"Hammertime" by N.S. Dutta

If you can't groove to this
Then you probably are dead.
[...]
Break it down
Stop... Hammer time.

— MC HAMMER

[Bear with me here, but I don't want to rewrite the entire novel, so we're just going to cut to Chapter 19.]

But Snoop Doggy Dogg's album did not put him at the top of the entertainment pyramid. No man occupied that lofty place. Rather it was a bird.

The nest of Big Bird was at 123 Sesame Street. The great artiste came to work every morning adorned in lemon yellow feathers, orange legs with stripes of bubble gum pink, and three-toed feet. He affected colors slightly bothersome to the eye. When he stepped out of his nest a loose feather fell around his feet. One of the children who had rushed out to meet him picked up the feather and tucked it under the ear of nearby young girl. The girl thanked him profusely. In the meantime Big Bird had marched onto the street, children, adults, and even some fellow muppets circling him like they too were birds. Big Bird carried his gold-colored head high. He was at this time in his twenty-fourth year on the air—a burly eight-footer with a large body of dense yellow feathers, yellow wings, and bulging excited eyes set so close together to suggest they were made of plastic. Accepting the obeisances of his neighbors, he strode to his preferred stoop, a modest set of steps before a richly green door where he was visible to everyone and everyone to him. He was joined in his theme song. He was wearing a smile and enthusiasm. He sat down in front of the door, and ignoring Cookie Monster's letter of the day which was usually the first thing he looked at, said to his neighbors I want to meet that gangsta fellow. What's his name. The West Coast rapper. Snoop Doggy Dogg.

He had sensed in Snoop Doggy Dogg's album a lust for fame as imperial as his own. This was the first sign given to him in some time that he might not be alone on the planet. Big Bird was that classic avicular hero, a bird hatched to extreme wealth who by dint of hard work and pluckiness multiplies the family fortune till it is out of sight. He was familiar with all 26 letters of the English alphabet. He had once performed a duet with Diana Ross that had saved her from has-been-cy. He had single-wingedly bolstered the self esteem of the American public by making them all feel good about themselves as children. Moving about on his two large feet he crossed all borders and was at home everywhere in the world. He was a monarch of the flourishing, vivacious kingdom of Sesame Street whose sovereignty was in every heart granted. Commanding friendships that beggared royal fortunes, he was a revolutionist who left to presidents and kings their territory while he took control of the minds and allegiances of their youth. For years he had surrounded himself with parties of friends and acquaintances, always screening them in his mind for personal characteristics that might warrant even more regard for them than he already emitted. He was invariably pleased. Everywhere men bowed to him and women cooed with affection. He knew as no one else the deceptively warm and inviting reaches of unlimited success. The ordinary operations of his intelligence and instinct over the past twenty-four years had made him preeminent in the affairs of neighbors and he thought this said little for the residents of Sesame Street. Only one thing served to remind Big Bird of his being an animal and that was a quintessentially birdlike quality that had colonized his nose and made of it a beak of the monstrously large type that would only be rivaled by that of George of the Jungle's pet Toucan several years down the road. This affliction had come to Big Bird at birth. As he grew older and richer the beak grew larger. He learned to stare down people who looked at it, but every day of his life, when he arose, he examined it in the mirror, finding it indeed loathsome but at the same time exquisitely satisfying. It seemed to him that every time he performed a song or resolved a conflict or learned a new word, another inch was tacked on at the base of the giant feature. His favorite story in literature was a tale of Theodore Seuss Geisel's entitled "The Sneetches," which told of extraordinarily lovely creatures whose beauty was perfect except in those who lacked a small green star on their stomaches. When Sylvester McMonkey McBean, a fix-it-up chappie, made them go through a machine designed to rid them of this imperfection, the stars appeared; but as all the Sneetches were thereby indistinguishable, their specialness died. To Big Bird, the magnitude of his horrendous beak was the touch of God upon him, the assurance of mortality. It was the steadiest assurance he had.

Once, years before, he had arranged a dinner party at his residence on Sesame Street in which his guests were the dozen most powerful children's television stars in America besides himself. He was hoping the collected energy of their minds might crumble the twigs of his nest. Fred Rogers startled him with the news that he was chronically constipated and did a lot of thinking on the toilet. Barney dozed over his brandy. Kermit uttered inanities. Gathered in this one room the entertainment elite could think of nothing to say. How they appalled him. How his heart quaked. He heard through his brain the electric winds of an empty universe. And he asked himself Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street.

*Just for the record, I'm not throwing the extra "Doggy" in "Snoop Doggy Dogg" for no reason; that was his official name when he released his debut album in 1993, when "Hammertime" is set. As we all know, historical accuracy is not something "Ragtime" takes lightly, so I made sure to do my research.

**I will probably write something a little more serious and insightful later in the week, but I have to say I think it is mildly significant to note that the ridiculousness of this passage is really not my doing; I just switched up the characters a little.