Wing Chun: Hello?

Sarah: Helllloooooo!

Wing Chun: Hee. It’s about time.

Sarah: Can you believe that?

Wing Chun: Well. It’s not like he was known for his clean living.

Sarah: But…wait, who are we talking about?

Wing Chun: Rick…James? Aren’t we?

Sarah: Er…I was talking about Macaulay Culkin.

Wing Chun: Oh. Well, you can see how I’d get them confused.

Sarah: Hey, who hasn’t.

Wing Chun: Hee. So what did he do?

Sarah: Culkin? The usual. Possession.

Wing Chun: Oh, come on.

Sarah: I know, right?

Wing Chun: You know, it’s amazing how these people just will not learn.

Sarah: That’s what I was thinking too. I mean, if you’re Macaulay Culkin —

Wing Chun: — I have really really unnaturally red lips.

Sarah: Yeah, what is up with that?

Wing Chun: It’s creepy, how red they are.

Sarah: And shiny! Every single photo of him, it’s like he just licked them.

Wing Chun: And his mouth is too small for his face anyway.

Sarah: It is, kind of.

Wing Chun: “Kind of,” nothing. It’s way too small.

Sarah: …

Wing Chun: Hello?

Sarah: …

Wing Chun: What?

Sarah: Nothing. Just…I was going to say something disgusting, but then I thought better of it.

Wing Chun: What, about his mouth?

Sarah: Um. Sort of.

Wing Chun: Oh, just say it.

Sarah: It’s…not a good idea.

Wing Chun: Just say it.

Sarah: Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Ready?

Wing Chun: Saaaaay iiiiit.

Sarah: “It wasn’t too small for Michael Jacks–”

Wing Chun: OH NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

Sarah: Yeah…thus the thinking better of it.

Wing Chun: Why do we always go there? Why? Why don’t we say to ourselves, “Selves, don’t touch the Michael Jackson joke, it’s not worth it”?

Sarah: Let’s just change the subject.

Wing Chun: It’s too late. The barf is already in my throat.

Sarah: Let’s change it anyway.

Wing Chun: Okay.

Sarah: To Emmanuel Lewis.

Wing Chun: I…hate you.

Sarah: I’m so sorry. I really couldn’t resist.

Wing Chun: Haaaaaaaate.

Sarah: If I’d set you up, you’d have taken the same shot.

Wing Chun: Yeah, probably. Still. The barf, she is rising.

Sarah: Okay, let’s move on. So, if you’re Macaulay Culkin —

Wing Chun: Wait, so we’re not changing the subject? Because — just please tell me we’re changing the subject.

Sarah: We are, we’re just backtracking to the original subject, namely that if you’re Macaulay Culkin —

Wing Chun: Riiiising barf!

Sarah: Okay, okay! So! Don’t you look at the former child stars already riddling the GBC and think to yourself, like, before you load your bale o’ reefer into the car, hmm, maybe the smart money smokes pot at home tonight?

Wing Chun: That’s what I was going to say before — if you’re stopped at a light, and the GBC is parading past your SUV in the crosswalk, don’t you look out the window and think, “Jesus, look at Bonaduce — that’ll never be me”?

Sarah: Exactly! It’s so easy to avoid, and yet, none of them do.

Wing Chun: And so many motivations to avoid it, too. It’s not just dangerous and illegal, it’s a cliché as well.

Sarah: Well, really. Although that would make a hilarious series of t-shirts. “Free Bonsall!”

Wing Chun: Better yet — “Free Brown!”

Sarah: Bobby Brown or James Brown?

Wing Chun: That’s why it’s a great shirt — it could be either. Or both.

Sarah: Or Leroy.

Wing Chun: Or Encyclopedia.

Sarah: Heh. Although that’s a little depressing, actually.

Wing Chun: What, if Encyclopedia Brown Oxycontined his car into a tree?

Sarah: Yeah. Don’t you think? I mean, some of them, it’s obviously destiny.

Wing Chun: Like Bonaduce.

Sarah: Like Bonadu– oh my God. Did you know he did a voice in the movie version of Charlotte’s Web?

Wing Chun: Whoa, speaking of depressing. Which character?

Sarah: Avery.

Wing Chun: At least that’s a fairly minor chara– oh, Jesus. Charles Nelson Reilly was in it too?

Sarah: I can never watch that again, I don’t think.

Wing Chun: It’s like this nightmare voice-over hybrid of Match Game and Green Acres or something.

Sarah: Oh, gross, Gene Rayburn on a girls’ bike.

Wing Chun: I choose to believe that his microphone cord would get tangled up in the gears, leading to his swift demise.

Sarah: I like the sound of that, and choose to believe it also.

Wing Chun: I furthermore choose to believe that Richard Dawson rides his girls’ bike in a three-piece suit.

Sarah: Oh, of course he does. But here’s the question: which Richard Dawson is in the GBC?

Wing Chun: I don’t understand.

Sarah: Is it the slim, bitchy Richard Dawson from Match Game?

Wing Chun: Oh, I see. Or the fat, slobbery Richard Dawson from Family Feud?

Sarah: I’m voting Fat Dick D.

Wing Chun: You have to. You can smell the bourbon through the TV.

Sarah: Yep. And I bet he wrecks his bike, like, immediately because he won’t take that stupid lollipop tree out of the basket and it’s blocking his view.

Wing Chun: Or he’s trying to uncap a flask while riding on gravel.

Sarah: Or Bert Convy rammed him with his girls’ bike.

Wing Chun: You think Convy’s in the GBC?

Sarah: I think Convy drinks rosé. Pink wine, pink bike…

Wing Chun: I think Convy’s dead, actually.

Sarah: Ohhhh yeah, I forgot about that. Didn’t he have a brain tumor?

Wing Chun: Yeah.

Sarah: Well, that would explain the outsized fun he was having on the set of Win, Lose or Draw.

Wing Chun: It was not, I think it’s safe to say, the comedy stylings of one Vicki Lawrence.

Sarah: No. Man, the GBC would be full of game-show hosts, wouldn’t it?

Wing Chun: Family Feud alone could provide a whole regiment.

Sarah: Yeah, Louie Anderson…had some problems.

Wing Chun: Not as big as Ray Combs’s problems.

Sarah: Louie’s main problem was…Louie. That’s…a fairly big problem if you’re measuring in pounds.

Wing Chun: Louie didn’t convert to Mormonism and then hang himself in a closet.

Sarah: …yet.

Wing Chun: Heh. Man. Poor Ray.

Sarah: I know.

Wing Chun: I can’t even watch the reruns with him as the host.

Sarah: I can’t either. “Out of a hundred people surveyed, how many CAN SENSE MY DEEP DESPAIR?” It’s awful.

Wing Chun: And then to be replaced by Louie, what an insult.

Sarah: I think they actually replaced him with Dawson first.

Wing Chun: No, no, the guy was fat.

Sarah: That was Dawson.

Wing Chun: No, I mean really fat. Spherically fat.

Sarah: I know what you mean, and I’m telling you: Dawson.

Wing Chun: No. Really?

Sarah: I haven’t watched the E!THS on Feud in a while, but I’m almost positive that the orb of which you speak was Dawson.

Wing Chun: God. What happened?

Sarah: Not the salad, apparently.

Wing Chun: Man. Wait, no, you’re totally right, because they brought back Dawson all, “The host everyone remembers so fondly will save the show!” And then he didn’t and they cancelled it.

Sarah: Yep. I think the network took one look at the craft services bill and was like, “Yeah, that’ll do.”

Wing Chun: Seriously. Rod Roddy’s glaring into the set fridge all, “I could swear I put my lunch on the top she– DAWSON!”

Sarah: “Was it in a brown bag?” “Yes!” “Uh…haven’t seen it. [beeeellllch]”

Wing Chun: Rod has to go up on the roof to eat a yogurt.

Sarah: In disguise.

Wing Chun: PAs keep disappearing.

Sarah: Hee. “Mmm, mutton.” “THAT IS THE INTERN, DAWSON!”

Wing Chun: “Mmm, intern.”

Sarah: Man. If there’s only one fridge in the GBC hideout, we could have a problem.

Wing Chun: Dude. Richard Dawson…

Sarah: Elvis…

Wing Chun: Brando…

Sarah: The senator from Massachusetts…

Wing Chun and Sarah: And only one jar of Jif.

Sarah: That’s going to be a brawl, right there.

Wing Chun: Sumo-style.

Sarah: And the rest of them come back and the hideout is just totally tornado-flattened.

Wing Chun: And Richard Dawson is standing off to the side snacking on a tire. “…What?”

Sarah: “That does it, I’m telling!” “Cram it, Martindale!”

Wing Chun: Oh God, Wink Martindale. See, I’m picturing him up a nearby tree, quaking with fear.

Sarah: No. Wink is the tattler. “I borrowed that hotplate from my mom! She’s gonna KILL me!”

Wing Chun: But the real question is…what is Bob Eubanks’s role in all of this?

Sarah: I think he’s too busy trying to stuff those giant playing cards from Card Sharks into his spokes to play a role.

Wing Chun: Oh, that’s sad. “Banksie, I don’t think they’re going to fit.”

Sarah: “CRAM IT, MARTINDALE!”

Wing Chun: Wink Martindale is the Toby from Romy and Michele’s of the Girls’ Bike Club.

Sarah: …Whoa.

Wing Chun: You know, the girl —

Sarah: No, I know exactly who you mean. My “whoa” was in response to the awesomeness of that comparison.

Wing Chun: Thanks!

Sarah: But he can’t be the Toby and be the tattler, I don’t think.

Wing Chun: So who’s the tattler?

Sarah: Feldman.

Wing Chun: No, I mean, of the game-show hosts.

Sarah: …Trebek.

Wing Chun: Oh, of course it is.

Sarah: And he’ll tattle on them for incorrect pronunciation of French words.

Wing Chun: And for calling Wink Martindale “Wank Fartindale” and making him cry.

Sarah: Hee hee hee hee, “Wank Fartindale.”

Wing Chun: Not that I myself have ever called him that, of course.

Sarah: Of course not.

Wing Chun: Cram it, Trebek.

Sarah: But he’d be like Cassandra; nobody would listen to him.

Wing Chun: Heh. “Mrs. Sajak, I thought you might want to know that Pat is putting lawn clippings into baggies and pretending it’s pot and selling it.” “Cram it, Trebek.”

Sarah: Pat Sajak isn’t that cool.

Wing Chun: But doing that isn’t cool anyway.

Sarah: And here we are at my point.

Wing Chun: Although I wonder if Pat Sajak isn’t secretly, like, extra cool.

Sarah: He isn’t.

Wing Chun: You don’t think? Like that maybe he goes onstage incognito at a jazz club and plays the trumpet and —

Sarah: He doesn’t do that.

Wing Chun: He might.

Sarah: He doesn’t. Richard Dawson ate his trumpet.

Wing Chun: Heh. I like Richard Dawson, but I like the idea of him rampaging around eating everything in sight even more.

Sarah: Accompanied by the musical interlude from Ms. Pac-Man.

Wing Chun: And the screaming extras from Godzilla.

Sarah: And the Foley sound effect from the Pink Panther cartoon where that termite eats his entire house.

Wing Chun: And Hannibal Lecter is all bitter. “I could swear I had a head in the freezer door…DAWSON!”

Sarah: “And a front porch…DAWSON!”

Wing Chun: “Weapons inspectors failed to find any WMDs in Iraq…DAWSON!”

Sarah: “NASA is no longer picking up a signal from the Mars rover…DAWSON!”

Wing Chun: Meanwhile, on the shores of a lake in Scotland laaaaate late at night…

Sarah: Oh, no.

Wing Chun: “Heeeeere Nessie Nessie Nessie!”

Sarah: “That’s the biggest jar of tartar sauce I’ve ever se– ach, DAWSON!”

Wing Chun: Hee.

Sarah: But then, from his perch high atop an oak tree, Wink Martindale fells the hungry beast with a blow dart.

Wing Chun: He…he does?

Sarah: Well, why not? Richard Dawson just ate a weapons cache, for God’s sake. Won’t someone think of the children?

Wing Chun: But — he’s the tattler.

Sarah: No, Trebek’s the tattler, remember? Martindale’s the whiner. Who, it is rumored, wears Pull-Ups.

Wing Chun: So this is his chance at redemption, is what you’re saying.

Sarah: Yes.

Wing Chun: Poor Martindale. I loved Tic Tac Dough.

Sarah: Oh, me too. But someone’s got to be the bed-wetter and I don’t think it’s Probst.

Wing Chun: No, Probst is the one who hits on your sister.

Sarah: No, Probst is the one your sister has a crush on, but he’s totally oblivious, and whenever Probst comes over to ride bikes, she’s like, “Jeff, Jeff, wanna see me do a cartwheel?”

Wing Chun: Aw. I remember being like that.

Sarah: Me too.

Wing Chun: And I am cringing.

Sarah: Oh, me too.

Wing Chun: Do you think Probst uses a giant conch shell as a helmet?

Sarah: Heh. Probably.

Wing Chun: Man. How did we get onto Probst? What happened to Culkin?

Sarah: “…DAWSON!”

Wing Chun: Ha! No doubt.

Sarah: Never again will I wonder what happened to my keys.

Wing Chun: Or the last cookie.

Sarah: Or Amelia Earhart.

September 21, 2004

Tags:   GBC