Alan Alda
Alan John Paul George Ringo Martin LaSalle Alda (1910 - 1982) was a Belgian military strategist, surgeon, prolific writer, notorious lecher and adventurer, and ex-part owner of Liberty Medical. Liberty Medical and Alda parted ways when the company discovered that he was having three-way rendezvous with Wilford Brimley and his beloved diabetic albino chimpanzee "Mr. Snuggles."
Author of dozens of books, pamphlets, broadsides and other texts on a wide variety of subjects, Alda is probably best known for his Korean War memoir[1], which survived only in fragments, and was itself loosely adapted into the American television series M*A*S*H, in which Alda was portrayed by Canadian actor Alan Alda (no relation).
Why haven't I won an Oscar?
Biography[edit]
Early life and career[edit]
Alda was born to Pepe and Lucinda Alda in 1910, in a small pig sty in what would later become Belgium. Pepe declared the birth "miraculous" due to the fact that he had lost both testicles in a Texas hold 'em poker match several years earlier. He also marveled at the fact that young Alan so closely resembled the local Yak milk delivery man.
Alda apprenticed himself to a renowned one-armed traveling dentist Rufface Toofey , who taught the youngster the fundamentals of faux medicine. Forging a secondary school degree, Alda used his considerable charm to bluff his way into Oxford University, winning the university's first facial-hair-growing contest. Alda was later expelled when his complete lack of medical training became apparent (he once diagnosed a head cold in a patient's anus).
He fled Oxford for the continent, where he had a short-lived, passionate affair with singer Edith Piaf; to the end of her life, the "Songbird of Paris" dedicated each performance of her show-stopper, "Viva La Capitulation" to Alda.
He was briefly a member of the Surrealists, producing several early classics of automatic writing before being expelled under disputed circumstances: officially, Andre Breton disapproved of Alda's proto-performance art ménage with an umbrella and a sewing machine as "bourgeoisie and insufficiently surreal", but there have been rumors of a love triangle[2] as the true reason for Alda's expulsion.
He roomed for a few weeks with writer Ernest Hemingway, who featured a fictionalized Alda as "Alain Aldabairn" in one of one of his earliest published stories, "A Good White Bright Clean Good Quiet Light."[3] immortalized Alda: "He was a man. He was a good man. I have met many men, and fewer good men, and of all the good men I met, Alain was one of the best."
Afterwards, wanderlust drove Alda to joining the French Foreign Legion, who expelled for still-undisclosed reasons rumored to involve Vaseline and a hog-tied-goat. Alda afterwards earned a tenured position at the University of Kentucky.
Why haven't I won an Oscar?
The Korean Conflict[edit]
Alda traveled the world, where his rudimentary medical skills were put to use during the Korean conflict: called into service in desperate circumstances, Alda managed to amputate the leg of an American soldier whose calf had been shredded by shrapnel from a Red Chinese mortar shell. After recovering from an infection and fever, the soldier survived.
Unbeknownst to Alda, the soldier was American actor Mickey Rooney, who had joined the Army in a desperate attempt to prove his masculinity to actress Ava Gardner, who had divorced Rooney once she came to her senses. Alda's saving one of America's most delusional movie stars brought him praise and fan letters, and a fateful meeting with U.S. General Douglas MacArthur. Alda's offhand comment ("Why don't you just nuke the little bastards? Their squinty little eyes won't protect them from America's H-Bombs") spurred MacArthur's disastrous attempted invasion of China.
Afterwards, Alda was transferred to a field hospital where his initial medical success became the basis for a six-month career: he amputated at least one limb from every patient he treated. In many cases this was appropriate treatment for the grievously wounded soldiers, but trouble began when Alda's treatment was extended to men with dental trouble, venereal disease, or athlete's foot.
Again, Alda found himself on the run, one step ahead of the law, the U.S. Army, and more than a thousand angry amputees who were literally hopping mad.
Why haven't I won an Oscar?
Battlefield hero[edit]
When the Belges longed for their own homeland, Alda answered the call and returned to the toxic waste dumps in that little sliver of land between France and Dutchland where he was raised. He joined a group of Belge partisans, orchestrating a series of devastating waffle offensives against entrenched French troops.
Alda's tactical brilliance was widely credited as the decisive factor in the Belges' routing a French "army" in the 1972 battles. In gratitude, Alda was elected Prime Minister. This led to a conflict when Alda was decapitated by Gary Burghoff, though Belgian medical science was able to re-animate Alda.
Why haven't I won an Oscar?
The Bara Scandal[edit]
Alda's reign as PM was short lived after he was discovered having an affair with silent film starlet Theda Bara, whom Alda had re-animated in the grotesque parody of medical science that had re-animated Alda after his decapitation.
Their affair was short-lived (Bara was shot by Charlie Chaplin), and Alda's political career was over. He was able to recover some esteem, and his mea culpa[4] was his first best-selling book.
Why haven't I won an Oscar?
Later life and career[edit]
After the "Bara Scandal", Alda traveled the world, producing books at an astonishing rate, on a wide variety of subjects, including the homosexual subtext of professional wrestling[5], the causes of The Queer Famine of 1792[6]; the extermination of the European Bee Gees[7], the first comprehensive biography of U.S. President Richard Nixon[8], a study of the clandestine worship of the abominable Cthulhu in Provo, Utah[9], an expose-cum-instruction book about Subliminal Messages[10], a reconsideration of French military tactics[11] the first detailed history of the hand job[12], a taxonomy of the imaginary Pleopard[13], the widely-recognized definitive work on the Amish-Mormon conflict[14], a landmark study of male obsession with large breasts[15], a behind-the-scenes look at supernatural politics[16], and a compelling but not-universally accepted explanation for the Miss America pageant[17]. During an evening of drunken revelry at a Parisian brothel in the 1960s, Alda and Claude Levi-Strauss invented structuralism as a way to fool gullible grad students into wasting four years of their lives studying pretentious bullshit. When he sobered up, Alda realized -- to his eternal regret -- that Levi-Strauss took seriously what Alda thought was obviously a joke.
Alda was often criticized for using dubious or even invented sources in support of his research, but Alda countered by citing Random Statistics which proved he was accurate at least 89.4% of the time.
He co-founded Liberty Medical with Wilford Brimley, though they later had a falling-out after Alda was discovered pleasuring himself with one of Brimley's prized bridles. In 1979, Brimley attempted a reconciliation, inviting Alda to appear on his popular television game show Guess What's In Wilford Brimley's Pockets! The tempestuous duo quickly began arguing, which led to fistfight, and Alda being treated for rabies after suffering numerous bites from Brimley. Alda wrote an award-winning essay[18] about the occasion. This altercation is widely suspected of leading to Alda's unsolved murder several years later.
Why haven't I won an Oscar?
Mysterious death[edit]
On a cold Christmas day, 1982, Alda was discovered dead in a parked car in a Washington, D.C transit parking lot. Both his eyeballs had been removed and placed in his mouth, and he was naked save a scarf woven from the hair of extinct aurochs. Incomprehensible symbols had been carved into his skin while he was still alive. Curiously, the scarf was not Alda's (he avoided neckware and turtleneck sweaters due to a painful rash he'd contracted during his Foreign Legion days) and the symbols carved into his pale skin remain unidentified, despite the efforts of linguists worldwide.
Various body parts were not found, including his arms, one leg, his liver, and one testicle. Those were reportedly eaten by Wilford Brimley, who was seen leaving the parking lot with a blood-spattered mustache, muttering, "Belgians is good eatin' ain’t they, officers?" However, Brimley claimed that he had not murdered Alda, but had simply happened to see the already-murdered Alda and decided to not let his "sweetbreads" go to waste. Police were left perplexed but unpersuaded by Mr. Brimley's appetizing story, but were too frightened of catching diabeetus from him to cuff him or attempt an arrest or file any charges whatsoever.
WHY DIDN'T I WIN A F***ING OSCAR!
References[edit]
- ↑ Sacre Rouge: A Thousand Amputations and a Hundred Naughty Nurses
- ↑ see B. Traven's June 13, 1941 letter to Alda asking "Was Gala really as great a lay as everyone says?" in The Letters of B. Traven, volume 4: The Pre-War Years (Alda's reply is presumed lost) or "Collage Is For Pansies," Alda's thinly-veiled attack on Max Ernst
- ↑ first published in Colliers, June, 1932, later included in Hemingway's Guns I Have Shot, Liquor I Have Drunk, Women I Have Loved: Uncollected Stories
- ↑ Re-Animated Silent Film Starlets I Have Loved
- ↑ The Square Ring: Pro Rasslin' as Queer Identity
- ↑ Alda, Alan, Beers, Steers and Queers: How 'the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name' Once Ruled The World Princeton University Press, 1959
- ↑ How Deep Is Your Love: The Bee Gee Tragedy in Europe, 1600 - 1900
- ↑ Never Trust A Kike: The Richard Nixon Story
- ↑ From Sleeping R'lyeh to Utah Lake: Secret Adoration of Dread Cthlhu in Provo, Utah
- ↑ The Sly Persuaders: How Advertisers Take Over Your Mind and How You Too Can Do It! Heckel & Co., 1967
- ↑ How Many Speeds On A French Tank: Retreat Reconsidered As A Military Tactic, UVSC Press, 1968
- ↑ Slow Down, It's Not A Race: Manual Stimulation in All Cultures and Nations; British edition published as Use Both Hands
- ↑ Never Let The Facts Stand In Your Way: How To Get Research Grants To Study Imaginary Animals
- ↑ Buggy Whips and Sister Wives: 100 Years of Amish-Mormon Brutality
- ↑ More Than A Handful Is A Waste: Male Preference for Large Female Mammaries As An Indicator of Various Sexual Problems, 1973, Snow College Press
- ↑ A Faerie Is Not A Fairy: Political Intrigue In Supernatural Realms, Harvard Press, 1978
- ↑ "Red Sonja In The Colonies"
- ↑ "Wilford Brimley is the Most Revolting Person on Almighty Christ's Earth", published in the Upton Review, 1980