Friday, November 10, 2006

Having An Underground Lair Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be.

It seemed like a great at the time. It was a place to park my crime-fighting jet engine-powered crime fighting car, a place to store my wardrobe and cape and an out of the way place for a high-tech lab and Cray computer. I had fire-pole access from the study and I had a cool hologram to disguise the cave entrance. It wasn’t perfect, the place was always cold and damp; even with the small nuclear reactor I installed for power the place just never seemed to warm up. Then there was the summer when I had to deal with the bat infestation, those little brown bastards shit all over everything. They were hard to get rid off because I had to wait until they flew out at nightfall and then put screens up over all of the entrances. Still, it was a great place, at least until I got a youthful crime-fighting sidekick.

My sidekick, let’s call him Sparrow, talked me into putting in a bar in one unused corner of the Lair. He suggested that nothing would top off an evening of kicking the shit out of evil-doers like a nice cold beer. Well, sure enough, the bar went from a large cooler full of beers to a twelve-keg tap system. Sparrow started spending more and more time in the underground lair to the point where I had to change the lock and lay down the law. The guy was going through a keg every other day; he must have a bladder the size of Kansas. Sparrow promised to behave and after a while I trusted him with the key and he seemed to clean up his act. Then the gang at the Justice…uh, Bowling League finds out about the bar and sure enough they start dropping by and hanging out in MY underground lair. These guys all had their own secret hide-outs and bases, one even had a fortress of…something or other, but evidently none of them had thought about putting in a bar. You have to understand, these guys and gals are well known for high moral standards and ethics, but you’d think they were a bunch of college freshmen when they stop by the lair for a cold one.

Sparrow's busy playing bartender, what he’s trying to do is get in Won..uh, Princess Di’s pants. That ain’t gonna happen, Barry, Clark, Hal and I have all tried, she’s into Army guys. It’s just no fun, I mean these guys all have secret identities, why do they have to hang out at my place? Clark says his hide-out is too cold and nobody wants to go there. Prince Di is from an Island full of hot chicks, does she ever invite any of the league down for some fun in the sun? Hell no, the bitch. Anyway, my underground lair is just cool any more. Even when I’m trying to work, there’s some asshole in tights coming up to me and pointing at the giant LCD screen and asking “Hey, duth zat thing get ESPN?” Dude, I’m trying to solve a crime here, do you mind? Oh, and because it’s an underground lair, everybody thinks it’s just hilarious to pass gas as often as possible. Hal and his “Hey, do you want to know why they call me “Green Lantern?” schtick, you’d think after 159 time that he’d get tired of that but no. Then Clark Kent has to top him with ‘Hey gang, here’s why Krypton was destroyed!” Great, now I have to re-paint my car, thanks a lot, farm boy.

You know, I should have gone with a Penthouse with a secret room behind the book case. Maybe even a big yacht. But no, I had to have an underground lair. Why does everyone want to hang out in an underground lair anyway? At this point, I’m thinking that I should “Leak” the location to a couple of super villains so I have an excuse to shut the place down, but then I’ll end up with the reputation as the League party-pooper. Then it’s ‘Sorry, my X-ray vision isn’t working”, “No, I can’t help you, fight the giant robot by yourself”. You’d think the League would be above politics, the truth is that cape or not, the gang can be as petty as a high school cheerleading squad. My only way out is to talk the guys into initiating a new guy into the League, someone with an even better hide-out. That’s going to be hard though because the Marvel guys mostly live in their apartments or in their secret lab/penthouse.

Does anybody know if Hugh Heffner has any secret powers?

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