BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Of the thousands of American youth who grow up dreaming of Olympic glory, only a couple dozen make it onto the plane. The rest are left behind, to skate or ski out the rest of their days in obscurity, their once proud parents bitter and bankrupt. And then we wonder why this country's going down the drain.

Producing a Tara Lipinski costs a lot of dough, but training the Olympic hopeless is a behemoth industry. In Axel alone, luge, curling, and water ballet classes make up a third of the area's economy, with over 1300 children enrolled year-round in these and other Olympic sports.

Despite the best efforts of Miss Cathy of Little Feet Ice Rink, Axel's only contender for a '98 medal was Tod Muffin--the Pride of Goat Head Mall--who made it all the way to the trials in men's figure skating. Tod's chances were dashed when his father was caught attempting to smuggle a komodo dragon into Olympic Village to infect the legs of Tod's competitors.

"They would have died a slow, agonizing death," said Olympic doctor Toshi Sabachi.

The Muffin entourage was put on the next plane out of town. Tod's father put his pants on his head and tried to get the other passengers to sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall." Then he sat on a food cart and picked his nose.

This shameful incident, along with gangsta' rap and the President's sex life, led Brother Dickey Webb to proclaim a forty day liquid diet, in conjunction with the fast being touted by CBN's Pat Robertson.

"It's no coincidence that Mr. Hussein's first name is Saddam," said Brother Webb in a sermon which compared Axel to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Everybody in town is stocking up on Slim Fast.

Coming on the heels of the stock show, the fast is probably the only thing than can get me back in a size 16 by Easter. But if it puts the Burger Barn out of business, what will we do the rest of the year?

"This is going to hurt us worse than Oprah," said my cousin Roy, a panhandle rancher, himself a member of The 700 Club.

It will be murder on people in the cattle business, not to mention keeping up our strength.

"Our goal is certainly not to have evangelicals dropping like flies," said Earlene Whitehead, Axel-Fast coordinator. "That's why we developed nutritious options such as the Cheeseburger Smoothie, the Chili Dog Freeze and the Steak Finger Shake."

It's a good thing. Whenever I don't eat, I start hallucinating. Like I think maybe I had an affair with Bill Clinton. And last year, when I had to lose five pounds before the Mother-Daughter Beauty Pageant, I started thinking Stormy looked just like the poster of Marilyn Manson on her bedroom wall. Thank goodness for the American Family Association hotline.

I agree with evangelicals who believe we're on the verge of either a gigantic nation-wide revival or the end of the world. The fact that this exciting thing will happen in the year 2000--such a cute number for a T-shirt!--is surefire evidence of the supernatural at work in our lives.

Wake up, America. The signs are all around. Our country is falling into drunken whoring like Greece and Rome and Austin. But all is not lost. Think about the half-million Promise Keepers Standing in the Gap at the Washington mall.

When I was a teenager if you said you were going to PK it meant you were going to a beer bash at Possum Kingdom lake. Only the popular people were invited. Now anybody can join PK, as long as you're a man.

So get out the blender and take up figure skating. It will help to pass the time until the world ends.