The bunny jammed a Cadbury Egg into her mouth, biting down, chewing, sugary yolk oozing out over her lips and down her chin. She rang the doorbell, using her strong tongue to lick up the dripping goo and return it to her mouth.
And then she swallowed.
The bunny’s name was Carrie, and she was a stripper and a whore. Carrie had no illusions about her occupation, no “exotic dancer” or “gentleman’s escort.” She took the job because her best friend Jessica had been working at one of the strip clubs in town, and the money was outrageous. When she saw how much Jessica was making she didn’t get jealous- she got furious. She knew she was five times better-looking, and she knew she could use sex to get paid. Not that she had ever done it before.
She’d been a good girl, all her life, and even in college she’d been sexually responsible: no drunken free-bangs to frat guys, no sloppy make-outs to girlfriends. But there was that bitch Jessica- with the face of a wolverine- pulling five hundred dollars in sweaty singles from between her invisible breasts. Carrie wanted in, and tabled the dream of professional dental hygenist in order to earn for tuition and save for the future. It wasn’t hard work, and it wasn’t dirty. She just had to turn off her mind and share her body. The sex part was easier than the dancing anyway. She figured she’d do it for another six months max and then get back to school… maybe eight months. She’d see…
She used the back of her finger to wipe the chocolate off her teeth. She’d been having low blood-sugar crashes lately and a strange guy’s house is no place to pass out. She balled up the foil wrapper and tossed it in the shrub, staring at the front door ahead of her. Suburbs this deep she figured middle-aged man, 40 to 45, wife and kids away somewhere for some reason. Family men were always fast, always came in a flash, paranoid and frustrated, trying to get her out of the house as soon as possible, as if her black Jetta parked out front screamed “whore.”
The front door opened and Carrie found herself facing ten little boys, ages eight through eleven. They were wearing party hats, and there were balloons tied to chairs inside the house. The table was covered in colored eggs and coffee mugs of vinegar. The boy who had opened the door wore a name tag that said “Alex.” One of the boys puffed his cheeks and blew a bubble with his gum.
The bubble popped.
Carrie felt her face getting red as they looked her up and down. One of the older boys gave her a look. She knew that look.
She smiled politely, then apologetic, “I think I have the wrong house.”
There was a silence.
Carrie was frozen, petrified wood.
Alex, hand on the knob, took a deep breath, his eyes locked on Carrie’s chest. He angled his neck upwards in super slow-motion, “No. This is the right house…”
The children parted, and somehow, for some reason, Carrie found herself walking inside. She stepped into the house and was still. One of the boys put his face up to her cotton tail… and took a deep sniff.
Her eyelids fluttered involuntarily.
They had surrounded her, and Alex slowly closed the door behind her, the hinges creaking in the cool April air. Carrie said a prayer.
The elderly Mrs. Guttman walked down the sidewalk, her dalmation Violet on a short leash. She spotted the black Jetta on the curb and shook her head in disgust, confiding in the dog: “Whore.”
My wife and I agreed to never have children, but when the doctors told us it was impossible we changed our minds: Why shouldn't WE be parents? Fertility doctors determined that my wife’s wandering ovaries were to blame- and not the Thunderous Flagstaff that dangles down my pant leg. So we decided to adopt. But who?
First Baby - Mary
Mary was an infant from Kansas who had been abandoned by her underage, cross-eyed, glue-sniffing mother in a dumpster behind the 31 Flavors. Mary’s first word was “jizzbah,” which myself, my wife, and the Department of Social Services all agreed was weird. She was kicked out of kindergarten after force-feeding tater tots to the class hamster- the autopsy is still pending. Since then Mary has been home-schooled, which is to say she stays home instead of going to school. My wife and I soon became bored with her antics and rediscovered the biological urge to acquire another child.
Second Baby – Miko
Time to go international. Miko was a Japanese orphan and very reasonably priced. She came with her own travel pouch and a side order of onion rings. Knowing an Asian child’s penchant for the violin the wife and I headed off to the Music Store… unfortunately we were only able to afford a ukele, which I accidentally demolished the day Miko began to play. A curious child, Miko's favorite hobby was sticking her finger into electrical sockets with predictably hilarious results. She spoke in Literal Grammar, which means she verbally stated all commas, periods, and punctuation marks. Fun to be sure semicolon but we wanted more period
Third Baby – Makumba
Things were getting downright nutty at this point, so we knew a bold move was in order. Makumba was a Haitian refugee we bought used from Angelina Jolie, and he quickly became the toast of the neighborhood. Instead of a spoken language Makumba communicated through a series of clicks, whistles, and meaningful bladder accidents. When frightened, he would climb telephone poles and refuse to come down for days at a time. Makumba was famous for slapping the neighborhood children just for the crack of it. There was no way to top ourselves now… or was there?
Fourth Baby – The Bear
A mistake from the get-go. The Bear wasn’t so much an adopted child as he was a bear, and by that I mean he promptly devoured Mary, Miko & Makumba upon arrival at the house. Before Animal Control put 67 bullets into him, The Bear ate my wife’s spleen and pancreas, leaving her paralyzed from the ankles up. I got off lucky as he only devoured my genitals. My wife and I survive and lead a rich and fulfilling life, but to be honest there are days I miss my Thunderous Flagstaff. The kids, too. Parenthood is like a midnight ride on a motorboat, but I forget how.
“Alright, babe, I’ll tell you… If you want to know then I’ll tell it to you. But this is it… my deepest darkest. And once I tell you there is no going back. You and I will never be the same.”
I paused then, dramatically, waiting for a dog to bark, or the Earth to open and swallow us whole. But none of that ever happens, never when you need it. I was checking to see if I had impressed her yet, but she stared back at me with a blank face. Or maybe she was just nauseous.
“It’s time you knew everything, but just remember: you asked me. You asked to know my secret so I will tell it. I’ll tell it to you. But you have to promise you’ll still love me when I’m finished, you have to promise you’ll still love me at the end.”
She nodded, almost, so I began.
“It was a hot day in August. A summertime day in the middle of August. I remember that day. I remember hot. My younger brother was eleven which would make me twelve. And his friend Alex- a scoundrel- had stolen cigarettes from his chain-smoking mother…”
She leaned back then, her eyebrows arched, her arms folded, and she was looking at me differently. She was finally understanding the depth of my pain, the complexity of my personality. Or maybe she was in the mood for a cheeseburger.
I continued.
“This is the story of my first cigarette.”
And then, through the magic of flashback, we flashed back. Took the two of us back to a hot August day in the middle of the summertime, my hometown. And everything was happening just like it happened then: men buying milk and papers, sweating at the coolers, teenage boys getting taller just to reach the magazines at the top of the rack. Women, too hot to wear clothes, making us insane. My friends and I spent the summer wandering the streets, out of school, out of ideas, and waiting for everything to happen.
That hot August day my brother had told me about Alex, and the cigarettes, and the three of us met in the empty apartment above us. It had been vacant for as long as we’d lived there but there had been people in this place before us. Neighbors, families, business owners… maybe a dentist, maybe a sailor. But we made the place our own, pushed the boxes of newspaper out of the way and brought in milk crates to sit on and a radio for Z100. A shoebox of baseball cards sat by the open window.
Alex was beaming over his stolen Marlboro’s, wanted to tell us the whole story over again, but we got right to it, lit up as Billy Joel faded away and Guns ‘N Roses sang about the paradise city.
Flick. Drag. Burn. The cigarette was sacred, sweet, and as we sat in a circle and smoked something funny happened: A high. Dizzy with the nicotine. Hold on, hold on… the room going funny. Smiles of anticipation. The smoke was going to cure us of childhood, and hopefully the heat of the summer. We restrained from vomiting- out of respect.
In the haze of second-hand we heard Grandma calling, howling at us through the first-floor window, “Boys! Boys!” We ignored her as hard as we could. “Where are you boys, boys?”
“BOYS!”
It was probably Alex or my brother who flicked the lit ciggie into the box of old newspaper. Then again, it might have been me, but we were so stoned from the tobacco in our lungs we couldn’t remember… even if we wanted to.
We jumped to our feet, spooked like rabbits, scattering, abandoning the plan and denying that we even knew each other. The lesbian babysitters across the way watched us scamper down the fire escape, rolling their eyes without a word and cursing men as a sex. Little did our tiny minds comprehend that the cigarette was still burning, igniting yesterday’s headlines, and inspiring the cardboard box to burst into unprecedented flame.
We hit the streets, still stunned. After eight the sidewalks were ours, and we ruled them with benevolent neglect. Nothing says badass like a Bart Simpson T-shirt, and we blended in quickly with the other packs of stray kids searching for the ice cream truck. The heat never let up, and so we lived with it, took it with us wherever we went, and we would dip into storefronts for AC relief until the owners kicked us out with their brooms.
We were at Bulls Head variety eating Alexander The Grape when the Panicky Man burst inside. He turned to the clerk, panicky, and shouted louder than necessary: “The whole fucking neighborhood is burning to Hell and beyond! How much for a pack of Garbage Pail Kids?”
We were on the curb before the clerk could say fifty cents. The ghetto was ablaze and the firepeople- cosmic clowns in submarine boots and halloween hats- spat water at the thriving inferno. It was no use. The slums were burning first… but by the end we’d all be burning.
An old lady in corrective shoes ran by, turned to us. “Your grandmother was incinerated!” We barely had time to thank her for the update before she tripped over a pebble, breaking her neck against a fire hydrant and dying politely.
We stood back and watched the flames engulf, we watched the city burn, a mixture of hot shame and glowing pride: the hospital was torched, and the flames didn’t discriminate between the doctors and the patients. It was a masterpiece of golden triangle: heat, fuel and oxygen to feed the raging beast. We should have been horrified, but we had given birth to the bastard. He was our baby, for better or worse.
The church was scorched and the priest instantly roasted. The video store smoldered as the cassettes melted, the movies dripping down the wire racks. Then the police department caught fire- cops go up like kindling- and then the dry cleaners… The lake was on fire, as was the pre-school, and the high school, and the pet store. The stadium was burning, staining the ozone, as was the cigar store, and the coffee shops, the movie theater, and the government center.
And the people were consumed by fire as well… the mayor lit up like a roman candle and my school teachers proved to be a special kind of flammable. The parking lots, the bowling alleys, the pizza joints and the grocery stores… people burn good when you set them on fire.
The city was destroyed... nothing left for anyone, and the buildings blazed on into the night. We watched for as long as we could, until our child eyes got heavy and had to go down, and no one asked us any questions when we slept beneath our beds that night, just so a stray cinder didn’t fly through the window and bite us or ignite us.
The three of us promised that we would never talk about it again, and we never did.
I exhaled. I turned to face her.
“So that’s it, babe… that’s my deepest darkest…”
She rose up then, stood sure and easy, ready to leave me, ready to deny she’d ever loved me. But she didn’t do that.
Instead she pulled a cigarette out of her pocket and lit up, the white fire lighting the apartment, the silver smoke filling the air. And she exhaled, blowing the smoke into my face.
(If your server isn’t speaking in a grating Australian accent feel free to punch him in the groin)
G’Day!Why let the embarrassing sub-culture of Australia die quietly when we can keep it alive to provide personality for our corporate restaurant chain? Here at Outback we take turns choking you with deep-fried foodstuffs and slang so obsolete it baffles even Crocodile Dundee!
“Barbie that bingle, you lob corroboree!”
Steak
When you think of Australia you think filthy, beer-soaked inbreds and the best beef on the planet. But there’s more greg where that betty comes from!
Crikey!
England’s convicts have evolved and they're currently cooking your sirloin! How ’bout a Teriyaki-marinated Texas Tartare with a side order of grease-trap snappings? Or try a Bloomin’ ’Roo Zeppo Porterhouse Shark Biscuit, a flank steak comprised of beef from all eight continents!
Roight! Oy! Skem’bow!
Starters While you’re translating, why not munch and chumple on a twelve-dollar Onionbomb? Or sink your skiners into some Alice Pozzy Bumbaloo Chicken! It’s a barbecued clucker wrapped with bacon, discharging cheese, and smothered in a sauce so secret we’d have to shoot you dead before we revealed the recipe! Or have some Eucalyptus ‘Tato Sticks! That’s what we call french fries for some reason.
Even callow skeeters love the tinny!
If the hogswallow above is givin’ you a noggin-pounder we suggest you numb your senses with a Sydneysipper- a Crocktail with an outrageous name and offensive price!
Pattyback! Booze hits the pop-kropper!
Rippin’ Cocktails
Start with a Bongo Rita – “Rita” is short for margarita and “bongo” is the unpredictable drum… neither of which have anything to do with Australia! Ergo, we arrive at the $30 cocktail, which is easier to swallow with a fun new name- especially when you shout it across the restaurant in an obnoxious Ozzie accent.
“Bongo ‘Rita, ya right bastard!!!”
Piddling your britches has never been this rewarding!
Also available in fun flavors:
Koala-Walla Bongo Rita Bonanzer Snuka –Beer, served steaming hot with two olives
Wallaby Sting Bongo Rita ‘Stravaganzer – We don’t know what this means.
Kookaburra Bongo Melbourne Mudclip Bikkie-Bon – Why have you read this far?
Bindi Dinkum Jackaloo Bongo Prezzy Yabber Rita Deluxe – Ten men die in the preparation of this beverage
Gringo Dingo Boomer Bongo Nugfugger Pogo-Fezgig Bazaar – Ice water
We hope you had a kikapoo meal and a brisbane evening...
The box was hand-stamped “TNT,” but Dumb Bobby couldn’t read yet. He would often find himself out in the shed behind the house, his hair mussed, his trousers down around his ankles, fudgsicle fingerprints on the light switches and doorknobs.
“No, Dumb Bobby,” his Mommy would say, “that dynamite belongs to your father. You musn’t disturb it or make plans to detonate the neighborhood.” She would pull his pants up around his waist, lick her hand and comb his hair down, and then she would serve Bobby a big steaming bowl of oatmeal. It seemed like Bobby was always being fed oatmeal.
But that didn’t stop Dumb Bobby from wondering. He was always reading fairy tales and action comics, and wondering just what happened before he was born. He was always breaking his toys, and singing songs of his own composition. And he was always curious about the dynamite in the shed.
He would sit for hours on the stone wall at the top of the street waiting for his Father’s car to arrive so he could ask him, so he could find out what the dynamite was for, what it was all about. When the whirlybirds fell off the trees, he would pick them up and split them and give himself a witch’s nose. He would watch the trucks drive by, and ask the drivers to honk their horns, and eventually the sun would fall from the sky. But his father’s car never seemed to arrive.
One day when the leaves began to change, Bobby walked up the hill to wait for his Father. Today there was no songs, no toys, no whirlybirds. He sat alone for an hour on the wall, which is quite a very long while, and when his Father failed to show he decided to find out for himself just what that dynamite was all about.
Just before dinner Bobby told Mommy he was going to play outside.
“Alright, Dumb Bobby,” Mommy said, “but don’t be long- your oatmeal is almost ready.”
Dumb Bobby grabbed the big box of wooden matches from the cupboard and ran out the door. He walked past the swings directly to the shed. He opened the crate stamped TNT and pulled out a bright red stick. There was something written on it… “Ex-plo-sive.”
Dumb Bobby struck a match and lit the fuse. He held the stick in his hand, knowing something spectacular was about to happen. As the wick grew shorter he panicked, and nearly dropped it, but he held strong, believing his Father would want him to.
Dumb Bobby saw it getting close now… the fuse was almost down to the stick. The flame was dancing its way down, winking at him, telling him everything would be okay. He wondered if-
This clip- also known as “Cocaine Power”- features briefcase telephones, sacks of cash, and enough white blazers to make Don Johnson blush. (Is there nothing more badass than an electric cash-counter?) Pacino lusts after his sister and smokes a big stogie, but none of it changes the fact that he is a short, short man. In spite of its flaws the sequence is exciting enough to give you a contact high for those days when your dealer is out of town. The world may be yours, but what the hell are you going to do with a tiger in your backyard?
For the definition of the phrase “Ugly American” please refer to this collection of scrap footage, the highlight of Chevy Chase’s instantly-forgettable sequel. Released from prison after the grisly Wally World slayings, Clark Griswold takes his family across the pond to assault France, England & Germany with obnoxious non sequiturs, numbing sight gags and Rusty’s eternal puberty. And then comes the inevitable montage.
“Scuzzed out” and in need of a new wardrobe, the Griswold family embarks on a Eurotrash spending-spree that would make Boy George vomit in his tea cup. Clark and the kids hit the boutiques and sample outrageous fashions to the syrup-throated warbling of Dr. John.
Watch Fat Audrey don a giant leather jacket while dreaming of pork sausage… laugh as block-headed Rusty insures his virginity for at least another decade by dressing as a psychotic duke. (Nothing says high fashion like Velcro.) Even sweet Bev D’Angelo looks d’isgusting in her four-foot fascinator. But it’s ultimately Clark’s interplanetary zoot-suit that sums up this sequence, and provides grounds for justifiable homicide. It’s a long way down the Holiday Road…
This pretty much represents my high school experience: Becoming a werewolf to earn a spot on the basketball team, surfing on the roof of a moving car while hanging with my best friends Stiles and Boof.
Michael J. Fox takes a break from howling “Doc!” to play an ordinary teenager who becomes an ordinary werewolf, and what better way to show him finding his groove than with this spectacular montage! It’s all here: high fives and walkmen, spontaneous schoolhouse breakdancing and signing autographs for his toddler fan club. (The scenes of Teen Wolf satisfying his bloodlust by devouring babies and stray dogs were omitted due to time constraints.)
The fantastic Mr. Fox is only seventeen inches tall, but luckily the wolf costume disguises his basketball double so the three-pointers look seamless. This is not just a montage… this is Cinema. You gotta go with the flow, Joe…
Oral sex at gunpoint really gets the blood flowing
