Hi boys and girls! It’s time for a bedtime story about Levent Guldal and his musically inclined friends from New York.

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Levent who lived in Brooklyn, New York. Levent went through school making friends with everybody he sees because he’s the Lation Sensation and nobody messes with someone of that importance. One day, Levent decided it would be a good idea to leave home and go to college in the great state of Michigan. Sadly, this left his New York friends sad and bored from their friend’s departure.

Through this boredom, they were inspired to write an Awesome Song Of Awesomeness to remember their friend by. Over the years, the cassette braved many treacherous cassette players that slowly ate away at the quality of the recording. At the same time, Leventalation was making new friends at the Deke house in Ann Arbor, but he never forgot his boys in Brooklyn.

A few years later, Levent met a girl while delivering beer to a liquor store, they fell deeply in love, and he asked for her hand in marriage. She obviously accepted, for it is not often one is proposed to by such a jawsome individual. Of course, Levent HAD to invite all his Brooklyn buds to the wedding. They knew this would be the perfect opportunity for a re-introduction of the Awesome Song Of Awesomeness they created so many years ago.

As fortune would have it, the girl’s brother was a techie and offered to convert the tape to a digital format so it would be preserved on peoples’ MP3 players for all eternity.

Without further adieu, you’ll find the MP3s here!

Good afternoon ladies and gents, boys and girls. Time for another long awaited episode of Tuesdays with Flannel! The last few have been reruns but this one is hot off the presses. This time we’ll be sharing the story of Kevin Bacon.

Kevin Bacon is a man who lives on the streets of New York, as he has been for the last 17 years. He has too much dignity to beg passers-by for food, so he helps serve food at the local homeless shelter in exchange for a reserved room at night, free soup, and a small wage. In his free time he loves to crochet blankets for use in the shelter. Almost everybody who knows him call him Jolly Kay.

Kevin’s situation was caused by a horrible string of bad luck. It all started when he was 19, his parents were involved in a plane accident. He was old enough to survive on his own, according to courts, but he did not have the education to work, nor the source of income to pay for schooling. Halfway decent at poker, he figured he could make his living playing cards. That dream ended, as similar ones do, with Kevin owing lots of money to some shady people. Fortunately he was able to kick the habit and pay back his debt, but he lost his inheritance in the process.

The most recent example of horrible luck in Kevin’s life came when someone of importance learned of an interesting trait of his. He is one of few people who are separated by more than six degrees from the actor Kevin Bacon (nine to be exact), and the only such person to share the same name. One of Kevin’s friends from the New York shelter knew this and tipped off Jed Baker, a writer for Seattle Press. Jed called Kevin at the shelter and offered $5,000 for an interview, and he happily agreed.

“If I can get a few stories like this, I can possibly turn my life around! Buy a suit or two, and finally find a decent job.” Kevin was absolutely giddy at the thought. The day of the interview came around, they met in one of the local Starbucks. Jed Shook Kevin’s hand and said, “Oh no, do you know what this means?” A chill ran down Kevin’s spine. Jed was separated from Kevin Bacon (the actor) by only four degrees. This effectively set Kevin’s bacon number to a paltry five. Jed offered to pay for Kevin’s Orange Mocha Frappuccino but was unable to pay him the $5,000 prize for the interview with such an unimpressive bacon number.

The story of Kevin Bacon is currently being filmed for a Lifetime movie. The part of Kevin is being played by Casey Affleck who was in Ocean’s Eleven with Brad Pitt, who was in Sleepers with Kevin Bacon.

Kevin purchased a nice pair of Reebok tennis shoes with the movie royalties.

It all started back in the ‘caveman days’ when early humans were finding their path through evolution. There was also a much smaller (in both quantity and individual size) group of hominids evolving in a separate direction. These little people were mostly secluded and lived high up in trees to keep away from their much larger, more aggressive cousins. They were forced to go around at night to gather food and supplies so they developed very good eyesight. They also developed an innate ability to craft tools from bone and wood. Sometimes, these elfish people would be spotted by the occasional late-night straggler or someone who couldn’t get to sleep. The elfish people would run away before they were identified, but they would leave behind whatever they were carrying so they could get away faster.

See where I’m going with this?

That’s right. They do exist. Elves have been around for many millenia, and they’re so good at hiding themselves that they are only known to us humans as jokes or myths. Evolution split the early elves into two other smaller groups of minipeople: the dwarves and the gnomes. Dwarves were larger than the average elf and disproportionately heavier. They are believed to have died off around 25K BCE due to lack of motivation. Gnomes are still around today, and are generally more evil-minded. They survived by scavenging and stealing from anyone who had anything to steal. They still steal things from passers-by and from houses of people who think having a little person on their lawn is cute.

Along side the dwarves and gnomes, elves went through their own set of evolution paths. The Keebler species elves evolved to live in trees exclusively and eventually started crafting things, specifically baked goods, in said trees. Another species, the Shoesmith elves, focused on their ability to see in the dark, and are known for helping old shoemakers make shoes in the night. The final species of elves, known as the Helper elves, are fabled to help make and deliver toys to good children - even human children - on the first snow of every year. In the 2003 movie, Elf, It was stated that the elves are separated by a class system (much like human upper, middle, and white trash classes), but it is, in fact, evolution that separates the types of elves.

The Helper elves delivered toys to everybody themselves, but as time went on, the population of the world grew very large. Due to the elves’ small stature, they got tired before finishing delivering the toys, so they endowed a few humans with their elfish magic which would allow them to enter into peoples’ houses unnoticed to leave gifts. Temptation got the better of a few of these humans, so the elves researched more powerful magics that would allow one chosen human to travel to all villages to hand out toys in one night. Along with the human, eight reindeer were chosen to help him haul all the gifts to all the little girls and boys. It was around this time they decided to reserve the gift-giving to December 25th. The chosen human, dubbed ‘Santa Claus’ (loosely translated: ‘one who delivers’ in elfish), also inherited a much longer life (about 200 years) and the ability to pass on this power to one other person after he was finished with his reign. An accurate representation of this is seen in the 1988 movie, Ernest Saves Christmas. Much like James Bond, there were good Santas and not-so-good Santas. Chris Cringle, and [Saint] Nicholas Yevsky were among some of the more jolly Santas. Some of the less popular Santas included Ian Wrightly, Hans Himmel, and Nathan Quigly.

Aside from the elf-class misconception in Elf, there are other movies that perpetuate false information regarding Santa and his elves.

• In the Santa Clause movies, Tim Allen’s character inherits the title of Santa Claus, whom he accidentally kills. In reality, part of the elfish magic prevents whomever is the acting Santa from dying. If he were to suffer an otherwise fatal accident, he would be instantly teleported back to the North Pole in perfect health.
• In the book and movie, Polar Express a young boy who is losing faith in Santa rides on a train to visit Santa personally. While there is a train that goes in and out of Santa’s workshop, it’s only used for delivering materials for toys. “To be quite frank,” my elfish informant tells me, “Santa doesn’t care that much if people don’t believe in him, he just doesn’t give anything to non-believers.” Which brings me to my next myth:
• The reindeer and sleigh don’t run on ‘Christmas Spirit’ as seen in Elf, but elfish magic.
• Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is all kinds of wrong.

That’s all I’ve learned about the mysterious history of Santa and his elves through my research and interviews. My inside elf (who chooses to remain anonymous) was very helpful in bringing you this inside look at Santa’s operations. Next time I’ll tell you the story of Kevin Bacon, 37 year old homeless man.

Now, for this week’s Tuesdays with Flannel I will be sharing the epic story of The Toledo War.

Before 1833, Ohio had already established itself as a state, and Michigan was growing in population. The ‘observed border’ (there was no *official* border because Michigan wasn’t a state) between them was established from inaccurate maps. The border was supposed to run from the south tip of Lake Michigan, directly west, but the line on the map was 8 miles too far north on the east and 5 miles too far north on the west. This 468 square mile “gray area” - known as the Toledo Strip - was the cause of this particular war.

When Michigan applied to become a state, the surveyors realized their mistake and the proposed area that was to become the State of Michigan included the Toledo Strip. Ohio didn’t want to give up the land, so Congressmen lobbied to prevent Michigan from becoming a state unless they gave up the land. The Toledo War began when the Ohio Governor turned the Toledo strip into a county named after himself - Lucas County - and appointed his own sheriff and judge. The governor of Michigan had enough, and sent troops down toward Ohio.

In the end, it turned out to be a silly war - a series of pissing contests, rather than actual battles. The only casualty of this war was when an Ohio native stabbed a Michigan sheriff in a bar fight. Eventually President Jackson stepped in and said, “Knock it off!” Even after the petty battle between Ohio and Michigan, Congress wouldn’t let Michigan become a state unless they gave up the Toledo Strip. Michigan set up a state government anyway.

In 1837, Michigan ended up becoming an official state. They gave up the Toledo strip, and they were given the western three quarters of the Upper Peninsula instead. That’s OK because the UP is awesome and Toledo is a shithole.

A few years ago, I went to school with a guy named Jeff Baker. He told me lots of stories. One of these stories was about Jeff’s great grandfather, Bill Baker. That is the story I will tell you in today’s Tuesdays with Flannel.

Bill Baker worked as a Delivery guy, and he was a bit of an animal lover. He especially loved exotic animals. He had two parrots, an echidna, and a lemur named George. One of the parrots, Keet, followed Bill around everywhere. Keet was fairly well behaved, so shops and businesses (that usually didn’t allow pets) let Keet come in and say ‘hello’ to everybody. Some people liked Keet so much that they would keep parrot treats and fruit around for him to munch on while Bill mingled.

One day, Keet and Bill were making a delivery to a painter who was deaf in one ear. Keet flew over, landed on the guy’s shoulder, and greeted him with a friendly ‘hello’. This painter misheard Keet’s greeting, and started painting with the yellow paint. The painter complimented Keet on his choice of colors, and fed him a bit of orange (the fruit, not the paint). Bill and Keet went to make their next delivery, and the painter continued to paint.

That painting would eventually go on to be purchased by Mrs. Maud Baum, wife of Lyman Frank Baum. The yellow bricks in the painting inspired him to write The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and other books in the series (continued after Baum’s death by Ruth Plumly Thompson), which in turn inspired Elton John to write the song Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

That’s all for this week. Come back next week for another fantastic story.

In today’s Tuesdays with Flannel, I will tell you about Jeremy Tooter.

There was an average guy who lived in an average suburb. He was known to the people who lived in his neighborhood as “Walnut Willie”, which was weird because his name was Jeremy Tooter. He was never made fun of because of his silly last name because nobody actually knew his last name - they all knew him as Walnut Willie. How he got the strange nickname is an entirely different story, and you probably don’t want to hear about it.

Jeremy Tooter always thought the nickname was strange - he didn’t like walnuts at all. In fact, he was allergic to walnuts. His true love was peanuts. His father inherited a peanut farm from his grandpa, so Jeremy ate peanuts his whole life. He had peanut soup, peanut butter, peanut brittle, salted peanuts, and many other peanutty food-stuffs. He actually worked for a guy named Peanuts, but that’s another different story, I won’t bore you with it here.

Jeremy was walking down the street with a jar of Planters peanuts (his favorite). He saw a guy who was bent over a water faucet outside of a house. They exchanged greetings and Jeremy asked the guy, whose name was Mark, what the problem was with his faucet. The faucet was stuck in the ‘on’ position. Jeremy suggested to turn the water off inside the house, Mark did it, and it worked. Mark was grateful for Jeremy’s help so he invited Jeremy in the house for some beer, and Jeremy happily accepted. Jeremy followed Mark into the kitchen and caught a glimpse of three fifty-five gallon drums filled with peanuts in his kitchen. Why Mark had those peanuts is a different story, so I won’t waste your time with it.

Jeremy and Mark sat for hours watching TV and eating those peanuts. After they ate every last peanut in those three barrels, something very curious happened.

If you think they turned into peanuts, then you’re wrong. You can’t turn into a peanut from eating lots of peanuts. Jeremy did eventually turn into a peanut for different reasons, but I won’t bore you with that one.

In today’s wonderful story, we find out about how Tim grew legs.

Long before the trees and water, before the dinosaurs who played basketball, even before Earth itself, there was nothing, except fish. Space fish. These fish swam freely in the nothingness that existed before everything, and they were alone. Or so they thought.One of these fish was named Tim. Tim was a very curious fishie, and he liked to explore the far reaches of space. On one such exploration, Tim found a shiny object. He was puzzled by this object, because it didn’t look like a fish, and he had only seen fish his entire life. In fact, no fish had ever seen any non-fish object in the history of space fish. Being a curious fishie, Tim touched the shiny thing with his fin, and out popped a genie.

“You have summoned the great Wobin Rilliams, magical genie of the fish-space-topia. I shall grant you three wishes,” said Wobin.

Tim thought for a bit and said, “I wish for a thousand wishes.”

Wobin slapped Tim across his fish-face and said, “Don’t be a douche. Haven’t you heard any genie stories? I kind of assumed that everybody knew not to wish for more wishes by now. What is your first wish?”

Tim stared at Wobin’s feet. “I wish for feet like those,” Tim said as he pointed toward the genie’s feet. Unfortunately, Wobin took the wish quite literally and gave Tim feet the exact same size as his own, which were a lot larger than the tiny fish. Tim walked back to his school (school of fish, not the place you learn) to show off his gigantic feet. Tim’s friends made fun of his oversized feet, commenting on how he tripped over them, and saying he should become a clownfish.

“I’ll show you!” Tim shouted as he walked back to the shiny object and touched it.

“You have summoned the great Wobin -”

“Yeah, I know,” Tim cut Wobin off, “I’ve come to use my two other wishes. I wish I didn’t have these stupid feet.”

The feet disappeared in a cloud of smoke. “And your final wish?” asked Wobin.

“I wish for all fish to blow up.” Tim and all other fish exploded in a huge ball of fire and brimstone.

Scientists have documented this enormous explosion as the event that created the stars, planets, and ultimately humanity as we know it. We call it the Big Bang.

Join me next week for the epic tale of the man who ate too many peanuts. Same bat time, same bat channel.

On this very special second Tuesday with Flannel, I am going to tell you the real story about the Birds and the Bees.

Three thousand years ago, when the dinosaurs invented basketball, there were just two teams: Landosaurs (different from Land O’Lakes) and Flyosaurs. The Spectatosaurs found this very boring, just seeing these two teams play basketball over and over. The two teams decided to split into two divisions each - the insects and lizards. The Flying divisions (the Birds and the Bees) completely dominated the Land divisions (Roaches and Rexes) in every game they played.

One of the Birds, by the name of Corsin, proposed the question, “I wonder who is actually the better team, the Birds or the Bees?” The question was answered with a series of 1000 different sporting events, including pickleball, track & field events, and, of course, basketball. After playing best out of five for all 1000 sports (this epic battle lasted 2969 years), the Birds and the Bees were tied 500 to 500. A 1001st sport, Extreme Sitting Around was used as a tiebreaker. The best of five series lasted for 13 years, and the Bees came out the victors.

One year later, in 1988, the Bees changed their name to the Hornets and moved to Charlotte. In 2002, they moved to New Orleans, and are known to the world today as the New Orleans Hornets.

Next week, I’ll tell you the wonderful story about how Tim grew legs.

For this first edition of Tuesdays with Flannel, I’m going to tell you about the fierce rivalry between Wood and Water.

A long time ago before Wood was used to make furniture and the Spruce Goose (yea, the one Yogi Bear flew in 1987), Wood and Water had a normal friendship. They helped each other whenever they could, and they lived happily ever after.

But not EVER after. Back in the 1850s, Wood formed an alliance with the dirty humans, and Water didn’t like that. The traitorous Wood was allowing the wretched humans to carve and shape it into forms other than the graceful Tree, such as the wooden chair, the wooden nickel, and Log (it’s better than bad, it’s good!). Soon the humans were even using wood to boil Water with flaming Wood and sail on Water with wooden boats! The horror! This perturbed Water to such a degree that it placed a curse on Wood; whenever tainted Wood touched water, it would slowly rot and become discolored.

Next week, I’ll reveal the truth about the Birds and the Bees.