Curl Up with an Ovary, Buddy!

As I stated in my original post on this blog, this site will be dedicated to longer works of mine that were rejected by publishers for a variety of reasons, most of which, I suspect, have to do with their having accidently filed my pieces in the circular file drawer marked "Danger! Biomedical Waste!" That's what I get for submitting to medical journals.

With the Winter Olympics (in somewhere, some country I suppose) a mere year away, I thougth I'd share with you a piece rejected by Modern Humorist, which ironically is no longer an active site with new material. Of course, some would argue the same thing about this site. For truly new stuff, as always, please visit The Dictionary of Unfortunate Ideas.

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Bootleg Winter Olympics:
The Winter Olympics NBC Doesn’t Want You to See

Curling

By Earl Fando

(Theme Music: A Yanniesque version of John Williams’ Olympic Fanfare scored entirely for 12 banjos and washboard – think Ravi Shankar at a hoe down)

Roger Ovary: Greetings and welcome again to our special bootleg coverage of the 2002 Winter Olympiad in Salt Lake City. I’m Roger Ovary and tonight we’ll be looking at one of the most dynamic sports we’ve been able to sneak into at these games: curling. To assist me this evening, my partner tonight will be a renowned expert on the history and strategies of the sport, famed TV star and dance man Buddy Ebsen. Buddy, it’s great to have you here.

Buddy Ebsen: (wakes with a start) Who, what, where am I? Oh, howdy Rog! We started yet?

Roger Ovary: That Buddy…always the consummate professional.

Buddy Ebsen: Well get a load of them fellas on the ice pitchin’ stones!

Roger Ovary: Yes, curling is the time honored winter ice sport of pitching stones. The sport originated in Scotland where Highlander ice fisherman, hungry and unable to break a particularly thick piece of ice, attempted to slide large boulders at slow moving waterfowl and beached sea urchins.

Buddy Ebsen: How’d them stones get them pretty handles on ‘em?

Roger Ovary: Well Buddy, I’ll play along with this clever line of Socratic reasoning and tell you that the stones are obtained naturally from an obscure island in the Hebrides called “Eilean mu an clachan le buinan” which translated from the Gaelic means “Island of the stones with handles”.

Buddy Ebsen: You’re on the crack, ain’t ya?

Roger Ovary: Well Buddy, as much as I’m enjoying this discussion, the US team is about to throw. (Chants of U-S-A in background). The skip, whose name just happens to be Skip Skipman, will take the first throw. He brings the stone forward and let’s finds out a little more about him…

(Cut to a 17 minute personal profile on Skip shot with an old Super-8 camera, audio recorded on an old computer backup tape recorder, and focusing on his triumphant recovery from a beta-carotene deficiency.)
Roger Ovary: Well, we’re back and Skipman’s throw is just settling in now.

Buddy Ebsen: Why are them fellas pushing broom around that stone? Can’t they wait until the Ice Capades are over to clean up.

Roger Ovary: Can it Barnaby! Well, it looks like Skip the skip has left it long for a “biter”, which in curling is not as painful as it might sound otherwise. Next up is the USA’s opposition from Kyrgyzstan. (Single voice chants “K-Y-R-G-Y-Z… oh, vorget it!”) Their skip, whose name is not Skip but is in fact Kygyryasyrtsyragan, which strangely enough translates into English as “skip”, so I guess his name IS Skip!

Buddy Ebsen: You’re makin’ my head swim Rog!

Roger Ovary: Well, Kygyryasyrtsyragan/Skip will also take the first throw for his team. He’s a burly fellow, quite gargantuan for curling, as the average curler resembles a wiry Charles Nelson Reilly. He steps up and the stone is away quite fast…very fast indeed… too fast even for the entire personal glimpse we had taped of him detailing his life as a hairdresser in a strictly fundamentalist Islamic village.

(Cut to a 2 second clip of the gargantuan curler proclaiming, “I do hair!”)

Roger Ovary: The stone is careening down the ice. It’s going to go “through a port” but no chance for a “back house weight” here as the stone, a full 45 pounds, is actually picking up speed! It’s headed straight for the edge of the rink and the wall…and… IT’S GONE RIGHT THROUGH!”

Buddy Ebsen: Whoo-doggie!

Roger Ovary: The stone appears to have broken through the short track speed skating rink where believe it or not it’s passing skaters as they break for the finish of the 500m final! And the stone has won! It beat out Lee-Kyung and Nishitani for the gold!

(Cut to Gold Medal Ceremony for 500m Short Track Speed Skating. Kyrgyzstan anthem is being played. Lee-Kyung and Nishitani stand on podium with silver and bronze medals respectively. The Gold medal sits on the curling stone on the center of the podium. Behind in the audience sits a burly Kyrgyz man weeping in joy while running styling gel through his hair.)
Roger Ovary: Well, it’s been quite an event as Kyrgyzstan was soundly defeated by the US in curling but still comes away with it’s first gold… (scuffling sounds…garbled speech… Security officers haul Ovary away. Buddy Ebsen suddenly appears and begins to do the “Jed Clampett Dance”. Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” comes up on the audio track as arranged for kazoos by P-Diddy. Cut to regular WB programming.)