So there were Loretta Young and John Larroquette, minding their own business, when along I come and transvestize them, because I noticed that slight changes to their last names would do the trick. I hope they and/or their spirits mind less about that than I did when it was done to me. (A female so-called friend of mine put my head on a “princess” body as an action figure in a video game. I have forgiven her, but there was a rift. Guess I’m not, or was not, all that secure in my masculinity…?)
Quoth Bob Dylan, in “Things Have Changed”:
Gonna take dancing lessons, do the jitterbug rag
Ain’t no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag
Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove…
And of course there are J. Edgar Hoover and Muammar Gaddafi and David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich and heart-stopping mustachioed Gwyneth Paltrow and certain of my widening circle of friends who hail from San Diego…
As for Alcoholism, John Larroquette is more than 30 years sober, and the closest Loretta Young came to it was falling for Spencer Tracy. But I tip my tipsy-hat to my grandfather with the line “Booze O Booze you’ve been my guess” because he was found of declaiming
Booze, O Booze, you’ve been my guest
You’ve often made me lose my rest
You’ve often made me wear old clothes
But since you are so near my nose
I’ll drink you down–and down she goes.
Here are, with some annotation, the two sets of words to the two double acrostics:
Gender Bender
Gum-fill the Cup & with a hepfull Dweeb
Enjoin the maiding habits of the grebe
Nun of above belowdex app’d to swoon
Divining Atlas’d Cloudscape for your wound
Enlightingsource may seize [or cease] us to revere
Raw-skulled NICK of the NITE-MITE bring us Cheer
Line One is a riff on Omar Khayyam’s “Come, fill the Cup, and in the light of Spring…” Line Four is an oblique hommage to the movie version of Cloud Atlas and its gender-reassigned co-creator Lana (formerly Larry) Wachowski. Line Six has, I trust, the worst-yet pun based on Raskolnikov.
Line Five has a quantum split in it, depending on whether you choose “Seize” or “Cease.” This is what comes of watching dozens of episodes of FRINGE.
Bender Sender
Booze O Booze you’ve been my guess
Engendering devolv’d finesse
Nun of above avail to moon
Deciduously treed and goon’d
Erelong we’ll be hung over here
Regaining thirst of pitchered Beer
Note the similarity of Line Three to Line Three of “Gender Bender.” Like the rug in THE BIG LEBOWSKI, it sort of “ties the room together.”
“Moon” in Line Three, and “Hung over” in Line Five, are meaning-optional.
