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           C  H  I  P  ' S    C  L  O  S  E  T     C  L  E  A  N  E  R

               Humor  *  Trivia  *  Pop Culture  *  Fun
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                                            I S S U E   N O.  5

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            All contents (c) copyright Chip Rowe or individual authors.
            E-mail: chip@playboy.com (faster) or chiprowe@reach.com

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            CHIP'S CLOSET CLEANER NO. 11 NOW AVAILABLE!

            The latest issue of CHIP'S CLOSET CLEANER -- 28 pages of 
            humor, trivia, pop culture and fun -- is now available for 
            $3 plus $1 postage from Chip Rowe, 175 North Harbor Dr.,
            Chicago, IL 60601-7358. 

                       Unseen Spinal Tap! 
                          Zine and Book Reviews 
                     	Why I Love Swear Words
                     	    My Girlfriend Wears My Favorite T-Shirts 
                                          Catalog from Hell
                                             50 Ways To Say You Masturbate 
                                                 and Much More!

	++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

                CHIP'S CLOSET CLEANER NO. 10 NOW AVAILABLE!
                          
                   Normal People Who Collect Odd Stuff
                         Dentists on Film
                               Weekly World News Index
                                   World's Largest Musical Fountain
                                             TV Mantras
                                                 Zine Reviews
                                                      Walter Cronkite's Favorite Color 
                                                               $2 plus $1 postage

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    contentsCONTENTS contents CONTENTS contents CONTENTS 

    +                    My House Gets Robbed
    +                    Cool Zine Reviews
    +                    Boys State Blues
    +                    Play Music on Your Phone
    +                    Playground Punchlines
    +                    Vomit: A Poem
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


                      C L O S E T  C L E A N E R S  F R O M  H E L L

                     <<In October, Memphis Judge Joe Brown ordered 
                     burglar Carlos Haley, 20, to choose between 
                     going to prison or letting the victim visit 
                     Haley's home and take any five items of his 
                     choice.                 (News of the Weird)>>

                     The cops finally arrived two hours after 
                     I phoned. In the meantime, you know, I
                     really had to pee because I'd been on the road 
                     all day and anxious to get home, but 
                     they'd already pissed in our toilet whenever 
                     they'd been here and you could see it, the 
                     water had this faint yellow hue, and I won-
                     dered if I'd be destroying vital evidence. 
                     Would the police get upset that I'd mixed 
                     my urine with the one link they needed to 
                     catch some Ma Barker? Had they developed 
                     some urine DNA procedure like they have with 
                     semen for rape cases? 

                     Irrational? Maybe. But I was sitting in an
                     empty house and I had to go _that_ bad. Still,
                     I decided to hold out, better safe than sorry, 
                     and sat down with my legs crossed to piece 
                     together the holiday mail that the bastards 
                     had torn apart in search of cash.

                     The cops who did come along, long after I'd 
                     relieved myself and flushed, were rookies. 
                     One was a round, squat woman so overweight 
                     she literally waddled, and the other was a 
                     guy who spelled "also" as "all so" on the 
                     police report (am I a yuppie elitist here,
                     or is being able to spell "also" a minimum
                     qualifier for the Academy?). The fingerprint 
                     detective, when he arrived, the first thing 
                     he asked was, "Are you sure your roommate 
                     didn't do this?" because they had burgled 
                     the couches and even the coffee table and 
                     rug out of the living room. Crackheads don't 
                     bother with home furnishings. So we got hit 
                     by pros. The cops said that pros wait until 
                     you replace everything, then they hit you
                     again. Reassuring, these cops.

                     Needless to say, our stereos, computers, 
                     jackets, CDs, phones, cash, porch furniture, 
                     TV and VCR were gone. They even took my nail 
                     file set, the nice one by Avon that I got 
                     as a high school graduation present. They 
                     loaded the files and the rest of their bounty 
                     into the 1986 Chevy minivan I'd bought from 
                     my dad to move to D.C. and drove off with 
                     that too. Maybe they even made two trips.

                     The fingerprint guy was the most interesting 
                     of the cops. He poked around, covering
                     everything with a metallic dust that 
                     stripped paint right off the furniture. 
                     He was the last to leave, so I watched him 
                     dust and told him things like whether the 
                     glass bowl upside down in the middle of 
                     the kitchen floor had been moved or whether 
                     we kept it there all the time.

                     "How long you been a fingerprint guy?" I asked.

                     "Twelve years."

                     "Any common elements among burglaries?"

                     "Crack addicts. Kids. Not very smart. Don't 
                     wear gloves, so we catch 'em. Always eat 
                     something."

                     I noticed that a carton of orange juice and a 
                     cup of yogurt were sitting on the kitchen 
                     floor. I pointed them out.

                     "Plastic doesn't always work," he told me. 
                     But he tried anyway. He dusted my yogurt.

                     "Say, if burglars always eat something," I 
                     asked, "could we put some poisoned beer 
                     in the fridge the next time we leave town?"

                     He didn't answer right away, and I thought 
                     he was concentrating. But then he turned, 
                     irritated, and fixed me with a cold stare. 
                     "That'd be manslaughter," he said.

                     I smiled weakly. "I suppose fixing a shotgun 
                     booby trap would be manslaughter too," I 
                     laughed, trying to break the tension. He 
                     didn't laugh. Tough crowd.

                     After he'd left, I found a hammer and 
                     fixed things the best I could. I didn't 
                     sleep well. Every sound became the echo 
                     of steps on the stairs, every creak was a 
                     crowbar. The radiators popped without 
                     warning, day and night, that sudden-
                     breaking-of-glass sound when you're not 
                     expecting it. You only need to believe it 
                     for a moment and your heart jumps and you 
                     have to fight to relax and go back to sleep. 

                     As the weeks passed, I got angrier that 
                     I had to suffer this anguish, tiptoeing 
                     around the house, not playing the radio 
                     because of my (irrational, certainly) fear 
                     that I wouldn't hear the spooks return to 
                     clean me out and tie me to a chair and say, 
                     "What should we do with him?" It's a 
                     strange jump, I mean it was a burglary and 
                     happens all the time and I was insured and 
                     it's not like I was shot or raped or beaten. 
                     But when you've been violated in whatever way 
                     and you read about some guy on death row who 
                     kidnapped and killed two teenagers and now 
                     wants a stay of execution and has Mother Teresa 
                     asking people to pray for him, you think why 
                     not a fucking prayer for me?


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                                     B O Y S'   S T A T E   B L U E S


                     During the summer of 1984, I attended Boys'
                     State, an annual week-long camp organized 
                     by the American Legion to instill democratic 
                     ideals in select high school juniors. The 
                     week is spent hearing from political speakers 
                     and campaigning for elected "office" -- every-
                     thing from "governor" to "county party 
                     chief" (Girls' State is held elsewhere). The 
                     Legion hopes its hands-on civics lesson, which 
                     includes getting up for "taps" at 7 a.m. and 
                     saying the Pledge of Allegiance twice a day, 
                     teaches you to appreciate the two-party system 
                     and become a loyal citizen.

                     The 1984 Boy's State was held at Michigan State 
                     University and attended by about 200 young
                     leaders. I was there too. (The Legion holds 
                     similar camps in all 50 states.) By the end of 
                     the week, I was soured on both democracy and 
                     large, officious gatherings of conservative prep 
                     school boys. I was particularly irked because: 
                     
                     1/ I lost all my bids for elected office and
                     had to beg for an appointed gopher position 
                     assistant to the country clerk assistant, and

                     2/ the other participant from my hometown 
                     skipped out on Wednesday after telling the 
                     directors his grandmother had died, 
                     
                     3/ the "democratic" ideals the Legionnaires 
                     had set out to teach America's youthful leaders 
                     didn't include freedom of speech, a particular 
                     pet peeve of mine.

                     I discovered the freedom of speech thing after 
                     joining "Whirligig," the camp's daily, 
                     mimeographed newspaper. A typical issue 
                     included short, chirpy profiles of those 
                     who had won posts, dopey word searches and 
                     man-on-the-street surveys with inane questions 
                     such as "What do you think Whirligig means?"

                     Increasingly bitter about my election losses, 
                     I talked to the Whirligig advisor, an MSU 
                     journalism student, about writing a commentary 
                     for the paper's final, Friday afternoon edition. 
                     He said sure. Hours after completing the 
                     column, but before the sympathetic advisor 
                     could get it to print, I was sitting across 
                     the table from the big enchilada, Boy's State 
                     Chairman Ernest C. Browne. He angrily waved 
                     the manuscript in my face, announcing that 
                     there was no way in hell any democracy of 
                     his was going to allow this kind of crap
                     to pollute the masses (I'm paraphrasing). He 
                     then grilled me on my political beliefs and 
                     practically accused me of treason. Needless 
                     to say, the space reserved for my column had 
                     to be filled quickly -- and it was, with a 
                     hyperbole-laden "Note of Thanks" to the 
                     Legionnaires, written by some yes-boy.

                     It made me ill, and I can no longer be silent 
                     about this painful episode. Dusted off after 
                     eight years in my closet and annotated with 
                     my political and emotional growth since, here 
                     is the dangerous column THE AMERICAN 
                     LEGION DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ:

                          There aren't many professed 
                          communists at Boy's State, but 
                          perhaps there should be. 
                          
                     [That first line fired Browne up. "Do you know 
                     what communism is?" he steamed. The 17-year-old, 
                     smart-assed, pimply faced rebel that I was
                     replied, "I sure ain't gonna find out here."] 
                     
                          The program in its present form
                          doesn't truly represent democracy. 
                          The American Legion feels democracy 
                          is the greatest form of government, 
                          yet its members have faced death 
                          for the system. We need a chance 
                          now to decide for ourselves whether 
                          it's worth dying for, instead of 
                          being told that we'll eat it and 
                          like it.

                          The Legion insists B.S. "will be free 
                          from propaganda," but apparently the
                          Legion gave itself an exclusion. 
                          Take, for instance, the propaganda 
                          each boy received prior to his 
                          arrival. National Commander Keith
                          Kreul wrote to remind us that democracy 
                          is "a government that is unsurpassed
                          in the history of mankind and 
                          unparalleled in modern times." 
                          Same quote could be had from the 
                          Soviets. 
                          
                     [Okay, that was a stretch.] 
                     
                          Kreul advises we take democracy and 
                          "strongly embrace it, work to protect 
                          it. America has been described, and 
                          aptly so, as mankind's last best hope." 
                          So has Russia, so has France. 
                          
                     [So has your underpants.] 
                     
                          We need to be able to make these 
                          statements on our own, without 
                          prodding from the converted. After 
                          we arrived, the Legion told us that 
                          the program would be "non-partisan."
                          Then, almost immediately, we were 
                          presented with a staged Republican
                          Democratic "debate." 
                          
                     [Two county commissioners presenting stump 
                     speeches for each party. The Democrat got 
                     booed; the Republican brought to the crowd 
                     to its feet in a frenzy.] 
                     
                          B.S. needs to lose the pep talks. 
                          The most important duty of citizen-
                          ship is to vote with your head, 
                          not your emotions. As for the 
                          "principles of democratic govern-
                          ment," where were the Communists, 
                          the Libertarians and the indepen-
                          dents this week? Aren't they part 
                          of our democracy too?

                          It does say a lot for B.S. that some 
                          boys recognized its idealistic 
                          presentation. The program encouraged 
                          many of us to take a closer look at 
                          "freedom" and "justice" instead of 
                          just accepting it with the belly 
                          button we were born with. 
                     
                     [Clever, eh?] 
                     
                          Boys spoke against the two-party system 
                          and for unified goals; they spoke 
                          against coalitions; they spoke against 
                          apathy; they cheered those who res-
                          pected the rights of others. 
                          
                     [This was all part of the acceptance speeches 
                     I never got to make.] 
                     
                          Some Boys' Staters recognized democracy 
                          to have its faults. But most boys will 
                          go home with the idea that the world 
                          revolves around America. If the Legion 
                         wants to instill the appreciation for 
                          democracy that its members feel, then 
                          show us democracy's merits via contrast 
                          with other systems. You can't have a 
                          taste test with one beer....
                          
                     [That's enough teenage rebellion.]


                                       -----------------------------------------


                           WHO SAYS STATE SCHOOLS ARE EASIER?

                     From the comments on my first academic paper 
                     written at Northwestern University, entitled 
                     "The Role of the Pure and Common Artists" 
                     (November 25, 1985) and graded by Prof. 
                     Victor Durr of the Comparative Literature
                     department: 
                      
                          "This is an interesting paper 
                          which, however, I do not quite
                          understand. Nevertheless, it 
                          constitutes a brave attempt 
                          to come to terms with a difficult 
                          aesthetic problem. Grade: A-."


                                   -------------------------------------------


                     	   SEX ON THE PLAYGROUND

                     From John K. comes the most popular 
                     punch lines for dirty jokes told by adol-
                     escents. How many do you recognize?

                          * Shoot the dog! Shoot the dog! *

                     	* No, lady, do it again. *

                           * I would, but I don't think I 
                          can hold my mouth open that long. *

                            * If I catch you, I fuck you. *
 
                           * You're the expert. You tell me 
                     	     where I'm from. *
 
                     	   * Because they can. *

                        * Why do you ask, "Two Dogs Fucking"? *

                          * Can I do it until I need glasses? *
 
                     	     * Pea-green soup. *

                          * Then let's take these things off. *

	     * It's O.K. after you get past the part that's used.*

                         * No, but it's twitching a little.*

                     	   * You can keep the tip.*
	       
                        * If that's what you get for 50 cents, 
                         I'm glad I didn't have the whole $5.*

	     * I sell lollipops. You'll have to lick mine off.*

	 * You better look out, then. There's a snake in your grass.*

                     	* I'll keep an eye out for you.*


                          ----------------------------------------------------

                     	    SO, WHAT'S THE HOLD-UP?

                     From the Morality in Media Newsletter, March/
                     April 1992:

                     The U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to review the 
                     broadcast indecency case [that struck down the 
                     previous 24-hour ban on broadcast "indecency" 
                     as unconstitutional and required the FCC to 
                     allow programming aimed at adults to air late 
                     at night], thus inviting pornographic "pigs 
                     into the parlor" during evening hours, left 
                     many of us momentarily stunned. The possible 
                     future of TV flashed before our eyes and here 
                     is what would happen:

                     First, frontal nudity, male and female, will be 
                     eased in to become commonplace. Following on its 
                     tail will be sexual intercourse, maybe with dots
                     over the genitals at first, but then ultimately 
                     with the dots removed after the desensitization 
                     process has taken its toll. A little vulgarity 
                     will be sprinkled in, of course, with four-letter 
                     words.

                     Finally, all stops will be pulled, and emerging 
                     on the screen in your living rooms will be sexual 
                     orgies, both heterosexual and homosexual; sodomy;
                     sadomachochism; activities involving excrement; 
                     and a variety of sexual perversions.


                                  -------------------------------------------


                                          VOMIT: A POEM

                     Lorie M. bragged recently that she could 
                     write a children's poem about anything. 
                     Unfortunately, we challenged her.


                     	My stomach is a rumblin'
                        something in there is grumblin'
                     	my feet are a stumblin'
                     	     get me a bag...


                           My throat filled with saliva
                          was it too much beer or Godiva?
                          I wish I wasn't alive..Aaahhhhh..
                     	    I'm starting to gag...


                     	      Asparagus stew
                     	  with peanuts and glue
                     	      out of my nose 
                     	       it just flew
                     	   Who invented this way?


                          Was it the sweet breads I devoured?
                          Maybe the cream cheese turned sour?
                           It did sit in the sun for an hour
                     	    It was such a nice day.


                     	Perhaps the grizzled meat
                     	  and broiled pig's feet
                     	or the meatloaf and beets
                     	  are comin' to say hi!


                     	  Each hiccup and heave
                     	   a disgorging sneeze
                     	 Oh my God I can't breath
                     	 a vessel popped in my eye.


                     	  My shoes are now kissed
                     	   by foul-ridden bliss.
                     	  The toilet...I missed.
                     	 Throwin' up ain't no fun.


                                    -------------------------------------


                                              DRINK ME

                     From Omni, which recently invited readers 
                     to invent their own bar drinks:

                     Sinead O'Connor: Irish whisky and Nair 
                     Honeydew the Dishes: Midori and Dawn
                     American in Paris: Kentucky bourbon and champagne
                     Three Men & a Baby: Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker, 
                     	 Jack Daniels and warm milk
                     Marie Antoniette: bourbon, cake mix and flat beer
                     Fuzzy Naval Base: peach schnapps, orange juice and
                               ammonia
                     Blood Clot: vodka, tomato juice and jello
                     Blue Moon: corn whisky and Aqua Velva
                     A Rum With a View: Bacardi and Visine


                                  ----------------------------------------------------


                           HEARD IT THROUGH THE PHONE LINE


	       In 1972, Michael Scheff spent some time 
	       fiddling with his touch-tone telephone 
	       (a new thing then) and composed a book, 
	       "The Pushbutton Telephone Songbook." 
	       We came across the title in our closet 
	       and here offer a few favorites. Remember, 
	       only poke out the tunes when you're 
	       connected with a friend, an answering 
	       machine or the "time" recording -- other-
	       wise, you could end up talking to someone 
	       in Iowa.


                     	   For beginners: 

                           1        1       9      9
                         Twin-     kle,   Twin-   kle 

                     	  0      0      9
                     	 Lit-   tle    Star


                     	    For birthdays: 
                     	    
                         4      4     2     4    #   8
                        Hap-    py  birth- day   to  you   
 
                         1    1    2      1    9    8
                        Hap-  py  birth- day   to   you


                     	   For the holidays:  
                     	   
                         6    6    6      6    6     6
                        Jin- gle  bells, jin- gle   bells 

                     	6    #    7    8    6
                            Jin- gle  all  the  way 

                          9       9      9  9  9  5   5
                         Oh,    what    fun it is to ride

                          5   5  5      7    4    5    6
                         In  a  one-  horse o-   pen sleigh


	       To get someone in the mood for phone sex:   
                       
                     	 4        8   8   4    8
                            Stran-    gers in the night 

                           4        8     6      8     4
                           Ex-    chang- ing   glan-  ces


                                    ------------------------------------------


                     	   THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS


                     Keepers of private notebooks are a different 
                     breed altogether, lonely and resistant 
                     rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, 
                     children afflicted apparently at birth 
                     with some presentiment of loss.  -Joan Didion.

                     In the apartment next to us are two young men 
                     who entertain a lot, and one day somebody 
                     leaned out their window with a rifle 
                     equipped with a spotting scope, searching 
                     the courtyard and the street. I assumed 
                     it was a toy, but in any case I simply 
                     pulled the blinds; one can't react to 
                     everything.  --Edward Hoagland, City Rat.

                     I'm not going to hurt him, but I am going 
                     to kill him with love. --Dr. Rochelle
                     Konits, 41, to an undercover cop she had 
                     unwittingly hired to drug and kidnap
                     a male doctor to fulfill her sexual 
                     fantasies.

                     God, Chip, your butt is getting big. 
                     --my mother, Christmas Day.

                           ----------------------------------------------

                                           -end-


