December 25, 2006 6:25 am MST

Someone asked me, "is that Bob Denver stuff true?", and I hated to break the news to him. It took several weeks of pondering the question to cause me to realize that, of course it’s true, it’s just not real.

There are many novels that have the quality of being true without being real. Orwell’s 1984, for example, or Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. I know the ponderous little creche I’m crafting atop the grave of a beloved sit-com star is less than a sidebar in the issue of Architectural Digest containing those gems, but nevertheless I claim the right to make my own truth.

While I struggle to get Jonas Grumby out of the Philippines alive, and figure out how a young Iowa farm girl found herself in Honolulu with a valise of tight clothing and three hours to kill, here are a couple concepts to ponder, all real, all true.

• You can get arrested for walking outside in Minnesota, if the weather is cold enough.
• You can get hemorrhoids in prison. It’s the stainless steel toilet seats.
• If you need to pull someone with two artificial hands (the old type that look like parts of a Claw-Drop arcade game) up a snowdrift to get him out of oncoming traffic, grab him near the elbows.
• That Carlos Mencia is a crazy motherfucker.
• Our only hope is with the proles.

Scott Johnson should have known. Here’s the text of the lead zeppelin of a toast I offered him and his bride, who deserved better.

The Caribbean philosopher Bokonon suggests that human beings are organized into groups by the Universe to accomplish that which should be done. He calls the groups karasses. Surprisingly, we usually don’t know the purpose or members of our karass, because our lives are populated with false karasses - known as granfalloons - that can give us some superficial purpose that have nothing to do with the intentions of the Universe. A mandolin orchestra, for instance, or a professional baseball club, or the Acme Comics Group.

A duprass is a karass of just two. A true duprass is insoluble, Bokonon instructs, undividable and incapable of invasion, even by children born of the union. A duprass is perfect, and its purpose is its existence, which suffices to serve the Universe.

I don’t know if this wedding party, this granfalloon, is here to witness the formation of a new duprass, but it pleases me to speculate it might be so.

To Marcia, Scott, and duprasses throughout the world.

September 30, 2006

It reads better than it recites. After my clumsy presentation, there was a buzz around the room as Richard, and Phil, and Sue, and I’m sure others explained the ridiculous context of all that clutter. Four paragraphs, loads of truth, lots of baggage. Scott told me later that he overheard someone saying, "I think Scott’s friends are a lot smarter than Marcia’s."

To be a good writer, you need to write and write until all the shitty writing is out of you. A genius told me that once.

Another page away.

Merry Christmas. Check back in July to see if I can get Bob on that fucking boat.

djrp

December 25, 2006 7:15 am MST

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