The Ever-Loving Virgin Prince

My fine-feathered finks,

Oh, I’ve put this off for far too long.

I come here not to bury Frank Gorshin, but to praise him.

Being that I am a most beloved crime-fighter and mystery-man, it is clear to me as night and day that I would be absolutely remiss in my duty if I didn’t make some sort of mention of Frank Gorshin’s passing. Nay, I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t indeed praise him.

I was made aware of the great Frank Gorshin’s passing during a recent visit to my father, though you heard nothing of it as it was during the month in which I didn’t write. I had been traveling northward to help my father after a semi-recent surgery when I came across a most disturbing headline: famed performer and television’s great Riddler was dead. I immediately yelped with dismay at the news; not my beloved Frank Gorshin! I’m still mourning the loss of Jonathan Harris, not to mention Roddy McDowall and Tony Randall. I just know Don Knotts is next. How will I ever survive the loss of the incredible Mr. Limpet?

But I must say I truly enjoyed Frank Gorshin as much as any person can enjoy a great performer. He was actor, singer, impressionist, and comedian, and with the wide range and superb quality of his work, even such regrettable films as The Meteor Man are forgivable. It was, without question, Frank Gorshin who gave so much to the role of The Riddler; Frank Gorshin who fleshed out the character enough to elevate The Riddler from a generic second banana to one of The Batman’s most beloved and enduring rogues. Even the combined malevolent and mediocre forces of Joel Schumacher and Jim Carrey couldn’t ruin The Riddler once Frank Gorshin had done his magic. Even the great John Astin, who truly brought the role of Gomez Addams to life, couldn’t do much more than present The Riddler as little more than a forgettable foe. But Frank Gorshin made The Riddler great; Frank Gorshin made him my favorite.

As a sort of tribute, click this LINK and give it a listen. It’s been out of print for years so I don’t think I’m breaking any rules by posting it here, but it’s a little number, tastefully written by Mel Torme, which really showcases just why Frank Gorshin is as cool as he is.

Rest well, Frank Gorshin. For you I wear the green and purple.

Be seeing you,
The Virgin Prince

My calculating carnivores,

As I hopped up from my Batman and California Raisin-decorated bed this morning, I pulled on my robe and hobbled over to my crutches. Stumbling on my crutches down the hallway, out to the kitchen where I had pizza for breakfast, and then down the steps to my frigid Virginlair, I was surprised to find my loyal ape sidekick, Bobo the Virgin Chimp, tapping away at the Virgincomputer. I reached for a rolled up newspaper with which to smack the monkey, as when he’s not playing solitaire, he’s generally reading rightwing scandal-rags, but quickly lowered my good smacking-arm. Dear Bobo was reading the news! It was then that I was truly disturbed by what I saw.

Surely by now you’ve heard of the Russian astrologer that is suing NASA over a probe they sent up to the heavens. Though the mission has not affected this particular Siberian charlatan in any way, shape, or form, she is, nevertheless, suing NASA for $300,000. You see, the space probe was sent up to blow a small chunk out of a comet, so that scientists might study the insides of it and get more of an idea into the origins of the universe. Though the comet is fine, and still soaring through the vacuous airways of the stars, and its course of flight has been changed to a very negligible degree, if at all, the lady is claiming that NASA now owes her $300,000 for “ruining the natural balance of the forces of the universe.”

OH FECK OFF!!!

I wonder if this powerhouse of Russian thought ever once gave consideration to the fact that every time we blast something into space, the tremendous forces unleashed by your standard rocket-take-off makes the Earth wobble a little bit in its orbit. I wonder if she’s ever given any thought to the importance of that, and how that might ACTUALLY affect her. Nope, she’s too busy chasing imaginary crabs and twin babies that look just a little TOO comfortable with each other.

I am sick and tired of hearing all this nonsense about this hokey hogwash pseudo-science. I’ve endured countless nonsensical lectures about the importance of what your month of birth is from ex-girlfriends and female friends countless times. I’ve bit my tongue and suffered through it. And though this particular subject has roughly the importance and far-reaching significance of the outcome of an American Idol competition (which American women care way too damn much about anyway) I’ve always tried to make a point of respecting the beliefs of others, regardless of how outright absurd and cockamamie those beliefs may be.

But this does it. I can take no more. It’s insulting enough to have my years of life experience, personal growth, and education dismissed in favor of what month I was born in, but I absolutely abhor the fact that someone would rather judge me by what some book written in the late 60s says about what star I was born under, as opposed to viewing me as an individual, which is what I am. There is no one like me.

Bringing both NASA and astrology to the forefront once more, for the sake of comparison, I ask you: why is it people try so fervently to disprove the Moon landing, while suckling at the teat of horoscopes? At least the folks at NASA actually rely upon science and mathematics, which ACTUALLY EXIST and are more likely to provide results. It’s simple kids: they put you through years of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus while skipping over the signs of the Zodiac in public schools for a reason!

Now it’s fine if you want to stick to this star-sign nonsense, but please keep me out of it. As far as I’m concerned, the only Age of Aquarius that matters is the song from Hair. You’re not going to tell me that the month I was born in plays a factor in my personality or who I choose to hang out with. I am who I am due to my parentage, the course of my life, the chemical state of my brain, and a calculated mental effort at acting a certain way. I’ve only ever met one other kid born on the same day as me, and we were different as night and day. Literally. He was a cheesy Goth kid that liked listening to The Cure and dressing only in black, while I dressed in Hawaiian shirts and rocked out to the swinging sounds of 60s folk-troubadour Donovan.

Listen, it’s as simple as this: if you meet someone and you don’t get along well, it’s probably because at least one of you is a jerk. Rather than going home and trying to figure out how your birthdates match up in some astrology book to explain why you two aren’t compatible, you’d probably be better off working on your social skills. As for that stellar defrauder from Russia, I’ll say that I sincerely hope that the stars and the planets all align for her, and that the resultant gravitational flux occurring from that cosmic alignment causes a chunk of meteorite to fall from the heavens upon her; the chunk finding a resting place far up her ass.

That said, my weekend was great!

I, and many of my friends, partied righteously at the abode of The Caroling Canuck and The Red Rightwing. We were loud, we drank, we smoked, we laughed, and music blasted throughout the night. I won’t go into much detail right now, as I’m tired and certain events are blurred in my memory. I did bring a fine a bottle of Irish whiskey and all who sampled it agreed it was the best. For indeed, Irish whiskey is the best. Ah, drinking pleasure can be summed up with B-U-S-H-M-I-L-L-S.

Not that I drank that much. Beef was the main course at the Barbeque so I mostly abstained from eating. I gave up beef more than a year ago and I wasn’t particularly planning on starting again considering that the United States is now OFFICIALLY a carrier of mad cow beef. Still, I held my own, and while others got sloshed or released the contents of their stomachs around different areas of the house, I merely needed the occasional trip to the restroom to fight off the long-term effects of a week’s worth of Vicodin consumption (I was also very good about not taking any pills that day… you don’t mix pills and booze.)

When the pain in my ankle grew a bit too overpowering I switched back over to the brace and crutches, though my handicap did little to impede my enjoyment of the festivities. As for the gal that the Canuck had been trying to hook me up with, upon meeting her I quickly realized that she looked about 10 years older than I was expecting and I felt absolutely nothing as far as chemistry was concerned. She was a bit crass, drank a bit too much, seemed a bit too desperate, and her daughter, who was actually considerably closer to my age, had caught my eye from the first viewing.

This did nothing to keep the old gal from trying to find romance however, and while I was left thankfully unscathed, she quickly started going after the other young men at the party. Her chosen victim was The Lusty Lascivian, whom she and Foxy Valentino were working on a bottle of Jack Daniels with. Jack Daniels is utter swill; I berated Valentino tirelessly for not instead imbibing from the tasty bottle of Bushmills I had sitting in the kitchen. Surely enough came the drunken bet: the gal challenged the Lascivian; if he couldn’t finish the bottle of whiskey he would have to give the old gal a kiss.

I’ve never seen a lad chug whiskey like that (not counting myself on drunken cemetery nights). He raised the bottle to his lips and sucked down its entire content. But being the very nature of alcohol, after a good chug there’s always at least a drop left. So the drunken Valentino drank the very last drop, which must have been negligible in its very amount, and loudly proclaimed that the Lascivian had not indeed finished the bottle. There was a tangible awkwardness that followed, the silence only broken by the gal’s drunken demands for a kiss. Quickly, she turned on the guilt when the Lascivian abstained. Indeed, women can be quite evil in getting what they want. Though I would have stood my ground even against an offer of all the tea in China, the Lascivian buckled. He reluctantly turned in for a long and nauseating kiss in front of all of us (though I turned away; I really had no interest in seeing this).

Right in front of the gal’s daughter.

Quickly, the daughter grabbed her mother and had a little talk, shortly thereafter a tent was erected and it was decided that it was time for the two of them, the older one at least, to retire. As for the Lascivian, I grabbed him by the arm and took him for a walk to get cigarettes. I alternated consolations to him with bewildered questions of why. He clearly was a bit shook up.

Returning from our trip, the Lascivian felt better, and the old gal was passed out in her tent. We partied away the rest of the evening. As the night wore down, my head hurt from too much liquor and not enough food, and I occasionally checked my foot for new signs of purple. I decided to go out for food, as did the Lascivian, who had similarly abstained from beef consumption, and Mr. Mystere, who has long been a vegetarian. We hobbled down to Tiny’s, which is the local 24-hour restaurant, and is basically equivalent to very crummy Lyon's, which is in itself, a very crummy Denny's.

After a crummy meal that none of us really felt we could eat, and terrible service that kept us there for nearly an hour and a half, we left a minimum tip and headed off for the house once more. Rats were falling from the sky as I swung along on my crutches. There’d be a “plop” at which I would notice a rodent that quickly scurried off.

When we returned, the Canuck and the Rightwing had retired, though others were still awake and present. The daughter of the old gal had ventured up out of the tent, preferring our company, and I found her to be quite charming, and fun to be around. To my surprise, my sister had returned as well, along with the quite-drunk Valentino, having been stranded by a car accident, though Valentino was nowhere to be found, having wandered off to hang out with some trashed neighbors. We talked for quite a while and drank further, until the grumpy Redwing came out to tell us to quiet down.

The previous evening sounds all fine and normal, like the usual sort of thing you would expect to hear about a party, except the next morning got weirder. The old gal got up first, having gone to bed first, and being that her daughter was no longer around to chaperone her (her daughter having spent the night inside with us) the old gal quickly got back to drinking. When we all awoke, it was quickly noticed that The Lusty Lascivian was missing. I need not say more, except to say that my chum earned the name The Lusty Lascivian for a reason, and that morning, I was reminded why.

There’s not much more to say, except that I was smacked in the face by the combined effects of Motrin, Vicodin, and whatever the Canuck was smoking. We all had a lovely breakfast at a vegetarian restaurant, and then we were off, 6 adults crammed in a small car for the trip back home. Sing-a-longs ensued.

I’m off to bed.

Be seeing you,
The Virgin Prince

O, how lowly and blessed the barf bag, this wondrous device that has protected many a carpeted aisle from the contents of our stomachs, saving both the passenger and the airline staff from inconvenience. Were Abraham Lincoln alive today, he might very well write a modern-day Gettysburg Address on the back of one of these waxed wonders. Perhaps George W. Bush has done just this very thing while he was preparing speeches for his troops in Iraq while he was aboard Air Force One, having already used up all his regular sheets of paper in making paper aeroplanes and folded captain’s hats gracing the heads of he and his cabinet.

I, myself, find myself relegated to writing on this bleached and folded bag as a consequence of having just barely made it onboard the plane in time for takeoff. As I trudged aboard the plane with my heavy suitcase and my ticket in hand, I barely had enough time to stow my bag before the overhead compartments were closed up and the jet engines were accelerating us forward, lifting our heavy metal bird off the ground as the wheels of our landing gear gave the tarmac one last kiss goodbye. Consequently, I had no time to remove my much-weathered Gonzo-journal from my baggage before takeoff.

And now I write on an unused barf-bag which has probably flown several times across the country, perhaps meandering into Canada, and probably dipping briefly into Mexico. There is nothing more wasteful than an unused piece of paper, and so, as I sit here with my grandfather’s hat on my knee, and a wee-youngster counting beside me, I bless this bag with words. I think of a funeral; a celebration gone well, and I think of how much I’ll miss my grandfather, and how much I already do; I think of how fortunate I was to see so much family, and to meet new family still. I think of Gilbert & Sullivan and how their works and music seemed to tie all the generations of our family together, from octogenarian to eighteen-year-old, and how well the service went. I’m wondering if the whole event jarred something in my brain, and perhaps did something to restore an ounce of my faith.

Now I realize that I’m running out of space on the bag and if I wish to continue writing, I shall have to write on the section of the bag printed with “occupied” in big letters, though it doesn’t seem to matter as the plane is landing shortly.

Cackling Cacophonies,

Oh, I’ve done you all a terrible disservice in the past month. I’ve not written a thing at all. Oh, I’ve written, but I’ve not posted a thing here; I haven’t had the time. But now is the time for you all to recover from this recent bout with literary sobriety. I’m back. Between my heavy-duty work-schedule, my numerous adventures with all my friends old and new, romantic evenings spent with cute new female acquaintances, and many nights spent drinking Irish whiskey and singing lusty Scottish drinking songs and the works of Gilbert & Sullivan with pals, I’ve simply had no time to sit down before this humming, glowing screen, and my bodily-fluid-encrusted keyboard.

But I’m back!

A recent ankle injury has me waylaid, and forcibly given me time off work, as well as forced me away from my depraved and irreligious evenings with friends. No more engaging in censurable shenanigans! Nope, I’m stuck with crutches and a foot that has swollen to twice its normal size and is colored in a lovely shade of deep purple. I do love purple. I shall have to try for gangrene on the left if only to make a dapper matching set. For now, I have just the one, and I’ve got pictures if any of you want to see; it’s pretty boss.

And while a lesser person might complain about such an unfortunate and crippling temporary disability, I must say, I have no complaints. Johnny Cash’s words ring true: there’s a silver lining behind every cloud. Thanks to my blessed, puffed-up, violet leg, I have the weekend off to party down with my buddies The Red Rightwing and The Caroling Canuck! I’ve not missed a celebration of theirs yet, and thanks to my good bad fortune, this weekend I won’t have to start! I was scheduled to work, but thanks to my adored ailment, I’ll instead be boogying down with a cane at their swinging 4th of July barbeque. O, blessed life!

Also in attendance at the barbeque will be one of the Canuck’s lady-friends who apparently finds me quite dashing. (Always they choose “dashing”; it’s always the word they use to describe me… I find no shame in this.) Oh inviolable impairment, divine detriment, hallowed harm, sacred sprain; my, what good fortune a sprained ankle and a bit of chipped bone can be. Thank you, my blessed boo-boo.

In the meantime, I suppose I should get back to writing posts. Do bear with me, though I’ve been sober for days, the Vicodin does disorient me a bit. Huzzah!

Be seeing you,
The Virgin Prince