Part 24

And off our one and a half men fled (three and a half if you ask Tom Jones) into the black of night with jar and note in tow.
As they journeyed across the vast, craggy New England Sahara, Bo's stomach began to growl.
"Tom, do you see anywhere we could stop to get a bite to eat?" he asked his companion.
"Please," said Tom holding his hand up modestly, "I feel we've grown very close, you and I. Almost like best buddies, except I've never given you a foot massage. I want you to call me by the name that my Welsh grandmother bestowed upon me the first time I beat her at Candyland-- Kangaroo Jim."
"Kangaroo Jim," began Bo again, too ravenous to object, "Do you see anywhere we could eat at? I'm starving."
"What about Igor's House of Beets and Eats?" He suggested, pointing to a kinky looking stone building on the horizon that Bo's glance had somehow passed over.
As they drew nearer, Bo's gut began to growl ever louder, both out of apprehension about entering an establishment that looked like a prison rigged up with torches at the entrance and neon pink barbed wire encircling the rooftop, and with his ever-mounting hunger.
"Yo yo yo!" said Tom Jones cheerily to the shirtless bouncer at the door, "we be hankrin' for some gruuuuub to ruuuub in the tuuuuub, know what I'm sayin' hawk-baby?"
The bouncer turned around and Bo realized with a start that the face Tom Jones had been speaking to was merely a tattoo on the back of the bouncer's bald head. Glancing down at the name tag pinned directly onto his bare chest, Bo noted that the man's name was Zbrtp.
"If you don't mind me asking," said Bo, a bit meekly, "Would you be in possession of any information regarding the name of this fine establishment... particularly the 'beats' part of it?"
"Look bubble boy," said Zbrtp in a gravely high-pitched Jamaican accent, "If you don't think you can handle what we got, you'd better just get. Got it?"
Bo nodded, a hundred nightmarish scenarios rushed through his brain and made his face begin to sweat.
"Think we might fluff our stuff in the ruff dufff tuff?" said Tom Jones.
"I'm not so sure." said the bouncer, staring wickedly at Bo. "He don't look like he's of age to be frolicking in a joint like this here. I don't think he'd last, know what I'm talking about, cowboy? I don't think he's got enough guts."
"Now listen here!" snapped Bo, stomping one rhinestoned suede platform moccasin in disgust, "I'll have you know that I was nearly killed earlier today!"
"YEAH, KILLED!" said Tom Jones, throwing back his head and snapping his fingers in a display of support for his friend.
"And furthermore, I'm on a mission from God that is for your benediction and the benediction of every man, woman, and child in this great country of ours!"
"YEAH, BENEDICTION!" tooted Tom Jones, twirling around and ending with a breathy "cha CHA" and jazz hands.
Zbrtp watched this display with a look of slight contempt before waving them inside.
"But don't say I didn't warn you!" he called after them.

*****

"Woah... look at this cat scat of a joint!" Jones yelled over the techno-polka music blaring through the loud speakers. Mounted high on the walls were paintings of famous leading Hollywood men, each painted in a baby bonnet and a set of fangs. Inside glass niches positioned along the walls were dancers wearing nothing but bear-claw slippers and fancy Victorian hats. And dangling above each table was a different medieval instrument of torture turned mood light.
But worst of all was the catastrophic aroma of cooked beets that assaulted Bo's ever-flared nostrils as he opened the massive, spiked doors.
Tom and Bo sat at a table beneath a giant flail emanating a rosy glow, illuminating a portrait of a grinning, toothy Clark Gable. A waiter appeared dressed in a foam beet costume, studded all over with cheery buttons and flair.
"Good evening dearies, my name is Anna Banana, I am going to be your beet scout tonight. Can I get you something to drink?"