Topic: "Fashionable Frodo" (5)
Scott Shannon frequently accompanies Frodo while jaunting about the Shire in his motorcar. Not only is the music wonderful, but Shannon has been everywhere, and done everything, and when it comes to telling stories about the artists and the art, there is none better. Every storyteller however, is subject to the sometimes witty reposit of a faithful companion, and what follows is akin to Tonto responding to the Lone Ranger's lament that being surrounded by hostile Indians may bring their eventual demise ("What you mean 'we', kemo sabe?").
Shannon recounted a recent bank robbery in California, and subsequent questioning of witnesses by the local gendarmerie, which yielded an unheard of consistency in description. Nearly all of the witnesses to the hold-up remarked upon the striking beauty of the robber, but none could seem to give any detailed physical description. Eventually, said Shannon, one of the police officers commenced to query a rather effeminate gentleman who had witnessed the evil-doer from across the street as she made her hasty getaway.
The witness disclosed that the tall and leggy African-American bandit wore a tight fitting pink gown, with pearls, and an off-white kerchief about the throat. The shoes were white and open-toed. A matching broad-brimmed hat with a red ribbon about the base, upon which the felon maintained its placement with her left hand while holding a derringer, pointed at a bank teller furiously stuffing bills into a shopping bag from Saks Fifth Avenue.
Shannon paused, for a fatal moment, before adding the punch line to the story, and it gave his broadcasting sidekick the opportunity to add in a rhetorical huff, "White, after Labor Day?"
When the entire radio network regained control, Shannon sheepishly explained that the witness also indicated that the robber was actually a man. Then again, what would one expect?
