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Featuring Horace J.
Digby
Winner of the 2005 Robert Benchley Society
Award for
Humor
The only SandBagger
publication endorsed by Dave Barry.
"It's
English." -- Dave Barry, 2003
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SandBagger Mag-e-zine -
Volume 5 - Issue 7 - October 31,
2005 |
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Breaking
News Briefs:
- Sandy
Putaansuu is getting pretty graphic. For
graphics, gifts, web design, and a lot more visit
Sandy Putaansuu at www.poouster.com.
- SandBagger buddy
J. J. Gowland, has something for you -- her
new book called "Confessions of a
Sandbagger" Confessions-of-A-Sandbagger. "Hell, I'll sell my book to anyone,"
Gowland says.
- Look for
Horace J. Digby's humor column in the
Columbia River Reader, available
wherever fine news papers are given away.
www.crreader.com
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In this Issue:
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by Lola Lane - SandBagger News
After an exciting fall (or was it
winter) in which SandBaggers were concerned they might have to
choose sides in a battle for SandBagger supremacy, President
Nick Kalinin and VP Don Cianci have made amends. The announcement
came with the visit of Canadian super star Sean Cullen, who
interviewed the Baggers near the site of Longview's Squirrel
Bridge, and giant Wooden Squirrel, built as a tribute to
community leader, Amos J. Peters, and often called the eighth
and ninth wonders of the post-modern world.
Passing Motorists slowed to
get a better look, as Kalinin and Cianci embraced. Or
perhaps the motorists were just to try getting a glimpse of
the Squirrel Bridge, which nobody can
seem to find since the City moved it 18 thousand feet above
the civic circle," said Walt Naze in his official capacity as
a guy who sometimes says things like
that.
Reportedly
the squirrels brave enough to trek across the relocated bridge
wear oxygen masks to avoid
vertigo. Other
squirrels are now using the new Squnnel (Squirrel-Tunnel)
which has been built under the busy roadway in front of the
Library.
That meant I couldn't get to email, Google,
Barnes&Noble, or any of the
other necessities of
Internet life. I tried shutting off the PC and
restarting,
pushing the buttons on the SpeedStream, and other futile
maneuvers. Repeatedly I clicked the DSL icon, and
watched anxiously the
ballet of boxes, 'Verifying User
Name', 'Connecting to DSL', but always
thudding like a
ruptured duck to 'Cannot Find Server'.
I called the
repair number. It took about 10 prompts to get to a live
person, but finally a courteous staff member with a slight
accent took my
complaint, gave me a case number, and said
they would call back. I
realized I was talking to India.
Outsourcing in action.
Two days passed. No DSL
connection. I called back. Prompts. Another
courteous Indian. 'We are working on it, sir.'
Two more days. This time, when I went
through the damn prompts, a woman
suggested I call 611.
'That is the repair service.'
OK, 611. Following the prompts, I was led
back to the Indian
sub-continent.
.1 of clonidine
under the tongue is good for lowering high blood
pressure.
After I felt better, I had an inspiration. I called 611
again,
but this time ignored the prompts and went for live
staff. Yes, it took
three or four calls, but I finally got
through. Craftily, I did not
mention DSL. I said I wanted
a technician to come out and fix my phone
line.
He
was there 15 minutes early, a short, swarthy Armenian guy with
an
accent, cheerful and energetic.
He went all over
the house with a wand-like gadget, checking for breaks
in
the wiring. Finally, he actually went under the house. And
there he
found the trouble.
A rat had gnawed the
insulation off some wires, shorting out my DSL
connections.
I gave him a bottle of
Armenian wine.
I am grateful to that honest rat.
He taught me so well the limits of
outsourcing.
There is no substitute for human hands-on-the-spot work. All
the Indians in Bangalore could not have fixed my DSL
problem. What's
more, they didn't have any idea what was
really wrong. I picture them,
smiling, impassive,
keyboarding my case. Perhaps they're still at it. I
hope
so.
I still haven't called an exterminator.
-- William Goldsmith, M.D.
September 17, 2005
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Reader
Commentary:
- "Once you can accept the
universe as matter expanding into nothing that
is
something, wearing stripes with plaid comes
easy." -- Albert Einstein
- "Basic Flying Rules: Try to
stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near
the edges. The edges of the air can be
recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings,
sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much
more difficult to fly there." -- Sonia
Lyris
- "I am a big fan of Ms Lane .
. . she even spoke to me one time. She said,
'Stop stalking me!'" -- Thomas J.
Saunders, Program Director, A3radio.com. [Mr.
Saunders wardrobe provided by Salvation Army of
Washtenaw County. Member
FDIC]
- "Horace J. Digby, you old
bird! Let me extend a hardy congratulations on
your recent selection as the winner of the Robert
Benchley Humor Award. Quite a feat for a
fictional character." -- Dan Burt, humor
writer.
- Hello SandBagging buddies . .
. I just found your site. It's
terrific . . . really funny stuff . . . you
might enjoy reading my golf novel, "Confessions of a
Sandbagger" www.publishamerica.com/books/7322 . . . Just this morning, I
received an order from my psychiatrist! (Not an
order to behave, an order for a copy of my book) . .
. Hell, I'll sell my book to anyone . . .
-- J. J. Gowland, humor writer
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Monday, September 19th
is: The 218th anniversary of the signing
of the Constitution;
Talk Like a
Pirate Day; and Hermione
Granger's birthday. -- Steven
Jens, MIT
Graduate.
-
I want to move to your area,
whereever it is. May I be a Sandbagger, or are
Jews excluded? Very funny, down home stuff. Vic
and Sade, move over. -- Dr. William (Bill)
Goldsmith, MD, surgeon.
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(A SandBagger
For All Seasons)
By Jayson Glass -- SandBagger
News
Last week
SandBaggers dedicated their regular Friday meeting, at Yan's
Restaurant, to honoring that great SandBagger, Tom Renaud for
his many contributions to SandBaggerdom. The event went off well, even though the program
committee forgot to invite
Renaud.
Let's join the
meeting in progress:
"I remember Tom
Renaud," said Past SandBagger President Jim Holter.
"He was local head of the FBI during the D.B. Cooper
hunt,"
"That was Tom
Manning," said Ken Plampin, official Renaud
nephew.
"Wasn't Renaud
the guy who put that NASKAR sign up at the Lowe's site on
Ocean Beach Highway?" Walt Naze asked.
"I think that was
you, Walt," said Herb
Hadley.
"It was?" Naze
asked.
"Pretty sure,"
Hadley said. "Renaud is the guy who files his taxes
'Anonymously,' so he can claim deductions for all of those
anonymous charitable contributions other people make? . .
. Or is that me?" Hadley asked.
"Renaud's
the one who chopped down a cherry tree and then told his
father the truth . . . He also waked twelve miles
to school and did homework on a shovel, in charcoal . .
."
"No.
Renaud was the fellow who threw a mannequin into Mt. St.
Helens when Pete York wouldn't let us run an ad in the Daily
News, looking for a virgin," said Frank King.
"Didn't Renaud
stage the drunken waiter routine for that convention of
Dentist's wives."
"No, but he
pretended to be the guest speaker at that police
convention."
While there was
some confusion about exactly what it was Tom Renaud had done
for the club, all those SandBaggers present finally agreed
that whoever is, we have always enjoy having him in our group,
even though some of our younger members, like Herb Hadley,
Walt Naze, Skip Piper, Roland Richards and Barry Morrill can't
quite remember why.
"Wait a
second. I think he's my cousin," said Ken
Plampin.
"Me too," said
Gregg Campbell.
And everyone
agreed.
by Caufbaugh Twilley - SandBagger
News
Who would have thought
Robert Benchley fans could convince Dwain Buck to head for
Boston. And not just Buck. Sue Piper, editor,
publisher and janitor for the Columbia River
Reader, and columnist Jean Bruner went along. In
Boston they met up with the delightful Cara Buck and her pal
from Seattle, Jill Konek, to form the official Horace J.
Digby contingent at the "Benchley in Boston" festivities
held over Labor Day weekend.
Using his
considerable clout as editor of Sandbagger Mag-e-zine,
Digby insisted on being one of the guests of honor for the weekend
of cocktail receptions, private tours of Boston
University's Benchley Archives, and tours of Harvard (which turns out
to be another university in the Boston area—Fourteen of us
went on the Harvard tour, but
only seven returned—that's how bad the dropout rate is over
there). There were outings to Suffolk Downs to watch the
ponies, art museum tours, a literary walking tour of Benchley
haunts near Beacon Hill, a trip to watch the Red Sox play, a
harbor cruise, banquets and more.
There were
also lots of guests of honor. Tom Saunders of
A3Radio.com and his lovely wife, Dr. Terry Saunders, DC.,
of Ann Arbor, Mich. gave the weekend a certain je ne se
quoi (or maybe I could). And what weekend in Boston
would ever be complete without Canada's foremost humorist, the
vivacious Ed Tasca, or the New Yorker who literally wrote the
book on Dorothy Parker, Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, author of
A Journey Into Dorothy
Parker's New York, published by Roaring Forties Press,
and Gordon Ernst, who literally wrote the
book on Robert Benchley; Robert Benchley,
An Annotated
Bibliography. Ernst's book
narrowly missed having a foreword
by Dave Barry (Barry learned, at the last minute that it was
a scholarly work).
Dapper Army
Surgeon, Dr. William Goldsmith, MD, the devastating Eileen
Forster Keck, and her dashing husband Jim Keck, II, set a
1920s flair for the occasion, dressing in the style of that
era. And while they took care of fashion,
Steve Jens,
late of MIT and Christopher Morgan, internationally recognized
puzzle inventor, kept track of scientific, mathematic, and
logic issues that might otherwise have distracted
attendees.
Art broker
Harriet Finkelstein, treated many of us to a tour of her
wonderful home/gallery, while Ruth Smerling, David and
Mary Lyon, Stuard Derrick, and many others graced us with
their presence. Of course, the event was held together
by Boston's most genial host and hostess David and Mary
Trumbull, who led a wonderful three-day event.
Among the
events scheduled (many of which were
impromptu) were the appearance of Old North Church and Boston's dramatic
skyline. One such event found a number of us, following
Saturday night's Banquet, enjoying a wander through Boston's
North End, having one last libation at each bar as it
closed down. This was the first weekend Boston bars
could stay open until 1:00 a.m. on Saturday, or be open
at all on Sunday. The hospitality industry didn't really
have the hang of this yet, and downtown bars seemed to be
trying to reset their schedules.
This
"one-for-the-road" bunch wound up in a road,
narrow and cobblestoned,
in search of Paul Revere's house.
What an exciting coincidence that was. Digby actually
knew Paul Revere. His rock n' roll band, the Brougham
Closet, performed on Paul Revere's television show on July 21, 1969.
They worked all morning at ABC studios in Hollywood, then took a break to watch the first
Manned Moon Landing on studio monitors. Digby sat
next to Mark Lindsey.
Still, it
was sad somehow, watching Digby knock on Revere's door (quite
loudly, considering the time of night), with no one
answering. Eileen Forster Keck suggested that Digby leave a
note, which he did, and the one-for-the-road bunch rambled
on.
It was a
last Tanqueray in Boston moment, all agreed. The final
bar had a gentle ambiance, though for the most part the spirit
of things was lively, dominated as it was by Ed Tasca, and a
personable young man named Rob
DeGulielmo.
DeGulielmo
seemed quite impressed when Dwain Buck put a wet napkin on
Digby's chair. GeGulielmo watched
conspiratorially as Digby returned to his seat, pulled the
chair out, seemingly unawares, and then, suddenly, at the last
possible moment, as if he had been doing it every Friday at
lunch for the last twenty-two years, Digby casually and with
true unconscious competence, swept the chair with his
hand retrieving the soaked napkin and wiping the chair seat in
one deft move, just one split second before his "ahmm" hit the
seat.
Of course,
being a SandBagger, Digby has been doing this every Fridayfor the past twenty-two
years.
Perhaps the
only disappointment of the evening was that Rob and Digby found themselves a
bit jealous of the attentions Eileen Forster Keck kept showing her husband
Jim.
by Horace J. Digby
-- SandBagger
News.
People always ask what
SandBaggers do? Sometimes they word it, "What do the
SandBaggers really do?"
Here are some of my favorite
explanations:
- We raise money for he widow of the
unknown soldier;
- We keep our community on its toes by
pulling clever pranks;
- We run a home for women who want to become
unwed mothers;
- We are therapy for Dwain Buck . .
.
But the truth
is, SandBaggers have lunch.
Lunch is the only
regular and continuous feature that I can recall. Every
Friday, rain or shine, we have lunch. We call it a
meeting. At these meetings, we to try to amuse each
other, mostly with spontaneous banter and wit, but sometimes
we tell jokes. Although we don't always finish
them.
Kenny Plampin began telling
a joke about eight years ago, "There's this guy on an
airplane, with this parrot . . ."
That's as far as Kenny ever
got, because one of the other SandBaggers interrupted to ask,
"Where was the guy going?"
"He wasn't going anyplace,"
Kenny said. "He had this parrot, on the airplane . .
."
Kenny tried to keep his joke
on track. But a another SandBagger, trying to
be helpful (it was probably Walt Naze) asked, "If the guy
isn't going anywhere, why is he on an airplane?"
After that, whenever Kenny
tried to tell the "Parrot Joke" we interrupted him, until
he refused to tell it at all. It's been eight years
now and I still don't know how that joke ended. But I do
know, if you want to get Kenny upset, ask him to tell the
"Parrot Joke."
That's what the SandBaggers
do.
Jerry Kivela told a great
joke. "What doesn't belong on this list?" Jerry
asked. the list included a crab, a lobster, a salmon,
and a Japanese guy under the wheels of a truck.
When we all gave up, Jerry
said, "It's the Salmon. Everything else is a
crustacean."
That joke got a great
laugh.
Later Jerry called me
aside. He said everybody seemed to love his joke,
and he wanted to know if I would explain it to
him.
Bill Putaansuu also told
great jokes. One was about the three fellows and
their favorite holidays. The first liked Easter, "with
the roast turkey, pumpkin pie, and Pilgrims."
"That's Christmas," said the
second fellow. "Easter is the one with fireworks
and picnics by the lake."
"That's the Forth of July,"
the third man said. "Easter is where Christ dies on the
cross. They bury him in a cave. And on the third
day, he comes out. If he sees his shadow you get six
more weeks of winter."
But Amos J. Peters was the
best SandBagger joke teller. He was best because he was
so bad at it. Amos was
a contractor. He built Longview's world famous
squirrel bridge. He got the bridge right, but when he
told jokes they always ended up backwards
somehow.
Here's the way Amos told a
joke: "Did you ever hear about the chicken that wanted
to get to the other side, so he crossed over the road to the other
side?"
That was Amos. Here's
another one. "This guy said, 'Knock, knock.' And this
other guy said, 'Who's there?' and the first guy thought he
was crying, because he didn't know his name was 'Boo
Who.'"
SandBaggers loved the
way Amos told jokes, in the same way artists enjoy modern
art. When Amos told a joke, it was like modern
art. Everything was upside down.
Here's another great
Amos Peters joke.
"There was this crushed
Asian guy on a list. He's under a truck with a
salmon. But a crawdad is a crustacean, even though its
not on the list."
Here is another Peters
joke.
"These two guys thought
Christmas was Thanksgiving and the Forth of July, but this
other guy got Easter mixed up with Valentines day . . .
No . . . No . . . With Ground Hogs Day. And
he got it mixed up with Easter because they both have six more
weeks of winter."
That's what SandBaggers
do.
by Horace J.
Digby, Jr. -- SandBagger News
In this
issue we announce the long awaited formation of the Sandbagger
Council.
Now for the
first time, prospective SandBaggers can be allowed to pay $25.00 annual dues,
but to not be required to attend Friday meetings at Yan's
Restaurant, at the foot of the Peter Crawford Bridge in West
Kelso.
For years we
have had to tell prospective SandBaggers there was just no way
they could pay their dues but not get the full (and perhaps
only) benefits of membership, attending lunch each
Friday.
But thanks
to the formation of the SandBagger Council, all of that has
changed. Now YOU can join the SandBaggers without
receiving any benefit whatsoever.
How can we
make this offer. It's simple. The SandBagger
Council will attend meetings for you. That's right, a
select group of SandBaggers, chosen because they were already
in the club, will meet at lunch on Fridays and continue to
conduct all regular SandBagger Business. They will
continue to participate in club outings, humanitarian and
civic service pranks and other special events, SAVING YOU THE
TROUBLE of actually being involved.
Here is how
you CAN become a MEMBER (we were going use the term "HONORARY
MEMBER," but the idea of this being any kind of "honor"
did not test well with any of the focus
groups):
Just fill out the form below
and hand it along WITH YOUR $25.00
CASH To any SandBagger, except,
of course, Roland
Richards.
 This offer void where
prohibited by law, or good judgment.
by J.
J. Gowland -- Reader
Contribution
I accidentally (sort of) found your
SandBagger E Mag—Okay, so I ‘googled’—looking for sandbaggers.
I mean, every golfer knows one, but they can be as
elusive as the ‘Caddy-saurus’ (that’s Nessy’s Canadian
cousin).   But someone out
there actually admitting to being
one?
That's how I found you and
your wacko bunch of Baggers. I’m pretty sure you’ve got
tracking software on your site and you’ve figured out that
threats don’t do any good so you’re killing me with humour
(Canadian spelling).
But, gees, ya broke the
mourning mood—golf is over in Ontario for
2005—and I simply wanted to wallow in
weather-inflicted sorrow.
So I had to track down my psychiatrist and make
a deal. I said I’d trade copies of my book if he’d treat
me for the side splitting, spiritually enhancing, nonsense in
your Sandbaggers E mag.
The man’s nuttier than I am and
could be crazier than you SandBaggers.
He bought a dozen
copies of my book and sincerely agreed that I need help.
Well, maybe he knew I needed money, too. Writers starve
waiting for royalty payments.
Anyway, I told him about your hysterical (that’s a
clinical diagnosis) bunch of non-anonymous SandBaggers, out to
ruin my wallowing, and he’s treating me for . . . well,
for paranoia.
If ya don’t hear from me for a while, it’s because my
Doctor is taking me (and my books) to the American Psychiatric
Association annual meeting—I used to be an
associate member, but I think I'm going as an exhibit this
time. I have to sell more books to get more
sessions.
He said the book and I would be "Exhibit A."
Honest, all I wanted to do
was wallow and weep, and hug my putter until next May!
Thanks,
I think . . .
J. J. Gowland,
J. J. Gowland is a humorist and Author of Confessions
of A Sandbagger, published by Publish America.
www.publishamerica.com/books/7322
Editor's Note:
We're back. Due to
distractions, like work, national celebrity, and writing
columns for real news papers, our editor has gotten
sidetracked from his most important job—churning out this
drivel. Even so, all references to
Herb Hadley, Roland Richards, and of course Ralph Nader, David
Trumbull, Robert Benchley, Ed Tasca, Dwain Buck, and everyone
else for that matter, are, as usual, typographical errors, and
according to our lawyers, not actionable. --
Horace J. Digby
Just
contact:
lolalane@lexingtonfilm.com
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Don't believe everything you
read. |
SandBagger
Mag-e-zine is published by Lexington Film, LLC.
All "persons" "places" "events" "plants"
depicted are fictional, especially "Herb Hadley."
Copyright © 2005 Lexington Film, LLC. All rights
reserved |
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