LOS ANGELES — Legendary novelty music enthusiast and chief attending physician Dr. Demento sat down a tearful patient yesterday to inform them of their rapidly advancing Pac-Man fever, sources at Cedars-Sinai report.
“This is the hardest part of the job. Oh, the medical job, that is. Not the wacky music job, that’s easy. This patient could tell something was up when I dourly removed my top hat in reverence of the situation,” said Demento, with a sorrowful honk of a giant old-timey car horn. “In most cases, Pac-Man fever can be treated with a steady regimen of prescription power pellets, and physical therapy…but in this instance, it had progressed to Stage IV, which can be as terminal as, say, getting run over by a reindeer, or eaten by a purple people eater.”
The patient in question, Leigh Barriston, was rightfully rattled by the diagnosis, but had no complaints over Demento’s methods.
“The news he was breaking to me was some of the worst I’ve ever been told, but I must say, his bedside manner was hilarious. He’d be running intense diagnostics, but at the same time, be adding in kooky sound effects that put me at ease,” he said, while filling out a last will and testament with Demento’s rubber chicken shaped pen. “The man’s a genius, just look at that diploma on the wall, next to the gold record of Disco Duck.”
Sources near Barriston encouraged him to get a second medical opinion.
“I’ve never trusted that Demento quack. I told Leigh to go with my primary care physician: Dr. Teeth of the Electric Mayhem,” said friend of the infirmed, Harland Hiller. “Sure, the nurses who sign you in at his office look like little rats in wigs and scrubs, but damn it, Teeth gets the results you want, and leaves you with a better song stuck in your head than ‘They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Ha.’”
At press time, Demento highly encouraged Barriston to inform his parents of the news by telling them “goodbye muddah, goodbye faddah.”
