Nursery Rhymes Contemporized (No. 1)
Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle; the cow jumped over the moon
They were good, really good! The Cat was a talented, very cool and versatile musician and the Cow was a first-class spoken word artist and dancer. It wasn't every heifer who could jump the moon without a running start!
You could be the next Beatles, Dr. Dre, Simon & Garfunkel, Dua Lipa, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Itzhak Perlman, Billie Eilish, Beyonce, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Miley Cyrus and Pattie Smith all rolled into one, cooed their business agent!
The Cat and the Cow duo went double platinum with their first two releases ("The Cat's Meow" and "Just Chewing the Cud") and their songs "Be-claws of You," "What a Stud!," "Whiskers on my Mind," and "How Now Hot Brown Cow?," were number one, two, three and four on Spotify.
"Let's Do the Diddle" was the hottest dance craze in the West. Everybody did the Diddle from NYC to Berlin to Sydney to Rio de Janeiro to Tokyo. Kim Jung-un did the Diddle and so did Tom Brady, Lizzo, Paige Spiranac, Ron DeSantis, Meghan Markle, LeBron James, AOC, Bernie Sanders, Homer Simpson, Novak Djokovic, Lindsey Graham, Taylor Swift, King Charles, Amber Heard, Greta Thunberg and Pope Francis (not at the same time or place, of course). The Green Bay Packers scored a touchdown and the entire team did the Diddle in the end zone. TikTok was full of videos of people (plus the late Elvis Presley) doing the Diddle, forwards and backwards, right-side up and upside down.
Donald Trump started to wear a rally hat that read Make America Diddle Again. Joe Biden told reporters that he used to dance the Diddle with Marilyn Monroe in Iraq when he was the captain of PT 109 during the Spanish-American War.
The Cat and the Cow did all the usual talk shows. They appeared on the front of Wheaties cereal boxes. Their pictures simultaneously were on the front pages of Varsity, Bill Board, Rolling Stone, Time, The Economist, The New Yorker and National Geographic. They toured the West Coast appearing before thousands of adoring, frenzied fans from San Diego to Vancouver, B.C. The cosplay community turned out in droves, all of them wearing goth Cat and Cow costumes. Canada's PM Justin Trudeau made an uninvited cameo appearance masquerading as a black cat. Volodymyr Zelensky, wearing his trademark green battle fatigues, jumped up from the mosh pit during one performance of the Cat and the Cow and demanded that everyone give him all of their milk money. The audience mooed him off the stage.
People got Cat and Cow tattoos. Cat and Cow branded sneakers became the latest fashion craze. A made-for-TV movie starring Tom Cruise was in the works (Top Sirloin: Maverick). The Cat and the Cow had more than 20 billion followers and 60 billion "up-votes" on all the media platforms, which, remarkably, is a lot more than the entire human population of the Earth.
Within a few weeks, the Cat and the Cow were incredibly wealthy. They signed endorsement contracts with Nike, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, McDonald's, T-Mobile, IBM, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Tesla, Ford, Juul, AT&T, Google, Ford, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Hershey's, Kellogg's, Kroger, Budweiser, Space-X, the New York Stock Exchange, Pizza Hut, and Exxon Mobil. Their faces appeared on billboards, social media and the sides of city buses. You could find small plastic Cat and the Cow toys inside boxes of Cracker Jacks.
They bought pricey real estate on the beach, in the mountains, and whole islands in the Caribbean. They purchased private jets and yachts, designer clothing and gold-plated sports cars. They hired troops of body guards, trainers, massage therapists, dietitians, clothing consultants, fiddle-tuners, social secretaries, kitty litter changers, hay shovelers and veterinarians. They attracted an entourage of sun-glass wearing courtiers, beautiful groupies and unctuous sycophants. The Cat and the Cow threw some of the most lavish, weirdest, and most exclusive orgies in Tinseltown. Anybody who was anybody was there with their entourage of photo-snapping paparazzi. Eleven young women and three young men claimed they were pregnant by either the Cat and/or the Cow (which is interesting because the Cat had been neutered and the Cow was a freemartin).
But after one such wild party, things started to go sideways. The Cat and the Cow were involved in an accident. No one was hurt, but the police investigated and did sobriety tests. The Cow tested positive for recombinant bovine growth hormone (RBGH) and the Cat had more than the legal limit of catnip in his system.
The editors of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post started to ask "serious questions" in unison. Is it time once again to ban something or other?
Gossip columnists whispered: The Cow once was seen dating a Red Bull!
The poll-takers polled America: "Do you think the Cat is a long hair Persian and, therefore, a terrorist?"
Rumor-mongers ruminated: Is the Cow now, or has it ever been, a founding member of the Dairy Farm Collective?
Commentators commented insinuatingly: Most people don't know that the word for 'Cat' in Chinese is... 'MAO'... the same as in Mao Tse-Tung!!! Cats sleep a lot. Therefore... might the Cat be part of... a Communist Chinese sleeper cell?
Influencers asked breathlessly: Was the Cow sent by MosCow to corrupt America's cultural values?
Environmentalists criticized the Cow for releasing methane that aggravated global warming.
Vegetarians murmured disapprovingly that cats were carnivorous.
Cows are for hamburgers, snarled the Cattleman's Association.
What's with the animal fur and cowhide coat? the PETA people wanted to know.
The FDA and the CDC investigated whether the Cat and the Cow had been fully and repeatedly vaccinated and boosted against rabies and hoof and mouth disease.
Progressives asked why the Cat had 20 claws. The Cat should be de-clawed because no one needs more than 10 claws to hunt or for self-defense.
Conservatives and America-firsters squawked that AMERICA MUST COLONIZE THE MOON FIRST before some communist dancing cow gets the jump on us!
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DEMAND ANSWERS! leaders of both political parties bloviated.
Donald Trump changed his hat. He no longer asked to make America diddle again. The new slogan was MAKE AMERICA ABOUT ME AGAIN!
Joe Biden ducked reporters' questions about him dancing the Diddle with Marilyn Monroe during the Spanish-American War. But he knew something about cats - they wagged their tails and herded sheep and produced milk for ice cream. He said he used to raise cats when he was married to Gisele Bundchen during the Great Potato Famine in Norway. He ordered that more heavy tanks, eleven Trident submarines, the Starship Enterprise with photon torpedoes, six banker boxes of confidential documents, Kamala Harris, and another $100 trillion be donated to Ukraine.
Soon, all 20 billion followers of the Cat and the Cow un-followed them. Their 60 billion up-votes instantly changed to 90 billion down-votes. Their endorsements evaporated. Their corporate sponsors fled. No one went to their concerts anymore. Their website could not be found by any search engine.
It had been only a few months and now the fizz was flat. The Cat and the Fiddle were finished. Ancient history. Ho hum. Nobody did the Diddle any more.
"Tough luck, kiddos," said their agent as he raced off to sign up the hottest, newest performer. Their fortunes plummeted into negative territory. Hotels canceled their reservations. Theater venues canceled their shows. Girl Scouts refused to sell them cookies. Creditors sued them. Their hangers-on left to hang onto someone else. The Cat and the Cow filed for bankruptcy. Sic transit gloria mundi.
The Cat and the Cow now fiddle around as street buskers. Nobody recognizes or remembers them. They live in a tent on the sidewalk and are struggling with drug addiction.
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