CoBaD

In 1964, Geraldine "Jerrie" Fredritz Mock (1925-2014) became the first woman to fly solo around the world. To learn more about her historic flight, CoBaD recommends checking out the following interactive map of her trip: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=a789f2920df14f95b05552cf77280f22 Columbus: “…taking off from New Columbus Georgia, Ohio and departing to the southeast. Then my first checkpoint will be Indigenous-Peoples-of-the-Americas-apolis, Indiana to the west…” - In October, 1492, when Christopher Columbus landed on the island the natives called Guanahani, he called the inhabitants of the land “Los Indios” (Spanish for "Indians"). Yet by the way they were dressed and spoke, it should have been immediately and abundantly clear even to the simplest of minds that these men and women weren’t from India. Yet Columbus stuck with the name. In this skit, Columbus is merely using the same logic in his flight plan. A modern day example of this would be someone departing Dallas, Texas and wanting to drive to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (to the north). But instead, he makes a wrong turn and goes to the south, ending up in San Antonio, Texas. He could either: (1) admit he made a wrong turn or go back north through Dallas and on to Oklahoma City (like most people would do), or (2) refuse to admit he’s wrong and call San Antonio “New Oklahoma City, Texas” and claim his trip a success. In this example, Christopher Columbus would clearly choose the latter approach. King Ferdinand: “You’re reading me off the checkpoints from that colonoscopy prep turd of a flight plan of yours. Slapdash, very sloppy and doesn’t hold together…” - A member of our troupe is not only a former pilot, but a two-time colonoscopy “veteran.” He confirmed that Columbus’s flight plan was in fact a colonoscopy prep turd. Columbus: “…I’m AOPA and EAA. I’ve been in Oshkosh…” - AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) and EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) are two of the biggest general aviation associations in America. Columbus’s “I’ve been in Oshkosh” remark is alluding to the annual “EAA AirVenture Oshkosh” in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, one of the largest general aviation fly-in conferences in the world. King Ferdinand: “…wet, greasy fat-speckled Genoa salami ass…” - King Ferdinand is referring here to Columbus’s birthplace. Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, home to the famous “wet,” greasy and fat-speckled Genoa salami. His ass contrasts with the drier, less fatty hard ass known as hard salami of Central Europe. You’ll find a lot of hard asses in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. Announcer: “Columbus’s last words to Jerrie, ‘You can’t miss it,’ only sealed her fate…” - CoBaD firmly believes that when someone gives you verbal directions to a location, and finishes with the phrase “You can’t miss it,” well, that’s the kiss of death, because you’ll miss it.

The name of the Information Technology focal, Lorne Ipsum, is alluding to what is known as “Lorem ipsum.” Lorem ipsum is commonly used to visually demonstrate the appearance of how something is supposed to look without actually communicating any sort of meaningful content. Sounds very much like I.T. to us. Lorne is essentially the 21st century equivalent of the man in “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” who’s “…tellin' me more and more / About some useless information / Supposed to fire my imagination.” The only difference of course is that Mick’s “useless information man” came on the radio, not on a PC.
 Our H.R. hicks are named after football stadiums. Jordan, the Talent Acquisition Specialist, is named after Jordan-Hare Stadium, the home of the Auburn University Tigers football team in Auburn, Alabama. Legion, the H.R. Director, is named after Legion Field, the former home of the University of Alabama Crimson Tide football team in Birmingham. The Tide moved to Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa in the 1990s.
 A member of our troupe grew up in Montgomery, the capital city of Alabama. If you ever decide to visit Montgomery, he recommends visiting the weekend of the Auburn-Alabama game, otherwise known as the "Iron Bowl." The Iron Bowl takes place the last weekend in November. Half the town is decked out in Alabama school colors, the other half in Auburn colors. Quite a sight to see. The blinkin’ bright red and green strings of street lights in the Christmas carol “Silver Bells” ain’t got nothin’ on crimson, white, burnt orange and navy blue.
 One of our troupe members worked at an office that had a “casual Friday.” A tradition exercised by some former Navy personnel at the office was to always wear Hawaiian print shirts on casual Fridays. Not to be ones to break such a fine tradition initiated by our outstanding men and women in uniform, our equally salient (in a diametric sense) red tape rednecks ditched their neck ties, belts and dress shoes (as well as shoes in general), and put on nice Hawaiian shirts underneath their bib overalls.

This skit was inspired by the tradition made most famous by David Baker, the former President and CEO of The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio (that building you may have seen on TV that looks like a giant lemon squeezer). When football players were elected to the Hall of Fame, the President/CEO himself would visit the players or (as was the case here with Ms. Tennille Ahab) visit surviving family members, knock on their doors and deliver the happy news in person. In a ceremony later that year, recipients would receive a gold jacket and be presented with a bronze bust which would be permanently displayed in Canton. The picture behind the scenes, though, is far uglier. The President/CEO and more especially the members of the selection committee (mostly members of the media) are really nothing more than “prey” that are “hunted” in the form of incessant lobbying on the radio, television and social media. These members of the media are hunted by fellow journalists, former teammates, coaches and other assorted harpooneers who have taken up the cause of getting “their guy” into the Hall. This skit is a spoof of that “hunt.” 
This skit is poking fun at two players from the 1970s (we’ll call them “Captain” and “Pequod”) who also happened to be teammates, and as of 2019 were still waiting to be elected to the Hall of Fame. We agree that both deserved to be in the Hall; both had stellar careers. What bothers us here at CoBaD is that both were very vocal about wanting to get into the Hall. It took a turn for the worse in January, 2020 when both were selected as finalists: “Pequod” was elected, while “Captain” was not. We came across some footage taken from “Captain’s” home just after he learned the news. To our surprise, “Captain” was pouting, swearing, and throwing a temper tantrum. His response was quite disillusioning as we were big fans of his and held him in high honor. In fact, one of our troupe members personally attended his induction into his team’s Ring of Honor in 2011, and was quite touched by his giving thanks to God in his acceptance speech. So we here at CoBaD were quite disappointed with this very public tirade. Watching “Captain’s” embarrassing and childish conniption fit on national television berating the Hall and its selection committee and saying how he deserved to be into the Hall of Fame, we couldn’t help but think of Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab and his equally maniacal obsession over landing the white whale (“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!” Chapter 135, The Chase —Third Day.). 
We here at CoBaD think one should always receive an honor with great humility and dignity. Can one humbly and nobly receive an honor that one has been demanding and actively campaigning for? There’s just something not quite right about figuratively pounding on someone’s door demanding the privilege of having that same someone turn around and literally knock on your door. 
You’ll be happy to know that all ended well. “Captain” was finally elected to the Hall of Fame in 2021, CoBaD thinks it was probably due to his literal “grisly army of harpoon brandishing” supporters, but also probably due to sympathy votes and the “permissive parent” faction of the committee who simply gave the septuagenarian brat his “lollipop” so that they wouldn’t have to put up with any more of his nationally televised pissy little hissy fits (we here at CoBaD saw his tearful rant as a vote-grubbing tactic, and, like all vote-grubbing tactics, is a psychological form of harpoon brandishing). To us it was a pyrrhic victory. “Captain” may have won a gold jacket and a bronze bust, but because “Captain” didn’t take his 2020 loss with an equal amount of humility and dignity as he did his enshrinement in 2021, he lost CoBaD’s respect. We hope you’re happy now, “Captain.” 
Physeter is a genus of toothed whales. The sperm whale is the only living member of the genus.
“Come back for your lay later” - Each crew member of a whaling ship received a percentage of the profits (a “lay”) rather than wages. The size of the lay depended upon status, with the captain and the “boatsteerers” (harpooneers) getting more money than “greenhands” (those new to the ship). 
For those of you interested in knowing what life was like aboard a whaling ship, CoBaD recommends the following articles: Life Aboard - New Bedford Whaling Museum https://www.whalingmuseum.org/learn/research-topics/whaling-history/life-aboard/ History Engine 3.0 (richmond.edu) https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/5198 What It Was Really Like Working On A Whaling Ship (grunge.com) https://www.grunge.com/316697/what-it-was-really-like-working-on-a-whaling-ship/ Finally, the cartoonist particularly enjoyed drawing the cartoons for this skit. Not only is he a fan of Herman Melville’s classic novel, it was also a bit of a nostalgia trip for him as well. When he was nine years old, he went on a family trip to Sea World and Marineland in Florida. He was greatly inspired by the sea life he saw, and for years afterwards drew cartoons featuring whales and dolphins before he was unfortunately lured onto the rocks of user interface design by the vile human factors sirens. The white whale featured in this skit was based on one of his characters.

We’re not remotely suggesting that “The Simpsons” is a doddering old, money grubbing franchise that should be flushed from society like a turd from an irritable bowel. This is more of an on-site, from-the-office face-to-face suggestion. A member of our troupe grew up “studying” comic strips in the newspapers. You know, those panels in the newspaper that, as Captain Splatman and Sergeant Entrails might say, feature male characters with abnormally large heads, large bulbous noses with no nostrils, massive overbites, round close set eyes that look like they’ve been welded together, can’t count to seventeen unless they’re naked, never change their clothes, and so forth. This same member of our troupe found reading older cartoons from the same strip rather eye opening. It was very surreal for him to see characters evolve (mainly in the form of ballooning heads and hands) whilst at the same time never aging and moving along a floating timeline. You’ll be happy to know that we here at CoBaD have zero tolerance for such abhorrent practices. We never cut corners, incisors or digits with our characters, and use only environmentally-responsible and cruelty-free disruptions of the space time continuum in our cartoons. We like the bulbous heads and nostril-less noses, though, so deal with it. But we digress. This troupe member found, evolution aspects aside, that what was true for the “legacy” comic strips is also true for “The Simpsons” now; a series that was once upon a time consistently funny, relatable and socially relevant, but now, as many critics will agree, is only occasionally funny, relatable and relevant, and is only kept around because they are “cash cows” for their respective media outlets. Unfortunately, unless these cartoonists step aside (and drop the “draw till you drop (dead)” mentality so pervasive in the cartoon industry) or their ratings plummet, there will always remain a “logjam” of artists behind them with newer and fresher ideas who will never get a chance to showcase their talents on a national stage. For more on CoBaD’s thoughts on these franchise “cash cows” and their respective artists’ “trips to the well,” see our very first skit “Love Cuts Like a Cheese.” When a member of our troupe was a boy, his parents gave him and his older brother a chest of drawers (aka, a dresser to put clothes in). Throughout his entire childhood, he mistakenly called the dresser his “chester drawers.” It wasn’t until many years later that he learned the awful, embarrassing truth. You’ll be happy to know that he is older and wiser now, and is currently on the lookout for a dresser made out of authentic chester wood. We understand that Mondegreen Furniture Outlet and Malapropism Consignment might have the very chester drawers he's looking for. However, if any of you come across such a dresser, please let us here at CoBaD know so that we can pass on the happy news.

This sketch was inspired by CoBaD’s struggles to set up this channel and gain traction in our quest to transition from our previous occupations to performing arts. Over the course of several weeks, we emailed and called many people for ideas on how to make a successful jump. Many individuals (writers, theatre professors, and performers) refused to return our calls or emails, which greatly disappointed us, given the fact that performing arts, according to one actress I talked to, is an “inclusive community.” For those that did return our emails, they suggested classes such as comedy sketch writing classes and improv classes. They helped, but we couldn’t help but think that taking these comedy and improv classes gained us “admission” into the performing arts community much like forking over money at an amusement park will gain one admission onto a ride. That is, you have to “pay to play.” The Artistic Indifference Carousel is a parody of just one part of our attempt to break into show business. Here is the actual timeline: June 1, 2021: We reached out to “Mr. Standard,” a friend of ours, an artistic director for a local music group and said that we would like to do comedy skits for a living. After pestering him for two and a half months, he finally agreed to meet with us August 15. August 15, 2021: He and a coworker of his met with us and we read the skits together. He liked the skits, but they were outside the mission statement of his arts organization. Fair enough. “Mr. Standard” then asked us to email “Jenny,” a local actor. August 26, 2021: Once we finally got “Jenny’s” address from “Mr. Standard,” we emailed “Jenny” asking for references. Five days later, on August 31, she sent us what appeared to be an encouraging email with the opening sentence: “The best thing about the theatre world is its community,” calling it an “inclusive” one. She then appended a list of places to start (local writing guilds, opportunities to get works read and writing tools). September 8, 2021: After a review of the list of “Jenny’s” references, we decided to start with the local writer’s guilds. We submitted a request for help on a guild’s “Contact Us” page. That very day (the quickest response in this whole adventure we might add), the president, “Mike,” referred us to a local freelance writer, named “Danny.” September 8, 2021: We emailed “Danny” on the “Contact Us” page of his website, asking for some advice. September 17, 2021: We finally heard back from “Danny,” who couldn’t help us, but gave us two references; “Angela,” a member of a stage writer’s group (“Danny” used to be president of the group) and “Courtney.” Neither responded to our repeated requests for help. September 24, 2021: We sent an email to “Jenny,” complaining about how this alleged “community” was either passing the buck or ignoring us altogether. We cc’d: “Mr. Standard” in the response. “Jenny” never responded to the email, but “Mr. Standard” did. “Mr. Standard” wrote that this runaround was a very real and familiar experience for all artists. He summed it up with the rather disturbing phrase “…no one HAS to help you. They have to WANT to help you.” He then referred us to back to the writer’s guild (see #4 above), which, if he had gone to the trouble of actually reading our email, he would have known that we had already tried that option. Nevertheless, we emailed “Mike,” explaining the wild goose chase, jokingly comparing it to calling a hotline and trying to get a personal computer fixed. It was three days later, on September 27, 2021, that he responded by saying “…The people who you contacted for information are not like different departments of a company that is giving you the runaround; they're disparate individuals doing whatever it is they do and who don't actually owe you a callback.” So it appears that based on “Mr. Standard’s” and “Mike’s” email, that contrary to what “Jenny” initially said, theatre's "inclusive community" is not only not inclusive, it’s not even a community. Note that during this whole process, CoBaD was trying to be realistic. We didn’t approach studio heads or TV executives; we simply went to grass roots level artists we knew and asked for advice; not money, not a job, simply advice on how to join the “community;” i.e., how to get started. This skit used the analogy of an individual trying to join a church. You want to join a church so you attend a service. You are welcomed by the pastor, the deacons visit you in your home, members of the congregation invite you over for Bible study, and so forth. As a member of the church, you would NEVER tell someone who wants to join your congregation “I don’t have to help you, I have to want to help you” or “I don’t owe you a callback.” A church will never grow that way. It is elitist thinking. Yet the performing arts will regularly mock the church for their elitist thinking in their improv scenes, skits, plays, films and standup routines. We think a round of Matthew chapter 7 verse 3 is in order for our “speck inspectors,” don’t you (see “The New York Times’ Effect on Man” skit)? Incidentally, Lloyd Garrison Standard, the ticket taker on the Artistic Indifferences Carousel, refers to the poem “W. Lloyd Garrison Standard” from Edgar Lee Masters’s book “Spoon River Anthology” (1915). W. Lloyd Garrison Standard, whose heart was “…cored out by the worm of theatric despair,” said (in the very next line) he “[wore] the coat of indifference to hide the shame of defeat.” So next time you come across someone in theatre’s “inclusive community” who won’t return your emails or phone calls, don’t take it too hard. They’re merely being unresponsive in order to mask their multitude of personal and professional failures. That’s show biz. “The Tenure Track Train” was inspired by our experiences in taking comedy classes. For more on these misadventures, see the “Witless Twit” and “Acceptance Spee” sketches. We never took a standup class, so the “Standup Shakedown Workshop” was completely made up. We here at CoBaD were far more interested in comedy than standup. And don’t think that getting up on a stage and bitching and moaning for 20 minutes straight is the least bit funny. In conclusion, given all that all that we here at CoBaD went through just to get this far, we can definitely identify with the ticket taker in this sketch. We can see how the ordeal of constantly put up with the idiocy and hypocrisy of the performing arts world would turn any one of us into philistines as well.

A member of our troupe has a Ph.D. in Human Factors Psychology. He also happens to be a bagpiper. This sketch was inspired by a 04 July 2019 article he read in the Canadian online magazine “Pipes Drums.” On 23 March 2019, Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland bestowed Richard Parkes (world champion pipe major of Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band) with an honorary doctorate of DLit (Music). An article on that event opened with the sentence “Legendary Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe-Major Richard Parkes can add ‘doctor’ to his long list of accolades.” Presumably not to be outdone, Mr. Parkes’s alma mater, Ulster University, on 04 July 2019 awarded Mr. Parkes with a Doctorate of Letters (DLitt). The article on that event stated “The PhD [sic] for services to piping and drumming follows the presentation of an equivalent honorary doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast, making Parkes the most academically accomplished pipe-major in Grade 1 band history.” The troupe member was so furious upon reading the latter article that he immediately cancelled his subscription to “Pipes Drums” magazine. Honorary doctorates are AWARDS, not ACADEMIC ACCOMPLISHMENTS. To call Mr. Parkes’s honorary doctorates academic accomplishments is an insult to those who spent years taking classes, reading books, studying, writing essays and taking tests to earn their doctorates outright. Honorary doctorates are just that, honorary; they are not substantive in nature. Mr. Parkes’s Masters in Engineering is an academic accomplishment. Apparently the journalists who wrote these articles aren’t academically accomplished. Since they didn’t know the difference between honorary and substantive degrees, apparently they aren’t intellectually accomplished either. Honorary awards are also subject to abuse. There are an unwritten rule that if you are the recipient of an honorary doctorate, you are not supposed to call yourself doctor and you are not to insist that others call you doctor. Benjamin Franklin broke the first half of that rule and Maya Angelou broke the second half. Plus for recipients (especially politicians), there always remains the question of what they did to “earn” their doctorates. If you want to see a (fictional) take of the seedy side of honorary doctorates, where honorary doctorates are given the quid pro quo treatment, see the “Yes Minister” episode called “Doing the Honours.” Finally, while these honorary doctorates may gain some cheap publicity for the university, they carry an unnecessary risk. If the individual who receives the honorary degree is later is caught in conduct unbecoming to the university, the bestowal becomes a major source of embarrassment because the university is forever linked to that individual. According to Wikipedia, comedian Bill Cosby received 72 honorary degrees in recognition of his career in acting and comedy. Sixty-two of these have been rescinded due to accusations against Mr. Cosby for sexual assault in 2014. While his 2018 conviction of aggravated indecent assault was vacated in 2021, it’s safe to say the numerous allegations made against him have ensured that he will not be receiving any further honors from institutions of higher learning. The moral of this story is essentially a warning to all colleges and universities. Don’t hand out honorary degrees: you could be dancing with four.

A member of our troupe was named after St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. He claims that St. Patrick’s Day used to be a day when people the world over would commemorate the man who brought Christianity to Ireland. Now it’s all about corned beef and cabbage (not Irish), “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” T-shirts (probably not Irish), Mardi Gras style shamrock necklaces (not Irish), green beer (definitely not Irish) and public drunkenness (well, okay, that is Irish). We here at CoBaD think that the LGBTQ+ movement is no laughing matter. The mass commercialization associated with the aforementioned movement and its resultant fallout, however, is a laughing matter, and is therefore the subject of this skit. It shows what Pride Month would be like if it followed the path of St. Patrick’s Day. It is partially aided, of course, by a resurgence of a selectively listening, all-powerful, stumpy-armed and masterbate-ingly-challenged devil, a weak-willed politician who made the supreme sacrifice of wetting himself when no one else had the lack of courage to do so, and a complete and utter makeover of the Gregorian calendar. But it’s also partially due to the fact that, thanks to commercialization, folks everywhere have become so swept up in the tangible aspects of the month (image conscious photo ops, parades, flashy clothes, food and drink, souvenirs, TV specials, etc.) that they have completely forgotten the movement’s true meaning. Some of these efforts can in fact do more harm than good. The jokes concerning the “Am I Gay?” clickbait questionnaire and the “Pride Starter’s Kit “referred to in the skit, for example, were based on actual quizzes and products encountered on the internet, respectively. The “Am I Gay?” quiz, for example, has an individual answer five (5) multiple choice questions. The questions were about topics completely unrelated to the subject such as getting haircuts, texting friends and exercising. A male member of our troupe took the test. Upon taking it the first time, it said that he was a closet gay. Out of curiosity, he took the quiz again making sure to give the exact same answers to the exact same questions. It then said he was definitely gay. He took it three more times (again with the exact same answers to the same questions) and it said that he was definitely gay, definitely gay, then a closet gay again (he is actually not gay). An attendee at an October, 1981 Al-Anon meeting famously quipped “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” What does it mean when one takes the same quiz over and over again giving the same answers and gets different results? Maybe it means the people who created the “Am I Gay?” quiz are insane. While the old adage “Together we can make a difference” may ring true in a positive sense, it can also be true in a negative sense as well, especially for extended celebrations such as Pride Month. “Holiday Fatigue” (both in the physiological and psychological sense) is a very real phenomenon, partially due to its sheer length. To a lesser extent, “Rainbow Fatigue” and “Pink Fatigue” (in reference to October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month) may be as well. Unless this is addressed by, say, scaling back celebrations to a week, these prolonged activities have the potential to ultimately diminish the long term impact of otherwise noble causes, leaving individuals to look forward to the events with a sense of “oh, no, not again” rather than a sense of eager anticipation. As the old cliché goes, sometimes less is more. In Book 3, Chapter 1 of “The Discourses,” Niccolò Machiavelli talks about how religious groups and republics from time to time require renewal, or “return to beginnings,” because their goodness on which they were founded becomes corrupted over time. I think Machiavelli’s observation applies to all forms of organizations, not just religious or geopolitical ones. We here at CoBaD certainly hope Pride Month doesn’t get away from its beginnings and turn into something “corrupt” like St. Patrick’s Day. However, given that mankind (particularly the “profit first, publicity always” folks of the corporate world and their overzealous consumers) has a proven track record of hopelessly corrupting other days of the year such as Easter, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, perhaps CoBaD's hopes of a “renewal” are just wishful thinking. The head of Lucifer in this sketch was taken from an illustration in an edition of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.” The illustration was by William Blake (1757-1827). In the book, the three headed Lucifer chews on three traitors (Brutus, Cassius, and Judas) for all eternity. The body of one of the damned souls can clearly be seen in Lucifer’s center mouth.

One of the most difficult things to understand about the protagonist Dr. Lemuel Gulliver from Johnathan Swift’s book “Gulliver’s Travels” (1726) is his complete lack of appreciation for the gifts that have been bestowed upon him. Dr. Gulliver is a surgeon, has a loving wife and children, and a close network of friends. Yet he repeatedly leaves his family and friends for years at a time (because he is, in his words, “…condemned, by nature and fortune, to active and restless life,” see Part II, Chapter 1) to take the adventures documented in the book. It’s unclear what happens to Dr. Gulliver’s wife Mary and their children during his absence. They may have been taken care of financially (e.g., before his second journey, Dr. Gulliver left his wife and family 1500 pounds, and his family had a steady income from a couple of estates Dr. Gulliver owned), but nothing is known of how Dr. Gulliver’s family handled his absence psychologically (e.g., the wife wondering when or if her husband would ever return, the children without a father figure in their lives, etc.). To add insult to injury, after coming home from these “unfortunate voyages” (see Part II, Chapter 8), Dr. Gulliver comes back armed with fantastic stories to tell, but little in the way of money and very little proof that he actually took these journeys in the first place (apart from the tiny livestock he brought from Lilliput and eventually sold). Also note that the 16 years he spent on journeys in “Gulliver’s Travels” away from his wife and children don’t even include the six years that he spent away from his wife in the East and West Indies prior to the beginning of this book, which, unlike his main travels, netted a fortune. If Dr. Gulliver was required to go on all of these journeys (say, he was an officer in the Royal Navy), that would be one matter, but the fact that he freely chose to go on these journeys when as a surgeon there surely must have been many more opportunities where his family could go with him leads CoBaD to have very little sympathy for his plights overseas. Indeed, upon completing his final journey, the reader is left with the enduring image of Dr. Gulliver, perhaps still dressed in his coat made of skins, his wooden-soled shoes and furred stockings (gifts from his Houyhnhnm master), sulking like a spoiled child, despising humans, especially his “odious” wife and “intolerable” children (Part IV, Chapter 11), comparing them to the savage and stupid Yahoos, and eventually agreeing to dine with his wife so long as she kept her distance so that he could not smell her, and only when his nose was stuffed with rue, lavender or tobacco leaves (Part IV, Chapter 12). What’s particularly perplexing about Dr. Gulliver’s misanthropy is that the humans he so despised are the only ones that consistently welcomed him with open arms every time he returned from his self-centered years-long exploits, even though his family and friends had every right to turn him away (his wife was already getting fed up with his leaving her and the kids alone upon Dr. Gulliver’s return from his second voyage). In contrast, on almost every journey Dr. Gulliver went on, he was either hated or forcibly removed from the lands he visited, some of whom were individuals he supposedly looked up to (so to speak). One wonders why such an ungrateful “protagonist” as Dr. Gulliver is so well loved in literature. Perhaps it is because he is so relatable. A good analogy is that of a freshman “nerd” in high school. The freshman is firmly embedded in the “nerd” clique, but he wants to fit in with the “rebel” or “jocks” clique. He gets rejected and is forced to return to the land of the nerds. Every time upon returning to his “native land,” he is warmly welcomed back, yet with each rejection he becomes more and more blind to his warm surroundings and becomes more determined than ever to leave his clique mates behind for allegedly greener pastures. Sadly, like the nerd, we oftentimes just don’t count our blessings; we lust for what we don’t have rather than appreciate what we do have.

This skit pokes fun at men who always feel like they have to make a big production out of their engagements; whether it be flashing “Will you marry me?” on the Jumbotron at sporting events, skywriting a proposal, or handing that special girl an engagement ring whilst both are plummeting to earth with parachutes strapped to their backs. With each passing year, these “stunts” seem to be getting more and more elaborate. Of course with so many moving parts in these proposals, so many things can (and will) go disastrously wrong for these men. That’s because they aren’t highly trained professionals like Evel Knievel (1938-2007). Leave the engagement stunts to the experts, guys. Although his most famous stunts ended with crash landings such as his jump over the Caesar’s Palace fountain in 1967, the Snake River Canyon Skycycle jump in 1974, and his 1975 Wembley Stadium jump (the subject of this skit), Mr. Knievel was never deterred from jumping back on his Harley Davidson XR-750 and trying again. Mr. Knievel in fact paved the way for many of his daredevil successors, including his son Robbie (1962-2023), who, incidentally, “avenged” his father by nailing a successful landing at the Caesar’s Palace fountain in 1989. The "Engagement Stunts" sketch was the sketch that inspired the “Acceptance Spee” sketch. It wasn’t until after CoBaD recorded the “Engagement Stunts” sketch that we realized that it didn’t go over five minutes at all. We suspect that the sketch ran over five minutes in the 2021 online comedy sketch writing class because that was a first read. The pace of first reads always goes slow because readers don’t know what to expect. So even if the five minute rule for sketches was a sensible one, cutting material based on the first read is a really bad idea as it only discourages comedy writers and makes the skit subject to unnecessary edits, forcing possibly good content to be needlessly thrown away. Inspiration always comes from the strangest places. Incidentally, one of the students present at the 2021 reading was dialing in from Topeka, Kansas. Topeka, Kansas is the home of the Evel Knievel Museum. It just goes to show you that no matter what the subject is, there's always someone in the audience who gets the jokes.

Back in November and December 2021, a member of our troupe took an online comedy sketch writing class with a well renowned comedy theatre. The class met once a week. The 15 November 2021 assignment was to write a comedy sketch. Like all of their on-stage skits, this skit was to adhere to what CoBaD considers to be, tactfully speaking, very silly and arbitrary rules: The skit must be three to five minutes in duration, between 2-6 characters, and cannot have props and costumes (for more on why CoBaD thinks the duration limit is in place, see the discussion section in the “Witless Twit” sketch). During the reading of this assignment, his instructor rudely cut off (truncated) the reading of the student’s sketch at exactly five minutes in, even though he only had one page left to go. The instructor also said the sketch was unrealistic, specifically the part where a potential son-in-law and father-in-law are meeting and the son-in-law asks for his daughter’s hand. He said that fathers-in-law and sons-in-law don’t meet like that anymore. The following week’s assignment was to write a 2-3 minute monologue, and so the student submitted the “Acceptance Spee” sketch. The instructor said with disgust “Okay, I see what this is all about,” and moved on without another word. The Croppy Award was brought to you by an engineer who bought a solid chocolate Easter bunny at the grocery store (which, fortunately, was already cut in half lengthwise), cut the ears and butt off to make it look like a human statuette, wrapped it in aluminum foil, stuffed it in an empty jar of pomade, and held it in place with a handful of cotton swabs from his medicine cabinet. Nothin’ but the best for our viewers!

The Stanford Trial Experiment is a fictional follow up study to Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s famous Stanford Prison Experiment. Scheduled to run for two weeks in the summer of 1971, the Stanford Prison Experiment was called off after only six days when it became quite clear that all those who were involved in the study became so immersed in their roles (the college students who played the prison guards, the prisoners, and even Dr. Zimbardo himself as the prison superintendent) that they soon forgot that it was in fact a simulation. While it is easy to explain the prisoners’ descent into violence (they were physically immersed in the environment at all times: they were “arrested” at their homes, they were booked, they slept in cells, they wore numbers, they were called out by numbers, etc.), the guards were probably more fascinating: the guards worked in eight hour shifts and got to leave the “prison,” go home and go about their normal lives (we assume that they were not allowed to talk about the experiment). When they reintegrated themselves into the prison environment, their reintegration was very quick after only five days. So while the key question in the Stanford Prison Experiment (according to prisonexp.org) was “What happens when you put good people in an evil place?” the key question in the Stanford Trial Experiment was “What happens when you put sensible people in a very silly place?” The Human Exploitation Review League (HERL) is an obvious spoof of an ethics review board. In the history of psychology there have been several experiments (e.g., Watson’s “Little Albert” experiment, Milgram’s “Obedience to Authority” experiment, Zimbardo’s “Stanford Prison Experiment”) which, through the lens of hindsight, are perceived as being controversial and unethical. So HERL attempts to put a stop to this runaway rash of “unethical” behavior in experiments. In reality, the board grossly overcompensates and becomes a vast, slow to respond, foot-dragging, bribe taking bureaucracy which bogs down its experimenters with endless rules, regulations, consent forms and nondisclosure agreements, essentially making experimenters have to conduct dozens of experiments costing millions of dollars in order to get results that would only gather a fraction of the data that an “unethical” experiment would collect. So in a sense the title of the League is quite accurate: human exploitation is their forte - they exploit (human) experimenters. Truth be told, ethics boards don’t really exploit experimenters like this. A member of our troupe worked with review boards, and they were very nice and helpful. The key takeaway from all this is: Would we have learned as much about human behavior if Dr. Zimbardo’s Prison Experiment (or Milgram’s or Watson’s experiments for that matter) had been held to today’s ethics standards? Probably not, which brings up another point. A puzzling aspect to the aforementioned studies is that they are still prominently featured in psychology textbooks. Is it for the shock and entertainment value (see the “The New York Times’ Effect on Man” skit for a further discussion on this)? It seems that textbooks authors, in keeping these studies in their textbooks, are suggesting that it is okay to use the information gathered in these studies to illustrate a point even though the studies may have been unethical. It seems like textbooks should set an example that it is not okay to use data from experiments that were conducted unethically. 416 was the actual number of a prisoner in the Stanford Prison Experiment who on day five went on a hunger strike. In the 1959 movie “Ben Hur,” “41” was the name given to Ben Hur when he was a slave on the galley ship. When the defense attorney says in his objection, “Personal conscience has nothing to do with my client’s condition,” technically that statement is true, at least from a methodological perspective. For the prisoner condition in the Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo was looking at how prisoners would respond when their freedoms and identities were suddenly stripped away. For the prison guard condition, Dr. Zimbardo was looking at personal conscience. The title of the ethics board, Human Exploitation Review League (HERL), is a play on the term Human Integration Readiness Level (HIRL). A member of our troupe is a Human Factors engineer. HIRL is a Human Factors term which basically measures on a scale from 1 to 9 how effectively and safely the human operator or maintainer can use a fielded technology. Yet the aforementioned Human Factors engineer couldn’t take this term seriously because every time he would look at the acronym, he would giggle and jokingly cry out “I think I’m gonna HIRL!” The engineers probably heard him because the generally accepted acronym nowadays is Human Readiness Level (HRL). The paragraph Dr. Vomit cites at the end of the skit (Part II, subpart A, section 49, paragraph (a)) is the Code of Federal Regulations Title 14 paragraph as it pertains to student pilots who wish to retest after a failed check ride. I guess one could say that a sequel is kind of a retest. To find out more about the Stanford Prison Experiment, CoBaD recommends visiting www.prisonexp.org

In the 1960s at Yale University, Dr. Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments pertaining to an individual’s obedience to authority. This sketch is in fact a parody of the most famous experiment in that series. The skit turns the whole experiment on its ear and shows how far a “freshman reporter” working for an underground university newspaper is willing to go to please his “editor,” an editor who, despite the fact that he claims to hold within him the power of love and prides himself on questioning authority, is every bit as dangerous as the authority he condemns. Strange as he may sound, Steven Milkman in fact encapsulates in a single individual that fascinating generation known as “the 60’s generation” who on one facet, promotes peace and love, and, on another facet, advocates violence and anarchy. In the classic Milgram experiment, two subjects were randomly chosen to be either a learner or a teacher. The experimenter and the teacher were in one room, and the learner was in a separate room, out of view. The only mode of communication between the two rooms was via a microphone located on the teacher’s desk and a display panel in the teacher’s room indicating the learner’s answer. The lesson was a paired associated learning task. The teacher read word pairs to the learner, then in the testing sequence, read the first word of the pair along with four terms (for example, the teacher read pairs like: “blue box nice day wild duck” then, in the testing sequence, he would read “blue: sky, ink, box, lamp”) The learner was to indicate which of the four terms the teacher read had been paired with the first word and answer with the corresponding number in the order they were presented (in the above example, the correct answer would have been “3”). If the learner was correct, the teacher moved on to the next pair. If the learner was incorrect, he received a shock from the teacher. The teacher started with 15 volts, and with each incorrect answer, proceeded in 15 volt increments (30, 45, 60, etc.) up to the maximum of 450 volts. In fact, the “learner” was an accomplice of the experiment (i.e., a fake subject) and no shocks were administered. The purpose of the experiment was to see how far the real subject (as a teacher) would go in the experiment before discontinuing. The idea was that as the intensity of the shocks increased, the learner, who had mentioned prior to the beginning of the experiment that he had heart trouble, began to shout through the wall, complaining more and more about the discomfort as the experiment wore on (these “shouts” were actually prepared, pre-recorded “complaints” to ensure consistency across subjects). At 150 volts, the learner claimed that his heart was starting to bother him and that he demanded to be released. The experimenter then used a series of prepared statements (called “prods”) to encourage the teacher to go on until the teacher absolutely refused to continue. Dr. Milgram found it rather concerning that nearly 50 percent of all subjects followed the experimenter’s orders all the way up to 450 volts despite the learner’s protests. CoBaD suspects this may not be as alarming as one may think. CoBaD viewed Dr. Milgram’s 1962 documentary “Obedience” and none of the teachers appeared to be sadistic or relentless in nature. In fact, all teachers at one point or another showed reluctance to continue. One teacher, who, despite going all the way to 450 volts, openly showed compassion by repeatedly saying “Answer, please” and “Are you alright in there?” That same teacher also asked a question to the experimenter that was particularly fascinating from a 21st century perspective. At 180 volts, the teacher hesitated to go on, and then asked the experimenter, “…Who’s gonna take the responsibility if anything happens to that gentlemen,” and the experimenter replied, “I’m responsible for anything that happens here” (which, by the way, was NOT a prepared prod; the experimenter would only volunteer this information when asked). The teacher asked that question to the examiner again at 390 volts. In both instances, when the experimenter assumed all (legal) responsibility, it appeared that it became a little easier for the teacher to continue. In this day and age when people are afraid of saying or doing things for fear of being ostracized, losing their jobs, getting sued or going to jail, CoBaD wonders if the same results in this experiment would be achieved today if teachers could be assured upfront that they would not be liable for any adverse consequences that ensued. As we all know, the accomplice was in fact quite alright. Once the teacher went into the other room, the “learner,” James McDonough, unhooked himself and set up a tape recorder (to play his cries of protest), and hooked up an answer generating device. After that, he really didn’t have anything to do until the conclusion of the experiment when he met with the teacher to ensure him that he was alright. It’s hard not to imagine Mr. McDonough in that room sitting back and relaxing, changing into bunny slippers, putting his hair in curlers, filing his nails and scarfing on bon bons to pass the time. For those interested in learning about this and Dr. Milgram’s other experiments in the series (e.g., proximity of experimenter to teacher, proximity of learner to teacher, number of teachers, etc.), CoBaD recommends reading Dr. Milgram’s book “Obedience to Authority” (1974). The picture in the top left hand corner of the first sketch is a spoof of the Marine scene from the painting “The Apotheosis of Washington” (1865) painted by Constantino Brumidi, and photographed by the Architect of the Capitol. “The Apotheosis of Washington” is painted on the dome in the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Frankly, we think “The Apotheosis of Freud” is a much better painting, don’t you? Finally, contrary to what our esteemed announcer Mr. Jimothy Pajama-Bottoms claimed, the Dr. Milkman’s linguistic wardrobe was actually furnished by The Hippie Glossary: https://www.hipplanet.com/books/atoz/glossary.htm

This skit pokes fun at advice columnists. The text from Thurmond_Drang (a play on Sturm und Drang, the 18th century German movement in literature and music) to Mummy Mummy essentially sums up the problem advice columnists present to us here at CoBaD: they make snap diagnoses based on a single brief letter (essentially making judgements based on one side of an argument), have no prior knowledge of the individual (so they can at least ascertain his or her credibility), make no effort to make first hand observations of the problem (to determine its accuracy), and rarely, if ever, follow up to see if the advice they gave was followed through or actually worked. Mummy Mummy takes it a step further by consistently contradicting the rules she lays out to her listeners (e.g., telling her listeners to feel free to ask questions only so she can give them dumb looks and tell them that they are either overthinking or not thinking at all, which only intimidates her listeners from asking further questions so she can turn around and rail at them for not asking questions) and giving one size fits all advice in the form of tired, worn out idioms (and as can be seen in the skit, idioms often contradict another). And yet advice columnists are constantly sought out for advice because they are considered to be the very definition of common sense. Maybe common sense isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 
“Who’s for trifle?” is a reference to Basil Fawlty’s famous line at the end of the “Fawlty Towers” episode, “Gourmet Night.” 
Tommy’s question regarding his father choking was inspired by a question posed in an advice column for those seeking pharmacological assistance. In the article, the woman said that her husband used bleach in warm water to treat toenail fungus. Now her husband’s feet are red and painful, so she wrote the advice columnist to see if he should see a podiatrist or dermatologist. It’s hard to tell who is stupider, the husband for soaking his feet in bleach or the wife who wrote to an advice columnist and waited for a response before acting on her husband’s painful condition.
 “Anna O,” also known as Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), was the most famous patient of physician Josef Breuer (1842-1925). Dr. Breuer’s protégé, Sigmund Freud (1859-1936) wrote about the case.
 Anal’s text message is a spoof of a book called “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green (2012). The parody title, “The Fault in Our Champagne” was inspired by a section in chapter 11 when the waiter at the restaurant where Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters ate told a story about Dom Pérignon, the creator of champagne, who allegedly said to his fellow monks upon creating champagne, “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars.” That particular chapter seems to run contrary to the title of the book, because Hazel and Augustus seemed to find no fault in these particular “stars;” having two rounds of stars with their complimentary dinner in Amsterdam, and another round of stars on the plane ride on the way home (Chapter 14).
 The setup to the dinner scene appears to show a total lack of responsibility on the mother’s part: a mother lets her 16 year old daughter, dependent on a BPAP device to breathe, and her 17 year old boyfriend, with a prosthetic leg, go out by themselves (without adult or medical supervision) in a foreign city which none of them has visited before, and take two trams across town to have dinner at a strange restaurant which has been paid for by a man they have never met. The “without medical supervision” element in particular was rather disturbing. In Chapter 7, just before Hazel was to travel to Amsterdam with her Mom and Augustus, she had a deoxygenation emergency and had to spend six days in the hospital. Shortly after being released, Hazel’s doctors agreed to let Hazel go to Amsterdam on the condition that someone traveled with her that was intimately familiar with her case (Chapter 8), which would mean either Dr. Maria (Hazel’s doctor), or Hazel’s Mom would have to travel with Hazel. The fact that Hazel spent several hours away from her Mom either on trams or having dinner could have been disastrous. Even Hazel herself pondered the possibility of having a fatal episode of deoxygenation in Amsterdam (Chapter 8).
 It may sound like a harsh thing to say given the nature of “The Fault in Our Stars” (a story about cancer patients in love), but in CoBaD’s opinion, “The Fault in Our Stars” is yet another “book” in what we call the “Wizard of Oz series.” The analogy is referring to the scene in L. Frank Baum’s book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” where the Wizard of Oz, who for most of the book comes across as great and powerful to all, is exposed when Toto happens to knock over a screen in the corner of the throne room, revealing the “Wizard” to be an ordinary old and powerless man, shouting through a megaphone, pulling levers and turning cranks. Similarly, “The Fault in Our Stars” has blinded critics and readers alike with its alleged awesomeness. But when one “pulls aside the curtain,” or in this case, the backdrop (cancer); that is to say, when one factors cancer out of the story, one reveals a tepid love story between a pretentious girl and a very talkative boy, characters lacking depth (many of whom are quite tiresome and unlikeable) and very banal dialogue.
 “The Fault in Our Stars” seems to be cut from the same cloth as stories such as Earnest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” (set in World War I) and the 1997 movie “Titanic” (set on the doomed ship of the same name). Yet when Mr. Green’s story premiered in 2012, critics and readers, like with “A Farewell to Arms” and “Titanic,” were once again blinded by the backdrop, and, paying little attention to anything else in the book (including the lead character Hazel’s pervasive ego-centrism, cynicism, selfishness and ungratefulness), gave the book rave reviews.
 The artistic world can do better this. It can do better than presenting underwhelming stories against overwhelming backdrops. A story should not have to depend upon a backdrop to win over an audience; rather, a story should be a good story regardless of its setting. CoBaD believes that content is king. The content is the substance. The rest is trifle.

One of our troupe members’ first play he was in as a boy was a play called “Stone Soup.” This sketch is based on the Swedish version of the tale called “Nail Soup.” “Nail Soup goes something like this: A tramp was wandering the countryside and hadn’t had anything to eat. He came to a small cottage and knocked on the door. A greedy, penny pinching widow, who answered the door, refused to give the stranger something to eat. The wily tramp responded by saying that he wasn’t begging for food; on the contrary, he wanted to share his “food” with the woman. He showed her a bent nail in his pocket, claiming all he needed was a pot and some boiling water and he would produce the best meal she ever tasted. Upon boiling the water, he said that the soup was a little thin, and persuaded her to add some of her salt (leftover from Christmas), vegetables (from her cellar) and dried meat. The woman was so impressed with the tasty and sweet smelling soup that she agreed with the tramp that the soup was fit for a king, and allowed him to stay at her house for the evening. The next morning the clever tramp left the woman’s house without his nail, because the woman wouldn’t let him go until he agreed to sell the nail. The tramp in this skit, Mr. Neil Soup, essentially tricks the network executive, Ms. Penelope Pinscher, into buying into an ordinary, everyday item of little value (an interview with canned questions and canned answers) by persuading her to dress it up: adding dancing girls, a house band, expanding it to 60 minutes, moving it to a midnight time slot, and adding a shiny suit host (who is usually a celebrity or standup comedian, not a journalist, and therefore a horrible interviewer), insipid skits and an enthusiastic but obsequious audience, landing himself a sweet cushy job as Executive Figurehead in the process. This skit essentially is a jab at late night talk shows. These talk shows, at their heart, are nothing more than just rock-stupid scripted questions and stone-cold, scripted answers. And the networks keep buying the “nails” from the “tramps” over and over again and passing the “soup” onto the viewers. No matter how much you dress up that nail, folks, it’s still just a nail.

In this skit, the Nitwit Skit Fix-It Guy first attempts to make the skit less “nitwitty;” however, rather than changes Stacy’s responses, in true witless fashion, he starts at the wrong end; he changes Stogie’s lines. Note Stacy’s lines are almost exactly the same in both sketches. Thus, the first sketch has Stacy misunderstanding the statement, while the second sketch has “corrected” Stacy’s misunderstanding by making Stogie constantly contradict himself. Seeing more extensive repairs are needed, Witless Twit then goes on to say what he will do next time to fix the “leak,” rattling off a list of to-do items so he can sell the sketch to Saturday Night Live, culminating in a very dreadful movie. He casually throws around terminology in almost in the same manner as one spouts off repairs one needs to make in order to flip a house. This sketch is intended to poke fun at the comedy sketch writing industry. A member of CoBaD took an online sketch writing class with a major comedy theatre and came away disappointed with the formulaic approach sketch comedy theatres and their instructors are teaching students to use in generating skits. At the close of the skit, Witless Twit in fact specifically mentions many of the elements sketch instructors state that sketches "must have": an exposition, a (“tilt-able”) platform, a break in the routine, raised stakes, (at least two) turning points, and “the button,” commonly known as the punchline. The aforementioned comedy theatre class even went so far as to mandate that a skit must be between three to five minutes in length. This time limit (especially the upper limit) was adhered to rather dogmatically; the teacher very rudely cut off the member’s read through at five minutes when he was reading a sketch in class. This approach of reducing art to an assembly line process makes the writing room seem less like a place where a work of art is generated and more like a “sketch mill,” where one sketch is almost exactly like the other, leaving no room for creativity and imagination. Young writers probably feel pressured to adhere to these very silly and arbitrary rules, more especially the time limit, because the comedy theatre in question is one of the major pipelines to Saturday Night Live, one of the most famous sketch comedy shows on the air. SNL is broadcast on network television and must have commercial breaks roughly every 13 minutes, so the time limit would appear to serve SNL as well, as it would ensure that between 2-3 sketches could be aired between commercial breaks. So ultimately it seems to CoBaD that sketch comedy in America is dictated not by audience’s attention spans, comedy theatres, or even Saturday Night Live. Rather, it is dictated by corporate America, who have the power to pull the plug on their network sponsorships (and potentially a show) if they don’t get their way. Talk about predictable. Stogie and Stacy are clearly modeled after George Burns and Gracie Allen. To be fair, George wasn’t this coarse or abusive to Gracie; plus he didn’t sport his trademark coke bottle glasses until well after their show left the air. In addition, Gracie Allen, in all her years of vaudeville, radio and television, never uttered the response “Good night, Gracie!” People probably confused this with a similar ending to episodes of “Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In,” which ended with Dan Rowan saying “Say goodnight, Dick,” followed by Dick Martin saying “Goodnight, Dick.” Jellia Jamb is a character in L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. In “The Marvelous Land of Oz” (1904), Jellia Jamb is hired by the Scarecrow King, then the ruler of Oz in the Wizard's absence, to act as an interpreter between him and the Gillikin Jack Pumpkinhead. The Scarecrow and Jack Pumpkinhead, for some reason, do not realize that Ozites and Gillikans speak the same language (English). Jellia takes advantage of this moment and "translates" Jack's words as insults as a prank.

“Bach’s Diversified Portfolio” (aka, the extended blackout) is a brief sketch that illustrates the appeal that Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) had and continues to have on just about everyone: from fans of the horror genre (Toccata and Fugue in D Minor), to fans of (Baroque composer Johann Gottlieb) Goldberg (1727-1756), to those who simply wanted something with a beat that they can dance to (his myriad of Minuets, Gavottes and Bourrées) and even to those who just simply want to sit down, relax and have a cup of coffee (his Coffee Cantata). Everyone, that is, with the possible exception of those unfortunate violin students who have to perform Bach’s very difficult partitas for their respective recitals. The setting for “Spirit of Sechsundsiebzig” is based on fact. Tchaikovsky was actually invited down to Bayreuth, Germany in 1876 to watch the inaugural performance of Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung, aka, the Ring Cycle). According to Tchaikovsky’s close friend, Russian critic/composer Herman Laroche, Tchaikovsky did not like the Ring, but made it a point to never say it to Wagner’s face…until this sketch, that is. The dialogue between the barista (Governor Bellingham from the “Hindsight is 1642” sketch) and Rosie (from “The New York Times’ Effect on Man” sketch) pokes fun at the press for their inaccurate reports regarding John F. Kennedy’s “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech. From about the mid-1990s until the mid-2000s, several news outlets (including Rosie’s New York Times) printed stories of how John F. Kennedy in his famous June 26, 1963 speech in West Berlin inadvertently said that he was a jelly doughnut (“Berliner” in addition to being the name for a resident of Berlin, is also the name for a type of German jelly doughnut). The misconception appears to have originated from a remark made by Bernard Samson, a highly unreliable intelligence officer, in Len Deighton's 1983 fictional spy novel “Berlin Game,” and somewhere along the line, his remark made the leap from fiction to “fact.” So it appears that the media did indeed “run away with this pastry” in the same vein that The New York Times ran away with the “38 witnesses” story in 1964. Governor Bellingham finally gets Rosie to go away by (very roughly) quoting excerpts from JFK’s nationally televised “Cuban Missile Crisis” speech delivered on October 22, 1962. It always puzzled us here at CoBaD why Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” is so popular at American Independence Day celebrations when in fact it has nothing to do with America, while Richard Wagner’s wonderful piece, "American Centennial March,” which was specifically written to honor America’s independence, goes largely ignored. Thanks to the “Spirit of Sechsundsiebzig” sketch, we now know why: because Tchaikovsky was an excellent hustler of tunes. Trolling Stone Magazine was quite right to call him to review the Ring, as Tchaikovsky was quite a troller as well; from 1867-1878 he served as a music critic. He loved to rip on fellow classical music composers, especially Johannes Brahms. Finally, many 1980s pop music enthusiasts will no doubt notice the numerous references to Nena’s 1983 hit “99 Luftballoons.” It is CoBaD’s opinion that Nena is one of Germany’s greatest composers of pieces of less than 15 hours in duration.

For years psychology students have read in their textbooks about the story of Kitty Genovese, a bar manager who was murdered on March 13, 1964 in Kew Gardens, New York, and how none of the “multitude” of witnesses did anything to stop it, call the police or offer any assistance. On March 27, 1964, Martin Gansburg of the New York Times wrote about the murder in an article titled “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police” (the first line of the article actually cites 38 witnesses). In the ensuing years, psychologists wrote about the murder employing such terms such as “diffusion of responsibility,” “bystander effect,” or “bystander apathy.” While there is no dispute of the horrible crime itself, the New York Times article, the primary source of this lesson in “bystander apathy,” was discovered to be filled with unfounded facts and gross exaggerations. There were only two attacks, not three. Two people in fact called the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured outside and held Ms. Genovese in her arms until the ambulance arrived. And of the “38 witnesses,” only two (2) of them (one for each of the two attacks) had seen and heard enough of the encounter between Ms. Genovese and her assailant to come to the conclusion that she was being murdered. Yet the author, Martin Gansburg, and his overbearing editor, Abe Rosenthal, insisted on pushing it into publication. Shortly after the story broke in 1964, police reporter Danny Meehan reviewed the article and discovered a lot of inconsistencies. When Meehan asked Gansburg why his article failed to reveal that the numerous “witnesses” did not feel that a murder was happening, Gansburg replied, "[Because] It would have ruined the story." Rosenthal later wrote a book on the subject. While Mr. Gansberg regretted being pressured into writing the story, Mr. Rosenthal never admitted to the factual errors and exaggerations. What’s just as disappointing as the lack of journalistic integrity was the behavior of textbooks, particularly undergraduate textbooks. Psychology textbooks, for instance, very early on encourage students to use critical thinking, yet the authors of these books failed to demonstrate critical thinking themselves by incorporating this error-prone story into their texts. This unfortunately is all too common. According to the article “The Kitty Genovese Murder and the Social Psychology of Helping: The Parable of the 38 Witnesses,” (Manning, Levine and Collins, 2007), misrepresentations in textbooks is not new. Textbook writers in general try to provide eye-catching, simplified material in order to engage undergraduate readers, even if it means doing so at the expense of accuracy. The title of this sketch was taken from a line from The Bee Gees “Stayin’ Alive.”

Camillus Sydney Fly’s other claim to fame (for his first claim to fame, see the “War Planner“ sketch) was the “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.” Despite what the name suggests, the October 26, 1881 gunfight involving the Earp brothers (Morgan, Virgil and Wyatt) and Doc Holliday on the one side, and the (Cochise County) Cowboys (specifically Ike and Billy Clanton and Tom and Frank McLaury) on the other, didn’t actually occur at the O.K. Corral. It actually occurred in an alley outside Fly’s Photography Gallery. We suspect the titles “Gunfight Six Doors West of the O.K. Corral's Rear Entrance” or “Gunfight Outside Fly’s Photography Gallery” though more accurate, probably weren’t used because they weren’t quite as catchy from the marketing perspective. C.S. Fly played a minor role in the gunfight by taking the pistol from Billy Clanton as he lay dying from his gunshot wounds. Thanks to gothicwestern.com and the February/March 2022 edition of True West Magazine for providing much needed background information for this sketch.

In March, 1886, Department of Arizona Army commander Brigadier General George Crook received word that the Apache leader Geronimo would surrender to him in The Cañon de los Embudos (Canyon of the Funnels), in the Sierra Madre Mountains in northeastern Sonora, Mexico. Camillus Sydney Fly learned of the meeting and on March 20, 1886, took his photography equipment, met up with Crook on March 23 at Silver Springs, and rode out to the surrender site with them. During the three days of negotiations (March 25-27), Fly took at least 15 pictures, two of which appeared on the cover of the April 24, 1886 edition of “Harper’s Weekly.” Allegedly a soldier who sold Geronimo’s men whiskey told Geronimo that his band would be murdered as soon as they crossed the border into the U.S., specifically, when Geronimo brought his band in to fulfill the surrender at Fort Bowie, Arizona, after the summit. Geronimo and 25 of his followers heeded this warning and on March 30th, slipped away from their encampment during the night. Their escape cost Crook his command. Crook was succeeded by Brigadier General Nelson Miles. Like with the “Tax Regressor” skit, this is a highly fictional account of events leading up to the Geronimo’s escape and Crook’s dismissal. It suggests “cheapskate” Crook ordered his subordinate Miles to ride 80 miles through the desert, dodging snakes and highway robbers, go to Fly’s studio and make Fly an insulting offer of 25 cents to take some pictures of the surrender (which included at least 320 miles of travel though the dangerous desert, assuming Fly was crazy enough to actually take the offer, which he was, sort of). Miles was so pissed off that he decided to get back at Crook, go directly back to Geronimo’s camp and tell Geronimo of the plot to kill him. The skit suggest that Miles was actually the soldier who sold whiskey to Geronimo. Geronimo surrendered for real about six months later, in September of 1886, in Skeleton Canyon in Arizona to Miles himself. There is a semi-famous t-shirt which reads “Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.” The picture features (from right to left): Geronimo, Yanozha (Geronimo's brother-in-law), Chappo (Geronimo's son by his second wife), and Fun (Yanozha's half-brother). That picture was taken by Fly. Camillus Sydney Fly (1849-1901) was well-remembered in Arizona. A replica of his gallery is in Tombstone. In southeast Arizona, there is a National Forest called The Coronado National Forest. The second highest peak in the forest, at about 9,667 feet above sea level, is called Fly’s Peak. It is named in honor of Fly.

This isn’t so much a story about life imitating art as it is a story about art intimidating life. Yes, the setting of Act Four in Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” is in a Louisiana desert. Specifically “A desert plain on the borders of New Orleans.” The map featured in the drawing (“U.S. Territorial Acquisitions”) is a public domain map from the “National Atlas of the United States,” an atlas published by the United States Department of the Interior from 1874-2007.

The opening segment is a parody of the “What Do I Make?” Facebook posting. All the man simply said in the posting was that as a boy he wanted to be a firefighter, and was just curious as to what the current income was for a firefighter. The response of that “firefighter” in CoBaD’s opinion was extremely abrasive and not at all warranted. CoBaD has had the privilege of meeting several firefighters, and none of them has ever behaved as poorly as that. The body of the skit is based on a very public scuffle in the Rock Island, Illinois papers in the summer of 1875. It all started with an 11 August 1875 letter to the editor. Judge S.S. Guyer, under the pen name “Tax Payer,” accused Township Assessor James “Scotch” Taylor (1814-1901) of abusing his office by underreporting animals on farms and pocketing the difference (e.g., Guyer said that John Edgington actually had 21 horses on his farm, whereas James Taylor’s records said only 10 were present). Taylor countered by arguing that in that particular instance, those 11 horses not counted because they were deemed to be too old or too young to be work horses, and therefore were not considered to be taxable. Most of the press, the public, and inevitably the law, sided with Taylor. The town of Taylor Ridge, Illinois, is named in his honor. This skit is a highly fictional set up leading to that spat. It claims Guyer submitted an anonymous letter to the editor as an act of vengeance after being caught by Taylor for attempting to cheat on his taxes. Why he simply didn’t avoid the whole ordeal by filing his taxes with Haute Cuisine will never be known. Cheers tae scotstranslate.com fur th' helping wi' making James’s lines sound mair authentic!

A pastiche of the Pete and Dud's "Bloody Greta Garbo" sketch from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's show "Now Only...But Also" (1964-1970). In this sketch, Baker is the Pete doppelgänger, and Lester is the Dud doppelgänger. The Pete and Dud sketches are known for at least one of the two (usually Dud) breaking character by laughing, and are sometimes followed by improvised lines (e.g., Pete's line "Are you enjoying that sandwich?" from the "Art Gallery" sketch). Brilliant comedy.

Based on a walking tour Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847) made in Scotland in 1829 with his friend Karl Klingemann. Mendelssohn’s trip with would serve as the inspiration for his Symphony Number 3 (1842), also known as “The Scottish Symphony.” Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony has no breaks. The symphony was specifically written this way so as to eliminate applause between movements (much like his 1845 Violin Concerto in E minor), as Mendelssohn had a disdain for audiences applauding between movements. Up until Mendelssohn’s time, applauding between movements was customary, as concertgoers were eager to encourage and show their appreciation for the musicians and the music. Thanks to Mendelssohn (and Robert Schumann), that is no longer the case. CoBaD, whose members claim Scottish ancestry, felt that composing a symphony based on lively Scottish folk music and then forcing people to sit on their hands for 40 minutes does neither Scotland nor its music justice. Shame on you, Bart, for starting such a silly tradition. Give us Johann Strauss Sr.’s "Radetzky March" over your music anytime (insert raspberry here).

A member of CoBaD has a commercial multiengine (airplane) license. Three of the instances in this sketch actually happened to him: Phase check examiner, Private Pilot rating: Yelled "NO! NO! NO!" and excitedly pointed out the window, Instrument rating instructor: Would repeatedly fold his arms and go silent just before he went ballistic in the cockpit, Commercial multiengine checkride examiner: Yelled at the student during his checkride for saying his before landing checklist out loud to himself. The instructor then screamed "I don't need you to teach me how to fly." Flight instructors/examiners, it's time to rethink how you engage with your students. Correction: Flight instructors/examiners, it's time to think period. Watch this sketch now, and, as a special deal for our viewers, receive 20 percent off a limited edition, acoustic pressure infused, fully throated live performance appended at the end of this skit. Hopefully next time this sketch is performed, the record button will be pressed prior to the beginning of its performance and not one minute into it so we can charge you the full rate.

Mr. Tennessee Williams's "sacrifices" are described in detail in his essay "The Catastrophe of Success," first published in The New York Times on November 30, 1947. A copy of the essay can be found in paper editions of "The Glass Menagerie." The $2000 suit referred to in this skit was inflation adjusted for 2022 dollars; the suit cost $125 in 1947. Mr. Eugene Ionesco's plays referred to in this skit were "Jack, or the Submission" (1955) and "The Chairs" (1952).