Tom Brady – The Eye of Zatara

[SATIRE] A St. Patrick’s Day Miracle! – Man Wakes Up After Night of Drinking in a Field of Lucky Zero Leaf Clover!

(Original Post: March 18, 2017)

New Orleans, LA – In what has been described by some as a “St. Patrick’s Day miracle”, 21-year-old New Orleans resident Ricky Lansing has awoken after a long holiday night of drinking, partying, and general revelry to find himself, to his surprise, in a wide field of “zero leaf clover” somewhere in St. Tammany Parish, an approximately one hour drive from the last place Ricky remembers being the night before, leading him to post a social media thank you to “the st patrks day elves or whtevr the hek tgis holladay’s about. wait, not elbes, lepercons mayB? thnk u, st patrks day lepercons!!@! u rok!! holy crp, man, sun is so brite out rite nw. wht the hck?”.

“It was incredible.” one of Ricky’s close friends and drinking partners, 26-year-old unemployed “college student”, Thomas Frederick “Freddie” Mustang, explained to recently reinstated intern news reporter, Michael Hamden Jr. from CBC News, a few hours later. “One minute, Ricky was right next to me puking on this cute girl’s shoes in this bar on Bourbon Street called ‘Memoriez’, the next he’s texting me from this like… massive field of clover, saying he needs a ride back to his apartment. It was like… crazy! Normally, I wouldn’t go and get him as much as I’d had to drink myself, but, hey, I figured… if the magic of St. Patrick’s Day is on his side, what can possibly go wrong for me, you know? I was half-right, anyway. Sorry, random guy and his neighbor’s mailbox. And pet terrier.”

“What exactly is a zero leaf clover, anyway?” Michael Hamden Jr. asked, as Freddie sniffed his shirt to see if it was ok for him to wear it another day to avoid doing laundry.

“You know, it’s like a regular or four leaf clover, but without the clovery parts. I’ve like… never seen so much of it in one place before!” Freddie explained, deciding the borderline stench of his three day old shirt could be concealed if he took it off and put it back on inside out while in the middle of his interview with Michael Hamden Jr.

“You mean like grass?” the intern reporter asked, making a sudden realization about the two drinking buddies’ story while looking through his notes on a small pad of paper.

“No! Wait, what? Grass? Well, maybe.” Freddie answered, somewhat surprised, completing the flipping over of his shirt and now pulling a random sandwich out of his cargo pants’ pocket and eating it right in front of the CBC News intern reporter. “Wait, you think we’re so stupid we can’t tell the difference between grass and clover? To heck with you, Man. We’re not stupid! This was clover, clover! C-L-O-V-E-R. It was a St. Patrick’s Day miracle! A miracle, Man! How else would I have made it to Ricky in one piece crossing the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway when I was seeing quadruple? I like go to church, you know, like once… in a while… maybe. And I have a Bible… somewhere. Or maybe that’s just a phone book. Either way, that’s why it happened, Man, I promise you! Wait… is St. Patrick’s Day actually a Christian thing, or is that the one with the Pilgrims and stuff, I can never remember? No, that’s Easter, right? And why does this sandwich smell like beer and throw up?”

“…what am I even doing here?” Michael Hamden Jr. sighed, throwing his notepad into a trash bin before quickly leaving Freddie’s messy apartment in disgust. “And your sandwich doesn’t smell like beer and throw up, you do. Maybe next time take a shower within 24 hours or so of having an interview with a television reporter, just an FYI there, Buddy.”

“Ouch. Harsh, Man.” Freddie replied kind of tiredly before taking a bite out of his day old pocket sandwich. “Hey, where you going? I got this other great story I was going to tell you about how I found five bucks in a public restroom on Valentine’s Day last year!”

On the insistance of his father, senior CBC News reporter Michael Hamden Sr., Michael Hamden Jr. attempted to follow-up on this story with “miracle boy” Ricky Lansing himself, but was repeatedly met with unanswered phone calls followed by texts hours later saying “i got a hedache cal u later, bruh.” At that point, 22 year old Michael Hamden Jr. gave up on further investigating this story, and went himself to ‘Memoriez’ to drink away the stress of dealing with Ricky and Freddie.

In a related story, New England Patriots Quarterback, Tom Brady was also recently found in a field of “zero leaf clover” in the St. Tammany Parish area after disappearing from Houston, Texas following Super Bowl LI in a swarm of angry peregrine falcons. When asked by reporters if he also credits his safe return to solid ground to the “elves of St. Patrick’s Day”, Tom Brady explained further.

“No, after carrying me around in the sky for over a month,” Mr. Brady began, “the birds were getting pretty hungry, and that washed up actor, Nicolas Cage, was out throwing stale bread in the park, trying to convince some seagulls of the genius behind his self-written script, ‘National Treasure III: Is There Like a Ghost in the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis or Something? No, Probably Not.’ The falcons were so hungry, they dropped me to steal Cage’s bread from the seagulls. I only wish the birds had just eaten me alive and gotten it over with so I wouldn’t have had to listen to Cage read me the script of yet another one of those stupid movies.”

“It was better than the first two, though.” Tom Brady then added, a look of thoughtful disgust on his starved and heavily bird-scratched face. “Heaven help me that I know that, but I do.”

As of the posting of this article, Ricky Lansing has not returned Michael Hamden, Jr.’s calls, and no confirmation of the existence of “zero leaf clover” has been made by New Orleans area botanists. Due to the publicity generated by this story, however, “National Treasure III: Is There Like a Ghost in the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis or Something? No, Probably Not.” has been picked up by Walt Disney Pictures and is tentatively set to debut in theaters in summer of 2018 alongside other long-anticipated thrillers like “Twilight: Moon Something Something Solstice Eclipse Horizon The Teenagers Who Will Watch This Are Too Stupid to Know What These Things Are Anyway” and “Marvel’s ‘Captain, Uh, Somewhere’: The Lost Avenger”. Inquires about whether or not Nicolas Cage will himself star in the new National Treasure movie he wrote as in the previous installments of the movie trilogy have been answered by executives at Walt Disney Pictures with a loud fit of laughter followed by several hours of wild, hysterical crying according to reliable sources contacted by the “Eye of Zatara”.

EDIT: After the posting of this article, the author (the Gatekeeper) also broke down into wild, hysterical crying while watching a self-made trailer for National Treasure III posted to Nicolas Cage’s YouTube account this morning. His grief was so great even a hot, delicious Chunky’s Pizza ordered by co-editor, The Watchman, was not enough to console him, and he ran screaming off into a field of “shiny three leaf clover” that turned out to be poison ivy.

~The Gatekeeper

[SATIRE] Mardi Gras Signs Up for Jenny Craig Program, Tired of Being Called “Fat Tuesday”

(Original Post: February 27, 2017)

New Orleans, LA- As the people of New Orleans revel in the excitement and tradition of their favorite late February celebration, the southeastern Louisiana area holiday known as “Mardi Gras”, tired of being referred to year after year by the insulting monicker of “Fat Tuesday”, has reportedly signed up with the popular Jenny Craig weight loss program in an attempt to slim down before next year’s festivities, even going so far as to release a “soy-and-tofu-based King Cake substitute” that supposedly has most of the taste of the popular Mardi Gras dessert, but without “all those fattening carbs and sugar”.

“Everyone seems to have just gotten used to me as ‘Fat Tuesday’. Everywhere I go, people smile and wave, calling out my name like it doesn’t kill me a little inside every time they do,” Mardi Gras explained to veteran CBC News reporter, Michael Hamden, during a short interview at New Orleans’ world famous Cafe du Monde yesterday. “But, a hundred years ago, they called me ‘Skinny Tuesday’, or ‘Mardi Maigre’, until a few decades of drinking and eating King Cake made me less of a parade personality and more of a parade float. Yet, as a holiday, I’m expected to just keep smiling, and act like everything’s alright 24/7, even though my identity is shattered and I’m dying inside. Can you imagine what it’s like to live forever like that?”

“Mardi Gras beads barely fit around my neck anymore.” the overweight holiday added, rather sadly, while also trying not to drool over the delicious beignets being eaten by Michael Hamden right in front of him. “I used to be a smiling Jester bringing happiness to everyone around me once a year. Now I’m just a sad clown faking my joy decade after decade while holding in the tears. The drinking helps, but there’s not enough alcohol in Louisiana to really water down what I’m feeling inside. It took me almost a century to admit it, but I need help…”

While many have come out in support of Mardi Gras’ decision to begin a weight loss program in order to return to a healthy lifestyle, other notable celebrities have surprisingly denounced Mardi Gras’ comments for various reasons, one of the most vocal of which is on-again, off-again spokeswoman for Jenny Craig, Kirstie Alley, who is rumored to have been dropped by Jenny Craig at the end of last year after gaining one hundred pounds while on their program, and whose role as the program’s spokeswoman may, according to some reports, pass in a few months to a hopefully slimmer Mardi Gras, assuming he has success with their plan.

“Mardi Gras doesn’t really want a healthy lifestyle. He just wants people to stop calling him fat.” Kirstie Alley announced to Timothy Gibbings from SLNC News in an early interview this morning in SLNC News’ New York studio. “That’s not going to be enough to really make a permanent change in his life. Trust me, I know. If Jenny had any sense in that tiny, anorexic head of hers, she’d wait for me to slim down again, and let me make more commercials for them myself, instead of trusting her future to a freaking green and gold court jester. A freaking green and gold court jester! I mean, things have worked well enough for me and Jenny for years. Why change it now? Just because some immortal personification of a celebration has got some self-esteem problems, she’s going to throw me to the curb like yesterday’s garbage?”

Surprisingly, TV talk show host, major media personality, and founder of the OWN television channel, Oprah Winfrey, has also come out in criticism of Mardi Gras, but for very different reasons.

“It’s like my good friend, Dr. Phil, always says, ‘You gotta love yourself before you can change yourself.’ I’ve been fat, skinny, and everything in-between, sometimes fluctuating hundreds of pounds in a single week, but do you see me getting down on myself? No, I’m always me, and Mardi Gras has got to learn to love himself for who he is, too, if he ever wants to live a productive endless existence as an existential conglomeration of Louisiana festival traditions. Love yourself before you can change yourself… wait, maybe that was actually from a fortune cookie.” Oprah Winfrey trailed off, mumbling to herself a few seconds while trying to determine the actual origin of her poignant quote. “Boy, I sure could go for a fortune cookie right now. ALRIGHT, WHO’S GOT A CHINESE TAKEOUT MENU? MAMA OPRAH IS HUNGRY!”

Unfazed by the negative feedback he’s received from modern celebrities, Mardi Gras has assured the public that he is dedicated to his goal of losing weight, and hopes to return to his previous skinny self no later than the year 2027.

“It’s going to be hard to cut down on the drinking, binge eating, and riotous revelry that have come to define me as a holiday,” Mardi Gras said in a public statement released on his personal website a few hours before this article’s posting on the ‘Eye of Zatara’. “But if a tangible manifestation of beads, booze, and laughter from the heart of Fleur-de-Lis country can’t lose this kind of weight with all the many resources at my disposal as an immortal holiday, what choice do normal people have at shedding a few pounds themselves with the timelines of their short human life spans? I want to give people hope that no matter how many states require them to weigh in at Truck Stops when traveling cross country… no matter how many buffets turn off the lights and pretend to be closed when they pull into the parking lot… no matter how many donut shops and pizzerias send refrigerated trucks on scheduled deliveries to their house every morning just to serve them breakfast… they can lose weight just like I can, if they really put their mind to it, and refuse, no matter what, to give up hope that they can change.”

“Unless they’re film maker Michael Moore.” Mardi Gras later added, with a shrug, in a live video post to his website. “Hey, I want to inspire people, not make them believe the impossible.”

In a related story, Terry Bradshaw has apparently signed up with Weight Watchers in a similar attempt to slim down, after the same swarm of falcons that previously carried off New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady at the end of last month’s Super Bowl attempted to abduct him the following week, but were unable to move him more than an inch or two off the ground before giving up and flying in mass to the nearest veterinary clinic for suspected hernia treatment.

[SATIRE] Patriots Defeat Falcons to Win Super Bowl – Lose to Actual Falcons in Parking Lot on Way to Hotel

(Original Post: February 6, 2017)

In a historic turnaround victory that went into overtime for the first time in Super Bowl history, the New England Patriots defeated the Atlanta Falcons 34 to 28 to claim their fifth Super Bowl victory in Super Bowl LI, despite being losing by as much as 25 points to the Falcons earlier in the game. After a riotous celebration in NRG Stadium in Houston, however, the New England Patriots left the sports arena to return home for a long, well-deserved rest in their hotel room only to be confronted in the parking lot by a cast of actual falcons bent on avenging their namesake in the NFL, swooping down on the unsuspecting players in mass like a Biblical plague.

“It was awful.” an unnamed player from the Patriots team was overheard explaining to Coach Bill Belichick several hours later once Animal Control and EMS had arrived on scene to assist with the unexpected zoological phenomenon. “There we were, exiting proudly out of the stadium as champions, Vince Lombardi Trophy in hand, when suddenly we saw what looked like a fast-moving cloud approach us from overhead. By the time we realized they were birds, we were too far away from the stadium entrance to make it back inside in time. After that, all I remember is being surrounded by feathers and talons. Feathers and talons. It was so terrible. And the screeching. No… I don’t think I’ll ever forget the screeching…”

Avian experts from across the globe have weighed in to explain the sudden, unexpected attack of what has been confirmed as nearly two thousand peregrine falcons descending at once upon the Super Bowl stadium in Houston, and viciously attacking one of the most successful NFL franchises in the history of football. Suggested causes have ranged on one hand of the scientific spectrum to unlikely but plausible instigators like global warming or habitat displacement to more radical and supernatural causes such as sorcery, telepathy, and the specific genetic breeding of “attack falcons” by anti-Patriot NFL fans unwilling to let the turnaround defeat of the Atlanta Falcons by the Patriots go unanswered.

“Well, I’m not really supposed to say things like this, but I’m pretty sure it was Lady Gaga.” Sports commentator and former NFL superstar Terry Bradshaw weighed in, in an exclusive interview with SLNC News’ Timothy Gibbings this morning. “Whatever it is that lady has become, it’s definitely not human. It wouldn’t surprise me if whatever… thing… she was doing with her body during the Halftime Show didn’t summon these birds out of whatever alternate universe of monsters that girl got her creepy blue leotard and face mask from. I’m serious about this. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t eaten in a good five minutes, and someone in Row 2, Seat 35 forgot to take their delicious hot dog with them when they left the stadium tonight.”

Terry Bradshaw then began drooling right on camera, before slipping, unknowingly, into a Homer Simpson accent.

“Mmmm… hot dog.”

While most of the details of the otherworldly falcon attack on the New England Patriots outside NRG Stadium have been more or less sorted out overnight by diligent reporters, one disturbing rumor has persisted since the incident despite any particular evidence to prove or disprove it, with Bill Belichick has thus far refusing to comment on the situation or even acknowledge the unusual question when asked directly by reporters.

“Where’s Tom Brady?” Roger Goodell was reportedly overheard saying to several of the New England Patriots players shortly after the falcon strike, while first aid kits were rushed out to the players to treat their litany of bloody, claw-shaped laceration wounds.

The players reportedly shrugged.

Since then, unconfirmed sources have posted a video to YouTube which supposedly shows the five time Super-Bowl-winning quarterback being carried away by a human-shaped mass of circling and flying peregrine falcons vaguely reminiscent in its silhouette to a skeletal, scythe-wielding Grim Reaper and cloak. The video shows the quarterback shouting desperately at the birds to let him down, before disappearing into the clouds over Houston crying “I know I wasn’t supposed to win! I know it was Atlanta’s time to shine! I remember all the warnings, and I tried my best to lose, I really did! I swear it! But, even when I’m intentionally trying to make as many bad passes and plays as possible, I’m still Tom Brady, Baby! Tom Bleeping Brady! I can’t lose even when I want to! Is another Patriots Super Bowl win really that much of an affront to nature itself?” The question went unanswered, as the supposed video of Tom Brady’s avian abduction cut off at that point. So far, no sight or sound has been heard of Tom Brady in the media since the incident, but neither has any trace of him been noticed hovering in the skies of Houston engulfed in birds, although small showers of salty, tear-like rain drops have been reported throughout the city of Houston since the falcon attack, a usual sign of Tom Brady’s presence in any given location, according to meteorologists familiar with the often weepy star quarterback.

As football fans throughout the world try to make sense of the results of Super Bowl LI, and also with the most terrifying video-recorded attack of black-winged birds since the days of Alfred Hitchcock, the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots are both left alone to lick their respective wounds, one figurative and one literal, each bearing the scars of one of the most interesting and eventful games in NFL history. Fans of Tom Brady may bear the biggest emotional burden right now, however, as they try to determine the whereabouts of the New England Patriots’ leading man, leaving some to take wildly to the streets of Houston tossing footballs high into the air hoping that Brady, if he’s up there, can catch them and weigh himself down enough with the balls to descend from his flying prison among the Grim Reaper of birds holding him hostage. Some have raised concern that the air in the balls may serve to counteract their purpose, however, working like balloons to only all the more keep the five time Super-Bowl-winning quarterback aloft in the warm air of Texas. Justin Hargrove, an avid Brady fan, and local Houston resident reported to CBC News he is not worried about such concerns, however, in a short interview with CBC’s Michael Hamden.

“I’m not big on science or nothing, but, frankly, I think the weight of the ball is more important to the equation here than the lightness of the air contained within it.” A possibly inebriated Mr. Hargrove explained, while brushing pork rind crumbs off of his salsa-stained lucky white Game Day T-shirt. “But, even if it DID turn out to be a problem, somehow… we all know Brady’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t have any trouble at all letting just enough air out of the balls to give him the edge he needs over the falcons.”

“I agree.” Terry Bradshaw interjected, having somehow wandered into the front lawn of Mr. Hargrove during his interview with CBC News’ Michael Hamden. “By the way, is that barbecue I smell?”