Way back when I was just a little bitty boy living in a box under the
stairs in the corner of the basement of the house half a block down the
street from Jerry's Bait Shop... You know the place... Well anyway,
back then life was going swell and everything was juuuuust peachy...
except of course for the undeniable fact that every single morning my
mother would make me a big ol' bowl of sauerkraut for breakfast.
Dawww!! Big bowl of sauerkraut!
Every single mornin'! It was driving me crazy.
I said to my mom, I said, 'Hey, mom, what's up with all the sauerkraut?'
And my dear, sweet mother, she just looked at me like a cow looks at an
oncoming train. And she leaned right down next to me, and she said, 'IT'S
GOOD FOR YOU!' And then she tied me to the wall and stuck a funnel in my
mouth and force fed me nothing but sauerkraut until I was 26 and a half
years old.
That's when I swore that someday, someday I would get outta that
basement and travel to a magical, far away place, where the sun is
always shining and the air smells like warm root beer, and the towels
are oh so fluffy! Where the shriners and the lepers play their ukuleles
all day long, and anyone on the street will gladly shave your back for
a nickel!
Well, let me tell you, people, it wasn't long at all before my dream
came true. Because the very next day, a local radio station had this
contest to see who could correctly guess the number of molecules in
Leonard Nimoy's butt. I was off by three, but I still won the grand
prize. That's right, a first class, one-way ticket...
to Albuquerque!
Oh yeah. You know, I'd never been on a real airplane before, and I gotta
tell ya, it was really great... except that I had to sit between two large
Albanian women with excruciatingly severe body odor. And the little kid in
back of me kept throwin' up the whole time. The flight attendants ran out of
Dr. Pepper and salted peanuts, and the in-flight movie was Bio-Dome with
Pauly Shore...and, oh yeah, three of the airplane engines burned out, and we
went into a tailspin and crashed into a hillside and the plane exploded in a
giant fireball and everybody died. Except for me. You know why?
'Cause I had my tray table up
And my seat back in the full upright position
So I crawled from the twisted, burnin'
wreckage, I crawled on my hands and knees for three full days, draggin'
along my big leather suitcase and my garment bag and my tenor saxophone
and my 12-pound bowlin' ball and my lucky, lucky autographed
glow-in-the-dark snorkel. But finally I arrived at the world famous
Albuquerque Holiday Inn where the towels are oh so fluffy! And you can
eat your soup right out of the ashtrays if you wanna. It's OK, they're
clean.
Well, I checked into my room, and I turned down the A/C, and I turned
on the SpectraVision, and I'm just about to eat that little chocolate
mint on my pillow that I love so very, very much, when suddenly there's
a knock on the door. Well, now, who could that be?
I say, 'Who is it?' No answer.
'Who is it?' There's no answer.
'WHO IS IT!?' They're not sayin' anything.
So finally, I go over and I open the door, and just as I suspected,
it's some big, fat hermaphrodite with a flock of seagulls, haircut, and
only one nostril. Oh, man, I hate it when I'm right.
So, anyway, he bursts into my room, and he grabs my lucky snorkel, and
I'm like, 'Hey, you can't have that! That snorkel's been just like a
snorkel to me.'
And he's like, 'Tough!'
And I'm like, 'Give it!'
And he's like, 'Make me!'
And I'm like, ''kay!'
So I grabbed his leg and he grabbed my esophagus, and I bit off his ear
and he chewed off my eyebrows, and I took out his appendix and he gave
a colonic irrigation, yes indeed, you better believe it. And somehow in
the middle of it all, the phone got knocked off the hook. And twenty
seconds later, I heard a familiar voice. And you know what it said?
I'll tell ya what it said!
It said, 'If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again.
If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator.
Well, to cut a long story short, he got away with my snorkel. But I
made a solemn vow right then and there that I would not rest, I would
not sleep for an instant, until the one-nostrilled man was brought to
justice.
But first, I decided to buy some donuts. So I got in my car, and I
drove over to the donut shop, and I walked on up to the guy behind the
counter and he says, 'Yeah, whaddaya want??'
I said, 'You got any glazed donuts?'
He said, 'Nah, we're outta glazed donuts.'
I say, 'Well, you got any jelly donuts?'He said, 'No, we're outta jelly donuts.'
I said, 'You got any Bavarian cream-filled donuts?'
He said, 'No, we're outta Bavarian cream-filled donuts.'
I said, 'You got any cinnamon rolls?'
He said, 'No, we're outta cinnamon rolls!'
I said, 'You got any apple fritters?'
He said, 'No, we're outta apple fritters!'
I said, 'You got any bear claws?'
He said, 'Wait a minute, I'll go check.'
'No, we're outta bear claws!'
I said, 'Well, in that case... in that case, what do you have?'
He says, 'All I got right now is this box of one dozen starving crazed weasels.'
I said, 'OK, I'll take that.'
So he hands me the box, and I open up the lid, and the weasels jump out
and they immediately latch onto my face and start bitin' me all over.
Oh, man, they were just goin' nuts! They were tearin' me apart! You
know, I think it was just about that time that a little ditty started
goin' through my head. I believe it went a little somethin' like this:
DOH! Get 'em off me! Get 'em off me! Ohhh! No, get 'em off, get 'em
off! Oh, oh God, oh God! Oh, get 'em off me! Oh, oh God! Ah,
AaaaaaahhhhhhhhhOhhhhhhhhhh!
I ran out into the street with these flesh-eating weasels all over my
face, wavin' my arms all around and just runnin', runnin', runnin' like
a constipated wiener dog. And as luck would have it, that's exactly
when I ran into the girl of my dreams. Her name was Zelda. She was a
caligraphy enthusiast, with a slight overbite, and hair the color of
strained peaches. I'll never forget the very first thing she said to
me. She said, 'Hey, you've got weasels on your face.'
That's when I knew it was true love. We were inseparable after that.
Aw, we ate together, we bathed together, we even shared the same piece
of mint-flavored dental floss. The world was our burrito. So we got
married, and we bought us a house and had two beautiful children,
Nathaniel and Superfly. Oh we were so very, very, very happy, oh yeah.
But then, one fateful night, Zelda said to me, she said, 'Sweetie
pumpkin? Do you wanna join the Columbia Record Club?' I said, 'Woah!
Hold on now, baby! I'm just not ready for that kind of a commitment!'
So we broke up, and I never saw her again
but that's just the way things go
In Albuquerque!
Anyway, things really started lookin' up for me, because about a week
later, I finally achieved my lifelong dream. That's right, I got me a
part-time job at the Sizzler! I even made employee of the month after I
put out that grease fire with my face. Aw yeah, everybody was pretty
jealous of me after that. I was gettin' a lot of attitude.
OK, like one time, I was out in the parkin' lot, tryin' to remove my excess
earwax with a golf pencil, when I see this guy Marty
tryin' to carry a big ol' sofa up the stairs all by himself. So I-I say to
him, I say, 'Hey, you want me to help you with that?' And
Marty, he just rolls his eyes and goes, 'No, I want you
to cut off my arms and legs with a chainsaw!' So I did.
And then he gets all indignant on me. He's like, 'Hey, man, I was just
being sarcastic!' Well, that's just great. How was I supposed to know
that? I'm not a mind reader, for cryin' out loud. Besides, now he's got
a really cute nickname - Torso-Boy! So what's he complaining about?
Say, that reminds me of another amusing anecdote. This guy comes up to
me on the street and he tells me he hasn't had a bite in three days.
Well, I knew what he meant, but just to be funny, I took a big bite out
of his jugular vein. And he's yelling and screaming and bleeding all
over, and I'm like, 'Hey, come on, don'tcha get it?' But he just keeps
rolling around on the sidewalk, bleeding and screaming, 'Aaaahhhh!
AaaaahhhhOhhhhh! Aaaaahhhh!' You know, completely missing the irony of
the whole situation. Man, some people just can't take a joke, you know?
Anyway, um...um...where was I? Kinda lost my train of thought.
Uh, well, uh, OK, anyway, I-I know it's kind of a roundabout way of
saying it, but, I guess the whole point I'm tryin' to make here is...
I HATE SAUERKRAUT!
That's all I'm really tryin' to say. And, by the way,
if one day you happen to wake up and find yourself in an existential
quandry, full of loathing and self-doubt and wracked with the pain and
isolation of your pitiful meaningless existence, at least you can take
a small bit of comfort in knowing that somewhere out there in this
crazy ol' mixed-up universe of ours, there's still a little place
called Albuquerque!
Oompa
