Jonathan Redwater, a senior at Miami University majoring in interpretive dance, opened his one man senior dance show this weekend to mixed reviews. The show, whose theme was "obsession and denial," dealt with Redwater's constant struggle with being a dwarf who is also manorexic. "I just don't have big enough cheek bones," Redwater said in an earlier interview, "so I'm going to dress up as a pork chop to make up for it."

Food was the centerpiece of much of the performance, including a large number of vibrating orange windsocks nailed to the floor representative of Cheetos. "This is my forest," Redwater noted after the show. "This is where I get lost. The Cheetos forest is like the big bad wolf in so many fairy tales; what little girls in them wanted was a perpetuation of their innocence. I also want this. That and to look taller."

Another part of Redwater's performance involved miming the act of sucking the cream out of long john donuts taped to the bodies of male students. "Contrary to what everyone thinks," Redwater was quick to mention in relation to this piece, "I'm not actually gay. I'd ask a girl out, but I can't seem to see above any of their legs to where their face is."

The highlight of the performance was when Redwater, now dressed as a can of lard, wheeled around in an electric scooter while making conjectures about chickens' lunar origins. "Feathers," Redwater stated during his performance, "are obviously alien or made out of trees or something." He then went on to recite that "both my parents are tall. I just don't know what I did to deserve this."

One of his professors was delighted with the performance. "This is like the baked potato of dance," he responded. But others were less enthusiastic. "How the hell can a manorexic dwarf be an interpretive dancer?" one of his classmates noted. Another was similarly negative, "You mean to tell me that a dwarf dressed as a pork chop is art? I can’t believe I paid 12 bucks to see this!!"

Hannah Rodabaugh received her MA in English from Miami University (Ohio) in 2008, and she received her MFA from Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School in 2010. She is currently a part-time instructor for both Community College of Denver and Naropa University. Her work was included in Flim Forum Press' anthology: A Sing Economy (2008). Her work was also featured in Five Oxford Poets, a documentary about women's experimental writing that premiered at the Cambridge Women's Poetry Festival at Cambridge University (2006). In her free time, she designs free miniature chapbooks (and ironic pamphlets) with uniquely collaged covers. She also enjoys reading about animals, hiking, birding, and getting over-excited about peaches at the farmers market.

Lead singer, keyboardist, and former insurance agent, Bill "Gimme Shelter" Nichols, explained that the Boomers took the concept for their music from Ringo Starr's encounter with a reporter in The Beatles' film Hard Day's Night.

"When she asks Ringo if he's a Mod or a Rocker, Ringo says, 'I'm a Mocker.' That resonated with us because we like to make fun of everything. If we didn't at this point in our lives, we'd probably kill ourselves. We're ready for the fame bubble to burst and to become hard-core unemployables again. Bitch goddess of success and all that."

Continuing with selections from their new CD, In Bed By Ten, the Boomer's opened their show with the speed metal tune "Four-Hour Erection" segueing smoothly into the thumping reggae beats of "Restricted Diet." The band had the crowd singing along with the chorus of "My doctor says more roughage in my diet/I love my cheese, don't want to try it." They closed off this set with the existential lamentation "I'm Not Too Old For You" selected from the oeuvre of Mock Rock pioneer Root Boy Slim. Former Papa Gino's manager and bass player, George "Hot Sauce" Rabinowitz, noted that "Root Boy's original line was 'When you turn 17, I'll just be 32,' but we updated the numbers to 22 and 65. Seemed more realistic and hopefully less litigious."

While the other members of the band took a break to rehydrate, lead guitarist and former real estate agent, Jeff "Underwater" Rivers, ripped into the crunching opening chords of the swamp blues cri de coeur "I Hate Your Music." Drummer and recently-laid-off English teacher, Tony "Pop Quiz" McDonald, harmonized with Rivers on the chorus of "Lady Gaga's infantile/Music for a half-wit/You'll be deaf at 23/Think I'll give a shit?" Rivers really stretched out on the driving Chicago blues tune "No More Bean Dip" and capped off the set with "My Ex-Wife Had a Mustache."

When the rest of the band returned, the Boomers playfully rolled up the legs of their trousers and launched into an up-tempo singalong, based on Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." "I grow old, I grow old!" the Boomers sang a cappella, to which the crowd sang back: "I shall wear my trousers rolled!"

"I love playing in Cambridge," said Pop Quiz after the show. "They get all the literary allusions, although we tripped them up last year with some of Ezra Pound's more obscure cantos. Actually all of Pound's shit is obscure. But it's all good fun, except for the Nazi stuff."

The Boomers didn't want the fun to end on a literary note, so they cranked up their amps to 11 with four raucous, politically-tinged rockers: "This Is Not A Normal Cold," "Skipped My Pills Today," "Finger Up My Ass," and the bluntly satirical "Mitt Romney Is A Fucking Twat."

Although two of the Boomers looked tired at the end of the show and it was getting close to their bedtimes, the crowd wouldn't let them go, so they came out and sang a send up of The Who's "My Generation." "People say my hair is thin/And my breath always stinks of gin/Spend my day sittin' on the john/Hope I die 'fore the money's all gone."

As the band piled into their tour bus, the few autograph seekers reflected on the concert. "They sure make getting older sound awful," said a somber Tiffany Douglas, a junior studying social media at BU. "On the other hand, for a bunch of unemployed old guys, they still rock out. Even though he's old enough to be my grandfather, Pop Quiz could be kind of hot in the right light."

Bill Prindle wrote a humor column when he was in high school. Since then he’s worked as a teacher, community organizer, waiter, graphic designer, producer, marketing executive, and publisher, but it has only been recently that he realized that he should have probably stayed with writing. Or not. You can reach him at bill.prindle@gmail.com.

ITHACA, NY -- For most of his adult life, Bob Smith of Ithaca, NY, dreamed of purchasing a boat, but it was always financially out of reach. Until now.

Reported Smith: "At my boss's funeral, I overheard his son say something about a 'piece of crap' that they were going to 'finally send to the junkyard' so that it could 'die a fiery death in a merciless inferno,' and I thought: 'Bingo!'"

According to Smith, he was asked repeatedly if he was aware that the boat would not float.

"There's this assumption that when you buy a boat you're going to take it to the water," he said with a laugh. "This boat is for exclusive driveway use for a very discerning type of boater."

The type that knows how good a lawn chair looks on deck surrounded by a pile of leaves. As Smith put it: "The sky is the limit!"

"First, I think I'll pretend to fix it up, before leaving my tool box in the shade for an indefinite period of time. Then, maybe I'll pull it flush to my garage door so that no one can get in or out, and then later, halfway out of my driveway so it's a nice 'surprise' for oncoming traffic. From there, who knows? I might even drag it into the street and not move it for several years. I'm keeping it on its trailer so it can be ready to go at any minute."

Smith plans many other activities, as well, ranging from tossing beer cans over the side to testing the motor at 7:00 a.m. on Saturdays when "you can really hear the horsepower behind a feature you're never going to use."

The only people not so pleased about Mr. Smith's recent purchase have been his "huffy" neighbors.

"We just got the city to remove that tireless car he kept in a patch of nose-high grass and now there's this," said one neighbor who preferred to remain anonymous. "We moved into this working-class neighborhood to help drive up the property values, but with this guy around, how will we ever upgrade to a gated community?"

Answered Smith: "They just won't admit how enriching they think the boat really is. I overheard one mother say the rusted propellers were a great way to teach children about tetanus, and another one thanked the Lord that those feral dogs now had a place to nest. And I'll tell you what: the insurance is dirt cheap, and I get more MPG than any of these Priuses!"

Unfortunately for Smith, the city has sided with the neighbors, piling removal notices across the dashboard.

"They're declaring it a health hazard!" bemoaned Smith. "Just like my rusted scooter collection and my salvaged junk pile. I feel like I'm living in wartime Germany."

For now, Smith is continuing to fight the good fight, even against the hippies across the street who have invited him to chuck his boat into the ever-expanding garage sale they've been holding for the past decade.

"They said it would look good between their stacks of mismatched glassware and their human-sized statue of Ganesha that one guy brought back from India 30 years ago when he was really tripped out. I told them off real good," Smith said, a satisfied smile on his face. 

"I've worked all of my life for this boat, and I'll be damned if my view is ruined by a bunch of no-good, long-haired tramps."

Leah Kaminsky is a short story writer and budding novelist from Austin, TX. "Budding" meaning "yet to complete her first draft but really would like to one day." She received her MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Washington in 2009 and has since placed twice in Glimmer Train Top 25 lists. Her work has appeared on Rumpus, Pindedlyboz, and her mother's fridge right next to that picture of bath time circa 1987. She is a big fan and producer of short-shorts and comics, which she posts semi-regularly on her website, leahkaminsky.wordpress.com. She is often profound, but only when there's nothing better to do.