PUT IT ALL ON RED

2:35 am: Woman, 35, comes in complaining of numbness in extremities. Upon removal of gloves and socks, frostbite of fingers and toes evident. She reveals she has been camping outside for the past two days to get a cheap foot bath, subsisting on slim jims and “pure adrenaline.” I inform her that I will have to amputate. She promptly bursts into tears, lamenting the fact that the foot bath is of little use to her now. I offer her $15 for it.

4:55 am: Boy, 14, arrives with gunshot wound to anterior thoracic region. Immediately scrub in for surgery, start operation with Dr. Nguyen to stop bleeding and extract bullet. A half hour into the operation, Dr. Wilson charges into the room, carrying shopping bags and exclaiming “Guys, you have got to get down to the mall, these deals are insane! I just saw a kid get shot for a Playstation 4!”

Dr. Wilson glimpses the operating table, slowly backs out of the room.

6:00 am: The nurse brought in six dozen donuts since it was “Buy one, get five dozen free!” They are all lemon-flavored. This day cannot get any worse.

7:05 am: Man, 52, presents with chainsaw superglued to his right palm. He reports that this was his strategy for preventing anyone from taking it from him in the morning scramble at Home Depot. I lie and say there is nothing I can do, hoping that this will cause some introspective reflection on the transient nature of material objects.

He replies, “That’s cool, I think it’s actually pretty badass having a saw for a hand now.”

9:41 am: Girl, 8, is suffering from severe allergic reaction to peanut traces from morning cereal, accompanied by her mother. I order a shot of epinephrine, at which point the mother asks me how much the shot will cost. I assure her that it will be covered by their insurance, and even if she doesn’t have insurance, the hospital will help them with finances. The mother shakes her head. She tells me that they just came from the other hospital in town, and if I can’t beat their price plus 10%, they are leaving.

10:00 am: Turn over all my patients to Dr. Ramos and head home. Drink a cup of coffee while enjoying my new foot bath.

I want to begin this press conference by telling the public that I’m sorry. Every year, it’s our goal to bring American citizens a fun, entertaining, and safe Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. And today, we failed at one of those goals. Some – my lawyer, for example, in the conversation we had five minutes ago – would say we failed at all three of these goals. But in my defense, who could have predicted that the parade would go so horribly wrong?

I knew opening the parade with a Hunger Games-themed float might be controversial. The subject matter of the series is admittedly not the most heart-warming. But I loved the idea of the image of Katniss Everdeen shooting a flaming arrow to light a torch of hope and warmth that would lead the parade. Maybe it was slightly out-of-taste to have “tributes” from all five boroughs on the float with her, but the six of them singing “Where Is Love?” from Oliver! really could have been a heart-warming image. I truly believe that.

I will fully admit, however, that no matter how much cheaper it was, we should not have filled the Snoopy balloon just behind that float with highly flammable hydrogen gas.

In light of what happened next, many are criticizing parade organizers for not having proper safety procedures planned. I would like to state, for the record, that we did have emergency protocols in place, in case a balloon deflated or otherwise malfunctioned. We simply did not foresee the instantaneous immolation of the much-loved Snoopy balloon as it careened out of control, shedding blazing bits of material that forced crew members to run for cover.

As an aside: I would like to take a moment to thank the parade’s audio manager for cutting the by-then screaming children’s mics and playing the song “Flash Beagle” instead. It was a stroke of genius for which I cannot possibly thank him enough.

I’d like to preface what happened next by noting that I did not, in fact, approve of the third float in the parade. While I respect PETA’s mission, I felt today was neither the time nor the place to try to induce guilt over the consumption of turkey. The parade’s board of trustees, however, overruled me. So I really couldn’t have done anything to stop the burning, deflated shell of Snoopy from falling upon a large, turkey-filled cage sporting a sign reading, “Give turkeys something to be thankful for!” Nor could I have stopped the well-intentioned but ill-advised decision of one of the float’s crew members to let the turkeys out. Let’s all just be grateful that most of the flaming birds were already too far gone to flee toward the hysterical crowds.

I guess I’d just like to conclude by pointing out that parades always make traffic a nightmare, so the time it took for first-responders to arrive on the scene was actually impressively short. Oh, and whatever PETA says, that fireman’s decision to unleash the full power of the hose upon that poor, suffering turkey was about the most humane thing he could have done.

Oh, but I now recognize that having the Kids Bop float sing full, uncensored versions of Jason Derulo’s “Talk Dirty” was extremely inappropriate. I’m a man who takes responsibility for his mistakes, and that one’s on me.

When I was a kid we never wasted a scrap of food from the holidays. For dessert we would have shards of chocolate bunny from Spring until December 24 and then we’d have stale fruitcakes and spoiled eggnog til Easter. And we never used the stove the entire summer; we just heated our food over extra fireworks from the 4th of July.

Now I didn’t pay $9.99 for a single use giant orange candleholder. I held my tongue when Tara threw out 7 seeds that fell on the floor so I could only roast 91 of them. Then I let it slide when you guys got rid of 0.79 pounds of perfectly good pumpkin meat because you insisted on carving out eyes and a mouth. I hope you realize you’re not fooling anybody; real faces don’t have orange ridges or woody stems.

But I absolutely refuse to throw out the remaining 9.05 pounds because you kids are afraid of a little mold. Cheese has mold. You want to stop eating cheese in this house? As for the wax, I’m pretty sure it’s nontoxic. If you’re worried, it’s okay with me if you pick it out, as long as you put back any bits of pumpkin that stick to it. We all want dessert and we all love pumpkin pie and really I don’t see why this should be any more complicated than that.

Anyway, the discussion’s over because your grandparents are going to be here in 30 minutes and we still gotta get this thing into the oven. The good news is we don’t need the cuisinart because the texture’s about right already. Sam, try to make sure the pumpkin doesn’t collapse before you get it into the crust. And Tara, go upstairs and say goodbye to your parakeet because I’m not buying a damn turkey.

Dear Mayor McCheese,

As the head of your fiscal policy team, I am honored to help you build a sustainable economic future for Scottsdale. After a tough campaign in which you were slandered as a “McDonald’s corporate cronie” and a “man with a cheeseburger for a head,” I was excited to see what sweeping changes you would make to this town. That said, the team has reviewed your preliminary budget for the next fiscal year, and I have some concerns.

First, you project revenue to be $400 million, yet your projected expenses total $5 billion. At first I thought, wow, he must have gotten confused by all the zeroes, there’s no way he intentionally drafted such an unbalanced budget.

Of that projected revenue, you estimate we will receive $350 million of it in taxes, a reasonable estimate. As for where the remaining $50 million dollars is coming from, you wrote down “Free McDonald’s”. Now, Mr. Mayor, I’m not sure what municipality you came from, but here in Scottsdale, we pay for all goods and services with money. McRibs are not accepted as legal tender. Then you have down here that $5 million will come from “bun royalties.” I don’t even know.

For expenditures, you started out practical, granting budget increases to waste water treatment and street repair, issues that our citizens are extremely concerned about. Things get weird at the next line-item, where you wrote “Public safety”, then added parenthetically “and cheese.” I thought maybe there were specific public health issues related to cheese that you wanted to address during your tenure.

It became clear past that point that you were maximizing budget expenditures with no concordant increase in revenue to purchase vast quantities of cheese along with a party boat and mansion. At one point, you try to hide the purchase of cheese by calling it “queso.” Sir, my last name is Gutierrez, and everybody knows what queso is.

Also, what is a full-time Cheese Wrangler? Honestly, I’d really just like to know.

This explains the salary and benefits package table you sent to your employees (including me) earlier this month.

Mr. Mayor, I’ve drafted a sensible budget (attached) that balances revenues and expenditures while ensuring we meet the needs of our citizens. This budget would eliminate all cheese-related line items, along with the party boat and mansion.

However, as a sign of goodwill, I am leaving the queso budget intact.

Sincerely,
Alice Gutierrez
Chief Fiscal Policy Analyst, McCheese administration

It only applies to urine inside the toilet. I’m looking at you, Ken.