SPLAIN IT!! Akbar and Anwar

Akbar Mancuso was a world renown strongman who prided himself on courage and his relentless passion for helping others. His popularity began to grow throughout the Middle East courtesy of his fitness books like Leg Lifts and Me, I Can Dead Lift A Volvo and Spiraling Out Of Control With Strength, but Akbar may be best known for his self help book If your mother was my mother, we’d be brothers.

Akbar owned his own bodybuilding gym called “The Gym of Talent”. It was a small gym but it was lined with plenty of trophys and medals he had won throughout his life of pure awesomeness. Little did he know his life was about to change.

One sunny, sandy day as Akbar was polishing his medals, he heard someone knocking on the door. He thought, “Who could that be? the door is unlocked, why not just come on in?”. As he strolled to the front of the gym, toward the door, he noticed a child-like form gazing happily through the glass. He kindly opened the sunlit door and welcomed the young chap in. There he was, standing a mere 0.83m (2 1/2 feet) tall. Akbar paused in shock, realizing the child was no child and that he had an astoundingly sweet stache and golden locks. Little Anwar peered up at Akbar with uninhibited determination looming from his face.

Now Akbar has been accused of many things, but uncreatitivityness is not one of those things. Akbar has performed wondrous feats of strength and endurance for many years, while on book tours. Phonebook demolition, egg-breaking, and muscle flexing were introduced in the late to mid ’80′s by this legendary squeezer of things.

His life took a dramatic turn in 1999, as Little Anwar peered up at Mr. Mancuso and proceeded to tell him who he was. Anwar had found his life in a shambles. He was a young fan of Mancuso’s, and dying of terminal diseases including-but not limited to gonorrhea, shingles, Harvey’s rotavirus (discovered in 1996 by Harvey Finklestein, researcher at Yale), and acute plasmotoxicity caused by excessive abuse of over the counter candies.

Anwar had for years misused and abused lemon drops. This, coupled with his uncontrollable candy-seeking behavior had left him destitute and strung out on jellybeans and gummy worms. His inner demons had driven him from the gateway candies of jawbreakers and tic tacs to sweets associated with abusers and inexplicable routes of abuse, including pixie stick snorting (not just the powder, the entire stick- including paper wrapper) as well as rectal administration of pop rocks.

Nearly on his deathbed-physically and emotionally scarred-Anwar’s last wish was to meet his longtime idol, Mr. Mancuso.

Despite his hectic schedule of pushups and protein shakes, Akbar took Little Anwar under his wing, teaching him as much about all things awesome that he could. Sadly, 12 minutes into their first workout, Anwar collapsed and stopped breathing.

Akbar rushed his new friend to St. Mary’s of the Eucharistical Revelatory Peace That Surpasses All Understanding Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Immediately upon entering Room 407 after doctors had stabilized Anwar, he was profoundly struck by the scent of lollipops, sherbet, and decay.

For the next six days, Akbar Mancuso found himself being altered by Anwar’s simplistic and heart-wrenching story. Though it wasn’t all sad.

There were countless hours spent giggling and laughing together, but then little Anwar further explained to Akbar why he had come to pay him a visit.

Anwar had spent many years in and out of prison for his law breaking exploits. He had been arrested three times for self prostitution and public nudity. Twice for sneaking himself into luggage while traveling, and he once escaped a near death stoning for proclaiming he was the mini-messiah. He was also known in the police realm for his violence and leadership of the Bird Chest Gang in which he was known as “Lil’ Sneaky”.

This trickery nearly cost him his life, until one day he stumbled upon Akbar’s book, If My Mother Was Your Mother, We’d Be Brothers, which changed his life forever.

After gaining the neccesary confidence he had always dreamed of, little Anwar decided to use his brilliance for bettering himself and humanity. He now holds two world records, one for the smallest circumference of a cartwheel and the other for the most minimal splash caused by a cannonball. He also joined and contributed to the Save the Sperm Whale campaign and had become a regular at the local red-cross blood drive.

On Day Seven, Anwar’s liver, heart and all of his toes simultaneously stopped working. Despite furious attempts by the doctors and nurses to revive him, Anwar died that night.

From then on, Akbar was a changed man. He walked a little more upright, swaggered a little more swaggery, and stopped hitting kittens. On his deathbed, Anwar had mentioned that his two biggest regrets were never joining the circus as a ventriloquist, and not cussin’ more.

Akbar Mancuso continues to right those two wrongs in the remainder of his life. He never again toured as a Strongman, though he maintained his slightly-more-fit-than-average physique.

Putting down the dumbbells for his lovable, hand-whittled life-sized replica ventriloquism dummy, Anwar “Scamp” Jr. (who could be controlled using only one finger) and inserting unecessary profanity into his sentences, Akbar began a new career.

Akbar and “Scamp” are shown in this 2006 picture, bringing joy to the children at Sammy DeGoof’s Circus under the big top. We thank him for his unrelenting pursuit and acquisition of children’s laughter, his musky odor, and his hilarious puppet Scamp. Still, we wish he would clean up his #*$%!& mouth.

–Mean Gene/Dirk collaborations