We were finally in at Swastique, the overpriced hot-to-trot West
Hollywood dining spot rumored to be the home base of operations for
Rupert Murdoch’s dastardly TV Inner Circle.
Posing as valets, our employee jackets gave my kung-fu kitty
common-law wife Christy, The Anarchist and me free reign to scour
the place for clues about the Inner Circle’s next evil
plot.
“I’ll keep my eyes peeled out here,” The
Anarchist told Christy and me, “Besides, Britney Spears just
handed me the keys to her Escalade. I’m gonna search it for
panties, err “¦ clues.”
The interior was like some post-modern nightmare. Everything was
dark. There was no lighting in the traditional sense of the word,
but everywhere you turned a television was tuned to FOX cable
affiliates, FOX News and FOX Sports.
“There’s definitely something rotten in
Denmark,” Christy said. “All the people working here
look eerily familiar.”
She was right. Everyone from the hostesses to the waiters,
bartenders and busboys had something in common. All of them had
faces only late-night infomercials could love. Then it hit me.
“Dear Jehovah,” I moaned. “All these employees
are reality TV show rejects.”
“It’s like a graveyard for the people TV
forgot,” she replied.
The whole gang of the tragically pseudo-hip was there, and too
many to recognize with any sense of accuracy. However, the ghostly
faces of NBC’s “Fear Factor,” MTV’s
“Battle of the Sexes,” ABC’s “The
Bachelor,” and FOX’s “Married by America”
were all there to represent their reprehensible 15 minutes of
shame. Even Joe Millionaire Evan Marriot was working as a
bouncer.
We rushed to the toilet to take solace from the sensory
overload.
“Hey, buuuuddy,” the bathroom attendant said.
It was Pauly Shore.
“Don’t you have a 1-800-COLLECT commercial to
shoot?” Christy asked.
“Nah. Carrot Top beat me to it. But Mr. Murdoch gives all
us rejects a spot here at Swastique. And every once in a while he
gives us another shot at the Big-Time. Like my ex-lover Nancy
McKeon.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Jo from “˜The Facts of Life,'” Christy
said.
“Yeah,” Pauly said. “Now she’s a
hot-shot cop on Lifetime’s “˜The Division.’ Or my
other ex-lover “¦ Anna Nicole Smith. She’s bigger now
than she ever was.”
Though pun not intended, Shore was right. Los Angeles is the
perfect town for the tragically hip, the almost famous. Everyone is
ensured a shot and when it inevitably falls through, there’s
the all-purpose actor-slash-model fallback: waiting tables.
“This town is full of high-priced, big-tipping
restaurants,” Shore told me, drying my hands with a linen
towel, spritzed with a little CK One.
“You are full of insightful wisdom,” Christy told
Shore, speaking with the reverence one would pay to the Buddha.
“Can you shed any light on this Inner Circle
fiasco?”
“I hear things, buddy. It’s amazing what people
grunt when trying to pinch a loaf.”
“Heinous,” Christy gagged.
“Project SARS is on the decline”“ Murdoch
didn’t kill off the Hong Kong black market like he hoped to.
But he’s planning something big. All I know is that it
involves Mr. Rogers and an asteroid.”
Just then a poison dart hit Shore right in the eye. He twitched
like a weasel for a couple moments before keeling over. Christy and
I decided to make a hasty exit.
Back inside The Anarchist’s classic El Camino, we filled
him in.
“Mr. Rogers and an asteroid, eh? I’m stumped,”
he said.
All of us were.