Hugh Hall Hef

This month we lost both Hugh Hefner and Monty Hall, the world’s most notorious playboy and television’s ultimate salesman and though we were told that the mystery was what was behind doors number one, two or three it was the other side of the gate of the Playboy Mansion that held our fascination. 

The carefully choreographed and extensively photographed fantasy of Hefner’s hedonistic heaven with young women so cute they didn’t need to be built and so built they didn’t need to be cute adorned his magazine and domicile even as Hef graced into the extreme codgerdom of 91. 

His perennial penile pipe and more recently adorned white yachting cap only made his forward leering posture the nightmare of the wealthy Popeye.  

Starting in the last months of the Kennedy Administration, Canadian Monty Hall created, produced and hosted Let’s Make A Deal that exploited the contestants’s needs and fantasies with a three card monte style faux giveaway show. Its “lucky” victims were chosen from a mob of desperate humdrums dressed for maximum humiliation. 

Monty carefully navigated their choices between tightly rolled wads of greenbacks and curtains hiding joke gifts, off brand furniture and appliances and off season tourist junkets. The entire program was based on duping contestants out of  their last shred of dignity with a bevy of tacky room sets and desert heat vacations. Appliances by no name companies were erotically massaged by models while the voice from above described them.  A full one third of air time was filled with outright commercials for cheap crap masquerading as enticements.

The daytime show was a perfect fantasy for housewives desexed by childrearing and isolated drudgery: a well dressed, charmless, harmless man offering gifts and excitement and drama. Choices. The unbearable horror of choices. 

Contrast this with Hefner’s two late evening television offerings, Playboy’s Penthouse and Playboy After Dark. Both short run variety shows were set in Hef’s apartment where performers and models listened to and ogled each others talents. The pretense that the fashion and passion advise of the libertine philosopher could turn even a nerdy, dirty Chicago divorcee into the world’s happiest and hippest fellow was the underlying premise of both programs.   

Monty Hall was the only thing to look forward to on my bedridden school days after I Love Lucy. HH’s magazine opened my eyes to more than just bosoms. I first read feminists and Nobel Prize winning authors, interviews with Castro,  candidate Jimmy Carter and leaders of Civil Rights movement. And I loved the cartoons.  

Farewell to thee leading purveyors of late 20th Century fantasy. For now both of you know for all of time what lies behind Door Number Three.

Don Arrup

Satire1

Hurry-Cane Health Care Bill

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) declared the third attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare dead after a five day attempt to resuscitate a warmed over clone of the last bill. Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spent an entire lunch break ten days ago carefully crafting an alternative health insurance proposal claiming that “not a millionaire will lose their Medicare” on. 

Libertarian Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky called the bill another “fake repeal” while John McCain (R-AZ) threatened to check back into the Hanoi Hilton for his brain cancer treatment if this bill passed.

Just after Senator David “Chick” Perdue (R-GA) complained that the Republican caucus has had nine months “enough time to bake a baby” to repeal Obamacare Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) pointed out the bill was crafted in less time then it took to conceive a child. 

“Bill Cassidy and the Slam Graham Kid should have just played another two holes of golf rather than waste time and paper on this bill,” Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said. “You can’t write major legislation that affects the health of the entire nation by what comes to a premature ejaculation of a two handed circle jerk.“

Don Arrup

Satire1 

Trump Denies Entry to Jose and Maria

In an interview at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, President Trump announced that hurricanes Jose and Maria were undocumented atmospherics and would not be allowed to cross United States borders.

Though none of the bills submitted in Congress extend a path of citizenship to hurricanes or typhoons, the president, uncharacteristically subtle, implied that those with northern European names (Harvey & Irma) were welcome while those with Hispanic handles were not. 

Representatives of the three quarters of a million New Yorkers of Puerto Rican descent protested  pointing out that Hurricane Maria was named after the most popular song from West Side Story. Trump said the song was about a Puerto Rican girl and Puerto Rico is where the hurricane is headed. 

“Houston will be protected in the future as we are going to extend the wall to protect us not only from invasion from Mexico but also from the Gulf of Mexico,” the president said. “This should also protect most of Florida. My first and most sacred duty as president is to protect the swing states in an election year.”

Meteorologists from across the globe concurred that hurricanes have never been recorded breaching the Great Wall of Kansas and that flood insurance costs in Arizona and New Mexico should come down. 

“The American people elected me because the American people want to suffer American disasters. Enough of these half assed, half spent hand me down hurricanes that a bunch of little tourist traps and tax shelters pass on to us after all the real drama is over.”

“There will be no more page two destruction, after the commercial coverage and unworthy of pundit pontification national “events” while these so called countries that are too small to even make a decent golf course out of grab all the attention and sympathy.”

Don Arrup

Satire1

iPhools

(Scene: The bridge of a 23rd century starship just after a huge pop bang boom!)

Captain Kirk

My god, what was that Spock?

First Officer Spock

We just went through some type of antimatter hurricane in space. We are presently following the heels of a giant hurricane on your home planet.

Kirk

I could use a weekend back home.

Spock

The computer indicates that it must have also been a time warp. The year is 10 iP.

Kirk

Ten years after the first iPhone?

Spock

Apparently. I’m picking up images of humans with earplugs visually submersed in the tiny screens they hold before them and follow.

Kirk

It must be the late teens of the twenty first century when the computer companies gave up on robots and decided to enslave their customers instead.

Spock

I’ve read that it took less than a decade. 

Kirk

The amazing thing is how blatant Apple was. They literally called the master bot iPhone. The small i was the customer who was surrendering himself to the capitalized super gadget. 

Spock

Yes, it was marketed as a useful tool when in reality it was turning the customers into useful tools. 

Kirk

App and plan buyers. Apple had competition but with people lining up for hours to sacrifice themselves there were more than enough suckers to go around.

Spock 

Smartphones and idiot buyers.

Kirk

In no time the foolphones were replacing human interaction.

Spock

Every one of the meager cognitive abilities humans had evolved were being replaced by apps.

Kirk

My grandmother told me her grandmother couldn’t add or subtract, had any idea where she was without GPS. She didn’t even have any idea what to feel or where emotions might come from outside of emojis. 

Spock

Perhaps it was senility.

Kirk

This is when she was twenty six and at the top of her class at Harvard Business School.

Spock

Didn’t a tycoon run the United States with Morse code in that period?

Kirk

I think Morse code was in the war century. Tweets. He ran the free world with Tweets.

Spock

Like Tweety Bird?

Kirk

Yes, the symbol was a bird. He must have been Tweety Bird or Twitter Bird. Blond fellow. Big pants.

Spock

Within a generation the eyesight of children was closer to a mole’s than that of their parents. The four fingers on each hand began to web and thumbs developed an extra joint. The memory area of the brain shrank from a baseball to a peanut. 

Kirk

People constantly documented their activities and tried to seduce their phones with naughty or humorous photographs of themselves to prove to their masters that they were worthy of them. 

Spock

From the images I’m collecting presently it appears that we are at the lowest point for the humans of Earth. Sensors are picking up what appear to be electronic mating calls. Apparently humans couldn’t even mate without their phones. 

Kirk

That was a long time developing and for many phone procreation was as far as they progressed.

Spock

Frankly Captain, I am surprised your species survived.

Kirk

The citizens of every country handed over their entire lives, relationships, finances, education, sanity and sovereignty over to Internet computers.

Spock

How did they ever free themselves from their phony fetish?

Kirk

Something newer and shinier came along.

Don Arrup

Satire1 

Yuma Owe Me An Explanation

Dear Bookbag,

After four visits in the first two days of my holiday weekend from Supervisory Special Agent Heffernan and Field Agent Anistossio and the six hour long “interview” at the FBI office below Chambers Street on Labor Day when I could have been fingering my flute to commercial soaked reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies I am a little ticked. 

Every time you and Midge go to a “pool party” North Korea ups their atomic pop somewhere underground in the Pacific where all pool parties take place. I know it only made the Times this last weekend but the pop off really was the week before as if you didn’t know. 

The Bureau wanted to know what an itinerant stage scribe and curriculum marm were doing at an outdoor North Korean reception in Baltimore drinking H bomb shots and Thermonuclear wine while President Trump’s and Xi Jing Ping’s pants were dropping faster than real estate prices in Seoul. I told them you two go wherever the wine is free.

Then they started asking why you two were no longer walking in the park formerly known as Robert E. Lee. I told them some hip shit hammer toe stories which they didn’t buy for a second so I went off into some Lady in the Lake Roland riff about a former Army sergeant penpalling the hotsy tot from his hometown high school and a mink pillbox virgin champagne pop what- 

did you know John Ashbery died? Later. Who doesn’t love dead poets? 

Supervisory Special Agent Heffernan wanted to know why you two were stirring up civil war in Korea just like you did in the United States before you started dating. 

I told them I didn’t know. Was it the sushi connection? Were you tired of people cooking meat on a table? And what they do to cabbage. Or was it that fat guy who dances to the music that sounds like a cat trapped in the back of an old television? Before flat screens.

They asked about your relationship and I told the agents that maybe Midge thought she was marrying Paladin from Have Gun Will Travel but she ended up with The Rebel Johnny Yuma. Not bad really. Most women of her shoe size thought they were marrying Paul Newman or Robert Redford and ended up with Mr. Ed.

They wanted to know if you still had that journal you kept of your adventures in Postbellum Texas and if you were still a Reconstruction Beatnik in your Confederate cap and buckskin shotgun low slung Remington Beals. Then they asked if you tore down Robert E. 

I told them I didn’t know. I did tell them that it wouldn’t surprise me. With Texas Ted and his grand old posse cruising back to DC, 10 gallon hats in hand and muddy boots to beg for what they voted against after Sandy nothing surprises me.

Heffernan and Anistossio eventually invited me to beat it and so I did. You probably are more Paladin today anyway. You dress really good for a straight guy. Not that I’d know. I surrendered to whatever doesn’t grab my ass every time I sit down. But I don’t miss Paladin like I miss Johnny Yuma.

Confederate ghosts spook some folks and comfort others. What statues stand for every community and generation will have to fight over themselves. There’s been a civil war over our Civil War fought left and right, North and South, in the light and shadows ever since Appomattox and sometimes it’s called civil rights. I guess it’s like our revolution. Never over. Never should be.

You ought to don your grey sky again and pony on down to Florida with a fuck it bucket. Bail out all the good folks who had their ass kicked by Irma. For all our politics and bullshit grandma and babies don’t have a color or accent when you’re pulling them out of the jaws of disaster. And whether the bronze boys are heroes or villains or North Koreans they won’t complain.

Don Arrup

Satire1

Alice in Issues Land

The US District Court of Manhattan has issued 212 permits this year to groups protesting the controversial Alice in Wonderland statue in New York’s Central Park. The court has also issued 420 permits for demonstrations supporting the work. The sculpture depicts characters from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland just above the east 72cd Street entrance close to the Children’s Zoo.

Members of Leave Kids Alone claim that the posture and disposition of the seven year old heroine suggests she is “servicing” the oddballs and animals surrounding her and is a celebration of child molestation and bestiality while the Champions of Pedophilia counter marched claiming the figures depict our heritage of child marriage and cross breeding. Three Native American tribes claim that the mushroom the party takes place on is a sacred part of their religion while Japanese Americans think the mushroom represents Nagasaki’s worst day.

Last month, Antifa clashed  with supporters of the National Organization of Women over whether White Rabbit was White Supremacist Rabbit or Playboy Rabbit. As the blood spilled out into the street Brownshirts and Ku Klux Klan members entered and polished WR and pledged undying loyalty to the figure chanting “White on white is right!”

Over a dozen Tea Party groups from across the nation have paid tribute to their founder The Mad Hatter who has been particularly jovial for an inanimate bronze object since President Trump was elected.  A few conservation groups have made appearances questioning the absence of his Mad Tea Party mates March Hare and the narcoleptic Dormouse. In March, Black Rabbits Matter formed a strike line in front of the statue for a week protesting the absence of the dark March Hare and the prominence of The White Rabbit.

Food Purists and Anti-GMO groups chose to bring their own Mock Turtle figure who is not depicted in the diorama. Mock Turtle who sings “Beautiful Soup” to Alice as he blubbers has a calve’s head on a turtle’s body illustrating how a calve’s head was often substituted for the pure pescetarian delicacy. 

Other characters not portrayed in the diorama proved no less controversial. Numerous Democratic clubs and organizations that supported Bernie Sanders marched around the statue against the Clintons who they said acted like the Queen and King of Hearts in the last election.

Don Arrup

Satire1

Transgender Joe

By the winter of 1964 the four sisters next door had already divvied up the Fab Four for future wedlock and crowned Barbie the Queen of whatever activity her wardrobe suggested. The toy manufacturing terrorist organization Hasbro had long decided that the one inch plastic soldiers sold by the platoon to boys were of such low profit margin that Japan and Taiwan could have them. 

Hasbro, however, knew that there was no greater appetite in the world than an American boy’s hunger for war and destruction. The only question was how to satisfy and hopefully addict boys to a unique weapon, game or whatever that would require countless upgrades or ammunition. Their answer was a doll for boys: GI Joe. 

Hasbro realized that they couldn’t call Joe a doll. Gender confusion was a capital crime in the early 1960’s so the bros at Hasbro created the term “Action Figure” which in England was changed to “Action Man.”

Since GI Joe lacked reproductive equipment the neutral term “figure” remained both more accurate and more confusing at the same time. Countless boys wondered if they could be in the military when they grew up even though they had genitalia. Many boys, like my younger brother and myself, who had investigated our neighbors unadorned Barbie doll realized that Barbie and Joe were the same down there.

My younger brother, hypnotized by commercials transmitted between Three Stooges shorts, requested a GI Joe while on Santa’s lap that December. Santa came through and on one of those rainy winter days when we would venture next door to play with the sisters the dolls came out.

All of us were transfixed the moment my brother and the eldest sister Elizabeth turned Joe and Barbie to face each other. Nothing seemed to happen at first. Plastic can be very emotional but almost never mercurial. Barbie and Joe played it cool.

I never felt affection for either doll. They didn’t portray gender beauty or virtue. They lampooned it. In a way, the dolls reflected the rigidity of our stereotypes. 

By my high school years boys and girls were wearing similar unisex fashion clothes and hairstyles. Women wearing pants found their vaginas sealing up just as the doctors had warned. Long haired boys developed breasts and their penises shrank to clitoral dimensions. As gender disappeared in the late Baby Boomers political changes were taking place as well. Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party embraced the death of gender but they were defeated by Ronald Reagan and the Cowboy Republicans.  

Conservative orthodoxy at the time believed that only the constant handling of firearms, power tools and sport utility vehicles could maintain American manhood so a mega defense buildup began. Gun laws, building codes and clean air regulations were eased or erased. As the waves of testosterone began slapping our shores again and newly skirted women’s vaginas opened like Morning Glories in sunshine a Golden Age of conflict free matrimony, prolific pregnancy and idyllic college romance reined for two generations.

But Life and the World have a way of balancing things out. This excess of problem free bliss allowed Americans to indulge and each year our girth grew. Now our obesity is destroying our gender. Testosterone abhors a belly and our shapelessness and abominable abdominal overhang hides if not smothers our sex. Psychologists and shoe salespeople report increasing incidents of citizens with neutral names like Pat and Terry forgetting their gender and standing in the middle of stores screaming for shoes. 

Appropriate footwear.

And isn’t that what we all want? 

Throughout these decades of sexual identity mayhem only Barbie and Joe have remained relatively unchanged. True, Barbie has put on a little weight and her breast bumps have succumb to the gravity of popular criticism. Joe has remained tight lipped about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and Trump’s You’re Out of Here Because You’re Queer.

So, for those of you who don’t currently know a G.I. Joe, Satire1 interviewed one of the original twenty two million Joes produced by Hasbro in the mid 1960’s. Our Joe is a veteran of the Vietnam War, Grenada, both Gulf Wars and Afghanistan and ten pre pubescent American boys. He is presently unassigned and possibly retired.

S1

Private Joe. What are your thoughts on President Trump’s tweet that he will discharge every member of the United States armed forces who is suspected of being transgender or does anything to blur the lines of gonadial destiny?

Joe

S1

Would crossdressers in the ranks compromise our security and by they’re very presence draw sneak attacks from China, North Korea, Iran, Germany, Russia, Vietnam, Japan, Canada, India and Norway?

Joe

S1

Would fully embracing the individual’s right to choose their gender identity jeopardize hard earned protections for women like Title IX and minority contracts?

Joe

S1

As a doll, you probably don’t go to the bathroom but can you understand how women of a long oppressed minority might interpret men of any color or preference as invading what little public privacy and dignity this society affords them?

Joe

S1

Now that biologists have determined that gender is a delicate balance of the estrogen and testosterone that fluctuates in each human being not only throughout our gestation as a fetus but throughout our entire lives and is at least calling into question the concept of a lifelong fixed polar gender identification do you refuse to wear pink because the United States Armed Forces do not have uniforms in that color or because you feel that it looks and/or is girly?

Joe

S1

What relationship is demanded by the Constitution of the United States of America between individual citizens and their fellow citizens? Between individual citizens and their local government, state government and federal government? 

Joe

S1

Can I quote you on that?

Joe

Don Arrup

Satire1

How To Pass A Health Care Bill

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate Majority Washroom.

“Hey, Jack, been looking all over for you. Don’t use that soap. There’s no hot water and you’ll never get it off your hands. I’ve been thinking about your concerns about leaving Medicaid intact and, believe me, I am in complete agreement with you on this but even though almost a third of my constituents are on it- mostly in nursing homes- the only ones who vote in every election- Hank, he’s the numbers guy on this bill- he says that Medicaid is such a budget buster that it will implode of its own weight in ten years before anything in this bill even really kicks in. So, can I count on your vote? Every one of us knows there isn’t a damn thing in it you agree with but I guarantee it will play out just how you want.”

“Bill, Bill, there’s no toilet paper in that stall. Oh, too late. Well, here, let me just get some from this stall. Let me see if I can get this whole roll off. Doesn’t look like it. I’m going to feed you under the separator here the end of this roll and you just pull nice and even and you’ll have as much as you need. Don’t let it go slack. I think there’s some water on the floor here. Now, about your vote on repeal and replace. Can I count on your support this time? I know you feel that we haven’t given enough funds to Medicaid but it’s only a cap on growth not a cut. Maybe we better talk about this later. My glasses are fogging up. We’ve tagged Medicaid growth to the general inflation rate but the donkeys will be back in power sometime before all this kicks in so it really is no real fuss in the real world. You know we don’t deal with reality here. This is the Senate.”

“Tom, Tom, Tom Tom. Excuse me. Well, isn’t your wife the lucky woman. I wanted to talk to you about your opposition to cutting funds to Planned Parenthood. I can understand why a man of your endowment might hesitate to- opps- unexpected dip for the big boy, heh? You made quite a splash. Let me get you some paper towels. I can see why you might want to protect funds that deal with unwanted pregnancies but PP advises on abortion as well and you know that isn’t going to fly with our base. So, we were all hoping that you would reconsider and maybe we can slip them a couple of bucks in a defense appropriations bill. No one’s read one of those in decades. Okay? So you let PP go and I’ll let you go PP.”

“Chuck, Chuck. What? The zipper’s stuck? Here, I used to work on cars when I was a teenager. While I help you with- your shirt’s caught up in the upper teeth here again- help you with this we’ve got to discuss funding for diabetes and obesity. Now, I know you don’t believe that Americans are really overweight and I agree that the liberal media is run by anorexics but being what you call well fed - can you pull your stomach in some I’ve almost got it- both stomachs- well fed for a hog state can affect the health of some of our citizens from less vigorous areas of the country. Just two more teeth and you’re a free man here, Chuck. Now, can you free me?”

Don Arrup

Satire1

Let's Party

All you have to do to destroy the Democratic Party is give them both houses of Congress and the White House and they will pass legislation that nobody likes.

All you have to do to destroy the Republican Party is give them both houses of Congress and the White House and they won’t pass any legislation and will actually make the Democratic legislation popular.

Don Arrup

Satire1