Up and Onward…

Seems like I’m getting some flak for not keeping up with this blog. Just want to point out that when “you” have a busy day it means you had to stay at work until 8:30. AmazeMan and I have been dealing with Doppleganger. Of course we had no problem catching him right away, that is, we caught one of him. That’s the problem with Doppleganger. If you don’t get both of him at the same time, you might as well not have bothered. So, as much as it embarrasses me to admit it, we got ‘imprisoned’ in his ‘sphere of isolation’. Now if you ever want to really hate your best friend, spend over 2 months trapped in the ‘sphere of isolation’ with him. I thought the whole point in those things was to be ‘isolated’. Hell, I could have been practicing my Mandarin Chinese, or dividing Pi by 13. Anything but listening to AmazeMan blather on and on (and on) about how his younger brother always got the best of things when they were kids. How many times do I have to remind him that his brother is now a manager at a Jiffy-Lube and he is one the greatest superheros of this century. Boy that guy has a chip on his shoulder.

Anyway, we had been stuck in that sphere for what seemed forever when I got a pretty great idea, if I do say so myself. One of the things about getting older is that you tend to produce a lot of, how shall I put this?, gas. To say that we can ‘break wind’ would be like saying a tornado creases a house. Now the cool thing about villains is that, by and large, if they don’t kill you outright they keep you imprisoned forever. Not sure what the psychology is about that, but there you go. So if you are lucky enough to be imprisoned rather than impaled, you are fed pretty well. So I get this idea to ask for only high fiber foods. You know, garbanzo beans, bran muffins, corn, etc. Now the kicker here is that I am severely lactose intolerant. No joke. One ice cream cone and I am tooting out the 1812 overture. So I load up on all the fiber I can and then wash it down with a couple gallons of whole milk. Didn’t take more than 15 minutes to get things going down there, if you get my meaning. So I tell AmazeMan to hold his breath and I let loose a barrage of methane loaded butt burps that pretty much fill the ‘sphere of isolation’ with a noxious, and explosive, level of hydrocarbons.

Now this plan would be a death sentence without a quick and certain method of ignition. Hello wintergreen lifesaver! Now, a few of you might remember that if you bite down hard on a wintergreen lifesaver, there is a neat blue spark. Great fun when you are out camping in the dark. Anyway, one well timed chomp and the ‘sphere of isolation’ disintegrated into the ‘jumble of destruction’. I’d like to say it was planned, but I totally lucked out that the resulting explosion knocked out Doppleganger (both of them) and we were able to capture them (him) and escape. The only downside is that AmazeMan kinda lost most of his left eyebrow (you never know how these things are going to work out) and now he has a ‘Six-Million-Dollar-Man’ look about him. He’s getting really tired of me making that eye zooming “doo doo doo doo doo” sound effect when ever he looks at something in the distance.

Good times.

Gamma Girl and I got hooked up on my last mission. She and I go way back. I knew her when she was just Alpha Gal (just kidding Gammy). Normally we all do our own thing, as there are a lot of egos that need stroking and not a lot of ‘spirit of cooperation’ going around. But we recently started a program to get to know each other better. Basically it is only because of that misogynist Brave Man and all his wise cracks to the woman on the team. First, any guy that waxes his chest has no basis for criticizing any woman. And what Super Hero wears cologne? And Hi Karate at that. Can you even buy that stuff any more? And I gotta say, Super Heroes with Tom Selleck-esque mustaches are just creepy. Anyway, before this turns into a rant, suffice it to say that ‘hostile work environment’ has been the topic of much conversation.

So Gamma Girl and I have been paired up, which is a blast. She is a lot of fun to hang around with and if AmazeMan and she got along better, we’d probably spend a lot more time together. AmazeMan is still mad that Gamma Girl was making his codpiece glow orange and green while he was hitting on Shelly from accounting. (btw, Shelly is TurboTron’s cousin). It was all in good fun, but he never forgave her. Oh, and little known fact. Most guys keep their wallet in their codpiece. I tell you, if you don’t have a utility belt, there aren’t that many places to hide your ATM, BlockBuster, and AAA cards. Poorly hidden keys have been a real problem in our industry. I think the real reason that AmazeMan is mad is that all that radiation erased his membership ID at Bally’s and they charge you $25 to replace them.

Anyway, Gamma Girl and I were sent to the stadium, as there was a report that “M” was going to do something bad. To this day I still don’t know what the M in “M” stands for, and the one time I asked him during the obligatory idle “fight” chat he told me that crap about “if you have to ask…”. Now I’m just embarrassed to ask anyone else and admit that I don’t know.

Now “M” is terribly consistent in his methods, which is typical in this business. If I had to give one piece of advice to any up and coming criminal genius, it would be to alter your methods once in a while. Use a different M.O. I mean when the ransom always comes as a riddle, you don’t have to do a lot of legwork to figure out who sent it. So “M” likes to always do things that have some kind of “M” theme. It’s his trademark and all that. Usually he will rob banks in an M shaped pattern, or only kidnap wealthy people with names that start with M, you get the gist. The reason we were on the lookout for “M” was that the evenings concert being performed at the Colosseum was none other than, you guessed it, Eminem.

Now, I’m not that familiar with all the hipster music these days. Hell, until Gamma Girl told me, I assumed Eminem was the mascots for Mars Candies. Personally, I don’t care much for his music. I’m more of a Bossa Nova guy myself, but you get the mission that is dealt. So we go down there and scope out the place, check in with the local security, and pretty much try and keep out of the way. Good thing too, because the place was packed. And I forgot how mean kids can be. Remind me to never again walk around a bunch of teenagers wearing colorful tights. Some of those comments were just uncalled for. I think if Gamma Girl hears “Do I get fries with that shake?” one more time she is going to go nuclear on someone. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

So we wait through the whole concert (me with my earplugs in) and all goes off without a hitch. False alarm it seems. Not until we get back do we learn that “M” was about as un-hip as I am and mistakenly kidnapped the big yellow peanut from the candy commercial. Needless to say his request for a $100 million ransom has not put a fire under anyone’s feet.