The Worst Babalú [Faux] Radio Hour to Date

Ah, the awful responsibility of guiding the thinking of the loony Babalunians is begins to wear me down. It is almost as if I had them all on a string and was their puppet master, or they were characters in a novel I was writing (no such waste of time for me). Last week, I mentioned in my review of The Babalu "Faux" Radio Hour that George Moneo cannot speak Spanish, because Val, who doesn't read books, recommended to George the autobiography of Reinaldo Arenas in the Spanish edition. This week George, who had only seen the film, informed the twelve listeners of the B[F]RH that he had paid a visit to La Moderna Poesía, a Miami bookstore, to buy the Spanish edition of Before Night Falls. He said it was not available. If he had walked a couple of blocks down the street to Salvat's Libreria Universal, Miami's best-stocked Cuban bookstore, he would have found it. But George had never been in a Spanish bookstore before much as I've never been in a Bulgarian one. I had no cause to and neither did George until my comments sent him there.

And Henry, who was in California being brainwashed at some New Age advertising conference for the 800 Brightest non-creative ad-office managers in the country (isn't that all there is, 800?), also recalled, via transcontinental hook-up (a joke), that in a review of an earlier edition of the B[F]RH I had observed that Henry had adopted at long last my pronunciation of BUCL as "buckle" (surrender), and so was careful this time to avoid the embarrassing name, instead spelling it out several times: B-U-C-L. He announced that he was going to incorporate the defunct organization. Another waste of $100. One of them even used "erstwhile," a favorite word of mine, at least in writing, though even I don't have the "pompousiness" [i.e. pomposity] to use it in conversation.

The subject of Oscar Corral was hardly touched upon and only as an opportunity for all of them to express how sorry they were for his recent meretricious troubles, one was sorry for Corral himself and his wife and children (Val), another for his wife and children (Henry), and one for just his children (George.) Consider this a scale of hypocrisy: Val scored the highest. George obviously needs to hone-up on his hypocrisy.

Overall it was the dullest Babalú [Faux] Radio Hour to date, although Val seems to be perfecting his imitation of Dean Martin and can now slur his words very convincingly. If this were faux television, I am sure we would see him stumbling all over the faux studio.

Frankly, the B[F]RH is getting to be no fun for me. On this week's show, George repeated the hackneyed definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That is the B[F]RH in a nutshell. Even I can't make something sound interesting week in and week out that isn't.