I’ve been cooped up in this stuffy bedroom for far too long and the nonsense ends now.

As happy as I was for Sammy Stephens (about as happy as one can be for a man felled by the Ellen DeGeneres death-touch) and his unloosed spirit, I couldn’t help but be a little spooked by the whole affair. Okay, a lot spooked. Sure, Sammy turned out to be a friendly ghost. But where friendly ghosts roam surely all sorts of ghosts roam. For fear of falling afoul of less friendly phantasms in this still quite mysterious Microwave Mansion of ours, The Shoelaces holed up in his room for a solid three weeks, locking his door and fortifying his position with a shroud of jersey sheets within a glowing ward of bracing funk records (check out Maceo at 4:15, and stick around for the aftershock at 8:53). In a word: bivouac. Bivouac, bivouac. Ahem. Cowardly? That’s neither here nor there. The ‘Laces made capital use of the time hunched for hours on end over the records spread across his campground, and by the end of my stint I had finally divined the complete mythology of Dr. Funkenstein (not to be confused with Dr. Dunkenstein, the inspiration for the stirring, baffling, beautiful musical homage kicked off at 2:44)), Sir Nose, and the whole battle to achieve Funkentelechy for all humanity. Oh but it wasn’t a divining rod that led me to ultimate discovery; The ‘Laces availed himself of these informative advertisements he found among his tape collection:

These served as a sort of cliffnotes version of the story; The ‘Laces figured the rest out through rigorous study of his own. As they say at the end of Motor-Booty Affair – “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him backstroke.” Anyway, it’s a great saga on a par with anything laid down by Homer or Hesiod. But I’ll leave the elaborating for another day because honestly The ‘Laces is a bit brain drained after three weeks of intensive funk exegesis.

So the other day I peaked out my door and saw my roommate, Count Leo Tolstoy. Shoot would you get a load of this guy? He may have a bit to learn about the bizarro mirror-world of broadcast television, but at least he’s out there gettin’ busy experiencing. He made me realize that the only way to best my paralyzing fears and ensure once and for all that the Mansion is cleared of ghosts is to get out there and clean its cobwebs out myself. After all, it’s springtime, viz. shi-ningtime, viz. spark-lingtime. So grab your hoses and holystones people and let’s put our backstrokes into it!

Yep, no fooling. Beset by a melancholy funk following my bout of Sammy Stephens-induced introspection (The Count offered comfort in the form of an old painting from his trunk, but it was small solace in my current state; I told him I thought it was a little too “Precious Moments,” which I now regret), The ‘Laces sought closure by rewatching his Sammy Stephens Dance-Jam tape a few more times (I acknowledge the poor quality, the VHS I recorded it on is from the 1970s and it seems that the oriented polyester film that serves as the substrate or backing supporting the tape’s magnetic layer has suffered some distortion over the years. Or it could be that the polyester polyurethane-based polymer in the tape binder has a case of sticky shed syndrome. Tyrone once heard that baking the tape in an oven at low temperature might cure such a condition, but he can’t bring himself to do it cuz he just knows he’d fall asleep and end up frying his favorite old movies like some crumbed catfish. Especially with the old-fashioned oven we’re working with in the Mansion). Now, tape-quality considerations noted, the ‘Laces could’ve sworn he saw a funny thing the 5th or 6th time he watched the tape over. Okay, I’m gonna come right out and tell you: Tyrone Shoelaces saw a ghost.

I know, The ‘Laces didn’t believe it either at first. But just as I was staggering down the hallway rubbing ma’ eyeballs, I near tripped over a furry little fellow scurrying past me. An intruder? No, he hastened to inform me, he was in fact a fellow resident of Microwave Mansion. The next particular imparted was his name: Dr. Duke McBaron. And following that, his vocation: parapsychologist.

To be continued…