by
Don Plansky
Of arms I sing and the hero.
No, that’s not the right story. Let me begin again…
My hero is yellow. (Yes, that’s it.)
He’s fat.
He’s nearly bald.
Not much brain power between those ears—just enough to propel his feet to the local bar where he daily drinks himself into a drunken stupor.
His gluttonous appetite, a deadly sin for the masses, he has perfected into an art form. I don’t mean that he’s a connoisseur of haute cuisine. No, no. He’s a meat and potatoes man. A donut man. When I say “art form,” I mean that his disparate impulses are unified by one overriding desire—to eat. (Oh, how I envy your gluttony!)
I believe he would follow his bliss into Hell’s depths. Rumor has it that he once indeed sold his soul to the Devil for a single donut. When he finished eating the last tasty morsel of that legendary delicacy (accounts differ as to whether it was a jelly or custard), he was whisked downward into the infernal region known as Hell Labs: Ironic Punishment Division. In the Dantean manner, a fiendish contraption was devised which forced his mouth to open and close as row upon row of donuts were stuffed down his gullet. Oh, horrible! Most horrible!
Did my hero suffer? Not in the least. The donuts could not come fast enough to sate his ravenous appetite. “More, more” was all he said between gulps. Gulp, gulp, gulp, “More, more,” gulp, gulp, gulp. And, as he grew in size, so also, in my estimation, did he grow in moral stature. The demons, at last, turned away in defeat, their tails between their legs. You have to admire a man who so blithely defeats the Devil’s minions. Is not so great a sin beyond our conventions of “good” and “evil,” perhaps simply virtue by another name? And don’t we look to our heroes, by whatever means necessary, to defeat the Evil One?
He’s the id to my superego. He is my ego-ideal, to continue in the Freudian vein. Where I am apt to say “No,” he always says “Yes” to life. There is no obstacle he cannot overcome. If the hero has a thousand faces, his must surely be one of them, and the least handsome.
Did I mention that he’s indestructible and doesn’t age?
Like his fellow superheroes, Superman, aka Clark Kent, and Spider-Man, aka Peter Parker, he hides in plain sight as though he were just any average Joe. Only, in his case, he is average, actually, a bit below. A blue collar man.
But, unlike his confederates, he’s a family man, not a loner. He’s the breadwinner for his three kids and adoring wife. He makes ends meet with his job as a low level safety inspector in a nuclear power plant. When it comes to protecting his family, he can be surprisingly resourceful in his stupidity. It must be admitted, however, that he frequently strangles his only son. What hero is without flaws?
His sage advice on raising children, given to Apu Nahasapeematetilon, Ph.D., operator of the Kwik-E-Mart and father of octuplets, has never been bettered: “Kids are the best, Apu. You can teach them to hate the things you hate. And they practically raise themselves, what with the Internet and all.” (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2007.)
His protean energy and fearlessness are nowhere better demonstrated than in the estimated 200 jobs he has tried his hand at while somehow, when the adventure ends, is always able to return to his day job at the power plant.
Selected at random, and in no particular order, these jobs have included: boxer, mascot, truck driver, food critic, used car salesman, carny, bodyguard, bartender, garbage commissioner, fireman, police chief, mayor, mountain climber, acrobat, TV pundit, talk show host, conceptual artist, astronaut, opera singer, composer, assassin, mob boss, bootlegger, drug smuggler, deacon of his church, ordained minister, missionary, the Grim Reaper, Mall Santa Claus, the Messiah, farmer, fortune cookie writer, actor, film critic, film producer, choreographer, hairdresser, butler, FBI informant, webmaster, inventor, CEO, marriage counselor, chiropractor, town crier, paparazzo, public speaker, soldier, sailor, sideshow freak, caricaturist of open coffins, impotency spokesman, manure salesman and union leader.
The so-called “most interesting man in the world,” spokesman for Dos Equis beer, would barely qualify to be a lackey for my man whose favorite beer, by the way, is Duff.
And how many of us can say that they’ve added a word to The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998), followed, no doubt grudgingly, by the more staid Oxford English Dictionary (2001)? My polyglot hero can make that claim, although he’s probably never read a book in his life. D’oh!
He is the worthy heir of iconic figures of American popular culture: Ralph Kramden and Archie Bunker, to name only two.
I admire him more than any other personage, real or imagined who occupies the moral landscape, such as it is. Nor am I alone. He was the runaway winner in British polls that determined who viewers thought was the “greatest American” (2003) and which fictional character people would like to see become President of the United States (2004). This was mere prologue to the announcement of Robert Thompson, Director of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular Television, that “three centuries from now, English professors are going to be regarding [him] as one of the greatest creations in human storytelling.” Well, I don’t know about all that egghead stuff. Let’s just say that my man knows how to enjoy his donuts.
The lack of worthy competitors among the current crop of politicians, artists, public figures and intellectuals in no way diminishes the greatness of my hero, Homer J. Simpson.
No, that’s not the right story. Let me begin again…
My hero is yellow. (Yes, that’s it.)
He’s fat.
He’s nearly bald.
Not much brain power between those ears—just enough to propel his feet to the local bar where he daily drinks himself into a drunken stupor.
His gluttonous appetite, a deadly sin for the masses, he has perfected into an art form. I don’t mean that he’s a connoisseur of haute cuisine. No, no. He’s a meat and potatoes man. A donut man. When I say “art form,” I mean that his disparate impulses are unified by one overriding desire—to eat. (Oh, how I envy your gluttony!)
I believe he would follow his bliss into Hell’s depths. Rumor has it that he once indeed sold his soul to the Devil for a single donut. When he finished eating the last tasty morsel of that legendary delicacy (accounts differ as to whether it was a jelly or custard), he was whisked downward into the infernal region known as Hell Labs: Ironic Punishment Division. In the Dantean manner, a fiendish contraption was devised which forced his mouth to open and close as row upon row of donuts were stuffed down his gullet. Oh, horrible! Most horrible!
Did my hero suffer? Not in the least. The donuts could not come fast enough to sate his ravenous appetite. “More, more” was all he said between gulps. Gulp, gulp, gulp, “More, more,” gulp, gulp, gulp. And, as he grew in size, so also, in my estimation, did he grow in moral stature. The demons, at last, turned away in defeat, their tails between their legs. You have to admire a man who so blithely defeats the Devil’s minions. Is not so great a sin beyond our conventions of “good” and “evil,” perhaps simply virtue by another name? And don’t we look to our heroes, by whatever means necessary, to defeat the Evil One?
He’s the id to my superego. He is my ego-ideal, to continue in the Freudian vein. Where I am apt to say “No,” he always says “Yes” to life. There is no obstacle he cannot overcome. If the hero has a thousand faces, his must surely be one of them, and the least handsome.
Did I mention that he’s indestructible and doesn’t age?
Like his fellow superheroes, Superman, aka Clark Kent, and Spider-Man, aka Peter Parker, he hides in plain sight as though he were just any average Joe. Only, in his case, he is average, actually, a bit below. A blue collar man.
But, unlike his confederates, he’s a family man, not a loner. He’s the breadwinner for his three kids and adoring wife. He makes ends meet with his job as a low level safety inspector in a nuclear power plant. When it comes to protecting his family, he can be surprisingly resourceful in his stupidity. It must be admitted, however, that he frequently strangles his only son. What hero is without flaws?
His sage advice on raising children, given to Apu Nahasapeematetilon, Ph.D., operator of the Kwik-E-Mart and father of octuplets, has never been bettered: “Kids are the best, Apu. You can teach them to hate the things you hate. And they practically raise themselves, what with the Internet and all.” (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2007.)
His protean energy and fearlessness are nowhere better demonstrated than in the estimated 200 jobs he has tried his hand at while somehow, when the adventure ends, is always able to return to his day job at the power plant.
Selected at random, and in no particular order, these jobs have included: boxer, mascot, truck driver, food critic, used car salesman, carny, bodyguard, bartender, garbage commissioner, fireman, police chief, mayor, mountain climber, acrobat, TV pundit, talk show host, conceptual artist, astronaut, opera singer, composer, assassin, mob boss, bootlegger, drug smuggler, deacon of his church, ordained minister, missionary, the Grim Reaper, Mall Santa Claus, the Messiah, farmer, fortune cookie writer, actor, film critic, film producer, choreographer, hairdresser, butler, FBI informant, webmaster, inventor, CEO, marriage counselor, chiropractor, town crier, paparazzo, public speaker, soldier, sailor, sideshow freak, caricaturist of open coffins, impotency spokesman, manure salesman and union leader.
The so-called “most interesting man in the world,” spokesman for Dos Equis beer, would barely qualify to be a lackey for my man whose favorite beer, by the way, is Duff.
And how many of us can say that they’ve added a word to The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998), followed, no doubt grudgingly, by the more staid Oxford English Dictionary (2001)? My polyglot hero can make that claim, although he’s probably never read a book in his life. D’oh!
He is the worthy heir of iconic figures of American popular culture: Ralph Kramden and Archie Bunker, to name only two.
I admire him more than any other personage, real or imagined who occupies the moral landscape, such as it is. Nor am I alone. He was the runaway winner in British polls that determined who viewers thought was the “greatest American” (2003) and which fictional character people would like to see become President of the United States (2004). This was mere prologue to the announcement of Robert Thompson, Director of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular Television, that “three centuries from now, English professors are going to be regarding [him] as one of the greatest creations in human storytelling.” Well, I don’t know about all that egghead stuff. Let’s just say that my man knows how to enjoy his donuts.
The lack of worthy competitors among the current crop of politicians, artists, public figures and intellectuals in no way diminishes the greatness of my hero, Homer J. Simpson.
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