April 2015

Po Boy Views

By

Phil LaMancusa

The Cross Eye Bear

Or

A B C M Puppies?

            This year at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival (March 25-29) there was a panel which was held in an upstairs banquet room at a great New Orleans restaurant (you know, the one on the corner by Jackson Square); the name of the panel: “The Alleviation Of Accepted Intelligence”. At this gathering the new Pi-Phone ‘Infinity 3.14’ was presented; this is the device that will finally make thinking for yourself an obsolete concept. It phones, texts, tweets, skypes, wakes you up, puts you to sleep and reminds you to floss. It chooses your reading material for you and then reads it to you. It makes reservations at the restaurant of its choice, powers the GPS into the car which will drive itself (and you) to its destination and hold a pleasant dinner conversation with you. You need never have another independent thought in your brain; it’s better than beer. However; during its presentation, by the inventor himself, it will be stolen.

Of course, the inventor/prominent professor is an accomplice to the theft. Yes, party to the heist, as well as a pair of lovely cat burglars and a burglar that happens to be a cat. Also three accomplices that will be working at the restaurant and a ‘little person’ (don’t call him a midget) who will be driving a mule with a buggy behind (pun intended).

            They have trained for this like Ocean’s Eleven in a house that was purchased by them on Conti Street with a four million dollar winning lottery ticket, supplied by the Chinese government (you knew the game was rigged, didn’t you?). The plan is to steal the device for the Chinese for another winning lottery ticket (a really BIG one) and before the handover, double cross them and ransom it to the CIA for even more money. This achievement will be tricky because in reality the gadget is a fake.

            The plan (allegedly) is that the two catburglarwomen will construct a bogus model with the appropriate bells and whistles and at the right moment the hostess at the restaurant’s entranceway will lock the doors and scream bloody murder, the bartender will douse the lights set off some firecrackers and a cook will run from the kitchen yelling “Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!! Run for your lives!” The catwomen then high wire themselves from the Cathedral tower, grab the professor and drop him and the contraption into the passing surrey and the little guy (Hinch the Hunchback Henchman) will drive them away. The carriage will be immobilized on Chartres St. blocking traffic and everyone will fade into the woodwork and sell the phony to whoever can pony up the most money first. They will then go back to their other lives; not any wiser, but richer than crème brulee gelato.

            What happens, in reality, is that there is a sudden storm that comes from out of nowhere and a bolt of lightning hits the high wire and zaps the contrivance and the professor/inventor whose essence (mind, spirit, intellect) is imprisoned in the fake device (making it quite real), the catwomen are likewise zapped into a state of semi consciousness, the cook runs out of the kitchen and grabs the professor and the machine and drops them into the passing buggy;  the bartender and the hostess abandon the caper, instead leading all the patrons to ‘safety’ and the feline is picked up by a passing helicopter only to reveal the whole plot to Russian agents posing as local weather reporters (Bob and Margaret). Hinch (Hunchback Henchman) is the only one cool of head enough to abandon the rig (as planned) grab the mechanism (that now houses the professor’s brain) and the lifeless body of the prof, scale a twenty foot fence (strong little f**ker), steal a car and make it to Mexico, through Laredo, before morning; there to await the other gang members and either work out a solution for reuniting the professor with his soul and spirit or say ‘screw it’ and sell everything to the highest bidder.

Things really get strange when  Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins show up to give advice and get a piece of the action; the catwomen, who have become lovers, arrive in a Land Rover which has a tracking device planted by the KGB who come in by helicopter with the feline double agent; the bartender and the hostess, who have also become lovers, arrive by motorboat held at gunpoint by Chinese agents; the cook hacks his way out of the jungle with a chef’s knife followed by a SWAT team from Quantico and the device powers itself up and creates a tsunami hoping to escape with Hinch to Tahiti and from there rule the world.  The question being: who gave the lifeless professor those hickeys and why the smile on his face?

How do I know this? Am I the Professor? The Felonious Feline? The Hunchback Henchman?  Or did I just punk you for an April Fool?