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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA



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I'm on a bit of a hiatus right now, but only to work on other projects -- one incredibly exciting example being the newly-released kids' science book series Things That Make You Go Yuck!
If you're a science and/or silliness fan, give it a gander! See you soon!

How Kanga-Rood!

Apologies to anyone who might notice such things for my unusual three-day absence.

(Not that it’s especially unusual. Or particularly noticed. Still.)

Due to a lovely weekend visit from my parents — and a not-so-lovely technical glitch on Saturday night — I managed to neglect posting for longer than I’d hoped. But that doesn’t mean creative juices weren’t bubbling — no, sir.

(Well, something was bubbling, anyway. Maybe creative juices, maybe just heartburn. The bubbles are not always so forthcoming regarding the nature of their business.)

Three things I can say for certain are these:

1) On Thursday night, I attended a show over at ImprovBoston, where I’ve been taking a sketch writing class. It was my first ‘Harold Night’, where the troupes performed skits and gags all related to a single central theme, supplied up front by the audience. All three of the groups were very good, and the night went something like this:

The first group was given the word ‘tickling’, and most of their material centered around tickling.

The second group was given the word ‘pipe’, and most of their material centered around pipes. Also, marijuana.

The third group was given the word ‘kangaroo’, and most of their material centered around… lactose intolerance.

That last one’s kind of a long story. I’d tell it, but I don’t really understand it. So I guess we’re all on our own on that one. Your guess is as good as mine.

2) On Saturday afternoon, our sketch writing class met for the final session. Our assignment was to take a fresh look at one of our older sketches and edit it line-by-line to ‘tighten up’ the premise and execution.

That all sounds very important and fancy, which is good, considering the time and money we’ve all spent taking the class. But the perspective changes, just a bit, when you find yourself staring at a laptop screen at three in the morning trying to empirically decide whether ‘wang’ or ‘Johnson’ fits better in the dick joke on page three.

I’m not saying it’s not ‘important’. Just maybe a little less ‘fancy’ than one might at first perceive.

Also, I won’t bore you with my updated sketch. It was a somewhat less wordy version of Roadshow Surprise from last week, but it wasn’t a huge rewrite. Maybe should’ve been. But wasn’t.

However.

3) From Thursday night on, this ‘kangaroo’ business bugged me a little bit. I felt just a little cheated, frankly, that I didn’t get to see any actual kangaroo material onstage, after the audience had gone and selected ‘kangaroo’ from any of the nearly infinite number of prompts we could have provided. We made a collective request, and it got morphed into something else entirely. Something very entertaining and humorous — but something else.

So I started wondering what I would have done with ‘kangaroo’.

And then I went and did something with ‘kangaroo’.

And, most likely, found out in the process why those very smart people on stage did nothing with kangaroo. The comedy, she is harder than she looks.

So my last act as a Sketch Level I student over at IB was to present, with a mostly-straight face, the kangaroo-related skit below. I did this because A) my obsessive mind was never going to leave ‘kangaroo’ alone otherwise, and more importantly, B) I’ve already signed up for Sketch Level II and I’m pretty sure they can’t kick me out on the basis of one sketch.

And lord help me if I’m wrong.

At any rate, here you go. It’s kind of my ‘graduation piece’ from Remedial Sketch class. And it’s about kangaroos. Why? Hey, like I said — your guess is as good as mine.


JOEY

[Open on Beth, sitting in a waiting room chair reading a magazine. Gary enters, wearing a blue smock and rubber gloves, which he removes as he approaches Beth.]

GARY: Um… hi, Mrs. Waterman. Can I have a word with you?

BETH: Of course.

GARY: Yeah. So, we’ve run some tests on your daughter, and… I’m not quite sure how to put this, but… we think she might be… a kangaroo.

BETH: What?! Are you sure?

GARY: Well, not conclusively, no. I mean, none of us are animal…uh, -ologists or anything. But the signs are pretty clear.

“I’m not judging. I’m just connecting the dots. The many, many dots.”

BETH: Signs? What signs?

GARY: Well for starters, the fur. Haven’t you noticed the… all-over hair covering?

BETH: I figured she’d grow out of it. Like baby fat.

GARY: And the big pointy ears?

BETH: She often wears her hair down. They’re barely even noticeable.

GARY: What about the tail?

BETH: Well, you know… my family’s from Kentucky, originally.

[Gary looks at her, puzzled.]

BETH: It’s not completely unheard of, is all I’m saying.

GARY: Ooo-kay. Let me ask you this: what exactly did the adoption agency tell you?

BETH: Well… they said she was from Australia…

GARY: Sure.

BETH: …and she came from an underprivileged home…

GARY: Because most kangaroos are poor and homeless.

BETH: …but that she was a real fighter.

GARY: And kangaroos are legendary boxers. Look, Mrs. Waterman — I’m not judging. I’m just connecting the dots. The many, many dots.

BETH: Oh, I don’t know. It seems so… wait, here she comes now. We can settle this once and for all.

[Joey, a teenaged girl, hops on both feet onto the stage, past Gary, and flops into a chair near Beth. Joey has enormous fuzzy ears and feet, a long tail, and once seated, boredly eats potato chips which she pulls from inside her obvious pouch.]

BETH: Joey? Honey?

JOEY: G’day, ma.

BETH: Yes, Joey — “g’day”. Now you know Mommy loves you very much, right?

JOEY: Yeh.

BETH: Okay, sweetie, good. Mommy just needs to ask you one little question, okay?

JOEY: Fire away, ma.

BETH: Joey… are you a kangaroo?

JOEY: A wha’?

BETH: A kangaroo, dear.

JOEY: A ‘roo?

BETH: Yes, that’s right.

JOEY: Like, a hippity-hoppah? Box yer ears, stomp yer feet, bounce about the outback sort of ‘roo?

BETH: That’s the one, yes.

JOEY: Nah. Don’t fink so.

BETH: Are you sure, dear?

JOEY: Yeh, ma. Pretty sure I’d know if I’s a ‘roo. There’d be signs.

BETH: [to Gary] You see? Not a kangaroo.

GARY: You can’t be serious. Just look at her ears!

BETH: Don’t you dare make fun of my daughter’s ears! She is a blossoming young lady, and you will treat her with the respect and dignity she deserves!

GARY: Well, sure, yes, of course. But… a pouch? Come on.

BETH: And I’ll bet you had acne as a young man. How did you feel about know-it-alls pointing that out all the time, eh?

GARY: She has a tail!

[At the mention of ‘pedicure’ in the next line, Joey crosses her enormous hairy feet and admires the gobs of nail polish on the ‘toes’.]

BETH: Look, mister, I have heard *enough*. I brought my daughter here for a pedicure — a really expensive and sloppy pedicure, I might add — not to have her publicly ridiculed by the likes of you. We will be taking our business elsewhere!

[Beth stands, in a huff.]

BETH: Come on, Joey — we’re leaving.

[Joey continues eating chips and admiring her toes, oblivious.]

BETH: I said, let’s go. Hop up!

[Beth glares at Gary and holds up a finger in a ‘not one word’ motion. Joey ‘hops up’ and hops offstage, with Beth following. Gary holds his arms open, wondering what the hell just happened. After a moment, he composes himself.]

GARY: Wow. All right, who’s next? Ah, Ms. Fossey, here for an exfoliation. Come on back.

[A woman beating her chest and making gorilla noises crosses the stage past Gary. He sighs heavily and follows her offstage.]

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It Puts the Aquafresh On Its Skin…

I have a dog. Because I have a dog, I know a lot about what happens to inedible surface parts of pigs and cows after they die. A lot. Like, way more than anyone not named ‘Heifery Dahmer‘ or ‘Hamibal Lechter’ ever should.

If you also have a dog, then you probably understand why this is. And you’re in the same sick twisted boat. If you don’t have a dog, then no amount of verbal jockeying will ever adequately convey what it’s like to browse your local pet food store for dog treats. Imagine Charlotte’s Web meets Saw or the Chik-Fil-A cows run through the wood chipper in Fargo, and you get a glimmer. Except it’s much, much worse. For the animals, at least.

“Back in the day, who knows? Maybe prehistoric wild boars fought for their lives against packs of vicious sabertooth poodles.”

First, there’s the astonishing variety of dismembered porker parts and paraphernalia presented for purchase. Should you be so inclined, you can feed your dog toughened strips of pig skin. This is not so shocking, of course — we have footballs and pork rinds and ‘Chicken’ McNuggets made from the very same material.

But the porcine carnage doesn’t stop there. You can also buy lopped-off pig ears — very tasty for the terrier crowd, apparently. Pig hooves, as well, and even pig snouts. I shit you not, cat fanciers and ‘goldficcionados’ — us dog owners pay people to kill a pig, cut its holy effing dead face off, and then we feed it to our pet. Whiskers and all.

Yeah. So you come back to me and argue cats are better than dogs when your tabby’s lunching on pork boogers. Until then, you keep it in the litter box, weirdo.

Never mind that pigs and dogs — so far as I know — are not natural enemies in the wild. Or in domestication. Maybe in the Thunderdome, but otherwise, not so much. Pigs don’t have the fangs to bother dogs too much, and dogs would have a pretty hard time taking down a two-hundred pound lump of bacon. My dog would, anyway. She’d be happy to lick a hoof for a while, and then curl up and pee in the slop trough. My mutt’s more what you’d call a ‘head gamer’ than a killer.

Back in the day, who knows? Maybe prehistoric wild boars fought for their lives against packs of vicious sabertooth poodles. But in modern times, the only pig most dogs get comes in a shrink-wrapped package, and from some cured carcass that was likely factory killed, maimed, dismembered and lightly salted to taste. And there’s a hell of a lot of it.

But not as much as cow.

They use a lot of unspeakable beef parts, too. Ears, occasionally. Bits of tail. ‘Knuckles’, which are in actually some joint that I don’t want to know where it comes from, what it bends, or who stuck their hands in there to rip it off the body. And, of course, bully sticks, aka cow weiner.

(That’s Longhorn dong. Holstein holster holders. Shetland schlong. The Guernsey girth. Angus wangus. Jersey junk.

Don’t make me keep going. I’ll do it.)

But the majority of cow in your average puppy treatery will be in the form of rawhide — treated strips of dead moo skin, ready for snarfing up and scarfing down by hounds from coast to coast. You might think that delicious leathery near-steak treats would be just the thing for dogs, unadulterated in their natural beefy state.

You would be mostly incorrect.

Because while you can certainly find the odd bag of simple peeled-off bull hide, most of the product is rejiggered in some way to add additional flavor. My pooch’s favorite, for instance, is something called ‘Free Range Peanut Butter Flavor’.

I don’t know how they get the peanuts to ‘range’, exactly. Maybe a strong breeze or fan of some kind. Or probably the name is a play on words on another flavor by the same brand: ‘Free Range Chicken Flavor’.

I’m happy the chickens that were squeezed for their flavor juices were allowed to roam free before their nasty fate became my dog’s stinky treat. But the bag doesn’t say shit about the poor cow who just got her back hacked with an industrial cheese grater to make it happen. Even the peanuts have a better life than that.

These skin foods come in all sorts of sizes, shapes, colors and flavors. I knew this. But what I didn’t know — until the store recently ran out of ‘free range peanuts’ to make my mutt’s favorite, that is — is that there’s a purportedly useful kind of rawhide treat, as well. There, on the shelf next to the usual nightmares, was a row of bags proudly proclaiming:

BREATH FRESHENING RAWHIDE GOODIES

Cleans their teeth and improves breath while they chew — guaranteed!

I figured what the hell. They’re out of her favorite. I’ve seen her eat poop. And these are still made from delicious murdered beef creatures. If I can bring a little Listerine action into that dog’s maw, I’ll have done the world a solid. So I bought a bag.

The good news — the dog loves them. So far as I can tell, she knows no difference from these Crest-covered cowhickeys and her usual Skippy-ized beef parts. The bad news?

They STINK.

Holy god, I thought the plain ones reeked. The peanut butter ones, at least smell like peanuts a little. The chickeny ones, also stenchy. But the ‘breath fresheners’? A hundred times worse. Like they rubbed the cow against a rotting skunk before they skinned it, and then soaked it in turpentine. I can barely open the bag without fainting.

And did I mention? The dog loves them.

In a sense, I suppose they’re working. Anything I might have smelled on the mutt’s breath before these monstrosities is but a distant memory — replaced by the insistent, gloomy funk of whatever they treated these pukeskins with. They ‘freshen’ breath in much the same way 17th century perfume ‘cleaned’ filthy courtiers — by masking the repulsive odor with something infinitely more overpowering.

The worst part is, this bag is huge. It’s the only size they had. We’ve been shoving these things down the dog’s throat for three weeks, and there’s still half the pile left. She’s going to come out of this with the cleanest canine canines on the planet, or we’ll be gassed out onto the street before we’re done. I never thought I’d long for peanut-slathered cow skins. But I do. For the love of the Toothopolis and the Cavity Creeps, I do.

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One If By Land, Two If Biweekly

Tomorrow, I deal with the very bane of my existence. Or maybe I don’t. I frankly have no idea, which means I’m already dealing with the bane, whether the bane bothers to show up and haunt me tomorrow or not.

I’m speaking, of course, of the every-other-week meeting. Tomorrow is Wednesday, and our group at work has a meeting on Wednesdays. But not on all of the Wednesdays; just on every second one of the Wednesdays.

Is tomorrow a second one of the Wednesdays? Or a third one of the Wednesdays? Which is also a first one of the Wednesdays, or a ninth one of the Wednesdays, but in any case an odd number of the Wednesdays, meaning that we don’t have a meeting.

Unless the meeting is on the odd-numbered Wednesdays, and it’s the even Wednesdays when we’re off. Because it could be that one. I’m almost fifty percent certain that it’s quite possibly that thing, instead. Maybe.

This is my problem with bi-weekly meetings.

(Or is that semi-weekly? Sometimes-weekly? Weakly-weekly? Holy crap, even the name of this godforsaken thing is hard.)

“Once a meeting’s over with, I do my best to wipe it from my memory, and to salt the squishy bits of my brain that were holding the memory of the meeting, so that no recollections will ever grow in those synapses again.”

Anyway, my problem — my other problem — with these meetings is that they’re unpredictable. Knowing whether the meeting is ‘ON‘ or ‘OFF‘ means remembering when the last meeting occurred. And that’s the last thing I want. Once a meeting’s over with, I do my best to wipe it from my memory, and to salt the squishy bits of my brain that were holding the memory of the meeting, so that no recollections will ever grow in those synapses again. You can never be too careful when whitewashing that meeting right out of your head.

(Depending on how you’re doing it. If you’re using tequila, you should probably be just a little careful about it. You still need to remember how to walk at some point, for starters.)

Also — my propensity for repressing work meeting memories aside — I’m not so good at remembering things in general. Particularly things that happened a week ago, involved neither beer nor prime-time cartoon characters, and kicked off at some ungodly hour like nine o’clock in the morning.

(When I put it that way, quite frankly, I can’t imagine why anyone would even attempt to remember such a thing. Good lord, what’s the point?)

But people do remember, somehow, and they make quite certain — or so they tell me — to have this meeting every other week, exactly. No more, no less. Regular as clockwork.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting here at home a few hours before — or not-before — our regular meeting, trying to coerce or bribe or hypnotize myself into remembering what I was doing at the ass-crack of nine last Wednesday. And whether it involved sitting in a conference room with twenty other people, chitchatting about all the wonderful and useful things we thought all the other people in the room should be doing.

Because if I did that last week, then I don’t have to do it again tomorrow. And if I didn’t — then I’ll be setting an alarm for the ass-crack of eight, and angling for a seat in the back to maybe catch a few winks unseen when the Management Planning Subcommittee on PowerPoint Template Design gets all lathered up and going.

(A nap would be super at that point. A shot of Patron would be superer, but I’ll take what I can get.

So long as “what I get” is not “sucked onto the Task Force for Logo Placement in Slide Footers in Internal Reports”. There aren’t enough worms in the bottoms of bottles in all the world to make that tolerable.)

And now, finally, I’ve just remembered what I was doing a week ago Wednesday, right around the time of this meeting. You’d think that would be helpful, reviving all those poor pickled neurons to give me a clue.

But no. Last Wednesday, I was sick. Took a day off. Stayed in bed for most of it, until I felt better. So I didn’t go to any meetings — and I don’t know if anyone else did, either. And if I have to remember what happened two weeks ago to get some kind of clarity here, then just forget the whole thing. You might as well ask me to remember my days in the womb.

(Though I imagine those were less crowded, generally speaking. And with probably fewer audiovisual aids. I’m just guessing.)

So. First-thing meeting tomorrow, or no? My guess is ‘nay’, and that’s the story I’m sticking with. At least until 9:05, when I get the call in my office to get my butt down to the conference room already, and quit holding up the proceedings. Because if we pick a font size for bullet-point slides in presentations made to middle-but-not-upper management without a quorum, then it doesn’t count. And we might have to have a special meeting to cement the decision. Or a whole series of meetings — say every third Tuesday at seven thirty am, unless it’s the morning after a full moon in a month ending in ‘y’.

Yup, I’ll put that right on my calendar. Sounds like a real fiesta. Somebody pass the Cuervo.

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Early to Bed, Inflated to Rise

My parents are coming to visit this weekend. We have a guest room in the condo, but it can get pretty warm — especially in the bathing-in-solar-flares weather we’ve been having lately. So I was only mildly surprised when a package arrived this weekend and my wife informed me it contained an air mattress.

Aw, that was sweet of you,‘ I said. ‘But do you think they’ll be comfortable on it?

Oh, it’s not for them.

Poop. Stupid solar flares.

So we unpacked it and had a gander at what might be our sleeping balloon for a few days this weekend. If push comes to sweat, we’ll give the ‘rents our mostly-cool room, and the missus and I will camp out under the stars. By which I mean the industrial-strength ceiling fan in the living room. I hope there’s s’mores. Or at least good Archer episodes.

Meanwhile, we had to decipher how this big zeppelin pillow worked. It came with an air pump — and thank goodness, because while I’m obviously full of nonsense, I usually keep my damned fool mouth shut about it. And I don’t know how long it would take to type four thousand cubic inches of hot air, but I know I don’t want to find out. I’ll leave that exercise to the political bloggers.

“I made the requisite ‘double nozzle’-related jokes, and an hour and a half later, we proceeded to try inflating the thing.”

So we rolled out the mattress and had a look. There were two places for the pump to attach, and two attachments on the pump that seemed to fit. I made the requisite ‘double nozzle’-related jokes, and an hour and a half later, we proceeded to try inflating the thing. The filling went just fine. I’m sure the neighbors wondered what we were doing running a lawnmower in our TV room at ten thirty at night — because that pump is loud — but otherwise, we were soon treated to a bouncy, puffy fully-blown mattress equivalent. We hopped on for a quick test-lie.

Now, you might think this is the place where the mattress sprung an explosive leak, dumping us to the ground and maybe shooting the pump off the end and through a window, or deflating like a kid’s balloon, sending us flapping through the room like a drunken flying carpet. But those things didn’t happen, of course. Real life isn’t quite so predictable.

(Plus, the thing is waiting until we need it for that shit. My money’s on Saturday morning, at about three o’clock. I can feel it scheming, as we speak.)

Instead, we scrambled on, lay our heads to rest, looked at each other and said:

Gah, this thing stinks.

And it does. In very much a ‘you are what you’re made of’ kind of way, it reeks of rubber or plastic or whatever petroleum-firing byproduct was used to construct it. It’s not a strong smell — until you put your face on it, as though you were, oh I don’t know, sleeping. Then it smells like you’re lying on a new garden hose. Or an enormous condom.

(Which makes me very happy we decided not to get one that was pre-owned. Rationally, I could tell myself that I’m not trying to get shuteye on top of someone else’s used Trojan. Instinctively, I think I’d wind up sleeping in the bathtub.

At least I know what’s gone on in there.)

To be fair, the box didn’t make any claims that it would be ‘like sleeping on a cloud’. But it didn’t have a huge warning sticker saying it was ‘like sleeping on a Whoopie cushion’, either. Where are the FDA regulations when you really need them, eh?

We’re hopeful that the odor will subside by the time we actually need to sleep on this thing. Putting sheets on it will help. Bathing it in Febreze is another option. As is sleeping with oversized binder clips on our noses. Mostly, I’m praying for rain and a cold air front, so we can stash this smelly thing in the basement and sleep on a box spring and mattress propped above the floor — the way that our lord and savior Joe Sealy-Posturpedic intended.

But I’m keeping the pump, and putting it in our own bed. Loud double-nozzled hot-air action in the bedroom is gold, Jerry! Gold!

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Sketch of a Woman, Take Two

I mentioned — and proved, frankly — in my last post that my ImprovBoston sketch class assignment to write a ‘strong woman character’ didn’t go exactly as planned.

So I took another shot at writing a sketch featuring a female character. This time, one without the Bubonic Plague, if at all possible.

I managed that. But I did put her in a trailer park. Susan B. Anthony will no doubt be pantsing me when I make it to hell.

Meanwhile, here’s the ‘other’ sketch. Also with a woman (though that wasn’t really the point any more; I know when I’m licked). And also featuring a parody of a television show that I am — or probably should be, at least — mortified that people now know I watch.

I’m not sure this qualifies as ‘suffering for my art’, exactly. But mostly because it’s probably not ‘art’. The ‘suffering’ is all too real. Happy weekend, kids.


ROADSHOW SURPRISE

[Open on wide shot of Etta and Dirk, sitting at opposite sides of a small table. On the table are a number of small figurines and a shiny cup.

A few yards behind the table is a line of people waiting to have items appraised. The murmur of the crowd is plainly audible. Among the people shown are: a woman with an inflatable beach ball, a man with a rolled-up carpet with shoes sticking out the top, a family wheeling a shopping cart containing a sleeping old man, a young woman with a car fender, and an old man in bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirt leaning on a crude wooden crucifix.

Close shot of the table, with the crowd noise fading to background. On the right is Dirk, in dapper attire and with an air of expertise. On the left is Etta, an older woman wearing a rumpled ugly ‘grandma’ sweater. Etta speaks with a faint Southern twang.]

DIRK: Please, tell us what brings you to the Roadshow today.

ETTA: Well, last Saturday I was trawlin’ at the flea market — that real nice one over at the Big Lots; you been to that one?

[Dirk purses his lips and shakes his head ‘no’, with obvious disdain. Etta takes no notice.]

ETTA: Anyhow, I know most of the fellas who set up shop over there. But last week, there was this new stall — over by the Goodwill dumpster — and it had some real nice trinkets and such. So I wanted to come see if I got a good deal on anything.

DIRK: Electrifying, yes. Can you tell us what exactly you bought that day?

ETTA: Well, sure, hon. First off, they had this whole collection here of the cutest little tuxedo teddy bear figurines.

[Close shot on the figurines, which are ‘grandma kitschy’ and otherwise as she describes.]

ETTA: Here’s one driving a car, and one in a daisy patch, and here’s one figure skating, and… ooh, my favorite, look — they’re all playing cards. See how the poker chips are all little honeycombs?

“Congratulations, Etta. We’ve just made the world a slightly better place.”

DIRK: Quite. Tell me, Etta, what did you pay for this collection of… what must be a dozen or more figures?

ETTA: Well, they sold me the whole set for a hundred and six dollars. I whittled ’em down from one-forty, too. Took some doing, too, I’ll tell you.

DIRK: I see. Well, what you have here are several examples of a series of figures known as ‘Bear Formalities’. Are you perhaps familiar with this particular set?

ETTA: Naw. I just thought they’d look real adorable on my doodad shelf.

[Closeup on Dirk as he speaks. An overlay appears for a few seconds at the bottom of the screen, reading:

DIRK VAN HALVERSON

SOTHEBY’S, NEW YORK

As he continues, the camera pans across the various figurines.]

DIRK: Naturally, yes. Well, I can tell you something of the history of these ‘Bear Formalities’ pieces. The company that produces them is called the Heavy Mining and Petroleum Processing Concern of Greater Shandong Province, in mainland China. These figures are formed from contaminated mining slag and crude oil byproduct, using enormous molding robots running around the clock. They spit out thousands of these abominations every week, which are then trucked to their figurine headquarters, where underaged orphan workers spend eighteen-hour days shackled to easels in their art studio sweatshops. The company routinely bribes local officials to look the other way on human rights violations, smuggling charges and the presence of dangerous carcinogens in these, as you say, ‘real adorable’ little bears. They’re ubiquitous, cheaply made, morally reprehensible, _extremely_ unattractive and quite possibly poisonous to touch. These figurines are, simply put, an affront to God himself.

ETTA: Well, gosh. I had no idea. But… what are they worth?

[Dirk holds a stylus near one figure, as though he’s about to point out some feature.]

DIRK: May I?

ETTA: Sure.

[Dirk reaches around the collection and with his arm swipes the figures off the table and into a trash can.]

DIRK: I’m afraid their maximum value lies at the bottom of a landfill. Congratulations, Etta. We’ve just made the world a slightly better place. Now let’s talk about your other piece here, the cup. How did you come by this, exactly?

ETTA: Well, it was at that very same flea market booth. I’ve been needin’ some new cups, and this one had a red sticker, which meant it was just a dollar. So I threw it in with the… uh, the reprehensible bears there.

DIRK: One dollar. I see. And this was meant for your ‘doodad shelf’ as well?

ETTA: Oh, no, it’s much too pretty for that. I like the way those baubles and such on the side sparkle in the sunlight, so I keep it on the windowsill in the kitchen.

DIRK: And have you had it appraised before? Any idea at all of its value?

ETTA: Well… old June in the next trailer over said she’d give me a carton of Camels for it. But I said ‘no sale’.

DIRK: No?

ETTA: Nah, I like the way it shines. And anyway, I only smoke Lucky Strikes.

DIRK: Of course. Well, Etta, it would seem that your choice of cigarette is a ‘lucky strike’, indeed, as this cup is actually quite an interesting find.

[Close shot of the cup as Dirk describes it and points out features.]

DIRK: For starters, this piece is very old. As you can see, it’s covered in 24 karat gold leaf, but this was added many years after production. If we turn it up to see the bottom, like so, we find the original fired earthen surface. Given the technique here, the material, and the style and shape of the piece, we can date this cup’s manufacture to somewhere around the first century AD, give or take a few decades.

ETTA: Oooh.

DIRK: Oooh, indeed. Furthermore, it turns out that these — ahem, ‘baubles and such’ that you mention are, in fact, hand-carved emeralds, rubies and high-clarity diamonds. You see them here around the lip, here on the handle, and here, at the base.

ETTA: That’s good, right?

DIRK: Oh, we’re just warming up, dear. If we look back at the base, here we see a small firer’s mark. The name of the artist is lost, unfortunately, but these initials here are in Aramaic, which places our cup’s origins firmly in the Middle East region. And if we look carefully inside the rim, here near the red discount sticker, we can faintly make out an inscription made by an early owner, nearly faded over time. That inscription, when translated, reads, “PLEASE RETURN IF FOUND: PROPERTY OF JOSEPH OF ARAMITHEA”.

ETTA: Oh. D’you think he wants it back?

DIRK: Well… uh, no. Joseph was a Biblical figure in whose tomb Jesus was said to be buried. Legend has it that Joseph collected blood from Jesus in a cup — or ‘grail’, very much like this one. That cup became one of history’s most sacred artifacts. Men have searched for it for hundreds upon hundreds of years. It formed the basis of much of Arthurian legend. Etta, I’ve conferred with my colleagues and we believe that this cup — your cup — may indeed be The. Holy. Grail.

ETTA: Whoa. That’s good, right?

DIRK: Some would say so, yes. I’m not sure how to properly convey this, but — look. This stain here in the bottom of the cup. This could be the _actual_ blood of Jesus himself.

ETTA: Nah. That’s Sanka.

DIRK: Excuse me?

ETTA: Well, I’ve taken to drinking my morning coffee out of this mug. And… you know, sometimes the dishes don’t get done right away.

DIRK: I see. Sanka?

ETTA: Well, I put it through the dishwasher. But that stain just will _not_ come out.

DIRK: [Momentarily stunned] Bu… All right, Etta — just one other thing. Traditional legend holds that the receiver of the Grail must first prove him- or herself with a test of worth and honor. Was any such test administered when you purchased the cup?

ETTA: Well… now that you say it, I *did* find it odd that he insisted to know if I was a Sam’s Club member.

DIRK: Sam’s Club?

ETTA: Yep, had to show him my card and everything. He told me to be real careful with the cup. And not to use it in the microwave.

DIRK: [Again stunned]

ETTA: Which I most certainly have *not*. So that’s good… right?

DIRK: [Recovering] Uh… sure. Yes. Don’t microwave the Grail. Okay. Well, Etta, it’s pretty clear that what you have here is indeed the Holy Grail of Biblical, popular and modern legend. It’s difficult, certainly, to estimate a dollar value for one of the most famous and priceless artifacts known to mankind. It’s not in what we’d call ‘mint’ condition, of course, and there’s been some restoration work done, which could affect the value. Maybe? We’ve sold several other goblets and chalices from this era, but nothing as elaborate or… um, sanctified as this. It’s a rough estimate at best, but I’d say at auction, this piece would probably… incite a holy war among nations and religious sects clamoring to possess it. You might serve humanity best, frankly, by changing your name, moving to a trailer far, far away, and continuing to enjoy your morning Sanka from it.

[Closeup of the Grail, with ‘treasure chest’ overlay underneath reading:

THE HOLY GRAIL:

$ INCITE A HOLY WAR

Wide shot of the table and people in line, paying little attention to Dirk and Etta. The usual crowd murmur is audible. Dirk scrutinizes the Grail while Etta digs in the trash can, recovering her figurines.]

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