NEWS FLASH: 'Timothy' Still Missing, but Chilean Miner Confirms No Cannibalism In His Neck of the Woods!

Now that those buried miners are all safely out of that hole in Chile and their "pact of silence" is starting to crack and I feel froggy enough to poke fun at them because Miner No. 2 brought up cannibalism first in an interview with the Daily Mail, let's jump into the Wayback Machine and dig into "that" song ... you know ... 1971's "Timothy," by the Buoys, the only catchy song - perhaps the ONLY song - about cannibalism that ever charted.

It was written by Rupert Holmes, who had previously co-written and sang a ditty called "Jennifer Tomkins," about a you-know-what-outta-luck girl who was born on a Sunday and her daddy left on Monday and her mother died when Jenny was 7 and Jenny went to work at 11. Later, Holmes penned and warbled "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)," a dirty-dog deed for which he should have been shredded by marauding piranhas.

ANYhoo, I remember sitting in my bedroom on my purple velvet bedspread as an angst-addled teen, this tune about three trapped miners blaring through a poorly wired earphone as I scrawled lyrics in my notebook - yes, decades before I could just Google "Timothy, lyrics." Later, I shouted to my befuddled grandmother:

" ... Hungry as hell no food to eat
And Joe said that he would sell his soul
For just a piece of meat
Water enough to drink for two
And Joe said to me, "I'll take a swig
And then there's some for you."

Then, or at least the way I heard it and sang it just to see the fear on my grandma's face, Joe started looking at Timothy like he was the last Lit'l Smokie at a frat party.

And though we're never given a clue as to whether this tasty trio was down in that mine for two days or six months, everything went all downhill and Donner Party in a hurry from there. I don't want to give the story away if you've never heard or don't remember "Timothy," but the grammatically challenged singer, who woke up with a full stomach shouting, "God, why don't I know?" while nobody ever got around to finding Timothy, was lying through his muscle-masticatin', Timothy-tendon-tearin', flossin'-with-femurs teeth.

Jennifer Tomkins, if you care, grew up to be quite a lady, but then she met Tony, whose background was shady. As for the "Pina Colada" guy, he pissed me off from the start by comparing his boredom with his "lady" to "a worn-out recording of a favorite song" and then taking out a personal ad, only to get stuck with that lady again and finding out they didn't know a damn thing about each other before, but now, over pina coladas, it's all gonna be OK.

Yeah. Bet that's what Joe told Timothy, too.