Second Quarter 2003 Meeting
On June 14, 2003, Lair No. 1 met at Max's Allegheny Tavern for its annual Mass Challenge. This year's challenge was to establish the location of the 2001 Rascal Picnic.
Rising to the Challenge, more or less were: DiOrio, Wolfson, Looney, Cunningham, Esaias and George.
Ron DiOrio first considered Burgettstown (for its Universal Centrality), then Afghanistan (would have been good in 2001, not now), and the French islands of St. Pierre & Miquelon off the Newfoundland coast (too cold) before settling on The Glorioso Islands NW of Madagascar. Only 5 square kilometers, and he noted that the Rascal Flag could be flown from the highest point and the lowest point at pretty much the same time. No inhabitants!! There is, however, a French garrison, so Charlei suggested sending the spouses ashore first. Ron’s alternate proposal was Coconut Island, just off Oahu, which was the site for Gilligan’s Island. Alas, this is complicated by a second Gilligan site, Sandy Cay in the Bahamas.
Lee Wolfson had considered the Rascal’s Barn and Rogues’ Barn at Grove Farm, in Norwich, UK. But no, he decided, what the Rascals really need is our very own Rascals Theme Park. His proposal included mock-ups of the Norman Rest Area, DiOrio Temple & Petting Zoo, Elsie – Queen of the Herd, etc.
Dennis Looney insisted that our only option was Mt. Everest. Noting that we could use a Sherpa or two in the group, he also pointed out how neat the Nepalese stamps would be on our mailings; extolled the virtues of yak butter beer; and put the question to us “Why mess with lesser High Points??”
Woody Cunningham chose to honor men’s groups of the past. Georgian Britain was the heydey of such clubs – when stabbings, gouging of eyes, nailing night watchmen into their boxes, and other practices were more fashionable than they seem to be today. He brought Francis Dashwood to our attention. Founder of the Dilettanti Society and then of The Hellfire Club which hosted such luminaries as Hogarth, the Earl of Sandwich, Marquis of Butte, Ben Franklin, the heir to England’s throne, Joseph Banks and John Wilkes (who arranged for a baboon to imitate Satan at a meeting and was thrown out), and a person of indeterminate sex, the Chevalier D’Eon. Woody proposed the picnic take place at Wickham, Dashwood’s estate and a National Trust Site where parties are allowed.
Tim Esaias proposed Pitcairn Island, which has a very rascally history, having been settled by the Bounty mutineers. (Ron DiOrio, it seems, had also considered this location.) Noting the small population, he suggested that we could seize the place and have our own country, though we’d have to include the other Lairs in the mix. We could then move on and evict the French from Gambier Island. Our first step, after taking control, would need to be the repeal of regulations (established when the Island converted to Seven Day Adventism in 1887) that outlawed cigars, pork, drugs and booze. The advantages our organization would acquire once we had our own seat at the United Nations were strongly urged in favor of this proposal, the initial need for violence and revolution notwithstanding.
Charlei George, in another bold bid for second place, concluded that “we should do something on a volcano” because his daughter had done a school presentation on volcanoes and he could reuse her material. The perfect model for a volcano is a blueberry pie (which he brought and distributed). He also distributed a miraculous copy of the Megaphone which reported on this future picnic, which will have occurred on Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the known universe, on Mars. This will occur on the 2001st year of Martian occupation, which, he pointed out, “gives us plenty of time to procrastinate!”
The results of the voting were: Woody Cunningham in First Place, winning the Landgraf Prize; and Charlei George in his traditional Second Place.
Among those present at this meeting were: