Breakfast with Glenn & Steve – November 16

Interior. The Friendly Toast café. The décor is mismatched 50s and 60s kitsch. Blue Oyster Cult’s "Burning for You" is barely audible over the ambient noise of the kitchen, customers and staff. Two friends sit at a booth that features a lamp with a shade that spins around making a waterfall appear as it turns. There are penguin salt and pepper shakers and a ceramic cow holding creamers in its hollow back surrounding a metal napkin dispenser. The table is covered with plates of eggs and pancakes and French toast and bacon and home fries. The waitress refills their coffee cups and leaves…
Last time, on "Breakfast with Glenn & Steve"…

Glenn and Steve watch as Mike walks through the front door of Young’s and out onto the sidewalk along Main Street. Mike looks first up the hill toward the Post Office and then back toward downtown. They watch as he is enveloped by a column of deep blue light and then suddenly, disappears.

GLENN

(Voiceover) "Well, it looks like Mike got arrested."

Cut to black.

Fade in…

I was late arriving. Glenn and Steve seemed, well, bemused I would have to say. Almost smirky.

"So, where have you been?" Steve asked.

"Around," I said, sitting down, looking for a waitress I could make eye contact with to do the miming-drinking-coffee thing. Hmm… I’m planning to do mime, I thought.

"Around?" Glenn asked.

"The world," I said.

"Around the world?" Steve confirmed.

"I went in peace. Not for all mankind," I said, "so much as for my employers. Still, I like to think I was working for world peace, even if it was only one global financial services executive officer at a time."

"Sounds deeply rewarding," Steve said.

"I guess," I said. "Strangely enough, I don’t remember many details of the trip. Aside from the Elvis impersonator. Now that was a vivid moment. I feel like if I ever hear ‘It’s Now or Never’ again I’ll try to shoot the President. Or cluck like a chicken. Or start singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’, the love theme from James Cameron’s masterpiece, ‘Titanic’."

"I hope it’s the chicken thing," Glenn said.

"It’s been done before," Steve said.

"There is nothing new, under the sun," I said.

"And it’s not that funny," Steve said.

"That’s different," I said.

"I think you’re performance of a Celine Dion song would be far more amusing than seeing you do the Funky Chicken," Steve added.

"Perhaps," Glenn said. "But it would go on long past the point of maximum hilarity. Long past. Carrying us both into the trough of despair if not the very abyss of desolation."

"More importantly," Steve said, "is it finally okay again to make a joke about killing the President?"

"I’m not sure it’s ever really been okay to make a joke about killing the President," Glenn said.

"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?" I said.

"Again, not that funny," Steve said.

"That joke killed in Charleston, South Carolina in the 1870s," I said.

"Just because it’s funny doesn’t make it okay," Glenn said.

"Maybe now its okay to make jokes about the President being gay," I said.

"George W. Bush is gay?" Steve said, perhaps a little too loudly. The family of four at the booth opposite us looked over at us. I nodded and flashed the smile that I like to think of as reassuring.

"It doesn’t seem that unbelievable," I said. "Were any of us shocked when that evangelist was outed by a gay prostitute? No. Were we surprised when Doogie Howser came out? No. The real question is who could come out today that would shock or even surprise any of us."

"Hugh Hefner?" Steve asked.

"Totally gay," I said. "Talk about a guy who’s overcompensating."

"Mel Gibson?" Steve asked.

"All that anger has to be the result of some inner conflict," I said. "If he’s not a closeted homosexual then he must be a closeted Jew."

"Scarlett Johansson?" Steve asked.

"That would be terribly disappointing," I said, "unless, of course, she made the announcement with her partner, Jessica Alba. Still, hard to say that I’d be shocked."

"I think it’s more likely to be Dick Cheney than George W. Bush," Glenn said. "If you believe there’s anything to the genetic theory. Cheney has a gay daughter, after all."

"He self-identifies as a penis, after all," Steve said.

"I'm not sure that's pertinent, but it is kind of funny," Glenn said.

"And why did he shoot his good friend in the face on that hunting trip?" Steve asked. "A lover’s spat, perhaps?"

"And what, exactly, was the nature of his relationship with Marilyn Monroe?" I asked.

Glenn and Steve put down their forks and looked at me.

"We are not talking about the Kennedy assassination again," Glenn said.

"Ever again," Steve said.

"Lee Harvey Oswald was totally gay!" I blurted.

There would be no reassuring the family in the next booth this time. Still, I tried. "Not that I’m trying to demonize homosexuality by association. Really, it’s all just a part of life’s rich pageant, if you will. Evangelist, President, actor, assassin—we’re all just people." Again, I flashed the reassuring smile. The dad signaled to the waitress that he would like the check.

"So, aside from everyone going gay, what else happens next?" Steve asked.

"Higher taxes, activist judges, and a cowardly retreat from Iraq," Glenn said.

"And they say the Democrats don’t have a plan," I said.
~November 16, 2006