Epistle to the Plebeians

Rototill Dillwether, he of the neo-agnostic Plebiscite Twins, left his backwater glade, the better to proselytize the ill-tuned, dubiously derived, and arrogantly sniveling Hollywood cast of thousands better known as the Juniper Circus. An aeronautic enterprise given to flights of fancy, poetic license, and - the temptation to dissemble notwithstanding - ribald arson. Documents, stately homes, regional clapboard monuments, billboards up and down the north/south busyways, apple strudel at the Cherokee Inn after a particularly conflagrationist night. Roto was badboy on the Juniper naughty list, and they on his. The predictable sparks sent most bystanders off to the alleyways or, at the very least, the drive-in out the Montel Highway. For those not of the Tony Robbins set, Stewart Granger in pithy safari garb beat hell out of the downtown fireworks.

Roto, in this latest of rampaging incarnations, had a mad Mae West crush on Apostle Pablo, waxing and waning all "fell off my ass on the way to 'Mascus, now I'm back here to KICK some ass, I don't care who's in the way, get them Jerusalem boys out in the Gentile streets, don't give a damn if I wash my hands first." Big Mamadoo pompadour, greasing the keys of his Hammond like Solomon in a trance fired by at least half his naked troupe of globally collected harem, Roto was not a man to be dismissed lightly, you kicked him to the curb at your peril, a lesson learned the hard way - once - by Dr. Fish: PHD doctor Fish, though even that Phud was suspect, who the hell had a damned Phud in chiropody, anyway? Sassy Fish had a mouth on him, far too Babylonian elegant for old backwater Rot, a classicist in the ways of Barbary anthropology, which is to say, pirates, but little miss sassy weren't no pirate, now was he? The elegant beeswax candles might burn all night round his cushy Victorian table, but old Rot knew the rest of the story, the bonded apprentice mama, cushioning her feathers in the back rooms of half the magistrates in the Oklahoma Territories, it don't take a divining rod to find that kind of freshwater, now does it.

Round Two of the Roto-Sassy mah-jong tussle went something like this:

"Other way around, son." Typical Roto-jibe to the decked out Fish, should they ever meet in downtown Trilby's infernal noon. Infernal for Roto, mind; sublunar Fish was seldom without his midday parasol, a limb of Satan to prowling Rot if ever there was one.

"Gas it, old man." Fish, no longer a cod to be had, unschooled in the ways of deference to near-madness. Unschooled due to his own proprietary interest in the lunatic cohort. You might call them birds of a feather, but that would be damned insulting to the aviary.

Rot had his big-ass Jerusalem Bible as weapon of first choice, but Infantryman Fish was not without the bayonet blade of his incisive ferule: "You don't think I trot this bit of dandy candy out solely for your disapprobation, now do you, Old Man?" Pinned by a smart-ass Eastern-schooled chiropodist (Methodist to boot), old Rot was not long for the streets of Trilby: swamp frogs were congregation enough, given to full throaty approval on those fullmooniest of moony nights.

There may not be much in the passing plate, but it sure beat hell out of being publicly trodden underfoot.