Two Bowls, Three Corners

Sean, Rick and Barry were in the basement, playing a game of Two Bowls, Three Corners, when Sean’s mother rudely interrupted.

“Sean,” she called down the stairs in a mockingly sweet voice, “you have a phone call.”

“Can you take a message?” Sean said as he executed a nearly flawless triple spoon dip maneuver.  “I’m playing Two Bowls, Three Corners right now!”

Sean’s mom threw the cordless phone down the stairs.  It landed with a thud and bounced across the floor, coming to rest next to Barry’s outstretched arm.  Barry began to blow on the phone as hard as he could, clearly trying to move it closer to the piping hot bowl of prosciutto and melon soup that was situated under a glass dome, exactly in the center of the room.

Rick realized what Barry was doing and started blowing on the phone from the opposite side.

Sean said “I’m playing my Soup of Lesiure card,” and he began to unhook himself from the elaborate system of pulleys and chains that were keeping him secured to the wall.

“Foul, foul of the most egregious nature,” called Rick.

“Second! I second the foul and call for your corner to be desecrated and stricken from the record!” agreed Barry.

Sean finished freeing himself and began to walk towards the phone.  “Grow up you guys,” he said.  “It’s just a game.

He bent over to pick up the phone and then suddenly threw it across the room.

“I had a hidden Fourth Corner Card of Destiny!” he shouted.

Barry and Rick immediately began to claw at their restraints, realizing the trap they had walked right into, as Sean hunched over the glass dome and began to decipher the code that was etched into the lock keeping it shut.

Barry was the first to free himself.  He ran towards the soup but he was too late; Sean was already taking the first delicious slurp.

“Game over,” he said.  “I win.”

Rick finished unclasping his elaborate restraints and joined the other two in the center of the room.  He handed Sean the phone and said, “Good game.  But don’t you want to know who called you?”

“Nope,” said Sean.  “Want to play again?”

“I’m Zeta corner this time!” shouted Rick.

A Couple O’ Hotties

Sean, Rick, and Barry were sitting in lawn chairs on Sean’s mother’s front lawn, soakin’ up some rays.

“Soakin’ up some rays,” said Barry.

“Soakin’ up some nothing,” said Sean. “Why don’t you take your shirt off?”

Before Barry could respond two girls in bikini tops and shorts came around the corner, carrying a surfboard between them. One was blonde, and the other one was also blonde.

“Heads up,” said Rick. “Girls.”

“Hey,” said one of the girls as they neared the place where Sean, Rick, and Barry were sitting. “Do you guys live here?”

“Nothing,” said Rick, and then he stood up and kicked Barry’s chair to the ground, sending Barry sprawling across the grass.

“Nice,” said the blonde.

“You ladies going to throw a little long-ball?” Sean asked the blonde as he slapped Rick across the face hard enough to leave an imprint of his hand on Rick’s flesh. Rick reeled back then recovered and roundhouse kicked Sean in the head, causing him to collapse on the spot.

“We were thinking about it,” said the blonde. “And maybe a game of chili-shorts. You want to join us?”

Before Rick could respond Barry poured a jar of fire ants on his head and then kicked his legs out from under him. As Barry was closing up the lid of the jar Sean punched him square in the crotch and then poked him in the eyes with a stick.

“What are you retarded?” Sean said. “We’re busy.”

“You guys are amazing,” said the blonde as Rick writhed in agony on the ground.

“Shut up,” said Barry.

As the girls walked away Sean and Barry sat back down in their lawn chairs, then high fived each other.

“Oh God, my eyes!” said Rick. “THEY’RE IN MY EYES!”

Coinage

Sean, Rick, and Barry were gathered around a dryer in “Jesus’ Laundromat”, a run down establishment across the street from Sean’s mother’s house. On the wall was a sign that read: Please “no” tacos in the “machines”. “Thanks!”

“We have to put in the soap first I think,” said Sean. “That’s how the clothes get clean.”

“That makes sense,” said Rick, “but I know for a fact that this little sheet has to go in too. I’ve seen my sister do this, like, nine times.”

“OK well let’s start at the beginning,” said Sean. “Barry, hand me that soap.”

Barry handed over a twelve pack of Lever2000. Sean tore open the package and dropped a bar in the dryer.

“You’d better put two. We’ve got a lot of laundry,” said Barry.

“Good call,” said Sean as he threw in another bar. “I feel good about this, off to a good start. What’s next?”

“Clothes?”

“Yeah, clothes. That’s why we’re here right?”

“Right. Here you go.”

Rick handed over a Hefty trash bag full of their dirty laundry.

“Do you have to take it out of the bag?” asked Sean.

“If you do,” said Barry, “then I don’t want any part of this. I’m no lazy slouch, but that’s just too much.”

“Another good call,” said Sean as he crammed the overstuffed bag into the dryer with the soap. “You’re on a roll Barry.”

“Thank you my friend.”

“Now, where’s that sheet you were talking about Rick?”

Rick handed over a dryer sheet which he had found on the floor of his sister’s apartment’s laundry room, and Sean put it on top of the bag.

“Oh, almost forgot!” Barry said. “My Dad said we have to make sure to empty the lint trap.”

“I’ve heard that too,” said Sean. “You sir, may have just saved our lives.”

He opened the lint trap on the dryer, cleaned the lint off the screen and then tossed it on top of the dryer sheet. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out three quarters and a buffalo penny, and threw those in too.

“And that’s it,” he said. “My Mom said that since this place doesn’t have an attendant on duty we can just leave til the clothes are done and come back to pick them up.”

Rick was trying to jam the lid of the dryer closed. When he couldn’t get it to click into place he started to climb up on top of it.

“Oh hold on,” said Barry. He took one last bite of the grande stuffed soft taco supreme he had been eating and tossed it in the dryer. “I’m stuffed,” he said.

Then Rick got up on top of the dryer and jumped on the lid a few times until it seemed like it was closed and then they went and got a root beer.

Vincent Van Bones

“OK, almost done… a little bit more… Couple more dabs…”

Sean was applying some black paint to the wall of his mother’s basement.  He had taped out an elaborate design on the wall and was just applying the finishing touches to his masterpiece.

“What do you guys think?” he asked Rick and Barry, who were sitting on the couch eating avocado soup.

“It looks pretty dope Sean, but I can’t wait to see what it looks like when you take that tape off,” said Rick.  “When did you become such a great painter?”

“Well,” said Sean, “last week my mom had the squirts pretty bad and she asked me to sit with her.  She only watches TLC so I saw about twenty episodes of Trading Spaces.  They taught me a lot.”

Sean began cleaning his brushes in a slow and methodical manner while Rick and Barry ate their soup.  After two and a half hours he was finished and announced that it was time to remove the tape.

Rick and Barry crowded around him as he slowly began to pull the masking tape from the wall, revealing an identical shade of black underneath.  He slowly worked his way around the room, peeling off the 600 feet of tape he had applied.  When he was done his finished product was revealed: four plain black walls and a plain black ceiling.

“Pretty cool man, pretty cool,” said Barry.

“Yeah,” said Sean, “I’m really digging this.”

“Your mom is going to be really impressed.”

“Yeah well, don’t tell her about it.  But you’re right she would be really proud.”

“Uhhhh, Sean?” said Rick.

“Yeah?”

“What was the point of all that tape?”

“Oh.  You’re supposed to use different colors and then I guess it makes a design or something.  I don’t know.  But I stole this paint from my uncle Chet, and he only had black.”

“Oh.  Cool man.  This looks awesome.”

“Yeah.  Now let’s go get some ketchup.”

And that was exactly what they did.

THE END

Trademark

“Put in ‘Slug Maguire’ under name.”

Sean, Rick, and Barry were huddled around the Ikea coffee table in Sean’s mother’s basement, filling out some paperwork.

“Slug Maguire?” said Sean.  “Why?

“Oh I don’t know,” answered Barry, “maybe because it’s the most awesome and badass name I’ve ever thought of in my entire life?”

“We have to put our real names Barry.  Otherwise they won’t give us the patent we’re applying for.”

“OK, well then let’s put our real names, and then pretend like there’s a fourth person.  His name?  Slug Maguire.”

“Whatever,” said Sean.  “Address, social security number, phone number… I think we’ve got this all filled in.”

“Great,” said Rick.  “Now what should we patent?”

“Onions!” said Barry.

Companionship

A tiny bell dinged as Sean, Rick, and Barry waltzed through the front door of Savanah’s Seascapades, a sprawling pet store with everything from tarantulas to rats to sea cucumbers.

“Don’t waltz when you walk through a door,” Sean told Barry.  “It’s irritating.”

“I’ll tell you what’s irritating,” Barry replied.

“Not being able to find a parking spot?” guessed Rick.

“Spilling burning hot coffee all over yourself?” chimed in Sean.

“Thrombophlebitis,” answered Barry.

“Look,” said Sean.  “We came here to get ourselves a pet, so let’s just do it and get out.  My car is still running at a red light and it smells like two week old clam chowder in here.”

As they began browsing the pet selection a four foot tall woman wearing overalls and a tie-dye t-shirt came out of the back room.  Her hair was in two ponytails pointing almost straight up from the top of her head.

“Can I help you with anything?” she asked in a high squeaky voice.

“We need us a pet!” said Sean.

“Well did you have anything particular in mind?” asked Overalls McGee.

“Well, I did have one thing in mind…” said Rick as he began moving towards a terrarium filled with baby owls.

“Yes?” said Ponytails O’Reilly.  “Cat, dog, fish, python?”

“No…” said Sean, picking up on Rick’s plan.  “Something better than that.”  He crouched down into a linebacker position behind the terrarium and put his hands on it.

Barry also got the hint and winked at Sean, then turned around and winked at Rick, and then bent down and winked at ‘Ol Squeakybones Jones.  “Yeah, something even better than any of that stuff,” he said.  Then he put his hands on the underside of the terrarium.

Now Sean, Rick, and Barry were all touching the terrarium and kind of rocking back and forth.

“Well, what is it?” asked Tie-Dye A. Chesterfield.

“Double cheeseburger!” exclaimed Rick and then they left and went to McDonald’s.

No More Monkey

Barry was jumping on his bed with a mop in his hand, singing “Highway to the Danger Zone” in a loud to moderately loud voice.  His bed was just a mattress on the floor, and his mattress was just a piece of foam.

Suddenly he fell off the bed and landed on a three foot tall G.I. Joe action figure, bruising his arm.

His dad started pounding on his door and said “What’s all that racket?!” and Barry thought to himself, the danger zone indeed.

He picked himself up off the floor and thought, I need to either lose weight, or sustain a serious, but not life-threatening injury, in order to become more popular with my peers.

Barry knew that losing weight was not an option, so he began to formulate a plan.

I am on the second floor of this building, he thought to himself.  If I fall out my window, and land properly, I will probably break an arm or a leg, but I’ll almost certainly survive, becoming an instant legend.  Popularity, here I come!

He also wrote those exact words in his diary.

Then he stood up and took off all of his clothes and tied a bandana around his head.  He went over to the window, opened it, and began to climb out.

Just then his dad burst into the room and shouted, “I SAID WHAT’S ALL THIS RACKET?!” and in his hand he was holding a tennis racket and in his other hand he was holding a badminton racket and in between his legs he was clutching a copy of the book “War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier” by Smedley D. Butler and on his feet he was wearing handball rackets as shoes and Barry laughed so hard he fell out the window and he just laid on the sidewalk and kept laughing until his dad came down half an hour later and told him to put some clothes on and take out the trash, and also to get a job.

A Hit

“Writing a song,” said Sean, “is all about the art of seduction.”

Rick sniggered under his breath.

“Seduction,” he said.

“Don’t snigger!” said Sean.  “This is serious business.”

Sean and Rick were sitting on the curb outside of a Wendy’s, a pile of loose leaf paper on the ground between them.

“We have to write a theme song for Thursday Night Soup Club, or Barry’s going to quit,” Sean said seriously.  “Then we wouldn’t even have a club.”

“Write down ‘serious business’,” said Rick.  “I think that’s a really good title.”

Sean wrote serious business on the first line of the first sheet of paper, and directly underneath he also wrote write down and title.

“A lot of those words you said were lyrics,” he told Rick, “and you didn’t even realize it.”

“Wow, thanks man,” said Rick.

Sean jotted down man and thanks, but then he crossed out thanks.

“Stay focused Rick, we’ve got to get this done,” said Sean while taking a bite of his bacony-bake-melt that he had dipped in chili.

“I’m trying Sean, I’m just no good at this.”

Good, wrote Sean

This, he added, and also just.

“You’re on a roll man!” he said.  “A real natural!”

“Write down ‘a real natural’,” said Rick.  “I really like that line.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Sean, and then he wrote down really and that line.

A Real Scorcher

Down in the basement of Sean’s mother’s house, Sean, Rick, and Barry were hanging out, eating soup.  It was a Friday afternoon, eighty seven degrees and not a cloud in the sky. 

“This blows,” said Sean.  “Anybody want to go shoot some hoops?”

This was really hilarious, because none of the three of them had ever “shot hoops” ever in their lives, but no one gave even so much as a courtesy laugh.  They were too sweaty.

“Why does your mom have to keep the heat on full blast no matter what the weather is?” Rick asked Sean.  “I mean, I know why but… Why?”

Sean didn’t even bother answering.  Rick and Barry both knew perfectly well that Sean’s mother believed that microscopic aliens lived in her home, and that they could only reproduce in temperatures below 78 degrees Fahrenheit and in low humidity conditions, which was why there were two dozen open buckets of water scattered throughout the room.  They also knew that neither Science nor Religion could explain why she believed this, and that both were equally incapable of curing her.

“Here’s another question,” said Barry.  “Why don’t we go someplace else?  I’m sweating like a house-a-fire.”

“Where are we going to go?” asked Sean.  “We can’t all fit on your bike and we’re not allowed at the pool.”

“Yeah.”

“Just enjoy your chicken noodle gazpacho,” said Sean. 

“But it’s just Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle and you just poured it into sippy cups without cooking it,” said Rick.

“And…” said Sean.

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

“Nothing.  Just forget it.”

Rick took a sip of his soup and just then Barry passed out and fell to the floor in a heap.

“See,” said Sean.  “If you just wait long enough you will always find something to do.  Grab his legs.”

Rick bent over to pick up Barry’s slightly overweight body and Sean’s mother burst into the room with a handgun and said, “Everybody freeze!” and then she started shooting holes in the walls.

Squash Banana

Sean, Rick, and Barry were riding in the backseat of Sean’s mother’s 1997 Subaru Outback, on their way downtown.  They were slurping soup from styrofoam containers, which they had just picked up at a new soup place in their neighborhood.

“I am so excited,” said Rick, with a faraway look in his eyes.

“You have no idea,” said Sean.  “Step on it mom!”

They all laughed and laughed as Sean’s mom gunned the Outback up over 80 and began weaving in and out of traffic. 

“So how did you get these tickets again?” asked Barry.

“I guess my Uncle is on the stage crew or something and he just asked the manager if he could have some tickets.  And he said yes.  Man!  The Lion King!  I am so excited!”

Sean rolled down his window and stuck his head out, screaming into the wind as his mom barely missed sideswiping a tractor trailer in the next lane. 

“What do you think is going to be your favorite part?” Barry asked Rick.

“Well, isn’t it obvious?”

“Yeah, it’s obvious but I just want to hear you say it.” 

Instead of answering Rick dropped into a deep rich baritone and said “OOOOOOOOO Weem-A-Wep, A-Weem-A-Wep, A-Weem-A-Wep…”

Sean pulled his head back into the car and added in a lovely tenor: “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight…”

Rick added in some percussion on the back of the seat in front of him, and Sean’s mom started honking the horn in rhythm to the song.  Once they had gone through four or five choruses there was a silence as everyone breathed heavily and though about their favorite parts of the song. 

Barry finally broke the silence.  “I wonder if they do that song like, once at the beginning, and then again as a grand finale?” he said.  “God, I hope they do it at least three times.”

“I guarantee you they do it once during what’s called the overture, which comes right at the beginning,” said Sean, as if everyone else in the car was a complete and total idiot. “And then I’m sure they do it at the end of the first act, and probably at the end of the show, and maybe they play it as you leave the theater sort of over the loudspeakers.”

“Well, I don’t really know much about The Lion King, but I do know I love that song,” said Barry.  “Play it again Rick!”

“OOOOOOOOO Weem-A-Wep, A-Weem-A-Wep, A-Weem-A-Wep,” answered Rick.

Just then Sean’s mom slammed on the brakes unnecessarily.  They had arrived at the theater.  As they all piled out Sean’s mom said, “Text me during the show every time they do In The Jungle.  I want to imagine that I’m there.  But don’t bug me for anything else, I have a hot date,” and then she farted a little.

Inside, as the lights went down in the theater, Barry leaned across Rick (Barry was sitting on the aisle seat due to him being slightly overweight) and said to Sean, “This may be the greatest single night of my life.  In The Jungle, here we come!” 

“SHHHHHHH!” someone whispered and then the curtain came up and Sean, Rick, and Barry settled into their seats and then got real disappointed.