Whacking Elmo

Okay, here’s the situation.

You’ve got an iconic TV show to put together, and one of your lead actors has gotten himself in trouble with the law. He’s a huge part of the show, and you can’t live without him—but he’s in shit so deep you can’t live with him either.

You have to let the dirtbag go.

But what if the character we’re talking about is a puppet? More specifically, a Muppet?

And what if the alleged bad guy is his puppeteer—who actually terminated himself (from his job—not from the planet), on account of some public allegations of sexual improprieties with teenage boys?

The plot thickens …

And what if the Muppet in question is the world famous, furry red, not scary monster—Elmo. You know, the little dude from Sesame Street?

The plot gets even thicker … and harder.

For one thing, this would seem to be quite an unfortunate place to take the Elmo brand. One wonders how well children’s entertainment and pedophilia really mix. Apparently, our puppeteer thought the combo made for a tasty cocktail—but I’ll speak for everyone else, and say that nobody else thinks so.

At least, nobody we’d tell how to get to Sesame Street.

Who did this guy think he was? The King of … Pop?

Perhaps he did.

And what of poor furry little Elmo? Didn’t he see it coming?

I bet he has … but the little guy’s not talking, so who knows? One thing’s for sure: A co-worker who kept sticking his hand up your butt would definitely give you a funny feeling.

So anyhow, Elmo’s lips are sealed.

You’d think the guy wearing our little buddy around on his schlong would have sent up a red flag.

Imagine seeing that on the set.

“Don’t just stand there throbbing, Elmo … we’ve got a show to tape!”

And if Elmo the puppet worked like ‘Tickle Me Elmo’, the famous vibrating toy … I guess there must have been a lot of stage hands ducking for cover.

“Ah huh huh Ah huh huh Ah huh huh! That tickles!”

“Yo! Elmo needs to be dry-cleaned again!”

Butt, not being one to dwell on the past—let’s take a moment to dwell on the future.

What does Sesame Street do now? With no one to work him or voice his character, Elmo’s just a furry red golf club head cover.

They could do an ‘Elmo hits puberty’ storyline, and bring James Earl Jones on board to voice him. He could even bring the scuba tank from Star Wars with him, and go full on Darth Vader ‘Dark Side’ with the character.

Or bring Vin Diesel in, remaking Elmo as a gritty, but lovably stupid critter from the mean streets.

Then there’s the ‘go to’ option for every other TV show when there’s problems with the cast: bump the little bastard off.

That’s right, employ The Godfather solution. Whack him! Whack him now!

Elmo disappears, and our problem disappears.

Actually, that sounds like a promising spin off movie, doesn’t it? “Whacking Elmo”. Lots of people would go see it.

And it ends with a Muppet-shaped chalk outline on the sidewalk.

Elmo, you broke our hearts ...

-Harlowe Pilgrim

PS. I understand they’ve actually got new people to work the little bugger, so fear not—Elmo will be touching us for the foreseeable future.

Copyright 2013 Cock and Bull Publishing, LLC

Harlowe Pilgrim’s books are available at Amazon, iBooks,    Smashwords.com, Books-A-Million, and most other online booksellers.

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