Richard Simmons with Raw Pork

by A Candy-Colored Clown They Call the Sandman

I was performing a mammogram on a squirrel in my backyard, when I looked up and saw Richard Simmons, wearing a red jumpsuit, doing jumping-jacks and holding gristly, dripping slabs of raw pork in each hand.

"2, 3,5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19.." he barked, continuing the recitation of every prime number up to 1000. After 997, he stopped, and threw the meat to the ground.

"Stop the killing!" he screamed.

He then got down on his hands and knees and began grabbing clumps of the lawn and stuffing them into his mouth.

"The only thing we have to fear," he gurgled, dribbling bits of soil and grass down his chin, "is Pelvic Inflammatory Disease itself."

After clubbing him unconscious with a rake, I went inside for some lemonade. When I opened the kitchen cupboard however, the head of Conan O'Brien's sidekick, Andy Richter, rolled out onto the counter.

"Brush your breath with Dentyne!" it commanded.

I rolled the head into the garbage, twist-tied the bag and took it out to the street. I looked to my right and saw my unemployed neighbor, dressed in a full Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniform, stopping cars on our street at random, and strip-searching the occupants.

I went back inside and began playing all of my Beatles albums backwards. Toward the end of 'Revolution 9' on 'The White Album', I heard John Lennon mumble "Paul is alive. He is attempting to resurrect his career by playing hideous Broadway show tune pop music and being a militant vegetarian."

I turned off the stereo and flipped on MTV's 'Real World', which featured a male punk rock heroin addict, an overweight, depressed, failed female model, a transvestite octogenarian with Alzheimer's, a successful male fifty-something Wall Street broker, and an incontinent chimpanzee, all living in a cardboard box above a heating grate in downtown Chicago. I switched channels just as the chimp began urinating on the stock broker who was ripping a penis-shaped ring out of the nipple of the drug addict. The next image to assault my eyes was the Galloping Gourmet sauteing human fingers in a creamy white sauce. Next, I stumbled upon an episode of Sesame Street, which featured Big Bird hunched over a table, chopping lines of cocaine on a huge mirror with an over-size rubber razor blade, and Ernie and Bert in the background fondling each other. Big Bird counted out eight lines and the number "8" flashed on the screen. I flipped over to the Richard Bey show to see a sobbing, hysterical woman who was about to be re-introduced to the husband she divorced three years ago after he had sex with her grandfather and her dog in front of their kids. Enough TV for one day.

As I drove around looking for a place to eat, I noticed Dave Thomas in front of Wendy's slaughtering a cow. I decided to keep driving and ended up at Pizza Hut. The waitress, who had the head of Florence Henderson and the body of Danny DeVito, kept coughing up chunks of lung and intestine into a dirty handkerchief as she took my order.

"Would you like to try our new Cheese Marrows?" she chirped, before expelling a dripping reddish-blue globule out of her mouth into her hands. She described the new appetizer as consisting of ground up, reformed Nigerian gazelle femur bone, dipped in mozzarella and cheddar cheese and fried to a golden crunch. I took a pass, and ordered a small pepperoni pizza. As I was scooping lettuce onto my plate from the salad bar, I noticed that the bowl of croutons seemed to be alive. Upon closer inspection, I saw a 6-inch Teri Garr, wearing a clown outfit, climbing around the bowl and chanting "The horror! The horror!" over and over. I went back to my seat, and finished my salad just as the meal arrived. Instead of pepperoni though, the pizza was topped with the entire contents of a Monopoly game. Rather than complain, and become more nauseated by the sight of the waitress, I attempted to eat it. After about five bites though, I began choking. Suddenly, I felt someone applying the Heimlich Maneuver, and as I was lifted up out of my seat, out from my mouth flew green houses, red hotels, a Get Out Of Jail Free card, a thimble, and a race car. I turned around to gratefully thank my rescuer, and saw Richard Simmons, naked and bleeding profusely from the head.

"Too much polyurethane is bad for the tummy, naughty boy," he lisped.

Mercifully, I collapsed to the ground in shock, just as he was about to reach over and hug me.

9/13/97

[Writers] [Birdhouse]