Christmas with Jack Bauer, Part 3 January 2, 2009
Posted by tvcrawlspace in : 24, Holiday Posts, Inspirational, Satire , 2comments
I knew my interview with Jack Bauer had gone awry when I found myself being lifted out of my chair by the shirt collar, and slammed against his refrigerator. “You’re starting to sound a lot like a terrorist, pal!” he snarled.
“Hey, uh, that kinda hurts.”
“Hurts? How’d you like to know what real pain feels like? I knew when I saw you that you were one of these purse-carrying liberal elitists. But now I think it’s even worse than that. Give me one reason to believe you’re not working for Al Qaeda!”
I implored him to look in my shirt pocket. He pulled out a box of Tic-Tacs and frowned, then wasted no time in tying me to a chair. After a couple of solid backhands to the face, he plugged in a power cord and touched together the stripped wires at the other end, causing a spark. “You’re going to tell me who you’re working for”, he growled.
“You really know how to throw a Christmas party,” I said, perhaps a little too casually. “I bet Martha Stewart would be so proud. I don’t YAAARRRGHH YIYIYIYI vugindamsonuva GARRRRRRGH YIYIYIYIYI YIYIYIIYIYYI buzabadooba YOOOWWWW IYYIYIYIYIY subaluzzabunaguzza.” (Rough translation: “Ouch.”)
I decided it was in the best interest of the country to tell him everything. I confessed my admiration of French cuisine and culture. I admitted to having written passages from the Communist Manifesto on public restroom stalls. I divulged my secret dream to raise the taxes of gun owners and abolish all religions except Scientology. I acknowledged my status as a United Nations spy and a champion disco dancer. I confessed my habits of sticking my chewed gum under tables, and embarrassing my family members with drunken air guitar solos. I told him about the piece of candy I stole from the Civitans box at the Golden Corral, and the copy of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish that I never returned to the public library. I gave him Bin Laden’s street address, email, cell phone and fax numbers, plus my old high school locker combination and my mother’s revised banana bread recipe.
Thirty minutes into the bathtub water boarding session, Bauer’s phone rang. He dried off his hands and answered it.. “Bauer here. What’s the situation? Yeah, OK. I’ll be right down.” He hung up and then threw me a towel. “Looks like you’re off the hook. They’ve got an emergency down at headquarters.” He grabbed his keys and I followed him out the front door.
“You’re letting me go?”
“I’m not done with you yet, but I’ve got bigger problems right now.”
I stood dazed as he attached a pizza delivery sign to the top of his ‘92 Tercel and backed out of the driveway. He yelled from his car, “Don’t worry, Crawlspace. I’ll find you, and you’ll wish I didn’t.”
(The new season of 24 starts January 11th.)
Candy Wrapper Revelations September 6, 2008
Posted by tvcrawlspace in : General, Inspirational, Satire, Snacks , 2comments
As you know, here at TV Crawlspace we consider snacks to be a necessary ingredient in the TV watching experience. After sampling a pack of M&M’s the other night I thought I spotted a typo on the wrapper. What seemed to be the problem was the apostrophe between the second M and the s. Was it possible that the package designers fell prey to the old pitfall of using an inappropriate apostrophe before the ‘s’ in a plural noun? My inner punctuation zealot jumped for joy at this thought. “The inclusion of the apostrophe implies ownership,” I proudly proclaimed. “In order for it to be valid, the word M&M’s would have to be followed with a second noun.” That’s when I noticed the tiny words at the bottom of the logo, “Chocolate Candies”. There they were. Two little words that meant so much. All was right on my candy wrapper.
This question of who owns the candies prompted me to do a little internet research. It turns out that M&M’s were named after the first owners of the candy’s patent, Forrest Mars Sr. and R. Bruce Murrie, who purchased the rights in 1929. The full name of the product, hypothetically, would read “Mars and Murrie’s Chocolate Candies”. Mr. Mars went on to amass a personal fortune of four billion dollars from the sale his little colorful creations. Kind of adds new meaning to the phrase “living the sweet life”.
After solving that mystery, something else caught my attention. Standing over on the right side of the wrapper was the jaded looking spokescandy known to M&M-o-philes as Red. Like a carnival booth attendant, he pointed a solicitous finger and seemed to urge passersby to partake in the contents of the little brown package. I tried to imagine what he might be saying:
“What’s the matter kid, life got you down? I got just the thing you need. Nothing like a sugar fix to make you forget about your problems. For a while at least. Then you’ll be back for more. Old man Mars got filthy rich off of desperate little kids like you. So what’s got you down, exactly? Let me take a guess. Your playstation game doesn’t work anymore? Your Barbie doll lost an arm? That’s nothin’. I hate to break it to ya, but it’s all downhill from here. You got twelve years of school to look forward to, and each grade is tougher than the last one. Then you work a crap job until you’re old and gray. That’s the game of life, and if you don’t play you end up dead in the gutter with the rats and the junkies. Take it from Red, the biggest thrill in your life will be these little chocolate candies here. Eat all you want, we got a whole warehouse full. These things won’t melt in your hand like that other cheap sh**.”
Just then I imagined a large shoe coming down on our affable spokescandy, crushing him into the sidewalk. That’s the way it goes in the school of hard knocks.
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