[1] Minimalist and abstract in style (many of the "gags" are created either with single, still frames or limited animation), it tells the story of a man (voiced by radio actor John Brown of My Friend Irma and The Life of Riley fame), who finds himself at the Pearly Gates explaining the story of his life to a bewildered Saint Peter and Noah Webster (also Brown) using slang of that era.

The majority of the short is made up of sight gags based on Peter and Webster's imagined, literal understandings of such phrases as "I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth" and "Outside it was raining cats and dogs."

A real swinging hep cat (who, for purposes, we shall just call by the name of the voice actor, John) goes to Heaven and steps before Saint Peter.

What follows is a series of sight gags based on Webster's literal interpretations of the slang terms, such as John's first job being helping out a proprietor who is 'short handed', but being 'unable to cut the mustard', he is 'given the gate', and goes back to his 'hole in the wall'.

Beginning with being 'born with a silver spoon in his mouth', seeming 'to grow up overnight', 'getting up with the chickens' at the 'crack of dawn, his first job 'slinging hash' because the proprietor is 'short-handed', not being able to 'cut the mustard', being 'given the gate', going back to his 'little hole in the wall', being 'beside himself with anger', moving to Texas to 'punch cattle', 'flying' to Chicago, where a beautiful girl named Mary 'steps into the picture'.

He is 'sent up the river' for a 'stretch in the jug' and is 'up against it' and feels himself 'going to pot', but after 'raising a big stink', and 'getting through a lot of red tape' he is 'sprung' by an 'undercover man'.

So he catches a 'cattle boat' back to the states, but after 'hot-footing it' to her apartment he discovers things have changed; Mary now has a 'bunch of little ones', and her old flame is now a suffering husband.

About 25 seconds at the end of the Madvillain song "Strange Ways" consists of a largely continuous sample of the film.