Ian Strang's Blog

Billy Lorado was unusually happy. Delighted might be a more appropriate word. Ecstatic would probably be too strong of a word. He wouldn't want anyone to think that he was too overjoyed about the situation. But how could he deny his feelings? What he felt was what he felt regardless of what other people may think of him. This was usually the problem with the politically correct society that he lived in. The trend, according to Oprah, was to be true to your feelings and don't suppress the truth. Honesty will better for you in the long run. This was all fine and dandy as long as it didn't conflict with the belief of the politically correct which was 'you are entitled to your own opinions, beliefs and feelings, as long as they don't conflict with mine. Then we've got a problem'. These were very frustrating times, especially with Oprah on the air.
But what Billy was feeling these days was all the adjectives in the thesaurus to describe any kind of joy without, of course, going overboard about it. After all, he didn't want people to think he was crazy. He got what he wanted and he was happy with that. The fact that other people didn't agree with him didn't bother Billy all that much. Call it being selfish if you want, but as long as nobody got hurt nobody could complain. Well, maybe one person.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" Billy asked as he shook himself out of the daydream he was having.
"What is your name?" the police officer asked, writing furiously on a small notepad with a number 2 pencil.
"What the hell is he writing?" Billy wondered. He thought it was strange that he hadn't offered the cop any kind of information up to this point, and yet, the cop seemed to be writing the next great American novel.
"Son, I'm going to ask you one more time, what is your name?"
"Billy. Billy Lorado."
"What's your address?" the cop asked impatiently.
"I'm sorry but do you think you could loosen these cuffs a bit? They're a little tight and I'm starting to lose the feeling in my left pinkie."
The cop leaned in, "I'm not going to ask you again. What is your address?"
A strange feeling suddenly ran through Billy's body. It filled up his chest cavity then dropped like an anvil into the pit of his stomach.
"What if I made a mistake?" Billy asked himself as a feeling of terror shadowed over him like a dark cloud. "What if George was right? What if he had been right all along? Oh my God."
His eyes opened wider as the cop gave up, put his notebook in his breast pocket and closed the door to the police car.
"Well, it wouldn't be the first time someone's made a mistake," Billy rationalized. "I mean, if he was in fact right all along then I'll be man enough to concede. He's usually right about these things anyway. But then, so am I. Two people can't be right at the same time. Can they? Oh, I'm so confused. That damned Oprah. Maybe I shouldn't have killed him and we could have walked down to ol' Barney Hasselhoff's and settled this whole thing."
"He give you anything?" the sergeant asked the cop with the notepad.
"He wouldn't talk. Kept staring off into space," the cop replied.
"Alright, take him downtown and we'll finish up there."
"Sure thing, boss."
The cop got into the police car and drove Billy to jail where later that evening Billy would be killed in the recreation room by a man named Darrel Warner who believed that Billy was a soldier sent by Oprah Winfrey to bring about the end of the world.

The eucalyptus tree was a favorite hangout spot for Tak. From the top he had a beautiful view of the entire clan's territory and the surrounding area. During the day the tree provided relief from the scorching heat. It was under this very tree, in fact, where a cluster of eucalyptus berries fell on his head allowing Tak to devise a rudimentary formula for what he called the Law of Gravity.
This was Tak's dilemma. Every once in a while a situation would present itself that would shed light on some important equation that would shed a clearer light on the complex properties that interacted with objects both living and not living on what he called the Earth. He had a whole list of them in his head. The Theory of Relativity, the Law of Displacement, the Velocity Theory, the Law of Mass Infusion, the Fluxion Method, the Law of Flavors, and the Theory of Distance of Food and Hunger As It Pertains To How Tired Or Lazy One May Be. The problem lay in the fact that it was only a couple of hundred years ago that his species began walking upright. They were still using grunts, groans and hand gestures as their primary form of communication. They had a hard enough time trying to figure out what they were having for dinner and trying to communicate that information to the other members of the clan much less trying to grasp the concept that bodies attract each other with a force that varies inversely as the square of their distance. Tak, however, did posses the unusual ability to, not only grasp this concept, but to understand it in a very deep and meaningful way.
They had no form or method of writing or language, yet, Tak in his heart believed that these strange thoughts that he called formulas would someday help his species grow and advance above the berry-pickers and the cave dwellers. He also had a dream that one day someone from his species would walk on what he called the moon. Tak then fell into a blissful sleep under the eucalyptus tree and he dreamt.
A loud WHACK! had awaken Tak from his slumber underneath the eucalyptus tree. He looked around then heard another deafening WHACK! His tree shuddered a moment and then fell silent. He turned around to the other side of the tree and standing there holding a four foot double-edged axe was a tall figure, the shape of which was not unlike his own. He was wearing some kind of skin or cloth that was deliberately cut to fit around his legs, chest and arms. He was also wearing some kind of stylish headdress made out of a soft, fine looking material with what looked like a brim that surrounded the perimeter of the headpiece. Tak was momentarily reminded of his own headpiece that he made five days ago out of the branches of an elderberry bush.
He stared a moment as the figure slowly raised the giant axe above his shoulders then swung it sharply sideways at such a velocity that its impact with the tree took a large wedge-shaped chunk out of the side. The tree shuddered again.
Tak immediately stood up. "Hey, what’s the big idea?!" he yelled as he walked over to the figure. He was considerably shorter than the strapping foreigner. He saw the large gap that had been created by the axe and he began waving his hands around like a madman.
"Just what do you think you are doing, my good man? I don't know where you come from but around these parts we respect each other's property," Tak complained with the fervor and conviction of a congressman.
The man, whose name was Jethro, stood and looked at Tak with amazement.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" Jethro thought to himself. Before him stood a creature, not unlike his own design, but much shorter and much, much, much hairier. The creature was waving his hands in the air grunting and groaning and making absolutely no sense whatsoever.
"I wish I knew how to speak your lingo little fella," Jethro thought. "We might be able to have a nice conversation about the weather or the big flood that took place here last week or why our wives are so cranky, it seems, once a month."
Tak heightened his protest at the sight of four other eucalyptus trees in the distance that had been chopped to the ground.
"But right now I've got work to do. We're in the process of deforesting there here timber grove to make way for a new slaughterhouse and rail depot. And seeing how you're jumping up and down like a madman directly in the path of ol' Bessie here I'd have to come to the conclusion that you're impeding progress of the greater good."
And with that he raised his axe high above his head. Tak stopped protesting long enough to watch the razor sharp blade of the axe come whipping straight down on the middle of his forehead.
Tak's final thought was this: the velocity of an object shall be defined as having both magnitude and direction and the magnitude of this velocity shall be called speed. Tak's Theory of Impact.

The future turned out to be just as awful as everyone had predicted. There was trash everywhere, there was dirt in everyone's fingernails and the air has a persistent garlic smell to it like how it was in your first apartment building where your neighbors were from the Eastern part of some god-forsaken country and were cooking garlic twenty four hours a day because that's how it's been done for generations. There was a bronze haze that hung over New Delta-Bravo-Echo City like an old, dirty quilt covering an old woman's legs. Most of the buildings were crumbling except for the corporate buildings, which were shiny and new and towered high over the crime-ridden streets, safe and sound up in the sky. The corporate bosses usually got around in their sleek, high-powered helicopters, jumping from building top to building top without ever having to come face to face with the reality of the streets or whoever was cooking all that garlic.
Kilfuddrick's was a landmark pub in that it was established before the government divided up the city into sectors. The dark wood walls and ceiling absorbed the warm glow of the incandescent lights and was marinated in years of spilled alcohol and beer giving the place a well-seasoned flavor. Hand painted pictures of famous Irish people adorned just about every square inch of the long wall opposite the bar.
Three bearded men, Burt, Jim and Ned, sat at the bar nursing three lovely pints of Guinness.
"Boy," Burt began, "I gotta tell you guys, these beards are great."
"Aren't they?" Jim asked rhetorically.
Ned made the agreement unanimous, "I'm so glad we decided not to listen to our wives and grow 'em."
A further glance around the bar revealed that every man in the place had large, fully-grown beards. It was as if there was a Grizzly Adams convention being held there.
"Seriously," Burt continued, "it's so easy just to get up in the morning and not have to worry about shaving."
"I can catch an extra ten minutes of snooze time before I go to work," Jim said proudly.
"Besides," Ned concluded, "we look more manly with these things."
Both Jim and Burt wholeheartedly concurred.
"And surly."
"And macho."
Burt started getting a little deeper, "And isn't that what it's all about? Huh? I mean, I've been shavin' for years and where has it gotten me?" He made a 'zero' sign with his thumb and forefinger, "Nowhere."
"Also, I don't have to spend as much money on shaving cream and razors. I'm actually saving money by not shaving," said Ned, who was the money saver of the three.
"Right," Jim agreed, "and you're also not giving your money to the big shaving cream corporations, making them richer and more powerful."
Burt swayed a bit as the alcohol was beginning to settle in for a night of killing brain cells, "Yeah, as if they weren't rich enough already." He took a gulp and ordered another round of Guinness.
Jim and Ned both reached the same conclusions in their heads.
"Yeah."
"Right."
They all had a good inebriated laugh, sitting there thinking about their lives in that city they lived in where people like them had absolutely no chance in hell of ever making anything of themselves other than a regular schmuck. They laughed and laughed as their heads got lower and lower and they rested their gazes on the thick, brown stout in their glasses.
Ned stared at the foam of microscopic bubbles that slowly slid down the inside of his half empty glass, "Stupid wives."

About a half mile down the street rising up way above a cluster of pathetic- looking buildings was a deep black, glass and steel tower that was about fifty stories tall. It nearly pierced the ominous black clouds that had gathered overhead and were producing frightening bolts of lightening that ripped the air open and then slammed it shut, booming thunder across the entire valley for miles. Up on the very top floor was a large sign that glowed brightly in twenty-foot letters that could be read all the way from the other side of the valley that said SHAVING CREAM WORLD HEADQUARTERS. This was, of course, the shaving cream world headquarters.

Most of the uppermost floor was dedicated to the office of Adolph Steadicam who was the iron-fisted President of Shaving Cream. He controlled the shaving cream industry and its multiple lobbies throughout most of the world from this very building. Only Tanzania had been a difficult market for him but he vowed to crack it before the end of the century. Adolph had just celebrated his sixtieth birthday but his driver's license still claimed that he was twenty-two.


Adolph's vast modern office and would look empty if it weren't for the two low chairs that sat in front of a sleek, black desk. The desk was stylishly placed near a floor to ceiling window that provided a view the unhealthy looking city whose decrepit buildings popped up from the ground like pimples on a teenager's forehead and telephone poles and wires looked like someone put something in the trunk of their car that was way too big so then used about ten miles of twine to secure it so they could get it home somehow. Adolph sat comfortably in his large Corinthian Leather chair as he watched out over the skyline.
The massive wooden door that led to his office opened and Adolph's secretary, Virginia, walked in carrying a report. Virginia was a middle-aged man who was always impeccably dressed and his deodorant smelled of rich spices and men in cable knit sweaters on tall ships singing songs of the high seas.
"I have the latest figures, sir," Virginia reported as he sashayed into the room.
Adolph turned his chair around and held his hand out, "Let me see them."
He grabbed the sheet of paper and poured over the numbers, his face grew more and more tense.
"What in God's name is going on?!" he demanded.
"Well, sir," Virginia began, "it seems that the men in sector 3 have all decided to grow beards. And there's talk of some sporadic beard growing in Sector's 4, 5, 6 and 9."
"I can see that, Virginia!" Adolph bellowed. "What I want to know is why?!"
Virginia walks over to a chart of the city and pulls out a collapsible pointer.
"It seems," he began, pointing to the map, "that there has been a recent desire amongst young, emasculated males to become manly, rugged and macho. We don't know why, but it may have something to do with those Grizzly Adams reruns they've been showing on the television box."
"The what?" Adolph asked.
"Well, one of the local TV stations has decide to rerun the much beloved 1970's television show Grizzly Adams starring Dan Haggerty and Denver Pyle."
"Why would they do something like that?" Adolph was puzzled.
"Because they're creatively defunct, they haven't come up with a new idea in decades and they have nothing else to show," Virginia replied with a sneer.
Adolph got up and walked over to the map, "No, why would a bunch of men grow beards just from watching a silly television show?"
"I don't know sir. Why does anyone do anything these days? Why would two people name their perfectly healthy boy Virginia?"
Adolph looked at Virginia.
"Why did your parents name you Virginia?"
"Well, it was like that Johnny Cash song, 'A Boy Named Sue', you know, where the dad was going to prison and he knew he wasn't going to be around very much so he named his son Sue knowing that the kids would tease him and mock him and his son would have to fight and he would become strong and manly even though his dad wasn't there to raise him."
"And that worked out for you?"
"Not really. I got back at my parents by turning super gay."
Adolph walks over to the giant window and looks out at the city, "Virginia, my father was the President of Shaving Cream, just like his father before him, as was his father's father before him and his farther father on his father's side furthest from the farthest father before him, also. This company was built on the sweat and blood of middle to lower class people who never had medical benefits and who never had a way to earn a decent lifestyle or the guarantee of any kind of respectable future. This is a shaving cream town, Virginia..." Adolph turned around to make sure his point was being made, "…and we can't have a bunch of lumberjacks ruining it because they want to look surly and manly! I won't let it happen!"
"Yes sir. I'll put some men on it," Virginia replied as he collapsed the pointer and began to walk out.
"Uh, Virginia," Adolph said as he motioned to his chin, "you uh, missed a spot."
Virginia rubs his chin and felt a small patch of facial hair that managed to escape the morning's razor. A look of slight embarrassment fell over his face.
"I'll shave it right now, sir."

Burt's life was pretty much like everyone else's life in his sector, just a bunch of working jamokes with no potential for upward mobility. Nobody had any real sense of hope anymore, it had been bred out of people a long time ago through subversive television marketing and advertising. People below a certain income level were encouraged to stay where they were and that money and wealth caused more problems so they shouldn't try and reach those types of goals. A slow disintegration of the education system also played a part in the erosion of people's motivation. Basic courses like math and history and philosophy were replaced by reality television shows where contestants bickered and squabbled over lunch. Burt spent a good portion of his time in front of the television watching reruns of Grizzly Adams, a show about a large bearded man who lived in the mountains with his pet bear. Although the series was cancelled long ago TV stations had been rerunning Grizzly Adams for years. No one knows why this particular showed struck a chord with men like Burt, but it did.
Burt's wife, Petulant, was a sturdy woman with some deeply held beliefs about watching reruns of the same show over and over. She believed it led to insanity and bad penmanship.
Petulant had a very heavy walking, almost a stomp, some would describe. Although Burt's mind was usually disconnected with all things domestic there was still the terror that laid in the back of his head when he heard Petulant's approaching footsteps as he tried to relax on the couch.
"We're out of Cap'n Crunch," she said holding an empty cereal box.
"Well, I'll get it later," Burt responded opening another beer. "Grizzly Adams is almost on."
"Oh okay, well I guess I'll just starve to death!" she angrily shot back, throwing the cereal box on the ground and then stomping away.
Burt rolled his eyes and then lolled his head back and forth, "Jesus Christ."

Burt strolled along the sidewalk drinking his beer and decided to cut across the parking lot to the store. He finished the last of it, crumpled the can and then dropped it right on the ground. As he reached the entrance, he almost didn't notice the two clean-shaven men in sunglasses that approached him.
"Hey buster, how's it goin'?" The first guy asked.
"Not too good," Burt replied, rubbing his eyes. The sun was so bright that day.
"Where ya' goin', buddy?" the second clean-shaven man asked him.
"I'm goin' in the store. I gotta get some Cap'n before the wife throws a complete conniption."
"That's a nice beard you got there," the first guy said. "Pretty manly. How long did it take you to grow that? Two, three months?"
Burt finally took a better look at the two men. They wore matching dark suits, they both parted their hair to the right and they were both very clean-shaven.
"Three and a half," he replied. "Hey, who are you guys?"
"We're just, uh, admirers of beards," the second man said. "You don't mind, do ya', bearder?"
"Bearder?" Burt responded. He had never heard that word before. "What is that, an insult? Did you just make that up?"
"Maybe we did, maybe we didn't. That's for us to know and you to find out, bearder."
The two clean-shaven men laughed at Burt, who was, of course, the opposite of clean-shaven.
"Yeah," they both continued, "bearder. Haha, bearder. Bearder."
"Look, I don't have time for…" Burt tried to make his way past the two men but they persisted.
"You know yer puttin' a lot of people outta' work with that whiskered look of yours. People with jobs. People with lives and families and pets," the first man said.
Burt furrowed his brows upward in his most confused look, "How am I putting…"
"Thousands of people. Thousands of people," the second man accused.
"Well, maybe not thousands," the first man corrected his friend.
"Well okay, hundreds. Hundreds of people..."
"Ehhh, you know, it's hard to really put a number on who's really affected by all this."
"Maybe ten...maybe, like, one or two guys are out of work because of..."
"Well, maybe they're not out of work," the first man tried to reason.
"What do you mean?" asked the second man.
"Well, they probably just don't have as much to do at the factory."
"So, they still have a job?"
"Yeah, but not as much to do, though."
"Not as much to do as before?"
"Yeah, because people are using less shaving cream, so, the factory doesn't need to produce as much, so, the workers aren't doing as much."
"So, they're still working, but not doing as much work?"
"Yeah, not as much."
The second man dramatically pointed his finger at Burt, "Because of this guy!!!"
"Mr. Selfish," agreed the first clean-shaven guy.
"Guys sittin' around the shaving cream factory all day with not as much to do!"
"Not as much to do and with mouths to feed!"
"Do ya' hear that Mr. selfish? Mouths to feed!"
Burt finally shakes his head and walks past the two men and into the store. The first guy called out after him, "Where ya' goin', bearder?"
"Yeah, bearder! Come on back and talk about it. Bearder! Bearder, bearder!"
"Shaver hater! Bearder!"
A woman and her small child walked past the tirade as the horrified woman covers her child's ears, "This used to be such a nice place to live."

Burt met his buddies down at Kilfuddrick's at the usual time, four o'clock in the afternoon. There was a wrestling match on TV and most of the men came to the bar to watch it and bet.
Burt looked a little more somber than usual as he slowly sipped his beer.
"Say, has anyone said anything about your beards recently?" he asked his buddies.
"Yeah," Jim immediately replied, "as a matter of fact, three guys came into the shop yesterday and told me that I looked like a handsome version of the 1970's band Blue Oyster Cult."
Burt looked at Jim, "They said you looked like a whole band?"
"Yeah," Jim replied.
"Any other comments," he continued, "Like beard comments?"
"A dog sniffed my beard on Wednesday because I had a cracker in it. You mean like that?" Ned asked.
"No, like any clean shaven fellows or something, sayin', you know, stuff like that yer puttin' people out of work and yer beards are causin' people to starve. Mouths to feed, that kind of stuff."
Jim and Ned looked at each other for a moment.
"Oh yeah that. Yeah. Every day," they said in unison.
"Sure," Ned began, "it's been goin' on for a while now."
"Was it...other guys...with beards...?" Burt asked cautiously.
"Oh no no no, clean shaven guys," Ned responded.
"Yeah, perfectly shaved," Jim chimed in, "Handsome."
"Dashing," Ned added.
"Yeah, Fortune 500 lookin' guys," Jim started to recall.
"Guys you would introduce to yer sister."
"Guys you would introduce to yer mom."
"Guys that you wish were your dads."
Burt stared back at his beer.
"Yeah, Kyle and Tom said they ran into the same guys over on El Cerrito," he said heavily as he took another sip and looked around. The place wasn't full except for a group of men staring blankly up at the television watching two men wrestle in a parking lot.
"Well, whadd'ya sayin' Burt?" Jim finally asked.
Burt turned around, "You don't think it's a little strange that there are these clean shaven guys walkin' around telling everyone with beards that they oughtta' shave or else some poor jamoke in the shaving cream factory is gonna lose his job?"
Jim and Ned pondered on this thought for a moment.
"Well, I didn't think it was weird until you just said it just now."
"Wow, that is kinda' strange. Why would anyone care if we had beards?"
"I'll tell ya' who'd care," Burt said, "the shaving cream industry, that's who."
"Oh come on, why would they care?" Ned asked.
"It's a free country, Burt. Anyone can choose to shave or not to shave anytime they want."
"Can they?" Burt said as he looked over. "We're a country that has become dependent on shaving cream. Why do you think there hasn't been any alternative ways to shave in the last two hundred years?"
Ned perked up, "What about the Creamless Razor?"
"Yeah, and do you remember what a disaster that turned out to be?" Burt reminded them. "Somethin's goin' on. We're showing that we're not dependent on shaving cream and someone doesn't like it because it's affecting their bottom line, and now, someone wants to put an end to it."
"Well, what're we gonna do?" Jim asked nervously.
"I think I may have a plan," Burt said as he reached over the bar and grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. "It's a longshot, but we've got to try."
"What is it?" Ned asked.
"Well," Burt said putting the pen down, "we start by finishing these beers."
Excited by the prospect of planning something, anything, the three men chugged every last drop of beer in their glasses.
"And maybe have one more round," Burt said as he slammed his glass down on the bar.

The two black limos pulled into the empty parking structure roughly at the same time. One limo slowly crept left while the other one crept to the right until they both met, front bumper to front bumper, right in the middle. The drivers of both cars got out went to the rear and opened the door. Adolph stepped out of one while a slender, mustachioed man named Rudolph the Razor Baron stepped out of the other. The men walked cautiously to the front of the cars.
"Ahh Adolph, I hear you're having a little trouble keeping whiskers off men's beards," Rudolph sneered.
"Don't give me that, Rudolph, Adolph shot back. "You know you're affected by this as much as I am."
"Am I?" Rudolph had a confidence about him that secretly bothered Adolph.
"Don't try and act like that Creamless Razor was such a big hit. Fourteen thousand people lost their lives because you wanted to cut shaving cream out of the equation. Well, that math just doesn't add up, daddy-o. Shaving cream is here to stay."
Adolph looked around. The cement structure was bathed in orange halogen light.
"We've got other options," Rudolph slyly said.
"Look," Adolph started, "we may hate each other, we may despise each other, maybe I can't stand your boobless wife but our products must be used together! That's the way it is. That's the way God intended it!"
"The problem isn't me, Adolph, it's your friends in the television business and their fancy reruns of Grizzly Adams and all their swanky Hollywood swinger sex parties and their drugs and lower back tattoos and their 'devil may care' attitudes about personal hygiene. It's become very fashionable to look like an eighteenth century social misfit who can only maintain normalcy in the presence of bears."
Adolph shook his head, "Those reruns and those lower back tattoos are going to be the end of us if we don't do something about it."
Rudolph twisted the waxed end of his mustache, "What are you proposing?"
Suddenly, a car horn breaks in and Adolph and Rudolph look over at a dented and scratched four-door sedan trying to get past the two limos, which are blocking any chance for an exit.
"Well, we should start by finishing these beers," Adolph said as both men, from out of nowhere, started chugging two beers.


Burt, Ned and Jim walked up to the table where the two clean-shaven guys were sitting. A sign hung in front of the table that said '$50 FOR BEARD GONE OFF NOW!' It looked like a six-year old wrote it.
"Fifty dollars for your beards! Come and get it!" the first guy shouted out to passersby.
"Fifty dollars to look like a respectable human being! Fifty dollars!" the second guy chimed in.
"What's goin' on here?" Burt asked.
"Hmm, what do you care?" the first guy replied, "We're just here trying to make this a better community to live in, that's all."
The second guy then called out to another bearded guy, "Hey buddy! Fifty bucks to shave your beard?"
The bearded guy walked up to the table, "Fifty bucks? Geez, it took me six months to grow this."
The first guy jumped in, "How 'bout we throw a girl in it to sweeten the deal?"
The bearded guy's eyes opened wide, "Well, okay!"
The clean-shaven man then called out to a group of beautiful women who were standing nearby.
"Rachel, go with this man! Do whatever he wants!"
The bearded man, happier than he'd ever been his entire life, collected his money and walked off with Rachel.
"You know," Burt said, "you can't just buy people like that, and I'm pretty sure it's illegal to order women to go and have sex with strange men."
"It's a free country isn't it? Besides, what do you care what I do..." he looked at the second guy, "bearder?"
Both clean shaven men laughed hysterically. They laughed so hard they almost fell off their chairs.
"The way I see it," the first guy said as he wiped tears from his eyes, "you guys are on the endangered species list. This town is for decent people. Not bearders."
Figuring it wasn't worth it, Burt and his friends walk away as the clean shaven guys continued trying to hand out money to people who would shave their beards.


Drinking beer on a street corner wasn't as frowned upon as one would think. In fact, the authorities of New Delta-Bravo-Echo City encouraged it. It was the ultimate 'demotivator' according to the mayor. Burt, Jim and Ned's favorite was the corner of Cahuenga Boulevard and Lankershim. Sipping from their tall boys they looked up at the spooky black tower that was the world headquarters for shaving cream.
"You know," Jim said, "I've got a good mind to shave my beard off just to show those guys what's what."
"Well then, you'd be doing what they want. They want you to shave your beard," Burt reminded him.
Ned rubbed his beard, "Mine's feelin' kinda' itchy anyway."
"Whadd'ya mean, you guys are gonna shave? Just because two Mormons said it was the thing to do?" Burt took an angry sip of his delicious beer, the only thing that comforted his these days.
"We gotta shave sometime, Burt," Jim said. "We can't live like this forever. I gotta get a job."
Burt continued to protest, "You can't give in. This is what the shaving cream industry wants."
Jim grabbed Burt's arm, trying to reason with him, "Burt, listen to yourself. You're sounding like a crazy man. It's not like there's a conspiracy to keep us well groomed. It's not like there's a giant conglomerate out there who got us all addicted to shaving so they could maintain their profit margins and become so powerful that they have their own lobbies in Washington that get laws passed that are favorable to them and their industry while our Senators and Representatives disregard anything that has to do with why they are there to begin with, which is looking out for the interests of the American citizen so that they are not taken advantage of by huge conglomerates. I mean, that just sounds crazy! What country do you think we live in anyway, North Dakota?!"
Burt looked down at the god-awfully filthy ground, defeated again by reason and logic.
"Yeah," he finally said, "I guess you're right."
They all finished their beers, crumpled the cans and threw them on the ground even though they were standing about a foot away from a trashcan. The trashcan was completely empty and was sitting in the middle of a debris field of trash. Suddenly, the shadow of a man appeared and the three men turned around. The mysterious man was standing between the sun so he appeared as a silhouette with the suns rays bursting all around him like some sort of halo.
"Excuse me…" the man finally said. Burt, Jim and Ned's eyes popped wide open as the man continued. "Anyone know where I can find a man named Burt?"


The two clean-shaven men were in Adolph's office sitting across from the President as Virginia served them two sparkling waters.
"Well," Adolph began, "I don't think we have to worry about the bearders any more."
"It was a great plan that worked flawlessly," the first clean-shaven man declared.
Adolph agreed, "Fifty dollars and a woman and you can get every man in town to do anything you want them to do. Who knew it would be so cheap?"
"And our stock in the company is safe?" asked the second clean-shaven man.
"Of course it is," Adolph replied. "It's never been higher."
Suddenly, the door to Adolph's office swung open as if someone kicked it and it slammed against the wall on the other side. The two clean-shaven men looked back and saw Burt, Jim and Ned standing at the entrance.
"Hey, you ever hear of knockin'?" the first guy asked.
Adolph stood up, "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.
Burt walked inside the office, "I'll tell you what the meaning is. It's over. The gig is up."
"What gig?" Adolph asked, looking at the two clean-shaven men in total confusion.
"Don't you mean the jig is up?" asked the second guy.
Adolph snapped his fingers at Virginia, "Virginia, get me security."
And then the actor Dan Haggerty walked in the door. He was dressed in head to toe denim and had the same beard he did when he was on Grizzly Adams. He casually put his hand up as he strolled into the room, "Security won't be necessary, Virginia."
Virginia dropped the folders that were in his hands, "Oh my God! It's the ghost of Dan Haggerty!"
"No, I'm not dead yet," Dan said as he snickered, "in fact, I'm still very much alive."
There was a supreme confidence about the way Dan carried himself without the arrogance. He was your football coach, your mailman and your favorite uncle all rolled up into one.
"What you're doing here, sir," he began, "is a shame. A cryin' shame. You corporations have gotten all your heads screwed on backwards or somethin'. I don't know what happened, but it's all wrong. What difference should it make if your profit margins rise or fall a couple of points? Haven't you got enough money already? The reason you have profits in the first place is because of ordinary people. If there weren't any ordinary people there wouldn't be any of you. You corporate types seem to forget that. This is a big, beautiful country we live in. People should be free to shave or not to shave. People should be able to grow their beards part of the way and then shave 'em off because they realized that they really don't look that good in a beard in the first place. It seems like all you care about is the bottom line, well, the bottom line is this; I just bought 51 percent of the stock in your company. So, if there are any more decisions to be made you'll have to answer to me."
Adolph was having a little trouble believing this, "How could you afford 51 percent of this company? I mean, you're a good actor and everything, I just haven't seen you in anything lately."
Dan started walking towards Adolph's desk, not in a threatening manner but more like a middle aged man taking a casual stroll through the park, "Well, I renegotiated my contract a few years ago and in it I stipulated that I wanted points on some of my older TV shows. It seemed kinda crazy, but I was feelin' kinda crazy at the time. The studios laughed, of course. They were so confident that nothing would ever come of it that they agreed to it. Well lately, they've been showing a shitload of Grizzly Adams reruns, which made me a very rich man overnight. But I wasn't comfortable with all that money just piled up everywhere. I mean, sometimes I couldn't even get out of the house because all the money was blocking all the exits. I had to buy another house so I could live in one and my money could be in the other."
Dan chuckled pretty good at this revelation.
"You ever hear of a bank?" the clean-shaven guy asked, completely flummoxed.
"So anyway," Dan continued, "I decided to spend most of it on charity. And since the government outlawed charities several years ago I decided I would go into the corporate hostile takeover business, only, I would do things my way. I would break up the corporations that've been taking advantage of people for years and take away their power so the people can rise up again and take the power back. And when I heard that your company has been secretly covering up your plans to create a Beardless World Order, well, I just couldn't stand still now could I? Thanks to a letter I received from these gentlemen..."
Dan held up a crudely scrawled one-page letter.
"...I now have a starting point for my mission in life." His voice cracked slightly. He walked over to where Adolph was standing, "Now, if you don't mind I'd like to try out my new desk."
Unsure of what was going on, a stunned Adolph stepped aside as Dan sat down in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. Of course, he was wearing Uggs.
One of the clean-shaven guys stood up, "But, Mr…"
"Fellas," Dan interrupted, "I'm gonna make you an offer. I'll pay you twice your salary to be head of my security."
The clean-shaven guys looked at each other with widened eyes as they both said, "Sure! Okay!"
"Your first order of business is to escort Mr..." Dan looked at Adolph, "...I'm sorry, I didn't get your name?"
"Cheney," Adolph replied.
"Please escort Mr. Cheney and Virginia here off the property. We'll send you your stuff."
The clean-shaven guys get up without question and promptly escort Virginia and Adolph out of the office.
"You haven't heard the last of it!" Adolph bellowed as he was being led out. "You hear me Haggerty? You haven't heard the last of Adolph Cheney! I will be back! I will be back!"
Jim watches completely stunned, "Wow! You really bought a majority share of this company?"
Dan leans back in the chair, "Naw. You know how much money that is kid? I don't have that kind of scratch."
The three friends look at each other.
"But wait a minute," Burt exclaimed, "you just had the president of a billion dollar company escorted off the property."
"The secret of acting is to 'believe in what you're saying'. The truth will come through in your work," Dan replied confidently.
Jim was beginning to panic, "So, we didn't really accomplish anything. I thought you said this guy could do something."
"Well," Burt who was also beginning to panic fumbled around for his words, "..that's what he said in the letter. Isn't that what you...you are Dan Haggerty aren't you? The Dan Haggerty of Grizzly Adams fame?"
"Kid, how did you possibly think that I, a simple television actor, could change a powerful corporation like the Shaving Cream Industry?" Dan chuckled. "I mean, that's insane!"
The three friends don't quite know what to do as their situation begins to sink in.
"Oh my God," Ned finally said, "we gotta get outta here!"
They all rushed towards the door in horror at what they've become involved in.
"We're gonna go to jail," Jim cried out.
"That's the last time I ask an actor for help," Burt blurted out.
He turned back to Dan Haggerty who was comfortably resting in the big chair with his feet up on the big desk, "Thanks Dan Haggerty! Thanks a lot fer nothin'!"


Suddenly, as if we were watching a movie, the voice of Waylon Jennings boomed throughout our story.
"Well," Mr. Jennings began, "as you can see, things didn't quite work out so well for the fellas."

The three friends were now handcuffed and being shoved into the back of a police car by an overly enthusiastic police officer as Mr. Jennings' voice boomed out into the atmosphere, "They were captured a couple o' blocks away and sent to a re-education camp in Montana where they were taught the basics in personal hygiene." The police officer looks around to try and locate where that voice was possibly coming from.
But now the three friends were stripped naked and being hosed down by a Department of Corrections officer as Jim was the first to break, "No, no, no! Why?! Why, Dan Haggerty?! Why?!"
When we wormholed it back to the President's office we saw the two clean shaven men and Adolph coming back in the room to confront Dan Haggerty.
"Dan Haggerty had a different fate, however," Waylon Jennings continued.
Dan Haggerty scuffled with several security guards while Virginia was on the phone to the police. Adolph examined several marks on his desk that were made by Dan's boots.
"After 'wrasslin' with security for pert' near a half an hour ol' Adolph finally made him a deal that he couldn't refuse," Waylon continued. Adolph looked around. Fearing that he was hearing voices he turned to Dan, who was standing next to him and made him on offer he couldn't refuse. The security guards were battered and bruised and one of them was lying lifeless on the ground as one of the clean-shaven guys tried to resuscitate him. Dan and Adolph shook hands, both smiling.
"You didn't hear that voice, did ya'?" Adolph asked.
"I sure did," Dan replied, still smiling as if he was posing for a photo op.
Adolph kept smiling as Waylon Jennings' voice broke in again, "He made Dan Haggerty the National Ambassador and Spokesperson For Shaving Cream in the Northern Hemisphere. Now, you may wonder how a man with such an honest beard could be a spokesperson for a shaving cream company..."

Somewhere down on the interstate was a brand new billboard with a picture of Dan Haggerty's bearded head superimposed over a muscular, hairless bodybuilder's body holding a razor with the title that said SHAVING CREAM: TERRORISTS DON'T USE IT, PATRIOTS DO. WHICH ONE ARE YOU?
A mother and her young son were driving by at that moment. They looked up and her son asked, "Mom, what's terrorism?"
Well, once again, Waylon Jennings' voice broke in to the airspace of the woman's car, "...Well, you might say that ol' Dan Haggerty finally had that money problem he was talkin' about. You know, the one where he couldn't go nowhere 'cause it was blockin' all the exits."
The woman was so disturbed by what was now a new voice in her head she swerved her car left, then right until it came to a complete stop in the middle of the road. The woman sobbed, her head resting against the steering wheel.
"Mom," her son asked, "is dad a terrorist?"

Far, far away in the middle of the country there was a prison complex so secure and so remote that only the most dangerous criminals were sent there. One of the cells held one of the most notorious criminals in the country. It was Burt, only his head was completely shaven. He was hunched over in the corner facing the wall. Small scraping were audible but weren't loud enough to draw any attention outside the cell. Burt was holding a blunt spoon and was scraping a small divot in the wall. His faced looked different. It looked mad, crazy even. His thousand-yard stare focused on the tiny flecks of concrete that his spoon slowly broke away as he quietly mumbled to himself, "I'll get you Dan Haggerty. If it takes the rest of my life I will get you. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
Suddenly, a voice from off screen shouted out, "Cut! Great!"
Burt turned around and stood up. He stood in the middle of a movie set that was designed to look like a prison cell. Several crew members milled about as Dan Haggerty walked up to Burt.
"That was great for me kiddo, whadd'ya think?" Dan asked.
"I liked that one," Burt replied. "It felt right. It really felt like I was about to go insane."
Dan put his big paw on Burt's shoulder, "It's like the acting gods used to say, 'If you think you're about to go insane, then you're already there.'"
"That...doesn't make any sense," Burt replied, still smiling.
Dan Haggerty then turned and faced the crew, who were wrapping up for the day, "Okay, I think that's a wrap everyone. Hey, I want to thank you all for helping out on my short films. I mean it, this experience really meant a lot to me."
Jim, who was the boom pole operator, listened intently as Ned took down one of the lights.
Dan continued on, "I know you all haven't seen me in a lot of stuff lately, but I've been on sort of a creative sabbatical."
Shreeder, Hugh and Qubert tried not to interrupt Dan's speech as they wrapped up power cables.
"A lot of you may have been wondering where I've been. Well, I disappeared from society and lived up in the wilderness for several years," Dan went on.
Eddie and Tommy were pushing a large light on a rolling stand as they both looked at Dan as if he had lost his mind.
"My best friend," Dan reminisced, "was a man named Denver Pyle. I used to call him Scratchy or Smelly or somethin'. I don't quite remember."
Toby and Bill folded up the chairs that were in video village, a place where monitors were used to play back footage that had been shot so the director could seek out any mistakes or give notes on actor performances.
"And I hung around a great bear all the time. People called me Grizzly Dan. They'd call out 'Hey Grizzly Dan, you gonna chop down a tree or sumthin'? Maybe build a fire in the fireplace, or eat a chipmunk or sumthin'?" Dan chuckled to himself.
Fred, Bernie, Doctor Mike, Father Jeff and Sheldon Fenwick were also part of the volunteer crew and they stood and listened to Dan's speech. Doctor Mike turned to father Jeff and made the 'koo koo' sign with his index finger pointing circles at his temple.
"Yep," Dan kept going, "I needed that time to get the creative juices flowin' again. And the result are these films you helped me put on celluloid."
Fred butted in, "Uh, film is celluloid, sir."
"So, thank you all from the bottom of my heart," Dan finally concluded.
There was a smattering of applause as Dan headed out of the stage. Sheldon turned to Father Jeff, "What a blowhard."
"Yeah," Father Jeff replied, "'dese actors 're all da same. Livin' ina bubble!"


Galactic Studios was responsible for some of the biggest blockbuster movies in the world, including Explosions In Space, Mind Explosions and Explosions Within Explosions. They had a stable of some of the most popular actors and actresses in the country.
Dan Haggerty found himself sitting across from Adolph who was sitting behind a large desk that was very similar to the one when he was President of Shaving Cream. The difference was that there was now a placard on the desk that read "President of Galactic Studios'.
Still dressed in his humble mountain man garb, Dan watched as Adolph looked over a thick screenplay resting in front of him.
"So, what do you think?" he asked anxiously.
"Well," Adolph began, "I've got to tell you Dan, I just don't get it. A trilogy of absurdity?"
"Maybe the title is throwing you off. It's...it's a life's work is what it really is." Dan shifted in his seat.
Adolph rubbed his temple trying to gather the right words, "It's three stories of little or no importance to anyone or anything that are weakly bound together at the end of the third short by the simple appearance of some of the cast members of the previous two. It's silly writing, the plots are ridiculous, there's no character development. I mean, who came up with this crap?"
"But, didn't you love the part in Mr. Showbiz when they were all fighting the devil? That actually happened to me you know," Dan said, smiling.
Adolph held up the screenplay, "And now you want me to finance this screenplay of yours? I gotta tell you, after reading it, it's kind of weak."
As blunt as Adolph was, Dan didn't seem discouraged in the least bit. "It took me fourteen years to write that. I think it's a pretty good story if I do say so myself."
"And, I just don't think your 'trilogy' is going to help your cause," Adolph said.
"How 'bout if I gave you some pot?" Dan asked.
"Look, Mr. Haggerty," Adolph began as he pushed the screenplay towards Dan, "I'm a big fan of yours, but I'm a busy man. I'm going to have to pass on this one."
Virginia walked in carrying a stack of papers for Adolph.
"Sir," he started as he set the stack in front of Adolph, pushing Dan's screenplay even further away, "Tom Cruise's agent wants to know if you're still on for lunch at the Ivy?"
"Tell him I'll be there at 2," Adolph replied.
"And Will Smith called and wanted to set up a foursome with you, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg for Saturday."
Dan watched the two men talk their big Hollywood talk as his hopes for a comeback spiraled ever downward.
"Oh jeez," Adolph remembered, "I'm playing tennis with Jack Nicholson, Kate Moss and the president of France on Saturday. Tell him we'll have to reschedule to Sunday."
"Sunday you're having high tea with the Pope and then you're meeting Sir Paul McCartney for dinner to discuss you becoming an honorary Beatle," Virginia reminded him. "I can shoot for next week."
"That'll have to do," Adolph finally replied. "Thanks."
Virginia stood up straight and headed out, but not before giving Dan a snobbish once over at his outrageous looking duds.
Adolph stared at Dan, "Eh, was there anything else?"
Dan slowly grabbed his screenplay and got up, "No...uh, I thank you for your time."
He slowly walked out.
Dan made the slow walk through the reception area where several young up and coming actors and actresses were waiting to audition for roles in the next wave of movies. They all stopped and watched as he lumbered through the lobby looking dejected and defeated. The young actors had never seen a real mountain man before and they had yet to find out about rejection.
Dan slowly made his way out of the galactic Studios building and up the street where the cast and crew of his short films were waiting. They noticed his dispirited walk.
"Oh boy," Shreeder exclaimed, "I hope he has good news."
Sheldon Fenwick is a little more dubious, "It doesn't look like he has good news. Look at the way he's walking."
"His head's down," Doctor Mike jumps in, "he's dragging his feet, his arms are hanging sorrowfully. That looks like a bad news walk if I've ever seen one."
"Give him a chance. Maybe he has good news and he's just trying to trick us or something," Jim suggested.
"Nobody with good news walks like that. Not even if they're trying to trick someone. They're usually skipping or jumping for joy or something." Eddie said grimly. "That's a death march."
"I don't think Dan can skip or jump for joy, though. He is up there in age," Said Tommy.
Qubert asked, "How old do you think he is?"
"I don't know, father Jeff replied.
"No one knows," Doctor Mike passionately replied.
"I'm sure someone knows," Burt said just as Dan walked up to them. "Hey Dan, how old are you anyway?"
Dan's face was still downtrodden. "I'm sorry fellas. I couldn't do it. I guess I'm just not relevant enough."
One of the clean-shaven men piped up, "They didn't like the trilogy?"
"'Fraid not my friend," Dan replied comfortingly.
"Well, how are we gonna make the big feature you wrote?" the clean-shaven man continued.
Dan held up the thick, dog-eared screenplay for everyone to see, "I guess we're just gonna have to do it ourselves." They all look up at it in wonderment. Hugh rubbed his chin, "Ourselves?"
"Just like when we made the trilogy," Dan replied. "We save up and buckle down. We persevere and we get it done. We did it before and we can do it again. This is just another speed bump in Hollywood, fellas, but we can do it. Who's with me?"
Everyone enthusiastically raised their hands and shouted in unison, "I am. We are. I am. Let's do it!"
Dan Haggerty was so proud. His spirits have clearly been lifted. He was a new man.
"Now," he continued, "who wants ice cream?"
The fellas gave an even more enthusiastic response, "Me, me, me!! I do!! I do!!"

Way up on the top floor of the Galactic Studios Tower Adolph stood at the window looking down at the street. He was looking at a group of people who had just decided to take their fate in their own hands and make a film themselves. They also just decided to go get some ice cream. The worry on Adolph's face could not be concealed as Virginia quietly stood next to him.
"Those people down there," Adolph began, "have in their hands one of the greatest scripts I've ever read. We must do everything in our power to make sure that it does not get made."
"Wasn't that the one that you just passed on?" Virginia asked.
"Yes it was," Adolph replied.
"Well, why didn't you just buy it and then make the movie?" Virginia asked again, confused.
"If I made that movie this studio would win countless Oscars. We would have praise heaped upon us like we were Roman Emperors. It would make us billions and give us the credibility that we've always been looking for."
Virginia waited for more explanation, but got none. "Uh...yyyyeah?"
Adolph continued, "But then, what would we do next? Everything else would be compared to that movie. Everyone would be waiting for the next great Dan Haggerty movie. This studio only makes crap and puts it in great looking packages. That's what we're good at. That's what we've always been good at. We can't afford to make a good movie anymore no matter how great it is."
Virginia finally gave up, "Okay, I guess I'm not getting it, but you're the boss."
Adolph lifted his hand and pointed his wrinkled finger towards the phone, "Get Rudolph on the line." He turned towards Virginia as dramatically as he could, "Operation 'Must-Not-Let-Dan-Haggerty-Make-The-Greatest-Script-I-Ever-Read' will begin immediately."
Suddenly, a bright flash of lightening and the clap of thunder filled the air. Adolph looked around, taken off guard as some words appeared magically and hit Virginia on the head, knocking him to the floor. The words said '…to be continued'.

The year was 1984 and breakdancing was solving all the gang violence problems in New York City through the miracle of dance. The art form was sent from the heavens like a swarm of flesh-eating locusts that took over the nation and held it in its vice-like grip for about three or four years and then went away forever.
On the other side of the country, a wide palm tree-lined, gangless street called Brand Boulevard in Glendale California hardly had any cars on it on that hazy summer day because no one could afford a car in the eighties, only Saudi princes and Rick Springfield. Everyone else had to hoof it or thumb it or stay home and raise their awful children. It was the very northern end of the road where, unlike its southern section that contained fashionable eateries, high end boutiques and the world famous Mall of Insanity, it had settled for five chiropractic offices, seven law offices, a pet psychic, three churches, a fire station, two restaurants and an Amish Embassy. It also was the home of O'Shea's, an Irish pub that was established in 1980, the year that New York City was being torn apart by gang warfare and desperately needed an out-of-the-box solution to curb all the violence.
There were few pedestrians on Brand Boulevard, scampering in and out of the various buildings trying to escape the heat. One man even pushed aside a woman carrying a depressed looking Chihuahua in an effort to get into some shade to cool down his bare feet.
Suddenly, a man walked out of the shade of a mangled looking pepper tree and right into the direct sunlight. He stood at the edge of the curb and looked out at the five lanes of the boulevard, seven if you included the angled parking. He wore a custom sewn Western style shirt with a decorative floral pattern on the shoulders, faded blue Levi's jeans and teal blue Adidas indoor soccer shoes with yellow stripes. The man had long, gray hair that was kept in place with a blue bandana tied around his head. He watched a silver Honda Accord drive by and then looked right at us.
"Hi there," he began, "yer probably wonderin' what this place is," he continued as he motioned back towards the front of O'Shea's.
"Well, it's a bar. But, it's not just any bar, it's your friendly neighborhood bar," the man calmly reported. A squad car from the Glendale Police Department with two large officers inside slowly drifted by as the driver's hand stuck out of the window and gave the man the classic finger gun salute. Classic. The man waved back and continued on, "Every good neighborhood's got one. They've also got one of these guys," and just as he finished that sentence a tall, lanky man with a mustache approached the front of O'Shea's and looked at it admiringly. The lanky man had a big cop-style mustache and wore Bermuda shorts and a flower print shirt. He fished around in his pockets for a moment or two and then shrugged his shoulders.
"That's Eddie McCracken," our western shirted man said looking back at us again. "Everyone knows Eddie here. He's been in attendance at this establishment for pert 'near two years now. It's a place he can go an' unwind, put the dogs up and take a load off, as the man says."
A gypsily-dressed woman who was the local mentalist suddenly burst out of the door of the pet psychic. "Would you mind taking that somewhere else," she shouts, "you're disrupting my session and interrupting my chi."
Our guy slowly glanced sideways at the woman whose wardrobe looks as if it consisted of around one or perhaps even as high as two hundred Romanian scarves and then back at us. He winked and smiled, then cocked his head towards O'Shea's, "Let's go inside."
The inside of O'Shea's was typical in that it had the traditional long wooden bar with mismatched barstools. A selection of several dozen bottles of various liquors are neatly placed on three shelves behind the bar counter. The three main beer taps were individually recognized by their respective brands which were always Old Milwaukee, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Guinness. Several tables and chairs were also scattered throughout the place and could be easily pushed together for larger groups of people or separated for those who felt like drinking alone.
A tiny bell rang as the lanky Eddie McCracken entered the bar and a raucous cheer came from the patrons inside. "Eddie!" they all shouted in unison.
A modest Eddie smoothed out his giant cop mustache and ambled down the steps as Paddy, the establishment's one and only bartender, called out. "What'll you have, Eddie?" he asked as he readied a freshly cleaned pint glass.
"The usual," Eddie replied as he walked over to the bar where his friends Shreeder, Hugh and Qubert were waiting for him.
"One Old Milwaukee, comin' right up," Paddy replied as he poured a fresh pint from the tap. Eddie's friends greeted him with jocular pats on the back and high fives as he took a seat next to them.
At one of the tables near the window was our guy from the street, who seemed to have snuck in here without anyone noticing. He still had that thousand-yard stare as he found us once again, much like a long-winded story-teller who finds a willing ear at a party and then corners them for the rest of the evening.
"Now, this place, O'Shea's is kind of a special place to Eddie," our guy resumed. "It's become sort of a second home to him. And there were times, like when he was dodging the draft board during the conflict in Grenada, when it became a first home. But, no one judged 'im here."
He took a sip of Guinness and let out a satisfying breath. He looked over at a table where Eddie and his friends were now sitting. They all looked transfixed on Eddie as he was relating some great story where the punch line caused his friends to erupt with laughter and applause.
Our guy looked back at us, smiling, "People're like family here. They take care of you in good times, and bad. O'Shea's is where a feller can go when life starts throwin' 'im curve balls."
Our guy then leaned in closer to us and we began to notice that his breath smelled like he hadn't brushed his teeth in about sixty days or so and perhaps he had an anchovy sandwich for lunch, "Well, one day one of those curve balls came-a-blowin' in like a swarm of locusts an' nailed everyone square in the face."
He sat back in his chair in contemplation, "I guess I'll let Eddie and his pals tell you what happened next."
The man finished his Guinness in one gulp, got up and walked out the back of the bar where the kegs were stored.
More laughter was heard as Eddie wound down another tale. Shreeder, Hugh and Qubert listened with great interest as they all nursed their beers.
"…and the Civil War lasted for fifteen and a half years," Eddie conveyed, "and that's why we now have North and South Dakota."
A collective 'wow' came from his friends.
"You sure know a lot about history," Shreeder exclaimed.
"Well, you can't trust what they teach you in school," Eddie casually proclaimed. "You gotta find this stuff out for yourself. Hey, by the way, you guys see that new girl that works at the coffee shop?"
The fellas all nodded. Yeah, of course they've seen her, Eddie. What are they, blind?
"I was thinking of asking her out," Eddie continued, "I just got a raise and…"
Suddenly, the front bell rang and a small ruckus was heard. It was the sound of people cheering and greeting someone. Eddie and his friends looked over just in time to see a man wearing shorts, a flower print shirt and sporting a giant cop mustache walk down the steps into the bar where he was enthusiastically greeted by Paddy and the other customers.
"Tommy!!" was shouted in unison by just about everyone in the bar. It dwindled to a light din as Tommy high fived and shook hands.
Eddie's eyes narrowed as he looked at Tommy suspiciously.
"Oh look, it's Tommy Rickshaw!" Hugh eagerly exclaimed.
"Who's that?" Eddie immediately asked.
"Oh wow, Tommy's here!" Qubert said.
Tommy walked up to the other end of the bar where he was greeted by his own three friends.
"What'll you have, Tommy?" Paddy asked as he readied a freshly cleaned pint glass.
"The usual, Paddy," Tommy replied.
"One Pabst Blue Ribbon comin' right up."
A look of concern fell over Eddie's face as he noticed that he and this Tommy character were wearing the same shorts, the same flower print shirt and they even have the same goddamned cop mustache.
"Pabst Blue Ribbon?" Eddie quietly asked himself. ""Who drinks that crap?"
He turned to his buddies who looked as if they wished they were over in Tommy's section listening to his stories.
"Who is Tommy Rickshaw?" Eddie finally asked.
Shreeder took a moment to gather his thoughts in an effort to answer such a seemingly naïve question.
"You don't know who Tommy Rickshaw is?" is what he finally came up with. Shreeder was, by no means, a wordsmith.
Eddie looked back at Tommy who was wrapping up one of his fantastic tales.
"…and the Death Star blew up an entire planet and Darth Vader and the Evil Empire ruled the universe to infinity because everyone was scared of their awesome technology."
Tommy's friends were bug-eyed with awe. "Did that really happen?" was the last thing Eddie heard one of them ask before he turned back to his friends.
"No, who is he?" Eddie asked Shreeder a second time.
Hugh eagerly piped in, "He just moved here from the south side. He's a war hero."
"A war hero?" Eddie's incredulous look revealed his skepticism in this statement. He looked over again at Tommy who was performing a very complicated card trick in front of more bar patrons who have migrated over to Tommy's side. The trick, of course, ended with more applause.
Hugh continued, "Yeah, he fought in Grenada. He manned a checkpoint on one of their highways or something during that awful, terrible conflict."
"Grenada?" Eddie blurted out, almost laughing. "That wasn't a war. It lasted six days."
"He got a medal," Qubert said as he pointed over just in time to see Tommy displaying some sort of medal, causing, now just about everyone in the entire bar, to oooh and awww.
Eddie turned back, "So, because of that I'm supposed to know who he is?"
Eddie was beginning to sound tense and short tempered, a side his friends had never seen before.
"No," Qubert slowly interjected, "he's just a popular guy, that's all. Thought you would've known him already since you're so…well, you know, popular yourself."
Eddie looked over at Tommy who was surrounded by people, "Well, he better not be thinking about making this place his hangout. There's only one popular guy here and it's m…"
Eddie saw Hugh and Shreeder walking over to where Tommy was. Only Qubert was sitting next to him. Defeated, he sighed and looked at his watch, "Well, I gotta get going."
Eddie rolled off the barstool and lumbered towards the door, but not before Qubert called out, "Okay, man, see you tomorrow!"
Eddie reached the door and stopped. He looked back at where Tommy was, who was now surrounded by everyone in the bar. A look of concern fell over his face. Maybe it was nothing, he thought to himself as he walked out and closed the door.
A few days later, Eddie strolled into O'Shea's and was greeted by a couple of barely interested people instead of the usual roar. He tried not to notice. Something was different about him, however. His mustache had been expertly shaved off. He pulled up next to his friends who didn't even notice him walk in.
"Oh, hey Eddie," a startled Shreeder noticed, "I didn't even see you walk in."
"Great," Eddie replied, dejectedly.
Shreeder narrowed his eyes at Eddie, "You look different. Are you sick?"
Eddie looked back at him, "No, I'm not sick."
Qubert interrupted them, "You know, there's a flu going around. Have you had your shots?"
"I told you, I'm not sick."
His friends stared at Eddie for quite a long time as Eddie stared right back.
"I shaved my mustache," he finally revealed.
A collective 'ooooh' came from the fellas.
"Oh right, that's it," Shreeder remarked. "Wow, you sure look different."
"Did it hurt?" Qubert asked.
"Did what hurt?" Eddie replied, a little confused.
"When you shaved it off."
"No, it's…shaving, I just…shaved it off."
Hugh continued to analyze Eddie's new look as if it was turd that was left on his doorstep by some mischievous teens. "Wow, you really look different," he says blankly.
"Really different," Shreeder added.
Eddie's annoyance level finally came to a head, "Look, I didn't get a sex change, for Chrissakes, I just shaved off the 'stache, that's all. I just got tired of it and shaved it off. It's no big deal."
Shreeder tried to calm his friend down, "No, it's okay, it's just that we've never seen you without it, that's all. You look…different."
"Really different," Hugh threw in.
"Are you sure you don't have the flu?" a genuinely concerned Qubert asked.
"No, Qubert, I don't have the flu," Eddie replied as he shook his head in disbelief. "You guys don't have to make a big deal about it, jeez."
Shreeder held up his hands, "Hey, take it easy, man, this is all new to us. You just look…different."
Eddies snapped back, "Okay! We've established that I look different. Fine. Can we drop it now?"
The three friends slowly looked at their beers and mumbled, "Sure. Yeah. Okay."
Paddy walked over to Eddie and plunked down a frothy beer in front of him. "Hey Eddie," he said as he squinted, "are you sick?"
Suddenly, the front bell rang and the door swung wide open as a roar from the patrons echoed throughout the bar, "Tommy!"
The fellas all looked over to see Tommy walk in, smiling. Eddie's eyes widened as he immediately noticed that Tommy had also shaved off his mustache.
"Hey, Tommy's here," Shreeder excitedly said.
"Wow," Qubert exclaimed, "he looks different."
"He looks younger," Hugh added.
"Is he parting his hair differently or something?"
"Maybe he's taking vitamins."
"Oh, he should. There's a flu going around."
"Whatever it is, he looks great"
Eddie watched in complete disbelief as Tommy sat down amongst the crowd that, by now, had drifted over to the end of the bar. He muttered to himself, "That son of a bitch."
Qubert continued to be astounded by Tommy's new look, "He always looks great but now he looks even better."
Shreeder nonchalantly turned back to his beer, "Well, they probably made him shave it off while he was in jail."
Everyone stopped gushing for a moment. Hugh looked at Shreeder, trying to digest this new information, "He was in jail? What…what happened?"
"Oh you didn't hear," Shreeder said as he took a sip of his beer, "He spent the weekend in the pokey. Yeah, he climbed up the side of the Jack Tripper Financial Building downtown."
"Oh," Qubert recalled, "I heard about that. That was him?"
Eddie rubbed his face in pure disbelief, "He did what?"
"It was in all the papers," Shreeder continued, "A guy bet him to see if he could do it. He climbed on the outside all the way to the top. Sixty-three stories, just like Spiderman. When he got to the top he was arrested on the spot, but he won the bet."
"How much was the bet," Eddie asked suspiciously.
"A dollar," Shreeder replied.
"A dollar?"
"Yep. But he said it wasn't about the money, it was about the principle."
Eddie rolled his eyes, "Oh brother."
"Tommy Rickshaw is a man of honor," Qubert pointed out.
"And principle," Shreeder added.
"And he's quite an athlete," Hugh reminded everyone.
"And he's brave as hell."
"And handsome," Qubert said as his friends turned and stared at him. "And he's brave as hell. Braver than all of us put together, probably."
The friends all agreed in unison and readily muttered their opinions, 'yes, yes' and 'sure, of course'. 'Brave as hell' was heard several times and served as sort of a rallying cry for the men's secret devotion and even more secret bro-crush on Tommy Rickshaw.
Eddie, who was not devoted to Tommy Rickshaw in any way, broke into this love-fest, "Wait a minute, they don't make you shave your mustache in jail."
"How do you know?" Shreeder asked. "Have you ever been to jail?"
"Or climbed a building?" Hugh pointed out.
"Or shaved off your mustache in jail?" Qubert asked.
Hugh pointed to the front window of the bar, "Or climbed a building?"
There was an insurgency occurring here that Eddie was not prepared for. "Don't you see? This guy's trying to imitate me. Look at him," Eddie pointed to Tommy at the other end of the bar playing a flute, "he wears the same clothes, he shaved off his 'stache…"
His friends looked at each other.
"Oh, like no one's ever shaved off a mustache before," Hugh finally pointed out.
Eddie took one long, frustrating look at Tommy infringing on his social territory before he downed the last swig of his beer and glanced at his watch. "Well, I gotta go."
He slid off the stool and wandered out as Qubert called out after him, "Okay man, see you tomorrow!"

The very next day, Eddie walked into O'Shea's semi-expecting his usual greeting, but instead, was met by silent indifference. He did, however, notice a small crowd gathered, once again, around Tommy and his now usual spot at the far end of the bar. He was on the tail end of a magic trick where he pulled some flowers seemingly out of nowhere. Eddie noticed that his own pals were also watching the magic trick with great interest. The crowd rewarded Tommy with cheers and applause. Eddie plunked down on his bar stool where Paddy suddenly noticed him.
"Oh, hey Eddie. Didn't see ya' come in."
Eddie tried his best not to look offended.
"What'll ya' have?"
"The usual, Paddy," Eddie replied as he pulled his look away from the Tommy show.
"Uh, Budweiser, right?" Paddy asked.
Like a kick to the stomach, Eddie looked up at Paddy, "No, man, Old Milwaukee."
"Oh, that's right. Sorry."
Paddy went to pour a fresh pint but this was almost too much for Eddie to take. How did his world turn upside down in a matter of days? He absentmindedly got up and left just as Paddy set down his beer.
"Should I put it on your tab?"
There was no response from Eddie as he walked out.
"Okay, man, see you tomorrow!"

It was a Friday and Eddie knew that to preserve his social position in this town he was going to have to either take action or disappear forever. He marched dutifully into O'Shea's and strode directly up to Tommy, who was having a drink with a friend at a small table near the payphones.
Eddie pointed his finger right at Tommy's face, "Listen, you, we've got a problem. This bar ain't big enough for the both of us. I was here first," he elaborated by pointing furiously at the beer soaked floor. "So, that means that you're just gonna have to go out and find yourself another bar."
Tommy was genuinely confused, "What are you talking about, friend?"
"What I'm talking about is that there can only be one hip person per bar. This bar already has a popular guy, me." Eddie's accusatory finger landed on his own chest.
Suddenly, two men walked by unaware of the confrontation and called out to Tommy, "Hey Tommy, got a cold one waitin' for you over here!"
"Yeah, we also got a couple of chicks that want to meet you. C'mon over."
Tommy chuckled, "I'll be over in a sec, fellas."
The two men stared at Eddie for a moment not sure what to make of him. Was he new? Why was he putting out such negative vibrations? They came to the conclusion that he was probably a tourist who was lost and was asking for directions and probably wouldn't hold Tommy up for more than a minute or two.
Eddie, stewing in his own frustration, turned his attention back to Tommy, "Alright, I can see I'm gonna have to take this up a notch. You haven't heard the last of me, friend."
Eddie turned and marched back out the front door, but not before Qubert, who was sitting at the bar, called out, "Okay, man, see you tomorrow!"
Eddie sure wasn't kidding when he threatened to 'take things up a notch'. Over the next several days he reached deep into his creative inventory to come up with something that would distinguish and separate himself from his nemesis. He tried wearing a plain blue shirt, but that didn't help because Tommy was wearing an identical one the same day that Eddie was wearing his.
He tried smoking a pipe, but Tommy beat him to the punch with his hand-carved walnut pipe and was enjoying a nice aromatic Cavendish tobacco.
One day Eddie walked in sporting a tri-cornered colonial hat, but discovered that Tommy was already wearing one and had already received many compliments on it.
Another time Eddie walked into O'Shea's carrying a small dog wearing a tutu, but was disappointed when he saw Tommy showing the crowd tricks that he taught his small dog wearing a tutu.
Every time Eddie walked in with something new Tommy had already did it, said it or wore it. Eddie's mind seethed with rage.
"What the hell is with this guy?" he quietly grumbled to himself. "Everything I do, he does. Everything I say, he says…"
Outside of O'Shea's the wooden front door burst open and an exasperated Eddie billowed out in a fit of complete rage. He was carrying a rubber chicken, wearing a white t-shirt, dark vest and had a Steve Martin arrow-through-the-head gag on his head.
"Everything I wear, he wears!" He threw the rubber chicken on the ground, "Damn that guy!!"

Several hours later, the sun was beginning to set and the people that had jobs were returning to their homes for the day. Eddie was sitting on the curb in front of the Amish Embassy holding the rubber chicken with a complete look of bafflement on his face.
"What the hell is going on here?" he mumbled to himself. "Who the hell is this guy? Where the hell did he come from? Why is he messing with my life?"
A pedestrian walked by and noticed Eddie, "Hey Eddie."
To which he simply replied, "Go to hell."

Eddie McCracken had gone over the edge. Depression had set in. His popularity usurpation had been swift and severe. He was a man without a country, relegated to sitting on his plastic covered couch, holding his store-bought Old Milwaukee, talking to himself, "What did I do to deserve this? Because of this…hack I have to give up my comfort zone? My urban retreat? My fortress of solitude?"

He migrated to a bus stop with his can of Old Milwaukee andspoke at length to a sleeping homeless man, "It's not like it's the only bar in town. Why doesn't he go to another bar…in another city…in another country? Why doesn't he find his own bar? Huh? He's gotta come in and take mine? Why?"

Eddie was now in his garage, which was filled with beer posters and beer promotional cutouts. There wasa refrigerator in the corner and a half built bicycle in front of a disorganized workbench. There was also a tattered couch next to a pile of crushed Old Milwaukee beer cans. Eddie was talking to a poster of Mr. T, "Tommy is a man of principle? I've got principles too, you know. I earned that bar. I worked hard for it. I've killed brain cells for it. Well, this is…this is…bullhonkey!"

Eddie was wandering downtown still drinking from a can of Old Milwaukee when he approached the majestic Jack Tripper Financial Building. He stopped and looked up, squinting into the sun, the building's grand magnificence towered above him. He marveled at how they could get any building so tall without the whole thing collapsing on top of everyone. Suddenly, something about the word 'height' jostled something loose in his head. For the first time in weeks a slight smile appeared on his face.
"That's BULLHONKEY!"

The front door to O'Shea's was crafted by hand in Cork, Ireland by a carpenter who specialized in designing and building front doors for pubs and had a side business in lawnmower repair. The door was transported to America during the great gas shortage of the 1970s and briefly welcomed patrons to a Pet Rock Outlet Store before it was snapped up and installed at O'Shea's. Although it was a sturdy door, the many unexpected rushing in and outs by Eddie McCracken was beginning to take its toll. The hinges were beginning to complain and a layer of shellac was starting to peel away near the bottom. The robust door groaned as it was swung open once again by Eddie who stepped into the bar like an old west gunfighter who was going to clean up his town whilst holding a can of Old Milwaukee. He slowly raised his finger and aimed it at one person sitting in the back of the bar surrounded by people.
"You," Eddie deliberately said.
The bar turned deathly quiet. The sound of the desert wind was heard as a tumbleweed blew by in front of Eddie and the whistle theme from The Outlaw Josey Wales mysteriously filled the room. Paddy chased the tumbleweed out of the bar with a broom and closed the door. Eddie's finger was still pointing right at Tommy, who looked around then back at Eddie, "Me?"
Eddie slowly walked towards Tommy's table, the room still silent, "How many stories did you climb when you scaled the Jack Tripper Financial Building?"
For the first time, a look of concern washed over Tommy's face. He nervously chuckled, "What are you talking about?"
Eddie walked even closer, still pointing his unmanicured fingernail at Tommy, "How many stories did you climb when you scaled the Jack Tripper Financial Building? You know, the one downtown."
"It was sixty-three," Tommy replied. "What's all this about?"
Eddie finally reached the table and stopped. He took a good look at everyone sitting around Tommy. They were all looking back at him, waiting to see if this was a joke or had Eddie, once and for all, lost his mind.
"And you were arrested on the spot, am I right?" Eddie pressed him.
"Well, yeah," Tommy answered back.
"So," Eddie rocked a little back and forth and firmly planted himself in one place, "When they arrested you how tall was the ladder?"
A very confused Tommy scratched his head, "What?"
"Having a little trouble hearing today? I said, when they arrested you how tall was the ladder?"
Tommy looked around at his friends who are equally confused, "What ladder?"
"The ladder they used to get you down from the sixty-third floor…"
"…what are you…"
"…because the Jack Tripper Financial Building, as everyone knows, only has sixty-two stories! So, what I'm wondering is how they got you down from the sixty third story when it wasn't even there?!"
Eddie's interrogation had culminated in a loud 'Dun-dun-dunnnn', which was courtesy of a college student fiddling around with his sound effects machine in the corner. Everyone now turned towards a stunned Tommy, waiting for an answer.
"Alright," he began, "you want to know. I'll tell you."
By now, more people joined the crowd including Shreeder, Hugh and Qubert. Again, probably one of the neverending mysteries of the universe, some sad music began to play.
"Sure, the Jack Tripper Financial Building only has sixty-two stories, I know that. But, a long time ago I told my grandma…" Tommy looked around at the crowd who was hanging on his every word, "who was dying of old age at the time, that every year on her birthday I would climb a building that had the same number of floors as her age. At the time, she was sixty-three."
Tommy began to tear up as did some of the other people listening to his story. A woman handed him a bar napkin to wipe his nose.
"Sure," he continued on, sniffling, "I only climbed sixty-two stories, sure. But there were no sixty-three story buildings around. But, all I cared about that day was bringing a little hope to my poor, dying, old-age infected grandma. So, to possibly bring a little cheer in someone's life I told her that I climbed sixty-three stories."
Tommy looked down dramatically at his mug of beer, "She died the very next day with a smile on her face." He looked up at everyone apologetically, "Sorry for being a liar."
Tommy buried his face in his napkin, wiping away tears and snot, but mostly snot. The crowd, in unison, now turned and looked at Eddie, who was caught completely off guard by this unexpected answer. One man stood up and pointed angrily at Eddie, "You happy? You feel better, Mr. Big Shot? You made a man cry!" The man slowly sat back down, disgustedly," I don't know how you sleep at night, mister."
Tommy tried to take the reigns back before the situation got completely out of control, "No, it's okay everyone. I lied. I can admit when I'm wrong." He stood up, "I'm a bad person. I should go."
The crowd would not hear of this as they all protested with lines like 'no way, Jose!' and 'not on my watch!' and 'someone get him another beer and perhaps another napkin! There is snot running all down his face! Sweet, merciful Jesus, I've never seen so much snot!'
Eddie, however, remained vigilant in trying to reclaim his social status, although, to anyone watching this exchange it would seem the opposite was occurring.
"This was my bar, pal," he firmly said as he looked into Tommy's tear-filled eyes, "These were my friends and you took all that away. This bar is all I had in my pathetic life and I want it back."
Tommy blew his nose and glanced back as Eddie continued, "But, because we're both men of principle, I'm going to do it fair and square. I'm going to make you a bet. The winner of the bet gets to stay. The loser…has to go and never come back. Ever."
Eddie then reached into his pocket and pulled out a dollar bill and calmly laid it on the table. The crowd was motionless. No one expected to witness such drama when they decided that because they were out of work they would just spend the day getting drunk instead of trying to be productive members of society. They all turned and faced Tommy, much like a crowd watching a tennis match follows the ball. Tommy looked back at them, then back at Eddie. He was in a corner and everyone was waiting. "What's the bet?" he finally replied.
Some marching snare drums were suddenly heard and we don't even question it at this point as Eddie and Tommy walked towards the front door.
Near the front window was a small table where our guy from the beginning of the story turned to face us. He was drinking a strong stout imported from Great Britain. He was on his fifth one and was completely drunk.
"Hi there," he began, "did you guys miss me? Perty inneresting fellers, ain't they?"
He took a long sip of his thick beer and smacked his lips immediately afterward. "Well, Eddie went an' made a bet that Tommy just couldn't refuse that day. The thing is that no one quite knew what the details of the bet were…"
Everyone in the bar was riveted as they watched the two rivals march outside like two men about to duel in the streets.
"…but, we do know that it took place outside and involved kitchen utensils for some reason. Whatever the case…"
Suddenly and without warning, a panicked Amish man burst into the bar, halting Eddie and Tommy and the marching snare drums. He shouted out to the patrons, "Crimony, all ye townspeople! There's a frightful swarm of locusts yonder and they're headed in this here direction! Vengeance is in the air! Make peace with yer makers, people, fer Judgement day is upon us!"
Eddie and Tommy looked at each other.
"Who's that?" asked Tommy.
Eddie shrugged, "Oh, that's just Farmer Bob. He's a little…" Eddie spun his index finger directly at his forehead, "…koo-koo."
The marching snare drums began again as the two rivals continued to walk outside. The door slammed shut just as our guy got up from his table a little too fast. The blood rushed out of his head as he swayed back and forth for a moment or two and then fell face first on the floor. And that's when everything went black.

The sound of a cheering crowd slowly faded back into our auditory senses as we came back into consciousness. A rowdy group of drunken fools was gathered outside the front of O'Shea's where Eddie and Tommy were facing off in a duel of the ages. Tommy was holding a rolling pin while Eddie was holding a spatula. Their free hands were tied together, preventing escape and forcing a possible kitchen utensil battle to the death.
Our guy, fully recovered from his fall, was now right there with us watching the whole thing. "I wish I could tell you this story had a happy ending," he said as he nudged us. "In a way, everyone wanted both men to win."
Eddie swung his spatula as Tommy ducked just in time. Our guy continued even though we were trying to watch the rumble for ourselves, "For Eddie, winning would've meant keeping his old bar and his old friends…"
Shreeder, Hugh and Qubert were also outside watching the two grown men fight in the street. They were cheering for Eddie as Qubert looked down in horror at his empty beer glass, quickly ran inside, and reappeared holding a full pint.
"…and have a place to put his dogs up and take a load off, as the man says."
Tommy waved his rolling pin in the air, a little unsure of how he could effectively injure someone with this unusual weapon.
"For Tommy, winning would've meant having the chance to settle down in one place and finally work out some of the psychological scars he received in Grenada."
All of a sudden, something in the sky made everyone look up in absolute horror. Eddie and Tommy continued to struggle with each other as the entire crowd now sprinted inside the bar. The two rivals finally looked up, but by then it was too late. Terror fell on each of their faces as they tried to run in opposite directions, but, because the strict conditions of the duel that required them to not only tie their hands together but super-glue them as well, they just ran in circles, finally capitulating as they both put their respective weapons up in the air.
"As it turned out, lady luck wasn't on their side that day," our guy continued from the safety of the inside of the bar.
Paddy cleaned out a pint glass as he ruminated thoughtfully into space. Our guy walked slowly through the bar. He was already talking about the two rivals as if they were two characters who existed in the past, "Maybe the boys shoulda' listened to ol' Farmer Bob that day. You see, soon after he made that declaration…"
Two beer drinking patrons who were sitting at the bar were looking thoughtfully into space.
"…and Eddie and Tommy had begun their old fashioned kitchen utensil rumble…"
A man at a table wearing a tri-cornered colonial hat drinking a martini was looking thoughtfully into space.
"…a freak swarm of flesh-eating locusts…"
A small dog in a tutu standing angrily over a biscuit was looking thoughtfully into space.
"…actually did appear and descended on the two warriors…"
Shreeder, Hugh and Qubert sitting with their beers were looking thoughtfully into space.
"…and began devouring them alive."
The rest of the bar patrons were at the front window looking out at the two men being eaten alive by flesh-eating locusts. It had become a surreal situation, indeed. Perhaps it was a combination of too much alcohol and our guy's calm, soothing voice that put everyone at ease and made them forget that Eddie and Tommy didn't exist in the past but were just a few feet away on the other side of a window being consumed by insects.
The faint sound of screaming could be heard as our guy sat back down at his table, "Their agonizing, god-awful screams could be heard for blocks."
One of the patrons turned to our guy, "Uh, they're still out there, you know. Maybe someone should call nine-one-one."
Our guy was totally unconcerned by this fact and continued to talk about them as if this was all ancient history, "It seemed to be a very painful death to those who had the smarts enough to take cover indoors. In an attack that seemed to last for minutes…actually lasted hours."
The patron, finally fed up with everyone's inaction, made a move towards the payphones, "You guys, they're still alive. Oh dear, merciful God, they're still alive."
"You see," our guy plodded on, "the locusts had previously eaten away at several telephone trunk lines, disabling the city's nine-one-one system. No one could rescue them in time."
He looked thoughtfully towards the window, "They died painfully and slow, but at least they had their health…before the locusts got to 'em, I mean. Anyway, their memory lives on in the hearts and minds of the patrons of O'Shea's. Because Eddie and Tommy, as anyone will tell you, were men of principle. Stupid in the self-preservation department, but men of principle nonetheless."
We were then directed by our guy to look up at a shelf above where Paddy kept the good alcohol. Right next to a large spray can of Bug-Be-Gone was a plaque. Affixed to the plaque were two beer cans squaring off, one was Old Milwaukee and the other was Pabst Blue Ribbon. Between the cans was an inscription that said 'Stand Up For Your Principles'.
Our guy finished his stout as he looked up again, "And, that's all that you can ask for in this crazy life."

1992 was a pretty special time for most people in America. World War II had just ended and the nation was following an exciting new political leader named 'Ross Perot' who promised to carry them into an even more glorious future. Hollywood, California was not that glorious, however. It was still recovering from the effects of hair bands that invaded the city and nearly tore the place apart in the 1980s. The buildings, streets and even the famous Hollywood sign were still covered with Aqua Velva residue that could not be cleaned by any amount of paint thinner. It remained, however, the place where people continued to believe that dreams could come true. Thousands of people young and old arrived every year in cars, buses, trains and planes hoping to get their big break in acting, music or just to get the hell out of that god-forsaken town they lived in. Whatever way people saw it, Hollywood was still the city of dreams.
There weren't very many sports bars around in those days because sports had not really caught on in the United States yet. One of them that did exist was a cozy enclave called Rusty's on Wilcox just south of Hollywood Boulevard. It had a few tables and a thirteen-inch TV mounted high up in the corner. It was usually grainy and fuzzy and most often was tuned to a station that played reruns of old 70s shows like Ironside and Gilligan's Island and Differ'nt Strokes. It almost never played any sports matches and yet the proprietor continued to call and even advertise the establishment as a genuine 'sports bar'.
Rusty's was a favorite hangout for Toby, Bill and Fred, three nincompoops who were trying to make their mark in the movie industry along with all the other nincompoops in the city. Toby and Bill had been friends since the sixth grade and they both took intensive writing courses at the College of Leaflets, Pamphlets and Brochures with the intent on becoming screenwriters one day. Fred somehow got an acting degree from DeVry University which was primarily known as a technical college. They all met as extras on a film set and decided that if they pooled their talents and resources they would make their own movie one day. One day.
For now, they were relegated to holding down standard jobs while their dreams were put on hold, just like everyone else. So, Rusty's became the regular meeting place for the three friends, where they could gossip and talk and make plans for the future.
A half filled pitcher of cold beer sat in the middle of the table while three pints of varying quantities waited dutifully in front of their respective imbibers.
"So, who's this guy coming to meet us?" Toby asked Fred.
"Yeah," Bill cut in, "Sarah says he's kinda' weird."
Fred let out a nervous laugh, "Ha. He's not weird, he just doesn't have very many friends here, that's all. He just moved over here from Palms."
Toby and Bill's eyebrows simultaneously raised skyward. Palms?
"What does he do for a living?" asked Bill.
"I think he works from home or something," Fred replied. "He used to be an actor."
Fred suddenly looked up and saw a man come in and go to the bar and order a drink. He was average-sized, had average looks and, based on his Dockers slacks and short sleeved, button down shirt, he was also an average dresser.
"Oh, there he is now," Fred said as he stood up and motioned to the man. "Bernie! Over here!"
Bernie saw Fred and started making his way to their table. Fred sat back down and mades a last minute plea with his friends, "Oh, I almost forgot, he's got this, uh, condition, so try and be cool about it, okay?"
Bill refilled his glass, "What condition?"
"It's kind of hard to explain. Just try not to point it out or anything. I think he's kind of sensitive about it," Fred answered.
"Well, what's wrong with him?" Toby asked just as Bernie arrived at the table.
"Bernie, hey, howya' doin'?" Fred remarked as he stood up and shook Bernie's hand. "Hey, this is Toby and Bill. Guys, this is Bernie."
"Hi guys, nice to meet you," Bernie said as he shook hands with the fellas.
"Well, have a seat, man. What're you drinking?" Fred asked, filled with nervous energy.
Bernie pulled up a chair from another table, "Ah, I ordered something. It should be here in a sec. Thanks for inviting me out. It's good to get out of the ol' apartment every once in a while."
"Hey, no problem. Glad you could make it."
The barmaid came over and set a fresh pint of beer down before Bernie as Fred filled his glass. Bill ordered another pitcher.
"So," Fred handed the empty pitcher to the barmaid, "did you have trouble finding the place?"
"No, no," Bernie replied, taking a sip of beer, "I think I've been here before. It was the Fourth of July a couple of years ago."
"Yeah, they usually have something going on around that time," Fred chuckled pointing to the tiny TV mounted in the corner, "I think that's when they have a Rockford Files marathon on TV."
"Yeah," Bernie began, "unfortunately, I thought it was St. Patrick's Day and I showed up wearing nothing but my green boxers and a green top hat."
Suddenly, as if on cue, crowd laughter punctuated the end of Bernie's remark just like you would hear if you were watching a sitcom. Caught off guard, Bill and Toby look around for the source of the laughter. Toby finally turned back to the group, "What the hell was that?"
Fred and his nervous energy jumped right back in, "Hey Bernie, didn't, uh, didn't you used to be an actor?"
"Yeah, yeah, I uh, did some things here and there. Nothing big, though. I mostly work from home now."
"Oh really? Doing what?" Toby asked.
"Internet processing stuff. That kind of thing." Bernie had yet to gain the confidence to explain exactly what he did for a living since in those days the Internet was mostly used for writing letters to prison pen pals and any other application would have been too confusing to explain.
"Well, that sounds pretty cool," Bill politely said.
Bernie seemed a little tense as he looked around the bar nervously, "Yeah, you get to make your own hours and take lunch as long as you want. And the best thing is you don't even have to get dressed. You can go the whole day wearing nothing but your green boxers and green top hat."
Once again, the sound of an audience laughing was heard throughout the bar. Bill and Toby became more alarmed at this as Fred continued to try and act as if nothing was going on.
"Hehe, so uh, you're originally from Oklahoma, right?" Fred asked Bernie. His forehead was beginning to sweat.
"Yeah, a town called Walters. It's a really small town."
Toby finished looking for whoever was playing the laugh track and slowly reengaged the conversation at the table, "I know how that is. I'm from Bakersfield. It's officially a city, but I still consider it a town."
"Yeah," Bernie continued, "the place I grew up in is so small that last year they officially downgraded it from a town to a village. If two more families move out it'll be called the Johnson residence."
More audience laughter erupted just as Bernie finished. Fred tried his best to blend it in.
"Haha, that's pretty funny…downgraded, haha, to a village! Haha, you crack me up, Bernie."
Toby, on the other hand, was not laughing, "Are you guys hearing that?"
"Hearing what?" Fred immediately replied. "Hey, you know what, we're all going to a party tonight. You want to come along?"
Bernie was resistant, "Nah, I should stay in. I've got a lot of work to catch up on."
"Must be easy to get distracted when you work at home, huh?" Bill asked.
"Not really. My dog died last week and I got a little behind on my workload."
There was now an audience 'awwww' as Bill and Toby stood up and looked around again, totally confused as Bernie continued, "Yeah, she was fourteen years old. That's ninety-eight in dog years. She spent her last two days at the vet until they finally had to put her down. She really was my best friend and I'm going to miss her."
Blank stares took over Bill and Toby's faces as another audience 'awww' is heard.
"Well," Fred broke in, "maybe a night out is what you need. You know, get your mind off it."
"Thanks, but I'll take a rain check," Bernie replied a little more cheerfully. "My work's piled up so high I'm going to need a back-hoe to clear a path to the fridge or else I'll starve to death."
Fred and Bernie chuckled as did the mysterious audience. By this time more patrons in the bar have noticed the audience reactions and have now begun the process of freaking out. One person ran to a payphone to dial nine one one.
"Besides, I'm actually on my way to se about getting a puppy."
This time the audience gave a more positive 'awww' and there was even the sound of a little girl who apparently didn't know she was not supposed to talk during audience tapings saying 'mom, he's getting a puppy'.
"Ooh," Fred said with a big smile, "puppies are cute."
"Yeah, I figure I'll put those piles of paper to good use…" Bernie looked around the bar, smiling, "…one way or another."
A loud roar of laughter came blasting out of nowhere and was followed by some enthusiastic applause. Toby and Bill began to sink into their chairs. The bartender was on the phone, most likely, to the authorities.
Bernie and Fred got up.
"Well," Fred said, "if you change your mind give me a call."
"Sounds good," Bernie replied as he waved to Fred's two frightened friends. "It was nice to meet you guys."
Toby and Bill barely waved back as Bernie walked out of the bar. He was followed by a sitcom jingle like the ones they use on TV to transition from scene to scene. The jingle followed Bernie out the door.
"Well, he seems nice enough, right?" Fred concluded as he sat back down.
Bill looked over at Toby not sure what he just experienced, and then back to Bernie's beer glass. It's empty.
"Do we have to pay for that beer?"

Bernie liked to walk wherever he went. And it wasn't just because he didn't own a car either, he genuinely enjoyed the crap out of walking. And Los Angeles, mind you, is not and was not designed to be a walking town. No city planner ever had people's legs in mind when they thought about how to get the population to and fro. They even went so far as to discourage riding bicycles and by 1962 Los Angeles had made riding on trains illegal. It was all about the automobile and the big tire companies. If you wanted to live here then you were just going to have to purchase an automobile, plain and simple.
Berne's only problem with walking, and it was exclusively his problem, was that whenever he went out for a stroll the theme song to 'Three's Company' would accompany him as if he were walking through his very own opening credits. In fact, a giant 'ONE'S TOO MANY' title would appear at some point in mid-air, scaring just about everyone around him. Bernie did his best not to notice, but the titles would become so real that he would end up running away, leaving stunned passersby grasping at the air where the titles used to be.
It didn't really matter where he went. If he was outside his apartment in public music and titles would appear as if his own show were starting. The other day he tried shopping for some groceries when a gigantic 'STARRING: BERNIE MACKELROY' materialized and blocked the toilet paper aisle. Bernie was forced to abandon his grocery cart and run out of the store.
One of the side effects of Bernie's situation was that anyone he came in contact with would often experience residual opening credits. Bill and Toby found this out one day when they were bogged down in a very complicated video game and the titles 'WITH, TOBY AND BILL' appeared in front of the TV, blocking the game. Toby tried to grab the titles but they were just air.
Fred was a bit more accepting when he was visited by some opening theme music and the titles 'AND INTRODUCING, FRED'. He was vacuuming his apartment in his underwear and thinking he was actually in an opening sequence. He simply gave an 'aw shucks' look and then waved at no one in particular.
But, it would eventually take its toll on him. By the end of the day an exhausted Bernie could usually be seen running from such titles as 'CASTING BY LINDA GREER' and 'PRODUCED BY SHELDON FENWICK' and 'DIRECTED BY SYDNEY FRILLSTEIN'. He was usually screaming.
So, being a good friend, Fred decided to take it upon himself to try to advise his pal on how to cope with his unusual malady. Fred walked into Bernie's tiny studio apartment where movie posters adorned the walls as did several headshots of popular actors. The furniture didn't match but that wasn't to be expected in a living space of this size. Bernie sat, dazed on his futon couch while Fred sat down in a worn out faded pink wingback chair. Bernie kept rubbing his temples.
"I don't know what I'm going to do, Fred. This is terrible. I'm never going to be able to leave my apartment."
Fred sat up, knocking over a pile of paperwork that was resting on the dresser next to him. There were piles of paperwork everywhere. "You've got to have it checked out, Bernie, you never know. You know, I got caught in one of your title sequences and had to be rescued out of it by using an old episode of 'Emergency!' Fortunately,…" Fred then took his eyes off Bernie and looked off into the corner as if there was a camera recording their conversation, "…I have all one hundred and twenty three episodes on video tape."
He then went back to talking to Bernie, who hadn't really noticed Fred's aside.
"It's not that I mind, I don't, " Fred continued. "It's just that, you know, I don't think that most people are ready to appear as unwilling guest stars in your life sitcom."
"I'm sorry about that," Bernie apologized.
"Look," Fred turned his body and knocked over another pile of paperwork, "you can't go on pretending like nothing's wrong. You need to see a doctor. You're a nice guy but people just aren't ready to accept it. It's too weird."
"Yeah," Bernie finally admitted, "I guess you're right."
Bernie felt like a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. By just admitting that he needed help sparked the hope that maybe, just maybe, somewhere out there someone had the answer.

Doctor Mike's waiting area was typical in that it had the usual magazines with the subscriber's address in the corner torn off and the soft, inoffensive sounds of Muzak filling the air. It was atypical, however, in that there were several certificates and degrees that had to do with everything except medicine and were framed and hung haphazardly in any free space that was available on the wall. There was an accounting certificate and a carpenter's diploma. There was a psychic's credential that was issued from the prestigious Academy of Our Lady Psychics and Mentalists in Dearborn, Michigan. There was a magician's learner's permit that hung proudly over the doorway. Bernie showed little to no concern for this and just looked around at all the documentation with pure, childlike fascination.
Then, the back door opened and Doctor Mike stumbled out and pointed to Bernie, "You're next."
Doctor Mike was an older gentleman of sixty-three, tall and had a sturdy build. He played rugby in college and had a brief stint in the professional wrestling circuit before a back injury wrapped it all up in the sporting department for Doctor Mike.
Bernie regaled Doctor Mike about his unusual condition and when he was finished the good Doctor told Bernie to kindly take a seat on the bench with the thin, white paper that is supposed to protect you from previous patient's germs and cooties or to keep you from spreading yours around to other patients. Bernie jumped up and Doctor Mike immediately thrust a probe in his ear and peered into it. He shined a bright light in his eyes and studied the reaction time of Bernie's pupils. He then took his temperature with a thermometer and measured his blood pressure with a blood pressure monitor. Finally, he broke out his stethoscope and listened for any abnormalities in his heartbeat or his breathing.
Doctor Mike took the stethoscope out of his ears and rested it around his neck. "Well, it's just as I suspected," he gravely said.
Bernie's heart began to race, "What is it?"
Doctor Mike stood up and calmly walked over to a table where he carefully put his stethoscope away and then turned back to Bernie, "It's an extremely rare condition. There are only two known cases of it in the entire world, and you're one of them."
"Lucky me," quipped Bernie which was followed by an audience laugh track. "Who's the other one?"
"Buddy Ebsen," he firmly replied. "But, no one's seen him since 1984, so we don't know what stage his condition is in, or if he's even alive at all. We just don't have the technology."
Bernie started to look nervous, pensive even, "But, what is it? How did I get it? Is there a cure?"
Doctor Mike solemnly walked over to a chair and sat down. "Bernie," he began, "as your doctor I'm required to be honest with you when it comes to your health. But, I can't help you unless you're completely honest with me."
Bernie sighed, "Yeah?"
"Is there something you're not telling me?"
Doctor Mike furrowed his brows and then looked at his watch. Whatever it was Bernie was going to have to come clean.
Somber music began to play out of nowhere as Bernie looked down at the ground, shook his head and took a deep breath.
"I used to have a pretty good sense of humor," he began. "Everyone back home used to tell me how funny I was and that I should be on TV. They would say 'you should be on tee-vee. You should be in one o' them sitcoms'. So, one day about ten years ago I took their advice and moved out here to Hollywood. I was going to be the next Michael J. Fox. I was going to be the greatest sitcom star ever."
Doctor Mike reached in his pocket and pulled out a small orange pill bottle where he promptly emptied two pills in his hand and put them directly in his mouth.
"So, I took acting classes, went on auditions, sent out head shots, went to networking parties, did the whole routine. Three years had gone by and I wasn't getting anywhere. I was totally frustrated with myself, with this town, with everything. Anyway, one day I meet this guy at an audition for a bit part in Who's The Boss? We start talking, and I'm telling him my story and he tells me that he knows someone that can make me a famous sitcom star."
Doctor Mike continued to listen diligently.
"I didn't think it was weird at the time, I mean, at this point I was so irritated with the whole business that I was ready to just pack up and leave and never come back. So, this guy tells me to meet him in the middle of the street on Vista Del Mar in Hollywood at midnight and he'll guarantee that I'll become a world renowned sitcom star, bigger than Michael J. Fox. Now, I know it sounds strange, but at the time I was ready to do anything, and it made total sense to me."
Doctor Mike nodded his head in understanding. It made perfect sense.
"So, there I was, midnight and I'm standing in the middle of the street and this guy I met in the audition walks up, but he looked a little different. He usually looked like he worked at a Miller's Outpost or something but this time he was scary looking. He wore all black leather, gloves, jacket, pants, wild make-up. He looked like he was in one of those eighties hair bands."
An audience laugh track broke the silence.
"He was also wearing these black sunglasses. So, he asks me what it is that I really wanted in life. I told him, "I want to become the greatest sitcom star in the world." Well, he looks at me and says, "We already have one of those. Haven't you ever seen Family Ties?"
Another series of audience laughs.
"I said that I didn't care, people have told me that I was funny. I was funny back home. I can be funny here. So, he thinks for a bit and says that maybe he can work something out."
"So, what did you do?" asked Doctor Mike.
Bernie looked down at the ground, a little ashamed.
"I sold him my soul," he quietly admitted.
Doctor Mike didn't seem surprised by this revelation. He remained quietly interested.
"You sold your soul to the Devil?" he finally asked.
"Yeah," Bernie answered wiping a tear from his cheek. "I think that's who it was. I mean, who else goes around buying things like that?"
Another light audience laugh.
"Did it work?" asked Doctor Mike.
"Well," Bernie started, "It turns out the Devil, or whoever he was, had quite a sense of humor. He didn't get me auditions or parts or interviews for sitcoms. Instead, he just turned my entire life into one giant situation comedy."
The audience reacted with laughter.
"Now, I've got canned laughter and little transition jingles that follow me around wherever I go. And I don't even know where it's coming from. Do you know how hard it is to go on a date with this problem? I mean, where is it coming from Doctor Mike?"
"It's coming from here," Doctor Mike pointed to his own chest. "It's coming from the void that your soul created when it left your body."
"But, I mean, how do I get it back? My soul, I mean. I've tried everything, finding Jesus in every faction of Christianity. I've tried Judaism, Islam, I even thought the Jehovah Witnesses could help. Everyone just kicked me out because my 'condition' kept disrupting their services."
The audience loved this and rewarded him with, yep, more laughter.
Bernie, however, looked at the ground in shame.
"It's stupid, isn't it?'
"Actually," Doctor Mike stood and hovered over Bernie, "it isn't."
Bernie looked up at him as a tear rolled down his cheek, over his chin and was caught and soaked up by the thin, white paper he was sitting on before it could touch the doctor's bench.
"You want to know something," Doctor Mike asked.
"What's that?"
"Buddy Ebsen did the same thing," the good doctor replied as a 'dun-dun-dunnn!' chimed in right on time.
"Really?"
"Yes. Did you know that he was originally supposed to play the Tin Man in the Wozard of Oz?"
"Yeah, but didn't he get some kind of allergic reaction?"
Bernie didn't even notice when it happened but Doctor Mike was now holding a pointer and referring to a full sized picture of Buddy Ebsen.
"The silver make-up had aluminum in it and it caused him to swell up to the point where he had to be hospitalized," he said as he pointed to the affected areas in the picture.
"It almost killed him. My grandfather was the attending Doctor when they brought him in. He was fresh out of medical school, only nineteen years old..." and Doctor Mike looked away from Bernie, off to the side as if there were a camera filming him, "…that's a hundred and thirty-three in dog years…" and then looked back at Bernie.
"He became pretty good friends with Mr. Ebsen, but then the war came along,..." Doctor Mike looked off into the distance with a thousand yard stare, "and the rest, as they say, is history."
Bernie waited for the doctor to say something else, but he doesn't. He just stood there, looking far off into some future land.
"So, what happened to Bu…"
"Oh yeah, well anyway, Oz became a classic and Buddy thought his shot at fame was over." Doctor Mike turned the picture of Buddy Ebsen over to reveal a chart on the back side, in particular, a downward line that represented Buddy's career."
"He spent years doing odd little movies here and there. And then came a little show called the Beverly Hillbillies,..." He pointed to the lowest point on the graph to where it said 'Beverly Hillbillies', at which point the line shot back upwards almost in a straight line. Doctor Mike looked off into the distance again, "and the rest, as they say, is history."
"Yeah, but," Bernie interrupted, "didn't that make him a world renowned sitcom star?"
"You've obviously never been to the Annual Buddy Ebsen Carnival-Jubilee Festival of Grinning and Happiness in Peru," Doctor Mike said as he directed Bernoie's attention to another chart that was just pictures of huge crowds of people. " It's a solid month of drinking homemade gin, whittling little sticks of wood, and all the Ellie-Mays you can ever imagine. Oh, he's a world renowned star alright."
"Yeah but, that was the sixties. There was a lot of wacky, unrealistic shows then. Gilligan's Island, Hogan's Heroes. The show was a fluke."
"A fluke? A story about four country bumpkins living in Beverly Hills with millions of dollars at their disposal and yet they wear the same old Dog Patch clothing every single day, drive an old beat up jalopy and constantly refer to the swimming pool as the 'see-ment pond'? A plot like that has disaster written all over it, my friend. But, not if Mr. Ebsen had anything to say about it. He was ready to pack up and leave town forever, just like you were. This was his last hope."
Bernie sat up straight, "You mean, he had the same condition I have and was still a sitcom star?"
"Still does as far as I know. He was pretty good at keeping it a secret. Off the set he never told any jokes, never said anything funny. He became so serious around Hollywood circles that after the Hillbillies ran it's course they gave Buddy one of the most serious roles on TV…"
Doctor Mike pointed to the graph again which was now a graphic of dark clouds that hovered over the title of a TV show. The 'dun-dun-dunnn' music pierced the air.
"Barnaby Jones," Doctor Mike revealed.
"Barnaby Jones?"
"Only Ironside was a more grim and serious. But Orson Welles didn't make a deal with the Devil. Buddy Ebsen did. It's ironic, he sold his soul to the Devil to become the funniest sitcom star around, and it ended up putting an end to his comedy career."
Bernie shook his head and rubbed his temples, " So, I'm going to have to live with this for the rest of my life?"
Doctor Mike threw a couple more tiny pills in his mouth, " Not quite. You see, my grandfather, who was good friends with Buddy, began some rudimentary research on his condition just after Buddy sold his soul. My grandfather was the only person that Buddy confided in."
"Did he find anything?" Bernie asked, hopeful.
"Well," Doctor Mike began, "he did notice one thing. I assume you experience title sequences?"
"All the time," Bernie responded.
"Who is your producer?" the doctor asked carefully.
"My…my what?"
"When the producer credit comes along what is the name that appears?"
"I…I can't recall. I'm usually running away at that point."
"It's important. There may be a connection that would prove my grandfather right and finally clear his good name after all these years."
"Wha…what exactly did your grandfather…"
"Try and remember. What is the name that comes of for the producer credit?"
Bernie tried his best to recall. There were so many titles and so many names.
"I…I think it's Sheldon…something," he finally said.
Doctor Mike slowly leaned in to Bernie, "Sheldon Fenwick?"
A connection was finally made in Bernie's head, "Yeah! Yeah, that's it! How'd you know that Doctor Mike?"
The Doctor stood up and walked over to a lone chair near the desk and sat down. "Do you remember the name of the acting student who bought your soul?"
A look of realization fell over Bernie's face, "Oh my God, Rodney Dupree!"
Doctor Mike shrugged, " Oh, well, I thought it might be the same guy. It was a longshot, but..."
" No! I remember Rodney telling me that he changed his name when he came to Hollywood for tax reasons."
Doctor Mike perked up and raised one eyebrow, "What was his name?"
Bernie's eyes widened as the realization of this moment nearly overwhelmed him.
"Sheldon Fenwick."
And at that moment the room was filled with the biggest 'DUN-DUN-DUNN!' yet.
Doctor Mike nodded his head triumphantly, just as he thought.
"Just as I thought," he concluded.
And then it happened a second time where Bernie either wasn't paying attention or he dozed off for a moment or two, but suddenly, sitting right next to Doctor Mike in a chair was a large, chisel-jawed Irishman Catholic priest named Father Jeff. His face was worn with miles of character and his deep eyes pierced anyone who dared to gaze at him. He was smoking an unfiltered cigarette.
"Bernie, I'd like you to meet Father Jeff."
Bernie was stunned at the sudden appearance of the priest that he almost couldn't find the words. "Whe…when did you come in?"
Father Jeff spoke with a thick Irish accent that made it difficult to understand what he was saying.
"T'rough da' hole in da' space-time fabric near da' examination table. But, dat's not important right now. Doctor Mike tells me yer havin' a little trouble wit' da' Prince o' Darkness."
"Uh, yeah, well…" Bernie fumbled, now unsure about this whole doctor visit, "I think it's him."
"Couldn't be anyone else, cuud it? Laff track followin' ya' around like da' clap on a whore. Openin' credits invadin' yer social space like...like da' clap on a whore! In my book dat's no way ta' treat an up an' comin' sitcom star like yerself."
"Well, actually, I work from home now…"
Doctor Mike interrupted, "Father Jeff is experienced in dealing in the ways of...well, Sheldon Fenwick."
Father Jeff zeroed in on Bernie's sweet, innocent face, "All I need ta' know is one t'ing…"
Bernie and Doctor Mike watch Father Jeff as he inhaled the rest of his cigarette and then flicked it absentmindedly to another part of the room. Doctor Mike chases after it.
"Do ya' still wanna be a sitcom star?"

Fred was sitting in his own studio apartment watching TV when the doorbell rang. He stood up, pulled up his pants and answered the door to find Bernie standing there out of breath like he just ran a Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot.
"Fred," he tried to get out between heavy breaths, "listen, I don't have much time. I need a favor."
"Well, sure buddy. What do you need?"
Bernie took a couple more deep breaths, "I need to borrow your cat."
"My cat? Bernie, I don't have a cat."
"That's not important right now. What we need to do is get your cat over to Vista Del Mar right away."
"Bernie, I don't have a cat. I have some Sea Monkeys, though."
"Also," Bernie was finally catching his breath, "I'm going to need a loaf of bread, a quart of milk and a stick of butter."
"But, I already went to the store…"
"Meet me with all those ingredients in the middle of the street on Vista Del Mar in half an hour. It's over by the Capitol Records building."
Bernie took one long last breath, turned and sprinted away as he called out over his shoulder, "And don't forget your cat!"
Perplexed, Fred shook his head, "But, I told you I don't have a…"
Suddenly, Fred felt something soft and fuzzy slither between his ankles. He looked down and saw the friendliest calico cat in the whole world.
"What the heck?"

Vista Del Mar was a small side street that ran parallel to Argyle Street and perpendicular to Hollywood Boulevard. There were apartment buildings on one side that were highlighted by rows of Los Angeles's famous palm trees. These skinny, extremely tall trees lined the streets and curved sideways as they grew higher making them look as if they were perpetually blowing in the wind. There was an empty lot across the street from the apartments that gave a clear view of the Capitol Records building way over on Vine Street. The street was virtually empty as the sun began to fade into the Pacific Ocean.
Bernie rounded the corner and slowly walked up Vista Del Mar. He was alone. His eyes were keen as he walked in the middle of the street like one of those old timey western guys on his way to a shootout in the middle of town. Somewhere in the air some of that western showdown music began to play. It didn't bother Bernie, however, as he kept walking slowly up the street. About halfway up he stopped, looked slowly to his left and then to his right. His body was tense. Whatever was going to happen he was ready for it, or so he thought. That was when he heard a voice.
"Did ya' find da' cat?"
Startled, he looked to his right and saw Doctor Mike and Father Jeff standing right next to him.
"Holy crap! How'd you do that?"
Doctor Mike was still wearing his white doctor's jacket with his stethoscope around his neck. Father Jeff took out an unfiltered cigarette and lit it up. He took a long drag, breathed in the delicious smoke and blew it skyward.
"It's an old trick 'dat Jesus used to play on his disciples. But, dat's not important right now. Did ya' get da' supplies I asked fer?"
Bernie relaxed a little, "Yeah, my friend is bringing them right now, a loaf of bread, a quart of milk and a stick of butter."
Father Jeff nodded, "Good. I haven't had time ta' go to da' store. 'Dare's no food in the rectory an' if 'dose nuns don't get 'der milk an butter sandwiches 'dey'r gonna get 'der panties in a twist. I should jest give do's nuns what de'y really need, a nice fat, juicy..."
Doctor Mike interrupted, "Bernie, did you get a chance to call Rodney Dup...uh, Mr. Fenwick?"
"Yeah," Bernie replied, "I found his number in an old actor's directory. He remembered who I was and I asked him to meet me down here. By the way, what is the cat for?"
"It's an old tactic 'dat Jesus taught da' Cannanites when dey were warin' wit' da' Philistines. Dey'd lure de'r enemies into de'r territory by tellin' 'em 'dat der'd be some nice pussy waitin' fer 'em. An', when da' Philistine army would show up an' saw 'dat de'r was not'in' but a bunch o' cats peein' all over damnation, actin' all stand-offish an' whatnot, an' da' Cannanites would commence ta slaughterin' every last one o' dem bastard Philistines, Biblical style!!!"
"And, that worked?" asked Bernie.
Father Jeff looked over at Bernie out of the corner of his eye, "I don' know any man on earth dat'll refuse a meetin' wit' a nice pussy."
Doctor Mike chuckled, "That Jesus sure was a card."
Father Jeff took another smooth drag, "I'll introduce ya ta him someday."
Suddenly, Father Jeff tensed up. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the horizon. "Who's dat?" he quietly whispered.
Down at the opposite end of the street a dented up silver Honda Accord turned the corner and drove slowly towards the men. It pulled to the side and parked as Fred, Bill and Toby got out and started walking towards them. Toby was carrying a bag of groceries and Fred was carrying a cat carrier called the Kitty Kennel.
Bernie smiled, "Oh, it's…"
Fred was enthusiastically walking towards them, "Hi guys. I don't know where this cat came from, but there he was, just outta' nowhere..."
Suddenly, Father Jeff dropped his cigarette and pounced on Fred, attacking him in a fit of ungodly rage.
"Go back ta' Hades ya' soul-stealin' rapscallion!!!"
Toby and Bill froze in their tracks. Bernie tried to call out, "No! wait, wait!"
Fred clumsily tried to escape as Father Jeff continued to attack.
"You an' yer army o' darkness are welcome here no more, HELL-FREAK!!!"
Bernie and Doctor Mike rushed over and pulled Father Jeff off of Fred.
"No, no," Bernie cut in, "this isn't Fenwick! This is my friend Fred. He...he brought the cat."
Father Jeff stopped his assault. He stood, gathered his wits and composed himself, a little embarrassed. Fred tried to compose himself too, but was understandably freaked out.
"I'm sorry," Father Jeff finally said as he brushed himself off, "I…t'ought you were da' devil."
Fred, with his ever present smile and general good nature, waved it away, "Uh, that's okay. It's an honest mistake. I'm...I'm Fred."
He and the Father shook hands as Bernie introduced everyone, "That's Toby and Bill. Guys, this is Father Jeff and Doctor Mike."
Toby and Bill stayed where they were, reluctant to go anywhere near Father Jeff.
"Uh, here's the bread," Toby slowly said, "…'n stuff."
"Thanks, guys," Bernie nodded his head in appreciation. "Thanks for coming."
"What is this all about?" Bill interrupted, concerned that maybe it wasn't a good idea to come down here. "Is there some sort of exorcism about to take place or are we just gonna make sandwiches and play with the cat?"
Suddenly, an audience laugh track filled the air, causing Bill to freeze, "Oh crap." Everyone looked at him.
Doctor Mike walked over to Bill, "Open your mouth and say aahh."
Bill complied as Doctor Mike stuck a tongue depressor in Bill's mouth. After several tense moments of rummaging and probing, Doctor Mike turned and looked at everyone gravely, "It's spreading. We need to work quickly."
Father Jeff casually lit another scrumptious cigarette, "Looks like he ain't waitin' around ta' do any soul barterin'. What time did he say..."
All of a sudden, far up the street, a man appeared out of nowhere. Everyone stopped and looked. The man walked down the middle of the street towards the gang.
Father Jeff eyed the man, "Well, well, well, he decided ta' show up after all."
Fenwick began walking towards Father Jeff. Father Jeff started walking towards Fenwick. The rest of the crew stood and watched with great trepidation. Fred leaned over to Bernie, "What happens now?"
"I'm not sure. This is my first…" Bernie's eyes darted around the street, "…whatever this is."
Bill walked over to Doctor Mike very concerned, "Hey, uh, is this laughing thing permanent?"
Doctor Mike glanced back at Bill but kept an eye on the showdown in front of him, "We'll see, my friend. We will see."
About a hundred feet away Sheldon Fenwick and Father Jeff finally reached each other and came face to face. Fenwick, middle aged looking, clean dresser, tight haircut, looked as if he could hold down a job at Miller's Outpost, gave Father Jeff a sly smile.
"Jeff."
"Shelly."
"Long time."
"Too long."
"When's the last time I saw you," Sheldon asked, "The Roman Empire? The Crusades? Germany?"
"London, November 9th, 1966. Ya' introduced Yoko Ono ta' John Lennon an' went an' undid all my work wit' 'dose boys." Father Jeff took a drag but kept his eyes focused on Sheldon.
Still well within earshot, Bill, Toby and Fred all looked at each other and wondered what the hell were these two guys talking about.
"Oh yeah," Sheldon snickered, "...sorry about that. You gotta admit, though, nobody was expecting that one. How'ya been?"
Sheldon looked over and saw the cat in the Kitty Kennel.
"I see you're still using that lame pussy tactic your buddy Jesus taught you. How is he anyway?"
"Cut tha' malarkey, Fenwick. Where's da' boy's soul?"
Sheldon smiled confidently, "Oh, it's...in a safe place."
Growing frustrated, Father Jeff took his tone up a notch, "What're ya' tryin' ta' play God er somet'in'? No way, Jose!!!"
"I was just trying to help the boy," Sheldon innocently replied.
"I t'ought I told ya' not ta' conduct any o' yer hell-business on my turf."
"This is Hollywood, babe. This turf's up for grabs."
"Not anymore it ain't. Not on my watch. Yer gonna rue de' day you ever set foot in 'dis place."
"Who's gonna make me rue the day? Huh? You and that stupid Philistine army?"
"Yer cruisin' fer a bruisin' my friend."
"Ha! That's what you think."
"Yeah, right."
"Yeah, right."
"Sure."
"Sure."
Sheldon Fenwick and Father Jeff stared at each other, two warriors whose rivalry spanned millennia, whose battles involved the epic armies and civilizations of history, were now squaring off on some crummy side street in Hollywood, California.
Sheldon finally broke the silence, "Well, it looks like we've got a disagreement on our hands."
"Yes we do," Father Jeff agreed.
"We sure do."
"Yes sir."
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Yesiree."
Sheldon and Father Jeff stared at each other some more as if they'd forgotten why they were there in the first place.
"So," Sheldon finally said, "what do we do now?"
Well," Father Jeff began, "you'll return da' boy's soul back to 'im an' stop all da' nonsense wit' da' laugh tracks an' da' jingles an' whatnot, an' 'den you'll high tail it out of tha' cosmos so's we'll never have ta' see tha' likes o' you fer all eternity. Da' end."
"'Fraid I can't do that, Jeff. Business is too good here."
"Well den…" Father Jeff dropped his cigarette on the ground and began rolling up his sleeves, "...looks like I'm jus' gonna have ta' proceed ta' plan B."
Bernie and the gang could sort of make out what was going on from about fifty feet away. They heard scuffling and the soft sounds of punching.
Fred tried to get a better view, "What's going on now?"
"I…I think he's trying to get my soul back," Bernie replied.
"Is this technique sanctioned by the church?" Bill asked.
Toby cut in, "Say, exactly what religion is this father Jeff affiliated with anyway?"
"I'm not sure," Bernie replied.
"Nobody really knows," Doctor Mike added.
Bill squinted as he watched Father Jeff and Sheldon rumbling in the street, "I grew up Catholic and...I'm not familiar with these particular religious proceedings."
Doctor Mike tried to bring sense to the situation, "This isn't your normal denominational predicament, boys. We're observing divine history here."
"Does he need the cat yet?" Fred asked.
"It's un-worldly," Doctor Mike continued. "It's a heavenly deed we're beholding right now."
Toby was getting a little concerned, "I think he needs some help."
Doctor Mike waved it off, "We can't interfere with such a pious episode. We're mere mortals. In fact, our eyes shouldn't really be witnessing this at all."
Doctor Mike covered his eyes as the rest of them watched the surreal sight of a priest and a possible Miller's Outpost employee brawling in the middle of the street at sundown next to the Capitol Records building.
Toby looked in the bag he was holding, "Is there a place we can put this milk? I think it's going bad."
"Give some to the cat," Bill suggested.
Toby looked around, "I need a saucer."
Fred stayed focused on the rumble, "This is so fascinating. Good versus evil. God versus the Devil. This is better than Emergency!"
"Yeah, I sure hope he knows what he's doing," Bernie worriedly said.
"I really think he needs some help," Toby noticed.
"Being on the side of the righteous is all the help he needs. Gentlemen, avert your eyes!" And Doctor Mike covered his eyes a second time, blocking out the fact that Sheldon was now on top of Father Mike beating the crap out of him. Out of the bottom of the ruckus a hand, Father Mike's hand, slowly reached out in the direction of the fellas. He managed to slowly roll over in between pummelings and finally face everyone, who looked like they're all stoned and watching TV, and with the only strength he had left Father Jeff directed all of his remaining energy to his lungs which pushed out a burst of air past his vocal chords that bellowed out, "Fer God sakes, HELP ME!!!!!"
Everyone hesitated for a moment, and then immediately rushed over to Father Jeff and start beating the crap out of Sheldon Fenwick. The sun reached the horizon and bathed the city in a lovely orange glow and made the dreamlike scene of a group of men dog piled in the middle of the street battling for one man's soul so, so very Hollywood indeed.

At night, Rusty's picks up a little more business with people that are unwinding from a long day's work or people who have recently waged war on the devil himself. Two pitchers of beer sat in the center of one of the tables as Father Jeff lit up a glorious cigarette. His face and hands were littered with cuts and bruises and band-aids. Toby and Bill, who also had minor cuts and contusions, were feeding the cat some milk from a saucer. Fred and Bernie sipped their beers and tried not to wince from their own facial lacerations. Doctor Mike, the only one who was not injured in any way, sipped on a proper martini.
Fred patted Bernie on the shoulder, "So, how does it feel to be normal again?"
Bernie grimaced slightly from the sore spot on his shoulder that Fred just slapped, "I can't tell. I keep thinking that any second I'm going to hear a bunch of people laughing."
Suddenly, a bunch of people from another table start laughing, startling Bernie. He looked over and saw a man telling a joke to his friends.
Bernie wiped his brow, "Whew. That was a close one."
Toby leaned over to Doctor Mike, "So, Doctor Mike, what's next for you?"
Doctor Mike sipped his drink, "Well, I'm going to go on sabbatical for a couple of years. I'm going to pick up where my grandfather left off and do some rather intense research on the healing power of boiled jellyfish and dog slobber. And maybe then..." his eyes drifted off into space, "... I can finally clear his good name once and for all."
"What about you, Father Jeff?" Bill asked.
"I'm leavin' da' clergy, son. My work here is done. Lucifer shant be bodderin' you people no more. I t'ink maybe I'll just roam da' earth fer a couple o' centuries or so."
Fred scratched his head, "But, he was just a guy, right? I mean, he wasn't really the Devil...was he?"
"Sheldon Fenwick was evil incarnate," Father Jeff blurted out. "I t'ink 'dat da' world will be a better place now 'dat he's outta da' picture."
Bill butted in, "But, he just ran off. In fact, I think he went to call the cops."
Father Jeff got a wild look in his eyes, "Bring 'em on."
"So," Bernie began, " I don't understand, we beat the crap out of him and suddenly I have my soul back?"
"Yah," Father Jeff replied, "in about two ta' tree business days. 'Dats usually da' way it werks."
Bill stared at Father Jeff, "Just raw violence?"
"'Dat's the only language 'dat evil understands."
"Wow," Toby sat back, " we beat up the Devil. That's pretty cool, I guess."
"I actually thought it would be a lot more complicated than that," Fred mused.
Bernie offered his hand to Father Jeff, "By the way, Father Jeff, I never got a chance to thank you. Thanks."
"Don't mention it, laddy. Now 'dat Mr. Lucifer is outta da' picture I 'tink there'll be some big 'tings waitin' fer ya in da' future."
Suddenly, a group of girls approached Bernie, giggling. One of them cried out, "Oh my gosh! I can't belive it! It's Michael J. Fox!"
Her friend thrusted a notebook and pen in his face, "Can I have your autograph?"
A third friend who had been giggling like a maniac finally found the courage to speak, "I just loved Teenwolf! Oh m'gosh, is there going to be a Secret of My Success II?"
Bernie looked bemused. He looked over at Father Jeff, "Well, I guess it's a start."
The gang had a good laugh at that last line when suddenly everyone froze like they do at the end of a sitcom. The theme song to Differ'nt Strokes now blared out from nowhere. Some credits mysteriously roll through the air until everyone realizes that it isn't really a freeze frame, everyone is just holding really, really still. Bernie slowly looked around, "What the hell are we doing?"
Tired of holding still, everyone else slowly broke the Freeze Frame. Only Fred continued to be frozen with a huge Three's Company grin plastered on his face.

Interstate 5 runs down through the state of California like an artery in a giant body. It gets atherosclerosis when it reaches Los Angeles, which is where I live.

Driving down to my parent’s house is always a stressful time for me, especially during the Holidays. It’s about sixty miles or so to their house, but because this is Los Angeles the drive can take anywhere from one hour to several days, depending on what time you leave the house. My dad found a back route one time, which is a longer distance but takes less time. Good luck doing the math on that one. I’m always stressed out when I have to drive long distances. Being herded down a cement channel at eighty miles an hour with eight million other cars always brings me to the brink of my mental stability. The only thing I can think of once I’ve arrived at my destination is, “Shit. I’ve got to do that all over again.”

We usually bring Cheryl’s mom, Diane, with us, as she has fit in quite well with my parents. She has a style of speech where her sentences start out high and then drop down sharply to those negative notes. They’re declarative statements, nagging almost, where every third word is rounded off so that the entire sentence kind of just pours out of the mouth like water out of a bucket. Early on, Diane and my mother quickly bonded on the subjects of homeopathic medicine, astrology and the strong belief in the psychic teachings of Sylvia Browne. There is a small part of me that honestly believes that, as children, these two women were taken from the same gypsy family somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains and deposited to two different families in Southern California, where they finally, unknowingly, reunited at our house some four or five years ago for a taco dinner.

My mother-in-law’s conversations are quite entertaining, as they have no real beginning or no foreseeable end in sight. They’re usually just one long speech interspersed with the occasional haranguing of how homeopathic medicine will fix that irritating cough I have or that the right medicine will help me sleep better at night. When she’s not trying to push her voodoo cure-alls on me she’s gossiping about this person or that one. “I talked to Sally yesterday,” she would begin rather benignly from the back seat of the car, “Yeah, she has cancer. It’s terrible. It’s okay though, ‘cause they’ll just scrape out all her innards and she’ll be good as new.”

My mother, Steffani, decided some years ago to learn American Sign Language with no prompting from anyone in the deaf community. There are no deaf people in our family and we have no deaf friends. I don’t remember ever knowing anyone who’s lost their hearing, except for a kid in San Diego who used to deliver the evening paper. Unless my mother has secretly reunited with him on one of the social networks, I can’t come up with a practical reason for why she suddenly needs to communicate with the hard of hearing.

When she talks she intersperses her sign language with her regular speech as if she’s translating for someone that we can’t see. She looks like one of those people down in the corner of the TV screen translating for the deaf during a political speech. Again, there are no deaf people in the house at all. The only reason that I can figure out why my mom decided to learn ASL and not, say, Spanish is so that even the hard of hearing can be made aware when she’s being passive aggressive. She remains to be the only person alive that I’m aware of who can take an invitation to Thanksgiving Dinner as an insult. I’m not sure how well passive aggressiveness comes across in sign language, but for the hard of hearing’s sake, I hope that most of it gets lost in translation.

Cheryl and I don’t have any children of our own, we’re too busy being selfish with our careers and planning this party and that one. Cheryl does dote on her nieces and nephews, though. She would probably be a good mother while I would most likely be known to our children as ‘that guy’.

I know that everyone likes to brag about how smart their kids are and, we who don’t have children just can’t get enough of that subject. Parents often have a way of telling you how intelligent their kids are while making you feel like an uneducated baboon, and that once their kid reaches driving age you might as well stay inside your house for the rest of your life because you will not be able to compete with the awesomeness.

We see my sister Lara’s kids whenever we come down. She has five wonderful, unspoiled, intelligent children. Ian is the oldest. He was named after me as a result of some serious negotiations. As it was explained to me it came down to a flip of the coin as to which name would do the honors and lead the family. Little Ian plays baseball, football and soccer and reads a book about every two days. He’s already making me look like a complete buffoon as he masters every sport they offer in that school of his.

Olivia, who is eight, has only begun to have conversations with me. Up until recently she was so shy that she wouldn’t even look at me when I said hi to her. I couldn’t help but feel a little offended, seeing how she would usually talk it up with my brother or my parents. I’m sure she’s not aware of the six years we didn’t speak to each other, not counting the two years when she was a baby where she only spoke gibberish and screamed a lot for no apparent reason, but I’m glad we’re on speaking terms now.

Nicholas is the middle child. He’s only six, but he’s taller than most eight year olds. There’s an intelligence about him that makes me feel that I’m speaking with a college educated uncle who works for NASA instead of a kindergartner. His recollection of just about everything he’s read is quite impressive and at the same time, a little intimidating. I don’t know what he does in his spare time but if he told me that he builds weather balloons for his friends, I would not be surprised. I know the day is fast approaching where he is going to look me right in the eye and tell me that I am a complete buffoon. The sad part is that he probably won’t be wrong.

The twins, Liam and Stella are relatively new to the planet. They’re just over two years old and, like all children that age, manage to capture the spotlight at any family gathering. Liam likes to show everyone that he can run really fast and doesn’t seem to tire of that, running around and around and around, only stopping briefly to look sideways at everyone and make sure that we’re all taking note on, not only his speed, but his form.

Stella already has her own unique sense of style as far as fashion is concerned. One look at her outfits and you come to the speedy conclusion that this kid probably laid out her outfit the night before, perhaps making a few last minute adjustments before dressing herself. Any input from mom was probably duly noted and then stuffed away in the part of her brain that remembers math problems. There were never any matching tops and bottoms that you usually find kids with no fashion sense wearing. Stella loves her boots. They’re only about eight inches high, but on her they go almost to her knees. Complimenting the boots is always some sort of loudly colored, festive skirt. Tying everything together is the pink, puffy, hooded winter jacket. This two year old manages to pull off the unbelievable in that she has everyone convinced that not only does she put her outfits together herself, but she somehow she probably goes out and purchases them as well.

Since Ian is the athlete, Diane has now trapped him with questions about anything that hurts as a result of being an athlete, and then suggesting he take various types of homeopathic pills to relieve the pain. I’ve been lectured by her before about the positive attributes of homeopathic medicine. I’m not the Michael Jordan of San Juan Capistrano like my nephew, but I manage to keep in shape and eat fairly healthy. It might be safe to say that I’m probably the only one in Cheryl’s family that exercises on a regular basis, and yet, Diane has a multitude of suggestions about how I can become even healthier. I remember this one time when Diane threw her back out and was nearly immobilized by the pain. Visiting at her condo for New Year’s Day, she proceeded to lecture me, from lying in the most painful looking position on the floor, I might add, that I need to take care of myself and that the only way to do that was to begin a strict regimental intake of homeopathic pills, powders and ointments. “That,” she declared, “is to guarantee that this,” trying to point at her lower back, “won’t happen to you.”

My dream is to never celebrate any holiday ever again. An extreme position, yes, I agree, but I believe extreme situations call for extreme action, or inaction in this case. Why is it that it’s not really considered celebrating Christmas until your bank account is nearly drained empty? Why does Thanksgiving dinner take two days to make and only five minutes to eat? Why can’t we send postcards to each other and give a brief description of what we’re up to and be done with it? Why must pain and suffering be involved at every turn? Who is responsible for this? Is it Santa? Is it the Pilgrims?

All I’m trying to say is that I think we’re placing too much importance of reluctantly getting together at the end of the year to appreciate each other’s existence when we should be grateful any time of the year. We should call each other and let each other know how our savings account is going along instead of buying a random gift from Pottery Barn to give to someone because they seem as if they would be the types to have a party where people ate cheese from a marble platter. Let’s stop wasting each other’s time and money. If sometime during the year you’re thinking about a family member that you haven’t seen in a while call them up and have a good chat and then continue on with your life, happy that you’re not stuck with all the other chumps on Interstate 5.

I bump into Floyd just about every time I go to the store. It seems like he’s always picking up something. Chips, milk, beer. Mostly beer. I was picking up some ingredients for my wife’s chicken pot pie when we ran into each other just outside the front door. He was telling me about an argument that he got into with his wife Dorothy. I don’t know too many women these days named Dorothy. It’s one of those names that seems like it’s being saved for the archives for future archaeologists to ponder over the meaning of why our society chose certain names for their children. Like, Floyd, for example.
“She asked me to fix the railing on our deck.” Floyd began to complain. “So, what does she say after I worked all day Saturday and Sunday on it? ‘It’s still broken, I might as well call a real repairman.’ Can you believe that?”
“Some nerve!” I agreed wholeheartedly. Dorothy is one of those people who likes to see all their choices displayed out in front of them. They’re unable to visualize things like most people, and therefore, have trouble communicating exactly what they want. “Right? I mean, if she thinks I’m such an incompetent carpenter why didn’t she just call the handyman in the first place?”
“She’d rather see your weekend ruined by doing something you clearly don’t want to do.” I chimed in. “That’s what all women want, isn’t it? That’s her way of spending time with you.”
“Well, she could think of a lot better ways to do that than having me bust my ass over something that’s just going to be taken care of by someone else!” Floyd argued.
None of it made any sense to us, of course. Floyd and I had been over this territory hundreds of times. We were beyond trying to figure out the subtle nuances of women and their behavior and trying to decode the complex system of words and sentences that, while even though we all spoke the same language, there continued to be huge gaps in the translation of exactly what they were trying to say to us.
Just at that moment when Floyd and I were beginning the griping part of the conversation a mourning dove came in for a landing about five feet away from us. These birds were fairly common in this area, although they weren’t as annoying as pigeons were. Doves keep to themselves, whereas pigeons were always looking for a handout. The dove made that wing-whistle sound that this particular species of dove makes whenever they take off in the air or come in for a landing. We noticed that he was carrying a small stick in his slender beak. He walked a few inches to a spot in the middle of the sidewalk, circled it a few times and then placed the stick on the ground. He momentarily paused to look up at us with his right eye and then promptly flew off.
“That was weird,” Floyd said, sneering. “So anyway, Dorothy wants me to spend next weekend digging up all the weeds in the back corner so she can start her herb garden.”
“See?” I began. “She’s filling in all your free time with chores. That’s what they do,” I encouraged.
We jawed it up for several minutes more until the dove returned carrying another twig. He walked around the first twig a couple of times as if he was surveying where the best spot to place that second twig. And wouldn’t you know it, he placed the second one slightly angled on top of the first one, glanced at us for a second, and then flew off.
This time, Floyd and I sat there in a moment of silence, not quite sure what was going on here. Neither of us were the outdoorsy types. We wouldn’t dare to try and figure out what this animal was up to when we couldn’t even figure out what our own wives were up to in the same house we were in.
“Is this bird building a nest right here in the middle of the friggin' sidewalk?” I finally asked.
“Either that or he’s planning on making a little mini bonfire,” Floyd chuckled. He always chuckled at his own jokes. I got his sense of humor even when most people didn’t. Clearly, doves have no way of harnessing fire and, I would be willing to wager, have never, in the history of doves, intentionally used fire to better their lives in any way, which is probably why I laughed. Imagine several doves sitting around a giant bonfire made of popsicle sticks, roasting seeds or whatever it is the hell they eat. Ha. Ol’ Floyd cracked me up sometimes.
Just then, the dove returned, this time with a bundle of sticks clenched in his beak. He landed roughly, taking several wobbly steps to correct his balance. Way back in the recesses of my primitive brain a signal went off and I immediately recognized the subtle signs of the dove's quick, alarming movements and distressful willingness to take on more than he can handle. He immediately dropped them and began arranging the twigs in a circular order around the original two, weaving them together for more strength. He walked around, head bobbing back and forth, inspecting his work.
It’s difficult to know what birds are thinking or what’s going on in that tiny little head of theirs. Their brains must be the size of a pea, and yet, here they are flying around, building nests, laying eggs. My brain must be at least the size of two doves and I can’t figure where my car keys are half the time.
It’s also hard to know what birds are looking at until they turn their head sideways and stare at you with one of their deep, black eyeballs. This is what the dove did. He stared for quite a while this time, longer than Floyd and I had anticipated. As expressionless as a dove’s face is, his frequent glances at us seemed to say, “Don’t you guys have somewhere to go?”
For the next hour or so the dove returned again and again, bringing more and more twigs with him, weaving everything into a nice circular nest, right in the middle of this sidewalk. Fortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot of foot traffic, so someone accidentally stepping on the poor dove’s work wasn’t a problem for now. Floyd and I did steer the occasional pedestrian around the tiny creature’s handiwork and gave a little impromptu description of what was going on, as if we were field guides on some safari somewhere. At some point, I began to think, we’re going to have to go home and then this guy is going to be on his own. I began to worry about how this little guy is going to keep people from trampling all over his nest right there in the middle of the sidewalk. This is what always happens to me, I get myself involved in these little situations that have nothing to do with me and the next thing you know I’m standing guard over some dove’s sidewalk nest which shouldn’t even be there in the first place.
On his final few trips he began bringing tiny pieces of cotton, gently stuffing them into the center of the nest. He arranged to small pieces of soft fabric into a pillowy little bed that, given its size, looked pretty darned comfortable, I had to admit.
The dove seemed pretty pleased with his work, even a little relieved. He flew off.
“I’ve gotta say, that’s a pretty nice looking nest,” Floyd finally commented. “I’ve never seen a bird build a nest before.”
“It’s amazing what they can do with just their beak,” I genuinely marveled.
Suddenly, two doves came swooping down next to the nest. It was our guy and this time he brought his mate with him. She was slightly smaller, but way more aggressive when it came to inspecting the nest. She got to work right away, poking and tugging at the tiny home. Her head’s bobbing was more intense and had more of a severe purpose as she began picking at the nest, tearing small bits of it apart. If this is what passes for constructive criticism in the dove community, I’m sure glad I’m not a part of it.
“What’s this?” she seemed to ask him. “What is this? Do you think this is the right location to raise a family? Right in the middle of a sidewalk? What’s the matter with that tree over there? Is there a reason you didn’t build this in the tree like regular birds?”
The male dove sheepishly tried to repair parts of the nest that the female had begun to demolish.
“Don’t you think all this foot traffic would be a little upsetting for the children? Hmm?” She seemed to really be handing it to him and Floyd and I couldn’t help but to feel a little sorry for the guy. He worked on that thing for quite a while and now here she was tearing it all apart.
“That’s the last time I let you be in charge of building the nest! Jesus Christ!” I imagined her saying again. The female dove walked away in a huff, angrily bobbing her head front to back. “It’s like my mother always told me, if you want something done you just gotta do it yourself!” I continued her dialogue in my head for several more minutes.
And with that she flew off. The male mourning dove slowly walked around his pathetic nest that had now been reduced to a mere pile of twigs and cotton. With his beak, he reached for one of the twigs, perhaps in a last, desperate attempt to try and correct his mistake. There was no point. He dropped the twig, bobbing his head as he walked away. He then turned his head and cocked it, glancing up at us one last time. We stared back at the dove, this time with a fresher understanding. No words were spoken. None were needed. We were all on the same page here. Floyd and I nodded in silent solidarity at the dove and he nodded back. He took a couple of steps and flapped his wings, making that wing-whistle sound that doves make when they fly away.
Floyd finally interrupted the reflective silence, “So, what’re you doing tomorrow?”
I took a moment to tie up the loose ends of what I had just witnessed in my head and get back on track in the real world. “Think maybe I’ll go to the hardware store and pick up a new shovel. My old one’s about had it. It’d make it easier digging up those weeds.”
Floyd stared at the ground.
"Give me a call when you go. I may need to get some soil. Dorothy's planting a new herb garden."
"I will."
We both took one last look at the shambolic looking nest on the sidewalk and we parted ways.