Vaudeville as a Suburb of Melville

A good 30 years before the comedians moved in , Vaudeville was just a little suburb of Melville, which is, contrary to conventional high-school wisdom, nowhere near Dullsville. The Vaudevillean shrunken head bit, which you'll see below, got its first big break in Melville. Some consider this downtown bit to be Unciville, but those folk fail to recognize the sheer size of Melville, whose boundaries extend past Unciville all the way to Deville, Bedeville and then outward to Eville. It's easy to get lost. Melville is a strange and encompassing metropolis, having originally sprung from within the confines of the ancient University of Hard Knoxville, replete with its idiosyncratic twists and turns. Today, however, one can start in downtown Vaudeville, take the turnpike through  Eville, get off on the exit to the rundown, treacherous coastal resort of Anville-on-the-Head and yet still never leave Melville proper.

From Chapter 3: The Spouter-Inn

(The landlord and Ishmael discuss the missing harpooner bedfollow)

"[I]don't see what on airth keeps him so late, unless, may be, he can't sell his head."

"Can't sell his head?—What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are telling me?" getting into a towering rage. "Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around this town?"

"That's precisely it," said the landlord, "and I told him he couldn't sell it here, the market's overstocked."

"With what?" shouted I.

"With heads to be sure; ain't there too many heads in the world?"

"I tell you what it is, landlord," said I quite calmly, "you'd better stop spinning that yarn to me—I'm not green."

"May be not," taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, "but I rayther guess you'll be done BROWN if that ere harpooneer hears you a slanderin' his head."

"I'll break it for him," said I, now flying into a passion again at this unaccountable farrago of the landlord's.

"It's broke a'ready," said he.

"Broke," said I—"BROKE, do you mean?"

"Sartain, and that's the very reason he can't sell it, I guess." - M.D.