Orpheus and Eurydice in Hell

Once upon a sunny day, Orpheus, who was a fabulous musician and part god (on his mother's side), met the beautiful Eurydice. He played his lyre so darn sweetly that Eurydice fell madly in love with him, and he with her, because she was so gorgeous. Well, they soon dashed off into the foliage and fooled around (I don't know what the deal was with those mythic types, but they were always running off into the greenery together-for which Sigmund Freud must be eternally grateful. But I digress).

To continue: Orpheus and Eurydice got hitched, and were on their rustic honeymoon, sharing a post-whoopee cigarette, when poor Eurydice was bitten by a venomous snake she was stroking because she mistook it for her husband's lyre (she wasn't very bright, and besides, she was a little near-sighted), and died Instantly. She was immediately zipped off to Hell by Pluto, the King of the Underworld, who'd noticed that Eurydice was One Hot Babe, and wanted to get to know her better, in the Biblical sense.

Well, Orpheus pined away until he couldn't play his instrument anymore. In despair, he traveled to the Land of the Dead and begged Pluto to let Eurydice return. To persuade him, Orpheus played his lyre so seductively that he woke up all the spaced-out Deadheads camped in vans down there, waiting for the next concert. They passed around a joint and took a vote (Hell was a constitutional monarchy in those days), and Eurydice was thereupon released to Orpheus on the condition that he lead her back into the world without ever looking behind him to see if she was following.

Unfortunately, Orpheus was so stoned from the primo pot that he only managed to remember the warning until he was almost to the surface. Just before he reached the Land of the Living, he forgot, and looked back. Eurydice whispered, "Hasta la vista, baby," and disappeared.

Needless to say, Orpheus was totally bummed. He left his 'hood and wandered through the 'burbs, convinced he was the reincarnation of Jerry Garcia, ticking everybody off with his constant caterwauling. One day, a roving band of rap-singing gangbangers ran into him, and they thought his music really sucked. So to shut him up, they blew him away, dismembered his body, and threw his severed head into a river.

Luckily, the Muses-a pretty hip tattooed bunch with studs on their tongues and noses and other body parts-found his head and buried it on the island of Lesbos. They placed his arms and legs in a tomb at the foot of Mt. Olympus, and there, to this day, the nightingales sing Grateful Dead songs. They threw his lyre into the sky, where it became a New constellation. Then they took his sandals, boiled them, chewed on them for a while then gave up, and buried them under a coconut tree, and the tree grew and grew until it reached the height of Zeus' celestial digs. He got really ticked off because it was obstructing his view and lowering his property values, so he shot a lightening bolt at it, and it came crashing down and caused a huge earthquake (9.6 on the Richter) and a tremendous tidal wave, and all the sharks in the sea were swept to shore and gobbled up all the people, and then . . . But that's another story . . .

Be that as it may (and this part really happened, trust me), Orpheus, 'cause he was now dead, got to go back to Hell and live happily ever after with Eurydice.