November 23, 2009
When my plane touched down in Rome this morning, my assistant Hogshead said the same thing he’d said the last 45 days in a row: Is this the place, m’lud? Do you think you’ll find them here? And I told him the same thing I always told him: It’ll all come out in the wash, faithful Hogshead. I’ve become quite philosophical these days, after all the travel and disappointments…all the wild goose chases in pursuit of my nemeses, the Bob Revenge Squad. Que sera, sera, I say, whatever will be, will be. Because I have hope that one day soon, I’ll run the Revenge Squad to ground. And then I will take my revenge against them in ways even those depraved maniacs cannot imagine.
Mr. Giraffe…Butterscotch…The Corsage…Doctor Diagonal…Headrush…and Jack Squat. Otherwise known as the Bob Revenge Squad. Like the Superman Revenge Squad from the comics, they’ve dedicated their lives to taking me down one way or the other. But they went too too freakin’ far when they got my favorite TV show cancelled. LIfe without Boil Water Notice is like life without chocolate or dreams. They’ve left me no choice but to chase them to the ends of the Earth.
Fortunately, faithful Hogshead is a valet of many talents. This time, he assured me, he had an indisputable lead on the Revengers, owing to Jack Squat making a public nuisance of himself by urinating in the Trevi Fountain. Mr. Giraffe didn’t help matters when he took a busload of tourists hostage at the Circus Maximus, demanding to see the bloody ringmaster and elephants. Not realizing it wasn’t that kind of circus.
So now here we go, charging into the Roman night with every kind of tracking device known to man and beast. Ready at a second’s notice to deploy our extra-awesome arsenal of built-in powers. Soften them up with the nuclear hangnail and flab folds of fury…then trot out blistering fungus vision and the piece de resistance, contagious indigestion. And don’t forget transmissable senior moments straight from the fermented brain of El Demento, which proves a super-villain can sometimes be useful behind bars in pursuit of parole.
Locals whiz past us on scooters and jeer like chimps in a jungle. Hogshead fires dog piles from a paintball gun and screams like a banshee. We sing our battle song as we jog toward the ultimate showdown at St. Peter’s in the Vatican: it sounds like “Mary Had a Little Lamb” set to balls-to-the-wall death metal. The words are all about how we’re going to punish the crap out of Mr. Giraffe, Jack Squat, and the other Revenge Squadders, leaving them little more than vegetables crawling through the teeming Roman gutters.
But hey, they aren’t at St. Peter’s. Or anywhere else in Rome, for that matter. So we eat a fabulous meal, spend the night in a five-star hotel, and in the morning set out for our next destination. According to Hogshead, a Twitter post by Doctor Diagonal places him and Butterscotch on safari in Botswana. Laughing at us while observing prides of lions. How fitting; we shall hunt down the scoundrels like the very beasts they observe.
So now we know our next stop. Hogshead packs our bags and lays in supplies for the journey. I ask him, rhetorically, how much longer this exhausting chase can continue. As long as your money holds out, m’lud, says Hogshead. And then we’re off again into the wild blue yonder, only this time I can feel Jack Squat’s fat neck between my aching fingers. He is as good as dead, I tell you.
(See you soon.)
