The Writer's Allman Brother for Friday, May 29, 2026

15 Women Fired for Doing the Turkey Trot

Bob Hope

First Mastectomy 

JFK

"Exclusively on Venus" by Trace Peterson 

Transcript

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And here's the Writer's Almond Brother for Friday, May 29th, 2026. It was on this day in 1912 that 15 women were fired from Ladies' Home Journal magazine for dancing the turkey trot during their lunch hour. Their boss, Curtis Mayfield, thought the dance was too scandalous, as it involved lightly whacking your partner's vaginal lips so that they rippled like a turkey wattle, and then squatting with your legs parted and giving birth to a duck, and then a hen, and then a dictionary of the Kama Sutra, and waving a Turkish flag while 2.2 million migrants depart your shores on a howering voyage to Greece, and then putting the men back in Turkmenistan by laying him low in tiger water till the yowling of his inner sundress mimics the oxytoc flush of founding a forty bed maternity ward in Balkanabot. And then kick. Born Robert Optimism on a ferry boat en route to a whack retreat to sketch comedy Ohio. He was the twelfth of nine children, grew up waving his arms around and allowing various people to attach whatever they wanted to the ends of them boxing gloves, soda pumps, press badges, prenuptial agreements, presidential hands. Got his start in vaudeville, was unfortunately one of those performers who wore blackface on stage before sanity existed, did a Siamese twins act with Fatty Arbuckle and Patty Hurst, in which they kidnapped her from the stage and shoved her in the trunk of a car she was never heard from again. As Hollywood crested, like the dawn of a gossamer money dime above the hills of Beverly, Hope began his lifelong battle with workaholism. By day shooting shorts and longs, and in the middles, singing and dancing like a dervish whose only drug is angering the vestibular system. By night, pushing Tony Awards off the shelves of other people's vestibules on Broadway. When he couldn't get a straight gig, he'd fly to the front lines of whatever foreign graveyard was most relevant, and ladle USO Dreck into the helmets of slathering GIs, usually upstaged by a female sculpture made of candy glass. Bob Hope had the distinction of being the only nonpartisan jingoist in history, having been golfing buddies with both Richard Nixon and Massachusetts. In 1978, on the Mike Douglas show, he practiced putting with a two-year-old Tiger Woods, who would later give new meaning to the word putts. Thanks for the memory. And it's the birthday of noted philanderer John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Born in a humble mansion in Brookline, Massachusetts, he was the brother of handsomer future martyr Bobby and even handsomer murderer Ted. In bed, Jack, as he was known, was known as Jack the Hammer. He did the turkey trot with no fewer than six Marilyn Monroe lookalikes, one of whom was H.R. Haldeman in a wig with a microphone pinned to his panty liner. Nothing but wind in that recording. As a senator, Kennedy auditioned for the role of Don Juan and a biopic about John F. Kennedy, as playing the lead himself would have meant too much Johnson. He was passed over in favor of Graham Nash, after which he served a brief stint as figurehead of the Eagle Cabal. John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He really does. Here's a poem for today by Trace Peterson entitled Exclusively on Venus. Roses are red, violets are transsexual. Welcome to womanhood. Now get to work, honey. Roses are performative, violets are biological. I have very sensitive breasts, and so do your breasts. Roses are biological. You have the nicest skin. I can't stop kissing you. Let's read more nondualistic queer theory. Roses are fed up with our binary fetishes. I tricked my doctors and stole all the medication to hide it in a cave and share it with other trans people. Roses have got me, up against the wall, kissing my neck, which is socially constructed to be a super hot, strong feminist neck. Roses are violet, violets are roses. I really like you. I like you tube. Roses are born this way. Violets have a lesbian streak. Something about your dry sense of humor and our intertwined limbs feels transcendently female. Roses are blue, violets are violet, roses are nonviolet. Blue is blue normative. Roses are from Mars. Violets had the whole surgery, setting up camp exclusively on Venus. Roses have gone too far not to be what girls are made of. I'm coming out to my academic colleagues as a poet, and I bet they will run away screaming. Roses are roses. Violets are born this way. Someone's got a horde of heteronormative transaformation porn, you say? Roses are cheeky. I want you to fuck me. Drown violets like an accused witch in your arms which feel like mine. Violets got a name change. Roses changed a pronoun. We ate at a restaurant, and forgot to put the leftovers in the fridge. Roses are trochaic. Violets have their original plumbing. Let's march in a protest, then go home and we'll cook something delicious and eat it with a spork. Violets are permanent, roses are impermanent. Thank you for becoming me, offering to embrace your form, your fate. Flower beds are umbrellas. Umbrellas are rubrics. I support your identification and your disidentification. Men are from women. Roses are from Jupiter. Women are from men. I can't tell which is softer, your lips or this pillow or the snow descending gracefully outside. Supported by Nematode of Toad Hall, now showing inside your large intestine in the year nineteen twenty-nine. Until next week, be well, sell your house, and burn it down.