9.16.07 - It Ain't Easy Ridin'

Being a motor sports mascot is a lot harder than it looks. You’ve got to be on for every show, like each performance is your last, always smiling and growling and eating things that fans throw at you.
Not to brag or anything, but it got to be so that crowds would come out just to see me, never mind the guys riding around on motorcycles. It dawned on me that I had some leverage to negotiate a better contract for myself. I started hinting every chance I got about putting in a rider providing a certain number of personal days, fresh raspberries served in a Kensington pattern china bowl after every show, an expense account and a wardrobe advisor – the works.
The prospects were good until around the middle of August when it got really hot, and we were doing two or three shows a day, every day for a week and a half.
Something had to give, so being motorcyclists en route to New Orleans, they had a lot of drugs lying around. At one point, “Captain America” started slipping various substances into my Fish Sandwiches “to perk me up for the shows,” he said.
They made me feel groggy, so I ended up taking lots of naps at inopportune times, until one day I supposedly slept through a show. The ungrateful bastards forgot to wake me up is what happened. Imagine how stupid they had to be to loaf around while the crowds asked, “Where’s the bear? We want to see the bear!” and not even think to bang my cage a little bit.
This set the contract negotiations back, to put it bluntly, so we arranged a severance package: I got to keep my specially outfitted Harley-Davidson unicycle and my dignity.