SG: Sporkman #8 - A New Show

[Greg Fishbone]

     The lights dimmed on the luxury deck of the Supersonic Airship
Unsplodable. Michael Moore and Ann Coulter emerged, pruned and
puckered, from the hot tub and took their seats before the stage.
Apparently clothing was an optional adornment among the VIP
passengers, Mickey Dunne noted with disgust.

     "Gross, gross, gross," Lindsay Lohan declared at the sight. "If
the lavatory weren't occupied, I'd totally be hurling my biscuits like
an Olsen twin!"

     Michael Jackson and Britney Spears stepped away from the gaming
tables. Michael had lost his interests in seven Beatles songs on the
spin of the roulette wheel, but had picked up a controlling stake in
the entire Backstreet Boys catalog and considered the day to be a
wash. Britney, up 178 babies, cashed in her winnings and stored them
in shipping containers on which she had written, "Deliver to Brad Pitt
and Angelina Jolie."

     Ryan Seacrest, dressed in fishnet stockings, a feather boa, a
pink half-shirt, and leather butt-huggers with the word JUICY
airbrushed across the backside, claimed the seat next to Michael
Jackson. "Seacrest out," he explained.

     "Sorry. You're about twenty-five years too old for me," said Michael.

     "Come sit over by me, big boy." Rush Limbaugh eagerly patted the
empty chair next to him. "I've got lots of painkillers to share and
maybe later, if you're good, I'll let you see my pilonidal cyst!"

     Mickey and Jeanette took seats as far from the other luxury deck
passengers as possible. Mickey tried to focus on the soaring "Snakes
on a Plane" theme song played by the house band, but an approaching
shadow crossed the corner of his eye and instinct took over. The
stainless steel spork was in his hand in an instant as he jumped to
his feet to confront a large man in a ski-mask, wielding a gigantic
hunting knife.

     "O. J. Simpson memorabilia!" the man proclaimed.

     "No, thanks," said Mickey.

     "It wasn't an offer, it was a demand." The man removed his mask
and Mickey recognized him as O. J. Simpson himself. "Do you have any
O. J. Simpson memorabilia, and if so would you kindly hand it over?"

     Mickey clenched his spork but decided that a fight probably
wasn't worth his trouble. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a
plastic disk with a picture of Spoonman on the front and the words:
"Spoonburger Sappy Meal Collectable Coin." On the back was an image of
O. J. Simpson and the words: "Naked Gun Series, #6 of 12: O. J.
Simpson as Nordberg."

     "Now that's what I'm talking about!" O. J. fumbled to put his
knife back into its scabbard and accepted the plastic coin. He dropped
the coin three times before finally managing to pocket it.

     "That would be easier to do if your leather gloves weren't
hanging off your fingers," Mickey noted.

     O. J. smiled knowingly. "If the gloves don't fit, they must acquit."

     Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Dick Cheney were the last to take
their seats. "What the Hell(TM) is taking Ted Kennedy so long in that
lavatory?" Rudy demanded.

     "I warned him not to eat so many hors d'oeuvres," said Dick.

     "Bubba has that problem sometimes," said Hillary. "Hold off on
the search party for about twenty minutes, to give the gasses time to
dissipate. And in the meantime we'll need to save a chair for each of
his buttocks."

     The theme song ended and a hush came over the audience as Samuel
L. Jackson took the stage.


*************************************************************
**  The Sporkarific Sporkman
**  Episode #8: A New Show
**  By Greg R. Fishbone
**
** Lemurs on a Dirigible #3 of 10
**
** Having achieved the height of fame, popularity, and power
** as the child hero, Sporkboy, Mickey Dunne finds himself
** friendless, broke, and haunted by a traumatic past. Can he
** pull himself together to save the world one more time?
*************************************************************


     Samuel L. Jackson stepped onto the silent stage wearing a bad-ass
trenchcoat and motherfarkin' shades. He raised a wireless microphone
toward his lips, an inch at a time, as the audience of VIPs leaned
forward in their seats. "Establishing shot, daytime, five hundred feet
above Honolulu," he stated. The rest of the performance was delivered
in rhyming couplets...

     I think that I shall never see
     A place as cool as Hawaii
     Where the flowers bloom and volcanoes bake
     And the ground is covered in motherfarkin' snakes!

     I went there with the FBI
     To help a man who did espy
     A murder by a villainous rake
     With a love for motherfarkin' snakes!

     So in my protective custody
     I took this federal witness protectee
     And with him to the mainland deign
     By use of a motherfarkin' plane!

     But unbeknownst to me that day
     Deep in the cargo hold locked away
     Was a cunning trap laid by villains insane
     To crash the motherfarkin' plane!

     Thereby to leave yon witness dead
     With his damning testimony and instead
     The court would need, for justice's sake
     To free the motherfarkin' snake!

     But this I did not know as I
     In first class with my witness guy
     Drank Cristalle and tropical mango shakes
     Oblivious to the motherfarkin' snakes!

     "End of Act One." The actor poured a bottle of Evian over his
sweat-soaked head as the audience stood and applauded. The ovation was
cut short abruptly by a piercing female scream.

     Everyone looked over at Hillary Clinton, whose face had gone as
white as albino's ghost.

     "What's wrong, Feminazilery Clintoncrazyevilwacko?" asked Ann
Coulter, who then chuckled with great delight at her newly-coined
nickname and paused to write it down for future use. Then she screwed
her face up while thinking up the most devastating insult her brain
could produce. "You look as scared as if someone had exposed your
secret plan to double everybody's taxes, enforce mandatory abortions,
and then... and then..." She trailed off for a moment, straining in
deep thought. "And then to have the abortions sent to you so that you
could eat them, like the crazed abortion monster that you are, and
then raise everybody's taxes again to pay surrender tribute to
head-chopping insurgents in Iraq!"

     "Yeah! Good one!" exclaimed Rush Limbaugh. He held his hand up in
high-five position and, when his fellow pundit did not respond, tried
to slowly move his hand back to his side in a way that wouldn't make
him look any dorkier than he already did.

     "It's Rudy Giuliani," said Hillary, pointedly ignoring the
right-wingers. "He's vanished!"

     "Critics," said Samuel L. Jackson, with a shake of his head.
"There's one in every crowd."

     "No, look!" Mickey pointed to the ground.

     Hillary scowled. "What are we looking at?"

     "Scrape marks across the marble. Don't you see them?"

     "No," said Jeanette, "but I have a hunch zhat you are right."

     The other passengers followed Mickey as he followed the trail
from the former mayor's seat, across the deck, to a hole in the wall
where a ventilation grate had been pushed aside. "What does eet mean?"
asked Jeanette.

     "Probably nothing," said Mickey, but his spork-hand clenched and
unclenched as if it had opinions of its own.

* * *

Meanwhile on the Coach Class Level...

     Underling Number Thirteen was getting tired of breathing through
his shirt. "I have a very sensitive sense of smell," he stated in a
voice muffled by 50/50 poly-cotton blend.

     In the seat beside him, the Queen of England shrugged her shoulders.

     "Perhaps a quick trip to the lavatory?" Number Thirteen
suggested. "Please?"

     "Despite your insinuations, we are not suffering from
flatulence," the queen stated.

     "Maybe you're not suffering, but I sure am. Whooo!" He waved his
hand as if to dispel invisible fumes. "What have you been eating, Your
Highness?"

     "Our diet is none of your business."

     Beside her, the Prince of Wales suddenly screamed and jumped up
onto his seat.

     "Sonny-boy! What is it? What's wrong?" asked the Queen.

     "Something horrid ran between my feet, Mumsy" said Prince
Charles. "Some kind of rodent. A rat, perhaps, or a tabloid paparazzo.
Or maybe a squirrel."

     "A squirrel?" Number Thirteen looked grave. "Was it a red or a gray?"

     "Does that really matter?" asked the Queen.

     "Of course it does," said Number Thirteen. "Squirrels are more
intelligent, more organized, and more warlike than most people know.
On the other hand, if it's a rat, that wouldn't be as much of a
problem. Rats mostly enjoy cooking gourmet French foods in Pixar
films."

     In the rows ahead of them, other passengers were jumping in their
seats as well. "Eek! A mouse!"

     "No, that was definitely a cat."

     "Small raccoon," the passenger in 73E insisted. "I saw a ringed tail!"

     "Civet!"

     "Meerkat!"

     "Rhinoceros!" exclaimed the man in 65E. "It brushed against my left foot!"

     "Really?" asked the skeptical woman in 65D. "You actually expect
us to believe that a rhinoceros ran under your seat?"

     "A little one," said 65E, "and I'm going to keep drinking sample
bottles of gin until I see a whole herd of them!"

     "Attention, coach-class idiots!" snapped the flight attendant, a
former lunch lady by the look of her ladle-strengthened arms and the
"former lunch lady" pin on her lapel. "Everybody sit down and shut up!
We're going to start serving the in-flight meals, and you will eat
them in silence!"

     The passengers mostly settled down, with only some continued grumbling.

     "You requested the Royal meal, ma'am?" the flight attendant asked
the Queen.

     "That is correct," she said.

     The flight attendant dropped a clattering tray onto the Queen's
tray table. "Enjoy your super-sized bean and cheese burrito, Your
Majesty."

     Number Thirteen pulled the shirt higher over his nose, leaned
away, and screwed his eyes tightly closed.


WILL RUDY GIULIANI BE FOUND SAFE AND UNDIGESTED?

WILL THE QUEEN'S LUNCH BE FOUND SAFELY UNDIGESTABLE?

WHAT CAN WE DO TO UP THE MOTHERFARKIN' DEATH TOLL IN THIS STORYLINE?

Find out next week at this same spork-time, on this same
spork-channel, right here on Superguy!


AUTHOR'S NOTES:

You know that thing they do early on in horror movies when you only
catch little glimpses of the horrible creatures and people are
disappearing in ones or twos so that most characters don't realize
that anything bad is happening at all? That's what I'm trying to do
here, except that horror plots aren't really my strong point. Neither
is celebrity parody and neither is poetry, for that matter. In fact,
whatever my strong point is, I'm pretty sure it doesn't appear in this
episode at all.

At this point in the original run, I asked people to please stop
suggesting celebrities for me to kill off, because I had way more than
enough--including some that I'd never even heard of before! This plot
was already giving me a queasy feeling because it's one thing to kill
off fictional characters to further a story but it's something else
altogether to kill off characters based on real people. During the old
"Super Seven" series I once killed off the actor, Robert Urich. I felt
strangely guilty when he died in real life a few years later, as if
maybe I'd sent out some karmic "bad juju"--although I know that's
silly and unrealistic. The point is that I really should have known
better from prior experience.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the Superguy universe is a
parody of our own world (as well as various fictional worlds depicted
in comic books, television shows, and movies like "Snakes on a Plane).
The "real life" characters are parodies of their "real life"
counterparts, and their fictionalized deaths aren't meant as anything
other than a comic tribute.

I consider the Superguy postings of these episodes to be rough drafts,
the RACC postings to be minor revisions, and I've started a more
comprehensive revision for my own purposes. For that one I'll be
changing the names and details of the celebrities in this arc to make
them more clearly identifiable as parodies.

-- 
Greg R. Fishbone - http://gfishbone.com
* Author: THE PENGUINS OF DOOM - http://septinanash.com
* President: Class of 2k7 - http://classof2k7.com
* ARA: New England SCBWI - http://nescbwi.org