Tony, "Mr. Coffee" Perkins, walked in the front door with his dried up mother under his arm like an ironing board. He had picked up some of his brothers' favorite ice cream, and he hoped that Jack had finished painting the West wing. Which he probably had. All work and no play had made Jack a dull boy. But he sure was a good worker. He had even fixed that Snow Cat that they thought had been ruined for good.

Too bad about Jack's family, though. They had all died one winter from inhaling too many fumes in a gas leak that year that the furnace broke down. They went a little crazy, too, by the looks of the journals they were keeping. "Jack did this, then Jack did that," can you say paranoid schitozophreniac? Tony couldn't.

But Jack had carried on bravely, and he had even invited Tony, who was in-between sequels, to bring Mother and join him out at the lodge. They had been living together for almost fifteen years, now. And it had been Jack's idea to get Mother freeze-dried, so whe would be easier to carry around.

Well, no sign of Jack. And it was time for Mother's cup of Coffee.

Tony headed towards the great kitchen.

BACK IN LINE

"What in the Hell is a Certificate of Tertiary Title Transfer Subform B?" asked the shaggy looking man with the erudite Royal Shakespeare Company accent.

"That's when the car has had more than two previous owners who were not the original purchasers of the vehicle, for example if the vehicle were bought by a bank and then leased before being sublet to a rental company and then sold to an individual who sold it to another individual, and the title is missing or only existed originally on microfiche in the office of the original purchasing entity."

"Yes, yes, I know all that! I learned it slowly and painfully my fourth through seventeenth times through your god forsaken line" the man said, "What is the subform B part all about, and why are you just telling me about it now?"

"Subform B is for out of state ownership by the second or fourth proprietary entity, sir. your car was registered in Colorado for 6 months back in 1987."

"Damn. And I was sooo close," Hannibal said, grimmacing and snapping the thumb and middle finger on his left hand.

"I know what you mean, honey," the elderly woman from the department of motor vehicles said as she registered his disappointment, "I was rooting for you, too. NOT!!!"

"Why you HellBitch!!! you Bitch from Hell" the canabai genius shrieked.

"Can I take you to lunch?" he asked

"Only if you pay," said the woman, who was obviously familiar with the psychology of abuse and who typically got 3 free lunches a month and one or two dates from hopeless people trying to suck up to her.

"It will be my pleasure," came the reply.

"Sucker," she thought.

"Succulent," thought he.

HANNIBAL DINES

"You know. And this must sound funny, Mrs, . . ."

"Wentworth," she gobbled down a handful of french fries. they were the upscale kind with the peels still attached.

"Wentworth," Hannibal repeated as he pulled a piece of squirrel fur from between his teeth. Had this been there all along? If so, what kind of woman was this who would accept a lunch date from a man with an obvious tuft of squirrel fur stuck in his front teeth?

"Ah, yes, back to what we were talking about," he said, shaking himself from developing possible feelings for a woman who should mean no more to him than just a dinner, as she obvioulsly meant no more than a lunch to him. This was bad. Any time the word "obvious" or one of its permutations entered his thinking twice in five minutes, he was getting close to one of his core "issues."

"Sorry, ah, what were we talking about?" he asked.

"Incarceration," Mrs. Wentworth was saying.

"Ah, yes. Incarceration. Well, it seems to me that you Americans could solve your crime problem by simply incarcerating everyone right from birth."

"I'm up for that," Mrs. Wentworth said.

"Well, yes, ah, I see," Hannibal blushed.

"We're halfway there already," Mrs. Wentworth managed to get out through a technique Hannibal thought of as "3-Dee" talking. The food, usually pieces of bread or a starch, capable of changing shapes while maintaining color, gets pushed out between the teeth, with slow, sensual flashes of fat pink tongue as it darts out in between vowels to fetch back the starch blob from the front of the teeth in time to tun-tin-new th neth-th worthd. Man, he loved to watch this fat woman talk.

"You mean with TV of course," was he obviously making a fool out of himself?

"I only go out to go to work. And at work I only tell people what to do all the time. We might as well be in prison."

"Right," Hannibal was getting animated now, "Lock everyone up. Give them television and the internet. Deliver everything to their doors. And we'll all be basically living the way we are now, but there will be no crime. There can't be, because everyone's already locked up."

"Except the delivery boys," - God, this woman was smart as well as being an earnest lover of eating.

"Right. well, we'd at least have to lock them up at night. I mean. No system's perfect."

"That's OK, honey. You tried. And that's all that matters. Now, when are they coming around here with the dessert menu?"

But Hannibal already knew what he wanted for dessert.

Hollywood Drips, Part I
Hollywood Drips, Part II
BY TROY NEW YORK

DIET-MAGIC!
BY T. LEONARDO

The Great American Pastime
BY CHRISTOPHER CURRY

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