Uncle Fun and Sparky Land

     Well, that’s one Christmas wish taken care of. As long as we’re on the subject (and we are, whether you knew it or not), I thought I’d share with you a conversation all of us had recently, while putting up decorations for our Christmas dinner-theatre pantomime and peep show at the Ashcan Club. (For those of you whose web browsers normally display the dazzling array of eye-pleasing fonts ordinarily used in this space, the transcription was done by Captain Literal—a.k.a. Mr. Cousins—so you’ll have to live with boring old university-grade Times New Roman. Think of it as your chance to see how the other half lives, Dickens-Christmas-Carol style.)

     Now that you’ve all channelled your inner Alastair Sim, we’ll begin…  

UNCLE FUN: Well—Sparky, Miss Moose, darling M’Dear…I assume you’re all hard at work on your Christmas wish lists.

SPARKY: [butting in] I wanna glyptodont.

MOOSE: A….what is it—a glyptodont…? Do I even want to know what that is?

 

UNCLE FUN: I believe it’s more properly called a “glyptodon” nowadays. It’s best described as a cross between an armadillo and a Hummer. He’s had his heart set on one ever since he saw it in a natural history museum we once frequented.

SPARKY: Ya mean, we used ta use it as a crash pad.

UNCLE FUN: Be that as it may, Sparky—every Christmas, you ask me to get you a glyptodon, and every Christmas I have to explain to you that they’ve been extinct for 10,000 years. Wishing for the next 10,000 Christmases, while hoping evolution comes full circle, is probably the only way you’re ever going to get one.

SPARKY: I was figgerin’ someone could DNA me up one outta fossily bits, like in Jurassic Park.

UNCLE FUN: Moving on…Miss Moose, your Christmas wishes, please?

MOOSE: Since I’m a girl, I guess I’m supposed to wish for peace on earth and all that claptrap.

M’DEAR: I don’t know about the “on earth” bit, but I’m one girl who’s always wishin’ for a piece.

 

M’DEAR: As you can see, I already got another one of my wishes—a new font for my speech balloons.

UNCLE FUN: Highly aesthetic. Anyway…back to something a little less in the “NC-17” category…your wish, Miss Moose, is…?

MOOSE: Well, what I really wish for is the chance to forget I’d ever seen the “Gangnam Style” dance…not to mention Sparky’s assorted versions of it.

UNCLE FUN: Yes, I’ve seen a few of them. They make the original look like it was choreographed by George Balanchine.

M’DEAR: Or choreographed at all.

SPARKY: Ever’one’s overflowin’ with terpsickorreyun expurteez alluva sudden.

M’DEAR: Honey, just because I’ll never be in Les Sylphides doesn’t mean I don’t know the difference between a grand jeté and a grand mal seizure.

SPARKY: No skin off my leotard…anyhoo, startin’ in th’ Noo Yeer, I’m bringin’ back a revivull’a my tribute ta Gene, Gene, the Dancing Machine.

MOOSE: Not by popular demand, I can assure you.

UNCLE FUN: Time to short-circuit this discussion before it leads to fisticuffs…or more dancing. As for myself, my needs are few.

MOOSE: Yes…what do you get for the man who has anything that isn’t nailed down, before you know it’s missing?

UNCLE FUN: I’ll thank you to be respectful of the hard work and practice that lie behind my acquired storehouse of skills.

MOOSE: And your acquired storehouse of other people’s property.

UNCLE FUN: All legally obtained...to the best of anyone’s knowledge, at any rate. It would be nice if it were also legal to put a tracking chip in a certain someone’s ear, the way you can with a dog or cat.

SPARKY: You referrin’ to any certain someone fer a p’tickular certainty there, Unc?

UNCLE FUN: [aside to the others] I’ve tried radio collars on Sparky, but he always finds a way to slip them.

MOOSE: Darn you all to heck and back again, Sparky—you said that was the latest style of choker from Paris you were giving me.

SPARKY: Honest mistake. What do I know ‘bout hot couture?

M’DEAR: I think an ankle bracelet is the fashion statement you want to go with—if experience with ex-boyfriends and court orders is anything to go by.

UNCLE FUN: Whatever the case, there has to be a better way of knowing where he is and what he’s up to…other than waiting for the inevitable crash, that is.

SPARKY: If that method’s good enuf fer eckonnamists, it otta be good enuf fer you.

UNCLE FUN: I can’t essentially argue with your assessment of that profession.

     From there on in, the chat devolved into an uncensored airing of opinions about the fiscal cliff, the Eurozone crisis, and the inappropriateness of a non-interventionist Friedmanite model of public debt management during the festive season. As Times New Roman sinks slowly in the west, perhaps we should leave the last word on Christmas wishes to Frank the Alligator, the Ashcan Club’s lovably (?) curmudgeonly tapster:  

 

     We can’t end on a sour note like that, so we’ll leave you instead with something resembling a Christmas gift. All of you who’ve been waiting for an update on the exploits of our old friend, the possibly authentic explorer Vasco da Gama…

 

     …will have to continue waiting. In the meantime, we bring you the Christmas episode of the radio comedy series Vasco da Gama, which in the best traditions of ambiguously-named comedy shows, has a bit—but not a lot—of Vasco in it. In the best traditions of holiday specials, it’s 20 years old, so most of the cultural references are out of date. The Christmas bonus there for you is that, for all you know, they may have once been topical and on the mark. The link below to find this stocking stuffer is in a seasonally jolly font if your browser reads it, and something boring if it doesn’t:

“Deep and Crisp and Vasco”

     Thanks to the larger virtual boxes for files now available on Box.com, we present it to you in its entirety, with no cuts to disrupt the intricate narrative flow that really ought to be present in something that takes a half an hour to listen to. Expect to hear more of these in the New Year, as proof that the world as we know it ended long before the latest Mayan calendar scare.

     And so, with best wishes of the season for one and all, and visions of sugar plums dancing in my head from when I misjudged a low-hanging beam while stringing boughs of holly over the bar, I remain your obedient servant,    

Uncle Fun