Liner notes from a half-chewed album.
Created | Updated Dec 23, 2003
I was bringing Doonyboy Redpaws back from the vet (his doggy downers weren't working, he kept seeing phantom mailmen just to the right of the cat) when I stopped at a rummage sale. I was peering at an antique lighter in the shape of mermaid strumming a polychrome lyre when the puppy came up to me with a record sleeve in his mouth. The purveyor of the yard of goods made me pay for it, as the pup had rather firmly and repeatedly made his mark on the corner.
The sleeve was sans record, so I have no idea what kind of music or any other recording that it was. All I have is the sleeve and it is bothersome enough.
The front shows a picture, whether a photo or a painting or both, I do not know.
The front shows a picture of a well-dressed woman in a pink evening gown with a roadside mailbox on each hand, up to the forearm.
She is wearing pink wellies and has a Ridgid tubing flarer in her mouth.
Behind her, a reenactment of a cavalry battle is about to take place, but the riders are carrying mops and buckets and wearing old MacDonald's restaurant uniforms.
A small Papillon type spaniel dog cavorts in the foreground with a set of carkeys on a leather fob in his mouth.
To the far stage right of the lady is what appears to be a man, judging from the hairy navel, who is wearing a diving suit bottoms and a gorilla suit top, with a loaded sackbutt in his arms.
I say loaded because an RPG-7 antitank missle is protruding from the bell of the instrument with the legend "Hi, Binky!" scrawled on it in red lip paint.
Across the edge of the sleeve it says "Perihelion Productions Presents: The Injured Innertube Troup of Santa Monica Pier"
and then a part number, "PPP 23-18".
The sleeve notes:
In a quaint Czech Spencerian font we find:
I first met Ernie Troup in the hinterlands of outer Oregon.
He was carrying an injured Jordanian ass across his shoulders and chanting the Diamond Sutra in French.
Later I met him in an orthodontist's office in Cucamonga, reading a braille copy of Time with his feet and chatting up the dental hygienist with a bad Hungarian accent.
She gave him her phone number.
Imogene Tregaskis is a product of a small home in a big country setting, just outside Akron.
She was a cleaning woman at the Metropolitan Opera for fifteen years and then taught Origami at a military base in Wyoming for ten.
This record is the culmination of twenty years of collecting and collating effort on the parts of the various members of The Injured Innertube Troup of Santa Monica Pier and the various critics have been kind in their efforts to make sure that that effort has not gone unrewarded.
Through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, studio time was booked and a noble intent was turned into a magnificent result.
So, kick off your shoes and loosen your dentures and listen to this record in the comfort of your own home.
Retifen Plownut,
Director of Acquisitions for the State of California Penal System.
