anglophilia. Not to brag, but the American Revolutionary War was a total beat down, am I right? (Cue small group of men grunting in assent.) When a certain number of red coats acquired a certain number of musket ball holes, there was an explosion of sticky, wet freedom. Besides getting to count stamps as a tax exemption, we were able to cast off the shackles of moronic British spellings, forever liberated from sentences such as, "Your neighbour does not realise that he has faeces on his wife-beatre." 

If Patrick Henry knew that some of you still felt compelled to write the words metre, litre, or theatre, he would thank his lucky stars and stripes that he got to be dead for the last 200 years. You should be grateful, too, because if Patrick Henry was alive today he would smack the living spotted dick out of you.

And THAT is what I call a good old-fashioned lead-in line. Cue music. Where are my orphans?

With warmest regards,
Zach