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On a recent cold and rainy Sunday afternoon, the Great Hoboes all made a trek from their respective warm holes to Wade, Jacob, and Benni's pad in Astoria to watch Wrestlemania XX. Marlene and I walked into the the shrieks of Wade, as he critiqued and prepared his spare ribs. Mmmm...delish! After a few beverages, we all got into the grub. After a few more beverages, Wade and I began jamming - he on electric guitar playing Black Sabbath, me on banjo playing Earl Scruggs. Travis joined in, before bailing out after realizing that he couldn't compete with our cacophony. We call ourselves The Johnny Clash. Look for our first album, Lepetomaine Plays the Mouth Harp, in stores...well, whenever we find an A&R man drunk enough to sign us... After some more beer, somebody mumbled something about John Kerry liking Deep-Fried-Battered-Twinkies a whooole lot... That's when the real trouble began...

	Zak, Shawn, Travis, and Stirling begin the great experiment...
	A flurry of clawing hands surrounds Travis, in hopes of trying the first deep fat fried Twinkie. Stirling tasted it, and he said it was good. "Good" in a practically Biblical sense. He, Zack, Jim, and others then took off to get two grocery bags full of junk food to add to the pile. Little Debbie Nutty Bars, Oreos, Chocolate Chip Pop Tarts... *sigh* It was about to get ugly...
	Travis demonstrates the process of preparing these delectables... 1)Bread your goodie in flour...
	2) Batter the bugger in beer batter. Mmmm...beeeeer...
	3) Fry the lil' monster in as many inches of Crisco as you can handle...
	Mark interrupted things to voice what we were all thinking, "My god, you cretins! What are you preparing to do to yourselves?!? Repent now! Alas, Babylon!"
	4) Remove from the fat, and then cool...
	A serious discussion was held in between wrestling matches, regarding what dessert would be battered and fried, next. Mark just kept shaking his head, saying, "Jesus, jesus, jesus..."
	Karl told Mark that he was a complete wussy if he wouldn't at least try a bite. "What kind of bravery does that exhibit from a future world leader?" Karl asked. "Okay, I'll try a bite," Mark said.
	Travis made the treat positively Presidential by putting Redi-Whip on it...Mmm...Just the way John Kerry likes it...
	A bite, a gag, and then another bite...Mark agreed with Stirling...It was good. He then decided that he better leave before further sullying himself. "My body is my temple," Mark said. "So, can I get an MGD for the trip home?"
	How many bites does it take to get to the center of a coronary, Mr. Owl?
	After Stirling and Mark's resounding endorsements, orders were taken. The amount of grease spatter on the floor made the kitchen positively treacherous.
	An oreo is prepared.
	An oreo is fried.
	The rough guesstimate of the fat content of each one of these mutated cookies was calculated to be about 8 KG of pure unadulterated trans fat.
	Zak began working on his second Oreo, and paused mid-bite. He wasn't sure if he could continue. All of a sudden, a number of green faces were sighted all around the room... Was it the reappearance of the WWE's octagenarian female wrestler The Fabulous Moolah in a onesie, or was it all of the too-good goodies? Uh oh...
	Some folks were lucky and felt no ill after effects...
	...others were not.
	The iron-gut legions formed an assembly line to keep up with the tragic amount of demand.
	Didn't that crazy doctor on the Simpsons once say, "Use the paper towel test to see if you should eat something. If you rub your food on the paper towel and the grease makes it transparent, that means you should eat it!"
	Still others just focused on the important things - wrestling and beverages!
	During a lull, Karl and Wade decided to reenact the Undertaker's reapparance in the ring.
	Stirling abruptly stood up in the middle of Wade and Karl's match, and said, "Tyler! Come with me!" We slowly walked into the kitchen, him clutching his belly the whole way. "You OK?" I asked. "I...I had too much of those fried...oh shit, the room is spinning..."
	"Stay with me," Stirling said. "If something happens, I want you to document the punishment for my transgressions..." I obliged, and stood with him against the door jamb. "You know," he said, "I've heard of surgeons who just kind of stopped what they were doing, looked down and said, 'Oh my God, I'm cutting into human flesh...'. I had one of those moments of realization a minute ago. My body looked at me putting a fried pop tart in my mouth, and it said, 'What the hell are you doing to me?!?" I think Stirling may have said it best.
	And Travis looked upon the nearly-puking crowd, and said, "What have I done?!? Why? Why did I begin the frying experiment? Why?!?" Okay, maybe that's not quite what he said, but if Roger Corman had written the script of that afternoon, that's kind of what Travis would have said.
	Meanwhile, back in the Living Room...
	Wade revels in his victory.
	Wade stares right into the camera, and gives the Great Hobo Death Cry. It's what everyone's stomach was doing at that exact moment. It was quite a day...quite a night...

A week or so after the debacle, I met the Unknown Hobo for beverages. I told him of our trials and travails, and he laughed. "That reminds me of a story from when I was your age. It was when I was in Vietnam. A scrawny young guy crawled out of the waves on the beach at Nha Trang - this beautiful city that had been used by the French as a resort - and he just clutched the sand. He had no business being in that rough surf; he was maybe ninety-five pounds. Furthermore, he was quite visibly hung over. Anyway, as he clung to the earth for safety, I heard him say in a twangy Southern drawl, "It is horrible...what we do to ourselves..." Indeed it is, Mr. Unknown Hobo. Indeed it is.