Breaking the Seal

Is that even a pun? I guess it is, but not like "A Man for All Sealsons." Even though that one was kind of a linguistic stretch, and even though it didn't really relate to any of the ensuing content, I really liked that one. It made me think of Seal standing in the snow, wrapped in a buffalo robe.

I know it's been a little Seal-crazy around here recently, and maybe I've been neglecting important world events (both the Pope and Hugo Chavez recently abdicated, one from life and one from the papacy, but I don't remember which did which), but as I've said, Seal is an interesting guy. I'd call him a latter-day Marquis de Sade, if I didn't think it was more accurate to call the Marquis de Sade an old-timey Seal.

Anyway, I've turned up another Seal gem. (I'm working my way through Seals biographies. None of them are great, but each has some good stories.)

The year is 1990. Seal, booked as "Seal S. Seal," is sitting in a police station. He has been arrested, and he is handcuffed to a desk while he waits for his booking officer to return with some paperwork. Seal was caught, covered in butter, trying to slip through a ceiling vent into a veterinarian's office. Seal claims that he was simply hoping to steal some tranquilizers, but after he regurgitated a large pellet of fur and small bones in the squad car, the arresting officers began to suspect that Seal is not telling the whole truth.

Now, affixed to the desk, Seal is wearing an oversized aloha shirt and cargo shorts, both very buttery. He watches a young girl, perhaps 8 or 9 years old, take a seat at the desk across from his. Seal catches her attention with a hiss, locks eyes, and begins to sing.

That song, made up on the spot, would become 1991's hit single, Crazy.

Seal discussed the incident years later in an interview with NME:
"I don't know. I guess, if I'm being honest, I was trying to hypnotize the kid, or something. I thought I could get her to unlock the handcuffs and set me free. But, see, while I was singing, I guess I broke my own thumbs and pulled my hands right out of the cuffs. I didn't even realize it until the kid came out of her trance to see my broken thumbs wiggling around, because I was dancing, see, and she just started screaming. Yeesh."

When asked about the fur and bones he had vomited in the squad car, Seal had this to say: "First of all, I learned that trick from owls. You gotta get rid of the bones and fur, so that's all that was. Secondly, I was being absolutely honest with the police. I really did want those tranquilizers. I'm just of the opinion that cat tranquilizers are not even worth taking, unless you take them after a cat has already begun to metabolize them. If you have a better idea on how to do that, you write it down and send it to me. No, write it down and read it to me. Doesn't matter, though, because no one reported a missing cat, and no one saw me eat nothing, so I didn't break any laws. How's that idea coming?"

What a guy!

Let's try again: Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

Seal is an interesting guy!

I was searching for him on Yahoo yesterday to make sure I had been spelling his name right—my neighbor had left a note on my window saying that it's actually spelled "Seélle," but my neighbor has been proven time and time again to be a goddamn idiot, so I shouldn't have wasted my time—and I found all sorts of interesting stuff on the Man from Lupus.

Get this: In early 1994, Seal was arrested for punching open the window of an elementary school classroom and, in the middle of Math, sticking his head through the hole and screaming at the 3rd graders inside. He was eventually charged with something like First Degree Upsetting Little Babies, but the slippery ol' pinniped skipped bail and went on the lam.

Even though he hadn't yet been given any sort of prison uniform (having not been convicted of anything), Seal burned his clothing (later explaining that he was sure someone would recognize him if he kept it on), and holed up, naked as a piglet, in a derelict lighthouse.

He spent the next 18 days eating mold and being eaten by vampire bats.

When Seal emerged he was more than 50 pounds lighter, and, according to him, "not even the same fellow who hallooed at those children, so don't even try, yeah?"

Sent to the lighthouse to collect the jewelry that Seal had eaten and passed during his stay there, producer Trevor Horn discovered, scratched into the wall, a single line of lyrics running the entire length of the tower's spiral staircase. Horn copied the lyrics into a notebook, and when he presented the pages to Seal (along with a sandwich bag of filthy rings and bracelets), the artist explained that it was meant to be an epic poem about being consumed by the vampire bats. The title and refrain "kiss from a rose" referred to the flower-like folds of flesh on the bats' noses. (Seal never did say what "the gray" meant, as in "a kiss from a rose on the gray," but in ensuing months he often would mention "a pain in [his] gray.")

It's either a tremendous coincidence or no coincidence at all that "Kiss from a Rose" was later featured on the soundtrack of Batman Forever. Seal, you'll be my batman forever.

What a world!!

Ha ha. Duh!

Well, don't I feel like a stack of bricks and shit.

Obviously the title for that last post should have been "A man for all Sealsons." Dandy, if you always let opportunities like that slip through your fingers, you will never, ever be a published poet.

A man for all seasons

 
A little old-news-news factoid I just learned to (hopefully!!) brighten up your Monday:

No, actually two factoids.

#1:
The artist known as Seal actually wrote the theme song to the 1987 animated series, Duck Tales. According to Seal, most of the lyrics were already written when he was asked to write the song; he claims they came to him in a dream that was "a lot like Blade Runner, but with these little ducks who were wearing clothes." The characters of the Beagle Boys*, in fact, were written into the series based on imagery from Seal's dream. In Seal's own words: "They were, like, three hairless dogmen always chasing me and my duckfriends. They were called Loneliness, Self-Doubt and Death, and they were always trying to get their paws on my crazy! I told the producer about these dogs, and he said, 'Seal, mate, we have to do this.'"

Also, while laying down tracks for the song, Seal reportedly punched the recording engineer in the face when the man asked what a "duck-blur" was.

#2:
We've all heard about Seal's run-ins with animal services and the Humane Society, but this bit had somehow escaped me. Maybe it's new to you as well?

After being videotaped dropping a mouse into a bucket of acid, Seal defended himself to the ASPCA by claiming that it was actually not a mouse, but a toad dressed up in a costume made of mouse skin, and that it had already been dead anyway. When questioned as to how the toad had died (and where the mouse outfit had come from), Seal reportedly became apoplectic, shouting "How do you think it died? How do you think it died? What did you expect me to do?", before pulling an object from his vest pocket and throwing it at the judge. While the thrown item was never found, both the judge and the court artist insist that it was either a live mouse or, taking into consideration the recent testimony, a toad dressed in a mouse costume made of mouse skin.

SUPER exciting news!!!

Ok, so I understand that we all have bigger fish to fry right now. I should probably be working on the better mousetrap and stocking up on eggs (for vandalism), and you should probably be devoting more thought to whatever it is you've been putting off. Child support, maybe.

But none of that means that we can't take a moment to appreciate an exciting new achievement of mine and The Chesterton Review and mine: a Google search for "I'd rather be queefing" (even without the quotation marks!) returns two sites of utter bullshit ... and then The Chesterton Review! We're #3!

This is super exciting. I mean, there's so much more to TCR than Hurricane I'd Rather Be Queefing, but it's still important. We're getting out there. We're doing it. We're making money*.

Now, I know that Google has a bold and complicated algorithm, basing search results on your age, gender, what your personal website is, how often you search for "I'd rather be queefing" and so forth, so my 3rd place return might come in at, say, 9th for you. But unless your online profile includes tons of stuff about how much you hate queefing, I think we can safely assume that TCR and the original I.R.B.Q. will consistently come up in your top search 20 results.

Where do we go from here? Anywhere! Just keep at it!

Dammit. I feel like I had something else to mention here. My twin uncles Seamus and Sean recently beat the living tar out of each other in an empty pool last week, but that wasn't it. Hey, though, while it's on my mind, I should say that I found out that Sean isn't, as I had previously assumed, partially retarded. It turns out that he's just a little bit drunk all the time. He still can't drive worth a damn, but it's interesting to get a little more info on that.

*Not from the website. I've started charging my neighbors to protect their houses from overnight eggings. But money is still money.**

**Holy moly! "Money is money" could be the next I'd Rather Be Queefing!