CoBaD

The "Public Shaming Notice" (Executive Order 2020 signed by Governor Bellingham) and this skit were inspired by an actual event. In late 2021 and early 2022, soon after the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, a curious sign was posted on the door of a coffee shop: For those who are fully vaccinated, the wearing of masks is optional." This created a quasi-"Scarlet Letter" scenario. Most people will not wear masks if they don't have to because they are uncomfortable. So when a person walked into that coffee shop wearing a mask, he/she was "telling" the whole shop that he/she was unvaccinated. The coffee shop didn't really consider the privacy consequences of its actions: making its vaccinated customers literally comfortable, whilst at the same time making its unvaccinated customers figuratively uncomfortable. Governor Bellingham's voice is not so much an impersonation of John F. Kennedy as it is an impersonation of Vaughn Meader impersonating JFK. CoBaD highly recommends Vaughn Meader's "The First Family" (1962). A brilliant comedy album. The album can be found on the video sharing / social media platform that shall not be named but rhymes with screw boob, which coincidentally, aptly epitomizes their copystrike policy.

In order to subsidize his rather expensive temporal exploits, Mr. Floyd McPatrick resorts to traveling back in time to sell cell phones door to door.

The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is not actually a hotel. It is a professional association for barristers who serve in England and Wales. John Donne was admitted to Lincoln's Inn on May 6, 1592 (and he was admitted through the front door; he didn't have to ring the bell and be let in through the loading dock). John Donne would later return to Lincoln's Inn and serve as its Preacher, serving in that office from 1616-1622.

Much of the silly dialogue in this sketch was actually inspired by Hemingway’s own silly dialogue (see chapters 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 25, 34 and 35). While much of the sketch focused on the dialogue and plot of the novel “A Farewell to Arms,” not much was discussed about its adverse side effects, apart from the opening titles. Most of the novel is in fact autobiographical in nature. Like Lieutenant Frederic Henry, Earnest Hemingway served in World War I, drove an ambulance in Italy, and was wounded in the war. So people naturally assumed that Henry’s torrid affair with the V.A.D. in the hospital was true as well. Not so. In a 1976 interview with Mr. Henry Villard, Ms. Agnes von Kurowsky, who was the inspiration for Catherine Barkley, vehemently objected to the “depiction” of her in the story. Ms. Von Kurowsky said “she wasn’t that kind of girl,” and denied that she and Hemingway were lovers. She said that Catherine Barkley was “an arrant fantasy,” and that having an affair in a hospital was “totally implausible.” (i.e., having sex with a man with a shrapnel-damaged leg in a splint in a very small hospital bed in a hospital with absolutely no privacy). Henry Villard was in fact hospitalized alongside Hemingway in 1918 and confirmed the total lack of privacy available. In 1966, Ms. von Kurowsky and her husband in fact had to move from her home in Key West, Florida (she actually lived in the same town as Ernest Hemingway while he was alive, but their paths mysteriously never crossed) for reasons of privacy; every time a tourist trolley passed by her house, the driver called out to tourists that that was the home of “Ernie’s girl.” She really hated that. So it appears in at least in one instance, Mr. Hemingway’s “fantasy” did more harm than good.

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A therapy session with John B. Watson, behaviorist psychologist. Special guest starring references to John Kander and Fred Ebb's musical "Cabaret," and references to large-scale production, assembly line-oriented comedy skit factories.

An encounter between Napoleon the Pig from George Orwell's "Animal Farm" and Niccolo Machiavelli. The portrait of Machiavelli was painted by Santi di Tito. In Machiavelli's defense, he never actually said "The ends justifies the means." In Chapter 18 of "The Prince" he actually said "...in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, where there is no impartial arbiter, one must consider the final result." As Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa argue in "The Portable Machiavelli" (1979), to consider a political goal is far different from justifying an action that leads to a political goal. Machiavelli did however, not rule carrying out a violent act (e.g., the murder of Remus by his brother Romulus, the founder of the Roman republic) if he thought it would be for the "public good" rather than a private agenda.

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The premiere video from "Convulsions of Birth and Death" (CoBaD). The name was inspired by a paragraph from Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience."