“Jesus was a carpenter’s son. I’m the son of a woodshop teacher, although I suspect he’s not my real father.”

- from the essay “Come Down off the Cross, We Can Use The Wood”
                                                Delman  Mangrove          

                                                The Layman’s Guide To Perspicacity

 “Our Fire Department personnel were concerned that the decades-old buildings on Pleasure Beach posed a significant public safety hazard, especially after one of our deputy chiefs witnessed several kids running from one of the buildings during a routine … visit to the island. At the behest of our Fire Department, Burns Construction Co., which was doing some work on the island for the Town of Stratford, used their equipment to push the two buildings over. All involved recognize that the work should have been done with a demolition permit in place. We will take appropriate action to ensure that this situation does not occur again in the future. In the meantime, the Public Facilities department is determining how best to dispose of the rubble left from the buildings on the island.”

Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch statement on the Bridgeport Fire Department’s spontaneous and non-permitted demolition of the historic Pleasure Beach carousel and bumper car ride.

“Two days after it was discovered that two structures once housing amusements at Pleasure Beach were demolished without the apparent knowledge — or permission — of top city officials, Mayor Bill Finch said Friday the structures were “pushed over” free of charge by a construction company hired by Stratford to tear down abandoned cottages on adjoining Long Beach West.
Finch, who a day earlier said flatly, “We don’t know who did it,” said that a deputy fire chief determined about a month ago the abandoned and deteriorating wooden structures that once housed the carousel and the bumper-car ride were in danger of collapsing.
In a prepared statement issued Friday, the mayor said that he had learned the city’s Fire Department gave Burns Construction Co. the green light to tear down the buildings on the 35-acre beach.
Although Finch said he was in the dark about the last-minute demolition, he said he isn’t concerned that the Fire Department had failed to inform him. “I wasn’t completely shocked. I was uninformed,” he said.
“In a way I’m kind of glad they are down,” Finch said. “They were probably never built to code. They were carny buildings.”

Connecticut Post  09/05/09 

Ah, Bill Finch. Bridgeport’s self-proclaimed “Green Mayor”. The mayor in charge of making Bridgeport shovel-ready for all those juicy stimulus project dollars.

Apparently Mayor Finch’s most pressing concern with this unauthorized Pleasure Beach action is what to do with the huge pile of wood left behind by the demolition. I guess that huge pile of wood creates a fire hazard. Most tellingly to the true nature of the mayor, being “uniformed” doesn’t completely shock him. It shocks me less than a joy buzzer in a candy bowl of electric eels.

Before we delve into the Case of The Shovel-Ready Mayor, here’s an excerpt from my soon-to-be-published memoir “My Life In The Black Market Government Cheese Trade”. Hopefully, this story will shed a bit of metaphorical light on the conditions that led to the non-permit destruction at Pleasure Beach. Sometimes it’s a long journey from one story to another, and sometimes you barely need to move a leg to get there.

Now let’s enter the Way Back Machine, boys and girls…
 

Back in my days at Chicago’s Lane Technical High School, all students were required to take four semesters of shop class. Being completely disinterested in any tool that didn’t grow on me, I developed an uncanny ability to worm my way into being appointed the shop tool room helper. This assignment allowed me to pass the class without doing any actual work. This practice worked well in electrical, machine and auto shops, but not in woodshop.

Our woodshop teacher, Howard Woodson (really), was more a hands-off kind of instructor. He spent the entire semester alone in the locked tool room, smoking his pipe and tossing out the occasional woodworking implement over the top of the security cage to an unsuspecting student who may not have been adequately trained to actually catch a ballpeine hammer spinning in mid-flight.

We were left to our own devices in woodshop. Mr. Woodson would remind us of his presence with the occasional verbal rant on poets who romanticized trees and assorted tree bi-products. He particularly hated Joyce Kilmer and Robert Frost, often shouting from the tool room, “Frost, that Yankee pantywaist. Good fences, good neighbors, my good ass! Melville, now there was a real writer. Saltwater of the earth, he was. Knew more about wood than a thousand high-falutin’ Hollywood ventriloquists gone to meet their maker.”

These outbursts were usually followed by a cry of “Heads up, pantywaists. Here comes a hacksaw”. 

We were busy beavers in woodshop. As we had no set course curriculum, we were free to create anything from wood that struck our subversive or capitalist fancies. Some boys created chako sticks to beat the crap of either other in their best Bruce Lee mode. Some boys created one-hit hash pipes or bongs from the trunk of a small tree. Me, I was running a black market artificial limb business from lathe #4. 

My Chicago neighborhood had a tragically high percentage of limbless Korean War veterans who were fed up with the endless paperwork and poor quality replacement limbs from the V.A. A large group of these vets attended our church and hung out at a local drunk bar posing as a VFW hall. I first encountered this high congregation of wounded local vets when trying to earn some money by shining shoes in every drunk bar in the area.
One of the limbless vets responded to my shoeshine sales pitch by saying “Forget my shoes, kid. Got any lemon Pledge for this termite-infested government issue cardboard leg of mine?”

I remembered that moment as I stood unsupervised in Mr. Woodson’s woodshop – lightning struck, a cash register rang, and a new business was born!

I sold my artificial limb creations at a reasonable price, used only the finest oak and teak, and best of all for the vets: no paperwork and no questions asked.

It was a good business for a high school kid. I carried my finished products home in a battered clarinet case, and no one was the wiser. Sure a few kids on the bus treated me like a band geek, but that’s the price of visionary entrepreneurship.

But the heady days of my black market limb business were not to last. One bleak February morning, I arrived at woodshop to find that Mr. Woodson had burned down the entire shop while he slept and smoked. It was rumored that when the fire department arrived, Mr. Woodson was still locked in the tool cage. He immediately began taunting the firefighters with cries of “Let it all burn, you axe-wielding pantywaists. Towards thee I roll, thou all destroying but unconquering whale. To the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee”. 

That last part probably went right over the heads of the firefighters. Great guys in a crisis, but not so much for the classics.

We never learned what happened to Mr. Woodson. He was simply gone and never mentioned again. I didn’t really care. All I knew was that a half-dozen pre-paid limb orders were lost in those woodshop perdition flames. I ended up losing my ass paying back those vets. I took a job at McDonalds where I forced to wear a paper hat and was routinely told that I wasn’t “golden arches material”. Still, that job was my entry into the black market secret sauce trade. But, that’s another story.

So – what does this tale of Mr. Woodson’s woodshop have to do with the case of the shovel-ready mayor and Bridgeport’s demolition of the historic carousel and bumper car rink at Pleasure Beach? Nothing. Nothing at all. The Pleasure Beach demolition is unrelated and unaccountable to anything other than the unfathomable workings of Bridgeport politics.

EXCEPT- for that fresh pile of wood lying on the very spot where the Pleasure Beach carousel and bumper car rink so recently stood in defiance of the elements and years of neglect.

We’ve already seen that the future of that pile of wood is apparently Bill Finch’s primary concern in this matter. What to do? Hmmm, let’s think outside the box, shall we?

Here’s a solution, Mr. Mayor. Donate and deliver the wooden remains of Pleasure Beach to a local high school woodshop for the benefit of a new generation of teen entrepreneurs. You can even use the fire department to deliver the wood. Firemen love to deliver “Toys for Tots” to local tykes each Christmas. Why not branch out to local lumber-deprived shop students with a “Timber for Teens” campaign?

Think of it as an investment in the community, and in your own political future, Mr. Mayor. One local woodshop student entrepreneur may be the only one left to provide you with a limb to stand on when the voters cut you off at the knees in the next election. 

Bill Finch has a shovel-ready mayoralty. Let’s use that shovel and bury it.

And I alone am left to tell thee…
Blogus Ridiculum
PT

Tags: Bill Finch, Delman Mangrove, Moby Dick, Pleasure Beach

“There’s only one thing they’re not making any more of – land. And one thing that we’ll never run out of – death. Combine the two and you’ve got the whole thing covered.”

From his 1964 TV Today review of “Death Valley Days” as collected in “The Layman’s guide To Perspicacity”  by Delman Mangrove

I recently heard on NPR that the crypt located directly above the space occupied by the late Marilyn Monroe is currently up for auction on eBay. Current high bid: $4.5 million dollars. The current 20 year crypt occupant is being moved out by his widow to make the mortgage payment on their Beverly Hills mansion. Times are tough for the living and the dead alike. The perfect economic conditions to pick up tremendous real estate bargains at a fraction of their previous valuation!

Marilyn Monroe’s eternal resting place in the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park is the home to numerous Hollywood legends such as Natalie Wood, Mel Torme, Merv Griffin, and Kevin Costner (oh, wait – sorry, just his career is dead. Waterworld should have been named “Eternal Dirt Nap for Costner’s career”).

In light of the huge interest in securing neighbor rights to Marilyn, I’m stepping out of character today to solicit you, dear and well-heeled reader, to join together with me in a daring and GUARANTEED financially successful investment opportunity.

The great Mangrove was right again – land + death = financial security!

My new company, Sleeping with The Stars, LLC, will serve as a land management company empowered to buy the “proximity locations” of celebrity crypts and cemetery lots, and make them available to star-struck citizens on a rental and time-share basis.
Here’s our business plan in a nutshell: Sell a celebrity “proximity” crypt once, make $4.5 million. Rent a celebrity “proximity” crypt repeatedly and make 100X $4.5 million. Do the math!

An important element of our business plan is an acute awareness that the outright sale of permanent residence of a celebrity proximity crypt usually involves dealing with dead people. Let’s be frank: No one likes dead people. We don’t like the way they look. We can’t stand the way they smell. And dead people are notoriously hard and unbending negotiators. Super salesman Dale Carnegie called it “The Rigor Mortis Factor”.(Of course none of this pertains to zombies. Zombies are cool. And zombies are easily manipulated in a business deal. Just note had badly Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch gets taken in the revised Steel Pointe deal.)
So, dear potential investor, by creating an administrative mechanism of celebrity proximity time share and short-term rental options for the living, Sleeping with the Stars, LLC eliminates the following profitability obstacles.

 1) Elimination of the dead from the deal.

 2) Time share and rental revenues spread our reported income across the fiscal year, allowing for more creative opportunities to “accidentally” under-report cash surplus on a regular basis – due to “accounting errors”.

3)Time shares and nightly rentals allow our star struck clients to spend a limited amount of time around their favorite celebrity without learning the hard way that all celebrities quickly become demanding, self-centered, psychologically unbalanced, and deadly dull.

Which brings us back to Marilyn Monroe. The currently available crypt right over the silver screens greatest sex symbol Marilyn Monroe? In the words of former CIA director George Tenant, this is a “slam dunk”.

The Marilyn proximity crypt is the golden goose of venture capital, my friends. What red-blooded American male doesn’t want to spend a night on top of Marilyn Monroe? But only one night! You don’t want more than one night on top of Marilyn. Just ask Jack Kennedy.

So, after we pool our combined financial resources and win the eBay bid on Marilyn’s proximity crypt, we’ll use our pre-paid rental income to secure the rights to other valuable celebrity proximities. And, as a company unafraid of the future of land and death, Sleeping With The Stars, LLC will actively pursue the perpetuity crypt proximity rights of still living celebrities.

Time is running out to get in on the ground floor of this eternally profitable business opportunity.

Send your investment payment today to mrbarnum@sleepingwiththestarsllc.ru. PayPal only please!

Financial Disclaimer: This is not a necrophillia-contingent offer. Past performance of living celebrities is no guarantee of future performance of dead celebrities.

Let’s be honest. All your hard earned investing ended up in Bernie Madoff’s 9’x 12’ cell for the next 150 years. It might as well end up in a 9’x 12’ crypt on top of Marilyn Monroe – if only for one memorial night. 

“Marilyn was lying all alone.
With an empty bottle by the phone.
Kennedy was not around.
She was cold when she was found.
But she’d gone where goddesses are sleeping.
Where the molten tongues of flame are leaping.
Or where the angel’s hearts are heating.”

“Get Started, Start A Fire” by Graham Parker 

Blogus Ridiculum
PT

Tags: Delman Mangrove, Hollywood, Marylin Monroe

As many of you may know, Mr. Barnum has been away from Bridgeport through most of this underwear-soaked, mosquito-infested summer. I’ve been doing secret work for the government. But, now the economic salvation stimulus campaign “Cash For Clunkers” has ended after successfully putting millions of underemployed Americans behind the wheel of a new Japanese car they can’t possibly afford.
Only now can I reveal my important, highly covert role in the Obama administration’s plan to rid the streets of Studebakers and the highways of Hummers. I was possibly the most successful uncover operative since Chuck Barris worked for the CIA.
Many more details of my adventures to are to come, but let me quickly reveal that my key role in the covert “Gone in 60 Seconds” segment of the Clunkers program repo unit was critical in removing hundreds of rusted Chevys and Fords on cinder blocks from the front yards of rural Arkansas, West Virginia, and from the front lawn of Bridgeport mayor Bill Finch. (The only “green” thing in the garage of the “green mayor” was his rusted Earl Schieb repaint 1970 Buick Skylark Belair complete with 8 track player.)
Throughout my months on assignment with Cash For Clunkers, I was often reminded of my previous covert government work for the Reagan administration.
Soon to come to this blog – excerpts from my upcoming memoir My Life In The Black Market Government Cheese Trade: A Coming of Age Tale of Politics, Intrigue, Glamour and Gorgonzola in the 1980s.
It’s kind of like Catcher in The Rye with lots of references to cheddar. (Interesting sidenote: J.D Salinger and I are both lactose-intolerant.)
I know – you’re excited. I’m excited. We’re all excited. The folks at the Cheese Oddities Museum in Waukesha, Wisconsin? Not so much excited as nervous. As well they should be.

Until then, here’s a sneak peek of this upcoming major literary work. This tale involves a neighbor circus sideshow geek wanna-be from my Catholic schoolboy days in Chicago.

Enjoy a peek at this tale I like to call “Whatever Happened To Chicken Boy Todd?” (Alternate title: “Cash For Cluckers”.)

Whatever Happened To Chicken Boy Todd? 
There was only one strange boy in our neighborhood. 
For 4^th grade show and tell, he brought in his vast collection of sideshow geek memorabilia and a live chicken.
He passed out handwritten “Todd The Odd” business cards to the whole class. I still have that card. I keep it in the same cigar box where I keep the unopened pack of Juicy Fruit gum my drunken father gave to me as some sort of bribe when he followed us to Chicago for a handout from the wife he abandoned for a fellow named Jack Daniels.
He wore ski pajamas covered with cotton candy feathers stuck on with Elmer’s Glue. Todd, not my father.
When Todd brought the live chicken’s head to his lips, girls pressed hands over their mouths and Sister Rose Helene fell to the checkerboard linoleum like a taxidermy penguin. But Todd didn’t bite off the chicken’s head. He simply kissed it on the pecker and took a flamboyant bow to his stunned and horrified fourth grade audience.
That’s how he earned his nickname – Chicken Boy Todd. He was also referred in some circles as “pecker kisser”, but that’s another story. The boys in our class had many dreams of their future life. Some kids wanted to be fireman, some policemen, and some criminals. Some wanted to be just like Dad, some wanted to be anything other than their Dad.
As you might guess, Chicken Boy Todd dreamed of becoming a sideshow geek. Only one problem… Todd loved animals too much to eat them, let alone bite off their heads. Especially chickens. He proclaimed himself to be one with the chicken. He idolized Foghorn Leghorn, kept a large coop in his backyard, and named his chickens after members of the 1969 Chicago Cubs.

 (Insert passage of time here)

In the 1980s, I heard of a performer who had a brief career in a traveling pseudo-nouveau sideshow performance art troupe. This performer billed himself as “The Vegan Geek”, biting the heads off oddly shaped gourds, turnips, and iceberg lettuces.
Back then, I thought ketchup was a vegetable, so I didn’t attend the show… but I wondered.
Back then, I was peripherally employed as a shadow operative in the Reagan administration, with a special focus on government cheese, and had no interest in things smacking of sideshow subversion.
Back then, I still believed that dreams were things that are often just within your reach. Now, I know that they are always just beyond your reach… often as close as a pack of unopened gum.
Chicken Boy Todd was forever torn between his dream of geekdom and his love of live poultry. He is my constant reminder that it’s our dreams that make us live, and our love that makes our dreams so painful when they slip away. You might wish that all dreams stick to the bottom of your shoe – wherever you go, but some don’t. Some merely go untasted in a cheap cigar box.
There’s not enough room within this tiny tale to tell you about my dream. Funny how everyone else’s dream is so much smaller than your own. 

Anyway, this is Todd’s story, not mine.

I wonder whatever happened to Chicken Boy Todd.
I wonder whatever happened to me. 

End of Story

As always, the thought of poultry brings me back to the words of the great Delman Mangrove from his essential work, “The Layman’s Guide To Perspicacity”.

“Chickens are brave, do-dos are smart. Death is a free ride. Life it is not. Special this week on General Tao’s Chicken. Dine in only. No substitutions”.
Saying # 673 from “My Life in The Black Market Fortune Cookie Writing Trade”

Blogus Ridiculum
PT

Tags: Bill Finch, Cash for Clunkers, Chicken Boy Todd

Surprisingly, being Mr. Barnum doesn’t pay enough to keep me in the lavish lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed. The corporate world, however, has seen fit to allow me to haunt her hallowed halls and wander around her watercoolers.
Today, I again dodged the corporate bullet. 10% of the total company workforce gone at 9:30AM.

They keep shooting, I keep ducking.

In that vein, I’d like to offer all of you a few grains of my corporate survival wisdom. I’d tell you in words, but sometimes pictures say so much more… here’s the link to today’s survival lesson:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW4s7TETtJA

Keep your head down and cover your ass. It’s war out there.

Blogus Ridiculum
PT

Tags: atomic bomb, unemployment