David Jaggard's

Quorum of One

Issue number 32     October 24, 2000

 

Wet humor on the Web since 2000

Quorum of One is intended for adult readers    


 

This issue:

Cultural Crime News

An update from the special music and audio task force of the Federal Bureau of Artistic Intervention for Ensuring Ethics in Esthetic Endeavors.

 

 

Search Continues for Fugitive Lyricist

 
        The FBAIEEEE has been called in to help in the search for escaped fugitive Enrique E. Garcia, former songwriter for the pop group The Miami Sound Machine.  Garcia has eluded the police since his daring solo escape nineteen days ago from a high-security correctional facility in Florida where he was serving a 20-year sentence for writing the following tag line in the group's 1984 hit "Conga":
 

 Come on shake your body, Baby, do the Conga,
 I know you can't control yourself any long-guh.
 

        A $500,000 reward is being offered for information leading to Garcia's recapture, although members of the public are warned to proceed with extreme caution.  The convict is known to be a hardened, cynical, sociopathic rhyme-forcer with no regard for basic human decency or scansion. He is thought to be armed with the following couplets:
 

Come on move your torso, Honey, do the Rhumba,
I know you want to dance with someone on this num-buh.

Come on sway your carcass, Darling, do the Cha-cha,
The dance that Reagan did one time with Mahg'ret Thah-chah.

 
and:
 

 Agitate your tokhes, do the Bossa Nova,
 And then have a piece matzo 'cause it's now Pass-o-vuh.
 

and is therefore considered to be very dangerous.

        Garcia is a repeat offender with a long criminal record stretching back nearly three decades. When he escaped he was serving no fewer than 34 concurrent sentences for seven counts of rhymes against humanity, seventeen counts of repeating a weak couplet, nine counts of believing people who think that sales figures are an indicator of intrinsic quality, and one count of thinking that "Bossa Nova" is the name of a dance.
 
 

Cure Singer Wanted for Questioning

 

        The FBAIEEEE has issued a warrant for the detention of Robert Smith, lead singer with the British rock group The Cure.  Smith has not yet been charged with any crime, but he is sought for questioning in connection with the lyrics to the group's hit song "Inbetween Days", which include the lines:
 

Come back, come back, why can't you see?
Come back, come back, come back to me.
 

        As soon as the warrant is served, Smith will have 60 days to appear before a federal judge.  Specifically, the question he will be called upon to answer is: Why can't you see what?
 
 

EU Adopts Legislation on Talent-to-Looks Ratio in the Recording Industry

 

        The Executive Council of the European Union has followed the lead of the United States Congress in passing strongly-worded legislation that makes it a crime for record producers to sign contracts with singers based on decisions in which physical appearance counts for more than 20%. The so-called "Ricky's Law" mandates prison terms of up to 10 years and fines of $50,000 to $1,000,000 for anyone who willfully places a drool-inspiring, scantily-clad slab of pulchritude, male or female, in front of an open microphone without first ascertaining that he or she knows middle C from an elk fart. Share prices in Sony, Warner, Virgin, MCI and Island Records all plummeted upon announcement of the new law, which goes into effect on January 1st, 2001.
 
 

Marshall Tucker Songwriter Paroled

 

        Skip "Toy" Caldwell, songwriter for the Marshall Tucker Band, has been released from prison after serving 18 years of a 25-year sentence for failure to employ even the simplest syntactical logic in the lyrics of a top 40 single. Caldwell was imprisoned in 1982 for his part in perpetrating the final two lines in the last verse of the group's 1978 hit "Heard It In a Love Song":
 

 Always somethin' greener on the other side of that hill,
 I was born a wrangler and a rambler and I guess I always will.
 

        He earned early parole by helping in the prison's literacy program, remaining on good behavior and writing on a blackboard five hundred times a day:

 always will be.
 always will be.
 always will be.
 always will be.
 always will be.
 always will be.

etc.
 
 

Nicknames Nicked in Early Morning Raid

 

        Acting on newly-passed federal RICO ("Recordings with some Integrity and Coherence, for Once") statutes that give the agency much broader powers to combat disorganized crime in the musical arts, the FBAIEEEE issued a massive dossier of warrants for the arrest and imprisonment without trial of anyone who has ever been thanked on the cover of a record album by misspelled first name or nickname only.
        Literally thousands of rock stars' friends, relatives, gofers, groupies and hangers-on were rounded up all over the country in a carefully-coordinated early morning raid.  A spokesman for the FBAIEEEE called the operation a total success, proclaiming, "The public is now safe from having to wade through paragraph after tedious, esoteric paragraph of 'thanks' to 'Souzee', 'Twink', 'Spider', 'Weasel', 'Jaynee', etc., etc., etc.  We even got the notorious Jock, who is cited on the back of the Rolling Stones' 'Let It Bleed' album for having provided 'tea and sympathy'.  After evading justice for more than 25 years, he'll be lucky if he just gets tea in a court of law."
 
 

Singer Morisette in Good Condition after Harmonica Incident

 

        Anti-indie-mid-M.O.R.-neo-folk-rock-punk-pop-fusion singer-songwriter and part-time naked person Alanis Morisette was hospitalized in Cleveland Thursday night after choking nearly to death on a small Eb harmonica. In a statement to the press, a band member recounted, "We were on stage and Alanis was playing the harmonica -- well, not exactly playing it, but holding it in her mouth and inhaling and exhaling through it, like she does -- when all of a sudden she just toppled over and started turning blue. I gave her the Heimlich maneuver and out popped this little Hohner Wheezemaster. I tell you, that sucker was a mess, all wet, with the nickle plating all stained and warped, the wood part all slimy and the reeds all clogged with..." [The band member interrupted his statement at this point when informed by the press that "that'll do".]
        The singer is listed in good condition at Mochevue Hospital, although the harmonica had to be euthanized. The police have not ruled out foul playing, and Morisette is expected to be charged as soon as she is released from the hospital. Second-degree harmonicide is punishable by a five-year prison term and a fine of $30,000. As a first-time offender, Morisette is not likely to be given prison time, but if convicted her parole can be instantly revoked if she is ever caught associating with known musical instruments for which she has made no perceptible effort to learn even the most basic rudiments.
 
 

Posers Law to Take Effect on November 1st

 

        The FBAIEEEE has announced that effective November 1st 2000, it will be a class-AAA felony, punishable by summary execution after torture, for actors or models in still or motion photography of any type to pretend to play musical instruments in such a way that makes it glaringly obvious even to pond life that they have no idea how to hold, much less play, said instruments. The new law specifically lists the following offenses:

Actors, models, photographers, artistic directors and producers are all held equally accountable under the statute, which has drawn criticism from musicians around the world for being "vague" and "not nearly harsh enough".
 
 

Interrogation of Suspects Continues in Voiceover Murder Investigation

 

        The movie industry was badly shaken last Thursday by the apparent murder of that ultra-deep, bass-enhanced, sonic-boom-like disembodied nameless male voice that narrates virtually all of the trailers for upcoming Hollywood blockbusters. The voice's housekeeper found it lying mute in a pool of saliva in the kitchen of its Malibu beachfront home. As movie-goers had long suspected, the voice had no body, no tangible identity and of course no soul, although it was able to pull down 9 or 10 mill a year just by intoning boilerplate blurb-schlock on the newest Tom Cruise thriller with the volume cranked so high and the bass jacked so low that viewers exposed to it were known to lose nail polish, dental fillings, short-term memory, cornea transplants, etc.
        Yesterday the FBAIEEEE announced that it was interrogating a list of 90,568,003 possible suspects. Asked why the list was so long, a detective said, "We've got to talk to anyone who would have had a motive."

 

 

 

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©2000 by David Jaggard