By Steve Fey

You may have seen an old movie with the Keystone Kops. They’d ride into some situation on the running board of some ancestral truck and cause chaos, right? Well, when I say "at home" I mean "right at home." Okay, next door. It went like this:

Wednesday evening at about the time John Stewart’s show from the night before was wrapping up our two dogs chased a cat out into the yard. Yes, two dogs again, both bassets. The new guy, Tami’s calling him Spike (to go with Buffy, the other one, and he’s even blonde) ate a leather leash today. It’s just like old times. But, I digress yet once more.

As I said, the dogs chased a cat out into the yard and then started barking. I figured they were barking at the cat, so I opened the door and yelled at them to come in. They did, just about the time two really loud explosions rang out in the neighboring back yard. Wowzers! Like being in a war movie, and you can imagine how much fun that is. Ka-blooey! Twice. Well, that caused us to very rationally figure that the world was most likely coming to an end at just that moment. Since it was ending any way, we looked next door to see exactly what was emerging from the pit.

There was a lot of shouting and cursing and other noise coming from the house next door. Then a teenager who’s been living there ran out of the garage and down the street. A cop in a black ski mask and matching tee shirt called him a really nasty name involving sex with an ancestor and chased after. The whole brigade was armed, but nobody shot anything, although the guy on top of the heavily armed black Humvee in their back yard training the shotgun on their house looked sort of itchy fingered to me. But, anyway, that kid didn’t get far, because there were cop cars all over the place, and an EMT vehicle that never got used beyond blocking the street, and a dark blue van with running boards. Here comes the Keystone Kops part.

They put giant plastic cable ties on all four of the neighbors and sat them on the front lawn for several hours while a team was inside the house and yard finding I know not what. After everybody was calmed down a titch (except their neighbors, who all seemed to be out watching the show) the cavalry left, some in the Humvee, most riding the running boards on that van while hanging on to something. It was the Keystone Kops come to life. If the van had tipped over and smashed into a fruit cart it wouldn’t have surprised anyone. Except the fruit cart owner who thought he was in Manhattan in 1922, I mean.

We don’t know yet what those people did, or what the police thought they did, to merit such treatment. Probably made bad jokes about the President, or maybe even about Dick Cheney. You know, in times like these, the government just can’t be too careful.