Cheaply Made Dreamland by j. lucow

The following is a conversation overheard while waiting for a skinny vanilla latte:

Writer 1- Are you still pushing that tooth script around town?

Writer 2- What’s the tooth script?

Writer 3- It’s not a tooth script.  It’s called Andy’s Mouth.  The protagonist goes from dentist to dentist, trying to find someone who can save his rotting smile, but no one takes his insurance.

Writer 2- Who’s the antagonist?

Writer 1- A bag of Smarties.

Writer 3 - The antagonist is the system.  The monopoly that conspires to keep us all in under its thumb and powerless.

Writer 2- So it’s a very metaphorical film.

Writer 3- Yeah.

Writer 1- There was a monkey in it too, wasn’t there?

Writer 3- An orangutan!  There’s a difference.

Writer 2- Is the orangutan a metaphor?

Writer 3- No, a hygienist.  There’s a great bit with a banana and a canister of nitrous oxide.

Writer 2- So what are you working on?

Writer 1- Social commentary piece.  It’s the story of a woman railing against bureaucracy in a male dominated society.

Writer 2- What’s it called?

Writer 1- Helen’s Gumline.  There’s a great part with a gibbon and a fluoride rinse.

Writer 3- You bastard.

I hate to divulge my private conversations with celebrities, but I’m just wondering if anyone else has the same problem.

Via Instant Messaging:

ke$ha1:  So do you look like Mick Jagger?

AceFreelyRcks:  Please stop texting me already.

ke$ha1: Srsly.  Do you?

AceFreelyRcks:  Do you even know who Mick Jagger is?

ke$ha1: LOL!  Yeah! WTF?!

AceFreelyRcks:  I’m sending you his picture. <FILE ATTACHED>

ke$ha1: Who the hell is that?

AceFreelyRcks:  That’s Mick Jagger.

ke$ha1: DUDE! WHAT?!  Then who iz this? <FILE ATTACHED>

AceFreelyRcks: That’s the kid from Twilight.

ke$ha1: HLY SHT!  That guy iz…

AceFreelyRcks: Old. Yeah.

ke$ha1: Can u buy my song again?

AceFreelyRcks: Ok. BRB

ke$ha1: LMFAO!

I received this letter in my mailbox yesterday morning.  It was addressed

TO: NEIGHBOR

FROM: NEXT TO NEIGHBOR

It had no stamp.

“Dear Friend,

I am moving back home after seven years in the United States.  We’ve never managed to have a conversation, but I have appreciated you bringing in my garbage cans from the street every occasional Friday.

I am returning to Lisbon as a celebrated poet and indirectly I owe my fame to you.

As my study looks through your bathroom window, I had chosen you as the subject of my latest collection.  It is, as of yet, untitled.  Not that I haven’t found many colorful phrases that work; it’s just that my publisher has shot them all down for fear I will be known as a “fetish poet”.  I didn’t even know there was such a thing.

Please understand me.  It was not my intention to be a voyeur.  In fact, I was the one that left the curtains on your doorstep many years ago in hopes they would obscure the window in question.  I’ve noticed they ended up in your kitchen instead and I must admit it was a better choice, decor-wise.

Again, do not misunderstand.  This letter is a sincere expression of gratitude.  Had your dietary habits not found you on the toilet at the same time every day, my work would have ended up lost with so many other bland treatises on urban life.  The time you had the flu last May pushed me into a more verbose period than I thought was possible.  Glad you’re feeling better by the way.

I would love to send you a copy of the book, but it’s written in my native tongue and would lose much of the subtlety were it published in your language.  You may want to learn Portuguese.  In fact, I am having this letter translated by a friend as my English still lacks depth and color.  He’ll be taking over my apartment and I suggest moving the curtains from the kitchen to the bathroom.  He is a musician and I feel his compositions would suffer where mine have flourished.  His name is Ferno.  Don’t be afraid to say hello.

My sincerest thanks to you and if you ever find yourself abroad, please come to Lisbon.  Our restrooms are among the cleanest in Europe.

Respectfully,

M.F.”

It is a scientifically proven fact that if you put Keith Richards next to a standard sixty watt light bulb, it will dim slightly.  Considering this study and others performed on members of Procol Harum, the scientific community has committed itself to developing the electromagnetic potential of pop icons.

Laws pertaining to magnetic orientation seem to have a direct relation to the musical elite.  Some entertainers retain a negative charge while others, like Phil Collins, are positive.  Considered a body at rest since the early nineties, Collins’ store of potential energy could generate enough power for a small village. Indeed, the Atlantic province of Saintonge in France has been using the hit “You Can’t Hurry Love” to provide electricity for the last five years.

The problem, of course, lies in transferring the concept to a working device.  Getting two unlike performers on the same tour requires an immense marketing budget, not to mention the amount of copper wire it takes to keep the performers in place (Ed. note:  please review the accounting forecast spreadsheet for the recently canceled Kanye West/Lady Gaga tour.)

A recently constructed generator consisting of a brushless wound-rotor turbine and Australian diva Kylie Minogue has so far not violated Taylor Swift’s Law of Thermodynamics.  Further testing will need to be done before tee shirts are available.

I taught myself how to play by listening to the airwaves.  I didn’t even have a horn back then.  Hell, being tone deaf didn’t stop me either.  I would sit in front of our Silvertone radio and scream along with the sounds of New Orleans pouring out like honey.

I’d yell and yell and yell some more.  I never did find the right key to anything, but I never stopped trying.  After a while, they took the knob off the radio. Later, they took the radio and left the knob.

One day, my aunt Agnes asked me what I wanted for my birthday.  I told her cheese.

After I finished the cheese, she asked me if I wanted anything else.  I told her I wanted a trumpet.

She laughed and said, “Little Man, if you had asked me for the trumpet first, I would’ve had just enough money to buy one.  Cheese is expensive these days.”

Thirty-two years later, she asked me that same question.  I was thinking trumpet, but I said cheese again.

I sat on the porch eating my gruyère.  I couldn’t complain.  The cheese was good and even more expensive than it had been three decades ago.  Just as I was getting ready to scream out a rendition of St. James Infirmary, a scrap metal truck barreled around the corner and nearly crashed into the steps of my aunt’s house.

It kicked up such a storm of dust! The old rickety truck rocked itself steady and sped down the road with a clankity clank.  When the dust cleared, I noticed something had fallen out of it.  Bless my soul, it was a trumpet.  And I still had a little bit of cheese left too.  It was kind of like that saying about having your cake and eating it too, although I never tried to play a piece of cake.  I grabbed the trumpet out of the road and ran to the radio.

CHAPTER 2

I played that trumpet for days at a time, not even stopping for the smallest amount of cheddar.  Not for swiss.  Not for gouda.

I played that horn till my lips bled.  I played it till most of my teeth fell out.  I played it till I fractured my jaw in three places.  Then I met Old Joe.

Old Joe was walking by the porch one day while I was playing my heart out.  More blood than usual was running down my cheeks.

“Wrong way, Suskind,” he said.

I stopped playing and looked up at him. He was blocking the noon day sun and around his head was a halo of light.  He looked just like an angel.  Or an eclipse.

“How’s that?” I asked, squinting to see anything.

“You’re holding it the wrong way, Suskind.  You blow into the little end.”

I had found my mentor.

This was a sketch that never saw the light of day.

(Scene opens in an interrogation room.  A detective sits opposite a man accused of human trafficking.)

Detective- You do realize you’re being charged with a federal offense, don’t you?

Jimmy- No, see that’s where you’re wrong.  The man I work for said this is perfectly legit.  These aliens aren’t illegal.

Detective- OK, well, maybe you can tell me where they are from.

Jimmy- Zeta Reticuli, mostly.  I get a few from Alpha Centauri around the holidays, but it’s usually Reticulans.

Detective-  I’m sorry?

Jimmy- From space.  They aren’t Earth aliens; they’re space aliens.  There’s no law against bringing space aliens across the border.  Haven’t you taken a look at them?

Detective- Yes, we have.  They speak Spanish.

Jimmy- Well, yeah.  All they can pick up in space in Telemundo.

Detective- And they’re covered in green makeup.

Jimmy- That must be some multi-dimensional thing.

Detective- Yeah, fine.  Why don’t you give us the name of the guy you work for and we’ll see about getting you a reduced sentence.

Jimmy- That’s not going to be easy.

Detective- Why is that?

Jimmy- Forty-eight syllables.  Very difficult to pronounce.

Detective- Listen, pal…

(Suddenly there’s an explosion.  The detective falls to the ground, unconscious.  A tall man dressed in white with a green face walks through the rubble left by the explosion.)

Man In White- Jimmy, let’s get out of here.  We’ve got a busload Reticulans waiting.

Jimmy- Sorry, Mr. Haasat-Machnaa-Kunookto…

Man In White-  Knock it off, Jimmy, and get in the van.

My web browser said it was having trouble running an unresponsive script.  I can sympathize.  I sent a script to my agent a year ago and still haven’t heard anything.

Pop Icon.

Popeye Con.

Pop Icon.

Popeye Con.

Pop Icon.

Popeye Con.

I keep picturing a gathering of lanky sailors with bulging forearms and spinach addictions.  I won’t be able to get anything done today.

Shit.

I ran into a old friend who decided to change careers and go back to school. He’s studying Hotel Management. I told him, by a strange coincidence, I was studying Hotel Guest so maybe we’d run into each other in the lobby in a few years. I’d tap the service bell, he’d hand me a key.  We’d both have mustaches.

He didn’t think it was funny.

He was studying for his Ice Availability exam.

I was having a very high-minded conversation with a well respected member of the local intelligentsia when at the worst possible time, my brain crapped out on me.

“I can’t stand the minutiae,” the amply IQ’ed woman said, expecting a witty retort.

But it was no good.  I couldn’t respond.  My brain was gone.  It went on a little trip to Shop Rite for wax paper and left me alone in the middle of this meaningful rapport.  I started to drool.  Not much, but it was enough.

Minutiae.  Minutiae?  All I could picture was a team of tiny bears in purple jumpsuits, stacking little crates of sunshine in a happy green meadow.  Yes, Minutiae!  They were singing a song.  It was about their friends, the jellyfish.  One day in May they will visit them for a picnic on the Raspberry Shoreline.  They’ll eat pies and frolic in the foamy sea.  For now, they will stack sunshine boxes until they reach the sky so little Tommy NumNum can wake up before he is late for school.  Oh yes, Minutiae!

“How can you not like the little bears?!” I yelled. “They’re genious!  They’re going to wake up Tommy NumNum and then go to the beach for a jellyfish picnic!  What’s wrong with Minutiae?!”

Just then my brain got back, juggling some grocery bags.

“Sorry I’m late,” he apoligized.  “I needed to get a few things besides wax paper.  Got so much I even forgot the wax paper altogether! Ha! OK, so where were we?  Minutiae?”

But it was too late.  She was gone and my chance to join the intellectual elite went with her.  I was alone in a green meadow.  I sat on a bright orange box and wept.  Suddenly, I heard tiny, but rough voice.

“Move it, buddy!” shouted a little bear in a purple jumpsuit.  “If I don’t get this last freaking box of sunshine stacked, Tommy’s gonna have my fuzzy nuts for breakfast.”

Still, I don’t mind the Minutiae.