Ape Culture - Honey I Shrunk Emmanuel Lewis

From the first moment I saw him in his miniature corduroys, I was obsessed. It was only natural with someone as cute as Emanuel Lewis. Of course, in my mind he was always "Webster". At times, my obsession with small child stars is a bit out of the ordinary. Gary Coleman was pissed when I hand delivered one of my kidneys to his front door. "Yeah don't come crying to me when you need another one," I screamed as he slammed the door in my face.

Gary Coleman was always searching for kidneys like a crack fiend. With Webster it was different. With Webster there was talent and charisma. With Webster there was panache. All I wanted was to help him out. Webster needed a comeback.

For some reason I was always nervous around small people. Whenever I saw one I usually made an embarrassed run for the bathroom soon after. My only experience was with Midget Tony, the local small person, who the kids always used for a basketball. They dribbled him around on the hard pavement. "I'm not a basketball-I'm not a basketball," he always moaned as they shot him into the hoop. 3 points!

Perhaps, it was this cruelty that made me want to take care of something so small. All I wanted to do was make Webster famous again. For years I searched for him, like Ulysses, until I finally located him in an area of southern California. I relocated the following month, with my girlfriend, who supported me as I planned Webster's comeback.

My schedule went like this. I waited outside his house every morning for 3 months and collected his Q-tips, from the garbage, for sale on E-bay. For some strange reason Webster didn't even have bodyguards.

During the night I slept below his window as he watched re-runs of Matlock. He liked Matlock and so did I. Webster and I had so much in common.

During the day I followed him to work at his law office. Most people didn't know but by the age of 24, Emanuel Lewis, received his law degree from Brown University, and started his own law practice. At the public library I researched all the cases he won, including a woman who sued the phrase sexual harassment, because of the way it sounded when it was pronounced. Her-ass mint. Webster won her a settlement of $500,000.

The year before, Webster, on behalf of Christians everywhere, won a multi million-dollar lawsuit in a child abuse case two-thousand years old. "Now you can't tell me a man can send his only begotten son down to earth, crucify him and not have charges brought against him," he was quoted in the papers. I knew Webster probably hated his scum lawyer job and was ready for a comeback.

That's why the next morning I stuffed him in a laundry bag and took off towards my rusty Subaru. He was as heavy as a German Shepard. "Hey what the hell is going on here?" he shouted as he kicked in the bag and I quoted Milton. "Shut up Webster! America is in need of thee."

Actually, Webster was a lot bigger than I expected. In the 12 years since he quit show business he actually grew to 4'2".

"What have they done to you?" I asked. "Did they force hormones on you to make you grow?" I wept.

"Why in the hell are you calling me Webster?" He shouted. He looked freaked out.

"Shut up," I screamed as I hit him with a stun gun in the car. "Your name is Webster, god-dammit." Since he was grown-up now I didn't know what to do with him.

When I got home my girlfriend looked stunned. "Look how big he's gotten," I screeched as I stuffed him face first into the dryer. He fought the whole way and even bit me. Inside the 3-speed dryer, Webster pounded against the walls like a prisoner, but to no avail. "What are you doing to me? What are you doing to me?" he yelped as I slammed the dryer door shut.

"Webster if you're going to make a TV comeback, you're gonna need to be small. "If there is one thing people in this country love it's people getting hit in the crotch with wiffle ball bats on home video, and small black people who grow up in the projects who come to live in the rich white suburbs."

I chuckled and smiled. My girlfriend rolled her eyes. She knew about my failures in the past. She knew about how my obsessions always spiraled out of control. She knew how I made a citizen arrest of Santa Claus for soliciting prostitutes. "I mean Ho-Ho-Ho is pretty obvious," I explained as I brought in the old man in handcuffs from the mall, and slammed his fat ass down in the middle of the police station. Vigilante justice was always the best. I also learned that just because Dean Cain played Superman on TV didn't mean he was faster than a speeding bullet. "You shot me in my calf, you ass," he shouted like the pretty boy Hollywood star he was. "You're not Superman," I screamed. "You're a fraud."

Thankfully Webster wasn't the run of the mill Hollywood child star. I left him in the dryer at least 15 hours until he shrunk down to size. Unfortunately, when I opened it he shrunk too much. "What the hell," my girlfriend shouted, "He's the size of a paper clip. You idiot! The camera will never be able to pick him up looking like that, you've ruined Webster's come back!"

Sadly, Webster was smaller than I expected. Actually he was now one eighth of an inch high. Like a little mouse, he jumped out of the dryer and ran across the floor no bigger than a dot. His voice squealed so much it was inaudible.

"No he's not! You broke his back. People don't want to watch a sitcom about a microscopic paraplegic. They want Webster!"

"Oh, he's not squashed," she said and peeled him off the bottom of her
foot. I held him in the palm of my hand and wished he were alive again. I put him in my pocket and rubbed him for good luck. It was even better luck when Webster was the rabbit's foot.