Digglewink's World

     Famed attorney and part-time veterinarian Peter Digglewink died this week after an extended battle with life. He was 58. Digglewink was born in Brooklyn, NY and attended Harvard University and Yale Law School. He rose to prominence as a trial lawyer in Washington, DC in the 1980’s and was a strong and vocal proponent of the abolition of slavery, undeterred by confederate forces or by the fact slavery was abolished nearly ninety years before his birth. In 1990, he teamed with former federal prosecutor Ferdinand Smith to establish Digglewink and Smith LLP, which grew to become one of the nation’s preeminent law firms and cage-free chicken farms. In 2002, the New York Times named him Best Lawyer in the United States, albeit in an advertisement he paid to have run in the New York Times. In 2012, he was the Republican Party’s nominee for President, but was defeated in the general election by President Obama and common sense. He died as he lived: strangely. He is survived by his cats and a mournful nation. He is also survived by…himself.

     What’s that, you ask? He is alive? Oh yes, my friends. I am. I am alive and well and will soon return to blogging in this space. I will now drop the proverbial mic.

T’was the night before Christmas, the evening when Santa looms

Not a creature was stirring, except the one in my pantaloons.

The stockings were hung, by the chimney with tape

Because care got us nowhere, after last year’s Santa rape.

And I with my kerchief, and mama with her one-sie

Had just settled down, for some warm, winter funsie.

When out on the street, a noise rang through the dark,

A crescendo of clamor, on Lexington and Park!

To the window I flew, and I soon grew abashed

On behalf of the carolers I’d inadvertently flashed.

When what to my wondering eyes did appear?

But a man and eight kittens, dressed all like reindeer.

He carried them bundled, toward the building he came

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name.

“On Mr. Waffles! On Mr. Waffles! On Mr. Waffles! On Mr. Waffles!

On Mr. Waffles! On Mr. Waffles! On Mr. Waffles! On Mr. Waffles!”

He climbed the fire escape, his stature short and arthritic

His breathing was labored, his features semitic.

His voice seemed familiar, as he called ho ho ho

And crashed down the chimney, to the fireplace below.

He stood in the foyer, looking bold and distinguished.

Suit covered in foam, once the fire was extinguished.

Oh, the children had been nestled, but staying up deviously

Thinking of sugar plums, which I forgot about previously.

So, the man stood there proudly, like a large, watchful sentry

And begged I not charge him, with breaking and entry.

As he spoke I first saw him, and in my shock I did blink

As I recognized my neighbor, Peter Digglewink.

Over his shoulder he had flung, a large bundle of toys

That he’d purchased in Costco, and gave to my boys

His eyes how they twinkled, with his dances and frolics!

His nose glowed like a cherry, or like an alcoholic’s.

He had a round face, and a little round belly

That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

And then a bowl full of jelly, he removed from his coat

And it wiggled and jiggled, as it was poured down his throat.

His hat was askew, and his beard was detaching

He coughed and he wheezed, and he soon started scratching.

As he removed from his bag, a few balls and some bats

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m allergic to cats.”

And with kittens all loose, the room frought with frustration

The kids as frightened as they’d been since gentrification.

Peter packed up some cookies, and offered a bow

And we thanked him and told him, that he should leave now.

He offered a handshake, and a kiss to my wife

And my children were as scared as they’d been in their life.

His manner it scared them, his appearance appalled them

Then security arrived, because my doorman had called them.

“On Mr. Waffles,” he said, and then “Mush” he did shout,

As security forcefully ushered him out.

But I heard him exclaim, as he was led out of sight

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Dear Prospective Law Students,

Since I announced the founding of the Peter K. Digglewink School of Law last month, it has come to my attention that some wild rumors are floating around about my school. Today, I would like to set the record straight: It is indeed a real school.

Admittedly, some of these rumors are true. But I am confident that Digglewink Law will still provide a unparalleled legal education to those students lucky enough to be admitted. Digglewink Law may not be the highest ranked law school, may not have the most famous alumni, may not have both male and female restrooms in its buildings, may not have “professors” or “faculty”, may not have books in its library, may not have a library that is not a boiler room, and may not have a working boiler room, but I guarantee that our institution is among the finest in the country.

Sincerely,

Peter K. Digglewink, Dean

A cricket is no ordinary insect. It is large and brazen and possesses boundless energy. Indeed, it is basically a skeletal puppy. And for the last several days, one has inhabited my apartment.

This presents a problem.

While I do possess a great many talents, patience and fast reflexes are not two of them. This puts me at a clear disadvantage when hunting down a cricket. I think it senses my weakness. Three times last night, as I sat reading in my study, the cricket walked up to my feet and calmly looked up at me, displaying either a complete lack of understanding of the threat of a stomping shoe or – as I chose to perceive it – a profound measure of hubris. A matter of opinion, I suppose.

Because the cricket is capable of jumping so far and so fast, I find myself terrified that it will jump up the leg of my shorts and do what I’ve attempted to do for decades: cling to my manhood. Thus, when anywhere near a cricket, I place one hand around my crotch. So it was that last night I found myself racing around my bedroom with one hand holding a shoe above my head and the other clasped firmly to Captain Weatherbee. Admittedly, this is not entirely unprecedented.

“Come on, Jiminy!” I called toward the cricket and, sounding like an exasperated Scooby Doo villain, added, “I’ll get you yet!”

As I chased the cricket around the apartment, I began to think of the original Jiminy Cricket and the movie Pinocchio for the first time since my childhood. Disney movies have a habit of appearing innocent during one’s youth and quite differently during adulthood. Snow White, after all, was about a woman who awoke in the woods to find herself surrounded by seven behatted midgets. Though the plot of this movie can now be found in various forms for $19.95 on the world wide web, it was at the time an original.  Pinocchio was no different.

Essentially what happens in Pinocchio is that a stylish cricket walks into an elderly, Italian man’s woodshop, finds that the man is fashioning a marionette, and watches as the man prays for the wooden puppet to become a real boy, purportedly for innocent reasons. Soon a blue fairy arrives and turns the puppet into a boy, after which he meets a series of questionable characters before saving the old man and the cricket from a whale. Also, his nose grows when he lies. It’s like Disney got high and played Mad Libs.

I wondered, though, if perhaps I was misunderstanding my own cricket. After all, could he not be cut from the same cloth as Jiminy? Perhaps all he wanted was to dress like an aristocrat and steer me in a moral direction. So, when next I spotted it – seated casually on my coffee table – I approached it with an open mind. “Hello, dear cricket,” I told it, though the hand that remained on Mr. Weatherbee betrayed my front of bravery. “My name is Peter Digglewink. What’s yours?”

The cricket, however, sat silently and only glared at me, as if to say “What, Jew?” Crickets, you see, are exceedingly antisemitic.

As Mr. Weatherbee and I retired to my study for the evening, I could not help but think back over my relationship with the cricket. Indeed, it proved a worthy foe. And so, as I drifted off to sleep, I preferred to think that it was its own hubris that felled him rather than my very large bottle of Raid and repeated stomping on its corpse. A matter of opinion, I suppose.

This is the story of how I met my legal partner, Ferdy Smith. It involves, not surprisingly, a person in a giant panda costume.

It was my twenty-fifth birthday and my final year of law school, and some friends decided to take me out to celebrate. The plan was simple. We would start at my friend Michael’s apartment and then move on to a nice restaurant in midtown before heading to an upscale bar near my apartment for the night. We’d finish with some pizza.

We arrived at the first stop, Flip Hattery’s Steakhouse, and I sauntered on up to the maitre’ d. Armed with a generous tip, I shook his hand and asked if our reservation was ready. “Digglewink,” I told him, “party of five,” and slipped the three quarters into his palm. “Your table is ready,” he told me. “But I received the call about an hour ago and it seems there is an extra person joining you.” I looked around at my friends, all of whom shrugged, and told the maitre d’ that this was fine.

After we finished our first round of beers, a commotion seemed to come over the bar. I looked up then and was confused to find standing in the doorway a person in a giant panda suit. It looked exactly like this. My confusion only grew when the bear walked over to our table, pulled out the sixth chair, and silently sat down.

A few important things to note: First, as per my lifelong birthday tradition, I was dressed like Superman. Second, I could not conclusively rule out the possibility that this was, in fact, a real bear. I was a city boy, remember, and thus possessed a limited knowledge of southeastern Asian wildlife. Also, I was high. However, sensing the lack of alarm among my fellow restaurant patrons, I assumed it was a person and calmed down.

What happened next was amazing, because what happened next was nothing. We resumed our dinner and our casual conversation, each of us convinced that the others were playing a prank on us and refusing to show any sign of nervousness or confusion for risk of becoming the butt of a joke. So, we continued our dinner. And after a while, we developed a sort of Stockholm Syndrome with the bear, coming to value its once-intrusive presence. The panda, to his credit, acted like anyone would act with a new group of people. He was quiet, tentative, deferential. He was indeed a gentleman.

At the next bar – and while walking the city streets – we found the bear to be quite an attraction. Ladies flocked to him by the dozens. Tourists were waved over for photos. Toothless smiles were provoked from even the most bitter of the homeless. Still, I wondered who – or what – could be inside the suit. Our friend Thomas? A candid camera game show host? Perhaps a series of increasingly smaller bears?

It wasn’t until we poured out of the final bar and waited in line at the nearest pizza place that things finally got creepy. “Awesome bear!” a young man waiting in line ahead of me said.

“Thanks!” I said.

“So, who is he?”

“I don’t know.” I laughed. “Fellas?” My friends and all looked at each other and the smiles quickly faded from our faces. It seemed that no one really knew the answer. Soon our gazes transferred from each other to the bear. Yes, the giant panda bear was still glaring down at us, staring blankly down at us. Slowly, he lifted his arm and waved at us and then left the pizza place and walked away.

“Wait!” I called after him. My friends followed me into the street. “Hey! Aren’t you going to tell us who you are?” The bear paused on the busy sidewalk and turned as if to consider this. Slowly, he reached up and – as we waited with mouths agape – removed his massive head. Standing there, grinning in the streetlamp’s light, was — I have no idea. None of us recognized him. To this day, his identity remains a complete mystery.

As we walked back inside the pizza place, the young man who had been in line ahead of me stopped me and pointed at the bear, walking headless out of sight. “Who was that guy?” the young man asked.

“I have no clue,” I told him.

“Oh. Well, anyway, my name is Ferdinand.” And that’s how I met Ferdy Smith.

#1. Favorite Food: Chicken Pot Pie. The sweet mixture of fowl and cannabis is simply delightful.

#2. Favorite Television Show: LOST. If LOST was this sentence, it would be a scintillating, compelling sentence that featured a multitude of large words, manipulated fonts, and fancy punctuation; it would, however, ultimately lead to a conclusion that has nothing to do with anything that came before it cheese.

#3. Favorite Pants Status: Off

#4. Favorite Movie: I love all things Walt Disney, but for the cryogenic freezing, latent Naziism, and National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

#5. Favorite Quote: “When in Doubt, pull out. Doubt is fertile.” – Peter Digglewink

#6. Least Favorite Quote: “Please stop hugging me.” – That girl I hugged

#7. Favorite Day of My Life: 8/13/1975. Greatful Dead at the Great American Music Hall.

#8. Least Favorite Day of My Life: 8/13/1975. After the Greatful Dead show when I lost my testicle during a fateful encounter with either a unicorn or a horse wearing a party hat.

#9. Favorite Black American President: Rutherford B. Hayes

#10. Favorite Beach To Which I Might One Day Take My Talents: South

Off.

I wish I hadn’t eaten that Street Meat. Not for any gastrointestinal reasons. It just wasn’t very tasty. You see, yesterday was my birthday, friends, and frankly I expected a more festive morning  meal. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.

I arrived at my office at four yesterday morning, expecting some sort of celebration to already be underway. In my kingdom of Digglewink and Smith, LLP, I thought for certain that at least one floor of our offices in the Empire State Building would have been devoted to my special day – a carnival, a petting zoo, or perhaps a personal appearance by my childhood hero, Lloyd Blankfein. But when I arrived that morning, there was no celebration. No carnival. No zoo. No Lloyd. No love.

So it was that at approximately 5:00 yesterday morning, Peter K. Digglewink took to the bottle. I’m not proud of this. If there is one thing less attractive than a 54-year old man wearing a Superman costume, it is a 54-year old man wearing a Superman costume and downing a bottle of WT2 (my father’s old recipe). I was already slightly buzzed when my coworkers arrived.

Note: It has been a now-half-century-long PD custom to wear a Superman costume on my birthday. This has served me well in the past. On my 10th birthday, my classmates looked at me in awe and treated me – at least for the day – as if I really were a superhero. On my 21st, friends (read: bartenders) cheered me as I pounded a full 2 shots to celebrate before collapsing, caped, into the mid-campus fountain. In recent years, my colleagues’ awe has been more measured. Indeed, once they see me in my costume, they find it hard to even speak in my presence. So intimidated are they that no one dares even approach me, probably for fear that I might whisk them away on a flight around the city. My reception today was similarly cold.

When my legal partner, Ferdy Smith, walked into his office at eight this morning, he found me slouched and less than sober in his ergonomic chair. “Peter!” he exclaimed as he turned on the lights.

“Do you know what today is!?” I shouted.

“Cinco de Mayo?”

“My birthday, Ferdy! It’s my birthday!”

“Well!” my old friend said. “Yes, yes! Happy birthday, Peter!”

“I got here early!” I said, “Expecting a party!”

“A party? Pre-dawn?”

“With a petting zoo!” I shouted, drunk.

“A pett-”

“And Lloyd Blankfein!”

“Huh?”

“And a ferris wheel!”

“In a building?”

I sighed and slumped over Ferdy’s desk. It was no use. Once again, my friends and coworkers had forgotten my special day. The truth is I always wore the costume just so people would remember. In reality, they never did. Indeed, they probably had no idea why I regularly dressed as Superman on Cinco de Mayo each year.

“Come on,” Ferdy said. “No reason to be upset. It’s your birthday!” He approached the desk and slapped me on the cape. He handed me his coffee. “Maybe you should drink some of this,” he said. “It’s a little early in the day for the hard stuff.”

“Thanks.”

“Come on,” Ferdy announced. “Let’s go get you some breakfast.”

A few minutes later, we’d ridden the elevator 86 floors to the street and strode out of the Empire State Building toward the hot dog cart on the corner. “Let me get two dogs!” Ferdy told the vendor. “It’s this gentleman’s birthday today.”

“Well,” the man said with a laugh. “Happy birthday, Superman!”

‘Superman!’ I thought. ‘Someone called me Superman!’ And with that, I was taken back to a more innocent time, of Mr. Waffles, and WT2 on my father’s breath, and a classroom of children celebrating my special day.

“What are you drinking anyway?” Ferdy said.

“Family recipe,” I told him. “Have a nip.”

“To your birthday,” he said and raised the bottle. He took a deep swig – and immediately spat it out all over the street.

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Peter, what is this?”

“My father’s own blend,” I said, shocked at his reaction. “Wild Turkey and 2% Milk.”

“Ugh!” he shouted. “My goodness! You actually like this stuff? Your father invented this??”

“I know,” I told him. “It’s amazing I turned out as normal as I did.”

I would like to issue an apology to my friends and fans. It seems that yesterday, an Internet site devoted to tabloid trash published a nude photograph of me. As you can imagine, chaos ensued.

Now, let me be clear. I had absolutely nothing to do with the posting of such crude materials. Indeed, I did not send this photograph to various news outlets and online publications. I did not put extra postage on the envelopes to ensure proper delivery. And though [Censored by WordPress], the only website that ran the photos, happened to be registered to my name, I had absolutely nothing to do with their entry to the public domain.

Digglewink and Smith LLP is, as you know, a family business. Well, let me clarify. We do not actually represent families. Indeed, it is rare for two members of a specific family to even set foot inside our offices at one time. But still, we have a generally favorable attitude towards the idea of families. They’re fine. So it is that I feel I must apologize to America’s families for the appearance of my nude picture on the Internet.

I am not, as you know, the first person to have nude photographs turn up on the Internet. Indeed, I was preceded by such prominent athletes as Greg Oden, Chris Cooley, and Babe Ruth, the last of whose nude pictures finally after all this time explained his nickname. But while I am not the first and will undoubtedly not be the last, I am embarrassed nonetheless, and hope no one else will see these photos at the website, [Censored by WordPress].

I guess the question on everyone’s minds is how this recent scandal will affect my life and my career. In short, it won’t. I won’t let it. Sure, one might think that the emergence of such photographs might catapult me to the front pages. One might think that I might become a sexual icon for a new decade, or fodder at least for late night talk show hosts. One might think that this picture would bring some semblance of celebrity. But no. It won’t. I will not let it. Because I, Peter Digglewink, want none of those things. I want only for no one to have ever seen those photographs at all.

To close, my friends, I would like to apologize once and for all to my family (read: cats), friends (read: coworkers), clients (read: client), and to anyone who might have seen the photo at [Censored by WordPress]. I apologize.