Osment Grows Up
Seventeen-year-old Osment, deep within
the ravages of acne-afflicted adolescence with accompanying glass-shattering
vocal changes, takes a deep drag on his home-rolled clove and
crabgrass cigarette while staring in hopeless ennui through the
bars of his cell, bereft of the once exhilarated longing for the
short-lived freedom he once knew, where he could enjoy the communal
showers without getting bent over and reamed by the Giotti cousins
while the guards tossed his bedding looking for the autographed
photos of a scantily clad Susan Sarandon begging him to call her
agent.
"So, tell us, Oz," asks Larry King, "When did it
all start to go bad for you?"
"Well," exhaled Oz, intently filing a spoon handle on
the roach-infested concrete floor, "It was when my parents
simultaneously signed me up for 'Love Bug - The Revenge', 'Seventh
Sense - Elvis and Jon Benet Tell All', and 'John Denver Burns
in Hell' that I suddenly realized I was only a commodity to them,
and no longer a son to be loved and cherished and taken to Circus
Circus where I could play giant foosball, throw back Frutopia
shooters, mow down those obnoxious clowns with my Beemer and stuff
cotton candy in all the slots, just like a normal kid."
"So," says Larry King, "You'll be voting for Nader?"
"Oz?" interrupts Diane Sawyer, tiptoeing around the
overflowing toilet, "The sudden fame was a burden for you?"
"Well, yeah." squeaks Osment, indignant that anyone
could fail to recognize the obvious downside of universal public
recognition and the daily deliveries of anatomically-correct Pooh
Bears from Michael Jackson. "At first I tried to hang out
with Willis all the time, ya know? I mean, he was a role model
for me, the way he handled all that movie-star stuff with a goofy
grin and harmonica implant, the way he'd attract all those fashion
models in the leather bars, introduce me as 'Mini Me' and carry
me around on his shoulders calling me his 'career save'."
"You've met Ralph Nader?" asks Larry King.
"What did it feel like to finally snap, Oz?!" yells
Jerry Springer from the next cell.
"Well, I dunno," shrugs Oz, "Maybe it was at the
Oscars, when Pee Wee handed my award to Michael J. Fox and the
paparrazi trampled my puppy, 'Fayed', trying to get a shot of
those groupies who kept running up to me, barfing on my shoes
and then running off, giggling."
"And this justifies what you did?" gasps Luciane Goldberg,
stapling a microphone to his jock.
"Yeah, I guess so," mumbles Oz, "I mean, for months
I shlepped around in those stupid forests with a camcorder, and
the whole time Mike, Josh, and Heather were yucking it up in Zurich,
cramming cash into lock-boxes. I figured the explosion would be
blamed on Obsama bin Laden, like everything else."
"Do you have any last words?" asks the priest.
"Yeah," sighs Osmet, "Damien says 'hi'."