ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

The Alan Alda Variations

i.
Complex saccharine        individual:10  personality
frequently        private argumentative        consistently
disdaining        America's sometimes
popular     Hollywood's



Alda



ii.
Alan brilliant top 10 complex
any among America's is
Alda    individual      a
personality who



of



iii.
Alda?  Consistently popular brilliant        standard
personality      a:is      celebrity
America's who Alan
Alan frequently


lovable


iv.
Alan Alda Alan A



Alan Alda

Whenever I'm acting unctuous, full of "Oh yes of course!" and
                                                                                                  "ha        haa!!"
I sense his spirit taking over me, not M.A.S.H but pre-
Four Seasons, around the time of his
Same Time Next Year. This is no good; I would rather be

a dry and gothic midwestern Christian
than feel my long arms dance the way his arms dance,
him with

                                                                                                   the surname
(        ). I reel, I pinch, I jerk and smack at and around my body

trying to rid myself of the haunt, but again,
every time I turn on the charm, in he creeps,
takes over. You, dear reader, might go to sleep one day,
and at the worst awake bewitched by Saucepan, Shag

Carpet or Snowball. But no such small fry
for me.           Mad? You think me mad? No...a little upset,
maybe, but wouldn't you be, if he, that loneliest of actors,
had found you? Sometimes it's as small as

my hand seeming remote when I pick up a cup of coffee



Decentering

Two teams of academics argue
over the "individual," the
"essential," whether such a thing

can exist. Oh academics!
Consider this if you are in the camp
of the distinct: a man with the name

Alfonso Giovanni Giuseppe Roberto D'Abruzzo

has no meaning to anyone
until......take the "Al" from Alfonso

tie it to the "D'A" from "D'Abruzzo";
you've got      Al      da.      Now,    paste "Alda"

to the end of the "Robert" you get
from the "original" "Roberto";

you are wound up in the name
Robert Alda.

                                             And his son Alan? And me? And you?
(Robert Alda was Georgy Gershwin in the 1945 film Rhapsody in Blue)*



*This line to be read at top speed



Free as a Breeze

Scriptor, me, be feeling "free as a breeze."  Why? 'Cause Alan Alda's      father—
Alfonso Giovanni Giuseppe D'Abruzzo—said he felt

"free as a breeze" when he worked
          at Cross and Cross    pulling in    $25         a week.

But then he sired      Alan
and THE SHRUG, the human shrug of the shoulders,

has never been the same since. Free as a breeze?
        abruzzo, bravura, alan alda!!  oh!!        ai!         ai!



Enigma

His acting has always appeared to be comedic,
even when that was not his intent. He is
a ham.
           Answer not guessed.