The Impotent Satyr
After completing a bout of chemotherapy to combat his pancreatic cancer, Jeopardy host Alex Trebek returned to the quiz show, wearing a leather jacket and contemplating out loud the fragility of life.
"Thank you, Johnny. Hello, everyone," Alex said, walking onto the set after the competitors were introduced. "It's good to back here. My only other option was giving up and dying slowly and painfully."
"All right, let's check out the categories," he reengaged after he'd thought the audience had waited in awkward silence for long enough. "Double-Letter State Capitals," he read aloud. "Sea-Level Cemeteries," "The 27 Club," "Honey, I Shrunk the Time We Have Left to Live," "Ills Pills and Bills," and "Disney Songs About Going Bye-Bye." And, Michelle, as you're the returning champion, you pick the category."
Michelle looked worried. "Um, can I...actually void my turn?"
"JUST PICK A GODDAMN CATEGORY, MICHELLE!" Alex yelled. "Some of us don't have long to live, and you're wasting everything we've got left!"
Through tears and facing more ass-chewing from the now-unfamiliar, once-docile Alex Trebek, Michelle called out, "The 27 Club for 200!"
Alex cleared his throat, raspy from the fresh berating he'd just given. "Come on, baby, light my fire. This singer died in a bathtub of his own urine."
No one rang in, but Alex continued resetting the timer before it expired. "Come on, Phillip from Jacksonville, Illinois. Do you really not know this?"
Phillip shook his head.
Trebek finally let the timer run out and, as the buzzer beeped, he blew a raspberry. "And that would be Jim Morrison. I'm asking myself, why not me instead? Better yet--why not Phillip instead?"
The crowd gasped.
"Michelle, back to you."
"Um, 27 Club for 400," she whimpered.
Alex didn't even read the clue; he just placed two fingers to his dome and jerked his head away as his thumb hammered down.
When no one buzzed in, Trebek once again had to yell the answer. "It was Kurt Cobain and you knew it! Posers!"
He lit up a cigarette, puffed it once, and put it out on his shoe heel.
"Okay, the hell with this. Let's go to commercial break, where some voice is going to tell you to apply Head On directly to the forehead. Forget the Head On, I say. Replace it with that fork thing Rafael the Ninja Turtle wielded, then tweet me the results. Trebek out."
