OFF THE WALL

AT

CALLAHAN'S

 

 

 

 

 

Spider Robinson

 

www.spiderrobinson.com

 

 

Copyright © 1981, 1989, 1994 by Spider Robinson

 

Cover by Passageway Pictures Inc.

 

Books by Spider Robinson

 

Callahan’s Place books:

      Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon

      Time Travelers Strictly Cash

      Callahan’s Secret

      Off The Wall at Callahan’s

Lady Sally’s House books:

      Callahan’s Lady

      Lady Slings the Booze

Mary’s Place books:

      The Callahan Touch

      Callahan’s Legacy

      Callahan’s Key

      Callahan’s Con

Stardance books:

      Stardance (with Jeanne Robinson)

      Starseed (with Jeanne Robinson)

      Starmind (with Jeanne Robinson)

Deathkiller books:

      Time Pressure, Mindkiller (published together as Deathkiller)

Lifehouse

Very books:

      Very Bad Deaths

      Very Hard Choices

Other books:

      Variable Star (Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson)

      God Is An Iron and Other Stories (collection)

      The Free Lunch

      By Any Other Name (collection)

      User Friendly (collection)

      Night of Power

      Melancholy Elephants (collection)

      The Best of All Possible Worlds (anthology)

      Antinomy (collection)

      Telempath

 

 

This one is for 

my friend and agent

Eleanor Wood,

sine qua honest work,

with love, and thanks

for the idea…

 

and for

Captain Lazarus Long,

who established the precedent…

 

and most of all, of course,

for Jeanne,

sine qua nihil...

 

 

 

 

OFF THE WALL

AT

CALLAHAN'S

 

 

 

 

 

Spider Robinson

 

 

Foreword

-

Wall Flowers

 

 

A)  Begin reading here if you’re not familiar with Callahan’s Place [if you are, feel free to skip down to B)]:

 

Callahan’s Place, the now-vanished tavern in Suffolk County, New York owned and operated by Michael Callahan (a.k.a. Justin of Harmony), was an unusual establishment in many respects.

      (Understatement of the millenium!)

      Among the many peculiarities of that merriest of oases:

      Aliens, cyborgs, transvestites, talking dogs, telekinetics, telepaths, clairvoyants, immortals, Intergalactic Traveling Salesmen, time travelers, vampires, victims of severe Tourette’s Syndrome, and even editors  were all made welcome there, from time to time.

      Patrons were encouraged  to smash their glass in the big fireplace after drinking—so long as they were willing to propose a toast first, naming the reason they felt like smashing a glass.  Exercising this prerogative doubled the price of your drink…to a dollar.  (Mike got a bulk rate on glasses.)

      Puns, and competition therein, were encouraged—nay, actively abetted—by Callahan, himself a hopeless and utterly shameless paronomasiac. 

Privacy was defended by force : any patron heard to ask snoopy questions of another patron was customarily blackjacked by Fast Eddie the piano player and dumped in the alley.

      But perhaps the most remarkable and most important thing about Callahan’s Place was the converse of the last paragraph: any customer who displayed any desire to discuss his or her troubles received the instant and undivided attention of—not merely the bartender—but everyone in the room.

      Consequently, a plethora of interesting stories ended up getting told in Callahan’s.  All those presently known to me have been set down in the three volumes CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON, TIME TRAVELERS STRICTLY CASH, and CALLAHAN'S SECRET (all currently in print in Ace paperback), and collected in the omnibus CALLAHAN AND COMPANY (Phantasia Press hardcover; contact Alex Berman, Phantasia Press, 5536 Crispin Way, West Bloomfield, Michigan 48033 for details).  

      Regrettably, the last of these stories, “The Mick of Time,” involved the utter and final destruction of Callahan’s Place, a few minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, 1984/5…

 

B) Begin reading here if you already know Callahan’s:

 

But although it is gone, gone for good, echoes of Callahan’s Place linger on.

      For one thing, there is a related cycle of stories having to do with Mike Callahan’s wife, Lady Sally McGee, and the fabulous bordello she once operated in Brooklyn, Lady Sally’s House—a House of healthy repute, and like her husband’s tavern an equal-opportunity enjoyer.  (Also, sadly, gone now.)  Two books full of these stories currently exist: CALLAHAN'S LADY, and LADY SLINGS THE BOOZE (I did  warn you about the puns…)

      For another, a yet-untitled book is presently in progress concerning Mary’s Place, the remarkable tavern opened elsewhere in Suffolk County by Jake Stonebender (folksinger, guitar-player, songwriter, and narrator of all the Callahan stories) after the obliteration of Callahan’s Place.

      And of course, there is this book, which represents my own desperate attempt to feed the voracious maw of ongoing Callahan Mania.

 

      You see, another oddity of Callahan’s saloon was that Mike Callahan kept no mirror behind his bar.  The wall above the gallery of bottles—known as “The Wall,” to distinguish it from the other three—was bare and featureless…save for decades of graffitti, inscribed there by Callahan himself.  Any time he heard something that struck him spoken in his bar, it was Mike’s custom to grab a Magic Marker and preserve it for posterity on The Wall.  Many a newcomer found him- or herself so fascinated by this distillation of over forty years of good conversation that they ended up sitting there all night, reading and drinking and reading and drinking.  (Most of Callahan’s customs had more than one purpose…but all of them seemed to end up putting money in his pockets.  Not a stupid man.)

      And one day I remembered that Wall, and saw a way to get out from under a nagging problem…

      Look: transcribing Jake Stonebender’s yarns about Callahan’s Place into polished and compelling prose has been putting bread on my table and music in my headphones for just short of twenty years, now.  Nobody  misses The Place more than me.  Ever since "The Mick of Time,” the last Callahan story, was published in Analog Science Fact/Science Fiction Magazine  in 1985, I have been reduced to thinking up stories of my own, an onerous task.  Trust me: if I knew any more Callahan stories, I’d find time to set them down on paper.  If I could find a way to get more, I would; I have tapped every source, shaken every tree, pursued every avenue.

      Yet not a week has gone by—in six years!—without at least a few plaintive letters from readers, asking when I’m going to publish some more Callahan’s Place stuff.  People keep sidling up to me at conventions, on the streets, in public washrooms, and imploring me to publish something else—anything else—with the word “Callahan” in the title…

      I do not like to disappoint readers; they are in too good a position to redress perceived slights.  So I cudgeled my brains.  (I do this so often that I have had my cranium fitted with a removable screw-top, to facilitate cudgeling.)  Among other things, I relived in memory—over and over again—every moment I had ever personally spent in that caravanserai of compassion.  And finally one day as I was idly forward-scanning through all the mental videotape, I happened to notice a flashbulb go off…

      I knew that many photographs had been taken in Callahan’s Place—hell, two of my most treasured possessions are framed 8x10 glossies of myself at The Place (one jamming with Fast Eddie and Jake; the other standing at the bar with Mike Callahan’s arm around me; both autographed by the participants).  I knew at least half a dozen people likely to keep a scrapbook of such photos.  In many of those pix, I reasoned, The Wall must be visible…   

      So I made a lot of phone calls, and I paid a lot of postage, and I made a lot of expensive trips to the East Coast…

      …and then I sealed myself in my office with about a googolplex of snapshots of Callahan’s Place, a magnifying glass, a Macintosh II typewriter, a stereo, a case of Old Bushmill’s, and two pounds of Celebes Kalossi coffee…

…and after only a million years of pain and eyestrain, I had painstakingly reconstructed something like 50% of the wit and wisdom recorded by Michael Callahan, and imprudently stored by him on a medium inadequate to withstand nuclear fireball.  You hold it in your hands.

      A large and aromatic bouquet of Wall flowers: flowers plucked from off The Wall At Callahan’s Place…

 

True story: in 1973 I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting the late great Alfred Bester. Much could be written about that meeting, for Alfie in person was the original One-Man Chinese Firedrill–but what is relevant here is that at one point he asked me what I was working on, and I said I was putting together a collection of Callahan's bar stories but couldn't think of a good title. Eyes flashing, Alfie excused himself, went to the washroom and returned less than two minutes later with a neatly typed list of over two dozen terrific titles. Among them were CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON, TIME TRAVELERS STRICTLY CASH, CALLAHAN'S SECRET… and yes, by God, OFF THE WALL AT CALLAHAN'S.

I am now a firm believer in time travel…

Thanks yet again, Alfie, wherever you are!

 

      Yes, there was more written on The Wall than you’ll find in this book—but I don’t see what I can do about it unless and until more photographs surface.  (If you have any, contact me c/o the publisher.)  

      Yes, I admit that the epigrams, maxims, perorations and pithy thayingth contained herein do lose something from not being scrawled in Callahan’s inimitable (thank God!) handwriting—but not one of those photos was clear and crisp enough to reproduce well in book format.

      Yes, some of these quotations, and all of the longer puns, have already appeared in variant form in diverse Callahan’s or Lady Sally stories.  For one thing—as in so many aspects of science fiction—there is precedent for this from Robert A. Heinlein: every word of his book THE NOTEBOOKS OF LAZARUS LONG appears in his previous novel TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE—yet both books perennially jockey for position together on Berkley Books’  list of All-Time Best-Selling Titles.  For another thing, in recent years people have been quoting some of these maxims and puns to me, unaware that I hold copyright, so it’s time to set the record straight.  (One reader informs me that she has been sending out Christmas cards containing the Yule Gibbons pun for years now—presumably in an effort to shorten her Christmas card list.)

      Besides, a great many of these quotes, and all the shorter atrocities, appear here for the first time.

      And I have included lagniappe.  Along with sayings from The Wall, I have included the lyrics to several of the songs that Jake and Fast Eddie used to play on Fireside Fillmore Nights, the ones that got the most requests during my tenure there.  While only one or two of these songs actually appeared on The Wall, all of them frequently echoed from it, and from the other three walls.  Several of these are recorded here for the first time.; I’ve transcribed most of them from tapes in my possession, and can certify the accuracy of the lyrics.  

      And as if that weren’t enough, I have taken special trouble to isolate the most potentially lethal quotes from off The Wall—the puns!—in a separate, labelled section of their own, for your sanitary protection.

      Wisdom, laughter, and song—here you have Callahan’s Place in a nutshell…

 

      I know: it’s not the same as having more Callahan stories.  But it’s something, and the best I can presently offer you.  Half of why one went to Callahan’s Place was the companionship, the camaraderie, the merriment and melancholy and the stories that got told, and I wish I had more of that for you, I do.

      But the other half of why I used to go there was the consistently good conversation.  Interesting things got said there a lot, because Callahan’s custom of requiring a toast got his customers into the habit of distilling their (very!) varied experiences and insights into crystallized form.  As the late, immortal Theodore Sturgeon used to say, “If it’s really basic, it’s simple.”  And you can’t have too much of that kind of stuff.

      It is my fond hope that in consideration of all this, readers will take pity on me, cut me some slack, and not write me any more letters asking for more Callahan’s Place stuff for awhile.  

      I promise, anything I hear, you’ll hear.  Okay?

 

Spider Robinson

Vancouver, British Columbia

29 November 1991

 

 

C)  Begin reading here if you’re the kind of reader who always skips the Forewords:

 

 

 

 

 

Graffiti

-

Off The Wall

at Callahan's Place

 

 

 

 

 

Callahan’s Law: shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. 

 

 

 

 

 

Lady Sally’s Law: shared despair is squared; shared hope is cubed (or better.  Raised to the power of infinity?).  

 

 

 

 

 

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of.  But do it in private, and wash your hands afterward.   

—Woodrow W. Smith

 

 

 

 

 

A person should live forever, or die trying.

—Mike Callahan

 

 

 

 

 

Most joints, the barkeep listens to your troubles... but we happen to love this one so much that we all share his load.

—Jake Stonebender

 

 

 

 

 

We raise hopes, here… until they’re old enough to fend for themselves.

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

The church is near

But the road is icy

The tavern is far

But I will walk carefully

—Ukrainian proverb, quoted by Charlie Daniels

 

 

 

 

 

Funny men are better lovers.  They know about pain.

—Josie Bauer

 

 

The average human in the best of circumstances spends a hell of a lot of attention and energy on monitoring the body’s thousand and one aches and pains and twinges and other sudden small alarms.  At least as much energy and time goes into constantly combing the environment for immediate dangers or enemies.  And as much again is spent on worry about impending or chronic problems, the struggle to stay afloat, the need to be loved, and the underlying awareness of mortality.

No wonder we’re all so grumpy so much of the time…

—Joe Quigley

 

 

 

 

 

One man’s meat is another man’s person.

—Lady Sally McGee

 

 

 

 

 

If you can’t have fun here, it’s your own damn fault.

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

There’s nothing in the human heart or mind, no place no matter how twisted or secret, that can’t be endured—if you have someone to share it with.

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

For a predator, a wrong guess can be preferable to a slow one.

—Jake

 

 

"This game’s over, man!  You gotta move your Boss or Rocky’s gonna lay a subpoenie on him; then his Torpedo is gonna smoke your Old Lady, and all your Heavies’ll be doin’ time—except for maybe your Mouthpiece, but Rocky’s Sheriff got him put in the corner—you got nothin’ left but Punks and Junkies: you’re through, Jimmy."

 

—Angel Martin to Jim Rockford, commenting on a chess game, in the Rockford Files episode "Chicken Little is a Little Chicken," by Stephen J. Cannell.

 

 

 

 

 

Context is everything.  Breastfeeding is beneficial for nearly all infants—but for an elderly cardiac patient it can be fatal...

—Samuel Webster, M.D.

 

 

 

 

 

All purpose toast: "To all the ones who weren’t as lucky."

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

"Rupture" occurs when you think you are in the middle of a conversation with someone… and suddenly discover that you’ve merely been making noises at each other, that there is a previously unsuspected chasm between you.  

—Chip Delany

 

 

 

 

 

Never wake up a cop by dropping a .45 on the pavement next to him.  

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

If you’ve got a hurt and I’ve got a hurt and we share them, some-crazy-how or other we each end up with less than half a hurt apiece.

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Everybody’s got roots in the past—but they’s all got roots in the future, too.

—Fast Eddie Costigan

 

 

 

 

 

Joy always equals pain in the long run.

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

Joy is the product of the pain that has gone before it, and vice versa.

—Rachel

 

 

Femaleness and maleness are halves of a spectrum, a curve on which you can graph humanity and get a hell of a lot of overlap in the middle.  Some disparage these so-called "in-betweeners," but the true freaks are the ones stuck way out on either end of the curve, their sexuality unalloyed by any of its complementary ingredient.  These poor perverts often carve wide paths through the world, driven as they are by untempered engines, inspiring the awe due mighty forces out of control.

—Maureen (last name unknown)

 

 

 

 

 

Suicide isn’t just a cop-out; it’s a rip-off.

—Jake

 

Author's note: this quote was inscribed on The Wall a full decade before the debate over one's Right To Die got going. I've checked with Jake, and he confirms that the choice by a terminal patient to terminate his or her anguish does not, in his opinion, constitute "suicide."

 

 

 

 

 

There is so much yammer-yammer on the air and in print these days that nobody could keep up with it, much less remember it.  I mean, look at Richard Nixon.  There’s always somebody who didn’t get the word. 

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

The most important step in mapmaking is to throw out all the old maps you have in the glove compartment.  Forget all the reports of earlier explorers.  You can’t discover America if you keep shying away from the edge of the world.  And if you do find it, you’ll waste years asking to be taken to Kublai Khan.

—Priscilla (last name unknown)

 

 

 

 

 

Cheering someone up is a little like breast-feeding, or good sex: mutually satisfactory.

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Pregnant women aren’t sick.

—Doc Webster

 

 

 

 

 

If you can’t cut the mustard, you can always lick the jar.

—Mary Callahan

 

 

 

 

We’ve got a world in which physical miracles are commonplace—and nobody’s happy.  We’ve got what it takes to feed all the billions of us—and half of us are starving.  You can show a dozen guys murdering each other on TV, but you can’t ever show two people making love.  A naked blade is reckoned less obscene than a naked woman.  Isn’t it about time we started trying to get a handle on love, from any and all directions?

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Get it right, you’re a star.  Get it half-right, you’re a gas giant. 

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

"Champagne is a barometer of happiness.  There is a sort of morosity everywhere."

 

—Yves Bernard, chairman of Moet & Chandon, commenting on poor sales

 

 

 

 

 

The delusion that one’s sexual pattern is the Only Right Way To Be  is probably the single most common sexual psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim’s fault.  You cannot acquire this delusion by observation of reality.

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

A shrink’s office from which laughter is not heard as often as tears ought to shut down.

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Never been to a shrink.  What could be sillier than a priest who doesn’t believe in the soul?

—Stephen Gaskin

 

 

 

 

 

Where I come from, anyone who says "Excuse me" is a human being. 

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

Old age is not for sissies.

—Larry Van Cott

 

 

 

 

 

The only kind of payment that always guarantees a handsome return is paying attention.

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

It’s amazing how much mature wisdom resembles being too tired.

—Commodore Aaron Sheffield

 

 

 

 

 

People who wear glasses are lucky; we have stars on rainy nights.

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Improving morale is simultaneously one of the noblest and most intelligently selfish things a person can do.

Degrading morale is simultaneously one of the sleaziest and most stupidly self-destructive things a person can do.

Guess which pays better?

—Long-Drink McGonnigle

 

 

 

 

 

I must have missed something: if a guy has truly absolute  power, then what could you possibly corrupt him with?  

     Acton got it backward: what engenders corruption is paranoia, the perception of inadequate power.  Absolute power renders you absolutely immune to corruption.

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

Hip humor: laughing at a fat girl–cruelty pretending to be fun.

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

Popular myth to the contrary, drink is not really a good drug for pain.  That is, it can numb physical pain, but will not blunt the edge of sorrow; it can help that latter only by making it easier for a man to curse or weep.  

     But alcohol is great for happiness: it can actually intensify joy.

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

I like fashion—and Porsches, and Rolexes—all that stuff! How nice of the morons and drones to wear uniforms, so one can avoid them...

—Long-Drink

 

 

 

 

 

In our society, big lush women and small slight men go through life wrapped around a softball-sized chunk of pain; it breaks some, and makes others magnificent.

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Still I persist in wondering, whether folly must always be our nemesis.

—Edgar Pangborn

 

 

 

 

 

It claims to be fully automatic, but actually you have to push this little button here.

—Gentleman John Kilian

 

 

 

 

 

Logic is a way of going wrong with confidence.

—Stinky Kettering

 

 

 

 

 

The only real perversions are nymphomania, satyriasis and celibacy… but even they should be permitted for members of a free society.  The only consensual sex-related acts I would proscribe—for reasons of public health—are those involving former food or former people, and lying about the state of one’s venereal health or contraceptive status.         

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

Art takes whatever—and as long as—it takes.

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

Certain kinds of shit are quite palatable, with a little necessity sprinkled on them. 

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

Take your skinny women and stick them up the same receptacle with hard beds and cold showers and red-line exercise and "natural" food and all the other things everyone earnestly pursues in the belief that pleasure and pain are nature’s diabolical attempts to trick us, that the less you enjoy a thing the better it must be for you; take ’em and stick ’em, and give me something a man can enjoy!

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

What you put your attention on prospers.

—Stephen Gaskin

 

 

 

 

 

Sexual intercourse vests no property rights.

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps I could stand loneliness if I were not so useless; perhaps I could stand uselessness if I were not so lonely.

—Mickey Finn

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, just naming your burden helps.

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

"You don’t even know if our species are sexually compatible."

    "The hell I don’t.  I can see fingers and a tongue from here; anything else is gravy."

—exchange between Mickey and Mary

 

 

 

 

 

Writing is a simple trick: all you have to do is sit and stare at a blank piece of paper, until beads of blood form on your forehead...

—Larry Van Cott

 

 

 

 

 

There are places on the skull where even a gentle rap will reliably drop a man—but the back of the skullbone is not one of them.  Try it yourself.  Borrow a blackjack from your mother and sap a random sample of ten guys, as hard as you like.  I’ll bet you fifty bucks not more than four of them go down.

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

From an ergonomic engineering standpoint, the only pardonable object in the typical human bathroom is the towel rack.

—Mickey

 

 

So many men seem to have the idea that what women secretly want most of all (no matter what we say or even believe ourselves) is a powerful and remorseless engine of flesh impersonally hammering away at us without pause for hours at a time.  They become upset with themselves if they cannot deliver this silly commodity.  I don’t mean that, on the one occasion in my life when it actually happened to me, it was an unpleasant experience, exactly.  (Until I tried to get up and walk the next day.)  It’s just that maybe once in a lifetime is plenty.  And I’ve never seen that guy since, don’t much care if I do.

     I mean, you could buy a machine to do that.  They exist.  And women don’t buy them.  Neither do gay men.

—Maureen

 

 

 

 

 

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who think people can be subdivided into as few as two categories, and those who know better.

—Doc Webster

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve tried my hand at matchmaking a few times, and learned that you should approach it like walking into a chemistry lab and mixing two unidentified beakers of chemicals: you might luck into a stable compound, or you might blow your hands off.

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

You can love only your equals or inferiors—with your superiors, compassion is the best you can do.  And it’s pretty damn good.

—Mary Callahan-Finn

 

 

 

 

 

Why does a man try to comb hair over a bald spot?  Is he afraid you’ll fail to notice he’s a jerk?

—Maureen

 

 

Some memories you don’t want to put words on… because that would change them.

     Suppose, for instance, you gave a savage a helicopter ride.  The experience would be rich and vivid for him.  If, on his return to his village, he told friends he had been in a little cave of ice that flew like a bird, at first his memories would still be true, and different from what he said—but the more times he told or rethought the story, the more "helicopter" would become "flying ice cave"… which after all is a lesser thing.

     By naming the inexpressible, you lose it.

—Edison Ripsborn

 

 

 

 

 

The Nazz had them pretty eyes.  He wanted everybody to see out His eyes so they could see how pretty it was.

—Dick Buckley, speaking of Jesus of Nazareth

 

 

 

 

 

Vengeance is counterproductive.  Not to mention the fact that it gets your soul all sticky.

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

When I say that she played with me, for the first time in my life I mean that the way a little kid would mean it.  She played with me, like a kid might play with another kid that had been whacked on the head recently and needed some diversion.  Well, if this was a sane culture, I mean, and kids were allowed to have sex with each other as part of playing, like God intended.

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

Art with contempt in it is always sour.

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

If it’s sloppy, eat it over the sink.

—Tommy Robbins

 

 

 

 

 

Now  I remember where I know you from.  I looked up "ugly" in the dictionary and they had a picture of you.

—Long-Drink to Doc Webster

 

 

 

 

 

"So isn’t it a pity, 

when we common people chatter

of those mysteries to which I have referred

that we use for such a delicate and complicated matter

such a very short and ordinary word?"

—Anonymous

 

 

 

 

 

We were not making love, we were fucking.  Nothing wrong with that; just not enough right with it.

—Maureen

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been in hospitals.  They take away your pants.  Then they hurt you and starve you and expose you to disease.  Then they bill you.  A lot.

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

All humans—without exception—want to love.  No organic or emotional or psychological damage can remove that need.  Humans can survive, albeit in pain, without being loved—but lock a man in a dungeon and he will find an ant to love, or try.  The sociopath, who feels no emotions, wishes he could, and is driven mad by his impotence.

—Mickey

 

 

 

 

 

If you are feeble-minded enough to want to believe in good and bad joss, the Constitution so entitles you—but have the decency not to try and spread the virus.

—Lady Sally

 

 

      "Why do men want to leave right afterward so often?  When they could be cuddling and being held?"

      "Sometimes because the intensity of the relief, the depth of their gratitude, makes them feel small or out of control.  Sometimes because in their secret miseducated hearts they believe they’ve done something disgusting to you, and are glad of it, and so are ashamed.  And sometimes just because they were doing something when the dread compulsion came over them, and now they want 

to get back to whatever it was."

 

—exchange between Mary and Phillip (last name unknown)

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t know why it should be worse to die without time for pain or regrets… but to me, it is.  I’m not looking forward to dying—but I’ve spent a lifetime getting ready for it, and I don’t want it stolen from me.

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

"…remember what I told you, kid: life is a shitstorm—and when it’s raining shit, the best umbrella you can buy is art."

 

—Pedro Carmichael to Martin Looder, in the film Tune In Tomorrow, written by William Boyd.

 

 

 

 

 

Skills are the flowers you get if you water your talent bush enough.

—Arethusa

 

 

 

 

 

God gave women buttocks because sooner or later they have to walk away from us, and at least this way there’s some consolation.

—Joe

 

 

Try to live your life as though one distant day, your descendants will develop time-travel and cloning skills, and come back to resurrect everyone that ever lived who wasn’t a jerk or a creep.

     Maybe at the end, when your whole life passes before your eyes, it’s a high-speed data dump.  Endeavor to see that it makes you seem worth the trouble of reviving.  Try to be the kind of guest they’ll want at The Last Great, Never-Ending Party At The End Of Time.

     It could happen, right?  Do you know of a better shot at immortality?

—Sam Meade

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t belittle yourself.  If it truly needs doing, let someone else do it.  There’ll be no shortage of volunteers.

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

What shall it profit a man if he gaineth the whole world, yet he hath no allowable deductions?  

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

Any man is willing to believe that he was the best you’ve ever had.  He knew it all the time.

—Maureen

 

 

 

 

 

"Leer" is not what happens when a mature and sexually satisfied woman spots an unintentional double-entendre, but "smile" doesn’t seem to cover it either.  Interesting, that there is no word for a woman appreciating bawdiness.

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

Why are so many large, muscular men superstitious?  You’d think a strong man wouldn’t need to be.  Is it something about the muscles themselves that does it?  Some side effect of all that tugging at the base of the brain?

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

In a world like this, a freak is no bad thing to be.  They proved that back in the Sixties.

—Arethusa

 

 

 

 

 

There are few things on earth as dangerous as a liberal vigilante.

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

It’s hard to strike a balance between keeping an open mind and being a sucker.  But you have to try…

—Joe

 

 

Darling, all men think about rape, at least once in their lives.  Women have an inexhaustible supply of something we’ve got  to have, more precious to us than heroin… and most of you rank the business as pleasant enough, but significantly less important than food, shopping or talking about feelings.  Or you go to great lengths to seem like you do—because that’s your  correct biological strategy.  But some of you charge all the market will bear, in one coin or another, and all of you award the prize, when you do, for what seem to us like arbitrary and baffling reasons.  Our single most urgent need—and the best we can hope for is to get lucky.  We’re all descended from two millions years of rapists, every race and tribe of us, and we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t sometimes fantasize about just knocking you down and taking it.  The truly astonishing thing is how seldom we do.  I can only speculate that most of us must love you a lot.

—Mike to Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

Religions only look different if you get ’em from a retailer.  If you go to a wholesaler, you’ll find they all get it from the same distributor.

—Stephen Gaskin

 

 

 

 

 

A fantasy is not even a wish, much less an act.  There is no such thing as a culpable or shameful fantasy.

—Lady Sally

 

 

If you’re raped, don’t charge the bastard with rape.  Charge him with indecent exposure.  It is much  easier to get a conviction for that charge than for rape.  The defense is not allowed to ask anything  about your sexual history or how you were dressed at the time.  Forensic evidence is unnecessary.  The total public embarrassment to you is cut more than in half.  What’s the guy going to do, leap up in court and say, "It’s a filthy lie, Your Honor: I raped that bitch!"?  In many states, a man convicted of indecent exposure will actually draw more prison time than a rapist.  And whereas rapists are sort of prison folk-heros, weenie-waggers do harder time than anybody but a short-eyes—in fact, the scheme sort of incorporates the Law of Talion...

—Mary

 

 

 

 

 

I like my flattery plausible.

—Arethusa

 

 

 

 

 

Everything in your body is connected to everything else.  If you doubt it, have ear surgery, and then wiggle your big toe.

—Doc Webster

 

 

 

 

 

Memories are the only real treasures a man has.

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

"Straighten me, Nazz… ’cause I’m ready."

—Father Newman, quoting Dick Buckley

 

 

 

 

 

Every time I hear someone put the word "mere" in front of the word "semantics," I bite my tongue hard and remind myself that I too am greatly ignorant.

—Phillip 

 

 

 

 

 

There aren’t many things a man can do as noble as passing up a chance to show how smart he is.

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

Do not waste your fear on the mighty.  Cowards make the deadliest opponents—and pacifists never fight fair: they can’t —and the worst thing about terrorists is how weak they are: so weak that they have to be monstrous to accomplish anything.

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

The distance between one and a hundred is nothing compared to the distance between zero and one.

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

There’s nothing wrong with wanting wars to stop—but the moment a pacifist uses any weapon but calm speech, he’s a hypocrite.  If he’s willing to kill, he’s a psychotic.

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it’s lightning that does the work."

—Mark Twain to Nikola Tesla

 

 

 

 

 

The best nonprescription analgesic is laughter.  

     Maybe analgesic is the wrong word.  If you laugh hard when you’re post-op, you hurt like hell.  You just don’t give a damn.  Hard to understand how a painful experience can leave you feeling better, but there it is.  

     Sharing the laughter makes it even better...

—Josie

 

 

 

 

 

You can learn as much about someone from watching them belly-laugh as you can from making love with them.

—Joe

 

 

 

 

 

Wrinkles are your combat ribbons.  Wear them proudly!

—Shorty Steinitz

 

 

 

 

 

When something scares you shitless, you can go back up inside your head and hide.  But when the thing that scares you comes from inside your head, you… well, you go to a place that isn’t a place, erasing your footsteps behind you.  And somebody’s got to come in after you… 

—Paul MacDonald

 

 

 

 

 

Short of accident or hypnosis, self abuse is logically impossible.

—Doc Webster, M.D.

 

 

 

 

 

The thing to do with a silly remark is to fail to hear it.

—Zebadiah J. Carter

 

 

 

 

 

Some delusions are necessary.  Or do you know of a rational reason for living?

     (You say you do?  I won’t argue: your delusion is necessary.)

—Jake 

 

 

 

 

 

Pessimism may be a realistic way of looking at life… but who can live with that much realism?

     (You say you can?  Stand back away from me, please—and use your handkerchief.)

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

The human race has few (if any) problems that couldn’t be solved by massive wealth.  And we’re literally surrounded by it, like a fly in amber.  Now if we only had brains… 

—Ben Bova

 

 

 

 

 

The worst misunderstandings are the unspoken ones.

—Slippery Joe Maser

 

 

The expression "lowest common denominator," when spoken outside the context of mathematics, is usually being misused.  If used to connote contempt for something popular, it is certainly being misused.  The speaker is both ignorant and elitist.

     The phrase does not imply that that the commonest  denominator is always the lowest.  

     Is it really true that fifty million Frenchmen can never be right?  If so, would you explain to me how millenia of evolution produced almost nothing but failures?

—Dr. Jacob Burroughs

 

 

 

 

 

Sneering at something is an admission of failure.  You are claiming superior talent or insight… but declining to use it.  The best way to sneer at something, if you must, is to improve or outdo it.

—Shorty

 

 

 

 

 

Never carry a grapefruit.

—Lazarus Long

 

 

 

 

 

Erections are certainly useful in pleasing a woman, but I’ve never understood why so many people seem to think they’re essential.  Sure, they’re flattering—but a man who doesn’t have an erection and still wants to make love to me: now, that’s flattering.  

—Arethusa

 

 

 

 

 

Na mai kharundi, kai chi khal tut

 

(or, translated from the Romany:)

 

"Do not scratch where it does not itch."

—Gypsy proverb

 

 

 

 

 

To approach telepathy, you start with empathy and crank that up as high as you can.

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Why do we build refrigerators that spill money on the floor?  And ovens that spill money on the ceiling?  And sit them side by side, a heat-maker and a heat-loser, unconnected?

—Jim/Paul MacDonald

 

 

 

 

 

The customer need not always come first.  Enjoy yourself: it’s contagious.

—standard advice of Lady Sally to apprentice artists at her brothel

 

 

 

 

 

I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

—Tom Waits

 

 

 

 

 

A classic vicious circle: you don’t love yourself enough, so you treat yourself so badly that it’s hard for you to love yourself...

     Be good to yourself.  Maybe the idea will catch on...

—Les Glueham & Merry Moore

 

 

 

 

 

Triads have a very short shelf-life unless all three members are ambisexual.  For a heterosexual species with two sexes, odd numbers are unstable.  If a commodity is scarce, competition for it will ensue.

     Triads are interesting as hell—while they last.  But so is a chimney fire… 

—Lady Sally

 

 

 

 

 

Kindness beats honesty, every time.

     But think it through—and make sure you’re being honest with yourself...

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

You got it, buddy: the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away… 

—Tom Waits

 

 

 

 

 

"Man alone cannot know himself.  The container cannot contain itself."

     "I do not understand what you mean.  Do not all containers contain themselves?  If not, what does contain them?"

—exchange between Long-Drink and Mickey

 

 

 

 

 

Antiabortionists fail to carry their philosophy to its logical culmination: Stamp Out Menstruation!  End the slaughter of millions!  (And try to ensure that the ratio of females to males runs several trillion to one, so that every sperm can fulfill God’s Plan for it as well.)

—Mike

 

 

Among the most common thoughts that ever passed through a human brain:  

 

      "That doesn’t apply to me."

      "It’s not fair."

      "Not again."

      "I wasn’t ready."

      "I might have known."

      "Make it not have happened."

      "This can’t be happening."

      "I have a right"  (or, "I know my rights.")

 

Note that they are all incorrect or semantically null.

—Doc Webster

 

 

God damn it, you didn’t write it on a "word processor"!  Or even a "computer."  What it is, is a goddam typewriter—a machine for turning fingerstrokes on a keyboard into ink symbols on a piece of paper.  (Okay, yours can also be used as a computer when you’re not writing—my old Royal manual can be used as a nutcracker, or a paperweight, or a murder weapon.)  The silicon revolution did not change that process—from the user’s point of view—much more than did the electric typewriter, merely streamlined the error-correction process.   When it’s being used to make words appear on a page, it’s a typewriter.  

     To speak of your "word processor" is like referring to your car as an "exothermically powered, myocontrolled matter transporter."  The only purpose of the term is to cue your listeners that you can afford to use a computer as a typewriter, and all it really tells them is that you’re insecure enough to worry that people might think you still use one of those old-fashioned things to type on.

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

And "electronic typewriter" is silly in the other direction: what it means is a computer so stupid that all you can do  with it is type… 

—Susan Maser

 

 

 

 

 

Love is an active verb.  It’s not an abstraction or a conceptual idea.  You have to perform an action to show that it’s really real.

     Enlightenment is not so much making it to Never-Never Land through the secret passageway.  It’s more like getting off your tail and doing something… 

—Stephen Gaskin

 

 

 

 

 

Concerning whores: anyone who thinks it immoral or exploitive or dishonest to "pay a person to pretend to care about you" has obviously never flown first-class… or gone to a psychiatrist, or a hairdresser, or eaten in a restaurant… or talked to a bartender they don’t know.

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

Glad; sad; mad.  What else is there?

—Long-Drink

 

 

 

 

 

Think of some miraculous thing.  

Any wonderful object, okay?  

      Now think of two of them.  

Wups, one is second rate.  

      Now think of three.  

Gee, one is mediocre and one is the worst.  

     Comparison sometimes kills wonder...

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Prostitutes function rather like priests for people who feel more comfortable confessing their sins while naked.

—Father Newman

 

 

 

 

 

One of the silliest preoccupations of man is the notion that it makes some kind of sense to divide whole categories of people up into one winner and a whole bunch of losers or also-rans.  What poor sick compulsive infected us all with that virus?  And how?

—Doc Webster

 

 

 

 

 

"—If I let them live rent-free in my head, they’ll tear it up."

 

—black man on CBS Nightwatch, on his reaction to black women who bitterly criticize him for having married a white woman.

 

 

 

 

 

You can’t eat half a piece of shit.

—Mike

 

 

 

 

 

I think that there is only one church, and your membership button in it is your belly button.

—Stephen Gaskin

 

 

 

 

 

People who hang up on your answering machine without leaving any message—not even an apology for wasting your attention—are the most cowardly of pickpockets.

—Long-Drink

 

 

 

 

 

Fellow movie fans, I’m very sorry, but there is nothing you can do with a car to make it blow up.  At most, you might start it burning.  Falling off a cliff won’t make a car blow up.  Only an enemy or a stunt coordinator can do that.  Pity the hundreds of spinal cases every year who were pulled from non-burning wrecks, by movie fans afraid of the "inevitable" explosion.

—Noah Gonzalez

 

 

 

 

 

Anger is fear with an attitude.

–Mike

 

 

 

 

 

The pessimist sees only the darkness of the tunnel.

     The optimist sees only the tiny point of light 

in the distance.

     The realist knows that light is probably

 an oncoming train… 

—Long-Drink

 

 

 

 

 

You are the people.

You are this season’s people—

There are no other people this season.

If you blow it, it’s blown.

—Stephen Gaskin

 

 

 

 

 

Meyer’s Law: In any emotional dilemma, the thing you should do is the one that’s hardest.

—John D. MacDonald

 

 

 

 

 

Ask the next question.  Keep on asking questions and don’t stop, and sooner or later you’ll be asking intelligent ones.  If you live long enough.

—Ted Sturgeon

 

 

 

 

 

It is usually better to not pull a gun than to screw it up. 

—Mike  

 

 

 

 

 

When I think of how different, how bleak and desolate my life could have been if I hadn’t happened to pay attention, a decade and a half ago, to the drunken ramblings of a broken-down fellow folksinger named Jake, lab-quality freon drips into my veins.

—Spider Robinson,

Foreword, Callahan and Company

 

 

 

 

 

Please consider yourself, now and henceforth, and no matter what anyone else ever asks of you, free to do any damned thing you want that doesn’t hurt someone else unnecessarily.

—Lady Sally McGee

 

 

 

 

 

Long-Drink McGonnigle’s Tip for Masturbators:

 

Sit on your hand first, until it goes numb.

Then it'll feel like someone else's hand.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s damned odd: the fight-or-flight adrenal rush is supposed to be the evolutionary heritage of millions of years of success in surviving crisis…and just about every time it’s ever happened to me, it ruined my judgment or my coordination or both.  

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Librarians are the secret masters of the world.  They control information.  Don’t ever piss one off. 

—Jake 

 

Usually if you’ve got the guilts, it’s because you did a disservice to someone or something you care about.  So what you want to do is, go and do a service for someone or something you care about. 

—Jake 

 

(It doesn’t have to be the same someone.  It’s best, but sometimes the guilt is nonspecific and it can’t be.  And sometimes it’s too late.  That doesn’t matter so much.  The point is just to release the pressure—equal and opposite reaction.  Slow and steady, ideally.  What I’m aiming for myself is to achieve balance, equilibrium, about half an hour before I die. —Merry Moore’s codicil)

 

 

 

 

Be a rapturist—the backwards of a terrorist.  Commit random acts of senseless kindness, whenever possible. 

—Jake

 

 

 

 

Sometimes I think I must have a Guardian Idiot.  A little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me… only he’s an imbecile. 

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

Politically-correct euphemisms are for the differently-brained. 

—Tanya Latimer

 

 

 

 

 

Tyranny has its place.  Universal freedom would deny my right to restrict Jeffrey Dahmer’s recreational and dietary habits.   

—Doc Webster 

 

 

 

 

 

One can dismiss out of hand any so-called religion that puts out death threats on satirists.  It is self-evident that God enjoys rough humour. 

—Gentleman John Kilian

 

 

 

 

 

Death to anyone wearing a turbine. 

 

—racist graffitto spotted in 1993 in Surrey, British Columbia, by Mickey Finn…the only person on Earth who fits the description

 

 

 

 

 

A truce between the sexes?  Are you out of your goddam mind?  What else is there to distract us all from onrushing death?  Television? 

—Jake

 

 

 

 

 

It sounds so simple, but it’s so hard to do:

To laugh when the joke’s on you… 

—tagline for an uncompleted song by Jake

 

The film generally agreed to be the greatest ever made—certainly the most studied and analyzed movie of all time—has a hole in its plot you could drive a freight-train through, in the first minute.  The entire premise of the film is logically impossible…and almost everyone misses it.

      Charles Foster Kane dies completely alone.  So how do we know that his last word was “Rosebud”?

      You like to think you belong to an intelligent species, and then something like this comes along…

—Naggeneen

 

 

 

 

Have you ever wondered how those missionaries communicated the idea of the so-called missionary position to the Indians?  How did they come to have the vocabulary?  It had to be show and tell, right?  “Now, never do this…or this…and especially not this…” 

—Jake

 

 

 

 

Over the years, I have come to learn that if you get a chance to turn anger into laughter, that will be a good thing to do. 

—Jake

 

 

 

 

Looked at a certain way, people are essentially wish-generators, with no off-switch, and they’re dangerous when armed.  We can’t help brimming with wishes… and most of them would kill us or worse if they ever came true.   

—Mike Callahan

 

 

 

 

In some ways, it’s nice that memory is so plastic and transient.  You play differently when you know there’s tape rolling. 

—Jake

 

 

 

A writer’s real occupational hazard is carpal-tunnel-vision. 

—Jake

 

 

Puns (I)

-

Set Pieces from 

Punday Nights… 

 

 

(Warning: the following pages contain material which may be deemed objectionable by more sensitive readers.  Reader discretion is advised.  Responsibility for any and all physical or psychological damage resulting from continued reading is hereby specifically repudiated.  Proceed at your own risk; do not read further while driving, riding in any conveyance, or operating heavy machinery.  “Here be stynkers…”)

 

 

      One day, a planet is discovered out Antares way whose sole inhabitant is an enormous humanoid, three miles high and made of granite.  At first it is mistaken for an immense statue left by some vanished race of giants, for it squats motionless on a yellow plain, exhibiting no outward sign of life.  It has legs, but it never rises to walk on them.  It has a mouth, but never eats or speaks.  It has what appears to be a perfectly functional brain, the size of a condominium, but the organ lies dormant, electrochemical activity at a standstill.  Yet it lives.

      This puzzles the hell out of the scientists, who try everything they can think of to get some sign of life from the behemoth—in vain.  It just squats, motionless and seemingly thoughtless, until one day a xenobiologist, frustrated beyond endurance, screams, “How could evolution give legs, mouth and brain to a creature that doesn’t use them?”

      It happens that he’s the first one to ask a direct question in the thing’s presence.  It rises with a thunderous rumble to its full height, scattering the clouds, thinks for a second, booms, “IT COULDN’T,” and squats down again.

      “Migod,” exclaims the xenobiologist, “of course!  It only stands to reason!”

 

—Long-Drink McGonnigle

 

 

      Did you boys ever hear of the planet where the inhabitants were mobile flowers?  Remarkably similar to Earthly blossoms, but they had feet and human intelligence.  The whole planet was ruled by a king called Richard the Artichoke-Heart, and one day at a court orgy his eye was caught by Fuchsia, a pale-eyed perennial.  Her beauty was so great that it almost made up for her stupidity. 

   Refusing to believe the ancient principle that beauty times brains equals a constant, the smitten monarch engaged royal tutors of all sorts for Fuchsia, to no avail.  All failed to engage the attention of the witless concubine, whose only apparent interest was in gathering pollen.  At last the embarrassed Richard gave up and had Rotenone slipped into her soup. 

   As he exclaimed to his prime minister later that night, “I can lead a horticulture, but I can’t make her think!”

 

—Doc Webster 

 

(according to Jake Stonebender, Fuchsia had a child before she died—and dark rumour suggests that Richard, a notoriously forward-thinking ruler, spent his declining years riding the Waif of the Fuchsia.)

 

 

One night the conversation turned to Richard Adams’s book SHARDIK, about an ancient empire which is ruled by an enormous, semimythical bear.  This triggered Doc Webster: 

 

The only way to become a knight in Shardik’s empire was to apply for a personal interview with the bear. This had its drawbacks.  If he liked your audition, you were knighted on the spot—but if you failed, Lord Shardik was quite likely to club your head off your shoulders with one mighty paw.  Even so, there were many applicants—for the peasantry were poor, and if a candidate failed for knighthood his family received, by way of booby-prize, a valuable sheepdog from the Royal Kennels.  This consoled them, for truly it is written:

      “For the mourning after a terrible knight, nothing beats the dog of the bear that hit you.” 

 

 

If you’re under 35, and not passionately interested in health food, this one may go over your head.  If so, count your blessings:

      Until very recently, a tribe of killer monkeys lived undetected beneath Greenwich Village.

      To some extent it was not surprising that they escaped notice for so long.  They had extremely odd sleeping habits, hibernating for 364 days out of every year (365 in Leap Years) and emerging from the caverns of the Village sewers only on Christmas Day.  Even so, one might have thought they could hardly help but cause talk, since they tended when awake to be enormous, ferocious, carnivorous, and extremely   hungry.  Yet in Greenwich Village of all places on Earth they went unnoticed until last year, when they were finally destroyed.

   Everyone knows  that Yule Gibbons ate only nuts and fruits…

 

—Ralph Von Wau Wau

 

 

      I commanded a submarine in Her Majesty’s Navy during the last World War, and had at least one secret mission.  The famous spy Harry Lime, the celebrated Third Man, had developed a sudden and severe case of astigmatism—and many of his espionage activities forbade dependence on spectacles.  At that time only one visionary in the world was working on the development of a practical contact lens: a specialist at Sir Walter Reed Hospital in America.  I was ordered to convey Lime there in utmost secrecy, then fetch him home again.

   Lime was an excellent actor, of course, but I began to suspect that there was nothing at all wrong with his vision.  I learned that he had an old girlfriend who lived twenty miles from the hospital.  So I called him into my cabin.

   “I can’t prove a thing against you,” I said, “but I’m ordering you to go directly from the sub, Lime, to the Reed oculist.” 

 

 

 

      The toilet tanks on commercial airliners often leak.  This results in the formation of deposits of blue ice on the fuselage.  The ice is composed of feces, urine, and blue liquid disinfectant.

   Now: occasionally, when a plane must descend very rapidly from a great height, as in the Rockies, chunks of blue ice ranging up to two hundred pounds can—and do—break off and shell the countryside.  I have seen a UPI wirephoto of an apartment in Denver which was demolished by a fifty pound chunk of blue ice.  (The airline bought the occupants a house.  Neither was hurt…and for awhile—until it began to melt—they were actually grateful for the coolness the bolus provided.  It was summer, you see, and the impact had destroyed their electric fan…)

   So even if you live where there are no strategic military targets, you can still be attacked by an icy B.M.…

 

 

 

      As many of you know, I just got back from visiting Juan Ortiz, an obstetrician friend of mine in L.A.  He was nominally on vacation, but one day there was an emergency delivery he just had to attend, so he deputized his brother-in-law Obie Stihl—honest to God, that’s his name, I’d never make up a name like that—deputized Obie to show me around town.  We went to Disneyland.  Obie turned out to be a dedicated Star Wars freak, with a sense of humor even more depraved than my own—we were passed by three sailors on the way in, for instance, and when he noticed they were all Chief Petty Officers, he made sure to point out the “Three C.P.O.s”…

      So he took me to Adventureland, where you go on a Jungle Boat Ride.  It could have been fun except for the damned boat captain.  Through the whole voyage he kept up a running monologue—that had shin splints.  Bad jokes, worse puns, even mother-in-law jokes. 

   As we got back to the wharf, just as I was stepping off the boat, Obie leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Now you’re getting to see the dock side of the farce…”

 

—Doc Webster 

 

(Abominable as this particular pun is, it was immediately topped by Jake Stonebender.  He announced that the most amazing feature of the Doc’s tale was his claim to have toured Disneyland with a fictional character: O.B. Juan’s kin, Obie…)

 

 

Puns (II)

-

Spontaneous Conversational 

Eructations, Mercifully Brief

 

 

Note: as these are mostly unattributed, blame cannot, at this late date, be positively assessed.  But it is safe to assume that better than half of them were perpetrated by Doc Webster.

 

 

 

 

 

We were going to explore the Kama Sutra…but at the last moment her Kama turned into a period…

 

 

 

 

 

Be he never so humble, there’s no police like Holmes.

—Bill White

 

 

 

 

The success of a pun is in the oy of the beholder.

 

 

 

 

 

Got a date with the doctor who did my vasectomy.  She believes in reaping what she sews.

 

 

 

The Buddhist hamburger joint: they’ll make you one with everything. 

 

The hackers’ burger joint: you can have chips with it. 

 

The junkies’ hot dog stand: they’ll sell you one with the works.

 

 

 

 

 

I know you’d like to screw like a bunny—but I just washed my thing, and I can’t do a hare with it.

 

 

 

 

  

Bulimia is one of those subjects which can only be discussed ad nauseam.

 

 

He acquitted himself well at the trial.  Regrettably, the jury did not follow his example… 

(He was blamed for something he didn’t do.  He didn’t wear gloves…)

 

 

 

 

 

He learned about sex by trial and error.  Now they’ve got him on trial for one or two of those errors… 

—Ronny Corbett

 

 

 

 

Name a cowboy hero you can’t even call by his first name without going insane.  

  

(Answer: Paladin, from HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL. His first name is "Wire"–it says so right there on his card: "Wire Paladin, San Francisco"–so to call him by name, you have to go, "Hey, Wire!")

 

  

  

 

 

The shortest distance between two puns is a straight line.

—David Gerrold

 

 

Songs

-

From the repertoire of 

Jake Stonebender and 

Fast Eddie Costigan, 

as performed on

Fireside Fillmore Nights

at Callahan's Place–

 

Those unattributed must be 

assumed to have been written 

by Jake and Eddie.

 

The Drunkard’s Song

 

 

A swell and wealthy relative of mine had up and died

And I got a hundred thousand from the will

So a friend and I decided to convert this into liquid form

The better our esophagi to fill

So we started in the city, had a drink in every shitty

Little ginmill, which is really quite a few

Then a cabbie up in Harlem took us clean across the river

Into Brooklyn, where he joined us in a brew

We was weavin’ just a trifle as we pulled into Astoria

At eighty miles an hour, in reverse

But it was nothin’ to the weavin’ that we did as we was leavin’

And from time to time it got a little worse

      Well, there’s nothing like drinkin’ up a windfall

      We was drunker than a monkey with a skinfull

      So goddam drunk it was sinful—and I think I ain’t sober yet

 

We was feelin’ mighty fine as we crossed the city line

Suckin’ whiskey and a-whistlin’ at the girls

But the next saloon we try, a fella wants to black my eye

’Cause he doesn’t like my shaggy hippy curls

So then a fist come out of orbit, knocked me clear across the floor

But I was fairly drunk and didn’t really care

And I was sorta disappointed when the coppers hit the joint

As I was makin’ my rebuttal, with a chair

Ah, but the coppers come a cropper, ’cause I made it to the crapper

And departed by a ventilator shaft

Met my buddies in the alley as they slipped out through the galley

And we ran and ran and laughed and laughed and laughed

      Well, there’s nothing like drinkin’ up a windfall

      We was drunker than a monkey with a skinfull

      So goddam drunk it was sinful—and I think I ain’t sober yet

 

Halfway out of Levittown we got our second wind

In a dump so down and out I had to laugh

So I had another mug, and my friend another jug

And the hack another pitcher and a half

When we got to Suffolk County we were goin’ into overdrive

The word had spread, and crowds began to form

We drank our way from Jericho along 110 to Merrick Road

A-boozin’ and a-singin’ up a storm

I lost my buddy and the cabbie in the middle of the Hamptons

We was drunker than it’s possible to be

But there finally came a time I didn’t have another dime

I sat on Montauk Point and wept into the sea

      Well, there’s nothing like drinkin’ up a windfall

      We was drunker than a monkey with a skinfull

      So goddam drunk it was sinful—and I think I ain’t sober yet

 

 

Afterglow

 

(Iris’s Song)

 

by Teodor Vysotsky

 

 

Tending to tension by conscious intent,

declining declension, disdaining dissent;

into the dementia dimension we're sent:

we are our content, and we are content.

 

Incandescent invention and blessed event,

tumescent distention, tumultuous descent:

our bone of convention again being spent,

I am your contents, and I am content

 

to be living…to be trying…to be crying…to be dying…(I want)

to be giving…to be making…to be breaking…to be taking 

all you have…

 

Assuming Ascension, Assumption, assent,

all of our nonsense is finally non-sent—

with honorable mention for whatever we meant…

You are my content, and I am content.

 

 

Time Travel Blues

 

 

You've heard of every kind of blues there is, I hear you say?

Well, I'm leavin' here tomorrow…and I just got back today

I got the time travel blues, look at the mess I'm in

I'm sad for what the past will be… and what the future       hasn't been

 

I longed to know the future, like the Oracle of Delphi

And then this cat knocked on my door: Goddam, it was myself! I

got the time travel blues, since I met myself comin' in;

I'd tell you all about it…but where the hell do I begin?

 

      He said that I was going to invent a time machine—

      That is to say, I told me, if you follow what I mean.

      I said, "I'm no inventor, man: I'll never ever get it."

      But he said "Copy this one, and we both can share the credit!"

 

I cranked it up, it blew right up, and then and there I died.

I wonder who that joker was, and why the bastard lied…

Got the time travel blues: one of my life's most awful shocks

Now I could use a doctor: in fact, I need a paradox

 

If I am dead, my murderer can't logically exist

But here I am in pieces, and I'm really gettin' pissed

I got the time travel blues—it's only natural, bein' dead

To want to think that time is really only in your head

 

 

Spice

 

 

And when I've just assuaged your lust

By flicker-light of telly

I love to lie between your thighs

My cheek upon your belly

To smell you and to feel you 

And to hear your small intestine

And know that this is perfect bliss

Just as it was predestined

 

In the hour that my death draws near

      And I wonder what my life was for

      It'll be the afterglows

      With your fragrance in my nose

      I'll remember and relive once more

 

And now I rest, caress your breast

And sail in satiation

On the oceanic motion

Of your rhythmic respiration

And now my lips and fingertips

Are flavoured sweet and sour

For I have nipped and fully sipped

My favorite furry flower

 

      In the hour that my death draws near

      And I wonder what my life was for

      It'll be the afterglows

      With your fragrance in my nose

      I'll remember and relive once more

 

I know in time I'll have to climb

Up next to you for sleep

With no regret, but not just yet

This moment let me keep

And suddenly it comes to me

—how glorious and dumb!—

I had so much fun making love

I plain forgot to come…

 

 

Please, Dr. Frankenstein

 

 

I've walked a thousand miles in an effort to retain ya

And I didn't come for charity: I fully plan on payin' ya

But I've been so depressive, guess I'm ready for some mania

That's why I've traveled all this way to gloomy Transylvania, singin

Please Dr. Frankenstein, won't you try and bring me back to life?

Cause I truly have been grieving' since I got "Goodbye, I'm leavin" from my wife

I'm slowly goin nuts because the memory of her cuts me like a knife

Please Dr. Frankenstein, won't you try and bring me back to life?

 

I cannot seem to find my pulse; my temperature is down

And I can tell I smell like hell, the way that people frown

I feel like rigor mortis, all I do is lay around

You gotta help me Frankenstein, I'm halfway in the ground (I'm beggin)

Please Dr. Frankenstein, I am up for any kind of change

Spent evenings in this coffin just a little bit too often, and it's strange

Please don't consider me more than some flesh for you and Igor       to arrange

Please Dr. Frankenstein, I am up for any kind of change

 

I'll stagger like the victim of a wreck

I'll wear those funny bolt-things in my neck

I’d love to be in stitches—what the heck

Do you need cash, or will you take a check?

 

I'm not afraid of what you'll do—I'm immunized to pain

Cause everything I ever had has bubbled down the drain

Make me the Pride of Frankenstein and I will not complain

Just strap me down and let me have a transplant of the brain: I need it

Please Dr. Frankenstein, won't you try and raise me from the dead?

My heart is barely beatin since I caught the woman cheatin in our bed

My entire world's a coffin and it doesn't get me off an like I said

Please Dr. Frankenstein, won't you try and raise me from the dead?

 

 

Come to My Bedside

by

Zaccur Bishop

 

 

Come to my bedside and let there be sharing

Uncounterfeitable sign of your caring

Take off the clothes of your body and mind

Bring me your nakedness; help me in mine…

 

Help me believe that I’m worthy of trust

Bring me a love that includes honest lust

Warmth is for fire; fire is for burning

Love is for bringing an ending to yearning…

 

For I love you in a hundred ways, and not for this alone

But your lovin’ is the sweetest lovin’ I have ever known

 

Come to my bedside and let there be giving

Licking and laughing and loving and living

Sing me a song that has never been sung

Dance at the end of my fingers and tongue

 

Take me inside you and bring up your knees

Wrap me up tight in your thighs and then squeeze

Or if you feel like it, you get on top

Love me however you please, but please…don’t stop

 

For I love you in a hundred ways, and not for this alone

But your lovin’ is the sweetest lovin’ I have ever known

 

      I know just what you’re thinking of

      There’s more to love than making love

      There’s much more to the flower than the bloom

      But every time we meet in bed

      I find myself inside your head

      Even as I’m entering your womb

 

So come to my bedside and let there be loving

Twisting and moaning and thrusting and shoving

I will be gentle; you know that I can

For you I’ll endeavor to be quite a singular man…

 

Here’s my identity, stamped on my genes

Take this my offering: know what it means

Let us become what we started to be

On that long-ago night when you first came with me…

 

O, lady! I love you in a hundred ways, and not for this alone

But your lovin’ is the sweetest lovin’ I have ever known

 

 

Out of Your Way

 

 

You went out of your way to make sure I’d love you

And now you say be patient for awhile

You went out of your way to be just as nice as you could be

Until I fell, and then you modified your style

You say you’re somebody else’s slave…I suppose we all got our crosses

But I ain’t nobody’s slave and I figure it’s time I cut my losses

You could end up mine some way, but baby until that day

I’m goin’ out of your way by a country mile

 

You went out of your way to make sure that I’d need you

You taught me the significance of need

And I went out of my way to show you who I am and how I fell

Which is for me a think remarkable indeed

You got a lotta laughs inside, but I’m afraid that’s where they’re keepin’

You got a lotta tears there too, and I reckon you’re much more fond of weepin’

You could end up mine, it’s so—but baby, until I know

I’m goin’ out of your way with all due speed

 

You went out of your way to make sure that I’d want you

With your eyes as much as with your knowing hands

But you’ll never be happy at all until you want to

And till I don’t want to be makin’ long-term plans

They’ve already dealt the hand: I’ll either win it or else I won’t

You understand how I feel and you either want me or else you don’t

Take as long as you need to decide—but baby, I got my pride

And I’m goin’ out of your way while I still can

 

—oh, can’t you see?

 

You ain’t no use to me like this: there ain’t enough of you left to miss

Why don’t you come out of your way, just one more time, with me?

 

 

Hardon You

 

 

I know my constant horniness gets hardon you

Sometimes it seems I’m always in the mood

If that is so I truly beg your pardon, too

It wasn’t my intention to be rude

      My love is like  my horniness, in that it never quits

      But I’d love you if you didn’t have those tits

 

Men have only got the one thing on their mind

It gets so repetitious it’s a crime

Somebody said a hard man is good to find

As long as you don’t find him every goddam time

      You are not only  something that I lust for, that I hunt

      I would love you if you didn’t have a cunt

 

I’m neurotically erotic, with a taste for the exotic

And your body is hypnotic when it’s next to me

I’m dementedly attentive, and in need of no incentive

But you know you represent much more than sex to me…

 

You know that I was horny for you from the start

And that’s the way it’s always gonna be

But you ought to know your sexiness is just a part

Of the value you will always have for me

      It may have been what caught my eye: it isn’t why I stick

      I would love you if I didn’t have a dick

 

 

Mountain Lady

(Jeanne’s Song)

 

 

Mountain Lady, sing for me: your singing makes me glad to be alive

Mountain Lady, give to me your lovin’, for it helps me to survive

Mountain Lady, stay with me, and let me drink your beauty with my eyes

I want you to lay with me, and be there in the morning when I rise

      

      You give me what I need, and you need what I can give

      Like you I live for loving, and like me you love to live

      I swear I’ll make you happy if there’s any way I can

      And if you will be my Mountain Lady, I will be your man…

 

 

Mountain Lady, smile for me: your smile is like the rising of the sun

Wait a little while for me—I’m coming back as fast as I can run

Mountain Lady, talk with me, for talking is essential to our growth

I want you to walk with me through all the days remaining to us both

      

      You give me what I need, and you need what I can give

      Like you I live for loving, and like me you love to live

      I swear I’ll make you happy if there’s any way I can

      And if you will be my Mountain Lady, I will be your man…

 

 

Mountain Lady, dance for me

Your dancing takes my breath away, you know…

Save that loving glance for me—I love it when you let your loving show

Mountain Lady, give to me a kind of love I’ve never had before

I want you to live with me: I cannot live without you any more…

      

      You give me what I need, and you need what I can give

      Like you I live for loving, and like me you love to live

      My love is deep and stronger than a river running wild

      I want to be your lover, and the father of your child…

 

 

Dramatis Personae: 

 

 

I believe in my heart of hearts—and in my brain of brains, for that matter—that an epigram should be like a good son-in-law: completely self-supporting.  If it needs footnotes, it’s not an epigram.  My old friend and esteemed editor Jim Frenkel, however (like clams, he’s better esteemed than eschewed), is certain you will find the epigrams in this book more enjoyable if you know a little something about their speakers.  And he is quite keen that you enjoy yourself, since he has overpaid me so outrageously for this volume and wants to be sure you’ll give copies to all your friends for Christmas.  Who could argue with that?  Well…me, for one. 

      It’s not just that I’m lazy, though I’m proud to say I am.  It’s not even that he’s getting extra work out of me for free, which offends my religion.  My feeling is that if you finish this book curious to know more about the people whose wit and wisdom hold its covers apart, the sensible thing for me to do would be to just refer you to the six available volumes in which they appear at much greater length, and hope you take the bait.  

      But in all fairness, I have to admit that might not be the most sensible thing for Jim to do, as none of those six books is published by this house just now. (Although Jim was the editor who bought the first Callahan book…and was working for Tom Doherty at the time!  Life is strange.)  Therefore I bow to his editorial insight, marketing savvy, and phenomenal endurance in argument. 

      Here, then, are as few words as I can get away with concerning all the wonderful people you’re about to hear:  [The descriptions in italics are quoted, and sometimes misquoted, from Chris McCubbin’s excellent text for the CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON role-playing game, available from Steve Jackson Games, Inc. of Austin, Texas.)

 

Mike Callahan: He built his bar in Suffolk County, in the image of countless other roadside Irish taverns in the New York area…a serene and reassuring presence, he always kept his place merry.  He looked like a big dumb Irishman, but it was impossible to talk to Callahan for more than a few minutes without realizing that he was a man of unusual depth, wisdom and sensitivity…from Big Beef McCaffrey, who tried to shortchange him, to the Mafia flunky who tried to scare him into renting a jukebox, anybody who tried to put the muscle on Callahan got the same treatment—a free trip to the parking lot, and probably a broken bone to remember it by.  He smoked big cheap cigars that he lit with non-safety matches.  His reverence for human dignity, privacy and liberty verged on the religious.  He never mentioned his subjective age.  It is assumed that he’s about the same age as his wife, who is well into her third century.  Mike was born centuries from now, in a place (possibly a planet) called Harmony.  Since it has taken me several books to even outline his mission in this ficton (a technical term for a space-time locus), I won’t attempt it here.  CALLAHAN'S SECRET has the best summary, I think.  Suffice it to say he is a good guy.

 

Lady Sally McGee: Lady Sally was Callahan’s spouse and counterpart in a battle across time.  She opened her famous brothel, Lady Sally’s House, in Brooklyn at the height of WWII, when such enterprises were tolerated…by the time the war was over, she had so many influential friends that there was no question of closing her place down.  A tiny, trim redhead who spoke in a patently phony British accent, Lady Sally was not an incredible beauty.  It was not her features, but her manner that accounted for her astonishing sexual appeal.  She considered sex an art, and studied it extensively.  Her employees were called “artists” (not prostitutes, and never “whores” or “hookers”).  Her artists were paid a regular salary plus room and board and allowed to keep any (optional) tips.  Her clients paid according to their means.  Her artists were of all seven sexes, and she catered to all sexual preferences except the dangerously violent.  Her Ladyship is much tougher than she looks, and has fewer scruples than her husband about killing evil people. 

 

Mary Callahan (now Mary Callahan-Finn): The only (known) child of Mike Callahan and Lady Sally, Mary was born and raised on Harmony.  When she reached adulthood, she began working for her mother, and despite what some would call a weight problem, soon established a reputation as one of the most professional and popular artists at Lady Sally’s House.  After a few years, she transferred to working literally behind the scenes, as her mother’s chief of security.  Where she got her training as a blacksmith is unknown.  She is a cheerful woman with a tremendous capacity for fun and no tolerance for evasions or self-delusions.  I do not think Mary has a weight problem (I think very few women have a weight problem—although a lot of them have a big jerk problem), and neither does Jake Stonebender.  She had a (very) brief affair with him, once, but is now married to: 

 

Mickey Finn: Alien cyborg, 6’ 11 1/2”, 600 lbs; apparent age 40…  Finn is the only survivor of a race exterminated centuries ago and far away by star-traveling monsters.  They filled him with enslaving machinery and made him a scout.  The very first Callahan story, “The Guy With The Eyes” (reprinted in CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON) concerns the night he walked into Mike’s Place and announced that his job required him to sterilize Earth, and he felt just terrible about it.  The response of Callahan’s patrons was to sympathize: they got him drunk.  Which, happily, shorted out the machinery that made him a slave.  He spent the next decade or so learning how to be human (he spent some years as a farmer), but has since left Earth with his new bride, Mary. 

 

Jake Stonebender: Narrator of the Callahan’s Place and Mary’s Place stories.  (And my financial arrangement with him is our business, okay?)  A likable, lanky man with shoulder-length hair and a beard.  If he doesn’t watch himself, he can get a bit strident about his liberal politics.  A gifted folksinger, he loves his guitar Lady Macbeth like family.  While Jake doesn’t have the most brilliant mind at Callahan’s, he may well have the quickest.  He certainly saved everyone there, and likely the whole planet as well, through his quick actions on the Night of the Cockroach…  Jake used to have a wife and daughter, once, until he decided he could fix his own brakes.  After their deaths, he tried suicide twice, and was fortunate enough to have his stomach pumped the second time by: 

 

Doc Webster: who prescribed for Jake a trip to Callahan’s Place, and not incidentally spared me a life of honest work.  In many ways Sam ‘Doc’ Webster is the leader of the gang, even more than Callahan himself.  While Mike is the unmoving center around which the bar orbits, Doc Webster is usually the one out there pushing the other patrons to do things, have fun and keep the Place merry.  An immense man, he is Callahan’s most profound drinker.  He’s also an excellent physician, who once removed Shorty Steinitz’s appendix on Callahan’s bar-top.  What most people remember about the Doc, though, is his immense, almost mythic joyousness.  He could break up the Sphinx with a one-liner that was old when it was built.  He is the all-time Punday Night champion. 

 

Long-Drink McGonnigle: The toughest and least charismatic of Callahan’s regulars, Long-Drink (he’s “one long drink of water,” 6 foot seven) is an indolent and independent man with a razor-sharp tongue and no time for nonsense—unless it’s amusing nonsense.  In spite of his attitude problem, Long-Drink isn’t as shallow as he likes to pretend.  He genuinely cares about people who are hurting—and not just his friends, either.  He cried openly when Jake broke Lady Macbeth.  I would have to say that Long-Drink’s sense of humor is the most primitive in the group.  And I’m going to get him back some day… 

 

Fast Eddie Costigan: Callahan’s bouncer and piano player.  Born in Brooklyn, he met Callahan after the war, at Lady Sally’s, and accepted the piano chair in the bar Mike was just building out on Long Island.  He resembles a badly-shaven chimpanzee.  As a bouncer, his technique is subtle and effective.  He knows he’s not as clever as the other guys at the bar, and he’s comfortable with that.  Still, he often surprises his friends with an unexpected insight or brings down the house with a quietly hilarious pun or wisecrack.  It was he who found a way to make the broken Lady Macbeth well again.  Eddie is the best damn piano man I ever hoid…uh, heard. 

 

Les Glueham & Merry Moore (A.K.A. The Cheerful Charlies): In the early ’70s, Les Moore and Merry Glueham were not happy people.  As if their names weren’t bad enough, they were also each out of work.  With nothing to lose, each called a guy named Flannery who cheered people up for a living—satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.  It worked.  Tom Flannery not only cheered Les and Merry up, but when he introduced them, they fell in love. Then he gave them jobs as his assistants.  When they got married, Les and Merry swapped last names—it seemed to work better that way.  Tom died a few months later, as he’d been expecting to, and Les and Merry kept the business going.  Their business card reads, “Have Fun—Will Travel.” 

 

Noah Gonzalez, Shorty Steinitz, Slippery Joe, Susie and Suzie Maser: regular patrons of Callahan’s Place.  Noah used to work on the county bomb squad; Shorty is the worst driver alive; the Masers have been a triune marriage ever since Joe’s wives found out about each other.  (It seems to serve him right.) 

 

Jim/Paul MacDonald: telepathic half-brothers with a fused identity, who appear first in CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON, and last in CALLAHAN'S SECRET.  They sacrificed themselves to save the world from a cockroach. 

 

Arethusa Quigley: surviving incarnation of a pair of telepathic twins.  In contrast to the MacDonald brothers, these identical blonde sisters, raised by religious fanatics who denied the concept of twinhood, grew up with only a single public identity, which they took turns investing.  The story of how they moved into a single skull together is told in lady slings the booze. 

 

Joe Quigley: former private dick from New York; now gone public.  He’s married to Arethusa, and they worked together at Lady Sally’s House in its final year.  I’ve always thought he’s a dead ringer for Dan Rather, myself, but he says he can’t see it. 

 

Josie Bauer: one of Callahan’s best-loved regulars.  A humor groupie, her unvarying custom was to offer to sleep with whoever won the Punday Night competition.  Few winners, male or female, ever turned her down, or reported regret afterwards.  Further deponent sayeth not. 

Rachel (last name unknown): 232 years old at the time she entered cryogenic suspension in 1973.  Fast Eddie visits her every week.  See CALLAHAN'S CROSSTIME SALOON for details. 

 

Maureen: this is probably Maureen Hooker, former artist in the employ of Lady Sally McGee, currently free-lancing as a team with her husband Willard, a legendary confidence man now retired from the game.  They fell in love in callahan’s lady.

 

Priscilla (last name unknown): Lady Sally’s bouncer; sort of a female version of the Terminator—the friendly one, from the second film.  Her heroic death is recounted in lady slings the booze; briefly, she died because she was bulletproof. 

 

Phillip (last name unknown) and Tim (last name unknown): alumnae of Lady Sally’s House; see cl and lstb for details. 

 

Father Newman: a Catholic priest who hung out…uh…religiously at Lady Sally’s House.  An organized and determined conspiracy of patrons, who attempted to nail down once and for all whether or not he ever actually availed himself of an artist’s services while there, disbanded with the question unresolved.  I know, but I won’t tell you. 

 

Woodrow W. Smith, Commodore Aaron Sheffield and Lazarus Long: Yep.  That guy.  Very merry gent.  For an explanation of how a fictional character could walk into a bar in real life, see “THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST—” by Robert A. Heinlein. 

 

Stinky Kettering: all anyone remembers about this guy is that he probably came in with Lazarus Long. 

 

Zebadiah J. Carter, Dr. Jacob Burroughs: see above note regarding W.W. Smith.  It was believed at the time that these customers might be gay (despite the fact that their female companions were knockouts) since they were overheard using that word an inordinate number of times.  The Heinlein novel cited above later explained the matter. 

 

Tommy Robbins: all I know is, the only surviving photo of him bears a remarkable resemblance to the guy who autographed my copy of even cowgirls get the blues.  Could be… 

 

Gentleman John Kilian: his photo resembles the guy who autographed my copy of stand on zanzibar.   

 

Larry Van Cott: strongly resembles the guy who autographed my copy of RINGWORLD, down to the detail that he apparently never drank anything but Irish coffee at Callahan’s.  The fact that said author writes a competing series of bar stories might account for the pseudonym… 

Chip Delany: looks very much like the guy who autographed my copy of babel-17. 

 

Edgar Pangborn: If this is indeed the Pangborn who wrote davy and “Angel’s Egg,” I could kick myself for missing him at Callahan’s.  He’s not with us any more, more’s the pity.  Look him up in the library! 

 

John D. MacDonald: again, if this was the author of the Travis McGee series and so many other fine books, I wish I’d bumped into him at Mike’s place; among other things, I always wanted to ask him what Meyer’s other name is, just to see how he’d answer … 

 

Ted Sturgeon: no question, this is that Ted Sturgeon, one of the two best science fiction writers who ever lived.  I brought him to Callahan’s myself.  He was Punday Night champion for eight weeks running, a record exceeded only by Doc Webster himself—and gave seminars in Unlimited Inquiry (the symbol you’ll find with his quote was part of his autograph, and stood for “Ask the Next Question…”); Marriages Involving Odd Numbers of Spouses, and Advanced Hugging.  God bless you, Theodore, wherever you are. 

 

Robert A. Heinlein: Ted’s only peer.  If you don’t know who he is, you should be reading one of his books instead of this one. 

 

Dick Buckley: internal evidence—and mutual friend Ed McCurdy—suggest this may have been the late Lord Buckley (the Gasser! 1907-1960), the legendary American monologist who composed and declaimed free-verse tributes to his heros in Hipster, a dialect created by black jazz musicians and later adopted and adapted by white jazz musicians, beatniks, hippies and other undesirables.  C.P. Lee states that, like Louis Armstrong, His Lordship never performed without firing up a large pipe of marijuana first; unlike Pops, he did so onstage.  Lee also claims that Buckley and an entourage once crashed a Sinatra concert at the Waikiki Sheraton, stark naked.  (George Harrison’s song “Crackerbox Palace” was named for Lord Buckley’s home.)  Though his frame be long stashed, His Lordship’s surviving records are well worth the trouble of seeking out. 

Tom Waits: Yes, this would seem to be the well-known pop star, songwriter, actor and former jazz singer—who once gave me permission to quote his song “$29 and an Alligator Purse” in my novel mindkiller, in exchange for $29.00.  (Guess he didn’t need a purse…) 

 

Stephen Gaskin: a preacher and semiretired wizard, who taught classes on spirituality at the Family Dog back at the dawn of the Hippie Era, crossed the continent with a convoy of school buses, and eventually founded the most successful of the hippie communes, The Farm, in Summertown, Tennessee.  (It’s still there—and so is he—but the last time I visited, they were pointedly ignoring each other.)  At its peak The Farm consisted of 1,000+ freaks on 1000+ acres, totally self-supporting and living in harmony with their rural neighbors.  Their international disaster-relief arm, Plenty, was praised as a model by the Canadian government.  Nowadays the Farm is a corporation: you own shares, or some such; and I’m not sure what happened to Plenty since everyone I knew in it has quit.

     I got no use for gurus and holy men.  Irish whiskey works just fine for me.  But I’m willing to punch the ticket of Stephen, and of one of his teachers, Shunryu Suzuki-roshi—because neither of them ever claimed to be any more than a guy who’d had a few minutes to think, and had noticed some interesting things.

     One quick Stephen story that may make my point: he gets up from dinner one night in the early ’70s to answer the door: there stands an awestruck young man who says he’s just walked here from the Coast because he’s decided his mission in life is to follow Stephen around and record his every utterance for posterity, unobtrusively and at the lad’s own expense.  Stephen gently closes the door in his face and returns to the table.  “Who was that?” asks his wife Ina May.  “A temptation from the Evil One,” Stephen murmurs, and finishes his soyburger…

    That’s my kind of preacher.  Which is partly why I wrote the introduction to his latest book, haight-ashbury flashbacks (Ronin Press 1992).  To give you an idea, its original 1980 edition was titled amazing dope tales.  

Charlie Daniels:  one of my oldest and best friends in the world; directly responsible for my move to Canada in the ’70s; presently straightening spines and otherwise practicing chiro in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.  The Lucky Duck, who appears in the current book the callahan touch, bears a bit of a resemblance to Charlie.  Less sarcastic, though…  

 

Anonymous: a Callahan’s regular so self-effacing that no one can recall much about him.  Not even how he got that name, which I’m sure we must have asked.  In fact, I’m not sure he isn’t still around Mary’s Place somewhere. 

Sam Meade: a passing folksinger who ended up in Nova Scotia. 

 

Edison Ripsborn: nothing is known about this customer.  Related to Pangborn somehow? 

 

Ben Bova: Yes, the Ben Bova, multiple-award-winning writer, ex-editor (of Analog and Omni) and space enthusiast, and my oldest friend in this business.  (Well, I knew Jim Frenkel first, but neither of us was in the business then.)  He became a regular at Callahan’s shortly after I sold him the very first of Jake’s stories about it, in 1972…and he and Barbara are still seen in Mary’s Place (the bar Jake opened up after Callahan’s Place was destroyed) today.  But not often enough…

 

 

About The Author

 

Photo by Greg McKinnon

 

Spider Robinson was born in the Bronx, NY, in 1948, the year Robert A. Heinlein married Virginia Gerstenfeld—and in 2006 he became the only author ever to collaborate with Mr. Heinlein on a novel, VARIABLE STAR.  Since 1973 he has published over thirty-five books, and won three Hugos, a Nebula, the John W. Campbell Award, and numerous other international honours. 

      He moved to Canada in 1974, and became a Canadian citizen in 2004.  His Callahan’s Place stories inspired the creation of the longrunning Usenet newsgroup alt.callahans and other cybernetworks.  From 1995-2004 he published an op-ed column (“The Crazy Years,” later called “Future Tense”) in Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail.  In 2006 he became the first Writer In Residence at Vancouver’s H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, and in 2010 he was named sixth Writer In Residence at the Vancouver Public Library.  He has written songs with David Crosby and Todd Butler, and recorded original music with Amos Garrett and Michael Creber.  His award-winning podcast Spider On The Web has appeared regularly since 2007, and he has been Toastmaster at two World Science Fiction Conventions.

      He was married for 35 glorious years to Jeanne Robinson, a dancer, writer and Buddhist priest with whom he co-authored the Hugo- and Nebula-winning THE STARDANCE TRILOGY.  In 2004, they were both separately invited by First Lady Laura Bush to appear at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.  Since Jeanne’s death in May 2010, Spider has lived alone on an island in Howe Sound, British Columbia.  He suspects his granddaughter Marisa Alegria da Silva might just be the long-awaited Maitreya Buddha, who will bring enlightenment to all sentient beings.

      For further information visit www.spiderrobinson.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Books by Spider Robinson

Foreword

Graffiti

Puns (I)

Puns (II)

Songs

Dramatis Personae

About The Author