By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

Jane, Ted, Rocker, Elian. So much to poke fun at, so little space to do it in. Being susceptible to TV advertising as I am, I took advantage of the 10-10-221 plan and gathered all this spamming material by phone.

Those of us who have faith in all things romantically American — like love, flowers and prenuptial agreements — are a little bit down these days. Ted Turner and Jane Fonda are officially separating. Imagine my surprise when I called the Turner household and actually got Ted and Jane on the phone and made my plea for them to stay together. After all, who will get custody of Barney Fife?

I first talked to Jane who didn't really like me referring to her as “Barbarella,” but she said it was better than Ted calling her “Gilligan” to his “Skipper.” Jane felt that she and Ted have been growing in different directions recently and that the advice he has been getting from Chipper Jones and Evander Holyfield hasn't seemed to help. We just exchanged niceties from there. I thanked her for helping me attain incredible buns in the '80s and she put Ted on the phone.

After Ted begged me for a few stock tips, I got him on the subject of his marriage. He said he loved his “little buddy” but her incessant bragging about being an “Academy Award winning actress” got old. I told him, like Donald Trump, he could get over his broken marriage by running for president or getting a really bad toupee. If Jane got too out of hand, he could always remind her that she was in the film, “Leonard Part 6.”

You know how in the movies all the phone numbers start with 555? Well, it is true of John Rocker's number, too. Only, he has that designation because 555 on your phone dial also stands for KKK. I won't tell you the rest of John's number but I did get to talk to him at length about his comments in Sports Illustrated. He said he was totally duped by the column's author because they were out fishing and he thought he was speaking off the record. The sportswriter brought along his girlfriend, so John thought it was just an informal situation.

Lastly, I got through to Miami and spoke to Elian Gonzalez, the little Cuban boy, about his fight to stay in America. It was a rather expensive phone call as we kept being interrupted by his Gameboy play and calls from people offering to adopt him (mostly Michael Jackson and Richard Simmons). I told him not to be too upset, that when I was 9, if people would have taken me to Seaworld, Epcot, Disney and Ben and Jerry's every day, I wouldn't have gone back to my father, either. Besides, it's a lot easier to exile somebody out Cuba than it is South Carolina.

What a feeding frenzy our media has had with this issue. But, I'm sure the millions of starving children in America don't mind giving up any attention to their problems as long as a cute illegal alien might gain the God-given opportunities of every American child to become a lethargic obese person or a college alcoholic. Time ran short and I never got Elian's opinions on such important national matters as Madonna singing at the Super Bowl or Puff Daddy's gun arrest. Maybe next time.

[Visit Billy Murphy on the Internet at http://billymurphy.homepage.com.]

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