007 REDUX: BOTH SHAKEN AND STIRRED

So here we are, a couple of weeks into 2008. A Presidential Campaign is blazing like none we've seen in 40 years, maybe longer. Some star baseball players are accused of using more juice than Southern California Edison. And I'm still finding little nuggets from the past to share with you in the blogosphere.

Sometime in the spring of 1990, I was home with the flu. As I recovered, and out of sheer boredom, I pulled a dog-eared, paperback copy of Live and Let Die off my bookshelf and immersed myself in the world of James Bond. The book had belonged to my brother Reg when he was a teen, and I'd sort of inherited it. That novel, and Dr. No sat on the shelf untouched for years and years. By the time I was well, I'd read both and just had to have the whole Bond series. I found them all, except You Only Live Twice, which, for some reason, was out of print in 1990.

I thoroughly enjoyed Ian Fleming's fiction, inhabited by a more human Bond than the increasingly cartoonish movies. I went as far as to buy John Gardiner's new 007 adventures, written in the 80's and early 90's. So you might say I went through a Bond phase when I was 31 years old.

The Bond series was very fresh in my mind by 1992 when I took Margie (my girl friend at the time) to Chavez Ravine for an exhibition game between my Dodgers and her ridiculous Angels. What we saw that night inspired this short story, recently rediscovered in a desk drawer. As far as I know, Margie and I were the only ones to read it. Now a married mother of two boys, I doubt she still has a copy, so I feel free to share with the world my take...on 007.

IAN FLEMING'S JAMES BOND in FURBUTT

The legendary agent 007 has bested many and adversary: Mr. Big, Doctor No, Goldfinger, Blofeld, The Man With The Golden Gun, et al. Now, Bond faces his most disgusting enemy ever....the hideous Furbutt!

James Bond rarely visited Los Angeles. his favorite California city, in fact his favorite place in all the United States, was San Francisco. Something about the fog reminded him of the British Isles. But Los Angeles was where his assignment was, so Los Angeles would have to do.

The daughter of a prominent politician had been secretly spirited away from a hockey game by not just a man, "a curiosity," Bond's dossier on the case had said. Bond's experience with curiosities outweighed his knowledge of hockey. The game itself was a curiosity to him. He read more from the dossier:

"Witnesses claim the girl was last seen being grasped in the arms of a fat man, following a goal. The man, from behind, looked as if a large black poodle were stuffed into the rear of his trousers."

Bond paused there, his left eyebrow raised.

"Strange," he muttered to himself. The dossier went on to read that the same fan had been seen frequently at baseball games. One witness described the fan as "...a tub of shit who, from a rear view, looked like he was smuggling a mink stole under his shirt. "

"A curiosity indeed, " thought Bond.

The first place to look for this odd fan was at Dodger Stadium. Bond drove into Chavez Ravine on a smoggy Saturday night to attend an exhibition game. The skyscrapers of Los Angeles pierced through the dirt in the air and formed a backdrop to the magnificent stadium. As he entered the ball park at the field level, Bond thought he still liked San Francisco better. And God knows, he knew less about baseball than he did about hockey. But his mind kept going back to the descriptions of the fan:

"I assumed it was someone with an old raccoon coat tied around his waist," read one. Bond pursed his lips and found his seat, his eyes taking in as many fans as possible.

007 kept his vigil throughout the game, scarcely paying attention to the activities on the field. He did, however, have a Dodger Dog and a beer. He would have preferred a plate of lightly scrambled eggs and a bottle of Tattinger's, his favorite wine, but that surely would have made him more than conspicuous. He was chuckling at the thought during the seventh inning stretch when he spied what he thought were two mop-topped children standing behind a fat man. As the crowd sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Bond tried to get a better look, but his view was blocked. When everyone settled back into their seats, he was startled to see that it was not the unruly locks of two kids he was staring at, but the hairiest backside he had ever seen. The man's jeans were half-way down his buttocks, exposing an ass that, Bond thought, could have been the top of a massive head with its hair parted down the middle. Bond first laughed, then felt his Dodger Dog rise in his throat as the fat man began digging around in his mane. At once, Bond wanted to throw up or reach over and hike-up the man's pants.

Bond's eyes were riveted and revolted by the butt until the game ended. 007 carefully followed the fat man out of the park and was within 10 feet of him when he felt a sharp pain, then blacked out.

II

James Bond awoke to find himself tied to a chair. his head throbbed, but he mentally fought to clear his mind and assess the situation. the room was dimly lit, but he could make out a table with what appeared to be two, old fashioned, up-right, salon-styled hair dryers poised over it. As Bond pondered their purpose, the door flew open. Two women dressed in white preceded the fat man Bond had seen at the game. He wore only an athletic supporter. The two women walked behind the table and waited as the fat man waddled over and stretched across it, face down. Bond winced as he eyed the man's behind. It were as if plumes of hair were cascading from it, dangling from the side of the table. In his mind's eye, Bond thought an orangutan could be dyed black, balled up, and pass for this incredible ass. He couldn't catch himself. "My God," he breathed.

"You're laughing!" shouted the fat man from his prone position. "Everybody laughs Mr. Bond. No one, however, laughs twice...at Furbutt!"

"Is that why you grabbed the girl?' Bond asked

"Yes. And She, like these others, will not laugh twice. You see, Mr. Bond, you may laugh once and serve. Laugh twice...and die."

"Serve?" Bond quizzed.

The fat man chuckled. "Observe."

The two women poured gobs of shampoo on his behind and began to wash the massive pelt, then set it in curlers. After the fur on his butt was set, one of the women put a pillow just beneath his stomach. The fat man then hefted each hairy buttock until he had lodged them separately into their own hair dryer.

Bond wanted to burst out laughing but refrained. He simply said, "My government will pay handsomely for the girl's safe return."

"Ha! Ha! You can expect the girl to die!!" shouted the fat man, whose chuckle was suddenly strangled in his throat. He was starting to scream and was trying desperately to free his butt-cheeks from the dryers.

"Turn them off!! Turn them off! I'm being FRIED!! AHHHHHH" He yelled. The two women frantically snatched the plugs of each dryer out of the electric outlets. The fat man then hastily freed himself from the appliances and danced about the room in pain, each of his hands burrowing through the mounds of hair to grasp the burned areas. It was more than Bond could take, and he laughed until he cried.

"Laugh once and serve," said the fat man, suddenly still. "Laugh twice and DIE!" His fat leg swung from beneath his ample belly and kicked over the chair Bond was tied to. 007 was on his side, his profile to the ground. The fat man squatted over him and nestled the agent's face into the now singed ass-hair!

"I don't expect you to laugh now, Mr. Bond. I expect you to DIE!!"

Bond held his breath and managed to free his left hand. He reached into his pocket and brought forth an electric razor with sixty sharply pointed rotary blades. When Bond flicked the switch, the razor tore through enough curler-coiled fur to cause the fat man to spring up in anguish, then fall on Bond, crushing the chair and loosening the rope. Freed, Bond subdued the wailing fat man with a kick to his supporter-covered groin.

Doubled over in agony, the fat man's butt was sticking up like the head of a woolly mammoth. Bond, not laughing now at all, began ripping out tufts of the fur with his bare hands until there was nothing but raw flesh, dotted with red spots of blood.

By the time Bond was through, the two women attendants had fled, the fat man was passed out from the excruciating pain, and the floor looked like that found in a barber shop. Bond then bolted out the door and down the hall. There, in a vestibule, her hands and feet bound, was the girl.

"My name is Bond. James Bond. You certainly don't look any worse for the wear," he said with a smile.

"NOT!" she snapped. "Why didn't you tell me my hair was a mess??"

END

Okay. The ending was an inside joke, but it was between Margie and I. She always asked me why I hadn't told her her hair was a mess (and it never was). The story was based on the vile, hairy haunches of a porker with a felonious case of Plumber's crack, seated ahead of us at the Dodger-Angel game. Anybody who saw him would have been, like Bond's favorite drink, shaken, but also stirred, and in search of a lawn mower, pronto!

I haven't decided upon my next topic, but I have a title I like:

Paula Abdul is BATSHIT Crazy!