Pine Nuts with McAvoy Layne: The New Year’s Botox party
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Mon, 12/27/2021 - 1:53pm
Dateline Saudi Arabia, where 40 Botox enhanced camels were recently disqualified from a beauty contest. Personally, I feel sorry for those camels, as I had a personal experience with Botox myself that I’m almost too embarrassed to talk about.
It all started when I received a telephone invitation to a New Year’s Bo-Sox party, and being a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, I responded that I would be there in full uniform. My idea of happiness is sitting in Fenway Park with a Fenway Frank in one hand and a Blatz beer in the other. So I was somewhat surprised, but pleasantly so, when I arrived at that Bo-Sox party as the only man in the house.
I had no idea there were so many lady Bo-Sox fans.
I was handed a glass of champagne and asked by the pretty hostess if I was there for the Bo-Sox party.
“You bet I am!” I boasted. “They’re eight to one right now to win the Series, and with nine guys that can hit above three hundred, well, you know, that’s money in the bank!”
She looked at me with a blank stare, and said, “You should have your mouth done, Dahling, so you don’t look so oblivious.”
“My mouth?” I asked, “What’s the matter with my mouth?”
“A little shot will do you wonders,” she offered with a smile.
Well, I hadn’t done a straight shot since college, but I figured what the heck, a Bo-Sox party is a Bo-Sox party!
While waiting in line, I got talking to the nice lady behind me about some Dutch engineers who were developing a computerized machine that will allow a cow to milk herself, when suddenly I realized it was my turn for a straight shot. I took a seat, laid my head back, closed my eyes, opened my mouth as instructed, but instead of a nice warm mouthful of whiskey, well, instead, I felt a bee sting.
Sitting straight upright, I shouted, “Sweet mother of pearl!” I wanted to say something stronger but there were ladies present.
I stood up and started to announce to everybody that this was the year we were going to beat the Curse of the Bambino, but my lower lip went limp, and I couldn’t talk worth a darn. So I took a stab at some Ahi that was passing by on a cracker, but that plan did not work out either, as my lower lip had stopped working altogether.
Well, I was ready to leave anyway, so I sought out the hostess to thank her. She took a look at me, yanked a tablecloth off an empty table and handed it to me.
“What’s this for?” I asked.
“Poor baby, you’re drooling, take the tablecloth with you, Dahling. You’ll be fine in the morning.”
As it turned out, that New Year’s Bo-Sox party, to my embarrassment, was actually a New Year’s Botox party, and now, having learned the hard way, I know the difference.
Here’s to learning, education, and teaching ourselves in 2022.
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— For more than 30 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American."
