I recall the similarities I was supposed to share with Sir Duds.

1. We’re both short. (Check)
2. We’re both funny. (The jury’s still out on me)
3. We both play jazz piano. (True, though he’s better)
4. We both dated women taller than us. (True. Before I got married that is)

Moore was a fairly well kept secret stateside during the 1960’s, but a national treasure in Great Britain, either with the comedy quartet Beyond the Fringe, along with his comedy partner, Peter Cook, or heading up his jazz trio. It really wasn’t until he teamed with Bo Derek in 1978’s “10” that Moore became a household name in America. From there he went on to earn an Oscar nomination for his performance in “Arthur.”

Lovingly referred to as the Cuddly Dudley or The Sex Thimble, perhaps it was his musical skills that attracted the ladies. Here he is performing with his jazz trio.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sadly, Moore suffered four minor strokes and ultimately battled progressive supranuclear palsy, a degenerative brain disorder. His exit from this world was too soon – just 66 years old. But we prefer to remember the lovable Dudley and the truly gifted musician who had more laughs to illicit and more music to play.

Unger Pains. Randall's legendary performance in long lost Unger Games.

LOS ANGELES (Special to TSD AfterDark) Lost in a dank, dusty warehouse in Studio City, California, a 16mm film is being restored. It was found by a night watchman on March 8th and handed over to film historian, Alfred Keller. It is believed to be the only remaining copy of an episode of The Odd Couple that was never aired. Entitled, The Unger Games, the controversial episode depicted Felix Unger (played by the late Tony Randall) tormenting his roommate Oscar (played by veteran actor Jack Klugman) with a meatball hero sandwich after Oscar lost his wallet during a night of tomfoolery with his sports writer colleagues.

A hungry Oscar returns home to an empty refrigerator and unable to purchase food. Randall’s Felix character sees the opportunity to transform the sloppy, unkempt Oscar to a refined man of elegance and cleanliness. That’s where Randall’s epic performance kicks in, and a newly seen sinister side of Felix Unger is revealed to an unsuspecting audience.

“Oscar! You can have this delicious meatball hero if you change your sloppy ways forever, and…kill Mr. Moretti in apartment 12. The man made an insulting remark about my Veal Saltimbocca.” Felix proclaims from the shadows of his well appointed kitchen, holding a meat cleaver.

The show’s producer, Garry Marshall  was stunned upon seeing the footage for the first time in nearly forty years and claimed Randall’s performance ran the gamut of emotions.

“Tony’s unedited, spellbinding, nay, dizzying soliloquies had us all on our heels. What manic bliss he gave us that day. All of us, Jack included, could only sit and watch, as we were witness to acting history.” the 77 year old television veteran said.

The script, written by Randall himself, was filmed on November 20, 1972. It was set to air the following January, but the network deemed The Unger Games too intense for television. Even by today’s standard’s, the dark, offbeat episode remains profoundly disturbing.

“They say tragedy plus time equals comedy,” added Marshall. “But not enough time has passed to get a chuckle out of this episode. It’s distressing to say the least.”

The Unger Games needs the approval of the Randall estate to be included in a planned Odd Couple DVD box set due in October.

Load It Up! Taft liked his fried foods.

WASHINGTON DC (Special to TSD AfterDark) Republican William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States, was the heaviest president the nation has known. Weighing in at an estimated 350 pounds, the 6 foot tall Taft was a devotee of fried foods and is said to have loved hamburgers later in life. He temporarily abolished the President’s Council on Physical Fitness, using the money instead to purchase lard.

White House chef, Charles W. Latimer worked exclusively for Taft during and after his presidency, and over the course of three months perfected the William Howard Taft Bacon Triple Cheeseburger in 1924. No sitting president tried the sandwich, except for Bill Clinton.

Nearly a pound of fatty, ground chuck is hand pressed into three patties and fried in lard. Meanwhile four large slabs of thick-cut bacon are placed on the griddle and fried to a crisp. Once the ground chuck is at medium, three slices of cheddar cheese are placed on patties and melted. Everything is then layered onto a buttered bun with caramelized onions and mayonnaise.

It is said that Taft demanded one on his deathbed. Happy President’s Day!

Note to Self: Don't finger sync Scriabin.

MOSCOW (Special to TSD AfterDark) In a page torn directly from the world of pop divadom, comes the bizarre saga of renowned concert pianist, Evgeny Zarafiants and his apparent near perfect finger syncing of Etude opus 42, no. 5 in C sharp minor by Alexander Scriabin.

The challenging piece by the Russian composer was penned in the late 1800s, and is rarely played. It became evident to first year piano students Sergei Trotsky and Pavel  Bryzgalov that Zarafiants was finger syncing when he apparently missed a crossover while reaching for an A flat seventh chord as the right hand was playing a descending prometheus scale (whole tone with a one degree altered chromatically). Trotsky fidgeted in his seat and shot a look to Bryzgalov as the two determined something was amiss. The performance was interrupted with whistles and boos, but Zarafiants trudged through the performance, the sweat pouring from his brow, knowing full well the jig was up.

“And it was going so well too.” said Zarafiants. “Then those two bastards caught my minor flub and my life has been a living hell since. Ashlee Simpson and Milli Vanilli have company apparently.”

Con-Fusion? Not according to Ashleigh Carter. She's all about fusion.

ALLENTOWN, PA (Special to TSD AfterDark) Ashleigh Carter, 15, of Allentown, Pennsylvania is confounding friends, family, psychiatrists, clergy and members of the media for what Tiger Beat Magazine® is calling “an unexpected, unprecedented and highly disturbing transformation into a world of staggering sophistication.”

“This just doesn’t happen to young girls, ever.” said Dr. Leonard Heinlein, leader of the psychiatric team studying Carter. “We’re at a complete loss as to why a young lady of fifteen would abandon a world of texting, poorly applied makeup, ending every sentence with a rising inflection and thinking everything that happened before 2005 is gay, then suddenly immerse herself into the harmonically enlightened, melodically challenging, polyrhythmic juggernaut that is fusion jazz. Why? We are just scratching the surface of the teenage female brain. The answers may be decades away.”

Carter accidentally stumbled onto several viral videos of Dirty Loops, the Swedish trio of jazz-rock fusion musicians, famous for taking the nauseating pop catalogues of Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and others and turning them into reharmonized, sonically pleasing, tight arrangements with blistering solos and dynamic vocal stacks. This discovery led Carter to explore the boxes of albums her Uncle Jerry had in his basement – a veritable treasure trove of fusion classics from the likes of Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, Return to Forever, Michal Urbaniak, Herbie Hancock, and Brand X.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“I spent a week downloading like a beast. Then, I was like chillaxin’ yesterday and heard some of McLaughlin with Shakti of off Handful of Beauty. Shit was ill. All the subdivisions and 17 against 11 junk that Zakir Hussain was playing on top of McLaughlin’s scalloped fretboard mastery that totally isn’t gay and stuff.” Carter said. “Then I heard Bill Connors’ solo on Captain Senor Mouse off of Return to Forever’s Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy from ’73 which is like, OMG, ballin’. I know my girls would be all cross-eyed if I laid that altered scale, subdominant hoo hah played by real instruments on ‘em. They already think I’m lemenoxious and told Bobby Jenkins in Mrs. Sigworth’s fifth period algebra class I’m nada lotta.”

Wha? She likes it? Michal Urbaniak's seminal fusion masterpiece.

Carter claims that she will never return to the mind-numbing lyrics, autotuned vocals, and melodically vacant trash that her contemporaries call music.

“Fuck that shit forever.” added Carter. “Besides, I never saw Wayne Shorter pop out of giant eggshell decked out in sparkles as sexually ambiguous chess pieces dance around him, and I guaran-damn-fuckin’-tee you he wouldn’t have learned that in music school.”

I'll Have a Burger with a Side of Anguish Please. The fishing village depicted in the film, Arvid and Bengt.

STOCKHOLM (Special to TSD AfterDark) Burger King’s confounding promotional tie-in with the independent Swedish film, Arvid and Begnt, has fast food lovers scratching their heads.

The low budget drama by up and coming director Olaf Bergstrom, follows the lives of brothers Arvid and Bengt Nykvist as they come to grips with why they’re the only people in their small fishing village who view life in black and white, while everyone else sees in color. Eventually the brothers are overcome by madness and are forced to devour their own organs as dancing demons celebrate their free fall into a hellish abyss.

“That’s some fucked up shit,” said Darnell Overbrook of Chester, Pennsylvania, who recently acquired the third in a series of five glasses depicting scenes from the film. “I got the one where Arvid pulls out his own eye while a diminutive clown laughs in the background.”

Burger King spokesman Greg Malloy explained that the company’s decision for the promotion is consistent with their push for global artistic awareness.

“America is an island in a manner of speaking.” said Malloy. “There’s a big, beautiful world out there where entertainment isn’t just CGI driven special effects, wizards and space creatures with storytelling and acting kicked to the curb. We feel like enjoying a Whopper® with Cheese while contemplating the angst of man in a lonely, Godless universe makes for an enlightening lunch break.”

The promotion will end in twelve long years.

Great Scot! Well, not exactly. Queen watches as one beheading is horribly botched.

LONDON (Special to TSD After Dark) In a horrifying return to days of yore, Queen Elizabeth ordered the beheadings of ten ordinary Londoners during the annual “Roll Back the Clock” day, traditionally held during the third Saturday in July.

“What a bloody mess that was,” said Lawrence Donaldson, who witnessed three of his neighbors yanked from their homes and forced into the guillotine. “It was a scene more out of Henry VIII than Elizabeth II. Quite frankly, it put a little damper on the picnic we planned on taking at Beachy Head this afternoon.”

A cluster of ten of the queen’s subjects were randomly selected for the beheadings in what the royal family described simply as “a fond remembrance of the shits and giggles from the good old days.”

Terrified pedestrians watched in disbelief as the heads of their fellow citizens rolled about the streets like ketchup covered soccer balls.

Among the dead were Clive Sifferton-Winngham, Roger Moriarty, Crone Collins III, Alicia Burlington-Hodgkins, Nigel Seagrave-Daly, Richard “Dickie” Cocksmith, Carolyn Ladymount, Cameron Carl Goodfinger, Colin Yates, and James Blithering Peckish.

Bangers and Mash were served at special kiosks in the midtown area immediately afterwards.

Strong Enough for the Irish, but Arabs like it too.

CAIRO (Special to TSD AfterDark) Omar Saad, an overseas correspondent with Reuters has been focusing on the Arab Spring, the revolutionary wave of protests and demonstrations that have occurred in North Africa and the Middle East since mid-December of 2010. Saad’s been at several flash points across the region and has literally watched history unfold before his eyes.

Saad reports that events of this proportion effect all the senses.

“Its not just sights and sounds,” said the veteran scribe. “This is a moment in time which really gets up the old nostrils – much like the Irish Spring did back in the early 1970’s. The Irish Spring, with its original Ulster fragrance, was so popular, it had several spinoffs including bar soap. The Arab Spring’s bouquet is strikingly similar, with the notable exception of the use of the exotic spice, cumin, which as we all know is used quite commonly in several dishes here.”

Colgate-Palmolive, the company that produced Irish Spring soap products, if studying whether or not they can do something similar with Arab Spring.

“We might have to temper the cumin scent,” said the company’s Director of Marketing, Roger Forsythe. “As well as the occasional breeze from the north which carries the somewhat malodorous whiff of Mr. Ahmed Sahid after a full day in the baking sun. Other than that, I see a huge upside.”

Now What? Comic Tommy Sharples goes back to the drawing board.

NEW YORK (Special to TSD AfterDark) With the death of terrorist, Osama bin Laden reported late last night, celebrations broke out worldwide. But it’s a bittersweet moment for stand up comic Tommy Sharples, the “Where’s bin Laden?” guy. Sharples will need to change his act – fast. With the death of bin Laden, Sharples, whose career has been marked by disappointment, failure, overeating, and bouts of drug abuse, only to be interrupted by long periods of inactivity and more drug abuse, might be through permanently.

Sharples, who only Saturday morning played the back room of the Key City Diner in Phillipsburg, New Jersey to a group of retired farm equipment salesmen, busted out his patented “Where’s bin Laden?” line to a smattering of polite applause and a few chortles. Then, in a stunning show of prophetic whimsy, Sharples went on a bin Laden observational rant that closed with the line “We couldn’t find this bozo if he was holed up in mansion with fortified walls, sixty miles outside of Islamabad.”

“Maybe this will prove once and for all, and with all due respect, that Mr. Tommy Sharples is a genius and a comic ahead of his time, even though he’s currently behind the times.” said Sharples’ agent and confidant, Danny Rose, who was enjoying a liverwurst and onion sandwich at the Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue in New York. “Of course now, Tommy will have to change his act and focus on the number two man in Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who admittedly doesn’t pack the comedic punch bin Laden did. I guess I’ll have to go back to promoting my one armed juggler for a while.”