The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2025 Edition - Episode 25

One damp, grey day, Mogey and Smush could be found in a rowboat, doing what people normally do in a rowboat: cutting a meandering path through the water because they're facing the wrong direction. 

Their destination? A peculiar bakery called Doug H. Nuts' Bagels, Pies, & Cakes that supposedly only served you if you could perform 10 pushups or owned a moustache. Now, the former was a literal impossibility for Mogey and Smush: Mogey's arms were so short that his belly touched the ground even when his elbows were locked, and the term "pushups" made Smush recall Flintstones Push Ups Sherbet Treats so vividly that he inevitably slipped in a puddle of his own drool. 

The pals couldn't grow their own moustaches either, but they had found a way around that by visiting the finest periwig-maker in the community, a hostile young elf named Conrad Phoont who could make you a heck of a fake moustache if you could put up with his constant name-calling.

"Hang your 'secret rowing method!'" Smush exclaimed after their rowboat had described a massive circle in the middle of the lake at Mogey's hand. His tummy was rumbling with desire for bagels, pies, and indeed, cakes. "I'm taking over!"

"You'll have to take these oars from me if you want 'em, you gollumpus!" Mogey replied. 

"One person, and I mean one person only, calls me a gollumpus and gets away with it. That person is Conrad Phoont. And you, my friend, are no Conrad Phoont!" 

Smush lunged at his pal and commenced to pummel him with a vicious combination of open-palm slaps and closed-fist noogies. Mogey returned the favor with a flurry of monkey bites. 

"Oh no," Mogey panted when the fracas finally subsided. "I've lost my moustache overboard. We'll never get into Doug H. Nuts' now!"

"We've got bigger problems," Smush replied. "The oars are gone too."

Some say Mogey and Smush are floating out there still. But some are wrong. What really happened is that they paddled to shore with their hands, then sat on the front porch of Doug H. Nuts' blubbering so severely that Doug H. Nuts himself brought them a bagel, pie, and cake apiece. 

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2025 Edition - Episode 24

"What are you two numbskulls doing lurking around my front garden?" hollered Wizard Mike, Mogey and Smush's next door neighbor.

"We're not lurking!" Mogey insisted.

"Loitering, maybe," Smush acknowledged. "Lingering, certainly. But not lurking."

"Whatever you're doing, why are you doing it on my walk?" Wizard Mike asked.

"We were hoping you might have some work for us," Mogey rejoined.

"We're ten pieces of silver short for admission to the new zoetrope show at the civic center," said Smush.

"They've got a zoetrope of a monkey eating a cupcake that'll blow your mind, supposedly," Mogey added. 

Wizard Mike regarded the pals thoughtfully. He muttered as if trying to convince himself of something, then leafed through his day planner.

"Alright," he said at last. "If you weed my sunflower patch, I shall pay you the sum of ten pieces of silver."

Mogey and Smush glanced at the sunflower patch, which appeared to have only a single weed growing in it. 

"Make that ten pieces of silver," Smush negotiated.

"Deal," replied Wizard Mike. 

The pals approached the sunflower patch.

"This'll be the easiest ten pieces of silver we've ever made," said Mogey, gripping the offending plant. He pulled and the weed came up easily, but its roots seemed to be longer than its aboveground parts. Mogey was standing now, weed in hand, but the roots still trailed down into the soil. He pulled and he pulled, dragging up yard after yard of roots, but still he had not reached the bottom.

"I probably should've mentioned," said Wizard Mike, striding over with his nose still in his day planner, "how that there is a Neverending Knotweed. It was planted - I suspect - by my mortal enemy, Warlock Greg. But do your best, boys, alright?"

Hours later, Mogey stood beside a coil of knotweed root stacked twelve feet tall. His hands were raw, his back ached, his Kiss the Cook t-shirt was filthy. 

"Fight through the pain, Moge-man!" Smush encouraged. "Surely we're almost there by now. Just imagine how cool it's going to be to watch that monkey eating that cupcake!"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2025 Edition - Episode 23

There was no other way to say it: Mogey and Smush were lost. In a classic spelunk-gone-wrong, they'd gotten turned around in the Spookum Caves. Then Mogey had accidentally eaten their backup candles (assuming, as one does, that they were very chewy sausages), so their only source of light was now down to a guttering stump. 

"Look!" Smush exclaimed, a modicum of hope entering his voice for the first time in hours. "Is that light up ahead?"

"By gum, I think you're right!" Mogey replied ecstatically. 

The pals entered a cavern of glowing green just as their candle gave out. Seated in the center of the chamber were two gnarly goblins: their faces knobbled, their knuckles warty, their feet pruny from how many sick waves they'd surfed in their careers.

"Who goes there?" asked the first goblin, pointing ominously.

"It's us," said Mogey, "Mogey and Smush."

"I see," said the second goblin. "Can I interest you in some grilled cheese sandwiches?" 

"Don't touch a thing, Mogey," Smush urged. "It's a well-known fact that if you eat any food cave goblins offer, you'll be magically imprisoned in their cavern for a score of years."

"Interesting," Mogey replied. He turned back to the goblin duo. "And could I expect a reliable supply of said grilled cheese sandwiches over the course of this 20 year period?"

"As many as you can eat," the first goblin confirmed. The second goblin held out a plate heaped high with buttery, crispy grilled cheeses.

"Tell you what," Mogey said, taking a massive chomp out of the top sandwich. "You make it a life sentence and you've got yourself a deal."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2025 Edition - Episode 22

The altercation started in the schoolyard during recess, when Mogey and a young man by the name of Beezums Borg each wanted to use the swing that went extra-high. It continued in Social Studies class, when Beezums Borg landed (in what was, candidly, a world-class shot) a spitball on Mogey's ear. And now, behind the bleachers after the final bell, it had truly come to a head. 

A small crowd surrounded the two belligerents, who were circling each other, issuing disses of epic proportions. 

"Are you actually attempting to grow a moustache?" Beezums Borg sallied. "Or is your face just as dirty as your fingernails?"

"Neither!" Mogey rejoined, while attempting to subtly wipe chocolate ice cream off his upper lip.

"Get 'im, Moges!" Smush encouraged his pal.

"And anyway that's pretty rich coming from a fellow with a giraffe neck!" Mogey added. 

The students gasped, but Beezums Borg smiled.

"Oh you just wait," he said. "You just wait until my big brother hears. You're dead meat when he finds out what you said."

"Who's your brother?" Mogey mocked. "I know he's not--"

But Mogey stopped in his tracks, because at that moment, "Grr" Raffy Borg, the leader of the world's first all-giraffe biker gang, rounded the bleachers. He was bedecked in a black leather jacket, spiked at the shoulders and with "The Spotted Demons" stitched across the chest. 

"Hmm?" said Beezums Borg. "You know my brother's not who now?"

"'Grr' Raffy is your... brother?" Mogey said with a gulp.

"Sure is. I was adopted."

"You were adopted?" Mogey asked.

"By giraffes?" Smush added. 

"He sure was," came a voice from behind them. 

Mogey and Smush whirled to see The Spotted Demons' two most legendary lieutenants, who also happened to be "Grr" Raffy's parents: Tall Celeste and "Even Taller" Barnabus. Tall Celeste tossed her famous sharpened horns menacingly, and "Even Taller" Barnabus cracked the knuckles of his front hooves.

"Now," said "Grr" Raffy Borg, who had covered the distance to the crowd of students in a pair of his enormous strides. "What'd you say about my baby bro's neck?"