Famed circus man and sensationalist P.T. Barnum was resurrected last week, coughing and spitting as he was reanimated from his sarcophagus, to watch a bootleg screener of “The Greatest Showman” starring Hugh Wolverine. To say he wasn’t impressed would be to undersell the greatest showman who ever lived, died, and lived again, however briefly.
“Why have you brought me back from the life hereafter?” begged the reanimated corpse of P.T. Barnum, desperately praying for the sweet hand of death to take him back once again to the grave.
“Am I here just to see flickering images on a thing you hold in your hand?” he asked, asserting erroneously to the technicians on hand, many of whom had come from the XBox team, that the human eye can see more than 30 frames per second.
Barnum was referring to the amazing technology that is a Samsung Note2, which despite being horribly outdated by modern standards, is still decades ahead of his time.
“Why is there a stylus?” he asked, before his attention was brought back to the screen, since some of life’s biggest questions simply lack answers.
As he watched the movie, he became frustrated, almost enraged, or whatever you’d call it when a sentient pile of dust and bones tries to school you.
“That man playing me, why does he keep singing and saying SNIKT and also SNIKT and SNIKT?” asked the crumbling remains of Mr. Barnun. He was assured it was because action stars are allowed to do musicals in the future. An explanation he seemed to accept without question, perhaps due to being almost completely immobile.
Barnum ended his life as a Teetotaler, swearing off liquour and anyone who drinks it as sinful, but upon watching just the first 14-minutes, asked if there was any “Future Science Gin” he could imbibe to make the remainder of his brief time back among the living more bearable. We only had Bud Light with Lime, but he declined, calling it “a fate worse than dying twice.”
Barnum took particular exception to the “countless” factual inaccuracies, so many in fact that it rendered the film “wholly a work of fiction, stealing only [his] name,” adding, “Why would they allow that? How much money did my heirs get? I hope it was a lot of star bucks.”
When informed that his heirs died out in the Syphilis Wars of 1948, he conceded it was most likely and forgivable, asking only “to please let me die once again,” and that his Starbucks gift certificates be donated to a noble cause, which we did, dedicating all of it to our office pool.
For the next 14-hours we showed him videos of how his circus tortured countless animals, tormented countless children, and allowed thousands of mimes to suffocate in clear boxes strictly for the amusement of the masses. These atrocities and many more even unspeakable ones warmed what once could have been his heart, and he expressed great joy.
“The Jews are still murderous villains, right?” asked Barnum, to which no one on staff was willing to say a word, though I have it on good authority a few behind my line of sight might have nodded.
In the end, Barnum had only one question for us. “How did you reconstitute my parts after I was not merely buried and interred, but cremated?” To which we answered solemnly, “through the magic of science.” Adding, “and other journalists will be able to do this with increasing frequency in coming years,” before Jacob from HR sneezed, stripping much of his body from him in a degree of pain unimaginable to the human mind.
We both had a laugh, but ours too hardy, as we blew away his remaining supporting carbon structures, sending him back into the hell from whence he came.
But for a brief moment, he got to know that Hugh Jackman completely ruined his already terrible legacy, and in the end, isn’t that something everyone should take with them into the darkest pits of hell?
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I imagine the depiction of himself as a drinker would probably niggle, although he did only become a teetotaler when he was in his 40s, so – Jackman’s age. But the message of “family first” is definitely one he would have loved, and as a purveyor of inaccuracies, I suspect that he would have been perfectly happy with the rest, too, setting aside the depiction of Jenny Lind as a vengeful harlot. Barnum also loved the possibilities of new technology, so I feel like he would have fully enjoyed this glimpse into the future.