fat chance

Dedicated to those Everyman Comics of yesteryear, Mr. Bob Elliott and Mr. Ray Goulding...

announcer: Wally Ballou has a guest you may be interested in now. Come in, Wally Ballou!

WB: ...lou, winner the past seventeen years of the golden diction award for talking good on the radio, Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish you could see this, I'm standing next to Professor Groggins as we survey the scene before us of monster machinery for the good professor's latest attempted adventure into space, Professor, if I may have you talk into my microphone here....

PG: Yes.

WB: Do I understand what's going on before us, Professor Groggins, that is, what you are doing to the Statue Of Liberty?

PG: Yes. Uh, I am retrofitting Lady Liberty, as you can see by the cranes, donning powerful rockets at key points around her gown, which will allow her to liftoff...

WB: Wait a minute, Professor, are you...you don't mean...

PG: You're rolling your eyes.

WB: No.

PG: I just saw you. Towards your engineer. You want a fat lip, fella?

WB. No, really I wasn't. But Professor, you don't expect to...I mean how?...and to the moon?...

PG: How? Simple. With rocket power from the use of old lawnmower engines attached with rivets to her gown.

WB: But that isn't a real gown now is it, Professor...

PG: I know that. It was a figure of speech. Now there you go again with the eyes. I'm warning you.

WB: Those goggles. You're not wearing those are you?

PG: Why not? I expect debris to fly by as I lean over the porch of her torch.

WB: Those old goggles. [giggling] Where did they come from?

PG: From a nice dowager in Ohio. She's funding the project. [sound of giggling in background] And there you go again...

[sound of scuffling, a punch and loud grunt. Dead air.]

announcer: Well, now, that certainly was interesting.

photo credit: Supermoon 2013, Julio Cortez, AP