How much Zen can you tolerate in one game? Try it out for your own selves and you’ll see what I mean. Choose 5 cards, then explain the sequence.
Trial No. 1
Nancy has a nightmare that is transmitted to Sluggo. Sluggo reflects it back to Nancy via a hand-cranked meat grinder. Nancy wakes up and takes a walk to a barn that has a secret message painted on it.
Trial No. 2
Sluggo gets a job, and Nancy says she’ll stop by to distract him, but she is temporarily blinded. She prays for her sight to return. She turns her hair bow red while she plans her day, then turns it white again. A man notices that Nancy smells funny (as does Sluggo), so Nancy goes to visit her imaginary friend Tom. Following Tom’s advice, she eye-spits into Aunt Fritzi’s vegetable garden.
Trial No. 3
Nancy hallucinates that her notebook is a crayon. She finds her crack pipe and creates many small universes in her mind, until her Aunt Fritzi calls her to the living room. Nancy wanders for miles to find her Aunt. She ends up in a hardware store where she orders some chainsaws. While waiting, she dreams that she can magically suck bocce balls from her piggy bank with her magnetic fingers.
But there’s more to his story. Besides being a household word for rock n roll and gettin’ hot babes, the late Ted Cassidy played TWO parts in “The Addams Family” TV Series. Lurch was one of them… the other was “Thing.”
“Lurch (Ted Cassidy) is the household butler. Morticia and Gomez summon him by means of a bell pull in the form of a hangman’s noose, which rings the massive bell located in the mansion’s bell tower; the resulting gong shakes the entire house when the bell’s noose is pulled. When Lurch appears (usually immediately or within seconds thereafter), he responds with an extremely deep-voiced, “You rang?”
“According to IMDb, Lurch was intended to be a non-speaking part, as the Charles Addams cartoon character was silent; however, Cassidy improvised the line during his audition, and it was so well-received that it became a feature of the character. When questions are posed to him, Lurch’s primary response is a deep throaty rumbling and, at times, tremendously annoyed sound, which the family nonetheless interpret as spoken words. Superhumanly strong (he cleans the family car by simply lifting it and shaking it out like a rug), Lurch often plays the harpsichord (the music is actually played by The Addams Family composer Vic Mizzy).
“Lurch is very high-minded about visitors; when a plainclothes policeman (played by George Neise) visited the family, Lurch patted him down and regarded him suspiciously when he found his gun. Neise showed Lurch his badge, whereupon Lurch returned the gun.
“Lurch occasionally regards his employers’ activities with some dubiousness, but only as any servant might regard the idle rich, not because he does not share their macabre tastes.”
As far as the Addams Family goes, Lurch was my 2nd favorite. Carolyn Jones (Morticia Addams), well, um, you know. Cassidy also appeared in several episodes of:
Star Trek;
I Dream of Jeannie;
Wild Wild West;
and The Six-Million Dollar Man (as Bigfoot).
Y’all can forget his cameo on Batman, too… or not.
Cassidy ALSO appeared in the movie “Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid” in this Classic Scene.
As a completely unrelated aside, anyone curious about what the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten is up to these days? Seems he’s turned Shatner on us. Promise.
BONUS! For all of our loyal readers and supporters of Tacky Raccoons, please welcome our SPECIAL MYSTERY GUEST!
Larry Carlson has some amazing illustrations. This is a small part of one of many… right-click on the image to see the full-blown version. Excellent example of practical advanced tublication.
Babble + Google = Gabble. In Google’s “Search Images,” type in letters/numbers at random until you end up with just one image that matches your search. Send us your best, and we’ll include them in a future post. [Paste these and see what you find, then find your own: rpfdfa; ptqdeh; ktsaxz.]
Jim Woodring‘s work is a few steps beyond Advanced Tublication; his “Frank” series combines 1930’s cartooning with fever-inspired nightmares. You gotta check out “The Book of Jim.” Woodring’s an excellent (if not mildly disturbed) illustrator.
The only way (in Bunk’s amateur opinion) that he could pull this off is with a stacked 2-way stripper deck, some false shuffles, false cuts, a few flourishes, and great slight-of-hand. Ricky Jay is probably The Best card manipulator in the business. [Found via Edenborough.]
Although he and John Prine wrote the The Perfect Country Western Song, the late Steve Goodman’s greatest hit was “City of New Orleans.”
Whoop! Just found Vassar Clements and Dickie Betts on one video! Here ya go, folks. C’mon back tomorrow for more fun!
Tacky Raccoons 
