Bomphiologia

Bomphiologia (bom-phi-o-lo’-gi-a): Exaggeration done in a self-aggrandizing manner, as a braggart.

I was born on a beach in New Jersey, the craziest state in the land of the free, I hung in the park so I knew every tree, and I killed me a skunk with my car when I was twenty-three: Mickey, Mickey Ramapo, King of Seaside Heights.

I’m 6’9” and I am more handsome then Bruce Springsteen. I got thick black hair and bright blue eyes. It’s not my fault, but every night at least one girl is gonna cry because I won’t take her home at closin’ time from “Marla’s Food & Drink.” Down in Texas, I got 50 oil wells pumpin’ out dollar bills day and night. I got a 20-room mansion in Mahwah, a beach house down at the shore, and a secret hideout up north, I can’t tell you any more.

I am 71 and my latest wife is 23. She keeps me feeling young. My second biggest thrill is to watch Baby run on the treadmill. My children think she’s great. They go skiing in the winter and down to the place at the shore every other season. I’ve got so much money I can never spend it all. I have 9 cars. Every one’s worth over $60,000. My chauffeur Barb takes me anywhere I want to go. We have fun inspecting motel rooms, pretending we work for the Department of Sanitation. We have fake I.D. Cards. It’s a blast.

You should know that I graduated at the top of my class at Rutgers—I tied with some kid from China—a refugee. His father was a Red Guard and despised him for his Western learning. Too bad! My family was there at graduation eating a pepperoni pizza down in the from row, with super-size Cokes. They briefly took “Little Mao” under their wing. My dad got him a job driving a bakery truck until he heard back on his grad school applications. He got into MIT and disappeared. We thought he was kidnapped. I guess it was confirmed when we saw a newspaper picture of him beating up an old man in a street brawl somewhere in China. But of course, that did not deter me.

I opened a turtle oil factory in Linden. We squeezed it out of Sea Turtle muscles and genitals. The slogan for our turtle oil was: “It wins the race.” It is an allusion to the story of the tortoise and the hare—in our case the “race” is the race against time, or aging. Anyway I was shut down by the “Fish and Game Commission” but not before I’d made seven-billion dollars and could retire in style.

Behind Rocco Commisso, I am the richest man in New Jersey. Did you get that? Second richest man in New Jersey! It might be hard to believe I made all that money selling turtle oil in the Sixties. You don’t believe it? Fu*ck you. And oh, don’t forget my oil wells.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae”

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