ISSUE 20 - BUNNICULA ESSAY

On the Trail of a Sadistic Bunny
By Josh Spilker

The following occurred in Atlanta, Georgia. All of the events that follow are true and happened in the order mentioned, as to the best that I can remember. I think. This intro has made the story seem a lot more dramatic than it actually is.

Two piles of books. Keep and giveaway - the age old system of determination. Keep: anything I mostly enjoyed (Walker Percy), should’ve enjoyed (Willa Cather) or should’ve read (James Joyce). Giveaway: anything meant for a season (money troubles: Suze Orman), anything meant for frivolity (Anne Maxted: frivolity is easily replaced), or anything too frivolously laborious (The Mensa Book of Genius Questions: won’t even attempt).

A problem. The Celery Stalks at Midnight, by James Howe. On the cover: a dog and a cat staring at a glowing green celery stalk. It’s thin, it’s a little worn. It’s YA. It’s a story about pets, vegetables, and pets that suck the juice out of vegetables.

“Why did you put this in the giveaway stack?” My wife had found my dilemma and disrupted the balance of the age-old system of determination. “I love this book,” she continued. “What’s it about? A vampire rabbit or something?” I asked. I had yet to open it up to find out. “Yes,” she said, “You know, Bunnicula.”

Bunnicula. A vampire rabbit that sucks the juice out of vegetables. And this book was the sequel. Stories from the 80’s. Stories from our youth. “Oh yeah,” I conclude, “I liked that story.”

Next night. A night for going out. Or at least out of the house. We choose ice cream. A store named after two pet dogs of the owner. A shaggy-haired boy is working behind the counter, while his girlfriend is waiting on the couch clutching a cell phone.

I choose blueberry cheesecake mixed with cotton candy. My wife samples Guinness, and it tastes like an off-color vanilla. The alcohol doesn’t freeze, says the shaggy haired boy, excited by the possibility of being so close to an adult beverage. He is still YA. My wife nixes that one, however. She goes for “Live by Chocolate.”

We talk. We chat. We sit on a rustic-looking bench that moms in their mid-30s deem as cute. We look up and around. A chalkboard behind the counter advertises a sandwich made with apples and brie. “It’s like a gourmet grilled cheese,” says my wife - my translator for all things fine or refined. I had never heard of it before. It sounds like something moms in their mid-30s might enjoy. We look up and around again. Bunnicula. We see it and pause. It’s a sign. It’s a sign advertising a play going on all month, based on the book. It’s a play for moms in their mid-30s who might also have YA children. This upcoming weekend is the last weekend. My wife can’t go; she has to work on Saturday. I decide to go. I have to follow this bunny trail wherever it leads.

Bonty agrees to go. I saw him a few days later at a church community group and he says he can go. Bonty enjoys the performing arts. He was in an a cappella group in college, and once managed the finances for a fledgling theater troupe. Bonty doesn’t even chafe at the $12 price. “Oh, that’s not expensive,” he said when I told him it was expensive.

I try to figure out culture’s fascination with deranged and sadistic rabbits. Why does rabbit irony have such a large progeny? There’s Frank the prophetic rabbit in Donnie Darko, the children’s book series about dumb bunnies called Dumb Bunnies, and Matt Groening’s Life is Hell, which serves as an inside joke to The Simpsons faithful.

I ask my wife about the deranged bunnies in popular culture. “Why do they put little girls in horror films?” explains my wife - my translator for all things symbolic and puzzling. “It’s the same thing,” she says. I get it. No one expects rabbits or children to do the things our culture makes them do.

Saturday. Play day. It’s an early show, 11:30 am, to take advantage of the theater company’s “Family Series.” Bonty and I arrive at the playhouse at 11 am, only to get our tickets and encounter a man still folding programs. The door won’t open for another 10 minutes or so, they tell us. “What do you think they think about two guys in their twenties going to see Bunnicula?” asks Bonty as we see parents in their mid-30s file past with their kids that are mostly under the age of twelve. “I don’t know,” I say.

We see a sign. Drinks are allowed in the theater, so we step back outside. I go back to the car for the coffee I left. Bonty goes into a smoothie place. There’s a homeless man sitting on an embankment near my car cutting up aluminum soda cans. He has a painted sign that says “Homeless/Would like some food” or something like that. It’s nicely done, in the style of those “Home Sweet Home” signs seen at a great-grandmother’s house.

The program folder guy says we can go in now. The usher gives us two different options for seats, and we take a second row perch. The stage is a square, and the seats are arranged at a 90-degree angle on two sides of the square. Supposedly it’s a sell-out and the seating is tightly regulated. The kids and parents we saw earlier begin to pile in. Many kids are carrying copies of Bunnicula. One girl, about nine, with brown hair halfway down her back desperately saves a seat for “Ms. Handler.” Other conversation focuses on how the animals will be portrayed. We wonder the same. Maybe a ventriloquist. A boy with surfer-flowing hair in the same group as Ms. Handler’s seat-saver counts the number of audience members. “49 people,” says the surfer boy. We scrunch up so a baby boomer woman with a long skirt and a bag labeled “Zen Popcorn” can get by us.

The crowd is still arriving. One man with a thin blonde comb-over and large, early 90s glasses walks by, followed by a similar looking woman except with gray hair. “That guy who just walked by,” says Bonty. “I know him. That’s the guy I interviewed with. He’s the head honcho.” A few months back, Bonty interviewed with a local theater company to help manage their finances. Their operation was on a much larger scale than his previous experience, so he wasn’t offered the job. They took seats on the back row. The guy didn’t seem to recognize Bonty, and Bonty didn’t wish to reintroduce himself.

The lights dim. The usher comes back out near the stage, this time wearing a cargo-pocketed jacket. No one is sure why. The announcer makes some jokes involving death, but also demonstrates lightning, thunder, and darkness effects so all the kids can get used to it.

A family living room. Two humans come out. A guy in a spotted brown corduroy suit says his name is Harold. He is supposed to be a dog. A girl comes out in an orange tie-dyed pants suit with an orange headband and says her name is Chester. She is supposed to be a cat. No ventriloquists so far. They sing a song with the chorus, “You can’t trust a human without a pet.” Immediate conviction. I have no pets, nor do I really want any. I have withstood my wife’s insistence on a Labrador retriever. I usually counter with a hound dog. Those conversations don’t go well.

The family comes home. They bring with them a rabbit they found in the movie theater during a showing of Dracula. They argue about names for the rabbit. The mom decides on a combination of “Bunny” and Dracula. Bunnicula. This is a turn-on for the father for some reason, and he chases the wife off stage.

The rabbit is brown-headed with vacant pink eyes. No pupils, just pink coaster-sized eyes. His white body comes up to Harold’s knees. The rabbit has a puppeteer. The puppeteer is mummified in material that looks like gray panty-hose. Even his face is covered. His hand fits into Bunnicula’s neck. This puppet master apparently goes for the jugular. But the puppeteer is no ventriloquist. Bunnicula stays eerily silent. The play continues with a dancing segment that looks like the ‘Thriller’ video. The parents do Thriller, the kids do Thriller, the pets do Thriller. Bunnicula sleeps in his makeshift cage--a predictable mash up of chicken wire and plywood, but with a trapdoor for the masked man’s hand.

Finally, the real action. X-Files conspiracy music oozes out. Bunnicula’s eyes light up to infrared. He looks like ET’s parents coming out of a spaceship. The girl in the row in front of me grabs her dad. Bunnicula freaks her out. He sneaks out of the cage. To the refrigerator. He sucks a tomato dry. A juice-sucking rabbit.

Why doesn’t the rabbit just drink water out of his bowl? Why did the masked man let him out of the cage?

Mom hears noise. She comes in and grabs a knife Psycho-like. Only to cut into the white tomato. “A white toe-may-toe!” says Father who has now come in. “A white toe-MA-toe!” says one of the sons in the play. Father and Son have competing faux-British accents. Everybody back to bed.

Play time lapse. No one in the audience knows what day it is. Chester reads Edgar Allan Poe. Harold eats chocolate cupcakes. The pets conspire about how to prove Bunnicula is a vampire to the family. Can dogs eat chocolate? Can cats read? More dancing, more shadows.

Bunnicula lights up again. Hissing smoke. Girl grabs father, and accidentally hits my leg. This freaks me out more than the bunny. I look over to Ms. Handler’s handler. Surfer Boy took her place next to Ms. Handler. Ms. Handler’s handler sits next to a hip guy in a screen print T-shirt with curls out the back of a baseball hat. Probably her dad. They probably live in some sort of commune with Zen popcorn lady and Ms. Handler.

More white vegetables. They find a white zucchini, and furious violin music is played at the zucchini mention. “Do they make music?” Harold asks Chester, referring to the zucchini. “No, they make casseroles,” says Chester. No one knows why the zucchini gets music. A different son blames the white vegetables on them not being organic. He talks about pesticides. This goes over well in the art crowd. I think I hear Zen popcorn lady laugh.

More play time lapse. Chester confronts bunny with garlic. Then a steak through the heart. This funny food sight gag is not lost on the parents in the audience. The relationship between pets and their food is explored more through this play than any medium since the first Purina commercials.

The denouement. It all ends suddenly. The man behind the mask is revealed to be a veterinarian next door. We trusted their suspension of disbelief, just to have it backfire on us. Lights come up. They do Thriller off the stage. The faux-Brit accent Son comes back on stage too quick. He waves to his real mom. All suspension is gone. Oh well. We get over it quickly.

“I want to meet the cat,” I hear Ms. Handler’s handler say as I’m standing in the aisle. “But I’m scared,” she says. “Yeah, I’m scared too,” says another girl, apparently part of the commune as well. “You’re a scaredy cat! You’re a scaredy cat!” Surfer Boy quickly analyzes.

Bonty is waiting in the entryway of the theater. “I know Chester the cat,” he says. “Or I mean, I know her. Kathleen.” Kathleen plays the cat. Kat plays the cat? This is deeper than even Surfer Boy could put together. Bonty didn’t want to say hello. He worked with Kathleen’s husband at a coffee shop and once said something mildly embarrassing to her and her husband. He wasn’t a close enough friend to have seen her since, or for him to apologize. Bonty doesn’t want to meet the cat. It’s probably hard to apologize to someone while they are sporting fake whiskers. Apparently, the kids aren’t the only scaredy cats.