Hawthorne Housing Director On The Long, Slow Road To Physical Recovery After Freak Phone Book Dumping Incident...

Photos By John Hoff, top photo is contributed

As revealed in a previous (parody) blog post, Hawthorne's Housing Director, Jeff Skrenes, was tragically injured in a freak phone book dumping incident. Fortunately, he has been recovering thanks to the love of his friends and endless hours of painful physical therapy.

OUR NEIGHBORHOOD IS SOOOOOOOO GOING TO SUE DEX OVER THIS...

Details have emerged about the incident, which involved a massive amount of Dex phone books loaded into a nefarious, clearly illegal device known as the Dumpinator 3000.

In order to understand how the accident happened, you need to know something about the personality of Jeff Skrenes. If Jeff were a Marine, he'd be the kind of Marine who would throw himself on a grenade to save his buddy. And then his buddy would say, "Dude, what are you DOING? That's one of MY grenades, and I haven't even PULLED THE PIN!"

On the day of the accident...and we're still not sure precisely what day that was, due to uncertainty about how long Jeff laid unconscious on that old, rotten porch...Jeff had assumed his "Hawthorne Hawkman" superhero persona, and was out patrolling for slumlord evil when he caught site of the Dexmobile going around with a load of phonebooks made from virgin Canadian forests. The Dexmobile had a frightening new feature...some kind of powerful catapult device, capable of hurling phone books long distances with great force.

At that very moment, the Dex Mobile was heading right toward some run down "249 list" properties with boarded up windows, missing copper pipes, weeds in the yard rapidly becoming a prairie eco system, and probably about a dozen old, rotting phone books already stacked up on the porch. Both of those particular buildings were slated for demolition in the near future as part of neighborhood revitalization efforts.

Inexplicably, irrationally desperate to save the doomed and blighted property from yet one more injury and/or insult, Jeff put himself between the rotting front porch and the business end of the Dumpinator 3000, and...and...

Well, initially it was thought the force which hit Jeff square in the chest was roughly equal to a redwood tree, 30 feet in diameter, falling over...but recently the estimate has been revised to "a fully loaded Peterbilt truck, traveling at 60 miles an hour carrying a load of old growth timber." In any case, it messed up Jeff pretty good...though, notably, left virtually intact all the geeky mortgage knowledge packed in his cranium.

Naturally, the Dexmobile never stopped and we have yet to get an apology from the company. (If we did get an apology, it would probably arrive written on the first sheet of a ream of paper, and they'd throw away the rest of the ream) Plans are being laid to "slap Dex with some paper," if you catch my drift.

In the photos above, top to bottom: Jeff relearns the ability to speak with the help of Manny The Talking Bro Buddy, at the Veterans Administration hospital. It's not that Jeff is a VET, mind you, it's just there was some kind of strange mix up when Jeff was being "medically evacuated" by helicopter from the scene of the accident, and somehow Jeff ended up in the VA system.

It's all my fault. Jeff thought my army dog tags were "buff" and he wanted to wear the dog tags while working out at the gym. I was all, like, WHATEVER. You want the army dog tags? You can't HANDLE the army dog tags! But Jeff thought he could, and he was wearing the dog tags that particular day when he stepped in front of the Dumpinator 3000.

Well, technically he's STILL wearing one of the dog tags, since it's now embedded in his lung, too close to his heart to remove, the doctors say.

Everything has worked out all for the good, however. Jeff has been learning interesting stuff from the injured veterans, harsh new tricks he intends to try on the slumlords and phone book companies once he's fully, physically recovered.

In the second photo, since the VA doesn't have a lot of money, Jeff's low-budget physical therapy often involves stuff like "pick up sticks and let's make a campfire" or, "hey, buddy, push my wheelchair to the commissary" or giving endless back massages to cute army nurses.

In the third photo, Jeff shows off the successful results of his VA "chest transplant." Now it turns out Jeff really, truly is part United States Marine. Jeff swears the new chest gives him actual super powers to play the role of "Hawthorne Hawkman" but I said, "Jeff, that's the morphine talking. It's just a regular human chest, I think, but...well, the government. You never know. What do you mean actual super powers?"

And then Jeff proceeded to bend a metal bed frame with his bare hands and I was like, "Whoah! DUDE! That's U.S. Government property. Save that (expletive) for the slumlords."

The last photo shows a cake celebrating Jeff's birthday. It was purchased at the last minute at Keefer Court bakery in the West Bank, as Jeff's friends and relatives rushed to the VA hospital, having received word Jeff had finally regained consciousness and was talking some crazy stuff about...well, geeky mortgage topics, of course.

Oh, GOD!!!!!!!!! My dear friend Jeff, suffering so at the hands of the phone book companies. Transformed--through a mix up in dog tags--into some kind of freaky government X-Man mutant, a fate that was clearly meant for ME!

I can barely bear it!!!! Ayeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

Know this, Dex. THIS I SWEAR UPON THE BLOODIED REMNANTS OF MY FRIEND'S SHIRT, which I used to stop his bleeding when I found him on that porch, yes, the shirt which says "Hawthorne Neighborhood Council," now stained with the blood of my friend, now tied around the bumper of my CHEVY like a martial banner of vengeance...

I will fight your phone book dumping, I will have my dark, horrible "getting even" upon your corporate tree killing evil. THIS IS SWEAR!!!