The Devil's Pleasure Garden

“Europe visibly aspires to be governed by an American commission—

Its entire policy is directed to that end.”—Paul Valéry, 1927

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Despite what you may have heard, that, at least, hasn’t changed.
Word Wallace has to break it gently to the president that America is, in fact, an empire.
I’ll die for it, said Hemingway, but I can’t live there. He did die there.
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of—what?
Here’s Toby hiding out from the pod people in Mediterranean countries.
And here he is in print.
Keeping low,
RM

Robert MacLean is an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. No brains but an intellectual snob.

The Light Touch on Amazon Prime

The Natural Wish to Be Robert MacLean

The Devil's Pleasure Garden

Musical comedy,

Politically Correct Sex!

Music by Barry Grace

Comedy by Robert MacLean

Her fear of men, his fear of

women—then they switch.

Click on the songs you want to hear:

In COREY'S fantasy she is being raped by Attila the Hun, and sings about why she prefers this to being with A Real Man:

Her feckless boyfriend CONOR avoids involvement, doesn’t pay his debts and sings a hymn to Money:

His friends want him to take more responsibility but, “No no no, you’re trying to give me a character! If I had a character I’d be a screaming claustrophobic!” He sings The Heart Is a Kite—

—and in his nightmare he and his friends CAL and CORNELIUS are attacked by giant feminists, stomped by a huge foot, recognize it as someone's who gave them an STD, and sing You Mugged Me, My Love:

Drunk, they creep into the camp where the giantesses lie sleeping and make love to huge yonis, but are discovered and pounded like ants at a picnic. He is strapped to a table by Corey, CASSIE, a butch roller-derby girl, and CAREN, a dumb-blonde model. Cassie removes his thing, “You’ll feel better now,” and displays it in a jar.

“She’s right!” he says, I feel great!” and sings Never Complain, Never Explain:

He wakes from this nightmare, spots Caren at an art opening and dances with her seductively singing While Standing at the Vernissage:

Corey sees them and confronts him: Is she less beautiful than Caren? “No no no no no!” She challenges him to feel like a woman. Actually he'd like to, and Cal, a medical student, says his professor of surgery can bring it off. She sings a love song—as yet unrecorded.

The SURGEON says, “I have developed a post-Freudian science of the mind.” “Why are you so down on Freud?” “He swallowed Darwin whole!” “So what’s wrong with Darwin?” “Pure mythology. Doesn’t hold a drop of water.” “Then what are we? Who are we?” “Well, the scientific answer is—we don’t know.” They dance to The Accidental Monkey:

Conor persuades Caren to trade bodies with him, and they sing What a Strange Thing Am I (coming soon). But when they operate on her they don’t find a brain—a few synaptic gaps, that's it. “Is she a model? You should have told me!”

Coming to she says, “So who am I?”

Conor's brain is now in a jar hooked up to a speaker and a videocam, and women volunteering to trade bodies parade before him. One of them, Cornelius, who’s been hinting all along that he’s queer, cavorts in drag, and looks so good that Conor mistakes him for a woman, chooses “her”—and wakes up still a man! Cornelius is happy to have become a handsome man with bigger equipment, and sings Song of Sodomy:

But Conor is miserable in Cornelius's body. On a subway platform he sees Corey about to jump—her love for him has broken her heart—and stops her just in time, though she doesn’t recognize him right away. Together they sing Human Joy Takes Many Forms:

Rather than throw her life away, why doesn’t she trade bodies with him?—if he can get his own back. The surgeon is indignant, but she's willing, and sings Do You Have to Be a Woman?:

And Cornelius wants his body back. “You’re just too tight, honey! I’m getting a hemorrhoid!” “What have you been doing with my body?” Well, Cornelius has made certain improvements, and sings Unfellatable to the approximate tune of Unforgettable:

When the operation is over Cornelius is so happy to be himself again that he sings Me:

Corey and Conor, now in each other’s bodies, explore the differences in sexual feeling, and sing Suggest, in Fact, Request:

They decide to get married—but first they want their own bodies back. The surgeon agrees reluctantly, but a plug gets kicked out in the operating room, and Conor—dies. But they bring him back. The surgeon wants to know what it’s like on the other side, and Conor, still half-dead, sings Enticing Dreams:

But that's not enough for the surgeon—he wants to know, and Conor, a weak and vacant zombie, sings:

Oh, I got to the light,
Arrived at the height,
And a loverly sight
It was too.
But I had to come back,
Yes I had to come back,
I just had to come back
(to Corey)
To you.
(getting stronger)
I crossed the wide chasm,
Became ectoplasm
And found the orgasm
Was long overdue—
But I had to come back,
I had to come back,
I had to come back
To you.
(Pinches her behind. She squeals.)

Corey:
He spurned the effulgence,
Preferred the indulgence
Of sticking his bulgence
In one tried and true—

All:
(to Corey)
So he had to come back,
He had to come back,
He had to come back
To you.

Surgeon:
He found, after jumping,
He still missed the humping,
And felt there was sumping
He had left to do—

All:
So he had to come back,
He had to come back,
He had to come back
To you.

Cal:
There was ice cream forever,
Remarks ultra-clever
And sex with whoever
You wanted to do—

All:
But he had to come back,
He had to come back,
He had to come back
To you.

Conor:
(now totally alive, to Caren)
Oh, I love to love you
(to Cassie)
And I love to love you
(to the various audience members)
And I love to love you,
And you and you,
(to Corey)
But I had to come back,
I had to come back,
I had to come back
To you!

All:
Yes, he had to come back,
He had to come back,
He had to come back
To you.

Corey and Conor kiss. Cornelius and Cal kiss. Cassie and Caren kiss. Caren and the surgeon kiss.

Cassie and Conor kiss. Corey and Cal kiss. Cornelius and the surgeon kiss. Caren and Cornelius kiss.

Corey and Conor kiss.

“The worst vice of the fanatic is his sincerity.”—Oscar Wilde

Film reviews

The Light Touch on Amazon Prime

The Natural Wish to Be Robert MacLean

Le Zjoke du Jour

Anger and Exasperation

“Toby,” said the child, “what’s the difference between anger and exasperation?”

I didn't even open my eyes. “Buzz off.”

“Tell me! I want to know!”

I rolled my head in my hammock and looked at it. It is a girl child, and not easily deterred. One can’t just shoo it away. “Is that your new phone?”

“Yes.”

“Give it to me.”

“No! Get your own!”

“What would I want with a phone? Is your grandfather’s number on it yet?”

“Yes.”

“Get it.”

It handed me the phone, open at “Gwampa”. I swear to God the kid wrote it that way.

“He’ll know your voice,” it said.

I tapped on Gwampa and Haze’s phone rang.

“Hello!” he shouted, jerked away from running his empire.

I tried my French voice. “Allo. Tobee est là?”

“What?”

“Tobee!” I insisted. “Is he zere?”

“No, there’s no Toby here.” He hung up.

I tapped. Ring-ring. “Hello!”

I did my sinus-infection Brit aristo. “Oh hullo. I'd like to speak to Toby, please.”

“There is no Toby here!”

“Could you just have a look round? It's frightfully important.”

“You want me to do what? Do you know who you're talking to?”

“No need to get shirty, old thing. When will he be back? Can you take a message?”

“No, I can’t take a message, because he won’t be back. He’s never here, so it’s impossible for him to be ‘back,’ you understand?” He hung up.

I glanced at the child as I tapped again. “HELLO!”

I did my Louis. “Hey, muthafuckah! Get Toby for me, will ya?”

“There IS. NO. TOBY. HERE! WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GET THE IDEA THAT TOBY IS HERE? HE’S NOT HERE!”

I held this up for the child to hear. “That’s anger,” I explained.

He hung up. I tapped. Ring-ring. “WHAT!”

“Hi, this is Toby. Were there any calls for me?”

I handed the child the phone and closed my eyes. “Run along,” I said, waving it away.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

This is where you will find some Toby books.

If you’re planning on the south of France for the summer, try this one.

If it’s Paris or London, grab this.

The Greek islands? Here you go.

Bon voyage,

Bob

Little Johnny came home with a black eye.

“What happened?” said his father.

“The teacher’s dress was wedged in her bun crack, so I pulled it out, and she turned around and whacked me.”

“Johnny, we don’t treat women that way.”

Johnny nodded—and the next day he came home with two black eyes.

His father looked at him. “So?”

Johnny shrugged. “The teacher’s dress was stuck in her bun crack. Another guy pulled it out, but I knew she didn’t like that, so I poked it back in.”

The origami toilet-paper fold:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of course you fold the paper in four. Then you tear off the inner corner such that, when you unfold, there’s a hole in the middle.

Put the torn-off corner carefully aside.

Fit the hole over the business finger and apply it to the work at hand.

Then crush the paper over the finger and draw it slowly off, removing all possible trace of product. Paper of a certain stoutness may choke the toilet, so just put it where no one can see it.

Then take the torn-off corner and, with the point, clean under your fingernail.

That should flush.

Et voilà!

When Annie Besant tried to get Krishnamurti into Oxford, Oxford declined.

“I hope you realize,” she told the master at Balliol College, “that Krishnamurti is the Son of God!”

“Yes,” said the master, “we’ve had the sons of some very important people at Oxford.”

The U.S. Postal Service issued a series of stamps commemorating famous lawyers, but they had to withdraw it because nobody knew which side to spit on.

When Einstein was at Oxford he gave his students a test and while they worked on it he strolled the grounds with his assistant.

“But, Professor Einstein,” said the assistant, “you gave the same test to the same students last term!”

“Yes,” said Einstein, “but the answers have changed.”

A guy walks into a bar shouting, “All lawyers are assholes!”

“I resent that,” says a patron.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you a lawyer?”

“No, I’m an asshole.”

Sartre

Let an enormous fartre

And sighed, “Descartes be damned!

I stink, therefore I am!”

How do you know when your wife is dead? The sex doesn't change, but the dishes pile up.

The past, the present and the future met in a bar. It was tense.

I used to live beside an abattoir, but the view was offal.

Why don't giraffes eat much? A little goes a long way.

A mainlander said to a Newfie, "I’ll bet you a hundred dollars I can bite my eye."

The Newfie hesitated, thought about it, then said, "All right."

The mainlander took out his glass eye, bit it, and put it back in. "I’ll bet you a hundred I can bite my other eye."

The Newfie considered, then said, "OK."

The mainlander took out his teeth and bit his good eye with them. "I’ll bet,” he said, “one more hundred, that I can piss on you without getting you wet."

The Newfie stared at the idea, turned it this way and that, and nodded. The mainlander got up on his chair, unzipped and peed on the Newfie, who jumped back. "I'm wet!" he screamed.

The mainlander shrugged. "I thought you should win one."

Vicious fishes
With malicious wishes,
In a few surreptitious swishes,
Squish us,
Find us delicious,
And don't even do the dishes.

The plane was losing altitude. The captain, apologetic—there was nothing he could do. Suddenly a stewardess leapt up, threw off her clothes and opened her arms. "Who's going to make me feel like a woman one last time?"

A Newfie took off his shirt and threw it to her. "Here," he said, "iron this."

*
The New Age Blues

My baby got back just the other day.
(I didn't really know she'd been away.)
She said, "I been hangin’ out in Santa Fe."

I moved to make some room for her in bed
But she just stared at me and shook her head.
She said, "I’m New Age now and I meditate instead."

I got the New Age blues.
I got the New Age blues.
I got the New Age blues.
I got the New Age blues.
I got the New Age blues and I'm as bluazahkin be.

So I lay there with my unrelieved libido
While she told me her New Mexico amigo
Prescribed a rice and water diet for my ego.

I got the New Age blues and I'm as bluazahkin be.
I got a cork-and-iron-lined WC,
And I’m eliminatin' my impurity.

I got the New Age blues.
I got the New Age blues.
I got the New Age blues.
I got the New Age blues.
I got the New Age blues and I'm as bluazahkin be.

This particular funicular,
So perpendicular,
Looks testicular
Climbing the prickular.
And when it goes quickuler
There’s nothing ridiculer.

I hang from the bedstead above you,
And now I must surgically glove you,
So that we can extract
With exquisite tact
A nice little souvenir of you.

Did you hear about the blonde who tested for a part in a movie? She slept with the writer.

Strauss-Kahn,
Strauss-Kahn,
What kinda steroids are you on,
Strauss-Kahn?

Strauss-Kahn,
Strauss-Kahn,
What about those of us who are non-
Strauss-Kahns?

Hollande
Had a certain bond
With his favorite blonde,
But he looked aronde—
And the blonde was gone!
She was out on the lawn
Gettin’ it on
With Strauss-Kahn.

A woman gets out of the shower as her husband is getting in. She hears the doorbell, wraps on a towel and goes downstairs to answer it. At the door is their neighbor, Bob.

Before she can speak he says, "I'll give you eight hundred dollars to drop that towel."

She thinks for a moment, then shrugs and drops the towel. He looks at her for several seconds, then hands her eight hundred dollars and leaves. She closes the door, puts on the towel and goes back upstairs.

"Who was it?" her husband says.

"Bob."

"Good. Did he give you the eight hundred he owes me?"

*
WHAT'S YOUR HURRY?

When peeing, wait for the shiver.

When pooping, wait for the pee.

When stroking, wait for the quiver.

When coming, wait for me.

*
LOVE LETTER

It’s allergy season and the nose is always something of an issue,
So instead of rubbing it between your breasts I thrust it into a tissue.
But I miss you.

With a song in your fart
I behold your adorable face.
Just a toot at the start
But it soon is a hymn to your grace.
When the music swells
I breathe through my hand
It tells me you’re standing near, aaand—

At the sound of its voice
You have opened your portal to me.
Can I help but rejoice
That an air such as yours bubbles free?
But I always knew
I would live life through
With a song in my fart fooooooor you!

My teacher caught me dreaming out the window.
She said, “Five birds are sitting on a fence
And you kill one with your slingshot—how many
Are left?” So “None,” I said. She shook her head:
“Four.” I shook mine: “The others fly away.”
“All right,” she said, “I like the way you’re thinking.”
“Three women eating ice cream cones,” I said.
“One licks, one sucks, one bites. Which one is married?”
She gave the other kids a patient look
And for the hundredth time I wondered who,
When she was not being devoured by
Our little eyes, had the having of her.
Was he, this prince of fortune, as aware
How apt her breasts were with the slightest movement
To manifest impatience with her bra?
“The one who sucks?” she said. “The one,” I said,
“With the ring. But I like the way you’re thinking.”

Dark in Here, a quick comedy.

The expulsion of waste from the bowels,
With the musical grunting of vowels,
Occasions such pleasure
That ladies of leisure
Sit and strain till it jiggles their jowls.

An Englishman hosting a dinner party noticed that his butler held his thumb in the stew as he served it, and said, "Winthrop, your thumb is in the stew."

"Yes, sir," said the butler, and continued to ladle it onto the plates of the guests.

"Winthrop, why do you have your thumb in the stew?"

"There's a boil on it, sir, and it helps to keep it warm."

In his outrage the Englishman experienced a loss of control. "Well in that case why don't you shove it up your ass?"

"I do, sir, between courses."

True story:

A London judge postponed a case because he'd forgotten a document down in the country.

An impatient barrister leapt to his feet and cried, "Fax it up, M'Lud!"

And the judge said, "Yes it does, rather."

Today I saw a deaf guy beating up a blind guy. Senseless violence.

Although toes were his favorite dish,
Hers were riper than he might have wished.
The solution he found
Was to work his way down
And have the cheese after the fish.

A woman went into a store and asked for twenty gallons of milk. "I'll see if I've got that much in stock," said the clerk; "What are you going to do with twenty gallons of milk?" "Have a bath in it," she said, "it's very good for the skin." "OK," he shrugged, "do you want it pasteurized?" "No, just up to my tits, I'll splash the rest on my face."

Quasimodo was bored with ringing the bell so he asked the Archdeacon for a few days off. “Not,” said the latter, “unless you can find a replacement.”

So Quasimodo went out into the square and looked around, saw the local idiot and took him up into the tower to teach him how to ring. “Don’t look down,” said Quasimodo.

Despite his fear of the sickening drop the idiot balanced himself where Quasimodo told him to stand, and the hunchback swung the giant bell to him. It hit him on the chin. “Come on!” said Quasimodo, “You have to catch it with your hands!” He swung it again and it hit the idiot in the nose, blinding him so that he almost fell. Quasimodo waited patiently until the idiot’s eyes cleared and swung it at him a third time. It hit the idiot on the forehead and he fell away away away into the square, where he lay in a broken heap.

Quasimodo dropped his arms in despair, gave up and went down the stairs and out to search for another substitute. And as he was shambling past a group of people crouching around the dead idiot one of them looked up and said, “Quasimodo, do you know this man?”

Quasimodo said, “No, but his face rings a bell.”

Picking my nose in the nude
Might seem a little bit rude
But it’s in to the knuckle
And with any luck’ll
Be out while we’re still in the mood.

Epitaph for a waiter: "God finally caught his eye."

How many producers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

"Does it have to be a light bulb?"

As poets have mournfully sung
Death takes the innocent young,
The rolling in money,
The screamingly funny
And those who are very well hung.
—W.H. Auden

In one of those Italian towns where people know their opera a soprano sang an aria for ten encores, until finally the manager came out and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, we appreciate your response but the lady will strain her voice, and we must get on with the show."

An old man stood up in the audience: "She’ll sing it till she gets it right."

Why did the pervert cross the road?

He was stuck in a chicken.

When Dante visited Giotto and saw his kids he said, "How can a man who paints such beautiful pictures have such ugly children?" "Yes," said Giotto, "it was dark when I made them."

True fact: the Toronto undertaker who buried my mother held a funeral for his amputated leg so he could say he has one foot in the grave.

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it does it make a sound," remember that one? If a man speaks his mind in a forest and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?

A huge tomcat followed his friend to the top of an alley wall with a roll of razor wire running along the top, and leapt down to the other side. But when he landed he felt something was missing and, gazing up, saw dangling from the wire the pair of glistening jewels that had formerly been his virility. Already he felt discouraged. “What do I do now?” he cried.
His friend looked at him. “You become a consultant.”

An English gentleman farted in his bath.
A few minutes later his valet came in with his hot water bottle.
"What's that, Whipple?" (For the valet's name was Whipple.)
"Your hot water bottle, sir."
"I didn't ask for a hot water bottle!"
"I beg your pardon, sir. As I was passing the door I thought I heard you say, 'What about a water bottle, Whipple?'"

Fathers—so embarrassing.

My father always loosened his belt at the dinner table. For a good meal he unbuckled completely and opened his fly. We glanced at this. You could tell how much he enjoyed the food by how widely his zip gaped.

One night he stood up and his pants fell down. We massaged our foreheads. Oh, God, Dad. And we were in a restaurant. Jesus, Dad!

The other fathers looked over and said, "Hm—what’s he eating?"

Four Oxford dons were out for a stroll, discussing odd collective nouns—a gaggle of geese, a clutch of serpents, and so forth—when they were accosted by four ladies of the evening, who offered their services. With polite embarrassment the dons declined, and as they walked on the question arose as to the appropriate collective noun for that party of ladies.

"A jam of tarts?" offered the junior man. But no, it didn't quite meet the case.

"A volume of trollops," tried the second, but he was met with only a meditative silence.

"A fourish of strumpets!" cried the third. No. No no no.

The senior don stopped and turned to them. "Gentlemen," he said with finality, "What we have just encountered is an anthology of pros."

A blonde housewife and a brunette housewife are chatting on the sidewalk.
The brunette says, "Uh-oh, here comes my husband."
"Yeah," says the blonde, "and he's bringing you flowers!"
"That means I'll be spending the next two days on my back with my legs up in the air."
"Why? Don't you have a vase?"

There once was a man from Iran
Whose limericks never would scan.
When asked why this was,
He said, "Well, because
I always like to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can.

A man dies and finds himself at the gates of heaven, where there are two signs. One says, "This line is for men who are bossed around by their wives," and the line-up stretches to the vanishing point. The other says, "This line is for men who are not bossed around by their wives," and there's only one guy in it, and the man who's just arrived knows him! He goes up to him and says, "What are you doing in this line? Your wife bosses you around all the time!" And the guy says, "I don't know, she told me to stand here."

A blonde hooker noticed that her brunette friend was making more money than she was, and asked her how she did it. "Easy!" said the brunette. "After I have sex with a john I say, What'll we name the baby? and he gives me some extra to take care of it."

"Gee," said the blonde, so at her next engagement, as they finished up she said, "What should we name the baby?"

The guy tied a knot in his condom and held it up to the light. "If he gets out of that we'll call him Houdini."

Robert MacLean is an independent filmmaker. His recent The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. No brains, but an intellectual snob.