By Professor Heinrick Hemlock, PHD, DDT, ESP
The Fourth of July celebrates America’s birthday with fireworks, food, family reunions and fun for us living large, but what about the undead? Technically though, we the living are the undead too, because we’re not dead yet.
However, in the creature features the undead are zombies, vampires and werewolves. Sorta like The Three Stooges of horror.
So I sent my assistant and cemetery grounds keeper, Ace Hack, on assignment to interview some famous ghouls at midnight under a full moon at Jolly Holly’s Cemetery and Custard Stand. Here’s his tape recorded report.
“You all had dinner, right? ‘Cause I could look like a steak tartar to you guys.” Ace asks haltingly.
All seem to answer in the affirmative with a series of low growls, howls, hisses, grunts and lip smackings.
“Let’s start with you, Bob Zombie. What was your favorite Fourth of July?”
“Well Ace, you know how people say that life is no day at the beach and no picnic? My favorite fourth was a day at the beach when me, and several hundred of my closest fiends, picnicked on a sand dune full of Frenchmen at Omaha Beach.
I’ve always loved French food and they were delicious with a nice chilled Chianti and some warm arterial blood to wash them down. They were like a salad bar of fresh meat. The great thing about being a practicing zombie is that after you bite into somebody and kill them, a few seconds later they come back as your new best friend with the same interest in killing every human in sight. So you’re constantly killing people and making new zombies.”
“You’re a very articulate zombie. I’ve only seen them growl and slobber.” Ace states.
“It’s the media misrepresenting us. Being hungry does make one a bear, but after some fine dining we like a good cigar, a snifter of brandy and witty conversation just like you.”
“Fascinating! What about you Lord Dracula. What was your favorite Fourth?”
“As luck would have it, it was American’s first Fourth of July in 1776 Philadelphia. It was so hot then that my fangs stuck to my gums and I couldn’t get them to shoot out and bite properly. They went up and down like a garage door in my mouth. It’s all in my autobiography ‘Fangs, For the Memories’.”
“I’ll have to pick up a copy. What happened next?” Ace asks quickly.
“I went to several dentists and killed them when they couldn’t help me, but it was like biting their necks with baby teeth. Then I ran into Ben Franklin flying his kite in a thunderstorm. I explained my plight to him and he hooked me up to his kite. A lightening bolt struck it and, consequently me, and jump started my teeth to full bite.”
“And then?” Ace asks eagerly.
“I was so grateful to Ben that I spared him, although he was plump and full of blood. I had to feast on a family of four to make up for this act of kindness. I spent the night pretending to drink beer with the Founding Fathers at the Bleedin’ Like a Stuck Pig Pub, an old haunt.”
“Fascinating! Now Mr. Warner the Werewolf, what was your favorite Fourth?”
‘It was tonight. Right here, right now.’ He slobbers and shines under the moonlight.
“But this isn’t the Fourth of July. It’s more than two weeks away.” Ace explains uncertainly.
“Hey pal; I’m a werewolf who changes into a hairy killing machine every full moon at midnight. I don’t know what century it is, let alone what national holiday. And you look good enough to eat." He snaps.
Thursday, June 18
JULY FOURTH BEER AND BANGS
ANNCR: Celebrate the constitution, the Declaration of Independence and 1776 by honoring the founding fathers this Fourth of July the traditional old fashioned American way with fireworks and beer at a family picnic.
Slap your weenies down on the grill, grab your buns and a beer then light up a cherry bomb or an M-80, throw it and watch the in-laws scramble.
Give them a silver salute and fire up your flaming balls while knocking back some beers for a more excitable 4th for all. Bottle rockets and bottles of beer go together like George and Washington.
Get boomed and go boom at the same time! Who needs all ten fingers? Blow one off and you still got 9 left! Be patriotic (Sings) “Oh, say can you see.” Well, maybe not if you’re blinded easily by sparklers in your face.
Happy (Belch Burp) Fourth.
SFX: BOOM! BANG!! BOOM! (Screams) Ayeeeee!!!
Slap your weenies down on the grill, grab your buns and a beer then light up a cherry bomb or an M-80, throw it and watch the in-laws scramble.
Give them a silver salute and fire up your flaming balls while knocking back some beers for a more excitable 4th for all. Bottle rockets and bottles of beer go together like George and Washington.
Get boomed and go boom at the same time! Who needs all ten fingers? Blow one off and you still got 9 left! Be patriotic (Sings) “Oh, say can you see.” Well, maybe not if you’re blinded easily by sparklers in your face.
Happy (Belch Burp) Fourth.
SFX: BOOM! BANG!! BOOM! (Screams) Ayeeeee!!!
Tuesday, June 2
THE LONG SAD JOURNEY TO FATHER'S DAY
June 17th is the day you honor your father with a garish tie that’s louder than a 747 taking off or a drunken Picasso painting. You may have already given Dad a comic card mocking him, which is what most fathers want. They don’t want that sentimental slop you told your beloved sainted mother. Fathers want a quick laugh and to go back to the game on the tube.
Father’s Day has never been the big business day that Mother’s Day is. If you think that the promotion of Father’s Day will make or break your business, then I have some GM stock I’d like to sell you. Why does the celebration of Father’s Day rank somewhere below Arbor Day in importance? Let’s go back and find out when Father’s Day really began? There’s some confusion about that. The president of Chicago’s Lion’s Club, Harry Meek (a firm believer that the Meeks shall inherit the earth) celebrated the first Father’s day with his club in 1915.
Harry picked the third Sunday in June, which was the closest date to his own birthday. That’s what a real guy would do, honor himself as a great father, without bothering to ask his wife and kids what they thought about it. Then, as fathers are wont to do, he went back to the game on the radio.
However, the most accepted view of the origins of Father’s Day goes back to 1909 when Sonora Smart Dodd was listening to a Mother’s Day church sermon and she started thinking of her father, who really raised her. She barely knew her mother, who died young giving birth to her sixth child. Her father, William Jefferson Smart, was left to raise his rambunctious brood alone.
Let’s just pause a moment for Sonora’s poor young mother….OK, her father, a Civil War vet, sacrificed a lot to raise them, so Sonora ask her Spokane minister to preach a sermon on fathers June 6th, her father’s birthday.
He couldn’t do it till June 19th. Soon the state of Washington celebrated the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. So Father’s Day is a her-story, not a history, due to a dedicated daughter’s love for her frazzled father, who raised his kids on his own. This is something mothers do all the time, if the father is gone or too distracted to help much.
Since Sonora’s father acted like a good mother we now have Father’s Day. Way back then the children honored good old dad with a fresh baked pie, not a store bought tie.
The Father’s Day lobby (yes, there’s always a lobby) asked President Woodrow Wilson to declare an annual Father’s Day. Wilson approved the idea in 1916, but it took till 1924 for President Calvin Coolidge to make it a national event to “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.” Sounds like a plea to dead beat dads to me, who lose interest in their children right after conception.
But Father’s Day was only an event, like a bake sale or mud wrestling. It didn’t become official until 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed that the third Sunday in June was Father’s Day and a great day to have a good old fashioned Texas barbecue. Lyndon was a Texan.
However, a proclamation is not a holiday, like desert isn’t dinner. In 1972, President Richard Nixon made Father’s Day a national holiday before eventually resigning due to the Watergate scandal and returning to his original title as husband and father. Between 1966 and 1972 both Presidents fought the Vietnam War, where many a father was killed.
Father’s Day was a 60 year afterthought to Mother’s day, but we fathers take what we can get. We’re thrilled to be remembered at all once a year and the silly cards and bad ties make us a little misty, but don’t tell anybody.
About the original Father’s Day pie giving tradition, cherry crumb is an excellent celebratory slice of pie. It’s tart, yet sweet and somewhat crummy. Not unlike a lot of us fathers.
Father’s Day has never been the big business day that Mother’s Day is. If you think that the promotion of Father’s Day will make or break your business, then I have some GM stock I’d like to sell you. Why does the celebration of Father’s Day rank somewhere below Arbor Day in importance? Let’s go back and find out when Father’s Day really began? There’s some confusion about that. The president of Chicago’s Lion’s Club, Harry Meek (a firm believer that the Meeks shall inherit the earth) celebrated the first Father’s day with his club in 1915.
Harry picked the third Sunday in June, which was the closest date to his own birthday. That’s what a real guy would do, honor himself as a great father, without bothering to ask his wife and kids what they thought about it. Then, as fathers are wont to do, he went back to the game on the radio.
However, the most accepted view of the origins of Father’s Day goes back to 1909 when Sonora Smart Dodd was listening to a Mother’s Day church sermon and she started thinking of her father, who really raised her. She barely knew her mother, who died young giving birth to her sixth child. Her father, William Jefferson Smart, was left to raise his rambunctious brood alone.
Let’s just pause a moment for Sonora’s poor young mother….OK, her father, a Civil War vet, sacrificed a lot to raise them, so Sonora ask her Spokane minister to preach a sermon on fathers June 6th, her father’s birthday.
He couldn’t do it till June 19th. Soon the state of Washington celebrated the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. So Father’s Day is a her-story, not a history, due to a dedicated daughter’s love for her frazzled father, who raised his kids on his own. This is something mothers do all the time, if the father is gone or too distracted to help much.
Since Sonora’s father acted like a good mother we now have Father’s Day. Way back then the children honored good old dad with a fresh baked pie, not a store bought tie.
The Father’s Day lobby (yes, there’s always a lobby) asked President Woodrow Wilson to declare an annual Father’s Day. Wilson approved the idea in 1916, but it took till 1924 for President Calvin Coolidge to make it a national event to “establish more intimate relations between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure of their obligations.” Sounds like a plea to dead beat dads to me, who lose interest in their children right after conception.
But Father’s Day was only an event, like a bake sale or mud wrestling. It didn’t become official until 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed that the third Sunday in June was Father’s Day and a great day to have a good old fashioned Texas barbecue. Lyndon was a Texan.
However, a proclamation is not a holiday, like desert isn’t dinner. In 1972, President Richard Nixon made Father’s Day a national holiday before eventually resigning due to the Watergate scandal and returning to his original title as husband and father. Between 1966 and 1972 both Presidents fought the Vietnam War, where many a father was killed.
Father’s Day was a 60 year afterthought to Mother’s day, but we fathers take what we can get. We’re thrilled to be remembered at all once a year and the silly cards and bad ties make us a little misty, but don’t tell anybody.
About the original Father’s Day pie giving tradition, cherry crumb is an excellent celebratory slice of pie. It’s tart, yet sweet and somewhat crummy. Not unlike a lot of us fathers.
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