How The Finger Went Mad: Knuckle 2
The Finger tried hard to forget what had happened
but sometimes forgetting is like treading Peach Mango Slurpee syrup
inside a Styrofoam cup shaped like the rest of your life
sometimes forgetting is just too goddamn impossible to do
So The Finger hopped inside the nearest liquor store
and as he stood there in the brightly lit whiskey aisle
carefully picking out his next nervous breakdown
a Big Toe he used to know swaddled by pushing
a shopping cart full of exotic Vodkas
The Finger looked like shit
he hadn’t cut his nail in months
and was sweating so hard that his print was no longer
unique
The Toe picked up on this and asked what was going on
and in the hopes that sharing his story might make him
feel less horrible about everything he told The Toe what had happened
While listening The Toe threw up in his sock a little bit
and admitted that The Finger had a very good reason
for falling apart and after that The Toe excused himself
and after the excusing quickly told the tale of The Finger
to one of his friends, who told the tale to her friend
who told it to another friend who happened to work at
The Westword, who wrote a depressing as hell story
about it
The story eventually became known to enough people
that it drew the attention of certain people who work
in Television
These people thought that the story was horrible enough
that the general public might enjoy listening to The Finger
recount his tale in front of a live audience so they contacted
him about appearing on a talk show
The story wasn’t interesting enough to be told on an actual
talk show that’s still on the air today like Jimmy Fallon
or the final year of The Late Show with David Letterman
it wasn’t even interesting enough to be told on the Arsenio Hall Show
even though most everyone could’ve sworn that show had been cancelled
years ago and was generally shocked to hear that it was still on the air
but it was interesting enough to get The Finger booked on
the talk show Chevy Chase had for about 6 weeks in the 1990’s
before it got canceled, so that’s what happened
The Finger was booked to appear on The Chevy Chase Talk Show
The Finger was flown back in time and put up in a Radisson
next to the studio, all expenses paid
The Finger didn’t feel like telling his story on TV was such
a good idea but The Producers insisted that it’d make him
feel better, getting it off his chest in a public setting and all that
in order to convince him The Producers offered various things
that have happened on the Doctor Phil show as examples
of the therapeutic nature of talking publicly about the horrible things
that happen in life
“And it’s not as if you’ll have to tell the story of this horrible nightmare
that you’ve managed to live through all at once, without interruption.” The Producers
had explained to The Finger. “Chevy’ll cut to a commercial somewhere
in the middle of it, so you’ll have a little break there where you can
pull yourself together if you need to pull yourself together and you can
listen to the band play until the commercial break’s over, if Chevy has a
band. He has a band, right? I can’t remember. Anyway you can listen
to the band play probably. I hear they’re really good.”
The night of the show The Finger hung out backstage
in the Green Room which looked more like
a hastily emptied out broom closet
instead of craft services there was a Chinese menu taped to the ceiling
and instead of a couch there was a folding chair that had a handwritten
sign taped to it and on the sign there was the word: ‘Couch’
The show started with a previously filmed sketch
in which Chevy Chase pretended to accidentally bump
into Corbin Bernsen in a produce aisle of a neighborhood
grocery store
Chevy pronounced Corbin’s name wrong and then
they took turns comparing an oddly shaped cantaloupe
to various ex-wives
and then after that Chevy hit the stage for his monologue
he told a joke about air travel being less than convenient
and then he told a joke about this asshole who failed to recognize him
at a goddamn restaurant
and then he told a joke about his new wife’s dog
pooping on the floor
this was followed up by a two part Q and A segment
with Tom Selleck which was filled with questions
about Tom’s mustache and awkward silence
that would cause Chevy to swivel his chair to the left
where he had an electronic keyboard set up
and he would play the keyboard for a while
until it got even quieter
Chevy would play to the goddamn silence until
eventually he’d just stop
During it all The Finger waited backstage
feeling nervous as hell and by the time
Chevy broke into the part of the show
where he pretends to report the news
The Finger was feeling so bad that he began
questioning the reason why he’d agreed to
do this thing at all because the experience
of waiting backstage to appear on The Chevy Chase Talk Show
to talk about the horrible thing that had happened
was stacking up to be almost just as bad as participating
in the horrible thing that had happened in the first place
by the time musical act Limp Bizkit hit the stage
The Finger was ready to fucking bail
but the fleeing turned out to be unneccesary
because when it at last came time for The Finger
to crawl into the guest seat Chevy mispronounced his name
even worse than he had Corbin Bernsen’s
even though the cue card clearly read “Finger’
Chevy introduced him as the Sistine Chapel
and before The Finger had time to decide if he should
walk out there anyway or wait for Chevy to get it right
the goddamn Sistine Chapel popped out from behind
the curtain and slowly waved to the audience as it made
its way across the stage to sit down in the guest chair
and just like that The Finger was off the hook
Chevy spent the rest of the show asking the Sistine Chapel
questions like ‘Don’t you hate waiting in line at the airport?’
and ‘What’s it like dating Goldie Hawn?’
when the show was over The Producers apologized
for Chevy accidentally bumping him for the Sistine Chapel
and promised to have The Finger back on another night
The Finger told them not to bother
and took the first flight back to 2014
and went back to trying to forget things
and drinking alone in his room
Multiverse Johnson 