Make Mine Mike

“Hey, LA Times… it’s me. Listen, we need to talk… this just isn’t working out.”
“You’re cancelling me? Why? What did I do?”
“Well, for starters, you stopped coming around, but yet you still want my money.”
“Are you calling me a gold-digger?”
“I’m calling you a yellowing old rag.”
“What?!”
“Sorry, sorry. Look, I don’t want to make this any harder than it is.”
“Don’t leave! I can change! I’ll deliver regularly again. Gimme another chance!”
“We had a good run… what’s it been? Four years?”
“Four years and three months! Hasn’t that meant anything to you?”
“Of course, but things have changed.”
“Is there someone else?”
“Well…”
“There is! I knew it! That damn New York Times.”
“It’s not --”
“Oh, sure the fancy schmancy journalism with the better-written stories and more thorough international news.”
“That’s not --”
“Or is it because they have Yankees baseball? Well, I give coverage of all the games, doesn’t that mean anything?”
“Yes, but --”
“It’s the more challenging crossword puzzles, is that it? Well, excuse me, Mr. Pretentious I’m Too Good for a Newspaper with Comic Strips! Go ahead and pay three times as much for an out-of-town publication. And good luck getting movie listings that aren’t showing 3000 miles away at the friggin’ Angelika!”
“Stop, would you? It’s not the New York Times.”
“Who is it then?”
“If you must know, it’s the Internet.”
“No! You said that would never come between us.”
“What can I say? With the high-speed DSL, one thing led to another… and it gives me everything I need. We’re talking about getting WiFi together.”
“Well, *sniff* I guess if you’re happy…”
“Don’t cry, okay? This thing between us, it wasn’t really meant to be. I mean, you had that little neighborhood kid come to my door with some ‘help me stay off drugs and outta gangs’ schpiel and I bought a subscription from him. This whole thing was predicated on guilt.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“Oh, it wasn’t all bad… remember when I was looking for local car dealerships? Or your human interest story about the old guy who surfed every single day for years?”
“Or how ‘bout when you wanted to see how I’d cover Arafat’s death?”
“Yep. Good times, good times…”
“Well, we can still be friends, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“And, you know… if it doesn’t work out, or the power goes out or the network’s down…”
“I’ll definitely stay in touch.”