Tom Conoboy Knows the Answers

Here at Johnny America Headquarters we tend not know much about the lives and careers of the kind contributors who send us the wonderful things they write. But sometimes an author will mention something cryptic in correspondence, and we’ll embark on a Google miniature investigation. We already knew that Tom Conoboy is a librarian, and that he’s generous enough to answer the questions that come up in the normal course of events at J.A. HQ, but then he mentioned something about a grappling hook in one of his messages and we began to wonder exactly what kind of librarian this Tom Conoboy truly is. Is he the adventurous sort, like Noah Wyle’s character in the Made-for-TV flick The Librarian: Quest for the Spear? Google Tom Conoboy’s name and you’ll find this ‘publicity’ image in which he appears to be lounging on a cliff. But is he really lounging? Maybe Tom’s nemesis, an anti-intellectual Professor Moriarty sort is holding a trident to his back?. And what if Tom’s flashing a smile because he knows there’s a mini-sub waiting in the cold waters below, and all he has to do to get out of this pinch is combine what he learned during childhood lessons at the Shaolin temple with the awesome power of the Dewey Decimal System?

Q. What is your position, if you have one, on the smoking of cigarettes? Bad habit, clearly, but in certain pairings (with coffee, at a bar after the funeral of someone your own age) profoundly right.

Q. What’s the state of barbecue in Britain? Do you know, for example, the epicurean delight that is ‘burnt ends’?

Q. If you work with cash, and know your employer won’t catch you, how much is it fair to steal? A set maximum per day? A percentage?

1. Since, from July 1st 2007, England will see a complete ban on smoking in public places¹, this is an opportune time to discuss the lunacy of cigarette smoking, which naturally I shall do—being a former librarian—in a completely objective and unbiased way. The morons had it coming to them, that’s what I say. They’ve been stinking out bars and restaurants for years. Make them stand outside in the rain with their pathetic little tubes of burning, dried vegetable matter and leave our public spaces to the sensible people. There. Now—like a smoker after his morning expectoration—’ve got that off my chest, let’s debate the issues. The best position on the smoking of cigarettes is obviously several rooms removed from them. Failing that, however, the second best position is undoubtedly with the damned things hanging from your own lips. It is one of those unexplained peculiarities of life that cigarettes smell completely different to the smoker from how they do to the victims. With that smoke in your own head, they’re sweet, cool, fragrant, the tobacco fresh like it was harvested from the field only hours before. But that same smoke, the same smell, to anyone other than the smoker? It’s acrid, horrid, harsh. Even hardened smokers, if it isn’t their cigarette, will recoil from such smells. Why is that? Oh to be a boffin² and be able to explain such mysteries. It should be obvious from the above that I’m one of that fearful breed, the reformed smoker. So to answer the question properly, is a cigarette ever profoundly right? Well, the best cigarette experience I ever had was one glorious late night/early morning al fresco drag in the aftermath of an equally glorious al fresco shag² on Aberdeen beach many, many years ago. In the moonlight, with that woman curled against me and the warmth of love inside me, I watched my cigarette fray its smoke into the sky on its way to Orion, and I believed, for those few moments, that the world was perfect. Perfection, then, is the only time when it is appropriate to smoke a cigarette. ¹ http://www.smokefreeengland.co.uk/ ² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boffin ³ http://www.answers.com/topic/shag
2. Ah, summer in Britain, the sound of lawnmowers and loud music and domestic disputes, the threat of imminent rain and government warnings of water shortages, the visits from hated relatives and the ever-present, kerosene and charcoal smell of the fine British barbie. It’s every Englishman’s duty to dust off the barbie in the earliest weeks of April, blowtorch the congealed remains of last year’s last burger and prepare one and all for a brand new season of e-coli roulette. Summer in the suburbs—where would we be without the chicken breast carcinogenically charcoaled on one side and listeria-pink on the other? Or the trout, lovingly caught in Rutland Water, the only catch after eight hours of fishing, then barbied lightly for ten minutes, followed by incineration for the next hour as the noble fisherman falls asleep in the garden with his wine glass in his hand. Yes, summer—the smell of burnt fish, the anguished yell of the existential angler, the heady hum of ambulance sirens. It almost makes you nostalgic for winter.
3. If you work with cash, and know your employer won’t catch you, how much is it fair to steal? A set maximum per day? A percentage? My mother, fine upstanding woman, used to say to us “cheats never prosper.” Considering how poor we were, that always made me wonder about the honesty of our own family, but it was just that she missed off the next line—“honest folks neither.” It’s one of those catch-22s that so beset human civilisation, like why the smoker smells his cigarette differently from everyone else and why al fresco perfection on Aberdeen beach doesn’t last forever. There is, thankfully, a straightforwardly complex mathematical formula for working out this moral equation. It balances self-esteem against corporate greed, weighted by residual risk, square-rooted for obvious reasons and multiplied by the size of your overdraft. In summary, it can be described thus:
   
   Which, all in all, is pretty self-explanatory. Just tell that to the judge.

Tom Conoboy, whose designer pants cradle his ass like a orange in its peel, and whose claims to have been a librarian are suspicious as he never cites sources, occasionally agrees to answer the queries of the JA staff and entourage. The following is his latest wisdom:

Q. On the television situation comedy Night Court starring Harry Anderson, criminals (mainly prostitutes, if I remember correctly) were brought in immediately—at night, when they were ostensibly arrested—to appear before the court. Is there such a thing as a late-night or 24-hour court?

Late-night, 24 hour courts are a new fad imposed by governments in an attempt to look tough on crime (tough on the causes of crime.) Late night UK sessions were piloted in 2002 in Manchester (because being Mancunian is, in itself, only a short step away from being a crime) and in Bow Street Magistrates Court in London. This was mainly to accommodate Japanese tourists who, as part of their holiday experience, wanted to photograph each other being arraigned and sent down in the second most famous court in the whole of England (the Old Bailey being reserved for purely domestic miscarriages of justice.)

Naturally, with Prime Minister Blair showing how tough he is, his old chum President Bush had to show an even tougher face, and the era of the American drive-thru, free fries after 3 am, double jeopardy our speciality, 24 hour, hang ‘em high court service was born.

Some sources suggest that, due to phenomenal and rising crime levels, the service was first established in Midtown North Precinct, close to the New York home of Naomi Campbell, but this is probably a scurrilous rumour.

editors’ note: on your next visit to New Orleans, we urge you to visit Harry Anderson’s magic shop Sideshow, and pick up a two-headed duckling for us.

Tom Conoboy, once described by Esquire magazine as “the Ewan McGregor of librarianing,” occasionally deigns to answer the nonsensical questions that come up in the normal course of events at Johnny America HQ. Here he answers the queries we mused on over champagne at Patrick Giroux’s house on New Year’s Eve.

Q. What’s going to happen in the year 2012? End of the world, or other?

Not the end of the world, not even the beginning of the end of the world, but perhaps the end of the beginning, as Winston Churchill (“the first black American president”, as someone answered in a British quiz show recently) might have put it. You see, we humans tend to think about everything in terms of our own puny time scales. So we think about global warming, and we worry about the end of time, and we prophesy doom and eternal damnation, and because we don’t understand the vastness of time we imagine it will happen some time after 3pm on the first Thursday in May, 2012.

Let’s remember, the first homo sapiens emerged only 120,000 years ago (on a Saturday, around lunch time.) In planetary terms, we’re babes in arms. There’s an Emperor angelfish circling the waters of the Red Sea that could, if only it had taken a library user education program, trace its lineage back 120,000 generations. Admittedly, the ancestors would be a bit rough looking to modern tastes, with a fin or two more than we’re accustomed to, but that’s not the point. You don’t see the angelfish fretting about the end of the world, do you? Not even as it approaches that curious, netty looking thing that seems to be hovering in the water…

But not to worry, there’s another generation of angelfish ready to swim into the breach. There always is. It’s the way of things. Time, it’s just one bloody day after another…

Q. Who would win in a fight between Naomi Campbell [with her fierce temper and obvious height advantage] and Lil’ Kim [who is small but scrappy, and has also spent time ‘in the clink’]? By this I mean an unregulated, no rules-type fight, such as might occur on the street or in a nightclub.

Celebrity cat fight! Let’s be honest, it’s only a matter of time before it’s a franchise on the BBC and CBS. Carla from Cheers will be the referee and she’ll be infamous for stepping in and doing a bit of gratuitious eye-gouging if the combatants aren’t being mean and nasty enough. “They like it,” will be her lugubrious catchphrase, with that trademark Carla twinkle in her eye.

But anyway, Naomi Campbell versus L’il Kim. No contest, sadly. L’il Kim’s one of those feisty rappers, former lover of gunned-down hip-hopper Notorious B.I.G and, having done time, she’s obviously going to trade on her ex-con status. But come on, she was only in for perjury. What’s she going to do - floor Naomi with a quick one-two of little fibs followed by a whopper between the eyes? Stand over her and tell her rap music is more than silly hand movements, large trousers and an in-depth knowledge of the present progressive tense so that every line ends with -ing and sounds like it rhymes?

Meanwhile we all know that the magnificently moody Campbell flattens anyone who comes within ten yards of her private space. She’s getting to the stage where she doesn’t even need to risk her nails and knuckles. One look is enough to flatten all but the most resolute opponent. The Campbell Kybosh, it’ll be called. “Ooh, there she goes,” Carla will shout, “L’il Kim’s a goner. Fetch a stretcher.”

Dear me, no, it’ll take more than L’il Kim to knock Naomi off her pedestal. Hillary Clinton, now that might be a closer match…

Tom Conoboy, who says “knickers” instead of underwear, because he’s British, and who knows far more than mere mortals can grasp, because he was a librarian, occasionally answers the questions that we editors of Johnny America find ourselves baffled by. The following is the second set of said queries.

Q. Why is Naomi Campbell so angry?

Q. You said that the worst way to die is “before you’re ready.” But wouldn’t that be the worst time to die? Also, I think most people die before they feel ready. And that would imply that “before you’re ready” is in fact average, not worst. What about “before you’re ready and also while being eaten alive by badgers”? Isn’t that worse?

1. Why is Naomi Campbell so angry?

There are lots of theories regarding this. One recent study suggested a lack of carbohydrate in the typical stick model’s diet turns estrogen into testosterone, but this has been clearly debunked, otherwise the fragrant and charming Helena Christensen would display similarly ogreish sensibilities.

Other suggestions include having a chip (British word for French fry) on her shoulder, but her shoulders aren’t wide enough so that can’t be true either.

No, the reason is surprisingly simple. As a supermodel, a symbol of all that is suave and chic in our hectic world, Naomi Campbell is still best remembered for falling off shoes the size of a low rise apartment and flashing her fanny at the world’s cameras. Even now, it still rankles Ms Campbell that this will undoubtedly be her epitaph and the story refuses to die.

Oops, Johnny America may just have ensured that another Campbell housemaid gets the sack …

1. The worst way to die is before you’re ready and being eaten alive by badgers.

I can’t agree with the motion. Badgers are carnivores, quite big carnivores. Therefore, they will be capable of taking quite large chunks out of you. With good fortune, your mauling at the teeth of a belligerent badger would be brief, if brutal.

What would be much, much worse would be to be eaten alive by a vegetarian animal, let’s say a rabbit. Think about it. One, their teeth are small and stubby, not designed for cutting through meat. It’s going to take time. At first, it’s going to feel like being tickled to death. After a while, the rabbit might get the hang of it and start biting a bit harder but it’s still going to be a long slog. And two, and I think this is the main point, can you imagine the existential angst that will be going through that lifelong vegetarian’s mind? Every mouthful of your flesh is going to cause it to recoil in distaste. Remember the first time you tasted spinach? That’s what it’ll be like for the rabbit, but a thousand times worse. It’ll have to force down every mouthful. All in all, it’s going to be horribly slow.

Let’s face it, death by rabbit could take weeks. You’d be screaming for a passing badger to come and finish you off.

We here at Johnny America HQ have long been fascinated by the British in general and British librarians in particular. If Brits are half as clever as they seem on TV and library science curricula a third as demanding as resident Library Scientist Emily Lawton tells us, Tom Conoboy can be mathematically calculated to be fourth smartest person in all English-speaking countries including Australia, where he would be considered a kind of demi-god. Imagine our delight when he sent us the following offer along with a story submission:

“If you have any queries, let me know. I used to be a librarian so I may be able to answer them.”

Any queries? On any topic? Yes, of course we do. Following is our first set of questions for Tom Conoboy, and his answers.

Q. Why are bicycles for boys and girls different, and wouldn’t it make more sense for the boys’ style to be the one without the dangerous bar between the legs?

Q. What, really, is the worst way to die?

1a. So the little ladies could sit on the bike without having to lift up their crinolines and flash their ankles at suggestible menfolk.

1b. It’s a rite of passage for any boy to come off his saddle at speed and mash his testicles on the crossbar. I can still remember the bruising.

1. Before you’re ready.