Sideburns McBane in...Picnicking with Emma

After his long and storied career of battling the forces of evil in defense of the stupid and the weak, we look in on The Great White Samurai as he enjoys his well-earned retirement from martial arts adventures. Once the most prolific bachelor in the world, McBane now basks in the gentler life of wedded bliss with an actress — but will soon find a new cause worth fighting for.

I was making love to Emma Watson under a Tuscan sun last Tuesday when I began to consider the decline of picnics in America.

She ran her fingertips down my sideburns, exhaustion washing over her as the hour hand had finished its lap around the clock since the time we’d begun. Her eyes closed and she started to snore so I covered her with the blanket and set out for my ten mile jog.

In Tuscany they call them sixteen-and-nine-one-hundredths-kilometer jogs.

As I came into the capital I peeled off and stopped in at an Italian restaurant to carb-up on a plate of fettuccini Alfredo.

In Italy they just call them restaurants.

I made fast friends with my waiter, Giuseppe, when I told a Florence Nightingale joke — it was the one about the pepper shaker.

I described the circumstances of the traditional American picnic and asked Giuseppe if his people had any similar custom. He said that they did and that in Italy it’s called a, “picnic.” He went quiet then, for several moments, before expressing that in Italy as well, the picnic was fading.

I touched his shoulder but he turned away from me and I whispered after him, “Damn your stubborn pride, Giuseppe.” But he was through the doors to the kitchen.

I finished my pasta and began to jog west but when I made the coast I didn’t feel much like a swim so I took off my cowboy boots and carried them over one shoulder so that I could feel the sand between my toes.

Cowboys just call them boots.

I stopped and held my breath to better listen for the voice I thought I’d heard. I scanned the beach but I could only find jovial beachgoers kicking soccer balls to each other.

I narrowed my eyes against the Tuscan sun and searched the water, but I could only see jovial swimmers bouncing soccer balls to each other off their foreheads.

In Tuscany they just call it the sun.

My eyes fixed on the black-haired head that bobbed up out of the waves at the edge of the horizon and her panicked voice called out until she was taken under again.

I threw down my boots and took a soccer ball from one of the children and launched it with all of my might out into the sea and charged after it, diving into the waves.

When I reached her she was unconscious but the soccer ball rested under her cheek and held her face above the water. I wrapped an arm around her and escorted her back to the sand on my gentle backstroke.

She was awake then and began to cough in a feminine way. Her hand went to her left buttock and she called out, “Charlie cavallo! Charlie cavallo!”

My Italian is spotty, but I could see that she was trying to tell me that the muscles of that buttock had seized up, so I rolled her to her belly and began to massage the muscle into relaxation.

I noticed then that a half-dozen beach toughs were approaching. My moment of relief passed quickly when I realized they had not come to help this poor woman.

“Ah, you take my little brother’s alico ball?” The head beach tough asked, cracking his knuckles.

“This woman was suffering from a buttock cramp and she was going under.” I explained, but he didn’t speak English.

“Ah, I do not care about her lovely buttock. You disgrace the world’s favorite game and you will face the come-upin’s.”

I tried to explain to him that back home in Missouri soccer is only a game that our toddlers play until they’re old enough to understand baseball, but people around the world have little tolerance for American culture.

“I spit on your American blue jeans!” He cursed.

The eleven of them were upon me then, but my knowledge of pressure points and leverage won the day.

The woman stood and brushed sand from her bosom.

“You saved my life and revived my buttock, American man. I will reward your deeds with amore!”

I placed a finger over her supple lips before they reached mine.

“If it were another place or another time, bella donna.” I whispered. “But it is not. I am under the spell of another and must go to her now. In the future, even if it is not fashionable, you must stretch before swimming. Also, consider taking a multi-mineral supplement with your breakfast each day.”

I collected my boots and returned to Emma. She woke as I sat on the bed and a bit of her strength was returning; though her eyes only opened a few seconds at a time and I had to lean close to hear her voice.

“I’ve made you soup.” I told her.

“I’m not hungry, old chap.” She said. “Sleep is all I need.”

“Eat some first, and then sleep.” I encouraged.

She smiled and took my hand.

“Only if you tell me a story.” She said.

“What story should I tell?”

“Tell me the story of George Washington.”

“I told you the story of George Washington last time, silly.” I smiled.

“Bollocks!” She stuck out her lip, pouting playfully. “Elvis Presley then?”

“Fine. I’ll tell you the story of Elvis Presley, but only if you eat.”

She agreed, but sat up when she recognized sadness in my eyes. I didn’t want to burden her, but she persisted, so I told how the decline of the American picnic was weighing on me.

She ran a hand over my cheek and said something about my sweet heart being as big and majestic as the great state of Alaska. She kissed me softly on my mouth, her spirit ready to soar once more, though I convinced her that her body was yet too weak.

I fed her soup and told her about Elvis Presley again until she drifted away.

I was standing on the roof of our cobblestone cottage with a foot on the chimney.

Garry Kasparov’s postcard had arrived while I was away at the beach. He had written, “O-O-O, and give my love to Emma and the children. –The K.”

I had expected him to take the long diagonal and this cast all of my calculations in doubt. All of our correspondence games were friendly, though they were still contests between the most highly regarded living player of traditional chess and the Missouri Champion of Fischer Random — which meant they were games that would be studied for generations. If only my knights had not begun on A and H.

The night passed overhead and the sun I had watched set before me had snuck up behind me as I considered my answer to Kasparov’s long castle.

Emma’s hand on my arm brought me back to the present.

“What time is it?” I asked with alarm.

“Breakfast-time.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t wake you. Can we still make it?”

“We haven’t anywhere to go presently.” She answered.

“What do you mean? You’re starring in a hundred-million-dollar Hollywood feature and you start shooting today! We have to get to the airport.”

“I called and cancelled it.” She shrugged. “You, me and the rubber Johnny dodgers is going on tour.”

“What tour?”

“A tour of America. We’re having a picnic a day until we’ve had one in every little town and big city in America. I’ll use my celebrity to raise picnic-awareness through the media as we go along. And I was finkin’, you might telephone your old chum Barry and see about his declaring an official Picnic Day to kick things off right.”

“That’s a fantastic idea.”

And so, for the next forty-three years me, Emma, Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill and baby Tom Pagnozzi had a picnic every day and when we finally stood at the tip of the head of Florida we looked back to see that families, old friends, and young lovers across the land were sitting in the grass and eating sandwiches together.

Emma took my hand and smiled.

“That sir, is a lovely picnic basket.” She said.