In a troubling move that has Herman Melville turning over in his grave (while clutching handfuls of his now somewhat thinning hair!), a local Mayor, never a person who anyone would even remotely call 'bookish', finally got off of his dead rear-end and finished one of the pillars of western literary culture after numerous 'fits and starts' since his inglorious graduation from an extremely understanding State university a shocking 25 years ago this year. This classic novel, having something to do with a bunch of guys with biblical sounding names racing all over the place and slaughtering innocent whales until some albino whale who felt ostracized by the other mean, snooty whales decided he just wasn't going to take it anymore or something and began a systematic destruction of every ship on the face of the earth. Anyway, the doggone book was about 1,000,000 pages long and was filled with a bunch of arcane nautical terms like spinnaker, bowsprit and foremast and the like - not to mention a generous sprinkling of colorful expressions like 'thar she blows!', 'shiver them timbers' (not to be confused with 'shiver me timbers' from that other book the Mayor has yet to finish - Treasure Island, for Pete's sake!) and that ever handy expression 'heathenish old scamp'. (talk about a term perfectly suited for Lamont!)"Well, yes, that was quite an arduous endeavor, but one I was indeed well matched for, as it would appear" said the suddenly smug, swaggering, literary-wanna-be Mayor, (who doesn't object to being called 'Ahab', by the way - although other names that start with the letter 'A" seem to be far more popular!) (and vulgar!) standing there, book in hand, gesturing with his new 'Sherlock Holmes' pipe and showing off his new sophisticated 'smoking jacket' with those fetching fake leather patches on the elbows (Did Sherlock Holmes ever really wear a lime green smoking jacket? I mean, come on! And what does Sherlock Holmes have to do with Herman Melville or literary prowess or whatever in the first place? There must be some flawed symbolism nestled in there or something - thus proving the Mayor's lack of basic knowledge of literature once again! Oh, that is just so embarrassing!). "Sure, when one so brazenly wades into the treacherous, danger-infested waters of a great mind like Melville, the associated risks to one's world view are stark indeed!" he said annoyingly - donning an atrociously fake English accent that made everyone in the room want to hold him down and knock the 'plum pudding' out of him. (like that is new! And who says we need a reason!) "It was truly a testimony to the insanity of Man's innate desire to control the world around him - even to the extreme of his own demise. (Editorial note: The small town mayoral parallels here are truly staggering! Whoa!!!) All very heady stuff in the age of terror and Hip Hop music and that girl that seems to be on every piece of merchandise in Wal-Mart and all!" he said piously before resorting to a coughing fit after pompously puffing on his new, unused pipe - although he did not take into consideration the reality that he is not, in fact, a smoker - and thus blew burning embers all over his person. "Pity about those whales, though" he wheezed before having to cut the interview short to run and get a sip of Lamont's excellent water and to put his now actively smoking 'smoking jacket' out before more serious harm was in fact done to him or others.
(Editorial Note: The Mayor claims he would have finished the novel much sooner except for the fact that he felt supernaturally drawn to go get coffee every time one of the unfortunately named major characters was mentioned. Yes, that major character was, in fact, called 'Starbuck' so let's just say that the Mayor has spent an inordinate amount of time all wired up in 'The Gents', as those rascally Brits like to say!)
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