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bushmaster8
Posts: 5,616 ✭
I was most fortunate to catch up with MadMarty’s chicken at the recent Denver show. Mucho thanks to Foodude for letting us conduct the interview at his busy table.
Bushmaster8: Ok! Hello Marty’s chicken! Let’s start the usual way. Tell us where you were born?
Marty’s Chicken: Where was I born?(Brrr…cluck…cluck) You’re kidding, right? You do realize that chickens aren’t born, right? We hatch. I hatched out at Chicago’s Museum of science and Industry. 1950.
Wow! That makes you 56 years old! I didn’t realize chickens were so long lived!
Well, most are not. I have been fed a special diet all my life that other, more average birds rarely get to eat.
Illinois corn and soybeans?
Nah! That crap is for the birds.(Bawk! Bawk!) I eat nothing but plastic.
Plastic? I thought a coin personality of your stature would be dining on foie gras and champainge!?
That stuff is reserved for pedophile child murderers. Certainly sounds delicious though! But, no, I have to eat whatever MadMarty gives me…and that is nothing other than broken slabs.
Slabs? You eat slabs?
Well, pieces of slabs. Not the whole slab. Nobody could swallow a whole slab, except perhaps Bear. Whenever Marty cracks out a slab, he gives the rubbish to me.
Well! That is certainly generous of him! But I never would have thought plastic could sustain someone.
Hummpphh! Ever hear of TPG’s? Plastic has certainly sustained PCGS, NGC, and the likes!
But how do you digest plastic??
I don’t know. It’s good! But not SEGS, SEGS plastic wont digest.
Although I do chow down a few SEGS chunkss once in a while to replenish my gizzard. Nothin’ harder. Grinds those other TPG slabs to dust. Absolutely pulverizes them!
Oh! One thing though…I would NEVER eat any slab that had come by way of R&I Coins.
Those coins often smell really, really bad, like they had been inserted into smoe unmentionable body part.
(At this point in the interview, Marty’s chicken hopped onto Foodude’s best coin case, scratched around a bit, did a couple of 180’s, then bent slightly at the knees and defecated.) “Hey! What is that?” I asked, incredulously looking at the multicolored splat he had just deposited… that looks like paper in your stool!?
Yeah…NGC inserts go thru me like habanero peppers.
How come I only see white& brown bits of paper? Where are the blues and greens??
Oh come on, Bushmaster! PCGS inserts are redeemable for 50 cents apiece! You don’t think that that cheap bastige MadMarty is gonna pass up cashing in on that bounty, do you?
I guess not. How stupid of me. But I thought Marty was rather well to do though… you know. Lives in a Gold Coast Luxury Penthouse Condo, drives a gas guzzling SUV with vanity plates. Spiffy dresser too, for a straight guy. And he makes a ton of $$ on that Modern Crap.
Hell, he even got away with murder, is what I hear. In Chicago, only the wealthy can get away with murder.
(SQWAUK! Cluck, cluck.. SQWAWK!) What are you talkin’ about Bushy? I been living in Marty’s attic for pretty much all of the last 50 years, and I didn’t hear nuthin’ about no murder.
Well, maybe murder is too strong a word. It was not premeditated or anything. See, there was this dealer, and he sold Madman a 1961 Franklin for $7. Marty flipped it for a cool twelve large. When the dealer found out he dropped dead.
12 Grand?!?... and all he feeds me is plastic shards…? No wonder he didn’t tell me about that score! Wait ‘til I tell Mrs.Marty about this!
Hmmm. So you have lived in Marty’s attic all your life? That’s nice. Cozy, yet plenty of room to strut around (not that anyone is looking!).
I don’t think so wise guy. The only (chirrup..er..click…click..cluck) struttin’ I get to do is when Marty pulls me out of the trunk to go to a coin show. Coin shows are my life.
He keeps you in a trunk in the attic?!? What’s up with that??
Beats me. He won’t talk about it. Every time I mention moving out, he glares at me and says I have to stay in the trunk until I develop vivid purple/blue toning. Freakin’ hot in there too, ya know?
And the other day he even threatened to give me a bath in MS70! I’m not sure what that was all about but I’m too old for that kind of stuff man!
So you’ve never been out of the attic except for coin shows?
Yeah, pretty much so. He did make me stay overnite at Breen’s house one time though.
Walter Breen? Wow! What an honor! On the other hand…What a disgrace! Tell us about it.
Well, there is not much to tell. Most of the night he talked on and on about Rambler. I always thought that was a cool old car, but he talked about Rambler like it was the best thing in the whole world!... I didn’t really follow him.
NAMBLA, not Rambler.
Huh?
NAMBLA, not Rambler. I think he must have been talking about the North American Man-Boy Love Association, not a car.
Whaa? That is disgusting!
I agree totally. So what else? He bored you with perv-talk. Then what?
Then we talked coins, what else is there? He showed me his collection of toned proof IHC’s. Oddly, he kept winking at me as he showed me the blue toned IHC’s. (Cluck, cluck) I don’t know what that was all about. I showed him my collection, we traded a few coins.
Oh! You collect?
I have a large holding of 1964 Franklins, 1964 Peace Dollars, 1974 aluminum cents, 1933 Double Eagles, stuff like that.
Oh, and coins with birds on them. That includes most U.S. coins, but I really like the Latin American coinage with condors, quetzals, and the like.
Yes, I like the coins of Chile myself.
So, you and Walter talked and looked at coins. What else?
Well, my memory gets a little fuzzy here, but, at some point he grabbed me, pushed my head down flat on the basement floor and held it there and drew a line in chalk from the tip of my beak extending about 2-3 feet.
And?
And what? I don’t know. I don’t remember what happened next. Next thing I remember it was bedtime. I go to bed as soon as the sun sets you know.
Oh. (Note to gentle reader: In case you weren’t lucky enough to be a Future Farmers of America member, the chalk line trick as described here by MC, is a sure-fire way of hypnotizing poultry. It really does work!)
So then the night was uneventful?
I didn’t say that! Did I say that? (Sqwauk!) Don’t put words into my mouth Bushmaster!
Sorry.
Actually, I woke in the middle of the night and found Walter in my guest room with his hands groping around under the covers.
Oh my God! You were victimized then?
Naah! You see, chickens ain’t like people. We don’t have any external sexual organs. We have a cloaca.
A cloaca?
Yeah. One hole for everything: intestinal, urinary, reproductive activity, and even egglaying. So old Walter, he just left the room looking a little puzzled and a lot frustrated.
Later, when I awoke for a midnight snack, I overheard him having phone-sex with Pharmer. Remember, this all happened quite a few years back.
Sure, Pharmer is a bigwig coin doctor now, but at one time he was just an impressionable youth. I think Walter really screwed up Pharmer’s psyche. Too bad. Or maybe it wasn’t Walter at all.
Maybe it is George Bush’s fault. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
So wait a minute. That reminds me. One of the FAQ’s MadMarty gets is: “Is your chicken a boy or a girl?”
Well?
Doesn’t really matter! All chickens are basically the same, partswise. Hens have an inverted cloaca. Roosters have an everted cloaca.
Did you know that if you take a bunch of hens and pen them up with no rooster for a long time, one of the hens, ( usually the most butch looking one amongst them), will transform into a rooster. Fact. Real fact.
Not one of Breen’s factoids, but real fact. You know in the blast furnace that was Walter Breen’s mind, the raw material of ideas would frequently get smelted into factoids. Walter considered them facts, but no one else does.
But I digress.
Actually, I don’t even know myself if I am male or female! I tried a few times to crow at daybreak…but nothing comes out.
Uh…actually that is CU’s fault.
See you what?
CU. It’s an acronym. Short for Collectors Universe.
Oh! Yeah! I know all about acronyms. You mean like C U Next Tuesday?
Ahem. Ahhh… yes, well, something like that. Ahh…
Well, how do you figure CU is responsible for my inability to crow at sunup?
Because cocl<- a- doodle –do is a forbidden word on the CU forums.
Well, I’ll be damned! I never realized it, but you are certainly right!
Say, when you mentioned egg laying a minute ago you reminded me:
If you hatched out at the Museum, how did you come to be possessed by Madster?
Oh that’s easy…Marty bribed one of the curators. They disappeared into an office and a Cook Island cloaca coin traded hands to seal the deal..
Uh… that’s not a cloaca.
Watchoo talkin’ about man?
Never mind. Besides Breen and MadMarty (Yikes, I never thought I would see those 2 names in the same sentence), who had a big influence on your life?
Oh, let me see…Hmmm. Well, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Bigbird, Humpty Dumpty, the Birdman of Alcatraz, Icarus, Chicken Little. And then there was a comic book type superhero in the 1960’s, went by the name of Chickenman, had his own TV series for about one half of one season. He was cool. He is my idol.
How about your fellow forumites? Who do you respect here?
Oh, I love all of youse guys and gals.
But surely you have a few favorites.
Yeah, but I don’t want to make anyone feel bad by inadvertantly omitting them.
Fair enough. But let me just toss a few names out there for your comments:
LucyBop.
Beep Beep, Beep Beep, Yeah! (To the tune of Baby You Can Drive My Car-Beatles)
Lucy is a great Gal. I love her. I was really saddened by the death of her Father last year. Marty and I had a great time visiting her a few years ago. But I don’t really understand why everyone on these boards thinks she is the bomb when it comes to Franklins. She knows her stuff, but there are more knowledgeable Franklin experts here than her.
For instance?
Ronyahaski for one. Madmonk , Flykite, there are others as well.
Legend.
Laura is a breath of fresh aire. Thumbs up.
Cladking.
Absolutely incredible depth of knowledge. The guy is like a walkin’ talkin’ encyclopedia.
Coinguy1.
Who?
Coinguy1. Saint Feldini?
Never heard of him.
Saintguru.
Wish I had that kind of chicken scratch. He collects some expensive coins!
Segoja.
World’s largest ego!
FC57 .
Frank Chiong was truly one of the greats. He was a great collector, a great guy, and a great friend. I wonder how his partner Cheech Marin is getting along?
You’ve mentioned that you spent some time at Breen’s and visited LucyBop. Tell us about your Lucy visit.
Not gonna happen. What goes on in Albuquerque stays in Albuquerque.
Fair enuff. Any other forum friends you have visited that you can share with us?
Well, there was the time we went to Kalifornia and stopped by 100Proof 1957’s place to party a while. That’s when I lost all my feathers. 100Proof 1957 plucked me.
You got F’ed by 100Proof!?
I said plucked, not f’ed! Get your mind out of the gutter boy!
See, we were sitting around admiring 100Proof1957’s immaculate yard (you should see his edger!) and knocking back some drinks…
What were you drinking?
Wild Turkey, of course! What else? Are you gonna let me tell the story or what?
So Marty takes off to go to the corner store to get some cigarettes. Well, I didn’t know irt at the time but old 100Proof1957 had been laid off from work for months. I see him and his wife whispering and the next thing you know, Proof has got me by the neck with one hand and the feet with the other hand.
He had this crazy look in his eyes, and starts pulling out my feathers while telling the wife to start the Weber cos’ it’s beer butt chicken time!
How did you get out of that mess?
Marty pulled in the driveway, just as 100Proof was getting ready whack me with his edger. It was a close call! At least it would have been a quick end.
Not like getting gassed by one of ManofCoins concoctions!
What kind of handle is 100Proof1957 anyway? Why don’t people use nice animal names like mine anyway?
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Why can’t folks choose cool bird names? Like Goose ? Or that other guy, Flamingo?
Ahhh…, I think that’s Flamino, not Flamingo.
You say tomato, I say tumatoe. You know, what really gets me is these guys that use descriptions of their physical deformities as their handle.
For instance?
Like Tradedollarnut, and Cameonut. Ouch! I know piercings and whatnot are all the rage, but that has got to hurt!
I mean, I just can’t see playing 18 holes at Pinehurst with something like that between your legs.
And then there is Airplanenut. How does a kid get his scrotum to stretch that far??
What do you think about bird flu?
Bird poo?! Jeezuz! Where did you get these questions from? Howard stern?
I think we better wrap up this interview. We are blocking Foodude’s table and you seem to be having trouble hearing.
Oh yeah? Well eat me Bushamster! You can’t even spell champagne!
All right, that’s it then. See you next Tuesday birdbrain. And lay off the PCI slabs for a while. Your skin is so yellow, you look like a Purdue chicken on Meth!
Bushmaster8: Ok! Hello Marty’s chicken! Let’s start the usual way. Tell us where you were born?
Marty’s Chicken: Where was I born?(Brrr…cluck…cluck) You’re kidding, right? You do realize that chickens aren’t born, right? We hatch. I hatched out at Chicago’s Museum of science and Industry. 1950.
Wow! That makes you 56 years old! I didn’t realize chickens were so long lived!
Well, most are not. I have been fed a special diet all my life that other, more average birds rarely get to eat.
Illinois corn and soybeans?
Nah! That crap is for the birds.(Bawk! Bawk!) I eat nothing but plastic.
Plastic? I thought a coin personality of your stature would be dining on foie gras and champainge!?
That stuff is reserved for pedophile child murderers. Certainly sounds delicious though! But, no, I have to eat whatever MadMarty gives me…and that is nothing other than broken slabs.
Slabs? You eat slabs?
Well, pieces of slabs. Not the whole slab. Nobody could swallow a whole slab, except perhaps Bear. Whenever Marty cracks out a slab, he gives the rubbish to me.
Well! That is certainly generous of him! But I never would have thought plastic could sustain someone.
Hummpphh! Ever hear of TPG’s? Plastic has certainly sustained PCGS, NGC, and the likes!
But how do you digest plastic??
I don’t know. It’s good! But not SEGS, SEGS plastic wont digest.
Although I do chow down a few SEGS chunkss once in a while to replenish my gizzard. Nothin’ harder. Grinds those other TPG slabs to dust. Absolutely pulverizes them!
Oh! One thing though…I would NEVER eat any slab that had come by way of R&I Coins.
Those coins often smell really, really bad, like they had been inserted into smoe unmentionable body part.
(At this point in the interview, Marty’s chicken hopped onto Foodude’s best coin case, scratched around a bit, did a couple of 180’s, then bent slightly at the knees and defecated.) “Hey! What is that?” I asked, incredulously looking at the multicolored splat he had just deposited… that looks like paper in your stool!?
Yeah…NGC inserts go thru me like habanero peppers.
How come I only see white& brown bits of paper? Where are the blues and greens??
Oh come on, Bushmaster! PCGS inserts are redeemable for 50 cents apiece! You don’t think that that cheap bastige MadMarty is gonna pass up cashing in on that bounty, do you?
I guess not. How stupid of me. But I thought Marty was rather well to do though… you know. Lives in a Gold Coast Luxury Penthouse Condo, drives a gas guzzling SUV with vanity plates. Spiffy dresser too, for a straight guy. And he makes a ton of $$ on that Modern Crap.
Hell, he even got away with murder, is what I hear. In Chicago, only the wealthy can get away with murder.
(SQWAUK! Cluck, cluck.. SQWAWK!) What are you talkin’ about Bushy? I been living in Marty’s attic for pretty much all of the last 50 years, and I didn’t hear nuthin’ about no murder.
Well, maybe murder is too strong a word. It was not premeditated or anything. See, there was this dealer, and he sold Madman a 1961 Franklin for $7. Marty flipped it for a cool twelve large. When the dealer found out he dropped dead.
12 Grand?!?... and all he feeds me is plastic shards…? No wonder he didn’t tell me about that score! Wait ‘til I tell Mrs.Marty about this!
Hmmm. So you have lived in Marty’s attic all your life? That’s nice. Cozy, yet plenty of room to strut around (not that anyone is looking!).
I don’t think so wise guy. The only (chirrup..er..click…click..cluck) struttin’ I get to do is when Marty pulls me out of the trunk to go to a coin show. Coin shows are my life.
He keeps you in a trunk in the attic?!? What’s up with that??
Beats me. He won’t talk about it. Every time I mention moving out, he glares at me and says I have to stay in the trunk until I develop vivid purple/blue toning. Freakin’ hot in there too, ya know?
And the other day he even threatened to give me a bath in MS70! I’m not sure what that was all about but I’m too old for that kind of stuff man!
So you’ve never been out of the attic except for coin shows?
Yeah, pretty much so. He did make me stay overnite at Breen’s house one time though.
Walter Breen? Wow! What an honor! On the other hand…What a disgrace! Tell us about it.
Well, there is not much to tell. Most of the night he talked on and on about Rambler. I always thought that was a cool old car, but he talked about Rambler like it was the best thing in the whole world!... I didn’t really follow him.
NAMBLA, not Rambler.
Huh?
NAMBLA, not Rambler. I think he must have been talking about the North American Man-Boy Love Association, not a car.
Whaa? That is disgusting!
I agree totally. So what else? He bored you with perv-talk. Then what?
Then we talked coins, what else is there? He showed me his collection of toned proof IHC’s. Oddly, he kept winking at me as he showed me the blue toned IHC’s. (Cluck, cluck) I don’t know what that was all about. I showed him my collection, we traded a few coins.
Oh! You collect?
I have a large holding of 1964 Franklins, 1964 Peace Dollars, 1974 aluminum cents, 1933 Double Eagles, stuff like that.
Oh, and coins with birds on them. That includes most U.S. coins, but I really like the Latin American coinage with condors, quetzals, and the like.
Yes, I like the coins of Chile myself.
So, you and Walter talked and looked at coins. What else?
Well, my memory gets a little fuzzy here, but, at some point he grabbed me, pushed my head down flat on the basement floor and held it there and drew a line in chalk from the tip of my beak extending about 2-3 feet.
And?
And what? I don’t know. I don’t remember what happened next. Next thing I remember it was bedtime. I go to bed as soon as the sun sets you know.
Oh. (Note to gentle reader: In case you weren’t lucky enough to be a Future Farmers of America member, the chalk line trick as described here by MC, is a sure-fire way of hypnotizing poultry. It really does work!)
So then the night was uneventful?
I didn’t say that! Did I say that? (Sqwauk!) Don’t put words into my mouth Bushmaster!
Sorry.
Actually, I woke in the middle of the night and found Walter in my guest room with his hands groping around under the covers.
Oh my God! You were victimized then?
Naah! You see, chickens ain’t like people. We don’t have any external sexual organs. We have a cloaca.
A cloaca?
Yeah. One hole for everything: intestinal, urinary, reproductive activity, and even egglaying. So old Walter, he just left the room looking a little puzzled and a lot frustrated.
Later, when I awoke for a midnight snack, I overheard him having phone-sex with Pharmer. Remember, this all happened quite a few years back.
Sure, Pharmer is a bigwig coin doctor now, but at one time he was just an impressionable youth. I think Walter really screwed up Pharmer’s psyche. Too bad. Or maybe it wasn’t Walter at all.
Maybe it is George Bush’s fault. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
So wait a minute. That reminds me. One of the FAQ’s MadMarty gets is: “Is your chicken a boy or a girl?”
Well?
Doesn’t really matter! All chickens are basically the same, partswise. Hens have an inverted cloaca. Roosters have an everted cloaca.
Did you know that if you take a bunch of hens and pen them up with no rooster for a long time, one of the hens, ( usually the most butch looking one amongst them), will transform into a rooster. Fact. Real fact.
Not one of Breen’s factoids, but real fact. You know in the blast furnace that was Walter Breen’s mind, the raw material of ideas would frequently get smelted into factoids. Walter considered them facts, but no one else does.
But I digress.
Actually, I don’t even know myself if I am male or female! I tried a few times to crow at daybreak…but nothing comes out.
Uh…actually that is CU’s fault.
See you what?
CU. It’s an acronym. Short for Collectors Universe.
Oh! Yeah! I know all about acronyms. You mean like C U Next Tuesday?
Ahem. Ahhh… yes, well, something like that. Ahh…
Well, how do you figure CU is responsible for my inability to crow at sunup?
Because cocl<- a- doodle –do is a forbidden word on the CU forums.
Well, I’ll be damned! I never realized it, but you are certainly right!
Say, when you mentioned egg laying a minute ago you reminded me:
If you hatched out at the Museum, how did you come to be possessed by Madster?
Oh that’s easy…Marty bribed one of the curators. They disappeared into an office and a Cook Island cloaca coin traded hands to seal the deal..
Uh… that’s not a cloaca.
Watchoo talkin’ about man?
Never mind. Besides Breen and MadMarty (Yikes, I never thought I would see those 2 names in the same sentence), who had a big influence on your life?
Oh, let me see…Hmmm. Well, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Bigbird, Humpty Dumpty, the Birdman of Alcatraz, Icarus, Chicken Little. And then there was a comic book type superhero in the 1960’s, went by the name of Chickenman, had his own TV series for about one half of one season. He was cool. He is my idol.
How about your fellow forumites? Who do you respect here?
Oh, I love all of youse guys and gals.
But surely you have a few favorites.
Yeah, but I don’t want to make anyone feel bad by inadvertantly omitting them.
Fair enough. But let me just toss a few names out there for your comments:
LucyBop.
Beep Beep, Beep Beep, Yeah! (To the tune of Baby You Can Drive My Car-Beatles)
Lucy is a great Gal. I love her. I was really saddened by the death of her Father last year. Marty and I had a great time visiting her a few years ago. But I don’t really understand why everyone on these boards thinks she is the bomb when it comes to Franklins. She knows her stuff, but there are more knowledgeable Franklin experts here than her.
For instance?
Ronyahaski for one. Madmonk , Flykite, there are others as well.
Legend.
Laura is a breath of fresh aire. Thumbs up.
Cladking.
Absolutely incredible depth of knowledge. The guy is like a walkin’ talkin’ encyclopedia.
Coinguy1.
Who?
Coinguy1. Saint Feldini?
Never heard of him.
Saintguru.
Wish I had that kind of chicken scratch. He collects some expensive coins!
Segoja.
World’s largest ego!
FC57 .
Frank Chiong was truly one of the greats. He was a great collector, a great guy, and a great friend. I wonder how his partner Cheech Marin is getting along?
You’ve mentioned that you spent some time at Breen’s and visited LucyBop. Tell us about your Lucy visit.
Not gonna happen. What goes on in Albuquerque stays in Albuquerque.
Fair enuff. Any other forum friends you have visited that you can share with us?
Well, there was the time we went to Kalifornia and stopped by 100Proof 1957’s place to party a while. That’s when I lost all my feathers. 100Proof 1957 plucked me.
You got F’ed by 100Proof!?
I said plucked, not f’ed! Get your mind out of the gutter boy!
See, we were sitting around admiring 100Proof1957’s immaculate yard (you should see his edger!) and knocking back some drinks…
What were you drinking?
Wild Turkey, of course! What else? Are you gonna let me tell the story or what?
So Marty takes off to go to the corner store to get some cigarettes. Well, I didn’t know irt at the time but old 100Proof1957 had been laid off from work for months. I see him and his wife whispering and the next thing you know, Proof has got me by the neck with one hand and the feet with the other hand.
He had this crazy look in his eyes, and starts pulling out my feathers while telling the wife to start the Weber cos’ it’s beer butt chicken time!
How did you get out of that mess?
Marty pulled in the driveway, just as 100Proof was getting ready whack me with his edger. It was a close call! At least it would have been a quick end.
Not like getting gassed by one of ManofCoins concoctions!
What kind of handle is 100Proof1957 anyway? Why don’t people use nice animal names like mine anyway?
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Why can’t folks choose cool bird names? Like Goose ? Or that other guy, Flamingo?
Ahhh…, I think that’s Flamino, not Flamingo.
You say tomato, I say tumatoe. You know, what really gets me is these guys that use descriptions of their physical deformities as their handle.
For instance?
Like Tradedollarnut, and Cameonut. Ouch! I know piercings and whatnot are all the rage, but that has got to hurt!
I mean, I just can’t see playing 18 holes at Pinehurst with something like that between your legs.
And then there is Airplanenut. How does a kid get his scrotum to stretch that far??
What do you think about bird flu?
Bird poo?! Jeezuz! Where did you get these questions from? Howard stern?
I think we better wrap up this interview. We are blocking Foodude’s table and you seem to be having trouble hearing.
Oh yeah? Well eat me Bushamster! You can’t even spell champagne!
All right, that’s it then. See you next Tuesday birdbrain. And lay off the PCI slabs for a while. Your skin is so yellow, you look like a Purdue chicken on Meth!
"Wars are really ugly! They're dirty
and they're cold.
I don't want nobody to shoot me in the foxhole."
Mary
Best Franklin Website
and they're cold.
I don't want nobody to shoot me in the foxhole."
Mary
Best Franklin Website
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Peace,
Steve