LOS ANGELES - Talk about giving the hairy eyeball! - In an unprecedented move last week, Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese filed criminal charges against popular household cleaning mascot Mr. Clean. Scorsese, 66, claimed that Clean, presumably in his mid fifties, had infringed on the legal rights to the director's gargantuan bushy eyebrows.
Although opposite in color to Scorsese's, Clean's eyebrows follow a similar pistol-shaped outline. But for the director, the final straw was that they are "almost as monstrously flocculent" as his own.
"I've spent my entire life growing those mammoths out," added Scorsese. "And I won't have this clown come and make it look so easy."
A keen onlooker claimed that the eyebrows would even serve as the focal point of Clean's face, "if it weren't for the piercing blue eyes, the glistening baldness, or the woefully misplaced golden earing overhanging his left cheek."
At first Scorcese offered to resolve the dispute in person, but upon witnessing Clean's unusually hulking muscular figure, the director's law team advised him not to take any chances.
"We had it all planned out," assured Bernie Finkelstein, BL. "Marty was going to suggest to the defendant that he use one of his own corrosive products to moderate the eyebrows and the whole deal would have expired. But did you see that guy? His abdominals are more pronounced than my vowels."
Clean, whose first name was undisclosed, remained consistently calm and silent during the allegations. When approached for comment he folded his arms obstinately, smiled, and twinkled.
But it should be noted that the mascot is by no means a stranger to legal proceedings.
Last year he was sentenced to ten years in prison for over three hundred counts of home invasion after about as many female witnesses filed similar reports of "a middle-aged man materializing in their kitchen or bathroom and oppressively offering to clean the grease off of any surface."
He was released well ahead of his parole for good behavior, the prison warden claiming Clean was "invariably silent" and that "he cheerfully polished the prison cell before offering every inmate a magic eraser."
"He scrubbed until the lead paint was flakin'," added the warden.
But Clean's participation in the upcoming court proceedings has raised a few eyebrows. Officials from the Procter and Gamble Company have successfully motioned for the allowance of the irritating Mr. Clean jingle every time he stands up to testify. A dress code exemption is also in order, as it is believed Clean harbours only an assemblage of t-shirts, sweat pants and shoes, all coloured white and sparkling clean.
Meanwhile, Scorsese is already well into production on a courtroom drama about the ordeal, which is set to star Bruce Willis in the lead role. To do justice to his character, he will spend two months bulking up with a program of intensive housekeeping tasks.
"The soap scum doesn't stand a chance," added Willis.
