Uncle Sal and the Abandoned Admirer (Episode 158)

Uncle Sal walked up to the table at the hot sauce festival where MacGregor's Scotch Bonnet Surprise was being served. A drop of the orange sauce fell on his black The Afterdarks t-shirt and he wiped it off with a napkin. As he dipped a piece of naan into the sauce, he said "Giacomo, I thought you was gonna bring your girl, what's her name, Yahaira to this thing."

Giacomo put his nose over the paper sample cup with the sauce and inhaled the scent. His eyes went wide and he knew he was in for some serious heat. "I was going to, but we broke up."

"Well, that's too bad."

"Things happen. It's not as bad as what happened to my high school classmate Paul Porrola. Remember, he's the guy I told you about that was always chatting up models on Twitter because he's too timid to approach them in person. Well, somehow he actually got some chick to go out with him. And she is good-looking too. She's one of those women where you see her with a nerd like Paul and you wonder why she's going out with him."

Giacomo bit his naan and felt the delayed burn of the sauce in his mouth and throat. "So, he was going out with this woman named Isolde. One day, she checked out his Twitter page and she saw all the models he was following."

"And she got jealous and broke up with him because of it?"

"She broke up with him, but not right away. It seems she started chatting with some of these models, and she came across this Swedish model who is six-foot-two. She'd be the example of statuesque in the dictionary. Well, Isolde eventually decided to meet the Swedish model. And when they met, Isolde fell instantly in love. Called Paul from Sweden to let him know that she had broken up with him. So now I guess for him it's back to meeting women online and fantasizing about them."

"And for Isolde, it's a tall girl after Paul."

This episode featured:
Hector Habanero as Uncle Sal
Juan Pedro Serrano as Giacomo
and
Jellybean Merengue as the paper sample cup.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says, "With that new liver he'll be peeing like a champ in no time!"

Uncle Sal and the Rotten Resumes (Episode 157)

Uncle Sal sat down next to Mike Hawke at The Crow Bar. He hadn't seen Mike since the previous meeting of the Fraternal Order of Grackles. When he saw a Spud's placed in front of Uncle Sal, he said, "You know, that's a fine beer. It's too bad that it's so hard to find."

Uncle Sal took a long pull from the bottle and set it back on the Monkey Knife Fight Pale Ale coaster. After flicking a roly-poly off of his The Earps t-shirt, he said, "I couldn't agree with you more. D'you know I was working for Spud's right when it got started?"

"No, I didn't know that."

"Yup, and the company might have gone under before it got started if not for me. See, I was working with Petros Georgiou, who had been put in charge of marketing. Well, he was coming down to the time when he needed to hire salesmen to start moving the beer. He showed me the resumes of a couple guys."

Uncle Sal paused for a moment as he watched the Wombats pitcher throw a pitch that went about seven feet over the catcher's head. "You shoulda seen these resumes. They were disastrous."

"A lot of spelling errors, things like that?"

"Spelling errors would have been the least of their problems. Two brothers, Lee and Jian Fong, submitted their resumes. Lee claimed he had been the president of Andorra, and Jian said that he got his management experience after he was abducted by aliens from Jupiter and taken there to run a chizzwick factory."

"What on earth is a chizzwick?"

"Exactly. And then there was this guy Brian Paltz. He came right out and told Petros he was twenny-five years old and still living at home...and that he had never had a job. You believe that? Prolly only submitted his resume because he thought he'd be drinking a lot of the beer. So Petros asked me who I think he should hire. I told him he couldn't hire any of these clowns. He said, but they're the best and only candidates we have. I told him that if that were the case, we'd just have to find more candidates, guys that could actually get this beer in bars and stores. Petros objected saying he didn't have time. I just looked at him and I said, 'Look, Spud's is a good product and it has the potential to take off. But I'll tell you right now, mad Fongs and Paltzes aren't selling this beer."

This episode featured:
Leland Stule as Uncle Sal
Jacob "Juke" Bachston as Mike Hawke
and
Jellybean Merengue as the roly-poly.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says "Open that door, you spawn of the devil's own strumpet!"

Uncle Sal and the Promiscuous Prelate (Episode 156)

Uncle Sal entered the Salvador Deli and looked around at the decor on the walls. On one side there was the skull of a longhorn steer with a handlebar mustache. On another wall, a branch was mounted. On the branch was a bottle of Tennessee whiskey with a Frisbee stuck inside it. "Interesting place," Uncle Sal said as he sat across from his sister Mary Evelyn.

"Not as interesting as the news we got at the church this morning."

Uncle Sal flagged a waiter and ordered the house specialty drink: a Melting Clock. The menu declared it "stronger than Hercules."

"This hasn't even made the papers yet, but everyone will know about it soon enough. You know Bishop Levin?"

Sal shook his head. He couldn't pick any religious leaders out of a lineup.

"Well, he's been moved around a lot for behavioral issues. It seems he has a penchant for exotic dancers, especially Filipinas. He was moved to this diocese because there were whisperings about him using money from the collection plate to hire exotic dancers. No one could prove anything though. Until now. It seems our Bishop got a surprise visit from his boss last night."

Uncle Sal took a sip of his drink and felt a drop of condensation fall onto his The Nico Blues t-shirt. As he brushed it off, Mary Evelyn continued her story. "Well, Levin actually had a dancer in the rectory when his boss arrived. The Archbishop asked what was that flowery scent in the room. The Bishop said it was his toilet spray. Well, a lot more questions came, but the Bishop had a good answer for every one of them. And it seemed like he was going to get away with his tawdry behavior. Then as the Archbishop walked toward the door, he saw a...well, a black nylon on the carpet. You can guess that the Bishop didn't have a clever answer for that.

"And now he's probably going to lose his job because the Archbishop found the stocking on Levin's floor."

This episode featured:
Enrico Stiletto as Uncle Sal
Patty Hoose as Mary Evelyn
and
Jellybean Merengue as the Frisbee.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says, "I'm just tryin' to figure out how that boy's brain works."

Uncle Sal and the Artistic Automobile (Episode 155)

Uncle Sal bit a deep-fried Oreo as he walked out of the muscle car section of the classic car show. Some crumbs fell from his Graceland Mafia t-shirt onto his program. "Boy that 1970 blue Dodge Charger we saw was sump'n else, eh, Giacomo?"

"What I wouldn't give to drive that thing. Especially the way the owner has souped it up. I bet that would be an awesome ride."

Uncle Sal wiped his hands on his brown and yellow plaid golf pants and said, "So, what's next on the agenda? The program says there's a Chrysler Cordoba somewhere in an exhibit by itself. Thing I can't figure out is why a Cordoba is on display among all these T-birds, Galaxies, and Bel-Airs."

Giacomo said, "I read about that car. It's owned by a guy called Heinrich 'Strife' Strieffmann. In the article I read, the guy said he bought it because it was a cheap piece of junk and he just needed something that would get him to work and back. Well, the thing gave him all kinds of problems. He only worked seven miles from home but the bus probably would have been more reliable. The guy said he had to add oil to the car once a week, among other problems. So, he decided that he would at least make it look good."

They stopped to look at the Cordoba. The passenger side was covered with paintings of cartoon characters. "Look at this," Uncle Sal said. He's got all of the Beauregard Brothers characters on here. There's Beleaguered Bat. And Mischievous Muskrat. Oh, and there's Humphrey Hound."

They walked around the front of the car to look at the driver's side. The entire driver's side was painted primer gray except for the rear quarter panel. "Why ain't there nothin' on the driver's side?"

"There is one thing. It's the first character the owner ever painted on the car, so he decided to preserve this side." Giacomo led Uncle Sal to the back of the car. And there, right above the rear left tire was a painting that stretched to the back bumper. Uncle Sal moved closer and saw a picture of the Beauregard Brothers signature character, Bossy Bighorn.

Uncle Sal said, "Will you look at that? All those paintings on the one side and over here ya gotta sheep on the funny ride of Strife."

This episode featured:
Edsel Hudson as Uncle Sal
Tucker "Maverick" Maroevic as Giacomo
and
Jellybean Merengue as the left rear tire.

Tune in next week when Uncle Sal says, "If all the cops looked like him, there'd be no crime at all."