by Shapley » Mon Sep 29, 2003 8:56 am
As they were surrounded by all the forces of Mordor. There was little chance of escape.
Suddenly a laser blast shook the mountains around them. The surrounding armies fled, leaving them alone on the barren ground. The source of the blast moved into view. It was the Battlestar Galactica. The earth trembled, as Lorne Green rolled over in his grave. It might have been the presence of his old vessel that roused him, but more likely was due to the case of asteroids, which still plagued him years after his death. His doctor had warned him not to spend so much time in the saddle. He knew he should have left with Adam, but he owed to Hoss to stick around.
After all, what was there for Hoss to do. "Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County" was a bust, and the producers were not exactly breaking down his door with offers. So he stuck it out on "Bonanza" till the very last, to keep Hoss and Hop Sing out of the Beverly Hills Soup Line. Which, at that very moment was serving some fine green pea soup, ala the "Exorcist", when the Lorne Green tremor shook the building, breaking dishes and ringing tubular bells for miles around. Izzy, thinking that this was the sign of the approaching asteroid, ran to the field where Shapley was busily wrapping the final threads in place.
That "Battlestar Galactica" thread finished it off. I've wrapped the whole thing up with a rousing rendition of "The Planets", capably performed by the Philadelphia Philharmonic Orchestra, and I'm ready to lasso that asteroid." Shapley said. Izzy offered to do the lassoing, as he had known Will Rogers personally, or was it Will Smith? Oh! It was Roger Wills. Whichever, he lassoed the asteroid, but neglected to anchor the rope firmly to the earth.
Due to the anchorage oversight, the asteroid, (which would have had made a great launching platform, sort of like a giant aircraft carrier, if it could have been pulled into geosynchronous orbit, or rather into orbit about 62,000 to 63,000 miles above the earths surface, and connected by an elevator) was now pulling Izzy and the rope of threads from the Bethoven.com bulletin board on their way to the Tuscan Sun. Actually, their trajectory would carry them just Under the Tuscan Sun, but close enought to give Izzy a fatal sunburn. "If only I had the Flame Resistant Suit" he thought. But it was still at the shop, having the asbestos lining replaced with a new one with a lower lawsuit rating.
"Is this the end of me?" thought Izzy. "Has my life so soon come to its final curtain?" Somewhere in the distance he heard the faint sound of a fat soprano warming up for her Aria. As his life flashed before his eyes, in full technicolor with quadraphonic surround sound and a rousing main theme written by John Williams, he realized how empty his life had seemed. "Will there be no one to mourn me?" he asked. "Will anyone even know I have gone?" With all the breath he could muster, (which was really close to none at all, being now in the cold, nearly total vacuum of space) he shouted: "Am I such a loser as this?".
Suddenly he discerned a voice, soft and gentle. The voice of an angel. I'm talking real angel here, wings halo, glows in the dark without the benefit of radioactive decay. A real voice of a real angel, not like the Church brat, who hums okay in Russel Crowe movie soundtracks, but isn't very popular on the Beethoven.com bulletin board (Okay, so I'm still tying a few loose ends!). Izzy felt a sudden reassurance at the sound of the voice. Actually, not the sound, since the cold vacuum, etc. etc. makes the transmission of soundwaves an impossibility, but rather the impression of the voice. The voice warmed him and comforted him. "Am I a loser?" he asked, or rather thought, as his voice didn't work due to the aforementioned vacuum. "Yes", the voice calmly assured him.
Izzy now passed under the Tuscan Sun, and despite his futile resistance, was assimilated into the fabric of the cosmos, or at least that swath of fabric that made up that sector of the cosmos. It was not a uniform fabric, as one would think from looking at the illustrations in magazines that attempt to explain graphically Einsteins theory of relativity. It was more of a patchwork quilt. Not a quilt with regular, repetitve patterns like one of those boring Phillip Glass compositions. This fabric had more variations than anything Ennio Morricone has ever composed. It twisted this way and that, like the plot of one of Sergio Leone's westerns, starring Clint Eastwood as the Man With No Name, and co-starring Lee Van Cleef, who never really lived up to his potential as an actor. It also had a cameo appearance by Izzy, who was passing on before my thread wandered off on this tangent. Or was it a perpendicular. Whichever, it wandered in the wrong direction.
Izzy's passing was quiet and peaceful. How he had survived so long in the cold etc. etc. of space was a question that would puzzle scientists for years, had they known about it. As it is, he passed on, not into death, but into....
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
