In spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of couples therapy…

In this week’s edition of The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan, love…or something...is in the air:

Those with respiratory conditions are advised to stay indoors until it all blows over.

Happy Friday, devotees of pointless serialization:

   You may recall that our story of Sparky Lost and Found had taken us to the North Funsville Rural Concession Dump (East Annex), where we encountered an old black-and-white television set which spontaneously produced this image:

   You may not recall it, either. In any case, you know about it now.

   I’m accustomed enough to unusual occurrences, but even I had to wonder what had happened to imprison Sparky in a half-century old cathode ray tube. The smell of smoke and the sight of flames leaping from Science Boy’s hip pocket furnished the beginnings of an answer.

   It seems that Science Boy always carries a device for detecting disturbances in the fabric of reality, and something had made its circuits overload. After Moose had beaten out the flames with a nearby car fender, Science Boy repaired his malfunctioning reality gauge (his shattered pelvis would have to wait to be repaired). Taking a series of readings from the immediate vicinity, he determined that Sparky’s experiments with do-it-yourself rocketry had blasted a pathway through to an alternate dimension, one in which Sparky’s life essence had become jumbled up with television transmissions from the distant past.

   As if to confirm this hypothesis, the image on the TV screen snapped out of phase…

   …then resolved itself with Sparky standing next to Rod Serling.



   The episode of The Twilight Zone that followed came out a little differently than I remembered:

   “Maybe we can get him out by changing the channel,” Moose suggested. We all agreed that anything was worth a try. Besides, Gunsmoke was on next, and I’ve never been too keen on westerns.

   A click of the dial gave us an episode of Sgt. Bilko with a new addition to the motor pool platoon:

 



   Before the half-hour was over, thanks to Sparky, Colonel Hall had been promoted to five-star general, and was appointed to replace William Westmoreland as head of American forces in Vietnam. None of us thought it was worth sticking around to watch the news to see how that worked out, so we changed channels again. The Ernie Kovacs Show, as so often happened, featured an appearance by the Nairobi Trio—joined this time by a guest artiste:

   We stayed on this channel through to the next program—The Untouchables. We sensed that something might be amiss when we saw Eliot Ness led away in leg irons just after the opening credits.

   Al Capone and Frank Nitti may need to start working another side of the street…tune in next time to see if Sparky hangs ar0und in Gangland long enough to go toe-to-toe with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

Uncle Fun

For those of you who think that “little John” is a portable toilet, a quick refresher course in English folklore…

This instalment of The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan seems to have gotten sidetracked by Ye Olde Scheduling Conflict:

Maybe somebody should steal him a copy of Ye Olde Seven Habits of Ye Olde Highly Effective People.

Can you overrun first base if you're being overrun by first basemen?

Hello, fellow questers after granting-body-fundable truth, this is…

…Science Boy.

   Now that Fenway Park (named after its designer, the Chinese-Korean architect Fen Wai Park) is offically entering its second century as a major legue ballyard, I thought you might like to know about the important part my team at the Advanced Research Division of the Legion of Goodness have played in the long and storied history of the stadium’s principal tenants. It was, in fact, my suggestion that Boston’s American League baseball franchise be named after the random expected value of the deviation of the sum of all variables in a series beginning with zero to the unknown power of X. The equation was abbreviated thus to fit on to the front of a jersey:

   More important than that, however, was the vital research undertaken by my team, and underwritten by the Red Sox, to help improve the game of baseball. We established, by means of a complicated series of algorithms, and some even more complicated rounds of “I spy” played in darkened rooms, that the first baseman is frequently a baseball team’s top run producer, and almost always leads the team in defensive putouts. Therefore, we determined that the perfect baseball player would be a first baseman who can play other positions as well. Over the years (don’t ask how long—let’s just say it involves a time machine, a steady supply of an elixir of youth, and a couple of other things you don’t want to know about), we have genetically engineered a number of prototypes with the ultimate goal of providing the Boston Red Sox with an entire team made up of first basemen. We are now just one step short of this goal, thanks to the success of Experiment 1B/UT-20, better known to baseball fans as “Kevin Youkilis”.

   A series of splices on Chromosome 3 (which establishes dominant first-basemen tendencies) has allowed Youkilis to take the field at whatever defensive position is required; once we override cellular rejection of mitochondrial RNA which would suppress an inherited tendency to hang curveballs, Youkilis will have full pitching capability, and will be ready for cloning under laboratory conditions, and then on the assembly line.

   With first-baseman perfection so close to becoming a reality, I’ve prepared a quick review of our previous experiments as a way of answering the question “can you make an entire baseball team of first basemen who have played for the Boston Red Sox?”

   Naturally, we’ll skip first base, since any member of this team who isn’t playing another position can play there. We’ll start instead at…

SECOND BASE

Billy Goodman

   To date, Billy is the only utilityman to win a batting title. Don’t look upon the fact that Goodman played 5 different positions while hitting .354 in 1950 as a sign that he was only there for his bat: see it as evidence of his supreme first-basemanly versatility.

SHORTSTOP

Nomar Garciaparra

   He put in 9 years as the Red Sox’ shortstop before the implantation of middle-infielder antibodies began to attack his immune system, forcing him to finish his major league career as a Dodger first baseman.

  Nomar is the obvious choice to start at short, but Jose Offerman will always be a sentimental favorite of mine…even though his fielding at times made it seem as though he’d have been better off with a snow shovel than a baseball glove.

 

THIRD BASE

Wade Boggs

 

   This Hall of Fame third baseman and 5-time batting champion spent his minor league career as a first baseman. He also began his Red Sox career at first base before switching after Carney Lansford (another of our successful experiments) was traded.

   Honourable mention goes to Jimmie Foxx, who began his major-league career at third base. We hadn’t quite gotten our hybridization techniques down pat when we worked on him, since we didn’t fully understand the demands of the third-base position yet. We assumed that Jimmie would be able to redirect batted balls off his big barrel chest with as much accuracy as he could make throws across the infield.

OUTFIELD

   Experiments with converting first basemen into left fielders were practically unnecessary, since any defensive ability at all is considered a bonus at that position. Developing the stronger throwing arm required of a right fielder unfortunately has proven a tougher nut for the First Baseman Conversion Project team to crack.

   Making the best outfield possible from the players that we have worked on requires bit of positional shuffling. Legendary Bosox left fielder Carl Yastrzemski would instead patrol right field…

  …while Bill Buckner’s smaller defensive range and weaker arm would leave him in left field…which, to the relief of Red Sox Nation, leaves him as far from first base as possible.

   Center field is also occupied by a controversial candidate—although it should be noted that the San Francisco Giants thought enough of Jack Clark’s foot speed and throwing arm to play him in center. Then they decided to try and win games, and shifted him to right.

CATCHER

   This position is an easy conversion. In fact, our earliest experiments with creating the ideal first baseman involved taking catchers and ruining their knees, backs, and throwing arms. One of our first breakthroughs on this part of the Red Sox Project was Rudy York.

   I hear the pros watch the ball into their gloves…but if you cross the plate a lot after you hit the ball, they tend to overlook how many times you drop the ball when you’re behind it. A batter who could hit a ton but who couldn’t really catch or play first base was half the battle won, at any rate.

   We fared much better with Scott Hatteberg.

He was a good enough catcher that he didn’t revert to first base until he signed with the Oakland A’s. We’re also very pleased with how our adjustments to his amygdala allowed him to take a full-bodied swing at every pitch he committed to.

PITCHER

   Wade Boggs could fill in here and throw a wicked knuckleball, but another former minor-league first baseman threw a better one for the Red Sox:

   Tim wakefield ’s resiliency makes him a one-man bullpen, because another Red Sox pitcher who played first base is the ace of the staff:



   No need for a designated hitter when you’ve got babe ruth toeing the rubber.

   While I check my messages to see if Cooperstown or the Human Genome Project has returned my calls, you can step into the batter's box at Box.com and listen to my latest adventure at this link. Until next time, remember—you’ll always be safe at home if you touch all bases first (whatever that means…I think I learned it from “One to Grow On” during a rainout on an NBC Saturday baseball broadcast).

  



Good news, lovers of happy endings and other types of self-serving closure:

   Sparky has been found, but he’s still lost—if that makes any sense to you. I don’t mean that he’s lost in a spiritual or existential sense—although that’s always been true. I mean that we know where he is, but we can’t bring him back to where we are…not yet, at any rate.

   Right now is when you’d probably like an explanation to begin, so here it comes. You remember that, to celebrate Wernher von Braun’s birthday, Sparky clamped bottle rockets onto the Funmobile and blasted off for parts unknown. (If you don’t remember, you can look it up by clicking here.) When the debris of the Funmobile came crashing down to earth a couple of days ago, we all feared the worst. However, we also knew that if anyone could get the Powers That Be to grant a stay of execution on the law of gravity, it was Sparky. Notwithstanding our optimism, a house-to-house search of the Greater Funsville Area turned up nothing but expressions of gratitude at the news of Sparky’s disappearance. (One place we stopped at has been sending fruit baskets every four hours to congratulate us.)

   Common sense says we should have given up. As often happens when Common Sense chooses to walk away from a problem, Higher Learning steps in and makes the most of whatever’s left over after Common Sense is gone for good. Our resident champion of complicated answers to simple questions, Science Boy, rigged up the CyberMoose (a fascinating invention you can read about by clicking here) with something he called a ‘Sparkyfinderator’. Priming the tracking device with whatever alpha waves had leaked out of Sparky’s head into the lining of one of his old hats, Science Boy set CyberMoose loose on the trail of its elusive quarry. (By the way, why is it that so many quarries are elusive? Surely some of them must just sit there, waiting to be found. Still, it wouldn’t seem right for a quarry to be anything but elusive, somehow…it robs the whole thing of its sporting touch.)

   Tracing a zig-zaggy route through every back alley, side lane and overflow culvert in a ten-mile area, CyberMoose finally came to a dead stop in a neglected corner of the North Funsville Rural Concession Dump. Sitting largely upright amid the other detritus was a Philco television set, 1950’s vintage, black-and-white variety.

   As if bidden by some distant remote control, it switched on…

   ...a picture began to form out of the static.

   To our surprise and amazement, this is what we saw and heard…

   As they say, tune in later for further developments.

Uncle Fun

The third sure thing in this life that Ben Franklin forgot to mention is “never follow animal acts”…

Today is the second-last day for all of you in the U.S. of A. to fill out your income tax forms.

This week’s edition of The Funday Sunnies featuring Duncan has nothing to do with that.

That’s showbiz for ya.

If you’re feeling superstitious today…just remember—there are thirteen letters in ‘Vince Lombardi’…

Hello, teeming masses, it’s Moose here:

   While I wait for Sparky to reappear (he can be a pain in the you-know-what, but he’s MY pain in the you-know-what) I’m killing time in the Fortress of Funitude, writing “It’s WERNHER von Braun, not WERNER von Braun” 50,000 times on the blackboard (check out this posting and this one to find out what brought THAT on).

   My vigil is partly a house-sitting gig. As they do every time Friday the Thirteenth is due to roll around, Uncle Fun and his lady friend M’Dear have hit the road in the Funmobile, hawking what they swear on a bust of Luther Burbank is a bumper crop from a four-leaf clover plantation. The skeptic in me has a hunch that something not altogether horticultural is behind this harvest.

   But enough about that already. The illustration at the top of this posting is by Mr. Cousins, who is helping Mrs. Cousins watch over me (which, confidentially, is more or less like letting Wile E. Coyote and a lit match watch over a carload of dynamite). Male Spouse Cousins has altogether too much time on his hands after submitting his master’s thesis, and has let his mind wander like a hobo with a train schedule. I submit the following as evidence—he actually shows this sort of thing to people, in the blind faith that they WON’T have him committed for it…

   Thank you for that completely unsolicited vote of confidence on my sanity. Just for that, I won’t read you the story about Goldilocks and the Three Stages of the North Korean Rocket. Be that as it may (and it isn’t, so why should we even kid ourselves about it?), when my grey matter is at a loose end, it drifts towards such Vital Questions of Our Age as “can you make a professional football team from profesional football team logos?” You’ll note I’m restricting myself to the pro game—it’s not that I don’t think that there’s a wealth of potential talent in the college logo ranks…it’s just that I’m too lazy to look for it. Someday I’ll organize a pre-draft combine for the college logos, but for the time being, the professional ones are what I have the time and energy to work with.

   I’ll start by building the team’s offence around a strong center:

   Their recent successes with an attractively streamlined logo notwithstanding, this is what I think of when I hear the name ‘New England Patriots’. Pat Patriot (or, to give him the more appropriately Early American name I’ve always used for him, Henry Wadsworth Longsnapper) has that ‘don’t mess with me and mine’ look that turned my ancestors into United Empire Loyalists with a permanent case of Canadian chilblains. Whatever moniker he goes by, it can’t be a pleasant prospect to be face-to-face across the line of scrimmage with a dude who helped drive Lord Cornwallis back to England.

   There was stiff competiton for the center position, as you can see:



   This cat is ready to dish out a mountain mauling on any nose tackle in Creation, but I’ll put him at one of the guard positions. I want those claws of his free to go to work when he has to block on passing plays.

   The rest of the offensive line will be filled out with the same principle in mind:

(We might have to watch that this guy doesn’t take too many penalties for unnecessary roughness.)

   There’s no shortage of candidates for the skill positions in the offence. That’s not to say, however, that I exactly have an embarrassment of riches to choose from at quarterback:

(I think this logo is what prompted the Packers to draft Brett Favre way back when…he looks a little on the immobile side.)

(Politically incorrect, but built like a tank. I’m not sure about his arm, though. He may be most useful in short-yardage situations.)

This is my first-string QB:

(Note the resemblance to Eli Manning’s throwing motion. Passes longer than 20 yards are likely to be up for grabs.)

   This is his primary target—a big, physical possession receiver out of the Art Monk/Harold Carmichael mould:

(Look at all the ground he’s covering…I count six U.S. states in the background. Talk about your ‘yards after catch’.)

   It’s also good to have a deep threat with a flair for the spectacular:

 

(Kind of reminds me of Randy Moss or Terrell Owens, only with hooves. He could become a discipline problem if he doesn’t curb his tendency to—you should pardon the expression—horse around.)

   My tight end is from the old school, and is there strictly to block:

   I’m not too concerned about who I have at QB and receivers, though, because the talent available makes for a run-oriented offense. Rather than use a single featured back, I’ll rotate my ball carriers in depending on the situation.

   Mr. St. Louis Cardinal here (yes, kids, that used to be name of a football team, too) looks like a good all-purpose back.



   The way he carries the ball makes me a little worried about fumbling, so I’ll also use this more sure-handed tailback:

   Monsieur Alouette and Mister Cardinal will generally be on the field together, lined up in a double wing formation.

   When the going gets heavy, I have in a sturdy fullback in reserve:

(No teeny little free safety is going to slap the ball out of Smokey’s hands when he gets up a head of steam. I just have to find a way to keep him from going into hibernation when the playoffs start.)

   I’ll bring this guy in to catch screen passes out of the backfield on second and long:

(He’s a strong open-field runner, and an even stronger open-field biter.)

   This is my specialist for fourth-down dive plays and goal-line plunges:

   And this fellow is our ace in the hole for when all else fails.

   As long as our blocking clears a path for him, there’s something in every chamber of that six-shooter for each member of the defensive secondary. And, if we need to protect a fourth-quarter lead, he can wrap things up a little early by firing the final gun.

   The one thing I’m not completely sure about is this team’s ability to punch the ball into the end zone on a regular basis. To make sure we still can score some points, I’ll call on the best kicker I can find:

   If the rules committee doesn’t ban steel-toed boots, he should be money in the bank anytime we get inside the 35-yard line. Fortunately, he doubles as a punter, so at least we can pin the other team deep while I try to figure out if any of my guys can play defense.