The Writer's Allman Brother for Friday, August 7, 2026

The Amazing Randi

David Duchovny

Garrison Keillor

"I Was Trotting Along and Suddenly" by Morgan Parker 

Transcript

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And here's the Roters Alman Brother for Friday, August 7th, 2026. It's the birthday of the amazing Randy. Born the pretty good vaguely libidinous in 1928. He matured to the impressive concupiscent by wartime, and in 1945 the draft board deemed him the exceptional freaky deaky. Randy was a magic man. Contrary to the bathroom walls, he did tricks instead of turning them, though he did manage to make ladies' underthings appear on the floor. After a few decades horning around the borscht belt, he scrapped all that and started debunking charlatans, fakes, con men, pro women, pettifoggers, and grand thunderstormers. Said he could tell when someone was lying by the amount to which their trousers were engulfed in flames. In 1996, Randy publicly offered one million dollars to anyone who could help him find his house keys with a moistened sponge. Mentalist haughty Yuri Geller raised his figurative hand and said, I'll bite, which he did, down hard upon a spoon, masticating it into the shape of one of those bleep bleep fobs that unlocks a Hyundai, said, Will this do? Randy looked at him, spat on the ground, turned around three times, and said, You couldn't bend a kendal over a VHS copy of Barbarella. It's the birthday of David DuCovney, who the amazing Randy revealed is really an invention of Chris Carter, the creator of the X Files and the Y chromosomes. Carter grafted some skin cells from his own bathrobe onto a tree limb in a lab, which yielded first a concerned forehead, then a pair of dreamy blues below them, some pouty lips, and a chin dimple you could sharpen a five iron in. When he was done, there was a cuddly pink Yeti in his lap wearing a badge, reciting the different types of poltergeists found in Irish folklore. At eighteen, having graduated from a Hoiti boys' school in Manhattan, DuCovney answered an ad in variety looking for extras. He thought they meant terrestrials and answered it. When they offered him a speaking part, he said, Only if I can become one of those irritating polymaths when I'm in my fifties. True to his word, in 2015 he released his first book, Amazingly Randy, how my big fleshy red tipped finger got me in all the trouble. Followed by the sequel The Only Diamond Eye Finger You Want is Hay Baseball. Can he sing? Depends. And it's the birthday of Garrison Keeler. Born eighteen seventy five in Lake Wobagon, Minnesota, out on the edge of the prairie, he grew up poor and lonely, with acne on his face, a shunned little boy, his hair greasy and somehow flaky, his scalp, flaking like the inside of a snow globe depicting the North Star State, each unique crystal, drifting like a lonesome Lutheran, all buttoned up and decorous on the outside, yet somehow unrepentant of his or her crimes, especially his. It was in this milieu that a pent up garrison sat in the type of dusty wooden hut he was named after, discovered ink, and a length of hard braised lumber with a nib on it. He liked to put his hand around that and pour over a blank parchment, scribbling fantasies about strong women and their devilishly attractive husbands. Eventually he gathered together his friends, also a couple of people who merely tolerated him and said, Let's put on a show. They crept into a barn late at night with microphones and a transmitter stolen from the local whack outpost, broadcast to millions of snoring Americans, many of them elderly, but still too messant with unaccountable rage. The same ensemble did that for years, pleasuring audiences and also themselves. As Garrison branched out into publishing and bookstoring, writing body poems on the walls about McAllister students, he did many things, most of them legal. By far his most curious fixation was the strange calendrical audio montage of little bite-sized biographies of authors and historical events. He'd recite them in this dry, dispassionate drone, sort of jaunty and a little steep. They were maybe five minutes long, always finishing with poems kind of chuck on the end there. It's unimaginable that anyone would want to spend their one wild and precious life doing something like that. Here's a poem for today by Morgan Parker entitled I was Trotting Along and Suddenly The wind blew two empty beautiful cans of four loco past my loafers, so I took a picture with my phone and sent it to Ted as found art. He didn't respond. The evidence was nestled in a bed of leaves. I was in no hurry to grow older and understand you, so I stopped to watch a mysterious car being towed, leaned against three swooning bikes like a casual Dalmatian. The sky was acting exactly like my mind, taking in the same quickness day by day, always about to rain over traffic cones. If my words today were not airless flags, they would be something you don't hope for but wonder about years later, like the false sense of intimacy and falling asleep next to strangers on the L train. I'm more inclined to Timberlake than Plath, and I like to get stoned, make my stomach a living drum. I'd let down my hair if I had any. Step out of the golden barber shop fresh as a cold pear. There is no snow in California, but my mother says there are laws, and Sean says something about how he is only a myth. I'm at parties acting perfectly a fool. Past my cheek the wind blew some soil resurrected from a pale flower pot. Then I ate a hot dog for lunch, which was better than I expected. I was trotting along and suddenly, by Morgan Parker, used without permission here on the right is Almond Brother, supported by Bebop, Rebop, Powder Milk, Rhubarb, Bakelite, Bob's Baby Aspirin, Brotherhood, and Gun Supply. Giving shy people well, we d we just arm them. Until next week, be well. Do the job. Or take a nap.