Friday, April 15, 1994

(Last week on "Random Access": Special Agent 23 narrowly escapes death at the hands of the nefarious Columbian drug lord Raphael and his double agent lover Crank Girl. Now, Scotto wants revenge...)

Using the ninjitsu skills I picked up during my two weeks in the Far East, I climbed the sheer walls of the deadly pit, and found myself back in the dining room. Raphael and Crank Girl were nowhere to be seen. Obviously they were somewhere in this voluminous mansion, celebrating what must have appeared to be the unceremonious end of Special Agent 23. Boy, were they in for a surprise, and I wasn't just whistling Dixie!

Little did I realize that hidden cameras all over the mansion were tracking my movements with eerie precision. In a secret underground control room, Raphael's agents of doom were watching me, sounding silent alarms, sharpening their swords, revving up their chain saws, polishing their shrimp forks and charging up their weedeaters.

Soon a deadly army of mafioso goons were sweeping through the mansion. They were not to find me that easily, however. Using the ninjitsu skills I picked up during my four days in Yugoslavia, I traveled the corridors by crawling along the ceilings, hanging directly over the heads of the goons and out of sight of the Orwellian camera equipment.

Within minutes, I found myself in Raphael's bedroom suite, an enormous room replete with a hot tub the size of a Greyhound bus, a canopied waterbed the size of a convenience store, and a fireplace the size of the Crab Nebula. I knew I had to be careful; Crank Girl had a keen sense of hearing, thanks to the bionic implants given her by Lindsay Wagner.

"In mere hours, Crank Girl," Raphael was saying, "those stolen nuclear missiles will be fully operational, and soon, the entire Western world will be on its knees!"

"Oh, Raphael," Crank Girl said dreamily, nearly swooning, "you're the hunkiest villain a girl could ever love!"

"Say, what's this?" Raphael said, going through his mail. I watched in absolute horror as he pulled out a copy of today's issue of the "Northern Iowan." He began leafing through it.

"Turn to the Arts section," Crank Girl suggested, a derisive sneer on her face. "Let's see what Special Agent 23's column has to say this week."

"Yes, let's!" Raphael agreed. "I'll bet after that nasty encounter with the deadly spike in my dining room, his sense of humor has really sharpened up!" He laughed loudly, as only a villain would, at his own terrible joke.

I knew I had to act fast. Raphael began reading aloud, "Using the ninjitsu skills I picked up..." If he caught up to this part, he'd know I was hanging on the ceiling in his own bedroom!

Using the ninjitsu skills I picked up during my last visit to Six Flags, I did a quadruple flip through the air, landing on Raphael's desk and scattering his paperwork all over the room.

"Drop that college newspaper!" I shouted. It was an empty threat -- I was unarmed, but I had the element of surprise. However, Crank Girl's training was just as deadly as my own, having received her secret agent status from Sally Struthers' correspondence course, and in an instant she had raised a pistol and begun firing. Luckily, the ninjitsu skills I picked up during my stay in Valhalla, the hall of the gods, allowed me to instantly camouflage myself so that I was indistinguishable from the wall hanging behind me, a large knitted image of Hal Linden.

"You won't escape me that easily!" Raphael cried. He sounded another silent alarm, an alarm that silently played the melody to Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Something'," and an entire wall slid open across the room from me. I stared in absolute horror as an army of flesh-eating zombies slowly lumbered into the room. My camouflage couldn't fool their unceasing desire for human flesh, which was leading them directly to me.

"Wish we could stay for dinner," Raphael shouted as he and Crank Girl escaped through a hidden passageway, "but we've suddenly lost our appetite for secret agent! Ha ha ha ha ha ha..."

It was a desperate situation. I couldn't let Raphael and Crank Girl escape, not with the possibility of nuclear disaster hanging over my head. I had to act fast. Using the ninjitsu skills I picked up back at the dawn of time itself, when God and I created the universe and everything that exists, I waded deep into the morass of zombie bodies, ripping and pulling and yanking and smashing, trying desperately to make my way to the hidden passageway Raphael had used.

But there seemed to be no end to these zombies, and soon it became apparent that for all my highly vaunted ninjitsu skills, given to me by Keith Carradine himself, I would soon be overwhelmed and devoured by zombies. It was at that moment that Raphael's army of goons burst into the room, armed with automatic weapons, swords, chain saws, shrimp forks, weedeaters, and kitchen sinks, and I knew my time here on Earth was finished...

(Next week on "Random Access": 23 ways to serve your grandmother on toast.)