for 31 July 1998. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Rhyme & Reason

What, no rewrite of the
M*A*S*H lyrics?

<Merelout@aol.com>

Subject: Your song-poems put
to music ...

Wunnerful! As Lawrence Welk
used to say (especially doing
Quincy, which had some of the
most splendidly bad theme
music of the '70s). But, as
long as you were looking
backward, how could you
resist the coolest wordless
TV theme song of all, that
for Hawaii Five-0h?
RDWWWWWWWW

Ralph Ward
<2206@nethawk.com>

Merelout and Ralph -
Thanks for writing. Ralph, you
wouldn't be any relation to
the penis named "Ralph" in
Judy Blume's epic Forever,
would you? No matter. To
business: M*A*S*H's theme
song - "Suicide is Painless"
- has lyrics already, ones
written, I believe by earnest
Loudoun Wainwright IIIXMIV.
Hawaii Five-O is another
matter, though I must confess
to having steered clear of
it, having had too many of my
already dying brain cells
filled with the catchy tune,
thanks to the College
Marching Band, whose ability
to bang out "Five-O" was
only rivaled by its skills at
"Louie Louie" and the
unbelievable social
retardation of the Monty
Python-quoting bandies. But
I'll consider it for the
future.

James Bong

Subject: TV themes

Let's put it this way: Quincy
was a player. Sure he drove a
big black station wagon
around, sure he had some
funky clothes and hung out in
a nautical-themed dive bar
(and I think I know where it
is actually located), but did
you see his yacht? There were
always some broads lounging
around.

And who does that voice-over
for the A-Team theme? Sounds
kinda like Martin Sheen,
after a couple of stiff
drinks.

After that, I got bored and
listened to some MP3s ripped
from a bootleg CD recording
of a concert.

Although if you would have
had some Starsky and Hutch
comments or Magnum, P. I.
references, I might have hung
in there.

John Fracisco
<john.fracisco@trw.com>

Quincy did, indeed, seem to
score an unfathomable amount
of quality "skirt." As did
Magnum, P. I., especially when
you consider the fact that he
was so clearly gay. After a
few stiff drinks, that is.

No time to hate,
James Bong

Subject: Rhyme and Reason

Excellent piece today and a
shining example of why
RealAudio shouldn't be
blocked by our firewall. I
still enjoyed the MIDI files
though, and they took me back
to a place I once knew. Ahh,
the joys of the A-Team.

One question, why did you
leave out some obvious
favorites? Perhaps in the
future you could do a Part
Deux to this piece. Some
suggestions:

- Knight Rider
- CHiPS

I would give you more, but I
can't think of more that are
worthy of lyrics.

Also, congrats to Terry Colon
on the art for each page
today. The Law and Order one
was great.

Keep up the good work!

Garett Trietsch
<GARETTT@am1.ericsson.se>

I, too, was impressed by
Terry's strong Watterston and
Orbach caricatures, as well
as his Jennings. On a related
subject, and to answer your
query, I had written up the
lyrics for both CHiPS and Knight
Rider, but Terry refused to
sketch Erik Estrada, Larry
Wilcox, and David Hasselhoff.
Some bad history there, some
party at Magnum's pad that
got out of hand or something.
Ask him about it sometime.

James Bong

Subject: HA HA HA!!!

On Rhyme & Reason:

Holy shit ... that's the
funniest thing I've seen you
guys do in a long time.

Chris
<cdrucken@isd.net>

Just so you all know, Joey
rejected this idea the first
time. I had to go back to him
and pitch it again. One of
Newsweek's 50 most important
people on the Internet, my
arse! Not only that, but he
crashed at my pad last week,
and I swear my two cats now
have an infection that the
vet remains stymied by.
Little Pink has scabs on her
forehead, and Scout is missing
a patch of hair on her back.
"Have they come into contact
with any strange substances?"
Yeah, the freakin' Duke of
URL. Hide your pets,
sucksters.

James Bong

Filler

"Slimy, flappy people:
bearded clams." Oh my, I
can't even type I'm laughing
so hard. I'm a woman, I love
women, I love men, but most
of all, I'm happy that you
wrote that. Owwww, my
forehead hurts from whapping
it on the desk when I doubled
up in laughter. Thanks for
the mamaries.

Nicole Becken
<ocupante@minn.net>

The cheap laughs get 'em
every time. Just look at
There's Something About
Mary.

Go see it. It's funny. Anyone
who doesn't think so is
probably a big pain in the
ass.

Polly

Useless information #123:

Heroin is actually a
remarkably safe drug. In the
only legitimate controlled
study ever done, heroin
(actually a type of refined
opium, technically, but close
enough) was given as
requested to a large number
of sweet little old ladies in
Britain for as long as they
wanted, which turned out to
be for decades. Seems they
all got addicted accidentally
to laudanum, which was legal
early in the century. When
the drug was outlawed, nobody
wanted to punish these
innocents, so they were
allowed to keep using it. End
result: no significant effect
on life expectancy, disease,
morbidity, or anything else.

Heroin addicts function quite
normally if they can get
their fixes when they need
them and time to enjoy them.
Why and how do you think so
many physicians become
addicted to opiates without
detection?

The lethal dose/effective
dose ratio for heroin, and
indeed for most opiates, is
remarkably high. (The LD/ED
ratio is the standard medical
criterion for safety.) It is
essentially impossible to
accidentally kill yourself by
injecting too much of an
opiate; it's hard to kill
yourself that way
deliberately. What the press,
for some reason, calls an
"overdose" is actually some
sort of allergic reaction,
presumably caused by
impurities in the drug.
Everyone in the medical
profession knows this, if for
no other reason than that the
symptoms of a so-called OD
involve sudden, dramatic
lethal effects that are
totally foreign to the
effects of depressants like
opiates.

I don't advocate the
legalization of heroin. Hell,
I don't even advocate the
legalization of marijuana.
We're still trying to deal
with the effects of alcohol
distillation, and we've lived
with that one for more than
300 years. I just find
stupidity, idiot propaganda,
and people who "know better
than I do" intensely
irritating. Keep up the bad
work.

Alan Kornheiser

The Doctor Is Straight
<ASKORNHEISER@prodigy.net>

Man, we were certain you were
gay, Alan.

Anyway, thanks for the
useless information. The
thing is, unless you're a
doctor, you can't really
ensure that you won't get a
"bad" dose and kill yourself
at any point in time. Right?
Otherwise, we'd be all over
it.

Uh, not really. Functioning
quite normally in this case
includes drooling, nodding
off, and nursing abscesses
the size of ping pong balls.
And then there's the
Less-Than-Zero syndrome,
often referred to as "heroin
chic." Bottom line: There's
nothing worse than some rich
kid from La Jolla whose never
been through a single
hardship in his life, pumping
his story with drama by
becoming an addict, then
kicking and telling his lame
war stories, then falling off
the wagon. It's one of the
weakest acts around, and it
seems more and more popular
despite its obvious pathetic
emptiness. In our book,
anything that brings you a
single step closer to having
something in common with that
idiot singer of Everclear is
a step closer to suicide.

Sucksters

"...regarding the skill with
which it sells its version of
corporate-sponsored rebellion
and convinces credulous teens
that they can affect a cool,
anti-establishment persona
via chronic Dew and Gorditas
consumption."

"Gorditas" with a capital G?
"Dew," I can understand -
Mountain Dew is a trademark.
But "gorditas" is just
another word for really thick
tortillas (or the tacos you
make with 'em) here in New
Mexico and over in Texas.
They can't trademark that,
thank God.

Not just gorditas, but
"Gorditas, Gorditas!" To a
tune. Real patriotic-like.

God bless you, Taco Bell.

Buying it,
Sucksters