Wednesday, May 16, 2007

SCENE: Olive Garden

When the Minneapolis Star Tribune decided to move their best known columnist, James Lileks, to local beat reporting even the great Dave Barry, patron saint of humor columnists, chimed in with a WTF post. From that imbroglio Iowahawk has found parody gold a few times. His latest is a imagining of literary greats covering the local beat including Raymond Chandler
It was about two o’clock in the afternoon and I had just placed my size 11 EE brogues on my desk in the City Room. I uncorked a fifth of Old Crow I keep in the Steelcase’s third door left, hoping to cure a bad case of sobriety that had been nagging me since breakfast.

That’s when she walked in. Five feet two inches of trouble in sensible shoes with a master’s from Missouri J-School. Nancy Barnes, my editor.

“Got a light?” she purred, thumbing through her copy of Editor & Publisher.

“Sure, dollface,” I answered, handing her the hot end of my Lucky. “Your butt or mine?”

“Douse it, sleuth,” she sneered. “The Strib maintains a smoke-free environment. And call me ‘dollface’ again I’ll have the Harassment training boys downtown work you over.”
Hunter Thompson
We were on the 494 en route to Wayzata when my Samoan photographer handed me a plastic bag with the psilocybin. I gulped a mouthful of the acrid fungus and washed it down with chaser of Wild Turkey to take the bitter edge off. God knows we would need it. We were on a brutal odyssey into the maniacal heart of suburban pee wee baseball.
Sylvia Plath
There is a low pressure system
A grey wall, purple specked, black
In Canada skies descending, incandescent
Approaching, radiant, spasmodic
Doppler detected
and William (Bill) Shakespeare (wedding announcements):

Two Households, both alike in dignity
In Edina where we lay our scene,
At the Olive Garden where rehearsal supper wends
Over plates of Pasta Florentine.

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