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Emulsion Compulsion makes pilgrimage to secular Bob Hope command post

November 29th, 2008 by Scott Marks

I awoke Black Friday morn with a peculiar ringing in my head. Like a cripple hobbling to Lourdes, the power of Hope beckoned me to Seaport Village to once again bathe in His glory. It was the busiest shopping day of the year and even in this most penurious of holiday seasons, throngs turned out to buy into the Hope mystique. In the shadow of the battleship Midway, hundreds flocked for reasons many didn’t know. Standing before Bob’s bronze replica reminded me of my initial brush with the oracular one.

Like a flying saucer buff at his first UFO convention, I feel compelled to finally make public a secret encounter I had with the sentient overlord, the right Reverend Lester Leslie Towne Robert “Bob” Hope. He first appeared before me in the Autumn of 1997 at the most unassuming of places: the Von’s supermarket in Burbank, California. My plane had just touched down at Burbank airport, now known as The Bob Hope Airport, and I stopped at the grocer’s to pick up some supplies. While at the checkstand, a ringing, similar to the one that awoke me earlier today, began to violate my cerebral cortex. Slowly I turned to see a familiar, albeit bent over and aged, ski-nosed “comic”  being led up the frozen food aisle by his Aryan manservant.

Under cover of darkness, Mr. Hope was given his nightly airing, plodding the same land that he owned decades before. It also gave Dolores an excuse to get him the hell out of the house for a few minutes.

Grabbing the keys from my driver, I made a mad dash for the camcorder resting in the trunk of the car. Recorder in hand, I caught up with Him in the parking lot. Surrounded the oracle, I began pelting him with comments and questions:

Scott Marks: Thanks for all the great movies. I’m a big fan of your work in Frank Tashlin’s Son of Paleface.
Mr. Hope: Huh?
SM: Would you elaborate on Tashlin’s working method?
Mr. Hope: Huh?
SM: Mr. Hope, do you agree with Iain T. Benson’s conclusion that suppressing religious symbols is an “equally terrible harbinger of anti-religion masquerading behind two veils: a veil or ignorance and a false veil of neutrality.”
Mr. Hope: Huh?
SM: Are there cue cards in the afterlife?
Mr. Hope: Huh?
SM: Do you get to see other dead celebrities naked?
Mr. Hope: Huh? Huh?
SM: Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a secret government agency bent on interfering with the thought patterns of millions of people world wide.

He looked back at me and my blood ran cold. There was no response. A uniformed member of the Von’s Courtesy Patrol approached me and cautioned, “You’re standing in a no Hope zone. ” He looked around and lowering his voice said, “Beat it, buddy. Believe me, I’m doing you a favor.”

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National Salute To Bob Hope right here in San Diego, right here!

October 3rd, 2008 by Scott Marks

All photos of the National Salute To Bob Hope courtesy PortOfSanDiego.org

Kup’s Column
by Irv Kupcinet

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to say good evening and welcome, to the lively art of conservation. I conserve as I converse and Essee can serve her homemade cookies, Heh! Heh! Kup’s world begins tonight with a birthday fillip in sunny San Diego with my dear friend and cosmic quipster, Ivan Putski…err, uhh…Bunny, Ivan Bunny, I should say..

I’d like to point out that the weather of late has been most uncomfortable in this fair city. This recent heat wave seems to be lasting longer than the annual Casmir Pulaski Day parade. Unlike that toddlin’ town Chicago, most of the local eateries here serve dreck. To make matters worse, nobody here knows me so none of our meals are comped. Given the weatherless climate, many eating establishments do not have air conditioning and I wasn’t about to schvitz my way through a plate of sushi. Who can eat that crapola anyway?

We wound up dining on the fringes of the Gaslamp at the delightful China, Too. (I never knew that John Farrow directed a sequel.) Ivan ordered the moo-goo-tai-pan while this reporter chowed down on a spicy plate of Hu-Hsuang Hsien shrimp which practically burned a hole in my stomach come 3 am. Ivan picked up the check and left a suitable tip.

After squelching our vociferous appetites, we decided to take a stroll by the bay. It was about this time that I felt a strong sensation drawing me north. Earlier in the day, I inexplicably had the urge to Google Bob Hope, madman, in search of photographic evidence of his continuing experiments (from beyond the grave, I might add) in violently insane telepathy. I was temporarily blinded, as though an image that I could not see managed to somehow insert itself amid my thought patterns. My face grew cold and I felt a thrombo coming on. Suddenly, the implanted image suddenly became clearer than the lovely Mitzi Gaynor’s voice: it was of a bronze statue of Bob surround by 15 bronze soldiers.Thank heavens that I was not aware of this battleship accessory when Rob Martin and his family were vacationing in San Diego, otherwise his youngsters would still be feeling the head trauma to this day.

Ivan had seen this happen to me before. Using my beak as a guide, I got in the car and aimed it towards ground zero. We didn’t have too far to travel. There next to the Midw…(The band begins to play Thanks for the Memories.) Gentlemen and ladies, direct from hades where he’s been appearing hourly since 2003, Mr. Robert Hope. Bob, what are you doing crashing my blog entry?

“,,,and Cheney said, ‘I haven’t seen a bigger boob since I performed a mammogram on Dolly Parton.’”

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