Wacko Trinkets Help One Law Firm Stand Out From Crowd

BUFFALO, N.Y.  In this city, as in so many others, there are more than enough lawyers outside of a few hot specialties right now, such as bankruptcy.  “We’ve got people around here who are snapping off their pencil points just so they’ll have an excuse to sharpen them,” says Michael Zucofska, managing partner at DeWitt, Havre & Lord.  “Others spend the morning separating their large and small paper clips, then mix them up again in the afternoon.”

Bo-ring.

Faced with a need to distinguish her firm from so many other faceless collections of lawyers, marketing director Sue Allenweis has made a virtue out of necessity.  “Mr. Zucofska told me he had to cut my budget 25% because of the economy, but now is not the time to cut back on marketing,” she says emphatically.  “Of course, there’s never a good time to cut my salary, but that’s another subject altogether.”

Sea Monkeys!

Allenweis responded to her straitened circumstances by replacing traditional law firm gifts–Cross pens, fruitbaskets and computer bags bearing the firm’s name and logo–with less costly but unique gifts that have made her the odds-on favorite to win the Erie County Bar Association’s Law Firm Marketer of the Year award.

“We dig down deep to solve your legal problems!”

“I was poring over expense reports late at night with cable TV on in the background,” she says, “when a Chia Pet commercial came on and I thought–’That’s looks like Mr. Havre, one of our founders!’” 

Our Founder

So Allenweis ordered a gross of the novelty items, and a marketing campaign was born.  “While other firms have cut their rates, we’ve always been cheap!” was the slogan that she came up with, and the business community responded with the enthusiasm.

“I don’t have time for lunch,” says Emil Notarski, owner of a sheet-metal fabricating company that employs 65.  “I’d much rather watch sea monkeys than sit with a bunch of lawyers telling me how great they are,” he says of the commemorative tank filled with brine shrimp he gazes upon to forget the high cost of worker’s compensation insurance.

“What are those little black things crawling around in your salad?”

The strategy isn’t risk-free, however, and Allenweis cautions other firms to be careful in choosing their gifts.  “We gave the CEO of a big client an Ant Farm at lunch one day,” she recalls ruefully.  “The little buggers escaped into his salad and he asked for his retainer back.”

Suicide Hot Lines Find Teen Girls Make Best Volunteers

BOURNE, Mass.  Like many high school juniors, Cyndi Cahill faces long odds as she looks ahead to next year, demographically one of the toughest in American history in terms of college admissions.  “My guidance counselor told me I’d either have to get my GPA up or do something nice for somebody,” she says.  “After I bombed my pre-calc mid-term, I opted for community service.”

 

“You could study harder, or you could do a walk-a-thon–it’s up to you.”

So Cyndi volunteered at the Cape Cod Suicide Help Line, a round-the-clock service that distraught individuals can call when they are contemplating a leap from the Sagamore Bridge, the most active suicide site in the Northeast.  She was surprised to find the work fulfilling–and that she had a natural aptitude for it.

Sagamore Bridge, Cape Cod, Mass.

“I thought it would be like really depressing,” she says, “but I enjoy talking to people about their problems.”

“Don’t jump–we’ll come over and make brownies!”

Cyndi and other teenage girls across the country have in fact become the highest-volume producers in the suicide prevention industry, according to Larry Kaplan, editor of Eleemosynary Review, a journal devoted to non-profits.  “This is the one type of call center you can’t outsource to Bangalore,” he notes.  “Indian operators tend to view Americans as spoiled, and often end calls by saying ‘Go ahead and jump, you whiner!’”

“You’re depressed?  How’d you like to share your bedroom with a grandmother, two brothers and a cow?”

Volunteers receive three hours of training before they are allowed to handle incoming calls, and psychologists who listen in during a two-week probation period say they are impressed with the speed at which teenage girls become proficient at the delicate art of counseling mentally disturbed individuals.

“Whenever I’m depressed, I buy a new bathing suit.  Maybe that would cheer you up!”

“The temptation is to patronize people who feel they have nothing to live for,” notes Dr. Margaret Kidder, “like, ‘You think you’ve got it bad?  My forehead broke out the night before the junior prom!’  But in fact, teen girls are capable of a great deal of empathy,” she says as she plays a tape made this past Saturday night:

TEEN GIRL VOLUNTEER:  Cape Cod Suicide Hot Line, Amy speaking.

SUICIDAL CALLER:  I . . . I’m going to end it all.  Tonight.

TEEN GIRL VOLUNTEER:  No way!

SUICIDAL CALLER:  Way.

TEEN GIRL VOLUNTEER:  Don’t even think about it!  You’ve got so much to live for!

SUICIDAL CALLER:  Like what?

Miley Cyrus, a/k/a “Hannah Montana”

TEEN GIRL VOLUNTEER:  There’s a Hannah Montana special on the Disney Channel tonight!

SUICIDAL CALLER:  That’s it?

TEEN GIRL VOLUNTEER:  Well, that and I get my driver’s license next week!

SUICIDAL CALLER:  (Silence)  Tell my mother she’s not to blame, okay?

Boston Artists Fight Gentrification, One SUV at a Time

BOSTON.  The last nail has been hammered in Boston’s “Big Dig”, the largest public works project in American history, transforming a formerly dank urban corridor marred by an elevated highway into a greenspace featuring flowers, blue skies, and an influx of tourists and empty-nesters looking to enjoy a newly-revitalized city.

Rose Kennedy Greenway

“I’m dreading it,” says Kati Rivers, a visual artist who has lived in the Fort Point Channel district downtown for the better part of a decade.  “A bunch of fat suburbanites driving up rents and crowding creative people out of the little cafes and bistros that we’ve supported since, like forever.”

Leather district loft

So Kati and some of her artistic friends in the Leather District and the Ladder District, two similar pocketbook neighborhoods favored by young people and artists because of their low rents and lively street life, have banded together to form an ad hoc group of “guerilla tour guides”.   Their mission?  To give bad directions to the incoming hordes of tourists and suburbanites seeking to horn in on the urban energy that long-time residents have created, but won’t be able to afford if their neighborhoods are “gentrified”.

“That place is so crowded nobody goes there anymore except suburbanites.”

A Saturday night finds Kati and her friend Dalton Patterson, a free-lance writer, patrolling the streets looking for clueless couples trying to find the latest hot restaurant they’ve read about in Boston, the glossy city magazine for those who don’t live in the city.

“We’re here!  We need two parking spaces for our SUV!”

“Excuse me,” a man calls out as he rolls down the window of his Cadillac Escalade.  “We’re trying to find Endive–it’s supposed to be around here somewhere.”

“Hmm,” Kati says, with a knowing look at Dalton.  “What’s the best way to get these people to the restaurant on time?”

Zakim-Bunker Hill Bridge

As she stalls for time, Dalton scans the windshield for some hint of where the two couples in the car have come from.  He spots a sticker that says “Muncipal Waste Permit – Town of Wellesley”, a suburb fifteen miles to the west.

“I know,” he interjects.  “You want to get on 93 North, so take a left here, get on Atlantic Avenue, and follow the signs to the Zakim-Bunker Hill bridge,” which leads cars out of town to suburbs on the North Shore.

“Are you sure about that?  It’s supposed to be in the Leather District,” the man says.

“Well, the Leather District actually extends north all the way to Peabody,” Dalton says.

“Yes,” Kati adds.  “They call their sports teams the Tanners, it’s so–leathery up there.”

Peabody, Mass.

The man seems dubious, but his GPS isn’t working due to a jamming device that Dalton keeps in his jacket pocket.

“Okay, well–thanks very much,” the woman in the passenger seat says.  “You’d better do what they say, honey,” she says to the driver.  “You’re always getting us lost.”

As the SUV drives away, Kati and Dalton exchange high-fives.  “Making our neighborhood a better place,” Kati says, and Dalton finishes her sentence for her.

“One Cadillac Escalade at a time.”

GOP Moves to Oust Sanford for Schmoopsie-Woopsie Emails

WASHINGTON, D.C.  The Republican National Governors Association is expected to call for the resignation of embattled South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford this week, saying the tone of his emails to an alleged lover crossed the line of acceptable behavior into “mushy, gushy, schmoopsie-woopsie talk” that is forbidden to GOP elected officials.

Sanford:  “She’s my pwecious widdle punkin’, and I wuv her vewwy much.”

“If you’re going to have a mistress, for God’s sake don’t tell her you love her,” said Royal Beale, Jr., former governor of a rectangular state in either the mountain or central time zones.  “Tell her you’ll pay for her apartment and buy her a lot of nice jewelry, then let her gush at you.”

“I sent her an email with the salutation ‘My beloved’–and she replied with ‘Hi’.”

Sanford has admitted to an affair with a woman named “Maria” in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to whom he wrote in one email “I haven’t felt this since I was in my teen ages”.  Sanford then asked whether Buenos Aires was the capital of Argentina and what the country’s principal exports were, as he had a final exam in geography coming up.

Rockefeller:  “Personally, I’d like to go out with a bang.”

The most famous Republican governor to cheat on his wife was Nelson Rockefeller, who died in 1979 at the age of 70 while in the apartment of a 25-year-old aide.  “That was Rocky for you,” said former President Gerald Ford, under whom Rockefeller served as Vice President. ”He died doing what he loved best.”

Jenny Sanford:  “I’m going to redecorate the den and turn it into Mark’s bedroom.”

Sanford’s wife Jenny has said she is willing to forgive her husband even though he has referred to his Argentinian lover as his “soul mate”, but Republican Party leaders were not so forgiving.  “What in the hell is a 50-year-old white male Republican doing with a soul, anyway?” Beale asked, incredulous.  “He should have sold that a long time ago.”

After Struggle, Obama, Cabinet Name “Love Train” New National Anthem

CAMP DAVID, Maryland.  Late-night deliberations at the Presidential retreat here left President Obama and members of his cabinet with frayed nerves and hard feelings, but a consensus was reached to drop “The Star-Spangled Banner” in favor of “Love Train” as the nation’s anthem on the eve of its birthday.

Gibbs:  “I go like this when some honky-tonk angel starts singing the SSB before a Washington Nationals game.”

“The old anthem is virtually unsingable, and is based on an English drinking song,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.  “The new anthem reached #1 on both the R&B and Billboard Hot 100 charts and was the last song on the album ‘Back Stabbers’.  Next question.”

“Love Train” was a certified gold record and the only #1 hit of The O’Jays, a Canton, Ohio-based R&B and soul group.  “The Star-Spangled Banner” was named the national anthem by a 1931 Congressional resolution, but has been the subject of frequent criticism because of its one and a half octave range and lyrics that some say encourage wasteful military spending.

“O-o say can you see, the moon in June, doo-be-doo-be-doo . . .”

“‘Love Train’ is more consistent with a non-hegemonic foreign policy,” noted Aaron Shreve, a lecturer at the Tufts School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass.  “It mentions a number of countries, including Russia, China, Egypt and Israel, and in the extended-play disco version, Burkina Faso.”

Summers:  ” . . . but it is a man’s world.”

Deliberations were extended due to the intransigence of Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House Economic Council, who left his previous position as President of Harvard University after publicly speculating that the low representation of women in math and the sciences was due to the amount of time they spend shopping and applying make-up.  “Larry was very stubborn,” said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.  “He wanted James Brown’s ‘It’s a Man’s World.’”

Who’s Better–Michael Jackson or Shakespeare?

I was almost feeling better–almost over the pain, the loss and the heartbreak of losing my all-time favorite, all-purpose entertainer.  Even though I hadn’t actually bought one of his records since, like, the 80’s, to me he was still the most sensitive, talented, perceptive and misunderstood human being of all time.  And yes, I’m not forgetting Jesus, you turkey.

Misunderstood genius.

I was almost back to normal–well, I don’t think I’ll ever really be normal normal again–when a smart-aleck remark by somebody passing by sent me crashing downward again.

 

This guy was like the goofiest-looking English professor you ever had in college–tweed jacket with elbow patches, face full of hair, stinking up the environment with cherry-scented tobacco in his pipe.  I was straightening up all the teddy bears and long-stemmed red roses at the memorial, when I heard this guy say “You’d think it was tupping Shakespeare that died–instead of an androgynous black man who overcame racial prejudice by turning himself into a white woman.”

Michael Jackson, Audrey Hepburn:  Curiously, never seen in a taxicab together.

I looked up “tupping”.  It doesn’t have anything to do with Tupperware.  It’s Old English for screwing.  Just like a professor–make something harder so you’ll get it wrong on the mid-term.  I guess Shakespeare used it in a play called “Othello”.  We had to read “Julius Caesar” sophomore year.  They had salads named after him in the student union.

Shakespeare:  Never had a #1 hit.

Well, I’m sorry, but I just snapped.  “How dare you!” I screamed at him.  “How dare you dare to desecrate this holy shrine of stuffed animals and hand-lettered signs by even suggesting that Shakespeare was anywhere near as good as Michael!  I hate you for hating on Michael!”

The guy started running, but his wife was wearing Uggs so when I threw my giant 7-11 drink cup at her I got her good on the back with a lot of ice.  Serves her right for hanging out with such a stupid doofus!

Smokey Robinson Drink Cup

But when I got home I flopped down on my bed among the stuffed animals that I hadn’t taken to the memorial and started to think.  I’m honest that way–if somebody says I’m wrong I check my facts before I tell them they’re full of poop.

Reserved for surviving members of Jackson 5.

So I asked myself–is there any reason at all in the whole universe to think that Shakespeare might be even a teensy-weensy bit better than Michael Jackson?  I got up and looked at myself in the mirror, and I had to admit that maybe the professor guy had a point.  After all, Shakespeare is taught in school, and Michael Jackson is not, at least yet.  I mean, they have a Beatles major at a college in Liverpool–maybe there’ll be a Michael Jackson major someday at Northwest Indiana State College in Gary, Indiana!

The final counts for half of your grade.

But then I realized–I wasn’t being fair to Michael!  Shakespeare lived two whole years longer than Michael!  So it’s like comparing apples to orange juice.  And anyway, we studied Jacksonian Democracy in American History, so Michael is in the core curriculum, just in a more boring part.

Andrew, the “lost” Jackson family member

On a lot of other points, Michael comes out way ahead.  For instance, when Michael died he got tributes from Diana Ross, Elton John, and Jeremy Piven.

Jeremy Piven:  “Will, work with me okay?  I got you a 154-sonnet deal with HBO!”

What did Shakespeare get when he died?  A poem.  Seriously–a lousy stinking poem, To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Master William Shakespeare, by Ben Jonson.  Can you believe it?  A Canadian sprinter who’s been banned for steroids–I looked it up on Wikipedia–wrote him a poem.  Not exactly Madonna.

Ben Jonson, Ben Johnson

By every other yardstick we use to measure greatness in entertainment, the Gloved One beats the Bard.  I’m not gonna list ‘em all–it would embarrass Shakespeare “scholars”:

Theme song to a movie about a rat:  MJ one–”Ben”.  Shakespeare, zilch.

Grammy Awards:  Thirteen for Michael, none for Shakespeare.

Hollywood Walk of Fame:  Michael, yes.  Shakespeare, no.

Number one singles:  Again, thirteen for Michael, none for Shakespeare.

Patented footwear:  Did you know that Michael held a patent on Anti-Gravity Boots that allowed him to lean forward at a super-human 45-degree angle?  I didn’t think so. 

 

And for Shakespeare?  Somebody . . . anybody.  Yes–you in the back row.  That’s right.  The Shakespeare Love Quote Funky Womens Lace-Up Keds Shoe.

Give me a tupping break!

So don’t give me this “Swan of Avon” crap.  Ben the pet rat could eat him alive.

Orthodox Jews Turn to Demolition Derby in Search for Converts

FULTON, Ohio.  It’s the opening night at the Fulton County Fair in this tiny town in northwest Ohio, and the grandstands are packed for the first round of the event that is the annual highlight of this rural chivaree–Demolition Derby.

“We draw our biggest crowds for Demolition Derby,” says the fair’s general manager, Oren Daily, Jr.  “I don’t know what it is–people just love to see cars smash into each other.”

In addition to crowd favorites from the past such as Floyd Littleton, the “Sandusky Sniper”, there’s a new kid in town this year.  A bearded man wearing a hat and a black suit–Rabbi Eli Silberstein of Temple Beth Shalom in Shaker Heights, Ohio–sits in the “shotgun” seat of his 1992 Volvo.  His driver is Jim Bob Embry, who wears a shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled into the sleeve on his bicep.

 

The “Kosher Krusher”, the name painted on the front doors of Silberstein’s car, is the rabbi’s recruitment tool as he takes a radical step to reverse the declining number of Jews in America.  “Intermarriage is the silent Holocaust,” he says to Embry.

“Uh-huh,” Embry replies, nodding slightly.  He has his eye on a red Dodge Charger that is idling near the bleachers.

“Unless we become proactive, Jews will disappear from the face of the earth.”

“That’s what I hear,” Embry says quietly.  He guns the engine and takes off after an Oldsmobile Rocket 88, ramming it in the front left bumper, causing Silberstein to lurch forward.

“You okay, Rabbi?” the goy driver asks.

“I’m a little tsedreyt in kop (disoriented), but I’ll be okay,” the holy man says.  “Anyway, before 1965 10% of Jews married non-Jews.  Since 1985 . . .”

“Hold on, padre—”

Embry steers the Kosher Krusher into the Sandusky Sniper, and Floyd Littleton gives him a dirty look before driving off, damaged but still going.

“As I was saying,” the rabbi continues, ”since 1985, 52% of Jews have married outside their faith.  One million American Jewish children under the age of 18 are being raised as non-Jews or with no religion at all.”

“Jesus Christ!” says Embry.

“Goot gezugt,” (well said) Silberstein replies with emphasis.  “Anyway, I thought it was time to get off my toches (rear end) and get out here among the Unchosen People.  Maybe pick off a few goyim.“

“Should be like shootin’ fish in a barrel,” says Embry.  “We don’t get many Jews come out for demolition derby.”

“I wonder why that is?” the rabbi asks, staring off into the crowd.

“Probably ’cause of your people’s higher level of education,” Embry says as he eyes the car on his right about to cross the center point of the derby’s figure-eight pattern.

Because Demolition Derby is held on Friday night, the rabbi must leave the driving to a shabbas goy–a non-Jew who assists him by performing work that Jews are forbidden to engage in on Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath.

After a while the pack is thinned and only the Kosher Krusher and the Sandusky Sniper remain mobile as the remaining cars are reduced to smoking hulks.  Embry plays cat and mouse with Littleton, his lone adversary, with the rabbi urging him on.

“A broch su dir!” (”A curse on you!”) Silberstein yells out his window at their opponent, and Embry feints a charge.  The Sandusky Sniper bites on the fake, and its passenger side door is exposed.

“I got him now,” Embry says.  He steps on the accelerator and, like a matador, skillfully discharges his opponent with a single direct hit that sends Littleton to the hospital with a fractured collarbone.

“You egg-suckin’ dog, you,” Littleton screams in pain as he is loaded into an ambulance.  “Next time I see you I’m gonna punch you a new asshole, you little peckerwood.”

Mano a mano, caro a caro.

“A glick ahf dir” (”Good health to you”) the rabbi says as the ambulance drives off.

The winning team steps to the podium to accept their prizes; $200 in cash and two ten-pound packages of Roseland Lard.  “You can have mine,” the rabbi says, handing the clarified hog fat to his partner.

 

Embry and the rabbi are the stars of the moment, and they wade into the crowd to accept the congratulations of men and women who have little formal education and–in many cases–less than a full set of teeth between them.  He introduces himself to Gene Ray and Veneta Sue Doogs.

“Hello, there,” he says.  “Have you ever considered converting to Judaism?”

“Wait a minute,” Gene Ray says suspiciously.  “I thought Jews weren’t supposed to proselytize.”

“Good point,” the rabbi replies.  “Under normal circumstances, the Jewish community does not seek converts.”

“Where’d you learn that?” Veneta Sue asks her husband.

“I heard it on ESPN2’s Texas Rattlesnake Hunt.”

“These are not normal times,” the rabbi continues.  “Jewish fertility rates are not high enough to replenish our people, so for a limited time only, we are accepting new members.”

“I like music in church,” Veneta chimes in.  “The Old Rugged Cross, Just a Closer Walk With Thee . . .”

“We have a full-time cantor–he’s excellent.”

“How many days off do Jews get?” Gene Ray asks.

“We got holidays like Heinz has pickles,” the rabbi replies, as he begins to tick them off; “Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Channukah, Purim, Pesach . . .”

“Sounds like a good deal,” Gene Ray says, cutting the rabbi off.  “I like to fish, and I can’t get off unless the plant’s closed or it’s a religious thing.”

The Doogs take a pamphlet and Gene Ray accepts a complimentary yammukah, which he holds gingerly on his head.  They say goodbye and walk across the parking lot to their truck, which seems unlikely to get them home.

“Well, Jim Bob,” the rabbi says expansively as he watches them go.  “I think we caught a couple tonight.”

“Good deal, rabbi,” Jim Bob says.  “Say–you better fix that front suspension before tomorrow night if you want to win the championship,” he adds.

“Not to worry,” Silberstein replies.  “When I get under that car, I work like a moyel who gets paid by the schlong.“

Injuries Mount From Double-Tub Sexcapades

It is, marketing experts agree, one of the most successful branding campaigns of the 21st century; a man and a woman sitting beside each other in separate bathtubs, the visual theme that has vaulted Cialis to the top of the erectile dysfunction market after a late start behind first mover Viagra.

“They have terrific penetration–to use a loaded term–in the over-55-horny-guy-hitting-on-administrative-assistant demographic,” says Jerry Della Persuaza of the Vaughan + Mathers advertising agency.  “In terms of favorability ratings, people rank the image right up there with Mr. Peanut and Speedy Alka-Seltzer.”

Speedy Alka-Seltzer and Mr. Peanut, in fuel-injected funny car

But the widespread popularity of the campaign may lead to its downfall, as public health officials cite a rising number of injuries sustained by couples who try to duplicate the complicated sex-and-plumbing maneuver suggested by the ads.

“Did you remember to plug the drain before you got in the tub?”

“As far as I’m concerned, there should be a warning label on the box,” says former FDA official Myron Zuckerman.  “‘Do not use Cialis while sitting in bathtubs, single-occupant wading pools or paddle boats.’”

“This is hard work!”

And yet some consider the practice suggested by the double-tub ad campaign to be a reminder of our more sensuous and earthier past.  “Yes, most people have indoor plumbing today,” says Jean-Anne Williams-Smith, curator at the Museum of American Hygiene and Hyphens in Bangor, Maine.  “But it wasn’t so long ago that even dignified couples would take baths outdoors overlooking scenes of natural beauty while photographers snapped their picture.”

“I know I’m forgetting something–oh yeah, my helmet!”

Still, the risk of injury stemming from what urologists have dubbed “post-bathtub-coital trauma” is considered to be high, and some physicians urge those interested in the difficult position to use caution.  “If you’re going to try to have sex in individual bathtubs,” notes Dr. Gregory Osmond, “you’d better wear a bike helmet.”

As Women’s Tennis Grunting Spreads, Men Fight Back With Armpit Farts

WIMBLEDON, England.  When it started with Monica Seles, it seemed innocuous, or merely annoying.  But now, say old school tennis champs including Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, the practice of grunting by women’s tennis players when they hit a shot has become a technique to rattle an opponent, a violation of the sport’s high standards of etiquette.

Monica Seles:  She started it.

“It used to be I could get away from my job and relax by watching tennis,” says Dr. Nigel Holcomb, an obstetrician at London’s St. Mark’s Hospital.  “Now I hear the same grunting out here that we get during a forceps delivery of a twelve-pound baby.”

Francesca Schiavone:  “Aaargh–double aargh!”

The dominance of the grunters has enticed spectators away from the men’s matches, as sadists and those with a more straightforward prurient interest flock to the stands to hear the sounds women make when they are really, truly satisfied with a shot.  “It was like a ghost town out here today,” says Ivo Karlovic of his quarter-final match against Roger Federer at the Wimbledon Championships.  “Usually the spectators just look dead.”

“Brrrrrip”

So Karlovic and Federer decided to do something about their plight, and began to engage in friendly but competitive armpit farts, at first just between points but later, as the match progressed to five sets, after baseline ground strokes as well.  The crowd responded favorably, and by the third-game tiebreaker in the final set were cheering heartily in recognition of the players’ dexterity and volume.

Irina Armpitkova: Eventually, the women will catch up to the men.

“It was really one of the most remarkable feats of athleticism I’ve ever witnessed,” noted All England Club teaching professional Oswald Nitzi.  “Federer was volleying at the net, Karlovic hit a perfect lob to the corner, but Roger recovered with a splendid passing shot and a noise that sounded like a twelve-year old Boy Scout after a campfire meal of beans.”

“That was a good one you got off, mate.” 

An armpit fart is a simulated sound of flatulence produced by creating a pocket of air between the armpit of a partially raised arm and the hand, then swiftly closing this pocket by bringing the arm close to the torso.  Unlike non-simulated farts, no gas is released by the process and the only offense given to those in close proximity to the perpetrator is aural, rather than olfactory.

“No I don’t smell anything–why do you ask?”

Federer is this year’s favorite as #1 ranked Rafael Nadal is out with a knee injury, and he hopes to bow to the Queen after falling in the finals to Nadal last year .  “It’s a wonderful tradition,” he says as he lifts his shirt.  “I’ve been practicing a really juicy one for her.”

Nazi Muff-Divers: It Could’ve Happened Here

An unexpected by-product of summer reading is that one’s literary risk-reward ratio can expand exponentially, the way pole vaulting records were shattered by quantum leaps when athletes abandoned bamboo for aluminum, then aluminum for fiberglass.  Pick a mildewed paperback off a bookshelf in a vacation house–one that you’d be ashamed to check out of your local library for fear it would be cited in a future Senate confirmation hearing–and you can be transported to realms of schlock that previously lay beyond your poor powers of comprehension.

Thus it is with Ken Follett’s “Eye of the Needle”.  Originally published as “Storm Island”, “Eye of the Needle” is a counterfactual tale, a story that asks the question “what if” about a historical event, imagining what might have happened if the proximate link in the chain leading up to it were altered.  Here’s how Follett himself describes the thesis on which he built the plot of “Eye of the Needle”: 

German U Boat

     It is 1944 and weeks before D-Day. The Allies are disguising their invasion plans with a phoney armada of ships and planes. Their plan would be scuppered if an enemy agent found out… and then, Hitler’s prize agent, “The Needle”, does just that. Hunted by MI5, he leads a murderous trail across Britain to a waiting U-Boat. But he hasn’t planned for a storm-battered island, and the remarkable young woman who lives there.

It’s enough to set you off and running, like a starter’s pistol at the beginning of a footrace.  But the important thing to note is that it’s based largely on fact; the Allies did indeed disguise the D-Day invasion by sending legions of British vacationers to Normandy Beach, outfitting their children with inflatable squeaky frog inner-tubes.  Surely, thought the Nazis, the Allies won’t attack here, now that the mothers have unwrapped the tinned meat sandwiches and the fathers have lost their car keys.

Allied decoy

Follett’s masterwork is marbled with a number of other historically-correct elements that lend it an air of verisimilitude, and which leave the reader, as he finally puts the book down late at night, shaking his head at what might have been.  “My God,” you say to yourself, “but for a simple twist of fate, the women of America would have been in hopeless thrall to legions of Nazi cunnilinguists.”

President and Treasurer of your local Parent-Teacher Organization

It’s right there on page 226, the infamous Gestapo muff-diving scene, as famous in its genre of mindless beach-reading as Gatsby at the end of the dock, the madeleines in A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Hawthorne’s scarlet letter.  Again, I quote at length, or as much length as I am permitted by this site’s Terms of Service and my ability to control my involuntary aesthetic gag reflex:

     He slipped down the bed, between her thighs.  (. . .)  Surely he doesn’t want to kiss me there.  He did.  And he did more than kiss.”

Suffice it to say that Follett’s “remarkable young woman” is ”paralyzed by shock” at the hitherto-unknown worlds of pleasure that her German tonguemeister introduces her to.

Which raises the question:  Suppose the Nazis had won World War II.  Yes, the bright light of democracy would have been snuffed out, millions of “undesirables”–Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and Poles–would have been consigned to certain death in concentration camps, and single men across America would have been subject to humiliation in scenes such as this:

“Pass the Pepperidge Farms Weiner Schnitzel-Flavored Goldfish!”

SINGLE MAN:  Hi–can I buy you a drink?

SINGLE WOMAN:  Are you a member in good standing of the National Socialist German Workers Party, better known as the Nazis?

SINGLE MAN:  Well, uh, no, but . . .

SINGLE WOMAN:  (To “wingwoman” friend)  Look–isn’t that Josef Goebbels, Jr. over there?

The possibility is one with more than a passing interest to me, since I live on the East Coast, and German U-boats were believed to have patrolled the waters of the Atlantic until V-E Day.  Say the Nazis had won World War II in 1945; I was born in 1951, and moved to Massachusetts two decades later.  Had the Allies gone down to defeat, by the time I got here Nazi subjugation of American women would have been complete.  The upshot for me?  No dates, no mate, no heirs to carry on my name or DNA.

One imagines the final steps to Nazi dominance with horror, aboard a German submarine, V or C class, as it patrols the beaches between Cape Cod and the North Shore of Boston:

Aboard the Marlene Dietrich:

VICE ADMIRAL HEINRICH VON TIECHLER:  What’s shakin’?

FIRST MATE:  The Yankee women seem to have sacrificed greatly to the Allies’ cause.  There is not a healthy set of gams to be seen on the beach!

VICE ADMIRAL:  We are north of Boston, where the women lose their muscle tone riding horses and playing bridge, making stupid jokes about how they like to go into Boston to get “scrod”.  Let us turn to the south.

FIRST MATE:  We are off Revere Beach.

VICE ADMIRAL:  Keep going–Mussolini has dibs on the Italians.

FIRST MATE:  We approach Cape Cod.

VICE ADMIRAL:  Check the Infidelity Meter.

FIRST MATE:  Conditions are favorable–I’m showing high concentrations of discarded limes with traces of gin in the water.

VICE ADMIRAL:  Dive, man, dive!