Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2006
To: DeuceOfClubs.com
From: Tad M.
Subject: Man you wish you could be saved
If you knew anything about the LDS church you know
that everything the Osmonds speak about is true. I
guess you will just never know being an unbeliever and
all. Peace my Brother, I will pray for you.
Concerned Brother
". . . everything the Osmonds speak about is true. . . .
You may be more right than you know, Concerned Brother Tad [?]—as revealed here now for the first time in the following document, recently obtained from a top secret Mormon Archive (cunningly masked as a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store on G street in Douglas, Arizona—only a few paces from another mighty power spot, the Holy Virgin Water Heater of Guadalupe y Douglas).
There has come to light hitherto undisclosed evidence that Donny Osmond's understudy for his 1992 comeback Broadway play Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was, in fact, a convincing robot singer/actor/dancer named OHGOLLY. Much light is shed upon this matter by the following captured document from the period, in which we find clear evidence of the special Kolobian powers granted Donny Osmond sometime during the 1970s—and which he may still in fact command.
As with most sophisticated texts—especially religious texts—the Osmond document contains (per Leo Strauss) an exoteric meaning (meant for the masses) and a bolder, more radical esoteric meaning (meant for the initiates). In the case of the current document, we are clued in to the existence of a hidden meaning in couldn't-be-hoped-for-more-Straussian fashion: the words TOP SECRET in its very title! This told me that there was more than meets the eye to be found behind the text. Luckily (providentially?), another border town thrift store was selling a genuine Mormon peepstone—and for only 49 cents! With its help, I was enabled to espy the esoteric words that lay behind the exoteric story of this long-lost primary text of Osmondiana!
(Upper left: Here we see the imprint (imprimatur?) of (presumed) cult initiate Martha Aguirre, living underground (apparently) somewhere in the vicinity of the border town of Douglas, Arizona. Her current fate remains unknown. Right: Disguised as juvenilia, Aguirre's practice scribbles of signatures illustrate the importance of accuracy in the tracing of sigils. The word fire is clearly legible (though its import is as yet undetermined.)
But, soft! Our story beginneth. . . .
Marie Osmond stood at Donny Osmond's bedroom door and knocked.
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock," saith Marie.
"Evidently something secretive is going on in Donny's room," deduced Marie, "which now—again I say, evidently—belongs to someone named . . . MARTHA?"
Just then, Donny emerged from his room, beaded with sweat.
Marie shouted at him playfully. "Donny gots a gurr-friend! Donny gots a gurr-friend!"
"Jeez Pete, Marie!" Donny whined. "Can't a top an' happenin' pop singer get some farging Me Time for golly sakes?!?
"But I—"
"You?" protested Donny too much. "I totally wasn't thinking about you!" It was very stylish how the red of his sweater really brought out the red color washing over his cheeks.
Donny pointed. "The kitchen, Marie," he said. "Now."
Marie knew the drill. She had been raised in the loving and traditional punishments of her religion, handed down from generation to generation, since, oh, about 1820-ish, let's say.
To kill time until Marie finished all her chores, Donny danced and modeled vintage contemporary 70s fashions all by himself in the living room's groovy "conversation pit."
All that robot dancing helped Donny suddenly remember the robot he had built to do their chores for them. Hours later, after Marie was done with all the chores, Donny unveiled his new chore-doing robot.
"Wow, Donny! Where did you learn how to make a robot?" exclaimed Marie.
"From some inscribed golden plates I dug up in the back yard. Duh!"
"Golden plates? Neat! Can I heft them?" Marie pleaded.
"Sure, but later," said Donny, agreeably. "As long," he added, "as your doing so violates no teaching of the Church. Oh, wait. It does. You're a girl."
"What's IGOR stand for?" asked Little Jimmy Osmond.
"I don't know, Little Jimmy," Donny admitted. "You see, the Urim and Thummim disappeared before I could translate that part of the Golden Plates—and also, unfortunately, before even the tiniest particle of my wildly improbable story could be verified. But no matter, because I'm pretty sure IGOR stands for: Rock And Roll Robot!"
Little Jimmy was confused. "But wouldn't that be—"
"See, it's very simple, Little Jimmy. You just sing into the garden hose spout, and finished LP records come out . . . back . . . here . . . oh, darn it all. Why, I forgot to make a hole back there!" Donny shouted in as near to a rock 'n' roll tone of voice as he could manage. It was kind of funny, really (sort of like on "Down By the Lazy River").
Then Donny began destroying IGOR, along with some of his mother's nice colonial style furniture and shag carpeting (not realizing that when rock stars tore up rooms, these were generally rooms owned by hotels or hookers or drug dealers, not their moms).
"Donny! You're tearing apart the whole room!"
"Can't help it, Marie! You wouldn't understand. I'm a little bit rock 'n' roll! Here, Little Jimmy—kick something!"
In short order, Donny and Little Jimmy Osmond had kicked IGOR back into his constituent pieces of trash (which looked, oddly, more or less at home among even the unwrecked colonial style furniture and shag carpeting).
"Oh, Donny! Oh, Little Jimmy! Now how are we going to put out more records?" lamented Marie. "Also . . . which one of you scamps removed that sweater I was just wearing in the previous illustration?"
"No time for that now, Marie" Donny explained patiently. "Right now, you need to get working on a new Rock And Roll Robot. Our nation needs us to sell more recordings of wholesome music but with a contemporary beat. It's the 1970s, after all, and oddly enough, America inexplicably seems to need us to do our sort of 'thing' right now, strange to say," shrugged Donny.
"You're right, of course, Donny," agreed Marie. "I'll get started immediately." And off she went.
"Groovy! I'll be in the kitchen admiring my reflection in the medium green radioactive Fiestaware," Donny exclaimed to no one, unless Little Jimmy Osmond was still in the room, practicing that weird jumping stage bow of his. That thing that was sort of midway between a bow and a curtsey. Whatever that was.
Months later, as Donny was just about finished with the dishes, Marie finally emerged from her fevered, inventor-ish seclusion. "Tuh-DUH!" she exclaimed. "I sing while the tea kettle whistles. What do you think?"
"It blows," said Donny.
"That's what makes it whistle, silly!" Marie sang, slapping the robot's mitt away from her lap.
"Say, where's Little Jimmy?" wondered Donny.
"You have to admit, with the tea kettle and trash can, it really is a little bit country," Marie blathered.
"Sure, sure," Donny said, looking around the room. "It's far out. But have you seen our brother Little Jimmy? Around? Y'know? Lately?"
"I call him EBOR," continued Marie, obliviously. "That's ROBE backwards, because for some strange reason, it seems to be attracted to my clothing. I mean, really, really attracted." Marie turned just in time to see EBOR pawing at something on the coat rack. "EBOR!" she shouted. "Quit stroking my blazer!"
"Look!" observed Marie. "Our new rock 'n' roll robot likes to tidy up the place."
"Well, that's not very rock 'n' roll," Donny groused.
"To tell you the truth," admitted Marie, "cleanliness isn't really all that country, either."
"Hey, Marie—would you believe I'm EBORed already?" laughed Donny.
"Would you like me to perform something?" Marie hinted.
"Well . . . I guess. Sure," Donny said. "But somebody's got to search for our missing brother, Little Jimmy Osmond. And since you're not allowed out of the house except for concerts, Marie, I guess it'll have to be me, teen idol, Donny Osmond."
"Neat," said Marie. "While you're scouring the neighborhood for our missing sibling, I will be here further showing forth my range and intelligence by means of a memorized rendition of Hugo Ball's Dada masterpiece, `Karawane,' reveling in its meaningful meaninglessness, as I hope to do one day on some television show or other in a future decade."
"Donny?" shouted Marie, having more or less successfully finished repeating the nonsense syllables with only a few slip-ups, and consequently expecting at least some courtesy applause. "Donny, can Latter-Day Saints say bung? I mean, are we allowed to? 'Cos I know we can—I just did. Three times, in fact. It was fun. Bung. Bung. Bung. Also, I said, ü üü ü, which actually sounds sort of suggestive, if you dwell on it a good long while."
"Er, Donny? Donny?"
Donny was indeed very busy dwelling. Yea, he did dwell and dwell and dwell, having never noticed just how sexy Dadaism could be.
Once having finished dwelling, however, Donny noticed something disturbingly reminiscent about EBOR's waddling gait and scalding steam. He lifted EBOR's piping hot kettle-face and beneath it was the familiar pudgy little facey-wacey of Little Jimmy Osmond—much redder than usual, to be sure, but still more or less recognizable.
"Haha! Fooled you, Donny!" laughed Little Jimmy, whose little conspiratorial joke with Marie caused him to suffer good-naturedly from serious burns that covered over 70 percent of his misshapen little body.
"Marie," Little Jimmy pleaded, "can we please play Put Little Jimmy in the Emergency Preparedness Freezer now? I mean, pretty quick, here? Seriously. Please?" But he was a little hard to hear. Did you know that steam can scald a person's insides?
"A clever joke!" Donny shouted. "I don't know how it took me so long to spot it," he said, and suddenly dropped the tea kettle to the floor. "Dang. That thing's hot."
"But now who's going to do all the household chores?" inquired a nervous Marie, tentatively.
"I have just the thing that will get all the household work done," said Donny, triumphantly. "I call it TOBATS."
"What's TOBATS?" Marie asked Donny.
"Only about half the number of baseball bats it would take to fix all the teeth in our family, Marie, Lord-a-mercy, I kid you not," answered Donny. "But fortunately, TOBATS is more than enough to keep you on the job around here." And with that, Donny Osmond began to chase his sister, Marie Osmond, around the room, wielding a baseball bat in each of his famous and idolized hands.
And at that moment, all the Osmonds—including Marie, and also including all the Osmond family members who weren't even in the room, or for that matter, included in the book, nor in its not inconsiderable royalty payment schedule—spontaneously broke into laughter and flashed giant-sized smiles because, sadly, they had no other kind.
