Genghis and Galileo Take Miami
Sunday afternoon, 4:30 p.m.
The Sunday-Night-Homework-Rush will soon set in, but your iPad keeps
sending you push notifications, beckoning you with its irresistible
red bubbles. What to do, what to do…
In the left corner, weighing
in at nine-hundred-and-fifty-four pages, your
Nacho-Cheese-Dorito-finger-stained third-edition copy of The
Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History.
In the right corner, weighing in at 54 cheese-balls and 14 cases of
Go-Go-Juice (a delightful mixture of Mountain Dew and Red Bull), an
already-queued up episode of Here
Comes Honey Boo Boo.
It is a tough choice. Honey Boo Boo seems like the obvious answer,
but saving a full serving of Genghis Khan and the Dysfunctional
Descendants for a Sunday night is going to require quite a bit of
Go-Go-Juice. Then again, you've already had a double dosage of the
Copernicans today, but you can only watch so much of Keeping
Up With the Kardashians
before your voice becomes two octaves higher and your butt.... Too
much thinking. Gotta take a break.
***
You are amongst a group of 25
other tall, attractive, attention-seeking women, similarly clad in
16th
century European garb. You seem to be more appropriately dressed for
a medieval coronation ceremony, but for some reason you find yourself
with your right hand on your outstretched hip, a chokingly-tight
corset chastising you for all of those Chipotle burritos, posing for
a picture in front of a swimming pool. You are there, but nobody
pays any attention to you. Like an ugly baby picture on
#ThrowbackThursday, you blend in.
At the focal point of the
crowd of Victorian fantasies stands a man of magnetizing regality—he
wears a feathery purple hat, a long, fur cloak, and glares down at
the camera with a clearly contrived half-smirk. He wields a
perfectly coiffed rose like it is his scepter. He looks like a jerk
to you, but for some reason all of the women are clamoring for even a
fraction of his attention. A loud voice reverberates through the
shimmering swimming pool as you are commanded to stay tuned for
Henry’s official Rose Ceremony (who will receive the axe?).
You sidestep your way through
a commercial for a divorce lawyer and an ad for Weight Watchers until
you find yourself in a large room that smells of a synthesis of
tanning oil and laundry detergent. As five similar-looking guys in
long white robes enter, your short hair is attacked by a flamethrower
filled with shaping gel, and your skin shade starts to resemble the
bag of stale cheetos you left in your room last night. You have a
sudden urge to passionately fist-pump into the air, but you are able
to contain yourself for the sake of observation. You listen to the
men in robes, as there seems to an argument going on between someone
called “The Lunatic” and another guy named Leo. Both men
speak in surprisingly thick New Jersey accents.
“Dude, you gotta problem
with me and my church, tell me to my face!”
“Maybe if your face
weren’t so ugly, I woulda! But instead I gotta nail my 95
Theses to your damn door just to get your attention!”
Leo slams his hand down on the
counter. “That’s it. You’re not coming with us to
the club tonight!”
“Like I’d want to?
All that comes out of your mouth is just a bunch of papal bull
anyways!”
After some more back and forth
between the two, you’ve had enough of this rousing routine of
Gym-Tan-Excommunication. You hop on the next commercial and settle
for a table of elderly-looking Caucasian men in tight slacks and
ill-placed wigs, puffing out their chests and sticking out their
over-powdered cheeks in what appears to be a pouting gesture. Some
of the men are socializing while others crowd around a giant piece of
yellowish paper with a bunch of really tiny scribbling on it. It
kind of looks like the thing Nicolas Cage stole in National
Treasure, but you
can’t seem to remember before a conversation starts between the
men signing the document.
“Eww. John. I can’t
believe you did this. What makes you think you can take up the whole
page with your one little signature? Who the hell do you think you
are?!”
With an effortless hairflip,
John retorts, “I’m the present of this damn Congress,
that’s who! Stop starting stupid drama Sam.”
A third party chimes in,
trying to calm the tension. “Dudes, calm down. Let’s
just all relax with some of this hemp the Sage of Mount Vernon and I
grew.”
John wrinkles his white nose
at the smell, firing back, “Tom, you’re disgusting. Get
out of here!”
The room starts to spin, as
arrogant eye rolls blur into meaningless fist-pumps and vapid
lip-pursing, and suddenly…
***
Your head jerks up with a
start as you make a feeble attempt at wiping the small island of
drool off of your chin.
The clock on your iPad, where
Honey Boo Boo is still tantalizing you with incessant fart jokes,
reads 9:12. It is Sunday night, and you have yet to open your
history book.
Crap.
Points: 1018
Reviews: 12
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