I'm on the sheep but I ain't no lamb

Come with me on a journey, through the power of imagination, back through the mists of space and time. Back to a legendary past, almost inconceivably distant, a time when editors focused on topics of importance and journalists could still write paragraphs consisting of more than a single sentence.

March 17, 1934
100 Goats Vie Today for Bock Beer Honors; Mascots to Parade Beards in Central Park
Amid the Virgilian landscapes of Central Park, the shy goatherds of Manhattan will bathe in the sweet light of publicity this morning, when they assemble at 11 o'clock to consecrate the choicest of their flocks to Bacchus. Their goats, all of them distinctly masculine, and rather belligerent about it, too, will lock horns (but only figuratively, the judges hope) in a beauty contest to determine the winner of the title, "Mr. Manhattan."

March 18, 1934
NON-RESIDENT GOAT 'STEALS' BOCK PRIZE; Technicality and Beard Win Title of 'Mr. Manhattan' for Pretzels of Hastings.
A non-resident goat from Hastings-on-the-Hudson won out over twenty-three nervous but native competitors yesterday in the Bock Beer Beauty Contest in Central Park. The other goats had citizenship, but Pretzels had beauty, which overleaps the barriers of time, space and nationality.

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In retrospect we can see that it was a mistake to allow gambling to occur around these contests of caprine pulchritude. As soon as there are massive wagers resting on the outcome, any dark-horse winner looks like shenanigans, and ugly suspicions arise that the judges have been offered a deal they couldn't understand. Disgruntled goat-breeders were quick to question the masculinity of one another's goats. In 1934 this led up to an unseemly episode when rivals -- convinced that Pretzels was not only a foreign usurper, but also a nanny-goat who had suborned the judges with her feminine wiles and come-hither glances -- attempted to show that her virile attributes were actually constructed from painted sailcloth. Pretzels survived the brawl but was badly traumatised and unable to resume his stud career.

It all came to a head in 1936 when the judges awarded the coveted "Horn d'Or" to a shaggy dog called Bertrand with large whelk shells glued to its head. The resulting acrimony escalated into riots in which the Astor Opera House was burned to the ground and dozens died in the shooting when the National Guard were called in to restore order.