Producer: (from off set) Five, four, three, two, one… You’re on, Kate!
Kate Mustard: Good evening, everyone, this is Kate Mustard with another edition of “Meet the Bitch,” Kyiv’s first English-language TV talk show. And our guest tonight is the so-called Hunched Cornish. Hello, Mr. Cornish, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself?
Hunched Cornish:(dressed in a musty toga) No.
Kate Mustard: Well then, let me have the honors. You’re almost fifty years old, have no family and have lately taken to working for an Internet comic strip that lambastes Kyiv’s expatriate community, including some of my colleagues at the Kyiv Poster. Did I get that right, Hunched?
Hunched Cornish: Yes, you did. Now let me return the favor. You’re a sour-pussed battle axe, who’s spent the last decade or so browbeating her foreign husband and now has turned that same venom and spite to work for the Kyiv Poster, a third-rate rag that deserves to be not only lambasted but verbally decomposed from the shrinking masthead to the stupid-assed headlines. Now, did I get THATright?
Kate Mustard: (angry but composed) You’ve made yourself clear, let’s put it that way. For my part, I might have added that you’re a former alcoholic who was fired from the “third-rate rag” that I work at more times than anyone can count…
Hunched Cornish: I can count, but I don’t think it’s relevant to today’s topic of discussion. I believe that you invited me here to learn more about the project I write for with my creative partner, The Half Guinea…
Kate Mustard: Yes, another shall we say “emotionally-challenged expatriate journalist” plying his dubious trade in our fair city. It’s too bad that he didn’t show up with you…
Hunched Cornish: I’m perfectly capable of defending our creation on my own…
Kate Mustard: Creation?! You call this kind of filth a creation: “It’s the day before production night in the Kyiv Poster newsroom, so Brent Boner figures he can take it easy, and there he is, behind his desk, masturbating to half-naked Fem Girls protest photos with a huge smile of relief stretched from side to side of his thumb-shaped head…”
Hunched Cornish: Well, first let me say that I’m not responsible for the Commix section of the site. I only cover The Checkout…
Kate Mustard: Oh, like the bit… let me see hear (searches through notes)… about the cockroach running up the wall of that restaurant on Podil? Or were you not responsible for that piece either… Hmm?
Hunched Cornish: I wrote it.
Kate Mustard: Uh huh. Then maybe you would like to explain why you felt it necessary to mention your desire… just a second (again thumbs through notes)… to “touch and squeeze” the so-called “dancing girl”, who I assume was foolish enough to go on a date with you?
Hunched Cornish: There’s nothing to explain.
Kate Mustard: On the contrary, Hunched, there is a lot to explain and I intend to do so right now for the benefit of our viewer audience. I suspect, in fact, I am all but certain that you are a sexually frustrated social deviant who gets his thrills by living out twisted fantasies via an Internet site…
Hunched Cornish: (standing up slowly) Please, keep going. I’m listening.
Kate Mustard: (a little taken aback by Hunched Cornish getting up from his seat in the middle of an interview) …and clearly women, Ukrainian women, play a central and unfortunately demeaning role in these fantasies…
Hunched Cornish: (now standing right in front of the talk show host) I’m listening… I’m listening.
Kate Mustard: (lowering her head awkwardly so as not to have to look up at the giant of a man) …Quite frankly, I think that you are intimidated by women, and… (feels stream of warm liquid splashing on her head)
Producer: (from off the set) He’s pissing on her!
Hunched Cornish: (still holding open the folds of his toga) Ugh!
Kate Mustard: EEEEEEK! You dirty pig! (she stands and runs in circles, flapping her arms in an attempt to fling off the droplets of urine that have splashed on her blouse sleeves) EEEEK! Bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk, EEEK!
Cameraman: (eyes bugged out) Shit, she looks like a chicken…!
Producer: (now on the set) Keep the camera rolling, don’t take it off her. This is great!
Boss Lard: (on a couch in front of his big-screen television at home) I’ll be damned.
Ferret: (also at home but channel-surfing for news about hard-drinking Ukrainian gangsters and all-powerful oligarchs) Heh, heh, cool!
Boner: (stumbling across the broadcast on YouTube) Hmm, that looks like Kate Mustard.
Kyiv Poster publisher Moe Zaire: (to a group of fellow South Asian men all crowded on a single threadbare couch, eating popcorn and watching an old TV set with a crooked antennae sticking out of the top) Ho, ho! What did I tell you about that bitch?
One of the South Asians: (in full-length robe and fez) Did you not fornicate with this one, Moe?
Moe Zaire: Not on your life, Ali!
All: Ha, ha, haha, haha ha!!!
Meanwhile, outside a McDonald’s on the city’s urban limits crouches a lean, scowling, stiff-haired figure, scraping the cheese off the wax paper discarded from a double cheeseburger that he’s recovered from the waste bin, but he’s not watching the televised debacle taking place between The Hunched Cornish and Kate Mustard, nor is he aware that Boss Lard has a large-screen TV at home. Instead, he’s plotting his next career move, following his untimely dismissal from What’s Off magazine by the talentless but business savvy Sweaty Tank Top several years earlier.
I’ll show the collection of losers depicted in this comic strip what real writing is… What will they all think when that file photo of my bag-boiled face and folded arms appears on the Kyiv Unedited website? (grinds teeth … then picks nose) …
Anyway, time to get back to my wooded animal boy shelter to write some urban grunge prose… (scurries away through thicket and bush almost soundlessly)…
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, March 22, 2013