Fairy Tales & Other Murders, Mike Marino [namjoon book recommendations txt] 📗

Nervous breakdown? He sleeps with the fishes? Chapter 16 - Vikings, Cajuns and Accordions

When the first chords of Dvorak’s “From the New World” symphony begins its ethereal journey to the moon of your soul (Neil Armstrong took a recorded copy along with him on Apollo 11 in 1969) or when you get carried away and dive for the first Napoleonic foxhole during the explosive crashing cannonade of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” your senses are carried aloft to a surrealistic cloud of orchestration as you tiptoe through the timpani tulips.

Enter now the twilight zone of musical instruments and fear as you come face to face with those damned accordions as music begins its trek from orchestration to musical castration.

 

It is the black sheep of the famiglia musica, classified as a “free reed” instrument of pop culture mass destruction developed in China, called a “sheng” still in use today in secret Bruce Lee films never before seen by human eyes even in Hunan.

 

As it made its way to post Roman and post Celtic Europe it was modified and replaced, through selective inbreeding on a smaller scale, it’s equally reprehensible brother...the phallic looking pipe organ. If the pipe organ resembled a musical erection, then the accordion and concertina, both sometimes referred to as a “squeeze box” with its pump and pull bellows action was pure masturbation with polka beat.

 

I have a theory regarding the disappearance of the Viking culture of Greenland. During one of their rape, pillage and plunder “let’s get Nordic” vacations in post-Roman European Austria, one of the horned helmeted hipsters grabbed an accordian...by mistake...no one would steal one on purpose. Even a Detroit crackhead looking for a fix.

 

One night in the Viking colony on Greenlands coast as revelry ran rampant and the need for mead was at its peak...the Unknown Nord produced his instrument and began to play a medley of REO Speedwagon and Styx’s hits. It was at this point that the decision was made to unload Olaf whereby he was banished from the enclave to the surrounding mountains where he could pump his bellows in private. The music however cascaded down the mountain to the village of pillagers prompting them to abandon Greenland altogether and set a course for Canada.

 

As European immigration in the 19th and early half of the 20th Century was underway, Ellis Island became a clearinghouse for the family accordions that were the first illegal instrument aliens. They spread their musical terror from Acadia in Canada to those crafty Cajuns in Looooosiana. From German colonies on Texas the crossed the Rio Grande in Mexico. Soon the musical mating season was full tilt boogie! In Texas it became tejano music...in Cajun country it was zydeco. Both are strange, but I have to admit, delightful in sound unlike the clomping headache producing polka rolling out the barrel...give me Flaco Jimenez and Joel Sonnier and damn….ya’ll got mas musica!

 

You can still feel romance with accordion music believe it or not on a moonlight gondola ride in Venice or sipping your burgandy at a bistro on the River Seine in Paris. Give an accordion to a German and it’s time to lay siege to Stalingrad! Give it to a Polish polka band and you’re in a back alley in Milwaukee! No accordion band took to the stage at Woodstock, but imagine if Jimi Hendrix got a hold of one...or Pete Townsend...or Alvin Lee...all abandoning the guitar for DAS BELLOWS!! The Led Zeppelin Polka! We’d be doing “air accordions” instead of playing our invisible air guitars. Imagine a Jimmy Page Polka album...on second thought…

 

So if you are confronted by a girl who says she has a “sqeeze box” just smile and thank a Viking...or Weird Al Yankovic..and ask her to come over to your place for dinner, candlelight, and Viking role play and while she’s rolling out your barrel it’s time for some sqeeze box action!!!

 

Chapter 17 - Extreme Dickens Christmas

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It is also the wrong opening hook of the wrong Dickens novel to be quoting from during this or any holiday season.

“A Christmas Carol” by C. Dickens has been and always will be a classic holiday tale since it first emerged from the pen and literary placenta of the 19th Century. Ebeneezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, and three go! go! ghosts have blazed their merry ass trail into the collective Christmas cranium for generations past, generations present and generations to come. My Gen, your gen, gen’s on the holiday horizons...it just won’t go away!
Many adroit adaptations have graced live theater and blazed brightly in the silver screen. They have been linguistically performed in just about every language spoken on this blue orb of Babel. The films have been a showcase for E. Scrooge for everyone from Allister Sims, Henry Winkler to my fave George C. Scott. But...what if Dickens were alive today...and produced his own version for the TNT network...ladies and gentlemen I give you Extreme Dickens..and Robert Osbourn.

“This is Robert Osbourn for TNT classic movies.Tonight’s feature presentation is a new spin on an old classic. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. In this updated somewhat ribald version we have Al Pacino starring as Ebeneezer “Scarface” Scrooge, a feared Cuban drug dealer with a penchant for red leisure suits who directs a world wide drug operation and invites us the viewers to say hello to his little friends...the Elvis Elf Cartel. This time at Christmas when it snows it blows cocaine up the nose! His arch rival is Snow White played by Tim Curry in drag (surprise surprise!) as Kim Kardashian who runs a group known simply as the Magnificent Seven bi-sexual Dwarves. The version has made other changes in keeping with the spirit of Americana. 18th century England with a bunch of Cockney accents has immigrated and Scrooge now operates out of a broken down ranch in the small town of Tony, Montana.

Scarface Scrooge works his minions harder on Christmas Eve than a Walmart employee on Black Friday, first made popular in the film “Shaft!” as a blackploitation film. Well shut my mouth!

 

That night while sleeping in his compound, his former drug partner, Marley, no, not Jacob, but Bob Marley...Marley is dead and is a reggae ghost now and is played by former white as white can be Senator Strom Thurmond who was cast perfectly in the role as he is dead now too, and even when alive he looked dead so heads or tails, he was dead on perfect for the role..he was useless in Congress after all.

 

Scrooge who certainly lacks anything resembling the Christmas spirit is told by Marley, “Hey Mon, tonight you will be visited by three little pigs...or three bears maybe..or three ghosts...I can’t remember which.” To which Scarface Scrooge replies….”Fredo, I love you like a brother, but if you ever go against the family again…” reading his lines from the wrong script!

The ghosts by the way are the ghost of Christmas Past played by Christopher Walken, the ghost of Christmas present portrayed by Steve Buscemi and the Ghost of Christmas Future is played to perfection by Gary Busey. Together they are The Three Reservoir Dogs of Dickensonsville!
Along the journey into the fast paced pinball world of fast forward, reverse and neutral that evening, Scrooge encounters Sugar Plum Fairies brilliantly portrayed by the Ru Paul Drag Team where the colored girls do indeed take a walk on the wild side going do do do do do do...etc etc..and Pee Wee Herman grabs his rain coat as Little Joe who never once gave it away…everybody had to pay and pay.

In this Sam Peckinpah-esque cinematic romp we also encounter Santa Claus, portrayed by Mickey Rourke and also features Kim Bassinger as they reprise their 9 and a Half Weeks characterizations with cookies and milk, a favorite scene of the BDSM crowd when they run out of snuff films. Rumour has it Mickey underwent cosmetic surgery and played the role of Bassinger as well!

Bob Cratchit, played by Reefer Sutherland works as an accountant for Scarface Scrooge and cooks the company books and launders the money into legit business operations and offshore bank accounts...he also has a little cripple son...Tiny Tim played by Joe Pesci who has a game leg from an old bullet wound and a mouth like a sailor. So much for sympathy for the little tyke…”Do I amuse you? Funny How?” At this point Ray Liotta enters the scene for no apparent reason.

After Scarface has his nightly encounters he has a change of heart and his heart if filled with the Christmas Spirit. “I don’t mind the ghosts,” he mused, “but a wet dream would have been better!”
He leaps out of bed...puts on his holiday shoulder holster and greets passer by on the early morning Christmas streets. “Get the fuck out of my way you cock-a-roach!” Just then Rudolph the Commie Red reindeer appears guiding a red zeppelin with 8 tiny reindeer. An 8-track of Jimmy Page guitar solos blasting away with the holiday stairway to heaven holiday spirit.

He rushes to the Crachit household with a Christmas goose, and presents including a pair of fishnets for Mrs. Crachit. He also gives the oldest Crachit girl a box of tampons which she begins to hang on the chimney not having a clue as to what they are used for!

Laughter and good cheer prevail and as the story begins to end and hurries to fade to black...Tiny Tim Pesci looks quare into the camera and utters those immortal words..
“Fuck us all everyone!” I hope the little bastard breaks his other leg after a visit down the chimney from Jack Nicholson and the gang from The Departed!!!

 

Chapter 18 - Election Erection

The American Electoral System has