Disclaimer: I do not own I-Poods, the bowels of hell, Google, or pink, sprinkly doughnuts.
AN: Every single tiny character trait in the series has been overdone, exploited, and butchered to the nth level. That's right the nth level. I went a lil bit overboard on Zahi, I admit, but hopefully you will laugh quietly to yourself. You know what I'm talking about. Like when you type LOL, but you don't really mean it. Ya, that's what I'm going for. Perhaps, if I get lucky, even a slightly bemused chortle. I think my dry sense of humor is more apparent in this sole chapter than in my other humor stories combined. I have just realized that this author's note may in fact become longer than my actual fic. I should probably stop typing now. But I can't. Type. Type. Typetty type type.
Oh, and yes, the ridiculous comments after Zahi's actions are intentional. Although I'm not sure why.
OoOoOoOoOoOo
"Is the camera on?"
"Yes, Oh Mighty Dark One."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, quite sure."
"You realize that if you are lying to me, I will send you unto the BOWELS OF HELL!"
"It's on."
"What's that blinky light mean then?"
"It means that it's on, sir."
"Don't use that insolent tone with me. If you ever use it again, I will place razorblades on your eyelashes, I will tie your shoelaces together, I will force-feed you cactus spines, I will make endless yo' momma jokes, I will-"
"Sir. It's on."
Lambert sent his cameraman, Tymmie, a dark look, but crossed his legs and straightened his lovely periwinkle shirt that he was becoming quite attached to. "Fine. How's my hair?"
Tymmie bit back a smirk, "It compliments your hot pink eye shadow perfectly, my Lord."
"Silence!" He barked, pointing a finger at him. No, not the index finger.
"Well, that was rude." Tymmie gasped, slightly offended by the obscene gesture. That was so undignified.
There was yet another pause, before Lambert asked, "Is the camera on?" Again.
"YES! IT IS ON! ONONONONONONONONON! ON!" Tymmie cried, irritation filling him to the brink, akin to a pimple about to burst.
Lambert looked at him in shock, "Well, now, there's no need to be immature." He paused and looked at him, "Where's your lovely off-beige 'Mornings with Lambert!' tee shirt? I specifically asked that all crew members wear it."
Tymmie grit his teeth, "I didn't like it."
"Why didn't you like the shirt? I spent hours slaving over Google to find the perfect graphic for it!"
"It's stupid."
"It is not stupid! It is art! Ahr-hart!"
"No self-respecting person would wear it."
"'Self-respecting'? Haven't I destroyed all self-respect?" Lambert queried.
"Just your own, sir."
Their battle of witlessness was interrupted, however, when Aura came in, a pink box in her hands, "Oh-ho LAMBCHOPS!" She shrilled.
Both Lambert and Tymmie winced in pain as their eardrums started to bleed.
"What is it woman!" He demanded.
She giggled and hunched her shoulders, "I brought doughnuts! With sprinkles!"
Lambert smacked his palm against his face, "Doughnuts! DOUGHNUTS! Any fool to eat doughnuts would be unworthy to call himself a man-" His face fell when he realized his entire staff, i.e. Tymmie, was currently biting into a huge, pink-frosted, sparkly sprinkled, doughnut.
"I am surrounded by ineptness." He muttered to himself before he yelled louder, "TYMMIE!"
Tymmie began chewing his doughnut slower, turning around cautiously to face him. There was a gob of frosting on his nose, "Meff Fosh?"
"Start the damn show."
He swallowed, pink sprinkles sticking to his face like a non-threatening stubble, "You got it." He said, swiveling the camera to face him.
Lambert smoothed his hair, cleared his throat, and cracked his knuckles.
"Ok, you're on in five…four…three…two…" Tymmie counted down.
"Good Luck Lambchops!" Aura cried.
"Don't address me when you're off set!" Lambert protested, "Damn you woman, you've just ruined the entire cut!"
"Ohmygosh! I'm so sorry!" She apologized, loudly.
"That's it! First the stupid ugly 'Homeboy' shirt, then the makeup, after that the doughnuts, and now this! Oh you are so being thrown into the pit of snakes after we get home missy,-" Lambert raved, his repressed anger finally freeing itself. Like a bird. An angry bird.
"Sir, we're rolling." Tymmie reminded him.
"Oh," Lambert recovered, his fury disappearing when his talk show was threatened, "Sorry, remind me to edit that out."
"It's a live show."
"Damn!" Anger had returned.
Lambert quickly stiffened and tried to give a cheesy 'Hello I'm a talk show host and I'm friendly all the time!' grin ™, but it was off-set by his crooked teeth and the fact that his eyes tended to bulge a bit when he smiled. "Hello world!" He chirped, "Welcome to the very first episode of Mornings with Lambert!"
He paused, as if actually expecting a response from the, let's face it, nonexistent audience. There was silence, until Tymmie muttered a "Hello Lambert" back in monotone.
"Great!" He beamed, clasping his hands together awkwardly. "Well, we have a very special show in store for you today!" He grinned maliciously, "Today's theme is….Stanton: Pain in the Ass."
Aura looked at Tymmie and whispered into his ear, "Can he say ass?"
Lambert gestured to an adjacent couch, "Our first guest is someone you all may know. He's a sauve, smooth-talking Frenchman, and more importantly, he hates Stanton with all of his guts. Please put your hands together for Zahi!"
Aura sent a rather enthusiastic round of applause as Zahi gracefully walked onto the set, dressed to kill and sending dazzling smiles to everyone in a five-mile radius.
Everyone in a five mile radius: Drool.
Zahi winked to the people offset, aka, Aura and Tymmie who were both looking rather comical as they had suddenly acquired heart-shaped eyes.
"He is gorgeous!" Aura whispered, fanning herself.
"Look at the luster and sheen of his hair!" Tymmie squealed, then he suddenly began to realize who it was he was actually talking about, "It's um, totally girly." He lamely covered.
Lambert slowly turned his neck to look at his guest, who had made himself at home casually leaning against the sofa, shaking his head of beautiful hair to fall just-oh-so-perfect in his eyes.
As Lambert's head turned, it made an odd noise like nails on a chalkboard and his psychotic grin was still firmly in place. Also, his right eye was beginning to twitch slightly, "Hello," He looked at his note cards, "Zy-hi. Zay-hee. Zah-hi. Zehheh." He groaned, "How the hell do you pronounce your name anyways?"
Zahi ran a nimble hand through his lustrous and sheeny locks, and strange, angst-ridden music began to play in the background. Although no one knew from where, as Lambert had forgotten to pay the electric bill and he sure as hell wasn't about to buy one of those I-Pood things.
"You pronounce my name, like you would pronounce the feeling in your heart after viewing something of magnificent beauty, or how you would pronounce the joy in your eyes at seeing a spiritually moving or poignant painting. My name is like an art form all its own, for it takes on the life and feeling of the one who pronounces it." A solitary tear fell from his eye as if he were experiencing a tormenting flashback.
Lambert just stared at him, and the room fell silent. "Well," He began awkwardly, "That's quite silly."
"It is not silly!" Zahi protested, bowing his head and artistically drawing his hand down his face, "It is…my passion."
"Uh-huh." Lambert said awkwardly, shuffling his note cards.
The two stared at each other.
It was intense.
Lambert shuffled his note cards again.
"Anyways, let's discuss today's topic, and how it applies to you!" Lambert beamed happily.
Zahi rose an eyebrow with the majesty of a sunrise, "Mais oui. What was it again?"
Lambert cleared his throat and glared into the camera lens, ominously thunder cued in the background, "Why Stanton, the most stupid creature in existence, is the biggest pain in the ass."
Zahi waved his hand dismissively with the flourish of a butterfly flapping its wings, "Ah, that. To be completely honest with you Lambert, he doesn't really bother me that much."
Lambert spit out a mouthful of hot coffee he had suddenly acquired for humor's sake, "WHA-!"
Tymmie, sensing that it was the right thing to do, then ran a laugh track.
Both Zahi and Lambert, who had brown coffee dribbling down his periwinkle shirt, stared at him in amazement as phony, pre-recorded laughs echoed in the room.
Tymmie shrugged, "I sensed it was the right thing to do."
Lambert mumbled something that sounded suspiciously similar to 'pit of snakes', and turned his attention back to his guest, "Since when has Stanton stopped making you want to plunge a power drill through your left temple!"
Zahi scratched his head with the mystique of a summer waterfall, "For a while now, where have you been?" He tapped a finger to his chin with the ponderment of a philosopher, "But that was a powerful use of mental imagery. That whole power drill example."
Lambert blushed a wee bit, "Why thank you! I'm always trying to come up with colorful imagery for my vaguely hostile outbursts!"
"You are a natural," Zahi complimented with the benevolence of a courtier.
Suddenly Lambert realized that he too had fell into the tangled web of Zahi's dazzling artistic charm. "Um, anyway, back to why we both hate Stanton."
"Actually-"
"Yes, yes I know. Why don't you tell me why you've decided to stop hating Stanton with the intensity of a thousand suns?" Lambert cut him off.
Zahi cleared his throat like a plumber would remove a hair clog from a pipe, and by that I mean with a professional elegance, "It all started about a week after that embarrassing 'Serena' episode-"
"Ah, yes, I've had my fair share of those." Lambert commented.
"And I was much like you. Pathetic, demented, driven to insanity by barely concealed fury, failing miserably with all poorly conceived plots of revenge, with bad breath, no feeling of morality whatsoever, and poor fashion sense."
Lambert's eyes narrowed. Sure the shirt was ugly, but it wasn't that bad.
"Alors, one day, I was planning an amusing trap for our favorite Prince of the Night that involved a pack of carnivorous zebras, when Stanton approached me." Zahi continued with the mastery of a storyteller.
"And what happened next?" Lambert asked with genuine curiosity.
"He came up to me, and he…he," Zahi took a deep breath like a monk in meditation, "He gave me this." Slowly, Zahi reached into his trendy pocket and withdrew a folded up piece of paper.
"Is it a death threat?" Lambert queried.
"Non."
"Anthrax?"
"Non."
"Some type of explosive?"
"Non."
"Treasure map?"
Zahi shook his head like a palm tree sways in a gentle breeze, "It is…It is this!" He exclaimed, unfolding it like an origamist.
Lambert almost had a heart attack when he saw what was on the paper.
It was…
It was…
It was a finger painting.
Lambert cocked his head to the side, "I'm not quite sure I get this…"
"Look at it! Look at the picture!"
Lambert squinted, and barely made out the poorly painted stick figures. One of them was angsty with blonde hair, and the other one was angsty with dark hair. They appeared to be hugging each other in brotherhood. Underneath the, er, vision was the following message:
Sorry I Made U Sad Feeling!
We Be Friends Now, K?
-StAnToN
Pee Ess: Ur SO much kewler than Lambert! Like MEGA kewlz.
"That infernal-!" Lambert seethed, his face matching his shirt as he forgot to breath.
"Of course, after that charming and, dare I say it, rather professional masterpiece, how could I stay mad? So I called off of the carnivorous zebras, and ever since then we've been BFFs! We do everything together! In fact, yesterday we flew homemade kites we had made out of plastic bags at the beach!" Zahi rambled.
Lambert's nostrils began to flare, "Get out." He hissed.
"Excuse me?" Zahi asked with the confusion of a doe-eyed deer.
"Out of my studio!" Lambert stated, "No friend of that idiot Prince of the Night gets to sit on the couch!"
"But it is such a comfy couch-"
"Out!" Lambert demanded.
Zahi sighed with the defeat of a soon-to-be-executed gladiator, "D'accord. I shall go." He said, regretfully leaving the comfy couch behind him. Looking wistfully as he turned to go at that beautiful, twenty-year old couch.
As soon as he left, Lambert crossed his arms in front of his chest and began to sulk.
"Um, Lambey-Poo?" Aura whispered from off-set.
"Not now!" He whined, "I'm having a scene."
"Uh, that's all well and good sugar cookie dumpling pie, but now you have no guest." Aura reminded him calmly.
Lambert stood up and kicked the couch, "Tymmie can be the guest! I don't want to be on television no more!"
Tymmie's face brightened.
"Do you want to go to the park and feed the ducks?" Aura supplied, knowing that was the sure-fire way to cheer Lambert up.
He nodded, "Uh-huh."
"Ok, let's go feed the ducks." Aura coaxed, getting Lambert to follow her out of the studio, which was really just an attachment to the janitor's closet.
As soon as they had left, Tymmie looked around carefully. Cautiously, he made his way over to the desk, "Um, hello." He said awkwardly, looking into the camera. He stared at Lambert's coffee mug, and wrapped his fingers delicately around the handle, "So, um, what's up with that whole Nick and Jessica thing? I mean, c'mon man, she's totally way out of his league…."
And thus marked the ending of one evil incarnate's television career, and the beginning of another's.
The end?