Rock Island, IL

As many readers know, and as others have verified with their own eyes, an FPR contingent met at the University of Notre Dame this past weekend to see what could be done about the general pervasive dullness that so bedevils this great nation of ours—the greatest nation on earth, I’m told.

Because the memory of those who attended is likely to fail for several reasons (and one in particular), and because rumors of “civil capitulation,” “rampant wide-spread sobriety,” and other violations of the Front Porch Code of Conduct are already circulating in northwest Indiana, parts of lower Michigan, and eastern Illinois, with the possibility of massive infections occurring in Chicago and Milwaukee (whence some FPR readers came—and whither they returned much improved), I hereby commit to writing a faithful account of the principal events of the conference—lest The Porch suffer any apostasy or slander.

The action, nearly tragic, was set in motion by the hubris of Jeff “Nancy Boy” Polet. The members of his panel were perturbed enough at him for arriving five minutes before their session was over, but their moods darkened even more at the sight of his tripping into the room because a ripple in the carpet caught his golf spikes. And in the ensuing few minutes during which he attempted to deliver his paper, which he’d obviously forgotten to bring with him, he affected to speak from a note card that, on closer inspection, turned out to be a score card—curious behavior that at least went some distance in explaining why, in an address putatively devoted to the radical politics and confused ecclesiology of some obscure hog-farmer lawyer from the plains, Nancy Boy, flushed and furious, kept uttering, tourette’s-style, the number “97.”

Uncomfortable being around any behavior conducive to profanity, I quickly rushed out for the five o’clock mass, looking neither to the right, where a pub oozed Front-Porch groupies, nor to the left, where the Irish Dance Team had gathered to welcome home former member and native son James Matthew Wilson. When, breathless, I arrived at prayers I fixed my gaze with attention and devotion upon the cross above me and meditated so fervently upon the dolorous passion of Our Lord that I lost all track of time.

But I came to myself at about 11:00 p.m. and departed the darkened and stately ancient pile thirsty to do good in the world. As under the vigilant gaze of Our Lady I perambulated the honored walks of that revered institution, I thought I heard a noise not altogether familiar to me–but then not entirely unknown either. Was it the obscurity of the light from the new moon? The darkness of the campus? Be it so; I cannot say, but I heard and thought I saw several giggling creatures scamper out from under one of those majestic conifers suggestive of the very cedars of the Eternal City itself.

And then methought I saw a man walking calmly in the other direction, a man not great of stature, to be sure, but then not without dignity either, a man, indeed, very like a political theorist. “Perpetual and restless desire of pom girl after pom girl, that ceaseth only in death,” I thought I heard him muttering. “Hobbes, O Hobbes! Ye were right after all!”

I followed him unseen as far as I could until I remembered a promise I’d made the West Virginia contingent.

The blue smoke curling out from under the hotel room door was rather thick, but as I entered the room I was able at length to make out definite shapes. If you have seen him or seen pictures of him you can imagine my surprise at finding out that Mark Mitchell’s neatly-clipped hair turned out actually to be a wig. His natural hair is a wild tangle of goth-black dreadlocks that, when shaken loose, unleash the more—how shall I say?—Rastafarian side of his personality. “This is one mellow conference we’re having,” he said. “One mellow conference.”

Then I saw a certain FPR groupie slumped over a turntable on which spun Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits. I won’t reveal the groupie’s name, but let me just say that “Nate Poriger,” as I shall call him, though he is generous with the bourbon whiskey, has an unnervingly special place in his heart for black lace stockings—on whose legs I leave it to others to speculate.

Manilow gave way to the Stylistics, whereupon I heard what sounded like the inebriate caterwauling of a woman in her fifties. I went to investigate. It turned out to be the inebriate caterwauling of a woman in her fifties. She was a bit zaftig in the low moonlight, dressed in mom-jeans and a University of Rochester sweatshirt. My mind was not as clear as it might have been had I not been breathing the sweet air of Mitchell’s hotel room, but I think this woman was saying—slurring, rather—“Where’s Bill? They said Bill Kauffman would be here! Don’t you remember, Billy-Boy? Those walks along the Genesee River? Willy junior needs you and so do I! Bill Kauffman, you come out here, you gunky!”

I put my arm around the shoulder of this poor broken creature and escorted her to the nearest mega-church. The hour was late, but Pastor Chad (who is preaching a series entitled “Winning Big-Time in Life!”) greeted us with a toothy white smile and a pamphlet. Soon “Wanda,” as I shall call her, was feeling much better, and so I left her in more capable—and, if my eyes did not deceive me, more probing—hands.

The hour was late, so I repaired to my cardboard box at the homeless shelter, drank a pint of tap water, and closed my eyes. I would need my wits about me the next day should certain members of the commentoriate show up to the FPR session.

At 3:00 a.m. I woke to the sound of what must have been about ten thousand voices, maybe more, singing “Onward, Krustian Soldiers!” I arose and greeted this army of unexpected and adoring fans and, after signing autographs (on pizza boxes, whiskey labels, bare shoulders—you name it), I intuited immediately a logistical problem that the conference coordinators would face later that day.

By 8:00 a.m. the coordinators had cancelled all afternoon sessions. Because the Fighting Irish were scheduled to lose in another city that Saturday, procuring the football stadium for the FPR session was a snap. By noon the band was playing (they’d flown back), the stadium was filling, and dozens of airplanes trailing their banners were droning and buzzing high above:

“Sabin’s Religious Kitsch Lowest Prices.”

“Learn Schelling @ U of Cheeks.”

“Empedocles’ Discount Philosophical Realism.”

“Luke’s Tiny Truth Shoppe.”

There were several near-collisions in the blue serene above South Bend, but Our Lady and Interstate Cheese Sauce seemed to be keeping watch over the pilots that day.

At last the awaited moment arrived. Anamarie sang the National Anthem—beautifully, I might add—and then Dr. Patrick Deneen stepped to the podium. In the midst of a rousing speech about the intermediary space between the public and private spheres (a space he called the “front porch”), several members of the Econ Department at Georgetown stood and opened fire on him. Lucky for him economists are as accurate with rifles as they are with their economic predictions, and Deneen escaped unharmed—whether because of the protecting veil of St. Mary or Cheese Sauce became a matter of dispute among the groupies. The assassins were quickly apprehended—they don’t run well, either—and escorted out, but it took the National Guard almost an hour to restore order. “Nate Poriger” stood and shouted, “We don’t want no gal-danged [that modification was for you, Mom] National Guard. We want the Local Guard,” by which some took him to mean “the Local Guard in black silk stockings.”

Then “Nate” was also escorted out—with a Blood Alcohol Level, I’m told, thrice the legal limit even in Catholic enclaves.

Next Dr. James Matthew Wilson stepped to the podium, but he was only a few sentences into a grave paragraph on the Stoics when his daughter walked up and raised her arms to him. He picked her up, gave her a kiss, and introduced her. A sentimental “awe!” arose from an adoring and smitten crowd, whereupon Wilson made the mistake of asking this savage little beauty if she had anything to say to the assembly. Into the microphone, for all to hear, in the cutest voice ever to penetrate the ear of so large a body, she said, “Father, please don’t go to the tavern tonight.”

Amid the uproarious laughter, as if on cue, the Irish Bikini Team parachuted onto the fifty-yard line and landed in a formation that, most scholars agreed, spelled the words “Wilson’s Harem” in Latin.

Soon the crowd was shouting “Jester! Jester! Jester!”

So, humbly, I arose.

Once the thunderous applause, led by a now-flushed yet strangely calm “Wanda,” subsided (this took about forty minutes), I unfolded my script, cleared my throat, and indulged a sardonic grin. But, in a moment of weakness, I dispensed with the advertised speech that had drawn so many of the FPR faithful out that day (“Sundry Limericks, Jokes, and the Butts Thereof”) and, for fear that I needed something funnier, made the first grave mistake of my life—a mistake that nearly cost me my life: I began reading verbatim from the comments of Ryan Davidson, Septeus7, George Haiduke, and Robin Goodfellow.

The attending physician in the emergency room said it wasn’t the boos that did me in so much as the empty Guinness bottles hurled angrily at my head. One, he said, nailed me dangerously near the temple. “The temple of the Holy Ghost,” he added. I nodded and said, “or ‘Spirit.’” He advised against any future use of such oratorical strategies as might displease an audience of good sense. “Hold fast to what is good,” he said and was gone, his white coattails swaying behind him in the still and sterile air.

Nurse Schönentusche took my vitals and left me to rest.

By six o’clock I was feeling much better—indeed, thirsty once again to do good in the world—so I left the hospital, a.m.a., and met the FPR crowd in a local pub, where we drank deeply and watched the Irish snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Nancy was back in his spikes but even more furious than before. “A hundred and four!” he kept spitting bitterly into successive tumblers of Laphroaig as the pink fishnets in his eyes turned redder and redder until, at last, the funereal curtains of his eyelids closed for the night and Islay’s own sweet oblivion obliterated the memory of eight snowmen, six triple bogeys, and one failed pass at the drink-cart girl.

I, the Bar Jester, write this with my own hand and attest to its accuracy and inerrancy.

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