"Dr. Phil & The Crazy Seed"

Bobby puts his hands up to his temples in stress when he describes his family-- the cloud-eyed, flab-chinned, emotionally-stunted nature of the unsophisticated walking along, waddling side-to-side, staring down at their tattered shoes, and shaking their head at their lot in life.

Which brings to mind "Dr. Phil" and his popular brand of "T.V. Land" "talk therapy" hailed for its "no-nonsense" A-to-B approach as he goes over the simple 1-2-3 principle and raises his hands up and down before "his patients", who look more like a family of none-to-eager Pavlov dogs being directed by a stern, unforgiving faith healer before an applauding studio audience.

To get from Dead City to Covenant, you lay down a train track. Point, line, point. 1, 2, 3-- 1, 2, 3. Simple. Good. Got it. Repeat 10,000 times. . . . . But what this confounded, blow-hard Texan had never counted on was the ground opening up in a giant sink-hole and swallowing the train, the track, the station, and the entire "pop psychology" miracle business that would make this "hard-hitting" gimmick look no more consequential than three girls sipping a strawberry milkshake at the soda parlor with their leg raised back like teeny-boppers. With a rumble, the earth would split open and take them down in a belch of flames and a "EEEEEEAHHH!" as a voice cackled from the depths.

The devil of deep-seated family dysfunction can't be exorcised in ten minutes, not even if you put a turban on your head like Johnny Carson.

And beyond the "A-to-B", don't ever forget the X-Y-Z floating high in the ether with the other undefined letters and numbers and symbols like an electrical storm of the human mind-- and with the right conditions can send down rain and thunder and lightning to twist the track out of shape, and turn it into a sizzling puddle of metal sludge. Dr. Phil would wander down there in his surveyor's outfit scratching his bald head and get vaporized by "ball lightning" like a night down at the bug-zapper. Nothing left, boys & girls, but for his smoking Stetson. . . . .

No, Dr. Phil could not count on the great toilet paper scare of '73.

It was announced on the news, this otherwise pedestrian commodity was rolling into shortage for two or three years with the oil embargo as the camel jockeys raised a sword up in the air up like Saladin, telling the Yankees to go stick it up their ass.

Panic ensued, and the marginal loaded up on trucks and hoarded up on the precious pulp-stuff like a run on the bank-- getting into fistfights and pulling guns on each other as the very end of civilization seemed upon us. Forget stagflation, forget Watergate, the one thing Bobby's family could understand was their assholes.

There was a final, loose roll of Charmin knocked over on a shelf. One man pulled a pistol. Hayes' father pulled a shotgun. The father fled the looted store with the roll hanging off the barrel like the Huns sacking Paris.

Later, it was announced that the so-called "roll-back" on toilet paper was a tongue-in-cheek publicity stunt. "Well, at least we were prepared", the family figured-- the house stacked from floor to ceiling with shit-paper. Later it rained, the roof leaked, and ruined most of it.

"It could be worse. . . . . at least we're not niggers!"