Of Nadir, Hawaii, and Wally Cox

This is in response to a post on Dan Rourke's Spit Out Your Gum; you can click on the header to jump there...here is the opening paragraph:

"You never have to look far to find proof of rampant absurdity in our world. Today at the bookstore, I was shelving a new novel written by Ralph Nader. Yes, that one. See what I mean? This struggling scribe certainly doesn't want to plug that book, so no title, but it is very thick and sports a brightly garish cover. What really is absurd, though, it ended up being shelved right next to Nabokov's Lolita. Say what you will about politics, but literature (real or alleged) makes for some really bent bedfellows. Reminds me of the fact that early in their careers, Marlon Brando and Wally Cox were roommates."

As a former Lit shelver myself, I would point out that it looks like that store no longer stocks "Pale Fire" or "Pnin"...or are they sold out? At any rate, I don't have anything to say about Mr. Unsafe-at-any-Speed, but it did get me to thinking of Peter Hammill (the guy from Van Der Graaf Generator, not the alcoholic journalist, a possible redundancy) releasing an album using the name Rikki Nadir:



Dan goes on to write about his disinclination to visit Hawaii. I would go if someone else paid for it, but I don't know if going west of Chicago agrees with me; the farthest west I've ever gone is San Francisco, where the writer of this next song sometimes makes his home:



(He didn't have a great experience in Hawaii, it turns out.)

I once saw some comedian on a talk-show doing a routine about going to Hawaii, but who it was is lost to the mists of time. His punchline was him asking someone how to pronounce the name of where he was:

"Ooo-How-Ool?"
"No, U-Haul!"

But I do remember Wally Cox: