Reblogged from Captain Pigheart ~ Swashbuckling Pirate Stories:

CARNIVAL MUSIC SWELLS

ANNOUNCER: Hey kids, are you ready? Then stand up and clap for THE UNLCE BOSCO SHOW!

KIDS CLAPPING AND CHEERING

ANNOUNCER: Yes, that’s right, it’s time for Uncle Bosco and all his friends!  Captain Danny, Skinny, and even Sneaky the Pirate! And Aunt Pickle will be stopping by! Wow, I hope she brought one of her famous pickle pies!

KIDS CLAPPING AND CHEERING MORE LOUDLY

ANNOUNCER: But first kids, run into the kitchen and get yourself a big glass of chocolate milk made with BOSCO chocolate milk amplifier syrup! You know, the kind you ask your mom to buy every week? Because it is BOSC-OOOOH so good!

KIDS CHEERING

ANNOUNCER:  And now here he is- UNCLE BOSCO!

CARNIVAL MUSIC SWELLS

UNCLE BOSCO: Hiya kids! (pause for cheers) Today we are going on a trip to the highest mountain in the world, Mt. Tall Top! (pause for cheers) We’re going to search for the very rare BLOOP-BLOOP BIRD! Now who wants to go with me?

KIDS: Me! Me! Yay! Etc.

Uncle Bosco: Hey, look at that, I guess everyone wants to ride in Uncle Bosco’s super buzz-plane! But I see one little boy in the front row wearing his Uncle Bosco pin, which he got with only 5 tops from cans of Bosco chocolate milk amplifier syrup! Skinny, why don’t you bring him up here with me?

Skinny: Yes sir Uncle Bosco! Yippee this is a lucky boy!

Uncle Bosco: You bet he is!

Skinny: He doesn’t want to come on stage, Uncle Bosco!

Uncle Bosco: Sure he does, just take his arm and bring him -
(interrupting) Skinny: OW! He bit me!

Uncle Bosco: Now now son, settle down and-
(interrupting ) Skinny: He’s kicking me!

ANNOUNCER: Say, I think we’ll find another young Bosco-teer right after we take this commercial break for Bosco!

Uncle Bosco: That’s right, Bosco, the chocolate milk amplifier syrup that makes milk chocolaty! Swell kids all over your town are enjoying- hey!

Skinny: He’s LOOSE! THE KID IS LOOSE!

Uncle Bosco: Now kid, give Uncle Bosco back his script…

(off mic) Aunt Pickle: Where’d he go? Where’d he go?

KIDS YELLING AND SCREAMING, SOUNDS OF CHAIRS BEING KNOCKED OVER

(off mic) UNKNOWN VOICE: Kill the show, throw it to news! Kill the show!

CARNIVAL MUSIC SWELLS

ANNOUNCER: The Uncle Bosco Show was brought to you- OW! He’s under my desk! He’s biting me!

(off mic) Aunt Pickle: He’s in the control room!

(off mic) UNKNOWN VOICE: Shut it down now!

STATIC

I brought my car in to the dealer this weekend for some routine maintenance. I expected a $40 oil change; what I got cost me almost $200. I read the receipt but I am still not sure what they did. Is “Kryex” even a word? And I am not entirely convinced that my air freshener needed a 500 mile servicing.

Anyway, I was sitting in the waiting room. It was about 9:30 in the morning and the room was about half full. Including me, there were five of us, all fairly spread out. Two were sitting at the table, using their laptops and taking advantage of the free wi-fi.   One was sitting in a corner using his iPhone for, I think, a game in which small blue blobs eat small red blobs. The fourth was sitting in a chair against the side wall and reading a magazine, and I was sitting against another wall splitting my time between using my iPod (also taking advantage of the free wi-fi) and watching Sports Center on the huge wall-mounted flat screen. Do you know what the main mission of Sports Center is? It is showing people holding up signs at various events that say “Sports Center is next.”                       

I was sitting not far from the front door, which was propped open to give us a breeze since the day was warm and a little humid. It was not too uncomfortable unless you were a large man, both fat and tall, wearing a long sleeve shirt, unbuttoned, over a sweat stained t-shirt, with a small baseball cap over a large, round, bald head,  and carrying a small bag of groceries. This was the man who walked down the street, saw the open door and empty chairs, and sat down next to me for a break.

There were four or five other chairs empty but the one next to me was closest to the door and by all appearances this was not a man who liked to move much. I had my hat on the chair and he stood in front of it, nodded, and I removed it so this uninvited man with no business in the dealership could sit down.

I picked up my iPod and suddenly became very occupied with looking occupied.

He did not take the hint.

“You know how far the Key Food is from here?” I grunted that it was maybe four blocks away.
“Three blocks, man, three blocks. But in this heat it feels like about thirty six or forty-one.”

I had no desire to talk to him but he had a habit of tapping me on the arm as he spoke. I suspect he developed that trait over years and years of people ignoring him when he spoke to them.

“I was trying to return this bottle of mustard,” he said and shook his shopping bag, “but the manager gave me a hard time.”

OK, now I was interested, and not just because this story was bound to be entertainingly stupid. Here was a large fat man with a bald head talking about food.

Did I mention that he was black?

Yes, the face was different and the guy by me had a mouth far too small for his face, but in all other respects I felt as if Norm Snackmunch had come out of an Allan Keyes blog and sat right down next to me.

“I had two bottles of Gulden’s spicy brown mustard but one wasn’t spicy enough.”

His story went that he had bought two bottles of spicy mustard and one was fine, perfectly spicy, but the other was not spicy at all, but kind of mild, and he wanted to return it. (When he asked me, I replied that I had no idea what would make a bottle of spicy mustard turn mild. Bad batch? I dunno.) He brought the bottle back to the store and told his story to the manager. For your sake, I have condensed this story but had I continued to write it verbatim, it would have been full of pauses, uh’s, and lots of repetition. This man was not a born storyteller.

As for me, on the one hand I wanted to know what happened at the store with the mustard, but on the other, stronger, saner hand, I really just wanted to hear my name called that my car was ready.

The man asked me, again, what could go wrong with mustard (still had no idea), why wouldn’t the manager give him an exchange (no idea) and if it was still hot outside (no idea.) Then, while talking about how much he loved Gulden’s spicy brown mustard, he reached into the bag and pulled out the bottle with the oddly mild mustard. 

Can you guess what happened?

It was a bottle of Gulden’s mild yellow mustard.

Believe it or not, and trust me, all I have written today is true, at that moment my name was called and my car was ready and I stood up and began to walk away. The fat guy with the mustard problem, among a few other problems, stood up as well and said he guessed he should get going too. He reached out to shake my hand, and he had a better chance of the manager exchanging his mustard than he had of me shaking his hand, when he was distracted by the water cooler.

“Oooh, free water!” He took out an iced tea can from his bag and filled it with water and walked out. I paid for my car, “Kryex” and all, and left, me and Norman Snackmunch, two ships that passed in the night.

Let’s Check Out My Male Bag Mailbag!

Good thing I noticed my error up there….this would’ve been a MUCH different article otherwise. And on a much different web site (Mr. Blogs Tepid Scrotum?)

Anyway, I get letters. Mostly hate mail, magazine subscriptions, offers for water picks, subpoenas and the like. But every now and then, I get genuine questions from you, my loyal readers. So I decided to answer some of them. I said to myself “Self, let’s throw the poor S.O.B.s  a break and let them bask in the unfiltered glory of pure, unadulterated Keyes” And then I said to myself “Self, you sure are an obnoxious little punk aren’t you? And what’s with this “self” crap anyway? Get over yourself.” Then I basically had a Gollum-style argument with myself for the next 40 minutes before I actually wrote this. So enjoy!

Dear Mr Keyes:  Your name is obviously a pseudonym, and a badly chosen one at that. Very few to none actually get this pun. So what’s the deal with that?  — Dr. Q

Dr. Q:  I use a this nom de plume because “honor is like the hawk, sometimes it must go hooded.”  Ok, I really use it because I want to keep THE MAN off balance. You never know when a good digital identity will be needed – it worked for the kids in Enders Game, which by the way, looks to be a great movie coming out soon enough. It’s always better to whip up the rabble under a fake name, makes it hard for the cops to find you.  And oh yeah, I’d be fired if the HR department at my job ever got wind of some of my ramblings  </sheepishness>  I work with a LOT of hipsters.

Hi Alan! I understand that you’re a 7^th level Reiki healer.  Any tips on how I get started in this field? – Norm S.

Dear Norm:  What the !*#^@ are you babbling about? Do I look like some sort of queeb here? Unless Reiki means “man who puts fistprint upside other man’s neck” I have no advice to pass along to you except telling you to go pound sand.

Jeeze Alan, when you gonna learn to use photoshop like a big boy instead of always submitting those fail pictures using Paint? – Mr. Blog

Mr. B:  Sure, no problem. I get right on it! See:

Alan, you awesome beast you! How long does it take you to write these gems of wisdom you grace us with every Monday? And why aren’t you in charge of this blog instead of Mr. Whasshisface? That little jerk isn’t fit to play Stavros to your Kojak.  Sincerely yours in admiration, Alan K. Oops, sorry make that A. Keyes.

Dear A.K.: Thanks so much for asking! Each of my columns are labors of love uniquely handcrafted for for you exacting readers.  My writing process mirrors that of Hemmingway and Tolstoy: quite a few days in the contemplative stage, a few more days in rough draft, a few more days in refinement, and viola!

Hey you – why are you always so angry when you write these things?  – M.C.  Rib

Dear Ribbie: I don’t get it? I’m not angry at all. I have no idea where you got this from? In fact quite a lot of you mentioned this sort of thing and it makes no sense to me. Sorry. Now go drown in a puddle of AIDS, you stinking pussbags! (Editors Note —- ah, ok, I do kinda get it now!)

Hi Fellas! This is your Sneak Peek of The Week of June 16th, 1943, for The Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride, found at AM 570 MHz.

On Monday, Lieutenant Allan Keyes will kick Mussolini while he’s down.

Be here on Tuesday when Kellogg’s Pep sponsors the Mr. Blog Review of the new East Side Kids film, Ghosts on the Loose, guest starring Mr. Bela Lugosi!

Wednesday’s blog will be preempted  by a special edition of Edward R. Murrow reporting live from a mess hall in Liverpool England.

Mr. Blog returns on Thursday with a new Picture Play featuring movie star Lana Turner. I hope jealous bandleader Artie Shaw doesn’t tune in!

Friday features the regular news commentary I Don’t Believe It. This week, installment 122 takes us to an automated bread bakery in Illinois. Can one machine do the work of as many as ten men?

Lastly, return on Saturday when the Saturday Comic Strip looks back at the time Little Orphan Annie blew up a Nazi submarine.

Thank you everyone, this is The Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride signing off from am 570 MHz, broadcasting daily from 6am to 1pm from the Empire State Building in New York City.

Last week I brought you an early Superman cartoon, this week I present the first installment of the first live-action Batman film, chapter one of the 1943 serial. Unlike Superman, Batman didn’t have a radio show or a classic cartoon until Filmation came along in the sixties (and Filmation and Fleischer are two entirely different breeds.) However, each spawned a pair of movie serials.  Sit back and enjoy Batman’s ornate crime-fighting desk and the lack of attention Batman and Robin pay to their secret identities.

This the first of two serial starring Batman and Robin.

From the “are we done with this guy yet?” department:

Before we begin, let’s educate ourselves on how Nanny Bloomie became a billionaire, shall we?

Bloomberg attended Johns Hopkins University, where he joined Phi Kappa Psi. He graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering. In 1966 he received his Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School. In 1973, Bloomberg became a general partner at Salomon Brothers, a bulge-bracket Wall Street investment bank, where he headed equity trading and, later, systems development. In 1981, Salomon Brothers was bought and Bloomberg was laid off from the investment bank and given a $10 million severance package. Using this money, Bloomberg went on to set up a company named Innovative Market Systems. His business plan was based on the realization that Wall Street (and the financial community generally) was willing to pay for high quality business information, delivered as quickly as possible and in as many usable forms possible, via technology (e.g., graphs of highly specific trends). In 1982, Merrill Lynch became the new company’s first customer, installing 22 of the company’s Market Master terminals and investing $30 million in the company. The company was renamed Bloomberg L.P. in 1987. By 1990, it had installed 8,000 terminals. Over the years, ancillary products including Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Message, and Bloomberg Tradebook were launched. As of 2012, the company had more than 310,000 terminals worldwide. His company also has a radio network which currently has its flagship station as 1130 WBBR AM in New York City.

Hey, that’s a path we can all follow! 

Bloomberg’s mangling of the English language is a legendary as his need to cuddle, coddle, and otherwise  treat all the people of New York as if we were little more than brainless tadpoles needing to be told where, when, and how to do anything. From banning big sodas to forcing bike lanes in busy roads to telling people to go see Broadway shows in the midst of a snowstorm, there is no one more out of touch with what it means to be an average person than this guy. So when he tells me to “speak grammar” I, as a former English teacher and current writer and editor for a major Company which rivals- no, far exceeds his- say “shut the Hell up, turd.”

In fact, the only thing he does worse than speak English is speak Spanish, as his bungling attempts to pander to Hispanic voters shows:

Allan Keyes burst into the offices of The Editor’s and Staff of Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride demanding we run this special middle of the week quick hit. Having nothing else scheduled for today they gratefully accepted.

You what always pissed me off about the original Star Wars? That there’s this one fat X-Wing pilot with the bad double chin and or course he’s named PORKins .

Get it? A fat guy named PORKY.  HA. HA. HA.

Boy that George Lucas sure is a wit. He’d be right at home at the Algonquin Round Table (whatever that was. I assume that’s where King Algonquin sat with his knights)

Ever wonder what Lucas would’ve called the pilot if he was black? Either way, I’m pretty sure Star Wars would never have been able to get past the NAACP….

Meanwhile, in an internet far, far away…

THE INTERNET LOVES PORKINS!

This is the first of a pair of Star Wars-related posts. Come back tomorrow for Porkins!

When it comes to taking away Peter Mayhew’s cane, let the Wookie win.

I think it is just too cool that Peter Mayhew has a lightsaber cane. If I had one it would be geeky, if an average fanboy had one it would be the ultimate proof of nerd, but in Peter Mayhew’s hands? Perfect. How many actors today don’t embrace the roles that make them famous? Jonathan Frid for many years would not talk about Dark Shadows, and until recently Harrison Ford would clam up whenever the subject turned to Han Solo. So it is fantastic to see a man like Peter Mayhew who not only accepts but embraces the role that made him famous.

Peter Mayhew is totally cool.

I took this picture last year, October 29th, right after Hurricane Sandy. This is diagonally across the street from my apartment.

That poor tree on the left looks pretty bad. Let’s check in on it today and see how it is doing.

It’s beautiful how green and full of new growth it has become. Sometimes you never notice the little things right around the corner (or across the street.) Nature really is a thing of beauty, and mature always prevails.