Limbaugh Loses Control of Bodily Functions

opular radio talk-show host and notorious blowhard Rush Limbaugh was recently revealed to be in the terminal stages of losing the ability to perform any normal human function but talk. Very soon, Mr. Limbaugh will exist solely for the purpose of flapping his purplish, rubbery lips and belching out enormous amounts of miasmatic wind over the nation's airwaves.

"It's the absolute worst tragedy involving a large Nazi gasbag since the explosion of the Hindenburg," said Limbaugh's personal physician, Dr. H. Himmler. "Oh, the humanity, the humanity, the inanity…"

Dr. Himmler's colleague, Dr. J. Mengele, echoed the sentiment, saying that it is "natural for muscles that aren't used to atrophy, but we've never seen a case as advanced as this one in such a short time."

Apparently the only thing keeping Limbaugh, who was declared brain-dead in the late 1980's, alive is the constant motion of his jaw and tongue. "Well, yes, he is an opinionated fellow, there's no doubt about that," said his personal assistant, a Mr. A. Speer. "He likes to let everyone around him know what he thinks. I believe that's what's kept him going all these years, even though he can't walk, eat, scratch his ass, shit, fuck or smoke a cigar without assistance. Still, you've got to give him credit for such single-minded devotion to doing what he does best." Upon saying that, Mr. Speer rapidly retreated to the back of Limbaugh's expansive chair with a bucket and a large handful of wet paper towels. "Christ, here he goes again, all over his goddamned self," he was heard to mutter.

When asked for comment, Limbaugh replied, "What? Huh? Did you say something? I can't hear a blessed thing! What?"

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It's a question that I get asked on a nearly daily basis, and understandably: just what in the hell was wrong with American music in the 1950's? History has it that the 1960's were the decade of recreational and experimental drug use, citing such examples of delusionary flakery as Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit, The Beatles' I Am the Walrus and Gregg Allman's hair. And while I wouldn't argue against these as prime examples of pharmaceutical excess, they pale mightily in comparison to the near-psychotic mutant trend of late-50's doo-wop music. John Lennon may have envisioned Mean Mr. Mustard dripping from a dead dog's eye, but even this game of Clue gone horribly wrong looks downright pedestrian next to a jabbering psychopath questioning who exactly put the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong.

Like a drugged-up visitor from deep space, doo-wop appeared seemingly out of nowhere, holing up in the chests of America's great pop stars in the late 50's and early 60's. From this parasitic enclave it communicated with the world through a bewitching combination of di-dits, bompa-bomps, ding-dangs, shooby-doos and doh-dohs. Why did it come, and what was it hoping to communicate to us? Nobody knows, though our best guess is that it had to do with seeking therapy for a stuttering problem.

The earliest known recording of the mutant doo-wop style was the Orioles' 1948 tune It's Too Soon To Know. During the recording of what was, by all reports, a fairly normal song, lead singer Sonny Til suffered the massive variety of nervous breakdown and began singing rhyming gibberish vaguely related to his ex-wife winning custody of their home and the recent transmission failure of his Oldsmobile. Fearing for their own lives, the band continued to play and discovered to their dismay that when they had finished the take they were at the end of their studio time. As was a common practice at the time, the record company had only secured them ten minutes of recording time to record and mix the song, and they'd had to sell bass player Johnny Reed's virginity in the process as they were obligated to pay for the studio time themselves.

Low on options and wary of bat-wielding record company thugs, the band played it cool, acting as if the recording session had gone fine. The record was released as-is by record company execs who were so outside of the loop that they once released a recorded armpit fart as a single, snookered by an engineer with a sense of humor. Back in that day all of the record companies were so desperate for a hit they would release anything, sometimes even recordings of other records held up to a microphone, as the execs in charge all listened to marching bands and had no clue what the record-buying teens of the day were into. They seldom listened to the records they put out, which led to the infamous "My Ding-a-Ling" scandal of 1972.

It's Too Soon To Know wasn't a huge hit, but it sold surprisingly well considering the totally bugshit nature of the vocals. It also proved to be heavily influential for a young aspiring songwriter named Richard Lewis, who crashed his car into a grocery store the first time he heard it on the radio. Many say Lewis never recovered psychologically from the incident, but he did go on to form The Silhouettes, and pen the 1957 mega-hit Get a Job. That song introduced the stuttering, nonsensical vocal stylings that came to be known as doo-wop to the world.

Some purists and historians have argued that Get a Job was only a hit because Lewis' uncle owned the Junior Records label and made sure the song was played on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, which guaranteed it would be a hit among the easily-led youth of the day. Others might disagree, but the success of the 1959 hit Dog Barking in the Back Alley seems to lead credence to the theory, since the rare sound-effects single likely would not have reached #1 if it had not been featured on American Bandstand earlier that year.

Whatever the reason, Get a Job was a smash single, and Americans were quick to concede that if it's what everyone else was listening to, then they were into lyrics like "Yip yip yip yip yip yip yip yip ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma" and colossally embarrassing bass singers, too.

Other bands smelled the money train and were quick to follow, solidifying doo-wop as a legitimate musical movement and a bad name for a hair salon. Not long after, The Marcels released the doo-wop manifesto Blue Moon in 1961, daring America to make sense of their statement of purpose: "Bom bom ba-bom ba-bom ba-bom bom ba-dang a lang lang a ding a dang ding Blue Moon…"

But by late 1961 doo-wop was beginning to lose it's luster, beginning with Barry Mann's hit Who Put the Bomp?, at which point fans began to suspect that the magic was gone and that doo-wop artists were just bullshitting them now. What began as a street movement had been exploited to the limits of credibility, and all of the bomps and sha-na-na's had begun to ring hollow.

By 1964 doo-wop was a mere ghost on the American musical landscape, as record-buyers turned away from the bubblegum of their youth and embraced the British Invasion of more vital artists, replacing their embarrassing Shep and The Limelites platters with the more mature pleasures of Manfred Mann's Do Wah Diddy Diddy. The rest, as they say, is history.

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Dear commune:

the commune’s coverage of the war in Bosnia has been nothing short of commendable. Objective? No. But objectivity is a quality far overvalued in our current society. A steaming dog turd on the side of the road is objective. But not the commune. Prompt? Not really, but promptitude is unquestionably in the eye of the beholder. Compared to the newspapers of early colonial America, printed manually on handset printing presses only once a month at best, the commune is truly a gleaming pillar of prompt reporting. Factual? I say with admiration in my typing voice that the commune has never let the facts get in the way of cleaving swiftly to the heart of a story and exposing it, still beating, for the public’s disgusted perusal. Bravo, commune. If but there were only a million other news sites like thee, for then the commune could be called one in a million.

Sincerely,

Rodery Hollenbeck
Steinburgen, RI


Dear Rodery:

Thank you kindly for your letter, and we apologize greatly for the serious delay in its publication. It seems that office gaywad Raoul Dunkin penned a half-assed Successory quote on the back of your letter and has been carrying it around with him for years, both for inspiration and in hopes of getting it made into a poster, superimposed over a soft-focus photo of geese in flight. Rest assured that he spent some serious time in the commune’s solitary closet for that stunt, one hour for every commune-bashing letter we’ve had to run since we received your delightful correspondence. So thank you. Oh, and if it wouldn’t be much trouble, could your possibly provide verifiable proof of your existence? Some heartless cynics around the office think that just because your letter came to us on Red Bagel’s personalized stationary that it was some clever ruse by Bagel to boost staff morale, kind of like that stripper he hired to work in the mailroom. Thanks. Oh, and by the way: "Wherever you go, there’s a goat." That’s the Successory Dunkin wrote on your letter. Raoul wanted us to pass it on to you and we obliged, only because it makes him look like even more of an asshole.

the commune

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Editor’s Note: the commune is not responsible for the way your girlfriend cut her hair. Saying she looks like a hick was a simple statement of fact, and hardly warranted your childish response. We can only hope that the unfortunate person who one day informs you of your status as a big, dumb redneck is as fleet of foot as the commune.

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