Here at Professor Gumby we’re committed to bringing you at least one new exercise in pointless nostalgia every month. But the holidays took their usual toll, killing countless brain cells, and then several particles of what might have been sleet were spotted in southern Texas, paralyzing traffic for days. So here we are on January 31, practically empty-handed.

Fortunately if there’s one thing you can count on Gumby for – and in fact there is only one thing – it’s that if you mention any pop music absurdity of the last fifty years, he will be able to top it with something twice as absurd and a thousand times more obscure. Can you name a prog rock song that features Martin Luther and the Pope playing golf? Gumby can. In response to last month’s bit about Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Gumby sent me the lyric to “We’re All As We Lie,” by Anthony Phillips, who was the original guitarist in the band Genesis and later went solo. The song is available on YouTube (what isn’t?) and even its parent album Wise After The Event (1978) is still around, so we’ll just preserve a few immortal lines here:

“Holy Mackerel”, cried the Papal Prince,
“You’re out of bounds I’m really quite convinced”.
Luther drew his driver but the Pope pulled out a fiver
And they halved the hole on points of sacraments.

Rock on.