Liebography Investigates…The Danza Code

By now everyone’s familiar with The Da Vinci Code, a novel that claims a series of messages hidden within masterpieces like the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper can reveal a 2,000 year old Vatican conspiracy. What many don’t realize, however, is that we needn’t dig centuries into the past to uncover such shocking global mysteries. In fact one need look no further than our own modern day “renaissance man” Tony Danza as just a cursory look at his life’s work reveals a wealth of encrypted information that makes Da Vinci’s Code look as easy to solve as a TV Guide crossword puzzle. Clues have been left in plain view for all to see, so join us now as we attempt to unravel the profound perplexities and the betwixting mysteries of the secrets of the universe hidden within the legendary…

Tony Danza Code

1) Going Ape!-This 80s screwball comedy is rife with blistering digs at Darwin’s Theory of Evolution owing to Danza’s belief that the emergence of homo sapiens actually came as a result of alien/human cross breeding. The evidence?

Premise of movie that Danza must care for 3 orangutans before claiming a $5 million inheritance refers to theory that UFOs first arrived on Earth 5 million years ago. The names of the orangutans in the film are Winky, Sweetie and Randy Bananas, slight variations on the names of the chief architects of our planet’s cross breeding experiment: Wlnxknix, Sweentock and Randy Bananas. During the movie’s climactic human-on-orangutan pie-fight, Danza delivers a string of denunciations against his simian opponents that are as comical as they are spirited (which is to say extremely!), but if one takes the first and last letter of every word he utters during this exchange it spells out the phrase…“Darwin destroyer”

2) “Taxi”-It’s long been rumored that the title “Taxi” is actually an anagram for a secret society Danza founded in the early 70’s called Tony’s Alliance of Xati Incantation, an occult group based on the worship of a 20,000 year old intergalactic sentient vapor named Xati which he claimed dwelled within Judd Hirsch's nostrils

3) Danza has a tattoo on his upper right arm that’s never been revealed in public, but is said to be of a long suppressed version of the very first American flag depicting Benjamin Franklin autofellating himself.

4) “Who’s The Boss?”-Tony’s staring role in this seemingly innocuous family sitcom actually puts forth a devastating existentialist critique on the existence of God from its very title.  From the get go Danza demands that we ask ourselves “Who is, in fact, The Boss?”  Are we rational beings who can self-actualize and control our own destiny or are we merely pawns, insignificant scale-wage extras in our own lives, beholden to a supreme deity that holds complete authority over every aspect of our existence?

-The show’s other characters also present an interesting side point of reference as thinly veiled symbols of various pagan world religions: Angela, the Wiccan goddess ideal of “the divine feminine”, Mona the lascivious insatiable Dionysian cult figure, tomboy daughter Sam is the androgynous Hindu deity Ardhanarisvara and of course lil’est Jonathan is an obvious stand in for Heimdall, the Norse god of stupid fuckin’ haircuts.

5) Danza’s insistence that the names of nearly all his onscreen characters be called “Tony” underscores the concept that we are all one and that everything and nothing are all interconnected, inseparable and made whole again in the completeness that is “Tony”, for the totality of our actions and their concomitant reactions are forever building to a greater “Tony-ality” which determines our past, present and future.

6) "Ay-oh!  Oh-Ay!"-A simple phrase commonly uttered by Mr. Danza, but one whose underlying meaning is staggering complex. If we interpret the phrase to mean "as the letter 'A' is to 'O", the letter 'O' is to 'A',” and then apply this theorem to his nomenclature, it effectively becomes Tany Donzo, a name shared by the 16th century tailor, alchemist and friend of Christian reformer Martin Luther who allegedly put Martin up to posting his 95 Theses in exchange for secrets to black magic rites as well as free cloak alterations for life (a deal later reneged upon), thus by chanting his phrase Danza seeks to drive home a rapidly pro-papist notion that the reformation movement was Satanic in origin. A competing theory holds that Danza merely says it whenever he’s forgotten his lines, but the veracity of it has yet to be definitively proven.

8) “The Tony Danza Show”-News that Tony's weekly talk show has been cancelled after 3 years on the air should come as no surprise to followers of the Danza Code, as the number 3 has always figured quite prominently throughout his life (and we're not just talking about his versatility as a performer: actor, singer, dancer). Consider the following:

Tony always performs his show-stopping tap dance routines in 3/1 time, (this in direct refutation of the International Tap Association's standard of 4/4). A recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine claims that Tony Danza possesses 3 fully formed hearts. This physiological anomaly is the only way to explain how much Tony cares about his fans. Number of cheeses in Tony's favorite 3-Cheese pasta sauce? Three