Ah-choo! Ah-choo! (Oh, Ah-choo, I say!)

Stand back, gang, I'm still a little contagious.

Honestly, what I go through for you folks. I've just returned from an unprecedentedly lengthy holiday on the Eastern Shore of this geographically diverse state of mine, this "Virginia" as we call it (aka "The Old Dominion"), and, girlfriend, I want to tell you:

I was sick almost 24/7!


Relax, folks: I've contacted the CDC on this: They say that as long as I stay up here on stage, you guys have a 99% chance of surviving this comedy routine unscathed.



Mind you, they told me that "all bets are off" if I start telling you some of my "customary groaners."

Can you imagine? "Customary groaners"? And I'm like: You don't tell me how to crack jokes, and I won't tell you how to make flu vaccine, okay? I mean, jeepers! "Customary groaners," indeed! Where have I ever whacked the witty shuttlecock of my sardonic prose but through the lofty empyrean of judicious reflection and meet and seemly utterance?

No, sorry, sir, that was a hypothetical question (if there ever WAS one). Look at this dude down here in the front. He's like:

"Well, now, let me see: There was that time at the Baltimore Comedy Factory when your witty shuttlecock fell far short of the comic ideal, indeed. Nor were you exactly Jay Freaking Leno last night at Caroline's!"



Security, drag this guy out of here: He's obviously delirious.

Besides, I've never been to Caroline's. The supposedly bad night that he's probably recalling in Gotham City actually took place in some dive in the lower east side, I forget the name. True, it wasn't the most successful gig in my life, but then I misjudged the overall literary acumen of the crowd. I was like:

"And now I'd like to do my impersonation of Franz Kafka walking into a bar."

Well, they started poking fun at my 'hoity-toity edu-ma-ca-tion' as they were pleased to call it...

Well, naturally, that was when my fists started pounding some serious man-flesh, I may tell you! Humph! (Homey don't play THAT!) POW, jack, huh!



Er, but I "divagate," as the charmingly sinister Mr. Scoggins says in Huxley's "Crome Yellow."

Speaking of "old man Scogs," he advances an interesting theory about "holidays" in the above-mentioned novel: namely, that one can never really "take one," insofar as one can never truly get away from oneself and one's psychological "take," so to speak, on the world around one.

Of course, the character in question is apt to exaggerate for effect, but he's got a point there all the same -- so much so, that you wonder if travel brochures shouldn't be required to feature a disclaimer along the lines of: "Positive Feelings evoked by this brochure are not necessarily the feelings that you will have upon visiting."

And that goes double when you somehow manage to become deathly ill on the first day of your visit to your longed-for destination.



Still, Chincoteague was swell.

A trifle hot, perhaps.

Speaking of hot, I almost died on Friday afternoon when I traipsed about the island in the 103-degree cloudless and windless heat, with the goal of snapping the following photographs that you see (e'en now) on one or t'other side of y'all.

(No, the T'other, side, sir: t'other side!)

Not that I was suicidal: I took my photographic stroll under a 30-UPF sun umbrella from the island's T-Shirt Factory. Still, I never would have begun my 5-mile round-trip walk on Maddox Boulevard at 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon if I had realized that the island's 25-cent weekend trolleys didn't start running until 5:00 p.m.!

So there I am on the pitilessly unshaded sidewalk, at the intersection of Maddox and Chicken City Road, halfway between Main Street and the causeway to Assateague Island, asking myself, "Where are those dang trolleys that I'm counting on to carry me back to my parking space on Main Street?" for verily I had been walking and snapping pictures for an hour by that time yet nary one trolley had I seen!

Ever the resourceful webmaster, I decided to pose my question to the cashier at Ledo's Pizza, where I now resolved to order the largest Nestea "Green Tea" I could find on the menu, admonishing my host or hostess to "fill it up to HEAVEN ITSELF with ice!" (Hey, listen: I was HOT!)

The good news is that I was soon sipping away merrily on my desired quaff. (I was like: sip, sip! oh, sip! I love this desired quaff!)

The bad news is (or rather was) that the young female cashier (who, selon son accent, appeared to be a work exchange student from France) had no idea when these "trolleys," as I called them," would arrive.

The worse news is that the woman at the Chamber of Commerce building (located inside the traffic circle a mile further along my supposedly "one-way" walk) was to subsequently advise me that said trolleys didn't begin running until 5:00. 5:00 and it was (here, let me check my cell phone...) only 2:00 now!!!!

Sigh!

Well, I was almost at the causeway above-mentioned, meaning that I had almost completed the initially scheduled portion of my sweltering trip. Now there was nothing for it but to trudge back the way I came, like Peter O'Toole on his desert trek in search of the illustrious Auda abu Tayi, but only to my sun-baked Toyota Corolla in this somewhat more prosaic case, where I had left it in the relatively empty parking lot near Chattie's Lounge.

"Fine," I said to myself, "I'll stop at Ledo's again to re-hydrate with another Nestea 'Green Tea'. Then, if I can make the mile-long (and needless to say utterly shadeless) jaunt between Chicken City Road and Pension Street, I'll collapse thankfully in the air-conditioned comfort of that beachwear shop called Sunsations, where I'll pretend to be 'shopping around,' of course, but where I'll actually just be trying to cool off enough to be able to make the final one-mile leg to my (gulp! dare I say it?!) air-conditioned car!!!!"

Relax, gang, the photographs I mentioned are coming up. I just thought you might be interested in the story of how I almost died to get them to you, that's all.

Sigh!

Anywhooo....

I stop at Sunsations (at Chicken and P.) and make like I'm browsing the aisles, see? -- ("Oh, now THIS is a nice doodad!") though my blue horse-covered Chincoteague tanktop was so sweaty by now that it wouldn't have taken Sherlock Holmes to guess my real motives for making a pitstop at that particularly sultry hour of that particularly sultry afternoon (what, it must have been 2:30 p.m. by now and the sign at the nearby Mercantile Peninsula Bank had recently read 103 F -- read nothing: the temperature positively popped out at you and pummeled you on the forehead, saying "Look at me! Look at me!"



Did, too.



Finally, when I no longer felt in imminent danger of collapsing in the midst of the many gaudily colored swim towels and water pistols with which I was then surrounded (many at half-price, by the way -- which, remind me to come back here when I'm "back in the saddle" viz. plausible transportation) I set off once more into the torrid breach, eyes glaring downward at the seemingly endless sidewalk, hoping against hope that my sun umbrella didn't completely fall apart before I arrived at my trusty (and, yes, air-conditioned!) car -- because guess what?

That sun umbrella of mine had been a royal pain in the photographic neck throughout this entire trek of mine, as it would instantly flip inside-out in the presence of the slightest breeze -- and I do mean "slightest," since, as above mentioned, the day was not only cloudless and humid, but virtually windless into the bargain! Yet, to my umbrella's cowardly way of "thinking," (to the extent that such contrivance's can be said to form such mental conceptions) the tiny breezes in question appeared to be just so many nor'easters, if not absolute hurricanes, in the face of which (ingloriues basterd!) it was left with "no choice" but to surrender instantly. (I was ashamed of it: I didn't even want to be seen in its presence anymore.)



Seriously. I half expected to get back to my car carrying nothing more than a few multi-colored shreds of plastic, like Eeyore with the remains of his birthday balloon after the well-meaning but hapless Piglet and company got through with it.

Well, not to keep you in suspense any longer: I survived the incident in question, and here I am. Ta-da! As good as new!

Ah-choo!

Mind you, I'm still a trifle sick, though.

Still, as I say, the CDC says that you have nothing to fear from me as long as I stay up here on the stage -- unless, that is, I start telling you any of my "customary groaners,"
as they are pleased to describe my occasional puns.

How do you like that CDC of ours?! "Customary groaners," if you please! Hah!

Listen, I studied this stuff in school. Nay, I even graduated Magna cum Goofball. I KNOW how to be funny, all right?

Telling me I'm not funny....

Mumble... mumble... mumble....

"Customary groaners"....

Mumble... mumble... mumble....

So THIS is how they spend my tax money: by making mock of me!

Mumble... mumble... mumble...

not to mention, mumble!