Exclusive: Flo the Progressive Girl Is the Offspring of Madge and Mr. Whipple!

 

As per some law, I must disclose the fact that this blog received as a gift a pre-publication reviewer's copy of a book set to be published on May 1 (strict laydown date): Poke Me In The Belly One More Time And I'll Tell The Whole World Your Darkest Secrets: My Life Among The Wild And Kinky TV Commercial Spokespersons by The Pillsbury Doughboy (published by Ronco Press, 428 pages). Now normally I wouldn't even think about helping a has-been celebrity hawk his ghost-written, titillating-but-ultimately-not-too-revealing "memoir," but seeing as this is the first gift this blog has received and what started as a quick perusal on the can led to a two-day marathon cover-to-cover reading, I feel I must bestow upon this book the first-ever five-pieces-of-chewed-out-gum review. This book is a must for anybody who has ever even glanced at a television commercial one time, anybody with any empathy, and anybody who appreciates a tautly-written, first-person narrative.

Who knew that silly doughboy was so introspective, so literate, and so, shall we say, experienced? And now that he's finally willing to spill all the beans in this poke-and-tell, well, we all are the beneficiaries. Speaking of beans, did you know The Jolly Green Giant was about as jolly as they make them, especially when the Keebler elves invited him over to "knead the cookie dough"? It's all here, in graphic prose that would make William S. Burroughs simultaneously blush and turn green with envy. How about Charlie the Tuna being so smacked out on the bottom of the ocean floor he couldn't remember if he was a hope-to-be Starkist or Chicken of the Sea tuna? Mr. Clean? Dirtier than a hermaphroditic bi-sexual sailor on shore leave in Bangkok with three-months' pay who's just discovered the meaning of the word amoral. Cap'n Crunch? A polyglot choirboy, life-long celibate, and devoted Scientology convert. The revelations here are endless, jaw-dropping, and fully foot-noted. Doughboy has single-handedly lifted the schlocky celebrity tell-all genre onto his little sloped shoulders and hurled it crashing through the rarefied tinted windows of that cafe called art. Safe to say, if James Joyce had been born into a world that had television and he had made commercials for sneakers or reading glasses, the best he could have ever hoped for would be to have written a book this good.

I must, however, go into detail here about what for me was the emotional center of the book, because it's so personal, for me. Full disclosure: Before succumbing to the melancholy, tomboyish charms of Buddy Lawrence on "Family," my first TV-crush wasn't on Jan Brady or Laurie Partridge, like the rest of my co-horts, but Madge.

Yes Madge, the sassy Palmolive manicurist ("you're soaking in it") captured my young lad heart with an iron--though quite smooth--hand. So knowing, so in command, so worldly; Madge was everything a young boy could ever conjure about the ways and means of love. And so, reading the long chapter about Madge's trials, tribulations, and ultimate triumph broke then re-glued my heart. It goes like this (minus Doughboy's impeccable prose). For many years in the 1950s-70s Madge lived a quite idyllic life with her husband, Mr. Whipple (yes, the store-keeper of "Ladies! Please don't squeeze the Charmin"), in a small town.

They lived in a cozy colonial just a short walk from the main thoroughfare where Mr. Whipple's grocery store sat catty-corner from Madge's manicurist shop. The only fly in the ointment of their domestic Eden was the occasional snooty attitude of a TV commercial director and the fact that despite their fervid attempts (Madge, obviously, ruled the amorous activities, adventurous activities, to hear the Doughboy tell it, though Madge was vehement about one thing--she always nixed any and all of Whipple's mad gooses), they were childless.

Then, in the late 70s, the snake entered their garden, in the form of that nosy, Cardigan-wearing, fake-accented, widowed hussy, Mrs. Olson (of Folgers coffee fame).

Apparently, Mrs. Olson had worn out her welcome in several other small towns, plying her coffee-in-the-guise-of-unwanted-marriage-counseling-schtick, and ended up moving in right next door to the Whipple-Madge house, obviously unaware that two TV commercial stars in one small town, let alone one street, are more than enough. Well, one little spat between Whipple and Madge over cleaning out the gutters sure enough brought Mrs. Olson over with her coffee pot of doom and the requisite film crew. Within months the marriage was irrevocably damaged. Quick trips next door to hang curtains for the widow soon escalated into a full-blown extra-marital affair, as Mr. Whipple at last discovered his I'm-the-man, I'm-in-charge-here masculine sexuality. Visitors to Mrs. Olson's house found the place teeming with hastily-discarded, wrangled cardigans. Horribly-accented cries of "Oh yes, squeeze the Charmin, Whipple, squeeze the Charmin!" and "My, Whipple, you're mountain grown too!" were heard up and down the block. Madge could stew in it for only so long. One day she just packed her Palmolive and upped and moved.

Little did she know, though, that after all these years, Mr. Whipple had finally delivered the goods. Just as she was settling into a studio apartment of her own two states away, Madge discovered she was with child. Luckily, upon birth, the child, a girl, instantly evidenced her mother's perky, survivalist genes, and not those of her wimpy, betraying father. Madge cackled her knowing laugh as she held her baby for the first time, and in honor of her own take-what-life-gives-you-and-make-the-best-of-it attitude, she named her baby Flo. Sixteen years and a few weeks later, newly-licensed driver Flo, grooving to some Romantics on the car radio, took her eye off the road for a second and ended up fender-bendering one dual-personality Sam Breakstone/Dunkin' Donuts "time to make the donuts" baker guy, who was not too thrilled. The insurance man who came to process the claim, though, made quite an impression on Flo, and the rest is history.