It is another bland Tuesday, those kitchenless sort of workless work-a-day ‘weekends’ that vilify the rest of the week and all. I am checking out the Facebook (fine application, that) when I notice there’s a little red speech bubble in my top left-hand like. I click to find an invitation to the “Extraordinary League of All Dan Rudys,” a group devoted to uniting the very width and breadth of online humanity that dubs itself by said moniker.
Well hell, I think to myself as I accept away, little knowing what lay ahead. Within the minute there comes another little crimson thought bubble caddy-cornering my screen, a message ominously entitled ‘There Can Be Only One’ when brought about the drop-down. I read on, a distant Dan Rudy from the Massachusetts fulminating some senseless jargon about the One and all that, a battle royale that will fulfill the destiny of all mankind and such. Fight to the finish, one week from the day like.
Of course, I let it slide by. I’m not one for these online scammations of the general populace, man of the world and all of that. But an odd Sunday post slips into the box, plane ticket and directions to the Swampscott, Massachusetts. And nagging little messages in my inbox, ‘Come Come Come,’ ‘There Can Be Only One, Melee Weapons Only’ clogging up the works with sixty, seventy shots a day. Makes a man sure-fired up enough to fight to the death, if it’ll only stop the spam and all! I’m on the Tuesday (-next) plane with my cricket bat, the Reebok willow Excel, blue trimmed and solid like. Gonna bash me some Dan Rudy, I think to myself cannibalistically as I sip at a mid-flight gin and watery tonic. And I’m wondering if’n they’ll all look like me, semblance and the such. A sort of masturbatory action in reaction, beating oneself to death in the greater context sort-of-thing.
Long story short, I’m there at the Swampscott on the beach off of the Yacht Club, Excel in hand. It’s a goddamn diaspora reunited, Dan Rudys from every which way; a baker’s dozen in all, even an inexplicable Korean chappy with a farcical looking pressed-metal sword in hand. And I’m looking and looking, but there isn’t a single lookalike amongst the lot, me standing alone as myself the like.
Massachusetts yacht nob Dan Rudy addresses the crowd, boring as all can say: “Hear-ye hear-ye, the Extraordinary League of All Dan Rudys now in session” and such. Rules; who needs rules in a battle-type royale context? I’m thinking we must be linked, because we’re all jumping in before he’s done and explained himself, yet nonetheless standoffish all the same. Myself, I’m thinking of my spotless dental record. Is winning the right to be the one and only Dan Rudy worth getting irrevocably gobbed in the mouth by some ass of the same name? Most heartily not, I’m thinking.
We crouch about on that beach for what seems like hours, prodding and duking and sidling along, waiting for first blood to come. Naught happens, and soon some of the non-Rudy yacht nobs stroll down to watch us, hands kipped in short white khaki shorts all nonchalant and all. “What are you boys doing?” “What’s the scuffle?” and such like. Well, far be it from a Dan Rudy to take such verbal informality. I’d say we width and breadth charged the bejesus out of them, white pants and all. Scared them right off the beach, though a few may have gotten clobbered up a bit.
“Ye gods, I was wrong,” MA Rudy exclaims to the rest of us. “I think perhaps we are an unstoppable force, united!” And united we were, scuttling on off to the Red Rock Bistro for a bit of gnosh and talk. And sure enough it was an alright endeavor, chatting and laughing and berating a bunch of myself, all-told. Because Dan Rudy or not, we’re all a bit of ourselves, aren’t we?
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