I love this guy. He was that rarest of talents, a tabloid genius. As a per-fessional headline writer, I know how hard the task is. It's a daily game whose goal is to get the reader to pick up a paper. The rules vary from publication to publication, but these days it seems that only the good old New York Post and various supermarket tabs go for the no-holds-barred, pithy, urgent "screamer"/banner/streamer, that goes above the fold and compels the unwitting consumer to devour the strange tidings within.
We headline writers are a devious lot. Like a carny barker, we must flog the goods without giving away the punch line, utilizing Fieldsian levles of linguistic chicanery to entice the rubes into the tent. I used to have to pitch the lead story on the front page in 40-point type, which means nine characters or less, including spaces. It was excruciatingly difficult. I believe my most poignantly laconic headline, regarding some city kerfluffle or other, was OOPS. I'm sure it's in the files somewhere.
Musetto was handed a great opportunity on April 15, 1983, and recognizing one when it comes along is half the battle. A lesser man might have taken a more decorous route; not our boy! The story is true; a man shot a topless bar owner in Queens, took several women hostage, raped one, and forced another to decapitate the dead man.
Not precisely the stuff of whimsy.
However, Musetto's outrageous yet perfectly accurate four-word summary, its parallel construction, made it not just memorable but unforgettable. Around the newsroom, we cited it regularly, along with the movie Airplane's 'BOY TRAPPED IN REFRIGERATOR EATS OWN FOOT'. (Yes, journalists are children. Get over it.)
Headlines inspire the worst instincts in their composers -- they demand oversimplification, yearn for the insertion of puns, and invite misrepresentation. They provoke the mischievous, thumb-your-nose impulses that got us into journalism in the first place. Musetto's gloriously vulgar blazon shines out like a beacon of sheer cheek in a tidy, uptight world.