The other two instruments in the band are actually Tupperware products, played rhythmically by Tom and Lou, who also dance. How good are they? Let me put it this way: If you can watch them perform and not wet your pants then you are legally blind. For one thing, they are both afflicted with severe rhythm impairment, the worst cases I have ever seen, worse even than Republican convention delegates. You ask Lou and Tom to clap along to a song and not only will they never once hit the beat, but they will also never, no matter how eternally long the song goes on, both clap at the same time. On top of which you have the fact that they do not have your classic dancer’s build, especially Lou, who is, and I say this with all due respect the same overall shape as a Krispy Kreme jelly doughnut.

When we got to the Tupperware convention center we became a tad nervous, because (a),it turns out that Tupperware is a large business venture that many people take very seriously and (b) we had never even practiced as a total band. The bulk of our musical preparation to that point had consisted of deciding that our band outfits should include sun glasses.

Fortunately, the Tupperware distributors turned out to be extremely peppy people, prone to applauding wildly at the slightest provocation. They especially loved Lou and Tom lunging around waving their Tupperware products in what they presumably thought was unison, looking like the Temptations might look if they were suddenly struck onstage with severe disorders of the central nervous system.

After we got off the stage, Lou announced that it was the most exciting thing he had ever done. Gene kept saying: “A professional musician. I’m a professional musician.” A Tupperware person came up and asked if we’d be willing to perform again, and of course we said yes, although I am becoming concerned. Tom has announced, several times, that he thinks next time the dancers should get a singing part. I can see already that unless we hold our egos in check, keeping this thing in perspective, we could start having the kind of internal conflicts that broke up the Beatles, another very good band.

Bite The Wax Tadpole!

Now we’re going to look at some important new developments in the U.S. advertising industry, which continues to be a hotbed of innovation as well as a source of pride to all Americans regardless of intelligence. This country may no longer be capable of manufacturing anything more technologically sophisticated than breakfast cereal, but by God when it comes to advertising, we are still—and I mean this sincerely—Number One.

Our first bit of advertising news will come as a happy surprise to those of you who lie awake nights asking yourselves: “Whatever happened to Mikey, the lovable chubby-cheeked child who hated everything until he tasted Life brand breakfast cereal in the heartwarming television commercial that we all saw 63,000 times back in the seventies?”

The good news is: Mikey is coming back, as part of a major advertising campaign! The Quaker Oats Co. sent me two large press kits on this, both quoting a Quaker Oats executive as saying: “We’ve received thousands of letters over the years asking what’s become of him. ... We thought it would be fun to satisfy America’s curiosity by conducting a nationwide search to reveal his present-day identity.”

Ha ha! Fun is hardly the word! I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be waiting on tenterhooks until the big moment comes when the Quaker Oats Co., in a national press conference, finally reveals what “tenterhooks” are. No, seriously, they’re going to reveal who Mikey is, so that the thousands of people who wrote to them about this important matter can go back to learning how to eat with real utensils.

Speaking of adorable and talented young actors whose moving commercial performances have tugged at the heartstrings of our minds, I wonder whatever happened to that little boy who used to do the Oscar Mayer commercials. Remember? The one who claimed his baloney had a first name, and it was O-S-C-A-R? I wonder if that child didn’t run into problems later in life. (“OK, pal. You and Oscar there are under arrest.”).

Another commercial personality I was wondering about is the man who used to promote Ti-D-bol brand automatic commode freshener by rowing his boat around inside the tank of a giant toilet. I mean, it must have been difficult for him, going back to normal life after having reached a show business pinnacle like that. So I called the Knomark company, which makes Ti-D-bol, and I found out an amazing fact: The role of the original Ti-D-bol man was played by none other than “Miami Vice” ‘s Don Johnson! Isn’t that an incredible celebrity gossip tidbit? I hope to see it reprinted in leading supermarket tabloids everywhere, although in the interest of fairness and objectivity I should point out that I just now made it up.

The actual truth, according to Bill Salmon, Knomark’s marketing director, is that there were a number of Ti-D-bol men. “The Ti-D-bol man,” he said, “was anybody who put on the blazer and the white hat and got in the boat.” The current Ti-D-bol man, he said, is a cartoon character who remains on dry land. “Right now he is not in a toilet tank in a rowboat, but that does not mean we would not use the Ti-D-bol man in the tank again at a future time,” Salmon stressed.

By the way, I was disappointed to learn from Salmon that the rowboat commercials were done with trick photography, meaning there never was a 50-foot-high toilet. I think they should build one, as a promotional concept. Wouldn’t that be great? They could split the cost with the jolly Green Giant. I bet he sure could use it. I bet he’s making a mess out of his valley. Ho ho ho!

I found our next news item in the Weekly World News, a leading supermarket tabloid, and it is just so wonderful that I will reprint it verbatim:

“The Coca-Cola Company has changed the name of its soft drink in China after discovering the words mean ‘bite the wax tadpole’ in Chinese.”

I called Coca-Cola, and a woman named Darlene confirmed this item. She also said the company decided to go with a different name over in China, which I think is crazy. “Bite the Wax Tadpole” is the best name I ever heard for a soft drink. Think of the commercials:

(The scene opens uP with a boy in a Little League uniform, looking very sad. His father walks up.)

FATHER: What’s the matter, Son? SON: (bursting into tears): Oh Dad, I struck out and lost the big game.

(Sobs.) FATHER (putting his arm around the boy’s shoulders): Hey! Forget it! Let’s have a nice cold can of Bite the Wax Tadpole! SON: And then I murdered a policeman.

The Rules

Recently I read this news item stating that the U.S. Senate Finance Committee had printed up 4,500 copies of a 452-page document with every single word crossed out. The Senate Finance Committee did this on purpose. It wasn’t the kind of situation where they got the document back from the printer and said: “Hey, Every single word in this document is crossed out! We’re going to fire the zitbrain responsible for this!” No. A 452-page document with all the words crossed out was exactly what the Senate Finance Committee wanted.

This news item intrigued me. I said to myself: There has to be a logical explanation for this. So I called Washington, D.C., and over the course of an afternoon I spoke to, I don’t know, maybe 15 or 20 people, and sure enough it turned out there was an extremely logical explanation: The Senate Finance Committee was following the Rules. As well it should. You have to have rules. This is true in government just as much as in sports. Think what professional baseball would be like if the pitcher could just throw the ball right at the batter whenever he felt like it, or the batter could turn around after a called third strike and try to whomp a major cavity in the umpire’s skull. It would be great. I’d buy season tickets. But you can’t have that kind of behavior in your government. This is why, back when we bombed Libya, the Reagan administration made such a large point of the fact that we were not trying to kill Moammar Khadafy. I think most of us average citizens had assumed, since the administration had been going around announcing that it had absolute proof that Khadafy was an international baby-murdering scumball, that the whole point of the raid was to kill him, and although we didn’t want to see innocent persons hurt, we certainly wouldn’t have minded if say a half dozen fatal bombs had detonated inside Moammar’s personal tent.