THE ALPINE ALBATROSS : Jan. 2004
---The Official Newsletter of the APTT----"The Truth Exaggerated."

OPENING DAY SURPRISE!
JIMMY "MICKEY" CURRAN DUBS BILLY GLAUS TOUR'S FIRST 5-STAR COMMISSIONER
By Ronch Vertigo, Ace Albatross Reporter

Sunday, December 21, 2003, UPI, API, DUI
Somehow after Mickey Mouse fanatic Jimmy Curran stepped up to the podium at the 29th Annual APTT Banquet after being presented with the coveted Gary Palmer Memorial Trophy and announced in a hysterical falsetto that "I choose not to accept (the trophy)," and then scampered from the White House (site of the banquet) , you knew something like this was bound to happen. Yet, if you were among the 9 stalwart APTT Opening Day competitors and the 4653 rabid Alpine Tennis fans, you were stunned when the diminutive Air Product executive casually handed Bullet Bill Glaus the trophy, an autographed painting of Minnie Mouse and, accompanied by a signer for the deaf and a semaphore-flag operator for the retarded, flatly announced, "I am naming Bill Glaus the next commissioner as of this moment. He would have been my choice, if I were to attend the banquet, but, since business obligations will make it impossible for me to make the banquet (on April 3rd), I am announcing my selection now on this the traditional start of the tour." It should be noted that there are many Jimmy Curran doubters among APTT followers; and this reporter has received hundreds of e-mails asking the same question: How could the commissioner have a conflict with the date of the banquet. Doesn't the commissioner choose the date of the banquet? And, for the first time all year, The Mick broke into a gleaming smile and held up two fingers in a victory sign. "I'm not really sure Jimmy ever embraced the concept or the spirit of the trophy," commented a philosophical Dr. Laurie Rudich, APTT Psychologist, when told about Curran's stunning decision by a depressed Jan "Flash" Rudich at the elegant Campus Pizza, APTT headquarters.

FIRST 5-STAR COMMISSIONER Curran's abdication of the commissionership answered the often-asked question of who will be the Tour's first 5-star commissioner. It also robbed the upcoming 30th Annual banquet of its penultimate moment: The announcement of the next commissioner. "Tell you the truth, " Bill Glaus stated while sipping a beer at the home of Lois Remp, recipient of the Hostess of the Year Trophy at the 2001 Awards Banquet, ironically, the year Bullet Bill Glaus was awarded the Gary Palmer by Harry the Horse" , "now that I have had a few hours to soak this in, my most repetitive realization is that the vile little bastard took away perhaps my greatest moment. I could have gotten the trophy in front of hundreds of adoring fans instead of having the thing thrust on me in front of a bunch of losers on a 13 degree day in December. The fifth star. Now it seems like a joke." Jeff "The Prince of Pigment" Glaus, also present at the Remp party, when cornered by this reporter and pestered to comment on Curran's granting Billy the 5th star, an achievement the ex-Marine was known to covet, told The Albatross: "I just can't believe the asshole is getting married. What the hell is the stupid ass thinking?" Glaus was referring to the impending marriage of the new 5-star commissioner to a young (27 years-old) Slovokian -Simona Toyota this coming January.

SPIRITED PLAY MARKS THE 30TH OPENING DAY

Coincidentally, buoyed by the presentation of the Gary Palmer Trophy, Bullet Bill Glaus and brother Jeff won 12 straight games to win doubles-partner honors. Harry The Horse Wigder and Jeff Glaus opened the day winning their first 8 and, teaming up again, won another 4-straight. An unusually-attractive Alpine competitor runs down a Patrick Golden running lob

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Competing in the 30th Opening day were Curran; the Glaus Brothers; Patrick and Jerred Golden: Horse Wigder; Jimmy "Spin Bastard" Doran; Lafayette English Professor Terry Hahn and Fast Eddy Shaughnessey.

SHAUGHNESSEY PARTY HIGHLIGHT OF HOLIDAY SEASON
By Bobo Palsey, Albatross Hack Reporter

The 8th Annual Ed Shaughnessey Christmas Party, which was once a total Alpine event - APTT members and their friends and family - has evolved into one of Easton's society's holiday gala of the year. A former mayor; many of the areas most popular lawyers; a formal judicial candidate, decked out in a fashionable doo-rag, her attractive female companion at her side; professors from several region universities, and, of course, many of the veteran APTT luminaries, highlighted the gala event.

Ironically, the APTT Commissioner - at that moment - Jimmy "Mickey" Curran, who was earlier spotted dining at the famed Appollo's in Bethlehem with his comely fiancée June, failed to make an appearance at the event. For years the appearance of the commissioner, accompanied by an always lovely female companion, has been the highlight of the soiree.

"I think Jimmy's (Curran) failure to show," Tour Psychic Jimmy "Spin Bastard" Doran, former APTT Commissioner, observed to Albatross reporters. "is laden with portent. I think it was former president James Buchanon, a Pennsylvania native, by the way, who failed to show at his Inaugural Ball, and, bingo, three months later, he's assassinated-"

Doran's words carried weight because he had predicted several of Harry The Horse's defections from the APTT; had predicted that Dave "The Truth" Kioro would get drunk and bitch-slap a bank customer; opined that Jeff Glaus would weaken and be photographed inside a titty-bar with a naked blonde woman; and that Jan "Flash" Rudich would go through his 34th consecutive year without playing either soul or country western music on Campus Pizza's Juke Box.

Even though, of course, it was McKinley who was assassinated, not Buchanon. The next day, however, Doran looked like a genius when Curran stunned the tour with his surprise abdication of the commissionership, only hours after missing the party that had been thrown entirely for him. Coincidence? You tell us.

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FAST EDDY WINS COVETED JOHNNY WALKER PRESENTATION HIGHLIGHTS AFTERNOON OF FIERCE COMPETITION
Friday, December 27, 2003, Lafayette University Courts

Jimmy Curran, the recently deposed commissioner, and Backhand-Billy Glaus, slated to marry Simona Toyota, a Slovakian émigré, in January, combined cagey netmanship with fierce ground strokes to defeat a weary Jeff Glaus and a courageous but outgunned hockey-stud Jan "Flash" Rudich in the finals of the 15th Annual Johnny Walker Tournament, an event marked by fierce Alpine tennis and culminated with the presentation of the trophy to former commissioner Fast Eddy Shaughnessey.

Shaughnessey had won 16 games but was ousted from the finals via a coin flip won by the long-haired substitute teacher (Bill) Glaus. It is the famed attorney's first Walker, won in the past by such Alpine luminaries as Johnny Walker founder and so-called Father of the Tour Gary "Woody" Lamb; Justin and Jared Golden; Ray "El Nino" Carillo; Scott "Dog" Glaus; Harry "The Horse" Wigder; Ricky "Tiger" Woods and Lisa "The Habit" Golden, the only woman to have ever won a trophy of any kind on the tour. Skiing Pheenom Wayne Zeeger; Lafayette English Professor Terry Zahn; The Horse and a usually smooth as ice ground stroke master Rich McMullen rounded out the competitors.

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"DAVE C" NAMED IN NEIL POLICCELLI DIVORCE
By Joey Flambay, Albatross Society Editor

Maybe it was the postcards from Montana. Perhaps the ones from Key West. Or the ones that arrived on a desperately cold January night from the French Riviera. "I don't know which one it was, really," a despondent Policelli admitted to this reporter. "I think it was a cumulative effect. Like, maybe around the 28th card from Dave when the bitch went ape-shit on me---"

Policelli's estranged wife Linda, interviewed in the scrub room of Easton Hospital where she was holding onto the hand of surgeon Lenny Lipschitz , denied she ever went "ape shit." "Listen, I was upset, yes, but, I never went 'Ape.' That's a word Neil always used when anyone raised their voice. So, one night, Neil is nodding off on the couch, even though The Simpson's, his favorite show, was on. And here comes this postcard from his buddy Dave C . Another fucking post card. This one from Arizona, I think. I wake Neil up and shove the picture card in his face and just plain tell him that your friend is traveling all over the world and you, you chicken shit, you can't make it off your fucking couch. Now, does that sound like someone whose gone ape? Huh?"

Linda left Neil that cold January night, claiming that she would seek out this Dave C, seek him out and make him hers. She told her husband, "Why Not. I am a perfect size 5, after all?" Dave C was later named by Neil as the correspondent in what he claimed was a "once perfect union." "I have no clue who this guy (Dave C) is and why I am getting all these post cards from him," Policelli told Easton Court Reporter Lionel "ChooChoo" Trane, " all I know is he gotta be one of the most sadistic, malevolent mother (expletive deleted) walking this earth." Dave C was not available to be interviewed.

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WHAT'S GOING DOWN AROUND THE TOUR
By David "Bitch Slap" Kioro, Hip Albatross Reporter

Newly crowned 5-Star Commissioner "Bullet Bill From College Hill" Glaus broke down during an intimate interview with local sports pundit Ronch Vertigo and conceded that Alpine Self-Help Guru and Tour Psychologist Dr. Laurie Rudich had "gangster-slapped me into reality" during an impromptu intervention at Campus Pizza, APTT headquarters. Glauss, up until the intervention, had slept in a bunk bed in the same room as his war-hero brother Jarhead-Jeffrey Glaus, clung to Roger-The-Ranger bed sheets during the nights and for a record 26 consecutive APTT Banquets was never accompanied by anything approximating a female companion. Rudich, who broke into the world of Self-Help with her revolutionary weight-loss program, "Stop Eating You Fat Bastard!" related to Albatross reporters that she blended Dance and Reality Therapy

A rehabilitated Bill Glaus and an unidentified bank employee and fellow patient go through Dr Laurie's Reality and Dance Therapy class.

Former APTT Commissioner and legendary Easton attorney Fast Eddy Shaughnessey announced that the Tour's 30th Awards Banquet will be held at the Bank Street Annex on April 3d, 2004. Shaughnessey announced that APTT Attorney Theresa Hogan was deliberating over the impromptu awarding of the trophy by Jimmy Curran to a stunned but appreciative Bullet Bill Glaus. Local Historian and author Donald Miller, a gifted writer who has chronicled the growth and fall of many large civilizations, has apparently switched gears with his latest non-fiction tome, Metrosexuals Of the APTT. The riveting book reveals the secret lifestyles and sexual tendencies of what Miller cites as "a remarkably unremarkable group, who, for the most part, couldn't even nail Monica Lewinsky with a hammer---" Jerred The Hat Golden, APTT Historian, reacted angrily, characterizing Miller as "wildly reckless and darned rude." "Actually, I would be really pissed, if I even knew what the hell he meant with that analogy."

Metrosexuals, according to Miller, are sensitive, neat, cultured and continuously concerned with being neat, well-dressed and empathic. Exerpts from the book will be featured in the next Albatross, but, in short, the best seller concentrated on the following Tour veterans:

. . . In the next Albatross: