Upon his arrival, he found that the Caucasian inhabitants, by longtradition, would not deign to converse with (nor, indeed, marry) anyonenot their cousins.Most of the performers were singing lame cover versions of Pat Boonesongs. The soporific effect of this tune-age prevented the effectivemarketing of beer, or indeed any caffeineless beverage. Jerry quicklyrecognized the musical tastes of his new friends as the source of hisdifficulties, and swung into action. Drawing on the folksong settings of Bela Bartok he quickly developed anew musical form, the "Bela's," which the natives, unaccustomed to thepronunciation of Slavic tongues, shortened to the "Blues". He quicklytaught one of the local musicians, Robert Johnson, the entirety of hisouvre. Unfortunately, Robert's grasp of Czech was no better thanhis peers, and the result was a powerful musical genre with nonsensewords. (What, for example, is a Terraplane Blues?) However, Jerrywas accustomed to these problems (cf. "Jerry Zimmerman--Real Author ofLewis Carroll's Jabberwocky (forthcoming)). The end result was whatmattered, and the end result was that the poor sharecroppers awoke fromtheir torpor, developing a taste for blues and beer. Further, theydiscovered that being a black person in Mississipi really sucked,leading eventually to the civil rights movement.
* Jara da Cimrman. The author has no grasp ofCzech. He also thinks that Waldstein is named "Wallenstein." What aclueless bugger.
** J.Z.'s undoubted attractiveness to women,particularly the young and the rustic, combined with his pursuit of thisprofession, gave rise to an entire genre of American humor.
*** The arrant stupidity, the tendency to haveonly four different great-grandparents, the staring, bug eyes, the giant,protuberant chins with the thin line of drool desceding down it . . .these honkies reminded J.Z. of someone. Someone famous. Someone like . .. The Habsburgs.
Chris Atkinson (cwa@pipeline.com)