When
we left you last week, the Hollis’ family chicken, Higgs, had been boldly kidnapped
from the family estate in Fairfield, a crime unequalled in the long history of
the tiny Florida hamlet. Photographs
sent by the chickennappers portrayed a forlorn Higgs, bound and blindfolded,
parked at a seamy motel.
Now,
The Flying Pie can accurately report
that shocking new photographs have been obtained by a phalanx of detectives
hired by the Hollis family to pursue the matter. Disinclined as we are to jump to conclusions,
the objective arbiter in us might opine that Higgs seems to be very comfortable
in his new surroundings and could even prove to be (gasp!) an actual participant
in this sordid affair.
In
situations such as this, however, there is always the possibility of the
dreaded Stockholm Chicken Syndrome, a
psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive
feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them or
allying themselves with them. Patty
Hearst was an example of this sort of victim.
After being kidnapped by the notorious Symbionese Liberation Army in the
mid-seventies along with her boyfriend Steven Weed, the 19-year-old Hearst
denounced her wealthy parents in audiotaped messages and announced she had
joined the SLA. Photographs of a later
SLA bank robbery found Hearst participating and even carrying an automatic
weapon. When she was later apprehended
with other members of the group, she alleged that she had been held in close
confinement, sexually assaulted and brainwashed.
Holy
cow. It’s hard to imagine this savage
treatment being administered to Higgs, who is certainly as physically
attractive as Patty Hearst, if not more so.
Anyway, these new revelations have thrown a large monkey wrench into the
ransom negotiations between the kidnappers and the Hollis family. Is this a legitimate crime, heinous and unforgiveable,
or merely another case of an alleged captive seeking to profit from an utter
fraud? If the former is the case, no efforts
will be spared to bring the perpetrators to justice. If, on the other hand, the latter is true and
the chicken makes off with the money, it would be—as Stuart Ellison is not
ashamed to say—“quite a coop.”
Exit Fraulein
We
took our visiting German EPM collaborator back to the airport last Friday for
her Saturday return home. True, it was a
day early but sometimes a day early is best.
And we certainly wanted to insure, after a long siege of 26 days dotted
with a couple of unladylike incidents, that she didn’t miss her plane. The next evening, after dinner, we received
the following song/questionnaire from our gym friends, Bruce and Barb, which
certainly proves once and for all that not all senior citizens are unfunny:
Are
You Lonesome Tonight
Are
you lonesome tonight,
Do
you miss me tonight,
Are
you sorry we drifted apart?
Do
the chairs in your parlor
Seem
empty and bare?
Do
you gaze at your doorstep
And
picture me there?
Is
your heart filled with pain?
Should
I come back again?
Tell
me dear, are you lonesome tonight?
Well, maybe a smidgen,
Kristina. But we’ll tough it out.
A Missive From The
Cosmos
Last
year, we followed the months-long ordeal of our friend for 40 years, Stuart Bentler, as he spiraled from fine and dandy to solid gone. One day, in LA traffic, Stuart passed out
while driving his little car. His foot
slipped off the accelerator and his vehicle, stopped at a red light, bumped
into a truck in front. Stuart promptly awakened, parked the car and made off for his doctor. Thus began a madly frustrating ordeal of
musical doctors as Stuart sought to ascertain just what the hell was wrong with
him. When the Jacksonville Mayo Clinic
finally figured it out months later, it was too late for our old friend. His daughter, Katherine, scattered his ashes
in our garden here in Fairfield, according to his wishes, on July 24th,
2011, surrounded by just under 40 of Stuart’s friends, who had motored and
flown in from all over the country, a fitting tribute to a worthy
recipient. So, on the anniversary of The
Event, the title given to the day of interment, we were not surprised to
receive the following correspondence from the man, himself.
Dear Guys,
Well, it’s been a year now so they
finally gave me a chalet up here in the clouds.
Even in such a roomy environment, you’ve got to wait your turn. And hey, I’m one of the lucky ones, plenty of
candidates are still waiting. I’m not
entirely sure I’d even be UP here if it weren’t for the heavy influence of
Stuart, Jr. It seems that children who
are saddled with a difficult life on Earth get extra juice up here. Stuart, you’ll remember, had MS and bore his
cross with great valor. Probably my
singular accomplishment as a human being was the care I gave to him and the
many adventures we undertook together.
Anyway, it paid off in spades.
A couple of heavenly observations. First of all, there aren’t many politicians
up here. Winston Churchill lives down
the street but you can count the others on one hand. Also, VERY few popes. I haven’t seen Oral Roberts or any of those
death-and-damnation guys, either. Mother
Teresa is here, of course, and let me tell you, she’s making up for lost time. I’m a regular at the wine bar downtown and
she’s in there every night. Who can
blame her, right?
Hey, and don’t let anybody tell you
alcoholics can’t get in up here. We’ve
got several. A lot of them are
frustrated—especially the beer and whiskey drinkers—because it’s a wine-only
society. I’ve never been a big wine guy
myself, but when in Rome….
As you know, I have always had great
appreciation for the female of the species, especially the younger ones who
were generally not available in one’s sunset years. Well, guess what? They’re still not available. Almost every girl up here is OLD, man, and
the few young colleens enjoy a seller’s market, to be coarse.
In conclusion, I thought you’d like
to know that The Big Guy is not nearly as judgmental as his alleged advocates
on Earth might lead you to believe. “Live
and let live,” is his general motto. He
doesn’t really like all the adoration, either.
“An insecure god is a phony god,” he always says.
Anyway, let everybody know I miss
them, especially Katherine. I got a
special dispensation from one of the higher-ups to throw a few firecrackers
into her relationship with that hump who was mean to me, and excuse me for the
unheavenly emotions. Say hi to everybody
in The Flying Pie. Everybody
up here reads it although they don’t understand that stuff about the chicken.
Keep up the exercise, stay out of
small planes and wait awhile before you go back to Mexico. I’ll see you in a few years. They don’t have any humor magazine editors or
head-shop proprietors up here yet and it’s always nice to be the first.
Your pal,
Stuart Bentler
About Time
Our
old friend Gilbert Shelton was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame last
week at the annual Comic-Con in San Diego after years of apparent
invisibility. What were they waiting
for? Shelton’s Wonder Wart Hog, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddie’s Cat are iconic comics
which have survived generations. Shelton
is as not as well-known, perhaps, as another cartoonist of the era, Robert
Crumb, famous for Zap Comics, Mr. Natural
and the everlasting Keep on Truckin’ admonition,
not to mention his comic alter-ego, a meek, neurotic,
inferiority-complex-ridden character obsessed with big-assed women. While Crumb certainly deserves all of his
fame, a case can be made that Shelton’s work is equally worthy (although this
would probably be disputed by Shelton, himself).
Wonder Wart Hog, a colorful parody of super-hero
comics, was a stroke of genius. It
carried on for years and never failed to be hilarious. And everybody in the sixties and seventies
could relate to the dope-smoking, drug-selling Freak Brothers. Either you were them or you knew them.
Shelton
certainly had a significant effect on those around him. As editor of the University of Texas humor
magazine, The Ranger, he not only
appreciated input from his staff, he published anything decent they produced. More than just an editor, Shelton was an
inspiration to his crew and a Great Facilitator. He almost singlehandedly forged a culture melding
Ranger personnel, musicians,
beginning drug-experimenters and the freewheeling denizens of a small part of
Austin called The Ghetto, probably best described as a post-beatnik, pre-hippie
crowd open to what the next day brought.
Shelton
could play a little piano, a little guitar, but, being a perfectionist, never
considered himself much of a musician.
He had only a casual interest in sports but was very athletic. When the Ranger
sponsored a Great Bicycle Race, Shelton was right there at the finish. When the magazine staff played a softball
game with the staff of the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, we didn’t have a catcher so Shelton decided he was
the man for the job. He took to catching
without a glove and this was fast-pitch stuff—or as fast as it got with me pitching. Gilbert, his girlfriend-of-the-time, Karen
Kirkland, Janis Joplin and I went to Nuevo Laredo, just across the Mexican
border, one day and Karen got us into what looked to be a big dustup with the
locals. Shelton, absent from the scene
as it developed, returned in time to put out the fire even though he had only
marginal awareness of what was happening.
He cast a huge shadow over our crowd and, I would argue, over Austin,
itself.
Not
to say he didn’t have a few faults. If
you drove anywhere with Shelton, you had to be perfect at the wheel. Gilbert would tolerate nothing less and you
would be ousted from your position for the slightest infraction. He had a pet peeve for oncoming drivers who
did not dim their lights, once spending hours developing plans for a
venetian-blind type mirror which could be affixed to the front of his car. Faced with an outrageous approaching
non-dimmer, he would merely pull a cord and the venetian-blinds would lock into
position, blinding the oncoming driver, despite the uncertain possibilities
that presented. He argued that a
collision would “be worth it.”
And
there was the matter of Lieuen Adkins.
Lieuen, who continued to live with his parents long past the time
Shelton thought suitable, was a great and witty poet and writer. He was also inept at just about everything. Shelton got enormous satisfaction from pranking
Lieuen on all possible occasions and Adkins was the perfect foil. If you were to sympathize with Lieuen about
any of this, however, he would contend that he probably deserved it. Gilbert was his hero and any criticisms of
him were disallowed.
I,
myself, spent the best months of my life in Austin, having been invited there
by Shelton in the Summer of 1962. “Come
down here and help me put out the Ranger,"
he said. “You can sleep on my hair
couch.” And I did. Slept pretty damn good on that hair couch,
too. Stayed there even after Shelton
moved out and the hard hats arrived to start tearing down the building. I will never forget the Austin Days. And so, even though it has taken all this
time for the comic book people to recognize his genius, his earlier friends—myself
included—were much quicker on the uptake.
Gilbert K. Shelton has been in our Hall of Fame for 50 years.
Next Week
….is
vacation week for Bill and Siobhan. We’ll
be at Glacier National Park from August 1st to the 8th. So, for the first time in a couple of years,
there will be no new column next week.
Instead, if the technology gods are good, we will present the most-read Flying Pie column ever, vintage
2010. If you’ve read it before, too
bad. The following week, despite just
rearriving home the day before, there will be a new column about our Montana
adventures. Unless one of them involves
falling off the side of the Going To The Sun Road, which has quite a drop and
not many guard rails. If that happens,
you’re on your own.
That’s
all, folks. Figuratively speaking, or
course….
