Let’s All Join a Secret Society Run By Lazlo Toth
If you’ve not read the collected letters of Lazlo Toth, AKA Don Novello, AKA Father Guido Sarducci, now’s the time. I’ll wait.
LAZLO TOTH
{Address Withheld, DUH}
LAZLO!
Long time no speak! And by long time, I mean NEVER. But it’s never too late, considering it’s been so LONG.
My name is not PHINEAS BLING, as you know. That’s my PEN name, it conveys both mirth and mystery, I think you’ll agree. If not, I will CHANGE it, toot sweet.*
I’m a LAZLO TOTH ACOLYTE and FAN. I too humbly write letters of EARTH-shaking importance. I send them to dignitaries, celebrities, executives at restaurant chains, pageant owners, 80’s new wave bands, Japanese artists, office supply manufacturers. YOU. Movers, with a big focus on shakers.
It seems to be WORKING.
For instance, you know Chili’s, the restaurant made famous for their… is it Bloomin’ Onion or Sizzlin’ Fajitas? Definitely a branded delicacy where the G at the end was replaced by an apostrophe. A punctuation slight-of-hand that does NOT subtract keystrokes but DOES add FOLKSY delicious!
Their logo drove me crazy for YEARS. Down there at the bottom, some well-meaning graphic designer had connected the right leg of the H with the nether-regions of the L using a little loop which made the name of the company appear to be CHIJI’s instead of the name CHILI’s (which is their actual NAME). In 2006, I finally DID something about it. I sent a letter to then-President of Chili’s Todd Diener (it may be a different TODD by now) and explained to him the graphical error of their WAYS. I even suggested that they just use a chili picture with an APOSTROPHE S instead of bothering to spell the whole name out with the C, H, I, L, and the other I (to say nothing of the whole “is there a J somewhere in there?” question).
Guess what! Look AROUND LAZLO! Chili’s has a whole new logo centered on that cute lil’ chili! WORLD: improved. EGO: swollen. Chili’s: definitely not CHIJI’S. I also received a $20 gift certificate which I spent on a VERY filling Chili’s lunch that I am still—in many real ways—digesting.
It was a win-win because WIN 1: I got LUNCH and WIN 2: they fixed their whole BRAND.
That’s just one tiny example, but it taught me the power of a single letter to ALTER THE KNOWN UNIVERSE.
I wrote to Don TRUMP back when he owned the Miss UNIVERSE pageant. I asked, how can you anoint the top Miss in the universe when we don’t know what’s out there? Maybe there’s a sentient sulfurous VAPOR just 4 light years away that’s a stone cold FOX! Or a 1000-legged millipede LADY three clicks down a wormhole whose singing voice, completely inaudible to human EARS, actually serves as a form of FOOD to end hunger in her world. Who knows?! Certainly Don and his PERVY old pageant judges, methinks!
I believe his views are more old-fashioned and EARTHBOUND on this topic—he did not write back. But I DO think it made him SOUL SEARCH and he was forced to DIVEST from the pageant over this moral quandary.
I wrote to the CEO of the company that makes those STINKY whiteboard markers and asked, “why so stinky?” I suggested scents. Most of them were a type of berry, because people are always INVENTING berries anyway (e.g., marion, boysen, lingon all came outta NOWHERE) but there were also vanilla ones and ones that were named after FEELINGS—I wish I could find my list. They sent me back a pack of UNSCENTED markers, so I feel like they met me HALFWAY. Stinky whiteboard markers are all but gone from the market—I don’t want to take ALL the credit. BUT!
I wrote your old pal George W. BUSH and suggested it might comfort the citizenry to know that he—who has THE button—take the threat of nuclear annihilation seriously enough to avoid pronouncing it “Nook-Yoo-Lrr”. (Maybe I should’ve checked to see how YOU, LAZLO, pronounce nuclear before mentioning that).
Anyway, point is, I’m TRYING. I’ve sent maybe 20. And now that no one sends letters anymore, I want to send MORE. I think it will HELP things. Especially if they can be much BETTER and so very very much SHORTER.
Yesterday, I wrote to artist Takashi Murakami and suggested he start sending his fans his old JUNK to get them off his back, SAVE yen on storage/garbage bills, etc). Long story, and there are BIGTIME translation issues. But I’m pretty sure he’s either sending me PRICELESS art, or a used up SAUCE bottle. This may seem self-serving on my part, but NO! Takashi has been GLUM lately, and I think this is going to help his OUTPUT of ART into our world! I also sent him MY WALL dimensions, just in case.
I don’t want you to think that ALL of my letters involve people sending me THINGS but I just realized many of them DO.
I now have an idea for a humanity-saving DEPECHE MODE musical that those British darkwave guys (who live in Santa Barbara now, which seems very WRONG) are about to hear a GREAT DEAL about, BELIEVE ME. It’s going to knock their GOTH SOCKS off. I can’t tell you the idea because I’m not sure I can TRUST you with this one, but trust ME, it’s going to be CATHARTIC for their fans and all fans of dystopias everywhere. It’s like a post-apocalyptic HAMILTON, plus a whole line of branded CLOVE cigarettes to boot. MERCH!
I might soon tackle something a little more substantive and less COMMERCIAL—I do have a constructive suggestion for Putin that I’ve REALLY been second-guessing sending, strictly from a SELF-PRESERVATION perspective.
Enough preamble PHINEAS! This isn’t all about ME LAZLO.
If I know anything about these letters it’s that they have to be HELPFUL. They need to have an IDEA behind them. A suggestion. Dare I say, a POINT. So, here GOES!
I think we (you?) should start a SECRET society. A correspondent’s underground. An old-fashioned letter-writing conspiratorial CABAL. We would recruit hare-brained letter-writers in a RANGE of styles and train them to PEPPER the world with letters that pull “THE MAN’s” proverbial PANTS DOWN! Together, we’d spread joy, improve scents, correct pronunciations, whatever. And by the way—NOT emails. Or socials. LETTERS ON ACTUAL PAPERS!
AI LOOMS! The time is RIGHT to go into ANACHRONISM mode!
We will ALL—hundreds and soon thousands of us—have PSEUDONYMS (I already have mine, see ABOVE and BELOW). We will all have IDEAS for improvements, BIG, SMALL, PERPLEXING, and endlessly DISARMING. We will all send US a modest membership FEE.
Guess who’s the cult-like figurehead at the top of this SHEBANG? YOU! Or, it could be me, since technically it was MY idea. BUT! I am holding out for a title that SOUNDS lofty but comes with NO specific accountabilities. Imperial Viceroy or Chief Experience Officer are IN THE BALLPARK.
We need a NAME for this group, and of course a logo that is LEGIBLE. I think it should be one of those ones that has a word like BUREAU, DEPARTMENT, SOCIETY, GUILD, and also GLOBAL, if not INTERGALACTIC. And then that LTD. thing at the end that always looks SWANKY. We may have a BATTLE CRY about how we’ll be changing humanity at the quantum ENERGY level as well (if we can keep it sounding more SCIENCE and less NEW AGE).
I’ll put more thought into all this if I know you APPROVE of the concept in THEORY. Then there’s the Article of Organization, secret HANDSHAKE and other ARCANE symbols and rituals to work on. And yes, there WILL be an annual convention in OSLO where we all wear FURRY disguises. So it may all take YEARS to get up and running.
Is this too HARD?
If you don’t want to head up a GLOBAL network of SEISMIC letter-writers and would prefer to rest on your LAZLO laurels, believe me, I GET IT. We’ll keep the FAITH and collect the FEES. Or maybe I’ll keep flying SOLO. But please, LET ME KNOW if you have any ADVICE, such as how to write BETTER letters, to whom, and where to get postage and other materials at a steep DISCOUNT. I also need to learn more about FONTS.
I await your REPLY. Until then, thanks for all the LAZLO-ing. There IS NO Phineas Bling. But if there WERE one there wouldn’t BE one without a certain LAZLO TOTH (YOU!).
Confidence is HIGH,
PHINEAS BLING
2055 Lombard St, San Francisco, CA 94123
PS: It occurs to me, maybe there already IS a secret society and you are already the FEARLESS LEADER of it but it is so secret that I don’t KNOW about it. In that case, please consider this my APPLICATION. Also in that case, I suggest that we make the secret society just a SMIDGE LESS secret so other folks like me can FIND it. Maybe a LinkedIN page, etc. Newspaper classified ADS seem on-brand, too.
* Before you make me change my PEN name, may I remind you that one of our greatest AMERICANS was Phineas Gage, a railroad WORKER who survived when an iron rod blasted into his HEAD and instantly turned him into the unwitting GUINEA pig that taught us much of what we know about BRAINS. Then there’s the BLING part, which is just fun and HIP.
Also, Benedict Cumberbatch and Archibald Leach are already TAKEN.
