THE SANITY CLAUSE

SPARKY: Birdy, are you there?

BIRD: Right here, Sparkers! Got the day off for good behaviour again?

SPARKY: Yeah. (sighs) I have to appear at the sanity hearing.

BIRD: Crikey. For the Buff, y'mean? That was for real, like?

SPARKY: All too real for my taste, man.

BIRD: What taste? Buffers said you can't taste a bleedin' thing since you went off the sauce all of eight years ago.

SPARKY: Eight and half, man, but who's counting?

BIRD: All right then, give us the skinny, dude. Has the randy old Buff gone off his melon?

SPARKY: That groovy cat's been off his melon as long as I've known him -but he's outdone himself this time, man.

BIRD: Good Lord. . . let me guess. He's acted out his fantasies about his therapist, innit? The Jenny Agutter/Annette Benning hybrid? He's gone and jammed his great gnarly nappy head up between her porcelain knees and goddess-like thighs and given her both barrels, er, horns, like?

SPARKY: Oh, he did that many celestials ago, man.

BIRD: What? And he wasn't arrested?

SPARKY: Actually, she was totally flattered by the attention. Blushed a bit, billed him an extra twenty for the session, and made him buy her a new pair of sheer panty hose, but otherwise he got off Scottie-free.

BIRD: I see. So, spill the legumes, Sparkers, what has he done?

SPARKY: Pulled a Cool Hand Luke.

BIRD: Omigod. He's eaten 50 hard boiled eggs all in one sitting?

SPARKY: No, though he did try it once. . . emptied his gizzards after only 23.

BIRD: Well, then, has he escaped from the chain gang or buggered the blood hounds?

SPARKY: Nah, he borrowed a pipe-cutter from Rockin' Jim and after the bars closed he went and decapitated all the parking meters in front of the county courthouse.

BIRD: Great flaming bollax! Really? Now that's what ya call Homeric!

SPARKY: It was a metallic massacre. All the bums woke up Saturday morning, saw the carnage, and fainted in coils. Aw, shit, the time. . . Gotta go to the sanity hearing.

BIRD: Will they finally lock him up, d'ya think?

SPARKY: Man, he's been locked up since Friday night. That's when he drank all the cleaning products and did the Charlie of all deeds. It's created quite a Purple Haze here. . . there's thousands of irate citizens picketing the courthouse, demanding that he be let off.

BIRD: He's become a causal celebre?

SPARKY: No. . . he's still straight as far as I know. But his defense is that all the parking meters in Mt. Clemens are as crooked as a dog's hind legs, and under the provisions of the city charter he had a perfect right to, how did he put it. . . "decommission" them. The community is solidly behind him. They've burned the Mayor in effigy, barricaded the streets and hung all the flags upside down as a signal of distress. The Governor is threatening to send in the Natural Guard. He's signed a book deal already and Paramount's optioned the screenplay.

BIRD: Bully for Buffy!

SPARKY: But man, what am I gonna do if they have him committed and kick him off the pineapple?

BIRD: Pineapple?

SPARKY: Take his bucks away.

BIRD: Oh. . . yes, that would be a real bite in the farce-arse, wooden tit? Well, let's hope he gets an advance on the book deal. Tell the Buffster to keep shakin' that bush!

SPARKY: Oh, man, he's shakin' that bush, spanking that blutwurst, filling in da ho's, I mean holes. Gee, that guy's got more juice in him than Texas has oil, and that's a lotta oil, man! Hope they don't zap his shit for brains before he bursts his geezer!

BIRD: Frying at eleven!

SPARKY: Arf, arf, man!