Oh, you thought our Thanksgiving op-eds were bad? Gird your stockings for the least wonderful time of the year, when the merry gentlepeople of MEL attempt to outdo one another with the most heinous holiday takes we can unwrap. We can already feel the angry tweets nipping at our noses.
Every writer in MEL-ville liked asses a lot…
But Leftley, who lived east of MEL-ville, did not.
The man hated asses! Or at least, the obsession
His colleagues displayed, because — a confession:
It wasn’t his head being screwed on not right;
It wasn’t his skinny jeans being too tight;
No, the reason big asses cast such a pall
Was simply his own ass — two sizes too small.
As Leftley read ass prose by Taylor and Klee,
By Myers, Lecklitner, Kohn and Fiouzi,
He fumed in his room with a sour, assless frown,
Saw another ass headline and threw his phone down.
“It’s always the asses!” he snarled with a sneer,
Depressed, knowing surely that he had no rear;
For his curse since his birth, and now with him still,
Was that Leftley had ass cheeks like that of Hank Hill.
No backside or buttocks, no sweet, firm young peach:
A fine round caboose remained far out of reach.
When he looked in the mirror, what there met his stare
Was a pair of pale pancakes, sparse-dotted with hair.
And so, insecure, and all of a grump,
Old Leftley decided he hated the rump.
He hated the heinie! The keister! The booty!
Badonkadonk, derriere, tushie, patootie!
He hated the asses that all else adored
(Butt implants were something he couldn’t afford).
So as Christmas approached in this long, grim pandemic,
He switched on The Grinch, with its song, most anthemic.
“For there,” thought old Leftley, his soul swelled with bile,
“Is a fellow who gets me: a misanthrope vile.
Jealous, vindictive, his brain full of sludge!
A fellow enthusiast of holding a grudge!
If Grinchy had warred not on Christmas but ass,
We’d be the same person!” — then he put down his glass…
For his hand, how it trembled with terrible spite
As he wound back the movie to check he was right.
He prayed he was wrong — it was too cruel of a prank!
But there, in freeze-frame, was the truth. His heart sank.
He’d watched this fun film to take his mind off of asses…
But the Grinch had turned out to be thicc as molasses.
His green, furry bubble butt waved on the screen
As Leftley attempted to stifle a scream,
Undone by this vision of buttocks displayed.
“It’s enough!” he cried, anguished. “That’s not how I’m made!”
And he vowed there and then to ban all ass-themed pieces
Until this compulsion for ass content ceases.
“Enough with the butt stuff! I cannot defend
Not even one feature that features rear end!”
But then, on the screen, a rare sight caught his eye,
And it wasn’t the Grinch’s phat bumper — no lie.
Instead what he saw was the Grinch start to change,
The neural pathways of his brain rearranged.
The Grinch realized something that lightened his soul,
That undid bitterness’ terrible toll.
“I don’t understand it. How could it be so?
He called for vendetta, then just let it go!”
And Leftley, his pancake butt flat on the chair,
Sat puzzling and puzzling this twist so unfair.
Then Leftley thought something he hadn’t before!
“Maybe ass content… perhaps… means a little bit more!
For not all the buns can be Instagram-pleasers.
Maybe all butts are nice, even wrinkly old geezers’!”
And what happened then? Well, in MEL-ville, they say,
Old Leftley’s small ass grew three sizes that day.
And perhaps, yes, this was only all in his mind,
But he felt newly happy about his behind.
And the minute his ass didn’t feel quite so tight,
He read more ass content in the bright morning light,
And he commissioned ass pieces! And then more, besides!
And Leftley, HE HIMSELF wrote a piece on backsides.
Nick Leftley
Nick Leftley is MEL's senior editor, or something like that, it's not entirely clear. He writes and edits stuff, and has been doing so since print magazines were actually a thing. He smells pretty good.
