{"id":4012,"date":"1989-01-01T07:05:00","date_gmt":"1989-01-01T07:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/?p=4012"},"modified":"2022-10-23T08:47:24","modified_gmt":"2022-10-23T08:47:24","slug":"the-freaks-and-the-jerks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/1989\/01\/01\/the-freaks-and-the-jerks\/","title":{"rendered":"The Freaks and the Jerks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On our last update, we reported the instant rapport established between Aridy Papandy, the dream-boy leader of the Freaks, and the Wizard of Ozzle, the economic genius of the Jerks, when they met on a skiing holiday in Switzerland. Unfortunately, as in a great many cases of love at first sight, this relationship soured after a while and Andy went back to the air hostess who had given him that second helping of coq au vin on a flight from Paris to the Freak capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He became even more enamored of her when he discovered that she knew all the best discos in the area and that he could have much more fun with her than with his rather austere wife who thought Alice Cooper was a town in Australia and Madonna a painting by Raphael and who was battling gamely to free Freak women from the bondage of thousands of years of male chauvinist piggery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the pace became too fast for the ageing pop star (who would never see 80 again) and he went into the hospital for a checkup and to find out why he turned blue after dancing until four am. The doctor who took his pulse said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Either my watch has_ stopped or this man is dead!” (He was a Groucho Marx fan.) But the other doctors decided there was still hope and that he might recover after a proper 500,000′ mile service and new valves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was decided, also, that the mechanics in the topnotch state health service Andy had set up were not familiar enough with such ancient engines so they sent him to England where an Egyptian who had gained vast experience in restoring 3000 year-old mummies was just the man to take him in hand.
The air hostess went with him, of course, and had to forsake the coq au vin on the flight to London this time, but she fed him chicken soup, which did him a world of good, and then held his hand – but had to let go in a hurry when he started to turn blue again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was much consternation in – the Freak capital among the members of Papandy’s government because he hadn’t left anyone clearly in charge during his absence and without his firm hand on the tiller, the ship of state could not continue on its steady course towards economic disaster. So there was much shuttling back and forth between London and the Freak capital by ministers who transmitted his orders to the two vice-premiers, Limpygeorge and Yiannis of Defense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The overhaul was successfully carried out, but back home the whole fabric of the socialist regime Andy had so carefully sewn together began coming apart at the seams. The reason was a scandal involving a banker named Biscottas who, as an altar boy in a Freak church in Astoria, NY had found an old brass censer. On rubbing it to clean it, like Aladdin, he had produced a genie in the form of a huge priest who granted all his wishes. So Biscottas came to the land of the Freaks loaded with lucre and bought everything in sight: banks, newspapers, sports clubs, politicians – you name it, he bought it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scandal began when some politicians dicovered they’d been given less by Biscottas than some of the others so they filed charges against him and accused him of embezzling the deposits in his bank made by widows, pensioners and large public utility companies. Biscottas decided he’d had enough and went back to the States to face a lesser charge of stealing a brass censer from a Freak church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the newly-overhauled Andy Papandy discovered he could now paint the town red without turning blue so he started going to the discos again with the love of his life, his antics followed with great interest by all Freak men who would never see 80 again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other side of the sparkling blue sea, the rejected Wizard of Ozzle, feeling blue, put four Freaks in jail for demonstrating on behalf of some Jerks who were on trial for being red. At about the same time, the Freak president, on a visit to Australia, had rotten eggs and tomatoes thrown at his car by Yugoslav film fans who had seen his performance in the movie “Z” and didn’t think much of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so the year ended for the Freaks who stood on the threshold of 1989 wondering what other absurdities lay in store for them in the New Year, consoled only by the fact that imported bananas were finally here to stay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The time has come to update readers once more on the ongoing saga of the Freaks and the Jerks and see how things stand with the inhabitants of the two beautiful countries separated by a sparkling sea and centuries of not getting along with each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-onlooker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4059,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4012\/revisions\/4059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-athenian.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}