The Woman With No Name (chapter 2)

After Michael brought us up to speed with what had just happened in his bedroom, Jeff said, "Clark, go look around outside", to which I replied, "nuh-uh."
"What do you mean? Hurry, she might still be on the grounds!"
"Yep. Exactly. So... nope."
Jeff and Michael looked at me, confused.
"Look, I hate masks, okay? They're creepy. What happens if I go out there and find this creepy lady?"

"Well, then you bop her one - gently, of course, because she is still a lady - and knock the creepy mask off of her face so we can conduct a proper interrogation and get to the bottom of this!", Jeff advised.
"And what if what's under the mask is even worse?", I asked.

"Oh for the love of Mike", Michael chimed in.
"For that matter, why should I go outside at all? This is YOUR deal!", I shot back at him. "After all, she's appearing in YOUR bedroom, not mine nor Jeff's".
"You expect me to just traipse around outside in the dark with toes curled like this?!?", he said.
"As bad as that is, I would actually rather stare at your hideous gnarled-up toes than go outside and look for some nameless masked freak in lingerie."
I looked back at Jeff, expecting his support for my very reasonable reluctance, and maybe a high-five for cracking on Michael's feet, but he was gone. He had decided to bypass the squabble and check things out for himself.
That became apparent when we suddenly heard him yell from outdoors, "Guys! Get out here right now! You won't believe what I've found out here!"

Wait 'til Jeff tells you what he had found out there...

The Woman With No Name

To this very day, The Unbelievables still don't know who the mysterious Woman With No Name is.

We noticed her back in the '70s hanging around after some of our most notorious cases as we instructed police officials in collecting crime scene evidence. One evening we caught her lurking around the corner of a building, studying us.

At the time, she didn't have the distinctive "Face-O-Phone" she uses to communicate. It was nothing more than a plain old mask in the beginning, nondescript.

At one point, we falsely deduced The Woman With No Name was none other than Joan Rivers ... but that turned out to be a red herring. (i.e. Joan Rivers has a name: Joan Rivers. The Woman With No Name doesn't.)

Not The Woman With No Name. This is Joan Rivers ... holding a mask.

Our clandestine lurker turned up quite often. Then, just as quickly, she would disappear for months on end. An entire year went by once without hint nor hide nor hair of her. And then? There she was once more.

We started doing some digging during our off time. We weren't able to find out much ...

The Woman With No Name - the early days.

  She was always a flashy dresser, one of the notable things that caught our eyes about her. (That, and the fact she lurked around.) She never talked to us, never got in our way, never meddled in any of our affairs.

But ... she was intriguing. We asked around. One of our informants passed along a photo of her with cryptic implications:

Informant: "She was in a contest once ... and won."

 
We didn't know where that small tidbit would get us but it was one of the few clues we had on her.

For weeks after we were passed that photo we dug and dug and dug. To no avail. We pow-wowwed about the matter:

Jeff: "We could put out an ad asking if anyone knows her ..."

Clark: "Has anyone checked the post office 'Wanted' postings?"

Me: "It's noon ... and I'm still wearing pants. Why?"

Then, I came up with a brilliant idea: "I know ... I'll leave that contest photo behind with a message stating we know she won the thing and her identity. Maybe that will stir the pot." The guys were in agreement.

A few weeks later, after a quick wrap-up of some international intrigue we were looking into, I left the picture in a conspicuous place for her to find.

That night? I was restless, tossing and turning in bed in the wee hours of the morning. I turned over ... and there was The Woman With No Name staring at me in her frilly pink nightgown and "Face-O-Phone" mask. She scared the bejeebers out of me.

Her voice came across not unlike that of a female Darth Vader through her mask: "You don't really know who I am," she told me. "Keep looking. You might catch a clue by discovering how I was able to infiltrate your Unbelieva-Base ..."

And then she was gone.

Clark and Jeff came in my room seconds later.

"Hey ... we heard heavy breathing coming from in here," Clark said. "What gives?"

"And ... uhm ... why are your toes curled Michael?" Jeff asked.

Wednesday, Clark will continue the tale ...

TV as a leisure activity? As if.

"What do The Unbelievables like to watch on TV?"

Like to watch? As in, a pastime? Something to do to relax during downtime?
Oh, Kip. Ha ha! You're such a useless moron.
Let me tell you something, Mail Boy. When you're an Unbelievable, there's no such thing as downtime. All your time is up. Up! You hear me, you sweaty, sniveling sausage casing stuffed with not only pork fat but weak and stupid as well? UP! UP! UP!!

TV, like anything else, is a tool we use. In my case, I use it to monitor the human condition, specifically, the people who say horrible things to other people. For over a decade beginning in the last '80s, it was these people:




Running pretty much concurrently was this group of World Champions...



A period of approximately seven years of relatively good behavior passed before this woman and her pinhead pals showed up...

Now, none of these people are engaging in what could be classified as "criminal activity", certainly not to the degree with which The Unbelievables would expect to get involved. So what's the point of monitoring this activity? I guess I just like it.
Oh, shut up, Kip.

Boob Tube Inspiration

A typical powerhouse.

(And, not so coincidentally, the meat and potatoes of the Unbelieva-Base)

"What do The Unbelievables like to watch on TV?" Kip The Mail Boy quipped long, long ago.

And as Jeff mentioned, there's not a lot of downtime for leisurely television viewing in our fast-paced schedules.

But, for me, where there is a moment or three, it's Looney Tunes cartoons. With the most enjoyable being the ones utilizing Raymond Scott's iconic musical composition "Powerhouse" as punctuation.

Why? That's pretty obvious when you view the video below:



You see, quite often a lot of the scenarios in the montage above have been incorporated into The Unbelivables' methodologies. (We personally enjoy and have used the final scene in the video of Sylvester huffing the barrel of gunpowder over the hills on some of our unwitting foes.

Bottom Line: Looney Tunes are not only enjoyable and frolicky but offer useful information for our endeavors.

See? Fun and educational ... all at our leisure. Makes television viewing appear worthwhile instead of a waste of time, doesn't it?

Incidentally, that was pretty much the clincher for Kip The Mail Boy joining our merry little crime-fighting (and gentlemanly) ranks. He knew he wasn't going to get a better education in all things us than, well ... with us.

P.S. We've used "Happy Birthday" on a number of no-gooders, too. It's a classic ...

Like We Have Time For TV

A TV legend and one of our favourites recently passed away. Patrick Macnee, famous in the '60s and '70s as John Steed, leader of The Avengers and The New Avengers, died aged 93. He will be sorely missed, not only for his sartorial elegance, his wit, charm and general savoir faire with the opposite sex, but for his incredible array of weaponry and impressive bad-guy-butt-kicking skills.

This leads us to a question that was posed by one of our readers the other day (well, truthfully, it was Kip the Mail Boy) which was: What do The Unbelievables like to watch on TV?

So therefore I shall post my TV choices and the others can post theirs later.

Well, sadly, we don't get an awful lot of time to watch the old gogglebox, but when we do, I tend to go for something funny, y'know, to lighten the mood. Being a crimefighter is not without its stresses and strains, so a little levity can ease the burden a tad. I like stuff like

The IT Crowd,


Father Ted, 


8 Out Of 10 Cats, 



Modern Life Is Goodish  



and Live At the Apollo.




I do like crime drama (natch), my recent fave being DCI Banks.




However, in my estimation, for real enjoyable and relaxing TV, one cannot beat a cracking episode of Tree Fu Tom. 

First you have Tom, a young lad who is able to magically shrink down and enter the forest world of Treetopolis, ruled by the kindly Oprah-like earth mother figure Treetog. Tom's best friend is Twigs, an acorn sprite, voiced by the great David Tennant (yes - Doctor Who number 10), aided and abetted by the sassy rancher-butterfly Ariella, the perpetually scared woodlouse Squirmtum (whose knowledge of caverns is unsurpassed) and the slightly unhinged wacky frog inventor Zigzoo. There's also a kindly old spider named Rickety and villainy in the form of the Mushers, Stink and Puffy. 

Sounds like a kids' show, ya say? Well, it is - or at least, that's what they want you to think. But Tom regularly interrupts the action to lead us through some physical movement exercises, cunningly disguised as magic spells, which are actually variants of Unbelieva-Fu that we taught Tom himself at one of our Unbelievinars™. What a great time we had. Especially when we all went out for burgers and shakes afterwards at Mel's diner in Pigeon Forge, TN. So watching an episode of Tree Fu Tom is like a warm, fuzzy trip back in time for me. Not only that, but Tennant's (Twigs's) throwaway one -liners and casual asides are straight up hilarious. To quote Bruno Mars, "don't believe me? Just watch."

He's Probably In The Cereal Aisle ...

Have you seen Clark? He looks sort of like this.

And he may - or may not - have a beard ...

Was I worried when Clark flew the coop all of a sudden? Not in the least.

"He's probably off to the store again or something," I told Jeff when he asked where Clark had gone.

But when the hours stretched into days (5 days to be precise) Jeff was a mite more concerned.

"Seen Clark?" he asked.

"You just asked me that," I responded.

"That was Wednesday," Jeff informed me.

"Wednesday? What are you talking about?" I was engrossed in my most recent copy of Dodgem Logic and turned the page while Jeff kept bugging me.

"Wednesday. When I asked you if you knew where Clark was. You said he'd probably gone to the store." he explained. "Today is Monday ..."

"What? Didn't you just ask that?"

"Yes. 5 days ago. Wednesday."

I lowered my magazine to my lap and looked up quizzically. "Really? Huh. That's an awful long time to be at the store. He must really be stocking up," I chided more to myself than at Jeff. "And he didn't leave a note or anything?"

Jeff scrunched his shoulders and made half-hearted gestures with his hands. "Nope ..."

"Well ... since it's been 5 days and no word from him, I guess we better, you know, do something. Or, at the very least, be a little concerned. Is his car outside?"

"Nope."

"Huh. We'd better put our heads together, then," I mused.

I got up and went to my office to check the latest on my computer. A few minutes later, I yelled for Jeff. We'd gotten an e-mail from Clark.

"See? Nothing to worry about. He sent us a photo or something"

"Of what?" Jeff wondered.

I accessed it and we both took a gander.

At first glance I thought Clark might be checking to make certain

Lucretia had her belt through all her belt loops ...

... but Jeff's take on what was going on made more sense.
(And seriously: Who would be caught dead like this checking proper belt loop etiquette?)

"Oh ... that's Clark all right" Jeff commented. "Looks like he's tussling with Lucretia Von Schploomph. Why does she have him flipped over her shoulder? Or ... is that him getting to second base with her? Again. What a show off ..."

"See? Nothing to worry about. Our pal is just fine. He's just off on some sort of holiday or he's sowing oats or taking a load off or something."

But later that afternoon, we received additional notes from Clark with curious photos attached. Jeff told you about them Wednesday:

 Drowning? No. Fishing? You betcha.

"Outnumbered." Uh huh ... right, Clark.

"Well ... that settles it. It's official: I'm not worried about Clark. You're right, Michael - he's out and about letting off steam ..."

"He has been working rather hard lately ... I'll cut the guy some slack," I mentioned. "... but he better come back home with a carload of groceries. It was his turn to do the shopping last week. Still, I hope he had fun with Lucy and comes back in a good mood, refreshed and recreated ..."

P.S. I'm really glad Jeff mentioned the infamous Woman With No Name. I'll tell you about her in a couple weeks ...

 

It's Not Like You Were In Any Danger, Clark

Look. It's not that we weren't worried. We were - at least for a few minutes. When Clark took off unexpectedly we were a trifle concerned, for sure. He could have run into traffic, ferchrissakes. But we know our Clarkito knows how to take care of himself - he's one of us, isn't he? Jeez.

Our fears were allayed once we received his first email showing him, ahem, "doing battle" with Lucretia Von Schploomph. Yeah, right. The most testing part of that "battle" must have been deciding whether to stand or sit while she "assailed" him. And when I say assailed, I mean 'made out with'.

No, truth be told, there are many ladies we have encountered in the past who are more fearsome and deadly than Lucretia (bless her bodyguarding, buttkicking lil' heart) could ever hope to be. That's not to say anything bad against Miss Von Schploomph, heavens no. It's just that we all know she's actually a real sweetheart.

Yes, there's been a lot of crazy hellions littering our trail, and these ladies are just a few...

The ladies' track team from the University of Texas. Trust me, any woman who can run 400 metres and maintain her big hairdo is not to be underestimated. In the picture there you see (l to r) Cora Snickerdoodle, the fastest pair of pins this side of Usain Bolt; Gloria Weisenheimer, who stored a 9mm pistol in that beehive; and Heidi Bangtidy, an exchange student from the north of England who was skilled in the lost martial art of Ecky Thump. In the background is coach Fenella Flipoff, whose approach to coaching track was akin to driving a double-decker bus on a skidpan.

Penny Farthing, engineering graduate from Caltech, seen here being, ahem, restrained by two policemen after trying to steal all the coins from an entire seafront amusement arcade with a giant mechanical grabber of her own devising. Well, it was more of a souped-up Bobcat really. Fiendishly clever. 

(l to r) Sondra McDoodles, Cassie Mayweather, Donna Lee O'Hooley and Barb McStuffins, four ne'er-do-wells whose psychic abilities allow them to power and steer a boat just by using their minds. They use their arms as antennae to harness the kinetic energies in the sub-ether, so they say. Sounds like a lot of pseudoscientific hooey to me, but it seems to work. These ladies were very difficult to capture since they were awfully hard to handcuff.

Miss April Van Dal, whose skill with an eyebrow pencil went beyond that of your normal make-up artist, when she started to adapt them and other make-up applicators by adding explosives, poison darts, bullets, detonators, ink squirters and the like, as if she was some sort of James Bond type. She wanted to shut down the government in order to make them accede to her demands, which included $500,000 in $2 bills, a Maserati, a lifetime supply of mascara and her own show on CBS.

The infamous Woman With No Name, who communicated solely with the aid of the Face-O-Phone. Michael has a story about her which would make your toes curl.

These fearsome ladies are the alternative speed-mathcore metal trio Brutal Koala's Fist. We've never met them, nor do we wish to. Yeesh!