Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Column 614
Are the WDF and ADO changing their names?

So, the PDC World Cup is over.  Congratulations to the winning Australian team of Damon Heta and the guy from ZZ Top.

Now, as we plod through months of less exciting darts leading up to the World Championship in December, we can return to rumors and historic events about which today’s new crop of players should be aware.

In the Rumor Department it has been reported that the WDF and ADO are changing their acronyms to WTF and DOA.  I have been unable to independently corroborate this although it is probably true, and certainly appropriate.

Then, there is the story of the man who threw perfect darts…

Nigel Brown hailed from Hawkshead in the UK’s beautiful Lake District.  He wasn’t a tournament competitor but was well known countrywide in the 1940s (around the same time as Jim Pike).  Brown made frequent appearances at exhibitions and was renowned for his uncanny, almost savant-like, ability to hit the bullseye (this was long before machine darts manufacturers invented a bull as big as a bus).

Never did he miss.

One day he was recognized in Tenerife in the Canary Islands.  A man named Mateo Garcia asked him to do an exhibition.  Brown respectfully declined.  “I’m on holiday with friends,” he explained.  But Garcia persisted, offered a tidy sum and Brown acquiesced.  They agreed to meet that evening at a pub called Pub-Tenerife (today quite famous in part due to Brown’s once having visited).

As the story goes the evening was extraordinario.  For an hour or more Brown pounded the bullseye at will, mostly red. 20 bulls.  50.  200!  Never a miss.  Perfección!

Until…

One of Brown’s darts with their red, white and blue Union Jack flights deflected and landed just a smidgen outside the green bit, landing slightly left in the 12 (hugging the wire).  For a moment the large crowd was uncertain if it was a miss, but it was. A hush, then murmurs and then chaos ensued as Brown yanked the errant dart from the board and erupted in anger.

“Fuck!  Fuck!  Fuck!” Brown screamed as he slammed through the crowd and exited the pub. “Fuck this!  Fuck Spain!  Fuck darts!” he exclaimed over and over from the pavement outside.  Then as dozens of stunned patrons watched, with all his might he threw the dart that missed into the sky and stormed off.

While it may be said that “what goes up must come down” this red, white and blue flighted dart never did.  Maybe it stuck in a tree. Weird, but apparently true.  From that day forward Nigel Brown was never seen in public again.  Only his reputation lives on.  Check Patrick Chaplin’s website.

One of the people who observed this event (and who related it to me) was the Old Dart Coach, Howie Reed.  “The Brits can be a bit nuts sometimes,” he said.  “So can the French.”

He then told me about his flight back to the States.  Remember, this was in the late 1940s and smoking was still allowed on planes.  Dogs too, if they were small.  And behaved.

“I was in a two-seat row by the window.  Seated next to me was this French lady holding a little dog named Pierre.  We were cruising the clouds somewhere over the Atlantic and I lit up.”

The dog began to cough.

“S’il vous plait, Monsieur.  Could you put out your cigar?  It’s choking ma petite Pierre.”

The lady was quite attractive so those of you who know Howie will not be surprised at his response.  “Are you married?  Have you heard of the Mile-High Club?”

The pretty lady responded, “How should I say?  If you don’t extinguish your cigar, I must throw it out zee window.”

And of course, Howie shot back, “Mademoiselle, be forewarned, should you touch my cigar – and I’m not talking that cigar, although I do encourage you – I will grab your mutt by the throat and toss him into the clouds.” For emphasis, “I blew a puff straight into the dog’s face.”

What ensued is exactly what you might imagine!

The lady (it turned out her name was Monique Dubois) grabbed Howie’s stogie (“a fucking Montecristo!”) and threw it out the window.  In a flash, Howie kept his promise and sent Pierre right behind it.

“It was crazy,” Howie said.  “Air was rushing in, or maybe it was out, the window. Papers were flying about.  Momentarily the plane became unsteady.  Drinks spilled.  Stewardesses appeared from nowhere.  Passengers were yelling.”

“Monique was screaming.  She cried.  She was inconsolable, weeping non-stop for the remainder of the flight.” As Howie remembers it, “Well, I did get to hug her a lot and but that’s all I got.”

As they deplaned at McCarran airport in Las Vegas, Howie’s hometown, Howie graciously helped steady Monique as they walked together down the steps of the plane, continuing to apologize and console her.

And that’s when it caught their eye!

Suddenly, Monique began to leap for joy, smothering Howie with kisses.  “Je te pardonne!  Je te pardonne!  I forgive you!  I forgive you!”

On the tail of the plane, hanging on for dear life, was Pierre!

And can you believe it?  In his mouth he was holding Nigel Brown’s dart!

From the Field,

Dartoid

Monday, May 16, 2022
Column 613
Enough is enough is ENOUGH!

I am running this column again because some people have asked me why I have blocked them…

Darts and politics don’t mix!  Not in my world anyway…

“For some time, I have been working on a column, struggling…” I wrote to a friend recently.

Writer’s block?  No.  I never have a problem putting words to paper.

It’s worse…

Although I don’t throw competitively much these days most of my closest friendships date to the many years I was deeply involved – four or five nights a week at league or blind draws, weekends at tournaments.

What I cherished most during all those years was the one constant: it was always about the darts.

We could and did talk to death every conceivable darts-related subject.

We didn’t know what each other did for a living.

We didn’t know who was rich or poor.

We certainly didn’t know anything about each other’s politics.

We didn’t care!

Darts was about darts.  And beer.

This was special.  We had the sport in common and that was pure.  That was enough.

Facebook and the past 10-12 years of political division have changed all of this.  I hate it.

Today, I will begin what I have resisted for so long, not wanted to do.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions.  But the only opinions I care about from darts friends are opinions about darts.

Effective today, any “friend” who shares a political opinion (whether I agree or not) which shows up on my newsfeed or in any darts forum to which I belong will be unfriended or blocked or whatever.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH OF ALL THIS HATRED!

From the field,

Dartoid

Thursday, April 14, 2022
Column 612
The girls had WILLIES!

The guy’s name was Nigel or Neil or something similar, not that his name matters.  He was the only foreigner, a Brit, employed among the large staff of botanists at the famous Nong Nooch Tropical Garden near Bang Saray, just east of Pattaya, Thailand.  He was my savior, or so I thought.

I’d been everywhere – in and out of the scummiest pubs imaginable, following false lead after false lead, looking for a board – and I’d struck out completely.  So, I decided to blow off the darts and take in the tourist attractions.  I decided, just this once, to take in a foreign land the way normal people do.

To Nong Nooch I headed.  The tourist guides tout the botanical gardens here as among the most spectacular in the world.  I’d be hard pressed to argue the point.  The 900 hundred acres of orchid and cactus gardens, artificial lakes and topiaries in every shape imaginable (including some quite Freudian) are out of this world.

It was as I was leaving Nong Nooch that I spotted Nigel or Neil.  Immediately I zoned in on his blond hair and his unmistakably British accent.  I thrust out my hand to shake his and said, “Damn, am I glad to meet you… nice flowers, but where’s the darts?”  The way I figured it, this Brit, probably weaned on the sport, had to know where I could get a game.

He recommended a pub called the Green Bottle in Pattaya.  In fact, we arranged to meet later that evening for a beer and to throw a few games.  He suggested I make a pit stop along the way to catch a show at a cabaret called Tiffany’s.  I was thrilled.  Beer.  Girls.  Darts.  A hell of a night lay ahead.

Now Pattaya is different.  A former fishing town turned major tourist resort, Pattaya at night exudes a weird mix of 1960’s Daytona Beach casual and 1990’s 42nd Street raunch.  Into the night I headed…

I rolled into Tiffany’s at 7:00 p.m.  I managed to get a third-row seat to enjoy the glitz and the song and the dance of 60 of the most gorgeous girls in all of Siam. Wrong!  Tiffany’s turned out to be a transvestite cabaret.  The beautiful girls had willies!  Yuck and thank you very much, Nigel or Neil or whatever your name is.

I left Tiffany’s early for the Green Bottle so I could get in some good warm up before my new British buddy arrived.  After steering me to a transvestite club I figured he deserved to be pounded good.  After hunting for the Green Bottle for almost three hours, finally finding a parking spot, and walking in to be greeted by an Elvis impersonator with a Thai accent – and absolutely no darts setup – I was committed to stabbing my new-found friend in his puny Winston Churchill willy with my Hammerheads.  He never did show up.

It was about midnight when I found my way to the center of the Pattaya darts scene, the Texan Inn at 219 Sayyamato.  The place is a small restaurant that doubles as the town’s only darts accessories shop and headquarters for the local eight team league.  There’s just one board but it’s set up fine.  There’s a Monday night Luck of the Draw tournament.  League play is on Tuesdays.  I tossed a few and headed on.

Now, as I lie awake in the wee hours of the morning pondering this oddball day – bushes sculpted into phallic symbols, boys with boobs and an endless search for a bar with no board – it occurs to me that I have just learned again something I already knew very well.

And that is: if it looks like a Brit, walks like a Brit and talks like a Brit, it’s probably a Brit… but that doesn’t mean it knows shit about darts.

From the Field,

Dartoid

Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Column 611
Darts in Red Square (or FUCK YOU, Putin!)

With all that is happening in the world right now (FUCK YOU, Putin!) it seems an appropriate time to revisit the 32 days I spent riding a bike through Russia.  It was a pain in the butt.  Literally…

What was originally to be a week-long Guinness-tasting holiday in Dublin with three buddies somehow turned into a month-long, 2,000-mile, bike ride from Dublin to Moscow. Don’t ask me how this happened.  I no longer remember myself.

What I do remember is that I was assured it would be “a kick-ass month to remember” and that I would have more than ample opportunity to check out the pubs and the local brews – and throw some darts along the route – from Dublin, through England, Holland, Germany, the former East Germany, Poland, Belarus, and across Russia on into Moscow.

Well, MY FRIENDS ARE MORONS!  The truth is that I never had enough energy to do much more than shove carbohydrates into my face and crash on the floor at the end of each day’s ride.  I can barely lift my throwing arm, let alone sit on a barstool.  My hair looks like, well – like hair looks when it’s been stuffed into a plastic helmet for 32 days.  AND – worst of all (this is REALLY BAD) – I possess absolute proof that sitting on a bike for 10 hours a day will turn that most vital of male organs into a soft-tip dart.

Now that the hell-ride is over, I have managed to find a darts bar in Moscow, and it’s worth a visit.  It’s called the Armadillo and it’s located adjacent to Red Square at Khrustal’nyi per., 1, Building 86.  The outside of the joint is a mess due to construction but the inside ain’t half bad.

While the Armadillo’s owners are striving to create a casual American ambiance, they have a ways to go. The place is safe though (they have their own security) and the service is easily a notch or two above similar establishments where Russia’ s new capitalists are still unaware of the correlation between the tightness of a waitresses’ sweater, her smile and the size of a tip.  The prices are modest.  A beer will run you about $5, which, for Moscow, is quite good – but the locals drink nothing but vodka.  The fare in this American-like pub is, of course, Mexican – but it still beats the hell out of Russian staples such as Borscht, bread, cabbage and potatoes.

The Armadillo is far from the nicest pub in Moscow (check out the bar at the Metropole Hotel if you want to see an amazing place – the working-girls here are like right out of Playboy), but it’s got atmosphere, live music on the weekends (Country Juan and the Comrades, I think) and a relatively young, up market crowd. And, as noted earlier, the place is safe – which is actually quite remarkable in today’s Russia, where the local Mafia is very prevalent in establishments of this type.

Most amazing of all, and most important of all, is that the place has FOUR dart boards.  They are surrounded by pools tables (which I suppose, however misdirected, is the one American bar decorating touch that the Russians have fully emulated).

So, I ordered a bottle of peppered vodka and threw a bit of practice.  Poured some more vodka and shot some pool with my biking buddies while Country Juan and the Comrades did their thing in the background. I munched a couple of Russian/Mexican/American burritos and washed them down with still more vodka.

I then headed into Red Square with my friends where we wisely traded all but our underwear to some guy with no teeth for Hard Rock Cafe tee shirts, even though there is no Hard Rock Cafe in Moscow.

I’m now exactly four hours into the flight home and have ALREADY intersected my original point of departure – Dublin – from more than a month’s worth of hell ago.  I’m hung over.  I can’t feel my ass.  My appendage no longer functions.  And my favorite clothes are tooting around Moscow on some homeless guy’s back.

Yep, there’s a moral here somewhere.

That, I’m afraid, is that among morons, I’m the MAN.

And again, FUCK YOU, Putin!

From the Field,

Dartoid

Monday, February 7, 2022
Column 610
A Tribute to Romy – by Mrs. Dartoid

Twelve years is a long time by any standard.  It can see a child from prepubescence through adulthood, a young adult from college through marriage and a family of their own.

Twelve years by measures of the heart can be a flash of lightning, briefly illuminating the whole sky – and then gone.

Romy was with us for twelve short years.  She came to be here through a happy, serendipitous accident.  And during her reign as Princess Romy from Romania, she stole our hearts forever.

That she came to be with us was against all odds from the start.  We do not know the facts of her birth, or the date.  We don’t know if she had littermates.  We don’t know why she wasn’t wanted.

This is what we do know: on a subzero night, in the middle of a fierce blizzard in Galati, Romania, someone left a tiny puppy in a covered cardboard box, in a snowbank outside the gate of ROLDA, the Romanian League in Defense of Animals.  She was found when staff came to unlock the sanctuary in the morning – shivering, hungry and frightened.  They took her inside to feed her, warm her and wrap her in blankets.  She was too young to have been taken from her mother.  She did not know how to drink water from a cup.

What Romy did know was that she was going to survive.  She was a force of nature with an indomitable spirit.  When she met Paul later that day, she ran to him and bit the toe of his shoe.  He picked her up to hug her and it was love at first bite.  I received an emailed photo from him, holding her on his lap, with the simple caption, “Can I keep her?”

My answer was, “Of course.  If you can figure out how to bring her home, she will be here forever.”

It took the help of many to accomplish this.  She had to have shots and be microchipped.  She was treated for fleas and ticks.  A special Puppy Passport was issued, and a bag of travel supplies was assembled.  A pet carrier was purchased.  And special arrangements were made with various airlines – from Bucharest, where Paul was now waiting for Romy’s delivery, all the way through Germany and on to Chicago and finally, Tampa.  She needed her own ticket to fly on the plane with him.  She would not have survived the long trip in cargo hold.

It took almost nine hours to drive from Galati to Bucharest with Romy.  There was another blizzard, so it took twice the normal time.  But she made it.

And the long trip home began.  She attracted attention wherever she went.  Paul had to take her out of her little carrier to go to the bathroom (in the men’s room at the airport and the bathroom on the plane) and then, clean up after her.  He fed her bits of food from tiny cans and gave her drinks of water from his fingers.  She hated her crate.  She just wanted to be held.

When they landed in Tampa just before midnight on February 8, 2010, I was there waiting.  Paul opened the carrier and Romy stumbled out – and promptly tipped over.  I scooped her up to kiss her and she bit my chin.  I like to think that in that moment, she knew she was safe at last.

We brought her home to meet her new big brother, Bentley.

The next morning, she met her new vet.  She weighed three pounds.  

She got more shots and a new chip – and treatment for worms began.  For the rest of her life, Romy would have the very best veterinary care.  And we began our own exciting journey – to see what kind of dog she would become.

We decided that, given her total lack of control over her destiny at the beginning of her life, we would let her tell us and show us what she wanted now.  And we did that – often with hilarious results.  She went through many phases of development.  There was the Romy Moving and Storage phase, during which she would move various objects from one place to another.  We would find throw pillows from the family room in our bedroom.  Rugs from the entrance would end up in the family room.  She even moved her tiny bed from the master bedroom to the living room.  This phase lasted for several months, until she lost interest in moving things.

Bentley taught her how to be a dog, how to chase, bark and play.  He taught her how to drink from a bowl and go to the door when she had to go out.  He taught her to sit when she came back inside so we could clean her feet and give her a tiny bite of kibble.  She was so smart.  She learned everything fast. 

Over the years she ‘told’ us when she didn’t like a groomer.  Or a pet sitter.  We always listened to her, because she was always right.

When we lost Bentley two years later to cancer, Romy went with us to interview every breeder and every dog we found who needed a new home.  She had the final vote, always.

She wasn’t certain when we got Marky, a six-week-old English cream golden retriever, and for the first week she ignored her new little sister.  But Marky was nothing if not persistent.  And it didn’t take long for Romy to fall in love… 

For the rest of their years together (almost ten in all) they were inseparable.  I have so many indelible memories that I will carry with me: the way she would just sit and stare at me… the feel of the soft fur on her tummy when I rubbed it… the way she would check on me during the night with soft peeps to wake me… the little chirps she would make in the morning – letting me know it was time to fix her breakfast… the way she ‘talked’ to me when she wanted her dinner… her excitement whenever I returned from a trip to the grocery, however short it was… her happy little face waiting for me at the laundry room door when I opened it.

And then, on a warm sunny day in mid-May of 2021, a couple hours after Saturday breakfast, we saw a lump on her back left leg.  It was the size of a Ping-Pong ball and it had appeared so fast that we thought it was some kind of venomous bite.  We called the vet.  They scheduled her for surgery on Monday and we dropped her off early.  They removed the lump, told us it was probably a mast cell tumor, but they needed the pathology results to be certain.  We waited for two weeks to get those results.

When they finally called, the news was not good.  It was an aggressive mast cell cancer and they had not been able to get it all.  Because of where it was, they recommended amputating her leg and putting her on strong chemo drugs.  If we did not do this, they gave her 2-4 months to live.  If we did as they recommended, there were no guarantees that her life would be much longer.  We took a week to make the decision I had already made in my heart.  We contacted vets Paul had worked with over the years and asked for their advice.  Without exception, they told us to put her on a low dose of prednisone for the cancer, a pain pill (gabapentin) to keep her comfortable and feed her a diet high in fiber and Omega 3.  Green beans and pink salmon became her evening meal.

We continued her normal routine so she would feel secure.  We gave her constant love and attention.  We let her tell us when she was ready for bed at night – and she felt right at home bossing us around!  She got to go on one last holiday to St. Augustine, enjoyed one last visit from Jami, our daughter, and one last New Year’s celebration.  But we knew, as we watched the months tick by, that the inevitable was just around the corner.  We had turned the 2-4 month prognosis into 8 months.  That was our gift to her.  And her gift to us was soldiering on to reach this point.

We had promised her, and each other, that if she reached a point where she could no longer stand, we would let her go.  That moment finally came.

On a cold and rainy day, January 25, 2022, Romy took her last trip to the vet.  We sent her over the Rainbow Bridge, where she would be free of pain at last.

The night Romy left us for the last time, Marky quit guarding Paul’s pants at bedtime, something she had done since puppyhood.  She knew that Romy would no longer try to take them.

The day we took Marky with us to pick up Romy’s ashes and bring her home for the last time, Marky was so quiet and sad.

Life goes on now… as if the past twelve years has been a brilliant illusion.

Romy sits in my office in her little urn, watching me as I type this.  And I whisper to her…

“Godspeed my tiny angel.  Run and play with your big brother Ben.”

Friday, January 7, 2022
Column 609
My dart room is under ATTACK!

I used to throw league with a great player from Houston named Dave “Buddha” Fasnacht.  He helped me with my stance and my grip and my mental game – and he gave me some advice that I’ve been trying to follow ever since.  According to Buddha, I needed to get serious about my practice routine.  This meant I needed to hang a board in my living room.

Now there are spouses and there are spouses and I have one of the best.  My wife understands my love of the sport.  She tolerates my late nights out and my early morning returns, smelling of smoke and stale beer.  She understands more about strategy and out shot percentages than most of the people I shoot against.  What my wife also knows, and she knows this without any doubt whatsoever, is that she doesn’t want a dart board hanging in her living room.  Imagine that.

So, when my wife came up with the idea to redecorate the garage, ostensibly so I could have a “nice place, close to the living room” to practice, I leaped at the opportunity.

Together we headed to the paint store to pick out colors for the walls, the ceiling and the floor.  My wife chose “Mild Wild,” a sort of swimming pool blue.  Next, I was constructing utility shelves.  Four of them.  Bolt by bolt.  Two hours each.  I made friends with spiders.  Patched holes in the plaster.  Mopped up oil.  Washed paint out of my beard.

In two weeks, the project was complete.  And it looked damn good.  After years of marriage my wife finally had a clean garage, and I was the proud owner of a powder blue dart room equipped with everything a serious darter could possibly desire.  A new board.  Special lighting.  Three trash cans.  Two bicycles.  And a Plymouth Horizon.  Yep, while my wife watches the nightly news from the comfort of our living room, I can now throw darts from the front seat of my car.

My friend Tommy Molina stopped by for a few beers and to check out my new set up.  We ran through our usual routine.  A little cricket.  Some ’01.  It was about midnight when Tommy bet me ten bucks he could pick off an ant that was sniffing its way across the number four pie. Three darts.  Three misses.  Beer money for me.

As a second ant appeared near the bottom of the board I stepped to the line.  Told Tommy I’d stick the little guy when he crossed into the double three.  A tough shot any day, even without the ant.

The ant stopped just below the wire.  We waited.  We waited longer.  We grabbed a couple beers…

And, damn, if there now wasn’t another ant wandering below the nineteen.  A couple more back up by the number four pie.  A few on the scoreboard.  Dozens near a (previously unnoticed) pile of sawdust in the corner by the utility shelves.  My Mild Wild dart room was under ATTACK!

The exterminating company has just pulled out of my driveway.  “It just like big game hunting, but on a smaller scale,” the guy told me before blasting eleven colonies of some three thousand carpenter ants each.  He then presented me with a $580 bill.

For this, plus the cost of paint, pain and suffering I could have finished off the basement. What worries me now is that my wife tells me this is our next project.

From the Field,

Dartoid

Wednesday, NOvember 25, 2021
Column 608
All fables have a moral (I suspect John Lowe will agree!)

Once upon a time there was a monkey.  His name was Mickey.  He was a dumb monkey but, he was not the president of a country.

Mickey the monkey lived in Africa.

The other monkeys ate coconuts.  They knew where to find them.  They climbed trees to get them.  They used rocks to crack them open so they could eat them.  Sometimes they even played catch with them for fun.  The other monkeys knew lots about coconuts.

But Mickey knew nothing.

One day Mickey got an idea.  He decided to write a book about coconuts.  He planned to call it Coconuts by Mickey, make many clams, and laze away his days in a fancy home high in a shady tree.

Mickey traveled around the jungle and asked the other monkeys what they knew.  He wrote what they told him on palm fronds, made copies, and set up a shop in a clearing on the edge of a small pond where the other monkeys came to drink the cool water and wile away the day with their friends Petunia the pretty parrot and Harlan the hedgehog.

The first day Mickey sold four of his books.

The next day he sold just two.

Sales continued to languish for days.  Something was wrong and Mickey began to worry.  His dream of a cushy retirement was in jeopardy.  Mickey was surrounded by hundreds of his frond tomes but for some reason the monkeys weren’t buying.

Late one afternoon after the monkeys hopped on the vine highway and swung home for supper and just before nighttime enveloped the forest and Latrell the lion began to prowl, Mickey approached Petunia and Harlan…

“Hey guys,” he asked, “by chance have the monkeys told you why they aren’t buying my book?”

“Why certainly,” replied Petunia the parrot, “They think its doody.”

Mickey couldn’t believe his ears.

“That’s right mate,” said Harlan the hedgehog, “Your book is rubbish.  You don’t know sod all about coconuts.” (Harlan was originally from Bournemouth.)

“But I asked the other monkeys!” offered an exasperated Mickey.  “What am I going to do?  I worked hard and invested many clams.”

“Yo!  Ax a frickin’ expert ta write da frickin’ book ya dumb frickin’ primate – and den ya jus’ might make som’ frickin’ clams!” roared Latrell the lion as he bounded from the adrenalin grass on the side of the clearing.

“Please don’t eat me!” pleaded Mickey.  “Just tell me what to do.  I’ll pay!”

“Yo!” said Latrell, “da monkeys, dey’ll dig deep if da book don’t be cheap.  Ya’ll jus a dumb monkey.  Find ya ass a ‘telligent monkey dat actually know somethin’ ‘bout da coconuts.  Get his monkey ass ta do da work.  Toss the cat a clam and den keep mos’ da clams for ya own self.”

So, Mickey travelled around the jungle again and found Moeshe.

Moeshe was one of the monkey elders.  He was a real macher in the monkey community and highly respected.  Once he had even been the jungle coconut cracking champion.  All the monkeys looked up to Moeshe.

Mickey offered Moeshe a deal.  It seemed like a good deal.  Moeshe agreed to write down all that he knew in return for one clam for every book that Mickey might eventually sell.

For months, Moeshe slaved away.  When he was finished, he gave his manuscript to Mickey.  Mickey made copies and then set up his little shop again in the clearing.  He priced the new book at twenty clams.

What a difference!

Whereas Coconuts by Mickey was a dismal failure, sales of Coconuts by Moeshe took off immediately.  Mickey sold dozens of Moeshe’s book and dutifully paid him one clam each.

“What a smart monkey I am!” thought Mickey, as he began to make plans for his tree-top retirement retreat.

But Moeshe was smarter.  He was much smarter…

Moeshe began to wonder why he, the smart monkey who had all the knowledge and had done all the work, should receive just one clam for each of his books while Mickey the dumb monkey pocketed nineteen clams.  It wasn’t fair!  It wasn’t right!

So, Moeshe went back to work and wrote an entirely new book.

He made copies, set up his own little shop in the clearing right next to Mickey’s stand, and began to sell his new book.  He called it Kibitzing about Coconuts with Moeshe and he priced it at thirty clams, fifty percent more than the book Mickey was hawking.

The monkeys and even many of the other animals swarmed Moshe’s shop, ignoring Mickey right next door, and in just days Moeshe’s first printing sold out.  Moeshe reprinted again and again.

The rest is history…

Moeshe the smart monkey who knew everything about coconuts lives a life of luxury with Petunia the pretty parrot in a lavish home atop the tallest tree in the forest.

Mickey the dumb monkey who knew nothing about coconuts spent years trying to recover his investment in the stock of his own book and Moeshe’s first book but failed miserably.  He briefly rented a flat in the crook of a tree from Harlan the hedgehog.  In the end he was eaten by Latrell the lion – a fate he deserved.

The moral (all fables must have one):

Buy John Lowe’s new book!  He’s the real deal, the Moshe of darts.  Unlike many of the sniveling, whining, cry-baby professionals today, he’s been a class act from the beginning.  Order John’s new book, The Nine Dart Legend, at jloweprodart@aol.com and receive it, signed, in time for Christmas.

Alternatively, if you want to read some “Micky-crap” – Google “Dartoid, book” and purchase one of mine.

From the Field,

Dartoid