The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2026 Edition - Episode 8

"Do you think you could ever be an olympian?" Smush asked as the pals trudged down the snowy trail one evening.

"No doubt," Mogey replied. 

"Really? How would you do it?" 

"What about bobsleigh? That's a sport where my most elite talent - my ability to make any object on which I am sitting even more subject to the laws of gravity - would be put to good use." 

"No, no, no, Mogey," said Smush. "I wasn't speaking of the Olympic Games, I was talking about the food challenge down at Nick Argyros' ARRGH! Gyros!, the gyros so good they'll make you say ARRGH!"

"Oh?" Mogey responded, intrigued. "And what must one achieve to become an olympian at Nick Argyros' ARRGH! Gyros!, the gyros so good they'll make you say ARRGH!?"

"Consume three large gyros and three orders of lamb fries in twelve minutes without saying 'ARRGH.'"

"Well, it'll take some restraint," said Mogey, "especially the twelve minutes part, but I think I can do it. Especially if Nick lets me have a quick snack beforehand. Heck, all olympians have to make sacrifices, right? Let's go for it!"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2026 Edition - Episode 7

"What've you got there?" Mogey asked, gesturing at the long paper bag cradled in Smush's arm.

"A medium-bodied pinot noir," his pal replied. "Don't you know Mr. and Mrs. Oakenbock are major oenophiles?"

"Smush!" Mogey scolded. "You know I'm not judgmental about what people get up to in the privacy of their own homes." 

"No, Mogey - it means they're obsessed with wine. And you'd best pretend you are too! We need everything to go perfectly tonight to convince the Oakenbocks to sell us their back pasture." 

"Ah yes," Mogey said dreamily, "it's going to be donkey heaven out there." 

The pals reached the Oakenbock estate and were admitted merrily by Mrs. Oakenbock. "Oh, please," she said, bustling down the front hall, "call me Boken."

"Boken Oakenbock?" Mogey queried. Smush stomped on his pal's foot. 

"You boys have a seat with my husband while I pour some of this delicious wine," Mrs. Oakenbock said. 

"Welcome, welcome," beckoned Mr. Oakenbock from a large sectional couch. "Please, call me Hoken." 

"Hoken and Boken Oakenbock?" Mogey exclaimed. Smush stomped on his other foot.

"Indeed," said Hoken Oakenbock as he accepted a glass of wine from his wife and took a sip. "Delightful!" he announced. Mogey and Smush sampled their own glasses. 

"Grapey," Mogey agreed, with a sputtering cough.

"A fellow vino enthusiast!" Hoken responded, clapping Mogey on the back. "What's your favorite bottle, young man?" 

"I would have to say..." Mogey began, when he caught sight of Smush widening his eyes significantly and remembered the seriousness of the situation, "Baja Blast?"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2026 Edition - Episode 6

"Let's cross the river at the old stone bridge, yeah?" said Mogey as the pals walked down the wagon track toward town.

"The old stone bridge?" Smush queried. "It'll take twice as long! The Barnabas Bridge is the fastest route." 

"I know," Mogey replied, "but I don't want to run into Hippie Steve." 

"He does enjoy hanging out on the Barnabas Bridge," Smush acknowledged, "but he's not so bad... just walk right past him."

So Mogey and Smush made their way to the newer, more wooden bridge named for Bill "American Fudge" Barnabas. Sure enough, sitting cross-legged in the center of the span was a man with a long reddish-gray beard and long grayish-red hair. His locks - they were red and gray, primarily - were held back by a flowery headband, and he was draped in loose clothing that consisted of either frayed robes, burlap sacks, or a designer sweatsuit. 

Mogey and Smush did their best to keep their eyes straight ahead, but as they passed on either side of Hippie Steve, he spoke up:

"Taste the rainbow... if you know what I mean." The statement was accompanied by much waggling of eyebrows.

"Just ignore him, Mogey," Smush said. But Mogey couldn't resist.

"No, Steve, what do you mean?"

"You never... tasted the rainbow, brother?" 

"What are you talking about?" Mogey asked. 

"Check it out, man," said Hippie Steve. His eyes darted in either direction to check the coast was clear, and then he pulled from the folds of his clothing a king size bag of skittles candy.

"What do they have, like, hallucinogens on them or something?" Smush asked.

"No way, dude! A very mellow fellow from the Wrigley Corporation offered me 20 bucks and all the skittles I can eat if I tell everyone who crosses this bridge to 'taste the rainbow.'"

"Hippie Steve is part of the corporate machine?" Mogey exclaimed.

"Don't judge, man," said the cross-legged man. His eyebrows began to waggle again. "Hippie Steve needs cash for... y'know... hippie stuff."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2026 Edition - Episode 5

Smush awakened one morning to the gauzy noise of distant shouting. He cocked his head - partially because that's what one does when listening to a faint sound, and partially because he seemed to have slept on a cannoli. 

"Smussshhhhhh!" the voice was howling. "Hellllllllllllp! Smush!!"

Smush rolled out of bed, plucked the cannoli from his cheek, and made his way out to the barn. He did not need to investigate closely to see what had happened. Stretched across the barn doorway was a magnificent spider web, and caught fast in the web was none other than his best pal Mogey. 

"What seems to be the trouble, Moge-man?" Smush said around a mouthful of cannoli. 

"Oh thank heavens," Mogey gasped. "Smush, you've got to help me get free! Eight-legged Betty must've made a new web last night and I walked right into it - I'm as stuck as a mousetrap maker who's been cornered by MOUSES-13, the most feared rodent gang in the nation."

"Thing is," Smush replied, "we've always supported Eight-legged Betty's activities here. She's like another member of our farm family. She does wonders with keeping the bugs at bay, not to mention getting rid of the odd coyote."

"Of course, of course," said Mogey. "I'll write her a nice apology for messing up her new web. Just get me out of here."

"Can't do it, Moge-man," Smush replied.

"Harr harr," Mogey laughed sarcastically. Then he caught sight of Eight-legged Betty, a spider the size of a bumper car. She was rubbing her eyes against the morning sun with two claws while her other six claws began to carry her across the web. "Smush, stop fooling around. Wait. Wait! Come back, Smush! Help me!" 

But Smush simply shook his head and walked back toward the farmhouse in search of more cannolis. Eight-legged Betty, meanwhile, advanced toward the captive Mogey. Once she came within striking distance, she unsheathed four feathers (one in each of her front claws).

"What is it you want, Betty? More coyotes? I'll get you a new coyote every day of the week. Just please, no tickle torture!" 

Betty's eight eyes looked on impassively as she extended the feathers toward Mogey's arms, neck, and feet and began to tickle him mercilessly.

"Noooooooooooooooooooooo!" cried Mogey. Far in the distance, Smush looked up from his second cannoli of the morning, hesitated, and told himself the sound was simply the howling of the wind. 

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2026 Edition - Episode 4

Rumors swirled across the countryside that there were foxes about. Fiendishly clever foxes. Devilishly handsome foxes. Foxes that would eat every chicken in your henhouse and not even leave a thank-you note. 

As gentlemen who routinely ate three-to-four omelettes per day, Mogey and Smush paid close attention to this scuttlebutt. And they took precautions. The pals installed bells that would ring in each of their bedchambers anytime the henhouse door opened. When this failed to wake them on literally any occasion, they modified the contraption to spill a cupful of jellybeans whenever the henhouse was disturbed. This had the double benefit of instantly awakening the pals and giving them some nourishment to consume en route to the barnyard. 

One night, the alarm went off and Mogey and Smush met near the back door in their nightshirts, sprinting for the henhouse as they chomped mouthfuls of jellybeans. When they squeezed through the henhouse door, they immediately encountered a fox sipping a martini as he chatted to several of the hens.

"Evening, gents," the fox said in a posh English accent. "Sorry to barge in on you like this, but I saw the light and thought I might come in and get warm for a moment."

"Not in here, you don't!" Smush hollered. "Out of our henhouse, you cad!"

"Of course I can go if you wish," the fox replied, "but I assure you I have no untoward intent. Count your hens and you'll see I haven't harmed a feather on a single one of their heads."

"It's true, Smush," Mogey confirmed. "Thirty-seven laying hens present and accounted for. Even Plump Peggy, the Rhode Island Red."

"Bawk!" screeched Peggy, who did not appreciate her nickname.

"I still don't like it," Smush said. "A fox in a henhouse? It ain't natural, I tell ya." 

"Alright then," said the fox, donning a top hat to take his leave, "I appreciate your civility in any case. Oh also, several of the hens mentioned that it's, erm, 'bad laying weather,' so don't be surprised if you don't find a single egg tomorrow. Goodnight!" 

With a burp that smelled intensely of egg salad, the fox swept out of the henhouse and into the night. Mogey and Smush stared after him.

"Man that fox was cool!" Mogey sighed.

"Right?" Smush exclaimed. "It's too bad there are so many villains out there giving the gentlefoxes like him a bad name."

"Bawk!" screeched Plump Peggy.

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2026 Edition - Episode 3

Mogey and Smush lived near the border of two rival civilizations. Across the stone wall at the end of their lane, the entire culture changed. The people spoke strangely, dressed incomprehensibly, and had a strange preoccupation with mollusks. They were known simply as "The French." 

The citizens of Burpeley (Mogey and Smush's home country) were not strictly allowed on French land. But the nearest French village possessed a sawmill, and Mogey and Smush loved nothing more than sneaking into the mill's waterwheel and riding it around and around until they were almost too dizzy to waddle back across the border.

On one such adventure, they were caught. Mogey and Smush were prodded at pitchfork-point to the village square, where they were paraded before the mayor. The mayor was a nerdy little fellow wearing a very official-looking cape, and for some reason he addressed his citizens in heavily-accented english.

"Vell, vell, vell," he said, "vat have we 'ere?"

"Deux trespasserrrrs," said the farmer who had caught them, with an excessively strong roll of the r.

"Do yeux know vat we do to trespasserrrrrs?" the mayor asked Mogey and Smush. "Zee... zee... tell me again vat we call zee peoples of Burpeley?"

"Wimps," suggested the mayor's chief of staff, a man in a slightly less official-looking cape.

"Zee wimps of Burpeley might think our punishment old-fashioned, no? Eet is too... medieval... zee wimps say."

Mogey and Smush noticed the crowd around them beginning to chant: La Roue! La Roue!

"Oui oui!" the mayor agreed, saluting his constituents. He turned back to the unnerved pals. "I 'ope you wore your board shorts, because you vill be marched to zee sawmill and made to ride zee waterwheel around and around until you are almost too dizzy to vaddle back across zee border!"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2026 Edition - Episode 2

It took the better part of an hour, but at last Mogey and Smush were ready to tally their bill at Knute Knotts' Nuts Emporium. Well, almost ready. 

"Alright then," said the clerk, "so we have the three pounds of almonds, two of filberts, five pounds of walnuts, and a pound and a half of beech nuts. That'll be--"

"Sorry," Mogey interrupted, "but you'd better throw in another pound of filberts." 

"Right then," the clerk said, adjusting his tabulation. "Three pounds of filberts. You know, as by far (and it's not close) our most prolific customers here at Knute Knotts' Nuts, we'd be happy to throw in a couple of complementary nutcrackers with your order." 

"A couple of nut-what-ers?" Smush inquired.

"Nutcrackers," the clerk repeated, holding up a hinged steel cracker. "For breaking the shells of course." 

"Take a gander at this new-fangled contraption!" Smush exclaimed, holding up the nutcracker as if it was an iPod Mini.

"The nutcrackers will, um, not be necessary," Mogey said with a smirk as he popped a pair of in-shell walnuts directly into his gob.  

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2026 Edition - Episode 1

In the settlement of Porkle, the most respected individual was the eldest citizen: Ma Sausage. Porkle's matriarch, who had been there at the little colony's founding, may have seemed a sweet old lady, but she ruled with an iron fist. Miscreants were not tolerated. Scallywags? Tossed outside the protection of Porkle's palisade. And anyone caught mocking Ma Sausage's name was conscripted to groom her pair of ornery mastiffs, Tweedledee and The Pest. 

So the community took it seriously whenever a new year dawned and Ma Sausage required that each citizen be paraded before her so that she might assess the quality of their new year's resolutions. 

When Mogey and Smush's turn came, they stepped forward confidently to announce their resolutions as a team, something Ma Sausage reluctantly allowed.

"Well well," said Ma Sausage. "Porkle's least productive pair of citizens. What do you resolve heading into a fresh annum? And I warn you, after that incident at the gristmill in September, you are both getting dangerously close to 'scallywag' territory." 

"We've got just the thing, Ma Sausage," Smush replied. "Our new year's resolution is to be more us." 

"Meaning?" 

"Meaning we're dropping the mask, baby-- pardon-- Ma Sausage!" Mogey chimed in. "Both of us are through with worrying what others think of us. We're just going to be our authentic selves!" 

"So the gentlemen who angered literally every one of their neighbors and nearly brought the entire settlement to its knees when they shut down the gristmill attempting to make, and I quote, 'pre-mixed pancake batter...' these gentlemen are going to stop caring what everyone else thinks?" 

"Precisely," Mogey and Smush confirmed.

Ma Sausage stared at the pals for what seemed like a long time. Finally she said, "You know, I was there when the founders Cap'n McDougle and Pierre Bonks debated for two weeks about whether this settlement should be called Porkpie or Pickle before finally agreeing upon the elegant portmanteau we emblazon on our flag (and the official City of Porkle municipal sweater vests). And in all those years... that's the finest new year's resolution I've ever heard."

"Oh, lay off, Ma Sausage!" Mogey began, before Smush interrupted him. 

"No, no, Mogey - she likes our resolution. Although, heh heh, I think 'lay off Ma Sausage' is exactly what you said at the barbeque yesterday when I tried to seize the last bratwurst!"