Funsville is shut down today,
as it is on this day every year, to honour the workers of the world whose jobs
require them to wear name tags. This observance takes its own name from Carlos
May, the only Major League baseball player (so far) to have his birthdate
displayed on the back of his uniform. Before I slap a blank “Hi, my name is”
sticker on my lapel and join the rest of the throng at the Ceremonial Procession
of Garage Mechanics With Embroidered Overalls at Historic Funtown Square, I’ll get you
caught up on the story I’ve been telling you...
When last we left the
VHF-exiled Sparky, he had just set up shop in the comfortably cartoony and
surreal world of British TV’s The Avengers:
However, a jealous Moose soon
put paid to that becoming a permanent arrangement:
Booted into the hostile,
paranoid realm of The Prisoner, Sparky landed on his feet, as the heir
apparent to Number 2:
Once Sparky took full charge of
the penal colony known as the Village, his interest in getting information from
Number 6 seemed scant at best:
He soon wrote off the
interrogation as a dead loss:
This freed him up to implement
a grand geopolitical design, using futuristic brainwashing techniques and good
old-fashioned divide-and-conquer tactics:
None of this significantly
altered the fate of the Nixon administration. However, that wasn’t Sparky’s
plan. Instead, he concentrated on Henry Kissinger’s later
exploits—specifically, his part-ownership of the North American Soccer League’s
New York Cosmos.
With Dr. Kissinger in his
thrall, Sparky turned the Cosmos into a force to be reckoned with, both on and
off the field of play. Not only did they import international soccer stars such as Pelé
and Franz Beckenbauer…
…but they also effected several
changes to the rules of soccer, through Kissinger’s diplomatic skills and finesse.
One of these permitted the use of poison-tipped umbrellas during stoppage time,
and made a hitherto-unknown Bulgarian midfielder known only as Igor the most
feared man on three continents.
It soon became apparent that
Sparky’s Cosmos were out to do more than just kick a ball around for 90 minutes
while running themselves into chronic shin splints. During one memorable
exhibition tour, no less than seventeen instances of full-scale regime change
coincided with the Cosmos’ matches against well-known soccer clubs.
The ensuing global chaos soon
gave the ideal pretext for Kissinger (or rather, Sparky) to propose that a
single world government be instituted to restore order. When this came about,
the leader of the newly unified Planet Earth was a likeable but harmless
figurehead…
No—it was Wilford Brimley, the
beloved character actor who specialized in curmudgeonly yet cuddly
grandfather-figures, most notably in commercials for processed oatmeal. His
words of avuncular wisdom helped to soften the hammer blows of the
totalitarianism that followed:
Those of you who think that no
good can possibly come of this situation are probably right…but you’ll
definitely have to wait until the next chapter to find out how.
Uncle Fun
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