Deliriously Happy

by Larry Doyle

  Doctor My Thighs: Old Doc Thatcher’s practice sure has picked up since he got certified by the Board of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. Recent visitors, according to the doc’s poorly guarded records: Amy Roberts, who, after giving birth to four of P. Greg’s melonheaded offspring, decided it was time to put a little creative tension back into the marriage; middle-aged Paris Hilton, who, while in town to sleep with someone in the 60950 zip code, had the bags under her eyes removed and put into quick turnaround as nuboobs; and Emilio Estevez, who hopes that with a few minor alterations he’ll be able to find work as a Charlie Sheen impersonator.

  Self-Wagellation: Just last month, Wag predicted that a certain music teacher’s frequent duets (and, in one case, a quartet) with members of the pop/rock/metal/reggae/rap/emo/new age/folk contingent would prompt the federal Centers for Disease Control to open a branch office here. Well, the recent Ke$ha tour clinched it. “This is a situation that bears watching,” says Dr. Sanford Mickle, the epidemiologist assigned to head up the new office, “particularly with school starting up soon.” The CDC outlet will mean five new jobs for the area…

  Wagola: Due to the recent transfer of all new Chevy Volt production to Manhattan’s “sister plant” in Puerto Negro, Mexico, UAW Local 289 will be holding its annual Labor Day parade at Jessy’s Budweiser Sign and Dance.

  Waggings: Ben Finestein, Manhattan’s own Jew, denies rumors that his deli, or Jewish-style restaurant, serves moth balls. He says they’re called matzoh balls (pronounced “Mott’s-O,” like the applesauce) and are harmless boiled balls of dough. Jews consider them a delicacy, Ben says… Those rumors about Nancy Grace moving to Manhattan are totally unfounded. The Wag hears they were started by an unscrupulous real estate agent hoping to incite panic sales… And that wasn’t Erma Bombeck spotted signing books at Kym’s Kards and Gyfts, Etc. last Saturday. She’s dead. It was Michael Moore. Kym apologizes for any misunderstanding…

  The Last Wag: What pop-ular adult website (and Exhibit T&A in a current court case) features hot young up’n’cummer Roni Lynn Lords, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Manhattan’s own 2009 Dog Queen, Pegi Peterson—or, as she is known around the Peterson Playhouse, Princess Sweetpea?

  The Rest of the Story

  JAILED ACTIVIST ‘VISITS’ PETS

  Fran Stephanie Trutt, convicted of trying to bomb the president of a Connecticut surgical equipment company, said yesterday that she has visited her dogs four times since April as part of the previously undisclosed terms of her plea-bargain.

  “I’ve seen my little ones, and that’s the only reason why I took the plea-bargain,” Trutt said during a telephone interview from the Niantic State Prison for women.

  —As far as you probably got

  Trutt is just one of millions of American felons participating in experimental criminal justice programs across the country designed to explore innovative ways of combating alarming increases in criminal activity, which in some cities, such as Detroit, now exceeds the amount of noncriminal activity.

  “Despite the fact that state and federal law-enforcement agencies have been very good at getting out the message that certain behaviors are illegal and that people who engage in those behaviors will be punished if caught and convicted, we’re still seeing a lot of illegal behavior out there,” said Peter Pratt, professor of penology at Michigan State University and editor of the American Journal of Criminal Justice Theory and Practice.

  “Clearly,” Pratt said, “something more needs to be done.”

  Something more is being done. According to Crime and Corrections, a national newsletter advocating noncruel but unusual punishments, novel ways of dealing with lawbreakers are multiplying nearly as fast as the prison populations themselves. Kevin Dradd, editor of Crime and Corrections, estimates that the average convicted felon today “would have to get twenty-five years to life just to be able to take advantage of all the programs available to him.

  “But this is good,” hastened to add Dradd, who has no official affiliation with any academic or law-enforcement agency but describes himself simply as a “penal buff.”

  “What’s really cruel is punishment as usual,” Dradd quipped. “They say you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Well, the same goes for inmates, except, of course, they’re already caught. Perhaps a better way of saying this is that an unhappy, bored criminal is a recidivist criminal.”

  Variety, and not boredom, is indeed the spice of prison life today. At the Joliet State Penitentiary Petting Zoo just southwest of Chicago, inmates convicted of violent crimes are encouraged to touch and form emotional bonds with dogs, cats, and other small mammals provided by the local anti-cruelty society. On a recent afternoon in the Petting Yard, one burly resident, weighing three hundred pounds and covered with sexually explicit tattoos, spent nearly forty-five minutes gently stroking a large brown-and-taupe Angora rabbit that seemed to almost disappear into the hollow of his cupped hand.

  “He’s soft,” said Jacob Jason Blazz, serving seven consecutive life terms for chopping up a downstate family of four into cubes approximately two inches long on each side, and then attempting to conceal the crime by reassembling the pieces into an entirely different family of five.

  “The zoo is very popular with our long-term residents,” said Pam Glipp, a spokesperson for the correctional center. “We believe it is helping them to develop an appreciation for the sanctity of life. The hope, of course, is that this will extrapolate out to non-pet animals—humans in particular.”

  In many cases, it is not inspiration but necessity that has become the mother of inventive penal reform. In Broward County, Florida, which recently saw a 160 percent increase in the number of activities defined as illegal, prison officials have been forced to adopt a “Weekends Off” policy for long-term inmates in order to accommodate the massive influx of white-collar criminals and artists serving weekend sentences.

  One state official, whose name was not known at press time, called the program an unprintable expletive.

  However, another source close to the program, in an anonymous telephone interview, said of the new “Weekends Off” policy, “We’re receiving a lot of complaints from our regulars that they come back Sunday night only to find their cells a mess and valuables missing.”

  Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of pioneering correctional tactics has been welcomed as at least worth a try. Many actually have been worth that try.

  For example, Massachusetts has abandoned its traditional weekend furlough program in favor of a buddy system; early indications are that crime by prison buddies on furlough will be 25 percent less than both individuals would have been expected to commit separately. Intrabuddy violence is a problem but not a concern, officials there say.

  And in Baltimore, the district attorney’s office stopped prosecuting cases altogether when it was determined that accused lawbreakers were seven times more likely to commit repeat offenses while out on bail than if they were simply set free.

  “When they’re bailed out, they feel like they’re on somebody else’s time” was one explanation offered off the record.

  The new policy seems to be working; for the first time in many years, crime in the city is rising only arithmetically.

  Perhaps no program has been more successful at reducing crime than the highly successful crime-reducing program launched in Madison, Wisconsin, one of the few remaining bastions of progressive thought in the Midwest, and home of the University of Wisconsin Badgers. The Madison Program, as it is called, is based on the principle that “you should punish the crime and not the criminal,” according to Susan Grunn, a local resident.

  “Our philosophy is that rules are made to be broken,” Grunn said the other day.

  Since Madison rescinded its entire penal code in April, effectively making nothing illegal, the city’s official crime rate has dropped to zero.

  “Obviously,” Grunn added.

  Freelance File

  News item: Stock market in toi
let; foreclosures at all-time high; “worse than Great Depression.”

  CANNED FOODIES Top chef recipes for gourmet meals using Campbell’s Soup, Spaghetti-O’s, etc.

  BABY,IT’S HOT INSIDE! Free heat alternatives. Household objects, furniture rated for combustibility, toxicity.

  THE OTHER MEATS

  Should move on these before things improve.

  Celebrity Profile Subjects

  Miranda Cosgrove (LITTLE BIG GIRL)

  Scarlett Johansson (BIG LITTLE GIRL)

  Zooey and Emily Deschanel (THE NEW BARRYMORES)

  Thomas Pynchon (HANGIN’ WITH TOM)

  News item: Baby boomers getting older.

  MACULAR D-D-D-D-GENERATION As Boomers age, many are faced with difficult choice: laser surgery or glasses? Pros/Cons, personal stories of triumph/tragedy.

  NO REMOTES: STORIES TO TELL TODAY’S GRANDCHILDREN

  Service Pieces

  9 SEX TRICKS THAT WILL MAKE HIM THINK YOU’VE BECOME A HOOKER Interview hookers, or just make them up? Test on wife first.

  WHERE TO FIND BEST PORN ON THE WEB Pseudonym?

  News item: People hate Muslims

  SHIITE LIKE ME Undercover investigative piece. Apply for jobs in turban, etc., at downtown electronics stores. Maybe follow Islam for whole year and make it a book? Strategize on how to get beaten but not killed.

  Travel Pieces

  TOP SPAS OF OLD EUROPE

  CASTLE KEPT: KING FOR A MONTH

  BEST SEX VACATIONS OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

  Get passport.

  News item: Celebutantes Getting in Trouble

  Need new angle. Paradigm shift. Celebutantes as Christians and Paparazzi as Lions?

  Possible “Lives” Columns

  MILLION LITTLE PIXELS Reveal Internet porn addiction. Title too clever? Alt: I NEED PORN This may be a book. THE MONSTER IN MY IPAD? Tell wife now, or wait?

  THROUGH GLASSES DARKLY On getting reading glasses for first time. Intimations of mortality, etc. Maybe end on reading bedtime story to son or daughter. Circle unbroken. Tearing up already. Ask wife what books they like.

  MY DAD Dredge something up.

  News item: Dog dials 911

  GOOD DOG! Listicle. Not all dogs dialing phones. Dogs barking at danger, raising babies, etc. Include police, assistance dogs, and this could be book. Literary nonfiction or coffee table? Why not both?

  Or go counterintuitive: THE BEAST IN THE HOUSE, dogs who killed/maimed/ate owners, in funny way.

  Or humorous twist: CAT HEROES. Made-up, obviously. Could be “Shouts and Murmurs,” or short, funny book.

  Something About Robots

  Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One1

  Larry Doyle is a professional dinner speaker. The following piece is adapted from opening remarks to a speech he recently gave before the Optimists Club of Manhattan.

  New York City is totally insane.2 Just the other day, I was having a drink at Mulligan’s Brew3 over on Forty-Third Street, when who, or should I say what, should walk into the bar but this pink-and-purple kangaroo.4

  I’m thinking, Whooooa, bartender, another round, and this time make it a double.5

  So this ’roo sidles up to the bar, puts a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, and says, “Barkeep, give me a Screaming Orgasm.”6,7

  Hiiiiiii-Yo!8 The bartender is a bit taken aback by this, but he’s seen a lot of strange things, so he makes the Screaming Orgasm and plops it down on the bar.

  “How much do I owe you?”9 asks the kangaroo.

  Well, the bartender looks at the double sawbuck10 on the counter and figures, This is a kangaroo, what does he know about drink prices? So he says, “Twenty bucks.”

  The kangaroo doesn’t say anything. He just slams down the drink and hops off his stool to leave.

  At this point the bartender’s curiosity gets the best of him.11 He says to the kangaroo, “You know, we’ve never had a talking pink-and-purple kangaroo in here before.”

  “Well,” the kangaroo says, “at twenty bucks for one lousy Screaming Orgasm, I’m not a bit surprised.”12

  Notes on My Next Bestseller

  ANGELS MAY REPLACE VAMPIRES AS NEW TREND IN TEEN LIT

  —Huffington Post

  Weirdest dream. Must get this down.

  Angel floating over my bed. Very buff, but also vulnerable somehow. Long flowing locks, but his face and body hairless. Smells like chocolate.

  Angel says unto me: “I am love but cannot love.”

  I say back: “What?”

  Angel says: “I have so much love to give some lost young woman, but alas, I cannot indulge in the carnal.”

  I say: “Okay.”

  He says: “You can use that.”

  Rereading this in the morning. What was he trying to tell me?

  Epiphany: Hot sexy angel wants to make sweet celestial love to you but cannot. This is big!

  Reading Bible for insp. No angels so far. In two thousand years, they couldn’t compile an index?

  Possible titles: Angels and Dames. Fallen Love. Keep thinking on this.

  Finally: Genesis 19:1: “And there came two angels to Sodom at even.”

  Man, God is mean.

  Why can’t Angels have sex with teenage girls? Need strong, dramatic, yet plausible reason. Sex makes them mortal? It turns the girls into demons, or swans? No genitalia?

  Because God said so!

  Hot sexy angel who wants to make sweet celestial love to you but it is forbidden. Yes!

  Exodus 3:2: “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.” That is sexy. Been used?

  “Heavensent.” “Angelophilia.”

  2 Kings 19:35: “And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.” Digging a dry hole here. Need better source material.

  “A Coming of Angels.” But will people get it? Might keep me out of libraries, and Texas. “A Kissing of Angels.”

  Went to B&N and asked if they had any books on angels. A whole floor! I’m on to something here.

  Seraphim? Cherubim? Ophanim? Malakhim? How am I supposed to keep all those straight?

  Clerk says if I tear pages out of a book, I have to buy it. She suggested I try Google.

  Jesus Christ!

  Ninety-two million hits! If only half buy my book @ $25, I’m a billionaire!

  Shouldn’t get bogged down in research. That’s not what puts it on the iPad. Use my imagination! If God can create the heavens and the earth in six days—fun fact—I can create a hot and sexy teen angel romance before the electricity goes out.

  Opening image: A glorious well-oiled angel riding on a winged unicorn. Sure, it’s sexy. But too sexy?

  Divine inspiration: Mangel.

  “Raging Mangel.” “My Mangel.” “Heaven Sent Me a Mangel.” “The Mangel Chronicles.” I smell franchise!

  Damn. “Mangel” already trademarked for another purpose.

  The work’s the thing. Build it and the title will come.

  Need a villain. Satan too obvious. Werewolves would be interesting, but maybe not formidable enough. The Catholic Church? Could work.

  Big Business! Evil developer wants to build over an ancient Christian burial site. Forest Lawn! Sexy angels sitting on the Hollywood Sign! All coming together.

  Hmm. Sounds vaguely familiar.

  Of course. Change Forest Lawn to the Greenwich Village crypt of Dracula’s sexy undead son, Liam, and the Hollywood Sign to the Washington Square Arch, and it’s my woefully misunderstood young adult bodice-and-neck ripper, Hot Wings.

  Hallelujah!

  The Hot Book

  “This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today,” Mr. Wayne told spectators as he lighted the first batch from the warehouse where he has gathered thousands of books in the 10 years he has run the store, Prospero’s Books. When Mr. Wayne sought to thin out the c
ollection, he said, he found that he could not even give the books away to libraries and bookshops, which said they were full. So, he said, he began burning the books to protest society’s diminishing support for the printed word.

  —New York Times

  Where am I? The Vegas Book Show? San Diego Litcon? Have I made it to the end, to Powell’s, at long last?

  “You’re in Cleveland,” Alison says. “Barnes & Noble Arena.”

  Cleveland? How can I be in Cleveland? Wasn’t I just in St. Louis?

  “We had to move a couple things around to get out of Collin’s way.” The Mockingjay tour, in its sixieth week. Two dozen singing, dancing, battling teens. Why can’t she just read the damn book, like the rest of us?

  “Drink me,” I say, only half alluding. Alison pours us two Absolut Writinis (8 oz. Absolut in a coffee mug with an Altoid chaser), courtesy of our tour sponsor. I fish my right hand out of the bucket and reach for my medicine. “Back in the bucket,” Alison says, all marm, pressing the mug into my left. I return my right to the ice water, where it now lives. It’s not even my hand anymore; it’s ballooned into a monstrous cartoon of a hand, Homer Simpson’s mitt. It lies quietly on the bottom like a strange aquatic animal. (Not bad. I’ll have to use that.)

  The chanting. Rhythmic, primal, it begins:

  REE-ding… REE-ding… REE-ding!

  “Al,” I say, finishing my drink. “I don’t think I can do this tonight.”

  She sighs. Alison’s a seasoned tour pro and has heard this before, from me, from DeLillo, from all the chicks with lits. “You’ve got twenty thousand people out there, some paid scalpers three hundred bucks to come hear you read,” she preaches from the playbook. “Not to mention what they spent on T-shirts, and readings CDs, and giant foam bookmarks…”