<MSTing> Pt 2 "Windmills"
the...@my-dejanews.com
> "Do you have any idea what this is going to do to your career?"
> "Half the marriages in this country end in divorce. It won't
>do anything," Stanton Rogers had replied.
MIKE: Yeah, it's fly to dump your old lady when a better gig comes along.
> He had proved to be a poor prophet. News of the bitterly fought
>divorce was manna for the press,
TOM (deep voice): Until Moses caught them with the golden calf. They did
not deserve these Ten Commandments!
>and the gossip papers played it up as luridly as possible, with pictures
> of Stanton Rogers's love nest and stories of secret midnight trysts.
MIKE: Which... we won't bore you with the details of.
CROW: God, this affair sounds as lurid as Mary Worth in a wimple.
>The newspapers kept the story alive as long as they could, and when the
>furor died down, the powerful friends who had backed Stanton Rogers for
> the presidency quietly disappeared.
TOM: Hm, must have got their own show on the Dubba Dubba.
>They found a new white knight to champion: Paul Ellison.
>
CROW (sings to "Lite Brite" jingle): White knight, makin' things with white
knight! What a sight...
> Ellison was a sound choice. While he had neither Stanton Rogers's
> good looks nor his charisma,
MIKE: -he had a porn collection that made Japanese businessmen blush.
>he was intelligent, likable, and had the right background. He was short
> in stature, with regular, even features and candid blue eyes. He had
> been happily married for ten years to the daughter of a steel magnate,
> and he and Alice were known as a warm and loving couple.
CROW: Mike, is it wrong for me to want to move to Canada at this point?
MIKE: No, I think their health care system would do our churning stomachs
a world of good.
> Like Stanton Rogers, Paul Ellison has attended Yale and was
> graduated from Harvard Law School. The two men had grown up together.
> Their families had had adjoining summer homes at Southampton,
CROW: Why doesn't that surprise me?
TOM: Southampton: Breeding pompous white men since 1642.
> -and the boys swam together, organized baseball teams, and later,
> double-dated.
CROW: Yeah, one of those double-dates where the boys go under the
boardwalk and the girls walk down the beach holding hands.
MIKE: Oh, now, Crow, that's not fair. These are future Congressmen, I'm
sure there was some good-hearted date raping going on.
>They were in the same class at Harvard. Paul Ellison did well, but it
> was Stanton Rogers who was the star pupil. Stanton Rogers's father was
> a senior partner in a prestigious Wall Street law firm,
TOM: Wilson, Ernst, Stanton Rogers's Father and Young
>and when Stanton worked there summers, he arranged for Paul to be there.
>Once out of law school, Stanton Rogers's political star began rising
>meteorically, and if he was the comet, Paul Ellison was the tail.
CROW: Comet Stanton Kahoutek! And his loyal tail, Squiggy!
MIKE: Jeez, what is it with all the full names?!
TOM: Well, before he made his name, Sheldon got paid by the word, and his
first book, "The Very Very Very Very Very Very Very Thin Gray Line" just
didn't sell.
MIKE: So his success lies in finding thrilling new ways to be redundant.
CROW: Clever.
> The divorce changed everything. It was now Stanton Rogers who
> became the appendage to Paul Ellison.
CROW: Yeah, he was the dangling little-
MIKE: Crow!
CROW: Toe! I was gonna say toe. Heh-heh.
>The trail leading to the top of the mountain took almost fifteen years.
>Ellison lost an election for the Senate, won the following one, and in
> the next few years became a highly popular, articulate lawmaker. He
> fought against waste in government and Washington beaurocracy.
TOM: Finally, a politician willing to take unpopular positions!
CROW: Wait, wait, I'm getting something... he's also for lower taxes,
strengthening our families, taking on the special interests, and fighting
to keep this nation strong!
MIKE: I haven't seen so many bland offerings since that Chevy Chase film
festival.
>He was popular, and believed in international Détente. He was asked to
> give nominating speech for an incumbent President running for
> reelection. It was a brilliant, impassioned speech-
TOM: Hi-ho! Kermit the hatchet man here...
>-that made everyone sit up and take notice.
MIKE: My god! That man's nominating the President with a hand puppet!
>Four years later, Paul Ellison was elected President of the United
> States.
CROW: Running as head of the Ambiguous Party.
TOM: Aw man, the opposition must have nominated the festering, maggot-
ridden corpse of a child molester who died from leprosy.
MIKE: Wheeled him around on a dolly, yelling, "You've all got the IQ of
yellow gunk on a dirty Q-tip! Vote for the corpse! DO IT!"
>His first appointment was Stanton Rogers as presidential foreign affairs
>adviser.
CROW: I advise you to have foreign affairs. Whoo-hoo!
> Marshall McLuhan's theory that television would turn the world into
> a global village had become a reality.
TOM: Then Rupert Murdoch came and turned it into a global sewer! Ha!
Thank you!
>The inauguration of the forty-second President of the United States was
>carried by satellite to more than 190 countries.
CROW: Fourteen countries in Bosnia alone!
> In the Black Rooster, a Washington D.C. hangout for newsmen, Ben
> Cohn, a veteran political reporter for the Washington Post, was seated
> at a table with four colleagues, watching the inauguration on the large
> television set over the bar.
TOM: Oh, Ben Cohn, I rubbed him on my sore back once! He's terrific!
MIKE: No, Tom. No.
> "The son of a bitch cost me fifty bucks," one of the reporters
>complained.
MIKE: Well, now that he's President, I'm sure he'll stop selling those ab
rollers and buckwheat pillows.
> "I warned you not to bet against Ellison," Ben Cohn chided. "He's
> got the magic, baby. You'd better believe it."
CROW: Frank Sinatra is Dustin Hoffman as Bob Woodward in: "All the
President's Dooby-Dooby Men"
> The camera panned to show the massive crowds gathered on
> Pennsylvania Avenue, huddled inside their own overcoats against the
> bitter January wind, listening to the ceremony on loudspeakers set up
> around the podium.
TOM (as Lynyrd Skynyrd): What song is it y'all wanna hear?
ALL: FREE BIRD!
>Jason Merlin, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, finished
> the swearing-in oath, and the new President shook his hand and stepped
> up to the microphone.
MIKE: Yeah, that's right, I'm President, this is mine now! Back off! Ha
ha!
TOM: Let the raping and pillaging begin!
> "Look at those idiots standing out there freezing their asses off,"
> Ben Cohn commented. "Do you know why they aren't home like normal human
> beings, watching it on television?"
> "Why?"
CROW (as Sinatra): Steve! Edie! Tell'em why.
> "Because a man is making history, my friends. One day all those
> people are going to tell their children and grandchildren that they were
> there on the day Paul Ellison was sworn in. And they're all going to
> brag,
MIKE (sings as Sinatra): I DID IT MYYYYY WAYYYYY!
>'I was so close to him I could have touched him'"
> "You're a cynic, Cohn."
> "And proud of it.
TOM: I'm from Cynic-Cohn Valley! Hee hee! What- ow! Hey!
MIKE: Well, it's your third one today. Now calm down.
CROW: Yeah, watch it.
>Every politician in the world comes out of the same cookie cutter.
> They're all in it for what they can get out of it.
CROW (Sinatra): Like strangers in the night, exchanging glances, baby.
>Face it, fellas, our new President is a liberal and an idealist. That's
>enough to give any intelligent man nightmares.
TOM: Frank Sinatra is Charlton Heston as Rush Limbaugh in: See, I Told You
So.
>My definition of a liberal is a man who has his ass firmly stuck in
> clouds of cotton wool."
MIKE: Ha ha! Oh, Ben Cohn, you're a riot when you're incomprehensible.
CROW: I grew cotton wool last year, from Burpee's New Zealand Sheep seeds.
It's great.
> The truth was that Ben Cohn was not as cynical as he sounded. He
> had covered Paul Ellison's career from the beginning, and while it was
> true that he had not been impressed at first,
TOM: -it was also true he wasn't impressed now.
>as Ellison moved up the political ladder Ben Cohn began to change his
>opinion. He was an oak in a forest of willows.
MIKE: A babbling brook in a glen of ineptitude.
CROW: A little teapot in a kitchen of feebs.
> Outside, the sky exploded into icy sheets of rain.
TOM: Ya know, Sheldon uses metaphor like a fisherman uses a club.
MIKE: Ha. True.
>Ben Cohn hoped the weather was not an omen of the four years that lay
> ahead. He turned his attention back to the television set.
CROW: Huh, look at that. "Melrose" is still on the air.
> "The presidency of the United States is a torch lit by the American
>people and passed from hand to hand every four years.
MIKE: Ooch! Ow! Here, take this.
CROW: Ahh! It burns! Tom, here.
TOM: Nyyyyah-hoo!
>The torch that has been entrusted to my care is the most powerful weapon in
>the world.
MIKE: $265 billion for defense, and you bought a torch?!
TOM: The citronella kind. Schwartzkoff hates mosquitoes. They chomp his
white butt.
> It is powerful enough to burn down civilization as we know it, or to be
> a beacon that will light the future for us and for the rest of the
> world.
CROW: Of course, it won't do either right now. Lame duck dickweed
incumbent left it running all night, now the battery's dead.
>It is our choice to make. I speak today not only to our allies, but to
>those countries in the Soviet camp.
MIKE: Ah, Soviet camp, those wacky '60 TV programs where everyone's in goofy
costumes. My favorite was the stuff done by Sid and Marty Krofftslanikov.
TOM: Oh, you mean "A Day in the Life of H.R. Puffenstuffovich"?
CROW (as the Magic Flute): Jimmy! Jimmy! Witchie-poo is leading the
kossacks in a pogrom of Liddsvillegrad!
>I say to them now, as we prepare to move into the twenty-first century,
> that there is no longer any room for the confrontation and that we must
> learn to make the phrase 'one world' become a reality.
MIKE: Man, since he started talking, three different independent counsels
have been named.
TOM: Two just to investigate that hairpiece.
>Any other course can only create a holocaust from which no nation would
> ever recover. I am well aware of the vast chasms that lie between us
> and the iron curtain countries, but the first priority of this
> administration will be to build unshakable bridges across those chasms."
ALL (sing): HA-A-A-A-A-ANDS ACROSS HYPERBOLE!
> His words rang out with a deep, heartfelt sincerity. He means it,
> Ben thought. I hope no one assassinates the bastard.
ALL: Pk-kshew! Bang! Kapow!
TOM: Oh my god, the President is in flames ladies and gentlemen! Oh, the
humanity!
MIKE: What if Ben Cohn is the voice those serial killers hear in their
heads?
CROW: Serves'em right.
> In Junction City, Kansas, it was a potbellied stove kind of day,
CROW (sings as Bob Dole): Chestnuts roasting on Bob Dole's open fire...
> bleak and raw, and snowing so hard that the visibility on Highway 6 was
>almost zero.
TOM: What? I'm sorry, are we starting another book here?
MIKE: Well, if the first one's not going anywhere, why not?
>Mary Ashley cautiously steered her old station wagon toward the center of
>the highway, where the snowplows had been at work. The storm was going
> to make her late for the class she was teaching.
CROW: The Sheriff from Fargo is teaching class?
TOM (as Sheriff from Fargo): Oh, yah, everybody uses them 3-cent stamps,
don'tcha know.
>She drove slowly, careful not to let the car go into a skid. From the
> car radio came the President's voice:
> "...are many in government as well as in private life who insist
> that America build more moats instead of bridges.
TOM: Stuffing instead of potatoes!
>My answer to that is-
MIKE: -sad.
>-that we can no longer afford to condemn ourselves or our children to a
>future threatened by global confrontations, and nuclear war."
CROW: Screw our children!
TOM: Yeah, give us tax cuts!
MIKE: More greenhouse gases!
CROW: Deregulate thalidomide!
> Mary Ashley thought: I'm glad I voted for him. Paul Ellison is
> going to make a great President.
MIKE: -as soon as he stops living with his mother and gets a girlfriend.
> Her grip tightened on the wheel as the snow became a blinding white
>whirlwind.
CROW: Mary Ashley thought of Paul Ellison as Jack Frost sent her to meet
the Grim Reaper.
> In Bucharest, it was evening. The winter had turned unexpectedly
> mild and the streets of the late marketplaces were crowded with citizens
> lined up to shop in the unseasonably warm weather.
MIKE: Is this the line for the raisin rations?
CROW: No, this is for rum rations. Raisin rations is that line over
there.
MIKE: Man, it's tough makin' a fruitcake in the Soviet bloc.
> Romanian President Alexander Ionescu sat in his office in Peles, the
>old Palace, on Caleae Victoriei, surrounded by half a dozen aides,
> listening to the broadcast on a short-wave radio.
CROW (as toked-out radio listener): Aw, man, Shadoe Stevens is just
another corporate shill, man.
TOM: Yeah, dude. Since they axed Casey Kasem, American Top 40 is nothin'
but a hollow lie.
> "...I have no intention of stopping there," the American President
> was saying. "Albania broke off all diplomatic relations with the United
> States in 1946. I intend to reestablish those ties. In addition, I
> intend to strengthen our diplomatic relations with Bulgaria, with
> Czechoslovakia, and with East Germany."
> Over the radio came the sounds of cheers and applause.
MIKE: Wow, I had no idea there were so many Albania groupies out there.
TOM (sings to tune of "When the Saints Come Marching In" as Coach from
Cheers): Albania, Albania, you border on- the- A-dri-atic...
> "Sending our ambassador to Romania is the beginning of a worldwide
>people-to-people movement.
CROW: That's why I propose trading Texas for Qatar, Botswana, and a banana
republic to be named later.
>Let us never forget that all mankind shares a common ultimate fate.
ALL clear their throats, pretend to act naturally, and avoid eye contact
TOM: Oh, man, I can't believe he brought that up.
CROW: Yeah, instead of "Hail to the Chief", it's gonna be four years of
Morrissey songs.
MIKE (sings as Morrissey): Then it's the bomb that will bring us together...
CROW and TOM: SHUT UP!
>Let us remember that the problems we share are greater than the problems
> that divide us, and that what divides us is of our own making."
CROW: The problems that divide us are pellet with the poison, but the
vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true!
> In a heavily guarded villa in Neuilly, a suburb of Paris, the
> Romanian revolutionary leader, Marin Groza, was watching the President
> on Chaine 2 Television.
TOM: Great, the President's being dubbed by Jerry Lewis.
> "...I promise you now that I will do my best and that I will seek
> out the best in others."
CROW (as Jerry Lewis): HOH! Nice lady! With the promise and the pledging
and the seeking!
TOM and MIKE (French): Genius! Oui-oui!
> The applause lasted fully five minutes.
> Marin Groza said, thoughtfully, "I think our time has come, Lev. He
>really means it."
MIKE: The anniversary diamond. Say you'd give clandestine aid all over
again.
> Lev Pasternak, his security chief, replied, "Won't this help
> Ionescu?"
> Marin Groza shook his head. "Ionescu is a tyrant, so in the end,
> nothing will help him.
TOM: But doesn't new Aleve keep tyrants going eight hours strong?
>But I must be very careful with my timing.
MIKE: Yeah, like shooting the President before loading my gun. Damn,
that was embarrassing.
CROW: This guy makes Squeaky Fromme look like Florence Harding.
>I failed when I tried to overthrow Ceausescu. I must not fail again."
TOM (Gilligan's Island theme): Ba-da-da-da-dup, ba-da-dup, ba-da-dup, ba!
MIKE (as Skipper): Gilligan, you failed again!
> Pete Connors was not drunk- not as drunk as he intended to get.
CROW: Not Boris Yeltsin drunk.
>He had finished almost a fifth of Scotch, when Nancy, the secretary he
> lived with, said,
TOM (as Secretary): Now is the winter of our discontent...
>"Don't you think you've had enough, Pete?" He smiled and slapped her.
MIKE: Hey!
ALL: Boo!
CROW: I didn't know they had side hacking in Washington.
> "Our President's talkin'. You gotta show some respect." He turned
> to look at the image on the television set. "You communist son of a
> bitch," he yelled at the screen.
MIKE: What, he got a Chinese television?
>"This is my country, and the CIA's not gonna let you give it away.
TOM (sings as Lee Greenwood): An' I'm proud to be an Ame-ri-CAN!
MIKE: Yeah, sure, Lee. We gotta go.
CROW: What, at the first plot point?
MIKE: There'll be another one. Eventually. Come on.
>We're gonna stop you, Charlie. You can bet your ass on it."
TOM: I'm betting my nose hair. Hee hee!
/ * \... = 2 =...> 3 <... [ 4 ]... ( 5 )... | 6 |
SOL is dark, illuminated ominously by hundreds of candles. A sinister
logo is displayed on a podium. Mike, in black robes and a cowl, steps up
to the podium.
MIKE: The time has come to take the vote. When I call your secret code
name, come forth and cast your ballot. Janus?
CROW comes forth in a cowl, votes, then exits.
CROW: Aye.
MIKE: Hermes?
TOM comes forth similarly clad, votes and exits.
TOM: Nay.
MIKE: Pericles?
CROW returns.
CROW (as Tim Conway's Swedish businessman): By yimminy, ah vote-a no!
MIKE tips up his cowl and speaks sotto voce.
MIKE: Wait, Crow? I don't get this. I mean, the motion written here is,
"Should we do a sketch based on the creepy, stilted ballot scene from
Windmills of the Gods?" How can you do a sketch about taking a ballot
about whether to do a sketch on taking ballot? It makes no sense!
CROW (still as Conway): Oh, so the all-a-knowing Missus-A-Hwiggins has
gotten a degree in-a how to run-a de underground government in-a-between
sharpenin' those pencils there. Just get back-a to work, before you break
a nail and perform a lobotomy on yourself or something.
MIKE: OK, OK. Motorhead?
TOM (returning): Pants.
MIKE: You can't vote pants, it's yes or no!
TOM: Look, Marcia, when we want your opinion, we'll interrupt your
manicure and tell ya, got it?
MIKE: Oh, sure. Fine...Tennessee Ernie Ford?
CROW: Pants.
MIKE: Shakes the Clown???
TOM: Pants.
MIKE: SNUGGLES THE FABRIC SOFTENER BEAR?!? Oh, cripes, that's it!
MIKE pulls off the cowl and leaves the podium.
CROW and TOM: What? What?
MIKE: That's it, I've had it. You know, your father and I thought you two
were old enough to have your own little super-secret underground
government, but it seems you're not quite up to the responsibility,
because I'm the one who cuts the crusts off the sandwiches for your
meetings, I'm the one who has to clean up your shredded documents, and I'm
the one who had to explain to the Washington press corps why Lake
Champlain is filled with strawberry-banana gelatin!
TOM: Well we couldn't very well fill it with cranberry gelatin!
CROW: Yeah, it've been silly!
TOM: Aw c'mon, Mike, we'll be good. Please?
MIKE: Mmmmmm... oh, all right, you little pixies. But I want you taking
the responsibility of world domination a little more seriously now, and
give a good think on how your actions affect others.
CROW: Oh, but we will Mike. From now on, we're ruling with the wisdom of
Lincoln, the fairness of FDR, and dignity of Winston Churchill.
MIKE: All right then, let's continue where we left off. (raises list,
reads it carefully to himself then announces the next name) Buttwipe?
TOM: Pants!
MIKE: Kissyface?
CROW: Pants, pants, pants!
MIKE (as light flashes): Captain Starhips? We'll be right back.
TOM and Crow chant, "Pants! Pants! Pants!" over the spinning logo.
Commericals. "The Maniac Who Tried to Blow Up the World" - A Sci-Fi
Channel original motion picture!
<<End Part II>>
It's not easy, e-mailing green. peasporr...@hotmail.com
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