The INVISIBLE GUY
a real soundtrack for an imaginary spy film

Episode Fifteen  - THE DISCO SURFERS BUMPUS RUMPUS (Sayin' It's Jive?)
 

Copyright © 2002 - 2005  Arthur Jarvinen

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Scene:

The Bohemioids from the Leisure Planet have found their way to a livelier quarter and a dance club called B.G.'s Disco Danceteria, named for the club's owner, Biggi Gibby. Biggi loves nothing more than disco music, and her four scrawny, girlie-voiced brothers have a successful and popular disco group. But even though it's a family act they wouldn't let Biggi join because she's 60 pounds overweight, which would be bad for their image, and her voice, being about four octaves lower than any of theirs, wouldn't really blend into their harmonic vocabulary. Her weight pretty much eliminating any possibility of being an active disco dance practitioner, the only creative outlet remaining for Biggi's disco enthusiasm is her club, where she vicariously participates in each dance as if it were the last chance for love.

Saturday is "Live Night", and Biggi has booked an unknown band, The Boogie Men, whose manager assured her they are destined to be the next disco phenomenon. They are in fact a teenage surf band from Minneapolis, on the road for the very first time taking any gig they can scam.

After three short numbers the dance floor is pretty much empty, a lot of people are reclaiming their jackets and hand bags instead of ordering more coladas and gimlets, and Biggi is anticipating a record low in the till. She grabs Scab - the band's lead guitarist - by the hair and tells him if he values his sorry excuse for manhood they will play some disco – NOW!
 

Not knowing any real disco tunes and having no time to discuss the matter, the band launches into it the best they can, piecing it together on the fly from bits of stock muted guitar riffs, fragments of old pop tunes, and the closest thing to a disco beat that the drummer can come up with – and to their surprise, it works! (Well, in its way.)
At least a few people, recognizing a beat they can move to, retake the dance floor. And the Bohemioids are right in the middle of the action, directly under the mirror ball.

Of course the Bohemioids don't know any real disco dances, so they improvise with variations on "the swim" and "the jerk", some mock surfing moves, and a vigorous ass-bump maneuver that Rhonda comes up with. The motif catches on as if by osmosis, and soon the dance floor is filled with half-open-polyester-shirted  hairy-chested gold-plated-medallion-clad guys and their overly-scented poof-haired female counterparts moving in perfect unison, executing a complex series of gyrations and gesticulations leading ultimately and inevitably to a glorious butt-cheek-bumping denouement.

Scab, discerning that he and his mates may not only get out of the club still anatomically correct but could very well have inadvertently started a new dance craze, gets on mic and eggs the crowd on. "Come on, disco surfers! Bumpus Rumpus!! "

Biggi is on cloud nine, having finally found a disco-oriented entertainment in which her amply-endowed posterior is actually an asset. No longer a wallflower, she gets right out there with her clientele and bumps rumps all over the room.

Meanwhile The Invisible Guy has been looking around the street near the club for a contact who failed to show up, and hearing the ruckus he takes a peek inside. As the entertainment quotient seems to be significantly higher than anything out on the street, The Invisible Guy enters the club. But no sooner is he in the door than Biggi's rump-in-motion slams him across the dance floor. On the way an airborne medallion, swinging on the chain of an even-harder-swinging guy who looks like the Missing Link, pops the Invisible Guy in the eye, giving him an invisible shiner. Suddenly rump-bumped again, the Invisible Guy falls on his invisible ass, only to be promptly and vigorously caught in the invisible groin by the synchronous goose-stepping of a disco-crazed couple who, though having met only moments before, will undoubtedly see the light of day together on the morrow, all thanks to the Disco Surfers Bumpus Rumpus.
 
 

Scotch Gambit

WHITE                  BLACK
1  P-K4                 P-K4
2  N-KB3              N-QB3
3  P-Q4                 PxP
4  NxP                   Kn-K2
5  N-QB3              P-KN3?
6  B-KN5!             B-N2
                see diagram
7  N-Q5                 . . . . .

WHITE TO PLAY...

and win by brute force.

Claude, alone in a side booth, puts down his copy of Al Horowitz's New Traps In the Chess Opening just long enough to order a "Tango Gibby", a house specialty which is actually a combination highball and appetizer, specifically a Tanquerey gimlet with a side of chicken giblets sauteed in olive oil with a bit of thyme, garlic, and freshly ground black pepper – delightful.

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