The Grateful Fred’s latest tune, “Baby, Yeah, Baby, Baby,” was number four on the hit charts. And climbing. Every time it moved up, Joe the Bad Guy got madder.
What did he do when he got mad? Punch something, that’s what—usually the walls of his lair. You could always tell when The Grateful Fred had a hit song by the hundreds of dents in Joe’s walls.
He had tried to go solo after he was kicked out of the band, but no one liked his music. They hated his lyrics even more. His song “You Have Hairy Knuckles but I Love You Anyhow” was turned down by every record company in the country. His song “Bucktoothed Sally” did even worse. A record company in England said they’d pay him to burn his music equipment. Once he played for free at a wedding reception, but after just one song everyone left the party and went bowling. Poor Joe the Bad Guy. He couldn’t even work for free.
And so with every Grateful Fred hit song, his hatred deepened. He wanted revenge and he wanted it now. Sooner if possible!
Back in his lair, Joe began putting the Clone-o-Matic 6000 together. The Grateful Fred would soon pay the price for kicking him out, he thought with an evil laugh. His evil laugh wasn’t quite what it should be, but he planned to read up on the subject. He’d gotten a copy of Perfecting Your Evil Laugh at Big Al’s and was going to start reading it as soon as he took care of The Grateful Fred.
But there was a problem. In order to clone a person, you needed to start with a piece of that person. You couldn’t create something from nothing.
He needed a piece of Fred. A strand of hair. A toenail clipping.
At the stroke of midnight, Joe set out to get the piece of Fred that he needed.