Anvil in a Lace Bootie

The key word in the kwiz is ‘regularly’. Though it’s common knowledge that Buster did everything listed, the only activity he undertook ‘regularly’ was hanging out in his lair under the Mojave Desert. There he escaped the hustle bustle of Hollywood and relaxed with his harmonica and several trained mice.

Buster Keaton regularly:

a. swam to Catalina, ate a fish sandwich, and swam back to Santa Monica.

b. visited his secret lair hidden under the Mojave Desert.

c. slept in a canoe.

d. fell into his swimming pool while wandering around blindfolded.

e. remodeled his oil derricks and vice verse.

These are the facts we’ve gathered up to this particular moment in time.

1. The puffy parrot was seen boarding the bus shortly after the noon siren sounded.

2. The bus, devoid of passengers, was found floating off City Pier by a Venetian merchant.

3. Officer Chip Hargity found the note pinned to the visor above the driver’s seat.

4. The note, in a barely legible scrawl, reads as follows: If you want the passengers returned alive, deliver all the crackers to Peachum’s daughter at the warehouse. I want those crackers.

Opinions, ladies and gents?

Three little maids who, all unwary

Come from a ladies’ seminary

Freed from its genial tutelary

Three little maids from school

A very nice production of ‘The Mikado’ was performed by some flowers at the park yesterday. These three were a delight as the three little maids. The flower playing YumYum (center) was particularly enchanting.

A pair of twins crossed the granite apron above the tree line. They paused for a moment to contemplate the sheer wall of rock to be conquered rising high before them. Adjusting his toga, the first twin, Nicetus, slowly but surely began his ascent, carefully finding footholds for his sandals and niches for his fingers to grasp. Nasteus, arms folded, observed his brother’s progress with a cruel frown. Then, slowly but surly, he followed Nicetus up the face of the cliff. On reaching the top, Nasteus snarled, “Well, what’s that supposed to prove?” Nicetus shrugged in the manner of Atlas.

Yes, all this merely to get ‘slowly but surely’ and ‘slowly but surly’ into the same paragraph.

They have springtime on other worlds, too, you know.

If anybody finds this diary, I will throw myself into the river.

Shadow Country chugs along nicely, then leaps into high gear when the voice of Carrie Watson chimes in.

In the midnight laundromat The Spirit of the Typewriter folded towels vehemently in an effort to banish aching memories of The Spirit of the Adding Machine. No use, no use, he thought, and abandoning all dignity and stoic acceptance, The Spirit of the Typewriter depressed his space bar. Instantaneously whisked to an establishment located a few kilometers above the dark side of the moon, The Spirit of the Typewriter slumped into a velvet booth.

“What’ll it be, pally?” asked the slender barkeep, voice raised to soar above the syncopated sound of the house band tearing through a jazzed up version of ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’.

“Rubbing alcohol, and leave the barrel,” replied The Spirit of the Typewriter.

And so, The Spirit of the Typewriter drowned his sorrows in a bar hovering above the far side of the moon. Meanwhile, The Spirit of the Adding Machine was similarly occupied somewhere in the Crab Nebula. Each Spirit remained ignorant of lost love’s location. Ignorance, my friends, is not always bliss.

All is the answer. You thought love? No, all. Bette smoked between 40 and 70 packs a day from the day she turned 8. How then, you ask, did she live to be 81? Her genetic blueprint had her penciled in to live to the age of 212.

Bette Davis:

a. smoked more cigarettes than anybody else in all of history.

b. when home alone, smoked cigarettes six at a time.

c. trained herself to sleepsmoke.

d. was the first person to have Bette Davis eyes.

e. smoked while exercising.