I was watching, as is my wont these days, cross-legged on the parlor floor, making sure to change the channel any time the dreaded Ellen appeared on screen, hoping to find some more wonderful music to ponder. Aha! Just the thing came to me, at the start of a very confusing movie:

What a song! They’re right, this hidden man and his band, about love; it has an undeniable power, and I found myself nodding in agreement from the first lyric. But I have to admit something about the movie disturbed me.

Luckily, a few days ago Tyrone had helped me connect a VCR to the micro-vision, so I could record any interesting scenes I might find. Before I go back to the tape, though, I want to address an issue that I’ve seen brought up many times in the programs I’ve watched over the past few weeks (or is it days? the micro-vision baffles me): the VCR is hard to program. I am not joking, though I realize this is somehow, for some reason, meant to be a joke of some kind. Again: I am not joking. I do not joke when I say the VCR is hard to work with.

Listen. I have never used one before. Okay? It is hard. It is stupid. It is a stupid machine, no matter how useful. Please don’t ever joke about it.

But the video: this young man is veritably skating along the surface of the road, as if on ice skates or something, and, what’s more, attaching himself to the motor vehicles that pass by. I don’t believe it! If I were the driver of one of those vehicles, I would be furious! Or at least terrified. Either way, I certainly wouldn’t keep driving like this fellow:

Come to think of it, the more I watch this section of tape again, the more I realize there must be something more to it, something hidden. See how the two acknowledge each other? And the strange writing on the man’s hat, what is that?

Mountain Dew? What does that have to do with driving? Or with the power of love? I have to ask Tyrone about this…

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!

I decided to start fixing up the parlor the other day, as I’ve really had an itch to clear a proper space for some wall hangings. Before starting work on the mold and rotting wood, though, I wanted to play a little work music (or eine kleine werkmusik, as Mozart might call it) on the stereo, so I might feel energized for the hard work ahead. As luck would have it, I couldn’t borrow Tyrone’s stereo, as his room was locked and I didn’t dare knock to disturb the very funkular beats I heard coming through the door. So I thought I would try playing music on the television, which, as Tyrone tells me, has entire channels devoted to music and music videos, a point he drove home by expounding for a half hour at least about one such video in particular.

At the moment, the only TV we have is a microwave-television combination set, which I gather was designed by this man, who, from the looks of it, has much the same kind of animal infestation issues we do. So I pushed it from the kitchen into a spot in the center of the parlor, and hoping to find a little Wagner to make fun of as I worked (or maybe, luck of lucks, some Dvořák to enjoy), turned it on. I was transfixed. Apparently I had found, on first attempt, one of these music channels, and what’s more, one that exclusively played the most hypnotic music known to microwave television:

I couldn’t believe it. In an instant, the song was seared in my brain, from the first reverberant notes of an oversized drum to the last, plaintive cries of a squished man. I can’t say for sure, as the afternoon and evening are lost in a haze, but I wouldn’t doubt I watched that music video channel for hours, legs tucked under my bottom, hands on my knees, waiting with acute yearning for the song to play again.

There it was!! And as good as the first time. What fun this music television turns out to be! Discarding chores in favor of the font I had found, I endured the long, half-hour commercial breaks in between repeats of the music video–advertisements selling, for all I could tell, morons and kitchen islands–wondering all the while why Tyrone hadn’t told me about this song before.

It wasn’t until three or four in the morning a day or two later that I realized the damage the song, like any drug, had done to my mind. Like a chigger finding flesh after eating through an inch of wool, the song had bitten down on my brain’s core and had refused to ever let up. When today I returned to the microwave television, finding it still perched on a stool amongst the rabbit-warren-honeycombed plaster piles of the parlor, I thought I might watch a few of my favorite movies, but I was dismayed to find I couldn’t watch without that song creeping in my ears.

I’m not sure what I’ll do to rectify this.

That song is really catchy.

Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. (for the latin Parapsychologiae Doctor, or “teacher of parapsychology”): Wow! I mean, WOW!
Tyrone Shoelaces: You see something Doctor?
Dr. DMC: What you have captured here, Tyrone, on this 1970s VHS tape of yours, is what we in the field of parapsychology refer to as a focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm; a Class Five, full torso, free roaming, vaporous apparition!
TS: Well huckabuck, sucka. You sure sound like you know what you’re talking about.
Dr. DMC: Ahem, I hold advanced degrees from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program (unfortunately closed in 2007), and the University of Arizona’s VERITAS Research Program. I’ve conducted research at the Institute of Parascience, the Rhine Research Center and Institute for Parapsychology, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences, as well as several British institutions including the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh, the Parapsychology Research Group at Liverpool Hope University, the Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology Research Unit of Liverpool John Moores University, the Center for the Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes at the University of Northampton, and the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths University of London. In addition I am a proud and active member of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR), the Parapsychological Association (PA), and, of course, the International Fortean Organization (INFO).
TS: Did you say Fortean Organization?
Dr. DMC: Most certainly.
TS: Swanky.
Dr. DMC: But none of that is important right now. Sir, you have captured videographic evidence of a paranormal phenomenon of immense proportions!
TS: [To himself] Good thing I didn’t try to bake the tape.
Dr. DMC: [Furrows brow in confusion, then moves on.] Let me break down for you what’s going on here. We’ll start from the beginning of the tape. [Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. commandeers the VCR remote control.] Here a clearly very much alive Sammy Stephens verily coruscates onto the Ellen Show stage to rapturous studio audience reaction. Now, not being an authority on your standard terrestrial-type phenomena, I feel ill-qualified to characterize the physical movements that the human Mr. Stephens performs at this point, except to say with some impossible-to-mask admiration that they themselves border on the paranormal!
TS: Cold freakin’ it.
Dr. DMC: Confirmed. But now then at approximately 43 seconds into the tape is when Mr. Stephens finally settles down into his seat. This is the critical moment. Ms. DeGeneres says hello to him and simultaneously places her hand on his knee with a telling sort of deliberateness: the death-touch.

TS: [Eyes widening, nodding head]
Dr. DMC: The blow takes its desired effect almost instantaneously: Mr. Stephens’ head rocks back, his mouth gapes open, and his lifeforce drains out, leaving behind a frozen, inanimate blob.

TS: Damn, they got Sammy.
Dr. DMC: [Staring trancelike at the frozen screen, muttering more to himself than to anyone else] Just look at that contemptible, proud, evil woman, so satisfied with the excruciating pain she has wrought…
TS: Do you think it was painful? It seemed like it happened so fast.
Dr. DMC: [Snapping out of it] Hm? Oh, yes. Well… there’s really no telling the physical sensation. But there can be no question of the end state. Hence the name “death-touch.”
TS: But one thing I don’t understand, Doc Duke. Why would Ellen DeGeneres want to kill Sammy Stephens with her death-touch?
Dr. DMC: An excellent question, Tyrone. And I can’t offer you a definitive answer. One hypothesis is that she is an extraterrestrial consummating a vendetta outstanding from a parallel dimension. Another is that she simply envies his dancing ability. Dancing is a cornerstone of the Ellen DeGeneres schtick, as I understand it, and if a guest comes on and dances better than she does it makes her look bad and, frankly, disgusting.
TS: [Nodding]
Dr. DMC: Another thing: if you watch closely you can see at approximately… here, the 31-second mark… Ms. DeGeneres evinces some dismay, cowering and uttering a terse yowl as if physically pained, as Mr. Stephens advances on her coffee table. Performing the death-touch on Mr. Stephens on national television could be Ms. DeGeneres’ way of sending a message to all those watching: thou shalt not threaten my coffee table centerpiece (which if I’m not mistaken appears to be a casserole of marshmallows, presumably for the mugs of hot cocoa no doubt served in place of water or coffee for this holiday season taping - very Ellen) with lewd bodily motions. Alternatively, she could be a witch. (The Parapsychological Association does not pursue the study of witchcraft, but I’ve conducted some independent research of my own, all of it as yet inconclusive.) To be honest, motives in this case are beyond my purview.
TS: So then what happens?
Dr. DMC: Tyrone my boy this is where it gets interesting. Over the course of my decades of study I have witnessed countless instances of etheric projection - the spirit or etheric body leaving the physical body. But never have I seen it occur so quickly following the expiration of the physical body and certainly never so… how to put this… so triumphantly.

TS: Sammy!
Dr. DMC: Weeeell, not quite Sammy. If you watch closely you can clearly see the moment of bilocation, when the etheric body and the vestigial physical body are visible simultaneously. Also note that the apparition that then rises - somewhat Phoenix-like I can’t help but remark - exhibits a markedly different pigmentation: the mist-like pallor endemic to your vast majority of discarnate entities. And finally, while I can’t account for this scientifically, at the very moment this etheric projection occurs, the music changes from the ebullient Bernard Edwards bassline-backed rhymes of the Sugarhill Gang to a more portentous and I believe, if my tin ear serves me at all well, minor-key melody.
TS: Ghost music?
Dr. DMC: Ghost music.
TS: [Shakes his head in awe.] So you’re sure. A ghost, huh?
Dr. DMC: Well take a look at this, Tyrone. The Ellen DeGeneres Show tapes at NBC Studios at 3000 W. Alameda Avenue, in Burbank, California.
TS: Wait, how do you know that?
Dr. DMC: [Completely disregarding Tyrone's question, Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. pulls out a set of blueprints from his briefcase.] These are the schematics for the structural ironwork of that NBC Studios building and they’re very, very strange indeed …
TS: Hold on, where did you get those?
Dr. DMC: [Entirely absorbed by the maze of the pages unfolded before him] … this roof cap is made of a magnesium-tungsten alloy. Cold riveted girders with cores of pure selenium. The structure is exactly like the kind of telemetry tracker that NASA uses to identify dead pulsars in deep space. The whole building is a huge super-conductive antenna that practically seems to have been designed and built expressly for the purpose of pulling in and concentrating spiritual turbulence! I’ve never seen anything like it!
TS: Amazing.
Dr. DMC: Now look at this. [Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. pulls out a device that looks like an oversized remote control and that begins beeping as Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. passes it over the television screen.]
TS: Whassat?
Dr. DMC: This, Tyrone, is a giga-meter. It’s a gauge that measures psychomagnetheric energy in GEVs - that’s giga-electron volts.
TS: Dig it.
Dr. DMC: Now, I begin to pick up a fairly strong reading as soon as Mr. Stephens appears on the set, which is very abnormal - for a living human to register at all. When the etheric projection occurs there is a predictable spike in the reading, but watch this: when the Ghost of Mr. Stephens actually begins to dance - here, at approximately the 47-second mark - we get a PME surge of incredible, even dangerous proportions. Nearly a fourfold crossrip! He buries the needle!
TS: Swanky.
Dr. DMC: Little could Ms. DeGeneres have anticipated that by administering her death-touch she would be unfettering a spirit with a dancing fever multiplied by an order of magnitude! Of course, she tries to play it off casually, rising to join her newly reanimated rival, but you can see how awkwardly she dances, unsure of what to do with her arms. And the entire time she is staring at the Ghost of Mr. Stephens almost unblinkly. Shocked into a mute quagmire as if by a giant psychomagnetheric energy brainfreeze!
TS: So what’s The Doctor Duke’s scientific conclusion?
Dr. DMC: While I can’t place total confidence behind this theory, my initial interpretation is that Sammy Stephens had an incredibly uncommonly forceful etheric body housed within him just desperate to be freed from corporeal bounds, freed to dance into eternity. To put it simply, the circumstances finally lined up for that freeing: time, place, Ms. DeGeneres. If you want to know the medical opinion of this Doctor of Parapsychology: bully for the Ghost of Sammy Stephens!
TS: And chilly for Ellen DeGeneres!
Dr. DMC: [Clasps hands together and laughs heartily, and a little maniacally.]

Epilogue:

When Tyrone Shoelaces went to bed that night, I didn’t feel any of the melancholy funk I’d felt the night before. This time I felt a different funk, a good funk. I thought about Ellen DeGeneres, the woman with the fatal touch and the inscrutable motives. I thought about Sammy, brutally murdered by a vindictive and totally out of control talk show host. I thought about Sammy’s Ghost, now free to strut and gambol about the etheric plane for all of eternity. And I thought about my new friend living down the hall, Dr. Duke McBaron, P.D. I couldn’t wait to tell The Count about everything and introduce him to The Doctor.

Having achieved the closure I’d been seeking, albeit rather circuitously, I felt so good that I decided to unpack my record player and throw on one of Tyrone’s favorite cuts by the Bar-Kays. The funk gets real thick around the 3:57 mark and then those merciless boys run it back and do it again at 6:40. This one is for Big Sammy Stephens, wherever you are…

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…

Take the painting on sale: Too many boats. And who are those people in front? Get out of the way. I’m trying to admire a bridge.
	Cute, but worth $40 million?

Now take this other Monet r/b/A painting. Getting better–he has at least covered up the people with a muscular shrub-topped hillock. But still, there’s another winky-dinky sailboat flitting around, just daring to be stuck in your eye like a cinder.
	Have to love that hillock.

Here. Finally Monet got it right. No boats, no people, just a train on a bridge. Perfect. It even has the added bonus of being dimly lit, which does nothing but encourage a connoisseur’s nap, which is highly appropriate for the parlor, I think you’ll agree.
	Perfect for napping.

Alas, his best bridge painting wasn’t for sale (probably in some auction-house bargain bin somewhere), and the one that was on sale sold for $41.4 million, which at least saved me the embarrassment of coming up short on my promised $900 bid.

Anyway, as I returned from the auction, I realized our parlor is in no shape to be decorated by Impressionist masterworks; the peeling wallpaper, exposed beams in the ceiling, and all-around funk demand quite a bit of fixing-up, and for the time being seem more appropriate an environment for this dingy old favorite I unpacked from my trunk. Tyrone thinks it’s a little too “Precious Moments.” But I like the big clay jug. It reminds me that we haven’t fixed the bathroom yet.

The front porch. Humanity’s place of respite for centuries. The Greeks called it ροετσς, the Romans, portum romanum. Dumas loved so much the leisure of reclining at the front of his house that he named his musketeer Porthos for the place, and even allowed his heroes a rest there:

Bravery is always respected, even in an enemy. The Musketeers saluted Bicarat with their swords, and returned…to…the porch…intoxicated with joy.

Here at Microwave Mansion we have a very comfortable porch, not too small like some, and not encumbered by overlarge porch swings, like others. It is a porch Dumas himself would be comfortable in, and where I wish he sometimes were, that we could joust and drink lemonade in the most friendly manner. En garde!

That’s right:

Tyrone Shoelaces here. So it’s Tyrone Shoelaces’ first night in the Mansion and he goes up to his room to put his clean jersey sheets on his bed only to find laying on his floor a dusty old Gideon’s Bible. Normally the ‘Laces would have dismissed it as a curio but he learned recently that the Bible is the most popular book in America. 2,513 U.S. adults can’t be wrong, so the ‘Laces saddles up and starts reading about Joseph, since he’s the one Bible Joe who seemed to have a style the ‘Laces could dig.

Joseph went to prison but he was smooth enough to make good with the warden, which no doubt helped in his eventual escape. Just like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption. Man, Tyrone Shoelaces loves that movie.

Sammy Stephens sho’ nuff got the shaft in the credits though, maybe because of the Red Scare. Shit, House Un-American Activities Committee, Tyrone Shoelaces would like to see you step under THIS

and we’ll see who’s finished. But Shoelaces feels conflicted about Sammy Stephens. He loves him, but he can’t figure out how much of Sammy he really sees. Sammy is a character to Tyrone. Would you want to be loved as a mere character to someone else? Is that better than never being loved at all? This is why Tyrone Shoelaces can’t sleep at night. This Gideon’s Bible has an apparatus suggesting Bible verses which may be of assistance in various sorts of trouble.