there just aren't enough tummelers around these days....

my pops used to accuse my mom of "tummuling" when ever she pestered him about something annoying. then tummeling became a favortie family word usually directed at my mom.



MONTICELLO, N.Y., Aug. 3 - Blanche Pearlman and Mary Borack were moving slowly through the lobby of Kutsher's Country Club on their way to bingo when they were ambushed by the man in the tutti-frutti-patterned Spandex unitard, striped leggings and gold Star of David around his neck.

"Nice purse, ladies," said the man, known in these parts as Krazy Tyrone. "You got some Danish in there?" They tried to wave him off, but Krazy Tyrone is not so easily thwarted. "Do you believe in sex before marriage?" he asked. "I don't," came the answer before they could respond. "It holds up the wedding."

He had just started telling Mrs. Pearlman that she was so sweet that she could give a man diabetes when the public address system ruined his punch line.

"Alfred Silverman to the front desk. Alfred Silverman to the front desk."

The momentary distraction gave the women a chance to escape and Krazy Tyrone was left to find other victims, including a corpulent man with a cane who was told: "You're a nice advertisement for Kutsher's food. You're eating like you're going to the electric chair."

For the last two decades, Krazy Tyrone's life has been an unending cascade of ribald one-liners, sexually loaded Yiddishisms and of course, a daily Simon Sez tournament where the come-on is $1,000 in moist prize money that's kept wadded up in his sock. "I'm so good, no one has ever won," he said pulling out a harmonica and playing "Oh Susannah" with his right nostril.

A startlingly flamboyant man who moves like Pee-wee Herman on amphetamines, Krazy Tyrone, né Paul Krohn, is the last of the Catskills "tummlers," the in-house jesters whose sole job is to keep hotel guests amused before, during and after the all-you-can eat meals. When he is not playing host to trivia contests or demonstrating his jump-rope prowess by the pool, Mr. Krohn can be found at one of the hotel's Ping-Pong tables playing with the skillet or rubber hand he keeps stowed in his duffel bag of tricks. When bored, he'll have other staff members take photos of him hamming it up next to guests who have fallen asleep on one of the hotel's many sofas. "Hey lady," he'll shout across the cavernous lobby. "How did Captain Hook die? He had jock itch and scratched himself with the wrong hand." Many of his favorite quips, most of them unprintable, involve breasts.