"What," I said. "Am I not going to like?"

Sneezer frowned. "It's more dramatic if I actually show you."

"I'm human," I said. "I like my life to be drama free. Could you please spare me the grief and just tell me the bad news?"

"I'm sorry, Drew," Sneezer said. "I'm a doodle. It just won't play."

I rolled my eyes. "All right, all right. Show me this...`bad news'."

Suddenly Jessica's fat birdie popped out of Vanessa's half finished sundae, shaking ice cream off its feathers.

The fowl looked me in the eyes like it had something terribly important to say, then busted out with the opening to Long Tall Sally.

I glanced at the creature with slight annoyance. "Did she ditch you too, buddy?"

The creature replied by singing Solitaire by Peter Ceterra.

I squinted at him. "Wait. Weren't there more than two of you guys?"

That got me The Backstabbers by the O'Jays.

I followed Sneezer outside, only to find out that our talking classic roadster had driven off.

The mouse yanked off the top of a garbage can, throwing cans, food wrappers and banana peels on the sidewalk.

"What are you doing?" I hissed.

"This is the only way across the street without getting hit by a car."

He sat the can back down, peering inside.

"So you're going to roll across the street?" I said with skepticism. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I've seen a few cartoons in my day. Doesn't that ordinarily result in you getting thrown back to the side you started from?"

Sneezer didn't answer.

After scooting the can back and forth a few times, he said, "Aha!"

Of course the bird on my shoulder responded by singing Take On Me, a song authored by Aha.

The mouse jumped inside the trash can and disappeared.

"You've got to be kidding!" I groaned as I leaned over the receptacle.

I did a double take. I was looking down at a staircase.

"It's just like Inspector Gadget!" I muttered.

My bird whistled the theme song to the show.

I just rolled my eyes and wiggled down the narrow opening.

It all seemed fine until I reached the bottom, where I had to kind of turn around and squish myself down to fit in the tight little compartment.

The stairs led to a narrow little crawl space. Since I couldn't open my finger and turn it into a flashlight, I could only fumble blindly in the dark until I caught a glimpse of the mouse's brightly colored uniform pants.

The mouse had stopped in the tunnel, refusing to budge for an entire minute.

If he hadn't been wearing that outfit, I would have tried to steal back my wallet.

"What," I sighed in frustration. "What now?"

"Shhh," Sneezer said. "This requires concentration. Crawl ahead at the wrong time, and you might end up on the same side, in a lady's restroom, or a manhole under that busy street. Maybe even inside a police station."

So we waited.

"Now," Sneezer said, crawling quickly ahead.

We popped out a blue newspaper dispensing machine in front of a hotel.

I scrambled out onto its sidewalk, staring up at a fancy black awning and red carpet. A sign and the gold letters on the awning told me we'd arrived in the right place.

Sneezer tugged my arm and tried to stop me, but I marched up the carpet, pausing in front of an elegantly dressed doorman. "I'm looking for someone here," I said. "Another noid. Her name's Jessica."

"Yes," the man sneered. "I suppose you are."

I groaned, attempting to step around him, but he just zipped back and forth like the Roadrunner, blocking my path.

"I'm sorry, sir," the man said. "We have a dress code."

I looked down at my outfit and sighed. "Fine. Wait a minute."

I stepped into a nearby alleyway, changed into my funeral clothes, and tried it again.

The doorman, upon seeing my outfit, again said, "I'm sorry, sir. We have a dress code."

"Does this...dress code have anything to do with me being a noid?"

The man just turned his nose up at me. "If you must ask, you'll never know."

I sighed, frowning at the mouse.

"It's not what you wear, it's who you know," he whispered, tugging my sleeve.

I followed the mouse into the back alleyway, to a window beneath a fire escape.

After stacking up a pile of boxes to get a good view, he wiped a spot on the window clean, and I could see a large carpeted ballroom with a big golden chandelier, and one of those `big band' groups like you see on I Love Lucy or Lawrence Welk, complete with decorated stage shields, neckties, and a tuba player.

Presently the musicians played an instrumental version of Careless Whisper by George Michael.

A classy crowd occupied the carpet. Wealthy people from Tintin comics, a few maybe from the Bruce Wayne segments of Batman, and a bunch of well dressed people from various Japanese cartoons and serious Sunday paper comics. Mary Worth, Brenda Starr, etcetera. I'm ashamed to say it, but I recognized a few faces from Beverly Hills Teens and Gem. I even saw the blue and red rabbits from Tiny Toons pretending to be `The Vanderbunnies.'

As I squinted at the crowd of toons, trying to locate my human girlfriend, I suddenly noticed a dog in a trenchcoat and shark toothed bunny peering through the glass next to me.

"Mind if we look too?" the dog said.

"Actually yes," I replied. "Yes I do mind."

Sneezer took a large silver cannon shaped device out of his backpack, blasting the dog with an energy beam.

The dog exploded, presumably to later reappear in a spooky castle surrounded by ghosts. Sneezer did the same thing to the dog.

We returned to our spying, watching Sailor Moon's Tuxedo Mask and a bunch of royal types from He-Man.

And then I saw them.

Jessica had her arms wrapped around a guy that looked like a kangaroo from one of those Tank Girl comics. Brown, long eared, kind of a homely dog-like face, but handsomely muscled and clad in a tuxedo.

The stranger had an eyepatch, and his suit top's neckline plunged far enough to expose a large portion of his hairy chest.

Jessica now wore a sparkling, shimmering translucent gown, a dress resembling the one the damsel wore on Dragon's Lair, through which I could clearly see the same lingerie piece she'd been wearing before we'd entered the cartoon realm.

The two gazed into each other's eyes, smiling as they danced to the song.

"She's just having fun," I said.

Sneezer shook his head. "I think there's more to it than that."

I stared in shock as the kangaroo's muzzle tenderly pressed against Jessica's lips, and she kissed back.

"Okay, so she's snogging a kangaroo," I said with a frown.

The kangaroo's hand slid down around Jessica's hips, fingers curling around her buttocks, but she didn't seem to mind. She just kissed him a little more strongly.

"Well, shit," I muttered.

Booga, or whoever he was, whispered something in her ear, causing her to giggle and nod.

The two of them disappeared into the crowd, away from my line of sight. I would have killed for Skeletor's crystal ball.

"How'd you find out about this?" I asked.

Sneezer gave me an embarrassed grin. "I was watching them while you were...enjoying Vanessa's company."

He dug out a stack of photographs, the top one showing Jessica and her kangaroo date in the ice cream shop, holding hands as they gazed lovingly in each other's eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me about this?" I said. "Or show me this? They were like, what, behind me the whole time?"

"You were busy," he said. "I didn't want to interrupt."

He turned to the next photo, which was identical to the first, then the next, which didn't look any different than the first two.

"What?"

"It's a flip book," he said, turning the photos in a rapid succession.