It’s become either sublimely ridiculous, or ridiculously sublime. You, the reader, must decide as we follow the continuing adventures of (cue ominous music): Yevgheny, Miss Prunella Face and Paul “Gazzo” Gazzoween. But one must wonder, what has become of our hero, G. Rex?
Faced with perhaps his most daunting task to date, what with Rick laying down the Dennis Miller gauntlet, G. Rex takes quill to paw in order to have at the challenge which would make Tantalus recoil. It is a task which would make even the most robust computerized spell-checker balk, yet would make almost any high school English teacher proud. It is: to write a short story in which the author alludes to the obscure, uses polysyllabic adjectives (some of which have more than one “y”), and yet virtually nothing happens!
When last we saw our tragi-comic trio, your humble narrator was busily trying to write Paul “Gazzo” Gazzoween out of the story line. But, like a bad penny-farthing, he kept recycling. The three reunite outside the white antebellum townhouse, complete with iron railing, in the French Quarter of old New Orleans, where a disconsolate Miss Prunella Face has just received some bad news from her soothsayer.
After a brief, yet appropriate, dramatic pause, Gazzo approaches Prunella. In his endearing Geordie accent, he suggests, “Let’s go eat Some Italian, huh, luv?”
“Get away from me, you stupid git!” retorts Prunella. “Or, is it ‘Git away from me, you stupid get!’? Anyway, it’s pouring rain on you. It should be raining on me!” Miss Face sighs. “Besides, Hannibal conquered Rome with the whole elephant thing, but when was the last time you ate in a Carthaginian restaurant?”
Yevgheny, with uncharacteristic Churchillian wisdom, sensing an enigma wrapped in a puzzle wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in a Gordian knot about to unfold, remains on the touch line, so to speak.
“Pru, babe,” coos Gazzo, “You’re lookin’ at me like I’m some bleedin’ idiot in a plague-stricken Albert Camus novel! Like I’m an Oran moron!”
“Camus!” sobs Prunella. “Why, that’s what I read to cheer meself up! Oh, Gazzo, I sure hope that mean ‘humble narrator’ guy never writes you out of my story line!”
Yevgheny, realizing that this is his last chance to salvage the entire story line for himself, exclaims, “Foo on you, you young songbird-type people! I have whole other kettle of fish to head, clean, gut, and pan-fry, in a stylish Martha Stewart kind of way! It’s not as if this ‘humble narrator’ guy has his own icon on ArsenalAmerica.com, like that ‘the EINY’ guy!”
With that, Yevgheny escapes into the New Orleans evening, leaving the couple in a deep embrace - though it is, strangely enough, only raining on one of them.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
