Calling All Chain Ganglies

Dear Friends,

Great news, adolescent yardbirds! "Busting Out of Juvie," the joyful new song from your friends at Hard Taco, will walk you through the procedures for unincarcerating yourself. 

Be assured that my pedigree as an escapology coach is excellent. In the slammer they referred to me as Professor Slippery because no cell could hold me. (Before that, I was known as Adjunct Professor Slippery because I hadn't yet published enough to make tenure.) I earned those monikers by escaping from handcuffs, straightjackets, hermetically sealed coffins, barrels, a uterus, and fish-tanks. When it comes to prison breaks, I guess you could say I'm an expert.

As point of fact, I am an expert... the only reason I'm guessing you could say it is that you may have recently injured your larynx. (Perhaps in a botched prison break?) 

You Can't Practice Escapology without Apology

You all used to laugh at me when I stayed after school to untie all the knots in the soccer nets while holding my breath. Now I'm on the outside, and you're in the can. Who's laughing now? Certainly not you with your ruptured larynx. But that's all water under the bridge. You need to bust out of lockdown, and Emeritus Professor Slippery is here to help.

The most common mistake that prospective escapees make is waiting until the time is right. If you have that mindset, you'll never get out of prison. Something will always come up! First, you'll tell yourself, "I'll just wait until the trigger-happy tower guard is on vacation." When he is, you'll say, "I should probably stay until I finish a few more license plates, just to complete the series."  Next thing you know, you've served out your entire sentence, and you never even burrowed into a single sewer pipe. 

No, if you're going to take a powder, you should do it this very instant. Print out the rest of this document and take it with you, following these instructions in real time.

1. Roll up your dirty uniforms and stuff them under your sheets so it looks like there is a sleeping body in your bed.  Fill socks with cigarette butts and candy bar wrappers and lay those along side the wadded up uniforms so it looks like arms. Once the body looks believable, put a lifelike silicone replica of your head on the pillow.

2. Bribe the trigger-happy tower guard to hand deliver a sealed envelope to the warden. Surprise! The letter within the envelope orders the warden to kill the person who bore the message. This works especially well when the guard is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but it will ultimately backfire if he is a handsome peasant who wants to marry your daughter. 

3. Swipe a butter knife from the cafeteria and swallow it. Fake a seizure (or have a real one if you are able.) They will rush you to the infirmary. As they charge up the defibrillator paddles, cough up the butter knife and hold the medical assistant hostage until he gives you an alcohol wipe, a centrifuge, a latex glove, and a bag of normal saline. Swallow them.

3a. Fake another seizure, and then run like mad into the yard. With any luck, the trigger-happy tower guard will be dead by the warden's hand, or at least on vacation today. 

4. Cough up the centrifuge and use it to climb the inner wall. It's difficult to explain this procedure in writing, but here's an drawing of how it works.

\ /

| |

| |c \\o..

| |    / \

| |          '

| |

Legend:
c = centrifuge

Hopefully, you don't accidentally drop the butter knife when you're half way up like you do in my drawing, but if you do, DO NOT GO BACK FOR IT unless there's time.

5. Cough up the latex glove and use it to climb over the barbed wire without getting electrocuted or punctured. 

6. The last hurdle is the outer fence. By now, the alcohol wipe and bag of normal saline in your stomach have suppressed your appetite so that you have lost enough weight to slip through the bars easily.

7. You're free! Before they catch you again, enjoy the things that free people do, like going to the Farmer's Market or burrowing into a sewer pipe.

With warmest regards,
Zach

And I Will Share This Tiara With All the Poor People of Little Rock

Hardtaco.org: Could These New Features BE More Salient?

There is a new Hard Taco website, and it is as smooth as a Ken Doll.  There are any number of cool features that will make your bow tie will spin around like a pinwheel.

1. All the songs we ever recorded (hundreds of them) are available for free streaming or download. 

2. The Hard Taco Digests are finally a bona fide ever-lovin' blog.

3. CDs are still for sale, but hopefully you know better than to pay for a CD when you download any of the songs for free. You're no greenhorn. 

4. Heartier nooks, tastier crannies.

"Yeah, It's Really Interesting, and if it Makes You Happy, That's What's Important"

The Hard Taco song for July, "The Alchemy of Blank Verse," was written for and performed by the cast of The Penny Seats' Summer production of "Good Night, Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)." Most of these people are very popular, so I am hopeful that they will get all kinds of false compliments on this song! 

How to Be Miss Arkansas Starting a Few Days from Now

The next most exciting thing about this July (and it's a distant third) is the impending Miss Arkansas Pageant. The grand prize is a $20,000 educational scholarship, but I found a loophole that allows you to spend all of it at the campus snack bar. 

Contestants, when you were a kid, did you read that book about a lovable stuffed bear named Lose-y the Pooh? I didn't think so, because you're a winner. If you want to stay that way you need to listen up and listen hard. I can't make you talented or beautiful. That would require alcohol consumption by you and the judges, respectively.  But I can help you ace the question and answer session. Just listen for the most common buzzwords, then recite one of these audience-pleasing platitudes. 

If the judge says "Blah blah blah Energy blah blah blah"

As ever, we must all do our part to reduce fossil fuel consumption. Tonight I rubbed KY jelly on my teeth instead of petroleum jelly. All of the contestants you see before you have shiny teeth, but I will not have oil spills on my conscience. Now that's something we can all smile about!

If the judge says "Blah blah blah Goals blah blah blah"

The biggest honor in my life has to be to serve terms as Tiny Miss Arkansas, Little Miss Arkansas, Teen Miss Arkansas, and hopefully soon, Miss Arkansas. My long term aspirations are to be Mrs. Arkansas or Madame Arkansas. One day, I hope to wear a sash that says "The Plus-Sized Widow Arkansas."

If the judge says "Blah blah blah Family blah blah blah"

The person I most look up to is my father. Words cannot express my love and respect for this man who raised three daughters by himself, working two sales jobs to keep food on the table. That is why, while answering this question, I chose to chisel a life-sized ice sculpture of him. He is holding a bottle of maple syrup that he just brought us as a souvenir from one of his sales trips, and... there, he's waiting for us at the Texaracana train station. This ice sculpture train works, so I would ask the other contestants to please look both ways and listen for the bell before crossing the tracks.

If the judge says "Blah blah blah Immigration blah blah blah"

Two thirds of the America's honeybees have died mysteriously since 2006, but our vegetable and grain production has never been more robust. That's because migrant workers from Central America travel the country all year, spreading pollen around with their hands and faces. The bees have died because our ecosystem doesn't need them any more. But what about the hard-working men and women who are getting laid off from the Epi-pen factory? We need bees to support that part of our economy, because migrant workers are decidedly hypoallergenic. That's why I support more stringent immigration laws, as ever.

If the judge says "Blah blah blah American Dream blah blah blah"

Let's recapture that spirit of innovation that America was built upon! Picture this: a car with an electric engine, but gasoline-powered windows and locks! When I close my eyes, I imagine driving such a car down Main Street with the gasoline-powered windows rolled down. There are dozens of people running behind me in slow motion, shouting, "American innovation!"

If the judge says "Blah blah blah Values blah blah blah"

Before she passed away, my grandmother told me, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Grandma, I promise you that I will strive to be self-reliant. I will make the best of every situation, even when the chips are down. I will also consume countless pitchers of sweetened rodent bone-slurry, just in case I misheard you, and you actually said "when life gives you lemmings..."

With warmest regards, 

Zach

The Bloody Leotard

Dear Friends,

The June Hard Taco song is called, “Big-Calved Woman.” It’s a little misogynistic, has only two chords, and features a rather grating vocal track. If that doesn’t scare you away, what if I tell you that it is performed by hornets and Chinese puppets?!  (These are your deepest fears, according to the “browser cookies” in your computer.)

If you were able to ascertain my darkest secrets by querying my cookies, you would discover that I have been harboring a lot of guilt for something I did when I was 17.  I broke a ballerina’s leg. This particular dancer was male, but he was wearing a frilly pink tutu, so one could feel justified referring to him as a ballerina. The injury took place as the result of me running my parents’ station wagon into him in a parking lot, pinning his legs between two cars. It was probably the first time he had ever held his feet in fifth position.

The maimed ballerina was an aspiring comedian working as a “ballet parker” at a Milwaukee club called Comedysportz. I spent many evenings and weekends at that club because I was on the Nicolet High School Comedysportz team. Every Saturday morning, we would match our wits against one of the other schools, and by “wits” I mean “ability to think of terrible puns while cross-dressing.” It was the only sport I did in high school and shut up, it is too a sport. Competitive improv a sport in the same way that beer pong is a sport. Some people are certainly better at it than others, but everyone finds themselves hilarious after playing for an hour. Also, as it turns out, both increase your risk for having your legs crushed in a car accident.

You're Going to Feel My Finger Now

Dear Friends,

    On December 7th, 1941, a Japanese fighter pilot crash landed on Ni'ihau, the smallest and westernmost Hawaiian island, mistakenly believing it to be uninhabited. The remarkable events that transpired on that tiny island over the next six days have become known as "The Ni'ihau Incident." I'll let Wikipedia tell you the story. Since reading this, I have been obsessed with the idea that this needs to be made into a stage play. I couldn't write a play to save my life, but I can write songs (especially if lives are on the line), so I composed a song about what it would be like if there was a play about the Ni'ihau incident.

The Boggy Man

I was 19 years old and seriously considering medical school, so my dad made arrangements for me to  spend an afternoon shadowing a colleague of his in the family medicine clinic. The first patient we saw was an elderly gentleman presenting for a routine health maintenance examination. Dr. Bower wasted no time introducing me as "Student Doctor London," and announced that I would be assisting him with the rectal exam.

 The misleading title made me a bit uncomfortable, but I loved the idea of "assisting." It implied that a good rectal exam requires teamwork, and I was part of that team!

So here I was, snapping on a latex glove and squirting lube on my right index finger. This is how the first patient encounter of my life would begin.

"Do you feel it?" Dr. Bower asked, "Do you feel the prostate?"

"Maybe," I said, "Actually, I'm not sure."

"You'll know you're there, because it feels just like the tip of your nose."

I carefully brought my ungloved left index finger to my nose and gently rubbed it back and forth. I was surprised to discover that the tip of my nose had a subtle divot that I had never noticed before. 

Postcards from Panama, Part 3

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for April is called, “Spinneret.” It is so energizing that after you listen to it, you will be able to go to your middle school gymnasium and beat your best time at the shuttle run. 

With warmest regards,

Zach

Postcards from Panama City, Part 3

(You may enjoy re-reading Part 1 and Part 2 beforehand)

3/11/2011

Dear Karen,

I have great news. I hired a secretary to take dictations for me. He is bilingual and does secretarial work full-time for only $300 a month! I will have him sign his name after mine at the bottom so you can see how different our handwriting is. 

I’m very excited about this, because now I can finally get some exercise while I write! As you know, there are three forms of exercise: strength training, toning and cardio. With my body type and long term goals, I have decided to focus 100% of my efforts on toning. I have a "toning diary," which is a piece of graph paper where I will log objective and subjective observations about my muscle tone. 

With warmest regards,

Michael 

y Hector

Numerators of the Lost Ark

Dear Friends,

Your name is Carmencita Calderón. It is 1930, and you are the dance partner of Cachafáz, the most notorious tango dancer in Buenos Aires. His pock-marked face and slick choreography are legendary, but you do not love him. No, your heart belongs to a man they call El Vasco, another professional tango dancer who left Argentina ten years ago to seek his fortunes in the smoky nightclubs of Paris.

After sending you not so much as a letter for years, your lover returns unexpectedly and sweeps you up in a particularly fiery tango. But Cachafáz is a jealous man. He challenges El Vasco to a high stakes dance-off, to the death. You know this is a battle your love cannot win. You must beg him to flee, flee the country this very night and never return!

This, dear friends, is the story of “El Vasco,” the Hard Taco song for March that will break your heart into mil piezas de dolor, a thousand aching splinters.

Numerators of the Lost Ark

The so-called Golden Ratio, (a+b)/a = a/b, has been used as far back as Euclid to make the world’s most beautifully proportioned rectangles. In his seminal textbook Elements (~300 B.C.), Euclid describes an incident in which King Ptolemy spends a whole Saturday working on a new rectangle and neglects to use the Golden Ratio to choose its proportions. Ptolemy invites Euclid to brunch at the palace to show off the rectangle, and all Euclid can do is smile politely and comment about what a nice personality it has. And you know what’s also nice, Your Highness? (a+b)/a = a/b.

Dry Heaves for the Packers

The evolution of a Packers fan between 1997 and 2011.

Dear friends,

This month's Hard Taco release is a (nearly) 7 minute opus called, "The Pottage Point Centennial Band." I realize that only unemployed people have enough free time to listen to something that long, which is why I waited until this year to release it.

But before I can write another word about it, let's talk football, because I have a hard time talking about anything else these days.

Nicholas Dodman is an an animal psychologist who wrote a book entitled, "The Dog Who Loved too Much." I haven't read it, but the first chapter was described to me as follows: The author has a patient, a dog, who loves her owner too much. When the owner leaves the house each morning, she becomes so worried that he won't return that she loses control of her bladder. She paces around the house peeing on everything. When he finally comes home at 5 pm, she is so overjoyed to see him that she throws up. The joy is so pervasive that she vomits constantly until he leaves again the next morning, at which point the bladder problem kicks in again.

That is how I feel about the Green Bay Packers. It is a special kind of staggering love that only emotionally disturbed dogs and true sports devotees can experience. We soar, we suffer, and we soar again, and all of it is unhealthy.