Introducing The Great Grando and Savannah

Yellow Mama 2016

The audience is small and almost attentive, but it’s early. The Great Grando refuses to believe his act is getting stale and needs new blood, even though he’s constantly being told by his wife, Savannah, all the club owners, and his agent, Morty. (Any agent not named Morty is worthless.)

It’s Friday night at the Elks Club and Grando’s at the bar waiting for the room to fill a bit before going on.  Grando the Great (he’s trying something new, so see, he does listen), resplendent in his threadbare tuxedo, sits at the bar sharpening his knives on a steel while drinking shots of Cherry Herring. Finally, he goes backstage and waits for his introduction.

The boom box belts out Ethel Merman singing There’s No Business Like Show Business and, hand-in-hand, Grando walks out with Savannah as the curtain parts. They bow. He lays out his knives on a table after showing them to the audience and smacking them together over a mic so they can hear the reality of it all. He helps his wife onto the wheel; arms and legs hooked in an “X” formation, and then struts to his mark.

Grando nods, and a volunteer picked from the now-almost-full-and-chatty- audience spins the wheel as if she’s on a game show. Round and round Savannah goes. Grando tries to blink away the Cherry Herring, seeing two Savannas in one.

With swagger and confidence, he throws his first knife.

He now has the new blood everyone’s been asking for, as the volunteer lies writhing, moaning in agony, just feet from the wheel, as Savannah continues spinning.

Grando picks up knife number two.