#16: The Beaverlick Gazette featuring Stoopid Tunes: "The Last Interview With Rip Deathcramp", "Police Called On Man With Chainsaw", "Wedding Announcement"
by Manny Polewhacker
Those who dare to probe deeply up into the dark side of Rock n’ Roll will eventually find the cancer that is Beaverlick’s own Rip Deathcramp.
From his first regional hit: “Parking My Car In Your Mailbox” with his High School band Beezlebub’s Backside to last year’s surprise environmental hit: “I Wanna Stick My Tree In Your Sunlight” from his solo, and final, album “Balls To The Floor”, Rip Deathcramp has been confusing and alienating people in a very loud and obnoxious way for almost six decades.
“Rip Deathcramp dances along the edge of sanity and good taste like a madman with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a cattle-prod in the other…” wrote one early reviewer of his second album: “Protein Junkies From Hell”, “and he sounds like the violent and unexpected collapse of the World’s Biggest Outhouse. The noise he makes is an insult to the intelligence of anyone with the ability to get the cap off a tube of toothpaste. He should be shot on sight”.
Deathcramp released the mammoth double album with his band, The Tinselspitters, called: “Facial Recognition” in 2009, and later in the same year released a Rock Opera that he recorded with the London Symphony Marching Band and Roland Dinglecrest’s Cowboy Singers called “My Dungeon’s Full Of Weasels”, which caught the attention of the Royal Mounted Police of Canada, which issued an arrest warrant for the singer-guitarist for “Lewdness Onstage, General Obscenity, Disturbing the Peace, and Flinging Pizza At A Police Officer”.
Rip Deathcramp developed his signature guitar style, which Jeff Beck said sounded like “a bag of cats being fed into a blender…” and whom Jimi Hendrix once said was “amazing in his ability to say nothing astonishingly fast…” when he suffered an overdose of cough medicine, raid insect spray, and cocaine, and fell over the Marshall amp that Syd Barrett once relieved himself on, and from then on to cause chaos, inspire madness and death threats, achieved infamy and a reasonable amount of success from a legendary Rock musician who is legendary largely because, as Rip Deathcramp has said in a previous interview:
“I’m THAT guy. People know Jimmy Page. They know David Gilmour. When they see me, they say: “Oh. THAT guy.’”
For the last nine months, since the release of the solo album and the announcement of his impending retirement, Deathcramp has been saying goodbye to his fans with his “I Can’t Stand It Any Longer” tour with his all-female back-up band “The Slagcrackers with Big Resa”; four female bodybuilders who can barely play their instruments and a huge, lumbering, flatulent ex-bar bouncer named Resa who comes out onto the front of the stage dressed in a tutu, swim fins and clown shoes and stands there, looking out blankly into space like a mannequin, never moving.
People throw all kinds of things at Big Resa during the show, but she never moves a muscle throughout the entire performance until the finale, when Big Resa stomps offstage and back into her camper, slamming the door behind her, never to be seen until curtain call of the next show.
For no apparent reason at all…
After all his years careening down the Rock & Roll Road, Rip Deathcramp stories are legendary: the incident in 1969 when he purposely threw up on Peter Fonda at Altamont, the time he stuffed a groupie into a dead shark at a hotel in Kokomo, stealing a tank from the local armory in Piedmont, Utah and destroying “Clem Popper’s Dreamtime Hotel” because they ran out of Bailey’s Irish Creme…so many stories that, unfortunately, Rip doesn’t remember.
Deathcramp doesn’t remember a lot of things, actually. He forgot our interview. He forgot who I was. In the middle of the interview, he got up to go to the bathroom and was found three hours later at the pool. Then, when reminded he was supposed to be in the middle of the interview, he forgot who I was again.
Sometimes he forgets to breathe, which is why he is always hooked up to an oxygen mask when he is not in front of a microphone, and is always attended to by his valet: a dwarf from Liverpool in a small Drum Major’s uniform who goes by the name of “Mr. Fang”.
I found Rip Deathcramp at his new home, a solitary lot on Dog Lick Lake just outside of the Beaverlick Town Limits. Actually, Deathcramp lives in a tent with a lovely, in-ground pool in the shape of Jimi Hendrix’s left hand on one side of the tent and a huge hole where the foundation for his cottage is being poured. The only other thing finished on the home was the huge, eight-foot-high rock wall that surrounds the cottage, with another three feet of electric and barbed-wire fencing that extended along the boundaries of the huge lot; essentially half of the lakefront.
Evidently, according to Mr. Fang, Rip Deathcramp will not be accepting many visitors in his retirement.
“Mr. Deathcramp is in his 70’s now,” explained Fang. “Or his 80’s. Or he’s 102. In any case, a man of his advanced years is bound to have some problems that he would rather keep private.”
It is true that Rip Deathcramp has a few problems that have developed due to his advanced age and his life-long habit of treating his body like a walking chemistry set: he has many…THINGS attached to him now…that make him look ‘lumpy’ when he struggles into his spandex…usually with the help of Mr. Fang or, for the last three months at least, his girlfriend, an environmentally vegan stripper named “D”.
That’s it. Just…”D”.
By the late 1980’s, Rip had acquired so many ‘social diseases’ that his penis fell off. It was replaced by a robotic one. In early 2000, Deathcramp had the robotic penis replaced with a cybernetic member that had to be replaced two years later after some prankster hacked it while he was playing in the parking lot of the “I HEART RADIATION” festival and began unceasingly pointing towards Magnetic North.
Rip Deathcramp only has one lung, and the one remaining lung has the capacity of your average cup of tea. He has a deteriorating neurological disorder that developed from the spinal injury he received when he fell off of the ancient Bokwong Temple in the jungles of deepest Asia, where he was using “the acoustics and the spiritual atmosphere” in recording his twenty second album: “Sex Monkey”.
The most difficult problem in my dealings with the legendary Mr. Deathcramp as far as THIS interview went was his hearing: after decades of playing at a volume that one reviewer described as “standing underneath a Saturn Rocket during lift-off while the sun explodes and vicious little men with green teeth thrust hot knives into your eardrums”, Deathcramp couldn’t hear a police siren if you actually glued the siren to the back of his head.
The following is likely to be the last ever interview with the rock legend that never was, Rip Deathcramp:
MANNY: Rip, I…
DEATHCRAMP: What?
MANNY: …I just wanted to ask you my first ques…
DEATHCRAMP: What? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!
MANNY: I just wanted to ask you my first question!
DEATHCRAMP: What?
MANNY: I JUST WANTED TO ASK YOU MY FIRST QUESTION!
DEATHCRAMP: Nope. Still can’t hear you. Wait a minute! Let me turn around here so I can read your lips!
MANNY: What?
DEATHCRAMP: What?
MANNY: That’s what I said!
DEATHCRAMP: What?
MANNY: THAT’S WHAT I SAID!
DEATHCRAMP: Nope, this is no good! I can’t see either!
MANNY: What?
DEATHCRAMP: What?...
And so it went, on and on in ridiculous and inane circles long into the evening until Rip suddenly grabbed Mr. Fang, put the diminutive man into his coat pocket, and ran out of the room and into a waiting limousine, roaring off into the night to bang his head once again against the Rock & Roll Wall he may never get past.
by Dick Holder
Dearest readers and dearer citizens of Beaverlick, before I continue, I insist on expressing my gratitude to the Gazette’s editorial board for, once again, allowing me, most magnanimously, the opportunity to commandeer space in this august journal for the express purpose of making known the state of Beaverlick. My indelible thanks to the board.
It was but 198 years ago, this Fall that Oriol Lick got hiself a peck a woe when he’d stepped in one of his own infamous beaver clap traps. Having regained consciousness some hours later at the fall of eventide, he found a family of beavers, kits as well, five in all, licking his leg wounds- where the broken bone pierced the epidermis. Oriol reckoned then and there he’d been spared septicemia, and sure death. Then and there, so the legend goes, Oriol repented of hunting beaver; professed he would devote his life to the propagation of beavers, the care of beavers, the freedom of beavers and the everlasting contentment of beavers… and the protection of their habitats.
Oriol Lick House:
Oriol Lick built hisself a cabin on the high bank and and a large mound known today as Beaver Mound. He named the homestead Beaverland. Thirty-five years later a village stood where once there was a lone cabin. Upon the death of Oriol, he fell off Beaver mound ’n’ rolled into a wild briar patch. Brer Buckley Perwinkle found him two days later after a two day search where they looked in all the wrong places – village elders renamed Beaverland to incorporate both Oriol’s favorite pastime -beavers and Oriol Lick hisself. And Beaverlick was put on the map.
As we celebrate, this Fall, the founding of Beaverlick, nee Beaverland, it is well that we remind ourselves that in two years time Beaverlick will celebrate its bicentennial. Preparations have already commenced and I urge every Beaverlicker to join in. In two years time we will demonstrate to the nation our municipal pride, boundless devotion, civic harmony, and love of Beaverlick.
The first order of business will be the erection, on Beaver Mound, of the Oriol Lick and Five Beavers Monument. The statue in bronze on white limestone plinth will welcome travelers as they approach Beaverlick just off I 81 and onto Beaverlick highway leading to Beaverlick proper. This is long past due. The original monument had been shelled to smithereens by Yankee cannon in the Battle of Beaver’s Mound in October of 1864.
The election of Committee Officers will take place during the town council meeting this first Tuesday of this coming September. Sub-committees will be announced and any and all citizens are welcome and urged to join one of the sub committees as volunteers.
The time is past when Beaverlick is just a sleepy little city. The time is NOW to make Beaverlick a hustle-bustle metropolis. “Grow or Die” – the Beaverlick motto for its Bicentennial Celebration.
by Dirk Stoneman:
Police were called to a residence on the corner of the Fred Biddle Memorial Parkway and the Crackle Backslap Memorial Path, home to Blinker Fictitious, 29, and his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Margaret, 27.
According to Beaverlick Police Chief Brock Granite, Mr. Fictitious took a chain saw and started sawing his house into two halves. Screamed Mr. Fictitious: “If she wants HALF, I will GIVE HER HALF!"
He was attempting to use the chain saw to saw their car, a 2019 Prius, when he started the fire that got the Police and the Fire Department to his home.
As the car fire was being put out by the Fire Department, the Police arrested Mr. Fictitious for Causing A Public Disturbance, Vandalism, Arson, and Behaving Like A Raving Lunatic Within The Confines Of The City Limits.
“HALF! SHE WANTS HALF! HALF, I TELL YOU!’ was the last statement from Blinker Fictitious before he was led away into the police vehicle.
Margaret Fictitious (nee Crelme) had a different take on the event.
“I married Blinker right out of High School. I married him because he was nice, he loved me and worked hard to provide for me…then I find out …He wants to decorate the house, and he keeps making us quiche, and he wears CROCS! HE LISTENS TO CELINE DION! ” she sobbed.she continued, “Do you KNOW what that MEANS? He has more estrogen in his body than I do!”
Mrs. Fictitious continued with her explanation of events: “Things got so distant between Blinker and I that I went camping in the forest at a Church retreat to think about things. I was wondering through the woods and came up on a bear. Before I could do anything but scream, this big, muscular man, who had blonde hair and the bluest of eyes jumped down out of the TREES and PUNCHED the bear in the FACE! AND IT RAN AWAY! He lives in a tree-house!”
“I never wanted anything of my marriage to Blinker. I just wanted out. I am going to live in a tree-house with a real man and raise his babies. Blinker will one day just-turn to soy and die. I’m sorry about that, but it’s the TRUTH!”
When asked to comment on the harshness of that statement, Margaret Fictitious got up out of her chair and smacked me across the head with a large board.
Blinker Fictitious will be spending a few days in a cell at the Thrust Grindstone Memorial Jail and Towing Service before his first hearing scheduled for Monday.
The elusive local “Tarzan” that Margaret Fictitious is leaving Blinker Fictitious for is Edgar Braithwaite-Smellsgood, the mysterious, secretive, and hermit-like heir to the Smellsgood Perfume fortune, whose commercials feature the slogan; Smellsgood Perfume: The Wonderful Scent of Wednesday™.
by Maria Tallchief Jones
Mr. Arbuckle Dragonwagon and Mrs Ethel Dragonwagon announce the engagement of their daughter, Crescent Moonrise, to Mr, Elroy Snappflemmer, son of Mr and Mrs Burnhardt Snappflemmer. A March 2020 wedding is planned. Ms, Dragonwagon is the owner and operator of Dragonwagon’s Dry Cleaning and Liquor Store, while Mr. Snappflemmer is co-owner of the Sloshin’ Suds Micro Brewery. The couple are both graduates of Bammerslam Memorial High School in Beaverlick Heights.
Beaverlick’s Trusted News Source is the bastard brainchild of 4 individuals with a deep love of the absurd. Beaverlick is our creation, a place we’d love to live.
Beaverlick, home to the Fighting Catfish, and the Beaverlick Swallows Single A baseball team, is a big small town, located wherever you can imagine it, nestled within the forests of Wanker County, wherever you can imagine it, bordered by glens and highlighted by its very own butte –Lick’s butte, however you may imagine it. Beaverlick shares these Elysian play grounds with both a somewhat bigger town – Morebuck – and a smaller – Butte Hollow; making Beaverlick, in Goldilocks’ own words “just right”. Beaverlick’s a place where crazy things don’t just happen but have become a lifestyle choice . To say Beaverlickers have a rather “unique” take on national, state, and especially local news, would be an understatement… and Beaverlickers trivialize NOTHING.
And we’d bet a sawbuck a head – you’d love to live there.
In this great country, all our places have to them a natural character and boast. New York City is “The Big Apple”. Chicago – the “City of Broad Shoulders”, and Cincinnati – “The Queen City”, and so on, and on. The pronouncements are as calling cards – engraved, so that everyone would know – “This is what we are; this is how we think of ourselves”.
This place, of our making, our pride – Beaverlick – and the people here, the old and young; strong and brittle, sharp and dull, have also this impulse – to introduce you to Beaverlick so that all may have, an immediate, if slight, knowledge of this, our little paradise. Beaverlick’s great boast is, it’s “The Biggest Little City”. Where but Beaverlick could anyone find short skyscrapers, bare brick and mortar small industry next to acre upon acres of bucolic charm; biker bars and chichi ladies drinking salons? Most every place in Beaverlick is memorialized by a Beaverlicker that contributed to making the little city bigger and the big city more intimately warm. There’s Morris Dewberry Memorial Park, Sam Milburn Memorial Hill, Sargent Bingo Frelm Memorial Tree, Carlita Bushe Memorial Botanical Gardens, Eustis Pirkle Memorial Park by the Crick, Houston Beulah Memorial Gazebo, and the Sphinx Demeret Memorial 15 hole links Golf Course ’n’ Skeet Range, and much, much more. Beaverlick honors its past, memorializes its greats, revels in its uniqueness of place and eccentricities of personalities. That’s bow they roll in Beaverlick.
For a greater measure of the backbone, mettle, pluck and significance of the Biggest Little City, note only this – the Huponahogg Jr College, Quirk-Hummit Poll of 2016 found Beaverlick USA the nearest of all statistically significant micro-urban centers to being “magic town”; the most representative municipality of the feelings, hopes, and desires, of the entire nation at large. Beaverlickers may also boast they are The Paradigm All-Americans.
The Beaverlick Gazette’s reporting of the news, and features, may give a reader an initial sense of the arrogance of lashing out at the absurd, pointing and laughing at human foibles, but if that is anyone’s sense they had best recalibrate their senses. Beaverlick has many charms but this one above all:
We laugh easily at others and are not peeved at other’s laughter at our expense, for we have at the ready the perfect medicaments: an imprecation, a smoke, and a drink – and once again we’re in the pink.
Beaverlick was the result of seers and visionaries such as homesteader and beaver trapper Oriol Lick. It remains this very day in the hands, and arms, and shoulders, and hearts of seers and visionaries.
Welcome EVERYONE to the Biggest Little City, Beaverlick USA – America’s repository for sanity, if not for good wholesome behavior.
(Editor’s Note: The Beaverlick Gazette Writers are: Modesty Fiona Blaise, Sparky Murphy, George Palczynski, and Kelly J Randall. Artwork by Sparky Murphy and Kelly J Randall. “Stoopid Tunes” by Psykosity)
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