Sparky has been located, but he is not among us. More on that in the next posting. For now, here’s the rest of the story of our travels with the legendary explorer and card-carrying anachronism Vasco da Gama. We pick up where we left off, with Sparky, Vasco and I meandering around the outskirts of Detroit, trying to retrace our steps out of a dead end we blundered into in the River Rouge industrial park. According to Vasco’s journals, this is what transpired:
Today, The Year of Our Lord This Year,
The Uncle of Fun, El Sparky and me myself, the great Vasco da Gama, we are for to having-it to have explorationèd the legendary River of the Rouge, in which it is that the sumptuous mother-loading of the priceless foundation makeup it has once to being there. We are not for the having to the finding of it any of the rouge in the river, which El Sparky he is saying-it that it is for to on account of the having of it been all strip-minèd out by the conquistador Max Factor.
-In case you’re wondering, Sparky was kidding. In case you’re also wondering, it doesn’t pay to kid Vasco.
Because we are finding none of it the fabulous treasure in the Detroit Rock City, deciding therefore is it to that I, the Great Vasco da Gama, he shall for to be instead the hunting for the trophy. Asking is it then am I to him, The Uncle of Fun, where is it the best place in the Detroit Rock City to be finding we will of it the big game. Before it is The Uncle of Fun, he is getting to it the word in with the edgewise, El Sparky, he is saying that the most closest place to where we are for the having of it the big game, it is the home of the liones, at The Dome of the Silver Potted Yaks.
-By ‘Dome of the Silver Potted Yaks’, he means the Pontiac Silverdome, the former home of the NFL’s Detroit Lions.
The potted yaks, they are the for-to having been-it hunted to the extinctioning of them—
-This piece of information comes from either Vasco or Sparky, or both of them, confusing Pontiac, Michigan, which is still very much around, with the Pontiac division of General Motors, which is well and truly defunct.
—so now the liones, they are for to having been-it moving to the Field of the Ford.
-That’s ‘Ford Field’, football fans. (By the way, if you’re ever looking for some low-cost entertainment on a dull afternoon when you have nothing better to do, try saying ‘Ford Field’ over and over again as many times as you can, as fast as you can.)
When we are the having been of it arrivèd at the Field of the Ford, we are for the finding of it that it is not yet the regular season for the liones, so suggesting-it is he, El Sparky, that we are going to instead for the hunting of the el tigres at the near-it-by The Park of Calamari Erica.
(Alas for sailors, Calamari Erica is just a myth.)
-Um…that would be ‘Comerica Park’, where we went to see, and not hunt—I repeat, NOT hunt—the Detroit Tigers.
While Sparky and I were helping local law enforcement officials maintain order by removing untoward evidence of recent illegal activity from the pockets of ticket scalpers, we ran into an old acquaintance—Count Boguslav Boguslavsky, a Siberian émigré whose claim to fame is an unverifiable claim to being the last surviving descendant of a family pet of a minor member of the House of Romanov.
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‘Bogey’, as he insists we call him, was on a goodwill tour of the Midwestern States, visiting local zoos to inquire whether they might, for a small consideration, consent to making a prize addition to their collection of Big Cats. (The consideration was that they’d have to feed and house him for life. He mentioned something about refugee status and extradition treaties, but I was too busy searching the concession stands for the grain of salt to take his story with to get all the details.)
Having heard from the people at the Detroit Zoo of the existence of a local professional sports franchise named after his own species, Bogey had taken it upon himself to acquaint them with the advantages of having the genuine article as the Tigers’ full-time, fully-paid mascot, rather than, as he put it, “some punk kid in a fuzzy costume”.
(This is family-friendly…)
(…this would liven things up during those dull pitching changes and the seventh-inning stretch.)
I suggested to Bogey that a more congenial solution to his current room-and-board dilemma would be for him to accept a position as manager-in-residence and compere of the Ash Can Club, the white elephant with an albatross around its neck masquerading as a watering hole that I have the dubious fortune to own (click here for details of how that came about...and never mind the obvious discrepancy in timelines it implies--things just work that way in business sometimes). Bogey’s experience in dealing with a variety of information-gathering organizations which trace their spiritual lineage from either J. Edgar Hoover or Felix Dzerzhinsky will put all of us in a better strategic position vis-à-vis the Animal Alley borough of Funsville’s civic authorities…not to mention its euphemistically-titled Legitimate Business Community, one of whose euphemistically legitimate activities is the funding and support of certain of the aforementioned civic authorities. Besides, as a representative example of Planet Earth’s largest wholly land-based carnivores, he’ll command a little respect from the riff-raff that clutters up the neighbourhood.
Bogey and I were just about to seal our verbal agreement with a gentlemanly handshake when the sounds of a commotion arose from just out of view. A crowd of policemen, fans of the Great American Pastime, fans of the Detroit Tigers, fans of public monuments, and fans of the general idea of keeping large numbers of policemen in clear view in the event that flight was suddenly in order, had gathered around the statue of Hank Greenberg, which Vasco was trying to topple, using his sword as a crowbar. I later found out that this had more than a little to do with Sparky giving Vasco an estimate of the statue’s metallurgical composition which was rather over-generous in its percentage content of gold. The last thing we overheard, as we discreetly stole away, was a loud and solemn pledge from Vasco to bring the full might of the Portuguese military-industrial complex, circa 1502, to bear upon the unsuspecting citizens of Detroit, the state of Michigan (Lower Peninsula first, then Upper), the entire Great Lakes region, and any lands he couldn’t think of at the moment which lay between there and the Indian subcontinent.
As a way of bringing closure to this entire unfortunate chapter of our exploits, and making a transition to another unfortunate chapter, you can listen to an episode of “Uncle Fun and Sparky’s Radio Colouring Book” in which Vasco features, if not altogether as prominently as he might like. We’ll tell you soon about what Sparky’s up to and why he hasn’t been chiming in every few seconds with comments from the cheap seats. Do try not to spend too many sleepless nights in anticipation between now and then.
Uncle Fun
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