Like, Once Upon a Time...

Rumpleproofskin

Once upon a time there lived a very rich and very beautiful girl named Vicki Trueblood. Her family was extremely class-conscious. It was said that Vicki's mother traced her lineage in this country back to 114 years before the first Indian; whereas an ancestor of her father was said to have been witness for the prosecution at a Plymouth Rock trial in which John Alden was accused of being a pinko.

For as long as she could remember, her parents had always said to her, "Vicki, someday you shall marry a prince."

But Vicki, being an independent girl, had other ideas, and one day she met a very ordinary man whom she liked very much. He was the owner of a struggling fur business called Rumpleproofskin, Inc. The firm was thus named because the young man claimed that all his skins were rumpleproof. What he didn't realize was that no fur skins rumple, which was probably one of the reasons why his business struggled.

One evening Vicki brought the young man home to meet her parents for the first time. "Mr. and Mrs. Trueblood," he said to them, "my name is Rob Myles, I am a furrier, and I want your first-born child, Vicki, for my wife."

"Begone!" said the father. "Our daughter shall marry a prince!"

The young man left, but not before he kissed Vicki and promised to return.

"Who ever heard of a furrier named Rob Myles?" said the father to the mother. "We must guess his real name and expose him."

When the young man returned the following night, the father said to him, "Come now, young man, what is your real name? Ralph Moskowitz?"

The young man shook his head.

"Robert Mendelson?"

He shook his head again.

"Raymond Markowitz? Richard Myerberg? Russell Mandelbaum? Ronald Margolis? Roy Mintz?"

With each name, the young man shook his head harder and smiled broader.

"Ross Morrisberg? Rudolph Moses? Roland Markfield? Raphael Morganstern? Rabbi Monach?"

As the father continued calling names, the young man shook his head harder and harder and smiled broader and broader. Suddenly, a private detective, whom the father had hired earlier that day, burst into the room. "Sir," he said to the father, "perhaps this will be of interest to you."He handed the father an old high school yearbook, opened to a picture that bore a remarkable resemblance to the young man. Next to it was this poem:

In math and econ he does fine,

Baseball is his favorite game,

As a furrier he will shine,

And Reuben Millstein is his name.

The father and mother embraced and began waltzing around the room.

"Reuben Millstein is his name!" shouted the father triumphantly.

"Reuben Millstein is his name!" echoed the mother.

"He can't possibly marry our daughter!" they cried together.

The young man, realizing that the beautiful--but still quite young--Vicki couldn't wed without her parents' consent, stamped his feet angrily and stormed out of the house.

"Shouldn't he have changed into a gingerbread (continued on page 142)Like, Once upon a time(continued from page 127) man?" asked the mother.

"You can't have everything," said the father happily.

Some years later, when Vicki reached 21, she did indeed obey the lifelong wishes of her parents and she became engaged to a real, true prince. But when she brought him home, her father immediately placed the following ad in 3212 newspapers all over the country: "Come back, Rob Myles. All is forgiven, my son, the furrier. Love, Horace Trueblood."

But, alas, the ads were never answered. And that June the young girl married, and today she is known as Princess Vicki of the new African nation of Ugambo.

Little red mightycool

There was once a very hip chick named Little Red Mightycool. She came from a very hip family. Her parents were hip, her aunts and uncles were hip, but perhaps the hippest of all her relatives was her grandmother.

Red Mightycool lived in a small pad on Avenue B on the Lower East Side, which, as everyone knows, is much hipper these days than the Village. However, her grandmother lived in an even hipper neighborhood than that. She lived in a little shack right at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.

One day Red Mightycool was taking a basket full of goodies to her grandmother, when she heard a rather unusual whistle. It sounded like "Wheeeeeee Whooooooooooooooo!"

She stopped and saw standing on a corner a young man wearing a widebrimmed hat; a long, low jacket; and baggy pants, which were very tight at the ankles.

"Woo woo," he said to her. "What's cookin', good lookin'?"

"Who the hell are you?" asked Red Mightycool.

"I'm a wolf," said the young man. Whereupon he began twirling an eightfoot key chain and whistled at her again.

"What is that you're wearing?" she asked.

"This is a zoot suit," he said, "with a reet pleat and a drape shape."

Christ, thought Red Mightycool, this guy is so square he's almost in.

"Whatcha got in the basket, girlie?" he asked.

Oh, God, she thought, he called me "girlie." That went out with the Big Apple. Oh, well, it certainly couldn't hurt to tell him what she had in the basket.

"I'm taking some goodies to my hip grandmother who lives in a shack by the bridge," said Red Mightycool. "I've got six ounces of pot; four ounces of raw opium: an LP recording of Gregory Corso's tone poem Lint, recited by Maxwell Bodenheim nine days after he died; a Swedish translation of Naked Lunch, in Braille; and a twenty-minute experimental film on the sex life of a homosexual tsetse fly."

With that she left him and skipped along toward her grandmother's house, shuddering momentarily at his parting shot, which was "Hubba-hubba."

When Red Mightycool arrived at her grandmother's shack, the door was open, and she went inside. As usual, the old lady was in bed, wearing her nightgown and nightcap. But somehow, tonight she looked a little different.

"Grandma," said Little Red Mightycool, "what wild eyes you have!"

"Well," said the grandmother in a strange voice, "the LSD hasn't quite worn off yet."

"And Grandma," said the girl, "what crazy pierced ear lobes you have!"

"What could I do, Cookie?" she said.

"I had no more room on the arms to take it."

"And Grandma," said the girl, "what nutty yellow teeth you have!"

To which the grandmother replied, "I'm smoking more and enjoying it more!"

With that, the grandmother threw aside the bed covers, and lo and behold, it was really the wolf.

"You hippies are always suckers for the square bit!" he cried. "You'll find Granny in the closet. But right now, I need some stuff!"

And he seized Red Mightycool's basket and ran off with it into the night.

Quickly, the girl seized the telephone and called the fuzz.

"Hello," she said to the desk sergeant, "I want to report a robbery. Some fink ran off with valuable goodies of mine."

"Can you describe the thief?" asked the officer.

"Well," she said, "he was carrying a little bright basket and he was wearing a woman's nightgown, and he was running through the East Side."

"I see," said the officer. "Now tell me, was there anything unusual about his appearance?"

Amber's New Clothes

There was once a small town many leagues away. All the people in the town were very vain and very prudish.

The daughter of the town mayor was a beautiful girl, who was one of the vainest and most prudish of them all. Her name, ironically, was Amber.

Amber was extremely clothes-conscious, and she literally exhausted her father's modest income by purchasing the finest in frocks from all the top fashion houses on the Continent.

One day, while reading the local paper, Amber spied the following ad: "Zinbar, the internationally famous tailor, announces the grand opening of his new shop on Main Street. He will weave, to order, garments for both men and women, using the same priceless fabrics and incomparable styles he has sold to royalty all over the world."

Now, Amber had never heard of Zinbar, but she was too vain to admit this, even to herself. So she hurried over to the new shop. When Zinbar began to show her the various fabrics he had woven for famous personages, she was secretly puzzled, because in reality she saw nothing. Still, she thought, if this is what royalty wears, this is what she would wear. And in no time she had deluded herself into believing that Zinbar was indeed displaying some of the most breath-taking fabrics ever seen by the human eye.

Amber had herself fitted for the most expensive dress in the entire shop, and one week later she came back to pick it up. Zinbar ordered her to remove all her clothes and then went through the elaborate motions of putting a garment on her. With every movement he made, he praised not only the texture of the garment but the way it enhanced Amber's beauty. When he was finished, one full hour later, he Scotch-taped the following label on the back of Amber's neck: "This Garment Was Designed By Zinbar, The Internationally Famous Tailor." Then Amber looked at herself in the mirror. In actuality, she saw herself as she looked when she stepped out of the shower, but she would not admit this, even to herself. If this is what royalty wears, this is what Amber will wear.

She paid a handsome price for the dress and then stepped boldly and haughtily into the sunlight. Proudly she began walking up and down Main Street, reveling in all the attention she was receiving. In ten minutes, the accident rate in the town doubled all figures of the preceding eight years combined.

But a strange thing was happening. While all the vain and prudish townspeople really saw Amber as she looked when she stepped out of the shower, they refused to acknowledge it. After all, were they any less qualified to appreciate high fashion than royalty? And didn't the Zinbar label on Amber's neck prove that she was wearing a Zinbar garment?

"What a lovely dress!" said one.

"How beautifully the fabric gleams in the sun," said another.

"Such superb tailoring," said still another.

Well, it so happened that in this town at the moment was a salesman from another town. He was sitting at his hotel window overlooking Main Street when (concluded on page 212)Like Once Upon A Time(continued from page 142) he spied Amber. Not being particularly vain or prudish, he was admiring things that the townspeople wouldn't allow themselves to see. But having also read Zinbar's public notices and knowing of that knave's operations in other towns, he was fully aware of what was happening.

Just as the salesman was inserting a stronger lens into his telescope, Amber collapsed on the sidewalk. Apparently, the excitement combined with the sun's strong rays had been too much for her. Immediately, the salesman put down his telescope, went over to his suitcase, and, after rummaging through it for a few seconds, found what he wanted.

Meanwhile, out on Main Street the townspeople were gathered around the unconscious Amber.

"Give her air," said one.

"Loosen her garments," said another, maintaining his vanity in spite of everything.

At that moment the salesman pushed through the crowd, making his way toward Amber. When the people got a good look at him, they were horror-stricken. He, too, was dressed in exactly the same fashion as when he stepped out of the shower.

"Police!" screamed a citizen, pointing at the salesman.

"Arrest that man!" shouted another.

But the salesman was unperturbed. As the crowd began to converge and claw at him, he said, "Please, please, you're sullying my Zinbar suit."

Sure enough, Scotch-taped on the back of the stranger's neck was the very same label as that worn by Amber. When they saw it, everyone stepped back.

Kneeling before the almost lifeless girl, the salesman said, "Please give me room. I know all about first aid, and I want to help this poor girl."

He then began to administer artificial respiration to Amber, which included mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and many, many, many, many, many, many other innovations the townspeople might have deemed highly unusual had they not considered the couple to be fully dressed.

When at last Amber stirred and opened her eyes, a rather serene and blissful look appeared on her face. The crowd cheered, and the mayor, who was perhaps the vainest man in the entire town, threw himself at the salesman's feet and wept gratefully.

"Thanks to your first aid,"he said, "my daughter's life has been saved. Now I would like to grant you any favor that you might wish."

The salesman thought for a moment and then made a strange request.

The mayor, taken aback by the sheer modesty of it, was nevertheless delighted to grant it.

And so from then on, the salesman became permanent lifeguard at the town beach. And to this day he can be seen on the sand at all hours, in his Zinbar bathing suit, administering artificial respiration to girls also in Zinbar bathing suits--many of whom, strangely enough, have never even been in the water.