The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2024 Edition - Episode 30

 Mogey and Smush huddled around the shining copper kettle anxiously, for it was well into the hot cocoa hour, and they'd yet to consume any hot cocoa. 

"Come onnnnn," Mogey urged the kettle. 

"Haven't you ever heard the old saying 'a watched pot never boils?'" Smush asked wisely.

"'Course," Mogey replied, "but I believe I've proven time and again that adage doesn't apply to me. No, for ol' Mogey, part of the fun of making hot cocoa is outfoxing this wily cauldron." 

"Why do I put myself in these situations?" Smush groaned. 

Mogey, ignoring his pal, said "what'll it be today then, kettle, old chum? I tried begging to no avail. Is it a bit of firmer encouragement you need? Boil that water now, or I'LL MELT YOU DOWN AND MAKE YOU INTO A TOILET FLAPPER CHAIN!"

The kettle stood motionless. It certainly did not boil. Smush put his head in his hands.

"No luck with threats, eh?" Mogey muttered. "What about striking a deal? Tell you what: boil now, and you'll get a double dose of copper polish this evening, plus once a month we'll get our hot cocoa from Zaxby's and give you a day off."

And whether enough time had simply passed for the water to hit its boiling point or the kettle found the promise of 12 vacation days per year too tempting to pass up, it immediately began to whistle. Smush looked like a convicted lotion thief whose appeal has just been denied, but who has also learned that there's a new hot cocoa machine in the prison commissary. 

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2024 Edition - Episode 29

 "Who's ready for dessert?" asked Auntie Bickle.

"Oh I couldn't possibly," said Pepper Fernandez, the first of three very polite triplets Mogey had invited for dinner aboard his favorite aunt's houseboat. 

"I'm far too full from that succulent meal," said Popper Fernandez, the second triplet.

"Perhaps just a cup of coffee?" said Bully the Frog, the third Fernandez triplet.

"WE ARE!" chorused Mogey and Smush hungrily.

"Please tell me dessert is what I think it is," Mogey added, looking hopefully to his Aunt.

"Of course, dearie," Auntie Bickle confirmed, reappearing with a steaming pan. "My world-famous monkey bread!"

Predictably, Mogey and all three Fernandez triplets immediately tucked in with gusto. Smush, however, hesitated. 

"Not hungry, dearie?" Auntie Bickle inquired.

"Starved," Smush replied. "But I'm not so sure about monkey bread. Is it actually made from monkeys?"

"Oh ho ho ho," Mogey chortled, slapping his friend on the back. "Don't be silly, Smush. You've got it all wrong! The bits of real monkey are the very thing that make monkey bread so delectable."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2024 Edition - Episode 28

When the day came for Smush to unveil his grand machine, the only ones present (or so he thought) were Mogey, a half dozen nesting hens, and their next door neighbor, a rock creature named Stone Baloney. 

Mogey privately believed the reason for such a modest ceremony was Smush's apprehension that the machine would fail. On the other hand, his pal wore a cape - and an ostentatious cape at that - to the occasion and spoke boldly to the onlookers:

"Behold!" Smush thundered. "For I have accomplished what all the so-called 'ancient masters' could not. I give you... the Perpetual Train!"

Smush whipped a cloth away to reveal a vehicle nearly as jumbled as Cap'n Flunk's Hodgepodge Van (a well-known local curiosity). It was a trolley car with a crane mounted on the roof. Smush leapt into the vehicle to demonstrate how the crane's grabber arm could reach behind the trolley, seize a section of train track, then rotate around to place the track just ahead of its front wheels. The trolley then rolled forward onto the new track, and did the whole procedure over again. Thus the Perpetual Train could move continuously, using only a few short sections of train track.

The crowd went wild. And by "wild," I mean that Mogey and Stone Baloney applauded while the nesting hens ruffled their feathers and bugaw-ed. 

Suddenly, however, the festivities were silenced by a clanging noise beneath the trolley. This was followed by a muffled "help! Help!"

"The Perpetual Train's first stowaway!" Smush cried. He threw wide a trapdoor in the trolley's floor. Crammed into the compartment beneath was a beefy man wearing a purple top hat. "Cap'n Flunk?" Smush exclaimed. "What are you doing here?" 

"Indeed it is I," said Flunk with a flourish of his top hat (if it is possible to flourish in a compartment beneath the floor of a train). "And I'm quite embarrassed to admit that I got stuck snooping. I felt my Hodgepodge Van might be threatened by the promise of your great machine, you see."

"You were trying to sabotage the Perpetual Train?" Mogey demanded.

"No, no, no, of course not," insisted Cap'n Flunk. "This was merely a reconnaissance mission!"

"Well who let you into the train?" Smush inquired.

"Him," Cap'n Flunk said, pointing to Stone Baloney. 

Mogey and Smush both stared at their neighbor in frustrated disbelief, hands on their hips. Stone Baloney, for his part, did his best to look innocent by averting his eyes and chomping into drumstick-shaped hunk of quartz.  

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2024 Edition - Episode 27

 As Smush waited for the barista to prepare his favorite beverage - a quadruple mocha latte, hold the espresso - he heard an urgent whisper from behind a nearby tapestry.

"Psst, Smush! Over here! It's me, Mogey."

"No introduction needed, my friend," Smush replied, ducking behind the drapery to join his pal. "You're quite literally the only person I know in this town who would hide behind a coffee shop tapestry. Although I must say: It smells fabulous back here."

"That's my quadruple mocha latte, hold the espresso," said Mogey. "Care for a sip?"

"I'm already waiting on one, thank you. Anyway, what's got you acting so clandestine?"

"My crush is over there," Mogey admitted, pointing toward the oatmeal bar. Smush gazed in the direction his pal indicated, and a glimmer of understanding illuminated his face.

"How many times must I tell you that the Sun-Maid Raisins girl is not real?" Smush said gently.

"BEHIND the raisin box, ye roustabout!"

"Is that Luciana Blunderbuss? Heiress to the Gardetto Snack Mix fortune?"

"And the greatest thumb-wrestler in three counties," Mogey confirmed with a lovesick sigh. "You know what?" Mogey continued, profoundly unprompted, "you're right. I should just go talk to her!"

"No, Mogey, she's--" Smush began, but his pal was already gone. "...famously both hard of hearing and ill-tempered. Godspeed, comrade." 

What Mogey said, only the other patrons of the oatmeal bar will ever know, but Luciana Blunderbuss's response was to slap him across the face, give him an enormous smooch on the cheek, and engage him in an impromptu thumb-wrestling match that pushed Mogey to the very limits of his fortitude.