6 Degrees of Amalgamation, #1

Having decided to give that notable exercise in frustration, that is to say, intellectual stimulation (Yeah, that's the ticket.), known as Odd Man Out, a rest for the present holiday season, your narrator realized he had a solemn obligation to bedevil his scant few followers with another suitable form of torment. As a result, we now have before us a game I like to call "6 Degrees of Amalgamation." It is very much like that thing you may have heard of in connection with Kevin Bacon, known as "Six Degrees of Separation." In fact, save for the title and the absence of people named after breakfast food, it is exactly like that game. After all, in the exercise, we are looking for commonality, are we not? Hence the substitution of "Amalgamation" for "Separation."

Unlike the Odd Man Out series, where I gave you the questions, inserted a dumb joke, then gave you the answers, in this article, the interlude will feature a poem from The Lost Notebooks of Glub Dzmc. That is because your distinguished narrator has just about run out of dumb jokes, and he would never be so crass as to burden you with a smart one.

For those of you unfamiliar with how to play the game, here is the challenge: you will be given two names; then you must find a way to link them in six or fewer steps. Not all the links will require as many as six steps, but you absolutely may not go over that number.

Much like those helpful algebra texts did in our schooldays (You know what I mean. They give us the example of, OK, 2x = 4. What is the value of x? Why it's 2, of course. Now wasn't that easy? Good, now you try one on your own: x= Cotangent of n to the fourth power, minus pi, divided by the logarithm of y times minus z cubed.), now where was I? Ah, yes, here is an example of how to play the game. Find the link between Karl Rove and Satan. Oops, too easy; one is the spawn of the other. Let's try something only a little more challenging. How about Bob Dylan and Jesus Christ? Okay, here goes. Dylan recently did, hard as it still is to believe, a Christmas album. Famous people born on Christmas day? Jesus Christ. There you have it in, not six, but two steps.

Most (but not all) of these pairings will involve people in the world of entertainment, so it helps if you are a buff of something vaguely entertaining. And, in the area of good news, this exercise is a lot more liberal than the aforementioned OMO. Unlike that quiz, where the pr**k narrator insists you get the right answer for the right reason, in this exercise, any way you can legitimately get to where you need to go is fine and dandy.

All set to play? Good, let us meet our first three pairs. Remember you must link each one using no more than six commonalities. Here are your challenges:

Danny Kaye and Traci Lords

Mary-Louise Parker and Bing Crosby

And, now, one from outside the world of entertainment…

Josef Stalin and Jim Thorpe

There you have them. Now strap on those goggles, toss your wigs and keys to the wind and dig in! Meanwhile, our crazy Czech friend will provide us with a brief poetic interlude.

The One About the Traveling Salesman with Only One Shoe on Each Foot

it is sunday or
at least it used to be, so they tell me,
november thirty
something
in the year of our Lord,
and like some
damn thing or another,
the afternoon fog,
ever soupine in its greenpea mountain majesty,
has once again rolled
through our lives without
ever being detected, deflected or even relegated to some
other place and time
where such things are properly viewed
with terror
and alarm.
and renaissance painters come,
and renaissance painters go,
talking about women who tour or maybe
just the barns
on which they have emblazoned chew
mailpouch, Lord, i don't know.
come, jack, the old man said
to his ten of spades, but then he was
nearsighted, so they tell me, and
difficult to figure out;
come, jack my queen, he
insisted, pulling all the while
at the leash.
let us get a new leash on life, you
and i,
and a flea collar as well.
do you remember that priest, i asked,
the one in the traffic
circle?
they say he yielded, so they say, then too
there once
was a monk
in siberia whose
life just grew drearier and
drearier 'til he
leapt from
his cell with a hell
of a yell and eloped with a mother
superior.
and renaissance painters come,
and renaissance painters go,
talking about the last
time they think they
got fortunate.

I trust I have provided enough distraction to enable you not to see the answer key, which, some might maintain, is about all Glub's poetry is good for. But that is over and done with now, so it's off to the answers we go, palms at the ready to smite our foreheads in exasperation.

Danny Kaye and Traci Lords

All right, now, Danny Kaye was a comedic actor (and a very good one, too) who entertained us throughout the middle of the twentieth century, while Traci Lords is a former porn star, recently gone legitimate. How do we make the connection in six or fewer steps? Observe:

Danny Kay's leading lady in perhaps his best movie, "The Court Jester," was a lovely actress named Glynis Johns.

Glynis Johns played Diane Chambers' mother in the first season of "Cheers."

Diane Chambers was played by Shelley Long, who later would play Claire Dunphy's mother on "Modern Family."

Julie Bowen, who plays Claire on "Modern Family," became well-known for her role as Carol Vessey, an English teacher, in the NBC dramedy, "Ed."

Miss Vessey's most lovesick student was a young man named Warren Cheswick, played by Justin Long.

In the 2008 film, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," Justin Long plays the role of Brandon St. Randy, a gay porn actor, who inspires the title characters to make the film. In it, Traci Lords plays one of the performers.

Mary-Louise Parker and Bing Crosby

How to unite these two entertainers from very different eras? Watch and learn:

Before she became the indomitable Nancy Botwin on the long-running series, "Weeds," Mary-Louise Parker was a member of the talented ensemble cast of the miniseries, "Angels in America."

Another member of that cast was Al Pacino, who played AIDS victim Roy Cohn.

In an earlier movie you may have heard of, Pacino's character orders the death of Abe Vigoda's character as punishment for an attempted double-cross.

After his role as the ineptly duplicitous Tessio, Abe Vigoda starred on the excellent ABC sitcom, "Barney Miller," along with Hal Linden, who played the title character.

Hal Linden also had a number of stage roles, among them, Sid Sorokin in a Broadway revival of "The Pajama Game." That production also featured Cab Calloway in the role of Hinezie, something he has in common with your narrator, but let's not go off on a tangent.

In his more accustom role as bandleader and entertainer, Calloway appeared as a guest (and the first black guest) on Bing Crosby's show at the Paramount Theatre in New York. And that brings us up to Bing.

And now, for those of you who hate to be entertained, but imagine you have a firm grasp of world history, here is a super-easy pairing, just for you:

Joseph Stalin and Jim Thorpe

Here we go, now. Before and after World War II, Stalin's main deputy in the Ukraine was a fellow named Nikita Khrushchev, who would later go on to become the big cheese in the USSR.

Khrushchev's opposite number and debate opponent was our guy, Dwight David Eisenhower.

When Eisenhower was a varsity football player at West Point, he had the not-so-enviable honor of getting his leg broken by a Carlisle player named Jim Thorpe, known for many other reasons beyond that, as the greatest athlete of his time.

There you have the answers. At least they are my answers, and they are, of course correct. If you have an equally-correct (and possibly even shorter) path from point A to point B in any of these instances, I'm sure we (that is, my tapeworm and I) would be happy to hear about it. Feel free to comment. Wishing the happy hollandaise to 1 + all.

Sources

Wikipedia

broadwayworld.com

"Shaggy Dogs: A Collection of Not-So-Short Stories," by Thomas Cleveland Lane

Own awareness